That could take forever, sergeant.
The murderer's on the other side of the county by now.
Wrong. l think the killer's in this room.
- Oh, come off it! - You confused sod.
l've examined this conference centre
and an intruder couldn't gain entry from the outside.
So, it has to be someone on the inside.
Someone Dr King would regard as harmless.
Quick, the standard lamp's legging it! Oi, you, get back here!
- Michael! - Quick, he's getting away.
- Try and cut it off. - (Woman yells) Run, Michael!
Damn! Standard lamps know how to drive cars.
(Siren wails)
(Crashing)
(Siren wails)
Right, out of the car, you're coming with us.
Get out of the car, don't mess me about!
(Yells) Michael! Michael, no, no!
Oh, Michael!
(Sobs) Oh!
Why would a standard lamp want to commit homicide?
That's just stupid.
OK, break him up for firewood.
You know, our imagination is a fantastic thing.
Using your imagination you can come up with any image you like in your head!
You can imagine a great big fat cheese aerial.
A pasta scarf, a spoon as head of Channel Four,
a monk in the shape of an apple.
You can imagine all the world's sausage dogs getting together
to recreate a very, very low Great Wall of China.
Or you can imagine the cast of Cats being shot at dawn. Just imagine.
- (Man) 'Fire!' - (Gunfire )
(Gunfire )
It's because we can do aII this and animaIs can't,
that makes us better than animaIs.
That's why I come down to the zoo once a day to Iaugh at the animaIs...
Tosser.
...and taunt them with things that show
how inadequate they are compared to us.
Look. lt's a pen that writes in ten different colours.
You can't even write. l mastered this when l was three.
Just Iook at these birds
struggIing with some straightforward books by Germaine Greer
and not knowing what to do with a cIarinet.
lt's our imagination that distinguishes us from the animals.
lt allows us to come up with amazingly complex things
like Dundee or Shirley Bassey.
The most complex thing an animal can do is chomp or get run over.
lsn't that right?
That's why if you put Shirley Bassey in front of us and some animals,
we would applaud her and give her singing contracts,
whereas animals would just use her as somewhere to piss.
(Phone rings)
- Hello, Television. - We need to beef up the schedules.
How did ''Who Wants To Be A Millionaire?'' do last night?
- 1 7 million. - What about the making of it?
21 million.
What if we cancelled ''Who Wants To Be A Millionaire?''
and put out an entire season
of ''The Making Of Who Wants To Be A Millionaire''?
- (Woman) Yeah! - Very good!
Hang on, though. The making of all of it, or the making of the best bits?
- (Man) l like that. - What are the best bits?
When Chris Tarrant takes the cheque saying, ''We don't want to give you that!''
That's funny.
What if we cancel ''Who Wants To Be A Millionaire?''
and put out a series...
(Man) l know what you're gonna say.
''The Making Of The Bit Where Chris Tarrant Goes
'''We Don't Want To Give You That.'''
- You are so good at television. - We're all good at television.
? We're good at teIevision We're so good at teIevision
? We're so good at teIevision You're so good ?
We are so good at television.
(Woman) 'Now, on BBC One, live urine sampling from lnnsbruck.'
Maybe we're letting our standards fall without us noticing.
l say that because last month l made a gardening programme, which is fine,
but l remember thinking ''Let's try not to make this too dry.
''Let's broaden the appeal'' Now l just think ''What on earth was l doing?''
Hi, l'm in the Channel Four garden for some Swearing On The Lawn,
where we show you how to plant and grow
'floral arrangements shaped like swear words.
'To show us how to do that, we've got our profane gardener, Peter, here.'
What's the first profanity you've got?
- Balls. - Balls. Let's have a look at those.
'We've put this on a stand, hanging, white nicotiana and petunias...'
l can remember we all thought ''Yeah, it's all right.''
- 'What have we got here?' - 'Shit on a glass.'
- This is quite a big one. - 'l planted these, last week of April.'
- 'And what have you got here?' - 'Piss flaps.'
(Armando ) 'What have you done with it?' (Peter) 'l used the French marigold.'
'And this, in the first S of piss, what have you used there?'
Oh, that's an interesting little plant, it's a campanula
with the sepal and the petal being both coloured.
'That's all for this week. We'll leave you with this week's swearing in cress.'
- (Doorbell) - Hello, Hugh!
l was worrying whether l'm becoming one of those dullards
who cack on about things being better in the old days.
- Got anything to add, being old? - No.
Hugh, how did you amuse yourself in those days?
We didn't have hundreds of television channels in those days.
We had to make our own entertainment from the basic Sky package.
No one every watched Sky News.
Those were the days when we still had Rumbelows.
