But I Digress ...

by Darrel Bristow-Bovey

  The Wheelbarrow VC refused to talk about his heroism. He refused to discuss or even describe what happened. After more than 50 years of living quietly in his country cottage, married to the woman who was his wartime sweetheart, he was embarrassed that someone should be making a fuss all over again.

  In a private interview, his wife confided: “He doesn’t like to be thought of as a hero. He always says that he did what he did because it had to be done, not because it was a heroic thing to do. That’s why he won’t speak about it.”

  I caught my breath. In the age of Oprah, that makes him a hero all over again.

  In the sight of the man, sitting gently in an old darned cardigan, occasionally turning to gaze fondly through the window at a garden lovingly tended, a vegetable patch neat with marrows and watercress and beans, a small corner of a world he helped keep safe for a little while longer, there was something that moved me unutterably. He was a quiet, ordinary man, living a quiet, ordinary life, desiring nothing more than to continue in quietness and ordinariness and privacy, who had once done extraordinary things.

  There was nothing staged in his reticence. In his awkward, fidgeting, dignified silence there was a glimpse of all that I find wonderful in human beings. I felt honoured to have seen it. And only television – of all the media that have ever existed – could have offered me precisely that glimpse.

  The Wheelbarrow VC refused to contribute, so the show was pieced together with newsreels and clippings and the memories of the surviving members of his unit. One of his former comrades remembered how, every day for two weeks, the Wheelbarrow VC would leopard crawl across no-man’s-land with a pocket of hand grenades to eliminate the Germans manning a forward machine-gun post. He was wounded in the shoulder by a German sniper, but he returned, again and again. The interviewer raised this with the Wheelbarrow VC. For the first time the Wheelbarrow VC ceased to look uncomfortable. He looked up, and in his faded blue eyes there was the fierce light of sudden emotion, and an expression of something like wonder.

  “Every day they were killed,” he said, “and every day there were new soldiers there. They knew they would die, but they kept manning the post.”

  He shook his head, and his eyes became moist and something caught at his voice. Unobtrusively, his wife lowered her eyes and pressed her knee against his. In the silence a clock ticked.

  “The Germans,” he said at last, still shaking his head in wonder and sorrow and something deeper that we who have not been to war can never understand, “those Germans were so brave.”

  Heinz Meanz Has-Beenz

  CAPE TIMES, 5 JULY 2002

  I DON’T LIKE HEINZ WINKLER. I’m sorry, but I don’t. There is something about that smirking face and smug hairdo that makes me want to seize him by the lapels of his pizza-delivery-boy-moonlighting-as-a-male-stripper outfit and strike him firmly with both sides of my hand. In fact, the more I think about Heinz Winkler, the less I like him. He is young, allegedly attractive to women and on the brink of making more money than me. What’s to like? He is the Jamie Oliver of South African pop music.

  There are many things I dislike about Heinz Winkler, not least his name. What kind of a name is Heinz Winkler for a pop idol? Not since Engelbert Humperdinck has there been a name so unlikely to have me heaving my boxer shorts on stage. I don’t know precisely what a heinz is, but I don’t think I’d care to see one winkled in my presence. (Although, to be fair, he does have this over Engelbert Humperdinck: Heinz Winkler is in fact his real name. Unbelievably, Engelbert Humperdinck is a stage name. What could Engelbert’s real name have been to have driven him to such a sobriquet? Jim Scrotum? Ben Dover? Adolph Hitler?)

  Do you join me in spurning Heinz Winkler? Probably not. Chances are you are one of the squillions of local viewers spending your evenings and your monthly salary calling the Heinz Winkler vote line at cellphone rates. Gee, you must really like him. I have close friends and family members for whom I wouldn’t pay cellphone rates.

  At any rate, there is no real doubt that Heinz Winkler will win Idols. My man at M-Net first tipped me off three weeks ago that the sheer volume of calls suggests that the Winklemeister has a fan-base roughly the size of North Korea. Is there space in Stellenbosch to hide the population of North Korea? my man at M-Net asked me. Because all the calls seem to come from Stellenbosch.

  This is causing some discontent in Johannesburg. Northerners take their Reality TV shows very seriously. These are the people, remember, who staked out the Big Brother house and threw messages over the wall hidden inside potatoes. That would not have happened in Cape Town, and not just because Capetonians do not go out of their way to greet new neighbours. People in Gauteng invest themselves deeply in the contestants, and they are beginning to suspect a conspiracy.

