just a minute

Twelve years ago I mentioned my interest in Just a Minute and um I also mentioned my interest in it a few months ago too, it's one of those very addictive slightly guilty-pleasure shows that not only runs and runs on a very simple premise / set of ideas, it has also developed its own internal ambience which probably makes it a little hard to get into (I'm not sure) if you haven't been listening to it for close to fifty years on and off like I have. 

After Nicholas Parsons died, which was always going to happen, they rotated hosts for a little while from the regular panelists, now it would seem they have settled on Sue Perkins as host. She was an excellent panelist so it's kind of sad to lose her in that capacity. She's very sharp of course and does a great job as host except in the way she consistently demonises Gyles Brandreth when he's on. 

Brandreth is a very, very funny man. He has created a wonderful persona for this program (or maybe it's him - I don't know, I've barely ever encountered him in any other forum). It's a kind of pompous showman with a grab-bag of old tropes that belie his apparently horrible politics. What gets up my nose is Perkins' decision to make Brandreth a scapegoat as though he was some sort of old perv at worst or at best someone who always needs taking down a peg or two. I don't really understand why; she may not like his politics, which is fine neither do I, but he is a brilliant personality for a show like this and he adds a huge amount. More to the point, with JAM's rather sour history of tolerating (but no-one knew - did they?) an actual sexual predator as a beloved member of the core cast for decades, I'm talking of course about Clement Freud, it seems a bit rich to be berating Gyles Brandreth in ways that, if you didn't stop to think about it, you'd think he was actually in some way toxic or handsy. I'm sure he isn't, because it wouldn't be tolerated for a second. 

I'm still sad about Clement Freud! I thought he was magnificent and I loved the Grimble books too. 

Incidentally I found a copy of The Kenneth Williams Letters somewhere (I can't remember where) and am dipping into it. It's interesting and absolutely not funny. Like a lot of people in his profession Williams is not only a miserable person, he sees the world very much in black and white. Of course he was intensely inhibited as well. Complete fucking genius though when he was doing what he did best. He was superb on Just a Minute indeed that might have been where he did his best work - ? 

Seems silly to be writing about JAM and to not mention the completely excellent Paul Merton. The glue that holds the thing together - even when he's not on it, in some weird way. Merton is also the link between the old and the new JAM, having essentially replaced Williams and so worked with the other three original panelists of Peter Jones, Derek Nimmo and Freud. But I should also say that paradoxically the show really improved at the turn of the century, in my unscientific estimation (i.e. I have no proof of this, just my memory thinking back) before Parsons started to seem not entirely sure where he was, and from when Jones, Nimmo and Freud were still around, joined by Merton, and then transitioned into a much larger pool of guests including a lot more women. I mean the show in the 70s and 80s was a lot of fun for the time but looking back it could have been a lot more than a show of five white men talking amongst themselves, for crying out loud! But I'm going from unscientific to ahistorical, aren't I. Apologies. It's still a great show but maybe it's a bit uncertain, well I suppose a lot of 55 year old people are uncertain so imagine being a 55 year old radio show.