Man Alive

A Man Alive team, invited by the Home Office, talked in Holloway prison for women, to the prisoners themselves about lives which are spent day by day, year after year, in the confines of a prison built 120 years ago.

Can you read this? Could you write it? Robert Payne is a bright 16-year-old - normal in every way except that he can barely read and write. He's just one of the bright, likeable children in tonight's Man Alive. He suffers from what some experts call dyslexia. Dyslexic children find it very difficult to learn what comes so naturally to most of us. They are not necessarily dull - indeed, many are more intelligent than average. But they often spend their school lives in misery and frustration - thought of as stupid. Is enough being done for them? Why do some experts argue that dyslexia is nothing but a label used to excuse backward children? In the first of two programmes, Jim Douglas Henry and a Man Alive film team look at those who are frequently written off with 'could do better.'

If you can't read a signpost, a tax return, a public notice or an examination paper, life is an uphill struggle. Many bright, intelligent people fail to learn to read. They may suffer from what some call dyslexia. Often they are written off as stupid. In last week's programme we looked at the children, parents and teachers caught up in this Problem. In this week's Man Alive with parents, teachers, doctors and educationists as well as the children themselves, we set out, in the studio, to discover what can be done.

The legendary Legion where men, escaping something - or seeking something - can enlist under a new name and bury the past. For once, the reality is more vivid and colourful than its celluloid imitation. Few have told it. The Legion protects its secrets, encourages anonymity and positively discourages journalists and film teams. But it still serves - and fights - today: 9,000 men drawn from 52 countries, wearing the kepi blanc of this elite fighting force in some of the fiercest corners of this troubled world, prepared, always, to die loyally for their officers and each other. More often than not, they do. For the first time the Legion cooperated with television. Desmond Wilcox and a Man Alive film team have been 'in' the Legion watching them train and fight; examining its mystique, its traditions and its role in the 70s.

They have always been a source of material for comics, science fiction magazines, television puppet productions and Hollywood extravaganzas. Since the beginning of time men have seen strange objects in the sky, which there have been men of science and authority ready to refute and explain away... but never completely. There is always the 10 per cent of 'sightings' that cannot be explained. The Ministry of Defence investigates every UFO report made to them. Now they have allowed Man Alive to film what, they believe, may be an explanation. But the ufologists are not convinced. On film and in an outside broadcast from Banbury in Oxfordshire - the scene of nearly 1,000 UFO sightings since last August - the sceptics, the scientists and the saucer spotters come together.

More than 40,000 people a year - nearly one third of all the people who appear before the courts of this country - are remanded in custody. And more than half are not eventually sent to prison - either because they have been found innocent, or their crime does not warrant prison. Too often, say critics of the system, magistrates unquestioningly accept objections to bail and remand in custody, on what is described as 'a nod from the police.' But those concerned with law and order say: how do you ensure the bringing to trial of those prepared to ignore the law? How do you protect the public? So what are the conditions for those who find their application for bail refused? - and what ether system could serve instead?

Divorce was, in the past, a matter of social stigma as well as legal judgment. The action of ending a marriage, as often as not, involved damage to reputations, the open washing of dirty linen and - sometimes - children caught in the middle of a recriminatory tug of war. Twelve months ago the Divorce Reform Act was brought in to change all that. Designed to remove hypocrisy, inequity and publicity from divorce it still had a stormy passage through Parliament. For those who hailed it as a long overdue reform there were as many who condemned it as a 'Casanova's charter.' Since then the number of divorces has soared. Is the new Act a complete answer? Who are the men and women who have sought freedom in the last 12 months? How fair has it been for them? - And what do their experiences indicate about the future for divorce - and marriage?

We can keep people alive these days longer than ever before. Advances in medicine enable us to prolong the existence of old people for years, even those who are infirm, incontinent and incapacitated. New techniques enable doctors to hold on to badly injured patients where previously death would have been a certainty. But how many times should doctors cure - only to prolong a dwindling existence? And should it be doctors who have to decide? There are those who demand what is known as voluntary euthanasia, claim the right to decide when they, or their loved ones, shall die. Some doctors agree with them. Most doctors will admit that huge doses of pain-killing drugs, used in cases of terminal disease, can have the effect of 'shortening life.' But is that just another phrase for 'killing the patient'? Do any of us have the right to decide when it is time to die?

