Cunk on Britain (2018): Season 1, Episode 1 - Beginnings - full transcript

This programme contains some
strong language.

Today, Britain stands
at a fork in its crossroads.

And its people are asking
questions.

Now we've got our country back -
what actually is it?

Who are we? And why?

The best way to find out
where Britain's heading

is to look behind us into something
called history -

a sort of rear view mirror
for time.

So that's where I'm going.

Back there.

It's a journey that'll take me
the length and width of the country.



On my odyssey, I'll be starting
sentences in one location,

and finishing them in another.

And looking at some of the biggest
faces in British history,

and asking other people's
faces about them.

What was the difference between
punk rock and just being angry

but without a guitar?

All of it taking place in this
skepterred isle we call home.

So join me, Philomena Cunk,

as I take you right up the history

of the United Britain
of Great Kingdom.

This...is Cunk On Britain.

Throughout this series

I've been on a journey
up through Britain's history.

Now I'm almost at the end
of that road,



at the point where olden times end
and now times begin.

A time when the archive footage
goes colour at long fucking last,

and some things you might have
actually heard of happened.

It's the story of how Britain
went from the 1960s

to this very moment now.

And this moment.

And this one.

And also this.

And found itself here and now,
at the arse end of history.

Britain had been uptight ever since
Victorian times,

and having two world wars on top of
that had really knocked the fun

out of everyone.

Men had to wear bowler hats
issued by the government,

and their only form of entertainment
was reading boring newspapers.

They weren't even allowed
to get erections

and had to make do with
a stiff upper lip instead.

Meanwhile, women had to stay at home
washing clothes,

raising hundreds of children
by hand,

and agreeing with their husbands.
The only form of personal expression

they were allowed was wearing
pointy glasses.

But all that was about to change
thanks to four boys from Liverpool -

George, Ringo and their guitarists.

A pop band called The Beatles.

Some brave volunteers among the
British police elect to act

with heroism above and beyond
the call of duty

and escort The Beatles
to their car...

These Beatles didn't have six legs.
They had eight legs. Like a spider.

Everywhere they went, girls
screamed. Like with a spider.

But unlike spiders, The Beatles
never crawled into anyone's mouth

when they were asleep.

Instead they sang, which scientists
claim spiders don't.

The Beatles started from humble
beginnings.

In the early days they couldn't
afford individual haircuts,

and had to copy and paste the same
one onto each of their heads.

And they had to share
a microphone to save money.

But their catchy jingles
were so infectious

they soon lead to an epidemic called
Beatlemania.

And The Beatles wanted to
hold your hand,

which only made the disease
spread faster.

Soon it spread across the Atlantic
to America,

a country which was still there.

There are rumours around
that this is Britain's revenge

for the Boston Tea Party.

While The Beatles were in the USA
they started to become influenced

by the hippies - which were
sort of American Wombles.

They experimented with a drug called
LUZZD which made the user

see and hear things that weren't
really happening -

a bit like Netflix.

Their music turned psychopathic.

Rather than churning out more
simple love songs,

thanks to psychopathic drugs,

The Beatles began to sing about
deeper, more meaningful things.

# We all live in a yellow submarine

# Yellow submarine,
yellow submarine.... #

The Beatles created some incredible
music whilst they were on drugs.

Did they not have dope
testing back then?

How come they weren't
disqualified from the charts?

Well, erm, as a matter of fact
there were songs they did

that the BBC, who in those days
were most of the radio stations,

thought were references
to drug taking

so they did ban them
from the charts.

It's weird that The Beatles
LSD songs are so happy, isn't it,

because LSD isn't always
a happy experience.

Like, my mate Paul met this Italian
couple whilst he was backpacking

and they invited him back
to their room for a threesome.

And they gave him some LSD and
when they got there the bloke one

pulled a screwdriver on him
and made him shit in his own shoe

and eat it,
whilst the woman one filmed it.

