Reality shows like this one encourage people to wallow in their own misery
The Duchess in Hull
ITV1
People talk of the obesity epidemic, but what about the self-pity epidemic? There are lots of things to say about The Duchess in Hull (19 May, 9pm), in which Sarah Ferguson, the former wife of one of our more pointless royalty, travelled north to help a poor family eat better - and I will say, in a moment. But what struck me most forcibly, once I had managed to quell my yelps of pain at the total embarrassment of it all - "I like Hull," said Fergie, looking bravely round the bedroom of her guest house, at which point I groaned so loudly that my next-door neighbour called to find out if I needed an ambulance - was how alike she and the Sargerson family were.
On one level, of course, they had nothing whatsoever in common, which was why the film got made in the first place. But as Fergie pointed out, she and her charges were able to "level" with amazing alacrity. The duchess put this down to shared humanity: people are just people, whether they shop at Aldi or at Harrods. In fact, the true reason for this unexpected understanding across the class divide was their lavish self-pity. "Everyone is mean to me!" wailed the duchess. "And us!" cried the Sargersons. Group hug, everyone.
In advance publicity for the programme, it was Ferguson who got all the stick. And why not? She is a ridiculous figure, up there with Cherie Blair when it comes to sophistry. The film opened with her "lonely" exile in New York, where she earns a living as a WeightWatchers ambassador. She told us how gloomy she felt in the mornings, and how, whenever she went to a party, she could only loathe herself, on account of her utter grossness. But never mind: a session with her trainer, followed by her daily ice bath, and she was up to tackling the problems of a nation or, as she put it, "to eliminating this obesity situation".
As if to prove how equal she was to this preposterous task, she gave a motivational talk at Marlborough College, the school attended by her daughter Eugenie. The drift of it was that, as a girl, she had thought her parents' divorce was all her fault and yet she fought back and . . . well, just look at her now. My God. Is this what our public schools have come to? I'm glad I went to a comprehensive. At least our motivational talks were given by Sebastian Coe and, er, Roy Hattersley's mum.
Anyway, it's now the Sargersons' turn for some stick. Fergie can afford self-pity. She can cry about Mummy the Bolter and the size of her thighs, and nothing really bad is going to happen. But Tonya and Mick Sargerson cannot. They are ill - it is not an exaggeration to say that they are dying - and although there is no doubting the difficulty involved in feeding a huge family on £80 a week, they were unwilling to admit that any of their problems was their own responsibility.
Ferguson, understandably desperate not to seem like a snob, only encouraged them in their sense of victimhood, feeling their pain, squeezing their rotting bones in her welcoming arms when she should have been telling them how pathetic they sounded, how appalled she was by their crocodile tears and their refusal to stop their 13-year-old son from sparking up a fag while Mum put another 800 sausages under the grill. The only non-victim in this whole sickly scenario was Mick's 83-year-old father, who kept an allotment and regularly offered his family free veg, all of which they refused.
I don't think we should blame loopy old Fergs for her relaxing psychobabble - "I'm listening! Massive love!" - any more than we should blame the Sargersons for their blithe, even stubborn, refusal to do anything about their plight beyond invite a camera crew and a famous person - Kerry Katona, Fern Britton, the Duchess of York; it was all the same to them - into their kitchen. It's tempting, but it's not quite right. So let us turn our anger instead on our programme-makers, whose reality-show quest for human extremes is pushing us all, headlong, into a cultural abyss where facts, argument and subtlety are as absent as apples and pears from a certain Hull council house.
Pick of the week
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Giles Coren and Sue Perkins try out a 1660s diet. It’s, er, meaty.
Filth: the Mary Whitehouse Story
28 May, 9pm, BBC2
Julie Walters as the woman who couldn’t stand sex on her telly.
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