Ian O'Doherty

Introducing the offending program with the words “Welcome to Pedogeddon,” Morris and his team of writers gleefully filleted every media cliché, mob reaction and hysterical misconception about pedophilia that has stalked Britain and Ireland for the last 18 months.

In that time, a moral panic of gargantuan proportions has swept the land. Last summer in the English coastal town of Portsmouth, egged on by English tabloids running a “name and shame” campaign, mobs of vigilantes roamed the streets like medieval peasants. But instead of pitchforks they carried knuckle dusters and baseball bats, and rather than hunchbacks they were seeking “kiddie fiddlers,” who existed only in the minds of the mob.

Dozens of people were wrongly accused, and one man, a pediatrician, had to leave the area after some of the protesters were confused by the term and torched his house. The pediatrician managed to keep his name out of the press, for fear that more crime might follow him. Another pediatrician, 30-year-old Yvette Cloete, had to leave her home in Gwent, South Wales after it was vandalized: Cloete arrived home from work to see the word “paedo” daubed all over her walls. Police say “the astonishing ignorance” of local anti-pedophile protestors forced her out.

Morris, the most determined iconoclast in Britain today, quickly pounced on the hysteria. His show was initially pulled from the schedules after lawyers at Channel 4 received word that musician Phil Collins was threatening to sue. The former Genesis drummer had been roped in to the “Pedogeddon” episode to present an obviously fake public information film.

Called “Nonce Sense” (“nonce” being an English slang term for child abusers), Collins eagerly spouted a barrage of drivel, oblivious to the fact that he was wearing a T-shirt proclaiming himself a “nonce.”

Other celebrities were duped as well. One popular London DJ, reading from a cue, described with a straight face how pedophiles were found to have genetic material more in common with crabs than humans. An MTV jock warned children how pedophiles can cause toxic vapors to emerge from the keyboard of a child, making them more susceptible to the “perverts advances,” while another celebrity described how new Internet technology allowed pedophiles to send penis-shaped sound waves down the computer to vulnerable children.

It was all obviously hokum, and the kind of leg-pulling that Morris excels at. After all, he was sacked from his first job as a radio announcer after he interrupted a live show to say that the Queen Mother was dead — she wasn’t, but his future at the radio station soon was.

Indeed, the studious-looking young man with the impressively middle-class accent had just been warming up back then. Some of his early radio antics included spontaneous and usually obscene running commentaries over somebody else’s live news report, filling the studio with helium just before the newscaster began his broadcast and on one infamous occasion, while working with Great London Radio, he spliced a tape of the British queen in which she appeared to be giving a tour of Buckingham Palace saying, “and this is the room in which my father used to service men.”

Back at “Brass Eye,” the decision was made to air the pedophilia episode with no cuts once the threat of legal action from Collins began to dissipate. In the days leading up to the pedophilia episode, the print media responded to warnings of impending offensive material with a preemptive strike against the man they fear more than any other.

Morris is often compared to agit-prop comedians like Michael Moore and Mark Thomas, but while they deal with the political, Morris is far more interested in the social. A tall, handsome 38-year-old father of two, he doesn’t speak to the media and cleverly timed his summer holiday in the South of France for the day after the show aired. It was a wise decision, because within hours of the first transmission, he had become the most hated man in Britain.

Previous episodes of “Brass Eye” had mostly appealed to a relatively small audience. Predominantly ABC1, the listeners tended to be young, media-literate and hip to the “in” jokes that come with a speed usually reserved for a swarm of flies hitting a speeding truck’s windscreen.

But the hunt for pedophiles has become a virtual national sport, and newspapers, celebrities and members of the public are in a constant battle to see who hates pedophilia the most. It’s no longer enough in tabloid Britain to abhor the physical, emotional or sexual abuse of children. If you don’t think pedophiles should be hanged then you’re accused of being soft on crime. If you don’t think they should be castrated without anesthetic before being hanged, you run the risk of being condemned as a liberal, the worst insult imaginable in Britian’s current climate of spittle-flecked hysteria.

It takes courage to swim against this particular tide in modern Britain and the sight of Morris dressed as Eminem with a baby doll attached by the mouth to his crotch, the news that child-killer Sidney Cooke had been blasted into space with only an 8-year-old child for company and the interview with a child actor posing as a victim of sexual abuse sent his critics into paroxysms of splenetic rage.

The day after the show was aired, Beverly Hughes, a member of the ruling Labour government went on national radio to condemn the program and denounce Morris. “Indescribably sick,” she called the episode, before admitting that she hadn’t actually seen it. She defended her precarious position by saying, “I don’t think I ever want to see something as horrible as that and I don’t understand anyone who would.”

This rather limp justification was soon followed by a spate of press releases, radio interviews and attention-grabbing stunts by politicians from all parties as they jostled to see who could be the most publicly outraged.

