BRASS EYE SPECIAL: DISABILITY [WORKING TITLE: SQUID BEAK]
                                                     CONTINUITY SCRIPT: 08/08/2003

IDENT: Three black men in wheelchairs are dancing on a basketball court. They dance until a basketball is thrown into shot. Then a BASKETBALL TEAM run in after it, crushing the three dancers to death. Once the BASKETBALL TEAM run off-screen and the dust settles, CHRISTOPHER MORRIS walks calmly into shot.

MORRIS
This... (indicates basketball court with a wave of his arm) never happened. But if it had, it would have been an ideal metaphor for how the disabled are treated today in this country today: A country in which rogue hairdressers give the disabled haircuts without their knowledge in an attempt to “beautify” them,…

In a busy London shopping street, a camp HAIRDRESSER carrying a bag of hairdressing equipment (with the words “PARALYSCISSORS LTD” subtly printed on it in red) follows an unaccompanied FAT WOMAN in a wheelchair, dressed in what looks like a flowing blue hairdressers’ gown. He tip-toes up to her and, taking some scissors out his bag, attempts to give her a trim. He mimes a few snips before the woman realises something odd is going on and spins around. The HAIRDRESSER leaps nimbly behind a nearby pillar, unseen by the WOMAN. The confused FAT WOMAN spins back and wheels off. Zoom in on the face of the HAIRDRESSER. Determined and with a pair of curling tongs in his hand, he follows her out of shot.

MORRIS (V/O)
…where opportunistic opticians sell John Lennon spectacles to the unsuspecting blind instead of their requested black sunglasses…

Cut to a shop, in which a SHOPKEEPER hands a BLIND MAN a set of rose-tinted round horn-rimmed glasses, like the type John Lennon used to wear.

SHOPKEEPER (V/O)
In today’s world of political correctness, I feel that blind people should look groovy too, even if they don’t want to.

Cut to a vox pop with shopkeeper, holding up various types of glasses to camera.

SHOPKEEPER
We don’t just have John Lennon style: you can buy Buddy Holly, Roy Orbison, Jimi Hendrix…

The BLIND MAN walks out of the shop wearing a ludicrous pair of Elton John-style glasses, with big pink feathers coming out of each side. MORRIS runs up to him with a microphone.

MORRIS
You, sir! What do you think of being sold those rid-ic-ulous Elton John glasses?

BLIND MAN
What Elton John glasses?

The BLIND MAN stands silently as the studio-based MORRIS speaks over him.

MORRIS (V/O)
...and where inexpensive spastics are frequently used to launch ships instead of champagne...

Shot of a minor royal swinging a man in a wheelchair into the side of an ocean liner. The wheelchair smashes and the man plummets into the water. The audience watching cheers.

MORRIS
Do we really want to live in a country like this? Join me tonight as I answer that question... by saying 'no'!

MORRIS walks off the court as the camera swings up to get a bird's-eye view of the court. The dead bodies of the crip-nigs are in the shape of the word "HELP". The loop of the letter 'P' is shown with a dented wheelchair wheel. We zoom into it as it spins. A digital EXPLOSION takes us into the:

‘BRASS EYE’ TITLE SEQUENCE. [NOTE: This is an updated version of the first series ‘BRASS EYE’ titles: John Major has become Tony Blair, Tony Blair has become Iain Duncan-Smith, Noel Gallagher flicking the V’s has become Robbie Williams mooning, the “drugs conference” out-take has become the “Wayne Carr interviews Christopher Reeve about Superman V” out-take from this special, and so on. The theme music is unchanged.]

Studio. CHRIS MORRIS wheels stage left onto the studio floor sitting in an electric wheelchair. He passes various metaphors for the disabled: a bollard with a sling; a sack of cement with dark glasses and a guide dog; a donkey with an ear-trumpet; a potato with a heart condition; doctors around a hospital bed shouting “Clear!” whilst trying to defibrillate a shoe; and finally a lettuce in an iron lung. At the end of the studio is a cracked television set resting in mid-air on crutches. It has the ‘BRASS EYE’ logo on it. MORRIS moves towards this as the camera pans with him.

MORRIS
We are living in an age of intolerance to mongs, or, as we television factbringers call it, inmongerance. (he does a 360° spin on his wheels, stops when he faces the camera, and points to the cracked television screen which is now showing the word "INMONGERANCE"). Or are we? (The TV set now shows the silhouette of a man in a wheelchair with a question mark superimposed over it) On the flip-side end of the spectrum coin (The TV now shows a rainbow-coloured fifty pence piece which flips over to reveal a picture of a brain) those with brain troubles are currently more poplar fan heather. (Over this last sentence the camera zooms in on the screen which flashes up pictures of a relevant image for each word spoken: a brain; a street riot; an ark; a raisin; Stewart Lee; Laurence Fishburne as Othello; a poplar tree; an electric fan; and finally Heather Mills. Cut back to MORRIS. He is relaxing over a wheelchair as if it was an armchair.) As well as the many Spastication Clinics that have been sprouting up all over London like hair in an old man's ears, more later, the popular disco hole The Ministry Of Noise has been having its regular "Disabled Only" nights.

Outside the Ministry Of Noise building is a poster with a picture of two wheelchairs facing outwards at 25° angles. In between them is a man in shades and headphones, mixing the top wheels with his hands as if they were record decks. The slogan reads: "PARALARGIN' IT! AT THE MINISTRY OF NOISE". We hear some heavy electronic dance music (sampling "SHE’S GOT LEGS" by ZZ Top) as we cut to the inside of the club. It looks like a normal nightclub except that it contains twenty or so crippled people all wearing casts on their arms and legs, swinging their crutches around their head in an attempt to dance, hitting each other violently as they do so. A man in a wheelchair pours a bottle of water over himself. Bandages fly everywhere. Cut back to MORRIS. He is kneeling on one of those wheeled boards that legless people use to move around, pushing himself forward with the two blocks in his hands. Behind him is a mural montage of celebrity cripples: Douglas Bader, Princess Margaret, Christopher Reeve, Anthea Turner.

MORRIS
But has it always been this way? Of course not; bottled water is a fairly recent invention, as are dance-garage-bangin'-electro-pop-"choons" as heard in the previous clip. But if you're anything like me you will be asking (working-class voice) "'Ey, Chris, what's the deal with them old spazzys then?". (normal voice) Well, watch on, stupid person, and be stupid no more!

MORRIS throws off his jacket and shirt to reveal an appendectomy scar. The camera zooms on and we see it isn't stitching holding it together but letters reading "SOCIETY". MORRIS rips it open and out comes a computer-generated man in a wheelchair, being thrown out by a group of fully-abled people all shouting "And stay out!". He sadly wheels off-screen. The camera follows him into a caption that reads "HISTABILITY" in a gothic typeface. There is a trumpet jingle, and then the picture fades into the Bayeux Tapestry, accompanied by war noises.

MORRIS (V/O)
Before 1482 there was no such thing as disability. Everyone was in perfect health, except for King Richard the third who was not, as commonly believed, a hunchback but instead it has been proved he only had a gammy leg. In a fit of jealousy, the King decreed that anyone with less than 30 acres of land should be "criplyd bye thyne village cryppler, (cut to these words in an old, important-looking book accompanied with a printing of a peasant having their knees smashed by a hooded man with a sledgehammer) havyng theyr legges brokken and theyr forrearmf fnapped". Gibberish of course, but popular gibberish. So popular, in fact, that this practise was continued up to and including 1942, (Pathé News logo; war footage) where it was decided that only those who had not gone to battle but stayed home in the Second World War should have their faces disfigured up (stock footage of WWII casualties) so as to keep the British women's minds off sex while their husbands were away, killing Germans for the King. (A German is shot; stock footage of hippies. A snatch of The Beach Boys' "I GET AROUND" plays in the background) By the time the war had finished in the late fifties the disabilitied had become useless and were often sold by their parents to travelling freak shows.

Black-and-white footage of ROLF HARRIS performing "Jake The Peg".

Cripples such as this one were often forced into the variety halls against their will, entertaining the public with their disfigured debauchery. Many, such as this man, tried to disguise their humiliation with a stolen pair of glasses and ludicrous fake beard.

Shot of children laughing at ROLF. Cut to black-and-white footage of flower-covered band playing a fluffy intro. A caption reads: "LET'S GO-GO POP VISION!, © BBC SOMERSET 1968".

MORRIS (V/O)
In the late sixties chart-second-placers Mannequin Stairlift were at the near-top of their profession (that's as musicians) with songs, such as this one from their album "Half", the first album to be produced as a vinyl semi-circle.

Over this last part we see a shot of the watercolour sleeve with "½" written on it in flowers, overlapped by half a record. Zoom in briefly on the record label which reads: "HALF; MANNEQUIN STAIRLIFT; MS½", followed by a listing of tracks: "SIDE ONE: 1) OPENING/ROLL UP YOUR OWN; 2) HALFLIFE; 3) DEFLOWER POWER; 4) SUPERDUPERMARKET; 5) WUGGA WUGGA WUGGA WOO WOO WOO (MEANS I LOVE YOU, I THINK); 6) I BROKE YOUR HEART, YOU BROKE MY SPINE; 7) I'M LIKE VINYL (AND YOU KEEP GIVING ME THE NEEDLE); 8) ONLY NINE MORE YEARS TIL PUNK COMES IN; 9) INTERMISSION/RECORD SCRATCH". The camera focuses on track four's title, "SUPERDUPERMARKET", as the music fades back in. Cut back to the band where we hear them start to sing a tune which sounds vaguely like "BUS STOP" by The Hollies.

SINGER
(sings)
I saw you in my local supermarket,
You were looking at the bread.
'That's the girl I'll love forever',
That is what I said.
To my friend Fred.
Girl.

He takes a daffodil out of his hair and waves it at the camera. He continues:

I took you out to the car park, all your bags I carried.
One year on we shop together, now that we are married.
And I say 'Woaaaaaaaaaaaah, whoa-yeah, wah ah-aah-ooooh',
Cos I love you.
Yes, cos I love yoooooooou, oh-oh yeah, girl...

He takes a guitar from another member of the band and performs a really long and bad guitar solo. Over this:

MORRIS (V/O)
But in 1973 the band suffered a hideous and literally crippling disaster in which their lead singer Richard Spirochete paralysed himself for life after being sat on by Elton John at one of Gilbert O'Sullivan's legendary crack parties. Richard was so embarrassed by the accident that he refused to see a doctor and ordered the band to carry on their tour without mentioning the incident for fear of upsetting their fans, but this eventually made their live gigs technically very difficult, some ending before they had even started.

Cut to a dodgy bootleg 16mm film of a stage with various instruments on it. Spotlights turn on and the audience cheer.

ANNOUNCER (V/O)
Ladies and gentlemen, please put it together and give it all away for... Mannequin Stairlift!!!

Audience cheering throughout.

First onstage, the man who's pulling the strings tonight, Brian Jaccuse!

A man runs out and picks up a guitar and starts playing the song we heard earlier.

There's no-one bett-ar on the gitt-ar, it's Eno Resolve!

Another man runs out and picks up a bass guitar. Puts arms above head to wave to audience, then starts to play.

You'll be a-coming when you hear this man's drumming, bang on for Poko Morrissey!

A fat man jogs out and sits behind the drums. Does a small solo and then joins in with the guitars.

And now pull up your ear-nodes and pump up your brain-hole cos here comes your favourite lead singer, the man whom Leo Sayer called "one wacky twat", please welcome.... Richard Spirochete!!!

RICHARD SPIROCHETE appears on stage being literally dragged onto the stage by two big roadies. His legs don't work. They take him to the microphone stands where he leans on it. He starts to sing:

RICHARD SPIROCHETE
I saw... shit.

He collapses. Throughout MORRIS' narration he tries to pull himself up the mike stand, only to slip all over the place due to his lifeless legs. The audience are booing and throwing ice-creams at him.

MORRIS (V/O)
Though only now able to speak through a speech synthesiser, which is like a vocoder only without the 'groove',...

On stage, RICHARD has made his way to the top of the mike and sings "I saw you..." before collapsing again. MORRIS continues:

...we still managed to speak with him at his duck sanctuary in the county of Mikola Pawluk in Utah, in the U S of A. That is, I spoke... while he typed.

Cut to RICHARD SPIROCHETE’s room. He is now fat and hairy, looking not unlike MAD Magazine editor Bill Gaines did at the end of his life. He is in an electric wheelchair which has lots of gadgets attached, including a corkscrew, a toaster and several remote controls. By his right hand is the keyboard through which he speaks. His house is surrounded by music memorabilia and ducks.

