Richard Nixon’s racist tape turned into comedy-drama for British TV

Nixon had microphones installed in the Oval Office to record all of his conversations with his aides and confidantes.

The system created the infamous “Watergate tapes,” which ultimately contributed to Nixon’s disgrace and his resignation from the presidency in 1974.

The TV production – which will concentrate on less momentous passages – has required the construction of a replica Oval Office at Sky’s studios in Osterley,west London.

Harry Shearer,who plays Nixon,voices both the factory owner Mr Burns and his fawning sidekick Waylon Smithers,in the animated American sitcom ‘The Simpsons.’

“Having grown up in Los Angeles,I’d had Nixon in my brain my whole life and it recently struck me that the current portrayals of the man were leaving out the wonderland of his emotional complexity,” ‘The Telegraph’ quoted Shearer as saying.

“To me,the key point of the comedy what was these conversations were being held,usually during working hours,by what was then usually described as the most powerful man in the world,” Shearer said.

Jimmy Mulville,the show’s executive producer at the independent production company Hat Trick,said,“Recreating the Oval Office at Sky Studios and populating it with Harry Shearer’s Nixon and then watching the recreations of just a few of the thousands of hours of conversations with Kissinger,Haldeman and Ehrlichman,was a unique and wonderful experience.

“I think that the Sky Arts audience will be genuinely shocked and hopefully amused by some of the opinions expressed by the Nixon White House. It’s a genuinely funny show and a startling historical document,” he added.