  There was disapproval at that chucklehead Ferdinand winning the first Big Brother, but nothing was said because there was no one else that anyone especially liked. Idols is different. Not only have there been candidates clearly stronger and less annoying than the Winkster, but for the next few months we are not going to be able to switch on the radio without hearing the winner’s rendition of “Islands in the Stream” or “Nelly the Elephant” or whatever fresh horror lies in store for us.

  There is much at stake here. Johannesburgers are becoming suspicious of the rural areas of the Cape. “What goes on down there?” they say, narrowing their eyes. “Are there betting syndicates in Stellenbosch with automatic dialling machines? Are there units of Cape patriots with telephones funded by Jürgen Harksen and a brief to win at all costs?” Then they say: “If this goes on much longer, we’ll just stop making Reality TV shows. Then what will they do?”

  Good citizens of Cape Town, I know these people. They are not joking. It is too late for Idols, but Big Brother 2 starts soon. Take my advice: let the northerner win.

  I can’t bare the Naked Chef

  SUNDAY INDEPENDENT, 28 JULY 2002

  IF YOU ARE a regular reader of this organ, you will know that I am no fan of the Naked Chef. It would be fair to say that between the Naked Chef and me, a great deal of love is not lost. We have never come to blows or anything, no matter what you may read in the tabloid pages of the yellow press, but relations between us are not cordial. Let’s just say we do not speak to each other, and leave it at that.

  There are many things I do not like about the Naked Chef. I do not, for one thing, like his lips. He has lips like the inside of a giant clam. I am afraid of standing too close to those lips in case they snap shut around my ankle and hold me immobile while the tide rises and slowly drowns me. Fortunately, I have devised a technique for neutralising the threat of those lips. Remember this simple manoeuvre if ever you find yourself in close proximity to Jamie Oliver and the rising waters of the seashore: place your right hand behind his head and press, with a firm and steady motion, his face against the nearest wall. A squelching sound will tell you when maximum suction has been attained between lips and wall. A few gentle backward tugs by the hair should ascertain firmness of bond. Congratulations! Jamie Oliver and his lips are now immobilised. You are safe! Plus, you won’t have to hear a grown man use the words “Tucker” or “Yeh?” or say “Wicked” as an expression of approval.

  It has been suggested that my principal complaint against Jamie Oliver is not his lips or his David-Beckham-meets-Keith-Floyd hairdo, or the fact that he has a vocabulary of fewer words than Marlee Matlin’s mynah bird, or even that cutesy scooter that makes the ladies go “Awww”. (Just wait until someone arrives to fetch you for a date on a scooter, girls. Then you’ll really say “Awww”.)

  It has been suggested that my principal complaint has something to do with the fact that each year he sells more copies of his rotten cookbooks than you can shake a stick at. (And believe me, I have shaken many a stick at those books.) This allegation, while uncharitable, is regrettably true. Jamie Oliver is young, slim, attractive to the public and sells lots of books. His very existence is abhorrent to me.

  But my better self
sometimes asserts itself. “Perhaps he is not so bad when he is not mugging it up in the kitchen,” says my better self. At which point I throw my better self in a headlock and shove my thumb into one of its eyes. So it was something of a relief to discover this week that the little swine is even more of a dunderhead when he’s not mashing potatoes or jellying eels or whatever.

  Jamie Oliver was a guest on Parkinson (BBC Prime, Monday, 10.30pm). He’s a lovely old duffer, is Michael Parkinson. He brings to me the same comfort as Graeme Hart the weather guy, or a cricket test on a summery Saturday afternoon: it feels as though nothing can go too terribly wrong with the world as long as Parky is having a good old chuckle with his guests. “Ho, ho, ho, ho, hooo, dear me,” says Parky during the course of a good old chuckle. When he is merely chuckling politely, he goes: “Ho, ho, ho. Yes.” To a veteran Parky watcher, these variations are all important.

  You could tell that Parkinson was slightly bemused at finding himself interviewing a chef in his early twenties with absolutely no life experience. “The secret of my success is that I am really passionate,” said Jamie Oliver.

