Original subtitles

The outskirts of Baghdad, 2031. The present day.

A dishevelled Briton Is filmed wandering around the bins with a gun in his hand.

I'll have the seared tuna, I think.

And that bottle of Pinot Noir.

But 30 years ago, he was this man.

So how did he get to become this man?

Do you sleep naked? I sleep naked.

Makes a guy feel... clean.

The answer was his relationship with this man.

...kinda burn off that excess energy, you know what I'm sayin'?

George Bush, seen here following his country's victory in the war against Iran In January 2007.

And again here, following its defeat by Iran four months later.

The day these two people's fortunes came to be so closely linked

was in 2003, when this happened.

(Woman) White House Spokesman Ari Fleischer saying President Bush

regards this as an historic moment.

"The scenes on television show the thirst for freedom is unquenchable,"

that from the President.

(Man) Kate, I think he's absolutely right. People love freedom, they can't get enough of it.

Whether it's the freedom to just sit and read a book full of left-wing propaganda

or the freedom to just be who you wanna be, you know?

Do your hair crazy, wear crazy clothes. It's all cool.

And the Iraqi people are saying " I'm loving that," you know? " let's have more of that."

But look at the statue! It's remarkable.

Yeah, he's got his hand up as if to say "Taxi!"

But there's no taxi coming to pick up this bastard.

It's 2031, when we now know alcohol Is no longer bad for you.

Guinness, please.

But 30 years ago, we always worried how unhealthy we'd grow as we got older.

The programme Honey, We're Killing The Kids specialised in terrifying us this way.

We're able to very accurately predict the future of your children.

Let�s start with your oldest, Michael.

I'm gonna take you through right up until he's 40.

Those rich enough did their damnedest to halt the ageing process.

The surgical altering of Anne Robinson's face...

has been described by doctors as making a sow's ear out of a sow's arse.

What state did you find yourself in once you'd had all this surgery done?

My famous wink, you know, I simply wasn't able to do it.

I had to use the whole of my upper torso and my shoulders sort of... Like that.

If they'd replaced her head with a balloon with a face on it, it would've been more convincing.

Could you really call it a face at all?

I mean, it looked like a bit of old steak rotting away with peas on it for eyes,

and a carrot put in for a mouth.

And a piece of old steak with peas and a carrot on it

might look like a face but it isn't a face, is it? It's a rotting old piece of steak.

I had an affair with Jeremy Clarkson. Not a good point, rather a low point for him

because he'd killed Richard Hammond, do you remember him?

- Yes. - In some very silly joke in the studio.

He ran him over with a steamroller that had been fitted out with a Porsche engine.

Can you imagine such a thing?

Anyway, we had a rip-roaring affair.

The sex...

just fantastic.

I mean, you know, I used to bang my head against the headboard.

One night, he pounded me so hard that my face fell off.

I mean, I'd had a bit of surgery, you know, and it hadn't quite attached.

But, erm, I wanted him to finish but he yelled and screamed and cried

when he saw my skull.

Tony Blair Is another man trying to turn back the clock.

Oh, Iraq is a much better place than it was under the Tories.

Trying to resolve the events of 30 years ago when this happened.

(Newsreader) Group Captain, you're watching these scenes as well,

what do you make of them?

(Group Captain) Well, I think it's amazing and brilliant and, er, it's like a film.

Er, you can see there's an Iraq man down there and he's climbing on the crane thing

because he wants to have a go on the statue as well,

but the American soldier's telling him, "No, you have to get down."

Cos it's dangerous.

It's probably right cos they're not trained to handle symbolism at close range like that

but I bet that all the people in the town are so pleased because Saddam, right,

everyone wanted to get him.

Er, we are, in a way, getting him now because we've got the statue and it looks like him.

These events changed history forever.

They arose because Britain and America had firm evidence

Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction.

Iraq consumes 27.3 billion kilowatt hours of electricity every year.

That's enough to power one Star Wars-type anti-missile system.

Where is it and who's it pointing at?

British and American Intelligence on Saddam was soon gathered

and shown to the world.

All the evidence was collected In a single dossier

which Colin Powell presented to the United Nations.

We have pictures that show an Iraqi military vehicle

with the registration plate A01A03.

Which, in a mirror, reads "Al Qaeda".

These pictures show Powell being handed the Intelligence dossier on Iraq

by the CIA 's leading middle eastern expert.

"This Is absolutely everything we have on Saddam, " says the official.

Powell takes this as a Joke and laughs uproariously.

He attempts to hand the dossier back but Is told, "No, really, that's It."

