TV review: Being Alan Bennett | Bennett on Bennett

Published on Sunday 6 December 2009 19:31

MY MUM once tried to buy an Alan Bennett book in a major bookselling chain, but had temporarily forgotten his name.

To prompt the gormless teenager at the counter, she said: "You know, he's from the North of England, gay, talks about his parents a lot," which seems to me a perfectly clear description of the writer (sadly, the assistant merely shrugged blankly, even though it transpired that the branch of said major chain had a promotional display featuring a lifesize cardboard version of Bennett just metres away, which is one of the reasons why the current difficulties of these big book supermarkets are hardly surprising).

Anyway, I suspect Alan Bennett would have recognised himself, as his own summation of his public profile goes: "Oh, the plays he writes – and he had two such lovely parents." Northern women, he says – and this may apply in Scotland as well – have a great facility to give a potted biography of someone, introducing a character better than most dramatists.

Yet this rambling programme, marking his 75th birthday, also portrayed him well despite not following the usual biographical format. There was some throat-clearing stuff first about putting his papers into an archive at the Bodleian Library in Oxford, followed by a digression about his eccentric former tenant, the "lady in the van" who inspired a memoir.

But, typically, once Bennett got on to the subject of his parents, the programme came alive. It was a "misfortune" to have parents he got on with, unlike the ones of Phillip Larkin's poem – which he sang to the tune of The Last Of The Summer Wine theme – adding ruefully, "If they don't f*** you up, you've got nothing to write about." But this was obviously rather disingenuous, as Bennett derived great material from his family.

Although the show didn't raise the question, it would have been interesting to consider whether his sexuality, which until recently he felt unable to discuss, made it seem more acceptable to talk about them publicly than his partners.

Another theme was Bennett's reluctance to accept the tag "national treasure", that patronising designation bestowed on those over a certain age who are deemed cuddly and safe. He spoke about the temptation to stop "doing it" (writing) and just "be it" – ie: deliver what people want to hear from his greatest hits at literary festivals, "pretending to be yourself".

Yet while Bennett also said his greatest drawback was that everyone was convinced he was so nice, the documentary showed how they get that impression. At a local Women's Institute meeting (where he was bumped three times for rival attractions including a brass band and the badminton) and opening his doctor's new health centre (and giving a speech defending the NHS and the BBC), Bennett clearly knew how to please and get a laugh.

Yet, as some wonderful clips from his past programmes, many featuring his best interpreter Thora Hird, reminded us, there is more to him than a couthy dialect phrase. Sunday's companion series, Bennett On Bennett, is a series of ten-minute monologues in the style of his celebrated Talking Heads, but delivered by "Alan Bennett" – a fictionalised version of himself. The first, Mixing, was about his parents' attempts to join the cocktail set; funny, sweet and touching. "Every family has a secret," he recounted, "and the secret is, it's not like other families."