  “Oh really?” said Parkinson, perking up at the scent of a conversation. “Passionate about what, exactly?”

  This was a question Jamie Oliver had not asked his press manager. “Um, uh, well, everything, mate. Everything, yeh?”

  Parky pondered. He didn’t want to belabour the point, but there was really nothing else to talk about. “Presumably you’re especially passionate about food?” he offered.

  “Oh, mate,” said Jamie Oliver, his eyes shining like a pair of faucets, “food is brilliant. Because you know, flavours are, well, they’re a real experience, aren’t they? Lovely. Wicked.”

  Soon Parky was stretching for something to ask. “Culinary fashions change so quickly,” he ventured. “What do you think we will be eating in 20 years?”

  Jamie Oliver’s new vertical hairstyle quivered slightly in the gentle breeze of his deep thought.

  “You know,” he said at last, “the secret of my success is that I am very passionate …”

  “Is it true that you have never read a book?” asked Parky.

  “That’s true, yep,” said Jamie Oliver with a proud smile. At least, I think it was a smile – it is hard to tell with those lips. It was a shocking admission. Even the person I always believed to be the biggest cretin on television – Margaret from Big Brother 1 – has read a book. If you will recall, she couldn’t remember precisely the title of the book, “but I know it was by Danielle Steele”. Think about that – Margaret with her suntan-lotion-stained paperback Danielle Steele is better read than one of the best-selling authors on the market today.

  Thoughtfully, Parky had invited Elle McPherson on the show to make Jamie look better. “So, Elle,” said Parky happily, “do you mind it when people call you The Body?”

  Elle was ready for this question. “No, no,” she said. “Bodies are good, because they have everything inside them, like, you know, a soul, and a spirit and … uh …” Polyps? Duodenal ulcers? Tapeworms? Sometimes, if you’re lucky, selected bits of other people’s bodies? We don’t know. She never finished the thought.

  “Anyway,” said Elle, “it could have been worse. I could be called … uh … The Brain.”

  Parky chuckled. “Ho, ho, ho,” he said. “Yes.”

  Bogie and Bacall look off-colour

  SUNDAY INDEPENDENT, 11 AUGUST 2002

  AND SO THAT’S how Ally McBeal ended – not with a bang, but with a whimper. Come to think of it, that’s also how Ally McBeal started – and carried on. Still, we have now seen the last episode, and a good thing too. No more pouting, no more hair-twiddling as a substitute for acting, no more of Vonda Shepard’s theme song for the 1990s, “I’ve been searching my soul tonight”.

  Searching your soul is unseemly. You never find anything useful there – the car keys are generally between the couch cushions, and your parking ticket will not be found, no matter where you look. When you do put in a thorough search, standing at the parking payment machine with a small sea of plastic shopping bags around your feet, and you finally emerge with a parking ticket, like a happy gannet bobbing up with a pilchard in its beak, it is always the parking ticket you lost the last time you were at the mall. Where was it three days ago when you needed it? Where has it been in the interim? Ah, my friends, these are life’s ineffable mysteries. You may as well ask why the caged bird sings, or how many roads a man must walk down before you can call him a cab.

  Humphrey Bogart never searched his soul, or if he did, he had more class than to do it in public. That is one of the many reasons I am so fond of him. Bogart is a reminder of a better time; a cleaner, stronger, nobler time, when male movie stars were men, not pretty boys with expensive haircuts and bellies rippling like traffic calming zones. When life dealt Bogart the blows it deals us all – true loves arriving in our gin-joint with a new man on their arm; strange hoodlums socking us on the jaw when we least expect it – he responded as men should respond: with bourbon and a cigarette and a quiet determination not to let it happen again.

  Bogart was not simple. He was not emotionless as Stallone or Steven Seagal or other modern so-called tough guys are emotionless. Sam Spade and Philip Marlowe and Rick in Casablanca were troubled, sensitive beasts, prone to brooding and hurting and – in the scenes off-camera, solitary tears. The difference is that they didn’t expect applause for being sensitive. They decided what had to be done, and they did it and bore the consequences like – if the Women’s Day activists will forgive me – like men.

