Brass Eye
Brass Eye (1997, 2001) is a Channel 4 satirical spoof documentary show, parodying current affairs documentaries and the media sensationalism and moral panics surrounding certain social issues. The series was created by Chris Morris and written by Morris, David Quantick, Peter Baynham, Jane Bussmann, Arthur Mathews and Graham Linehan.
Series I
[edit]Animals
[edit]- Chris Morris: Boo-hoo about calves! They do that with crabs, I don't see you weeping about crabs.
- Dinner Party Guest: Well, I think every animal has as much right decent treatment as we do.
- Chris Morris: You're wrong, and you're a grotesquely ugly freak! Thanks. [leaves the table]
- Chris Morris: [describing a tradition in Tripoli] An outdoor celebration in which the men of Tripoli have a great time - but the same cannot be said for their cattle. At the climax of the feast, a cow is rounded up and driven into a metal tube - a tube which is charged with explosives. The cow is fired through the air and lands in a crunched-up bone heap. Running men then clobber any remaining life out of it with their fists and feet and sticks. The body is dragged about and then left for the dogs and jackals. And possibly scorpions if they eat meat, I don't know...
- Chris Morris: Over the centuries, man's relationship with animals has been complex. In ancient Egypt, felines were worshipped because the Egyptians thought they were funny. Many of today's familiar relics are cat monuments. [pyramids are shown as the ears of huge cat statues] These vast cat heads were built underground and seen by no one. Europe, too, has its animal traditions. In Zaragoza, the streets still get crazy with the annual running of the wasp. In Britain in the last century, it was quite acceptable for a young gentleman to lose his virginity to one of London's many whore dogs. Dickens and Prince Albert both boasted of their experience. Today animals are used more discreetly, as a vital lubricant in the wheels of government.
- Chris Morris: There are many legal sports that kill animals too.
- Patrick Da Fronk: [a fox hunter] I think the thing that people get fussed about is that a fox is a small brown furry animal, very much like a dog. Um, I don't think they'd be nearly so worried if it was a little four-legged car... full of chips.
- Chris Morris: The evil of our relationship remains a paradox. If you plot "Number of animals abused" against "What makes people cruel" versus "Intelligence of either party", the pattern is so unreadable that you might as well draw in a chain of fox heads on sticks. And if you do that, an interesting thing happens: the word "cruel" starts flashing. So, are we cruel to hunt foxes?
- Patrick Da Fronk: The fox feels nothing. It's made of... string.
- Chris Morris: Institutionalised cruelty is one thing, but the twisted brain-wrong of a one-off man-mental is quite another. Ted Maul disturbs.
- Ted Maul: What sort of mind would do this? We contacted a huge bank of psychiatrists in the States. They told us: "The guy's a homo!"
- Simon Hottrin: [tormenting a cow] You don't even know what electricity is, do ya? Little planets in the wires...
- Ted Maul: These docs show that Hottrin had been driven nuts because the land on which he lives is owned by the cow. In the will of Edith Bates, a local crone who loved cattle - then eccentric, now dead - the cow inherited the land, and a special bank account for stockpiling rent. Meanwhile for the beast, which knows nothing of money or bitter mankind, life has become a living cow-mare, thanks to the thoughtless beneficence of a mad old woman.
- David Jatt: Here's a point. We execute wasps, but we don't execute dogs.
- Sir Peregrine Worsthorne: We execute wasps because they sting us, and dogs give us pleasure.
Drugs
[edit]- Chris Morris: The effects of a heroin overdose are lethal. Yes, in the short term, but there's been absolutely no research into the long-term effects.
- Chris Morris: People say that alcohol's a drug. It's not a drug, it's a drink!
- Chris Morris: The biggest problem of all is the law. It is legal to carry drugs if you're not actually touching them. These men avoid contact by using helium balloons attached to little drug baskets. It's also legal to buy and sell drugs if you do it through a mandrill. Typically mandrills work at night, approaching the house of a client with a drug pouch and returning with the money. Mandrills are intelligent and vicious, capable of throwing a 12-stone man over 40 feet, but mandrills have been protected by law ever since Queen Elizabeth I gave birth to a child resembling a mandrill by mistake.
- Noel Edmonds: What is Cake? Well, it has an active ingredient which is a dangerous psychoactive compound known as "dimesmeric andersonphospate". It stimulates the part of the brain called "Shatner's bassoon", and that's the bit of the brain that deals with time perception. So a second feels like a month. Well, it almost sounds like fun, unless you're the Prague schoolboy who walked out into the street, straight in front of a tram. He thought he'd got a month to cross the street...
- Bruno Brookes: [about "Cake"] You know, they've even tested this stuff on rats. Turned them into bloody space hoppers, for God's sake! Come on!
- Lemuel Webb: [to a classroom of kids] Drugs need you. [underlines the "U" on a blackboard and crosses it out] If you take the "you" out of drugs, what have you got? Drgs.
