Tough love
James Delingpole
The closest I ever came to splitting up with my wife was before my stepson the Rat went to boarding school and we had to go through the daily hell of persuading him to do his homework. Had the Rat settled down and done it straight away, of course, he would have had it finished in 20 minutes. Instead, he chose to drag the whole process out into a Chinese water torture of evasion, excuses, refusals, wilful incompetence, glacial slowness and
tantrums, which drove Tiffany and me to despair. If child murder had been legal in those days, it's a near certainty I would have reached for my Uzi. My only reservation would have been that death was possibly too slow for him, and not nearly sufficient compensation for the immense damage he had done to my fragile psyche.
I love him now, though, but that's not the point. The point is to try to give you an idea of the peaks of near-orgasmic — in fact, possibly even, better-than-orgasmic — ecstasy my wife and I achieved as we writhed helpless on the sofa before the wondrous parental-fantasy-come-true that is Brat Camp (Channel 4, Tuesday).
This is the programme that takes a group of problem English teenagers — a thug, a foul-mouthed, cocky spliffhead, a moronic waster, an angry bitch, a sullen alkie — transports them to the middle of nowhere in Utah (allegedly 'America's most boring state-, though I don't think anyone who'd seen the magnificent Sion National Park would agree) and forces them to fend virtually for themselves in the depths of winter until such time as their hippie-fascist adult supervisors have decided that they are fit to rejoin the human race.
Quite how interesting this is for nonparents, I'm not sure. But for anyone with kids, Brat Camp affords a vicarious, quasipornographic thrill not dissimilar, I imagine, to that experienced by bored US marines when they treat themselves on the eve of combat to back-to-back sessions of Platoon, Apocalypse Now, Hamburger Hill and The Deerhunter. 'W ow that is so cool!' you keep going. `I must rewind.'
Among the scenes well worth rewinding for this week was the one where stroppy bitch-girl had her matted dreadlocks roughly sheared off by a moustacheoed ranch-hand type, ostensibly because they posed a louse risk, but really, I'm sure, because she was being so damned annoying that she needed to be squashed.
What seems to have surprised the teenagers is the willingness of the Brat Camp staff to get tough, physical even, when necessary. It surprised me too, actually, first because the staff are all so mildlooking, with wussy, peacenik names like Stone Bear, Rhythm Otter and White Winds, second because in these postEsther times we've been culturally conditioned into imagining that pretty much any form of discipline is the equivalent of child abuse.
Modern kids have grown very good at exploiting this weakness. They know their 'rights'. Which is what made it so piquant when bitch-girl threw her food ration on the floor, secretly confident that she was certain to have it replaced. After all, no adult would ever let a child go hungry, would they? But that's exactly what they did.
Before you start thinking I'm too much of a sadistic bastard, you ought to know that what gave me even greater pleasure than watching these revolting teenagers suffer was when, little by little, they began to reform. When bitch-girl cracked her first smile; when swear-boy stopped sneering; when bully-beef drew such sweet, innocent pleasure from being able to light his first fire without matches; when pallid
acne-creature's complexion visibly improved thanks to the outdoors and the change of diet. Underneath, you realised, they were all lovely kids. That such miracles could be achieved so quickly on children so seemingly intractable made me so happy that I almost cried.
Hurrah! I thought. So I can be a Nazi dad. And just in case we were in any doubt, look at which team won last week's reality show Carrot And Stick (Channel 4). Two teams of twentysometbings were carted off to the Black Mountains for a series of punishing competitive exercises (e.g., pulling a Land-Rover three times across a field; carrying someone on a stretcher up Pen Y Fan) but with an amusing, formatTV twist: one side was given nothing but punishments, the other nothing but rewards.
So, for example, when the Stick team (in khaki, presided over by bullying ex-army NC05) failed to win the Land-Roverpulling exercises, they were kept up all night digging trenches; the Carrot team (with their touchy-feely motivator, and cosy red fleeces), meanwhile, were treated to comfy chairs, phone calls home, and slap-up dinners in a nice warm house. They did different training exercises, too: while one side was yomping, the other was bonding in a sweat lodge.
My wife was rooting for the Carrot team. I, of course, wanted the Sticks to win. And win they did. So if anyone can tell me where a man can procure a cat-o'-nine-tails these days, and how many lashes they would suggest can be non-lethally administered to a three-year-old girl, and a five-year-old boy and a 17-year-old boy, I should be much obliged. It's harsh, but I know now that they'll love me for it in the end.
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