Original subtitles

This week, Time Trumpet looks back at 2007,

the year Charlotte Church vomited herself inside out.

Eurgh-bl-bl... You can imagine, can't you?

And when there was an outcry at the BBC's new weather graphics

that used actual human blood.

And it stays that way into the early part of next week as well. Mind you, some brightness...

And we look back at this madman,

and how he ended up 20 years later

dementedly wandering around the bins of downtown Baghdad.

Move further down the bendy bus.

Have your money ready, please.

We're now In the year 2031.

Apart from the two billion people wiped out by flooding,

It's an era of unparalleled progress.

We're able to use meat as a source of energy.

Special airlines now allow animals to migrate comfortably

by commercial flight.

But what was it like 30 years ago

In the first decade of the 21st century?

What was petrol about?

Imagine! It smelt so bad.

If you've ever tried to sniff petrol you'll know...

what I'm talking about - it stinks.

You had your phone or you were pushing your wheelbarrow and you'd think, you know,

"This is great, these are the times to be alive."

One man who hated being alive In 2007 was Tony Blair.

Privately he was locked in a bitter struggle with his Chancellor, Gordon Brown.

- (Scattered applause, people jeering) - While publicly he was deeply unpopular.

Stage-managed photo opportunities became embarrassing displays of contempt.

Come and shake my hand, you big English shit.

Members of the public were prepared to be rude to his face.

And even his backbenchers were against him,

as recounted In this slightly revamped Newsnight show.

Our political editor Martha Kearney is here now.

They put an awful lot of effort into winning this vote, didn't they?

(Squeaky) They certainly did. Tony Blair was ringing a lot of people himself...

- What went wrong? - Tony Blair made it an issue of principle

- for him... - What are gonna be the consequences, then?

Well, you've got, you know, nearly 50 abour rebels,

- people prepared not to toe the party line... - Martha, thank you.

By the end of 2007, the Blair-Brown conflict spilled into the public arena.

Sometimes Blair would make gun-pointing gestures at Brown,

as If trying to Imply he would love to shoot him through the eyes and Into his head.

Sometimes his underhand techniques on Brown were picked up by the microphones.

Wanker.

Blair would pay cameramen to get their cocks out while Brown was speaking.

...parliament, we beli... And... And we... An... An...

But Brown never cracked. His eye was always on the prize - the Premiership.

He really wanted it. By the end, he just had this look in his eye like a sailor on shore leave

banging on the door of a boarded-up brothel.

Meanwhile Brown gave as good as he got.

His speeches were full of coded references to his belief It was time for Blair to make way.

(Nick Robinson) What does he really mean by that?

To know, you have to crack the political code.

I tell you. It's high... time...

Tony Blair... was... put...

into a... retirement...

home... and... I've... finally...

got... my... hands...

on... his... fu... cking... job.

30 years on, I caught up with someone

who knew both Blair and Brown, Clare Short.

So, now, you worked with both of them for a long time.

- Yes, I did, yes. - What would say were the differences

between the two of them?

Unfortunately, Gordon never had the common touch Tony did.

To put it bluntly,

Tony could shit in your hat

and you'd want to buy him a drink,

whereas Gordon would buy you a drink

and you'd want to go off and shit in his hat.

And if he didn't have a hat on him,

you'd go off and buy one just so you could shit in it.

Time Trumpet will be catching up with people who were famous 30 years ago.

- What are you talkin' about? - People like Sebastian Coe.

And we'll also be talking to today's leading cultural commentators

to find out what life was like then.

Maybe we could start by...

(Clears throat noisily)... erm...

- looking at why the years 2005 to 2010... - Mm.

...were so seminal. Erm...

- Sorry, are you about to speak? - No, no, I wasn't.

And ask ourselves,

what was it about them that had an impact on the next 50 years.

You know, in a sentence.

They were...

special.

Why do you think, er...

Why... Why... No, I... I... Scrub that.

