In this episode of Trigonometry, writer and comedian Titania McGrath returns to the show for the 100th time to discuss the end of the year, the new year, and the things that have stood out to her this year.
00:00:30.000hello and welcome to trigonometry i'm francis foster i'm constantin kitchen and this is a
00:00:40.240show for you if you want honest conversations with fascinating people are brilliant and returning
00:00:45.840for the hundredth time today 103rd time 103rd time guest today is a comedian satirist writer
00:00:51.860the creator titania mcgrath brilliant a friend of the show who's been on as i say many many times
00:00:56.800andrew doyle welcome back to trigonometry it is a great pleasure to be here again
00:01:01.400as you say it's becoming interminable yes well you know what it's funny it's and it's a special
00:01:07.080moment for us because this is probably i think the fourth time we've had you on is that right
00:01:12.140at least plus we've done some live shows together as well but as we are recording this we're about
00:01:17.840to break through 200 000 subscribers on youtube which is a lot we're pleased and you were actually
00:01:23.700probably our first sort of big guest that did very well i remember being the i was the set in
00:01:29.300the second episode yeah yeah and back then you had a very different format it was very minimalist
00:01:34.040you know not none of this sort of elaborate set that you've got going on now yeah it was
00:01:37.800fucking atrocious me i liked it was that it was just the three of us around the table it looked
00:01:42.740like a seance yeah spotlight it had that sort of eerie quality which i miss in a way yeah he's
00:01:49.460lost weight i've lost hair we've all moved on yeah everything changes it's all for the good
00:01:54.000it's all good so for the good but listen man it's good to have you back uh with the reason we thought
00:01:58.620we'd get you back on is you know it's been an interesting year to say the least a lot has been
00:02:03.160going on uh and uh you know we we spent obviously the whole year talking about it in a serious way
00:02:08.800with a lot of people but we just thought it's been such an absolute i i nearly said the word
00:02:14.280shit fuck i don't know why cluster whatever whatever it's been uh we just thought we'd
00:02:18.940spend the last week sort of trying to cheer people up and have a light-hearted conversation about
00:02:22.520what's going on even though we will touch on the serious stuff as well so of all the things that
00:02:27.640have happened this year what has stood out for you as as the sort of epitome of 2020 it's very
00:02:33.080difficult to say because ultimately the year in of itself has been sort of the moment i think it's
00:02:38.780going to be very important moment historically because it's the moment when everything that
00:02:42.480we've been warning about for the last five six years has come to fruition so it's just been the
00:02:46.780complete um explosion of the culture war into the mainstream so whereas uh i've always and i know you
00:02:53.080have as well i've always had to deal with this accusation that you're talking about a straw man
00:02:58.360you're talking about something that doesn't exist you're talking about a few uh overzealous students
00:03:02.480on campus getting upset about certain things you're talking about a few overzealous columnists
00:03:06.720etc and now of course the evidence of everything we've been talking about is everywhere so so
00:03:12.080People have actually stopped saying that to me now. It's not sustainable anymore. So all of those elements of the kind of postmodern social justice movement or ideology or whatever you want to call it has now just completely broken through. And it's not really a matter of these things bubbling under the surface anymore. It's just a matter of acknowledging that they are out there front and centre. And now it's a case of what do we do about it?
00:03:37.180so i think when it comes to pinpointing something from the year it's very very difficult i think i
00:03:42.260think what's but what's quite interesting is is seeing how seeing how that change has become
00:03:48.280actuated if you go back to january if you think about the story in january when when over 300
00:03:53.000guardian staff members signed a petition against suzanne moore at the guardian because they
00:03:58.480perceived something she'd written was was um was transphobic and i think this actually this was
00:04:03.400this in february anyway it was back near the start of the year and uh you know that now i mean back
00:04:09.020then people were saying this is ridiculous i can't believe this is happening now that would be seen
00:04:12.780as just well that's completely normal that's completely standard there's such has been
00:04:16.660the the sort of transition uh from a relatively sane society to this pseudo reality that we now
00:04:22.880occupy so it's it's it's a weird one and andrew how much of uh of that is due to social media the
00:04:29.520fact that we're cooped up in our houses and we tend to be mainlining twitter into our eyeballs
00:04:34.100i don't know i mean this is the thing i'm not i'm not an anthropologist or a i'm not in a position
00:04:40.420to say why all this has happened a lot of people have speculated that there's been this as you say
00:04:44.260kind of pressure cooker environment and that early in the year because everyone was cooped up under
00:04:48.280lockdown this is why after the george floyd moment uh the explosion happened this is why people were
00:04:53.640out there rioting uh this is why everything went so insane so quickly it so if there is a
00:05:00.240psychological reasoning behind it then then i i i find that persuasive but i'm probably not in a
00:05:07.340position uh to make the judgment as to its validity but yeah i think that's i think that's
00:05:13.180true i'm always wrestling with this idea of should i just get off social media and then
00:05:17.020but i i mean i sort of depend on it for what i do um and and the problem isn't so much that
00:05:23.340i mean you're absolutely right what is it it's 80 of the country are not on are not on twitter
00:05:28.480and and the people who are on twitter i think it's something like only five to ten percent of
00:05:32.700the people who do most of the tweets right so it's it's a twitter and social media generally
00:05:37.180such a small uh minority that's why so many people just don't know about this stuff but
00:05:42.900the problem is that now it's very clear that that the social media discourse is in is driving the
00:05:49.280rest of it so so stuff that last year we would have heard from um the most overzealous blue check
00:05:57.840academics on twitter is now being parroted by sadiq khan say or people in parliament or
00:06:04.140or you know the sort of mainstream voices or the headmaster of eton or whatever you know so
00:06:08.620so that's the problem it it's it wouldn't matter if we could just disregard the whole of social
00:06:14.660media and just say oh look they're nutcases they're insane they're they are and there's
00:06:17.960there is that element of of what ricky gervais talks about like being able to see you know it's
00:06:22.840like being exposed to the scrawlings on the toilet wall now that's what that's what it is it's just
00:06:26.620it's all there for for you to see the problem is that the scrawlings on the toilet wall never
00:06:32.300directed popular discourse before never never never migrated into parliament and into education
00:06:38.940and into the the media and into journalism and all the rest of it so that's the that's the really
00:06:44.280dangerous thing now and i don't know how you reverse that really yeah well we're keeping a
00:06:48.360light already at the top of the show so that's great andrew did you yeah did you want this to
00:06:52.900be a bit more frivolous and flippant no no i'm just joking me uh that was my way of injecting
00:06:58.360a bit of levity into it but you know i was wondering one of the accusations i think all
00:07:02.640three of us to some extent have always got is that uh like we're delighted that this is happening
00:07:08.600we're so happy because it validates what we've been saying it it gives us a job it's like all
00:07:15.400of that stuff and i i can't tell you how how desperately frustrated i am that everything
00:07:22.000you and i and francis and everybody else has been saying is is turning out to be correct
00:07:26.060oh i know i agree i want to be wrong i want to be wrong i want it to go away uh you know i mean
00:07:31.620when people say that to me i just think well that's really weird because my job never depended
00:07:35.260on this you know i've i've always uh written plays and articles and and comedy and and in the
00:07:42.900comedic sense i've always mocked the stuff in society that i perceive to be ridiculous which
00:07:47.580is what we all do and this is the stuff that i currently perceive to be ridiculous i'm obviously
00:07:51.780going to talk about this the idea that that this is what is sustaining my livelihood is isn't true
00:07:56.980uh for one thing uh that is not to say i don't earn money out of the comedy that i write i do
00:08:02.960but if it was if this wasn't going on i'd be mocking something else and earning money that
00:08:06.360way you know that's what it's it's a very weird accusation isn't it that you're you're cashing in
00:08:11.380by doing what you do for a living that would mean that absolutely everyone is cashing in whenever
00:08:16.400they accept a paycheck it doesn't make any sense um i would love to i would love for this to go
00:08:21.480away it'd be it'd be absolutely wonderful if the titani mcgrath character was redundant it would
00:08:26.720be a dream come true i want all of this stuff to stop i want uh society to get back to just being
00:08:32.300sane again that would be that would be great but it's not it's not far from it it's not it isn't
00:08:42.100have we as rod little uh quoted many many times have we reached peak wank yet andrew is that what
00:08:48.980said yeah um uh he didn't say we have it's just a term that he used yeah uh so what you're really
00:08:57.620asking me is can it get any worse yes yeah and i know the answer to this but i feel it's important
