The case of Neil Heywood, Gu Kailai and Bo Xilai would be farcical if it weren't a real-life tragedy, as this documentary brilliantly showed
In a piece the other day, I replaced the characters in a political drama with their counterparts from real life. Today I'm doing something a bit similar. Ponies, tricks, not very many, you might be thinking. But it's not a drama this time, it's a documentary. So I'm not turning fiction into fact, I'm just relocating the action, and changing the cast. OK?
So Metropolitan police commissioner Bernard Hogan-Howe shows up at the US embassy in London in a right old state. His boss, London mayor Boris Johnson, is going to kill him, he says, and he'd like to defect to the US please. The reason Boris is going to kill him is that Bernard knows that Boris's wife – with whom Bernard became friendly when she was the target of mercury poisoning administered via her herbal supplement pills – is herself a murderer. Bernard says she killed a Chinese family friend (sort of) who was trying to extort money from them. His body was found in a Premier Inn close to the M25.
Mrs Johnson is arrested. Her trial lasts a day, there is very little evidence against her (the body of the Chinese sort of friend was cremated quickly after his death), the evidence the prosecution claims to have isn't shown in court, but she is convicted anyway and receives a suspended death sentence. Bernard doesn't get his political asylum and is sent to prison himself. Boris, who was seen as going right to the very top in the next government, is under investigation too and is finished politically. Nothing is clear, except that there is the deepest corruption at the highest levels of the British politics.
Nah, you say, nonsense (apart from the last bit, of course). If this was a drama, you'd claim it was a step too far, belief not just suspended but hung, drawn and quartered. It's not drama though, it's *Dispatches: Chinese Murder Mystery*![ext]()
(Channel 4), just with the location changed from Chinese megacity Chongqing to London, and the English and Chinese characters flipped. For Boris and Mrs Johnson read Chongqing mayor Bo Xilai and his wife Gu Kailai; for Hogan-Howe read police chief Wang Lijun, and for the Chinese sort of friend read posh British sort of businessman Neil Heywood. It would be farcical, laughable even, a kind of Chinese Midsomer Murders, if there weren't a real human tragedy – Neil Heywood's death – at its heart.
The story is familiar to anyone who has kept even half an eye on the news in the past year. But this Dispatches digs deep. They speak to a lot of people, some more useful than others. Among the latter are Gu Kailai's Bournemouth landlord (she spent some time on the English Riviera when her son Guagua did an English course there) who says she was very smart, "a real lady", and he can't think of anyone less likely to murder anyone. Heywood's Harrow housemaster says he was lazy, there was something missing, and Neil didn't keep in touch after leaving. (Well, why should he? Maybe he hated you and your school? I find myself warming to Heywood: a bit of a maverick, a bit hopeless, he loved Talking Heads and didn't fit in at Harrow.) And here's Denis MacShane, talking about corruption in China. Yeah, pots and kettles Denis … though, admittedly, expense fiddling isn't quite murder by poison.
Dispatches does have a new source though, a Chinese contact who knew both Heywood and the Bo family. The unidentified source sheds some light on things, but mainly on the characters involved – especially Heywood – rather than on what actually happened. The trouble is, the people who do know have either been locked up or are in hiding, too scared to talk for fear of being locked up too or poisoned and swiftly cremated before anyone can determine what really happened to them.
It's a proper and thorough investigation, an extraordinary story told better here than it has been before. All it lacks is answers, and an ending. Which it will probably never get, given the machinations, duplicity, divisions and dark forces at play within the Chinese communist party. Look, there's Peter Mandelson with Bo Xilai. I told you there were dark forces at play. What's he doing? Perhaps it's not so absurd to think something like this could happen here after all …
*Full English*![ext]()
(Channel 4), a new family-based animation, lacks the warmth of The Simpsons and the smartness of Family Guy. It's baser, more British, more about arses, and blow jobs, and shagging the Queen, wey hey.
