preview in scotsman; reviews in times,guardian :
re child prodigy mentioned in preview, i haven't got a sound facility - i don't know if audio-clips work.
so i've provided two alternatives - virtuous and cs.princeton
_____________-
HELEN STEWART
One of the most complained-about episodes in Radio 4’s history was when a little-known (at that time) chat-show presenter called Alan Partridge interviewed a nine-year-old child prodigy, Simon Fisher.
The kid was an insufferable little prig, and Partridge managed to offend the good listeners by referring to him as "abnormal", before asking Simon’s father if he ever sat alone at night by the fire, with his head in his hands, thinking, "God have mercy on my soul, I have spawned a monster."
After a brief bout of one-upmanship with the child (where Partridge, of course, came off worst) comes the line: "All right then, I, Alan Partridge, would like to push you, Simon Fisher, into a very deep, disused canal." And that’s what Middle England objected to.
Every so often, when old chat-show footage is broadcast, you see that same instinct nearly overwhelm Terry Wogan. Faced with the lisping, cotton-candy-haired, pink-eyed ten-year-old antiques genius James Harries, you can just tell that Wogan would have sold his soul to be standing near a waterway. Sure, that queer Quentin Crisp-y kid was TV dynamite, but his presence soiled everyone he came into contact with because, well, because he was just a kid and we were all laughing our heads off at him.
Wogan once said to Harries, "What you’re going to be like at 20, I just can’t imagine." Now Keith Allen, actor, piss-merchant and documentary-maker, is here to help. In fact, he shows us: James has become Lauren, a leggy blond woman with a penchant for tight skirts and trashy underwear. She desperately wants a job in TV. So far, so Weird Weekends, but unlike Louis Theroux, the snarling, sneering Allen is not enamoured by the prospect of spending a weekend chez Harries - and then he meets them: mother Kaye, father Mark and brothers Patrick and Adam. The family, with their internet-bought doctorates in metaphysics (one each), their private detective qualifications (again, all of them) and counselling diplomas from a college based at their own house, is acting out a dysfunctional drama that will terrify any future clients.
The parents come across as fraudsters who have possibly damaged their children beyond repair. Allen even discovers that the psycho-sexual counselling Lauren was required to undergo before her sex change was provided by her mother (using a false name). Male-to-female gender realignment surgery - now that is irreparable damage.
To his eternal credit, Allen confronts them in a local pub, and their response is to confound, take offence, cause offence and feel generally outraged by his attack. But they do not walk out. In the end, after an hour of raging and shouting, it is Allen who exits, leaving his crew behind. For the Harries family, it seems, the simple act of appearing on camera is worth more than protecting what tattered reputation they have. For all I know, they are still there, looking at their very peculiar reflections in the lens.
(You need to Login or Register to view media files and links) (You need to Login or Register to view media files and links) (You need to Login or Register to view media files and links) (You need to Login or Register to view media files and links) (You need to Login or Register to view media files and links)______________
TV Review
Joe Joseph
Little Lady Fauntleroy had an unusual denouement in that it was the interviewer rather than the interviewees who stormed off
IF YOU have ever felt that you had missed out on life by being born several generations too late to enjoy a Sunday family outing to Bedlam to gawp and snigger at the lunatics, then Little Lady Fauntleroy (Channel 4) was a godsend. Remember James Harries, that odd-looking boy, snooty, skinny as a sapling, with corkscrew blond curls and a face that looked slightly unfinished, as if it had been taken out of the oven half an hour early? You know the one, he kept appearing on shows such as Wogan, wearing a velvet jacket and a bow-tie, claiming to be a genius and to have an eye for making a mint from dealing in antiques? Well here he is, as a grown adult, aged 24. Only along the way he turned from a he into a she — full surgical transition, breasts, the works — and now calls himself Lauren.
Lauren Harries looks like the girl next door; but only if you live next door to a ghost train. And oh my, how she loves her new breasts. She likes to flaunt them, or point them at us from over the lip of a plunging, tightly-laced corset. It confirms your worst fears about men. If God had routinely given all men bosoms, the world would be a very different place. If men had their own breasts, the phone number of a local pizza delivery service, and football to watch on television, they would never leave the house. What reason would they have to go out?
If James seemed weird back then, it was only because we hadn’t yet been introduced to his family. The Harries family is the sort you used to see paraded on Esther Rantzen’s television show — no, not because they resemble amusingly misshapen vegetables. It’s because they all boast doctorates and degrees and diplomas in metaphysics, and in counselling, and in dramaturgy, even though these qualifications seem mostly to have been awarded by dubious-sounding colleges that frequently happen to share the same Cardiff address as the Harries family.
That’s before you’ve even investigated the mother’s background as a stripper in Africa, or the father’s spell in prison for arson. One brother has a gift for astral projection. Maybe the gift box was missing the instructions leaflet, since it was never clear what was involved, or what the purpose was.
