A new decade, new scandals,
and new outrages.
Ay, caramba! It's 1990.
A year of sex, thugs...
..and rock 'n' roll.
There was panic on the streets of London.
It was really shocking.
Even confectionery caused controversy.
How dare they change our Marathon bar?
There was chat show carnage...
Are you under the influence of drink, or not?
What are you laughing at? LAUGHTER
These people don't know what they're laughing at half the time.
..shocking soapy revelations...
All right, Michelle?
I mean, it's a stroke of genius, really, when it comes to casting.
..and word up for some truly bad taste telly.
If you would like to complain about anything in this show,
phone this number.
This was the year the beefburger captivated the communists...
It must've been like a blinding light, frankly, for them.
..and mortified the man from the ministry.
Suddenly, there was this feeling of
is it actually safe to eat beef at all?
A year when pop stars were exposed.
It was the worst crime any musician could ever commit.
And politicians were deposed.
I thought, "This is cataclysmic."
So, belt up, put your foot down,
and prepare to deploy the airbags as we speed back to a year
where TV, showbiz and politics were so controversially 1990.
Three, two, one... We have lift off.
In a year when the space shuttle
took the $2 billion Hubble telescope to look at the stars,
and a man called Tim proposed a new hi-tech computery way
to look up information.
On our TV screens, we were looking at something even more shocking.
I think at about the age of 15 was when I hit six foot.
And so I could get into pubs.
So, Friday night, I was often in a pub.
And we'd get in at about twenty past eleven
and you never want to go straight to bed,
so the first thing you do, remote, boom, what's on telly?
What was on Channel 4 was The Word,
the most controversial new TV series of 1990.
'Spread The Word.'
From the second you saw these high-energy titles,
you knew you were in for a wild ride.
I think it was controversial because it felt very un-policed.
It was shocking, it was raw.
It was so naughty.
The Word.
It was so modern and fresh and achingly cool.
With a studio audience full of hyped up twentysomethings,
The Word was on a mission to shock.
It were either acerbic jokes, or controversial interviews...
He's a very difficult man to talk to.
..or random acts of kind of nudity,
bands storming the stage, bands storming off stage.
It was wild, man. The Word was wild.
Leading the anarchy from day one
was the shy and retiring Terry Christian.
Welcome to The Word, the show that's got more critics than viewers.
The Word, the idea of it was just to make something cheeky,
very irreverent, cos you've got to remember,
in 1990 when we started,
there was a lot of disaffected youth.
There was still high youth unemployment,
it was still very much Thatcherism.
It was only controversial because we weren't following Radio One
or BBC One or, you know, the NME or any of that.
We were ploughing our own furrow.
And where other shows feared to tread, The Word not only rushed in,
it kicked the door down when it came to courting controversy.
In this now famous TV moment,
the guitarist from the all-female rock group L7
found a cheeky way to get her band maximum exposure.
And it was exactly the kind of headline-grabbing stunt
the producers were banking on.
It would have been Paul Ross, who was the editor,
with the director who said, "Go in for a close-up."
You know what I mean? LAUGHS
"Let's go in for the close-up there."
But it wasn't just the acts who went all-out to get noticed.
The man and woman on the street got themselves on the screen
to get their 15 minutes of fame, or shame.
The Hopefuls was an idea stolen from a Canadian TV show,
where people would be paid $250
for doing, like, a dare on the telly.
You know, like a student prank.
'Welcome to The Hopefuls,
'people who say they'd do anything to get on television.'
They volunteered to be on this strand, and then they'd be told,
"Right, you've got to go in a snorkel and mask in a bath full of,
"you know, horse pee and cow dung."
You know, that kind of stuff.
You've got to eat worms... Sometimes, they'd have a speciality
that they'd volunteer for, like the bloke who ate a worm sandwich.
Yes, that happened.
Eurgh. And then the guy doing pubes on a cracker.
As did that.
I mean, just awful stuff.
I couldn't believe what I was watching.
Even three sheets to the wind,
I couldn't believe the things they were willing to eat and do.
In a way, you look back at that footage and think
that was the forerunner to a Bush Tucker Trial.
They were doing it on The Word back in the '90s.
The Word may have left a bad taste in some people's mouths,
but it raised the bar when it came to
pushing the boundaries of youth TV.
Everybody copied us afterwards.
I remember when Chris Evans did TFI Friday.
So, in order to create some controversy, he got Shaun Ryder on,
knowing quite well he'd swear.
And then it's like, "Oh, my God!
"Horror of horror, Shaun Ryder's sworn on TFI!"
And you're going, "He'd done it every time he appeared on The Word."
After more than a hundred episodes,
the final word on The Word came in 1995.
Looking back, it was the precursor
of today's attention-grabbing clickbait world.
It was the kind of telly that you sneaked on
when your parents thought you'd gone to bed,
and you wouldn't tell anyone.
It gave you that chance to be able to tell everyone the next day
that you'd seen it.
That's what was so great about The Word.
'Word.'
OK, so The Word had outrageous music acts on, week after week,
but in 1990, one band offended the world so much,
their name became a byword for controversy.
Ever get that lip-syncing feeling?
I'd just started working in the music industry,
hadn't been in it too long,
and this duo came along called Milli Vanilli.
Girl, You Know It's True - cracking single.
Absolutely brilliant. They were on everywhere.
Milli Vanilli! Milli Vanilli!
At number ten with Girl, You Know It's True!
# Girl, you know it's true... #
# Cos I've got long braids Ooh, ooh, ooh
# I love you Because I'm macho man. #
They sounded brilliant, and they looked amazing.
I mean, these were two male models, rippling with muscles, amazing hair.
These ridiculous jackets with shoulder pads,
literally like planes taking off.
They came out of nowhere.
They could dance, they could sing, they were beautiful.
Yes, they could dance. Yes, they were beautiful.
But could they sing?
Milli Vanilli, aka Fab Morvan and Rob Pilatus,
had scored a string of international hits,
when, in 1990, they found themselves embroiled
in one of the most memorable pop scandals of all-time.
So, there they were, out and about, doing the circuit. Won a Grammy...
And the best new artist is...
..Milli Vanilli. CHEERING AND APPLAUSE
# Girl, you know it's true... #
And then suddenly it transpires...
They didn't even sing the songs.
In a toe-curlingly embarrassing bit of telly,
our two shoulder-padded pretenders were exposed
after a simple technical hitch.
It was when they were performing live and the track skipped...
# Girl, you know it's... Girl, you know it's...
# Girl, you know it's... Girl, you know it's.... #
..over and over again.
And so there was no denying that they were totally miming.
Miming on pop telly had been around since pop telly began.
That wasn't the real problem.
The duo's downfall came with the shocking revelation
that these hot-panted hunks hadn't even sung on the original tracks.
# Girl, you know it's... Girl, you know it's... #
It was the worst crime any musician could ever commit.
"We're Milli Vanilli." BUZZER
"Well, actually, we're not."
It transpires the track had already been recorded,
the management find these two lovely guys and go,
"You know what? You look great, you can move, can you sing a bit?
"We haven't got much time to re-record the vocals,
"so why don't you just go with it?
"I'm gonna pay you a little bit of money,
"and we'll sort it out further down the line."
A lot of people would have said yes to that, to be fair to them.
But the masterplan failed,
and an outraged world treated the band like master criminals,
rather than bad mimers.
People were so horrified. People were so brutal to them.
And I look back, and I was like, "What's so bad that they did?"
We were angry with them, rightly so.
But why them, and not the executives who put them together?
Why them, and not the people responsible
for paying money and benefiting from deceiving the world?
Is also is funny that their biggest hit was Girl, You Know It's True.
And it wasn't true at all.
They were lying.
To prove they could sing,
the boys put on an impromptu performance at a press conference.
Possibly a bad idea.
OUT OF TUNE: # Girl, you know it's true
# Ooh, ooh, ooh I love you. #
A watching world concluded
maybe they'd have been better off sticking to the miming.
So in a bid to put their side of the story across,
the boys hotfooted it to the Wogan sofa.
This is the first interview you've given on British television.
How did you find yourself in that situation?
In that appalling situation of being exposed to the world as fakes.
Do you think that the kind of thing that happened to you
happens in the pop music business?
It happens a lot, but we had bad luck because we are two boys
and just one big, greedy, hard guy
used us and seduced us.
And we really wanted to make it by our own.
We're really talented and...
So you're completely innocent? Both of you?
It looks like. LAUGHTER
Certainly the way you tell it, yes.
These were two guys who escaped poverty
by being good-looking and being good dancers.
And someone brought them in and said,
"Go and dance on that television programme
"and mime along to this song."
And they end up having their lives ruined as a result of it.
Following the scandal, the life of Rob Pilatus
tragically spiralled into one of crime and drug abuse,
and eight years later, he died from a suspected overdose, aged 32.
Fab Morvan carried on,
and three decades on is still drawing the crowds.
So, here comes the litmus test.
After all that happened, can he really sing?
# Girl, you know it's true... #
Yes. Yes, he can! # Ooh, ooh, ooh, I love you... #
So now we know it's true.
# Yes, you know it's true... #
Still to come on our compendium of controversy from 1990...
The cartoon character from over there
that was causing chaos over here.