- Ian Beezley: Well, we live in very drugged-off times. I've seen mothers chasing children down the street - who's to say they're not going to inject them with drugs once they catch them?
- Chris Morris: If time's a drug, then Big Ben is a huge needle injecting it into the sky!
- Bernard Manning: Cake is a made-up drug. It's not made from plants, it's made from chemicals... by... sick bastards.
- Chris Morris: Luckily, the amount of heroin I use is harmless. I inject about once a month on a purely recreational basis. Fine. But what about other people less stable, less educated, less middle-class than me? Builders or blacks, for example. If you're one of those, my advice to you is leave well alone. Good luck.
Science
[edit]- Ted Maul: Loser Street. Look at all the feckless dregs.
- Ted Maul: A London alley. A body. Looks dead, but it isn't. It just wishes it was.
- Ted Maul: The personal organizer revealed a chain of rich clients for organs and limbs. Donald Trump has received over seven feet of new tongue. Even Saddam Hussein has an access - he's obsessed with having white lady's wrists.
- Tania Bryer: Perhaps the most disturbing effect is the disruption of rivers. This is footage of the river Euphrates flowing backwards. It looks like it's flowing forwards, but only because we've reversed the film.
Sex
[edit]- Chris Morris: [having exaggerated sex with a woman] If this were really happening, what would you think?
- Chris Morris: [in studio] Perhaps you wouldn't be that surprised. Increasingly, it seems the bone around our brains is not the skull, but the pelvis.
- Chris Morris: We are permissive, yet confused. It is quite acceptable for Peter Sissons to receive oral sex during disaster reports on the Nine O'Clock News, and yet on the Isle of Man nudity is still considered so shocking, it's illegal for babies to be born naked.
- Chris Morris: Now, our friend here was unlucky enough to catch his virus from a blood transfusion, something he had no control over--
- AIDS Guy: No, no, sorry, I got it from my boyfriend.
- Chris Morris: Your boyfriend?
- AIDS Guy: My partner, yeah.
- Chris Morris: So you got bad AIDS, not good AIDS?
- Chris Morris: [to the AIDS guy] What if a madman broke in here with a machine gun and shot you to pieces? Anyone here yawning would get your blood in their mouth!
- Sir Hugh Maharggs: Homosexuals can't swim, they attract enemy radar, they attract sharks, they insist on being placed at "the captain's table", they get up late, they nudge people whilst they're shooting. They muck about. Imagine... the fear... of knowing you have a gay man on board a boat, when you retire at night you think to yourself "God... will I wake up and find everybody dead?" You can't run a ship like that.
- Chris Morris: Welcome back. Now, sex and children. "Stop right there," you might think, but don't say it, because to hear the word "stop" is, for many, the biggest turn-on of all.
- Audience Member: My father repeatedly abused me between the ages of four and sixteen.
- Chris Morris: But it hasn't happened a lot recently?
- Audience Member: No.
- Chris Morris: Good.
- Chris Morris: Now, throughout tonight's program, we've also had a naked asexual man up a stick watching some pornography. Have you reached any conclusions?
- [The man shakes his head]
- Chris Morris: Well, I hope that's been of some help.
- Chris Morris: We'll just leave you with a couple of items of whore news: a large build-up of whores in a digger on the A47 tonight, and don't forget that in Leicester, Joanna Lumley, Anita Roddick and Helena Bonham Carter are all whoring themselves all night to raise a little money to buy some coloured bricks for some children. Helena's speciality there is a golden shower. And if you're anywhere near Yarmouth, watch out for that giant whore. [An overturned car is shown] It's still on the loose terrifying everybody, including the police.
Crime
[edit]- Chris Morris: UK used to mean United Kingdom, but ask anyone today, and they'll tell you it stands for "Unbelievable Krimewave"!
- Chris Morris: This month, police pictures showed another estate in Manchester turning itself into a gun.
- Ted Maul: From the moon, Cowsick's a little dot. From the ground, it's a huge mess! Like Dante meets Bosch in a crack lounge!
- Ted Maul: Cowsick. The stench of poverty hangs in the air like an old man's nappy.
- Ted Maul: For the cops, it's a jungle, where dangerous animals speak Swearhili.
- Ted Maul: They say a bored mind makes a great office for the Devil. In Kerry Hufford's case, it's fully air-conditioned with free typing.
- Ted Maul: Cowsick's people are the smashed toes of a lame duck society - a lame duck that's attacking its own feet with a sledgehammer. Will the nightmare ever end for Cowsick? Perhaps with some help from outside? Oh yeah? In 1993, the council gave them a football. Good, but not enough. In '95, Paul McCartney donated a hundred top hats. Fat use. And last year, the mayor gave them a goldmine. It actually worked for a bit, this, until someone clogged it up with sick!