- Was there much entertainment? - The music was different then.
Mike Oldfield had just brought out Tubular Bells 4.
He said he did it to get away from the Tubular Bells 3 thing,
that'd been hanging over him like an albatross.
Last night I went to the opera, to reassure myseIf
that we can stiII come up with something more sophisticated
than Mike OIdfieId.
I was at the RoyaI Opera's new production of Ibiza Uncovered.
? l'm going to shag the rep
? l'm going to have him on the beach by Thursday
?' l think there are more Australians here this year
? God, l haven't slept for three days but l don't care
? The club's now charging 30 pounds admission
? Do they still have the sex show at Manumission?
? No, but Paul Oakenfold's on the decks
? Oakey's on the decks
? Oakey, Oakey, Oakey... ?
As the baritones Iit their farts,
I wondered what was wrong with our imagination.
Had we reached the stage where we accepted aImost anything as art?
Now, while the bride and groom sign the register,
there'll be a short demonstration of skateboarding skills.
- Oh, that is lovely. Look at that. - That is really good.
Oh, yeah, go on!
Oh, nearly! Nearly, that's very nice.
- There you go, mate. - Lovely.
As you we can see, it looks like a naked man bending over doing the washing up.
(Applause )
By now I was scared,
so to convince myseIf I couId do better, I wrote two poems
which I tried out at a IocaI art centre.
''As she grimly walked away, 'l'm leaving you' she said
''and l had nothing new to say, like the second album by Portishead.
''Girlfriend in a coma with a face like Hana Mandlikova
''whenever she served to stay in the match, oh, yeah.''
The poems were shit.
One for Simon Schama's talk on the lncredible Hulk's Underpants please.
Five pounds please.
At the art centre, I can see everything,
from an exhibition of squid Iaid out in the shape of Geri HaIIiweII,
to a puppet show about the Moroccan post office.
Here I can ceIebrate the fact that everything is art.
This chair is art, since it's an exampIe of design.
Design is stuff with curves in, Iike this designer stretcher.
(Screaming) Argh!
lt's interesting that anyone who calls themselves an artist
is allowed to be very precious.
lt's not as if we let butchers storm out of their shops
because the lighting isn't right,
So they can go off whoring with other butchers
and come back at two in the morning, drunk but inspired,
and start to chop brilliantly.
- (Phone rings) - Pentagon, lncident Control.
(Man) 'This is Derek Attlee, the British playwright.'
Commander, l have a British playwright on the line.
Put him on speaker.
This is the US Military Command, what do you want?
(Atlee ) 'l've written a play. lt says some pretty intense things.'
lntense?
(Atlee ) 'lt'll shake people up. Question everything.'
- What do you mean by everything? - (Atlee ) 'Everything.
'From the top to the bottom. Everything.'
l see.
(Atlee ) 'l'm gonna put it on upstairs
'at the Hen and Chickens Pub, lslington, North London...'
Got it.
'...unless you give me three million dollars.'
- Hold on. - He's bluffing.
But he said it was gonna question everything.
- We can't give in to these people. - We can't take the risk.
All right. We're gonna fly into the Hen and Chickens. You'll get your money.
- What time does it start? - (Atlee ) '7:30.'
That's tight for us. Can you make it later?
(Atlee ) 'No. We're sharing the space with a production of School For Scandal.
'lt starts at 1 1 :00. We have to be out by 9:00. lt's tight. We can't go any later.'
All right, we'll be there.
(Atlee ) Bring the lights up quicker
because it's just done in that moment. l want you, snap, straight up.
When Mary says...
- So, this is the Hen and Chickens. - Yeah. lt's a good space.
- Have you cancelled tonight's show? - Er...no.
Contractual reasons - they could sue me, we've sold a lot of tickets.
- l've changed the script, it'll be cool. - What's your play about?
A family coming to terms with their butler's autism.
- ls this autism some kind of metaphor? - l don't know.
- Will it be a metaphor tonight? - No.
Glad to hear it.
(Woman) Alex, your butler's autistic.
- (Man) What's that to do with you? - (Woman) Nothing.
(Woman) Listen to you, you're like a small talking mirror
or a speaking magnet.
- (Audience laughs) - This play is really terrible.
- l know. - l mean, really bad.
Yeah. l think we're safe.
(Man #1 ) What are you doing with all that milk?
(Man #2 ) l'm making butter to see if it'll melt in your mouth.
And later, l'll be showing you how to plant jizzflakes.
l've reached a dead end.
l've been searching for happiness, love and the perfect man
and l'm not gonna find it.
l'm never gonna find someone who understands what's going on in my head.
- Which is why you feel suicidal. - Yeah, exactly.
- So what are you gonna do? - l'm gonna do it.
