Brass Eye

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Brass Eye
Format Comedy
Created by Chris Morris
Starring Chris Morris
Country of origin United Kingdom
No. of episodes 7
Production
Running time 25 min
Broadcast
Original channel Channel 4
Original run 29 January 1997 – 26 July 2001

Brass Eye is a UK television series of satirical spoof documentaries which aired on Channel 4 in 1997 and was re-run in 2001.

The series was created by Chris Morris, and written by, amongst others, Morris, David Quantick, Peter Baynham, Arthur Mathews and Graham Linehan. It was conceived as a sequel to Morris's earlier spoof news programmes On the Hour and The Day Today, and satirised the media's portrayal of various social ills, in particular, sensationalism and the creation of moral panics. The series starred Morris' former The Day Today cohort Doon MacKichan as well as Gina McKee, Mark Heap, Simon Pegg and Kevin Eldon

Contents

[edit] Original 1997 series

Brass Eye aroused considerable controversy when it was first broadcast, primarily because prominent public figures were fooled into pledging onscreen support for fictitious, and often plainly absurd, charities and causes.

The second episode was called "Drugs", and is considered by many to be the most successful of the series. In the opening scene, a voiceover tells viewers that there are so many drugs on the streets of Britain that "not even the dealers know them all". An undercover reporter (Morris) asks a purportedly real-life drug dealer in London for various fictitious drugs, including "Triple-sod", "Yellow Bentines" and "Clarky Cat", leaving the dealer puzzled and increasingly irritated until he tells the reporter to leave. He also asks the dealer if he is the "Boz-Boz", and claims that he doesn't want his arm to feel "like a couple of fortnights in a bad balloon". Later in the episode, in the same area, Morris, dressed as a baby with a nappy on and a red balloon-like hat on his head, again asks for "Triple-sod" and then says "last time I came here a friend of mine just got triple-jacked over a steeplehammer and jessop jessop jessop jessop". He also explained that possession of drugs without physical contact and the exchange of drugs through a mandrill were perfectly legal in English law.

David Amess MP, the Conservative Member of Parliament for Basildon, was fooled into filming an elaborate video warning against the dangers of a fictional Eastern European drug called Cake, and went as far as to ask a question about it in Parliament [1]. The drug purportedly affected an area of the brain called "Shatner's Bassoon", can give you a bloated neck due to "massive water retention" (allegedly known in the then non-existent Czechoslovakia as "Czech Neck") and was frequently referred to as "a made-up drug" (a drug, they were told, not made from plants but made up from chemicals). Other celebrities such as Sir Bernard Ingham, Noel Edmonds and Rolf Harris were shown holding the bright-yellow cake-sized pill as they talked, with Bernard Manning telling viewers that "One kiddy on Cake cried all the water out of his body. Just imagine how his mother felt. It's a fucking disgrace" and that "... you can puke yourself to death on this stuff - one girl threw up her own pelvis-bone... What a fucking disgrace". Manning, along with other participants, told the public that Cake was known on the street as "loonytoad quack", "Joss Ackland's spunky backpack", "ponce on the heath", "rustledust" or "Hattie Jacques pretentious cheese wog", and then informed anyone offered it to "chuck it back in their face and tell them to fuck off".

Other episodes dealt with the topics of science, animals, and infamously, sex. In one scene of the "Sex" episode, Morris posed as a talk-show host who took a starkly discriminatory attitude in favour of those with "Good AIDS" (e.g. from a contaminated blood transfusion) over those with "Bad AIDS" (caught through sexual activity or drug abuse), satirising stereotypical right-wing attitudes to people with AIDS.

The screening of the 1997 series was postponed for nearly six months as it made comic reference to murderer Myra Hindley, who was back in the news at the time after her portrait was vandalised in the Royal Academy exhibition Sensation. In a particularly infamous portrayal, Hindley was the topic of a farcical song by a fictitious indie band called "Blouse" (whose appearance and style closely resembled that of Pulp). The lyrics to part of the song read: "Every time I see your picture, Myra/I have to phone my latest girlfriend up and fire her/And find a prostitute who looks like you and hire her/Oh, me oh Myra." The "leader singer" of Blouse, Purves Grundy (who resembles Jarvis Cocker), is then shown commenting on the song; "Myra is a very complex woman, you know, and this song is about her hair. I don't think there's a single reference in the song to her brain, which I think maybe, had a slight problem. I do think [if] someone's gone and bought this record just because of the fuss that's been made about it, I think they should throw it away. And then they should go and buy another copy, because they liked the song".

As with the reference to Czechoslovakia, anyone with the most basic grasp of current post-Cold War geography would also have realised that the case of "Carla the East German elephant" was impossible, since the reunification of Germany. But still the celebrities in question failed to notice this and many other blatant and deliberate clues.

[edit] Michael Grade

Michael Grade, then chief executive of Channel 4, repeatedly intervened to demand edits to episodes of Brass Eye, and rescheduled some shows for sensitivity. The final episode (which had been most tampered with) included a single-frame subliminal message reading "Grade is a cunt".

As part of the 25th anniversary of Channel 4, this sequence was shown again, twice, including a freeze frame for anyone who didn't catch it originally. Grade was interviewed on this, referring to it as a "See you next Tuesday", and pointing out that subliminal messages are illegal under British law.

[edit] Repeats and DVD release

In 2001, to tie in with the paedophilia special (see below), the series was repeated, and also released on DVD, in a revised form. This new version reinstated most of the material which had been cut from the original broadcasts, although a few items were removed, most notably the "Grade is a cunt" message, and an interview with Graham Bright MP in the "Drugs" episode. A disclaimer was also added to the "Drugs" episode at the request of David Amess.

