It's 1988... That is crazy.
..when acid dropped on the UK.
"All right, mate?" "Yeah, good here, innit!"
Scandals got very juicy.
Cocaine and sex parties.
And gangsters came out of Compton. We, like,
slapped everybody in the face and said, "Yo, listen to this."
Our small screens saw big changes.
Thunderbolt, lightning, flash, fancy graphics.
Our future king was seconds from death.
The Prince of Wales was actually crying
when they got him into the helicopter.
And the novel ignited mayhem.
Suddenly, I saw other British agents on TV burning books.
Strap in for two hours of astonishing events...
I can't believe it.
..that will have your jaws hitting the floor.
One of the craziest episodes in the history of television news.
Six million people stopped buying eggs,
which was quite an impact.
It just seems like a recipe for disaster.
Desperate drinkers got good news.
You couldn't buy alcohol anywhere out of hours.
BBC news became a battle ground.
I'm afraid that we have rather been invaded.
And cold warriors got less frosty.
Things you just didn't think would ever happen all sort of happened.
These are the most extraordinary events in TV, music,
entertainment and politics that were Controversially... 1988.
In a year when it was all about the money,
the average UK house price neared 60,000.
And free enterprise loving Mrs T
became the century's longest-serving PM.
One controversial comedy character spawned in 1988
reflected the age better than any other.
Loadsamoney!
His catchphrase was also his name - clever, eh?
Loadsamoney!
His character was greedy,
cynical, self-interested, really crude, really obnoxious guy
that just wants to get rich.
What's that, then? What is that?! Look at that!
I'll tell you what that is, right.
That is loads of money!
And it's all mine, right. Loads of money!
It was sports casual, wasn't it?
Brassy, kind of streaked hair,
really spanky trainers and a wad, like that, "Whey!"
I'm a plasterer, see. Bosh, bosh. Dollop, dollop.
Lovely job. Loads of money!
The intention of the character was very definitely to take the piss
out of this kind of Thatcherite moment where greed was acceptable.
It was acceptable to go round flashing your watch.
And it became massive, this character.
It was the sort of thing that everybody was doing
in the playground.
It became an iconic national figure.
When I got down to football, right,
I always sit behind the dugout where our Tel sits, right.
I lean over to him, I go, "Oi, El Tel. Loadsamoney!"
Performing this horrible, shouty plasterer
was nice, softly spoken Harry Enfield.
Is this kind of a social comment?
Well, yes. I mean, that's how he started off,
and that's what I think he still is, really.
But, erm, I mean, I see him as Mrs Thatcher
without the elocution lessons.
The character captured the public imagination in 1988,
even bagging a top five single.
So far, so good, until Harry lost control of his comic creation.
It bit him because the people that he was lampooning, satirising,
were the biggest fans.
The irony is, everybody loves him.
I mean, I don't know why, but they love him.
I don't know, you see. I think... I mean, people have said this to me.
"Don't you think you've created a monster here that people worship?"
There were people who were going, "That's me."
Cash in hand, down the boozer, got loads of money.
Poor Harry, his vicious satire of '88's avaricious attitudes
had become a role model
for the very many real Loadsamoneys out there.
Unfortunately, comedy creators can't take control
of where their characters go in the minds of the public,
and he became very swiftly a sort of folk hero.
Loads of money had helped make Harry Enfield a household name,
but so shocked was he by scenes like this...
where southern football fans started waving their wads
at opponents from the north, Loadsamoney style,
he decided to do something drastic.
And so, famously,
on a Comic Relief broadcast, Harry killed off Loadsamoney.
The character had burnt brightly, but briefly.
And loads of money!
But if you want one word that defines the late '80s era
of vulgar excess,
Loadsamoney is a war cry from the haves to the have nots.
It's a brilliant microcosm of late '80s comedy.
It's a Thatcherite comedy behemoth.
NARRATOR: Ah, remember when homes only had one screen?
In 1988, that lonely screen hosted a TV revolution.
Our tea time routine was - get in from school, Grange Hill,
Neighbours, tea.
At which point, Dad gets in and puts the 6:00 news on.
We don't really want to watch the 6:00 news,
but there was no alternative until Def II comes along.
The graphics screamed, "This is hip and happening," honest.
As Def II dished up shocking topics like...
Sex. Drugs. And radical politics.
Yeah, right on, see.
Stuffy old Auntie B could be down with the youth.
Yo, this is LL Cool J, you know what I'm saying?
And I'm coming up next on Behind The Beat.
That's right, boy-y-y-y-y-y.
It was "move over" all of us starchy 6:00 newsers.
Def II's young presenters represented the kids.
We've been bombarded by so much conflicting information about Aids
that it's hard to know what to believe.
The camerawork was crazy, the hosts were hip.
Which is absolutely wonderful and makes a fantastic change,
and I'm going to get run over.
Although some asked, was it trying just a bit too hard?
What, Def II? Are you deaf? Def II? Deaf?
Yes, "def", it means definitely, short for definitely.
It means very good. Well cool.
Def II was the brainchild of Janet Street-Porter.
She'd masterminded the painfully hip Network 7 on rival Channel 4
and had been poached with the job of injecting some street cred
into BBC Two.
I'm trying to win what I would call the lost audience
back to television, the 16-to-25-year-olds.
But the programmes that I'll make, and I won't just make programmes,
it's a scheduling thing, too.
So, in a sense, she's just taking one idea
and moving it to a channel that's usually quite hesitant
about youth culture and not that good at doing it
and saying, "This is what we can do,
"and we can make it this, this and this."
Janet Street-Porter was kind of wild and different,
and I think they thought, "Oh, yeah, the youth will love her."
The look of the new shows was in-your-face.
Then all of a sudden, it was like, thunderbolt, lightning, flash,
fancy graphics everywhere, Def II, noise,
jumping out of the screen.
Even the BBC Two branding got a remix.
And of course, the other big controversy was
they changed the logo of BBC Two.
So you had, like, this bar code.
With Def II, they tried to make it seem cool and edgy,
obviously because I guess bar codes were new then.
Let's have a barc... I know, let's have a bar code. Def II.
Twice weekly, Def II hijacked BBC Two's airwaves,
replacing the usual shows with edgy, teen-focused telly.
So you'd find kids taking on pillars of the establishment.
Question in the back row, the leather jacket.
You said that you and your business' success
was due to you being different.
Does this being different include breaking the law?
Er...
There was youth-skewed current affairs.
Well, so far this year, 1,000 people have died of Aids,
according to the latest figures.
If you think it's a disease which only affects homosexuals
and drug addicts, you'd be wrong.
Move over, Judith Chalmers.
When Def II travelled, you'd wish you were there with them.
What I enjoyed watching was the Rough Guides
because I thought, "That's what TV hasn't done before."
How do you pronounce this?
"Fan Go". "Van Gog".
"Van Goff". "Van Go".
I haven't seen anything that can tell me where to go,
but also has great places to go for people under 45.
Well, the streets of Amsterdam are bad enough problem
if you've got normal feet,
but can you imagine having to wear shoes that are this size?
Def II was fresh, exciting and showcased the best new TV talent,
welcoming to our screens the likes of the young Krishnan Guru-Murthy.
Hello, and welcome to Open 2 Question.
We said bonjour to Antoine de Caunes,
all Gallic gregariousness on rapido.
And this brave new TV domain had its queen, too.
Even the firefighters are hunky.
One of the most memorable characters from the dawn of youth television
was the one and only Magenta Devine.
This billboard will be showing neon arts,
which of course fits in terribly well
with Piccadilly's neon advertising.
And I do remember the thing that really made her stand out,
of course, is the fact that she used to sport these rock-widow sunglasses
underneath a very severely cut bob.
OK, it might look almost quaint and strangely innocent now,
but back then, this stuff was pushing boundaries.
If I look back at Def II, I think it needs a lot of credit
for breaking fresh ground.
It was a pioneering programme that said,
"It's OK to break some rules here
"because there's an audience that aren't being served."
We've got more controversies on the way,
as long haul becomes less of a drag.
That is crazy.
Last orders get their marching orders.
You couldn't get a drink because pubs shut.
And illegal raves dance to a new mantra.
Acid! Acid! Acid!
NARRATOR: We're looking back at the memorable moments
that were completely controversial in 1988.
If you jumped into a time machine,
the first thing you'd notice is smoke everywhere.
Before 1988, nicotine addicts could light up wherever they wanted,
no matter how enclosed or how dangerous.
I can't believe you used to be able to smoke on a plane.
I can't BELIEVE it.
Like, isn't that a health hazard?
You can't even think of that right now.
That anyone would ever smoke on an aeroplane.
So, you're sitting on a plane up in the sky
and somebody takes out a match, strikes it, and lights a cigarette.
I mean, that is crazy.
Spot on, Nicki.
With package holidays booming, more and more of us were heading skyward,
savouring micro-portion food and tiny tins of lager
before arriving in paradise, all smelling like ashtrays.
There was a section that you could smoke in,
and there was a section that you didn't smoke in.
