MORRIS: The headlines tonight - Euro MPs headsets play the sound of screaming women, Bryan Ferry bathmat poisonous say lab and bouncing elephantiasis woman destroys central Portsmouth. Those are the headlines - happy now?

OPENING TITLES

MORRIS [popping up from behind the logo]: Hello sir! On The Day Today tonight - MP in heartless outburst after bomb goes off in Hurd's bath-

MP: Well, one bomb's gone off in the Foreign Secretary's hand, but all he does is say 'Well I didn't need that hand anyway'.

MORRIS: -and a warm handshake from Michael Heseltine to the children he is about to release into the woods and shoot.

HESELTINE: How do you do? Good to see you.

[Morris plays the background music on a keyboard, giving it a final chord.]

MORRIS: The Bank of England is in chaos after the discovery that the pound has been stolen. As the news broke, trading rooms were plunged into chaos, even seasoned campaigners known for grace under pressure being reduced to squawking the day's panicked cry, "What's happening?"

TRADER: What's happening?

MORRIS: The pound was stolen at 1.30 this afternoon by thieves dressed as cleaners. They drove a white Montego - helicopter police gave chase [footage of a speeding Montego crashing into another car] but despite the shunt the men escaped, making good with their legs across open ground. [A freeze frame shows two sets of animated footprints hurrying away from the crash] As City markets crashed and flew off, the government tried to stabilise the economy with an emergency currency based on the Queen's eggs, several thousand of which were removed from her ovaries in 1953 and held in reserve. This meant anyone mad enough to seize on the panic selling of dead pounds could become a dollar millionaire in less than an hour.

CREEPY-VOICED INTERVIEWER: How much money have you personally made today?

TRADER: About ten million.

CREEPY-VOICED INTERVIEWER: Wow.

MORRIS: Throughout the day, bank officials have refused to confirm the rumours that the pound was only vulnerable at all because they removed it to play with at lunchtime and forgot to put it back. Later tonight we'll be asking Malcolm Rifkind for his view, and asking him why he likes pulling the legs off live dogs and shooting foreign policemen.

VOICEOVER: The Day Today - hommy sidey news.

PARTRIDGE: I'm Alan Partridge. Hello. Rally driving! The championships start tonight, but here's what I got up to this morning.

[Partridge on a dirt road next to a rally car, kitted out in racing gear and with a miniature camera attached to a stalk on his crash helmet.]

PARTRIDGE: Hi, you join me with Susie Herper, one of this Britain's top, lady, rally drivers. Susie, you're going to be subjecting me to some atrocious punishment. What's that?

HERPER: Well, I'm going to take you round the course that I won the rally on recently.

PARTRIDGE: Fantastic. And, er, the stickers - what are the stickers for?

HERPER: Advertising.

PARTRIDGE: It's as simple as that?

HERPER: Yeah.

PARTRIDGE: It really is that simple. Ah, before we go round the course, I'd just like to explain this [he points at the helmet camera] is a modern camera that'll be watching all my facial movements. It's the size of a slim Panatella cigar. One more thing... it's a great model, it goes like a bomb - and the car's not bad either! Let's go burn some rubber.

[Various in-car shots as Herper takes Partridge around the course. The close-up shots of Partridge's face from the helmet camera are really quite disgusting... he's definitely got a Gavin Estlar mouth! (Herper's dialogue is barely audible, BTW, so I had to take a guess for much of it. Sorry...)]

PARTRIDGE: Well it seems quite, er... [the car hits a bump] Wooah-hooh! Woh-hey! Hey! Spunky lady!

HERPER: You can feel the bumpiness!

PARTRIDGE: Yeah! You certainly know how to handle this bitch! Keep her in line! I like it, it's good.

HERPER: It takes all your time to keep control, really.

PARTRIDGE: You take it by the scruff of the neck and you let it know who's the queen. It's the bitch and you're the queen. I like it. Woah! Slow down.

HERPER: I don't need to use the brakes for this corner...

PARTRIDGE: Okay, easy, easy, woooah! Watch out for that! Aagh! Don't be stupid! Watch out for that! Careful!

[Out of the car.]

PARTRIDGE: Well, while driving like she was might be big and clever on the rally track, it certainly isn't on a housing estate. Remember - lives matter. Chris.

