EDIT NEWS: The Chris Morris Music Show - 'Millennium'
(Never previously published)
The Chris Morris Music Show - 'Millennium'
Anyone with even a fleeting interest in great radio comedy should be familiar with The Chris Morris Music Show, an hour-long DJ-format programme broadcast on BBC Radio 1 FM from June - December 1994. Hosted by Morris, with on-air assistance from Peter Baynham, the show is often remembered for the mess of dull press scandals - eg the 'Death of Michael Heseltine' routine - which accompanied it.

But it was always the less-explosive material which caused the most coffee-spluttering, in particular the chemistry between the two main creative players. Sharing a skewed take on the world, Morris and Baynham's fantastical two-handers about current events seldom failed to hit the spot, the whole experience enlivened by what appeared to be completely off-the-cuff, improvised banter. This, however, was seldom the case. The 'chatty bits' were often quite methodically arranged beforehand. In the case of a discussion speculating about plans for the Millennium celebrations (Show 20 - 30/11/94), a full three separate script drafts were carefully sculpted before they even got their headphones on.

Those original script drafts follow. First however, here's a transcript of the material as it was broadcast.

GRAMS: KIRSTY MacCOLL - 'FREE WORLD' (ENDS)

MORRIS
Don't suppose you heard the Today programme, Monday morning, ten past eight - cracker of an interview between James Naughtie and Michael Heseltine. Naughtie was basically sort of saying "Are you going to be... Are you going to put yourself forward to challenge John Major?", and Michael Heseltine was going "(HUFFS) This is pointless speculation, I've answered this question so many times! All you're trying to do... you're just trying to push me towards giving you a slip of the tongue, and then you'll go wwwrrrushing off to all your colleagues on the One O'Clock News, the Evening Standard will do a leader about the whole thing and everyone in television will be running around getting over-excited...". And he just absolutely lambasted the whole idea of the kind of media speculation thing, er, which effectively works because of, the media has such a rough reputation for just, er, y'know, making things up or just pumping hot air into stories which aren't really issues. Erm, and James Naughtie was just kind of like, nearly crying by the end, every time Heseltine waded in and said "there's another one - there's another one... You... you see, you're just trying to... trying to make me say something stupid so that in the end you'll be able to rush around with your little piece of tape!". And Naughtie was sort of going "Ohhh, but, ehhh, ohhh, ehhhh...," and he was kind of like... virtually nearly crying. It was class! It meant nothing at all, but it was class listening. (TO BAYNHAM) You didn't hear that, did you.

BAYNHAM
No I didn't, I just heard the second half of that programme. About the, um, the stuff about the Lottery. Lotto...

MORRIS
Oh, the Millennium Fund?

BAYNHAM
Yeah, yeah.

MORRIS
Ah, well, you see, the content of that was much more disturbing but they underplayed it a lot - that thing about, er, one point five billion quid at the end of the century to spend on the celebrations....

BAYNHAM
Yeah, yeah...

MORRIS
...drawn from the National Lottery tickets that we're buying now.

BAYNHAM
I know. It was really... I saw the Panorama thing as well about it...

MORRIS
On Monday night?

BAYNHAM
...yeah, yeah, yeah...

MORRIS
Ah yeah. How are they gonna spend that though? It's absurd!

BAYNHAM
What a... waste of money, this business of they're gonna give it to the thir... they're gonna give a third of it...

MORRIS
Yeah...

BAYNHAM
...to the first baby born... on New Year's Day, 2000.

MORRIS
Utterly ridiculous - they've totally failed to foresee what trouble that's going to, er, throw up...

BAYNHAM
Well, ba... basically, the way I see it is anybody who conceives during 1999 is gonna want some of that so they're gonna hang onto the kid or something like that...

MORRIS
Well they're gonna say they're in with a chance - those who conceive early will say "yeah, let's hang onto it - we won't have it in October", and those who conceive late will say "we can do a super-gestation in a month!" and have it out in a mo... so you're gonna get these mothers, like, in October, they're gonna start contractions and they're gonna go "no, no, I'm gonna jam in a cork! Keep it there - keep it there for two months..." Or, the baby's gonna start coming, the waters will break, the baby will start coming out... and the, the, the head will be sticking out of their pants! They'll be walking around going "it hasn't been born yet!", and they'll take these drugs to relax all the muscles so it won't fall out! And then Mothercare will be actually providing... with these... kind of... these, these pants - these pregnancy pants with a great big kind of baby's hat let into the gusset! So they can walk around with a baby sticking out of their pants! And they... they'll even appear on... like, on er... tube trains - you know how people sort of think it's quite acceptable y... "I'm feeding my baby so I can get my breasts out, okay - you're not allowed to watch..." What they'll do this time - they'll be just, like, hoiking up their skirts! And showing their pants! And then just whipping out a bottle and then jamming it between their legs into the gaping baby's mouth which is lying down there!