I'm gonna save that question for someone else.

OK.

- Talk about television. - Well...

My favourite thing ever, Top Of The Pops 2 title sequence.

I mean, the first thing you'd hear is this guitar playing the riff

from Led Zeppelin's Whole Lotta Love.

Then in time with the riff, the screen would change colour.

And within that colour, spirals of a darker hue would appear.

First off, the screen went yellow,

with spirals pulsing from the bottom left of the screen.

Then it'd go red with the pulse from the middle right.

Mid left, blue.

Top right, orange.

Bottom left, scarlet.

Bottom centre, green.

Top centre, red.

Then, there was a wipe from right to left with blue.

But the spirals were emanating from the end of the wipe on the left.

As a counterpoint, there was an orange wipe in the other direction, right to left.

And again the spirals emanated from the end of the wipe.

I.e. Top right.

Then it went green from the bottom of the screen.

Then a red wipe from right to left, but this time the spirals pulsed from the start of the wipe.

And then an iris out to show the titles.

Black on grey with the "2" in orange. Perfect.

In the world of professional football you're considered a bit of a loner, aren't you?

- Yeah. I... That's because I am. - Mm.

OK. Let's... talk a bit about...

- You don't want to talk about me? - No.

- My lonely life? - No.

Let's talk about, erm, the, er...

- terrible incident... - I think that would make good television.

Talk about... People are interested in what I do.

Yes, but all...

For just now, we really just want simple soundbites out of you.

Of all the bad incidents of that period,

the worst incident was the Charlotte Church incident.

I began to feel a bit weird, and, you know,

er, dizzy and stuff.

And, erm, I started retching and retching and retching,

and I felt like the skin detached from my body,

and I looked down

and my stomach was hanging out of my mouth.

So I thought, that's not gonna do my voice any good, is it?

- (Loud retching) - Oh! Charlotte!

I kept on puking, and then I got this really weird taste.

I could taste, er, like, Bacardi Breezers, white wine, lager,

my leg, my kidneys,

my liver, and lots and lots of fat.

Well, she was out on a night with her girls, and she just...

started puking and she didn't stop.

I mean, sometimes I go for a wee and I think I'm never gonna stop,

but I'm not weeing myself inside out, I'm just having a wee.

In the papers it's like, " Oh, Charlotte Church, you know, the Welsh magpie,

"she's vomited herself inside out." But it didn't stop her working.

And if you remember, that year's Royal Variety Performance,

she went up there with her heart hanging out,

with her intestines flung over her shoulder,

with major organs hanging down around her waist

like a kind of meat grass skirt,

and she did a medley of I Don't Know How To Love Him,

something from Phantom Of The Opera and the JCB song.

And it was the best-received thing of the night, even though she was in that kind of state.

(Girl) Oh, my God!

(Church) I woke up three days later In the Infirmary.

I had make-up round my mouth... Oh!

Out of interest, what could you see?

Well, I couldn't remember a lot, you see?

And of course the skin was on the inside as well, you know?

And my boobs were poking me in the eye from the inside.

It was definitely a watershed moment for the youth of Britain.

You know, when people realised what had happened

they did say to themselves, you know,

"No way do I want to taste my own lungs slithering out my throat."

(Woman moaning)

A lot of people found Charlotte Church's inverted appearance disgusting.

- Well... - And literally vomit inducing.

Yeah, all right. What's more disgusting, right -

a woman onstage with her organs hanging outside her body

with her skin all inside out, singing Andrew Lloyd Webber,

while thousands of people in the audience and at home vomit,

or the institution of the monarchy?

Er, it... I would say

the, erm, the inside-out woman Andrew Lloyd Webber medley song vomit incident.

But when you say it back to me like that

I agree with you,

but I was trying to make a kind of clever point,

and I wasn't expecting you to...

meet that head on with logic.

- You got a visitor, didn't you? - I did. I did.

David Cameron came to see me.

