Warship: Life in the Royal Navy (Channel 5)
Admiral Nelson’s last words as he lay dying at the Battle of Trafalgar were, “Kiss me, Hardy.” To which Sir Thomas Masterman Hardy did not reply: “I can’t, you’ll ruin my lipstick.”
As woke as the British armed forces have become, full-on make-up with blusher and false eyelashes is generally frowned upon. But presenter Julia Bradbury, a junior rating for the day on Warship: Life In The Royal Navy, was clearly not worried about regulation.
Taking part in a morning exercise aboard the aircraft carrier HMS Prince Of Wales, she wore an inch of eye shadow, lip gloss and foundation, clearly visible against the fresh-faced sailors on either side of her.
Previous series of Warship have taken us on naval manoeuvres, introducing us to some of the characters below deck and chronicling their daily duties. This three-part series is different, sending Julia and co-host JJ Chalmers to get a taste of life in all branches of the Senior Service.
Julia’s biggest worry was the marching. ‘There’s a reason I didn’t do Strictly,’ she warned us. Eventually she managed to keep up, but every time the order came to attention she was half a second behind the rest of the group. You could almost hear Sgt Wilson mumbling, ‘Try to keep up, Bradbury.’
Julia Bradbury and JJ Chalmers get a taste of life in all branches of the Senior Service in Warship: Life In The Royal Navy
Julia was exhausted after a day in the Royal Navy
Julia experienced a day in the life of a junior sailor aboard the warship
And she was a menace in rifle practice. The automatic weapon, weighing nearly fourteen pounds, was so heavy that she was thrown off balance every time she shifted it from one shoulder to the other. The steel bayonet on the barrel cut through the air alarmingly… They don’t like it when it happens to them, Sah!
After half an hour of this, Julia was knackered. Real recruits can expect to spend five or more hours square-bashing daily, and up to four hours polishing their boots. No wonder our sailors don’t wear makeup — when would they have time to put it on?
JJ, a former Royal Marine, saw the commandos at Lympstone training base in Devon daubing their faces with camouflage paint and decided not to join them. He also avoided the forced march carrying a 100lb rucksack.
But there was no escaping the challenge when he was tasked with making his bed in a dormitory at the Royal Naval College, Dartmouth. He remembered how to align the folds in his sheets with razor-sharp precision and showed us a tip for measuring the fold of a duvet using an A4 magazine.
But his efforts failed to pass muster. ‘Did you iron this?’ barked the NCO. ‘What about a chocolate ice cream?’ The humour of NCOs never fades. When JJ arrived at Lympstone, he was greeted by a corporal who sneered: ‘Chalmers? You don’t charm me! Age — 36? Older than time itself!’
All of this captured an aspect of the forces’ lives that is usually ignored in TV documentaries: the underlying sense of pleasure. The camera usually focuses on the gruelling aspects, the discipline and exhaustion, and the ever-present danger.
Julia and JJ also gave us a glimpse of the fun.