British Tunnels Brushing up on...

Tunnels. The fact that all human beings are obsessed with tunnels

is well documented...I assume.

Indeed, if one is to give credence to some of history's greatest philosophers,

and virtually all of its deranged speculators,

our lives begin and end with a journey through

these miraculous tubes.

It's as if our creator had intended

this planet to be a giant Swiss cheese,

but with seven days to work with,

he had to cut a few corners.

Thus, since the dawn of time,

we have been attempting to finish his task

and riddle the Earth with thousands of subterranean corridors.

In this programme, I am going to look over

the BBC's extensive archive of tunnel-based broadcasting

and see if we can learn anything new

about what some see as mere utilitarian channels,

but what an increasing majority of us

are recognising as mysterious wormholes,

each with its own fascinating tale to tell.

As Professor Brian Cox himself once said to me,

"Lots of luck with that one, then."

So where shall we first break ground on our symposium of the substrata?

Surely only one choice here.

As singers have their Frank Sinatras,

actors their Robert De Niros

and lovers of combined liquorice and sherbet their fountains,

so with tunnels, there is only one all-time champion.

This story is as interesting as it's boring.

It's about tunnels.

The tunnel that caused such a spate of plans and discussions

and Government committees,

instead of the spades of workmen,

has yet to be built.

But an alternative to that stormy crossing had to be devised,

if only on paper.

In 1869, a doctor invented this strange sea tram,

and Bob's your uncle.

Other projects included a fantastic submarine-driven boat.

Submarine-driven boat?! Isn't that a bit like bicycle-driven aeroplane?

Or you can fly your car across.

Over the last 200 years,

all sorts of people have looked for ways of crossing the English Channel.

The stormy history of the Chunnel project began in 1802,

when it was first suggested to Napoleon by a young engineer called Albert Mathieu.

Napoleon turned it down,

but it was a grand idea in every sense.

It involved building the tunnel out to an artificial island in the Channel,

where Mathieu could establish an international city,

and the horses could come up for a breather.

Napoleon himself vetoed this idea as "insane".

Remarkably, in 2012, plans for a new London airport in the Thames Estuary

was enthusiastically OK-ed by Boris Johnson.

Then...

It was in 1867 that William Low submitted his twin-tunnel scheme,

providing tubes from Dover to Calais.

And this is how the scheme works.

Here is evidence enough

of the high degree of British engineering skill involved.

Before being abandoned, this attempt, in theory,

brought us a mighty 60 feet closer to France,

before, among other things, invasion fears closed it down.

It's still down there, though.

Of all lost causes, lost most irretrievably, to all appearances,

was the Channel Tunnel.

Five miles from Dover,

its little-known entrance a derelict folly.

Inspector Arnold, every week for the last seven years,

has, like his predecessors,

examined the tunnelling remaining intact since it was begun back in 1880.

Abandoned almost at birth because of alarmist invasion talk.

Well, now, we're right underneath the White Cliffs of Dover,

and there is a mark on the wall which was made by one of the tunnellers at the time...

My favourite bit of the entire programme,

which shows you how shallow I am.

..at the time,

which reads, "This tunnel was begun

"in 1880. William Sharpe."

William Sharpe couldn't spell too well, could he?

Yeah, but I bet he could stand up all right.

The next initiative came in 1973...

..when I was phoned personally with the news.

TRANSLATED FROM FRENCH:

Nothing could go wrong now.

The Channel Tunnel project to France is dead.

And the machine's been here ever since,

buried 50 feet under the sea,

at the end of a hole which it dug itself

and which is all that now remains of the Channel Tunnel.

Until scrap dealer Ron Mardell came along.

He saw a small advertisement for the mole,

and undeterred by the difficulties of getting it out of the tunnel,

he bought it for £20,000.

Even though it's stuck 50 feet under the ground, 250 yards in?

It's not stuck there. That's where it finished. It's not stuck.

What's the biggest thing you've ever bought?

Er...possibly Reading Gasworks.

You paid £20,000 for it. How much do you think you're going to be able to sell everything for?

We'll probably do money on it.

For some people, though, it's not enough to wait around

like mindless sides of beef

while giant corporations build tunnels for them

to journey through in style and comfort.

No. These folks are the pro-tunnel enthusiasts.

They take their tunnels where they find them.

Lesley doesn't like the cold and wet, and she doesn't like the dark.

It's hard for a non-caver to understand why, though,

when you hear John Russell describing what it feels like.

It's bloody cold when you go in water for the first time in your wetsuit.

All the little tears as the cave

grinds into the rubber.

