TV review

Concorde: A Love Story (BBC2)

Fact Or Fiction: Robin Hood (C4)

CONCORDE, as Rolf Harris pointed out, still has the power to turn heads today, more than 30 years after first taking to the air.

"It expands, it contracts, it flexes like a fly fishing rod, it's extraordinary," said Concorde chief pilot Brian Calvert in the Timewatch documentary marking the supersonic flyer's retirement from active service.

Harris immortalised the aircraft in a silk screen print in the style of Andy Warhol in the last of his Rolf On Art series.

Unlike Concorde, Warhol's pop art was considered shocking and vulgar by many. But Harris had fun learning about the silk screen process as he produced prints of Prince William and Concorde.

Warhol's most famous images feature celebrities, like Marilyn Monroe, and food, including tins of soup and bottles of cola. Harris felt certain he would have approved of Concorde being a subject of a Warhol-like print because the aircraft is an icon.

The Timewatch documentary was strangely touching as the sense of pride and achievement gave way to sorrow that the end was nigh for the supersonic aircraft. Pilots and engineers spoke lovingly of Concorde. So did celebrities such as David Frost, who regularly flew to New York aboard it. Ordinary people too told of their fascination with it.

This was a love story that had ups and downs, while achieving the seemingly impossible of bringing together the British and the French.

As the cost rose from the original £70m to a final £1.4bn, the Labour Government got cold feet but stayed with the project as the get-out clause would have cost them even more.

Perhaps the project was doomed from the start. Conceived when speed sold plane tickets, the situation had changed by the time it entered service three years behind schedule. The makers hoped to sell hundreds, but only 16 were ever built. The Americans held out for two years before giving landing rights. In this country, a retired schoolteacher launched a "ban the bang" campaign, protesting against the aircraft's sonic bangs.

The twilight years of Concorde have not been happy ones. After one of the Air France fleet crashed, engineers worked for a year strengthening the aircraft. A British Airways rehearsal flight before putting Concorde back in service took place on September 11, 2001. The World Trade Centre tragedy unfolded while it was in the air.

The aftermath of that attack was a downturn in passengers. Half-empty planes and the rising maintenance costs spelt the end. The aircraft will end up in museums around the world, although some of its technology is still cutting edge.

The name will live on, like Robin Hood's. The celebrity outlaw would have been a perfect subject for Warhol - if he'd been a real person, the very thing Tony Robinson set out to discover in Fact Or Fiction.

The earliest ballads about Robin, from the 1300s, were examined for evidence and various suspects who could have been models for Robin Hood were lined up. Far from being a dispossessed nobleman from Nottinghamshire, the outlaw may have been a low-born Yorkshireman.

As for giving away the proceeds from his thieving, one expert suggested: "He almost certainly robbed the rich and kept it." Whether this had anything to do with being a Yorkshireman wasn't discussed.

Moscow Radio Symphony Orchestra, Middlesbrough Town Hall

ONE of Russia's finest orchestras blew the socks off a North-East audience. The Moscow Radio Symphony Orchestra, under the commanding direction of Emil Tabakov, set the tone with exquisitely played extracts from Tchaikovsky's Sleeping Beauty.

Violinist Oleh Krysa then presented a masterly interpretation of the same composer's Violin Concerto in D Major.

Outwardly, Krsya was a study in stoicism. Standing ramrod straight, there were no overt flourishes of the bow or displays of emotion. When he had rest periods, he fastidiously wiped his instrument and twiddled his bow tie before studiously carrying on. But if he showed no feeling, his music positively brimmed with passion. Displaying a technical mastery and extraordinary delicacy of execution, his playing was elegant and energetic. The enraptured hall showered him with praise.

The evening ended with Shostakovich's monumental Symphony No 10. The impulsive score portraying the hopes and sorrows of contemporary man was performed with power and dynamism, vividly capturing the drama and conflicts. The second movement, with its high strings and screaming woodwind, cried out with pain, while the last oozed charm. One was left quite breathless. The town hall rolls out the big guns again on November 16 with the appearance of the Hungarian National Philharmonic Orchestra.

Gavin Engelbrecht