TRIGGERnometry - Simon Evans on Woke Bias at the BBC

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

00:00:09.480 And this is the show for you if you want honest conversations with fascinating people.

00:00:15.040 Our brilliant and returning guest today is one of Britain's finest comedians,

00:00:18.780 Simon Evans. Welcome back to Trigonometry.

00:00:20.460 Thank you very much. Thank you for having me back. And you both look extraordinarily well,

00:00:24.460 better even, I would say, than you did two years ago.

00:00:26.940 Fantastic. Well, the lockdown has done us well, apparently.

00:00:30.580 We are the Donald Trumps of mid-range calls.

00:00:33.720 A nice little setup there for the rest of the conversation.

00:00:38.060 But Simon, if you don't mind me revealing this, a few weeks ago,

00:00:41.820 when the whole BBC left-wing, right-wing bias thing was being discussed,

00:00:45.580 you called me up or we had a phone conversation,

00:00:48.080 and you were sounding increasingly irate as the conversation went on.

00:00:51.220 Maybe your new diet was kicking in, not enough carbs or whatever it was.

00:00:54.660 but but you felt quite strongly about some of the things that were being said at the time

00:00:59.700 yeah and it's obviously since we last spoke to you the culture war has accelerated it's become

00:01:04.660 much more part of everybody's lives so just talk to us about your feelings on the whole thing how

00:01:10.460 it was presented there was articles written about how the no funny right-wing comedians or all this

00:01:15.420 sort of thing yeah that's absolutely true and my wife incidentally would agree with your diagnosis

00:01:19.980 that it's due to a lack of carbohydrates,

00:01:21.860 but I actually feel much better for having eliminated those.

00:01:24.880 I feel the clarity which I wish I'd had 30, 35 views ago.

00:01:28.680 I would say that something, I mean, I don't know,

00:01:32.340 it's a cliche, isn't it, to say that something snapped or something.

00:01:35.480 Do you know what I mean?

00:01:36.060 These things are incremental.

00:01:37.260 They change over time.

00:01:38.300 But there have been lots of iterations about that discussion.

00:01:42.200 Is right-wing comedy even possible?

00:01:43.840 Is it desirable?

00:01:45.000 Is representation important?

00:01:46.920 Is it the equivalent of having on a climate change denier onto the Today programme?

00:01:51.340 Do we need to hear from Piers Corbyn every time there's a new programme or report comes out of the IPC?

00:01:56.820 But I do feel that there was a dishonesty in the last iteration that angered me.

00:02:03.060 There was there was I on this this podcast and I've been on a couple where we've discussed this kind of thing before.

00:02:07.980 I've had five series of Simon Evans goes to market, which is not a right wing show,

00:02:12.280 But I suppose it is in support of the free market and it champions the notion that markets have a role to play in organizing our affairs, which, you know, authoritarian state command is sometimes less able to do as efficiently.

00:02:25.520 So it has its right wing to that extent, you know, and I've had been on the news quiz and so on.

00:02:30.800 So I've always felt that, you know, I'm not like kind of banned.

00:02:33.300 I don't have pictures of myself with gaffer tape over my mouth to demonstrate that I feel like I'm in silence, you know, like I'm in some sort of gulag.

00:02:41.140 But I think, like I say, on the last trigonometry that I was on, that I came to the defense of the BBC to some extent and said, I think, among other things, it probably has fallen victim to some extent to conquest, Robert Conquist's second law, which just says that any organizational institution not explicitly dedicated to right wing pursuits will drift leftwards over the course of its lifetime.

00:03:01.020 I've never heard that. That's great.

00:03:01.900 Well, all three of his laws are brilliant.

00:03:03.880 The other two are that everyone is conservative about that which they know most about.

00:03:09.000 And the behaviour of most bureaucratic institutions is most easily understood

00:03:13.220 if you assume it has been captured by a cabal of its enemies,

00:03:16.280 which I think is also possibly accurate for the BBC now.

00:03:20.620 But he was, of course, he was a brilliant writer.

00:03:23.660 He was the man who first exposed the great terror of Stalinism in the 30s and 40s

00:03:27.620 and all of British intelligentsia didn't want to have anything to do with that.

00:03:30.980 when his book was republished, The Great Terror,

00:03:33.940 in, I think, the 1990s, and the publishers asked him,

00:03:36.460 I don't know if you know this story,

00:03:37.460 but they asked him if he would like to change the title,

00:03:39.480 and he said, yes, let's call it I Told You So, 1.00

00:03:42.060 You Fucking Fools, which was pretty trenchant. 1.00

00:03:45.840 But he also wrote brilliant light verse and limericks, 1.00

00:03:48.660 which was anthologised by Kingsley Amis.

00:03:50.980 So, you know, a man of many talents.

00:03:52.280 Anyway, that's what I thought the BBC was.

00:03:55.920 But there was something about the way they treated the most,

00:03:58.880 you know, the way they defended themselves

00:04:00.200 against the most recent, there was this thing that was appointed,

00:04:03.200 Tim Davy, which may or may not even have been true

00:04:05.260 or may have been exaggerated, that he was concerned

00:04:07.680 that a certain kind of woke tendency, which is like,

00:04:10.480 I know it's a slightly laboured term, but, you know,

00:04:12.500 it is very convenient shorthand, a kind of, yeah,

00:04:15.560 the new orthodoxy about certain political views,

00:04:22.260 which is okay or not okay to hold, was dominating British comedy,

00:04:25.940 especially a topical comedy, and the other views weren't being heard.

00:04:29.660 And he was anxious as well, I think, which I think is as much as it to do with anything that a certain kind of juvenile attitude to those issues was predominant as well.

00:04:41.660 You know, and the middle aged people were feeling hectored by students essentially every time they wanted to see some comedy.

00:04:47.000 so this yeah this launched a thousand uh think pieces and i just noticed a a large number of

00:04:55.420 them containing my name as an example of the bbc's determination to bring balance to topical

00:05:02.500 comedy wherever possible it said there are very few stamp right-wing stand-ups for whatever reason

00:05:07.080 we just don't know we just we just don't know for some reason right-wing views and stand-up comedy

00:05:12.600 just don't mix. And presumably, if you're a right winger, you know, you immediately go into,

00:05:17.780 you know, the privatized prison services or something, you know, rather than like trying

00:05:23.060 to make people laugh. But the one or two right wingers that there are, which is to say me and

00:05:28.360 Jeff Norcott, it seems, are never off our screens as a result. We are the beneficiaries of this

00:05:33.820 terrible, you know, gap, this terrible market supply problem, which somehow market forces

00:05:40.780 have failed to meet, as they normally would

00:05:42.720 by producing more supply, there's this

00:05:44.740 terrible shortage and consequently you never

00:05:46.800 I haven't been on

00:05:48.620 Mock the Week since 2011

00:05:50.640 I have never been on

00:05:52.840 Have I Got News

00:05:54.700 For You, I've never been on The Mash Report

00:05:56.700 I've never been on any topical

00:05:58.940 comedy BBC

00:06:00.860 television programme at all, or

00:06:02.740 in fact, for that matter, any of the ITV or Channel 4

00:06:04.820 ones. Now I'm not saying I should

00:06:06.720 have been, I'm not saying I have a right

00:06:08.620 to be, I'm not saying this is the dereliction

00:06:10.540 of duty and the licensed peers are being shafted. But if you're going to present me as the totem

00:06:19.020 of your earnest enthusiasm for finding balance wherever possible, and I haven't been on a single

00:06:24.720 program in over a decade, that feels to me like dishonesty. And that was the point at which

00:06:29.720 something started twitching in me. And I just thought, I need to say something about that,

00:06:33.320 because it's just absurd. You cannot keep getting away with that. There is clearly some

00:06:39.620 determination to either remain willfully oblivious to the appetite that at least half the nation,

00:06:47.440 by definition, if half a left wing, half a right wing, you know, the centre moves, yes, but you

00:06:51.920 know, by definition, half a right of centre. If you're oblivious to their weariness, their fatigue

00:06:59.620 at this endless bias, and you're fighting a rearguard action to try and keep your licence fee

00:07:06.640 in place then i don't see that that ends well you see what i mean so you're saying there's

00:07:11.980 no right-wing privilege no i don't believe there is i mean clearly you know the old-fashioned

00:07:17.880 right-wing privilege still exists you know the aristocracy are all right you know there is still

00:07:22.280 there are still landed classes maybe there is still work to be done on that front you know but

00:07:26.880 but in terms of the voices that are heard and it's not impossible you know i was on the news

00:07:31.540 quiz last week as i say on radio i still get a sniff of it i was on the news quiz and you know

00:07:35.980 I am confident enough in my performance to say I think it went well.

