Stay Free - Russel Brand - PUTIN'S NUKE THREAT! | Plus, Simon Jordan on Money In Sport - #153 - Stay Free With Russell Brand

00:00:00.000 **birds chirping** **music**

00:00:30.000 Brought to you by, Fyjer **music**

00:00:38.000 In this video, you're going to see the future.

00:00:41.000 **music** Our Lord God he don't make trash he makes awakening wonders and that's what we're being joined by now in the form of yes you are we are here together it surely must be friday this is what we call it friday yeah that's it now you've done well that's my favorite one yeah that's my favorite one of the days all the different ones they're all just made up though i always come to you when i want to know what day of the week it is ask me yeah i'm like what day of the week is it today

00:01:16.000 Ask me if NATO vetoed a Ukraine peace deal, and how did the US find an extra 6, 6, 6 billion.

00:01:22.000 They found sex where? 0.95

00:01:24.000 They found sex, sex, sex in a 6, 6, 6 billion dollars for military aid. 0.98

00:01:28.000 No wonder they keep failing, that the Pentagon keep failing those bloody audits. 0.98

00:01:33.000 They keep finding 6 billion dollars, and as Aaron Maté tweeted, Hello, darling.

00:01:38.000 We've got a fantastic show coming up.

00:01:40.000 We're going to be talking a little bit about Jeffrey Epstein and exactly... See if you can guess this.

00:01:46.000 Humour me.

00:01:47.000 Which congressperson do you think solicited donations from Epstein?

00:01:52.000 Let us know in the chat right now.

00:01:53.000 Let us know in the chat who you think.

00:01:55.000 Probably all of them.

00:01:56.000 They all like him.

00:01:57.000 He was very popular, wasn't he?

00:01:58.000 He went over ever so well.

00:02:00.000 All the ones that were on his list.

00:02:02.000 What?

00:02:03.000 Epstein's List.

00:02:04.000 What I think was interesting about Epstein is it's comparable to the Black Rock story that we did the other day.

00:02:10.000 We know already, don't we, that this kind of corruption goes on and then a story like this breaks and it merely confirms what we already reckon.

00:02:17.000 Is that how you feel about it?

00:02:18.000 Let me know.

00:02:19.000 If you're watching this on YouTube, we're only going to be here for about, I don't know, 10 minutes, 10 minutes, something like that, because we're just actually a bit busy at the moment.

00:02:26.000 And also, we do our broadcasting exclusively on Rumble.

00:02:30.000 Because like RFK, we recognize that free speech ain't free if you ain't willing to fight for it.

00:02:30.000 Why?

00:02:36.000 That's why you've got to get over to Rumble.

00:02:38.000 If you're watching us on Rumble, give us a Rumble.

00:02:39.000 Hit that Rumble button now.

00:02:40.000 See that Rumble button?

00:02:41.000 What's she ignoring it? 0.99

00:02:42.000 Hey, what it done to you?

00:02:43.000 It ain't no little kid.

00:02:44.000 It ain't no orphan.

00:02:45.000 Don't neglect it.

00:02:46.000 Who are you?

00:02:47.000 Dr. Bernardo?

00:02:47.000 Give it a nudge.

00:02:48.000 That is the old Rumble button.

00:02:50.000 Give it a push.

00:02:51.000 Okay, shall we get into some news?

00:02:52.000 Because I've actually got quite a lot to say, Gareth.

00:02:55.000 I'm one of the busiest journalists... No, I know you are.

00:02:57.000 ...on Earth.

00:02:58.000 Barely get a meeting with you.

00:02:59.000 You know, you can't do.

00:03:00.000 I'm too busy journaling.

00:03:01.000 I've got a lot to do, especially around... I know, you've got room on your own.

00:03:03.000 Like candlelight.

00:03:03.000 ...summer cycles.

00:03:04.000 With that quill.

00:03:06.000 Doing the old journaling, baby!

00:03:07.000 That's what I gotta do.

00:03:08.000 Journal, journal, journal.

00:03:09.000 Hey, if you think we weren't about to mention killer aliens, you're mistaken, because we're going to be doing a deep presentation on those killer aliens.

00:03:16.000 You lot, do you think it's a distraction?

00:03:17.000 Do you think we're being used?

00:03:18.000 Do you think the CIA are meddling with us?

00:03:20.000 Because a lot of our sources, and we've got good sources actually, say that the CIA, the deep state, don't want this stuff coming out, and that it's epochal, and it's seismic, and it's paradigm shifting.

00:03:30.000 So if you think that they're just using this stuff as a distraction from I don't know.

00:03:34.000 Did Joe Biden take that money?

00:03:35.000 Ding!

00:03:36.000 Allegedly.

00:03:37.000 Where's that button gone?

00:03:38.000 Or did, uh, or elsewhere, are they hounding Trump?

00:03:43.000 Thanks very much.

00:03:44.000 Are they hounding Trump instead of focusing on the contents of those boxes?

00:03:48.000 Is there a plan for a war in Iran?

00:03:51.000 Anyway, look, these are all questions that simply have to be asked and simply have to be answered.

00:03:55.000 We'll be doing that in our presentation on killer aliens. 0.69

00:03:59.000 murderous aliens. It's weird to think of an alien being murderous because that sort of places them

00:04:04.000 within a moral framework that is literally terrestrial. 0.95

00:04:07.000 Maybe in their crazy old country murdering is little more than a sport. Now we asked you a

00:04:12.000 minute ago which congressperson solicited Epstein for donations. Hopefully it's not someone

00:04:19.000 who's incredibly smug, pious, pompous and willing to talk to groundbreaking award-winning 0.99

00:04:25.000 journalists like Michael Schellenberger and Matt Taibbi like this scum of the earth. Have a look at this 0.99

00:04:31.000 clip. Go guys. This isn't just a matter of what data was given to these so-called journalists before

00:04:39.000 us now.

00:04:40.000 Matt Taibbi all upset.

00:04:42.000 That reminds me of last night when I was with Matt Taibbi and Michael Schellenberger.

00:04:45.000 I know, hell of a night.

00:04:46.000 What a night it was.

00:04:48.000 It was so brilliant, Gareth, to start this movement against the censorship industrial complex.

00:04:54.000 What great fun.

00:04:56.000 The fact that Tim Robbins came, magnificent.

00:04:59.000 I didn't see him, but that was good, yeah.

00:05:00.000 Didn't see him?

00:05:01.000 The way you spoke to him, Gareth, sidling up to him.

00:05:01.000 I didn't see him.

00:05:04.000 Shouldn't have done that.

00:05:05.000 Getting on his lap like that, saying, hey, what about if me and you I've always wanted to do.

00:05:12.000 Finally got to do it.

00:05:13.000 Think before you act.

00:05:14.000 Told you that before.

00:05:14.000 Should've done.

00:05:15.000 Think before you act so you wouldn't have this long litany of atrocities you've committed against Tim Robbins.

00:05:19.000 I liken you to that lady there we just saw out of Congress. 1.00

00:05:22.000 Stacey Plaskett?

00:05:23.000 You're a bit like Stacey Plaskett, gal.

00:05:25.000 Am I?

00:05:26.000 In a way, yeah, because look what she's been doing. 0.97

00:05:26.000 Am I? 0.97

00:05:28.000 Trying to get Epstein to give her a quid or two.

00:05:30.000 God rest his eternal soul.

00:05:31.000 She did this in 2018? 0.94

00:05:33.000 Is Epstein really?

00:05:34.000 We can't because we're still on YouTube.

00:05:36.000 Now, if you're watching us on YouTube, there's a link in the description.

00:05:38.000 Join us over on Rumble, right?

00:05:40.000 Join us there because we ain't using Rumble for hate speech.

00:05:43.000 I don't hate anybody.

00:05:44.000 I believe in love.

00:05:45.000 I believe in you.

00:05:45.000 I believe in your right to disagree with me.

00:05:47.000 I believe in our right to find new mutual systems of consensual governance.

00:05:53.000 What I don't believe in is calling Matt Taibbi and Schellenberger a couple of flyby nights and charlatans, which any of you that attended the show last night will know they simply are not and could not be.

00:06:03.000 And then, knowing that you yourself have solicited donations from Jeffrey Epstein, Bill Gates' former buddy, We can't even tell you what Epstein did on YouTube, because we would get demonetized, but you know, because you're an awakened wonder, aren't you?

00:06:19.000 Also, you know, she was talking about Mark Tovey and Michael Schellenberg as releasing cherry-picked out-of-context emails, and basically, as you say, calling them so-called journalists, when she essentially is a lie, is a lying, she is lying.

00:06:30.000 Come on, Mamma Mia! 1.00

00:06:30.000 She's a lying! 1.00

00:06:32.000 Come on, think of it, we're in a Stacy Pulaski's, you're picking the bloody cherries yourself! 0.99

00:06:36.000 She's basically said that she didn't know anything about Epstein donating to her campaign.

00:06:41.000 She didn't know?

00:06:42.000 But she actually did, because we've got emails that have come through this case of JP Morgan versus the Virgin Islands, which is going on at the moment.

00:06:48.000 JP Morgan versus the Virgin Islands?

00:06:50.000 Yeah, it's all about... Boring football match?

00:06:53.000 Still nil-nil at halftime!

00:06:55.000 So in 2018 she had personally requested that an invitation to a Bloomberg fundraiser be sent to Epstein.

00:06:59.000 I would be grateful for his support and the support of those that he may direct to assist me, she wrote.

00:07:04.000 Let me see that quote.

00:07:05.000 What does it say?

00:07:06.000 I'd be grateful for his support?

00:07:07.000 Yeah.

00:07:08.000 Is that what it says?

00:07:09.000 Yeah, it does.

00:07:10.000 I'd be grateful for it.

00:07:11.000 So these emails have only come up as a result of this lawsuit that's going on at the moment.

00:07:14.000 Let me know what you think in the chat.

00:07:15.000 It's only come up because of the bloody JP Morgan versus the Virgin Islands.

00:07:19.000 They should do it as a wrestling match, I say.

00:07:21.000 Do it as MMA.

00:07:22.000 It's the only way to get to the bottom of this.

00:07:23.000 It's the way you try to solve your differences with Matt Taibbi last night, after all.

00:07:27.000 I shouldn't have done that either. 0.95

00:07:27.000 Physical violence, ridiculous. 0.95

00:07:29.000 And in that singlet? 0.99

00:07:30.000 Outrageous.

00:07:30.000 I know.

00:07:32.000 Uh, listen, let us know in the chat and the comments what you think about, uh, is it Stacey Plunkett?

00:07:36.000 That's good.

00:07:36.000 Well, nevertheless, it's simply unforgivable, isn't it, to make those requests of Jeffrey Epstein?

00:07:43.000 And let us know what you think about his untimely demise.

00:07:45.000 Did he do it himself, or did somebody else do it?

00:07:47.000 Is it so mysterious going on?

00:07:50.000 Because I'll tell you this, this is a bit of news that we're not supposed to report, but we will because we love you, because we respect you, because we believe in your ability to discern truth from fiction, take a bit of a joke, have a laugh, recreate, create new systems of government, thank the old order for establishing commercialism, commodification, centralised media and government models, say your time is done now, we're going to decentralise, we're going to end this gargantuan experiment, this gigantist model that's gone out of control, this tumorous, horrible, Metastasization of our value system that you have undertaken.

00:08:20.000 We're going to do it ourselves now.

00:08:22.000 Sisters, and in some cases brothers, are doing it for themselves.

00:08:25.000 Have you seen this?

00:08:26.000 Putin reckons, and can we trust him?

00:08:29.000 Well, it's on Russian state television, so you know, who knows?

00:08:32.000 We've got a clip.

00:08:33.000 Putin claims that he offered a peace deal.

00:08:36.000 Do you believe this Putin?

00:08:37.000 I mean, isn't he a criminal?

00:08:38.000 Well, no, he says there was a signed peace treaty with Ukraine.

00:08:42.000 Yeah, in 2022, in the spring of 2022.

00:08:45.000 We already know the situation with like Boris Johnson that was reported in Ukrainian newspaper that Boris Johnson went over in April 2022 to discourage Ukraine from going ahead with its peace deal.

00:08:54.000 So Putin's not saying anything that is like totally we haven't heard about before.

00:08:58.000 You could say so.

00:08:59.000 Are you willing to say that?

00:09:00.000 I would be willing to say that.

00:09:01.000 Yes, I would.

00:09:02.000 I'm going to press that.

00:09:04.000 Just for safety's sake, if nothing else, Gareth, just for the sake of legal safety, join us on Rumble like RFK.

00:09:12.000 There's a link in the description to ensure that your free speech is protected.

00:09:17.000 Let me know if you think that Putin is a war criminal.

00:09:20.000 He's a war criminal.

00:09:20.000 He isn't.

00:09:21.000 Come on.

00:09:22.000 But also, do you think he did have a peace deal and that the West scuppered it?

00:09:25.000 But let me ask you this simple question.

00:09:27.000 What possible motivation could Western governments and their commercial sponsors in the military-industrial complex have for prolonging a war?

00:09:38.000 It's not like there's recently been a war in Afghanistan that went on for ages and ages and ages and basically achieved nothing and that we now know was basically an attempt to siphon taxpayer monies into the hands of the military-industrial complex.

00:09:49.000 We don't know that.

00:09:50.000 In fact, hold on a minute.

00:09:51.000 Like, when we're talking about surveillance and all that stuff, and we're saying how the deep state has turned in on itself like a souffle made of corruption, what we often say is that the reason it's done that is because they've solved the problem of terrorism, right?

00:10:05.000 They've solved terrorism now, because you don't hear about it, do you?

00:10:07.000 No.

00:10:07.000 You don't ever, like... Where are ISIS these days?

00:10:09.000 Where are they?

00:10:10.000 I never used to step outside my house.

00:10:11.000 I'd go out there, water in a can, just to do, you know, look after the plants by the door.

00:10:18.000 They'll be there.

00:10:18.000 ISIS.

00:10:19.000 Or the Taliban.

00:10:20.000 They're a bit more old school, the Taliban. 0.99

00:10:22.000 They're not so bad.

00:10:23.000 ISIS, they're like, they're pretty on it, weren't they? 0.93

00:10:27.000 They were taking it to the absolute bloody limit, if you ask me.

00:10:27.000 Those lads.

00:10:30.000 Anyway, you don't hear about them anymore.

