This entry was posted on
Tuesday, November 1st, 2005 at
3:51 pm and is filed
under The War on Stupid.
Guardian (August 4, 2005): But there is one anniversary that seems to be curiously missing: this year it is 400 years since Guy Fawkes very nearly blew up parliament in the Gunpowder Plot. There were plans to make an ITV programme about it, hosted a little eccentrically by the Top Gear presenter Richard Hammond, in which a full scale mock-up of the Jacobean House of Lords, filled with crash test dummies to represent the MPs, peers, bishops, king, queen, princes and princesses who would have been there on November 5 1605, were to have been blown sky high. But that seems to have been cancelled or at least put on hold.
Oh, I get it… you were only feigning restraint…
ITV, 9:45 pm this evening: This weekend it will be 400 years since Guido Fawkes (as he styled himself) was caught with 36 barrels of gunpowder under the House of Lords, preparing to launch the first-ever bonfire night with a bang. And here comes boyish Richard Hammond, of Top Gear, with a novel idea to mark the occasion. He plans to build a full-size replica of the 1605 House of Lords, with 9ft-thick concrete walls. Then, in a blaze of wanton pyrotechnics, he intends to blow it up. To help him, we have TV’s favourite blower-upper, Sidney Alford, a man so immersed in his subject he talks about “the wonderful, semi-erotic power of burnt gunpowder”. It’s mad, gleefully wasteful stunt TV, but Guido would surely have approved.
Press coverage:
Telegraph – Guy Fawkes had twice the gunpowder needed
Times – Gunpowder plotters get their wish, 400 years on
Daily Mail – A real blast from the past
Mirror – Blast from the past
Your task:
Watch the programme and take names…. for the trial, you understand. Not that there’ll be one.I expect an extended detention without trial will be the fate of those who seek to glorify terrorism. And so it should be.
POST-VIEWING UPDATE – Did they stand aghast at yonder blast? No! They clapped and cheered! Disgraceful. They need locking up, they do.
