Clemency suggests

Email registration

Free weekly email update

Great products and special offers for Spectator readers

Click here for great value reader offers and events

Click here for the latest Spectator Wine Offers

It’ll end in tears

James Delingpole

Wednesday, 2nd April 2008

Hughie Green, Most Sincerely (BBC4); Clay (BBC1)

According to a recently divorced friend of mine, the sex opportunities when you’re a single man in your forties are fantastic. Apparently, you don’t even need to bother with chat-up lines. You’ll be hanging about at the bus stop, or wherever, and, bang!, a flash of meaningful eye contact then back to her place for brilliant, uncomplicated sex miles better than you ever had in your teens or twenties because at this age you know what you’re doing.

I’d like to be able to try out my friend’s theory but I’m afeared there might be opposition from the Fawn. Plus, this friend is a very rich banker, whereas I’m not. Plus, also, he told me a French saying which sums up a chap’s dilemma in this respect rather well: ‘A married man lives like a dog but dies like a king; a bachelor lives like a king but dies like a dog.’

The latter was certainly true of Hughie Green, the priapic Canadian wisecracker who spent a good 20 or 30 years cavalierly rogering the contestants on the game and talent shows he presented (Double Your Money; Opportunity Knocks) and chalking up an impressive tally of over a thousand on the side of his Spitfire.

‘Oh, that I should have such a career!’ many men may have thought yearningly as they watched Trevor Eve’s scarily realistic impersonation of the man — right down to that weird fluttery thing he used to do with his tongue — on Hughie Green, Most Sincerely (BBC4, Wednesday). But not for long. By the end, we saw, Green’s wife had long since left him, his kids wouldn’t speak to him, he’d betrayed his best friend, and he spent his last days yearning pathetically to see the beguiling illegitimate daughter who didn’t even know he was her father — the doomed Paula Yates.

Like the equally wonderful programme about Stepoe and Son the other week, the Green drama was part of BBC4’s Curse of Comedy season, which is proving to be such a resounding success that it almost restores one’s faith in the future of television. Last week we had the tragedy of Tony Hancock (or Tony Blackburn as my father-in-law accidentally referred to him: now there’s a drama I’d love to watch one day), next week I think it’s David Walliams doing Kenneth Williams. ‘Kids,’ the general message seems to be, ‘whatever you do, don’t become a celebrity comedian. It’ll only end in tears.’

1 | 2 Next page