Code-name Geronimo: Parallels between the Apache hero and Osama Bin Laden

Posted on May 3, 2011 by Samira Ahmed

GERONIMO

Played out via helmet cam, Hollywood-style still photos released of the Commander-In-Chief, in the Situation Room supervising the kill. For an operation that was reportedly a year in the planning, an elementary understanding of the history of the American West suggests they should have thought more carefully before they code named Bin Laden after the last hero of the Indian Wars. This post first appeared on the Channel 4 News website. 

It’s what you shout when take a dangerous leap; a slogan of US paratroopers during the second world war. But the 19th century Chiricahua Apache hero, whose name it is, was a perhaps questionable choice of code name for Osama Bin Laden; given the numbers of people who do regard him as a hero. His story is laden with symbolic parallels for those who choose to regard Bin Laden as a great warrior.

Born Goyahkla (He Who Yawns) in modern New Mexico in 1829, he was given the name Geronimo by Mexican soldiers, who prayed to St Jerome, after seeing him defy bullets to attack with a knife. His desire for revenge against the Mexicans was fuelled by their massacre of his mother, wife and 3 children. He was a symbol of resistance – the man who defied the White Man’s broken treaties, who refused to remain quietly on a reservation when other tribes had given in and been forced off their tribal lands.

Geronimo, famously said he was not a chief; not a political leader. Like Bin Laden he saw himself as a military leader.

Bin Laden’s fundamental hatred against the West was supposedly the US presence on holy (and oil-rich)  Saudi Arab soil. In the 1860s, the discovery of Gold in the West saw the US and the Mexican governments speed up their push against American Indians to seize their land. Geronimo became a great war leader, a symbol of resistance to the White occupation. His small band of warriors raided settlements in Arizona, and attacked US troops.

As the US looks to withdrawal from Afghanistan, and the possibility of negotiating with the Taliban,  it’s worth noting that he was rarely defeated and US Generals found themselves struggling to form a successful strategy. The last of the Indian wars ended after years, only when Geronimo signed a peace treaty with General Nelson Miles – who had failed to defeat him by military means.

The end of Geronimo was a humiliation of broken promises, not assassination. As a result of the revisionist histories written since the 1960s, many younger Americans, such as President Obama, would, surely be aware of the less than honourable actions of US forces against American Indians, such as Geronimo. He and his people were moved around Florida, and Alabama, ending up in Oklahoma. He was not killed in a compound; but died in a US military base – Fort Sill in 1909 after completing his autobiography.

Even in the early 1960s, when we assume Indians were the “bad guys”, Hollywood’s first biopic starring the white sportman turned actor Chuck Connors  as the Native Indian hero, saw him portrayed as a great hero and family man, abused by Federal forces.

The 1993 film Geronimo: An American Legend, starting  Gene Hackman, Robert Duvall and the Native American Wes Studi as Geronimo, focussed on the abuse of the Apache themselves and the success of a small band of dedicated warriors against the might of the US military.

According to some analyses today, the US military chose the code name because Bin Laden, like Geronimo, had evaded capture for years. If they were trying to avoid mythmaking, it seems they chose the wrong code name.

Further reading

On life of Geronimo.

on the choice of code name: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/asia/pakistan/8489354/Osama-bin-Laden-dead-code-name-Geronimo.html

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Poly Styrene — The real thing, not a Rock n’ Roll Swindle.

Posted on April 27, 2011 by Samira Ahmed

Confession. I was 8 when Poly Styrene and X-Ray Spex hit the punk scene. I only realised, as I researched her obituary for Channel 4 News yesterday, just how I’d totally misunderstood her at the time. I’d seen the bin bag dresses and heard the often screechy singing and thought she was one of those attention seekers who shocked for the sake of shocking. An enlightening reading of her lyrics, Dave Simpson’s thoughtful interview in the Guardian just last month and my conversations with both Dave and with Charles Shaar Murray later, I feel huge sadness that I’d failed to listen more carefully at the time. Because curly haired Poly Styrene would clearly have been a role model for me.

I didn’t write the intro for my piece, and was so busy writing and finishing the edit of the actual report that I only realised as I read the intro out live that I was going to be saying “Oh Bondage Up Yours” as the lyrics scrolled up on my autocue.  It was a little moment of Vulcan-style mind melding. You might notice a little grin of delight. It was quite empowering, as they say in feminist circles.

The new album Generation Indigo is beautiful too. Poly Styrene. I’m sorry it took me so long to find you.

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8 Days in Seoul with Images. India’s Dream City?

Posted on April 22, 2011 by Samira Ahmed

I was nagged by one question throughout my recent holiday to Seoul. Why does South Korea remind me so much of India? But of an India without slums, heavy pollution, child poverty and endemic corruption? This is a personal write up of my trip. There’s a full photo gallery of my own pictures at the end, featuring many of the locations.

Seoul: A dream version of India’s cities

Born to Indian parents in Britain, I’ve watched India’s transformation through my regular visits with fascination and  sometimes great sadness.

Like Lotte World,  the world’s largest indoor theme park with European castles and rides through Egyptian tombs,  Seoul seemed to me at times like a super improved version of urban India. South Korean firms’ attitudes to IP are sometimes just as controversial or disputed  (Visible everywhere from the Disney-castle style logo of  Lotte World to the current lawsuit launched by Apple against Samsung over its Galaxy phones, with Samsung counter-sueing.)

Both countries are proud nations with strong armies, amazing cuisines, powerful movie and music industries within South Asia and perhaps the richest and oldest living  cultures in the world. My trip to South Korea was actually organised by my children’s Tae Kwon Do teacher, a Korean  ex-Marine; so we saw plenty of martial arts displays, went to meet Tae Kwon Do Missionaries at Church and met serving Marines taking part in a military display.

Both their modern states were forged out of a brutal fight for independence against occupying colonial powers. In India Gandhi led a peace-based movement, while Subhash Chandra Bose led a violent revolutionary army against the British, that allied with Hitler and the Japanese during the Second World War. The Japanese — whose influence in Korea grew rapidly at the end of the 19th century — deposed the long Joseon Dynasty in 1910, (imagine the Plantagenets ruling Britain right through till then)  and their 35 year occupation was marked by a campaign to attempt to eradicate Korean language and culture, and a brutal suppression of the Korean independence movement.  The Seoul prison where many activists were tortured to death is a major memorial, though the exhibition, apparently fails to mention that it was also used to hold student activists during South Korea’s the violent military rule of the 80s. On Korean Air, the classic Hollywood film selection always appears to include at least a couple of WW2 Actioners about the Japanese defeat in the Pacific. Historical dramas about the golden age of the Joseon Dynasty are big ratings pullers. Statues of major heroes such as General Yi Sun-shin, (South Korea’s Admiral Nelson) who repelled the Japanese with his technological marvel — the  turtle ship —  are a striking presence on the boulevards, in parks and museums. There’s a magnificent replica in Seoul’s Korea War Memorial museum.

