Updated: December 14, 2005 13:45   

(Scotsman - 2nd September 1989)

A sight for sore eyes

Ever since Miss Joan Hunter Dunn romped her way into John Betjeman's verse it has been known that jolly, golly, girls who look ravishing in rompers are not hard to find. At least in the Southern Counties of Olde England they are not. So anybody who thought that Miss Anneka Rice would be difficult to replace was barking up the wrong shinguard. In Miss Annabel Croft - an ex-tennis star with a big forehand, too - we have just what the old family doctor would have ordered if a sight for sore, Betjemanesque eyes was the prescription. The likes of her and helicopters are two a penny down among the Cotswolds and both reappear in an ITV revamped version of the runaway Channel 4 Anneka success.

This one is called Interceptor and is almost kinky enough to cause a shudder in the loins of a Sun reporter. Whereas the old version had nice, homely Kenneth Kendall in the studio while Anneka romped to our hearts content "through field and briar" like a plump yellow Puck, in this one Annabel bubbles and burbles from some pleasantly rural home base while the two contestants run across little bits of green and pleasant land pursued by a black-clad interceptor in a black-clad helicopter. His dastardly task is to fire laser beams at little targets on their back packs, in one of which there is a thousand pounds. Symbolism is rampant how Sigmund, thou should'st be living at this hour. And Interceptor never smiles. He just tries to spoil the fun of jolly, money-making Home Counties people. And, after all, what has he got to smile about? He has, I swear it, a North British accent, the Knoxious spoil sport.

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