The British Inversion!

It’s 8.15am in a Warsaw Starbucks and Frank Leland is purchasing his usual Grande Americana with heated soya milk. He moved to the city six months ago to take up a job as an Assistant Producer for a Polish News Show. “Basically I advise them on presentation style.” “Say if it’s a court case, I tell them to report from outside a courthouse, if it’s a paedophile story then outside a school.” Frank is one of a number of Brits who over the past few years have flocked to Eastern Europe in search of media work. As he says, “they just don’t have the skills here, they are crying out for media graduates.”

The impressive TVP building

Frank studied Media and Performance Design Science Theory at Salford University before going on to do Media and Cultural Art History Studies Management at East London U. “I came out of that thinking I had the world at my feet.” But the only work he could find was stacking shelves at Pidl n Widl or holding up golf sale signs. “I did temping work, voluntary work, anything really to get a foot in the door.” He even stooped to paying for an internship at The Gate Post newspaper in New Cross. It cost £3000 for a month and all I ended up doing was making coffee all day”. The problem is that the UK churns out media graduates at the rate of thirty thousand a year into a job market that is quite frankly in its death throes.

Luckily a chance meeting with a friend changed it around for Frank. “A friend told me how his sister had struggled for years to get into the British Media before upping-sticks and heading out to Poland where from what I can gather she was given a top producing job for TVP - basically as she was getting off the plane. I went out there for a week just to try for an interview and have never looked back”

Though the opportunities are vast; Polish tv doesn’t pay much. Frank shares a two bedroom apartment with five other Brits. “Two of them I know from my MA course.” Like many expats Frank lives in the Mokotow area of Warsaw near the impressive new TVP building. He takes me for a walk around what is fast becoming known as Roast Beef Town. “There’s lots of British food shops opening up around here where you can get Hovis loafs, Tunnock’s Teacakes and Zoo Magazine” he tells me. Then he points proudly to a mock Tudor pub called The British Arms, “they serve pints in there!” There is even a weekly British themed clubnight downtown he tells me… YAWN

“…I could say more, but you get the general idea”