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Top Billing: The Making of an Infantilist Viewer

It’s Thursday evening, 7:30pm, and millions of pale, fifty-something-year-old housewife toes are warmly settled in stokies across the country, ready to live their imaginary lives through a few indefatigable paragons of upper-middleclass waspish style. Yes, it’s Top Billing time. Time for vicarious television lives for those who need an aspirational injection of money-culture.

As soon as I see Mike Mol’s purposeful walk into shot, screen left past a green settee that, in a few minutes, will be termed “functional, yet aesthetically pleasing”, I begin to feel anxious. I just know there’s a tragically poor figure of speech waiting to dribble out of his taught little smile in a viscous flow of voice training (purposeful adjective overflow there). I know it’s the scriptwriter’s fault, but I can’t help pinning the blame on Mr SA. He just tries so hard to pull the cringe-worthy dialogue off that he’s more than complicit (I hope they don't script Dr. Mol's bedside manner; it would inevitably be euthanistic). Miss RAU (Jeannie D don’t ya know) is probably even more guilty. Except she has a higher smile-per-frame rate - almost as high as her co-smiler Ursula Stapelfeldt. I really marvel at Jeannie's ability to produce so many varied expressions of glee in a 30 second introduction of a dull game lodge. But I get so exhausted watching them. She’s either very happy in her work or she’s coked to the brim. Maybe it’s also a reluctance to drop those relentless beauty queen smiles once they win you a pageant title.

But it’s not only the presenters who challenge my couch-time composure (I do try to not get worked up, but always fail), the voice-over guys are even worse. How did Top Billing become a retirement home for has-been Radio 5 DJs? I used to love Phil Wright and Alex Jay when I was 14. Now they talk to me like I talk to my cat. And even he looks at me funny. The more I listen to them the more I think the viewer isn’t given a chance to decide what is significant for herself. The faked lilts and accentuations riding on their artificially energetic cadence tell us exactly what we are supposed to consider humorous, poignant, enviable, frivolous, desirable etc. Are we so daft that we need this didactic, spoon-fed TV? I almost expect them to talk down to us like a condescending aunt who finishes your sentences for you. Except here they start them for you too. It’s like we’ve been drawn unwittingly into a state of infantilism; we become children of “lifestyle” programming. And it never ceases to amaze me how they can state the obvious with so much conviction. Sometimes so enthusiastically that it can make you reconsider the simplest facts. You become inclined to doubt the validity of a truism merely because it's so difficult to believe that something so self-evident can actually be expressed with such satisfaction.

Although I can’t stand it, I can imagine how Top Billing works like an amphetamine. People wait in anticipation for the Thursday evening hit, get a huge high from the places they’re taken (basically out of their own lives), followed by a depressing comedown when it slowly dawns on them how far removed their life is from what they’ve just seen. Maybe I’m totally wrong and the programme just serves to fuel the viewer’s unrelenting drive towards the South Africash dream. Either way, is this programme a much-needed, light-hearted distraction from the everyday troubles we face in this country? Or is it a blinkered kick in the guts to those same troubles? Or can it be both simultaneously? Maybe when I’m a fifty-year old, addicted, infantilised viewer, I’ll have a quick answer to that.

Cute cat illustrations

Found this great kid's book at, yet again, Milnerton market.

Record Player

Got this old portable record player from Milnerton market yesterday for R130. And it works!

Milnerton Market finds

Retro side table with magazine rack

Detail of the table surface

Cover of a set of 78 records for kids

More animals and humans

Makes me laugh (almost as funny as Stywe Lyne)

I though this was a motivational booklet, but I was wrong.

Pet booklets from the charity shop

The hamster shown in its natural habitat

There's only one word going through this kid's mind..."blender".

Enjoy it by giving it a toupee

Silly stuff I made

Put some 1930's track and field cigarette cards into an old frame.



I jammed these between two sheets of glass. I think it looks nice, in spite of the poor photography and the crap reflection.

The A-Team

I got this annual at the market the other day and I don't recognise one of the characters depicted on the cover! Can anyone tell me who that guy at the bottom with the slick black hair is? I really don't remember him... I don't like him, he's messing with my memories.

This series of illustrations shows how B.A. earned his name.

Did that bear just fart?


I don't remember The A-Team being very deep, unless I was too young to pick up the philosophical undertones, but this monologue by Murdoch, as the team drives into a No-Man's land area somewhere in a South American jungle, is quite reflective:

"That's right, pal," he confided triumphantly. "I've become No-One, the Number One hero of our times. That's me, bub, the incredible guardian of all things good and caring, the stoic custodian of honesty and valour, the biggest, reddest cheese in the history of No-Man's Land - yes B.A., your humble friendly prince has transmuted into No-One himself, and, as needs must, I've completely disappeared!"

Of course any possible profundity is lost on the team and we're led to believe that it's just one of Howling Mad Murdoch's crazy 'episodes'. But I'd like to believe more...

That maybe the humble, faceless contract writer was writing himself into the script. That, for lack of acknowledgement, he inserted a homage to his unacclaimed occupation. For he is the "No-One", "the Number One hero" behind the heros. And he has indeed "completely disappeared" into the background, behind the cyclopean presence of Stephen J. Cannell.

I'll have to read a few more stories to confirm my suspiscion that the writer(s) may have used Murdoch as an conduit for their frustrations or creative expression. Or maybe I should just let it go...

True love

Picked up these great women's weeklys from the 70's. I've never seen them before, because I was born late.

Is she looking at his fire down below?
A random excerpt from page 25 of this classic:

"He smiled his teasing, most charming smile, but Comfrey was furious. As it happened, Comfrey spent a delightful evening with Phillip. He was a charming companion, and she felt quite at ease with him."

Hmm goosebumps...

This nurse needs to be true to herself and admit that she is blind. And doctors shouldn't lose hearts.

When sickness comes...

Found this booklet at a charity store that shows you how to care for sick people at home.

This little girl is suffering from facelessness. It's hereditary.

He's faking.



Geppetto beats pinocchio at cards again and feels like a real man.

That's no onion in the background. That's the last patient who tried to have her day. The 50's were hard.

Great old books

A 1963 book called 'Interpret', for English travelers in Germany. Such great illustrations - small and simple, but they convey a lot of mood. For me anyway.





This children's book is very simply illustrated but it's so cute.




I wonder if this is THE Ingrid Jonker. Book published in 60's.

Zaren Kaffee set - R45 at Milnerton Market

It looks Russian, smells German.

Alka-kunst Alboth & Kaiser coffee set - R50 at Milnerton Market - Nice one

This is not a small coffee cup, it is a demitasse, apparently.

steady hands

i'm going through first-post anxiety.