First broadcast 19th January 2010.
Charlie Brooker returns to wring more laughs from our hilariously troubled world, looking at some of the scariest news stories ever, and some jokes.
Charlie Brooker
Tim Key
Doug Stanhope
Dan Gardner
Charlie Brooker returns to wring more laughs from our hilariously troubled world, looking at some of the scariest news stories ever, and some jokes.
Charlie Brooker
Tim Key
Doug Stanhope
Dan Gardner
Category
📺
TVTranscript
00:00Hello, I'm Charlie Brooker and you're watching Newswiper program, all about things that have
00:27been happening. Things like this.
00:31Islam will dominate the world, screams piece of paper held aloft behind small recently
00:36banned group in the snow.
00:38Woman watches in nodding amazement as televangelist performs miracle of the talking anus while
00:43discussing cause of Haiti disaster.
00:45They got together and swore a pact to the devil. They said we will serve you if you
00:50will get us free from the French. True story.
00:54And eerie, uncomfortable scenes as Brown uses laptops in bed to lure young voters.
00:59Do you like computers now? You find them quite good.
01:06But we start, as these things so often do, in a small darkened room.
01:13We humans like to think we're more sophisticated than the rest of the animal kingdom, just
01:18because we know how to operate a fan heater.
01:20But in truth, we're still primitive, easily spooked creatures that can't help pricking
01:24their ears up at the first hint of danger.
01:27Constantly being on the lookout for danger is a basic survival mechanism that served
01:30us jolly well throughout history. In fact, it's why we're all still here.
01:35Today, of course, we're not roaming the plains, listening out for lion noises and trying to
01:38avoid snakes. We're just flopping around at home, watching telly or reading the paper.
01:43But we're still alert to danger. It's just that the news has come to form part of our
01:47early warning system.
01:50The trouble is that while some things are authentically worrisome, the news has an inherent
01:54bias towards the worst-case scenario in every single case. There's little middle register.
01:59Scientific projections, for instance, have a wide margin of error. If you're looking
02:02at some lurgy, the best-case scenario could be that a mere 300 people could die.
02:07Or the worst outcome could be a body count of 300 million.
02:12News reports on the lurgy will always focus on that scarier number, because it's got more
02:16impact. It makes our primitive internal ears prick up. And this sometimes catches people
02:20unawares. For instance, recently the nation fought back tears of wet sympathy as Alastair
02:24Campbell recounted how shortly after helping to assemble a notoriously cautious and well-researched
02:29dossier, he looked on in powerless and surprised horror as the British press inexplicably focused
02:34on its scariest figures. Why?
02:37Even when the figures aren't in question, the way they're presented ramps up the fear.
02:41The swine flu sweeping around the globe is now in Britain.
02:44The news has long served as a kind of endless conveyor belt, delivering one concern after
02:48another directly into your living room. And just like haircuts or shoes, different scares
02:53go in and out of fashion.
02:55The terrifying spectre of all-out nuclear war was one of the coolest news stories for
02:59years, although looking back at coverage from the 80s, what's notable is how emotionless
03:03and businesslike it seems considering the stakes.
03:05Britain's doctors say 33 million people in this country may be killed and injured in
03:11a nuclear war.
03:12You've got to admire his inner steel. If I had to deliver news like that to the nation,
03:16I'd read it off the autocue through a haze of tears while tying a noose under the desk.
03:20The 80s were terrifying all round when we weren't stocking our nuclear bunkers with
03:24bin bags, we rang our mitts over problems such as AIDS, football hooligans...
03:29And most sinister of all, eggs.
03:32The One O'Clock News, from the BBC, with Philip Hayton.
03:37Good afternoon. The government is introducing new measures to combat salmonella in eggs.
03:46Scrambled eggs, fried eggs, poached eggs. I don't really believe any cooking can render
03:51those safe that doesn't destroy the flavour.
03:54So you're telling people to stop eating eggs, really?
03:56That's right.
03:56But fuck eggs and check out this immense threat to civilisation.
04:02Yes, any youth phenomenon almost automatically becomes a moral panic, and the late 80s provided
04:09an absolute humdinger in the form of Acid House, which worried many with its lurid dancing
04:14and pill-chugging culture.