The same 5 star hotels and Western brand names dominate the down towns of big cities like Seoul and Mumbai. Localised coffee brands are taking on the behemoths of Starbucks and McDonalds. (You can get a sweet potato latte in Hollys Coffee.) In India similar entrepeneurship lies behind success stories like VG Siddhartha’s Coffee Day cafe chain.

While I was in Seoul, its fanciest hotel, The  Shilla, named after an ancient much mythologised kingdom, even featured in the kind of row that India specialises in: A well known designer of Hanboks, Korea’s graceful national dress, was refused entry to the hotel’s famous Sunday buffet. The Hanbok, it turned out, was banned, as were tracksuits. Then the hotel claimed wealthy (and foreign) guests had apparently complained about tripping on them. It was a health and safety issue.  As politicians and celebrities got involved to condemn the policy, the hotel quickly backed down and there’s been much public bemoaning of South Korea’s alleged lack of cultural pride.

But these are the differences. The big ones: While so much of India’s rich cultural heritage survived, admittedly with all the jewel inlays prised out of some palace walls by various invaders (eg. Delhi, Agra, Lucknow) much of it decays under heavy air pollution, poor maintenance and indifference. It infuriates Indians and foreigners alike. In Seoul, where  fire did not destroy, the Japanese  often did. But as you travel around the city you find every surviving stone or gateway lovingly restored and carefully labelled with a National treasure number. One assumes not that many have survived.

At the Deoksu palace in central Seoul, the small site that remains moved me greatly. Apeing Western style, while under pressure from strong trading interests, the last Joseon emperor built a salon to receive Western dignitaries furnished with electric lights and other “modern” fittings. It looks wretched compared to the simple elegance of the rest of the buildings.  The link above shows photos as well of the Classical style buildings he added, giving valuable commissions to European architects, furnished apparently from Maples of Tottenham Ct Rd.

Straight away I was reminded of  India’s princes and maharajas,  spending their millions on Western luxury goods such as the world’s largest chandeliers, imported from Chicago,  by the Scindia family in Gwalior , as foreigners entrenched their political control over the subcontinent. (Gwalior, incidentally,  is where I spent many childhood summers living with my aunts who taught in the Scindia Girls’ Boarding school. )

Like India’s Mughals, Korea has a great history of ancient scientific achievement. In the grounds of Deoksu palace National Treasure number 229 was particularly moving. Just a couple of large vessels and small bowls had survived of the world’s earliest automated water clock or Chagyeongnu/Jagyeongnu,  that could strike gongs and ring bells. It was commissioned by King Sejong in 1434. A replica’s been made. Next to it was another example of Korean technological innovation — the Singeon — the first weapon for which a blue print exists. It’s a 14th century multiple missile launcher, that could fire more than a hundred iron-tipped bamboo arrows, with paper gunpower-filled rockets attached to the rear. The fuses would all be grabbed and lit at the same time. There are more excellent models in Seoul’s Korea War Memorial museum.

Perhaps most symbolic of South Korea’s success has been the reclaiming of the Cheonggye stream, which runs down the centre of Seoul. Reduced to a covered over slum by the early 20th century, not dissimilar one imagines, to the historical Fleet river and other Thames tributaries now covered up by London’s eponymous streets,  in the last 2 years Seoul has turned it into an urban park; slightly sunken below street level, and landscaped with grasses, benches, sparkling fountains and lights at night. A sunken version of New York’s similarly recent High Line reclamation, on a disused elevated railway track. In the summer it’s contributed to lowering Seoul’s sweltering humid temperatures by 10 percent, directing cooling breezes over the city.

During the day and night we watched families, joggers, teenagers and courting couples share its space. One night our children watched fascinated (and nervously) as a young airforce officer in apparent dress uniform negotiated his way over a waterfall by stepping stones, one hand holding onto his girlfriend’s, the other a black attache case, which we speculated contained important military secrets.

Could such a scheme ever work in India? How much funding would municipal and contractor corruption siphon off? How soon before the stream, flowing with fish whenever we walked along it, was clogged up with rubbish and human waste.

It wasn’t that I saw nothing that troubled me. There were all too many fragile looking alcoholics and drug addicts around our hotel and in the parks. Many of them quite old; all of them begging and occasionally aggressive. But nothing that I haven’t seen around King’s Cross station in London.

The street food stalls that set up along every major thoroughfare at night offered the same bargain delights as the many Indian cities I’ve been. There was mess, but it was cleaned up by morning. There were no children begging.  As in India the proliferation of small scale trading is impressive:  The arcades and various markets specialised by areas. Scores of stalls in mazes of souk-like streets competing to sell you engrave-able trophies or road traffic cones and lighting, cheap clothes, or mobile phones or cameras. Everything open till late at night.

The sky scrapers and glowing lights of downtown Seoul could be Los Angeles. Up close they are properly finished and working. There are no slums on their doorsteps. But as we saw the grim high rise tower blocks where most Seoul-ites live, many commuting in on the extensive and clean train and subway network, I wondered about the social cost of South Korea’s economic miracle. For all the day trippers clad in the latest high tech gear that  we met returning from a Sunday  hiking up one of the beautiful mountains that surround the city, I saw all too many old women and men are working late at the 24 hour fish market, or sitting on the steps of subway stations selling small packets of vegetables, or toothpaste out of suitcases on the subway train carriages.

Talking to Korean friends, who live near me in London’s Koreatown, New Malden, many agree that comparative “success” in Korea can be much easier here in Britain. Like India, where education is so valued, but there are big demographic pressures on the number of places available at prestige insitutions, the pressure to attain can have a terrible cost. Seoul’s KAIST university — one of the the nation’s most prestigious science insitutions — was hit by a spate of student and (1) staff suicides, after linking tuition fees to grades and insisting courses be taught in English, to boost the university’s international ranking. The Wall Street Journal has an interesting take on the story here. And South Korea’s Human Rights Commission is investigating.

Out on the streets, chatting often to groups of South Korean school children, they seem very much like British kids; but with much higher grades and many more 6 year olds carrying smart phones. The value of education; the respect for elders remain strong in India and South Korea.

