Episode 3 Happy Birthday BBC Two

-Good evening.

-This is BBC TWO.

-Blastoff!

I've got a story to tell you.

What happened?

THEY HUM

Gizza job.

My darling.

I miss him, but I know I shouldn't do this.

Hello and welcome to this week's Whistle Test.

-NARRATOR:

-BBC Two hit the air on 20th April 1964.

This anniversary series tells

the stories of some of the programmes that shaped it.

All drama that had been set in space before then was very middle-class.

Nobody was ever sent to space who drank a pint of beer or had a curry.

Everybody at that period of television history, regardless

of channel, every channel, just said,

"It's not funny, it's not a sitcom.

"Science fiction isn't funny."

-25 knots, 35, 50.

-It's coming straight for us.

There's only three alternatives.

It thinks we're either a threat, food or a mate.

It's going to either kill us, eat us, or hump us.

Lined up to do it, we had Alan Rickman and Alfred Molina, who

both said they were very interested in doing it, which was a great coup.

And then we started getting nervous that maybe they were too good

and too big and that by series three

they'd be off in Hollywood being super villains.

Uh-oh, Speed bumps.

LAUGHTER

We wound up with a stand-up comic, an impressionist, a dancer, and a stand-up poet.

When someone's had a tad too much claret and has fallen asleep

naked on their bunk, people of honour generally don't take

a Polaroid of your snoozing todger, draw a moustache,

mouth and ears on it,

and then pin it up on the bulletin board under "Missing Persons".

When it first went on it got really pretty good figures for a new

series, which tailed away to pretty much nothing.

Season seven we got on the front of Radio Times for the first time.

We had done seven series

and they went, "All right, give them a cover."

I don't think it ever got good reviews.

LAUGHTER

'I started to notice'

and in fact worry

when I would come out of the studio

and you would see people standing there with aitches on their head.

I've been to a couple of the conventions and, actually,

for the most part, I hate to burst the bubble,

but they're mostly nice people.

Please, I'm begging you!

LAUGHTER

-Pull them down!

-Keep still!

'The weirdest one I got was this strange guy, a wide-eyed guy,'

who came up and he was very keen to meet me and he presented me

with a computer printout, one of those green and white ones,

which had all my private details on it.

It had my bank account number, my home address, my phone numbers,

and he then invited me back to his car to show me his gun collection.

That was a very scary moment.

Following in the tyre tracks of earlier presenters including

Angela Rippon and Noel Edmonds, Jeremy Clarkson joined Top Gear

in 1989.

In those days, Top Gear went out on BBC Two at the same time that

Dallas went out on BBC One.

So, obviously, I watched Dallas.

This one, for instance, is seriously lacking in the door department.

It only costs a miserable £76,000.

Surely you could live with one of these.

Toed the line and did all the usual standing there, not knowing

what to do with my hands, because I'd never been on TV before.

# Bad company... #

A new director came along and we went off

and filmed these Lamborghinis and we used Bad Company as the soundtrack.

# Bad, bad company... #

And he had a camera on the end of a pole, whizzing it around.

Of course, we came back and the office went, "You can't put that out.

"That's rubbish."

And, of course, that was actually the start of what Top Gear became.

Now you're probably expecting the next five minutes to be

an uninterrupted flow of large

and vigorous similes garnished with sexual innuendo.

It sounds like lightning,

but actually what it sounds like is Tom Jones bending over to pick

up the soap while he's in the showers in Wandsworth nick.

Ra-argh!

Not since the Germans and the Italians teamed up

in the Second World War have we seen power like this.

I did my pause, the great big, "..in the world" pause,

because I used to smoke a great deal

and I didn't have enough breath to get all the way through

a sentence, and the similes really came about

because I didn't know the first thing about cars.

I thought if you describe a Ford Mondeo as a potato,

kind of a bit boring but you need it, hopefully people will understand

that without my having to explain what a torsion beam rear axle was.

Because I hadn't the first idea. Not a clue.

Well, here they are. A choice of hatchback or saloon...

There was the Vauxhall Vectra saga when everyone who had

a Vauxhall Vectra wrote to say I was biased.