Leak.

The water shoots in in some very nasty places.

I personally can't stand water.

I get very terrified of water, especially if there's limited air space.

John Shepherd was soon in trouble when the floor collapsed.

Dangerous boulders everywhere, and no hope of progress

until a diversion had been made.

Behold the rubberised hardy clique,

for whom no tunnel holds hazard, no crevice is too small,

no risk worth weighing.

It's as if they simply have to know what's round the bend.

I would suggest THEY are.

Obviously, these images stem from an era before TV health and safety.

But probably not accident and emergency.

The pull of nature's own pipeline

is so strong in these people

that even an everyday bath plughole

represents a tempting invitation into the unknown.

As usual, when we look upon such daring free spirits,

following their reckless urges like this,

one thought strikes us uppermost.

"That cameraman must be really wishing he was back on EastEnders."

Thankfully, their claustrophobic sojourn is all worth it.

Having descended via a fissure in the summit of a mountain in Iceland four weeks previously,

they all later emerge safe and sound,

via a woman's dustbin in Wakefield.

Our Neolithic ancestors at least had reasons to squirm about in the depths.

A - they were mining flint,

and B - you had to make your own fun back then.

The great David Bellamy here re-enacts

one such early rock festival for us.

There must be an easier way of making a living than this,

but crawling about down these here tunnels, you realise two things -

exactly what a ball duster feels like,

and the fact that these Neolithic miners

must have been much smaller jobs than me.

Bravo!

This is TV presenting red in tooth and claw.

And in case you're at a loss to know what a "ball duster" might be,

here's a clue.

He's wearing a pair.

From London on top

to London underneath.

They did those shifts in small gangs,

70 feet below the surface,

in a secret, sweaty world of their own.

Like moles, they tunnel towards the next gang along the line.

A gang of six men

working a modern rotary digger

can clear a running tunnel through the clay

at a rate of two inches a minute.

Once every 15 minutes,

the miners assemble a self-supporting ring of concrete

behind the digger.

Yes, perhaps I should offer a note of explanation here

to those viewers under 30.

What you're watching is British industry at work.

In Britain, we used to have all sorts of industries -

docks, steel, coal, cars,

television.

These were what we historians call "proper jobs".

So the next time you speak to your team leader for office social media fusion strategy going forward,

you might want to remind them of that.

Anyway...

No nuts or bolts.

They just pack the segments under power and pressure into place.

It was work for big, strong and enduring men.

For men with iron in their arms and buttocks,

for the shovel rather than the machine.

Yeah, sorry to break in again so soon,

but...buttocks?!

For men with iron in their arms and buttocks,

for the shovel rather than the machine.

Muscles to match the iron determination to face the task.

Where did they come from?

Where have they come from so often

in the story of these islands?

Sons of Ireland,

almost all descendants of the formidable navvies

who dug the canals and laid the railways.

The men who astonished Europe

when the canals were cut in the 19th century

by cooking steaks on their spades over their bonfires.

Back again to mine the new Victoria Line.

OK, right. This is my friend Baylen Leonard.

I'm not gay, but Baylen is,

so he can say the next line.

Is it just me, or is this documentary kinda hot?

Men with big appetites, mighty thirsts.

Then again, maybe it's just their glib postmodern minds

grafting a sexual psychology onto a more innocent time.

Oh, I dunno, though.

I actually went down a sewer.

Well, here I am at the top of a sewer.

As you see, I'm all dressed up in the gear, ready to go down.

The bloke behind is gutted they just cut his speaking part.

Let's just have a look at it.

Now, I promise you, this is not going to become a theme,

but how many items of the Village People's wardrobe

is this one presenter wearing?

Let's count 'em.

1 - the construction worker's hat.

2 - the cowboy's gloves.

3 - the traffic cop's belt.

4 - the leather man's chaps.

Why, if we had longer,

I'd change the words to In The Navy to In The Sewer,

and we'd all get a kick out of it.

But let's press on.

Could I go down and have a look?

It's quite dangerous,

but if you really want to go, we'll take you down.

I'd like to.

Oh, look!

We're inside a huge pipe.

Of all the tunnels on offer,

it is the sewers that attracts TV most.

It's called a sewer.

This is where all the dirty water and the poop go.

Yes, they say that half of all working TV crews

can be found in the sewers at any given time.

That means whenever you visit the toilet,

you have a 50/50 chance of hitting someone from the One Show.

There you are - false teeth.

Do people ever ask for their teeth back?

We've got one or two stories about when they've been out at a party

and they've had a good night and they've lost their false teeth.

