Scottish Sunday: Opinion & Debate

7 Days in the Life of...

A Land Fit For Heroes

The phonebox was a fake … but Pennan has clung to the fame Bill Forsyth brought 20 years ago with his Local Hero. Douglas Fraser takes a look back at the birth of Furness, and finds out what happened next

A Parliament Silenced in Fear of Having an Opinion

What We Think

Ay, It’s A Sad Day For Civil Society

Powerplay: Iain Macwhirter

The Cowardice of a ‘New Scotland’ that Allows a Vulnerable Family to be Deported

Blurred Vision

Books: Double Vision by Pat Barker (Hamish Hamilton, £16.99)

Reviewed by Lesley McDowell

Carol’s Gift

In a Short Story Written Specially for the Scottish Sunday

Ahead of Her Appearance at the Edinburgh International Book Festival, Crime Author Denise Mina Weaves an Atmospheric Tale of a Man Wrestling with His Past

Catholic MPs Must Listen to the People, Not the Pope

Muriel Gray Says the Vatican’s Anti-Gay Hysteria Risks Creating a Witch-hunt

Cherie: The Remix

Reports of a Dance Track Featuring That Version of When I’m Sixty-Four are False. More’s the Pity, Says Charlene Sweeney … After the Year She’s Had, Mrs. Blair Could Do With Winning Some New Fans

From Agadoo to Chilled Ibiza

David Keenan Casts a Nostalgic Eye Over Summer Novelty Hits of Old and Asks … What Went Wrong?

From Wallace to Whisky … Via Wicker

10 of the Best Scottish Films

Games on

The Skye Gathering is an All-dancing, All-flinging Affair … With a Whole Lotta Piping

Tom Shields Gently Doesn’t Do It

Last Week SNP Top Brass Nicola Sturgeon Welcomed Debate About the Future of the Party and Argued That a Gradual Approach to Independence Should Be Adopted. Wrong on Two Counts, Replies Margo MacDonald MSP

In The Present Tense

Books: Tokyo Doesn’t Love Us Anymore by Ray Loriga (Canongate, £9.99)

Reviewed by James Smart

Lights Out: An Elegy To A Lost Way Of Life

Books: Stargazing: Memoirs Of A Young Lighthouse Keeper by Peter Hill (Canongate, £14.99)

Reviewed by Brian Morton

Making The Grade in the Money Game

Gordon Keith Attempts to Discover What Motivates the Men and Woman Hell-bent on Amassing Millions

Pick of The Bunch

Books: Picking Brambles and Other Poems by Des Dillon (Luath Press, £6.99)

Reviewed by Ron Butlin

Prickly Side of Spike

Spike Milligan: The Biography by Humphrey Carpenter (Hodder & Stoughton, £20)

Reviewed by Alan Taylor

He May Seem a Bundle of Contradictions – A Pacifist Who Respects the Military, a Man Without a TV Who Won a Prime-time Gameshow – But, Finds Sam Phipps, Alastair McIntosh Simply Has Unusual Ways of Making His Point

Scotch-lite

On The Rocks

Despite the Criticism and Consternation, the Vast Majority of the Museum of Scotland is a Triumph. So Why Does it Descend into a Vacuous Farce in its Attempt to Catalogue the Last Century?

Ian Bell

Text And The Pity

This Life: Flirting By Sending Messages on Your Mobile Phone Might Be Fun and Less Daunting, But its Lack of Intimacy Could Spell the Death of Romance, Believes Elizabeth McMeekin

The Big Motion Picture

Poet Laureate Andrew Motion Enjoys Documenting Real-life National Events But, Reports Lesley McDowell, He is Going to Reveal at the Edinburgh Book Festival Why He Also Likes to Make Up Stories About People

Virtue Outweighs Vice in Virgin Novelist’s First Sexual Adventure

Books: Politics by Adam Thirwell (Jonathan Cape, £12.99)

Reviewed by George Rosie

Want to be Slim and Beautiful? Get Rid of That Dishwasher

This Life: Housework May Be a Great Way to Keep Fit, But, Finds Elizabeth McMeekin, it Doesn’t Mean We Should Ditch All the Mod Cons and Relive the 1950s

Wild In The Aisles

This Life: The Highland Castle is So Last Year, Discovers Louise Bell, After Finding That the Growing Trend for Wacky Wedding Ceremonies Has Reached New Heights with a Russian Couple Set to Tie the Knot in Space Today

East is not EastEnders

Edd McCracken Discovers That Many Asian Actors Are Frustrated That British Soap Operas, Predominantly Written by White Writers, Never Seem to Portray Their Characters Accurately

PISS Off Poof Paki

You Might Expect Those Words at a BNP Rally But Never on a Primetime BBC Soap. Yet This Offensive Alliteration Was Part of a Script Handed to Veteran Soap Actor Deepak Verma During His Short Tenure in BBC Scotland Soap River City.

'I just told them that no way was I going to be called a Paki,' said Verma, who previously played Sanjay Kapoor in EastEnders. And he didn't stop there. He left the show and, as a parting shot, launched a vicious broadside against soaps themselves and in particular their portrayal of Asians. 'Soaps can't do Asians. They never get them right because producers and writers behind the soaps aren't Asian themselves. Look at the new family in EastEnders. I think they have shot themselves in the foot by making them Christian.' Hear that sound? It's a can of worms being slowly, but very surely opened ...

