Who broke Britain? Welcome to The i Paper’s opinion series in which experts and writers debate the issues that concern them about modern Britain.
• You won’t know James Bevan, but you should know what he did to this country• Boris Johnson wrecked Britain. But this man left even deeper scars• Martin Lewis: the money-saving expert… who accidentally cost Britons billions• The American woman who ripped the heart out of Cadbury• Steven Bartlett: the glorified PR man quietly making Britain worse• The Tory who sold off Britain’s greatest assets – then told us to take back control• Dua Lipa: the ‘magical thinker’ unwittingly making Britain’s young women miserable• The podcast bro whose toxic slurry of sexism targets impressionable young men
One spring day at an ice rink in New York’s Central Park, a former British paratrooper from Essex spotted a famous figure in the crowd – and the world changed direction.
Mark Burnett, who had come to America on a tourist visa and fashioned a shining career in television, was there on location, filming the finale of his hit show, Survivor. Sitting in the front row of the audience was the man whose company operated the ice rink, Donald J Trump. In that moment, in May 2002, Burnett – impressed by the brash TRUMP branding plastered over the venue – had the notion that the flamboyant property magnate should be the star of his next TV experiment.
