Richard Littlejohn, the Daily Mail’s one-note Gorblimey merchant, is angry again – but what’s riled the old bore this time? The Gorton and Denton by-election? Pointless university courses? The defacing of Winston Churchill’s statue? No – it’s a 24-year-old episode of The Bill!
The columnist tells how he was watching the police drama on something called “UK Gold” – no channel having been called that since 2004, approximately the last time the Florida-dweller was a regular British resident – and was struck by the difference in how asylum seekers were dealt with.
After treating his readers to a lengthy Wikipedia-style synopsis of the entire episode, for which he is presumably being paid by the word, he describes a terrified trafficked Albanian girl being found in “a knocking shop at the back of a billiard hall”, where she has been forced into sexual work. She co-operates with police by identifying one of the men responsible, who has murdered another migrant and dumped him in the Thames.
“So there’s a happy ending after the sister is given indefinite leave to remain in exchange for her evidence, plus the possibility that she will face reprisals – certain death even – if she is returned home?” asks Littlejohn.
“Er, not as such. Despite her co-operation with the Bill and the fact that she has genuinely been forced into what today we would call ‘modern slavery’, her asylum claim is refused without leave to appeal and she’s put on the first plane out. A heartless immigration officer has no sympathy. He shrugs: ‘She’s a [sexual worker] and she has no right to be here’.”
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Of this, of course, the Mail man approves wholeheartedly. These days, he bemoans, the girl would “be entitled to the best lawyers British taxpayers’ money could buy. Even though she’d been working as a sexual worker, it was under duress and although she’d entered Britain illegally she would be guaranteed our sympathy.
“After giving evidence, she’d get a new identity and disappear into witness protection. These episodes of The Bill judged by today’s standards have about as much in common with modern reality as Dixon of Dock Green.
“Watching The Bill again this week, I couldn’t help reflecting on how drastically – and how rapidly – Britain has changed over the past quarter-century, to the point of being unrecognisable in many areas. And not for the better.
“Sun Hill nick would inevitably have been shut down years ago, along with hundreds of other High Street police stations. By now, it would probably have been turned into an asylum hostel.”
Given that Littlejohn has spent most of “the past quarter-century” living in a beachside home in a Florida gated community, perhaps the best person to pass judgement is not a man whose sole point of reference appears to be ancient episodes of an old police drama on a TV channel which has long since ceased to exist.
Next week: Littlejohn watches Porridge and whinges how these days HMP Slade would be full of Romanians, Mr MacKay would be Mx MacKay to support gender fluidity and Fletch would spend his days playing PlayStation 5 on a taxpayer-funded 80-inch TV in order to comply with “yooman rights” legislation!
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