The birth of the modern fitted kitchen and the creation of Cluedo

30:13And she asked me, oh, is it brain computers? I said, yeah, yeah, yeah. Then I asked her, how can I help her? She said, I have a problem with my computer and it tells me to contact you. I was thinking, how come? Then I asked her, where are you calling from? She said, I'm calling from Florida, some university. I can't remember the name. So she said, oh, I was writing some article for my department newsletter. And suddenly it started giving me a problem. I was unable to save my file. So then it struck my mind, oh my God, you must be having the virus. Then I asked her, have you exchanged floppies or anything?

30:55She said, I don't give a damn, you just tell me how to get rid of this situation. I have to save my article right now. I also asked her how she got my contact. Then she told me that one of her colleagues who was good in computers, he digged into the floppy and he found my name and contact there. Remember that software that Amjad wrote for his doctor friend and clearly warned him not to copy? Well, somehow it must have been copied because the code on that software had spread to computers everywhere. It was the start of a virus and people all over the world were reading this message on their screen.

31:34Welcome to the dungeon. Copyright 1986. Basit and Amjad's Brain Computer Services 730 Lahore, Pakistan Phone 430 4432 530 Beware of this virus Contact us for vaccination It reached US, UK, Australia, China, Singapore The brain computer virus was spreading around the world So what exactly is a computer virus? BBC TV show The Net explained all in 1994. Viruses are bits of software code that can creep into your system and clone themselves. At the most harmless, they can just produce pretty pictures on your screen. But at the most pernicious, they can destroy all your data. Amjad knew that his brain virus was a harmless one, but not everyone thought that.

32:32Here's some of what Time magazine wrote in 1988. Using a binary editor, the computer equivalent of a high-powered magnifying glass, systems engineer Peter Schiedler examined the disk's contents line by line. What I saw wasn't pretty, says Schiedler. It was garbage, a real mess. Suddenly he spotted something that gave him a chill. Buried near Sector Zero, the disk's innermost circle, was evidence that the glitch was not a glitch at all, but a deliberate act of sabotage. That was not true. This virus was not, or this piece of code was not, intent to damage, steal or harm anything. There standing out amid a stream of random letters and numbers was the name and phone number of a Pakistani computer store and a message that read, in part, Welcome to the dungeon.

33:26Contact us for vaccination. Brain was thought to be the first virus for personal computers. And also the first and possibly the only virus to contain the genuine names and contact information of its creators. This was unusual because no one who wrote a harmful virus would want to be identified. Amjad and his brothers still work at their company, Brain, which is now a large telecommunications firm in Pakistan. We three are together by the grace of God. We enjoy our work. We make less money, but the amount of enjoyment we have is countless. This one small thing, which is so-called virus, is actually just a small thing in my whole career.

34:12Very, very small thing. Small thing, potentially huge ramifications. Protection against computer viruses is now a global multi-billion dollar industry. Amjad Farooq Alvi was speaking to Jill Kersley in 2023. Next, we're going to Venezuela, a country currently going through political upheaval. But this is not a story about politics and tension, because we're focusing on December 1999, when thousands of people perished in a natural disaster. Jen Dale has been hearing about the traumatic events from a survivor. Whole communities and thousands of lives have been simply overwhelmed by the tidal wave of mud that descended from the mountains.

34:55Only the strongest buildings remain standing in what's become the worst disaster in Venezuela this century. It's the 15th of December and torrential rain has been inundating the mountainous regions of Venezuela.

35:12We already had a lot of rain for several days, but we did not expect what was going to happen. The rain was really heavy and the drops were really big. It was very strange because I had never seen that before. We'd never experienced anything like it. Usually when it rains, the rain is lighter, not that heavy. Lady Crespo lives with her two young daughters, mother, sister and aunt, in the coastal state of Vargas, now known as La Guayra in the north of the country. There's no let-up in the rain, and later that day, flood water starts rushing down the road. It was muddy water. We could hear it was carrying big stones and huge trees.

35:59This water was brown, and it was moving very fast. I could see big vehicles floating by, and they were, most of them, completely destroyed. We also saw some animals like dogs, and I could hear a pig and horse screaming. Some houses were also getting taken by the water. We could hear a lot of people screaming and the noise of the stones falling down. It was destroying so many things. We had to abandon our house and to run to the neighbour's house. It was the worst natural disaster to hit the country for nearly two centuries. Unseasonal tropical rains caused it. Lady can only see what's happening when flashes of lightning illuminate the sky.

