Other Lives Watching Ourselves: 60 Years of TV in Scotland

We first got television in Scotland in 1952. 1952, that's the year

the Queen became...well, queen,

Prime Minister Winston Churchill scrapped identity cards,

the first ever passenger jet flew across the Atlantic,

and the year Nirvana were formed.

Eh? Well, you know, I'm not so sure about the last one

but the other three are a lock, I'm telling you.

One of the most brilliant things that television does

is show you other people's lives.

Some of the best bits from the last 60 years of television in Scotland

aren't from big budget dramas or breaking news stories,

but moments from documentaries

where a window opens to someone else's world and we can take a look.

I mean, what must it have been like to travel from the rainforests

of Peru for ground-breaking surgery in Scotland?

Or to be a shipbuilder during the Clydeside work-ins?

Or to serve life plus 20 in Barlinnie?

The last one, of course, I know all about.

Having watched the documentary.

'The five men kept inside this high security unit

'are all convicted killers.

'Since they were brought from various other prisons to this unit,

'violence in the Scottish prison system has fallen dramatically.

'In this yard, the casual way in which the inmates and the staff mix

'is the essence of a unique experiment in the world's penal systems.'

1965, attempted murder of a prison officer.

1968, attempted murders of three prison officers.

Common assault's another two.

1972, serious assaults on four prison officers.

So all together, you're doing a life sentence

-plus 26 years for various assaults?

-Yeah.

How does this prospect hit you?

Well, it's deflated me somewhat, you know?

There was no fear that those guys, the inmates,

were going to do anything untoward.

This was, and they understood this,

their last chance.

They believed that the next stop for them was Carstairs,

the state mental hospital.

They had a great fear of that,

so they recognised this was their last chance they were going to have.

I'd just come from a cage.

-In Inverness?

-In Inverness prison,

and I'd been kept there for four and a half years.

I'd nothing.

Any food was thrown under the cage.

There was no talk or dialogue between me

or any of the prison people there.

And to be thrown into this situation, you know...

It offered me something, whereas the cage existence...

I became so alienated to the outside world.

It became so alien to me

that it was hard to understand that there was a world outside.

Someone was trying to boil a kettle up, boiling a kettle of water

and it was taking a long time.

And an official from the Scottish Office looked at the kettle

in some frustration because it was taking a long time to boil,

and said, "Boil, you BLEEP!"

And at that point, Jimmy Boyle wheeled round and looked at him,

and the guy said, "No, the kettle!"

The Special Unit was hugely controversial.

It's detractors felt it was rewarding bad behaviour

instead of punishing it. The prison governor let the BBC in

because he was hoping that showing the public what it was really like

might make people think again.

We're doing something here that's a lot more positive

than anything else I've ever seen in the penal system.

Jimmy discovered sculpture in the special unit

and found a new reason for living.

Reporter David Scott asked the prison governor

what he thought would happen to Jimmy Boyle.

A complex one. His history doesn't help him in any way.

One can only say that one cannot see release for him

for a very long time indeed without trying to put any term on it.

-What about Larry?

-I suppose, as he says himself,

the most hopeless case of all.

The governor was right about Larry.

Two years after this programme was made,

Larry died of a drugs overdose in his cell.

But Jimmy Boyle? Well, we all know the governor was wrong about Jimmy.

He served six more years and while he was still in prison,

he got married to a psychiatrist he met on the unit.

He lives in the South of France now.

Jimmy Boyle is unquestionably

the special unit's biggest success story,

but the controversy finished it off in the end.

It was finally closed down in 1995.

Right from the start of television in Scotland, the programme makers

knew that they ought to be putting real Scots on screen.

They just hadn't worked out how to do it. Here's what they tried.

Well, ah'll tell ye what ah'm like.

When ah look in the mirror, ah see a face that hunger

and hard times have left a mark on.

It wis unemployment left this scar across mah brow.

Ah've been a Clydeside Red.

Ah'll put the fear o' god in them down the House of Commons.

'It's scripted, of course.

-POSH VOICE:

-'No way they were going to let a real Glasgay keelie

'blather into the microphone back in 1957.'

When ah raise mah voice, it's the Hampden roar ye hear.

No, the nearest you get to unscripted real people here

is this rather stagy interview with David Niven and Deborah Kerr.

In that well-known part of Scotland, the South of France.

Turns out she's one of us - sort of.

What about Helensburgh, Deborah?

I don't really remember much about Helensburgh naturally

because I was very young when I left, but I do remember one thing.

