Why Can't We Just Get Along？ - Iain Dale
Episode Stats
Length
1 hour and 13 minutes
Words per Minute
188.37424
Summary
In this episode of Trigonometry, returning guest Ian Dale talks about his new book, Why Can t We All Get Along? and why he thinks we should all just get along. He also talks about why he doesn t want to live in a house of Commons.
Transcript
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Hello and welcome to Trigonometry from our brand new studio in central London.
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And this is a show for you if you want honest conversations with fascinating people.
00:01:35.700
Our fascinating guest today, who laughs at the idea of being fascinating as he's introduced,
00:01:41.700
is the broadcaster and returning guest to Trigonometry, Ian Dale. Welcome back.
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You are fascinating, and we just have to reveal it,
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You've just written a book, which is absolutely fantastic,
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given some of the things that have been happening,
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You missed out the word just, which everybody does,
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I was on BBC Radio Cambridgeshire, and they did the same.
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Well, I'm almost as good as the BBC. What can I say?
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Yeah, fair enough. I'm almost as bad as a regional radio station.
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Anyway, Why Can't We All Just Get Along is a great book.
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I really enjoyed reading it. But the title itself, let's talk about that.
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Why can't we get along? It seems like for the last four years, certainly,
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and probably before then, I'm sure you'd argue,
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we've just been suffering some sort of collective hysteria, delusion,
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whatever you describe it, where the fever pitch of our public discourse has just taken off.
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I think one thing that has become apparent is that there are so many people in this world,
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on the left and the right, who don't accept that somebody is entitled to hold a different opinion
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to them. And I argue in the book that unless you understand that somebody is not only entitled to
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have an opinion, but you know, from time to time they may be right, how can you marshal your own
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arguments against them because otherwise you're just talking to people who agree with you and that
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is really boring i mean my radio show um i prefer people to ring in to argue with me not in a bad
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way but just have a good debate how boring would it be if i spent three hours every night just
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talking to people that agreed with me or thought i was fantastic i mean it would be wonders for my
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ego but it would be very boring radio there are radio presenters who thrive on that who just want
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people who agree with them they have a narrative they want to get that narrative over and anyone
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else who disagrees with them is immediately sort of cast into outer darkness now that's not what
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i think debate should be all about but let's not pretend that it's just over the last four years
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this has happened i think this this if you go back to the i don't know 18th 19th centuries you look
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at the political cartoons of the time and there were really violent debates in the house of commons
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and our current house of commons is fairly calm compared to that but i think what's happened
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certainly over the last 20 years is the the internet has intervened now in many ways for good
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the internet has allowed people to have a voice and everyone should be able to have a voice
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but the destructive voices have come to the fore i think particularly in the last 10 years with the
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advent of social media um back in the early 2000s i was one of the first people to do a political
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blog and I thought this that blogging as soon as I discovered blogs I thought this is fantastic
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I don't have to bring up my website person to change my website when I want to put something
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new on it I can do it myself in a few minutes now that was great because it gave ordinary people
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a platform it might be that they only had 30 readers in their local area well so what it
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still gave them a bigger voice than they had before and I think blogging allowed people to
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put forward views that were different from what they were reading in their newspapers or hearing
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on the radio but with the advent of twitter i think things have really changed and twitter is
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a great thing in many ways but it's so spontaneous you can react instantly and that's sometimes a
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good thing but very often it's a bad thing if i tweet to you that you're a twat you're in correct
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your instant human reaction is to think no i'm not i'm going to call him a effing twat so you
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type it instantly now on a blog you'd probably take a couple of minutes to think about that and
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by the time the couple of minutes were over you think oh well i better not do that that's a bit
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rude whereas on twitter people don't think that there's no buffer on twitter and it it's not i
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think it's actually just sort of natural human reaction if we're attacked we fight back if you
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look at the way that politics works on twitter if a conservative politician is in a scandal or
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something the conservative tribes sort of circle the wagons and defend their man or woman same on
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the left if corbyn's under attack or was under attack he would be defended in the same way
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so it's like my country right or wrong there's no shades of gray here and if you've read the book
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you'll know the word that i most often use in the book is nuance there is no nuance on social media
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it's all black and white and you're either for me or against me you're in my tribe or you're not
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and if you're not then you're my enemy that's not how public discourse should really be conducted
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i don't think and in don't you think part of the problem is when it comes to social media is that