00:07:39.640 I don't think it felt like there was a turd floating in the swimming pool

00:07:42.800 around which all the nice left-wing, you know,

00:07:45.380 Bien-Pensant were forced to swim and hold their noses. 0.98

00:07:49.580 I think I combined pretty well with, you know, two other comedians,

00:07:53.640 three other comedians, an L.A. comedian who was kind of very progressive

00:07:57.940 and mainly does routines about how Donald Trump is going to end the world.

00:08:01.380 We still managed to sort of engage.

00:08:02.760 And do you know what I mean?

00:08:03.640 there's not necessarily some kind of oil and water issue here

00:08:08.640 where you just cannot combine these ingredients

00:08:10.580 to make a palatable soup.

00:08:12.620 It's, you know, it is better for everyone in this respect

00:08:16.060 that diversity is actually better for everyone, you know.

00:08:19.560 So why aren't we seeing it?

00:08:21.340 And so now I feel like I am much less patient

00:08:24.620 with this argument, you know, that they have

00:08:26.580 than I was two years ago, which I think to some extent then

00:08:29.500 there was an argument that, you know,

00:08:32.640 if you don't see representation if if you see a certain kind of political view is always the one

00:08:38.540 that's funny if it is taken as right I mean I remember working on the 11 o'clock show never

00:08:43.180 appeared on it but I worked on it as a writer that must be what 15 or 16 years ago the 11 o'clock

00:08:48.480 show was 1999 right and um and Addy G of course you know and it was kind of mocked at the time

00:08:55.340 but it had some pretty good moments well in the writer's room they had a board up on the wall I

00:08:59.860 mean it was a bit tongue-in-cheek but it was there which had like a dozen core propositions which this

00:09:05.580 show finds funny and returns to in order to you know create jokes and they were things like

00:09:11.300 John Prescott is fat and likes pies you know it was that bold you know now they talked you know

00:09:17.880 Labor knew Labor had been in for a while at that point and they were the you know they were the

00:09:21.240 the targets but that's how writers rooms work you know that's how these things once you know

00:09:27.060 they think it's all over. It was exactly the same. Certain football managers are fat and eat pies.

00:09:32.080 Certain football managers drink too much. Certain players could probably lose a few pounds. Do you 0.98

00:09:37.520 know what I mean? There's just these core propositions. You come back to them again and

00:09:40.820 again and again, and it becomes very hard to dislodge them. And I just think a lot of people

00:09:45.660 switch off after a while. And do you think that there is a fundamental bias within the heart of

00:09:50.280 the BBC? Yes, a huge bias now. I don't, not, well, the heart, I suppose you might say, I don't think

00:09:56.320 the news department is that badly biased i think in fact if anything you could find evidence that

00:10:00.820 some of its you know highest ranking high profile reporters may have a right-wing bias i think you

00:10:06.060 could probably say that nick robinson engaged with right-wing politics in his in his youth you

00:10:10.280 know i think he keeps it under control but you know there are there are examples i love the way

00:10:14.680 you talk about it like some kind of disease yeah he keeps syphilis under control i don't mean he

00:10:20.580 keeps it under control in that it's toxic but obviously in interviews yeah andrew neal they

00:10:24.560 could probably i know they've lost him recently i don't know whether it's due to that i think he was

00:10:27.920 by by a mile the best interviewer the bbc probably the best interviewer i've ever seen tackling

00:10:33.300 contemporary politicians in the uk and and you know would be in the us as well i think it's he's

00:10:38.880 a grave loss but i hope he'll find you know you know success with his new station but um but yeah

00:10:44.280 he obviously has some he has some quite um let's say skeptical views about certain left-wing

00:10:49.880 politicians and the quality of people in Westminster as much as anything else you know

00:10:53.700 so yeah the news and current affairs department I think is reasonably well balanced but I think

00:10:59.040 comedy and I think also drama and I think like entertainment I think general radio for programming

00:11:03.640 it just displays and it's a really and I think it's just getting ridiculous now and I want to say

00:11:10.000 this is I say I'm saying this I'm breaking cover in a way knowing this is not going to help

00:11:13.860 BBC Korea they're not going to wake me up and go oh we heard you complaining on the podcast sorry

00:11:18.580 with a bit of an oversight. Let's get you on. But the fact is, I love the BBC. I grew up with

00:11:23.600 like loving its programs, everything from Blue Peter and Jack and Ori, you know, up to

00:11:28.300 All Creatures Grants, all of that kind of stuff. You know, that absolutely is my childhood. And I

00:11:33.500 think it performs an incredibly valuable role in British culture and society because it doesn't

00:11:39.740 have advertising and because it doesn't have, you know, the kind of commercial forces that China

00:11:46.320 is currently able to bring to bear on private media companies in America now. Terrifying

00:11:52.660 degree of leverage that they have on everything from basketball and football right the way through

00:11:57.500 to actual news programming. You look at Bloomberg and how he downplays Chinese authoritarianism in

00:12:03.300 order to keep his business channels open with him. Michael Bloomberg, the actual individual.

00:12:08.060 These are really worrying tendencies. And the BBC is our strongest bulwark against that. But if it

00:12:13.240 loses its legitimacy by, you know, by just losing the goodwill of half the nation,

00:12:19.440 then it's in real trouble. And it cannot legitimately determine, it cannot legitimately

00:12:23.420 demand the license fee, which is inessential, you know, in terms of taxes, can be used to fund it.

00:12:31.020 You know, I can see arguments for and against in the background, but its primary function at the

00:12:35.920 heart of British culture is enormously important to me, you know. And so in exactly the same way

00:12:41.120 that i would actually reject the notion that for instance ralph miliband hated the country which

00:12:45.100 offered him safe sanctuary you know in the 1920 you know that whole daily mail thing oh he came

00:12:49.660 here and then and then tried to undermine it with his he came here but he loved the country but he

00:12:54.160 had communist views now i don't share those views but i'm sure they were sincerely held and i'm sure

00:12:58.480 he wanted to improve the country that had given him sanct you know sanctuary but make it as good

00:13:04.180 yeah yeah exactly i mean it's insane but and i mean i think it's also it's also a legitimate

00:13:11.500 thing to raise incidentally if you're trying to decide whether to elect a prime minister but

00:13:15.320 but this is what i mean i mean i feel like the reverse of that now i feel like i'm i'm actually

00:13:20.120 saying to the bbc for god's sake you need to get this under control because you know i just i just

00:13:26.860 see so many people switching off now and totally unable to to trust it and you've seen what

00:13:31.640 happened in America. Donald Trump, for the last four years, I don't see him as so much like a

00:13:39.560 torch that's been swung around down in the basements and the cellars under the media and

00:13:43.800 the deep stay or whatever. He's more like he's thrown down one of those flare gut. There's been

00:13:49.320 an explosion. It's made a terrible mess. And you can very easily argue it's done more damage than

00:13:53.560 good. But it is, I think, incontrovertible that it has illuminated an extraordinary degree of bias

00:13:59.940 in the american media there is no question now to my mind and people talk about oh you've been

00:14:04.900 radicalized i've only ever been radicalized by seeing obvious explicit outright and naked lying

00:14:12.460 on the part of the left i've never read anything by anyone right wing that has pushed me further

00:14:17.540 right do you know what i mean i've never i've occasionally glassed a katie hopkins article

00:14:21.900 thing this is rabid half semi-literate nonsense yeah i have no interest but i read the washington

00:14:28.520 Post in its coverage of the Covington High School incident where those boys were like approached by

00:14:32.880 the Native American with his drum and the way they promoted that as being somehow some kind of bunch

00:14:38.000 of Catholic high school boys bullying this like a political activist that radicalized me yes I

00:14:44.380 I was deeply affected by that I was horrified by the anger and the malice and the the poison and

00:14:52.760 invective that was directed at those boys and the complete refusal of them to acknowledge that they

00:14:57.500 got it totally wrong when within 24 hours lots of video evidence emerged that told the true story

00:15:03.280 and that was just one example there's been loads of examples of that and and you don't want to go

00:15:08.480 down that route because america now nobody acknowledges a universal consensus about the

00:15:14.680 media they can trust there is not one single source of news now in america which more than

00:15:20.380 40 or 50 percent of the country will say is a trusted source and that is not a good start that

00:15:26.000 is not a good place to go to. I agree completely. And that's one of the reasons we've been talking

00:15:30.760 about BBC and the problems with the BBC, because we both feel passionately, like you, that it's a

