Original subtitles

Father Teasdale, subjected to a left -wing witch hunt by Twiggy Rathbone's

Crucible, at the hands of its editor, Russell Spam, has tried to take his own

life by hammering a kebab skewer into his heart.

Reporter Bill Titler, meanwhile, still investigating a tip -off that a mental

patient who claimed to be Khrushchev was murdered in a television studio, sees a

Russian trade delegate hand over to a detective from Special Branch a bundle

papers that may hold a clue to the whole mystery.

Yes, I got them, sir.

Do you want me to bring them personally, or shall... Right, I'll use the normal

channels, and then we can... Oh, look, uh... I think I'd better ring you back.

Stand up, Mr.

Titler.

Try not to bleed too much, won't you, Mr. Titler?

It does make such a nasty mess on the carpet.

This is what we call the sub -editor's desk. This is where we write all the

headlines. Now, a headline has to be short and snappy, but nice and clear so

everyone can understand what it means. You see?

Wog -jibe race chief slams glue -sniff coma girl quiz game.

Wog -jibe race chief slams... This one?

Slow -flow mail row boss wrapped in green paper.

Has anybody got any questions?

Yes? Why don't you resign now? Why's Sue got some integrity left?

I think that's when an eight -year -old schoolgirl starts to notice I think the

time has come for me to move on.

As a matter of fact, I've had a very tempting offer from the States.

There's the senior lecturer in media and communication studies at the University

of Boston.

Well, the money's good. They want me to start next semester.

Funny, isn't it?

How casual a remark from a little girl can finally make up your mind for you.

There you are, a nice bag of sweeties. And don't eat them all at once.

Oh, night.

Oh, when it happens, I turn into a werewolf.

Nurse,

nurse.

Father Teasdale?

I can't seem to breathe, nurse.

Well, we shouldn't go driving wooden stakes through our hearts now, should

Father?

Perhaps you have a temperature.

Good one, Mike. That'll look fine. Now, let's try one with the thermometer now.

What's happening?

No cause for alarm, Father. It's all quite official.

Perhaps it's time I revealed my true identity.

Yes, it is I.

Greg Kittle, her baddest distress.

A minor masquerade as a senior osteopath to help gain me admission.

Could we try a few goose shots now, please?

All right,

Bill. So whoever Keith called up on that phone to say he'd got these

documents... Has got to be Mr Biggs.

The one who got Sharon Chandler to bump off Kabelsky and the one who is now

paying everyone to keep their mouth shut.

Speculation, Bill.

When am I going to get some hard facts, huh?

Prince Harry has a small red pimple on his left buttock.

A Paris spokesman confirmed today.

Hard facts.

One star George Michael's live -in lover had a great uncle who was Hitler's

chiropodist.

Documents aren't guesswork, Russell.

They could be the key to the whole story.

We need a fast translation, Bill. Someone we can trust.

I'll get straight on to it.

Incidentally, Harry, I'm sorry to hear you're leaving us.

Marjorie, I think you've made a wise career decision.

Henceforth, you'll impart your treasure trove of knowledge to a whole new

generation. The genius of Harry Stringer belongs not to the crucible, but the

world. No finer press man ever graced the hallowed portal... Oh, piss off.

had time to reflect on your sins, Father. You now repent your old Marxist

do you, and sort of pray to God for forgiveness?

Fine. Well, thank you for this most illuminating interview.

I hope you get well soon.

You murdered him?

The man you thought was Khrushchev?

The old man?

You murdered him?

You knew, as a trained nurse, that the injection would prove fatal. Yes, you

right to confess, my child, but I cannot grant absolution.

You must own up.

It is wrong to try to protect this man. What man?

Wrong to protect him. Which man? Protect who?

Good afternoon, Harry. I just dropped by for no reason in particular to make

sure everything's okay. No problems, I trust?

I've decided to resign, Mr. Rathbun.

Problems are the mouthful of pips in the fruit of a man's labors.

Ever since you became managing editor, the crucible has forged ahead of every

other paper.

