Original subtitles

Ruggedly beautiful, and in an awe-inspiring situation.

If you'd like to see Portencross Castle restored

and fully accessible to ordinary people, then this...

This week on Time Trumpet: 2008.

The year Britain descended into a morass of drunk, bingey drinking

that turned dangerous.

Everyone that presented television shows was drunk.

Huw Edwards was mostly off his face.

How are we doing for tapes?

Britain In 2031.

An overcrowded land, but at least we're sober,

not like In 2008.

But if you're looking for a sports coup�...

Aston.

(Richard) Rubbish.

- (James) I'm not... No... - Oh.

There'd be whole news bulletins where you couldn't make out anything,

apart from giggling and slurring.

(Huw Edwards) Watching that with me is our political editor, Andrew Marr.

Andrew, still digesting details of tonight's reshuffle.

I can't remember if it was Jon Snow and Krishnan Guru-Murthy,

one of these double acts had a thing they'd do when they were drunk

where one would go, "It's 9:00, here are the headlines,"

the other one would go, "It's 9:00, here are the..."

There was a lot of that on the news.

One person would say there's been a shooting... "Oh, a shooting!"

- We were never pissed on screen, were we? - No.

We wouldn't touch a drop, like.

But that Cilla Black, she came on and she was all over the place.

She was pulling at her hair, tugging it and going, "It's a wig, it's a wig!"

It wasn't.

And Bill Turnbull and Anna Ford, they got pissed with whatshisname,

- George... - George Alagiah.

Aye, George Alagiah. Just before he did the Six O'Clock News.

- And they shaved half his head. - Aye.

But it didn't grow back properly, so he spent the rest of his life with this weird half haircut.

- Serves him right. - (Laughs)

At six o'clock, these are tonight's top stories.

Binge drinking: A special report on how even six-year-olds are ending up in casualty.

(Woman) These youth workers are looking for underage drinkers.

It's Streetwise! Anybody else here?

You look pale, are you OK?

- Let me look at your eyes. - (Vomiting)

This is the outskirts of Southampton, but the Increasing number of teenagers drinking

Is a national problem.

When I was a kid, you never heard of anyone drinking binge.

It was not even an issue. And then suddenly...

there's this thing everywhere of binge drinking, I don't know where it came from.

News studios had got more and more relaxed and decadent places anyway.

With everyone binged off their face, professional standards plummeted.

...maintenance of the East Coast Mainline...

Lots of you are... Sorry, I wanted to tell you that lots of you are talking about this on the email.

- (Laughs) - Oh gosh.

Disco dancing or disinfectant, Cathy?

And over to Jamie for something appropriately festive.

(# Manic jazz)

(Slowed down, distorted singing)

Remember Bill Oddie on Springwatch? Christ, he was awful!

He puked in a badger's sett and then punched a sparrow.

Talking about 2008 on Time Trumpet this week

are a veritable who's who of top cultural commentators/TVpundits.

When I think of life now and life how it was in whatever period of time...

the clip show today is going to be covering,

I think there was some interesting differences between now and then.

Some of them good, some of them bad, and I'm happy to elaborate on them

in whichever way you feel is most appropriate.

What a year, I mean... It was...

It was one year that I will never forget. You know?

Which year was that?

Do you watch much television now?

No. I mean, sometimes at, like, a party

someone will get out a tiny television and you'll look for about ten minutes but...

It would help if you said that you watched a lot...

Oh yeah, I watch TV all the time.

If you are new to Home Shopping Bacon, think about this.

It's the glamorous films over the last 20 or so years that have made us so big.

Think about Deliverance, when the guy says, "Squeal, piggy, squeal!"

While he's bumming the fat rafter.

It's wham, bam, thank you, ham!

If you know what I mean. That's why you're here today.

- How best to beat the smoking ban? - Which is imminent.

Which is imminent. May we present the Personalised Smoking Unit, PSU.