00:09:02.260that we do it anyway well you know the obvious truth is yes it can um and it probably will um
00:09:09.220i think you know we've seen over the last week or so uh the law commission trying to push for
00:09:16.000greater hate speech regulation which would include uh criminalizing things that are said in the home
00:09:21.040it would include um a policing offensive comedy uh the the thing that they keep mentioning in
00:09:27.820the document is the uh the the cartoons of muhammad for instance so so satire would be
00:09:33.940so it's going the other way you know what what what all of this stuff should be doing is like
00:09:38.120a wake-up call and people should be saying okay well let's abolish hate speech laws let's let's
00:09:42.560just repeal all of that stuff let's get back to liberal values let's do all but we're not going
00:09:46.400the other way and it's you know everyone got a bit crazy when humza youssef and the the smp
00:09:51.360started pushing their hate crime bill through which they are still uh proceeding with and uh
00:09:56.020but there was some consolation that well that's just scotland but now the law commission want
00:10:00.020that to be rolled out to england and wales as well um so obviously if that kind of stuff gets
00:10:06.820enacted then things are going to get a lot worse a lot quicker i mean people were very shocked
00:10:11.020at the start of the year when uh it was reported that 120 000 non-crime hate incidents had been
00:10:17.500recorded by police over the last five years and that is a shocking figure uh well just imagine
00:10:21.940once if this law commission's proposals are taken on board it's going to be a lot lot worse that
00:10:27.360kind of thing so yeah i i mean i'm not the thing is i try to be optimistic you can hear the sirens
00:10:32.920in the background they're coming for andrew right now yeah they probably are i mean i know look i
00:10:38.280don't want to be i don't want to catastrophize that's the first thing so i don't i don't like
00:10:42.560talking about the idea that we're in this utter crisis and we're going to end up in the gulags
00:10:46.940and all the rest of it because i don't think that's true i think we're still in that a precarious
00:10:52.140position where we can see the fissures breaking in the barricades that we put up to protect our
00:10:57.580civilization we can see those fissures widening and and what you always have to do in every
00:11:03.240subsequent generation is is is defend free speech anew and defend liberal values anew it's not
00:11:08.940something that can just be taken for granted so um so i think it's very important that we do
00:11:13.600without catastrophizing if possible um uh and and also i think when you do that you give ammunition
00:11:20.760to the people who say that this is all just a concocted thing of the right you know um so i
00:11:26.480think let's acknowledge that we're not living in a soviet style scenario at the moment um but
00:11:33.140we also need to be wary when it comes to these uh the this erosion of our our fundamental values
00:11:39.760and and rights so you know yes it can get worse in answer your question yes it probably will get
00:11:44.540worse and then hopefully in about 10 years time everyone will say god you remember all that stuff
00:11:49.020that was nuts wasn't it what happened and what would be even better is if the people who are
00:11:52.820the practitioners of cancel culture who deny its existence if in 10 15 years time they look at
00:11:59.080their own behavior and say i can't believe we we just lost our minds we just went all hysterical
00:12:03.580for a moment we started believing in all these invisible power structures we start we became
00:12:08.120religious for a while there and and now we've realized that you know all of that was was just
00:12:13.900folly i that's my hope it's interesting the the extent to which it's got though because you would
00:12:20.640probably have seen there's a story about a black boy who was sent a video of his classmate
00:12:28.460singing along to a rap song using the n-word and he saved it for three years waited until she
00:12:37.300applied to university and then released it for maximum impact and she got her place at that
00:12:44.060university cancelled and it so i think one of the concerns for me and where i agree with you about
00:12:49.880it getting worse is that this is now being embedded into young people's psyches where they
00:12:55.260think this sort of behavior is normal and you talk about comparisons with the soviet union
00:12:59.120i mean obviously i grew up there you know the story of pavlik morozov the the boy who reported
00:13:04.400his his father to the authorities it's very reminiscent i mean the the i'm not saying there
00:13:09.880are gulags but the way of thinking is very much this no i'm not denying that at all i think you're
00:13:14.300absolutely right and it's it these the tactics of cancel culture are from they are based on a
00:13:19.680totalitarian instinct um that particular story is very troubling because of course it's so
00:13:25.740calculated isn't it and then of course and then it was endorsed by the new york times and then
00:13:29.900you have people uh chipping in and saying well this is good because it means there's one less
00:13:34.260racist at university who you know it's like someone is condemned for uh something they said
00:13:40.660when they're 15 and there's no redemption it's it's it's not about redemption it's about it's
00:13:45.440about just constant punishment throughout your life you are you know so yeah all of that is
00:13:49.440utterly reminiscent and you're right to to point out the echoes because that's a really good way
00:13:55.480uh to to expose it and to explain why we need to guard against it i absolutely think that's
00:14:00.440no i'm not i'm not denying that you should make the comparison the comparison is true i mean the
00:14:04.540entire social justice movement is essentially totalitarian and revisionist that's that is what
00:14:10.140it is that's what the print the you know i mean this is why you get the odd denial of history and
00:14:15.420i'll give you a very very clear example of this which pertains to us i think so you'll have
00:14:19.360noticed there's a lot of articles and writers for the guardian now denying that the word woke was
00:14:25.640ever used to describe this movement the social justice ideology they just say this is a word
00:14:30.900that's been concocted by right-wingers and the conservatives to smear us right but you go back
00:14:36.160to 2018, when Nika Burns gave that opening speech to the Edinburgh Festival Fringe, in which she
00:14:41.180talked about how she was looking forward to the new woke world of comedy. She was saying she was
00:14:45.820looking forward to the next generation of woke comedians who are going to set the parameters for
00:14:49.260what is acceptable to talk about. No one, no one who reported on that said, hold a minute, isn't
00:14:54.840that word woke just a conservative word? No, everyone knew that that's just the word that
00:14:59.360they used to describe themselves. The Guardian repeatedly talked about wokeness and the woke
00:15:04.920world and all the rest of it in its own articles without irony. And the good thing is we've got
00:15:09.540the internet that can prove it. But they just gaslight everyone to use their own term. They
00:15:14.380just are now determined to say that it was a word they never used at all. I think what's actually
00:15:18.780happened is because people like you and I mocked the term throughout 2019, now the word is used
00:15:25.420by some as a slur and a smear. So now they pretend that they didn't use it themselves. So they just
00:15:30.140completely and they just say this they just say what is palpably not true in the way that cnn can
00:15:35.980report can have a reporter with with the city burning behind him saying that these are largely
00:15:41.000peaceful protests or the bbc can tell you that a protest in which 29 police officers were injured
00:15:46.360is mostly peaceful so you know it's the very definition of gaslighting which is that term
00:15:51.600they gave to us it's the term that they accuse other people of doing even their accusation of
00:15:56.500gaslighting is a form of gaslighting because they themselves are the ones that do it it's just this
00:16:00.300i'm really fascinated by this complete uh this complete failure to engage with reality to push
00:16:08.420a false reality when the evidence is there before our eyes and they expect people just to go along
00:16:14.000with it that's how little they regard uh humanity they think that humanity is so stupid and malleable
00:16:20.660that they can just flat out deny reality you know in the way donald trump used to he'll say i didn't
00:16:26.140say that and then you go on youtube and there he is saying it it's like this is infantile stuff and
00:16:31.840i think it's something that i'm hoping in 2021 everyone will kind of get over or at least have
00:16:36.180the courage to say that's not true what you said just isn't true you know but the fight back has
00:16:42.480started isn't it if you look at for instance with brexit the brexit negotiations have finally come
00:16:48.340to an end we've signed the deal we've now officially lift the european union surely
00:16:54.2602021 we're going to see more of a pushback against this maybe but i don't think they're
00:16:59.780going to let the brexit thing go uh because again they're doing the gaslighting thing they're saying
00:17:04.700that nobody knew what they were voted for there was no political debate nobody ever discussed the
00:17:09.040customs union nobody ever discussed the single market again you can go to youtube you can check
00:17:14.220the biggest debates of the time the one that was in wembley arena for god's sake where within
00:17:18.040five minutes they're talking about what it would mean to leave the customs union in single market
00:17:21.260you know all that so the they won't accept it i don't think um so i i don't believe it it is
00:17:30.120the end of it i think you've you've started the the rejoin eu hashtag is now trending uh people