RICHARD SPIROCHETE
(through a speech synthesiser, sounding like Professor Stephen Hawking)
IN-THE-LATE-SEVENTIES-I-WAS-SO-DEPRESSED. I-HAD-EMBARKED-ON-A-SERIOUS-AND-DANGEROUS-ADDICTION. I-WAS-AN-ELKOHOLIC.

MORRIS (O.O.V.)
(interviewing)
Alcoholic.

RICHARD looks confused.

MORRIS (O.O.V)
(continues)
You were an alcoholic, presumably that was a mistyping of your condition.

RICHARD SPIROCHETE
NO,-I-WAS-AN-ELKOHOLIC. I-LOVED-THE-TASTE-OF-ELK-MEAT. I-COULD-NOT-GET-ENOUGH (pronounced "Eeno-ug") OF-IT. BUT-IT-WAS-VERY-EXPENSIVE. IT-COST-ME-SEVENTY-GLAND-A-DAY.

MORRIS (O.O.V.)
(correcting)
Grand, seventy grand a day.

RICHARD SPIROCHETE
NO,-'GLAND'. THAT WAS-THE-NAME-OF-OUR-'BEST-OF'-ALBUM-AND-I-USED-MY-ROYALTIES-OF-EACH-INDIVIDUAL-RECORD-TO-PAY-FOR-THE-ILLEGALLY-IMPORTED-CANADIAN-DEER-MEAT. MMM-I-COULD-SURE-GO-FOR-SOME-SWEET-ELK-BURGERS-RIGHT-NOW.

RICHARD presses a button. A robotic hand comes up from the chair, opens a can of beer, picks it up and pours it all down RICHARD's neck. He presses another button and a dangerous-looking electric arm with a handkerchief comes up. As it nears his face, we zoom in over his shoulder to see a gold disc case on the wall. The disc itself is missing, replaced with a pawnbrokers' slip.

MORRIS (V/O)
But his luck would change in the Eighties as he released a song which, (chuckling) like his spine, went quadtruple-platinum all over the world and made over five-million times what the video cost to make, as we can see here by this pathetic-looking extract.

We hear a synthesised "OW!" and a duck flies into frame. Cut to an Eighties music video. It is shot on 4:3 video and features a dark studio, the floor of which is covered in dry ice and two disco lights hang from opposite corners of the room. RICHARD sits in his wheelchair while a small bespectacled man plays a grand piano. The music he plays sounds not unlike the backing track of 'SHIPBUILDING'.

RICHARD SPIROCHETE (V/O)
I-WROTE-THIS-SONG-WITH-A-FRIEND-OF-MINE-WHO-WAS-ALSO-DISABLED (pronounced 'Deesa-bled') AT-THE-TIME. IT-IS-ABOUT-ALL-PEOPLE-EVERYWHERE-BUT-ESPECIALLY-IT'S-ABOUT-ME-AND-MY-INJURY.

The song starts. RICHARD and his PIANO MAN start to sing.

SONG
When I was a little boy
I used to enjoy walking around.
But since the tragedy of Elton John
I can barely lift my legs off the ground.
No feeling
From my toes up to my eyes.
I was a dancer
Then my doc told me that
I was paralysed.
My life was so Shakespearian,
I was drowning in hubris.
Either life was truly bad
Or God was deliberately
Taking the piss.

Piano solo. Over this:

RICHARD SPIROCHETE (V/O)
I-FEEL-THAT-THIS-SONG-REALLY-SPEAKS-TO-ME. BUT-SINCE-I-PUMP-MYSELF-SO-FULL-OF-THE-GOOFY-JUICE-EVERY-DAY-I-FEEL-THAT-THE-BEDSIDE-LAMP-IS-REALLY-SPEAKING-TO-ME.

SONG
Though my mind was a sharp as ever
My tendons were slacking
And my legs went packing
As I was spinecracking.

RICHARD picks up a guitar that is passed into frame to him. He plays the same awful guitar solo as in the first song, which continues as MORRIS narrates:

MORRIS (V/O)
In the short time I knew him I have come to regard him as a close personal showbiz chum of mine, of the type of Chris Moyles and-stroke-or Nicky Campbell-type proportions, and so I am personally interested in what he is doing now and am not just telling you so as to neatly tie up a four-minute news package.

Cut to another, more psychedelic video, this time of a wheelchair-bound RICHARD ‘dancing’ on the beach by Blackpool Tower with ELTON JOHN. There are half a dozen clowns dancing in the background, and a gospel choir can be seen. Music starts. MORRIS continues:

Although in retirement for nearly all of his career, Richard had been persuaded to return to music, performing on a charity duet for the worthy cause of Lepers With Leprosy. The duetee? Elton John, the man who crippled him all those years ago. And the song? "Don't Go Breaking My Heart". Hit it, Rich! And Elton.

We see them singing in the video. RICHARD sings through his synthesiser.

ELTON JOHN
Don't go breakin' my heart!

RICHARD SPIROCHETE
I-COULDN'T-IF-I-TRIED.

ELTON JOHN
Oh huuurny, if ah getta rest-less...

RICHARD SPIROCHETE
OH-BAY-BEE-YOU'RE-NOT-THAT-KIND.

ELTON does some Elvis-style shaking. The paralysed RICHARD simply spins around on the spot.

TOGETHER
WOO-HOO! NOBODY-KNOWS-IT...

They continue as per the original song as MORRIS narrates.

MORRIS (V/O)
But what else is on the paralytic cards, the kings and queens of which are all wheelchair-bound and the jokers are mentally unbalanced?

Cut to a silhouette of the wheelchair-bound RICHARD SPIROCHETE going up a hill into a beautiful sunset. We hear the piano solo of 'SPINEBREAKING', sounding exactly like the terrible guitar solo. It is equally terrible.

MORRIS (V/O)
A reunion with the other members of Mannequin Stairlift is in various pipelines, including a tour and new studio album, to be entitled "Cain and Disable".

RICHARD SPIROCHETE (V/O)
IT-WILL-BE-DIFFICULT-TO-ARRANGE-AS-BRIAN-IS-DEAF,-ENO-IS-BLIND,-AND-THE-OTHER-ONE,-WHAT-WAS-HIS-NAME? ANYWAY,-HE-IS-DEAD,-BUT-I-SPOKE-TO-HIM-A-YEAR-BEFORE-HE-DIED-AND-HE-WAS-VERY-KEEN-ON-A-REUNION-TOUR,-SO-I-HOPE-TO-INVOLVE-HIM-IN-SOME-WAY,-DRAPE-HIM-ACROSS-THE-DRUM-KIT-OR-SOMETHING. HE-WOULD-HAVE-LIKED-THAT. HE-WAS-A-VERY-FUNNY-MAN. WE-NEED-THE-PERMISSION-OF-HIS-WIDOW-BEFORE-WE-GET-STARTED,-SO-I-HAVE-MY-FINGERS-CROSSED. OR-AT-LEAST-I-WOULD-HAVE-IF-I-WAS-ABLE-TO-MOVE-THEM-INTO-AN-OVERLAPPING-POSITION. HA-HA. HA.

More 'SPINEBREAKING' vocals.

SONG
I still have feelings
Though my nerve cells aren't reacting
Because I did my back in
As I was spinecracking.

The song plays out. As RICHARD goes over the horizon, he says a synthesised "ERK!" as he falls off the edge of the world. It was not a hill, it was a cliff edge. Over this:

MORRIS (V/O)
But it wasn’t all hit-singles and elaphus-addictions for the wheelchair-bound in the Eighties. The disabiliatied were gradually being accepted in other forms of entertainment.

A shot of an early Eighties BBC2 ident cuts to the fast-moving title sequence of a “YOUNG ONES”-style sitcom, only that the characters are all in wheelchairs. MORRIS continues:

BBC television’s “The Mong Ones” was the first mainstream sitcom to feature regular characters with gangrene, spinal column paralysis and motor neurone disease, and only the third to be written by a man with brain damage.

The words “THE MONG ONES” appear at the end of the title sequence (the “N” in “MONG” is reversed) as it fades into an episode. In a grotty kitchen two wheelchair-bound students sit around a table; one, NEIL, is unable to move at all. Another, MIKE, walks around with a zimmer frame. There is a constant laughtrack throughout.

RIK
Oi matey! What’s for brekkie then?

MIKE
Cornflakes.

He pours a packet of cornflakes into a bowl in front of RIK, spilling them all over the table.

RIK
Blimey, cornflakes again. I wouldn’t mind but we haven’t got any milk.

MIKE
What are you complaining about? You couldn’t lift the spoon up to your mouth even if you tried.

While MIKE says this he pours some cornflakes into an IV drip attached to NEIL’s arm. NEIL struggles to speak.

NEIL
Mmmm-gggnhh-fffffnnngh-mmmaggggh.

MIKE
Nah, listen, we haven’t any milk. Special Needs Group took it all.

Shot of a puppet hamster with crutches, pouring some milk into a shot of vodka. He drinks it.

SNG
(Scottish accent)
Coh, that’s the stuff!

RIK
And another thing: there’s a proper dining room upstairs, why don’t we eat there, go on, answer me that, Mr Limpy!

MIKE
There’s a simple answer to that. Because none of us can climb the stairs! It’s a mystery to me as to why we bought this house in the first place. What was wrong with that bungalow we saw?

RIK
(snorts) That area of London was full of Tories, ploppy-breath!! Live there if you want, young fellow-me-lad, but don’t expect me to become Mrs Thatcher’s live-in lover!!

NEIL
Mmmmmmffgh-gnnnnngh-uggggggmmmmf-rfffffth-gggfh-mgumph-mgmmph.

MIKE
You can say that again! Anyway, I sent Spyv out for some milk earlier, so he should be back any second.

At this moment another character swings through the wall, wheelchair and all, smashing the set to pieces. We can see a camera crew through the hole in the wall.

SPYV
Hey spazzy–chops, I bought the buggering milk!

He squeezes it and it explodes everywhere, covering everyone with milk and sawdust. The laughtrack explodes in a huge climax of guffaws and MIKE looks in to the camera and shakes his head and shrugs. Cut to a third generation copy of a late eighties advert that features a family of four gathered around a table.

MORRIS (V/O)
But despite such sophisticated byplay those “differently disabled” among us were still being exploited by greedy, able-bodied fatcats!

We hear the characters in the ad speak. They are poorly dubbed.

BOY
What board game are we playing tonight, mum? Not Scrabble again?

MOTHER
(laughs unconvincingly)
No! I’ve got something different for us tonight!

She picks up a large box out of which she takes a table-sized plastic game. It is a large square, like a boxing ring, but it features a different plastic disabled person on each side: one is on crutches, one is a spastic, one is blind with a guide dog and the last being a small plastic orphan with a huge tumour in her forehead and holding a tiny plastic sign that reads “WILL PROSTITUTE ONESELF FOR CANCER MEDICINE”. Each has a large plunger coming out of their back.

BOY AND GIRL
(together)
Wow! “Hungry Hungry Crippos”!

The whole family gather around the game taking a side each. The BOY drops several dozen ball bearings into the centre of the game. A VOICEOVER starts. As it speaks the family play the game by hitting the plungers behind their disabled person. The figures move when the plungers are hit, trying to knock the balls into a small hole underneath them, knocking them in with their wheels or their sign. The spastic wildly bats his arms and the blind man’s dog grabs the balls with his mouth.

VOICEOVER
Yes, Hungry Hungry Crippos is the game any middle-class family can play to learn about the disgusting habits of the disabled and homeless without having to go anywhere near them!

BOY
(unconvincingly waving his arms in the air)
I won!

MOTHER
That’s my boy! Maybe you’ll grow up to become a disabologist yourself someday. And remember, nine pence from each game sold goes to help the Princess Diana Hogwash Foundation for Dead and Dying Children.

They both look into the camera and the “Hogwash” logo appears onscreen over this last sentence. It features an anthropomorphised pig with crutches and a shower cap giving the thumbs up.

BOY
I love those cripples, mum. Let’s play Hungry Hungry Crippos again!

They have another game. Caption: “HUNGRY HUNGRY CRIPPOS”. Over this:

VOICEOVER
Hungry Hungry Crippos. The newest game from Milkin Badley. (quickly) Only fifty-nine ninety-nine. Not suitable for under-twelves. Under-twelves featured in commercial are in actuality middle-aged midgets. Milkin Badley can not be held responsible for any crippling accidents resulting from the playing of this or any other board game ever made by anyone in the world ever. Your statutory rights have been affected.