Perhaps it is the scale of everything in India that makes it seem impossible to imagine it achieving South Korean levels of standardised affluence anytime soon. I wondered whether the caste system of the rich versus the poor (not just a religious one) that discriminates so powerfully against the have-nots, (so well explored in Aravind Adiga’s White Tiger), is too entrenched to overcome.

India, like South Korea, lives with a real sense of fear about its nuclear neighbour, and in Delhi it can take up a lot of government focus; at the expense of dealing with poverty; especially since the 2008 Mumbai terrorist attacks; which of course targetted symbols of India’s affluence and success . In Seoul it’s sobering when you see every subway station has cabinets full of gas masks, and school children are drilled in how to act in case of a North Korean chemical attack. But municipal and central government money is still spent on social projects on a scale that makes a difference.

Indian friends I’ve discussed my questions with say South Korea has had the benefit of 60 years of strong American support.  It doesn’t have the sheer numbers that India is dealing with. A billion people. A huge agricultural-based economy. The endurance of feudal attitudes. Many who abandon the land for the city slum, it’s been argued, have escaped to a better life.

As someone who remembers India’s strange and sometimes dark flirtation with socialist and particularly Russian alliances in the 1970s and 80s (the State of Emergency; more mundanely, the time you had to drink strange Indian imitations of unavailable American imperialist Pepsi and Coke) Korea’s close relationship with the US seems key. Though Seoul had its own dark period under an authoritarian regime well into the 1980s. While many nations took part in the UN led Korean War in 1950-3, (many British veterans are currently in Korea marking the 60th anniversary of the Battle of the Imjin river) General MacArthur’s strong leadership helped build great trust. America understood South Korea’s fight for independence. Japan plays baseball too, but South Korea’s relationship with America is based on a shared fight for freedom. Perhaps those extra decades of unwavering alliance have made all the difference.

The tower blocks and war monument of Seoul can, seen from a distance, seem indistinguishable from similar ones in Communist-bloc Europe — like Berlin’s Treptower Park and the wide socialist boulevard of Karl-Marx Allee. But if there’s one difference with India where I think South Korea has the greater challenge, it is over territory. The cruel suffering of Kashmir — disputed by India and Pakistan with its own ceasefire line — may never be solved. But North Korea — whose people have been hermetically sealed, brainwashed and starved physically and spiritually for 60 years — is a challenge well beyond the East Germany that the Federal Republic absorbed in the 1990s.

Unlike in Kashmir, it’s easy in South Korea to do a tourist daytrip from Seoul up to the demilitarised zone to peer across into The Other Side. You can even buy DMZ mugs and engraved golfballs. The commercial opportunities have not been missed. But the  peninsula’s longterm future is a challenge almost unfathomable.

So I haven’t got an answer to my question. But after a thoughtprovoking week in Seoul I am looking forward to my next visit to India to ask some more.

All photos (except moonrise over Seoul) are copyright: Samira Ahmed. No reproduction without permission.

Further reading: Timely article in The Independent about fighting corruption in India.

The Indian state of Manipur obsessed with Korean pop culture.

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Prevention in Pakistan: Cameron’s new strategy?

Posted on April 5, 2011 by Samira Ahmed

This is my post for Channel 4 News about David Cameron’s announcement of £650 million in education aid.  Amid all the fuss about Libya, has the Coalition Government’s smartest foreign policy decision been made quietly  and efficiently?

The Prime Minister’s visit to Pakistan has been functional, with little apparent pre-briefing, but it could be one of the most important foreign policy decisions the Coalition Government makes and contains evidence of a major rethink in strategy towards the increasingly troubled Commonwealth nation.

Just months after causing huge anger in Islamabad when he accused Pakistan — while on a visit to their historical enemy India —  of “looking both ways” on terrorism, David Cameron today, speaking next to Prime Minister Yusuf Raza Gilani, announced 650 million pounds in aid, targeting education in a country where corruption and poverty have entrenched illiteracy and religious fundamentalism for millions (17 million children are not in school) and encouraged thousands to migrate legally and illegally to Britain – in search of a better life.

In what’s being regarded as a “fresh start” with the notoriously sensitive Islamabad government, Mr Cameron told his audience in Pakistan that the money would be spent on training 90 thousand teachers, building or refurbishing 8,000 schools and providing 6 million text books.  He acknowledged the terrible price paid by ordinary Pakistanis in their own battle against terrorism, with 3 thousand civilians killed in the past year. “Few countries have suffered at the hands of this terrorism like yours – as we saw again this weekend, with the cowardly attack which murdered dozens of innocent people at the Sakhi Sarwar shrine.”

The Prime Minster said he’d have trouble justifying the spending to the British people at a time of domestic economic hardship and urged Pakistan to deal with its endemic corruption: “Too few people pay tax. Too many of your richest people are getting away without paying much tax at all.”

More importantly perhaps,  for British interests, the religious schools or madrassas, often the only education on offer,  have again and again proved staging posts for the radicalisation of young British Muslims and been linked, together with jihadist training camps, to a number of successful and aborted terrorist plots, including the July 7th London bombings, the 2007 plot to bring down transatlantic airliners with liquid explosives and the 2004 fertiliser bomb plot targeting London night clubs and shopping centres, uncovered by Operation Crevice. I was in the Old Bailey when one of the would be bombers, Omar Khyam testified about the widespread awareness and support in his British Pakistani community for  jihadist military training camps, which he said were supported by Pakistan’s military intelligence service, the ISI.

Critics of the British government’s reallocation of its DFID budget have accused No 10 of fighting domestic anti terrorist battles under the guise of development aid. Certainly this £650 million fund is an interestingly timed programme, just months after the Coalition announced they were reviewing and essentially scrapping large parts of Prevent – Labour’s controversial Home Office strategy to tackle home grown Islamic radicalisation.

But it could be regarded as a very smart refocussing of priorities at a time of heavy spending cuts. Like Prevent, the focus of the new Pakistani aid is on education and long term social benefits. It will be hard to quantify – not least because it’s notoriously difficult to measure success by absence – the absence of terrorist attacks. But by giving Islamabad hard cash in return for  cooperation from the ISI, and setting targets for good governance, could the Coalition government have come up with a strategy that will require action and deliver measurable results?