00:15:35.980 hugely important institution. Actually, I would go beyond even what you said. It's hugely important

00:15:40.580 for keeping Britain together. But my grandfather fled the Soviet Union because he actually

00:15:46.520 listened to BBC World Service. He was a beacon of freedom to a lot of people. And still people

00:15:51.300 talk about it in those terms shortwave radios yeah but equally that's why you and i and francis

00:15:56.760 we've all been warning about the path down which the bbc has gone because it will destroy itself

00:16:01.700 yeah you know um but one of the other interesting things about the chat we had on the phone a few

00:16:07.980 weeks ago was that you were somewhat skeptical about the noise being made by tim davy and people

00:16:14.120 on his behalf and saying that this is now this radical transformation that will bring the bbc

00:16:19.280 back from the brink you you're less uh persuaded by that are you the only thing i would have to say

00:16:24.560 about about the tim davy remark which then didn't really seem to correlate closely with his speech

00:16:30.660 when it came he was this was like a sort of teaser for a speech he was giving to some conference i

00:16:34.560 can't remember which one and it didn't seem to get a mention in fact in his speech and some people

00:16:40.060 said oh the telegraph have taken this opportunity to um you know go to one of their hobby horses

00:16:45.920 which of course the Telegraph have a biased interest

00:16:48.620 and a naked commercial interest in seeing the BBC fail.

00:16:51.200 So they would like to see that happen, you know.

00:16:53.440 And, you know, can you trust them?

00:16:54.960 Well, no, you can't trust them.

00:16:55.980 That's half my point.

00:16:57.260 But you can't trust anyone at the moment really

00:17:00.180 without seeing some action

00:17:01.320 because I don't know Tim Davey at all.

00:17:03.820 I've never met him

00:17:04.560 and I haven't really followed his career up to this point.

00:17:06.700 He seems like a decent chap

00:17:07.860 and I think he has the credentials, you know,

00:17:10.000 on paper to run the show and to do that job.

00:17:13.120 But I don't know how serious he might be

00:17:14.820 or might not be about this.

00:17:15.940 So you can't be swayed by a press release.

00:17:19.860 This is my point, really.

00:17:21.460 My wife works in PR.

00:17:23.020 I see how it works all the time.

00:17:24.660 Press releases are sometimes put out to test the water.

00:17:27.120 Sometimes they're put out instead of doing anything.

00:17:30.600 Sometimes they're put out deliberately.

00:17:33.120 I'm not saying she's done this, but I know the industry.

00:17:35.980 Sometimes they're put out deliberately

00:17:37.420 in order to provoke such a strong reaction

00:17:39.740 against the idea of a thing happening

00:17:41.560 that it's retreated from before.

00:17:43.280 Do you know what I mean?

00:17:43.740 It's deliberately done in order to make the action impossible.

00:17:46.820 Now, I don't know whether you would say, sorry,

00:17:48.360 I don't know whether you would say that that has taken place with Tim Davey.

00:17:51.840 It flared up, and in the time since we spoke, it's died down again a bit.

00:17:56.720 Who knows what may or may not be coming.

00:17:58.740 Every so often you see stories in the media that Paul Merton

00:18:02.580 and Ian Hislop have been sacked from the Vigot News for You

00:18:05.960 because they're seen as being old white men,

00:18:08.900 and now there's going to be some new box-ticking woke alternatives

00:18:11.860 that are going to come in.

00:18:12.700 And this isn't true.

00:18:13.740 You know, it just isn't true.

00:18:15.240 And I don't know whether any of these stories that come out

00:18:18.080 have had any kind of connection with anyone who even, you know,

00:18:21.900 puts the kettle on in the BBC.

00:18:23.460 But you have to wait and see what actually happens.

00:18:26.680 So, yes, I'm not sceptical specifically about this.

00:18:29.800 I just, you know, this is just how the world of PR works now

00:18:32.420 and how messaging is controlled.

00:18:35.020 And it is a dark art.

00:18:37.460 I mean, it always has been to some extent, you know.

00:18:39.400 and and confusion and befuddlement is usually like the absolute first go-to you know as everyone

00:18:45.320 says big tobacco playbook that's the first thing you cast doubt on everything you know you you find

00:18:50.640 alternative surveys and alternative findings everyone I hate to use it because it's a term

00:18:56.860 so beloved of the left but gaslighting it just feels to me like gaslighting which if in case

00:19:02.140 your listeners don't know it come from a movie in which a man drives his wife mad by altering

00:19:07.780 the environment around her and then denying that he's doing so basically he turns the gas he turns

00:19:12.040 the lighting down and she's convinced things are getting darker he says no it's exactly the same

00:19:15.700 and she goes mad now whether that would actually make you mad or not is a moot point i mean people's

00:19:20.720 nerves were a bit short after the war but um that happens a lot to us now we can all see what's going

00:19:27.540 on but there are it's quite possible you know it's quite people can sustain for a long time

00:19:33.060 media campaigns that if you have enough control of the argument of the conversation and where it

00:19:39.200 goes you can sustain the impression that actually this is an illusion you're suffering under and

00:19:43.620 and you're conspiracy theorist or whatever you know when we all can see exactly what is happening

00:19:48.480 and it's absurd to pretend otherwise so you know i want to see actual action before i see any kind

00:19:53.940 before i have a view about whether tim davy is is in earnest not not that i'm saying i think he's a

00:19:58.580 liar or you know i don't think he's up to the job but i do think it'll be a bigger job than he

00:20:03.040 realizes because i think the culture what we see what emerges from the bbc and what emerges from a

00:20:09.240 lot of places like the universities and so on at the moment is not it's not a veneer this is coming

00:20:14.560 from deep inside this is coming from you know the collective viewpoints the collective mindset of

00:20:20.740 of the you know the sentiment that is shared throughout the organization you know it's deep

00:20:27.540 inside it's not because it's not responding to some memo saying make comedy more woke you know

00:20:32.580 So it's not like another memo going, okay, that's enough.

00:20:35.360 He's back on.

00:20:36.020 That's not going to happen.

00:20:37.260 This is downstream of the people who work there.

00:20:40.880 So unless you're going to, like, sack everyone, you know.

00:20:43.860 I've got no problem with that.

00:20:46.140 Go Russian on them. 1.00

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00:21:47.340 I don't feel we said absolutely enough during the course of this ad.

00:21:50.320 No, we haven't.

00:21:51.160 That's absolutely true.

00:21:55.420 I suppose that leads into the question, you know, Tim David can come in and he can try his best,

00:22:00.860 but haven't we gone too far down this particular path?

00:22:05.620 In the BBC?

00:22:08.920 Well, I don't know. You have to be patient.

00:22:12.160 You know there is this phrase, the long march through the institutions,

00:22:15.460 which sounds like paranoid absurdity.

00:22:18.960 And if it had been invented by somebody on the right, I would say it probably was.

00:22:21.920 but given that it was, you know, coined by a German Marxist, I think, wasn't it? Was his name?

00:22:27.720 Deutsch or something, Rudi Deutsch, something like that. It's interesting, interesting thing to look

00:22:31.040 up. And he got it. Basically, he was synthesizing Antonio Gramsci writings from sort of 1930s Italy.

00:22:37.700 It's very interesting stuff. It's very theoretical. But, you know, you can see it's not hard to map

00:22:44.180 it onto the reality we live in now. The long march through the institutions is basically the

00:22:48.180 proposition that you are never going to bring about a communist or left-wing revolution,

00:22:52.280 a socialist revolution in the West through the traditional means employed in Russia or China,

00:22:57.480 because contrary to Marx's views, everyone is too comfortable, there's too much cultural hegemony,

00:23:04.940 which was Gramsci's phrase again, which is that there is too much control by the universities,

00:23:12.400 by the media, by the government, by the establishment, as they used to be described,

00:23:15.980 the various instruments of soft power which to some extent we still have um who will make people

00:23:23.380 averse to this you know the idea that they should rise up and burn everything to the ground and start

00:23:27.120 again and so instead what you have to do is get your hair cut clean your nails present yourself

00:23:32.860 in a nice clean shirt and tie and get a job in the british library in the universities in the bbc

00:23:39.120 and you are basically like sleeper agents now as i say put like that it sounds like right wing

00:23:44.300 proper, you know, paranoia. But as it becomes a kind of, as patience, you know, takes its time

00:23:52.680 and as a certain kind of shift in the mindset of the sort of people who might be inclined to go

00:23:58.280 into the civil service changes. I mean, I was at university in the mid eighties and I think most