00:10:32.000 So perhaps that's because of the success of the Deep State.

00:10:35.000 Perhaps that's because of the success of the campaign in Afghanistan.

00:10:38.000 I'm not being the devil's advocate.

00:10:39.000 I've got no time for the devil, after what he tried to do with Jesus.

00:10:43.000 It's because GCHQ took all your data.

00:10:44.000 That's why they got rid of ISIS. 0.85

00:10:46.000 It's because of that.

00:10:47.000 Once we got rid of all of our data, once that was all bundled up by commercial enterprises, then sold back to the Deep State, it's another story we're going to be bringing you soon.

00:10:55.000 It's going to knock your knickers down, mate, because what we found out is that the Deep State are using taxpayer dollars to acquire from commercial entities your private information.

00:11:05.000 But look, we've got so much to tell you, it's difficult, Gal, honestly.

00:11:08.000 It's difficult some days.

00:11:09.000 These people on Rumble or our Awakening Wonders on YouTube have got to click that link in the YouTube chat there and join us.

00:11:16.000 They deserve the truth, and let's have a look.

00:11:18.000 Now, let's call this what it is.

00:11:20.000 Hold on, can we even show state propaganda on YouTube?

00:11:22.000 I think we can.

00:11:23.000 Can we?

00:11:23.000 As news crew, can we just clear that with the gallery?

00:11:25.000 Are we allowed to show Russian propaganda on YouTube?

00:11:29.000 Yeah, that's young Putin that said yes.

00:11:31.000 Wow, okay.

00:11:31.000 And he's not reliable, is he?

00:11:32.000 Okay.

00:11:33.000 Remember when he got us that strike?

00:11:34.000 Yeah.

00:11:34.000 Which we can't even mention.

00:11:35.000 Not really.

00:11:37.000 All right, let's have a look at old Putin.

00:11:39.000 Young Putin is just a nickname someone works there.

00:11:40.000 He's not a war criminal as far as we know.

00:11:41.000 Let's have a look at this one who definitely is.

00:11:42.000 Let's check him out.

00:11:44.000 The draft of this agreement was initialed by a representative of the head of the negotiating group from Kiev.

00:11:51.000 He put his signature there.

00:11:52.000 Here it is.

00:11:57.000 It's funny that he's gone to the trouble of getting a bit of paper because, like, that'd be such an easy thing.

00:11:57.000 Funny that.

00:12:01.000 Like, look, watch this.

00:12:04.000 Well look, this has just come in.

00:12:05.000 It's from the government of our country, the UK.

00:12:08.000 They've said they're sorry for everything they've done up to now, and the whole way they behaved during Partygate, you know, where they held parties during the coronavirus pandemic while locking us up and everything.

00:12:17.000 And they've acknowledged also that the opposition won't be meaningfully better, so here they've said, I can run the country, because I'm a nice lad.

00:12:24.000 So that bit highlighted in green, that says, that's you can help.

00:12:28.000 Actually, go on.

00:12:29.000 But none of that business like with Schellenberger last night, where you gripped him by his ankles and tried to tug him out of his seat.

00:12:36.000 I'm glad I only did that. 1.00

00:12:37.000 Stupid bloody thing to have done. 1.00

00:12:39.000 Biden says the threat of Putin using tactical nuclear weapons is real. 1.00

00:12:44.000 So in a sense, we're in some bizarre spectacle.

00:12:47.000 It's difficult to discern truth from fiction.

00:12:49.000 No one has moral authority anymore.

00:12:51.000 We think everybody is corrupt.

00:12:52.000 We don't trust government.

00:12:53.000 We don't trust media.

00:12:54.000 We don't trust our legal systems.

00:12:56.000 Biden says the threat of Putin using tactical nuclear weapons is a real threat.

00:13:01.000 What do you say to that?

00:13:02.000 You are, after all, from Hull.

00:13:03.000 Yes, exactly.

00:13:05.000 And that gives me... Yeah, that's why I know all about this.

00:13:08.000 Well, yeah, I mean, this is all going on, you know, at a time when Biden says Putin's threat of tactical nuclear weapons is real, is when Putin's sending nuclear weapons over to Belarus, at the same time the US is sending depleted uranium to Ukraine.

00:13:22.000 Depleted uranium is essentially what I think they call nuclear bombs, or Putin's called that.

00:13:26.000 So this is all, Jen Stoltenberg of NATO has said that Russia have to lose to send a message to China, so at this point we're not even talking about this being about Ukraine anymore, it's about sending a message to China.

00:13:38.000 Everything continues to escalate in the wrong direction.

00:13:40.000 Are you finding this exhausting?

00:13:41.000 Let me know in the chat if you're exhausted by this.

00:13:41.000 I am.

00:13:43.000 Uranium to Ukrainium?

00:13:45.000 Are they simply doing that because it rhymes?

00:13:47.000 Let's have a look at that picture of Joe Biden just once more for a moment before we leave to get over to Rumble where we belong.

00:13:52.000 Let's face it.

00:13:53.000 If Joe Biden hates Putin so much, Answer me this, why's he got a portrait of him up on his wall?

00:13:59.000 What's the point in that?

00:13:59.000 Wow.

00:14:00.000 That is the wrong message all over the place, isn't it?

00:14:02.000 Unless it's a mirror, and he's actually in the room with him.

00:14:05.000 And he's over there going, listen, Joe... When you think of that Russiagate nonsense, where they said that... Well, I can't say this properly while we're still on YouTube, that Trump got wassnamed on by a couple of Russian wassnames.

00:14:18.000 Yes. 0.99

00:14:19.000 Disgusting. 1.00

00:14:20.000 What an absolute palaver. 0.85

00:14:22.000 OK, listen, we're going to get into this story about the Pentagon's accounting errors and a $6.2 billion bonus has been found for a bit more bonus war over there between Ukraine and Russia.

00:14:35.000 Later on in the show, we're going to be... Talking about killer aliens?

00:14:40.000 Oh, my God. 0.77

00:14:41.000 We're gonna be talking about killer aliens. 0.98

00:14:43.000 We're not gonna talk about normal aliens no more. 1.00

00:14:46.000 I'm sick of them. 0.96

00:14:47.000 Killer aliens it is for us, and also we will cover this Pentagon story.

00:14:49.000 So listen, if you're watching us on YouTube, click that link in the description right now.

00:14:53.000 If you're watching us on Rumble, press the red button on your screen and give us a bloody good rumbling while joining our locals community, which I believe was invented by Dave Rubin.

00:15:01.000 Bloody good friend of ours. 0.98

00:15:02.000 Damn decent fella. 1.00

00:15:03.000 See you later, you Awakening Wonders. 0.99

00:15:05.000 Hop over onto the side of righteousness.

00:15:05.000 Hop over.

00:15:07.000 See you there in a second.

00:15:09.000 Now, Gareth, Clearly the Pentagon keep failing audits.

00:15:14.000 Why is that?

00:15:16.000 Why can't they concentrate?

00:15:18.000 Apparently they can't track where how their money is being spent and when we find out that apparently another

00:15:23.000 Six billion dollars is available for sending weapons to Ukraine. You can kind of see how this has happened

00:15:28.000 But yes, essentially what's happened is apparently they're saying that they overvalued the weapons that it was sending

00:15:34.000 Ukraine And so now they go. Oh we overvalued those weapons

00:15:38.000 So actually there's another six billion that we can now send in weapons to Ukraine to keep this war going

00:15:43.000 It's like a credit note You were allowed to bring those pants back to the store,

00:15:47.000 but only to get another Raytheon or Lockheed Martin missile.

00:15:51.000 Yeah Think of it that way.

00:15:52.000 Think of it in those terms.

00:15:54.000 Isn't it true, or have I invented this in my admittedly magnificent mind, that Mexican drug cartels were found in possession of some weaponry that was intended for use in Ukraine?

00:16:06.000 Well, someone's got to get these people an A to Z.

00:16:08.000 Because I tell you now, Ukraine and Mexico, they're in completely opposite directions. 0.95

00:16:12.000 Yeah, it's almost like the Pentagon and the military-industrial complex don't really care where those weapons end up.

00:16:15.000 As long as they sell them.

00:16:17.000 They can't pass an audit.

00:16:18.000 They can't even deliver weapons reliably anymore.

00:16:21.000 70% of them can't be reliably traced.

00:16:24.000 I understand.

00:16:25.000 We're not sure how many Nazi battalions are roaming around out there on behalf of Ukraine.

00:16:29.000 And if you are a Ukrainian person, we completely support you in the humanitarian effort to defend your cities and your population.

00:16:35.000 This criminal invasion is plainly wrong.

00:16:35.000 It's a disgrace.

00:16:37.000 But I think you could get a lot better allies than the United States of America and their profiteering Pentagon partners.

00:16:43.000 So a lot of people are talking about this story on Twitter at the moment.

00:16:45.000 Aaron Maté tweeted something that I think we have talking about.

00:16:50.000 Show us it!

00:16:51.000 Yeah, another accounting error frees up billions more dollars for the Ukraine proxy war.

00:16:55.000 How come these errors never free up any money for US healthcare or the unhoused? 0.98

00:17:00.000 Very good point.

00:17:00.000 Have you noticed that?

00:17:01.000 Have you noticed that they never find 6.2 billion dollars and say, oh, do you know what we can do?

00:17:05.000 We can help the most vulnerable people in society.

00:17:07.000 We can create some new infrastructure.

00:17:08.000 We can change the world, make a better America for one another.

00:17:12.000 Immediately or alternatively we could send more weapons ostensibly to Ukraine, but they

00:17:16.000 do tend to end up in the hands of Mexican drug cartels.

00:17:19.000 At least that has already happened once.

00:17:21.000 Listen, it's high time we started to examine the mystery of beyond.

00:17:26.000 Extra dimensional entities move among us.

00:17:30.000 Some claim that they have diplomatic relationships with the most powerful governments on our planet.

00:17:35.000 Ludicrous and outrageous suggestions have been made that many of you believe, let me know in the chat if you believe this, press the red button, join us on Locals, are simply another distraction from important stories i.e.

00:17:46.000 the corruption, the high-level corruption within the Biden administration, And the fact that Trump is being unduly hounded to take him out of the race.

00:17:53.000 You know over here on our channel, we believe that there is no systemic solution using those hollowed out entities that are the bipartisan participants.

00:18:01.000 But nevertheless, we're very interested in your views.

00:18:05.000 And we're very interested in murderous aliens from another dimension.

00:18:09.000 I mean, some people watching this don't like it when people cross the border from Mexico.

00:18:13.000 How are they going to like it when people turn out from Venus and start killing people?

00:18:18.000 We are going to need better ones, because they've got vaporizers and stuff.

00:18:21.000 I'm talking about the aliens.

00:18:22.000 Space aliens, not illegal aliens.

00:18:24.000 I don't think we've sent Mexico any vaporizers yet, have we?

00:18:28.000 Not that I've heard of.

00:18:28.000 I'll look into it.

00:18:29.000 One of the things you were suggesting last night though, Gareth, when we were... Well, I shouldn't have done that.

00:18:33.000 So you've actually lowered the tone of a perfectly good conversation with Schellenberger, and Taibi will be broadcasting that on this channel.

00:18:41.000 But now, it's time for us to take a deeper look at an issue that's important to you, psychologically, ontologically, spiritually, and mentally.

00:18:52.000 That's right, here's the news.

00:18:53.000 No, here's the effing news.

00:18:55.000 Thank you for choosing Fox News. 0.99

00:18:57.000 No, here's the fucking news. 0.99

00:18:59.000 First, aliens have visited Earth. 0.99

00:19:03.000 Second, the government have got alien spacecraft. 0.77

00:19:06.000 Third, aliens are killing human beings.

00:19:09.000 Will someone get Lockheed Martin on the phone?

00:19:11.000 We're gonna need a bigger missile.

00:19:15.000 The revelations keep rolling out from David Grush.

00:19:18.000 The whistleblower has revealed that he's heard about extraterrestrial craft and he's even heard that extra-dimensional or terrestrial beings are murdering people.

00:19:26.000 We can rely on our friend from the mainstream media to ask questions about this in a personal, provocative and peculiarly eerie way.

00:19:34.000 Have a look at this.

00:19:35.000 The common interpretation from some commentators is that There is a non-human species and it's incredibly benevolently well disposed to the human race.

00:19:46.000 Yeah, and I think the logical fallacy there is because they're advanced, they're kind.

00:19:52.000 We'll never really understand full intent in that because we're not them, whatever them is, or are.

00:20:01.000 But I think what appears to be malevolent activity has happened.

00:20:06.000 Okay, so for the first time we're considering the ethics and morality and perspective of extraterrestrials.

00:20:12.000 Are they kind, lovely, E.T.

00:20:14.000 type extraterrestrials?

00:20:17.000 Or are they Sigourney Weaver gut-wrenching extraterrestrials?

00:20:23.000 Based on not only nuclear site probing activities, witness testimony, I think at least if we look at it through a humanistic lens, it does appear negative, at least to us.

00:20:36.000 Well, we can't take it personally.

00:20:37.000 These are intergalactic beings.

00:20:39.000 Let's not start worrying about it on the level of, oh no, they might be coming to get us.

00:20:42.000 I've been told that there have been attempts to bring down craft.

00:20:49.000 That we've acted offensively against non-human craft.

00:20:53.000 There have been instances, and there are certain techniques.

00:20:57.000 What a ridiculous approach to take to extraterrestrial life if you encounter a technology that indicates an advanced civilization. 0.95

00:21:04.000 To fire a missile at it seems like a bloody ridiculous thing to do. 0.94

00:21:08.000 Like, the assumption is, well, this means war. 0.88

00:21:10.000 Surely we should be approaching this open-mindedly, open-heartedly.

00:21:14.000 But somewhat sceptically, because we know that the mainstream media and government often put out information that's intended to distract us and confuse us, particularly a time where the Biden administration seems like it's in particular trouble, when Trump is being pursued in peculiar ways, when trust in government and all of our institutions is waning, and when it seems like our systems are beginning to quake and shake and fall apart.

00:21:35.000 When even people at the extremes of the cultural argument are surely beginning to recognise that it's the establishment itself that's the cause of the problem, not the people that they supposedly oppose.

00:21:44.000 Have human beings been hurt?

00:21:49.000 Or killed by a non-human intelligence.

