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00:00Once again, it's time for another edition of This Was Television.
00:24Introduced by your special guest host this week, Alexei Sale.
00:30Remember this place?
00:35BBC Television Centre, where they turned out so many classic shows back in the 1980s.
00:43This is the actual studio where we made 1,500 episodes of my own series.
00:50Stuff.
00:51This is where I stood, performing, as one reviewer described it, like an aubergine on speed.
00:59Green tears of joy and laughter the world over.
01:04Yeah.
01:05It all seems a far cry now from my seat in the House of Lords, as barons say in Bloomsbury.
01:17What glorious, innovative situation comedies the BBC made in those days.
01:22Balty Towers.
01:23Oh no, it's Selwyn Foggett.
01:28And, erm, what stars we had then.
01:32Giants of show business like Mike Morris, Don Estelle and, of course, tragically, Ben Elton.
01:41Then, this place was filled with something like 50,000 people turning out several programmes a year.
01:52Let's go back to the year 1989.
01:56Powdered wigs were still on ration.
01:59And government control of the media was still so strict you could actually be censored simply for saying f*** off.
02:07How about it now?
02:09Yes, it's 50 years of that colourful cartoon character, Alexi Sale.
02:16Who's the leader of the gang that's great for you and me?
02:20A-L-E-X-E-I-S-Y-L-E.
02:23Who's the lovely bastard dad that's back on TV?
02:27Who is that fat bastard?
02:52And now, here are the answers to last week's IQ test.
03:01Insert a word that means the same as a word on either side of the brackets.
03:07And the answer was...
03:08Cellosaurus.
03:10A rare four-string prehistoric reptile played between the legs with a bow.
03:15Question two.
03:17Which of the following is not a European capital?
03:20Answer C.
03:23Rangoon is in Burma.
03:26Question three.
03:28Insert the odd man out.
03:31And the answer was...
03:33Carburetta.
03:35All the rest are types of fish.
03:38And question four.
03:40What comes next?
03:42And the answer was, of course...
03:44This.
03:45I spend a lot of time hanging round bus stations.
03:51No, I do.
03:52I do.
03:53Cos I write down all the numbers on the front of the buses,
03:56roll them up on a piece of paper,
03:58and staff them up me arse.
04:00Cos we're not very anal.
04:02Us bus bosses.
04:03All us collectors.
04:04But you meet a lot of really weird people hanging round bus stations.
04:09Seemingly mild-mannered individuals have had just one glass of cider.
04:13You know.
04:14Suddenly they're going...
04:15Yeah, they're bastards.
04:17Yeah.
04:18Yeah, strangled-mannered.
04:19Yeah, they're bastards.
04:21Yeah, strangled-mannered.
04:23And they're just the inspectors.
04:27The ones who always get me are called Norman.
04:30And you can always spot a Norman, cos he's got a pack-a-mack on.
04:33In the middle of July.
04:35Don't sell you a pack-a-mack unless you're a loonie, you know.
04:38You go into, like, next and you say,
04:40can I have a pack-a-mack, please?
04:42You say, are you a loonie?
04:43I say, no.
04:44Well, you can have one, then.
04:47I'm sitting there, dead quiet, waiting for the bus ride.
04:49Suddenly you hear this voice and it goes,
04:52Hello.
04:55Do you like sponge?
04:59I do, cos I'm not allowed anything sharp.
05:03And you're going,
05:04Shut off! Shut off! Shut off! Shut off!
05:08I've got two CSEs, you know.
05:11One in biology and one in metalwork.
05:15If you want your dog welding, I'm your man.
05:19Shut off! Shut off! Shut off! Shut off!
05:23I've got a mackerel in me pocket.
05:26It's portable and shower-proof.
05:29It's a pack-a-mackerel.
05:31Shut off! Shut off!
05:34This is a disused warehouse in the docklands of London's East End.
05:38And I am a reporter who talks like this.
05:43Who would imagine that behind this wall, even as I speak,
05:46the dark, insidious underbelly of the human soul
05:49is once again about to slake its thirst for cruel, sadistic sport.
05:54These men gather here once a week for a spectacle that would once have been unthinkable in a civilised country.
06:07A fight to the death by clockwork teeth.
