This World: The Secret Swami BBC2
Panorama BBC1
Real Crime: Who Killed the Pageant Queen? ITV1
Euro 2004 ITV1
'Do as I say or your life will be full of pain and suffering'.
No, not Big Brother to the housemates, Sven in the dressing room at 4.45pm on Thursday or even the delightful pig farmer, Jimmy Doherty (of BBC2's equally delightful Jimmy's Farm) to his 'gay' boar, Blaze, but, allegedly, the not-so-sage advice of the Indian avatar, Sai Baba, to one of his (good-looking, teenage, American) male followers after an inappropriately intimate one-on-one.
Whether sleazy paedophile or over-enthusiastic practitioner of what he claims are 'ritual healing processes', the 'Living God' has about 30 million devotees worldwide and endorsements from a succession of Indian prime ministers - odd really, given his unsavoury demeanour and platitudinous religious philosophy (in a neat bit of cross-branding his 'Love all, serve all' mission statement was co-opted by Baba devotee and Hard Rock Cafe founder Isaac Tigrett who, apart from contributing to the obesity epidemic, has also done a great deal of good with his own many millions).
I've not spent quality time with as many man-gods as I would have liked, obviously, but I would have thought that even a profoundly unenlightened soul can spot the difference between a living deity and a living goat. Though not interviewed for the film, there was plenty of footage of his shifty-eyed Swami-ship performing shoddy close-up 'miracles', materialising fake Rolexes and 'giving birth to golden egg-shaped objects through his mouth'. He really needs to catch up with the latest trends in close-up 'miracles' from David Blaine or Derren Brown because with an act this poor he'd be lucky to make it into the Magic Circle, never mind jump the queue for Nirvana.
In last Sunday's Panorama those of us for whom Faith is a chain of high street shoe shops got some idea - though not quite enough (choosing a female presenter may have helped) - of what it must be like to be a British Muslim woman in the current climate, and particularly one who chooses to wear the hijab. Salma the anti-war campaigner, Syeda the drugs counsellor, Muddassar the lawyer, and Ameena the student were all extremely articulate and exceptionally reasonable and it would have been useful to have this balanced by someone extremist, dim-witted and / or glib.
Only the youngest, 18-year-old Ameena, wore the full hijab, head to toe, with just a slit for her eyes, but Ameena's mum considered her daughter's decision 'not to dress the way everyone else dresses' as a form of teenage rebellion - a fashion statement infinitely more provocative and interesting than the predictable piercings and tattoos of her non-Muslim peers. Ameena enjoys the fact that nobody can comment on her figure or her hair, but thinks it's funny that she gets cat-called 'Ninja'. Apparently underneath that veil beats the heart of a proper little 21st-century punk. I liked her style, and if those eyes are anything to go by I suspect she's as beautiful as she is smart.
In 2001 an edition of ITV1's Real Crime went some way to persuading viewers that the parents of JonBenet Ramsey, the six-year-old American beauty queen who was murdered on Christmas night in 1996 at her home in Boulder, Colorado, were not guilty of the crime. Despite never having been charged, John and Patsy Ramsey had been effectively found guilty by US daytime television (stand up, Geraldo Rivera), while even the Boulder Police Department never looked much further during their incompetent investigations.
Despite there being no evidence, forensic or otherwise, connecting them to the crime, the Ramseys were demonised even as their daughter became (according to Zoe Wanamaker's voiceover) 'the most famous murdered child in history'.
Like the Boulder PD, it seemed as if America wanted the Ramseys punished not only because of their affluent American Dream lifestyle and their personal peculiarities (what kind of a name is JonBenet? What sort of parents think beauty pageants for six-year-olds are a good idea?), but also for failing to play the role of grieving parents with the prescribed degree of wilting victimhood. Patsy never did enough crying for the cameras and didn't come across well on TV (or, come to that, during the footage of her police interrogation) but it was still a big leap to accuse her of murdering her own daughter. Though now living in near-penury in Michigan, the Ramseys may be about to be vindicated, last Tuesday's follow-up Real Crime revealed. A handful of private investigators (working for nothing) have come up with two prime suspect accomplices - one whose 'suicide' shortly after the murder now looks like murder, and another who 'dresses like a ninja' (plenty of bad PR for ninjas this week).
