Michael Hogan: Brian, your speech at the recent Sandford St Martin Trust awards for religious broadcasting said TV was blighted by "ever-increasing vulgarity and ever-lower intellectual levels". Strong words. Did you have a particular programme in mind?
Brian Sewell: Nothing and everything. Now it all conforms to a formula. Even Islam: The Untold Story (C4), to which we gave one of the awards, immediately descended into a travelogue and became virtually indistinguishable from anything in which Michael Palin rambles around. Religious broadcasting, all broadcasting, ought to be better than that. We looked at David Suchet's In the Footsteps of St Paul and again, it just turned into a travelogue. Someone in the city of Tarsus said, "St Paul's father was a tentmaker here." Off at once goes Suchet to weave some canvas himself. Does someone sitting in a room in the 21st century weaving flax tell us anything about St Paul? It's childish and idiotic, but fits that Michael Palin formula which the BBC inflicts on everything.
MH Not everything, surely? You talked in your speech about the "dread sameness" of the BBC, but the corporation has eight TV channels with a vast variety of programming – and a lot of it's brilliant.
BS Yes, I'm not really talking about the entertaining things. Hateful though I find them, the BBC does those perfectly well. But anything they tackle that is intellectual, historical, biographical, cultural… It all turns into a travelogue of some kind. Whether it's Andrew Graham-Dixon on the Italian Renaissance or that rat-faced young man [Simon Reeve] wandering round Australia, it's the same, because this is what the BBC asks for. The channel controllers are of little education and no background. The editors are very technically clever but know nothing about the topic, so they fit everything to this comfortable format. We deserve better. It's patronising rubbish.
MH But the Beeb's historical programming is admirable – all the way from CBBC's superb Horrible Histories to BBC2's recent Tudor season.
BS All those Simon Schama and David Starkey programmes inevitably turn into walking about and arm-waving. Poor Mary Beard, trundling around the ruins of Rome on a bicycle. Why? These devices even creep into news bulletins: some wretched reporter suddenly emerges from behind a car or tree and walks towards the camera. For God's sake, you have news to communicate. Stand still and tell us what it is. I don't want to be entertained, I want to be informed.
MH OK, but what about one of the BBC's major strengths: science and nature? Surely David Attenborough and Brian Cox escape your wrath?
BS Attenborough does very well because he is just there, talking as the omnipotent voice. He's good at that. That's infinitely more convincing than Brian Cox with his sibilant delivery, trying to be the sex symbol of science.
MH As an art critic, what did you make of Grayson Perry's Bafta-winning Channel 4 series, In The Best Possible Taste?
BS I can't bear Grayson Perry. He's today's equivalent of Sister Wendy Beckett. You spend all your time looking at his get-up and he's a total distraction from the subject. It may be amusing for some people but you learn nothing about the work, just a lot about Grayson, his motorcycle and his teddy bear David Measles, or whatever it's called [it's Alan Measles].
MH If the terrestrial channels aren't to your liking, the likes of Sky Arts and BBC Four are home to more weighty programming.
BS I'm not criticising the commercial channels. They all have obligations to shareholders and advertisers. The BBC doesn't. It has only one obligation and that's to the public who pay for it. When the BBC is covering something serious, it shouldn't be afraid to be serious. It was scandalous when the National Gallery had that miraculous Leonardo Da Vinci exhibition last year. What did the BBC do? Give an hour-long programme to Fiona bloody Bruce. She gushed like a sixth-form girl, questioned nothing and none of us learned a thing.
MH I get the impression that Mr Palin and Ms Bruce aren't your favourites.
BS I know many people who groan at the mere mention of Fiona Bruce. What Michael Palin does, he does perfectly well but it isn't serious television. It's tomfoolery. He goes to Outer Mongolia and sleeps in a yurt, but you don't learn anything about Outer Mongolia's politics, economics, future or past. You're merely having an adventure holiday by proxy. It's unambitious and complacent. The BBC plays it far too safe. It's got little Alistair Sooke on everything now. He has a certain gauche, boyish charm but – and this isn't professional jealousy – he doesn't know anything. The BBC clearly think it's good to have programmes presented by people with no knowledge or experience. A few years ago, [Alan] Titchmarsh hosted the Proms – an absolute insult to anyone who knows or cares about music. You wouldn't ask a conductor to go on Gardener's Question Time.
MH So is the problem, to your mind, that BBCs 1 and 2 are trying too hard to be populist?
BS Absolutely. It's terrified of being too intellectual. There's no debate, no critical discourse or differing viewpoints. The BBC has forgotten the tradition of the Third Programme, which was introduced on radio in 1946. It was fundamentally serious: we didn't talk down to you, we talked to each other as we normally would and you'd better hurry along behind. I taught history of art in Brixton jail for 10 years and one lesson I learnt very quickly is never talk down to people. If you treat them as equals, you've got them, they're with you. But talk down, they smell it a mile off and hate it. That's what the BBC does all the time.
MH But the BBC remains a great source of pride to many of us. It's arguably the best broadcaster in the world.
BS Bollocks. It could be 10 times better. The camera is a wonderful instrument for showing people things. It could work miracles in appreciation of the visual arts but it's never used properly. We get Waldemar Januszczak standing in front of a painting, looming at the camera like some kind of North Korean dictator, while you can see two square inches of Van Gogh behind him. He's another walking-about, waving-his-arms merchant and it's not a pretty sight. Same with Alan Yentob. He's not exactly an engaging screen presence, so why is he even there?
MH It can't all be bad, Brian. There must be some TV shows you like.
BS I'm a secret devotee of Casualty and Holby City. They're wonderfully soporific. Good for emptying the brain after a working day.
MH I hear you're also a fan of The Apprentice.
BS I'm not sure I like The Apprentice but I watch it, fascinated that these awful people even exist. That's rigidly formulaic too, but it's funny.
MH You're a car aficionado too. Ever watch Top Gear?
BS Yes but I see it as three clowns enjoying themselves and nothing whatsoever to do with motor cars. They never talk about the aesthetic beauty of cars, their history or future. They're just overgrown schoolboys.
MH You should go on it and be the Star in a Reasonably Priced Car.
BS (Laughs uproariously) I don't think that's a good idea. I'd be terribly rude in the interview.