02/10/2012 The One Show

Hello and welcome to the programme. Tonight's guest is Ian Hislop. It

is as if butter would not melt. Please welcome Ian Hislop! I'm not

sure that was quite emotional enough. Shall we? Come on! That's

man's love. That's better. We will be letting our emotions run wild

later. That's pretty crazy for me. Well, we will be speaking about

your new show, Stiff Upper Lip, and finding out what emotions you bring

out in the people of Britain.. out in the people of Britain..

we will be asking you for a caption to this picture. Have a think about

that, you have about 25 minutes. If you at home would like to join in,

you can let us know what your caption would be. Sadly, tomorrow

and Thursday sees the funerals of police officers Fiona Bone and

Nicola Hughes. Their deaths have resulted in the usual calls to arm

the police, but has policing really become more dangerous? This is one

of the darkest days in the history of Greater Manchester Police.

big news when police officers are big news when police officers are

killed in action, and the recent events are no exception. The

killings of PC Fiona Bone and PC Nicola Hughes came as a huge shock.

In the past five years, thousands of police officers have been

assaulted in the line of duty, and five have been killed. Each death

brings an understandable public outcry. There are calls for police

officers to be armed. But what I want to find out is, is policing

more dangerous today than ever before? The modern police force was

set up in London in 1829. The first Constable to be killed was PC

Joseph Grantham, just one year later, kicked in the head whilst

arresting a drunk. These new recruits for the British Transport

Police are taking part in unarmed defence training. If something is

going to happen, it is going to happen. It is a case of having the

skills to deal with the situation. Do you think your role is any more

dangerous than that of your male colleagues? I don't think so. Often,

women can calm the situation down, so there are benefits. What about

your family? My mum and dad have always supported me, they have

never discouraged me from this line of work. These recruits think

unarmed tactics are more important than carrying firearms. I do not

believe the average police officer needs are done on his belt yet. If

we aren't, the criminals will be wanting to take the next step.

man is a former officer who was with PC Fletcher, the moment she

was shot outside the Libyan embassy in 1984. It was just a normal day.

Demonstration outside the Libyan embassy. There were 10 a penny then.

A routine event turned nasty. I was devastated. I broke down, I

wondered why it had happened. When I saw the photographs of those two

officers in Manchester, it brought it all back. I knew what their

family and friends and colleagues were going through. I joined the

service in 1972. The only protection I had was a small wooden

truncheon. We had respect for the public, the public had respect for

us. What do you think about it? some respects, I can understand it,

because the need is there for them to carry all of that equipment. I

would probably hesitate to approach a policeman these days and ask for

something, because they just look out of touch and very aggressive.

People get so shocked when they hear the stories of police officers

dying. I think because it is so rare in this country. He is right,

it is rare. In the past 100 years, 149 police officers in England,

Scotland and Wales have been killed and the line of duty as a direct

result of violence. The place where, as an unarmed police officer, using

to be most at risk of death, his New Zealand, in the post-war period,

where the death rate appears to be two or three times what it is in

Britain. Right at the very beginning, in the 1840s, you have

got five was six cases where police officers have been attempting to

make arrests, and have been beaten to death by crowds. In the last

century, the Highers number of police officers killed in any

single year was six, and that was in 1982. Some of those were at the

hands of the IRA. Since then, the only year which has come close was

1991, when five were killed. We can never predict violent murders. If

you look at how many assaults there have been on police, it was running

at around 28,010 years ago, but now it seems to be 7,000.

circumstances in which the two women died were shocking and its

extreme, but do you think the mood here is guilty of exaggerating the

risks faced by police officers? and the press is fairly historical.

Two weeks ago, all policemen should be put in jail because of

Hillsborough. This week, they are all heroes, the issue beyond. You

need a bit more distance. Most senior police officers have said,

the Way you Are safest is if the crowd does not be due to death, but

helps you a rest the person. So, the closer you are to the community,

in other words, not armed, the better you are. That's my view.

Your new series starts tonight on BBC Two. You start in the 18th

century, and you describe this country as a surprisingly emotional

place. Let's have a look. English were not known for reserve,

they were known for exuberance, particularly the women. The Dutch

scholar Erasmus came to London and wrote home, wherever you come, you

were received with a kiss by all. When you take your leave, you are

dismissed with kisses. When you return, kisses are repeated. They

come to visit you, kisses again. They leave, you kiss them all round.