Cut to a shot of a large white theatre with the “Hogwash” logo on the side of it. MORRIS is wandering around the car park, hands behind his back. As the camera pulls out we see a WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE LOOKALIKE.

MORRIS
(to camera)
But nine pence per game was not enough for the brave and tiny boys and girls of Hogwash, so in the early nineties they decided to fight back! (he takes his hands from behind his back to reveal he is wearing large red boxing gloves) With theatre! (MORRIS punches the SHAKESPEARE LOOKALIKE in the stomach. He doubles over and MORRIS gives him an uppercut to the chin, knocking him unconscious) Earlier this filming, I sent Libby Shuss in there (points to building) where she had a bit of a nose around, like a girl.

MORRIS walks off to his right and the camera follows. He passes LIBBY SHUSS who is standing with a microphone, ready to do her report. MORRIS walks on but the camera stops on LIBBY. She speaks:

LIBBY SHUSS
They say that all of us are born with a fatal disease, and that this disease is called ‘life’. (beat) They’re wrong of course. Only some of us are. (smiling) I’m not. (serious face) But these children (pull out to reveal that LIBBY SHUSS is now surrounded by hundreds of crippled and dead children. MORRIS is standing at the end) are all going to die within only a few months. Some are already dead.

She starts to walk left to where MORRIS was at the start so that all the children are out of shot. As the camera moves, MORRIS speaks:

MORRIS
Incidentally, don’t go thinking that I’m a dying child. I’m only here because I failed to walk far enough after performing my introduction to this piece, which was excellent by the way.

LIBBY SHUSS
(deadpan)
Yes Chris. It was. But not as excellent… as this.

She unrolls a poster and holds it up to the camera. It reads “THE Princess Diana Hogwash Foundation for Dead and Dying Children PRESENT: KELLER! THE MUSICAL. BASED ON ‘THE MIRACLE WORKER’ BY william gIbson and FEATURING the tunes of a dozen pop classics! ‘TERRIFIC FUN!’ – THE LANCET”. There is a picture of HELEN KELLER in a spotlight. She is on her knees and has her arms outstretched, Al Jolsen-like. We hear MORRIS bitterly mutter “Yes, it was, it was twice as excellent” as we cut to the dressing rooms behind a stage. They are full of ill children who are getting ready for a performance.

LIBBY SHUSS (V/O)
The Princess Diana Hogwash Foundation for Dead and Dying Children is a charitable trust which helps useless cripples such as these get jobs in the theatre and entertainment industries which would otherwise go to people who could dance without any form of medical equipment plugged into their veins. After last year’s success with ‘Reach For The Sky: On Ice’, they are performing their most ambitious production to date: A musical interpretation of the life of Helen Keller.

We see an actress silently picking out a pair of sunglasses from a choice of two. She mouths “Yes, these look the most pathetic” and takes them, trying them on.

I spoke to Fantazie Supermarche, the actress taking the inspirational title role.

FANTAZIE SUPERMARCHE is sitting on stage in a schoolroom set, wearing her period costume. She holds her dark glasses in her hand, occasionally chewing on the end. She is very pale because she is dying. Caption: “FANTAZIE SUPERMARCHE; DYING ACTRESS”.

FANTAZIE SUPERMARCHE
All my life I wanted to be an actress. Ever since seeing Kelly Lynch in ‘Road House’, acting’s been all I’ve ever wanted to do.

Brief shot of LIBBY SHUSS nodding and raising her eyebrow.

And last year, er, I applied to Sylvia Young’s Theatre School and, uh, they obviously liked me so they offered me a one-year scholarship. But I had to tell them I didn’t think I’d live that long, so here I am.

She coughs terminally. Cut to LIBBY SHUSS trying to nod sympathetically but actually getting quite disgusted at the increasingly guttural coughing. Cut to a close-up of FANTAZIE SUPERMARCHE dressed as a baby and sitting in a crib. Pull out to reveal that she is on a stage, and that standing by her are two actors, playing the roles of ‘KATE KELLER’ and ‘ARTHUR KELLER’. They speak in over-the-top American ‘Noo Yoik’ accents.

‘KATE KELLER’
Oh Art’ur, whadda we gonna do about our liddle goil Helen? She’s gotda Brain Fever, already!

‘ARTHUR KELLER’
Aw, shuddup a second, willya Kate? I put an ad in the Noo Yoik Times for a tooter, and she’s gonna arrive today here at noon.

‘KATE KELLER’
But what time is it now?

A large bell chimes and a large gobo of a clock appears on the curtain behind them. It is twelve. There is some dry ice from the right-hand side of the stage, along with some train noises. Out of the wings steps ‘ANNE SULLIVAN’, wearing dark glasses and a large black coat.

‘ANNE SULLIVAN’
Hiya folks! Now where’s the sprog I gotta tute?

‘ARTHUR KELLER’
Holdonasecond! You’re blind!

‘ANNE SULLIVAN’
Half-blind, I’ll have you know! Now will you accept me as a private tutor for your daughter or not?

‘ARTHUR KELLER’
Not! You, Miss Sullivan, are nothing more than a half-blind Yankee schoolgirl!

‘ANNE SULLIVAN’
So you think I’m not worthy, eh? In that case, I’ll have to ask you to listen to this!

Music starts, being played on one piano. It is “LIKE A VIRGIN” by Madonna. ‘ANNE’ starts to dance.

‘ANNE SULLIVAN’
(singing)
I travelled up to Alabama,
Somehow I made it here-ee-ere.
This should be enough to make me
Teacher Of The Year.

Dangerous
Is the bus
For all us
Impaired vis-ua-lly.
I nearly got killed,
Yeah, I near-ear-ly got killed,
And what do you call me?

KATE and ARTHUR KELLER start to tango. ANNE removes her coat to reveal that she is wearing a Madonna-esque silver basque as she launches into the chorus:

Hey! Half-blind Yankee.
Half-blind Yankee schoo-ool-girl!
Half-blind Ya-a-a-ankee.
Yet I could be
The one who’ll rock your world.
Whoo!

She starts to dance with HELEN KELLER. The music continues as we cut back to the FANTAZIE SUPERMARCHE interview.

LIBBY SHUSS
Who wrote the play?

FANTAZIE SUPERMARCHE
All of us. All of us did. We all contributed a song or a line or a joke, and those of us that didn’t, uh, they designed the sets or the costumes or something.

LIBBY SHUSS
And the songs, were they a joint effort?

FANTAZIE SUPERMARCHE
Well, yeah, but cos none of us can write any sort of tune, we had to use the music of old pop songs; “Like A Virgin”, “Don’t You Want Me”, “Relax” and that. (coughs)

LIBBY SHUSS
Did you write anything?

FANTAZIE SUPERMARCHE
No. No, I didn’t. I did write one song, to the tune of Genesis’s “I Can’t Dance”, to use at the end of the show, y’know: (ahems; sings badly) “I can't hear, I can't see, but I still passed my exams at uni-vers-it-ee-ee, tum ti tum, ti-daa” (Cut to a shot of LIBBY SHUSS nodding, thoughtfully) but, um, they said someone else had written something and since they were dying more urgently than me, y’know, they might not live until the end of the play’s run so, uh, they used her song instead of, um…

LIBBY SHUSS nods some more, before turning to the camera and smiling. Cut back to the stage. It is evening. ‘ANNE SULLIVAN’ is tucking the baby ‘HELEN KELLER’ into bed.

‘ANNE SULLIVAN’
Oh little Helen, you may never be able to talk but you’ve said more to me than anyone with fully-working vocal chords ever could.

She smiles before leaning back in her chair and falling asleep. A few seconds silence then:

‘HELEN KELLER’
Wa-tuh.

‘ANNE SULLIVAN’ awakes with a start.

‘ANNE SULLIVAN’
What was that?

‘HELEN KELLER’
Wa-tuh.

Music starts to play in the background, again on a single piano.

‘ANNE SULLIVAN’
(starting to smile)
What you say?

‘HELEN KELLER’
Water!

‘ANNE SULLIVAN’
(grinning)
Say it again!

‘HELEN KELLER’
(now standing up and smiling)
I want water!

‘ANNE SULLIVAN’
Hit it!

The music for “I WANT CANDY” by The Tremeloes/Bow Wow Wow plays in the background.

‘HELEN KELLER’
I want wa-tuh!
I want wa-tuh!

‘ANNE SULLIVAN’
(singing)
Yesterday you couldn’t do a thing.

‘HELEN KELLER’
I want wat-uh!

‘ANNE SULLIVAN’
But now you can speak and dance and sing.

‘HELEN KELLER’
I want wat-uh!

‘ANNE SULLIVAN’
What you’ve achieved is simply amazin’.

‘HELEN KELLER’
I want wat-uh!

‘ANNE SULLIVAN’
You’re a miracle of determination!

‘HELEN KELLER’
I want wat-uh!

Cut to LIBBY SHUSS backstage looking at people getting changed. A one-legged actor in period costume and wearing a curly fake moustache walks towards the stage, studying his script. He plays the NARRATOR in the play. LIBBY runs out in front of him, shoves her microphone up his nose and starts to interview him as if she’s asking a politician about his involvement in a well-publicised scandal.

LIBBY SHUSS
You, what are you and how-why?

NARRATOR
Well, I play the narrator of the piece. Um, I describe the action that happens on- and off-stage.

LIBBY SHUSS
Yes, we all know what a narrator is, thank you. Why are you needed?

NARRATOR
I’m needed because the play was originally far too long so it was drastically cut down by taking out some of the less essential scenes to trim it to a tight four hours thirty-six. My job is to describe these scenes, er, by…

LIBBY SHUSS
(interrupting)
Like what?

NARRATOR
Like what?

LIBBY SHUSS
Yes?

NARRATOR
Well, for example, there was a long scene about Helen Keller dumping her boyfriend, and he attempts to get her back by going to her window and shouting “Keller! Kell-eeeer!”, you know, like in that film, umm… that one. I was to play the boyfriend but (getting increasingly upset as he opens old wounds) I had my part completely cut off- OUT!... er, and now I’m only the narrator. My dear old mother would have been so proud. (a tear; composes himself quickly) That’s her in the fifth row.

He points out behind a curtain at the auditorium. There is an OLD WOMAN prominently featured in the fifth row. She waves to the NARRATOR and LIBBY, saying “Coo-ee!”. A man in the row in front ‘shhh’s at her. The NARRATOR is cross with LIBBY.

Now if you’ll let me onstage, I’ve already missed my cue.

He angrily pushes past her onto the stage, walking into a spotlight. In character he speaks to the audience:

NARRATOR
(speaks like a forties Movietone News voiceover)
Nineteen-oh-seven, and Helen Keller has submitted her finally-finished novel for publication.

He hobbles off, muttering bitterly. The lights come up on stage to reveal ‘HELEN KELLER’ standing in an office with a fat ‘PUBLISHER’ behind a desk (he is in a wheelchair and, like KATE and ARTHUR KELLER, speaks in a ludicrous American accent) and several ‘heavies’ standing at the back. She hands him a manuscript.

‘HELEN KELLER’
Here it is, sir. I hope you like it.

She tries to hand it to him but misses his hand and drops it on his foot.

‘PUBLISHER’
(hopping in pain)
Doooooohhh!! Now get outta here, ya dumb broad!!

‘HELEN KELLER’
(hand to her ear)
What?

One of the heavies shows her out the door. All of them move around the table as the ‘PUBLISHER’ picks up the manuscript and starts to read.

‘PUBLISHER’
(flipping through the book)
“The Story Of My Life”, whadda crock of sh…

Suddenly he becomes very engrossed in what he’s reading. The book’s good! Better than that, it’s great! The music for “PINBALL WIZARD” by The Who starts up in the background. The ‘PUBLISHER’ starts to sing.

‘PUBLISHER’
(singing)
When that young girl came in here,
I thought she was having a laugh.
Can’t hear a writer’s meeting,
Can’t sign an autograph.

But now that I start reading
I can see that she writes well.
Yes, that deaf, dumb and blind kid
Sure writes a mean nov-el.

The heavies start a choreographed dance routine around the guitar riff played, as before, on a single piano. Cut to stock footage of Princess Diana opening a building by cutting a large ribbon to much applause.

LIBBY SHUSS (V/O)
The Hogwash Theatre was opened by Princess Diana when she was still popular. As well as being the Theatre’s main benefactor, she was also the UK’s largest source of disabled and dying children. (cut to stock footage of Princess Diana shaking hands with some ill children) These children were all personally hobbled by the Princess Royal, and the most healthy was later to be set loose into the countryside where Ms Spencer would sportingly hunt it and eventually shoot it through the head. She once even tried to cripple her husband, the late Prince Charles, by hitting him over the head with a wine bottle…

Cut to that famous footage of Princess Diana hitting Prince Charles with a stunt bottle to rapturous applause.

