TRIGGERnometry - Mike Graham on the Problem With MSM

00:00:00.000 Hello and welcome to Trigonometry. I'm Francis Foster. I'm Constantine Kishin.

00:00:08.840 And this is a show for you if you want honest conversations with fascinating people.

00:00:13.720 Our brilliant guest this week is a journalist and broadcaster, Mike Graham. Welcome to Trigonometry.

00:00:18.420 Thank you very much indeed. Thanks for inviting me. Very nice, bijou little place you've got here.

00:00:22.180 I don't know if I'm allowed to say where it is in case you have sort of, you know, people that might come here and do you harm.

00:00:26.580 but it's a very nice part of North London

00:00:28.580 I took a little time to find it

00:00:30.260 but it's an amazing part of the world

00:00:32.620 I really like it

00:00:33.340 I used to do a show

00:00:35.960 with a guy called Mike Parry

00:00:37.640 called The Two Mikes

00:00:38.380 and we actually started our comedy career

00:00:40.320 at Hen and Chickens

00:00:41.620 which is a million miles away from here

00:00:43.440 and it went from bad to worse basically

00:00:46.520 and now I don't work with them anymore

00:00:47.520 so that's another story

00:00:48.540 We got there very quickly

00:00:51.080 Sorry

00:00:51.480 but I mean you've described me

00:00:52.880 as brilliant and fascinating already

00:00:54.540 so I hope I can be that

00:00:55.840 I don't know if I can be, but for anyone who doesn't know who I am, I do a show on talk radio every day, Monday to Friday, 10 to 1, up against James O'Brien, who's not one of my favourite people.

00:01:05.300 I knew him when he was a sort of an apprentice journalist during a period of his life when he used to say, and he says now in his book, that he was a failed journalist, which is entirely correct.

00:01:16.160 And he used to be like a showbiz sort of runner, effectively.

00:01:20.220 He used to turn up at parties and try and get quotes from people, and he didn't do it very well.

00:01:24.160 Now he claims to be this kind of great thinker,

00:01:26.220 and I'm not quite sure how he managed to make that leap.

00:01:28.460 But my mission in life is to get him off the air, basically,

00:01:30.700 by being better than him and stealing his audience.

00:01:33.820 He's got a much bigger audience than me because he's working for a station

00:01:36.280 that's been going for a lot longer.

00:01:38.700 So, yeah, so before I got his radio, I was a newspaper guy.

00:01:41.660 I was in Fleet Street for a while.

00:01:42.460 So you were rocky.

00:01:43.280 25 years, really, when it was hot, when it was great,

00:01:46.900 when it was amazing, when you could basically get away with murder.

00:01:50.240 And obviously we couldn't do it now, some of the stuff that we did then.

00:01:53.800 But I can personally say that when I was a journalist and I worked in America for 10 years, I never did anything that was in any way illegal or unlawful.

00:02:02.900 And there was nothing that I couldn't defend doing.

00:02:05.060 And I think a lot of other, where it all went wrong was a lot of people started to do that.

00:02:08.600 And you better stop me at some point.

00:02:10.340 No, no, we're about to.

00:02:11.640 But I was just thinking like you describing your fight with James O'Brien.

00:02:15.340 You're like Rocky and he is Apollo Creed.

00:02:17.380 Yes, I suppose so.

00:02:19.300 He's not as classy as that.

00:02:20.480 He just keeps punching you.

00:02:21.520 And I suspect he hasn't got a very good punch, but that's another story, you know.

00:02:25.580 He's so miserable, is the thing.

00:02:27.200 People have come to listen to my show, not least because, you know,

00:02:30.100 obviously I tend to be more of a Brexiteer,

00:02:32.500 even though I actually didn't vote in the referendum at all, because I don't vote.

00:02:36.140 It's one of the things that I choose not to do in order to be a proper journalist.

00:02:39.580 Why not? That's really interesting.

00:02:40.760 Well, because in order to be a proper journalist,

00:02:41.900 I think you actually do have to be neutral, and you can't be neutral if you vote.

00:02:45.060 And when people say to me, yeah, but hang on, you know,

00:02:46.760 surely you need representation, you need to, you know,

00:02:48.880 put your kind of mark on a piece of paper and become part of the population. I say not really,

00:02:56.100 because I think if I voted Conservative, or if I voted Labour, if I voted Leave, or I voted Remain,

00:03:00.480 I couldn't honestly kind of, you know, carry on a conversation about what should happen.

00:03:04.920 But you do have strong views, though, don't you? I mean, you are pro-Brexit, for example.

00:03:08.100 I am pro-Brexit, but one of the reasons I'm pro-Brexit is because the people voted to leave

00:03:12.120 the European Union. So that's my motivation. If they had voted to remain in it, I would have said,

00:03:16.620 well, then that's what we have to do.

00:03:18.100 So you're pro-democracy.

00:03:19.060 I'm pro-democracy.

00:03:20.160 A lot of people think that that's just me hiding behind a banner,

00:03:23.240 but it's not.

00:03:24.380 And also, as I started to talk more and more about Brexit,

00:03:27.600 I got more and more fed up with the kind of Remain sort of elite,

00:03:32.180 the people that ran the newspapers,

00:03:33.620 the people that ran the TV stations,

00:03:35.160 and all of the kind of nonsense that was coming from the pro-Remain lobby.

00:03:38.720 And I had many, many rows with lots of MPs.

00:03:41.520 We had this tent down in Westminster, and they would come in.

00:03:43.680 And some of them were just so condescending about, you know, how everything was going to be terrible.

00:03:49.100 And basically what they were really saying was that the stupid people have somehow voted for this.

00:03:53.740 You know, they don't know what they're doing. And we know better than they do.

00:03:56.700 And I started to get really kind of wound up about that.

00:03:59.160 And so it seemed to me that I should be one of the standard.

00:04:01.820 And now I'm sort of seen as one of the standard bearers of Brexit, which is fine with me,

00:04:05.300 because it also I think was a really important moment, you know, for the country to actually have the people deciding what to do

00:04:11.600 rather than all of those people sitting in Westminster,

00:04:14.260 because they would have loved to have stayed in the European Union.

00:04:16.200 I still actually don't know why.

00:04:17.820 I mean, I don't know which way you guys voted,

00:04:19.260 but I don't understand those people who say to me,

00:04:21.900 it's a great thing to be in the EU.

00:04:23.580 You know, I don't get it.

00:04:24.940 What's so great about it?

00:04:26.420 Well, we both voted Remain.

00:04:27.780 Because we're good people.

00:04:28.860 Yeah, obviously.

00:04:29.760 And obviously very intelligent, clearly.

00:04:32.380 That was a running joke on our show for such a long time,

00:04:35.160 because we voted Remain, but we are very much in your camp

00:04:39.060 in the sense that people vote, man.

00:04:41.260 And that's it. And democracy is far more precious than if you, even if you think that Brexit will be economically damaging, which I'm not sure about.

00:04:50.180 I don't think it will be. I mean, it could be. But any number of things could be. I mean, coronavirus could be a lot more damaging than Brexit ever was.

00:04:56.340 But also staying in the EU could be incredibly economically damaging, too. And no one ever thought about that.

00:05:01.360 But anyway, my point is, you know, just we voted Remain. We lost. That's it.

00:05:07.080 There's never been, in my experience, a more kind of collection of bad losers.

00:05:12.440 I mean, I've never seen anything like that.

00:05:14.320 We were sitting in Westminster on a day-to-day basis,

00:05:17.900 and at one point, actually, a guy called John Rental,

00:05:20.240 who you probably know is the independence political commentator, sat down,

00:05:23.540 and I literally said to him, you know, I've actually run out of questions.

00:05:25.960 I can't think of anything to ask you, you know, because what are we going to do?

00:05:29.600 I thought we were going to be stuck in this kind of horrendous hellhole of nothingness,

00:05:33.560 going nowhere, not being able to do anything, not being able to pass any bills,

00:05:36.700 not being able to get any votes through, I honestly didn't see an ending.

00:05:39.840 I thought we'd just be doing this forever.

00:05:41.480 But as it turns out, everybody else didn't agree.

00:05:44.940 And so when the election time came, I mean, I didn't expect Boris Johnson to win by that much.

00:05:49.480 But it was fantastic.

00:05:50.760 I mean, I just remember because I'm I'm I wouldn't say terrified of Jeremy Corbyn becoming prime minister,

00:05:55.160 but I wouldn't like a Labour government.

00:05:56.700 I don't think I would enjoy a left of centre Labour government because apart from anything else,

00:06:01.060 they would probably shut down the bits of the media they don't like.

00:06:04.340 They would certainly not be very pleasant to parts of the Rupert Murdoch Emperor, I'm sure,

00:06:08.360 because already, you know, a lot of them don't speak to anybody in the building that I work in, you know.

00:06:13.000 So I'm very concerned that what happens next in the Labour Party will be more of the same,

00:06:19.860 because, you know, if they were ever to get into power because Boris Johnson screwed something up,

00:06:24.320 you know, where would we be then?

00:06:25.380 I don't think we need to worry about that too much in the near future.

00:06:28.400 Probably not. No, probably not.

00:06:28.980 But it's good to see you remaining politically neutral anyway.

00:06:32.520 But Francis...

00:06:33.320 Well, you see, I don't have to do that.

00:06:34.380 I mean, I have to do that on the radio.

00:06:35.720 Yeah, yeah, yeah.

00:06:36.560 Because I say to people, it's on my Twitter,

00:06:38.340 it says it's the most balanced show on the radio.

00:06:40.000 And so whenever anybody says it's not,

00:06:41.660 I say, well, look, it says it on Twitter.

00:06:42.980 I must be the most balanced show on the radio.

00:06:45.280 But we wanted to talk about media independence and balance.

00:06:48.800 Yeah, media independence and balance.

00:06:50.160 Because what I think Brexit exposed, and we touched on it,

00:06:53.160 was the fact that there seems to be this schism

00:06:55.240 between the media class and the average working person

00:06:58.500 on the street, man, woman,

00:06:59.580 and how actually more and more people are becoming less,

00:07:04.380 more and more disenfranchised with the media.

00:07:06.460 Why do you think that is?

00:07:07.400 Well, I think a lot of it is because of the individuals who are working in the media

00:07:11.860 because, you know, I'm old enough to remember when I first went into newspapers,

00:07:15.340 newspapers were not full of public school boys and girls.

00:07:18.160 You know, it was a trade.

00:07:19.760 A lot of people went into local newspapers because their father was in it

00:07:22.920 or because, you know, it was quite a good apprenticeship.

00:07:25.520 You could go and do a journalism course when you were 16.

00:07:28.340 You could become a reporter indentured by, say, the local newspaper in Hastings or in Cardiff or somewhere like that.

00:07:35.460 And they were just ordinary members of the community. And they didn't go and work in the community.

00:07:39.180 They'd cover the local council meetings and then they'd sort of move up to Fleet Street and all that.

00:07:42.560 But what we've got now, it seems to me, is some very highly educated people who have all been to Oxbridge at some point or other.

