(SIGHS)
Bugger the House of Lords.
That's exactly the PM's thinking.
And you'd like Prentiss McCabe to handle it for you?
Well, what I'm looking for is a public-private partnership.
So...
you'd like Prentiss McCabe to handle it for you.
(CAMERA CLICKS)
Yes.
Good.
Well, now let's get down to the nuts and bolts of pounds and pence.
Flash git.
Very good. File under P. For Priestley?
For Potential Porking, as in, we now have irrefutable evidence
of my little parley with Priestley should it all go tits-up.
Invites have gone out for Tara's book launch.
Has Salman responded?
You advised him to rebuild his profile. He's on tour with Busted.
Tara's book launch? I thought she'd only managed one chapter.
If we'd waited, London would have slipped into the Thames.
Have you seen this? Separated at birth.
Neil Morrissey and the Duracell Bunny. Neil's demanding a retraction.
So's Amanda Holden.
Sadly, it's too late for both of them. Right...
Five minutes. Meeting room. Everyone, please.
Hello, Sid.
Nick from Prentiss McCabe. Good news.
They've accepted your specialist subject at Celebrity Mastermind.
Yeah. The McVities biscuit range from 1975 to 1990.
But some of my closest friends are in the House of Lords.
This is our chance to get a foothold in Number Ten.
It's no time for mixing business with sycophantic toadying.
Well, doesn't it strike you as odd?
I mean, here's the PM, the great persuader,
Colin Priestley, top spin doctor, hiring an outside PR company.
Well, I did detect the faint scorched tang of panic in the air.
Besides, Priestley's new office is so far away from the centre of power
that if Number Ten got nuked, he'd merely looked tanned.
What about nasal hair?
I'm going to regret asking this, but what?
Untrimmed nasal hair.
When a chap's career is on a downward curve
it's one of the telltale little signs.
It's how we all knew Cecil Parkinson was on the slide.
We thought he'd have to plait his.
This has come directly from Number Ten?
Well, from just around the corner. But via Number Ten.
Definitely via Number Ten. Absolutely.
Where do we start?
Well, imagine I'm the Prime Minister.
I lead a party which, in a fit of absent-minded lunacy,
promised to reform the House of Lords.
This party has only had 18 years in opposition
and seven years in Government to think about it,
so they haven't a clue.
So they bring in someone from the outside.
I still don't know where we start.
It's quite simple. Has anyone got a watch?
Can someone tell me how I get Sid Owen up to speed
for Celebrity Mastermind?
Even when he's told the answers he gets them wrong.
Can I borrow your watch for a minute?
Thank you.
Right. I'm...
I think we're paying our employees too much. Right.
I'm the Prime Minister and this is the House of Lords.
So I have promised to sweep away century after century
of unelected, clapped-out hereditary peerage.
This undemocratic, unrepresentative chamber must and will be smashed.
So, ladies and gentlemen, having smashed the House of Lords,
I must now reform it. But I'm the Prime Minister.
I'm very good at the right hand of God stuff,
a past master at smashing things to smithereens
but... not quite so good at reforming them afterwards.
So I say to my expectant audience, "Ladies and gentlemen..."
Bugger me, I've forgotten how to do the rest of the trick.
And that's where we come in.
Tricks are us.
So, first things first.
We need a firm base from which to spring forth and dazzle.
Number one, what is the House of Lords?
What is it for?
Cat? Come on, you take a keen interest in current affairs.
I'm not really into fringe groups.
So you don't know its purpose? Not really, no.
Sorry, previous engagement.
Jamie? The purpose of The House of Lords is?
Its main purpose, surely, is to get up the Government's arse.
A cream bun, a Blue Peter badge
and a fellowship of the Academy to our young colleague.
So, you see this as an opportunity to do a terrific job
and get in with Downing Street?
If we do a terrific job then Colin Priestley will take all the credit.
We'll have worked our backsides off and be left howling in the wilderness.
So what do we do?
What we're going to do is trap Priestley into making a fool of himself.
What we need are left-field ideas, ideas so ludicrous, so off the wall
that even Ken Livingstone wouldn't consider using them. Alison?
Of course, I'll do anything to help, Marty.
Thank you.
What are old friends for? Now...
what do you know of Colin Priestley?