00:21:52.000 Now listen, I'm asking you this as a friend. 1.00

00:21:55.000 Did those aliens touch you on your dick or your arse? 1.00

00:21:59.000 Look, we're talking about extraterrestrials, but we're talking about more than that, aren't we? 0.99

00:22:03.000 While I can't get into the specifics, because that would reveal certain US classified operations, I was briefed by a few individuals on the program that there were malevolent events like that.

00:22:15.000 Now I'm scared.

00:22:16.000 Well now I'm scared.

00:22:17.000 I came here in good faith to talk about extraterrestrials.

00:22:20.000 It takes a lot to shake me but you've shaken me to the core.

00:22:23.000 I didn't realise you were going to make me feel this way.

00:22:25.000 People have just heard you say non-humans May well have murdered human beings.

00:22:34.000 It's also funny to think of it as a murder when it's an extraterrestrial because he can't have the motivations.

00:22:39.000 Did that extraterrestrial murder you because it wanted your watch or because it was jealous that you was looking at its girlfriend?

00:22:45.000 It's like beyond the framing of reality that we have.

00:22:49.000 That seems to be the case at one point, yeah.

00:22:52.000 Grush says the craft may not be traveling through space as we understand it.

00:22:58.000 It is a well-established fact, at least mathematically and based on empirical observation and analysis, that there most likely are physical additional spatial dimensions.

00:23:10.000 If you're a person that's a nerd about UFOs and extraterrestrials, you'll have heard about some of these theories, the ability to warp and bend and change space, and ideas that exist purely in the realm of the theoretical ideas of Bohm and Planck and all of the great Copenhagen physicists seemingly in practice with these extraterrestrial vehicles.

00:23:27.000 There's so many ways to approach a story like this.

00:23:29.000 What are the connotations for the way that we use energy?

00:23:32.000 What are the connotations for the way we understand reality?

00:23:34.000 What about morality, the way we organize our systems?

00:23:37.000 And the interviewer as well wants to know how Sexy these aliens are, and more importantly how sexy you are, David.

00:23:43.000 You could imagine on 4 and 5D space where what we experience as linear time ends up being a physical dimension in higher dimensional space where if you were living there you could translate across what we perceive as a linear flow.

00:23:58.000 So there is a possibility that, and this is a theory here, I'm not saying this is 100% the case, but It could be that this is not necessarily extraterrestrial and it's actually coming from a higher dimensional physical space that might be co-located, you know, right here.

00:24:19.000 The one thing I like about this story is it introduces us to ideas and concepts that challenge the way we look at reality ordinarily and makes it seem ridiculous that we would continue with punitive economic models and martial militaristic outlooks when people can bend time

00:24:36.000 and space and travel between dimensions.

00:24:38.000 When people talk about stuff that might seem a bit tangential and new age,

00:24:42.000 like meditation, reflection, contemplation, changing the way you view reality,

00:24:46.000 altering your obsessive nature with the self, stories like this, for me, assist me on that journey.

00:24:51.000 I think, why am I so obsessed with what I want and what I don't want, and my opinions, when I'm clearly operating in a tiny cube of potential realities?

00:25:01.000 I agree with you.

00:25:02.000 Of course this information being released at this time has some sort of significance and relevance.

00:25:06.000 Of course it's being exploited.

00:25:08.000 But I also have always believed that there is extraterrestrial life, and I've always believed that the government are in contact with them, and I've always believed that that information is concealed, because the minute you accept it, you have a kind of spiritual experience.

00:25:08.000 Of course it is.

00:25:21.000 What I mean by that is your inner life alters when you accept that, oh well, life's just life, you just get on with it, you're born, you live, you die, death and taxes, that's what's unavoidable.

00:25:30.000 No, space and time and the most basic assumptions of the way that we live are all up for question.

00:25:36.000 And if they're up for question, then everything's up for question.

00:25:38.000 Why would you spend your time worrying about whether the Democrats are better than the Republicans or whether this way of living is better than that way of living?

00:25:44.000 Plainly, you've got to arrive at a broader More open perspective, a more open-hearted understanding of human life.

00:25:51.000 Our role in the universe has just changed.

00:25:53.000 Maybe that's why people challenge the ideas of someone like Graham Hancock so strongly, because if you start questioning the lineage and heritage of our species, you undermine the assumed narratives that are used to control the way we live today.

00:26:04.000 This is the best it's ever been.

00:26:05.000 We're more advanced.

00:26:06.000 We're the apex of all that's possible.

00:26:08.000 Well, we'll consider some of your ideas, but for now, let's just trust the experts.

00:26:12.000 Look at what happens when we trust the experts.

00:26:14.000 Look at how the experts have lied in the last few years.

00:26:17.000 Look at how certain experts have been ignored in the last few years.

00:26:20.000 Now bring to bear upon all that we've understood in the last three years that now, for whatever reason, it's becoming more prevalent in our news cycle that we're not alone in the universe.

00:26:29.000 For me, this seems like an end times move.

00:26:32.000 This seems like the kind of information you release when you're running out of ideas, when you recognize that there are challenges around resources, challenges around the population, whether you think it's too big or whether you think it's too small.

00:26:43.000 We've heard both of those arguments here.

00:26:45.000 Whether you need to reorganize your understanding of national sovereignty, your And what does it indicate more broadly, philosophically?

00:26:50.000 All of these things now are entering into some cyclone, some cauldron where we have

00:26:54.000 to start asking fundamental, pivotal questions.

00:26:56.000 Once you start accepting that high-level military security are bringing to the forefront of

00:27:02.000 the conversation extraterrestrial or even extra-dimensional life, profound questions

00:27:06.000 are being asked.

00:27:07.000 Unless you think that this whole thing is just a red flag distraction.

00:27:10.000 Let me know in the chat.

00:27:11.000 And what does it indicate more broadly, philosophically?

00:27:14.000 This is from Daniel Pinchbeck's sub-stack on the subject.

00:27:17.000 Philosopher Bernardo Kastrup explores the dreamlike nature of the world in Why Materialism

00:27:22.000 is Baloney, The Idea of the World and Other Works.

00:27:25.000 Kastrup proposes that consciousness is the ontological primitive, that everything we experience occurs within consciousness, and that we we ourselves are temporarily disassociated alters of this

00:27:35.000 instinctive, unified field of sentient awareness, which in a sense dreams us into

00:27:40.000 manifestation in order to experience itself from different angles and in many different ways.

00:27:45.000 The modern history of the UFO ET phenomenon is particularly dreamlike and eerie. For Patrick

00:27:50.000 Harper, the world of UFOs and crop circles, as well as the thousands of accounts of strangely

00:27:55.000 detached aliens who perform frightening abductions and often communicate with their victims in

00:28:00.000 nonsensical riddles is an expression of the demonic otherworld.

00:28:04.000 The trickster likes to express itself outside of our limited conceptual categories of thought, breaking apart the distinctions we try to hold between real and fake, physical and imaginary.

00:28:13.000 The UAPET phenomenon is inherently subversive and liminal.

00:28:17.000 Rife with paradoxes and contradictions, it stubbornly wishes to remain on the margins.

00:28:22.000 Most people are not able to hold their attention on it to take it seriously for very long.

00:28:26.000 There is something about it that continually slips away from one's grasp, one's attention, even when you try to focus on it.

00:28:32.000 It's like the black spot in your gaze after you look at the sun for too long.

00:28:35.000 You have to look away from this spot to see it, but it immediately starts moving away as you start to track it.

00:28:40.000 Have we made agreements with non-human intelligences?

00:28:46.000 That's the kind of information I really hope national leadership is able to get to the bottom of.

00:28:51.000 I need to pin you down on this.

00:28:52.000 No, I've got to pin you down.

00:28:53.000 I'm not going to just accept that.

00:28:54.000 It's strange, isn't it?

00:28:55.000 Because you have to continually metabolize complex information and then tie it down into bureaucratic and daily quotidian interactions.

00:29:04.000 So what?

00:29:04.000 Did Ronald Reagan have a chat with an alien?

00:29:07.000 Did Lincoln see one?

00:29:09.000 Over the balcony before John Wilkes Booth fired the fatal shot.

00:29:12.000 It has to be made ordinary.

00:29:14.000 It has to be incorporated into our mythology.

00:29:16.000 What I believe is that this is an invitation to start considering the real nature of reality and the limitations of our understanding of reality and the potential that the way that we'll change the world, which is clearly what needs to happen now, the way that we'll reorganize our power structures, the way that we'll reorganize communication, the way that we'll get rid of tired government models that want to surveil and censor and and control and continue with sort of weird feudalist ideas

00:29:40.000 from the medieval times, want to perpetuate wars, want to perpetuate control, is by

00:29:44.000 recognizing this is a small finite rock in limitless space. The way that we see reality

00:29:50.000 is tied to our personal and spatial history and our personal and subjective experience.

00:29:55.000 There are new ways of regarding reality now. Consciousness itself, the fact that you're

00:30:00.000 able to watch this and understand it, the fact that you know what the experience of being you is

00:30:04.000 in a way that no one else will ever understand, has to have some value in the way that we

00:30:09.000 conduct our personal lives and the way we organize our political lives.

00:30:13.000 There's no point in us just marching on, trudging on, pretending that we still live in a time when it isn't possible to organize things differently.

00:30:20.000 And every time we have to consider the possibility that there are intergalactic agreements, life elsewhere, different types of species, different ways of understanding time, different ways of understanding space, the model starts to shake a little more.

00:30:32.000 It starts to seem more and more implausible that the type of decision you're reduced to making is whether or not to buy Bud Light or whether or not to vote for the Democrat Party.

00:30:40.000 It all is exposed as a little bit ridiculous, isn't it?

00:30:43.000 Are there agreements between non-human intelligences and the American government? 0.64

00:30:48.000 I think...

00:30:49.000 That's a question that I would like to know all the details of as well.

00:30:54.000 Could I put it to you that crimes must have been committed?

00:30:58.000 All of it seems trivial, doesn't it?

00:30:59.000 In light of the fact that there are extraterrestrials that have been connecting with human governments potentially for millennia.

00:31:05.000 Have they done any crimes?

00:31:07.000 I mean, I've noticed my stapler's gone missing.

00:31:09.000 Could that have been them?

00:31:10.000 At the very least, I saw substantiative evidence that white collar crime was committed.

00:31:16.000 Have people been killed to protect this secret?

00:31:19.000 He's a good investigator, actually, I think, because he just wants more and more.

00:31:21.000 Have people been killed to protect this secret?

00:31:25.000 Have there been agreements? 0.87

00:31:27.000 These aliens, are they sexy or not? 0.81

00:31:29.000 Because one thing's for sure, you are, David.

00:31:32.000 Yeah, unfortunately, I've heard some really un-American things I don't want to repeat right now.

00:31:36.000 Un-American at this point?

00:31:38.000 So you have a strong suspicion that people have been murdered to protect this secret.

00:31:42.000 Over the years, yeah.

00:31:44.000 So the UFO story continues.

00:31:44.000 OK, there you are.

00:31:46.000 Let me know in the chat.

00:31:47.000 Is this a distraction?

00:31:49.000 Is this an important story?

00:31:50.000 Why isn't there better footage of this stuff?

00:31:53.000 Have you long believed in ETs?

00:31:55.000 Do you see this as connected to the emergence of RFK, to the new conversation around politics, the breaking down of our systems of trust in government and media?

00:32:04.000 Do you see this as the paradigm shift that we've been waiting for?

00:32:07.000 Or do you see this as yet another distraction?

00:32:10.000 Let me know in the comments.

00:32:11.000 See you in a moment.

00:32:12.000 Thanks for choosing Fox News.

00:32:14.000 Good evening. 0.99

00:32:15.000 Now, here's the fucking news. 1.00

00:32:17.000 The world is a complex place full of hypocrisy and contradiction. 0.99

00:32:23.000 Systems that atrophy around us can no longer be relied on and trusted.

00:32:28.000 Our leaders are fallen figures and our poets are all mute.

00:32:33.000 But football?

00:32:34.000 Football is nice.

00:32:42.000 Hello and welcome to a very special edition of Football is Nice with me, Russell Brand.

00:32:48.000 Today I've dispatched with Hull's favourite son, Gareth Roy, in favour of British entrepreneur, broadcaster, author, iconoclast and disruptor, Simon Jordan, who by the age of 32 had built a company from nothing.

00:33:01.000 He'd made it from nothing.

00:33:02.000 He sold it for $95 million, bought Crystal Palace Football Club, which is a type of football team almost In London, he's the best-selling author of Be Careful What You Wish For, now co-host of The Daily Show on Talk Sport in the UK, which I've had the great privilege of appearing on, where his opinions, views, willingness to confront the establishment and ordinary platitudinous orthodoxy has bought him legions of fans, many people calling him a kind of peroxide

00:33:32.000 Paxman, the Tucker Carlson of sport.

00:33:36.000 Please welcome.

00:33:38.000 2Football is nice.

00:33:39.000 Live on Rumble.

00:33:40.000 If you're a member of Locals, press the red button right now.

00:33:42.000 You can join us on Locals.

00:33:43.000 You can pose questions to Simon Jordan.

00:33:46.000 It's Simon Jordan.

00:33:47.000 That's who it is.

00:33:47.000 It's Simon.

00:33:48.000 It's Simon Jordan.

00:33:48.000 Hello.

00:33:48.000 $95 million.

00:33:50.000 Is that what it was that you sold your business for?

00:33:53.000 No, it was about 136 million dollars at the time.

00:33:55.000 Oh yeah, well done.

00:33:56.000 What was it?

00:33:57.000 A little bit better than that.

00:33:57.000 Was it tech?

00:33:59.000 Um, it was mobile telephony.

00:34:01.000 So I was, the reasons why people are sitting there gawping at their phones and doing nothing else besides sitting in their mum's bedrooms with their pants around their ankles sending out rude messages over cyber optics is because of people like me.

00:34:12.000 As I voyaged out here into the country I saw a little signpost saying Medieval Jousting.

00:34:18.000 I assume that's not a metaphor for what I'm about to experience is it?

00:34:22.000 We're so deeply ensconced in rural Britain that Medieval Jousting is the frontier of entertainment here, the apex.

00:34:30.000 That's what we do out in the... It's an interesting little setup.

00:34:33.000 As I came wandering up here and saw the studio I thought it was Get a bit more on mic, it ain't as good as your radio.

00:34:38.000 A little bit like, I expect it's sort of Felicity Kendall come bowling out from the good life and get mugged by Richard Bryars on the way in.

