At the big studios outside London the ephemeral dream­world of television is carefully concocted by technicians and producers, in their factories of images and fame. Under the cameras dangling like bats from the roof, the disparate subjects assemble – an archbishop talking to a pop singer, a trade-unionist talking to a Tory MP: they troop on and off in endless cavalcade, all mixed together – professors, jugglers, Cabinet ministers, ventriloquists, dukes, chairmen, comperes and diplomats – all punctuated by quick glimpses of detergents and toothpaste. On the magic screen people who have never met each other before chat away with Christian names, as if they jostled together every day in some inner world of power.