MORRIS: It's been revealed that the junior Treasury Minister, Michael Portillo, carries a sawn-off shotgun to constituency meetings, corners children in parks and chews their cheeks and has frequent sexual intercourse with stray animals, claiming "As long as it's got a backbone, I'll do it". That story we reported last week, and have since discovered it to be untrue.

['Speak your brains'.]

VOICEOVER: Paul Boateng!

[The interview looks to have been done at a Labour party conference.]

MORRIS: Do you feel that young people are taking the right cues from their culture?

BOATENG: I think that young people make a contribution and indeed form the culture in which they live, and in which we all live.

MORRIS: How do you feel about some of the more... dangerous... elements... of... their... cultural... melee? (He means milieu, but it's probably deliberate...)

BOATENG: I don't know what you mean by their more dangerous elements.

MORRIS: I'm talking bang! I'm talking guns, I'm talking people like Uzi MC, the Blood Rap Movement, Herman the Tosser... how do you feel when young people are presented with the sort of stuff that they're churning out?

BOATENG: I think it's rather sad, and-

MORRIS: What, if someone listens to Herman the Tosser? Agh.

BOATENG: -and I think there are very many young people who are turned off by that violence, by that sexism, by that racism and by that homophobia.

MORRIS: Are you levelling all those accusations at Herman the Tosser?

BOATENG: No I'm not, Herman the Tosser is not someone who's invaded my own particular consciousness, although he has clearly invaded yours and is a concern.

MORRIS: Ha. Ha. Ha. Ha. [He continues as Boateng talks]

BOATENG: It sounds to me, it sounds to me-

MORRIS: It sounds to me too.

BOATENG: -it sounds to me a rather unpleasant name-

MORRIS: Unpleasant name.

BOATENG: -but he may be a delighful man-

MORRIS: Man.

BOATENG: -in person.

VOICEOVER: The Day Today - the last scintilla of doubt just rode out of town.

MORRIS: The American serial killer Chapman Baxter is to be executed today by the dead body of his last victim. Barbara Wintergreen reports.

WINTERGREEN: Florida state penitentiary, and killer Chapman Baxter has dug deep into his past for tomorrow's execution ceremony.

BAXTER: The best kind of justice would be if my last victim, Colin Akavito, could be dug up and he could kill me.

WINTERGREEN: In Oregon's Manimatronics Center, doctor Travis Daveley has been fleshing out Baxter's unusual carcass request.

[Daveley has wired a hideously made-up corpse with motors and servos, operating them all from a large control box.]

WINTERGREEN: Coffin boffin Travis has undertaken to manimatrize Colin Akavito, the man who Baxter blasted in the past. He's even helping him to speak from beyond the grave.

DAVELEY: There's three simple voices. This one is a kind of generic voice-

GENERIC VOICE: Justice.

DAVELEY: The second one is Martin Sheen...

MARTIN SHEEN VOICE: Jurstice.

DAVELEY: And the third one is my favourite, Louis Armstrong.

LOUIS ARMSTRONG VOICE: Jurrrsticcce.

WINTERGREEN: All of America is electrified by this veg-o-lante victim. [Shot of the corpse wrapped in the American flag, on the cover of Esquire] He's appeared in a cadavalcade of front covers and chat shows, and has squeezed new life into fruit juice adverts.

[A Sunkist-style TV ad, with the corpse dressed in a Hawaiian shirt and holding a can of orangeade while the theme music to the BBC's cricket programmes plays. You know, the jaunty Caribbean one.]

VOICEOVER GUY: If this ain't the tastiest, zangiest fruit juice you've ever tasted, then there ain't no-

LOUIS ARMSTRONG VOICE: Jurrrsticcce.

WINTERGREEN: Live wire Akavito is dating supermodel Kendal Ball, who seems stuck on the stiff.

[Said stiff, in a dinner jacket, is wheeled into a charity ball. Daveley is standing a few steps behind him, holding the controls.]

BALL: Colin's kind of cute, he's strong and silent and, um, doesn't bullshit me like other guys.

WINTERGREEN: Do you get to spend a lot of time alone together?

BALL: Well no, 'cause Travis is always with us, but I kind of like it that way.

DAVELEY: I have this little dream whereby there's this whole village of reanimated corpses, and if you like, a kind of control tower at the centre of that village with a bank of monitors, and I control all the corpses.

