Saturday 2nd June 2012
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Sunday 3rd June 2012
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Monday 4th June 2012
| Desperately Seeking Sympathy |
Why would a perfectly healthy person pretend they had cancer? Or pretend that were pregnant with a foetus that could not survive long after birth? Munchausen's disorder has been known about for years but it's spread to the internet. People are constructing elaborate false identities, faking medical misfortunes and then posting online support forums. Few forums have escaped the imposters in what has become an epidemic of fakery.
In this programme Jolyon Jenkins speaks to those who have fallen victims of this kind of deception, as well as tracking down those who have perpetrated it. He learns how people who have genuinely suffered from medical misfortunes go online to offer help to other sufferers, only to find themselves taken for a ride by fakers. For some, learning that they have been getting into a deep and personal relationship with someone who turns out to be an emotional fraudster, is traumatic. Entire online communities sometimes feel devastated to learn that they have been harbouring an imposter.
The deception is often highly elaborate. "Munchausens by Internet" sufferers often invent multiple online personalities (known as "sock puppets"): to support each other husbands, boyfriends, relatives and friends who pop up to validate the main character. In one case, the Macmillan cancer forum was hoaxed by a teenage girl who posed as the mother of a young girl, "Charly", with terminal cancer. Members of the forum were gripped for months as the Charly's fortunes rose and fell. Eventually she lost her brave fight against cancer; forum members painted their nails pink in tribute to Charly's alleged last wishes and others wrote poetry in her memory. When it turned out that Charly was completely fictional, Macmillan forum members, many of whom had cancer themselves, were stunned. Some still refused to believe they had been corresponding with a teenager.
Imposters are not always detected but when they are they usually disappear without a word. Sometimes they reappear later under different names, but tracking down the real person behind the fake is virtually impossible. Why do they do it? Not for money. In interviews with two sufferers, Jolyon Jenkins hears of their desperate need for attention, their feelings of inadequacy in real life, and of loveless childhoods.
Other questions are raised by the phenomenon: why are people prepared to offer 24 hour support to characters who they don't know, and whose very existence they take on trust? And given the psychological damage done by perpetrators, shouldn't forum owners take more care to check that they are not providing a home for this new kind of online fraud?
| The Digital Human (6/7) |
Aleks Krotoski explores the digital world.
| Highlands on Film |
From crofters, mountains and midges to hunting, whisky and the Highland Games, key archive gems from newsreel and documentary collections combine to create a portrait of the region and its people.
| Surviving Progress |
Documentary telling the double-edged story of the grave risks we pose to our own survival in the name of progress. With rich imagery the film connects financial collapse, growing inequality and global oligarchy with the sustainability of mankind itself. The film explores how we are repeatedly destroyed by 'progress traps' - alluring technologies which serve immediate need but rob us of our long term future. Featuring contributions from those at the forefront of evolutionary thinking such as Stephen Hawking and economic historian Michael Hudson. With Martin Scorsese as executive producer, the film leaves us with a challenge - to prove that civilisation and survival is not the biggest progress trap of them all.
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Tuesday 5th June 2012
Law in Action (1/4)
Radio 4, 4.00pm - 4.30pm
Joshua Rozenberg looks at the legality of drone attacks, the changing face of international law and the thorny issue of time and the law.
| Rolf Paints… The Diamond Jubilee |
In celebration of HRH Queen Elizabeth's diamond jubilee, Rolf Harris joins Anneka Rice and a team of sixty inspirational artists as they try to capture sixty years of royal history on canvas.
Rolf will be throwing open the doors of his specially-constructed 'pop-up art school' to artists of all ages and abilities as, for one day only, they set up easel and pick up their brushes to pay tribute to our Queen. With Rolf as their mentor, the artists will be able to pick up tips and techniques from the man who has become one of Britain's favourite artists and entertainers.
Joining Rolf is amateur artist Anneka Rice. Anneka has been out and about collecting stories and meeting people with their own memories of the Queen's reign. Not only will she be painting, but she will also face a huge challenge; as soon as the artists put down their brushes, she will need to work through the night to transform the venue into a free pop-up art gallery ready for the public to view the paintings over the jubilee weekend.
| Jimmy and the Giant Supermarket (2/3) |
This week Jimmy tackles Tesco's best-selling own brand sausages, to see if he can produce a free range version for the same affordable price - and persuade the public.
| All in the Best Possible Taste with Grayson Perry (1/3) |
...with Grayson Perry. Artist Grayson Perry explores British tastes, using his discoveries as inspiration for a work of art. In this episode he immerses himself in working class Sunderland.
