Highway robbery

THE word "real" in the title is the giveaway. It means the makers have discovered some unsavoury facts about their subject and intend to destroy his reputation.

Sure enough, we learn that Dick Turpin wasn't a swashbuckling highwayman who loved the ladies and his horse Black Bess in equal measure. He wasn't the Robin Hood-style figure of popular legend who robbed the rich and gave to the poor.

He was, not to beat about the bush, a right villain who murdered and raped and lied about his equine skills. His famous 200-mile ride from London to York is proved impossible. Perhaps the comedy film Carry On Dick wasn't so wrong after all about the stand and deliver merchant.

The man mostly to blame is an 18th writer of pulp fiction, one William Harrison Ainswood. His novels about Dick Turpin did much to perpetuate the legend of the man and his horse.

In reality, the programme suggests, he was a violent, armed gangster who joined the local Essex Gang to commit a series of house robberies. Guns were readily available, so a spot of violence as they robbed remote farmhouses was a distinct possibility.

Dick was not a nice man, by all accounts. At one farm, he and his gang terrorised the farmer and his servants. They threated to cut off the legs of the farmer and then tortured him over an open fire until he told them where he'd hidden his money. Then Turpin raped a servant girl.

He was, and the programme doesn't mince its words, a psychopath and England's most wanted man with a reward of £200 - 15 years wages for a labourer - on his head.

How much more peaceful things were for Bruce Parry in this week's Tribe as he visited Anuta in the South Pacific, one of the most remote communities in the world.

Usually, he's subjected to all manner of unpleasant and vomit-inducing rituals during his stay. This is more like a holiday. The worst he has to do is dress up, be smeared with paste and do a dance.

His most worrying moment is when the women in this 250-strong community invite him to wash the tumeric with them on the beach. Men aren't usually allowed, but the women insist he joins them.

The experience reminds him of a hen night and, he tells us, "the songs about their private parts are just as rude".

The people on this paradise island just half a mile wide and 75 miles from their nearest neighbours believe in sharing with one another. The 24 famlies believe in showing love and compassion for their fellow human beings - and strangers like Parry.

They get terribly upset when it's time for him to leave. They cry, then he cries as the entire community turns out to wave him off. "When they say goodbye, they really let go," he observes. It's a touching moment in another excellent edition of Tribe.

Life as a trainee with an animal care and rescue outfit is a tougher proposition. RSPCA: Have You Got What It Takes follows 18 women and one man on a training course to see if they've got what it takes to become an RSPCA inspector.

The omens aren't good for Pam. Not because she can't handle the animals, but because she's been sent to Middlesbrough in a blizzard. "I don't know anyone up North and it's scary," she tells us. I hope she doesn't come face to face with a Yeti in the snow-covered landscape because I fear she'd turn round and run away.

The more horrific moment comes when a terrapin is rescued from a garden pond into which someone has dumped chemicals. The poor creature is covered in glue.

The inspector diagnoses it as beyond help and puts it in a box. Luckily trainee Helen spots some movement and the terrapin is rushed to animal hospital for treatment.

Dick Turpin could have done with Helen's expertise when his horse Black Bess collapsed within sight of York Minster after the ride from London - if that particular story had been true.