The last six rows of the seats were set back for smokers,
so if you were in the seventh seat from the back,
it was absolutely disgusting.
As if the children and families towards the front
weren't breathing in people's Rothmans cigarette smoke.
1988 saw the first roll-out in America of new rules
that would gradually extinguish hopes of a mid-air puff, globally.
Yeah, in-flight smoking, 1988.
Wow. Done.
Although for those partial to a drink in the UK,
it was party time.
Pubs, pubs everywhere,
but for large chunks of the day, not a drop to drink.
Until in 1988,
a licensing-law revolution introduced all-day opening.
It seems extraordinary now to remember
that if you were thirsty at 4:00 in the afternoon,
you couldn't get a drink because pubs shut.
Last orders now, ladies and gentlemen, please.
By law, pubs could open between 12:00 and 2:00.
Then they shut, and they opened again at 5:00,
until 10:30 or 11:00 at weekends.
And it wasn't just the pubs.
You couldn't buy alcohol anywhere out of hours,
so you'd be in a supermarket on a Saturday afternoon
and you'd put four pack of beer in your trolley, and they'd go,
"Sorry, it's outside of hours."
Because the British are an enterprising lot,
especially when thirsty,
finding loopholes in the law had become a national sport.
There used to be regular articles in Time Out and the Evening Standard
about how you could drink for 24 hours a day in London.
This is London, right?
You know, this great international capital city.
And it did involve things like pretending you were a meat porter
at Smithfield Market.
There was also supposed to be some market workers pub
in Billingsgate or something.
You go there at six in the morning, you can get a drink.
"Don't really want to get up at 6:00 in the morning to have a drink,"
but it sounded exciting and sort of slightly subversive.
THEY CHEER
To be fair, these draconian laws
had been made for an earlier Britain in peril,
but they still mystified modern visitors to our shores.
We had American friends over, and you have to go,
"There's nowhere to go in central London.
"Sorry. It's because of the First World War."
Yes, it was emergency measures introduced 74 years earlier
that had been stopping the quaffing of 1980s Hofmeister and Hooch.
Prime Minister Herbert Asquith decided that there's a war going on.
What's everyone doing?
They're going to the pub at lunchtime and getting drunk all day.
So he decides that there's going to be a break in the day
where you are not allowed to drink.
Let me see now, how many pints did we drink?
Hang on. Uh, there was one...
The man on the street, and it was usually a man,
was all for the plan to ease restrictions.
I think it's a wonderful idea. Why?
Because I think the pub should be on all day permanently for 24 hours.
I don't think it'd be any more drunkenness
or violence or anything like that.
And then we had two.
Although some guardians of the nation's morals
were dead against it.
And then we had three, four, five.
I think that the combination of all-day drinking, and youth,
and unemployment and inner cities could be very dangerous.
I'd say we had about 11 pints.
11 pints at a lunchtime. 11 pints at a lunchtime.
Finally, in August 1988,
the three-quarters-of-a-century wait for an afternoon tipple ended
with that rarest of things -
a government reform that people liked.
When they allowed all-day drinking,
the nation didn't half have a party, mainly on a Wednesday afternoon.
CHEERING
But in 1988, some parties became the scourge of society.
Middle England found a new public enemy number one,
when a fresh musical trend burst from the underground
in a splash of smiley faces and created a classic press storm.
Acid house was the genre that got white people dancing.
Dancing badly, mind.
It was a music scene dominated by house music
and by people in kind of smiley logo T-shirts.
We knew when we saw that smiley face somewhere
that it was a fun zone for us to go to.
There's lights, there's lasers, there's music, there's DJs,
there's different areas, as far as the eye can see.
You're walking along, everyone's dancing,
people high up on podiums, dancing.
I mean, it's just amazing.
It's just dunk, dunk, dunk, dunk.
There was something intoxicating and mildly scary about the whole thing.
To give a sense of how revolutionary acid house was,
we need a history lesson about the great British Saturday night out,
mid-'80s style.
What was the scene like before 1988?
There was no scene. I mean, there was nothing. It was dire.
Dance music previously had been the preserve
of the Mecca ballroom circuit.
You still, to a degree, had to go and pay money
to be looked up and down by some bruiser in a dicky bow,
who might well end up beating you up at the end of the evening.
Guys round the side, all the girls dancing round their handbags.
Then a slow track comes on,
and everyone has a snog, and then they go home.
And if you haven't pulled then the guys will have a fight.
It was grim.
One tiny acorn that would help lead to the mighty oak of UK rave culture
was Shoom -
a London club night where DJ Danny Rampling
brought to the capital the house music
that had been gaining traction in Ibiza.
I walked in to this tiny little building, and it's boiling hot,
and there's this music I'd never heard before.
People smiling, you know, not going,
"Hello, darling. Can I get in your knickers?"
You know, it was like, "What's your name?"
People chatting to each other. It was... It was mind blowing.
It was amazing,
and Shoom, once you've had the best night of your life,
you want to do it all the time, so we were like, "Do you know what?
"Let's just put on our own parties," and that's what we did.
Charlie's brother, Tony Colston, later formed Sunrise,
one of the era's foremost party-promoting outfits.
Their genius idea was to bypass normal clubs completely.
The great revolutionary thing about acid house is it says,
"No, we're going to take the music out of all that.
"We're going to start having it in car parks,
"in farmer's fields, anywhere we want to."
It became like a party treasure hunt,
with ravers roaring around the M25
on a quest to discover that weekend's venue.
First of all, it's a mystery trip.
You don't know where you're going to go.
Where do you think you're going to? Mystery tour. We don't know.
That's why it's mystery. That's the mystery about it.
This is acid, man.
We would have people meeting at three different locations.
So, I don't know, South Mimms
or whatever service station, they would phone up,
they would get the address, and then there would be a convoy.
You're driving along, you can see people in front, people behind you,
and then eventually, if you're lucky,
you then find the rave.
We've brought together key figures from the acid house story.
Now friends... THEY CHUCKLE
..in 1988, they were at war.
I was the area chief superintendent of Gravesend, Dartford,
Sevenoaks, Tunbridge Wells.
The aim of our operation this weekend was to actually ensure
the safety standards for these young partygoers.
Kenneth was actually the head of what they called
the police Pay Party Unit.
Quite frankly, there could well be a disaster at any time.
And I was on this side of doing illegal parties.
I have to say to him,
you don't have to say anything unless you wish to do something.
But anything you say may be taken down in evidence.
I don't know, mate.
This huge, empty warehouse on the Gillingham Business Park
was another potential venue for the party,
being watched by the Kent Police on Saturday night,
acting on information gathered by their special squad
and with their suspicions enhanced
by the fact that there were clear signs of a forced entry.
We'd look for these warehouses, and essentially, we'd break into them.
We'd bring in sound and lights and thousands of people,
and, you know, we'd stay there for all night and have a party.
Now, as an adult, looking back,
you've got 10,000 people in a building.
All of them are on drugs.
I mean, that's got to be a nightmare for anyone.
Wayne was having parties in these warehouses.
He put the electric in these warehouses
from lamp posts in the road.
So, if the warehouse electricity wasn't working,
you know, you'd fit it to a lamp post.
Well, how safe's that? No, he did! How safe's that?
A weekly battle royale ensued
between the police and partygoers and promoters,
played out across Greater London and the Home Counties.
You have caused more of a breach of the peace on this road
than anybody has.
If we hadn't been here to stop you, we would have had the problems.
CROWD CHANTS
The cat and mouse was interesting.
They were my favourite bits as well, my interactions with the police.
REPORTER: Fearing further confrontation
with overwhelming numbers,
the senior police officer at the scene then decided
to pull his officers out altogether and let the party go ahead.
Go and have your party in a field.
And in any battle, spreading misinformation is key.
He used to tell lies. Well, he's always told lies to me,
but basically... Blagger.
Yeah, until I knew him as a pal.
You'd never, ever tell Kenneth the truth.
You know, you try and bend it as much as you can.
If we could sell Kenneth and his boys, you know,
up the M1 the wrong way, then we would do that.
We'd give them fake addresses.
Although the police had their own tricks up their sleeves.
We set up our own radio station.
Every Saturday night with youngsters,
some young people of mine, it wasn't for me to talk on the radio.
They had to talk in the rapping. If you understand me.
What we did then with our Sunrise radio,
we then sent them to the wrong place completely.
We did that all the time. There's no party here.
There's no party here, no party whatsoever.
Right, OK. OK?
The reason why it got to the point
where the police were having to do tactics,
like start their own pirate radio station, was because it grew so big.
We just wanted to put on the biggest and best parties.
Then we met somebody who had U2's stage lights.
I don't know if U2 ever knew that we had their stage lights,
but they had all these fairy lights.
We had U2 stage lights at one of our parties.
Well, U2 definitely know now.
And then the biggest controversy erupted.
Just what was keeping these kids dancing like this all night?
Ecstasy is the drug that's causing most concern to both the police
and the drugs advisory services.
