Celebs are name of the game
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NEIL, Lily, Fern, and (heaven help us) the imminent return of Kerry Katona – TV’s focussed on some of the personalities we love to love this week.
Predictably there’s been some chilling results. And none more so than looking into the dark past of one of telly’s favourite laughing boys, actor Neil Morrissey – voice of Bob The Builder, drop dead gorgeous grin of one of our favourite middle-aged lads.
And looking into the ludicrously big brown melting eyes actor Neil has built a career on, it was almost impossible in Monday’s NEIL MORRISSEY – CARE HOME ID on BBC1 to imagine the concrete-hearted social worker who would have decided childhood in a care home was the answer for the 10-year-old sweetshop thief.
Neil himself obviously didn’t understand it. Hence the two-parter
with possibly more answers tonight.But asking some tough questions
about the care system’s past cruelties, the actor’s search did send seismic shudders through our present arrangements for care home kids.
An hour of sometimes uncomfortable viewing in, the actor didn’t seem much wiser about why he’d been denied a
family life. The first revelation for viewers was finding out that the star of 80s comedy Men Behaving Badly had been in trouble long before TV fell in love with him. If nicking sweets and propelling pencils is your idea of major crime.
But that was the point where Neil and his beloved older brother Steven were separated from their family – and each other. Sent to separate children’s homes, the boys weren’t to clap eyes on each other again for 10 years. Steven’s dead now. So it was uncomfortable to watch Neil’s horror as he dug through old newspaper clippings about Steven’s care home to find major bullying and abuse had gone on during that time.
But as Neil’s sad interviews with fellow care home kids made clear, all bore some kind of scars, even if – like him – he preferred to keep them hidden as a way of coping. As his girlfriend Emma explained: "I know he thinks about it, he just doesn’t talk about it." But talking is the particular skill of Fern Britton who surfaced on Channel 4 with her own new chat show FERN – and a possible second chance at thatqueen of daytime crown.
So it was a bit sad to see launch day’s big guests were boringly familiar telly faces such as BBC’s ungainly comedy goddess Miranda Hart and former BBC celebrity farmer Jimmy Doherty, now signed up by Channel 4.But the show might be the only place for a while where we’ve seen Macca’s exHeather Mills praised as an inspiration.
And despite the odds, that’s what former pop ladette Lily Allen came across as in the final episode of three-part series LILY ALLEN: FROM RICHES TO RAGS. What may well have started as a sneering insight into a poor little rich girl’s bid to give her partied-out sister Sarah a job and Lily setting up her own vintage fashion business, ended up surprising itself. And us Money-ditz Sarah who had been a nightclub greeter turned into a potential business woman of the year against the odds.
As actor Simon Callow’s knowing voiceover put it: "A few months ago, the only calls Sarah would be getting was from partiers who had left their coats in the club’s cloakroom."But the importance of the whole Lucy In Disguise empire was made to look superficial when Lily’s bid to start a family ended in tears as she lost her baby in hospital fighting blood poisoning.
Often sulky and girning in earlier episodes, Lily’s experience apparently made her realise there were worse things in life than being a superstar media magnet.
Unable to stop tears falling, she spoke about losing her baby and her illness: "Although what has happened to me is beyond devastating, it has made me realise ... how good I had it. "I can’t believe how much of my life I spent complaining about things. "I was a real moany old cow!"
But loving your honesty, Lily.