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we because of the nature of social media it tends to promote posts that have the highest level of
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interaction which tend to be lo and behold the most divisive ones you know all brexiteers are
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racist all remainers are woke or whatever it may be so actually these nuanced points they simply
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don't get promoted because of the algorithms no and it actually when you have people on both sides
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of the brexit debate for example who don't i mean i've never called a remain supporter a ramona
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i mean i just think it's quite disrespectful i might call them undemocratic sometimes if they
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didn't accept the referendum result i think that's entirely legitimate but i think if you
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indulge in sort of calling people ramonas or breckshitters or whatever i mean is that really
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is that really where we want to be in our society it's so pure out there like you see the fact that
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people when i i once asked a news night producer when i used to run news night literally every week
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it seemed at one period and even i was getting bored of myself on news night and i said to one
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of the producers i said why do you keep booking me why don't you find other people and they said
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well we see you as the thinking person's brexiteer i thought well i've been called worse but because
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i was seen as a sort of more moderate voice than the likes of andrew bridgen or john redwood or
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whoever um and i was actually willing to entertain the thought that um that there might be issues
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with brexit i wasn't sort of saying it's all going to the land is going to be flowing with milk and
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honey um but that enrages the other side even more because they see somebody on their television
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screens or they hear somebody on the radio that can put a reasonable sounding argument for brexit
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and it destroys their narrative that everyone on the brexit side of the argument should basically
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be cancelled because they're mad or racist or whatever yeah and no i mean isn't part of the
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problem and this is a very coarse way of putting it in that it's unlike you
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but isn't part of the problem on social media that you don't have the threat of physical
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violence because when you know if you're talking to someone are you advocating for physical violence
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i'm saying it's a deterrent it is a deterrent man getting punched in the face i mean it's a
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modulator of behavior let's put that one six foot two like you're on west ham support yeah
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I sometimes say to people who insult me on Twitter,
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I'm helping you improve, just sowing little seeds,
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But I mean, we've talked about social media to death
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and there's no question it's been a contributing factor.
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But one of the things that you talk a lot about in the book
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But I certainly feel like in my lifetime, which is not all that long, the sort of way that we talk about things has changed.
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And I think we've seen this during the coronavirus pandemic where you had in these daily Downing Street press conferences, you'd have all of these big name journalists asking questions to the various politicians.
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and generally they were questions that were along the lines of aren't you ashamed of yourself why
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don't you resign you effing idiot obviously i didn't put it that way and so any fool could
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have seen that this was going to happen and on the 13th of march you said this but now you're
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saying that and i think the public saw through that because all they were doing was looking for
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gotcha moments they weren't looking to get information from the politician or an explanation
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all they were trying to do was to get the politician to say something that would give
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them the headline in the news bulletins and you see this where um and this is all broadcasters
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are guilty of this so they ask um questions which are that they just pick their own journalist
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questions to the exclusion of others even though they may have been better questions
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and got more newsworthy answers and then at the end of the press conferences you'd have all of
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the regional and local journalists asking questions and they were the ones that were
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actually spot on and actually got interesting answers from the politicians well what a surprise
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that is in a way the way the media has developed it's inevitable that this has happened where if
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you're doing three or four minute interviews so on a breakfast show where inevitably it's much
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more pacey than other times of the day and the politician goes into the studio with maybe one
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or two things that they're determined to say whatever the question is and the journalist
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starts off not with a sort of softball first question because you haven't got time for that
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on a breakfast show you go straight in why are you lying to me minister well immediately the
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shutters go up but if i start with an if you started here with an aggressive question to me
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immediately my defenses go up and i'm probably not going to say anything very interesting you
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might think i haven't anyway but i mean it's just again natural human nature and so i'm really
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pleased actually that the long form interview is coming back particularly on podcasts where you
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don't have a time limit i mean your show is all an hour long the podcasts i do sometimes
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maybe two hours long we just go and see how it goes um and you actually i did a 78 minute interview
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And I mean, our job is not to make politicians interesting.