Ecstasy was the drug of the time.
Anyone who tells you there were no drugs
at acid house parties is telling lies.
Ecstasy or MDMA pills,
often carrying the smiley face acid house logo
had two crucial effects that defined the movement.
One - endless energy.
I think it was something that people would take to dance a little longer
on the dance floor, putting it mildly.
And two - making users relaxed, empathetic and happy.
Ecstasy broke down barriers.
Before, in nightclubs, people used to get drunk.
They used to used to get drunk all the time, then have a big fight.
I think ecstasy made you, erm...
I don't know, just, like, want to talk to people.
It just broke down all those barriers.
To feel that good inside, to wrap up the best sex,
the best present your mum ever bought you as a kid,
to wrap it all up into one feeling and put it in a nightclub situation
with 2,000 other people and you all feel the same, then it's ecstasy.
It's got the right name.
You'd be seeing this guy coming towards you with his eyes rolling,
and you're thinking, "Hold on, it's going off here."
And he would, "All right, mate, how's it going?"
"Yeah, yeah. It's good here, innit?"
And you go, "Oh, I thought he was gonna jump us for a minute."
He just wanted to dance.
In his role policing the situation, Chief Superintendent Tappenden
soon became acquainted with the flip side of the ubiquitous drug use.
We used to have mothers ring us on a Sunday saying,
"Have you seen my son?" 18, 17.
And we used to find them in ditches still spaced out.
You never knew until you turned them over
whether they were alive or dead,
and that's how serious the whole thing got. Wow.
Some kids only had to have one drug and they're dead.
That's frightening.
No surprise that parents were panicked
and the press went into meltdown.
More than a dozen people are due to appear in court today
following police raids on four acid house drugs parties
over the weekend.
Arrests were made at four parties in Essex, Kent, Sussex
and Greenwich in London.
It's perfect tabloid fodder, isn't it?
REPORTER: Two hours earlier,
scuffles had broken out after police raided another acid house party
at Sevenoaks in Kent.
250 people had packed the empty property.
It took more than 60 police to restore order.
It's the kind of controversy that you get every generation,
and this was the '80s' one.
I just remembered that all the newspapers were saying,
"Keep your kids in the house."
The police are giving little away about this operation,
but some reports from eyewitnesses suggest it had been planned
for some time, with undercover officers among the party guests.
It's a brilliant example of a moral panic.
A few people getting in Vauxhall Vivas
and going to somewhere on the M25 to dance about a bit in a field.
That's like bringing about the downfall of society,
which it clearly wasn't.
And the thing about tabloid outrage stories is
you couldn't have a better advert for a club than The Sun screaming,
"People are taking drugs, they're having sex,
"they're staying up all night, they're having fun!"
You know, who wouldn't want to go to that?
So those kind of outraged headlines just helped stir it
and kind of popularise it with even more people.
And those headlines soon saw acid house in the charts,
courtesy of D-Mob, featuring Gary Haisman.
Suddenly, everyone was chanting one word over and over and over.
Ac-Ac-Ac-Acid. Acid!
You just hear this, "Acid! Acid!"
It did sound like a row of car alarms had gone off down the street.
Acid! Acid!
You know, on the M1.
I was panicking... And on the M25.
Acid! Fantastic. I think, "Why don't you clear off?"
The song's success meant a Top Of The Pops slot,
where it wasn't the band causing controversy,
but the presenter.
Hello, hello. Good evening,
and welcome to another exciting edition of Top Of The Pops.
We have Steve Wright on Top Of The Pops with his acid house T-shirt on.
Like this.
I was thinking, Steve Wright,
oh, he's like an amiable, slightly amusing DJ and he's got...
"Oh, look at that nice T-shirt he's wearing."
And the kids are kind of going, I know what that means.
Although '88 was acid house's heyday,
it mutated into '90s rave...
until a government bill banned gatherings of 20 people or more,
with music wholly or predominantly characterised by the emission
of repetitive beats.
The party was over.
I feel so lucky to have been at that place in that time.
I feel so lucky to have been there and to have been involved in it
and to be part of it.
Of course, there were casualties from it,
and I'm not kind of minimising those,
but what's interesting now,
there's lots of nostalgia groups around that period,
and the biggest feedback is people going,
"I would give anything to be back there again."
One acid house veteran looking back fondly on the period
might come as a surprise.
I loved it. I loved it. We were all tired out.
He was tired out cos he was on Es and not sleeping,
and he didn't know what to do with the money.
I was tired out because we never had days off or anything like that.
But if I look back on that period,
it was the best policing role I ever had.
I couldn't replicate it in anything else I did in my life.
Sometimes I think I want the youth of today to go and...
Because everything is, like, all the festivals and everything
is all big business now, and it's all...
I'd love them to go off and start their own scene again
and go, "Do you know what? This is what we think of that.
"We want to do our own thing."
The controversial party of 1988 is far from over,
as a politician is left with egg on her face.
I think there was an attempt to hang me out to dry.
It turned out to be a failure.
Saints become sinners.
Basically hucksters and charlatans. That's what they were.
And a royal holiday ends in tragedy.
What on earth is the future king getting involved
in such dangerous pursuits?
Welcome back to the surfeit of scandal that was 1988,
the year that one controversial Conservative
seemed to be on an unstoppable rise.
The junior health minister, Edwina Currie,
has been helping to launch this year's National No Smoking Day,
and she's joining me now.
She seemed in the sort of Margaret Thatcher mould
in that she was very tough,
she was very articulate, she didn't stand any nonsense.
I am convinced
that we should allow the police to use their existing powers
and put these on our criminals and leave them on.
In 1988, Edwina Currie was just a junior minister,
but she knew exactly how to boost her profile.
She was not a major politician, but she loved being on the TV cameras.
I think she's one of the greatest prime ministers
this country has ever had.
By 1988, Edwina's outspokenness
had seen her promoted to junior health minister,
and in that role, she became aware of a medical mystery
that had led to a spate of hospitalisations.
We seem to have growing infections,
food poisoning that was putting a lot of people in hospital.
The Public Health Laboratory Service said to me,
"Minister, I think you should know
"that we've traced the cause of this, and it's in eggs."
"What?"
So when we got to about 500 confirmed cases a week,
so that's people sick enough to have samples taken,
I took it upon myself to tell everybody, just to warn them.
The controversial events that followed
would define Edwina Currie's reputation,
transform our eating habits,
and impact UK egg production for years.
Tomorrow, the government will announce
a series of new measures to combat the spread of salmonella in eggs.
And then Edwina hit the nation with this sound-bite bombshell.
We do warn people now that most of the egg production
in this country, sadly, is now infected with salmonella.
It's always one headline - "Don't eat eggs,"
which I never said.
Mayonnaise and dressings and bloody Marys and that sort of thing,
they are not a good idea any more.
All we really wanted to say was you shouldn't eat raw egg.
We would advise strongly against using raw egg.
And all hell broke loose.
A Conservative backbencher, Richard Holt,
has called for Mrs Currie's resignation.
He said her behaviour had been crass.
Junior minister Edwina Currie, who highlighted the salmonella worries,
has been silent today,
but the egg producers and some MPs are still demanding her resignation.
In the weeks after I'd said my little piece,
I think something like six million people stopped buying eggs,
which was quite an impact.
The whole of the British egg market sort of collapsed,
and 5,000 egg farmers practically went out of business.
I think it'll be a different industry that comes out of this.
We've lost a lot of business, and some of it,
I think will never get back.
400 million eggs and four million hens were destroyed
as a result of Edwina Curry's remark.
Claim and counter-claim followed.
I do think she's right,
and I think the farmers have got themselves to blame.
REPORTER: The British Egg Council called Mrs Currie's comments
factually incorrect and highly misleading.
According to them,
the risk of any egg being infected is less than 200 million to one.
Suddenly, publicity-hungry Edwina found herself walking on eggshells
in so many ways.
REPORTER: The junior health minister
was carefully avoiding awkward questions
when she visited a hospital in south London.
Do you stand by your remarks?
Her claim on the weekend that most egg production
was now affected with salmonella has drawn fresh criticism.
Egg on face, headlines on the front pages.
Obviously, it was a tragedy for the egg industry,
but the rest of us had to endure this barrage
of egg puns in the newspaper.
It was all like, "Are you all white, 'Egg-wina'?"
"It's no 'yolk'."
"What 'shell' we do?"
Eventually, with the press furore showing no signs of slackening...
MAN: Do you regret anything you said? No.
..something had to give.
The current ministerial career of Edwina Currie
came to an end this afternoon.
She resigned from office as the government faced up
to the full cost of her comments about contaminated eggs,
and as MPs on all sides said, "Enough was enough."
You just kind of feel, "Oh, I want out of this."
Like John Travolta at the end of Saturday Night Fever.
I am an able person, I can do other things.
That's what you feel.
Since the end of her eventful 27-month stint as a junior minister,
Edwina's colourful career post-politics
has seen her win Celebrity Mastermind,
come fourth in I'm A Celeb, and publish six novels,
plus published diaries that made major headlines.
