Lockerbie & Riverdance Real Lives Reunited

Ordinary people.

-Look at that.

-Tsunami!

Extraordinary stories.

It was one of the most amazing days of my life.

It just felt like being part of a moment in history.

Bonds forged amid triumphs...

..and tragedies.

She came to help people,

so to me, she is an angel, she is a great person.

It would mean an awful lot to me

to be able to say thank you to the firemen that saved me.

They shared a past, then faced a future apart.

I just hope I recognise them.

Brought together by fate.

It's going to be very emotional.

Separated by time.

# Rap 'er to bank, me canny lad. #

Real Lives Reunited.

In today's programme...

terror in the sky.

There was a sound like loud peals of thunder.

But instead of them dying away,

they sort of coalesced into a roar.

The Lockerbie locals who saw their town on fire.

It's that confusion in the first few minutes and hours.

And it can get scaled up from a contained incident to getting

bigger and bigger and bigger,

with more and more casualties and death around it.

And Riverdance reunited!

The Lords and Ladies of the dance line up for one last encore.

-These are the shoes I wore in Eurovision.

-No way!

-There is no way!

# But I would walk 500 miles

# And I would walk 500 more

# Just to be that man

# Who walked a thousand miles

# To fall down at your door

# When I'm working

# Yes, I know I'm gonna be

# I'm gonna be the man

# Who's working hard for you

# And when the money... #

On December 21st 1988,

at 6.25pm,

Pan Am Flight 103 left London's Heathrow Airport

en route for Detroit.

243 passengers were on board,

most returning home for Christmas.

38 minutes into the flight,

a bomb exploded.

31,000 feet below, in the Scottish town of Lockerbie,

John Gair heard the explosion.

There was a sound like loud peals of thunder.

But instead of them dying away,

they sort of coalesced into a roar.

And then the hall was lit up with a sort of red light.

So we realised something strange had happened.

18-year-old police rookie Colin Dorrance was off duty.

He too saw and heard the explosion and immediately reported for work.

Not knowing what had taken place at the time,

I drove into the town to see what the explosion actually was.

And very quickly it became apparent this was a huge incident.

People were running towards the area which seemed to be

on fire.

Police Inspector George Stobbs also reported for duty.

There was a pile-up of traffic on the road.

They were being stopped and I couldn't get through.

So I dumped my car, started to walk in towards the town centre.

I was picked up by a patrol car that came up behind me.

And as I went over the fly-over, I could see a great pile of smoke.

Even as the car was driving along the road,

I could smell aviation fuel.

The jumbo jet had crashed into the heart of a built-up

residential area in Lockerbie.

News of the disaster started to spread.

Randolph Caughie, a photographer, had finished work for the year.

Or so he thought...

I was in the car, driving home, actually.

And got a call from one of my bosses in London.

And he says that a plane had gone down.

It was just as simple as that - a plane had gone down in Lockerbie.

He says, "Can you get there?" I said, "Sure."

Randolph found himself as the first photographer

at a scene he will never forget.

It was like...a field of death.

It was pretty horrific, I've got to say.

There was a lot of people lying there.

There was nothing... What can you do?

We decided that we weren't going to photograph them, um,

because it wasn't nice to see.

It wasn't nice to photograph. So we just concentrated doing what was left

of the plane.

By now, the small town was swarming with emergency services.

The fire and rescue service were very busy.

There was between a dozen and two dozen houses where

they were either on fire or at serious risk of fire,

including the petrol station.

The emergency service response was massive by any standards,

then and even now.

It wasn't until sunrise that the true scale of the disaster

became clear for all to see.

As far as I know, I've lost my brother-in-law,

my sister-in-law...

Their house is just...it's just...a 30-foot crater.

Where their house was, I can't even find the house.

It's gone, like.

All 259 people on board had lost their lives

as well as 11 people on the ground.

I mean, there was the ghastly problem of collecting

all of these bodies.

They started, I think, taking them to the town hall, but

eventually, they were taken to the ice rink.

Which was an extremely sensible place to take them.

It seemed like chaos at times,

but I think it was mostly very well organised.

Colin, now a sergeant in the area,

was just an 18-year-old rookie that night 26 years ago.

He has never really talked about it - before today.

I'm looking forward to meeting the other people today

because you know you've been there. And sometimes, trying to discuss

and describe what took place is very difficult to get across.

And there's a certain...

frustration, almost.

They're meeting in Lockerbie Town Hall,

which was used as a temporary resting place for the victims.

Hello, John. Nice to see you again.

Mr Gair, you were living amongst all this.

What was your recollection of it as someone who lived in the town

at the time?

A small town where nothing much had happened

was in the middle of a horrible international tragedy.

People were coming from all over the world, saying,

you know, "Where did this happen? When did that happen?"

