Poseurs, nitwits and the toxic truth about oh-so trendy bottled water
One day soon, the phrase ‘bottled water’ might replace ‘ the emperor’s new clothes’, to signify the deluded snobbery of people who imagine their superior senses thrill to experiences that mere ordinary mortals will never know.
The sort of poseurs and foodie nitwits who claim that they can taste the difference between tap and mineral water from a plastic container are the same folk Hans Christian Andersen was lampooning in his fable about the king who paraded stark naked, to the coos of his courtiers.
Anti-pollution campaigner Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall proved this with a cheeky product launch in his War On Plastic (BBC1). Made up as a trendy London hipster with a beard and a neck tattoo, he urged passers-by to sample his ‘Tapineau’ branded water ... without telling them it was straight from a tap.
One dubious customer was reluctant to try it, because he preferred to drink a product that was ‘enriched with electrolytes’. This, he insisted, made the water so much healthier.
Talk about being in the altogether, he was altogether as gullible as the day that he was born.
The mark-up on bottled water is verging on the criminal. One scientist pointed out a litre of a fancy brand is about 500 times pricier than a jug from the tap — which, he said, was like a pint of beer in a pub for £2,500 instead of a fiver.
But the real peril is in the singleuse plastic. even if it is conscientiously sent for recycling, there’s no guarantee that it won’t end up in landfill abroad, or bobbing about in the ocean. Hugh saw illegal dumps in Malaysia where thousands of tonnes of waste from the UK lay stinking in the sun.
One local campaigner pleaded with Britain to stop dumping plastic on his hometown. Hugh looked uncomfortable, but he was far more shaken by the children who woke every day with nosebleeds and inflamed eyes, because of the toxic fumes from the open plastic furnaces.
This was a shocking segment. Hugh has been consistently at the forefront of the fight against waste, in particular with his campaign against waxed paper coffee beakers three years ago.
But uncovering the truth of what happens to at least some of our rubbish, when we believe it is being responsibly recycled, took him into a new league of investigative journalism. He summed it up neatly: ‘What a mess. It’s insane.’
The last 20 minutes of the hour floundered, as Hugh drove around British petrol stations looking for a tap to refill his water bottle. He’d have done better to uncover more of the corruption that ends with bonfires of plastic belching black smog over communities half the world away.
Black smog was on sale at tuppence a jar in Year Of The Rabbit (C4), a foul-mouthed, fastmoving parody of Victorian crime dramas. Matt Berry is harddrinking Inspector Rabbit, saddled with a novice partner (Freddie Fox) and racing to solve the murder of a prostitute found floating in Limehouse docks.
The show wants to be Jack The Ripper vs The Sweeney, but it’s more like a 19th-century version of Channel 4’s shouty Manchester cop show, no Offence.
Despite his attempts at a Cockney accent, Berry plays the same character as ever — barely different from his vampire in Sunday night’s What We Do In The Shadows. The lack of variety doesn’t matter much, because he’s always funny.
Best bit of dialogue went to Keeley Hawes, who appeared from nowhere in the final seconds and stole the show. How does she do that?