00:17:35.960going on about gammons again uh people uh pushing the idea that you are looking rather gamony today
00:17:42.140i must say andrew am i looking a bit gamony yeah you are you know this is so offensive to me because
00:17:47.220you know i'm a vegetarian very very upsetting very upsetting thing um yeah you know no i don't
00:17:54.080think they are gonna let it go and they're going to cling to this myth that this was all about race
00:18:00.760they're going to cling to the myth that you know it's it's it's it's very interesting isn't it that
00:18:04.660this comes predominantly from middle class people who don't know any working class people and don't
00:18:08.360know any leave voters so it's very easy i had a conversation just before christmas with someone
00:18:13.340i hadn't met before and she was saying to me she was utterly shocked because she started going on
00:18:17.120about how you know people voted brexit because they were racist and i said well i voted brexit
00:18:21.280and she was genuinely shocked she said well i've never met anyone who voted leave and she was and
00:18:26.140then we got to talking and by the end of the conversation she almost came around to my way
00:18:30.100of thinking because because you know they just haven't they've just willingly blocked their ears
00:18:36.900to the reasons why the genuine reasons why people voted and substituted it for this very simplistic
00:18:42.780reductive good versus evil thing which does make it it's an easier way of thinking you know i
00:18:48.500understand it you know we our brains are built that way that we always go for the easiest way
00:18:53.320of thinking but it's it's lazy um they're not going to let that go i mean i've already seen
00:18:57.460people talking still about this idea that people wanted an empire but you know the people who
00:19:02.440voted leave wanted their empire back i i mean i couldn't i couldn't find someone who thinks that
00:19:07.260if i tried i wouldn't know where to begin where would you find someone who thinks that that it's
00:19:11.160just not a thing that those you know you could probably find one or two nutcases and i'm sure
00:19:16.120the bbc have done their best to find those nutcases and interview them because it promotes
00:19:19.800that narrative but it's really not a thing and yet you had vince cable you know a major politician
00:19:25.800giving a talk where he talked about how the brexit vote was because people missed the days of white
00:19:30.900faces and blue passports and a pink map you know the empire map and it's like nobody thinks this
00:19:37.240and this just goes to show how isolated they are in their own fantasies it's just lots of people
00:19:42.480talking to each other reaffirming each other's false beliefs false view of reality and that
00:19:48.280can't be sustainable can it i mean you you can only live that way for so long you know you've
00:19:53.660got to you've got to you've got to confront reality at some point and i think that's going
00:19:58.180to be our that's going to be our battle really is is it is finding a way to to to guide people
00:20:05.320back from their fantasy world uh and into the real world and i don't know you know i'm not sure
00:20:10.660how you do that uh but that's going to be that that's going to be the big uh the big battle of
00:20:15.7802021 i believe constantin how do you like your things printed big like my ego and that's why
00:20:26.720you should use print it big 3d what they actually do is help you print tabletop gaming pieces
00:20:34.020short-run manufacturing parts and even statues from your favorite movies and tv shows so you can
00:20:39.680get ned stark without his head on they also make cosplay costumes car parts and weapons but not
00:20:47.320real ones obviously and the wonderful people that they are they also make free prosthetics for kids
00:20:52.600what virtue signalers on top of that they also do individual pieces prototypes and short-run
00:21:30.300One of the big battles that I think is going to happen in 2021 is we've touched at it, well, some people more than others, but certainly whether the BBC has any sort of sustainable future.
00:21:44.920What are your opinions on it? And do you think that we should be funding it publicly?
00:21:49.360It's really difficult. I mean, you know, I think that over the, you know, it's very difficult to be politically impartial as a broadcaster.
00:21:58.540And I think, and I think it's very hard, you know, someone like Andrew Neil is utterly brilliant at this, because he will always challenge whoever he's interviewing, irrespective of his own personal beliefs. And that's what the that should be the sort of ideal. And, and, you know, they will be damned whatever they do, you know, they've been called, they've said that there's people say, accuse them of having an institutional left wing bias. People also accuse them of having an institutional right wing bias, for instance, against Jeremy Corbyn, you know, so, so that's very hard.
00:22:27.120but i think what is and i so i have a kind of sympathy in a way um uh when it comes to that
00:22:32.980because i just don't know how you fully monitor that but i think what is indisputable is that
00:22:37.400they are systemically woke i think there's no getting around that that and that is so built in
00:22:41.940um and woke isn't about a left right thing it's not um and and so it's it's so built into every
00:22:49.240into the way they think the way they perceive i mean i just i scrolled through some bbc article
00:22:55.160the other day and they were they were spelling female f-e-m-x-l-e and and you know it's it's
00:23:01.060like well the very fact that you do that and you don't even question that is is is evidence of this
00:23:06.420kind of systemic wokeness so i don't know how they unpick that i don't know how they would begin
00:23:13.280to do it um i think it's just too built in you know i've had enough conversations with people
00:23:18.620who work at the bbc and this is not to say that everyone that works in the bbc feels this way but
00:23:22.640everyone at the bbc knows that they have to toe the line on this they they really do oh i've had
00:23:27.540i've had a situation where i was on a bbc show as as you know as you and i always are the token
00:23:33.820fucking what you know evil bigger whatever it is uh to be for yourself and and well but but what i
00:23:40.980mean is they basically get you on to say the thing that a lot of them think but no one is supposed to
00:23:45.620say at the bbc and so you i constantly find myself in this position where i am asked onto a show
00:23:52.000and on on on camera i'm asked to defend positions which are presented as unreasonable and weird and
00:23:59.640whatever antagonistic whereas off camera the producer is saying to me actually you know what
00:24:05.620i you know i don't agree with this you know that or whatever so there is that conflict at the heart
00:24:11.820of it and i'm not someone who particularly wants the bbc to be defunded but on the other hand i do
00:24:16.840agree with you i think yes on economics they may not be particularly left or right uh or may even
00:24:23.260lean to the right who knows but when it comes to this woke stuff they are very systemically woke
00:24:27.980and how how you unpick that i don't know but maybe we should broaden it out to the media more
00:24:32.020generally because i think one of the things that has happened this year is you know i think the
00:24:37.800war in iraq and and mps expenses those were things that massively undermined people's confidence in
00:24:44.240in the institutions of the establishment like the media and government but i think this year
00:24:49.660has been particularly bad for the media because there have been so many polarizing events which
00:24:54.720they have just shown their true colors on i think that's it that they just have to really maintain
00:25:00.080a rigorous high standard you know when do you remember when the uh there was that gathering
00:25:04.340the brexit gathering i think it was trafalgar square and it was a bbc representative who was
00:25:08.960who was uh focusing on whiteness and the white the whiteness of the crowd and that kind of thing
00:25:13.440john snow sorry well no that was the channel four example right oh right but it also happened with
00:25:19.260the bbc it was it was a similar thing and then and every time that happened of course they don't say
00:25:24.280that at an extinction rebellion gathering which which is basically like a white rally you know
00:25:29.720so they don't do that then and and those moments you see will always be seized upon uh by by the
00:25:39.880critics of the bbc and rightly so and it makes their position unsustainable so i think always
00:25:46.240with the media it's about holding yourself to incredibly high standards and and that will be
00:25:50.500the way the way through it and not saying things that are palpably false for instance not editorial
00:25:56.040izing as we saw with with news night you know just just being really sharp on that and making
00:26:01.600sure that that doesn't happen you know there's a reason why people don't take channel four news
00:26:04.640seriously anymore because it because because it is effectively just a mouthpiece uh for the social
00:26:10.880justice ideology and and so people don't really you know i mean all the people i know who used
00:26:15.180to read the guardian they do still but they don't really take it that seriously now and and so people
00:26:21.240are shooting themselves in the foot so yeah i mean and it is a worry i talked to peter bogosin about
00:26:26.820this recently he used the phrase the legitimation crisis and this idea of the legitimation crisis
00:26:32.420is this concept that where we no longer have any faith in authority figures and that can be the
00:26:37.340media it can be politicians but it can also be academic academics and academia and all of that
00:26:42.020is happening uh concurrently so we're losing faith in all of these major institutions at the same
00:26:47.360time and and that's a very very fundamental and dangerous uh precarious situation to be in because
00:26:55.280it it means that you do get this destabilization of reality that's where we are now and and