WINTERGREEN: Why use corpses? Why not normal people? Why don't you just leave things the way they are?

DAVELEY: Because... because normal people... because I wouldn't have my tower! I want a tower.

WINTERGREEN: The day of justice, and Baxter gets to renew his acquaintance with the body of evidence.

[With a whirr of motors, the corpse shakes hands with Baxter.]

PRIEST: In whose voice do you wish justice to be done?

BAXTER: Martin Sheen.

PRIEST: Thank you very much. You may proceed.

[Akavito is wheeled into position by the switch.]

WINTERGREEN: Colin needs a few moments to decompose himself before delivering a stiff charge to Baxter.

MARTIN SHEEN VOICE: Jurstice.

BAXTER: Aaagh! Aaaaaagh! Aaaaaaaaaaarrrrrrrghhhhhh!

[The corpse gives the crowd a thumbs-up.]

WINTERGREEN: So, as Chapman Baxter came here to bury his past, looks like his past has come here to bury him. Barabara Wintergreen, CBN News, at the corpsecution here at Florida state penitentiary.

MORRIS [chuckling at the report]: BBC mandarins are bleating again, this time because their new soap opera 'The Bureau' has plummetted out of the ratings. A BBC spokesman said "Don't read too much into the fact that we're sending them out on tour to the regions on the back of a truck, it's not to drum up support, it's standard policy for all programmes". Let's have a look, shall we?

['The Bureau'. Instead of the usual location, this time the whole bureau set has been put on the back of a lorry, complete with actors, and is being driven around some city streets.]

GUY: Maria?

MARIA: Yeah?

GUY: You know I'm gay?

MARIA: Yeah.

GUY: Do you think it's possible for a gay man to love a woman?

MARIA: Of course it is Guy, there's no rules to love. You've got to follow your heart.

GUY: Maria?

MARIA: Yeah?

GUY: I love you. [He's about to embrace her when...]

ALEX: Watch out, it's Hennety!

HENNETY: Oi! I'm trying to run a high-class bureau de change, not some two-bit nipple peep show in Rio de Janiero.

ALEX: Ange! Where you been all day? We've been worried about you!

ANGE: It's not 'Ange' any more, actually. It's 'Mrs Hennety' to you.

[Everyone looks shocked as Ange and Hennety kiss.]

LIVEROT: A cat miaows. A horse neighs. A lion roars. A bird sings. A snake hisses. A human... burps.

MORRIS: Time now for business with Collately Sisters.

SISTERS [who has her hands up for some reason]: Thanks. Chris. [Frantic 'Sarf Landahn' voice] "You do it! Get it now! No you do it! It's over there!" [Normal android drone] Arguments like that broke out on the international markets today when economic talks collapsed and Spain withdrew from the world and began trading with itself. The peseta burst open at four. The pound was barely audible this morning, it rotted by 3.9 points against the dollar, and there was further bad news for coke developers Watney Heckbulb nrrrrrrrrrr, who were ordered to cease trading because of bad burping. Chris. Chris. On now to the money markets, and the international finance arse. [Another insane graphic, this time of two globes being pushed together] And there you can see that the US and Japanese cheeks started off with a gap of 2.4, but increased trading forced the two together to form a unified arse at around lunchtime, which held for the rest of the day. In summary then, oh no. Chris.

MORRIS: For the second night running, London's police are out in force, clamping the homeless. The new measures have been in operation since Monday, and are already proving successful.

[Shots of a London street at night. Homeless people have been locked in place by large yellow clamps around their feet.]

REPORTER: The clamps are bolted onto any homeless person found asleep or motionless after 9pm at night. This is the time when London's street people start accumulating in doorways, many of them drunk and pissed up on booze. The clamps ensure than any homeless who has caused a blockage is forced to stay put when they wake up [a row of clamped men is passed by 'The Bureau' on their truck]; they've probably been sick too. They are then prosecuted and punished.

MORRIS: And reaction to the new measures has been strong - so far we've spoken to Kim Wilde.

MORRIS: Does it make you feel bad when they clamp homeless people on the Strand?

WILDE: ...when they *clamp* them?

MORRIS: Yeah. Businesses on the Strand getting in people to clamp them so they can't move away and they're persecuted, and then they're fined for being in the way.