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But don't you think the problem is, Ian, in that a lot of the mainstream media, they're finding it impossible to monetise.
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This is the only way that they can make themselves seem relevant in many ways.
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Well, it may be, but it's going to be a short-term pleasure.
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And in the long term, they will just eat themselves.
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I mean, we've seen this week that there are now apparently two rival news channels being launched because,
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well presumably because they think that sky news and the bbc aren't doing a good enough job now
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commercially i'm not sure i see how that can work back in 2006 i was part of a team that launched
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an internet tv channel called 18 dowdy street and it was i mean a bit like this it was we we did
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live programming but also recorded programming where there was much longer you had a lot more
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time and it was seen i remember a lot of people wrote it up as always new fox news because we
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were predominantly on the right although we had people like peter tatchel presenting programs it
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wasn't entirely on the right um now that was 10 years ahead of its time um and it only lasted a
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year but it i mean that cost i think it cost about a million pounds over the course of that year this
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is not a cheap thing to do so although i i think competition is great and i'd love to see a whole
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plethora of different style of news channels um that is a reaction to i think a widespread feeling
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that mainstream media news channels in a way aren't servicing their public properly um now a
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lot of the times you've got people on the i won't say far right but people on the right people on
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the left who think that the bbc and sky are either right wing or left wing and then the bbc and sky
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think oh well if they both think that we're either right or left we must be doing something right
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which is the laziest way of thinking i think um and it's interesting that tim davy the new bbc
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director general has already in his first week stepped into this and said well i think we are
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getting things wrong we're not speaking to the whole country in the way that we should be
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well good on him and i let's see what he actually does i mean we're recording this just after it's
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been announced that they've reversed the decision on the proms and there will be singing now in a
00:15:15.200
way not a massively important issue but that i'm sure will have come from him and that is a signal
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I hope he's right because I think the BBC is a bit like an oil tanker.
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It's quite difficult to turn around, but let's wish him luck.
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because we've obviously gone through a period of time
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where a lot of people feel like British history as a whole thing
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And to see the national broadcaster sort of spearheading that movement,
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And the other interesting thing here is that the left
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to have tried to pretend that this wasn't a story
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Well, I was listening to the Fortunately podcast,
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And they had Nezrin Malik, the Guardian columnist,
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had been fabricated by the right to enable Boris Johnson to look patriotic and all the rest of it
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well the journalist who broke this story in the Sunday Times is Grant Tucker who used to be my PA
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so I spoke to him I mean when the story happened I thought well that is a really good story
00:16:36.820
and so I talked to him about how he got the story so what the sort of he didn't tell me
00:16:41.040
necessarily who the sources were but he actually had quoted name sources as well
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I'm thinking, well, how can you say this wasn't a legitimate news story?
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which I think is a really serious allegation to make.
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because who wants to sing all these old-fashioned lyrics anyway?
00:17:01.460
Fine, have that debate, but it's a legitimate story to write.