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From Casablanca to Calais: refugees on film

Posted on March 30, 2011 by Samira Ahmed

On 10 June last year I chaired a panel discussion at BFI Southbank with directors Stephen Frears, Mat Whitecross and Kenny Glenaan and cultural commentator Professor Terence Wright. We were looking back on the portrayal of refugees in film as part of a unique event organised by Refugee Action and Brightwide for Refugee Week. As our event at the BFI Southbank drew near, I reflected on some of the films that were to be  debated in NFT1. Thanks to Esme Peach and Refugee Action for giving me permission to reprint it here. You can read more about the charity’s work particularly the challenges they face since losing 60% of their funding for some services here:

As I write this, there’s been much discussion on the news about the British government’s plans to start sending back and “resettle” 16 and 17-year-old Afghan asylum seekers. Everyone has an opinion about them; not least how far they’re genuine refugees rather than economic migrants pushed by their families to make their fortunes in the West.

From Casablanca to Calais?

in-this-world2

By coincidence the day before I’d been watching In This World – Michael Winterbottom’s controversial documentary-style drama about young Afghans smuggling themselves at huge expense overland to Britain for a better life. Watching it I felt extremely uncomfortable.

Not just because of the trauma of their dangerous travels – notably in the back of a sealed truck; living off their wits on the streets of Italy – but because of the use of non-actors to undertake the perilous trip. One of course, really did claim asylum on arrival.

Philip Lioret’s Welcome also mixes professionals with non-actors, but this acclaimed French drama, focussed on the illegal migrants trying to get from Calais to the UK, is an unashamed romantic story; like Casablanca. Much of it is set like Let The Right One In, in and around a municipal swimming pool, and has a similar dreamlike tone.

Indeed my dreams have been haunted by the image of a swimmer attempting to cross the tanker-crowded shipping lanes of the stormy Channel. “Welcome” is also one of the few films to focus also, on the plight of women – London can mean a forced marriage, as much as it means freedom.


What emerged for me?

Filmmakers, it seems have two ways of dealing with the theme of refugees.  They can reveal the director as journalistic investigator, or aesthetic experimenter. What is it like to be smuggled from Afghanistan to London? How do you get there? (In This World). An intriguing experiment. Leonard Maltin described the effect of watching it as  “hypnotic”.

Moving to Mars_press still 1

Mat Whitecross’ charming Moving To Mars is openly a documentary.  He recently said in an interview that in a way it didn’t matter that the families he followed from their Thai refugee camps to resettlement in Sheffield were Burmese Karen. It was about capturing the refugee experience of translocation.

But actually, what engaged, charmed and ultimately moved was the way he gave viewers the intimacy of getting to know these individual families’ way of life, their tastes (one dad loves “The Carpenters”), their values and their hopes collide with a new reality.

The bright tropical warmth and appetite for learning among their fellow Karen in the refugee camp schools and nurseries, fade to the cold grey of a South Yorkshire winter and a 49-year-old highly qualified engineer forced to sit a BTEC course alongside some spotty teenagers.

The scene where an illiterate rice farmer tells his JobCentre plus interrogator that he’s willing to do anything, but would like to learn English too, is one of the most heartwarming. She grasps both his hands on the brink of tears, wishing him all the best.


Looking back on Free Cinema

Refuge-England

Refuge England – a product of the late 50s’ “Free Cinema” movement, championed at the National Film Theatre by Lindsay Anderson – was a revelation for how it turned what could have been a cold experiment (a European refugee of unknown origin arrives at London’s Waterloo station with only a name and an address to construct a new life) into a reverse examination of a strange and mysterious city; all those bowler hats, all those survivors of the Blitz looking haggard beyond their age.

For a modern viewer, too there’s a shocking realisation of what London eating must have been like without curry, kimchee and ramen. It was rather good to keep going with the FreeCinema DVD to watch We Are the Lambeth Boys too – a reminder of how native working class Londoners themselves could feel stateless within their own city. Though wearing fabulously smart suits and dresses.


The second kind of option on refugees on film?

Some directors have opted to make unashamedly popular mass market movies. I would suggest that’s perhaps the most impressive. Refugees are just people, aren’t they? Not “issues”.

Casablanca may have been made entirely by European refugees at the height of the Second World War, but damn it, Ingrid Bergman looks fabulous when she walks into Rick’s café Americain in her white suit with matching clutchbag. And used as we are to blanking out news reports on people trafficking, there is a new shock to watching the opening sequence of the film in which desperate white people throw their life savings at Middle Eastern and African smugglers to attempt a Mediterranean crossing with forged passports.

I have to confess my heart sank at the thought of sitting down to watch a film about post-Sangatte migrants, but Welcome pulls off the double coup of a truly French love story – parental as well as romantic – with real political impact (it was shown in the French parliament for the storm it brewed up about the Republic’s callous and to some extent hypocritical handling of the humanitarian crisis on its shores.) It’s one of the most wonderful films I’ve seen this year.

dirty-pretty-things

Stephen Frears’ Dirty Pretty Things uses the best professional actors (Chiwetel Ejiofor and Audrey Tatou), the best of thriller plotting (a human heart found blocking a hotel room toilet), and a brilliant setting, imaginatively photographed (London by night) to construct a gripping and moving drama that tells an emotional truth about gritty issues (human and organ trafficking). A master director, focussed on telling a great story.


Exile on celluloid

As political arguments rage across the river in Westminster, we will darken the lights, open our minds and hopefully shed a little light on some great films.


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Whose Bible is it anyway? A discussion on the King James version

Posted on March 21, 2011 by Samira Ahmed

After all the celebrations for the poetry and power of the King James Version, I chaired a rather more revisionist public panel discussion for the Royal Shakespeare Company on March 9th. In the atmospheric setting of the Stationers’ Hall, off Ludgate Hill, where the translation was completed 400 years ago, Canon Dr Giles Fraser of St Paul’s Cathedral was keen to dismiss the nostalgia of ex-public schoolboys for school assembly recitations. He subsequently did a Thought for the Day on March 22nd drawn from our discussion about whether the KJB, like the Midsomer Murders row, was linked to nostalgia for a pre-multicultural Britain. Atheist playwright and self-styled “lefty” David Edgar brought the perspective of a writer, working on his own play about the creation of the KJB.  Dr Peter McCullough presented a detective’s investigation, intriguing even as he de-romanticised the writing of it and how many of its most memorable phrases came from earlier translations, notably the Geneva Bible.  Only Professor Ralph Williams was more romantic and passionate about the influence on Shakespeare.

At 1 hour and 12 minutes in there’s an interesting discussion about the power of Biblical oratory contrasting Martin Luther King and President Obama.  And I managed to call the only Canadian panellist an American. But he showed Christian forgiveness and turned the other cheek.