Priestley? Ghastly man.
Australian and therefore of course but a hop and a skip away from the stocks.
Why? I have to come clean with you.
I summoned you here under slightly false pretences.
To provide you with a gastronomic delight
at a fraction of West End prices, of course,
but also to approach you officially on behalf of the House.
What? The House of Lords needs a PR company?
Word is that this Priestley is under orders to wipe us out.
Surely not. And I for one will not stand for it.
This House represents all that is great about Britain.
It is the beating democratic heart of this great nation.
Plus I've barely dented the wine list.
Well, I don't know what I could...
Should you set your shoulder to the wheel,
I can almost guarantee that your application will find its way
to the very top of the pile
and the face that greets it will be smothered
in a benevolent and favourable smile.
We could turn the building into a hospital?
What? The House of Wards? Or a music college?
The House of Chords.
How about a brothel? The House of Bawds?
I think we need to start taking this quest
for something ludicrous a lot more seriously.
NICK: How about getting the place secretly sold off
to a multi-trillionaire Russian oil magnate
and then turning the place into a block of luxury flats?
Desirable London locations with river views.
The GLC building's now a luxury hotel.
But the House of Lords isn't just about a building.
It's about the people in the building.
We pin down what to do with them and we crack this, surely?
We could relocate the old trumpets to Torquay.
But how do we shift hundreds of Lords en masse?
Sunshine Coaches?
CHARLES: Well, so far, Colin, we've got sexual depravity,
peculation of public funds and 124 cases of tax fraud.
But there's nothing here that's going to shock the great unwashed
into a blood-letting frenzy.
Maybe we should try insanity.
You know the sort of thing -
"Clare Short is mad..."
Well, of course she was actually mad.
Colin, this is the House of Lords.
If we can't find clinical insanity there, where can we find it?
Charles, we need to talk. Yes, won't be a second.
...I suppose we... Now.
Conflict of interest? How yesterday! Lesley Garret's on the phone.
She can't decide between a season of opera at the ENO
or another series of Saturday Night Takeaway.
Well, do Ant and Dec want her to sing? Absolutely not.
Then Ant and Dec it must be.
So, we say nothing to Priestley or the Lords?
On the contrary, we say lots to both sides
and bill them enormous sums for doing so.
But ethically?
Ethically we'll never get another chance like this.
You take Jamie and Cat,
I'll take Nick and Alison and may the best man win.
We've spent the afternoon deconstructing the Lords
and now you're asking us
to come up with ways to put them back together again?
Is it such a tall order?
There are hundreds of peers and not a decent-Iooking one among them.
It's like clubbing in Newcastle.
OK, Charles, here's the pitch.
The Government wants to reform the House of Lords,
bringing it more in line with Government thinking and policy making, yes?
Well, that's what they're saying publicly.
The real agenda is to get shot of a bunch of clapped-out troublemakers
about whom nobody gives a damn.
Precisely.
Then why not get rid of them literally with a TRAVELLING second chamber?
So let me get this straight.
CHARLES: By all means.
You are proposing that we replace the House of Lords...
That was the brief.
...with a travelling second chamber called the Democrabus.
Well, it'll be a fleet of buses eventually, but... yes.
Are you completely deranged or are you just deliberately taking the piss?
It's a radical solution, I grant you,
but it's one that's sure to chime with the electorate.
The old farts are always banging on
about how they're the defenders of democracy.
Well, let's see them get out and meet the people, eh?
They can debate top-up fees in Totnes, health in Harrogate, education in Essex...
Well, perhaps not Essex.
And ordinary people will be involved?
Well, they won't actually be involved, no.
They won't change anything, but the point is they'll THINK they are.
It'll feel democratic and it'll get all of those peers
out of your hair once and for all. That's the point.
Look, if you're still uncertain,
do what you always do with your more toxic political proposals.
Label it a "pilot scheme"
and start it off in Scotland.
You see, Marty, it's our utter detachment from democracy
that makes us what we are.
Yes, I think you may probably be right.
If only people would see beyond appearances.
Indeed. Although to be fair, it's not easy seeing beyond this goose, is it?
But things are changing.
We have all sorts of riffraff in here now.
