1985: English in New York | Whickers World | BBC Archive @BBCArchive
1985: English in New York | Whickers World | BBC Archive  @BBCArchive
Uploaded March 2026 | Updated September 2026, 2 weeks ago
*This film contains strong language, as well as attitudes and depictions of its time.*

Alan Whicker talks to a wide range of enterprising Brits who've gone to live and work in the USA.

Richard Wrigley has some forthright thoughts on America, and in particular on business and sex. At 38, with no financial background, he's creating in Manhattan a million-dollar brewery as well as a vast ice-rink in New York's Central Park. He has no bank account and no credit rating but says thousands of dollars have gone through his mattress.

Brendan Fearon, with a BA from Manchester University, is also working in Central Park - driving a horse-drawn carriage - and experiencing some of the romance himself.

When most of the muggers are still in bed, Richard Lord - who lives with a pet eel - takes the
4am subway to Wall Street - not to a bank, but to the Fulton Fish Market, to pursue his obsession.

The Vulcans, meanwhile, show that even some of the buskers in New York now have an English accent, by belting out a kerbside rendition of "Hard Hat Zone" to any passing New Yorker within earshot.


Clip taken from Whicker's World: Living With Uncle Sam: You've Got to Jog, See an Analyst and Make Love Energetically, originally broadcast on BBC One, 15 September, 1985.






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