00:07:48.480 And if not, they've been they've got a degree in something or other, you know, and they've all become part of this same establishment.

00:07:55.180 It's a sort of separate establishment to the establishment.

00:07:57.600 But the media, for me, should be anti-establishment.

00:07:59.700 You know, you shouldn't be part of it.

00:08:00.760 You shouldn't be sitting there going, oh, I'd really like to end up, you know, running a quango.

00:08:05.460 I'd really love to end up in the House of Lords for services to journalism.

00:08:08.740 I'd rather be sticking two fingers up to them.

00:08:10.380 You know, I don't want anything from them.

00:08:11.920 I want to hold them to account.

00:08:12.980 And I don't think enough people really do that.

00:08:15.060 And somehow there's been this kind of cult of personality where you look at people like Paul Mason, you know,

00:08:21.440 who's a great example of someone who was meant to be an economics journalist.

00:08:25.580 And I think he worked, I should remember, he was economics correspondent for the Channel 4 News.

00:08:29.860 And then he suddenly became this Labour activist.

00:08:31.720 And you kind of go, well, which one of these things are you?

00:08:34.820 And actually, at least you knew where he was coming from.

00:08:36.960 He seems to have gone completely mad.

00:08:38.700 You know, I mean, he's out with placards, warning about this and the other.

00:08:41.500 He's now, the left have now turned on him for being not left enough.

00:08:45.380 Paul Mason.

00:08:45.860 Yeah.

00:08:46.540 He's not left enough.

00:08:47.460 No, apparently he's not.

00:08:48.440 No, because apparently he's been talking about Keir Starmer being the answer.

00:08:50.960 Right. So all the people that want Rebecca Long-Bailey to get the job or were rather keen on Jeremy.

00:08:56.980 I think he's basically come out against Corbyn.

00:08:59.000 Paul Mason's to the left of Stalin. I know. I know. Well, something's gone wrong.

00:09:03.340 But I think, you know, when you watch people like Adam Bolton and you watch people on Sky generally, you know, they're very Romani, you know, whether they think they are or not.

00:09:14.260 They absolutely are. You know, and the news agenda that they choose to follow tends to be very much driven by that.

00:09:20.780 And I think that's the problem. Unlike, you know, genuinely sort of people who try to be and I know that people accuse me of being, you know, a Tory and all of that.

00:09:29.040 But actually, if the Tories do something wrong, I'll criticise them for it. I won't find reasons not to. I won't find another story to do, you know.

00:09:36.260 But there were so many cases during the Remain campaign and the Leave campaign where after the referendum, you know, I remember the BBC doing a story about Northern Ireland saying that basically all the cattle would have to be slaughtered.

00:09:47.700 You know, if this agreement went through with Boris Johnson and with no backstop.

00:09:52.740 And they actually had to apologize for it the next day because it turned out to be complete and utter nonsense.

00:09:56.400 The NFU came out and said, I don't know where you're getting this from, but it's complete rubbish.

00:10:01.380 We will not have to slaughter all the cattle.

00:10:03.400 You know, just stuff like that.

00:10:04.360 Just basic politics and basic journalism, getting it wrong like that.

00:10:08.660 Question time as well.

00:10:09.640 I mean, you go to question time and I watch it now just to get annoyed.

00:10:13.360 You know, I literally can't see any merit in it really at all.

00:10:17.360 And they're so desperate to try.

00:10:18.700 The other thing about balance, I think, I can't remember who said this.

00:10:21.480 There was somebody in America who said, you know, balance is not about giving equal time to absolutely everyone.

00:10:26.260 Because there are some right nutters out there.

00:10:27.720 You don't necessarily want to equate one person's thought process with another.

00:10:31.680 And so the person who said this in America said, you know, if you're trying to be balanced,

00:10:36.000 if somebody says to you it's raining, you know, you don't get somebody on who says it's raining

00:10:41.120 and somebody on who says it's not raining.

00:10:42.380 You look out the window and you decide whether it's raining or not.

00:10:45.040 and then you tell the people whether it's raining.

00:10:47.580 You know, you don't necessarily take every single view

00:10:50.340 and just repeat it as if it's, you know, gospel.

00:10:53.380 Because we know that the people who want to be in the media now

00:10:56.640 or on the media are very sophisticated now.

00:10:58.340 You know, people are very good at spinning stuff.

00:11:00.900 And do you think the media has hit this point of crisis now?

00:11:04.060 You look at the mainstream media,

00:11:05.480 I mean, we were talking, you know,

00:11:07.660 The Sun declared record losses of £68 million.

00:11:11.260 What is the purpose of the mainstream media?

00:11:13.240 Do we need it anymore?

00:11:13.960 Well, I think politically speaking, it's nowhere near as influential as it used to be. I mean, I was watching Prime Minister's Questions the other week and having a conversation with someone saying even Parliament is actually less relevant now in a way than it used to be. You know, Prime Minister's Questions is no longer what it used to be. You know, the debates in Parliament are no longer what they used to be because you feel as though everything's kind of already preordained. It's already stitched up. You know, all the decisions are being made now in Downing Street. They're not really going to Parliament to debate them.

00:11:40.920 They now don't even have to, because everything's going to be passed through. I mean, I can't imagine any newspaper being responsible for Boris Johnson getting that incredible 80-seat majority. I don't think you could point to any one columnist that was formerly powerful.

00:11:57.760 you know um i think as as entities they're still you know part of something but they won't last

00:12:04.680 forever and i think you guys doing what you do me doing what i do uh in a smaller way perhaps but

00:12:10.160 also we're doing a lot of stuff on youtube now um you know there's many more people watching

00:12:14.740 youtube now who've just been turned off tv altogether really because actually you have to

00:12:20.900 ask yourself the you know why do you watch the news at 10 why do you watch i mean i watch channel

00:12:25.380 for news, generally speaking, also just to kind of get annoyed. I've been very happy to see that

00:12:31.000 Jon Snow's been self-isolated. Apparently he went to Iran to cover the elections and he came back

00:12:36.500 and he's now self-isolated. He doesn't present the news anymore. They just cross to him every time

00:12:40.200 that the news is on. And he talks from his kind of, you know, hellhole wherever he lives,

00:12:44.900 probably somewhere around here, and looks, doesn't look very well, you know. So, but I mean,

00:12:51.180 i don't really watch it to be informed about anything oh no and i don't finish watching it

00:12:55.700 and think that was a really really interesting you know item about something and i've got a lot

00:13:00.260 of time for a lot of journalists and particularly the ones who go into war zones and you know

00:13:03.700 individuals who actually are people that i respect and there's lots of them um and don't get me wrong

00:13:08.640 there's lots of them that work at the bbc there's lots of work in fleet street um there's lots of

00:13:12.460 them that work at all over the place but but the entities themselves i think are sort of confused

00:13:16.440 as to where they go next

00:13:19.000 because they can't do what you guys do

00:13:21.480 and they can't really do what I do

00:13:22.660 because, you know, they don't know how to.

00:13:25.540 Well, the reason they can't do what we do

00:13:27.660 is because they're on the leash.

00:13:28.800 Yeah.

00:13:29.320 We don't have a leash on us.

00:13:31.500 We can talk about...

00:13:31.860 Well, not at the moment,

00:13:32.720 but I mean, Ofcom would very much like to put a leash

00:13:34.620 on YouTube and on social media as well,

00:13:36.640 wouldn't they, which is actually quite terrifying.

00:13:38.720 It is, it is.

00:13:39.620 And YouTube itself would like to put a leash on everybody.

00:13:43.000 And we've talked about that a dozen times.

00:13:45.100 But I think in terms of what you're talking about is it really looks to me like the mainstream media kind of they keep clutching at things quite awkwardly because they they're dying.

00:13:55.860 Yeah. And they're like trying to grab on. And that's why you get these things like the Kathy Newman, Jordan Peterson interview where it's just worthless.

00:14:03.200 Right. It's absolutely worthless.

00:14:04.560 She's basically talking to a guy who has a massive following whom those people who follow him think he's great.

00:14:10.260 She's kind of introducing him to everybody else who doesn't know about him because they don't go on YouTube.

00:14:15.100 and they don't really know who he is.

00:14:16.980 And in the space of the short interview time that they've got,

00:14:19.440 they can't really work out who he is.

00:14:21.360 And as you say, I don't think anybody learned anything from that.

00:14:24.540 Well, the only thing people learn is that he was good at arguing

00:14:27.300 and she looked like an idiot.

00:14:28.720 Yeah.

00:14:29.000 That's it.

00:14:29.660 And I don't think that's worth half an hour.

00:14:31.240 It's not the only place you can look for that particular conclusion.

00:14:35.000 But talking about the mainstream media,

00:14:37.380 you brought up the BBC a couple of times.

00:14:39.340 That was one issue that we really wanted to talk to you about.

00:14:42.080 Obviously, Boris Johnson is looking at removing the license fee, making it a subscription-based model.

00:14:48.600 You're quite critical of the BBC, are you not?

00:14:50.680 Well, I think the BBC is too big, apart from anything else.

00:14:52.960 I mean, what it's meant to do and what it was invented to do was to produce, you know, broadcastable material either for the radio or for television.

00:15:02.280 At a time when that was really – they were the only people that could do it.

00:15:05.060 You know, when they invented, you know, Radio 4 when it was called the home service and I used to listen to it.

00:15:09.900 My mother used to listen to The Archers, you know, every night.

00:15:13.040 And the Today programme, you know, it was good because there wasn't much else to listen to.

00:15:17.160 There wasn't much else out there, you know, and it was very well done.

00:15:19.800 And the news, everybody watched the news at six o'clock because that was how you found out what was going on.

00:15:23.900 But now you don't, if you don't know what's going on at six o'clock, you must have literally been asleep all day, you know,

00:15:28.280 because everybody now knows they get an alert on the phone when something happens.

00:15:31.140 I mean, you know, during the coronavirus scenario, you get alerts going on all the time.

00:15:35.740 You know, this has happened or that's happened. A few more cases over here.

00:15:37.820 I mean, if you're really not able to see any of that and you get to six o'clock and you go, oh, my God, you know, there's a coronavirus going on.

00:15:46.380 You literally you have to be living in a cave or something.

00:15:48.820 And also I've looked at what it is that they do.

00:15:52.200 They employ 22,000 people.

00:15:54.220 Right.

00:15:54.660 They've got 61 radio stations.

00:15:56.600 Now, I was one of my incarnations was running a radio station in Edinburgh.

00:15:59.800 The first speech license that was given out since LBC back in 1973.

00:16:03.740 And it didn't work in the end because it was it was smothered by BBC Scotland.

00:16:07.560 BBC Scotland is this massive, huge organisation with a great big office on the banks of the Clyde in Glasgow, employs hundreds of people.

00:16:14.840 And so commercial operators can't get a look in.

00:16:18.060 You know, you cannot run a commercial radio station for speech in this country because of the BBC.

00:16:22.420 You know, they've got BBC Sussex, BBC Surrey, BBC Kent, you know, all in a very small part of the southeast of England.

