13 episodes · 11th May 1994
"You can close your eyes but you can't shut your ears off, "says John Wilkinson of Westminster Council's noise team. The first film in this new series follows the team as they try to make central London a quieter place. Barking dogs, blaring music, shouting neighbours and screeching burglar alarms can turn rational people into paranoid wrecks. So, although they now have extensive powers to break into cars or property where there is a noise nuisance, much of their work involves diplomacy as they diffuse explosive situations and soothe shattered nerves.
When the owner of Birmingham City Football Club, publisher David Sullivan, appointed 23-year-old Karren Brady as the club's managing director, she became the most powerful woman in football, in charge of a club with a macho reputation for hardness. She got the job because her track record proved that she had the hard-nosed business acumen that the club needed to re-establish itself as a major force in the game. Commercial common sense had to be brought to the fore. However, matters have gone far from smoothly. The film traces her tempestuous and controversial first season, during which manager Terry Cooper resigned to be replaced by Barry Fry, relegation loomed and the club reached its lowest point by being knocked out of the FA Cup by non-League Kidderminster Harriers.
Sean is 15 and well known to the Gateshead police as a juvenile car thief and burglar. He reckons he can break into a house with "good gear", grab the TV and video and get away in less than five minutes. Gladys Smith is 80 and suffering from Alzheimer's disease. When a man posing as a council officer burgled her home she couldn't remember anything about him or tell the police what had been stolen. Filmed on the streets of Gateshead, this Inside Story investigates breaking and entering by talking to the cops, the robbers and the victims. It includes footage of a police stake-out in which detectives watch a street they believe is a haven for the area's most prolific house-breakers. After many uncomfortable days, they finally move in. There is a break-in every 20 seconds in Britain - so in the time it takes to read about this documentary, another home will be burgled.
This film sounds a warning that paedophiles are often the least likely people. It investigates a man who was a top-ranking consultant on child care and yet for 30 years has secretly abused that position of trust with his paedophile cravings. Unnamed until the programme is transmitted, the man - a former teacher - managed to keep his activities undetected by his colleagues - or if they suspected, they said nothing. They - as well as some of his victims and duped friends - are among those interviewed in the programme, which reveals the full extent of one man's double life as official child protector and secret child abuser.
If you think that Michael Elphick 's Harry was tough, stand by for the real thing. News Team in Birmingham is one of the country's leading news agencies, working at a frenetic pace to place their locally generated stories on to the nation's breakfast tables. "You've got two or three minutes to phone a desk and get an order," explains picture editor Nick Bowman. Doorstepping the bereaved, dogging celebrities believed to be "playing away from home", poking their telephoto lenses through the shrubs, the job demands a ruthless streak. And if it comes down to trying to do a deal with a rival, then as head of news Christine Challand says, "you hope there's a bit of honour among thieves".
Can a person so totally suppress recollections of sexual abuse during childhood that the memory of it can only be recovered through therapy? Or are "retrieved memories" the result of overzealous therapists planting the idea in what is an already vulnerable mind? In America recently Gary Ramona was awarded $500,000 in damages from two therapists whose treatment of his daughter with truth drugs resulted in her accusing him of abuse. Now scores of British parents are claiming their children were coaxed into fabricating memories of childhood abuse. But no matter what the courts decide, families are destroyed by these claims. In tonight's Inside Story, some accused fathers and mothers in this country bravely tell their stories - as do two daughters who now believe their recovered memories were untrue. As one American psychologist points out, while abuse certainly happens, so do false allegations.
An investigation of the accident on Chappaquiddick Island, Massachusetts, in July 1969, when Senator Edward Kennedy's car plunged off a bridge and Kennedy's companion, Mary Jo Kopechne, drowned. The film was made in 1994, for the 25th anniversary of the event.
Are you driving a stolen car? Thousands of motorists are but do not realise it. They are victims of "car ringers" who steal cars, falsify their identities, and sell them on the second-hand market. Inside Story joins a unique operation by a police stolen car squad to seize 200 vehicles from innocent families and track down suspected ringers.
The astonishing story of June and Jennifer Gibbons, identical twin sisters locked in an all-exclusive love-hate relationship which eventually drove them to arson and an indefinite sentence in Broadmoor Hospital. In tonight's Inside Story, June tells their story.
The beach and beer are the main preoccupations in Malia, a lively resort on the island of Crete. And Louise, a 21-year-old from Blackburn, is the holiday rep whose job it is to deal with the consequences. Tonight's Inside Story follows her progress as she works long hours dealing with thefts, fights, hangover horrors, noise complaints, drunken rows, smashed up furniture and mosquito bites.
In the last four years the Lloyd's of London insurance market has lost £6.6 billion - more than in the whole of its 300-year history. This loss has had to be borne by Names - private individuals who agreed to be liable for everything, down to the last penny they own. For many this has been literally true and tonight's programme meets a few of those who feel they have lost more than they ever imagined possible. See today's choices.
What drives someone to it? Is it only for the rich and famous? Why are more and more men doing it and what difference does it make to people's lives? This week's programme lifts the lid off cosmetic surgery, going behind the scenes at one of Britain's largest centres for aesthetic plastic surgery and exploring why so many people want to change parts of their bodies, opting for the scalpel to do it.
The world of the junior doctor has been dramatised in series like Casualty and Cardiac Arrest, but what is the reality? Life on Call provides a compelling and revealing insight into the challenges two young doctors face as they start work.
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