00:34:45.000 You could get mugged by a cosy sitcom.

00:34:47.000 The TARDIS, isn't it?

00:34:48.000 It's much bigger on the inside.

00:34:50.000 Yeah, that's right.

00:34:50.000 Indeed.

00:34:51.000 Like my mind, like your vocabulary.

00:34:52.000 You're like a documentary character you are.

00:34:54.000 I've got a little bit of that about me.

00:34:56.000 Simon, I'm really excited to talk to you.

00:34:57.000 Nice to be here, mate.

00:34:58.000 Thank you for coming into our show the other day, so I'm very glad to reciprocate.

00:35:01.000 It went pretty well, didn't it?

00:35:02.000 You were brilliant.

00:35:03.000 Thank you.

00:35:04.000 I enjoyed it very much.

00:35:05.000 What I enjoy about our... You were loved.

00:35:07.000 Loved, actually.

00:35:07.000 People loved you.

00:35:08.000 Which ain't... That's a rare treat, because I've always been someone who divides opinions.

00:35:15.000 I've accepted that, and as part of Because if you're dividing opinions, it means you're moving across echo chambers, moving into different spaces where people can relate or disagree in equal measure.

00:35:24.000 I think that's good.

00:35:25.000 People that are successful tend to be a little bit Marmites. 1.00

00:35:28.000 Yeah.

00:35:29.000 Marmite, for those of you watching this in the United States of America, is a disgusting yeast-based paste that people... That you get to smear.

00:35:36.000 Smear.

00:35:37.000 Smear.

00:35:38.000 I can't think even of a US equivalent of marmite, but certainly it's a divisive culture.

00:35:43.000 Vegemite in Australia.

00:35:44.000 Vegemite in Australia.

00:35:45.000 America, they care about Australia even less than they care... There was a brief moment with Paul Hogan, who you're not dissimilar to, let's face it.

00:35:45.000 Yeah.

00:35:53.000 Because once upon a time, I had the desire to make myself look like an Adonis in blonde.

00:35:53.000 In what basis?

00:35:59.000 Do you know what I thought?

00:35:59.000 It's grey now.

00:36:00.000 I was thinking about this from you.

00:36:01.000 A man from ordinary origins.

00:36:03.000 Indeed. 0.98

00:36:04.000 Ridiculous haircut when you first burst onto the scene. 0.99

00:36:07.000 Autodidact, I assume. 1.00

00:36:08.000 Ridiculous haircut. 0.99

00:36:10.000 It's like looking in a mirror. 1.00

00:36:11.000 Me, the Dionysian.

00:36:12.000 You, the Apolline. 0.80

00:36:13.000 Nevertheless, we're in some ways similar people.

00:36:16.000 I pushed back against conventional wisdom. 1.00

00:36:17.000 I had a mother that was a hairdresser who said to me, the fuck are you doing that for? 1.00

00:36:21.000 And I thought, no, I will not go down that route. 0.99

00:36:23.000 I shall do precisely what I want.

00:36:25.000 Cause that was a Larry haircut.

00:36:26.000 It was a bob.

00:36:27.000 And it was, it was, it was a moment in time.

00:36:30.000 You really captured the spirit of the, was it the nineties?

00:36:30.000 It certainly was.

00:36:33.000 Well, no, it was the early two thousands.

00:36:35.000 Thank you.

00:36:35.000 But it was, it was also, yeah, that was, that was, that was, yeah, that was then.

00:36:40.000 Yeah.

00:36:40.000 You look like a scarecrow with an ambition to model.

00:36:43.000 Do you think so?

00:36:44.000 Yeah, like specifically Worzel Gummidge.

00:36:45.000 Do you kind of look like the Crowman out of Worzel Gummidge? 0.98

00:36:47.000 Yeah, somewhat.

00:36:49.000 Or, yeah, a cross between Catweasel, which the American audience will get no relevance to, Catweasel and Worzel Gummidge.

00:36:54.000 But you can imagine rocking into the ballrooms of Premier League football clubs at the average age of a chairman being about 65, and that comes wandering through the door.

00:37:01.000 It must have been a wonderful greeting that I got.

00:37:03.000 Because you would have been talking to, like, sort of, Ken Bates!

00:37:06.000 Yeah, I would, yeah.

00:37:07.000 So, it was an anomalous time.

00:37:10.000 Since you've been involved in the game, it's metastasized into a global corporate entity.

00:37:16.000 It's no longer figures like Jack Walker, who once owned Blackburn.

00:37:20.000 It's a global entertainment business.

00:37:21.000 I don't know about global corporate entity, but a global entertainment opportunity, which will then maybe morph, as you suggest.

00:37:27.000 Why do you think that is an important distinction?

00:37:30.000 Because I think that your propensity to want to make everything about some corporate elitism isn't necessarily as prevalent in football as it is in other sectors, but there is an element of it, and we can perhaps kick that around in our discussions, but I'm not entirely sure that your little revolution that you want to go on sometimes is necessarily as prevalent in football as you'd like it to be.

00:37:48.000 Where do you think the game is heading when we have more and more state ownership or de facto state ownerships of top flight clubs?

00:37:56.000 Do you not think that it is precisely the type of corporate gigantism that I'm describing elsewhere?

00:38:02.000 Particularly when contrasted to the time where a kid from South London with nothing but a blonde bob and a dream could march into Sellyhurst Road and start telling Mark Bright what to do!

00:38:14.000 Yeah, yeah.

00:38:15.000 Yeah, I mean the days of the cook, the candlestick maker, the baker owning football clubs are probably long gone.

00:38:15.000 Strange doesn't it?

00:38:21.000 But that's the world that we wanted to create.

00:38:23.000 Football was no different from any other parts of society that's susceptible to globalism and globalization and the opportunities that it brings because it's such a hook, a conduit, an anchor for so many different things that as much as I don't like it and the idea of nation states The subterfuge of people suggesting that the acquisitions of clubs like Newcastle United aren't nation states because they've got sovereign wealth funds that ultimately fund nation states needs to be debated.

00:38:55.000 But if you look at recent terms, if you look in America, they don't allow that sort of acquisition of what people would consider to be Societal and community assets ie sports clubs.

00:39:06.000 That's not allowed.

00:39:07.000 That's not tolerated It seems to be the case in Europe that we have a different attitude towards it.

00:39:11.000 if you look at recent times, albeit I think it's dressed up in, and again

00:39:16.000 subterfuge, the Premier League, the English Premier League have suggested

00:39:21.000 now that they're not going to allow nation-state ownership, which is a bit

00:39:26.000 like, you know, shutting the stable door after the horse has bolted because it's

00:39:30.000 already there and it's already very prevalent and how they're going to stop

00:39:34.000 it because without being overly melodramatic you've got a situation where nation-

00:39:41.000 states are using vehicles to buy football clubs and then able to convince 0.99

00:39:48.000 the village idiots posing as people that are running the Premier League because 0.99

00:39:51.000 it suits them because they'd rather have Middle Eastern money in the Premier 1.00

00:39:55.000 League than perhaps in the Italian League or the Spanish League or the

00:39:59.000 German leagues because that money will develop their leagues faster and then

00:40:03.000 they've been convinced for example The PIF Fund is not a nation-state.

00:40:09.000 It's a separate entity.

00:40:10.000 There's an arm's-length relationship between Mohammed bin Salman, who's the Crown Prince of Saudi Arabia, and this sovereign wealth fund whose sole purpose in life is to advance the financial benefits for the nation is not a nation state yet you find out in another realm in america that live golf which is funded by pif has made the case that it is a nation state yeah so it's interesting isn't it yeah there's a lot of things i want to pick up on simon and what you tell me mate firstly the pif have taken over four domestic league clubs over there in saudi arabia making them some national assets you'll be aware that's how they work doesn't

00:40:46.000 Is it mate? The moment a business in Saudi Arabia becomes successful, what happens is the state requisitions it.

00:40:52.000 I see. That's how they work. And with the acquisition, the de facto acquisition of a club like

00:40:58.000 Newcastle and with the you know the potential for United to become owned perhaps in a comparable

00:41:02.000 way by Qatar with City already owned by Abu Dhabi and this for me isn't about the geographic location

00:41:08.000 of the you know the fact that they're all Middle East and then East because I wonder what the

00:41:12.000 distinction is between state ownership and corporate ownership when it's a gigantic

00:41:16.000 corporation like you know FSG or comparable like entities.

00:41:21.000 But one has a commercial agenda the other has an influence agenda.

00:41:24.000 And one is slightly more different than the other, because if you're looking at the Middle Eastern guys, and neither one of us are sitting here from a xenophobic position, we're just questioning the validity and the motivation and the methodology being deployed.

00:41:35.000 And so you look at someone like them, and I have no objection to anybody trying to advance their society, anybody being able to participate in anything like sport, because we don't have a God-given right in Europe or North America to suggest that we own sports and sports can't evolve.

00:41:51.000 But when they're being used as a vehicle some would say for sports washing to legitimize their their their regimes through parts of the world that don't accept them or to go to your point to advance the industrial opportunity because they want to turn away from having to be sort of funded by the only thing they can be funded by which is underneath the sand which is oil and turn it into A hub or a commercial vehicle for different opportunities.

00:42:16.000 So that goes to your narrative about the fact there's a corporate agenda behind it rather than just an acceptance of embracing a different opportunity for a different part of the world to compete.

00:42:25.000 And whilst it's clear from your description that one of those propositions is potentially more nefarious and more vast, my perspective is a romantic one Simon and it's based on the, this is something I really would It's the idea that somehow football still encompasses a sense of deep community connection.

00:42:45.000 People feel like they own their football clubs, that they love their football clubs, and that football can present us with these moments of incredible romance, whether it's something as potentially trivial but yet beautiful as David Moyes giving his medal to his father after West Ham won the most important European Cup recently, becoming champions of Europe, the most important of the trophies available.

00:43:07.000 Uh, like, uh, what I suppose I'm saying is, is that it feels to me that even though a Super League was mooted, then rebutted because of fan outrage a little while ago, that if we see this kind of corporatism continue, does it become inevitable that the globalization of the game will eventually lead- Brace the Lynx.

00:43:25.000 Breaks the links between community, community values.

00:43:28.000 And like that, the next step of that dislocation will become games being played elsewhere, franchises being moved around as we see in the United States of America with their football team and pocket teams or whatever.

00:43:37.000 And like, at what point did it stop being the thing that presumably motivated you?

00:43:43.000 Because I bet for you, why did you buy Palace and not Millwall or Fulham?

00:43:47.000 Presumably it's a romantic connection to your father.

00:43:50.000 Yeah, my father father played for the Mugger but I'd been brought in up a

00:43:53.000 hundred yards away from the stadium and it was the club that I wanted to own.

00:43:55.000 And also Russell, it's because I saw a commercial opportunity because you know

00:44:02.000 nobody goes into football, no matter how philanthropic they feel about it, to lose

00:44:06.000 money. There will always be an end game whether it's your exit strategy that

00:44:09.000 gets you back the money you've invested and maybe take some money out of it for

00:44:12.000 you and if you've done well and everyone else has done well as a result of it and

00:44:15.000 the club has prospered there's nothing wrong with that.

00:44:17.000 There's nothing wrong with people making money from football.

00:44:18.000 No one seems to have a problem with football players or managers or agents getting paid a king's fortune.

00:44:22.000 Anyone moots the idea that someone that actually owns a football club should get some money out of it, they should be flogged at dawn.

00:44:28.000 But the notion that you're advancing is that we are beginning to move into a territory where you're taking away the grassroots and the values of a football club that was built from years gone past when the factory workers used to turn out at one o'clock in the afternoon and three o'clock kickoff times are put there to be able to meet the expectations of the people that wanted to watch football.

00:44:46.000 And then you've got the other side of the argument, which is the romantic side against the reality of what fans actually want to see football become.

00:44:54.000 They want to see the best players.

00:44:55.000 They want to see the best way of watching it.

00:44:57.000 They want to see the best stadia.

00:44:59.000 They want to see all of these scenarios.

00:45:01.000 So with that comes a cost.

00:45:03.000 And then there's this sort of prostitution of the soul.

00:45:06.000 What do you want?

00:45:07.000 Do you want to have the earthy football club that Bob Lord once presided over in 1960s in Burnley when he was the town mill baron and everyone went to him with their cloth caps to watch the football team?

00:45:18.000 Or do you want this wonderful, dynamic, gold dust orientated, 360 degree, 7 day a week, 24 hour access to sport?

00:45:26.000 America's different.

00:45:27.000 I lived in America for 2 or 3 years and the tribalism, albeit it exists, it's not steeped quite so much in the culture and society of Western Europe in terms of specifically England where you've got a football club.

00:45:44.000 A town often thrives and sometimes survives by the very nature of having a successful football club

00:45:50.000 into it because it reflects aspiration, it brings commerce in there, it brings people coming in to

00:45:55.000 spend money in that town because the team's doing well or not doing so well and obviously

00:45:59.000 the knock-on effects of that have a diametrically opposed effect. But there is this

00:46:04.000 balance.

00:46:04.000 I've often thought, and I would disappear into your sort of romantic, saccharine, sentimental world, of we should have a blue, you know, the blue plaques that we have celebrating Grade II listed buildings above a football stadium, suggesting that these things need to be governed by a different set of parameters.

00:46:20.000 But, when you start flying players around the world in private jets to get their toenails clipped, and you start paying people £500,000 a week, the dynamics change.

00:46:30.000 And it's about trying to manage the evolution alongside the aspiration, alongside the reality of what people see it to be.

00:46:37.000 I don't think anyone, I'm sure some people would, but the argument I'm advancing is not that there's anything with enlightened self-interest, a young man acquiring Crystal Palace both out of a sentimental attachment to the club and reverence perhaps for his father, love of the game, natural love of football.

00:46:55.000 Also wanting to be successful.

00:46:56.000 Wanting to be good in another field.

00:46:57.000 Exactly though, Simon.

00:46:58.000 There's nothing wrong with that.

00:46:59.000 And egotistical.

00:47:00.000 Anyone that buys football clubs often has an ego attached to it as well.

00:47:03.000 You buy football clubs for credibility.

00:47:04.000 You buy it for recognisability.

00:47:06.000 If you're Roman Abramovich, you once bought it for the most expensive life insurance policy.

00:47:09.000 But you do it for different reasons.

