Trust on trial
James Delingpole
Eitinthough it is to lambast the BBC for its nauseating political correctness, its glib left-wing bias and its continual dumbing down, there are times when you're forced grudgingly to admit that it's still the greatest broadcasting organisation in the world and that your licence fee is worth every penny. The first part of its new series The National Trust (BBC4, Sunday) was one such moment.
But that wasn't my immediate response. For quite a bit of this leisurely and sumptuously photographed account of the squabbles surrounding the NT's most visited property — Studland Bay in Dorset — I found myself getting increasingly irritated. First, the pacing seemed self-indulgently slow and laborious. Second, it didn't seem to be going anywhere. Though we had been introduced to plenty of opinionated characters, we had been given frustratingly little supporting evidence to help us to decide which ones we could trust and which ones were nutters. 'Oh God,' I thought, 'maybe the programme-makers are suffering from some right-on hang-up about not being too judgmental.'
Which was a pity because right at the beginning it had all seemed so impressively forthright. First we met Julian Homer, the NT property manager responsible for the area Then, one by one, we were introduced to all the different interested parties who loathed his guts: the horsewoman, the hote her, the nudist, the beach café owner. They didn't mince their words. One described poor Homer as 'a devious little s—t'.
When a man has been so comprehensively slagged off by so many people, it's hard not to develop a suspicion that his detractors may have a point. And Homer wasn't exactly his own best PR man. He came across so eerily uncharming that even when he had right and common sense on his side, he still managed to alienate most of his potential allies. You could imagine him making a very efficient traffic warden; or one of those local-council functionaries who derive inordinate pleasure from denying you what you want because you have failed to fulfil some trivial bureaucratic detail.
So, when we heard bearded hotelier (and author of Dorset At War) Mr Rose and his wife blustering about the ruthlessly legalistic way that Homer had enforced a property lease they had bought from the National Trust, we sympathised. And when the nudists moaned about the cruel manner in which he'd denied them all but a tiny segment of the beach, we thought — as we averted our gaze from their hideous, wobbly bodies, wondering the while why it is that only lard-buckets ever want to be naturists — well, what a meanie. And when the horsewoman tearfully indicated the gravel motorway with which Homer had defaced the heath, we shared her out
rage. And when the owner of the beach café hut grumbled about Homer's plans to relocate him to the car park on the cliffs above, we thought. .
Well, actually we thought: 'Hang on. Homer has got a point.' The National Trust — quite sensibly — had recently taken the decision not to carry on wasting hundreds of thousands of pounds a year trying to arrest erosion on the 600 miles of British coastline it owns, From now on, it would let nature take its course. By enforcing that decision — for example, explaining to the café owner that, with the sea encroaching on the beach at the rate of a metre a year, he might soon need to move his hut — Homer was simply doing his job.
And so, deliciously and surprisingly, it began little by little to dawn that all was not as it had first seemed. Homer's problem with the nudists, it emerged, wasn't kill-joy prudery but the fact that some of them had been upsetting fellow beach users by publicly masturbating. As for the horsewoman, it turned out that she wasn't necessarily right. One of her fellow riders was heard praising Homer for his sensitivity and willingness to address riders' needs. But the best bit came last: the jaw-drop pingly riveting, hide-behind-the-sofa, embarrassing showdown between the NT and the 'wronged' hoteliers. Since the couple refused to deal with Homer, a more senior area representative had been draft ed in. This representative was a sleek, plummy-voiced, merchant-banker type — much more up the hoteliers' social street, you suspected. But if they had assumed from his emollient tones that he was about to cave in and offer them the £100,000 they felt was owed them, they were about to get a very rude awakening.
First, we heard Mrs Rose put her case against the National Trust. It had tried to 'ruin' and 'blackmail' her; it was guilty of 'dubious business practices'; it was 'atrocious', 'unethical' and 'appalling'; it had kept her awake; it threatened to make her unable to pay her children's school fees. Then came the bombshell, as the NT representative gently but firmly responded that they hadn't done that badly; it was a business deal 'sound to all parties' and when they had sold their hotel for 11.25 million, they'd emerged with £.600,000 profit.
I can't imagine that there have been many moments on television where an audience's sympathy for a 'wronged' party has evaporated quite so dramatically or swiftly. And as I watched transfixed, appalled and delighted at this classic piece of road-accident TV, my heart filled with joy about how wonderful the BBC can still be when it gets its programmes as right as this. Great camerawork, great direction (by Patrick Forbes), great voiceover, great everything. God, I can't wait for the next four episodes.
Previous page