06:09Well, as usual, we seem to have imported this barbaric sport from America.
06:15The teeth are kept in quite inhuman conditions.
06:18If we look at this set here, for instance, you can see that it's developed an abscess in the root canal,
06:23where they stick the key in to wind it up.
06:25And I'm afraid in a case like this, the only thing we can do is to set fire to Harrods.
06:33And yet, it's here, in the very bosom of the English countryside,
06:37that the cruelest, most inhuman blood sport of all takes place.
06:41A blood sport which, under new government legislation,
06:44is not only permitted, but will shortly become compulsory.
06:56In just 30 seconds from now, this innocent teddy bear's picnic
07:00will be transformed into a sickening blood bath.
07:07I was horrified by the brutally graphic scenes of teddy bear hunting
07:35in this week's edition of the Alexi Sale Show,
07:38broadcast well before the 10 o'clock watershed time,
07:42when all teddy bears are deemed to be tucked up in their beds.
07:46I had just sat down to watch the show with my own three teddy bears,
07:49and I had great difficulty explaining to them
07:52that it was just a piece of harmless satire,
07:55in that they are just toys filled with sawdust,
07:58with no autonomic nervous system of any kind.
08:02Also, I would like to ask the BBC,
08:05is it possible to remove the rude word
08:08at the beginning of the following monologue?
08:11Is it bollocks?
08:15Psychic phenomena, telepathy, do they really exist?
08:19Well, I'm actually slightly telepathic myself,
08:22so here's a quick joke for all my fellow telepaths out there.
08:31It's a good joke, isn't it?
08:33A little bit saucy, you know what I mean?
08:35Basically politically sound.
08:37Also, yeah, I can.
08:41Can anyone really see into the future?
08:44The big thing on television these days, though,
08:48is to be topical, isn't it?
08:50And I hate topical stuff.
08:52I mean, people think they can get away with any feeble old joke,
08:55as long as it's been in the news that day.
08:58Oh, yeah, well, it wasn't fanny, but at least it was topical.
09:03I just hate topical stuff.
09:05The other reason we don't do topical stuff on this show, though,
09:07is because these bits that you're seeing now
09:09are actually done on film,
09:11and they take an incredibly long time to get to the screen,
09:14because of film processing, sound, dub, editing, so on and so forth.
09:18In fact, this bit that you're watching now
09:21was actually made several years ago.
09:25Still, the public do love topicals, so here goes.
09:30I see that dick Mr. Clement Attlee got elected then.
09:33And behold, a day of pestilence is almost upon us,
09:47when all shall be destroyed in a mighty deluge,
09:50and the fowls of the air and pelicans,
09:54save for myself, Noah, and my descendants.
09:58So go forth, wife, and call together my three sons,
10:01shim, him, um, hom, hum.
10:08Sham, wasn't one of them called?
10:10Uh, Sam, Sham.
10:13No, no, you're thinking of Sam the Sham and the Pharaohs,
10:17sang Woolly Bully.
10:20So who were the sons of Noah, then?
10:22I don't know, it's Genesis, isn't it?
10:24I think so.
10:25Genesis...
10:27Oh, here we are, here we are, yeah.
10:29And Noah begat three sons, Shem, Ham, and Japheth.
10:34Japheth?
10:35Yeah.
10:38Ah, Japheth, um...
10:41Out goes the work of constructing a mighty ark of gopher wood.
10:44That shall be the salvation of we, and all they that are descended of we.
10:50It's all finished. I've got it here.
10:55It's a bit, um, small, isn't it?
10:58Well, it's 300 cubits by 50 cubits.
11:01How long is a cubit?
11:02It's about half a millimetre, isn't it?
11:05Well, fair enough, then.
11:07Erm...
11:08Take it away and start loading up the rhinoceroses and the wildebeest, will you?
11:12And, er, if you need any help, ask Elijah.
11:14How can he ask Elijah? He went up to heaven in a whirlwind.
11:18I thought that was Elisha.
11:20I thought Elisha was the one with the coat of many colours,
11:22the one who dreamt of seven fat sheep and seven thin sheep.
11:25No, that was Jacob!
11:27It was Joseph!
11:29Oh, I Joseph, then!
