Sit back...
It's so naughty!
..strap in...
It was quite an eye-opener.
What? ..and get ready to return...
They banned the video!
..to naughty, naughty 1984.
The world stopped turning at that point.
And what had our scandalised tongues wagging?
Even if she'd been 16, she was still too young for him.
They were at it!
That is shocking!
There were political puppets...
AS MARGARET THATCHER: I do not take orders from men.
And don't you ever forget it!
..while video got nasty.
They were classic movies she had a problem with.
I have far too much respect for my mind.
Over the next two hours, we'll take a deep dive into the outrageous...
Blasphemy, darling, what was she doing?!
..and gobsmacking events of '84...
Listen, I might seem like a traitor.
..as the nation watches tragedy unfold live...
You knew something had gone dreadfully wrong.
It was absolutely horrible.
..and politics takes a sinister turn.
It makes you very frightened
and very determined that they're not going to win.
It was outspoken...
Like a monstrous carbuncle.
He really wasn't allowed to say that.
..shocking...
I don't know what happened. I can't remember.
Oh, I'm getting upset now.
..and crazily controversial.
I thought it was rubbish.
It's OK to be wrong about things, Michael,
and you were wrong about Doctor Who.
These are the most extraordinary events
in TV, showbiz, music and politics that were...
George Orwell predicted 1984 would be bleak -
he had no idea.
Forget Big Brother, we had a big sister in charge,
and not everyone was happy.
The police are already blocking off roads.
It seemed to be wall-to-wall anarchy.
It is unlawful assembly.
And that chaos spilled from our streets onto our screens,
as Britain's youth revelled in gratuitous violence
from the comfort of their sofas.
One series which some, particularly older reviewers,
find tasteless is The Young Ones.
The second series of the rebellious and ground-breaking sitcom
The Young Ones didn't just raise the comedy bar,
it repeatedly smashed viewers over the head with it.
It was anarchic, it was naughty,
it was just deeply funny,
and rude, really rude.
All of Felicity Kendal's underwear...
that needs a good wash.
It was like nothing I'd ever seen before.
It was like punk the sitcom.
Hands up who likes me.
Damn! Right, that's it, I'm going to kill myself.
Then you'll be sorry. No, we won't.
The Young Ones was completely controversial,
and you never really knew what was going to happen next.
It was fantastic cos this was a show for me,
this was not a show for my mum and dad,
this was a show for young people.
Comedy duo Rik Mayall and Ade Edmondson,
along with Alexei Sayle and Ben Elton
were pioneers of '80s alternative comedy.
Upcoming BBC producer Paul Jackson, on the lookout for edgy new talent,
had caught them live at The Comedy Store.
I was a young assistant in the entertainment department,
and I've always loved comedy and I thought,
"Oh, I must go and have a look at this,"
and I was knocked out. I went back to the BBC and said,
"Look, there's this thing happening, we should do something about it."
Rik Mayall, a natural disruptor,
had already unleashed his spoof reporter Kevin Turvey
to BBC sketch show A Kick Up The Eighties,
and wanted to go further.
Good evening, Britain.
Tonight, I'd like to talk about shark fishing,
but I don't know the first thing about it.
I'm going to have to talk about something else, I think.
Mayall was keen not to just push TV boundaries, but burn them,
and following an offer from Jackson,
Mayall began writing with American Lise Mayer
and British political satirist Ben Elton.
Their intention - to kick the very concept of sitcom
down the garden path.
Now, that IS a miracle!
We'd had The Good Life...
..and we'd had Wendy Craig, Butterflies.
Sexy legs. Is that a joke?
Is it? Is that a joke?
And suddenly, somebody is putting their head through a wall.
There's head-butting, nuclear bombs,
people are punching each other.
It was just so high energy, so revolutionary,
and yet it was sort of a domestic sitcom all along.
The scripts are actually absolutely bog-standard sitcom procedure.
You've got four characters with very explicit characteristics
which never change, you lob a situation into it,
whether it's a bomb in the cellar or the end-of-term exams...
Oh! Oh!
Wow! Yeah!
..they all react in their own different ways,
and then the whole thing reconciles in the final scene.
It's a very traditional comedy.
Not traditional enough, though,
for the self-appointed guardians of the British moral compass.
It was controversial in the sense that there was a lot of violence
in the show, quite graphic violence, you know, Vivian loses his head
and blood spurts everywhere.
You took your time, you bastard!
People said it was too violent.
It had a kind of element of cruelty to it that felt kind of new.
Why do you think that an older audience would be offended,
as some of them were, by both the language...
And they claim to be disgusted by some of the stuff
they saw on The Young Ones?
I'm sure they are.
I mean, we certainly didn't set out that way,
we just put in the stuff that made us laugh,
and I think that's all you can do.
Nobody was trying to offend anybody, you know,
that's a really basic misunderstanding.
If the kids are united, we will never be divided!
Did we think it would be controversial?
Well, if you'd asked us at the time,
probably we thought people would object, but we didn't care,
and it wasn't the purpose.
I'm being hassled in the street by a chick.
Don't make me paranoid, man.
Stop making him paranoid, you slag!
Oh!
It's very slapstick violence, The Young Ones.
It is, it's The Three Stooges, really.
I mean, it's lots of eye poking and hits over the head with frying pans.
I mean, it's Tom and Jerry made real.
Oh, wow, a wet bum. Just what I need. Far out.
It's boy farty toilet humour.
Achtung! BUZZING
It's not an automatic! EXPLOSION
There were no trigger warnings in 1984,
but nowadays, the sensitive are given ample alerts.
It's even more shocking now
because there's things that we thought were OK to say
and situations we thought were OK to represent
that would never make it through any kind of compliance now.
Vyv can you, like, actually kill yourself with laxative pills?
I don't know, Neil, but I'm going to stay and find out.
You would never get away with doing stuff like that these days
because we're so much more aware of mental health.
When you talk about suicide, well, of course it's not funny,
and making jokes about suicide wouldn't be funny.
I really screwed that up, didn't I?
I should think I'd look pretty stupid if anyone was watching.
That's not a joke about suicide,
there wasn't the remotest chance of him committing suicide.
It's a joke about the complete ineptitude and self-indulgence
and self-importance of that character, of Neil.
I thought you were dead!
Well, that's no reason to hassle me on the toilet.
In the modern day, I think it's possible to become too concerned
about trigger issues, trigger words.
So you say, "Suicide, you can't do gags about suicide."
Well, you can do a gag about an incompetent bloke
completely failing to commit suicide
for a completely ridiculous reason in the first place.
I think you CAN do that joke.
That was really pretty bad, Rick.
Bad for society when the kids start to get into it.
Anything made in any time is made for its time,
that's the point of popular culture.
They weren't making The Young Ones in 1984 to be funny in 2023.
See, I've done my revision.
I'm going off now to stuff loads and loads of paper down the toilet.
It's '80s gold, and its influence obviously went on to Vic and Bob.
The League Of Gentlemen wouldn't have happened in the same way
without The Young Ones.
It was irreverent, it was anarchic,
and if that offended sort of the older viewers
and the TV critics from The Times, well, tough luck to them,
they had plenty of shows of their own.
The next targets for conservative campaigners
would be horror films and pop music.
They were classic movies she had a problem with!
"This is harmful, this is offensive."
But one pop band was primed and ready to turn the tables.
It's so beautifully designed
to cause the maximum amount of trouble.
The minute something got banned,
we were obsessed with it at our school.
Check down the back of the sofa for that old VCR remote control,
and join us as we rewind back to the controversies of 1984,
when your TV choice could land you in a whole heap of trouble.
More than a third of all children under the age of seven
have seen a "video nasty".
That's one of the findings in a study of video violence
published today by a group of MPs, peers and churchmen.
Every day, this is what scores of Britain's schoolchildren are up to.
They're tuning in in their thousands to the sickening violence
of an endless stream of video nasties.
All new technology has a dark side,
and in 1984 it was hardcore horror,
known as the video nasty.
Video nasties were extreme VHS films that were unrated.
Usually very hardcore horror movies
depicting sexual violence, murder, other acts of body horror.
More movies are now seen on video than in the cinema,
but regulations which were designed for films
don't apply to the new technology.
The authorities were playing catch up in trying to regulate it.
And here's the authorities using the Obscene Publications Act
to seize unregulated films.
Cue moral panic!
The Director of Public Prosecutions called the material,
"an extravaganza of gory violence
"capable of depriving and corrupting those who watched it."
But depravity seekers who knew someone who knew someone
were in for a nice evening of corruption.
I've seen a lot of them, you know.
There was a builder doing some work at my mum and dad's house,
and he could get his hands on these, and I loved it.
But my mum and dad didn't seem to mind,
cos it was horror, you know,
it wasn't, like, hardcore porn, cos I'm Catholic.
It was, like, Barry on the estate who could get you these things.
So I had Spit On Your Grave, Evil Dead, Driller Killer.
They're all quite boring, actually.
