Chris Morris articles

[Howj Begg]

However, my targets were always the pompous, the vain, and the hypocritical, because such people deserve ridicule.

erm...

[An tSaoi]

Some half-arsed Googling has revealed this lot:

Article
31 July 2001
   
Chris Morris - that old fogey
Shouldn't conservatives be Brass Eye's biggest fans? After all, Morris hates the same things they do.
by Patrick West

The furore generated by the latest Chris Morris extravaganza - the Brass Eye Special, on 26 July 2001 - was a classic case of life imitating art.

Chris Morris fronts a TV show that addresses the media's hysterical and demented attitude towards paedophilia. In response, the media succumbs to a fit of demented hysteria. Meanwhile, just as celebrities were duped into making pronouncements on subjects they clearly knew nothing about, so Beverley Hughes, the child protection minister, and home secretary David Blunkett, waded in with condemnation - when neither had seen the programme in question.

But in reacting so strongly against Morris, haven't the so-called 'conservative' tabloid press missed a certain irony - that however controversial his programmes, Morris is in fact a conservative?

Much that Morris has lampooned in Brass Eye, and the 1994 series The Day Today, is the stuff that both old-fashioned, hard-headed leftists and traditional conservatives find distasteful about modern society. In the mould of the late Auberon Waugh, Morris looks like a Tory anarchist: often objectionable, deliberately provocative but evidently repulsed by a society governed by emotionalism, the cult of celebrity, bad TV, modern art, thuggery, cant, humbug and general dim-wittedness.

In short, Chris Morris is an old fogey. One of the highlights of the Brass Eye Special on 26 July was an ex-paedophile who now runs his own bus-tour, joshing and joking with passengers as he points out his own haunts, soliciting loud guffaws as he makes jokes about pubic hair. This is, of course, a parody on 'Mad' Frankie Fraser, the south London celebrity-gangster who similarly runs his own tour of London, reminiscing about the good old days when you could leave your front door open and torture people with impunity.

Fraser is himself a former victim of Morris. In a previous episode of Brass Eye, Morris had him on as a guest, in which he was presented with a 'madometer'. Morris asked him to rank various crimes from one to 10 on how 'out of order' they were. When he asked Fraser how serious 'messing wiv de kids' was, Fraser - who used to practise amateur dentistry on his victims as a form of punishment - of course replied that this was the most out of order thing that anybody could do.

Just as former criminals will plead that at least they're not a kiddy-fiddler, so the red-top tabloids are notorious for the hypocritical moralism when it comes to criminal activity - at once adoring the likes of the two Ronnies (Kray and Biggs) and tacitly encouraging the general public to find a paedophile and smash his face in.

I once remember somebody on a bus telling the conductor what he would like to do to a nonce. He said he would personally love to 'cut his bollocks off with a rusty razor'. It is this bloodlust and violence dressed up as morality that Chris Morris is mocking. And it is done in a true fogeyish manner, in which the unwashed masses are erected as a figure of contempt - simple, tribal people fed on a diet of poor quality newspapers and sensationalist TV.

Man cannot live by irony and parody alone

How people laughed at the Portsmouth lynch-mobs of last year, or the paediatrician who was threatened by marauding imbeciles. Similarly, after the fictional burning to death of a paedophile in Brass Eye, roving reporter Ted Maul is on the scene to conclude: 'Tonight, one man kebabbed. Thousands scarred forever by a shared blood ritual. And yet, an astonishing sense of community here now, a positive atmosphere, a sense of a job well done, a shared sense of relief.'

And just as old codgers love sneering at revolting proles, so they love to admonish the corrupting influence of pop music. The Brass Eye rapper JLB8, who boasted of his sexual conquest of minors, is similar to Fur-Q, another creation of Morris who featured in The Day Today - a rapper who sings 'She's an Uzi-lover' and guns people down on stage. Just as Fur-Q reflected the early-1990s panic over gangsta-rap, JLB8 is a parody of Eminem, a figure who has worried parents throughout the globe with his 'dangerous' act. Although Morris is primarily seeking to shock, and indeed mimic people's fear of pop music, there is the suspicion that he also endorses it.

So shouldn't the Daily Mail really be on Morris' side? If it hates modern art, then so too does he. In Brass Eye, Michael Hames, the former head of the Obscene Publications Branch, deemed new works of art 'obscene' or 'not obscene' - in what seemed an utterly arbitrary manner. Reactionary establishments like the Daily Mail are fond of seeing most modern art as essentially rubbish or pornography - so too does Chris.

To Morris, as it was to Waugh, the biggest cretins in the world are celebrities and politicians. Time after time Morris has gruesomely stitched them up. By doing this he attacks our own propensity to follow the word of somebody just because he or she is famous, and exposing the lamentable calibre of politicians we have today. Never again should anybody listen to Carla Lane bleat on about animal rights, Bianca Jagger about Nicaragua or 'baby spice' Emma Bunton support the NSPCC, without thinking, a) Do they know what they are actually talking about?; b) Is the cause they are endorsing necessarily a good thing?; c) Are they sincere anyway?

After all, Phil Collins, who was done over by Morris, is the same Phil Collins who sang Another Day in Paradise, then threatened to leave the country if the Conservatives lost the general election. And as for Tory aide Lord Coe, Labour MP Syd Rapson and Labour MP Barbara Follett falling for Morris's pranks - not to mention Tory MP David Amess raising questions in the House of Commons about the made-up drug Cake - it is we, not they, who should be furious. Our dumbed-down society seemingly goes right to the top.

Whether you agree being a fogey is a good thing or not is of course a matter of choice. And of course this is merely one interpretation. Morris is so elusive, hiding behind irony and parody, that it is hard to know what he really believes. Nonetheless, the son of doctors and educated by Jesuits, he is, I suspect, a moralistic man; and from the Jesuits I suspect he got his taste for tormenting people.

There is a danger that when we have the next paedophile panic, we will merely snigger, 'Oh, this is so Brass Eye'. Man cannot live by irony and parody alone. However, Chris Morris has done us all a favour. Although he has spread much cynicism, let us hope he has generated a good dose of scepticism, too.

31 July 2001
   
All eyes on Brass Eye
Love it or hate it - but show it.
by Rob Lyons

Was Channel 4's Brass Eye Special on paedophilia 'the sickest TV show ever' - as the UK Daily Mail put it - or an outstanding example of using satire to provoke discussion about a difficult issue, as the programme's defenders have argued?

In fact, it was neither. But Channel 4 was absolutely right to screen Chris Morris' programme on 26 July 2001, and the discussion that has raged since then shows the consequences of free speech - particularly on an issue such as this - are entirely positive. Whatever you thought about the show itself, the reaction to it shows that we need more such provocative programming, not less.

For those who didn't see it, Brass Eye Special was a Crimewatch-style spoof in which a nationwide appeal was launched to move millions of children into stadiums across Britain for their own protection from a notorious paedophile, due for release - while a mob waited for him outside prison, eventually capturing him and setting him on fire.

In between, there were sketches about an Eminem-style rapper singing paedophile lyrics and a comedy bus tour given by a former sex offender. The 'presenter' showed his own son to a paedophile and demanded to know if he fancied the boy. A host of celebrities were filmed making statements supposedly in support of child protection charities, which anybody with half a brain would realise were utterly stupid (1).

The reaction to the programme was exactly what Morris would have hoped for. The tabloid press, whose own paedophile panics formed the butt of Brass Eye's jokes, have been loudly outraged; as have the tricked celebrities. Bubbly TV presenter Kate Thornton, who, along with others, had been duped into making statements about the dangers of a children's video game in which paedophiles could touch children's bodies pressed against the screen using special gloves, said she feared it would put celebrities off from speaking up for good causes (2). (One can only hope it will make celebrities exercise a few more of their critical faculties in future.)

Most telling of all has been the reaction of the ministers. Child protection minister Beverley Hughes called the show 'unspeakably sick'; culture secretary Tessa Jowell is looking into increasing the powers of the Independent Television Commission (ITC) to respond quickly to complaints, following Channel 4's decision to repeat the program the following night (3).

All in all, the response to Morris' show demonstrated quite neatly all the things he set out to satirise.

But this same response also brought a wave of support for Morris, the programme, and the issues it raised. Among the broadsheet press, columnists from left to right have pointed to the importance of the issues raised in Morris' show, from the often-hysterical debate over paedophiles to the gullibility of journalists and celebrities, and the dangers in calling for such programmes to be banned, or spiked by cowardly TV chiefs. And while some of the viewing public no doubt did turn their televisions off in horror, Channel 4 claimed that the number of viewers calling to congratulate Channel 4 about its controversial Brass Eye programme has dramatically outweighed the complaints (4).

Bad taste can be funny too, and it needs no other justification

In our censorious times, it is refreshing that, when confronted with shocked politicians and commentators holding 'You can't say that!' sermons, other public figures will retort, equally loudly, 'We can - and we should'. But the row is far from over.

That government politicians were so quick to condemn the programme and raise doubts about Channel 4's wisdom in showing it indicates how far the knee-jerk 'ban it' mentality persists within this government. Yet as Downing Street rushes in with reassurances that it is not calling for censorship, a more insidious process is at play. 'We are not talking about censorship', said a Downing Street spokesperson. 'We are not talking about the government dictating what should or shouldn't be broadcast.' (5)

What Downing Street is talking about is the need for TV to regulate itself more conservatively, through bodies like the ITC. Clearly, if TV played safe enough, there would be no need for the government to get involved. But is that free speech? Would that kind of TV be worth watching? And the fact that the tabloid press has rushed in to condemn Channel 4 for showing the programme is also worrying. Here we have the media calling for restrictions and self-imposed censorship on other aspects of the media - as if the media had no common interest in defending free speech.

On the other side, the programme's defenders were not so robust as they could have been. 'Television at its best has a real sense of social purpose and provoking debate can be unnerving but ultimately necessary', wrote Channel 4 head Michael Jackson in the UK Observer. 'The media reaction to Brass Eye indicates that it is a paternalistic media that suggest the boundaries of what should and should not be discussed.' (6)

Jackson's points are very true - but Channel 4 exemplified this very paternalism by pulling the show from its original transmission date a few weeks ago because of the disappearance of schoolgirl Danielle Jones, and cancelling a rerun on E4, its satellite entertainment offshoot. And Channel 4 has always had an uneasy relationship with Chris Morris, delaying transmission of the original Brass Eye series for months and then cutting scenes from it.

Channel 4 should be congratulated for its nerve in showing the programme, knowing what the fallout could be. But it should be careful about getting too defensive. Why should the question of showing a comedy programme need to be justified in terms of some 'social purpose'? While the bulk of Brass Eye was an accurate satire of the media guff about paedophilia, some of it was just black humour, plain and simple. Bad taste can be funny too, and it needs no other justification than that.

Underlying all the arguments that Morris' programme should not have been shown is the dangerous assumption that most people are too moronic to separate a joke from reality, and that ministers and tabloid editors know what is best for us. The reaction that has greeted the programme in fact shows the benefits of trusting people to make their own minds up. If I laugh louder because part of me thinks I shouldn't be laughing at all, doesn't that show that the programme has achieved its aim?

31 July 2001
   
Brass Eye: reaching satire's gold standard?
Alexander Pope said that satire 'heals with morals what it hurts with wit' - and that's what Chris Morris' Brass Eye manages to do.
by Ian Walker

Defending Chris Morris' controversial Brass Eye Special about paedophilia, the UK Observer argued that it is 'spectacularly obvious that paedophilia is not of itself a source of humour' (1). But Chris Morris didn't shy away from using paedophilia as a source for some of the humour in the programme - and this is partly what counts for some of the consternation about it.

As well as trying to get us to laugh at the media, Morris was also telling jokes about what constitutes the sexual abuse of children. The fact that this was funny made it even more uncomfortable. But Morris' ability to make us squirm by making jokes about issues like this is what, in my mind, elevates his comedy beyond anybody else's.

Morris is a brilliant caricaturist, particularly when playing his Paxman-like anchorman. Especially in his series Jam, Morris uses surreal exaggeration to ridiculous and often disturbing extremes, revelling in the absurdity of everyday life. These techniques help to create the most original comedy of the last few years.

But more important in contributing to Morris' strength as a comedian are the subjects he takes up. While other satirists and comedians play the mainstream radical card, taking banks to task for making money or capitalism to task for exploiting people, Morris attacks animal rights activists, or self-appointed moral guardians and their ridiculous horror stories about drugs, crime, sex - or paedophiles. What makes him stand out as a satirist is that he dives right into those issues around which contemporary politics and morality is being debated and shaped, and says the unexpected.