- Tommy Vance: Now while you're inside here, you're going to have to learn a whole new language. It's not French, it's prison slang, and I've got some of it written here, so it might help. [reading] "Howard's Arse" means prison. "One-nil at half-time" means food. "Woggy coconuts" means air bricks. "Gazza" is a gas-coin used as currency for cigarettes. "Plank sanction": a one-for-one fag exchange. "Sue my chin": give us a fag, I'll give you two next week. "Buff my pylon": give us a fag, you owe me two, so I'm letting you off the other one. "Don't buff my pylon": switch over the telly. Oh, and very important this one: "Portillo" means look out behind you.
- Chris Morris: Research shows that football riots can be halted instantly by showing pornography on the video displays.
- Chris Morris: In Holland, they've halved the crime rate by legalizing murder with the introduction of slaughter cafes!
- Chris Morris: This French system of victim support comes to Britain next year. Last month, that woman woke up to find a young offender defecating on her floor. Under police supervision, she now meets the offender at his house... and is given an hour to formalize a similar return on his floor.
Decline
[edit]- Moss Staples: The most likely explanation is that people are just seeing some blue light bouncing off a strut. But try telling that to these bog-brained murphies. You'd have more chance of getting a blowjob from the pope.
- Christopher Morris: Your phone calls tonight have been described variously as "rabid", "pig-ignorant" and "stultifyingly ill-informed". Thanks... for those.
Paedogeddon
[edit]- Chris Morris: Even our most drastic measures don't work. Last month, the notorious paedophile Sidney Cooke was blasted into space to spend the rest of his life aboard a one-man prison vessel, posing no further threat to children on Earth. But it was revealed that an eight year old boy was placed on board by mistake, and is now trapped alone in space with the monster. A spokesman said: "This the one thing we didn't want to happen."
- Chris Morris: Why can we no longer think of the British Isles without the word "Paedoph" in front of them?!
- Chris Morris: Security footage of a paedophile disguised as a school. He's been getting away with it in Sheffield for twelve years. Do you know him? Have you seen him? Please call.
- Swanchita Haze: Yes, we must catch that man, he really is a shit.
- Chris Morris: But today the number of children having sex with adults is beyond belief. If you define a child as anyone under thirty, the figure is over 86%.
- Ted Maul: Yes, and I don't know if you can sense the air of aggression here, but ten minutes ago, we threw this crowd a dummy full of guts. It lasted just eight seconds. This is very much a protest that's swallowed a bomb and given the detonator to a monkey.
- Chris Morris: I recently met one of North's victims. She was in fact so upset, she would only talk to us through her sister disguised as a plastic troll.
- "Kelly"'s Sister: She still can't really speak about it.
- Chris Morris: I asked "Kelly" if she would mind demonstrating North's perversions. Someone who agrees to rub their breasts on television is clearly inexcusable disturbed.
- Chris Morris: But even in prison, North's rastopedic impulses found new outlets. He was allowed to write articles for a magazine, edited by a man who at that time had a nine year old nephew with a nice pink arse and no hair on his balls. The orgy of sly-winking usury was only brought to an end by a stairwell nonce bashing, which left North braindead and quadrospazzed on a life glug.
- Andy McNab (ex SAS): Let's just get one thing straight: the British Army has never launched an offensive against a six-year-old child.
- Dr. Fox: Genetically, paedophiles have more genes in common with crabs than they do with you and me. Now that is scientific fact: there's no real evidence for it, but it is scientific fact.
- Chris Morris: You are a paedophile, you are a nonce, you're a perv, you're a slot badger, you're a two pin DIN plug, you're a bush dodger, you're a small bean regarder, you're a unabummer, you're a nut administrator, you're a bent ref, you're The Crazy World of Arthur Brown, you're a fence vole, you're a free willy, you're a chimney bottler, you're a bunty man, you're a shrub rocketeer...
- "Peter": Yes, well, those are just some of the names we have to put up with every day, and it's really just another form of racism.
- Announcer: The Pedo-Files! Starts next week on 4, straight after Paedophile Island: a hundred kids and an ex-offender, on an island full of cameras! What's going to happen?!
- Ted Maul: Yes, a vigilante has just tried to fire himself over the prison walls using a giant catapult. Minutes earlier, a test projectile, believed to be a side of beef, cleared the parapets by a full twenty feet. But when the man himself was fired, his trajectory was all out of goose. He thumped into the wall, you could hear his bones breaking on impact. Medics say he may live, but only with his neck as an internal organ.
- Ted Maul: Sheets of flame, dancing to the beat of primitive animal justice! One man kebabbed, hundreds scarred forever by a shared blood ritual! And yes, an astonishing sense of community here now! A positive atmosphere, a sense of a job well done, a shared sigh of relief - very much like the bizarre euphoria at the end of an hour's vomiting!
- Chris Morris: A Peter File was attacked in his car this evening, but I have to say, if your surname was File, would you call your son Peter?
- Swanchita Haze: No!
- Chris Morris: [chuckles] And look, if a child does take your fancy, please remember: leave it a couple of years.
- Swanchita Haze: I did.
