301 Robbie

First  watched : Uncertain

I  didn't  watch  too   much  of  this  because  I  hated  it.

"Robbie"  was  Fyfe  Robertson, a  weird,  gaunt-looking  bloke  with  an  aggravatingly  over-enunciated  Scottish  accent. He  dressed  like  an  Edwardian  laird , surely  the  inspiration  for  beyond-irritating  racing  pundit  John  McCririck,  but  at  least  had  the  excuse  of   being   born  into  that  era  , already  in  his  seventies  when  the  first  of  his  four  short  series  was  aired  in  1973.

I  had  no  idea  who  this  professional  eccentric , roaming  around  Britain  like  a  geriatric  Alan  Whicker, was,  but  he  had  a  long  background  in  serious  journalism  prior  to  appearing  before  the  cameras  in  Tonight   ( the  precursor  of  Nationwide   in  the  late  fifties  /early  sixties ; Whicker  also  cut  his  teeth  on  the  programme ).

There  was  a  whiff  of  self-indulgence  about  the  programme  - one  episode  allowed  him  to  foam  at  the  mouth  about  modern  art  -  but  I  guess  he'd  earned  it. The  final  series  in  1980  consisted  of  Fyfe  dropping  in  on  other  examples  of  the  active  elderly  such  as  ghastly  "novelist"  Barbara  Cartland  and  catering  tycoon  Charles  Forte.

Robertson  died  in  1987  aged  84.