  The Humphrey Bogart festival started on e.tv this week, and I settled in front of the The Big Sleep (e.tv, Monday, 10.15pm) as excited as a kitten. The Big Sleep was co-written by William Faulkner. The plot line is more prolix than Faulkner’s novels, but fortunately the sentences are shorter. Bogart carried a gun, but his most effective weapon is the snub-nosed sentence, delivered like a poker dealer delivers a card: “Have you met Miss Sternwood?” asks the butler. Bogart’s face is impassive.

  “Yes,” he says, “she tried to sit on my lap while I was standing up.”

  Later the supernaturally lovely Lauren Bacall loses her temper and flies at Bogart. He catches her wrist. “Careful,” he says, without any inflection. “I don’t slap around so good, this time of evening.”

  Bogart was so hard-boiled he hardly spoke the way other men speak. He seemed to hold his lower jaw immobile and move his upper jaw up and down. He specialised in playing lonely men toughing it out in a world of shadow and deceit, a world of pasteboard masks and moving scenery that conceal corruption and betrayal and death. And down these mean streets he stays true to his code of honour and tortured sense of duty. But scarcely had I started watching The Big Sleep when I realised that Bogart was up against a whole new threat.

  The Big Sleep had been colourised. Some poor schlub in Ted Turner’s diabolical workshop sat with digital paintbrush and pen and coloured in the black-and-white print, so that Bogart floated across the screen in lurid shades of newly peeled pink, like a hard-boiled lobster. It was awful. The point of film noir is that the hero wanders a world of black and white, in which nothing is black or white but washed with shades of moral ambiguity. The only thing ambiguous about the colourised print was the actual colour of Bogart’s trench coat.

  In the original it is an appropriate shade of slate; colourised, it suddenly took on precisely the mustard shade of Inspector Clouseau’s coat. It was disconcerting to be half-expecting Philip Marlowe to ask people if they had a minkey. Fortunately, halfway through a scene the colourisers had a change of heart, or perhaps they ran out of mustard crayons, and the trench coat subtly metamorphosed to a queasy shade of green.

  Precisely how aesthetically destitute would you have to be to prefer the colourised version? Ted Turner defended the process by claiming that the renovated prints would attract new generations to the films. This is something like painting bigger breasts on the Mona Lisa in order to bring her in line with contemp
orary tastes and draw a younger crowd to the Louvre.

  I don’t think I can bring myself to watch the other films in the Bogart festival. I love them too much to see them painted and peddled like tuppenny tarts. I will certainly not be watching a colourised Casablanca. There are few things that are sacred to me, but Ingrid Bergman’s white dress is one of them. If I see her on that runway in shades of lilac or bottle green, I’ll regret it. Maybe not today, maybe not tomorrow, but soon; and for the rest of my life. Here’s not looking at you, kid.

  It’s a god’s life

  SUNDAY INDEPENDENT, 18 AUGUST 2002

  IT’S A DOG’S LIFE, being God. Hang on, I’ve just realised that I’m not sure whether the expression “It’s a dog’s life” means it’s a hard life or an easy life. Do dogs have a hard life? In Korea, yes, and it can’t be much fun in Greenland with a sled tied to your back and a man in a furry parka yelling “Mush!” at you all day, but besides that dogs seem to have a soft enough time of it.

  There must have been a couple of Buddhists over the generations who have been tempted to rack up a couple of bad-karma points so that they could come back as a dog and spend some good years being fussed over and scratched behind the ears and regularly fed a tasty dish of something nutritionally balanced and tail-thumpingly good. Of course, the risk is that you might collect too many bad-karma points and come back as a tapeworm, or a pimento, or something.

  That’s why I have never converted to Buddhism: too imprecise. There should be a schedule of benefits and punishments, as with frequent-flier miles: “Thirty acts of adultery earns 1700 bad-karma points, which equals reincarnation as a moose,” for instance. Then you would be able to plan for the future.

  But I digress. When I say: “It’s a dog’s life, being God,” I mean that it can’t be much fun. Oh, there must be plenty of fringe benefits. Good seats at all the big games, for instance, and you wouldn’t have to worry about medical aid or retirement schemes. Plus, there are any number of tax-free corporate gifts, although after a while you might be looking for a little variety. “Enough with the burnt offerings already!” you might say. “What’s with the thousands of years of burnt offerings? What’s wrong with medium-rare every now and then? And would it kill you to throw in a nice blue-cheese sauce?”