Should you meet them anywhere, kisses in abundance. You cannot

move without kisses. The whole thing sounds like a medieval

lover's paradise. So, as a nation, we were quite the floozy.

absolutely. The thing the British were known for at various points in

history was being over-emotional. In the 18th century, if you were a

proper, civilised, decent man, you worked a lot, you show people you

were civilised by weeping. Surely that's Italy, isn't it? We were

exactly like that. When did it change? It changed when we decided

we could not be like France. Essentially, it was the French

Revolution, the French, in a very major way, getting over-excited,

and murdering everyone, and everybody running wild. The British

establishment had one look at that and thought, we need to control

this, we need to control ourselves, and we need to stop being like them.

You referred to Nelson as a romantic hero - so, who in your

opinion sums up the stiff upper lip? The real prototype was the

Duke of Wellington. The Victorians made a real fetish out of the Duke

of Wellington. He was the man who showed no emotion, he was reserved

and restraint. There was an anecdote about him from the Battle

of Waterloo, standing next to the Duke of Uxbridge, and a cannon ball

takes off the leg of the Duke of Uxbridge. He turns to him and says,

by God, I think I have been hit, I have lost my leg. Wellington goes,

my God, so you have. That's it. This year, we have had the Olympics,

we have had any number of different events, which have had us blubbing.

We were crying everybody crossed the finishing line. Do we still

have a stiff upper lip? Again, it is ambivalent in this country. If

you watched the Olympics and the Paralympics, everybody was weeping.

I think it is great. But you had a very mad event just before that

with the Jubilee, with the flotilla of little boats. The weather did

not help that one, did it? No, the weather did help! It is almost as

if we were teasing ourselves to become emotional, and then, saying,

no. The flotilla was really five hours getting drenched in the rain

and everybody pretending it was not happening. We're fine! We are

British, this is absolutely right, the Duke of Edinburgh is going to

end up in hospital, fair enough. The people singing with the Mascari

are coming down them, everyone got hypothermia. But no, we are not

going to admit it. What about you, do you have a stiff upper lip?

very, very touchy-feely. Are you? No. The last time I genuinely cried

was when Piers Morgan went to America. The fact he had a return

ticket? Then I would have cried again. Well, we wondered what

emotion stirred inside people when they saw a picture of somebody

famous, and that person in fact was you. Let's see what they had to say.

It makes me feel happy. That makes me feel smug. Impish. Sometimes I

just think of him as a little twerp. Happy. Happy indeed. He has got

more hair than me, which is quite upsetting. He is quite chirpy,

happy and bright. How does he make you feel? You look quite similar.

Yes, people have said that before. He is beautiful. That's the best

one we've had, he will love that. He has got a lovely little smiley

face. You want to go like that to his ears. I think you got away with

that, just about. Just about, I liked the baby, that was terrific.

And the other little toddler said, give him a kiss. No reserve there.

And you had some female fans - she thought you were sexy. Yes, that

will do! We have kept her number. Every now and again, an

environmental disaster looms on the horizon, threatening the end of the

world as we know it. In the 1980s, it was the turn of acid rain.

so long ago, a deadly enemy coming from the skies seem to pose a

serious threat. The Government is trying to cut sulphur dioxide

emissions from power stations... Lakes and forests were being

poisoned. Scientific investigations suggested fish would die in their

millions. With acid rain, we are all constantly told that there is

no proof. But proof was quickly established when the very fabric of

civilisation started to feel the effects of acid rain. Acid rain

knows no boundaries, it is even eroding some of the world's most

famous buildings, turning their facades into nothing more than rock.

But now, acid rain is rarely mentioned - is that because it was

a false alarm, or was the problem solved? What became of it? This

professor from the University of no, has been investigating the

phenomenon for 30 years. What causes it? When we burn coal,

Salford comes off, as sulphur dioxide, which is converted into

sulphuric acid up in the atmosphere. It is then washed out in the rain.

But as industrialisation increased, there was more acid rain. Gases

created by industry was swept across to Scandinavian, falling to

earth as acid rain. Suddenly, around the 1960s and 1970s, we had

dead fish in the water, and we thought, we have got to do

something about this, this is not going to go away. In the laboratory,

it is easy to see the effects of acid rain on stonework. Sulphuric

acid, in a strength which mimics many years of acid rain, has little

effect on hard as stone, like granite. But on soft limestone,

used extensively for building, the reaction is obvious. It fizzes away.

The legacy of acid rain can still be seen. This is York Minster, and

inside the beautiful interior, the stonework is pristine. Outside, it

is a different story. The stonemasons at York Minster have

been dealing with the effects of We we place the stone with brand

new stone to maintain the safety of the building, as well as the detail.