00:47:11.000 Yeah. 0.97

00:47:11.000 If ego is part of the qualification, you're bloody... 0.97

00:47:14.000 You should have all of them.

00:47:16.000 You should own the entire Premier League.

00:47:19.000 So what I'm saying, right, is, is there a point where the convergence of these two ideas,

00:47:25.000 one idealistic and about a love of the game and...

00:47:29.000 And just the basic way that the free market operates to turn a profit from a business becomes so sort of capsized, so overtly metastasized that you can no longer discern the original community romantic connection.

00:47:44.000 At one point, like we experienced during the COVID period where fans weren't present and the economic model still works, but does the ideological model still work?

00:47:52.000 That's where I'm trying to get to.

00:47:54.000 The televisuality it did was because what you saw was this enormous rush to watch television and it's enormous appreciation.

00:48:00.000 Ironically how important fans were and the moment they get back in the grounds is how can we control them?

00:48:05.000 Don't let them go on the pitches and celebrate with the players and ultimately players should be distanced from actually even engaging with the fans.

00:48:10.000 So there's this juxtapose of actually how football views what I consider to be the most valuable asset that it's got which is the people to watch it.

00:48:18.000 Yeah, and that in a sense we don't watch it just passively, we participate in it.

00:48:24.000 And the thing that I'm sort of circling around is at what point does this process of sanitization that we see elsewhere in culture, commodification that we see elsewhere in culture, corporatization, where in a sense the product, you know, if we're going to call No longer has its original value.

00:48:41.000 At what point do we say, shouldn't we intervene?

00:48:45.000 Because we can see where this is heading.

00:48:48.000 This is heading to a global Super League where games are played in the state of the highest bidder, where it don't matter if you're Luton or whatever top-flight franchise you are, you can be uprooted and planted wherever.

00:49:02.000 And what I suppose I still feel in football, Is it because it is a vehicle for community is a vehicle for sort of a version of tribalism that's safe.

00:49:12.000 It's a vehicle for romanticism, heroes, etc.

00:49:15.000 But it's also a way of plotting the way that the culture is changing and in a way that I think requires regulation.

00:49:22.000 And yet when we spoke before you talk about the player, you know, salary caps and all you know, I'll yield that I'm not bothered in a way.

00:49:27.000 You can't regulate emotional relationships, can you?

00:49:29.000 You can't regulate the way people perceive the value that they attach to something which, you know, despite Bill Shankly's, you know, observations about football not being life and death, it's more important than that.

00:49:39.000 People will engage with sport the way that they want to and there's one thing you can't do is control that.

00:49:45.000 The product itself, and the uniqueness certainly of the English game, is very different than any other part of the world, even other European countries.

00:49:54.000 Do you think?

00:49:55.000 It's quite like Napoli though, when they're going all nuts with them ultras.

00:49:55.000 Yeah, I do think so.

00:49:57.000 Yeah, okay, there's always exceptions that don't always prove the rule, but I mean, in Europe you'll get more of that relationship.

00:50:03.000 We start to move, and of course in South America, where you've got absolute lunacy at times about the patronage.

00:50:08.000 You've even got in Colombia, people get, got shot because they didn't perform in a World Cup, so we're taking that a little bit too far.

00:50:14.000 But you look at the cynicism of certain things like, you know, I have no dog in the fight with Manchester City.

00:50:20.000 People turn around and say if you criticise Man City it's because you're jealous of them.

00:50:23.000 I'm not jealous of Man City.

00:50:24.000 I don't support Man City.

00:50:25.000 I'm not envious of anybody.

00:50:26.000 Never have been.

00:50:27.000 But I also believe that there's an approach to the way that football should work that,

00:50:32.000 because it's a collective business, the trickle-down economics that we often hear about in other

00:50:36.000 parts of the world that are supposed to benefit societies really don't ever work.

00:50:40.000 But the trickle-down economics in football do affect it because what you pay people and

00:50:44.000 what people cost at the very top end up landing at the bottom and the economics of football

00:50:49.000 don't work that way.

00:50:50.000 That's why there's an element of cynicism about the Man City model because what they've

00:50:53.000 done is precisely what you advocate for which is recognizing the community.

00:50:56.000 So they've gone in and they've regenerated the community alongside the football club.

00:50:59.000 The football club's been the hook and they spent lots of money in Moss Side and regenerated this and made valuable parts of the community feel more valid in terms of the investment into the structure and everyone goes how wonderful that is.

00:51:11.000 But the objective behind that is not because Sheikh Mansour wanted to wander around Moss Side.

00:51:15.000 It's because there's a vehicle here which indeed gives you legitimacy and validity and builds the relationships that they want to have by utilizing sports clubs.

00:51:25.000 And I'm slightly troubled by that.

00:51:27.000 I'm not as utopian as you.

00:51:29.000 And I'm much more, I'm sort of like a Tom Berrington character out of Platoon.

00:51:33.000 I don't need reality, I am reality.

00:51:34.000 I see things for what they are.

00:51:36.000 In terms of, look, let's look at it, let's look at the reality of what things can become, what things should become, and what they will become, and try and find a hybrid of the three.

00:51:44.000 Because I feel that the biggest obstacle, the only way to prevent this globalised model, where it will impact the fans' emotional connections with clubs, because I think ultimately what will happen, and we witnessed a touch of this... The fans where?

00:51:58.000 The indigenous to the location or this global audience that's now being brought around the world to see football in this country?

00:52:05.000 Because I would say a less cynical model would be to build grassroots clubs in all these various territories so there is a geographical connection between the fans that love the game.

00:52:15.000 Well tell me how that works then.

00:52:16.000 You've got 92 clubs.

00:52:18.000 You've got 92 clubs occupying a very small country and you've got overpopulation in certain parts of the country in terms of football clubs.

00:52:24.000 Most parts of the country are represented.

00:52:27.000 You've got one example.

00:52:28.000 One example in 150 years of football.

00:52:31.000 of a football club being geographically relocated.

00:52:34.000 Half of that was my fault because I drop kicked them out of my stadium.

00:52:36.000 Out you go, Wimbledon.

00:52:37.000 Don't want you here anymore.

00:52:38.000 And they became AFC Wimbledon and moved out and became AFC Wimbledon and Milton Keynes.

00:52:43.000 But we've not got any other examples of it.

00:52:45.000 Your fear is that that's going to happen?

00:52:46.000 Yeah.

00:52:47.000 Well, you've got no basis for that fear.

00:52:49.000 Well, I have got bases because only 14 Premier League clubs would need to vote for something like that and we're approaching that number where we're going to have comparable intentions.

00:53:00.000 Explain to me the logic of XYZ club moving from XYZ location to another one.

00:53:07.000 Money.

00:53:09.000 Okay, well give me an example of what that looks like.

00:53:11.000 Well, because there are these new emergent models, for example, it would be unthinkable a little while ago for the MLS to participate in the funding of the Messi transfer in the way that they did.

00:53:21.000 The league itself, commercial sponsors and the club come together to acquire a player because they all acknowledge that the benefits will be spread.

00:53:29.000 Of course.

00:53:30.000 So as this model continues to evolve, capitalism doesn't go backwards.

00:53:34.000 Globalism doesn't go backwards.

00:53:36.000 It becomes more immersive.

00:53:37.000 That's not a model.

00:53:39.000 The MLS model isn't particularly working, is it?

00:53:41.000 It's working for the owners, but it's not working for the sport.

00:53:43.000 And that's the only people it needs to work for, is the owners.

00:53:45.000 That's why, in fact, the argument that I am trying to undergird here, Simon, is that if we came close to creating a Super League, it didn't work because the fans bought it.

00:53:54.000 They're obviously not going to go away, as I've heard you say on the radio.

00:53:56.000 It didn't work because there wasn't enough money put up by JP Morgan.

00:53:58.000 But they'll refine it, and they'll find ways to make it work.

00:54:01.000 But did you think there was anything wrong with that, then?

00:54:04.000 I do, mate, because I think that... Are you happy with your team playing in Europe?

00:54:11.000 Do you know what I think?

00:54:12.000 This is where I think it should go.

00:54:13.000 This is set in a broader cultural framework.

00:54:17.000 You're going to have to let me explain this.

00:54:18.000 Don't interrupt because I'm interested in hearing from you.

00:54:20.000 I'm only saying this stuff so I can make sure... I want you to understand the nuance of what I'm saying so that I can get the nuance of your response.

00:54:27.000 What I think should happen is that there should be ownership, fan ownership of clubs.

00:54:32.000 In fact, this is a big political point that I've been mulling over for ages.

00:54:35.000 Like Germany. 0.88

00:54:36.000 I'll take you there.

00:54:37.000 Beyond Germany, actually.

00:54:38.000 If I was running politically, no, not if I was running, that's too dangerous.

00:54:40.000 If someone was running politically, here's something I would suggest as part of their

00:54:43.000 manifesto.

00:54:44.000 As the Saudis have just re-nationalised those four clubs because they've become an asset,

00:54:49.000 under our administration, we will re-nationalise all the 92 league clubs.

00:54:55.000 Those assets will be seized and they will be owned not by the state, but collectively by the community.

00:55:01.000 Watford will be owned by Watford fans.

00:55:03.000 Arsenal will be owned by Arsenal fans.

00:55:05.000 Liverpool will own Liverpool fans.

00:55:06.000 I told you it's new.

00:55:07.000 Liverpool will be owned by Liverpool fans.

00:55:10.000 It's going to be taken back by the state in the same way you could with municipal assets and then collectively owned by the community.

00:55:16.000 Vote for me.

00:55:18.000 Now, what have you got?

00:55:19.000 You've got a mighty marching movement of people that are willing to go on the streets when they're dissatisfied.

00:55:21.000 Come on, it's a brilliant idea, Simon!

00:55:22.000 Think beyond the money!

00:55:22.000 You mean nationalise?

00:55:23.000 Because it's never been nationalised before, so we wouldn't re-nationalise them.

00:55:23.000 You mean nationalise?

00:55:25.000 You'd re-nationalise them for the first time.

00:55:38.000 What do you mean by the funding model?

00:55:39.000 Well, because you've got a situation now where the genie's out of the bottle.

00:55:42.000 The economics of football are at such a level, right, that ultimately, fan ownership, which I don't have a particular problem with, besides the fact that it becomes too emotive, too visceral in its decision-making process, and it doesn't make much commercial sense.

00:55:52.000 You want emotion.

00:55:53.000 You want it to be visceral.

00:55:54.000 Yeah, but you want it outside the ballroom.

00:55:55.000 I suppose this only works, but it's a paradigm shift, Simon.

00:55:58.000 I can't sort of go, here's my spreadsheet.

00:55:59.000 It's a deluded shift.

00:56:00.000 Yeah.

00:56:00.000 It's not a deluded shift.

00:56:02.000 It is a little bit.

00:56:03.000 What this is addressing is the fact that we have turned everything into a commodity and this is an attempt to redress that phenomena and reverse it.

00:56:12.000 You own your football clubs.

00:56:14.000 You own your electricity.

00:56:16.000 You own your waterworks.

00:56:17.000 We are rejecting this model.

00:56:19.000 We are reversing it and we are granting you, fans of Everton, you own Everton Football Club now.

00:56:25.000 You run it democratically.

00:56:26.000 Does that mean you're going to be our pay players as much as you used to?

00:56:29.000 What's going to happen?

00:56:29.000 Absolutely not.

00:56:30.000 There's going to be a seismic shift in the game.

00:56:32.000 I'm happy with that.

00:56:33.000 The world is going to alter.

00:56:35.000 Because that's really what we're discussing.

00:56:37.000 I want to break the framework.

00:56:38.000 I don't want to operate within the existing framework.

00:56:40.000 In your reverse Davos mentality of the Great Reset, but going with the alternative way with it, what you're suggesting is... It's democratic.

00:56:45.000 It's not Davos because it's voted for by the people.

00:56:47.000 You can never get it through unless the people vote for it.

00:56:49.000 In the reverse is what I said to Davos, right?

00:56:51.000 So it's democratic.

00:56:52.000 There's nothing wrong with that.

00:56:53.000 In your view.

00:56:54.000 And it's...

00:56:56.000 So we look at it and say that you believe this is a global order?

00:57:00.000 That every league will fall in order with this?

00:57:03.000 It doesn't matter.

00:57:04.000 This is quite isolationist.

00:57:06.000 Because all of a sudden your scabby little team won't be playing in Europe anymore because they won't be able to compete.

00:57:10.000 We don't want it anymore.

00:57:11.000 We own them now.

00:57:13.000 So we'd have this wonderful model in the UK which the guys on the bus with you would have this viewpoint that your sentiment has some validity to it.

00:57:24.000 No one else in Europe would perform that and then we'd be the sick man of European football on that basis.

00:57:30.000 Well, I can see why you wouldn't stand on an argument like Brexit based on some of the rhetoric.

00:57:34.000 No, I have a very open mind.

00:57:35.000 Well, this is just that.

00:57:37.000 This is simply that.

00:57:38.000 What this is suggesting is that in order to break down globalist models, you're going to have to take legislative and regulatory steps.

00:57:44.000 Why not confront this at the most populist level possible?

00:57:49.000 Football.

00:57:49.000 Sport.

00:57:50.000 Instead of going about it in things people don't really understand or care about or can't connect to, find ways that they actually connect, mobilize them there.

00:57:57.000 Mobilize them where it matters.

00:57:58.000 You own your community.

00:57:59.000 Why do you care about football?

00:58:00.000 Because of your father.

00:58:02.000 Why do you care about football?

00:58:03.000 Because of the feeling it gives you.

00:58:05.000 Why should your football clubs be owned by conglomerates abroad? 1.00

00:58:08.000 Just because of an economic model that doesn't serve you, that's never served you, that doesn't respect you, that wants you dumb and dead, all that stuff. 0.99

00:58:14.000 But you're saying that, right? 0.99

00:58:15.000 You're saying it doesn't serve people.

00:58:18.000 Yeah, you've got a league in this country, in England, that's the envy of every league around the world.

00:58:25.000 It's brilliant, the heroine's brilliant.

00:58:26.000 You've got fans.

00:58:28.000 You've got momentarily, isn't it?

00:58:30.000 Yeah!

00:58:31.000 And I suppose owning a football club is a bit like taking drugs, isn't it?

00:58:33.000 It takes all your money, gives you a headache.

00:58:35.000 I wish you hadn't done it.

00:58:36.000 But the railings ain't suffered, you've still got lovely notches.

