05/12/2011 Inside Out East

Good evening. These unearthly stories tonight.

How safe and nightclubs? It would be desperate if we waited until

more people died in night clubs before the regime change.

dangerous world of cut-price cosmetic surgery. My chest was

covered Basset look like when the brand and animal. And the railway

historian who thinks that Brunel was not as good as his reputation.

Brunel was not Superman. He did not do everything on his own. When he

did something on his own it was programme. That is on tonight's

A night out at a nightclub a few weeks ago ended tragically when two

people died. How do clubs assess safety? I have been investigating.

This report contains flashing lights. October 2011 and a tragic

incident shocks the nightclub world. A 22 year old woman has been killed

in a crush in a crowded nightclub in Northampton. A Nightclub in

Northampton where a student was crushed to death has been shut down.

Two people lost their lives as hundreds rushed for the exit.

The industry insisted today that the safety of nightclubbers was a

top priority. That could have been me. But we

discovered that in nightclubs licensing and fire officers no

longer carry out routine safety inspections. Kids who buy tickets

to go to festivals, or nightclubs, or whatever the entertainment may

be they've got a right to expect they can go to a safe, comfortable,

happy environment, and any number of checks on that has got to be a

good thing. So why are nightclubs under much

less scrutiny than ever before? is there another nightclub tragedy

just around the corner? Licensing is all about making sure

people are safe. We're at a student night in at The Malt House in

Ipswich and Head of security Ryder is getting ready for one of the

busiest nights of the week. Lewis - you searching please.

you're on crowd control. Looking after crowds of people has

been his business for years these days doorstaff are well trained.

Which is important in the event of evacuation.

The course has changed over the years to incorporate emergency

evacuations and my belief is if you've got a thousand people in 80%

of them will want to go back out the way they came in which is the

front dooor, but whilst he is experienced and runs a tight ship

with properly trained doorstaff he'd like to see more documented

inspections from licensing officers. 20 years ago they used to come

round. It was all documented. They would sign registers in reception

to say they'd been in, who they were, who they'd met what they'd

done, but in my experience now they may just turn up at the front door

for a chat with the door staff and that's it they go away they very

rarely come ii. In fact Inside Out contacted 35 local authorities in

the East. Not one routinely inspects nightclubs, but at UK

music festivals the same licensing officers which enforce nightclubs

licences keep a very watchful eye over promoters with very good

reason. Following the death of 9 Pearl Jam

fans who were crushed to death at the Roskilde music festival in 2000

licensing inspections are much more stringent. Lessons were learned at

Roskilde in Denmark and now licensing officers in the UK always

inspect music festivals to make sure safety rules are being stuck

to. And some promoters across Europe and the UK even use

scientists from New Bucks University to test crowd pressure

to try and keep people even safer. Chris we've got some elaborate bits

of kit - the girls are wearing some suits and you've got these barriers.

How does this all work? What kind of measurements do you get from

this? The pressure suit system here is

blown up to a set pressure and inside there are sensors and what

happens is these sensors go back onto the stage, onto a screen, and

you get a reading out of what the excitation and the push is on the

girls. So it's quite an important

development because it's the first time that the pressure inside a

crowd has actually been measured. So researchers go into the audience

at major festivals right across Europe and then Chris and his team

can see where pressure and crushing is occurring.

Sometimes you get pinch points where people are being crushed in

those pinch points and you will need to know and that's what

happens behind the stage - these people identify to the crowd

managers that this is happening and then they can look into it and

identify if they need to pull people out or if thy need to calm

it down slightly. $$NEWLINEAnd whilst Chris and his team use

science to keep people safe this man has safety responsibility for

some of the biggest gigs in the country such as Glastonbury and

Latitude. Having the back up of safety inspections from licensing

officers is important. I think local authorities play an

absolutely critical role in making sure that the terms and conditions

of the Licensing Act and other safety legislation are adhered to.

For the most part they are the only agency that come round and look at

a lot of events. Since incidents like Roskilde and the Castle

Donington incident in the UK there has grown up within the UK events a

sector of which I am very proud to be a part. Which is delivering

specialist health and safety services to large scale events and

outdoor gigs and that kind of thing so large crowds at music festivals

have routine licensing inspections but large crowds in nightclubs do

not. Last year the Government issued

guidance saying that licensing inspectionsin nightclubs should

should no longer be routine. The Government's intention to

streamline the licensing process but these proposals go too far.

