A forgettable royal visit

TV REVIEW:  The Duchess on the EstateUTV, Tuesday Return to Mullaghmore RTÉ 1, Monday, LukeRTÉ1, Tuesday, Charity Lords of the RingRTÉ1, Saturday, Tuesday and Wednesday

‘DO YOU KNOW the queen?” “No.” “Yes, you do, she wears a crown and things. Well, I married one of her sons. I married a real prince!” Lady Sarah Ferguson, Duchess of York, seems a little depressed. Life hasn’t been a saucer of Queen Anne roses for Fergie; from hanging out in her jodhpurs with the polo pony boyos, to a spot of enthusiastic marrying and divorcing of Prince Andrew, the jolly Titian-haired gal has been gadding about in the glare of a largely hostile media for at least the life-span of two corgis now. Not quite an exacting career, but from children’s author of helicoptering tales to occasional stints as a television presenter, Fergie hasn’t given up on her efforts to scratch out a living around the chicken coop of celebrity.

With barely enough time to get her Botox straightened since her last TV sojourn (investigating life on a British sink estate in The Duchess in Hull), the Duchess (with alarmingly immobile, one assumes cosmetically reconstructed, lips) is back with the less poetically titled The Duchess on the Estate. The Northern Moor estate in south Manchester drew the short straw for this, Fergie's second attempt to instil traditional British values and a bit of bulldog backbone into a fraught community.

It appeared at the start of this highly amusing programme that the former royal had been practising her divine imprimatur all the way from London in the back of the big black car. “Let’s see if we can’t get some community spirit going!” she commanded a startled Rottweiler as soon as her feet touched down on Mancunian soil, before distractedly shaking her wand at a rather insubstantial clutch of bemused residents and then humping off to check into a local BB, one suspected to try and remember what the terms of her contract were.

“Hurrah to that!” shouted the assembled hoodies in her wake, while choking on the lady’s exhaust fumes (I’m lying, of course). Whatever interest Lady Duchess Princess Sarah’s visit may have provoked was about as substantial and lasting as her literary oeuvre. The son of Fergie’s hostess on the estate, when introduced to the said dignitary in the middle of his PlayStation game, wasn’t terribly sure who the queen was, let alone her former daughter-in-law.

The Duchess on the Estateis an hysterical mess and I genuinely have no idea what the purpose of Fergie's trip was supposed to be. Her largesse (if one can call swanning around a shopping centre in a purple pashmina largesse) is akin to Marie Antoinette sprinkling Battenberg crumbs over the revolting peasantry. The befuddled duchess, who ingratiates herself with the locals by shedding crocodile tears and displaying her startling ability to wash up her own teacup, appears to have absolutely nothing of substance to offer the community besides squeezing television cameras into their box rooms for a couple of weeks.

Unlike the philanthropically motivated Secret Millionaire,which sees wealthy individuals invest in long-term strategies to assist communities, what we have here is an insecure minor celebrity with a fortnight on her hands and an almost painful need to be liked. Northern Moor, as the sandpit for Fergie's bruised psyche, is painted as a place tossing on a sea of despair and hopelessness, an area drowning in grimy takeaways, family funeral directors and cut-price solicitors.

The reality is bound to be much more complex, and it would seem that existing community groups on the estate are (understandably) cheesed off that their home is being presented in such a prejudicial light and that the hard work that goes into improving their neighbourhood is left to languish on the cutting-room floor.

“Oh, all these silly muggings,” tutted the duchess, vigorously attacking two boiled eggs at breakfast in her comfortable-looking B&B, an expression of dull determination on her powdery visage. “We really must get some community spirit going!” Oh, someone give the ruddy woman her cheque and an agony column on daytime TV, and put us all out of our misery.