Bush, aware terror could strike at any moment...

(Man spits)

...Immediately consulted with Blair and made preparations for war.

I remember the huge problems of pronouncing it at first.

We had all these meeting with the Americans and they would call it "I-raq".

"I-raq... Iraq... i-raq."

It sounded like the mad clamour of rooks.

Blair wanted to be seen standing shoulder to shoulder with Bush.

He took a British delegation to Washington

to be guests at the President�s State of the Union address.

...the end of tyranny in our world.

Dictatorships shelter terrorists and feed resentment and radicalism

and seek weapons of mass destruction.

Democracies replace resentment with hope,

respect the rights of their citizens and their neighbours

and join the fight against terror.

Some dismiss that goal as misguided idealism.

Every step toward freedom in the world makes our country safer,

so we will act boldly in freedom's cause.

Emboldened by this appeal, Britain and America prepared for war.

The clock was tickling against Saddam.

We realised if we attacked him, he would attack us.

- Right. - So we had to attack him first.

But then we realised if he realised we were going to attack him first,

he would then attack us first.

So then we heard that he'd heard about this,

so we realised we'd have to have a pre-emptive attack, before he attacked us

- in retaliation to us attacking him. - Yeah.

Eventually we had to abandon that train of thought

because we realised that the only way that one of us could attack the other first

was if we went back in time.

And neither of us had the capability to do that.

Though we reckoned that Saddam was working on it

and probably could do that within three to 18 years.

An anti-war rally marched through London.

Unofficial estimates put the number of marchers at up to two million.

There were actually 14 people on that march.

The rest were shoppers.

The stage was now set for the Invasion of Iraq.

Meanwhile, celebrities! Here's Charles Clarke talking about Scary Spice.

She was my favourite. She was curvy and spangly.

She was like a firecracker in a Ming vase.

So I stuck her in Belmarsh for 20 years.

OK, everyone, get out your history books.

Nowadays, we appreciate the power and Influence of celebrity.

(Teacher) Everybody know who Hitler is?

But then, celebrities were Just regarded as odd or mad or thick,

a point disputed by this woman,

the woman who released the doves at the end of the Michael Jackson trial.

30 years later, Time Trumpet caught up with her.

I named all the doves after Michael's songs.

Mr Billy Jean,

Mr Ben,

Mr Blood On The Dance Floor,

Mr Don't Stop Till You Get Enough...

Mr Smooth Criminal,

Mr Thriller,

Mr Beat It,

Mr Dirty Diana,

Mr Wanna Be Starting Something.

Oh, it was very stressful, the day the verdict came out.

Mr Dirty Diana was pecking the eyes of Mr Smooth Criminal.

"Stop!" I said, "you are Michael Jackson's songs.

"Michael Jackson's songs don't behave like that."

And then, they both pooped.

That was their way of saying "I'm sorry, Mommy."

But one man, Bob Geldof, knew that celebrities had the power to change the world,

and that he was the only man brave enough to ask them to do It.

I wanted a proper fucking concert

with a proper fucking achievable aim

and in the end that aim was to be an end to death.

(Woman)... considered a cyclone...

Ending death was a big challenge, because at the time,

death was everywhere, In all forms - unnatural and natural.

We have no cyclones to report here in West London - London W12.

Dan, thankfully there are no cyclones on the way, are there?

I booked the venue ten years before,

knowing I would be angry at something.

And I'd want to stage a concert about it.

I didn't know who would be performing

or what it would be for

but I knew that at some point

I would want to do an unplanned and impromptu performance of I Don't Like Mondays.

Geldof believed that If he could get enough famous people to sing in a concert,

that would persuade the world's scientists to come up with a cure for death

and enable those people who were already dead to rise up again.

Yeah, I thought it was fraught with problems.

What if he brought someone back to life and then they committed suicide?

- It'd just be a waste of everyone's time. - Mm.

Suddenly London gets the Olympics.

They want the venue.

I didn't see how singing I Don't Like Mondays

was going to help resurrect a corpse.

But Geldof seemed to think it was a vital part of the process.

I went up to Seb Coe and I said, "What's more fuckin' important,

"an end to death or the triple jump?"

He said the triple jump.

He's built an entire career on the fact that he doesn't like Mondays.

I don't like the Irish but you don't hear me going around singing about it.

Boomtown Twat.

People were saying they thought it was stupid.

But he did something, didn't he? What are we all scared of?

- Death. - Death. And ghosts.

But he tried to do something, he had ambition. What have you ever done?

What have you done? All you've done is get a load of old clips,

force people to shave their hair off and speak about them.