00:16:29.480 Three different stations, completely different programming, completely different presenters.

00:16:33.920 I mean, it's a nonsense.

00:16:34.680 And for me, that should all go.

00:16:37.240 I'm quite happy for them to keep the news operation because I think some of it's still very good.

00:16:41.160 But, you know, why the hell do they do Strictly, for example?

00:16:43.360 What is the BBC doing making a programme about dancing in which they pay loads of money to individuals to appear on it?

00:16:50.780 I don't get it.

00:16:51.660 You know, that's not what the licence is for as far as I'm concerned.

00:16:54.160 And why do they have such a massive website?

00:16:56.780 You know, what are they doing making children?

00:16:58.700 They have 10 TV stations, 10 channels, which they don't need.

00:17:02.920 They were supposed to have shut down BBC Three, still seems to be going.

00:17:05.920 They're commissioning stuff now just for the iPlayer.

00:17:08.820 And it's just too big.

00:17:10.160 I think it just needs to be broken down.

00:17:11.520 So you want to make it leaner, but are you saying we should abolish the license?

00:17:15.360 Yeah, absolutely.

00:17:16.180 Yeah, definitely.

00:17:16.720 But do you not think that...

00:17:17.460 And you should pay for the bits of it that you want.

00:17:19.220 That's how I would do it.

00:17:20.460 The reason I ask is like, and I'm someone who's gone on the BBC a number of times,

00:17:25.760 usually to criticise the BBC.

00:17:27.480 So I'm not a huge fan on the one hand.

00:17:30.180 On the other hand, I do think that we do need one national broadcaster where in a very polarized politically society, we can all come together and what they need to do is kind of be more balanced, which they haven't been.

00:17:44.180 They've taken the piss on some things.

00:17:46.140 But if they could be more balanced on that, I think they could actually bring people together into a common space.

00:17:52.680 Otherwise, we just all disappear in a Taranika chamber.

00:17:55.260 Yeah, I mean, Andrew Neal made that point. He came back from America, I think it was sometime last year. And he said, you know, I watched TV when I was there. And he knows America. He works over there and all that. And he said, I watched a program on MSNBC, which was four guests talking about what a horrible man Donald Trump was. And then I went over to Fox and there was four people talking on a chat show there about what a great guy Donald Trump was. He said, here's what you should do. Why don't you take two of them out from each side, put them in the same show, and they can have a proper argument.

00:18:23.120 And you're right, I don't want to see British media becoming polarised

00:18:26.240 so that only some people watch this and other people watch that.

00:18:29.240 But the problem is, is that, you know, who decides what the BBC does, right?

00:18:32.820 I mean, if you were to be the guy that said,

00:18:35.320 now we're going to make X number of shows,

00:18:37.660 we're going to have this many channels,

00:18:38.800 we're going to employ this many journalists.

00:18:40.080 I mean, what is it though?

00:18:41.360 Is it an entertainment vehicle?

00:18:43.920 Is it a news vehicle?

00:18:45.560 You know, what is it?

00:18:46.320 How would you change it?

00:18:48.440 Well, it's a combination of a few of those, isn't it?

00:18:51.240 which is maybe why you say it's too big.

00:18:53.000 Well, you see, I mean, in my view, when I was growing up,

00:18:55.420 I'm a lot older than you guys,

00:18:56.420 I was watching things like Porridge and Dad's Army and all of that.

00:18:59.220 There was literally nothing else going on.

00:19:01.100 I mean, there were three channels.

00:19:02.180 I remember when there was only two channels, you know,

00:19:04.460 and long before they brought four and five in,

00:19:07.860 and you didn't have a massive choice.

00:19:09.320 On Saturday night, the family sat down,

00:19:11.380 and you basically watched TV from about 6 o'clock at night

00:19:13.880 till Match of the Day finished, you know.

00:19:15.960 But people don't do that anymore.

00:19:18.280 And variety comes in many different ways.

00:19:20.620 You know, people will watch your show rather than watch TV.

00:19:22.720 You've got a smart TV now.

00:19:23.720 You can watch YouTube on it and it's just as good, you know.

00:19:26.620 You don't need to spend a fortune on making Peaky Blinders.

00:19:29.740 Somebody else can do that, you know.

00:19:31.140 Netflix can make Peaky Blinders.

00:19:32.460 Why is the BBC spending a fortune doing it, you know.

00:19:35.260 So I just think that the model of basically telling people that you must buy this,

00:19:40.940 otherwise we'll put you in prison, you know.

00:19:43.620 It's supposed to be fun, right.

00:19:45.300 You know, can you imagine somebody from Netflix turning up and going,

00:19:47.380 you don't have a Netflix subscription

00:19:49.720 so we're going to arrest you now.

00:19:51.820 You know, in this day and age

00:19:54.000 I don't think it's justified.

00:19:54.800 And it is quite a regressive

00:19:55.820 if you look at it as a tax.

00:19:57.440 It is very regressive.

00:19:58.780 Right.

00:19:59.440 And it's, you know, people

00:20:00.220 on the one hand will say

00:20:01.680 oh, but it works out

00:20:03.200 at about £12 a month

00:20:04.640 or something like that.

00:20:05.380 Well, that's quite a lot of money

00:20:06.220 actually for a subscription.

00:20:08.320 You know, I pay I think £11.99

00:20:09.780 for Netflix

00:20:10.900 because I've got all sorts of

00:20:12.120 members of my family

00:20:12.820 in disparate parts of the world

00:20:13.740 watching it.

00:20:14.600 But you can get a subscription

00:20:15.820 I think for about £5.99 a month.

00:20:17.380 you know, which is less than half. And that's the other bit I don't get. They've now launched

00:20:21.620 this thing called BritBox, which is basically their version of Netflix. They started in America

00:20:27.380 and it's BBC and ITV together. They're supposedly going to be commissioning shows for it, but they're

00:20:34.600 also carrying old shows that would otherwise have gone to places like Netflix. So they're

00:20:38.940 actually asking you to subscribe to something you've already paid for. So you can watch Peaky

00:20:42.480 blinders, you know, as a box set, but you've already paid for that. Why would you pay again

00:20:46.800 to watch it somewhere else? It's just, it's just, it's all wrong. It seems to me it's too big.

00:20:51.360 It's a bit like the NHS, you know, bits of it work very well. Lots of it doesn't work at all.

00:20:55.720 And they need to just, you know, trim those bits off, I think. And if they, and if they say that

00:20:59.280 the people want them, a lot of people say, oh, but local radio is really important. Well, local radio

00:21:03.820 is important, but it should also be commercialized. You know, I think a commercial company should have

00:21:09.260 the opportunity to start up a radio station, if they want to, in Birmingham. But you've got,

00:21:14.700 you know, BBC West Midlands there. And, you know, you've probably got BBC Shropshire coming in from

00:21:19.300 the side. You've got, you know, BBC Bedfordshire. I mean, you know, you can't, literally BBC York,

00:21:24.120 BBC Derby. I could go on and on. Mike's just showing off his knowledge of British geography

00:21:28.020 at this point. Well, I've looked into this, this is the thing. And I mean, 61 radio stations,

00:21:32.320 it's a joke. I mean, you cannot possibly justify that, I don't think, you know. And they've also

00:21:37.340 killed off the local newspaper industry as a general rule as well because they have now

00:21:41.800 kind of taken over as the as the thing that local people go to if they want to look at stuff they've

00:21:48.380 got local webs you know they've got all they've all got websites and so all the news that's

00:21:52.140 happening in your local area if you live in derby is on the bbc local website and you know so

00:21:57.000 newspapers can't get can't get any traction there either we know you've been waiting and your full

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00:22:38.160 Mate, we've got a predominantly British audience. None of them are going to be interested in learning a foreign language.

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00:23:36.280 And where do you stand on the BBC, the bias within the BBC?

00:23:39.280 Do you think it's a fundamentally biased organisation?

00:23:41.760 No, I don't actually.

00:23:42.720 I mean, I think some individuals have got,

00:23:45.880 it's a bit like sort of Noam Chomsky says,

00:23:47.640 you know, nobody is unbiased.

00:23:49.120 You know, no matter where you come from,

00:23:50.360 you have a kind of inbuilt bias.

00:23:51.560 So there's no point in pretending that we're all sort of these pure people who don't have any prejudices or don't have any kind of, you know, leanings.

00:23:58.320 Speak for yourself, Mike.

00:23:58.900 Who don't have any leanings.

00:24:00.020 Well, we'll get on to that later.

00:24:02.060 But everybody has a view of the world, right?

00:24:04.140 Now, if you try and disguise that in some way and try and make out that, you know, your view of the world is this pure thing which has come from your ability to be completely and utterly neutral, I would say you're talking absolute bollocks, you know?

00:24:16.500 But I think there are certainly different ways of interviewing that different people do.

00:24:20.980 I mean, I'm a big fan of Andrew Neill's, for example, but I don't think that what his, you know, when he did that sort of piece to camera about Boris Johnson not coming on his show, I didn't think that was necessary.

00:24:30.320 I thought that kind of slightly demeaned him.

00:24:32.320 Really?

00:24:32.700 Yeah.

00:24:33.120 I thought that was really good.

00:24:34.020 Yeah, see, a lot of people did.

00:24:35.000 I thought that it was unnecessary because the reason for doing it was slightly petulant, slightly self-obsessed, slightly going, you know, how is he not coming on my show?

00:24:44.960 You know, everybody knows that my show is the most important show during any election period because I'm the only person that can hold him to account.

00:24:50.980 And he made a series of allegations about him without him being able to answer them.

00:24:55.340 Now, you might argue, well, Johnson should have gone and done the interview.

00:24:58.340 But I don't think it's the BBC's place to kind of do that.

00:25:01.220 Like they're all kicking off at the moment because the ministers are not going on the

00:25:04.540 Today programme because they've said the Today programme is very biased.

00:25:08.000 They don't want to do it.

00:25:09.100 So they've become slightly less relevant now.

00:25:11.000 You know, the Today programme, when I was a journalist in Fleet Street, was always the

00:25:14.160 show you listen to in the morning driving into the work because it was the one that would

00:25:17.820 give you all the stuff you needed to know.

00:25:19.200 And that's where all the ministers went.

00:25:20.260 But now that they're not doing that, people are listening to other stuff.

00:25:23.520 But that speaks to France's point about bias because in those days,

00:25:26.940 that program would have been edited by Rod Little.

00:25:29.020 Yeah.

00:25:29.340 Right?

00:25:29.780 And that would never happen now.

00:25:32.880 Yeah, but I mean, would you say if you listened to the program

00:25:36.080 that Rod Little was editing that somehow it was biased towards the Tories?

00:25:40.400 I don't think you would.

00:25:41.040 No.

00:25:41.260 Because Rod Little is a guy who can actually be reasonably neutral in his job.

00:25:46.380 You know, he writes what would be considered a right-wing newspaper column.

00:25:50.260 And he's a pro Brexit guy. But I mean, I spoke to him about Brexit a long time ago.

