2016 Highlights Part Two Victoria Derbyshire

Hello and welcome to the programme.

We will bring you some of the exclusive interviews

and original stories we have brought to you over the last year.

First, the conversation that left Lily Allen in tears.

She had never visited a refugee camp before.

She met unaccompanied child migrants in Calais and it overwhelmed her.

Her apology to refugees became front-page news.

This is some of what she saw.

Calais's makeshift refugee camp, the Jungle, home to around 10,000

people including children.

This place has been partially demolished and reappeared.

The French government wants it gone again.

Starting to knock it down within weeks.

MUSIC PLAYS.

A world away from the squalor, Lily Allen is working

on her new album in a studio in North London.

What do you think you can achieve going there?

Save everyone?

No...

I hope that...

On a personal level, to see things for myself so I know

and can talk openly about it, having experienced it

even if for a short amount of time.

And humanise the people that are there because at the moment

what I've read, all these articles which are very dehumanising

about people and children.

You know, I am a mother.

I have two little girls.

If something was to happen in this country, to me or their dad,

I would really hope that other parts of the world would

really be more helpful.

It would seem to me that there are people who have been driven very

far away from what they know and love, stability and comfort.

No one would choose to live in the Jungle.

Josie Norton is with her.

They are old friends.

Josie gave up the music industry to start up a charity.

Right next to the camp, this massive warehouse shows

the scale of the charity work

that has emerged providing help to those in the Jungle.

An army of volunteers.

Today, Lily is one of them.

This is just kids' stuff.

My kids said that you could have.

Shoes, jackets.

Jumpers.

A Snow White costume which might come in handy!

It is actually really sweet.

And then it's time to enter the Jungle.

She has never been to a refugee camp of any kind, so this

is her first experience, and it's on her doorstep.

This is a bus for women and children in the camp.

Volunteers tell of the things they are constantly doing

is telling young people, like this young Afghan teenager,

to apply for asylum in France rather than constantly risking their lives

jumping on trucks for the UK.

They are risking their lives every time they go way out,

going to major highways.

You hear about people killed, you are not hearing about the people

who are severely injured.

There are number of children that have been severely injured.

One of the reasons she is here is to meet for herself children

and teenagers who call this place of their home.

There are 1022 unaccompanied children in this camp.

With the imminent closure, massive risk of trafficking

and getting lost in the system.

A huge proportion have a right to be there because they have families

or because of legislation passed in May and still there is not one

child brought to the UK under the amendment.

It was an agreement by the UK Government to take in unaccompanied

refugee children from Europe.

At this youth centre in the camp, there is a sense of urgency today.

Volunteers are recoding details of teenagers so they can keep track

of them when it becomes demolished and continued to help those

who have the right to be in the UK.

What I want is anybody who has family in England that has not

started the process.

Lily meets this 13-year-old from Afghanistan, who says his

father is in Birmingham.

He has been in the camp for two months.

Why did you leave Afghanistan?

The camp is closing in a couple of weeks, what are you going to do?

So you have been trying to jump on lorries to get over to the UK,

that must be terrifying?

I know you are trying to get onto the lorries every night

but from what I hearing from the refugee volunteers

here in the is that you have a right to be in the UK.

Have you started that process?

What are your hopes for the future?

It just seems that at three different intervals in his life,

the English have put you in danger.

We have bombed your country, put you in the hands of the Taliban

and now putting you at risk, risking your life, to get

you into our country.

I apologise on behalf of our country.

I am sorry for what we put you through.

I am sorry for what we put you through.

Sorry.

I am just so sorry.

And now I'm making you do this interview!

It is just desperate, isn't it?

I'm shocked really that this is happening in such close

proximity to where we live.

It feels like it's people are just managing to cope.

Something has to be done because it is inhumane.

Life is easier for me if I put this stuff out of my mind, you know?

And that is not really a right and correct response

to a humanitarian crisis.

This is these people's lives.

This is just a day out of my life, but

this is their existence and not knowing the uncertainty

of what comes next.

No one has chosen to be here and it is not fair.

You know, it is a lottery.

It is a geographical lottery.

Wherever you are born in the world...

I know I wouldn't like to end up here, though.

I certainly wouldn't want my children to end up here.

Over the last two years we have been following two transgender children

aged seven and nine.

Girls who were born as boys.

This is seven-year-old Lily's story.

How are people at school?

Well, at school,...

Do you miss having a brother?

In some ways, yes and in some ways no, when I say play

How proud are you of your sister?

How much do you love her?

Hey, that's brothers and sisters for you, isn't it?

I bet she says the same about you sometimes.

Phew.

One, two, three.

Can I ask you about skirt day?

Yeah.

They had an assembly were they talked about how

everybody is different.

Yeah.

But you were not in the assembly though, were you,

you and your brother?

No.

How has it been at school since that day?

Really good.

Really good.

And after skirt day, how many more girls wanted to play with

you?

All of them in the class.

Did they?

What was that like?

Awh, that's lovely and that meant from that day onwards you

could use the girls' toilets?

I mean, if everybody treats you like a girl now, they

call you your girl's name, people at school, friends, family.

Can you even remember being a boy?

Not really.

Does it seem like a long time ago?

Does it really?

Yeah.

And what do you think about when you grow up, what

do you know what you want to be when you grow up?

