Is anyone else watching the Au Pair programme on Channel Four

[moodlumthehoodlum]

My god its depressing..

Very amused by the Timmy Mallet/Wackaday family. They were bonkers.

Oh yes, that's the anme I wracked my brain for.... TIMMY MALLETT.

She seemed a nice au-pair, putting up with the oddest family.

Does anyone think that the au-pairs came across better than their employers ?

Who came off looking worse? Parents or au pairs? Wish I'd seen it. On the other hand, maybe not.

I wish I'd seen this!

So many people employ Au-Pairs nowadays & call them Nannies, that's fine but they should at least pay them a better salary!

The au pairs, NFK.

ST - it's repeated on More4 (if you have Sky / cable) on Sun 27 May at 10pm, definitely worth watching.

All of the au pairs seemed lovely, especially Tab. I sat watching through my fingers thinking what a bad impression they must have had of the British.

Great, I'll have to stay in on Sunday night now!

I saw this it was shocking , the mother's shd be ashamed of themselves but have to say I have worked with two women in the City who were paid extremely well and both had aupairs and spoke to them like crap.

I used to think how awful when they are caring for your ds's , one boasted how she had been through about 25 in one year and then they would just post another ad on Gumtree for £70.00 a week to get another & to look after 3 young ds all under 5, all day and do the cooking etc and be spoken to like a piece of something off her shoe.

Haw to say the turkish lady as soon as I saw her I said to my dp she has no pushchair no water , no food etc no cardigans for the poor little things they are going to be hungry , tired, one shd be in a pushchair she did'nt have much sense quite scary really and then it looked like she was lost on top of that

So was it all about horrible parents paying rubbish money and trying to get nannies on the cheap?

I really wish I'd seen it.

Grrrr - I missed that bit about the blades in the mower, thanks for the info...must have been making a cup of tea!

Just watched this, and was imagining the comments on this thread (which I knew would exist lol!)

The mother of 3 boys - Clara? - certainly had 'ishoos' - the way she talked about how she felt sorry for whoever had to look after them, and clearly couldn't wait to get away from them was very sad.

The wierd couple were just that - wierd. I think there was something not quite right with the mother - and where on earth was that karaoke being held? All the people there seemed a little 'different'.

And as for 'Jilly'. What an idiot. Nothing more needs to be said on that subject...

I kept waiting for the voice over to say 'au pairs are not cheap nannies' but it never came.

I felt sorry for those girls cos they were treated really badly by most of those employing them.

I was also shocked at how parents could think of leaving their kids with girls that they had only just met who had no qualifications or experience. That one who wanted to be a nurse seemed to leave no instructions or information about the children at all. Just a dump and run.

I was really shocked and appalled, not only by the attitudes of the parents, but of the programme makers as well. I can't believe that everyone treats their au pairs like cheap slave labour, cheaper versions of nannies, but that was all the programme presented. It would have been nice to see a family that treated an au pair properly and the voice over reinforcing that was how they should be treated.

Yes, I agree that they should have shown at least one "good" family. Surely not all au pairs are treated in such a cavalier fashion.

Couldn't believe what happened about the key. And if the mother was so concerned about the 2 year old not being able to walk far, then why didn't she tell the au pair. "I didn't think you would be going out today". WELL WHY DIDN'T YOU ASK HER YOU SILLY BINT?!?!?

She obviously hadn't given any instruction about the school drop off, either...(or perhaps Perrin (sp?) hadn't understood?)

yeah apparently she was so worried about leaving her children with someone she didn't know - so instead of getting a childcare proffessional, she got an au pair (who she'd met only the day before if I remember rightly) and then didn't give her proper instructions about what she expected nad what the kids were like.

Horrible programme

Those girls were being taken advantage of and the kids were being put at risk, just so the parents could save money.

Weird family mother looked like Wayne's World's Garth.

And posh mum placing ad and saying she scrutinised responses properly and then picked au pair on the basis of feng shui and being a Libran Monkey ha ha