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Wednesday 6th June 2012
| The Secret History of Our Streets |
In 1886 Charles Booth embarked on an ambitious plan to visit every one of London's streets to record the social conditions of residents. His project took him 17 years.
Once he had finished he had constructed a groundbreaking series of maps which recorded the social class and standing of inhabitants. These maps transformed the way Victorians felt about their capital city.
This series takes six archetypal London streets as they are now, discovering how they have fared since Booth's day.
Booth colour coded each street, from yellow for the 'servant keeping classes', down to black for the 'vicious and semi-criminal'. With the aid of maps the series explores why certain streets have been transformed from desperate slums to become some of the most desirable and valuable property in the UK, whilst others have barely changed.
This landmark series features residents past and present, exploring how what happened on the street in the last 125 years continues to shape the lives of those who live there now.
In Booth's time, Deptford High Street was 'the Oxford Street of South London'. Today, marooned amid 70s housing blocks, it is one of the poorest shopping streets in London.
Featuring compelling accounts from residents, including one family which has been trading on the high street for 250 years, the film tells the story of transformation and endurance as the people themselves tell the history of their own past and the street they lived in. Through these deeply personal accounts of huge extended families living together in a single street, the bigger story of slum clearance and the unraveling of the old ways of life emerge - a change which shaped the lives of tens of millions of British families all over the country.
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Thursday 7th June 2012
| Work Till You Drop?: Tonight |
Over three quarters of a million people aged over 65 go to work, and it is predicted that that figure will double to one and a half million by 2017. With many facing a poor retirement and forecasts that more of us will live into our eighties and nineties, is it fair that everyone can work for as long as they like, or are young workers losing out? Fiona Foster meets some of Britain's oldest workers.
| The House the 50s Built (1/4) |
Brendan Walker explores the social and technological advances of the 1950s by reconstructing a house. This episode focusses on dramatic changes to the engine room of the house; the kitchen.
| The Fruit 'n' Veg Market: Inside New Spitalfields (3/3) |
The fruit and veg trade in England was once a closed world dominated by traditional British costermonger families. But then London changed. Successive waves of immigration have brought new people to New Spitalfields market in east London, people for whom food has a deeper meaning.
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Friday 8th June 2012
| The Man Who Saves Life Stories |
Irving Finkel collects ordinary people's lives. He hoards their life stories in diary form and has amassed a collection of hundreds of handwritten volumes. But Irving has a problem. What should he do with them? The diaries are crammed onto shelves and piled up in corners of his small office. Irving's day job is Assistant Keeper in the Department of the Middle East at the British Museum.
With a couple of trusty recruits, Polly North and Laura Barnicoat, Irving sets out to find a home for his collection and turn it into a 'proper' archive. The plan is to create a repository for unwanted private diaries written by ordinary people.
As the project takes shape, the diarist's life stories take over. There's Godfrey, a retired JP who kept chickens and made an entry in his diary every day for 76 years. There's an unnamed catastrophist, who notes only deaths, diseases and disasters. Whilst Laura's grandmother, at 18, shows a flair for bagging boyfriends and wonderful prose.
And finally, there's a mystery. Why did a war time school girl write in code?
| Punk Britannia (2/3) |
Daydreaming England was about to be rudely awakened as punk emerged from the London underground scene. A nation dropped its dinner in its lap when the Sex Pistols swore on prime time television. Punk had finally found its enemy- the establishment. In Manchester, the Buzzcocks' self-released Spiral Scratch was a clarion call for a do-it-yourself generation, while the Clash's White Riot tour took punk's message across Britain. Moral outrage followed the Pistols around the country, effectively outlawing punk - but there was one refuge for the music. Nestled in the wasteland of 70s Covent Garden, the Roxy was punk's cathedral. Punk interlopers the Jam raised the bar for lyricism, challenging punk's London elite.
Punk also began to extend its three-chord vocabulary through an alliance with reggae, memorably captured by the Clash on White Man in Hammersmith Palais. With their second single, God Save the Queen, the Pistols scored a direct hit at the establishment in summer '77, but a disastrous PR stunt on a Thames barge would mark a turning point. The darker underbelly of the summer of '77 would see race riots in Lewisham. This street turbulence was the backdrop for a rawer, working class sound. If the Pistols and the Clash had been the theory, a second wave led by Sham 69 was the reality.
By '78 punk was becoming a costume - the very pop orthodoxy it had originally sought to destroy. For many punk ended when the Pistols split, beset by internal problems, following an abortive tour of the USA in January '78. Those practitioners who would go on to enjoy sustained success sought to modify their sound to survive, such as Siouxsie Sioux. Punk had shown what it was against, now it was time to show what it was for in the post-punk era.
With John Lydon, Mick Jones, Siouxsie Sioux and Paul Weller.
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