If you're puerile, a 13-year-old boy at heart, it may amuse you. I think it's hilarious. It's already series-linked. Reported by guardian.co.uk 2 hours ago.
In a piece the other day, I replaced the characters in a political drama with their counterparts from real life. Today I'm doing something a bit similar. Ponies, tricks, not very many, you might be thinking. But it's not a drama this time, it's a documentary. So I'm not turning fiction into fact, I'm just relocating the action, and changing the cast. OK?
So Metropolitan police commissioner Bernard Hogan-Howe shows up at the US embassy in London in a right old state. His boss, London mayor Boris Johnson, is going to kill him, he says, and he'd like to defect to the US please. The reason Boris is going to kill him is that Bernard knows that Boris's wife – with whom Bernard became friendly when she was the target of mercury poisoning administered via her herbal supplement pills – is herself a murderer. Bernard says she killed a Chinese family friend (sort of) who was trying to extort money from them. His body was found in a Premier Inn close to the M25.
Mrs Johnson is arrested. Her trial lasts a day, there is very little evidence against her (the body of the Chinese sort of friend was cremated quickly after his death), the evidence the prosecution claims to have isn't shown in court, but she is convicted anyway and receives a suspended death sentence. Bernard doesn't get his political asylum and is sent to prison himself. Boris, who was seen as going right to the very top in the next government, is under investigation too and is finished politically. Nothing is clear, except that there is the deepest corruption at the highest levels of the British politics.
Nah, you say, nonsense (apart from the last bit, of course). If this was a drama, you'd claim it was a step too far, belief not just suspended but hung, drawn and quartered. It's not drama though, it's *Dispatches: Chinese Murder Mystery*
(Channel 4), just with the location changed from Chinese megacity Chongqing to London, and the English and Chinese characters flipped. For Boris and Mrs Johnson read Chongqing mayor Bo Xilai and his wife Gu Kailai; for Hogan-Howe read police chief Wang Lijun, and for the Chinese sort of friend read posh British sort of businessman Neil Heywood. It would be farcical, laughable even, a kind of Chinese Midsomer Murders, if there weren't a real human tragedy – Neil Heywood's death – at its heart.The story is familiar to anyone who has kept even half an eye on the news in the past year. But this Dispatches digs deep. They speak to a lot of people, some more useful than others. Among the latter are Gu Kailai's Bournemouth landlord (she spent some time on the English Riviera when her son Guagua did an English course there) who says she was very smart, "a real lady", and he can't think of anyone less likely to murder anyone. Heywood's Harrow housemaster says he was lazy, there was something missing, and Neil didn't keep in touch after leaving. (Well, why should he? Maybe he hated you and your school? I find myself warming to Heywood: a bit of a maverick, a bit hopeless, he loved Talking Heads and didn't fit in at Harrow.) And here's Denis MacShane, talking about corruption in China. Yeah, pots and kettles Denis … though, admittedly, expense fiddling isn't quite murder by poison.
Dispatches does have a new source though, a Chinese contact who knew both Heywood and the Bo family. The unidentified source sheds some light on things, but mainly on the characters involved – especially Heywood – rather than on what actually happened. The trouble is, the people who do know have either been locked up or are in hiding, too scared to talk for fear of being locked up too or poisoned and swiftly cremated before anyone can determine what really happened to them.
It's a proper and thorough investigation, an extraordinary story told better here than it has been before. All it lacks is answers, and an ending. Which it will probably never get, given the machinations, duplicity, divisions and dark forces at play within the Chinese communist party. Look, there's Peter Mandelson with Bo Xilai. I told you there were dark forces at play. What's he doing? Perhaps it's not so absurd to think something like this could happen here after all …
*Full English*
(Channel 4), a new family-based animation, lacks the warmth of The Simpsons and the smartness of Family Guy. It's baser, more British, more about arses, and blow jobs, and shagging the Queen, wey hey.If you're puerile, a 13-year-old boy at heart, it may amuse you. I think it's hilarious. It's already series-linked. Reported by guardian.co.uk 2 hours ago.