And the Big Mac in Moscow took the Soviets by storm.
America had planted a capitalist flag
in the heart of the communist capital.
And it was fantastic.
KIDS CHEERING Children's TV in the '80s -
technicolour and unfailingly polite.
Hello. Hello. Hello.
After school, you could make things with the Blue Peter team,
or laugh with the Chuckle Brothers and Stu Francis.
Ooh, I could wrestle an Action Man!
But, for some, Action Man wrestling,
or, indeed, grape crushing, just wasn't edgy enough,
and in 1990, rebellious kids found their saviours from America.
Specifically, Springfield.
With its now instantly recognisable title sequence,
The Simpsons was already a ratings-winner across the pond.
SCHOOL BELL RINGS
And in 1990,
the dysfunctional family from Springfield arrived in the UK.
We didn't have Sky,
so I used to get a lad in the sixth form
to tape ten of them on a VHS
and then bring them in for me and I'd go home...
We did have a video player, we didn't have Sky.
And so, I'd go home then,
and watch these back-to-back Simpsons.
And I'm just thinking...
"This is a show about a naughty kid, and I quite like it, actually!"
HE LAUGHS
Put her there. SING-SONG: Ha-ha ha-ha-ha! Loser!
The underachieving hero of the piece wasn't everybody's cup of tea.
Mom, I never won before, I may never win again.
Na-na na-na-na!
Bart, I think, annoyed people
because he seemed to be a kind of a celebration of stupidity, really.
WHISK WHIRRING Dibs. First dibs.
I get to lick the beaters.
Whoa! Ah, ah, ah! Lisa...
If you found a character
upon the idea of "underachiever and proud of it",
then that is going to irritate some people.
There was something about the morality of Bart.
I thought I'd investigate
the effects of cigarette smoking on dogs.
DOG COUGHS
I think that was some of the controversy.
Still in the '90s,
there was an idea that TV rotted your brain.
We were told this throughout the '80s,
when I was a kid, "You're not meant to watch TV too much."
It's like gaming now. It's one of those things.
"If you sit down, watch it, something will happen,
"all the little brain cells will come out of your ears."
There was still an idea that we'd all start watching Bart
and even people who were essentially in their 20s would become Bart.
So, what was it about the behaviour
of this ten-year-old skateboarding schoolboy
that caused such a commotion?
Well, Bart used to ring up, didn't he, ring up Moe?
And he'd have these funny little... he'd prank call him,
and he'd say these funny names that were a bit rude.
RINGING TONE Hello, Moe's Tavern.
Birthplace of the Rob Roy.
Is Seymour there? Last name, Butts. Just a sec...
And Moe would yell it out in the bar,
not really realising... how rude he's being.
Hey, is there a Butts here? Seymour Butts?
YELLING: Hey, everybody, I wanna Seymour Butts.
And we're all cacking ourselves at home, going, "That is fantastic."
Listen, you little scum-sucking pus bucket,
when I get my hands on you... KIDS LAUGH
'I'm gonna pull out your eyeballs with a corkscrew...'
And so it gave naughty little kids a little bit of a, uh...
HE CHUCKLES ..a fillip, is that the word?
A little bit of a charge, like, "Oh, hello!
"Well, if Bart can do it, I can do it."
Across the Atlantic, this was all a huge hit
with naughty little kids and adults alike,
although, for some, the celebration of bad boy Bart
as an unrepentant underachiever raised hackles.
In schools, we try to instil in all children
to do their very best.
And if we accept an under achievement...
attitude from them... Yeah. ..then that is inappropriate.
The family with the yellow faces even caught the attention
of the man from the White House.
Well, lemme tell you something.
We are going to keep on trying to strengthen the American family,
to make American families
a lot more like the Waltons and a lot less like the Simpsons.
Of course, this was a red rag to a yellow family,
so the writers gleefully went about having the last laugh.
Hey, we're just like the Waltons.
We're praying for an end to the depression, too.
You could tell it was the work of a group of very clever people.
You can hear the conversations in the writers' room, almost,
I think, with The Simpsons.
Controversial in 1990, but part of the cultural landscape today,
Bart, Lisa, Homer, Marge, and Maggie, of course...
DUMMY SUCKING ..gave us more than just a laugh.
That was the first show I remember thinking,
"Yeah, I'm glad you get this, Simpsons.
"Things aren't black or white.
"Teachers tell you it's black or white. Do this, or else."
But it's not. And The Simpsons got that.
GRUNTING
And then, and only then...
Of course, TV comedy and controversy go together hand-in-hand.
Sometimes we LIKE to be outraged. To gasp. Even to be offended.
LAUGHTER
It's a pity old Enoch ain't in charge, mate. Oh, here we go again.
Yeah. He'd have the solution, don't worry about that.
LAUGHTER But on the 30th of September, 1990,
one sitcom declared total war on good taste.
Although to see it, you needed to have put
one of those funny square aerials on your roof.
# Heil, honey Heil honey
# Heil, honey Heil honey... #
Heil, Honey, I'm Home
was a show that was commissioned
to be controversial.
That doesn't happen very often.
The Young Ones wasn't commissioned to be controversial.
Till Death wasn't commissioned to be controversial.
That Was The Week, Saturday Live,
these shows are not put out there to make...
to make... to upset people, put it that way.
They're put out there to make a statement of a particular kind,
but they're not put out there to annoy people or upset people.
On Heil, Honey, I was working for BSB at the time,
and they wanted something to make a bit of noise.
That was why it was commissioned.
HITLER: Heil, honey, I'm home! DOORBELL
Heil, Honey, I'm Home is a parody of a 1950s sitcom
that places Hitler and Eva Braun in a domestic setting
and gives them Jewish neighbours who they're in humorous conflict with.
It scarcely needs to be said that this was going to be controversial.
AMERICAN ACCENTS: When I finally get to invade Poland,
who'll be the first to know?
The Poles? No! Rosa Goldenstein.
CANNED LAUGHTER Hey, Adolf...
MUFFLED ARGUMENT
How do you like that? The Hitlers' are having another fight.
The whole thing is a deconstruction of situation comedies.
Ah, hiya, bub. Is he here yet? Who?
Huh. Ain't he always acting the clown, honey?
It's basically a sort of a studio situation comedy, a la I Love Lucy,
with lots of sort of laugh track moments.
I'm a very, very bad Hitler. CANNED LAUGHTER
And lots of sort of puns and looks to the camera...
Boy, this is gonna be some night! HE SIGHS
..reaction shots and catchphrases.
I'm a lucky guy.
Gotta think lucky, gotta be lucky. I'm a lucky Hitler.
But it's about Nazi Germany.
You have been rather a naughty boy.
All this Czechoslovakia nonsense, eh? Ah, come on, Neville.
I was just having fun!
It was taking a titan of terror,
a hate figure, you know, for the last three generations,
and plonking him into a sitcom.
No more naughty little invasion plans, eh?
BOTH CHUCKLE You're kidding, Neville?
From now on, I'm the sweetest Mr Nice Guy you know.
Here, thank you, yes.
The whole point is it's I Love Lucy, it's The Honeymooners.
It's... It's the couple and the couple next door,
it just happens to be Ava and Adolf.
Hey, do you remember the names
we used to call each other when we first started dating?
Oh! Well, you were Mr Sausage... CANNED LAUGHTER
..and I was your hoochie coochie girl. Yeah.
# Hoochie coochie coochie... #
A sitcom about a genocidal dictator.
Who could be offended by that? Well, form a queue.
So, obviously, Jewish groups were not too keen
on the series coming out.
And then the tabloids waded in
because the tabloids will never miss an excuse to wade in on anything.
Shortly after the pilot episode aired, BSB was taken over.
Surprisingly, it turned out the new owner was not a fan of Nazi sitcoms,
and the series was scrapped.
Once Sky took over BSB,
the first phone call I got from David Elstein was,
"Stop production, stop production."
Although a lot of money had already been spent, the price was too high,
so the rest of the series has been consigned to a TV bunker ever since.
So, they wrote 16 episodes,
and then they filmed eight of them and only one was ever shown.
So there is another seven episodes sitting on a shelf somewhere.
For all the commotion it caused, the poor take-up of Squarials
meant very few people ever saw Heil, Honey's solitary screening.
But it was so controversial
that its title alone is now a byword for bad taste TV.
Boy, you invade one little country...
CANNED LAUGHTER ..everyone is on your back.
And there are more bad tastes to come after the break,
when this government minister bites off more than he can chew.
It's one of those moments, you look back now and think...
INHALES SHARPLY
And it's all change at Number 10 as the Tories turn on the Iron Lady.
152 of her own MPs are saying,
"We do not want you to continue as Prime Minister."
'Mrs Thatcher, could I ask you to comment?'
We're looking back at the controversial events of 1990...
..a year when US troops were in Panama
and Iraq invaded Kuwait.
Meanwhile, over in East Germany, walls were tumbling down...
..both literally and metaphorically...
..as troops began dismantling
one of the 20th century's most infamous symbols
of the division between East and West.
Starting today, it's coming down all over Berlin.
On the way to a united Germany.
SPEAKS GERMAN
"A feeling of exaltation," this East Berliner called it,
"like being out of prison."
