Filmmaker Richard Macer has, rather disturbingly I thought, more than 200 hours worth of footage of the ‘phenomenon’ that was Katie Price who then became Jordan and who is now Katie Price again.

His film last night smacked not so much of journalistic endeavour as stalking but what was evident throughout was one thing; Macer had rather hastily cobbled together the ‘best bits’ of those 200 hours to take full advantage of Jordan/Katie’s headline grabbing split from Peter Andre, so, friend/stalker/video biographer of Katie’s he may be, but his pocket is his first love… Read more & comment »

I was eagerly anticipating this show on Five last night; I love Simon Cowell and have had a crush/major attraction on/to him for years, yes, even through the 80s when his trademark V necks and high waisted pants were in fact fashionable, but this was one of THE dullest presentations of a TV biography that I’ve ever, ever seen.

It had the makings of a fascinating show about this giant of the popworld, what with contributions from his mum Julie, his brother Nicholas, old teachers, his well-known acts and so on, but all without exception contributed to an exceptionally tedious show… Read more & comment »

“He’s hoping that he’ll be able to conquer his inhibitions and get under the skin of people and cultures around the world.” These were some of the opening words of this show and were spoken of Stefan Gates who, for this episode, travelled to India to witness the feasts associated with a traditional Hindu wedding and the celebration of Onam, and both were extraordinary events to watch.

As a Westerner and therefore someone to whom these hugely extravagant ceremonies and celebrations are totally alien, this programme really was very interesting and Stefan Gates brought a pleasant, relaxed, sit-back-and-enjoy feel to the show. He didn’t attempt to be overly serious about the whole thing but he also wasn’t at all disrespectful to the cultural and religious sensitivities of the people he visited and spent time with in India. Read more & comment »

This wasn’t quite the ‘enlightening’ show I’d expected it to; I had thought that Professors Canter and Ekman would give us an in-depth ‘how to spot a liar’ sort of thing, but in fact, although they did discuss how body language often betrayed the lies of those featured telling them, I had, as I say, expected a somewhat more technical explanation.

Nonetheless, it was a very interesting programme and one that shows the gullibility of not only ‘us’, as in the public, but the police too, and even those closest to the supposed victim, who in these cases, turned out to be the perpetrator of a crime.

And of coursed, hindsight is 20/20 and when one looks back at footage of the crocodile tears invoked for the cameras by the likes of Karen Matthews and Tracie Andrews, one can see that there were of course ‘signs’ that even people with a rudimentary awareness of body language and its use in deception could see… Read more & comment »

Evan Williams

In yet another incredibly shocking documentary in the Unreported World series, reporter Evan Williams and his colleague Paul Kittel – director and cameraman – travelled to the Brazilian city of Recife, a beach paradise that’s visited by thousands of British tourists every year.

There, they uncovered allegations that the police are involved in ‘death squads’ which murder thousands of ‘undesirables’, including hundreds of street children, every year.

Within minutes of the programme beginning, Evan and Paul were taken to the scene of the murder of an 18-year-old boy at the side of a street. Police officers told Evan that the murder was “an execution” – a close-range shot to the head, typical of many of the city’s thousands of murders each year… Read more & comment »

As part of Britain’s Forgotten Children season on Channel 4, this moving documentary charted journalist Rachel Roberts’ attempts to trace some of the children with whom she was in a care home in Doncaster. She also wanted to find the matron of the home, Tina – of whom she had nothing but fond memories – and her husband Dennis. This particular sentiment was one that we were to discover was shared by all those she met who’d also been in Tina and Dennis’s care.

Rachel, who’s now 38, was just four years old when she and her sister Jenny were placed into the care of social services and – unlike many of the people we’ve encountered in this emotive series of documentaries – described her time in care “a positive experience” adding, “I was really happy there.” Read more & comment »

As part of the BBC’s Violence Season, in last night’s Horizon, How Violent Are You? Michael Portillo investigated what makes ordinary people commit extreme acts of violence and explored the fine line between control and aggression.

I’m not sure Portillo was the best person for the job, given he’s not ‘ordinary’ – he’s a pillock, and an upper class pillock at that – but nonetheless, Horizon sent him off to Bolivia to take part in Tinku, an annual “violence ritual” where men, women and children beat seven colours out of each other.

This seems to be a ritual that’s replicated on the streets of the UK at about 3am on most weekends, so maybe he’d have been better going off to the middle of Camden on a Saturday night and saved us license payers the cost of shipping him off to the Bolivian Andes… Read more & comment »

As part of the ‘Britain’s Forgotten Children’ season, this programme revealed the scandals of the British care system and, presented by reporter Rageh Omaar asked, is the care system working or failing our children?

By the end of the programme, there was no doubt that it’s the latter; children who have been through the care system in this country are likely to leave that system – at just 16 years old – ill equipped to deal with independence and with emotional and psychological problems. They are also more likely to become homeless, drug and/or alcohol users and fall foul of the law.

This documentary revealed some shocking statistics; for instance, one in five girls leaving care will become mothers within a year, nearly a quarter of prisoners and one in three homeless people have been in care. This is the bleak outlook that faces many of the 80,000 children who are in care in the UK and one of the first questions Rageh asked as the programme began was, “What’s being done to help the 80,000 kids who risk being lost in care?” Read more & comment »

In this first of five new documentaries on BBC2, Dr Alice Roberts – who’s very funky for an old-bones-and-stuff doctor – asked, and attempted to answer, some of life’s big questions, such as, where do we come from? How did our ancestors colonise the world? How did their journeys change us?