00:58:40.000 Don't compare my experiences to yours, right?

00:58:42.000 This wasn't an intervention.

00:58:45.000 I look at the scenario and say, well, what's broken so far?

00:58:49.000 You're railing against the system and saying it needs to be fixed, but what is it you think's broken?

00:58:54.000 We are seeing fans, we're seeing attendances... What do you think's broken?

00:58:58.000 You're the one saying cap the players.

00:59:00.000 What I think's broken is that we're losing the game.

00:59:03.000 Although we're creating an entertaining product, we're losing the connection.

00:59:06.000 We're losing the thing that's real about it.

00:59:08.000 That's what I'm claiming.

00:59:09.000 Do you think so?

00:59:10.000 I mean, do you think that the fans themselves, from what I see, are more engaged and more invested than they have been for some time?

00:59:17.000 They need to invest.

00:59:18.000 It's bloody expensive.

00:59:19.000 The merch is expensive.

00:59:20.000 The people that built the game can't afford to get into stadiums no more, Simon.

00:59:25.000 Are you an individualistic?

00:59:37.000 You're from a normal working class background.

00:59:39.000 What is the affinity you feel with that community?

00:59:41.000 What do you feel about just basic arguments that people from that part of South London won't be able to eventually afford to attend games?

00:59:48.000 They won't be able to participate except by watching Crystal Palace playing in, I don't know, somewhere in Malaysia.

00:59:54.000 I'm not sure that's right.

00:59:56.000 You think it's going that way don't you?

00:59:58.000 No, I think that the least amount of money generated inside a football club is by what people pay to get into it.

01:00:04.000 The broadcasters are the ones that bring the revenue in, the corporate sponsors.

01:00:07.000 So the geography is sort of irrelevant in a global way?

01:00:09.000 Yeah to some extent.

01:00:11.000 I'm not in the camp of wanting to see Premier League games being played in America.

01:00:15.000 I understand why other leagues want to do that because they need to do it because they can't keep up with the financial juggernaut that is the Premier League which by the way hasn't even scratched the surface of the opportunity it can present.

01:00:24.000 For broadcast you mean?

01:00:26.000 Yeah because we've got a situation where you've got a product which is in demand.

01:00:28.000 You've got a model exists over here which is a VOD platform in Netflix which has got a market cap of 250 billion and you've got and built its business primarily on other people's content.

01:00:38.000 You've got the Premier League that could build the same model, reduce the cost of football to people by the very nature of the volumes it can achieve worldwide and multiply its revenues by factors of 6, 7, 8, 9 and 10.

01:00:49.000 And then what you've got is you've got a product which is delivered to people when they want it, how they want it, where they want it, at a price they're paid to consume And everybody wins.

01:00:57.000 Then it goes against my argument then of course that I want football to suddenly suppress the expenditure on not what you call the poor hard done by footballers I'm targeting to get their wages brought down.

01:01:08.000 I'm just trying to get substance into the game and a game to be supported by its own merits rather than daddy warbucks.

01:01:16.000 pop in with an agenda whether that be Simon Jordan 20 years ago because he made 100 million quid and wants to buy his local football club or what they buy Sheikh Mansour because he has it for a different reason.

01:01:26.000 It needs to be sustainability and at this moment in time we've got the wild west and that's why I have an aberration for the MLS model.

01:01:34.000 But I also have a bit of a disdain for it.

01:01:36.000 Because the MS model is a group of owners getting together.

01:01:37.000 Because I put a team in America.

01:01:39.000 I put the first English team into America.

01:01:41.000 We played out of Annapolis in Washington State.

01:01:44.000 And I looked very carefully at the MLS model.

01:01:46.000 And to one part of my mind as an owner.

01:01:48.000 Yeah, get it.

01:01:48.000 All the owners get together.

01:01:49.000 We work out how we're going to make money.

01:01:51.000 And then we work out how everyone else is going to make money.

01:01:53.000 And that has some resonance to it.

01:01:55.000 The other side of it, it makes it the world that you're advocating for, which is it loses the competitivity of it, it loses the objectivity of it, and it makes it all about money.

01:02:04.000 But is there already, Russell?

01:02:06.000 I may well be in the land of brand but I'm still slightly commercial in my thinking.

01:02:12.000 I don't think there's anything wrong with the entrepreneurial spirit.

01:02:15.000 I think there's nothing wrong with capitalism either but I think there's everything wrong with irresponsible capitalism.

01:02:19.000 Yeah and I think that's where we are and I think that we're going to see it play out in sport.

01:02:22.000 I've got a question that's on a slightly different tack now but I think you'll be well into it.

01:02:25.000 With the success of Wrexham based around like Ryan Reynolds acquisition and the way it's played out on Disney and again sort of tapping into the romance of the game and I think any Wrexham fan would say it's like the best thing that's happened to them and they love it and all that kind of stuff.

01:02:36.000 It's a moment in time isn't it?

01:02:37.000 It certainly is.

01:02:39.000 But did you see the other day they were playing like in America against the ladies team and all that kind of thing?

01:02:43.000 Do you know what it made me think of?

01:02:44.000 Is that now Wrexham, not because of the merit of their football club, although they've done very well getting to the league, but because of the paraphernalia of fame and celebrity, they've entered into a new domain.

01:02:54.000 Do you know what it made me think of?

01:02:55.000 And I know you know an awful lot about boxing and you're a big boxing fan.

01:02:58.000 It made me think of like 10, 20 years ago, if you're fighting in Vegas, if you're showcased as an elite boxer, you've earned that on merit and you've got the scars to prove it.

01:03:07.000 Well now you've got the phenomena of like Conor McGregor fighting Floyd Mayweather, you've got YouTube boxers fighting for millions KSI and Logan Paul and all that stuff.

01:03:17.000 Is there not a danger that the sort of almost the essence of sport which is meritocracy is being sort of eroded that you can create these Frankenstein clubs, these entertainment products, it's not an attack on Wrexham, it's in a sense I'm coupling it with that trend.

01:03:31.000 Because years ago you wouldn't have got a couple of like sort of people that were unrecognisable in the context of the sport.

01:03:37.000 It's a clever digital deal where they're using their reputations to enhance the opportunity and make a movie about it.

01:03:43.000 That's what they're doing, really, aren't they?

01:03:44.000 Netflix are going to fund them, I suspect, and they're going to build a television series out of it.

01:03:47.000 And that will take them so far.

01:03:49.000 And then when, you know, you could watch Salford, you could watch The Class of 92 and all that went with that, and of course the Stardust that goes with Beckham and gigs and Skolls and Gary Neville and that mob, and see that Salford were manufactured into a situation.

01:04:02.000 But it doesn't alter the fact that the argument that you would make, which is the community that they represent, I'm delighted!

01:04:07.000 They're thrilled that their football club is back on the map.

01:04:10.000 Now, Brian Reynolds and his mate will go so far, and when it eventually lands in their pockets, they've got to put their hands in their pockets to go through the gears, because Meritocracy will still be the endgame.

01:04:19.000 Wrexham will be the movie of the week, right, for a period of time.

01:04:23.000 And when it gets a bit tough in League One, if they ever get there, and you've got to start funding a football club properly, then that may run its course.

01:04:32.000 But if Westham, sorry if Wrexham, sorry mate yeah comparison between Wrexham and Westham not a good one.

01:04:37.000 If Wrexham were to find a different way of delivering an outcome because whether we're

01:04:43.000 in a digital age or whether they're using other aspects of the opportunity available to them to

01:04:48.000 build a football club, still at the centre of it is a football club and a community.

01:04:52.000 If that team were to go through the levels and get in the Premier League, it would be another story, a different strand of the football story that needs to evolve.

01:05:02.000 We're in a generation now that consumes what it looks at and what it reads through things like this, mobile telephones.

01:05:08.000 Once upon a time you used to call the kitchen wall to speak to someone.

01:05:11.000 You don't now, do you?

01:05:12.000 Everything evolves.

01:05:13.000 If you lose something when you're evolving, which is your argument, is the trade-off good enough?

01:05:18.000 I'm not sure.

01:05:19.000 I'm not sure that we've lost too much.

01:05:21.000 I still think you've got massive engagement.

01:05:23.000 You know, I do media stuff where you're dealing with fans and their emotional investment on a daily basis.

01:05:29.000 And I don't see it lessening, I see it heightening.

01:05:31.000 I also see the entitlement of fans heightening, which I'm not sure is a good thing.

01:05:35.000 I wonder if this is like a sort of a frantic and fearful twitching corpse as the sense that this game is being corporatized and owned elsewhere dawns upon the sort of collective unconsciousness that something is rotten in Denmark.

01:05:50.000 I've got a few things I want to flesh out.

01:05:52.000 They're all starting to tie together a little bit now.

01:05:55.000 Say like when Wimbledon went through the leagues, FA Cup Final, Big Liverpool, Culture Club versus the, you know, crazy gang.

01:06:01.000 Until I turfed them out of Sillis Park.

01:06:03.000 You keep mentioning that, you obviously want that followed up on.

01:06:05.000 But my point is this, right?

01:06:07.000 Out they went.

01:06:09.000 Off they go, Dave Bessett and you loopy barnet. 1.00

01:06:12.000 Laurie Sanchez, you can fuck off. 1.00

01:06:14.000 I'll teach you, Harry Bessett, to write me a letter to say piss off young Billy Whiz or whatever he wrote to me. 1.00

01:06:18.000 Is that what he wrote?

01:06:19.000 Yeah, he wrote... He called you Billy Whiz?

01:06:20.000 Yeah, I fired... Get him out of the door, you're a pirate. 1.00

01:06:23.000 I fired Steve Cople and he wrote some article in the newspaper and I said, I really have to listen to these dinosaurs from the past.

01:06:29.000 So he wrote me this letter... You evicted him?

01:06:31.000 No, his side that he used to manage and he wrote me this letter saying, you know, bollocks, H. You, Harry Whiz, should mind your own business.

01:06:37.000 How can I not mind my business? It's my football club, it's my manager, I'll fire whoever I want.

01:06:41.000 But, yeah, on a tangent. 0.99

01:06:42.000 Go for the old bob, a little comb, and then out the fucking door, tack it, tack that up. 0.98

01:06:46.000 As opposed to the Jesus of Nazareth look, yeah? 0.99

01:06:48.000 Yeah, yeah, yeah.

01:06:49.000 Like, see, like, sort of like the Wrexham is, like, you know, Wrexham, again, I'm not trying to diss Wrexham fans

01:06:56.000 or take their money.

01:06:57.000 Well, it sounds a little bit like it, yeah.

01:06:58.000 I know, it does a bit. It's because I'm jealous, isn't it, of Ryan Reynolds.

01:07:00.000 But what I want to also acknowledge is that as a West Ham fan, I'll acknowledge that a ceremony is created around a third tier European competition, and yet the emotions feel real, because there's so much investment that you put in it, it feels real while you do it.

01:07:15.000 When Wimbledon get to the top flight, only to be evicted by the old peroxide Paxman over there, Like, it's like it's a real story.

01:07:25.000 But now, it's almost like, you know, a sort of a construction.

01:07:29.000 And my concern is this, is if it becomes, excuse me, a construction rather than a reality, it's going to lose the thing that it has in the first place.

01:07:36.000 That we're going to, it's not going to mean anything anymore.

01:07:39.000 We're killing the golden goose, to put it in a simple phrase.

01:07:42.000 Again, I think you're being idealistic.

01:07:44.000 What else are you going to be?

01:07:44.000 How you get... Of course I am.

01:07:45.000 Well, realistic is an alternative, you're right.

01:07:48.000 We've got to bring them together.

01:07:49.000 Your auto-reality subjection.

01:07:51.000 A Venn diagram that we meet in the middle of.

01:07:53.000 That can be part of the brand of this series.

01:07:55.000 But it's still steeped in the values of Rexim isn't it?

01:07:58.000 And it's still going through a system.

01:08:00.000 It's still got to abide by the rules that come to pass in terms of governance and the way that it can spend money.

01:08:07.000 It's just using its assets.

01:08:09.000 So what we're saying is is that Rexim went through the gears by one methodology or another and this instance it's got two Hollywood superstars that can use their digital imagery To leverage the revenues that you can get from digital spaces.

01:08:21.000 Like you guys are doing here, right?

01:08:21.000 Yeah.

01:08:23.000 And you build a club that goes there and lands in the Premier League.

01:08:27.000 Would that be less of a story than constantly watch Manchester City win the league with Middle Eastern money or Manchester United because it's steeped in 60 years of heritage and legacy and an ability to be able to print money for itself?

01:08:41.000 Would it be less of a diminishing or would it be diminishing the football story?

01:08:45.000 Would it be devaluing it?

01:08:47.000 No, I think that would be a great contribution.

01:08:49.000 And of the two problems outlined there, I'd say that the Man City one is the greater one, particularly with them 115 charges as yet.

01:08:55.000 So why do you keep attacking Wrexham?

01:08:57.000 I'm not attacking Wrexham!

01:08:58.000 I'm attacking the commodification of the sport in various ways and seeing if it's somehow stripping away its essence, gutting it somehow, hollowing it out.

01:09:07.000 Every time you stick something on television, including yourself, you're making it a commodity for someone else's benefit.

01:09:13.000 You sit here doing your broadcast because a particular platform wants to give you an opportunity so they can monetize you.

01:09:18.000 So you're a commodity.

01:09:19.000 So you're quite happy with it. 0.92

01:09:20.000 So why do you hypocrisy?

01:09:21.000 Because there's such a thing It depends on what's behind it.

01:09:24.000 It depends on what is the objective, what is the aim, what is the goal.

01:09:27.000 If the aim is always and solely to make money, and remember we've touched upon enlightened self-interest earlier in the conversation, ideally there's a kind of synthesis of I have a purpose, I'm pursuing meaning, oh wow I'm earning a few quid out of it.

01:09:40.000 That seems to me like that's not in the same domain as stripping away the meaning of something that's sort of valuable.

01:09:47.000 I would argue even possibly sacred.

01:09:49.000 And this is where I'm trying to get to.

01:09:50.000 Is this the end of fairy tales in football?

01:09:52.000 Could we ever have a little Wimbledon again?

01:09:55.000 Could we ever have?

01:09:56.000 Let's start with the title.

01:09:58.000 We've just had it with Luton, haven't we?

01:09:59.000 We've just had Luton, the ultimate fairy tale.