I mean, if Bragg and Putnam can get a seat, what price Forsyth and Wisdom?
Or McCabe?
Marty, this Government is taking away our liberties.
And of course taking liberties is YOUR job.
Rumour has it, they've hired some professional outfit.
I want you to find out who this tin-pot team are and deal with them.
Have no fear, Henry.
Prentiss McCabe know how these things work.
First, the softening-up process, the blackening of names,
the besmirching of reputations.
Swine.
Then the whisperings to the press, the sensationalised stories,
before they deliver the final coup de grace
and unleash the dread word - "Abolition".
Bastards!
You see, what we need is to rearrange the shop window.
We need to change the public's perception of the Lords
as a bunch of over-privileged toffs
who, I don't know, sit around guzzling port, stuffing themselves with game
before staggering into the chamber and falling asleep.
No, what we need is the public face of two thousand and...
Who's that? Bunty Statham's daughter.
Recently taken on the title of Baroness Statham of Chelsea.
Ah.
He's taken the bus to the PM?
Yes, we should hear the rocket going up any minute now.
Charles, Nick Moran wants to get onto GMTV and Breakfast Time.
Has he got a new film to promote? No, he just wants to get on.
And Geri Halliwell wants to cancel Richard and Judy, Des and Mel,
Parky, Jonathan Ross and Paul O'Grady
because she's afraid of over-exposure.
There's also an e-mail from Colin Priestley. He wants to see you ASAP.
Do you know, I rather thought he would.
He loves it. What?
It's quintessentially British, it has tradition, it has flair, it has...
wheels.
Yes. It's also got democracy.
It's modern.
It's a bus.
It's in tune with the people, it's blue-skies thinking.
It reminds one of childhood, of day trips, of the seaside.
It's radical but rooted.
He wants it?
He wants the whole package.
This'll get rid of the old bastards once and for all,
spending the rest of their lives
in some travelling, never-ending Radio Five Live phone-in.
It'll look like sweeping reform, but the beauty of it is that essentially it's...
totally meaningless.
It's certainly that.
It's a pity we can't acknowledge your part in all of this, Charles.
It seems so unfair that I get all the credit.
Doesn't it?
Still, who knows? I might be able to swing it with the PM for you
to get a seat in the Lords.
Which would you prefer, top or bottom deck?
The PM liked it?
So much so he wants to pilot the idea.
I must say, by now I fully expected Priestley
to be sat outside the steps of Number Ten,
giving it the full Paula Radcliffe.
Is the world coming round to our way of thinking,
or are we inadvertently shaping the world?
One of PR's primary dictums -
if you knock on a door for long enough, someone is sure to open it.
We're about to send our Lordships into 'Grateful Heaven',
now I have to tell them to go out and buy bus passes.
Do they still have the power to hang, draw and quarter?
How long before the peers are signed up with Wallace Arnold?
A week at most.
Then we build up the Lords and undercut the bus idea.
We reinforce the idea that the House of Lords doesn't need to move around
to be in touch with the people,
you can be in touch with them from your own living room.
VOICEOVER: You've tuned in to Big Brother,
thrilled to The Games, yawned at The Farm.
But here's a new reality show that gets you close
to where the decisions that matter happen. It's here.
It's now. It's the House of Lords, live on the Parliament Channel, 508.
Press your red button to pick a peer.
The House will take you to the place
where the celebrities are the people who run the country.
Meet Baroness Jane Statham of Chelsea.
Oh, God, what a dog!
So it's an 8.30 in the office...
I'm Baroness Jane Statham, yes, but everyone calls me Jane.
I'm an hereditary peer and I take my role very seriously indeed.
Broad range of students...
VOICEOVER: She cajoles, she rages, she makes herself heard.
Send it back to the Commons!
If you were to put me on the spot, I'd have to vote for...
...Baroness Amos because she really got on my tits in the House today.
VOICEOVER: Make a difference, make a date with Jane,
make a date with The House.
They were supposed to be getting deeper into the shit
prior to the buses pulling up
and now all of a sudden they've gone platinum.
Yes. Yes, indeed.
Saturday nights, the Parliament Channel is now more popular than BBC One.
Well, so is everything else.
That Statham woman has become a cult.
She's now having an affair with some hunky beefcake Liberal Democrat.
