Man Alive

George Plimpton has made a name for himself as the try-anything-once adventurer. This week he goes to Meru National Park in Kenya on a photographic safari for an American magazine. His assignment: to shoot pictures of Ahmed the elephant, believed to be the largest animal in Africa. George Plimpton learns the secret of elephant trading, techniques of wildlife photography, and a lot about the inhabitants of Africa both human and animal.

Every day of the week, except Sunday, from November until April, farmers, squires, lords, ladies and, on occasion, even Princess Anne all ride to hounds. During the past year, Man Alive has followed the South Dorset Hunt where Jeremy James talked to those who hunt and those who don't. He has discovered that in this year of 1973, hunting is a booming sport: for those who do, for those who watch, and for those who protest against it all.

Every year hundreds of workers contract - even die from - illnesses which they can't understand, let alone pronounce. Yet people continue to work with substances that can subsequently prove fatal. Some do it because they're ignorant of the dangers; others because they want the money and are prepared to take risks. This week a Man Alive film team looks at the hazards, and in the studio Desmond Wilcox asks: why it is so difficult to establish who is to blame - who is to compensate the victims?

The modern home is usually bombarded with words - television, the telephone, radio and newspapers. Yet families often find it difficult to communicate on a personal level: husbands and wives who live under the same roof sometimes don't, won't or can't talk to each other. They may share their children, meals, even the same bed, and yet one partner has nothing to say to the other. How do two people with so much in common get to a point where there is no verbal communication? What keeps these silent couples together? Jeanne La Chard and a Man Alive film team have been talking to the husbands and wives who are not on speaking terms.

A report by Man Alive and French Television on the New Hebrides in the South Pacific. In a tropical paradise miles from anywhere lies this tiny chain of volcanic islands. By a unique accident of historical convenience they are jointly governed by Great Britain and France. This condominium - a colony of beer and beaujolais, chips and camembert -has two of everything. There are bobbies and gendarmes, lycees and grammar schools, Douanes and Customs, pubs and bistros. Yet this strange mixed-marriage of government still seems to work - at least for the Europeans. Jim Douglas Henry and a Man Alive team make their own entente with Dominique Viard and French Television.

Two people on your bus to work every day may be criminals. And your teenage son or daughter, perhaps just starting at college, may be breaking the law or sharing rooms with someone who does. The crime? The possession or use of cannabis - better known as pot. These statistics are not dramatic journalists' headlines either; they're revealed in a government report. Two million people, in this country, have smoked pot. With so many people flouting the law - it is perhaps surprising how little is really understood about pot. Is it bad for one's health, and in what way? Is it addictive? Will it lead to other drug usage? And is the present legislation satisfactory? With Desmond Wilcox in the Man Alive studio tonight are those anxious to discuss the prejudices and the facts about pot.

In the middle of the Second World War Sir William Beveridge produced his blueprint for peace: a Welfare State 'from the cradle to the grave.' In this specially extended edition, Man Alive reviews the successes and failures of the Welfare State through two families. Erlend and Clare Copeley-Williams live in an Essex farmhouse with their three children. They are middle-class and comfortably off. Fred and Muriel Wadsworth live in a Manchester council house with their two children. They are working-class and struggling to make ends meet. Jeremy James and a film team compare the families in four key areas: income, housing, education and health. In the studio Desmond Wilcox examines how much we have achieved - 30 years on.

Throughout the country slums are being torn down and replaced with new and better council housing. But the cost of higher living standards often means higher rents. The authorities who set the rent must face the possibility that the homes which they build to free people from the tyranny of the slum are imposing on them another tyranny - debt. The problem can affect all new council estates and new towns. When one third of a town is behind with the rent something must be wrong. Tonight Man Alive is at Thamesmead for a filmed report by Jack Pizzey and an outside broadcast discussion chaired by Desmond Wilcox between the GLC, who collect the rents, and the people who live there and say, 'We like it, if only we could afford it.'

The cost of higher living standards often means higher rents. Man Alive at Thamesmead.

