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“Let me,” cried Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar, “have men about me that are fat, sleek-headed men and such as sleep o’ nights.”One can see his point. There is something infinitely measuring about a rounded, even cherubic, circumstance something sound and trustworthy about a man of bulk.

Now this may, of course, be merely an optical illusion. But the lean and hungry look does not, in general, inspire confidence. Perhaps that’s why, when a fat man is proved to be villain, he’s very villainous indeed. We feel sadly let down.

Ramblings such as this occurred to me in considering the case of the television presenter. In recent weeks the nature of my work has brought me face to face with many forms of the genus interlocutor. As you know, they come in many shapes and sizes. Any consideration of their merits must begin with the visual impression that they make. Let us disregard the disembodied ones, the out-of-vision narrators, those known in the trade as “voice-overs”. Our business is with the front men and women in corporeal view, upon the producer pins all his hopes of an audience joining and staying with his product. And, while it’s a television truism that the strengths of a chat show or a magazine is often the strength of its weakest link, its equally true that a presenter can make or mar the best-intentioned programme.

It is no easy task. Far too often presenters and producers forget that the Box is essentially an intimate medium. It is not a market place, nor a Speaker’s Corner. And as in those two public arenas the louder the voice the more strident the appeal, the more dubious appear the goods for sale. No, your good presenter must get on intimate terms with his viewer-singular, not plural. He may in numerical terms be talking to millions but it is still a one-to-one business. 

So, the essence of the craft is the quiet, conversational buttonholing of the viewer. This is precisely the point at which good TV presentation Parts company with show business. Introducing the next item or personality in a steady crescendo of spurious excitement is no more than rabble rousing, to elicit audience applause. Often what follows falls flat on its face, despite the bolstering of audience reaction, for the viewer at home in solitary, before his set. 

The ground rules of presentation are pretty obvious-a friendly face and manner, a persona one can like on first impression or warm to as the one-way conversation continues. It was no accident that the archetypal presenter, Richard Dimbleby, was so good at his job. He was a large man, voice and personality projected effortlessly into the home. Always the keynote was a quiet sincerity. In a lighter fashion, the ever-green Cliff Michelmore continues the tradition. He’s another rounded person, in several senses, with whom the viewer finds instant rapport. Of course, there are dangers in the large personality. It can be allowed to grow so that it fills the screen, allowing only a peep over the shoulder of the famous front man at what the programme’s really about.

How can an interlocutor be ‘disembodied’?

  1. Because the telecasts are poor
  2. Because the frames are edited haphazard.
  3. Because the viewer never sees them physically.
  4. None of the above
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