Generation (Media) Terrorist

FEW NEWSPAPER columns have caused as much outrage in both civilised and journalistic circles as Time To Go, the weekly 1,000 word eyebrow-raiser which recently drew to a dramatic conclusion in The Observer. Appearing weekly beneath the by-line and mug shot of the hitherto unheard of Richard Geefe, the column served as an outlet for its author to chronicle his last remaining months before his suicide, which was planned for November 16th 1999.
Geefe had struck a lucrative deal with the editor of the Sunday broadsheet after an initial attempt to end his own life went awry. In essence, he was being paid to have another go. Each Sunday, bemused readers were presented with a grim but compelling column penned by a man in moral freefall, whose life was clearly spiralling out of control. The dramatic conclusion came when a book deal forced Geefe to record the last two months of his sorry existence in advance, in order to meet the publisher s deadline and facilitate a Christmas launch.
Reaction to the column was fairly predictable. The Observer s editor, Roger Alton, was inundated with letters from angry and sympathetic readers alike, as well as organisations such as The Samaritans and Mind. An array of Fleet Street journalists also clambered onto the moral high ground in order to castigate the tastelessness of what appeared to be a sadly inevitable journalistic excursion. The Spectator, The Evening Standard and The Guardian went apoplectic, while in an ironic twist, a group of 30 Observer journalists vented their collective spleen in a memo to their editor initially because they thought the column was serious, and then because they realised it was a spoof.
Yes, as if you hadn t already guessed, Richard Geefe did not actually exist. Instead, the suicidal hack s column was the brainchild of arch satirist Chris Morris, who wrote Time To Go in a successful attempt to lampoon the state of contemporary newspaper journalism.
The structure of the satire is aimed at those who benefit from the writings of those who are suffering, explained Alton, when it emerged that Morris was the brains behind the operation. The detail is aimed at the psychology of the self-obsessed, be they me-journalists or celebrities of any kind. Some say it is a comment on confessional journalism. Personally, as a commissioner of copy, I have always ruthlessly used that sort of material. I often find myself, with horror, saying to friends and acquaintances who have suffered any kind of extreme experience Oh, that s terrible, but don t forget, if you want to write about it, give me a call . Why shouldn t I have the piss taken out of me for that?
While I would agree that it is unlikely that anyone whose girlfriend or uncle has recently been very depressed will necessarily find it very cheery, I don t see that that should make the theme off-limits. Why should anything be off-limits now?
Morris himself was more forthright in his criticism of those who attacked him in the aftermath of his latest stunt. How could anyone have seriously thought that the editor of a national newspaper would hire someone to commit suicide? he countered. What I found disturbing was the number of people who said they felt betrayed when they realised it wasn t true. What are they saying that they wanted him to die? It s even reached war reporting. Maggie O Kane s pieces in The Guardian are just lists of obscene deaths she has witnessed, and you find you re flicking through to see if the next child s head was blown off in a more violent way than this child s head.
By writing the Geefe column, Morris launched a broadside against two facets of society: self-obsessed journalists who consider the minutiae of their private lives (marriage, divorce, parenthood, death etc.) to be of interest to others, and the people who avidly digest their scribblings. Despite being guilty on both counts, this writer can appreciate his point. Others were less impressed, however. India Knight, who wrote at length about the breakdown of her marriage in The Observer, used her Evening Standard soapbox to attack the tastelessness of Morris latest prank.
This is not the first time Morris has milked sacred cows dry. Indeed, he has made a career of it. And yet, despite his awesome talents as a broadcaster and evil genius, he remains relatively unknown, directing his media terrorism operations from behind a veil of anonymity and secrecy that is becoming increasingly thin with the successful execution of each new jape. Fame appears to interest him not a whit, nor does he wish to change the world. It seems he just does what he does because it s funny.