And especially they're boring
when you're watching it on a 10th generation one
where it looks like there's a blizzard sweeping in.
You didn't mind the bad quality, the...
The snow and then it kind of...
clearing. And you go, "Oh, it works," you know?
"This video works."
That was the thrill, you'd got your hands on a copy,
it was like a badge of honour.
You just had to have sort of seen them in order
to have some kind of playground or pub sort of credence.
Enter Britain's offence-finder general,
crusader against controversy, Mary Whitehouse.
I'm afraid people who say,
"But why shouldn't adults
"be able to see this kind of thing in their own home?"
I'm half tempted to say
that people who make that kind of demand,
knowing that children are likely to see it,
aren't really themselves very mature and adult.
Whitehouse, as chief spokesperson
for the National Viewers' and Listeners' Association,
had been cleaning up TV since the '60s,
and was now sworn enemy of extreme horror.
This list came out, of video nasties,
to try and make everything clearer for people.
"This is harmful. This is offensive."
REPORTER: The image the campaigners presented
was of children having unrestricted access to horrific videos.
The hysterical horror headlines forced our government into action.
Such was the outcry, Members of Parliament panicked.
I was on the standing committee that went through the bill
on video nasties that eventually became law.
The idea was that we would be able to categorise
the nastiness of videos,
so some would be banned outright,
others would be restricted.
I was rather a sceptic.
There was a danger we were actually glamorising video nasties,
but it answered the media and, to some extent,
public demand that the government should,
in inverted commas, do something.
1984's Video Recordings Act banned 72 nasties outright.
Shame, I rather fancied Zombie Creeping Flesh.
There have been many moral panic moments,
and when there's moral panic around something in society
which terrifies people,
that's the moment when they can push through bans.
There were classic movies she had a problem with, like Evil Dead!
How can you have a problem with Evil Dead?
It's so funny!
Mary Whitehouse explained her logic,
and it's an argument that's still raging four decades later.
Just as drugs are obsessional,
so getting hooked on violence can be obsessional, too.
My actual view back to her is we're not puppets,
we don't do the things which we watch.
I watched Superman
and I felt no desire to jump out of the window and pretend to fly.
I actually think the horrific things give us moments of catharsis.
But the big question was,
what did Mary herself make of a video nasty's content?
I haven't seen it. I have far too much respect for my mind
ever to look at these things.
That National Viewers' and Listeners' Association,
it wielded an extraordinary power.
But then again, in a democracy, I suppose fair play to her.
If I have any power,
it is because it is acknowledged that our association
speaks for the considerable voice in the country.
Maybe she had a point.
She was opening up a question around what is the limit of free speech.
Is it really OK to show rape and paedophilia
and incest and murder and horror?
What are the limits of what's acceptable?
There always will be in this battle between
what broadcasters and film-makers
and programme makers want to put out,
and what the so-called kind of pillars of society
feel that we should be watching.
So in 1984's heavyweight bout between moral crusaders
and controversy, round one goes to the crusaders.
But seconds away - round two,
in which the fighters against immorality square up to pop music.
Another story of the pop singer turned impresario,
who's making a great success of his new career
producing unknown bands.
He's Trevor Horn.
In 1983, former Yes and Buggles singer Trevor Horn
set up his own record label ZTT along with his wife,
Jill Sinclair, and former NME journalist Paul Morley.
The trio believed they knew exactly
what the record-buying public were craving.
Pop music is about sex and about reproduction,
because the kids who buy records are between the ages of about 12 and 25,
and mating is all that they have on their mind.
And Liverpool's horny hopefuls - Frankie Goes To Hollywood -
were a band keen to kick pop's old guard out of the charts.
Somebody like Rod Stewart always, to me, looks like a dirty old uncle,
and I thought Frankie looked much healthier.
They were just sort of raw lust, you know?
Holly, why did the Frankies sign to ZTT?
Well, no-one would touch us with a barge pole!
The recording relationship was a match made in heaven
and would lead to the most controversial debut single
of all time, with its own explicit video nasty,
which, naturally, we lapped up.
# Relax, don't do it
# When you wanna go do it... #
It was clearly the greatest record of its time.
# When you wanna come... #
The video was outrageous. Very, very sexual.
# Relax, don't do it... #
It was quite an eye-opener.
Oh, my God. It's so naughty!
# When you wanna come... #
It's not about gardening, is it?
I do remember thinking, "This is a bit near the knuckle,"
or other bits of your anatomy.
It was so beautifully designed to cause the maximum amount of trouble.
ZTT's plan to provoke moral outrage left nothing to chance.
In the end event, you know, we're in business.
It wasn't just the record itself, which is quite steamy,
it was the iconography that went with it -
the slightly rude sleeve.
Two people in sort of bondage gear, they're back to back.
It just looks raunchy.
And that's where the record company, ZTT, they won,
they managed to create controversy.
The last thing you want to be is another record label.
You have to be a little bit special.
Racy video, tick.
Catchy-but-naughty single, tick.
Playlisted on radio, tick.
The plan was coming together,
but deep in the bowels of Broadcasting House,
somebody was not relaxed,
not relaxed at all.
Mike Read, the Radio 1 disc jockey, decided he was appalled
by the subject matter of this record
and declares that he will not play it any more.
Mike Read, who's quite fond of making a fool of himself,
suddenly decided that he was going to be the nation's conscience,
and that he couldn't possibly put up with this pornographic piffle
on his dear radio show.
Radio 1 producer and knitwear fan David Atkey
attempted to explain the ban to singer Holly Johnson.
I found the lyrics objectionable,
and I felt that the record could offend
a majority of our listening audience.
I'm quite outraged by the way I've kind of almost been slandered
and said, you know, I sing disgusting lyrics.
It is a description of a sexual act.
"Relax, don't do it," you know?
"Till you want to come." Where is the sexual act?
Well, come on, explain further.
I don't think I need to.
Good try, Holly, but no cigar.
The BBC often gets itself in a bit of a tizz,
and particularly did back then,
it did with the Sex Pistols and God Save The Queen
and all of that.
And, of course, they just looked a bit old-fashioned.
What really seemed to get up people's noses was
it was really overtly a gay anthem.
A lot of people found that really shocking.
They scared the establishment.
It was like, "Oh, there's gay men talking about gay sex,
"and we don't want anything to do with that."
There's no doubt that a lot of the vitriol levelled at
Frankie Goes To Hollywood at the time
was a fallout from homophobia, which was rife at the time -
you only have to look at the rhetoric of the tabloids.
You know, we're in the middle of the AIDS pandemic.
Personally, for me, growing up as a gay man at the time,
I remember that rhetoric very, very vividly.
If this blitzkrieg of negative publicity was designed
to shut Frankie up, it really didn't work.
The more people tried to suppress it, the more it was everywhere.
The Frankie T-shirt was everywhere, the Frankie slogans were everywhere.
By banning it, they turned it into the biggest hit of the year.
Obviously, this is fantastic for Frankie Goes To Hollywood
and the powers at ZTT behind it,
they'd have been delighted by this.
ZTT's master plan to stir up a storm had played out
exactly as they intended.
The minute something got banned,
we were obsessed with it at our school.
Someone says, "Have you heard this track, Frankie - Relax?"
"No, what is it?" "It's been banned!"
"How do I hear it?"
I was 12 years old, I didn't know why it had been banned
because I didn't know the language.
Mike Read was an absolute muppet
because most of the people were just buying it
cos it was a great pop song.
DJs thought that they were on the side of the child
and the moral high ground,
but all they were doing was clearing the path through to number one.
Relax would hit the top spot in ten different countries
and even make the top ten in the United States...
It was huge in America.
..a country not normally known for its sexual liberalism
and experimentation.
I think, basically, us Americans, all we heard was "Relax"!
So why didn't the BBC relax?
SHE LAUGHS
While Frankie Goes To Hollywood's entire reputation
came from courting controversy,
one British band had so far managed
to steer away from anything remotely contentious -
Bucks Fizz.
# You gotta speed it up
# And then you gotta slow it down... #
I was a massive fan.
The first record I ever bought was a Bucks Fizz record.
I just thought they were brilliant.
They were our version of Abba.
# For making your mind up... #
Bucks Fizz were literally put together
like the ingredients in a cake.
The icing on that cake was winning the Eurovision Song Contest
only four months after their formation.
So, from being nowhere and nobody,
that short period of time, life changed completely.
Making Your Mind Up hit number one in the UK charts
as fans lapped up the group's catchy music and wholesome image.
Bucks Fizz were really squeaky, squeaky clean.
I mean, they were like squeaky clean and some polish on top.
Although, looking back at their iconic dance routine,
perhaps we shouldn't, erm, skirt the issue.
Back then, it wasn't controversial to rip our skirts off,
not in the slightest - and we didn't mind, either.
We just thought it's great telly, it'll be an eye-opener.
I think it won the Eurovision Song Contest for us.
In an age of video nasties,
a minor skirts removal hardly registered on the shock dial.
For the next three years, the Fizz were everywhere.
