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Glastonbury and Nelson Mandela's birthday

Nelson Mandela
  • Posted at 3:21pm
  • 11 July 2008
  • by DavidButcher-RT

David Butcher on the dangers of indigestion from binge surfing.

The red button was a gift watching Glastonbury (BBC3), where TV coverage struggled, inevitably, to do justice to all the acts on the bill. Touch the magic button and you could take your pick from five bands at once or, even better, flit between them.

It's wonderful to have that choice, but hard to resist it, like one of those all-you-can-eat buffets where you end up piling flavours on top of each other because you don't want to miss a treat. At one stage I flicked restlessly from the chilli crab claws of the Ting Tings' set to the wobbly trifle of the Fratellis, taking in a sweet-and-sour jazz chanteuse on the way. Heartburn was the result.

Heartburn made worse because I also couldn't resist turning over to watch highlights of the Mandela concert, Nelson Mandela: Happy 90th Birthday (27 June ITV1), or "the party of the decade" as presenter Phillip Schofield put it. At least I think they were highlights, but parts may have been live: space and time became fractured as Schofield and backstage reporter Fearne Cotton jumped backwards and forwards between "now," "next up" and "earlier on".

The chop-suey approach made it hard to get involved in what must have been an extraordinary occasion. There were touching moments, though, notably when Mandela himself took to the stage for his last public appearance, looking frail and full of emotion. As he gazed out at the crowds, the microphone, poignantly, picked up his wife, Graca Machel, urging, "Baba, please wave." So he did, before giving a short speech where he reminded us, "It's in your hands now."

As the finale, Amy Winehouse sang the Specials' Nelson Mandela, tugging at her skirt and giving the anti-apartheid anthem a whole new urgency. Maybe it was because she knows all about loved ones behind bars, but her performance had real feeling.

As she choked along with the soaring Soweto Gospel Choir, the message was clear: we had to free our hero again, this time from the burden of expectation. It was time to let Mandela retire from view as he'd done everything else, with dignity intact.

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