Whatever happened to Michael Aspel?

Yes, I wrote a poem about Michael Aspel. No, I couldn’t tell you why if I tried. It just came to me.

I also didn’t mean for this to come out as sarky as it did. I never met the guy and he always seemed like a decent spud on the TV. It’s just that everything he did seems such a long time ago now. Probably he feels that more than I do.

Anyhow, it wasn’t personal. As a friend said to me, I could just as easily have used Wogan.

Aspel

Is this how it is, Mr Give us a Clue?

If we manage to make it to eighty-nine,

mostly forgotten, most of the time?

Guest starring on ‘Morecambe and Wise’,

digging drains, selling beds, sent away in the war,

doing a year in the King’s Rifle Corps,

having seven kids, and three or four wives –

you thrived when people still lived many lives.

But all that you did now reeks of before,

a lost age from back in the days of yore,

nights of Miss World and the Eurovision,

all that national bonding on television

when television was still the glue

that united us while you read the news.

Those dusty archives of video,

Crackerjack, Antiques Roadshow,

you sat on sofas, legs akimbo,

chatting to the starlets of the past,

forgotten now, youth gone so fast,

will we all be so outcast?

Is that how it is, Mr Give us a Clue?

If we manage to make it to eighty-nine,

mostly forgotten, most of the time?

If we do, will we be like you?