And 1,000 miles away in the Russian capital,
there was another meaty political stand being taken.
Muscovites queued for hours today to taste the delights of fast food
when McDonald's opened their first restaurant in the Soviet Union.
The Big Macs, chips, and milkshakes
will taste the same as everywhere else.
But the food isn't cheap.
Half a day's roubles for a Big Mac alone.
It is really interesting thinking about
what Moscow felt like to the rest of the world then,
to the West, you know.
And you think of that back in the USSR idea,
that really Moscow was this place that was full of people queueing,
empty shelves, eating cabbage, being cold and miserable.
And that was very much the picture that the West was painting.
They were at the height of kind of Soviet rule,
and suddenly, these bright yellow arches appear.
You know, the golden arches of Western capitalism.
REPORTER: It's hard to miss the restaurant's garish neon
among Moscow's drab streets.
And this morning, the crowds were quick to gather.
And rather than people shunning it, going,
"Oh, no, no. This is all terrible.
"This is all part of the West," and so on, people are loving it.
CHEERING
It wasn't just customers that were desperate for a taste of the West.
27,000 people reportedly applied
for just 630 jobs.
Even the Ronald McDonald winter clothing collection was a hit.
REPORTER: In the Soviet Union,
Western clothes have a special cachet.
Even, it seems, the McDonald's uniforms,
which have just arrived for the Soviet staff.
This was huge.
This is the first time that the free world's leader, America,
had planted a capitalist flag
in the heart of the Communist capital.
It must have been an extraordinary moment.
It must have been like a blinding light, frankly, for them.
Remember, McDonald's was the unique, global symbol of America.
The golden arches signified American ideology.
So it was profound, and it was historic.
It was almost like, "Here we go. Here's westernisation in a burger."
While the Muscovites got burgers,
the West got a takeaway of optimism.
I think for a lot of people watching it in the UK at the time,
there would have been a feeling of hope.
You know, it hadn't been that long before that
that there was a real fear,
in this country and elsewhere, of a nuclear attack.
That there would actually be a nuclear war.
And to suddenly see something as kind of iconic
as a McDonald's opening up in Moscow,
I think would have been a symbol of hope to a lot of people.
The golden arches were an immediate success in Moscow,
with over 30,000 people served on the opening day.
A new record for a McDonald's restaurant anywhere in the world.
The burger blitz was a success, and over the next 30 years,
800 more McDonald's would open in Russia.
But history has a horrible habit of repeating itself,
and in May 2022, 32 years after this first opening,
the wall metaphorically went up again.
Because of the Russian invasion into Ukraine,
many Western companies have decided to leave Russia.
And so now McDonald's have decided to shut up shop
and serve Big Macs no longer in Russia.
While the Russians couldn't get enough beef,
back here, we'd gone a bit bovine-phobic.
It all started in the '80s,
when our cows contracted a deadly condition
that cost them their lives and farmers their livelihoods.
Two government ministers have been speaking about a new disease
which is worrying British farmers.
The disease, known as BSE, affects cows and it sends them mad.
BSE, we called it. It was also called mad cow disease.
Basically, it was a brain disease that affected cattle.
REPORTER: Normally placid animals become aggressive towards the farmer
and other cattle in the herd.
Animals will often stumble and fall. Within six months, they are dead.
The vets believe the origins are to do with changes in cattle fodder
that took place in the early 1980s.
What had seemed to be a money-saving decision to feed cattle bonemeal
made from the carcasses of other dead animals
turned out to come with a deadly cost.
For some reason,
somebody thought it was a good idea to feed meat to cows.
Cows live on grass.
Cows live on, you know, silage and fodder,
and it's not normal for cows to eat other cows.
REPORTER: It's thought that this feed
was infected with the sheep disease scrapie,
which became transmuted into the far more serious BSE,
now responsible for the deaths of 300 cattle a week.
The disturbing images of cows in distress were concerning enough.
But by 1990, scientists were starting to worry
that mad cow disease could infect humans.
The illness is a very severe one.
Very rapidly, it progresses into what is called a dementia.
That is, a severe impairment of memory.
Impairment of thinking ability, confusion,
inability to look after oneself, find one's way about,
dress one's self and so on.
Suddenly, there was this feeling of, you know,
is it actually safe to eat beef at all?
Is it safe to eat British beef?
REPORTER: While local authorities act
on the basis of the varying advice they've received,
the picture for most consumers remains as confused as ever.
But the meat industry is worried
about the effect further uncertainty could have.
Mad cow disease actually put anyone
with any sense off eating meat,
particularly mincemeat and hamburgers.
The press were probably also scaremongering about this disease.
"Oh, my goodness, we're all completely crazy,
"and we're all gonna get this dreadful thing and die."
Because, you know, that's what the press does.
They get a story and they put a rocket under it.
The public needed reassurance,
so step forward the man from the ministry.
The Agriculture and Food Minister John Gummer has said
there's no evidence that humans are at risk from BSE or mad cow disease.
John Selwyn Gummer, he was like, you know,
"We can't have people not eating beef.
"We can't do this to the beef farmers."
Those who are scaremongering not only harm the agricultural industry,
but they do great harm to individuals who get frightened.
So Gummer needed a cunning plan to make Britain beefy again,
and came up with one that was staggering in its ambition.
A photo opportunity was needed to prove burgers were safe.
But who would take the crucial bite?
I really felt sorry for John Gummer.
He was trying to show that he was absolutely sincere
in believing that this meat presented no threat to human beings,
and to show that he was sincere,
he would feed it to his own daughter.
The Agriculture Minister John Gummer said he was wholly
and absolutely confident that it was safe for the public,
and indeed his own children, to eat.
So he was like, "Here I am at some sort of agricultural show,"
I think, "with my four-year-old daughter Cordelia,
"and I will now feed her a burger to show that it's safe."
Even saying it, I can see why someone would have said,
"Oh, hold on, I don't think that's going to come out quite right."
Children don't tend to do what you want them to do,
particularly if they are on camera.
As I remember, she was quite young, and she said, "No."
SHE CHUCKLES As young children tend to.
So he had to eat it himself.
So he quickly stuffed the burger into his own mouth
and smiled as he was chewing and swallowing that burger.
So John Gummer ate the hamburger and said,
"British beef is perfectly safe."
And sadly, it wasn't.
Six years later, the government was forced to admit
there was a link between BSE and its human form, CJD,
making even more of a mockery of John Gummer's ill-advised stunt.
It's one of those moments, you look back now and think...
INHALES SHARPLY
..shouldn't have done that.
Not to your kid. Not unless you were absolutely sure...
..or you didn't like your children.
Of course, John Gummer was just a foot soldier in the Tory Government.
But the five-star general in charge
was also about to face her own Waterloo in 1990.
It was 11 years since the daughter of a Grantham shopkeeper,
Margaret Hilda Thatcher,
had moved into a spacious des res just off Whitehall.
Very excited, very aware of the responsibilities.
In '79, she was new and fresh and young and untried.
And I think the fact that we'd elected a woman
meant that the nation was ready for change,
for something different.
You know, this was a ginormous achievement.
She was the first woman Prime Minister
at a time when women were few and far between in Parliament.
In the years that followed, Margaret Thatcher's supporters
gloried at victory over Argentina in the Falklands
and lapped up domestic policies
like the chance for council tenants to buy their homes.
To the Tory faithful, she could do no wrong.
But she was loathed by the left.
They were desperate to find one chink in her armour.
And in the late '80s, her enemies were gifted it
in the shape of a revolutionary new tax.
The government is about to tear up
the present system of domestic rates,
and replace it with a fairer one.
And high time too.
The big, new idea behind the poll tax
was that everybody would pay the same for their local services,
no matter how much they earned.
The same level of services...
..at the same degree of efficiency...
..will result in the same community charge all over the country.
Of course, it wasn't known as the poll tax,
Mrs Thatcher called it "the community charge".
The community charge...
Well, nobody called it the community charge.
And once, in Parliament, she began by saying, "The poll... The...
"community charge."
So even she got it wrong.
But at that time,
nobody could predict just how wrong Mrs Thatcher had got it.
The poll tax was clearly the bridge too far for Margaret Thatcher.
She was advised by some people within her own party
that, "This wasn't a very good idea, Margaret."
But I'm not sure at this stage,
Margaret Thatcher is listening to too many other people.
Opposition to the new tax was growing.
Many regarded it as unfair,
and protesters took to the streets to make that point.
'Outside Cheltenham Town Hall,
'poll tax demonstrators clashed with the police.
'There were several arrests as the police moved in to disperse them.'
Fast forward to spring 1990, and the poll tax powder keg
was about to blow up in everyone's faces.
I beg everybody here to give 100% support
to those who do not or cannot or will not pay the poll tax.
On the 31st of March, initially peaceful protests
disintegrated into the worst violence
that had been seen on the streets of London for decades.
'At Downing Street, heavily guarded by the police,
'bottles and cans were thrown.
'In the last hour, there's been more trouble in Whitehall
'with demonstrators throwing cans and placards at mounted police.'
If you look at the rioting in Trafalgar Square, it is brutal.
'The use of police horses always carries a risk
'to those not directly involved in trouble,
'and one woman was knocked to the ground and trampled.