On top of that a government consultation on relaxing licensing

laws even further ended last week. A goverment spokesman told us:

"Current rules are a mess, tied up in red tape". Deregulating

licensing law in this way is not something the local government

association want to see: "We are completely behind the Government's

intention to streamline the licensing process, but these

proposals go too far". As things stand in nightclubs it's left to

people like Ryder and his team to rigorously enforce licensing

conditions and ensure licensing law isn't broken.

Yyou've got quite a stringent security system going on here.

Everyone's being searched and then they go across to the scanner. Is

this what you have to do? We do like to do this it shows everyone

we are professional. Obviously we've got the metal detectors. We

can look for unwanted weapons and then they go over to the scanners

where they have their finger print taken.

Is all this necessary? I think it's necessary. Especially the searching.

The club scan helps to govern who is coming in and it takes away the

id checks at the door because the scan does it all for you. They're

important crowd safety measures. Meanwhile Tim has a bigger concern

about crowd safety in clubs - fire. Over the last 5 or 10 years there

have been a sequence of catastrophic fires in nightclubs

that have caused many hundreds of people to be killed so I think fire

is actually a very significant risk in clubs and something wehich is

very actively guarded against. Current cutbacks mean the fire

service has to target its resources very carefully and like licensing

officers they only regularly inspect where the risk is greatest.

And the chief fire officers association told us the current

government proposals to relax licensing law even further is "a

step too far". I believe that if any venue or door

supervisor company are not interested in more inspections then

there is something not going right. The tragic events in Northampton

are thankfully very rare and whilst licensing and fire safety law is

robust the inspection regime in nightclubs seems anything but.

Every time something happens like Hillsborough or something happens

like Roskilde it's always after the horse has bolted.

Things come in - "Oh yes we'll make it better for next time" and then

when nothing happens they relax it. I think it will be absolutely

desperately wrong if we waited for more people to die in nightclubs

before regimes were changed about the inspection and management of

nightclubs. I think the framework is already

there. That doesn't need to change. It's how it gets inspected and

reviewed that maybe needs some If there is something you think we

should investigate same as an e- Later we expose the dangers world

of cut-price treatments. This time of year that engineers

are working hard. Brunel was a Victorian engineers who built

railways and steamships. But one historian thinks Brunel might not

necessarily be the genius that many claim he was. People should

remember that Brunel was not Superman. He did not do everything

on his own. He did not think of everything on his own. He had help.

When he did think of anything on his own it was at dog's breakfast.

I am a volunteer signalmen. I have been on the really for most of my

working life. I have written over 30 books about it has to be,

including a book about Brunel. From leading -- from bleeding his

diaries and letters I do not think we have got his history right. I am

going on a journey to some of Brunel's landmark.

I started to research at Brunel to write a book about him. To my

amazement I discovered he was doing some silly things.

A lot of people have said that I have denigrated a great man. I have

not. I have just told the story straight.

In 1833 Brunel was appointed Chief Engineer or to devise a route from

Bristol to London. He had no previous experience in railway

construction. He wanted to try out his new idea

of putting big Telegraph Paul's into the ground. Rimell's idea was

that if he drove these piles deep into the ground, then nailed the

Well of course, that's a nonsense because the weight of the train

running over the track crushes it where it isn't supported, and where

it is supported it's held up. So you've got a 15-foot roller coaster

Now I'm in Bristol, there is so much of Brunel's work to see.

