In the UK today,
one in five people have a dispute with their neighbour.
I am working from home!
These escalate... He threw the first one!
..turning quiet cul-de-sacs... Shut up!
Argh! ..into war zones.
And Victorian terraces...
These lights need to be taken down this year!
..into battle grounds. This is Deep Fake Neighbour Wars.
We begin in Catford, South London, where Idris Elba,
a handyman, barman, mobile phone repairer, car detailer, chef,
delivery driver and DJ,
had lived peacefully in this ground-floor flat for over 20 years.
I'd loved it here.
I just do my thing and normally, I get on with everyone.
My flat had this communal garden that no-one ever used,
had it all to myself. Kept it nice and tidy, I did.
Herbs for my own cooking.
Roses. I make perfume with water and the rose petals, I do.
It's beautiful, sell it on Etsy. Ooh, mind out.
Lovely.
Compost area.
Everything in the garden had its place
and it was just like a simple order to things that, you know, just...
It just made it work as a garden, right?
But then Idris started noticing
there was an intruder to the communal garden.
I come out to check on my Brassicas,
which is not an easy plant to get right, I'll have you know.
As I come out, I see four towels hanging off the pergola.
They've been there all night, and then, two days later,
there was a paddling pool right over there,
which left a big yellow patch on the grass,
which old muggins here had to sort out.
Not easy, I'll have you know.
And then, one morning, I got the shock of my life
when I saw an intruder just lying here in a bikini on a sun lounger.
I mean, who starts sunbathing at 9am?
She was right here, right here. And she was hogging the whole garden
until, like, 2pm.
The woman Idris had mistaken for an intruder
was, in fact, his new neighbour, bus driver Kim Kardashian,
who had recently moved in to the first-floor flat.
When you've come from a background like mine,
a high-rise in Kentish Town,
having a garden you can call your own is such a huge blessing.
I couldn't wait to get my family around for a barbecue.
South East London was a long-held dream for bus driver Kim,
and there was one bus route in particular
which held the key to her happiness.
Everyone wants the 828 route. It's so scenic.
It actually drives past my house.
My last route was the least interesting to look at.
So I got off my ass and I worked.
And finally, they gave me the 828.
But for bus driver Kim, that blessing soon turned into a curse
when her downstairs neighbour, Idris Elba, confronted her.
Well, I was just lying here in the communal garden
and he made me feel like an intruder.
I mean, this is a communal garden
and I had just as much right to be here as him.
Idris told us you were out here all day.
I was, but I didn't plan to be. But his attitude sucked.
So I decided to make a stand.
Coming up... Kim Kardashian tries to get over things.
Do I look like a hurdle-ist? I am not a hurdle-ist.
From the capital city and Catford,
to the Essex Estuary, Southend-on-Sea.
Home to Adventure Island and the world's longest pleasure pier.
Single mother Greta Thunberg
left behind her snowy home in Kiruna, Sweden,
and made a dream move to Southend-on-Sea
to raise her newborn son.
It has always been one of my hopes and dreams
for my son, Algae, to grow up here, away from the long Swedish winters.
Here, you have your chips and fish
and your tiny castles made of sand by the hands of children.
But Greta was shocked when she discovered she'd left behind
one winter wonderland and moved right next door to another.
SHE SOOTHES BABY
The first morning I come down my nice, quiet street...
..the house was covered in Christmas tat!
I thought, "It is in the middle of July."
I check my calendar to see if I've gone bonkers.
But when the sun went down, things got worse.
TINNY FESTIVE MUSIC
It was unforgiveable.
All night long, the neighbours' little Santy Clauses would sing,
"Blah-blah-blah, blah-blah-blah," all lit up.
FESTIVE MUSIC CONTINUES
Upstairs in the nursery, little Algae would be trying to sleep
in the Sniggler, but night after night,
the light and the noises would force their way
through the Viligenborden and he would cry his little Swedish tears.
BABY CRYING
These people were stealing his childhood.
Then, two days after I move in,
this Christmas card comes through the front door.
The card was from neighbours Conor McGregor and Ariana Grande.
"Dear neighbour, season's greetings, we promise we are not mad."
I did nothing to make them mad!
Already, they're accusing me of nothing.
"You must come over
"for a traditional English Christmas dinner.
"There will be no Swedish meatballs,
"but I'm sure we can wrestle up a swede."
So now they're threatening physical violence.
And then they call me a ho, three times.
"Ho, ho, ho."
It felt like an attack.
I had no choice but to fight back with a letter of my own.
Coming up, Greta fights back with a letter of her own,
and Conor McGregor and Ariana Grande give their side of the story -
and it's "snow" joke.
Three, two, one, snow!
