No offence to Alex Scott, but as I know nothing about football, and I don’t watch Strictly Come Dancing, I’d never heard of her. I’ve also never seen Who do you think you are?, now in its 18th series. I’ve got my hands full dealing with those relatives still alive, I can’t imagine wanting any more on my plate. ‘But Alex has Jewish ancestry.’ I’M IN! BIG FAN. WHAT TIME’S IT ON?
So when Alex initially introduces herself as ‘a true East End girl’, she doesn’t know how right she is. East London’s always been a home to immigrant groups landing upon these fair shores, or at least until property prices rise too high. With a father of Jamaican heritage, and a white mother, Alex talks candidly of ‘not being black enough to be black, not white enough to be white.’ And oh dear, with the subject of great granddad Phil G. bought up, now we’re also chucked into the mix. That’ll make things easier.
In Sandy's Row shul, the first she’s ever been in, Alex learns what for many British Jews, is a familiar story. Amongst the two million Jews who fled the pogroms in Russia at the end of the 19th century, were Alex’s great great grandparents Morris and Dora, transposed from Lithuania to London. Maybe they even came over with my own. Although I’m pretty sure none of my relatives was a runner taking illegal bets, but that, as well as Phil G’s love of dancing, are presented as precursors to Alex’s sport and rhythmic skills, a Jewish first.
This element of the show triggers my cynicism, the need to draw direct parallels between our ancestors choices and our own, when sometimes the gap is too great, the chasm between realities too wide. Where the programme works best is instead as a piecemeal history lesson. We learn about the settlement of Jews in the East End, we learn of how those with mental health were treated, or not, we learn of the fight against fascism at the Battle of Cable Street being directed as much at police as the blackshirts.