11:30Who was it who had the wisdom of Solomon?
11:32Oh, now, that was Joshua, wasn't it?
11:34Well, Joshua was the one who was eaten by a giant fish.
11:36No.
11:38Now, look, look, look, look, look, look, look, look.
11:40We're getting off the point here a bit, aren't we?
11:42I mean, the point is that God has decreed that I should ghost God.
11:45Who?
11:46What?
11:48Wasn't God the one who had all his hair chopped off
11:49and then was thrown into the fiery furnace?
11:51No, that was Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego!
11:55Honestly, how can you all be so ignorant about the Bible?
11:59Oh, hark at him! Didn't even know the names of his own sons!
12:02Shut up!
12:08Oh, God, please grant your salvation and tender mercy on this your humble servant Noah.
12:15Noah?
12:16Wasn't he the one who married Elsie Tanner?
12:19No.
12:30The 70s.
12:31That's when it all started to happen for me, here in Stoke Newington.
12:35Very alternative part of the world, Stoke Newington.
12:38I actually worked here on an alternative listings magazine called What's On in Stoke Newington.
12:44It was a piece of paper with bugger all written on it.
12:48In the 70s, that's when the middle classes started to recolonise these inner city areas like Stoke Newington.
12:54You'd always spot the middle class houses because they were always the ones that had been painted blue
12:58and they had them carriage lamps outside.
13:00You know, it's like putting up a big sign saying,
13:02Please break in and steal my video recording.
13:07I never understand them carriage lamps.
13:08You know, I mean, what's the idea behind carriage lamps?
13:10I mean, why put headlights on your house?
13:12I mean, it's not going anywhere, is it?
13:14But in the 70s, you got all them grants, government grants to make a mess of your house.
13:20And in one middle class street in Stoke Newington,
13:23they all knocked their front and back rooms into one in the same week and the street fell down.
13:29Another way you could spot the middle class houses was they always had them Suzuki Jeeps parked outside.
13:34Oh yes, I think it's so important to have four wheel drive when you're going down to Sainsbury.
13:39Have you noticed that with the top down, them Suzuki Jeeps, they all look like pedal cars.
13:45They're all pedalling, you know.
13:47They have to pedal them because they're all powered on Evian water.
13:52Time of great political activity, the 70s.
13:55And I was in a political group called Cistitis Sufferers Against the Nazis in March.
14:01Well, it was more of a mince, actually.
14:04Ooh, ow, ooh, bloody hell, ooh, can't you see that?
14:06Ooh, ow, ooh, ooh, down with the Nazis.
14:08Ooh, ooh, down with the Nazis.
14:09Ooh, ooh, bloody hell, ow.
14:11The left has an obsession with words and changing words.
14:15Like, where I live now has got one of them Labour left-wing councils.
14:20And they're always renaming things, usually after Nicaraguans or dead South Africans.
14:25I mean, that's going to worry the government in Pretoria, isn't it?
14:28Oh, my God, they've named a taxi rank in Camden after winning Mandela.
14:33We'd better dismantle apartheid immediately, then.
14:38But they think that if you change the name of something,
14:42then it's going to make it somehow better.
14:44They think that, like, if you took something like Typhoid
14:46and you renamed it fabulous, fun, happy time, jolly feeling,
14:51then it'd be, like, loads of fun to have it.
14:57Of course, they say the only way to change society
15:00is democratically through the ballot box.
15:03Crap.
15:04I mean, can you think of anything more futile
15:07than going into a little booth once every five years
15:09to vote for some politician?
15:12Well, yeah.
15:19Morning.
15:20Good morning.
15:21I've come to stick my head in a bucket of something nasty, please.
15:24Right, have you got your registration card with you?
15:28Lovely.
15:30OK.
15:32There we are, then.
15:33Now, there are four buckets in this constituency.
15:37Creosote, sunpoil, liquid manure and cold rice pudding.
15:42If you'd just like to go into the booth
15:43and stick your head in the bucket of your choice.
15:45It's just over there.
15:47Thank you very much.
15:48Uh, excuse me, sir, may I ask which way you...
15:59Yes, I went for creosote.
16:00I'm proud of it.
16:01And have you always stuck your head in that?
