SubscribeJulie Burchill’s documentary on Chavs was well hyped but total nonsense. Well the first half was, because we gave up at that point to see David Walliams and Matt Lucus’s Real Little Britain.
According to Burchill all working class people are Chavs, but nobody on the miners’ strike picket lines she showed was blinged-up or wearing a tracksuit or designer gear. Even more ridiculously, she’s bidding to be spokesperson for the Chavs, but not once was she shown pushing a pram in Ugh boots. Chavs are merely a subsection of the working class, mostly drawn from poor white trash, and certainly not the majority. Burchill may be proudly working class herself, but she’s obviously spent far too long away.
Meanwhile, Lucas and Walliams produced a totally unpretentious documentary (which only touched on Chavs) that let the subjects do the talking. There was a great moment when the Chav teenager, who’d given up on school to work in a pub, had to watch her boss’s impression of her on the phone. Her face was painted with a look of sudden and truly horrible self-realisation. (Note to Burchill: both these women were working class, but only one was a Chav.) There’s a subtext here of course. Little Britain’s been criticised by other professionally working class writers for misrepresenting the proletariat, but this shows us that all too often these people are very real. But then is it any surprise a country with a population over 60m throws up some real characters?
Complaining Little Britain… challenging Peter Kay……That’s just like… sooo Little Britain