In Loughton a demonstration against demons; a Pentecostal minister's protest against the spirits who help Harry Edwards at his spiritual healing meetings. In Hove a medium goes into a trance; through her - she says - a Chinese doctor who has been dead for 500 years carries out 'psychic' surgery. In a darkened room in Belgrave Square spirits manifest their faces and voices through a medium, or so he says. In a Birmingham suburb an ex all-in wrestler lays his hands on a spina bifida victim and claims she is beginning to walk, because of him. This country has become the world centre of spiritualism, faith healing, and 'making contact' with the dead. Americans even organise 'psychic' package tours to London, the new international capital of the occult. Jeremy James and a Man Alive team have been looking at the business of faith, the critics of the whole thing and those who believe the spirit is willing.

The Government claims that its new Housing Finance Bill is the most important housing reform of this century and will mean a decent home for every family at a price within their means. Opponents say it will double rents and send house prices soaring; split the nation into the 'haves' and 'have-nots,' with millions having to face the indignity of a means test. The first of two programmes on this controversial legislation illustrates on film both sides of the coin - the effect on council tenants, private tenants and potential house buyers; the thinking of the landlords who welcome the new Bill; and looks at the mounting opposition from local councils and rent payers.

The new Housing Finance Bill is claimed, by the Government, to be the most important housing reform of this century. The aim of this legislation, which concerns both the private and the public sector, is to provide 'a decent home for every family at a price they can afford.' But opponents, both in and out of Parliament, have called it Government-sponsored inflation, say that it will double rents, send house prices soaring, split the nation into 'have' and 'havenots' - with millions having to face the indignity of a means test. In the second and final programme on this troubled subject, Man Alive invites to the studio landlords and tenants, as well as Government spokesmen in favour of the legislation and opposition critics.

Four boys aged between 11 and 14. The landmarks of their world are the lingering slums of yesterday, new blocks of flats that aren't being built quickly enough, the warehouses and docks along the river in London's East End. Already they have fallen foul of the law for truancy or stealing-or both. They're in trouble and they're aware of it, but it hasn't dimmed the vitality and optimism of boyhood. There are people who care about them: probation officers, social workers, schoolteachers. But in the end they may be powerless.

A little boy is killed falling off a roof in Islington. The parents of children in the area get together in anger and despair - because their children have nowhere safe to play. There is a council-owned site which, they think, would be ideal for an adventure playground, but the local borough council seems indifferent. It is impossible, they say. They need the site for a new block of flats, a car park and a scout hall. The mothers and children become militant. They decide to occupy the piece of vacant land, to build themselves an adventure playground, to defy the council. The council sets out to crush the rebellion. They send in bulldozers and ask the police to arrest the parents. This week's Man Alive is Jonathan Power's day-to-day record of their remarkable battle. And in the studio we ask: is law-breaking and defiance now the only way left in which progress can be achieved for people like the mothers of Islington?

Justice in the United States is different. At least, there it can be filmed. In this programme, specially presented by Man Alive, a CBS reporter and a film team waited in a mid-western town, Indianapolis, for the results of a night of patrolling and arrests by the police. They followed two cases. A black man accused of a small robbery at a service station, and a white man also accused of robbery - in a bar. Through the process of arrest, bail-bonding, trial and eventually, sentence, the cameras followed. The result is a fascinating anatomy of two cases of small-town law and justice.

The old age pension goes up. In future a single pensioner will live on £6.75 a week - and married couples on £10.90. Is money all that is needed? The old face problems which the rest of us, too often, push to one side - while we live in the Welfare State that their generation built. In almost every country they are respected as 'senior citizens.' Here they are, usually, just 'the old' and often made to feel a nuisance. Jeanne La Chard looks, with old people, at 'Life on the Pension' and in the studio Desmond Wilcox discusses with them, and others, what, perhaps, it ought to be.

Covent Garden market is moving out leaving nine acres of fiercely congested London quiet-for the first time in several centuries. The departure of the market has opened the way for the planners and property developers eager to 'redevelop' not only the market itself but 90 acres of Covent Garden. Sunken motorways, an international conference centre, luxury hotels, expensive offices, tall apartment blocks. The benefits, many would reasonably argue, of 20th century development. It has been the same with the Barbican; the Elephant and Castle; in central Birmingham, Liverpool and Manchester; Exeter and Plymouth. It brings a new style to our city centres and, indisputably, profit to potential developers. But at what cost to 'villages' like Covent Garden and the people who live in them? The planners seem confident and promise responsible behaviour. Jim Douglas Henry and a Man Alive team have been listening to the planners and the people because what is happening in Covent Garden is important

There are a number of ways to report for television. George Plimpton is an American television reporter who goes about it in a somewhat unusual manner. He doesn't observe - he joins. Tonight Man Alive hands over to a George Plimpton report: in which, as a reporter, he becomes part of the industry he intends to observe - this time a Hollywood western.

