Logically Positive

I know this will come as a big surprise to you, but I’m not much of an expert on game shows. Growing up, when we all sat round the black and white telly watching whatever Father deemed fit, we would be entertained by Call My Bluff, in which mostly-bald middle-aged men sparred to be witty, while making borderline sexist comments to whomever had been chosen as the sole pretty young thing that week (usually Joanna Lumley, I seem to recall), and Face the Music, in which mostly-bald middle-aged men sparred to be (etc). The latter programme featured perhaps the most surreal thing ever televised, in which a mild-mannered man called Joseph Cooper, the host, played a dummy piano keyboard which went clatter clatter, and everyone had to work out what the piece was that he was noisily but tunelessly playing. Robin Ray, one of the team captains, who wore the kind of clothes Princess Margaret would have bought for her latest paramour, normally got the right answer, and usually knew the opus number too. My, how we laughed. It was not very Love Island.

So that was the extent of our domestic televisual entertainment; two earnest, aspirational programmes, which left a warm glow of self-satisfaction if you ever got any of the answers right – like University Challenge, with more cardigans. And only on the BBC, of course. Button 3, for ITV, was never pressed in our house.

As a result, I drew a blank at Blankety-Blank, and The Price could very well have been Right for all I knew, but I never saw it. There is however a very desirable consequence from this childhood deprivation, this insulation from popular (lack of) culture; I never saw Bob Monkhouse in gameshow host mode, with shiny suit and shinier hair, an oleaginous smile toying around his lips. I know he hosted dozens of these shows, for I have this thing called Wikipedia, but never a minute of any of them passed across my increasingly myopic teenage eyes. So instead of having an impression of Bob as TV’s Mr Smarmy, I recall him as he really was; one of the finest and smartest comics of the last century, a man who wrote peerless gags for some of the best British comedians, and Bob Hope too, and whose own comedy routines were priceless. (His priceless was right, you might even say).

Featuring prominently in them were Uncle jokes, a vehicle for his wit and impeccable comic timing in which his fictitious uncle was forever doing implausible things. For example:

My uncle invented a clockwork surgical support. Wound up a nutcase.

And my favourite –

I want to die peacefully in my sleep like my uncle. Not screaming in terror, like his passengers.

I think I particularly appreciated these because my own uncles were - well, they were not quite so funny. Uncle Ronnie, who was a storeman in a power station, was never known to crack a joke, being instead obsessed with his prize leeks and the Conservative Club. (Shame really; leeks and the Tories seem ripe for verbal comedy to me, especially at a time when the latter were full of Wets). Meanwhile Uncle Brian, possessor of an impressive beard and a talent for throwing pots – on purpose, happily – only had one joke that I recall, which today would be about as acceptable as those antediluvian attitudes on Call my Bluff.

‘Relationships thrive on incompatibility. The man needs the income, the woman the pat-ability’.

(I didn’t say it was a funny joke).

I was thinking about him last week, when I had the inestimable privilege of going to Henley. This, you’ll know, is part of ‘the season’, in which people with nothing better to do with their time harrumph and drink too much, being only vaguely aware that in the background, sturdy young men and women are flogging their guts out doing miraculous feats on the river. It is awfully posh, so much so that I had to buy a new suit for the occasion (a light blue linen one, since you ask, with a tie best described as virulent) - though I was there because I’m obsessed with rowing, so unlike the majority of the crowd, I was genuinely interested in what was happening on the water.

So, surrounded by ladies in gorgeous frocks and men in implausibly-coloured woollen blazers in 32C heat, we watched stream after stream of aquatic excellence, whilst everyone else toyed with a Pimm’s and talked about Tuscany. And then we discussed the finer points of rowing technique while trying to work out which gaudy blazer came from which rowing club. Most of these have enough piping around the edges to get Mary Berry all excited, but I learned Most Interesting Useless Fact of the Day when chatting to a nice man in a plain, bright red jacket. He’d been to somewhere called Cambridge, where apparently they have some sort of embryonic University, to St John’s College to be precise, which for reasons I was too polite to unearth has a boat club called Lady Margaret’s. And, said the man in vermillion, many moons ago its members decided to introduce a jacket to be worn when they all assembled, which was such a hot red colour, like the flames of an especially scorching fire, that it was instantly dubbed a ‘blazer’. Et voilà: that’s where the word comes from.

As I was reeling from this wonderful piece of trivia, we had lunch. This involved walking to the car park, where we were serenaded by a recurring car alarm, then ate delicious food on a groaning plastic picnic table which, miraculously, failed to collapse. There, I fell into conversation with a lovely man who turned out to be a Professor of Philosophy. With him was his equally charming other half, who by strange coincidence was also a Professor of Philosophy, albeit at a different university. This seems like the ultimate Platonic relationship. There must have been something in the A J Ayer when they met, an instant spark - cogitamus ergo sumus. I like to think that, drawn inexorably and indeed logically together, they initially lived separately for a while, putting Descartes before the house.

I naturally fell to wondering about their subsequent domestic conversation.

‘Would you like a cup of tea, darling?’

‘What exactly do you mean by ‘a cup of tea’?’

Still, at least they were compatible. My Uncle would have been pleased.