Television
A very public act of charity
Published 07 August 2008
There's something suspect about this reality show that promotes giving
The Secret Millionaire Channel 4
After I finished watching episode one of the third series of The Secret Millionaire (5 August, 9pm), I didn't set to writing about it straight away. I waited. I had a feeling that it had pulled a fast one on me; that the tears (only a few, honest) that I had shed were the result of nothing but cheap sentimentality.
And so it proved: 48 hours later, I'm much calmer. Which means that I'm able to ask some thoroughly uncharitable questions about this charity-based series, the most obvious of which is: why don't the people who run the good causes that the secret millionaires visit "undercover" ever get suspicious? Don't these people watch television? Don't they think it's a bit odd when a new "volunteer" turns up at their drop-in centre, school or hostel for the homeless with a camera crew in tow? Or perhaps they do, and they just play along in the hope that they'll bag a cheque for £50,000. Either way, the show smells a bit whiffy to me.
What's more, if the nation's millionaires themselves have had this thought, it certainly hasn't put them off: some now apply to appear (in the beginning, they were all recruited). Cue added whiffiness, because this suggests that their motivation has more to do with being on television than with the theology that the series seemingly promotes: that giving is not only better than receiving, but more conducive to a feeling of general contentment than even a session with one's personal trainer.
After all, it's perfectly easy to give cash away quietly. Tch! These boys - and they do all seem to be boys - should learn to do without applause every time they give away cash. Anyone who can afford to drive a Lotus, the car of choice for James Benamor, the first millionaire of this series, should have good deeds fitted as standard in their life, in the same way they have chrome gearsticks fitted as standard in their ridiculous motors.
To be fair, Benamor, who made his £77m fortune in loans for people who find it hard to get loans, seemed nice enough, and he took Moss Side, to which he was spirited from Bournemouth, in his stride. The programme had fixed it for him to work as a classroom assistant at a centre for excluded students, which was where he met Aidan, a boy who picked up the paper only to find on its front page three relatives - they had just been convicted of drugs offences.
Aidan had a nice line in piss-taking. He noted that Benamor was driving an especially rubbish Nissan Sunny (the Lotus remained at the seaside in the interests of Benamor's "disguise") and that, were he one day to get a GCSE and thus be in a position to employ Benamor, all he'd have to do to persuade him to leave teaching would be to offer him a superior model of car (he didn't mention tartan seat covers and tree-shaped air fresheners, but that was the implication). No real surprise, then, when our laughing Nissan driver found £36,000 to give to the project on which Aidan was enrolled.
Then there were Terry and Ann, a retired couple who take in troubled teenage boys. I found Terry and Ann oddly sinister. Perhaps it was the calm way they let Benamor into their home without ever questioning his motives for volunteering - or does the presence of a camera negate the need for the usual checks? Still, this zen cool was as nothing to that which they displayed on discovering that James was a multimillionaire; his £50,000 donation might as well have been a family-sized tin of Cadbury's Roses.
I couldn't really work this donation out. Benamor started by going on about outlay versus reward: he wanted to be sure that his money would be well spent. Then he gave Terry and Ann the money to realise their dream of a "roof garden". Are roof gardens now an essential requirement in the rehabilitation of violent young men? Don't ask me. I'm positively bewildered by The Secret Millionaire's considerable success. First it makes you mawkish; then it makes you feel Alastair Campbell-like in your cynicism. Just for the record, though, my hunch is that bad boys need more than dahlias to keep them on the straight and narrow.
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