Naughton Your Nelly

I can and do quarrel, however - and this is not just a mini-spat, this is serious war - with numbers 12, 14 and 28 in what is, remember, the worst TV of all time.

Number 12 on Naughton’s list is The Black and White Minstrel Show, which ran for twenty years from 1958. He describes it as “a legacy of the 19th-century Deep South”, “an anachronistic obscenity” and “The BBC‘s long-running embarrassment”.

Such politically correct twaddle is possibly to be expected but the blackface makeup is a theatrical costume, and I write this as a Scot who has stoically endured and enjoyed tributes - for tributes they are indeed - to my culture from comedians in See-You -Jimmy hats with paintbrushes for sporrans, in a long line that stretches from Laurel and Hardy and Danny Kaye to Russ Abbott and beyond.

But then Naughton confuses the issue by stating that “almost as offensive, however, was its success: its schmaltzy song-and-dance routines regularly attracted 16 million viewers, as well as winning the 1961 Golden Rose of Montreux and spawning two number-one spin-off albums”.

It might not be rocket science, but I have a theory that perhaps viewers enjoyed watching and listening to excellent singers and dancers performing melodic, cheerful or comic songs that will last for a very long time.

His next choice is The Good Old Days, which ran for thirty years from 1953. You’ll be glad to know that he doesn’t accuse chairman Leonard Sachs of racially abusing people from Yorkshire, but Naughton is on dangerous ground when he claims that the acts which Sachs introduced “offered ample evidence of why music hall had expired in the first place.”

I think closer examination of this point will reveal that television itself, along with the cinema, did for the music hall and not a lack of talented performers.

Some of my favourite television moments included Les Dawson seated at the piano as he punched out some inappropriate notes, Denny Willis in The Fox Has Left Its Lair (wait a minute … don’t tell me that was un-PC too?) and the sublime Animals in the Box routine featuring Jimmy Casey (son of the original sketch member Jimmy James), Roy Castle and Eli Woods.

Edinburgh Military Tattoo

Finally, but it’s a big one, Naughton gets his teeth into The Edinburgh Military Tattoo, which was first televised in 1952 and is still running. By this time he appears to be tiring, for all he can manage is “Guarantees the question: “What’s on the other side?” I’m not quite sure if it’s the pipes and drums he dislikes, or the Highland dancers, or the visiting artistes - did you see those amazing Swiss drummers again this year? - who provide some colour, entertainment and spectacle into what can sometimes be a drab life.

Perhaps I’ve taken Naughton’s article the wrong way. Perhaps it’s meant to be provocative in order to sell copies of the magazine, but these programmes were part of my education and I have nothing but happy memories of them. Nostalgia? It’s not what it was.