TW3

No, TW3 is not my postcode area, though it's not far away and the "Jubilee Mail Centre" through which the pedestrian post passes is even closer to where I sit as I type. This TW3 though was the short acronym affectionately adopted for the BBC's first serious attempt at TV satire in the mid sixties: That Was The Week That Was.

TW3 was daring stuff, even in that decade famed for liberation, though it started before the height of free love and flower power from 1967 onwards. Instead, TW3 blossomed in the wake of the Cuban Missile Crisis at a time when the Cold War was at its peak and concerns about 'Reds in the Bed' were everywhere. No more so in fact than when those reds might have the wrong sort of connections with both KGB officials and Tory Government ministers, as a certain John Profumo -who has just died at the grand age of 91- was to discover at the cost of his career after his brief dalliance with call girl Christine Keiller.

"It's over, let it go", intoned Millicent Martin each week, I gather, at the end of each TW3 show. I say I gather, because I've only seen the show in archive footage, being too young to remember its original screenings. Satire has a long tradition in British life, and indeed my birthplace in the next postcode area was home to one of the most famous political cartoonists of his era, William Hogarth.

Some things in the news though are always more tragic than funny, and to treat them as satire is of very questionable taste. The news in the last seven days has featured two very different groups of people, but each of them precious to the God who made them and so they should be to all right-thinking human beings with any sense of the dignity and sanctity of human life.

At long last, the obscenity which is apparently Guantanamo Bay, the US holding facility in Cuba for alleged terrorist suspects, is back in the public eye. In the face of worldwide condemnation at the indignity of the detention facility and the purported tactics of its staff, the American government has been forced to release the names of detainees, if not the prisoners themselves. Meanwhile, the inmates of "Gitmo" as it has become known are said to be enduring a regime of torturous force-feeding as they attempt to make their protests in desperation by hunger strike.

A week ago, I first heard about this latest outrage on BBC Radio 4's Today programme: for its effect on me, follow the link by clicking on the title of this post, which directs you to the following Saturday's Thought for the Day on the same programme. It was delivered by a friend of mine who knows how to use both humour and the power of the Word as occasion dictates. On this occasion, it's nothing to laugh about.

The same week saw an overdue reminder in the media of other captives equally precious and needing to be remembered. It's now just over one hundred days since the 74-year old British Christian peace campaigner Norman Kember was abducted, along with three of his fellow workers, in the tragic hell hole which is post-war Iraq. Supporters of Mr Kember and his compatriots had been gathering regularly near London's monuments to hard-won liberty to pray and pursue this case of four human beings only seeking the peace and freedom of their fellow human beings. They do so regardless of creeds and colours, or ideologies and isms. They do so out of love.

On Sunday afternoon, I knew I just had to join these supporters. It was the natural complement to my actions last Friday. The fact the vigil ended up being shown on Tuesday's TV news, a day when a recently-filmed video of Mr Kember and the others gave new hope was not what motivated me. Maybe what did, instead, was looking over to the peak of the building opposite the square where around 100 souls stood in liberty to remember four others who are not at liberty.

That building was South Africa House. What greater sign can there be of the ability of a higher power than avarice and hatred to overcome evil as once reigned in that country which became so villified by the world for its policies of division and apartheid. That peak had two words "Good" and "Hope", either side of the embossed image of a sailing ship presumably rounding the cape of the same name, though that day I thought of it rather more as the "Escape of Good Hope".

Human awfulness can often beach us on the shores of desperation but this is because we so often set our course with the wrong sails aloft. Faith, hope and love should power our three-masted schooner to lead us to the sea of tranquility found only in God's harbour.

Yes, sometimes, there will be laughter along the way, often there will seem to be disaster, war and tragedy. But, as one memorable sixties portrayal of Jesus had it, casting the Messiah as a clown, there can be 'happy endings' to the human stories behind Gitmo and Norman Kember et al. As apparently happened for John Profumo in his latter years, there can be release, redemption and even the promise of resurrection in the face of death. And, for those who believe, God will always have the last laugh.