And as a final twist in the tale, in 2001,
it was revealed that there had been a salmonella epidemic in 1988,
which had been covered up by the government.
I think there was an attempt to hang me out to dry.
It turned out to be a failure.
NARRATOR: Let's head over to the US for our next controversy,
where 1988's biggest TV stars weren't chat-show hosts
or actors, but televangelists.
When you are in America, you put on the TV-preacher channels,
it's utterly fascinating.
I mean, they're basically hucksters and charlatans,
that's what they were.
There was so much money involved
that these people got incredibly rich.
One of them built a Christian theme park.
They had gold taps on these bathrooms.
They had private jets because they needed this
to do the work of the Lord.
They obviously hadn't read the Bible, these guys,
cos when you read the Bible, Jesus comes over
as quite a humble guy
who doesn't seem to need to be a TV evangelist
or a rock-and-roll star.
In a crowded market, it was preacher versus preacher
as all God's chosen broadcasters tried to increase their viewers
because more viewers mean more donations
and more donations mean more gold taps.
There's always preacher wars.
They're always fighting each other because it's a big money business
and they're all superstars and rivals.
It's a whole wasps' nest of backstabbing people
being very un-Christian to one another.
By 1988, one of the biggest wasps in this hugely competitive
but lucrative nest had established himself in Baton Rouge, Louisiana.
Jimmy Swaggart was like one of the best-known evangelical preachers
of the 1980s, so he was all over TV.
I'm saved.
I'm washed in the blood.
I'm saved by the blood of Jesus. CHEERING AND APPLAUSE
I'm saved. I'm baptised in the Holy Ghost.
My body is a temple of the Holy Spirit.
Swaggart was the avenging angel of televangelism,
ready to accuse his rivals if he suspected they'd sinned.
REPORTER: Swaggart is a fire-and-brimstone preacher
with a special talent
in front of vast audiences for pointing the finger at others.
Your day is about over!
And point the finger he did in 1986,
when Swaggart made the ultimately short-sighted move
of accusing fellow Assemblies of God minister
Marvin Gorman of having multiple affairs.
He had a go at another televangelist type
who got caught in flagrante having affairs and stuff,
and, like, was really condemning him.
And then he got caught with his trousers down himself.
The disgraced Gorman had decided two can play that game.
He tracks Jimmy Swagger, he spied on him in a motel bedroom,
and caught him going in and out with a sex worker,
and he even went to the trouble of letting down
Jimmy's car tyres so he couldn't make a quick escape.
Cue some of 1988's most extraordinary TV.
One of America's leading television evangelists Jimmy Swaggart
has resigned in disgrace over a sex scandal.
He's said to have been photographed with a prostitute in a hotel room.
When he was caught,
I actually think that he did the first ever
"I've been cancelled" apology.
Now it happens on Twitter all the time.
I have sinned against you.
'He did it much better. He came on stage...'
I beg you...
..and he was crying.
I have sinned against you, my Lord.
He goes on air and says, "I have sinned. Please forgive me."
REPORTER: He asked forgiveness from his wife, Frances.
I have sinned against you, and I beg your forgiveness.
"I have sinned," and all that kind of thing,
which was endlessly sampled and played out
through loads and loads of records
and went through pop culture for years.
APPLAUSE
Swaggart's crying game seemed to do the trick.
I think we're all human,
and God loves him, and he loves us all,
and we should stand behind him.
What we saw in there was something that took a man to do,
and so we're proud of him.
A lot of people did forgive him, and he kept going.
Jimmy Swaggart, the American television evangelist
who resigned in disgrace after a relationship with a prostitute,
is back in the pulpit.
At which point, Jimmy Swaggart resumed his career as a TV preacher,
never making the headlines again...
is what didn't happen.
And then he had another prostitute scandal.
We're like, the devil again?!
But while in America, it was TV evangelists
bringing calamity upon themselves,
in 1988, the future King of England
would be a victim of a shocking natural disaster.
Prince Charles was on a skiing holiday
in Klosters with Major Hugh Lindsay
and with various members of the Palmer-Tomkinson family,
although not Tara.
Where the royals go, the paparazzi followed,
even when their long lenses were freezing.
How long have you all been standing here for? Hours?
Hour and a half.
This was a favourite destination for the royal thrill-seekers.
REPORTER: They have chosen Klosters for the past three years
as a royal winter resort
because of the quality and complexity of its ski runs.
After four days of cloudy skies,
the sun was finally shining in the resort
and the prince was determined to make the most of it.
On that particular day,
he went off skiing with Bruno Sprecher, who was the guide,
and they decided to go off-piste.
The Prince of Wales was off-piste.
Now, that, I think, means that he was away from
the easier skiing areas.
Does that mean that he was in a more dangerous area of the mountains?
Uh, there have been lots of avalanches that have affected people
on-piste as well as off-piste.
While going off-piste is common for experienced skiers,
there are always risks.
Had there been any warnings about the danger of avalanche?
It was quite clear
around about halfway through the morning
that there were avalanche warnings.
REPORTER: Such a warning does not deter experts from going off-piste,
and like this, the royal party descended the slope,
weaving their way across the mountainside.
It was quite a steep mountain. It was not for beginners.
Despite their skills on the slopes,
the royal party could not foresee the icy twist ahead.
Prince Charles is an expert skier, and he likes doing these tough runs,
according to the people I know in Klosters.
They had not been able to resist the new-fallen powder snow,
which is a dream of most skiers,
and he instructed the guy to take him there.
Of course, we don't know whether that was...
that was what happened.
What we do know is that what happened next
was every skier's worst nightmare, a huge and all-enveloping avalanche.
But it was down to the quick-thinking of Bruno Sprecher.
When he realised what was happening, he yelled at the top of his voice,
to the whole party, "Jump!"
The Prince of Wales, as he was then, only just manages to avoid it.
It was as a result of that jump,
the Prince of Wales was able to escape the full magnitude
of this avalanche.
Unfortunately, Major Hugh Lindsay
and Patti Palmer-Tomkinson were both caught in the avalanche.
Charles and the group frantically dug through the icy snow,
desperate to rescue their buried companions.
And Mrs Palmer-Tomkinson is OK.
I think she has damage to her legs and her lungs.
When they got to Hugh, he was pretty much dead
at the... at that moment in time.
REPORTER: Major Hugh Lindsay was killed instantly.
Another member of the party, Mrs Patti Palmer-Tomkinson,
was badly injured.
The avalanche swept the two victims more than 1,000ft.
They said that, um, the Prince of Wales was actually crying
when they got him into the helicopter.
As the shockwaves from the avalanche rippled outward,
the spotlight fell on Charles and his role in the fatal incident.
Within days of the event happening,
the questions then started to be asked,
"What on Earth is the future king
"getting involved in such dangerous pursuits?"
Swiss experts are almost certain
that the royal skiing party triggered the avalanche themselves.
A scientific investigation is now complete,
and its conclusion is that the weight
of the skiers loosened the snow and set off a chain reaction,
bringing down a huge cascade of snow and ice
from the side of the mountain.
And for many years afterwards, Charles blamed himself, really,
for the death of Hugh Lindsay.
Further fallout from the incident was a deepening of cracks
in the already strained royal marriage,
as a moment's decision to go off-piste in 1988
had repercussions far beyond the slopes.
And there are still more controversies to be unearthed
as fear begins to dig deep.
It just seems like a recipe for disaster.
Rats coming over, IRA.
Icy tensions melt in a Cold War twist.
We all got terribly worked up that there was going to be a nuclear war.
And gangsta rap has parents up in arms.
If you tell your child, "Don't go there,"
that's the first place they're gonna go.
1988 saw controversy come in many forms,
with even feats of civil engineering becoming huge headline grabbers.
Ooh, fun graphics!
Mrs Thatcher and President Mitterrand
meet in France this morning
to announce which scheme has been chosen
for a fixed link across the Channel.
They'll be making the announcement in Lille,
where the Channel Tunnel Group is expected to emerge as the winner.
This was like our equivalent of the moon landing.
It was quite amazing.
This exciting animation shows the plan's ambition -
50km tunnels connecting the UK and France.
REPORTER: The English Channel's days as the last bastion
of Britain's island status are numbered.
Within seven or eight years,
you should be able to travel by car from the tip of Italy
to John O'Groats without ever resorting to a ferry.
It was bold, it was ambitious,
and it got a lot of people hot under the collar.
There was huge controversy.
If it's a link or something, it might collapse.
It's terrifying if you think about building a tunnel underneath wa...
It just seems like a recipe for disaster.
For some, predictably, it was the idea of travelling
beneath the ocean bed that was making them queasy.
When I first heard about the Channel Tunnel,
even the words made me want to bury my head.
No, I'd probably get claustrophobia.
I had actual nightmares of people going under the Channel
and actually sort of suffocating. It didn't seem real.
Although there were other equally predictable fears being aired.