'There were complaints from others hurt as police cleared the streets.
'They argue that such injuries are inevitable
'if the guilty deliberately mingle with the innocent.'
There were over a hundred injuries in just one day.
But, as she proved over the last 11 years,
the lady was never for turning.
There is no excuse ever for people turning to violence.
None whatsoever.
But even as London licked its wounds,
the damage had spread beyond the capital.
The PM's popularity dived.
Her own electorate had started to turn against her,
and within Whitehall, Tory MPs began to whisper the unthinkable.
By 1990, gradually opinion starts to harden that...
she's outlived the good that she can do,
and that maybe the time is coming
when we have to think about who to replace her with.
But who would be the one
to decisively stick their head above the parapet?
Well, on November the 13th, 1990, one former ally did just that.
Sir Geoffrey Howe had been in the government a long, long time,
and he had started off as Margaret's first Chancellor.
And by the end of her reign, by the end of the 1980s,
he was Foreign Secretary, and he was being pushed around and yelled at,
and he was not gonna carry on with that.
After enduring years of tongue-lashings, Howe wanted out,
and delivered a blistering broadside
in his resignation speech.
Geoffrey Howe was probably the meekest, mildest man
you could imagine in politics.
He was just a quiet... Looked like a bank manager.
And I think Mrs Thatcher went in there thinking,
"This is gonna be the same boring stuff."
But she was wrong. And Howe...
'The conflict of loyalty,
'of loyalty to my Right Honourable friend, the Prime Minister -
'and in two decades together, that instinct is still very real -
'and a loyalty to what I perceive
'to be the true interests of this nation.
'That conflict of loyalty has become all too great.'
We listened to it, and honestly, our mouths dropped open,
because here was this mild-mannered man
who was... vicious! SHE CHUCKLES
I mean, it was, he was... putting the knife into Maggie.
'I no longer believe it is possible
'to resolve that conflict from within this government.
'That is why I resigned.
'In doing so, I have done what I believe to be right for my party
'and my country.
'The time has come for others to consider their own response
'to the tragic conflict of loyalties,
'with which I have myself wrestled for perhaps too long.'
I mean, we were expecting something big,
but we weren't expecting his truth-telling to be so savage.
It was clear that that was the beginning of the end.
For the first time,
Mrs T's authority had been openly questioned.
Then Michael Heseltine launched a leadership challenge,
and the gloves were truly off.
When I was standing outside the embassy in Paris
waiting for the result,
13 million people were watching the event live
on an extended six o'clock news -
it didn't stop at six thirty, it went on to quarter to seven.
Once the result came in,
she hadn't done well enough - JUST hadn't done well enough -
to avoid a second ballot.
But I thought, "This is... This is cataclysmic."
152 of her own MPs are saying,
"We do not want you to continue as Prime Minister."
In typically combative style, the PM initially vowed to carry on.
Naturally, I'm very pleased
that I got more than half the Parliamentary party,
and disappointed that it's not quite enough to win on the first ballot,
so I confirm it is my intention
to let my name go forward for the second ballot.
But two days later, the Iron Lady melted
and declared she would be standing down for the good of the party.
After 11 years, Margaret Thatcher's reign was over.
She seemed so upset to be leaving 10 Downing Street that...
you kind of thought, "Well, you know, you've been there a good...
"You've had a good innings."
You know, this wasn't Liz Truss, there for two minutes,
but I think most people felt she was gonna be there forever.
Mrs Thatcher's three consecutive terms
marked the longest continuous leadership
by a British Prime Minister for over 150 years -
a record that remains intact to this day.
But when she finally left Downing Street,
she wasn't the only one looking for a new job.
The Sun newspaper rang me up and said, erm...
Er...
"We'd like to photograph you, er, outside a job centre
"dressed as Mrs Thatcher. Will you do it?"
And I said, "I don't... I don't..." HE SPLUTTERS
"I don't think so! No."
They said, "We'll pay you three grand."
I said...
"Where's the frock?" HE CHUCKLES
Coming up, even more drama from 1990,
when a controversy-causing character turns up in Walford.
All right, Michelle?
By the start of the '90s, by then in its sixth year,
EastEnders had established itself as a soap behemoth,
regularly attracting over ten million viewers.
The everyday lives of the residents of Albert Square
had us enthralled every Tuesday and Thursday.
We love the antics of Dirty Den... Don't say a word.
..Dot Cotton...
Now, don't you get lippy with me, I'll put you across me knee, sonny.
Mark!
..and one of the original bad boys of soap, Mark Fowler.
Don't hit me, Mum. I don't like it. It makes me lose my temper.
Get out! Just get out.
It's kind of lost in the mist of time, this,
but there was a Mark Fowler "mark one", an ur-Mark Fowler...
Oi, you, cheer up. Naff off.
..played by David Scarboro.
All right.
So, I nick dinner money, and I buy fags, and some days, I bunk off.
There was a kind of thuggish side to Mark Fowler -
he wasn't a totally attractive character.
Are you on heroin? Has Nick been supplying you, is that it?
Look, I've gotta go. You wait!
He seemed to be a racist...
Things are being nicked round here.
Girls. Our girls. And we don't like it.
..he was accused of murder...
Where were you on the day Reg Cox got done?
Given all this about him,
I'm not sure whether Arthur and Pauline
would have been that dismayed
that he suddenly and mysteriously vanished from their lives.
In 1990, after David Scarboro's tragic death,
the character of Mark Fowler roared back into Walford,
with an apparent change of ways, and a new face...
All right, Michelle?
..one that viewers of a certain age were already very familiar with.
Thank you, Jenkins.
We all remember him of old as, er, Tucker -
"Flippin' 'eck, Tucker!" - from Grange Hill.
All right, Pong Head? What do you want, Pint Size?
Nothing, just admiring your beauty, in't I?
Clear off, or I'll sock you in the jaw.
"Sock you in the jaw"? Where are you from, Luton Airport? Shut up.
So, you have someone who's already held in a great deal of affection
from the original cast of Grange Hill
now coming into Albert Square...
I mean, it's a stroke of genius, really.
I don't care.
Grange Hill's cheeky heart-throb had headed east.
He'd grown up, and so had his storylines.
We had to do something! There's nothing you can do.
Including one that shocked a nation of soap lovers.
At the time...
you'll remember, we had those big adverts, you know,
about AIDS and HIV.
I was at work, I was working with somebody with HIV,
there was a huge amount of stigma around it. I mean, it was ghastly.
'Anyone can get it. Man or woman.
'So far, it's been confined to small groups.
'But it's spreading.'
Throughout the '80s,
the government had warned and informed us
about the deadly threat of HIV and AIDS.
A hard-hitting TV campaign helped spread a very important message.
'So don't die of ignorance.'
But as the '90s began,
EastEnders producers saw an opportunity
to show viewers about the reality of living with the disease.
This thing that I've gotta tell ya...
What is it, Mark?
Well, it's not as bad as it might sound...
I mean, it could be a lot worse... Mark, just tell us what you've done.
EastEnders are really good at taking difficult storylines -
difficult things, actually,
that people are going through in real life -
and saying, "We're going to dramatise this,
"and we know you love the programme,
"and we know you love the characters in it,
"and we're going to dramatise this
"in a way where you still feel held throughout the story."
I've got a virus.
Virus?
"And we're gonna tackle this incredibly difficult subject
"that still has a huge stigma around it,"
which HIV did, at that stage.
Mm, what they call...
..HIV.
HIV?
Yeah, HIV.
And you are going to live it with the characters.
You're gonna see the moral dilemmas that are played out,
you know, over the kitchen table.
That's AIDS, innit? You've got AIDS?
No. No, Mum. That's what I'm trying to say. It's not AIDS...
Either you've got AIDS, or you haven't!
No, that's not it, Dad! I've got the virus. Look at me!
I'm not ill or nothing, am I? I'm fine!
Mark's revelation not only educated his own parents,
but millions of viewers too.
His condition was kept secret from the Square,
but you know EastEnders - a secret always comes out.
And when it did, Peggy Mitchell naturally rose to the melodrama.
What the hell are you doin' here? We're having a drink.
Oh, no, you're not. You're leaving right now.
It was an extraordinary scene in The Vic,
you know, you've got Mark surrounded by his family...
You all right, love?
..all the residents of Walford are looking on.
And for him to make that frank confessional in front of everyone,
you can imagine the courage that would take.
I'm HIV-positive.
I knew it. You don't know anything.
I've got the virus. But I ain't got the disease!
And there would have been people at home living with the virus
who would've watched that scene,
and it would have resonated with them just hugely.
I've known you lot for years.
And some of you won't even pass the time of day with me.
You're even frightened to breathe the same air as me!
You have to remember, like, this was at a time in which
there was a large moral panic about how you could get HIV.
You're not gonna catch it from eating food from my store
or drinking from the same glass as me.
You're not in any danger.
The fact is you've got nothing to worry about.
I'm the one that's gonna die.
There isn't a day that goes by that I don't think about it.
I remember talking to Barbara Windsor
about that storyline... and...
..she felt sick when she had to actually play... that part
because, of course, a lot of Bar's friends were gay
and living with the virus.
I want him out of here.