Thank you to the Royal Shakespeare Company and the meeja-people at St Paul’s Cathedral for the invitation to be involved and putting it all on YouTube.

Further reading:

A blog summary of the event: http://www.atomies.org/public-lectures-miscellaneous.html

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The romance of Apache: RIP Jet Harris

Posted on March 20, 2011 by Samira Ahmed

I’ve always loved The Shadows, and when important figures in music die amidst major world events, I feel sad that their contribution gets overlooked. Jet Harris, apparently one of the first people to play electric bass guitar in Britain, as a member of the ground breaking Shadows, died on Friday.

Apache captures all the romance and excitement of Britain’s postwar love of Americana and Westerns. When I was choosing music for  a film about the end of the cross Channel Hovercraft run (started in 1959) it was Apache that I wanted to capture the excitement of the New Elizabethan Age of British technological innovation. And Simon Napier Bell’s first hand history of late 50s/ early 60s British pop, Black Vinyl, White Powder, rightly acknowledges Jet’s and the Shadows’ too often overlooked importance in forging a new kind of British music and paving the way for those who came after. Jet took an interesting career path after leaving The Shadows quite early in their history, too. I don’t really need to explain. This isn’t an obituary or a piece of journalistic comment. And special thanks to Bernard O’Hara in Belfast (@berniegriff) who found me this 1960 clip, featuring Jet on bass — especially at the end. I just wanted to say, watch this and enjoy.

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Do They Mean Us? A lecture at the Three Faiths Forum about journalism

Posted on March 18, 2011 by Samira Ahmed

This is posted with kind permission of the Three Faiths Forum. (Links to video clips of my speech are on their website.) I spent much of February 28th at the National Liberal Club just off Embankment in London today — my first visit there since interviewing Baroness Floella Benjamin about social mobility, race and politics for The Independent last year. I was giving the annual lecture to the 3 Faiths Forum, which provides parliamentary mentoring to bright young undergraduates for a new generation of potential leaders. They asked some great questions after. I chose to entitle my talk about faith, politics and the media “Do They Mean Us?”. This is a shortened version of my talk.

In this lecture I want to talk about who news coverage excludes and why. I’ll look at how good and bad coverage works, what it means and how we can make it better.

The title comes from a TV show I enjoyed watching growing up, presented by the great Fleet Street editor Derek Jameson. (Jameson, incidently, is  a genuinely working class, self-made success, having worked his way up from a copy boy). Do They Mean Us? in the early 80s showed footage of foreign news reports about Britain for entertainment. I remember one from Iranian state TV reporting in sombre tones that Punk music was created by degenerate youths in a stable.

At the end of each show, Jameson would, in his strong accent, deliver the punchline.”Do they mean us? They surely do.”

What the programme laughed at was broadcasters’ prejudices; how they chose to ignore reality in favour of reinforcing propaganda or prejudices. I feel the question is relevant now. The question that we need to  ask ourselves in newscoverage and who and what gets covered is  who is normal? Who is main stream?

Danish embassy London protests

There has been a danger of reporting retreating to extremes, especially in pursuit of a quick and easy newsline. After 9/11 and the Danish embassy protests there was a period when Islamic radicals were getting a lot of airtime, at the expense of moderate, mainstream voices, but that’s changed. Though the recent row over Stephen Green of Christian Voice being asked to comment on Elton John’s adoption showed infotainment is still a danger.

Overall I will look at the pressure of the commissioning process a little later.

These are examples of  “Do they mean us” reporting:

A woman in a burkha jumping into a swimming pool. This is a story which was reported as fact by a number of tabloid newspapers. But it wasn’t true. The woman concerned was an American Muslim wearing a burkini swimming costume  more like a mini wetsuit. She had caused no scandal in the pool. It was only when The Guardian gave her a feature spread to tell the true story that the rather less sensational facts emerged.

A commentator on Thought for the Day talking about about food prices saying ”It comes as a surprise to us that people in India don’t just eat rice” . Well ,it depends who you mean by “us”, doesn’t it?

MUSLIM TAXI DRIVER BANS GUIDEDOG.

I saw this banner headline on a news stand. The true story was more complex. I personally wasn’t that bothered, as it seemed a parody of itself, along the lines of Freddy Starr Ate My Hamster. A pet must feature in truly special British tabloid headlines.  Interestingly, this was the story that got a senior journalist I know really annoyed. He actually sought me out to express his frustration at what he regarded as Islamophobia. But like a lot of journos, they don’t want to challenge it themselves. He actually wanted me to do it. No one wants to be labelled a minority campaigner. Because then you’re just a minority. Not a real journalist. Not One of  Us.

So where does the problem lie?

I speak broadly here across news organisations. Part it of lies in in the commissioning process. The problem is not the background of people, per se, but the refusal sometimes, to acknowledge that their relatively narrow social and gender backgrounds is not neutral. That they might need to commission and think outside their comfort zone, or or their range of experience. There is the temptation to rush out a story that other outlets seem to have and a consequent failure to independently investigate and do basic fact checking.

Now the reality is that British society is far more mixed and integrated than we realise. Everytime I go to Paris or Berlin, I come home to London and realise how much better things are. But then I know people of many different backgrounds.

I happen to be half Muslim, half Hindu, was educated in Catholic and Protestant schools, and married a man whose family are from Northern Ireland and who gladly left the religious and social divisions behind.

Dinner party commissioning was a fascinating phenomenon I first came across some years ago. It’s the result of senior journalists and senior figures in public life, or on the boards of charities or companies, knowing eachother socially and sharing stories.  And at Newsnight I got put on to follow up one such idea. It turned out to be a terrific story about the Aerobathon charity which had not been paying out to some of the smaller charities fundraising for it.  I uncovered wrongdoing and set off a Charity Commission enquiry. It was a major scoop.

But I think you can’t justify getting stories in such a way and then NOT seeking out a wider range of stories and voices from people who are not as well connected.

Diversity programmes: I remain ambivalent about these. In an interview I did for the Arte French/German culture channel about the British phenomenon of ethnic minority box ticking on forms, I expressed my concern that such forms could be a way of avoiding the real issue of promoting on genuine talent. That separate tracks, could ghettoise people from “underrepresented” backgrounds. The focus, in my view, should always be on recruiting from the widest pool of talent. As a result of that programme, which focussed on ITN, I found out that ITV news keeps very detailed data about every single voice/person who appears on the bulletins — from the presenters and interviewees, down to the vox pops in the street.