04:16World In Action considered it such a menace they devoted an entire straight-faced episode
04:20to uncovering the truth behind this sinister scene, which, as it helpfully pointed out,
04:24was receiving measured, cool-headed coverage at the hands of Fleet Street.
04:28Some newspapers have called Acid House music a sinister and evil cult which lures young
04:32people into drug-taking. The message is certainly getting across.
04:35What do you know about Acid House music?
04:38There's meant to be a drugs-related craze. It seems to be the most worrying thing.
04:43And where did you find that out?
04:45That was in the paper.
04:46Do you think it's anything to do with a certain religion, do you think?
04:49No.
04:50Is there anything like that?
04:51No, it's more to do with a kind of a drug, isn't it?
04:54It's a drug.
04:55Those that take it want to be ashamed of themselves.
04:58While the public and the media worried about the effects of ecstasy,
05:01the users themselves seemed curiously upbeat about the whole thing.
05:05Let's hear from a sweaty man and a wookie.
05:07I don't think doing an E every couple of weeks is going to be any worse for me than smoking or drinking.
05:13Really?
05:14The 90s veered from drugs to bugs as the tabloids seized on a random cluster of cases
05:18of necrotising fasciitis, which had been around since the 1800s,
05:22and sexually rechristened it the flesh-eating bug,
05:24thereby helpfully scaring the shit out of millions.
05:27Even people who'd already had it got retrospectively concerned.
05:30They told me I was a lucky boy in the hospital, but it doesn't really hit home then.
05:34Now, reading all this stuff in the newspaper, it's hit home now.
05:38The furore was so large, it even made headlines in funny foreign countries.
05:46Fears of a flesh-putrefying epidemic quickly died away,
05:49but there was no place for concern about an epidemic of anger
05:51reportedly sweeping Britain's highways, an epidemic known as Road Rage.
05:56Road Rage is that point when a motorist loses control of his or her behaviour,
06:01when they actually do go, for a short time, completely mad.
06:05I'm not a fool to be...
06:07What am I supposed to do, at least wank at?
06:09Are you going to let me out, or what?
06:11F***ing hell.
06:12Just a few days ago in Newcastle, another driver had his nose bitten off.
06:16Suddenly, mankind somehow managed to survive Road Rage
06:19and made it all the way through the 90s,
06:21only to find itself plunged headlong into a war with the machines
06:24on the eve of the millennium.
06:26The fear is that the computer systems that support our lives
06:30are far more vulnerable than we ever could have imagined.
06:33The millennium bug was definitely going to kill everyone.
06:36Apocalyptic predictions were trumpeted for months.
06:38Fear-mongering coverage repeatedly warned us to be on the lookout
06:41for plummeting planes and malfunctioning ATMs.
06:43Hospitals would explode.
06:46People would inexplicably transform themselves into grapefruit.
06:49Robots would wave their arms around,
06:51screaming, does not compute for a while,
06:53and then rise up and kill.
06:56And if that wasn't bad enough, it was a nightmare for corned beef fans.
07:00Marks and Spencer almost destroyed a consignment of corned beef
07:03when their computer system mistakenly told them
07:06that the tins were decades old.
07:08Come millennium eve itself, the BBC nervously wheeled out its big guns
07:12to stand in front of a rotating globe and see the world get destroyed.
07:15But the only thing that really seemed to be affected was Peter Snow's autocue.
07:18So far, it's cost us about 250 billion pounds to take on the bug.
07:25And that's the way it's been.
07:30250 billion pounds it's cost us.
07:35Shortly after the millennium, something genuinely bloody terrifying did happen,
07:39making terrorism the most sensational number one fear
07:42in the shit-yourself parade for years.
07:44Terrorism, of course, is a story which has received
07:46the kind of calm, measured coverage we've come to expect,
07:48rivalled only by the rise of the paedophiles.
07:51A series of hard-hitting Sky News reports
07:53reveals how these characteristically haunted-looking gentlemen
07:56have infiltrated virtually every aspect of society.
07:59They can be found lurking in schools
08:01or hiding under towels in the backs of Australian cars.
08:04He's chased by photographers.
08:06Chased out of Australia and back to Britain.
08:09They run sophisticated advertising campaigns on trains.
08:12Scrawled on a toilet door was an advert asking for young girls for sex.
08:16They even commit foul, made-up crimes in leery, made-up worlds on the internet.
