Sharron Davies, then married to the black athlete Derek Redmond, described how much such comments hurt her Dawn French and Lenny Henry have even had death threats. But again, these relationships carry on and are getting more and not less common.White women with black men first caused a panic in this country in the 16th century and the same anxieties will no doubt surface when people watch Tina and her friends tonight. But no laws, policies or lectures will, it seems, stop this attraction. And anyway, says Sony defiantly: “Look at our beautiful babies We make beautiful babies with black men. What’s wrong with that?”‘Skin Deep’, Channel 4, 11.35pm
More from Yasmin Alibhai-Brown. There is an ancient street in Bath called Westgate Street. Halfway along Westgate Street there is a greengrocer’s called WF Buss.

WF Buss is a wonderful little shop overflowing with raspberries and cherries, fresh ginger and red peppers, and I thoroughly recommend a visit there. I recommend that you hurry, though, because this weekend WF Buss is closing its doors to the public and there will be no greengrocer’s left in Westgate Street.Actually, it’s much worse than that. There will be no greengrocer’s left in the centre of Bath at all.
Oh, yes, you could still go into Waitrose in the centre of town, if you don’t mind all the hassle of going to a superstore to get your veg, but nowhere in the middle of Bath will there be a little shop selling fruit and veg Bath isn’t that sort of place any more There are still greengrocers on the edge of Bath, of course. There is a good shop near St James’s Square, way up near Lansdown, and there is a very good one in the bus station, way down by Bath Spa railway station, but in the main part of Bath? I don’t think so.This is odd, because when I first got to know Bath as a neighbour, 15 years ago, there were little greengrocers all over the place. There was one in George Street, which I think is now an art gallery.

There was one next to the Video Front on Bog Island, where a little old man sold everything from limes to beetroot, and many’s the time I’ve gone to get a video for the weekend, and come back with the new season’s carrots and a bag of lychees as well, but then he gave up and now his premises are a quick photo-development place. There was a splendid fruit and veg stall in the Guildhall Market, but that’s gone too They’ve all gone. Bath isn’t that sort of place any more.So what sort of place is it? Well, it’s the sort of place where the rates and rents are getting too much for the best kind of small business, and the main reason for that is that Bath and North East Somerset Council, unaffectionately known generally as BANES, has a policy of squeezing as much rent out of its tenants as possible.”Our duty is to get the best possible return on our assets,” is what they generally say, in the same spirit as blackmailers and loan sharks, confident in the knowledge that sooner or later some London chain or souvenir shop will take the risk of the high rent for the “privilege” of being in Bath. The result is that Bath becomes less and less the kind of city that people want to live in, and more and more the kind of place you’d take a day trip to, as if BANES cared more for its visitors than its residents.For instance, the other day I wanted to get a replacement for a single screw.

I happened to be going into central Bath that day, and tried to think if there was anywhere in the city where I could look for one. Well, I could think of lots of shops where I would have been able to look 10 years ago, but I couldn’t think of one today Not a single hardware shop anywhere in the middle of Bath All squeezed out.So I went on to Larkhall instead. Larkhall is a village on the eastern outskirts of Bath, which is now joined to the city by development. There, within 50 yards of each other, they have Langbridge’s the hardware shop, a very good butcher’s, a greengrocer’s, and a delicatessen called Goodie’s, which is better than anything similar in Bath.I needn’t have gone to Larkhall. I could also have gone to nearby Bradford-on-Avon where, in the old-fashioned town centre, in and around the charming old Shambles, they have a hardware shop, a lovely cheese and bacon shop, a health-food shop, a fabulous bookshop called Ex Libris, and two greengrocers within three doors of each other.Bradford is a tiny place compared with Bath, but when it comes to greengrocers, it wins 2-0.And if I didn’t go to Bradford- on-Avon for a screw or a pound of cherries, I could have gone to nearby Frome, or Marlborough, or Devizes, or Keynsham…The one place I couldn’t have gone to was Bath.Don’t miss the next exciting episode, in which our hero tries to find a good baker’s in Bath, and ends up in Chipping Sodbury!
More from Miles Kington. They’re out there We know they are Prowling, crawling tunnelling They may even be among us.

But where, exactly, are Britain’s mole crickets?

They’re out there. We know they are Prowling, crawling tunnelling They may even be among us. But where, exactly, are Britain’s mole crickets?
A national search was launched yesterday to locate one of the country’s most elusive insects, a giant grasshopper that spends most of its time underground.Almost two inches long, stout in the body with broad front legs adapted for digging like a mole’s, you would think a mole cricket would be hard to miss. But sightings of this once common creature have grown scarce and are now about once a year in Britain, prompting fears that it may be on the edge of extinction here.The trouble is, nobody knows. So an alliance of conservation bodies has launched a nationwide bug-hunt for the Gryllotalpa gryllotalpa wherever they may be found. The Natural History Museum, English Nature and London Zoo are asking amateur scientific groups and the public to be on the lookout. They should also be on the listen-out; on summer evenings the mole cricket sings a purring song, similar to that of a nightjar.Emily Funnell, an entomologist at the Natural History Museum, said: “They are definitely quite rare, but there may well be more than we think.