So, you're in a bar, sometime in the future.

- There's no smoking here. - But I've got one of these.

My apologies. Would you like a complimentary...

So how does it work, you're probably wondering.

This gets plugged into the nearest power point...

the cigarettes are here, the smoke comes down here, through the filtration system,

in and out... handily through this little baby,

which goes to the nearest door, window or fire exit.

Folds away neatly.

- We're looking for �100,000 for 10%... - 10%.

I will do the 100,000...

for 25%.

Frankly, that's an insult. This is a work of genius.

Yeah, wait... For what percent? What? Excuse me.

How do you expect to get up to six million, cos that's a huge turnover?

Sorry, love, I'm talking to the man.

I'm John Humphrys and we're painting a wall.

I'm Gavin Esler and we're painting a wall.

I'm Germaine Greer and I'm painting a wall.

I'm Nicholas Owen and I'm painting a wall.

I just love green. I just love green.

(Nicholas) I'm painting a wall with my friends.

(Germaine) It's good to have friends.

See how I'm standing to paint the wall.

(Gavin) Still quite a lot to do. (John) And so little time to do It.

(Armando) One politician happy to go on painting a wall was David Cameron.

Seem to have got a bit of red in this one.

Soon Cameron won plaudits for his sure media touch.

I did an awful lot of things to, um, gain popularity.

I learnt to breakdance, I went to the premiere of Ice Age 3 in a mammoth costume,

I lived in a treehouse, I danced with Natasha Kaplinsky on Comic Relief,

I rapped the five pledges of our manifesto, sang with McFly...

But look at the facts - in 2006, an edition of Question Time will get 1.5 million viewers.

If you put a bloke from EastEnders on it, it might go up to 1.7.

How did you sell politics to the public?

The answer was to have a puppet of a donkey

asking the person the questions, in the company of puppets of animals who are objects.

So first question from Monkey is, what do we call you? Is it Dave? David?

Crazy Davey?

Cameron was the first politician quite happy to go on this new show.

...people call me David. I don't mind. I sometimes often don't notice.

Right. Crazy Davey Cameron's in the hut!

Whatever you like.

We used to go on holiday in Spain every year and you'd see the donkey on the beach

and you'd see the newsstand next to the donkey and all the kids were looking at the donkey.

There were no kids looking at the newsstand.

So when the BBC came to me and said "How about doing Question Time?"

I thought, yeah. Let's have the donkey.

So, Davey, can you tell us everything about politics in 10 seconds?

There are those who come into politics to tell people what to do - that's Tony Blair,

and there are those who set people free - that is David...

The word was edutainment. I don't know if you've heard of that.

- Yes. - It both educates and it entertains.

And that word is a compound word of those two things

and people say to me, "You always talk about edutainment, what do you mean?"

- What I mean is... - It's infocation.

Infotation is another way of saying edutainment.

Let's face it, this is exactly the right time to roll one up, isn't it?

I did lots of things before I came into politics that I shouldn't...

Yeah, right.

David Dimbledonkey trivialised politics?

Well, they said the same thing about Poli-tits. Or, you know, Shite-geist on Channel 4.

Let me just take on the other two points.

No! Monkey's tired.

He is only three foot tall but packed into that is a lot of nous.

Oh, Monkey wants to know which is your favourite spin-off band from Busted?

- Is it Fightstar or Son Of Dork? - I've...

Quick as you like!

It's hard to remember that there was a time

when politicians were not interviewed by anthropomorphic puppets.

And there was a time when a politician could expect to be asked difficult questions

by a human, not by some kind of sock.

Heehaw! Thanks for coming in. Grab yourself a coconut on the way out.

Bye, Davey!

But the biggest political story of 2008

was that two men were acting as parallel prime ministers,

Tony Blair and Gordon Brown.

Occasionally they would give simultaneous speeches.

- Power wealth and opportunity... - Power, wealth and opportunity...