08:21We've uncovered paedophiles acting out sexual encounters
08:24with virtual children in the internet world of Second Life.
08:28And when children aren't being endangered by sex-beast monster scumbags,
08:31they're a threat from virtually everything else.
08:34Mobile phone bullying, obesity, knife crime.
08:37They're not afraid to show them to camera and they're not afraid to use them.
08:41What's he going to do with that? Slice up a Hawaiian?
08:43With so many horrible things in the world to choose from at any given time,
08:46how do news bosses pick which ones to concentrate on?
08:49Here's Canadian journalist Dan Gardner,
08:51author of Risk, the Science and Politics of Fear, with his view.
08:54The media plays a central role in the development of unreasonable fear.
09:01I would not say that the media are doing this deliberately.
09:04I think what's fundamentally at work is human nature.
09:08Journalists are interested in the sensational story
09:11for the same reason audiences are interested in the sensational story.
09:14Tornadoes. Terrorism.
09:17These are great traumatic stories.
09:19You can be sure that if anybody is killed by terrorists or tornadoes,
09:23it's going to be a major news story.
09:26How about diabetes? Asthma?
09:30No. That's never a news story. Somebody died of diabetes.
09:34I mean, this doesn't make the news ever, right?
09:37And yet, in a single year, diabetes will kill more people
09:42than tornadoes and terrorism ever will in all of history.
09:45That's how skewed media reporting is.
09:48In the mid-1990s, in the Western media and in the Western popular culture,
09:52there was a lot of talk about killer viruses breaking out of deepest, darkest Africa
09:57and sweeping the globe, killing us all.
09:59It wasn't just in the news. It was also in suspense novels.
10:06It was also in movies.
10:08It was something that was being talked about and feared broadly.
10:12It was in the culture.
10:13Then, there was an Ebola outbreak in Central Africa.
10:16Ebola is a horrible disease and it killed about 250 people
10:21under rather horrible circumstances.
10:23The Western media descended on it with both feet.
10:26Then it played out as the outbreaks usually do
10:29and the Western media left and we forgot about it.
10:33A couple of years later, Civil War breaks out in the very same regions.
10:38Three million dead, virtually no coverage in the Western media whatsoever.
10:43Why not?
10:44Because it didn't fit any existing Western storyline.
10:50It didn't fit any Western self-interest.
10:53It didn't feel like a threat to us.
10:56And so, we didn't pay any attention.
10:59So, you have this spectacular disparity
11:02between an enormous amount of attention
11:05given to an outbreak that killed 250 people
11:08versus a Civil War that killed millions and was virtually ignored.
11:12The media follow established narratives.
11:16Once there is a storyline, an arc arcing through the media,
11:21the media like to pick up on it and continue with it.
11:25Terrorism is a great demonstration of the power of the media narrative
11:31to shape how the media portrays events.
11:34In 1995, Timothy McVeigh, who was a white, anti-government, right-wing radical,
11:41detonates a terrible bomb in Oklahoma City, killing many people.
11:46And that becomes the paradigm of terrorism.
11:51The terrorism story, the terrorism narrative,
11:54throughout the late 1990s, is that of militias,
11:59of angry right-wingers, of anti-government radicals.
12:03Then, of course, 9-11 happens.
12:06Now, the narrative, of course, is it's Islamic radicals.
12:09That's what terrorism is.
12:11Then, of course, we all rush out and go looking for facts and figures
12:15that support and advance that media narrative.
12:18Well, in 2005, in Oklahoma City, of all places,
12:23a man named Joel Henry Henricks
12:26detonates himself outside a football stadium.
12:29Well, this is a suicide bombing in Oklahoma City,
12:32and it was not reported around the world.
12:35If Joel Henry Henricks had blown himself up in the late 1990s,
12:40that absolutely would have been widely reported.
12:42He not only would have been national news,
12:44he would have been international news,
12:47and everybody around the planet would have known his name.
12:50But his name was Joel Henry Henricks.
12:52It wasn't Mohammed.
12:54He didn't fit the narrative, and so he was ignored.
12:57Every news network in the world got just what it wanted for Christmas this year.
13:00Something new to be scared of.
13:02Specifically, underwear.
13:04The drama began on Christmas Day,
13:06when a man wearing the world's least amusing pair of novelty underpants
13:08boarded a plane bound for Detroit.