You've got to go down and look for them.

We find them sometimes,

but what they do with them after that, God only knows.

There's an old screwdriver here, look.

As far as telly's concerned,

it's what the public want.

Would you recommend this to a friend?

No.

Now, that's not the spirit.

Whenever a TV person asks you anything,

always answer with enthusiasm,

unless it's a news person whose actual job it is to make you frightened.

Take this bloke.

Bonjour!

Yes, we're back on the trail of the Channel Tunnel again.

And later in the show, we'll be revealing if it ever did get built.

Bonjour!

"Panorama" THEME PLAYS

No, I'd probably get claustrophobia.

The English don't want to.

Why do you think we don't want to?

Terrorists.

And rabies.

There's rabies in France. There's rabies all over Europe.

-So what?

-Bonjour!

-Because you want to keep England...

-You want to keep an island.

You want to keep it like it is, you know.

England's always been an island.

And why should it be joined up with France now?

Too easy for attack as well.

Too easy for an attack.

Just a minute - who's going to attack us?

Anybody. Germany again.

Dover's going to have to actually get up and do something about their terminal.

Basically, if you're a Frenchman and you came in to Eastern Docks, Dover,

you'd see a huge large roundabout

and a big street of tatty hotels.

Bonjour!

Are the French going to learn how to make toast?

Because whenever you go to France

and you see this thing called "le toast",

you get something that tastes like breeze block.

They get a lump of bread, they dry it out for three weeks,

and then they burn it on either side.

I believe in Europe, and I want the English people to believe in Europe.

It's a strategic matter, then, for you, is it?

TRANSLATED FROM FRENCH:

It is a matter which is vital to industry.

Lines of communication have become the essential element, haven't they?

Essential to the expansion of business.

And what could be better than...

CRUNCH!

Oh, no, too strong, too strong.

We only want light slapstick on this programme, thank you.

..made by one of the tunnellers at the time...

There's enough illegal goings-on in the tunnel world as it is.

A man they call Swampy crawled out of the ground tonight,

gave a smile and a few words, then was hauled off to police cells for the night.

He'd been down for the longest time yet recorded by an anti-roads protestor,

trying to delay contractors who wanted to get on with building the A30 dual carriageway.

I feel that it's the only way to get a voice these days.

I mean, if I wrote a letter to my MP,

would I have achieved all this?

Would you lot be here now?

I think not.

The kid's got a point.

This news graphic from the period

shows the position

of his underground lair.

It also points out

that the protestors' tree houses had been cunningly placed

in the trees.

Bit cramped.

But, um...

I don't know. Conditions weren't too bad.

This has been a good-natured operation so far,

with the protestors even inventing a new game

of tickle the bailiff.

Tickle the bailiff?!

Just when I thought this show was done with innuendo.

Anyway, kids, it all ended very peacefully,

and, yes, that's the story of how Glastonbury got started.

DOG BARKS

What's the matter, Chipshop?

Who's down there?

John's left the tiller, and we're going to give a demonstration

of the ancient British canal art of legging a boat through Dudley Tunnel.

This is where we have to get friendly, Fred.

You see, it really is an upside-down world.

Five hours of back-breaking work.

This is legging. Really, all you're doing is walking sideways,

pushing with your feet against the wall.

I think me cap's falling off.

Now a little history lesson.

Without the efforts of two great men,

modern tunnels might be little more than long, hollowed-out caverns from one place to the next.

And, as always, we must tip the stovepipe here

to Marc Brunel and his boy, Isambard.

The development of their revolutionary digging shield

allowed men to work under the Thames

and create the Rotherhithe to Wapping foot tunnel.

Though, as this postcard shows,

only three people at a time could use it.

Some rebuilding corrected this error,

and after many trials and tribulations,

not only did they show the world the way forward with tunnels,

but opened the door to the series of Thomas The Tank Engine books.

Tunnel techniques have progressed considerably

since the old tunnels were built under the Thames.

Soon, all nearby districts in the capital wanted in on the tunnel racket.

There's the Sick Man of London at Blackwall.

The gloomy echo chamber that is the Greenwich foot tunnel.

And recently, the Dartford Tunnel,

which, having two lanes, mercifully means that the only way isn't Essex.

When nine-year-old transport enthusiast Glen Martin

asked for a first-day invitation to the new Dartford Tunnel,

he never expected to arrive this way.

But the county councillors of Essex and Kent

were so impressed with his enthusiasm

that they decided to give him the job

of opening the latest cross-river link.

Seriously, kid, would a tie on the day have killed you?

