TELEVISION and me: it's not been the happiest of unions. Take my first TV appearance - go on, please, I'd rather forget it ever happened. For as a wee laddie, I once appeared on a BBC children's' tea-time entertainment hosted by that most avuncular of magicians, the late David Nixon.
Helping David Nixon make a bottle of milk disappear under a handkerchief? Heck, no sweat for a born finagler like me. The problem was the other kids on the show. No, that's incorrect. The problem was the show's format.
See, in addition to the prestidigitation, the show climaxed in a general knowledge quiz. Seated behind a sort of breakfast bar, David Nixon asked the questions. The kid answered them. Big prizes beckoned.
However, on the table-top before both parties lay what the show's producers obviously reckoned was a tense and graphic televisual means of demonstrating the kid's braininess - or lack of same: a toy train on a length of miniature railway track.
Answer correctly and the train chuffed forward a notch. An incorrect answer sent it back. No way to run a railroad, that. For what if the kid kept alternating right and wrong answers? Stalemate. Transmission-time used. And no big-prize opportunity for the speccy geek - me - waiting tearfully for his go.
Me and TV, cuh. Years later I'm at The Herald writing about the telly, all surreal and caustic, and what does it get me? Nightly telephonic death-threats from enraged Benny Hill fans down the pub (''Youse've wrote Benny's sexist tripe, an' he's no' - it's jist burdz wi' nae kit on'') and po-faced diddies baffled by the satirical new plot synopses I've invented for Take The High Road (Mrs Mack stages a gay thrill-kill spree at the Manse; Wee Eck ODs on porage).
Things worsened when I began writing for TV. Like the first thing I wrote for TV, a documentary about the closure of legendary Glasgow rock venue, the Apollo. I admit it. The show was keech, and I'm to blame.
It was keech chiefly because I'd written the show's dialogue in unspeakable riddles. I didn't know they were unspeakable riddles then, mind. In fact, I rather fancied that my script was a minor masterpiece of deconstructed neo-Hegelian subtextual commentary (with a witty bent). Which it may have been. But it was still mostly keech.
Now, though, everything could change. Because me and TV are on the brink of a glorious new accommodation - all thanks to Michael Caine and The Italian Job.
You know The Italian Job. It was on telly again recently. A filmic homage to sixties Britcool and bespoke gangster chic. Tasty geezers flying about Turin in tasty Minis, trying to pull a tasty bullion blag. Led by King Tasty I, Michael Caine.
Clad in Savile Row's finest, Michael Caine is The Italian Job's ace young face, Charlie Croker. Michael's hip, flip, cool. He's swinging Sarf Lahndahn incarnate, forever issuing gnomic Sarf Lahndahn utterances. Such as? Well, remember that bit when Michael's explosives expert is working out how much jelly to crack the bullion-van, and he uses too much, blowing the van to smithereens, whereupon Michael laconically observes: ''You were ownly sappowsed to blow the bladdy doors off.''
And come October, that'll be me, standing in the Dolomites, in a tasty suit, facing the telly cameras, and probably saying something like: ''I was ownly sappowsed to blow the bladdy doors off, but I've blown a bladdy gasket, too.''
Because over the past nine years The Italian Job has mutated into a leisurely 2000-mile, 120-car trans-European charity motor rally, starting in Dover and encompassing Italy's mountain passes, BMW's Munich HQ, and champers on Le Touquet's swanky polo-lawns. This year it'll visit San Marino's Imola Grand Prix circuit, too.
And now an eminent Mr TV Fixit reckons me attempting The Italian Job would be fab telly, yah. It won't be easy, of course. Present-day TV is acutely budget-conscious, and me and my co-driver, motorcycle speedway ace David Walsh, former captain of Glasgow Tigers, are insisting on high-grade Caine-inspired schmutter (tasty single-breasted suits, three-button, made-to-measure).
Additionally, the rally would be more straightforward if you could undertake it in a modern car, or leastways a decent one like a VW Beetle, but that's against the rules. Only cars which featured in the film are allowable. Minis, obviously, plus more exotic marques including a Lamborghini Muira, an Aston Martin DB4, E-Type Jag, Alfa Giulia, Bedford Dormobile, or a Harrington Legionnaire - the latter being the mammoth old coach that ends up balanced atop an Alpine precipice at the film's end.
If anyone has any of the above to spare, we'd be very grateful. Now excuse me, I've a bladdy film to study, and lines of flip dialogue to bladdy learn.
Not a lot of people know this, incidentally, but bladdy Benny Hill was in The Italian Job. And Noel Coward. He played Mr Bridger, the film's camp criminal mastermind.
Overly fond of a silk cravat, my man TV Fixit doubtless sees himself fulfilling that role. I shall only worry if he suggests the involvement of undraped Benny Hill-style totty, or that we utilise bladdy trains.
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