we have in front of us what seems to be the evidence of Brunel not

being quite aware of modern developments in ships. Now the ship

has got a long straight looking hull, but here we have this

semicircular cut out, and this is proof that the ship was originally

designed as a paddle steamer and it would take the extended block thing

that the wheel goes around in, that So they built the dock in this way,

and then Captain Claxton who designed this dock came to Brunel

to say that the screw propellor ship had arrived in Bristol docks,

just out there, and as soon as Brunel saw it, he was immediately

captivated and decided this was the way forward, with the screw

propellor. So he redesigned the hull, but we have this as a silent

witness for Brunel changing his mind, which is something Brunel

And it isn't just Captain Claxton who we must credit for the design

of the SS Great Britain! The keel of this ship, which was

revolutionary at the time that it was done, was patented by Thomas

Guppy. William Patterson, the owner of the shipyard, he helped to

design the lines of the hull, how it curved out, how it came to the

bows and the stern. They all put their piece in and Brunel took

their advice. And because he allowed people to help him, this is

why he was so successful. And the extra pairs of hands gave

Brunel time to concentrate on this. Brunel made a lot of mistakes when

he was in his early days at the Great Western Railway. But it is

therefore wonderful to be able to come along to a marvellous thing

like the SS Great Britain and say nice things about Mr Brunel,

because I'm now standing beneath this fantastic propeller, which is

truly an amazing piece of technology and he designed this all

Well Brunel might have talked about Clifton Suspension Bridge as being

his darling. But I dispute whether the bridge we have today is his at

all! So up here on top of the tower we

have three names. Isambard Kingdom Brunel started it, commenced it,

John Hawkshaw, William Henry Barlow completed it in 1864, and that's

the small print of the Clifton Bridge. Because the truth is,

Brunel didn't design the bridge. It was designed by John Hawkshaw and

William Henry Barlow. 24 year old Isambard designed his

bridge in around 1830. But the project ran out of funding and was

abandoned 12 years later. Only part of the towers had been completed.

Brunel died in 1859. As a memorial to him, the bridge opened in 1864.

But the new engineers did not use Brunel's design. Hawkshaw and

Barlow added a third tier to the suspension chain, so straight away

Brunel's design has been altered. The other thing that Barlow and

Hawkshaw did was to incorporate the lattice work girder here that forms

the footpath railings, that is part of the bridge. The third thing that

Barlow and Hawkshaw had to do was to take away Brunel's idea of a

wooden sub-structure, and underneath there is a wrought iron,

riveted lattice work girder as a stiffener underneath. The design is

completely different to the one But someone isn't going to let the

sun set on this argument quite yet. It's historian and Brunel

enthusiast, Professor Mark Horton. So Adrian, this is story of the

bridge, pretty well okay, apart from one small detail. It was

actually designed in 1831, but otherwise it's pretty good.

Ah right, so this is the extent of the mistake? Well, it's a pretty

long lived fairytale. No it's not, it's true, it's true! This is a

great monument to Brunel's engineering genius.

Well, I'm afraid I think not Mark. I think if we want a monument,

which of course we do, to Brunel's great engineering genius, you

should go down to the River Tamar and look at the Royal Albert Bridge.

Now there's a bridge and he designed it. Well he also designed

this bridge! No, no, no. The bridge was designed

by Barlow and Hawkshaw and in their paper to the Institution of Civil

Engineers in 1867, they described what they had to 'vary and

rearrange'. But it's still Brunel's bridge!

it's Barlow and Hawkshaw's bridge on the site of Brunel's proposed

I totally disagree. Goodness, I think the two of us could argue

this matter til the cows came home! So I would argue that Brunel should

be remembered as much for his blunders as for his brilliance. I

think it's time we set the record Everywhere you look these days,

there are adverts offering bargain priced cosmetic surgery. Wrinkle

eradication, lip plumping and even body-reshaping we can have it all

and apparently for just a small fee. But how safe are these procedures?

Jo Good investigates and asks does the cosmetic surgery industry need

to be more tightly regulated? And I should say that you may find some

of the images in this film disturbing from the start.

My chest was covered in red burn marks that look a little like when

you brand an animal. The botched operation. I'm in pain.

Help can somebody help me. And the toxic overdose.

If I'd taken the whole syringe the doctor said to me that it could

have been fatal. According to new figures backed by the Department of

Health, one and a half million cosmetic surgery procedures will be

undertaken in the UK this year. Many of these will be bargain-

priced quick-fix treatments done in lunch breaks or even at parties.

But as the demand for cheap cosmetic surgery has risen, safety

standards have fallen with lethal consequences. When Charlotte Cripps

noticed her skin aging she had shots of high frequency light to

smooth the complexion. The technician went over my face and

chest with a sort of hand held machine but when she did my chest

the pain was absolutely excruciating. I did keep stopping

her and she kept carrying on. I left the department store and I got

home within about twenty minutes and I looked in the mirror and I

screamed! These photos were taken just 24-

hours after Charlotte's first and only treatment. I couldn't put a

duvet over me or anything because it was just so raw and painful.

Charlotte's agony lasted several months. She received a six-figure

out of court settlement from the insurers of the spa but its little

compensation. I'm still left with scarring so I

have to live with that. Provided you deliver proper training in the

use of these devices they can be perfectly safe and give excellent

results to people where you don't do that you run into trouble.

Godfrey has spent the last decade training people to use light

therapy safely at the Wellbeck hospital near Harley Street. But

recently his services have been less in demand.