You used to be lucky to get bread and cheese or a pie with your pint in the pub. Today, along with booze, they serve up go-go girls, topless dancers, strippers, female impersonators and music, music, music. Right now the local is in danger. Big cities are being swamped with disco bars, ideal for those who don't want to talk to each other; popular 'mine hosts' are being replaced by managers; old pubs frequented by old men in old villages are being closed down. Some people are making a lot of money out of the changes. But a lot more are sad - and angry. Dr Johnson once said: 'There is nothing which has yet been contrived by man, by which so much happiness is produced as by a good tavern or inn.' Man contrived it. Is man now destroying it?

Five years ago this week Mauritius, a tiny island in the Indian Ocean, celebrated its independence from British colonial rule. Behind the fun of the festivities, a retired British Army colonel was in reflective mood. Colonel Eric Hefford had organised the independence celebrations for eight different countries. Mauritius was the end of the road. The pink bits on the map had all but run out. Five years ago Man Alive followed Colonel Hefford as he brought military precision to the pomp and protocol of Independence Day. Today John Percival meets him again and asks what his plans are now with so few colonies left, fewer still that can afford the de luxe celebrations Colonel Hefford provides.

A woman shares her bed with her husband-and a ghost who makes advances to her; a man is clutched by a ghostly hand and sees a fire engine drive through his room; a woman is haunted by a presence - sometimes friendly, sometimes not; a boy dabbles with the ouija board and sees the devil. Today, faced with the complexities of modern technological life, people are once again turning towards the mysteries of the occult. The result-an increasing demand for exorcisms and cures performed by churchmen, witches and psychiatrists. Jeremy James has talked to the possessed, clergymen, a white witch, doctors and a ghost hunter to try to find out if there are those haunted from beyond the grave - or if it's all in the mind.

When it comes to National Hunt Racing most people are only concerned about which horse is first past the post. Spectators can often be heard urging the leading horse to fall. You need to be tough to be a jockey. It means riding at 30 mph over fences that can send a horse flying - and a jockey to the ground with a broken back. The risks are great; the financial rewards not so great. In Grand National week Man Alive finds out why jockeys do it; why they risk their necks for £15 a ride when compensation is poor if they're injured - or killed. Richard Pitman, favourite for this year's Cheltenham Gold Cup, sums it up like this: 'Getting hurt is far less important than the glory, the enjoyment, the thrill. It's eating you. It's part of you. We love it.'

Tonight Man Alive comes from Farringdon in Berkshire where heavy lorries thunder through day and night. The residents say the big lorries should not be allowed through. The transport men say that unless they are, distribution costs will rise and so will prices. Jack Pizzey and Desmond Wilcox ask if we should keep the lorries off the roads that aren't big enough for them. Why can't the railways do more to relieve the traffic on the roads? Are we building new roads fast enough to cope with the juggernaut explosion?

Rodgers and Hammerstein's The Sound of Music is a big production. The feature film has become the biggest money-spinner in the history of cinema musicals. The Sound of Music opened -at the Lunt-Fontanne Theatre in New York on 16 November 1959. The London production at the Palace Theatre started on 18 May 1961. On 12 February 1973 The Sound of Music opened in Herne Bay-an amateur production. Jack Pizzey was there with a Man Alive team to chronicle the birth-pangs of this ambitious enterprise.

It's little more than a form of slave labour; doing the dirtiest, the most menial jobs in the affluent societies of Europe today. As prosperity and affluence increase so does the need to import a labour force to do the jobs that the newly rich will no longer consider. The situation is thought by some to be an international scandal. It's an open secret, for instance, in Germany that the 'guest workers' shipped in from poorer countries are used to do all the dirty jobs. For legions of women there are higher wages than they can earn in Korea, the Philippines and other Third World nations - but at what human cost? What is life like for these women in the cities of Europe who wash the dishes in hotels, change the bedpans in hospitals, scrub the floors in the homes of the middle-classes? Jeanne La Chard and a Man Alive team have looked at the situation in Germany, Italy and this country: and in the studio Desmond Wilcox meets those responsible.

Social Work is a growth industry: each day thousands of social workers, some professional, some voluntary, attempt to unravel the lives of their 'clients.' Some critics say they are merely papering over the cracks. Should they be more involved? Social workers themselves are becoming unsure of their role. They know they are needed, but to do what? Social workers inside and outside the formal system, self-confessed revolutionaries, lecturers in sociology, are among the people with Desmond Wilcox in the studio tonight to discuss the issues raised by last night's Tuesday's Documentary on BBC1.