00:24:02.960 people who went into the civil service there, I regarded it as being, I couldn't imagine having

00:24:08.980 the whole world, the opportunities that it presented, the different kinds of career paths

00:24:13.860 that you could choose. I studied law. I knew you didn't want to be a lawyer, but I thought I'm

00:24:16.640 going to come out of this as a graduate, you know, as a free man with like a, you know, a wallet and

00:24:22.000 a pair of boots and I can go wherever I want, do whatever I want. Who would conceivably join the

00:24:27.260 civil service in that situation, you know, and basically sign up for 35 years with a nice

00:24:32.160 pension, you know, as the main prize. So I've never understood the kind of mindset of people

00:24:38.000 who might do that, you know, never, never overlap with me. But they were fairly sort of conservative,

00:24:41.960 I think, at that time, you know, but gradually over time, it has become a role that's become

00:24:48.380 more attractive to people of the left, you know, it's become more attractive to people with that

00:24:53.900 kind of mindset. And the more than there are, the more attractive it becomes, and the more they tend

00:24:58.420 to get recruited, and the more they tend to see messaging that encourages them to think that

00:25:02.320 their kind of thinking will be welcome, and that they will be able to get some leverage on the

00:25:09.440 wheels of you know the levers of power will will be available to them in a small way and they will

00:25:13.680 be able to make the difference as they say they don't see themselves as engaged in some sort of

00:25:18.360 you know conspiracy or or or terrible sort of evil plan they think they are doing god's work

00:25:24.460 of course you know this is the right correct moral people have finally exactly and we are now

00:25:29.340 able to educate children about the correct way to think about sex and gender from the age of seven

00:25:34.520 and all the rest of it. That has become a perfectly legitimate role for anyone working

00:25:39.980 within the state sector now. So what we need, I suppose, what I'm saying is patience. These are

00:25:46.380 long, long fights and the pendulum is long and swing slowly, but it must eventually swing back

00:25:52.200 again. It may even conceivably already have started. I don't know. I do see, my daughter is

00:25:57.780 16 and I see in her generation, she is privately educated, so she may not be typical in that regard,

00:26:04.140 But I do see, about which I have issues myself before anyone starts, but I do see in her generation, Generation Z or Gen Z, as they call them, you know, a good deal more skepticism about this project, you know, the Great Awakening than perhaps, you know, the people in their late 20s, early 30s or whatever, who were, you know, I think they can already see that they are being...

00:26:34.140 you know, bossed around at the very least,

00:26:37.080 I think there's a resistance to that that's emerging, I hope.

00:26:40.220 It's an interesting thing talking about bias

00:26:41.740 because one of the things I've aware,

00:26:43.080 and it's probably way too late into the interview,

00:26:44.920 about half an hour in,

00:26:46.120 to explain to people who may not be familiar with your work

00:26:48.880 or your thinking on things,

00:26:50.480 that both you and Jeff Norcott,

00:26:52.080 who's a friend of ours as well,

00:26:53.580 who you mentioned as the two sort of at least claimed representatives

00:26:57.380 of right-wing comedy on BBC and other channels,

00:27:00.860 you're both sort of, you are sort of more libertarian than anything.

00:27:04.140 Jeff is very much centre-right.

00:27:06.460 So neither of you are sort of doing material

00:27:09.120 on the benefits of flogging and hanging.

00:27:11.300 Well, no, my shtick, to the extent that it was political at all,

00:27:14.340 I suppose things change.

00:27:15.640 I've been doing it for 25 years.

00:27:16.800 I think the first 10 years I did adopt quite an arch persona,

00:27:19.680 which was obviously quite ironic,

00:27:21.280 but was essentially almost a sort of, I mean,

00:27:24.940 I don't know if you know Julius Evele.

00:27:26.220 He's a sort of 1930s right-wing Italian thinker.

00:27:30.220 I'd never heard of him then, but I've since encountered him.

00:27:32.160 I mean, he's quite comical because some of his pronouncements

00:27:34.200 are just so sort of absurdly, you know, dignified.

00:27:38.560 There's a famous one that I adapted for my Twitter bio

00:27:41.300 in which he said that my views are only those

00:27:44.100 which prior to the French Revolution,

00:27:45.860 every well-born person considered sane and normal.

00:27:49.380 He said this in the 1930s.

00:27:51.540 But, you know, that was kind of my shtick.

00:27:53.320 And it was, as I say, it was very tongue-in-cheek.

00:27:55.080 But I suppose what I would try and do, as I say, again,

00:27:56.980 to the extent that it was political,

00:27:58.340 was express views that were like comically of that kind,

00:28:01.500 you know comically antiquated and archaic and aristocratic rather than sort of right or left

00:28:05.580 wing but also i suppose use those to puncture some of this sort of sentimentality or the

00:28:10.640 absurdity of the left and just you know just make a space in which you could see the you know how

00:28:15.920 you could make that point but that's my point which is that neither you or jeff are sort of

00:28:20.300 making material about the importance of creating the lebens ram and poland no no that's not that's

00:28:25.420 well it was it was brexit which i think created the thing of course as it did for most of us and

00:28:29.820 And I think Jeff genuinely did vote Brexit and has made a perfectly sort of clean case for that and expressed his views.

00:28:37.780 My thing, of course, was I didn't really vote. I didn't vote Brexit.

00:28:41.060 I wasn't on the day of that itself. I found myself unexpectedly stuck in London.

00:28:46.940 I didn't vote at all. But if I had voted, I would have voted the main, but without any great enthusiasm.

00:28:52.520 But, you know, I paid attention, it was all it was, to some of the legitimate arguments on the Brexit side.

00:29:00.420 And I knew, for instance, my friend Merrin Somerset-Webb, who's an FT columnist and editor of Money Week, who used to be my guest on Goes to Market.

00:29:07.500 She was an advocate for Brexit on economic grounds, long-term economic grounds, you know, always going to be bumpy.

00:29:14.520 But there are huge gains to be had, in her view, and a few other people of that kind.

00:29:19.080 And also, I was increasingly sick of people like my father, who was in his late 80s and wanted to vote Brexit, you know, being treated as just unreconstructed racist, you know, and I didn't think that that was where he was coming from at all, you know.

00:29:31.320 So it was more like a defense of a different point of view from my point of view, you know, and just, I mean, you know, I'm in danger of sounding like a kind of white knighting mentality, you know, which is obviously very obnoxious.

00:29:44.320 But I just felt there were certain people who weren't getting properly represented.

00:29:48.420 So I just sort of came out a little bit in their favour.

00:29:51.820 But Brexit, obviously, you know, it divided everything and it redrew every map.

00:29:57.140 Or rather, it drew a much, much deeper chasm between two halves of that map.

00:30:03.040 It was like the Berlin Wall going up, you know, I think in the comedy business and in culture generally.

00:30:09.380 I still think to this day we are still seeing many things through a Brexit prism which aren't really Brexit at all.

00:30:15.620 For instance, this is my view, and I'm well aware I might not be able to sell this, but I genuinely hold it.

00:30:23.920 Dominic Cummings, when he had that whole fiasco, driving up to Durham with his kids and then going to Barnard Castle for the day,

00:30:31.180 which I think was unquestionably was a day trip with his wife, regardless of the ITS nonsense.

00:30:36.720 but the hate the loathing the the the vitriol directed at him for doing that after his rules

00:30:45.140 supposedly we were obeying his rules as if he'd come up with them arbitrarily you know because

00:30:49.480 he thought that they might be for our better good Neil Ferguson who actually insisted on those rules

00:30:54.700 broke lockdown there was no hatred and vitriol towards him whatsoever it was basically he that

00:30:59.700 was quite funny that he allowed allowed his girlfriend his this married woman to come in 0.87

00:31:03.980 through his French windows for a bit of hanky-panky

00:31:06.320 during lockdown, when Matt was breaking the rules.

00:31:08.960 No question, I'm sure he was right in thinking that they weren't...

00:31:10.880 Yeah, but he had a decent motive.

00:31:12.600 Come on.

00:31:13.160 Yeah, exactly.

00:31:14.560 Maybe Dominic thought he was going to get his end of way

00:31:16.900 after the day of Barnard Castle.

