What is probably the longest-running weekly TV programme anywhere in the world? First aired in October 1961, it is the quintessentially BBC programme synonymous with Sundays. In the early 1990s, the weekly viewership of the show was about twenty-five percent of the British population, perhaps five times as many as attending church that day. The programme staged its largest event at the Millennium Stadium in Cardiff on the first Sunday of 2000. A live audience of over 60,000 people came to sing, with a 6,000 piece choir, an orchestra of 100 harps, the band of the Welsh Guards and an anthem specially written by Lord Andrew Lloyd Webber. It is of course… Songs of Praise.
But is nothing sacred anymore? Last week’s broadcast, 16 August 2015, was filmed at a ramshackle Ethiopian Orthodox church in the Calais jungle, the nickname given to a series of ramshackle camps near Calais, where migrants live while they attempt to enter the United Kingdom illegally by stowing away on lorries, ferries, cars, or trains travelling through the Port of Calais or the Eurotunnel Calais Terminal. The migrants are a mix of refugees, asylum seekers and economic migrants from Darfur, Afghanistan, Syria, Iraq, Eritrea and other troubled areas of the world. The BBC received criticism from tabloids including the Daily Express, who lambasted the BBC as “out of touch” and the show as “political propaganda”.