Alexander Pope, the truly savage and great satirist, wrote that satire 'heals with morals what it hurts with wit'. If Morris intended to hurt with wit he achieved his aim - Capital radio DJ Dr Fox and other media figures were made to look very stupid (or were exposed for their stupidity). The response of politicians, children's charities and the tabloid press was probably just as Morris intended - he was also trying to hurt them with wit, and seems to have succeeded. But there is more to this humour than the cynical desire to hurt or ridicule people for the sake of a cheap laugh - something that other comedians, like Ali G, often indulge in.

Because Morris takes up the issues he does, his comedies ultimately become comments on contemporary morality. Brass Eye satirised society's obsession with paedophilia by exaggerating it and showing it back to us. Morris has achieved, with mockery, controversy and laughter, what more soberly made critical points about this issue have failed to do.

Jokes about paedophilia may hurt with wit - but the ultimate measure of satire like Brass Eye is whether it helps to undermine, or heal, a morality that is being shaped by irrational fears and hysterical debates.

[DJ One Record]

Loving this thread. Only now that I've read that Mail article do I truly appreciate the comedy in the phrase "25ft wicker phallus."

[Neil]

I've never understood the hatred for the Special. Many people outside of this site would consider it his magnus opus.

That's actually quite a daming appraisal, though*.  On paper, the Spesh was ace, and some of the bravest comedy/media commentary of all time.  However, it ended up being a largely disappointing retread of former ideas (making it feel much more like a Best Of than a Special).  So, yes, a high-profile comedy show that's more palatable for the people who aren't mad fans and/or those who get off on the very idea of subversiveness.

* Dependant on your own perspective/fan status/ etc.

[Neil]

Facial deformity? It's a birthmark, it's not like he's had his skin burned off. And even if he was a grotesquely ugly freak, how would that be a criticism of his work?

I think it's actually a very human and natural thing to wonder aloud about the reasons why X would do Y - VLS' concerns are certainly tempered by bitterness (understably so, given how much Morris impersonated him in the early years), but that doesn't automatically make (all of) them invalid. 

When you have some who was notorious for showing up others as fakes and phonies, it becomes almost ridiculous not to try and work out exactly who they themselves are.

[An tSaoi]

I think it's actually a very human and natural thing to wonder aloud about the reasons why X would do Y - VLS' concerns are certainly tempered by bitterness (understably so, given how much Morris impersonated him in the early years), but that doesn't automatically make (all of) them invalid. 

When you have some who was notorious for showing up others as fakes and phonies, it becomes almost ridiculous not to try and work out exactly who they themselves are.

My objection is that Morris isn't facially deformed. To say that he is suggests bitterness that if not invalidating the opinion certainly lessens its credibility. The idea that Morris sees himself as some sort of wretched freak who hates everyone and just wants to get back at the cruel cruel world smells like serious bullshit, and the fact that it's VLS's opinion only makes it seem even more bullshitty.

I used the term "grotesquely ugly freak" from the Animals episode because what Morris' character does in that opening segment is almost exactly what VLS is doing in that article, only Smith actually means it. He's pissed off that someone who started off in a similar vein to him had become markedly more successful, well-known and liked, and his attitude reflects that. It's just pissy bitching.

I agree though that it would be fascinating to find out what makes Morris tick, to work out who he is, but that's a rather fruitless venture because he is obviously reticent to show much of himself; few interviews, no chatshow appearances, no autobiography etc. And even if someone could (and was to) deconstruct his mind, then it shouldn't be someone who holds such an obvious grudge against him.

Personally, I think he must be or have been at least mildly mentally ill. Not in a absolute cuckoo way, but maybe schizophrenic or deluded in some way. There are things in Blue Jam and My Wrongs which I'm not sure a perfectly sane person could come up with on their own. That's not to say his monologues are in any way based even slightly on his real experiences, but that there has to be some slightly cracked part of his brain that dwells in that warped view of the world.

Anyway, a few more pointless articles...

All about the special, from the Mail (no dates given):

Jail trade in sick TV show

by REBECCA ENGLISH, MICHAEL CLARKE and CHRISTIAN GYSIN, Daily Mail

Jailed sex offenders are passing around copies of Channel 4's controversial spoof documentary on paedophiles.

Officers on prison wings holding rapists and child molesters fear they are using video tapes of Brass Eye for gratification.

The revelations will deepen concern about the sick programme, which has triggered a record number of complaints from viewers and been condemned by Cabinet ministers and child protection charities.

As Culture Secretary Tessa Jowell announced plans to shake up TV watchdogs who allowed the programme to be shown twice last week, the head of a stage school accused its makers of tricking him into allowing an eight-year-old pupil to appear.

The boy was filmed standing in his under-pants at the side of a darkened road before a so-called paedophile tried to pull him into a car.

Prisoners with TVs in their cells can watch them at any time, so they could have seen either of the late-night broadcasts live.

Video recorders are not allowed in cells but inmates are understood to have used communal VCRs provided for education classes to tape the programme.

A prison source said: 'There has been enormous disquiet among officers that sex offenders both on and off segregated wings were able to watch this programme and tape it.'

A Prison Service spokesman said he was unaware of the allegations and insisted that video recorders in units designed to hold sex offenders were kept under strict control.

He added: 'The service monitors convicted sex offenders very closely and if a person is thought to be in possession of inappropriate material it will be taken away from them.'

But many sex offenders are held on other wings and officers already have evidence that copies of the tape are being circulated around the communal video areas, which are not always supervised.

The Brass Eye paedophile special was produced following an exercise in deceit which took in celebrities, politicians and members of the public who agreed to take part without fee and were rewarded with ridicule.

Sir Robin Phillips, head of the Ravenscourt Theatre School in West London, condemned the programme makers for tricking him and a child actor over its content.

Sir Robin said eight-year-old Sonny Rooney had been conned by Morris into taking part in a scene where he is abducted by a paedophile.

Sir Robin said: 'Had I known the programme was going to be about child sex offenders there is no way I would have let one of my actors take part.'

Two volunteers who took part in a bogus discussion group on paedophilia with presenter Chris Morris told last night of their anger at being duped.

Christina Brooks, a 50-year-old care worker from north London, and her disabled neighbour Michael Cull, were told they were taking part in a serious 'Kilroy-style' programme on child abuse.

Instead they found their contributions formed part of a show lampooning campaigners against paedophilia.

Mrs Brooks told the Daily Mail: 'I still have not seen the programme but I have had people coming up to me in the street saying, "Fancy you taking part in a show like that.

'They all assume I made lots of money but I was not paid anything and I am very angry about the way I've been treated.'

Mr Cull said: 'It's entrapment. It was a con trick and con tricks are illegal. At the very least we should have a public apology and it must be bordering on the edge of the law.'

A raft of celebrities duped into appearing on the programme said they were consulting their lawyers to see what action they could take against its producers.

The programme makers risked inflaming the row last night by comparing anti-paedophile campaigns in the press to pornographers.

Co-writer David Quantick told the BBC the programme 'was satirising the way the media, particularly television, exploits paedophilia - which is a very serious and horrible issue.

'They exploit it to sell newspapers and television programmes, and use it as a kind of pornography, which is vile.'

Comic actor Steve Coogan - who played Alan Partridge alongside Chris Morris on The Day Today - defended his former colleague and long-time friend.

'Chris is a very moral person and he produced a thought-provoking and challenging piece of comedy,' he said. 'There is a lot of ignorance in the people who are complaining about it.'

Amid the outcry over the Brass Eye debacle, ministers have drawn up plans to speed up the way the watchdog Independent Television Commission handles controversial programmes.

Sources have revealed that the ITC had no idea Brass Eye was due to be repeated the night after it was first shown last Thursday.

Now Miss Jowell is considering new rules so that programmes seen as 'pushing back boundaries' would be banned from immediate repeats. This would give viewers enough time to complain and the ITC more breathing space to act.

ITC board member Alastair Balls, 57, said last night that he wished the commission could move faster and hinted that the time had come to change the way it worked.

'I'm anxious this is resolved as expediently as possible,' he said. 'We mustn't let time pass on this one and must press hard to get a verdict as fast as we can as there has been a flood of complaints.'

He added: 'Either we have a right to intervene which means screening broadcasters' schedules or we deal with complaints after they've occurred. The current legislation is after rather than before. Whether or not that changes is a decision for ministers.'

Both Miss Jowell and Downing Street sought to rebut accusations that ministers were trying to censor TV.

The Prime Minister's spokesman said: 'Satire is very important. It has a valuable role to play in highlighting issues and asking questions about how we as a society deal with difficult issues. But there are limits to satire and there have to be boundaries of decency.

'The point is whether the regulatory framework is sufficient to deal flexibly with issues like this, particularly when we have a situation where a programme is broadcast, a huge number of people complain and it is repeated.'

Paedophile spoof Brass Eye nominated for TV Bafta

A controversial satire about paedophiles which provoked outrage when it was broadcast last year was today nominated for a prestigious television award.

Channel 4's Brass Eye special is in the running for Best Comedy at the British Academy Television Awards, the TV version of the Baftas.

Thousands of viewers jammed the station's phone lines to register their disgust when the programme was aired last July.

Channel 4 was later forced to broadcast an apology after the Independent Television Commission (ITC) upheld viewers' complaints that the show had been offensive.

In one scene, presenter Chris Morris brought a young boy into the studio and asked a "paedophile" locked in stocks if he wanted to have sex with him.

Celebrities such as ITN correspondent Nicholas Owen, presenter Richard Blackwood and rock star Phil Collins were duped into appearing on the show.

DJ Neil Fox was seen hammering a nail into a crab shell, telling viewers that paedophiles shared more in common genetically with the crustacean than they did with other humans.

Makers of the show insisted it was a satire on the way sections of the media sensationalised the issue of paedophiles.

But many viewers failed to see the funny side, with Channel 4 receiving almost 1,000 complaints on its first showing and the ITC getting more than 500.

The NSPCC branded the show "crude, crass and offensive" and said its National Child Protection Helpline had taken calls from child abuse victims distressed by the programme.

The show has been nominated for Best Comedy programme, up against Bremner, Bird and Fortune, The Kumars at No 42 and The Sketch Show.

It has also been nominated for Best Innovation where it will compete against David Attenborough's The Blue Planet and wacky betting show Banzai.

Elsewhere in the awards, Pop Idol has been nominated as Best Entertainment programme alongside Have I Got News For You, Parkinson and Room 101.

Hosts Ant and Dec are also up for Best Entertainment Performance and face competition from John Bird and John Fortune for Bremner, Bird and Fortune, Paul Merton for Have I Got News For You and last year's winner Graham Norton for So Graham Norton.

There was bad news for Emmerdale, which won the Best Soap award last year but has not even made the shortlist this time.

Instead the honour will go to either EastEnders, Coronation Street, Hollyoaks or Doctors.

The Office has picked up two nominations - for Best Situation Comedy and for Ricky Gervais for Best Comedy performance, in which he will compete with Joanna Lumley for Absolutely Fabulous.

The Best Presenter award pits Newsnight's Jeremy Paxman against chat show host Michael Parkinson, historian Simon Schama and Louis Theroux.

Michael Gambon, Alan Bates, Timothy Spall and David Suchet are up for Best Actor, while Best Actress will go to either Lindsay Duncan, Sheila Hancock, Lesley Sharp or Julie Walters.

In the Best Drama series category, last year's winner Clocking Off is nominated again alongside At Home With The Braithwaites, Cold Feet and Tales From The Pleasure Beach.

England's World Cup qualifier against Germany will complete for Best Sport coverage with the British Grand Prix from Silverstone, Channel 4 cricket and the FA Cup Final between Liverpool and Arsenal.

The awards, hosted by Chris Tarrant and sponsored by Radio Times, will be held at the Theatre Royal Drury Lane in London on April 21.

Is this the sickest TV show ever?

by TARA CONLAN and ALISON BOSHOFF, Daily Mail

Chris Morris

Channel 4 stood defiant last night after screening a vile spoof documentary about paedophilia.

The Brass Eye programme on Thursday night provoked a record 2,000-plus complaints from disgusted members of the public.

The NSPCC said it was deeply offensive and trivialised offences against children.

Yet the much-criticised broadcaster still scheduled a repeat of the programme last night.

And the chairman of the board which sanctioned the screening - who astonishingly ran a recent appeal for the NSPCC - stood by its decision.

Father-of-three Vanni Treves, 60, said: 'I was involved in the decision that this should be shown and I think it was right.'