00:31:19.240 My point is, my suspicion is the reason that Cummings

00:31:22.460 was hated for the Barnard Castle excursion

00:31:24.600 is because for a couple of years, everyone had thought

00:31:28.340 he will deliver a no-deal Brexit from the consequences

00:31:32.400 of which he will then proceed to make himself safe and secure. He will not be the one feeling

00:31:37.800 the food shortages, unable to get insulin, held up in a 20-mile tailback at Dover. None of that

00:31:44.660 will apply to him. He will escape all of that. He will give us this absolute shitshow of a no-deal

00:31:50.620 Brexit, and then he will abscond from all the terrible consequences. And that hasn't even 0.95

00:31:56.580 happened yet, and may happen, and maybe he will do that. I don't know. But when they saw him go

00:32:01.560 to Barnard Castle that's what they thought they were seeing they thought they were seeing the

00:32:06.820 the mind they always knew that's what he would do he would it would be one rule for us and one rule

00:32:12.240 for him and they thought that's what they were seeing and that's how it's poisoned everything

00:32:15.900 you see what I mean it's like everything is just seen through that lens now and again not good not

00:32:20.860 healthy at all how nice to be talking about Brexit yeah it's been a while it's just key it's like

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00:33:46.380 well we are three comedians here and we we've touched on comedy yeah but we haven't really

00:33:55.600 delved into it so it seems to me and maybe you disagree with me on this but the bias within

00:34:01.740 comedy has just got worse since the two years ago that we spoke to you yes i'm afraid i think

00:34:07.040 that's true and it's funny you know when the virus came i think there was there was there was a month

00:34:11.440 or so i i suppose it was probably immediately prior to the to the death of george floyd when

00:34:17.660 you felt that a lot of what had you know what the kind of fluff and like loose hair we were all

00:34:23.260 entangled in had just been swept away and we were brought back to fundamentals you know we suddenly

00:34:28.100 see what was important in life the lives of our nearest and dearest and keeping yourself safe and

00:34:33.300 all the rest of it and it felt like a lot of the of the noise that had you know might die away and

00:34:38.480 we could all just embrace, albeit through Zoom,

00:34:40.900 and emerge into a new reset.

00:34:46.760 And then, of course, it just exploded with ten times the ferocity,

00:34:51.580 the Black Lives Matter riots and then the statue toppling

00:34:56.020 and then people against the statue toppling

00:34:58.220 and then people believing that the mask wearing

00:35:02.220 was yet another attempt to authoritarian control.

00:35:06.520 and there's just been an escalation now of polarizing views.

00:35:11.020 I think it's much, much worse, not just in comedy,

00:35:13.020 but obviously that.

00:35:13.760 The thing I would say about comedy is,

00:35:15.480 obviously I know who my colleagues are

00:35:18.280 and I speak to some of them on Twitter,

00:35:19.640 but there is no comedy as such at all at the moment.

00:35:22.200 I mean, it's gone into, in much the same way

00:35:24.380 in the Second World War, you know, you had no football.

00:35:26.820 I think it was Arthur Askey who made his first broadcast

00:35:30.100 in four years from the, you know, from Broadcasting House,

00:35:33.540 you know, that all having been shut down during the war

00:35:36.160 and then said, you know, anyway, as I was saying before,

00:35:38.780 I was so rudely interrupted, you know, it feels a bit like that at the moment.

00:35:42.940 And so, of course, we're all inward looking.

00:35:44.580 We are all trying to create, we're all trying to, let's be honest,

00:35:49.240 you know, keep ourselves in the public eye to some extent.

00:35:52.120 It's quite difficult to do that with jokes.

00:35:56.820 You know, they are a bit lame.

00:35:57.980 One of the things that was quite interesting, I found,

00:36:01.080 this is, I don't know if this is off topic,

00:36:02.360 But in the first month or two of coronavirus, and it's continued to some extent, but in the first month or two, there was a sudden eruption of really funny memes and videos and like shared online humor from anonymous people.

00:36:19.860 None of it credited to anyone.

00:36:21.780 You know, some of it was classic Internet meme, just a face of somebody famous with a speech bubble.

00:36:25.940 Some of them were like people who'd done like a minute long TikTok video in their house, which was brilliantly inventive.

00:36:31.420 some of them people have made little models of people moving around the house incredibly inventive

00:36:36.320 and not one of them came from a recognized comedian as far as i could see to the extent

00:36:40.880 that comedians did their own stuff it was a bit icky quite a lot of the time there was a lot of

00:36:46.040 egginess there was a lot of sense that ah without you know i said there's a there was a famous saying

00:36:50.960 when um i think it was in 2008 that the financial crash somebody said it's like when the tide goes

00:36:55.700 out you can see who's been swimming naked and that's how i felt about comedians without laughter

00:37:00.400 track you know if you don't have an audience responding and saying that was funny do it again

00:37:05.580 suddenly there's a kind of slightly feeling you know and we're not used to that we're we're like

00:37:12.280 tennis players you know we need the ball to come back over the net so we can punch another low

00:37:17.540 ground shot over it's like we're not used to just performing in a vacuum so we've had we've had

00:37:23.200 difficulty and one way to get around that of course is to become politically activated you

00:37:28.160 You know, to start doing stuff like, oh, my God, I can't believe, you know, we're being asked to wear a mask stroke.

00:37:34.120 I can't believe people are refusing to wear a mask.

00:37:36.620 It gives you something to connect with.

00:37:38.440 It gives you something to engage with.

00:37:40.400 And it makes you feel vital.

00:37:41.800 It makes you feel like you're an important part of people's lives.

00:37:43.900 And, you know, comedians are, you know, we need to eat.

00:37:46.300 You know, I totally understand that.

00:37:48.040 You know, I don't know to what extent I may or may not have got it right or wrong myself.

00:37:52.600 But I haven't produced a huge amount of like self-promoting content.

00:37:57.520 I have written for a few online magazines and, you know, I've tried to remain active.

00:38:04.120 I've probably written more under lockdown than I have done in the previous 20 years.

00:38:08.740 You know, month by month on a pro rata basis, I've written about 30,000, 35,000 words of what I, you know, is considered content.

00:38:17.060 But it's not a whole book, but it's more than I normally would do.

00:38:20.820 But you make the point, Simon, about the political angle, because, you know, I think it's a legitimate point.

00:38:27.620 Some of us, I've always been political with what I've done.

00:38:31.080 So it's not been a thing for me.

00:38:32.700 But there has seemed to be, and as you said, particularly since BLM and George Floyd, a sort of uptick in people's embrace of that.

00:38:42.620 Friends and colleagues that were never political before, very political now.

00:38:47.400 And this is why I want to come back to the BBC briefly, because there was this incident. I don't want to get into the who said what and whatever, because it's not really that important. I think it just illustrates the point about the BBC's angle on things. There was this instance on Frankie Boyle's show, New World Order, where a black comedian was explaining how when when people who are from that point of view, the BLM point of view, say kill whitey, they don't really mean kill white people. And the joke was then we do. 0.62

00:39:16.760 Yeah, I saw that, yeah.

00:39:17.700 And that created a stir.

00:39:19.620 And I just remember that the first time we had you on,

00:39:22.180 Joe Brand had just made comments about Nigel Farage,

00:39:24.980 and they were sort of very similarly tinged with the sort of –

00:39:30.020 and I defended Joe Brand at the time,

00:39:32.560 but they were tinged with this idea that the joke was about hurting people.

00:39:38.560 And what was your take on that situation?

00:39:43.020 Well, we talked about Joe Brand, didn't we, the last time I remember that?

00:39:46.040 Yeah. And I felt I defended her right to do it while, you know, observing that she had herself, you know, brought people to account in quite a decisive way previously for things they'd said.

00:39:57.400 And also you were critical of the producer.

00:39:59.500 Yeah.

00:39:59.720 Which was interesting because this time I was critical of the producer while, again, defending the comedian's right to do the joke.

00:40:05.480 And I got a lot of pushback on that as supposedly I'm this free speech warrior and now I'm saying.

00:40:10.880 I watched Frankie Boyle's New World Order and I think it's, I'll be honest, I think it's a show of two halves. I think Frankie's monologues are amazing. They're densely packed, incredibly rich in analogy, creative language. You know, there's almost like a kind of magic realism to them or you might say like they're very elusive. They're very, they're almost biblical. You know, they remind me of like hard rain's going to fall or something.

00:40:37.020 I mean, do you want to mean the way that Dylan would channel Browning or the Old Testament?

00:40:40.100 They have that kind of density, which is really rare in language.

00:40:44.040 Funnily enough, Russell Brand is capable of it when he puts his mind to it as well.

00:40:47.200 You know, he's another man of the left who has been on a more interesting journey, in my view.

00:40:52.760 I think Frank is a really talented comedian.

00:40:54.780 I hope he won't mind me acknowledging that he also has, I think, a very good writing team on that show.

00:41:00.060 And that's perfectly natural and normal. It's about creating the best product.