-And I drew up a wee map...

-So this is your own map?

This is my own map, yeah.

And all I did was put down the strategic places.

And I tried to explain to them that the wind was blowing across

-that way and it took all the...

-That's what you were saying.

You had to reverse engineer everything from the finishing point

-back to up in the sky to understand how it all...

-Yeah.

It was. It was a very strong wind that was blowing that day.

And it just took everything.

I mean, we were recovering stuff from the North Sea,

60 miles away.

Photographer Randolph saw at first-hand how the local

community and emergency services helped each other that night.

What you guys did... When I hear all these stories,

when they say it on the outside, you know, being a journalist...

The police were fantastic doing their tasks as well.

Just amazing. They kept us in touch with what was going on

and they were very helpful.

The service was amazing.

The thing I remember most about this was being stood out

in some of these areas where the engines were

-or, in the early days, where some passengers still were.

-Uh-huh.

And people coming out of their homes at two o'clock in the morning

with flasks and sandwiches and...

Even give you the key to the house so that you could use the toilet.

The openness and the support was second to none.

If there's some consolation out of this, it was to see

-the very best of human nature.

-Yes.

Good people came to the front and did their duty.

In the years that followed, a joint investigation

between Scottish Police and the FBI resulted in the arrest, conviction

and imprisonment of the Libyan intelligence officer

Abdelbaset al-Megrahi.

In August 2009,

he was released on compassionate grounds.

He died in May 2012,

remaining the only person to be convicted of the 270 murders.

Today, the four men are visiting the Lockerbie Air Disaster Memorial.

I think a community the size of Lockerbie,

where most people know each other.

A community like that will always pull together,

irrespective of what is thrown at them.

Some of these have got a nice...

It's a difficult subject matter and

nice to meet these three gentlemen

who have reflected on things over the years as well.

And you realise you're not alone with your own memories

of what took place.

Coming up...

Randolph reunites with reporters who covered

the disaster - one of the most emotional stories of their careers.

I don't think it prepared me

for what I was going to see.

But, um... Phew! It's, uh...

It brings it all back.

# It's written in the wind

# Oooh

# Everywhere I go

# Yeah

# So if you really love me

# Love me, love me

# Come on and let it show. #

April 30th 1994,

and The Point Theatre in Dublin was getting

ready to host the Eurovision Song Contest.

300 million people tuned in to watch,

and as usual, Sir Terry was on great form.

'Well, nobody could accuse those two of underselling this.'

What no-one bargained for, however,

was they were about to witness the birth of an act that would

break theatrical records all around the world.

Riverdance!

Just a few months before Eurovision, however,

Riverdance was barely a trickle of an idea.

The concept - to transform Irish dancing, a discipline associated

with stiff arms and ringlets into something cooler and sexier.

Michael Flatley and Jean Butler were on board as lead dancers,

but a chorus line had yet to be found.

My father took the phone call from RTE

to say that somebody had passed on my name for

the interval act for the Eurovision.

But my father, God rest him, said,

"You must have the wrong Emer O'Grady,

"because she doesn't have a note in her head."

He thought it was singing.

So they rang back a day or two later and spoke to my mum and they said

it was an Irish dancing act.

Scores of young dancers gathered to take part in a highly

secretive selection process,

all under the watchful

eye of a man who would soon become a dancing legend.

And Michael Flatley came in, and we all had to do our steps

for Michael Flatley.

And we just had to do it again and again and again...

It was just...

I was over the moon, like,

when we were picked cos we were told,

"Yeah, you're doing the Eurovision." It was like, "Oh, my God!"

With selection over, rehearsals got under way.

It was quite intense - very, very hard work.

But enjoyable because you were learning something new.

And you were working with Michael and Jean.

But it was worth it, as another of the line-up, Dara, remembers.

The producers, they came to see it one night,

the finished product. And there was definitely excitement

in the rehearsal hall.

It really became apparent that this was something big.

With weeks of intense rehearsals complete, the big night arrived.

For the Riverdance chorus line, the excitement was palpable.

The atmosphere backstage was just, like... It was electric.

Like, we were just... It was like,

"Oh, my God, this is happening. Wow!"

This is just something totally new to us.

This is...brilliant.

As Eurovision reached its interval,

usually a chance for viewers to have a cup of tea,

Riverdance was unleashed

onto an unsuspecting world.

It was an unforgettable performance,

for those watching at least.

I couldn't tell you one thing about the actual performance that night.

I actually don't remember.

I know before I went out on stage,

I was just praying that I'd stay on my feet

and I wouldn't slip on live television.

I just danced.

Dara however knew

just how special it was.

It's a hard number to do. You know,

that...keeping that line straight

and keeping it all in sequence and that, you know. It's a hard thing to

do. But it went brilliantly, yeah.

