BBC Scotland’s bizarre fascination for chronicling the chaotic lives of poor people in disadvantaged parts of west-central Scotland is beginning to seem creepy. Last week, another middle-class film-maker, having been paid a lot of money for his efforts, pointed his camera at people in Glasgow’s Sighthill district and switched it on. The programme, called simply Sighthill, observed families and individuals as they prepared to leave their tower blocks for the last time.
There was no effort to convey the history of this much-denigrated and oft-misunderstood area north-east of Glasgow’s city centre. Nor was there an attempt to evaluate the lives of these people and the way their neighbourhood had been treated by Glasgow city council, which was now intent on demolishing the unlovely tower blocks. In the BBC’s defence, you could say that the camera-work was brilliant and the production was expert. But there was a predatory aspect to this film, which was not present when the BBC visited Kilmarnock seven years ago to film The Scheme, which followed the residents of a working-class housing estate as they met the daily challenges that poverty, unemployment, crime and addiction presented in their lives.
As with Sighthill, there was human dignity and nobility in the face of overwhelming odds and some small human triumphs that made you cheer, but you couldn’t help thinking that this wasn’t the primary purpose of the exercise; far from it. Instead, it seemed intended for the titillation of the middle classes. Imagine the viewer: “I mean, whatever is she thinking of, having so many children that she can’t afford. I do hope those boys aren’t dodging school and do you think that boy is heading an imaginary football because he’s on drugs?
“Isn’t it amazing that they only live a couple of miles away. Do you think they do bus tours? If there was proper security I’d go on one of them, you know, like a trip round a safari park. I wonder if we’d be allowed to feed them.”
There are reasons why television companies get away with preying on these communities like this. Middle-class estates simply wouldn’t put up with the intrusion of a camera lens into every room of their homes at every time of the day. Nor would they let their children be filmed unaccompanied as they played in their secret little playgrounds.
Poor people don’t have the same concerns though. When your existence has been blighted by the full matrix of health and social inequality, being asked to feature on a television show can help brighten things up a little, break the monotony. Jeremy Kyle’s show works on the same principles. Circuses featuring live animals aren’t fashionable any more because, well, the way those circus animals are treated makes us all feel a little squeamish. So let’s take a camera into another sink estate and see what wonders there are to behold.
Wouldn’t it be great if this predatory, intrusive documentary style were to be granted access to the lives of those who dwell in one of those chardonnay estates in Newton Mearns? I have a pilot episode in mind. Let’s call it: Juniper Lane. Soon we are transfixed as the hopes, fears and aspirations of several families become intertwined. The facade of affluence and easy insouciance is quickly stripped away to reveal a vortex of greed, thwarted ambition and soggy cupcakes.
Ginny Tortington is awaiting the arrival of a team of workers to fit her heated driveway. She’s lived here with her husband, Jack, and their two children, Olivia and Lucas, for six years. “Jack’s had his heart set on a heated driveway,” says Ginny “ever since that cold snap three years ago when he forgot to put the winter tyres on the Audi Q7 and he missed the boss’s son’s first communion. So I’ve been doing a bit of overtime in reception at the estate agent’s to save up. It’s my Christmas gift to him.”
But trouble is brewing as two vans pull up at Number 27, home of the Finlay-Farquhars: Jenny and Colin and their labradoodles. Jenny and Colin are both police inspectors. They too, it seems, are having a heated driveway fitted. Ginny Tortington looks on helplessly, her irritation turns to outright fury. Not only will there be heated tiles on the monoblock driveway but that looks like a rather large hot-tub going in the back garden.
“I shouldn’t have opened my big mouth,” Ginny hisses. “I’d had a few Moets at the women’s networking thingy at the bowling club and told Jenny about my plans for a surprise heated driveway for Jack. And now look at her; she just can’t stand anyone having something that she doesn’t. After I’d had my implants, what do you know; there she is jiggling down the street like Dolly Parton.”
But the rammy over the heated driveways is soon to be the least of Ginny’s worries. Just when she thinks that the day can’t get any worse, Ginny is dealt another blow when the police come to the door. “Mrs Tortington? Mrs Ginny Tortington? It’s about your extracurricular activities at your place of work. Following a tip-off from a member of the public we’ve had your estate agent’s under surveillance and we’d like to ask you about your interesting activities every Tuesday and Thursday between 6pm and 10pm in the back office.”
Jack and his bloody heated driveway, thought Ginny, I only did all this for him. But just as it seems her gilded lifestyle is to be swept away and a spell in the pokey beckons, redemption beckons from an unlikely source. Jenny Finlay-Farquhar comes visiting that evening armed with a potential solution. “Hello Jenny, sweetheart. Look, my love, I hear you’re having a spot of bother regarding your overtime arrangements.
“I know it’s none of my business but we’re going to be having some ‘special’ garden parties over the summer with some of our colleagues. Now if you could be persuaded to come along and perform a few harmless ‘niche’ activities to help the occasions go with a swish and a swing then I’m sure we could come to some arrangement over the other matter with my husband’s colleagues.”
Next week: as Juniper Lane gets ready for its summer of illicit love will Ginny beat the rap?