You are innocent until proved guilty - the jury reaches a verdict, and if they acquit, you leave the court without a stain on your character. But sometimes you leave with a hole in your pocket. The innocent person is often ordered by the judge to pay his own legal costs - which can be very expensive. And there can be no appeal against the judge's decision about costs. Is this justice? Esther Rantzen talks to three people about crimes they did not commit - but for which they must now pay. In the studio, with Desmond Wilcox, lawyers and laymen look at the issues raised.

George Plimpton is familiar to American viewers for his have-ago-at-anything approach. He has chanced his arm on the flying trapeze at the circus; in Las Vegas he has tried his luck as a stand-up comic, and in Africa he has stalked the world's largest elephant. This week he enters the Mexican 1,000-in a dune-buggy. In preparation for this gruelling race he consults Jackie Stewart and helps him in the pits at the Monza Grand Prix.

Mothers bringing up their children on Social Security, without husbands, find many things to complain of. They do not know their rights, or what help is available to them; they are watched and spied upon; they feel that society resents having to support them. Deserted mothers feel they are treated differently from widows, who get their money as of right. Four women tell their stories to Jim Douglas Henry; and in the studio Desmond Wilcox discusses with Social Security officers, Prof Peter Townsend and the mothers themselves what needs to be done.

On a Saturday morning last September Sarah [text removed], aged 14, packed a bag, hitch-hiked to Taunton - and disappeared. On a morning in February 1972, Kevin [text removed], aged 14, caught a train from Dartford to London - and disappeared. Three years ago Susan [text removed], aged just 14, took all the money she could find from her home in Cleethorpes, Lincolnshire - and disappeared. Two years later she went home - taking with her the boy she was living with. No one knows how many children run away every year. It could be as few as 2,000 or as many as 6,000. In terms of numbers, not perhaps a very serious problem; in human terms, a tragedy. Jeremy James talks to the girl who came home and to her parents; to the parents of children who have run away; to the police and welfare workers to find out where the children go - and why.

In every British passport it requires that the holder be afforded 'such assistance and protection as may be necessary.' It's eight months since the dramatic airlift of Asian refugees from Uganda hit the headlines in Britain. The fate of these 28,000 British passport holders expelled by General Amin is something most of us have forgotten; but a Man Alive film team have been following the refugees since they arrived last October. Tonight, we look at how they have fared. What problems they have met finding homes and jobs; and whether or not we have made them feel welcome-given enough assistance and protection? In the studio Desmond Wilcox discusses with those responsible how well we handled this emergency.

Last month, thousands of angry men, women and children marched across Canvey Island to plant home-made crosses on what is left of their countryside. They believe their island is about to be crucified. The land has been bought by two oil giants to build refineries and permission to build has been granted. The Government says it's all 'In the interests of the national economy.' But the people of Canvey say: 'Why pick on us?' Jim Douglas Henry and a film team have been looking at the protest and Desmond Wilcox with an Outside Broadcast unit, in the local school, brings planners and people together.

This is the story of three boys - Philip Ramocon, Dabs Edun and Leburn Rose. They are ambitious, talented, and black. The stories we normally hear about boys like this are concerned with their special problems - bad housing, unemployment, the violence of the ghetto. But many are conquering prejudice and defying prophecies of doom. Esther Rantzen meets three boys who are, each in their own way, breaking out of the ghetto. Philip is a musician. Dabs is a boxer. Leburn is head boy of a comprehensive school in London and his ambition is to become a teacher; to succeed simply on the strength of his character and intelligence. All three are determined to make good lives of their own; all three believe they have at least a fighting chance.

American history doesn't go back very far - at least for the white man. It was only 100 years ago that the West was tamed, and the heroes of the legends are still with us - the buffaloes, the broncos, the Indians and the cowboys. This is a story from the most famous legend of all, the Wild West; the story of a part Indian, part Canadian cowboy - Kenny McLean, the most successful cowboy Canada has ever bred. Kenny McLean is as famous for busting broncos, wrestling steers and roping calves as Bobby Charlton is for scoring goals and Geoff Boycott is for scoring centuries. In 13 years of risking his life in the rodeo ring Kenny McLean has earned $100,000 - not much more than Jack Nicklaus might hope to win for four afternoons' golf - but enough to make him a legend in his own lifetime.