BAYNHAM
What about... all the ones where the kid hasn't started to show, so, y'know, they haven't gone into the contractions yet...

MORRIS
Right.

BAYNHAM
...but they might soon. I mean, they're just gonna start doing things like pushi... pushing little Christmas lights up there, or little fire flies...

MORRIS
To keep it in there?

BAYNHAM
Yeah, yeah, so the kids are like "Ehh-hhh-hhhh"

MORRIS
"Ooh, I'm not coming out!"

BAYNHAM
Or give 'em one of those little dogs - you know, those little Japanese dogs? What are they called, um...

MORRIS
Japanese Finger Dogs?

BAYNHAM
Yeah!

MORRIS
What, those two-inch things?

BAYNHAM
Yeah - they're gonna push one of those up inside... and the thing's gonna be there, barking at the foetus - the foetus is gonna be cornered in the middle of the... in the uterus.

MORRIS
And there's all these 90-year-olds as well - I bet you they'll be kinda like... thinking "I could have a kid too!" - they'll be desperately swallowing ovaries or shovelling frogspawn up their fannies... or, they'll try anything, those people, they're kind of like the, the, the jumble sale technique - it's like anything is okay! So, like, they'll knock out their husbands, bung them into a pram, rush round to a hospital and say "Ew, look, I've had a baby!" Or, they'll try and get inseminated by rushing around Soho peep shows with a little yoghurt pot - "Can I have some?"

BAYNHAM
It's gonna be an awful mess! Live on television. Horrible.

MORRIS
Well of course it's gonna be telivi... I mean, televis... I mean, if it doesn't happen on television then it's not a fact! I mean, you know how television confirms things as fact. We use... we refer to television programmes all the time in order to try and substatiate some ridiculous lie!

BAYNHAM
Er, Chris.... you shouldn't...

MORRIS
Sorry.

BAYHAM
Mm.

MORRIS
In fact none of them seem to have taken account - this is the sad thing - none of them seem to have taken account of the fact that the whole thing is going to be eclipsed... by the fact that Christ is very likely to be born again that night! Experts predict that Christ is going to emerge as a fully-formed man from a circus elephant!

BAYNHAM
They'll have to hose out his beard a bit then...

GRAMS: STONE ROSES - 'LOVE SPREADS'

MORRIS
I'm not gonna buy anymore Lottery tickets, are you?

BAYNHAM
No. (BEAT) Why are we banging on about babies again?

MORRIS
Broody stuff I think. It's 'cos Emma Freud's gone off to have a baby. That's why she's leaving. She's going off to have a baby. You know the careerist cow won't elbow enough space in her diary to have one. It's tragic, and... plus the fact that Richard Curtis is impotent...

The Chris Morris Music Show
Show 20 - 30/11/94, BBC Radio 1

Some moaning about The Stone Roses and buskers follows. Then they return to the planned routine:

MORRIS
Of course the other thing the money's gonna go on is all these ridiculous celebrations. They're gonna spend the... other billion quid on these superlatively daft celebrations...

BAYNHAM
Oh God, yeah, have you got... have you got that thing there?

MORRIS
In the paper... Jack Tarlton (sic)... okay, tell us what they say about Jack Charlton...

BAYNHAM
Jack Charlton is gonna be launched into space in a rocket full of examples of British wildlife!

MORRIS
And at the same time - get this - Stephen Hawking is gonna be gonna be fired off too - but in totally the opposite direction! And then the rest of the budget is gonna go on these kind of '2,000' mini-events. Two thousand of these things!

BAYNHAM
Right: 2,000 monkeys are gonna be driven into the sea in Lowestoft.

MORRIS
Yeah. 2,000 sheeps eyes are gonna be dropped on Sweden.

BAYNHAM
In Norwich, two boxers - each with a thousand fists - will fight for twenty seconds.

MORRIS
Errr, you see these - jeans - 2,000 pairs of jeans will be burnt in Roy Castle's old garden.

BAYNHAM
2,000 British poets will smoke a huge 2,000-stemmed pipe with one bowl.

