CAPTION: 'A COAL MINE IN LLANDDAROG CARMARTHEN'
(A nice photograph ofa typical pit head. Music over this: 'All Through
the Night' being sung in Welsh.)
Voice Over: The coal miners of Wales have long been famed for
their tough rugged life hewing the black gold from the
uncompromising hell of one mile under. This is (at this moment
across the bottom of the screen comes the following message in urgent
teleprinter style, moving right to left, superimposed 'HM THE QUEEN
STILL WATCHING 'THE VIRGINIAN) the story of such men,
battling gallanfly against floods, roof falls, the English criminal law,
the hidden killer carbon monoxide and the ever-present threat of
pneumoconiosis which is... a disease miners get.
(Cut to coal face below ground where some miners are engaged at their
work. They hew away fir a bit, grunting and talking amongst themselves.
Suddenly two of them square up to one another.)
First Miner: Don't you talk to me like that, you lying bastard.
(He hits the second miner and a fight starts.)
Second Miner: You bleeding pig. You're not fit to be down a mine.
First Miner: Typical bleeding Rhondda, isn't it. You think you're so bloody clever.
(They writhe around on the floor pummelling each other. The foreman comes in.)
Foreman: You bloody fighting again. Break it up or I'll put this
pick through your head. Now what's it all about?
First Miner: He started it.
Second Miner: Oh, you bleeding pig, you started it.
Foreman: I don't care who bloody started it. What's it about?
Second Miner: Well ... he said the bloody Treaty of Utrecht was I713.
First Miner: So it bloody is.
Second Miner: No it bloody isn't. It wasn't ratified 'til February 17 14.
First Miner: He's bluffing. You're mind's gone, Jenkins. You're rubbish.
Foreman: He's right, Jenkins. It was ratified September 1713. The whole
bloody pit knows that. Look in Trevelyan, page 468.
Third Miner: He's thinking of the Treaty of bloody Westphalia.
Second Miner: Are you saying I don't know the difference between the
War of the bloody Spanish Succession and the Thirty bloody Years War?
Third Miner: You don't know the difference between the Battle of
Borodino and a tiger's bum.
(They start to fight.)
Foreman: Break it up, break it up. (he hits them with his pickaxe) I'm sick
of all this bloody fighting. If it's not the bloody Treaty of Utrecht
it's the bloody binomial theorem. This isn't the senior common
room at All Souls, it's the bloody coal face.
(A fourth miner runs up.)
Fourth Miner: Hey, gaffer, can you settle something?
Morgan here says you find the abacus between the triglyphs in the
frieze section of the entablature of classical Greek Doric temples.
Foreman: You bloody fool, Morgan, that's the metope. The abacus is
between the architrave and the aechinus in the capital.
Morgan: You stinking liar.
(Another fight breaks out. A management man arrives carried in sedan
chair by two black flunkies. He wears a colonial governor's helmet and a
large sign reading frightfully important. All the miners prostrate
themselves on the floor.)
Foreman: Oh, most magnificent and merciful majesty, master of the
universe, protector of the meek, whose nose we are not worthy to
pick and whose very faeces are an untrammelled delight, and
whose peacocks keep us awake all hours of the night with their
noisy lovemaking, we beseech thee, tell thy humble servants the
name of the section between the triglyphs in the frieze section of a
classical Doric entablature.
Management Man: No idea. Sorry.
Foreman: Right. Everybody out.
(They all walk off throwing down took. Cut to a newsreader's desk.)
Newsreader: Still no settlement in the coal mine dispute at
Llanddarog. Miners refused to return to work until the
management define a metope. Meanwhile, at Dagenham the
unofficial strike committee at Fords have increased their demands
to thirteen reasons why Henry III was a bad king. And finally, in
the disgusting objects international at Wembley tonight, England
beat Spain by a plate of braised pus to a putrid heron. And now,
the Toad Elevating Moment.
Series 2 Scripts