Nancy: the best writer on the ‘Graun’…by far

February 6, 2010 at 8:09 pm (good people, Guardian, Jim D, literature, TV)

“When someone points to a box of fireworks and says ‘They should be in the cellar’, you know the whole place is about to go up. Trust me, I’m a critic” - Nancy Banks-Smith

As regulars here will know, I have something of a love-hate relationship with the Grauniad and its columnists. Well, hate mainly.

So why the hell do so many of of who heartily despise the hypocritical Stalinist ravings of  Milne, the banal religiosity of  Bunting, the smug Tory isolationism of Jenkins and the infuriating self-delusion of Toynbee, still shell out for the rag every weekday? Well, the truth is that all the other “quality” papers are worse.

But for all the garbage churned out by the likes of Milne and Bunting, the Graun is also home to some great writers. And none greater than their TV critic of forty years, Nancy Banks-Smith. Like Neville Cardus (another Graun writer -on cricket and ’serious’ music) before her, she has transcended mere “criticism” and produced writing that is often superior to its subject matter.

She nearly gave it all up in February 1994:

“Right, I think that’s about it. I’m off now. If you can’t put your socks on in the morning while standing on one leg, you have to retire. I only took the job on in the first place because the last critic left to stand for Parliament. What a bit of luck, by the way, that Dennis Potter didn’t get elected. Perhaps I’ll go into politics myself. There seem to be several interesting openings and it sounds an unexpectedly colourful life. Also you get into the paper a darn sight more than a critic. Or perhaps I’ll just sneak back.”

As a Graun letter-writer, Chris Weeks, comments, “But sneak back she did, thank goodness!”

Nancy is a natural humourist – Nancy with the laughing prose. But reading through the Graun‘s fortieth anniversary tribute selection of her work, you also realise just how moving her writing can be: moving to the point of tear-inducing. Follow the link and read her review of the dying Dennis Potter’s interview on Channel 4′s Without Walls, for instance.

Or, incredibly, her absolutely stunning piece on the death of the Coronation Street character,Vera Duckworth:

“Jack, played by Bill Tarbey, is a bit of a bar-room baritone. Last night with his fingers entwined in Vera’s cold hand, he sang to her. ‘Oh my lass! My lovely lass! You’re all right now. That’s us…Nothing to mar our joy. There will be such wonderful things to do. I will say such wonderful things to you. If you were the only girl in the world. And I were…’ Then his voice failed him.

“He brushed her hair (‘Pretty as a picture’); put on her bedroom slippers (‘There you go, Cinderella’); laid his coat over her (‘I don’t like her cold. She hates it cold’); and, holding the world at bay for a few minutes, told no one else.

“The first caller was a pigeon. ‘She always made out she didn’t like them,’ said Jack. ‘It was the mess. I knew she used to sneak out to talk to them. I used to pretend I didn’t know.’ And he gave the pigeon a message to carry. It was something he’d never said directly to Vera: ‘Oh, you are beautiful! You are a pretty one! I love you.’

“In the closing credits of Coronation Street, you see a couple of pigeons fluttering about on the cobbles. Always together.”

Thank you, Nancy.