First broadcast 30th December 2014.
Charlie Brooker
Al Campbell Barry Shitpeas
Diane Morgan Philomena Cunk
Adam Curtis
Victor Spirescu
Charlie Brooker
Al Campbell Barry Shitpeas
Diane Morgan Philomena Cunk
Adam Curtis
Victor Spirescu
Category
📺
TVTranscript
00:00Hello, I'm Charlie Brooker and you're watching 2014 Wipe-A-Pragam, all about things that
00:25happened in 2014, and what a year it was. Oscar Pistorius somehow managed to avoid a
00:30murder charge. He was known as the Blade Runner, although he's actually more like the Terminator
00:35because he's got metal legs and he shoots people. There were upsetting scenes on the
00:39Great British Bake Off as a furious owl man scraped his pudding into a bin. I haven't
00:44seen that much hot cream being dumped into a mucky box since I hacked your parents' iCloud
00:48account. There was disturbing coverage as PR guru Max Clifford mimicked a human outside
00:53of the court where he was on trial. Clifford was a well-connected silver-haired man who
00:57claimed to be able to fix it for people. What could have seemed less suspicious than that?
01:01And somehow Scott Mills managed to avoid controversy despite blacking up on Strictly Come Dancing.
01:07Alright, listen to me. The human world, it's a mess. Life under the sea is better than
01:14anything they got up here. But we'll get onto all of that in a bit. For now, let's commence
01:19as tradition and indeed common sense dictates with January. As 2014 began, Britain was bracing
01:27itself for invasion, just like in the good old days of World War II. This time we weren't
01:32going to be overrun by Nazis, Vikings or killer wasps, but Romanians. Or Bulgarians. Or both.
01:40All Bulgarian and Romanian citizens will be free to live and work in the UK from today.
01:44Yes, reports suggested that foreign Romanians and Bulgarians fed up with what the news depicted
01:49as their rubbish medieval homeland, where the sole source of entertainment is driving
01:53over the nation's one speed bump, were apparently set to flock to Britain in droves. I don't
01:57even know what a drove is. Well, that's probably some kind of Romanian boat made of dirty foreign
02:03sticks. Not everyone was happy about the influx. Chortling, boozy frogman of the people Nigel
02:08Farage was convinced too many were going to come here. I don't know how many are going
02:12to come. The best estimate has been put out by Migration Watch, which is 50,000 people
02:16a year for the next five years. 50,000? We don't have room for that many. What are we
02:20going to do? Breathe in? We should go over there and send them back to where they came
02:23from before they can leave. Come the day itself, the government stations keep VAS at Luton
02:28Airport in a desperate bid to ward off any incomers. And as the first planes from Romania
02:33arrived, in they came. All one of them. A bloke called Victor, in a green hat. And he
02:38was insisting he only wanted to work. I don't come to rob your country. I come to work and
02:44you open the borders. I come to work. Well, you're not taking my job. Speaking of which,
02:48I think my show's actually on at the moment. Well, that's all. We have time for this week.
02:53Go away. Oh, you bastard. Interestingly, as well as meeting VAS, Victor was greeted by
03:00Tory MP Mark Reckless, who was so appalled by the sheer number of immigrants he'd seen
03:04flooding in with his own eyes, later in the year, he emigrated to Ukip. Anyway, around
03:09the same time people were pissing their pants over floods of foreigners, the nation was
03:13having far more bother with an actual, old-fashioned, traditional flood. Tonight at ten, more extreme
03:20weather on the way, with strong winds and very high tides. Yes, in the words of Mr Dapper
03:25Laughs, Britain was proper moist as a merciless deluge of raindrops threatened to turn the
03:29country into a particularly shit reboot of Venice. The sea, apparently, had decided to
03:34take a gap year and go travelling around places it didn't belong, such as the land. And any
03:38immigrants who had come over here were probably regretting the decision. Although they did
03:42seem to be making the most of it. I think we are getting better in this, you know. Now
03:47we have more experience. Typical, coming over here, breaking our brollies. Over in the USA,
03:52meanwhile, they'd completely eclipsed our extreme weather with some extreme weather
03:56of their own, the polar vortex, which made Narnia look like the Bahamas. Some amateur
04:01scientists soon discovered that if you stood outside in these freezing temperatures and
04:05lobbed a load of boiling water into the air, it turned into instant snow. The magical result
04:09filled screens everywhere. And it soon transpired that boiling water plus idiots equals the
04:14keys to Chuckle Castle. Also in January, Channel 4 pioneered a new TV soap opera which caused
04:22a thousand years of shouting, Benefit Street. Welcome to the non-block world. Benefit Street
04:29was, depending on how you looked at it, either a cynical, punching down attempt to goad the
04:32public into booing a set of hate figures, or a searing and heartfelt expose of the troublesome
04:37life of an underclass many would prefer to ignore with ad breaks. It was broadly sympathetic.
04:42The main trouble was the name, Benefit Street, a dog whistle title Taylor made to trend on
04:46Twitter and wind people up. Other equally subtle titles they probably rejected included
04:52the Great British Sponge Off, Deride and Prejudice, Downturn Scabby, Tweetbait Sink Estate, What
04:58the Porpoise Say, and Strictly Scum Chancing. The end result was a feisty debate culminating
05:04in Channel 5's opportunistic Big Benefits row, which brought some much needed incoherent
05:08bellowing to the cultural conversation. Well that's that cleared up then. Having settled
05:19the welfare state for good, harmony was restored and Channel 4 continued its proud tradition
05:23of public service broadcasting. I wonder if I will miss it when he's not here. My Baggy
05:27Body after Benefit Street. Later in the month, following a night time road race in Miami,
05:32melodic pipsqueak Justin Bieber briefly went from world's most desired pop star to world's
05:36most wanted man. His disarmingly cheerful mugshot was all over the media and he was
05:41condemned as a bad influence. In astonishing scenes, one Brazilian TV host was so outraged
05:46he held an on-air protest in which he improved Bieber's latest CD with his foot. But this
05:53wasn't the only showbiz gasp of the year, no, because in February, during a staggering
06:02American News interview, a news anchor mistook Samuel L. Jackson for Laurence Fishburne.
06:24Oh, what a ridiculous mistake to make. I mean, here's Samuel L. Jackson and here's Laurence
06:32Fishburne. Totally different. Racist. Meanwhile, the world was shocked by an outbreak of what
06:37resembled 14th century combat in the present day in Ukraine. Or the Ukraine. I never really
06:43know if it's the Ukraine or just Ukraine. Maybe that's what they're fighting about.
06:47Suddenly, news channels were brimming with unpleasant footage of a standoff between the
06:51government and pro-EU campaigners who were turning the centre of Kiev into a cross between
06:55Mad Max and a live performance of Stomp that had spiralled completely out of control.
07:22Actually, it's really out of order, this, isn't it?
07:25March was enlivened considerably by the glitzy annual back-slapping festival, the Oscars.
07:31This year's ceremony was hosted by Ellen Degenerate and was chiefly memorable for one particular
07:35moment in which she gathered some stars together for a selfie, the end result being sadly only
07:39the second most viewed image of Jennifer Lawrence available this year.
07:43One of the big winners this year was 12 Years a Slave, a harrowing epic which brought home
07:47the misery of slavery by making you sit in a chair for three hours until it was over.
