How To Get a New Life BBC2
Dispatches: Keep Them Out C4
The Protectors BBC1
London: Fire and Destiny BBC2<
Given the weather, the interest rate rise and our steadfastly unimproving relations with the Middle East (never mind all the paedophiles or the terrifying inhabitants of Lee-on-the-Solent - more on those who missed their calling in the League of Gentlemen later), it's been a very good week in which to contemplate moving abroad, leaving this stinking landfill to steam in its own fetid slurry of miserableness for a thousand years or so. Unless, of course, you live in Chorleywood, where, according to a survey, the bluebird of happiness nests on your windowsill and unicorns frolic on the decking even as I write.
So dismal is it to be British right now that I am starting to admire the absurdly gung-ho attitude displayed by would-be participants in How To Get a New Life, the precursor to a second series of BBC2's foreign relocation series, in which those for whom English is a second language (after Ignorance, presumably) talked about their dreams of making new lives for themselves in countries other than their own.
France is the sixth most popular relocation destination for disaffected Brits, particularly those who don't speak French. Mind you, that might just explain it; the less you are able to communicate the less likely you are to find out how much you are loathed by the toothless crone who serves you your pain au chocolat of a morning. After all, how many French families have holiday homes in the Lake District?
People's naivety astonishes me. A wealthy-looking family from Poole, Dorset (where property is among the most expensive in Britain, incidentally) dreamt of relocating to Boston for a more 'laid-back, outdoorsy' lifestyle. They'd obviously never been to Boston and, given that American cities are clearly many things but 'laid-back and outdoorsy' are not two of them, maybe they'd never even watched Cheers. The 'laid-back' ol' US of A, with its average 50-hour working week and fortnight's holiday, is our third most popular destination.
Frankly I was expecting Narnia to be voted straight into the number one slot, despite the proliferation of lions and witches, but no, it's Australia. I can sort of understand this one - there's a surmountable language barrier, barely any ozone to get in the way of you and your all-over tan and it's the only other country you'd actually want to visit where a man can get away with wearing socks and sandals, but is this enough?
Sydney and Melbourne may be two of the loveliest cities on earth but even the residents of Lee-on-the-Solent in Hampshire might find Queensland just a wee bit on the parochial-side. Then again, having watched David Modell's excellent documentary, Keep Them Out (C4), about middle-English attitudes to asylum seekers, perhaps the government should resurrect the old assisted emigration scheme.
Modell's film was a wake-up call for anybody who may have deluded themselves into believing that Britain is quite a tolerant, multi- cultural sort of place. 'London and Baghdad have more similarities than London and Lee-on-the-Solent' observed the lady resident who runs the information arm (pasting cuttings from the Daily Mail, basically) of the local anti-asylum seekers action group, and I'm pretty sure it wasn't meant to be a compliment.
'You've the fear [in Lee-on-the-Solent] of rape, HIV, Aids and a lot of sexually transmitted diseases, haven't you?' she mused. However in one delicious scene, which must have had Modell trembling with delight (well, it did me), a seemingly entirely well-balanced local resident railed against her neighbour: 'I don't mind asylum seekers - they're in need. You're ignorant! You're living in fear!'
'Kill 'em! Shoot 'em!', he shouted back, several times.
Which is probably exactly what he'd say about paedophiles and I'm afraid I might be halfway sympathetic. I'm surprised the subject of paedophilia didn't crop up in Keep them Out (or at least it didn't on my roughly edited tape) because if asylum seekers can be held responsible for terrorism, rape and the spread of HIV, then surely it's unfair to deprive them of the additional stigma of latent paedophiliac tendencies?
Anyway, last week's intelligent and self-consciously responsible paedophile documentary (the only kind these days, fortunately, and in this case the first of a two- part series, The Protectors, produced by the recent Bafta-winning veteran documentary maker Roger Graef) focused on a spectacularly loathsome individual called Adrian who has been in and out of prisons and mental institutions for the past 15 years, not least because he was found in bed with a three-year-old on his wedding night.
Having served his time, however, the Powers decreed that Adrian would be released into the proverbial community, and specifically somewhere that looked a bit like the Essex coast (you hardly ever see kids at the seaside do you? No temptations there then).
In order that Adrian might be assimilated back into the sort of world where having sex with children is not perceived to be 'showing them love', he needed to be cocooned by a posse of highly skilled and dedicated professionals from the Multi-Agency Public Protection Arrangements, or Mappa.
At one point, Adrian was called to a meeting of his Protectors, sharing a boardroom table with 10 other people - including police, parole officers and psychiatric nurses - all of whom were entirely focused on Adrian and the problems Adrian might be about to cause them as he toyed with the possibility that he might not be able to stop himself reoffending, especially now that he'd fallen in with a couple of predatory paedophiles he had met in prison (how did they all find each other again, given that Adrian had moved counties and changed his name and there were teams of people looking out for his well-being every minute of the day? We didn't find out).
This scene enraged me. The so-called Protectors were, as far as I could tell, very fine people doing a job I could never conceive of attempting to do in this or any other lifetime. However they were also, in this case, wasting their time and their resources. I'm sure there are paedophiles who do respond well to psychiatric treatment, who learn to empathise with their victims, are horrified by their past actions and who, in time, can build themselves profitable lives, but you didn't need a degree in psychology, psychiatry or indeed any other 'ology' to see that Adrian was not going to be one of them.
When he talked, in detail, about his compulsions, he sounded psychopathically disconnected from emotion, yet he also clearly loved the attention. Each time he threatened to abuse he naturally got more attention, not to mention a camera crew hanging on his every word for a year; in short everything, as far as Adrian was concerned, was all about Adrian. He was, without a shadow of a doubt, one of those for whom the key should be thrown away, if only to deprive him of the attentions of all those talented people. I feel rather vindicated in this point of view because Adrian has since returned to prison. Long may he remain.
On Wednesday's Newsnight (BBC2), the writer Jon Silverman ( Innocence Betrayed: Paedophilia, the Media and Society ) told Gavin Esler that 'unfortunately when we put these programmes on in primetime, we skew the debate...' and I can't help but agree; while even Michele Elliott of the children's charity Kidscape (who admitted she was 'pretty upset to see [Adrian and his ilk] out of prison' in the first place) was happy to acknowledge that most paedophiles will never need this intense level of protection, whether from themselves or from the communities in which they live. Sometimes, though, even the best-intentioned documentary makes it hard not to imagine there's a bogeyman around ever corner. Especially in Lee-on-the-Solent. For the record, there are 1,400 of them. And if it turns out there's one at the end of my street, which is seeing something of a kiddie-boom, heaven help him.
The first part of Peter Ackroyd's BBC2 billet-doux to his favourite city did indeed remind us that London and Baghdad have more similarities than London and Lee-on-the-Solent. It was titled Fire and Destiny and Ackroyd claimed that 'London grows stronger every time it burns', citing examples from AD60, via 1666, right up to the Blitz.
There was much that fascinated but none of it was visual. From the tricksy technique of 'interviewing' (first-class) actors playing historical figures, to the tired old Koyaanisqatsi -style camera speeding around the streets, I became increasingly irritated. All one needed to do to make an interesting film of Ackroyd's book was to point a camera in almost any direction and then let the author's voiceover do the rest. By the end I was pretty tired of London, but I was also persuaded that it beats Baghdad, Boston and Lee-on-the-Solent hands down - though arguably not Chorleywood.