…although sadly, in this case, she only gave him permanent brain damage, a condition unproblematic in being a Royal.

Shot of Prince Charles wearing a silly hat and dancing with some foreigners. This fades in to a blurry reconstruction of a PRINCESS DIANA LOOKALIKE getting into a car in a Paris tunnel, accompanied by a synthesised instrumental version of “CRASH” by The Primitives. A caption in the upper-right-hand corner reads, in tiny writing: “RECONSTRUCTIONISM”. Throughout this sequence, there is no Dodi Fayed. LIBBY SHUSS’s voiceover continues:

It was even rumoured that the Princess lost her life whilst trying to cripple two fully-operational French orphans by ordering her driver to run them over.

Over this, the LOOKALIKE orders the DRIVER of the car to run over TWO FRENCH ORPHANS who are standing in the middle of the road and looking pathetic. They run in the opposite direction. The car swerves to try and hit them. This happens a few more times. Throughout this sequence there are many extreme close-ups of DIANA’s mouth, hands, tiara, etc., as well as the DRIVER’s lower-class flat cap, and a martini glass that spills its contents all over the backseat during one of the swerves. There is a close-up of the DRIVER’s wooden leg.

Sadly, the driver was one of Diana’s, as she called them, ‘amployees’ and only had one leg, and half of one eye. This was not good enough for the awful, (audibly smiling) and smelly, French driving conditions and the tunnel eventually got the better of them, in a fatal way.

Over this are more close-ups of the crashing car, from more and more awkward camera angles, including a shot of DIANA’s gloved wrist, the car’s exhaust pipe, and the DRIVER’s nose. The final two shots are of DIANA’s horrified eyes, in which the tunnel wall is digitally reflected, and the entrance of the tunnel, out of which blasts an enormous explosion, bigger than it ever could have been. The flames disappear and after a few seconds of silence a tyre bounces out. Cut to a similar event happening in cardboard on the Hogwash stage.

In tribute, the crash was presented in a theatrical form by the Hogwash Theatre Group the year later. The Hull Echo gave it “three stars”.

The two FRENCH ORPHANS are dragged on stage and blindfolded. They are tied to two separate poles. The entire cast stand in front of them clutching guns, ranging in size from a handgun to an Uzi. On the side of the stage there is a tank. It looks like a Tex Avery cartoon.

At the end of the show…

We hear someone shout “Ready!”. The cast position their guns.

…two French orphans were killed so that this tragic loss could never happen again.

“Aim!”. The guns all move to face the ORPHANS. Pull out to reveal that LIBBY SHUSS is standing in the back row with her back to the stage and talking to the camera.

LIBBY SHUSS
It wasn’t the same two French orphans that killed Diana, obviously, but they (smiling) certainly bought a little bit of excitement to the people and children of Hogwash (makes philosophical face) and, at the end of the day, isn’t it always midnight?

She smiles, nods, and raises her eyebrow to camera to indicate that she is right. The same man who ‘shhh’ed the OLD WOMAN earlier ‘shhh’s her. We hear someone shout “Fire!” as we cut to a sign that reads: “KELLER! SULLIVAN! THE BLIND-AND-DEAF MINSTREL SHOW”. Pull out to reveal that it’s being carried by the NARRATOR from the ‘Keller!’ show earlier. He speaks:

NARRATOR
In nineteen-nineteen, Keller and Sullivan went on the road, desperate to educate the normal people about the prejudices which they had had cast upon them, which they did by performing traditional comedy sketches with a satirical edge for the freak show-going public. Despite being performed by two vision-impaired American schoolgirls, it was still much funnier than the second series of ‘Big Train’.

The NARRATOR goes. The music for “BAGGY TROUSERS” by Madness starts to play. ‘HELEN KELLER’ and ‘ANNE SULLIVAN’ run on stage, ‘HELEN’ carrying a toy parrot. All action in this scene takes place quickly and the girls sing their lines throughout.

‘HELEN KELLER’
This parrot’s dead, it cannot chat.

‘ANNE SULLIVAN’
But you’re stone deaf, you stupid twat.

‘HELEN’ throws the parrot away.

‘HELEN KELLER’
I would like fork handles please.

‘ANNE SULLIVAN’
Why d’you need candles? You can’t see.

‘HELEN’ starts to hop on one leg.

‘HELEN KELLER’
I would like to play Tarzan.

‘ANNE SULLIVAN’
Go away, I need a man.

‘HELEN’ turns around to show her arse to ‘ANNE’.

‘HELEN KELLER’
Does my bum look big in this?

‘ANNE SULLIVAN’
I can’t see, are you taking the piss?

Cut back to FANTAZIE SUPERMARCHE interview.

FANTAZIE SUPERMARCHE
This play’s gonna be great, yeah, the audience are gonna love it. The previews had people rolling in the aisles. Admittedly they were mainly epileptics, but still…

LIBBY SHUSS (O.O.V.)
Are you worried about dying on stage?

FANTAZIE SUPERMARCHE looks at her with a shocked expression, then thinks about her answer, then looks down sadly. Cut back to the play where ‘KATE’ and ‘ARTHUR KELLER’ are chatting to ‘ANNE SULLIVAN’.

‘ARTHUR KELLER’
Well, Ms Sullivan, Ah guess I owe you an apology (pronounced “appo-low-gee”). You truly were a worthy teacher for mah daughter.

‘ANNE SULLIVAN’
Why, thank you Mr. Keller.

‘ARTHUR KELLER’
(smiling)
Please. Call me Art. (he turns to his wife) Ya know what Kate? It just goes ta show…

One piano plays the music for “YOU NEVER CAN TELL” by Chuck Berry. ARTHUR sings:

‘ARTHUR KELLER’
When our daughter got Brain Fever I thought that she could never speak.
But Anne taught her to converse in little under a week.

‘KATE KELLER’
(sings)
She performed a minor miracle on our girl, Hel.

KATE, ARTHUR AND HELEN KELLER
“C’est la vie,” say the old folks, “it goes to show you never can tell”.

Everyone we’ve previously seen in the play comes on stage to sing the finale.

EVERYONE
(to the audience)
We hope you all enjoyed our little true-life fable.
Our moral is that strong beliefs make you able.

‘HELEN KELLER’
It just falls to us to bid you all a fond farewell.

EVERYONE
“C’est la vie,” say the old folks, “it goes to show you never can (big finish) teeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeell”.

The curtain comes down to much applause. The camera spins to reveal that CHRISTOPHER MORRIS is sitting in an aisle seat near the back of the auditorium, clapping loudly and flatly, as he does at the end of the “Sex” episode of “BRASS EYE”. The applause dies down but MORRIS continues to clap repetitiously. He turns to the camera to speak, continuing his applause.

MORRIS
“’C’est la vie,’ say the old folks, ‘it goes to show you never can tell’”. Well, tell the old folks that they’re wrong, because I can tell, and I can tell you that Helen Keller was blind, which supplies an excellent segue into our next news portion. Austin Tasseltine. Hit me with your blind man’s stick!

That same MAN from before turns round and ‘Shhh’s again. There’s a few more seconds of MORRIS clapping intensely before a sudden cut to black. After a second the hands that were covering the camera are removed. They belong to a cheery AUSTIN TASSELTINE, currently in extreme close-up. The camera pulls out on a helicopter, getting further and further from AUSTIN, causing him to shout increasingly louder.

AUSTIN TASSELTINE
Hello! If you were really blind, you wouldn’t be seeing me now. It would be dark, like what it was before. (the camera pulls out to reveal that AUSTIN TASSELTINE is standing in the eyes of the Cerne Abbas giant, one leg on each eye. He is really stretching to achieve this.) But why aren’t you yourself blind? Well, in America, a recent scientist has stated his theory that the only blind people in the world… (the camera zooms into his face. He is in a different location and no longer shouts, but smiles stupidly) …are black. I flew out to his poolside apartment in California to speak with (smug) this scientific visionary.

He smiles daftly. Cut to a “SPEAK YOUR BRAINS”-style interview with a non-blind, non-black, Yorkshire pensioner in the middle of Tottenham Court Road on a wet Wednesday afternoon. AUSTIN TASSELTINE is slightly off-screen, holding the microphone. He speaks with his usual silly voice.

AUSTIN TASSELTINE
Professor, good to see you at last.

MAN
Yes, you too.

AUSTIN TASSELTINE
Well, maybe “see” is the wrong word, what with you being blind! Eh! Eh!

MAN
Oh, yes, ha ha.

AUSTIN TASSELTINE
Ha ha ha ha ha ha, very good, (looks at notes; to himself) very good. (to MAN) Now, tell us a little about your theory.

A pause.

MAN
Um, what theory is this then?

AUSTIN TASSELTINE
Why, your theory, professor. The one where you say that the only way one can suffer from blindness of the eyes is to have multiple negro genes running throughout one’s (silly voice) bah-dee.

While he says this AUSTIN hands the MAN a card.

MAN
Ah, yes, well, er, I have this theory…

AUSTIN TASSELTINE
Yes.

MAN
(reading off the card; monotone)
…that the only people than can be blind are those in a state of being a black-born Yankee baby-chile whom is an negro. This is because the big lips-stroke-curly hair gene and watermelon diet causes scraping of the part of the retina known as “Iama Far-quit”, which in turn leave the coloured person as a dark-glasséd walker of the florescent-jacketed labrador. It happened to me, and it happened to my cousin, Stew Pidkun-Ted.

Over this, a caption: “PROFESSOR NATHANIEL PIGMENTOSA; SCHOLARTRIST AT THE AMERICAN UNIVERITY OF RIDICULOUS AND PROFITABLE ONE-WEEK THEORIES”.

AUSTIN TASSELTINE
What was his name again, professor? Say it into the camera.

MAN
(reading; to camera)
Stew Pidkun-Ted.

AUSTIN snatches the card back from the MAN when he’s finished reading.

AUSTIN TASSELTINE
Mmm, mmm, excellent. Most blind celebrities are black, aren’t they?

MAN
Uh, why, yeah. Like, you got your Ray Charles, your Stevie Wonder, your Blind Lemon Jeff--

AUSTIN TASSELTINE
(interrupting; confused)
I’m Ray Charles?

MAN
What?

AUSTIN TASSELTINE
You just said that I was Ray Charles.

MAN
No I didn’t. I said “your Ray Charles”.

AUSTIN TASSELTINE
(misunderstanding)
Yes. Well, can I just tell you that I’m not Ray Charles. I’m not.

MAN
No, I know.

AUSTIN TASSELTINE
I’m Austin Tasseltine.

MAN
Yes, I know that. I know you’re Austin…

A beat.

AUSTIN TASSELTINE
(irritated)
Tasseltine.

MAN
Tasseltine, that’s it.

AUSTIN TASSELTINE
(getting rather shirty)
Yes. Yes it is. (trying to remain calm) Now, you are… look, I’m a bit jolly cross you didn’t know my name just then.

MAN
(looks at his feet; mumbles)
Mm, I’m sorry about that.

AUSTIN TASSELTINE
No, s’alright. After all, you are an American, can’t expect you to have brains as well as looks. (sighs; looks at his notes; calms down) Now, you are a famous blind and black man yourself, aren’t you not?

A slight pause as the MAN looks cautious, considering his answer.

MAN
Ummmmm, yes.

AUSTIN TASSELTINE
Tell us, what’s it like? What is it like?

MAN
Oh, awful. Absolutely awful.

AUSTIN TASSELTINE
To be blind or black?

MAN
Both.

AUSTIN TASSELTINE
(shocked)
Both?

MAN
Both.

AUSTIN TASSELTINE
Wow, so it’s really awful, yeah?

MAN
Definitely. (pause; AUSTIN nods, urging the MAN to say something) Uh, it’s a pain that never ends.

AUSTIN TASSELTINE
The only thing… I can imagine being as bad as that… is when a small chicken gets caught… in a car’s sprocket hole…

MAN
(nodding)
Oh, yes, yes…

At this point, AUSTIN TASSELTINE is gradually coming out of character and turning back into CHRISTOPHER MORRIS.

AUSTIN TASSELTINE
…causing it a slow horrible death by splurging its gut-gizzards all over the neutralised opium sponnnnnnnnnnge-ah?

AUSTIN stretches this last word out for as long as he can. The MAN speaks over him.

MAN
Yes, exactly, it’s rotten. Bloody, bloody rotten.

AUSTIN TASSELTINE
Would you help these chickens if you could?

