Brass Eye
Brass Eye is a UK television series of satirical spoof documentaries that aired on Channel 4 in 1997 and were re-run in 2001.The series was created by satirist Chris Morris, and written by, amongst others, Morris, David Quantick, Peter Baynham, Arthur Matthews and Graham Linehan.
Brass Eye was the cause of much controversy when first broadcast, primarily because prominent public figures were fooled into pledging onscreen support for fictional, and often plainly absurd, charities and causes. David Amess, the Conservative Member of Parliament for Southend West, was fooled into filming an elaborate video warning against the dangers of a fictional Eastern European drug called Cake, and went as far as to ask a question about it in parliament[1]. (Cake purportedly affects an area of the brain called Shatner's Bassoon.)
Sequence from the special episode on pedophilia where presenter Chris Morris confronts a supposed spokesman for the fictional pedophilia advocacy organization MILIT-PEDE and asks him whether he wants to have sex with a six-year-old child. Hesitantly, the spokesman responds that "I don't fancy him", driving Morris to further indignation. The child was actually matted into the final cut of the episode
Michael Grade, then controller of Channel 4, repeatedly intervened to demand edits to episodes of Brass Eye, and rescheduled some shows for sensitivity. This interference outraged Morris, who responded by inserting into one episode a subliminal message denigrating Grade in strong terms. As another insult to Grade, Morris supposedly wrote to Nelson Mandela telling him that Grade campaigned for him to be kept in prison and protested upon his release.
Brass Eye was not deemed suitable for repeat until 2001, when a new one-off show was added to the run - this special episode dealt with the highly sensitive subject of paedophilia, and more specifically, moral panic in the media. Celebrities including Gary Lineker and Phil Collins were fooled into declaring their support for a charity called 'Nonce Sense', and the show contained scenes which suggested child abuse onscreen. Over 1500 complaints were received regarding the show, and several politicians spoke out against Morris, although David Blunkett, Tessa Jowell and Beverley Hughes all later admitted that they had not seen it. There was also a vociferous tabloid campaign against Morris, who refused to discuss the issue. The episode went on to win a Broadcast magazine award in 2002 and the complete series, including the 2001 special, was released as a bestselling DVD later that year.