Gogglebox's Steph and Dom discuss how cannabis oil offers new hope for their epileptic son
The Channel 4 stars open up about their 18-year-old son's treatment for severe epilepsy
As fans of Gogglebox know, Dom and Steph Parker are more than familiar with the premise of inviting television cameras into their home. Over the years, viewers have seen no shortage of intimate footage of the husband-and-wife duo, a charismatic pair whose larger-than-life personalities give the clear impression that, in Steph’s words, they “live a very privileged life without a care in the world”. Their latest TV venture shows that assumption to be far from the truth: this time, the cameras reveal a different slice of family life. How did Gogglebox’s Dom propose to Steph? Gogglebox star quits C4 show ‘to pursue a career in TV’ Gogglebox’s June won’t be returning to show after husband Leon’s death The focus is on the couple’s 18-year-old son, Max, who from infancy has had a severe form of epilepsy that can see him experiencing up to 130 seizures a day. The effect on his developing brain has left him with a mental age of five, and alongside the daily distress the couple endure in witnessing their son’s regular fits, they must cope with the knowledge that these seizures bring with them a much higher risk of sudden death, particularly as he gets older. To date, Max’s condition is managed by a cocktail of powerful drugs – but those drugs come with equally powerful side effects. The couple’s discomfort with what Dom calls these ‘‘mind-altering, powerful chemicals” has led them to contemplate giving their son cannabidiol (CBD) oil, a non-intoxicating marijuana extract credited with helping treat a host of medical problems from seizures to anxiety. View oEmbed on the source website Last year, the Government announced that specialist doctors in the UK will legally be able to prescribe cannabis-derived medicinal products, and the documentary follows Steph and Dom as they explore whether medical marijuana will help alleviate their son’s symptoms and give him a better quality of life. The decision to open this journey to the documentary cameras wasn’t easy, however. “It was a tough call,” says Dom now. “We’ve spent many years trying to keep our private lives private for our kids, but the timing felt right. We felt that, hopefully, we could move this whole debate a little further, and based on that it would probably be wrong not to do it. But in some ways scratching old wounds was really quite harsh – we were reliving all the horrid, nasty bits of the last 18 years.” It’s clear that it’s not easy for either of them, particularly Steph, whose emotions sit close to the surface and who is frequently close to tears as she talks of the couple’s battle to give their son the best quality of life they can. “We’ve had great sadness for a very long time, and great pain, and we carry that pain daily,” she says. “We just hide it very well and hide it through laughter.” Yet both firmly believe that exposing that pain is worth it to show the reality of what it’s like living with severe epilepsy. Says Dom: “When it comes to Max’s quality of life, on the one hand it’s fabulous because he’s very loved, but on the other hand it’s s*** and we don’t shy away from showing that.” The life captured by the documentary is indeed sobering: the electrical activity in Max’s head is so ferocious that he gets only around six or seven minutes an hour of respite. “He’s pretty much seizing nonstop,” says Dom. “It doesn’t get much worse than this.” Now married for 20 years, the couple were relative newlyweds when Max came along and until he was four months old they had little reason to suspect anything was amiss with their first-born child. Then, one evening, Dom noticed a funny movement as he changed his four-month-old son’s nappy. “I thought, ‘That’s a bit odd,’ then I saw the same thing again as I was undressing him the following evening,” he recalls. Concerned, he and Steph took Max to the doctor, who, after a series of tests, confirmed that he was suffering from infantile spasms. Over time, these progressed into frequent and violent seizures that had a catastrophic effect on Max’s growing brain: as well as the distress of observing the fits, the couple also had to confront the reality that his development would be severely stunted. “You go through a period of mourning,” Dom reflects. “That was probably the hardest time – you know you’ve lost the child that all your hopes and dreams were invested in, the son you were going to play football with, have that first pint with. All that goes straight out of the window.” His wife puts it more bluntly when she says, “It feels like the death of the future of your child.” Over the years the couple and their 15-year-old daughter, Honor, have become accustomed to the vast emotional ups and downs that Max’s condition brings with it. "It can change plans, end plans, ruin plans. It can change everything in a heartbeat,” says Dom. Running parallel to that, meanwhile, has been the frustrating, on-going quest to find the best drugs to manage their son’s condition: at the moment Max, who attends a special boarding school in term time, takes four different drugs. Yet none has completely managed to control his violent seizures. “Every time you try a new drug, there’s always a bit of hope that comes with it,” says Dom. “We’ve been going through trying new drugs, dumping them, trying them again. Each time you hope that this is the one that will make a real difference.” It’s a quest that has taken on heightened urgency, for the risk of sudden death from epilepsy increases as Max approaches adulthood. “It means they have a big seizure and they never wake up,” Dom explains. “We don’t dwell on it, otherwise I’d end up blowing my head off or crying my eyes out. We’ve had to sort of mentally box it off. Our focus is on improving his quality of life.” View oEmbed on the source website And, after speaking to others in their position, they’ve encountered plenty of evidence that this is possible. One of the most moving parts of the documentary comes when the couple talk via Skype to Charlotte Caldwell, mother of 12-year-old Billy Caldwell, who was given the first ever NHS prescription for medical marijuana to help control his epilepsy. She tells the Parkers that while it’s far from a cure, it helps to manage his condition. But it’s not just her message but her interaction with Billy, who comes to hug his mother while she’s chatting, that moves Steph to tears. “We’ve never had that from Max,” she says. Their meetings with other parents in their position and with medical specialists left them convinced that pharmaceutical-grade cannabis oil could help manage Max’s condition. Yet despite new legislation allowing specialists to prescribe to suitable candidates, actually obtaining properly licensed CBD oil has proved impossible so far. “Along with everyone else we assumed we could run along to the GP, say, ‘Can we please have medical cannabis for our son?’ and it would be a case of ‘Here’s your prescription. Nip along to the chemist and there you go,’ ” says Dom. “But of course there have to be protocols – who can prescribe it and supply it, who is going to monitor it, who’s going to pay for it – and setting up those protocols could take months, possibly years. It has to be done properly. It has to be prescribed with the supervision of a specialist in epilepsy and it has to be a proper, regulated pharmaceutical-grade product. So it’s going to take time." Nonetheless, he admits the delay is frustrating. “Max has just gone back to school and we know we could get a call any day to say he died in the night,” says Dom. “So knowing there is something out there that could improve his chances… it’s hard. You have four pretty grim chemical drugs and you think a little pot of herb can’t be worse than that horror show. So if one or two drops of oil could take these things out of his body – well then, that would make me the happiest man alive.” Steph and Dom: Can Cannabis Save Our Son? airs at 9pm on Channel 4 on Monday 28th January
How one BBC doc tracked down this Sottish woman’s lost long family in Sri Lanka
As seen in Searching for Mum, Ria Sloan was born in Sri Lanka but adopted and brought up in Scotland – now she’s trying to find her birth mother…
If you’re a fan of the TV reunion series Long Lost Family, you’ll know that behind the moving stories of disconnected family members often lies a trail of impeccable record-keeping navigated by the show’s meticulous researchers. For those people who were born thousands of miles away from the UK, however, the challenge of tracing their past frequently proves far more complex. All too often the records that may shed light on their adoption have been lost, destroyed or even faked. And that’s the distressing reality facing four British women as they return to Sri Lanka and India to trace their birth mothers for a moving two-part documentary in the BBC’s Big British Asian Summer starting this week. Everything you need to know about BBC2’s Searching for Mum: Sri Lanka “Shakespeare is so Bollywood”: Anita Rani shares her love for India’s cinema classics Sign up for the free RadioTimes.com newsletter View oEmbed on the source website All four were adopted at, or soon after, birth, and raised in the UK – and all are gripped by a longing to know more about their background and meet the mother who gave birth to them. At 27, Ria Sloan is the youngest of the four featured. A chef who lives with her girlfriend Kat near Inverness, Ria had a happy childhood in the Scottish Highlands, raised by parents who adopted her when she was just three weeks old from war-ravaged Sri Lanka via a Dutch adoption agency. “I knew from fairly early on I was adopted,” she says. “I remember asking Dad why I was a different colour, and that’s when he told me I came from Sri Lanka. I didn’t fully understand, but I accepted it. Initially I wasn’t that curious.” That changed as she entered her teenage years. “I was one of the very few Asians at secondary school, so while I’d always stood out, those differences became more obvious. I started to wonder what my life would have been like if I’d stayed in Sri Lanka.” Just a few documents and one photograph connected her to that life: a picture of Ria’s birth mother holding her as a newborn, along with a letter that described her as “unmarried, illiterate and unemployed” and incapable of supporting Ria. The letter also stated she didn’t want any further contact. “I remember being very upset by that,” Ria says. “There was a rejection there that I didn’t know how to process.” It took years for her even to try – only when she met Kat three years ago did Ria finally feel able to fully explore her past. “Now, looking back, I realise there was always this huge question mark – but it wasn’t until I was in a really secure relationship that I felt able to try to answer it,” she says. Having taken the decision to return to Sri Lanka to embark on her search, Ria knew there were no guarantees. Omens did not immediately look promising: on arrival she had to confront the reality that not only was record-keeping often shambolic, but that the records that did exist were not to be relied on, with many adoption agencies faking both paperwork and accompanying photographs. For Ria, whose only palpable link to her birth was her one photo, this was devastating. “I had put a lot of trust into that photograph – it was really all I had – and then suddenly I didn’t know if it meant anything. That was very hard. I knew there was corruption but I hadn’t ever really related it to me. It felt pretty shocking.” When the hospital cited on her birth certificate as her place of birth said it had no record of her, the prospects looked bleaker still – until Ria learnt that Lulelamulla, which was given as her mother’s home town, did exist. Lulelamulla is a remote village around an hour’s drive south of the capital, Colombo, and Ria arrived there to discover that an extended family sharing her given birth name still lived there – in the house where she was born. In the space of a few hours she had gone from having no blood relations she knew of to a grandfather, aunts, uncles and cousins and – most movingly of all – a mum. “It was quite overwhelming,” she says. “I had no idea I was going to be presented with so many family members – and to hear that they already knew about me was really special. It was a turning point mentally in terms of everything I thought I knew. View oEmbed on the source website Her birth mother, Sumithra, told Ria how, abandoned by her partner and with her parents unwilling to support her, she was left with no choice but to give up her baby and had cried for three months afterwards. “More than anything, I was just really happy to know the truth,” says Ria now. “That was enough for me in that moment.” She stayed for two days, marvelling at the contrast between her birth family’s rudimentary life and her own and yet also at the family resemblances that linked them. “I did feel very privileged when I looked at the circumstances in which they lived,” she says. “At the same time I felt very at home there. Pictures of my cousins when they were really young are almost identical to family snaps of me and that was an amazing feeling.” She has stayed in touch since returning to the UK and plans to go back to Sri Lanka as soon as she can. “The distance means it’s not easy. My mum can’t speak any English or read and write, but I do video calls with my cousins and we send each other pictures,” she says. “I’m very aware that we live very different lives, but that doesn’t matter. I have a strong yearning to go back.” Her British parents have been nothing but supportive. “I told them this is no reflection on them – I just needed to find out who I was.” It’s a discovery that has brought Ria renewed peace. “This big question mark that was a big weight on my shoulders – it’s now gone,” she says. “I totally underestimated how important my identity was until I found it.” Searching for Mum: Sri Lanka is on Thursday 9.00pm BBC2