00:17:10.000
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to spell the word trigger because that would be patronizing but you you mentioned this uh sort of
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new right of center channel potentially that people are talking about and i thought you you
00:18:37.820
said you didn't think it was going to work do you not think there's a huge gap in the market there
00:18:42.020
well i haven't said i don't think it's going to work i think it's going to be difficult for it
00:18:45.020
to work commercially now there are lots of people with very deep pockets who might be willing to
00:18:48.800
accept that it's never going to make a profit and that they'll happily subsidize it um i think it
00:18:54.760
can work from a journalistic point of view i think you can have a channel which has uh
00:19:02.860
which allows opinion i mean i work for a channel where all the presenters are encouraged
00:19:07.400
to express their opinions and we have a very diverse range of opinions so you know at one
00:19:12.900
stage it went from sort of Nigel Farage through to Ken Livingstone I mean actually they weren't
00:19:17.460
on at the same time but um I think that is the way probably to do it rather than have just a
00:19:24.140
whole stream of uh right of center presenters who are inevitably going to give I mean it will
00:19:31.040
inevitably be called a British Fox News if you do it that way um I'm not sure I would want to watch
00:19:36.000
a channel that did that necessarily because why would you just want to watch people that you might
00:19:41.840
agree with all the time um i think you've got to be challenged um otherwise you just develop lazy
00:19:48.440
thinking habits and isn't this a problem that if we do have this channel that it's just going to
00:19:53.580
increase polarization and that people who agree with it are just going to watch it and they're
00:19:57.620
not going to engage well we can see what's happening in the united states where if you're
00:20:00.900
on the right you watch fox news if you're not on the right you watch cnn or msnbc i'm not sure
00:20:05.820
that's very healthy for anyone really but that's what that's where the point you made about the
00:20:11.300
bbc is so important as you say that the mooting of this new right of center thing is a direct
00:20:18.100
response to people a lot of people feeling that the bbc has gone to the left and and so if the
00:20:24.160
bbc under this new director general can recover a sense of what their role is which is to provide
00:20:29.640
balance and uh unbiased reporting if they can achieve that which remains to be seen at this
00:20:35.460
point then then then that threat of a right of center channel may dissipate by itself potentially
00:20:42.080
it could do and the bbc is capable of doing that if you think back and people forget this if you
00:20:47.420
think back to the brexit referendum campaign i thought they covered it really well i think most
00:20:52.500
people did it was only afterwards when all the shenanigans started that you could tell that there
00:20:57.880
weren't very many brexiteers working in the bbc and that is that is a problem and the fact that
00:21:04.580
they didn't really see all the sort of red wall thing coming up to be fair i'm not sure anybody
00:21:09.420
saw it to that extent a lot of our guests did well did they okay well fair enough but sorry
00:21:14.100
we do a better job i mean i i certainly thought there would be a tory majority i didn't think it
00:21:20.440
would be be that much um people like matt goodwin paul embri that that sort of caliber of person
00:21:28.820
that we've had on the show repeatedly they all predicted it with quite a lot of confidence
00:21:35.040
And the metropolitan centrism of sort of broadcasters in general,
00:21:43.760
First of all, I don't think the BBC or anybody in the sort of London media bubble
00:21:50.220
understands that Boris Johnson has an appeal outside the M25.
00:21:58.140
if you walk down the street with Boris Johnson,
00:21:59.940
It doesn't matter whether it's in Kensington or Halifax.
00:22:03.580
He attracts people around him in a way that no other politician does.
00:22:13.460
And I've never seen that in any other politician
00:22:15.800
with the possible exception of Margaret Thatcher.
