Taylor Jeremy Vine John Ware Vivian White Benjamin Zand Monika Plaha Notable programmes Mescaline In 1955, Panorama filmed Christopher Mayhew taking mescaline under medical supervision. The resulting programme was never broadcast, though the footage and transcripts were later released. Spaghetti tree Panorama broadcast a famous hoax film about the harvesting of the spaghetti crop on April Fool's Day, 1957. Salvador Dalí Broadcast on 4 May 1955, Malcolm Muggeridge talked with Salvador Dalí, the Spanish surrealist artist. Maggie's Militant Tendency In January 1984, Panorama broadcast an episode which claimed that three Conservative MPs (Neil Hamilton, Harvey Proctor and Gerald Howarth) had links to far-right organisations both in Britain and on the Continent. The programme was based on an internal Conservative Party report compiled by Phil Pedley, Chairman of the Young Conservatives. Panorama confirmed its status with a senior Conservative Party vice chairman. The report was formally presented to the Party in the week before the programme was aired. During the making of the programme, attempts to contact some of the named MPs for comment were unsuccessful. (Hamilton's wife Christine later described how "Neil and I had devised a method for making sure that Panorama personnel would not be in a position to say that Neil had refused to speak".) The programme was vetted prior to transmission by the BBC's lawyers, by the Head of Currents Affairs Television, and by the Chief Assistant to the Director General, Margaret Douglas. Two of the MPs named in the programme (Hamilton and Howarth) sued the BBC and the programme-makers. The Director-General, Alasdair Milne, reviewed the BBC's own legal advice, and that of his Chief Assistant, and declared the programme to be "rock solid". The Board of Governors (Chairman Stuart Young) also gave their backing for the programme to be defended in court. Stuart Young died in August 1986, two months before the libel case against Panorama came to trial. A new chairman, Marmaduke Hussey, had been appointed but had not formally arrived at the BBC when the trial opened on 13 October 1986. Hussey nevertheless spoke with the BBC's barrister, Charles Grey. Hussey says in his memoirs that "Grey thought it unlikely the BBC would win". Sir Charles Grey disputes this statement, saying that "my junior and I both thought the case was winnable". The first four days of the trial were given over to opening statements from Hamilton and Howarth and their lawyers, which