RADIO Played to type
Electric Ink BBC RADIO 4
he frailer the newspaper industry seems to become, the greater the rest of the media’s fascination with it. Like Tom Rachman’s recent debut novel The Imperfectionists, Alistair Beaton and Tom Mitchelson’s sitcom, now in its second series, is set in the office of a decaying broadsheet. Whereas Rachman’s crew of ground-down journalists ply their trade on an international daily based in Rome, the Beaton/Mitchelson vehicle is a London quality. No obvious par- allels come to mind, and certainly the editors of neither The Guardian nor The Independent will find anything actionable in the character of Oliver, its feeble yet conniving supremo. My own experience of Radio 4 comedy is that it promises much while occasionally deliv- ering a whole lot less, amid landscapes whose geography is sometimes rather easy to predict. Here, the world in which Oliver and his min-
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TELEVISION Hello goodbye
The Day John Lennon Died ITV
any ironies emerge in the life of John Lennon: that a man not averse to thumping people, including the women in his life, should turn into an apostle of peace and feminism; that a multimillionaire should achieve his greatest renown with a song laud- ing the virtues of having “no possessions”; that the most middle-class of the Beatles should write a song depicting himself as a “Working-Class Hero”. Most savagely, there was the fact that he chose to live in New York City because his fans didn’t bother him, only for one of them to shoot him dead outside his apartment building. ITV1 marked the thirtieth anniversary of
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that event with a documentary called The Day John Lennon Died (6 December). It offered an hour-by-hour rundown of the mun- dane events of the day in question, which began with the musician stepping out of the Dakota building to go for a haircut. And yet it left a hole at the centre, jumping over the moment of the murder itself: one minute Lennon was stepping out of a car outside his building, the next his assailant was being arrested. Of the cast of interviewees assembled here, only Yoko saw what happened, and she said only that “it was really terrible”. Lennon had been very comfortable in New
York. Only two days before his death, he told the British radio DJ Andy Peebles how pleased
ions go about their tasks is all too recognisable: circulation on the slide, business in turmoil, everyone desperate to “monetise” the online content, sober commentary giving way to eye- catching reportage. Things kick into gear at the paper’s daily conference, with Oliver con- gratulating his staff on the advertising appeal of a feature entitled “How smart is your cat?” and suggesting that it might be possible to find a more “creative” way of addressing the problem of climate change.
If the backdrop looks as familiar as a Gilbert and Sullivan stage set, then the individual cast members are quite as foreseeable. The chief opposition is between Maddox Bradley, harassed 50-something veteran of the days of hot-metal printing, and Carol (Polly Frame), the cheery, tabloid-reared news editor whose job he is thought to have coveted. Maddox’s passing over turned out to have its roots in his accidental libelling of a Southend whelk stall owner, after which his employers settled out of court for £20,000 and cancelled his weekly podcast into the bargain. Several other stereotypes could be found lurking around the news desk. They included Freddy (Stephen Wight), the youthful online editor whose Ali G-style patois (“Not from where I is standing, innit?” and so on) failed
to disguise his public-school education, extended to Carol’s first stand-off with her seething understrapper (“I cover the important stories,” Maddox declared before being handed a commission to file 500 words on “The intel- ligent stoat”) and climaxed in Freddy’s complaint, when ordered to track down a bat- tling grandmother who had stabbed a mugger, that she had already signed with Max Clifford. I had my doubts about Masha (Debbie Chazen), the voluble Russian staffer, although she and Carol did at least run to a mock- serious exchange or two on the state of the industry. Curiously, despite these deplorable symp- toms, the patient rallied and by the end of this first episode (3 December) seemed to be in reasonably good health. This had less to do with the script, with its understandable need to explain some of the things that go on in newspaper offices to people who don’t have the privilege of working in one, than the gusto of the performances. John Sessions was loudly self-righteous as Maddox, Alex Jennings suit- ably weaselly as his craven boss. Although Maddox looked to have been set up as the eter- nal fall guy, the episode ended with his turning the tables on the lawyers, retrieving the £20,000, reclaiming his podcast and generally carrying all before him. It can’t last. D.J. Taylor
John Lennon signing an autograph for Mark Chapman outside the Dakota building in New York, 8 December 1980
he was that he could do simple things like going to a restaurant without being bothered. He had reached an accommodation with his fans. He would sign things for them and pose for pictures and the rest of the time they would leave him alone. One such admirer waited all day outside the Dakota with his camera; his reward was a picture of another fan in a long dark coat and a fur hat, presenting an album to Lennon to have it signed. It was the only picture of the star with his killer and it would go all round the world. The film assembled an impressive number of those who were there on that fateful day: the fan and amateur photographer; a radio interviewer who spent two-and-a-half hours with him; the police officer who was first on the scene; a young reporter who got to break the story because he was in the emergency room, having had a motorcycle accident early that evening; the ER doctor who attempted to save Lennon, declared him dead and then broke the news to Yoko. Less revealingly, we heard from celebrity friends of Lennon who only heard about the murder after the event:
Cilla Black, Jimmy Tarbuck and, for some reason, David Frost. And then there were peo- ple who had been with Lennon at other times in his life: a friend who was with him during his infamous “lost weekend” separation from Yoko; a girlfriend from his teenage days (their relationship ended when “he absolutely whacked me one”). There was a gaping, but no doubt deliberate, void at the heart of this programme: it told us nothing about the man with the gun. The first TV news report to mention the killer said only that police had described him as “a local screwball”. Paul Goresh, the fan who photo - graphed him with Lennon, spoke passionately about the “disgust and anger” he felt when he realised he had been speaking to the man earlier that day: “[The shooting] achieved what that piece of garbage wanted to achieve, which is to make a name for himself. By doing that, he linked himself with John forever. And unfortunately that’s the way history is.” This was the only piece of speculation about Mark Chapman’s motives; otherwise he was not discussed, and, indeed, was never named. This is not uncommon: admirers of Lennon often refuse to use the man’s name, as if that were enough to thwart his twisted ambition to become famous. Some hope. This was a workmanlike documentary that told a well-known story in a slightly flat-footed way. The most revealing of the interviewees was the ER doctor. One macabre detail gave a hint of the madness surrounding the cult of celebrity. After they had worked on Lennon (a hopeless task – the blood vessels from his heart were shredded), staff in the ER were given a solemn instruction: they were not to sell their blood-soaked uniforms. John Morrish
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