00:25:54.840 And he said to me, you know, when the morning after the referendum result, his wife went to take the kids to school and they live in a sort of leafy part of the country.

00:26:04.560 And she said, yeah, I came back from from the school gates and she said, everyone was saying, we can't believe this has happened, you know, because we don't know anybody that voted to leave.

00:26:13.080 Oh, really? Well, that's surprising. You know, that's because you're in a Volvo.

00:26:15.680 you're in Kent and you're in a very nice affluent part of the country where you've got your kids in

00:26:21.340 private school well it's not very surprising is it you know but they literally didn't get it and

00:26:25.800 I think that's part of the problem the BBC that they because they live in this kind of rather

00:26:29.400 nicely upholstered world you know whether it's in London or elsewhere they're all paid ridiculous

00:26:35.280 amounts of money by the way I haven't even mentioned that there's a guy called Stephen

00:26:38.140 Nolan right who gets 500,000 quid a year he works in Northern Ireland he occasionally covers for a

00:26:44.180 Radio 5. But, you know, it's ludicrous

00:26:46.260 money. I mean, I can say that because I'm not on

00:26:48.060 £500,000 a year, but I'm actually better than he is.

00:26:50.800 You might say he's got a bigger audience,

00:26:52.380 but, you know, that's not the point. How does he

00:26:54.200 get half a million quid? That is not, in any

00:26:56.200 way, shape, or form, market value.

00:26:58.480 If he left the BBC, he would not

00:27:00.120 get that money anywhere else. You could buy most of Northern

00:27:02.120 Ireland for that. Yeah, right.

00:27:04.040 You could certainly buy all the cattle.

00:27:06.380 The dead cattle.

00:27:07.600 But it's become, it's been sort of

00:27:09.960 knocked out of kilter with reality. I think that's the problem.

00:27:12.600 And so I think they all sit around talking

00:27:14.060 to each other. Fiona Bruce is a good example. I think Fiona Bruce is probably quite a good

00:27:18.100 presenter of the Antiques Roadshow. But what the hell? How does she end up doing the best

00:27:22.440 and supposedly most interesting political show as well? How can you do that? She was

00:27:28.560 a newsreader. So I've got nothing against Fiona Bruce. But when she presents Question

00:27:33.020 Time, she interrupts people who tend to be from the Tory party far more than she interrupts

00:27:38.200 people from the Labour Party. And it's very irritating. And they all do it. The interrupting

00:27:42.640 thing is really awful. One of the things that I like about these kinds of shows is that you're

00:27:47.040 not sitting there trying to interrupt me all the time, you know, and I'm not trying to interrupt

00:27:50.340 you. You let people talk. And I know that they don't have perhaps the time that we have,

00:27:55.220 but there's a lot of sort of nitpicky type journalism that goes on where they get somebody

00:27:58.940 on and they've clearly got, Andrew Marr is the king of this. He's clearly got one question that

00:28:03.360 he wants to ask. He's very proud of it. And that's what they're all hoping to make the bulletin.

00:28:08.260 You know, they're all hoping to get somebody to admit to something or to screw something up.

00:28:12.640 you know, or to, you know, to tell a lie.

00:28:15.300 And it's kind of what I would call kind of hijacking journalism, you know.

00:28:18.760 It's sort of trying to ambush people all the time.

00:28:21.320 I think what they don't understand, sorry, Francis, about that is...

00:28:23.860 They're talking about interrupting.

00:28:24.660 Yeah, stop interrupting.

00:28:25.460 Yeah, shut up, mate. Fucking hell.

00:28:27.620 But what I think they don't understand, and this is just a quick point before,

00:28:31.100 is that they're damaging the brand.

00:28:33.920 Yeah.

00:28:34.420 The brand of their company, whether it's the BBC or it's Channel 4 with Cathy Newman,

00:28:39.420 or whether it's the broader brand of journalism.

00:28:42.640 They're damaging the brand by doing that, and they're contributing to their own death

00:28:46.600 spiral.

00:28:47.320 And I think actually, I mean, if you look at what Trump's done, and I'm no particular

00:28:51.460 fan of Donald Trump, and I've found it very distasteful when you would see those press

00:28:55.420 conferences that he would have with his supporters in them, all kind of doing this, you know,

00:28:59.620 to the journalists and, you know, threatening them and stuff and making out that the journalists

00:29:03.300 are the enemy.

00:29:04.160 And he really fed into that, and he really made the people who were there feel that way,

00:29:09.380 that the journalists were definitely the enemy.

00:29:11.440 And I think there's a bit of that going on at the moment with Downing Street, because

00:29:14.260 I think Dominic Cummings is very much about making the journalist appear to be the enemy.

00:29:18.700 And I think he's been quite successful.

00:29:20.080 I mean, if you watch the way he operates in terms of those little snippets you get of

00:29:23.780 people following me around in the street, and he just says something ridiculous, you

00:29:27.400 know, like you said, that thing about the kids show, the masks, and, you know, he looks

00:29:30.980 at them, you could ask me stupid questions all night, and he's walking away from them.

00:29:34.320 And he's treating them really with absolutely nothing disdain, you know, but I've never

00:29:37.840 been a fan of politicians being allowed to have, you know, these kind of staged events.

00:29:42.440 But they're all doing it now. I mean, the Labour Party were doing it as well. They would boo when

00:29:45.600 the BBC would get up and speak. You know, it's a really, it's a sort of, it's a kind of nasty

00:29:50.420 atmosphere that's been created, I think, largely by the fault of the journalists for being too

00:29:56.160 biased, but also the fault of the politicians for encouraging, you know, their supporters to feel,

00:30:01.760 you know, kind of aggressive against journalists. And so it's a really good point that you're making

00:30:06.520 because you do see that.

00:30:07.800 And that is a relatively recent phenomenon.

00:30:10.080 It is, yeah.

00:30:10.460 And we've come to this point

00:30:11.800 where we seem to be polarised

00:30:13.060 and, you know, you get people openly booing journalists

00:30:15.480 and both sides of the argument

00:30:17.800 saying the BBC are fundamentally biased,

00:30:20.200 Brexit BBC, you know, Brexit Broadcasting Corporation,

00:30:23.680 all the rest of it.

00:30:24.760 How do we bring some kind of unity back to journalism?

00:30:28.080 Well, you see, I'm not one of those,

00:30:28.960 you hear this all the time now that, you know,

00:30:30.440 from those who defend the BBC,

00:30:31.660 well, if they're being attacked by the left and the right

00:30:33.680 for being biased, they must be doing something right.

00:30:35.480 No, they must be doing something fucking wrong, actually, because everyone thinks they're doing a shit job.

00:30:40.940 If you're a painter and decorator and everybody's criticising you, you don't go, see, shows you what a great painter and decorator I am.

00:30:47.700 No, it means you're not doing it right.

00:30:49.720 And I think the BBC needs to stop being quite so pompous.

00:30:53.700 I think they could do with giving their journalists, their senior journalists anyway, a kind of a shake up, because I think they all think that they're God's gift to everything.

00:31:03.480 And they're the only ones that know anything.

00:31:05.480 And they're very snobby about everybody else. I mean, if you're not in the BBC, you know, people just look at you and go, oh, what, you work for Murdoch? Oh, God, you know, how awful must that be? Or, you know, you work for the Mirror or you work for the Express or you work for ITN. You know, there's a kind of snobbery. I think they have to just strip it all down and start again and have a real conversation, an honest conversation with themselves about what it is that they think they should be doing.

00:31:28.740 and they should realise that actually the majority of people in this country

00:31:33.260 are ordinary sort of lower middle class individuals who work for a living

00:31:39.080 who don't really care that much about the transgender debate.

00:31:42.540 They don't want to hear about it ad nauseam.

00:31:44.080 They don't really care that much about LGBT.

00:31:46.540 They don't want anyone to be horrible to anybody

00:31:48.160 but they just don't want to have stuff talked about endlessly

00:31:50.980 which is a minor issue or which is what most people would consider to be

00:31:55.300 a minority issue, shall we say.

00:31:57.700 I mean, there's an interesting study that came out the other day about LGBT and BAME representation on broadcast media and on television.

00:32:07.940 It turns out that it's actually overrepresented.

00:32:09.980 Of course.

00:32:10.580 You know, it's not actually in any way representative of the percentage of the population.

00:32:14.740 It's overrepresented by a factor of about double.

00:32:17.940 Right.

00:32:18.280 Which, again, I don't really care about.

00:32:20.000 But somebody's doing that.

00:32:21.180 Yeah.

00:32:21.420 Somebody's making that happen.

00:32:22.660 You know, like when you have a transgender character in Coronation Street, right, you're kind of going, OK, well, that's fine.

00:32:29.860 But, you know, why did you have to do that? You know, why did you have to have a transgender character?

00:32:34.080 You know, and it's it just feels a little bit forced all the time.

00:32:36.480 And I think that's the problem. I think everybody's been trying to be too inclusive.

00:32:40.060 And they've forgotten what the majority of people actually are quite like.

00:32:44.140 And the majority of people in this country are not racist. They're not horrible. They're not nasty.

00:32:47.340 they're fair-minded and they just want i think their television to represent you know their

00:32:53.580 lives and i think it's moved so far away from that that they don't really feel that it's it's

00:32:59.280 for them anymore it's like we don't know where to stop right with all this stuff so i remember

00:33:02.760 there was an article about how the bbc plans to make sure that i think it was like 20 percent

00:33:08.420 of on-screen talent are gay lesbian or whatever and i was like why on earth would they want to

00:33:13.720 reduce the number of gay people on TV, right?

00:33:16.560 I mean, so it's not to say that making sure that people are properly represented

00:33:21.680 is necessarily a bad idea, but you've got to make sure, as you say,

00:33:25.020 that it's representative of the population as opposed to an endless drive

00:33:28.860 to just make sure that everyone on TV is LGBT, you know what I mean?

00:33:31.980 Well, I mean, funnily enough, Christopher Biggins came on Talk Radio a while back

00:33:35.260 around the time Paul Schofield came out, you know, the shocking and brave...

00:33:39.860 Philip Schofield.

00:33:40.820 Sorry, Philip Schofield, yeah.

00:33:41.720 and Biggins was hilarious

00:33:44.820 because he's basically saying

00:33:45.880 when he started working in TV

00:33:47.260 you couldn't be gay

00:33:48.300 there was absolutely no way

00:33:49.240 you could admit to it

00:33:49.900 he says now if you're not gay

00:33:50.820 you've got no chance

00:33:51.420 of even getting on it

00:33:52.260 but I've been told

00:33:54.640 by various people in the business

00:33:56.340 well forget about getting on TV

00:33:57.780 because you're white

00:33:58.640 and you're male

00:33:59.880 it's not going to happen

00:34:01.360 and so like you

00:34:03.660 I've appeared as a sort of

00:34:05.100 talking head from time to time

00:34:06.240 but nobody's ever going to give me

00:34:07.500 a TV show at the BBC

00:34:08.940 nobody's ever going to give me

00:34:10.520 a job reading the news or anything like that because I'm not the right sort of concept

00:34:17.060 for them because I might have a few views that they don't agree with.