If we didn't do this there would be a chance that some stones would

become dangerous and the possibility that one could fall off.

From up here, you can see five power stations, so whichever way

the wind blew the Minister was bound to be affected. Acid rain was

once one of the biggest environmental panics we faced. Now

it's faded from the headlines, so what happened? The answer was

international co-operation on limiting emissions. The amount of

sulphur that is produced in Europe has decreased by more than 60% and

in the UK there's been a 90% or so reduction in sulphur emissions, so

it has been very successful. What's specific things happened, which

made a difference to acid rain? the UK, at power stations, there

was a shift from coal to gas and this led to a marked decrease in

the amount of sulphur emitted. Long-term damage was done and the

gas is still pumped out, but the area affected by it has diminished

greatly. It's amazing to think that 30 years ago this huge ecological

problem dominated headlines and what's even more remarkable is by

countries coming together it was largely solved. Lucy, what exactly

did we do to get rid of the problem? We did two things. We

switched and scrubbed. Shall I explain? We switched fuels to ones

that had less sulphur. The coal industry was in decline anyway and

British Coal was high in sulphur and we changed toil and natural gas.

That having hardly any sulphur. The other thing, which was really

clever technology, we scrubbed the air in the big chimney stacks at

power stations, so they have electromagnetic particles and they

basically trapped the sulphur inside or mixed the gases with lime

and the sulphur falls to the ground, so they cleaned the air, which is

easy. It sounds easy, but I'm sure it was hard to get to the point.

Then the other thing was that we began to outsource a lot of our

industry, so actually acid rain might be an historical story for us,

but scientists are very worried about it in India and China and

even in parts of eastern Europe, where there is a lot of heavy

industry. That's a successful British export? Yes! Another one.

On the subject of global warm, -- warming, the Government has come up

with the green deal, but it's quite confusing. It's not clear. Yes. The

central idea is to make us all invest really in energy yom

provements. We know we have leaky - - improvements. You know we have

leaky old houses and energy bills are going through the roof, so what

we need to do is start bringing in quite expensive stuff like cavity

wall insulation and property loft insulation and they want us to take

out loans, which will then be paid off through our savings in our

energy bills. So, kind of, it could be revolutionary, but it's become

so complicated I think it's fair to say it's going through a difficult

phase at the moment. The green deal has been launched, but what

nobody's quite sure about is how it will be financed and what

particular product is going to look like. And whether, actually, it

will be attractive to us all, so that we'll actually do it. It's got

to make financial sense? It does. It's the golden rule, the pay-back

time doesn't exceed the savings and it's about the balance. There are

so many factors at the moment. That's with the economy and other

things. And the debt, if you have the improvements, the debt stays

with the house, not with the people who live there, so if you buy a

house you're taking on that debt? Yes, that would be part of it

possibly. They would buy in from the big companies and big DIY

stores and some are keen and some may be not. Thank you so much. Ian,

we have got a little game for you now. It's a headline round to get

you warmed up for the brand new series of Have I Got News For You.

As we have been staying, the media loves to exaggerate, so now it's

time to play Headlines of Doom. We have taken headlines from every

newspaper editor's favourite industry magazine, apocalypse Now.

These are real headlines that didn't really materialise in the

end. Lucy, you can help out. A confering round. Here's your first

head -- headline of doom. It's 2008, are we all going to blank next

Wednesday? Die? It's not Salford, is it?

LAUGHTER That's one for the DG! Very good.

No, in fact, Lucy you should have listened to your friend, the answer

is going to die next Wednesday. For a bonus, what was the disaster?

Swine flu. SARS. Mad cow disease. A comet, as strayed. No, only one

answer. The Large Hadron Collider that could have created a mini

black hole. Here's your second headline of doom. This one is from

2006. Blank fears soar sky-high. The clue's on my top. Bird flu.

It is. It's all about the beginning of the bird flu pandemic. Your

final one and this one is from the year 2000. Blank ate my marriage.

The big clue is the date. Any idea? May 2000. John Cleese? I don't know

which marriage that would be. The year is significant. The K Y2 bug.

