ROLAND WHITE reviews last night’s TV: Being rich can be tough, said the billionaire’s son. Cue tiny violins
Brian Cox: How The Other Half Live
Rating: *****
Oti Mabuse: My South Africa
Rating: ***
Actor Brian Cox’s introduction could have come straight from the lips of Alan Whicker. ‘My journey begins,’ he said, ‘in the playground of the super rich.’
The difference between Whicker’s World and Brian Cox: How The Other Half Live (C5) is that the Succession star also found time on his journey to meet the super poor.
Cox grew up in poverty in Dundee. His father ran a grocery shop, but died when the actor was eight, leaving his family with just £10. ‘Being plunged into poverty affects me to this day,’ he said. ‘Money is very much my own personal demon.’
Actor Brian Cox’s introduction could have come straight from the lips of Alan Whicker. ‘My journey begins,’ he said, ‘in the playground of the super rich’
Going back to Dundee, he met two cleaners who struggle to pay the bills. Their stories affected him so much that he ranted at the crew, wondering whether they should even be filming.
‘It’s extremely painful,’ he said, his eyes full of fury.
He wasn’t so angry on meeting the super rich — more bemused. An encounter with great wealth can often be baffling.
Billionaire phones tycoon John Caudwell gave Brian a tour of his Mayfair home: 15 bedrooms, swimming pool and an aquarium underneath the dining table.
All the neighbouring homes are owned by fellow billionaires, and largely stand empty.
Caudwell, himself from a very ordinary background, said at one point: ‘I just hope I’ve done my job so well that my kids don’t get too much grandiosity.’
Cox grew up in poverty in Dundee. His father ran a grocery shop, but died when the actor was eight, leaving his family with just £10
As Cox pointed out, they were sitting in the lavish cinema of a house worth £250 million.
Not even Caudwell’s main residence, by the way, but a pied-à-terre — grandiose doesn’t come much grander.
Perhaps he is right to worry. Being showered with cash from an early age isn’t always a bowl of Fortnum & Mason cherries (with the stones removed by an obliging under butler).
The son of a Nigerian billionaire, interviewed as he was being fitted for a new suit, told Brian: ‘You constantly have to uphold that image of coming from money, which can be very draining.’
Is that the sound of very, very tiny violins we can hear?
Oti Mabuse: My South Africa (BBC1) turned out to be more like South Africa: My Oti Mabuse. It was less about the country of her birth, and more about the former Strictly dancer and her family.
The star of the show was Oti’s mother, who founded a nursery school in a township near Pretoria because she wanted to keep children off the streets.
There was a wonderfully moving moment when mother and daughter danced together on the very floor where Oti learnt her first steps. We also met Oti’s aunt, working at the roadside flower stall that was set up to raise money for the school.
Under apartheid, life for the family was unremittingly hard. Oti’s father recalled being rounded up at the age of 11 and driven in government trucks to newly established black townships. There were no actual houses, just rows of tents.
Oti also met South Africa’s first black female wine grower, a former cleaner who struggled on a wine course because it was taught in Afrikaans, which she didn’t understand.
Yet she is now so successful that her wine is stocked in Oti’s nearest supermarket in London. She didn’t even like wine at first: ‘It was the most terrible thing I ever had’.
But selling plonk sure beats a lifetime of mopping it off the floors.
Insight of the week: The Crown: Behind The Lens (Sky Arts) offered a handy tip on how to imitate the King. Dominic West, who plays Prince Charles in the current series, advised: ‘Keep your mouth closed, keep your teeth closed — that absolutely sort of helps.’
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