But at the same time it instituted a positively Victorian degree of regimentation - with vast lists of rules to which the children had to adhere. "Whatever your rules are, what we say is make them stick," explained Amalia, with a lavender-scented steeliness, a remark which Alleway accompanied with footage of Blu-tack failing to hold up one of the home-made promulgations with which every door in the house was decorated. Yvonne and her husband believed that they were old- fashioned in their philosophy - "We neither of us have any time at all for this modern thing of counselling," she said in the clipped tones of a One Fat Lady in the making - but they actually administered a household of permissive anarchy, in which the son was allowed to drive the family car if he sulked for long enough and the daughter idly carved her name on the kitchen table with a Stanley knife. In fact, it's something of a wonder that the cameraman didn't lay him out cold, because whenever he remembered the presence of the lens he would exhale on it in an attempt to fog it up or simply bounce up and down two inches away uttering stupid noises. Despite her pacific ambitions Yvonne put a lot of store by smacking and even talked rather wistfully about "thrashing" at one point, perhaps realising that her regime of unpredictable acts of violence had not demonstrably worked with her son, a petulant 12-year-old whose chief delight appeared to be tormenting all around him. This tender maxim was then usefully illustrated by two of her offspring: "Do you want a smack in the face you dumb bloody child!" shrieked the daughter as she retreated from the taunting presence of her younger brother. "I like to think that one gives them a gentle childhood," explained Yvonne in Family Values in the Modern Times strand (BBC2), an excruciatingly watchable film about the daily Gehenna of bringing up children.
Until quite recently these things were managed fairly discreetly. I dare say people talked about these things among themselves, but it wasn't in the newspapers or on the telly, so you could get away with it. Just look at how many children of my generation thought their mother was their sister. I'm not suggesting that was a good thing, but if you're told early on about the circumstances of your birth, you just take it for granted. There will be a time when children will be asked 'who is your father?' and they'll just say 'Oh, I don't know. I'm a test tube baby' and it will be completely normal."One cannot help but wonder what Bainbridge's papal pin-up would make of such flexible morality.
"Morality?" she asks, "Oh God, it's just struck me that in the last forty-odd years, I've gone a million miles away from morality."She sounds almost wistful, but stiffens her resolve with a deep drag on the Silk Cut "It's not a matter of morality" she insists "Most things aren't. It's a matter of truth."The South Bank Show, this Sunday, ITV 10.45pm.'Master Georgie' will be published by Duckworth in April.. I think it's only because of the Titanic that things have gone a bit mad - even a rotten book about the Titanic would sell - and once that happens people go back and read the other books and say 'Oh, this isn't bad, is it?' and you feel like saying, 'Well no, it never was bad'."Which is how London Weekend Television came to send Bainbridge to the Crimea to record her thoughts for a special South Bank Show tribute to be aired this Sunday. Bainbridge has her doubts about the show: "You don't think that it's maybe a bit self-regarding?" she asks.
[...]