Imagine that......

[johncorrigan]

Well I'm not much of a Yentob fan - he always seems to want to be centre stage rather than his subject but I won't be missing this one, this week.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b0186j2l

[Globaltruth]

Well I'm not much of a Yentob fan - he always seems to want to be centre stage rather than his subject but I won't be missing this one, this week.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b0186j2l

Good pointer JC. I recall hearing somewhere that his real surname was Botney.

I always think of him as that anyway.

He does do the odd good programme - there is a complex mathematical relationship between:
how interesting the programme is compared to how much Botney is in it
but I can't quite capture it...anyway don't think he is in that one at all....

They meet Bhopa bards who recite four-night-long epics in front of huge hand-painted scrolls, saffron-clad, chillum-smoking sisters, cross-dressers and gypsy dancers who literally bend over backwards to pick up rupees.

Sounds like a fairly typical night round at the village pub (I refer of course to Post 77 on this thread
http://www.for3.org/forums/showthrea...g-Moving/page8)

[johncorrigan]

Good pointer JC. I recall hearing somewhere that his real surname was Botney.

Well he will henceforth be Nala Botney to me Global.

I reckon I could do with a night out in that pub as long as they don't expect me to do any bending over backwards - these days I struggle to bend over forwards and when I do it's usually just to make sure the beer glass reaches my lips without incident.

[Lateralthinking1]

Yes, a good one. He has done some reasonable things, although seems to be in a privileged cherry picking position. The only thing of his that was bitterly disappointing was the one on the history of the guitar.

[aka Calum Da Jazbo]

... i thought of him as Snowball .....

[johncorrigan]

For me it was a typical Nala performance - he was all over the place. I kept thinking, 'There's a really good doc in here, but this isn't it'. I couldn't help thinking what wonderful things Dr Duran would have done with it. It was like an anarchic travelogue with Nala going along for the ride. There was no interest in the instruments and little in the stories of the songs.

But there was still lots to enjoy. Some of the images were wonderful, like a trip into the Arabian nights. The Muslim family group were wonderful and it did highlight the caste system and the position musicians found themselves in; and the old guy telling four day stories through the night; and the woman who pined for a return trip to Edinburgh after being taken to the Festival - aaahhhh! don't we all?

William Dalrymple said something really interesting towards the end where he compared some of these folk musicians and storytellers to being like Homer being alive and still reciting the ancient stories. Then someone else towards the end talked about the need to support this tradition - 'when you want the tree to grow you don't water the apple'. Interesting but Nala was completely out of his depth, in my opinion.