And yet you have the audacity to sit there in your shirt

making fun of a man who tried to literally give everyone eternal life.

And, you know, when you have attempted to do that,

maybe you can come back and laugh at him.

What's wrong with my shirt?

Meanwhile, In Iraq, pressure was being put on Saddam.

With time running out, Blair told Parliament that Saddam could strike within 45 minutes.

It was perfectly valid. There were lots of things Saddam could do in 45 minutes.

I mean, most of them were, we found out later,

things like prepare food and open maps and so on

but there were certainly things he could do in 45 minutes.

His claim would come to haunt him.

- (Music plays) - The big problem for the Government

was the publication of the Hutton Report.

And the problem... Could you stop the music?

- Oh! - (Music stops)

Yeah, they didn't know which way the Hutton Report was going to go.

The Hutton Report Into the death of David Kelly

concluded that the BBC were bastards.

I believe that Saddam poses a clear and present threat to the security of our country.

Relations between the BBC and the government broke down

and this came to a head with the BBC's controversial Panorama reconstruction

of how the government drew up its dossier,

using just children.

Give me all your intelligence. This has got to go now.

What does 45 minutes look like on the clock?

- Everyone, this is what 45 minutes looks like. - No it don't!

The Hutton Report proved conclusively

that there was no evidence that David Kelly had even died,

or indeed that there was even a David Kelly.

Though the actual war Itself went really well,

trouble started soon after for Blair.

There were allegations of torture by British soldiers against Iraqi detainees.

And the newly-Installed Iraqi president proved rubbish.

Mr President, it's one year since you became president of Iraq.

What does it feel like?

Ee...

Erm, er...

Er... Erm...

- Yes. - The... There...

Let me be very, very frank with you.

Shit.

President Talabani, thank you very much indeed.

Meanwhile, none of Saddam's WMD were being found.

No, there were no weapons of mass destruction,

so we had to assume that he was developing weapons hiding systems.

The same people who said that Saddam had those weapons

were the same people who said those nasty things about Michael.

Why do people tell these lies?

Do you remember some of the music from 2006?

- Oh... - Seven, eight, nine.

The Arctic Monkeys.

Everyone heard the sound, erm, of their music.

And I don't think there was anyone who didn't go, "It's all right."

"That's... It's pretty... That's OK, isn't it?"

And, erm, there was a lot of music around that time that was fine.

And, you know, really fine.

Meanwhile, time was running out for Bob Geldof to organise a celebrity concert

that would finally put an end to death.

We had a fantastic line-up, the greatest rock and roll line-up of all time.

We had, er... Elvis Presley, John Lennon,

Freddie Mercury,

Kurt Cobain, Jim Morrison

and that bloke from, er, The Shamen.

Er, all dead. All coming back.

Over a million and a half people assembled In Hyde Park.

I was backstage, mainly, getting lashed with Shane MacGowan, who was technically dead,

um, at that stage.

In fact he was the example that Geldof used when scientists said it couldn't be done.

You know, he's wheel Shane out and yell, "How do you explain that, then, you weasels?"

The science was there to end it all.

Er... But the scientists, you know, were just bone idle.

They'd say, " Bob, we can't resurrect the dead,

"because once the tissue and nerves have decayed they can't be regenerated."

And I said to them, "Bollocks to that!"

"I'll come back in an hour.

"And I want that man brought back to life," so I came back in an hour

and we still had the same bloody row,

it was like banging your head against a brick wall.

As the night wore on, death hadn't been ended.

Geldof got furious.

A volunteer corpse was brought on and In front of what was now two million people,

Geldof himself told It to rise up and walk...

which it did.

At no point did I think I was watching anything other than

a dead man being made to dance by roadies.

It was a sorry spectacle and they pummelled that corpse.

- It wasn't graceful. - No.

It was just manhandling a dead man.

I just wanted him to get off by that stage because,

you know, it's all very well trying to end death

but I was just sitting there going, "When are the Stereophonics coming on?"

Oh... Matt Lucas and David Walliams went on

but at that stage, they weren't really talking to each other,

so it was quite a tense sketch.

And quite tasteless.

The crowd just drifted off...

and ripped the place apart,

and ironically for a concert that was supposed to be ending death,

there were 22 fatalities that day.

Many people said what Geldof was trying to do was impossible.

Mm. But you know, impossible is 80% possible, isn't it,

if you look at the letters.

- How do you mean? - Well, the word "impossible"...

- Yes. - That word is 80% of that...

80% of that letter... letterings...

- Yes. ...is "possible".