00:34:20.980 This is the other thing, of course, that people now are much less tolerant of other people's

00:34:24.520 views.

00:34:25.400 If you disagree with me, that's great.

00:34:27.320 We can have a conversation about it.

00:34:28.540 It's called a debate.

00:34:29.240 But now, if you go on television with views which are considered to be horrible, even

00:34:35.540 though they might not be horrible, they don't want to put you on.

00:34:38.320 They will never, for example, Kelvin McKenzie, more or less never allowed now on Question

00:34:41.860 Time.

00:34:42.140 He used to go on it quite a lot.

00:34:43.460 Now, you can take a view of Kelvin McKenzie of what sort of a guy he is, but why should

00:34:47.420 he not be able to go on TV?

00:34:48.620 The reason is because so many interest groups have said, this is a monster, we can't have

00:34:53.440 him, he's responsible for all the horrors of the world.

00:34:56.280 And so the BBC just goes, you know what, it's easier if we don't put him on.

00:34:58.940 And I think there's a lot of that going on.

00:35:00.280 There's a lot of kind of pushing of certain agendas, a lot of pushing of certain cultural

00:35:06.000 yays and nays. And so the BBC try and kind of keep to what they think they should be doing

00:35:13.720 to attract the least sort of anger from groups, you know, because there are certain groups of

00:35:19.820 people who are much more vociferous than others, right? And so if you do have, I mean, I think one

00:35:26.920 of the greatest things that ever happened, for example, was when that guy from the BNP went on

00:35:30.160 Question Time. Nick Griffin. Nick Griffin. I mean, that was the end of him. He went on Question

00:35:35.300 time he made a complete fool of himself didn't know what he was saying and his political life

00:35:40.140 pretty much ended that night you know so I'm all for showing people like that up putting him on

00:35:44.480 putting him on the air making them look idiotic and making everybody realize that actually this

00:35:49.200 is not very clever guy after all and maybe he's not really worth listening to and that was and

00:35:54.040 literally that was it for him you know

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00:37:12.180 What else are you going to do?

00:37:13.160 um mike we were talking about all these you know lgbtq bame all the rest of it and we talk a lot

00:37:22.340 about diversity yeah but isn't one of the major problems that when we we don't actually have

00:37:27.420 diversity because real diversity is diversity of opinion yes and we don't seem to have it

00:37:32.540 i think a lot of it is diversity of class as well which we don't have i mean one of the things you

00:37:37.480 see with almost every black and ethnic person on major broadcasting shows, they're all very

00:37:45.180 middle and upper class. You know, they've all been to private school. You know, you're not

00:37:48.580 getting the equivalent of Stormzy, you know, coming on the one show and presenting it. You're

00:37:52.500 getting the equivalent of, you know, basically Andrew Marr, who went to school privately and

00:37:58.220 who went to nice universities, who happens to be brown, you know, so they're not actually

00:38:02.020 representative of anything other than the same class of people. And you're absolutely right.

00:38:06.460 And if you don't have a diversity of opinion, I mean, I was laughing at the Oscars ceremony, right?

00:38:09.980 Because suddenly this movie from South Korea wins called, what's it called?

00:38:14.540 Parasite, Parasite, which is meant to be a brilliant film.

00:38:16.440 I'm sure it is.

00:38:17.460 But everyone's raving on about, isn't it great to have all this diversity at the Oscars?

00:38:20.520 And I'm looking at them all standing on the stage and they're all South Korean.

00:38:24.040 And I'm going, well, how are they diverse?

00:38:28.000 Just because you've let some South Koreans in.

00:38:30.240 Yeah.

00:38:30.580 I'm sorry, that doesn't make you diverse.

00:38:32.720 And they've sort of got it all wrong.

00:38:34.180 Yeah.

00:38:34.500 You know?

00:38:35.340 It's a crazy time.

00:38:36.320 But let's move on to the political landscape, kind of in broad brushstrokes.

00:38:42.080 Obviously, as we mentioned and joked about earlier, the Labour Party is kind of disappearing.

00:38:46.800 Yeah. Well, they're more and more and more irrelevant, it seems to me.

00:38:50.160 One, I don't really know what they stand for.

00:38:52.940 They don't either, to be honest.

00:38:54.400 No, I don't think they do. And they're actually frightened of saying what they stand for.

00:38:57.340 I mean, the thing I find the most amusing about them is whenever anybody asks them about, you know, who was your favourite Labour leader.

00:39:03.320 And they're also desperate to avoid saying Tony Blair.

00:39:06.320 So they kind of dance around all this.

00:39:08.300 I mean, poor old Rebecca Long-Bailey.

00:39:10.420 They said to her, you know, who's your favourite for the last 50 years?

00:39:13.060 And she named Clement Attlee, who died like 60 years before.

00:39:16.440 So if one of them had actually come out and say with some honesty, look, we can't, we

00:39:21.880 should say Tony Blair because he won three elections, but we can't say Tony Blair because

00:39:25.680 he basically betrayed us and he took us into this illegal war and therefore he will never

00:39:29.860 be regarded as a great man.

00:39:31.520 But they don't do that.

00:39:32.360 They kind of talk around him like he didn't exist, like he was never there, you know?

00:39:36.080 Well, look, we've talked the Labour Party to death on the show, but let's look at the Conservatives, because Boris Johnson's obviously been elected on a large base of working class people from former Labour heartlands. How do you see the kind of the job that he's doing? You'll get a lot of those kind of people calling into your show, I imagine.

00:39:57.340 Yeah. Well, actually, I mean, we've got an audience of what I would say are more Brexit party types, right?

00:40:03.240 People who were driven to vote for Brexit in whichever way, shape or form they could.

00:40:08.420 Some of them are Labour, some of them are working class, some of them are Northern.

00:40:11.840 And I think a lot of them are still, for them, the jury's out on Boris.

00:40:15.020 You know, they're going to wait and see how it all goes.

00:40:17.960 And I think, I mean, I think he's doing better than people thought he might do,

00:40:21.880 certainly before the election when he was, when he became prime minister.

00:40:24.580 And we were told, you know, this is a man who, you know, would basically sell his own mother.

00:40:28.380 You know, he's not to be trusted.

00:40:30.060 I mean, I found it quite distasteful that they were talking about how terrible he was with women.

00:40:34.220 I mean, I don't really care what he's like with women.

00:40:36.760 I don't know if he's beat them up.

00:40:37.780 You know, the fact that he's left a couple of wives does not mean he's not going to be a good prime minister.

00:40:42.180 And again, you know, people like to sort of point fingers at guys like Boris Johnson and say, oh, but look how horrible he is.

00:40:48.140 Look what he did.

00:40:48.820 You know, he doesn't even know how many children he's got.

00:40:50.960 To me, none of that really matters.

00:40:52.460 What matters is what he does.

00:40:53.700 I've been a bit disappointed that he's been so sort of green because I call them the eco planks, you know, the Extinction Rebellion crowds, the people that want to, you know, stop everything and make everybody just walk around and cycle everywhere and not actually get in a car, not get on a plane.

00:41:08.240 And I'm really disappointed that he hasn't kind of been a bit less enthusiastic about that.

00:41:12.660 You know, the fact that he's now talking about doing away with cars that are not electric by 2032, that's not that long away.

00:41:19.360 I mean, there are some ordinary people who buy a car and keep it for 10 years.

00:41:22.940 So there'll be people now thinking, well, I was going to get a diesel,

00:41:26.480 but I'd better not now because it's not going to be worth anything.

00:41:28.840 And so I've been disappointed with that.

00:41:31.200 But, of course, that's a very unpopular view because that makes me, you know,

00:41:34.140 some kind of dinosaur.

00:41:35.100 I don't know how that's unpopular because the thing with the diesels,

00:41:37.920 by the way, that pissed me off is I've always had a diesel.

00:41:40.160 The government kept pushing diesels on people.

00:41:42.540 And then suddenly they're like the worst thing ever.

00:41:44.560 It was Ed Miliband that told everybody diesels are the right way to go.

00:41:47.300 So we should have known then that that was the greatest idea.

00:41:50.940 But you're absolutely right.

00:41:52.540 And the fact remains that, you know, he has this majority and the only kind of, I suppose, impediment to him being as successful as he wants to be is his own party.

00:42:01.960 And him himself.

00:42:03.160 And him himself.

00:42:03.620 I mean, I think one of the reasons why when we had the floods recently that he wasn't going out there is because he's worked out that, one, if he does it, he's likely to run into another one of those Labour stooges.

00:42:13.640 He's going to turn up and say, you know, my son's dying in hospital.

00:42:16.420 What are you doing about it?

00:42:17.360 And then miraculously recovers the next day and they go home.

00:42:19.940 or he does something really idiotic

00:42:23.180 like either he falls down a hole

00:42:24.780 or he says the wrong thing

00:42:26.420 or somebody overhears him

00:42:27.520 you know he has his sort of

00:42:28.480 you know that bigoted woman moment

00:42:29.860 or something like that

00:42:30.460 so I think they've worked out

00:42:31.360 as they did during the election

00:42:32.400 keep him sort of quite far away

00:42:34.760 from the press

00:42:35.420 because he's actually

00:42:36.500 people said you know

00:42:37.720 Boris is a brilliant orator

00:42:38.720 I mean people do like him

00:42:40.100 but he's not a great orator

00:42:41.180 he's not a brilliant debater

00:42:42.480 I mean the debates he had with Corbyn

00:42:43.840 I didn't think he was that good

00:42:45.240 no and to me

00:42:47.300 the one thing that is going to define

00:42:49.300 Boris's term, well, his four-year, five-year term, whatever it is, is going to be the question of

00:42:55.100 immigration. And that is what a lot of people voted for with Brexit. Priti Patel has come out

00:43:01.240 and said they're going to be incredibly tough on immigration. Do you think he's actually going to

00:43:04.700 commit to it or do you think he's going to fudge the issue? I think it's going to be a fudge because

00:43:08.000 the problem is that an awful lot of businesses have already kind of turned their backs on it

00:43:12.480 and said, well, hang on, it's all very well for you to say, as Priti Patel did, well, you know,

00:43:16.440 just hire some local people and pay more money. And people are going, well, you know, I can't do

00:43:20.160 that because I won't make any money then. And what I do make, you'll be taxing me. And one of the

00:43:23.920 greatest errors, I think, that they ever made to Tories was giving the chancellor's job to George

00:43:28.320 Osborne, who I think is probably the worst chancellor of all time, who's put taxes up

00:43:31.980 massively. I mean, I run a small business. My taxes have more or less doubled in the time that,

00:43:36.600 you know, I've been running the business in the last, say, 10 years, you know, because they've

00:43:40.160 changed the way that they tax small business. They've gone after individuals who are the wealth

00:43:44.040 creators of this country, and they're the Tories. You know, this is why I'm terrified of the Labour

00:43:47.720 Party getting in, because, I mean, this lot have done bad enough. But I think that, you know,

00:43:52.000 for example, the fruit pickers that would come in from Eastern Europe on an annual basis,

00:43:56.860 sometimes maybe would stay for the rest of the year. You know, you're not going to find people

00:44:00.780 indigenously here in this country who are living here who are going to want to do that kind of

00:44:04.700 work. So apparently they're going to give some dispensation to the fruit growers so that they

00:44:11.000 can import these people. So you can forget that one, right? First of all, they're also now going

00:44:15.440 to forget the 30,000 threshold for people coming in. So if you work at the NHS, you can come in,

00:44:19.720 so you can forget that one. And so, you know, I think it's a good idea to have a points-based

00:44:25.340 system, but whether it actually practically means anything, I don't know. And every single

00:44:29.480 government that said they're going to crack down immigration somehow fails to do so, and it ends

00:44:33.560 up with more people coming in. That's what I think will happen with this, because the way

00:44:38.000 they've set up the point system, I mean, I think it allows a lot of people to come into this

00:44:43.420 country, which I personally don't have a huge problem with, but there are people who do.