And Mr Mayor, let him do it himself, eh?

This is little more than a scissors karaoke act.

No wonder little Glen retired from public tunnel-openings after that.

To Liverpool, and the tunnel over which flows the river

that the altogether more celebrated ferry crosses.

Thank you, Pacemakers.

CHOIR SINGS

There are currently delays westbound here,

after a lorry earlier shed its load of adult choristers,

who are still awaiting recovery.

Though it's been eight days since these Scouse pipes of a different stripe

were abandoned below the waves,

they are managing to keep their spirits up,

working through the entire Hoagy Carmichael songbook.

Lovely stuff, ladies.

And if ambulances can't be re-routed because of this sort of thing,

then I don't know what.

Meanwhile, in another part of the old MT...

Well, this is where we're going.

All right, Kevin?

-How's it looking?

-It's actually not too bad in here.

Tight squeeze, isn't it?

-Pardon?

-Tight squeeze.

It is.

With the whole River Mersey trying to get in there with us,

I still felt a little nervous as we went looking for bulges in the tunnel walls.

If it changes shape...

Bulges, this type of thing.

-This reminds me of when we went down the sewers.

-Pardon?

Of course it does. You're on telly. Bound to happen.

Do we have to check that?

Oh, we're used to this sort of thing.

There's a lot of water pouring out here.

There is, yes.

Is it dangerous, all this coming out here?

Oh, no. If we try to block this here, it'll come out somewhere else.

You get the feeling the whole thing's going to cave in.

Oh, no, it's not like that.

So is it worth you trying to patch this up?

Oh, no. If you patch this up, it'll probably come out somewhere here.

And it'll go on for evermore.

That's pretty much what they said on the Titanic, actually.

A train! It had better have one of those flotation rings, like Chitty Bang Bang.

-What about the Mersey?

-About 50 foot above that.

50...40...30...20...

10...9...8...

7...

As our previous, frankly cavalier, guide showed,

we British feel comfortable within a troglodyte existence.

During the Second World War,

our sub-surface retreats became second homes.

People learned to cherish these womb-like warrens,

as all on the surface exploded in fury.

But Chislehurst was already adequately prepared.

Because of work begun 8,000 years beforehand,

15,000 men, women and children found perfect protection

in the 22 miles of privately owned man-made caves.

My father acquired the caves in 1932

to grow mushrooms in.

And then the war came along.

And when they tried to grow mushrooms after the war, it was too hot for them

and they all died!

So that's why the caves were opened to the public, really.

She was born in the hospital, I believe, in 1943.

She was christened in the original church

and she was christened, unfortunately for her, Cavina, after the caves.

I know she didn't like this, because I do believe she did change her name soon after

to Susan or Joan or something sensible, anyway.

In fact, it was Lady Gaga.

The Tube network was a more common escape from the violence without.

This was a railway system built, you may recall,

by the Chippendales dance troupe.

Everything possible has been done to make them really comfortable.

There are canteens to keep the shelterers supplied with hot drinks and light refreshments.

What do the shelterers themselves think about it?

Mr Margarine, what do you think of the shelter? You've been here a week or two.

I think it's fine.

Wait a minute - did she call him "Mr Margarine"?!

Mr Margarine, what do you think of the shelter? You've been here a week or two.

I think it's fine.

She did! Mind you, before the war, he would have been Mr Butter.

Hello, shelterers.

In one more minute, the lights will be dimmed.

Now, hurry along and get to bed. Tuck yourself up well.

Good night, everybody.

The Bergerac Islands.

A mysterious archipelago about which very little is known.

The few people who have been there

say it is a strange realm,

where the natives push high-end cars into the bay

in an attempt to quell the sea gods.

Beneath this stone defence

are miles of tunnels

from when the Minotaurs ruled the islands in the 1950s.

But instead of destroying them, the ever-resourceful islanders have put them to good use.

But not in the way you might think.

Dave has converted this former German bunker

into a fish farm.

It houses 6,500 turbot.

So you'd recommend fish farming in a German war tunnel, then?

"So you'd recommend fish farming in a German war tunnel, then?"

What kind of question is that?!

I mean, how often would the circumstances arise?

If one recommends it or doesn't recommend it,

it's immaterial.

It's simply too literal an observation,

the sort of baggy presenting that induces lethargy

on the face of a flat fish. Look!

What a beautiful fish.

When they hatch, they're normal swimming fish,

with an eye each side.

By the time they're the size of your thumbnail,

the eye has slid round

and they've turned into a flat fish.

And that's why their mouth

-is still sideways.