Mrs Mitchell, don't you think you're being a bit extreme?
Who asked you to stick your nose in?
Come on, Mark, there's other pubs in Walford. No.
I like drinking here.
And you have someone like Peggy
who is giving it the full "get out of my pub" to Mark Fowler,
flagging up the ignorance of the time, thinking, you know,
"You've got AIDS."
You've got AIDS, Mark...
..and I won't have that sort of thing in my pub.
I haven't got AIDS.
I get goose bumps now just actually thinking about that performance
cos it's so out of joint with who Barbara was.
She would've been a mouthpiece for a lot of people at the time
who were living in ignorance
and, you know, were believing the headlines about the virus
more so than the reality of living with it.
Look, this is MY pub.
I say who drinks in here and who doesn't.
Now get out of here before I have the law on ya!
I think the fact that, er...
the way that it had been... carefully researched...
They worked with the Terrence Higgins Trust,
which is a charity, a HIV charity,
to ensure that it helped remove prejudice and stigma
around what it meant to be HIV-positive.
I think one of the spokespeople from the Terrence Higgins Trust
said it did what thousands of leaflets couldn't,
that storyline on EastEnders.
It shifted perceptions in a really sensitive way,
a really moving way.
I'm HIV-positive.
Nothing I can do about it.
And perceptions were also being shifted in 1990
by another moving BBC drama
which had the nation hooked and shocked.
Oranges Are Not The Only Fruit was incredibly controversial.
It was ground-breaking TV at the time,
and it's still one of the best TV adaptations to this day.
Based on Jeanette Winterson's
semi-autobiographical novel of the same name,
this gritty three-part drama caused an uproar
when it first aired in 1990.
I'm going home.
To think I brought you all the way from that orphanage for this.
They say what's breed in the bone comes out on the marrow.
Well, I wish you'd left me there!
So, what was it that caused such a commotion?
Was it the sex?
Was it the cruel oppression of its main character?
Or was it the portrayal of radical religious zealots?
Well, actually, it was all three.
Let's sing Somebody Touched Me and do our best for Jesus,
as he has done his best for us.
It's all about a young girl
that's growing up in a household in Lancashire.
# I was sleeping Somebody touched me... #
She's adopted.
Her adoptive mother
is an Evangelical Elim-Pentecostal preacher Christian
very involved in the local Pentecostal-Evangelical community.
# Glory, glory, glory... #
Pentecost is the Holy Spirit.
So, that's very charismatic,
they speak in tongues, other languages,
and they cast out demons.
So, they're big on demons,
which means everything is judged as black and white.
Everything in life is judged as black and white.
There is no room for grey.
You're a goodie or you're a baddie.
And Jess, played by a young Charlotte Coleman,
would prove to be an out-and-out baddie
in the eyes of the Pentecostals
by breaking one of the biggest taboos of all.
The young girl, Jess, realises that she's a lesbian.
She wants to explore her sexuality,
but she also wants to kick against all of the restrictions around her -
super-religious upbringing, very homophobic.
She's being forced into
a kind of way of life that she doesn't agree with at all,
and she begins to rebel.
This was a drama that tore up the taboo rule book.
These days, you'll probably find LGBTQ sex on Countryfile,
but back then, it was a shocker.
These children are full of demons. I'm not!
Then they twisted the controversy dial up to 11
when Jess's pastor decided to drive out her demons.
We've been waiting for you. I was about to go to school.
Jesus... has been waiting for you.
All of this series is really hard to watch for me
because I was attending an Elim church,
but the exorcism is the hardest part for me to look at
because I've seen these kind of exorcisms.
In the case of Jess, it's so brutal.
Sometimes, the Devil scars you as he comes free.
You might be scarred, Jess. You might not be pretty any more.
PASTOR SHOUTS, JESS WAILS
JESS STRAINS
She's so damaged,
and you are watching this young woman being damaged
in, it feels like, real time.
I'll struggle against the demon.
But you see how much we love you?! JESS GROANS
And you think, "How did... Jeanette, who wrote the book...
"..the Jess character,
"how did Jeanette Winterson get through this?"
Remember, this was on BBC Two at 9.25 on a Wednesday night,
so of course the critics were queueing up to comment.
Inevitably, Mary Whitehouse waded in.
You know, religion and sex, they're her two favourite subjects.
Put them together and she gets very excited.
But I think by that stage,
Mary Whitehouse was a slightly spent figure.
She didn't have the potency
that she had back in the sort of '70s and '80s.
I think the tide was already turning
in terms of popular perception of a bit of nudity,
of girls kissing girls, you know, or whatever else it was.
We were starting to get used to that.
Mary Whitehouse predictably saw it as the end of times...
And the winner is for the best drama series serial...
Oranges Are Not The Only Fruit. APPLAUSE
..but BAFTA saw it as a powerfully acted and written drama
and gave it five nominations.
Absolutely compelling viewing.
Incredible acting.
The story... is... so true of its time.
It's meant to be Jeanette's story anyway,
but the story could be any number of LGBT people
who were attending church
or grew up in religious families at that time.
We've got more scandalous sexual controversies coming up,
courtesy of the Queen of Pop...
At the time, I probably didn't fully understand
some of the images I was seeing in that video.
I'll level with you, some things I still don't get.
..while our future King causes a right royal rumpus on horseback.
It was everywhere.
You know, "The heir to the throne, what's he doing, you know,
"doing something so potentially dangerous?"
We are checking our controversy calendar for 1990,
a big year to go wild in the aisles in the UK.
In April, we first said "guten tag" to Germany's Aldi,
and in December, it was "god dag" to Denmark's Netto,
but we were not happy shoppers when it came to confectionery.
In fact, there was outraged wailing
when somebody, somewhere, decided things had to change.
Born in the USA in 1930, the Snickers bar,
as seen in this delightfully lo-fi TV ad,
came to Blighty in the late '60s, where we renamed it Marathon.
Why? Because it sounded healthier.
No, really.
Of course, the advert was huge in the '70s.
M-A-R-A...
..T-H-O-N, Marathon.
They were glamour.
They were like the kids to be like.
Marathon meant something. It would give you strengths.
It would not only come up peanuts slice after slice,
but it would make you run further.
It would give you that energy.
But in 1990, the men from Mars made a controversial decision.
Everyone except us called it Snickers,
and Britain was going to fall in line with the rest of the world.
I was shocked and horrified when Marathon became Snickers.
I liked a Marathon,
and I saw no reason why something that was named for a...
..decent run should suddenly become named after an unpleasant laugh.
The mellifluous tones of a national treasure were enlisted
to break the news.
STEPHEN FRY: Marathon has changed its name to Snickers.
It's still packed with peanuts
and still covered with the smoothest milk chocolate,
but now the Marathon says Snickers.
But even Stephen Fry's chocolatey voiceover
couldn't sugar-coat the shock, and then the controversy really started
when others got in on the name-changing act.
Marathon changing its name opened the floodgates.
Within a decade...
Opal Fruits would be Starburst.
Jif became Cif.
But I think there are people out there
who think the reason we're in the mess we are today
all started when Marathon changed its name to Snickers.
How dare they?
How dare they change our Marathon bar
and change it to an American Snickers bar?
It's just not on.
What's the old saying? If it ain't broke, don't fix it.
Why did they fix it?
It was great as Marathon. Leave it alone.
Of course, the real reason for the change came down to money,
which as we all know, makes the world go round.
By 1990, money-obsessed yuppies were dancing all the way to the bank,
doing big deals on even bigger car phones,
ditching their Filofaxes for electronic PDAs,
and haring about the UK in the newly-launched Lamborghini Diablo,
yours for just 160,000,
which was a lot of money even back then.
But that would have been small change for a billionaire businessman
starting to make waves across the Atlantic.
He was so rich, he even had his own airline.
Lots of people in the '80s and the '90s had heard of Donald Trump.
His private life was incredibly public,
and he wanted it to be so.
All I know of Donald Trump in the '90s
is he was just professionally rich and professionally quite irritating.
You know, he was one of those people who you wouldn't be surprised
if he had an album out at that point.
You know, you wouldn't be surprised
if he just went ice-skating in the nude just to get in the papers.
Best not to mentally picture THAT image.
Now, as we all know,
Trump went on to become America's 45th president,
where it's fair to say he was ever-so-slightly divisive.
But what is it about the man that's so compelling?
The trouble with Trump is publicity comes easy
because you can't take your eyes off him.
Be it horror or love,
in my case horror, I might add, it's mesmeric.
You cannot not watch him.
But arguably,
the man who's always been most interested in Donald Trump...
is Donald Trump himself.
I was always amused when I saw a documentary,
and he sat in his New York office at his big desk,
which was covered...
..in front covers of magazines with him on it,
and all the covers were facing him.
And at that moment,
you know the guy is difficult to beat
when it comes to narcissism.
And in 1990, Trump's love of press attention
and one particular newspaper headline
ramped his notoriety sky-high.
The story goes that a journalist at the New York Post was in the room
and heard Donald Trump calling the editor,
absolutely raging that his now ex-wife Ivana,
during this very acrimonious divorce,
had stolen the headlines in a rival newspaper the day before.
So he was asking to be on the front page of the New York Post.
