logo
CHRISTOPHER STEVENS reviews Louis Theroux: The Settlers on BBC2: Theroux's bumbling gaucheness is wearing uncomfortably thin...

CHRISTOPHER STEVENS reviews Louis Theroux: The Settlers on BBC2: Theroux's bumbling gaucheness is wearing uncomfortably thin...

Daily Mail​27-04-2025

Mae West made her final movie, Sextette, when she was 84. She stars as a movie queen so irresistible that an entire squad of athletes are desperate to seduce her.
'I do the role I always do,' she told an interviewer. 'I do Mae West. I've kept my looks.'
Louis Theroux is turning into Mae West without the wigs. Aged 54, he's still doing the schtick that launched his career in the 1990s, the faux-naive bumbler with an air of boyish puzzlement. And it's wearing uncomfortably thin.
'You've come armed, but we're so friendly,' he teased a twitchy Israeli radical with a sub-machinegun slung over his back, as he toured Jewish outposts on the West Bank in The Settlers.
For a ghastly moment, I was afraid he was going to use Mae's famous line from the Broadway play Catherine Was Great: 'Is that a pistol in your pocket or are you just pleased to see me?'
That sort of jejune flirtiness worked wonders with eccentrics such as Christine Hamilton and Debbie McGee on When Louis Met..., but it had no effect on the belligerent Zionist evangelists. Like an increasing number of people, they were immune to the Theroux charm.
Daniella Weiss, a veteran campaigner for increasing Israel's territory, became so tired of his pretence at gaucheness that she placed both hands on his chest and shoved him hard. Her aim, she explained frankly, was to provoke him into shoving her back — so she could claim he'd physically attacked her.
If he was as unworldly as he likes to make out, Louis might have fallen for it. Instead, he shot her a hurt, bewildered look like a puppy that's just had its nose smacked.
A deep streak of cynicism lies under his charade. His interviewees are carefully chosen, to reinforce the BBC narrative that Israelis are the oppressors and Palestinians their victims.
Weiss is a crackpot, who believes Jewish settlers should be rushing into the Gaza Strip to establish tarpaulin homesteads amid the rubble. Aside from all the other arguments, the fact that this would be suicidal, inviting barbarous reprisals by Hamas, doesn't appear to bother her.
While Louis's camera team was following her car in a military convoy, she veered away and made a break for the Gaza border. Israeli soldiers intercepted her, but when Louis caught up, her eyes were sparkling with manic glee: 'I wanted to show the rabbis that Gaza is not something beyond reach.'
By contrast, his main Palestinian spokesman was the avowedly non-violent Issa Amro, a long-time activist who advocates peaceful protest and has denounced Hamas terrorism.
Every aspect of this documentary, and Amro's involvement most of all, will have been scrutinised in minute detail by BBC lawyers and spin doctors. They can't afford a repeat of the disaster earlier this year, when the teenage narrator of a film about children in the Gaza Strip turned out to be the son of a senior Hamas official.
Louis isn't naive enough to make a mistake like that.

Orange background

Try Our AI Features

Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:

Comments

No comments yet...

Related Articles

Should family history, however painful, be memorialised forever?
Should family history, however painful, be memorialised forever?

Spectator

time4 hours ago

  • Spectator

Should family history, however painful, be memorialised forever?

Be under no illusions: this is not a food memoir. Chopping Onions on My Heart is a linguistic exploration of belonging; a history of the Jewish community in Iraq; and an urgent endeavour to save an endangered language. Above all, it is a reckoning with generational trauma. The subjects of Samantha Ellis's previous books include the life of Anne Brontë, heroines of classic literature, feminism and romantic comedy. She is the daughter of Iraqi Jewish refugees, and the language she grew up around, the language of her people and culture, is dying. Judeo-Iraqi Arabic 'came out of the collisions of Hebrew-speaking Jews and Aramaic-speaking Babylonians, and then absorbed linguistic influences from all the other people who conquered Iraq'. Ellis is irrepressible in the way she talks about her mother tongue, calling it 'earthy, sinewy, witty, excessive, wry, noisy, vivid… Hot, where English often seems cold. Mouth-filling, where English seems empty. Patterned, when English seems plain.' Jewish people first came to Iraq in 586 BC. At the community's height in the 1940s there were 150,000 Jews living in the country. At best guess, by 2019 just five remained. Most left in the decade following Farhud, the pogrom carried out against the Jews of Baghdad over two days in 1941. More than 180 Jews were murdered and countless raped and injured. Ellis's father's family left for Israel, while her mother's stayed on for more than 20 years. But both her parents eventually ended up in London, where Ellis was born. She was raised speaking English, 'but all the gossip, all the stories, all the exciting, forbidden grown-up life happened in Judeo-Iraqi Arabic'. She quietly absorbed the language, but as she grew up, lost it. Now, as an adult and mother, she is acutely aware of the consequences for herself and her son. The mass exodus of Iraqi Jews in 1950-51, and their assimilation into adopted countries, meant that the language was marginalised, and speaker numbers dwindled fast. Ellis's early investigations are urgent, panicked, motivated by a combination of incredulity and guilt that a language that informs her heritage, but that she doesn't speak, isn't being preserved by someone else: 'I raced to my laptop to find out if anyone was saving my language. Someone had to be!' She begins language classes, visits museums and consults relatives. She attempts to trace the history of her people. She cannot accept that the reason languages become extinct is because second generation, non-native speakers 'didn't value or care for them, that we were recklessly letting them die'. She realises that 'there was always violence somewhere in the vanishing of languages. There certainly was in mine'. The mother tongue is 'earthy, sinewy, witty, excessive, wry, noisy, vivid…Hot, where English often seems cold' The psychological effect of being brought up by families who have experienced war, discrimination and displacement is what makes Ellis both neurotic and determined not to pass on that inherited fear to her son. When he garbles the history of how they came to Britain, Ellis decides: 'If I was going to unmuddle him, maybe I had to try to unmuddle myself first.' But how does one preserve the stories of a culture's past without also holding on to the pain that imbues them? In her search for home and belonging, she finds solace in cooking her country's traditional dishes. But this is not a tidy personal narrative that finds resolution in a comforting stew or finishes with a glorious homecoming wrapped neatly in bread dough. Ellis is wary of simplifying the past and making it more palatable through food. The problem is not Iraqi Jewish cuisine; that's the easy bit. It's the gnarly, traumatic parts that are harder to engage with. So, no, this is not a food memoir. And if at times it doesn't seem to know quite what it is, then isn't that sort of the point? Unpicking, extricating different facets of heritage is near impossible, compounded by the conflicting motivations of a second generation immigrant. What begins as a shapeless mass, a grey cloud of uncertainty, slowly morphs into a full-colour, defined picture of a more confident, peaceful acceptance of Ellis's duality – of being Judeo-Iraqi, but not in Iraq, of belonging to two places at once, even if one place cannot be visited. Like her identity, Ellis's book contains multitudes.