Meet the Manchester Arena bomb survivor attending the royal wedding
A year after she was left traumatised by the bomb attack, Amelia Thompson has received a wedding invite from Prince Harry
Lisa Newton admits that when she received a late-night email informing her that she and her 12-year-old daughter Amelia had been invited to Windsor Castle to be part of the royal wedding, she initially thought it was a hoax. “I read it on my phone and was so shocked that I dropped it on the floor,” she laughs. “I couldn’t believe it was genuine.” The best royal TV specials marking Prince Harry and Meghan Markle’s wedding How to watch the Royal Wedding of Prince Harry and Meghan Markle RadioTimes.com newsletter: get the latest TV and entertainment news direct to your inbox View oEmbed on the source website The email, from the Lord Lieutenant of South Yorkshire, was followed the next day by a phone call from Kensington Palace, at which point Lisa felt confident enough to break the news to her daughter. “Part of me still couldn’t believe it,” she says. “At the end of the day we are just an ordinary family.” Perhaps – albeit one that has been through a terrible ordeal. On 22 May last year, Amelia and her mum were in the crowd at the Ariana Grande concert at Manchester Arena when a device was detonated, killing 22 people. While Amelia was uninjured, she was left deeply traumatised by the horrendous scenes she witnessed and is still undergoing counselling. “Doing day-to-day stuff is still hard for her,” says her mum. “Going to the shops, to the cinema – in any normal environment you can sense her nerves, she’s questioning and looking.” The bomb trauma came after a difficult few years for Amelia: she had lost her uncle to cancer and her father Wayne has undergone major heart surgery. The concert was meant to be a treat but instead became its own nightmare. Her anguish was so great in the minutes after the explosion that she damaged her vocal cords through screaming. “Her screams of fear left her unable to speak properly for weeks,” says Lisa. “She required intensive speech therapy to help regain her voice. More than that, the bombing really changed her. She was always very confident and loud, then suddenly she was very withdrawn.” One thing has made a difference however: last November Amelia was offered the chance to help out at a local stable. In return she has been learning to ride, and has struck up a close friendship with a three-year-old called Viktor. “They have bonded so much,” says Lisa. “He’s too young to be ridden, but she goes up twice a day to feed and groom him. He loves her as much as she loves him. It has made such a difference. When she first went there she was very withdrawn. Now she is more chatty and outgoing, although she’s not quite the girl she was before.” The wedding invitation has given Amelia another reason to look forward, not back. “She’s really excited about something for the first time in a while,” says her mum. “Even now, part of her can’t believe she’s been chosen.” Amelia will be one of 2,640 members of the public specially invited to observe the wedding comings and goings from the private precincts of Windsor Castle. “I was speechless when Mum told me – I thought it wasn’t real,” says Amelia. Hard to absorb, too, has been the interest from the world’s press, with broadcasters queuing up to tell her story. “It’s been a bit mad,” says Lisa. Like many guests, however, her daughter’s focus is deciding on her outfit, as yet unpurchased. “I’m definitely getting something new,” says Amelia. “I would like a prom dress with details at the top, although I am not sure if I want it short or long – I don’t want it to be too fussy.” Lisa, meanwhile, will watch on TV: in a lovely touch, Amelia asked her mum to forfeit her chance to attend and has given her plus-one to Sharon Goodman, whose 15-year-old granddaughter, Olivia Campbell-Hardy, was killed in the Manchester attack. “She’s going through a hard time, so I just wanted to put a smile on her face,” Amelia says. She’s also supporting charity appeals in memory of Olivia, Liv’s Trust, and the Royal Manchester Children’s Hospital. Both mother and daughter are all too aware that, with poignant timing, the wedding comes just three days before the one-year anniversary of the bombing, although neither has decided how to mark it. “We’d like it to be with some of the other families,” says Lisa. “Either way, I think it will have helped enormously that Amelia has been part of something so joyous beforehand. Amelia agrees: “The last couple of years have been difficult. But it feels like things are getting better for me now.” The Royal Wedding is set to start at 12PM on Saturday 19th May, with coverage beginning early in the morning and lasting well into the afternoon Sign up for the free RadioTimes.com newsletter
Royal Wedding: BBC presenter Kirsty Young explains the details to look out for
The host also talks about the difficulties fronting the six-hour broadcast marathon – and why Harry and Meghan are "showing a rather different way of being royal"
As any live-broadcast presenter will testify, it’s not always possible to know quite what will unfold once the cameras start to roll. Kirsty Young does know one thing, though: ahead of a six-hour broadcast marathon as one of the anchors of the BBC’s live coverage of the wedding of Prince Harry to Meghan Markle, she will be getting her hair done at the crack of dawn. “There will be an early call time, so I will definitely be at the hairdresser’s very early in the morning,” she laughs. Until the conclusion of the carriage procession after the wedding, it will be Young – alongside Dermot O’Leary – who will present the BBC’s coverage of a wedding that will be watched around the world. How to watch the Royal Wedding of Prince Harry and Meghan Markle Meet the winner of our competition to design the Radio Times Royal Wedding cover Sign up for the free RadioTimes.com newsletter View oEmbed on the source website Huw Edwards, at his post on the roof of the Guard Room of St George’s Chapel, will describe the wedding ceremony itself. While cameras from all the main UK broadcasters will be positioned along the route of the procession, only BBC cameras are allowed inside the chapel. They will then feed pictures to other broadcasters, both in the UK and globally, who in turn will be jostling for position outside. “I thank God I’m not at the logistics end of things – the broadcast presence from around the world will be phenomenal,” says Young. “I heard that one American channel alone is sending over 15 anchors!” The royal wedding is certainly a “big gig” – not that Young isn’t used to those. Although, as she quickly points out, “Often big gigs can be dramatic news stories. The lovely thing about this is that it’s something joyful.” Both joyful and informal – relatively, at least: the usual pomp and ceremony notwithstanding, this is a royal occasion that is parting from tradition, so it seems fitting that Young and O’Leary have been charged with providing the main BBC television commentary. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/3/2018/05/GettyImages-906665940-1-3fb2068.jpg" width="3425" height="2334" alt="CARDIFF, WALES - JANUARY 18: Prince Harry and Meghan Markle watch a performance by a Welsh choir in the banqueting hall during a visit to Cardiff Castle on January 18, 2018 in Cardiff, Wales. (Photo by Ben Birchall - WPA Pool / Getty Images) TL" title="Prince Harry visit to Cardiff Castle" /> Their job, says Young, will be to try to bring into people’s sitting rooms a flavour of the excitement of being there. “We’ll be trying to capture the mood. And of course there’s the arrival of the guests. While there aren’t the reams of foreign dignitaries you normally get for an occasion like this [no politicians, and that includes the Prime Minister, have been invited], it’s likely that it will be a glamorous crowd, so the people and hat-watching opportunities will be top drawer.” The absence of dignitaries from the guest list is just one way in which this wedding will differ from that of Prince William to Kate Middleton. Details released by Kensington Palace reveal a number of personal touches introduced by Prince Harry and Meghan. The service, for example – led by the Archbishop of Canterbury, Justin Welby – will feature a gospel choir; and it will be Meghan’s mother, Doria Ragland, who will travel with her by car to the chapel. Harry has also ensured that Princess Diana’s side of the family is prominent by asking her sister, his aunt Lady Jane Fellowes, to give a reading. “It’s an interesting change in protocol,” says Young. “It’s putting the mother of the bride at the centre. The way they are organising it feels creative, it feels modern and contemporary.” Which is one way of describing Harry and Meghan. “They’re showing a rather different way of being royal,” says Young. “Of course you want them to be glamorous and special, but they’re doing that in a very modern way. “They are both in their 30s and have lived a life, which makes them much more typical of most couples these days – although of course they are entirely untypical in other ways.” View oEmbed on the source website Young also predicts a few more surprises, too. Will one of them be that Meghan, unlike the Duchess of Cambridge, pledges to obey her husband? “We shall see – that’s all part of the fascination, isn’t it?” she grins. “What I am sure of is there will be some lovely original touches.” Having worked on a documentary released after the couple’s engagement, Young was left with the impression of a couple “very much in love”. “I got a sense of two grown-ups who are mad about each other, but who also have their heads screwed on,” she says. “You get the sense that they understand the giant step they are taking. They have their feet firmly planted on the ground. And that is part of what has made people warm to them.” Not everyone: there are naysayers, among them Germaine Greer, who has described this future member of the royal family as a “bolter” who won’t last the course. Young is too canny to speculate, but it’s clear she doesn’t agree. “We can’t possibly comment in that way on someone we don’t know intimately,” she says. “What I will say is that it’s a huge thing for a young woman to take on what the royal family entails and I think that you must have to love someone very much to do that. What is lovely about this occasion is that, ultimately, for all the ceremony that we do so splendidly, at the centre of this we have an extremely tender love story between two people.” Sign up for the free RadioTimes.com newsletter
A CNN news anchor explains why Americans are so obsessed with Meghan, Harry and the royal wedding
From the glamour to "the diversity question", CNN's Richard Quest talks through what's made the royal event so popular across the Atlantic
It’s being dubbed the friendly invasion – scores and scores of American journalists and broadcasters over here to witness one of their own getting married into the British royal family. Celebrated news anchor and reporter for America’s CNN channel, Richard Quest, is no stranger to covering big British royal events. The Queen Mother’s funeral, the Diamond Jubilee and the wedding of Prince William and Catherine all saw him in London reporting back to an eager American public. How to watch the Royal Wedding of Prince Harry and Meghan Markle Meet the winner of our competition to design the Radio Times Royal Wedding cover Sign up for the free RadioTimes.com newsletter Most observers believe the US audience figures for Prince Harry and Meghan Markle’s wedding will outstrip the 23 million who watched Prince William tie the knot in 2011. View oEmbed on the source website Quest confirms the interest from across the Atlantic is huge. “Harry may be a more distant heir to the throne but he’s extremely popular in the US, and never more so since he chose to marry an American. “So even though this won’t be the big set-piece occasion – it’s not Westminster Abbey, not the ‘full monty’ – people are still excited about the royal prince and the girl from LA. I was in Miami last week and people were stopping me to ask me about it.” What he calls an “invasion” of US broadcasters – CNN alone is deploying a staff of more than 30 – is, in part, a response to the desire of their viewers for light relief. “There’s so much tough, difficult news at the moment that, rightly or wrongly, everyone has latched onto this wedding for a bit of glamour. The public see her as a real-life American princess.” Their interest is also fuelled by what Quest calls “the diversity question”. He says: “It’s an issue that reaches almost obsessional levels in the USA, and while of course it’s awful that we’re still talking about this in 2018, there are undeniably deep race issues in the US today, so Meghan’s African-American heritage is a focus especially for that community. “There is interest in the fact that it’s not just as an American but a mixed-race American that she’s bringing something new to an old institution.” Meghan’s fame is in marked contrast to her pre-Harry days. “She was a perfectly respectable actress with a decent portfolio, but was she well known? Not really. Now of course she finds herself in the biggest real-life role she’ll ever play, and I think she knows exactly what to do with it. “She brings a professionalism in dealing with the public spotlight that even Wills and Harry, who have been doing it all their life, don’t have. She knows how to tickle the cameras under the chin.” Sign up for the free RadioTimes.com newsletter.
