White City

I’m going to go out on a bit of a limb here and say some people who work in television have first hand knowledge of cocaine. Usage levels might not be as endemic as say the fashion or music industries, but everyone knows a story of a researcher who has had to score for the ‘talent’ and the toilet cubicles of any media watering hole are always as busy as a Delhi train station. Personally I don’t touch the stuff. To paraphrase Robin Williams ‘Cocaine is God's way of saying you're making too much money’ and I’m skint!

So in TV you will find just the same tossers who spout off about the cause de jour, when all they care about is the ratings. Those who love to bang on about organic, eco etc. (all good causes), and those that would always read the caring sharing Guardian (a fine paper but the media rag of choice), are often just the types to leave any morals at home if someone offers a cheeky line in the toilets. After all, coke is the perfect drug to let inflated egos actually believe their own shit. Do you really need a celebrity famous for being the most irritating and least talented member of Blur to tell you that what your sticking up your snout is the result of a production system steeped in blood?

Well that’s what we got in Monday’s edition of Panorama: Cocaine - Alex James in Colombia (Mon 28 Jan, 8:30 pm). So finally a program makes the connection and for all the potential irritation Alex James came over rather well. He admits at the start of the programme that in the nineties he spunked a million quid on champagne and coke, I was half expecting a noughties remake of the Omnibus about the KLF watching a million pounds go up in smoke, instead James is in repentant mood. For Panorama he accepts a invitation from the Columbian government to visit the country and see the effects of the cocaine trade up close, well closer than his previous experiences on the end of it at least. Then we follow the Ross Kemp on Gangs format of meeting the law enforcement, then shady meetings with the ‘bad guys’ while the presenter quite rightly shits himself at the possible danger of getting shot.

Alex James in a Columbian Coca Field

Alex James to be fair did really seem to commit to the material, visibly moved by stories of bloodshed and was very much out of his comfort zone. Often fear showed on his face probably wishing he was back in the safe confines of the Groucho Club or on the farm we see him frolicking about on at the start of the programme.

Although not quite examining his past ‘chained to the mirror and the razor blade’, the programme works well for having a presenter whos been on the business end of a rolled up note. After hearing the evidence of the brutality undermining the cocaine biz the director asks James ‘your quite anti coke now aren’t you’ - he seemed genuinely moved by the experience in Columbia, reassuring the traditional BBC audience we were dealing with a repented sinner. So will it hit home? Next time after a dinner party when the lines come out someone might make a stand and say “what about the poor Columbian farmers and the gang bloodshed, do you know how it’s made? I really don’t think it’s organic. Didn't you see Panorama? God we've been talking about it more than the bloody chickens. Alex James wouldn't approve." Maybe they will - but how will all the echelons of the entertainment industry continue to have their cake and snort it? Well what they really need is someone to start marketing fairtrade cocaine. Or do what the governments of the world should have done years ago, legalise and control it and lose all the crime, death and heartache that goes with the illegal trade of drugs to Europe. Then maybe they'd sell it in Fresh and Wild.