[Wilde looks absolutely horrified.]

WILDE: I didn't know that, that's awful

MORRIS: Would you call for clamps to be illegalised?

WILDE: Certainly on human beings, it's obscene!

['Enviromation']

MAY: Enviromation from me, Rosie May. A revolution in household heating is sweeping across America - frozen fire. Normal fire is solidified in special cold furnaces, and packaged for home freezer storage. It can then be defrosted at a later date and poured onto logs. Frozen fire saves heat. The echo from the nuclear bomb that destroyed Hiroshima is set to devastate the city again. Half of the original blast has ricocheted off Jupiter, and will strike Japan in 2041. It's not yet known if the city will be evacuated.I'm Rosie May - tread not on the forest leaves, for you tread on my face.

MORRIS: Today is the anniversary of 1944. People did different things then, and lived different lives. This Day Today reminiscipackage features contemporary memories and footage from a time when a five speed, three litre Ford Capri was the stuff of a madman's dreams.

INTERVIEWER: What was the food situation like in those days?

LOUISA SMAMS: Dreadful, of course it was dreadful. Sometimes we even had to eat bits of the house. Bricks, and... the mortar was tastier than the actual bricks because after all, it had been mixed up once, so you could mix it up again. You used to try to get it off other people's houses, of course, houses that had been bombed and broken down, but sometimes you had to eat your own house, and it was better to find yourself without a house than without food.

KITTY FROSLIN: Electricity was very, very expensive, but you had to have a light of some kind, so we had the, I don't know, we thought it was quite a good idea, you see babies have such a lot of energy, they're always on the go, so we used to connect the house to a baby, and that used to keep the lights going.

SMAMS: I don't remember much about 1945, because that was the year that, that was my hibernation year. You'd go and get your ticket and find out when you had to hibernate, and then you'd be given just a few weeks to get yourself organised. You know, you knew you had to keep going, you got into a box and curled up and went to sleep. It was our bit of the war effort really, to keep ourselves out of the way.

FROSLIN: During the war, everyone was called up to be in the War Cabinet. I was called up to be the Foreign Secretary for a month. I was in meetings and having to express opinions, and had to travel abroad. I went over to France and I met the French foreign minister who seemed quite impressed, because my French really was rather good. So we had conversations with me understanding everything he said and answering him, but whether I answered him properly I don't know.

MORRIS: This is The Day Today. Still to coooome, controversy over new Treasury appointment-

BLOKE IN DOORWAY: I'm sick to death of this. Treasury, treasury, treasury, it's all I ever 'ear. I'm sick of it, I've had enough, just all of yer fuck off!

MORRIS: -and new anti-shoplifting measures for a B&Q store in Bracknall.

SECURITY GUARD: If I catch anybody stealing items from the shop, then I shoot 'em through the mouth with this. [Holds up crossbow]

MORRIS: The number of Ministers in Westminster suffering from Slemmel's Disease has risen to 22.

[Various MPs are shown in their offices.]

REPORTER: Slemmel's Disease is caused by a brain virus that affects the victim's ability to read. They can see the words, but have no idea what they mean. Baroness Trumpington was the first to show signs two weeks ago - she may have caught it from a badger. Then John MacGregor - the virus is highly infectious and lives in peppermints. This was the moment Peter Lilley realised he too was in trouble. [Lilley reads a paper, looking perturbed] Slemmel's also affects leg-eye coordination, causing victims to walk straight past places they intend to stop.

[An MP walks along a street with a camera crew. The cameraman stops, but he keeps going.]

JOURNALIST: Sir, could you - hey!

REPORTER: By last Friday William Waldegrave had little control over his body [Waldegrave wanders past the camera], Teddy Taylor followed-

JOURNALIST: Mr Taylor, could - oi!

REPORTER: -and Jimmy Knapp severely.

JOURNALIST: Mr Knaaaapp!

REPORTER: Most seriously of all, on Monday John Patten showed unmistakeable signs [Patten seems bamboozled by a revolving door], failing to recognise familiar surroundings and objects [Patten looks around his office, then opens his case with a grunt of "Ah!" before taking out some papers], clearly having no understanding of the day's briefs. The second document proved equally mysterious, and the third he couldn't even be bothered to try. The disease shows no signs of stopping. This morning, Malcolm Rifkind appeared lost when he was just 20 yards from his office.