Two million viewers saw the beginning of the programme, hosted and written by satirist Chris Morris, at 10.35pm on Thursday. By the time it finished half an hour later, a million had turned off.

In one scene, Morris played a Crime-watch-style presenter, introducing a boy pretending to be his son to a paedophile and asking him if he would like to have sex with him. More than 1,000 viewers called Channel 4 to protest. BT said it received thousands of directory enquiries for the number of the channel's complaints department.

A further 600 rang the Independent Television Commission, 200 the Broadcasting Standards Commission and hundreds more contacted children's charities to voice their outrage. Mary Marsh, director and chief executive of the National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children, said it was 'outrageous' that Channel 4 had scheduled a repeat of the show.

'This offensive programme trivialises child sex abuse. We were particularly outraged by spoof scenes of paedophilia and pornographic images of children. The NSPCC deals with many tragic cases in which children have been seriously damaged by sexual assault.

'The crimes committed by paedophiles against children and young people are among the most abhorrent in the criminal justice system. They are not a laughing matter and have no place in satire.'

A spokesman for the National Children's Homes charity said: 'To make light of these issues is not funny or helpful. We are also deeply concerned about the use of children in this programme. To include them is completely inappropriate and irresponsible.' He added: 'Charities like ours benefit from the support of many individuals. Programmes like this may make it harder to engage public figures in supporting organisations in raising awareness of child sexual abuse.

'NCH hopes Channel 4 will ensure that a comedy based on the sexual abuse of children will not be deemed fit for transmission in the future.'

Shadow culture secretary Peter Ainsworth said the programme was 'in incredibly bad taste'.

The ITC admitted it was powerless to stop last night's repeat but said it would investigate the complaints.

A spokesman said: 'We have had calls from people who have complained that paedophilia is not a subject for humour. We will be speaking to Channel 4 about Brass Eye and have the power to stop it being repeated in the future if we find any programme codes have been breached.'

Channel 4 also received complaints from celebrities who were tricked into appearing on the show, including singer Phil Collins, ITN journalist Nick Owen, BBC presenter Philippa Forrester, comedian Richard Blackwood and freelance TV presenter Kate Thornton.

Collins said: 'I was led to believe it was part of a public service programme that would be going round schools and colleges to stem child abduction and abuse.' He took legal advice about the possibility of stopping the programme from going out.

Miss Forrester, who was tricked into making a video warning about a socalled Internet game which allows paedophiles to watch children playing at home, said: 'I didn't even want to watch the programme when I heard about it.

'I felt physically sick. I took part in good faith because I was told it was a charity. Other charities will suffer as a result of this programme too, which is very sad.'

Miss Thornton said she was 'appalled' at the content of the show.

'Taking advantage of someone's goodwill is neither funny, clever or charitable,' she said. 'Attempting to make jokes about something as serious as paedophilia is beyond me.'

Nick Owen was similarly hoaxed. His spokesman said: 'He is upset about the programme. It just means when prominent people are asked to work with charities in the future they could be put off it.'

Richard Blackwood said: 'I am surprised and disappointed that Channel 4 allowed this programme to be screened. A lot of celebrities want to help charities and it is an important issue for me.

'But they seemed so genuine, they even had fake police records and a website. How do you tell who is real and who is not now?'

He added: 'I hope as a comedian I know what is funny. From what I know of Chris Morris, he has always been a bit risque but has stuck to stuff that is fair game. This time he's gone too far.'

The show was commissioned by Channel 4 head of comedy and entertainment Caroline Leddy, herself the mother of a young child. It was made by Talkback - a production company founded by comedians Griff Rhys Jones and Mel Smith. It was originally scheduled for last month but postponed after schoolgirl Danielle Jones went missing because the broadcaster feared it would cause offence.

The decision to show it this week would have gone through Channel 4 chief executive Michael Jackson and then to the eight- strong board of directors.

Chairman Vanni Treves, a City lawyer, was for three years the chairman of the NSPCC's Justice for Children appeal. He is also chairman of Equitable Life.

He declared: 'It was a joint decision and I stand by it.'

Asked whether he felt the number of complaints perhaps indicated the board had been wrong, he replied: 'No. We knew some people would find it a sensitive programme and we factored that very carefully into our decision.'

Board member Peter Bazalgette, who was behind Changing Rooms and Ground Force, refused to comment. All six other board members, including Tony Blair's close friend and fundraiser Barry Cox, the deputy chairman of Channel 4, were not responding to phone calls.

A Channel 4 spokesman, however, defended the use of child actors, insisting that they were all aware of what they were doing and were chaperoned throughout the making of the show.

He described the programme as 'astonishingly vivid and original' and offered no apology to those who were offended or distressed, pointing instead to the fact that a warning about adult material had prefaced the programme.

He said: 'Brass Eye challenges what it perceives to be the hysterical way the media treats the issue and tackles inconsistencies in our attitudes to children and sex. It is a powerful satire on the way the media exploits and sensationalises the subject of paedophilia.

'It is a programme that is both humorous and directed to make a serious point. As with much of Chris Morris's work, it is in places disturbing and is astonishingly vivid and original.'

Viewers' fury over child-sex TV hoax

by NEIL SEARS and JASON WOOLFE, Daily Mail


Chris Morris

Channel 4 received a barrage of complaints last night after screening a disturbing spoof documentary about paedophilia.

Viewers were disgusted by a succession of bad taste references to attacks on children - and horrified to find child actors in many of the sketches.

A choir of youngsters even sang a song about paedophiles which concluded with an underage girl singing that she would not be available 'until the day after tomorrow'.

The half-hour programme, a one-off edition of the notorious Brass Eye series, was written and presented by controversial humorist Chris Morris.

In one scene he described sex between an adult and child as film was shown of a topless woman writhing in bed with a man.

In another sequence, Morris sang about being abused by his own father, with a model of a child strapped to his body as if peforming a sex act.

The show, presented as if it were a serious investigation, had sparked controversy long before it was broadcast. It had been postponed once - because of fears that it would cause offence if shown soon after schoolgirl Danielle Jones disappeared in Essex - and when singer Phil Collins complained he had been tricked into appearing it looked possible that it could be scrapped.

But Channel 4 controller Michael Jackson, who recently announced that he was leaving for the U.S., ruled that the show could go ahead, with Collins featured regardless of his objections.

Other celebrities, including Gary Lineker, Lisa Tarbuck and Kate Thornton, were also apparently taken in by Morris, who has been sacked from a long series of broadcasting jobs for outrageous behaviour.

Phone lines were jammed as incensed viewers tried to complain. Mrs Delia Neale, from Cambridgeshire, said: 'It was the worst programme I have seen on British TV, beyond words. Several children have died at the hands of paedophiles in this country. What are Channel 4 thinking of?'

Mrs Alex Keisner, who has children aged eight months and two, said: 'I'm very liberal about sexuality and homosexuality but making jokes out of children being abused is really beyond the pale.

'It was puerile, sickening and offensive.'

TV watchdog demands apology for Brass Eye paedophile spoof



The Independent Television Commission (ITC) today demanded that Channel 4 broadcast an apology over its controversial spoof paedophile documentary Brass Eye.

The television regulator ruled that the programme, which sparked a flood of complaints when it was shown in July, had breached its code in two areas.

In a statement issued today in response to the complaints, the ITC accepted that Channel 4 had failed to give adequate warnings about the nature of the programme and ruled that not enough care had been taken to avoid causing "gratuitous offence" to the viewer.

The ITC decided that an appropriate course of action would be to take the rare step of asking Channel 4 to broadcast an apology, the details of which are yet to be finalised.

A spokeswoman for the Department of Culture Media and Sport said: "Brass Eye caused widespread concern and we welcome the full consideration of the issues by the ITC and BSC (Broadcasting Standards Commission).

"No doubt broadcasters will pay heed to their decision and its implications.

"For our part, we wish to be sure that the regulation system is able to respond rapidly and effectively to issues of the kind we have seen in this case."

She added: "It is the Government's policy that content will remain the responsibility of broadcasters and regulators, who must balance the right of free expression and considerations of taste, decency and public interest."

Channel 4 originally defended the programme, describing it as a "powerful satire on the way the media exploits and sensationalises the subject of paedophilia".

But announcing its decision today, the ITC said while they accepted that satire was an effective way of making statements about a range of issues, the broadcaster had failed to bear in mind the expectations of those watching.

They also ruled that Channel 4 had breached the area of the code which required clear and specific warnings where viewers were likely to find the programme disturbing or offensive.

Brass Eye caused a storm of controversy when it was screened in July, with the ITC receiving more than 1,000 complaints.

Home Secretary David Blunkett said he had been dismayed that the programme had been screened and child protection minister Beverley Hughes described the show as "unspeakably sick".

But Channel 4 chief executive Michael Jackson defended the programme claiming it had a "real sense of social purpose".

The programme featured a number of celebrities, including pop star Phil Collins, ITN correspondent Nicholas Owen and comedian Richard Blackwood, who were duped into fronting anti-paedophilia campaigns.

In one scene Morris brought a child into the studio and asked a paedophile held in a set of stocks whether he "fancied him".

The ITC chose not uphold a number of complaints about the inclusion of children in the programme.

Scores of viewers had expressed concern that youngsters had been involved in scenes which were disturbing and offensive.

But the Commission accepted that Channel 4 had taken all the necessary steps to ensure that child performers in the programme were properly cared for and supervised and that relevant approval for their inclusion had been gained.

It also accepted that the scenes including children had been filmed using editing and special effects.

However, the ITC noted that this would not have been known to the viewer and could have therefore caused offence or concern to those watching the programme.

Asking a channel to broadcast an apology is a rare move by the regulator and has only occurred twice in the recent years.

The previous occasion was in April 1998 when Channel 4 screened a documentary called Agent Nature about the environmental lobby.

The ITC ruled that it had not informed the contributors to the programme of its true nature and was therefore in breach of its code.

In 1996 Channel 4 was again forced to broadcast an apology after a storyline in its soap, Brookside, which tackled the issue of incest.

Connolly defends Brass Eye

Billy Connolly has defended Channel 4's controversial spoof documentary about paedophiles.

The comedian, a father of five, insisted yesterday that paedophilia was a legitimate topic to make jokes about.

He admitted he had not seen the Brass Eye programme, which provoked a record 2,500 complaints from the public, but said there should be 'no boundaries' on the subjects comics used as sources of inspiration.

'It's a field that should be explored,' he told a press conference at the Edinburgh International Film Festival.

'I'm sure everyone in this room has been told a joke about that subject. I have many times and I've laughed, even though they are horrifying and shocking. I think there's no boundary at all, whether it's that subject or another.'

Connolly was at the festival for the premiere last night of the film Gabriel And Me, in which he plays a disillusioned angel who befriends an 11-year-old boy.

When asked about comedians who try to raise laughs by breaking taboos, he added that it was 'very worthwhile to shock people every now and then'.

The Brass Eye programme, presented and written by satirist Chris Morris, featured celebrities, politicians and members of the public who agreed to take part without fee.

Phil Collins was seen in a T-shirt with the words 'Nonce Sense', while Tomorrow's World presenter Philippa Forrester held up a T-shirt with a headless body motif and claimed it enabled a paedophile to 'disguise himself as a child'.

ITN journalist Nick Owen, comedian Richard Blackwood and freelance TV presenter Kate Thornton also complained to Channel 4 after being duped into making ridiculous statements while believing they were helping a charity.

Home Secretary David Blunkett was dismayed by the programme and did not find it 'remotely funny'.

Minister's anger at paedophile spoof


Tessa Jowell

Culture Secretary Tessa Jowell was today set to register her anger with Channel 4 over its controversial spoof investigation into paedophilia.

Ms Jowell was also contacting the Independent Television Commission (ITC) to discuss whether the regulatory body needs new powers to react more quickly to the kind of widespread public disquiet prompted by the Brass Eye programme.

She is concerned that Channel 4 repeated the programme shortly after it was first broadcast, despite the negative reaction from viewers and children's charities.

Channel 4 has faced mounting criticism over the programme, with Home Secretary David Blunkett joining Ms Jowell in voicing distaste, and child protection minister Beverley Hughes branding the show "sick".

The Metropolitan Police confirmed that they had also received complaints about the programme.

A Scotland Yard spokeswoman said: "The Internet and Obscene Publications Unit has received a number of complaints from members of the public regarding the content of a television programme screened on 26th July.

"We have obtained a copy of the programme for reviewing purposes. There is no investigation at this stage."

The ITC, which received 600 complaints, is set to launch an investigation into whether the programme broke its requirements on taste, decency and the use of child actors.

