I KNOW that you have already noticed the fine countenance that is my picture byline. You may be drawn to those understanding eyes. But look at the beard. OK, so you might say, “He is just trying to cover up what the superb Times photographer failed to do. He has a double chin. Fat blokes hide behind facial fuzz, that’s what they do. Just look at Phill Jupitus.”
And, if you said that, you may have a point. I am a chubby. But I have also a seafaring soul. I remember being 13 and fishing five miles off the west coast of Ireland in a boat that was about the size that my bottom is now. We would stay out from dawn to dusk and would occasionally return with nothing (and, no, I hadn’t eaten the whole catch raw before we reached shore), but usually we came back laden with mackerel, pollack and catfish. One of the “catfish” actually turned out to be a baby shark, something which became apparent when it bit off the end of my Uncle Mike’s finger as he tried to bludgeon it to death with an oar. Oh, how we laughed.
Last night’s Journeys to the Bottom of the Sea (BBC Two) proved to me that I am of seafaring stock. Monday’s Human Senses about balance included a scene in which the presenter Nigel Marven found himself unable to deal with sea travel. What a lightweight! There has been many a time when I have been at the mercy of a terribly rough crossing to Ireland. Around me, people have been unable to handle their regurgitatory impulses, but it has not bothered me once.
Put me in a plane and I am terrified. In a boat and I am as happy as Larry.
The reason? I have a beard. You just had to take a look at the physical makeup of the people involved in last night’s programme about the history and recovery from the depths of the first iron-clad warship, the Monitor. So, you might expect most of the crew from this 1860s American warship to be sporting beards. It was fashionable then (and there ain’t nothing changed among us seafaring folk).
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However, most of the main people involved in the recent project to try to recover the gun turret of the Monitor from the depths of the Atlantic also had hirsute faces — even the women.
But all the beards in the world could not disguise another excellent BBC foray into history and archaeology. The programme makers entwined the history of what was known as the cheeseboard on a raft, which was built in 1862 by the Union to combat the Confederates’ own customised iron-clad sailing ship, the Virginia, (which, it must be said, rather resembled a sort of android Dougal from The Magic Roundabout), with the ultimately successful attempts last year to raise its remarkable gun turret from the depths 25 miles off the American coast.
The Monitor was indeed a strange-looking beast, with all the living quarters and the engines beneath the waterline. The fact that it possessed just two guns in a turret that poked above the water like a hippo’s eyes, was also revolutionary in an age when most fighting ships had 150-200 guns each. The advantage of the Monitor, however, was that its turret could swivel; that and its compact size (it was half the size of the Virginia) meant that it was a formidable weapon.
Although it only fought one vital battle against the previously indomitable Virginia, it ended in a points victory for the pocket battleship, a result that changed the face of the naval front of the American Civil War and the entire future of naval warfare.
Now to a programme on which I would have rather spent more time but, unfortunately, the preview tape arrived very late in the day. That’ll Teach ‘Em (Channel 4) is an intriguing notion. Take a group of 16-year-olds and, for four weeks, place them in the environment of a Fifties boarding grammar school. How will they react without recourse to mobile phones, make-up and Playstation 2s? How will they fill their time when the only recreation on offer is a couple of yo-yos and a train set? More importantly how will they fare with a Fifties-style education? The answer from the first programme in the series was, predictably, “not very well”.
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There were tears, tantrums and very poor marks for an 11-plus maths exercise that was sold to them as GCSE standard. But there are characters emerging, especially among the staff. The maths teacher, Mr Vince, is a rumbustious chap and could probably make a little extra beer money by hiring himself out as a Terry Scott look- and soundalike. The headmaster, Mr MacTavish, you can tell is extremely upset that corporal punishment is banned — he doesn’t look right without a cane in his hand and you just know that he doesn’t feel right.
Of the students only Freddie from Norfolk, a chap with haystack hair (which was shaped, like the others, into a Fifties short back and sides on arrival), and a Mancunian girl called Nicola, whose main gripe throughout is that she can’t talk back to the teachers, stand out so far.
The characters who were interviewed in Hotels from Hell (ITV1) were plain embarrassing. Yes, all the hotels they were moaning about were quite dreadful. But in the case of two of them, what did they expect? They were in Blackpool! Regardless of location, there is simply no excuse to choose a bad hotel — there are plenty of good hotel guides out there. Poltroons.
Joe Joseph is away