Clive James on... the French Open, the Jubilee Pagaent, America this Week, The Elgin Marbles and Romancing the Stone Though the day of the great Jubilee Pageant on the river is in the past now, I am approached every day by people who want to know why I was so soft on the BBC's coverage of it. Some of the people are quite angry. They are right, but their cause is lost. Nothing will wind the Beeb back to the days when its commentary on such an occasion felt bound to tell you things. The convention has changed, and now the commentary has the sole motive of making the viewer feel all right about knowing nothing. But my angry assailants were annoyed with the wrong people. Now that the pageant has moved on into history, dare I say that the Pageant Master was lucky to keep his head? He forgot to prepare a Plan B, which would have provided an alternative ending in case it rained. He was lucky that his chief customer was the second Elizabeth, and not the first, or he could have been taken to the Tower, where he might barely have had time to remember that in England, when you count on the weather, it will always betray you. Here, the weather is a gift, not a right. The weather must be propitiated, with white socks, and even then it might decide not to smile. The modern theory goes that Britain might not do power very well any more but it can sure do pageants. Hence the lurch of fear when we see the grip on pomp and circumstance turn shaky. Suddenly it becomes apparent that the Yanks are doing even the symbolic stuff rather better. In the always absorbing BBC Parliament show America This Week, the C-Span cameras were in the East Room of the White House to watch President Barack Obama and his First Lady Michelle unveil the recently completed official portraits of the previous president George W Bush and his wife Laura. The portraits will be included in the collection of the White House Historical Association. President Obama gave a gracious speech in which even the jokes worked a treat. He thanked his predecessor for leaving behind "a really good TV sports package." But nobody is surprised when Obama talks well. Everybody is surprised when Bush can talk at all. Yet here he was, being eloquent and witty. The whole scene went as if Aaron Sorkin had written it for The West Wing. Lacking the presidential system, we don't have an equivalent ceremony, but the easy elegance of the occasion made you wonder if we could duplicate it even if we wanted to. We need horses and carriages, and a commentary from the BBC. Come to think of it, let's just keep it to the horses and carriages. Female petitioners from my family have asked why my recent listings of the new, non-weird factual presenters have failed to include Dan Snow. I hasten to oblige, but surely I have mentioned before that in his Empire of the Seas, now being repeated on the Yesterday channel, he looks very good with his profile cutting into the wind. The cut of the jib can be crucial to the image. When, in The Elgin Marbles (BBC Two), the camera got sideways from Lord Elgin, his artificial nose looked like a sugar scoop. You would wonder what such a man had been up to. In his case the only question was whether it was a crime to take home the Elgin Marbles. Or had he saved them? Andrew Graham-Dixon was in charge of the show, which has been broadcast before, but is still current, because the marbles are still here in Britain, instead of back in Greece where they could be sold off by the molecule to help defray the national debt. I realise, of course, that Andrew Graham-Dixon is the true captain of the new generation of acceptable factual presenters with non-freak enunciation, so don't bother to write in. Just tell him not to wave his hands about so much. Another exponent of articulate normality is Alastair Sooke, front-person for the stupidly entitled series Romancing the Stone (BBC Four). The title is stupid because it is ripped off from a movie, on the stupid assumption that past achievements are fair game. The subject is the heritage of British sculpture. I learned a lot and at one point learned a whole new name, Francis Chantrey, active in the 19th Century. His sculptures have a marvellous naturalism. Looking him up, I find that there is a statue by him in a church in Sydney. I never saw it, but if I ever get back there I will take a look. Clive James has a new collection of recent poems, 'Nefertiti in the Flak Tower', published by Picador