Tom Sutcliffe: Mourn Reg - but not 'On the Buses'

Understandably the homepage of the On The Buses Official Fan Club was in a relatively sombre mood yesterday, noting the death of Reg Varney with the headline "Thanks for all the laughter, never to be forgotten here at the fan club".

Beneath that legend, and the expression of condolences to family and friends, you could find a more extended piece by the fan club's organiser in which he (or possibly she) praised the characterisation of the "cheeky chappie" Stan Butler and the writing talents of Ronald Wolfe and Ronald Chesney, and also expressed the somewhat forlorn hope that "maybe we can get On the Buses back on the main TV channel so that a whole new generation can enjoy the antics of those lovely folk from Luxton Town and District".

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Well, I wouldn't hold your breath for that ... although these days the obstinacy of channel controllers isn't the source of frustration it might once have been. Amazon was yesterday listing a complete series box set of the sit-com at £118.46. Its position at number 16,372 in the DVD sales ranking suggests that there may not be a huge groundswell of public demand for broadcast re-runs.

I did find myself wondering, though, what "a whole new generation" would make of On the Buses in the unlikely event that they sat down to watch it. They would, surely, be astonished by its casual and almost through-composed misogyny – not just the characters' assumption that women should be judged and dealt with solely on the basis of their sexual desirability but the raucous gusts of studio laughter that accompanied every insult to the hapless Olive, a drudge in bottle-bottom glasses who served as one of the sit-com's two comic punchbags, along with the officious inspector Blakey.

Pastiching the series recently in their sketch show, Harry Enfield and Paul Whitehouse delivered the following neat distillation of a typical exchange. "You ugly old bag," says the Varney character dismissively, thrusting Page Three of his newspaper at the woman next to him, "Why can't you look more like that?" "Go easy on her Stan", his friend intervenes, "after all she is nearly human".

I didn't see much mention of this aspect of the show in the obituary coverage. Nil nisi bonum, perhaps, or an anxiety not to appear humourlessly politically correct. It is all too easy, of course, to judge with a callow hindsight – congratulating ourselves on a sensibility that we've done little to earn. But it isn't just from the perspective of today that much of On the Buses looked ugly and bullying. It looked like that back then too.

Replay Dad's Army and you'll be hard pressed to find a joke or an attitude that now looks culpably outdated. Replay On the Buses and you'll be spoilt for choice. And I have a suspicion that this probably made some women's lives worse than need have been. If even a comedy as pointedly well-intentioned as Till Death Us Do Part could have its unintended victims (more than one person has testified to the little spike in racial abuse that it's weekly broadcast would generate) what did On the Buses do – with its implication that verbal abuse and contempt would receive the roaring, communal endorsement of a studio laugh track?

It wasn't, as one Amazon review has it, a "healthy dose of fun". It was unhealthy fun. Condolences to Reg Varney's family and friends by all means – but no regrets surely that the comedy with which he was most closely associated died a long time before him – and that its only resurrections will be a private affair.

If your music's gift, Kanye, why am I paying for it?

There was something of a "one-hand clapping" quality to Kanye West's response to his arrest by Newcastle police after a scuffle with a paparazzo last week. "I'm not a celebrity", he explained on his blog, "I'm a normal person that's just famous".

I'm inclined to agree with him that there is a genuine distinction here (West is famous for his music, not just for being famous, so he could be argued to have an entitlement to off-stage down-time). But I would have been much more sympathetic if I hadn't been to his London concert last week and thus been been exposed to the fire-hose force of the Kanye West ego. At one point he appeared to deliver a hip-hop moan about the fact that he hadn't been able to sell his Hollywood house for as much as he'd originally paid for it... a grievance that I couldn't feel was exactly central to his fans' lives.

He then concluded the show with an interminable, musically-backed sermon about the impertinence of critics who had dared to write in other than glowing terms about the show. When your mother knits you a sweater, you don't criticise it, he explained. It's a gift. Just as my music is a gift. It's been a while since my mother knit me a sweater but I can't recall that she charged me £40 before she handed it over and then tried to sell me an over-priced T-shirt to go with it. Snap away guys, he's not that normal.

Obama must refocus to be a hit on YouTube

Watching Barack Obama's first YouTube fire-side chat to the American public I was a bit surprised to see that he's got a bad case of autocue eyes – that tiny pupillary shiftiness which reveals that the speaker isn't really gazing earnestly at you (and you alone) but scanning a column of carefully vetted text.

Nothing particularly unethical about an autocue of course. But I think he's missed a trick here in not grasping that a certain informality and looseness is part of the idiom of the YouTube video blog. When they work they're a kind of conversation, not Oval Office public addresses.

Presidents can't risk too much off-the-cuff, of course, but he can always rewind and try again if he accidentally blurts out the secret plan to nationalise the means of production. He should ad lib it next time – or at least practice until he gets rid of the skittering eyeballs.

n Gordon Brown has been widely reported to be "dismayed and frustrated" by the findings of the Government task force appointed to look into the issue of presumed consent in organ donations.

I was a little dismayed and frustrated by this formulation itself. He's the Prime Minister for goodness' sake! If he still thinks this is the right thing to do, having read the report, why doesn't he show a bit of backbone and do it?

It's a classic instance of the kind of "choice architecture" that is so politically fashionable, but he has an army of the great and the good to back the decision up and it would, unquestionably, save some lives.

What's more, it wouldn't force a single bereaved family to do something they don't want to. He shouldn't avoid embarrassment with a tactical delay. He should, as they say in America, "nut up" and do it.

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