07:51There was this really good sort of film thing called 12 Years a Slave. I wasn't sure I'd
07:57understand it because I haven't seen one years a slave or two years a slave or any of the
08:02others but turns out that didn't matter because I didn't understand it anyway.
08:06The main bloke in it was a violinist, right? And he was really good at violinism, like
08:11Nigel Kennedy. But unlike Nigel Kennedy, he ran off to join a circus and accidentally
08:15joined a farm instead. Not just any farm, but like the harshest farm ever.
08:20They all had to collect like bits of cloud that had got stuck on trees, which sounds
08:25like a really nice job from a furry book but actually looked quite knackering.
08:31The people they worked for were really out of order, like in that film Horrible Bosses.
08:35I'm not saying this lightly because it's a big label to put on someone but I actually
08:40think some of the boss people in it were a little bit racist.
08:45They kept treating me like shit. And you're like, tell him to shove the job, mate. But he never did.
08:51Eventually the main bloke goes sod this, you know, 12 Years a Slave is enough for me.
08:55I can't hack it anymore.
08:57It was good they made it but they didn't really need to because they don't have racism in
09:01America anymore. When they voted for Obama, they sorted all of that out, you know, drew
09:06a line under it. These days America's changed and black people can be whatever they want
09:11to be as long as it's either president or shot.
09:15Also in March Malaysian Airlines flight MH370 unexpectedly went missing somewhere over the
09:20ocean.
09:21Air disasters are always big news. This one was bigger than most because the whole thing
09:25was also a genuine mystery.
09:27Sky News resorted to running a kind of on-air guessing game with a room full of experts
09:31placing their bets on a map of the sea like roulette crossed with battleships while Fox
09:35wondered how long the search would take considering how much time other mysteries took to solve.
09:39So it took us, what, 100 years to find the Titanic? It took us 2,000 years to find Noah's Ark?
09:45Yeah, it took us 2,000 years to find Noah's Ark but then mythical boats don't usually
09:49show up on radar.
09:51Speculation reached its nadir with Channel 5's opportunistic The Plane That Vanished
09:55lie fronted by no more an authority than Donald McIntyre.
09:59It's the mystery that's baffled the entire world. What has happened to flight MH370?
10:04Tonight the question everyone wants answered won't be answered.
10:09The show itself featured international correspondents who didn't know where the plane was, a terrorism
10:13expert who didn't know where the plane was, a psychologist who didn't know where the plane
10:16was, a man who looked old enough to pre-date air travel itself who didn't know where the
10:20plane was and an air accident investigator who didn't know where the plane was.
10:24I know you don't wish to speculate but do your best guess.
10:27It's very difficult to say because we've got no evidence.
10:29Yeah, well no one needs evidence when there's brilliant speculation to be had.
10:33Was it pilot suicide? A new Bermuda Triangle? Could it have been a rogue missile or even
10:38alien abduction? No.
10:41In April there was a jolly nice story about a jolly nice young man called George.
10:46Yes, the world's media joined Killium as they went touring down under with the Joffrey It's
10:50OK To Love, Prince George.
10:52Mum and dad had a packed itinerary, they headbutted the locals, met some plebs, did some swinging,
10:58made direct eye contact with a man doing a shit, enjoyed the Australian remake of Mrs
11:03Brown's Boys and were underwhelmed by a rock.
11:06But no one really cared about them. The person they really wanted to see was Wickle Prince
11:10George. And just like any other royal, the news found his every move inherently fascinating.
11:15Prince George attended his first public engagement today and he wasn't mucking about.
11:19Yes he was.
11:20He wasn't afraid to assert himself. But then that's perfectly normal for an eight month
11:24old boy.
11:26So is crawling, which he probably learnt from you.
11:28Afterwards, parents of other less regal and therefore ultimately unimportant infants were
11:32asked how they'd found their encounter with the superior baby.
11:36He sort of took control, went into the middle of the circle of toys. He hunted out the biggest
11:41toy, brought himself up and yeah, he owned the place basically.
11:46That's because he does own the place. And you. And your kid. Whatever it's called. It's
11:49not royal. Don't see why I should give a shit.
11:52In May, Jeremy Clarkson became a star in a massively sized fracar. Yes, top gear presenter
11:58and professional controvergonk, Jeremy Clarkson stood accused of using the N word. And by
12:02N word, I don't mean Nissan.
12:04The roots of the outrage lay in this apparently innocuous sequence from an old top gear in
12:08which Clarkson had to choose between two motors.
12:11Eeny, meeny, miny, moe. Catch a teacher by his toe. When he squeals, let him go. Eeny,
12:17meeny, miny, moe.
12:19But wait! An incensed Daily Mirror had uncovered alternative footage of Clarkson's eeny, meeny
12:24act in which they said Clarkson used a racially offensive word. Although the man himself was
12:28on Twitter saying he hadn't.
12:30So it was Clarkson's N word against theirs. But who was right? Only one way to find out.
12:35Eeny, meeny, miny, moe.
12:37No, no, no, no.
12:39Clarkson was now dick deep in trouble and as Sky News made dazzlingly clear, everyone
12:43wanted to talk to him.
12:44Hello, is Jeremy there? It's just a dog from Sky News wondering if he might come out for
12:51a chat.
12:54Eventually amongst growing calls for him to be sacked, Clarkson issued an eeny, meeny
12:58apology apparently filmed in a surface station toilet.
13:01Please be assured I did everything in my power to not use that word.
13:06Oh, I know how he feels. I'm doing everything in my power to not express what I think about
13:10that.
13:11But I'm sitting here begging your forgiveness.
13:13Well, shitting.
13:14For the fact that obviously my efforts weren't quite good enough.
13:17He's never going to make the honours list now, except maybe as a knight who says nee.
13:22By now the news was filled with people saying the N word.
13:25He says he is mortified he had used the N word.
13:28The N word.
13:29The N word.
13:30The so-called N word.
13:31Which meant the one place you could unequivocally hear the word itself being spoken aloud was
13:35in your own mind again and again, because I don't know about you, but every time someone
13:39says the phrase the N word.
13:41N word.
13:42N word.
13:43N word.
13:44N word.
13:45My brain auto-corrects it like a racist iPhone just so I can understand what they're saying.
13:48So while this was in the news, my internal mental readout resembled a collision between
13:52hardcore East Coast hip-hop and the screenplay for 12 Years a Slave.
13:56That wasn't the only media storm for Clarkson this year.
13:59There was an inflammatory licence plate and he was criticised for using the word slope
14:03to describe an Asian man on a bridge.
14:05There's a slope on it.
14:08It's funny because it's racist.
14:11Hey, do you remember being particularly happy this year?
14:17Me neither.
14:18But apparently, we were.
14:27It all began when celebrity hat stand Pharrell Williams' song Happy went viral.
14:32Deceptively bland at first, infuriatingly catchy after two listens, the toe-tapping
14:36clap-along earworm was taken to the globe's heart, probably because unlike everything
14:39else in 2014, it expressed an emotion other than soul-crushing terror.
