How to be a Brit

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shoelaces, they always refused to have television sets. No one ever
admitted that he could not afford one. You ‘cannot afford’ to fulfil a dream;
but a television set was rejected on its merits as something belonging to the
lower orders. The English middle class were as proud of not possessing television
sets as they are of not knowing foreign languages.
    Television, however, has
slowly conquered — in varying degree — all layers of society and, whether we
like it or not — it has come to stay.
    I have watched a large
number of programmes from the nadir of most variety shows up to the
upper-middlebrow Monitor. I have watched innumerable statesmen boarding
and leaving aeroplanes with heavy, meaningful faces and have always been
astonished to find that the same platitudes can be expressed in so many different
ways. During our periodically recurrent strikes, I have listened to trade union
leaders and employers on Mondays and was impressed to learn that no concessions
could be made in matters of principle; only to be told on Wednesdays that their
relinquishing of these principles was — on their part — victory for
common sense and a true service to the community. I have heard innumerable
party politicians explaining that defeat is victory, and that it is high time
to save civilization by restoring hanging, birching and flogging. I am always
fascinated at the sight of mild, slightly bewildered people putting up with the
insolent and aggressive questions of those interviewers who buttonhole them in
the street or drag them into a studio. I like the Brains Trust, too — its poets
and interior decorators with the gift of the gab, who are able to utter weighty
opinions on every subject under the sun without a moment’s reflection. I am
fond of watching people in Tanganyika or Madagascar catching rats, snakes and
worms for pets while black ladies with bare bosoms look on. (Personally, I
should like black ladies with bare bosoms to appear in all my programmes.)
    The basis and main pillar
of the art of television is the television
personality. If you want to become a Television Personality, you need a
personality of some sort. It may be unattractive or simply repulsive; but a
personality is indispensable.
    On the whole I like
television very much indeed. The reasons for my devotion are these:
    1. Television is one of the
chief architects of prosperity. Certain television personalities can give away
money with great charm on the slightest provocation. It is their habit —
indeed, their second nature — to give you a refrigerator or a motor-scooter if
you happen to pass near them. Should you chance to know what the capital of
France is called, or who our war-time Prime Minister was with the initials of
W.S.C. — if you are able to scratch your left ear with your right foot while
lying on the floor blindfold and watched by ten million giggling spectators,
then you are practically certain to be sent to Majorca for a three weeks’
holiday. If you can tell whether polygamy is something to eat or
something you find in coconut trees, or recognize the features of a fourth-rate
comedian or fifth-rate guitarist in Dotto, you are almost bound to get
an annuity for life.

    2. Television is also one
of the main architects of slumps. A short while ago Panorama made a
report on the stock-exchange boom, in the course of which one or two people
made some cautious remarks about the boom not lasting forever, and recalled the
Wall Street crash when people threw themselves out of the windows of
skyscrapers. Next day hordes of people sold their shares, thus causing a fall
unknown since the days of the Suez crisis. The bank rate had to be raised three
days later and if Dotto and a few other programmes had not rectified the
country’s economic balance by giving away even more washing-machines,
bubble-cars and tea-sets, we would have faced utter and irretrievable ruin.
    3. Television has united
the family — by keeping the family at home, gaping at it round the family
hearth.
    4. Television causes more
friction in family life than any other single factor by offering unique scope
for quarrels as to which programme to watch.
    5. Television is of great
educational value. It teaches you while still really young how to ( a )
kill, ( b ) rob, (c) embezzle, ( d ) shoot ( e ) poison, and
generally speaking, ( f ) how to grow up into a Wild West outlaw or
gangster by the time you leave school.
    6. Television puts a stop
to crime because all