By ROLAND WHITE
Published: | Updated:
The Book That Changed My Life (BBC2)
Rating:
Rating: Four stars
Some of the people who took part in The Book That Changed My Life were invited to tea with the Queen, who was the programme's star attraction.
It was an oddly formal affair. She sat a little distance away, facing everybody else. It looked more like a press briefing than a tea party. That was a pity because she'd been much more relaxed up to that point.
This was supposed to be a celebration of books, but it was also quite a good advertisement for the Queen.
She seemed very much at home during a primary school visit, obviously enjoying herself in a crush of children and asking about their favourite books.
'Bye, Queen!' called one of them enthusiastically as she left.
'I left school quite young so reading has been most of my education,' she revealed. Did that include sex education?
Some of the people who took part in The Book That Changed My Life were invited to tea with the Queen, who was the programme's star attraction
She admitted reading Lady Chatterley's Lover under the bed covers by torchlight when she was a teenager, at a time when the book was banned.
'The minute something is forbidden you want to get hold of it,' she observed.
There was a brief insight into life at the palace. Before dinner, she and the King have their noses buried in a book. He apparently enjoys biography and P.G. Wodehouse.
Yes, but whose biographies? And is he a Jeeves and Wooster man, or does he prefer Lord Emsworth and his prize pig.
The Book That Changed My Life was in theory about, well, how books can change people's lives. But the books were actually less interesting here than glimpses into the lives of the people who've been reading them.
There was lorry driver Peter, who couldn't read, which made every trip to Tesco an ordeal. Now, a copy of Harry Potter rarely leaves his side.
Then there was Omar, who at seven years old suffered a massive electric shock while crossing a railway line. He couldn't concentrate at school, and turned to crime instead.
'I embraced being a criminal,' he admitted. 'I prided myself at not setting the alarm off.'
This was supposed to be a celebration of books, but it was also quite a good advertisement for the Queen
He wasn't a very good criminal, though, because it was in a young offenders' institution that he first discovered books. There was a copy of Jack Higgins's thriller The Eagle Has Landed in his cell. As he had nothing else to do, he decided to read it.
Books can bring people together. One young woman
left a box of books on her boyfriend's doorstep with a note: 'Everything you have wanted to know about me is in these books. If you love me, you'll love these.'
It worked, by the way, and they're now married, but yet again: which books did the trick?
Perhaps my favourite contributor was a young man who particularly enjoyed the great classics. 'I didn't know the authors were dead,' he said. 'I only found out when I tried to email Oscar Wilde.'
FU FIGHTERS: In Rob And Romesh vs Kung Fu (Sky One) Rob Beckett and Romesh Ranganathan had martial arts training from actor Paco Yick, whose nickname is apparently Crazy.
As Romesh noted: 'What you'd love to do is train with someone whose nickname is Safety.'