And the editor said, "Well, look,
"you can't be on the front page of the New York Post
"unless you've got a story."
And the only kind of stories that really make headlines are,
you know, murder and sex.
And so he was having a relationship with the woman
who became his next wife, Marla.
And so he said, "Well, Marla says that sex with me
"is the best sex she's ever had."
I adore women, and I go out with women, and I do it with respect.
And of course the editor said,
"Well, that's great, that is a headline,
"but we do need it to be confirmed, to be corroborated."
And allegedly, he said, "Well, she's here.
"She's here. I'm gonna... I'll ask her, shall I?"
So he went off the phone, said... "Honey..."
No, I won't do the impression,
"Was that the best sex you ever had?"
And this voice over the room went, "Yes."
Now, what we never know is was that just Donald Trump,
because he has admitted that he's done this before,
just throwing his voice, or did she really say that?
Do I think it was Donald Trump who said yes?
Yes. Of course it was Donald.
Of course, it's in his nature.
People. Fucking men, sorry.
Theresa May didn't do that, did she?
"Scuse me, just wanna get the papers,
"yeah, best shag he's ever had."
Later that year, the Donald and Ivana Trump divorce was finalised,
with the New York Times reporting Ivana walked away
with a settlement that included $14 million,
a 45-room mansion,
and an apartment in the Trump Plaza.
And as for Donald, well, we all know how that ended.
It's just something that's worked out so well for me.
# Catch a glimpse of myself In the mirror and I go like... #
From the man who would be President to America's First Lady of Pop,
Madonna Louise Ciccone, or Madge to her friends,
ruled the charts in the 1980s,
with a whopping 21 top ten hits under her pointy gold bra thing.
But how could she stay on top in the '90s?
CROWD SCREAMS Well, by doing what she did best -
outrage.
When we get to 1990, she's just getting into gear now.
I mean, you'd had Like A Virgin, you'd had Papa Don't Preach,
but that was just her dipping her toe in the water.
I mean, we get to Justify My Love and it's like,
"OK, guys, I'm here now. I'm here."
Co-written by her friend, the guitar-toting Lenny Kravitz,
Justify My Love soared to number two in the UK charts.
But it was the video that justified our shock.
So, here we go. Madonna checks into a Paris hotel.
Three days later,
she emerges with a promo video that ticks all of her favourite boxes.
So, in the video we have gay sex and bisexual sex,
and we have voyeurism, and we have S&M.
# Justify Justify my love... #
It has everything that we expect from Madonna.
# My love I'm open
# Ooh, my love And ready... #
I think it's such an amazing video
because it is completely playing with gender and sexuality,
and it's all about female fantasy.
For some, the material girl's latest offering was an artistic statement.
But for others, it was simply true blue.
What you need to understand about the Madonna Justify My Love video
is that it came out in an era where,
as a hugely hormonal teenage boy, your only access
to what certain older relatives would call "rude ladies"
was the discarded porno mag in the woods.
# Ooh, my love... #
Then all of a sudden, Madonna brings out Justify My Love...
# To justify my love... #
At the time, I probably didn't fully understand
some of the images I was seeing in that video.
I'll level with you. There's some things I still don't get.
There is no story to this video. Let's not pretend there is one, OK?
She turns up at the freaking hotel, she has a good time, and she goes.
That's the video.
# I just wanna be your lover... #
I remember just being so shocked.
I thought it was pure porn at that age.
I was like, "This must be what porn is like."
Because it was so sexually explicit for, you know, the time.
And the powers that be agreed - almost like she planned it (!)
The video was banned from MTV
and only broadcast here after the 9pm watershed.
Job done.
Madonna had joined previously banned video artists
like Frankie Goes To Hollywood and Duran Duran.
But she wasn't going to take it lying down -
unlike in the video itself.
To cash in on the controversy,
the business-minded blonde put the erotic epic on sale,
and her fans voted with their VHS recorders,
making the video single the first ever short-form film
to be certified multiplatinum in the United States.
Justify My Love is Madonna at her very best.
I absolutely love the song. I love the video.
And looking at it now, it doesn't look that dated.
And it's also slightly funny now
that it was considered outrageous enough to ban
because when you look at it, you know, you can't see anything.
It's all quite vanilla. Everyone keeps their clothes on.
You see far more outrageous things, you know,
in soap operas at eight o'clock at night now.
Let's leave the Queen of Pop
and head to the future King of the UK.
How the royals must look back on the '80s fondly.
It was all going so well.
The decade began with Charles and Di's fairy tale marriage,
uniting the nation with hope for the future.
But then the future came along, as it so often does.
By 1990, cracks were starting to show for Charles
and not just in his marriage.
The Prince of Wales has broken his arm
after a fall during a polo match.
The Prince was playing at Cirencester Park in Gloucestershire
when he lost his balance and fell from his horse.
NEWSREADER: The Prince of Wales was playing in a semi-final match
when the accident happened.
He was riding his pony, Echo, in the second chukka of the match
when he lost his balance as he leaned forward to make a shot.
He fell heavily to the ground.
He was put on a stretcher by a doctor and ambulance crew,
who are always stationed at the park,
and taken to the local hospital just outside Cirencester.
It was everywhere.
It was the headlines, it was every news bulletin.
You know, "The heir to the throne!
"What's he doing," you know, "riding a horse,
"and doing something so potentially dangerous?"
And at the time, there was a kind of a backlash from people
like the Burke's Peerage mob, who said, "Oh," you know,
"Prince Charles should have more responsibility,"
and, "We can't have the heir to the throne
"behaving in such a reckless manner
"and potentially killing himself in a polo accident."
I don't know who it was who said that the Prince of Wales should...
pack in these kamikaze pursuits,
but mind his own business.
The Prince of Wales was a youngish man, and he loved playing polo.
Good for him.
Despite the future king being in a sling,
Charles kept on chukka-ing,
and only hung up his mallet 15 years later in 2005.
Prince Charles is giving up polo.
At the age of 57, he's decided that he's played his last chukka.
After more than 40 years in the saddle,
the royal horseman had won many a trophy
and raised millions for charity.
But polo was to cause an even bigger break,
since he reportedly met a young lady called Camilla Shand at a match,
a tryst that would lead to a few juicy headlines of its own.
I think, with all the headlines that the royal family have had
over the last couple of years,
they would now be really, really grateful
if the most controversial headline that emerged was,
"Prince breaks his arm playing polo."
Coming up after the break,
reversed vinyl leads to a violent act
that threatens to bring a heavy metal group into meltdown.
And the sky's the limit for these rooftop rioters.
Up until that point, the only time we'd ever seen, like,
a prison riot like this was on a film.
MUSIC: 'Living After Midnight' by Judas Priest
In the 1980s,
hit singles like Breaking The Law and Living After Midnight...
# Living after midnight... #
..made rocking Brummies Judas Priest
one of our most successful purveyors of the heaviest of metals.
But then the bottom fell out of their world,
as the much-loved rockers became embroiled
in controversy across the Atlantic,
climaxing in one of 1990's most high-profile US court cases.
The evidence in this case will show
that on December 23rd, 1985,
Raymond Belknap took this shotgun...
..placed it under his chin... and pulled the trigger.
1985. Got these two American teenagers in Nevada,
James Vance, Raymond Belknap.
They are, I guess, what you would call the local misfits, right?
They never really fit in in their town.
They spent the night...
firstly getting drunk, then getting stoned,
and then listening to this Judas Priest record on loop
over and over and over again.
And they felt that the record
had subliminal messages in it telling them to commit suicide.
And that's what they did.
They both took a gun and shot themselves.
One survived, and one died.
It takes quite a while for anyone to start singling out Judas Priest
for potentially being... responsible for this.
Because what happens immediately after the shooting
is that James Vance has to have very,
very extensive reconstructive surgery.
It's clear that his life will never be the same again.
It only comes to light in a letter
that he writes to Ray Belknap's family, where he says,
"Well, I think it might have been the music that made me do it."
Although James Vance survived the shooting,
he died three years later, in 1988.
The families wanted closure and compensation,
so, in 1990, they set out to sue Judas Priest
for a staggering $6.2 million in damages.
Understandably, it was a trial that was played out
in front of the world's media.
Today's testimony really sums up what this case is all about,
which is subliminal or hidden messages
in the music of Judas Priest,
specifically in the Stained Class album.
Now, attorneys came to court today fully armed with computers
and high-tech equipment to make their points.
What's at stake here isn't just the fate of a heavy metal band,
what is being questioned, in a legal sense,
is whether it is possible to... use subliminal messages
to make people commit extreme violence.
Apparently, if you played their records backwards,
there were subliminal lyrics inciting kids to kill themselves.
And there's one passage in the song Better By You, Better Than Me
which sounds a little bit like someone saying,
"Do it, do it, do it."
And that is the part that the prosecution focused on most.
Lead singer Rob Halford
found himself swapping his usual microphone,
this time for one in a Nevada courtroom.
LAWYER: Are there subliminal "Do its"
on the Better By You, Better Than Me song?
Absolutely not.
JUDAS PRIEST RECORD PLAYED INTO COURT
The hearing lasted for 17 days,
as the band's fans saw these leather-clad rock gods
in a very different light.
