William Donaldson's Week: Not a drop for Mrs Matthews

IN SIX months there won't be anything on our TV screens, and a good thing, too, you may think. This is because Marcus Plantin, ITV's new scheduling supremo, refuses to be hurried - and quite rightly, in my opinion - in making his decisions. I discovered this when I tried to get Mrs Matthews grassed up in a prime-time slot by one of those priggish young men who expose street fiends from the back of a transit van.

According to the Sunday Telegraph, Mrs Matthews ought to grow up. They didn't mention her specifically, but they ruled last week that persistent cannabis abusers are simply being infantile, and I must say I agree with them.

She used to run around the common parts telling the other tenants to pull their socks up, but now she sits on the floor with her new pal, Dread the Head, nibbling tastes and listening to Seventies sounds. Worst, she's turned on all the other old ladies in the block - not least Mrs Perkins, the mad old tart who used to feed the pigeons in her nightdress and whose language was so bad that even Val Hennessy, my house guest at the time, felt obliged to make other arrangements.

Mrs Perkins, who hasn't been in a decent fight for a week, has quietly joined the group. On Tuesday, I read the Riot Act to Dread the Head. 'Look here,' I said, 'I'm worried about Mrs Matthews.'

'She's only doing a bit of dope,' he said.

'We're talking slippery slopes here,' I said, 'as the Sunday Telegraph has perceived. Already she's lost her sense of humour.' On Monday, I stopped her on the stairs and read her an extract from the Oldie that a week ago would have made her bark with laughter.

'Listen to this from the Old Un's Diary,' I said. 'You'll crack a rib. 'It's difficult to choose from the many agreeable anecdotes about Bill Grundy, but here's our favourite. Grundy was next to Lord Whitelaw at a Conservative Party booze-up. 'Lord Whitelaw,' he observed in slurred tones, 'I think I should inform you that I'm pissing in your pocket.' Grundy was barred from future gatherings]' '

Mrs Matthews remained stony-faced. 'Is that meant to be funny?' she said. Worse, and like all converts, she has become a zealot, garnering so-

called statistics from kill-joy organisations such as Alcohol Concern and telling anyone who'll listen that drink, not drugs, is the greatest social menace afflicting us.

'How many alcohol-related deaths do you suppose there were in the UK in 1992?' she said. 'Forty thousand. And from the killer drug cocaine? Four.'

I groaned. Next she'd hit me with the latest figures from Amsterdam.

'The latest figures from Amsterdam,' she said, 'show that . . .'

Fortunately, I remembered the knockdown argument with which my sister Bobo had confounded my friend Ted Honderich, Grote Professor of Mind and Logic at University College London.

'If Amsterdam is such a paradise,' I said, 'why don't you go and live there?'

'Don't be silly, dear,' she said. 'On Saturday, I rang up the Casualty Department at Paddington Hospital and asked them what had caused all the late-night carnage. 'Alcohol,' they said.'

I was ahead of her. 'Only because they didn't ask the people they were patching up what they'd been watching on television.' Mrs Matthews' 66-year-old boy, Vernon, is as concerned as I am - as well he might be, as he's a stipendiary magistrate with a reputation to protect.

'What's the worst of it?' I asked him. 'Mrs Perkins all over the floor? The Seventies sounds? Marvin Gaye? Donna Summer? 'Love To Love You, Baby'?'

'The blizzard of findings from Amsterdam,' he said.

'We should avail ourselves of a hotline,' I said. 'Hold her up to national ridicule in a prime-time slot. I suggest Beam and Da Silva, a couple of heavy-footed plonkers currently grassing up all and sundry on behalf of Carlton Television. A word from me and they'll be up her stairs in their gym-shoes, pushing a hand-

held camera through the letter-box. Tough, love. Firm but fair. She'll thank us in the long run. Plus, there'll be an earner in it for us.'

Vernon agreed, so I rang up Marcus Plantin and put the scam to him. To my surprise, he said he was up to here in it at the moment and that I should submit the proposal through an independent producer. I wasn't having that. Independent producers are common young opportunists who eat bananas in the boardroom and roll their sleeves up. They're not proper producers. They're postmen, really, simply forwarding your proposal and creaming off the profits. Accordingly, and with Vernon's approval, I summoned my local postman.

'Right,' I said. 'You're an independent producer now. Kindly take this proposal to Marcus Plantin. As quick as you like. Have a banana.'

If and when television returns to our screens, I expect Mrs Matthews to be first up, exposed as a drug abuser. I think I'm doing the right thing. It's for her own good, really.