20/12/2011 The One Show

Barack Obama on his visit, what was going through your mind? Well, he

was running late, it was a big day, huge meetings, crisis meetings,

would he turn up at all? We had 22 minutes, we were told, no more than

that. And halfway through the interview, my earpiece goes, so, no

timings. So, I'm busking it. After a while, I can see frantic figures

behind me waving, but, reasonably well prepared, tried to be well

prepared, having chats with the editor, and just go in and do it.

But he took a transatlantic flight just to do that. Absolutely. We

were working for a long time to get at interview, up against other

people who were also trying to get it. So feeling that we had cracked

it, but also worrying that we might fail to ask the right questions.

What is it like sitting down to do an interview like that? I have got

butterflies, and mops and everything else. One thing we will

be talking about tonight will be Andrew Marr's new book. We will

also be finding about the preparations one little boy has put

in place to make sure that Santa has a smooth arrival to his house

this Christmas. Merry Christmas! What's going on there? But first,

it is the season of goodwill, and Christmas is alive and well on the

outskirts of Glasgow. Simon Boazman went to the notorious Easterhouse

to find out how they would be celebrating Christmas this year.

These words will mean little to people outside of Scotland, but

everything to the kids of Easterhouse. They're just some of

the names of the gangs which have a long history on these streets. This

area has been notorious for decades for deprivation, drugs and vicious

gang rivalry. But things seem to be improving. There has been a

reduction in gang violence. We are not here to add another tale of woe.

Instead, we have come to see a charity which is doing all it can

to bring together a community which has been so divided in the past.

Fare, Family Action in Rogerfield and Easterhouse, was set up in 1989

by local people to provide something for the kids to go. It

started off as a pool table in the back of a shop but it has grown

into a valued community resort and a rich chief executive. We work

with schools, we provide youth clubs in here, we take them on

holidays, to get them out of this environment, let them see that

there are opportunities and possibilities for them. But today,

the clubs are closed, and the kids are set to work to make campus for

the older people on the estate. To understand why such community

spirit is so important here, you have to understand the deep rooted

gang history of the area. Chris has been coming here for 22 years,

first as a child, but now, he works here. In the mid- 1950s, there were

no local shops or anything for people to do. Gangs evolve quickly

in that environment. Rivalries evolved between different streets,

just 100 yards away. Even superstars like Frankie Vaughan

were trying to get generations of youngsters to put down their

weapons. Today, projects like Fare are finally getting people from

different areas to work and play together. You can see how this is

bringing people together, to improve the community. Young people

do not really get the opportunity to meet older people and understand

them. Older people can be a bit wary about meeting young people and

understanding them. So it is taking a positive opportunity for young

and old to come together. One of those young people is Dean. Until

recently he was heavily involved with gangs, but now, he's a trainee

youth worker. It was just really a sense of belonging. When I was at a

very young age, I was three, and I had lost my dad. I had lost my dad

to a gang. So I did not get to know my dad. It was just belonging

somewhere, I felt I was needed. What kind of stuff were you getting

up to?. It was smashing windows, gang fighting, it was the adrenalin

rush, getting chased by the police and stuff. It was day-in, day-out.

Dean showed me the borders of his old gang territory. This patch of

land separates three traditional gang areas. Would you be cautious

going over to some of those areas now? I would be, but I'm starting

to progress with them, taking them to football and stuff, letting them

know that I have changed. Today, Dean is helping co-ordinate the

hampered deliveries. For all the perceptions people have about

Easterhouse, this is the real Easterhouse. I don't know that

there are many communities across the country which would generate

this kind of spirit. Time to start delivering the hampers to the

pensioners. It is estimated that only 5% of youngsters in

Easterhouse are active in gangs, but the territorial is an effect

them all. That's one reason we are travelling by minibus. I was

brought up in another area. that would have been a rival area?

Yes. They were big rivals, and still are. But now, we're working

together, showing young people that with schemes like this, we can come

together and mingle. The first deliveries are in a territory which

until recently team would never have expected to bring gifts.

think that's great. Does it help build a community? Oh, yes, you

give them a kiss, and it makes it better. Go on, then. Lovely. As we

were just saying, you reported from Easterhouse back in the 1980s.

