Lorry ambushes, a torched Jungle and a bunch of naive do-gooders
You say ‘tomayto’, I say ‘tomato’. You say ‘international humanitarian crisis’, I say ‘organised crime syndicates’. Let’s call the whole thing off.
Calais, The End Of The Jungle (BBC2), a This World documentary about the sprawling shanty town for migrants on the Normandy coast, presented two irreconcilable views of the mess. There was no guidance, no interpretation, no voiceover. The whole programme was as chaotic as the camp itself.
on one side were naive young idealists, all of them desperately decent and middle class, who had come to the French port to help to distribute aid to the migrants — or, as they called them, ‘the refugees’.
Some were frightfully posh and rather ashamed of it, like Charlie Whitbread, a former art evaluator. others had tried to do a bit of good and were swept away: one group of women launched a Facebook appeal and accidentally raised £2 million.
All of them were there to help because, they assumed, these people weren’t able to look after themselves.
There’s something very patronising and imperialist about their attitude, though the volunteers would be mortified to think they were motivated by racism.
While they built 1,500 wooden shelters, the able-bodied young migrants — almost all of them male — were laying barricades and setting ambushes to trap HGV drivers heading for Britain.
Night-vision video shot on a long lens captured grainy footage of dozens of illegal immigrants mobbing lorries.
The ones who weren’t agile enough to board a truck could bribe people smugglers who charged between £500 and £10,000 for a ticket across the Channel.
While the volunteers were working for nothing, other people were making themselves rich. We didn’t meet them though.
Market stalls in the camp, operating for private profit, sold clothes and supplies donated by kinder hearts. ‘You’ll get some damn good deals in there, a nice T-shirt for a euro,’ said a volunteer approvingly. But he warned the camera crew to stay away — the market was a murderous place.
When their camp was cleared last october, the migrants torched it and moved on. Many of the volunteers looked devastated to see their hard work destroyed. other testimony seemed difficult to find. We saw only one interview with an illegal immigrant who made it to Britain on the back of a lorry.
He was a man of 27 from Eritrea who claimed he’d come to avoid military service.
We didn’t learn much, except that the uK suits him because he already speaks English. So that’s handy.
After jumping on a lorry to Channel 4, Paul Hollywood has become the Godfather of The Great British Bake Off (C4).
He dominates the show — fellow judge Prue Leith is a far better cook but an also-ran in every encounter. Paul looks at presenter Noel Fielding, when he deigns to notice him at all, with undisguised contempt. Noel, whose cocky persona has perished like a soggy choux bun, tried to make a joke about the Hollywood dress sense — Paul gave him a withering sneer.
The only person Paul deferred to was baker Sophie, the ex-Army action woman. His voice became softer and more admiring when he spoke to her. She seemed oblivious to his charm, though.
The standard of cooking is as high as ever this year, and the contestants are an engaging lot. But, with the final looming next week, this series feels less like a real Bake off and more like a Hollywood solo project.