May 2003. As Simon, Gilly and their new research assistant Arabella toil away in the Radio Special Projects unit at Television Centre, another BBC journalist named Andrew Gilligan is making a fateful broadcast over the morning airwaves about Iraq’s ‘missing’ weapons of mass destruction.
What begins as a seemingly innocuous phrase soon evolves into a major confrontation between the Corporation and Downing Street’s spin machine. The insults fly. The politicians hold hearings. A weapons scientist named David Kelly is exposed. And the rest of the media have a field day.
How Andrew Gilligan’s words transform the BBC’s fortunes – and the lives of Simon, Gilly and Arabella – is the subject of this fast-paced and thought-provoking new play.