I remember losing a sixpence I'd been given and screaming for a week.

So you see, I started off as a very good Scot,

screaming about losing money!

It's a shame we can't bottle these two off

like Sheena Easton at Glasgow Green.

Listen to David's rather patronising idea

of the television audience.

We all like something for nothing, and that's what television is!

No, I think all joking aside it's wonderful,

especially for people in rather lonely parts of the world.

Telly - perfect for Scotland. Home of the tight-fisted loner.

In 1967, STV made the brilliant documentary

The Bowler And The Bunnet.

The '60s was a time of huge change in industrial Scotland.

The old heavy industries were under threat.

The old hierarchies were starting to crumble.

This film shows a vanishing world.

This is where the crunch comes for a Govan shipyard,

for Govan itself,

for the whole business of building ships on the Clyde.

Fairfields has been modernised at a cost of millions,

but it's going down.

If it dies, a whole community is going to die with it.

-13 million

-BLEEP

-pounds of orders and they've gone

-BLEEP

-bust?!

-Gonna be some bloody Christmas(!)

-That's nothing new.

This goes back a long way.

Aye, it goes back a long, long way.

By 1967, Sean Connery had made five Bond films

and he was getting fed up with 007.

He felt he was being typecast and wanted a change.

You can really feel in scenes

like this how much he's enjoying himself.

It was a fight to the death. And this is the death.

Harland And Wolff, one of the proud names

in Clyde shipbuilding, is a graveyard.

And there are others.

Henderson, Simons-Lobnitz, Blythswood, Hamilton, Inglis...

Sean didn't just present this, he directed it too.

The switch from Hollywood superstar to Govan documentary maker

couldn't be more extreme,

but he threw himself into it and did a pretty good job.

And when it's your job to sack 1,000 men at the stroke of a pen,

you can't be sentimental about the men.

When it's your job to take the sack at the drop of a hat,

you can't be sentimental about the boss.

The script was written by Cliff Hanley.

It's a bit poetic compared to documentaries today.

The boss takes the gravy when the going's good.

When things look bad, he sells out, takes his money and vanishes.

Cliff also wrote the Oscar winning Seawards The Great Ships

and the words to Scotland The Brave.

# High in the misty highlands out by the purple islands

# Brave are the hearts that beat beneath Scottish skies

-# Wild are the winds... #

-I'll stiffen ye!

I'm trying tae drill here!

Sorry!

We found this next clip of Sean

in a previously unbroadcast interview,

talking frankly about what this documentary meant to him.

It awakened all sorts of dislikes

and likes that had obviously been kind of dormant in me,

particularly against management.

It's clear listening to him here it was a very personal project.

My experience anyway since I left school, which was at 13.

In this country, I have never found a particularly sympathetic

or a really good functioning management

in this country in my experience.

They're, as a rule, too sort of greedy.

Four years later, another documentary picks up the story

of Fairfield shipyard, as Ted Heath's new Conservative government

announced they were ending the industry subsidy.

Check out this government minister. Oh, he cares, he really does(!)

I hope nobody believes that the government doesn't care.

I got this impression slightly when I was up in Glasgow recently.

We do care deeply about these things.

Watching these documentaries makes you realise some things never change.

Politicians, for example.

But other things seem like they're happening in another universe.

Can you imagine the unions pulling this off today?

The world is witnessing the first

of a new tactic on behalf of workers.

We're not going on strike.

We're not even having a sit-in strike.

We are taking over the yards because we refuse to accept that faceless men

can take decisions that devastate our livelihoods with impunity.

They're not on.

In his own way, Jimmy Reid had as much charisma as Sean Connery.

Our experience in the Clydeside has been once you're out a place

and in the dole queue, once the padlocks are on the door,

you're finished and the place is finished.

After 18 months of the workers running the yard themselves,

the government caved in and reached a compromise.

Two thirds of the yard survived to fight another day.

But nothing could halt the industrial decline of Scotland.

By the 1970s, areas of Glasgow were some of the poorest in Britain.

In 1976, the BBC made a documentary called Lilybank - The Fourth World.

It's about a sociologist who goes undercover

to live in one of the most deprived areas in the country.

All sounds very modern, doesn't it?

Sort of like Secret Millionaire, but without the money.

'I took a taxi'

and I took with me my radio, my tape recorder,

a few books,

And a change of clothes.

And absurdly, I left this house

clutching a sweeping brush.

And that really was

a very primitive kind of response.