00:41:02.820 and I know some of those writers and I think it's a really those monologues are amazing

00:41:07.260 I think Frankie himself in my view is not really a man of the left I think he's a total nihilist

00:41:14.680 I think he made quite a considered and probably correct judgment at a certain point in his career

00:41:19.720 that he couldn't continue to just like degrade everything without any sort of sense of having

00:41:25.960 any sort of focus or distinction between what was deserving and what wasn't and so at that point he

00:41:30.800 basically threw his weight behind releasing political prisoners from Guantanamo and everything

00:41:35.140 else was like directed you know I'm not saying it's insincere but that's my that's my impression

00:41:40.040 that makes the most sense to me when I look at the arc of his career but that show has become

00:41:44.700 weird now where you get that monologue and that's very funny and engaging and thought-provoking and

00:41:50.000 I have no quarrel with it being one-sided because it's obviously you know that's what it is it's an

00:41:54.080 authored piece and then there's this kind of weird round table discussion which feels much more like

00:41:59.580 some kind of 1960s

00:42:01.040 marriage struggle session

00:42:02.160 in which Sarah Pascoe

00:42:03.880 is expected repeatedly

00:42:05.160 to acknowledge

00:42:05.840 her white privilege 0.97

00:42:06.700 and all the rest of it, 0.64

00:42:07.680 you know,

00:42:08.300 by a series of ever more didactic,

00:42:10.860 you know,

00:42:11.800 critical theory experts.

00:42:13.320 I'm interested that you say

00:42:14.640 that woman was a comedian 1.00

00:42:15.660 because she didn't come across

00:42:16.800 like a comedian at all.

00:42:17.940 She doesn't come across

00:42:18.720 like somebody

00:42:19.240 who wants to make people laugh.

00:42:20.760 When she said, 1.00

00:42:21.720 when we say kill whitey, 1.00

00:42:22.880 we don't mean it, we do. 0.98

00:42:24.400 I mean, people laugh,

00:42:25.440 but it was the way you laugh

00:42:26.520 at somebody who is like,

00:42:28.400 you know,

00:42:28.780 at a meeting and said something funny about the real but suppressed for the purposes of PR

00:42:35.040 intentions of the group. Now, I don't think it necessarily shouldn't have gone out. I don't see

00:42:38.920 it as a genuine incitement to kill Whitey. It might have had some connection to that terrible 0.99

00:42:44.440 event in East Croydon a little while later. Who knows? I don't know. I'm not pinning that on them.

00:42:48.760 I can just say if it were on the left, if that had been the sort of thing that somebody had said

00:42:53.580 about Brexit just before the MP was stabbed up in the north,

00:42:57.660 Joe Cox, then, you know, I wouldn't be surprised

00:43:01.780 if some people had drawn connections between the BBC broadcasting

00:43:05.420 that and that happening, do you know what I mean?

00:43:07.240 Who knows?

00:43:08.440 But it's an extraordinarily, you know, wide definition of comedy

00:43:13.860 what goes on in that show right now.

00:43:15.320 It feels like it's a very, very politically motivated

00:43:18.700 and unadorned, you know, discussion of events

00:43:22.540 from a certain political perspective.

00:43:24.120 And as I say, that would be fine, perhaps, to a degree,

00:43:27.900 if there was anything at all from the other side,

00:43:32.460 if there was any attempt to put on comedians

00:43:35.200 who were as well-informed and well-read

00:43:38.460 and well-referenced in libertarian points of view

00:43:42.140 or right-wing points of view or conservative points of view

00:43:44.820 or let's say Roman Catholic points of view.

00:43:46.780 Or just centrist point of view.

00:43:47.920 Or even just, yeah, centrist point of view

00:43:49.780 to say why Black Lives Matter actually has certain elements in its credo,

00:43:54.740 which we should be very careful of introducing into our schools

00:43:57.580 and playgrounds before we wholeheartedly endorse

00:44:00.000 the capitalized version of that slogan.

00:44:02.500 You know, I just think that these, this just,

00:44:05.400 you've got to have some kind of pushback against material

00:44:08.820 of that degree of that strength, I suppose, you know, that purposefulness.

00:44:16.620 And I'm going to present you with the counter-argument now.

00:44:18.760 The counter-argument to your point would be that really comedy can only be left-wing

00:44:23.800 because the entire point of comedy is to mock, to satirise the people in charge and power.

00:44:28.200 And we have been in a conservative government now for 10 years.

00:44:31.220 The right are the ones who hold power.

00:44:33.080 Therefore, the only truly authentic position is to be on the left comedically.

00:44:37.600 Do you agree?

00:44:38.900 I think, was it Swift or somebody of that era who said that satire is a sort of mirror

00:44:43.740 wherein everyone perceives every face but their own?

00:44:48.760 something like that not not necessarily initially felt not necessarily to be i know yes um what is

00:44:56.160 it like uh to discomfort the comfortable and vice versa or something like that and comfort

00:45:02.120 the afflicted comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable satire to me and i mean satire

00:45:06.680 is quite a narrow definition anyway and does it even exist or does it come and go or you know

00:45:10.960 would it would could you honestly say for instance what the week is satire i don't mean that in a

00:45:15.900 harsh way, honestly, it delivers a lot of laughs, you know, pound for punch. But

00:45:19.440 satire, for me, at any rate, should be of the human condition. The fundamental purpose of

00:45:29.940 comedy is to make us aware of how ridiculous life is, how ridiculous we all are, how ridiculous all 0.97

00:45:36.060 our aspirations are, how ridiculous the aspirations of a Tory government that comes in with a huge 0.95

00:45:42.480 elected majority and has an incredible budget in which they essentially steal all of the left's

00:45:48.740 clothes and present the red wall with a massive payday for their electoral loyalty and within a

00:45:54.420 month are destroyed by a once-in-a-century medical event that nobody could have foreseen coming

00:45:59.780 whatsoever all of their aspirations and hopes and glories you know just reduced to dust in that

00:46:04.660 respect that's funny you know and so too is it funny when alf garnet wants to just try and get

00:46:12.540 through his sunday afternoon without being interrupted by the bloody jehovah's witnesses 0.96

00:46:15.840 a man of that low status with his tiny aspirations but still unable to pursue them

00:46:21.680 it's also funny you know comedy is about our absurd inflated view of ourselves as having

00:46:28.680 any command and control over our own our own fate and fortunes whatsoever you know i watched a good

00:46:34.260 filmed a couple of nights ago a cohen brothers movie called a serious man which i've been

00:46:38.640 thinking about a lot which kind of deals with those issues and about the the insanity of of

00:46:45.340 pursuing meaning or coherence in life you know this is what a lot of comedy shouldn't and

00:46:51.560 traditionally has been about you know it's what samuel beckett's plays are about you know high

00:46:56.000 art can go there but so too can gorton and simpson you know step two and son had aspirations it was

00:47:02.100 only because young Steptoe had such huge aspirations that that series remains such a high watermark

00:47:09.800 in British comedy he is funny you you now you would go well that's punching down Steptoe and

00:47:14.600 how could it be more punching down these two men are the most like absolutely on their uppers the

00:47:20.180 most economically marginalized and vulnerable people in society that wasn't how they saw

00:47:24.900 themselves you know and that made the show funny we're far far too preoccupied now with this kind 0.72

00:47:31.660 of what is essentially a critical theory matrix of oppression dynamics.

00:47:35.940 Where does the power lie in any situation?

00:47:37.900 And that will tell us.

00:47:38.840 And this is why when you go to a comedy show like Unleashed,

00:47:41.440 which, to be honest, is not nearly as kind of provocative

00:47:45.440 as it pretends it might be sometimes, but it's just funny.

00:47:48.320 It puts on a good bill.

00:47:49.640 There is this gale of laughter when anyone says something

00:47:52.480 which they know they probably shouldn't laugh at.

00:47:54.640 And we're not talking about racism or sexism or rape jokes.

00:47:58.080 To be honest, you're more likely to see a rape joke at a Jimmy Carr live show

00:48:01.140 or, in fact, a Frankie Boyle live show than you are at Unleashed.

00:48:03.980 But you see jokes, you know, that just make you laugh 0.99

00:48:07.280 before you run through all the fucking Rolodex in your head 0.98

00:48:10.040 to see whether it's okay to do so. 0.99

00:48:11.920 That's why comedy is necessary, you know, because it reminds us.

00:48:15.620 It's a truth which we struggle to repress most of the time.

00:48:19.760 That's usually what breaks out in the middle of a comedy set, you know.