If it finds that its code was breached, the commercial television regulator could hit Channel 4 with an unlimited fine or even, theoretically, revoke its licence - although that ultimate sanction appears unlikely in this case.

Channel 4 has voiced regret that some viewers had found the "savage" satire offensive.

But it defended the decision to make and broadcast the programme which, it insisted, made a serious point about media sensationalism over paedophilia.

The station has received more than 2,000 calls about the show, which was first shown on Thursday night and was repeated the following evening.

The NSPCC described the show as "crude and crass" and "offensive", and along with NCH, the NSPCC's National Child Protection Helpline, unsuccessfully called on the station not to air the repeat.

In a statement, Ms Jowell said: "As a viewer and a parent, I think it is a great shame that a public service broadcaster has chosen to transmit this programme.

"If this is considered acceptable material then we are tearing down all the boundaries of decency on television.

"As Secretary of State, this raises the question of whether the ITC can deal quickly enough with complaints against programmes.

"I will be taking all this up with the ITC and Channel 4 personally as soon as I can."

Later an aide said that Ms Jowell would contact both organisations by telephone today.

She wanted to tell the station how "appalled" she was by both the programme and its decision to give it a repeat airing so quickly.

She would also want to know from the ITC what it needed to be able to react more quickly than was possible in this case to significant public concern.

Mr Blunkett's spokesman made clear the Home Secretary's distaste for the programme, saying: "Mr Blunkett was pretty dismayed by the programme and did not find it remotely funny."

Mrs Hughes - who was today launching a consultation document on tightening up the working of the sex offenders' register - said that parts of the programme were "unspeakably sick".

But a Channel 4 spokesman said: "Channel 4 knew a satire of this nature would be a difficult programme for some to view and it is a matter of regret to us if victims of child sex abuse and those who work with them have watched the programme in full and been offended.

"However, it is part of the channel's remit to ask hard questions about the way society and the media deal with its most difficult problems.

"The channel stands by its decision to commission and broadcast this programme, which, through savage satire, sought to make a serious point.

"Chris Morris (the presenter) was not making light of paedophilia; his target was the dangerous sensationalism and exploitation that can characterise media coverage of the issue."

The ITC has no powers to vet programmes, nor to issue directions about scheduling. If a programme is found to have breached its code, then it cannot be screened again in the same format.

In most cases, breaches of the code are dealt with by means of a public reprimand.

But other possible sanctions include an unlimited fine - in December 1998 the ITC fined Carlton £2 million for a faked expose of a Colombian drug running operation.

It could even revoke the channel's licence - in April 1999 it pulled the licence of the London-based Kurdish satellite station Med TV for breaking its rules on impartiality, and using Britain as a platform for inciting violence.

An ITC spokeswoman said it was not possible to say when the investigation into the programme would begin, nor how long it would take. The station would be invited to give its views.

Phil Collins seeks legal advice over Brass Eye stunt

Recording star Phil Collins is seeking legal advice after he was fooled into appearing in an episode of the satirical Channel 4 comedy programme Brass Eye.

The one-off episode of the show created by Chris Morris focuses on paedophilia and the hysterical treatment of the issue by the media.

As part of the episode, due to be screened on July 26, a number of celebrities took part, endorsing two fabricated anti-paedophilia campaigns.

In one scene, former Genesis star Collins is featured wearing a t-shirt with the words Nonce Sense across the front while he warns youngsters what kind of people to be suspicious of.

Another of those stung into appearing was comedian Richard Blackwood, who warns viewers of the dangers posed by the Internet.

In one scene he tells children paedophiles can make toxic vapours rise from their computer keyboards.

The programme was due to be aired earlier in the month but was pulled at the last minute after Channel 4 chiefs claimed it was not complete.

Today, several of those who appeared in the show expressed their distaste that such an issue should have been used as the subject for a comedy programme.

And Collins, whose wife Orianne gave birth to his fourth child earlier this year, said he was furious about the stunt.

In a statement he said: "I took part in the programme as I was very firmly led to believe it was part of a public service programme that would be going around schools and colleges in a bid to stem child abduction and abuse."

Collins said he had been assured that his quotes had been taken from genuine police records.

He added: "I think the presenters of this programme have some serious taste problems when it comes to picking subjects from parody.

"I did this in good faith for the public benefit but unfortunately this will probably now affect many celebrities' willingness to support public spirited causes in the future and it's not difficult to see why."

Blackwood also expressed concern that the programme could have a detrimental effect for legitimate charities working in the field of child protection.

While accepting that he had been cleverly hoaxed he added: "Well I guess the joke is on us and also on every other charity working in the field of child protection. If you think that kiddie porn is funny you should have a good laugh."

Capital FM DJ Dr Fox also admitted to being completely taken in by the stunt but said the subject had been inappropriate for a TV comedy.

"I have been had and it was well done, it is just a shame it had to be about such a sick issue," he said.

But a spokesman for Channel 4, insisted that the programme was meant to be a humorous look at a serious issue.

The spokesman said: "Chris Morris's Brass Eye Special is a powerful satire on the way the media exploits and sensationalises the subject of paedophilia.

"It is a programme that is both humorous and directed to make a serious point. As with much of Chris Morris's work, it is in places disturbing and is astonishingly vivid and original."

An insider at the Channel also pointed out that none of the celebrities who had taken part had checked out the credentials of the charities which had approached them.

This, she said, raised questions about how celebrities were willing to let their names be used for things they did not fully understand.

The programme is due to be screened on Channel 4 at 10.35pm on July 26.

The brass neck of Brass Eye

by TARA CONLAN, Daily Mail

Television watchdogs yesterday let off Channel 4 with just a slap on the wrist over the sickening Brass Eye spoof documentary on paedophilia.

And last night, triumphally brushing aside even the mildest of official rebukes, the station said it 'will screen the programme again'.

The supposed satire, presented by Chris Morris, was almost universally condemned and provoked a record 3,000 complaints when it was shown in July and controversially repeated a day later.

Among those disgusted by it were Home Secretary David Blunkett, Culture Secretary Tessa Jowell and Home Office minister Beverley Hughes - who branded it 'unspeakably sick'. Even the normally liberal Guardian carried an article scathingly attacking it.

But yesterday the Independent Television Commission - which has the power to revoke a broadcaster's licence or impose huge fines - merely told Channel 4 to apologise on two relatively minor points.

The ITC and the less powerful Broadcasting Complaints Commission, which separately considered the issue, effectively ruled that programme-makers have a licence to use child abuse as a subject for comedy.

The BSC said: 'The BSC, like the ITC, affirmed the right of broadcasters to produce satirical programmes, even on such sensitive topics as paedophilia.

'It also recognised that satire will often only achieve its purpose by shocking and offending some people.'

Last night, Channel 4 was totally unrepentant. A spokesman vowed: 'We will show the show again.'

Director of programmes Tim Gardam said he and his colleagues 'don't have any regrets' and 'do not feel like apologising' because they believe they did nothing wrong.

'We apologise because we are directed to under the terms of our licence,' he added. 'We justify the programme because we think of it as a serious piece of satire. Satire is comedy with a serious purpose. I think Chris Morris is one of the most distinguished minds working in the media today.'

Chief executive Michael Jackson also showed no remorse, saying: 'Channel 4 is unwavering in its support for Chris Morris and Brass Eye and we would not hesitate to commission or transmit such a programme again.'

The watchdogs' ruling outraged children's charities. NSPCC chief executive Mary Marsh said: 'We felt after the programme was first screened that Brass Eye had overstepped the mark on this very sensitive issue.

'Channel 4 should not have repeated the programme, particularly after so many complaints. In this case, we think Channel 4 got it very wrong.'

National Children's Homes, which finds accommodation for abused youngsters, said it was disappointed by the ruling. A spokesman said: 'We still believe that Brass Eye made light of an issue that we believe should not be trivialised.'

Christina Brooks, 50, was duped into taking part in the spoof documentary when she answered an advert for the public to take part in a debate.

'I think they should have been fined,' she said last night. 'They will have made a lot of money from the adverts screened around the programme and they should be forced to give some to a children's charity.

'We genuinely believed it was a Kilroy-style discussion programme and then we found it was supposed to be a comedy about child sex abuse, which is no laughing matter.'

John Beyer, chief of TV lobby group Mediawatch, accused the ITC and BSC of misjudging the public mood. 'They are out of touch with the viewing public - the public's confidence in them will be undermined.'

A number of celebrities were tricked into appearing on the show, including singer Phil Collins. Their complaints are still being investigated by the BSC.

A spokesman for one of them, comedian Richard Blackwood, said: 'Richard still feels the show should not have been aired. He feels the same about that as he did before the ITC's conclusions.'

Sources at the Metropolitan Police's paedophile unit said inquiries are continuing into a possible prosecution over Brass Eye.

Although Channel 4 has been ordered to broadcast an apology for breaching two parts of the ITC's programmemaking code, it will cover only two relatively minor offences - the fact that it has offended some viewers and that it failed to provide suitable on-air warnings before the show was broadcast.

The ITC and BSC also cleared Channel 4 of inappropriately using child actors.

The ITC's decision not even to fine Channel 4 is astonishing - lesser misdemeanours have proven costly for the station in the past.

In 1999, the watchdog imposed a £150,000 over a documentary, Too Much Too Young: Chickens, which did not label a scene involving two rent boys as a dramatic reconstruction.

With Brass Eye, the ITC admitted that many viewers 'saw what appeared to them to be a succession of scenes in which children were apparently placed in highly inappropriate and harmful situations and significant offence resulted.

In some cases, this necessary protection was achieved through editing and montage or through special effects. But this artifice was invisible to viewers.'

The ITC has come under fire many times for being out of step with the public's feelings about taste and decency issues.

It rejected complaints about the Keith Chegwin programme The Naked Jungle, which featured nudist contestants.

It also rejected 163 complaints about the Channel 4 drama Queer as Folk, which showed a 15-year-old boy being seduced by a promiscuous 29-year-old man, saying that it was within the channel's remit.

There was further furore when it failed to act to stop ITV from moving News At Ten to 11pm. The ITC threatened legal action and months later ITV moved the bulletin back to its original slot on most days of the week.

It is only the third time Channel 4 has been ordered by the ITC to apologise to viewers.

In 1996, it apologised for an incest storyline in Brookside and in 1998 for misrepresenting environmentalists in a programme called Against Nature.

I know we've seen all these before, but this one deserves another airing if only for the not-so-flattering picture:


And a s a bonus, The Times mentions CaB, but worringly thinks the Smokehammer was "brilliant".

August 12, 2008

The Web watcher: Chris Morris
Nigel Kendall

I've been thinking quite a bit about the satirist Chris Morris recently. First, More4 is repeating his brilliant Brass Eye mock-current affairs series, and secondly I bumped into him buying milk at my local shop. Now, I know for many people that Morris's brand of satire is too vicious, not close to the bone so much as cutting right through it then waving the severed remnants in the air. But if this country has one heir to Peter Cook, it's Morris.

Look, for instance, at his brilliant internet cut-up of one of George Bush's state of the nation addresses, at www.thesmokehammer.com. At the time it appeared a few years ago, before the invasion of Iraq, it was wildly amusing. With the benefit of hindsight, it has acquired the power of prophecy.

Morris worshippers, of whom there are many in internet land, convene and exchange snippets of gossip at chilled.cream.org. Rumours of current projects, including a Dad's Army-style take on suicide bombers, abound, and there's a great selection of radio clips from Morris's early shows on London's GLR.

Whatever you think about Morris, he's certainly not afraid to put himself about, as he did when he smuggled himself on to the daytime TV show The Time, the Place, posing as an expert in ancient sexual practices. The presenter John Stapleton listens with mounting incredulity until a producer reveals Morris's identity in Stapleton's earpiece.

It's a great piece of live TV, which the internet has made possible to enjoy again and again, at tinyurl.com/32ehfc.

Morris also excels as a cultural commentator. The ridiculousness of celebrity charity is brilliantly lampooned by the London Jam Festival segment of The Day Today, at tinyurl.com/58qtmc . In a performance that makes Paxman look like Parky, Morris's anchorman Ted Maul exposes the utter fatuousness of celebrity endorsement.

The trendy London bar scene, which Morris attacked in Nathan Barley, is the subject of a wonderful text only site of mock reviews, at www.warprecords.com/bluejam/barguide.

A braver target was the "on the spot" news reporting of September 11, at tinyurl.com/5h5yaw. In this audio clip, Maul reminds us all that the only thing standing between us and information blackout is the dubious probity of the mass media.

