Meet the Grewals: a great British family

Channel 4 tonight aired the first episode of ‘The Family’, introducing the British public to the Grewals. It is the first time that a British Indian family has undergone the rigours – and scrutiny – of reality tv.

The first episode introduced us to the three generations of Grewals who all live in their five-bedroom pebble-dashed house directly under the Heathrow flight path in Windsor. There’s Sarbjit and Arvinder (mum and dad) who have been together for 35 years; eldest son Sunny together with his fiance Shay; pregnant daughter Kaki and her husband Jeet; and youngest son Tindy.

The series begun with the Grewals planning a traditional Indian wedding for Sunny and Shay. But rather than take a fetishistic view that accentuated the family’s otherness, the show focused on the fact that the Grewals are like so many other ‘normal’ families in today’s Britain. And with this, viewers were introduced to the fact that there was a dark cloud hanging over the wedding preparations because of the breakdown in the relationship between Shay and her own mother. It’s strong and emotional but essentially normal: something that everyone that has had family problems or tensions will identify with.

At the same time though, and as with most families, the stress and strains of everyday life are lightened by the banter between Sarbjit and Arvinder, the self-proclaimed “man-of-the-house”. One particularly wonderful image was of Sarbjit playing shoot’em up games on a laptop whilst she and her husband were having their heair dyed.

As The Guide in Saturday’s Guardian put it, the show is filmed with a lot of love. And no doubt as the series unfolds, so a lot of love will be shown to the Grewals, the latest in a long line of great British families.

Everything on this site by Chris Allen is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial 2.0 UK: England & Wales License. www.chris-allen.co.uk.

“I detest the niqab and the BNP: what does that make me?”

For anyone who has read the post by Gary Younge on Comment is Free entitled, ‘When you watch the BNP on TV, just remember: Jack Straw started all this’, many I’m sure will conclude that he makes some good points. Not least when he notes that:

…there is little doubt that once the BNP is on Question Time, Jack Straw – or indeed anyone in the New Labour hierarchy – is in no position to take the fight to it. The same is true for most of the rest of the British political establishment that will be represented on the panel – they have either actively colluded or passively acquiesced in the political trajectory of the past decade.

But it is no accident that this happened on New Labour’s watch and no small irony that Jack Straw should set himself up as Griffin’s opponent.

In fact I couldn’t agree more. Why put up against the BNP’s Nick Griffin the very man that started the whole niqab furore a few years ago?

Mikaeel Jackson: Wacko becomes Muslim

As part of the wider melieu, it is unsurprising that an old story that has repeatedly raised its ugly head has once again been circulating on the internet. The story in question is that Michael Jackson converted to Islam.

As a man that wore a traditional abaya on a trip to Bahrain a short while ago (see image above) – something that clearly goes against the practices of Islam – it would seem somewhat absurd to believe that Jackson could have converted. Indeed, it seems even stranger that such stories are given any credence or thought. However, it is apparent that they clearly do.

The email in circulation at the moment, contains a link to the Daily Telegraph article from November 2008.

“Eccentric, perverse, hideous, disfigured, flawed, scandalous & ruined”: Reflections on the death of Michael Jackson

Apart from simple references to celebrity – and maybe human idiocy – there is little apparent else to link the deaths of Jade Goody and Michael Jackson. This is not to suggest however that his death has been any more palatable or indeed that the legacy that will no doubt ensue will offer any better hopes of reality or authenticity. As I wrote in relation to Goody’s tragic-comic passing, the debacle was symptomatic of society’s:

…superficiality; the growth of the cult of celebrity; the veneration of its most shallow idols; the adoration of excess and greed; the voyeurism of schadenfreude; the cultural antipathy towards intellectualism; and the nihilistic and myopic rejection of social and personal morality…

‘Spin Spin Sugar’: terror arrests & household sweeteners

In a story that smacks of the same absurdity as the Brass Eye episode about ‘cake’ (for those unaware of ‘cake’ click here to read more), The Sun newspaper is reporting that anti-terror police have confiscated ’sugar’ from the houses of those arrested in the terror raids last week.

Under the headline, “Terror plot cops find ‘bomb part’ “, The Sun reports that:

COPS searching the homes of 11 terror suspects have seized bags of sugar — a common ingredient in home-made bombs.