00:22:22.840
I mean, Ian Duncan Smith once said that you have 90 days
00:22:29.300
if you haven't made your mark after 90 days you might as well give up there and then and i think
00:22:34.660
he's absolutely right now you can't create charisma you either have it or you don't
00:22:41.080
but it's it's true you cannot people see through it yeah sometimes people try too hard i'll give
00:22:52.060
you an example um liz truss i think tries a bit too hard in this regard with her sort of instagram
00:22:57.500
photos and they're amusing but i'm not sure they did her any good as a sort of creditable politician
00:23:04.440
she didn't actually add to her political credibility um by doing all of that stuff
00:23:10.040
um people people want when cameron had this phrase keep it real and you've got to keep it
00:23:16.140
real if people don't like your personality you're not probably going to persuade them to you know
00:23:21.120
before farad just ask you a question just on david cameron my wife is completely apolitical
00:23:25.660
you've met my wife i think possibly briefly maybe you haven't uh but anyway she's completely
00:23:30.980
apolitical couldn't care less about politics at all but she said she said to me uh she's not
00:23:37.440
right or left or anything like that but she said to me every time i see david cameron on tv i want
00:23:41.560
to throw up he just looks so dishonest yeah yeah that was her i can think of many politicians i
00:23:48.040
could say that about but he wouldn't be one of them that's interesting she just thought he was
00:23:51.660
a sort of very fake person but anyway speaking of i'm interviewing him uh in a couple of weeks
00:23:56.300
that explains that i'll put that to him put that to him why why are you so fake
00:24:00.500
but speaking of prime ministers uh prime ministers who've been criticized boris johnson is someone
00:24:07.780
who during the hustings in the last election you you you had a little bit of a run-in with his
00:24:12.560
fans it's fair to say and that's what i have always liked about you is you know you are probably
00:24:16.920
centre-right on some issues, centre-left on others.
00:24:22.160
Yeah, I would self-describe as being on the centre-right.
00:24:28.840
With a few sort of lefty social issue opinions.
00:24:33.400
So, for example, in immigration, you described yourself as wet as a lettuce.
00:24:40.100
you actually pushed him quite hard to the chagrin of his following at the time.
00:24:45.300
And what do you make of Boris Johnson's nine months
00:25:06.660
because in April 2021, it's the 300th anniversary
00:25:11.560
So I've commissioned 55 people to write an essay
00:25:14.400
on each prime minister for this book and i've written the boris johnson chapter oh wow um and
00:25:21.060
i mean i've written it up to the end of april i might do a little it's going to print soon so
00:25:25.160
i can't do much of an update um i said before boris johnson became prime minister that i thought
00:25:31.860
he would be one of our great prime ministers or the shittest prime minister we've ever had
00:25:36.460
now i it's far too early to come to a judgment now i think he did what a lot of people thought
00:25:43.440
would be impossible he has got us out of the european union which i was beginning to doubt
00:25:48.540
whether that was actually going to happen so that's certainly on the plus side which i mean i
00:25:52.780
would say that wouldn't i if he gets a free trade deal done of of any in any meaningful form with
00:25:59.120
the eu by the end of the year that will be a significant achievement i actually do believe
00:26:03.440
that that will happen um we already know that there's we're about to sign one with japan which
00:26:09.100
we're told is actually better than the deal that the eu has got with japan i think that would be
00:26:13.140
a landmark thing to do. If we've got a lot of the free trade deals rolled over from the EU by the
00:26:19.960
end of December, again, an achievement. But he's not going to go down in history as the Brexit
00:26:26.360
Prime Minister, which is what he thought he would. He's going to go down in history as the
00:26:30.400
COVID Prime Minister. And I don't think even his greatest fan could say that he's got a stellar
00:26:38.440
track record in handling this statistics don't lie in the end and although i think the british
00:26:46.460
public are very forgiving um there are things that were done over the last four or five months that
00:26:52.960
could have been done differently could have been done more quickly and it's easy for anybody to
00:26:57.360
say in hindsight oh well you should have done that you should have done that but there were people
00:27:01.320
for example on lockdown there were plenty of people saying this should be done a week or 10
00:27:07.200
days earlier than it was um and i think that would have been that that was the main error that was