36:44I was really, really afraid. And I tried not to show it to my little daughters, because I didn't want them to be more afraid. I was so scared. So much fear went through me. It was such a disaster that my eyes couldn't believe what had happened. The floods trigger landslides, with a wall of water, boulders and debris coming down the side of the mountain. When dawn breaks the next day, ladies met with a terrifying sight. We call it the big brown wave. Because of the way that the water was running from the mountain, it was not straight. It was going in little circles. And that's why for us, it looked like a big snake was going down the mountain.

37:27When I think about it, the fear comes back. It was like a horror movie, you know? This type of movie is where you see a tsunami. It was actually not a blue wave, but it was a brownish wave. There was also a smell of sulfur. It was a very strong smell. Trying to escape the muddy floodwaters, strewn with scattered pieces of wreckage, Lady flees up a nearby hill. It was a desperate move. Some people were screaming, come up, come up. So we went up with my mother and my two children. And when we got up, we could see the whole city floating and all the water around it. We thought we were going to be safe up there, but when we were there, we realized it was worse.

38:12And we realized that it was not safe to stay there because we could also be swept away by mudslides. And the place where we were staying could fall away too. So we decided to go back down. We just couldn't distinguish anything because the brownish mud was everywhere. This whole region of Venezuela has been shattered. Roads lie in ruins. There's no fresh water and everyone who can is trying to leave. We really thank God that we could wake up and see the light of day. And so we thought that we could keep going. Once the water levels go down, Lady and her family manage to evacuate and end up at one of the refuge centres.

38:55The outside world is sending assistance. The Venezuelan government says it could take a decade to rebuild the damage. It cannot cope alone. Lady and her family are officially registered as victims of the Vargas tragedy. They spend Christmas in a shelter. We were very emotional because we were actually very thankful that we got a lot of help from the government, but also international help, and all the children could have some toys for Christmas, and we also had some food. Already 1 ,500 graves have been dug, but many thousands more will be needed. Bodies are being found all the time. The death toll keeps rising and long lists of people are still missing.

39:40Figures for how many people lost their lives in the floods and mudslides vary. Whilst the government at the time maintained it was 3 ,000, other estimates put it between 10 ,000 and 30 ,000. Many bodies were buried under mud, rocks or trees. tens of thousands more people were made homeless. We had to live with the feeling that many of our neighbours had probably been swept away by the flood. How many kids were lost? How many families were separated? I was lucky because none of my family was dead, but a lot of my neighbours were. We just lost material things.

40:20They spend four months in refuge centres, and in April 2000 end up in the capital, Caracas. The Poliedro of Caracas is a big place where they have concerts. And that's where they were set up. I didn't feel very safe there. And the same day that we arrived there, they threw out a guy that was raping women. There were thousands of people and there were a lot of people from all the villages around. And most of them I didn't know. I told my children that we were going to stay only one night and the next day we were going to go back to La Guaira because I was actually more afraid to stay there. I never let go of their hands.

41:00It was a very long night for me. Lady goes back to what remains of her home. It was half destroyed, actually. Half of the house was actually collapsed and half of the house still had the walls and we still had a roof. Everything we had built was completely destroyed. The only thing I could recover was two pictures of my daughters when they were doing sports. I was devastated when I had to explain to my daughters that we would have to clean up everything and that we would have to start all over again. We had to go ahead. Be brave to keep going. It took a long time for Lady to get her house back to normal.

41:41It took me four years. Of course, every time we had rain, we were fearing that it was going to happen again. Lady lives in a different house now, but she still has nightmares, and the sound of water brings it all back. And I need to specify that. As far as I am concerned, the noise of water flowing, or even from the sink, bothers me. I mean, we were so scared, and that's why today I think that if it was happening to me again, I would let the water take me away, even though it sounds cowardly. For us, as soon as we hear a little bit of rain, even normal rain, we go back to this day. Lady Crespo was speaking to Jen Dale.

42:30Next to one of South America's most celebrated sporting heroes. It was at the Portuguese Grand Prix in 1985 that the Brazilian Ayrton Senna won his first Formula One race, and he did it in dreadful and dangerous conditions. Senna's mechanic at Lotus, Chris Dinage, has been telling Guy Kilty about watching on from the pit lane. After the race, it was absolutely jubilant. It was a great day for him, great day for us, and the next chapter in a true world champion's career, which put him on the road to the successes that he had in the future. Chris Dinage, then just a year younger than Senna at 24, was one of the mechanics for Team Lotus.