- l'm gonna leave a note, that's decided. - l see.
l wanna leave something that will make them sit up and listen.
- Something more than... - Noise.
- Yeah, noise. - Too much noise in this world.
Yeah, there is.
- Shall l show you what we've got? - Yeah!
- This is the engine room, welcome. - Thank you.
l fed a draft of your suicide note into the system,
to show you what we can do with it.
This is Steve. This is Louisa.
- Hello, nice to meet you. - Nice to meet you.
l passed your note round the office and got everyone to chip in.
Let me show you what we've come up with.
Just to start, this part about mother and no excuses,
l thought we could justify this to the right like that.
That sort of emphasises how marginalised you've come to feel.
Oh, that's good.
''Along the way l lost myself'' - there it goes.
(Laughter)
This part about the cheapest burial with no friends from school -
l thought we could adjust the kerning on that.
- What's kerning? - lt's the space between the letters.
- Here we go. - lt's gone tight.
Sort of knotting up inside your head, the tension.
That's really good, cos it does feel like that.
This part about Steve not being worth that amount of pain. Whoa!
He will hate that so much. That's brilliant. l love it.
Excellent, that just leaves the final bit.
This part, if you wanted to e-mail it to your friends and family,
we thought we could introduce... animation.
Oh, my God, l so love it!
You are gonna blow them away with that.
We'll press on with this
and we should have that ready next week if you're planning to do it then.
l wasn't planning to do it so soon.
But best to have some idea about the time.
lt's up to you, it's your funeral.
l would stay away from Christmas and Valentine's Day.
- You'll get drowned out. - Good idea. l'll wait till after that.
But if you do get suddenly anxious, here's my card.
lt's got my direct line. We can speed things up for you.
- That's really kind. - No problem.
- Thanks Louisa. - Thank you.
- Tell all your mates. - l will tell everybody.
- l'll see you in the new year. - Bye.
Back at the zoo, I was finding it more difficuIt to taunt the animaIs
with things that made them Iook inadequate.
I'd start with stained gIass and take if from there.
But once I'd reached the CharIeston,
I began to run out of anything quite good.
(Fish hums tune to ''Don't worry, be happy'')
This was because the onIy stuff I can actuaIIy buy now is baIIs and cIubs
from the hundreds of massive goIf saIes that are opening up around me.
The golf sales have really taken off round here
which is tremendous if you're a golf enthusiast.
But it does mean that for a 25-mile radius,
there is nowhere to buy food.
This deputy headmaster hasn't eaten for eight days.
Within an hour he wiII be dead.
MeanwhiIe, the board of management at HewIett Packard
are forced to scavenge paperweights for water.
From the decline in our number of management consultancy contracts,
l've done a projection that shows we'll be out of business in ten days.
That doesn't give us much time to turn it around.
l can't believe in three years we've gone from being the biggest
to being the smallest in the country.
Let's do what we're good at - let's look through the problem.
- What do other companies do? - Bring in management consultants.
- Do it. - Who do we get?
The one that replaced us as the biggest in the country.
Norbrand?
Norbrand's rule is simple - give it to your clients straight.
What's our problem?
You're spending too much on management consultancy.
- How much are we paying you? - £300,000.
- We can't afford that. - Get rid of some consultants then.
Who'll do the consultancy work?
- Elephants - Elephants?
Yes, Captain Spazz from the land of Spazz - three lndian elephants.
People don't realise what elephants can be trained to do.
The three lndian elephants can be used to do menial tasks
such as delivering internal mail and moving photocopiers.
Yes and three great big lndian elephants
require 70 kilos of vegetables a day and 40 pounds a day for their riders.
You'll save so much on salaries and canteen facilities,
you'll have money pouring out of your ears and arse.
- lt's a bit radical. - You wanted our advice.
Will you take it or spend your days alone laughing at your balls in the bath?
We're on the way to becoming
the largest management consultancy in Europe
once we work on the complete rewiring of British Airways. See?
- Should we order in some coffee? - Yes. Can you move the model please?
Can we have coffee and biscuits for eight management consultants.
- (Speaks lndian) - (Elephant trumpets)
People have noticed how good we are as management consultants,
so we expect an increase in profits - £50,000 to be spent reinforcing floors
and £750 to widen the lift shafts. Pete?
(Man) l had a word with the boys, they've got it down to £600.
- lgnore him. Everyone happy with that? - Let's check on teas and coffees.
- Tea, please. -Coffee with creamer.
- Two coffees and a tea. - lgnore the elephant. What?
l've got some memos for you to look at.
You'll get it in a minute.
- The elephant's only got one trunk. - He's eating the plants.