00:27:13.560
made um the fact that he was out of action for a month six weeks the fact that i think he's still
00:27:20.300
suffering from the after effects of that and i think this is leading to speculation that i mean
00:27:25.900
if he does get the free trade deal and say the economy has gone back to a semblance of normality
00:27:32.020
by the middle of next year it's entirely possible that he might think well i've done what i came to
00:27:38.060
do i quite fancy the thought of earning millions of pounds for being an ex-prime minister i don't
00:27:43.660
think he's enjoying it as much as he maybe thought he would i mean how can you enjoy being prime
00:27:49.860
minister at this kind of time it's not like being in a war although people make the war analogies
00:27:57.260
it's not like fighting a war and I just get the feeling that it's not the job that he thought he
00:28:05.180
was going to be doing and so it wouldn't surprise me if by the end of 2021 I mean his Dominic
00:28:13.100
Cummings father-in-law I think was suggesting that he might go before Christmas I can't really
00:28:16.380
see that but it wouldn't surprise me at all if by the end of 2021 he thought or maybe into 2022
00:28:22.840
he thought okay i've done what i came for um let's give someone else a chance that's unusual
00:28:28.020
for a prime minister to give up office voluntarily but boris is an unusual politician so nothing
00:28:33.980
nothing would surprise me i don't think he's done overall as bad a job as his critics would
00:28:40.380
necessarily say um but i i think if you were marking him it would be quite hard to go above
00:28:46.840
a b minus and that's probably being kind and in there's quite a few people who said that he was
00:28:52.440
quite weak during the black lives matter protests he wasn't particularly visible and when you know
00:28:59.060
the statue of church was being defaced he should have taken a stronger position
00:29:02.840
upheld you know law and order do you agree with that i think it's really difficult for a conservative
00:29:09.560
politician on those issues because whatever you say is going to be taken down in evidence and
00:29:15.600
used against you um i think things were mishandled in some of those i mean to my mind the protest
00:29:23.060
shouldn't have ever gone ahead anyway given that we were right in the middle of the serious part
00:29:28.340
of the pandemic and all social distancing rules just were ignored interesting that this week of
00:29:34.440
course and it will be a few weeks by the time this goes out but pierce corbin uh fined 10 000 pounds
00:29:40.420
for breaking the better Corbyn the better Corbyn starting from a low base there I'm not so sure
00:29:46.560
about that uh the madder Corbyn the madder Corbyn but uh but but I mean he did the same thing as
00:29:55.360
as the BLM protest he went out and organized and participated in a public protest I think the the
00:30:02.880
difficulty here and I found this when all this was going on and I was covering it on the radio
00:30:07.360
every night i knew that one word out of place if i if i'd sort of made any derogatory mark about
00:30:16.220
remark about what was going on i mean that that would have been a really serious thing i mean it
00:30:20.800
was it was if you're a politician or a broadcaster on those things you are one word away from losing
00:30:27.660
your job or ending up on the front page of one of the tabloids um and i was very careful to try
00:30:33.140
and distinguish between the black lives matter movement and the black lives matter organization
00:30:38.660
as we were yeah but that gets lost in translation it does the people and i i don't know if you saw
00:30:48.120
i i had a call one night from a woman called denise in enfield and she took me to task for
00:30:54.540
what i was saying and so that i was looking at it through that my white middle class prism which i
00:31:00.580
took exception to and we had quite a bit of a ding dong about this and then i i'd sort of let
00:31:06.020
her talk and she was then saying well of course what you don't get is the black people we don't
00:31:10.280
get the same chances that white people do and i said well no i do understand that and and she
00:31:16.100
said there's a black woman it's even worse um and then she's saying of course on your radio station
00:31:21.300
you've only got one female presenter you've got no black presenters at all i said well
00:31:25.960
well, Majid Nawaz is not black, but he's Asian Muslim.
00:31:30.400
And she just signed Rachel Johnson, so we got two.
00:31:33.780
And then she said, yeah, I wonder how she got the job.
00:31:37.160
And I said, well, she didn't just walk through the door
00:31:49.800
She actually had to prove that she could do it.
00:31:52.040
But again, that's got nothing to do with skin colour.
00:31:55.200
But she said, I wouldn't get through your front door.