MORRIS: Doctors say the only treatments they can offer so far are rubbish.

LIVEROT: A man sees God in his car. He crashes.

MORRIS: Today's historic trade agreement between Australia and Hong Kong marks a new season of hope for the future of world trade. The two countries have been at each others' throats for years, but now the hatchet's been buried by a treaty which allows unrestricted trading between all parties at all levels. I'm joined now by Martin Craste, the British minister with responsibility for the Commonwealth, and Gavin Hawtry, the Australian foreign secretary in Canberra. Gentlemen, this is pretty historic stuff, well done - a future of unbridled harmony then? Australia?

HAWTRY: Yeah, I think that Martin Craste and I can be pretty satisfied - it's a good day.

MORRIS [to Craste]: If, as in the past, Australia exceed their agreement, what will you do about it?

CRASTE: This is a pretty satisfactory treaty which I am sure will work well. Naturally, if the limits were exceeded this would be met with a firm line, but I can't see this being necessary.

MORRIS: Mr Hawtry - he's knocking a firm line in your direction. What are you going to do about that?

HAWTRY: Well, in that case we'd just reimpose sanctions as we did last year-

MORRIS: Sanctions! [To Craste] Hang on a second, they've only just swallowed their sanctions and now they're burping them back up in your face!

CRASTE: I think sanctions is rather premature talk. Certainly if sanctions were imposed we would have to retaliate with appropriate measures. But I can't-

MORRIS: I think 'appropriate measures' is a euphemism, Mr Hawtry - you know what it means, what are you going to do about that?

HAWTRY: Well, I'd just have to go back to Cabinet.

MORRIS: And ask them about what?

HAWTRY: I dunno, maybe it's a matter for the military-

MORRIS: The military!

CRASTE: I think a military reaction is inappropriate, and this is way, way over the top.

MORRIS [to Hawtry]: Sounds like you're being inappropriate! Are you?

HAWTRY: Course I'm not being inappropriate! Martin Craste knows that full well.

CRASTE: This is the sort of misunderstanding that I thought we'd laid to rest during our negotiating period!

MORRIS: Misunderstanding it certainly is, it's certainly not a treaty, is it? You're both at each others' throats, you're backing yourselves up with arms - what are you going to do about it? Mr Hawtry, let me give you a hint. Bang!

HAWTRY: What're you asking me to say?

MORRIS: You know damn well what I want you to say! You're putting yourself in a situation of armed conflict - what are you plunging yourself into?

HAWTRY: You want me to say it?

MORRIS: I want you to say it, yes!

HAWTRY: You want the word?

MORRIS: The word!

HAWTRY: I will not flinch...

MORRIS: I will not flinch *from*...?

HAWTRY: War.

MORRIS: War! [He's delighted] Gentlemen, I'll put you on hold - if fighting did break out, it would probably take place in Eastmantown in the Upper Cataracts on the Australio-Hong Kong border. Our reporter Donald Bethl'hem is there now - Donald, what's the atmosphere like?

BETHL'HEM: Tension here is very high, Chris - the stretched twig of peace is at melting point. People here are literally bursting with war. This is very much a country that's going to blow up in its face.

MORRIS: Well gentlemen, it seems we have little option now but to declare war immediately!

CRASTE: This - this is quite impossible, I couldn't possibly take such a decision without referring to my superior, Chris Patten, and he's in Hong Kong!

MORRIS: Good, because he's on the line now via satellite. Mr Patten - what do you think of the idea of a war now?

[Patten nods his head absently.]

MORRIS: I'll take that as a yes!

CRASTE: Very well, it's war!

HAWTRY: War it is!

[Behind Bethl'hem, a shell explodes.]

BETHL'HEM: That's it, Chris - it's war! War has broken out - this is a war!

MORRIS: That's it! Yes - it's war!

[The normal blue studio lighting changes to a blood red. A wall of huge letters spelling 'WAR' is illuminated. Technicians pour in and start turning the studio into a media command centre. Craste and his desk are hurriedly wheeled away.]

MORRIS: From now on, The Day Today will be providing the most immediate coverage of any war ever fought. On the front line and in your face, Donald Bethl'hem.

MAN WITH GLASSES: Standing by, Douglas Hurd.