Class of Mum and Dad: how a group of adults coped with going back to school
17 parents were sent back to the classroom for a C4 documentary. One of the returning student tells us what he got out of the experience
With documentary cameras now, seemingly, ever present in school classrooms, it was only a matter of time before a broadcaster came up with a twist on the observational format. Cue Channel 4’s Class of Mum and Dad, which sees 17 parents – and one grandparent – form their own class at Blackrod Primary School in Bolton and study the year six curriculum (for 10- to 11-year-olds). The six-week-long experiment – in which the parents wore school uniform and were subjected to the same rules – would horrify many people, but not Bill Bones. Instead, the 70-year-old grandfather to Jessica, nine, and five-year-old Jack, jumped at what he calls a “once-in-a-lifetime opportunity” to experience what happens behind the school gates. New on Netflix: the best movies and TV shows released every day Everything coming to Netflix in April 2018 View oEmbed on the source website “My wife Gloria and I have always been hands-on grandparents and, since my stepdaughter passed away two years ago at the age of 34 from cancer, the children have stayed with us several nights a week,” he says. “I’ve always helped them with their homework, and as a school governor I pride myself on having a good overview of the school, but there’s no better way to really get a sense of how somewhere works than to immerse yourself: sitting in the odd lesson doesn’t give you a full picture.” Bill’s own school days, of course, are a long way behind him. His time at a Staffordshire primary in the 1950s was not a happy one. “I was a bright boy but I had an awful stammer, which meant I struggled to get my voice heard,” he says. “No one tried to tackle the stammer and it meant I was also bullied quite badly.” Discipline was also harsh – and frequently administered. “It was the era of the cane and the hurled blackboard rubber and I was on the receiving end of both, often for fairly minor infractions like not concentrating properly,” he says. He left school at 15 with little in the way of qualifications, although he went on to set up his own business. “It made me realise that although education is important, you shouldn’t get too hung up on exam grades,” he adds. View oEmbed on the source website Like many of his fellow classmates, Bill had little idea what to expect of his return to school. “We all had to sit a test on the very first day to see where we were at in terms of maths and comprehension, and I think the level of expectation took some parents by surprise. A few got really upset as they couldn’t answer quite a lot of the questions.” Bill, it turns out, fared entirely as he predicted. “I assumed I would be fine in maths and anything technical and do less well on the English and comprehension side, and it worked out exactly that way. I actually had to be taught to write properly in what they call script or joined-up handwriting, as I write in print. I didn’t expect to be learning to write again at 70,” he laughs. It wasn’t the only surprise: the sheer number of subjects taught in the year group also took him aback. “Over the course of six weeks we did everything from maths and comprehension to art, geography and dancing. It was jam-packed. I was also surprised by the depth of knowledge expected of the children in our year, particularly in maths. It was a reminder that whatever the talk about declining standards, I think they are higher than they have ever been.” He was equally impressed with the quality of the lessons. “One exercise involved writing our own book, from designing its cover in our art lesson to writing it,” he says. “I can’t remember anything creative like that from my school days.” Less impressive, alas, was the behaviour of some of his classmates: on one occasion, Bill recalls, the head teacher “tore a strip” off the grown-up class, telling them that reception and year one had been better behaved during a fire drill. “There was a bit of silly bad behaviour, and I think there was an element of a couple of the parents acting up for the cameras and hoping they could make a name for themselves,” he says. “The majority, though, were interested in doing it properly, even if they did play up a bit sometimes.” As for Bill – he didn’t have the energy to misbehave. “Mentally it was actually pretty draining,” he explains. “Every night I fell asleep as my wife was getting the tea ready.” Class of Mum and Dad is on Tuesday 8:00pm C4
The lone cameraman who filmed The Fight for Mosul on the toughest battle of his life
Battle-scarred filmmaker Olivier Sarbil was embedded with Iraqi special forces as they took on Isis, and captured the brutality and the humanity of war
In the opening moments of The Fight for Mosul, a fly on the wall documentary about the ferocious nine month battle to reclaim the Iraqi city from Isis, a window is blown in by gunfire and one soldier narrowly avoids being killed. The message is clear: the viewer is not to be spared the brutal reality of urban combat in a film which gives us almost unprecedented access to the front line, captured by one lone cameraman Olivier Sarbil. Sarbil is no stranger to warfare, having covered conflicts all over the world from Mali and the Ukraine to Syria and Libya – where he was horribly injured as he filmed the 2011 battle for Sirte. Caught in the blast of an RPG, his face, leg and arm were torn to shreds and he spent eight months in hospital. Yet Sarbil says that it was Mosul which proved to be his most punishing mission yet. Embedded with a ten strong Iraqi special forces team for weeks at a time over nine months he slept and ate alongside them as they moved from one house to the next – some abandoned, some occupied by civilians– narrowly escaping injury himself among the car bombs, snipers and suicide bombers that were the daily reality of life in the beleaguered city. His extraordinary access allowed him to capture the ferocious reality of the fight to take back the city of Mosul, but also the more intimate moments of life behind the front line. Without a translator, and speaking no Arabic it was an often lonely quest, but one Sarbil felt was vital. "We’ve tried to get something different with this film – something more visceral," he says. "So yes, we see the horrible reality of battle, but we also see the soldiers talking to their girlfriends, taking a smoke. "I think it’s rare to see Arab fighters portrayed in this way. I wanted to show that they were the same as any other soldier – that they live like us, they love like us, they suffer like us." What gave you the idea for this film? A few months earlier I had met the squadron’s captain Anmar in Fallujah. He spoke a little English and as we talked I had a strong sense there was a film to be made about his squadron – young men who were only in their early twenties but ready to sacrifice their lives to reclaim their country. I told him to stay in touch as I wanted to tell his story and he contacted me two weeks before the offensive in Mosul was launched. I flew to Iraq and went to meet them where they were stationed. How did you achieve such intimate access? It would never have happened without the overall commander of Anmar’s unit. We had to build a relationship, and we had to do it without language as he didn’t speak English. We had two weeks watching each other and trying to get that common understanding about why I was there. Once he had accepted me he was unquestioningly on my side. Did it take time to build trust with Anmar’s men? They were definitely wary at first. When we were editing the film back in London and doing the translation you could sometimes hear them talking about me – "what is he doing? why is he filming us eating?’’. But over time we built a strong relationship. After a while my camera became invisible to them. I think the fact I having been wounded helped. I have many scars and they are testament to the fact that I know about suffering. In the film we see soldiers sometimes behaving with a degree of brutality towards the civilian population Isis was hiding among the civilian population – among pregnant women and children– so the squad were naturally suspicious of anyone they encountered. It was stressful, and in the film there are a few moments where they don’t look their best. At the same time this is the reality of war: people do extraordinary things one day and the next they show the worst of themselves. This film is about the many shades of grey in combat. And much as I grew to care for the men, you can never lose sight of the fact that you are there to do a job, not a PR offensive on their behalf. Aside from the daily reality of living in a war zone what were some of the hardest challenges? The isolation. Aside from Anmar no-one spoke English. I was able to communicate by body language, but ultimately there was a barrier, so mentally it was very hard– the only things I had to keep me company was my podcast. The logistics were difficult too – I didn’t always have electricity to charge my equipment and I went two weeks without a shower. In the film there is a fast moving sequence where, briefly, we see a fighter who has been beheaded. What made you include this image? He was a Daesh fighter the squad found on the street in the aftermath of one battle. There are not many dead bodies in the film and there’s no message behind that picture. I just felt it was important in that small sequence to show the reality of war. You also know that first hand I was with a group of rebels in the heart of very fierce fighting when an RPG blew up. Four of the five strong team were killed and I survived with one other man. I woke up in an open field with half of my face hanging off. I was literally in pieces. I remember the rebels standing over me crying, saying "please don’t die’". On the fourth day a French sanitary jet came to pick me up and I spent eight months in a military hospital in France. I had 35 surgeries, I lost a finger and it took me months to regain the use of my hands. They will never be the same: I was a pianist and I loved to draw so that is the one thing I regret. But you learn to live with it. Knowing the risks – and the consequences – did you feel scared? Of course– but the biggest risk assessment is the one you make it before you get on the plane. If you want to cover this kind of violent battle, you make the decision before you go that once you are there you will place your trust in the men you are with. You also have to know when to get out. Each time I left, it happened in a heartbeat – I would pack my bags, call the guys back at base and tell them I had to leave. Has covering this conflict left a legacy? Absolutely. I don’t have flashbacks, but the brutality of the conflict is something you carry within you. Of the ten men squad I was with more than half were wounded or killed. Part of you wonders why you have been spared – there’s no reason other than luck, and that can eat away at you. What drives you to take such risks? I am not a war junkie. I’m just following the story, and if it is in a war zone and I have good access I will go. But I have to admit there is an egotism to this kind of work, and sometimes it is harder for the ones that love you, like my wife, who are left behind. After Mosul I can feel something changing. It was the toughest battle I’ve ever covered and I find myself wondering if I can go to war again. The Fight for Mosul is on Channel 4 on Tuesday 7th November at 10pm
Saving Lives at Sea: how a family day out at the beach turned into a fight for life
Ben Biltcliffe and his daughter Grace are just two of many who are saved by RNLI lifeboat crews every year
