Jungle lore

THE visit of tribesmen from Papua New Guinea to this country takes an unexpected turn in the second part of Return Of The Tribe. The surprise is not that these visitors from the jungle are having to deal with such strange things as dishwashers, vacuum cleaners and fruit crumble.They take those aspects of our so-called civilised society in their stride. What mystifies Chief Joe and the others are our attitudes and treatment of our families.

Having spent time in London, they're staying with families in other parts of the country - the Tanners in Weston-super-Mare in the West country and on a farm in a remote Welsh valley with the Binns family.

It's a visit to a care home, where Mark Tanner works as finance manager, and meeting elderly residents that shocks them.

Statistics show that, in Britain, we live on average 140 miles away from our parents. In Papua New Guinea, families stay together and the concept of putting parents in a home is something they don't understand.

"Because when I was born they took care of me, so I must take care of them now they are old," explains one tribesman. He goes on to tell an elderly couple: "You make me worried because your sons and daughters are supposed to look after you."

On the beach at Weston, they go looking for shells which are used as a dowry in Papua New Guinea, where 61 will buy you a bride. Sounds like a bargain to me.

The Widow's Tale is a simple idea, well-executed. Six women talk about losing their husbands and, as writer Katharine Whitehorn puts it, "the grey mudflats of widowhood". A well-chosen cast of familiar faces - Anna Ford, Joan Rivers and Alex Best among them - talk candidly and movingly about their late husbands, from initial reaction to coming to terms with being on their own.

The length of the marriages under discussion ranges from four months to 45 years. The shortest is that of Jayne Zito, married to Jonathan just four months when he was stabbed by a stranger on the London Underground. The longest belongs to Katharine Whitehorn and novelist Gavin Lyall.

I suspect this proves 60 minutes of fascinating, if occasionally macabre, television because of some clever questionning that brings out the best in the interviewees. Ford, never one for personal publicity, talks openly about learning that cartoonist husband Mark Boxer had an inoperable brain tumour.

She found it frustrating that doctors wouldn't tell her the truth. Patients as intelligent as Boxer, she maintains, want to be treated with complete clarity. One specialist told him he had two years to live. Ford pressed doctors to tell the truth. Eventually one said Boxer would die "sooner rather than later", finally admitting he had two months left. "Mark said, 'oh, thank you' and they both started crying," she recalls.

It's interesting - although you can't help feeling intrusive - to hear these women recall how they heard the news about their husband's death or the circumstances leading up to the death. The pain is the same whether it's the result of a random killing, long illness or sudden death. Jayne Zito says it's "almost like someone puts a fist down your throat and pulls your guts out".

If it's suicide, as in the case of Joan Rivers's husband Edgar Rosenberg, there can be anger. She says she's still furious over the effect on her and her daughter. She's still unable to listen to the taped message he left her, although she has read a transcript of it.

After the grieving, there's being on your own. Ford confesses to going to bed with an old jersey of her husband's for a long time, and Zito says she slept with the box containing her husband's ashes.

Have they all come through the dark times? Some have come to terms with widowhood more easily than others. Whitehorn is even able to say that her husband's death has given her some more closet space.