43:12He watched in awe that day as the Brazilian negotiated torrential reign to win the race in stunning fashion, lapping all but one of his rivals on the way to victory.

43:26Senna's potential as a future world champion had been widely recognised for a couple of years before the Portuguese Grand Prix, but this was the first time he'd won on the sport's biggest stage. and he did it in a race that almost didn't happen because of the terrible weather it was so bad that towards the end even Senna had had enough he'd been making a few hand signals about getting the race stopped or we interpreted was getting the race stopped because we didn't have radios in those days but the officials cargled the course let the race go full distance so and every lap that goes by they seem to take longer and longer each lap and the last lap in particular is always, it always feels like it's twice as many minutes as it would be early on in the race.

44:12Chris started working with Ayrton Senna when the young driver joined Team Lotus for the 1985 Formula One season. They'd decided Senna was the man to take them back to glory and as soon as he joined, he started to make a difference. It was pretty clear that he was going to be a world champion and Team Lotus was desperate for him to do that in one of our cars. He played a big part in the development of the cars. The feedback we got from him was incredible. He was extremely accurate. He was single-mindedly going to be the world champion and he certainly had the raw talent. And then, of course, he gets everybody on side to make that happen.

44:51It wasn't a certainty he'd be able to get behind the wheel during that first season for Lotus, though. He'd had an episode of Bell's palsy, a condition that affects the facial muscles. The side of his face was collapsed and we weren't really sure whether he was going to recover from that. There was definitely some concern, but by the time we were ready to drive, he pretty much recovered. Senna was meticulous both on and off the track. He was interested in everything that was going on. He was interested in talking to his race mechanics. He was interested in talking to the fabricators, the composite guys.

45:30He was interested in talking to the guy who kept the place clean. If you have a Formula One driver who takes an interest in you, you're far more likely to take a bigger interest in him than somebody who turns up at 9.30 in the morning, gets in the car, finishes at 2 o 'clock, and by half past 2 he's gone without a buy or leave. If you have drivers like that, you're far less likely as a mechanic or as a fabricator or engineer to be prepared to go the extra mile, to be prepared to work all night. And Ayrton was incredibly good at doing that and getting people on the side. Despite all the hype and preparation, Senna failed to finish the first race of the season in front of his home crowd in Brazil.

46:18For the second race, the team headed to Portugal. When he woke up on race day, April 21st, 1985, Chris saw little sign of the dreadful weather conditions to come. I recall it being a little bit overcast. There was talk of rain, we weren't sure how much. Then, of course, come race time, it was torrential and it didn't ease off, it got worse and worse and worse.

46:48The conditions in Estoril on the 21st of April were probably some of the worst I've witnessed. There were floods across the circuit.

47:01So what is it about rain that makes it so difficult to drive in? The biggest challenge of those conditions is just the pure lack of grip. And you don't know from lap to lap, when it's raining, how much water's going to be on the track, even the next lap around, because there's just so much water. So the whole thing is a challenge.

47:24Despite the awful weather, Senna started the race brilliantly. By the end of the first lap, he had opened up a lead, and by lap 10, he was 13 seconds ahead of the rest of the field, as driver after driver had to retire. Even Alan Prost, one of the greatest drivers of all time, spun off on one of the straights. It was a masterful piece of driving, and Ayrton had an ability to use half of his capability, half of his capacity to drive a racing car faster than anybody else, which left him with another 50 % of his capacity to be aware of what was going on around him and being able to just log all that information that was in front of him, where the damp patches were, where the rivers were, where some of the other guys had gone off.

48:11He would have been logging all of that lap by lap just to give him the edge that he regularly had. Eton himself said, you know, there were two or three times when he had such a close-run thing for actually leaving the track, but managed to keep it all together.

48:31Powering round the track faster than everyone else, Senna lapped all of the other cars bar one. The race was supposed to be 70 laps, but at the beginning of Senna's 67th, it had gone over the two-hour time limit allowed for the race, so he was given the signal that he had one final lap to go. Senna crossed the line at the end of that 67th lap more than a minute ahead of the driver in second place to complete his astonishing victory Afterwards, Senna calmly summed up how difficult the conditions were It was a very hard race I could not see anything in front of me With the cars going in front, it was impossible to see anything and you had to go by because it was a big difference in the pace that I was going Now, more than four decades on from Senna's breathtaking win in Estoril, what does it mean to Chris that he was there for the first of his 41 Grand Prix victories?