Nothing seems to attract bad publicity quite like a pop festival. Drugs, nudity and violence make sensational headlines at any time, but when they can be found simultaneously within a single small area, then they command column inches on a gigantic scale. But to the hundreds of thousands of young people for whom a pop festival is a peaceful celebration of their own life-style, this publicity seems totally at variance with their own experience. Now, the proposed Night Assemblies Bill will place restrictions on pop festivals and its critics believe that it could stop them altogether. Tonight all the interested parties will discuss the purpose and possible dangers of the Night Assemblies Bill.

5.30 am and Major Dan Bonar, pacing the roof of his house, greets the dawn with a skirl of his bagpipes. Another day in Malta has begun; a day when a retired colonial policeman will play golf with a retired shop-keeper; a retired Kenyan farmer will play polo; one retired businessman will hoe his marrows and another will play with his collapsible motor-bike. For the bronchial, asthmatic and arthritic as well as the plain hard-up, Malta is a place in the sun where it is still possible to live well, if not extravagantly, on £1,000 a year. Also, for those who have lived and worked in what once were called our colonies, Malta can seem the nearest place to home where the sun does still shine. This is not a film about politicians or the British military presence; it is not even about a representative cross-section of the British in Malta. It is about some of the English abroad. Fifty years ago they would, perhaps, have been destined to govern outposts of our Empire. Today there is no Empir

In the five years since the Beatles made their pilgrims' progress to the Ganges in search of the meaning of life, thousands of their fellow-countrymen, disillusioned by the orthodox Christian churches, have turned to the East seeking spiritual comfort. All over Britain people are meditating; there are long waiting lists for Yoga lessons; and sects whose inspiration comes from Eastern mysticism have mushroomed. Jeanne la Chard looks at three mystic sects in Britain: the Divine Light Mission, who worship a 14-year-old boy God; the Sufis, originally a secret Islamic society; and Krishna Consciousness, whose saffron-robed followers believe that by chanting the Hare Krishna mantra about 2,000 times a day they will achieve enlightenment.

For the first time ever, an oil boom has come to an established British city. Aberdeen is proud to boast that it was a University town at the time England only had Oxford and Cambridge. One in four Aberdonians works in the fishing industry. Today there are new riches to be won from the sea - oil rigs are being towed from all over the world to take part in what is being called the greatest oil search ever. Oilmen promise Aberdeen the rewards of a boom town -new jobs, new investment and perhaps even the sort of bonanza that made Texas rich. Many Aberdonians welcome the prospectors with open arms but some are more cautious, especially trawler owners and local conservationists. Is there room for the new boom and the old life style both to survive?

Schoolchildren are bewailing their lot, challenging the system. A new militancy in the classroom is evident and many teachers feel that it may totally undermine their authority. Last month, over 2,000 schoolchildren truanted for a day of marching and protest in central London. They claim that their radical demands represent a challenge to the principles and structure of the entire educational set-up in this country. But who are the playground activists and what are the reforms they seek? Who supports and helps them? And who is against them? Tonight Man Alive invites teachers, pupils and their supporters, as well as parents, to the studio to discuss, with Desmond Wilcox, what, if any, lasting influence the pupil protest movement may have on our schools.

Margaret and Willy have helped to make a film about love - their own story. They made it for the sake of others like themselves - spastics. Intelligent, but handicapped. Sensitive, but misunderstood. Spastics like Margaret and Willy believe they have a right to challenge the rest of us to recognise their emotional needs. They claim the right to love like others do. Are we in danger of allowing handicapped people fewer rights than the rest of us? The story of Margaret and Willy is moving. It may also cause controversy and upset some people. Margaret and Willy know it and believe, with other spastics, that the time has come to do just that. It is easy to see why they love each other. But can they be helped to live with that love, or is it too much for them - and others like them - to hope for? The film raises difficult issues. In the studio those most involved discuss, with Desmond Wilcox, a problem that few people may previously have recognised - but hardly any of us now dare to ignore.

Maytime in Chelsea. English summertime arrived - as usual - with howling wind and gusts of rain. But the Chelsea Flower Show must go on. So 150,000 gardeners crowded into the biggest marquee in the world. They inspected everything, from orchids to aspidistras, and spent £280,000 in orders in four days. Esther Rantzen and a Man Alive team were there behind the scenes - and well before the scenes: with the man who froze his daffodils, and the General who grows dwarf pomegranate trees. They saw the Queen - and an East End Parks superintendent. They found mystery, drama, excitement and suspense - and the largest strawberry in the world: all at this year's Chelsea Flower Show.