00:44:48.940 And people voted to have it reduced. I think the interesting thing is that it's categorized and

00:44:54.240 framed by the Labour Party as a racist issue, which it really isn't, because most of the people

00:44:59.380 who voted to control the borders voted about people coming from the EU, particularly from

00:45:04.760 Eastern Europe. That was their main concern. They're not that bothered about the family of

00:45:09.000 Asians who've been there for three generations living down the road. I mean, there are racist

00:45:13.920 people in this country who might be against people with different colored skin. But by and large,

00:45:18.040 it was the Eastern European sort of influx of people that came. Because of course, the European

00:45:22.660 Union is now a very different animal to what it was. I mean, I remember before I got a dog,

00:45:30.100 I used to go to Calais quite a lot from Sussex. We'd go and take a day trip over to Carrefour

00:45:34.640 and buy some wine and pate and pretend we were Europeans.

00:45:38.200 So isn't it great, you know?

00:45:40.340 Typical Brexiteer.

00:45:41.300 Yeah, yeah, absolutely.

00:45:43.320 And, you know, coming back on the ferry one time,

00:45:45.440 there was a group of Romanians and they were standing on the deck.

00:45:49.680 And when the White Cliffs of Dover came in,

00:45:51.260 they literally were jumping up and down, cheering,

00:45:53.160 because, you know, this was their kind of, you know, Nirvana.

00:45:55.760 They'd suddenly found the place they wanted to get to.

00:45:58.000 And they all got into a van with Romanian plates and drove into Britain.

00:46:01.680 They're probably still here, you know,

00:46:03.340 Because there's nothing wrong with that.

00:46:04.720 There's nothing illegal about it.

00:46:05.920 But I think the problem is that if you look at countries where people live,

00:46:09.500 where the standard of living is so poor that they want to come here

00:46:12.260 even to do a terribly labor-intensive job for not very much money,

00:46:17.300 but it's still better than where they live, of course they're going to come

00:46:19.780 and they're going to want to stay.

00:46:21.200 And the reason that people want to come to these countries is because it's a great country.

00:46:24.260 And the people who are already here from the EU are all asking for settled status.

00:46:28.260 Two million of them.

00:46:29.320 I mean, we were told by the Remainers that they were all going to leave.

00:46:32.080 No, they all want to stay because they love it, you know, and I'm quite happy with that.

00:46:37.180 But living in London, it's a very skewed prospect.

00:46:40.320 I mean, I hear from people in places like Peterborough, and I've never been to Peterborough,

00:46:44.280 so I don't know whether it's true, but, you know, apparently Peterborough's got a very

00:46:46.840 big Czech contingent of people that went and lived there.

00:46:50.420 That wouldn't bother me, but, I mean, I can see how other people might think, you know,

00:46:53.740 oh, it's not my turn anymore.

00:46:55.160 And I think that's what the government has to be careful about.

00:46:57.300 They have to be aware that some people think like that.

00:47:01.680 But isn't Boris aware, and to use his own words,

00:47:04.900 that the vote was borrowed, not given,

00:47:07.760 and that he really needs to tackle this?

00:47:09.660 Because if he doesn't, then, well, actually,

00:47:12.780 who else are they going to vote for?

00:47:14.040 Well, I mean, that is the problem.

00:47:15.900 I mean, you know, I've obviously got to know quite a few people

00:47:18.020 in the Brexit party.

00:47:18.780 I don't think they're, I mean, there was some talk

00:47:20.540 that Nigel Farage was going to have a sort of, you know,

00:47:22.640 reform party, they were going to try and reform politics.

00:47:25.120 That's not going to happen.

00:47:25.920 I mean, that's all going to go away

00:47:26.900 because all of their funding is going to disappear.

00:47:30.160 But you're right.

00:47:30.920 you know, yes, people will expect Boris to improve their lot in life. But I've always said,

00:47:36.400 and I said this during the whole campaign of the referendum, you know, people shouldn't be,

00:47:40.180 you know, relying on politicians to make their lives good or bad, because in the end,

00:47:44.740 you know, it's up to you what you do with your life. Yes, a politician can ruin it by making

00:47:49.460 you pay too much tax or by, you know, making you move to another country, you know, but by and large,

00:47:54.080 your own life is your own destiny. And it's how you sort yourself out, how many children you have

00:47:58.320 and all of that, it's nothing to do with them.

00:47:59.780 So you shouldn't expect to be handed money, I don't think.

00:48:03.460 I don't think you should be expected to be provided with a job.

00:48:07.020 And I know plenty of people who live in the north-east of England

00:48:08.980 who are perfectly happy with their lot.

00:48:10.580 It's not as if, you know, there's this huge swathe of poor people

00:48:13.420 wandering about, you know, without any clothes on their back

00:48:15.580 and no food to eat.

00:48:16.560 You know, this is Britain.

00:48:17.480 You know, it's not, you know, Siberia,

00:48:19.500 for want of a better place to pick at random.

00:48:22.000 I'm deeply offended.

00:48:23.080 I'm sure.

00:48:23.540 Sorry.

00:48:24.200 See, I'm just somehow unable to do that.

00:48:26.300 Trust me, you can't wander around in Siberia naked for very long.

00:48:29.920 No, I can imagine.

00:48:31.540 But do you know what I mean?

00:48:32.280 I think we sometimes think that people's experiences are worse than they really are.

00:48:38.860 You know, I mean, I had a row with Laura Pidcock before the election about poverty, you know,

00:48:43.160 because we have this figure of something like 14 million people living in poverty in this country.

00:48:47.640 And it's not true.

00:48:49.040 It's relative poverty as designed by the UN because, you know, they take the average income and they look at what people are making.

00:48:55.960 You know, there are not 40 million people living in poverty in this country.

00:48:58.760 She accused me of peddling right-wing myths, you know,

00:49:02.240 and then she didn't get elected, funnily enough.

00:49:05.140 But there are lots of parts of the north of England which are very prosperous,

00:49:07.640 which are full of very reasonable people making a reasonable living,

00:49:10.880 running businesses, you know.

00:49:12.880 And yes, but it looks already, one of the things that Boris has apparently promised to do

00:49:16.740 is to siphon more money up to northern parts of the country.

00:49:20.480 But we've seen all that before.

00:49:21.620 I mean, look at what happened in Salford when the BBC relocated to Salford.

00:49:25.100 They spent most of their time ferrying people backwards and forwards from London because nobody wanted to move north.

00:49:30.280 You know, in fact, Susanna Reid ended up leaving the BBC as a result and going to ITV because she just didn't want to live there.

00:49:35.680 And that's just to put up with Piers Morgan.

00:49:37.240 I know.

00:49:38.020 That's how much she hated it.

00:49:40.840 Yeah.

00:49:41.240 And I think, yeah, I mean, it's difficult to know how much the government can improve the society in which we live.

00:49:49.160 You know, I mean, HS2 is another thing I think was a massive mistake.

00:49:52.120 I don't really see the point of HS2.

00:49:53.720 and they're going to spend $100 billion plus,

00:49:56.180 it'll probably be $200 billion by the time they're finished,

00:49:58.520 to basically get from Birmingham to Shepherd's Bush

00:50:01.160 in 20 minutes less than you would normally have got to Euston.

00:50:04.740 Two dreadful places.

00:50:05.540 You know, exactly.

00:50:07.020 And it's going to be, how long do you think it's going to take

00:50:08.440 to get from Shepherd's Bush into town?

00:50:10.300 Yeah.

00:50:10.760 You know, I mean, and they talk about, you know, cross rail this.

00:50:13.720 And I mean, I do agree that we have been very bad in this country

00:50:16.720 for a long time at infrastructure,

00:50:19.060 that nobody's looked more than five years ahead.

00:50:20.960 And maybe, in that case, it's a good thing to build this fast train.

00:50:25.140 But, you know, I'm going to be dead by the time it's ready, frankly.

00:50:28.480 And I know it's not all about me, but, you know.

00:50:31.660 It's mostly about you, yeah.

00:50:32.280 You know, imagine how much technology will have moved on in 20 years' time.

00:50:36.340 You know, people might be in flying drones, you know,

00:50:39.000 being moved around by, you know, Air Uber or something, you know.

00:50:42.760 There's still going to be cancellations on Air Uber and delays and whatever.

00:50:46.360 Absolutely, of course.

00:50:47.520 You know, you're still going to be there.

00:50:48.660 What do you mean you cancelled my Air Uber?

00:50:50.100 Yeah, you went to the wrong street.

00:50:53.020 Yeah, I mean, you know, the point is that you can't imagine something

00:50:56.200 that they think is going to be absolutely, you know,

00:50:58.980 cutting-edge technology now is going to be cutting-edge technology in 2040.

00:51:03.640 It just isn't, you know?

00:51:05.260 Absolutely.

00:51:05.960 Well, I suppose that argument could always be made at any point in time.

00:51:08.620 That's what people say, and they go,

00:51:10.040 oh, that's what they said about flying, and that's what they said about.

00:51:12.200 Actually, it's not what they said about flying,

00:51:13.820 because before you could fly.

00:51:15.000 Well, flying was revolutionary.

00:51:15.680 You know, flying was pretty fucking amazing, actually.

00:51:18.300 And so you could get from here to New York, you know, in less than a week, you know, which you'd have to take on.

00:51:23.100 You know, so it's not like that.

00:51:24.780 No.

00:51:24.920 But what I'm saying is that, I mean, bizarrely as well, the Green Party are against it, which almost strikes me as slightly odd.

00:51:30.560 It's then meant to be, you know, for public transport and against, you know, car travel.

00:51:35.540 But the Green Party are against HS2.

00:51:37.720 Yeah, why?

00:51:38.440 Apparently because it goes through too many areas of wetlands or, you know.

00:51:42.860 Too many badgers in the West.

00:51:44.020 Too many badgers and otters in the West or something.

00:51:46.000 But, you know, it's kind of mad.