You can watch the full interview with Lily and all our other stories

on our programme page at:

Next, the remarkable story of a man

who spent more than 20 years on death-row in America

after being wrongly convicted.

It was a DNA test that eventually freed Nicky Aris.

He sat down with our programme exclusively to give us a rare

insight into what it's like to be on death row and survive.

When you're faced with the hopelessness that

you can't change the outcome then what do you do?

I knew I would be executed and no one would believe me.

I didn't think DNA would save me.

I tried for 15 years with it, so I decided that

if I had to die then to do it elegantly with

the beautiful vernacular replacing the broken person that I was,

with love and caring so if I died I still cared enough about myself

that if that was the outcome, I died with dignity,

and that's something a lot of people are afraid of.

We're so afraid to die in an ignanamous way, we don't

want to go out badly, I had my chance.

That's really interesting.

Explain to our audience how the conviction happened,

it came as a result they lie you told the police because you

thought that would help them.

Yeah, I initially in December of 1981, I was driving a stolen car,

I'm a 20-year-old kid, I get pulled over by

an officer and an altercation starts when he starts choking me.

It blows out of proportion, his gun discharge into the ground,

he made up a story of me murdering him, I was put

into solitary confinement - I was out of my head on drugs -

I went through withdrawals, I was facing life and I made up

a stupid story from a newspaper article and that was mistake

because the police seized on the fact that they knew it couldn't

be me but they could close a very sensationalised case.

I was then arrested for that murder based on another inmate

saying I confessed to him.

So in a really weird set of circumstances I ended up

being charged with the rape and murder of a woman

I couldn't possibly have met from my own desperation to get out

of the initial charges.

And that was just the beginning of what became a really crazy set

of circumstances you can never contrive, being put on trial

for the initial charges.

I was acquitted by a jury and that made the prosecutor insane.

They went after me with the death penalty and they gave me a three-day

murder trial at the age of 20 and I had no chance.

I went through the process angrily.

I was so bitter that at the age of 20 when I first got put

into prison in solitary confinement, I used to beat my head

against the wall in frustration because I hated myself.

I hated that I let a childhood incident of being attacked

and sexually abused make me a drug addict, I ruined all my chances,

Victoria, and I felt so ashamed when I went to prison and I felt,

God, give me a reason to live.

Then an officer took pity on me and let me have some books in a cell

that a man committed suicide in, and I began educating myself.

And 10,000 books later I felt like I had mastered myself.

Is that how many you read in that time?

More than that.

I became very fluent in the study of serology and biology

so I could understand DNA.

I wrote to Sir Alex Jefferies for many years, the inventor

of science, I did all this so I could have a purposeful mind

for fighting for myself.

Next, the man who claims to have fathered up to 800 children

through unlicensed sperm donation.

41-year-old Simon Watson is an online sperm donor.

Private licensed clinics can cost up to ?1000 for each cycle

of treatment, but Simon charges just ?50.

His services are legal, but they're unlicensed.

I would like to get the world record ever, make sure that no one

is going to break it, get as many as possible.

Usually about one a week pops out.

So I reckon I've got about 800 or so so far.

So in about four years I'd like to crack 1000 if I can.

Yeah, I just picked up the results from the hospital.

I get tested every three months to show I've got no nasty things.

I always post a copy on the internet so people can see it for themselves.

My name is Simon Watson and I'm a sperm donor.

If you do it formally, there's loads of hurdles

you have to go through, they make people sit through

counselling sessions and they make you do huge amounts of tests

and then they charge huge amounts for the service,

but realistically, if you've got a private donor you can go and see

them, meet them somewhere, get what you want,

just go, that's it.

It's all sorted.

I charge them ?50, that's it, for the magic potion pot.

Then I give them a syringe with the pot and then leave them to it.

Most of the people I help out tend to be from Facebook.

When people join the site, I see their name and I send them

a message explaining the service I provide.

It's like artificial insemination only, and they like the fact I do

that, and they're not going to get anything funny out of it.

Because I charge people for my service, there's a lot

of people who would be happy to provide the service

with no charge.

But then they want a bit of fun out of the customers.

So I'm not knocking them, it's up to them, some ladies

are looking for that, too.

Some lady couples, like the ones I had today,

they are booked into this hotel.

I won't know who they are unless they want to contact me later on.

I don't plan to stop.

I would like to get the world record ever, make sure no one

is going to break it, get as many as possible.

Usually about one a week pops out, I think I've got

about 800 or so so far.

Within about four years I'd like to crack 1000.

Before we go, it was one of the remarkable

achievements of the year.

Team GB finished second in the medals table in Rio.

We beat China and Russia, and in the process became the first

country ever to improve on a home medal haul at the next

Games, winning 67 gongs - two more than London 2012.

Here's a quick reminder of those two magic weeks in August.

MUSIC.

COMMENTATOR: Mo Farah is going to get gold

for Great Britain again!

Will it be Britain, will it be Australia?

It certainly will be Australia.

It certainly will be Great Britain!

As Max Whitlock has made history.

Andy Murray is a double Olympic gold-medallist.

MUSIC: Remind Me by Conrad Sewell.

They've done it!

MUSIC: Remind Me by Conrad Sewell.

Thank you very much for watching.

We're back on air on 3rd January.