I was working for the Scotsman. I was born in Glasgow but was not

brought up there. What were your impressions? It was a classic post-

war estate, where lots of people were shoved out of the centre of

Glasgow, into a very large area. Not enough pubs, cinemas, shops,

public spaces - what was there to do? That's why it has had so many

problems. What was nice about that film was, the people in Glasgow are

the warmest and funniest people you will find anywhere in the British

Isles. Great people, but they have had some very, very Hard times.

grew up in Dundee, do you go back to Scotland are not? Yes, I go to

Edinburgh, which is Glasgow's great rival. All of Scotland's modern

history is the fight between Glasgow and Edinburgh. Totally

different world views. Yes, I go back a bit, but not enough. I went

through a dimmer on my rickshaw, they gave me a lovely send-off. If

you're feeling a bit guilty about the Christmas trees which are being

chopped down, then here's Miranda Krestovnikoff to make you feel a

bit better. Though December is the season of goodwill, it can also

herald a season of guilt, as we buy Christmas trees that have been cut

down just for us. But it does not have to be a worry. Around 8

million real Christmas trains are sold each year in Britain. But

actually, they're not just for the festive season, because where they

grow, wildlife can flourish. A couple of decades ago, this man

gave up farming to concentrate on growing Christmas trees. On his 40

acre site near Wellington in Somerset, he grows around 70,000

trees in yearly blocks. The change has boosted wildlife. 20 years ago,

we used to farm potatoes, beef, that kind of thing. We never had

all the wildlife that we have got now. What is it about the Christmas

trees that they like? It never dries out, you never get a frost on

it. Last winter, when it was really bad, we got no end of wildlife

coming in underneath. If you're chopping these trees down, you're

taking the cover away, aren't you? It is kind of farming Forestry, if

you like. The wildlife just moves with it. There are hundreds of

Christmas Tree growers in the UK, and it is the bigger trees on the

plantations which provider winter bonus for many animals. Just being

in amongst them, you feel very little wind chill, it is like being

inside a great big, living duvet. And it is that which brings in all

sorts of wildlife during the winter. In spring and summer, some of the

birds prefer the smaller trees, which are more closely packed. What

about this one, with the the leader of the Labour Party, Ed Miliband,?

Yes, it has got a label because we know there is a nest in there.

was nesting in there? That would have been a blackbird. We will just

let them be, put a label on it, walk away, and come back several

weeks later to finish the pruning. Growers continually prune and cut

their trees, aiming to get the perfect shape. But wildlife can

cause problems for the very top. This can be the most important bit

of people's Christmas trees. Yes. That looks quite a good one. Yes,

it is pretty well perfect, the right length, with the right amount

of buds on it. But that one looks not quite so perfect. This one,

when it was young, quite soft, the birds tend to come in and pitch on

it, and of course, they break it. They can be repaired, but there is

a cunning ploy to stop it happening too often. And this is the

Christmas tree grow up's nifty trick, it is a mobile perch, and

the songbird comes along and sits on it, and everybody's happy. So,

these small forests dotted around the country are not just for

Christmas, they are a gift for wildlife all year round. Where do

you stand, real Christmas tree, or artificial ones, like us?

Delightful though it is, I have to say, real Christmas tree, so you

can smell it. I'm with you. What have you gone for this year on

yours? As ever, huge quantities of bad taste, and two mad cats trying

to bring it down from below. Moving on to your book, The Diamond Queen,

and you have spoken to friends, ladies-in-waiting, lots of

different sources for information - how would you sum her upper?

Although we are all supposed to be her subjects, she is the ultimate

servant of Britain, I think. She took over when she was a young girl,

and then when she became Queen, to serve, and she has done it every

single day, every day, she's reading the red boxes, attending

meetings, meeting people, handing things out, travelling. It is a

relentless life. Amazing energy, she has. Yes, her husband once said

that nobody would choose this life. But she has never failed to turn up,

it has been a remarkable story. in preparation for the book, you

look at every history book about the royal family since about 1917 -

what surprised you most? Well, among the particular stories that I

was struck by was the fact that she fell in love when the Duke of

Edinburgh when she was 13. That was when she was first struck by him.

And she appears never to have looked at anybody else. He's now 90,

she, 85, it is quite a love story, actually. When did she first see

him, then? She was with her parents, at Dartmouth, the royal naval

training college, and he was one of the young Cadets who was given the

job after looking after the Princess's. And he has been looking

after them ever since, if you think about it. We're going to have a

look at some of the extraordinary photos from the book. One of these,

the Queen in pantomime, who would have thought it? That's right.

During the war, at Windsor, she and Margaret, her younger sister,

appeared in pantomimes every Christmas. They were apparently

very good performers. Margaret was perhaps the more extrovert of the

two. But if you were asking, where did the Queen first learn to

perform in public? Answer, it was in a pantomime. Oh, no, it wasn't.