LAUGHTER
Back in Catford, Idris Elba was having trouble
sharing the communal garden
with his new neighbour, Kim Kardashian.
Look, I didn't have an issue with Kim using the garden, all right?
It was just she was using it too much,
and I didn't like how she was using it.
Have a listen, look. Er, there was a three-hour sunbathe...
HE MUMBLES ..Kisstory on loud.
And, er, a 45-minute phone call - on speaker!
Yoga, yoga, yoga, yoga, yoga...
A fair bit of bloody yoga as well.
Oh, here's the main one, here's the main one.
A rotary washing line would appear randomly, randomly!
I mean, what the...? The noise it made, the squeak.
It just went right through me.
METALLIC SQUEAKING
And if there's one thing that someone from Catford knows,
it's when they're being mugged off.
And I... I did feel like I was being mugged off, you know.
So, Kim, you'd actually noticed
Idris logging your garden's usage?
Yeah, I filmed him doing it as proof.
What the...? Is he...? Oh, my God!
I mean, who does that?
Who acts like that?
Hey! Yeah, you! I see you!
I really started to regret my move to South East,
I miss North West.
But for Kim, the spying was just the start,
as she began to suspect Idris was removing her things
from the communal garden.
So, this is how I access the communal garden,
I open the gate and I walk down this side path.
Anything I placed there in the garden was removed immediately.
Sun loungers, rotary washing line, full laundry baskets, all gone.
Then he'd place them here,
with his garden hose and wheelbarrow
and Flymo, making it super impossible
for me to access the garden.
I mean, have you ever tried to step over a Flymo?
SHE SCOFFS
It's harder than breaking the internet.
I merely left a few items in her way just to see how she'd like it.
I was constantly stepping over and jumping over things, like this.
He denied it, of course, but it was daily.
And the stress was really getting to me.
My hair was noticeably less shiny.
One time, I had to jump eight things. Do I look like a hurdle-ist?
I am not a hurdle-ist.
But despite Kim's claims, Idris believed he was the victim.
Do you ever feel like you're being watched? Well, I was.
She had installed CCTV cameras, one up there and one in the garden.
HE HUFFS I tell you what,
Alan Titchmarsh never had to put up with any of this shit.
Coming up, Kim is driven to breaking point.
And in Southend-on-Sea, things take a shocking turn.
Back in sunny Southend-on-Sea, single mum Greta Thunberg
had moved here from North Sweden to escape the never-ending winters.
But her neighbours had other ideas.
Meet florist Conor McGregor and his wife, scaffolder Ariana Grande.
Me and Ari have been living here going on donkey's years.
Yeah. You gotta live somewhere warm
when you're up at the crack of dawn every morning,
trimming the petunias. HE CHUCKLES
So, like, this one year,
Conor refused to take down the Christmas lights.
Don't look at me, you're the scaffolder!
And there was, like, this stand-off between us...
Yeah. ..and it went on for a while,
and then it got to the point
where it actually got closer to the next Christmas.
See, if we were taking the lights down in August,
we'd only be putting them back up four months later,
so at the end of the day, you know, it's all about timing.
Timing is key, that's fundamental. Do you know what I mean, so...
But then the neighbours started bringing their kids over
in the summer to see the lights, and then we became...
The Christmas house! CONOR CHUCKLES
FESTIVE MUSIC
The people liked it, do you know what I mean?
So I thought to myself, "Feck it, let's put it up all year round
"to celebrate the birth of baby Jesus."
And you know me and Jesus are cool, so...
And then Conor got the snow machine.
Ari, baby, are you recording this? Yeah.
All right. Three, two, one, snow!
HE LAUGHS
Ah, babe, I'm after making a snow-beard on him, look.
Have a look at this. It's deadly, isn't it?
But two days later, we got this letter from the council.
"Southend Borough Council acknowledges your religious right
"to celebrate Christmas, but we ask that you limit your lawn display
"to no more than two singing Santa Clauses
"and to switch them off between the hours of 10pm and 8am."
We were getting shut down.
I just wanna say to the fans of our house, who have been so supportive
and dedicated and loving and genuine and passionate...
sorry.
So we got rid of the singing Santy Clauses...
But we added a nativity scene. HE CHUCKLES
GRETA SPEAKING INDISTINCTLY
Unsatisfied with the council's response, Greta went public,
airing her grievances on a local Facebook community page.
SHE RANTS IN HER OWN LANGUAGE
This is all wrong.
These lights at night, they attract the moths, which attract birds,
which attract foxes, which are disgusting
when they're waking me up at 1am with their aggressive fox sex!
These lights need to be taken down this year, not next year,
not 2050 or something.
Who else is with me on this?
SHE RANTS IN OWN LANGUAGE
Ah, would she ever stop?! No.
