November 2.

Until I read Ian Bell's article on the inestimable Eileen McCallum, I

had no idea he was such a snob (November 2). The view down Ian's nose is

not an edifying one nor is it particularly well informed.

If I had as much space to attack him as he did to attack Scottish

Television, I would go on at length. However, here are three points to

be going on with.

With breathtaking arrogance Ian Bell calls Take The High Road ''a

tacky soap'', ''unalloyed tosh'', as he weasels behind the usual ''on

the one hand . . . on the other hand'' formula. By the end of his

article his contempt for Take The High Road is clear. But how does he

know? Has he watched much of it? I doubt it.

A journalist working on a daily morning paper is busy at 6.30pm on

Mondays and Fridays. I do watch a great deal of Take The High Road and

it is a first-class piece of television.

But more important than my views or Ian Bell's is the fact that Take

The High Road regularly gains a 60%-70% share of the available audience

in Scotland. That makes the show a national institution valued and

enjoyed by millions.

Take The High Road enables a great deal of live theatre in Scotland

because it employs more than 35 actors each week, 26 crafts people, and

12 writers, all of whose skills nourish theatre and other arts. Not the

other way round.

Bell's bourgeois distinction between high art (the theatre, the arts,

etc.) and low art (television in this case) is both bogus and, well,

bourgeois.

The concept was re-invented in the Italian Renaissance by the writers

of etiquette handbooks designed to cater for the emergent middle

classes. They required to be told what sort of art was suitable for

gentlefolk and what was for the plebs. And thus the concept of high and

low art was reborn.

That pernicious and false distinction has riddled and addled our

attitude to all the arts, producing the sort of distortions in Ian

Bell's article.

The wonderful Eileen McCallum does all sorts of things; recitals,

plays, and Take The High Road. Why does one of them have to be counted

better than the other? Different, sure, and demanding a range of skills,

certainly, but live theatre better as a genre than Take The High Road?

That is a function of prejudice rather than judgment.

The sad thing is that Ian Bell, a gifted writer, wastes the

opportunity of praising another gifted person in the shape of Eileen

McCallum by mounting such an out-of-context attack on Scottish

Television.

Last Friday night Eileen McCallum and I both spoke at a do on Loch

Lomondside to celebrate the 1000th Take The High Road. The sense of

togetherness, of community was almost tangible -- not only with each

other but also with the huge constituency of viewers who watch a

distinguished piece of television which entertains, educates, and

informs.

Alistair Moffat,

Director of Programmes,

Scottish Television,

Cowcaddens,

Glasgow.