[5] Other memorable conversations included footballer Garth Crooks disputing the future of the game with politician Sir Rhodes Boyson and MP Teresa Gorman walking out of a discussion about unemployment with Billy Bragg.

[10] Jeremy Isaacs, the founding Chief Executive of Channel 4, said that the programme allowed him to realise one of his longest-held ambitions: "When I first started in television at Granada... Sidney Bernstein said to me that the worst words ever uttered on TV were, I'm sorry, that's all we have time for.

Clive Ponting, ex MOD; Anne-Marie Sandler, French psychiatrist; Peter Hain, former anti-apartheid campaigner; Colin Wallace, former army "information officer" engaged in psychological warfare in Northern Ireland in the Seventies; Mrs Margaret Moore, widow of one of the computer scientists who have died recently in mysterious circumstances; Isaac Evans, a farmer who campaigns against bureaucratic secrecy, and T. E. Utley, Times political columnist, who still believes Section 2 of the Official Secrets Act "has a point" – all these discussed frankly their experiences and their perception of the consequences of excessive secrecy.

[40]At the start of the second series The Independent reported ("Masons pull out of TV debate with policeman") that "Chief Inspector Brian Woollard, the Metropolitan Police officer at the centre of the Freemasonry controversy, will go on national television tonight to state his case.

In a discussion of what women really wanted, Dearden and Ms Hite were joined by Mary Whitehouse, Naim Attallah and proponents of career motherhood, lesbianism and open marriage ... the advantage of the length is the opportunity to see positions crumbling and being constructed.

Equally fascinating are small gestures and expressions, beautifully caught at significant moments by some astute camerawork; the group's physical and verbal interaction with each other; and above all, the ways in which we are able to see how and why an individual might have arrived at his/her set of ideas and beliefs.

(Host) Helena Kennedy recalls that homeless Spider, sitting on the plump sofas in the mock studio living room with fellow guests, did not take kindly to being lectured about fecklessness by John Heddle, a Tory MP".

"[56] Milton Shulman in The Listener magazine wrote about the edition broadcast on 4 June 1988: I never plan to watch After Dark and usually am surprised to see that it is on when I return from some social occasion on Saturday night and switch on the box at one o'clock ... My own favourite evening was involved with the subject of ethics and journalism.

But for sheer oddness, none has outmatched crime writer-cum-New York bag lady lookalike Patricia Highsmith ... asking a series of staggeringly daft and insensitive questions to poor David Howden, whose daughter was strangled by a maniac as she slept.

Several distinguished persons appeared on the program, including Dr. Jim Lovelock, who coined the name Gaia for global environmental crisis; Heathcote Williams, poet and author of "The Whale Nation" enormously popular with young generation of the U.K.; Petra Kelly, then a German parliamentarian of the Green Party; Kieran Mulvaney, then a 17-year-old energetic anti-whaling activist (who later became the spokesman for Greenpeace); and Tony Ball who represented the British motor industry.

[81]An alternative view is provided by Laura K. Donohue (writing in the Cardozo Law Review [82]), who summarises Professor Keith Ewing and Conor Gearty as follows: ... at the urging of the British Government, Channel 4 eliminated one of the After Dark programs, in which Gerry Adams was scheduled to appear.

The subject was official secrecy, and during the course of the night remarks included: "I was in Egypt at the time, plotting the assassination of Nasser" and "Wilson and Heath were destroyed in part by the action of intelligence agents" and (spoken with incredulity) "You mean we shouldn't have got rid of Allende?"

The other participants were the historian Lord Dacre, Eddie Chapman, who had been a double agent during the war, Anthony Cavendish, who is a former MI6 and MI5 officer, Miles Copeland (an ex-CIA man), James Rusbridger, who has worked with MI5 at one stage, and Adela Gooch, a defence journalist from The Daily Telegraph.

This may be the last time for some years that any disclosures can be made on such matters ... After Dark exists for mysterious reasons, probably something to do with a necessary safety-valve in a climate of increasing pressure on the media ... Its strength is that it has rescued that endangered species, genuinely spontaneous conversation, and presented it absolutely without frills.