But most worrying was the decision by Culture Secretary Tessa Jowell to go to the Independent Television Commission, British television’s regulatory body, and demand a change in their methods. It was indicative of a Labour government which, rather than provide the liberal alternative after years of Conservative Party misrule, has instead proved itself to be as staunchly Victorian on social issues as its predecessors.

The ITC politely told Jowell to mind her own business, and when Channel 4 news interviewed her, the anchor suggested that she and her colleagues must “feel like idiots.”

The program was trumpeted by the right wing as an example of what happens when you allow college-educated liberals unrestrained access to television. The News of the World, The Daily Mail and a host of other publications even accused Morris of actively promoting pedophilia.

In the middle of the furor, a nonplussed David Quantick, one of the writers on the show, was persuaded to grant interviews. He pointed out that as that episode of “Brass Eye” was aiming to satirize media overreaction on the issue and spark a debate, they had obviously succeeded. “I think a lot of people complained because it just had the word ‘Paedophilia’ in the title and that a lot of complaints seemed to be related to a program that didn’t go out,” he said.

“It wasn’t a show mocking victims of pedophilia. It was a show about media attitudes to pedophilia and the way the media apparently exploits pedophilia.” This merely provided a further cue for the critics, who promptly designed banner headlines telling their readers that the creators were “unrepentant” and “smug.”

One of the interesting things is the way the furor has confused both supporters and critics. More than one columnist who has defended Morris on the grounds of freedom of expression has now had to bite his words as Louis Farrakhan, that great liberal bug bear, reaches Britain for the first time. All of a sudden the freedom of expression that allows you to call Hitler a great man is not quite as palatable as the freedom of expression which allows you to satirize blue-collar newspapers.

At least one writer is believed to have withdrawn his name from the list of “Brass Eye’s” credits before the show was aired, and it was hard not to look at some parts of the show through knitted fingers, dreading what was going to come next. Which, one suspects, is exactly what Morris wanted. After all, it was no surprise and no fun to have right-wing author Freddy Forsythe condemn Morris, but one imagines he got a real kick out of the bleeding heart liberal brigade balking at the subject matter.

In previous episodes, Morris has dealt with drugs, where he persuaded celebrities to tell outrageous stories about the dangers of a fictitious new drug called “cake.” The tablets were size of a sombrero and one duped politician even raised the deadly specter of the new drug in the House of Commons.

Morris has also dealt with animal-rights issues, crime and religion — all emotive subjects where opinions differ and no quarter is sought or given. Each time he has managed to make each topic hilarious, vicious and completely on the money.

With “Pedogeddon,” however, the laughs were more sparse than usual. Of course, one can point out that devoting an entire satirical show to the subject of pedophilia is a little like looking at a dog walking on two legs. It’s not important whether the dog does it well or not, it’s just refreshing to see it try.

But there were moments of inspiration. For example, Morris as the newscaster who is upset by the pedophile — restrained in stocks, naturally — who admits that he just doesn’t fancy his son. Or the grainy, undercover, black and white footage of a sinister building, with the whispered voice-over, “this clever pedophile has disguised himself as a … school.” Or the live newscast from outside a prison where a braying mob, encouraged by the reporter, break into the cell of a pedophile and set fire to him live on camera.

Predictably, these were among the scenes which caused most of the outrage, simply because they were virtually identical to real footage we have seen on our television screens for the last year and a half. Those Portsmouth protesters who carried placards saying “hanging’s too good for them” and burned people out of their homes condemn anyone who has criticized them, and anyone who dares to question their actions is frequently painted in some way as a defender of pedophiles.

But right in the middle of the “Brass Eye” storm came a new spin on the story, one that caught everybody off guard. As a child, Morris had attended a minor English public school which was the center of a child sex abuse scandal that saw the headmaster jailed and several senior staff fired.

Two years ago Morris was asked if he remembered any abuse while there. He replied, “I remember all sorts of degradation going on with other boys and teachers.”

But to the chagrin of some of his fellow students who testified, Morris refused to go to court. It suggests some things are just too daunting even for Chris Morris.

Neil Hamilton was an unimpressive and relatively anonymous Conservative MP until it emerged in 1999 that he had taken cash and accepted presents and favors from Harrods owner Mohammed al Fayed in return for asking questions in the House Of Commons.

It was a charge that the eccentric Egyptian millionaire (he has repeatedly claimed that Princess Diana was about to marry his son Dodi before they were both killed in Paris, a notion that still sends members of the British establishment scurrying for their smelling salts) was happy to repeat ad nauseam, and the resulting case destroyed Hamilton’s career. It also gave al Fayed the opportunity to make several wild allegations from the legally protected sanctuary of the witness box, and made a star of Hamilton’s bullish wife, Christine.

But while the couple have become a weird political sideshow for the last few years, appearing on satirical television together at every available opportunity and seeming quite happy to swallow the insults as long as they got paid, even their harshest detractors are uncomfortable with how the pair are now being treated.

