(Man) I would have had them all but I was full.
(2nd man) Well, this is it.
Exactly. The way they are crushed inside those lorries.
Vets hit them with planks. Vets!
The hormones make them so huge they're in agony!
Boo hoo about calves,
they do that with crabs, you don't weep about crabs.
Every animal has a right to decent treatment.
You're wrong and you're a grotesquely ugly freak.
Thanks. Animal rights. It's an extremely controversial subject,
not just the odd dinner party punch-up over squealing meat.
It's the Spaniards chucking horses out of towers,
the Chinese sucking the brains out of live monkeys
and now this, a shocking example taken from a recent Libyan News.
(Speaking Arabic)
The footage shows a ritual from the Feast of Ayed Alabta,
a celebration in which the men of Tripoli have a great time
but the same cannot be said for their cattle.
At the climax of the feast,
a cow is rounded up and driven into a metal tube,
a tube which is charged with explosives.
The cow is fired through the air and lands in a crunched-up boneheap.
Running men then clobber any remaining life out of it
with their fists and feet and sticks.
The body is dragged about
and then left for the dogs and jackals.
And possibly scorpions if they eat meat, I don't know.
Tonight on Brass Eye...
Animals - are we too nice or too nasty?
Man's relationship with animals has always been complex.
In ancient Egypt, felines were worshipped
because the Egyptians thought they were funny.
Many of today's familiar relics are cat monuments.
These vast cat heads were built underground and seen by no one.
Europe, too, has its animal traditions.
In Zaragoza, the streets still get crazy
with the annual running of the wasp.
In Britain in the last century,
it was acceptable for a gentleman to lose his virginity
to one of London's many whore dogs.
Dickens and Prince Albert both boasted of their experience.
Today animals are used more discreetly
as a vital lubricant in the wheels of government.
It was my job for 17 years
to procure wild beasts for the Houses of Parliament.
I had to get bats, gibbons...
Ex-civil servant Foster Pann
purchased over a thousand animals to work in Westminster.
Michael Hesseltine finds it very useful, if he's angry,
to have an ape to slap.
Kenneth Clarke has a baby moose in a cupboard.
(Morris) 'The most commonly used animals are zebras,
hurrying between offices with documents pinned to them.
Tony Benn had a tapir in the '70s he sent messages on.
Rude messages to the Lords, I always remember,
he used to pin to the head of the tapir.
Most of it was great fun. I enjoyed the job.
The only real difficulty I had
was trying to haul a basking shark up the Thames for Jack Ashley,
it didn't really work out.
It died after three days of being tethered to the terrace.
Jack was quite unpopular after that for a while.
So much for the fat brass of Westminster
but this East London boozer knows all about animal abuse,
because here every week,
beer users gather to watch large men fight with weasels.
(Man) 'There's normally about 40 men in a room,
standing round in a ring and a bag above your head.
Somebody pulls a string, the weasels cascade out,
and you've got as short a time as possible to despatch them.
I've seen a man die weasel fighting.
When you're fighting a weasel, he's bigger than a man.
And there is money in it, if you're good.
There's other perks as well - the women.
They fancy you if you kick the shit out of a weasel.
(Morris) 'After 13 years in which he pulped over 4,000 weasels,
Lerring suffered a compound nervous breakdown.
I lost it and I just picked up a living doing otters,
which are very easy, they're very docile animals,
and even when they pump them full of rat hormones, which they do...
you can kill an otter in about a second.
Just kick its face off.
(Morris) 'Many legal sports kill animals, too.
But I think the thing that people get fussed about
is that a fox is a small, brown, furry animal, very much like a dog.
I don't think they'd be nearly so worried
if it was a little four-legged car full of chips.
(Morris) 'The evil in our relationship remains a paradox.
If you plot number of animals abused
against what makes people cruel,
versus intelligence of either party,
it's so unreadable you might as well draw in fox heads on sticks.
If you do, an interesting thing happens -
the word "cruel" starts flashing.
So, are we cruel to hunt foxes?
The fox feels nothing. It's made of string.
Or are we too nice?
This is a bus-load of flies going on holiday to Africa.
They'll enjoy Somalia but should they?
Can it possibly be right for gene men to play with DNA?
This one...survived a couple of days and then just keeled over and died.
Is this wrong?
- How on earth can you justify this? - (Pigs squealing)
And has anybody ever come up with a reasonable argument for this?
