8 best Chris Morris moments: from Brass Eye to The Day Shall Come

One of the most controversial TV episodes ever aired, Paedogeddon garnered some 3000 complaints (to be fair, Ghostwatch got around 30,000 complaints) when it aired in 2001, making jokes about unintentionally sending real-life paedophile Sydney Cooke into space with an eight year old boy, and getting celebs to back its ‘Nonce Sense’ campaign. There are lots of laughs, but they all come with a huge slice of discomfort.

This episode of Brass Eye centres on a news report about a massive yellow drug the size of a birthday cake that’s doing the rounds which, if taken, affects the part of the brain called Shatner’s Bassoon. It’s absolute nonsense and a brilliant take on the media’s furore about ecstasy at the time. Despite how ludicrous the whole things is - Morris explicitly calls Cake a made-up drug - celebs and politicians alike still fall for it, so much that it was actually brought up in parliament.

If anyone could find the comedy in UK’s domestic terrorism problem, it would be Chris Morris. Four Lions is a fantastic film that manages to make you both laugh and cry at wannabe suicide bombers bungling their way through a terrorist plot. Morris called it the ‘Dad’s Army side to terrorism’, which is a perfect description. One of the best scenes is when Faisal (Adeel Akhtar) tells the rest of the group how he procured 12 bottles of bleach from the same shop without raising suspicion - he put on a different voice with each purchase.

Alan Partridge, Steve Coogan’s greatest character, started off life on Chris Morris’ The Day Today, as a sports presenter. His one liners were some of the best things about the show. "Boof! Eat my goal!, "Twat! That was liquid football!" and “He must have a foot like a traction engine!" are just a few of the lines from Alan Partridge's Road To 94 goal montage that are still quoted in pubs up and down the country today.

"Peter, you've lost the news! What have you got to say?" Another character from The Day Today and another one inept at their job, O'Hanraha-hanrahan was the go-to economic correspondent for the show and was useless, even faking speaking German in one episode with the infamous line: “ich nichten lichten”.

If you work in the media then the spectre of Nathan Barley still looms large - and it’s largely due to how true the portrayal is, even more so now that the world is awash with influencers and hipsters. One of the best moments of the show was when Barley got a Geek Pie haircut, because his idol, journalist Dan Ashcroft, told him it was a new style of haircut. It wasn’t, it was an accident because Dan had accidentally killed his barber’s cat. Morris wrote Nathan Barley with future Black Mirror creator Charlie Brooker and the result is another satirical masterpiece.

If you thought BrassEye was dark, then take radio show Blue Jam, and the TV version Jam, for a spin. Each of the show’s skits are horrific and hypnotic - usually focusing on some sort of death or debauchery - and set to a fantastic ambient soundtrack. The result is what David Lynch would come up with, if he were ever to do a comedy show. One of the best clips from Jam is called Casual Parents - it focuses on two laidback parents who are slow to realise their child is missing and, well, don’t seem that bothered about it. This is comedy painted black and dipped in oil for good measure.

“Pitch me the next 9/11” says an FBI agent in The Day Will Come, a movie about the US government’s plans to turn seemingly innocent people into terrorists so they can arrest them and make sure they are hitting their targets. Despite the plot (inspired by hundreds of true accounts), for the most part, the film is a lighthearted look at the FBI trying to coax newcomer Marchánt Davis’s impoverished prophet Moses Al Shabazr to the dark side. One particular standout scene is when Shabazr meets up with a fake sheikh and tells of his plan to take over the world, by calling on the dinosaurs.