Liddle Britain

‘How can I steal a motorbike?’

Rod Liddle

24 January 2007

Rod Liddle observes a beautiful microcosm of British society on Branscombe beach, as slavering chavs and media monkeys make the most of a shipwreck

Sidmouth, Devon

The plaque at the entrance to the sharply sloping banks of shingle reads ‘Bountiful Branscombe’ and, you have to say, they’re not kidding. The giant containers, their metal sides crushed or ripped open by the waves, lie haphazardly across the beach at the point where the shingle turns to sand.

Seen from a distance, they resemble pill-box defences constructed under the directions of a drunken idiot, all facing the wrong way and placed at jarring angles to one another. When you get closer, though, you hear the excited babble, you see the endless procession of people weighed down by five BMW windscreens strapped across their backs, or dragging huge camshafts across the stones, or passing bags of dog food to one another, or still desperately rummaging in the jagged maw of one of the containers. Just beyond them, illuminated by fierce klieg lights, are seven or eight identical little huddles of television people — soundman, cameraman, serious-looking reporter in a suit and with perfect hair — preparing to do their stuff for the evening news programmes.

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