A hunky Lib Dem?
Isn't that a contradiction in terms?
The tabloids are calling it "Posh and Even Posher". They're lapping it up.
Thousands of people are tuning in in the middle of the night.
I am distraught. The PM is... distraught.
Yes, well, all of us are... distraught.
I'm not paying you to be distraught, Charles. I'm paying you...
I'm paying you to scupper the House prior to us torpedoing the bastards
out of the water for good.
Look, all that's happened here
is that their Lordships have hired some inferior little PR agency,
some Mickey Mouse outfit, to beef up their public image a little.
It's an abortive pre-emptive strike.
But it's working.
Well, I suppose one does have to have some grudging respect
for whatever Ryman League kind of agency
is running their campaign, yes, I grant you.
The PM is demanding a response.
And he shall have one. It's time to cry havoc and let slip the dogs of war.
Today the Government have finally unveiled their plans
for a new, reformed second chamber - the Democrabus.
In a moment I'll be speaking to a top Downing Street adviser.
But first, to explain how it will all work, here's Peter Walsh.
Well, Kirsty, this is tremendously exciting. It's a new concept in democracy.
And it's not going to be shut away in some boring old building in London,
it's gonna be right out there with the people. So how does it work?
OK, suppose the Government wants to bring democracy to Barrow-in-Furness.
And off go their Lordships.
And we simply stop the bus in the town centre and start the debate.
And the ordinary people of Barrow-in-Furness... There they are.
They simply join in the debate and all they have to do is get on the bus.
What's so radical about this proposal is that the ordinary voters take part
and vote on an exactly equal footing with their Lordships.
It's direct, instant democracy.
All right. Now let's bring democracy to Devon. There they go.
Oh, dear, some ordinary people have fallen off the bus. Never mind.
There's been a lengthy period of speculation
over this Government's intentions
concerning the thorny issue of House of Lords reform
and... and... and... and now we know. Kirsty.
Well, with me is Colin Priestley, the Number Ten press secretary.
If the Lords are so hugely popular
as we've been led to believe, then why change anything?
Well, like the rest of the nation, I applaud the House of Lords
for proclaiming their belief in democracy so vociferously.
And the Government is happy to have the Lords on board, as it were, so to speak.
Isn't the truth of the matter that this pilot
is just another piece of spin from a Government obsessed with gimmicks?
Well, every time this Government has attempted something truly radical
we get the same old cynicism from the BBC.
We devolved power to Scotland and the critics sneered.
We even gave power to the bloody Welsh...
To the... admirably bloody-minded Welsh people, whom frankly I love,
and again the critics sneered.
So, you know, when will the BBC give us some credit?
This is a genuinely radical experiment in democracy.
OK, then, so what route will this magic bus take for a radical experiment?
Well, we thought we'd actually start in Birmingham,
the heart of the nation, the epicentre if you like, and then fan out from there.
We anticipate that this campaign will be a resounding success.
Well, congratulations, Charles!
The Democrabus sails triumphantly off into the sunset, crammed with irate peers
and Colin Priestley standing in the prow, Lord of all he surveys.
Well, our mission is a trifle more complicated than once it was,
I grant you.
But that needn't hurl us all into a slough of despond.
Well, how are we going to save my peers and crucify Priestley now?
The buses could have a breakdown on the M1.
Stop the caravan before it gets going.
Or make sure that no-one turns up in Birmingham.
Cancelled due to lack of interest. CHARLES: Or...
we make sure the Democrabus is an unqualified success.
Do you want me assassinated?
What is the point of the Democrabus? Its avowed point?
It's an exercise in democracy. Precisely.
And true democracy is an untameable beast, wild and uncontrollable.
So what we need is for the Democrabus to be a real exercise in democracy
with genuine ordinary people kicking up a hell of a stink about every damn thing.
My God, the PM would hate it.
It's a pretty broad trawl,
but we've tried to pinpoint the key issues for the punters to pick up on -
top-up fees, waiting lists, trust hospitals and, of course, Iraq.
Of course.
The emphasis is on direct personal experience
coupled with a coruscating fury at the Government.
Well, let's light the blue touch paper, shall we?
Let me tell you straight away, Mr. Prentiss...
