This is a guest post from the wonderful Hannah Riggott, who you should annoy on Twitter.

In this current climate, the right work experience or internship can make a real difference on your CV. So, it is truly heart warming to see BBC three have found a selection of deserving, motivated young women, and offered them placements with some influential female entrepreneurs and business women in highly competitive industries like fashion and the food industry. Not really! That’s not really a BBC three concept, is it? No one watches BBC three for that. It’s much more entertaining to find some girls who have no desire to work, and force them into industries they have no interest in. I settle down to spend a full hour being judgemental and contemptuous.

The program begins with a montage of black and white archive footage of ladies cheerfully working. The patronising voice-over is quick to inform me how lucky I am. Apparently, a hundred years ago it would have been illegal for me to keep the earnings from my job. As I am a spinster, I would have had to hand it over to my father, who would have spent it for me on whisky and coal. My father is terrible with money; I feel a brief glow of happiness at my good fortune. Then the contestants are introduced, with shots of them walking tiny dogs, swigging vodka and extorting money from their Mothers. I warm to them instantly.

Meet Stephanie, who has spent the last four years going out with her friends, somehow managing to eke out a bling-tastic party lifestyle in London on Job-seeker’s allowance and hand-outs from her single mum. Despite her vapid, selfish existence, I suspect Stephanie and I would really get on. Her views on work, that it is boring and interferes with her social life, totally correspond with mine. Although my 9 to 5 would probably get in the way with us hanging out a lot.

And then meet Steph, who would rather the last hundred years hadn’t happened, because ‘feminism ruined it for everyone.’ So, how does glamorous Steph afford the rent on her Central London flat, her shopping habit and her huge gym fees? Erm…well, she gets hand-outs of approximately £10,000 a month from men in her exclusive social circle. But she’s not an escort; she’s just really, really hot. Cut to a shot of Steph seductively waving thanks at man across a restaurant. Well, I guess the title of the programme is Working Girls…

Both girls are going to be forced to work for a whole week in the notoriously cut- throat food industry. Stephanie is forced upon Priya Lakhani’s fledgling curry sauce business. She starts tasks with a ‘can’t-do attitude’ and generally pisses everyone off. She sighs a lot, refuses to eat lunch, and freaks out at being asked to design a leaflet, on a computer, by herself. Pretty much an average first day at work really, minus the crying in the toilets.

Steph is working in a hotel kitchen for Lisa Allen, a Michelin starred chef, who hates laziness. There is the predictable two hours of shrieking as Steph is forced into an unflattering uniform. After all, what’s the point in having a hot body if you hide it in medium sized trousers? She fails to impress at pot washing, but it’s not her fault, as the pans are too heavy for her fragile wrists. After an understandable tantrum at being forced to mop a floor, where she manages to simultaneously call another girl a ‘bint’ while demanding to be spoken to respectfully, Steph is asked to leave. And to be fair to her, if I could earn ten grand a month from just tossing my hair at men across restaurants, I probably wouldn’t know how to mop a kitchen floor either.

Jamie Broom, a cheerful history researcher, is in charge of making the programme vaguely resemble an informative documentary. He achieves this by showing the girls their family tree and making them feel guilty at how hard their female ancestors had to work, in what is clearly meant to be the emotional turning point of the show. For Stephanie, whose family moved from Dominica in the 60s, this seems to succeed too easily, and she is suddenly enthusiastically cooking curry at a food fair and chatting to customers. It turns out that all her lack of motivation stems from breaking her ankle and having to have surgery, rather than just being allowed to get away with being lazy and ungrateful. Disappointingly, the voice-over reveals that Stephanie did actually get a rather good job once the show had finished. I suspect she wasn’t actually rubbish enough to be on the programme in the first place, and immediately lose interest in her.

Luckily, after a round of insincere apologies, Steph is back in the kitchen! After a good shift, she is rewarded with a 3am trip to the fish supplier, where she is allowed to pull the skin and bollocks off some fish, while talking to a man who looks surprisingly perky considering he claims to work a hundred hours a week. Then, it’s her turn with Jamie. Coincidently, Steph’s family are from the exact docks she is sitting on, where they used to earn a couple of quid a week pulling the skin and bollocks off fish. What are the chances? And aptly, the only one of them who didn’t work ended up in the workhouse. The cheerful voice-over predicts a grim future for Steph, one where her exclusive man friends are no longer interested in bank-rolling her pretty face. Unfortunately, Steph doesn’t seem to entirely know what the workhouse was. ‘Oh, it looks quite nice’, she trills, no doubt imagining it transformed into luxury flats, complete with private gym.

Still desperate for that illusive emotional turning-point, the film crew make Steph’s boss Lisa take her for a nice, cosy meal to pretend to care about what makes her tick. And the revelation…poor Steph was forced to practice the violin for four hours a day as a child, and she was put off hard work for ever. Lisa desperately struggles to feel sorry for her, and the next day gives Steph a chance to cook something to be served to actual real people who are paying hundreds of pounds for a Michelin starred meal. Steph triumphs, but her moment is marred by her medium sized trousers slipping down, exposing her arse to the whole kitchen. Oh well.

Steph was inspired by the programme, and now occasionally dances in ‘high-profile clubs.’ Success! When is BBC three rolling out this scheme out as a public service? I think I finally know what the Big Society looks like.

Comments

1. Hutcho says:

   March 23, 2011 at 4:30 pm

   Is it just me or is the photo at the top just Mark Owen in a blonde wig?
2. Hannah says:

   March 24, 2011 at 11:50 am

   I really don’t know how I missed that!

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