And that's a side of drug use

that Paul McCartney doesn't
sing about, isn't it?

No, I think, luckily, that...

That kind of experience
never came his way. Hmm.

During one LUZZD expedition,
or "trip",

The Beatles became the first Britons
to discover the existence of colour.

And like Sir Walter Raleigh and his
potatoes, they took their discovery

home to the UK, where it caught
on like hot cakes of wildfire.

Britain went overnight
from grey to groovy.

Suddenly it was cool
to ignore society

and just be
whoever you wanted to be,

as long as you had fashionable hair
and flamboyant clothing

like everybody else.

A pearl mink miniskirt.

Must be tailor-made for the freeze.

Were miniskirts actually shorter
or did they just appear that way

cos people's legs
were getting longer?

They were actually
quite a lot shorter.

And they got shorter
as the '60s went on.

Was there a miniskirt for men?

You know like trousers that just
stopped under the balls?

No, there wasn't. There wasn't
a miniskirt for...for men.

That seems like a shame.
For whom? For men.

So they didn't feel left out,
you know.

And it must be nice to have that
sort of...air circulating.

But it wasn't just clothes
that were changing.

The sexual revolution was coming,
and the country was lapping it up.

Much of the change was due to this -
the pill - a condom you could eat.

A sort of "Get Out of Child Free"
card, that meant at last

women could have sex for fun,
with any man of their choosing,

for two or three minutes,

until he spaffed off, rolled over
and went to sleep.

Some women were having so much sex
they decided to burn their bras

cos it was quicker than putting them
on and taking them off all the time.

Free love was all the rage.

Thanks to the pill,
sex was turned on its head.

And its back.

And over the table.

People let it all hang out,

like your dad doing the gardening
in loose shorts.

And the law was catching up
with the times.

For years, homosexuality was illegal

and gay men were sent to prison
where, as punishment, they'd have to

share a tiny room with a man,
for years.

But in the '60s, same-sex sex
was decriminalized.

It was a time of liberation.

Soon everyone in Britain
was swinging.

Except convicted murderers, because
hanging had just been abolished.

For the first time ever, Britain
was cool, not just the weather.

Britain even decided
to be cool at sport.

England, the posh bit of Britain,

brought back memories of the war
by beating the Germans again.

This time they bounced a ball into a
net, rather than a bomb into a dam,

killing far fewer civilians and
coining the infamous phrase

"They think it's all over,
presented by Nick Hancock."

Things were really looking up.

But the fun, like a Toblerone,
couldn't last forever,

and almost as quickly as the '60s
had arrived, they were over,

give or take ten years. And now
it was the 1970s turn to happen.

The 1970s was a time of great change

and the first change
was the economy.

Britain had a new Prime Minister,
Edward Heath.

With his love of yachts,
classical music and church organs,

Edward Heath seemed to be
a real man of the people.

But Heath soon found himself
facing a financial crisis,

the likes of which the world only
sees about every ten years or so.

Thanks to inflation,
prices were getting bigger,

while wages were getting smaller.

The country was in chaos.

Britain was said to have
"the British disease".

And there was no known cure.

Apart from not to be Britain
any more.

Which is why Ted Heath insisted
we should became part of Europe.

Soon Britain entered
the European Common Market,

in what should have been
called Brentrance, but wasn't.

It was so perfect
we held a referendum to check

whether Britain should
stay in Europe...

Yes is now at 67%
and the no vote at 33%.

..and it turned out everybody
was happy with the idea,

as a majority secretly are today
but daren't mention.

But things were still rubbish.

There was rising unemployment,
widespread industrial action

and an energy crisis,
which meant for the first time

people had to justify how much
electricity they were using.

But elsewhere on the estate,
one bar of an electric fire

was heating a defiant
old-age pensioner.

If we don't need two bars on,
well, we don't have two bars on.

If we need two bars on
we put two bars on!