If all of this hasn't convinced you to buy the complete DVD set of The Day Today, then the taster at tinyurl.com/6engsf will surely tip the balance. Alan Partridge's description of horse-racing from the "Chicory Tip Incest Cup" is as spot-on a spoof as you'll ever hear. Results just in: the winner is Alf Ramsey's Porn Dungeon.

Followed by a bit about My Wrongs, including an interview:

February 23, 2003

Report: Chris Morris
Mad dogs? No, it's the hero who's crazy. Stephen Armstrong talks to Chris Morris about his new film

There are some names that instantly intrigue and attract, even if you hear they're planning an exhibition of their socks. (To be fair, I think Tracey Emin's done that one already.) So when you say to people that the anarchic satirist Chris Morris has made a short film, there is a perceptible ripple. "I'd like to see that," they say. "What's it about?" The short answer is, it's about madness. My Wrongs 8245-8249 and 117 starts with a man (played by Paddy Considine) looking after his friend Imogen's dog. He's already poured ink into her goldfish bowl because the fish were staring at him. And when he takes the dog for a walk, things really begin to fall apart.

The dog starts talking to him. Turns out the dog's a lawyer, appointed to defend the man for his life to date. Moments like the time he told his mother that daddy was having an affair, because the hamster told him so, flash before our hero's eyes. The dog forces him into a church during a christening, where the baby begs him to reveal that the mother is a whore, the priest a kiddie-fiddler ... Actually, let's leave the plot there.

The 15-minute film is based on a monologue Morris devised for his Radio 1 series Blue Jam, in 1997. This seminal series was laced with dark soliloquies: in one, a man whose sedatives were particularly strong lay down in the park and found a gun under his head. With Morris's voice set to a gentle murmur, they managed to soothe and alarm in equal measure. Since Blue Jam, this descent into madness seems to be a theme Morris is pursuing. His Suicide Journalist, a spoof column in The Observer that pastiched the trend for confessionals from terminally ill hacks, and the scene from the televised Blue Jam in which a woman whose baby has died pays a plumber to "make it work again", show people clouded by forms of insanity, fumbling to maintain equilibrium as the world twists out of view.

It seems curious that Morris, a frighteningly bright son of two doctors, should take this route. Is it a sign of the fear of lunacy that dogs many of those whose thinking teeters on the edge of the conventional? Morris himself doubts it. "I think most kinds of aberrant behaviour often represent something that is a common experience on a smaller scale, such as a loss of control, or confusion," he says. "I don't rate insanity highly. I think it's often overestimated, either as a tool or a subject. The guy in the story, I don't know if he's genuinely mad. He could be in the grip of a schizophrenic episode. Madness is an explanation."

So why the form? "I felt film would be a better way to convert a monologue that would sit uneasily in the middle of a television programme," he explains. "With this one, you could access part of what was going on in his head. With the Suicide Journalist, it was all about his thinking, so it had to be written down."

My Wrongs has been warmly received even before release. Indeed, it has already been nominated for a Bafta for best short film. "The nomination is absurd," he snorts. "There are many reasons why all Baftas are absurd, but this is like a bird crashing through the window with five wings and a cat's beak. There's such a degree of fuss around a short film as opposed to a 10-minute sketch. As soon as you mention the word film, people start developing fake suntans and swaggering around with their arses clenched."

While the film is excellent, there are those in the Morris fanbase who are yearning for him to get back in the satire saddle. He has recently updated his website (www.smokehammer.com) with a spoof of Bush's State of the Union address. Could he not deliver a Gulf war Brass Eye special? "I can't blame people for wanting it, but I don't think satire is a live wire." He seems to shrug with his voice. "It's something in the cultural portfolio that people point to occasionally, but I don't believe in it as an entity. With My Wrongs and Brass Eye, the motivation is the same, it's just that the thing you're responding to is different.

"Most of the time, satire is the shout of rage from someone who's already lost the argument. It's the cry of the powerless. I suppose satire is a laugh outwards rather than a deeply crippling laugh inwards. I watch Bush and Blair and wonder how they can be so certain. When Paxman interviewed Blair, in the first 10 minutes he'd identified two blatant lies, but Blair didn't flinch."

But doesn't that inspire him to return to satire? "I don't know anyone who can say: 'I'm sitting at my desk and being satirical.'

If you do that, you should line yourself up against the wall straight away. It means you are starting from a position of righteousness, and the people who are out there peddling righteousness always f*** up."

It's difficult to track Chris Morris vectors, and probably foolish to try. Much of the delight is in stumbling across something nasty and suddenly spotting his gimlet eye peeping out from behind it. Nonetheless, for those who would like to try, he does have some plans. "I would very much like to make some kind of radio noise," he confides. "I don't have a contract, but I might put something out on the internet. I'm doing a lot of lip chewing, and 65% of my lip chewing is devoted to radio."

Perhaps the purveyors of digital radio should get in touch. Who knows? Morris could finally shift some sets for them.

My Wrongs 8245-8249 and 117 is out on DVD tomorrow from Warp Films

Now I'm off to try to track down some older, rarer articles.

[Portaccio]

Publish & Bedazzled, Issue #13
Interview With Chris Morris

HOLY DRAGGER: Whose idea was it to team you with Peter Cook?

CHRIS MORRIS: It was the idea of the guy that 'runs' TalkBack - Peter Fincham. He'd had some chatting sessions with Peter Cook and the idea just surfaced as a result of, I don't know, he put two and two together or he thought it would be appropriate in some way because it must've fitted with something that I was doing. He'd heard some radio shows I'd done - On The Hour or the Radio 1 series. It came out in early '94, I think, Why Bother. So we recorded it during the autumn of '93.

HD: Did it take long?

CM: Three or four sessions. We did a pilot in February '93 then recorded it in November, so there were probably four sessions in all, the last of which was a sort of 'details' session, meaning putting in the beginnings and ends.

HD: How structured were the interviews?

CM: Just shoot from the hip, really. See what happens.

HD: No preparation?

CM: No. I think the preparation that existed, existed only in terms of the things we had already done. I was already quite used to going and imposing bollocks interviews on people anyway from any direction so it didn't seem much different, except with him, obviously, you could keep an idea going for much longer. There was an idea that was cut from On The Hour which I was still rabidly insisting should get on air somewhere, about an archeologist having discovered a fossil of Christ as a baby and what that would mean for the whole Christian religion. So we'd get the tapes rolling and let's talk about Sir Arthur and religion or experiments, whatever. I just said "Sir Arthur, you are going to address the Royal Society tomorrow and reveal that you have found the fossil of Christ as child." From that, he said there came a whole series of larval stages and it developed from that.
It's trying to keep some sort of logic going. It was a very different style of improvisation from what I'd been used to, working with people like Steve [Coogan], Doon [MacKichan] and Rebecca [Front], because those On The Hour and The Day Today things were about trying to establish a character within a situation, and Peter Cook was really doing 'knight's move' and 'double knight's move' thinking to construct jokes or ridiculous scenes flipping back on themselves, and it was amazing. I mean, I held out no great hopes that he wouldn't be a boozy old sack of lard with his hair falling out and scarcely able to get a sentence out, because he hadn't given much evidence that that wouldn't be the case. But, in fact, he stumbled in with a Safeways bag full of Kestrel lager and loads of fags and then proceeded to skip about mentally with the agility of a grasshopper. Really quite extraordinary.

HD: Where was it recorded?

CM: Up in Camden, can't remember the name of the place. Some radio studio.

HD: Did you have any preliminary talks about the interviews?

CM: No, just chat. He was such an affable bloke and approached it all in a rather modest way - "Ooh, just ask me, you know, we'll see what happens." I think we did talk for about quarter of an hour beforehand about, y'know, is there something we could do with the War?, but it was really to find the first question or starting point. We did do a bit of that then to get an obvious end, normally being gales of laughter, and pause for five minutes and then say "Right, tape's rolling again", and it was more fun to say "Right, Sir Arthur, you're shortly going to die", and I'd find myself thinking, "I wonder what he's going to say to that?".
It was quite odd because I felt I was half-interviewing him and half-interviewing Peter Cook. We'd find we'd been talking about something that had started innocently and had gone, er, you know, he had imported a tribe of 12-year old girls and dressed them up - or something, I can't remember.

HD: I don't remember that one.

CM: No, it wasn't on tape because it didn't go anywhere. It was Sir Arthur's experiments with some child-nurturing scheme. We'd get to the end of a recording and he'd be like, "My God!", and just be appalled at himself about where he got to. But the sessions were pretty merry.

HD: Why Bother is like Peter Cook as an Alice wandering in a Wonderland composed of elements of your comedic universe - the mental and physical tortures, the drugs, public figures being weirdly humiliated, like Leon Brittan whizzing around on a food trolley - and he does rise to the challenge.

CM: Completely. That's a good analogy. As we got to know each other through the sessions it seemed less divided like that. He pulled Leon Brittan out of nowhere. And the good thing was - and the thing that made us enjoy it - was the fact that we found the visual cartoons and people being ridiculous was something we both found very difficult not to laugh at. People will look at my stuff and say it's Dark and Death and stuff, but that's where it starts. But what it is, is always laughing at something - not because it's mentioned, i.e. just raise a subject and it's shocking, but because you get something to live in that situation until it pops in a ridiculous way. And, after all, Derek And Clive - you don't get much bleaker than...

HD: Raping a nun or-

CM: Stoop to rape a nun. That's fantastic but it's clearly a well of dark stuff. I mean, in his head, he was absolutely capable of appreciating where it was going and why. I don't think it shocked him at all. He may have shocked himself occasionally, probably because he hadn't been down that route for a while and he was thinking more about his mother than he was when he was off his head in the '70s. He was seriously thinking that - not "What would my mother say if she heard it?", but it was a thought that was at least half there. He did have a sense of propriety which Derek And Clive - the only evidence Derek And Clive show of that is that they have to have a sense of it to know they're ignoring it or driving a coach and horses through it. Whereas, he felt, in 1993, at least some compunction to pay a due sense of propriety. But he quite enjoyed not doing it.

HD: RCA were supposed to have released Why Bother, weren't they?

CM: Yes. There was a lot of rather hopeless pottering about and it just evaporated. There was a difficulty when he died of seeing the wood for the trees in terms of simple transaction. Suddenly everyone started rushing out "Peter Cook this" and "'Peter Cook that". We were thinking of doing another session when he died, which was what? Christmas?

HD: January '95.

CM: God, was it that long ago? Ninety-five! Jesus... So, we must've been thinking of meeting up in February, a wintry kind of thing, and exploring it a bit further. But the RCA thing came and went, then the BBC thing came and went and then it has come back again and I think it is on their list [of releases] for the autumn.

HD: Are there any good, salvageable outtakes that could be included in the released version?

CM: Well, I was pretty sure when I edited it first time round that we got everything of worth there was. In fact, the last programme - the fifth - had three different stories.

HD: Yes, it started with violence - the Hestletine Handy - and then the Queen's Speech.. But the opening question was about plans for the BBC orchestra, but that got forgotten as you two got sidetracking.

CM: I think we were playing with the idea that in the pre-'On Air' all sorts of things could happen - from dealing with a cough to a subject that never got raised in the interview itself. But that last programme being in bits and pieces is because, by that stage, I couldn't find a complete narrative. So I put it together as a bits and pieces thing. I don't think there's anything else from those rushes. There are about eight hours of rushes to hack down. But when you are shooting like that, a lot of it is straining for quite a long time to get into the right ballpark. Then you get there, you'll find a fertile bit and that produces a good ten minutes and then you move on and go somewhere else. Some of it's funny at the time but not funny afterwards; some of it's funny in bits but it doesn't hold together. There's quite a high wastage but you could do that on radio.

HD: Was the pilot ever broadcast?

CM: I think the pilot was the one about eels and Eric Clapton. I don't know if you can tell but I think it probably did get more complicated. I certainly wouldn't have asked him about dropping dead in the first session... What was the first one? Eels...

HD: Louis B Mayers casting couch...

CM: That's right; getting letters from someone who was "rather like Alma Cogan but without the bounce". What was she called? He mentioned her name a lot: "Lita, Lita, Lita, Rosa, Rosa, Rosa". And, ah, LA Riots [laughs]: "I like to think I mowed down as many blacks as I did whites. The Koreans did very badly out of the whole deal". Yeah, that was the staggering thing - hearing fully-formed jokes just coming out. And that gave the lie to the impression that by the end he was a sack of useless old potatoes. He was not. It was very evident that whatever he did to his brain he could still get things out fully-formed.

HD: Like Gavin the hairdresser's pre-snipping ritual, was there a pre-taping ritual you and he went through?

