Opportunity knocks for the ladies who lunch a lot
Strictly Lady Sumo, Channel 4
The Madness of Modern Families, BBC2
JUST when you thought you’d seen it all before, along comes a programme that succeeds in opening your jaded eyes to a previously unimaginable world. It had never crossed my mind that there might be people outside of Japan with a desire to compete professionally at sumo wrestling. And it had certainly never occurred to me that some of those people might be women. British women at that, the sort of careworn, mountainous souls you sometimes see pushing over-stocked shopping trolleys round the aisles of Asda.
But Strictly Lady Sumo proved that a small percentage of these women aren’t content to merely fritter their lives away at the bottom of a family-sized packet of Doritos. When you get to a certain size, there aren’t many options available when it comes to sport, but the World Sumo Championship in Japan is an event in which even the most profoundly misshapen fatty can be considered a world-class athlete. The ordinary women in this documentary saw sumo as a way of empowering themselves, to prove to the world that they are more than mere couch potatoes. And, while my initial reaction might have been to scoff at such pretensions, by the end of this film I had nothing but admiration for the first ever British ladies sumo squadron. Their trainer was professional UK sumo champ Steve “Sumo” Pateman, who looked like both the Mitchell brothers combined and spent most of his time barking aggressively while stomping around in a massive nappy.
Despite Steve’s claims that sumo is a serious sport full of strict rituals, there is something inherently ridiculous about watching two enormously fat people smacking each other around with their bottoms hanging out. With their Lycra leggings stretched almost to bursting point, it was hard to think of these women as well-honed gladiators. When grandmother Big Jackie went belly-to-belly with 28-stone single-mum Sharran (a woman with “huge potential” according to Steve), it was like watching two drunk bruisers rucking in a pub car park. I saw very little of the supposed “technique” that Steve had apparently been teaching them. It was tempting to presume that the only reason he was doing this at all was because he gained some sort of perverse thrill from fighting fat women while dressed as a baby. But, after 12 long weeks of gruelling training, the four-woman team was ready, and by the time of the finals I was almost punching the air with excitement.
These plucky underdogs were all such nice ladies that it was easy to root for them. When stocky rugby player Adele finally won a silver medal, it was almost as inspiring as the end of *Rocky, and any thoughts that this was a bogus non-sport had vanished from my mind. True, the fact that someone with no previous experience can train for just 12 weeks to become the second highest-seeded sumo wrestler in the world does rather suggest that luck, not skill, is all that is required to succeed. But seeing as any one of these women could have demolished me with their big toe alone, I’m hardly in a position to criticise their prowess.
The Madness of Modern Families was a frightfully middle-class look at the oh-so-amusing tribulations of organising a young child’s birthday party. Cheap, inane and pointless, watching it was like being trapped at a dinner party where people you don’t know witter on incessantly about their ghastly offspring. It only hardened my resolve never to have children and never to speak to anyone who does. So thanks for that, Auntie Beeb.
http://living.scotsman.com/tv.cfm?id=160942007
Has anyone over there actually watched this? :XXkiss:
The review doesn’t exactly inspire one to do so.