BRITAIN IS a notoriously animal friendly nation, and there are those among us who subjugate human rights in their favour. These individuals are not so much animal lovers as haters of humans. Police estimate that there is a hard core of about 30 animal rights extremists who now hunt people. The word terrorist has become more emotive than ever over the last troubled weeks, but that, undoubtedly, is what such individuals constitute.

It was a term that cropped up several times during The Siege of Darley Oaks Farm (BBC Two), a Money Programme special charting five years of guerrilla warfare directed against John Hall, a guinea-pig farmer whose stock is bred for medical experimentation. No attempt was made to put the farm’s experiences in context: no references to warnings by pharmaceutical companies that Europe, where extremism is focused, is now fatally lagging behind the US in terms of research; no mention of the Victims of Animal Rights Extremism support group established in the face of such militancy last year. Nor were the views of the protestors much canvassed (although, where they were, claims that they had nothing to do with the violence were undermined by one woman’s assertion that she sympathised with the perpetrators and would join them were she able).

All that could be achieved in half an hour was a snapshot, but what a compelling snapshot it was. The series’s business bias revealed how the tentacles of extremism exert a stranglehold first over one enterprise, then a series, and from here an entire community. Stories of personal courage abounded as the Animal Liberation Front’s campaign intensified from dire warnings and attacks against property to arson, accusations of paedophilia, murder threats, and, finally, body snatching.

Altogether, the farm and its surrounds have endured 290 protests and 170 incidents of violence and intimidation. In March a High Court judge refused the area an exclusion zone, while defining these actions as a terror campaign. The ALF, it would seem, is not the only perpetrator of inhumanity.

A documentary in which animals were elevated above the status of humans was followed by a makeover programme in which human beings were scrutinised in the manner of beasts. The first series of The Sex Inspectors (Channel 4) attracted controversy when it was revealed that sexperts Tracey Cox and Michael “caterpillar brows” Alvear would be watching couples have sex for the delectation of late-night audiences. In fact, the episodes screened rather less intercourse than the average reality tv show and were a heart-warmingly moral lesson in helping couples to play and thus stay together.

Whether this was a desirable goal for the pair who last night kicked off the second season was a moot point. Kelly and Sean were newlyweds of one week’s standing, although in the custom of modern newlyweds this meant that they had been together for three years and had a child. It was immediately evident that the problem with their relationship was that Kelly isn’t very nice. An Amazonian former strip club hostess and international swimmer, Kel’s idea of a honeymoon period was to use Sean as her personal manservant and head off to raves on her own. Sean, meanwhile, exhibited sufficient passive, rodent qualities to inspire protest by the ALF.

Nevertheless, it transpires that D. H. Lawrence was right, and a quick tussle under the eiderdown can turn even the most dysfunctional relationship around (although it is doubtful that Lawrence would have approved of Cox’s finger-puppet vibrator). Cox and CB imposed a vigorous three-week regime of “quickies”, phone bans, and soft, teasy bondage on the basis that, by now, everybody wanted to tie Kelly down and give her a good hiding. Astoundingly, Sean did not use his wife being restrained as his chance for a swift exit, but hung around, demonstrating considerable interest in grabbing her posterior. She, meanwhile, made the realisation that she could not look her husband in the eye without bursting into peals of vitriolic laughter, a discovery that prompted total mental breakdown and the shedding of crocodile tears.

Still, the shagging prevailed, summarised by Kelly as “lush”, a word she managed to transform into the most obscene of all expletives. The moral of the story: the relationship may yet crash and burn, but its participants will go down fighting: with cords, whips, and soft, teasy manacles.

Joe Joseph is away

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