14:49This up-tempo reboot of If You're Happy and You Know It clap your hands quickly became
14:54unavoidable, with irrepressible happiness belting out of every radio, tinkling away
14:58in the background in every clothes shop, leaking from the headphones of the maniac sitting
15:03beside you on the train, and tootling from the radio as you accidentally reverse over
15:09your dog.
15:11There was no respite from the happy onslaught online either, as people uploaded videos of
15:21themselves being happy here, happy there, happy every pissing where.
15:24In especially happy scenes, Pharrell himself, dressed as the ranger from Yogi Bear, was
15:28shown footage of the universal outpouring of happiness he'd inspired on Oprah, and his
15:31eyes did an emotional ween.
15:33Why am I crying?
15:34I don't know.
15:35If that upsets him, imagine how he'll feel when he finds out that rooms have ceilings
15:41and not roofs.
15:42But hang on, amidst all the global YouTube revelers was a number of Muslims sharing videos
15:47of themselves dancing in a bid to overturn negative media stereotypes, and the news made
15:51clear that amongst them was a group of fun-loving Iranians who'd uploaded their own version
15:55of Happy in Tehran, with disastrous consequences.
15:58You all know the song that has become a global anthem for optimism, Happy by Pharrell.
16:03Know it?
16:04I can't f***ing escape it.
16:05Well, some young fans from Iran decided to join the movement.
16:09Their irrepressible joy met with an ominous show of force.
16:12They rounded up and arrested the six dancers and the filmmaker.
16:17Yeah, well, they don't like Pharrell in Iran.
16:19They prefer Shariah Carey.
16:22Throughout May, all the political parties were campaigning for the local and European
16:26elections being held at the end of the month.
16:28Although, as Channel 4 News made clear, not everyone was interested.
16:32Do you know about this by-election?
16:34No, I don't.
16:35Well, the local MP, Patrick Mercer, had to resign over a bit of scandal.
16:39Yeah, that's right.
16:40And so there's a new election now.
16:42Will you be voting in that?
16:43No, I don't vote nothing.
16:44You don't vote nothing?
16:46Two men who were interested were Nick Clegg and Nigel Farage, who drummed up interest
16:50by going head-to-head in a pair of live debates about Europe.
16:53If it sounds too good to be true, then it probably is.
16:57Hmm, sounds too good to be true.
16:59You know, that reminds me of the time 100 years ago in 2010 when a younger, pluckier
17:03Clegg took part in debates with the Gruffalo and Iggle Piggle.
17:06Back then, he was the wild card, the exciting outsider fighting the system, the voice of
17:11ordinary people, Barack Hussein Clegg, bright-eyed embodiment of hope.
17:15Now, you're going to be told tonight by these two that the only choice you can make is between
17:20two old parties who've been running things for years.
17:24I'm here to persuade you that there is an alternative.
17:28Now, just four years later, here he was, the company man, tainted goods, defending the
17:33closed shop against a new wild card man-of-the-people outsider, albeit the kind of outsider who
17:38thinks the country's got enough outsiders already.
17:40Part of Clegg's trouble is that as soon as you're part of the system, you're not a man
17:43of the people anymore, you're not relatable, and you don't even seem human.
17:46For instance, Robo Cameron, the optimist prime minister, consistently exhibits alarmingly
17:51stiff gestures and arm movements, like he needs oiling.
17:54He also has an odd habit of abruptly walking out of shot the moment he's had enough of
17:57talking to the media or uploading information to the pleb cloud, as he probably thinks of
18:01it.
18:03Where's he going?
18:04Those are the things we'll be discussing here today, and I'm hopeful of a positive outcome.
18:08Wait, wait, come back here, don't just walk off with your hands in your pockets, Jesus
18:13Christ.
18:14Right now, the key thing is getting everything done that we can in the next few hours to
18:19protect as many homes and communities as possible.
18:21Once the army's gone, I think we can say that was, that was David Cameron there.
18:27It was late for a bus by the looks of it, but Labour's Ed Miliband has the biggest image
18:31problem.
18:32Throughout 2014, poor old Miliband, a man with the face of a rubber ear and the voice
18:36of an enchanted plimsoll, looked and sounded awkward in every setting he appeared in.
18:40It's like he's been badly photoshopped into our world, and the more he strains to look
18:44normal doing everyday things, the less normal he looks.
18:48He looks at odds trying to drink a pint in a brewery.
18:51He can't eat a bacon sandwich without looking like a man who's been neck nominated to eat
18:55a live bat.
18:56He can't even look viewers of insipid breakfast TV in the eye without coming across like a
19:00slightly frightened robot.
19:02He's the only man on earth who manages to visibly shift uncomfortably in a still photograph.
19:08Into this void have poured people who were once considered fringe figures and are now
19:11hailed as a fresh solution, chief amongst them being UKIP.
19:14The odd thing about UKIP is that unlike the other parties, every gaffe they commit seems
19:18to make them stronger, and throughout the year they guffed out gaffes like a gaffe-guffing
19:21garrison.
19:22One of their sponsors claimed women shouldn't wear trousers.
19:25Why should women dress to excite men?
19:27Because that's the only way the world is going to continue.
19:30If they don't, then men are going to stop f***ing them.
19:33When Lenny Henry complained about a lack of diversity in British television, which speaking
19:37as a black woman I thought was a ridiculous claim, one UKIP candidate said he should emigrate
19:42to a black country.
19:44He told me if black people come to this country and don't like mixing with white people, then
19:49why are they here?
19:50Hair-cutted UKIPer and tough pub quiz answer Mike Reid caused a stink when he sang a calypso
19:56in a cod West Indian accent.
19:58Inadvertently creating the most controversial record in which a white man pretends to be
20:02black since blurred lines.
20:04Open the borders with them all coming.
20:06The eagle of immigrants in every town.
20:09Stand up and be counted, black and brown.
20:13It's funny because it's racist.
20:15Given all this, little wonder whenever ubiquitous Nigel wasn't on screen gaffering over a pint,
20:20he was saying sorry for something.
20:22Anything.
20:23Over and over again.
20:24I regret the fact that I was sort of completely tired out and I didn't choose, I didn't use
20:31the form of words in response that I would like to have used.
20:34Somehow, somebody in UKIP has made a very major error.
20:37This is our fault.
20:38It's the party's fault.
20:39Hands up.
20:40This kind of behaviour is unacceptable and it must never happen again.
20:43UKIP leader Nigel Farage apologises in person to the Thai woman described as a ting-tong
20:49by one of his MEPs.
20:51But, you know, mega, mega apologies.
20:54Yet despite all this, UKIP's popularity continued to grow and come the elections, they cleaned up.
21:01The UK Independence Party celebrates a dramatic breakthrough in the European elections.
21:07Even the pinko lefty BBC felt compelled to celebrate Nigel's birthday live on air like
21:12he's an emperor or something.
21:14It is Nigel Farage's birthday today, he's 50 today, so happy birthday to Nigel,
21:20happy birthday to Nigel.
21:22But who knows how long that'll last since Farage, the alternative outsider, is already
21:26being challenged by another alternative outsider.
21:29But this man is not a cartoon character.
21:32He ain't Del Boy, he ain't Arthur Daly, he's a pound shop Enoch Powell and we've got to watch him.
21:41Usually politics is really boring but this year it got more interesting because it had
21:46Russell Brand in it.