Movie men talk about the Cannes Film Festival. Time was when the Festival was a prestigious showcase for the world's best films. Now, 25 years on, it is almost irrelevant. Today Cannes is the place people go to wheel and deal. At this year's Festival John Pitman and a Man Alive team follow the fortunes and misfortunes of a young girl producer; two men - one English, one American - who spent £200,000 of their own money on a feature film; and the men, with millions to play with, who could make or break them. Stars like Peter O'Toole, Gina Lollobrigida and Princess Grace still came and the Festival itself went on somewhere in the background. But money - big money - is really what it's all about.

Men may go to sea for adventure and romance but the appeal doesn't usually last very long and the shipping world is worried about the wastage. One out of three merchant seamen leave the life within the first year and nine out of ten return ashore, for good, before they have served ten years. For some men, life at sea represents an escape from the rat race of shore life, or from domestic responsibility. And, behind a man's decision to leave shipping and return home, there is usually a wife. At sea on two very different ships - an old passenger boat and a new container ship - seamen talk, to Harold Williamson and a Man Alive team, about their love - and hate - of life on board. And, back home, the wives have their say.

The Wimbledon crowds used to call Billie-Jean King 'Little Miss Moffitt.' They laughed both with her and at her as she snapped and snarled around the Centre Court. But later the crowds turned sour. They thought the game was the thing and what they saw as 'gamesmanship' was bad sportsmanship. They objected loudly to her behaviour and tactics and suddenly they liked - and even wanted - to see her beaten. We all know what happened at Wimbledon this year, but 1969 was a decisive year for Billie-Jean. Man Alive looked behind the scenes then at the girl who hates to lose and goes to such extraordinary lengths to win.

In the bad old days of mass unemployment, they used to say that love went out of the window when poverty came through the door. Today, when it seems that no one's job is absolutely secure, what would the romantics say in a world of money-worship and hire-purchase commitments? The dole can mean more than material hardship-the soul can be damaged, the spirit corroded. When no one knows if he - or she - will be next to join the dole queue, what happens to the quality of marriage, the atmosphere of family, a man and his children, wedding plans for two, a blossoming courtship? When the bread-winner gets the sack, can love survive on the dole?

Four years ago Man Alive made a report about a young English-man living in Spain. Henry Higgins - a bullfighter. Jeremy James talked to him in his moments of triumph and despair as he struggled against massive and dangerous odds to become a bullfighter whom the Spanish would admire. Now he has succeeded. He has become a matador and a biography has been written about him. Tonight's Man Alive shows Henry Higgins in his struggle to the top and asks him now whether it was all worthwhile.

George Plimpton is an amateur of many worlds. He has driven a racing car in the Italian Grand Prix. He has even played a bit-part in a John Wayne movie. George Plimpton is familiar to American viewers for his have-ago-at-anything approach. Tonight, Man Alive hands over to Plimpton as he joins 'The Flying Apollos,' a trapeze act with a travelling circus. After 10 days' training, George Plimpton, in a packed big top, himself has a go on the flying trapeze.

Man Alive follows firefighters from a fire house in the South Bronx: Battalion 27, Ladder 31 and Engine 82. It chronicled the appalling conditions the firefighters worked in with roughly one emergency call per hour, and the high rates of arson and malicious calls.

Dole queues in Britain's depressed areas are getting younger as thousands of teenagers released from school join the unemployed. In Sunderland, where unemployment is more than twice the national average, Jim Douglas Henry found 2,000 school-leavers chasing 100 jobs. From Sunderland Desmond Wilcox invites the young unemployed and their parents to talk about a way out for the future with industrialists, union leaders, councillors and education experts.

Once Stepney was a community. Then the war came and knocked most of it down. As concrete blocks spring up where the door-step families used to be, the sense of community seems to have vanished. So the people of Stepney decided to do something about it. They staged their own festival. Result: a huge success for thousands of people. Rose, born in Stepney 40 years ago, commented, 'What was lost is back again, but it's took a long while.'

When a marriage breaks it is the children who suffer and legal disputes over custody can be drawn out and bitter. But when the parents are of different nationalities the aftermath can be even more distressing. Jeanne La Chard and a Man Alive film team have been following the trail of missing children-and parents - from London law courts to Italy and southern Sardinia. In the studio Desmond Wilcox with the parents and the lawyers discusses the future of these unhappy children.

It's not very long since respectable parents thought of fashion modelling as being a step on the road to ruin for their daughters. But the swinging 60s changed all that, and today there are over 80 model agencies in London alone - and a rash of model schools - which cater for the dreams of girls ambitious to earn fame and fortune with their figures. What is the truth? Man Alive looks at the chic fagade and the seamy side of the world where model girls are fashioned.