It's all a bit of fun. Do you know what I mean?
It makes no difference to her whatsoever. No.
It's absolutely ridiculous. Yeah.
Despite the post on the local community Facebook page,
Greta's cry for help fell on deaf ears and Christmas just kept coming.
The following day, I came to the front door
to shoo away the sex foxes, and there's a glass of milk,
a mince pie and two carrots on my front porch.
I had no choice but to retaliate. There was so much at stake.
But what Greta did next left Conor and Ariana speechless.
SHE MURMURS
The snowmen.
So sad.
The inflatables.
And that.
SHE MURMURS I'm not an aggressive man.
But I draw the line at desecrating the baby Jesus.
I always say be happy with being you, love everybody's flaws,
but... who the fuck goes after a fucking reindeer?!
Coming up, shocking scenes in Southend-on-Sea.
ELECTRICAL CRACKLING
Back in Catford, Kim Kardashian's feud with her neighbour Idris Elba
had become so fractious she began monitoring him with CCTV cameras.
I was just so super shocked at what he was doing,
so I installed the home surveillance app to monitor his movements.
Anything happens, it gets sent straight to my phone.
I was on my usual bus route, I'd be driving past my house soon,
I pulled up to regulate the service,
and suddenly I get a notification on my phone
from the home surveillance app.
I could clearly see him fitting the padlock.
So in my mind, he was clearly blocking me from my rightful access.
But then... he went way too far.
Idris collected all of Kim's garden belongings...
What?
..and threw them over the newly-locked gate.
Kim's response put her job on the line.
Big bus comes round the corner, screaming down the road.
Skids right in here, yeah?
BRAKES SCREECH
Hops out the bus... And I tell you what, she weren't happy.
Kim had driven her bus full of passengers straight to her property,
missing three scheduled stops to confront Idris.
Her home CCTV, and the passengers on the bus,
captured these shocking scenes.
Kim discovered Idris in the garden
and attacked him with potted seedlings.
The fight spilled out onto the street and soon took a nasty turn.
Not the petunias! Oi, Kim, watch out! That's coriander!
Oi, Kim, watch out! That's coriander! Stop!
'Petunias! Oi, Kim, watch out! That's coriander! Stop!'
SHE EXHALES
Breaking the internet really made us take a hard look at our behaviour.
Neither of us are proud of ourselves.
I had to confess some difficult truths.
I admit I did move some of Kim's things.
I'm sorry about that, yeah?
And I learned to appreciate just how much Idris had put into the garden,
and maybe I was not always respectful of that.
Idris was a character witness for me at my work disciplinary
and I was literally so grateful for him doing that.
And we came up with a way to enjoy the garden
that we're both happy with.
And so Kim can now enjoy her music, and her paddling pool.
Show 'em. MUSIC PLAYING
Whilst Idris still enjoys his plants...
Watered! ..in peace and quiet.
I can't hear a thing. HE CHUCKLES
Back in Southend-on-Sea, Greta Thunberg was locked
in a very public dispute with her neighbours
Conor McGregor and Ariana Grande
over their all-year-round Christmas decorations.
And after damage being done to property,
things took a shocking turn.
So, like, the doorbell goes at 2am, seven rings.
I didn't even hear the bell, I was out for the count.
It was the ambulance people, and they were loading Greta
into the ambulance and we were like, "What?"
And they were like, "Did you see anything?"
And we were like, "No. Thank you, next."
And then we remembered the camera. Yeah.
What the couple saw next changed everything.
After I was electrocuted, I remember being very cold.
In a place without love or happiness, just darkness.
I thought my time was up.
We had no idea we were overloading the power cable.
Conor and Ariana were ordered to take down all Christmas decorations,
despite a petition in the local community.
It stings, you know? It does sting. Yeah.
I just like to have fun, you know?
That's all this was ever meant to be, you know?
So... I don't know, me, yeah.
Yeah.
All I ever wanted was to be listened to.
For them to feel a sense of urgency.
Now Algae and I can live in peace.
Sh-sh-sh.
From the bottom of our hearts,
we'd like to take this chance to apologise. We had a little think
and we realised the council said no more Christmas decorations.
But they said nothing about Halloween.
HE LAUGHS
Rargh! We apologise to absolutely fucking nobody.
Two weeks after filming concluded,
Greta and baby Algae left Southend-on-Sea
and returned to the relative comfort of the long, hard Swedish winters.
Next time on Deep Fake Neighbour Wars...
Single mother Rihanna is the victim of theft.
Phoebe Waller-Bridge goes apple crazy.
Get out of my way! Ugh!
And Adele's personal property is under attack.
And me awning is covered in... Now, excuse my language.
..excrement.