Danger man

HEALTH and safety consultant Ed knows that many people get a lot of pleasure out of gardening.

But he worries they aren’t aware of the risks. After all, he points out, an anagram of GARDEN is DANGER.

Ed is the star of The Fun Police, whose previous title of Slips, Trips And Safety Tips gives a better indication of what it’s about.

The documentary investigates a world being taken over by health and safety rules. Often they’re introduced, not so much to safeguard someone’s well-being, but to prevent an injured person suing the company responsible. Or as one participant puts it: “Everyone is trying to cover everyone’s arse.”

Some say that health and safety people are taking things too far and spoiling people’s fun. “Why don’t they fence the whole country, then we’ll all be safe,”

asks one critic. Another chips in: “Let’s not go outside at all.”

I hoped that the programme would have come up with more ridiculous examples of health and safety gone mad than it does. There’s a lot of Ed explaining how we should be more careful.

I could see his point on one thing. He visits a supermarket car park where there’s no marked pedestrian walkway, with customers having to go over two access roads to get to the pedestrian walkway.

The supermarket was Sainsbury’s, the very chain that I moan about when I go to the Monks Cross store, York. You get out of your car and there’s no provision made for pedestrians. You have to dodge cars and walk over a roundabout to get into the store. Maybe I should give Ed a call and send him round to sort it out.

Most health and safety tips are common sense, which many ignore when working against the clock. It takes £400- a-day consultants like Ed to remind them of the pitfalls of the workplace.

One event forced to have a rethink was a donkey derby in Wales that had been staged for 40 years and attended by more than 8,000 people. Two years ago the attraction was stopped for fear of a child having an accident.

Nowadays the derby is run with donkeys (who’s there to protect them?) and inflatable toys, not children, as the jockeys.

Inspector Pauline takes a hands-on approach to the nail industry. Some types of glue used to attach false nails are banned in the US but not in Britain. She has the power to find out if they’re being used by local businesses and if so, get them to introduce a safer alternative.

One nail bar owner tells her to go away in no uncertain terms. Ed finds some remarks gratuitously offensive, being called a Nazi and a Jobsworth fall into that category as he sees himself doing a socially valuable job.

His wife has a lot to put up with at home, as he’s always on the lookout for danger. All the knives in the drawer must have the handles facing the same way.

Never leave a bread knife in a bowl of soapy water because your wife could put her hand in and cut it on the knife.

The trade organisation for the health and safety profession now sponsors the World Conker Championships after the bad press received in 2004 when they banned schoolchildren from playing conkers because of the dangers.

NOW they sponsor the event to show that they’re not spoilsports.

The programme visits the government lab in Buxton where millions of pounds are spent investigating the changes that surround us. Some 400 people, from mathematicians to psychologists, work there to provide the health and safety inspectorate with the facts on which to base their decisions.

I may never eat bananas and custard again. Custard powder, you see, contains cornflour and that’s explosive.

Never mind donkey derbys, Ed wouldn’t like water buffalo racing in Samoa. The six athletes playing other people’s extreme games in Last Man Standing try this “utterly insane sport”.

This is a race across paddy fields with the driver standing on a wooden frame balanced between two water buffalo. It looks the chariot race in Ben-Hur but considerably wetter. I’d advise Ed to look the other way.