A child born into a world he will never see needs special love, and care. The number of children born blind is much smaller than it was; but, nowadays, a high proportion suffer other handicaps as well. Man Alive shows a film portrait of the Sunshine Home in Northwood, Middlesex, where blind children learn to prepare themselves for the outside world. Is enough being done to provide work and facilities for them to lead reasonably independent lives when they leave school?

In the first programme of this two-part enquiry, John Pitman and a Man Alive team look at the problem and, next week, examine some of the answers. When grandparents get too old to look after themselves, the family must decide what to do. An old person, who may also be sick, needs much care and nursing: may become the cause of over-tiredness and bad tempers within the family. Yet the alternative, to send a much loved grandparent to an old people's home, may seem callous and cruel. For old people too, it can be a difficult time. On the one hand they don't want to be a burden on the family: on the other hand they are frightened of being 'put away' and forgotten. Do we care for our parents as well in old age as they did for us as children?

Last week Man Alive looked at the problems for elderly relatives and their families. This week Desmond Wilcox looks for some of the answers. Do we care for our parents as well in old age as they did for us as children? When grandparents get too old to look after themselves they can become an intolerable strain on the family. Yet the alternative, an old people's home, may seem callous and cruel.

George Plimpton will try his hand at anything. First he played a bit part in a John Wayne Western. Then he chanced his arm on the flying trapeze at the circus. Now he tries the loneliest job in the world: stand-up comic. Alone on a stage in front of an audience, he has only his jokes between him and disaster. Bob Hope, Woody Allen and Buddy Hackett all have advice for Plimpton. Laugh-In's comedy writers provide the material. But on the big night at Caesar's Palace at Las Vegas he is out there alone in front of 1,200 people, an audience used to the best entertainment the world can provide.

All over Britain the traditional industries are declining. Coal mines, shipyards and steelworks close; men and women are thrown out of work. The drift to the south east and to the cities continues. It is a familiar pattern, one which faced Dartington in Devon in 1925. But one man, Leonard Elmhirst, believed that by bringing industry to the countryside and efficiency to agriculture he could halt the rural decline. He believed too that a job is not enough - that everyone had a right to 'the abundant life.' Now Dartington is reaching out again. This time to help the mining town of Conisbrough in Yorkshire. Gordon Snell asks 79-year-old Leonard Elmhirst what lessons can be learned from his experience. Is the Dartington way a lesson for the future?

Child cruelty cases provoke strong reactions. But it is now accepted that while protecting the child is paramount, understanding the parent is better than punishment. John Robinson went to prison for attacking his 18-month-old son. Since his release he's been taken to court because, it was believed, he had again attacked the child, now aged 5. Robinson denied the charge and believes he is being victimised, blamed for every cut and bruise his child suffers. Harold Williamson follows the court case and also sees how some London mothers, who live in fear of repeating attacks on their own children, are being helped in an experiment run by the NSPCC.

There are over 2 million secretaries in Britain. Almost all of them are women; almost all of their bosses are men. Very few of the bosses have ever been secretaries; very few of the secretaries will ever be bosses. While men look for jobs with good prospects, good salaries and job satisfaction, most women are destined for monotonous jobs with little chance of getting to the top. Jeanne La Chard looks at the role of the secretary in the commercial world; and in the studio Desmond Wilcox discusses with secretaries and bosses why it's always seemed a dead-end and almost exclusively female job.

Over 8,000 men sleep rough in London on park benches, in derelict houses and railway sidings. No one knows the total for the whole country; how many will spend Christmas alone this year, out of doors? These men weren't born homeless. Many of them had good jobs, a home and a family and they thought they were secure. Ending up jobless, without a roof and alone, is a gradual process, but those who've dropped to the bottom rung on the ladder say you get there almost before you know it-once things really start to go wrong. Harold Williamson talks to men who admit they brought it all on themselves; some who are trying to fight their way back and others who've accepted life on the doss-house circuit at a time when hostels for homeless men are fast disappearing in property development schemes.

When Captain Cook landed in Hawaii the natives clubbed him to death, but the blood spilt on that beach didn'deter other white men. Every year millions go to the Pacific islands, to Hawaii, Tahiti and Fiji in search of the sun, surf, grass skirts and free love: the world the ad-men tell us is paradise on earth. But it is a changing world. Land developers and international hotel chains fight to keep pace with the tourist boom. Military bases and warships mean a juke-box in every port. Atomic testing, islanders claim, is a health hazard. Jim Douglas Henry and a Man Alive film team joined the rush to the South Pacific in the hope that theirs was not the last trip to paradise.