21:47He was good because when politicians talk they use all this boring language normal people
21:52don't use that you can't understand.
21:54But he cut through all that by talking in Victorian.
21:57In the phrase that these women have come up with, social housing not social cleansing,
22:01is incredibly germane, incredibly apatite.
22:05He's like a sort of cross between Jesus and Rise of the Planet of the Apes.
22:10He said how rich people like him were shit and we shouldn't listen to them, so I didn't
22:16know whether to listen to him or not.
22:18But he was fucking everywhere so it was really hard not to.
22:21Then he brought out a book called Revolution about how unfair everything is.
22:26And so you'd know he meant it, he pulled a serious face on the front.
22:30It was about how catapultism is naughty and how we could build a better world if we were
22:36nice to each other instead of spending all our time thinking about coins.
22:40Energy companies are subsidised by our taxes while renewable energies are ignored.
22:46So you can't support that system, Evan?
22:48He'd talk about how the status quo keeps the working classes enslaved, which I found
22:53sort of boring compared to the stuff he used to do about putting his dinkle into granddaughters.
22:58What he's saying might actually be stupid but it's hard to tell because he says it with
23:03clever words.
23:04We don't want pedagogic figures coming in and didactically shouting at us.
23:09So the only people who can actually tell if he's stupid are clever themselves and they
23:13think everyone's stupid compared to them anyway.
23:15Basically the only way to find out if he's clever or stupid will be to do everything
23:19he says and see if society totally collapses and hundreds of thousands of people die.
23:25Also in May the BBC attempted to rally the nation with When Cordon Met Barlow in which
23:30national treasure James Cordon met national treasure Gary Barlow in a bid to solve the
23:36mystery of how they both became national treasures.
23:38The end result was a dispiriting road trip in which Barlow did all the driving.
23:42I mean he could have got a cab but he prefers to avoid taxis.
23:45It was shot weirdly too, at times almost like a sort of odd couple romantic comedy in which
23:49the two leads sadly never kiss.
23:59Sometimes it was like watching an episode of The Royal Family or a Creature Comforts
24:03animation before they put the plaster scene in.
24:05What's been your proudest moment?
24:07I've got to say the OBE, haven't I really?
24:10It's a good day.
24:12It has been the ultimate occasion, hasn't it?
24:16It was, it was a good day.
24:17Yeah.
24:18The best bit happened after really, didn't it?
24:20Yeah.
24:21Because I'd made a stew at home.
24:23Right.
24:24So we raced home, we got the award, done the pictures, raced home, we all tucked into this
24:30stew that I'd made earlier, wolfed it.
24:33Although he is an incredibly accomplished musician, this is my favourite one of his.
24:37Look at that, total concentration.
24:39I mean, he's boring, but he's focused.
24:41Gets good in a minute.
24:43Probably still thinking about that stew.
24:45Look at him.
24:46Any minute now.
24:48Seriously, stick with it.
24:51It's going to get good.
24:54Good bit's coming up.
24:56I know how to improve this.
24:59Just add a bit of Ukrainian stone.
25:10Sorry, I completely forgot what I'm meant to be doing.
25:15June heralded the glorious World Cup, the global festival of kickery-pokery.
25:19The sheer magic of football was apparent from the offset, with players flying in amid swirling
25:23allegations of FIFA corruption to be greeted by a traditional Brazilian street party.
25:28Then in surprising and powerful scenes, Luis Suarez caused outrage when he was caught biting
25:32an Italian man on the shoulder from behind, like your dad did in the Navy.
25:372014 will perhaps go down as the year the Internet no longer seemed like quite such
25:41a benevolent presence in all our lives.
25:43I mean, for years, we were like, oh, look, it's full of kitten pictures.
25:46But this year, looking behind almost every unpleasant event,
25:49there was some kind of online origin story.
25:52Trolling, harassment and online misogyny were constantly in the news.
25:55Celebrity photographs were stolen and shared, and Sony Pictures suffered the most
25:59merciless hacking since Janet Leigh in Psycho.
26:02Then, of course, you had terrorists using the Internet.
26:05Yeah, I suppose I've got to talk about ISIS, if that's what you even call them.
26:09I mean, I don't know if they're ISIS or ISIL or just IS,
26:13which I suppose is sort of vanilla ICE.
26:16The unfolding horror show that is ISIS has its roots in a terrorist group
26:19once commonly known as al-Qaeda in Iraq, which in June declared a worldwide caliphate,
26:24or global Islamic state, claiming to represent Muslims worldwide.
26:28But sadly, this lot put the hate into caliphate.
26:31The group seen here training in a sort of terrorist version of crufts
26:34appeared to be rapidly gaining ground throughout Syria and Iraq
26:37and made its presence felt globally online with a series of videos
26:40depicting nigh-on medieval brutality, including some in which hostages were beheaded.
26:44These videos were packaged to be spread, even including a gruesome trail
26:48identifying the next potential murder victim at the end.
26:50ISIS videos slot perfectly into a Western news narrative
26:53already overflowing with negative stories about Islam.
26:56In fact, the news actually assists the group, not deliberately, but as a side effect.
27:00ISIS draws much of its strength from its flashy propaganda
27:03and the bind the news media finds itself in is that each time it reports on the latest atrocity
27:07it also helps promote it.
27:08The coverage feels like one long ISIS showreel,
27:10everything from posturing videos to ominous images of Beetle John
27:14literally given a rock star nickname, accompanied by awestruck accounts of his ruthlessness.
27:18It all becomes spectacle, draped in the visual language of fictional thrillers,
27:21an accelerating viral cycle.
27:23And the terror spreads and spreads and makes ISIS seem more powerful
27:27and the rest of us more powerless.
27:31Do you know who this terrorist is?
27:34No.
27:35This sense of ever-expanding madness has been unfurling all year,
27:38not just with ISIS, but with Russia and Ukraine, Israel, Palestine, Ebola,
27:42mistrust with politicians, with institutions, with the media, with cultural icons.
27:47There's chaos in the USA, chaos in Hong Kong, chaos in the news studio in Jordan.
28:01At times the news has been so chaotic the news readers themselves don't want to turn up and read it.
28:06Even seasoned reporters are chickening out live on air.
28:09Nicholas, what does it say?
28:16Against this sense that everything's sliding out of control,
28:19it's hard to know what to cling to or even what's going on.
28:22Here's a personal view from documentary filmmaker Adam Curtis,
28:25the man behind the power of nightmares and the forthcoming Bitter Lake,
28:28on the chaos that seems to be engulfing everything.
28:31So much of the news this year has been hopeless, depressing and, above all, confusing,
28:37to which the only response is, oh, dear.
28:41But what this film is going to suggest is that that defeatist response
28:46has become a central part of a new system of political control.
28:50And to understand how this is happening, you have to look to Russia
28:56and to a man called Vladislav Surkov, who is a hero of our time.
29:02Surkov is one of President Putin's advisers
29:05and has helped him maintain his power for 15 years.
29:09But he has done it in a very new way.
29:16He came originally from the avant-garde art world
29:19and those who have studied his career say that what Surkov has done
29:23is import ideas from conceptual art into the very heart of politics.
29:29His aim is to undermine people's perception of the world
29:33so they never know what is really happening.