01:10:03.000 Eric Morecambe, great comedian, I'm sure you appreciate, has indexed Luton many years ago, a club that was always punched above its weight.

01:10:08.000 Collapses.

01:10:08.000 Boom!

01:10:10.000 Drops out of the league.

01:10:10.000 Gets put together by a fans group.

01:10:12.000 Have values like they won't attach himself to betting companies because they don't believe in the principle of betting money going into sport.

01:10:19.000 And they've built a club that's now got promoted with 10,000 fans back into the Premier League.

01:10:23.000 Are you worried that somewhere along the line they might change their agenda?

01:10:27.000 Are you suggesting that the criteria that you just outlined, it somehow makes it a worthwhile, valuable story, that the connection to the fans, that espousing them values, makes it better than a globalist corporate entity that won't confront its charges of illegal activity?

01:10:44.000 I'm saying it's a mixed bag.

01:10:47.000 You're sort of forecasting this dystopian future where football becomes something that is simply an endgame for people with nefarious motives or alternative intentions. Everyone's got

01:10:58.000 an intention and very few people have got an intention simply to do it

01:11:02.000 for the love of football. Everyone wants to get something from it. So

01:11:06.000 with that in mind I've just given you a case in point where Luton in our

01:11:11.000 leagues have proven the point that there's still the value of football being

01:11:15.000 built in a certain way for the people from the people because of the people.

01:11:20.000 And we don't lose the vibrancy of football by the nature of ownership models that might have different intentions.

01:11:29.000 We muddy the messages sometimes and we allow the broadcast world to Uh fulfill their outcomes when we're constantly being listened to broadcasters pumping societal messages through football.

01:11:42.000 You and I have discussed this on other platforms about the nature of football being leveraged for other people's agendas and how that should be or could be or would be or shouldn't be.

01:11:50.000 Yeah.

01:11:50.000 In my view and I think yours is the same.

01:11:52.000 The only agenda should be football.

01:11:53.000 I think you should be really critically alert to the various ways that agendas play out, including financially, including the agenda of state ownership of these football clubs.

01:12:03.000 But money makes the world go round, Russell.

01:12:05.000 It doesn't have to, though.

01:12:06.000 It's a representative and symbolic system.

01:12:07.000 Don't you dare sit here and say you're doing this for charity, or the things you've done in your life have been for charity.

01:12:11.000 You do them because ultimately money is the commodity that fuels the world.

01:12:14.000 So we all need to grow up a little bit.

01:12:16.000 The only word I would query there is the word ultimately because we are not yet at the point of fully understanding the many miraculous ways that I express my intentions.

01:12:26.000 More definitively then?

01:12:27.000 Maybe not ultimately?

01:12:28.000 No not definitively because like probably like you I do what I do for a variety of reasons and but I began doing what I do out of love, like bloody vanity you know I mean there's a sort of a complex set of motivations but at this point in my life of course I require I'm quite idealistic. 1.00

01:12:48.000 Hold on Simon, fuck you now. 0.95

01:12:50.000 Like, you know, I require a degree of financial security, but when I'm laying in bed at night, 1.00

01:12:55.000 and let me tell you, it's a pretty sexy spectacle, I'm not thinking solely about my financial security.

01:13:00.000 I'm thinking about a set of aims, a set of goals.

01:13:03.000 How can we contribute to the conversation?

01:13:05.000 The reason that, like I haven't got you on here and banged on...

01:13:07.000 Once you've achieved your financial stability...

01:13:11.000 So you start with this communistic approach, which is I'll look after myself first, and then I'll build from there.

01:13:15.000 And that's great.

01:13:16.000 And that's, there's nothing wrong with that.

01:13:17.000 We've all got to get our own mask on first, of course we have.

01:13:19.000 We have to sustain ourselves to even participate and contribute.

01:13:21.000 What we want in life is a degree of idolism meets realism, don't we?

01:13:25.000 And a fair proportion of representation.

01:13:27.000 Now where is this idealism going to be entering into the sport of football with the current trajectory?

01:13:32.000 But where's it been lost then?

01:13:34.000 You keep suggesting it's been lost.

01:13:35.000 Because of the commercialisation, Simon, I suppose.

01:13:37.000 I suppose that's what I'm... Yeah, but you love to watch football, dawn till dusk if you can.

01:13:43.000 And watching sport through whichever medium you choose, whichever way you want to.

01:13:47.000 And with that comes a commercial scenario, because you're going to watch it through a medium that's commercially motivated.

01:13:53.000 So with that in mind how do you square that particular circle?

01:13:56.000 Well we're arguing sort of a lot about economics and I think in a sense there's certainly there's yeah we're debating there's a great deal of validity in what you're saying and there's no question.

01:14:06.000 Is there a reason why you've taken your shoes and socks off while we're debating?

01:14:09.000 Didn't I a minute ago?

01:14:10.000 Like and also I really thought what I wanted to do.

01:14:12.000 Does it help your thinking?

01:14:13.000 I want to really concentrate.

01:14:14.000 Call your feet down and your head will start functioning.

01:14:18.000 It's a double-ended approach, Simon.

01:14:21.000 Get your little trotters out. 1.00

01:14:23.000 Get them tootsies under the table. 1.00

01:14:25.000 Simon, no, this is what I want to say, is that those currently necessary commercial opportunities that are predicated on the emotion that football in particular solicits cannot be allowed to kill the host, which is currently what I fear could potentially happen.

01:14:46.000 So someone has to advocate for the idealistic side of the argument which includes things like fan ownership, investigation, interrogation of ownership models and assurances that these clubs will remain connected to the communities that built them and ultimately the value of the fans will be respected.

01:15:02.000 That's what they're trying to achieve by the independent regulator suggestion in this country which I think is for the birds and I think any business, any industry that's regulated in the end Isn't a particularly good industry to be in and we have now reached a point, Russell, whether we like it or we don't like it, you and I. And again, I use the expression, I don't apologize for the genies out of the bottle.

01:15:23.000 We're not going to unwind this.

01:15:25.000 We're not going to change the economic model.

01:15:26.000 All we're going to be able to do is perhaps halt it.

01:15:30.000 Hold it in its tracks, but even then we've now got Saudi Arabia wanting to pay footballers 200 million pounds a year to go over there and play because they want to build their leagues up.

01:15:40.000 So again, I don't share your concerns.

01:15:44.000 I understand why you think there's a validity in your thinking that there's a loss of the core principles of the game on what they were supposed to be.

01:15:53.000 But I'm not sure that when you see the emotion when you watch Sheffield Wednesday for those North American fans that don't know who they are, they're a club in Yorkshire that's got great heritage.

01:16:02.000 When you watch Sheffield Wednesday play Peterborough in the League One semi-final with 32,000 rabid fans in a stadium and the emotions that outpour as a result of a game having a ridiculous outcome, do you then still worry about the fact that sport isn't valued in the way that it should be, isn't going in the right direction?

01:16:25.000 I think that they value it and my fear is that it's that emotional connection has been parasited and that football means a lot about class, it means a lot about identity, it means a lot about geography, masculinity, unity, teamwork and all of those things are very real and very beautiful and I'd actually go so far as saying there's something sacred in it.

01:16:46.000 Okay, what do you mean football says a lot about class?

01:16:49.000 That these clubs have a historic and real relationship with the communities that they come from.

01:16:55.000 But we've got gentrification in every town now.

01:16:57.000 So the fact that people... That's not great either.

01:17:00.000 But that's the reality of economics, isn't it?

01:17:02.000 The reality of economics is a political matter.

01:17:04.000 It's not like, it's not meteorology.

01:17:06.000 Gentrification is not happening naturally.

01:17:08.000 It's happening as a result of decisions, consensus and a lack of democracy.

01:17:11.000 is a good thing. If you were living in America in certain times during

01:17:16.000 the scenarios where people were in redline districts they would have cried 0.97

01:17:21.000 out for gentrification where ultimately the income streams could have

01:17:23.000 gotten bigger and people could have improved their own social standing and

01:17:26.000 so with that in mind you're looking at a class structure of saying that football

01:17:31.000 once upon a time was an old geezer with a rattle and a cloth cap

01:17:35.000 going to the game.

01:17:36.000 And the next generation of football supporters aren't cut from that particular cloth.

01:17:40.000 We have a different generation following behind us.

01:17:42.000 I'm not entirely sure that generation doesn't send me screaming to bed at night thinking they're going to look after me in my dotage, but that's a different discussion.

01:17:49.000 But the class argument, I think, is becoming less and less prevalent.

01:17:52.000 Other parts of what you just said might be relevant but the fact that football is still steeped in a working class mentality is probably not rugby and other sports maybe but we're not moving from football into cricket where cricket has a certain attitude or cricket into tennis but there is a different social classification now of football fans.

01:18:10.000 I suppose what I'm encircling and analysing is what is this value that football appears to herald?

01:18:17.000 What is this secular ceremony that appears to be able to evoke such deep feeling and such deep connection?

01:18:22.000 It's like alchemy.

01:18:22.000 Well it's brilliant isn't it?

01:18:23.000 I mean if you could bottle it and sell it you'd become a billionaire overnight.

01:18:26.000 They are bottling it and selling it and that's part of the bloody problem.

01:18:28.000 But that provides access.

01:18:31.000 So with the flip side of the coin is... I bet if we change the subject, you'd still find me just as ravishing.

01:18:37.000 No, I bet if we change the subject to another commodity that you would alter your perspective.

01:18:42.000 Like if we start talking about, I don't know, entertainment or music or something, and I'm not going to, I want to talk about another aspect of football, but I feel that sometimes because of your personal involvement with the sport, you find peculiarities that prevent you applying your ordinary principles to this matter.

01:18:59.000 Not at all.

01:18:59.000 I think sometimes you're a contrarian.

01:19:01.000 I think you're a contrarian Simon.

01:19:03.000 The difference between you and me on the subject matter is I come from an educated point of view and you're coming from a hypothetical, idealistic one where you don't know the nuts and bolts of it.

01:19:10.000 You're looking at it from an idealistic point of view.

01:19:12.000 I have both sides.

01:19:13.000 I have the person that was a fan that bought a football club.

01:19:15.000 I have the reality of the experience and I look at it then from a slightly balanced point of view.

01:19:20.000 I try to find balance.

01:19:22.000 That's the opposite of objectivity.

01:19:24.000 That's a deepened subjectivity that's unable to consider a variety of perspectives and synthesize them.

01:19:29.000 Now, the other thing that I want to talk about is, like, the power of leadership.

01:19:29.000 Yes.

01:19:34.000 I've seen you talk about it elsewhere on your excellent podcast, Upfront.

01:19:38.000 I loved the episode with Sue Ness.

01:19:40.000 I'm a pro, mate.

01:19:40.000 Thank you very much.

01:19:41.000 Yes.

01:19:42.000 The brilliant conversation with John Barnes was fantastic.

01:19:45.000 Brilliant, excellent.

01:19:46.000 We've had him on here, he's masterful.

01:19:49.000 Did you read his book called The Unfortunate Truth About Racism?

01:19:54.000 I don't even read the books I write, let alone other people's.

01:19:56.000 Now, Simon, when I used to write at Further Guardian, one of my mates noticed that I always ended up writing more about managers than any other aspect of the game.

01:20:08.000 And I think that somehow in managers we find, obviously, leadership in some ways, father figures, and I wonder if you'd talk for a while on what is the real, observable, measurable power of a manager.

01:20:24.000 Once the Athletic did this piece, right, where they said, When you take out the super exceptional, the exceptions, your Cluffs, your Guardiolas, whatever, they said that the results often aggregate out almost the same regardless if you have this manager, that manager, or no manager at all.

01:20:38.000 So what are we talking about when we talk about greatness in managers?

01:20:42.000 What are those qualities?

01:20:43.000 What are those abilities?

01:20:44.000 And who has it these days?

01:20:46.000 And what is it when they lose it?

01:20:48.000 What goes on when they have it for a bit, then lose it?

01:20:51.000 Well, I often have thoughts Having spent time with lots of managers and sometimes listened to these so-called Churchillian speeches that they give, and found myself deeply unaroused by the very nature of what they're saying.

01:21:02.000 I don't mean sexually, I mean in terms of a response and a contour.

01:21:07.000 That's not the intention.

01:21:08.000 It's a little bit like the Emperor's New Clothes.

01:21:10.000 I mean, there is players that can perform of their own volition.

01:21:14.000 There's a situation where you have a player that can get to this level himself, where you want to get him to here.

01:21:19.000 So you're not managing from here to here, you're just managing from here to here.

01:21:23.000 And that's where the managers step in.

01:21:25.000 And this balance between leaders lead.

01:21:30.000 You know, you can create better people and you can create people that can operate at certain levels, but natural leaders have this ability to be able to communicate in such a fashion that inspires people.

01:21:41.000 to do things that they wouldn't ordinarily be prepared to do and that means operating at a high level all the time even when they don't feel like it and the more you've got footballers being paid what I would consider to be F off money so they can end up telling people to F off because they're in a situation where they can control their own destiny one thing you control people through is finances the other thing you can control people through is by motivating them fear cultures of excellence But there's no one-size-fits-all for managers.

01:22:11.000 Guardiola, some people would say, could Guardiola manage Scarborough and get the same outcomes?

01:22:17.000 I think probably he could because I think he has the ability to be able to extract the very best from people by setting the highest standards, maintaining those standards, never deviating from those standards.

01:22:27.000 Uh, and being across the subject matter, being deep in the detail, being a constant evolver, not standing still, not believing that what he knew yesterday is going to be prevalent for tomorrow.

01:22:37.000 Yeah.

01:22:37.000 And I think people like Guardiola are real exceptions.

01:22:39.000 I think a lot of the football managers around, and I use this term, and I throw it around quite regularly, and people don't particularly like it, but I think a lot of charlatans get away with murder.

01:22:47.000 And we do, we reward in sport too much mediocrity.

01:22:51.000 There's too much of that going on.

01:22:53.000 Um, but I think, Managers are they're not often you know the funny thing you will think is that these managers are the strongest people in the world and often they're not they have the same doubts and the same need for support as anyone else does and there'll be people that say who motivates the motivator and that's where people like me that own football clubs come in and support managers there's a lot more of that going on than you would believe a lot more of owners that will provide that prop because in football

01:23:20.000 It is this perverse, reverse sentiment of success in life has many fathers.

01:23:27.000 But in football, success is an orphan.

