note he left on the Wednesday before transmission he restated the need for a powerful defence. A programme source says: "He said, 'Our defence needs to be good' but he wasn't saying 'It can't go out'. But in the light of that note we redoubled our efforts to defend it."
             Defending a sketch about the Yorkshire Ripper is an improbable task. They had to place it in context, even if no one else could be bothered to. The Morris team had pointed out that the whole of that week's programme would lampoon the media's ever-enlarged appetite for verité TV, where the principal ingredient is the vicarious pleasure offered by doorstepping tragedy, whether it's on the back of paramedics of police cars. They would point to the huge stash of books, films and TV programmes routinely made about murders. And who can properly say that a TV documentary about this or that notorious killer is not, at least in part, an exercise in entertainment?
             Then there's the case of Mad Frankie Fraser: He left his calling card in print in the Mirror when he said "They never did
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