Desperately clutching on to his 11-year-old daughter Grace as they were buffeted by waves nearly a mile from the shore, Ben Biltcliffe had a terrifying thought. “It struck me that perhaps no one was coming,” he recalls. “It was a frightening and lonely moment.” By then Ben had been treading water in the freezing North Sea for nearly an hour after going to his daughter’s rescue when she was caught in a riptide that swept her – and then him – out to sea. In fact help was on its way in the form of an RNLI lifeboat crew, who undertook a dramatic rescue amid the wind and waves. A few minutes later, Ben believes, and it may have been too late. His experience – one of several shown in Saving Lives at Sea, the returning documentary series looking at the RNLI’s vital work – underlines how quickly a sunny afternoon by the sea can so nearly end in tragedy. It’s something Ben, 47, from Bedale, North Yorkshire, now knows only too well. In the late summer of 2015, together with Grace, his former partner Alannah and their 12-year-old son Peter, he was enjoying a family afternoon on the beach at Robin Hood’s Bay on the north-east coast, without an inkling of the dangers in the water. He recalls how his daughter was holding his hand as they jumped up and down in the waves. “She then let go of me, although she was still within arm’s reach,” Ben recalls now. “But the next thing I saw was that she’d gone and was being pushed along.” Unbeknown to Ben, Grace had been caught in a riptide, an unpredictable current that moves directly away from the shore – and as he went after his daughter, he was also caught up in it. “The sand was disappearing from beneath my feet with every step I took – it was like walking up an egg timer,” he says. “When I reached Grace it was up to my chest, and you could feel the force underneath.” At this point, relatively unperturbed, Ben told his daughter they would have to swim to shore – only to find they couldn’t. “I quickly realised that we weren’t going in, we were going out. The current was so strong.” The shoreline now invisible through the breakers, all Ben could do was try to calm his daughter as the waves crashed over their heads. “I tried to gently cup her under the chin and put her head on my chest like they teach you in lifesaving at school but the surf was too strong. Grace was really panicking and trying to climb on top of me, which was pushing me under. I could feel my own panic rising as I knew I wasn’t going to be able to keep this up for much longer.” Racking his brain, Ben came up with another idea. “I was wearing an old cotton shirt and realised that if I took it off I might be able to trap a bit of air in it to create a makeshift float.” Thinking it was one thing, executing it quite another. “I had to push Grace away to take the shirt off and flap it above me to create an air pocket. I was terrified she would be carried further out, but I felt I had no choice.” The “grapefruit-sized” float, which he placed under Grace’s head, did at least help, although it was also at the mercy of the waves. “It would get squashed and I would have to start over again.” As father and daughter floated, facing in opposite directions with their right arms interlocked, Ben shouting encouragement to his daughter over the wind and waves as the minutes ticked by. “By now we were level with the headland, which I later learned was about a mile out to sea. I was thinking, ‘Maybe this is it’. But your survival instinct kicks in. All I could focus on was not letting Grace go.” By now father and daughter had been in the water for more than 45 minutes, and Grace was complaining of the cold. “It was a horrible moment, as there was nothing I could do. My arms were exhausted from supporting her and I wasn’t sure how much longer I could go on.” Thankfully, minutes later an RNLI lifeboat raced alongside. “I’ve never been so glad to see anybody in my life,” says Ben. “I pushed Grace into the boat and I had nothing left. I went limp.” Ben and Grace were then airlifted by helicopter to hospital, where they were treated for hypothermia. Nearly two years on, Grace still cannot talk about her ordeal, although it hasn’t put her off the water. “Thankfully she still enjoys swimming,” says Ben. He remains eternally grateful to the crew who came to their rescue. “As they pulled me into the boat, one of them said I was a hero for keeping my daughter alive. But to me they’re the heroes because they volunteer to put themselves in harm’s way for others.” Saving Lives at Sea returns on Wednesday 16 August at 8pm on BBC2
Joanna Lumley on India: A land of tech billionaires and untouchables, breathtaking beauty and giant rats
Lumley, who was born in Kashmir, discovers the country in a new three-part series on ITV
Joanna Lumley loves India but she also knows her limits. Asked to front a new three-part series about the country, she wondered whether she could do it justice. “You could spend six million years and you wouldn’t get anywhere near really understanding India,” she says. “It’s elusive, forever changing.” The actress is better placed than many to understand this: she was born in Srinagar, Kashmir, in the last days of the Raj and her family ties go back several generations. It allows her to bring a personal touch to a series in which, criss-crossing this vast nation, she explores India’s extraordinary diversity and contradictions in the year it marks the 70th anniversary of its independence. Joanna and her older sister Aelene were largely raised in rural Kent – to which the Lumley family returned from India just after partition – but grew up listening to stories of their parents’ colonial life amid the mountains and clear air of Kashmir. Their father, Major James Lumley, had served with the 6th Gurkha Rifles, and while his memories were coloured by his experiences in Burma during the war, there were many happy, colourful expat tales of polo, dogs and horses. “There were these heavenly stories, like the one about a parade where suddenly the General’s horse decided to go backwards through the marching troops,” Lumley, 71, recalls. “Daddy would cry with laughter telling it.” Meanwhile, her mother Thya had grown up enjoying life as a diplomat’s daughter in Sikkim, in the north east, where Joanna’s maternal grandfather, Lieutenant Colonel James Weir, was political officer. While she was educated in England, Thya spent her formative years at the Governer’s Lodge in Sikkim’s capital, Gangtok. While filming, Lumley was able to visit her mother’s childhood home, catching a glimpse of the exact spot where the eight-year-old Thya is captured astride her beloved pony in a treasured black and white photograph. “Some things have changed – the trees have grown, there are more buildings – but in essence it was the same,” she says now. “It was very, very touching. There was something special about being there with the memory of my mother as a little girl. You get a glimpse into another life.” It is a life that is not viewed, of course, altogether kindly through the prism of history. And while the programme stays away from partition itself, Lumley acknowledges that the legacy of British rule is equally tricky territory. “First of all we must start by saying that I don’t think there’s a country in the world who would relish being ruled by outsiders,” she says. “But at the same time there were obvious things that the British did in India, too: railways, schooling, law courts. They brought in a kind of civil service and the bureaucracy, which Indians have taken to like ducks to water. These are the good stories. The bad stories are, in essence, that nobody wants to be ruled by somebody else.” For all that, what she discovered on her travels is that, for most Indians, India’s colonial past is now largely an irrelevance. “Most of the population today never knew India under British rule, so it’s a part of history for them, they don’t talk about it any more than we sit here talking about the Second World War,” Lumley says. “We know about it, but it doesn’t affect us. So those we met were always thrilled to hear that we were from Britain, but there was no overweening sense of either curiosity or shame or anger or resentment.” It was, instead, less the legacy of occupation but India’s contradictions that struck her most: the vast gulf between rich and poor, the curious mix of modern and medieval thinking. Today, the maharajahs Lumley’s parents described to her, with their sacks of uncut emeralds and dinner services of solid gold, have been replaced with tech billionaires. But in both cases there is a common thread, their lives playing out just whiskers away from what Lumley calls “unbelievable squalor and poverty”. One homeless community she visited in Delhi lies under a newly built multimillion-pound flyover. “Overhead, there is this city of unimaginable wealth going about its business. Below, there were rats the size of cats just running over our feet and sewage and filth, dogs scavenging. For these people there is no work, no hope at all. Some people have lived there for decades,” she says. “It’s terribly hard to reconcile.” Meeting the country’s Dalit community – the untouchables – was also heart-breaking for her. “One of Gandhi’s tenets was that there should be no such thing as an untouchable caste. And everybody adores Gandhi, but time passes and suddenly it’s a case of, ‘Oh, well, he probably meant they should do the sweeping and the cleaning.’ So actually the untouchables have not disappeared at all.” And while India has proved forward-thinking enough to become the first in the world to recognise transgender people as a third gender, in reality it has given them little in the way of status. On camera, Lumley meets three transgender girls who tell her they are only accepted by their family because of the money they bring in through dancing and sex work. “You can see the complications for families – they are poor people, desperate, and what good is a transgender creature, because they want either a hardworking man or a marriageable girl, but God, I felt for those girls,” she says. “One of them was going off to turn a few tricks that night. They charge nothing, ten rupees [about 12p].” The counterpoint to these poignant stories was both the country’s physical beauty and the spirit of its people. Lumley recalls the ethereal, gold and peach “cow-dust light” of Gujarat’s Aravalli hills, created by the soft clouds of dust sent into the air by returning livestock as the sun sets. “You think, is there anything lovelier than this?” More than anything, it is the warmth of the many Indians she met, particularly the poor, that has stayed with her since her return. “The thing I hold in my heart is the generosity of people who’ve got absolutely nothing: their courtesy. There’s a kind of extraordinary grace, I’ve noticed. It is an honour for you to visit their house and to sit on their special seat. It touched me enormously.” She hopes the series will inspire viewers to discover this for themselves. “I want people not to be afraid,” she says. “There’s a kind of nervousness among people who like to have a hot shower every day in the same place. And I want to say, sometimes you might have to wash in a bucket but that’s OK, we’re only people. Be a little bit brave and bold. You will experience something wonderful.” Joanna Lumley’s India is on Wednesday at 9pm on ITV Radio Times Travel India's Golden Triangle, Bombay and Varanasi, 8 nights from £1,599pp. Enjoy a journey from Delhi's stunning glories to Agra, 'City of Love', and watch the sunrise over the peerless Taj. Explore 'Pink City' Jaipur; stay a night in a Rajasthani palace; watch the faithful at sacred Varanasi and discover historic, colourful Mumbai. This escorted tour unveils some of India's most breathtaking sights. What's included: Explore Old and New Delhi Journey to Agra, the City of Love, and visit its vast Red Fort See the Taj Mahal at sunset Visit the deserted city of Fatehpur Sikri Take a jeep ride up to Amber Fort Enjoy the sights of Jaipur Varanasi, on the banks of the Ganges, and Sarnath - two of India's most sacred sites Eight nights' half-board accommodation at excellent hotels in Delhi (1 night), Agra (1), Jaipur (2), Patan (1), Varanasi (2) and Mumbai (1) Lunch in Delhi on Day Two A farewell dinner in Mumbai Return flights from the UK to Delhi, returning from Mumbai Internal flights from Delhi to Varanasi, and from Varanasi to Mumbai Click here for the full itinerary and to book Browse all India escorted tours and holidays at: travel.radiotimes.com
What do Good Morning Britain’s Piers Morgan and Susanna Reid really think of each other?
