Kicking The Door Down: May 2007

Cutting Edge: Meet The Au Pairs

(Channel 4. Last night. 9PM.)

For two years now The Apprentice has sold itself on being ‘the job interview from hell’. But last night it finally had a competitor for that title.

Having just arrived in the UK for the first time, the three hopefuls in Meet The Au Pairs had it terribly tough. For a start, they were quizzed by children.

One interview even began with “Are there rabbits in Brazil?” – it would be enough to derail even the toughest of Sugar’s business minds.

And as if it that weren’t enough they were also expected to deal with the occasional pangs of xenophobia from the locals.

“Where’s she from? Turkey? You wouldn’t want a foreign au pair, would you? The kid’ll grow up ordering kebabs and that!” quipped one, showing a shameless disregard for modern Turkish cuisine and the very nature of the word ‘au pair’.

But on the whole this was a rather engaging documentary – and one which left us genuinely rooting for some of its subjects.

It was far from seamless, however. Take thorny matriarch Gilly Holloway, for example. Before she’d even let a potential au pair into the house she’d quiz them relentlessly and dissect their CV for anything slightly suspicious.

“When it comes to your child’s safety, you can’t make any concessions”, she explained coldly. Quite true, but why, then, was the Cutting Edge camera crew allowed to roam unrestrained around her house without question?

But this was what Meet The Au Pairs did best. It was, at its height, a ripping exposé of the hypocrisies and shames of the modern middle class.

Like a vitriolic ‘How Clean Is Your House?’ it burrowed deep beneath the surface of apparent domestic tranquility, digging out the dirt for all to see.

All their peculiarities were on display – their inexplicable faith in feng shui; the quasi-religious importance of extra-curricular music lessons; and, sadly, their deep reluctance to really listen to their children.

As the final installment of Channel 4’s Cutting Edge season, Meet The Au Pair’s most noteworthy achievement was putting us in the shoes of the hopeful au pairs. Like the au pairs, we, too, were left baffled. It didn’t matter that the viewer wasn’t from overseas – this was a culture shock for anyone outside of Islington.