Gone girl

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NEWS

NEWS 2-27

TELEVISION

Gone girl

A new BBC drama explores the disappearance of Shannon Matthews and how her mother betrayed her community with a kidnap hoax. By Ella Walker 16 days from on l £1,999ppy

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F

ormer Prime Minister David Cameron once labelled Dewsbury, West Yorkshire, an example of “broken Britain”, calling it “a place where decency fights a losing battle against degradation and despair”.

He made these comments following the disappearance of Shannon Matthews in 2008 – who, it was later found, had been hidden by her mother, Karen, in a faked kidnapping. A new BBC drama, The Moorside Project, starring Sheridan Smith, Sian Brooke (Sherlock) and Siobhan Finneran (Downton Abbey), is set to take that sweeping “broken Britain” statement and tilt the angle.

“We don’t tell the story of Shannon Matthews – we tell the story of the women on the estate who came together to find her,” explains writer Neil McKay, who developed the two-part miniseries with his longtime colleague, executive producer Jeff Pope.

Shannon went missing less than a year after the disappearance of Madeleine McCann, but the hunt for the Moorside Estate youngster played out very differently.

“Do we pay attention to a missing child on a council estate?” was the underlying question, explains McKay, and the prejudice relentlessly manipulated during the investigation – by the public, papers and politicians.

However, that attention swang violently when Shannon was found alive at the home of Karen’s partner’s uncle, Michael Donovan. “Their trust had been betrayed,” remembers McKay, of the people who had campaigned and searched for the nine-year-old.

“People piled in then, [saying]: ‘They’re just low-life after all, they’re everything we thought about people on a council estate.’”

This drama focuses on the opposing perspectives of Julie Bushby (played by Smith), who spearheaded the campaign to find Shannon and believed in Karen throughout, and Karen’s next-door neighbour, Natalie Brown (played

by Brooke), the first to suspect her friend wasn’t telling the full truth.

“These women – they’re fantastically strong,” says Brooke.

“The whole community came

together, searched night and day for 20-odd days. There was this spotlight on them – and then suddenly, it vanished.

“Everyone came away with that impression of, ‘Well, there we go...’

So this [drama] is great, because it really does open it up and tells their side of the story.”

“It was a story we thought we knew, but we didn’t, and we should do; we should know what was happening on that estate,” says Finneran, who plays Karen’s family liaison officer, Christine Freeman.

“Having watched it on the news and feeling I knew what was going on there, to read this [script] gave me a very, very different story.”

The show examines the scrutiny the case attracted and the deception of a community by one of its own. But McKay adds: “We go beyond that, to reaching the final scene between Natalie and Julie, where they both recognise each other’s point of view – the one who had the doubts and the one who had faith – and how, in a sense, they were both right.”

Filming didn’t take place in Dewsbury, but on an almost identical estate in Halifax. Karen wasn’t approached or involved at any stage of story development; however, Smith and Brooke did spend time with their characters’ real-life counterparts.

“They were quite heavily involved,” says Brooke, who spent several hours with Natalie. “When I spoke to Natalie, she really gave this impression of community – and they were so close. She said, as mothers along their road, they’d have their doors open all the time – they would all look after each other’s kids.

“They’d shout out: ‘Where’s so-and-so?’, and then there’d be this echo at every garden, and then they’d find out, and know the [kids] were all safe. Natalie and Karen had been friends for many years and so, for her, it was a huge sense of betrayal.”

When it comes to the ethical concerns around putting Karen back in the spotlight, McKay is clear it’s something that “keeps him up at night”. But, ultimately, he says: “We don’t tell it from her point of view – we don’t defend her or condemn her.”

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BUSINESS SPORT 38-43 47-56

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The Belgian who knows all about Yorkshires Regula Ysewijn tells Mark E Johnson how the Sunday roast pudding evolved Shannon Matthews (above) was nine when her mother, Karen (below), faked her kidnapping GETTY

STUART WOOD/ITV

No uniforms and longer working days for pupils on path to entrepreneurship. By Mark Blunden University Technology College wants teenagers to wear “sober suits” and adopt the open-collared dress style of Sir Richard Branson (inset) in class.

The 550-pupil free school in Pimlico, centrsl London, is under construction and is due to open

There’s a court order preventing press contact with Shannon, but the team behind The Moorside Project did get in touch with those in charge of her care. What impact do they think watching the show could have on Shannon, who is now in her teens?

“Read anything about Karen Matthews and she’s a deeply vilified figure – and we don’t make any apology for the crime she committed,” says McKay. “Nonetheless, I think we show a much more balanced picture than is in the press. She’s frequently described as ‘evil’ – to put her in the same category as Rose West and Myra Hindley is just daft.

“It’s not for me to know how Shannon would react. Whatever she thinks about her mother, and we can’t speculate about that, it’s better that there’s a portrait of Karen that’s more balanced.”

Sheridan Smith as Julie Bushby in ‘The Moorside Project’

Suits you! The new school that means business

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TV 28-29

FOOD

EDUCATION

new school that aims to produce the next generation of entrepreneurs is shelving uniforms in favour of gender-neutral “business-appropriate attire”.