13:10As it descended for landing, he tried to detonate something
13:13by injecting a syringe into his thigh, a bit like Pete Doherty.
13:16Luckily for the other passengers and his nuts, it didn't work.
13:19The news obediently sprang into action,
13:21and speedily descended on Detroit airport,
13:23like, well, like a load of planes or something.
13:26Exterior cameras recorded endless thrilling scenes
13:28of the plane grounded behind chicken wire,
13:30and mountaineers scaling the boarding steps while indoors,
13:33reporters scrambled around trying to find interesting eyewitnesses to interview.
13:37ITN found a woman who described his behaviour
13:39in terms which sounded a bit like a review of every Keanu Reeves performance ever.
13:43It was completely unemotional.
13:45Absolutely, just a blank face.
13:47There was no recognition of anything occurring,
13:50you know, when you looked at him.
13:52It just seemed as if he wasn't there, you know, emotionally.
13:55America's Fox 2 dispatched possibly the world's most histrionic reporter
13:59to stand around on the scene being outraged.
14:01Quite frankly, the details are chilling.
14:03And it's very scary to think what could have happened to so many innocent people
14:07if his plan to kill would have worked.
14:09It's almost as horrifying to think how melodramatic you'd be if it had.
14:14How did this happen? How did this man beat security?
14:17How is a man that is on a do-not-fly list able to get on a plane?
14:21Well, I don't know, shouty-hat, you're the f***ing journalist, go and find out.
14:24To be fair, Shrieky Guts was right,
14:26there were many unanswered questions about the perpetrator.
14:29The first being, how do you pronounce his name?
14:31Fox made an early bid for Abdul Mudalla.
14:34The man, the menace, 23-year-old Abdul Mudalla of Nigeria.
14:39But his name quickly grew to be both longer
14:41and a more daunting autocue challenge than that.
14:43Terror suspect Umar Abdul Mudallab.
14:46They've added an Umar to the front of his name.
14:48It was just hours ago that Umar Farrokh Abdul Mudallab...
14:53Oh, she's just added a Farrokh.
14:55I hope they've got an expert they can call on to help him
14:57deal with pronouncing all these exotic-sounding names.
15:00Nigerian journalist Kemi Omololu Olunloyo joins us.
15:05Kemi, tell me what you can about this man.
15:09Before long, Captain Allegedly Thunderpants was being profiled
15:12as though he was the subject of an E! True Life Stories special.
15:16How did Umar Farrokh Abdul Mudallab get so close to blowing up an airliner?
15:21And what can we tell from browsing through his Facebook photos?
15:25Was he always into leaves? How much did he pay for this woolly hat?
15:29One of the main things the news wanted to know is where he'd been radicalised,
15:32as though a change in your belief system is something you somehow catch instantly
15:37in one location, like a stomach bug.
15:40Reporters diligently tracked down his past friends and mentors
15:43to ask whether he'd ever done anything to suggest he might one day
15:46try to blast his bollocks apart on a plane.
15:48Mike Rimmer taught him history in West Africa
15:50and says he seemed supportive of the Taliban in class discussions.
15:54Umar actually thought that their ideas were the correct interpretation of Islam.
16:00But I thought maybe, you know, in the class discussions,
16:03maybe he was just sort of playing devil's advocate
16:06to sort of keep the discussion going.
16:08Oh, right, well, maybe this whole thing's just a big icebreaker.
16:11We also got to look around the street where Umar Farrokh Abdul Mudallab grew up.
16:15The Abdul Mudallab family asked us not to film their house
16:18and we respected their wish.
16:20That's quite considerate of the BBC.
16:22I wonder if ITN will be similarly respectful.
16:26Outside the home where the man who tried to blow up flight 253 grew up.
16:31Still, ITN didn't just film his parents' home.
16:34They also filmed their second home.
16:36Umar Farrokh's father and other members of the family
16:39are now at their second home in Abuja,
16:41another large and sprawling house with a domed mosque in the ground.
16:45What are you going to do next? Show us his primary school.
16:48Farrokh attended the Essence International School for his primary education.
16:52Even at this young age, he rarely mingled.
16:55Perhaps most intrusive of all, we also got to peer at his underwear,
16:59which looked considerably cleaner than I was expecting.