01:23:30.000 It has one person that's responsible for it, whereas failure has many fathers.

01:23:35.000 So if you're successful as a football team, it'll be the manager, no one else.

01:23:38.000 It'll be the manager that created that success.

01:23:40.000 But if you fail at football, it'll be bleeding everybody that did it.

01:23:43.000 The manager's not me, it's the players, it's the owner, it's the lack of support from the fan base.

01:23:48.000 So there's that unique phenomenon But it's just the ability to be able, like anything, if you're not doing it and someone else is doing it for you, it's that ability to be able to impart to them the desire for them to do what they need to do to be successful.

01:24:05.000 It's like that, again to use a movie analogy, which I know you'll appreciate being a big movie star, it's like that scene out of The Untouchables where Sean Connery is talking to Kevin Costner about what are you prepared to do to get Capone.

01:24:20.000 One of his guys brings a knife, one of your guys brings a gun, one of his guys goes to hospital, one of your guys goes to the morgue.

01:24:27.000 What are you prepared to do to get Capone?

01:24:30.000 And I would say what are you prepared to do to be successful and to be a top class manager whatever it takes and whatever you need to do whether that's managing up to the guy that you work for to get from him what you want Or it's managing down to the charges that are your responsible for or whether it's selecting people that work with you that are actually better than you at certain things and you have the comfort in your own space to be able to be the leader of those people even though they're better.

01:24:57.000 I remember having a finance director work for me in one of these businesses that I owned and I said to him you know about doing something he said you do realize I'm a higher form of life I'm a qualified professional and I said that's wonderful.

01:25:07.000 But you fucking will work for me and I'm the managing director so we'll debate about what's a higher form of life in a different discussion.

01:25:11.000 But it's all about giving people a reason to want to be successful and that may well just be by the very nature of the rewards that they get or it might well be by the nature of the pride that you're invoking them or the motivations that you give them to want to improve or keep changing the circumstances or have basic disciplines that you will not Acquiesce, sorry, you will not move from, you will not change, Pep Guardiola will not change his view about how he wants a player to play. 0.97

01:25:42.000 David De Gea will go in goal, make a mistake, and the next thing he'll do is no longer play out from the back, he'll be launching balls up from the front.

01:25:49.000 Pep Guardiola would not accept that. He would make David de Gea perform at the level that he wanted to

01:25:54.000 until such a time as he could and if he couldn't then it'd replace him. You have to be ruthless,

01:25:59.000 you have to be fair, you have to be equitable, you have to be honest, you have to be authentic,

01:26:02.000 you have to communicate with people, you don't duck responsibility. All of these things are the

01:26:06.000 natural attributes of a leader and there's not many of them about because people don't like to

01:26:11.000 deal with confrontation because that's part of it. They don't like to deal with being able to

01:26:16.000 to be able to communicate in a way that sometimes means that you've got to find a balance between

01:26:22.000 what you believe and what you need to say to somebody to get to where they need to get to

01:26:26.000 and it's all of these things and this sort of again alchemy that out of it comes a leader

01:26:32.000 and it's about leadership. When you walk in a room you go That's the leader.

01:26:38.000 That's the guy.

01:26:38.000 That's the guy we go with.

01:26:39.000 That's the guy that we go over the trenches for.

01:26:42.000 That's the guy that we want to play for.

01:26:43.000 And even more, it's even more difficult in this day and age when you've got players like we've just discussed that are islands economically on their own.

01:26:51.000 It takes away motivation.

01:26:52.000 I like what you described about there being a necessity for a vision and a refusal to compromise on that vision.

01:26:59.000 That's pretty exciting.

01:27:00.000 And when you talk about being able to identify leaders, It's exciting to me that there ain't a uniform set of immediately identifiable external characteristics, that it could be someone that's relatively conservative, that's not always someone that's mouthing off or whatever.

01:27:17.000 Well, leadership isn't an immutable concept.

01:27:19.000 It morphs.

01:27:20.000 You know what I mean?

01:27:21.000 It's about what it, you know, a leader in one environment because there's different tools required.

01:27:27.000 If you're, if you're the elite manager at the top of the Premier League, you're managing guys that are all on 20 million pounds a year.

01:27:33.000 So you can't pull that trigger.

01:27:34.000 You've got to pull a different lever.

01:27:37.000 So your skill set is no less or no more than say Neil Warnock who managed for me in previous incarnations at Crystal Palace managing further down the pyramid and achieving an outcome of relative success by getting a group of disparate sort of hobo Footballers being able to perform at a very high level and find themselves running through the pyramids. 1.00

01:27:56.000 Taking a relatively recent and localized example, how do you get a situation where Roy Hodgson is able to return to Palace for the umpteenth time and get more success out of Palace than Vieira, who to all intents would look like the very model of a new emergent manager that's going to succeed?

01:28:12.000 And can you fold into that answer, because God knows you talk fucking long enough, how you get a moment where you look like a... Am I getting paid by the word?

01:28:20.000 We can't afford you at that rate. 0.94

01:28:24.000 And what about writing it with the Hodgson Vieira one?

01:28:29.000 Could you fold in like, you know, there was a minute where Arteta and Nunes were like neck and neck.

01:28:37.000 It was like, which one of them is going to get sacked out of North London?

01:28:40.000 And Arteta stays and now he's the, you know, the next big thing.

01:28:45.000 So what is that thing that's sort of unquantifiable about it?

01:28:48.000 How do you track it?

01:28:49.000 How do you get Hodgson to come in and revitalise Palace in that way?

01:28:54.000 I think sometimes it's nothing more simple than timing.

01:28:59.000 I think there with the Vieira situation I think there was a dissatisfaction with certain coaching methods of the player to stop listening if you want to be specific and explicit about Vieira and there was a lot more of the Emperor's New Clothes in that appointment.

01:29:14.000 It looked good for a period of time and when the reality of it becomes more prevalent and the players start to go Um, and Roy comes back in.

01:29:22.000 He's comfortable.

01:29:24.000 He says sensible things.

01:29:25.000 He does sensible things with players.

01:29:27.000 Um, and he had a better squad of players than the one he left.

01:29:29.000 The reasons why Roy Hodgson left Palace is because it needed to evolve.

01:29:32.000 And the brand of football had gotten a little bit boring.

01:29:34.000 It's like night and day currently.

01:29:36.000 Roy Hodgson's version of Crystal Palace this time round, version two, is a completely different Palace side.

01:29:41.000 Attacking and forward thinking and ambitious.

01:29:43.000 How's he done that?

01:29:45.000 Because I don't think he's had the same challenges as he had once before.

01:29:49.000 When he was at Palace he was there to make sure that Crystal Palace achieved the constant pursuit of staying in the Premier League with a season in front of him.

01:29:57.000 This time around he was coming in to fix someone else's mess with a group of players that needed a different voice and he just let them go, pointed them in the right direction and let them go.

01:30:05.000 Sometimes less is more.

01:30:07.000 Um and in the situation that you use of Arteta and Nuno Espirito Santos they were just the Tottenham appointment by Daniel Levy was someone I get on quite well with.

01:30:18.000 It's a surprise that we do because we had nothing but confrontation when I was involved in football because he was constantly trying to do things to my football club that I didn't appreciate.

01:30:27.000 Um but over the years I've seen both sides of the argument and I can appreciate some of the things he does but his appointment with Nuno Espirito Santos was just a bad appointment.

01:30:35.000 Our Teta was a moment in time.

01:30:37.000 He'd lost his way.

01:30:38.000 And he'd moved from somebody I thought had the chops to do something to somebody that was all theory.

01:30:42.000 And he was falling in between two stores.

01:30:44.000 He didn't know whether it was Arthur or Martha. 0.99

01:30:45.000 Didn't know he was having a shit or a haircut. 0.99

01:30:47.000 And he got lucky by beating Norwich in a game and all of a sudden the world changed again. 1.00

01:30:51.000 And then he got some balls and then he got rid of a Bamiang and said to the director, here I am. 1.00

01:30:55.000 Then all or nothing comes along and everyone starts to get a different point of view. 0.84

01:30:59.000 A TV show.

01:31:00.000 And he's off again.

01:31:02.000 And some of it can just be, you know, Russell, you've been successful and unsuccessful in life at times.

01:31:08.000 More successful than unsuccessful.

01:31:09.000 And I've had a combination of both.

01:31:11.000 And again, more successful than unsuccessful.

01:31:13.000 But there's sliding door moments.

01:31:14.000 And sometimes it's got nothing to do with how good you are.

01:31:17.000 It's just, you know, it's just a moment in time.

01:31:20.000 I lose £50 million in a football club because a player that I bought from my academy in a playoff semifinal hits the post on a penalty.

01:31:28.000 Changes the direction of travel for me.

01:31:30.000 I go and do some deals that eventually cause me a lot of problems.

01:31:33.000 The same player pops up two years later, Ben Watson, God love him, come out of my academy, and scores the winning goal in an FA Cup final for Wigan.

01:31:39.000 And these moments in time that sport throws out, that takes you back to the sentiment we started with.

01:31:44.000 That's a beautiful way to begin to wrap this up.

01:31:47.000 As you know, I'm a big fan of your show with Jim White over on TalkSport.

01:31:51.000 I love coming on there as a guest.

01:31:52.000 Yeah, we love having you on there.

01:31:53.000 Yeah, I really like it.

01:31:55.000 Come on, mate.

01:31:56.000 I want to do this thing.

01:31:58.000 Oh, God, look, we're late, look. 0.96

01:31:59.000 Don't do this, right, because I had all this bullshit from Martin Keown, what you're about to do here. 0.98

01:32:03.000 Martin Keown? 0.94

01:32:03.000 Bring in a word of the week. 0.94

01:32:04.000 You're saying that I'm suggesting an item that you rejected from Martin Keown?

01:32:07.000 I didn't want it from Martin Keown.

01:32:08.000 I didn't want a word of the week.

01:32:09.000 What's next, that Steve Boulds came up with my argument that corporatisation has a bigger influence than player wages?

01:32:15.000 Dean Windass brought it forward.

01:32:18.000 God love you, Dean.

01:32:19.000 He's from Hull.

01:32:19.000 I know one of your producers is from Hull.

01:32:21.000 Dean Windass is his favourite player, as a matter of fact.

01:32:23.000 I like Dean, and his son, Josh, has done wonderfully well for Sheffield Wednesday.

01:32:27.000 What Keown said, right, let's try and get these words in.

01:32:30.000 Some of these I've heard you say. Superannuated, I've heard you use. Apostiori, fatuous, I've heard you use that.

01:32:36.000 Sophistry, you could drop that in. Some of the ones I'd really like-

01:32:39.000 You used that the other day, sophistry.

01:32:41.000 Yeah, I did. I've been reading my words thing. I don't share these with many people. These are my favourite words.

01:32:46.000 Is that because nobody wants to hear them?

01:32:47.000 I've got a lot of pushbacks on me.

01:32:49.000 Am I the victim of this one?

01:32:50.000 But while you're here, the door's locked, you can sit and listen.

01:32:54.000 One I would like to hear on Talk Sport, and then what I would rather like, because I watch most of your stuff on YouTube, right, you know, that's when I watch your clips.

01:33:02.000 Jordan and White striding forward in their trousers in this... The Coliseum of Confrontation.

01:33:08.000 I don't like that, you know, that moniker that they give it, the Coliseum of Confrontation.

01:33:11.000 It makes you look like a one-trick pony.

01:33:13.000 I would prefer the Coliseum of Common Sense.

01:33:16.000 Things of that nature.

01:33:17.000 It's not a, uh... Not this adversarial position.

01:33:19.000 Here, this is good.

01:33:20.000 Construal understanding or perception.

01:33:23.000 That's an interesting construal, you could say to Jim.

01:33:26.000 That would be good.

01:33:27.000 Uh, you could say, uh, reify.

01:33:30.000 Look, I'm not gonna sit here and reify Mikel Arteta. 0.99

01:33:35.000 He don't know if he's having a shit or haircut. 0.99

01:33:36.000 He's gonna get consequenced! 1.00

01:33:38.000 He needs to have his mind concentrated!

01:33:40.000 And I need this, why?

01:33:41.000 Or how about apotropaic?

01:33:43.000 Apotropaic.

01:33:43.000 I mentioned that to you when I was in there.

01:33:45.000 Apotropaic.

01:33:45.000 That means good luck charm.

01:33:47.000 Yes.

01:33:47.000 Could you please just get apotropaic in tomorrow and then we'll use that clip.

01:33:51.000 It'll be good promo for this.

01:33:53.000 You can listen, if you can bear it, to Simon every weekday on TalkSport.

01:33:57.000 That's not much of a plug!

01:33:59.000 If you've got the guts, if you've got the stomach, you can listen to Simon Jordan every weekday on TalkSport or on YouTube, you know, before he gets banned in the UK from 10am to 1pm BST.

01:34:12.000 On the show next week, we've got Jack Dorsey coming on.

01:34:15.000 There he is.

01:34:15.000 Look, he's got a touch of the dinklage, I'd say.

01:34:19.000 Join our locals community, just press the red button and you can join us for exclusive interviews, meditations, podcasts and all sorts of fantastic stuff.

01:34:28.000 My stand-up special, Brandemic, is premiering this Sunday on Moment.

01:34:33.000 Pre-order your tickets now at moment.co forward slash Russell Brand.

01:34:36.000 Join us next week, not for more of the same, but for more of the different.

01:34:41.000 Until then, thank you, Simon Jordan.

01:34:42.000 Pleasure.

01:34:43.000 Nice to be here.

01:34:44.000 Until next time, because surely there will be a next time.

01:34:46.000 There's so much more to cover.

01:34:47.000 I want to come back and learn some more words.

01:34:50.000 Not just words.

01:34:51.000 How to construct an argument, Simon.

01:34:53.000 How to open your mind.

01:34:54.000 How to stay loyal to your roots.

01:34:56.000 How to use your power to galvanise a new movement.

01:34:59.000 How to listen to platitudes.

01:35:00.000 They're not platitudes!

01:35:02.000 These are the roaring anthems of a new and emergent movement.

01:35:07.000 A bowel movement.

01:35:08.000 Until next time, stay free.

01:35:19.000 Switch on.

Stay Free - Russel Brand - June 23, 2023

PUTIN'S NUKE THREAT! | Plus, Simon Jordan on Money In Sport - #153 - Stay Free With Russell Brand

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