Here’s a game to while away any semi-mournful hours you’re having. Maybe you’re half-cut, or maybe out the other side and slightly hungover. Maybe you’re just awake at 4am for no reason. No matter. Settle yourself in for a few rounds of Who’s Got the Best Life? Two rules – they have to be famous (otherwise it’s boring for other people) and they have to be alive (otherwise it’s always Frank Sinatra). Is it Judi Dench? Helen Mirren? Alan Bennett? Joanna Lumley? Mary Berry? Talented, loved, respected, successful, enduring – not a bad package. Or would you need a dash more glamour? Joan Collins – she may well have the best life. George Clooney? Jon Hamm? Comic and dramatic chops, synonymous with handsomeness and suavity but, crucially, never in Dynasty.
I must now add a further candidate to the list – Burt Bacharach. A six-time Grammy and three-time Oscar-winning composer, songwriter, record producer, pianist, singer and general hit factory for half a century, beloved and worshipped and interpreted by every new generation of stars and singers and still going strong at 87. That’s a pretty good life. Right up, I reckon, until the moment he had to take part in last night’s Burt Bacharach: A Life in Song (BBC4).
It must have sounded good on paper. A concert at the Royal Festival Hall celebrating his music – hits and medleys interspersed with talk from the great man himself. Except. Except. Michael Grade did the interviewing, in a weird, jocular yet aggressive fashion that quite overwhelmed his thoughtful, gracious guest. He cut off answers just as Bacharach seemed to be going somewhere interesting and railroaded him into others so that another song could be “fortuitously” introduced. Infuriating, frustrating and – unless it was all down to butchery in the editing suite – fairly insulting to Bacharach, whose face was not a picture of happiness between anecdotes.
And then there’s the problem of multiple performers – including Alfie Boe, Sophie Ellis-Bextor, Rebecca Ferguson, Laura Mvula, Joss Stone, Michael Kiwanuka and Shaun Escoffery – having to come on, find their audience, create their atmosphere, nail their piece without straying too far from or reminding us too much of the landmark original, and get off.
Save for the medley at the end from Bacharach and his band, you were left feeling you could put something better together yourself from YouTube. When you’ve finished a round of Best Life, perhaps? On you go.
