By Deborah Orr
Friday, 28 November 2008
I don't know how, but the whole Jackson-clan-moving-to-Devon thing passed me by.
When someone mentioned The Jacksons Are Coming, a documentary about the Jacksons moving to Devon, I thought maybe it was the Jacksons from EastEnders – although that's going back a bit – or some other Jackson family that had fallen for the charms of Kirstie Allsopp. But it really was the actual Jacksons, as the opening footage of the original Five, on stage in their loon pants, and described in the voice-over as "one of the most famous and intriguing families in showbusiness", confirmed.
How did this happen? What possessed the Jacksons to imagine that they could quietly relocate to Appledore, leaving sunny California behind? And what possessed them to believe that this quiet relocation could best be achieved under the eye of a camera? Or who possessed them? A 27-year-old multimillionaire martial-arts expert called Matt Fiddes possessed them. The little git.
It all started, Matt explained, when he got a 3am call from Uri Geller, his spoon-bending friend when he was 17, saying that if he didn't drive over to Uri's house right now, he'd regret it for the rest of his life. So Matt drove over, and at 5am made the acquaintance of Michael Jackson. That, for me, was weird enough. Like tout le monde, I know that Uri is Michael's great friend. But what sort of great friend hits the phone in the middle of the night, inviting people to drop by to have a gawp at their celebrity houseguest? Inevitably, Michael was thrilled to meet Matt, rather than regretful that he'd ever known Uri, and 10 years on, Matt was on the telly, explaining that he was best mates with the whole family, and especially close to Tito, the Jackson Five's guitarist. "They're not strange," said Matt. "They're the nicest guys on earth." Matt had persuaded the family to move to Devon because it was quiet, with "less media than in the city". He wanted to show them that they could live a normal life and "fit in".
All this was explained to Jane Preston, a documentary-maker who'd somehow been identified by someone as a suitable video diarist, for reasons never disclosed. When Preston got to California to film the leave-taking, Tito revealed that he was "a boater and a fisherman" and wanted to pursue these hobbies in Appledore, with his family around him. He revered this as-yet-unseen village in much the way that Yeats did the Lake Isle of Innisfree, but without the turn of phrase.
Tito also revealed that the giraffe that used to roam around in the two-acre yard at the family home had been "a tall guy", and that his former wife Didi, mother of this three sons, had been a wonderful girl who had not deserved to be stabbed to death by her boyfriend. The man was an open book.
The heart-breaking thing about this family, or the few of them silly enough to be beguiled by Tito's enthusiasm, anyway, was that they did indeed seem to be "the nicest guys on earth", maintaining a naive capacity for trust and a polite wish to be helpful, all the way through this odd and excruciating film. As the trip, and the plan, fell apart, so did Tito's friendship with Matt. As he stared at the umpteenth "freak show" spread in a tabloid, Tito said: "I came here with peace in my heart, not to be battered."
After Tito had packed up and fled – handwashing all his pants and drying them in the sun first, because his mother had always taught him "don't bring dirty underwear home" – Matt announced that he was suing Tito, because he owed him some money he'd spent on arranging the terrible trip. The film made being a Jackson seem like the loneliest and most awful job on the planet. The problem would appear to be, quite simply, that none of them is cut out to cope with fame.
Beeching's Tracks was a much more jolly affair, since it merely investigated the semi-destruction of "the finest railway in the world" at the hands of Sir Richard Beeching in the 1960s. Simon Calder, The Independent's travel expert, started out in Portishead and headed towards Minehead, using the railway when he possibly could, and travelling by bike or car when he couldn't.
A 12-mile car trip from Portishead to Bristol took just more than two grid-locked rush hours, even though only three miles of line need to be restored to provide a direct link to the city. "Why can't this happen?" Calder asked a transport consultant. "If I had a franchise lasting no more than 10 years, I wouldn't be keen to make the investment either," he replied. The problem, Calder insists, lies with "politicians looking no further than the next election". Get off! They'd never do something as dumb as that!
Isn't it better that fans get to see MJ stuff than people making money by selling to MJ fans?