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TV: London in the grip of terror - 30 years ago
by Conrad Astley25/ 8/2005
THIS may come as a surprise, but apparently terrorism existed
before the 11th of September, 2001. Yes, I know. It shocked me too,
but apparently it's true.
A documentary has turned the clock back 30 years to a time when the
capital faced a threat from a very different source.
The Year London Blew Up (
Thursday, Channel
4) reconstructs the events of 1974, when the Provisional IRA
bombed bars and shops in the West End.
Interviews with the victims' families and hostage negotiator Sir
Peter Imbert, are combined with dramatisations of the events and
pieces of historic footage.
The Americans may have decided to stop giving money to terrorists
after it happened to them, but otherwise, perhaps things haven't
changed that much.
Elsewhere, Sunday night has clearly been designated likeable beardy
night, with a double bill from everyone's favourite uncle figures -
Rolf Harris and Bill Oddie.
Rolf, who has been hailed as personally responsible for an increase
in the number of people visiting galleries, returns with another
series of
Rolf On Art (
Sunday,
BBC1).
The celebrity least likely to be involved in a tabloid sex shame
story was behind a giant reconstruc- tion of Constable's Hay Wain
last year - when hundreds of artists painted a huge version of it
in Trafalgar Square.
Now he's back to do the same thing with the Mona Lisa in Edinburgh.
Good old Rolf can do no wrong, even being commissioned to paint the
Queen's portrait next year.
The niceness continues with Bill Oddie giving us
The Truth
About Dinosaurs (
Sunday, BBC1) narrating a
computerised fight between a triceratops and a tyrannosaurus rex.
It just doesn't get any better than that.
But an antidote to all this geniality is provided later by
Ian Fleming - Bond Maker (
Sunday, BBC1)
analysing the author who created the film hero seen by half the
world's population.
A lover of gadgets, fast cars, and women, who was thrown out of
Eton after an incident with a girl, and who smoked 60 cigarettes a
day - bearing three gold stripes to denote his rank of naval com-
mander - it isn't difficult to see where Fleming got his ideas for
the character.
The man once said his ideal wife would have three qualities: "She
should have enough money to buy her own clothes, she should be able
to make incomparable sauce béarnaise, and she should be
double-jointed."
Having died just after first Bond film, Dr No, came out, you wonder
what he would have made of the secret agent's boss being played by
Judi Dench.
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