The feral children whose lives are being ruined by their parents
WITh Britain in the grip of halfterm, that ritual time when mere anarchy is loosed upon the land in the shape of millions of small demons, many parents are counting the minutes until their children go back to school.
Why any mum would deliberately reject that respite, and choose to have her brood running riot every day of the year, is hard to fathom.
hairdresser Gemma, who has seven children at home aged from one to 13, says she loves the chaos — but most viewers of the documentary Feral Families (C4) must feel, like me, deeply concerned for their future.
It wasn’t just the parents’ casual attitude to physical danger, allowing the youngsters to treat the house as a climbing frame or play with knives and axes.
It wasn’t even the lack of rules that let the children stay up into the small hours gorging on ice cream and snacks, and sleeping late into the day.
What will damage them most is the dogged determination of Gemma and her husband, chef lewis, to prevent their brood from getting any conventional education, however much they begged for it.
The oldest boy, 12-year-old Finlay, was desperate to learn. he was a natural conformist, keen on tidiness and regular hours. Gemma claimed she didn’t ‘own’ her children but, as she saw it, she would ‘lose’ Finlay if he went to school.
She tried every trick to change his mind. Good children were subjected to bad influences at school, she said (meanwhile, nineyear-old Phoenix was in the garden playing with a pickaxe). She clung to Finlay, half-smothering him with hugs and pleaded with him not to break up his family.
Dad lewis was equally controlling. he hated the idea of any stranger having influence over his son’s upbringing: children should be raised as a tribe, he said.
In the end, Finlay went to school and loved it — but inevitably he struggled with the new regime and his parents seized their chance. They persuaded him to quit. They’d been right all along, you see.
Finlay will pay dearly for that, in a few years’ time. This intelligent, willing boy ought to be preparing for a successful life. he should soon be going to university or finding a vocation.
Instead, with no qualifications, he’s likely to miss out on a satisfying career and the chance to make some friends who will expand his horizons.
The film-makers pretended to be observing the family, but of course they were smirking behind their viewfinders, expecting us to laugh along, too. They were wrong: there was nothing to smile at here.
While Feral Families deliber- ately courted controversy, Rich House, Poor House (C5) was simply too bland to matter.
The haslams in Chelmsford, essex, were very nicely off, thank you; the Brimicombes in Watford were perpetually skint. So they swapped lives for a week.
This format might be entertaining when the wealthy family are clueless toffs or the other lot are shallow, greedy spendthrifts. But both these clans were downto- earth, normal people, who respected each others’ lives.
The show could work if the gulf was even wider. Few families have more disposable income than the haslams, with £3,000 a week.
But the Brimicombes lived in a respectable council house on a good estate and kept themselves solvent.
Steve haslam moved in, and said: ‘ We’ve got hot water, heating, wifi and satellite TV — we’ll be all right.’
For plenty of people, including many pensioners, that ‘ poor house’ looks like the lap of luxury. It’s all relative.
HEALTH WARNING OF THE NIGHT: While pilgrims splashed in the sacred waters, Sue Perkins seemed reluctant to swim in The Ganges (BBC1). By the end, we knew why: it’s liquid pollution. Can’t say I blame her for staying dry.