Chaperoning us around this menagerie was Keith Allen. Having wangled a three-day stay at the Harrieses’ house, he spent the majority of this documentary either with his jaw hanging open as wide as the loading bay of a car ferry, or else shaking his head in disbelief.
With television having helped to create the monster known as James/Lauren, it is only right that television should be the one to destroy this Frankenstein creation. The extent of Lauren’s sickness is that either she is too dim to realise that she is a laughing stock in her own Cardiff neighbourhood (and now, as a result of her further television exposure, also a laughing stock across the nation), or else she realises just how ridiculous she is, but is so addicted to the hot lights of television cameras that she is willing to pay any price necessary to bask in its glare.
Having deluded herself about so many things throughout her short life, including that she is posh and that Robbie Williams is a pal, Lauren has managed to convince herself that she is destined for a career in front of the camera. She is sure that she is smart, can sing, looks sexy, and can act, even as we are watching her prove the very opposite. She is like the reverse of Magritte’s surrealist painting showing an image of a pipe alongside the caption, “Ce n’est pas une pipe ”. In Lauren’s case Magritte’s caption at the bottom of the television screen would read: “This is a talented, charismatic, artistically gifted, intelligent woman who has both her feet planted firmly on the ground.”
When Allen finally loses his patience and accuses them, over a pub lunch, of all being deranged frauds and scam-mongers, it is the Harries family members who remain seated and soldier on through pudding, while it is Allen who walks off the set in disgust. It’s an unusual denouement for this kind of documentary, which usually ends with the interviewees storming off. But to the Harries clan, even humiliation is just another valuable photo opportunity. You know that Ginsu knife they advertise on cable television, the one that can cut through meat, leather, plastic, even metal? They should try it on the skin of the Harries family. Their skin’s that thick I doubt the knife would even leave a mark.
_____________
House of the surprising son
Sam Wollaston
Tuesday June 29, 2004
The Guardian
You may remember James Harries from the late 1980s and early 1990s. He was that weird man-boy with curly blond hair and a face like Harpo Marx, who wore suits and bow ties, had a voice like Margaret Thatcher's and knew a lot about antiques. He used to be on TV quite a lot, mainly on Wogan, saying he wanted to be prime minister one day.
It turns out he didn't really know anything about antiques, but that's probably the least startling revelation in Little Lady Fauntleroy (Channel 4), Keith Allen's film about James and his family.
They are an unusual lot, the sort of family that makes you want to ring your parents and say thank you, thank you for not being like them (The Friedmans, of Capturing the Friedmans, are another good example). James's father Mark is a private detective who has, among other things, tried (unsuccessfully) to sue the government for Ł1m for mismanaging the economy, made the world's largest Yorkshire pudding, and spent time in jail for burning down his own fancy dress shop. James's mother was once a stripper in Africa, ran a Soho escort agency and is a qualified hypnotherapist. One brother is an expert in astral projection, the other a local DJ. All have doctorates in metaphysics.
As does James, though he's no longer a genius, or posh. Or male. James became Lauren, having suddenly realised he was a she. "I must say," she tells Allen, "I'm a bit of a dizzy blonde, so you'll get used to that."
That voice has been replaced by a Cardiff accent but Lauren now looks disturbingly like Mrs Thatcher. And all she wants to do is get on television. She tried to get on Big Brother and is thinking about a career in singing, though judging by a performance in a karaoke bar, she should probably think again.
It gets better, or worse. Worse I think. During the few days Allen spends with the Harries, more comes out. The counsellor who looked after Lauren during her sex change operation was called Lesley Stewart. And Lesley Stewart turns out to be the "business name" of Kaye Harries, Lauren's own mother. Plus it turns out that all their qualifications, doctorates in metaphysics and counselling degrees, were issued by the Cardiff College of Humanistic Studies which, happily, is located at Tudor Cottage, their own house. They've certified themselves.
The whole family seems to live in a disturbing fantasy world. Even their house is a lie - the tudor beams that give the cottage its name are in fact just creosoted planks that have been stuck on. It sits on the edge of a Cardiff estate, pretending to be posh, while their neighbours throw bricks and abuse at it and its inhabitants.
There's something desperately tragic about the whole thing. It ends with a row in a restaurant. "Oh shut up, all of you," shouts Allen. "I'm fed up with it. They're full of crap. Get rid of them, they're crappity smacking mad." Then he storms out.
But he does have the decency to realise that what he has done is part of the awfulness - as are we. "The sad truth is they're fascinated by television and only feel alive when they're being filmed," he says. "The even sadder truth is that television is fascinated by them, and people like them, and that's why it keeps returning to them, year after year."
God, how depressing. And utterly mesmerising, of course.
(You need to Login or Register to view media files and links) (You need to Login or Register to view media files and links)
Pages: 1
little lady fauntleroy (Read 10,987 times)