CM: No, he'd just turn up. Doing the first one, he was in high spirits, came in with a bottle of Champagne, celebrating the fact he'd just bought a fax and he'd been up half the night faxing world leaders with advice as to what they should to do. And he'd just chat - "Have you seen what they've done in this week's Private Eye" or "I saw that Dave Baddiel thing, it was rubbish". Then we'd wander through the studio, sit down and get the fags out, and only paused to open the doors to let the smoke out so I didn't suffer from carbon-monoxide poisoning. He was really getting through them in a sealed studio with no ventilation, air-conditioning off so it doesn't get picked up on tape. A complete fog I was wrestling. I've taken up smoking up again now but at that time I was not used to that carbon-monoxide concentration.

HD: And after the session you'd both go your separate ways?

CM: I think so. But, er, that first time I met him was at a lunch, and he'd meticulously ordered what I thought was a suspiciously healthy bit of poached cod, a big lot of spinach and some mashed potato. And he left the spinach and the cod and just ate the potato and drank wine and smoked. Obviously, he was trying. Somebody had said to him eat a few vegetables and he'd got as far as putting them on his plate, but then he thought "Ugh, don't want that". Somebody had said, "Oh, he'll probably be pissed when you meet him", and, in fact, he wasn't, but he spoke with a slur. Which seemed to me to indicate somebody who could speak perfectly well, but just couldn't be bothered to articulate precisely, when articulating in a sloppy way did just as well. He had reached that level of "Ah, fuck it" kind of thing.

HD: So, when he burst into the studio brandishing his sack of lager, you weren't filled with optimism?

CM: Well, I'd already met him informally for this meal so I kind of knew what to expect in terms of physical presentation. He did burst in one time with a mightily bloated arm. He'd stumbled around in his bathroom, and the builders had been building, and he'd fallen over a stack of tiles and cracked his arm. It was in a messy state. An enormous bruise. It was already a two-week-old wound which clearly should've been going away quicker. In fact, we did remark that you were never sure if he was going to turn up; he always did, but you always thought you might just as easily get a call saying "Sorry, he's pegged it". Because a knock on the arm doesn't blow it up to the size of a leg unless the immune system is licking its own wounds in it's own corner.
But what struck me was that, at his memorial service, Alan Bennett said, "And even in later years when he lost his powers and was not the man he was..." and you thought "BOLLOCKS!", actually. He may have presented a more shambolic figure and I'd be the last one to maintain a sentimental notion, but there was clearly a lot still going on there. And God knows what else is going on in there, but in terms of that ability and joy in ridiculous ideas, it seemed completely genuine. Completely genuine.
He seemed a very twinkly sort of person. You know, very conspiratorially amused, and not the classic hardened cynical figure that a late-in-life alcoholic tends to bring to mind. You can cross that out if it sounds too sentimental, but that's what struck me. He came in looking like a boozer, he came in looking like someone who could well have chosen to give up, and why not?, but in fact there was an alarming amount of neural activity still traceable... My memories of him are sort of broken and diffused and fragmentary. He was incandescent with indignation at having been told to stop smoking when he went to Hat Trick Productions because they have a slightly born-again attitude - all mineral water and no booze - and he just couldn't believe it. He was beside himself and unable to speak. He'd be "Oh, I'll just put this one out and I won't smoke again" and then have another one. That was about the time of Clive Anderson Talks Back, where he did the football manager: "Motivation, motivation, motivation - the Three Ms!"

HD: And as Norman House, abducted by aliens.

CM: Yes. Yeah. Otter. Good use of otter in that. [His drawing of] the shape of an otter! It was like a Greek letter.

HD: He drew two exactly alike and pointed at one saying "That's the one that took me".

CM: Yeah, very, very good. He'd obviously conserved his energies for the session and didn't do anything crazy like mount a double-decker from the top deck.

HD: So, no drugs involved in making Why Bother?

CM: No. No evidence of drugs. No track marks on the arms. You always get surprised by a fat coke-head, but no. [HD laughing] Well, you do, when you see Chaka Khan or Barry White, you think "It's an appetite suppressant, what's going on??" But I suppose for Peter, the booze would've accounted for it. But there's all kinds of rumours, aren't there? People saying he was a heroin addict right until the time he died.

HD: Who said?

CM: Fuck knows. I've read people saying that about Peter Cook. He did go through a stage when he looked like he was taking a lot of coke in the '70s, around the Revolver period. He looked very hard-beaten. But no, there was no trace of ecstasy on his breath... He wasn't sprightly enough to be on coke. He was at an even. Sort of laid-back... I knew someone who used to be a waitress in The Dome or something similar, and he used to go in there for a coffee some time in the '80s.

HD: The Dome??

CM: No, it pre-dated The Dome. It was on the Kings Road. It was one of those pale interiors, you know, espresso coffees type places. He would never give a tip but he always left an immaculately rolled joint at his table after he'd gone. Which she thought was class...

HD: I'm just absolutely amazed that Why Bother took next to no time to make with so little pre-planning, 'cos I think in years to come people will say that, after Dudley Moore, this was a brilliant, albeit short-lived, partnership.

CM: Well, I found it so stimulating and it gave me a sense of being able to risk staying up there with things till they happen. The Dudley Moore collaboration was propelled by the organic heaven-and-hell of their relationship. I think, had we gone on, it would've gone further and tried lots of different things, but I was very pleased that there was something very good about the instant way you could do something like that, and it's a cliché that's worth repeating: "You can only do it on radio". When I saw A Life In Pieces-

HD: It's boring, visually. There's a chair.

CM: And also you can see he's reading from an autocue answers from a previously worked out session. And I just know that, often with improvised stuff, it happens the first time you do it because it's happening exactly in time with the thoughts that make it, and then it falls apart for a very long time, and if you manage to rehearse it well enough it can sort of return. It's never quite the same but it can be effective enough for that not to matter. But you know that Peter was never going to last from Improvisation #1 to Rehearsal #40; he'd never do that, would he? I believe the Clive Anderson Special was prepared but there was a degree of leeway involved, so he had the space to come up with things at the time. One of the most impressive things about the show was not so much the ideas, though some of them were very funny, but the way he performed it. You could easily be forgiven for thinking he was in was in the World's Bottom Ten Actors. In many of his performances he didn't really do anything, he was being 'Peter Cook' and had a strange way of shrugging lines off, but in that show I was thinking, "I've never seen this before; he's right inside these characters."

HD: Each one has their own physical lingo.

CM: Yeah, and you're tempted to say 'crafted' although it probably wasn't.

HD: Crafty?

CM: Crafty if it looked crafted and wasn't - very crafty. It was character-acting with a real sense of character. But the thing with Why Bother was it meant you could go off with an idea and stay there as long as the idea deserved it, rather than just so long as the camera would tolerate it. That's the difference. Because if you're in the middle of Lake Ontario you're in the middle of Lake Ontario and that's where you are. That's what you've been told. You're not in the middle of Lake Ontario plus "Is that moustache he's wearing real?" or "I like the way he raised his eyebrow when you said that."

HD: Real fan-club question now: was Peter a hero of yours?

CM: Well, it's very odd. The temptation is to create an ideal football team of all-comers but I don't find it works like that. I particularly enjoyed the way he could rip a chat show to pieces the same way Spike Milligan could, by breaking all expectations of what you're going to say. So it was more just leaping at the chance to work with him for that reason. I mean, I didn't see much of Not Only But Also. I recall seeing Bedazzled when I was about 12 and liking that. And seeing him on Revolver and thinking, "That guy's wrecked". And hearing Derek And Clive when I was at school and liking that because of all the swearing.

HD: Do you think Derek And Clive stands up now?

CM: It depends on what you listen to it as. I think it represents a stage a lot of people get to. It represents a lot of things happening at the same time. It's like you're completely bored with what you've already done; not wanting to do that again; not quite knowing what to do next; knowing there's a sensation in going massively downhill like a burning bomber; being fuelled by the curiosity of what that might feel like... It's like a massive mixture of mainly negative forces that takes you there, but 'stands up'? For God's sake, I dunno. I still enjoy it, most notably when they're enjoying it. It's not so much the ideas as the degree to which they're taken. It hasn't got anything particularly delightful to savour, but sometimes their sheer rage at something they don't like... There's an absolutely rubbish pastiche of Bruce Forsyth - "I can't dance, I can't sing, wurgh wurgh wurgh" - and it's borne out of looking at a television screen and going "ARGHH!!" Or the things were they're just beginning to crack up because they can't believe where they've got to. And then just going "Fuckingcuntfuckingfuckingcuntcuntfuckningcuntyoufuckingcunt', the fact that it stops being a sketch and becomes two guys in a studio doing this becomes funny for that reason. But the best thing was Jonathan Miller, who is given to ridiculous pronouncements and God-knows-what, on some TV programme describing what happens when you're trapped into being a clown or comic. I think he was saying the desire to be a comic is primarily a young man's thing which tends to be through by the time he's 30 and, in Peter Cook's case, he had done a lot by the time he was 30 - of everything - and if you're intelligent, like he was, you just realised that you have nowhere else to go. You are landed with this gift which has reached it's sell-by date - not in terms of people wanting to listen to it but in terms of your own mentality, so you're stuck, saddled with this blessing that's become a curse. That's the way Jonathan Miller looked at it, which seems to make sense because you see how people fossilize if they try to occupy the same area... I try to keep ahead of it but it's a sort of race because you're trying to keep yourself interested because your biggest fear is being trapped with something you hate, or grow to hate...
But tell me, do you slavishly adore everything Peter's done or - ?

HD: God no. We're not uncritical.

CM: Good Because the worst thing that could ever occur is the sanctification of Peter Cook as the Princess Diana of Hampstead.

[weirdbeard]

NME - 17th February 1990
Launching a campaign that has shocked the music industry, a top BBC disc jockey is claiming that pop groups like New Kids on the Block are spreading "evil pro-drug propaganda".

Chris Morris - who has a show on both the BBC's Greater London Radio and BBC Radio Bristol - had his attention drawn to "backward masking" by a Manchester clergyman who played him a backwards recording of Queen's 'Another One Bites the Dust'. Chris claims that the words "smoke marijuana" were clearly audible.

This led him to check out records on the current BBC playlist. The results, he says, are "horrifying".

He now plays backwards recordings of chart hits on his show and asks the audience to make up their own minds as to whether or not the songs contain "drug messages".

"The real danger is that these messages are being put into the heads of young kids," he claimed. "If you play certain segments of Madonna's 'Dear Jessie' backwards you can hear her say quite clearly 'Have another sniff, you'll like it'. This is clearly a cocaine reference."

Morris claims that hidden messages - common practice amongst overtly Satanic heavy metal bands for over a decade - are now increasingly common in pop singles.

"You know at the end of the chorus on New Kids on the Block's 'Hangin' Tough' where they go 'Ruff ruff ruff'? If you play that backwards it sounds like 'Hurry hurry hurry' - getting louder. And when they sing 'Hang Tuff' - spin that backwards and it sounds like 'I snigger' or possibly 'Ice n**ger'. This betrays the intelligence behind the hidden messages because it's a phonetic pun. 'Ice' is the new form of smokable meta-amphetamine, and 'n**ger' is clearly either a gratuitous racist insult or a code word for a dealer. Originally the 'Ice n**ger' was the black dealer who sold you the stuff on the block."

'Block' is also slang for the drug Beta-blockers. Morris also claims that the single contains the hidden message "Your days go whizzing by when you're on heroin".

"Did you know," asks Morris, "that Madonna's name backwards is Annodam? And that Annodam is pig-Latin for The Year of Damnation?"

Other acts that are dabbling with hidden messages, according to Morris, are Jason Donovan and Kylie Minogue.

Morris's campaign has proved popular with listeners - many of whom have sent him records which he intends to smash up on the air. His refusal to play those records which he claims to be "tainted" has, however, brought him into conflict with the management at GLR.

"It's limiting my field of choice as a DJ. I don't think I could ever play the Carpenters again for instance."

On last Sunday's GLR show Morris claimed that he was visited in a dream by Karen Carpenter who warned him that the song 'On Top of the World' contains the backwards message "See that dog. Bite its head off. Ha ha ha."

"The human brain is capable of picking up these messages," claims Morris. CBS press officer Graham Hill was outraged at the DJ's attack on New Kids on the Block.

"He should keep his lying, straw-sucking yokel mouth shut!" he said. "New Kids on the Block were launched at an anti-drugs party and were solid supporters of Nancy Reagan's 'Just Say No' campaign. The group are totally opposed to drugs."