00:48:23.620 So in the last 10, 15 minutes in the home straight, if you like,

00:48:27.380 I mean, one of the things we were talking just as we were sitting here

00:48:29.960 as before we started uh and you mentioned it in the interview itself which is you talked about how

00:48:35.520 you don't expect the bbc to watch this and to go let's get simon on this and yeah whatever there

00:48:41.820 is a price that can be paid by people who are critical of this critical race theory stuff and

00:48:48.000 you talked actually you know to us about how it's not even your own career that you're so much

00:48:52.860 concerned about now you know that there's a price to be paid by families of people who speak out

00:48:58.680 against this uh not i would say i mean i'm not no kind of physical threat no no no to my family but

00:49:04.920 i'm aware that you know yeah some people might say oh i thought your husband described as a right

00:49:08.780 wing comedian it's not right wing is he you know well i'm not saying i am right wing or i'm not

00:49:12.760 but you know those conversations can be uncomfortable even that right wing which i mean 0.76

00:49:17.720 probably yes i am you know in in historical terms i have probably sat center right to most

00:49:24.960 governments that I've lived through, you know, even as everything has drifted leftwards in my

00:49:28.820 view. But that is another, I suppose, moot point. And I suppose that's one of the reasons that few

00:49:34.360 people are willing to be as open as you are about your concerns. Because I know a lot of people

00:49:41.080 share certain views about, let's say, diversity, quote unquote, in inverted commas, about things

00:49:48.280 that are happening. But it's very difficult to discuss, number one, without being punished

00:49:51.340 directly and number two without also sounding like a sort of bitter middle-aged white man yeah

00:49:56.760 where you're going why haven't been given this opportunity even though and i have no skin in

00:50:01.800 the game anymore because i'm not really doing the comedy strictly speaking in that sense even though

00:50:06.800 we all know that some people are promoted because of who they are rather than because of how skilled

00:50:11.820 they are you know so we seem to be in this environment where it's very difficult to to be

00:50:16.760 open about these things yeah yeah certainly and the diversity thing you know i don't think

00:50:21.740 i don't know anyone who has a quarrel with diversity that emerges naturally or even i

00:50:26.940 think perhaps to some extent is given a helping hands maybe if for instance posters went up in

00:50:32.520 schools encouraging young black kids to think that there was a job for them in the bbc i mean 0.92

00:50:37.880 the bbc have made an awful lot of um progress as they would see it maybe it is uh in terms of

00:50:43.560 getting representation on the screen, there is still an enormous lack of diversity in the

00:50:48.960 production and in the boardroom, in all the management. At that level, they could probably

00:50:55.780 do to encouraging some people. That might not be such a bad thing. But it does become a racket.

00:51:00.280 There's no question about it. It becomes a racket. There's that great old phrase,

00:51:04.700 I can't remember the guy's name, but every great movement starts as a cause.

00:51:10.440 sorry, every great cause starts as a movement,

00:51:12.580 becomes a business and ends up as a racket.

00:51:14.700 I can't remember the guy's name.

00:51:15.860 I wish I could.

00:51:16.380 American sort of philosopher.

00:51:18.280 And, you know, that's where we're at.

00:51:22.640 You know, there is huge amounts of money,

00:51:24.700 huge amounts of money now to be made.

00:51:27.620 Essentially, it's classic rent seeking.

00:51:29.440 You know, you're not bringing any value.

00:51:31.020 You're not creating wealth.

00:51:32.080 You're not improving the lot of mankind.

00:51:34.720 You are interfering with processes.

00:51:38.160 but in order to do so and in order to maintain your legitimacy you have to come down very hard

00:51:43.620 on anyone who says anything i have friends for instance a criminal barrister who was recently

00:51:47.940 forced to go on an implicit bias training thing you know where they sit in front of the computer

00:51:51.960 and you find out whether you have no how racist you are yeah this stuff has been like it's it's

00:51:59.380 been thoroughly debunked i mean there is no question about it at all there are very very

00:52:05.060 substantial studies which have proven beyond doubt it doesn't work it doesn't a it doesn't

00:52:11.320 demonstrate anything meaningful about how deep-rooted deep-seated somebody's racist and

00:52:16.060 prejudiced opinions might be and it certainly doesn't improve their behavior afterwards you

00:52:21.080 know they come out having had a nasty shock you know or maybe or whatever or being told that you

00:52:26.020 know and nothing nothing improves but there is loads of cash in it and i remember like you know

00:52:31.960 Two or three years ago, I overheard people at the BBC canteen

00:52:34.580 talking about having been on one of these things

00:52:36.260 and how it was fascinating.

00:52:37.760 Because people, it's a human behavior thing to my mind as well,

00:52:40.580 as much as anything else.

00:52:41.740 People are fascinated by themselves.

00:52:44.020 You know, everyone, it's catnip, you know,

00:52:46.220 especially to a certain kind of demographic.

00:52:48.800 Youngish people usually, you know, just fascinated.

00:52:51.260 Oh, it turns out, look, I've got this and you've got that.

00:52:54.440 You know what I mean?

00:52:55.520 They're all people.

00:52:56.260 It's like astrology.

00:52:57.600 It is literally like astrology.

00:52:59.500 It has no greater claim to intellectual foundations than astrology, but it taps into exactly the

00:53:06.720 same curiosity we all have about ourselves, and it's become a vast racket.

00:53:10.900 And in order to sustain that, yes, they will come down very hard, and you get that kind

00:53:15.000 of thing, which we all know about now, like white fragility, probably the highest mode 0.99

00:53:21.480 of it, the final form of it, where any attempt to resist the narrative only goes to prove

00:53:27.980 how deeply embedded in the flaw you are, you know.

00:53:32.020 White fragility, written, of course, itself by a white woman 0.95

00:53:34.680 and one who collects vast fees to lecture people

00:53:38.700 about how their fragility is preventing them

00:53:40.800 from seeing the truth about their, you know, their privilege.

00:53:45.500 Bad. It's bad. I'm telling you, man, it's not good.

00:53:48.680 These are not good trends at all. Bad.

00:53:52.460 We need to raise productivity in this country.

00:53:54.760 You raise productivity and everyone starts feeling better off.

00:54:00.040 The feel-good factor that Tony Blair had, that was an economic factor.

00:54:04.560 That was an economic reality.

00:54:06.480 Raise productivity, improve everyone's lot.

00:54:09.560 We urgently need to address the housing situation in this country 0.61

00:54:12.720 and redistribute the wealth a little bit around the country

00:54:15.220 and across the demographics.

00:54:16.460 I totally get that.

00:54:17.480 I think a lot of this reflects a terrible hand

00:54:22.280 that's been dealt with young people.

00:54:24.020 And certainly if you look over the last 10 or even 30 years, you know, you see the top

00:54:28.620 1% have absolutely creamed off all the extraneous wealth, all the new wealth that's come into

00:54:34.540 the economy in the last 10 years, in particular since the crash, has gone straight to the

00:54:38.340 top 1%.

00:54:38.980 Not even like to the headmasters or barristers or local newspaper editors, you know, who

00:54:43.560 used to be considered to be solidly middle class, you know, the Acacia Avenue guys with

00:54:47.160 their umbrella and the morning deer, you know, slightly boring and stayed, but, you know,

00:54:51.400 knew he had a decent pension to look forward to those people have been shafted every bit as much

00:54:56.460 as the kids have you know there's no wonder they feel this the system is rotting but it's not to

00:55:01.060 do with like the the issues that black lives matter is you know it's not to do with police brutality

00:55:05.940 not in this country certainly it is to do with economic you know some really deep-seated economic

00:55:11.740 problems that are not being addressed and i think a lot of the deal with woke capital as they call

00:55:16.540 it you know like the banks happy to put up flags for gay pride and everything you know is because 0.99

00:55:20.960 they're really happy for you to focus on that shit and not notice what's actually going on, 0.99

00:55:25.700 which is that capital accrues value faster than labor can keep track with. That's the problem 0.99

00:55:29.860 we're facing. You know, that's the difficulty. And the only way it was solved in the past was

00:55:33.600 with world war. So we really need to get to grips with that instead of hacking all these distractions,

00:55:38.360 which is, you know, which is where we're at at the moment, as I say, and is why I think,

00:55:42.900 you know, the whole edifice of the establishment is now behind the woke movement, because it's an

00:55:47.720 amazingly successful distraction

00:55:49.460 from the actual issues we need to address.

00:55:51.400 And so how do we move forward, Simon?

00:55:53.860 Well...

00:55:54.400 He's already told you, world war, man.

00:55:55.880 World war.