And talking of forged papers, an anonymous source I was playing golf with

morning tells me there's some bunch of anarchists on the loose circulating

counterfeit documents to try and discredit certain well -known public

Look, I said I'm going to... What? Should the Crucible come into possession

this bundle of dupery, I'd hate to feel we fell for it and took them at face

value.

I'm sure we'd confine them to the weight bin where they rightfully belong.

What's all the cloak and dagger in Adolf Harry? Something in the wind?

I just want to be careful, Max.

Now.

Yes?

Russell who?

Russell, where are you?

Locked in the executive dining room, however did that happen?

That's terrible, Russell.

I'll get straight on to maintenance.

Now then, let's look at what we've got.

A man who, to all intents and purposes, is Nikita Khrushchev is murdered in a TV

studio. Why?

We don't know.

But we think it may have been carried out by the staff nurse working on orders

from someone up above. Now, until today, that was just a hunch.

But now, thanks to what Greg tells me, there can't be any doubt.

You knew as a trained nurse the injection would be fatal.

Teasdale, in his delirium, was obviously reliving the moment when she admitted

her grisly deed in the confession box. He also said, you must own up. It's

to try and protect this man.

But what man?

So far, the only evidence we've got is a bundle of papers in Russian which are

being translated now.

Papers this man was obviously desperate to get hold of.

This afternoon, I had a visit from Citizen Rathbone.

He knows we've got those documents, and yet he was trying to palm them off as

fakes.

Now, why would he say a thing like that?

Unless... Christ.

Rathbone. Well, look at his motive.

A multi -million pound contract to sell rat cola to the Soviet Union.

Worth a fortune.

And negotiations were all too delicate.

and if Khrushchev had spilled out secrets that were embarrassing to

could have blown the whole deal.

If only we could get that nurse to go on the record, we'd have him. But she's

left the country. She said to go on her letter. She's gone to work in

Bangladesh.

Unless that's what she wanted us to think.

Sure. So that we'd stop looking for her back here.

How are you going to find Sharon Chandler now? It's impossible. She's

hiding to escape the press.

The person has not yet been born, Max, who can escape the press.

If she's still in Britain, we'll find her.

The photograph.

Her and an elderly couple.

Her parents, like us, must.

They were in a garden.

There was a big lion behind them. A big white lion carved on the side of a hill.

Whipsnade Zoo.

Get the veg spurnbock.

Check out every charter until you find them. Don't say who you are and then get

out there.

And don't show your faces in this office again until you've got the whole bloody

story. And move it, for God's sake.

All right, thanks.

There's a Professor Irem G. Quigley in reception.

Come to discuss your syllabus for the media studies course.

Oh, tell him to stop his bloody syllabus.

I've got a newspaper to bring out.

I'll go.

Good afternoon.

Mrs. Grace Chandler? Yes? Greg Kettle, Her Majesty's pet.

I wonder if I could... I don't want to talk to you. Go away.

Oh, what a pity. You see, I'm doing a feature on glamorous grandmothers of the

Chilterns. I was invited to the Dorchester Hotel to have your photograph

with Sylvester Stallone.

But you don't want to talk to the press. There we are. I'll bid you a good day.

No, wait. Come back.

I'll come with you.

Let me just get my coat.

I can't believe this.

Sylvester Stallone at the Dorchester Hotel.

Hello, Sharon.

Great, Greg.

Is Bill with her now?

What?

No, I don't know anyone who looks like Sylvester Stallone.

Well, hang on a second.

No.

Just use your initiative, but keep her out of the way.

First time lucky they've found her.

I've got the translations, Harry.

My God, is this a big one.

What are they?

Love letters and diaries, mainly.

Evidence of a wild and stormy sexual relationship.

Between?

I think you'd better sit down, Annie.

Poking, prying, hounding people.

You never give up, do you?

You're not kidding me, Sharon.

You want us to publish this story. You want it more than anything else in the

world. Oh, yeah?

You wanted us to print the truth about this right from the word go.

That's why you rang us up in the first place.