REPORTER: There'll be protests in Dover and in the Kent countryside,
which stand to suffer from the tunnel traffic
and its giant terminal.
My grandad's definitely against it
because the tunnel is going to be tunnelled
right underneath his house.
There were newspaper headlines warning us
that this was the start of Armageddon.
England's always been an island,
and why should it be joined up with France now?
Why would we allow Johnny Foreigner
the ease with which to come through the tunnel?
They will be queuing up, they will be racing through.
We will have no control.
This controversial notion of an undersea tunnel
linking us with Europe wasn't exactly new.
So, as early as 1802, the idea had come up to build a tunnel.
And I just loved the drawings
because they thought there would be horse-drawn carriages
going underneath
and there would be a chimney providing oxygen.
But those crazy Georgians with their Channel chimneys
would have to wait until '88 for the dream to become reality.
The big question was where do you start with such a mammoth task?
The answer, as illustrated by state-of-the-art graphics
late '80s style, was over here and over there.
And that's when the genius idea came that, oh, you can start tunnelling
from this end, you can start tunnelling from this end,
and you'll meet in the middle.
At each face was an enormous tunnel boring machine, or TBM.
Computer operated and laser guided,
it made an average speed of 12cm per minute.
When work started on the project, a barrage of protest followed.
British people are quite resistant to change.
Car in the tunnel, the leakages, rats coming over, IRA.
I think it's terrible.
Terrorists and, er, rabies.
And it was hilarious because the older generation,
I remember this - the fear, the hysteria.
I'm afraid I won't be using it. Ever?
Not unless it's absolutely necessary.
I'm standing at the mouth of the Channel Tunnel,
a new gateway to Europe.
Down there now, about 23km out to sea,
they're preparing to make the first human breakthrough.
After all the fuss, when it opened in the mid-'90s,
Chunnelers didn't know what to expect.
Under the Channel to England.
I can't believe that's where we are.
Actually, I wondered whether there were gonna be sound effects,
whether you'd actually hear the kind of "blub, blub, blub" outside.
And then, typically, Britain changed its mind overnight
and decided we quite liked it after all.
If we were looking for speed, it's an ideal mode of transport.
If you want quickness and you want a fuller day over in France,
then you go by the tunnel.
And, of course, the reality was that it opened up this country
to people to come from Europe,
it opened up the entire European continent
for people from Britain to go there.
Someone can call you and say, "Hey, can you come do a gig in Paris?"
and it's like being asked, can I come do a gig in Dover?
In fact, it probably takes me less time to get to Paris.
Yes, this was an innovation that led to absolute
and unencumbered freedom of movement between Britain and Europe
that nothing could ever reverse.
I think the Channel Tunnel now is as much a part
of the British holiday psyche as going to Butlin's
and a wet August bank holiday and swimming in sewage.
It's what our holidays are all about.
I, Ronald Reagan, do solemnly swear...
That I will faithfully execute the office
of President of the United States.
That I will faithfully execute the office
of President of the United States.
NARRATOR: Let's head back to America now
to catch up with their popular
and controversial president Ronald Reagan.
Look, I had a chance to shoot a bunch of you
the other day and didn't.
Throughout two terms in office,
this former cowboy actor never hid his suspicion of the Soviet Union,
with this sort of thing.
They are the focus of evil in the modern world.
Don't hold back now, Ron.
So, we had the US and the Soviet Union,
two nuclear superpowers in a scary stand-off
that was keeping us all awake at night.
In the mid-'80s, we all got terribly worked up
about the danger that there was going to be a nuclear war.
Reagan had become president at the beginning of 1981,
and we were really afraid he was gonna start World War Three.
What was known as the Cold War
threatened to get very hot very quickly in the '80s
as both sides constantly rattled sabres.
What can be said about Soviet credibility
when they so flagrantly lie?
There had been so much suspicion,
so much absolute conviction that somebody was gonna start a war.
It was an act of barbarism,
born of a society which wantonly disregards individual rights
and the value of human life.
But then a controversial development on both sides,
whisper it, compromise was in the air.
Things you just didn't think
would ever happen all sort of happened.
A key factor was a new man in charge in the Soviet Union.
For a long time, the USSR had been governed by Leonid Brezhnev,
who was one of the old guys in the Politburo.
Then in 1985, we got Mikhail Gorbachev,
who was a bit of an unknown quantity.
He wasn't that old.
He just suddenly struck us more laid-back, more friendly.
REPORTER: Gorbachev seemed a new kind of Russian.
Mrs Thatcher's verdict...
I like Mr Gorbachev. We can do business together.
And in Gorbachev, you've got this extraordinary man,
one of the most extraordinary men who's ever lived, I think,
to have the foresight and vision to say,
"Yeah, this is going nowhere, this, we need to rethink."
Gorbachev felt that if he didn't shore up the existing Soviet Union
by making it more open and so on, it would just collapse.
Margaret Thatcher, who was prime minister at the time,
met him, and she said, "I can do business with him."
And we went, "Really?"
He started talking about these two words we hadn't come across before.
One of them was glasnost, which meant openness.
And this other word he came up with was perestroika,
which meant reorganising.
Good evening. The Iceland summit has ended without any agreement.
Reagan and Gorbachev had met in Reykjavik in 1986,
and we now know the drama that had occurred behind closed doors.
But when they got in the room on their own,
or with just a handful of aides, Gorbachev said,
"Why don't we get rid of half of our nuclear weapons each?"
And Reagan said, "Why don't we get rid of all of them?"
and apparently, you could feel the room go...
as the aides went and dashed out, saying,
"He's going to get rid of all our nuclear weapons,"
and was reined in by his generals.
The next shock came in 1988 with Reagan's big "duh"
to the offer of a Russian state visit.
Ronald Reagan stepped onto Soviet soil this morning.
Only two American presidents since the Second World War
have gone there before him.
Here was hawky hardliner Reagan, the Soviet nemesis,
in the very epicentre of what he'd called the evil empire.
REPORTER: President Reagan has been welcomed to Moscow.
He and Mr Gorbachev have begun their talks.
The atmosphere is cordial.
They wandered out into Red Square
for a look at Lenin's Mausoleum and St Basil's Cathedral.
In Red Square, there was plenty of time for photo opportunities,
including the much-loved staple - politician meets small child.
President Reagan?
Do you recognise President Reagan?
Uh... yeah.
Whoa, whoa.
LAUGHTER
We find ourselves standing like this.
The Soviet-American relationship today was better
than at any point since the Second World War.
Watching Reagan in Red Square,
I think it was easy to get swept up in the optimism of it.
This wasn't just about photoshoots,
rather a possible new future of life on Earth.
REPORTER: No-one three years ago would have foreseen
that the old hostility would have turned into
what's now almost a partnership.
Not long earlier, talk of Armageddon had seemed only too real.
Now the two leaders were aggressively pursuing peace.
Reagan and Gorbachev both saw an opportunity
to bring the Cold War to an end.
I would like to think
that our efforts during these past few days
have slayed a few dragons
and advanced the struggle against the evils that threaten mankind.
There was a reduction in the number of conventional weapons
right through Europe.
There was an element of... peace in our time.
INTERPRETER: The first lines have already been written
into the book of a world without wars, violence
or nuclear weapons.
I believe that no-one can now close that book and put it aside.
It was a moment of hope in both capitals.
President Reagan left Moscow this morning
saying he'd learned much and hoped for more.
The atmosphere was cordial, and both he and Mr Gorbachev
spoke of cooperation, openness and friendship.
Of course, it wasn't to last,
but the feeling of optimism,
certainly for people of our age, was acute.
NARRATOR: Not all Americans were ready to sit down
and talk peace with their enemies.
In music, one group shocked listeners
with their graphic and confrontational rhymes
that gave rap a whole new controversial genre.
RAPS: Straight Outta Compton Is a crazy brother named Ice Cube
From the super dope gang with...
NWA is the first time that gangsta rap has been heard of.
NWA's album Straight Outta Compton
was and is a rap and hip-hop classic
which is about drugs and crime.
But it was very, very...
mm, controversial,
let's say the word, cos there was a lot of cussing.
You know, we did something real different.
When we put our record out, we, like, slapped everybody in the face
and said, "Yo, listen to this."
You know? Plus, everything we said was real.
The grooves were howls of rage toward rival gangs, the police
and life in one of America's most violent neighbourhoods.
It introduces the rest of the world to South Central Los Angeles,
which no-one really knows about before then.
The battles, the murderous battles between the Bloods and the Crips,
the two main gangs.
High School Centennial was like, it was half and half.
It was... It was half Crips on this side of the school,
and Bloods on this side of the school.
So it was like, wow.
Also, it allows NWA
to talk about police oppression of Black people.
I got stopped by police recently.
"Get out the car, keep your hands on the steering wheel.
"Come over here, and sit on the kerb.
"Any guns in the car? What gang you from? Any drugs in the car?"
And I'm wondering, if I was in Beverly Hills
with a different coloured skin, would they ask me what gang am I in?
This was an explosive rhetoric and sound never heard before.