...are in the hands of the many, not the few. ...in the hands of the many, not just the few.

It was like the two of them were doing the same job, like two peas in a pod,

like Noah's Ark or something.

Like Tweedle-Brown and Tweedle-Blair.

(Laughs)

- Sorry. - Are you all right?

I am all right, I was just thinking about what I just said.

Gordon Brown's one of the best chancellors this country's ever had, but as prime minister?

You see, my judge of a prime minister is always,

"Would I be happy to have my wife leave me for him?"

Tony, no problem.

Any time. He can have her.

But Gordon? I mean, would you want to hire a private detective

and have him show you pictures of that leaving a motel with your wife?

Not in a million years.

But on April the 9th, Tony Blair, realising that really there was nothing else left for him to do,

announced his resignation.

Well, the night before, Cherie rang and said, "Come over, Alistair, I think he's lost it.

"He's really gonna do something stupid" like, in her words, "wee on the policeman",

which was always one of Tony's jokes.

- How did he look when you went? - He looked desperate, crestfallen.

And there he is, sitting in the towelling dressing gown

that he thought brought him closer to Thatcher, which wasn't the case -

"Trusthouse Forte" written on it -

and he kind of whimpers and whimpers and says to me, "Do they still love me?"

I said, " No, Tony, they think you're an arsehole, why do you think the fireworks are going off?"

And he says, "But I still love them."

Then he suddenly changes and says, "Well, if it's fireworks they want, I'll give 'em fireworks."

So he reaches for the amaretto bottle, poured the amaretto all over himself,

er, unfortunately neither of us had any matches, so there wasn't gonna be any fireworks.

Not that it would have made any difference, cos the amaretto bottle was full of Ribena.

He wasn't even drunk.

That's when I finished with him. I haven't spoken to him since.

I never liked the guy. Never liked him at all.

Actually, if you can't get out and about, then here is a really good idea.

If you fancy a pork chop, and you may be sitting there slavering over the thought of it now,

a pork chop, freshly cooked...

Look, you haven't got it but I can help you and deliver this, usually within five days,

cook a whole pack of bacon all together.

Great substitute for a gammon steak or a pork chop, I'm sure you'll agree.

Do you remember some of the documentaries?

Oh yes. The Man Who Was Just A Foot.

All right? Watch a bit of, erm, telly. Let's have a look.

You like The Bill, don't you?

Thought I might, erm...

...do a bit of shopping later on

if you fancy slipping on your roller skate and getting a bit of air? Yeah?

(Interviewer) How do people react to him? Do they tease him?

Erm, people do joke that he must be really good at football.

And of course he's not, because he's totally immobile.

Erm, because he is a foot doesn't of course mean he's good at anything

that's particular to a foot because what people don't grasp is he is a foot.

That's him.

He can't kick his foot.

Erm, that's just you, isn't it, darling? That's just you.

Meanwhile, Britain�s descent into binge spread to all aspects of life.

These are two bishops.

In hospitals, drunk surgeons had a laugh

sewing eggs and ping-pong balls Into the stomachs of patients.

Too far. Too far.

Put that... (Giggling)

Just imagine if he's hugging the missus and the egg sort of...

- (Laughing) - Get it sewn up.

Remember them, er, pukey-oke bars?

I liked them. You know, you'd puke and sing at the same time.

What word can indicate...

Meanwhile, at university, tired students couldn't be bothered to learn anything.

...entertainment game combining memory and skill tests,

poor quality cheese and the play within a play in Shakespeare's Hamlet?

- Venezuela? - I can't remember the question...

Venezuela, Venezuela? I think it's Venezuela.

- You say Venezuela for every answer. - I'm convinced it's Venezuela.

- Give us a sec. - Just make something up.

Venezuela, Venezuela? Have I said Venezuela?

Can I sit in the middle?

It's Venezuela.

- He's been to Venezuela. - It's not fuckin' Venezuela.