(Squeaking)
Of course, animals and man have coexisted
since long before we all evolved.
But while cruelty makes our hearts bleed
Iike fresh operation scars in a hot bath,
our daily language is full of abuse,
with expressions like "frog stupid"? Why?
For some answers, David Jatt asked Carla Lane for them.
I saw something in the paper this morning.
A bulldog mauled a girl, we don't want that. But...
We wouldn't like a girl to maul a bulldog, either.
- No. - No. But when you read on,
you learn that some boys threw the bulldog into the garden
- to get a fight together. - Yeah.
Now, the bulldog was put down but nobody said,
"What did they do to the bulldog before it was in the garden? "
They wind up the tail, tweak its central nervous system
and it goes like a rocket.
Yes. But they put it down, no thought.
Of course. Now, they put the dog down...
What of the people that fired it off like some elastic...
There are no words to describe, prison's not good enough,
prison's become bed and breakfast and telly.
Prison's too good. What about jail?
They should have their coccyx twisted.
- Yes. Now people will say... - Can I just say,
this, which has been prepared by the news graphic people,
represents what's going on in one way.
Is that the sort of thing you'd agree with?
"Human version of..." Yes, I think so.
I've been 20 years going to the ministers
and they're finding out what man does.
- Yeah. - Not only to calves,
to everything - frog's legs they're onto...
- East End weasel fighting. - Everything.
Pulling live weasels out of the wild
- and making them fight a man. - Yeah. And they have...
they do have endearing, wonderful habits, animals.
- I had guinea pigs, 11 years old. - Jesus!
- And one died. - Yeah.
Just before it died, it washed its face.
From what you're saying, have we got it right or wrong?
What, people? Wrong! A hundred million times...
- We're right here. -..people wrong.
What chance of getting even here, let alone here?
Oh, dear. Not much.
Here?
Never in my lifetime or yours.
Just watch this, then. We're trying this, there's a tension,
- it goes back like that. - I think so.
(Woman) 'During the Blitz, when many clocks were destroyed,
Londoners knew the time by watching a dog throw itself off a high board,
which it did precisely every 60 seconds, 24 hours a day,
for over eight months.
Institutionalised cruelty is one thing
but the twisted brain-wrong of a one-off man-mental is quite another.
Ted Maul disturbs.
Arable Wiltshire, a peaceful country haven
Iike something out of a cheese ad.
It doesn't look troubled...
but it is, at least for one of these cows.
Take some money, this, and a human mind as bent as a bad hedge.
Six months ago, life for a cow here at Park Farm
was pretty much like this.
Nothing much going on here.
But last June, out of nowhere,
anti-cow slogans started appearing on the sheds,
the text designed to undermine the cows' confidence.
Local press caught whiff of a weird one
when the vandal shot his paint straight at the cow,
in the form of words like "twat"
and later "fucknut" and "arsecandle",
as the campaign plunged into overdrive.
Next came a wave of sick attachments -
cow attached to a filing cabinet,
cow attached to a Mini engine in a shopping trolley.
What sort of mind would do this?
We contacted a huge bank of psychiatrists in the States.
They told us, "The guy's a homo."
- (Phone) 'A homosexual. - 'Then, a breakthrough.
The vandal was caught on camera.
(Man) 'You got no knickers.
(Maul) 'This farmer's son's handicam footage shows him at work...
(Man) 'Fuck off.
..whispering inept insults down a wire,
straight into the cow's head.
(Man) '..don't even know what electricity is, do you?
(Maul) 'The man was Simon Hotrin, known locally as Chobb.
(Chobb) 'Push off my wire. (Maul) 'He lives in a field.
(Chobb) 'Toss arse.
But that night, Chobb had discovered a bad new hobby.
(Chobb) 'Idiot, fucking idiot, idiot, idiot, idiot.
Stupid, stupid fucking idiot.
(Maul) 'It seemed the court action would be open and shut but it wasn't.
These pics from the Beeb's Western Region show.
..but walked free on a technicality.
(Maul) 'Local feeling ran high.
One activist got so angry he donned a cow suit
and lamped Hotrin right outside the court.
Wow, he chopped him in the gob and he's legged it. Great running.
He may have been free but Chobb owed the world an explanation.
I'm gonna muck your lens, you gay sod!
Hotrin prevented himself from giving a real interview
but we gleaned vital clues from some documents we nicked.