Is their breakfast TV partnership really a "great unrequited love story", as Morgan tells it?
ITV has a history of landing big-name, big-bucks stars to add substance to its early morning breakfast offering. Who can forget the ill-starred Adrian Chiles and Christine Bleakley – both poached from the BBC – who sank without trace in 2011? So when Piers Morgan joined the other BBC defector Susanna Reid on the Good Morning Britain sofa a year ago, there were some cynics who believed he might not go the distance. View oEmbed on the source website Could their breezy, sometimes flirty, on-screen demeanour win over viewers from the rival BBC show, where the boyishly enthusiastic Dan Walker has filled the shoes of Mr Dependable, Bill Turnbull? So far, so as you were. ITV says its audience is steady at around 600,000, where it was when Morgan arrived, whereas BBC Breakfast is still getting a daily average of 1.5 million viewers. Morgan and Reid reflect on the past 12 months in our special RT “bedroom” – though we should make clear that even the twin beds were a bit too close for Reid’s comfort! Piers Morgan: Susanna, what’s the secret of our magical on-screen chemistry? Susanna Reid: I knew you’d start with that. I think it’s because you’re a very opinionated, dynamic, disruptive, divisive figure, and left to your own devices you would probably career out of control. You’re a mini-tornado, and I play the role of... Piers: Compliant wife? Susanna: Interested observer. Also timekeeper, hurricane watcher, ruffled-feathers smoother and legal adviser. So I’m the belt and braces, with a dash of humour and – I hope – my own contribution journalistically. Piers: I’d describe it as alpha male meets queen bee – although I don’t need a legal adviser, by the way, I’ve never been successfully sued. What I like is we have journalistic rigour. And I knew we’d get on when in my first week, moments before we went on air, you said, “God, I’ve got legs like a pit pony.’’ Susanna: I really do, sadly. What do you find irritating about me, though? Piers: Actually not much. I am definitely more annoying, and if anything I’m impressed by how unannoyed you are by me. That said, your politeness can be a slight fault. Sometimes I’m tempted to get straight in and say to a guest, “Forget it, you’re a waste of time, get off our airways.’’ But I also think you’re very calm and unruffled, and you’re incredibly well briefed. I think you’re the rock of the show – a slightly tarnished rock in many ways, but the rock nonetheless. View oEmbed on the source website Susanna: What do you think I find annoying about you? Piers: The fact that I talk over you and I can be too domineering – although of course I see those as qualities as well. Susanna: You have the skin of a rhino, a steely backbone and enormous chutzpah, which is essential not just in television, but also in the social media world in which you’re completely immersed. Sometimes you’re still on your phone seconds before we go on air. Do you think you’re addicted? Piers: Well, I do have 5.1 million followers on Twitter. Feeding a beast of that size is not something you would be familiar with, but I feel that my public do need me and actually that I interact with them in a way that I believe helps the show. It’s not like I’m texting my mates. If I am, it’s normally Bradley Walsh. He’s our number one fan and he loves us going after people who deserve it. Susanna: You get a lot of online abuse – does that bother you? Piers: Remember I had 25 years on national newspapers coping with mockery and abuse. And I couldn’t give a hoot what some spotty little teen makes of me – the way to bite back is to do something like correct their spelling, which they hate. I know it bothers you more, although I think I’ve toughened you up. Susanna: I’ve definitely become more comfortable about using the block button. But generally I’m more reticent about putting myself “out there”. Piers: Actually I would say that, of the two of us, in real life I’m far more similar to my television personality. You have a very distinct TV persona. You’re far more opinionated in the morning briefing than you ever are on air. I think you’re more an object of mystery. People say to me, ‘“What is Susanna really like?’’ Whereas people say to you, “He’s like that, isn’t he?’’ View oEmbed on the source website Susanna: I’m definitely very private about my private life, so there’s a lot that I won’t share, although of course that doesn’t stop you from trying to drag it into the open. As well, of course, as suggesting that I am secretly in love with you. Piers: It is the great unrequited love story of the airwaves – even if it’s only happening in my head. Susanna: What on earth does your wife think? Piers: Celia [Walden] just looks at it with total bafflement that any other woman would even consider being interested in my romantic entreaties. Although of course we all know that, despite your protestations, you secretly harbour deep-seated feelings for me. Susanna: I will thank you for one thing: as a result of you campaigning about our start times we’ve all got a half-hour lie-in. My alarm used to go off at 3.30am, now it’s 4am. Piers: Ten to four for me. That’s the first alarm, second alarm at 4am, in the car by 4.10am, in the studio 4.30am. I normally lie there for about eight minutes. I do nothing for two, then I’ll spend six minutes checking Twitter, then I look at the news. Susanna: Who has been our best guest? Piers: Sir David Attenborough. To me he is probably the greatest broadcaster this country has ever produced. He’s got such fierce intelligence and I think he’s a real force for good. He has an edge to him, too – he doesn’t tolerate fools. View oEmbed on the source website The Dalai Lama was also a highlight. Here’s a celibate monk who has never had a drink, never had sex, doesn’t listen to music. It’s a life of utter purity in every way. I thought he was fascinating because he had such a serenity to him. View oEmbed on the source website Susanna: I’ve interviewed stars who are in films that my kids love, and sometimes you’re not as impressed by them as you’d hoped. So for me it’s the human stories that exert more of a grip. Recently I interviewed Charles Nunn, the detective at Aberfan whose task it was to help parents identify their children. He’s been a murder squad detective for decades and yet, when I went back to Aberfan with him, he was in tears remembering a three-month-old baby who died in that disaster 50 years ago. It’s those interviews that often have the most resonance. Piers: Of course, one of your more charming daily tasks is working out the history between me and the famous people that come across our sofa. Like when Carol Vorderman said to me, “I can’t remember if we’re talking again or not.’’ Oh and Nick Clegg, who we had on recently. The last time I’d interviewed him he famously said he’d slept with up to 30 women, and he hadn’t really had a civil word to say to me since, so he got slightly glacial. View oEmbed on the source website Susanna: I rather enjoyed that. Piers: What’s your dream sofa line-up? Susanna: Barack and Michelle Obama, no doubt about it. Piers: I’ve already met the Obamas. I guess if we’re talking Hollywood stars, then Brad Pitt. I’d love to hear Brad’s story. I kind of think I know what Angelina’s is. I’d like Arsène Wenger sitting there, too, because he’s brought me as much joy as he’s brought me despair in the past 20 years. Susanna: Joy and despair. Sounds like our show. Piers: Here we are, heading towards our one-year anniversary – the anniversary they never thought would happen. And if we’re still enjoying each other’s company, then there’s hope for the future. Susanna: Where there’s caffeine there’s hope. Good Morning Britain is 6am Mon-Fri on ITV Main photo by Jonathan Ford, exclusively for RT
How do you transplant a garden from the Chelsea Flower Show to the roof of a London hospital?
Ahead of DIY SOS at Great Ormond Street Hospital, a garden designer, a mover and fixer, and a clinical nurse reveal what it took to build a magic garden
Chris Beardshaw, garden designer: "It was the boiler house roof" I’ve always believed gardens should be transformative spaces, but when I first stared down on the space that would eventually become the Great Ormond Street Hospital garden it was about as uninspiring as it’s possible to be. There, in the centre of the hospital, surrounded by high buildings with very little natural sunlight, was the grey flat roof of the old boiler house. One of the great lessons in gardening is to look around and see what’s growing naturally because that will indicate the growing conditions. On this roof there was nothing but air conditioning units. Nonetheless, I was inspired to create something that would, in a small way, help people going through some of the most difficult times in their life. The sponsor, Morgan Stanley, set a demanding brief – a permanent roof garden at the hospital, but first it had to be displayed at the Chelsea Flower Show. In truth, showing at Chelsea had to be a secondary concern, although it gave me a date to work towards: a year from conception to delivery of both projects. The shady, windless, rather humid environment immediately directed the scheme towards a woodland garden of dappled shade, varied leaf texture under-storey and jewels of blooms. Japanese maples, with their delicate foliage, form the centrepiece while buildings are masked by pruned hornbeam, oak and pear trees. Overall, I wanted to ensure people saw something different each time they ventured outside – the way the light was catching the trees, seasonal blooms or frost on stems. A lot of the design challenge, though, was dictated by what you can’t see. The roof wasn’t designed to be weight-bearing, which in turn dictated the placement of each of the three-tonne trees, as each had to be supported by a weight-bearing column. And everything had to be lifted over the hospital buildings by crane. The whole project was a monumental challenge. Occasionally, when we were on site, I’d forget where I was, but then I’d step into the hospital corridors and collide with the daily world of noises and stress. Now, people can leave that behind, if only for a few minutes, and walk into this green church. It’s a place where parents can recharge themselves emotionally and spiritually. I’m enormously proud of what we achieved.” Nick Knowles, mover and fixer: "Beneath was an MRI machine worth millions" The first morning I came to work on the garden at Great Ormond Street Hospital I was drinking a coffee outside when an ambulance arrived with a tiny baby in an incubator accompanied by its two terrified-looking parents. It was the starkest of reminders of the importance of what we were doing there: every day you would pass children on stretchers and in the hospital wards. People are going through hell, so taking on this project was always a no-brainer – although it did give us the toughest technical and logistical difficulties that we’ve ever had on the show. Luckily, we had an army of volunteers to help – up to 200 – and from the moment the Chelsea Flower Show finished they swooped in, unearthing hundreds of plants and taking them to nursery storage. The enormous trees, meanwhile, had to be wrapped and put on the back of trucks to be driven across London. Back at Great Ormond Street, work had been underway for weeks to prepare the space, a mammoth effort centred on reinforcing the roof and making sure the water barrier was secure. All the while we were aware that directly below was a multi-million pound MRI machine to which even a teaspoon of water could do serious damage. Time was constrained: Great Ormond Street is a working hospital so we weren’t allowed to do any heavy lifting during the week. The cranes we needed to lift a five-metre, three-tonne tree over a fifteen-storey building could only be used at weekends. We used special collapsible cranes that could be dismantled, but it was still quite a feat of co-ordination. There were endless other complications: we had to replace soil with specialist granules made from lighter volcanic ash to lessen the weight burden on the roof. We even made a small miscalculation on the amount of “soil” needed – the last four or five tonnes had to be brought in by a chain of people with buckets – it felt like we were building the pyramids at that stage. The whole process was incredibly emotional. So many people here have to absorb tough information about their children’s health or make life-changing decisions and they told us this garden would help in those moments of contemplation. It’s so much more than a green space.” Clare Langer, clinical nurse: "It's now so green and peaceful" The families we look after at Great Ormond Street are facing so many challenges. A lot of parents have children with rare and complex diagnoses, and more than half of them live outside London, so they are having to travel back and forth while juggling jobs and other children. There are huge practical and emotional strains on them. Obviously, we all work very hard to make the wards nice spaces, but you can’t escape the fact that the hospital is a very intense, often noisy, environment with beeping machines and lots of hustle and bustle. Previously, aside from the café and some quiet rooms there really wasn’t anywhere restorative where parents could go to get away and have a proper break. We used to suggest going out to the shops or to one of the nearby parks, but for many parents, leaving the building is a step too far when they have a sick child in a ward. That’s why this garden is such a wonderful addition – it’s so green and peaceful. The first time I walked out there it felt like emerging into the fresh air, even though we are in the heart of the hospital at the centre of a busy, smoggy city. I know the parents will feel the same way.” DIY SOS at Great Ormond Street Hospital is on tonight at 8pm on BBC1