Ladies and gentlemen, Bucks Fizz.
Bucks Fizz. Bucks Fizz.
1984 saw the group riding the crest of a wave.
We were on a sold-out tour, enjoying life,
really having the best time.
But a few fateful seconds in Newcastle
brought the band's dreams to a crashing halt.
We did the gig, it was fantastic.
We got on the coach, got a vodka tonic, sat down,
you know, really beautiful coach.
SIREN BLARES
And the next thing I remember is lying on the road.
Two members of the Bucks Fizz pop group
have been badly injured in a road accident in Newcastle.
A total of 15 people were hurt when the group's coach
collided with an articulated lorry
on the Great North Road during the night.
Singers Cheryl Baker and Mike Nolan and two members of the backing band
were thrown through the coach's windscreen.
I just remember waking up and blue flashing lights
and voices - "Cheryl, Cheryl, wake up, Cheryl."
It was like my mum waking me up to go to school,
and I wanted to say to her,
"Five more minutes, Mum, five more minutes."
The injured were rushed to a local hospital.
The first thing I did was move my legs, and I could move them.
But my back was broken.
Somehow, singers Jay Aston and Bobby G escaped serious injury.
It felt, first of all, that we was braking heavily,
and then it just became more intense,
and we were just hurled through the coach.
From external injuries alone, it seemed Cheryl had come out worse.
I remember lying flat and them picking glass out of me.
And the next morning, Mike Nolan came in to see me and he went,
"You all right?"
And I went, "Oh blimey, Mike. If your fans could see you now."
Cos, like me, his hair was full of blood and glass.
And he went, "Oh, don't make me laugh, Cheryl,
"I've got such a headache,
"and they won't give me any tablets."
And that evening, he slipped into a coma
and was rushed off to the general hospital
to remove a blood clot on the brain.
So...
Oh, I'm getting upset now.
His condition is critical and may either deteriorate,
possibly to a fatal outcome, or he may cover.
I don't think I realised how serious it was.
Mike Nolan nearly died.
It was really touch and go.
He had the last rites.
He was revived three times with CPR.
On the edge of death,
miraculously, Mike Nolan pulled through.
I don't know what happened, I can't remember what happened.
All I know was it was just this big crash and I had a clot,
and they had 11 minutes to release it,
otherwise I would've been brain dead, they reckon.
It took a long time for Mike to get over the coach crash.
In fact, he's still getting over it now.
When you're involved in something that catastrophic,
I don't think it ever leaves you.
For many years he was very, very ill.
He wasn't the same.
He lost his spark for many years.
People have said to me that the old Mike that I was
has never come back. I'm now a better Mike.
You've gotta back me up on that.
Yes, it's right. LAUGHTER
When I look at the coach I think,
"How did anyone get out of that alive?
"How did anybody live after that crash?"
Shattered by their experience, the band were never the same again.
That accident brought to light so many things -
all of the arguments behind the scenes.
It was really the crash that exploded the band.
Four decades on, with '80s revivals soaring in popularity,
the Fizz are back as a three piece, without singer Bobby G,
and are once again pulling in the crowds.
It's fantastic.
Got back together, me, Mike and Jay,
and we still rip the skirts off.
It is wonderful that we can still do that.
In 1984, no-one was off limits when it came to creating controversy.
We were certain that Margaret watched it
because she changed to look more like her puppet.
And the press were getting better and better
at dragging secret affairs into daylight.
Everybody was completely gobsmacked.
She was just a child.
We're dusting down the Trimphone
and dialling back to the controversies of 1984...
It was shocking being there.
..when celebrity gossip got juicier than ever before...
We are obsessed by the relationships in the tabloids.
..and political satire was once again
raising its ugly head on TV.
Evening, evening.
It's lovely to be here, isn't it, Roy? Yes it is, Neil.
And that may well be controversial.
Spitting Image was a satirical rubberised puppet show
which took the mick out of the headlines of the day...
April Fool!
..in the most cutting and clever
and yet grotesque and laughable way possible.
We'd been in the grip of Margaret Thatcher's government,
and many people did not like it,
and so to have these puppets making complete fools
of all these stupid politicians was fantastic.
Everyone had to watch Spitting Image,
cos we'd all be talking about it on Monday morning.
I'm Mary Whitehouse.
I didn't actually see Spitting Image last week,
but it was disgusting.
Millions and millions of people were tuning in
to watch politicians whacking each other over the head,
and suddenly, political satire was huge again.
Hungry for led, Ed.
While some laughed, many others scowled.
I'm not sure of the purpose of the programme,
cos it's not really very funny, it's not really very satirical,
you don't learn anything new.
Mrs Thatcher is made to look very ugly.
Now, she has many defects, according to some people,
but ugliness is not one of them.
It is a little bit cruel.
Do you bother about what people think?
Yes, we do.
I'm glad that he does find it's irresponsible and disrespectful
because that is exactly what it's supposed to be.
Politicians across all parties were ruthlessly parodied.
Don't dawdle, Geoffrey, or I'll send you to Northern Ireland.
Naturally, MPs were way too busy to be concerned with the show.
Everybody watched it,
and then you'd come into work the next morning going,
"He-he-he."
So those who were on sometimes wished that they weren't,
and those that were not on the show
recognised that they weren't important enough
or well enough known.
Conservative Edwina Currie,
a relatively unknown backbencher at the time,
was keen to up her profile.
We did eventually have a puppet of Edwina Currie,
and of course, she was delighted about this.
I think she sent in a lock of her hair,
so that we got that right.
It was a kind of double-edged sword, if you like.
Suddenly 10, 12, 13 million people knew who you were,
but they thought you were just like your puppet.
They didn't see the subtleties or, God help me,
the intelligence or anything that you were trying to say.
While rising comedy stars
like Harry Enfield and Chris Barrie provided some voices...
When I became president, someone told me I had a voice.
Then I opened my mouth - ah-ha-ha -
and here it came.
..it was 22-year-old Steve Nallon's on-the-money impression
of Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher that stole the show.
She was the greatest comic gift of the 20th century
for comedians and satirists.
You couldn't have invented her.
I got the job on Spitting Image writing to John Lloyd,
who was the producer.
The audition wasn't really an audition,
what happened was he asked me a question as Mrs Thatcher..
AS MARGARET THATCHER: ..and I answered it as Mrs Thatcher.
And, goodness me, I think the way my body moved,
the way my hands moved,
the way I expressed myself, that got me the job to a degree.
NORMAL VOICE: And then Roger Law came in, who was the puppet maker,
and John said, "This guy is going to do Mrs Thatcher."
And Rodgers said, "Do her, then."
And I said, "Goodness me, Mr Law, I do not take orders from men!"
And he burst out laughing, and we've been friends ever since.
You know, Spitting Image portrayed me as someone who is out of touch,
someone who has no humanity.
Well, the truth is, I care. I care a great deal.
I care, I care, I care, and don't you ever forget it!
We never will,
but did the real Mrs T care enough to check out her latex counterpart?
We were certain that Margaret watched it, absolutely certain.
Why were we certain?
Because she changed to look more like her puppet.
At the beginning of her time in office, she was quite nervous,
quite shy, and she wore little kind of pussy bows,
and she had a slightly high voice.
Goodness, it's as well you didn't
live in the time of Queen Elizabeth I, isn't it?
Then along comes Spitting Image
with a much deeper voice and a man's suit...
Are you trying to tell me, you fat, spotty oaf,
that I can't kill anyone I choose?
..and next thing we know, Margaret's wearing dark suits
with little white revers,
and her voice has become more authoritative.
While Mrs Thatcher was an easy target,
the royal family didn't escape the derision, either.
There's plenty of excess fat in the monarchy.
You leave my sister out of this!
I understand that the royal family didn't really like it much,
apart from Diana, who thought it was fantastic,
but then of course, she would, cos she was like the rest of us,
we all wanted to poke fun at anything stuffy or anything
that was ridiculous.
Its take-no-prisoners portrayal of royals and politicians
made Spitting Image one of the most successful
and controversial satires ever.
But what happens when your number-one target
is ousted as prime minister?
As you know, I won't be here forever.
GASPS And my successor, well,
might be someone from round this table.
New PM John Major's quiet and unassuming front
was a far cry from Thatcher's aggressive and forceful nature.
We were the guys who had to decide how to portray John Major.
We were trying to pin down the ordinariness of him.
I said, "Well, imagine if he was always grey
"and everything else was in colour,"
and they just painted him grey,
put him in a grey suit, and it looked fantastic.
These peas are rounder than usual.
We'd film him having his tea with Norma
and always eating peas, for some reason.
We just thought it was funny
that he had the most boring vegetable you can think of.
They're the same ones I normally buy.
Oh, I don't mind.
Oh, good.
But peas can only take satire so far.
The writers needed some drama
and invented a situation that could never happen.
Not ever.
We thought, "Wouldn't it be fun if we had him
"maybe having an affair?"
So we sat around and went, "Well, who should it be?"
