Benny is a Welsh coal miner. He is a radio ham. He
is 23 years old, married to Molly. They have a
son, young Ben, age 4, and a new baby. They look
after Benny's twin brother Billy, who is
apparently a vegetable. The mine is closed by the
market forces. The Male Voice Choir stops singing,
the village is dying. One night Benny takes Billy
on a pub crawl. Drunk in a brightly-lit shopping
mall, Benny vents his anger on a shop window full
of multiple TV images of Margaret Thatcher's
mocking condescension. In defiance, he steals a
cordless phone. Later that night, Benny cavorts
dangerously on the parapet of a motorway
footbridge, in theatrical protest of the tabloid
press. That same night, a cab driver is killed by
a concrete block dropped off a similar bridge. The
police come to question Benny; he hides the
cordless phone under the cushion of Billy's
wheelchair. Billy is different, he can receive
radio waves directly without the aid of a tuner;
he explores the cordless phone, recognizing its
radioness. Benny is sent to prison. Billy feels as
if half of him has been cut off. He misses Benny's
nightly conversations with radio hams in foreign
parts. Molly, unable to cope, sends Billy to stay
with his Great Uncle David, who had emigrated to
the USA during the war. Much as Billy likes Uncle
David and the sunshine and all the new radio in
LA, he cannot adjust to the cultural upheaval and
the loss of Benny, who for him is 'home'. Uncle
David, now an old man, is haunted by having worked
on the Manhattan project during World War II,
designing the Atom Bomb, and seeks to atone. He
also is a radio ham; he often talks to other hams
about the Black Hills of his youth, the Male Voice
Choir, about home. He is saddened by the use of
Find more similar lyrics on http://mp3lyrics.com/H7Lytelecommunication to trivialise important issues,
the soap opera of state. However, Live Aid has
decynicised him to an extent. Billy listens to
David and hears the truth the old man speaks.
Billy experiments with his cordless phone, he
learns to make calls. He accesses computers and
speech synthesizers, he learns to speak. Billy
makes contact with Jim a DJ at Radio KAOS, a
renegade rock station fighting a lone rear guard
action against format radio. Billy and Jim become
radio friends, Reagan and Thatcher bomb Lybia.
Billy perceives this as an act of political
"entertainment" fireworks to focus
attention away from problems at "home".
Billy has developed his expertise with the
cordless phone to the point where he can now
control the most powerful computers in the world.
He plans an "entertainment" of his own.
He simulates nuclear attack everywhere, but
de-activates the military capability of "the
powers that be" to retaliate. In extremes
perceptions change, Panic, comedy, compassion. In
a SAC bunker a soldier in a white cravat turns a
key to launch the counter attack. Nothing happens;
impotently he kicks the console, hurting his foot.
He watches the approaching blips on the radar
screen. As impact approaches, he thinks of his
wife and kids, he puts his fingers in his ears.
Silence. White out. Black out. Lights out. It
didn't happen, we're still alive. Billy has
drained the earth of power to create his illusion.
All over the dark side of the earth, candles are
lit. In the pub in Billy's home village in Wales
one man starts to sing; the other men join in. The
tide is turning. Billy is home.