Glued to the Box by Clive James

Author:Clive James [James, Clive]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781509832408
Publisher: Pan Macmillan UK

Snow job

All the time Max von Sydow was chasing Liv Ullmann with an axe in The Night Visitor (Thames), ITN was putting up captions telling you to stay tuned for the hostages, who would be presented live shortly after midnight, in a satellite hook-up fronted from London by Jon Snow.

Max having dispatched Liv, the screen was cleared for Jon Snow and a man billed as the Archbishop’s representative. At some stage the Archbishop’s representative had been to Iran and actually seen the hostages, which made him an expert. Jon, as far as I could gather, had never met the hostages, but had been to Iran, which made him an expert too. They were thus able to have an expert discussion while waiting for the action to develop in Algeria, where the Boeing 727 carrying the hostages would shortly land. The Archbishop’s representative was asked to predict what condition the hostages would be in. He agreed with Jon that the hostages would be exhausted.

Jon then introduced a film-clip résumé of the whole hostage business from day one. This was followed by a run-through of the year’s major events, in order to underline the fact that the hostages had not been around to witness these, on account of being incarcerated. Any hopes that you might at least see some pictures of the incoming plane circling the airport in Algeria were dashed when Jon admitted that the satellite link had conked out. ‘But at least our correspondent can see what’s happening. What’s happening down there, Sam?’

‘We . . . we’ve just seen a plane land,’ said Sam from Algeria. ‘We’re not absolutely sure it’s the plane with the hostages aboard . . . if it is the plane, then surely the hostages are exhausted . . .’ Jon felt it incumbent upon him to break the news to Sam that there were no pictures. ‘Sam, let me butt in here . . . we ought to explain that there has been a technical failure . . . Sam, can you see the plane from where you are?’ There was a still photograph of Sam holding a telephone in the alert manner of a foreign correspondent. ‘Irony for the hostage families,’ mused Jon. ‘Let’s leave Algiers, and let’s hope that they can repair that satellite before you can say knife . . . and let’s return to the Archbishop’s representative.’

The Archbishop’s rep once again reached the conclusion that the hostages would be exhausted. Jon tried tuning into Algeria by sheer will-power. ‘Let’s now . . . let’s hope . . . those pictures . . . tragic irony . . . airport full of things we want to see, people we want to see, and we can’t see it.’ The next best bet was to run some film about Wiesbaden, whither the hostages would be flown after arriving exhausted in Algeria.

There were pictures of wide streets in Wiesbaden with not much happening. ‘Their first chance to experience free space,’ Jon explained, ‘will come on the open streets of Wiesbaden.

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