Paul Kingsnorth

[Scene: a Channel Four post-mortem into The Great Global Warming Swindle is underway]

Tabitha: Thanks for coming in, Martin. First of all, congrats on a super show! It completely rocked. Everyone’s talking about it!

Jezza: Usually through gritted teeth…

Durkin: Thanks, Tab. Champagne all round, then? Celebrate really sticking it to those Marxist so-called environmentalist Nazis.

Jezza: Marxist Nazis? That’s a new one.

Max: I thought you were a Marxist anyway?

Tabitha: Oh Max, keep up. That was years ago. The media won’t touch Marx now. Martin’s a brave crusading filmmaker these days.

Jezza: Brave is one word, I suppose.

Durkin: I’m sensing some hostility in the room.

Jezza: Listen, Durkin. When this idiot Max commissioned you, we all thought it was agreed that you would produce an in-yer-face piece of crusading journalism.

Durkin: Well there must have been some misunderstanding. That wasn’t the point at all. The point was to stick it to the eco-Nazis by any means necessary.

Tabitha: Well listen, that’s the point, Martin. We asked you to come in because – well, we just have a few concerns, is all…

Jezza: We’re concerned that you totally ballsed it up again, just like you do every time we let you near a camera.

Durkin: Are you trying to censor me?

Jezza: Read your contract mate. Every time you make a film you interview people under false pretences and then selectively edit their words so they end up saying something completely different….

Durkin: So?

Tabitha: It’s great TV!

Jezza: Shut up Tab. So, the last time you did it we had to broadcast a prime-time apology. Which is why, this time, you were contractually obliged not to bloody do it again.

Max: And you did, didn’t you, Martin? Look, this professor you interviewed is all over the press saying that you lied to him about the programme and then edited him so he sounded like he agreed with you.

Jezza: And he’s talking about legal action. What have you got to say for yourself?

Durkin: I knew this would happen. I find it outrageous that you should attempt to censor my brave dissenting views. It’s just absolutely bloody typical of the risk-averse, woolly liberal, eco-Nazi establishment. You just can’t stand having your smug little bubbles punctured can you?

Jezza: Don’t give me that false victimhood schtick.

Max: Look, the thing is, Martin, if you’re going to bravely challenge the consensus you need to kind of, you know – get your facts right?

Durkin: Facts? This is Channel Four!

Jezza: And your science.

Max: And it helps if you could use contributors who aren’t paid by oil companies. And who actually kind of work on climate change sometimes.

Durkin: The science is fine. Your science guy checked it all over before we broadcast.

[Everyone looks at Crispin, accusingly]

Crispin: Well, it looked all right to me. But it has been five years since I did my GCSE physics.

Durkin: Listen, I know what’s going on here. You bunch of eco-gimps don’t have the guts to champion human progress. How do you think we got to this point, eh? Industrialism, scientific progress, Shakespeare, the Groucho, primetime documentaries … these things are the pinnacle of human achievement. Achievement which would be denied to us all if the eco-Nazis had their way. Do you want that? Is that what you want? Are you going to deny the fruits of challenging documentary-filmmaking to the Third World? Are you? It’s pathetic. It’s beyond satire.

Jezza: Tankies can’t do satire.

Tabitha: I’m not an eco-gimp! I’ve got a coat made of foxes!

Jezza: Look what the fuck is all this anyway? We commissioned you to make a film, not a bloody sermon.

Durkin: What’s the difference? Look, we have to stop the Eco-Nazis any way we can! It’s not tofu that’s going to save us, it’s tractors! Glorious tractors, belching out carbon dioxide across the motherland! Tractors, produced in unprecedented numbers by our world-envied factories in the Urals! Science, industry and Man, marching forward together! Nothing shall stand in our way! Not even scientific reality!

Max: Christ, he’s lost it.

Jezza: He’s regressing. I was worried this would happen if we pushed him too far.

Durkin: Kulaks! Kulaks everywhere! Destroy them, brothers! Requisition their grain! Stamp on their counter-revolutionary faces! Progress!

Tabitha: On the bright side, the ratings were good.