WHAT do the actor James Nesbitt and the pop chump Preston have in common? Answer: they failed to take good care of their careers. They thought they could swan off and make annoying commercials, and frolic with Paris Hilton lookalikes on Celebrity Big
Brother and that their credibility wouldn't suffer as a result.
Then, either out of desperation or madness, they threw themselves at the mercy of Simon Amstell and TV's equivalent of the medieval stocks, Never Mind The Buzzcocks. Preston, the wimp, couldn't take the relentless slagging and flounced off halfway through. Nesbitt, to be fair, didn't request a Yellow Pages (for a cunning disguise, an easyfit trap-door or a fast taxi out of the studio) and took his punishment.
Since then, Preston has disappeared from public view, but the rehabilitation of Nesbitt continues apace. He was very good as an investigative journalist in last year's Midnight Man and even better in last week's Five Minutes Of Heaven. This was a tough gig. Opposite was Liam Neeson and your focus was very much on him. Here was a big movie star slumming it on the box; more than that, here was a man who'd just suffered tragedy in his own life. Although this drama was completed before the death of his wife, you couldn't watch him playing what someone called a "broken man" and avoid thinking about it.
Neeson was Alistair, to all intents a success but inside a wreck. Thirty-three years previously, as a teenage member of the Ulster Volunteer Force during Ireland's Troubles, he'd killed a Catholic so he could "walk into the pub feeling 10 feet tall". Since serving his time, he'd become a one-man Acas, only more glamorous – more Red Adair – travelling the globe as a conciliation expert. "What was the last job, Alistair?" asked his driver. "The Cassocks? The Cossacks?" "The Kosovans," he confirmed. And Nesbitt was Joe, now working in a factory making egg cartons, having last seen Alistair sporting a balaclava and about to shoot his big brother in the head while he watched The Generation Game.
A TV show called One On One thought it would be a great idea to reunite them. Joe was suspicious. Alistair had been dining out on notoriety, he reckoned, and now television couldn't wait to shake the hand of a killer. Meanwhile Joe would become just another telly freak, alongside "men in love with donkeys". But Alistair was haunted by Lurgan, 1975, and the little street footballer who saw it all.
Within the bigger story of guilt and the hunger for revenge there was a small satire on television and its hunger for lurid truth. As the crew fussed around Joe, one of them said: "And then, when the time's right, we'll do a little shooting… er, filming." Joe had turned up for the recording armed with a knife but thankfully no one else died, although later there was a storming fight. Alistair needed to suffer a degree of physical pain, just as Nesbitt was required to endure Buzzcocks.
Both the main performances were superb, Mark Davison was excellent as the young Alistair, and praise is also due to the locations manager for finding such desolate streets where the kerbs could be painted red, white and blue and to writer Guy Hibbert who boldly took a true story (the events of '75) and imagined the men meeting again (it's never happened).
The script made its points subtly. Alistair claimed that during the Troubles he was oblivious to the other side suffering losses, but to his mates in the getaway car, the victim was no mere number – they knew his mum as a dinner-lady and that his "crimes" were bogus. In divided Ireland, they spoke up in defence of community, albeit in vain.
It was a week for rehabilitations. First James Nesbitt, then Alan Yentob. In his dismal hagiography of Jay-Z earlier this year, Yentob narrowly avoided asking the rapper: "Why are you so great?" But Yes We Can! The Lost Art of Oratory was much better, a study of speechifying that could also qualify for an all-too-exclusive sub-heading, The Lost Art of Classy Documentaries.
Yentob began in America – a country, he said, "suspicious of eloquence". But Theodore Sorensen, speechwriter to John F Kennedy, reminded him that the US had just endured eight years of a president "who could barely manage the English language". Enter, Barack Obama. Lots of clever people deconstructed the words of the new world champ speech-maker, tracing his style all the way back to Ancient Greece, but it took Bob Geldof to remind us that he nicked "Yes we can!" from Bob the Builder.
Abraham Lincoln, he of the Gettysburg Address, stole from Pericles. Winston Churchill was inspired by an Irish rabble-rouser he heard at Tammany Hall. Churchill didn't like speaking off the cuff, or as he called it, "on unpinioned wing" and secretaries had to type his speeches in "psalm form". Tony Blair would wake his speechwriters at 3am for re-drafts and pizzas – then, 15 minutes before going on, would ask: "Got any more jokes?"
William Hague cracked a joke once: it was 1977 and he was a young fogey at Tory Party Conference. Neil Kinnock had a laugh at his own expense for his 1982 speech-making nadir ("We're all right!"). And Geoffrey Howe recalled Margaret Thatcher experimenting with different voices – "suddenly she was Cilla Black".
The biggest revelation of the programme concerned Col Tim Collins, who told the Allied troops about to invade Iraq: "This is the site of the Garden of Eden, of the Great Flood and the birthplace of Abraham – tread lightly there." Yentob asked him how he prepared for his speech. Collins said: "I genuinely didn't. Somehow the words just came to me."
It's a pity binge-drinkers aren't told "This is the birthplace of the NHS – tread lightly there" before they get blootered. The Hospital was a shocking portrait of A&E staff under siege. Twenty years ago, medics staged wheelchair races to while away the longueurs between admissions. Now it's all hands to the stomach-pump and none of the walking wounded ever thanks you for it.
The full article contains 1064 words and appears in Scotland On Sunday newspaper.