There's another great photo we have found, what's going on? That's

Charles trying out an early car, he has had a rather bigger cars since

then. Interestingly, the Queen is a very keen amateur photographer, she

takes lots and lots of photographs. I think the Queen's personal

collections of photographs and films, if and when they are ever

seen, will be a real story. Is that what she does most in her spare

No, she is a great outdoors person. She enjoys courses, she will not

wear a helmet -- she enjoys outdoor riding. She enjoys watching

television. She does a lot of the things the rest of us do. She is 18

television viewer. She says to me all the time, I never miss The One

Show, one and never misses The One Show. She thinks it's called after

her. Do you think the Jubilee will further cement a relationship with

Great Britain? In the last year, the relationship has grown stronger

and stronger. It has been an amazing year with the Royal Wedding,

the fantastic trip to Australia and this historic trip to Ireland, when

a member of the Royal Family has been for a century. The Jubilee is

going to be fantastic. We will look back on a 60 years. Not all of us

can remember it vividly, but it is a chance for everyone in Britain to

think about those 60 years and or she has contributed. I reckon it

will be a very serious party. Andrew's book is absolutely rammed

with content, it is a great read and the diamond -- The Diamond

Queen is out now. You have had a long career in journalism, hardly

ever gone under career -- undercover? I haven't, no. I think

now it wouldn't work. Not now! He they will say, you are Andrew Marr,

we can tell by the years -- they Anita Rani looks back to tell a

remarkable story of one of the pioneers of undercover journalism.

These days, we are used to journalists going deep undercover

to expose wrongdoing. But the story of undercover journalism is a good

deal older than you might think. This is one of a series of shots

taken of London which, when they were published in 1904, caused a

sensation. In the 1900, this area was blighted by poverty, but it was

a largely hidden world until all live now very decided to both

immerse herself in it. She was a staunchly middle-class Anglo Indian,

a graduate of the Royal College of Music he campaigned on behalf of

the poor. She took the same jobs they did, living their lives for

weeks at a time, and she arranged for a series of candid photographs

to be taken. Here she is pictured in an East End sweetshop. Dr Ruth

Livesey is an expert in Victorian Studies, who has looked into how

reporting was changing towards the end of the 19th century. There is

the introduction of mass education in the 1870s. For the first time,

we have a mass reading public. With this new readership come new forms

of reading material, of course, most notably, this so-called

sensation journalism. This new sort of journalism could expose

injustices. By doing this, it you could appeal to a mass market.

printing technology meant that photographs could be reproduced

widely in magazines. People were used illustrations but not seeing

it photographed. There is a bit of a thrill seeing, is that what is

going on just round the corner? Olive quickly realised how powerful

photographs could be. In 1904, she approached the influential peers

since magazine, with an idea for a series of illustrated articles --

The pictures were taken quite openly. Photography was new to most

people. To modernise, they look staged and theatrical, but they

brought to life her articles, which brought to life her articles, which

describes terribly hard lives. She This doctor is an expert in the

19th and early twentieth-century writing, who has studied her work.

She felt the best way to write about their lives was to go

undercover as a journalist. She worked as a flower girl, in a bar.

It gave her the opportunity to experience intimacies with other

working women that she never would have had a chance to do as a member

of the respectable middle classes. Olive caused a sensation with these

articles, she became a celebrity. That combination of sensationalism

and campaigning is still a powerful journalistic tool. Stuart Purvis is

a professor of journalism who understands the legacy left by

pioneers. The baths kind of undercover reporting is when you

have a sense that something is going wrong -- the best kind. You

get your cameras in the undercover, you see the wrong, and then the

wrong is corrected because of what to have discovered. It is still

terribly important. It has an amazing impact. If all of was still

alive, I am sure she would feel -- It is a fantastic legacy that she

has. Money she raised from a journalism and photography was used

to fund campaigns to alleviate poverty and advance women's rights.

Although her active campaigning was ended by her early death at the age

of just 37. An extraordinary story.

Matt Allwright joins us, merry Christmas. You have been involved

in lots of programmes that used secret filming, but how would you

prepare for an undercover reporter? On the BBC, you have do provides

evidence that something is wrong in the first place -- you have to

provide. We call it prima facie evidence, that is how you start to

seek permission to film Secret Love. Once you have got that permission,

it is a case of -- to film secretly. Then it is a case of getting into

the role, you have to create a story that feels authentic, that

you'll be able to sustain over the weeks and months you will be under

cover. Because if your cover is blown, there can be serious

repercussions all but it is very gruelling mentally and requires a

great deal of preparation. And a real knack to draw out that

information. You have to be the sort of person that people want to

talk to. You have two jobs going on at the same time, you have to have

a split personality. The guys who do this say it is absolutely

exhausting. Some areas of journalism have been getting bad

press at the moment. When secret from him works, it can be

incredibly successful. It can, it gets great result and it makes for

gripping viewing. In 2003, there was a show called the Secret

policeman's. A reporter called Mark Daly went undercover for seven

months full-time with the Greater Manchester Police, investigating

institutional racism, living as a policeman, passing through training.

