Letters | 11 July 2009

Moore’s TV dinner

Sir: While I have been generally supportive of Charles Moore’s quest to impose a degree of financial proportionality on what the BBC pays Jonathan Ross, and of his ‘scheme’ to withhold payment for his TV licence until the matter is satisfactorily addressed, I am dismayed to read that he is doing so at my expense (The Spectator’s Notes, 4 July).

If he wishes to dine with the corporation’s director-general in order to discuss his ‘project’, could he not do so at his own expense instead of that of the taxpayer? Or should I now withhold payment of my TV licence until such gorging ceases?

Adrian Hilton
Farnham Common, Buckinghamshire



James on James


Sir: James Walton (Arts, 4 July) may be doing Clive James a disservice. The glory of his Observer column was that he never took television seriously. Clive James adored writing about Dallas and the verbal howlers of commentators on Match of the Day. He didn’t pay much attention to serious drama and documentaries. This is why there is hardly a mention in The Crystal Bucket of Play For Today, the weekly contemporary drama slot that was, at the time, British television’s equivalent of The Wire and Mad Men. All television reviewers since have followed in the court jester’s footsteps. The difference being that today’s reviewers can no longer take the serious stuff for granted. Unlike in James’s day, it isn’t there — certainly not on BBC1.

Peter Ansorge
London SW3



Rainbow anthem

Sir: Aidan Hartley (Wild Life, 27 June) is incorrect in stating that ‘after Mandela’s 1994 election the rainbow nation switched to “Nkosi sikelel’ iAfrika”’ as a new national anthem very early on.

The first (Nguni) section of the new anthem is, as before, ‘Nkosi (Lord/God) sikelel’ iAfrika’; the second (Sotho — Tswana) an invocation to ‘Morena’ (Lord/God); the third a sizable piece of the Afrikaans ‘Die Stem (voice) van Suid Afrika’, as sung by the parrot.