00:55:57.120 Look at you, it's a sudden the Russism is like,

00:55:59.520 yeah, well, I don't know why...

00:56:01.420 General Winter is back, whatever that accent was,

00:56:03.600 doesn't really matter.

00:56:05.240 It is funny, I have found myself reading endlessly books

00:56:07.840 about summer of 1914.

00:56:10.700 The lesser known of the Brian Adams songs.

00:56:12.820 What's coming, that's right, yes.

00:56:14.880 But my first real sick string,

00:56:16.500 but I had nothing to plug it into.

00:56:18.200 So that was...

00:56:19.080 No, but you're right, Simon.

00:56:19.940 I mean, wealth and income inequality,

00:56:22.520 you can be on the right or left.

00:56:24.440 It's toxic to harmonious societal relations.

00:56:28.740 It kills everything.

00:56:29.600 And the evidence on that is very clear. 0.90

00:56:31.360 And unless we address that, we're going to be screwed.

00:56:33.820 And that's why a lot of us have been talking

00:56:36.060 about the economic impact of the lockdown.

00:56:38.140 Yeah.

00:56:38.460 Because that's only going to make things worse.

00:56:40.120 It's made it much worse.

00:56:41.300 And I'll be honest with you,

00:56:42.260 I will say this, you know, a little bit tongue-in-cheek,

00:56:44.900 But the truth is this virus left to its own devices would essentially have been quite benevolent towards mankind in the long run because it was absolutely focused and targeted at the elderly.

00:56:55.080 You know, it would have it would have been like a bad flu.

00:56:57.960 We would have had a bad winter flu.

00:56:59.640 There would have been a lot of people would have gone a year or two before it was maybe their time.

00:57:03.500 Otherwise, many of them already living in the hell of dementia.

00:57:05.900 and um and two or three years later people would probably have moved on and nobody would really

00:57:13.840 have felt that there was any great terrible tragedy a few people yeah but we've looked at

00:57:18.500 the statistic way less than a thousand people in this country have died under the age of 70 with

00:57:23.060 no comorbidities that is not a public health emergency you know the the last time I was here

00:57:28.960 this thing I said nobody's paying attention to is the demographic shift in you know the elderly

00:57:34.640 social care, the ownership of property being held by the elderly, you know, young people unable to

00:57:41.100 move forward. This is a massive societal problem. And this virus could actually have solved it. But

00:57:46.040 we've buggered that up. You know how we said he's not really right wing? I think he is. I think what

00:57:52.520 would have been the best solution, you know, funnily enough, the best policy was the one that

00:57:56.740 Boris Johnson laid out to Philip Schofield and Holly Willoughby on this morning, a couple of

00:58:00.780 days before neil ferguson's phone call came through we should have toughed it out herd immunity the

00:58:05.280 elderly and vulnerable should have locked down and self-isolated we should have got you know 0.92

00:58:09.680 systems in place meals on wheels or whatever to keep them looked after and um and everyone else

00:58:14.860 should have cracked on with it i honestly think that would have been the best solution we have

00:58:18.160 now absolutely shafted young people they have inherited an even vaster debt than the one they

00:58:22.860 already had loads of the kind of jobs that they always wanted to get into have just disappeared

00:58:26.880 zoom and all that kind of stuff the absence of commuting a move to home working may or may not

00:58:32.840 be like a viable way to move forward and it could be part of the great reset that avoids the

00:58:37.080 you know the cataclysmic climate change that has been on the table for some time that may be a good

00:58:42.280 long-term solution but i don't think it's healthy for young people not to be going to to workplaces

00:58:46.240 where they can engage with others a lot of office romances and so on you know are not ever going to

00:58:51.720 kind of yeah get kindled via zoom you know i think it's a you know a huge amount of of and

00:59:01.280 london in particular you know was like a real young person's i mean they were they were getting

00:59:05.720 shafted on the property and everything yeah but they were all coming here regardless because it 1.00

00:59:09.840 was like it was absolutely cooking you know places like shoreditch were like world centers of 1.00

00:59:14.080 excellence for young people having ideas and using their vitality to create new you know all kinds of

00:59:20.480 new modes and idioms of profit. And that has just been slammed. You know, I think it's a terrible,

00:59:28.620 terrible error, a terrible error. And again, one which a lot of people who feel that way feel

00:59:33.620 unable to speak about because, you know, oh, you want to kill your granny. You know, there are lots 1.00

00:59:40.180 and lots of different ways in which government programs can kill people. And they aren't always

00:59:44.600 immediately obvious, you know, but you've seen what's happened in America, you know, the Rust 0.98

00:59:48.900 belt, the opioid addictions, the deaths of despair have rocketed over the last few years

00:59:53.940 and almost certainly played a huge part in leading to Donald Trump, which is what everyone

00:59:58.060 says they don't want to happen over here, you know, and that's what you're going to

01:00:01.560 get, I suspect.

01:00:03.060 You know, it's not a total coincidence that fascism emerged out of the Great Depression.

01:00:09.100 That's a slight over simplification, you know, the collapse of empire as well, but it was

01:00:14.660 a big part of it.

01:00:15.980 and on that rather cheerful note i don't i don't have any uh finish with a song yeah

01:00:23.440 buddy can you spare a dime um we always finish with the same question which is what's the one

01:00:29.920 thing we're not talking about as a society but we really should be well i mean i suppose in a way

01:00:36.020 i've just said it i said last time that it was the demographic shift towards the elderly because

01:00:40.780 It's the least glamorous demographic shift.

01:00:44.180 People are actually quite happy to talk about changes in race, 0.77

01:00:46.840 changes in religion, the rise of Islam and the collapse of Christianity

01:00:50.560 across the West.

01:00:51.420 Those kind of issues feel dangerous.

01:00:55.260 They feel risky.

01:00:56.220 You know, you feel a frisson when they come up

01:00:58.180 and you're worried that somebody might say something unacceptable.

01:01:00.540 But people are quite excited about them.

01:01:02.220 Talking about old people just like living for 30 years after retirement 1.00

01:01:06.740 and our failure to address that or whatever that's coming in,

01:01:14.060 I think has only got worse since.

01:01:16.140 I think the care home fiasco with, you know,

01:01:19.920 basically sending in patients with, I mean, it was almost like,

01:01:25.860 I remember Winston Churchill in one of those books I mentioned

01:01:30.380 I've been reading a lot earlier, I love this quote,

01:01:32.640 referred to Lenin as being like a plague bacillus

01:01:36.440 who were sent in in a sealed carriage into Russia by the Germans

01:01:39.300 in order to create their downfall.

01:01:41.840 And, I mean, that's what I think about every time I think about,

01:01:45.540 you know, the treatment and the whole approach to it.

01:01:48.980 But, of course, the truth is it's something nobody wants to address.

01:01:53.300 It's very easy to get angry with the government

01:01:55.600 or to get angry with the local authorities

01:01:57.480 for their callous treatment of the elderly, 1.00

01:02:00.220 but they wouldn't be in those homes in the first place

01:02:02.520 if a certain degree of callousness was not already in evidence

01:02:05.360 from the society that doesn't feel it has a place for them.

01:02:08.660 You know, they're basically in cold storage waiting to die.

01:02:10.940 There's no escaping it.

01:02:12.260 We've seen Panorama does it like once every 18 months.

01:02:15.320 You know, none of these places are like very pleasant.

01:02:19.360 So I'm afraid I'm going to have to say that again.

01:02:21.400 I still think it's that.

01:02:22.620 We are not talking about how we are dealing with demographic shifts.

01:02:26.900 And, you know, we are not having children and we are not dying.

01:02:31.300 you know that that is not an ultimately long-term sustainable situation it's a good point

01:02:38.440 you reminded me there was a comedian who i used to gig with who had the joke about how he's he's

01:02:44.220 put his mom in harm and it must be a good one because it's been in the news 1.00

01:02:47.820 you're right you're right simon thank you so much for coming back is there anything you'd like to

01:02:57.200 plug at this point oh god your twitter is just remind everybody just follow my twitter at the

01:03:02.760 simon evans and if you want to read my patreon stuff the top tweet there the pin tweet will

01:03:06.920 tell you exactly where you can find that um and uh but everything else comes through there anyway

01:03:12.580 that's where i spend most of my day fantastic simon so good to have you back thanks we'll see

01:03:16.740 you guys for very soon with another brilliant episode or a live stream all of those go out

01:03:21.560 at 7 p.m uk time take care and see you soon guys

01:03:27.200 We'll see you next time.

TRIGGERnometry - October 11, 2020

Simon Evans on Woke Bias at the BBC

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