[weirdbeard]

Sunday Times - 6th March 1994
Pair of jokers; Steve Coogan and Armando Iannucci
Mark Edwards

`You know when you're watching a chat show and there's some really old lady on maybe she was a starlet in the 1930s and because of her past she's afforded tremendous respect. She'll ask, would you like me to sing?

And they'll say, yes, that would be wonderful. And you think, oh God. And she sings, and it lasts three minutes, and you think, please end soon. You can cut the atmosphere with a knife. She finishes singing, and everyone breaks into rapturous applause, but that applause is too rapturous, and the reason it's too rapturous is to deny that horrible atmosphere that's gone before. I love that. Steve Coogan is describing his favourite kind of television those moments when we, the audience, think we cannot possibly watch any longer, but know we cannot possibly stop watching. It is the kind of television that Coogan's alter-ego, Alan Partridge, specialises in. Coogan has been playing Alan Partridge for three years now, first in Radio 4's On The Hour, then in Knowing Me, Knowing You, and most recently in the television version of On The Hour, The Day Today, which arrived on screen earlier this year to universal critical acclaim. All of these programmes have been produced by Armando Iannucci, and all involve a style of comedy that derives its humour from a painstakingly accurate parody of current broadcasting styles. Thirty-year-old Iannucci and 28-year-old Coogan have taken their fondness for television's most hellish moments and converted it into what have quite simply been the funniest programmes to grace the airwaves in the 1990s. Partridge a creation of Coogan, his co-writer Patrick Marber and Iannucci has been dubbed ``that chat show host from hell (as if there would only be one chat show host in hell). His idea of a probing question for a French racing driver is: ``What's the biggest road you've ever driven on? Talking to a peer of the realm, he once enquired, ``Your autobiography... what's that all about? Minutes later, his lordship died. Partridge took off his trademark Pringle sweater, used it as an impromptu shroud and then suggested that his listeners observe a minute's silence. For those listening while driving on motorways, he gave an exhaustive list of the service stations they might like to stop at: ``On the M6 you have got Knutsford, Sandbach and Hilton Park, he said sombrely. ``Drivers on the M4 might like to pull off at Chippenham where, if I am not mistaken, you will find a Julie's Pantry.

It was Iannucci who first brought Coogan and Marber together, when, as producer, he put together the cast of On The Hour. He fashioned the painstaking way they worked to achieve the astonishingly accurate parody of news programming styles that gave the programme (and The Day Today) its edge. The idea for a spoof news show, and the broadcasting knowledge to achieve it, both came directly from Iannucci's wide-ranging BBC career.

He started out at Radio Scotland, which was, he says, ``big enough to have all the resources, but small enough to allow you just to muck around. I was working with engineers who also did the outside broadcasts, the sports, whatever so if I wanted to do a parody of a sports item, they could tell me: `No, no, if we were editing a sports package, we'd do it like this'. Iannucci moved down to London, where he found himself producing ``the old warhorses Just A Minute, The News Quiz and going on a training course in news production. The latter fired his desire to produce a parody news show. ``I heard Chris's stuff on GLR, Iannucci recalls, referring to Chris Morris, who ``anchored both On The Hour and The Day Today. ``It seemed very similar to what I wanted to do, so we got together, and spent the next six months coming up with the programme. Steve I met for the first time on the first day of recording. Listening to the pilot of On The Hour, Iannucci realised that an important element was missing: they didn't have any sports coverage. ``I said to Steve, could you do some kind of sports reporter? He just opened his mouth and out came Alan Partridge. A mixture of sports reporting cliches and simple ignorance, Partridge described the Boat Race thus, ``Once again Oxford and Cambridge, the undisputed grand masters of racing boats on the Thames, are in the lead, as they come under the bridge, the famed bridge that has cars on it. Partridge was soon given his own chat show. Despite snorting cocaine, gambling his wife's car away and hitting a child prodigy all on air Partridge is strangely likeable, mainly because he says the things we would all like the real chat show hosts to say. So, to a minor member of the royal family, came the question: ``What do you do?, and a Vivienne Westwood-esque designer was asked to agree that ``your clothes, though, they look ridiculous, don't they?. Nobody who saw both could fail to make the connection with Westwood's own appearance on Wogan (hosted by Sue Lawley), when the studio audience at first stifled giggles and then laughed openly as each new dress was paraded in front of them. ``What was great about the audience laughing was that that was simply the truth. Westwood said: `If they don't stop laughing I'll tell the models not to come on', and Sue Lawley asked them not to laugh. It was wonderfully pathetic.

On The Hour came just at the right time for Coogan. Despite appearances on primetime TV, and a regular gig as a Spitting Image voice, his early career as an impressionist was beginning to feel all wrong. ``I was known as a sort of cut-price Rory Bremner. Reliable, but limited. I knew that impressions made people laugh and were a shortcut to approval from an audience, but I respected other comedians because they got laughs without doing impressions, which meant they had to work a lot harder, and that what they were doing was more substantial. It wound me up. I wanted that respect. Coogan had been ``badly winged by a review of an earlier show of his at the Edinburgh Festival, in which Frank Skinner, nominally the support, ``blew me off the stage. So On The Hour provided Coogan with: a vehicle in which he could get some of that respect; a producer Iannucci who would make him work a lot harder; and a co-writer Marber who would also direct his triumphant return to Edinburgh in 1992, when he won the Perrier Award. That show featured several new characters, including Alan Partridge and Paul Calf, a drunken, student-hating northern lout, whose philosophy was very simple ``I'm a radical feminist. You've got to be these days if you want to get your end away and whose catchphrase, ``bag o'shite, reached ``loadsamoney proportions when Calf became a regular on Channel 4's Saturday Zoo.

Calf is written by Coogan, Marber and the stand-up comedian Henry Normal; and just as Coogan has a parallel career outside Iannucci's programmes, so Iannucci has a life beyond the spectre of Alan Partridge. He is a stand-up performer on his own and with David Schneider. He has presented several Radio 4 shows, including the archive-based Down Your Ear and the documentary series In Excess, and tomorrow his eponymously titled Radio 1 show begins a new series. ``In the first programme, he reveals, ``we're going to systematically lower the homosexual age of consent live on air. We'll have a policeman in the studio, and a series of gay men of increasingly lower ages kissing, and we'll see at what point the policeman steps in.

After the Radio 1 show, Iannucci will devote himself to Knowing Me, Knowing You, and then will, as he puts it, ``kick-start the television version of yet another of his radio productions, Loose Talk a show that ``uses stand-ups in a non-here-they-are-for-five-minutes sort of a way. He was originally scheduled to produce the whole series but pulled out. ``I never set out to be a producer, he explains, ``and I'd like to get out of it really. I'm going to take maybe a year away from producing to concentrate on writing. Producing takes time. It can lead to me being frustrated because I feel that I'm not giving 100% to each project, and it can also make the people I'm working with feel frustrated, so I'm trying to pare it down, not do two things at once.

Stepping down on the production work may mean that Iannucci will lose a little control over projects. If he devotes himself to writing, he will be working from home and he mentions that living outside London can make him feel a little out of things. He writes a column in a London section of The Guardian, and doesn't get to see it until someone remembers to fax him a copy.

Coogan feels even further removed from the London media world. His normal articulacy breaks down when he tries to explain it: ``My background is very different to Armando's and Patrick's. I don't... my background is a bit... it's just different, you know, it's just different. I'm from north Manchester, comfortablish, and I've got a healthy disregard oh God, I'm sorry, that sounded terrible, `healthy disregard'. I often have meetings I often have conversations with people where they'll use a word and I don't know what that word means. If the name of some author comes up in Knowing Me, Knowing You, and Alan hasn't heard of him and makes some faux pas, the fact is I'd never heard of him, and I was just giving my initial philistine response to the world around me.

``I feel sometimes that I've bluffed my way into a sort of camp where lots of people who've done more exams than me say nice things about me. I don't know whether I belong or not. Sometimes I sit down and watch The Late Show and I look at Sarah Dunant and I don't listen to what she's saying. I just think, why don't you take those ridiculous glasses off.''

Initial philistine response? Or common sense? You decide.

[An tSaoi]

I love the fact that nobody realised he was taking the piss with the backmasking.

[chocolateboy]

A few years ago, he was banned from broadcasting live on radio after announcing the death of Michael Heseltine (how the politician's friends and family must have laughed when they heard the news).

Victor Lewis-Smith, whose sense of humour died today.

[Portaccio]

Victor Lewis-Smith, whose sense of humour died today.

Ha! What a bitter, hypocritical cunt. The different between that and the Heseltine bit is that the latter was actually funny.

[Ronnie the Raincoat]

My objection is that Morris isn't facially deformed. To say that he is suggests bitterness that if not invalidating the opinion certainly lessens its credibility. The idea that Morris sees himself as some sort of wretched freak who hates everyone and just wants to get back at the cruel cruel world smells like serious bullshit, and the fact that it's VLS's opinion only makes it seem even more bullshitty.

I used the term "grotesquely ugly freak" from the Animals episode because what Morris' character does in that opening segment is almost exactly what VLS is doing in that article, only Smith actually means it. He's pissed off that someone who started off in a similar vein to him had become markedly more successful, well-known and liked, and his attitude reflects that. It's just pissy bitching.

I agree though that it would be fascinating to find out what makes Morris tick, to work out who he is, but that's a rather fruitless venture because he is obviously reticent to show much of himself; few interviews, no chatshow appearances, no autobiography etc. And even if someone could (and was to) deconstruct his mind, then it shouldn't be someone who holds such an obvious grudge against him.

Personally, I think he must be or have been at least mildly mentally ill. Not in a absolute cuckoo way, but maybe schizophrenic or deluded in some way. There are things in Blue Jam and My Wrongs which I'm not sure a perfectly sane person could come up with on their own. That's not to say his monologues are in any way based even slightly on his real experiences, but that there has to be some slightly cracked part of his brain that dwells in that warped view of the world.
.

This thread is fantastic but want to interject here- I think Chris Morris was treated for depression at some point.  I had a source for this, but I can't think what or where it is, so if I'm wrong, then skin me.

[Mob Bunkhaus]

"Sad to be a sad Uncle".

[An tSaoi]

This thread is fantastic but want to interject here- I think Chris Morris was treated for depression at some point.  I had a source for this, but I can't think what or where it is, so if I'm wrong, then skin me.

Somehow the fact that he's mentally ill makes me like him even more.

[Portaccio]

I'd be more shocked to meet someone who has never been treated for depression.

[An tSaoi]

What? It's not that common.

[Mob Bunkhaus]

The number of prescriptions for anti-depressants hit a record high of more than 31 million in England in 2006

There were 16.2m prescriptions for SSRIs alone.

[Retinend]

I'd be more shocked to meet someone who has never been treated for depression.

hi

[An tSaoi]

Facts

Wow. I feel less alone now.

[13 schoolyards]

I'm sure he said in at least one article about Blue Jam that it came about because he was feeling fairly low after all the fluffing around Brass Eye when through before it finally aired.  It's hardly surprising that being put through the wringer for eighteen months or so would leave you feeling somewhat less cheery about things.

Tho' to be honest, I've never thought his work was the result of anything but a man who takes his messing about very seriously.  Odd imagery and an interest in the weird isn't always a sign of mental problems*, especially when the oddness is being expressed in a creative work.

*_{(unless it is, in which case I'm in trouble)}

[Portaccio]

hi

Yeah, yeah, I expected that when I posted. However, it's very common to suffer at least one period of depression in your life. As posted above, someone must be taking all those damn antidepressents.

[klaus]

To add to the mix, here's the Barley Flak interview.  There's an unedited interview out there somewhere but I don't have the time to find it right now.

Also, the photographer, Jason Joyce, who took the photographs for the Blue Jam CD has three Blue Jam images, two of which I hadn't come across before.  Worth checking his website (in the Advertising photographs section).

And finally, that book on Morris has now been pushed back to 2010 (or so says Amazon UK). 

Interview:

Finally: We have the first sustained critique of youth culture's devolution into Kevlar post-irony, and (bonus!) we get it as hilarious British sitcom.

Nathan Barley follows its titular character — a twenty-something DJ, guerilla filmmaker and doltishly exuberant clothes pony — as he ruins the life of his involuntary mentor, Dan Ashcroft. Ashcroft has just published a screaming jeremiad in an urban lifestyle magazine eviscerating exactly the kind of dense narcissists — like Barley —who almost immediately begin lauding him as a genius.