The thing about this documentary is if you were making it today,

she'd have a television crew with her. But back in the 70s,

she wasn't just doing it for the cameras, she was doing it for real.

She went and lived in Lilybank for three months

and then came back and told Magnus Magnusson all about it.

It's hostile and it's ugly

and there were times here

I would go back to the house and my eyes

would literally be hurting

with the pain of never having anything beautiful to look at,

everything being dissonant and difficult.

There's that one. She thinks she's it.

There were some lovely children, of course.

There always are. But there were others who were marked

with the stigmata

of deprivation

by the time they were three years of age.

The stigmata of deprivation?

Whit you talkin' aboot, missus? Ma weans are clean!

34 years later, the BBC filmed life on this estate in Kilmarnock.

Look how the filmmaking's changed.

'Upstairs, Candice's boyfriend, Chris,

'thinks it's him who the police are after.'

It's handheld and all about getting up close and personal.

Chris is saying he's got warrants oot. He disnae want lifting.

'Chris gets away and downstairs, Gary is sticking to his story.'

Gary's no been here all night. I don't know what's happened.

But did he say to the polis he's been here?

Well, I don't care.

-Cos I think...

-CHILD: The polis in?

-Shh!

'The police have finished interviewing Kay.

'Gary is taken away for more questioning.'

Back in the 70s, Kay's much more academic, analytical.

Listen to this.

Dogs seem to have enormous symbolic significance

in areas of great poverty.

When a dog is brought in as it usually is as a puppy,

it is a focus for a lot of tenderness.

Later on, when the dog gets bigger, it becomes some kind of symbol,

I'm sure, of power and virility and strength.

Ha, I'm not sure about that. What do you reckon, Bowser?

When you watch these films,

it's the women who jump out the screen at you.

There's a certain kind of Glasgow mum

and boy, you don't want to mess with her! Look at this.

Youse have nae got a dump, in't youse?

-I know, it's terrible.

-Aye, well who's making the dump? Eh?

-Who's making the dump? Who's to pay for all this?

-I dunno.

-Yer mother and yer faither's to pay for it.

-I'm no getting the blame.

-Is that true? CHILDREN:

-Aye.

Ye'll no dae it in yer ain place. Youse always come

and pick on this close.

The people in this close cannae be keeping... Ye think it's funny?

There's something about watching children in old programmes,

you can't help but wonder, "What happened to that wee one? How did their story pan out?"

One of the most famous documentaries in Scotland

told the story of one child.

It was a child the whole country fell for

and his astonishing journey.

The story we're about to tell you is one of the most remarkable

I personally have ever reported.

It's become, for all of us working on it,

more than a documentary search, rather a kind of unfolding drama.

It's about a little boy called David

who might have spent his whole life labelled as a freak or even a monster,

bracketed with the other victims of awesome deformity like The Elephant Man.

'We desperately wanted people to fall in love with David.'

We knew he'd come across well with the viewing public

but it was how to ease our way in.

'And so I started off the film with lots of shots of this young boy

'walking to school, but from the rear.'

Here was this child with a lollipop in his mouth.

The only unusual thing was that the stick of the lollipop

came out from a hole about half an inch above his eyes

because, with having no roof to his mouth,

he could bring his lower teeth right up onto his forehead.

'Of course basically that lollipop was being sucked against the base of his skull.

'He had no central area to his face.'

Plastic surgeon Ian Jackson came across David in a hospital in Peru.

He raised the money from the people of Glasgow to bring three-year-old David to Scotland for surgery.

David had four or five operations a year throughout his childhood.

'I just felt terrible, I can't describe how I felt.

'Your heart couldn't fail to go out to him.

'He was a frightened, tiny little boy and very cold

'and he had little Peruvian hat which covered all of his face

'except his eyes and the hole in the centre of his face.'

So he was an odd little figure and terribly pathetic.

-Do you want to have a game of scissors, paper and stone?

-OK.

The film was presented by Desmond Wilcox.

Back in the Eighties he was a big cheese in British TV

and he came up to Scotland to make this programme.

One, two three.

DAVID LAUGHS

One, two three. You win, you win!

Desmond's got a great rapport with David here.

He makes us feel like we really know this boy.

Have you enjoyed being part of a film?

Yes.

And you know what all the equipment's for now, don't you? What's that for?

That's to hear... That's to hear the sound.

-That's the sound equipment, is it?

-Yes.

-What do we call that?

-Take one.

-Take one! Yes, well, we do call it "take one", but it's actually called a clapperboard, isn't it?