17:02The unusual methodology was another gift for the news
17:05because it could fill hours debating the proposed changes to airline security,
17:08complete with saucy footage of the vaunted full-body scanner.
17:11The body scanner's raunchiness seemed to vary
17:13depending on whose footage you were watching.
17:15For instance, in this stimulating sequence, it looked downright titillating,
17:18whereas at other times it'd only be arousing if you were into chubby blue ghost porn.
17:23Mind you, sometimes the body scanner didn't look sophisticated at all.
17:26More like a Fisher-Price Cyberman detector.
17:28Anyway, back to the suspect and his other great gift to the news networks,
17:32making Yemen interesting.
17:34Most veteran current affairs junkies already knew
17:37Yemen was likely to be the next front in the war on terror,
17:40but those are hardcore news fans.
17:42If you think of Yemen as an indie band,
17:44then the Pants Bomber story marks the moment
17:46where it had a breakthrough hit and went mainstream.
17:49A lot of people are suddenly learning about Yemen for the first time.
17:53The news now had an attention-grabbing narrative hook
17:56with a casual viewer interested in the previously boring land of Yemen,
17:59a nation apparently twinned with the film Life of Brian.
18:02It reacted by running urgent info-packed mini-seminars on this newfound threat
18:06as though the viewer was the f***ing president
18:08in an episode of 24 receiving a critical security briefing.
18:11It was almost as if the entire Yemeni nation had been wished into being overnight.
18:16The news had a whole new land of fear and chaos.
18:19Jihadistan, Afghanistan 2, Al-Qaeda on C.
18:23Thing is, Yemen wasn't just new to many viewers,
18:26but many reporters too.
18:28It's across the way they're selling portraits of Saddam Hussein.
18:30Saddam Hussein's good?
18:32Boys?
18:34Without much footage of their own from outside the capital,
18:37news networks relied heavily on images uploaded by Al-Qaeda themselves,
18:40and this can ramp up the fear factor considerably,
18:43as Al-Jazeera soberly pointed out.
18:45Most intelligence officials say there were only a few hundred active members in Al-Qaeda,
18:49in the Arabian Peninsula,
18:51so these videos act as almost like a force multiplier.
18:54They allow the group to portray itself as being much larger
18:57and much more influential than it actually is,
18:59so they're happy to get these images out there.
19:01In short, it looks like 2010 might be Yemen's year in the spotlight.
19:04It's the next big chapter in the news' favourite ongoing horror story.
19:09Don't have nightmares.
19:12Obviously, there's nothing funny whatsoever about a man trying to blow up a plane,
19:15but there might be something poetic in it.
19:17Here's award-winning poet and shambles Tim Key.
19:19BEEPING
19:22The Bad Gentleman.
19:26Put some powder in his knickers and shuffled through security.
19:32Once in his seat, the Bad Gentleman watched a film.
19:35It was the one about Edith Piaf.
19:37It was a bad film.
19:40But he couldn't really get into it because it had subtitles
19:43and because he kept on thinking about the fact that he had to blow his dick up.
19:46Then he speculated how angry the gaffer would be
19:49if he came home without an exploded plane load of Westerners.
19:54In the end, he made a half-hearted attempt to make the plane go bang.
19:59But he screamed when his knob caught fire.
20:02The brave Westerners jumped on him and twisted his arms behind his back
20:05and extinguished his privates.
20:10Well, when he landed, everyone treated him like shit.
20:14It was excruciating when he did a piss.
20:17He felt like a ripe plum.
20:22It was the big, um...
20:24That was the big Christmas...
20:27That was the story they brought out at Christmas this year.
20:31In any given week, there are big stories, there are little stories,
20:34and then there's this sort of thing.
20:36This is the week in bullshit.
20:38MUSIC
20:42To you and me, it's simply a dip that goes well with pita bread.
20:45For the delicate relations in the Middle East, though,
20:48hummus might just be the perfect ingredient to bring people together.
20:52Yes, 5 News diligently covered a valiant and uplifting attempt
20:55to bring peace to the Middle East,
20:57as a community of Arabs and Jews worked together as one
21:00to break the world record for the biggest dish of hummus ever.
21:034,090 kilograms of hummus.
21:06The success of the bid will hopefully herald an era of 1,000 years of peace,
21:10which is about how long it will take them to eat all that f***ing stuff.