These docs show that Hotrin had been driven nuts
because the land on which he lives is owned by the cow.
In the will of Edith Bates, a local crone who loved cattle,
then eccentric, now dead,
the cow inherited the land
and a special bank account for stockpiling rent.
Meanwhile, for the beast,
which knows nothing of money or bitter mankind,
life has become a living cowmare,
thanks to the thoughtless beneficence of a mad old woman.
So far do we have it right or wrong? Let's ask the answer prancer.
(# Renaissance music)
Thanks. Find out exactly what to think next.
Still to come up - David Jatt meets Peregrine Worsthorne.
Here's a point.
We execute wasps but we don't execute dogs.
We execute wasps because they sting us and dogs give us pleasure.
Do wasps really sting us?
Well, they do, they have stung me and it seemed like a sting.
Was it actually a sting?
Uh... I call it a sting. I'm a creature of habit.
I've never been stung by a wasp.
I don't necessarily believe... We're told they sting.
Well, I have been stung by a wasp and they do sting.
People say that snakes sting and snakes bite.
I haven't been stung by a snake, I'm glad to say...
- That's cos they bite. - Or bite.
Now, that, weirdly, I believe,
and yet I've never been bitten by a snake.
Why don't I believe...
Why do a lot of people not believe that wasps sting?
Come out into our garden in South Bucks on a summer's day,
I'll find you a wasp and...
- Sting me with it. - What?
You'd sting me with a wasp?
- This is a conversation... - Yes.
(Morris) 'Before it all stops,
a school tour for the Oxford don
who believes all animals are vegetarian.
Now, what do crocodiles eat? Natalie?
Other animals.
- (Groans) - No, they eat grass.
Why wildlife documentaries are often misleading...
(Woman) The famous footage of a lion killing a wildebeest -
- can you explain that? - The lion was chasing it,
in fact, it wanted to catch up with it to give it a potato.
And can animal breeding go too far?
A discussion point for David Jatt and horse jumper Oliver Skeete.
Is it because they don't have legs that spherical cows are so bad?
Or is there cruelty involved? I mean, what what what what?
I'm not sure what they do to the cows.
They breed them in a particular direction,
so they're just a big ball of meat.
No, I wouldn't like to eat that.
If I knew I was eating that, I would go absolutely mad,
it's like somebody putting a bit of snot in a bit of bread.
Really? That sort of thing? Somebody's at a restaurant,
somebody out there, and they get a piece of spherical cow,
- what do they do? - They just eat it, don't they?
But what SHOULD they do, for God's sake? Yeah, yeah, yeah...
They should make a stink,
phone up people and complain about the meat.
"This came from a spherical cow, how dare you sell this to me? "
That's right.
More good news for animals with Mike Fox's elephant campaign.
Let me explain.
If this elephant was called Mike Fox,
it would have exactly the same name as the man that did the campaign.
Mike Fox and Andrew Dean.
These men hate zoos.
Together they run the World Organisation
For Decreasing Captive Animal Problems - WOFDCAP,
incorporating Against Animal Anger
And Autocausal Abuse Atrocities in Zoos - AAAAAAAZ.
Two weeks ago they read about Karla,
an East German elephant who'd been so upset by captivity
she'd stuck her trunk in her anus.
In seconds, a campaign was born to publicise Karla's plight in a video
and tell the world about zoochosis,
the disease that drives animals nuts.
Jilly Cooper was busy writing a book.
- 'Hello? - Has Jilly come out of her shed?
But Fox persuaded her to send a drawing of Karla in her plight.
(Fox) Thank you very much for your picture.
We showed Karla and I think she gave a little elephant smile.
Oh, I love that, I want to cry, that's sweet.
- The zoo won't acknowledge us. - 'Bastards!
She could be accommodated by Jimmy Page.
- 'It's only this bloody book. - Oh, bloody book!
Oh, duck, you've made me very happy.
- 'OK, darling, bye. - Bye.
With Jilly's drawing on her shirt,
Britt Ekland told the world about WOFDCAP.
Last year they stopped penguins
catapulting each other through the glass roof at Sydney Zoo.
Last month they stopped a pig throwing itself out of a tree
onto a python in a two-way death pact in Chester.
Now they want to help Karla, an East German elephant
who has got her trunk jammed up her own guts.