Currently available from UK-based web-vendors on a universally compliant Region 0 DVD, it's already been on DVD in Britain for years. It also evidently wasn't considered that hilarious in Britain, where the show garnered only 5 percent of the available viewers for Channel 4's Friday night time slot. However, as the Sunday Times noted, Barley "more than made up for disappointing ratings with its disproportionate social impact," having by series' end "garnered more column inches than the return of Doctor Who." Why, you may ask, would Channel 4 consciously choose to broadcast this show at an hour when its target audience was getting dressed to go out? How could this have happened to a series that lists co-creator of The Office Stephen Merchant and Borat writer Peter Baynham as script consultants?

The short, paranoid answer is that the style mags tried to kill it. The series was panned by a former Sleazenation editor in the Times of London and Vice magazine's ur-ambiguous capsule review reads like it was written by a scared high school bully. (In two sentences it goes from calling the show "fucking funny," to saying a writer for the show "never gets laid.")

And frankly, they have cause for concern. Series creators Charlie Brooker and Chris Morris — respectively a media critic for the Guardian and a comedy writer routinely described in the British press as "sick" and "a genius" — have together set the new standard for satires of the art-damaged, radical chic set. Where Gawker's "Blue States Lose" and Robert Lanham's The Hipster Handbook have provided merely a derisive taxonomy, Nathan Barley models ecosystems, entire lifecycles of viral aesthetic trends. (Sample: Nathan's degrading prank videos are described as "Swift meets Jackass" by a young television executive who thinks Nathan is kidding when he replies, "Yeah! Only even faster.")

First covered in Flak by Scott Martinez, Nathan Barely is now likely to have a much belated second season. Below is the complete transcript of independent email interviews with series creators Chris Morris and Charlie Brooker about all of that. Originally conducted for a feature piece in Anthem (a "progressive culture" magazine completely not comparable to those parodied in Barley), the majority of the interview is improbably wonky and not intended for British comedy novices — which is probably why it's appearing here and not in a glossy bimonthly with Cillian Murphy and Daft Punk gracing its limited-edition alternate covers. You're welcome, Internet!

Flak Magazine: The two of you had spent several years trying to get Nathan Barley made into a series. What were some of the contributing factors that made it difficult to get the show broadcast?

Chris Morris: Making it was the main obstacle. You can't drive a car made out of drawings.

Flak: How did you approach Office co-creator Stephen Merchant to be a script consultant for the show? Can you recall any specific contributions he made to either the plot or dialogue in Nathan Barley?

CM: From ground level Steve's head looks very small, but actually it's the size of a shoe or television. He uses most of it to process data, which he does. He interrogated the scripts with enthusiasm and forensic scrutiny, made many useful suggestions, at least one of which was that episode 1 was too full (it originally contained the Preacher Man plotline), and that we should consider writing an episode 0. He was sometimes appalled at the stage directions.

Flak: These questions could also be repeated for Peter Baynham, who — as I understand it — just recently did some writing for that Borat movie.

CM: Peter Baynham provided insights which were as much a product of his mind as his brain. He wanted to know if Dan was an idiot and this prompted us to write the Dan/Weekend on Sunday interview scene (begins 0:38 of 6:54). Baynham is always funny, often brilliant and talks as if sticking to the point is pure evil. He received an Oscar nomination for totally writing Borat so your understanding is good.

Flak: Both of you pointed out in an interview that a key to the humor in the original TV Go Home capsule reviews was the exaggerated (and perhaps occasionally even unconsciously jealous) fury leveled at Nathan Barley. To what degree was the creation of Dan Ashcroft as a character born out of trying to preserve that aspect of the humor? Did personifying that rage lead the show into darker territory than expected?

CM: You can't really translate that aspect of the original columns so, brilliant as they are, we had to do without them.

Charlie Brooker: In some ways, Dan is Nathan in about seven years time. I think he did originally pop up as an idea during conversations about who the "angry observer" in the TVGH listings might be (as did Claire) — the angry narrator in the listings is clearly a hugely frustrated and confused sod, which I think was roughly the origin there. But the principal characters weren't cast in stone prior to casting — there was a long period of working with the cast and tweaking and bending the characters around their individual strengths and quirks. They changed quite a lot from the original basic starting points.

Flak: How much enthusiasm was there on set over the fact that this series was poking fun at a segment of the population whose sardonic self-posturing has traditionally served to elevate them from criticism? Was there much heady excitement over the concept of satirizing a group of people that consider themselves the world's premier arch-ironists?

CM: None. It's the only way to work.

Flak: Was there difficulty in getting Channel Four to agree to Region 0 encoding for the DVD? Did they have piracy concerns or was there a general understanding that this series would benefit from some kind of (ugh) global, interweb word-of-mouth?

CM: There may have been a stifled bleat.

Flak: Signing on Julian Barratt as Dan Ashcroft and Noel Fielding as his roommate, Jones, seemed like an impeccable bit of stunt casting given their comedic aesthetic.

How aware of their work were you prior to writing the series? Were the parts written with them in mind?

CM: Dan Ashcroft was written before we cast Julian but once he was in, he was all over it — for example, literally asking questions. Julian can produce a laugh with miniscule shifts in his trigonometry. Once someone is cast, you write towards their abilities, not away from them. Noel did a brilliant audition in which he claimed he'd been discovered in Borneo looking "like a frog in a puffer jacket."

Flak: In any event, are either of you weirded out by the fact that Ophelia Lovibond, the actress who played Mandy (go to minute 1:00 of 8:08), appeared in Roman Polanski's Oliver Twist almost immediately after working on Nathan Barley?

CM: No. But I was totally weirded out that Polanski raped her.

Questions For Charlie Brooker

Flak: Can you take me through the logic of doing the first Cunt synopsis at TV Go Home, then deciding to make it a regular feature, then deciding to make Nathan Barley a TV series? Does anyone own the rights to Condorman Fucks Up?

CB: The first listings were really just me yelping about a certain type of bell-end I suddenly found myself trying to avoid on a regular basis. At the time I lived in an area of London that was becoming increasingly gentrified — the local pubs (which had been grotty and uninviting and which I never dared venture into anyway) were being transformed into rather po-faced wooden-floored gastrobars permanently surrounded by a throng of bellowing duffers, who'd stand outside blocking the pavement, drinking and guffawing and talking at maximum volume about screenplays they weren't working on. If I'm honest, I think it was general resentment tinged with class envy on my part: I thought I had to work for a living and they didn't. Their lives seemed more fun than mine. And everything they said was loud and stupid. Wahhh, it wasn't fair. Re-reading the very first Barley listings, it's really just me getting annoyed at the very notion of upper-middle-class kids slumming it.

Anyway, when I wrote the first one, I figured no-one would know or likely care what I was banging on about. Turned out they did, or felt they did. Later, Cunt expanded to cover virtually any stripe of modern poseur I could think of. But really, the main joke was always the insane degree of anger blasted in Barley's direction. It'd still be quite funny if it was being hurled at a blameless postman or a friendly baker — although lobbing it at an imaginary cocksure twat WAS satisfying.

For the TV series, we effectively had to create a new Nathan from scratch — I mean, we knew he'd wear fashionable shoes, but he wasn't much of a character in the listings, rather a sort of identikit berk, put in the stocks and spat at. There were lots of different ways you could "do" the listings Nathan — you could easily turn him into a detached Patrick Bateman type for instance — but the wide-eyed, barging, try-too-hard, insecure-but-over-pleased arsehead was the funniest way to go.

Condorman Fucks Up would make a good film. So would Drunk Batman.

Flak: Unsurprisingly, I'm extremely perplexed by Vice magazine's review of Nathan Barley, which I've included below for your edification:

Nathan Barley

Channel 4

Anybody who's a target of this show either pretends they haven't seen it or they think it's boring. Truth is, it's fucking funny. There's even a nod to Vice on here, which is not surprising because we're Charlie Booker's [sic] favourite magazine. When he's not propping his half-formed "extreme VIZ" shtick up with Chris Morris' genius he sits on the bog crying and wanking off at how much funnier/popular we are than him, the fucking miserable cunt who never gets laid.

DAN ASHCROFT

CB: That "extreme Viz" line is probably quite accurate, in that the TVGH site as a whole was definitely heavily influenced by the early tabloid spoofs in Viz comic. As for Vice, we looked at some copies of Vice when developing Nathan and co, and despite expecting to hate it, I found bits of it hilarious. (Intentionally, I mean: some of the writing had a gleefully obnoxious, Jackassy quality to it). Incidentally, the SugarApe "Vice" issue from Ep5 wasn't an assault on Vice magazine — I think it just (understandably) ended up looking that way. As for their review — I can't tell — it's a sort of handshake-and-headbutt — but I'll assume it's positive, just for the hell of it.

Questions For Chris Morris

Flak: Nicholas Burns said in an interview that you dispatched him to parties and events specifically to meet people that you considered to be "a bit of a Nathan Barley." He also stated that some of these appeared later in the show. Do any come to mind?

CM: What we ended up using was Nick's Nathan-filtered versions of types of behavior. At a particularly cooooool event, someone dressed as a cowboy asked him for a light. When Nick offered him his lighter, the cowboy held up his already lit cigarette and noted triumphantly "I've already got one" as if that was about the coolest thing since Elvis.... and that smirk of idiotic self satisfaction is what you see on Nick's face when he says "I dunno" at the end of program one, part one.

Flak: In 2002, you were widely rumored to be behind a cleverly edited video of President Bush's War on Afghanistan speech and the now-defunct website, Smokehammer.com, on which it appeared. Considering that this is close enough to the kind of activity lampooned on Nathan Barley, how conscious were you that the show would be perceived as a dig at (admittedly) a dimwitted radical-chic portion of your fan base? How does it feel that both you and someone like Bansky have been described as "media terrorists" in the press? Did you actively pursue this project as a means of disassociating yourself from these specific satirical techniques?

CM: No no no no no.

Flak: News from your talk at Bournemouth University has been that Nathan Barley 2 will feature "a different set of characters," and explore "different situations than before." Will there be any continuity between the two series?

CM: Yup.

Flak: Can you provide even the slightest hint as to what fans might expect to see?

CM: Nathan's brother, Jason.

Flak: Can you disclose the projected airdate? Is shooting going on right now?

CM: No projected airdate yet, but it won't be before 2008. Shooting won't happen 'til we've completed the scripts — and we're working on those around more immediate projects.

Flak: Off the record: Is their any truth to the rumors about Channel 4's head of entertainment Andrew Newman feeling that the "Ivan Plapp" character hit a little too close to home? Did it affect the green-lighting of the second season at all? I promise I will not mention either of you as the source — not even obliquely.

CM: These are excellent rumors, but Andrew Newman is a closet masochist.

[neveragain]

I'd be more shocked to meet someone who has never been treated for depression.

I think a less debatable way of putting that would be 'someone who has never suffered from depression'. It is incredibly virulent, but not everyone gets treatment.

[Ballad of Ballard Berkley]

I adore the best of Morris' work as much as most on here, but I hate to be reminded of these interviews, most of which make him sound like a juddering cock. That revealing, unaffected interview about Peter Cook aside, I wish he would stop trying to be Chris Morris in interviews, because it sounds awfully forced.

[Glebe]

CM: Dan Ashcroft was written before we cast Julian but once he was in, he was all over it — for example, literally asking questions. Julian can produce a laugh with miniscule shifts in his trigonometry. Once someone is cast, you write towards their abilities, not away from them. Noel did a brilliant audition in which he claimed he'd been discovered in Borneo looking "like a frog in a puffer jacket."

I remember reading a little Boosh interview in some magazine (Nuts or Zoo or something like that), where Noel Fielding mentioned that, saying that a chuckling Morris mentioned his 'frog in a puffer jacket' quip one night when they were out having a drink or something, and how chuffed he was that Morris thought it was so funny.

[Beck]

I remember reading a little Boosh interview in some magazine (Nuts or Zoo or something like that), where Noel Fielding mentioned that, saying that a chuckling Morris mentioned his 'frog in a puffer jacket' quip one night when they were out having a drink or something, and how chuffed he was that Morris thought it was so funny.

Well that's me depressed.

I think he only comes off as a juddering cock in more recent press, quite logically in line with the decline of his work. I've always found the likes of the Simon Price interviews, those Standard articles, Richard Geefe and all the rest of it very good, but everything post-2000 is painful to read. He's simply not funny, nor insightful or interesting, and he's trying far too hard at something that previously seemed effortless to him.

[yesitis]

here's some shit about that shit soem of you wer talking about. maybe. i dom't know. leave me alone.

http://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/health-and-wellbeing/features/creative-minds-the-links-between-mental-illness-and-creativity-1678929.html

[An tSaoi]

Coming soon ... Jason Barley!