00:51:47.420 And if you're going to spend that kind of money, it seems to me, how about you build some houses for people, because people do need houses, build some places where they're not going to get flooded, and in the places where they are going to get flooded, do something about the flooding.

00:51:58.520 You know, we don't need another bloody train.

00:52:00.340 It's funny, when you were talking about Boris Johnson messing up during the floods, I just had this image of him just, like, standing over some kind of lever on a dam, and he accidentally fires it off, and, like, the whole town gets flooded.

00:52:11.160 That's the kind of thing that you can imagine him doing.

00:52:13.180 Although, I mean, I think he's actually less accident-prone than he appears to be.

00:52:17.420 And those people that I know...

00:52:18.820 That's not what the women say, mate.

00:52:20.280 Well, I can tell you something.

00:52:22.540 Well, that's not the story.

00:52:23.440 Oh, hey, come on, let's do it.

00:52:25.280 No, it's not quite ready for release, this one.

00:52:29.100 But he is a guy who is very good at stage managing things, right?

00:52:33.240 I know some people who work very closely with him as a mayor.

00:52:35.980 And, you know, the ruffling of the hair before he goes on TV,

00:52:38.780 you know, the kind of slightly dishevelled look,

00:52:40.600 it's all quite well manufactured.

00:52:42.020 It's not normal.

00:52:43.820 And if you look at his hair, I mean, nobody's hair looks like that.

00:52:46.000 The way that his hair kind of goes in different directions,

00:52:49.300 he's got to be putting something in it to make it do that.

00:52:51.680 I mean, I know that I may not have the greatest head of hair,

00:52:53.700 but I'm quite old now and I'm not ashamed of him, is it?

00:52:56.040 But his hair does not look normal and it doesn't grow like that.

00:53:00.240 I'm sorry, it just doesn't.

00:53:01.620 And, you know, I just think he's much less spontaneous

00:53:05.060 than everybody thinks he is.

00:53:07.160 Do you remember, in fact, he did a speech.

00:53:11.660 Somebody was telling this story.

00:53:13.000 I can't remember if he was telling it to me or I heard it on the radio,

00:53:15.460 talking to somebody else he basically went to do a sort of after dinner speech and he turned up

00:53:20.200 late and he kind of shuffled around and um he just went into this kind of random story about

00:53:27.120 something or other which was quite amusing and nothing really much to do with the people that

00:53:30.820 were there for the night somebody then saw him at another event where he did exactly the same thing

00:53:34.800 told exactly the same story and it was all rehearsed it wasn't in any way spontaneous it

00:53:39.920 wasn't like i've forgotten my notes i've left them on the train which is what he was saying

00:53:43.720 I'll just have to do it from scratch.

00:53:44.980 This was a routine that he had memorized.

00:53:47.260 He's like a stand-up comedian.

00:53:48.320 Yeah, exactly.

00:53:49.280 And, you know, you guys, I guess, do a bit of that.

00:53:51.860 So you know what that's like.

00:53:53.020 I mean, there's nothing wrong with it, you know,

00:53:55.680 if you have to do an act and you have to, you know.

00:53:57.900 I mean, Talk Sport made a massive error once,

00:54:00.080 and I can talk about this because it was a long time ago

00:54:01.860 and the guy's not working there anymore.

00:54:03.800 But they booked Russell Brand to do a show.

00:54:06.780 And, you know, it was when Russell was kind of riding very high

00:54:09.860 in the popularity ratings, and he was basically on tour.

00:54:13.220 And so the program director at the time said,

00:54:15.040 this will be great, you know,

00:54:15.820 because we can put him on at 10 o'clock on a Saturday night

00:54:18.280 and we'll just run it live every night.

00:54:20.640 Not live, but, you know, the Friday night recording, whatever.

00:54:23.620 So the first one went out and they went, oh, this is great.

00:54:25.660 You know, it's fantastic, brilliant.

00:54:26.840 The second one came in and he had to listen to it first

00:54:29.880 and he rang the agent up and he said,

00:54:31.400 he said, I think you've sent me the wrong one.

00:54:32.840 There's a bit of a problem here.

00:54:33.560 He says, it's the same as last week.

00:54:36.140 And he went, yeah, that's the show.

00:54:37.920 And he went, what do you mean?

00:54:38.660 We've booked this for 10 weeks.

00:54:40.360 It does the same show everywhere.

00:54:41.880 yeah he's a comedian he goes to places and he tells basically the same jokes and does the same

00:54:47.060 routine and they went oh christ you know so they just they had to kill him and they paid him all

00:54:52.580 this money but they could only ever want run one episode because all the others were the same

00:54:56.520 sounds like a great gig man yeah but if you find where this guy's working now i'll tell you his

00:55:01.260 name and maybe you can sell him something we can sell him something again finance a show finally a

00:55:07.340 way to monetize it yeah absolutely right no no no as you well know we're well funded by the the

00:55:12.200 pro-israel lobby do you get those accusations as well you have no idea it's amazing how people

00:55:18.200 think you're funded isn't it when you actually aren't funded by anyone no well we're funded by

00:55:22.060 fans that's the only people who give us money and constantine's overdraft yeah yeah well that's

00:55:25.940 very good um but yeah i mean the the sort of the difference in the media landscape now is is really

00:55:31.780 quite interesting for me because it's even just in five years it's changed you know and i think

00:55:36.080 it will continue to change which is why to go back to the BBC um I don't think their model is

00:55:41.400 sustainable you know because they can't possibly if you were setting the BBC up now from nowhere

00:55:45.940 oh yeah you would not get to where it is now it's just like would you join the EU now if you're in

00:55:50.800 independent Britain probably not but uh just uh before we wrap up I guess uh and on the political

00:55:55.900 side of things as well Sadiq Khan is somebody yes you're not a huge fan of no uh we wanted to talk

00:56:00.680 about I mean look one of the there there is a couple of issues that are happening in London

00:56:05.100 right now that they're just dreadful i mean number one is obviously knife crime yeah and number two

00:56:10.840 is the amount of rough sleeping and homelessness that you see like we walk around this very wealthy

00:56:16.420 area and there's literally people with tents yeah in the middle of the recent thing isn't it yeah

00:56:21.080 very recent it's happened i'm a londoner and i've lived lived here the majority of my life i don't

00:56:25.600 remember that happening when this city was actually poorer yeah and there was a less wealthy i mean

00:56:30.500 there was always like like you say there were always kind of tramps as we refer to them then

00:56:34.140 there were always people that slept on park benches and normally they wanted to you know

00:56:38.060 for whatever reason they were you know not all there they were probably suffering from some kind

00:56:42.060 of mental problem but you know but it was kind of their choice and then i mean sort of down at

00:56:46.500 charing cross it started to get bad i guess about 20 years ago but it's much worse now and i know i

00:56:50.380 agree there's money coming supposedly from the government um i spoke to a guy not long ago about

00:56:55.920 all of that and who goes around helping particularly homeless veterans because there's quite a lot of

00:57:00.420 them as well. And it's very hard to know what is going on. I mean, I think the other, there is a

00:57:06.740 problem with the sort of culture of begging as well, which I think has meant that a lot of the

00:57:11.140 people that you see begging are not homeless, but they then impact on people wanting to give money

00:57:15.680 to the real homeless people, you know. And certainly I know that there's been sort of

00:57:21.280 inflections of people, is that the right word, from, you know, from some of the poorer parts

00:57:26.980 of Eastern Europe living. I mean, I think there was a whole sort of tented village around Marble

00:57:31.320 Arch at one point, which I never saw, but I saw pictures of. And I don't know what you do about

00:57:37.820 it, but London has become also a very busy city for me. I mean, it's now never quiet, right? I

00:57:44.320 used to do a show that finished at one o'clock in the morning on Friday, going into Saturday,

00:57:47.580 and I could come out of the office and be in a traffic jam in the middle of New Cross at one in

00:57:52.200 the morning. And I'm not sure that Sadiq Khan can do much about that. I think he's messed up

00:57:59.380 the transportation system. I think the roads are a terrible, terrible state. He's completely

00:58:04.840 discouraged anyone from driving, but yet he's got 35,000 Ubers driving around at any given time.

00:58:11.180 The tube trains that used to be really good and very efficient are no longer that.

00:58:16.620 And I think he is a figure who sees himself as the job's too small for him. He thinks he should

00:58:22.080 be prime minister. He thinks he should be president of the United States or something. I just don't

00:58:25.220 think he takes London seriously enough. And from looking at the way he operates in the City Hall

00:58:31.060 chamber, he's very arrogant. He doesn't like people questioning what he does. We've asked

00:58:35.640 him numerous times to come on our radio show. He's refused, never does, goes on James O'Brien's show

00:58:40.220 all the time because he quite likes it. But he doesn't want to come anywhere where he's going

00:58:43.860 to be asked some serious questions. And you're right about the knife crime. He could have spent

00:58:47.360 a lot more money on police in London, but he chose to spend it on his PR machine. He chose to spend

00:58:52.000 it on trips abroad. You know, he was over in Europe, wasn't he? Not long ago, asking people

00:58:56.320 if they could become honorary or associate members of the European Union, citizens of

00:59:02.120 London and citizens of Europe. You know, what's that all about? You know, we voted to leave,

00:59:06.760 you know, get lost. And I think he's, I just don't think he's very good at it, but I think

00:59:11.420 he'll probably be re-elected because the labour machine in London is very, very good, you know.

00:59:15.240 But it's not just knife crime. I think there's a crisis with policing. Like my parents' house

00:59:20.560 got burgled last year

00:59:21.760 and they reported it.

00:59:23.320 A lot of very valuable things

00:59:24.620 got stolen

00:59:25.220 and then they didn't

00:59:26.560 even investigate it.

00:59:27.660 They just went,

00:59:28.240 the case is closed.

00:59:29.000 Yeah, they don't.

00:59:30.480 I mean, I don't know

00:59:31.100 what that's all about

00:59:31.820 to be honest.

00:59:32.340 I mean, I was

00:59:32.800 the victim of a crime

00:59:35.020 which, when I tell you

00:59:36.400 what it was,

00:59:36.900 will make you laugh.

00:59:38.080 Somebody actually went into,

00:59:39.800 you know what I'm laughing

00:59:41.060 thinking about it,

00:59:41.840 went into my local dry cleaners

00:59:43.440 and stole my shirt.

00:59:45.340 Right?

00:59:46.060 I mean, it's the most

00:59:46.760 ridiculous thing

00:59:47.340 you've ever heard of, right?