Now I think vox pops are important, but I don’t know that you necessarily need to monitor them formally. You just need to take an open approach. 2 years ago I did a film about a possible shortage in bananas, and a big price rise, because of a fungus wiping out much of the world’s crops. I went to do vox pops outside a supermarket. In inner London it’s not hard to get all races and genders. But one vox pop stuck out. I stopped a lady wearing a chador and asked her. She happened to be a white convert to Islam. And she gave a great answer which I used. It was a bit of an epiphany, when I found myself thinking, I  don’t think I’ve ever seen a veiled woman interviewed on the news except about Islam. It was I think, in hindsight, important example of how a small gesture can be part of a bigger more inclusive way of handling news and ordinary people.

More broadly there’s an interesting challenge in covering certain negative stories.

Sex trafficking is  a story which I think is hugely underreported. The facts of it are of course, harrowing. But it is happening more and more in Britain, because there are more men using prositution.

I sometimes think male journalists find it too harrowing, like a lot of violence against women, such as domestic violence or rape. But all women I know think about personal safety in a different way to men in our daily lives.

If there were to be a rail accident with a death at a level crossing, and then another a day later, I don’t think any news editor would think twice about trying to make a connection and looking for failures in the system – of inspection, of regulation, or funding. Most sexual crimes can be responsibly reported in the same way, looking at an offender’s criminal history and contact with the authorities. There is an issue about the mainstreaming of porn culture and its impact on younger and younger men, who are exposed to hardcore material very easily through the internet.

Once you start to look at news coverage for gender differences you quickly spot disconcerting inequalities. Just last week news coverage of Silvio Berlusconi being charged with corruption and sex with an underage girl saw many news organisations use pictures of the young woman in question, panning sexily up her long bare legs at a red carpet event. I could blame the Italian agency cameraman who probably shot it, but it wouldn’t have taken much thought to use a more modest and less sexy shot.

The long running row over fears about possible misuse (in the future) of the DNA  Database has been a major political row. I’ve interviewed Nick Clegg about it. The Government has just announced it’s planning to take innocent people off it.  But I remember when David Davis MP famously forced a bye-election about it, I was aware that there was a crucial perspective missing – that of  victims, especially women victims of unsolved rapes and murders; some of which were being solved years later thanks to the database. When I found out that the Ealing Vicarage rape survivor and victims’ campaigner, Jill Saward was standing against David Davis in defence of the DNA data base, I suggested we get on the News at Noon to talk about it. She made a compelling case for a universal DNA database, which left Nick Clegg stumped, when I put her idea to him at a Liberty conference.  You can watch my interview with Jill Saward on the Featured Videos page. The point is, the whole civil rights debate was in danger of being framed by a small minority of important male politicians.

There is much discussion about whether news rooms run “too much” crime, especially nasty domestic violence and murder. But I feel by connecting crimes to whether there have been failures in the criminal justice systems, or in funding of important policing units, like the one originally set up with great success to tackle sex trafficking, these stories can and should be reported in a relevant, not salacious way, with the potential to show the way to avoid such tragedies in future, not dwell on the suffering for the sake of it..

We had a programme the other night where, by a terrible coincidence, the only women on the programme apart from C4 News staff were  in reports on sex trafficking, and domestic murder, either as victims of friends and commentators. While male guests discussed the economy and the staffing of Mars Missions. This is why we need to think more carefully about representing all of “us” better and fairly.

On the day the Prime Minister was trying to relaunch the Big Society I suggested getting on the Homesstart charity – which makes invisible savings to the state everyday, as women volunteers help other vulnerable mothers cope. It was quite an interesting contrast to see the views of the charity’s volunteers and users, and then the coincidentally all male and very affluent ministers making centralised decisions about cuts.  The viewer had the opportunity to see that for themselves and draw their own conclusions.

SO MY LESSONS ARE:

We journalists should show more humility and less arrogance. Not assume everyone is like “us”. We should educate ourselves about major religions, cultures, disabilities and lifestyles of our fellow citizens. We should not  sacrifice judgement or journalistic impartiality, but nor should we be afraid to seek advice from people who know more than we do. We should think more honestly about whether we really hire and commission from outside our social circles and comfort zones.

We should look constantly for fresh voices, especially younger voices, despite the pressures of the news deadline.

In return what can viewers and organisations do? You can contact news organisations to complain and praise coverage. It does get noticed. You can say yes to requests when you can. But be frank about what you are comfortable doing.  Be aware that news organisations are  not there to be an uncritical advert for you. Good journalism is impartial. Do you have something relevant to offer on that story?

I found the Forced Marriage Unit operates on a great principle: Focussed on the law, on basic equality and rights of every British citizen they are focussed on getting you out of nasty situations; not on what your religion or gender or culture is.

Overall, good journalists try to integrate a range of representative voices into all kinds of stories that fully reflect British society and concerns; so there isn’t an unacknowledged them and us. On my personal wish list: We need more joined up coverage of violent crime — particularly sexual crime;  more comprehensive coverage of science, more women interviewed on science and business, more young people talking about education, not being talked about primarily in regard to chucking fire extinguishers off buildings.

And that’s why asking a Muslim woman about bananas actually was important.

Posted in Culture, journalism, Media, Politics, Religion, TV, Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , , , | Leave a comment

How to re-programme your children in 6 easy steps.

Posted on March 15, 2011 by Samira Ahmed

I’m of the generation supposed to be blessed with the Golden Age of children’s TV (the 70s and early 80s).  Fortunate enough to be on the Royal Television Society jury judging Children’s TV and TV Drama this year, I was delighted to see some outstanding original programming. Horrible Histories and The Sarah Jane Adventures won Best Children’s Programme and Best Children’s Drama at the awards on March 15th. It seemed a good point to put up this piece I wrote for @JamesofWalsh’s eminent fanzine Hospitalized for Approaching Perfection #2 last year.

When I was a sixth former in 1984, there was a girl called Rowena with waist-length plaits, who revealed that her family didn’t have a TV at home. She was 17. She was like the Amish kid at school. We felt sorry for her.

Flash forward to 2001 and I am raising my own spawn. Thunderbirds is still on TV. My son has a pathological fear of the restaurateur in Fireman Sam. My mother takes me aside one day and expresses her deep concern that my children are not watching ENOUGH television. They will be freaks to their peers in Reception, she fears.

How did this happen? Why was I turning away from the shiny box that had been such an important part of my own childhood? And what could I do to remedy the situation?