The unbelievable coincidence behind the new series of Long Lost Family
Davina McCall and Nicky Campbell explain how one case in the tear-jerking reunion show was a million-to-one shot
Sometimes in TV programme-making, the natural order of events is turned on its head by a moment of serendipity – something so unexpected and surprising it leaves those working on the programme slack-jawed in disbelief. Such a moment occurred during the making of ITV’s Bafta award-winning Long Lost Family, which returns this week. Thirty thousand people have contacted the show since its launch in 2011. But researchers investigating appeals for this latest series realised that two people who had written in entirely independently were actually searching for the same person. Cliff, a 54-year-old Devon taxi driver and Sue, a 51-year-old grandmother from Portsmouth, were entirely unaware of the existence of the other. Both had been adopted, and both had spent most of their adult lives searching for their birth mother. That search led to them writing in to Long Lost Family at almost exactly the same time. Only detective work by the show’s researchers – and a subsequent DNA test - uncovered the fact that they were looking for the same woman and they were half-siblings. It’s a scenario that left not just them but both the show’s presenters Davina McCall and Nicky Campbell reeling. “What are the chances of that happening?” McCall asks now. “Not only that they applied at the same time but that the same researcher read both application forms and saw the similarities? Without that they would never have done the DNA test and they would never have found out that they were looking for the same person.” The new siblings’ reunion proves joyful, yet ultimately bittersweet. While researchers did manage to trace their mother she didn’t want to be put back in touch - the pain of reconciliation apparently greater than the pain of separation. “It’s devastating for them, but they respect her choice,” says Campbell. That news is delivered off-camera, and isn’t addressed in the programme, although the cameras are rolling when the siblings meet. As always, the two presenters absent themselves from this final act – a tear-shedding moment observed without intervention. They don’t catch up with it until months later in an early preview of the programme. “We are actually watching it in the way the viewers sees it, except we know them,” says McCall. Campbell, who said a link to the programme was “burning a hole in his iPad” all weekend, admits to being “in bits” by the end of the opening titles. “I texted Davina and Sally, the producer. It's astonishing, isn't it? You see a four-minute reunion; you see a microcosm of a lifetime's pain.” Is the search for identity the theme that underpins the show? Davina McCall That and belonging, finding that familial bond. I think I had that when I had kids: suddenly I look at them and I go, “That's me, that's a part of me.” Nicky Campbell I think that's why this show works - because you're not just watching these individual stories, you're watching every person's story. This show is about all of us, about the human experience. So it’s about so many things, identity, and belonging, and redemption too. Which scenarios touch you most? DM I think it's probably what we identify with, so if there's ever anything about a mother-daughter relationship, I'm always in tatters. Also because I've lost my sister (McCall’s half-sister Caroline passed away aged 50 in 2012 after battling cancer) there's been occasions when sisters get reunited and that always really affects me. Obviously, I'm not naive and I do understand that you can introduce people and they don't necessarily hit it off, but I still think: wouldn't it be incredible to discover a half-sibling just out of the blue? NC The ones with a sense of redemption affect me most. They’re the most raw and the most difficult ones, but the most life-affirming too. You realise that it’s never too late. DM One thing I am really pleased about is that we’ve done a lot of these programmes and you could worry about compassion fatigue but this show just keeps talking to me in a way that nothing else does, it taps into something deep within me and that's not abated. Do you have an innate sense of which stories are going to be the most powerful? DM All of them are powerful, because you know that the people who have written in have tried everything, and they are desperate. You never forget that. But sometimes with stories you think, “OK, I know how this works.” And then you get there and it's always different, it's never what you think it's going to be. NC What I find interesting is that people’s emotions change even within the course of one conversation. You see it a lot with the people who are being looked for: they start out being brave and it’s, “I'm interested in it, but it's not a particularly emotional thing” and then they realise as they talk that it really is. Sometimes they’re speaking about this for the first time in their life. They’ve not allowed themselves to think about stuff but the minute you do, it all comes out. It’s fascinating to watch. For all the stories that we see on-screen, there must be many we don’t. NC So many people aren't found. DM The ratio is something like one in six in terms of success. And quite often people get found, but they don't want it to be on TV, which is understandable. And obviously some people don’t want to be found? DM It happens all the time…. NC Sometimes it's too much for people to revisit the past, it's just too much of a volcano. DM It's been suppressed for so many years they can’t go back. But obviously that is very hard for the person searching. That’s something we deal with off-air. NC Davina is amazing at bringing news. Sometimes she'll have bad news to talk through off-camera, and sometimes she's bringing good news, but she's brilliant at helping people through. My role is more finding out what the story is and exploring that. DM We also have some amazing, compassionate people on this show who sometimes have to do a really tough job. We had one woman who was 74 whose baby boy was taken out of her hands at four weeks old and taken away by social workers. She had been looking for him every day of her life and one of our producers had to go and see her to tell her we had found out that he died at 12 weeks old. Can you imagine? Has working on the show made you think differently about adoption? NC It’s complex. On one side you have people saying it’s too slow but then you get a contrary message that babies are being taken away too soon. I think there are necessary checks, and we are doing our best. Since I went into working with adoption charities [Campbell himself was adopted at four days old], I have changed my view of interracial adoption: originally, I used to think love is love, whatever colour or race the adoptive parents are. But when you're adopted, there is a lot of identity crisis anyway. I had a big identity crisis because I had blue eyes and no one else in my family had blue eyes. So if you are adopted, plus you come from a different culture, plus you look completely different, it's like a triple whammy. There are situations where that doesn't matter, but in the long term it's an extra layer of identity problems. DM For me I’ve realised there are huge dangers around social media when it comes to adoption. The worst thing you can do if you are adopted or searching for someone is to just go and look them up on Facebook, because Facebook doesn't always tell the truth and unless you're very robust it can end up being very painful and very hurtful and you might get rejected. So go through a mediator, or go through somebody that can help you. You know what it was like Nicky – you did it all on your own, and you were 29. NC And it’s very difficult, not just the build up to it, the reunion, but dealing with that afterwards. Sometimes it creates even more of a “Who am I?’’ feeling than there was before.
What is it like to be a divorce mediator?
Who gets the dog? Long-time mediator Irene Jackson on how you can avoid pricey lawyers fees if you pick mediation instead
This week TV cameras go behind the scenes of the UK’s family mediation services, where warring couples attempt to settle their differences instead of taking them to court. Here Irene Jackson, a mediator for nine years who features in the series, gives an insight into her work... The main bones of contention are property, money and access to children. Whatever the issue, it generally boils down to the fact that one person thinks they are entitled to something and the other person thinks they’re not. The focus varies: some couples will say they can’t even think about money until arrangements for the children have been sorted, others are completely in tune about where their children should live and with whom, and it is all about the pounds, shillings and pence. The family pet can also be divisive. Dogs in particular carry a lot of importance for some people, even when there are children in the family. Emotions can run just as high. The timing of mediation is important. Ideally you don’t want to work with anyone whose relationship has just ended because often there is a disparity between how each half feels. There isn’t an optimum time but ideally you are talking months – sometimes even years – as opposed to weeks. I never underestimate how hard it is for couples to be there. When people come into mediation we are asking them to do something that is actually really alien to them. Sometimes they have just grown apart but more often than not something horrid has happened in their relationship, so the last thing anyone wants to do is sit in a room with that other person and talk amicably about how they are going to resolve their future lives. People get fraught, upset and frustrated – but it’s rarely directed at us. No matter how angry people are they do understand you are trying to support them through a difficult time. I have never felt threatened. The only slightly hairy situation I have encountered is when, on one occasion, a guy got so worked up that I genuinely thought he was going to punch his former partner. I got between them because I thought that while he might punch her he wouldn’t punch me. It was pretty scary but I managed to get him out of the room and it was all fine. Men and women behave no differently. They are both capable of anger, hurt, frustration. One thing I do see is that when it comes to arrangements for children some mothers tend to think the fathers are not terribly capable. They might have genuine justifcations for feeling that way, in that the dads didn’t do a lot while they were in the relationship. Equally they might not have had the chance because the mother did it all. My job is to try and unpick some of that. Sometimes we have to mediate in different rooms. Clearly it works best when people are prepared to sit in a room together, but not everyone is able to do that. Sometimes there is just too much pain and anger, so one option is shuttle mediation, in which couples sit in separate rooms and I travel back and forth between them. It’s not ideal, but at least they are communicating in some way and I have seen this lead to resolution. Sometimes you do want to tell people to grow up and stop acting like children. But as one colleague has pointed out, that sentiment is doing children an injustice! She was only half-joking... I don’t just think mediation works, I know it does. Not for everyone, but for most people: on average around 70–80 per cent of the couples who attend walk away with a successful result. That doesn’t mean that for the remaining 20–30 per cent mediation is a failure, either, as there is often a longer-term impact. I was surprised that couples agreed to be filmed. Many refused, but the others saw it as a way of spreading the word. They thought it would be a good way of informing people about their experience. Mr v Mrs: Call the Mediator premieres 9pm Tuesday on BBC2
Inside Birmingham Children's Hospital: what would you do to save your child's life?
