Race Across The World Series 5 Thread 2

[TwentyKittens]

With only five posts left on the old thread, thought I'd start this so we can link between the two.

This thread carries on from the first:

https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/telly_addicts/5314933-race-across-the-world?utm_campaign=thread&utm_medium=share

and exactly my point about the bbc wanting to downdown any poshness,
um not sure what word i am lookign for there

I don’t think they are trying to downplay any poshness (although I hate that word)

i I don’t think anyone could hear Caroline and Tom and think they’re not posh

laetitia also sounds posh!

conversely Brian doesn’t - he’s clearly done very well for himself but I don’t think they grew up posh and I don’t think he’s tried to embrace being posh either

i think back to the South America series and i liked the fact we saw good and bad. So Jen and her hubby as an eg - I think we saw well rounded people there just through watching them travel. I don’t want this to end up like other reality tv where everyone has to have a sob story

i also have a preference for the couples who lose the competitiveness over the race and actually end up seeing it as an experience

While we're talking about poshness, every time I hear Caroline say 'oh golly' or 'oh golly gosh' I can't help laughing 😆

I quite enjoyed her 'fuck it' moment when she stepped onto the train.

I thought that train scene was really odd!

the train ended up not actually being that busy (and definitely not as busy as you are shown trains in India to be). Maybe it’s because I have to squeeze onto the northern line every day but it didn’t seem that bad!!

in fact the whole train thing didn’t seem as hard a they were building it up to be!! I was expecting people to get stranded because the trains were so busy but the only people who struggled were the brothers who didn’t use trains

eta I didn’t really feel we were shown how the brothers found their way or the couple. It’s like they show us people who are stranded and then the next minute they’ve popped up at their destination

How is it mean? I am not referring to his disability at all- more just his lack of awareness of cultural issues- some of the comments he has made are just so cringe.

I agree he has some physical challenges which he mas managed well- but the lost money belt, he total lack of awareness of some cultural issues. You wouldn't think he's had a private education..

I agree @Bruisername- it’s often done this & no explanation as to how which is frustrating.

I also agree with the word gormless for Tom - not related to his cp at all but to his general lack of awareness & oomph to get things done. I hope that following this experience, he has got a bit more about him.

The poshos do make entertaining tv though e.g. Alexander in Traitors falling into a hedge.

I loved that!! (Caroline saying fuck it.) Thought to myself, now that isn't on the list of acceptable swear words! What happened to golly gosh?

I do think Caroline's got a lot out of this despite her playing on the housewife thing. I can imagine if she's been involved with horses all her life then perhaps it was expected that if she was going to be doing anything to fit around home and family it would be all horse related. And she's done well to be a horse trainer, and have a hobby that plays to her competitiveness. She says she was brought up to just get on with things, so maybe what she does. And now she's in her sixties and truly thought, hey what happened!

Perhaps that's what she means about not doing anything truly for herself.

Her look of pure joy at times when she very obviously feels incredibly alive is wonderful to see.

I don't think Tom is gormless, but wonder if he's potentially a product of his upbringing, particularly if he's been helped more growing up (due to CP or otherwise).
Independence & "general awareness/wherewithall" is learned, and if he's been helped a lot by family (for whatever reason), he might be behind on that front.

He went to boarding school, didn't he?.

@Thequeenofwishfulthinking

If I compare Finn to the youngest sister who appears to be dramatic and difficult ... She lost a family home. This is less traumatic than Finns cancer battle and having diabetes particularly throughout the race. It is less traumatic than having CP

I don't think that's automatically true. There's so many variables around the situations. It's not necessarily just moving house. Growing up in a home with stressed and angry adults arguing about money, that sort of toxic environment can really affect someone years down the line. OTOH growing up with a disability naturally comes with frustrations and challenges but if you're well supported and given encouragement and confidence it can be a lot less disabling than the poor mental health or dysfunctional patterns of relating caused by other scenarios.

Plus in RATW it's all carefully managed/edited as we have been discussing, so who knows what the truth is!

I don't think Letitia is as posh as Caroline and Tom! She is well-spoken but that just seems to be the accent of certain places, whereas Caroline has an actually posh accent. Also accent is relatively meaningless anyway - it's the not needing to work, private school, and horsey stuff that speaks of privilege! I thought Tom was a privileged idiot at the start but he has really grown on me. I think Caroline would be quite fun to travel with too.

Really like the brothers too, although not sure what was so funny about the room early on with the lock on the door. Surely the worse the room, the more likely your stuff would be to get stolen, so you'd want a lock!

I thought Sioned was being pathetic when she broke down in India, but on reflection when I travelled there (solo, at the same age) I had been primed in advance what to expect, and to look out for scams, and so on. Without that, it would be a shock. (Although widely-spoken English makes travel easier than China IMO!) I'm intrigued as to whether they've been back to India - it was (is?) a standing joke amongst backpackers that the chaos and noise meant you were ready to leave at the end of the trip ... but somehow found yourself longing to go back again!

He went to private school, it hasn't been said if it was a day school or boarding.

Brian went to boarding school, though.

Toms education story has a few things missing. I think it would have been better to just leave it at ‘I didn’t get any GCSEs’ tbh

i think he’s been over protected his whole life and Caroline has tried to use this to cut the apron strings

Yes, I know about Brian. I was talking about Tom.

I agree. There are quite a few questions. I get the whole being expelled in Y11 for drugs, but most schools allow excluded Y11s to come in to sit their exams, rather than let them chuck away their futures by not getting any GCSEs. I suppose it might depend how close he was to sitting them?

I think private schools might be different

the Parents would have been able to put him in an independent resit school etc

so I do think there’s more to it but I don’t think we need to know and I don’t think it should have been brought up like that tbh

i do wonder when he said he works as a labourer what he actually means.

I think this will have helped him the most out of all the contestants tbh and I’m glad he and fin have become friends.

my DS didn’t like Alfie last time and found him really annoying - he liked his friend though and he really likes fin. I think the two are quite similar

They’re not

and expelling someone with sen is particularly hard unless they’ve done something really bad.

I know you were talking about Tom.

You and some others have mentioned boarding school when talking about Tom.

I mentioned Brian because he is the only person who is known to have gone to boarding school.

i do wonder when he said he works as a labourer what he actually means.

Me too, particularly after Caroline and her description of herself as a housewife! And bearing in mind his CP.

I read in one of the interviews somewhere that he'd left his job to go travelling.

I just read one where he said he’s given up his job to set up his own business as the village handyman

Significant horse achievements aside, I found the fact the Caroline must have been 40 when she had Tom meant her ‘I’ve never done anything for me I’m just mummy’ narrative is even more unlikely.
She has had a large part of her adult life without children and must have achieved something in that time.

According to this interview, Caroline gave up her career to look after Tom, and she did say in one of the episodes that she gave up work when she got married:

metro.co.uk/2025/05/21/after-race-across-world-quit-job-a-new-life-23168844/amp/

I do wonder if maybe there’s an older daughter - Caroline introduced Tom as ‘her only son’.

She was competing quite a lot prior to Tom being born, and has obviously been very successful at it, so I do find it quite annoying when we get the ‘I’ve never done anything fulfilling and I want to do something for me’ line.