Prices go from about 12 to around 20 for this one.

They'd had one, they'd always had one, "And you're biased." "No, I'm not biased, you're biased."

It's got a horrible engine and the steering is a joke,

but it moves about, it steers, it stops.

The 1992 Ford Escort came out and I savaged it on television.

And it went on to become Britain's best selling car.

This is my bete noire...

Then I did the Toyota Corolla and said it was boring.

I still hate it with every fibre of my body.

And that went on to be the world's bestselling car.

And then I did a car called a Renault Alpine A610.

# Highway to the danger zone... #

I said, "This is just fantastic. Everybody should have one."

And they sold six.

The '80s were a fabulous decade of television for the BBC,

particularly in drama,

and we wanted to start the 1990s much in that spirit, but say,

"Hey the girls are here and now we're really going to show you something."

'I think Oranges was stylistically different to'

a lot of the drama of the time in the fact that it was very

unafraid of the religious community,

or a certain section of the religious community,

and also that it dealt frankly with lesbian sexuality.

These children of God have fallen foul of their lusts.

Their bodies have proved stronger than their spirits.

Their hearts are fixed on carnal things.

It's very much a growing up story as well as a coming out story.

Its success was that a lot of people could identify with it

regardless of their sexuality,

but it was the first time that anybody had seen gay girls on screen.

Do you deny that you love this young woman with a love

-reserved for husband and wife?

-Yes. No... It's not like that.

St Paul says in Romans chapter one,

"Claiming to be wise they became fools.

"Therefore God gave them up to the lusts of their hearts,

"to the dishonouring of their bodies..."

SHE SOBS

Overall, I think we were cusping a moment of change in British

society which we both helped to happen, but benefited from too.

It was the right time, it was the right place. Oranges had to happen.

-I love you.

-Amen.

-Amen.

-Praise the Lord.

Video diaries was that moment when the technology arrived to make it

possible for people to tell stories

which they were determined to tell.

-RADIO:

-'Fulham were leading 1-0 with a goal after 31 minutes...'

In the early days of video diaries they were really

looked down upon within the television industry as being

kind of toy cameras, and ordinary members of the public

and not worthy of a programme maker's serious attention.

-RADIO:

-'And they achieved it.

'Gary Lineker hit the equaliser 13 minutes from the end after...'

Yeah! Gary Lineker!

I think the public liked them because they could relate to the stories that were in them.

If you asked me what I had always

wanted from life when I was little

the only thing I would have said to anybody is that

I wanted somebody to love me.

We had one diarist who was a prisoner in a special secure

unit in Barlinnie Prison in Glasgow.

Tom Campbell.

'It takes a lot of the anger away to have your kids run around your feet.

'It puts responsibility back where it belongs.'

In order to edit his programme we had to set up

an edit suite in his cell in prison and the editor and producer

worked in his cell, because he had to have control over the programme.

So video diaries were by people not just about them.

I need food to survive, right?

So I eat.

That's why I eat. "Oh, do you realise you're eating something dead?"

-Yes, I do as a matter of fact. I'm enjoying it.

-He's dead anyway.

I'm dead anyway.

We got a letter from a teenage boy, Chris Needham,

who was from Loughborough,

and it was the kind of classic letter that we got from lots of teenagers

about forming a band,

but there was something slightly different about his letter.

Hello there.

You've seen In Bed With Madonna,

well, this is In Bed With Chris Needham, so there.

It got picked up in an incredible way.

There was a fan club of young women.

They wrote to me and said, "We've got this fan club,"

and every few months they would meet and watch

In Bed With Chris Needham and then gets drunk out of their heads.

This is where me nan lives. Me nan lives there. Number six.

This is on Charles Street. That's where my nan lives.

Here she is. Hi, Nan! Say hello to her.

-NAN:

-What about that fish?

I'm fishing tomorrow. I'm taking it with me tomorrow.

She's worried about the fish.

We've got fish for dead baits tomorrow for all my piking.

We've got a load of herring, four herring and three mackerel.

And she's worried about them. That's what she's on about now.

-I'll pick them up tomorrow.

-What time?

