Ordinary Gweilo

Shaky has alerted me to the news that Norris McWhirter died earlier this week. He was famous chiefly for appearing (a long time ago) on a British TV show called “Record Breakers” with his twin brother Ross. The two of them were the founders and co-editors of “The Guinness Book of Records”, and today you would probably describe them as nerds.  They didn’t just edit the book, they appeared to know the details of every single record in the book and were willing to turn up anywhere that a new record might be set.

Ross McWhirter was killed by the IRA in 1975, apparently because he was an outspoken critic of the organization rather than because they didn’t like the TV show.  Obviously you don’t really expect people to be murdered in their homes in suburban London, whatever their politics, but to anyone who knew of him only through ‘Record Breakers’ it was even more shocking.

‘Record Breakers’ was a cheesy sort of show, hosted by Roy Castle (who is also no longer with us), featuring people who had broken records listed in “The Guinness Book of Records”, with Norris McWhirter being challenged to remember the records published in the book.

The show, like the book, appealed mainly to children (or anyone who was easily pleased), but this was in the days before videos or cable and satellite so we didn’t have much choice! It is a source of constant amazement to me that the book is still a best-seller – for goodness sake, what is the point? – but I suppose it’s an easy choice as a Christmas present for people you either don’t like or don’t know very well. 

This reminds me that Bob Monkhouse died just after Christmas.  I remember him as the presenter of The Golden Shot, a rather chaotic game show that used to go out live on Sunday afternoons.  It featured a dizzy glamour girl called Ann Aston, and the catchphrase “Bernie – the bolt”, used when the contestants had a chance to shoot an arrow (attached to the side of a camera) at a target.  They had to give instructions to a blindfolded operator, telling him to go up a bit, down a bit, right a bit, and so forth, before firing the arrow.  Sounds stupid, and it was, but at the time it seemed quite entertaining.

I hadn’t previously realised that he wasn’t the original presenter of the show (he was a guest on an early show and was then invited to take it over), but he certainly made it successful, and when he left it went downhill again, though he did return for the final series.  Later he was the host of other game shows such as “Celebrity Squares” and “Family Fortunes”, and whether or not you liked the shows you had to admire his professionalism. He was often described as “smarmy and oleaginous”, and in later years he played on this reputation and rather sent himself up.

Finally in the obituaries section, Alistair Cooke died at the end of last month.  As with Charles Schulz, it was hardly a surprise to hear of his death only a very short time after he reluctantly announced his retirement.  It seemed like he was determined to carry on with ‘Letter from America’ for as long as he could, and he was only going to give it up when he really had no alternative.

His style of radio essay probably belongs to a different era, not today’s world of rolling news and instant comment.  I remember hearing him talk about the programme he did at the time of Nixon’s resignation – his problem was that at the time they recorded it nothing had been decided, so he talked about the sequence of events, ending with the phrase “and the rest is history”.  By the time it was broadcast the listeners knew that Nixon had resigned and assumed that Cooke did as well.

Although they really had nothing in common, I think it would be fair to say that Bob Monkhouse and Alistair Cooke were both consummate professionals, always appearing calm and unruffled whatever was going on around them.