Rob Halford, the lead singer of Judas Priest,
his onstage persona was sort of... I mean...
He used to sometimes look like he was wearing
a... like, a gimp costume.
Full leather, the studded cap, chaps, and the whole works.
That's correct.
But when he was on trial in America...
..they just looked small and... sad.
And I just remember feeling really sorry for them
because... they'd been drawn into the eye of a storm
that was of not their making.
The outcome of it was that Judas Priest won,
but, you know, the toll on them was pretty huge.
On August the 24th, 1990, all charges were dropped,
and soon after that, Rob Halford left Judas Priest
and wouldn't rejoin the band fully until 2003.
These days, 50 years after forming,
older, wiser and, yes, heavier,
the band are back, and packing out stadiums everywhere.
Rob Halford rejoined the Judas Priest fold
after just over a decade.
But these fans had to wait longer for what they wanted.
They may look like metal enthusiasts on a night out,
but they are actually fans of a more intergalactic entertainment,
and after 18 years lost in space,
their favourite TV series came back to Earth in a big way.
'Space - the final frontier.
'These are the voyages of the starship Enterprise.
'Its continuing mission - to explore strange new worlds...'
Yes, they kept the immortal opening words from the original series,
but after that...
'..to boldly go where no-one has gone before.'
They really went where no Star Trek had been before.
Wasn't it fantastic to have Star Trek back in the 1990s?
We had all been watching those repeats of the '60s episodes on TV.
When Star Trek: The Next Generation came through,
it seemed like something impossibly good.
And it was also something that was, like all Star Trek is,
really focused on a sort of utopian way of living.
It was much more touchy-feely than the old Star Trek.
I'd just love to hear more of your poetry.
PICARD CHUCKLES NERVOUSLY
It was very politically correct, you know, it had a counsellor,
and it had this sort of... It, it was quite, er, you know...
It was full of good messages about how to behave.
And it was offering this vision of the future
where basically everything seemed sorted out.
But the makers still got explosive
with both their effects and storylines.
EXPLOSION
In 1990, they set their coordinates for the Constellation Controversy
when AI android Data suggested to Captain Jean-Luc Picard
that maybe terrorism could be justifiable?
I have been reviewing the history of armed rebellion,
and it appears that terrorism is an effective way
to promote political change.
Yes, it can be.
But I have never subscribed to the theory
that political power flows from the barrel of a gun.
Yet there are numerous examples when it was successful.
The independence of the Mexican state from Spain,
the Irish Unification of 2024, and the Kenzie Rebellion.
This was really controversial in Ireland and the UK at the time,
because Northern Ireland was still engaged in the Troubles,
so the IRA was still fighting at that time.
Yes, I am aware of them.
Then would it be accurate to say that terrorism is acceptable
when all options for peaceful settlement have been foreclosed?
There were still British troops on the ground in Northern Ireland,
there was still sectarian violence going on.
I think if Data had said, "Oh, Ireland was reunited in 2024
"because everybody learned to get along together,
"and there was this, this, this kind of scrupulous democratic process..."
I think it would have been much less of an issue.
But Data's data didn't match the reality of 1990,
and his controversial comment saw the BBC ban the episode.
The BBC would not show that episode.
In fact, the episode wasn't shown at all
on British television until 1992,
when it was shown on Sky with that bit of dialogue edited out.
It was finally shown with the dialogue edited in
on BBC Two in 2007,
but in the after-midnight repeat slot.
And it's still never been shown on RTE in Ireland
because the thought that Ireland could be reunified
and that somehow the IRA could have had something to do with it
was just anathema.
But while in space, Captain Picard believed violence achieves nothing,
back on Earth, certain residents of a certain institution
were putting that theory to the test.
Rioting has broken out at Strangeways Prison in Manchester.
About 50 prisoners are on the roof.
According to unconfirmed reports,
some prison officers have been taken hostage.
'Fire swept through part of Strangeways tonight,
'while firemen fought to bring it under control
'in the face of missiles hurled by inmates.'
These aren't belligerent roofing contractors,
but rather inmates at Strangeways Prison, Manchester.
Over 25 days in April 1990,
these "prisoners on the roof" took their protest to the slates.
One of the things that made Strangeways really unique
was that we had never seen that type of insubordination in a prison
on our TV screens. We'd never seen that level of rioting.
'More than 100 inmates have made their way onto the roof,
'where they ripped up tiles and hurled them at people below.
'Police say that more than a thousand prisoners
'were on the loose inside the jail, smashing up cells.'
And, of course, this was the days before social media.
The only time we'd ever seen, like, a prison riot like this
was on a film, or on a TV show.
'There are unconfirmed reports
'that prison staff may have been taken hostage.
'The area has been sealed off,
'and police officers in riot gear are at the scene.'
But now we're actually watching
live footage of something happening in real time.
And it went on for such a long time.
It was basically on the news every night.
And this was being beamed right into our living rooms.
This was a real-life soap opera at altitude,
with recognisable returning characters, drama,
and, of course, controversy.
'They'd smashed in windows in the centre of the prison,
'and many of the inmates
'were wearing prison officers' uniforms or hats.'
The rooftop riots were a very public embarrassment -
an admission of a lack of control from the authorities,
which they were determined to rectify quickly and dramatically.
'The chief weapon has been
'an unceasing barrage of sirens from police on the ground,
'and from the police helicopter
'hovering above the rioting inmates' heads,
'although they appear unconcerned.
'Even at night, the helicopter flies in low across the roof,
'emitting a high-pitched howl.'
Day after day, the drama continued.
The Strangeways protests lasted an entire month,
but it felt like much longer than that,
partly because the media were covering it every day.
As the images of the defiant inmates
were beamed into our front rooms,
some viewers started to take their side.
I think initially, people were shocked and thought,
"Oh, my God, these are... these are probably just violent people
"who are, you know...
"desperately bored of being in their cells and just kicking off."
But, in fact, as it went on, you began to understand why.
And they became to be seen as kind of renegades,
and almost, to some people, heroes.
'Since the beginning of the siege,
'relatives of prisoners have been arriving at Strangeways
'to see what's going on.
'Whole families have turned up,
'standing for hours in the cold and rain.'
Some supporters even went there, did that, and wore the T-shirt,
but hardly surprisingly,
the prison management weren't in the mood for fun.
What we know about the injuries
that prisoners have inflicted upon each other...
is another example of...
the extent of the violence,
and what I would actually describe as an explosion of evil.
That explosion of evil came with a price.
Two deaths, and injuries to almost 200 inmates,
police, and prison officers.
Finally, on the 25th of April, 1990,
after three weeks of chaos, still defiant,
the last five inmates to surrender were cherry-picked from the roof.
It had been the longest riot in British penal history,
and it certainly left behind a legacy -
a four-year rebuilding programme to repair the damage,
at a cost to the taxpayer of over £90 million.
And then, eventually, came the inquiry.
What was interesting about it
was that it became a much bigger discussion.
Not just, "How did these inmates get out of their cells?
"How did they overpower the prison officers?"
It then led into a much bigger conversation
about prison conditions,
and why it was that these men had done this.
What had been the trigger?
The inquiry announced by the Home Secretary
will be conducted by Lord Justice Woolf, an Appeal Court judge.
It's the first inquiry into a prison riot
by a senior judge in recent times,
and will be separate from the police investigation.
Lord Justice Woolf will be looking, not only at the riots themselves,
but also the events leading up to them,
and that will give him the chance, if he wants to,
to look at the role of Britain's overcrowded inner-city prisons.
His report could therefore have a key influence on penal policy
well into the 21st century.
It started as a sort of crime story, and a story about sort of violence,
and a very important incident at the prison.
But when the inquiry concluded,
big changes came about as a result of that riot.
For example, sanitation slopping out was abolished,
more basic rights about contact and communication
were given to prisoners.
What was undoubtedly a horrible, horrible event,
which was bloody and violent for lots of people,
it did catalyse a real kind of revolution
in public policy around the penal system.
Coming up in our final instalment of nefarious naughtiness from 1990,
neighbours become more than just good friends
for this Aussie pop star and her hot-rocking Romeo.
There were lots and lots of rumours about it at first,
and no-one believed it.
And we raise a glass to a football legend
who scored an own-goal with this infamous chat show appearance.
Oh, it's good to see you again.
What you're witnessing is so sad - it's the tragic demise of a genius.
AUDIENCE GIGGLES What are you laughing at?
These people don't know what they're laughing at half the time.
# Put your hand on your heart And tell me... #
Hooray! It's the late 1980s,
back when the charts were pretty much owned
by Stock, Aitken, and Waterman.
The hit factory's production line
included Rick Astley and Jason Donovan.
But arguably, the number one slice of fun
came in this tiny Antipodean package.
Kylie Minogue was the ultimate good girl.
She was pop's princess, squeaky-clean, loads of fun,
the girl that you had on your bedroom wall
on a poster from Smash Hits.
She was everyone's girl next door, she was just this burst of sunshine.
We just saw this gorgeous younger sister we all had all of a sudden.
# Come on, baby Jump up... #
That's why she became so sort of phenomenally popular here.
# Well, I think you got the knack Ohh... #
Of course, some fabulously '80s videos also helped.