I realised that I was increasingly disturbed at the amount of rubbish being fired at my toddlers: poor quality, pastel, computerised fake “claymation” desecrating the memory of Andy Pandy and Bill and Ben; under dressed continuity presenters who kept making me think of those news stories about girls being “groomed”; scrolling captions along the bottom of the screen telling them what was coming up next to keep them glued; and the speed of the shot changes.

Aric Sigman, (brilliantly enough a former kids’ TV agony uncle) was for a while the only one out there warning about the impact of such overload on developing little brain synapses in a paper called “Visual Voodoo” for The Biologist magazine (Feb 2007). More recently Dr Susan Greenfield has said the issue is one she wishes to explore further.

The turning point came with the following two incidents: noticing “treat-sized” videos of Thomas The Tank Engine, with only 3 episodes, so kids couldn’t keep the tape going for 3 hours. And when I met a 50 something architect, who asked me in desperation: How do you manage to control how much TV your kids watch? He admitted that his own three year old was watching Disney feature films every night. All these adults with years of higher education, helpless in the grip of rolling kids’ TV…

Like a disillusioned parent living near a sink school, I opted for home education. Each of the following was originally administered to my generation in 15 minute doses, once a day, max. I’m shocked to realise how little time that seems. I went for doses of up to 30 minutes a time; the same duration as an episode of Teletubbies, that was aimed at one year-olds.

LESSON ONE

Camberwick Green/Trumpton/Chigley

Camberwick Green: Went the Day Well?

This proved less successful than I had hoped. Apart from the hauntingly beautiful music, the complexities of neo-feudal village life seemed a bit much for 3 year olds. They were terrified when bees got loose near the bakery. For some reason, watching the episodes myself, aged 30-something, I was reminded rather strongly of Went The Day Well? — Alberto Cavalcanti’s wartime adventure in which cuddly English stereotypes are about to axe and get axed by an advance force of invading Nazis.

LESSON TWO: Fingerbobs

Fingermouse and Scampi -- a polygamous culture

This is like the Arts and Crafts lesson. Yoffy, a genial bearded Canadian with a neckerchief, has a selection of coloured gloves from haberdashery, and cuts little curls of gummed paper to make: a black crow, a grey mouse, a brown tortoise, a white dove and a pink shrimp, called confusingly, Scampi. I was rather disturbed to find that his is a polygamous culture, and that his harem of shellfish is referred to as “Scampi’s girls”.

There is, though, copious use of simple materials – pebbles, cottonwool, straw – to tell imaginative stories with beautiful music and evocative lighting. Even today, my first and most fundamental memory of Venice is the cardboard cut-out version from Fingerbobs, not my own visit to the real St Mark’s Square. My daughter’s favourite is set in the Mexican desert and is an animated collage involving paper men, honey, cacti and feathers. This does set me thinking ominously of Once Upon A Time In the West – but that can wait till Year 8. The overall impact: it feeds my daughter’s love of making stuff. Each programme is about 15 minutes long. They feel slower-paced and calmer than anything Cbeebies has to offer.

LESSON THREE: BAGPUSS

:

Bagpuss: a mystery unfolded, ironed and carefully refolded

This was repeated on TV until well into the 1980s, a testament to its enduring appeal. The use of collage and beautiful folk style music (Madeleine, the rag doll, I now realise, was essentially Joan Baez) goes beyond Fingerbobs because of the use of junk and antiques. The ’70s were a decade full of the junk of history. Like the ’60s Sergeant Pepper vogue for wearing Victorian military jackets from I Was Lord Kitchener’s Valet, Emily’s shop is full of filthy, broken stuff from a pre-pop age. We sifted through it as children. I am reminded of dressing up in friends’ attics full of musty lacy costumes.

The chocolate biscuit mill episode fascinated both children as it did me. It’s the focus on the simple mechanics and pulleys. The voices are beautifully crystal clear. In 15 minutes a mystery is unfolded, ironed and carefully refolded. My daughter remains obsessed with owls. This is partly because she’s named after the Hindu goddess, Lakshmi, and the owl is her vehicle., but I can date the fascination to her first watching the opening Bagpuss episode, The Owls of Athens.

LESSON FOUR: PIPKINS

"Johnny" from Pipkins (Wayne Laryea)

At the age of 6, it’s time for some urban (and commercial TV) grit. Like me, my kids first watched this far too late. Pipkins was an ATV pre-school programme aimed at 3 year olds, that I must’ve caught on rare sick days in junior school, aged 6-ish, when the BBC was far too snooty to run daytime programmes, so I was allowed to watch The Other Side.

Like Bagpuss, Pipkins is a shop full of filthy Victorian junk, including a very scary Punch and Judy-like puppet called Michael. I do wonder if he was named after Michael Redgrave in Dead of Night, when he’s driven to madness by his own ventriloquist’s dummy. I realise it is the children’s equivalent of a kind of Steptoe and Son. The original Steptoe or Inigo Pipkins died in real life, so the business is being run by my first crush — handsome, gently spoken Johnny (Wayne, now Amartie Laryea) — an example of impressively diverse casting. He’s paired with a myxomatosis version of Kenneth Williams.

Hartley Hare concept: Kenneth Williams with Myxomatosis

Hartley hare is paranoid, egotistical, childish, and speaks in the same intense drawl, only with really mangy fur. Hartley Hare eats evil ’70s sweets like Spangles that he hides under his pillow at night. He hogs the rocking horse at the dentist’s waiting room. My kids adore him. Like Tony Hancock, I suspect some of the other cast members were deeply jealous of Hartley’s scene stealing.

There is a useful aesthetic lesson from Pipkins: the 70s were foul-looking, even studio set urban streets. There is Pig, made out of apparently rotting foam, who is clearly not quite “all there”. Topov the monkey speaks like he’s from a Children’s Film foundation project, trying to engage inner city yoof. And grumpy old man Arthur Smith appears to have modelled his voice on the gravelly-toned and morose Tortoise. Both Tortoise and Topov are made out of sludge-coloured army surplus socks.

In fact it’s not so much Steptoe, as it is a ’70s sitcom set in a children’s home. Occasionally Sue Nicholls from Coronation Street turns up to help. There are no mouthy kids who shout at gormless authority figures all the time. Johnny keeps his cool and engages his wards in the art of playing Westerns. And I am deeply grateful that Johnny doesn’t straighten his smart Afro.