It's like... It's not...
It's logic. It's human nature.

So if the weather suddenly turns
very cold again you're probably

going to have to put the other bar
on, are you?

I'll put the other bar on and a
reflector. I'll have the lot on.

Soon power cuts became all the rage.

Because the lights kept going
out at a moment's notice,

plunging everyone into darkness,
there was no point dressing nicely.

And as a result the world of fashion
decided to simply give up.

Every item of clothing
in the world went off overnight.

And the sickness spread to haircuts,
which caught Dutch elm disease

and became horribly disfigured.

Even the air and the sky started to
look dingy and awful,

and like it was all filmed
underwater.

To cap it all, in Northern Ireland,
a civil war was breaking out,

but so as not to scare anyone,
they didn't call it a civil war,

they just called it The Troubles,
like it was a tummy bug
or something.

People were angry and all that
pent-up fury had to go somewhere.

Conditions were ripe for a musical
explosion known as punk.

# Remember you're a Womble
Remember you're a Womble

# Remember you're a Womble
Remember you're a Womble

# Remember you're a Womble
Remember you're a Womble

# Remember you're a Womble
Remember you're a Womble

# Remember member member what
a Womble Womble Womble you are... #

As you can see from this
searing performance,

the punks were antisocial,
cynical, and dangerous.

And no punk band was bigger or more
shockinger than the Sex Pistons.

# I am an antichrist

# And I am an anarchist... #

They had shocking names
like Johnny Bottom and Sid Knickers,

they wore shocking
home-made clothes,

and put hankies on their heads,

hence their famous call to arms -
Handkerchiefs in the UK.

But the most shocking thing
they did was swearing on TV,

an incident so outrageous that in
the time since it first happened,

it's only ever been seen again
three, or maybe four hundred times,

in music documentaries.

It's what? Nothing. A rude word.
Next question.

No, no, what was the rude word?

Shit.

Was it really? Good heavens!

The Sex Pistols were fired,
weren't they, as TV presenters?

What was all that about?

Well, I think the thing about the
Sex Pistols were that they were...

They had a lot of impact cos
they got a lot of, you know,

shock value and sensation
in the papers and on telly.

And they help really launch
the movement of punk

because everybody knew about what
they were up to.

But I don't understand why
they got fired on the telly?

Well, they swore.
Oh, right, yeah. OK.

That was quite shocking back then,
wasn't it? Back then it was.

Not now though, really. No.

Now you'd have to do something much
bigger, wouldn't you? Yeah.

You'd have to like do a poo on
The One Show or something. Yes.

Even then, you know,
you might not get fired.

What if you then sort of hoike your
trousers up without even wiping?

But punk wasn't the only sign
the country had gone to the dogs.

In 1978, literally everyone
went on strike in

the Winter Of Discomfort.

Even punks went on strike, refusing
to put on their punk uniforms

and instead dressing
like normal people.

Something had to be done,
so it was decided to start the 1980s

a year early, with the election
of a new Prime Minister in 1979 -

Margaret Thatcher.

Street name: Mrs.

Her Majesty the Queen has asked me
to form a new administration.

Thatcher's election was a watershed.

It proved that absolutely anyone
could become Prime Minister,

provided they went to Oxford
and married a millionaire.

As well as a uterus,
Mrs Thatcher had a vision.

An economic vision.

With all coins up it.

She believed in laissez faire
economics -

which is French for something,

and then English again for
the "economics" bit.

OK, let's pretend it's the 1980s
and I'm Margaret Thatcher.

This is a political interview.

What would you ask me?

I think I would start by asking,

if this was, erm, the early part

of her period in office,

erm, why she was setting
interest rates so high,

why she was allowing
the exchange rate to go so high

in a way that was really damaging
British industry and, er,

causing a huge rise in unemployment,

and didn't she think that she was
causing huge, unnecessary suffering?

You're not expecting me
to answer that, seriously.