New Channel 4 documentary series tells the story of Christopher Tobey, who went through life-threatening surgery to help his son Charlie
Most parents will do anything for their children. For Christopher Tobey, however, that sentiment was put to the test when he learnt that his teenage son Charlie faced death if he didn’t receive a liver transplant. As there was a desperate shortage of donors, Chris was told that Charlie’s only chance was for him to become a living donor, giving a section of his liver via high-risk surgery that had no guarantee of success. Here, Chris (53) and Charlie (15) from Woolhope, Herefordshire, who feature in Channel 4's new documentary series Inside Birmingham Children's Hospital, tell their story. THE DAD’S STORY Sometimes, a few words can change everything. In my case they were: “We could just take some of yours and give it to him,” uttered by the doctor who was looking after my desperately ill 14-year-old son Charlie. He needed a liver transplant, but with a shortage of donors his chances were looking grim. I knew instantly that I would do it, despite the fact that I’ve always harboured a deep fear of going under the knife. To be honest, I’d do anything for him. Charlie had liver problems at birth. His mother – my wife, Rachel – had contracted autoimmune hepatitis when she was pregnant, which had passed on to Charlie in the womb. Days after his birth we were told that without a transplant our beautiful newborn son had just a week to live. Looking back, I don’t really know how we dealt with it. All you can do is try to focus on the positive, because the alternative is just too horrible to contemplate. We were lucky: Charlie received a new liver when he was two weeks old, and doctors told us that if he took his anti-rejection drugs he should recover well. And he did. As the years went by, Charlie grew into a clever, bright and sporty boy with a love of rugby and cricket. Of course, you never fully relax when your child has been severely ill, but Rachel and I also knew that we couldn’t wrap him in cotton wool, and it got easier as he got older. Then, a few years ago, Charlie was given the swine flu vaccine. To this day, we don’t know why he reacted so badly to it, but again his health started to deteriorate and he started to reject his liver. Endless investigations ensued while – over months, then years – Charlie got weaker. It was very hard. Suddenly, we were facing the same nightmare all over again, the difference being that this time Charlie was no longer a baby but fully aware of what was going on. As a family we have always dealt with things by using humour, and Charlie was incredibly brave, but there was no getting away from the fact that his prospects were looking increasingly grim. By October 2014 we had been told that Charlie had to go back on the transplant list. At the same time it was clear that there was a huge shortage of donors – and that’s when the doctors said I could do it. The details didn’t make for easy listening: while the operation was unlikely to affect me in the long term, it came with a list of risks, from blood clots and paralysis to death, with a significant chance of something going wrong – although I’m not sure that any odds, no matter how low, would have changed my mind. What kept me awake at night was worrying about Charlie. Would it work? Would he be OK? What would happen if it didn’t work? By day, Rachel and I did our best to put a brave face on things, but there were moments when Charlie had gone to bed when we would both break down. The night before the operation we went out as a family, with some close friends. We tried to have as much fun as possible. It wasn’t easy, knowing that at the end of the evening we would go our separate ways to different hospitals and that the next time we saw each other – God willing – we would both have been through major surgery. On the morning itself I woke with a tumult of emotions – trepidation and fear, but also excitement that this might help give my son his life back. I recovered well, but it was a week before I could leave hospital and see Charlie. His surgery had not been without complications and he was still in intensive care when I saw him. I’m not too proud to admit that I cried when I saw my brave boy covered in tubes. It’s been a rocky road since, but today Charlie has made amazing progress. I’m so proud of him – and however the operation turned out, I would do it again a hundred times over. CHARLIE’S STORY I’d known since I was very small that I’d had problems when I was a baby, but Mum and Dad did their best to make sure it didn’t overshadow anything. We’ve always joked around and taken the mickey out of each other. Then, after I had my flu jab in 2009 I started to feel really poorly. No one seemed to know what was wrong, and over the next few years my life revolved around endless hospital appointments, blood tests and biopsies. I tried not to worry about it and to focus on living a normal life. It helped that my friends understood that I didn’t like to talk about what was going on as it upsets me. I’ve never liked people feeling sorry for me. But by 2014 it had got really bad. I was very small for my age, and tired all the time. I was only managing three or four mornings a week at school and didn’t really have any focus or concentration in class. I couldn’t play sport any more, which was hard because I didn’t want to be the one sitting on the sidelines. Of course, there were moments when I thought, “Why me?” But there’s no answer to that. I tried not to feel sorry for myself, although a week after I had been told I needed another transplant I remember bursting into tears at school when the teacher asked me about my homework. By then I was just fed up with being ill the whole time. Something had to change. But when Dad told me he was going to give me some of his liver I wasn’t keen at first. I was more scared for him than I was for myself. I didn’t want anything bad to happen to him, and I worried that if something went wrong it would all be my fault. I told him I would prefer to get it from someone I didn’t know, which was hard for him as he wanted to do the right thing. But by the time the transplant came round I was feeling so ill that I just really wanted it to happen. The night before surgery, we tried not to make a big deal of it. We all had dinner together as a family. At the end I said, “See you soon,’’ to Dad, who went one way, and I went the other way with Mum. I remember lying in my hospital bed after surgery, waiting to hear if his operation had gone well and feeling the most enormous relief when Mum told me it had. My surgery was complicated: I had septic shock, all my organs failed and I felt very ill. For the first week I didn’t really know what was going on, but I remember Dad coming to see me and breaking down in tears. It sticks in my mind, as I had never seen him cry before. It hasn’t been the easiest ride since, but a year after my surgery I am fine now and I can look forward to normal life. I’ve got Dad to thank for that, and I am so amazingly grateful for what he did. We were close before, but we are even closer now. Christopher and Charlie will be featured on Inside Birmingham Children's Hospital, Thursday at 9pm on Channel 4.
To vape or not to vape: are E-cigarettes a miracle or a menace?
Michael Mosley has never smoked – but for a new Horizon documentary, he's taken up vaping
Michael Mosley has never taken so much as an experimental puff on a cigarette. “When I was about ten, Dad told my older brother and me that if we didn’t smoke before 18, he’d give us 100 quid,” he says. “It worked.” He never took up smoking – so he was puzzled when he was asked to front a new Horizon documentary examining the phenomenon of e-cigarettes, and which called for its presenter to try them for a month to investigate the consequences. “My initial reaction was that it would be better to ask a smoker,” Mosley admits. But in fact his unblemished lungs made him a good choice, providing a chance to test out the effects of “vaping” on healthy volunteers, a study that, as far as he knew, had not been done before. But there has long been uncertainty surrounding e-cigarettes. Currently used by around two million Brits, they have exploded in popularity in the past decade. Yet they are banned in some countries (it’s unlawful to sell or possess them for personal use in Australia, for example), amid widespread concern that they would have a broader appeal than merely as a tool to quit smoking, while experts remain divided about their safety. “When I started looking into it some studies suggested it was as dangerous as smoking,” Mosley says. There are currently one billion smokers globally, and as many as half will die of smoking-related diseases. “If I was looking at the two greatest epidemics in the world today, they would be smoking and obesity. The scale of tobacco consumption and the amount of damage it’s doing is a world epidemic. People tend to think about lung cancer, but actually there’s so much else – heart disease and strokes, because basically smoking buggers up your arteries and veins. It’s the number one cause of impotence, too. Basically it hits every system in the body.” Yet people find it hard to do what it takes to address their habit, though they know continuing can create potentially catastrophic consequences. “Just telling people to stop smoking is completely useless. It’s like telling people just to eat less,” says Mosley. “Going cold turkey is really, really hard.” Which is where e-cigarettes come in. Inhaling them – or vaping – is a way of getting a nicotine hit without inhaling the dangerous toxins that are released in most cigarettes. But you’re still taking something into your lungs, and Mosley admits that having signed up to vape for a month he was apprehensive about the potential effects, not to mention cynical about their effectiveness as an anti-smoking tool. “I was a bit worried that I might get addicted. I also thought inhaling something that contains a good old whack of nicotine has to be a pretty bloody awful idea. So I was quite sceptical when I went into it, but then again that’s what I love about doing these sorts of programmes.” These sorts of programmes, of course, being Mosley-as-guinea-pig, with self-experimentation a theme of much of his work. To date, his portfolio has seen him swallow cameras to track the inner workings of the human body, ingest parasites, and try out intermittent fasting and a high intensity exercise programme (“HIT”). The last two challenged both the way we exercise and the way we eat, suggesting that very small periods of intense exercise can be as effective as sweating it out on the treadmill and that intermittent fasting or calorie restriction can both keep us in shape and prolong life. Making them also turned out to be life-changing for Mosley: prior to filming the Horizon documentary on intermittent fasting, he discovered he was diabetic – his own father died aged 72 of complications related to type 2 diabetes, having been diagnosed at around the same age. His subsequent discoveries about fasting and HIT and their positive effect on blood sugar control and insulin “profoundly changed my life”, he says. Today he still has fasting days, and still incorporates HIT exercise into his daily life, convinced they are the key to longevity. “Horizon saved my life. No male member of my family has made it beyond 72. I’m 59 now, so I have 13 years to go and I’m hoping to outdo them.” Vaping, he believes, lies on the same narrative arc as his previous work. “I do see it as part of that journey I’ve been on,” he says. “I’m looking for other answers to big dilemmas, trying to translate what I learn into something that will actually make a difference. That’s what I’m obsessed by.” The vaping itself left him nonplussed, more of a logistical challenge than anything, as he had to puff on one every ten minutes or so throughout the day to mimic the actions of most vapers. “I didn’t particularly enjoy them, although I did a little bit more as I went on,” he admits. His children, meanwhile, aged 16 and 21, were “fairly underwhelmed” and apparently not tempted to ape their father. “One of the anxieties about vaping is around kids and the fact e-cigarettes are available in sweet flavours like popcorn, but when I asked my kids whether their contemporaries see vaping as cool they said not at all,” he says. “My 16-year-old thinks it’s something done by old people – old being anyone over the age of 20.” Smoking itself, however, embraces almost every demographic: the programme follows a band of heavy smokers of all ages as they attempt to kick the habit by a variety of methods ranging from vaping and nicotine patches to cold turkey. The results left Mosley in no doubt about the effectiveness of vaping as an anti-smoking tool, even though e-cigarettes themselves do not emerge with an entirely clean bill of health. After a month of vaping, tests on Mosley showed a slight increase in nitric oxide in his system – a marker for airway inflammation – as well as an increase in the defence cells that line the airways of the lungs to protect them from foreign bodies. Yet for Mosley the possible side effects are “piddling” compared to the benefits. “Clearly, if you’re not a smoker than taking up vaping is a stupid thing to do, but if I was a smoker then I would certainly give it a go, despite the uncertainty.” It’s a view shared by the Royal College of Physicians, who at the end of April published a paper suggesting that the medical establishment is swinging behind e-cigarettes, one of their conclusions being that: “provision of the nicotine that smokers are addicted to without the harmful components of tobacco smoke can prevent most of the harm from smoking”. “I’m genuinely surprised by the fact that there’s still controversy around them,” says Mosley. “I think vaping has the potential to make a huge difference. If it even converts a small number then you are potentially talking about tens of millions of lives.” He cites Horizon’s sound engineer, a 20-a-day, 20-year-long smoker, who took up vaping the same day as Mosley and hasn’t touched a cigarette since. “That’s a real success story right there,” he says. His own e-cigarette, meanwhile, has been consigned to history. “I gave my device away when I finished the trial and I haven’t felt a single pang for it since.” Horizon: E-cigarettes — Miracle or Menace? airs on BBC2 tonight (Sunday 22nd May) at 9.30pm
