THORNS IN THE CROWN OF BRITISH TELEVISION

LONDON —  Ah, Britain. Home of the best TV in the world.

Home of “The Jewel in the Crown,” “I, Claudius,” “World at War,” “Upstairs, Downstairs,” “Civilisation,” “Reilly: Ace of Spies,” “Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy,” “The Six Wives of Henry VIII,” “An Englishman Abroad,” “Brideshead Revisited,” “Life on Earth.”

Home of . . . “The Fame Game” and “All Star Secret.”

“Our best television is better than your best, and our worst is worse than your worst,” Sir Denis Forman, chairman of Granada Television, told an American visitor recently.

He should know. Granada, one of 15 companies constituting Britain’s Independent Television (ITV), walks both sides of the street. It can claim credit for the glittering “Jewel” and blame for “The Fame Game,” one of those cretinous but profitable game shows that help pay for the truly grand programs that ITV and the BBC seem to produce almost routinely.

Those programs--the swanky elite--are the ones shown in America, chiefly on PBS, leaving the impression that everyone working in British TV wears a pince-nez and can balance a teacup on his knee.

Equally numerous bad British programs seldom reach America. We rarely see ordinary British TV.

Such as: “Live From Stage One in Manchester, it’s ‘The Fame Game,’ ” where each week 1,000 viewers are asked to pick the acts they want to return the following week. Whoopee.

This is “The Gong Show,” but on the level. Somehow Granada TV has gathered in-studio people so desperate for diversion that they will sit through this appalling, alleged talent show and even applaud on cue like puppets on a string.

The competition is keen. And, alas, it is not the comforting Alistair Cooke, but that card of a host Tim Brooke-Taylor who introduces an incredible aerial act--wire-walking, a death-defying 12 feet above the studio floor.

And . . . without a net. You’d think Granada at least would have one to throw over Brooke-Taylor, who remarks about the aerial performance: “It looked very frightening here.”

And now on to the electrifying Kelvin and Sonny Boy (a showman dressed as a puppet), followed by an impressionist who works with a brick, and then a man who brings down the house by lighting a match off the top of his head.

Whew! The thrills continue.

Following “The Fame Game” on ITV is London Weekend Television’s utterly stupefying “All Star Secret.” The idea is for a studio audience to guess which celebrity on the panel made such provocative statements as: “I’m so romantic that I’ve been asked to leave my lips to science.”

Can you stand the suspense?

“Moving right along,” says host Frank Parkinson, “one of the stars is so compulsive that this star named their first child in a traffic jam.”

One star on the panel guesses that the compulsive star is someone named Giles. “We agree,” reports the audience “spokesman,” who has somehow reached this conclusion telepathically, without polling anyone else in the audience.

But oh nooooooo! It wasn’t Giles. It was Janet. What a downer.

At last report, “The Fame Game” and “All Star Secret” weren’t destined for “Masterpiece Theatre.”

Introduced in 1983, meanwhile, British breakfast television stresses amiability over information in a sleepy format copied from America’s early-morning TV.

The British have added their own touch, though, loud pullover sweaters for the male “presenters” instead of jackets.

That makes fatherly Frank Baugh of the BBC’s “Breakfast Time” look like someone passing uneasily through mid-life crisis. You half expect him to show up one morning in pajamas.

A taste of “Breakfast Time” also convinces you that Baugh’s benign co-host Selena Scott was recently named Britain’s top presenter (British for host or anchor) solely because she is the most presentable of the presenters, a gorgeous dish who, as an interviewer, is a threat only to communication.

No better bargain is ITV’s “Good Morning Britain,” co-hosted by the vanilla duo of Anne Diamond and Henry Kelly. This show, which also features a babbling exercise woman, can shift breathlessly from world affairs to a penetrating discussion of models posing for advertisements:

“When men are standing around in their underpants, they feel a bit self-conscious.”

“Yes, but if you are standing around in your underpants, you’re bound to look a bit bananas.”

“Yes, but . . . . “

Morning shows in the United States have their flaws, but at least they occasionally reveal a pulse, and NBC’s “Today” recently even traveled to the Soviet Union. You can’t imagine corn-flaky “Breakfast Time” or “Good Morning Britain” ever venturing past Piccadilly Circus.

Finally, about that new evening chat show (British for talk show) known as “Wogan.”

The week’s big “Wogan” news was made off the air by Joan Rivers, who abruptly canceled an appearance while in London.

The story going around was that Rivers somehow feared being grilled by host chat-er Terry Wogan. Viewers of the thudding program can think of a likelier explanation:

She feared falling asleep.