The city of Copenhagen and its happy residents are on the agenda as Oprah’s talk show comes to town
American talk show queen Oprah Winfrey may be arriving in Copenhagen on Wednesday to boost Chicago’s bid to host the 2016 Olympics, but that’s not keeping her away from the day job.
A team from her Harpo production company arrived in the city today to scout locations and participants for a Danish segment of the Oprah talk show.
The 30-minute segment filmed during Winfrey’s trip will feature city residents showing off the city and their homes and explaining why Denmark is considered the happiest country in the world.
Oprah’s team is currently recruiting Copenhagen guests through her website and the happy episode is due to air on 9 October.
Denmark’s reputation as a happy country stems from numerous surveys and is often cited as a given, but the label of happy Danes raised heckles when it was brought up on popular US day-time show The View last week.
Guest Joy Behar told the panel that Danes were the happiest people around because they didn’t have to worry about health care or sending their children to college because ‘everything’s paid for’.
Fellow panellist Whoopi Goldberg was unconvinced and rejected Behar’s comment. As did many visitors to the show’s website.
Website visitors from both Denmark and the US questioned just how happy Danes could be when taxes are so high in order to pay for the ‘free’ education and health care promoted by Behar.
News pundit Carolyn Plocher from the Media Research Center was quick to add her weight to the unhappy campaign and pointed out that from the latest happiness survey, other Scandinavian countries with ‘free’ education and health care did not even rank inside the happiness top 10.
