Booze-addled hard-living Glaswegians? Blame it on The Archers, says ex-SNP quango boss
ITS rousing theme tune is widely regarded as the soundtrack to middleclass British life.
But BBC radio rural soap The Archers has found itself accused of an unlikely sin – perpetuating violence in Scotland’s biggest city.
The former head of Scotland’s Violence Reduction Unit and influential justice figure Karyn McCluskey has told how the show’s portrayal of Glasgow-born character Jack ‘Jazzer’ McCreary peddles a ‘self-fulfilling’ stereotype of the drunk Scottish ‘hard man’.
Jazzer, played by Scots actor Ryan Kelly, is a milkman and pigman and, according to the BBC website, ‘represents the dark underbelly of Borsetshire life’. During his time on the series, set in the fictional village of Ambridge, he has been known to grow cannabis, abuse ketamine and even steal cars.
Speaking on Nicola Tallant’s Crime World podcast, Ms McCluskey, chief executive of SNP quango Community Justice Scotland, said harmful portrayals of Scots in the media can influence them to embody such stereotypes.
She said: ‘We talk about the Glasgow “hard-man”. I used to say, “Well what does the Birmingham man look like? What’s the verb that we use or the describing part that we use?” It’s one of
‘It’s how we have been portrayed for decades’
these things that has been self-fulfilling for us, about how we’re portrayed.
‘I think even in The Archers the Glaswegian is the hard-drinking guy, so it’s how we’re portrayed and how we have been for decades.’
The interviewer then asked: ‘Isn’t that really part of your work and your thought process, that if you portray people a certain way, if they believe they are a certain way if they’re isolated, if they’re forgotten as such, then they will just become that?’
Ms McCluskey responded: ‘Absolutely. You have to create a new narrative about the fact that we’re a really successful wee country, we have so many assets.’
Last night Scottish Conservative community safety spokesman Russell Findlay hit back at the comments, saying: ‘Linking Glasgow’s historic associations with violence and alcohol to a twee BBC radio show’s Glaswegian character is tenuous and a wee bit daft.
‘This wacky theory is part of a wider culture which always seeks to find spurious and abstract reasons to justify law-breaking and self-destructive personal behaviour. Victims are not interested in the public sector chattering classes making excuses for criminal behaviour.
‘As a Glaswegian, I reckon the city’s problems have much more to do with decades of inept, neglectful and self-serving Labour and now SNP misrule.’
In The Archers, which has been running since 1951, Jazzer is also well known as a womaniser who likes to eat porridge.
In one episode, he is heard saying: ‘I can make porridge as good as anybody. My ma taught me that. The only time to eat porridge is before a sesh. It lines the gut beautifully.’ He then says he is ‘out for a few’ that night so he plans on making some.
BBC insiders last night insisted Jazzer’s character had changed and that his ‘arc’ had ‘led to him becoming a caring, brilliant friend to Professor Jim Lloyd, and prospective husband to Tracy Horrobin and her two teenage children’.
It is not the first time that the BBC has been on the receiving end of complaints about the character, who has been a fixture on the soap since 2000.
Listeners have said Jazzer represents a form of negative stereotyping about Scottish people and have accused the show of lazy writing.
Amid a slew of complaints about the character in 2010, one 16-yearold listener said: ‘Jazzer is a shocking case of an untruthful stereotype.’
An English listener said: ‘Jazzer, the Scottish lodger, is portrayed as lazy, dirty, sarcastic and mean. My experience of
Scottish people leads me to find them as having none of these traits and are always extremely kind. No stereotyping please, that’s just corny.’
Another Scottish listener added: ‘He seems to have possibly every negative character trait that the writers could think of. It does all seem like very lazy writing which is quite happy to stereotype an entire race.’
Ms McCluskey was discussing her time working to reduce violence in Glasgow when she raised Jazzer’s character during the podcast interview.
Last night she said: ‘My tongue-in-cheek comment was on stereotypes of Scots’ propensity for drinking and fighting contributing to the cultural mood music.
‘It’s old-fashioned; not who we are, and not who we want to be. I love The Archers – I’m happy to voice their next Scottish character.’