"Edwina Currie, well, no, she's not around so much these days.
"What about Virginia Bottomley?"
Cooee! I got your message, I came as soon as I could.
Yes, John, I think we've got to talk.
Oh, so do I.
The nation loved this naughty idea
that John Major was having an affair.
But in a shocking real-life twist,
choosing Conservative MP Virginia Bottomley
was the wrong option.
When I saw John Major's rather grey image,
I had a private giggle to myself along the lines of,
"Oh, you don't know him.
"That might be the image he's portraying,
"but that isn't him."
And Edwina would know,
after revelations in her published diaries
took everyone by surprise.
We so nearly chose Edwina Currie,
not knowing that he'd had an affair with Edwina Currie.
The news would stun the nation,
and inject some colour into John Major's image.
The reason why Edwina Currie saying she'd an affair with John Major
is just beyond most of us
is because not so much her, but him!
So this guy that we've all gone,
"He's the grey man, you know, he's so boring."
Back in '84, when went we were all laughing at Spitting Image,
they were at it!
That is shocking!
You can imagine I'm in the House of Commons,
there are 23 women in the entire House of Commons,
with over 600 men,
we're getting propositioned all the time.
Sometimes in a nice way, sometimes in a not very nice way.
And occasionally we see somebody that, actually,
we do rather fancy and we do rather like
and we do rather think might be trustworthy
and be a closer friend than some of the others.
That's what he came across as, at least to me.
Edwina Currie was 38 in 1984, John Major was 41.
I only mention that because our next controversial couple
had a 34-year age difference.
Meet the Rolling Stone and the schoolgirl.
Bill Wyman and Mandy Smith...
SHE INHALES SHARPLY
He said in his autobiography that she looked like a woman,
but in reality, she was just a child.
It was all a bit tawdry.
She was a part of this wild-child scene,
all over the covers of The Sun
with these basically out-of-control youngsters
who were behaving way beyond their years.
Now, admittedly, he thought that she was older but still,
even if she'd been legal, even if she'd been 16,
she was still too young for him.
The couple did at least wait a few years before tying the knot.
He's 52, she's nearly 19, and they married today.
Bill Wyman and Mandy Smith.
Even then, as a schoolboy, I'm looking at it going,
"What, he's marrying her?"
"But, hang on, isn't she just the year above me at school?
"How...? Really? Really?"
Mandy's mother is younger than you.
Yes. Yes.
It's confusing, isn't it? CHEERING
Hold on, can we rewind that reaction?
Mandy's mother is younger than you.
Yes. Yes.
It's confusing, isn't it? CHEERING
Can you imagine an audience doing that now?
I remember thinking, if the boot was on the other foot,
I'm not sure I'd want to go on a national chat show with a woman
that was double my age and say we'd just got married.
But I remember looking around the room and everyone else going,
"No, it's fine, it's fine.
"They've just got married. Of course they have."
At the time, there was a lot of blame
attached to her as well as him,
said she was a bad role model for young women.
It's unfair. That relationship was very damaging for her.
This is forever, isn't it?
I hope so. That's what it's about, isn't it?
If forever means two years, then, yes, they were married forever,
and the 1984 controversial couplings keep coming.
Step forward another music legend.
The rock star Elton John was married in Australia this morning.
His bride was a German recording studio engineer, Renate Blauel.
Everybody was completely gobsmacked.
I remember somebody writing was saying,
"I'm Still Standing is one of his hits,
"but the rest of us are on the floor."
He'd announced his engagement on Friday,
and, under New South Wales' laws,
would normally have had to wait a month before the wedding.
After publicly declaring his bisexuality in the '70s
and after rumours of many male lovers,
Elton's sudden marriage to a woman was the last thing anyone expected.
Renate was a studio engineer, obviously very talented musically,
and Elton and she had a great bond
already formed through the music.
He met Renate in an island called Montserrat.
They'd gone out to dinner,
and I think Elton was really sick of falling in love with men
who didn't fall in love back with him,
who didn't reciprocate.
Once again, Wogan was on the controversy front line.
Was it a whirlwind romance, or had you been...
cogitating it for a long time?
Well, I'd often done that. But it was, yes,
it was kind of whirlwind. But I'd met her before.
Renate is an engineer,, and there was just a chemistry
between the two of us, and I had no doubts,
and I thought that, in my time in life,
it was about time I took the plunge.
I don't really remember him coming out as bisexual or whatever,
I just loved him and I was thrilled he'd got married,
and she had a fabulous dress on.
So there was kind of no judgement.
I can sympathise with Elton
in deciding that a marriage was a good idea.
As it happens, it wasn't a good idea.
People were panicking in those days, and they thought,
"What can we do to get out of this?"
And the answer was to find someone that you could marry.
Elton and Renate's relationship would last twice as long
as Bill and Mandy's,
with the couple divorcing after four years.
You can't live a lie,
and, sadly, you know, that didn't work out.
But he genuinely loved her.
He really genuinely loved her.
I think they were very good friends.
One celebrity couple whose relationship
was unquestionably built to last was the McCartneys'.
But in 1984, they hit the headlines after being issued a ticket to ride
to the local nick.
Linda McCartney, the wife of pop singer Paul McCartney,
was arrested at Heathrow Airport this afternoon
and charged with possessing cannabis.
She'll appear in court later this month.
Paul McCartney and his family had arrived back from Barbados,
where he'd been fined £70
for possessing a small amount of cannabis.
Most pop stars would be contrite, but McCartney isn't most pop stars,
and he dug in and doubled down, regardless of the consequences.
Now, whatever you think, and whatever you think I've done,
I'm telling you, this substance, cannabis,
is a whole lot less harmful than rum punch, whisky,
nicotine and glue, all of which are perfectly legal.
It's so sort of almost normalised now,
where then it was so sort of demonised.
"Oh, my God, he's smoking weed." It's like the devil incarnate.
What about your children?
I would like to see it decriminalised
because I don't think, in the privacy of my own room,
I was doing anyone any harm whatsoever.
Well, you've got to start off by saying that Paul McCartney
is possibly the greatest human being
who has ever lived or ever will live,
so everything needs to be seen in that context.
I'm a fan.
Macca's enthusiasm for herbal produce
is well known and completely fine, I think.
And because of Paul's enthusiasm,
I think we've had some of the greatest art of the 20th century.
Macca's herbal dalliance began
during an early Beatles visit to America.
REPORTER: 3,000 screaming teenagers
were at New York's Kennedy Airport to greet,
you guessed it, The Beatles.
The Beatles were first introduced to weed by Bob Dylan in 1964,
and you can see the difference in the photographs
between that first wave of Beatlemania
and then, say, when they're making the film Help!,
because they're all out of their boxes.
He's almost a lifelong advocate for marijuana, isn't he?
He'd been busted in America, Sweden, Japan.
Even in Scotland, on his farm, he was growing his own.
And on all of these occasions, he called for weed to be legalised.
Personally, I think it's less dangerous than cigarettes,
in the long run, personally.
But I haven't got any proof, just my opinion.
Macca it wasn't the first Beatle to be busted.
Both Lennon and Harrison were arrested for possession in the '60s.
But while the Beatles were known to have experimented
with hallucinogenics like LSD,
their cannabis use has proved enduringly controversial.
Not being a big fan of the wacky tobaccy,
I do know that if you are a musician,
it seems to be a very good drug creatively.
Whereas some people,
it sort of slows down their creative process,
with him, it seemed to sort of speed it up.
It took him to wonderful creative places with a lot of his work.
I love you all dearly, goodbye.
Now, without medical examination, we'll never know if the Fab Four's
herbal intake had any lasting negative effects.
But let's note that in '84,
Ringo Starr became Thomas The Tank Engine,
and Paul McCartney decided a Frog Chorus was a good idea.
Just saying.
FROG CROAKS
In 1984, it seemed no-one could escape controversy.
Simon Roberts on the line. Hello, Simon.
I think the world stopped turning at that point.
That year, TV had its critics...
I think it was a waste of the licence payers' money.
..but it had the power to be deeply shocking, too.
Incredible piece of television.
I'm getting choked up now just thinking about it.
What happened? Did somebody else come on?
Ah, look, we've landed back in 1984 on Planet Controversial.
And now we're rewinding the troubled TV of that year.
Starting with a Time Lord
who probably wished he could go back and start all over again.
Who's to be the new Doctor Who has been announced.
The man who will take to the TARDIS from now on is Colin Baker,
the sixth Doctor Who in 20 years.
I might regenerate.
I don't know.
In 1984, Peter Davison's easy-going Doctor said ta-ta to the TARDIS,
with some effects borrowed from Top Of The Pops.
Die, Doctor!
HE LAUGHS
It WAS different.
His replacement would instantly be divisive.
The new Doctor, Colin Baker's Doctor,
was going to be brash and loud and angry,
and they really decided to go for that.
What's happened?
Change, my dear.
And it seems not a moment too soon.
A change that would see the Doctor go full 1984,
with this migraine-worthy make over.
