Being Blacker, BBC 2, Monday at 9pm
The story of Blacker Dread is in many ways the story of immigration into Britain.
Dread, a pioneer of the Jamaican sound system culture of the 1960s, was closing his legendary Brixton reggae music story and documentary maker Molly Dineen was on hand to record it for posterity.
Dread (real name Steve Burnett-Martin) and Dineen first meet at age 19 when she filmed a student project about the underground reggae scene.
Her new film opened with the funeral of Dread’s mother Pauline who had brought him as a young child to England.
Dread instantly hated his new country, his says, citing in particular the cold but also the rampant racism.
He had always wanted to return to Jamaica but he refused to leave his mother and her new life in the UK.
During a car journey Dineen coaxed the deeply held story out of Dread of when he told his mother in anger that he hated her. He regretted the outburst soon after in arrived in London so much that he vowed never to leave her.
Now that the matriarch had died, he wanted to go back to the Caribbean.
Not that Dread had ever emotionally given himself to England. His hair hasn’t been cut in 40 years, he wears the flag of Jamaica on his clothes and we saw him at his most celebratory when Jamaicans win medals at the London Olympics.
One of the most intense moments of the 90-minute documentary was when Dread opened up about the racist abuse he received. How he was one of just four black boys at his local grammar school and the lengths he went to to avoid a daily beating.
It was implied by Blacker and his friends that the lack of opportunity for minorities led many of them to a life on the margins of the law.
Blacker’s best friend is only out of jail and trying to go straight after 10 years for armed robbery and “another two years in a French prison.”
It also emerges that Blacker isn’t simply closing his record store to return to the Caribbean sun. He’s closing the store because he has been convicted of money laundering and is about to be sent to prison.
And tragically his son Solomon was shot dead by a gang within a month of being released from prison.
In all, it was a curate’s egg of a film. It was an interesting study of immigration, integration, racism, family, death and education, but it was too long at 90-minutes and meandered through all these topics without any conclusions.
***
Valspar Championship, Sky Sports Golf
Tiger Woods’s possible return to the winners' circle will be among the most incredible stories in sport.
I can’t think of anything comparable. Federer’s dominance of tennis, while remarkable at his age, is more a continuation that a comeback.
Lester Piggott’s return to riding after retirement and then jail for tax fraud was impressive, but many others have been a disaster, including Michael Schumacher and Bjorn Borg.
Tiger had every reason to give up - public humiliation, four back operations and three failed previous comebacks.
Perhaps only Ben Hogan's determination is the equal of Tiger. Hogan won six major championships after a life threatening car accident.
Tiger’s performance at the Valspar, finishing just one stroke behind the winner, has driven anticipation to feverish levels. US viewing figures were up 180 per cent for the tournament with record numbers expected again this weekend at the Arnold Palmer Invitational.
If he stays healthy and in form, the Masters in early April will be must see television and not just for golf fans.
