Dear BBC, Miriam’s mad auntie act is no way to tackle a racist

From the moment the man who called himself ‘Pastor’ mike Hallimore walked into the hotel room, there was plainly something creepy about him.

A fat man in tight jeans with hair and sideburns dyed a uniform blond, he looked exactly the sort of character you would go out of your way to avoid ever meeting.

We already knew the leader of the ‘ alt- right’ Kingdom Identity ministries group was a distasteful creature: before he agreed to be interviewed on Miriam’s Big American Adventure (BBC1), he insisted he would only speak to film crew of ‘European ethnic/racial makeup’ — and no Jews.

The producers should not have pandered to this demand, but miriam margolyes, who is Jewish, agreed to sit outside the hotel in her car and feed questions for Hallimore to a researcher through a headset.

Sweaty and nervous, Hallimore was asked what he would do to change America.

‘ The Jews,’ he said. ‘I would gather them up and put them on an island where they couldn’t do any harm such as madagascar, and of course I would castrate the males, hysterectomies for the females so they couldn’t reproduce.’

At this moment, the concept of taking an eccentric, 76-year- old actress who likes to be the centre of attention, and sending her on a roadtrip through the heartland of Trump’s America, fell apart.

She was far out of her depth, unable to cope with the people she was provoking — and she knew it.

Until then, miriam was managing. She can dial down the outrage when she feels like it. Flirting with a redneck cowboy — who blushed scarlet when she asked, ‘Have you ever met a Jewish lesbian before?’ — she was in control.

But after the Hallimore encounter, it was obvious she just wanted to go home. She was ‘puzzled’, she said frankly: she didn’t know what to make of America now, though the country had once been her home.

That’s no good. Even to give Hallimore the oxygen of airtime was a dubious decision on the BBC’s part. The bile he spouted had to be challenged by a serious interviewer.

Louis Theroux has proved he can handle bigots like that. Stacey Dooley has the courage to tackle them. miriam was just throwing rocks at a hornet’s nest and running away. one scene later, she was standing on the porch of a couple in Texas who have 12 children. She broke wind loudly before she walked through the door just to see everyone’s reaction. The mad old auntie routine wasn’t working any more. It was as misjudged as this whole documentary.

Her coarse antics would be ideal, though, for Girlfriends (ITV), which has now parted company with any scrap of credibility and is reeling around in all directions like a drunken hen party at three in the morning.

All the viewer can do is give in, laugh and whoop along. Admit it — it’s fun.

When Zoe Wanamaker, as lollipop lady Gail, escapes from a knife-wielding maniac to be told she’s just lost her job for turning up late at the school crossing, two fire engines go tearing past — and sure enough her house is on fire.

The police arrive to arrest Gail’s son Tom (matthew Lewis) three times in one hour, and he still finds time to get his girlfriend pregnant.

Wanamaker is also starring tonight in Britannia over on Sky Atlantic.

She plays a tattooed Celtic queen defying the roman invaders, who has journeyed to the underworld to speak with her ancestors.

It’s far more believable.

LEFTOVERS OF THE WEEK: Would I Lie To You? (BBC1) wound up with a collage of the best bits that couldn’t be crammed into the rest of the series. When the offcuts are laugh-out-loud funny, that’s the hallmark of a top comedy show.