00:27:00.600actually it's really important to have i mean i'm all for a public broadcaster that holds the
00:27:05.020powerful to account which of course is what the the bbc is is meant to do and so i am troubled
00:27:09.820um when when it fails maybe maybe it fails to be impartial but more than that it fails to be
00:27:16.140perceived as being impartial and that that the perception is absolutely everything you know
00:27:21.180um and we saw this in america donald trump very successfully cast aspersions on the on the on the
00:27:27.460media but it wasn't helped by the fact that the media often did represent what he said so the
00:27:33.740simple solution to that is just tell us the news right don't don't tell us what to think about the
00:27:39.180news all the time don't preach at us all the time just tell us what's happening and then we'll we'll
00:27:45.480do the rest but andrew isn't the problem that you've got this like you said this woke ideology
00:27:51.620is in all these media corporations but if the people in these corporations have this ideology
00:27:57.440you're never going to change it no but they like you said a lot of them don't you know i i think
00:28:03.380it's just the ones that do are terrifying i think that's all it is right so the people who will
00:28:09.720you know the people who you're nervous about speaking in the meeting with
00:28:13.840i i wrote an article about this recently before the lockdown and all the rest of it happened
00:28:18.360early in the year friend of mine was putting on a play and the director was extremely woke and
00:28:23.080extremely you know always looking for something to be offended by always calling out white
00:28:27.040privilege and toxic masculine and all this sort of stuff he said that he found himself treating her
00:28:32.400like uh like a dangerous dog insofar as because what you do is you're really careful not to upset
00:28:38.920it because it'll bite and and that's that's the way people behave around and i don't think i don't
00:28:43.920think a lot of the woke people know this about themselves how scary they are how people just
00:28:48.560shut up when they're around because they don't want to risk um being open god knows what this
00:28:53.660does to their relationships to their friendships um i think a lot of them might be quite turned on
00:28:59.740by that revelation andrew if i'm honest with you mate also just on another point um we treat
00:29:04.920dangerous dogs very differently in russia apparently you put them down right yeah yeah
00:29:09.460that's what we do that i'm not advocating for that to happen to woke people no well you know
00:29:13.700it's a very brutal race we we are more kind of compassionate over here um but i'm weak is a word
00:29:20.460you're looking for. You must all be put down. Do you watch problematic content online? Of course
00:29:32.020they do. They watch trigonometry. Many ISPs log your internet activity and sell that data on to
00:29:38.680other big tech companies or other advertising companies. I know that is why I use ExpressVPN
00:30:14.100stop handing over your personal data to isps and big tech companies which are just going to use it
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00:30:32.300i love it when you spell things out but it gets even better than that expressvpn are offering
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00:30:45.060but what i would say to return to the dog metaphor actually i'll give you a better example
00:30:51.800i was talking to a young comedian on the circuit this was last year
00:30:56.460a new comedian to the circuit and she said to me that she every week she goes to these open
00:31:03.200mic gigs and every week she has to go up to comedians afterwards and tell them what they
00:31:06.620shouldn't shouldn't have been joking about and she has to go up and berate them for the things
00:31:10.820that they've done and she said to me and and what was weird about this she said you've no idea how
00:31:15.060exhausting this is to me that i have to do this and i shouldn't have to do this you should be
00:31:19.240helping people like you should be standing up and seriously and i'm surprised no one's no one's
00:31:24.040punched her you know like this isn't like this is incredible this kind of but it was a sincere
00:31:28.560expression of exasperation why can't the whole world just change to suit what i want why can't
00:31:35.480that just happen you know it's it's it's this general infantile mentality that suggests a real
00:31:42.080lack of education there's something gone wrong in our educational system that that people think like
00:31:47.360this that they act like babies um and and scary babies they're terrifying babies you know that i
00:31:54.200can't think of anything more frightening than someone coming up to me after a gig and saying
00:31:57.180you shouldn't have said this and here look i've made a list of the things you should have said
00:31:59.960but doing it from the position of valor and virtue i mean this is like this is nuts so
00:32:05.680yeah i think i think and that's why to go back to the bbc point is that even if it's a minority of
00:32:13.280people at the bbc it doesn't matter because everyone at the bbc knows they're not getting
00:32:17.900the promotion if they don't toe this line everyone knows that everyone knows that programs aren't
00:32:23.700going to be commissioned if they mock uh the social justice movement in any way that's not
00:32:27.500going to happen um you know you have insiders at the bbc telling the guardian well there are no
00:32:33.500funny anti-woke comics well i don't think i mean i think i think all comic all comics are anti-woke
00:32:40.820really aren't they all comics mock the prevailing orthodoxies and you know um i mean all that person
00:32:46.300was saying is they don't find it funny because it upsets them i mean that's fine i i wouldn't
00:32:49.460expect them to find it funny but it's just simply not true what they're saying and you know the
00:32:53.500idea that that there's a meritocracy when it comes to comedies is is utterly ludicrous um
00:32:58.220so it is ideological so if you're in if you're working within those circumstances of course
00:33:03.700you're going to shut up because you don't want the viper to turn on you it's just it's it just
00:33:07.960makes sense so how you combat that i think the only way is is a kind of a collective courage
00:33:15.680when everyone just says what they think and we don't get this preference falsification where
00:33:22.040everyone's just saying what they think other people want to hear or they're saying the things
00:33:26.140that they think won't get them in trouble if everyone just says what they honestly believe
00:33:31.140then i mean imagine what society would be like it'd be amazing if there's no jobs anyway so you
00:33:37.160can't lose your job well that's true that's true you know just it's horrible isn't it in a way
00:33:41.520because uh in order to affect this change you have to accept that a lot of people are going to fall
00:33:45.600you know a lot of people are going to end up fired if they do if they take my advice a lot of people
00:33:50.100get fired right but but maybe you have to just maybe that just has to happen it's very easy for
00:33:56.940me to say isn't it because i well you know uh something i always mention to francis is that
00:34:01.700this is what alexander solzhenitsyn talked about in the gulag archipelago he said that if ordinary
00:34:05.780people had stood up and resisted minor tyrannies as they happened then the major tyrannies wouldn't
00:34:12.320have been possible yeah um but yeah sorry go ahead no um go with alexander solzhenitsyn
00:34:19.660oh yeah fucking mate but uh one thing that i wanted to ask is look we touch on this again
00:34:26.300and again and we've touched on it with various guests well i've got a friend he's in academia
00:34:31.620he was like do you think i should come out and say something and he's he's right at the beginning
00:34:36.220of his career as an academic and my honest advice is no coward why would you sacrifice your career
00:34:42.740why would you make yourself effectively unemployable because of your beliefs if you know nobody around
00:34:48.880you is going to speak up and say anything when when when we got cancelled nobody on the in the
00:34:53.820in the club even people who messaged me privately spoke up because if you don't then this will never
00:35:00.020end i suppose is the answer to that um yeah i mean it's hard it's just look because i'm speaking
00:35:08.440as someone who has never been censored i i i've never been cancelled i say what i want and and
00:35:14.840actually part of my job now depends on saying what i want so it's really easy for me i don't
00:35:19.200have a boss who's going to fire me for something that i've said you know um so yeah you could you
00:35:25.600could accuse me of of that and you would be right to to do so but i just don't think i just look i've
00:35:33.080got a teacher friend who's going through this right now he's on probation at this new school
00:35:36.520right so he's got a year's probation and um a year's probation so sorry that's a teaching term
00:35:42.220which basically you're you're being watched for the first year of your employment to make sure
00:35:45.400you don't put it wrong basically yeah and um it's not a bad term it's not like the term it's not like
00:35:49.840criminal it's not like it's not what you're thinking um but he's not if he so he's being
00:35:55.260told you know you're gonna have to talk about white privilege teach kids about white privilege
00:35:58.580all of this sort of um uh robin d'angelo style stuff you know he's even been told to read
00:36:03.520white fragility by robin d'angelo stuff like this so if you if in his position he's he raises an
00:36:09.580objection he's convinced that he won't have his contract renewed that might be true but here's
00:36:15.680the alternative maybe most people are secretly thinking the way that he is thinking and maybe
00:36:20.580if he were to say something other people might say something and then maybe you get this kind
00:36:24.440of tipping point where everyone just says yeah actually the emperor does have no clothes on
00:36:28.380so and it does take that even in the most horrendous of circumstances and i've used this