Say anything, make something up. Say, "Meurgh", maybe it's right.

Say, "Foognoognoo". That's fuckin' ridiculous.

Foognoognoo?

- No, it's Venezuela. 10 points for this. - Bollocks!

And Noel Edmonds. He did Deal Or No Deal off his face.

He was tearing open the boxes and saying, "I don't care if you win! Chicken feed to me."

Then he clouted someone over the head with a phone.

(Slowed down, distorted singing)

Things have now got so bad that as a last resort, the government have asked Ant and Dec

to hold an Inquiry Into binge Britain and come up with recommendations.

- Report comes out next week? - Aye, next week. Yes, yes.

Looking forward to it. It's over a thousand pages long, pretty thick.

Thank God for computers, eh? Imagine having to type that lot up. It'd take forever.

Does Ant understand all this? Do you get all this?

- No. - No, you don't really, do you?

Mind you, let's just say, neither of us really understand the ins and outs of it,

what we understand is people.

Old people, young people and drink.

Well, we like a good time but we're not hospital cases.

No. Just a glass of sherry before a meal, something like that, eh?

Oh, yes.

At the presentation of the report, Ant and Dec couldn't resist falling back into their old ways.

Ant, what are you doing?

I was a bit anxious, so I thought I'd have a quick snifter to settle me nerves.

No, you cannot drink alcohol at a press conference for booze Britain.

The Ant and Dec report has come up with the following recommendations.

Publicans should be legally obliged to undertake an ID check

both at the door and at the bar for all customers,

thereby eliminating any possibility of underage drinking.

Publican? What do they know about running bars? They can only eat fish.

No, Ant. You're thinking of pelican.

Because they played the ass so much, no one has taken the report seriously

and Britain has descended Into hell.

There's four yob kids over there and I'm going now to approach them,

dressed as one of them.

If I'm spotted, or if they realise that I'm not, in fact, a yob kid,

I could be in serious trouble.

Trying as much as possible to move like one of them,

I approach a small gang and cautiously begin to blend In.

Wassup, ma niggaz?

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

I, er, just in town to buy a little bit of drugs and ting.

You know? Oh my God, I can't believe it, I never been this far away from home.

(Boy) What are you talkin' about? (Dennis) Is I the only gay in the village?

Er, just talkin' about... is we, like, gonna do a stabbin'?

Do some stabbin', you know? Rewind, bovvered, I'm a lady!

(Boy) Nah, mate, just playin' a bit of footie.

(Dennis) Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. Blate, blate, blate, blate.

Oh, look. Adult.

Which one of you negroes is gonna like come and happy-slap that Madeley with me, yeah?

(Boy) You go and we'll just watch, yeah?

(Dennis) We could like take a lot of drugs and do the happy-slappin' on the drugs

with that... on the...

man over there and stuff and it could be like blat and wicked and blate.

That is so blate, you know, that is blat.

That is phat blat. That is William Peter Blatty and that is...

Look, mate, why don't you just fuck off?

(Normal voice) Hey, OK, listen. Don't come closer, stay there because I'm being filmed.

I'm doing a programme for the BBC and this is all being filmed,

- so if you come any closer it'll be on film. - Where are the cameras?

There's a camera... I'm wearing a hidden camera, there's a camera in that car,

you can see the light, so if you just stay there, stay there.

Don't move. And put that skateboard down.

Furthermore, all alcohol should not be advertised as an aspirational ideal.

But how do they cure headaches?

What? No. Aspirational. Not aspirin.

(Man) Jesus...

We will now take questions from the floor.

(# Lullaby playing)

Eh? Look at the little ellie. Look at the little ellie!

Oh!

Look at the pussycat!

We're looking for, um, �225,000.

Pete? Peter?

I know what you're thinking.

Come on, Pete. What's going through your head?

