A Foul Mouthed Old Man

I had a disappointing media experience on Sunday night - I watched William Goldman on 'The South Bank Show'.

I had been very much looking forward to it, to the extent of telephoning my father, a three times a week moviegoer in the days before Glasgow's cinemas were turned into bingo halls, to tell him it was on. To my mind, 'Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid' remains the paradigm of what an original screenplay should be. Having read 'Adventures in the Screen Trade' as a teenager and continued with Mr. Goldman's analyses of the movie business up to 'Which Lie Did I Tell?', I thought I would be in for a literate treat.

Instead, what the viewer got was an unnecessary flow of foul language from a man not a kick in the pants away from the age of 80. It might have been edited negatively (and I very much doubt it was), but Mr. Goldman came across as being a deeply unattractive person - the type of writer whose thoughts are best expressed on paper, and nowhere else.

I do not recall Mr. Goldman using a similar level of profanity in those of his books I have read. I do not imagine that he would consider addressing an American television audience in that way for a moment. Quite why a British television audience should be thus addressed escapes me.