Ah.
You're not serious?
I'm always serious.
You can't go out dressed like that.
Why ever not?
Well, you look dreadful.
Over to the fans for an instant reaction.
Doctor Who's look, it's more adventurous in this one.
This one just looks like he's come out of a comedy programme.
I like the way he dressed,
but I don't think he plays his part very well. Harsh!
I have to say that the outfit you're wearing, Colin,
is rather odd, to say the least.
Did you have any hand in designing it?
Well, I'm not one to talk about '80s fashion,
cos look what I was wearing.
But his flamboyant patchwork coat was quite a thing.
It featured such a lot of pink, which is a difficult colour to wear.
I mean, that outfit is really of the time, shall we say.
It is giving very '80s, but I mean, it's Doctor Who.
You are a time-travelling space alien with two hearts
that constantly saves the universe,
I feel like maybe fashion
isn't your priority in that kind of situation.
But, Doctor, it's dangerous!
Of course it's dangerous!
Warm and cuddly? Not this Doctor.
I'm falling to pieces!
I no longer even have any clothes sense.
Oh, stop feeling sorry for yourself!
Not only do you get in Colin Baker's Doctor,
this kind of eye-aching costume,
but what it goes hand in hand with
is the desire to make the Doctor
a more dangerous and unpredictable figure.
But nothing must be allowed to interfere
with my period of contemplation.
They really played this hand hard, so that in the first story,
in Colin Baker's first episode, he is strangling his assistant.
Well, we all know the fate of alien spies!
He's absolutely unstable.
You're just sort of left to think, "Well, maybe he'll settle down."
This was a Time Lord keen to face down his detractors.
I am... the Doctor.
Whether you like it or not.
Unfortunately, in the latter category
was the new BBC One controller Michael Grade.
Here he is, scowling through time and space.
I thought it was rubbish.
It was pathetic, it was a waste of the licence payers' money.
It had had a long run, it had been going 21 years.
The ratings were plummeting, rather,
and Michael Grade was a person with an axe to wield,
and he saw Doctor Who's head on the block and thought,
"I'll have that."
The fans of Doctor Who were outraged.
Fans are notoriously reluctant
to let go of their favourite things.
People were up in arms.
I actually hate sci-fi, to begin with,
so I'm not a sci-fi fan.
And when your monster budget is £2.75 for the series,
it's time to go.
You're an interfering fool!
Star Wars was '77.
I mean, we didn't really move with the times.
It's quite comedic to see an old police box
flying through space.
I mean, it's iconic, yes,
but you know, it's not an Imperial Star Destroyer, is it?
There'd always been pressure from Hollywood,
and Doctor Who was never trying to be a Superman
or a Star Wars or a Star Trek, it was its own thing.
Then, like a cat with a galactic mouse,
Grade announced a reprieve.
The sense was somehow that the fans had saved it.
Public pressure got their way eventually,
and Colin came back for one last season.
Even though it does have a kind of rebirth,
there's still that institutional hostility towards it,
it's very grudging, the restoration.
In 1989, the BBC threw away the TARDIS key, seemingly forever.
I don't really know why Michael Grade
wanted to axe Doctor Who, it seems a little bit foolish.
But then look what happened.
Calling the War Council of Gallifrey, this is the Doctor.
Ironically, maybe the Doctor just needed time to regenerate properly
and become a global phenomenon.
Commencing calculations.
It's just iconic. Geronimo!
He never quite apologised.
He's put his arm metaphorically around Colin Baker's shoulder
and said, "Yeah, you did a good job."
It's OK to be wrong about things, Michael.
And you were wrong about Doctor Who.
The making of TV can be controversial,
and it's what's in front of the cameras
that can really go nuclear.
Especially when broadcast live,
and particularly when teenagers are let loose on the airwaves.
The wonderful thing about children's television
is what is supposed to be so anodyne and fluffy and inoffensive
becomes this cesspit sometimes for awful things happening.
Behold that cesspit of depravity, Saturday Superstore -
a live kids' show with music, guests and phone-ins,
presented by Frankie-hating Mike Read.
Oh, look at that shiny happy set, nothing bad happened here.
Until one-hit wonders Matt Bianco turned up.
Right, and Simon Roberts is on the line.
Hello, Simon. Hello.
You're through to Matt Bianco.
Hello, Matt Bianco. Hello. Hello, Simon.
You're a bunch of wankers. MIKE READ CHUCKLES AWKWARDLY
Hello? He's gone.
Now, naughty Simon Roberts rang in to Saturday Superstore,
had the opportunity to interview and speak to Matt Bianco
and called them all a bunch of wankers.
I think the world stopped turning at that point.
On live kids' television!
Hello, Matt Bianco. Hello. Hello, Simon.
You're a bunch of wankers.
It's the funniest thing on TV,
and what's so funny is they look like they're a bit annoyed
but it's like, "Yeah, maybe we are."
I mean, it was just unheard of. Absolutely unheard of.
I bet in the gallery and stuff they were like, "Oh, my God, no."
And then that night down the pub
they were killing themselves laughing.
Mike Read seems to brush it off.
Right, sorry about the silly caller just now.
You sometimes get a silly caller.
But Mike Read is probably very angry that this could happen on his watch.
Heads may have rolled.
Claire Marshall, hello. Hello.
You're not a silly caller, are you? No. Good.
The reason why Bianco-gate became so celebrated
was because it punctured the pomposity
of Saturday Superstore.
Cos Mike Read was, like, so respectable
and had this kind of smoothness about him.
You can see why some radio stations and some TV live phone-ins
have a delay. You know?
It's like the five-second delay so that somebody can go,
"Hit that button and mute it."
"Matt Bianco, you're a banker."
Matt Bianco's misfortune was comical in its controversy,
but our next live TV event
was one of the most tragic moments in British TV history.
Fellow comedians have been paying tribute to the late Tommy Cooper,
who died last night after appearing onstage at a London theatre.
The show was being broadcast live on ITV,
and the viewing audience saw the magician collapse
during his act.
This was so tragic and so bizarre.
I, as a television critic, had been invited along
to a programme called Live From Her Majesty's,
hosted by Jimmy Tarbuck.
And we had Tommy coming on
and I thought, "What a thrill seeing Tommy Cooper live, it's fantastic."
Tommy Cooper was a genius.
They say the phrase, which has been said many times, about funny bones,
but Tommy Cooper could walk on stage and you would laugh.
The brilliant comedian, magician and light entertainment legend
for 30 years.
There is something so divinely stupid
about this huge man wearing a fez with clumps of hair coming out,
and then on top of that, he starts telling you stupid jokes...
Look, see that?
This one's just the same, look.
And then he'd throw in tricks.
HE SHOUTS
Tommy Cooper's performance at Her Majesty's Theatre in April 1984
saw the comedian in classic form.
LAUGHTER
No-one imagined this would turn out to be his final
and most dramatic act,
witnessed by an audience of millions.
It was all going really well, and everybody was laughing hilariously.
And then he suddenly seemed to sort of collapse.
When Tommy Cooper, at the end of his act, crumpled down
in front of the audience,
everyone thought it was part of the joke
cos that's what Tommy Cooper would do,
and the place was in hysterics.
LAUGHTER
We were watching on TV,
and it was like it seemed to be the end of the act,
and he just collapsed.
And then some arms just came out
and pulled him slowly back behind the curtain.
Jimmy Tarbuck came in front of the curtain,
and he was very, very agitated -
this was in the commercial break.
So I thought, "Oh, my God,
"that must mean something awful has happened to Tommy."
It was horrible, it was absolutely horrible,
and it all went out live on television.
Tommy Cooper had suffered a fatal heart attack.
He was one of the great comedy geniuses this country's ever had,
for many, many, many, many years,
he's just brought laughter to people all of his life.
Around that time, you had Eric Morecambe,
who died in a very similar circumstance,
these were performers who worked and worked and worked...
They should be taking it easy,
but they were still hitting the act like they were 20-year-old men.
But of course it took its toll.
Cooper's friend and fellow comedian Eric Sykes
had shared a poignant last moment.
He phoned me on Saturday night
and told me he was doing the programme,
and the funny thing is, he was joking, of course, he said,
"All I need is a finish to the act."
Well, that's...
That's going to live with me for a long time.
It's a cliche for actors and comedians,
they want to die with their boots on,
but I'm not sure Tom would've liked to have gone quite so dramatically.
It must have been dreadful for his family and his friends and his fans,
but if you're a comedian,
the most glorious sound to you is the laugh of an audience,
and those will have been the last sounds he heard.
That seems to me a wonderful, fitting tribute to him.
Incredible piece of television.
I'm getting choked up just thinking about it,
I've not seen it for 40 years.
What happened? Did somebody else come on?
Most of us will never, fortunately,
have to watch somebody die.
But that night, millions of people did,
right in front of them, right in their homes.
Soon, we would all be swept up in a nationwide controversy.
It is an attempt by force to prevent others
from doing what they have a right to do.
