Читать книгу Grumpy Old Men: New Year, Same Old Crap - David Quantick - Страница 42

They don’t seem to know anything. Time was when a TV presenter was at worst a jobbing actor with a nice voice (see ACTORS) and at best a polymathic journalist and historian who’d sailed the Amazon in a kayak to interview Fidel Castro. But these days … It looks like the TV companies just send a van round the hair salons of the land with the words FREE CONDITIONER INSIDE THIS VAN! GET IN THE VAN! IT’S PERFECTLY SAFE!

You can understand it with the kids’ TV presenters. There’s not much need for intellectual rigour or a deep-veined knowledge of the Middle East when all you have to do is talk to a toy animal and introduce some other toy animals. It’s not even completely mind-offending with the teen and youthy presenters. Never mind the fact that they’ve only learned to read autocues and keep staring at books, wondering when the page is going to move down; never mind the fact that they can only communicate by waving their arms and shuffling about on their backsides, like a man who’s been glued to a toilet trying to get help. All they have to do is interview soap stars and pop stars, who are equally ill-prepared for taking GCSEs, buying things with coins or any other rigorous tests of the mind.

All that’s fine. What is a little bit vexing is the fact that newsreaders and current-affairs presenters seem to be going the same way. No wonder the world is in a terrible state. Thirty years ago, a good TV interviewer could reduce a president or a prime minister to tears just by ripping apart their domestic transport policy. Now an incisive interview with a politician doesn’t go much further than a pretty lady disguised as a real news reporter saying to a major political figure, ‘I like your shoes. Where did you get them?’