But it was no good him talking to me cos my head was still inside my stomach.

Now, David Cameron, he was, er...

Do you remember David Cameron? Perhaps you don't. I don't know.

Er...

- Jog my... - David Cameron.

He had a sort of melted face.

He had a face like a...

a whoopee cushion before someone had sat on it.

And a mouth that made the sort of...

shape the aperture to a whoopee cushion would make

- once you did sit on it. - Mm.

Do you not remember him at all?

- No. No, I don't. - OK, that's fine, that's fine.

- OK. I would've thought I would've done. - That's fine.

- That's... That's all right. - OK.

- No, we can talk about something else. - Mm.

Are you absolutely sure?

Ab... Ab... Absolutely sure you haven't heard of David Cameron?

That's the face!

We must look ourselves in the eye and make this pledge -

never, ever again.

Well, I nodded my head but I knew he was committing oratorical suicide.

"We must look ourselves in the eye." How do you look yourself in the eye?

Well, with a mirror maybe?

Oh, yes.

Cameron was great. He would use any means necessary to come over as appealing.

At one point I went around for a month being black.

Then the BNP went up in popularity, so I went round telling everyone how much I hated it.

Real change isn't just about policies,

or even, dare I say it,

having a young, vigorous, energetic leader,

- although... - (Laughter)

...come to think of it, it's not such a bad idea.

Credit where it's due. David nailed that line. I was pissing myself.

With pressure from Cameron and Brown, Blair went mad.

Whenever he appeared In front of large numbers of people

he thought he could see ghosts.

It can be, for example, because you feel passionately about certain things...

It was in the hospitality room, quite late,

and he'd been on, talking about... I think it was about Gordon Brown actually.

And, er, he said to me, he said, "June, do you believe in angels?"

And I said, "Yeah, why not?" you know.

And he said, "Can you see that one over there?"

I said, "Where?" He said, "Over there, by the nibbles."

"By what nibbles?" I mean, there were no nibbles.

There weren't any nibbles!

I cooked for him one night and, erm...

and he got all the mash and he piled it up

and made a huge head of Gordon Brown.

Right? And, er...

then he started kissing it and then punching it,

and I mean, there was mash everywhere.

In order to free up traffic in town centres

he decided that everyone should be given their own bus.

He thought that all cars should be tarmacked

so that if they were in a gridlock

then other cars could literally go on top of them

and continue their journey that way.

Listen, let me turn that question round, OK?

Is it mad to care about the security of the country?

Is it mad to put more money into public services than any other government?

Is it mad to grab a guy by the balls

and squeeze and squeeze and squeeze until he cries out in pain?

If that's mad, then guilty as charged, I'm mad too.

Hello, it's a North-South fixture tonight...

Blair�s policy of trying to get as many people Into university as possible

had many unforeseen consequences.

I'm from Jersey and I'm studying medicine.

Hi, I'm Katie Lee, I live in West Yorkshire, I'm reading physics and philosophy.

My name is Jonathan Hall, I'm from Putney, and I'm reading for an MBA.

I'm Edwin Famous from New York City, I'm also reading for an MBA.

- I'm from Suffolk and I'm reading medicine. - And I'm also studying medicine.

- Chemistry. - Biology.

- History. - Maths.

- Hello. - Hi.

- Hello. - (Applause, cheering)

We could see a little bit more snow, just a dusting in places,

up over the highest ground of the Downs, perhaps,

and certainly pushing westwards in the Mendips.

Could see a covering of maybe a couple of centimetres.

We've all been there. You're throwing a dinner party,

important people coming round, important that it goes right.

You're about to serve the pavlova, and bang,

something falls on it from above.

Beautiful pavlova destroyed.

Well, worry no more. We present Cake Shield.

Anything that falls from above now,

whether it's cups, plates, whatever,

will deflect off the shield and go to the safety of the floor.

The pavlova will not be touched.

Could still have the pavlova-crushing incident, though, couldn't you?