On one side politics, the other protests...
It's almost impossible to imagine that could happen
in what was supposedly a civilised nation.
..which all became a matter of life and death.
Margaret Thatcher was saved by her workaholic nature.
We're stepping back to controversial 1984,
when some barriers split communities...
No pit closures, no manpower reductions!
..while another barrier built that year
would save the Queen and the capital...
London has now been made free from the threat of flooding.
..and a young prince arrived
who would go on to provoke no controversy whatsoever.
No, none.
NEWSREADER: The royal baby arrives, the princess has a second son,
and they've already announced his names. He'll be christened...
But the royal couple say the family will call him Harry.
I think his name should be longer.
Henry Charles Albert David Wolfgang
Karen Susan Nieve.
You know, just make it longer and longer and longer,
the most ridiculously long name in history.
Cos he's a royal, he can have any name he likes.
He should be called Hepsiba or Lightning, or maybe a bit,
you know, like a wrestler or something like that.
His less formal name was immortalised
in Shakespeare's Agincourt battle cry.
"God for Harry, England and St George."
That is very privileged rich people -
they give them all these names and then give them a nickname.
I think that's wonderful.
"Look, look at me, I'm Biggins."
So, Prince Harry Henry Charles Albert David it is.
OK, Britain, thoughts?
Harry, cor, terrible, innit? You'd hear that in the pub or something.
I'm sure it'll be a popular name from now on.
When I first heard the name I didn't like it at all,
but I've said it about 20 times now, and I'm quite getting used to it.
Having managed to tie the nation's tongues in knots,
Prince Charles then unleashed another controversial nickname
for an iconic London landmark.
But what is proposed seems to me like a monstrous carbuncle
on the face of a much-loved, elegant friend.
Absolute... I mean, scenes, as they would say,
when Prince Charles, as was,
talks about an extension to the National Gallery being a carbuncle.
I remember this was everywhere.
It really... He wasn't allowed to say that.
King Charles, as he is now, he's a caring, thoughtful man.
I don't think it was said in any way as a clever remark,
I think he really meant it.
The argument was over this -
the proposed extension to the National Gallery.
To be honest, though, I agree with Charles about the carbuncle comment
because it wasn't in keeping with the original architecture.
And for something not to kind of like, you know, match,
and him saying, "This is a carbuncle,"
I think he's within his rights.
You've only got to look at the places he lives in,
and also the fact that he won't live in Buckingham Palace.
He loves Clarence House as a London...
And Clarence House is beautiful, it's a home.
And Buckingham Palace is not a home.
I mean, they should turn it into a hotel, you know,
it would be much better use.
He wasn't just saying, "I don't like this newfangled stuff."
He was saying, "Let's think a little bit
"about the visual language of central London."
But it gave him a bad reputation.
It's interesting that people will criticise the royal family
for being apolitical, which they're supposed to be,
but then they'll criticise the royal family
for ever saying anything.
So you can't win.
And yet he managed to get it stopped
and a different one then built, and apparently the different one
was better than the one they had proposed.
Four years later, a more sympathetic gallery extension
was finally underway.
Unveiling the foundation stone, you guessed it,
Carbuncle Charlie himself.
When the Prince and Princess of Wales
arrived at the National Gallery in Trafalgar Square today,
they were on something of a peace mission.
They were bringing to an end one of the longest-running
and heated arguments British architecture has seen.
We shall now have a purpose-built gallery extension,
rather than the unsatisfactory arrangement
of a commercial office building
with only a few galleries perched on top.
It was architects, not known for their violent protests,
upset by Charles,
but Margaret Thatcher was about to clash head-on
with entire angry communities.
She admitted that 1984 has been the type of year
she doesn't want to see again.
What we have seen in the past few weeks is not picketing at all.
The UK was on a knife edge
as a miners-versus-government dispute
was tearing the country apart.
It is an attempt by force to prevent others
from doing what they have a right to do.
For me, as a kind of centre, centre-left Conservative MP,
the miners' strike was a sad and difficult period
because it seemed to turn people against each other.
There were violent clashes at collieries,
as pickets fought both police
and so-called scabs who refused to strike.
Everybody pretty much picked a side and battled it out.
It was that divisive, it was that brutal.
Almost impossible to imagine that could happen
in what was supposedly a civilised nation.
It's the nearest we got to civil war, I suppose.
It wasn't about coal, it was about wanting to destroy the strongest bit
of the working class, in the trade unions.
It still seems unbelievable that people could revolt that strongly,
that forcefully and that vocally for so long.
The miners' controversial leader was uber-trade unionist
Arthur Scargill -
determined to stop the planned pit closures, whatever the cost.
Our people ARE going without food, they ARE suffering severe hardship,
they ARE having their electricity cut off
as a result of this government's policy.
One thing you don't lead your members into
is a battle they can't possibly win, and there was no way,
if you decided to have a strike to bring down the government,
that you were going to win that one.
Violence in the coalfields has reached a new pitch
because the miners' leaders will resort to anything.
I thought Mrs Thatcher was right to hold out against the miners.
The mining industry was headed for extinction anyway,
it was being extinguished all over Europe.
But the tone was sometimes a bit hateful.
This is a British Prime Minister
who described the working class as the enemy within,
as if they were somehow traitors to the nation.
Miners were just ordinary men and women like ourselves,
with children,
and I should have preferred a Conservative government
that had adopted at least a more conciliatory tone.
There was no conciliation, though, as alleged scabs' homes were burned.
And as Thatcher pursued an us-and-them stance,
she received a very British protest, straight out of the larder.
NEWS REPORT: Mrs Thatcher was left in no doubt about her unpopularity
when one of a barrage of eggs, tomatoes and ice creams
found its mark, squarely in the chest.
It's the slapstick hand grenade, the egg, isn't it, really?
It's not ever going to cause anybody a great deal of harm,
but it does cause a lot of mess and loss of face.
After a year of violence and protests,
Thatcher emerged victorious.
But another group were planning direct action against her.
On the eve of her speech at the Tory conference in Brighton,
there was a devastating attack.
REPORTER: The explosion came just before three o'clock.
Most of the residents were asleep.
Some were still socialising in the bars
as the hotel was ripped apart.
It still is one of those news stories where,
even as you were saying it out loud, it still sounded... wrong.
Those pictures of the front of the Grand Hotel in Brighton
were remarkable.
REPORTER: After the initial and inevitable confusion,
the rescue operation was soon underway.
You didn't need to be political
to know this was a terrible thing to do.
Everybody was shocked.
"How could this happen?"
The Gunpowder Plot was years ago.
REPORTER: Some of the casualties helped out at ground level
were able to walk - but only just.
Others, more seriously hurt, were stretchered to ambulances.
I was staying in the Ship Hotel, which was a little bit further down,
because I was a brand-new MP.
And the first thing in the morning I went for a run along the prom,
only to find that the hotel had disappeared in a pile of rubble.
I said, "My God. What's happened?"
And I was immediately reassured, "The Prime Minister's OK."
Margaret Thatcher was saved by her workaholic nature.
She was actually working on her conference speech
when the bomb went off
some time between two and three in the morning.
I just turned to do one final paper, and then it went off.
My husband was in bed, and all the windows went,
and the bathroom was extremely badly damaged.
In your own room? Yes, yes.
They were trying to kill her,
and it was sheer luck,
sheer luck that that didn't happen.
REPORTER: Firemen were forced to axe their way through locked doors.
But the biggest problem was how to free victims trapped in the remains
of the upper floors.
Controversially, news broadcasters aired the rescue
of trade and industry secretary Norman Tebbit live on TV.
The firemen are now getting close to Mr Tebbit.
He's in a crouching position
with the rubble of his room more or less on his back.
As clear as day, I remember seeing
Norman Tebbit being stretchered out.
To see him in his pyjamas, dust around his face,
a bit bloodied and a bit battered,
was really rather shocking at the time.
This is live news 1984 style.
And it still has the power to shock today.
REPORTER: It was 6:50, the rescue had taken nearly four hours.
Five people died in the attack, with many more seriously injured.
It was absolutely tragic for those who lost their lives,
for Norman Tebbit's wife, who was maimed for life.
It makes you very frightened
and very determined that they're not going to win.
Margaret Thatcher sent a clear message back to the IRA
when she refused to cancel the conference.
Mrs Thatcher walked along the front to start her conference
on the dot of 9:30am.
I knew immediately what the response would be.
It would be, "Take no notice and carry on."
They began with prayer and two minutes' silence.
There was an element of...
..understanding what it was like during the Blitz for our parents
and knowing that they didn't give in,
and eventually, they defeated Hitler.
And if we showed the same kind of spirit,
however scared we were, we would eventually defeat the IRA.
Thatcher's Churchillian resolve
even drew respect from her detractors.
I spent a lot of my life making fun of her,
and yet when I saw her speech, you just saw the Iron Lady.
You couldn't help it.