Three years ago I would have trained around 140 people. That

number this year has dropped to 55. I think we are going to see a lot

more problems coming with people claiming they've been treated in a

poor way at the hands of not properly trained people. Despite

the potential danger to the public last year the Department of Health

approved the deregulation of the IPL and laser industry. I think the

government has got it wrong. I think it's a bad idea. I think we

need these regulations just to protect the public.

Heidi is a permanent make-up artist. She has prided herself on the

service she gives to women recovering from illnesses like

cancer and alopecia but in the last year things have changed. Now I'm

finding more and more it's a lot of corrective treatments for people

that have had cosmetic treatments Many of Heidi's clients and

hundreds of others have been left scarred by untrained therapists

working in High Street outlets. Hairdressers, dentists and even

supermarkets are cashing in on the trend for cheap cosmetic treatments

but there's an even bigger danger on the web. There are literally

hundreds of unregulated sites offering treatments at knockdown

prices. You can buy DIY Botox kits, injectable tanning solutions or

even book yourself a full scale operation. Many of these products

and services are not licensed for sale in the UK, yet online, they

are freely available - no questions asked.

When Essex hairdresser Garry purchased an injectable serum

online he was hoping to get a tan at a fraction of the price that a

holiday would cost. The product is I suppose tanning from the gods.

You inject yourself over a gradual time. You build up that melanin in

your system which is the ingredient that makes you brown. Tanning

injections are illegal in the UK due to concerns about their

potential side-effects but Garry thought it was worth the risk.

going to speak quite freely about it. I heard it was illegal but I

just wanted to be brown. What happened when it arrived?

Went into bathroom and just pinched the skin on my stomach and injected.

Twenty minutes later Garry realised he'd made a big mistake. A fever

came over me very, very quick. It was like the flu hitting you in one

big shot. Your legs ached, your bones ached. When the paremedics

came and they checked over me they said you are burning up.

He was rushed to hospital where a specialist eventually ascertained

the best way to treat him. If I had taken the whole syringe the doctor

said to me that it could have been fatal. It took about a week in

total before I was actually feeling well enough to come back to work.

The illegal sale of cosmetics and medicines online is estimated to be

worth at least �50 million pounds per year in the UK. Danny leads the

team who have an uphill battle trying to close this black market.

What we got here is some suspect product. It's a slimming product.

This is very dangerous. Anybody who's taking it will be subject to

heart palpitations, increased risk of stroke. Earlier this year

Danny's team were involved in a global operation to seize �5

million worth of illegal medicines and cosmetics. One of our partners

in the operation was the Met police e-crime unit and they actually

closed down 12,500 websites. We are seeing more and more unscrupulous

individuals engaged in this who see consumers in the UK in particular

When people damage their health through online products or botched

treatments they usually turn to the NHS for help. But the demand on the

health service is now so high, there is growing concern about the

drain on resources and cost to tax payers. The question about how big

a problem this is for the NHS is very difficult to answer because we

don't really have specific figures but if one per cent goes wrong and

has to be sorted out by the NHS, that's an awful lot of patients.

feel ashamed that I'm using the money and the cost of surgeons one

after the other. Jim, who wishes to remain anonymous, turned to the NHS

when his cosmetic surgery went drastically wrong.

I had an extremely tight scrotum and I had been speaking to quite a

number of people via various chat lines and forums about people now

having silicone injected into their scrotum, just to give more weight

and volume. When Jim discovered that he could

improve his appearance for just �130 he booked an operation online

with a man claiming to be a qualified nurse. When he did the

operation it was very simple, straightforward, there was no

discomfort. It was only months later when problems began.

noticed that the silicone seemed to start to harden. I went back to the

guy, I spoke to him and he didn't Jim had actually been injected with

industrial silicone. Embarrassed, he rarely left home for three whole

years before he sought help from the NHS.

It was like stone, hard piece of stone of the dimension of about

that big. Dr Orlando is one of the UK's top plastic surgeons. If Jim

had been a private patient his treatment would have cost tens of

thousands of pounds. There is now a campaign to ensure tighter

regulation of cosmetic treatments in the UK. Whether online or on our

High Street, a growing number of rogue practitioners are exploiting

our vanity. But be warned - cheap, quick cosmetic fixes can prove

Now for something you think we should investigate, send me an e-

mail. If you want to follow me on Twitter, please do. That is it,

hope you have enjoyed the programme. See you next week when I will be

back with these untold stories. Why more people are relying on food

handouts. What it is like being a pioneering heart surgeon. John

retired from at surgery this year and gave us exclusive access to his