CHEERING AND APPLAUSE

'Good grief! That brought the folk memories out.'

Standing there, listening to that applause

and everybody cheering - absolutely amazing.

The hairs stood up on the back of your neck.

Kind of looking at each other as if to say, you know,

"Oh, my God, this is really good," like.

You feel this ovation coming towards you and it was like

a tsunami, you know, of appreciation.

And, um...

And it was just...you were filled with this kind of unbelievable sense

of...achievement.

The whole place erupted.

Tears, laughter, everything. The whole lot.

It was brilliant. Brilliant.

Although meant to be just a one-off,

the clamour for more Riverdance was overwhelming.

Within months, it was expanded into a full-length show

and toured the world.

For the dancers, nothing was ever the same again.

Something that I absolutely loved and was my life became my career.

I actually was studying to be an accountant,

and that all went by the wayside. I never...

I never worked as an accountant for a day in my life.

Looking back at Riverdance now, I'm extremely proud at having been

part of it. It changed things for all of us and it changed things

for Irish dancing as well. I mean,

people take Irish dancing seriously now.

# Beautiful day... #

Today, after 20 years, the four dancers are heading back

to their old watering hole, The Hairy Lemon in Dublin.

Today is really special cos we haven't really had a reunion

to hear how it's affected everyone's life.

I think it'll just be like old times,

just as if we haven't been apart.

Going back to The Hairy Lemon will bring back a lot of memories.

-Nice to see you.

-Great to see you.

Oh, my God! Hello!

All grown up.

It's amazing to walk in through the doors.

It was a... "Wow, we're here."

It brings back so many memories, doesn't it?

I remember you being quite a personality.

But you kind of made a point of getting to know people.

-Yeah...

-Gosh, you didn't have to stand beside her.

-LAUGHTER

-Are you saying I talked a lot?

So what are your strongest recollections of doing the show?

I think it was all a blur.

I remember walking on.

And I remember it being over. And the light kind of came on

all of a sudden and I felt this wave of atmosphere and energy

coming off the audience.

You forget the specifics of the dancing, the rehearsals,

but the bonding and the friendships

-at that time, it was so intense.

-Yeah.

What are the elements

that made it the success that it was?

Just Riverdance took it that step that showed it to the whole world.

We were doing all these things, do you know what I mean?

But it was behind closed doors.

-Absolutely.

-Riverdance just put it on that world stage

and it just blew it all open.

Catch-up complete, Emer, Breandan, Joan

and Dara are off to a nearby dance studio to see

if they can recreate the iconic steps from that amazing night.

-These are the shoes I wore in the Eurovision.

-No way!

My only worry about putting the shoes on is that

the rest of them would be any better than me.

Hopefully, yeah, I'm definitely better than the rest of them now...

-Still.

-HE LAUGHS

1998 would have been the last time we performed together, so...

Yeah, it could be great fun doing it now again.

THEY LAUGH Jesus!

It's been a wonderful day for these former Riverdancers -

retracing their old footsteps.

It was just a great reunion with old friends.

And just to rehash it all out and share the memories

and go back to The Hairy Lemon.

It was just really special.

-WOMEN:

-Whoo!

It was really nice to kind of see the three girls.

I think it made me think about doing something

like this a little bit more often - reconnecting.

What happened back in those days was very special. It was historic.

-ALL: Cheers!

-Slainte!

-Slainte!

Today was absolutely super, brilliant. One of the best days.

Nearly as good as the night of the Eurovision.

The world awoke on the morning of December 22nd 1988

to find out the news that Pan Am Flight 103

had come down over the town

of Lockerbie,

causing massive fatalities and serious causalities.

'The victims on the jumbo jet -

'258 people died,

'most were Americans.

'At least 13 adults and four children from this small Scottish

'town are dead or unaccounted for.'

Throughout the night, journalists, broadcasters

and photographers had worked tirelessly,

piecing the story together in the midst of chaos and confusion.

Photographer Randolph Caughie was first on the scene

and took the iconic photo that came to symbolise the tragedy for many.

Today, he will return to the field

where he captured that image for the first time.

When I go around the places, like where the nose cone was,

I'll have my moments,

um, to reflect.

You know, I stood here 25 years ago at these places and photographed

what happened.

That night, Randolph was joined by rookie photographer

John Paul.

When they arrived at the crash site,

it was still pitch-black.

We drove up this country lane.

And you could see just as you crested

the top of the rise,

there was a police car sitting in the middle of it.

And it was the most amazing site I'd ever seen.

Out of the gloom,

this thing was just...the front of an airplane... It was huge!

..looming out of the field.

It was like, "Wow!

"What is that?"