Attenborough at 90: Sir David Attenborough picks his favourite four documentaries
The broadcaster has chosen four of his favourite films to show the nation again for his 90th birthday
As with many people who are approaching a landmark birthday, David Attenborough is struggling to reconcile himself to the sheer number of candles on his celebratory cake. Although he’s marking the occasion with a birthday lunch at his Richmond home with extended family, he acknowledges that the number itself still doesn’t seem real: “I don’t believe it, actually, and all I can say is I’m aware that I’ve been fantastically lucky. I have relatives and friends who are my age who can’t remember anything, who can’t move, and the fact that I can do both of those to some degree is just unbelievably fortunate.” In fact, his memory remains not just intact but forensically sharp, as he demonstrates while discussing his “passion projects” – four programmes he’s personally chosen from his vast back catalogue, and that are to be reshown on BBC2, this Saturday and next. They span several decades and, he believes, all stand up to modern scrutiny. “There are things you’d do differently on modern apparatus that you didn’t have back then, but not much, actually. Nothing’s perfect, but one or two of them you think, 'Well, yeah, that wasn't bad.'" 1. The Lost Gods of Easter Island (2000) Saturday 7.30pm BBC2 (not N Ireland) When Attenborough purchased a strange wooden figurine at a New York auction in the 1990s, it was initially merely a source of private curiosity. “I’ve always enjoyed collecting things, and this was a very strange figure that the auction catalogue said was from Easter Island,” he recalls. “But the estimate led me to suppose that the auctioneers thought it was a fake. I thought it was better than that.” His conviction sparked a personal quest that, ultimately, led him to the belief that the figurine had been handled by none other than Captain Cook in 1771. “How could you possibly prove that? Well, this programme is how we try. And along the way it took us to one of the most remote civilisations on Earth.” 2. A Blank on the Map (1971) View oEmbed on the source website Saturday 6.30pm BBC2 (not N Ireland) Attenborough’s tribute to the explorers of yesteryear took him on a gruelling expedition into the heart of then unknown New Guinea: “As a kid I read about the great explorers like Livingstone and what they all did was walk. Up to about 1920, that’s what you did if you were an explorer. You hadn’t got aeroplanes or cars.” Plunging into the thick rain forest was a Boy’s Own caper, although “in some ways very little happened. We were just walking for eight hours a day for three weeks,” says Attenborough. Then, on the last day, he awoke to see a pygmy standing in front of him. “He had feathers through his nose, a huge hat, a wig and blackened teeth, and he was holding a spear, just looking at me. That moment of meeting a man who hadn’t seen a European face before was unforgettable.” 3. Charles Darwin and the Tree of Life (2009) View oEmbed on the source website Saturday 14 May BBC2 Marking the bicentenary of Darwin’s birth, this film focused not on the great geolo- gist’s life but his work, to which Attenborough says we all owe a great debt: “There’s no ques- tion that his theory of evolution by natural selec- tion changed natural history from a sort of stamp collecting of different species into a coherent, logical history – one which was easily understood. “What Darwin thought makes the world comprehensible and logical. Nature isn’t just an accumulation of oddball freaks. There’s a reason why there’s a duck-billed platypus, why hummingbirds are where they are. If you under- stand that, then the enchantment of the natural world becomes more thrilling.” 4. Lost Worlds, Vanished Lives (1989) Saturday 14 May BBC2 A journey of discovery to the world’s most famous fossil sites, this programme connected David Attenborough to a childhood fascination that helped spark his passion for the natural world. “I grew up in Leicestershire and there were thrushes, foxes, badgers, dragonflies and newts, but the thing I enjoyed collecting a lot were fossils,” he says. “The notion that you can hit a rock and it falls open and you see something that hasn’t seen the light of day for 350 million years yet it’s all there... well, it’s magical.” Their hidden secrets are also “the beginning of natural history. You don’t know perhaps what it is, but you start classifying. Are they male or female? Or are they a different species? It’s a way into all sorts of things.” Today his affection remains robust. “I still think that fossils are some of the most romantic objects you can think of. I love them.”
SAS: Who Dares Wins – what does it take to be an SAS soldier?
Former special forces serviceman Colin Maclachlan reveals the gruelling tests of the SAS selection process – and what happened when he put 30 novices to the test for Channel 4
Asked about the most vital qualities required to be an SAS soldier, Colin Maclachlan doesn’t hesitate. “Everyone talks about the physical aspect of being in the SAS but to me that’s twenty percent of it,” he says. “The majority of it is about mental robustness. Give me a guy who’s got that over a guy who’s twice as fit any day of the week.” He should know: during seven years serving with Special Forces, Maclachlan, 41, has been on the frontline in some of the most dangerous and testing territory in the world, deployed in highly risky operations everywhere from Afghanistan and the Balkans to Northern Ireland and Iraq – the latter three times. Recently, though, Maclachlan has found himself in an altogether different role – this time on camera. Together with a group of other former Special Forces servicemen, he put a group of 30 civilian rookies through their paces as they undertook a series of gruelling tests from the SAS selection process for a new Channel 4 series. Former SAS serviceman Colin Maclachlan It’s not for the faint-hearted: SAS selection is widely acknowledged as one of the most physically challenging and psychologically demanding military entrance processes in the world, and the show – described by Channel 4 as the toughest of its kind ever broadcast – doesn’t shy away from its excesses. Using exact replicas of the selection process tests, in Maclachlan’s words, it “strips these candidates bare so you can see what’s at the very core. “It shows the whole process. It’s not just, ‘He can jump out of a plane, he can survive under interrogation,’ it’s looking at all the competencies.” These included so-called “sickeners”, a punishing full day of exercises with a number of false endings and a “tunnel and kidnap” task, in which they are “kidnapped” by hooded special forces and taken to a room when they are exposed to barking dogs and simulated beatings. They’re tests Maclachlan knows all too well. He joined Special Forces in 1999, ten years after enrolling with the Royal Scots infantry as a “petrified” 16-year-old. In his first year, he was the first soldier on the scene of a terrorist hijacking, when an Afghan airline landed at Stansted airport with 150 people on board. ‘‘Within an hour of that happening I was 50m behind the plane with my sniper rifle giving commentary and intelligence,” says Maclachlan. “It was touch and go whether we were going to go in but happily all the hostages got released.” View oEmbed on the source website Three tours of Iraq followed, during the latter one of which Maclachlan’s car was captured at a police checkpoint outside Basra by a group of Iraqi military. Dragged into a brick outhouse he was stripped, blindfolded and handcuffed before being knelt against a wall. “Then there’s something pressing against your head, and there’s a click,” he recalls. He was then interrogated before being taken back outside where he was told to get into an unmarked car. “I think if I had got into that car I would have been beheaded, but as I was fighting to get in, a surveillance plane flew overhead, which might well have saved my life.” Within moments he heard gunfire, before being rescued by the British army and hastily taken out of the country. It was a turning point. “I think I felt it was time to make some different decisions. I left the SAS not long after that.” After initially working in private security he followed a different path, studying for a history degree at Edinburgh University before taking a masters in counter-terrorism. He now writes for a number of academic and military publications, as well as working as an advisor on video games. Leaving the SAS has also allowed him a family life: now married, he has two young children aged four and two. Yet he admits to missing it, and enjoyed the chance to recapture some of the old camaraderie with fellow former soldiers – as well as watching the progress of the recruits. “All these guys had peak fitness – they were at the top of their game – but quite quickly some fell off or emerged to the front,” he says. “It was fascinating.” SAS: Who Dares Wins begins Monday 19th October at 9pm on Channel 4
Alex Jones on being made a Welsh Bard at the National Eisteddfod: "My heritage is very important to me"
“It’s an enormous honour," says The One Show host, "my family are beside themselves with excitement"
Alex Jones is aware that what she’s trying to describe sounds, in her own words, “a bit mad”. “For someone who hasn’t been brought up with it, I appreciate that it sounds totally bizarre,” she laughs. “It” being the National Eisteddfod, the celebration of Welsh language and culture that takes place each August, and more specifically her induction into the Gorsedd of the Bards in a ceremony performed by the Archdruid. Even if it does sound bizarre, Jones, 38, couldn’t be more thrilled. “It’s a huge thing for me. Huge,” she smiles. “It’s an enormous honour and my family are beside themselves with excitement.” Dating back to 1792 and made up of poets, writers, musicians and artists who have made a distinguished contribution to Welsh culture, the Gorsedd features among its number opera singer Bryn Terfel and ex-Welsh rugby star Gareth Edwards. For a woman who is a fluent Welsh speaker you have to be to join the Bards – and fiercely proud of her Carmarthenshire upbringing, join- ing such esteemed company is “the cherry on the cake” of her career. As presenter of The One Show, Jones may now call London home but Wales is where her heart is: “Although I moved from Wales five years ago, it’s still a massive part of my life. My heritage is very important to me.” Jones recalls, as a girl, how she, sister Jennie and parents Mary and Alun would all pile into the family’s orange caravanette to attend the Eisteddfod whenever they could. For an otherwise painfully shy girl the festival also offered the chance to try her hand at performance. “Each school would have to produce a short musical. You’d compete in the county and if you won, you’d compete nationally to perform at the festival itself. If you won overall and got to take part – well, it was joyous.” Her school won plenty of times, which gave her parents many sightings of their otherwise apparently reserved daughter on stage. “It really bought me out of my shell,” she adds. “Really, the Eisteddfod set me on the path that led me to where I am today.” After she is honoured by the Archdruid before the main druid stone, and touched on each shoulder by a sword, Jones can call herself by her Bard name, Alex o’r Amman, or “Alex from the Amman”. The ceremony will be a family affair, attended by her parents, sister and fiancé Charlie Thomson, an insurance broker. “It’ll be an eye-opener for him although I’m sure he will love it,” says Jones. As for more pressing concerns, like what to wear under her induction cape, she says, ‘‘I honestly have no idea.” The One Show is on Monday-Friday at 7.00pm on BBC1 Alex Jones will be at the Radio Times Festival on September 27th. You can buy tickets here. LIFE AFTER STRICTLY 2pm, 27th September Alex Jones joins Russell Grant, Deborah Meaden and Strictly pro Robin Windsor to reflect on their time on the dance floor.