- No. - How?

- How? - Cake Shield.

I mean, it's perfect, it's the ideal thing for, er, cakes, cheesecakes, cream cakes,

- pavlovas... - Black Forest gateau, Swiss rolls.

Year one, what was the turnover?

Er, apple.

- An apple turnover. - Year two turnover?

- Er, apple again. - Lots of apple, yeah.

And last year?

Er, last year, as I said, was the pavlova incident.

It's perfect. It's a shield for cakes.

I've got one of these in my house.

- Excuse me... - You can't have one of these in your house.

- This is the prototype. - No. I've got one of these in my house.

You can't have one of these in your house.

You actually don't.

Have you got one of these in your house? Do you want one of them?

I've had everything done.

Nips, tucks, bone grafts,

bringpads and I had a flange-oplasty.

I've had my eyes chinked and de-chinked,

I've had a... a nasal-rectal interchange,

I've had buckets of Botox,

and still everybody recognises me.

I mean, it's uncanny.

Welcome back to Spicey Slicey...

Robinson became a role model for children, and In 2008

the BBC controversially launched a children�s plastic surgery show.

He has had himself a stubble implant.

- Do we like that, guys? - (All) Yeah.

It's fantastic, isn't it? Yes. This is from Michael.

He sent us a little note saying, "I'm a pretty lady now."

Isn't it a sad day when you meet a child you think is a burns victim

and she says, " I made myself look like you, Annie."

Now I know some of you in the audience have had some great work done.

Let's speak to you. What's your name?

- Max. - Max, what have you got surgery for?

I've been made to look like Patrick Kielty.

Patrick Kielty eat your heart out. I think Max is after your job.

Kids could have, er, could have bladder implants

so that they can urinate in different flavours and colours.

- That's not right, is it? - It's not right.

And this is Lucia. Lucia, thank you so much for coming on the show today.

Lucia is going to have live cosmetic surgery done

right here on Spicey Slicey. Tell us, what are you gonna do?

I'm gonna have my chin enhanced so I look like Clare Balding.

Fantastic. Give her a round of applause.

Remember, guys, a bit of advice to you if you are thinking about resetting your jaw.

Remember, one hard crack with the hammer

is far better than several small ones.

You know, for a while you could buy the kit in Toys R Us.

It was called the Anne Robinson Face Changer.

Well, you know, it was just a... branded knife actually.

They had to ban it after about a month.

- Let's talk about sport. - Good. Great.

What sport would you like to talk about?

What would you like to talk about?

Erm... football? (Laughs)

- OK. - I'm not saying...

- OK. - No, I'm joking.

What do you think of David Beckham's vagina?

Erm, I think it's good, I like it.

I've played with it, and, er...

You've... Pardon?

I know David very well, and...

I like it. I think it's great.

In 2007, footballer and trendsetter David Beckham

had a real woman's vagina stitched into his arm.

Does everyone ask you about the vagina?

Well, a few birds do, yeah, when I go out, a few birds come up to me and ask about it.

I don't always show it. You know what I mean? I'm a bit careful.

But I, er... I'm quite proud of it.

Have any other sports personalities had, erm?

Yeah, well, Ronaldo, he had nipples put on his knees,

and, I mean, women loved it.

Whose vagina was it?

I don't know. All I know was that she didn't want it any more.

There were rumours that he was pregnant,

but he told the press it was just a case of fat arm.

Well, I heard he doesn't wash it,

and he keeps his car keys in it.

Did other players treat you differently in the dressing room?

Yeah, yeah. I had a few comments and I just...

I just gave them a smack around the head, you know. That worked.

- David was always wild, wasn't he? - Yes.

He was always, " Oh, I'll be the first one to have, er, Jesus Christ on my neck."

Erm, or "to have a vagina on my arm."

Have you ever accidentally got it caught or anything?

Oh, yeah. Well, the other day I got it caught in a door, and my God, did it hurt.