In the Locomotion video,
you see Kylie Minogue dancing her socks off
in the best Lycra and primary colours
that the '80s has to offer.
She's squeaky-clean,
and everything is about being the best dancer at the school disco.
In 1989, it was a denim-on-denim love fest,
as Kylie teamed up with Jason Donovan.
These two had already been a squeeze in Neighbours,
but was there romance away from Ramsay Street?
CHILD: 'Do think you're going to get married in real life?'
KYLIE CHUCKLES Well...
Well, are you? JASON CHUCKLES
I think, I mean...
To each other, or do you mean to anybody else, Lindsay?
'To each other.'
Well, I don't think so. Kylie and I...
Well, we've actually worked together for a long time,
and, er, we've been really good friends.
Obviously, the characters have worked so well
that people tend to believe that it's more than what it is on...
on, er, on television.
It turned out Jason was fibbing.
They had been romantically involved, but controversially,
another Aussie musician had decided to do the locomotion with Kylie.
After you've been having white bread for a few years,
maybe you just want something a bit more crunchy and spicy.
# Suicide blonde... #
And here is that spice!
Lead singer and head hottie of INXS,
Michael Hutchence was the leather and studs
to Kylie's rara skirts and leggings.
# Suicide blonde
Was the colour of her hair
# Like a cheap distraction... #
Michael Hutchence was rock 'n' roll through and through.
There he was, he looked dangerous.
He looked the absolute sort of epitome of...
you know, in the '60s, that,
"Would you let your daughter marry a Rolling Stone?"
You know, it was like...
Men admired him, and women fell in love with him.
And in 1990, Kylie couldn't get Michael out of her head.
There were lots and lots of rumours about it at first,
and no-one believed it. No-one believed it.
And then they have that bit
where they're spotted out for the first time...
"Oh, they're a couple."
And how exciting? It was really, really exciting!
I should say so! Even those firmly plugged into pop
hadn't seen this controversial coupling coming.
What was so incredible about Michael Hutchence and Kylie Minogue
is that, if you work for a magazine like Smash Hits,
which I did at the time,
we could go back and look at the quotes where Kylie had said,
"Hmm! Michael Hutchence... Not sure about that."
Cos they'd always be asked about each other,
because they were Australian - I know, it's that sad.
But also, Michael Hutchence does say in another interview in Smash Hits,
"Kylie Minogue? Fine, but she sings a bit high."
Or something like that!
So, there's this thing that they weren't necessarily suited,
and they'd sort of slightly dissed each other in the press.
But the dissing turned to kissing.
The unlikely love match was confirmed,
and quickly, our girl next door really came of age.
We know what happens when dirty meets clean - clean gets dirty.
And that's what happened in the case of Kylie Minogue.
She started to look like a female version of Michael Hutchence.
And, you know, she started to sizzle.
But that sizzle burned out after just two intense years
of a relationship scrutinised on the front pages.
Then, like an evil soap Lothario,
Hutch called it a day in dramatic fashion.
I think Kylie was, you know, naturally, absolutely heartbroken.
I mean, Michael, this beautiful, talented singer from INXS,
doing so well all around the world, and then Kylie, who...
We never really saw her loved-up with anyone,
so we thought, "Ooh, this could be it!"
And so short lived.
Apparently, he dumped her after she flew out to Japan!
Can you believe that? Who dumps Kylie?
Well, Michael Hutchence, apparently.
But he did leave Kylie
with a new, edgier attitude, style, and persona, which fans loved!
So, swings and roundabouts.
Now she's sort of this everywoman
who can, you know, do the sex bit on stage
and then do the cute bit on stage and then do the mature bit on stage.
And I think it just gave her a credibility that lasts...
to this day.
While Kylie continues to flourish,
tragically, Michael Hutchence took his own life
in a Sydney hotel room in 1997.
'Fans crowded outside the cathedral
'to pay their last respects to the Australian musician.
'Kylie Minogue was among the celebrities at the funeral.'
I mean, the irony was we were...
You know, people sort of worried about her, and,
"Oh, she's a delicate flower, and he's going to corrupt her," and...
and yet, she's the survivor.
She is the ultimate survivor, you know.
She survived breast cancer, and she survived, you know,
a whole career of ups and downs.
And, poor guy, Michael Hutchence didn't survive.
So, in lots of ways, he was the much more vulnerable of the two.
Yes, surviving in show business can be tricky,
but one man, who did it with a twinkle in his eye,
is at the centre of tonight's final controversy.
APPLAUSE Wogan was the chat show of the day.
Monday, Wednesday, Friday. 7pm, live. And he got everybody.
Terry Wogan seemed constantly amused by his own fame.
But for ten years, he offered up his sofa to a parade of superstars.
That's right, nobody did chat better than El Tel.
The man was a broadcasting genius, and I don't say that lightly.
Other talk-show hosts watched with jealousy,
as by 1990, Terry was lining up icons on a regular basis.
Hollywood A-listers...
You're basically a very decent, nice, quiet, well-behaved man.
Yes, I am. LAUGHTER
..to British pop and rock royalty!
It's nice to be in the charts with someone fatter than me.
It's wonderful. LAUGHTER
So, there... When are you making a record?
LAUGHTER
He even did Prime Minister's Questions,
but that year, two celebrated faces staked their claim
to being amongst Terry's most famous, or...
infamous guests?
Welcome Nicolas Cage! APPLAUSE
Nicolas Cage, when he came onto Wogan, was...
He was just, "Wow!"
He comes running on, he does, like, a somersault,
which he nearly misses with.
And then he's doshing all this money out,
and I was like, "Wow, this is... this is manic!"
I'm sure he took his top off and gave it to Wogan.
No, no, I gotta give you my Wild At Heart T-shirt.
CHEERING AND APPLAUSE Hey!
He gives him the T-shirt, he's got...
He's bare-chested on Wogan, giving Wogan his T-shirt.
I think Wogan was a bit bemused, didn't really know what to do.
I'll just put this jacket back on.
It's a big night for me, I can tell you!
And the leather jacket goes back on, classic.
Do you wanna rob a bank with me?
They're all closed now, we'll have to wait until Tuesday.
Do you get off work soon?
It's a bank holiday, so Tuesday. OK. OK.
It was like he was a 15-year-old.
I loved him. APPLAUSE
So, let's be polite and say Nick Cage was "high on life".
But 1990's most controversial chat show guest
was stimulated by something slightly stronger.
The Good, The Bad And The Bubbly
is the entirely suitable title of the biography
of an enigmatic Irishman,
who started out by just wanting a football for Christmas.
LAUGHTER AUDIENCE: Aww!
So, what happened to the man whom Pele himself called
"the greatest footballer"? Let's ask George Best!
APPLAUSE
George Best comes on,
and there's probably that moment when you're looking at someone,
and you're thinking,
"Are you under the influence of drink... or not?"
And then, pretty quickly, you know that he is.
Well, it's good to see you again.
When you saw George Best on there,
your first thing is, "Brilliant, what a rebel.
"What a lad. Ah, well done, George. Good effort, well done, well done."
What is important in life?
Friends...
People. Football?
Football, yeah, still. Yeah.
The ladies? Ladies are still important, yeah.
AUDIENCE CHUCKLES
And then the further away you get from that...
what you're witnessing is so sad, it's the tragic demise of a genius.
What about the booze, is that important to you?
The booze is still important, yeah. LAUGHTER
He is the definition of someone who pissed his talents up the wall.
Get off. No, no! LAUGHTER
And it is a really awkward interview,
because you can see Terry is supporting him as much as he can.
What about football? What's your opinion when you look at...
I mean, there was a great upsurge of interest
when, when England did so well at the World Cup this time.
And George is there, doing his best to give a brilliant interview.
But the audience are laughing, but they're not laughing-laughing,
they're sort of tittering, and you can see it throws George slightly.
And he actually talks to the audience
and sort of says, "What's going on?"
What are you laughing at? LAUGHTER
These people don't know what they're laughing at half the time.
Terry Wogan, you know, as always, dealt with it incredibly gracefully.
But I-I just look back on it now,
and it just seems really, really sad.
Do you still feel that your... your career was cut short? No.
You feel you gave... you gave your money's worth?
I don't like bullshitters. Yeah.
AUDIENCE GIGGLES
GEORGE TITTERS Fair enough.
And it was live. Is this live? No.
No, we can edit that out in a minute.
Terry Wogan worked for the BBC, so if you work for the BBC, guess what?
There aren't any adverts.
So it's not like he can suddenly go,
"Well, we're gonna wrap this up now,
"thank you very much for joining us today."
Because he knows, in his ear,
he's probably got another five or six minutes to fill...
Can I say "shit"? LAUGHTER
I don't think so. I don't think so.
..and they don't have anything else they can just slot in.
So Terry is probably hearing the gallery saying,
"Keep going," looking at George,
working out what he can ask him without it being too controversial.
You had a reputation for knocking around with a lot of girls.
Terry, I like screwing, all right? LAUGHTER
It was a really difficult situation,
and I think Terry Wogan was brilliant in it, as ever.
Such a professional.
So what do you do with your time these days?
Screw. I see.
LAUGHTER Ladies and gentlemen, George Best!
CHEERING AND APPLAUSE