CHRISTOPHER STEVENS reviews last night's TV: Clive's trip to Jamaica proves pride in your heritage is deeply important
Clive Myrie's Caribbean Adventure (BBC2)
One of the most ghastly blunders anyone can commit is to ask a black or Asian person in Britain, 'Where are you from?' The question is now deemed unforgivably racist.
Susan Hussey, a Lady of the Household to King Charles, learned this to her cost in 2022 when, at a reception hosted by Queen Camilla, she innocently asked the question of a guest, charity organiser Ngozi Fulani.
Baroness Susan was obliged to apologise and relinquish her royal duties, though she has since been quietly welcomed back into the palace fold.
Yet, as presenter Clive Myrie emphasises on his Caribbean Adventure, family roots are deeply important to most people. To ignore that seems, to me at least, equally insensitive.
As presenter Clive Myrie emphasises on his Caribbean Adventure (pictured), family roots are deeply important to most people, writes Christopher Stevens
On a coffee farm in the Blue Mountains north of the capital, Kingston, he joined his older sister Judith, who recently moved back to Jamaica from the UK
Clive was born in Bolton, Lancashire, to parents who had recently emigrated from Jamaica. One of the chief figureheads of BBC News, he's as British as it's possible to be. He also adores his heritage and loves his mum and dad's homeland, known to its population as 'the Rock'.
That fondness, instilled during childhood family holidays, came across loudly. His enthusiasm seemed much less academic, much more visceral, than it was in his Italian travelogue last year.
On a coffee farm in the Blue Mountains north of the capital, Kingston, he joined his older sister Judith, who recently moved back to Jamaica from the UK.
Judith spent her first seven years on the island, she reminded Clive. Her return felt like 'coming home . . . I mean, look at it, the fresh air, the fresh food, the sunshine, the people, everything'.
Leaving the grandmother who brought her up and arriving in Britain as a small girl was 'traumatic on many levels', she said. 'The climate, the family . . . School was horrendous — and the food!'
But she knew what a sacrifice their parents had made to start a new life, she said, 'so we made the best of it'.
It was moving to hear such a heartfelt admission, and saddening to know that political correctness makes it difficult to address such natural emotions.
'Where are you from?' is not inherently a racist question, though it's obviously wrong to assume anyone is an immigrant based on their skin colour. The real racism is the assumption that life in Britain must automatically be better in every way than the world left behind.
One of the most ghastly blunders anyone can commit is to ask a black or Asian person in Britain, 'Where are you from?' Susan Hussey (pictured, at King Charles's coronation in 2023) learned this to her cost in 2022 when, at a reception hosted by Queen Camilla , she innocently asked the question of a guest, charity organiser Ngozi Fulani
The real racism is the assumption that life in Britain must automatically be better in every way than the world left behind
Clive's travels, which continue in Jamaica this evening, showcased the beauty and turbulent history of the island. In Boston Bay, where surfers sported in the turquoise water, he joined chef Tica Thompson to prepare jerk pork with a searing seasoning of scotch bonnet peppers.
He tried his luck at stilt-walking — 'I will be getting high,' he quipped, alluding to the island's traditional relaxations.
And he stripped to his trunks for a dip in a cliff-top pool at an 'eco-tourism resort', with the Atlantic breakers crashing below. 'The closest place to paradise on Earth,' he called Jamaica, and with that view, it really did look like it.
