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UK's Toughest Jobs

A workman at a demolition site
  • Posted at 11:52am
  • 22 October 2007
  • by RhodriMarsden-RT
  • 1 comment

The toughest jobs in the UK can't really be featured in UK's Toughest Jobs. Balancing resources and demand within the NHS, negotiating wage settlements with postal workers, instilling some sense of respect at inner-city secondary schools, ensuring that aircraft don't slam into one another at 30,000 feet over southern England – these are all jobs which most of us would shun, lest we collapse from stress-related illnesses.

The show should really be called UK's Toughest Jobs Which Are Menial Enough for Us to Give to Errant Youths without Posing Too Much Risk to the General Public.

A new episode on Saturday night saw three young lads – Lee from Wigan, Mohsin from Stockport and Derek from Glasgow – sent to work on a demolition site. This, according to the voiceover, is the "glamorous end of the construction industry" – a fact that was made immediately apparent by the red carpet thronged with lingerie-clad models that led to the disused paper mill in Aberdeen that was due to be demolished. Not really. There was just a gruff bloke by the name of Boyd who was to guide them through ten days of climbing over rubble.

"We're not here to have a good time," he barked, slightly pointlessly, during endless hours picking up bits of wood. Readers may recall that "picking up bits of wood" doesn't feature in the lyrics for "Good Times" by Chic. Nor does "changing a tool arm on a 24-ton excavator". It would be great if it did. But it doesn't - you don't need to check, I already have.

Each of the three lads showed a markedly different enthusiasm for the project. Lee, having recently come out of prison and now living in a hostel, was so keen to get stuck in and create a new opportunity that it almost brought a tear to the eye. Derek had spent the last two years living with his mum, but had a slight twinge of guilt that was forcing him off his lazy arse. Mohsin, however, had what the voiceover described as a "laid-back approach to work". This quickly became apparent on site.

While Derek and Lee wielded sledgehammers, Mohsin hovered in the middle distance, doing exactly what I would have done: pretend to work. Pretending to work is hilarious to watch, once you've realised that's what someone is doing.

Their eyes dart backwards and forwards, they carry a thing from one place to another and back again, and generally aim to use up time by having zero impact on any situation. This didn't endear Mohsin to Lee and Derek. On discovering that he found belching and farting distasteful, they began to throw as much enthusiasm into doing that as they did into demolition work.

As is typical with these kinds of shows, one segment ended with the phrase "After the break: tensions reach boiling point". Unusually for these kinds of shows, we weren't really shown what happened – only that Mohsin was mysteriously transferred to another demolition site some 400 miles away, well out of belching and farting range.

Both Lee and Derek found ten days of laying waste to derelict buildings beneficial: both are now in gainful employment of some kind. Mohsin, however, didn't take to hauling sandbags to and fro. "This isn't my sort of work, if you know what I mean," he said at one point. Come on then, let's try this lad on air-traffic control, pronto.

You can share in the participants’ pain by watching UK’s Toughest Jobs on Discovery (Sky 520, Virgin 212).

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  • Posted on 26 November 2007
  • at 10:25pm
  • by jenjowright
I felt that i should leave u a comment as to how you referred to the people in the programme. I was in the quarry men show that this compnay done. . . You fail to listen as to why us "errant youths" wanted to do this. I was stuck in one of the biggest ruts of my life and i am so thankfull that i done the show as now i have such a better life, the jobs that were picked were to show hard physical demanding labour that people dont usually get the insight to see. I myself take my hat of to the nhs staff as they cared for my step dad when his cancer was terminal and they supported us when he died, just like the staff supported us and looked after my dad and saved his life when he suffered a massive brain accident. Doing the show opened my eyes up to the kind of person i was and what it was i was doing with my life. Now i live in a lovely house i have appologised and paid for my errors in life, and my family are extremelly proud off me. Tv programmes like these are edited to make us look like complete idiots sometimes they fail to show the personal journey through this. The show i done we were up at 6am and not in bed by midnight. It certanly wasn't a walk in the park, it was day in day out. Certanly some of the people who done the shows didnt want to participate as much as others and that is their own idiotic fault and i used this experience to turn my life around... Sometimes we all need a second chance in life, and sometimes we shouldnt judge a book by its cover..

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