PLAYING a monstrous dictator – more than that, the world's No 1 bogeyman of recent times – can't be an easy thing to do. But for this reviewer, Igal Naor was going to have to work extra hard to convince as Saddam Hussein. It wouldn't be enough to aff
ix a moustache, the way that a different kind of mouser – small, almost square, very camp – can always evoke Adolf Hitler. It wouldn't be enough to get the Saddam 'tache absolutely spot-on: that corpulent caterpillar, bloated on power and Granny Smiths, lounging decadently on the upper lip. No, Naor was also going to have to bear a strong resemblance to the third editor of my newspaper career.
Both Saddam and the editor shared the same whiskers and a flair for the unequivocal statement. On his first day in charge, while addressing the newsroom, the latter declared: "I'll never stab any of you in the back – only the front." Halfway through the opening episode of the four-part House Of Saddam, Naor warmed up for tyranny with the assertion, "I know a traitor before he knows himself", and I was sold.
This BBC/HBO production had begun with George Bush's declaration of war and the bombing of Baghdad in 2003 before flashing back to 1979, when Saddam and his cronies had a breadth of vision to match that of their jacket lapels. "Comrades," he said, "America hopes for a strong Iraq, the Arab world demands it and the Iraqi people deserve it."
At that stage he was the president's deputy, but the top job was soon his. Luxuriating in the moment, Saddam asked his closest friend: "Are you enjoying power?" He said he was, whereupon Saddam shot him. The reasoning: "The man who can sacrifice even his best friend is a man without weakness in the eyes of his enemies. I am stronger now."
Saddam told the man's grieving widow that his death was for the best, for the country, and this attractive woman agreed. "Tell me what I can do to serve you," she offered. Saddam's moustache twitched with arousal. Later, the only blonde in Baghdad allowed herself to be groped for the cause. Her husband objected until a Saddam yes-man confirmed: "There will be compensation."
The first instalment of what promises to be a gripping series showed us Saddam the family man, Saddam the non-family man and, most intriguingly, Saddam the mummy's boy. There was the odd soapy scene, but the palace glamour and mad cackling only added to the creepy fascination. By the end, Saddam was ordering the execution of two generals for the withdrawal of troops during the war with Iran. "The Iraqi army never retreats," he snarled, and the moustache threatened to stand on its hind legs and beat its chest in defiant fury.
House Of Saddam featured state television footage of the brave hero on horseback while a choir sang: "Oh love, we love the leader/Saddam the president and father/If he says 'build' then get ready…" Ordinarily this would have been a cert to be rated the worst song heard all week, but Summer Heights High was reaching its climax and that meant only one thing: the end-of-term musical – written, directed and produced by Mr G, and a thinly disguised celebration of the brilliant career of the school's performing arts supremo.
No mere drama teacher, Greg Gregson (in reality Helen, "the Ancient Greek masculine version of the name") is a deluded, self-mythologising, super-camp fool who believes his talent is only outshone by his popularity – but in reality he can only count on the unspoken love of one man, science master Rodney Parsons. If you haven't seen Summer Heights High, you're probably thinking The Office and David Brent and Gareth Keenan. But if you have, you'll know that Chris Lilley's Australian comedy is no rip-off.
As well as Mr G, Lilley plays Ja'mie King (note pretentious apostrophe), the spoiled hair-twirler from Year 11 who's on exchange from private school to slum it among the "bogans" and "povo skanks" of the state system. Eventually she musters some friends: an "emo" friend, an "Asian" friend, a "commission house whore" friend and a "hot" friend, though no one is allowed to be as hot as Ja'mie thinks she is.
The series ended with Ja'mie leaving Summer Heights, along with Lilley's other character, Jonah Takalua, the Tongan tearaway who threatened one teacher too many and, as a parting gift, spray-painted the outline of his penis on every wall and car. As Mr G had already quit over the head teacher's refusal to remove the gymnasium's basketball hoops for his "arena spectacular", there probably won't be a second run, which is a shame, but at least it went out on a high.
Inspired by the Ecstasy death of a pupil – "One girl, one pill, one helluva night" was the original tagline – the musical was re-worked after complaints from the dead girl's parents into an only slightly less tasteless affair, featuring a Down's syndrome boy winched on to the stage from a great height to play Mr G while the man himself sang from the wings: "You want to tell the children of all the human race/The special ones, the normal ones, the Chinese ones as well…" Comedy of the year.
This column is being brought to you while I munch on a sandwich, home-made, as all my sandwiches will be from now on, after watching a grisly, and gristly, Dispatches. Alex Thomson's report, Sandwiches Unwrapped, probed the fatty, salt-drenched, water-pumped, polyphosphate-riddled underside of a £5bn industry. He found a Marks & Spencer chicken sandwich with a fancy name that contained more fat than a double cheeseburger from McDonald's and a Subway meatballs special that was the salt equivalent of 18 packets of crisps. Pret A Manger, according to one expert, dealt in "food porn". "New Labour, New Sandwich" might have made a good motto for this company, but perhaps Maggie Thatcher and Gordon Gekko were right all along. Lunch really is for wimps.
The full article contains 1047 words and appears in Scotland On Sunday newspaper.
