Robert Robinson (1) (1927–2011)

Television fame is an ephemeral thing. For a good thirty years or more Robert Robinson was one of the most famous people in Britain due to his ubiquity on television and radio. He presented many programmes, mainly though not exclusively, on the arts end of the output. Since his death in 2011 he has become a largely forgotten figure.

Robinson was smart in both the sartorial and intellectual sense. Somewhat aloof, utterly himself, serious yet playful, and preternaturally articulate, he spoke in a baroque argot larded with self-conscious archaisms and verbal quiddities. His urbane manner concealed a waspish wit and subversive spirit, and he divided the watching millions like Marmite. Not a few of them thought he was too clever by half, while some of us thought he was just clever. Received opinion insists that his eventual decline in popularity - or at least his marginalisation in British broadcasting - was due to his style failing to keep up with the changing times. In fact, there was always something unmistakably anachronistic about him, and far from being a liability, this was his USP. It was almost as though an 18th century drawing room wit had materialised at Television Centre, word perfect and raring to go. He seemed a tad overqualified for some of the more lightweight fare he presided over - quiz shows and panel games like Ask The Family and Call My Bluff - but they afforded him ample opportunity to exercise his special gift: converting base metals into gold. I listened to the radio quiz Brain of Britain for several decades simply to hear Robinson extemporising eloquently on nothing in particular between questions, or just for the way he said for the umpteenth time ‘would that it were, would that it were’ in response to the wrong answer from a contestant.

It’s a celebrity memoir (though I suspect he would have had something to say about that) and - rather as he did on television - Robinson does what all the other celebrities do but with an idiosyncratic style, wit and intelligence beyond most. So, following an amble through his formative years (starring a neighbour who turned out to be a murderer, and an old style grammar school headmaster of the tyrannical yet inspiring sort), he gives us what we came for: lots of funny anecdotes from the days when British television (or The Magic Rectangle, as he called it) was in black and white, there were only three channels, and everything shut down at midnight to the soporific strains of God Save the Queen.

In 1965 Robinson was presenting a televised discussion on censorship when Kenneth Tynan said, entirely disingenuously, ‘I don’t think anyone would mind if they heard the word “fuck” spoken in the theatre.’ People minded to such an extent that Tynan, amid much artificial outrage from the press, found himself banned from television. Robinson writes with sardonic humour about his encounters with Jayne Mansfield, Bette Davis, John Osborne, Saul Bellow, and the ever popular Many Others. His thoughts on the impossibility of interviewing politicians, when presenting the Today programme on Radio 4 in the 1970s, indicate that they were as skilled at not answering questions then as they are now.

Most of the final chapter is given over to Stop The Week, the radio conversation show which he chaired for eighteen years. Assisted by a panel of regulars, Robinson discussed such vital topics as: at what point across the Channel are English seagulls joined by French seagulls? and the ironing board as a symbol of our fallen state. The intention, I suppose, was a sort of sideways look at life - philosophical and sociological insight leavened with humour. The result was disagreeably clubby and self-satisfied. Someone whose name escapes me once described it as ‘a sort of excruciating dinner party without dinner.’ My thoughts exactly, but I found the wretched thing irresistibly addictive nonetheless. This deeply ambivalent response was by no means unique: ‘And being something of a cult’, he writes, ‘it was passionately disliked by many who never missed it.’

Robinson did a bit of acting while at Oxford, under the direction of Tony Richardson, and there was a marked performative element about him (this also applies to his prose style; this book is, above all, a dazzling performance). He was, I think, one of those people who go around pretending to be themselves with great conviction. Anyone so self-confident and sharply defined in public might possibly be entertained by private doubt. He wasn’t the type to perform a psychological striptease in print, but this memoir does have its reflective moments. He writes with great insight about his friend J. B. Priestley and almost everything Robinson says about him is also true of himself. The book ends with a beautifully sustained passage on the mysteries of identity, and I’ll round off this review with a short extract-:

‘When I was a boy I sometimes heard through my bedroom window an owl hooting in the fields beyond the brook: “Who are you-oo, who are you-oo?”- and over the years my eagerness to jump in with a convincing reply suggests a certain anxiety in this department…”

P.S. I bought this in a charity bookshop (where else?) and whoever donated it has slipped inside its pages a copy of a newspaper article about Robinson from 2011. I love it when people do that. If you’re reading this, unknown donor, thank you.… (meer)

There is a murder mystery, of some ingenuity, but the real focus of the book is a send-up of Oxford. In Monty Pythonist fashion, some bits land and others do not, or at least haven’t aged well. But the final pursuit from Parson’s Pleasure down to the Randolph is a brilliant set piece, What I perceived as casual British 1950s racism was somewhat nuanced by the penultimate paragraph: “As the Inspector walked away he caught sight of [the universally sought after] Balboa Tomlin on the arm of Mr Singh. ...As he turned the corner, Autumn saw Mr Singh raise his hand to Nicholas. But if it was meant to be Mr Churchill’s V-sign, Mr Singh had got it wrong.” The book in miniature.… (meer)