49:29It was a massive excitement when he finally crossed the line and wheel-jumped over to pit wall and ran out onto the track. He's always maintained that that was the most difficult Grand Prix he ever won because there were no driver aids. It was driver, steering wheel, gear shift and clutch brake and accelerator. his ability to concentrate 100 % and just be aware of what the grip was the lap before if he was a foot away from the curb on the previous lap and felt there might have been a little bit more grip if he'd been right next to the curb on the current one he'd be looking and looking for all those little bits of information to keep him going and keep him going quick and you know he never stopped concentrating for a single minute, not till he crossed the line.

50:15If he'd started at the back, he would have probably still won, provided no one took him out on the way through. He really was in a total class of his own. On the 1st of May 1994, Ayrton Senna was killed after his car crashed into a concrete barrier while he was leading the San Marino Grand Prix at the Imola circuit in Italy. That's an emotional topic. I'm sure he would have been in the eight or nine world championship victories window that Lewis and Schumacher have achieved I'm sure Etten would have achieved the same thing Unfortunately we didn't get to witness any of that So we're left with his memories, his victories, his personality

51:05Chris Dinich was speaking to Guy Kilty and remembering the first Grand Prix win for Ayrton Senna. Finally this week, we have another of our cultural moments from the past, but this is one which is very much tied into politics and religion. For this, we're going to Afghanistan in the early 2000s for the launch of a controversial and yet hugely popular television show, as Tim O 'Callaghan explains. In 2005, people in Afghanistan were introduced to a phenomenon that was gripping the Western world, singing competitions on TV that the public could vote for.

51:43The show was called Afghan Star and was inspired by programmes like Britain's pop idol or France's Nouvelle Star. Jahid Mohseni was the development producer. I think pretty early on we sensed that it was going to be pretty big. Throughout the whole process, people were ringing up and complaining about why we're letting these untalented people on air and letting them sing, etc. A lot of complaints. And then somewhere around the top five, it moved from people ringing to complaining to people saying, hey, you should make sure this guy wins because he's very good. I was like, yes, it's hooking in.

52:20People are kind of understanding it. The thing that made Afghan Star impressive was that it was made in a country that was recovering from years of turmoil. In 1979, the Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan, leading to 10 years of war against militant Islamic forces called the Mujahideen. After the Soviets left, the country collapsed into civil war. The Taliban gained control of the capital Kabul and the majority of the country in 1996 and enforced a strict interpretation of Islamic Shahi 'a law. The Taliban's political and social grip over the areas they control is absolute. They've executed opponents and displayed their bodies publicly.

53:04And they've shown what they think of women's place in society by closing girls' schools and banning women from work. Basically, music was banned under the Taliban. Listening to music satellite was banned. classic images of videotapes and audiotapes being strung up from wires etc. So anyone listening to music was listening underground. Then on the 11th of September 2001 everything changed. You're listening to the BBC World Service. I'm Lise Doucette. There have been terrorist attacks in the United States. In New York two airplanes have deliberately crashed into the twin towers of the World Trade Center.

53:42Both towers have collapsed. The 9-11 attacks on the United States of America were planned by the head of the al-Qaeda terror group, Osama bin Laden, who was based in Afghanistan. After the Taliban refused to hand him over to the US, an invasion was launched by the Americans with NATO allies alongside anti-Taliban Afghans. By December 2001, the Taliban had been removed from power in Kabul and the majority of the country. Yahid and his family had left Afghanistan just before the Soviet invasion, moving to Australia. They decided to return and set up a media company. Historically, music has been a big part of Afghan tradition.

54:27And we saw that as an opportunity, and all the media that was being set up was very news-focused, and you could almost feel the weight on people's shoulders of listening to news for the last 30 years at that stage of war and what have you. And the music industry was kind of destroyed. We started off with a music format and then it was pretty obvious within the first few weeks that there's going to be a lot of issues unless we build up the local music industry. We had a top 40 program and of the top 10, basically like seven would be Indian or Iranian or Turkish songs. So yeah, from there, Afghan stars seemed like a simple format to try to find new talent on the ground in Afghanistan that can do music and we sort of try to nurture it.

