An extract from Wikipedia's article on Brass EyeBrass Eye aroused considerable controversy when it was first broadcast, primarily because prominent public figures were fooled into pledging onscreen support for fictional, and often plainly absurd, charities and causes.
The second episode was called "Drugs", and is considered by many to be the most successful of the series. In the opening scene, a voiceover tells viewers that there are so many drugs on the streets of Britain that "not even the dealers know them all". An undercover reporter (Morris) asks a purportedly real-life drug dealer in London for various fictional drugs, including "Triple-sod", "Yellow Bentines" and "Clarky Cat", leaving the dealer puzzled and increasingly irritated until he tells the reporter to leave. He also asks the dealer if he is the "Boz-Boz", and claims that he doesn't want his arm to feel "like a couple of fortnights in a bad balloon". Later in the episode, in the same area, Morris, dressed as a baby with a nappy on and a red balloon-like hat on his head, again asks for "Triple-sod" and then says "last time I came here a friend of mine just got triple-jacked over a steeplehammer and jessop jessop jessop jessop". He also explained that possession of drugs without physical contact and the exchange of drugs through a mandrill were perfectly legal in English law.
David Amess MP, the Conservative Member of Parliament for Basildon, was fooled into filming an elaborate video warning against the dangers of a fictional Eastern European drug called Cake, and went as far as to ask a question about it in Parliament
[1]. The drug purportedly affected an area of the brain called "Shatner's Bassoon" and was frequently referred to as "a made-up drug" (a drug, they were told, not made from plants but made up from chemicals). Other celebrities such as
Sir Bernard Ingham,
Noel Edmonds and
Rolf Harris were shown holding the bright-yellow cake-sized pill as they talked, with
Bernard Manning telling viewers that "One kiddy on Cake cried all the water out of his body. Just imagine how his mother felt. It's a fucking disgrace" and that "... you can puke yourself to death on this stuff - one girl threw up her own pelvis-bone... What a fucking disgrace". Manning, along with other participants, told the public that Cake was known on the street as loonytoad quack,
Joss Ackland's spunky backpack, ponce on the heath, rustledust or
Hattie Jacques pretentious cheese wog, and then informed anyone offered it to "chuck it back in their face and tell them to fuck off".
[1] David Amess's Parliamentary Question
Seven minutes of extracts
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By far the most interesting figure present was the old Duke of Wellington, who appeared between twelve and one, and slowly glided through the rooms - truly a beautiful old man; I had never seen till now how beautiful, and what an expression of graceful simplicity, veracity and nobleness there is about the old hero when you see him close at hand. His very size had hitherto deceived me. He is a shortish, slightish figure, about five feet eight, of good breadth however, and all muscle or bone. His legs, I think, must be the short part of him, for certainly on horseback I have always taken him to be tall. Eyes beautiful light blue, full of mild valour, with infinitely more faculty and geniality than I had fancied before; the face wholly gentle, wise, valiant, and venerable. The voice too, as I again heard, is "aquiline" clear, perfectly equable - uncracked, that is - and perhaps almost musical, but essentially tenor or almost treble voice - eighty-two, I understand. He glided slowly along, slightly saluting this and that other, clear, clean, fresh as this June evening itself, till the silver buckle of his stock vanished into the door of the next room, and I saw him no more.