LESSON FIVE: THE GOODIES

By 2009 my children were rising 10 and 8  and it was time to move onto the greatest underrated classic of all: The Goodies. I suspect Bill Oddie won’t want to know that my 8 year old daughter thought his name was Eckythump. Her Brownie pack were somewhat bemused when her contribution to the “design a poster about your favourite TV show” challenge was about The Goodies.

The strength of this programme is its child-like, not childish surrealism. Garden and Brooke-Taylor revealed a couple of years ago that they employed some veterans of silent cinema, to use their analogue, perspective-based visual effects on the most memorable Buster Keaton-influenced episodes. Certainly it’s interesting, having visited the Barbican’s Surrealist House exhibition, to see how much of the film material reminds you of The Goodies.

There is one episode that is currently banned at home — the sex and Mary Whitehouse one. Though my son, in particular, insists that they know all about sex, I point out that they’ve yet to acquire the requisite understanding of ’70s sexism that does rather mar the episode.

I decided not to flag up the rather anti-Semitic large fake noses and fur coats in the “Goodies at the Movies” episode that, I guess, is a reference to British showbiz moguls Lew Grade and Bernie Delfont. We have, however, discussed the “blackface” dressing up and why many people find it offensive, though our family’s attitude it not strict as my large Indian family’s two favourite films are The Party with Peter Sellers and Carry On Up The Khyber.

ADVANCED LESSONS:

Once your children have learned to enjoy programmes that are slower paced, with a focus on dialogue, they are ready for… classic Doctor Who.

Sarah Jane Smith: Time-travelling reporter extraordinaire

By choosing episodes carefully, mine have been able to appreciate Sarah Jane’s gutsy earnestness and flared trouser suits; compare Douglas Adams’ jokey scripts to more complex plots, like “Planet of the Spiders” (which references Buddhist spirituality as well as arachnids) and marvel at how many actors could sport comb-overs and Austin Powers-style teeth and still get major character parts on national TV. God only know what flicking through a 1970s Spotlight Directory must’ve been like.

MEETING THE MASTER

One day a few years ago I got a call from The Woman Who Created Play School and Jackanory and produced “The Magic Roundabout”. Joy Whitby of Grasshopper Productions had kick-started the careers of people such as Brian Cant at the BBC Children’s unit in the 1960s. She wanted me to re-voice Thora Hird and Shelley Winters’ narration on an early 80s show she made called Emma and Grandpa for its updated DVD release. Joy wrote the script, which was in rhyming couplets. Sitting in the Soho sound recording booth, watching the rural scenes on playback, I was able to enjoy the slower pace of speaking.

Emma and Grandpa (extract) from brian millar on Vimeo.

Each of the 12 episodes was set in a different calendar month to explore the changing of the seasons in the English countryside. Joy had to amend the lines about an 8 year old going up the road on her own to the shop, to cater to modern parenting standards. But there was an entire midsummer episode in which Emma goes out into the forest at night, alone, which is so fantastically impossible to imagine happening today, and another in which Grandpa and Emma discuss a dead rabbit they’ve found at the side of the path: Who killed it and who’s going to eat it.  It is incredibly charming and I can “hear” myself smiling all the way through my narration.

CONCLUSION

I do not think my children are freaks, though there is something televisually quaint about their frame of reference. Amish children famously are allowed out into American towns at 16 to decide for themselves if they want to leave the community (at least according to the TV documentary I once saw). I’d like to think my children don’t have to choose. Like reading the Bible to understand great literature, or making clothes without buttons watching ’70s kids’ TV is about gaining depth and critical skill. It’s about appreciating things that are superficially simple, but made with love for children.

Along with The Simpsons and SpongeBob Squarepants, I hope there will be a part of them that will pass on Graham, Tim and Eckythump to the next generation.

Oh, and I know.. The Goodies isn’t a children’s show.

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The Guinea Pig — experiments in schooling deprived teenagers

Posted on March 2, 2011 by Samira Ahmed

Richard Attenborough as the working class Guinea Pig (1948)

Looking at all the wistful posters for the new TV series, Jamie’s Dream School immediately made me think of the Boulting Brothers’ fascinating film sixty three year- old film The Guinea Pig — also for popular entertainment — about an educational experiment with  a working class boy put into a posh Eton-like boarding school.

 

Richard Attenborough manages to carry off playing a  sixteen-year-old in short trousers –despite being 25  — with the same conviction as the dark hearted Pinkie three years later in Brighton Rock. The two would make a great double bill; as relevant today about our own anxieties over youth crime, entrenched poverty, and low aspiration and social mobility.

Attenborough’s fellow students are posh bastards. He’s ragged mercilessly at first. Incidentally I know a journalist from a  financially-modest background, at Eton in the 1980s, whose schoolmates actually called him “pleb”. Attenborough’s cut-glass accented teachers worry about whether they’ve just made it worse for him, but talent and hard work earn the Guinea Pig the respect of his fellow pupils and in an ever so discreet way, presented to a postwar British audience only just starting to experience grammar schools, the possibilities of a ladder out of a ghetto.

More than 60 years on where are we? For children living in areas with very poor performing schools the exceptionally talented few from genuinely deprived backgrounds — who some would say, once might have  got assisted places at private schools, till Tony Blair’s Labour government abolished them on coming to power — now might try for the few grammar schools or, hope to be picked by programmes like Teach First and Aim Higher — much praised by the new Conservative Education secretary Michael Gove.

TV does have a current tendency to pick the most extremely disengaged for possible fame. (Big Brother anyone?) And Jamie’s Dream School lavishes high profile talents on a select few dropouts, not themselves any strangers to the benefit of becoming a TV brand (Cherie Blair, Alastair, Campbell, Lord Winston, David Starkey). Even if the young guinea pigs are convinced into re-engaging with education, shows like this could be seen to perform a Secret Millionaire role — serving up tiny human samples of wider social problems for entertainment, with the claim of being morally uplifting. One media star created by the Guinea Pig reality TV format  — Phil Beadle who taught “Unteachables” — remains influential and engaged in education; and the arguments over free schools.  And Jamie Oliver’s sincerity and commitment to reforming School Dinners and troubled lives through his Fifteen restaurant programme, is not in question.

But as we watch the new show this week, one wonders about the short and long term impact on the participants, whose  life choices will be weighted by their TV “fame” from now on. TV inevitably focuses on dramatic potential to pull an audience. Who is willing to lavish attention on all the children not at the very top or very bottom of educational attainment, and their families’ struggles to get a decent education?

Further reading: Cambridge Professor, Mary Beard, who taught Latin in the Jamie Oliver series has written a thoughtful article about the issues in The Guardian.

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