Nicola Sanderson

Writing Beauty of Britain

Writers Christopher Douglas and Nicola Sanderson talk about writing radio comedy Beauty of Britain and finding genuine humour in the most difficult and profound places...

Sharp new comedy, from Christopher Douglas and Nicola Sanderson. Beauty (Jocelyn Jee Esien) is an African woman, in Britain to work, finding it hard to make her family back home understand why she can't supply new glasses and sundry other stuff on request. But she has to send some money back home so she goes to an agency and says she's available for care work. All she's offered is a bit of cleaning. It turns out to be for a really interesting woman (Jenny Agutter) who lives with her mother and her own daughter. I didn't think I'd laugh. I did. A lot.

Beauty of Britain (Mondays, Radio 4, 11.30am) should be a winner. It's written by the actress Nicola Sanderson and the mighty Christopher Douglas, who has helped to give British radio two of its funniest and most finely observed comic creations, Dave Podmore and Ed Reardon. The premise, about a black African and her experience as a carer to various horrible English people, is ripe for satire. And black Africans are under-represented on our radio. We get more Eastern Europeans with accents of no fixed abode than we do Africans.

And yet... look, the problem with Beauty of Britain is what I would call the "Hau, medem you are too kand" factor. When I was growing up in apartheid South Africa, black characters were all over radio drama, usually portrayed by white actors. If they were men they tended to be gardeners, odd-job men and general layabouts. If they were women they tended to be servants. And what they did was prop up the household while the lady of the house got herself into frightful scrapes due to her inability to boil a kettle, with hilarious results. The servant would solve the problem, repair the damage done to the kitchen ceiling, make the dinner and knock off around midnight, with her mistress's thanks ringing in her ears, to which her response would be: "Hau medem you are too kand." Cue closing credit music and the cast list: "The part of Sunshine [no last name - black servants had no last name] was played by Sonja Whitechick" or whoever.

As a white South African I can still do a passable "Hau medem" accent - although mine is more a "Hau master" - but I don't, because it comes with so much baggage. To an English person it may be exotic and, yes, humorous, but to me it's a stereotype.

Douglas and Sanderson's heroine is called Beauty Olonga. She does get a surname - after all, times have moved on - but she also has one of those annoying first names that, once again, carry me back to the days when my mother would go to the butchers to buy "servant's meat" for the help. It's the same with Alexander McCall Smith's Precious Ramotswe (who also has a "Hau medem" accent, even though she's from Botswana and Olonga is from Nigeria). Where is it written that black African women must be saddled with abstract nouns and adjectives for first names to be "authentic"? Even if her name does prop up the title.

But then, what is Jocelyn Jee Esien, who plays Olonga, to do? If "Hau medem" does the trick and doesn't offend anyone other than guilt-ridden expats, then who is she hurting? And at least her accent never falters. So enough of the bleating. Let's have some unleavened praise. For starters, the cricket-loving Douglas has given his heroine the surname of a particularly brave cricketer, Henry Olonga, the Zimbabwean who went into exile for his opposition to the rule of Robert Mugabe (and who himself speaks in an accent as far removed from "Hau master" as it is possible to be). And she is a hero too, with her determination to better herself in a country that wants to pigeonhole her as a servant to various pervy old men whose families are too busy or too uncaring to look after them.

This greater message is shot through with sidelong observations - old people subsist on cauliflower cheese; you can pick up great designer bargains in charity shops. And if anyone can realise her dream to start up a chain of boutique self-help clinics it'll be Beauty Olonga. And there's no "Hau medem" in that.