'HIS HAIR WASsticky with seawater and oil. I picked him up, his body was warm. I thought he might still be alive. He wasn't." In these words, John Maxwell described finding the body of his 15-year-old son Paul, who, along with Lord Mountbatten, Baroness Brabourne, and Mountbatten's grandson Nicholas, was murdered by an IRA bomb in the beautiful, hitherto peaceful Sligo town of Mullaghmore in 1979. Paul had a summer job as the Mountbatten family's boat boy and it was a source of great pride to him to motor out and pick up the lobster pots, according to his sorrowful but composed father. The weather, Maxwell added, had been bad all summer, but on the day the boat was blown up and shattered into thousands of pieces in the gently lapping bay, the sun had come out. It was, he remembered, a perfect day for boating.

Return to Mullaghmore, a moving documentary, marked the 30th anniversary of Mountbatten's assassination. Built largely around John Maxwell's concise and painfully crisp recollections, it also included interviews with key political figures of the time, all of whom seemed to believe that that tragic day in August (the same day saw 18 British soldiers blown up at Warrenpoint) was one that marked the beginning of a new phase of understanding and cooperation between the Irish and British governments.

The film also made use of recently released documents showing that Mountbatten (described as “liberal in his instinct”) believed the reunification of Ireland to be inevitable and that he had offered his services to the British government to secure such an outcome. “He should have spoken up. It might have changed the course of history,” said former Sinn Féin president Ruairí Ó Brádaigh, whose somewhat wary contribution to this quietly devastating film did not make easy listening, though he did express regret about the “civilian” deaths involved.

“I waved, he waved back,” said John Maxwell, recalling watching his young son prepare the Mountbatten boat minutes before its last short voyage from the small harbour. “I waved, he waved back – that was the last time I had any contact with him.”

'WHAT'S DONEis done/And what's won is won/And what's lost is lost/And gone forever." A repeat of the brilliant documentary, Luke, a biography of musician Luke Kelly of The Dubliners, which included the finest archive I've seen of daily life in Dublin's battle-scarred inner city, somehow seemed to contextualise the Mountbatten film. Kelly, a man of grace, intelligence and magnificent talent, was someone who succeeded in bridging the divide between nationalist and non-nationalist. An internationalist, a socialist, an intellectual and a humanitarian, Kelly above all possessed an extraordinary voice which was, according to Bono, "the stuff of revolution", capable of illuminating the struggle for justice, whether on the streets of Derry or Dublin.

That face rings a bell A fellowship of ‘celebrities’ battle it out in the ring

I'm a little at a loss to understand the point of Charity Lords of the Ring.I know it's a boxing charity challenge and that the participants stand to make some money for their respective causes (at a time when charities are being hit where it hurts).

But the tricky thing about sticking the word “charity” before a cheap idea is that the cheap idea remains the same, though hidden under generous skirts which it seems improper to look beneath. Of course I’m delighted if some bloke from Fair City makes a few quid for a good cause, or an ex-footballer brings home the bacon for a deserving scheme, but it doesn’t necessarily make scintillating television.

Skill against guile, brain against brawn, and so on and so on. There are, however, some entertaining aspects to the week-long series, which concludes tomorrow. The contestants, all male, who snuck into the game under the banner of "celebrity" (a term which appears to be a broad church in this country), come from a variety of sources, and if you watch children's TV or Big Brother, or know anything at all about ball sports, you just might recognise them.

Anyway, the guys got dragged out of their hotel beds at dawn to run up and down cold hills, and were then put through their paces in a dilapidated warehouse by a congenial Barry McGuigan. They were taught to plié by elegant ballerinas in order to achieve balance and flexibility, and were encouraged to skip down damp corridors in theatrical dressing gowns before going nose to nose with each other in the ring. They said lines such as “I’m going to take you down to Chinatown” with all the conviction of a duck in the Sahara.

Still, I suppose you’ve got to hand it to anyone who is prepared to dance around the ring looking like a roll of white pudding as they attempt to annihilate a mouthy opponent who resembles a dollop of yesterday’s mash. Christ, let’s hope someone makes a few bob out of it.