YOUNG folk just ain't what they used to be. In the good old days when University Challenge was under the stewardship of the admirable Bamber Gascoigne, there was always added entertainment value to be found in the remarkable variety of haircuts on show. After all, what is third level education for if not to experiment with ill advised hairstyles? It's a sign of our over cautious times that these days, Jeremy Paxman often has the most extravagant locks. If the situation in the UK is bad, it's far worse here, where a restrained goatee seems to be the most rebellious look the contestants can muster.
"You should know that teams from England, Scotland and Northern Ireland have all won this competition, but never one from Wales," barked Paxman this week at the hapless University of Swansea team, who duly endured a thorough thrashing at the hands of the Open University. Over on RTE, where the adjacent RTCs of Waterford and Carlow had a close contest, Kevin Myers demonstrated his egalitarian credentials, affectionately addressing his victims by their Christian names. Nothing so namby pamby for Paxman, who confines himself in best public schoolmasterish fashion to surnames. It was doubly unfortunate for Swansea that one team member, a rare individualist whose luxuriant hair recalled the heyday of Jethro Tull, should happen to bear the name Thick. "Swansea - Thick", bellowed Paxman in response to the buzzer, and you couldn't disagree.
Both Paxman and Myers play the exasperated old tutor, astonished by their charges' failure to identify Handel's Messiah, and appalled at their ability to reel off all the Spice Girls' names. In the case of Challenging Times, though, the high and mighty tone is rather undermined by the surroundings - despite stiff competition from Farrell and Know Your Sport the show still has the worst set on RTE - a neon pillared excrescence that looks as if it's been lifted from some dingy nightclub called Nero's or Caligula's. It appears that the barbarians have breached the gates and are working in the art department.
IKE Questions and Answers and Black Box, Challenging Times bears a marked resemblance to an established BBC format. There's nothing wrong with that, if the idea is good enough and translates well into an Irish context. The new documentary series The Joy also takes its cue, stylistically at least, from recent British programmes like The House and The Museum.
Just as those films used fly on the all techniques to depict troubled British institutions, The Joy aims to provide a detailed portrait of life in Mountjoy Prison. The differences, though, are huge. Donald Taylor Black's series portrays the inside of an institution which we constantly hear about, but which is rarely seen on our screens. Mountjoy is the focal point for a huge amount of debate around fundamental questions of how we run our society. In such a situation, gaining the freedom of access that seems to have been granted the programme makers is an achievement in itself (and one which most print journalists have not managed).
Equally difficult is the task of assembling a coherent and objective portrait, and The Joy started well. Future programmes will apparently concentrate on specific subjects like drugs, but this opening episode aimed at an overall picture of a day in prison life. Sean Corcoran's unfussy camerawork gave a convincing sense of the physical environment of the prison (shooting a programme like this on film rather than video is well worth the extra expense), and the various tensions - between prisoners and staff, staff and governor, addicts and non addicts - were lightly sketched presumably to be returned to later.
Most importantly, we seemed to be seeing everything - there were hardly any of the blotted out faces, disguised voices or false names which usually characterise this type of programme on Irish television, and which distance us from the realities of human experience. Television is often criticised for its reliance on images and emotion at the expense of information and debate, but a programme like The Joy can convey human experience in a way which print never can.
THE inhabitants of Mountjoy might laugh at the idea that their situation has anything in common with that of Princess Margaret, whose six week honeymoon aboard the royal yacht in 1959 cost the British taxpayer £750,000 in today's money, but the last of the current series of Secret Lives (a programme which it is impossible to imagine being made by RTE) portrayed Queen Elizabeth's little sister as a prisoner of sorts, detained At Her Majesty's Pleasure for the rest of her natural life.
Still, there are advantages to being a royal. "When I hear about Scarborough," she told the inhabitants of that town while gracing them with a visit, "my mind turns less naturally to the North Riding than to Tobago." She was trying to describe her "hard work" for the Commonwealth, but it came across as an honest preference, and who among us could say we'd feel otherwise?
Portrayed as cold, selfish and not very likeable, Margaret came across as having endured a sour and pointless life. The whole programme had the feeling of an obituary, both in style and in the language of the participants. "She has a low threshold for boredom and doesn't suffer fools gladly," said one acquaintance, which translates from obituary speak as "she's a self centred, arrogant cow". Others were more forthcoming, describing Margaret as "the weekend guest from hell".
Forced to economise when Big Sis took her off the Civil List, Margaret has been struggling along since on a mere £210,000 a year. She started booking economy fare tickets for her trips to the Caribbean, but a Mustique neighbour remembered that "Lord Whatsisname who ran British Airways was horrified when he heard she was travelling third class, and of course she was moved up. So now she always pays third class and travels in first." It's nice to know that the higher orders don't bother with all those euphemisms like "economy" or "tourist".
WHILE Margaret was swinging around London in the early 1960s, young Thomas Woodward was taking his first steps into showbiz with the Senators, "the biggest band in Pontypridd" (now there's a proud claim). They were a great looking group, and a tidy group," said one early fan, for whom the tidiness was clearly as important as the good looks. Tom Jones, as he was to become, was always more at home with well groomed pops orchestras on TV specials than with rock `n' roll roughness. It's 30 years now since he had his biggest hit with The Green, Green Grass of Home, and the anniversary was the ostensible reason for a whirlwind tour through his life and career.
The Green, Green Grass of Home has been covered by many of the century's great singers (think of Nana Mouskouri and Des O'Connor), but nobody seems to realise that the old karaoke favourite is actually about a tragic execution. When Elvis Presley first heard Tom's version, he was so moved he got different members of his band to ring the local radio station to get it to play it over and over.
GGGOH, with its glitzed up country inflections, was Tom's entry pass into the golden pastures of Las Vegas, where he has stayed happily grazing for the last 30 years. It's hard to grudge the old trouper the rewards of what seems to have been an untroubled and comfortable life, but there's a certain nasty pleasure in waiting for the moment when the Secret Lives team get him, too.