And the fact that we are gathered here now,
shocked, but composed and determined,
is a sign not only that this attack has failed
but that all attempts
to destroy democracy by terrorism will fail.
The week after, she was in church, she said,
and she looked through the stained glass window
and the light was coming in, and she said,
"I realised this was the day...
"..I was not meant to see."
And I don't think you can be a human being
if you don't have some understanding of that thought.
Coming up, more of '84's controversial women,
with the live MTV debut of this material girl.
Blasphemy, darling. What was she doing?
There's a furore over fur.
Wow. That's graphic.
And a music legend is under fire.
It was really, really shocking
that something like that could happen to one of our pop stars.
Do not adjust your set,
this was what passed as high fashion in 1984,
as clothes for the '80s generation screamed, "Look at me now!"
People felt more free to express themselves.
Not caring what people think.
It was just really fun, and we didn't take ourselves too seriously.
And while the rest of the UK were dressing like this,
across the pond, a controversial 26-year-old stylistic pioneer
was out to dominate the planet.
One of pop music's most flamboyant characters...
It's a girl who's been tipped as the white female answer
to Michael Jackson.
The hottest property on the music scene at the moment, Madonna.
I like the way she acts.
She's got everything, she's worked her way up.
She's like Marilyn Monroe again, except a much harder Marilyn Monroe.
It's "virgin" on the ridiculous.
Madonna was one of those artists - well, she still is -
where she makes headlines.
She knows exactly what buttons to press.
Madonna is the girl that every boy wants to go to bed with
and every girl wants to be,
and every parent loathes and despises.
She's always been opinionated,
she's always been outspoken, she doesn't care about her critics.
If she's got a message that she wants to get across, she'll get it.
If you're going to call your track Like A Virgin,
then you know people's backs will be up.
Madonna revelled in conservative criticism
that she was undermining family values.
Next, MTV invited her to perform the song
live at their inaugural Video Awards -
oh, the possibilities!
Anything could happen.
So I think she may well surprise everybody.
You don't say!
Madonna was a controversy-seeking missile
determined to score a direct hit.
First of all, she'd said she would do it
if they provided a live Bengal tiger.
But they didn't want to do that,
so she decided she would do it dressed in a wedding dress.
# Like a virgin
# Touched for the very First time... #
Madonna, MTV, Like A Virgin.
Blasphemy, darling.
What was she doing?
# When your heart beats... #
So far, so harmless.
But soon, the bride had everyone blushing.
I was like, "OK, Like A Virgin, but you're not being a virgin."
It was very, very controversial.
Then she rolls around on the floor,
and it shows the top of her thigh and her backside -
it all seems quite pleasant to me.
That's not how a virgin behaves.
Was she drinking?
No, I mean, look,
she's obviously in the moment,
she's enjoying her performance.
Madonna may not have been the headline artist,
but her risque routine stole the show.
MTV, I don't know how many millions and millions of viewers
over the world.
So she thought, "Let me just push it over the edge."
So she pushed it.
Cue predictable outrage from the world's media.
They got very bent out of shape about this indeed.
And then she has to make an excuse - well, her shoe had come off.
But obviously, Madonna is going to do this!
It's quite obvious,
I don't understand why everyone got so distressed about it.
As a businesswoman, Madonna was very clever,
she knew which buttons to push, she knew what would get press,
she knew what would get things talked about,
she knew what would get records sold.
She knew that she was going to be very successful
and she knew she was going to have a career in film as well,
she told me.
REPORTER: It's the sort of ecstatic welcome
that hasn't been seen since The Beatles.
40 years on, even Madonna's face is controversial.
She's still the most successful female artist of all time, though.
So what's the legacy of those raunchy three minutes
way back in '84?
Upon reflection, I'm sure it was very controversial for the time.
At this moment in time, we've all done much worse,
we've all seen a lot worse.
I've probably got a lot worse
in the gallery on my phone right now.
If you consider today's artists
like Beyonce or rap artists, you know,
in their videos, you know, how raunchy they get,
what Madonna is doing is kindergarten stuff.
I think present day has really gone a bit too far.
You've got Cardi B, who just plain old gyrates
and wears a G-string all the time.
But Madonna might have started it.
She may have started it
that you have to push it a bit further and a bit further.
Madonna's racy style influenced a whole new generation.
But high fashion came at a price.
In an era where wearing fur was still considered chic
and live animals were controversially used
as test subjects for new make-up products,
1984 saw outraged animal lovers
pulling ever more public stunts.
REPORTER: Nearly 1,500 animal rights protesters
from a wide area converged on the farm,
and foxes have been released from their pen.
It certainly seemed around this time,
the early '80s, the mid '80s,
that the animal rights protesters were becoming much more visible.
It was important,
and it was the febrile time for animal rights campaigners.
There were quite shocking protests, really,
like injecting Mars bars with poison,
to really raise awareness, to hit the headlines.
REPORTER: So far, there's no firm evidence
that any of the ten bars discovered
have actually been injected with poison.
A controversial confectionery campaign
would gain nationwide exposure.
Which is the more important to you - children or animals?
I think the greatest suffering is the most important.
Millions of animals are tortured every year
in laboratories in this country...
What about poisoned the children,
are they not important? There are no poisoned children.
There's no poison in these Mars bars whatsoever?
There's been no evidence of it so far, has there?
But you can't give us any guarantees about that whatsoever.
But there is plenty of evidence of cruelty to animals.
The extreme protests polarised opinions,
and in 1984, this shocking Lynx anti-fur campaign,
followed by an even more controversial Greenpeace TV advert,
split opinions.
It looks like a catwalk show,
largely because legendary style snapper
David Bailey was directing.
Known as the Dumb Animals campaign,
it's too disturbing for TV today,
as the fashionistas are splattered with blood.
Oh.
Wow. That's graphic.
Even now, as an adult you watch that and you think, "Wow."
For a large part of it,
it feels like a very '80s, glamorous, yuppie-era fashion show,
then you start to see the blood,
and then it kind of throws it back at you -
"If you buy a coat like this, you're a dumb animal"
After this moment, it becomes socially unacceptable to wear fur.
Who wants to wear a fox around their neck, anyway?
Who wants to wear a jacket that's made out of, you know,
17 dead animals?
Pressure worked, as major designers went fur-free,
or, in some cases, fur-partly-free.
People used to go, "Yeah, but it's not 100% fur, it's only 50%."
And you're going, "What, do you think there's a fox
"that's just lost its back legs
"and it's still running around with two legs like that?"
And I think that really hit home,
where it shows actually the death and the cruelty of it.
Today, 19 European countries have banned fur farming,
but over 90 million animals are still killed annually
to put their fur on humans' backs.
1984's clothing was clearly as contentious as it was colourful.
And without a hair-raising outlandish mop to top it off...
..you'd never stand out from the crowd.
But with rivers of gel, mountains of mousse,
and gales of hairspray -
most of which contained napalm, apparently -
you risked more than a bad hair day.
I did a pantomime with Tessa Sanderson.
She was an Olympic javelin thrower, gold medallist, actually.
And she'd come on, and a pyrotechnic had gone off,
it had caught her hair - backcombed, full of hairspray -
and it set fire to her hair.
So we had to... I was going...
onstage bashing her head, trying to put the fire out.
It was dangerous.
It was exactly the same as what happened to Michael Jackson
in the Pepsi advert.
1984 was arguably Michael Jackson's biggest year.
Thriller was breaking global sales records, and nothing,
seemingly, could go wrong.
Oh, my gosh, Michael Jackson was the king of pop.
He was number one. He sold out stadiums worldwide.
He was the top banana.
Michael Jackson - Thriller
is now the highest-selling solo album
in the history of recorded music.
Jackson's life was about to take a terrifying twist.
A starring role in a Pepsi commercial went devastatingly wrong,
as seen in this horrifying behind-the-scenes footage.
Of course you've got hair, make-up,
you've got Jheri curl juice and spray
and all of this everywhere.
One of the sparks just went too close to Michael,
his hair was set on fire...
Oh, no. That's really bad, what happened there.
That's the worst place to get burned.
Then all of a sudden the crew is running over,
they're patting his head down.
The footage!
He got dragged off with flames on his head
and they're putting towels on him,
and it was really, really shocking.
He ended up with second-degree burns.
Problems with hair growing back. It was a mess.
While Jackson's chart success continued,
some believe those few shocking seconds
may mark the turning point between Jackson's old life,
and the deteriorating health that would follow.
We didn't see the trauma of it, we saw the drama of it.
It was like, "Oh, my God, Michael Jackson's head's on fire."
But it must have been awful for him.
In a way, it was an even darker tragedy
because they then say that the reason
that he got so far into prescription drugs
was because of the drugs he'd had to take as painkillers,
and that he was never the same again.
But as we should know by now,
big corporations tend to get their way
and, amazingly, the Pepsi advert still got shown.
The Pepsi ad, actually, it went on to go out,
but a lot later, and you know those clever clogs,
they did use some of that to push the advertisement.