[edit] Celebrity involvement

In an attempt to get celebrities to support the airing of the show, and as another insult to Grade, Morris allegedly wrote to Nelson Mandela telling him that Grade campaigned for him to be kept in prison[2], and protested upon his release. He also wrote to musician Paul Simon, claiming that Grade always considered Art Garfunkel the more talented of the duo.[3]

[edit] 2001 paedophilia special

In 2001, the series was repeated, along with a new show, which tackled the subject of paedophilia and the associated moral panic prevalent in parts of the British media at the time following the death of Sarah Payne, focusing on the controversial 'name and shame' campaign of the News of the World. This included an incident in 2000, in which a paediatrician in Newport had the word 'PAEDO' daubed in yellow paint on her home.[4]

Celebrities including Gary Lineker and Phil Collins appeared in videotaped interviews, in which they endorsed a spoof charity "Nonce Sense" ("nonce" is common British slang to refer to people convicted or suspected of molesting children), Collins going so far as to announce, "I'm talking Nonce Sense!" Tomorrow's World presenter Philippa Forrester and ITN reporter Nicholas Owen amongst others were tricked into explaining the details of "HOECS" (pronounced entirely without awareness as "hoax") computer games, which online paedophiles were supposed to be using to abuse children via the Internet. These fairly simple plays on words were opaque enough that none of the guest celebrities understood that they were being lampooned until the show was aired, in spite of what often seems to the viewer like plainly absurd subject matter. The Capital Radio DJ Neil "Doctor" Fox, for example, informed viewers that "paedophiles have more genes in common with crabs than they do with you and me", before qualifying his remarks with "Now that is scientific fact - there's no real evidence for it - but it is scientific fact". Viewers were also told by the then Labour MP Syd Rapson that paedophiles were using "an area of Internet the size of Ireland", and by Richard Blackwood that internet paedophiles can make computer keyboards emit noxious fumes in order to subdue children (Blackwood even sniffed a keyboard and claimed to be able to smell the fumes, which he said made him feel "suggestible"); Blackwood also warned watching parents that exposure to the fumes would make their children "smell like hammers".

Sequence from the special episode on paedophilia, in 2001

In one segment, the studio is "invaded" by members of a fictional pro-paedophile activism organisation called MILIT-PEDE and the programme appears to suffer a short technical disturbance. When the show returns, presenter Chris Morris confronts a supposed spokesman, Gerard Chote (played by Simon Pegg) who has been captured and placed in a pillory, and asks him whether he wants to have sex with Morris's six-year-old son. Hesitantly, the spokesman looks at the boy and refuses, explaining, "I don't fancy him", which then drives Morris to further indignation that his son is found unattractive. Morris later claimed that the child actor was not present during filming, and was incorporated digitally in post-production, but this scene was one of the key causes of the media backlash which followed its first broadcast. (Evidence in favour of Morris's claim includes the child being out of shot in all but the opening seconds of this scene, and a few shots in which the image of the child has clearly been spliced into the foreground as well as a faint green outline around the child and a lack of lip sync for the character played by Morris in the final shot.)

Around 2000 complaints were received regarding the show, and some politicians hastily spoke out against Morris. Beverley Hughes described the show as "unspeakably sick" (while admitting that she had not seen the programme) and David Blunkett said he was "dismayed" by it. Although she did not criticise the show, Tessa Jowell was reported as asking the Independent Television Commission to revise its rules to allow such a controversial show to be prevented from broadcast[5] even though she had not watched the actual episode of the show. There was also a vociferous tabloid campaign against Morris, who refused to discuss the issue. The episode went on to win a Broadcast magazine award in 2002 and the complete series, including the 2001 special, was released as a bestselling DVD later that year.

The show caused a furor among sections of the British tabloid press. The Daily Star printed an article decrying Morris and the show, apparently unaware of the piece's ironic and hypocritical juxtaposition with a separate article about the then 15-year-old singer Charlotte Church's breasts under the headline "She's a big girl now". [6][7] Similarly, and also with no hint of irony, the Daily Mail featured pictures of Princesses Beatrice and Eugenie, who were 13 and 11 at the time respectively, in their bikinis next to a headline describing Brass Eye as "Unspeakably Sick".[7] Defenders of the show argued that the media reaction to the show reinforced its satire of the media's hysteria and hypocrisy on the subject of paedophilia.[7] This episode has been shown 3 times even though controversy was caused each time.

[edit] References to and appearances of celebrities by episode

[edit] Animals episode

[edit] Drugs episode

[edit] Science episode

[edit] Sex episode

[edit] Crime episode

[edit] Decline episode

[edit] Brass Eye special ("Paedogeddon")

[edit] References

  1. ^ Parliamentary question raised by David Amess MP
  2. ^ 15 things you genuinely never knew about Chris Morris, bubblegun.com
  3. ^ The last temptation of Chris, Tim Adams, The Guardian, 4 April 1999
  4. ^ Paediatrician attacks 'ignorant' vandals, BBC News, 30 August 2000
  5. ^ TV spoof to bring tougher regulation, Lucy Ward, The Guardian, 30 July 2001
  6. ^ Perv Spoof Bosses Axe Wrestling, copy of article from the Daily Star, 2001
  7. ^ a b c Why Chris Morris had to make Brass Eye, Euan Ferguson, The Observer, 5 August 2001

[edit] External links

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Chris Morris
Radio shows
Television shows
The Day Today · Brass Eye · Jam/Jaaaaam · Brass Eye Special · Nathan Barley · The IT Crowd
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