Only Big Keith shoved a gun up your nose to make sure you wouldn't talk.

This is your last chance to unload it all, Sharon.

Don't throw it away.

Go on.

Kill me.

You want two murders in your conscience? Fair enough. That's up to you.

Two murders?

What are you talking about?

We know you were forced into it, Sharon. The courts will take that into

consideration. My God.

You don't think I murdered the old man?

We just want you to go on record. We know you've confessed all to Father

Teasdale. Confessed? I'm not even Catholic.

You don't know, do you?

You really have no idea what actually happened.

Six and a half hours trapped in a room with a hysterical waitress. And to run

for this match, mark my words.

Now, are we off the copy?

What's the splash? Wild baby in bum pimple sensation?

I think we can now mock up a special picture.

I've spiked the royal baby's story. Russell, it was mindless pap.

Really, Harry?

Have you got something better?

Uh, well, how does this sound?

The wife of Prime Minister Gerald McNamara murdered a 75 -year -old mental

patient to protect her husband from a massive sex scandal.

When he learnt of the crime, the Prime Minister himself ordered a route to

up operations to take his wife Iris from the gallows.

Are you out of your mind, Harry?

Bill's just come back with a full story.

The nurse told him everything.

Do you think it's good enough at the front, Russell? Or do we shelve it to

way for Frank Bruno's cookery column?

I'm listening, Harry.

In the 60s, Gerald McNamara was attached to the British Ministry of Defence.

While in Moscow one year, he had a secret affair with a member of the

government, Mr.

Gregor Trezhnikov.

His wife found out but stood by him. Together they managed to keep it a

for over 20 years.

Well, Trezhnikov's now dead, but his diaries and his correspondence with

McNamara, all in Russian, were passed to another lover, Mr.

Kuznetsky. Yes, whom I met, concluding the Ratcola deal.

The whole affair was dead and buried, and McNamara thought he was safe until

day we came along with Nikita Khrushchev.

Now, as I'm sure you'll remember, Russell, Mr. Khrushchev was all set to

the sex secrets of the Kremlin.

Mr. and Mrs. McNamara began to panic. If his past indiscretions were suddenly

made public, it would be the end of his political career.

And then, on March the 31st, Mrs.

McNamara found herself with an amazing opportunity.

She'd gone along with the Prime Minister to the television studios where he was

recording an interview about the following day's hanging debate.

As they were leaving, Mrs. McNamara remembered she'd left her scarf behind

the dressing room. She went back to find the room had now been allocated to

yourself and Kubelski.

emptying the insulin files and filling them with water, she knew as a former

nurse herself, it would kill the man she believed was Khrushchev and save her

husband's neck.

Sorry, I was just looking at her.

I just went back to fetch my stuff. I left it behind.

Deprived of his insulin, the old man died a short while later.

Mrs McNamara told her husband what she'd done.

We also know she confessed to her family priest, Father Teasdale.

Now, the Prime Minister, who didn't want to see his wife hanged, ordered a heavy

from the special branch to go back the next night and destroy the only

the remaining piles of water.

That was when Sharon first met Keith.

She was warned to say nothing about it if she wanted to stay alive.

After wrestling with her conscience, Sharon rang us.

Unfortunately, her phone was being monitored by a sophisticated new

Scotland Yard.

Five minutes later, Keith, the man in charge of the cover -up, was round at

flat. And he made sure that when Bill called, Sharon Chandler had nothing to

say. What no one knew was the special branch computer had a conscience.

Using a speech synthesizer over the phone, it started to give Bill Titler

-offs based on the information it was recording, until Keith found out and

pulled all the plugs. And that was the end of the story.

In the meantime, McNamara was still trying to destroy all evidence of his

homosexual past.

Kuznetsky, the man who had the letters, came over with the trade delegation to

sign the Ratcola deal.

and passed the documents to Keith, at which point we intercepted them.

Now, it's not for me to speculate, Russell, that the Prime Minister may

used his influence with our proprietor to try and suppress these papers. I'm

sure Mr Rathbone has far too much integrity to interfere with the story,

for the sake of the peerage of the birthday on this list.