00:36:34.440analogy before but i think it's it's exactly right if you take what happened in salem massachusetts
00:36:39.040with the witch trials now there was a point where anyone who cast any kind of skepticism on the
00:36:44.180girl's testimony on abigail williams and all the others all the girls who were saying they could
00:36:47.680see spirits and devils and all the rest of it anyone who did cast dispersions on that or just
00:36:52.140say this isn't real the girls then turned their fingers on them and accused them and they got
00:36:57.760hanged you know and ultimately what is it 1918-19 people were hanged in in in salem but there came
00:37:03.400a point where too many people started saying no this isn't real this is a myth and the reason and
00:37:09.260they couldn't hang everyone and the real the real turning point was when i think the governor's wife
00:37:13.460was accused by the girls and at that point of course people felt a bit more empowered so maybe
00:37:18.240it will be when this stuff starts affecting the people on their own side you know or something
00:37:23.920like that i mean already you're getting this kind of this kind of uh change but i'm getting more
00:37:29.380messages than ever from people within either the comedy community or the arts saying oh this is
00:37:34.760going a bit far you know i've always been on board with this woke stuff but it's going a bit far now
00:37:38.180i'm a bit nervous about it now and i think you will get a salem tipping point where everyone
00:37:44.600just says and it does have to start with a few sacrificial lambs unfortunately that you know
00:37:52.040it does i don't there was a little blint in his eye and as he said that but uh you you talk about
00:37:57.600the the governor's wife andrew one of the interesting things for me that's happened i
00:38:01.500think a lot of the people who uh you know boris johnson said lent him their vote and i include
00:38:07.920myself in that i used to be a lib dem voter voted label the previous election yeah for the first
00:38:12.900time ever in my life i voted for the tories and that was mainly because i thought uh well i even
00:38:18.200though i voted remain i thought brexit had to be had to be done because you're a democrat right
00:38:21.980Right. Yeah. Unusual, given my background, but nonetheless. But I thought Brexit needed to be done. So democracy was important. I thought that Corbyn was useless, obviously. And the third thing I thought was, look, Boris Johnson has hinted that on this cultural stuff, you know, he's gonna be, you know, he's not, I didn't think he was going to be some anti-woke warlord, but I didn't think he'd be particularly woke.
00:38:47.120and my sense is both to use your metaphor the government and the government's governor's wife
00:38:52.080are actually sort of woke or or on on that on the path to that yeah although you know you get these
00:38:59.900sort of moments don't you like with liz truss's speak yeah the other day or or kemi badenock also
00:39:05.680but i feel like that every now and again they come out and sort of throw a steak to
00:39:09.880to the dogs but the rest of the time it's it's a it's a meager diet yeah it is and i remember
00:39:16.060during the height of the the black lives matter stuff and i was and all the critical race theory
00:39:19.780stuff i spoke to someone within uh you know within the government who said the trouble is no no one
00:39:25.320can say anything you know because it would it would have to be a person of color for a start
00:39:28.960to say anything and and and and and so few people understand what's going on and everyone's very
00:39:33.620nervous about it understandably eventually it became i mean kemi badenock did stand up and say
00:39:37.900and actually all she did was reiterate the point that that um that you have to be impartial when
00:39:43.120it comes to teaching politics in schools but of course because they hadn't associated critical
00:39:46.800race theory but it is such an essentially political uh discipline so um so that you
00:39:52.000know that shouldn't be a controversial thing but you're right like yeah i mean i think a lot of
00:39:57.080people did lend their vote to uh johnson for the same reason i think brexit was the big thing though
00:40:01.460but i think those other concerns were were there as well that maybe that the tories would stand up
00:40:07.520well if anyone was going to stand up against this this ideology surely it would be the tories but
00:40:12.160of course it's so pervasive now its tentacles have reached out so far uh that it's it's it's
00:40:18.860in the Tory party as as well so you know which means that we don't really have an option I mean
00:40:25.480can we really rely on the occasional victory can we really rely on the occasional speech by Liz
00:40:31.080Truss or someone like that is that sufficient if the cabinet itself is is is is too cowardly
00:40:36.920to stand up to this stuff? I mean, I don't know.
00:40:40.680But Andrew, going back to The Crucible,
00:40:43.860which is a brilliant play for those of you who haven't read it.
00:40:47.160At the end of the play, because I used to teach it,
00:40:50.320John Proctor says, you must leave me my name.
00:40:53.060It's the only thing that I have. It's my name.
00:40:55.520But isn't that what people are worried about
00:44:28.860Do you think that the lack of representation of the cultural concerns that people like
00:44:36.020us i think uh voice and represent will eventually lead to a political movement and and that will be
00:44:42.200the only way that any of this happens i hope so yeah i mean i'm all for that i think as many new
00:44:47.020political parties as as possible uh as many voices in in parliament uh pushing back against
00:44:53.200this stuff it's not even about winning the general election it's about making those voices heard
00:44:57.980and not just having an opposition that just echoes what the what the current government says
00:45:02.580when it comes to these particular issues obviously they have they have many points of
00:45:05.900disagreement but when it comes to this stuff they're all in lockstep um and i think that
00:45:09.460that will be the case i don't have any uh illusions that we can transcend the two-party system but i
00:45:14.700think electoral reform would help if we can somehow get proportional representation and maybe if we
00:45:19.640could get um other smaller parties rising up i think the sdp is basically right on everything
00:45:25.080and i think it would be great and i would have voted for them if there was a candidate standing
00:45:29.100in my constituency but there wasn't uh so i spoiled my ballot but i think if we could get
00:45:33.620someone like that uh into parliament then then uh then yeah you would get uh sensible adult
00:45:40.100discussion restored i think so um i don't know about a revolt i think if any revolt has to come
00:45:45.700it has to come through the ballot box you know if you want to live in a civilized democracy that's
00:45:49.000what's that's what's got to happen agreed you know so hopefully yeah i think that'd be great i mean
00:45:54.220i'm not getting into politics god god forbid you know i would never uh consider that you should do
00:45:58.940it why don't you start a trigonometry party you know i think the trigonometry party why not
00:46:04.040oh mate i think we get enough hate as it is mate i'd love to see you in parliament yeah i'd love
00:46:11.360to see you in parliament right the thing is right yeah you know you can do that what about them
00:46:16.340fucking pedos yeah i think it happened like glenda jackson became a very successful politician you
00:46:21.380know you can be uh you can do this you can you can follow her route what do you think go on
00:46:26.160go on francis no absolutely not one of you has got to step up because i'm not going to do it
00:46:31.660you know i think i think being a politician is terrible because firstly everyone obviously
00:46:35.360uh that well particularly if you've been a comedian because you know anyone who's a
00:46:40.020politician the media are going to dig into everything you've ever said and as comedians
00:46:43.060we've said a lot of offensive stuff inadvertently actually because i'm not particularly offensive
00:46:46.660comedian but you could take some lines from my stand-up and and certainly paint a grim picture
00:46:51.100um as you could with any stand-up uh so but also i think it's just towing the party line i couldn't
00:46:56.980bear it i really feel for those politicians when everyone they're on question time or something
00:47:00.460and they can't answer a question because they know that their their honest answer would would
00:47:05.000go against the party whip and so therefore that you see them squirming and i think it's really
00:47:09.040it's an unpleasant thing to watch and i wouldn't want to participate unless you just go full trump
00:47:14.380and double down on everything and just be completely unapologetic yeah gain a massive fan
00:47:19.180base i'm all for this i want as i said earlier i want politicians just to say what they think
00:47:23.540because at the moment all we're ever doing is trying to fathom what they're secretly thinking
00:47:27.640and trying to trying to work out that's impossible for one thing you can't actually do it and it's
00:47:32.660just a waste of everyone's time so if if everyone just said what they honestly thought then we could
00:47:37.900we'd know who we were voting for and we could we could elect the people that represent our values
00:47:42.560and that it would be i know this this sounds like a really shocking system right but it's so basic
00:47:48.420it's so basic do you think everybody should be a little bit more like andrew adonis
00:47:53.200more like andrew adonis do you not follow him on twitter mate he is the best account he's way
00:48:01.080better than titani i'm sorry to say this but look you know i love you i think you're a great writer
00:48:05.280but andrew adonis is a much much higher quality of troll on the internet i know but look people
00:48:11.680People like that. Andrew Adonis and Priyamvada Gopal at Cambridge and David Lammy and all the professional trolls on Twitter. Right.
