Westminster Hour - 31/05/2009

Reports from behind the scenes at Westminster. Including The Condensed History of Big Ben: The Great Clock of the Palace of Westminster is celebrating 150 years of almost continuous time telling. To mark the occasion Adam Long, co-founder of the Reduced Shakespeare Company, and his two friends Simon Jermond and Giles Terera take a whirlwind musical tour of all things Ben. It's a story of arduous neo-Gothic design, bells that kept cracking and the invention of something called a double three-legged gravity escapement mechanism. So join Adam for a quirky look back at a century and a half of faithful ticking.