29:37Surkov turned Russian politics into a bewildering,
29:40constantly changing piece of theatre.
29:43He sponsored all kinds of groups,
29:45from neo-Nazi skinheads to liberal human rights groups.
29:49He even backed parties that were opposed to President Putin.
29:54But the key thing was that Surkov then let it be known
29:57that this was what he was doing,
29:59which meant that no-one was sure what was real or fake.
30:03As one journalist put it,
30:05it's a strategy of power that keeps any opposition constantly confused,
30:10a ceaseless shape-shifting that is unstoppable because it's indefinable.
30:17Which is exactly what Surkov is alleged to have done
30:20in the Ukraine this year.
30:22In typical fashion, as the war began,
30:25Surkov published a short story about something he called non-linear war.
30:31A war where you never know what the enemy are really up to
30:34or even who they are.
30:37The underlying aim, Surkov says, is not to win the war
30:41but to use the conflict to create a constant state
30:44of destabilised perception in order to manage and control.
30:49But maybe we have something similar emerging here in Britain.
30:54Everything we're told by journalists and politicians
30:57is confusing and contradictory.
30:59Of course, there is no Mr Surkov in charge,
31:02but it's an odd, non-linear world
31:04that plays into the hands of those in power.
31:07British troops have come home from Afghanistan,
31:10and nobody seems to know whether it was a victory or whether it was a defeat.
31:14Ageing disjockeys are prosecuted for crimes they committed decades ago,
31:18while practically no-one in the City of London
31:21is prosecuted for the endless financial crimes
31:24that are being revealed there.
31:26In Syria, we are told that President Assad is the evil enemy,
31:30but then his enemies turn out to be even more evil than him.
31:34So we bomb them, and by doing that, we help keep Assad in power.
31:39But the real epicentre of this non-linear world is the economy,
31:44and the closest we have to our own shape-shifting,
31:47post-modern politician is George Osborne.
31:50He tells us proudly that the economy is growing,
31:53but at the same time, wages are going down.
31:56He says he is cutting the deficit,
31:58but then it's revealed that the deficit is going up.
32:02But the dark heart of this shape-shifting world is quantitative easing.
32:08The government is insisting on taking billions of pounds
32:11out of the economy through its austerity programme.
32:14Yet at the very same time,
32:16it is pumping billions of pounds into the economy
32:19through quantitative easing.
32:21The equivalent of £24,000 for every family in Britain.
32:28But it gets even more confusing,
32:30because the Bank of England have admitted that those billions of pounds
32:34have not gone where they are supposed to.
32:36A vast amount of the money has actually found its way
32:39into the hands of the wealthiest 5% in Britain.
32:43It has been described as the biggest transfer of wealth to the rich
32:47in recent documented history.
32:50It could be a huge scandal, comparable to the greedy oligarchs in Russia,
32:55a ruthless elite siphoning off billions of public money.
33:00But nobody seems to know.
33:03It sums up the strange mood of our time,
33:06where nothing really makes any coherent sense.
33:10We live with a constant vaudeville of contradictory stories
33:13that makes it impossible for any real opposition to emerge,
33:17because they can't counter it with a coherent narrative of their own.
33:23And it means that we as individuals become ever more powerless,
33:27unable to challenge anything,
33:29because we live in a state of confusion and uncertainty,
33:34to which the response is, oh dear.
33:38But that's what they want you to say.
33:40There was this Australian man called Roald Farris
33:43who'd come over to Britain years ago
33:45and hung around for ages like Australians do,
33:48working as a sort of odd job man for the entertainment industry.
33:51He was an other people entertainer,
33:54in that you always assumed other people found him entertaining,
33:57when actually he wasn't.
33:59Anyway, he was sort of quite popular until this year,
34:01when it turned out that as well as doing his entertainment,
34:04he was a criminal.
34:05He'd committed all these terrible crimes years ago
34:08and then escaped from the past
34:10and tried to get away with it by hiding in now.
34:12But luckily they caught him.
34:16Now, you might have noticed there were a lot of depressing stories this year,
34:19so to counteract that, here's some funny music.
34:23Right, now for Ebola.
34:25This unpleasant shoelace is Ebola,
34:27a terrible, highly infectious disease
34:29that's ravaged some regions of Africa, causing untold misery.
34:32It's a grave concern in the affected countries,
34:34but it's very unlikely to spread in the West
34:36because we've got an infrastructure that should be able to cope with it.
34:39We also have the luxury of publicly worrying about Ebola
34:42in an entertaining way.
34:43In Mississippi, for instance,
34:45parents began taking their kids out of a school
34:47after a rumour the headmaster had just returned
34:49from a completely different part of Africa.
34:51Principal Lee Waddock just returned from his brother's funeral in Zambia,
34:55far from the Ebola hotspot countries on the other side of Africa.
34:59Really, the only people at risk outside Africa
35:01were health workers returning from disease hotspots,
35:04hence the small number of isolated cases.
35:06Unstoppable American blowhard super-tip Glenn Beck
35:09showed his audience how difficult it was
35:11for health workers to avoid contamination
35:13by donning hazmat clothing himself
35:15and getting some lackeys to simulate the challenge
35:17of tackling Ebola symptoms.
35:19Yeah, you're tasked with coming up with a way of simulating
35:22the projectile vomiting and explosive diarrhoea.
35:26This largely involved flinging the contents of an entire Italian buffet
35:30complete with full chocolate pudding course at him.
35:32Not that the average Joe needs all that protective kit.
35:35One US news network lucidly explained
35:37Ebola isn't necessarily that easy to catch.
35:40You have to come in intimate contact with it
35:42while the person is infected.
35:44Now, if you came across some strange mucus
35:46or faeces or something out there
35:48on the subway, the street or anywhere else,
35:50you know, don't eat it.
35:52But only until this all blows over.
35:54After then, knock yourself out.
35:58Later in the year, Ebola was linked to a sudden re-emergence
36:01of the Band-Aid virus that had laid dormant for years.
36:04This was an attempt to recreate the successful formula
36:06that had previously ended hunger, made poverty history
36:09and brought peace to Africa.
36:11A huge crowd of pop stars I don't recognise
36:13queued for their turn to sing into a table tennis bat,
36:16including Bono, who hadn't actually been invited.
36:18He was installed on the song automatically from Apple's iCloud.
36:21Tonight we're reaching out
36:24and touching you
36:29Normally, when someone pops up holding a bucket
36:31and talking about charity, you do your best to avoid them.
36:34But there was no avoiding them this year,
36:36even if you put the bucket on your head,
36:38which was sort of the point.
36:40This is the Ice Bucket Challenge,
36:42raising funds and awareness for ALS
36:44and I nominate Jamie Curry, Travyn Tomelli and Beyonce.
36:49The concept was simple.
36:51Mention the cause, nominate three mates to copy you,
36:53empty a bucket of ice water over your head
36:55and lob the results on YouTube.
36:57It was fun and it was ubiquitous.
36:59Of course, it didn't really count until celebrities got involved
37:02and before long, the great and good could be found online
37:04in a series of internet videos.
37:06It all looked like good, clean, famous fun.
37:09Years ago, Tom Cruise, Benedict Cumberbatch,
37:11Steven Spielberg, Cilla Black, even Ed Miliband joined in.
