It is fast becoming the most tiresome pre-election tradition in British politics: the mind-bendingly dull TV debate. Ed Miliband has threatened to make them a legal necessity; Conservatives countered by complaining about the Labour links of the BBC’s debate negotiator, Sue Inglish. But while watching the dire “I agree with Nick” event on YouTube recently, (the first debate in this format, which made a star of Mr Clegg and created this coalition government) I realised what the TV debate as a genre really resembles: something by Samuel Beckett, particularly his desolate one-act piece Play, from 1962.
In this work, we see three funeral urns on stage with three exhausted faces poking up, with an apparent emotional connection but always looking ahead, never at each other. Sometimes they babble together; sometimes they take turns. But their language is an agony of non-communication. The pre-election leaders’ debate is the same absurdist drama of unmeaning, an immobile ballet of wretchedness in which the three (or two, or seven) politicians have an inert, waxy hopeless quality, with a flash of existential panic in the eyes. They are paralysed with self-consciousness and anxiety, each facing front, each of their puppet faces plonked on top of a suit, frozen with the tension of remembering all those lines to take, all those unfunny pre-prepared zingers. Perhaps the Royal Court can ask the Beckett estate for permission to restage Play with Nick, Dave and Ed’s faces in those urns, with maybe one or two more urns for Nigel’s head and one for Natalie Bennett’s.
Health lottery
Like everyone else I know, I have become obsessed with the NHS Heart Age Calculator. This is an online diagnostic tool for telling you what shape your heart is in. But it also, terrifyingly, appears to say the age at which you are going to die. I tapped in details including height, weight, family medical history and whether I smoked (oddly, it’s not interested in alcohol). There was a short pause while a “heart” symbol pulsed, tensely. Then it said my heart age was 55(older than me, thank you so much) and I could expect to live until 78 before I get a heart attack or stroke. A fatal one? It doesn’t say. But at 78, I guess they tend to be.Well that’s just great. The bell tolls on or by my 78th birthday. It’s a bit of a downer. Perhaps I should feel like the character in Jorge Luis Borges’s story The Secret Miracle who is condemned to death in just a week’s time, but who feels paradoxically elated because for that week he has an unprecedented feeling of being invulnerable, immortal. In theory, nothing can happen to me before 78. But I still don’t much feel like going to the gym now.
Towering fire risk
Unnerving news from Vienna, where Austrians are shortly to enjoy what is rumoured to be the world’s tallest wooden skyscraper. This is the HoHo project: 276 feet (84 metres) tall. The developer, Caroline Palfy, says: “We have wood, which is a perfect construction material for building. It was used 200 years ago; and it was perfect then, and it is perfect now.” Well, I agree. It is a lovely, warm, organic material. A great big skyscraper made of wood! But those of us who remember the movie The Towering Inferno might feel nervy about allowing matches in the building. Gas hobs in the kitchens might be something to discuss. Candles on birthday cakes could be an issue. Already the Viennese fire service has raised spoilsport concerns. In the film the architect, played by Paul Newman, is at loggerheads with the fire chief, played by Steve McQueen. Let’s hope there is no need for a documentary-style remake set in Vienna, starring Christoph Waltz and Daniel Brühl.
• This article was amended on 12 March 2015. We had mixed up the parts played by Steve McQueen and Paul Newman.
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