I mean, you've got to be very careful.

And also when I put my clothes on, I've got to be very careful

about how I lay the shirt on because you mustn't brush it too much.

Otherwise, you know, it can either hurt or you can stimulate yourself,

you're not sure which.

A lot of people were saying to him, "Why the arm? Why the arm, David?"

Well, where else could he have it?

Erm... forehead?

Well, you know...

he's not a gymnast, is he? He's a footballer.

Do you remember, what was the most fashionable thing you ever wore?

Oh, God.

I think that was the placenta of the white Siberian tiger.

I wore it to the premiere of Mission: Impossible 6.

I wore it as a little beret. Very stylish.

OK, whip your sleeve, let's have a look.

Yeah, I'm proud of it. I will.

Do you look up to him?

- Not now. I did when I was a child, of course. - Mm.

He was the first one to teach me how to do a header.

And then many years ago I kept track.

But now of course not. He's... You know, he doesn't...

He's... No. I don't look up to...

I don't! I don't look up to him.

OK, we play football, doesn't mean that all footballers know each other or like each other.

It's like, "Where are you from?" "I am from China."

"Oh, do you know Mr Li who has an acupuncture in Camden High Street?"

- That's an insult, isn't it? - Yes, but... Well, it's slightly different.

I can't remember how many million Chinese people - a hundred million or so?

- Footballers... - Ten million.

- Ten million? - Ten million million.

Ten million... million.

- Ten million million? - Ten million million.

- That is a lot of people. - Yes. Now, whereas footballers...

there are, in terms of professional footballers in Europe, say,

there must be, what, about a thousand?

- A thousand and fifty? Erm... - A thousand and fifty? Wow.

And in any one year you will all play against each other.

- Yeah, of course. - Right, now...

- you can't say that in any one year... - Yes.

...a hundred million million Chinese people will bump into each other.

Of course. That's why it's an insult to tell them if you know Mr Li from the acupuncture.

Exactly. But it's not so much of an insult

to expect you to know another footballer.

I am not Chinese. I don't know what you're talking about here.

So it could be quite tricky here first thing in the morning.

Special effects were very primitive In the early parts of the 21st century.

For example In the popular soap opera EastEnders,

all the glasses and bottles In the Queen Vic pub

were shot In a special CGI studio away from the actors.

Have you tried in the past having the actors act

- with, er, while holding the glasses? - Other soap operas do in fact do that,

but you end up sometimes with spillages on set

and with actors getting sort of crotchety with each other.

We describe it as we're herding zombies,

just in terms of the actors just being quite difficult to control.

(Woman) Yeah, but I just don't know.

That's Pat Butcher's wig. If we can shoot that all first with the greenscreen

then obviously she doesn't have to wear it during shooting the scenes

and so it gives her one less thing to worry about and she can do what she does best.

- OK. And, erm... - Acting.

...why do you shoot all the drinks separately?

Well, what we do is we shoot all of the glasses and things in front of the greenscreen,

with the leotards,

and then we matte that onto the footage that we've got of the actors

so that it looks like the actors are holding the drinks.

No, that's how you do it, but why do you do it like that?

Erm...

I mean, that's just... this is how we've always done it.

- And then you film the actors here? - Then we film the actors in Bristol.

Then all the footage from that is couriered down,

then that's matched up with this.

Everyone, everyone, can I have your attention, please?

That's a very expensive way of doing it, isn't it?

Er...

Yes, very. Incredibly expensive.

If your glasses are charged, I'd like to raise a toast

to, erm, love and marriage.

To love and... marriage. Go.

(All) Love and marriage!

One of the most shocking stories from that period

was the revelation that Prince Charles's wife Camilla

turned out to have been Channel 4 prankster Justin Lee Collins all the time.

Prince Charles's reaction came in for comment.

Apparently when, you know, the rug was pulled,

he laughed and he said...

"Fair enough.

