Insecurity services

This week's report that the new boss of Tennessee's Death Row is called Mr Slaughter comes as no surprise to me. Surnames have traditionally been derived from trades and professions (Baker, Butcher, Carpenter), and there's no reason why that shouldn't continue into our own hi-tech age, with people a hundred years hence being called Mr Keyscut-Whileuwait or Mr Customs-Analsearcher. You know where you are with a surname, which is why I've always been suspicious of people who have two Christian names instead, because there's invariably something odd about them. As evidence, allow me to cite Barry Norman (cantankerous), Steve Martin (depressive), Elton John (prone to hysteria), Henri Paul (alcoholic princess killer), Russell Grant (where do I begin?), Craig Charles (accused of rape, though thankfully cleared), or George Martin (a crashing bore).

Dutch surnames also reveal much about a person's profession, be it carhire boss Hertz Van Rental or former FBI agent Clint Van Zandt (Mr Sand). Clint has spent his professional career sandbagging and stonewalling in hostage situations, playing for time while trying to ensure a peaceful rather than a fatal outcome, and he discussed some of the hundreds of cases he's been involved in during last night's The Negotiator (C5).

Scarcely an evening goes by on Channel 5 at present without at least a one-hour-long programme celebrating the work of the US law enforcement agencies, because such shows reliably pull in an audience of young (and, one fears, socially dysfunctional) males; and although most of what we saw was simply a training session in Arlington, Virginia, we were warned at the outset that "the pressure will be intense" and "if you're wrong, you're dead". Fighting talk indeed, yet all the jerky handheld camerawork, and the exciting crash zooms of policemen in Ali G glasses barking commands into their telephones couldn't disguise the fact that what we were watching was merely a simulation, and the situation was really about as tense and dangerous as a bunch of traffic wardens issuing parking tickets.

"A hostage negotiator is someone who can sell ice cubes to Eskimos," declared Clint, apparently confusing his profession with that of a barman in Alaska. But his esoteric meaning became clearer as the programme progressed, because much of the work of a hostage negotiator apparently involved not haggling over terms of surrender, but arranging for an order of soft drinks to be sent to the hostage taker (a fictional Islamic extremist holding his wife at gunpoint in his home).

"I want those damn Pepsis, why is it taking so long?" demanded the kidnapper during one of his many beverage-related phone conversations with Clint's trainees, and the delay may well have been due to a frantic search for some caffeine-free cans (depriving hostage takers of stimulants being a key part of the FBI's strategy). "We know there must be three people in the house because he asked for three diet Pepsis," said one policeman in a moment of inspired deduction, and if the temperature of the drinks was the same as the intellectual temperature of the room, the hostages would have no need of Clint's ice cubes.

Interpolated into this extended training exercise were archive clips of some of Clint's real-life cases, and the number of fatal disasters he'd been involved in suggested that he isn't exactly the Red Adair of negotiating. A stand-off in a New York bank in 1981, for example, had ended with a hostage dead (as well as the gunman), and when government troops stormed the Waco compound in 1993 (admittedly without Clint's approval), 80 people were killed, including 22 children.

None of the real-life cases we saw involved Middle Eastern terrorists, so I wondered why the bogus hostage taker in the interminable training exercise was officially designated as "Mohammed, an Islamic extremist", until I noticed a police white board bearing the phrases "suspect calls his wife 'the bitch'" and "the Koran allows him to treat wife this way". That seemed to be the lesson this programme was trying to drum into viewers' brains: that the patient, rational, peace-loving Christian authorities are fighting for civilisation against cruel and irrational Muslims, who are armed to the teeth with teeth, and must therefore be "neutralised" (the favoured euphemism for being summarily shot).

Since Kevin Lygo's arrival at Channel 5, the station has acquired a profile for quality broadcasting that had eluded it before, but there's still plenty of old-style C5 like this in the schedules, for no reason other than ratings. Story House Productions (who made this programme) specialise in documentaries about Islamic terrorism and Hitler, and it's a pity that their mindless pandering to the prejudices of America's redneck and trailer trash audience should also be given airtime here. "The government's patience ran out" was the chilling phrase we heard as we saw the tanks roll into Waco, thus confirming that while those under siege may be mentally disturbed, it's those on the outside who seem to go crazy. And talking of craziness and captives, I've often wondered this: if someone with multiple personalities threatens to kill himself, does that count as a hostage situation?