Sir Simon Milton Westminster

VOICES 14-18

in September. It will specialise in construction and transport engineering, with facilities including a robotic lab, 3D printers and superfast broadband.

Pupils at the non-selective secondary will study GCSEs and A-levels, and will be expected

‘The Moorside Project’ begins on BBC One on Tuesday 7 February

to work from 8.30am to 5pm, in preparation for the business world.

The curriculum includes work experience, with pupils spending half their time applying classroom learning to real projects run by “industry supporters”, such as Network Rail’s London Bridge redevelopment.

Principal Karen Barker said: “Students will be working with graduates and apprentices at these companies, so it makes perfect sense for them to wear business clothes.

“It needs to be welcoming to all – it will be a sober suit and we won’t

insist on ties, which also get in the way if they are working on practical stuff. I’m working hard to make sure it’s gender neutral. I’m very keen on getting as many girls as boys. At the moment, we have slightly more girls than boys who have applied for Year 10.”

The school is named after Sir Simon Milton, the former leader of Westminster Council, who died from leukaemia in 2011 aged 49.

Industry supporters include Network Rail, Transport for London, BT Fleet, Alstom, Land Securities and Sir Robert McAlpine. Classes will have a maximum of 26 pupils.

Ms Barker added: “Students will get used to standing up and presenting to people.”

The 5,200 sq m site, situated next to the tracks into Victoria Station, includes 47 flats, which are due to be sold as part of a scheme that developer Bouygues claims will be worth £65m.

The school is being funded

by Westminster Council, the University of Westminster and the Sir Simon Milton Foundation, with £300,000 of start-up cash from the Government, plus an undisclosed deal with the developer.

However, pupils can’t afford to get too relaxed about their dress. The school website states: “When meeting visitors or the public, students will be expected to wear a college tie.”

EVENING STANDARD

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n in-depth journey through the history of British puddings might seem like an odd project for a Belgian writer – but by the time she was eight, Regula Ysewijn was already such an Anglophile that her parents took her to Canterbury for a day trip.

It spurred a lifelong obsession that would eventually lead to the award-winning Pride and Pudding, a blend of food history and recipes that was one of 2016’s most critically acclaimed food books. “I wanted to write a book about British historical food,” says Regula, “to show people that Britain’s food is amazing.”

It was clear, however, that fitting the entire history of the nation’s food into one book wasn’t feasible. “I had so much on puddings that I decided on those, because there’s so much to tell. They describe the complete evolution of [British] taste,” she says.

“People say Britain doesn’t have a food culture, but it’s actually strong enough for British people to put food on Christmas cards and all kinds of political pamphlets. You can’t be a non-foodie nation if you’re using food to make political statements.”

She adds: “The thing is that puddings have always been something that could be prepared together with the main course.

“Because it was stuffed into guts or a bag, people were able to boil it [in a stew] with the rest of the food.

Pudding was often eaten as a starter to fill you up before you were going to tuck into the meat, so that you wouldn’t need as much of it.

“With batter puddings, it’s the same thing. When people started roasting meat in front of the hearth, they wanted something to have with the meat – and they used the hot fats to cook the pudding.”

However, these early puddings were not the savoury puffs of batter we know today.

“Traditionally, you would have had a joint of beef or mutton turning in front of the fire in a bottlejack spit, and there would be a pan underneath to catch all the

The Brits put food on pamphlets – you can’t be non-foodies if you use it to make political statements dripping,” Regula explains. “To make a pudding, they would replace that dripping pan with a pan containing the pudding. The pan would be sat so that the fat would drip on top of the batter and cook it.

“It would be quite flat – more like a pancake. It’s hard to describe how amazing a batter pudding made in that way tastes.”

While today, Yorkshire puddings are idealised as the grub of farm kitchens, they used to be a luxury.

“Earlier on, it would have been the very rich [who ate them], because most people wouldn’t have the spit to cook on,” she adds. “Pudding only dripped down to the lower classes at the end of the 19th century.”

As the seeds of the 20th century were being sown, the working classes began to cook their own roasts as the industrial revolution came into full force.

“Even in the 19th century, people would go out and buy a piece of meat, and they would go to their local pub or cookhouse and someone would fry it for them there. Puddings were served in public houses and cookhouses, but they wouldn’t have been able to do it at home,” she says.

But as Britain prospered housing improved and kitchens evolved.

“People started getting ovens rather than fires,” says Regula, “so the logical thing was to start experimenting with how they could get that pudding into the oven without the need for a huge chunk of meat over it. Firstly, they would have made it with beef tallow or lard. [Then] all kinds of cooking oils started to leap into our cooking [in] the 20th century.

“And when the whole muffin or cupcake craze came from America, people started to make them in cupcake shapes, so you’d have the individual puddings – but that’s all quite recent.”

Traditional Yorkshire pudding as made by ‘Pride and Pudding’ author Regula Ysewijn

YORKSHIRE POST