-Half nine. Ten o'clock-ish.

And so we went with him. It became one of our most successful diaries.

It seems irrelevant but there is a quiz going on.

The show is a very odd combination of elements.

It is essentially a quiz show.

-Have you read it, then? Have you got a copy?

-I've read a precis.

No, he hasn't read it.

But it's a quiz show in which there is an element of satire.

That's the lorry rotisserie. It's kind of like a toast rack

they put the lorries in.

This is the madness of having lorries delivering fire to the continent.

One of the functions of the programme is as a sort of comic watchdog.

When outrageous things happen in the public sphere then there is

a way of dealing with it using comedy.

I seem to remember some problem with The Guardian, wasn't there?

-No, we don't mention that word.

-Don't you?

-No.

-I will, then. The Guardian.

If a public figure comes on a show like Have I Got News For You,

then I think they are up for whatever happens.

Al Fayed is a liar.

There is a DTI report saying he is a liar,

but in this case he wasn't lying.

Which happens sometimes. Even liars tell the truth...

Neil.

I haven't really felt I've gone too far.

Sometimes I'm slightly annoyed with myself.

I feel I haven't gone far enough.

He is charming, isn't he?

-Don't try the popularity line with me, Hislop.

-Why?

Anybody here like him? Do you like him?

AUDIENCE: Yes!

CHEERING AND APPLAUSE

I may not know much about anything in the newspapers, Piers,

but Ian is a regular on this show.

These are all people who have come to see Ian. We're strangers.

They don't like us. They've never heard of us.

Although I wasn't cheering then, I must admit.

LAUGHTER

Like most British institutions, Have I Got News For You is

largely about class.

And Paul sees it as his role every week

to secure a victory for the working classes,

and I feel, "You know, fine."

Noblesse oblige, I'll let him.

-Stoic... Is that the word for someone who goes to Stowe?

-Yes.

-Right.

And what's the school motto?

Persto et Praesto.

Which is?

Don't tie your shoelaces up in the playground.

During that period on BBC Two,

we really experimented with a lot of filmmakers

to really reinvent the play, the television play.

The first time I directed, I was terrified.

I didn't know anything,

and I just wanted to survive it.

In fact, I turned down...

To do Truly, Madly, Deeply, I turned down the chance

of directing an Inspector Morse, which I had started writing.

And I didn't do the Morse cos I thought too many people

would see it, and I thought I could get away with doing a tiny job

that nobody would see.

I had a sense that he knew exactly what he was doing,

but he always says he didn't.

I tell her last night...

Nina, she is beautiful woman.

She is beautiful.

-You are.

-OK.

-I think she's beautiful.

-Who's this who's beautiful?

We're talking about Nina.

-Yeah, she is.

-Guys, what is this?

I remember him ringing up and saying,

"I've written 72 scenes - guess how many you're in?"

I said, "I don't know. Six, maybe?"

He said, "72!"

I miss him. I just miss him, I miss him, I miss him.

I know I shouldn't do this.

I remember the crying scene.

We rehearsed in my car on the way down to Bristol, where we'd borrowed

a room, literally borrowed a room in the university, for the afternoon.

Somebody's tutorial room.

It's anger, isn't it? It's rage. I get so angry with other people!

People in love, or out of love or wasting love!

Women with children, growing children, fertile!

Most of all, I'm so angry with him!

I'm so angry with him!

It was the first of those films to make a transition into the cinema.

What we began to see were the first beginnings of BBC films,

really, and the theatrical arm of the BBC emerged out of Screen Two.

The channel needed the single play to resonate

and for risks to be taken.

And it was possible for someone like Alan Clark

to make a film like Elephant, which was perhaps

one of the most controversial dramas the BBC has ever made.

Shot in documentary style, Elephant was an unremittingly bleak

portrait of the Troubles in Northern Ireland.

It followed 18 sectarian killings

with no dialogue or word of explanation.

GUNSHOT

Call for you, Mr Holland.

Sorry, I haven't got the time to take it. Later.

When we started Later, we started it in a studio

that was borrowed from The Late Show,

so we had no real studio time of our own and we had no set.