MORRIS: The Day Today smart bombs have nose-mounted cameras, this is smart bomb Steven [goes to a monitor showing in-flight cruise missile footage], and that is Susanna Gekkaloys.

GEKKALOYS: I'll be reporting from inside the fight! [She races off]

MORRIS: Like some crazy Trojan! And keeping an eye on everything that's going on out there, at The Day Today news pipe, Douglas Trox!

TROX: Chris!

MORRIS: But first, the weather from Sylvester Stuart.

[Stuart is wearing a large cardboard collar with the British Isles drawn on it, which he rotates for each region.]

STUART: And now the weather, starting in the south-east, where the sun should plop through after a dull start, a bit like having your hand sewn back on after a farming accident. Let's revolve the weather collar now 70 degrees to the Midlands, where I was first bereaved. And there'll be a large cack of heavy cloud covering the area, but it should stay dry enough for you to dance outside until our lord Beelzebub calls upon us. Now, if we revolve the throat circle back to the West Country, and you can see there'll be several gits of bad weather across most of the sky. Some rain, but no more severe than soft porn. In summary then, and that's all the weather.

MORRIS: Back to the war, and in the front line at Eastmanstown, our reporter Donald Bethl'hem. Donald, what's the latest?

BETHL'HEM: As I swilled the last traces of toothpaste from my mouth this morning, a soldier's head flew past the window, shouting the word 'victory'.

MORRIS: Seems to be a lot of action behind you there - have you seen any fighting yourself?

BETHL'HEM: Today I saw the body of an old woman on the ground - she was lying in a pool of her own tomatoes.

[There is an explosion behind him - he gets the shrapnel in his back and collapses, twitching.]

MORRIS: Thank you, Donald. Earlier today, I've been down among the fighting myself. This is my report.

[Assorted shots from Bosnia, etc, appear.]

MORRIS: There's something about the way these people move that tells you they are a nation at war. Look into their eyes, and you can read the words 'I have a reservation at the restaurant of death'. It's a messy bistro, with a bad name for soiling its customers' clothes. We've seen only one napkin in four days. [Someone waves a white flag from a window] People here are confused, spending most of their time running about like idiots. Earlier today, we met a family who thanks to this war now have no home. A war which they feel anyway has nothing to do with them.

[A child and his mother speak. Morris translates.]

CHILD: This is not our war. We are being forced to swallow the rotten egg of an angry political goose.

MORRIS: That boy is now a war orphan. One more victim of what they call here the 'desert confetti'. I have a child about his age myself. When I phoned him ten minutes ago, I told him to move out of the house to make room for his new brother.

[Back in the studio. Morris strides about purposefully, lit by red lights.]

MORRIS: Back live now, progress on The Day Today smart bomb - Jonathan! Get rid of Hurd! Thanks!

[Hurd vanishes from a monitor, replaced by a bomb's eye view of the war zone.]

MAN WITH GLASSES: Well, Chris, as you can see there's the missile, cruising at around 2000 per second trying to locate the target the soldier it's aimed at - there's the soldier, it goes in through the mouth, down through the oesophagus, into the stomach and there's the explosion. [The camera enters the gob of a surprised trooper before the picture turns to static]

MORRIS: Absolutely bang! That's The Day Today bringing you another tear on the face of the world's mother! Alan! Sport!

PARTRIDGE: Thanks, Chris. And now some late night soccer results. I'm Alan Partridge - this is division two. Hull Paragraph 5, Portsmouth Bubblejet 1. Sheffield Hysterical 3, Chunky Norwich 1. Richmond Artithmetic versus Nottingham Marjorie match postponed due to bent pitch. Good night.

MORRIS: Susanna Gekkaloys has broken through to the front line - this is her contribution to history.

GEKKALOYS: This is the very heart of the conflict - the men here have been fighting non-stop for three days. We drove in at night, straight into the middle of a rocket battle. The air now is thick with what they call here the 'electric cornflakes'. We're under strict instructions not to leave the vehicle, but to drive on through.

[Gekkaloys immediately stops her Jeep and jumps out.]

GEKKALOYS (V.O): With no cover, we immediately ran across open space to a nearby house.

[Gekkaloys kicks the door down, races inside and shoots one of the occupants.]

