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Ratty
apologises, he's too busy for boating today I
have just finished filming that heartwarming evergreen Victorian classic Three
Men in a Boat. ("This programme features strong language and extreme
violence from the beginning" - though things got calmer once we got the
boat in the water. Placidly gliding
up the river on a September weekday after the beginning of the school term,
through ruined Kingston and leafy Windsor, we started assuming that some germ
bomb had exploded. There was no one
about at all. Except at Hampton
Court, where we bumped into (sorry about that girls) a team of attractive social
workers from Teddington. They were
messing about on a ratepayer-subsidised team-building river-boat-exercise.
I
would have thought that wrestling with west London's youth offenders was bonding
enough but clearly not. Their
council had decided that paddling a skiff and steering around slightly damp
posts would harden up their team awareness.
It used to be white water rafting and SAS assault courses, of course, but
the insurance risks are apparently bringing on prohibitive disability claims.
The path to true grit these days is a little gentle floating beneath
Cleve lock. Good luck. A
week in a small boat only served to utterly divide me and my old friend Rory
McGrath. Rebecca
rang in great excitement. I was in Denmark trying to wrestle my own sailing boat
from a Danish carpenter. She tells me that the Daily Telegraph has run a piece
promising me plunging nude in the Thames. Calm down girls. Yes,
I did jump in, risking not only Weil's disease but Weil's derision.
However, I was respectably clad and, bizarrely, well-shod. The only
scandal will be the plaster white of my flabby body.
I have made a living exposing myself on stage (in the notorious
"tie-quickie") so I never usually take my clothes off in public for
fear of gales of public laughter. But
competitive reality television is quite another thing altogether and brought out
the worst exhibitionist instincts. The
rank commercialisation of the Thames since 1889 (when he wrote the
heart-warming, evergreen etc) is something that Jerome K Jerome would have
difficulty recognising. Today, his cosy riverine inns buzz all morning with the
hum of business meetings. In the
coffee room of the Compleat Angler I had to rustle my newspaper and snore loudly
to avoid overhearing "I'm
majoring on..." "the focus of my presentation..." "let's
take a rain check here. .." We
remain two nations, alas, but the industrious have an iron grip on the Home
Counties now. Today's Ratty would
be too busy meeting his accountant in a hotel lounge to come out on the river. Griff
Rhys Jones. Sunday
Telegraph 25 Sep 2005 Click
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Thames boating |
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