And mainstream America didn't know how to react.
NWA experienced hostility from the FBI and the police,
but the band's core audience understood.
I like them, I think they're hot.
They speak the truth.
It was just really a lot of young Black kids
from Compton talking about what their lifestyle was like every day.
And most of the people in the neighbourhoods were just like,
"Well, that's just what happens on my way to school
"or coming back from the supermarket,
"I might get pulled over."
Controversy sells,
and Straight Outta Compton shifted one million copies
in its first year.
UK rap fans were impressed,
but also culturally unprepared
for this take-no-prisoners assault on their speakers,
their attitudes and their minds.
I remember taking the tape into school the next day
and playing it to friends on my Walkman,
and, you know, I went to quite a middle class grammar school
in the North London suburbs, and we were just gobsmacked.
Just hearing the N word repeated so regularly throughout the album,
even the name of NWA,
we really questioned whether this was legal or not
to even be listening to it,
let alone rap about these kinds of things like killing police.
The release also entered music history
as one of the first to feature a "parental advisory" sticker.
Tipper Gore, wife of the future Vice President Al,
had been on a mission.
We are asking the recording industry to voluntarily assist parents
who are concerned by placing a warning label on music products
inappropriate for younger children
due to explicit sexual or violent lyrics.
She'd long been calling for this type of packaging
to warn concerned parents of explicit content in music,
but what was the effect when it was introduced?
The Parental Advisory sticker on the NWA album
completely backfired.
As a mom, you should know.
If you tell your child, "Don't go there,"
that's the first place they're gonna go.
That's not gonna put anyone off.
Remember everyone had those Parental Advisory t-shirts?
And then loads of white kids in the suburbs,
they were like, "What is this?"
But it was danceable,
and it went pop, and it crossed over,
and it sold out everywhere.
Stay tuned for more outrageous moments from 1988.
A news bulletin becomes a news story...
I'm afraid we have rather been invaded.
..Margaret Thatcher goes on the attack...
If you ever get trial by television,
freedom dies.
..and terrorists are silenced. Kind of.
One of the craziest episodes in the history of television news.
NARRATOR: We're reliving the most controversial moments
in a year full of them, 1988.
Margaret Thatcher's Conservatives had been in power for nine years,
during which time they'd made sweeping changes to British society,
and the Iron Lady wasn't finished.
Her next crusade was controversial then,
and even more so today.
Children who need to be taught to respect traditional moral values
are being taught that they have an inalienable right to be gay.
Detecting a hint of homophobia maybe?
In 1988, many shared those opinions.
I obviously don't want children taught
that the gay and lesbian lifestyle is natural or normal.
It is not, it never has been, and it never will be.
We were in a very strange time in history.
It was, I think, oppressive.
There'd just been a moral panic against LGBTQ+ people,
even years after the decriminalisation of homosexuality,
that somehow being gay could be a bad thing.
Through my school career, saying "gay" was still an insult.
A law was proposed to make it illegal
to promote homosexuality in schools.
But what exactly did "promote" mean?
This policy, called Section 28,
essentially banned teachers from, quote,
encouraging any or even talking about gay relationships
and LGBTQ+ relationships in a positive light.
Simply talking about homosexuality,
you could be accused of promoting it.
Simply talking to somebody who's homosexual,
you could be accused of promoting it if you talk about their needs.
I think it's really hard now
to remember how awful Clause 28 was,
an advocacy against the promotion of homosexuality,
and it really meant it was impossible to be gay.
It was impossible to be out and proud.
The LGBT community decided to fight back with protests
and high-profile speakers.
We must be out and about in pubs and clubs
and in the classroom talking about homosexuality
and in fact, in that sense, promoting homosexuality.
But in pre-social media 1988,
such protests went largely unseen by the mainstream audience,
so an audacious escalation was planned
to take the anti-Clause 28 message straight into people's homes.
ANNOUNCER: The Six O'Clock News from the BBC
with Sue Lawley and Nicholas Witchell.
From the start of the BBC news bulletin,
you immediately know that something's off.
I mean, you can hear Sue Lawley literally shout the news at you.
Good evening. The headlines at six o'clock.
WOMAN SHOUTS: Stop Section 28!
In the House of Lords, a vote is taking place now
on a challenge to the poll tax. Stop Section 28!
CLATTERING
Tory rebels have said that the tax is unfair and unpopular.
You start seeing the camera move from side to side,
essentially trying to avoid the activists
from being picked up on camera.
And I do apologise if you're hearing quite a lot of noise
in this studio at the moment.
Protesters had infiltrated BBC Television Centre
and somehow slipped into the news studio
just as it went on air.
I don't know how they did it, get past security at the BBC.
I worked at the BBC, and I was stopped at the gate every day.
I'm afraid that we have rather been invaded by some people
who we hope to be removing very shortly.
It's not great to be a live newsreader
and have something like that happen,
and I've done a lot of live television,
and I don't know how I would've coped.
Probably not as resolutely as Miss Lawley, that's all.
Very quickly, events in the BBC news studio
became a BBC news item.
REPORTER: With handcuffs still attached to the camera cable
and the Six O'Clock News still on the air,
the protesters were taken away by police.
It's fascinating to see
how far people will go to get their message across.
Outside the studio,
one woman who'd handcuffed herself to camera cables was cut free.
Lovely, thanks very much.
Another, and the piece of studio furniture
she'd handcuffed herself to were parted in a corridor.
I thank the group of lesbians
who broke into the Six O'Clock News studio
and tried to take a stance.
Led away, the women repeated their protest.
We're protesting about rights for lesbian and gay people.
And of course, it led to an awful amount of attention on the policy.
The protesters had succeeded
in getting Clause 28 onto the front pages,
but they weren't able to stop it becoming law.
The controversial ban would be in place for 15 years,
affecting millions.
Section 28 led to such a terrible impact for the young LGBTQ+ people,
and it only got lifted more than a decade later.
But even then, in the years subsequently,
it was still... LGBTQ+ lives we're not taught about in school.
I would've had a great time if my old biology teacher
had said something about his boyfriend.
I'd have been like, "Oh, good, there's nothing wrong with me,"
but sadly, that wasn't the case.
Finally, let me apologise to you for the slight commotion in the studio
at the beginning of the programme.
Our unwelcome guests have now been taken away by the police,
and I hope the noise and my hesitations
didn't distract you too much from tonight's news.
NARRATOR: Throughout the '70s and '80s,
British news was dominated by the conflict in Northern Ireland
between Unionists and Republicans.
By 1988, any peaceful resolution of The Troubles seemed impossible.
At this time in 1988,
it was probably worse than it had ever been.
It was the nearest to a civil war that we've had.
The British Army on the streets, riot controls,
so many innocent people killed.
EXPLOSION, SCREAMING
Horrendous things were happening in a part of the United Kingdom.
And then what happened is that it spread to the mainland.
EXPLOSION
We were all checking under our cars.
And of course, there was the Brighton bomb attack.
Bombs were in the House of Commons.
Margaret Thatcher's stance was positively
and, indeed, knowingly Churchillian.
This government will never surrender to the IRA.
Never.
That uncompromising stance
led to another government battle with broadcasters.
Their first broadside was aimed at ITV,
whose current affairs show, Death On The Rock,
investigated a shooting by the army of three IRA members in Gibraltar.
The order was given - to stop the broadcast.
I think the feeling about Death On The Rock
was it rather let the side down
because it came out at a time when the IRA was causing
a still terrible, terrible trouble.
Death On The Rock suggested
the IRA members may have been unlawfully killed
by the British Army.
The government feared these revelations
may taint the coroner's inquest and tried to halt the broadcast,
but to no avail.
The documentary aired in April 1988.
The Prime Minister has accused
the Independent Broadcasting Authority
of acting irresponsibly in allowing the screening last night
of an ITV programme about the killing
of three IRA terrorists in Gibraltar.
It included an interview with an eyewitness
who said that two of the terrorists were shot
after they had appeared to surrender.
Margaret Thatcher was very bitter and hurt by it.
As the nation grappled with the implications of Death On The Rock,
Margaret Thatcher hit back hard,
with these words aimed at the broadcasters.
If you ever get trial by television
or guilt by accusation,
that day, freedom dies.
ECHOING
It was a very frightening time to be upholding democracy
and the rule of law.
I think looking back,
Death On The Rock was a brave piece of investigative journalism.
Relations between TV companies and the government
were already on shaky ground when that October,
new broadcasting restrictions were announced.
They may have started with understandable intentions,
but would end in farce
and one of the most notorious infringements
of British press freedom.
Good evening. The government has banned anyone
who speaks in support of Irish terrorism
from doing so on television or radio in this country.
This was Margaret Thatcher as Prime Minister
saying that she wanted to deny the IRA
the oxygen of publicity.
Suddenly, edict from government was that you cannot
broadcast the voices of leaders of various groups -
Sinn Fein being one.
As the leader of Sinn Fein,
Gerry Adams was the most prominent voice
that the Tories wanted silenced.