37:19Simon Cowell, no stranger himself to pouring cold water on people's dreams,
37:23had fluid sloshed all up his back on the deck of a yacht,
37:26which is the first time that's ever happened.
37:28Or shucks, warmongering hell wraith George W. Bush
37:31tried to wash the blood off his hands with a dowsing.
37:35He was into the Ice Bucket Challenge years before anyone else,
37:38although back then he called it waterboarding.
37:40But the bucket-chucking fun had its pitfalls.
37:43Over-enthusiastic members of the public,
37:45who earlier in the year had failed to remember that boiling water is hot,
37:48were now failing to appreciate how heavy a container full of water can be.
37:52Before long, there was a spate of videos
37:54raising awareness of neck injuries instead.
37:56Palestinians also got in on the act with the Rubble Bucket Challenge,
37:59in which the object was to raise awareness of the situation in Gaza
38:02by tipping a bucket of smashed-up building rubble all over your head.
38:13Also in August, the final gasping repercussions
38:16of 2012's glorious Olympic legacy dribbled on to BBC One
38:19in the form of celebrity gymnastics contest Tumble.
38:24Your host, Alex Jones.
38:27It's Saturday night and this is Tumble.
38:32Jesus Christ, what is it with these simple programme titles?
38:35We've had Splash, Jump, now Tumble. What's next, Plop?
38:39The first event was clearing the impossibly low bar the BBC had set itself,
38:43and accepting that challenge were a galaxy of stars,
38:46including H from Steps, aka Ian Watkins.
38:49And just to be clear, he's the Ian Watkins it's still OK to like.
38:56Although he is testing that to the limit, if I'm honest.
38:59This amounted to celebrity forward rolls and a level of spectacle
39:02you wouldn't crane your neck gently to watch if it was happening behind you
39:05while you sat in a deck chair. It became apparent this was a format
39:08they should really have been saving for the months and years after the apocalypse.
39:14Interestingly, that is the precise opposite of an act I once saw in Bangkok.
39:19Police have searched the home of Sir Cliff Richard.
39:22The BBC tried to do this new kind of celebrity reality show,
39:26What they did was they started searching famous people's houses on TV,
39:29people who hadn't been arrested or charged with anything.
39:36They had all cameras outside and they flew over in a helicopter
39:39so you could tell what a building looks like from the air
39:42when there's police inside it that you can't see.
39:45It was sort of like Extreme Through the Keyhole,
39:48where instead of thinking, who would live in a house like this,
39:51you were thinking, how the hell is this allowed to happen?
39:55Which is an interesting new spin on it.
39:58After it went out, the reviews were terrible.
40:01People said it was worse than Tumble and they got loads of complaints.
40:04I don't think it'll get another series, to be honest.
40:08In September, millions of people were asking themselves one simple question.
40:11Am I Scot or not?
40:14Yes, porridge scoffing super northern as the Scottish went to the polls
40:17to decide whether to get divorced from the English and leave Britain
40:20to go and live in Scotland.
40:23The Yes campaign was a series of ill-founded doomsday scenarios.
40:26Scotland would lose the pound. RBS would go and live in London.
40:29It would snow all the time, even indoors.
40:32Duncan's horses would turn and eat each other. Nessie would die of rabies.
40:35Mothra would attack Dundee and God herself would hammer the mountains flat
40:38and delete the taste of iron brew from their memories.
40:41Whereas the Yes campaign largely consisted of hope, yearning
40:44and a bunch of vague wishes held together with sticky-backed patriotism.
40:47Both sides attempted to bolster their arguments with big-name backing.
40:51Among the political heavyweights supporting the Yes campaign
40:54were former identical twins, Frankie Boyle lookalikes
40:57and hiking enthusiasts, the Proclaimers.
41:00We've voted Yes for Independent Scotland because we want to see
41:03a fairer and more just society.
41:06Talk about breaking up a familiar union. You two don't even look alike anymore.
41:09The No camp had strong support from John Barrowman,
41:12the least Scottish Scotsman since Condoleezza Rice.
41:15Not long after my family immigrated to America in the mid-70s,
41:19we were invited to be the special guests of a Burns Supper in South Dakota.
41:23Call me ignorant, but I didn't realise he was born in Glasgow.
41:26I always thought he was manufactured by Mattel.
41:29I am Scottish. I do have an opinion. And I do have a voice.
41:33Yeah, usually an American one.
41:36J.K. Rowling gave £1 million to the No campaign,
41:39instantly prompting some carefully considered conversation on social media.
41:42For instance, Twitter user System Overload said,
41:46Her books are pish. Got a specky bastard,
41:49a ginger and a squeaky wee bitch
41:52fucking about where wands.
41:55Wits up where that? Wits up indeed.
41:58Politically, the debate was personified by Alex Salmond
42:01and David Cameron, both of whom gave countless impassioned speeches,
42:04making the case for their side. We can't recount all of those speeches here,
42:07but cut-and-paste collaborators Cassette Boy
42:10have boiled down the essence of everything they said into one handy
42:13musical package which starts when I bang my head on the desk.
42:16Independence. What a difference.
42:19The lesson is a simple one. Of better days to come.
42:22No longer run from London. We intend to win
42:25this referendum. Thank you very much for that
42:28real welcoming bang drum to keep our United Kingdom
42:31as one. We cannot change forever the way
42:34our country is run. Because I believe in
42:37Team GB. But believe me, I love Scotch whisky.
42:40That's really what it's about for me. Some people have advisements
42:43to push Alex Salmond in the North Sea.
42:46It will be easy. Well, not really.
42:49Who would you rather have representing this nation?
42:52A coalition devoid of any vision. People who've never travelled
42:55north of Kings Cross station. Or Scotland could be
42:58an independent nation. My argument today
43:01is we want you to stay in the UK.
43:04That way Scotland has to stay in our national club.
43:07I would rather go straight to the pub.
43:10A life in Scotland is no life at all.
43:13Better than living south of Cajun's Wall.
43:16Where quality of life continues to thrive.
43:19Thanks to the Philistines of Whitehall.
43:22The sight of that man makes me sick.
43:25We all know living in Scotland is catastrophic.
43:28Home of the drug addict or the alcoholic.
43:31David Cameron, you are a Westminster dick.
43:35They won't get more powers. We will not finish what we have begun.
43:38Scotland will be going back to square one.
43:41When the polls close and the voting has been done
43:44it could be the end of David Cameron.
43:47That's the main reason to say yes.
43:50To speak out against the forces of darkness.
43:53I say no. We know to vote yes.
43:56As the vote neared, a shock poll suddenly put the McShits
43:59up a previously complacent Westminster.
44:02I would like to know what to make of some of the poll results.
44:05Especially if they were watching CNN.
44:08The survey of the six polls says ultimately the answer will be no.
44:11But it's close. You see the numbers, 52 to 58%.
44:14Good old CNN. Accurate reporting, 26 hours a day, 17 days a week.
44:17Lots of last minute promises were made about what would happen
44:20if Scotland voted to stay in bed with Britain.
44:23A list that read like a desperate late night text from a boyfriend
44:26who just doesn't want to be broken up with.
44:30Scotland could borrow the car at the weekend.
44:33England would fill the dishwasher like it had promised to.