So you've got to take that into account, haven't you?

- It's sort of like a saying, in a way. - Yeah.

Impossible is like, 80% possible.

It's like "inspiration is 99% perspiration". It's not exactly the same...

- Completely different. - It's a completely different principle...

I wish I'd never given that as an example.

What I'm saying is the lettering in the word "impossible" is 80% possible.

- Does that make sense? - 80% of the word "impossible" is "possible".

You've put it much better than me, which I wish you hadn't, but yes.

I know, cos it shows you up.

Meanwhile, the BBC relaxed the rules on product placement,

meaning that products could be advertised within programmes.

Welcome to the magnificent cathedral of St Edmundsbury.

But there was an outcry when Songs Of Praise revealed they'd been sponsored by Kellogg's.

Sainsbury's.

In 2010, the BBC brought together two of the world's biggest celebrities.

You then did a chat show which you co-hosted with David Beckham.

Oh yes, don't you remember it? It was called Anne And David's Saturday Night Kickabout.

But listen, I was unhappy about it from the very beginning.

I didn't think they should use the word "kickabout" in the title

because it seemed to favour David more than me.

So I said that to the producers and they said, "Well, Anne, what is your talent

"that you can match with David's soccer ability?"

And, erm... Well, I thought about that for a bit

and, um, and then I had them sacked.

Well, I flatter myself that I can deal with tricky women - Vicki's a very difficult woman.

She had some pigeons blinded the other day

because she thought they were leaking stuff to the press.

I remember my first line was,

"Hello and welcome to Anne And David's Saturday Night Kickabout.

"A show with more balls than a snooker factory in a..."

And you know, then the autocue kind of froze.

And David chipped in and went "scrotum!" You know, in that terrible voice.

So suddenly, I'm the bad guy, but that's my training, I've got to get it in.

Ball hits the crossbar, you've got to get it in. It's the same with jokes.

We wanted to show some clips from the show but...

Well, I don't think there's anything left! I think the BBC wiped the tapes.

Not surprising, is it?

By the end the audience were chanting, "She's the weakest link, get her off!"

And the other half were saying, "Does Posh Spice take it up the arse?"

Which to this day I don't know,

and the rest of 'em were saying, "Kick her 'ead off! Kick her 'ead off!"

I think some man got about 30 seconds' worth on his mobile phone...

(Chanting) Kick her head in! Kick her head in!

And the voices got louder and louder and louder.

Kick her head off! Kick her head off! Kick her head off!

I must have blacked out cos the next thing, I'm standing there,

and I'm kicking her head off.

What happened?

She survived, cos all I done is kick some surgery off her face.

(Explosions)

(Man whooping)

Do I hear laughter?

Is it a party?

2031, the present day.

A man wanders dementedly round the bins In downtown Baghdad.

Pudding? Pudding? Not in my name.

He's largely forgotten now.

I frankly don't even remember having my picture taken with the guy.

I don't know him.

The war In Iraq Is largely forgotten too,

since It was soon eclipsed by the 15-year war between America and Syria, Iran,

North Korea, China, terrorism and Turkey.

Iraq descended Into chaos but no WMD were ever found.

The Americans decided to withdraw from Iraq

and invade again with clearer objectives.

Not long after Blair left office in 2007, he was heard by friends to say,

"I'm gonna go out there and sort it out myself."

He was last seen in Britain in 2009,

when former defence secretary Geoff Hoon, a deeply unpopular politician at the time, fell Ill,

and the Queen invited Blair to switch off his life-support machines.

Ten, nine, eight, seven, six, five, four, three, two, one.

(Wild cheering)

Blair was then never seen again. Until now.

What most people forget is because weapons of mass destruction...

...were never found...

...they think they don't exist.

But I've never been to Jupiter

or Saturn...

but I know where they are.

And I will find them.

I think that Tony Blair is such a nice man.

He makes me want to cover him with feathers,

put him in a cage

and feed him seeds.

In the end, we just asked Saddam if he'd like to have it back.

Just stay with us, please, on the line because in the studio I've got Dr Hassan Attia,

who's a former diplomat.

What do you make of this, the flag on the head? Are you offended?

- Yes. - Thank you very much.

You worked a lot in coordination with Jack Straw.

Who?

- Jack Straw. - Who?

Jack Straw?

Who?

No. I'm not very good with politicians.

- Jack Straw. - Don't recollect, I'm afraid.

- Nicklaus? Jack Nicklaus? - Straw.

Jack Straw?

Nah. It's doing nothing for me.

Jacks Traw.

Is it gay slang?