Mrs Thatcher had saved the nation
from chaos

with her tough economic policies,

and a grateful nation erupted
into lively street parties.

The sense of jubilation continued
during the royal wedding

of the century.

It was a dream come true,

as the then future and still future
King of England,

the Prince of Charles,

married one of the three people
in his marriage,

the future Queen of Hearts,
Lady Diana Frank Spencer,

in a wedding just like something
from a fairy tale,

except without a wolf or dwarves
or a beanstalk, or a happy ending.

But while people waved
flags like idiots at home,

trouble was brewing overseas, at a
faraway corner of foreign Britain

known as the
Isle of Falklands Island.

This island was
invaded by Argentinas,

who'd mistaken it for an identical
island they'd left lying around

in exactly the same place
a few centuries ago.

Mrs Thatcher immediately fought
back by bravely ordering troops

to fight and die on her behalf.

And soon that famous flag,

the Onion Jack, was flying over the
Isle of Falklands Island once again.

Beating the Argentines at war
sealed Mrs Thatcher's reputation

as a tough guy so much that people
started to call her the Iron Lady.

And she soon got another chance
to prove just how hard she was,

not in a major war
but a minor strike.

During Mrs Thatcher's reign there
was the Minor's Strike,

wasn't there? Yeah, yeah.

Why was it considered minor?

It wasn't considered minor.

It was a strike by miners.

People who go, you know,
underground and dig out coal.

Right. What's a mine?

So a mine is the
underground construction

where you dig out the coal.

Right. What's coal?

So, coal is this black, er,
rock that you burn.

Right.

And that's grown underground?
And that's underground.

So the min-ers go in the mine...
They do.

..and they get the coal.
And they get the coal.

And then they went on strike.
Yeah.

The miners' struck their strike
in 1984, led by their leader,

Arthur Scarface.

If we've got to suffer,

through November and December
we'll beat this...

CHEERING

Thatcher refused to back down
and soon the two sides were at war.

A class war.

The rich police on their horses
in their smart uniforms,

and the poor dirty miners
fighting with bits of coal.

It was like something
out of the Russian Revolution.

Except it was happening here.

In Britain.

Somewhere near you.

If you lived near a mine.

The miners' strike,

perhaps the most bitter dispute
Britain had seen in years,

tore generations apart,
before ending in 1985 -

one whole year before
the terrestrial broadcast premiere

of the BBC sitcom Brush Strokes.

# Because of you

# These things I do

# Because of you

# Because of you

# Oh, oh... #

With the miners crushed,
like miners in a bad mine,

Thatcher was free to pursue
her economic dreams

by privatizing some of Britain's
biggest assets.

Thanks to the big sell off,
anyone could get rich,

providing they had loads of spare
money already -

a system still in use to this day.

Suddenly having money was cool

and no-one had more money than the
yuppies, or Young Urban Twats.

To be a 1980s yuppie, did you have
to qualify as a wanker first

and then just work your way up?

Eh...I think some people identified
as yuppies but it was also,

I think, used as an insult
in the 1980s.

I've seen footage of yuppies holding
Filofaxes and mobile phones.

Er, are they still in that footage
or where are they now?

Er, where are they now?

Well, they're sort of 30 years
older now so...

So they're not in that
footage any more?

Well, that footage is historical
so...

So if you look back at that footage
it'll just be empty? No...

Cos that person has now left.

No, the footage is...is....is
a recording of what happened

in the past.

So the footage stays the same
but those people,

we don't know what's
happened to them.

But what... What of their Filofaxes?
What happened to them?

It seemed like a golden
age of twattery.

But Thatcher's luck couldn't last
forever and as the 1990s approached

she got too ambitious, by unveiling
the controversial Paul Tax.

A tax on people called Paul.

And they were furious.

Following a wave of protests,

Thatcher wound up on her Iron Arse,
leaving Downing Street crying

tears down her face, which she'd
never done before in case it rusted.