-And whose name has it got on the front?

-David.

-"David..." What does it say?

-David Lopez.

-That's right. And why does it say David Lopez?

-Because it's my film.

-It's your film. You're quite right.

I knew the public would warm to him

but the extent of that warmth I didn't anticipate.

It just was overwhelming and, you know, it's nothing to do with me,

that was all to do with the character of the boy himself.

This film isn't just the story of David's journey from the rainforest to Glasgow then America,

or his courage under the knife.

When the Jacksons decide to adopt David,

the film takes an unexpected turn.

Marjorie goes to South America to find David's real parents

and try and get their permission. It's an astonishing story.

'Here we are, we don't know what will happen. What if they want him back?'

I don't want to give him back. I think as far as his future's concerned,

I think that David is going to... He's not now a Campa Indian.

The Boy David was one of those programmes that everyone seemed to have watched.

It made a huge impact on the television audience.

El cumpleanos.

Este es el papa.

So when the Jacksons finally got permission to adopt David

the whole country rejoiced with them.

David Lopez is a graphic designer in California now.

Now there's a whole other type of television documentary we haven't got to yet.

Since the dawn of time - well, since the '50s -

television in Scotland has being telling us our nation's story,

so what are the ingredients you need to make a history programme?

A presenter walking over a hill, and being expressive.

-But it's strange...

-Of ancient monuments...

An expert with lots of facial hair,

Celtic carvings and old paintings.

A bunch of actors in slightly dodgy costumes who aren't allowed to speak because that costs too much money.

And aerials - you have to have aerials.

MUSIC: "The Celts" by Enya

In 1974, director John McGrath did something completely different

with history on television.

The Cheviot, The Stag And The Black, Black Oil began life in the theatre.

It tells the story of the Highland Clearances, and it's brilliant.

It uses every trick in the book to draw the audience in.

DRUM ROLL

Scene Five - 1882, Isle of Skye.

Now, at that time Lord McDonald

was driving the people down to the shores.

-What shores?

-I'll have a wee dram.

-DRUM ROLL, LAUGHTER

Yes, but apparently we're having an altercation about the grazing rights on a little mole.

-A little mole?

-Och, Angus, that's very civil of you.

-DRUM ROLL, LAUGHTER Just say when.

-All right.

'The Cheviot, the Stag and the Black, Black Oil, was originally a stage show.

'John McGrath, he came up with the original idea

'and wrote most of the material.

'But we all contributed, it was a real sort of collective show.'

Bill Paterson, John Bett and I, Liz MacLennan,

and we toured all that all round the Highlands with the show

and it kind of... It set the heather on fire.

The word went round like a fiery cross,

and people used to pack the halls to come and see this show.

So we kind of knew we were... We had something a bit special.

And I'm perfectly satisfied that no person has suffered

hardship or injury as a result of these improvements.

'It was a mixture of drama, of theatre,

'of music hall, of political polemic, of agitprop, of comedy.'

Now this, by any measurement across all different parts of Scottish life -

our theatre, our sense of self,

the history of Scotland's clearances, the oil industry -

it's just a massive kind of big piece of work

that when it came on television just shouted at you.

LOUD SINGING

# We'll show you we're

# The ruling class. #

MACHINE GUN FIRE

'It was innovative in ways that I'd never seen television before.'

Arguably one of the great pieces of work in the history of Scottish culture.

We didn't charge these chappies a lot of money.

I mean, we didn't want to put them orf.

Good thinking.

Your wonderful Labourite government was really nice.

Thank God they weren't socialists.

Ten years earlier, back in 1964

another astonishing programme changed the way we saw our history.

Culloden was the first full-length programme Peter Watkins directed.

He had the brilliant idea to make a historical film

as though he was reporting from a contemporary battlefield.

Not a documentary or a mockumentary, but a Culloden-mentary.

Your Highness, why are you fighting today

when the ground here has been criticised

-by some of your officers?

-Because God is on our side

and I'm convinced that my duty to my people lies in fighting today.

LOUD EXPLOSIONS

The rebels' artillery have stopped firing altogether.

Before they did, we counted...

Angus! Stop gassing with that camera crew and stoke the cannon!

It still looks pretty brilliant almost half a century later

but back in 1964, scenes like this were revolutionary.

'The public orders of the rebels to give no mercy to the Royal Army

'do not exist in any other form than a crude forgery

'alleged to have been found on the field of battle.'

It's all right, lad. We're only taking you to hospital.