The son of two doctors, he emerged from a comfortable but Catholic boarding school childhood and Bristol University with a degree in Zoology, and a penchant for messing about with tapes. After university he worked with several local radio stations, learning the trade by persuading them to give him his own show and then bringing them into disgrace while simultaneously maintaining the charade that he was a model broadcaster. While working for Radio Bristol in 1987, he is reputed to have filled a studio with helium seconds before broadcast, forcing the announcer to deliver a train crash story in the voice of a Smurf. On another occasion, a news story about mutant cows that couldn t be killed came within an ace of being broadcast. Although his job involved serious news reporting, in 1989 he gave a running commentary on the news as it went out, was sacked and told that he would never work on radio again.
This prophesy proved short-lived when Morris took a job on Greater London Radio (GLR), only to be fired again for broadcasting the following cleverly doctored speech by the Queen: This year I speak to you not from Buckingham Palace, but from the cross. It was from here that I made my first Christmas broadcast in 1862, and it was from this house that my grandfather, King George V, and my father, curiously enough, used to service men and women. This year, I am very glad to be able to speak to you again from a long, drawn out and terminal illness. My heart goes out to those whose lives have been blighted by war, famine, natural disaster, Leonard Cheshire or his fellow members of the Order of Merit.
Morris next port of call was the BBC, where he continued to wreak havoc on the airwaves. In 1993 he produced and conducted Why Bother?, a series of five candid and controversial interviews for BBC Radio 3 with Sir Arthur Streeb Greebling, one of many celebrated alter egos of the late, great Peter Cook.
According to Cook s biographer, Harry Thompson, the shows were packed with parodic autobiographical material; even the title referred to its author s attitude. Sir Arthur, for instance, discussed his stint as a co-chat show host with Joan Rivers, whom he described as a pain in the arse . With reference to his childhood, Sir Arthur explained that he once had to spend an entire winter standing in the middle of a frozen lake.
Sir Arthur: It was a learning experience to be a child in my father s household, or whichever household he put me in. He felt that the best education I could possibly have was to be put in prison and raised by hardened murderers. We were woken at dawn by the sound of hanging.
Morris: Did you hold this against your father at all?
Sir Arthur: We never spoke about it.
At this point in the early 90s, Morris was ubiquitous on the BBC radio airwaves. On Wednesday nights he teamed up with his associate Peter Baynham for a one-hour show on BBC 1. One of the show s more amusing features involved one of Morris cohorts travelling to a London airport where, in the guise of a taxi driver, he would present tannoy announcers with a piece of paper with some names written on it. The names looked innocent enough on paper, until the announcer attempted to pronounce them over the PA! Another of Morris favourite wheezes was announcing the deaths of well-known Britons who were still very much alive. On Wednesday 6th July at 9pm, the following sad announcement was made:
This is BBC Radio 1 FM and if there is any news of the death of Michael Heseltine in the next hour, we ll let you know.
Suitably sombre music and an array of snappy soundbites culled from the deceased s speeches followed. Within minutes, Heseltine s fellow Tory MP Jerry Hayes was on the air to pay tribute to his former colleague: Michael Heseltine was a truly great parliamentarian, a beast of the jungle, and what s more, he got things done. He was one of the few politicians on the front bench any front bench that had real charisma. He rose from the dead so many times. He probably had more farewells than Frank Sinatra.
Upon finding out that he had been duped, Hayes was understandably furious at the manner in which he had been humiliated. Not for the first time in his career, Morris was let go.
Meanwhile on BBC Radio 4, Morris was collaborating with a crack team of writers including Armando Ianucci, Patrick Marber and Steve Coogan to come up with On the Hour, an hilarious spoof news show which satirised the sensationalist nature of modern day news reporting. Morris hammed it up to great effect in his role as anchor man, while a small pool of talented actors played the roles of co-presenters, reporters, on the spot reporters, eye witnesses and rent-a-quote experts .
Morris glacial timbre, uncanny ability to pull off ridiculous vox pops, prank phone calls and interviews with celebrities, coupled with the show s inspired scripts and dramatic stings ( Dr Fact is knocking on the door, will someone please let the man in! ) ensured that the only thing which distinguished On The Hour from the genre it set out to mock was the sheer absurdity of the stories if featured.