The couple were arrested after an anonymous complaint was made about them raping and abusing a young woman at a party. Immediately, rumors claimed that the Hamiltons were enthusiastic swingers — a not utterly outrageous claim in an environment renowned for kinkiness and where one of Hamilton’s Conservative colleagues, Stephen Milligan, killed himself in a sex game gone wrong long before INXS singer Michael Hutchence ever heard of auto-eroticism.

But as both sides desperately tried to take control of the story, it began to look as if the Hamiltons had been spinned against. Notorious publicist Max Clifford had been approached by the accusing woman several days before the actual event was even alleged to have taken place, and the London Metropolitan police were criticized by civil rights campaigners for arresting the couple with such alacrity and on such flimsy evidence.

Then, as debate raged about the morality of women being allowed to make anonymous rape claims, the alleged victim went public.

Twenty-eight-year-old Nadine Milroy-Sloan outed herself to the low-rent tabloid News of the World in an attempt to fight back against what she described as “the Hamiltons’ sickening lies and attempts to discredit me.”

Just what she expected them to do in that situation remains unclear, but Milroy-Sloan, a trainee college lecturer, may have made a fatal tactical error in exposing herself. Her ex-husband was quick to regale a salivating media with tales of lesbianism, swinging and threesomes, and rather candidly claimed her voracious sexual appetite led to the breakup of their marriage.

She has four children from three different men, and has now been accused of being a fantasist who has made unfounded rape allegations in the past. The fact that the Hamiltons have six people prepared to place them at a dinner party on the other side of London on the night of the alleged incident also worked in their favor.

With such evidence seemingly stacked against Milroy-Sloan, then the obvious question is: Why? The Hamiltons are bankrupt, both financially and politically, so there is nothing to be gained there.

Conspiracy theorists are speculating that al Fayed, a phenomenally wealthy man who despises the couple, may have paid the woman to make the claim out of sheer malice.

But perhaps the best conspiracy theory is that the Hamiltons themselves are behind the whole affair. Financially ruined, they are now talking about suing both the police force and the newspapers that characterized them as brutal rapists or overly enthusiastic swingers. Should they win these cases — more than likely now that the police have dropped their investigation and stated that they have “found no evidence to support the allegations against Mr and Mrs Hamilton” — they stand to amass a small fortune in damages.

In a way, it’s a nice idea. After all, nobody wants their juicy scandals to actually involve serious bodily harm.

But looking at the once ferocious and proud Christine, leaning against her husband’s shoulder in an unexpected role reversal, it became clear that even if the charges are dropped and they win their inevitable libel and false arrest cases, the curtain has finally closed on the couple’s strangely charming double act.

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Note: In the original version of this story, the Conservative politician who died under mysterious circumstances was misidentified. A correction’s been made. Salon regrets the error.

Retiring to the spectacular Victoria Falls for a gawk and a smoke, I spent a couple of hours gazing in awe at the majesty of the vista in front of me while trying to remember my name and wondering why I had smoked that second joint. On leaving the falls I took what I assumed to be the pathway leading out. Instead I was trekking further into the bush, my brain still too jarred from the incident with the cops to pay attention to such piffling details as walking the wrong direction into the bush in 95-degree heat.

After an hour or so I began to get the Fear. The pot really kicked in and the run-in with the local plod replayed itself in my head, each time with a more gruesome ending. And then there was a more immediate paranoia. I felt like I was being followed by baboons. Which made perfect sense, because when I turned around there were four or five of them stalking me alongside the dirt track.

This was not good. They kill a couple of people each year and they can smell your fear. Or was that dogs? I wasn’t sure but I was sure they could smell something. Growing bored with freaking out the Irish guy, they decided to have even more fun. As I walked in the middle of the pathway, keeping my head down and hoping they wouldn’t notice me — a 5-foot-10 white guy with a green top and a shaky stagger in the Zim bush — the first stone zipped past my feet. Oh God, I thought, I’m going to die here, pummeled to death by a bunch of hooligan baboons. The stones flew closer, close enough, in fact, for me to realize that they weren’t stones, but fresh lumps of their shit. Jesus, I wasn’t even worth rocks — they were going to crap me to death.

I did a stupid thing and broke into a run. This new part of the game seemed to excite the baboons. They enthusiastically followed suit, shouting, screaming and stopping occasionally to shit in their hands and throw the lumps at me. Finally, a ranger drove along and discovered me, hysterical, shouting at the baboons and waving a stick, telling them to come and have a go if they thought they were hard enough. After I explained to the ranger that it was their fault, not mine, he drove me back to the hotel and deposited me with the others. I was ranting, nearly hallucinating and completely dehydrated; my mumblings about corrupt Zimbabwean bastard cops and shit-throwing baboons soon meant already strained relations were stretched beyond limits. Still, it was a good trip, even though I spent six months in a suicidal depression from the fucking anti-malaria drugs I was on. Larium — just say no, kids.