00:48:19.940But they know what they're doing. And when you talk to them, you know, I was recently trolled by this academic.
00:48:25.140I can't remember which university he was at. And it was like it was like some truculent teenager had got drunk, had raided his parents vodka cabinet and was like it was just incredibly aggressive and and rude and weird and not listening and all the rest of it.
00:48:40.140and then i heard him on radio four talking to melvin bragg and he was really polite and
00:48:44.520seemed quite nice and i bet the same is true of like of lammy and gopol and and and yes adonis
00:48:51.360who you've met i'm sure these are really nice people and i bet i could sit down with any of
00:48:55.700them have a sensible conversation but as soon as i left they'd be on twitter saying oh that scum
00:48:59.200nazi doyle it's you know that's and that's a weirdness there's a weirdness about it there's
00:49:04.200a kind of performativity about it i have no doubt that sometimes adonis send puts a tweet out there
00:49:09.860thinks i don't really i don't think that i'm just gonna i'm just gonna stay after the brexit deal
00:49:15.680he went on twitter and said i think the best policy for the united kingdom is to rejoin the
00:49:20.800european union immediately you cannot you cannot get better than that we've got right we've got to
00:49:26.180give him the benefit of the doubt and assume he's lying right because because otherwise he's just
00:49:31.080being stupid and i don't think he is stupid so i think no he's a lovely man he's a lovely man
00:49:35.780lovely as i say we interviewed him on the show we both voted romaine it was fun but as i say there's
00:49:41.980a level of deludedness about that that i can't believe that he actually is that deluded but
00:49:47.220most people are just nice aren't they most people are just nice when you when you when you meet them
00:49:50.940and talk to them um i bet even the most vicious trolling you get if you spoke to them they'd be
00:49:56.660they'd be just really nice and probably a bit embarrassed uh by what by what they said and i'm
00:50:02.000sure the same goes for these these kinds of these kinds of people um uh but yeah i mean yeah i think
00:50:08.120with adonis i could literally cut and paste some of his tweets and put them out as titania i've done
00:50:13.060that a few times from prominent uh sort of celebrity activists you know and uh it's it's
00:50:18.960always quite fun to do because i'm continually told that the stuff that she says is like a straw
00:50:23.160man and these people don't exist but this is why in the when i wrote the first book it's interspersed
00:50:27.980on every page with quotations from real life activists which are exactly the same as what
00:50:32.140titania is saying you know i'm trying to make the point that it is it is the same it is the same
00:50:36.660thing uh and and actually the accusation of straw manning is completely demonstrably false um uh you
00:50:43.120know i could put out some of adonis's tweets or lammy's tweets and you would say i've made that
00:50:46.420no one would actually say that well yeah it's actually a member of the house of lords who's
00:50:50.340who said that you know but do you not find it a little bit depressing using david lammy as an
00:50:55.240example. So Lammy roundabout 2011, you would say that he'd be very much a blue Labour acolyte.
00:51:00.720Those were the policies that he espoused, the policies that he supported and all the rest of
00:51:04.860it. And we've slowly seen him drift towards that extreme. We've seen people who are centre-right
00:51:10.180drift towards the other extreme. Do you think as a society, we're simply not going to get more and
00:51:14.480more polarised? Maybe. I mean, I hope not. I think, again, people went a bit mad. I mean,
00:51:24.560i'm really torn on this because i have essential optimism about humanity and the goodness of human
00:51:29.060beings but i also can see so much evidence from the past four years of the propensity for hysteria
00:51:34.940and there's no other word to describe it the stuff about brexit you know we our democracy is
00:51:39.320sustained on the loser's consent as you know and the utter hysteria of going out in droves painting
00:51:44.100your face in the eu flag and screaming gammon at everyone and calling everyone a fascist about
00:51:50.500membership of an international trading bloc that you didn't care about before 2016 you didn't pay
00:51:56.120it a second thought you cannot be this passionate about something unless what it is is a kind of
00:52:00.840religious devotion that that's the only explanation for this i mean sure there have been some people
00:52:04.980who have always been passionate about the eu but you could fill them in like one church hall or
00:52:08.240something there's not many uh in fact most of the people who were talking about the eu most of the
00:52:12.840discourse about the eu from the past 30 years in in advance of the referendum was in fact people
00:52:16.900who wanted to leave you know had the like the referendum party back in the 1980s and then of
00:52:21.060course UKIP and all the rest of it and Nigel Farage so it wasn't people who were celebrating
00:52:26.400the EU and talking about how wonderful it was they didn't care about it they just didn't care
00:52:30.460and I don't believe you can go from complete apathy to extreme zealous passion where you hate
00:52:38.140anyone who disagrees with you I don't think that can happen if it's been thought through from a
00:52:42.060of rationality that has to be a kind of hysterical uh phenomenon that's what that is um and and you
00:52:49.620know i think when when you see people tweeting in the way you've described they are succumbing
00:52:52.500to a hysteria when david lammy talks about how the erg are worse than nazis or whatever it was
00:52:57.240he said i'm paraphrasing that that's someone succumbing to hysteria that's not someone who's
00:53:01.960thinking rationally and because i have a belief in him as he's an obviously intelligent man so i
00:53:06.980believe that in about five years time he'll be able to look back on that and say yeah he'll be
00:53:11.200able to put his hands up and say that was stupid wasn't it he will because we all have the capacity
00:53:15.020to say stupid things in the heat of the moment particularly when emotion is heightened who
00:53:19.540hasn't i have you have everyone who hasn't done that and i think most of us have the humility
00:53:25.480to be able to say yes that was a mistake and i and i and i do believe that will be the case i
00:53:30.180believe in about 10 years time all of the people who had the f what is it fbp uh hashtag the real
00:53:37.600angry uh you know the bullies online the really vicious ones you know i think they'll look back
00:53:44.480and say i cannot believe i behaved so disgracefully i can't believe i smeared all these people as
00:53:49.260nazis i can't believe i i lost my senses and i do believe that will happen particularly once
00:53:54.040we're out the eu because i mean it's not something that anyone would rejoin sensibly i mean this was
00:53:58.340one of the strongest arguments i thought during the brexit debate if if we weren't in the eu and
00:54:02.340the debate was about should we join that would have been a very difficult argument to win you
00:54:06.740know not least because the the eu has such a terrible track record of economic growth but
00:54:10.500quite aside from that it's it's it's borderline racist policies when it comes to immigration and
00:54:15.940things like that would have put a lot of people off it's complete bureaucracy uh it's complete
00:54:20.900democratic unaccountability all of this stuff you know if you'd have said we're going to subscribe
00:54:25.000to this thing that's going to make anywhere between 30 and 60 percent of our laws and
00:54:28.340regulations but we will have no means to vote these people out the left would never have got
00:54:33.300on board with that certainly not and and you would never have been able to persuade the population
00:54:38.000to get on board it just wouldn't have happened so i think ultimately you know look at someone
00:54:42.900like ac grayling who is a tremendously talented writer i mean he's a philosopher obviously but
00:54:47.580if you've ever read any of his books he is calm he is measured he is collected he is forensic
00:54:52.680in some of his analysis um and yet his behavior on twitter is like a child when it comes to brexit
00:55:01.140it's like it's it's like a child who doesn't who hasn't even thought this through can only think
00:55:06.000in terms of of of good versus evil who could only think in these these black and white it's it's it's
00:55:12.040almost sad to see someone of such stature degrade himself to this degree and i just wonder again i
00:55:20.920hope there is the possibility of redemption i hope in you know i i mean i look at some of those
00:55:25.620tweets i'd be so ashamed to have written those tweets he can't see it at the moment but you make
00:55:30.400This is where, even though I'm very optimistic and I was hoping we would have a more lighthearted conversation, but it is what it is because that's how we feel.