MAN
Absolutely. It’s a horrific thing to do. The people who own the cars should be locked away without a key.

AUSTIN TASSELTINE
Not even a key that didn’t open their cell, say, a tur-key?

MAN
No, not that key, not any key at all. Never.

AUSTIN TASSELTINE
Now here’s a teaser for you: would… you… help these chickens even if they were neither blind nor black?

MAN
(nodding)
Yes.

AUSTIN TASSELTINE
(instantly)
No. (beat) No, professor. Think about the question again and consider your answer carefully: (very slowly and deliberately) would you help… these chickens… even if… they were neither blind… nor black? Nnnn…

The MAN looks confusedly at AUSTIN, who is trying to get him to say “no”.

Nnnn…

MAN
Sorry?

AUSTIN TASSELTINE
It’s quite alright, don’t do it again. Nnnnn…

MAN
Nnnn…

AUSTIN TASSELTINE
Nnnnn…

MAN
Nnnnnnnnnno?

AUSTIN puts one finger on his nose and points at the MAN with the other hand, as if playing charades.

AUSTIN TASSELTINE
(indicating that the MAN’s got it right)
Mmmm!

MAN
No. No, I wouldn’t.

AUSTIN TASSELTINE
So, you’d only help those farmyard animals who, like yourself, are black, blind and American?

MAN
(confident)
Yes.

AUSTIN TASSELTINE
And does the same go for humans?

A beat as he thinks.

MAN
Well, I wouldn’t go that far.

AUSTIN TASSELTINE
Yes, you would.

MAN
Oh, yes, I would, yes.

AUSTIN TASSELTINE
Professor Pigmentosa, thank you for your theory, it has challenged my blinkered, white, visually-able world, and I hope it will others.

AUSTIN outstretches his hand for the MAN to shake. The MAN sees it and shakes it gregariously.

MAN
Oh, you’re very welcome, and thank you too.

AUSTIN spins around to face the camera, still shaking the MAN’s hand throughout his next link. As the link goes on, the shaking gets more intense and the MAN’s face shows his discomfort.

AUSTIN TASSELTINE
(to camera)
Well, iris-stened to what the professor said, and I hope you lenst us an ear as well, in essence becoming one of his pupils. But the question on everybody’s lids is this: will his h-eyebrow theory be retina-ed in the memory or will people lash out at it, deeming it cornea than most, causing it to become a short-lived cataract-strophe? Back to you, Chris, in the stud-eye-o.

AUSTIN lets go of the MAN’s hand, does a 180° spin on his heel and walks in a ridiculous fashion across the busy road, almost getting himself run over and causing much beeping of car horns in the process, and trots straight into the ‘Time Out’ offices without missing a beat. The MAN confusedly watches him walk away, and then stands around bewildered for a few seconds before walking off-camera. Loud ‘news’-style music starts as we cut to CHRISTOPHER MORRIS standing in a computer-generated street on a computer-generated curb.

MORRIS
Like those crippled in a car crash, we too have been split into two separate parts...

A large computer-generated car drives into shot and hits MORRIS. He collapses out-of-shot in a bloody heap. The camera swings down to reveal MORRIS' torso separated from his legs. Blood is pouring out of both parts. The blood forms itself into vague letters.

MORRIS
(smugly)
You've seen our top half (indicates self) but boy, have we got legs! After the break:...

The blood forms the words: "AFTER THE BREAK...". The legs get up and run towards the car. The camera sweeps up and back into the car's windshield which displays VT of Professor Stephen Hawking.

MORRIS (V/O)
Political correctness gone absolutely bananas as Professor Stephen Hawking launches his new line in audio book erotica.

Fade into the cover of an audio book of "PANDORA" by Jilly Cooper with the legend: "READ BY PROFESSOR STEPHEN HAWKING" emblazoned across it in gold.

STEPHEN HAWKING (V/O)
THEN,-SPITTING-ON-A-NAIL-BITTEN-FINGER,-SHE-REACHED-ROUND-AND-PLUNGED-IT-DEEP-INSIDE-HIM. RAYMOND-GAVE-A-GROAN-OF-PLEASURE-AND-CAME.

MORRIS (V/O)
Ted Maul indulges in a fight to The Deaf!

Cut to an interview with a DEAF MAN in the deaf street.

TED MAUL (O.O.V)
(quickly)Youradeafright?

DEAF MAN
...what?

TED MAUL
Well, I think that gives us our answer. (DEAF MAN looks confused) How are you a deaf? From birth?

DEAF MAN
No, I answered my mobile phone in the pub once but had accidentally pressed the ‘SpeakerPhone’ setting as I held it to my ear. (mimes demonstration) Those fings are lethal, youknoworramean?

TED MAUL
(immediately)
What?

Sudden cut to TED MAUL interviewing a posh woman in an office, McGREEVY DICKINSON (Ms).

TED MAUL (O.O.V.)
You’re not at all a deaf, you ashamed?

MCGREEVY DICKINSON
No.

A beat.

TED MAUL
Right, but don’t...

MCGREEVEY DICKSON
And if I was I certainly wouldn’t tell you.

TED MAUL
(disappointed)
Ohh.

Cut to JOHN LYDON messing about in an office between takes.

MORRIS (V/O)
We listen to what celebrities think about the latest disability to hit the kids...

JOHN LYDON
(to someone off camera) Oh, no, don’t give any money to Scope, they’re a bunch of spastics.

MORRIS (O.O.V.)
(as runner) Right.

MORRIS (V/O)
And David Quad cracks open the mind of (strange voice) Richard Branson.

Cut to the interview studio. DAVID QUAD is interviewing RICHARD BRANSON as they sit around a circular table. Caption: “DAVID QUAD; INTERVIEWNIST”.

DAVID QUAD
I’m sitting here with the, uh, bearded megalomaniac that is Richard Branson… I’m not wrong in calling you that, am I?

RICHARD BRANSON
No, no, “bearded megalomaniac” just about covers it, ha ha ha.

Caption: “RICHARD BRANSON; VIRGIN”

DAVID QUAD
Right! (manically) Heh-heh-heh-heh-heh-heh-heh-heh-heh-heh. But, no, seriously, you… run ‘Virgin’ airways…

RICHARD BRANSON
Yup.

DAVID QUAD
…of which each aeroplank has a picture of a… well, a sexually desirable woman on the outside shell-tube.

RICHARD BRANSON
(laughing)
“Sexually desire…”

DAVID QUAD
(deadpan)
“…able”, yes. Well, did you ever consider putting a picture up of a middle-aged… male… polio sufferer, for instance?

RICHARD BRANSON
Well, no….

DAVID QUAD
…and if not, (make popping sound with his mouth) why not?

RICHARD BRANSON
Well, the company’s called ‘Virgin’…

DAVID QUAD
(quickly)
Yeah, like a big stupid woman with an intact twat…

RICHARD BRANSON
(not hearing)
…and so we couldn’t very well have used a middle-aged polio sufferer, or any sufferer for that matter…

DAVID QUAD
(quickly)
Epileptic monkey?

RICHARD BRANSON
Exactly, yes, as they’re, well, (smiling) they’re not virginal enough, so to speak.

DAVID QUAD
What about a monger who snapped his nob-strap in a bike attack? Surely he’s a virgin as well?

RICHARD BRANSON
(thinking)
Yeeeeees, maybe, but the image is wrong, you know, you said it yourself, people will prefer to look at a sexy girl than at a… (tries to find the words) a…

DAVID QUAD
Crippled half-cock.

RICHARD BRANSON
(not quite sure what he just heard)
What?

DAVID QUAD
(quickly; blasé)
You, you think your customers would rather enter a flying metal death-box with a big-titted six-year-old girlie printed on the side than a middle-aged monstrosity of nature with an abyss of legs and a tiny broken glans-piece.

There is a very very long pause.

RICHARD BRANSON
Um…

Sudden cut to an extreme close-up of MORRIS' head.

MORRIS
Part one! Do your ending now!

Scary theremin music starts to play. Pull out to reveal that MORRIS' decapitated head is hanging by itself in a medical lab that looks like it came out of a Universal horror movie of the thirties. The top half of his head is missing and most of his brain can be seen. The brain is connected to several electrical wires which spark and whirr occasionally. Various wires and tubes pump blood into the stump of his neck via an artificial heart attached to a wall. Attached to MORRIS' throat is also an artificial lung. Blood drips out of the neck onto the floor. He screams like a banshee and the camera zooms into his mouth, filling the screen with black. The words "END OF PART ONE" appear in traditional ‘BRASS EYE’ flames for a split-second before fading out.

ADVERT: A “Channel 4” logo appears over the image of a big dark green studio containing lots of odd objects on tables, some large screens, a studio audience and a silhouette of a man sitting at a big desk. His image is on the screens. The lights go up to reveal a bewigged Scottish man in a navy blue suit. He is very similar to Gordon Burns.

THORDEGREE BURNS
Hello, I’m Thordegree Burns and it’s time to play… The Krypple Factor.

Loud, plinky-plonky news music plays in the background. Cut to a shot of an outdoor obstacle course containing a climbing frame, tyres on the ground, those hanging ring things, etc. Over the next voiceover we see six people in wheelchairs and crutches rolling and hobbling into shot trying to get through the course. They get stuck at various places on the course, some of them falling out of their chairs.

THORDEGREE BURNS (V/O)
Have you ever wondered what it’s like to be physically disabled in a variety of ways? Well, find out… on The Krypple Factor. We theoretically cripple you for one round and if you lose, we actually cripple you for real.

The camera zooms in on one of the contestants who is stuck upside-down on the hanging rings. Dissolve to his face in a studio. The camera pulls out and turns the right way up to reveal that he is stretched out on a large rack, a spotlight on his bare knees. The studio audience look on, as a large man in an executioner’s mask (who we can tell is THORDEGREE BURNS by his suit) is holding a sledgehammer. He gives the hammer two practise swings towards the knees as the audience chant: “One… Two…”. On the count of “Three” we cut away to an extract from the show, with THORDEGREE sitting at his desk.

THORDEGREE BURNS
Your time starts… now.

We see five people in a row trying to make a structure out of a selection of small plastic pieces. They are using their mouths and chests to lift the pieces as their hands are tied behind their back. In the corner is a counter timing down from 30 seconds.

THORDEGREE BURNS (V/O)
Ha ha, look at them there, the fools. Each week you may watch a selection of the viewership try to increase their Krypple Factor beyond the realms of their ability.

The timer now reads “7”. Most of the contestants are finishing or have finished, except one who looks worriedly at a man in executioner’s mask (THORDEGREE again) clutching a large shiny axe. He almost finishes but then the structure collapses. The counter reads “1”. Cut to another show extract, back with THORDEGREE BURNS at his desk.

THORDEGREE BURNS
On to the Observation Round now. Watch this video carefully, I’ll be asking questions at the end of it.

Cut to a row of four people all blindfolded, carrying white sticks and with guide-dogs sitting by their sides, facing a videoscreen. Cut back to the original shot of THORDEGREE BURNS at his desk, only now he is sweating and his wig has slipped a bit.

THORDEGREE BURNS
And don’t forget to watch our Comic Relief Celebrity Krypple Factor Special where stars such as, but not actually, Pierce Brosnan, Frank Skinner, Claire Sweeney and Madonna will all be fighting hard to go home with all their limbs intact and show that they can prove that they have what it takes to prove that they have… The Krypple Factor.

Cut to a graphic. Computer-generated shapes, much like the ones from the original Channel Four ident only made of liquid silver, zoom into a diamond-shaped frame in the middle of the screen to form a three-dimensional image of the symbol for a person in a wheelchair. The words “THE KRYPPLE FACTOR” rise out of the ground, á la the title for “THE CRYSTAL MAZE”.

THORDEGREE BURNS (V/O)
The Krypple Factor. New series, only on Four, starting... (audible grin) after the break.

We hear a limb-cracking snap and a girly scream (MORRIS). Channel Four ident. Black.

SPONSORSHIP MESSAGE: A groovily-dressed MAN is sitting in an armchair in a disco. Generic techno music plays. He is very depressed. He takes a small plastic container out of his trouser pocket. Extreme close-up of the packet. It reads: “SPASTIC-TACS”. The MAN makes an interested “Hmm” noise, opens the pack and drops one of the mint tablets into his mouth. He makes a pleased chewing face, then goes into a massive epileptic fit. Limbs and mints fly everywhere as the man falls to the floor, constantly gyrating.

AUSTINE TASSELTINE (V/O)
Brass Eye Special is sponsored by SpasTic-Tacs.

Extreme close-up of the packet. It is in the SHAKING MAN’s hand, rattling around the screen. Mints catapult out of the hole in the top.