So, as that new family, the Ferreiras, get used to life in Albert Square -- and they are the first Asian family to do so for 10 years -- the whole issue of Asians on British soaps resurfaces once more. Tomorrow, tikka queen Madhur Jaffrey also joins the cast, bringing a well-known Asian face to the programme. But while that might help with the ratings will it help with the scripts? Will Asian roles ever be well written?

'That's a very thorny issue,' says Kristine Lambden-Smith and she should know: half-Indian, she's the artistic director of Tamasha, the theatre company which first staged Ayub Khan-Din's play East Is East. More importantly, Lambden-Smith also cast the actors who play the Ferreira family in EastEnders.

'I know that all those actors were very confused and in a sense disappointed when they heard that the family was Goan Christian,' she reveals. 'They were absolutely not expecting that.'

So, the only Asian screen representations of the ethnic minorities which dominate London's east end -- predominantly Hindu Punjabi and Bangladeshi -- are Goan Christians. Lambden-Smith believes it's because white producers and writers are, quite simply, scared of what could be seen as a political hot potato.

'People in television are running scared all the time of actually getting it wrong,' she says. 'There is a cultural nervousness. They felt if they actually do a living community from the east end, people could ring up and say 'You are getting that detail wrong'. They feel safer saying 'Hey, this is one individual family who happen to be Goan Christian'.'

This, she claims, is a get-out clause so producers don't have to answer that tricky question of accurate representation. But, she adds, the EastEnders writers and producers have a wealth of material and ideas in front of them: the actors themselves.

'Those actors that they have employed as that family also know so much,' she says. 'They could use those actors. They probably won't. But they could use them so much to get so much of it so right.'

Shabana Akhtar Bakhsh also wants to help to get it right. The 22-year-old is Scotland's only Muslim actress (her mother is from Pakistan, her father was born in the UK) and she plays Zara Malik in River City.

She is also currently filming Ae Fond Kiss with Ken Loach, director of the award-winning Sweet Sixteen.

Despite the Deepak Verma episode, she says the River City writers often do take advice.

'We are all in it together,' she says with a multilateral diplomacy that would put the UN to shame. 'It is my responsibility to go up and say to the writers when something is not right. And they encourage you to do that. And they do take things on board and they do listen.'

However, since the soap started last year, Bakhsh has encountered several incidents of ignorance on the part of the script-writers. Not only was her on-screen Muslim sister asked to wear a T-shirt with a Sikh statue printed on it, but they wanted Bakhsh to have a relationship with a 'ned' -- not the first choice of suitor for most young female Muslims.

'They wanted us to do kissing scenes and a full-on relationship,' she laughs. 'I was in full-on disbelief. That does not happen. Girls with head scarves do not go about kissing white boys, and neds of all people. So I had to go in and tell them 'You can't do that'.' Yet on River City that nervousness that Lambden-Smith warns about may have resulted in the 'killing off' of several original Asian characters. Bakhsh's character has already lost a brother and sister. She is the only Malik kid left. Then Deepak Verma came and went.

'It's not hard to write for an Asian family,' says Bakhsh. 'Sometimes you want the writers to approach us and tell us when they are having problems. Maybe we can help.' It's no surprise, then, that aside from making the move to the big screen with Ken Loach, Bakhsh actually sees her future in writing.

'When I think about it I could sit and write storylines for the Maliks forever,' she muses. 'Being Glaswegian, being Muslim, and being an Asian, I am almost the real McCoy.'

Which brings us to a crucial point: are there any Asians writing for soaps in Britain? Bakhsh says there are none on River City. Lambden-Smith says there are 'a handful'. Gurpreet Bhatti is one of that handful. She has scripted several episodes of EastEnders as well as plays for stage and for Channel 4.

The 32-year-old writer is Punjabi Sikh and she's from Watford.

'I don't believe for a moment that soaps can't 'do' Asians,' she says, immediately rubbishing Deepak Verma's claim. Her attitude towards Asian representation is measured and sociological.

'We live in a really imperfect society, a society where there is heaps of racism; covert racism and blatant racism. I think it is unreal to look to television and soaps and expect them suddenly to be perfect.' Bhatti takes a holistic approach to dealing with the problem.

Getting rid of compartments and admitting ignorance could help white writers and producers rid themselves of their nervousness.

'Sometimes to say 'I don't know' gives you an enormous amount of power,' she says. 'I believe if your heart is in the right place, if you ask the right questions, if you make the right choices anybody can write about anything. It is just about doing it with sensitivity and care and passion.'

According to a 2002 Broadcasting Standards Commission and Independent Television Commission on multicultural broadcasting, 69% of people working within TV admit that the perspective of ethnic minorities is not featured enough, but Bhatti does believe it is getting better.

'At the end of the day we have got some really good young Asian actors on screen, in people's living rooms,' she says. 'It is really important to get behind that. I'm not suggesting that everything is perfect. I work in television. Let me tell you, it is not perfect.'

But are the Ferreiras and the new addition of Madhur Jaffrey a good start in this process, whether Goan Christian or not? 'It's definitely a step in the right direction,' Bhatti says.