The next Prime Minister, Major John,
was as fearsome as he looked,

and he presided over yet another
depressing period of recession.

Britain was in a right state,
not only financially

but also economically,
and in money terms, too.

The only hope was that we could
somehow paint and sing our way out.

It was an art
and culture renaissance.

An era defined by Oasis,
The Spice Girls, Swede,

Chris Evans, Take This,
Damien Hurts, The Proddy Guy,

Trainspotting, Chris Evans,
Mr Blobby, Jamie Oliver, mopeds,

ironic wanking, The Italian Job,

Chris Evans, Chris Evans,
and Chris Evans.

But one name sums up the nineties
better than anyone else: Blur.

In the 1997 election,

why do you think more people
voted for Tony Blur than Oasis?

You're making, erm, a mistake which
was quite common at the time

because the Prime Minister,
or Labour Party leader

at the time, was called Tony Blair.

Blur.
Blair.

Blur. Blair. Blur.

Blair. Blur.

Tony Blair was....
Blur. Blair. Blur.

..was Prime Minister and leader of
the Labour Party and there was one

of the biggest, erm, rock or pop
bands of the time was Blur.

Blur. Blur.

Yeah.

It's hard to remember today,

but Blur and Blair were actually
two different things.

Blur were a rock band locked
into a notorious rivalry with Oasis.

Oasis were rough-and-tumble
lads from Manchester,

whereas Blur were from art school,
which is the opposite of Manchester.

And that's why
they hated each other.

Tony Blur, meanwhile,
was a guitarist and D:ream fan,

who reinvented the Labour Party and
rode it to victory at the election.

Blur hosted a party at Number Ten,

inviting lots of the Cool Britannia
crowd

and immediately making them
much less cool.

Anyone who was anyone who was
a massive prick was there.

But the party atmosphere
was interrupted by tragedy.

Diana's death couldn't have come at
a worse time for a nation

that had just got really into being
judgmental about her sex life.

The sense of loss was shocking.

It's hard to convey the atmosphere
to younger viewers,

although it's fair to say
the general mood was...

And also...

But because emojis hadn't
yet been invented,

people had to cry with their faces.

Millions looked to the Queen to pull
a ceremonial sad face in solidarity.

But with the monarch
constitutionally forbidden

to express emotion, their pleas
fell on deaf tear ducts.

Tony Blur stepped in to say
what needed to be said.

He called Diana
"the Peebles Princes."

"She was the People's Princess."

Even though she wasn't from Peebles,
she was from Norfolk,

but sometimes the facts aren't as
important as how something sounds.

It was the first step on a post-pop
career that turned the

Prime Minister into a living saint,
like Bono, or Holly Willoughby.

Through the '90s, Blur solved
all the nation's problems -

the economy, health, education,
education, education,

even the Irish Troubles -
there was nothing he couldn't do.

But no sooner had the 21st century
started happening,

than Blur dragged
Britain into the war on terror.

But the war in Iraq proved
about as popular

as infanticide-flavoured crisps.

And Blair's legacy was well
and truly shat through a bin bag.

Blur slinked off to
live inside a haunted mirror,

leaving Number 10 under
the stewardship of a man

with all the carefree joie de vivre
of a haunted cave in Poland -

Gorgon Brown.

Gorgon Brown knew mainly about
coins, but that wouldn't help him

cos all the coins were about
to implode

in a financial crisis
which would become known as

"the financial crisis".

People queued outside banks
in scenes of boring desperation.

The world of money was broken
and no-one knew how to fix it.

Today stock markets across the world
tumbled, imploded,

continued to collapse like deflated
dirigibles.

People say the financial
crisis happened

because it just got too complicated
and it's all because of the maths.

If we took maths out of the equation
it'd be much easier.

Couldn't we use something else
instead of numbers?

I think that actually
you're right, in a way.

That there is too much
maths in the way that people

think about the economy.