"I partly question the last 60 years

"but that is a good joke

"and you have followed it through."

It was quite interesting to see the expression on Charles's face.

It was kind of a mixture of, erm, confusion...

and excitement. (Laughs)

The Camilla-Collins scandal was Just part of a growing disrespect for figures In authority.

Erm, let's go to our first question from Matthew Gration, please.

Er, how would the panel react if I said the first person to speak is an arsehole?

Boris Johnson.

- Well... - Arsehole!

- Well, what I'm trying to say... - (Laughter)

But first here's our political editor Martha Kearney.

(Squeaky) It's not really a coincidence that some of the ideas and strategy

used by the New abour Islington set

have commuted across London here to David Cameron's Notting Hill.

After all, the people around him have studied Blair intensely for years.

We had this idea of filming David talking to the women who work in ASDA.

Tell us a bit about how that works.

So we sat him down with them and he... he managed to mask his contempt.

It was touch and go, though.

The last thing you wanna do is go shopping straight after you've finished a long day at work.

Yeah.

(Armstrong) We gave David one of those England bracelets that morning,

we thought he'd look patriotic and sporting,

particularly if he was talking to the type of scum who like the game.

Anyway, the trouble was, the bracelet slipped down

but quick as a shot I was up behind the camera and I signalled to him

to try and move it down onto his wrist so that the camera could pick it up.

(Woman) We wouldn't do that as a company anyway, but...

it's about, you know, meeting the customers' needs

and obviously providing jobs for...

(Armstrong) And good enough, David did it without anybody spotting it. It was terrific.

Derren Brown, eat your heart out.

(Armando) While Cameron had a good eye for the media moment,

Tony Blair was caught between the teeth of opposition

from his own Chancellor but also from the very same Cameron

who had a good eye for the media.

It soon became apparent that Cameron was copying

everything that had previously worked well for Blair,

word for word...

It's a tremendous honour and privilege...

It is a huge privilege and an honour...

...gesture for gesture.

Everyone could see it. It was like single glazing.

The way he used to hold his hands in front of his tits like that.

By taking the tough decisions...

Tough, long-term decisions...

- Punch and Judy... - The Punch and Judy politics...

You should dig up the archive on Desert Island Discs.

Cameron copied all of Tony's choices, except for the Foo Fighters track.

Values don't change, but times do.

That is the change that I'm talking about.

- We can change. - We can change.

- Public services. - Public services.

- Education. - Education.

- Specialist schools. - Special schools.

- In China and India. - India and China.

- Eight years. - Eight years.

- Aspirations. - Aspiration.

- And courage. - Courage!

- Million. - Million.

- Fringe. - Fringe.

- Never. - Never.

- Change. - Change.

- Change. - Change.

- Change. - Change.

- Change. - Change.

- Change again. - Again.

- In turn. - Turn.

- But times... - Times.

- Time. - Time.

- Change. - Change.

- Change. - Change.

- Change. - Change.

- Changing. - Changing.

Change is marching on again.

That's got to change.

Change makers!

People said Cameron modelled himself on Blair and he did, of course.

When he became Prime Minister, people said, "Hang on, Tony had done it first."

I mean, you can't be Prime Minister and say, "Oh, this is my idea."

It was Tony's idea to be Prime Minister. Cameron was just copying him.

In next week's Time Trumpet,

the disrespect for authority figures Invades the newsroom.

The story's been obtained by our political editor Nick Robinson. He joins us now.

We look at more television from the first part of the 21st century.

But I'll start with what I've got right in front of me here,

and I'll pop one of these little fellas just over my hand.

We catch up with an Increasingly odd Tom Cruise.

Pound for pound, I am the strongest man on this planet.

Feel my bicep.

Hey, don't touch me or I'll break your fucking neck.

(Laughs)

And I won't even have to touch you to do it.

And we look at the time when Blair and Brown battled

over who should be called Prime Minister.

You can't have two Prime Ministers.

It's like having two parents.