16:03I have.
16:04We've always been staunch creosote in our hands.
16:07In fact, my grandfather served as a local alderman
16:09with his head in a bucket of gold tar for 36 years.
16:13Think you politicians do a wonderful job.
16:18Excuse me, sir, may I ask which bucket you just stuck in?
16:20No, you may not.
16:21We're just doing an exit.
16:22Look, what disgusting substance I choose to stick my head in
16:23is between me and the bucket.
16:25Now, if you excuse me, I have to go and buy some industrial solvents.
16:29My son says he's not going to stick his head in a bucket of anything this year.
16:32He's going to shove it down the lavatory instead.
16:35As a protest.
16:37Bloody anarchists.
16:38He should be grateful that he don't live in Russia.
16:40Cos they're right, they only have two buckets
16:42and they're both filled with hedgehog's urine.
16:45They were going to have a third bucket this year
16:48with some glasnost in it.
16:50What's glasnost?
16:52Well, it's a kind of very runny cheese.
16:56It smells of.
16:58Thank God we live in a democracy.
17:00In order to be close to my people, the working class,
17:05I live on this giant council estate.
17:08It's very boring.
17:09It's so boring, our council estate.
17:11Its twin town is Père Lachaise Cemetery.
17:14You get all these exchange visitors, you know.
17:19But the big problem round our way is dogs.
17:22Round our way they definitely believe that a dog is for Christmas, not for life.
17:27Oh yeah, well we had to buy Jason a dog
17:30so he could leave it on the motorway like all the other kids.
17:34Oh, it's lovely to see him playing with it just before it gets splattered by a lorry.
17:39And you go through the park, right, and there's all these enormous dogs
17:41like German Shepherds and Rottweilers and Dobermans and Rhodesian Ridgebacks.
17:48You start singing Free Nelson Mandela, you're dead, mate.
17:53You see, all these little guys, right?
17:55All these little guys with little bristly moustaches.
17:57Look at these enormous, great big yappy dogs.
18:01Enormous dogs with loads of teeth.
18:03Well, you know what they say?
18:05Big dog, small dick.
18:07I expect when you sit at home trying to understand one of these shows,
18:18you think that we're all top-class professionals
18:21who perform everything absolutely perfectly first time around.
18:26But you wouldn't think that if you saw some of the mistakes and gaffes
18:30that we make that never reach your screens.
18:34For instance, take a look at this outtake from last week's show.
18:39All I had to do was deliver the line,
18:41my grandfather was a follower of Trotsky.
18:45Run, VT.
18:4786, take two.
18:49Action.
18:51My grandparents were typical Russian peasants.
18:53My grandmother always carried with her
18:55a small Bakelite remnant of the True Cross.
18:57But, actually, my grandfather, strangely enough,
19:00was a follower of
19:01TONIGHT!
19:04WON'T BE JUST ANY NIGHT!
19:07TONIGHT!
19:08Sorry!
19:10The line is follower of Trotsky.
19:13Oh! Follower of Trotsky.
19:15Oh, God, I'm sorry.
19:17I keep doing that.
19:20Of course, there are worse things than forgetting your lines.
19:23Take a look at this next scene.
19:25On a little tip, keep your eye on the animal in this one.
19:29Scene 32, take 45.
19:32I love animals, don't you?
19:35Take this hamster.
19:36Now, the reason that a hamster stalks...
19:39For God's sake, clear all those bloody gorillas off the lighting pantry!
19:44I told you before!
19:45End credits, take 257.
19:55positiv heaveen,
20:03Oh, God, is it?
20:06Alexi Sail is now appearing in
20:07in No Prophylactics Please I'm an Armenian at the Royal Opera House Coffee Garden.
20:37These council flats behind me were built by a large, overbearing, paternalistic local council.
20:53And certainly my philosophy is you can't fight City Hall, but you can clap on the steps and then run like that.
21:01Most of my parents were in the Communist Party and that's a very traumatic thing for a child.
21:07Me dad fought during the Spanish Civil War. He was in charge of a regiment of Surrealists
21:13who for most of the war kept their guns trained on a platoon of alarm clocks commanded by a lemon squeeze.
21:20Being old-fashioned commies, my parents had an uncritical love for all things Soviet, all things Russian.