Once you’ve got it, you just can’t stop shaking.

The words “BRASS EYE: PART TWO” appear in the lower right-hand corner of the screen. Cut to:

PART TWO: MORRIS is in the studio. Through the power of computer graphics he appears to be joined at the front of the hip to an identical CHRIS MORRIS so that they are facing each other. They both have their arms crossed. They both turn their heads to face the camera to do the next link. They both speak at the same time, saying the same words, but are slightly out of sync with each other.

MORRISES
So you came back. You’ll wish you hadn’t as we tell you the news.

Cut to stock footage of a police conference. A POLICEMAN speaks but we can’t hear him as a singular MORRIS reads his words over him.

MORRIS (V/O)
Police in the Midlands have held a press-do to tell us that the Venus De Milo Killer is still at large.

POLICEMAN
...large.

Photo of an ugly man with a moustache.

The Venus De Milo Killer, real name Gummo Marber, has been known to kidnap small-breasted, big-hipped women, before taking them home where he strips them naked, saws their arms off and dips them in plaster of paris for his sexual kicks.

Cut back to the police conference footage.

POLICEMAN
…’armless.

Cut to footage of a large warehouse full of Venus De Milo statues.

He was thought to have disappeared after police found this warehouse full of his ex-girlfriends three months ago, but it turns out he’s back and this time he’s got a Picasso fetish…

Ominous footage of young girls walking around a public park, morphing into that Picasso picture of a woman crying. Scary music plays.

...so if you see a tall-aged, middle-height male man walking around public parks carrying a small metal funnel and a sachet of battery acid, then please:

Studio. MORRIS looks directly into the camera, pointing.

MORRIS
Don’t call us. (puts on policeman’s helmet with blue flashing light on top) Call the police!

MORRIS turns away from the camera and faces a different camera. With the cut we are no longer in the studio but in a completely different exterior location, a grotty housing estate. MORRIS starts to walk past a row of cripples, each looking increasingly disgusting and weird until the last one is just a ball of flesh with two arms sticking out, one begging for money, the other holding up a sign reading “WIFE AND THREE MEATBALLS TO SUPPORT”. MORRIS, still wearing the flashing helmet and his arm stuck in a permanent pointing position, talks:

For the past few years the upper-middle-classes like myself have kept shoving the disabiliated aside, continually pushing like a woman with no womb giving birth to the Elephant Man’s egotistical brother.... wearing a hat.

OLD MAN IN WHEELCHAIR
(mumbling)
Uh, spare ten pence, officer? Huh?

MORRIS turns around the OLD MAN and pushes him violently down some steps. He continues undisrupted as the man’s cries get increasingly distant.

MORRIS
But over the past few weeks this opinion seems to have transferred into a complete turnaround.

Footage of a large building.

MORRIS (V/O)
Doctors have been hurriedly converting old veterinarian practices into 'Spastication Clinics'...

Cut to a bronze plaque on the side of the building which reads: "DR REDZONE KEANOBUNT, SPASTICATION CLINIC. AS SEEN IN 'HEAT' MAGAZINE", followed by David Frost's telephone number.

...where perfectly healthy people can go and get lobotomised for a small fee. I asked one doctor why he was deserving of our media attention.

Caption: "DOCTOR REDZONE KEANOBUNT; WILL CRIPPLE YOU FOR LIFE."

DOCTOR REDZONE
The public is very pleased with resurgence of stupid people in the public eye. I mean, when the average man, or indeed woman, no sexism here (chuckles), um, yes, when a person sees someone such as, uh, John Mortimer... or Simon Schama, for example, they start to feel stupid and indeed inferior. It's only when they see people like Ian Wright or-or-or-or Ant and Dec, for instance, and they suddenly feel superior, you know, thinking "I'm cleverer than that!". And so they feel happy, it's a great ego-boost for them.

ADVERT: We see half a dozen semi-beauties in a colourful waiting room, decorated with tinsel and coconuts. DOCTOR REDZONE slides in using chromakey.

MORRIS (V/O)
Doctors such as this one, in fact this very one, have made televisional commercisments to create awareness of their services.

DOCTOR REDZONE
(in advert; he is quite nervous but trying to sound American; to camera)
Hey! You! Too smart, huh?

Cut to an office. One man is writing sums. The other people see him and start laughing and pointing and throwing balls of paper at him. The DOCTOR slides in and out of shot quickly, saying:

Co-workers think you're a bit of a wisearse?

Cut to a schoolroom. The teacher hands out marked exam papers. They all read low marks except one boy's, which has "97%!" written on it in big red marker. The other children throw things of increasing size at him, from paper aeroplanes to pencils to binders to a machete knife which imbeds itself in the boy's desk. He looks depressed. The DOCTOR slides from top to bottom, saying:

The few friends you have want you dead?

Cut to DOCTOR REDZONE at desk. He points at the camera.

Then let's get stupid!

'MAMA WEER ALL CRAZEE NOW' by Slade starts to play in the background. The DOCTOR gets up and the camera pulls out to reveal that he has two bikinied ladies on each arm.

Yes, for just twelve minutes and five-thousand pounds of your life, I can give you a Designer Lobotomy of your choice, as seen in such films as "One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest" and "Planet Of The Apes". Not the Tim Burton one, the original.

He turns around one of the girls to the camera to reveal her profile. We can now see she has half her hair missing and a large downward-facing crescent-shaped scar on the side of her head.

Yes, you too can have one of these for just the price of a small speedboat. But what's that? Too sad-looking, you say? No problemo! Problem. Just look at lovely Lisa here.

He turns the other girl around. She has a similar scar but this time it faces up, like a smile.

Yes, with my patented "Gladotomy" you can have a smile on your face every hour of the day! And it doesn't make you any less ignorant! Just watch: Lisa, what's the capital of Paris?

LISA
(blankly)
What's a day?

DOCTOR REDZONE turns to camera and shakes his head, chuckling.

DOCTOR REDZONE
(to camera)
And for just five-hundred pounds more I can exclusively add eye tattoos, custom-made for each customer based around their own eyes!

He takes out a marker and draws two dots above LISA's scar, roughly where eyes should go. It looks awful, like one of the Mister Men after a serious accident.

Mmmm, spastacular! So why not come and see me today? You won’t be disappointed! Or if you are, you won’t even remember it happened! Isn't that right, Lisa?

LISA stares blankly and drools a bit.

Darn-tooting!

An address runs a long the screen briefly before we cut back to the doctor being interviewed.

DOCTOR REDZONE
(being interviewed)
Well, it's not a safe practise by any means, but it is extremely expensive. And I personally believe that the disappearance of one’s awareness of one’s surroundings and the loss of sight in one eye is a small price to pay for being permanently in fashion for the whole of summer.

MORRIS (V/O)
(interviewing, in a weasly voice, á la “Horrorcaust”)
Yes.

Shot of the DOCTOR in his surgery with an anesthetised female patient whose head is half-shaved and sitting in a barbershop chair. The DOCTOR is examining a phrenology bust.

MORRIS (V/O)
(normal voice)
You would think that celebrities would be queuing up for this treatment in a vain and downright silly attempt to look more popular, and you'd be right.

The DOCTOR gets out a jig-saw and turns it on. The patient opens her eyes. Cut to a photograph of David Beckham.

Oxford graduate David Beckham used to have a job as a quantum physicist before taking the operation to please his wife, worried that he was too bright for her. Tragically, David's I.Q. is now in double figures and he can now only get work as a professional footballer. Other celebrities who recently had the "crip-snip" include Dale Winton,...

Stock footage of Michael Portillo smiling.

...Sir John Harvey-Jones,...

Stock footage of Leo McKern as Rumpole.

...and Bo’ Selecta star (laughter in voice) Leigh Francis, in his Geri Halliwell mask.

Stock footage of Vikki Lucas walking along the street with her fat face. Cut to a long shot of the studio. MORRIS is standing motionless in a ‘monged-out’ pose. He drools occasionally but never blinks. He is standing in front of a large Venn diagram, the two circles of which are the wheels of the wheelchair pictures that appear on ‘disabled driver’ stickers. The circle on the left reads “CRIPPLED-OUT MONGS”, the circle on the right reads “1970 – 1979” and MORRIS is standing, hunched, in the loop in the middle. The camera zooms in to his face as he talks.

MORRIS
Of course in the seventies, being a lobe-schmucker was not rewarded like it is today, but punished, quickly and harshly, as we can see happening in the story of Joey Davidson, a boy who from birth was plagued with Tugwell Arwen disease from birth and had his life documentented in the award-nominated documentadrama “Joey’s Not Dead” which, although originally on a rival channel, has now had it’s rights bought by us so that we can show you live extracts over the next three minutes.

Cut to a grainy Seventies documentary series, shot on 16mm film. We open on a pan around a kitchen table where a family are eating, starting with the MOTHER.

MOTHER (V/O)
Well, when we first discovered that our boy had Tugwell Arwen disease we were mortified, you know, who wouldn’t be? But we decided not to let it affect our everyday lives, and now we treat him as we would a normal human being.

Over this we pan across from the MOTHER eating to the FATHER eating, then to a small girl (the SISTER) eating, followed finally by a large plastic isolation booth which contains JOEY DAVIDSON throwing food around. He is wearing a specially altered rainbow-coloured jumper with very long sleeves and hundreds of pockets, which contain bottles of pills, syringes, spoons, lipstick, a copy of MAD Magazine #161 with Doctor Who on the cover, Leo Sayer’s “ONE MAN BAND” album, a knife, and some Sticklebricks, amongst other things. There are three mittens stapled onto his sleeves. He throws some risotto at his SISTER. It splatters spectacularly on the plastic curtain of the booth. Cut to the MOTHER, FATHER and SISTER sitting unhappily together on a musty old couch. JOEY DAVIDSON’s booth, still containing an over-excited JOEY, can be seen in the corner. He shouts a rude-sounding word occasionally.

MOTHER
It was very hard to raise the money to pay for a one-point-four children family, Joey being the point-four. We used to have to steal the belts of old hairy men to sell to heroin addicts, y’know.

JOEY DAVIDSON
Wankel rotary engine…

MOTHER
It was quite easy to pull off, so to speak, and they can’t run after you cos their trousers’d fall down.

JOEY DAVIDSON
Rubbed on wog’s neck…

MOTHER
I’m not proud of it. Ok, I am a little bit. But Joey’s a good boy at heart, never had any trouble--

JOEY DAVIDSON
Portillo…

MOTHER
…with the law, never been bullied. Some of the local schoolboys steal his wheels occasionally, for go-carts, but apart from th--

JOEY DAVIDSON
Emperor Takeshita…

MOTHER
…from that, he’s perfectly able to live in the outside world.

THE YOUNG TED MAUL (OOV)
(interviewing)
And the booth?

MOTHER
Oh, that’s just to keep him out of the way.

JOEY DAVIDSON
Christ’s fat cock…

He throws some more food. Cut to a DOCTOR in an office. Caption: “DOCTOR GRUVIS CINDERHAART; THE DAVIDSON’S FAMILY QUACK”.

DOCTOR GRUVIS
Yes, Joey is an extremely lucky little cash cow BOY! Boy. I... detail his remarkable story in my best-selling book and he has helped me make a lot of money PROGRESS... er, in helping me, erm, and the medical world to make great advances. IN MEDICINE, medicine, and, er, we are truly enriched INDEBTED to him for... that. (careful with his words) We are all... now... very... ri-- proud. (beat) Booker prize. Ooh, what a give-away!

Cut to inside a disco, we see JOEY DAVIDSON dancing wildly and flailing his limbs like Jack Douglas’ Alf Ippititimus character. The music playing in the background is “BLAME IT ON THE BOOGIE” by The Jacksons, specifically the lines “I just can’t, I just can’t, I just can’t control my feet”.

MORRIS (V/O)
After this documentary went out, Joey’s life was mostly ignored by the public, and rightly so. His single epileptic tip-toe into the limelight occurred when he won the regional freestyle discotheque dancing competition, although he later admitted that he was only going to the bar for a packet of peanuts. (subtle drum-riff in the background) Until…

Sudden cut to stock footage of the Hollywood sign accompanied by a tinny fanfare, followed by lots of stock Hollywood shots: Grauman’s Chinese Theater; a female Marilyn Monroe lookalike; Dame Judy Dench; some dog shit; a t-shirt that says “I went to LA and all I got was a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame”; a lamp; Tony Danza; some homeless people sleeping in the boxes TV sets come in; Rodney King being beaten by policemen; a male Marilyn Monroe lookalike; Tony Danza again; and finally zooming in on the doors of a cinema.

