The reviews of BBC4's docudrama, "Breaking the Mould" are in.
The verdict from the UK's scribbling classes is this : Alexander Fleming was lucky, lazy and undeserving of his past fame.
But these paid scribblers are usually sixty years old and younger - too young to remember 'The War' or even the Festival of Britain, and inclined to think that the Beatle-led Pop Explosion was their country's greatest ever export.
Why not - the events of 1962 to 1966 was probably the seminal event of their youth.
But Brits old enough to remember the collective British response to their displacement at the end of World War II by the USA and Russia and the loss of their Empire are all retired now and their response will come later, in letters to the editor.
Worshipful, unquestioning admiration for Alexander Fleming's role in Penicillin and similar admiration of his counterparts in
the fields of Radar and Jets was the key part of that collective response.
As these people retire from the work world and the oldest among them die off, is Fleming about to undergo a honest re-assessment by Britons of his role in the greatest medical discovery ever ?
AR hopes so - but we will wait till the letters from those readers come in.....
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