00:59:48.960 Maybe it's just like

00:59:49.940 your fashion sense yeah yeah the police wouldn't leave me alone though yeah you know and i know

00:59:53.760 stories like yours which is which is proper you know proper victims of crime i then eventually

00:59:58.100 they called me in for an interview uh into a bermondsey police station uh which is now closed

01:00:03.660 by the way because when i went there we were like stepping over these the guy was i'm really sorry

01:00:07.500 it's a bit of a mess we're moving we're moving out i'm like where are you moving to he's like

01:00:10.800 well we're not moving anywhere we just shut it down they're selling it um and i sat there with

01:00:15.600 him for about an hour uh talking about this crime and how i felt about it and how it made me feel

01:00:21.980 and did i feel victimized by it and i'm like he stole my shirt so i've already done a deal with

01:00:27.680 the shirt guys they've already now going to they're guaranteeing they're going to give me

01:00:31.120 free dry cleaning for as much as long as i want um because i'm gonna have to replace 10 shirts

01:00:35.980 it's fine you know but yeah i don't know what's going on with the police i mean they seem to have

01:00:40.640 the capability as they have done recently to do these raids on the county lines gangs and every

01:00:46.020 now and again that seems to work quite well the armed police in london i think are brilliant

01:00:49.380 whenever there's any kind of terrorist problem yeah they're so quick now i mean i was in london

01:00:53.760 bridge the last time there was a there was an attack and you know the speed with which the

01:00:58.280 rapid response guys get to things now is really amazing and i'm very very sort of impressed with

01:01:02.720 that but yeah but the ordinary just you know making yourself feel safe in a city which is

01:01:08.680 what you should feel. I don't know what's gone wrong. But I don't know, again, whether that's

01:01:13.960 a national problem, whether it's Sadiq Khan. But I think Sadiq Khan could be much more proactive

01:01:19.500 about doing something about it. He should be saying this is the most important thing that

01:01:23.880 affects everyone in the city, instead of going off to Europe and trying to get some kind of,

01:01:27.520 you know, associate. Do you think he's more interested in his image than he is in helping

01:01:30.780 all the Londoners? I think so. I think he's the worst kind of politician, which is why I just

01:01:35.020 don't have any time for him. I think he's only interested in soundbites. He's only interested

01:01:38.580 in kind of appealing to his base, the people who vote for him.

01:01:42.160 He's not that interested, if you don't vote for him,

01:01:43.920 in what you think.

01:01:45.140 You know, he doesn't really care about your parents

01:01:46.740 unless they vote for him, you know.

01:01:48.920 Maybe that's what they should have done.

01:01:50.120 They should have called up and said, you know,

01:01:51.140 we vote for Sadiq Khan, can you come and help us out?

01:01:54.340 You might have got them around a bit quicker.

01:01:56.680 So, Mike, the last question we always ask is,

01:01:59.040 what's the one thing we're not talking about

01:02:00.460 that we should be talking about?

01:02:01.460 But maybe before we get to that,

01:02:04.260 you obviously take a lot of calls from members of the public.

01:02:07.560 What do you think is the one issue that people are really concerned about

01:02:13.000 or interested in in the kind of broader spectrum of things at the moment

01:02:16.420 that you feel like, oh, this is an issue that's getting a lot of traction?

01:02:20.940 Well, I think there's two really.

01:02:22.100 I would say the environment is a very big one

01:02:27.720 because there's an awful lot of people who hate the whole idea

01:02:29.940 that everything's turning green and we've been told to stop eating meat

01:02:33.720 and driving around in cars and not allowed to fly anywhere.

01:02:36.860 and the hypocrisy of all of that. And I think there's, you know, there's a big backlash now

01:02:40.760 against the kind of woke generation of people, I think. And a lot of ordinary people have just

01:02:44.960 said, enough already, you know, let's just like live our lives. We can be nice to one another,

01:02:49.560 but we don't need to, but there's a lot of people telling us how to live. And I think there's a lot

01:02:53.480 of distrust and distaste about that. And I think we've already touched on the other one, which is

01:02:57.520 immigration. I think people are genuinely worried that this country is basically full up. Now,

01:03:04.400 you and I both know that parts of this country are completely desolate you know if you go down

01:03:09.020 to the west country for example you know it's very white and there's quite a lot of room you

01:03:14.060 know same as parts of Scotland I mean the Scots are always talking about how you know we need to

01:03:17.920 have an awful lot of immigration because we've got a falling birth rate you go to parts of Scotland

01:03:21.200 there's no literally nobody there there's more sheep than there are people you know so for anyone

01:03:25.380 to say that you know the country's overrun with with anybody whether it's immigration or not it's

01:03:31.040 just not true. But I think there are certainly parts of the country where people feel somehow

01:03:36.200 that it's hostile. And whether that's right or wrong, those are the two things I'd say

01:03:40.920 that they get most worked up about. And crime as well. I mean, if you count probably the

01:03:47.660 numbers of callers on any given subject, there's always a lot of callers like you who would

01:03:52.220 say, well, I reported this to the police, nothing happened. We had a guy once who said

01:03:57.560 he had his motorbike stolen and he knew exactly where it was and it was behind, it was in

01:04:01.460 a garage, it was in a lockup and he basically found it because he had one of the tracker

01:04:05.180 device.

01:04:05.580 They wouldn't go there and make, and open it up.

01:04:08.980 He said, they were like, we don't have enough evidence.

01:04:12.320 Here's the evidence.

01:04:13.440 They wouldn't, and they wouldn't do it.

01:04:14.560 Yeah.

01:04:15.120 But it does make people angry.

01:04:16.620 I mean, you talk about doing an hour interview with the police about some shirts, right?

01:04:21.000 I had my car broken into.

01:04:22.500 Yeah.

01:04:23.380 I got a fucking email.

01:04:24.540 Right.

01:04:25.040 Yeah.

01:04:25.200 I got an email saying.

01:04:26.560 And a crime number.

01:04:27.100 And a crime number.

01:04:28.020 Yeah.

01:04:28.300 That's it.

01:04:28.860 You need your own show and talk radio, mate.

01:04:30.580 That's what you need.

01:04:31.200 Yeah, that's the pulling power.

01:04:32.840 You know, I mean, it's just bizarre.

01:04:35.680 And, you know, other people have nice stories to tell about the cops.

01:04:38.240 But I think you've got to be very lucky now to have a cop actually come around to your house and visit you and actually investigate what may have happened, you know?

01:04:45.780 By the way, there's no criticism of police officers.

01:04:47.900 I don't think it's anything to do with them.

01:04:49.180 I think my experience with police officers in general is they're incredibly conscientious, decent, hardworking people who are in it for the right reasons.

01:04:57.740 There's obviously something going on structurally that prevents them from being able to do their job.

01:05:00.400 Well, I mean, I always ask the question, you know, when they say, oh, we haven't got enough people, you know, but when there's a, you know, in the days, you remember those days when people used to march for Brexit or march for Remain or whatever it was?

01:05:08.840 There was always loads of cops.

01:05:10.040 Yeah.

01:05:10.300 And they all somehow managed to find 20,000 police who were willing to do overtime.

01:05:13.760 So, I mean, you know, there's something not quite right.

01:05:15.920 There's enough police.

01:05:17.100 I think they're just not being, you know,

01:05:19.040 policed in the right way themselves

01:05:20.520 and given the right job, you know.

01:05:22.860 Do you think Peter Hitchens is a big fan of this,

01:05:25.460 that they should be out on the beat?

01:05:27.300 I think seeing them is a good thing, you know.

01:05:30.120 I don't expect them, I mean, again,

01:05:31.900 I remember the days when they used to drive around

01:05:34.280 in those little panda cars, you know.

01:05:36.260 And actually that would be better than what they do now

01:05:38.140 because even if you see the odd police patrol going,

01:05:41.360 if you're going to commit street crime,

01:05:43.020 you're probably going to not commit it

01:05:44.180 where they drive around, you know.

01:05:46.480 I'm not a big fan of them just walking around.

01:05:48.740 I think that's probably a bit naff.

01:05:50.320 But I am a big fan of them walking around with machine guns

01:05:52.180 like they do in Parliament Square.

01:05:53.680 I mean, I was down in Parliament not long ago,

01:05:55.800 and I love to see police with big fuck-off machine guns, you know,

01:06:00.520 in case somebody wants to do anything dangerous.

01:06:02.860 You know, I mean, I think most people feel the same way, you know,

01:06:05.600 that you feel safe, you know.

01:06:08.240 So, you know.

01:06:09.220 All right, well, we've got time for one more question for you.

01:06:10.820 Which is always, what's the one thing that we're not talking about

01:06:13.560 as a society that we should be?

01:06:14.840 I would say it's not Manchester City being banned from the European Union at all, even though they've just hired Lord Panic to try and keep them in it.

01:06:22.540 I think it's Trump, probably. It's the American election because, you know, that's coming up later in the year.

01:06:27.500 And I think he's going to win it, which will drive all the lefties completely and utterly mad, which will be very funny.

01:06:33.020 It's also it's the death of, again, any kind of reasonable opposition, which is which is the wrong way to run a country.

01:06:39.300 You know, I mean, my sister lives over in America, and she's a Democrat, and she's absolutely in despair about the fact that they can't seem to find anyone who can beat this guy.

01:06:49.080 That's because they've gone off the deep end, man.

01:06:50.580 Yeah.

01:06:50.880 They've gone so far off the deep end.

01:06:51.680 I don't know.

01:06:52.200 I mean, I lived in New York for, you know, nearly 10 years back in the 80s until 92.

01:06:57.220 And, you know, I don't know what's happened to America.

01:06:59.260 You see these videos on Twitter of the Antifa crowd fighting each other and, you know, turning up with balaclavas on.

01:07:05.480 I don't know.

01:07:06.040 I mean, there was none of that when I lived there.

01:07:07.460 I don't know where that's come from.

01:07:08.580 I really don't.

01:07:09.300 and it's very disturbing I think

01:07:12.200 and I think we need to worry about that a little bit

01:07:14.320 because Trump for another four years

01:07:16.540 I mean I don't think he's doing a terrible job actually

01:07:18.240 but I just worry that he's

01:07:20.320 creating this kind of hatred and he's

01:07:22.140 fueling you know more of the

01:07:24.320 same so it won't get better I think it'll get

01:07:26.360 worse. And on that uplifting

01:07:28.320 note thank you very much Mike. Yeah there you go

01:07:30.200 Trump is an issue that no one talks about

01:07:32.500 but Mike thanks for

01:07:34.340 coming on. Thank you not at all. Really appreciate it. If people want to

01:07:36.520 tune into your show how do they do that?

01:07:38.340 Well, Talk Radio's on DAB.

01:07:40.020 We're also on YouTube every day.

01:07:41.740 And you can look for the Talk Radio message there.

01:07:44.720 We do podcasts.

01:07:46.120 Just type Talk Radio into Google and you'll find us.

01:07:48.880 And if they want to find you on Twitter?

01:07:51.000 It's at I-R-O-M-G, which has not anything to do with me being Iron Mike,

01:07:54.480 which some people seem to think.

01:07:55.460 It's the Independent Republic of Mike Graham, which is the name of the show.

01:07:58.160 And also MG was taken.

01:07:59.960 Okay, fair enough.

01:08:00.880 We'll put all the links in the video, as always.

01:08:03.820 Thanks for tuning in this week.

01:08:04.960 We'll see you in a week's time with another brilliant episode.

01:08:07.120 Take care. See you next week, guys.

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TRIGGERnometry - April 12, 2020

Mike Graham on the Problem With MSM

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