21:13Next week, solving climate change with taramasa lata.
21:17Now here's American comic and alienated drunk Doug Stanhope
21:20with his view on fear in the US news media.
21:29I'm Doug Stanhope, and that's why I drink.
21:32What is it that you're so afraid of, anyway?
21:36It's no secret to anybody that the news is just a constant
21:39battering ram of fear-mongering.
21:42If you want to be terrified, there's never-ending coverage
21:45that can make you scared shitless.
21:47Juvenile heart attacks. Could it be your child?
21:50Is someone masturbating in your sandwich at the local diner?
21:53You might not think so, but this horror movie graphic will change your mind.
21:57Can you get pig flu from pork chops?
22:00No.
22:01The calls are coming from inside the house!
22:03Shots fired. Shots fired. Two out of seven.
22:06You must get out of the house!
22:08Where's your teen right now?
22:10Probably getting the shit kicked out of him.
22:12You make me so pissed!
22:14People tend to blame the news as though it's their fault
22:17for spreading all this fear, as though there's no market for it.
22:20You can't blame the news for making you afraid
22:23any more than you would blame horror movies or haunted houses.
22:26That's what people are buying into.
22:29And the reason that people are buying fear so easily
22:32and stockpiling it is you'd much rather believe
22:36all that bullshit that immigrants are trying to take your job
22:40and pedophiles are trying to fuck your kids
22:43and terrorists are coming to blow up your Ford Focus in particular.
22:47That's far more palatable for people to buy
22:51than to accept the reality, which is that
22:56probably, a statistical high Vegas odds probability
23:00is that nothing of any significance
23:04will ever happen to you in your entire boring life.
23:09You're not going to win the lottery.
23:11You're not going to get caught in gang violence
23:15or school shootings. You're not going to get date raped.
23:18I know you put a napkin over your glass when you go out to have a cigarette
23:21so no one slips something in there and fucks you later.
23:24It wasn't going to happen anyway. Nothing's going to happen to you.
23:27You'll fall in love. You'll break your heart.
23:30Later on in life, you'll settle for less.
23:32They're not so much of a looker, not real high on the personality scale,
23:35but they're stable. You can make a family with them
23:38and you'll push out rotten kids and you'll get some awful job.
23:41You'll give up your dreams and sit in a cubicle.
23:44Maybe in your 50s, you'll find some lump in the back of your neck
23:47that they have to just cut out and your daughter flies home
23:50from college in the Dakotas to be there by your side,
23:53but by then they found out it's benign.
23:56It's an outpatient procedure that you'll still bring up
23:59every Christmas dinner like it was some near-death experience.
24:02Before you carve the turkey, Barry,
24:05I just want to say, after my little scare with the neck thing,
24:08it made me reevaluate my entire life.
24:11Now I realize how much my family means to me
24:14and just to have you all here.
24:18I know I get choked up every time I talk about this.
24:21Nothing ever happened to you. Stop milking it.
24:24Nothing ever happened in your whole boring life.
24:27So shut up, flip on the news and carve the fucking turkey.
24:30Don't know if you noticed, but we had a bit of weather recently.
24:33Temperatures across the land plunged to Hollyoaks IQ level
24:36and Nick Griffin's dream of an all-white Britain was finally realized.
24:39The rolling networks covered it in much the same way.
24:42They'd cover an alien invasion.
24:45Rapidly dispatched journalists to all 18 corners of the nation
24:48where they stood around looking cold and uncomfortable,
24:51a bit like hungry homeless people forlornly staring through the window
24:54of an upmarket restaurant, a diner sitting indoors in the warmth.
24:57You could be forgiven for thinking that snow was a brand-new,
25:00never-before-seen phenomenon.
25:03Sky helpfully explained where it came from for the benefit of dimbo-dumbos.
25:06To have snow, the layers of the atmosphere below cloud level
25:09must be cold enough to keep the flakes from melting.
25:12We were also shown that snow is a cold, white, watery powder
25:15which can, in large quantities, render roads impassable
25:18and make pavements more slippery than usual.
25:21Mainly, though, we learned that snow is a disloyal, deceitful substance
25:24responsible for causing conditions that can only be described as treacherous.
25:27Treacherous conditions on the roads as even tractors battle with the ice.