I can't understand the mentality or physical make-up
of anybody that lets an elephant get into that condition.
(Morris) 'Paul Daniels' contribution moved all to horrible tears.
Karla the elephant is currently curled up in kind of a grey ball.
Her trunk is actually stuck up her anus
and they're not trying to help her, so we must.
I'll give you another one that you can cut in later,
I'll just say that and you can cut it in later.
Yeah, go, well, go to the elephant, go to somewhere else
and...still rolling?
Come on, help us get that trunk out.
(Morris) 'And so thank Christ for Wolf the Gladiator,
who joined not a moment too soon.
Urgent news - Karla has started to ingest her own head.
Her dung pump mechanism has blown.
There's bloody vegetable gas everywhere.
For God's sake, help us pull her trunk out.
She needs Wolf power
or she will explode in a shower of pulped yams.
Please help me and AAAAAAAZ
get Karla's trunk out the end of her guts.
With that ace burst of Wolf,
the WOFDCAP appeal was ready for its final phase.
You've heard a great deal about Karla,
the poor elephant in this East German zoo
who's suffering horrendously, horribly.
Desmond Morris, the great anthropologist,
the author of The Naked Ape,
who understands more about animals than probably anybody,
has written this little poem about Karla.
I'd like to read it to you.
"Aren't we a bunch of fuckwits?
"An elephant could no more get its trunk up its arse
"than we could lick our balls."
We're obviously pretty close to a solution.
Three points. Firstly, cruelty has not been eliminated.
These goats are going to box each other's heads in
and there's nothing the law can do about it.
On the other hand, we can be too nice.
This woman spent her life savings on plastic surgery
to make her dog look like Ralph Fiennes.
It's an improvement on the original.
Well, the way ahead's obviously through compromise.
Next month sees new regulations for slaughterhouses.
How are these going to work?
We kill 400 cows a week and to redress the balance,
we'll be slaughtering one member of staff every six weeks.
That's him? Are you happy about this?
- Oh, yes, yes. - Thank you for coming in.
- So whatever you... - Hello.
So whatever you forget about tonight's programme, remember this...
Introduction time, let's talk about cows.
This is the grave of a cow.
As you'll see, it was killed in unnecessary pain, by a man.
- We agree with that, don't we? - I agree, yes.
If we think it's bad in this country, if it's bad in Europe,
it's worse in Libya.
Take a look at this piece of VT.
(Jatt) 'The men gather round and finish it off with their feet,
drag it through town and leave it quite often to the jackals and dogs.
In fact, the end word of this news report from his mouth is,
"Wow, look at that dead bastard."
That incident itself, the Libyan cattle slaughter,
- right or wrong? - Wrong.
- That wrong? - Yes, absolutely wrong.
OK, yeah, you can kill the tape.
- Please, kill the tape. - Kill the tape.
(Phone) 'Hi, this is Alexandra Paul from Baywatch.
Please help me get Karla's head out of her guts now
before she explodes.
(Fox) 'Just imagine how she feels. (Paul) 'Oh, gosh.
(Fox) 'Oh, goodness me! Goodness! I've just received this.
Now, our vet has managed to get in an hour ago...
(Paul) 'Uh-huh...
..and she pulled Karla's head out. Oh, God!
(Paul) 'Well, what does it say?
(Fox) 'Her head came out but it had shrunk
and it was now small and smooth and white.
(Paul) 'So did she put it back in?
(Fox) 'No, she's walking around with a smooth white head
about the size of a man's head.
- 'God... - 'She's got eyes...
..but she hasn't got any ears.
It looks like one of our helpers, Andrew Dean, got sucked in.
- 'No! - 'He's breathing through a tube.
- 'Oh, Jesus. - 'And he's stuck inside.
(Paul) 'You should get a press release out.
(Fox) 'Which paper would print it?
(Paul) 'Well, you put it over AP.
(Fox) 'You put it over a pea?
(Paul) 'You put it over the wire services.
(Fox) 'What, you put a wire over a pea?
(Paul) 'No, no, this is, um...
(Fox) 'Is it like a distribution pea?
I phone up a pea and I send it down the wire to the pea
and then the pea sends it out to all the newspapers.
(Paul) 'Yeah.
- 'Thanks very much, Alexandra. - 'OK, and, um...
(Fox) 'I'll pass on your good wishes, particularly to Andrew...
if he's still going.
(Hangs up phone)