He was doing the job, but at the same time, he was trying to find

that evidence, following the story. The results made for some very

shocking viewing, as we can see it. This is a moment when he has gained

the trust of one of his colleagues, and the guy is speaking incredibly

That is the sort of thing that you wouldn't get any other way, that

kind of frank expression. You can only really get from under cover

filming. It is worth saying that the programme also found that

officers like that, who spoke like that, were in the minority and it

did not reflect the greater Manchester Police as a whole. But

it did result in 10 officers resigning, 12 more being

disciplined and three police trainers being removed from their

posts. As former editor of the Independent, or do you hope will

come out of this inquiry into ethics? -- what do you hope. It has

been a terrible time but it is important that we don't have a

state control of the press. Many of the politicians are very sore over

the MPs' expenses scandal and we don't want them using this to clamp

down. The best undercover reporter, the most successful one, was Mazher

Mahmood, the so-called fake sheikh, who worked for the News of the

World, which was the first victim of this terrible phone hacking

stuff. What ever you think of that paper, he was a very brave, very

successful undercover reporter, who exposed quite a lot of wrong doing.

Thank you. It is not long until Santa Claus

sets off on the North Pole to deliver all those presents to

children around the world. Lucy Siegle has been to meet basic year-

old from just outside of Cirencester, who was worried that

Santa might not be able to get down his chimney, so he started to think

big. Really big. Christmas Eve when children all

over the world are fast asleep, dreaming of opening their stockings

on Christmas morning. Santa Claus will be busy travelling from home

to home, to deliver their presence. -- presents. 16-year-old boy wants

Santa Claus to deliver his presence the traditional way, down the

chimney. His mum is having a new house built at Lower Mill Estate.

We were looking over the plans of our new house, Leo was getting

quite involved. Santa won't be able to fit down, there is no chimney,

he said. Tongue-in-cheek, I said, or write a letter. As well as

writing his letter, he wrote one to the owner of the estate. Dear Mr

Paxton. I think Santa Claus will get stuck. Please can you help.

got this wonderful letter from 6- year-old Leo, and he was dreadfully

worried about his mum and dad's Jimmy not been big enough on the

house they were building. letter was passed to the architect

to see if he could design a Santa friendly chimney. We found out more

about Santa's dimensions and of his sack. A mathematician gave us an

equation that we followed, plugged it into a 3D computer model, and we

physically low at Santa into the chimney that we had built on the

The prototype has been tested -- has been finished and is ready to

be tested. This is a typically precise experiment. The equation

has been worked out by mathematicians. It used to puzzle

us, how Santa could travel around the world on Christmas Eve and

deliver presents to every body. But absent, we'd been strange behaviour

in particles called neutrinos -- but at CERN. If Santa can use those,

he can do anything. Somebody has taken the time to work this out for

you, so you must be very grateful. A lot of children ask how to get in

if they haven't got a chimney. We can use the miniaturise --

miniaturisation technique, or it is the magic heal. If you have that,

you'll be able to get in to deliver See you on the other side.

There is always a chance that the chimney might not yet be right, so

everyone is a little worried. So, the oh got his wish for a Santa

friendly chimney, just in time for Christmas -- Leo got his wish.

He has made it down, that's brilliant news. Andhra, let's set

the scene, it is Christmastide, you tiptoe down the stairs for a glass

of warm or, and you are faced with Father Christmas. The injury that

everybody wants. What question are you asking. OK, tens of millions of

paths, almost everyone with a glass of whisky or sherry. They'll always

gone by the morning. Is he really safe, driving that thing? That is

That is a good one. What happens in your household, Christmas Day?

that turkey. I stagger up, presence around the tree. Not going to tell

you what time the first bottle is opened, because I think that is

disgraceful. The day starts to flow more smoothly, and it is everybody

else. Telly and far too much to eat. That is all we have got time for.

Thanks ever so much, all the best with your book, The Diamond Queen.

Tomorrow, we will be getting hot in the kitchen with Gordon Ramsay, and