Anyone who has ever pondered whether arts programming on the BBC isn't quite what it used to be will have the opportunity, from tomorrow, to test that theory. The BFI Southbank in London is presenting a season devoted to Monitor, the TV arts show that ran from 1958 to 1965, under the guiding hand of editor, interviewer and anchor Huw Wheldon.
Film-makers such as Ken Russell and John Schlesinger cut their teeth on Monitor, and the BFI is showing some gems of imaginative film-making: for instance, a beautiful little piece about Magritte, complete with footage of him footling around his suburban home in Belgium, in the company of a small and ridiculous dog.
Even better fun, perhaps, are the interviews, from comedian Spike Milligan to writer Evelyn Waugh, who spits out a series of witheringly gnomic statements. "I regard longevity with the utmost horror," he begins. "One's got a certain professional skill like an old workman who can still mend a tap."
His advice to writers is to modify - and temper - reality in fiction. "If one wrote down what had happened to one's acquaintance, everyone would say it's too extraordinarily absurd." And then he gets on to modernism. James Joyce is "a poor dotty man ... who wrote absolute rot, you know"; Gertrude Stein "happened to be a clever and amusing old gal, but when she started putting pen to paper - gibberish".
In short, if the BBC reran this stuff instead of bothering with the Culture Show, the Diary would be a happy viewer.