The tale of Harry Potter and the new mum with a magic baby . . .
Deliveramus! Hogwarts devotee stacey must have got her spells muddled because, staying at a manchester hotel for a Harry Potter convention, the 25-year-old popped into the bathroom and came out with a baby.
Her best mate rebecca didn’t quite know how to explain this to the 999 call-handler on Ambulance (BBC1), the endlessly interesting observational documentary series that follows paramedic crews throughout a hectic shift.
‘my friend, she’s not been well all day,’ rebecca began. ‘and then she’s literally just . . . had a baby? she didn’t know she was pregnant.’
incredibly, stacey had recently been examined by a doctor and told her swollen belly might be caused by a cyst. a pregnancy test was negative. Dark magic was afoot, clearly.
The ladies in the 999 call centre were baffled. ‘i’m not being funny,’ said one, ‘but at nine months, i looked like a potato.’
stacey suffered complications but, thankfully, the rapid attention of the skilled NHs team saved her life. little elizabeth alice rose was bonny and healthy . . . though as the paramedic pointed out, she really should have been called Hermione.
it was remarkable that the crew had time to help stacey at all, because almost every ambulance in the city appeared to be busy with homeless addicts. One man, slurring his words and suffering from a badly inflamed leg, claimed to be teetotal and drug-free — until the paramedic caught him inhaling butane from a gas canister hidden in his coat sleeve.
He admitted sucking up ten to 15 cans of lighter fuel a day: ‘it blanks me problems,’ he slurred.
The medic shook his head sadly. ‘it causes your problems,’ he said.
another junkie, freed from jail that morning, downed every illegal drug he could lay his hands on and overdosed. By the time the crew found him, he’d taken enough to euthanise a whale, but the crew fought to save him.
The ambulance heroes and heroines make no attempt to judge their patients, and the documentary wisely resists that course, too.
as we learned last month when ex-army captain ed stafford spent two months living rough for a Channel 4 documentary, the streets of manchester have seen a sharp rise in homeless sleepers. many are ravaged with drugs, and ambulance highlighted how frustrating it must be for the crews, unable to do much more than hand out blankets.
The hour ended with a montage set to a gorgeous cover of Paul mcCartney’s Golden slumbers, the one from the John lewis advert and a reminder of how many beautiful melodies have poured from macca’s piano.
There were too many hits on the soundtrack of Happy Birthday OU (BBC4), a celebration of the Open university led by one of its graduates, lenny Henry, who completed a PhD with the 50year-old institution. it’s Doctor sir lenworth to you and me. Dozens of pop songs accompanied the archive clips, scrambling for attention. For instance, the university’s driving force — the redoubtable Jennie lee — entered the story to the backing of Californian surfer duo Jan & arnie . . . with a forgotten number called Jennie lee. That’s trying too hard.
many of the interviews were taken from a 2009 documentary that marked the Ou’s 40th anniversary. This wasn’t the first time we’ve seen reformed gangland killer Bobby Cummines recalling how he studied for his degree in solitary: ‘it was such a buzz, it was better than robbing banks.’
But the shots of long-haired lecturers in knitted sleeveless pullovers, scrawling chemical equations on blackboards, were far more entertaining to see than they were in the seventies.