-Hello, Jools. Enjoy yourself.

-Thanks for the studio.

-Sorry about all the mess.

-That's OK. Make sure you tidy it up after.

Later is one of the few shows in the entire world

in which music is the entire narrative.

# Oh... #

# And it was all yellow... #

Sometimes, it can be a little daunting

when you see this spread of artists that you've been a big fan of.

# ..waterfall

# Wherever it may take me... #

Then you have to step up and perform. You're thinking, "Right..."

Let's do this.

# I was checking this girl next door, when her parents went out

# She phoned, said, "Hey, boy, come on right around..." #

'There's a certain chemistry happens'

in the room, often, with Later.

That's why it really is a thing to cherish. It's real.

It's not actors. It's genuine artists in a room together.

# If you sing

# Sing

# If you sing

# Sing, sing, sing... #

There we go.

It says here, sir, to ignore the red wire, sir.

Right, thank you.

Now I think it's one or other of these pretty green ones.

This one, I think.

-Looks like we may be here for the duration, sir.

-Yes.

Sod this. Anyone fancy a pint?

This season, I'll be mostly wearing Dolce "ee" Gabbana.

Oh, suits you, sir. Aw!

-Me?

-Brilliant.

-Marvellous.

-Nice.

Very drunk.

Scorchio.

Which was nice.

In 1996, Alan Titchmarsh became the new face of Gardeners' World.

I used to watch Gardeners' World when I was tiny,

when it was Percy Thrower.

It was something you did on a Friday night.

Gardening was always on BBC Two,

there was only one gardening programme,

that was it, Friday night, Percy Thrower,

when you sat down for your weekly fix.

Hello. Welcome to Gardeners' World.

How many people, I wonder, enjoy an orange, such as this?

Taffy grows these on the hillside.

It's lovely.

Lovely, lovely addition to the border.

I am going to grow stuff like this.

Now we're at it all over the country.

Marvellous.

Gardeners' World is an enormous mantle,

and it started around Percy's shoulders

and it went around other shoulders.

All great gardening, broadcasting names.

Peter Seabrook, Geoffrey Smith, Clay Jones -

all names that mean "gardening".

Tonight, we're at Clack's Farm.

There's so much to be doing down in the garden at this time of the year.

A clean, well-trimmed hedge is good for the soul, raises your spirits.

One or two things in my greenhouse I'd be a bit embarrassed to show you.

If it looks puckered and punctured...

..burning or itching sensation...

..and a little yellow spotted, then, whatever you do, avoid those.

Horse manure.

But I've got others that I'm happy to swank with.

Remember this?

Tall cypresses.

There it is.

Bougainvillea.

Citrus fruits.

You can't beat perennials.

Gesneriaceae - bit of a mouthful.

And that's all we've got time for now.

So I hope you'll join us on Friday next at nine o'clock.

You won't forget, will you? Until then, good night.

Death of Yugoslavia was...

in a way,

a quietly original programme.

It's about putting a microscope up against these particular events

and seeing them from the inside out.

Austrian television, ORF, got onto me and said,

"Would you please make us a series about Yugoslavia?",

and I thought that was absolutely mad.

At that time, nobody was very interested in Yugoslavia.

But Norma and the BBC talked me round.

SPEAKING OWN LANGUAGE:

When I first saw the rushes

of the Presidential Council of Yugoslavia with the army,

discussing a plan to send the army into Croatia, I couldn't believe it.

We had footage of a group of politicians

and top soldiers discussing invading part of their own country

and bullying fellow members of this Presidential Council to agree.

I think it's one of the most extraordinary pieces

of archive footage,

not just that I've ever seen, but that anybody's ever seen.

We had been commissioned to get all the top people in Yugoslavia,

and there's one interview that we absolutely had to get.

That was Slobodan Milosevic.

Very, very cold. Most politicians are kind of warm and friendly.

But oddly charismatic.

He fixed you in eye-on-eye contact.

I only worked it out later, in the cutting room.

When we were finishing the programme and putting up the date supers,

I saw "Srebrenica, 14th July, 1995",

and I realised that was the day

we finally got our interview with Milosevic.