GEKKALOYS (V.O.): We found an injured man, and did our best. There are always casualties in war. There was a family sheltering in the back room. We had no tongue in common, but through the universal language of mutual need [Gekkaloys yells at a terrified woman who is trying to force her out] I knew she was saying "Come, set your equipment up in our refuge, the world must see this mess".

GEKKALOYS: These brave people are now sleeping, but they know that tomorrow, our aerials and transmitters could make this house a prime target. Chris.

[Morris, with a different haircut, is somehow in the studio and on the battlefield at the same time...]

MORRIS: Back to the war now, and in the noise and heat of what they call here the 'flying scissorbeans', there is no optimism - or at least wasn't until just two minutes ago, when we received these pictures of a miracle from the front line, less than a mile from where I'm standing. [A flaming body hurtles across the frame behind him]

MORRIS (V.O.): This was the scented rose in the bumgut of Satan, for here at 7.13 precisely, the fighting stopped. Soldiers, who moments earlier had been shooting each others' teeth out, put down their guns and joined in peaceful commune. Some played games, or like these men, planned a musical. The reason for this calm lay inside a shed, for here, the massed forces of two world powers were unified by nothing more than the distress of a cat stuck on a high shelf. No-one knows how it got there, but these brave fighting men, moved by the simplicity of the animal's plight, decided to forget their differences and try to get it down. [Various soldiers rescue the cat and cuddle it] But even as the men celebrated, their heads were blown clean off, for somebody, nobody knows who, had filled the cat with nitro-glycerine.

VOICEOVER: The Day Today - news from telly to belly! (Chah! A repeat!)

MORRIS: Just time for a quick look at tomorrow's headlines - 'Plastic surgeon arrested with stash of stolen mouths', that's in the Express, the Hull Aphrodite, 'Police chief crushes lizard with whistle', there he is looking wretched, the Daily Mail, 'Child made of paint wins by-election', the Murdoch papers tomorrow, 'Crazed wolves in store a bad mistake admits Mothercare', and there's the same story in the Sun, and the Daily Mirror have a special pull-out note for the milkman, 'five pints please', they'll be doing three, two and four later in the week. That's it, that's The Day Today on the day a man on this programme told how he was menaced by Hugh Sculley.

MAN: He just came in and went - [pulls a face, which is morphed into something ridiculous] - and went out.

MORRIS: That's it - good night.

[Morris gets up as the credits roll and walks around the studio. The other people congratulate him as if he's just won an Oscar.]

The Day Today featured Christopher Morris, Rebecca Front, Doon MacKichon, Patrick Marber, Steve Coogan, David Schneider and the voice of Michael Alexander St John.

With Jean Ainslie, Bill Bailey, Philip Bretherton, Andrew Burr, Carl Forgione, Robert Putt, John Thompson, Margery Withers.

Weird credit: "Carpets: Bono", "Thanks attack: BBC Radio"

But wait, there's more...

[Clips from the show appear.]

ANNOUNCER: Available now on commercial video, The Day Today: This Is Our War! Featuring the men and women who've sacrificed themselves at the altar of fact - and the beat of over a thousand pop classics!

[They include: 'Jet' by Paul McCartney (Tornados and Jaguars whizzing around in Desert Storm), 'Get Down On It' by Kool And The Gang (soldiers dive for cover), 'Dreadlock Holiday' by 10cc (soldiers with long strips of camouflage on their helmets), 'The Clapping Song' by the Belle Stars (Iraqi prisoners are forced to keep their spirits up by clapping), the 70s-sounding song with the line 'show me you're a lady' by whoever it was (a picture of a woman in combat gear), 'You Really Got Me' by The Animals (I think) (people who've been shot, including that BBC reporter who got hit in Yugoslavia), 'Stop Your Sobbing' by The Pretenders (loads of people weeping), 'I'm Wishing On A Star' by Rose Royce (flares lighting up battlefields at night), 'Disco Inferno' by the Trammps (things blowing up and people on fire), 'Oops Upside Your Head' by the Gap Band (loads more surrendering Iraqis), 'Hands Up (Give Me Your Heart)' by Ottawan (even more surrendering Iraqis).]

ANNOUNCER: The Day Today: This Is Our War. Bang after bang after bang after bang!

Transcribed by a Unknown Author, updated in Nov 2000 by Niall Mc Mullan