21:26And on the wall in our house, we had a giant picture of Uncle Joe Stalin.
21:30That's what we called him, Uncle Joe. Scoring the winning goal for Liverpool in the 1949 Cup Final.
21:36It's one of the best retouching jobs the KGB ever did.
21:40But is the Soviet Union the workers' paradise that my parents imagined? Or what?
21:47Well, if you've ever planned to travel east, cross the USSR, back on or back off east.
22:03See the Soviet state on People's Highway 88.
22:09You go down to Maman's, cross the Gulf of your Gansk.
22:14Seljivin City looks mighty pretty.
22:17Can you see the Gansk? And Orenburg, Kazakhstan.
22:20Don't forget Tagoreny, Ufa and Nagoreny.
22:23Come on over to Russia, it's totally great.
22:28It's round o'clock grooving, that's why it's called a one party state.
22:33Rushes bags of fun and frolics, because they're all alcoholics.
22:39You go up to Bogosk, turn right at Naransk.
22:55Cause Chernobyl city's still radioactive.
22:58Can you see a Blonsk, a Zizky and your Gula dogs?
23:01Don't forget Nagazny, Lieber and Bogosny.
23:04The lovely town of Volkov, the mudflats of Bogolkov.
23:07It's really, really easy to have fun in Tbilisi.
23:10Hey tourists, looking for a thrill? Feel your legs like jelly go.
23:15Our latest tourist attractions, the Gulag Archipelago.
23:26From the bloody revolution, the Soviet state emerged.
23:31But the early years of hope are cut down as the best are purged.
23:38Then, horror upon horror, 20 million are lost in the Second World War.
23:44Now, if the USSR's going to turn into a cheap, tatty version of the West, well, what was it all for?
23:54And that's all we're going to show you of that for now, unless you ring in and agree to borrow another 20 million pounds.
24:13That's right, we said 20 million.
24:15Remember, we'll lend you as much money as you want to buy whatever you want, whenever you want.
24:19Crippling second mortgages, vast unsecured bridging loans, it matters not a toss to us.
24:24There are currently 300,000 homeless families in Britain who've had their homes repossessed through defaulting on their mortgage payments.
24:33But we can make that 500,000 with your help.
24:38You can condemn yourself to a lifetime of debt first thing tomorrow morning by simply popping into any of the major banks or high street building societies.
24:47Just leave your name, address and a pound of flesh as collateral and they'll do the rest.
24:52And now we're going just down the road to Acton to say hello to some cavity wall insulation salesmen. Hello there.
24:59Hello, Sir Derek.
25:00I gather as a special stunt for us today, you and your colleagues have been wearing silly fancy dress costume.
25:08Hello.
25:10Oh, what have you been doing then?
25:12Well, we've been persuading various chronically disabled pensioners and single parent families on fixed incomes to sign everything that's put in front of them.
25:21And so far we've notched up several credit schemes at punitive fixed term interest rates totalling 563,000 pounds.
25:30And now here's a rather moving report from a commercials director with a film school diploma in compassion and understanding.
25:46It's now five years since they closed down the steelworks here in Moordyke, throwing thousands on the social scrap heap.
25:55The conditions today, the poverty, are tragic.
25:58Some of these 13-year-old school children may never know what it's like to direct their own documentary series for Channel 4.
26:05For some, the prospects of running their own advertising agency before their 16th birthday are remote.
26:17Resources at this soup kitchen are so pitiful that the priest in charge can't even afford proper tears in his jeans.
26:24Like many of his helpers, he has to make do with a pitifully unfashionable haircut.
26:33But you can help.
26:34Just 75 pounds will buy a monogrammed cufflink for one of these homeless old bag people.
26:40Just 250 pounds will buy this crippled old lady a pair of Nino Cerruti skiing goggles.
26:47Just 1,000 pounds will buy a business lunch with a Lexi sale, provided you're on a diet.
26:54When you're in show business, you have to be right there, bright, wide awake, on the case.
26:59People are always asking me how I do it.
27:02Well, like my hero, Mrs Thatcher, I can get by on three or four hours sleep a night,
27:08and yet still I can manage to...
27:10I like a laugh.