The Great British Asian Invasion (C4): RONNIE Barker was dressed up as an Indian. Brown face, turban, comedy "goodness gracious me" accent, the lot. This was a sketch about Indian cooking from an episode of The Two Ronnies. "Ronnie Barker a racist? Hardly," the narrator assured us.

The point was that Asians were long considered harmless figures of fun and acceptable as long as they kept their distance. The fact that they'd saved the NHS, changed our eating habits and altered the face of British shopping counted for little. Now, after the 9/11 terrorist attacks, some people fear they are "the enemy within".

This takes you back to the bad old days when anyone with a skin colour other than white was considered inferior and to be kept in their place, a legacy of the British Empire.

This documentary promised to tell you everything you ever wanted to know about Asians - and did a thorough job too, without losing a sense of humour, producing fascinating stories about how and why Asians got here.

It took its cue from the BBC comedy series Goodness Gracious Me, in which Asian performers took the mickey out of the British and themselves. Author Kate Fox thought the show told us "so much about the appallingness of our own behaviour without preaching and pontificating in a politically correct way". This programme did much the same thing.

Even the word Asian is misunderstood. It's used to cover a variety of people from different countries who came at different times to do different things.

The 5,000 doctors recruited from South Asia in the 1960s enabled the ailing NHS to expand faster than would otherwise have been possible. They were the product of colleges established by the British to ward off the spread of Communism as they feared Asians would go to Russia. Today, one in four British doctors is Asian.

Others changed our "boiled beef and carrots" eating habits by opening curry houses. There are over 9,000 Indian restaurants today - run by Bangladeshis who, arriving in the 1970s recession, went into catering because they couldn't find jobs. Instead of saying that we're "going for an Indian", we should say that we're "going for a Bangladeshi".

When Napoleon called us a nation of shopkeepers he didn't have the Patels in mind. They were among Indians who left East Africa in the 1960s and 1970s when dictator Idi Amin ordered all Asians out. Most arrived in this country with nothing. Their trading history pointed them in the direction of corner shops

Pakistani workers didn't fare as well when recruited as imported cheap labour for factories in Northern England to do jobs nobody else wanted to do. The decline of the textile and manufacturing industries led to unemployment for them.

The programme also considered the next generation, who've taken the educational path to good jobs or moved into the entertainment industry. Instead of being the butt of jokes, Asian performers are now considered cool. Only in football have they failed to make much headway, although the first Asian soccer superstar could be round the corner.

Published: 08/10/2004