UNCOMMON PEOPLE

Actor Stephen Graham says television needs to stop making working-class families look miserable. Chris Harvey reckons having a broad mix of writers can help quash the stereotypes aan

- Chris Harvey

In an interview at the weekend, the actor Stephen Graham said that British television misrepresents what it's like to be working class in this country. "It's very condescending," he said, pinpointing TV's "Ooh, look at the poor!" habit of portraying working-class life as one long, grim struggle. "Things can be hard, but there’s also a lot of laughter. My childhood was full of it.”

His words struck a chord. I’ve been banging on for years about the fact that television has forgotten, thanks to the way that it’s now almost monocultural, how hilarious working-class people are. When I was a kid, extended family made our house feel like a stop on a never-ending stand-up tour. Great aunts, uncles, cousins, each brought their own brand of humour that would just fill up our living room. We would laugh so much. Being teased by adults and learning how to hold your own was just part of growing up.

The first time I found myself in a culture defined by an agglomeration of middle- and upper-middle-class folk – Fleet Street – it was a massive shock. They communicated with each other completely differently. It felt like being forced into a collar that was so tight it was cutting off your air supply, having to talk in your best “telephone voice” for eight hours a day. I had to learn it like a foreign language. Of course, I discovered they were witty, too, but in an entirely different tonal range.

I still think of something Shane Meadows said when I interviewed him in 2015. The director of This Is England, whose mum worked in a fish and chip shop and whose dad was a longdistance lorry driver, has mobilised a small army of workingclass talent that includes Graham, Vicky McClure, Paddy Considine, Joseph Gilgun and Jack O’Connell.