Who won Race Across the World today? BBC final recap
Who won Race Across the World today? BBC final recap

Scotsman

time5 hours ago

  • Scotsman

Who won Race Across the World today? BBC final recap

See which of the four teams managed to win Race Across the World series 5 🏃‍♂️ Sign up to our daily newsletter Sign up Thank you for signing up! Did you know with a Digital Subscription to Edinburgh News, you can get unlimited access to the website including our premium content, as well as benefiting from fewer ads, loyalty rewards and much more. Learn More Sorry, there seem to be some issues. Please try again later. Submitting... Race Across the World has crowned the winners for series 5. The winning pair walks away with the grand prize after the final leg. But which team made it to the last checkpoint first? The fifth winners of Race Across the World have been crowned after a rollercoaster final on the BBC. The remaining teams faced one last dash to reach the last checkpoint on a truly mammoth journey. After eight weeks - and around 14,000km - four pairs successfully completed the journey from the Great Wall of China to Kanyakumari in India. It is an incredible journey that has taken them across two of the most populous countries in the world - via Nepal. Advertisement Hide Ad Advertisement Hide Ad However, all good things must come to an end, as they say. The final of Race Across the World's fifth series took place tonight (June 11) and just over seven hours separated the top three teams heading into the last leg. But which of the pairs managed to run out as victors at the end of the race? Here's all you need to know: Who won Race Across the World series 5? Race Across the World series 5 finalists | BBC Heading into the final leg of the mammoth race from China to the bottom of India, mother and son duo Caroline and Tom were in the lead. They reclaimed the top spot at the end of last week's seventh leg - as then-leaders Brian and Melvyn saw themselves tumble to the bottom of the leader board after opting for the rural route and avoiding Mumbai and falling 17 hours behind. Advertisement Hide Ad Advertisement Hide Ad Caroline and Tom had a nearly seven hour lead over sisters Elizabeth and Letita. Young Welsh couple Fin and Sioned were ever so slightly further behind at seven hours and 48 minutes - having clawed back from a 33 hour deficit earlier in the season. It set things up for a dramatic final dash across the southern states of India. But who made it to Kanyakumari first? Caroline and Tom were the first to reach the last checkpoint and thus were crowned winners of Race Across the World series five. What does the winner of Race Across the World get? The winning couple walk away with a £20,000 jackpot - as well as bragging rights of course. It has been the same prize since the show began back in 2019. Advertisement Hide Ad Advertisement Hide Ad Fortunately for fans, the show is not completely over as there is still one episode left in the season. Race Across the World will be back next week (June 18) with a reunion special that will reunite the five teams six months after the end of the race. It promises unseen footage, behind-the-scenes insights and plenty more. Find out how to watch it here. Have you got a story you want to share with our readers? You can now send it to us online via YourWorld at . It's free to use and, once checked, your story will appear on our website and, space allowing, in our newspapers.

Wynne Evans shares full video 'BBC wouldn't let him publish' after 'grope'
Wynne Evans shares full video 'BBC wouldn't let him publish' after 'grope'

Daily Mirror

time5 hours ago

  • Daily Mirror

Wynne Evans shares full video 'BBC wouldn't let him publish' after 'grope'

Former Strictly Come Dancing contestant Wynne Evans has posted a video that he claims the BBC wouldn't let him share in full amid a scandal on the show last year. It comes following his departure from the BBC in recent weeks. The video shows Wynne and Katya Jones backstage after a scene in which he had moved his hand over her waist on the show. Wynne wrote: "The video that was too long for @bbcstrictly @bbccymruwales I think this tells it as it was."

DOWNLOAD THE APP

Get Started Now: Download the App

Ready to dive into the world of global news and events? Download our app today from your preferred app store and start exploring.
app-storeplay-store