Great stuff. Whether you pity, mock or empathise with Carrol's attitude towards life, it can't be denied that it provides great entertainment, whatever your own take on life might be. This is a well made documentary which veers away from the often stuffy delivery that many documentaries provide, and offers up plenty of debate for your next trip to the pub. It works because we have all imagined what we would do with that 'big win', so to see someone else's take on it is an interesting premise, Carrol's take being one that (for me at least) inspired frustration, as well as a degree of pity. This film can't help but mock its subject (for the most part... Keith Allen does his best to be respectful and professional) but does succeed in portraying Carrol as both victim of his win, and abuser of it, also highlighting the 'hangers on' whom have helped Carrol waste his money. I missed the celebrity boxing match when first shown, so was delighted to find that they repeated it in this film, along with some behind-the-scenes footage before and after the fight. Seeing a drunken, unfit bum take on a 20 stone body builder in a boxing match, is the stuff of slapstick Hollywood comedies - never mind a British charity event...
3 Reviews
Michael Carroll: King of Chavs
jboothmillard3 November 2006
Warning: Spoilers
The person in this one-off programme is just the most stupid and unworthy character in Britain. Keith Allen (father of singer Lily Allen) had the very lucky opportunity to talk to the Chav who won the National Lottery. Michael Carroll is the most undeserved winner of the lottery in Britain, probably in history. All he has done with his money is bought a big house and loads of cars, but all of that has turned into wreck and destruction, well, he is a Chav. This programme basically gave Allen access to the kind of life Carroll lives now after winning the lottery and become the most unwanted Chav anywhere. Maybe in the future, we should be careful and more aware of who could win the lottery. Good!
J'accuse Fleet Street's Unthinking Hordes
velvoofell28 June 2006
Warning: Spoilers
In the UK press of the early twenty-first century, Michael Carroll's name became shorthand for the loutish lower eschelons of the nouveau riche. Stories about the teenager who won millions on the UK national lottery abounded with incidents of tasteless overspending, orgiastic parties and wanton anti-social behaviour - but what was the truth? This excellent documentary argued that Carroll, as the masses casually regard him, is a modern folk tale, a bogeyman, a Sweeney Todd born of nineties lad culture - and a middle-class run media prone to inverted-inverted snobbery (sic).
As an example from GMTV showed, TV presenters could turn their nose up at him, sneer, throw figurative rotten tomatoes and be safe in the knowledge that because he had won money and seemed not to deserve it he was fair game.
They spread the notion that he apparently had no taste, purchased top of the range cars to smash in dirt-track derbies in fields outside his home and was the worst of nuisance neighbours. To the comfortable, lightly right-wing world of Richard and Judy and daytime television he was a resurrection of Pan, a Satanic figure whose mere presence was offensive to their eyes.
Keith Allen's film sought to show how wrong this reputation was, and how unfair, disgusting perhaps, his off-the-cuff castigation by the popular media and press was.
He tracked Carroll, a quiet, maybe lazy, certainly thoughtful man, over a period of weeks where he prepared for a charity boxing match. He would fight a celebrity and play the villain of the piece. Subtle comparisons with messianic validity could be observed here. For the public to accept him, for them to finally forgive the fact that a teenage tearaway had won nine million pounds on the national lottery he would give them his blood. When he finally does, pacing around a boxing ring being pounded to near insensibility it is to the boos then rapture of the crowd.
The film ends with Allen helping Carroll make a pop single for his daughter. Allen's argument rests on the proof that Carroll is far from the pseudo gangster he is painted to be.
Some of his entourage are uncouth, lary and nasty, but he is none of these things. What we are left with is a very real portrait of a tormented soul, surrounded by ridiculous and cynical hangers-on and targeted by the media and organised crime. He needed a friend and defender and Keith Allen may have saved a life with the documentary he delivered.
As an example from GMTV showed, TV presenters could turn their nose up at him, sneer, throw figurative rotten tomatoes and be safe in the knowledge that because he had won money and seemed not to deserve it he was fair game.
They spread the notion that he apparently had no taste, purchased top of the range cars to smash in dirt-track derbies in fields outside his home and was the worst of nuisance neighbours. To the comfortable, lightly right-wing world of Richard and Judy and daytime television he was a resurrection of Pan, a Satanic figure whose mere presence was offensive to their eyes.
Keith Allen's film sought to show how wrong this reputation was, and how unfair, disgusting perhaps, his off-the-cuff castigation by the popular media and press was.
He tracked Carroll, a quiet, maybe lazy, certainly thoughtful man, over a period of weeks where he prepared for a charity boxing match. He would fight a celebrity and play the villain of the piece. Subtle comparisons with messianic validity could be observed here. For the public to accept him, for them to finally forgive the fact that a teenage tearaway had won nine million pounds on the national lottery he would give them his blood. When he finally does, pacing around a boxing ring being pounded to near insensibility it is to the boos then rapture of the crowd.
The film ends with Allen helping Carroll make a pop single for his daughter. Allen's argument rests on the proof that Carroll is far from the pseudo gangster he is painted to be.
Some of his entourage are uncouth, lary and nasty, but he is none of these things. What we are left with is a very real portrait of a tormented soul, surrounded by ridiculous and cynical hangers-on and targeted by the media and organised crime. He needed a friend and defender and Keith Allen may have saved a life with the documentary he delivered.
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