The thought of having to look at...

my shit when I go to the toilet afterwards is...

sort of borderline for me,

especially if you're going as I would call it when I was a little kid and I haven't changed now,

I'd call it big toilet, so when you go to the big toilet,

you can't wait to close that top seat down.

(Laughing) There you go.

Of all the onscreen relationships In 2008, the one that was to lead to most tragedy

was the one between Natasha Kaplinsky and Dermot Murnaghan.

I don't think he ever really came to terms with my success on Strictly Come Dancing.

He spent ages trying to set up a show with Dermot O'Leary

called Dermot And Dermot,

but it... it was just a name.

Still, he pushed it around for ages in various forms -

Dermot Meets Dermot, Dermot Squared,

It Takes Two Dermots, Big Dermot Little Dermot,

Dermot Crabs.

Well, helping raise awareness is the singer Thom Yorke from the rock band Radiohead.

I'm a massive Radiohead fan and I was so excited that Thom Yorke was on

but Dermot was in a very bad mood because he'd wanted to do a joke,

something about climate change being a hot issue.

He'd written it himself and it went down very badly.

Now, climate change is quite literally one of the hot issues of the moment as we're all urged...

When the joke didn't work, something broke in Dermot.

He gave up and in fact, when I was talking to Thom,

I could hear this muttering in the background, I heard him say...

"You might at least have shaved," which was really embarrassing.

And then he also said, "What on earth's the matter with your eye?"

Er...

I heard him say, "Wanker!" And I had to actually cough over it.

- Thom, the problem is... - (Dermot) Wanker.

When Dermot Murnaghan hung himself live on breakfast television...

it was a calculated critique of the way the media was going.

He was caught up in this stupid world of edutainment

or, er, infocation, whatever you call it.

And he wanted to make some kind of protest against that.

And as soon as he did that, as soon as he made that gesture,

Docu... medy.

- Huh? - Documedy.

Documedy, yeah. As soon as he made that gesture of hanging himself on TV,

he became the people's news presenter of choice.

Bit of a change for you, Thom, from Radiohead to Friends Of The Earth, saving the world.

Saving the world?

I... sensed something happening beside me.

You know, when the guy's standing on the chair, putting the thing around his neck,

it's kind of obvious, isn't it?

I went on, I turned to autocue,

and I finished my piece and I threw to him...

and he was hanging.

- We've got a day, haven't we? - Right, we'll finish about 6:00.

- What made you decide to get involved? - Erm...

She was being upstaged, really, which she hated.

A lot of the time, Dermot would make little rabbit signs

or kind of go, "Ooohh" and do things like that

but this was a real ramp-up.

His eyes were pleading for me to help him.

So I swung off his legs just to finish off the job.

They did ask me to dance at his funeral. I didn't think it was appropriate.

And of course you could have written the tabloid headlines yourself, couldn't you?

"Kaplinsky Dances On Murnaghan's Grave."

So...

But the biggest event of the year was the day Blair resigned as prime minister

and tried to hand over to someone else who wasn't Gordon Brown,

even though he'd promised It would be Gordon Brown.

He tipped off to me that he wanted me to take over,

but of course that was something private between us,

the rest of the Cabinet thought it was Brown that was going to take over.

Blair called a quick Cabinet meeting without Gordon Brown

and told them all It wasn't going to be Gordon Brown.

Oh, the day itself was murder. He set off to the palace and we all thought, "OK, that's it."

Unfortunately, he'd promised large numbers of people that they'd be the next prime minister.

Publicly, Miliband said this rumour was bollocks.

I had this car waiting for me to take me to the palace, so I shot off to the palace.

Brown shot off after him, as did Cameron who'd also been promised,

while Menzies Campbell waited for a taxi.

I think all in all there was more than 17 people he was promising to hand over to.

I wasn't aware of this. I mean, you're telling me this now,

but that's really knocked me for six, to be honest.

So you can see the Mall was getting pretty congested.

The fly in my ointment was Brown and I had to get to that palace before him.