For God sake, you're the most pathetic bunch l've ever come across.
- He's crushing British Airways. - (Consultant) l've had enough.
lgnore the elephant.
You look like you've never seen an elephant before in a boardroom
Ours is a sophisticated society, aIways on the move.
The peopIe who make things have cIosed their shops
and gone to seek their fortune in caII centres,
where chiIdren can ring for advice on how to pIay.
l've put my robot in a small tree. What should l do now?
How about, the robot headquarters have sent out a helicopter.
- Then the helicopter can go ''whoo!'' - (Boy) OK, bye.
AIthough there's no shops, we're making more fiIms than ever before
and such is HoIIywood's demand for new story ideas,
it's now common to see kids in the street earning quick money
by ringing HoIIywood up and seIIing the movie rights to incidents in their Iives.
- (Man) 'Hello, MGM Stories.' - Hello. A strange guy just walked past.
(Man) 'Yeah, ten dollars.'
ln my house, l found a hockey stick in my cupboard.
- (Man) 'Hockey stick? Four dollars.' - ls that all?
Somebody pissed in a lift today.
(Man) 'We've had five people ring up with that today.'
Shit! Did you buy it from my mum?
l heard some scuttling in my loft the other day.
- Oh no? - Yeah, yeah.
Anyway, l called the man round from the pest control,
and he said ''l'm sorry to tell you this, but l'm afraid you've got Wombles.''
Right.
Yeah. l said, ''How can you tell l've got Wombles?''
He said, ''Have you noticed your house is a bit tidier than usual?''
And he was right. He laid down some traps and poison
and in the middle of the night l heard this crunching sound
and l went downstairs and l found Madame Cholet
in a trap, juddering.
lt's a terrible sight, really. l felt a little bit sorry for her, to be honest.
He managed to trace the Wombles to their source,
which was actually behind the wall, yeah?
And in the cavity between the two walls was Bernard Cribbins doing the voices.
So we killed him, cos otherwise he breeds
and we'd end up with 64 Bernard Cribbinses.
lt's nothing personal against Bernard Cribbins,
but his place is out there in the wild, you know, not in my house,
using up all the crockery.
(Barber) Oh, the bloody power's gone. (Armando ) What, a power cut?
(Barber) No, all the power's used up
cos they turned all the power stations into art galleries.
(Armando ) ls that good or bad? (Barber) lt depends.
On the plus side, people get to see art which is good for the soul.
But you can't see the paintings cos there's no electricity.
By ten o'cIock this morning there was no eIectricity or food Ieft in Britain,
so I went to a goIf saIe.
I thought I couId buy two putters to rub together to make fire.
What I didn't think was that the goIf saIe wouId be run by badgers.
Up and down the country, badgers have been gatherings stuff
Iost on goIf courses and Iearning how to seII it off.
We took our eye off the evoIving
and the animaIs decided to catch us up
and it dawned on me that aII the time I've taunted them,
they've been Iistening and finding it quite usefuI.
Hello, you're through to Call Centre Action Man.
l don't go out now. l've eaten all my CDs.
Yesterday, l ate all of Lenny Kravitz.
l've eaten my books, apart from one,
which is the novelisation of Ghostbusters.
l'm gonna hold onto that one.
l'm sorry if everything l've said this week appears to be a pack of lies.
All l can say is, ''What's wrong with lying?''
As kids, we're force-fed lies about Father Christmas and elves.
l was told lies about how if l went to my local parish priest's house
l could see his magic train.
And then, when we get older, we go sleepwalking into dementia
and think a wall is our sister.
All l've been trying to do is make the middle bit of our lives
more consistent with either end. That's all.
(Girl) Look! The lion's jumping all over the pigs and they're screaming
and they've taken off all their trousers!
- (Children laugh) - They're a bit rude, aren't they?
Hey, look at the witch and the lion.
The witch is jumping on the lion and the lion's rocketing everywhere.
Let's go over to the big frog. Guess what we're having for tea?
- What? - Wolfburgers.
- Don't tell anyone about this. - Right.
- Do you promise? -Yeah.
Now, go back.
l'll get the lion to eat you.
l'll sweep the leaves, then you can give them to the lion.
? Wazaa!
? Why aren't you joining in?
? You're not still doing that, are you?
? Wazaa!
? l first came here in '92 What about you?
? l came in '94
- ? '92 - ? '94
? This place peaked around 1 997, '98
(Both) ? 1 997, '98
? 97 98, 97 98, 97 98
(Both) ? Wazaa!
? Wazaa!
? (Woman) l can run faster than you when wearing flip-flops
? Take your top off and show everyone your tits
? Tits, tits, tits
? Tits, tits tits, tits, tits, tits, tits! ?