Al Murray: Why Does Everyone Hate the British Empire? review: while we hand-wring, India moves on
Programmes about India tend to follow a template. A celebrity tries to say something profound about the Ganges, which is filmed at dawn accompanied by some sitar music. They note that there are lots of poor people (sad!) then take tea with a Harrow-educated maharajah (delightful!). They eat some street food and deliver the breaking news that the Taj Mahal is lovely to look at. There may be elephants.
Al Murray: Why Does Everyone Hate the British Empire? (Sky History) hit some of the travelogue beats. Murray, the comedian best known for his Pub Landlord character, even went as far as bathing in the Ganges, but he didn’t romanticise it. Instead, he pointed out the dead dog a few metres down the bank.
This wasn’t quite an ordinary travel show, though. Murray is visiting former outposts of the British Empire – future episodes will find him in Jamaica, Australia and South Africa – to explore the legacy of British rule. The novel bit is that he does this in the company of a local comedian, in this case the witty Anuvab Pal.
It’s a wrought subject, but Murray (he has hair! Who knew?) and Pal gave it a light-hearted treatment. Murray duly noted that the East India Company was bad, and ticked off all the usual things: tea, trade, trains. “Very often people say, ‘Well, we gave them the trains and they like the trains,’” he said. “But that’s a bit like buying someone a lawnmower then expecting them to mow your lawn and be grateful.”
Perhaps mindful that he’s just another well-spoken English chap (descendant of Thackeray, educated at a minor public school) who could well have been plundering India if born 300 years ago, Murray defaulted at regular intervals to his Pub Landlord character, who is usually funny but here was not.
It was far more interesting to listen to the well-spoken Pal, and I would have liked to hear more of his nuanced take on Indians and class, and how families such as his have a privilege rooted in Empire. He mused that “maybe in 20-30 years, Indians like me with this accent will not exist”.
The best contributor, though, was a rickshaw puller who put all the British handwringing over Empire in its place. Murray asked him what he thought of the bad old days. “I wasn’t around. I don’t give a s--- about the English, whether they were good or bad,” he shrugged. Pal translated further: “He says we should stop talking about the Empire.” No chance of that.