They thought that if we didn't use Gerry Adams's voice,
then there would be no more interviews with Gerry Adams, period.
The bizarre solution adopted by broadcasters
was to hire actors to say the words of the banned leaders.
Viewers got the same message, just said by someone different.
They turned down the sound on the soundtrack
and substituted the voice of an actor.
I mean, it was absolutely bonkers.
If everyone in Ireland tomorrow morning
voted For Sinn Fein,
it wouldn't make a blind bit of difference
to the British government.
When it came in, we thought,
"Well, we're gonna have to have a roster of actors
"with a certain accent that you can phone up at last minute."
We can only achieve what we're attempting to establish in Ireland,
a democratic socialist republic,
through the use of political action and military force.
And so in the end, it was just a total nonsense.
The better that the actors became at getting the voices,
you might as well have just been hearing from Sinn Fein.
What divides Catholics and Protestants,
Unionists and Nationalists in Ireland
is the British presence.
Take the British presence and the guns out of Ireland,
there will be peace in Ireland.
So, far from being denied the oxygen of publicity,
I think that in some ways, more people listened.
But what it meant was that the already fractious relationship
between the government and broadcasters just deteriorated.
People started taking the mickey,
and it was really easy to take the mickey out of,
actually, something quite serious.
Earlier today, I spoke to their deputy leader,
Rory O'Connor, who under broadcasting restrictions,
must inhale helium to subtract credibility from his statements.
So, you do support this campaign of violence?
HELIUM WHOOSHES NORMAL VOICE: The IR...
HELIUM WHOOSHES
HIGH-PITCHED VOICE: Sinn Fein is a legitimate political party.
I regard it as one of the craziest episodes
in the history of television news.
..which supports terrorist action.
HIGH-PITCHED: Your tone is antagonistic,
and you're making me very angry.
Brace yourselves for some divine drama.
His Holiness gets heckled...
We reject the Pope as Antichrist!
It is truly strange behaviour by a grown man.
..and fiction fuels fury.
He's a devil, the true devil himself come to life.
NARRATOR: We're stepping boldly
into the most controversial events of 1988,
where it's time to reacquaint ourselves
with a man whose very veins flowed with outrage.
I remember growing up
with Ian Paisley always being on the news.
SHOUTS: You'll never defeat the Protestant people of Ulster!
An amazing accent, an unforgettable face,
his finger jabbing.
SHOUTS: Never, ever!
Fire and brimstone.
Never, ever!
He could be a very frightening character,
so determined and so aggressive.
You go down there and do your duty, and don't read a lecture to me.
In Northern Ireland's religious divide of the '70s and '80s,
Paisley was the booming voice of hardline Protestants.
His rhetoric was uncompromising.
We reject the Pope as Antichrist!
And we... CHEERING
He was the man who was gonna complain about Roman Catholics
to his dying day, we thought,
and you couldn't have been more strident in terms of anti-papacy,
anti-the Pope.
From 1979, Paisley had been what you might describe
as an outspoken member of the European Parliament.
He tackled Irish Taoiseach Jack Lynch.
He'd shouted down British PM Margaret Thatcher,
and then in 1988,
guess who arrived in Brussels to make an address?
I remember turning on the TV
and them saying, "Oh, the Pope's visiting the European Parliament."
With Reverend Paisley's track record,
no-one expected him to be hanging out the bunting,
but what did happen still came as a shock.
Ladies and gentlemen, first of all, permit me to say
how much I...
PAISLEY: I denounce you as the Antichrist!
Paisley within a few yards of the Pope,
well, that's putting a match to a fire, isn't it?
I'm gonna do a one-man protest. I'm gonna stop this.
I'm gonna pull out all this stuff saying, "The Pope's the Antichrist,"
and doing it like an Extinction Rebellion protester.
REPORTER: Mr Paisley quoted a 16th century anti-papist slogan
as furious Euro MPs threw papers at him in disgust.
Other European members of Parliament
sort of jumped on him to keep him quiet.
Mr Paisley, I call you to order,
and I ask you to stop this disturbance.
The Pope was actually pretty cool,
just kind of stands there and lets Ian Paisley get on with it.
If someone was, you know, describing me as the Antichrist,
I might got a bit upset.
REPORTER: The poster stated simply, "John Paul II, Antichrist,"
a reference to the view
supported by Archbishop Cranmer in Reformation times
that by claiming to be God's earthly representative,
popes have usurped the position of Christ.
I mean, it is truly strange behaviour by a grown man.
What are you doing, sir? You're an elected representative.
It's like you're behaving like a lunatic on Oxford Street.
PRESIDENT: Mr Paisley, I now exclude you from this house
and for the remainder of the sitting.
APPLAUSE
The Roaring Reverend may have caused a commotion,
but what happened that day in Brussels
was far from being the year's biggest religious controversy.
1988 saw the publication of the era's most notorious novel.
The saga of events that followed featured riots, religious decrees
and death threats,
propelling an Indian-born writer from fame in literary circles
into the international spotlight.
In 1988, the novelist Salman Rushdie
produced a novel called The Satanic Verses.
"Two actors, prancing Gibreel
"and buttony, pursed Mr Saladin Chamcha,
"fell like titbits of tobacco from a broken old cigar."
It's an adventure romp
in which various characters who are associated with the film industry
go through various carnations and incarnations
when they take on various roles.
If I had to say in one word what this novel is essentially about,
it's about the nature of metamorphosis,
and it's about it's about change.
He is a very learned writer,
and he's also into magical realism,
where there's satire going on, there's comedy,
there's real historical research.
It's designed to inflame your passions
and also for you to really love the way he writes in English.
The witty, weighty and wide-ranging novel
was published to critical acclaim,
although one controversial chapter
started to receive special attention.
One of those storylines is about a character being reincarnated
in the guise of the Prophet Muhammad,
and various adventures happened to him.
REPORTER: What stirred controversy
is the suggestion couched in allegory
of a human Muhammad with human failings.
He actually had the Prophet Muhammad
doing stuff that a lot of Muslims would find very offensive.
Salman Rushdie probably didn't think too much about the reaction
The Satanic Verses was going to create in places like Bradford,
in places like Mumbai, in places like Karachi and Lahore.
It's been condemned as blasphemous by fundamentalists
all over the Islamic world, most recently in Pakistan,
where five people died in rioting on Sunday.
I think he didn't think about it, he just thought,
"Publish and be damned, and let's see what happens."
It's the fact that Rushdie was born into Islam
and is now, as they see it, turning against his own religion
that has stirred anger among Muslims,
including those in Britain.
He was probably really taken by surprise.
So was the rest of Britain,
as outraged Muslims took to the streets
in a way not seen before.
He's a devil, the true devil himself come to life.
The Satanic Verses controversy felt like it had come from nothing.
REPORTER: How many people do you think feel like that?
ALL TALK AT ONCE We all feel like that! All of us.
For a British Asian like me,
it was just bonkers cos suddenly,
I saw other British Asians on TV burning books.
The public burning of the book on the streets of Britain
has shown that the fact that it's fiction makes no difference
to those whose leaders have pronounced it blasphemous.
If religious people don't like a certain movie or a certain book,
the best thing they can do is not talk about it.
Because of the scandal,
more people read The Satanic Verses than ever would have.
They should've just kept quiet,
or better yet, if they said they like it,
nobody would read it.
This is the latest stage in a campaign
that began with smears and vilifications
and distortions of the book,
which has escalated through all sorts of levels of violence.
And slowly but surely,
as people found out about it, it started spreading.
There were demonstrations in other parts of the world.
What had started as vocal protests escalated into something darker
when the controversy reached Iran.
And then Ayatollah Khomeini made a pronouncement on it.
Iran's spiritual leader, Ayatollah Khomeini,
has told Muslims that the prize-winning author,
Salman Rushdie, must be killed on sight.
His book Satanic Verses is an insult to Islam,
the Ayatollah said.
And he, his publishers and everybody knowingly involved
in producing the book were now under sentence of death.
He basically offered a bounty on Salman Rushdie's head,
and then all hell broke loose.
Before then,
most of us had never heard the Islamic term for a ruling or edict.
Now we all know about fatwa.
REPORTER: Fundamentalist followers of Ayatollah Khomeini
call him Imam - Allah's representative on earth.
So the sentencing to death in absentia
of someone accused of blasphemy
is considered well within the Ayatollah's jurisdiction.
I remember turning on the evening news
and seeing people who looked like my dad essentially saying,
"Yeah, yeah, yeah, if I saw him right now,
"I'd kill him."
The tabloids got involved and started joking about mad Mullahs,
Islamic fundamentalists who are crazy to have
Salman Rushdie's head on a plate.
Rushdie was to have flown to the States
to promote the book there.
Now that trip is under review,
and his agent says steps are being taken to ensure his security.
And that meant spending the next ten years in hiding.
You don't want a bestseller that is achieved
at the cost of there being a price on your head,
having to live in safe houses,
having to have police protection wherever you go.