From a photographer's point of view,

it was the most amazing sight.

CAMERA CLICKS

If images showed the immediate horror of the tragedy,

putting what had happened into words

would be another challenge altogether.

That task fell to others, like newspaper journalist Tony Brooks,

who travelled to Lockerbie from Stoke-on-Trent that evening.

The journey took about three hours.

And I should say that it was probably among the most stressful,

from a work point of view, of my life.

You didn't really know what was going on.

There was... Obviously, the radio was on in the car.

The enormity was not fully explained,

so I didn't really know what to expect.

And when I did arrive, that area of Lockerbie was still in flames.

Quite stunned. Quite stunned.

With phone lines down, mobiles not working

and without the internet technology we take for granted today,

Lockerbie became a black hole for communications.

For broadcasters like Bert Houston,

it was hard to separate fact from fiction and accurately report

the disaster to a public desperate for information.

It's difficult to really convey a story

over the radio and give details when you do not know

what had happened.

I had been told that it was a Pan Am jumbo jet and yet couldn't see it.

It was very, very difficult

to give the true significance of what had happened.

Despite all this, you do have to do the job and...you have to do it

pretty quickly because of the time.

If it had happened much earlier in the day, you've got more time

to collect your thoughts, but you have the news desk screaming for

copy before you've even got out of your car.

It was just virtually impossible

trying to find from witnesses what had happened.

People were dazed. They didn't know

what it was or to what extent it was.

All they knew was that something

terrible had happened.

It was a night the men would never forget.

But until today, they've never had the chance to reflect on it

together.

Well, this is Lockerbie. We've just arrived.

26 years since I've been here.

Last time I was here was that fearful night.

It was completely lined with fire engines and police cars,

ambulances...

Mixed emotions, really.

Exciting, in a way, to meet

old colleagues. But also sad to recall

what actually happened here.

Randolph and his former protege, John Paul, are first to meet.

-You good?

-Better for seeing you.

-How are you?

-Randolph.

-Tony.

How nice to see you.

Hello, Bert, how are you? Nice to see you again.

You must have been one of the first on the scene, then.

Yes, one of the first.

I mean, because I had the call... I as on duty at BBC Radio Cumbria.

Got the telephone call

more or less when it happened.

It was quite tricky for us to work out what had actually happened.

-Where to go.

-And where to go, yeah.

Because there wasn't anything physical that you could say,

"This is a plane crash."

It wasn't until we actually

went up to the nose cone.

I didn't know about the nose cone, of course, when I did my first piece.

There were lots of problems,

the biggest one being communication.

So tell me, Tony, when did it first sort of get to you

as a journalist, as a writer?

I think it dawned on me pretty quickly as I was hurdling up

the M6 and getting news flashes on the car radio.

I don't think it prepared me for...

for what I was going to see, but...

Phew! It's, uh...

It brings it all back.

My mind has blanked an awful lot of those details.

-Seeing the pictures is bringing it back.

-I think many of us were

in a sort of zombified state, almost.

It's so unreal.

I've found, Tony, that if you had a camera in front of you,

it sort of acted as a sort of

blind to what was going on, you know, because you had

a fairly focused view of what was going on.

How did that work for you guys? Because you didn't have that

object to hide behind, that sort of...

No, you didn't. And that's why I think it was...

it made it for me even more overwhelming.

-Yeah.

-The new guys would find it.

-Yeah.

There we are. Such is life.

Whoo!

Wow.

The reunion has given the men an opportunity to

share their feelings about one of the most emotionally

challenging nights of their careers.

Before going their separate ways,

they visit the field where Randolph and John photographed the nose cone.

This is where it was, 26 years ago.

Looking across an empty field now,

but there was a nose cone there.

If it hadn't been for the police car

lighting that nose cone up, we probably would've come up this road

and driven on, cos we don't know where we were.

What did you think when you first arrived?

My first thoughts were...

"Where's the rest of this plane?"

All you could see was that looming out of the field.

So as far as we knew, the whole aircraft was sitting there.

And it wasn't till the next morning when the light started to break

and we stood and watched

and then we realised we're parked at a church with a cemetery in it.

-Yeah, right next to it.

-Which was very ironic

when this was just a field of...horror.

It's a sight that I don't think

-either you or I will ever forget.

-No, no, no.

Even for hardened newsmen, the trip back to Lockerbie has been

a bittersweet occasion.

'It's great to see old colleagues again,

'but...I would have preferred it to be in other circumstances.'

Much more fun to see them somewhere

which hasn't been blighted by tragedy.

I don't think I'd want to come back to Lockerbie

and think about what happened then again,

but it was an interesting journey.

Brings back sort of sad kind of memories, but happy memories

that I can talk to these guys about what we did

26 years ago. Very interesting indeed.