Have we put this to Downing Street yet?

Bill's trying to get through now.

Hello.

Mr McNamara.

Yes, I'm sorry to trouble you this hour, Prime Minister.

I just wondered if we could have your comment on a story we're planning to

in tomorrow's crucible.

That your wife committed murder in order to save you from a scandal about your

homosexual affair with a Russian diplomat.

Prime Minister.

Are you still there?

And I'll have every one of your arses for breakfast.

You print this pack of lies, and Jesus Christ almighty, I'm getting on to my F

for Freddy lawyers.

And then he put the phone down.

I think we can take that as a denial, Harry.

It's all manner. The way he reacted.

He's as guilty as hell, I know it.

This is the most explosive thing since Hiroshima, Harry.

If we're right, we shall make newspaper history if we've got our facts wrong.

Defamation, criminal libel, sedition. There's no telling what they'll hit us

with.

Run the story.

And welcome back on this morning of utter news sensation. I think we can

actually talk now to the executive managing editor of The Crucible, Mr

Springer, who's currently in custody at Highbury Police Station on charges of

seditious libel.

Can you hear me, Mr Springer?

Yes.

Hello, Nick.

Good morning. Mr Springer, are you having second thoughts at all now about

wisdom of calling the Prime Minister's wife a murderer?

Um, no, I stand by the story.

You're still confident, are you, that your reporters have got it right and

you won't, say, spend the next ten years of your life behind bars in Parkhurst?

Yes, I'm totally confident.

And let me just say this, Nick.

Though we seem, I'm afraid, to have lost Mr. Springer there, but we have been

joined now by the proprietor of the Crucible, Mr.

Terence Rathbun. Mr. Rathbun, good morning to you.

Now, I gather the first that you heard this quite astonishing story was when

got up this morning.

It ill behoves me to lay down the law to the press of this country, Nick.

But I'm not ashamed to confess that I wept.

over my rat -brand, fibre -rich breakfast plate.

To see so fine and well -loved a national figure, pilloried and defiled

sake of cheap sensationalism, it's shabby tabloid journalism in its worst

And shabby tabloid journalism is the tongue down the back of the throat in

Kiss of Death.

I have no truck with it, and I...

utterly dissociate. I'm sorry, I'll just have to stop you there for a moment,

Mr. Rathbone. We've just got some news coming in at the moment, in fact, that

just a few moments ago, Mrs. McNamara broke down in tears and admitted that

every word of the story is, in fact, true.

Now, the Prime Minister has gone off to see the Queen.

And MPs are calling for an emergency vote of no confidence in the government.

And you still dismiss the crucial story, even after this.

The Crucible story.

I thought we were talking about the front page of this morning's Sun.

Prince Harry has a pimple on his left muzzle.

Of course I stand by our story.

I never doubted it for an instant.

The Crucible has this day rewritten history, Russell, thanks to the

of one man.

Harry Stringer bestroids our narrow minds like a colossus. He's the acme of

journalistic perfection in whose shadow we all pale. I agree, Russell.

Future generations will scarce believe that such a man in flesh and blood did

work in Gray's Inn Road.

And now, if you'll forgive me, I have... luncheon appointments with the leader

of the opposition, the Prime Minister -designate, who wishes to reward us. The

service is rendered. I understand the subject of the birthday honours list may

not be excluded from the agenda.

Well, I think we... Frank!

Harry! Harry who?

They can't get the key to open his cell door.

Don't worry, Harry.

We'll carry on without you.

I can speak on Harry's behalf. Where is the like of two peas in a pod?

Serpies scare.

And across the top we can run Ken Barlow wig on rates shock sparks mass toupee

claim crisis.

And down the inside column, Busty Brenda jilts Jim Slip Judge for beer gut

darts. Do you know a picture on that one?

Would you like to feed me some dinner?

I told you you're not to feed them.

Someone's secrets we have grabbed, famous facts that we have stabbed.