00:55:38.880My concern is that with the existence of social media now, in the past, if you'd made mistakes, those mistakes could only be used against you for so long before they were sort of purged from the public record.
00:55:52.840You know, if you made some innocuous or maybe inappropriate, but it's not particularly major comments 10 years ago, you know, people moved on.
00:56:01.620It wasn't really there easily accessible.
00:56:05.040It might have been covered in a newspaper article or whatever, but it wasn't really a thing.
00:56:09.700Nowadays, all your history is there forever.
00:56:13.120And I think that also one of the things that does is it actually makes it quite a lot more difficult to go, you know what, actually, I don't like the person I used to be.
00:56:24.360And to me, you know, I've always thought about it.
00:56:26.700If I don't like the person I was 10 years ago, I've always seen that as a sign of progress.
00:56:31.220I've always thought, well, of course, I think I was an idiot at 18, right?
00:56:35.540Because I'm now bigger, better, stronger, more intelligent, more emotionally intelligent, whatever.
00:56:41.480i'm not sure young people or frankly anyone at this point has that luxury anymore because
00:56:46.980if you start to move away from your previous position someone is instantly going to pop up
00:56:53.020and go well this is what you said you know yeah and the example you gave of the the the 15 year
00:56:58.360old who put that video out yeah that example it's going to be held on to yeah that's true and
00:57:02.920but but i think the the reason to be cheerful with this is that everyone knows this to be the
00:57:08.580case right everyone i mean i i remember seeing a play at the Edinburgh Fringe by a friend of mine
00:57:11.860and she writes for the guard you know she's a very very um pro social justice writer a very
00:57:16.680good writer and um the play was about how anyone's life can be ruined if you have complete access to
00:57:24.080everything they've ever texted or tweeted or or written in an email there is no one who would not
00:57:30.200fall foul of that because anything can be selected uh can be taken selectively against you um and
00:57:35.960used against you and also people change like you say and and and and people make mistakes more
00:57:40.480importantly and no one is morally pure or morally uh infallible and so the expectation that people
00:57:46.980should be is is is actually unworkable and i think because everyone knows that even the woke
00:57:52.780they know that because because so many of them get eaten by their own um everyone's just living
00:57:58.000in this continual state of fear and that's not something that anyone wants it's not desirable
00:58:01.440for anyone so i think um yeah i that's something i really wish we could change i wish we could
00:58:07.780change this idea that just because you said something 10 years ago it still counts against
00:58:12.120you you know uh and that's not to say you don't take responsibility for the things you've said
00:58:16.020but you should be allowed to change your mind you should be allowed to grow as a person and move on
00:58:20.320as a person i mean this is these are basic principles of humanity more than anything else
00:58:23.860um and i hope we can do something about that as of next year this is why i think we need to be
00:58:28.820better as well i think i think people on all sides of this debate should not be dragging up things
00:58:34.260that our opponents have said many years ago i think it happens on both sides and i uh and and
00:58:38.860of course the temptation is there because you want to point out the hypocrisy of someone i mean i saw
00:58:42.540this happen uh the other week where i won't mention the name but it's a very very famous uh left-wing
00:58:48.060journalist um who who loves to engage in cancel culture and call people out well someone called
00:58:52.620up something that he'd written while at university uh and put on on on the internet and it did paint
00:58:59.800him in a very bad light but i thought you know if we start doing that then we lose all moral
00:59:04.920high ground everyone's just got to stop stop doing that that doesn't mean not holding people's
00:59:08.960account it doesn't mean challenging people when they say things but it does mean uh just not
00:59:13.340dragging through people's past and expecting everyone to be morally pure because that just
00:59:17.120gets us nowhere what happens if you destroy someone with facts and logic like me is that
00:59:22.180what you that's what you guys do isn't it and that's how that's how you label your videos isn't
00:59:26.520it destroying libtards with fat no we've never we've never ever used the word i know i was i
00:59:34.140was mischaracterizing you you are you're smearing us with your bigger to the right wing opinions
00:59:39.320andrew but i know i love that though because that's i get this all the time i'm called an
00:59:42.880edgelord and oh so i love this though because whenever someone does this to me online and
00:59:46.980they say oh you your whole career is is bitching about snowflakes and libtards and i just say
00:59:52.600can you find me one example of when i've ever said either of those things just one because if
00:59:58.440it's my whole career if it's my whole shtick this should be a really easy task for you and the fact
01:00:03.840they can't find anything because i've never done it i love it like the the claims of i had one the
01:00:09.200other day some academic oh no writer i think he's a journalist saying that i've uh i'm a bit i'm
01:00:13.700whinging again because i wrote an article about my experiences when i came out as titania amongst
01:00:18.300the comedy community and he was saying look at him again whinging about how he's got no voice and
01:00:22.700how he's being censored all the time and being cancelled and he can't say what he thinks but
01:00:26.040here he is being paid to write an article i'm like i've never made the claim i've never made
01:00:30.120the claim and if you think that's all i ever do you should easily be able to find an example
01:00:34.600shouldn't you and if you can't maybe you might want to reflect on the validity of your criticism
01:00:38.540but of course that would take a degree of introspection that a lot of these people do
01:00:42.560not possess well i never i never i would never use the word libtard mainly because i'm liberal
01:00:47.860myself right so uh i know and i just also don't find that sort of language unhelpful andrew so
01:00:54.620let's let's look at some of the what has been amusing you the most this year what have you
01:01:00.240found really funny there have been loads there have been loads of things so i actually made a
01:01:05.080little list oh did you uh of of the various things that have happened this year and some of the some
01:01:11.760of the amazing ones i mean there's so many like so i was just going through the year and i was
01:01:15.460thinking what happened when and there's just been some some astonishing things happening so like in
01:01:19.740january for instance when the the pink news started praising pakistan because they said they were
01:01:24.840going to subsidize trans surgery and of course the reason the government was doing that is because if
01:01:29.280you're gay you're in a lot of trouble so they they're encouraged it was actually a homophobic
01:01:34.980thing and then the pink news which is meant to be a gay publication were praising this homophobic
01:01:39.500policy i thought that was hilarious a bit scary but but but but but quite funny oh the one i loved
01:01:45.240in january was the um sheffield university paying its students nine pound 34 an hour to spy on
01:01:53.380fellow students in case they said any racial microaggressions that was amazing i mean that
01:01:58.660because that was i mean you talk about comparing with the soviet union that that was pure that's
01:02:03.200that's that's pure soviet style isn't it no it's not pure so let's not get our wires twisted here
01:02:09.340it's much better than the soviet south in the soviet union those jobs were unpaid that's true
01:02:14.280yeah so at least you're making a buck out of it exactly exactly so capitalism at work this is
01:02:19.500brilliant i mean yeah that was incredible um the uh the the constant cancellations throughout the
01:02:27.540year and yet people talk about how cancel culture is a myth that's really funny to me that's really
01:02:32.600funny to me there's a there's a thread online i should send you the link uh which records every
01:02:37.220instance of cancellation it's thousands long and it's just con it's just it's just non-stop
01:02:41.720and the very people who perpetuate it say yeah it's just a myth it's just a right-wing myth
01:02:46.000no one's no one's because no one's lost their job because of something they've said no that's