Though the net is now closing (no thanks to Boulder Police), in the US JonBenet's murder has been mythologised almost as much as that of Nicole Simpson and so, even if proved technically innocent, their perceived 'guilt' may prove difficult for the Ramseys to shake off, at least in the eyes of many Geraldo fans. But for the fact that it has been proved their shoes do not fit the scene-of-crime footprints, they've effectively been OJ'd.
And so to, yawn, the football. Now I love a good game but, despite the score against Switzerland, England's performance in Euro 2004 has been on a slippery downhill slope ever since that heartfelt, gloriously European, pre-match kiss between Beckham and Zidane, just before they emerged from the tunnel for England v France last Sunday. The performances on the field have been undeniably scrappy and lacklustre and so I'm afraid I am forced to agree with Alastair Campbell's analysis on Thursday night's Fantasy Football (and given that everything else he said was insufferably smug and self-aggrandising this is not a sentence I expected to write): 'Even Burnley could have won 3-0 against 10 Swiss.' Indeed, the ITV1 pundits were nearly as weary as the players by half-time on Thursday:
'Not really sparkling, are we?' (Des Lynam to Terry Venables.)
'It just feels a bit after-the-Lord-Mayor's-Show to me.' (Come again, Gareth Southgate? Though my favourite Colemanball of the week is courtesy of Mark Lawrenson after Ruud van Nistelrooy's goal against Germany: 'It's a great goalscorer's goal, that'.)
For sporting thrills last week you needed to look no further than the final furlong of the Royal Hunt Cup at Ascot on Wednesday, when 32 elegantly handicapped thoroughbreds crossed the line with barely a whisker between them (incidentally it's been a busy week for Angus Loughran, combining his daytime racing punditry for the BBC with the evening job as Fantasy Football 's 'Statto' on ITV1), but even though the football's been dire at least we have been able to lose ourselves in the heroic glamour of the footie-related advertisements. Or at least some of us have.
It really is Fantasy Football out there in adland: from the Zoo-readers' wet dream that is the Heineken 'flatmates' ad, to Pepsi aiming for blockbuster glamour (and missing) as Beckham does Brad Pitt in Troy, via the irresponsibility of Nike as Thierry Henry and his fleet-footed friends trash a house in pursuit of the ball (a nation of parents weep), the message is 'Way-ay, lads - anything goes! Just Do It': a view presumably endorsed by the morons who have been busy tearing up Albufeira.
Even the dullest parochial ads are trying to make themselves over with a little Euro-glam-elan: Persil secured themselves Michael Owen ('Thanks, Mum') but Currys' approach was simply to give Linda Barker a football to hold and stand her next to David Seaman. (Did they bother to try and get a current England player? Do they care?) But aside from Linda (rest assured, after the bomb drops all that will be left will be Linda Barker and the cockroaches), some 'ad-mums', numerous 'Fantasy Girlfriends' and Gabby Logan, switch on the telly at the moment and it's as if women have fallen off the face of the earth. Canon's footballing fingers, T-Mobile's horizontal ball-control, Carling's street football, predictable car-balls from Hyundai and Saab, bandwagon hopping and dribbling from Mastercard, the terrible fast-forward food ads from Pizza Hut and McDonald's ('Free-One!'): they're all aimed at blokes.
Admittedly I've not stayed up late enough to catch any tampon advertisements but if they don't feature a bunch of blondes playing five-a-side in tight white shorts on a Portuguese beach I'll eat one of David Beckham's Gillette Mach 3 Turbos (Turbo? Yes, it's a razor with an engine ) while singing the Croatian national anthem.