25:32The few cars that did brave it, the going was treacherous.
25:35Minor roads continue to be treacherous, treacherous ice.
25:38Although it turned out snow wasn't the only thing capable of treachery
25:42when there was a brief distraction in the middle of the blizzard
25:45in the form of an attempted political coup.
25:48Since most of Sky's other reporters were standing around the country
25:51gawping at snowflakes, Kay Burley herself shot down to Westminster
25:54disguised as a pearly queen.
25:57But it was a false alarm.
26:00Gordon Brown remained in power and a humiliated Geoff Hume
26:03had to nod his way through impromptu bollockings
26:06from passing backbenchers to embarrassing effect on ITN.
26:09Having shot to the top of the news agenda,
26:12the coup quickly shrank back down.
26:15Meanwhile, back in the kingdom of Narnia,
26:18the state of Britain's slippery pavements was providing bulletins
26:21with plenty of tittersome, you've-been-framed style slapstick.
26:24This spot in Bristol claimed two victims in very quick succession.
26:28All they had to do was pop a camera next to an icy bit of pavement,
26:31hit record, sit back and let the hilarity commence.
26:34It's still dangerous for Dublin pedestrians.
26:37He's probably in hospital now.
26:40Slippery pavements were a huge concern for many journalists
26:43as they pandered to some of the moaniest people in Britain.
26:46The pavement should be gritted like the roads.
26:49People leave their cars at home because they can't get off their drives
26:52and so forth and so on. It must be gritted like the roads.
26:55Last year during a cold snap, the news largely contended itself
26:58with showing viewers snowy shenanigans.
27:01There was still plenty of that this time and very charming it was too.
27:05But overall, the emphasis was firmly on the negative.
27:08More schools are out. Now the snow puts A-levels and GCSE exams at risk.
27:14Record demand for gas and electricity strains supplies and pushes up prices.
27:17We explore how much the appalling weather will cost you.
27:20Yes, to the miserable newsmongers, the snowfall was little more
27:23than a collection of new things to worry about.
27:26They worried whether shopkeepers would run out of bread and pastries.
27:29Last packet of Quasals.
27:32They worried whether their viewers knew how to defrost a frozen pipe.
27:35Basically, once you locate the pipe, just turn the hairdryer on.
27:38They even worried whether baboons could comprehend what was happening.
27:41It's a shame we can't talk to the animals
27:44and tell them what all this cold white stuff is.
27:47No, no it isn't.
27:50Largely though, they worried about the supply of grit.
27:53We're in big problems with grit.
27:56They were obsessed with the notion we might run out of food.
27:59They were obsessed with the notion we might run out of grit,
28:02thereby killing everyone in Britain.
28:05The news went live to every variety of gritting depot you could imagine.
28:08There were boring gritting depots, dull gritting depots,
28:11tedious gritting depots, underwhelming gritting depots,
28:14undermanned gritting depots, manned gritting depots,
28:17indoor gritting depots, outdoor gritting depots,
28:20murky gritting depots, sexy gritting depots.
28:23Everywhere you looked, the news was taking it up the gritter.
28:27No wonder they lost all sense of perspective.
28:30With more snow and ice forecast, is Britain sliding toward chaos?
28:33While the reporters stood around looking miserable,
28:36concerned and serious, real people were having a laugh.
28:39They were frolicking, tumbling, sledging and arsing around in the background,
28:42precisely the sort of frivolity Alastair Stewart has no time for.
28:45The bad weather has indeed brought great acts of humanity,
28:48but as we just saw, it's also been an excuse for spectacular stupidity.
28:51With its doomy mantra of treacherous conditions,
28:54chaotic roads, perilous pavements, Arctic winds and plummeting mercury,
28:57the news did its melodramatic best to turn the winter wonderland
29:00into a story of death from the skies.
29:03It was a tale of woe, peril and treachery
29:06the general public just weren't buying.
29:09What about this travel chaos, the misery across Britain, snowbound Britain?
29:12Doesn't matter, does it?
29:15Anyway, that's all we've got time for this week. Good night.
29:24Coming up, breaking major scandals
29:27and revealing dark secrets all in the corridors of power.
29:30Rory Bremner is joined by Edwina Curry
29:33for a look at the perils of a political memoir,
29:36as Dear Diary concludes next.