Responding to such recent history with such immediacy,

so rapidly, in the kind of detail that we were able to do,

was something that had never been done on television before.

I think Our Friends had always felt to controllers before,

like such a big, overwhelming commitment,

that it had somehow worried people.

You're the most unbelievable person I've ever met.

It did not get commissioned, over and over again.

It had been on and off

and cancelled and re-written

numerous times over 15 years.

-What's going wrong?

-Nothing.

I just think there's more important things to do

than be an undergraduate.

Well, look....maybes not for you, but for me.

'It gave me the chance

'to take the characters I had invented when I was 29

and write them again in my 30s,

and then, when I was 44, I was given the chance to write them

in their middle age, because this whole process took so long.

You must be Mary.

I'm Tosker.

-Hi. That's an unusual name.

-Crazy name, crazy guy.

I got an enormous envelope through the post.

Nine episodes.

# Oh Mary, marry me... #

'I couldn't put it down.'

It was one you wanted to read and find out exactly what happened.

# Let share all the time we can... #

SHE CRIES

'It was a year's shoot.

'We had to age from 20 up to 50.'

Do you love me?! You never say it, ever!

It was the fusion of the two things.

The fact that you could see the politics of the country

over 30 years set against the social changes

in the lives of these characters.

The Rhodesian blacks are an oppressed race.

Anything you do that helps the white regime only

-makes it harder for the blacks to take their freedom.

-Yeah, yeah,

I'm not interested in politics, so...

That's why he votes Tory.

How do you know what I vote or don't vote?

Our Friends In The North was probably the last

of the great, epic series like that.

You're moving on, you're changing, they're staying behind. That's all.

You came here to get houses built, to attack poverty,

to speak up for people who have no voice in the world,

and what are you doing?

Getting pissed in the bar and playing the same irrelevant

political point scoring games as the rest of the wankers in this place.

I am not mental!

Reeves and Mortimer!

Welcome to Countryfile.

Tonight, we'll be walking here,

and fishing on the river, but first, here's Whiskey and Brandy Boland

who found something...

RATHER UNUSUAL DOWN ON THE FARM!

HE PLAYS A JAUNTY TUNE

I got a phone call from Michael Jackson,

who was head of BBC Two,

and he said he wanted a new show, a drama, low budget, of course...

They always want a low budget show.

..for younger people.

"And by the way," he said, "could it be about lawyers?"

You'd expect Tony Garnett, the man who'd given us Cathy Come Home

to want to find a writer with a burning social passion.

Don't tell me you've been wild

and free and having a great time,

because you're not.

You're sad and lonely and fucked up, and so is Egg.

Interestingly, of course,

This Life was utterly the polar opposite

of something like Cathy Come Home.

I can't believe you bought me all those roses. How did you afford it?

I didn't. I found them in a corner.

It was very much about relationships,

it was about people who had no real interest in politics.

In fact, the whole idea of This Life is that it portrayed

a generation who were interested in themselves.

I buried my mother, the sermon was moving, the rain stayed off.

I'm not upset any more.

I don't need sympathy, I just need a drink.

I said, "I don't want there to be any issues. Sex, race, drugs."

They're all there, but they're never an issue.

You on drugs?

I love you.

We had to find a style that helped to bring to the screen

what we were trying to say in the shows -

this feeling of being eavesdropped upon.

Anna?

Can I have a word?

After just two series, This Life decided to call it a day.

Here's to our future relationship at the BBC.

See, I don't think you should see your future just at the BBC, Alan.

I just think it's time for you to consider moving on to new pastures.

Have I got a second series?

-There's so many opportunities...

-No, no, let me rephrase that.

Um, can I...

Actually, I'll just repeat the question.

Have I got a second series?

No.

Thank you. That's all I wanted to know.

-Tony!

-Peter! Hello, how are you?

-Fine, fine.

Alan, this is Peter Linen,

he's revamping our current affairs output.

We haven't met, but I liked your chat show.

Thank you very much.

Has he given you another series?

No, he won't give me one. THEY CHUCKLE

Give him another series, you swine.

Yeah, give me another series, you shit.