Please, call me Charles.
No soft-soap stuff will cut any ice with me.
Straight in with the mixed metaphors, splendid.
I'm a plain man from Birmingham.
Patently. And I've had enough.
Good.
Good. Enough of what exactly?
Harry's been broken into 150 times.
I demand to know what's going to be done about it!
Excellent. Well, thank you for coming in and being so time-consuming.
My husband waited for a hospital bed over 11 months.
Didn't we have a 15-monther earlier?
Um...
Mrs Lee. Then we go with Mrs Lee... Goodbye.
Your son served in Iraq? Yes.
This is the kind of story that tugs the heartstrings
and makes one ashamed to be British.
How did you lose him?
He's not lost, he's at home.
He feigned his death and returned home?
He didn't feign anything.
He came home five months ago, honourable discharge,
but he's been having terrible headaches.
He's not dead? No.
Well, then you're wasting our time. Goodbye.
My word, isn't democracy terrifying?
Good evening. The Government was thrown into confusion tonight
after the latest outing of the reformed Second Chamber,
the Democrabus, attracted nearly triple the expected crowds.
In Exeter, Liverpool and Norwich, buses had to be closed for safety reasons.
And in Middlesbrough a local MP was said to have faked a heart attack
in order to remove himself from a heated debate on immigration.
I'm joined now by Baroness Jane Statham,
one of the Lords' most high-profile members,
and by Colin Priestley, the architect of the Democrabus.
Baroness Statham, you were there in Birmingham today.
The public seemed to like this very much.
It was really very exciting, Huw.
There were several issues on the agenda, including Child Tax Credit,
free trade agreements and GP out-of-hours services.
You would be amazed how strongly people feel about these issues.
The public's response certainly seems to have taken the Government by surprise.
This was a magnificent demonstration of the democratic principles in action.
This is about people having their say.
So how do you respond to rumours
that the Government's proposing maybe to cancel this?
This was their idea in the first place, wasn't it?
Mr Priestley, can I turn to you?
There's a 90% approval rating for this scheme.
Why are there plans to shelve it?
Well, with all due respect, Huw,
we haven't actually said we are going to shelve it.
The Democrabus is an interesting experiment
that we feel needs further examination.
So we've set up an enquiry to be headed by Lord Hutton
and once the results of that are through,
which could be as soon as August 2006,
then we feel we'll be in a better position
to reconsider the wider implications of such a project.
So you ARE scrapping it?
I'm being held personally responsible for this fiasco.
But you are responsible.
This was your idea, Charles. Only unofficially, remember?
You assured me that it had been planned down to the last detail.
Oh, but, Colin, it was.
I saw the PM this morning.
He claimed to have had his doubts from the start.
Well, that's his prerogative.
He also said that he was firing me,
but in a compassionate, modern way.
Well, he could hardly appoint you to the House of Lords, could he?
But the good news is that I'm now in a position to offer my considerable services
to any top-notch PR agency who'd care to snap me up.
(CAR ALARM BLARES)
Oh, I think someone's breaking into your car.
The little shits.
Well, one good thing's come out of this, Marty,
apart from Baroness Statham's exclusive leather range.
I think I can promise you a lot more work for Prentiss McCabe.
Excellent.
Just a shame about your application to join this place.
Why? Why is it a shame?
"I can fully endorse Martin McCabe for a position as a legislator.
"He is brilliant, a person of principle and an advocate of truth above all else.
"The one flaw, and a minor flaw it is,
"is that there may be something fundamentally unsound about him."
What? What is there fundamentally unsound about me?
I did say you were brilliant. And fundamentally unsound.
May be. I said that you "may be" fundamentally unsound.
I was aiming for the rounded view.
"I also hesitate to mention his drinking".
Well, I did hesitate.
And then I mentioned it. I told you not to put me down as a referee.
But I thought that was because we were working partners.
Martin, my dear chap, I simply couldn't afford to lose you.
You can understand that, can't you?
I shall not forget this.
Oh, in a week's time you'll be thanking me.
Now, chop-chop, we've got work to do.
We've got that Donatella Versace cowhide handbag range to launch.
Avoiding obvious comparisons.
And we have to put a stop to those Martin Clunes Toby jugs.
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