To find this disturbing and distasteful?

YABVU. I couldn't watch past that bit. Not because they said they'd had a shag that morning, but because that poor couple, that poor mother describing how she didn't even feel her daughter slip away. How her daughter was so brave but for a whimper. I cried, and like a lot of posters here, I went upstairs and looked at my DS asleep and hoped i would never ever have to go through what they went through.

Oh and standing I laugh about things that happened around the time of my dd's death 10 years ago(like the time she did a wee in my Mum's coffee when she was changing her bum ) is that ok .

I didn't watch it because I don't do voyeurism. Can't add anything to what SGB said, really. The idea that people who have been bereaved must behave in a certain way so they don't offend your delicaate sensibilities is in itself, offensive. Count your blessings and thank God it's not you trying to work out how to be normal after losing a three year old child.

When my dd died I made a very bad/crass comment about something I couldn't believe I had said it at the time it just came out.

I think what they were trying to say was that the day started off so perfect and within an hour their whole world was destroyed.

You could see the devastation in their faces they don't need to justify their grief or the way they speak to anyone and I think it is quite insulting to think that once you have lost a child people think you should sit in a little bubble of grief and should not laugh or think about any happy memories you had before your child died.

Yes, I'm afraid YAB totally & utterly U. They have been to a hell I can't even bring myself to imagine. Having your 5 year old daughter sucked from your arms into death - can you imagine the hell of self blame and 'if only's' they must have been through over the last few years?

I saw only a couple who had come to a place where they could discuss events leading up to the tragedy with relative joy. A joy that reflected the recollection of the lovely time they were having with their daughter and each other in a beautiful place. When it came to the tsunami itself the destruction of their lives and their absolute devastation and despair at the loss of their daughter was blindingly obvious. For me it was the most honest example of a life after the death of a child that I have ever seen portrayed in any media.

I didn't find them disturbing or distasteful in any way. I found the topic disturbing, but not them. And distasteful? well FGS, words fail me.

Well, I watched it and I thought it was interesting, not entertaining. It reminded me to treasure what I have; that life is fragile and precious. I don't really care if others think that makes me a fuck-witted voyeur. And no, I don't visit murder scenes with cellophane wrapped flowers either.

the whole idea of it is tabloid fodder though, isn't it?

The very idea that people want an insight into the lives of those who have experienced these tradgedies first-hand is just horrible.

I don't think the people filmed are necessarily at fault, although as I said before I have no idea why anyone would want to be a part of such a programme, the people at fault are those who watch it. Because without the viewers, there wouldn't be a market for it..

Wow.

Sorry to gush but that was indeed a mighty turn of phrase by SGB. Someone give this woman a newspaper column.

I'm truly not being sarcastic but it does remind me of the Carol Duffy poem about Diana's death.

[Impressed emoticon]

The whole show was voyeuritic and in bad taste imvho

I didn't watch any of it because I could see from the many prime-time trailers that it was going to be horribly voyeuristic. Thousands of people died that day and thousands more lives were ruined. I'm not sure what C4's programme was supposed to teach us about the disaster, with its REAL ACTUAL VIDEO footage and REAL SURVIVOR TESTIMONY - it was packaged as entertainment and I find that disturbing. YABU if you deliberately tune in to a programme like that and then complain that any of its content distresses you.

SGB yet again awed by your turn of phrase.

It's just tabloid-reader wank, though, isn't it, this idea that people have to grieve in a particular way to feed the fuckwitted voyeurs who want to run about with their cellophane-wrapped wilting tulips and their pound shop teddies, bawling in the street over stuff that's nothing to do with them.

I am amazed and by some of the comments I've read on here. I watched the programme and was struck by this couple's nobility and bravery. To talk about such a shattering experience must have been incredibly difficult and I thought they handled it so very well. My 3yr old DS was snoozing on the sofa with me after a nightmare as I watched it and I sobbed into his hair. Their loss is unimaginable.

I don't doubt for one second that the programme producers, in search of some 'light' and 'dark' contrast, asked the couple to recount a happier moment of their trip to contrast with the hell that was to come. In much the same way that they showed other families opening their christmas presents or singing carols immediately before the event.

For any of you to mock this couple or somehow imply that their grief is any less legitimate because of the use of the word 'shag' is self riteous behaviour in the extreme and you ought to be incredibly ashamed of yourself.

, and again!

I think it is very arrogant of you to cast judgment on the way people cope with their grief

SG- I don't think anyone has used the words 'offended' or 'shocked' except you; some people said they thought it was odd and they are entitled to an opinion.

WTF has their behaviour got to do with any of you? If you lost someone in that or any other disaster, how you behave is up to you, how other people behave is up to them (within obvious legal parameters ie bereavement doesn't entitle you to rob banks or randomly assault strangers). If youare one of these self-righteous voyeurs with nothing better to do feel themselves 'offended' or 'shocked' by something they see on the telly, then why not get a life?

I thought it was odd, TBH, but I've never had a close bereavement so I don't feel I could comment on the way it makes people behave or the way people should or shouldn't behave when bereaved.

What a self-righteous bunch of posts.

Why do some of you think you have the right to dictate how people who have lost their child should behave? FFS be glad you haven't lost your child and stop demanding that people who have, conform to some norm you've decided is appropriate.

Sheesh.

I didn't see it but I agree with avril that TV has warped our ideas about how people are "supposed" to behave in difficult situations.

I think that movies and soap operas have given us a rigid idea of the appropriate way to behave if bereaved.

They were not actors, they were ordinary people explaining what happened, giving context.

I don't perceive it in the same way at all, obviously it would be distasteful to laugh at something that happened as the tragedy unfolded but to laugh about something that happened before?

So what would be the time frame on that? Is it just inappropriate to laugh at something that happened on the day (before the tsunami)? Or the day before? The week before? That holiday?

I found it a bit inapropriate to tell the woorld you were shagging in the morning on holiday, i wouldnt do that but i realise other people would.

I dont think that the fact that they lost their daughter would change their way of talking, i think they conveyed quite well that it was a 'normal' holiday, they were doing all the nomal stuff when out of nowhere total disaster struck.

I thougt it was horrid when the mum described how she had nearly drowned and felt that drowning was the worst way to die. You could see they were really trying not to break down but to tell their story.

I hate this idea that once you lose someone you should essentially be able to do and say whatever you want for all eternity because somehow losing a child must absolve you of ever having to conform to socially accepted norms ever again.

This couple lost their child and that is obviously tragic beyond words. However, had they not lost a child then it would seem distasteful to be laughing about the shag you'd had on the morning in which hundreds of thousands of people lost their lives just yards away, I don't think the fact they happened to be victims too makes it any less so.

Although why anyone would want to go on camera to talk about that is beyond me.