Gene: What is this, Jackanory?

Jackanory was a BBC children's programme designed to encourage reading. The series was broadcast on BBC1 from December 13, 1965 to March 24, 1996 and produced over 3,500 episodes. Every episode of the series lasted 15 minutes and featured an actor or other well known British public figure reading a fairy tale or a children's novel. Readers included Patrick Troughton, Jon Pertwee, Tom Baker, Peter Davison, Sylvester McCoy, Rik Mayall, Dame Judi Dench, Sir Clement Freud, Kenneth Williams, Patrick Stewart and Helena Bonham Carter. However, its most notable contributors were Bernard Cribbins, who appeared in a total of 111 episodes from 1966 to 1995, and Prince Charles, the Prince of Wales and heir to the British throne since 1952. After being off the air for a decade, the series was revived on November 27, 2006 and has been shown on CBBC since then.

Gene: You're not exactly Bobby Sands, are ya? You're not on the news every night. The public has had a belly full of hunger strikers lately.

Bobby Sands was a provisional IRA volunteer who was imprisoned at Her Majesty's Prison Maze (colloquially known as Long Kesh or the H Blocks) from September 1977 until his death in May 1981. Seeking to be afforded Special Category Status among other demands, Sands and twenty-two other prisoners went on hunger strike, beginning on March 1, 1981. 38 days into the strike, on April 9, 1981, Sands was elected to the House of Commons as a Sinn Féin MP for Fermanagh and Tyrone. The strike proved to be one of the most controversial political events of the 1980s, sparking much debate in the United Kingdom and the Republic of Ireland. The actions of Sands and his fellow prisoners also attracted media attention, in the form of both condemnation and praise, from all over the world. Sands died on May 5, 1981 at the age of 27 after being on hunger strike for 56 days. He was the first of the ten prisoners to die before the end of the strike on October 3, 1981. Sands' death resulted in a significant surge in recruitment to the Provisional IRA in Northern Ireland, the largest since Bloody Sunday nine years earlier. His funeral was attended by more than 100,000 people.

Visual: The Joy of Sex

The Joy of Sex was written by Alex Comfort, a medical doctor, in 1972 and is regarded as playing a role in the sexual revolution. It is essentially a sex manual and, in that sense, is reminiscent of the Karma Sutra.