It was sad to learn of the passing of British TV broadcaster Sir David Frost, 74, last week. Although he became internationally known through his interviews with former US President Richard Nixon in 1977, I will always remember him for his early work on the breakthrough BBC satirical show That Was The Week That Was, aka TW3.
It is hard to convey the impact of the show which ran in 1962-3, because it was so different to anything seen on the BBC before. It laid into politicians and other establishment figures with a vengeance, particularly pointing out hypocrisy and contradictions _ and there were plenty of those.
No one was spared. It was the time of the Profumo Affair, which provided rich pickings, and they had a field day with Harold Macmillan and his government, but Labour's Harold Wilson and George Brown were also prime targets. Making fun of politicians became a national sport.
Frost was the anchorman of the show, but he had a great supporting cast of people like Lance Percival, Willie Rushton, Roy Kinnear, John Bird and singer Millicent Martin. Amazingly, they did the whole show live.
It was the last programme on a Saturday night and I recall sprinting home from the pub to catch it, sometimes even abandoning an unfinished beer. That's just how good it was.
Seriously, though ...
Inevitably the show spawned a number of catchphrases, including Frost's distinctive, tautological introduction: ''Hello, good evening and welcome.'' Then, after a sketch totally demolishing somebody's credibility, Frost would come out with a mocking: ''Seriously, though, he's doing a grand job!''
Such was the impact of these catchphrases you still see them in newspaper headlines, along with variations of That Was The Week That Was.
The BBC, which was quite brave in running the show in the first place, finally got cold feet and dropped it as 1964 was an election year and they were rightly worried about what TW3 might come up with.
After the election, now with Wilson in power, Frost and his team returned with a similar show, Not So Much a Programme, More a Way of Life. It did not carry quite as much impact as it had lost the shock value that TW3 enjoyed.
His final satirical show was The Frost Report, which introduced to the world the likes of Ronnie Barker and Ronnie Corbett and five-sixths of the Monty Python crew. Oh happy days.
Could it happen here?
You could argue that Thailand is ripe for a TW3 type of programme. Wouldn't that be fun? They could possibly call it ''You Couldn't Make This Up If You Tried''.
Among TW3's targets was greed, duplicity, prevarication, phoniness, patronage, profiteering and nepotism. Then there were people who thought they were above the law, loud-mouthed politicians, shady practices, double-dealing liars and general slippery behaviour. Those things couldn't happen in Thailand, of course, although throwing chairs in Parliament last week wasn't a bad effort.
One suspects that in the unlikely event such a programme was ever launched here, it would last approximately five minutes, before an unfortunate blackout, followed by an avalanche of lawsuits.
But to be fair, Thailand is not much different to anywhere else.
Where's the catch?
Politicians around the globe find catchphrases very useful. Perhaps Prime Minister Yingluck Shinawatra should work on one, although by all accounts, she has already mastered ''hello, good morning and welcome''. A catchphrase doesn't have to mean anything. In fact the more confusing the better _ as long as it shuts up nosy newshounds.
''Put a sock in it'' or a variation on that, always struck me as quite an effective retort, but it's not very lady-like and the present premier might find it lacking somewhat in refinement.
The most famous catchphrase from a Thai premier was ''mai mee panha'' (no problem) which the gentleman in question trotted out with considerable aplomb a couple of decades ago. Whenever there was a crisis he would simply say ''no problem'' and the problem would go away ... that was until the men in uniform decided there actually was a problem _ him.
The phrase had developed into quite a business with ''No Problem'' T-shirts, stickers, songs and even bars of that name. Foreign visitors were greeted by kids shouting ''no problem' rather than the traditional welcome of ''hey you!''. After a while this developed into ''Hey you, no problem, five baht'', which quickly transformed into ''Hey you, no problem, 10 baht''.
Absolutely no problem
The successful ''No Problem'' policy should not be dismissed lightly. It is based on the old dictum: ''There is not any problem, however complicated, which when looked at in the right way, does not become more complicated.''
Following this line of thinking, it clearly makes sense not to have a problem in the first place, because it can only create more problems. This is what you call Thai logic, and it works too.
Some Thai governments have foolishly made the mistake of admitting there were problems and even more foolishly tried to solve them. Having thus committed themselves to solving problems they could not possibly solve, they still had to come out and solve them when everybody knew they couldn't. Then they had a real problem.
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