01:02:50.940never happened it's like that that to me is just hilarious that's really great um i quite enjoyed
01:02:57.560the oscars i quite enjoyed the um jane fonder having ethically sourced diamonds i love the
01:03:06.220hypocrisy of that i love natalie portman with her deor cape embroidered with the female directors
01:03:10.880who should have got the nomination that was quite funny um just the incredible lack of self-awareness
01:03:15.760when the most privileged people in the world are hectoring everyone else uh of course we've had
01:03:20.400that with megan and megan and harry as well i mean they're particularly funny because they'll
01:03:25.060they'll they'll hector everyone about their carbon footprint then fly off to out in john's house for
01:03:29.300private party in their private jet so that's that's inherently funny um you know it's just
01:03:34.280funny when someone's telling you about privilege you know he did a big thing about white privilege
01:03:39.280it's like you're a prince you're an actual prince you're not in a position to to lecture us about
01:03:45.580privilege you're just not um so there's all of that um there's what else has been been quite
01:03:51.920good oh yeah all the revisionist stuff has been quite interesting like i think the removal of the
01:03:56.260native american indian from the lander lakes butter pack uncle ben's rice that's been dixt um
01:04:01.360all of that kind of stuff as though this will do anything at all i mean in the case of the land
01:04:05.380of lakes thing that was designed by a native american artist if anything this is a this is
01:04:10.760attacking that person's cultural heritage but in the name of progress so all of that's been quite
01:04:15.320interesting and of course all the uh the the the you see there's there's been something disturbing
01:04:20.120about the mobs tearing down statues and i don't want to undermine how how anti-democratic and
01:04:24.720problematic that is right to use one of their phrases but by the same token the overreach of
01:04:30.260some of it has been has been funny when they start targeting mahatma gandhi because he didn't what
01:04:34.800did he ever do um or or or you know winston churchill you know the man who defeated fascism
01:04:41.520or abraham lincoln i mean wanting to tear down statues of abraham lincoln you'd think he'd get
01:04:46.100a free pass for the whole abolition of slavery thing you would think but it's not there but my
01:04:50.880favorite was the british library you know they have this decolonizing working group at the british
01:04:54.500library who decided that they need to revisit all of their western manuscripts why it's a library
01:05:00.240it's a repository of historical artifacts you know so you don't need to go through it and and
01:05:05.320flag up where things are problematic they even made the mistake of saying that ted hughes was
01:05:08.760now a problem because of some tenuous relationship to an ancestor from the 16th century who he wasn't
01:05:13.300even related to you know and the best thing about the decolonizing working group at the british
01:05:17.420library is that they claimed that the architecture of the building itself was colonial because it
01:05:21.400looks a bit like a battleship so that stuff is funny to me so so all of this stuff these things
01:05:27.300are they're great they're ripe for comedy if they weren't quite so sinister i really like this so
01:05:34.660andrew because if you think about it like the historical aspect of uh your your uh descendants
01:05:40.320being punished for things you say like there is a guy who descended from me four centuries down
01:05:45.780the line who is absolutely fucked isn't he yeah oh yeah you're you i mean you are you are ruining
01:05:51.280i mean you don't have children right no not yet so right well maybe you shouldn't because
01:05:58.540you're basically condemning them you know exactly i'm not a breeder so i don't have to worry about
01:06:05.660that but you know i i love that sort of sins of the father business i mean you can't even pin that
01:06:11.240on me because all of my ancestors were you know irish in the bogs you know being sort of colonized
01:06:17.520themselves so i mean you know i don't get to inherit uh that guilt um or maybe did they have
01:06:22.580their pronouns in their bio they probably did they were good people unlike you and yours good moral
01:06:28.820people yeah andrew listen it's been great having you back man uh we wish you all the best uh give
01:06:35.180our viewers some thoughts about what you see happening in 2021 what are you excited about
01:06:40.400for next year uh i've written a book on free speech which i'm very excited about i wrote it
01:06:46.260in lockdown so you know silver linings you know i was i was it forced a kind of disciplined work
01:06:51.520ethic on me you know it was meant that i had nowhere to go so i was writing which was good
01:06:55.600um and that is called free speech and why it matters and that is going to be published uh in
01:07:01.800february so it's all very quick and very excited about that and um and the idea of that is i wanted
01:07:07.000it to be like it's not a long book it's a short punchy uh sort of covering all what i what i
01:07:12.320perceived to be the most important arguments in relation to this the free speech battle and i do
01:07:16.620perceive it as a battle insofar as i i like i said i don't think we're there yet we're not facing
01:07:20.960but we are definitely experiencing the early signs of some very disturbed of a very disturbing road
01:07:26.140that we're going down and i think we need to be well equipped to deal with that to to have the
01:07:30.940arguments in place you know so really what the book is doing is going through systematically
01:07:34.480all the various reservations that people understandably have you know because everyone
01:07:39.120hates it when you hear some idiot stand up and say the most horrible thing and your instinct is
01:07:44.020to shut them up your instinct it makes sense that people want to phone the police and all the rest
01:07:47.800of it you know and so i i'm trying to approach that from a sympathetic perspective i'm not just
01:07:52.460saying oh everyone's got to man up and stop being snowflakes which is what people will doubtlessly
01:07:56.460say that i'm saying because they won't read the thing but uh i think we need to understand why
01:08:02.380people have reservations about free speech understand why they want limitations on it
01:08:06.360and then uh talk about the dangers of that and explain to people why however well intentioned
01:08:13.220that might be uh that is a is a perilous uh road to go down so that's that's what so that's what
01:08:19.100i'm quite excited about that because i think it's um it's nice to have a book out that isn't written
01:08:23.280as a 24 year old woman you know because you know the last two books i've done have been to tanya
01:08:28.980books and so a book in my own name would be would be rather nice um and uh yeah and then i'm i'm
01:08:36.240also working on another book which should be ready by the end of next year about the culture war so
01:08:41.200those two things are happening uh i'm hoping that i can tour with titania later in the year because
01:08:47.720that tour has been postponed you know the live titania show which was meant to be last march and
01:08:52.140then it was this march and so hopefully that'll be in november um hopefully the show with douglas
01:08:58.660murray will be going ahead the show at the hammersmith apollo which is scheduled at the
01:09:02.980moment for late June so who knows maybe I have to wait and see what happens with the um with the
01:09:08.120vaccine and the regulations and the lockdown and all the rest of it but hopefully hopefully that's
01:09:11.420what I'm looking forward I'm really looking forward to everything getting back to normal
01:09:14.380right am I being stupidly optimistic there he is a comedian yeah that's what I want that's what you
01:09:20.180want well thank you so much for coming on the show Andrew uh your books will be released uh in
01:09:25.140February and later on um the one question that we always finish with is what's the one thing we're
01:09:30.360not talking about but we really should be and i knew you were going to ask that because you ask
01:09:34.420it every time and yet i still don't have an answer isn't that interesting why couldn't i
01:09:38.280have simply prepared something why can i have done something i could have then i could have
01:09:41.980finished on a flourish and as it is it's a damp squib it is uh but at least you told us and all
01:09:47.280our viewers about the books you're now using to cash in on your right wing bigotry so there we
01:09:51.660are exactly so for you know the threats to free speech are great for my bank balance apparently