On one occasion Morris reported solemnly that Red Adair had been called in to tie up the Dingle Peninsula, which had burst, and, of an unlikely foetal prodigy, he had this to say: Just a few bits of news coming through on the printer. I ll try and digest most of them before I give them to you but this one looks rather interesting. An unborn baby named Daniel Pope has today been offered a place at Cambridge University after passing seven exams to gain admission to a philosophy course. The brilliant infant was conceived five months ago and has been educated since it was an eight-celled blastular. Maths and physics courses were projected on to a special screen inserted in its mother s cervix, while small books and pencils were channelled through cables. It s not so much his wisdom that stunned me, said Professor Hilliard Halliard, who conducted an ultrasound interview with the boy. My only worry is the stress . Apparently Daniel already has deep worry lines on his forehead and has developed a lust for spirits.
Such was the success of On The Hour, that it soon made the transition to the small screen where it continued to thrive as The Day Today. Most popular of all the show s myriad characters was a witless sports presenter called Alan Partridge, whose colourful sports reports (he once likened the Tour De France peleton to hundreds of cows on bikes) and obsession with groin injuries eventually earned him his own BBC chat show.
In the wake of the success of The Day Today, Morris was poached by Channel 4, where he set about creating Brass Eye, possibly the finest television programme ever made. A stunningly accurate take-off of such heavyweight investigative current affairs programmes as Panorama and World In Action, Brass Eye purported to examine the state of Britain in a series of six hard-hitting specials dealing with such important issues as Animal Rights, Drugs, Sex, Science, Crime and Moral Decline.
Written by Morris, with the assistance of Peter Baynham, Graham Linehan and Arthur Mathews, a large part of each show involved Morris tricking politicians, journalists, TV presenters, sports personalities and other celebrities into participating in bogus interviews, charity campaigns and TV shows. The results were spectacular. In the Animal Rights special, an unsuspecting Paul Daniels appealed to viewers to campaign on behalf of Carla, an unfortunate elephant that had found herself in a rather worrying predicament: Carla the elephant is currently curled up in a kind of a grey ball. Her trunk is actually stuck up her anus and they re not trying to help her, so we must.
In the episode of Brass Eye devoted to science, journalist Eve Pollard earnestly discussed how she had witnessed scientists tampering with organ pre-cursor cells : A woman has given birth to a two foot testicle. The gland was alive when we saw it and being kept warm in a cot.
However, it was the drugs special that created the greatest furore, causing questions to be asked in the British House of Commons about a non-existent drug called Cake, which Morris alleged was flooding Britain. When asked to participate in an awareness campaign, an unsuspecting Noel Edmonds had this to say of the mind-altering narcotic: It stimulates the part of the brain called Shatner s Bassoon. That s the bit of the brain that deals with time perception.
Although Brass Eye was recorded in 1996, Michael Grade, Morris Channel 4 boss, bowed to external pressure and postponed it until finally agreeing to broadcast it, with cuts, in 1997. Acclaim does not even begin to describe the manner in which it was slavered over by the vast majority of television critics.
With the world at his feet in the wake of Brass Eye s success, Morris returned to his natural habitat, the radio studio, where he masterminded the surreal late night comedy show, Blue Jam, which he described as being insomniac and warmly grinning. Imagine spending a year in a flotation tank. Well, that s what this show will achieve in an hour. It sounds better if you re lying down and mentally dishevelled.
The Radio Times seemed bemused and slightly bewildered by Morris latest expedition across the airwaves, commenting in January of this year that Over ambient dance music, voices come and go delivering bleak monologues, desolate psycho-dramas or weirdly juxtaposed sentences. This is dark, introverted stuff, unlike anything else on radio.
Opinions on the work of Chris Morris to date are divided. Many of those he has humiliated openly despise him, while vast swathes of his fans and colleagues speak of his innovative comic genius in reverential tones. A modest and private individual who, understandably, gives very few interviews, Morris is reputed to be currently developing several new ideas for television, which have received considerable interest from independent production companies. Assuming that they encompass his ongoing obsession with what one observer described as the mortal fool beneath the husk of every human , they should be well worth waiting for. n