Back on Benefits Street and now even druggies want star treatment
TODAY'S instant celebs, in their quest for 15 minutes of fame, spend the first ten flashing their knickers to attract the cameras and the next five protesting about unwarranted Press intrusion.
That’s how the game is played — you’re nobody until the paparazzi are seen to be making your life unbearable. it’s like running into a crowded shopping centre in a ballgown and tiara, striking a dramatic pose and crying out: ‘oh! Why won’t the world leave me alone?’
it’s pathetic, but thanks to pretentious bigheads who truly believe their private lives are more important than Press freedom, every wannabe imagines journalists must only print what celebs permit.
even unemployed dope smokers expect newspapers to behave like obedient public relations agencies. This was vividly proved on the vile
Benefits Street (c4), when the residents of Kingston Road in the north-east town of Stockton- on-Tees turned on a trio of polite freelancers who had come to report on the making of the programme.
First, they subjected the journalists to a barrage of abuse and threats. Then the teenagers started throwing eggs. ‘it’ll be bricks next,’ warned one. Finally a masked man ran at them with a bucket of water, picking out the only woman and chasing her down before trying to soak her.
The truly ludicrous thing was that a channel 4 crew was standing by, watching all this smugly, and all the residents were happy to be filmed.
‘We’ve given them our permission,’ explained a schoolchild on a bike. This high-handed attitude was once assumed only by Palace press secretaries — now it’s snotty kids playing truant. one mother of five called dot did pose for the tabloid photographers, and then reacted tearfully when her treatment was less than sympathetic.
her luminous complexion earned her the cheeky nickname orange dot. ‘ it’s all lies,’ she seethed, outraged at the suggestion that she used fake tan.
The show rewards the biggest attention-seekers by making them its central figures. Much of the airtime in the first episode went to Maxwell, the local cannabis dealer, who had been in prison for everything from armed robbery to shining a laser pen at a police helicopter.
apart from his illicit proceeds, Maxwell was claiming more than £500 a month in benefits, through income support and disability allowance: he claimed he had debilitating memory lapses.
This might not have been wholly unconnected to drug abuse. at one point, we saw him gobbling ten diazepam tranquillisers before a court case. he showed up late, and stoned; the magistrates let him off. despite his ‘disability’, Maxwell was healthy enough to do press- ups . . . standing on his hands. he referred to his benefits as ‘early retirement’, and treated himself to a session at a tanning salon every day.
one man with retirement nowhere on his mind is TV veteran John craven, 74, who has been a presenter for more than 40 years, since the days of newsround and the Multi-coloured Swap Shop. despite appearances on all sorts of quizzes from Blankety Blank to countdown, John has never presented a gameshow.
Goodness knows why no one thought of it before, because on
Beat The Brain (BBc2) he was as affably expert as you’d expect.
contestants tackled questions based on observation, logic, memory and other mindstretchers against the clock, all set by an electronic brain that lit up in rainbow colours. There was no grey matter to be seen — it was all neon.
The format still needs a bit of work. The graphics looked as if they’d been designed on one of alan Sugar’s old amstrad Pcs, and some of the challenges were childishly easy — such as anagrams made up of three pairs of letters. MP-Le-Si . . . it was that SIMPLE.
The first team of quizzers, four medical students from Manchester, made mincemeat of the game, scoring all but maximum points and walking off with more than two grand. They looked almost embarrassed to take the cash.
The show has potential, but its computer brain just wasn’t clever enough. it was obviously a mistake to use an amstrad.