One of the things that occasionally
goes wrong is that economists

think that they can build...

PHONE RINGTONE: Man! I Feel Like
A Woman by Shania Twain

# Let's go girls... #

Sorry about that.

After Gorgon Brown stuck
a plaster on the economy and left,

the country needed a strong leader,

and luckily one man stepped up
to single-handedly save the nation.

The finest Prime Minister
Britain has ever had.

A man whose name will never
be forgotten.

Davis Cameron.

Davis Cameron skilfully almost won
the 2010 election,

and formed a Brokeback Mountain
style coalition

with the equally visionary
and beloved Nick Clegg.

Almost immediately,
Britain's problems,

apart from the economy and social
injustice and all the other ones,

were solved, and by 2011
everything was going swimmingly.

There was even a new Diana, in the
form of Kate Middleton,

who married King William

in a high definition reboot
of the Royal Wedding.

By the time the Olympics
came to Britain

the country was riding the crest
of a wave.

Suddenly, it seemed like we could do
anything if we put our mind to it,

even stop moaning.
It was a great time to be British.

Unless you were Scottish.

Scotland wasn't sure it wanted
to be British any more

and thought being Scottish
might be good enough.

Delegates, it's game on
for Scotland.

It's funny - why do Scottish
people hate the English

when the English have absolutely no
feelings at all about the Scots?

I suppose it's a bit like a...
a marriage...

..of an old couple.

Er, it's, you know,
it's as though Scotland

and England got married
when they were young

and it's constantly under debate
whether they're better off

staying together for the sake
of the pension and the house

or if they should get divorced.

Do you think England snores?

England looks to me like the kind of
person that snores. Mm.

The Scots held something called
a referendum,

which is a way of asking the public
what they want to happen,

and then actually taking them
seriously, unlike in an election.

In the end, Scotland voted to stay
attached to England

using a system of fields and roads,
as before.

But the referendum had been such
a hit that Davis Cameron

decided he wanted one, too.

But this referendum would be
about a different country: Europe.

And I will go to Parliament

and propose that the British people
decide our future in Europe.

It was a simple choice -

should Britain leave things as they
were and stay part of Europe

or, alternatively,
remain on its own,

and become part of England instead?

One thing's for sure,
Davis Cameron's referendum

would stop anyone arguing about
Europe ever again.

When the sun rose on
24th June, 2016,

with it came the news that
Britain had voted Out.

Brexit was happening,
and everyone was delighted.

That is now statistically,

mathematically there,
that the Leave campaign have won.

The Brexit result
shook everything up.

Suddenly Davis Cameron was out,

Theresa May was in and Jeremy Corbyn
was sexually attractive.

The future of Britain is now more
uncertain than at any point

in the past, which is the opposite
of its future.

Right now, is Britain at an
important moment in history,

or a significant one?

Erm...I'd say really important.

Not significant?
Both.

What if you had to choose one?
Important. Not significant?

Just because it's important, doesn't
mean it's... They can be both.

They can be important
and significant. Not in this.

OK.
You have to choose one.

If I'm going to choose one...
Yeah.

..I'll chose important.
So it's not significant?

Throughout this series
I've charted the story of Britain,

and it's a story that ends here,

with the country once again
at a turning point

between a rock and a harder rock,

closing one door with a foot
in the past, and opening another

with an eye to the future, an eye
that's looking at itself in

the mirror and asking the question,
"What sort of massive country am I?"

Can the nation that withstood
Romans, Vikings, plagues,

Great Fires, Rippers
and Hitler survive itself?

Will it draw upon the spirit of King
Arthur, Lord Nelson, Queen Victoria,

Charles Darwin and Andy Crane?

Who will the Britain of tomorrow
look like? And why?

Britain didn't get to have a long
history by ceasing to exist

or being born yesterday.

The one thing we can be sure of is
that Britain is Britain.

And it'll stay that way forever.

Until it's not.