Making Bradford British

It seems to me that this is the kind of social experiment we need to have on a much bigger scale. I know it's manufactured, and makes good telly, and they probably chose the kind of people who could at least articulate enough to get their point across, and who weren't afraid to confront, but this was an interesting, questioning programme, which really made me think about myself and my attitudes to being British, race, religion, and all those big questions. So if it made me think, hopefully it made others think too.

I guess what worried me is that Maura, the middle class liberal one, was closest to me in age and life style, and her attitude to Mohammed seemed more a desire to confirm her liberalism and to bolster up her own idea that she was not racist. Yes, he was a 'chauvanist' in the Western sense of the word, but he wasn't doing his family any harm by not doing the domestic jobs, his daughter told Maura that her mother didn't mind, that was her role in the Pakistani world in which she grew up and she accepted it. Maura's inability to get her head round that, and then to think that Muhammed would enjoy being a dancing monkey at her dinner party, made me want to scream, and blush. Might I be like that too, a sort of 'look at me, I'm so open minded, I even have a Pakistani 'friend'. When he eventually flipped and left the house and she chased after him shouting, 'But my guests were looking forward to seeing you' I wondered if she'd actually thought about how might feel, being on display, this token Pakistani in this all white environment. Surely that would be ultimately threatening. He was already totally out of his comfort zone.

The big success of this seemed to me to be the devout Muslim man who prayed five times a day with the young heavy drinking self confessed 'Paki basher'. What a transformation, in them both. Their humility was palpable and I really could see them being friends. The white guy's (Damon's?) observations of the traditions of Islam, watching them pray, seeing how close the families were, realising that these people were actually a lot more sorted than him (and not all raging terrorists either), then equating that to a British heritage that is now almost gone, was really quite profound.

And what did they do? They talked, they argued, they opened their minds, they made themselves vulnerable, the questioned who they were, they cried and they laughed.

So please, let's have this replicated all over Britain, and show us ignorant white folk (and other British who may be reluctant to integrate with us because they fear their own cultural identity will be lost) the reality of the depth and richness which other cultures can bring to our culture, and hold a mirror up to the worst excesses of ourselves.