Street talk

TELLY bosses aren’t daft. The welfare system has long been a hot topic, and so they knew that airing the Benefits Street series would provide much debate across the country. But could they have anticipated just how much fuel it was going to add to the fire? Probably not.

Benefits Street first stunned audiences five weeks ago, following the exploits of White Dee and the other residents of James Turner Street, in the Winson Green district of Birmingham, one of the UK’s most benefit-dependent thoroughfares.

It has become one of the most talked about programmes in years, providing plenty of content for social media, endless column inches for the newspaper industry and even questions in Parliament.

The programme set out to explore the day-to-day routines of a close-knit community and highlight some of the challenges they face, including poverty, illiteracy and drug and alcohol addiction, but it has turned out to do so much more.

According to the politicians and media coverage, benefits pay for a life of luxury and easy living among those unwilling to work, all at the expense of the hardworking taxpayer.

However, this controversial programme prides itself on showing the realities of life on benefits and the residents’ attempts to find their way through life on the bottom rung of our economic ladder.

Among the residents are the aforementioned Dee – who has happily taken on the role of the street’s matriarch, offering her shoulder to those with addictions and money woes – selfconfessed alcoholic James Clarke (whose story is particularly sad) and young parents Mark Thomas and Becky Howe.

This last episode in the series is followed by a debate addressing the issues raised with a panel that includes people featured in the series taking questions from the studio audience.

JIM DAVIDSON is one of those larger- than-life characters who makes up for in personality and reputation what he lacks in stature. Wine, women and bawdiness have been the cornerstones of his wild-man image ever since the one-time window cleaner hit the spotlight as the youngest-ever comedian to top the bill at the London Palladium. And ever since he has been on a roller-coaster of trouble.

But now he has been crowned winner of the latest edition of Celebrity Big Brother. What you see is definitely what you get with Jim – an opinionated, honest man.

Jim Davidson: At Least I’m Not Boring is a profile of the comedian that charts his rise to fame after appearing on talent show New Faces in 1976, before going on to become a household name hosting BBC favourites Big Break and The Generation Game.

ONE year ago, Danny Baker presented his Great Album Showdown, a compelling mix of chat show and documentary in which the veteran broadcaster waxed lyrical about the beloved vinyl LP, with the likes of Jeremy Clarkson and writer Kate Mossman.

Now Baker is back with a nearly identical new series, Danny Baker’s Rockin’ Decades – The Seventies, in which he begins a celebration of the best of British rock music over the past four decades. In episode one he reflects on 1970s sounds with ex-Joy Division and New Order bassist Peter Hook, the Slits’ Viv Albertine and rocker-turned-chef Loyd Grossman.

JEREMY PAXMAN’S series Britain’s Great War has been exploring what life was like on the home front, as the country was forced to transform itself into a war machine, and civilians faced up to the possibility that they too could become casualties.

In the third part, he looks at what the wreck of a U-boat in the Medway can tell us about Germany’s attempts to starve Britain into submission.