This is timely: Working Class White Men (Channel 4). And thankfully they have got one of them to present it too: Professor Green.
He goes to see three of them. First, David – lost, unemployed, living in a hostel in Bolton. One minute he’s eating in a restaurant run by British Pakistanis, the next he’s flirting with and being courted by the far right. It’s stereotypical working-class white Britain – lost, forgotten, angry.
Denzil is also familiar: an Essex entrepreneur – well, he would be if he focused a bit. The rave in a prison looks like a brilliant idea, and shouldn’t he be signing up Pro Green there and then, on camera, keep him to his word … but that doesn’t come off, the authorities get wind of it and Denzil gets himself another plan. He needs to knuckle down a bit if he’s to be the next Lord Sugar.
And finally, in this first part, there’s Lewis in Eastleigh, Hampshire, whose mum is a hairdresser. Lewis is smart, a maths whizz. He’s got himself a smart new jacket, and a smart new accent, and he’s off to Cambridge University. Far from being abandoned, it’s Lewis who’s doing the abandoning. Lewis is the one Pro Green finds hardest to comprehend.
He – Green, Stephen – has done best of all. Having been brought up by his nan on a council estate, and making it in the music business, he’s now making a bit of name for himself as a maker of thoughtful, empathetic, relevant documentaries. Which this is. They trust him, he gets them, and gets to the issues.
Oh, and there’s some good news from Bolton too. David has got himself a job, a girlfriend, and rejected the far right. There is hope.
There’s hope, too, on ITV, where Riley Partridge shoves MLK and Churchill out of the way with a new contender for my favourite piece of oratory: his My Feet are Shaking speech, delivered to a small crowd in Trafalgar Square. To be fair that’s pretty much all Riley, 13, says, apart from his name, twice. But it’s less about content, more about the fact that it’s happening at all, that makes it so damn moving – along with Jessica’s, Mueid’s, Joe’s, Emily’s and James’s speeches.
They are all students at the School For Stammerers (ITV). This is an intensive speech therapy course called the McGuire programme, which uses breathing techniques and sports psychology to help people control their stammers, run by people who have stammers themselves.
When they arrive, Riley, Jessica, Mueid can barely gets their names out. Actually, a stammerer’s name is often one of the most difficult things for them to say, because they have to say it. A stammer is a cruel thing.
It’s almost unbearable to watch, which you do with a sick, tense, helplessness in the stomach. Especially when poor Mueid, who works in a pharmacy, is trying to make a work phone call. Nothing at all is coming out, you can hear the customer on the other end: “hello … hello … hello …”
Disability porn alert? Stammering is the new Tourette syndrome … There may be an element of that. It’s also almost certainly a documentary that knows where it’s going before it sets off: an emotional journey, for the participant and for the viewer – there are tears all round. Practically drama.
I don’t care if I’m being emotionally manipulated; right now all I care about is Jessica, who wants to be able to work as a wedding photographer and to say her marriage vows one day soon. And Tony the lorry driver (he wanted a job that doesn’t involve interacting with other people), who feels emasculated by his stammer. And Riley, who says he is like a jigsaw puzzle with lots of missing pieces. “If I can’t find them, I’m unrepairable; it makes me very very sad,” he says. Riley is very eloquent
They learn how to breathe a new way, with orange belts worn high around their chests, and techniques that are not intended to cure their stammers but to control them. And soon they’re saying their names with confidence; and picking up the dreaded telephone (even Mueid); and speaking to strangers on the street. Jessica, who finds this especially hard, eventually says: “Hello, my name is Jessica” to a man in Covent Garden, and they sound like the greatest words ever uttered (well, until “my feet are shaking”).
It is certainly a good advert for the McGuire programme. I don’t know if the success rate on show here (100%, remarkable improvement in all six participants) is truly reflective. But I’m not bothered about that, or about the science (if there is any), because I am so absorbed in the drama. Which is an excellent one, with a lovely diverse cast, who have interesting back stories. And a plot, that journey, that goes from very very sad to much much better. This is very much a good news story, hallelujah. It may border on evangelical but it’s irresistible.
Four days after not being able to say their names, our six heroes are making their public speeches in Trafalgar Square, and even the lions are moved. And then there are more tears when the families they haven’t been able to speak to come to see them and what they’ve achieved. New Riley, New Jessica, New Mueid, New Joe, New Emily and New James say the things they haven’t been able to up to now. For example, Joe, whose wife is here, makes the speech he never managed at their wedding …
And even that’s not the end of it, this one is really going to wring those tear ducts dry, put you through the mangle. There’s a postscript, and it’s more good news (hey, we could use a bit, no?). James is addressing his whole school; Emily is working as a teacher; wise, young, newly confident Riley says he’s lucky to have had this opportunity at such a young age when Tony had to wait until his 50s. And, as for Tony, the lorry driver who couldn’t order a drink at his local, now he’s in there at an open mic night, doing a bloody stand-up routine! Yeah all right, that’s enough now, shut up.