…in 1987, BlueTit Pictures decided that the life of a young spaz-hole and his fictional wife would make one hundred and seven minutes of fascinating entertainment, and a biopic (pronounced “b’yop-ik”), ‘Sweet Child Of Spine’, was released.

Cut to widescreen film of two figures standing on the moonlit porch of a rustic log cabin. We can tell that AL PACINO is playing the disabled ‘JOEY DAVIDSON’ character because he walks with a slight limp.

Joey cameoed briefly but studio executives decided he couldn’t play himself as that would be mad. Teri Garr played his fictional wife Diane whilst Joey himself was portrayed by (silly voice) Al Pacino.

The camera zooms in for a close-up. ‘DIANE’ moves towards a semi-paralysed ‘JOEY’ with a jug of orange juice and two glasses.

‘DIANE’/TERI GARR
(patronising)
Okay, Joseph, tonight we’re going to have a quiet night in at home. First we’ll watch an episode of ‘Family Feud’ and then play a game of Ludo. I’ll move your pieces if you feel you don’t have the strength…

She puts a glass in ‘JOEY’’s hand and pours orange juice into it.

‘DIANE’/TERI GARR
…and later, if you’re good, I’ll get the dog to chew up your food for you before you eat it. How’s that sound, hmm?

A pause. ‘JOEY’ crushes his glass in his fist and throws it against the ground.

‘JOEY DAVIDSON’/AL PACINO
Goddamn it, Diane! Once I was Liverpool’s (prounounced “Lie-verples”) young pianist (pronounced “penist”) of the year, now I can’t even open a goddamn soda pop without one of my goddamn fingers falling off one my goddamn hands!

He walks up to a conveniently placed outside coffee table, covered with photos, music boxes, nostalgic memorabilia, etc. He then knocks them off with both hands and hobbles off the porch and down the path to an adjacent road. He holds his arm up.

‘JOEY DAVIDSON’/AL PACINO
Taxi!

A yellow New York taxi drives up. AL PACINO walks to the window.

‘JOEY DAVIDSON’/AL PACINO
(to the driver)
Take me to the airport!

Close-up of the driver. It is the real JOEY DAVIDSON making his spazzy cameo.

JOEY DAVIDSON
Mmmm-ppppgh-ggguuuuuuuh-pft.

AL PACINO gets in the back of the cab, which drives off with the door open and him hanging on the back yelling at the house. The driver in these long shots is clearly not the real JOEY, but a stunt driver.

‘JOEY DAVIDSON’/AL PACINO
(yelling)
Goddamn it, Diane, you muckyfunster! I will be famous! I will have a gold record! I will realise my dream! Hoo-hah!

As the cab drives off into the moonlight:

MORRIS (V/O)
In the film he dies. But in real life, Davidson won an Academy Award for Best Adapted Disease.

Stock footage from an Academy Awards Ceremony. The sound fades in on much applause as Whoopi Goldberg is dubbed to say “…oey Davidson!”. JOEY, in his wheelchair, is pushed to the podium by TERI GARR in a sparkly dress. Footage of various celebrities applauding. JOEY makes a big important speech.

JOEY DAVIDSON
Mmmm-hmmmmph-dmmp, ssssssssphmp mmb mmmp. Fffffffffrppp-splal-frp, dhhhh-bap, spib-mmmmphfy doosh.

Pause. Cut to the audience to see various real-life celebrities in tears and nodding. JOEY continues.

Mmmmthdy-phhlnky scuck, essssssssen-mdunk ptwap. Esnghtr, wicco mmmumbly-dppppphes spllllt ftunmck! Bsssshis crvggso, spungren. Mmmph dph.

He wheels off-stage. Cut to the audience giving a standing ovation, including a close-up of the real AL PACINO applauding wildly.

MORRIS (V/O)
What rubbish indeed. But this speech so ingratiated the spazster with the American entertainment industry that he quickly got his own cartoon out of it…

Some animated clouds. Out of this flies a yellow caption: “THE DAVIDSONS”. It is sung by a chorus of off-screen voices. Cut to inside a house animated in Flash. Inside are yellow cartoon representations of the Davidson family: MOTHER, FATHER, and SISTER. Not JOEY yet. The voices are all American and bear no relationship to the family we saw earlier.

MOTHER CARTOON
Hey, Pops, where’s that Joey got to? It’s nearly dinner time. And it’s meatloaf night.

FATHER CARTOON
I’m missing meatloaf night? Why, that little...

SISTER CARTOON
Hey, don’t quadrasplaz, dad. Look: (points out window) Here he comes now.

On a small golf cart the JOEY cartoon character drives in, still unable to move but wearing a backwards baseball cap, added by the cartoon-makers to look cool but actually making him look incredibly ill. He says his catchphrase, with the rhythm of “Don’t Have A Cow, Man!”

JOEY CARTOON
Mmmph shbbuh fn’w, kkl!

Huge audience laugh, identical to the one from ‘THE MONG ONES’ earlier. The family all look at him with pride except dad who leaps to choke him as we cut to:

A big audience at a rock concert. They are carrying ‘STEPS’ banners, for some reason

MORRIS (V/O)
The series flopped after twenty-seven seasons, but Johnny lifed his live-long dream when he started a band. He teamed up with the unsuccessful independent rockers Syndrome Of A Down...

Picture of Syndrome Of A Down: It is a black-and-white still of a young Morris and Iannucci looking moody.

...and became the group Joey Hates Spazz, where they became extremely big in Belgium doing Bob Dylan covers.

Cut to a close up of the audience as before. We see now that they are VERY BELGIAN. Cut to the stage. JOEY is in a specially adapted chair, made for rock and roll. Well, it has “ROCK ‘N’ ROLL” written on the arm in Tipp-Ex. He sings over the group’s backing:

JOEY
Mmmmmphap eeeeeeemwyph nn nn nn, plooty spammo wwwwndry nissssssst...

He sounds exactly like Bob Dylan. Audience cheers. Cut to a close-up of JOEY ‘dancing’ (his chair rocks back and forth) in slow motion.

MORRIS (V/O)
(cheerily)
What next for Joey? Nothing but (sudden solemnity) death.

Picture freezes on JOEY looking particularly at death’s door. BRASS EYE IDENT swirls up the scene and morphs into an extreme close-up of MORRIS’s face. Extreme extreme close-up, showing just his nose or something before it zooms out too fast for a television camera to read.

MORRIS
Later, we’ll be talking to the politician accused of hating dwarves.

Cut to an M.P. at a dwarf-tossing competition. Behind him midgets are being thrown in the air like javelins. As each one hits the ground an audience cheers increasingly loudly.

M.P.
I, I have nothing against dwarves, nothing. One of my favourite films is Time Bandits.

A particularly fat dwarf hits the ground and there is a sudden cut to studio. MORRIS is driving down the length of the studio, standing on an electric wheelchair with a pogo-stick-style handle, steering it as if it were a Segway. It 'whrrr's softly as he drives towards camera, past three enormous black-and-white portraits of Gareth Gates, the last of which is of Will Young. He speaks directly into the camera.

MORRIS
(solemnly)
But first, we've just heard that television talent show failure Gareth Gates has died. The stuttering starlet expired while attempting a parachute jump for the charity Children With Disabilities But No Parachutes. The trouble was first noticed during his training, where he was told to count up to ten before pulling the ripcord. Gates only got up to 't-t-t-two' before his soft, malleable body became liquid fleshmulch on the dirty, dirty concrete. Your taxes paid for that concrete so, in effect, you the nation killed Gareth Gates. (angry) I hope you choke on his manslaughter in your sleep tonight. (solemn again) In tribute, the rest of tonight's progcast will be performed in absolute silence.

A four second pause. MORRIS then starts moving his mouth but no sound is heard. This carries on for a few seconds until the scene pulls out to reveal that this MORRIS is on a large screen and ANOTHER MORRIS is in the lower-left hand corner, as if this were a signed programme for the deaf. He signs as he talks.

ANOTHER MORRIS
For the deaf, this is what it's like every second of their disgusting lives. But what is it really like? It's like this. (indicates screen; by now the original MORRIS is cupping his mouth and shouting, still silent) As I just told you. Believe me, in my business I've seen it. But if you think me so untrustworthy that I would lie to the nation on a live news-media-entertainment-package-magazine, then firstly, get out and thirdly, take a look at this. It's a report that Ted Maul co-produced and proves my spoken words to be frothing over with truthnesticity.

Cut to TED MAUL in a giant ear. He talks to camera as it subtly zooms in.

TED MAUL
If you were a deaf you wouldn’t be hearing me now. You’d be hearing this: (pauses and points upwards to air) nothing. The deaf can never fully appreciate the sheer beauty in design of objects like this. (pulls a Big Mouth Billy Bass out of his jacket, lets it sing for several seconds, then talks over it) What a waste. I decided to talk – loudly – to the woman behind the Proceeds to Aid the Radically Deaf and Occasionally Non-hearing, or ‘PARDON’ for short. But not for long.

Looks to camera smugly. Then looks at the continuously singing fish with annoyance. Cut to a WOMAN in an office. Maul interviews her. Caption: “McGREEVY DICKINSON (Ms); NOT DEAF” [NOTE: on the cut there is a 1/30th-of-a-second caption reading: “ALL BLIND PEOPLE ARE CUNTS”.]

MCGREEVY DICKINSON
The deaf have a tough time of it. They...

TED MAUL (O.O.V)
(interrupting rudely)
In what way?

MCGREEVY DICKINSON
(slightly thrown)
Well, for a start, the word ‘deaf’. If you are hard of hearing, this word can sound like ‘chef’, ‘breath’, ‘leaf’, or even ‘dead’. If someone came up to you and asked if you were ‘dead’ (makes airquotes with one finger of each hand) what would you reply?

TED MAUL
I would say no and ask them to step outside.

MCGREEVY DICKINSON
Yes, but many deaf people don’t have that option as they have non-functioning ears that would adjust badly to a sudden stepping outside of them, isn’t it? That what my society does: we buy big hairy men to stand around the deaf all day, protecting them from anyone who comes near them and, ultimately, killing them.

TED MAUL
What, even bus conductors?

MCGREEVY DICKINSON
Especially bus conductors. Bus conductors are one of our worst problems in the aiding the hearing umpared. We’ve killed hundreds of the little bastards and I like to think we did it bloody well.

TED MAUL
(reasonlessly confrontational)
What do you want, a medal?

MCGREEVY DICKINSON
(matter of factly)
Yes.

TED MAUL
Oh.

Cut to an elaborate computer animation of a tumour growing in the studio. Eventually the tumour grows so big MORRIS’s face appears in the centre of it. He speaks:

MORRIS TUMOUR
This show is a cancer growing on your news. Let’s spread with this fatal report.

Cut to scary grey-tinted footage of various city streets. [NOTE: all the footage in this sequence is silent except for mood music.]

MORRIS (V/O)
(solemn; Michael Burke)
The disabled have much to worry about. They are beaten;

Shot of a man being pushed out of his wheelchair by youths.

uncared for;

Shot of a young ruffian on a bike riding past an elderly gentleman and nicking his walking stick. The old man spins and collapses, crushing a squirrel.

and generally mucked about with.

Shot of four young boys sitting on two wheelchair-bound cripples, racing them down a hill, using walking sticks and IV drip stands to propel their ‘racer’ along.

(‘confused’ brightening up) And yet so much is done to help them.

Footage suddenly lightens up, much warmer than before, as if shot in Technicolor. A black woman carrying a Sainsbury bag is passing a bus stop, by which a limping man is having difficulty getting onto a bus. She puts down her bag and helps him on as he clutches the bus’s handrail. As she puts her hands under his ankle to help him up the bus drives off with the man on it, leaving her at the bus stop clutching this man’s artificial leg. She looks at it disgusted, then thinks of something, puts it in her bag and walks off.

People are more tolerant to the crippled now. Just five years ago, this woman would have pushed that man under that bus.

Shot of an eleven-year old brownie helping an old man up some stairs to his door. She looks around nervously, and goes inside also, closing the door behind her.

But now even the most able bodied members of society can look at and in many cases even touch those with physical problems without spewing all over the flid in question but even once.

A big strong man is helping a little old lady with her shopping cart cross the road by picking her and her cart up and lifting them above his head, dropping much if not all of her shopping as they traverse. As they reach the other side of the road he puts her down and she thanks him profusely. In the background, a car has slipped on one of the old lady’s loose mangos and crashes into another car, which crashes into a truck, which explodes into a building signposted cheerily: “AUNTIE JO’S CHILDCARE, ORPHANS, PUPPIES AND BABY-CHANGING HOME”. Various bits of puppy and baby fly everywhere (including into the lady’s shopping cart), while MORRIS speaks over it:

Lovely people may be everywhere, but beware: for there is one thing designed to help that causes more lives than it could possibly ever try hope to avoid saving in a way which hinders... I’m sorry, can we start again?