-Yeah.

So how much would you get for a fish like that, then?

£2 billion.

Wow!

Now, in this mountain is a tunnel.

And I promise you, it was once considered

as a retreat for the Royal Family

in the event of nuclear attack. Hooray!

This excellent plan has been superseded today,

which is a shame, because just think -

the Queen, inside a mountain, like Gollum!

I'm now going to go down the tunnel

and see if we can have a look at them.

Ooh! Bald head.

Equerries, private secretaries,

corgis and Royal personages

scuttling along these tunnels

as Russian missiles rain down over the rest of Britain?

Possible, and, of course, the Department of Environment

refuses to disclose any details at all

of what it's doing here,

as was made clear when one of its guardians appeared.

Tell me what you're looking after here.

Proof of a conspiracy,

or just some bloke surprised while goofing off at work?

"No unauthorised entry", and at this point, we stop.

But even here, it's clear that the entrance

is large enough to take sizeable furniture vans

and down the tunnel, you can see the beginning of the system

of reinforced doors.

If you listen in the silence, you can hear the noise of the engine

which is keeping the ventilator fans moving.

CHOIR SINGS

I suspect the Queen would rather stay in Buckingham Palace

than go anywhere near there.

He had all day to come up with that ad-lib.

Kids! The Nintendo Wii took decades of development.

That compact little box that sits under your TV

once took an entire warehouse to accommodate.

In 1947, in order to experience indoor skiing,

special Government wind tunnels were created

and the waiting list to have a go stretched into the millions.

Some people are still waiting but, you know, it looks totally worth it.

In turn, each member of the team went in to face the gale.

Of course they did. I mean, look at that!

I say! There's one in the eye for Angry Birds.

Making tunnels. It's what separates us from the animals.

Sort of.

Badgers are good tunnellers.

Their home is called a sett.

They usually stay underground until nightfall,

when they come out to forage for food for their young.

I have an artificial sett out in the garden.

I've got a two-way switch in the sett entrance,

which I've connected by a cable

right across to this recorder here.

This little gadget makes pin-point punctures above the line...

I guarantee this bloke is called Don.

Don has mastered the art of comfortable badger-watching.

Told you.

He sits in an easy chair and waits for the badgers to arrive.

They enter the artificial sett and proceed along a complex system of tunnels

to the feeding chamber, where Don can also watch them.

The badgers probably believe they're below ground,

whereas, in fact, the chamber

is raised three feet up for easy viewing.

Here, literally only inches away,

Don can observe them eating and sleeping,

blissfully unaware of any human presence.

It seems wrong,

but as a result of Don's diligence,

badger-on-badger street crime in the area fell by 60%.

The common mole is a superb tunneller.

It visits the surface from time to time,

but moles are usually underground.

It's thanks to a special camera

we can watch a mole as it works away underground.

It burrows with its strong front paws

and somersaults around to push the soil back through the tunnel,

like a miniature bulldozer.

Farmers and gardeners treat the mole

as an enemy, because it creates piles of soil where they're not wanted,

especially on lawns.

This one isn't alive, of course.

Oh, isn't it? Isn't it really?

Where are you, my children of the night?

We have unfinished business, by the way.

The Channel Tunnel cliff-hanger,

which actually sounds like one of the early designs to build it.

Anyway, the first British person to go through the tunnel

was not Barbara Windsor, who the nation wanted,

but Mr Graham Fagg.

It was about three o'clock in the afternoon.

I got instructed to go to the office.

I honestly thought it was for a ticking-off from Dave Denman.

When I got to the office, Dave said,

"Your name's been pulled out of the hat

"and you're the man going through the hole tomorrow."

It would take him more than an hour to get out there in the little train.

My main concern was actually getting Graham Fagg out of bed.

Funny name - there's no getting away from that.

..at five o'clock in the morning,

and he looked at his watch and said, "Well, you're early."

I said, "We've got to be down there."

He said, "It's not till 11 o'clock. We've got plenty of time."

My wife insisted on making me a full lunch.

Well, at least we know now what they did with the rubble.

They filled this story with it.

And so, at last, mankind's ultimate dream was realised.

Realised through the supreme will of the human mind

with unwavering support from its strong arms and buttocks.

At last, hot soup served on a train leaving Paris

might still be warm when it reached the UK.

In turn, they could ignore our pop stars in new record times.

So here's to the unquenchable energies

and restless tunnelling of the human race,

to all of us beings on this ever-more-aerated rock,

spinning through space.

We are all truly geniuses.

Good night.

Subtitles by Red Bee Media Ltd