44:36Eventually the no camp got so desperate they dug up former PM
44:39and haunted butler from a horror movie, Gordon Brown.
44:42Hoping some of that warm nostalgia we all share for 2010 might help.
44:45In the end the no campaign won by 11 points
44:48on a genuinely impressive turn out of 85%.
44:51The highest for any vote since series three of Big Brother.
44:54SNP leader and the automatic pilot from Airplane, Alex Salmond resigned.
44:57In October ITV2 broadcast Release the Howls,
45:00a staggering new game show in which hapless contestants
45:03had to solve horrifying puzzles culminating with an astonishing challenge
45:06in which they attempted to outrun a pack of hungry dogs
45:09in a sort of cross between Total Wipeout and the CIA's enhanced interrogation techniques.
45:12But oddly enough that wasn't the most controversial show on ITV2 that month.
45:15No, that would be Mr Dapper Laughs.
45:18Dapper Laughs started out as the brainchild of former estate agent Daniel O'Reilly
45:21who uploaded a series of six second vines
45:24in which the titular Mr Laughs shared the contents of his brain
45:27which sadly often ran out before those six seconds were up.
45:30Six second sex secrets.
45:33Have you given us a blow job?
45:36No, I'm keeping eye contact. Not sexy. It gets a bit awkward.
45:39Stop looking at me!
45:42He was an estate agent from Clapham saying the sort of thing you imagine an estate agent from Clapham says
45:45to amuse other estate agents from Clapham.
45:48The tragedy was the rest of us could see it too.
45:52As well as sexism there was also cheap homophobia.
46:00And some material that veered into what you might charitably call ill-advised territory.
46:09That is terrible.
46:12Although if you ask me the most offensive thing is he's filmed all of this in the wrong orientation.
46:15Turn your phone sideways, Laughs!
46:18Given that it was perhaps surprising when ITV2 offered Mr Laughs his own dating show.
46:21They've only gone and given me my own ITV2 show.
46:24Baiting's out and pulling's in.
46:27Anyway before long Japper Laughs on the Pool was on the air.
46:30A sort of makeover show in which the oily tit attempted to transform
46:33awkward insecure men into lady killers.
46:36Don't want to pimp your penis. How you doing?
46:39Look at this thing. Jesus Christ.
46:42No wonder you can't get no mints. Your face looks like one.
46:45Now on the face of it there's only the faintest pube of difference
46:48between Japper Laughs material and that of fellow ITV2 face Keith Lemon.
46:51Smash her back doors in.
46:54Destroy her.
46:57I would ruin that.
47:00Difference is while the character Keith Lemon is clearly
47:03a preposterous non-threatening dick the character Japper Laughs
47:06seemed to be actively celebrating crass laddism.
47:09And he was appearing in a show in which he gave advice to real people.
47:13Go and talk to the bird at the end of the bar.
47:16And he couldn't be an ironic character surely because the bloke who played him
47:19wasn't middle class and only middle class people do irony because
47:22they're sophisticated and better than plebby chimps and that.
47:25But then shit got real. Japper got into a spat with a website.
47:28Some of his followers piled in with misogynist abuse and soon
47:31a full blown Twitter storm was raging.
47:34And when a murky video emerged in November of him digging himself
47:37even further into a hole the game was well and truly up.
47:40Now as far as the media was concerned Japper Laughs was radioactive dog shit
47:43and ITV2 showed they'd learnt some pulling tips
47:46when they pulled his whole show.
47:49He'd smashed it. F*** the shit out of himself. He was hanging out the back of his own career.
47:52He was proper hoist on his own petard.
47:55But his punishment wasn't over because he hadn't said sorry yet
47:58which is why an embattled Japper appeared on Newsnight dressed as a 50s beat poet
48:01for a stern telling off at the hands of Emily Maitlis
48:04who echoed his own material back at him to see if he found it quite so
48:07chucklesome when it was being recited during a revival of Kafka's
48:10The Trial starring himself.
48:13When you say you're giving advice to men on the pool and for example
48:16you say get your gas out to women
48:19can you deny that that would encourage men to do that on the street?
48:22It's not the first time Maitlis has tried to hand it a bit of stand up.
48:25Back in 2008 she delivered some of Frankie Boyle's material
48:28to former Director General Mark Thompson.
48:31I'm now so old my pussy is haunted.
48:34And if you enjoyed that don't forget to catch Emily Maitlis
48:37on her forthcoming live tour.
48:40Anyway in the space of a few months Dapper Lass went from being the king
48:43of six second carry on land bants to battered, shat out, festering carry on.
48:46Dapper Lass is gone.
48:49I look at it now and I'm trying to at the moment
48:52hold back the emotion that's attached to
48:55what it's done to my life and what the media have done to my life
48:58in the last four days.
49:01I didn't realise I was causing that much of a problem.
49:04It's quite a sad story really. My eyes are getting proper moist.
49:07To lighten the mood in November ITV decided to release
49:10one more hound as opulent melodrama Downton Abbey
49:13bumped off the unfortunately named family dog Isis.
49:16You know what IRA the cat must be shitting himself.
49:19I'm going to sleep in the dressing room tonight.
49:22I'm not cross I just want to have her with me.
49:25He's got balls telling his wife he'll be spending the night
49:28with some bitch he's just picked up. He knows.
49:31Then they are here between us and she'll know she has someone
49:34who loves her very much next to her.
49:37This emotionally charged three in a bed dogging action
49:40wasn't the most shocking bedroom scene on ITV this year.
49:43That'd be the heart rending moment in Coronation Street
49:46when Hayley Cropper necked a pint of death juice
49:49and gave Roy a cheeky hand job on her way out.
49:52I love you.
49:56There was this comet which lived miles away in space
49:59and these scientists were trying to land a probe on it
50:02so they could find out more about it, like what it was made of
50:05and if the weather was nice there, that sort of thing.
50:08The science people are all in the control house
50:11looking at computers and then when it landed
50:14they were really happy which was lovely to see.
50:17It's landing! It's landing! It's landing!
50:21Then the probe sent back these sort of selfies
50:24which everyone said were amazing even though they were black and white.
50:27It was all just rocks, I don't know, trees or waterfalls
50:31or even like, I don't know, a horse by a pond in the background.
50:35Anyway, the news coverage was really great, totally comprehensive.
50:38They'd spoke to all the science people who'd done it
50:41and one of them was this science man
50:44who was wearing this sort of rude shirt with all drawings of ladies' bums on it.
50:48Possibly the water, the 50% water we find on a comet
50:53could have been a delivery mechanism to the Earth.
50:56People on the internet said he was a bit silly
50:59and then they said he was a bit wrong and then a bit bad
51:02and then sexist and then oppressive and horrible and disgraceful
51:06and totally and unforgivably evil and that he should apologise.
51:10And so the next day he did.
51:13The shirt I wore this week, I made a big mistake
51:17and I offended many people
51:20and I'm very sorry about this.
51:22It's sad to watch the way he looked on the news.
51:24Normally when people the internet doesn't like issue an apology
51:27they're still not forgiven because the internet is sort of like a killing machine.
51:31It can't forgive but this bloke cried
51:34and when he cried everyone felt sorry for him again
51:36so things calmed down and went back to normal.
51:39And then there was someone else to hate so we did that.