A lot of nonsense is talked about the day of the handover.

There was a bomb scare that had come in by telephone

and it was in the part of London where my car was travelling through,

so we couldn't get out, we couldn't move.

While on the way to the palace, Blair pulled one more massive rabbit out of his hat.

He rings up the press and announces that we're gonna join the euro,

thinking that Gordon would think, " Hell, I gotta go back to the Treasury and sort it out."

Gordon..."Fuck economics," he says, "keep going for the palace."

I mean, it was never really established where this bomb threat had come from

but I've got a pretty good idea.

Not true. Not true.

I phoned in a suspect package. It may have been a bomb.

It may have been a discarded bag of chips.

Aware of Miliband's delay, Blair dragged his conversation with the Queen out for some time.

Tony's audience with the Queen went on for three and a half hours. But that's not unusual.

He makes her laugh.

When offered tea, he asked If he could have some lapsang souchong,

which he knew they would have to send out for.

The Queen found it quite difficult to let Tony go. He was her first real prime minister,

and it was quite difficult for her to imagine someone else doing the job.

While the meeting between queen and prime minister continued,

Brown was left In a holding pattern.

(Ayoade) Brown's just going round and round in circles

and, you know, they had to refuel.

- The whole country watched this, didn't they? - Yeah, people took the day off work.

Everyone's going, " I can't come out, I'm watching Brown go round Buckingham Palace."

- It was a bit like the OJ... - Yeah.

...car chase, wasn't it? - It was like the OJ car chase

but with no chase element.

And with one car.

Seven hours and six years later than he'd been promised, Brown was at last prime minister.

For months, all the staff would address Gordon Brown as "Prime Minister",

and they would always do... I just did that quite, you know, small scale,

some of them would do enormous inverted commas.

Not just "Prime Minister" but they would say things like, um...

there's an "important call", quite elaborately, and I think it did have an effect on Brown.

One of the things that happens when you are, er, prime minister...

er, is that you get your portrait painted.

And hung on the wall in Number 10.

The sitting was very pleasant and the painter was very friendly but...

erm, when it came to the unveiling,

it was a portrait of Tony Hancock.

Well, I thought, there is some resemblance, I suppose,

but after a while I did begin to... it did begin to rankle.

Because l-I walked day after day, up and down the stairs,

every day,

er, and could see a picture of Tony Hancock...

when it should have been a picture of me.

And look at what you've got, the line of fat there, that's what does it for me.

It's juicy and you can taste it already.

But you leave the grill on a little bit too long and what have you got? The crispy fella.

Sunday morning wouldn't be the same without the little crispy fella.

- (Alarm) - We may have just heard the alarm there.

Let me pop that down... Mm, that's good stuff.

Let me pop that down. The alarm's gone off for our one-minute smash-and-grab bacon raid.

This is your big chance to win,

details of the phone number at the bottom of the screen,

you can call now but you'll need a question first of all.

The prize is a whole pig's worth of bacon.

Not a word of a lie, this is the moment you've been waiting for.

Here's the big question, then.

What is a thinly sliced pork that could be grilled or fried

and is usually served with eggs?

Go! Got about 40 seconds, then. The phone number's at the bottom of the screen.

I'm waiting for a caller.

I'll give you a clue in case you're struggling. It's a bit difficult.

You may have had it on a sandwich with ketchup.

No? There's no call yet, I'll give you another one.

Erm, think of the first two letters of the alphabet, reversed.

Next week on Time Trumpet we catch up with an Increasingly mad Tom Cruise...

I've read every book that's ever been written. Test me.

...the crackdown on security...

There'd be strip searches at things like the cinema and the ballet,

so people got used to just walking round with nothing on.

It was the only way you could tell someone was definitely not a terrorist.

...plus a look back at some of the television from the period.

You've come to the studio today because you think your window is the cleanest in the world.

Oh, definitely.