'But whether he knows this public order is a forgery or not

'Cumberland makes it his excuse to authorise what now happens.'

Fire.

'The officer in charge of this execution squad is himself a Scotsman.'

There are no actors in this, and I think you can tell.

Peter Watkins found people with faces he thought fitted the part,

and he couldn't care less what they did as a day job. The Ken Loach approach.

A year later, Peter would use the same technique

to make his controversial film, The War Game.

How do you feel?

I don't feel nothing, really.

-Left.

-ALL: Left, right, left, right, quarter to...

248 years after the Battle of Culloden,

these teenagers have all just joined the army.

We follow them through ten weeks of basic training.

Bayonet comes along with a scabbard. Things in it -

you've got a bottle opener there

so's in-between killing folk you can have a wee bottle of Coke.

It looked like a kind of joke at the time,

for the boys, playing around with weapons and having fun

but the reality was going to bite.

Fit the bayonet to the weapon.

'And so in this very disciplined environment

'which initially they find quite hard,

-'they grow and they grow physically and they grow mentally.'

-Take it off.

"I left you in this position!"

The left arm is forced to the rear as far as physically possible.

'They're basically corrupting your mind.'

That's taking your mind away and replacing it with a microchip.

What... What they're doing is actually moulding you

to be a soldier. They're taking away a civilian

and replacing it with a robot who knows how to go and kill people.

Yes, about turn. One, two, three, one.

Now turn to the right. One, two, three, one. Look, look at this.

-It's sliding, isn't it?

-Yes, Corporal.

It's sliding all the way down to the right.

-It is not squared off, A4 size, is it?

-Yes, Corporal.

What are you talking about, you psycho? That's really tidy!

The only people with cupboards tidier than that are serial killers.

Do you want all your soldiers be like that guy out of Sleeping With The Enemy? Clown.

'They're no here for the right reasons, that's for sure.

'There's no many of them here because they want to be a soldier.

'They want to come here because they cannae get a job, it's as simple as that.

'It's, er... The Government's our best recruiting officer, I think.'

-Right, good night, ladies.

-Good night.

This kind of film-making is called fly-on-the-wall.

Director and cameraman David Peat follows these boys everywhere.

He's even lurking in their bedroom after lights-out.

BOYS SING THEME FROM TWILIGHT ZONE

-Night-night.

-I love you.

-Sleep tight, everybody!

One of the small joys about watching old programmes

is seeing how people have changed.

This next one was made in 1997. It's about a Scot

who's got his eyes on the prize and he's just about to hit the big time.

This is the party long before the hangover.

'On May the 2nd the Labour Party celebrated their

'greatest ever election victory.

'This film goes behind the scenes...'

Oh, look. Here's Rebekah Brooks listening in.

This documentary concentrates on Gordon Brown and his team.

-GORDON BROWN:

-'Ed Balls was brought in from the Financial Times.

'He's still under 30.

'With him, Ed Miliband who's even younger

'who works on the speech-writing alongside him.'

The taxi driver said that he wouldn't have done it

for Kenneth Clarke but given that Gordon...

This is so long ago Ed Miliband looks like he's there on work experience.

TANNOY ANNOUNCEMENT ..Tony Benn. We chose not to...

He looks like Harry Potter's younger brother.

..Gordon Brown had different views.

I think, as far as the Health Service,

-I don't think we actually got it up strongly enough.

-Mm.

I don't think the claim was precise enough.

So I think in your speech...

So much has happened between these two since,

it's like looking back at the wedding video

after a really messy divorce.

-That's the phrase. Why don't we put it, "Every pensioner must ask the question..."

-Yeah.

"Every parent must ask the question,

"will the Health Service be there when I need it?"

-Is that the right way to do it?

-Yeah.

-I'll write that up.

Can you do me some stuff...

-Can you pick up my suit at the dry-cleaners?

-"Every pensioner should ask..."

Anyway, I won't spend all afternoon arguing

but if you wrote anything other than "we'll be tough on public spending" I'll beat you up.

They're not guaranteeing every pensioner £175 a week...

This documentary really takes you inside the New Labour world,

back to a time when they had everything to play for.

You change that then. Let's see it.

After watching a stack of them,

I suppose that's what all our favourite documentaries have in common.

They give us a window into somebody else's world,

and who can resist a keek into someone else's windie, huh?

# Runnin', runnin' from home

# Breakin' ties that you'd grown

# Catchin' dreams from the clouds. #

Subtitles by Red Bee Media Ltd