55:14Starting a show like this in a country where the media had been severely restricted wasn't easy. On purpose, we didn't pick up anyone with TV experience because the people who had media and TV experience generally worked for the national television and they were still living in the 80s in terms of how they approached things. so we're dealing with young kids probably in the early 20s with little understanding of broader media and just smart kids willing to do things and try things out through the school of hard knocks of production effectively i mean again none of these people had any idea of production and you know people were like bricklayers or taxi drivers that come in and they're like oh you're in charge of this show and we're going to run around and do stuff and um yeah so through that we ended up having like pretty good producers that technically didn't have any training but were able to pick up shows and manage to do some leading show in a country with a lot of pressure from everyone and being able to get that up and running.

56:09And I'd argue probably harder than it is in the West because you're dealing with multiple levels of difficulty, not just getting people there in studio on time, but is the power working and is it going to get shut down? Afghan Star followed a similar format to other singing talent shows. There were the auditions, with the usual mix of talented and not-so-talented people taking part.

56:49Three judges then decided who made it through to the public voting round of the contest. People would then text in each week with who they wanted to win. From the West, the assumption is that this thing is like American Idol type thing, but it was really not. It was in some ways more towards MasterChef than it was American Idol, you know, where we're trying to push through positivity of music and unity of the country. And also, whenever you take up formats, there's a lot of limitations on what you can do. And we want to have that freedom to be able to adjust things based on the culture. and we didn't have the money anyway.

57:24We were under extreme tight budgets and ultimately I think it made much more sense to do it that way where we had an ability to adjust. Televisions were also becoming a staple feature in people's homes. Multi-generational households were tuning in to watch and the show became a big hit. By the third series, an estimated 11 million people were watching each episode. The events themselves were probably the biggest concerts you would have had in that country for a long time. We were getting like, you know, three, four hundred people into a recording. But basically, a lot of these guys would become somewhat famous, then they would go and get invited to sing in weddings and receptions and other things.

58:04So they start earning an income and people will pay sometimes quite a bit of money to come in and perform. And through those processes and film clips and other things, I think we went from like zero music domestically being produced in Afghanistan to maybe more than 50 % of our music that we were broadcasting were Afghans in Afghanistan producing that music. And in series 14, history was made.

58:42Zahra Alam was the first female winner of the competition, a watershed moment for the country. However, the success of the show and the chance for women to sing and dance on television came to an abrupt end in 2021. The headlines this morning, the Taliban is preparing to take over the running of Afghanistan. The government in Kabul has collapsed. There is chaos at Kabul's international airport where hundreds of Afghans have been trying to catch flights to safety. The return of the Taliban have seen the musical scene that blossomed during their absence crushed. Musicians have fled the country and playing music and musical instruments have been banned.

59:21I think the show had an impact. That impact doesn't just go away. It had an impact on generations, particularly the younger generation, the generation that are going to be the leaders in 10, 15 years. We, on purpose, set up an international music that's creating music for more for the diaspora, but trying to keep that music industry alive because, you know, ultimately, I think Afghans want music. They prefer to listen to Afghan music rather than Western music or Turkish, Iranian or Indian music. so ideally we don't end up in a scenario where if it becomes legal again or people are able to listen again that we're starting everything from scratch again.

1:00:01Yahid Moussaini was the development producer for Afghan Star and is now the chief operating officer of the Mobi Media Group. He was speaking to Tim O 'Callaghan. And that's it for this edition of the History Hour. As ever, don't forget to look at our website if you can. There's a fantastic range of first-hand stories from the past there. Just search for bbc.com slash witness history. And we'll be back with more for you next week. So until then, this is Max Pearson from all of us here. Thanks for listening. Goodbye. From the brilliant and bizarre. It was really surreal. It was a surreal kind of atmosphere there.

1:00:37You couldn't really see anybody. To the shocking and unexpected. I'm just wondering, what are we going to do now? This was really my worst fear. He found 100 % horse meat that was labelled as beef. witness the stories that have shaped our world told by the people who were there when he went to the factory the poodle went in front of him so the workers only all the bosses here many people had many things to lose by our victory the future was not so bright witness history we had a designer he brought in a fully storyboarded idea about how the queen would arrive by jumping out of a helicopter and we all said that's brilliant but it's never going to happen witness history at bbcworldservice.com slash witness history or wherever you get your podcasts true crime meets history with a twist in a new series of lady killers join me as we travel back in time to investigate the most astonishing lady killers of the 19th and 20th centuries we visit the scene of the crime and we delve deep into their lives to ask how did they do it?

1:01:45Why did they do it? What drove them to it? Watch Lady Killers with Lucy Worsley on BBC.com It all starts with a subscription to BBC.com Find out more at BBC.com slash unlimited