But at first nobody wanted to touch a Pepsi,
they thought that Pepsi set your hair on fire.
In 1984, the final controversial straw...
"You need to be tortured like I was.
"I made it, you can make it."
..would mean the end of time-honoured traditions...
"You got Mickey Mouse qualifications."
I think they were just jealous.
..and a frightening fear of the future.
I was more or less convinced
I would end up kind of bartering rat meat
in the ruins of Cheadle.
Oh, 1984 - so much to answer for.
The fire at York Minster is still a mystery tonight.
Landmarks burned as iconic British institutions disappeared.
It was awful, I lived in fear.
We all know us Brits hate change, even small change.
In '84 it arrived with a vengeance.
The campaign to save the English pound note is gathering pace.
After yesterday's announcement
that it's to be replaced by the pound coin,
MPs - Labour and Tory - are demanding a rethink.
Conservative Norman St John-Stevas called it...
I remember when the pound note was phased out
feeling a little bit nostalgic
for that little bit of paper scrunched in my jeans pocket.
I remember pound notes, they were lovely.
You felt rich when you had a few quid, didn't you, like a wad?
I remember the end very clearly, I remember lots of old people
getting really irate about it,
my dad talking about how we were going to have to get used to this
newfangled situation.
REPORTER: The campaign to stamp out the coin
isn't confined to Westminster.
Well, we've had about 3,000 letters in all,
and many of them contain petitions.
But it's old people in particular
who are most likely to be upset by the metal pound.
The old people, some of them don't realise the difference between them,
say, and a 5p or a 20p piece.
Do you yourself find it confusing?
Yes, I do, sometimes.
The change in that was almost like you had killed society
for that generation.
I remember people going, "Oh, you can't get rid of that."
The £1 coin was tiny, it was actually more practical.
Any introduction of any kind of new monetary, anything tangible,
is going to upset them.
Of course, in 1971 and they had to deal with decimalisation.
So you'd gone pound note to pound coin,
and then you went big 10p, smaller 10p,
5p, smaller 5p.
Any change of size of coin they think,
"Oh, too fiddly getting on the bus."
For some, they were a blessing.
The blind say they can recognise the coin by touch.
People who make slot machines reckon it'll make our lives easier.
As a kid I was just like, "I want a pound coin."
I remember holding that pound coin in my hand
and just marvelling at it, because it was really heavy.
As a kid it was like, "Oh, my God, how heavy is this?"
Most did what we do best - complain.
Most of the people I've spoken to
have assumed that if anything was going to be scrapped,
it would be the coin and not the note.
No-one wants the coins at all.
Everybody wants pound notes.
Well, I think it's a shame, in a way,
because I think a pound note
has got more value than a pound coin.
Maybe never apply to be Chancellor!
But if maths O-level was going to be a stretch,
there was maybe good news on the way.
In 1984, exams were getting a controversial overhaul.
O-level GCE exams and the CSE are to go.
The GCSE will replace the present O-levels and CSEs.
Got that? Good.
The era of everything resting on a single end-of-year exam was gone.
I lived in fear of O-levels,
and it was a memory test, which is ironic now,
as kind of my job is a memory test all the time, really,
learning lines and learning script.
So you did well, then?
I got two.
I left school at 16, and I worked really hard for my exams,
I came out with three.
More than two! Well done.
REPORTER: The new scheme will put all children on the same scale.
There will be harder papers with higher marks
for the brighter and more ambitious,
simpler questions for those who choose them.
No, you've lost me.
Someone explain, are GCSEs easier?
I did O-levels, obviously, and did rather well in them,
thank you very much.
And when they became GCSEs,
I think everybody knew that they were completely diminished.
No-one since has done a serious exam.
No young English person who hasn't done a proper...
I'm only kidding!
People who did O-levels said, "Yeah, it's a Mickey Mouse exam.
"You've got Mickey Mouse qualifications."
I think they were just jealous.
All I'm going to say is, I got a couple of O-levels, yeah?
And my friends - I'm not saying some of them were stupider than me -
but they all got, like, 10 GCSEs or 12 GCSEs.
REPORTER: In some subjects,
the children will set their own standards,
choose how deeply and how precisely they answer the questions,
or choose what questions to attempt.
I remember thinking, "I wish I was doing GCSEs."
A lot of it was prep work and project work,
and you were judged on that as equally as the test at the end.
GCSEs come in, and all of a sudden,
I can pass my English literature with no exam,
I can pass my English language with no exam.
And that to me seemed,
A, not only much more beneficial for my own skill set,
but, B, a much fairer way of testing your rounded knowledge.
Thanks to the introduction of GCSEs,
we now have generations of bitter O-level parents
convinced their kids are educational chancers.
People always want their children to struggle how they did.
When I speak to my mother she says,
"Oh, I did O-levels, and I did this, and it was, like, torture,
"which is why you should do the same thing, too.
"You shouldn't have it easier."
"You need to be tortured like I was. I made it, you can make it."
Poor young things, all we did was change the name!
All right, so, in 1984, we lost our pound notes
and O-levels were being phased out.
We lived, we moved on.
But waiting in the wings was a far more apocalyptic event -
the apocalypse.
In 1984, I think I probably thought about the end of the world
more than I thought about anything else.
I was obsessed with nuclear war, and massively afraid as well.
It structured our lives,
the thought of looking up into the sky
and seeing something that would vaporise your eyeballs.
The whole thing to me is terrifying,
you know, it is mutually assured destruction.
In 1984, there were nuclear weapons everywhere -
Russia had them, America had them, your grandad probably had them.
But he wasn't running the free world,
unlike retired cowboy actor President Reagan,
with his finger on the nuclear trigger.
The fact you had an old Hollywood movie star
actually as president of the United States of America
was almost like we'd entered
this sort of blockbuster apocalyptic film,
and it all felt very, very real.
So not a time to do anything stupid.
Russia were on a third leader in three years - Chernenko -
and feeling twitchy.
Enter President Reagan with some Armageddon-inviting ad-lib.
Hilarious? Well, no.
Every Saturday morning,
Reagan gave a radio address from the White House.
And of course, before any broadcast, you check the mic for sound,
and normally, you say, "One, two, three, four, five, six, seven."
But he came on with this daffy line about starting to bomb the Russians.
We all thought that if this was some kind of a joke,
it was particularly scary
because some truth might lie behind it.
This is an off-the-cuff remark, it's a joke, really,
but I suppose it's the joke that could have ended everything.
It wasn't a storm in a teacup, it was more than that,
it was a joke of the most alarming proportions,
if you considered he was the man
with his finger on the nuclear button.
It took a lot of explaining away afterwards,
especially, of course, to the Soviet Union.
Three, two, one.
With Reagan's stand-up career on hold,
the nuclear controversy would next explode in the UK,
when US cruise missiles targeting Russia
arrived on our shores.
This is the time of the deployment
of medium-range missiles in Europe,
and he was thought to be trigger-happy,
and there were huge protests at Greenham Common and elsewhere.
Understandably, we didn't want to be, in Britain,
an airstrip for nuclear war.
And as so often in history,
it's women who take the lead,
and they created this fabulous peace camp.
The Tory government was not in the mood for protests.
1984, we know which side we're on.
We're with the Americans,
and if they want to base cruise weapons in Britain,
then so be it.
You do whatever you can to avoid war.
And sometimes, that includes being very well-armed.
With the Cold War heating up,
public preparation for the horrors of nuclear war intensified.
It was a time for nuclear scares.
Take cover at once when you hear the attack sound.
SIREN BLARES
You had public information films of what would happen
in the event of hearing the air attack warning.
You had four minutes.
And it became a standard sort of school playground thing,
"Oh, what would you do in your last four minutes?"
If you weren't already petrified, you soon would be.
Jesus Christ. They've done it.
They've done it.
The brutal and controversial drama Threads
told you everything you really didn't want to know
about nuclear destruction.
Threads is completely and utterly nightmarishly terrifying
and haunting.
Come on. Get all this stuff on!
To actually see the grim reality was exceptionally powerful.
We all watched it kind of pale faced, I think.
The blood drained from us.
SCREAMING
It was everything I'd read about,
but then made into an even more howling nightmare.
It was controversial in the sense
that that put a great deal of fear out there.
Threads isn't reality, it's only a television programme,
and one based upon the sometimes controversial techniques
of a drama documentary.
What we were trying to do in Threads was to give a realistic picture
to people who perhaps haven't thought about it at all
in their lives.
It certainly did the trick.
Thanks for that.
I didn't think I would've reacted like this, you know,
but I just couldn't help it.
There's literally going to be nothing after, is there? Nothing.
I want to die when it hits me cos I don't want to live through
anything they lived through. Not at all.
Watching Threads, I was more or less convinced
I would end up kind of bartering rat meat in the ruins of Cheadle.
That's what the future seemed to present to me.
Listen, I might seem like a traitor, but guess what?
I'd rather be taken over by the Russians,
the Chinese or the North Koreans than be vaporised.
Now, That's What I Call Controversially 1984.