Crap Town, Named & Shamed



Preoccupied with QPR getting beat by Sheffield United last Tuesday night, your distracted correspondent missed out on BBC2's "Cambeltown", a grim portrait of life in a Scottish town deemed "the armpit of Britain". The Observer's Lorna Martin writes that residents aren't happy about the film's contents.

'It feels as if we've been dragged through the gutter - manipulated and exploited for a piece of very cheap journalism,' said Nancie Smith, chair of the community council and a former deputy head teacher at a local school.

She is not alone in her anger. The local paper, the Campbeltown Courier, has been inundated with calls and letters from irate residents, as has the BBC, which broadcast the film. Argyll and Bute Council is considering making a formal complaint to the corporation because of what it described as 'a shockingly unbalanced picture'. Even the local chief inspector of police said it gave a 'wholly false impression' of the town.

More than a million viewers watched the BBC2 documentary last Tuesday night. It followed the lives of disillusioned teenagers Donald, Casie, Jessica and Katie in what was billed as an intimate portrait of small-town life.

During the 50-minute film, London-based director Paddy Wivell showed the teenagers drinking and yearning to move to Glasgow, with one of them saying: 'It's a shite-hole. If I hate my children, I'll send them to Campbeltown Grammar School.'

Casie, a clearly vulnerable 19-year-old, revealed that she'd been raped at 14 and had been getting 'blinding drunk' after her relationship with a 38-year-old man fell apart. Unemployed, she informed viewers - including potential employers - that she would prefer bar work because 'you can have loads of sneaky wee halves'.

Donald was shown stealing drink from a friend's house while his parents were on holiday, urinating in the street and complaining that he could get married at 16 but had to wait two years before he could legally buy porn.

Smith's main concern is about the repercussions on the teenagers who took part.

'I don't blame them one bit,' she said. 'The film-maker, who had better never show his face here again, exploited vulnerable young people. What is the point of showing a boy urinating in the street other than to humiliate him?'

Why would the film-maker return to such a miserable place unless it was to film more teenagers urinating?

Posted: Sun - September 5, 2004 at 08:14 PM      

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