MORRIS
Um... In Rome - this should be worth seeing - a 2,000-uddered wolf is gonna be driven through Rome and then beheaded by Giorgio Armani. And out of the body will fly a special moth!

BAYNHAM
(GIGGLING) Keith Richards, meanwhile, is gonna go on MTV and try to play... he's gonna try and play 2,000 guitars at once!

MORRIS
What with?

BAYNHAM
Well he's just gonna point a big blunderbuss at them and just fire them randomly at the guitars.

MORRIS
Get this, right - on Glastonbury Tor, Druids are gonna congregate and throw 2,000 spanners into the sun!

BAYNHAM
David Bowie... David Bowie's gonna parachute into a volcano!

MORRIS
And back in London, in Hyde park, they're gonna release a cow with 2,000 backbones!

BAYNHAM
What about the rest?

MORRIS
I think the rest of the money's gonna be poured into a fund to be spent on inventing an upside-down flame!

BAYNHAM
Bloody hell - who's in charge of all this rubbish?

MORRIS
Jack F(record scratch)ing Dee!

NEWSBEAT JINGLE

The Chris Morris Music Show
Show 20 - 30/11/94, BBC Radio 1

The evolution of the routine is probably best achieved by working backwards through the drafts. So let's start with Draft 3:

Peter Baynham closes his suitcase after giving us the scripts covered on this page - University of Glamorgan, Dec 1994 (by kind permission of the Getty Archive)
The handwriting on the first page belongs to Peter Baynham - extra notes, doodles and suchlike - these pages were liberated from Baynham's suitcase after a Fist of Fun gig in December 94 - a week after the show went out.

Note that the stuff in this draft is pretty close to what made it to the edited broadcast, but there are still a couple of unused ideas - eg the allusions to inducing birth by "filling the room with nuns", etc.

One interesting section has Baynham asking "what does constitute a child being born?" which seemingly would have linked to a pre-recorded item ('t. flying call - chat with doc - when is baby born'). Would the 't.' here stand for 'tape'?

There's also a note which mentions 'mayo bitching' (referring to Simon obviously) which doesn't appear, perhaps dropped when they decided to have a bitch at the new Stone Roses single instead.

Also note the uncensored nature of "Jack Fucking Dee" - the profanity was, sadly, censored for broadcast. The "frogspawn up their fannies" section was apparently also considered snippable but ended up going out.

Now, let's go back a little bit - to Draft 2:

No mention at this stage about the Naughtie vs Heseltine spat. The concept of 'Japanese Finger Hounds/Dogs' not yet conjured up. The 'chat with doc' also mentioned in this draft, along with some stuff about how Noel Edmonds would react to having a premature baby on the Millennium show ("urrgh it's only two inches long")

No "frogspawn up their fannies" here, but reference to the 90 year olds having their wombs put back in ("any old womb - camels, frogs")

The line about having to hose out Christ's beard added by Baynham's biro.

It was originally Todd Rundgren and not Keith Richards who was going to play 2,000 guitars.

The whole event wasn't originally to be organised by Jack Dee ('fucking' or otherwise) but by an altogether more outlandish media celebrity.

Note the handwritten scribbles on the second page reading "Land ahoy" and other curious nautical refs - this particular show actually began with Baynham pretending to be 'at sea', purportedly standing in a laundry basket as a makeshift crow's nest. Note also the boxed "fog" - obviously considered a very important aspect of this routine!

Quite why these scribbles feature on an earlier draft page is unknown, although it's possible that the Millennium routine was recorded at a later session to the rest of it. Having been banned from broadcasting live after the 'Heseltine' incident, initial attempts had been made to at least pre-record the subsequent shows 'as-live', thus retaining an air of spontaneity, However, by the end of the run they were back in the Radio 1 studio, literally assembling the programme - as it went out - from various bits of tape.

Finally, back a bit further, to the first draft - just one page at this stage:

Some interesting stuff about feeding the unborn babies using baby aqualungs. Just camel's wombs mentioned here - no frogs. Nice line about the 90s-year-olds getting "the masses of homeless to inseminate them."

Proper mention of the fake TV show upon which this silliness will purportedly feature - allusions to Peter Snow and Noel Edmonds "rushing around looking at TV screens of all the potential winners".

And a couple of fantastic unused '2,000' events:

"Tom Robinson is going to release a new version of his biggest hit that goes 2-4-6-8-10-12-14-16-18 up to 2,000 motorway."

"Bill Withers is going to attempt to hold on to one note while a backing singer sings 2,000 lovely days."

So there you go. 1994, eh? Everything seemed so right back then.

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