51:41Can't remember who that was.
51:43Could have been anyone.
51:50While America tore itself apart over black oppression
51:53Britain tore itself apart over Black Friday
51:56a sort of official capitalist reimagining of the 2011 August riots.
52:00Yes, in what looks set to become a depressing tradition
52:03shoppers stood in line waiting for retail outlets to open their doors
52:06for a headline grabbing set of one day only offers
52:08reciting what they wanted like a consumerist mantra.
52:11An Xbox.
52:13I'm after TV.
52:15I'm after a phone.
52:16The anticipation was so great some people didn't even know what they wanted
52:19as ITN made abundantly clear they just knew they had to come.
52:22You don't even know what you might be getting.
52:24No, no, till I have a look.
52:26They said that there should be something in there
52:28but they wouldn't say what I would find.
52:30Chillingly it's a sort of real life consumerist parody
52:32of George Romero's excellent consumerist parody Dawn of the Dead
52:36in which zombies flock to a shopping mall for reasons they don't understand.
52:39What are they doing? Why did they come here?
52:42Kind of instinct, memory, what they used to do.
52:47This was an important place in their lives.
52:53As the doors opened on Black Friday
52:55it wasn't long for the whole thing to come crashing down
52:58sadly along with customers.
53:01In surreal and alarming scenes
53:03which might as well have been sponsored by online retailers
53:05to convince you to shop online instead
53:07ordinary Britons stampeded into shops
53:09to punch 52 inch televisions off each other
53:11so they could take them home, hang them on the wall
53:13and ignore them while gawping at their phones.
53:16Sad really, now they've commercialised it
53:18the true meaning of senseless violence has just been lost.
53:21Little wonder as Christmas loomed nearer
53:23some people were afraid, none more than this poor woman
53:25who suffers a festive phobia
53:27and who was tormented by Yuletide imagery
53:29as part of a pioneering experiment on ITVs this morning.
53:32Here's some footage of a snowman, you're up to 140 now
53:36and how does that make you feel?
53:38145, 146, 147, 148
53:42heart rate is increasing to 150 now
53:45Alright, that's enough, let's take that off.
53:47Equally disturbing were some of the Christmas ads.
53:50Yes, noted humanitarian movement and supermarket
53:53Jay Sainsbury PLC unveiled the glossy tale
53:56of a perfectly good war ruined by a tragic outbreak of football.
54:00There they are, our ancestors shivering in the frosty trenches
54:03or the frozen isle as Sainsbury's call it
54:05waiting to shoot their five a day or get killed
54:08body bagged for life as Sainsbury's call it
54:10when they call off the hostilities in favour of a kick around.
54:13Anyway, once the game is over they presumably go back
54:15to slaughtering each other and dying in wretched agony
54:18scenes Sainsbury's have left out for reasons of taste of difference.
54:21Some said that placing a supermarket logo
54:23over a recreation of a real life killing field was an insult
54:26others said it was a tear jerking tribute
54:28to a generation of young men who laid down their lives
54:31so we could all enjoy three for two on tender stem broccoli.
54:34But perhaps the most unsettling Christmas ad
54:36was this startling presentation in which TGI Fridays
54:39unveiled a missile towed drone designed to make diners kiss one another
54:42and maybe temporarily forget the nightmare dystopian future
54:45they're eating onion rings in.
54:47But as an alarming US news report made clear
54:49the festive kissing fun was short lived.
54:52A recent promotion at a restaurant in Brooklyn
54:54let's just say didn't go as planned
54:56it involved a drone carrying missile tow
54:59flying around trying to get couples to kiss.
55:02A cute idea but then the drone ended up crashing into a woman's face.
55:05It seemed to cut a little part of her nose off
55:08because the blood was gushing.
55:10My date's got no nose. How does she smell?
55:12Crying.
55:14Well that's about all we've got time for.
55:16As you've probably noticed it's been quite a challenging year
55:18one containing an ever growing sense of dread.
55:21There's been plenty of reasons to be fearful in 2014
55:24but hey, let's not make a song and dance about it.
55:27No, actually let's.
55:33Reasons to be fearful. Fourteen.
55:37Constant global crisis. Syria to ISIS.
55:39Rising living prices. We can't cope.
55:41Rolling news is leering and looking on and cheering
55:43and Danny does appearing in our leading soap.
55:45Historic times are pitted. Historias are quitted.
55:47Dapper laughs transmitted. Shop floor war.
55:49Online woman hating. Gamer bloody gating.
55:51And below the breadline rating on Channel 4.
55:53Violence unending. iPhones bending.
55:55Ian Botham trending. Hashtag urgh.
55:57Verval diarrhoea. Annex in Crimea.
55:59And a spider in the ear of Katie Melu urgh.
56:01Teleactors mumbling. No marks tumbling.
56:03Our social order crumbling.
56:05While people snigger. Sony facing hacking.
56:07MPs backing fracking and Clarkson facing tracking
56:09for saying naughty words.
56:11Reasons to be fearful. Fourteen.
56:14Reasons to be fearful. Fourteen.
56:18Reasons to be fearful. Fourteen.
56:22Reasons to be fearful.
56:242014.
56:35Reasons to be fearful. Fourteen.
56:39Awful fear and dreading. Ebola virus spreading.
56:41Clooney's bloody wedding and that damn song.
56:43U2 uninvited. UKIP all delighted.
56:45And everything Mark Wright did all year long.
56:47Corruption in the city. Scotland getting splitty.
56:49Would he? Could he? Did he? That's no joke.
56:51Porridge for Rolf Harris. Miller band embarrassed.
56:53Cameron was harassed by a random bloke.
56:55Devastated Glyph face. Choppers over Glyph's place.
56:57Baked Alaska mist place. Feelings hurt.
56:59Solange attacking Jay-Z. Atmos looking hazy.
57:01And Twitter going crazy for an ill-judged shirt.
57:03Pratuma with a hard-on. Boko Haram.
57:05Her continued stardom. Jeremy Hunt.
57:07Russell's evolution contains no solution.
57:09He's untouched by evolution. The ape-like chap.
57:11Reasons to be fearful. Fourteen.
57:15Reasons to be fearful. Fourteen.
57:19Reasons to be fearful. Fourteen.
57:23Reasons to be fearful.
57:252014.
57:33Yes, yes, dear, dear, but hey, next year, perhaps things might get better.
57:40I'll prepare that case.
58:03No, no, no, no, no.
58:13They're
58:15no, no, no.
58:17They're
58:19no.
58:22No.
58:26No.
58:29No.
58:32Let's try looking forward, beyond West Norwood, maybe things will turn good in months to come.
58:38Economies recover, we all embrace each other, and the love will spread like butter, and
58:42your mum.
58:43What Peter Capaldi?
58:44You might go on holiday, the bargain bin at Ald is full of cheap Czech beer.
58:47You can do some voting and new royal baby-dating, oh shit I'm sugar-coating, f*** back to fear.
58:51Battlefields burning, stomach always churning, Benefit Street back to series 2.
58:55Every day up early, Nigel Farage and Kate Burley, belligerent and surly on Sky News.
58:59Another coalition, parliamentary repetition, hatred and suspicion every day.
59:03Apocalyptic weather, going hill for leather, that's the end of this, you now go away.