Years ago when Judy Garland sang "You Made Me Love You" to a pin-up picture of Clark Gable, she was expressing on film the real-life sentiments of thousands of film fans. Most of us at one time or another have had crushes on stars; most of us get over them. But some people never have - and never will. These days it's the adolescent Donny Osmonds and David Cassidys who come in for the hero-worship. But will the dedication last for them as it has for some of the superstars of the past? John Pitman has been to see a tailor and cutter who is still devoted to the late Errol Flynn; a widower who worships Valentino; and a housewife who reckons that any time she devotes to anything other than the memory of singer Jim Reeves is a waste of time. Fortunately she has a very understanding husband.

The case for London's third airport is based on several praiseworthy assumptions. That it will relieve the noise around London's airports; that Britain is running out of runways and terminal space. The case against Maplin is that the best way to reduce airport noise is to exploit the new quiet engines; that Maplin and all that goes with it, motorways, rail links, a new town, an industrial zone, a new port, all add up to an environmental disaster; that Britain is not now short of and may never run out of runways or terminal space; that Maplin is an economic folly.

Tourism is Britain's largest dollar earner. Our culture and heritage are one of our most important invisible exports. Although the number of Australians and Europeans coming to England rises every year, the majority of visitors are American, in search, perhaps, of a past they feel does not exist in their own country. What they want to see is Changing the Guard, Stratford, a couple of castles and with any luck, a living, breathing earl or marquis. Jeremy James has been looking at the new tourist boom - at the package tourists who do Europe in a fortnight and Britain in three days, and can go off the beaten track with a stage coach and a country weekend.

Nothing succeeds like excess in the Indian film industry. In Bombay, Hollywood of the East, a new, noisy, colourful feature film is churned out every three days. Heroic heroes battle furiously with villainous villains - everything is larger than life, including Rajesh Khanna, Bombay's superstar. Jack Pizzey and a Man Alive film team watched Rajesh dancing through love scenes beneath the Himalayan snows, plotting his way through the intrigues of the Bombay film world, and at home with his 15-year-old wife: when he married in March millions of Indian girls were heart-broken.

It's almost 30 years now since the British left India, but if Rudyard Kipling had gone with Jack Pizzey and a Man Alive film team to the once-fashionable hill resort of Ootacamund in Southern India, he would have felt entirely at home. Seven thousand feet above the heat and turmoil of India, it was known to generations of expatriates as 'Snooty Ooty' and is still jealous of its reputation as queen of the hill stations. Ooty's summer social season is a major attraction for people wanting to escape the stifling plains below, and a handful of British people have chosen to make Ooty their home; still live much as Kipling's characters did. Many of them have been there so long and England has changed so much that they have nowhere else to call home.

Peper Harow, an old country house set in fine grounds, provides a splendid if unexpected setting for its new residents - group of disturbed adolescents, most of them potentially violent. All the boys at Peper Harow have taken some kind of a beating from life. But at Peper Harow the beating has been stopped. There is no regimentation, no system of rewards and punishments to encourage conformity. Instead the community offers to the boys a chance to try out the experience of ordinary life again; to take responsibility for themselves, for others, for the community. To some this would seem a case of sparing the rod and spoiling the child. But to the boys of Peper Harow the task of facing up to the realities of themselves and their circumstances is - as several of them put it to Jim Douglas Henry-tougher than punishment.

For the men and women who own Britain's 11,000 racing greyhounds there's a dream of winning a fortune in prize money and gambling. Some pin their hopes on a single dog cosseted at home as one of the family, fed on a secret diet and trained when few people are about. Others kennel 70-80 dogs in the expensive hope of finding a world-beater among them. Some use professional trainers. It's exciting, heartbreaking and sometimes shady. It draws bigger crowds than horse racing, attracts more gambling money than the football pools, and it's split under two codes. One is governed by a 146-page rule book; the other is an unwritten, free-and-easy game of bluff and counterbluff. Harold Williamson has been with the dogs, the owners, the winners and the losers.

It didn't take the British record companies long to notice they were missing out when the Americans invented the weenybopper singing star. The latest to join the race to manufacture a British little Jimmy Osmond is EMI, the world's biggest record company. Their product, 12-year-old Darren Burn, seems to have all the right ingredients: he's pretty, he can sing and his dad's an executive at EMI. John Pitman has followed the marketing of Master Burn, Ricky Wilde and the James Boys, and talked to their families.