He's got it. Very good. The millennium bug, a couple fled to a

remote farm house and stockedpiled food. The world survived and their

marriage tragically didn't. Good effort. Well done. Now, Miranda is

at the Penallta Colliery looking at art project that has been made in

memory of the pit ponies. She will take to the skies. By the way, it's

pronounced Penallta Colliery. Working horses are part of our

heritage. They pulled ploughs and toed canal boats, but there's not

such a rosy glow surrounding the image of a pit pony, working

underground in the cramped conditions of a mine. Horses

working down mines have been recorded as far back as 1750. At

first there weren't that many, but all that changed in the mid-19th

century, when it was made illegal for boys under ten and all women to

work in coal mines. Women and chirp's primary job down the mines

was to carry coal. Without them, another way of doing this had to be

found, so horses were sent down to replace them. Sometimes this meant

they would have to be lowered down the shaft in a harness and once

underground many spent the rest of their lives there. 10 metres

beneath the surface of Yorkshire, at the National Coal Mining Museum,

can I see how they used to live. It's not the best of environments

to be living in. No access to the sunshine. It's a hard life and

fairly short life too, unfortunately. How much shorter was

the life down here for a pony than above ground? Probably looking at

half, I would have thought, five years at the most, most -- maybe

ten. They may have been worked hard, but some miners formed very strong

bonds with their charges. 70-year- old John Carrington worked with pit

ponies when he started aged 15. were all in a dangerous environment

and you depended on him and he depended on you. If I pony wouldn't

go down a road there were a reason, whether it was gas or the roof were

coming in. Whether they could hear the cracking or smelt the gas, I

don't know. He has got something there he knows and you don't know

and you don't want to find out. the late 1800s the number of horses

down mines reached a peak of an estimated 200,000. But, as

mechanisation arrived, horses started to be relaced by machines

and their numbers fell. Yet, as recently as 1961, there were still

around 11,000 horses working in the collieries and some of the last

ones like Jake here, were only finally retired at the end of the

1990s. Jake is now 20 years old and is living out his days with other

pit ponies in the Taff Valley. This part of industrial history has now

come to an end, but at the sight of -- site of the former Penallta

Colliery in South Wales, they've been a lasting monument, to make

sure they don't fade from memory, but it's way too big to see

properly from ground level. What I'm standing in is just a nostril

and to take on the full effect, I'm going up in the One Show balloon.

Joining me is Mick Petts, the artist who came up with the design

and this flight will be very special for him. He's never seen it

from the air before. Are you excited? Yeah. As we rise, the true

form stands to reveal itself. brilliant morning, the first time

I've been up in the air. Absolutely I've been up in the air. Absolutely

brilliant. The reason for having the pony in this kind of shape,

leaping hopefully in an expressive way, is symbolising the final

release of the pit ponies. Taking over seven months to build, it's

200 metres long and nearly made up of thousands of tonnes of coal

shale, so this could be Britain's most asthetic slag heap. When it

was completed one last thing remained, giving it a name. One of

the first people who walked over the pit pony was one of the ex-

miners and he stood on it, pointed to the ground and said, "This pit

pony is going to be called Salt p Sultan." Working pit ponies may

have disappeared from this country for ever, but this vast monument

will serve as a reminder of the hundreds of years that those ponies

helped keep our homes warm by working down the mines. It's so sad

that they spent nearly a lifetime that they spent nearly a lifetime

in darkness. What a beautiful place. It is. As we mentioned, the 44th

series of Have I Got News For You starts next week. Yeah. You did say

that you feel responsible for making one public figure really

popular. Can you enlighten us? number of people have said that

Boris Johnson was made by the programme. It's quite a serious

charge. If he's Prime Minister you could have been partially

responsible. I think we'll have to go to jail. Will Ferrell was saying

he felt responsible for President Bush getting into power, so satire

can be dangerous? Yeah t can backfire very, very badly. What if

Number Ten called and said, "The Prime Minister would like to come

on and host."? I think the produces would say yeah, get him on.

wanted Tony Blair? I would love Blair to come on. It would be

marvellous. Peter Mandelson on my side. We could have a big fest.

could be watching now. We have a caption competition. We'll get your

response to this. No, no, we can't have the public being funnier than

me. Shall we do theirs first. yeah. All right. We have had loads

of them in. Brian marshal says, "Come on Ed, your speech wasn't

that bad." Brian, who is possibly a Private Eye employee, "It's the

only way to read Private Eye in peace." Sal says, "Over here boys,

I think I've found the economy." That's very good. Tim says, "We'll

soon have you nought dear, the fire brigade are here now." James said,

"Ahead of the Conservative Party Conference, David Cameron finally

manages to shake off Nick Clegg." Simon with my personal favourite,

which is, "Fenton, Fenton, Fenton." Ian, time for yours? They are all

extremely good. I thought that was looking -- that was me looking for

ideas for my next series. I'll have to steal most of them for next week.