Everything he did then became risky to anyone he did it with.
An uneasy peace developed from the end of the '90s,
then a shocking new twist came in 2022,
when a knife attack on Rushdie in New York
resulted in the loss of the use of one hand and the sight in one eye,
all down to the words he wrote more than three decades earlier.
I think there's a lot of self-censoring
which occurs in art,
and I think it's a shame because I think the best art
is transgressive, and the best art takes risks.
But at the same time,
you don't wanna have to fear for your life.
People forget that if you read The Satanic Verses,
it's a work of the imagination.
It's not about Muhammad, it's not about religion.
It's not a comment on Islam or Muslims.
And the threat to him is still going on.
Shocking? We haven't even got started.
Do not adjust your sets,
as a beloved TV presenter is tied up in controversy...
It was one of those classic scandals.
Cocaine and sex parties, I think.
..and a soap tackles tough issues head on.
She suddenly finds herself in this really dangerous situation.
NARRATOR: Next up, a truly shocking 1988 controversy that had it all -
a household name, drugs, sex and knitwear.
WOMAN: Oh! MAN: Oh, my giddy aunt!
It was one of those classic, classic scandals.
It really was. You couldn't make it up.
It was complete shock.
It's always the quiet ones, you know.
And here is that quiet one -
a safe pair of hands,
more than able of rocking a zip-up-cardigan-tie combo,
loved and trusted by viewers.
Good evening. This time tomorrow, it'll all be over.
Friendly Frank Bough had been the voice of sport
on Grandstand since the '60s.
It's Breakfast Time.
It's Wednesday the 9th of February today.
Then in the '80s,
he became as much a part of British breakfasts as lardy bacon.
Calm, reassuring, great in a pastel sweater,
Frank was someone we all got used to waking up with.
Well, our guest this morning is the king of British magic, Paul Daniels.
Thanks very much.
Always a brighter place when you're here. I don't know why it is.
It's cos you wear your yellow sweater.
Frank Bough was a warm, kind of friendly BBC presenter.
He was very much the nation's cosy breakfast show host.
I've never had it so early in my life, all this sport.
There's no answer to that, Frank, actually, is there?
Well, he was granddad, wasn't he?
He was granddad presenting BBC Breakfast.
Except your granddad probably never did this.
That May, the News Of The World tore up Frank's clean cut image.
Two things that were specific to this, one was cocaine,
and the other thing was sex parties, I think.
I don't think anyone saw
Frank Bough's debacle coming, did they?
I mean, here was, you know,
a nice, slightly avuncular broadcaster in a jumper...
God bless and good morning to you.
..who suddenly is doing cocaine with prostitutes and kind of,
you know, being kind of flayed alive in front of the nation.
We loved it.
Now, despite the bitter chill of winter,
there's a lot happening outdoors as dawn comes up this morning.
When there's a schism between the public face
and the private person,
is that... that's what makes it really shocking.
As you may have read by now,
this is obviously the programme for you
if you want to stay as trim as you can.
It was a massive story,
and journalists were rubbing their hands with glee,
and people were just ecstatic in Fleet Street about it.
It's like lifting the stone and there's all the worms, you know,
wriggling about underneath.
Bough's self-defeating excuse was that he'd only started using cocaine
after prostitutes gave it to him,
which is admitting to one scandal while denying another.
The BBC pressed their presenter ejector-seat button.
Frank left for, quote, a rest.
But then came the official sacking, followed by more juicy stories,
including claims of sadomasochism, which must have hurt.
I seem to remember it was all over the tabloids,
but then the tabloids then, they were like the Mafia.
They were lawless.
Frank's career never recovered
from the substances and stockings scandal,
but nowadays, would he be safely back on telly by Monday morning?
I mean, that's his private life.
Shouldn't affect his career. That's his choices, you know?
I know drugs are illegal, but good on Frank.
That's what I say. Good for him. Good for him.
Soaps have always generated controversy,
but in 1988, one EastEnders storyline
went beyond the usual Albert Square gossip
to really change things.
To understand the impact of Kathy's rape storyline
in EastEnders way back in 1988,
you kind of have to take yourself back to that particular year
and understand just how huge EastEnders was.
'88, it was in its absolute heyday.
WOMAN: Oi!
They were not afraid to confront really big stories
that perhaps the other soaps at that point, you know,
like Coronation Street, was still very friendly.
You don't have to put a brave face on in front of me.
This was grittier.
But I feel like I've let you down, done something disgusting.
Mothers shouldn't get into these scrapes.
It was hardly a scrape, was it? DOORBELL RINGS
It's all right, Mum. Mum, it's all right. I'll get it.
It's an issue that hadn't been dealt with as brutally
and as explicitly before,
and also to a beloved character.
Gillian Taylforth had played Kathy Beale
since the soap started in 1985.
Kathy was very much a stalwart of Albert Square.
Here we are. Thanks, Mum.
Mother of Ian, wife of Pete,
Kathy was a salt-of-the-earth cockney,
usually shifting apples and pears on the family barrow.
Blokes like that go on forever.
They're pickled, so they last longer.
No, blokes like that just go burst, they don't get pickled.
But by 1988, Kathy had taken a new job
with debonair but smarmy James Willmott-Brown.
What's so good about it?
Well, look at Kath, your new bar mate.
Looks that good working on a stall,
she'll look a real cracker behind your bar in the evening.
Yes, very nice.
Oi, I can hear you two looking at my wife.
Many compliments, Pete.
Now, Pete Beale doesn't really like the fact
that his wife is going to work in the wine bar with Willmott-Brown.
Why not come into the den tonight?
It's not my sort of gaff, you know that.
Well, then, at least wish me luck. Sorry, Kath. You know how I feel.
Willmott-Brown is a bit of an out-of-towner.
That's how he would've been considered.
Oh, sorry, Kath.
But Kathy kind of befriends him.
Certain people have a certain rapport with each other.
You know straight away whether or not you're gonna hit it off.
That's what the tabloids call sexual chemistry.
Well, like you and me,
we hit it off, didn't we, when we first met?
Yeah, I suppose so.
There were some flirtations between them,
but he, one night after work, invites her upstairs for a drink,
which felt really normal cos they knew each other really well.
Come on. Pauline'll be asleep by now.
Ten minutes won't kill you. Well, all right.
Let's go upstairs, shall we? We'll be more comfortable.
And then she suddenly finds herself in this really dangerous situation.
No, honestly, I've got to go. Kathy.
Just, please... Come on. What's the matter?
Where are you going? I'm going to Pauline.
She'll be wondering where I am. Well, let her wonder.
Please, James, let me go. No.
CLATTERING
You'd only regret it if I did.
I know what you came up here for tonight, Kathy.
I'm not that stupid.
It was handled and shot really well
because we don't actually see the physical rape itself.
We didn't need to see the rape cos it shows the impact.
While Channel 4's Brookside had been the first soap
to include a storyline based around rape,
when EastEnders covered the subject, 19 million viewers were watching.
She's been attacked.
Well, what do you mean, attacked? Will someone tell me.
He raped her?
And at the time,
it garnered hundreds of complaints from viewers
because, you know, for many of us,
that was the first time we'd ever seen a woman attacked on screen
by someone that she knew.
I mean, is it right that he should be allowed to go around
scot-free to do it again?
And is it right that Kathy has to keep this secret from her husband
just because some bloke wanted sex and he wanted it from her?
Is that right?
All right, I'll call the police.
It made a big splash in all the red tops.
It became a huge talking point up and down the country.
The term "date rape", for example, suddenly became popularised
off the back of the storyline with Kathy and Willmott-Brown.
He went up with the drinks,
and I didn't wanna make things unpleasant between us.
So by mutual agreement, you went upstairs?
No, that's not what I said.
He went and I followed, but I didn't want to.
Then you opened a bottle of Champagne?
No, he did.
Women were coming forward saying, "This has happened to me."
"My gosh, that's rape, then."
Kathy, the fact is, he's saying you consented.
Well, he's a bloody liar.
And then the storyline progresses,
and Pete Beale blames Kathy
because his jealous rage can't cope with the fact
that Willmott-Brown fancied his wife.
I've got bruises. Look. I'll show you the bruises. Look.
Look, Kath, I don't need to see bruises.
Get off! Don't touch me!
The woman is blamed, and there is something in this
that speaks straight into where we were in the '80s,
with the progression of women and women not being believed,
women crying wolf,
all of those kinds of narratives that would've been out there.
The storyline remains a landmark soap moment.
It's harrowing.
It was harrowing to watch. It was harrowing television.
Really hurt...
hurt me inside...
hurt me in my mind.
Her acting in it is absolutely incredible.
God, I just wanna pull my skin off.
I wanna die. I really wanna die.
It's what soaps like EastEnders do very, very well,
by bringing the issues into the home.
I think EastEnders, the one thing that they do very, very well
is when they do a storyline,
they handle them in a way that makes people think,
and, if anything, it starts a conversation
so that change can occur and be made.
EastEnders does that very well,
and they should be commended for that.