Our Yorkshire Farm
The Rise Of The Murdoch Dynasty
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Any stressed-out parent who has struggled to control just one unruly child in a supermarket or on a long car journey will look at the super-mums with a coachload of kids and think: ‘How do those women cope?’
According to Amanda Owen, who has nine children aged 18 to three, mass motherhood is easy.
After you reach the fifth, she says, ‘it doesn’t matter any more’.
Amanda seems to mean it.
Anyone tuning in to Our Yorkshire Farm (C5) expecting a bucolic tale of the passing seasons was in for something of a shock. This is farming as a raucous team sport, where it is everybody’s job to rebuild the dry stone walls and chase the sheep out when they invade the kitchen
She and husband Clive are bringing up their brood on a remote farm in the Yorkshire Dales, 1,300ft above sea level, where the nearest hospital is two hours’ drive away and a trip to the shops is a once-a-week event.
Maybe it helps that she’s a professional shepherdess. Her faithful border collie responds to the slightest whistle . . . perhaps some children can be trained the same way.
Anyone tuning in to Our Yorkshire Farm (C5) expecting a bucolic tale of the passing seasons was in for something of a shock.
This is farming as a raucous team sport, where it is everybody’s job to rebuild the dry stone walls and chase the sheep out when they invade the kitchen.
The Owen children are tough. They have to be.
Seven-year-old Sid is taking part in fell-running contests, and his sister Violet, nine, can wrestle a young ram into submission for display at the local showground.
Even four-year-old Clemmie is doing her bit, clearing up after Tony the pony with a shovel.
Amanda Owen (pictured with her dog on Ravenseat Farm) trusted her instincts – with so many children, she’s earned them. ‘We’ve never sent a child off crying,’ she declared to Clive. There and then she ruled that Clemmie could stay off school for another year
There’s no room for sentiment, though.
Amanda gathered the family around the kitchen table to say a few words as oldest daughter Raven prepared to leave for university.
Raven briskly put a stop to that. ‘We’re not a family full o’ mush!’ she snapped.
UNAPPETISING DISH OF THE NIGHT
Monica Galetti and Giles Coren ate rolls of beef in China
Monica Galetti and Giles Coren tucked into ‘husband and wife innards’ in Macau, China, on Amazing Hotels: Life Beyond The Lobby (BBC2).
It was rolls of beef, not human entrails — but what an offal name.
I warmed to this parenting style from the start.
When filming started last September, little Clemmie was about to set off for her first day at school.
But when the big day came, she was in floods of tears, miserable at the thought of leaving Tony.
Who would muck out after him?
Amanda’s instincts told her the little girl wasn’t old enough to cope away from home.
And she trusted those instincts — with so many children, she’s earned them.
‘We’ve never sent a child off crying,’ she declared to Clive.
There and then she ruled that Clemmie could stay off school for another year.
This must be Big Family Week on telly — first the seven musical Kanneh-Masons in Sunday’s Imagine special, now the Owens, plus an oddly spineless documentary about the world’s most powerful media family, The Rise Of The Murdoch Dynasty (BBC2).
Director Jamie Roberts desperately wanted to highlight the parallels between Rupert Murdoch, his three bickering children and the fictional Roy family in the Sky Atlantic drama Succession — starring Brian Cox as a grumpy patriarch who owns half the world’s media, and whose four obnoxious offspring will cut each other’s throats to inherit the power.
Every hint of controversy has been excised from Roberts’s three-part programme by lawyers with big scissors.
Director Jamie Roberts desperately wanted to highlight the parallels between Rupert Murdoch, his three bickering children and the fictional Roy family in the Sky Atlantic drama Succession
All that’s left is an opening montage splicing Murdoch family video with footage of Rupe greeting prime ministers and presidents, set to a bad-tempered string quartet, recalling the Succession title sequence.
Various interviewees said not very much at all.
Nigel Farage admitted he had requested clearance from Murdoch even to appear.
Former New Labour spin doctor Alastair Campbell, knowing the difference between insult and libel, contented himself with calling the Aussie mogul ‘a wild dog in the corner of the room’ that had to be kept quiet.
What did we learn? Not a lot.