The footage rewinds, playing upside-down. As it starts to play again:

(hurriedly) Lovelypeoplemaybeeverywherebut beware: For there is one charitable device designed for helpfulness but ultimately indulges in unhelpfulness. Grave unhelpfulness.

Huge dramatic chord over a huge dramatic close-up on one of those charity boxes for the blind shaped like children.

(more serious than cancer) Charity. Cocking. Boxes.

A montage of those child-shaped charity boxes shot and lit eerily from beneath as hurried, mind-fucking jazz plays over the top. MORRIS continues:

By day these are harmless-looking plaster representations of the childian form, but by night, in the dark, they are easily mistakable for the real things. (shot of a charity box morphing into a real, similar-looking child) As such, people have been trying to slot English currency into the heads of real children...

Over this last sentence, a reconstruction of a MAN scratching away at the BOY’s head with a fifty pee piece. It clearly hurts the BOY but the MAN is relentless.

..leaving the children with... (fade into an x-ray of a caved-in skull inside the outline of a boy’s head. Although the skull is human, the outline of the head is Bart Simpson’s) ...broken skulls. (fade back to the scene where by now the MAN is quite forcibly inserting the coin into the boy’s head, wrestling with him on the ground, in a violent, and non-sexual, way) The main perpetrators of this tragic kid-cracking are those least likely to notice the difference twixt plastic flesh and pubeless skin: the partially sighted and blind themselves, the very people the boxes are trying to help. Irony, indeed, has been writ ironic.

Cut to a jolly title sequence: Quantel effects fly bright yellow letters about a blue bubbly website background until they land and read: “THE DON’T CAVE IN KIDDIES CAMPAIN [sic]”. MORRIS’s voiceover continues.

But someone is here to help: M.P. Stallion Eminem (cut to still of someone with his jacket over his head exiting a brothel) has launched the Don’t Cave In Kiddies campaign, designed to alert awareness to the people. Top celebrities the world over have given their full commitment to appear in this promotional video,...

Under this, a montage of Jamie Theakson sitting down; Tammi Grey-Thomson being miked up by MORRIS dressed as a runner; Jon Culshaw looking seriously at his script, hand on chin, reading glasses on nose. He tuts a heartfelt “God, how awful”; and finally, John Lyndon saying “I hope this fucking finishes soon, I’m starving”. The next scenes show these people being interviewed in fast cuts.

..the major coup of which must have been Jon Culshaw, roped in here to do his (silly voice) ‘voices’.

JON CULSHAW
(impression; grinning smugly in and out of character)
Hello. I’m Tony, uh, Blair, uh, and I and my wife Cherie don’t like seeing kids in trouble so please... listen. To what John Lyndon has to say. Thank you.

JOHN LYDON
(clearly not giving a shit)
‘Allo. Put that down and listen to me. Kids everywhere are having their craniums smashed in by good people. Honest people. But by being charitable towards the blind you actually create more blindness that there is to help. (trouble reading those last few words) ‘Ere’s Tangy [sic] Grey-Thompson with more.

TAMMI GREY-THOMPSON
(wearing her medal, as always)
Hundreds of children every year are permanently damaged by old men with big coins. Permanently. Do you know what that means? These skulls can’t be fixed with a plaster or a piece of Detolled bandagery. These children have to live with this bone-fault for the whole of their lives. A child living with this disease for their entire lives. How will they get a job? The fact they are children will be negligible in trying to get a job at a software company when potential office bosses see the appearance of a caved in cranium on their curriculum vitaes.

JAMIE THEAKSTON
(sitting on a chair back, legs apart, hands together. You know the pose)
Have you seen these children? I have, and it’s not a pretty sight. The tauntings they get in the playgrounds: if being called “Convex Bonce” isn’t bad enough, the children often use the large indentation in the forehead to play with their finger skateboards (holds one up with two fingers), causing the child in question even more pain and anguish and tyre-treads in their already most wonky noggins.

TAMMI GREY-THOMPSON
Learn the difference between a human child and a piece of plaster. If you can’t bring yourself to do that then, for God’s sake, use notes. They couldn’t even hurt a badger. I mean, do you think it’s fair that small children are being put into wheelchairs for life just because (said angrily, as if it’s the worst thing anyone can do) some insensitive monster decided on a whim to give money to charity?

JOHN LYDON
Fair? In a nun’s cock!

JON CULSHAW
(in hat and scarf; Tom Baker)
I am the Dwoooooooorctweeeeeer!!! Not even my Tardis and I can go back and prevent fools from cracking the skulls of young, innocent boys, and one girl, thereby causing much work for the real doctors. If you want them to see the future, then help them, help me, help us, help... The Doooooctaaaaaaar, bwauh bwauh bwauh hauh hauh...!!! (off-screen MORRIS shouts “Cut”. A brief shot of CULSHAW as he comes out of character and looks really depressed. Cut to:)

TAMMI GREY-THOMPSON
(she is holding up the Bart/skull picture form earlier; to someone off-screen)
Why is it Bart Simpson’s head?

MORRIS (O.O.V)
Oh, that’s for, uh, appeals to kids.

TAMMI GREY-THOMPSON
(none the wiser)
Oh.

JAMIE THEAKSTON
(holding up the Bart pic)
This is what a child’s skull looks like after merely three minutes rubbing with a twenty pence piece. Twenty pence and three minutes did all this. Imagine if it had been a pound and half an hour. (nods seriously)

JON CULSHAW
(out of character; to someone off-camera and pointing at script)
I don’t really do him...

MORRIS (O.O.V.)
(as runner)
No?

JON CULSHAW
No, that’s not me. That’s someone else. Its... (confused)... I don’t... If you... um...

MORRIS (V/O)
Oh. Well, could you do it for us now anyway?

JON CULSHAW
Yeah, alright.

Jump-cut to:

JON CULSHAW
(wearing big glasses; impression)
Oi! Moi name. Is Michael Caine. I don’t want you to scrape their bloody skulls off! (takes off specs; out of character) And this is me. Please, if you do want to give money to the blind, do it directly. Run up to them and their labradors in the street and force the money into their pockets if you must, but please: Don’t be cruel. Don’t use charity boxes.

JOHN LYNDON
I may have once been the king of punk, but this is one Anarchy In The UK I can do without. (out of character) No, sorry, I’m not reading that. I’m not. Cut that there. (makes ‘I’m not doing it’ motions)

JOHNNY VEGAS
Johnny Vegas here to quickly say: Save a cranium – Don’t stick your pay-in-um.

JAMIE THEASKTON
(sitting in a ‘cool’ way)
Think of it: your head, or your child’s head, smashes into fragments of thin bone, because of people’s ignorance. If there is one thing we must not tolerate it’s ignorance. Heck, children who have had their brains smashed are rattling, rattling as they walk on their way to their school, their clubhouses, their discos. And think of that: imagine being in a disco with three-hundred broken-skulled children. Every time the crowd say ‘Bo Selecta’ it would sound like a bull in a Chinese shop. Think about it. (He pauses, looking ‘cool’ towards camera. Off-screen MORRIS yells ‘Cut’. THEAKSTON’s faces collapses to confusion.) Chinese shop?

JON CULSHAW
(impression)
Fwank Bwuno ‘ere, telling you clearly: Don’t put dat-in, or kid’s skulls you be crack-in’, knoworramean, ‘Arry? Knockout! Braugh hwauh hwauh!

JOHN LYNDON
(reading off autocue)
Just listen: Learn the difference between a human child and a piece of plaster. If you can’t bring yourself to do that then, for God’s sake, use notes. They couldn’t hurt a (suddenly and apparently shocked by the idiocy he’s reading) badger?! (shakes it off, back to professionalism) Remember, kids: If you want to give to the poor, don’t be a Pretty Vaca-- No, I‘ve told you, I’m not reading that sort of thing. It’s a fucking mockery. (He starts to walk off. MORRIS, as runner, tries to reason with him: “Mr Vicious, just one more--”) No, no, I’ve had enough. Fuck this. Fuck the children. Let ‘em fix ‘emselves. Fucking ‘ell...

As he walks off the camera stays in its fixed position. Some scratchy mic noise as his clip-on hits the floor. The ‘BRASS EYE’ ident morphs in and morphs out to reveal MORRIS in the studio surrounded by all who took part in tonight’s broadcast, even people that shouldn’t be there, people who couldn’t be there, and people who don’t exist: the BASKETBALL TEAM; the HAIRDRESSER; the FAT WOMAN in a wheelchair (now sporting a natty bouffant); the SHOPKEEPER and the BLIND MAN in the Elton John spectacles; the DOCTORS who were defibrillating a shoe; the SHOE; the DANCING CRIPPLES from the Ministry Of Noise; ROLF HARRIS with three legs; RICHARD SPIROCHETE; the PIANO MAN; ELTON JOHN; the cast of ‘The Mong Ones’; the WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE LOOKALIKE; LIBBY SHUSS; the cast of ‘Keller!’, on of whom is clutching FANTAZIE SUPERMARCHE’s urn; the PRINCESS DIANA LOOKALIKE; AUSTIN TASSELTINE; DAVID QUAD; THORDEGREE BURNS and what’s left of THE KRYPPLE FACTOR CONTESTANTS; the SPASTIC-TACS BLOKE; the M.P.; the OLD MAN IN A WHEELCHAIR; SIMON PEGG; DOCTOR REDZONE KEANOBUNT; JOEY DAVIDSON and his FAMILY and his BAND; DOCTOR GRUVIS CINDERHAART; AL PACINO and TERI GARR; TED MAUL; McGREEVY DICKINSON (Ms); and PROFESSOR STEPHEN HAWKING, plus a hundred crippled children and teens. MORRIS is giving his final round-up:

MORRIS
Since that report went out, absolutely nothing has happened proving that television shows such as these have no effect on society whatsoever. As such it has been decided that this broadcast will be is the last television show ever, and how better to go out then with M.S....

MORRIS suddenly has a worryingly convincing epileptic fit, foaming from the mouth, limbs flailing. He collapses out of vision. The camera tilts down to reveal his motionless body (save for a small twitch in his left toe). He is now wearing a white tuxedo with a black shirt and white bow-tie, topped of with a white top hat. His eyes open suddenly.

...our mmMusical ssSpectacular!

1930s MGM musical music starts to play. He stands. The camera tilts up to reveal that everyone is now wearing a white tux, including the girls who also have deep cleavages and stockings. They start to perform an elaborate Busby Berkeley-style dance number as they all sing a Cole Porter version of ‘SPASTICUS AUTISTICUS’ by Ian Dury and The Blockheads: “I'm spasticus, I'm spasticus, I'm spasticus autisticus”, etc. On each line we see a shot of different characters singing and dancing. Halfway through the second chorus, along the bottom of the screen run the CREDITS:

At this point a quick series of cuts of the shows key players:

MORRIS
(singing smugly)
Hello you! Out there, in Normal-Land.

TED MAUL
You may not comprehend my tale or understand, you dopey cocks.

LIBBY SHUSS
(sexy as fuck)
As I crawl past your (flicks hair) window give me (runs tongue along lips) lllllllucky looks. (raises eyebrow)

AUSTIN TASSELTINE
(over the top, really rocking it!)
You-you-you can be my body, yeah! Ahhhhhh, but you'll never, you’ll never read my... (fake enigmatic) books?!

This last word comes too late as by this point everyone has started singing the chorus again. More CREDITS:

As the credits roll, the dancing gets more and more complex and Berkeleyesque. By this point the entire cast have formed themselves into a giant high-kicking ring, which from an above camera looks like the ‘disabled’ sign, with it’s ‘wheel’ constantly rotating in a manner reminiscent of the spinning wheel which exploded into the opening titles. From this high angle, a camera zooms in quickly. In a blink of a second we realise that the camera is not zooming in quickly, it has detached and is dangerously falling from the ceiling. The dancers panic and the camera lands on and kills CHRISTOPHER MORRIS, who was in the circle’s direct centre. We see all this from the camera’s P.O.V. The music quiets down and becomes and instrumental. As the final CREDITS run, we see within a CG frame, an interview: MORRIS, off-screen save for his hand and microphone, is interviewing a genuine DYING BOY in his hospital bed.

MORRIS (O.O.V.)
So, you are... dying? Of what?