These are the sort of questions our kids ask, well, the first one is anyway… any other kid asking the second two would be something of a child prodigy, however, chirpy anatomist Dr Alice Roberts didn’t seem in the slightest bit daunted by tackling this challenging set of questions.

Alice opened the show by saying, “They say this is where it all began…” as she wandered toward the camera through a barren and arid landscape before adding, “That we are all children of Africa, but if so, why do we look so different, and how on earth could a handful of African families become a whole world of people?”

She then told us she’s a “medical doctor and an anthropologist” while some rather rockin’ music played… Read more & comment »

This was a very emotive film, as of course all media reports about missing children are and especially this high profile case, but the McCann’s have had to face so much, I wonder how they’re still standing; how they’re still functioning and able to live with what any parent will know must be the horrific thoughts about what could have happened to their daughter.

I can think of few things worse than having your child abducted, except perhaps not knowing what happened to her and if she’s dead or alive.

As we all know, on May 3rd 2007, their daughter Madeleine was abducted from their holiday apartment in the Portugese resort of Praia da Luz and she’s never been seen again. This Cutting Edge documentary examined the circumstances of her disappearance as well as catching up with how Kate and Gerry McCann have been coping with everything that’s happened to them since that fateful and devastating night… Read more & comment »

Kids TV presenter Kirsten O’Brien tried to find out in this show whether she could boost her career – and her income one assumes – by getting her kit off for lads mags. After all, it’s worked for lots of other ladies who started out in kids TV; remember Gail Porter doing that naked FHM photo that was ‘screened’ across the Houses of Parliament and Big Ben?

So, having bluntly wondered aloud whether her “norks” were lads mag material and with a determination to hear the worst if it came to it – and it did – she intrepidly set off to find out if her bod, norks included, was good enough to be centerfold material and if, as she put it “getting my norks out” would enliven an otherwise relatively mediocre celebrity career… Read more & comment »

To be honest, ten years ago when Daisy Asquith made the first documentary about a 15 year old living in Brixton called Kimberley – which won Asquith a BAFTA – I don’t suppose it occurred to anyone – other than Asquith – that perhaps there would be a follow up film ten years on. But, if it’d been announced at the time, I’d have put about a million pounds on it that when ten years had gone by, Kimberley would’ve had several more children, by several different fathers and would be an overweight eater of junk food, living on benefits and a committed daytime TV watcher; in other words, someone Jeremy Kyle might have on his show. Either that or an underweight junkie who’d had several kids taken into care.

I would only have been in part right… Ten years ago, Kimberley was a ‘typical’ Brixton teenager; loud, opinionated, and usually with the wrong or ill-informed ones, from a broken home and worse yet, she’d been the victim of a rape at just 12 years old. She was relatively unintelligent academically but she was streetwise and at that time, despite being what I would consider gobby, stroppy and a girl with a pretty bleak future, she expressed a determination not to end up pregnant young like her mother and sister had done, but quelle surpise, that’s exactly what happened… Read more & comment »

I have to admit to being extremely ignorant about many of the harrowing details of the Nazi invasion of so many countries and the Holocaust – especially the child victims of it – for no other reason than that I find it very, very distressing so I rarely watch or read anything about it.

This is because I once watched a film called Sophie’s Choice which was about a woman who had to choose which of her children – her son or her daughter – to allow a Nazi to take away from her and supposedly kill, and it so deeply disturbed me, even though it was well over ten years ago that I saw it, I can recall it in almost every detail.

So, it was with trepidation that I watched last night’s Kindertransport Story which is part of the Passover Festival of programmes, and I was both right and wrong to fear it… Read more & comment »

Here’s what we recommend you tune into this week, with two of the most major events happening in Coronation Street and EastEnders where there’s a fire and fireworks respectively this week!

Monday

Tonight: How Safe is Your Hospital? is on at 8:00pm on ITV1 during which Morland Sanders looks at recent hospital scandals, including Stafford Hospital – where up to 1200 people may have died unnecessarily – and Birmingham Children’s Hospital where a lack of equipment and trained staff has put patients lives at risk, and asks why regulators failed to recognise the problems earlier… Read more & comment »

In the aftermath of last week’s damning report into the “appalling failings” at Stafford Hospital, Confessions of a Nurse sought to “lift the lid” on what it’s really like to work as a nurse in NHS hospitals, and it wasn’t a pretty picture.

And despite one ex-nurse saying, “The managers might know what goes on at night but certainly the general public don’t,” anyone who’s ever been in hospital overnight would doubtless disagree with her… we are very well aware of what goes on. This particular Nurse was sacked for selling knickers on eBay during a night shift using her NHS email address… so I didn’t drop dead of shock to hear she’d been given the boot.

Confessions of a nurse didn’t tell me anyway, anything I didn’t already know, and I’m sure it was the same for anyone who’s ever been in an NHS hospital or indeed, ever reads the papers or listens to the news. However well any particular hospital scores on the various surveys, targets and polls it’s subjected to, staff shortages, sometimes staff indifference and always a lack of money make any trip to, or stay in, an NHS hospital of a nightmarish quality for many… Read more & comment »