"[45] The Communist journal Unity later wrote "The last time I saw Bukovsky was on a Channel 4 programme After Dark in which he slaughtered the drinks trolley and got up the nose of the former Labour leader [sic] Denis Healey who seemed to work out pretty early that this bloke was not the best of people.

[96]In his book A Thread of Gold the Rabbi Albert Friedlander describes his participation in the After Dark discussion held on the 50th anniversary of the start of the Second World War: I had a strange and almost traumatic encounter with some Germans of the type I had basically avoided ...

The most impressive guests were Molly Parkin, who asked all the right questions; ex-body builder Zoe Warwick, whose perceptiveness and incisive comments kept opening up new areas of discussion; and Professor Arthur Marwick, who had to bear the brunt of everyone's criticism and abuse ... Ms Mudd and disabled actor Nabil Shaban shouted him down.

"[99] A week later, on 7 October 1989, "a hangman (Syd Dernley) declared, in the presence of a judge yearning for the return of the death penalty (Michael Argyle), that if authorised he would happily kill another guest, a former IRA man (Sean O'Dochartaigh)".

[100] On 28 October 1989, during a discussion on differences between men and women with among others Mary Stott and Hans Eysenck, one guest, Malcolm Bennett, "successfully propositioned the Happy Hooker author Xaviera Hollander, and the pair walked off the live set to continue their discourse privately.

When Professor (Sherrill) Mulhern and Dr. Bill Thompson systematically explained how MPD and disclosure therapy were iatrogenic, and neither Beatrix Campbell nor the feminist or Christian social work directors had an answer, the media set out to extricate itself from its uncritical coverage of the NSPCC's claims by pouring all over Orkney.

"[117] The Daily Telegraph reported what happened next: "More than 100 Christians gathered outside County Hall to demonstrate their support for Mr Andrew Croall ... Members of the National and Local Government Officers Association, meanwhile, held a protest backing the suspension.

"[118] The New Statesman described the programme broadcast on 23 March 1991: James Harries, aged 12, sat perched forward on the edge of his seat, dwarfed by the upholstery that threatened to devour both him and his blonde mop of frizzy curls.

In 1995 the Financial Times wrote: Channel 4 ended its remarkable season on capital punishment, "Lethal Justice", by reviving After Dark, the best studio discussion format ever created; why they do not run it 52 weeks a year is a mystery.

For Kennedy, herself from Irish Catholic stock, the real merit of the programme was the way the abuse scandals led into a wider debate, and a bigger picture of the social changes taking place in Ireland at the time, which were challenging teaching on contraception and divorce, and the traditional deference to the church.

With a rare appearance by Claus von Bülow, guests also included George Monbiot, Emmanuel Le Roy Ladurie and Beatrix Campbell, who "argued that Princess Diana had survived victimhood to realise her true self-identity".

It produced some memorable television moments: John Sutcliffe, father of the Yorkshire Ripper, was able to give a considered view of his son's behaviour; General Sir Anthony Farrar-Hockley, a former commander of British forces in Northern Ireland, swapped anecdotes with Bernadette Devlin; and arms dealer Joey Martyn-Martin claimed Mark Thatcher was a beneficiary of the international weapons trade.

Places further afield but just as important – Chile, Eritrea, Iran, Iraq, Israel, Nicaragua, South Africa and Russia – featured regularly, as did programmes explicitly about the pressures history puts on the present (After Dark noted anniversaries as various as the Second World War and the death of Freud).

[142]In 2021 journalist Fergal Kinney wrote of Tony Wilson’s work as a host of the programme: His appearances on Channel 4’s freewheeling late-night debate show After Dark...are exhilarating, pitched somewhere between a malevolent David Dimbleby and a slightly effete Jonathan Meades.

This web-based learning resource was free but accessible only to UK Higher Education/Further Education institutions, in partnership with The National Archives, the Parliamentary Broadcasting Unit, the BBC, FremantleMedia and the After Dark production company Open Media.

"[178] Author James Rusbridger wrote in The Listener magazine: "When I appeared on a Channel 4 After Dark programme recently my postman, milkman and more than two dozen strangers stopped me in the street and said how much they'd enjoyed it and quoted verbatim extracts from the discussion.