The shortage of council housing and the plight of the homeless are familiar problems. But solutions are not so easy. Escalating land prices in all our inner city areas mean that pressure to build in outer areas is increasing all the time. And many residents of pleasant suburban areas don't want vast council housing complexes - and the people who live in them - on their doorsteps. Man Alive tonight comes from the London Borough of Hillingdon where house-owners are up in arms about proposed new council housing. Desmond Wilcox chairs a town meeting with the people of Hillingdon and asks what the solution is when people protest: 'Do it somewhere else.'

What happens to a marriage when the wife unties the apron strings, goes out to work and then earns more than her husband? How does a man feel when his wife who has always washed his socks, fed his children and shared his bed suddenly becomes a tycoon? What happens to the children when Dad becomes the housewife? What do they tell their friends? In the first of two programmes, Jeanne La Chard talks to families where Dad stays at home and families where the wife is the major breadwinner.

Today Mark Phillips, an acting captain in the British Army, earning around £2,500, married Anne Windsor, a Princess of the British Royal Family, who has an income of around £35,000. Last week Man Alive looked at five families, where the wife had become the-major breadwinner, to discover its effects on the traditional roles of marriage. Good luck, this day, to acting Captain and Mrs Phillips who are just one of thousands of couples who have to face this problem. Tonight Desmond Wilcox examines the implications of this change of roles in a marriage; the implications for the children, for industry and for the society we live in. Among those taking part in the discussion will be the families on film, Marjorie Proops - herself a successful working wife - sociologists, a psychiatrist specialising in marriage, and marriage guidance counsellors.

The Costa Brava might be just as cheap these days, but for a lot of people, there's still nothing to beat the good old traditional holiday camp. In the week John Pitman visited a holiday camp at Selsey in Sussex, the place was booked out - 1,200 gathered together, all out to enjoy themselves. Well, most of them. You can't please all the people all the time. There were boys looking for girls, girls looking for boys. Confident people who mix easily; shy people who don't. There were families who come every year and those who had never been before - and some who won't come again. And always there, ever ready to make you smile, were the Blue-coats, personality-plus people: stars in their own little galaxy, but always hoping that some day someone will spot them, give them a break and take them away from it all.

Scratch a modern millionaire and underneath you will probably find a property developer. Since 1954 the boom in commercial property development has spawned oblong office blocks by the thousands and new fortunes by the bank load. To amass their private fortunes, the property tycoons must enlist the willing co-operation of local government councillors - some of the hardest-working, unpaid public servants in modern Britain. For it is in the power of local authorities to grant, or to withhold, the necessary public permission to speculate on making a private fortune.

Of all the events which use sport as an excuse to ease out the champagne corks and have a social junket-Ascot, Wimbledon, Lord's, Cowes - the most exquisitely English is Henley Royal Regatta. The course is English to the point of idiosyncrasy: it doesn'conform to international standards for one inch of its beautiful length. Yet every oarsman in the world wants to row on it. Even the Russians send their best men to heave and sweat past the Stewards' enclosure, where the English upper classes relax in deck-chairs, wear dazzling boat-club blazers and caps, sip punch and champagne, gossip, and clap politely.

Legal aid is the most remunerative thing that has happened to the legal profession since the invention of sin. (ANON) If all men are to be equal before the law, all men must have equal access to advice and advocacy. The legal aid system has been developed over the years to reduce the gap between the high idealism and the everyday reality. Tonight's extended Man Alive examines the gap that still exists and asks how far a fair hearing is still determined by the thickness of your wallet. On film JACK PIZZEY reports, on cases where denial or restriction of legal aid may have led to injustice. In the studio DESMOND WILCOX introduces a discussion between judges, lawyers and laymen : their views range from those who maintain that ' British legal aid is the best in the world' to those who see it as ' the feeble Cinderella of our social services.'

Blackburn in Lancashire is twinned with Peronne in France and Altena in Germany. At the end of Britain's first year in Europe, the children of Blackburn have invited their European twins to join them in a festival of music and dancing. Today the children, les enfants and die Kinder come together in Blackburn to show the world that they all share the joy of celebrating Christmas with music -all in their very different ways.