00:32:02.000
So I said, okay, come and present the program with me tomorrow.
00:32:04.800
Because there was something about her that I thought.
00:32:09.960
And I was thinking all the time I was saying this.
00:32:12.940
Because I said, don't you think I've made these points to the management here
00:32:19.220
And as I was saying, I thought, I've probably gone a bit too far here.
00:32:24.720
well, if I lose my job, if I'm not here tomorrow,
00:32:33.680
And she's been coming in for an hour every week
00:32:38.120
Now, we're not going to give her a job just because of that
00:32:48.040
sitting behind a microphone for three hours a night
00:32:50.760
is not just sitting there and having a little chat with somebody you've got five things going
00:32:55.080
on in your head at any one time you've got to be able to handle a breaking news story a terror attack
00:33:00.060
and not go to pieces you've got to be able to handle mh-17 being shot down over ukraine
00:33:05.600
and that's the only thing that you know you're going to rolling news mode and that's the only
00:33:10.040
piece of information you've got and your task is to keep people listening but not bore them to tears
00:33:15.460
just by repeating the fact you've got to talk to experts on it you've got to actually have an
00:33:20.380
understanding well what i mean how does a plane get shot out of the air at sort of 20 000 i can
00:33:24.620
tell you all about it i mean people think that i must be sort of like a pig in shit just sitting
00:33:31.440
there doing what i love doing talking but you're you're constantly thinking right i'm interviewing
00:33:35.480
the cabinet minister next what's my first question i'm talking to somebody my producer's talking in
00:33:41.420
my ear um all sorts of things are going on and at the end of the three hours you are mentally
00:33:47.040
exhausted i mean you're physically exhausted sometimes depending on what kind of program
00:33:50.740
you've done um so you can't just sort of give anybody a job just because they think they can
00:33:56.960
do it um but and i do i have talked to enough people on the radio over the last 10 years
00:34:04.160
of uh black heritage of asian heritage to know that there is discrimination whether it's conscious
00:34:10.360
or subconscious there is if your name is undabiningi you are less likely to get a job
00:34:16.180
interview than if your name is Francis that is just a fact there's no point in us denying it it
00:34:22.700
is a fact and that has to be addressed and we're not being fair to people if it isn't addressed
00:34:27.320
I don't think we're a nation of racists there are racists among us we all know that but I do think
00:34:32.720
there is there is a degree of subconscious racism in a lot of people people who don't like to think
00:34:38.800
that there is it's the sort of I'm not a racist but kind of syndrome so I have a lot of sympathy
00:34:44.180
with some of the aims of the people who were demonstrating in some ways but i can't support
00:34:52.020
a movement that wants to defund or abolish the police depending on who you talk to um or abolish
00:34:58.180
capitalism i'm sorry i'm not going to say that i can support that organization and one of my regrets
00:35:03.720
is that um when this was all happening right in the first week um we had a minute's silence for
00:35:11.520
george floyd on lbc or on all of the global radio stations and i was given a statement to read out
00:35:17.960
um after this which in retrospect i think i should have said well i want to amend this because
00:35:25.600
it didn't wholly reflect my views yet i was the one i was the messenger and what was that
00:35:32.120
discrepancy i can't remember the exact details but i do remember at the time thinking well
00:35:36.480
should i sort of challenge this but the problem is it was being read out on every other global
00:35:41.400
radio station but what was the gist of it is what i'm getting well i think it was about the
00:35:46.160
organization as well as the the the general aims um so you were sort of being asked to declare your
00:35:53.600
support for the organization well it was it was me on behalf of the whole organization right and
00:36:00.320
it was i i just i think in the end came to the conclusion that it probably wasn't worth the fight
00:36:06.360
But, I mean, that was also not long after Nigel Farage left,
00:36:10.700
and it sort of played into this narrative that developed on Twitter
00:36:13.880
that sort of I've gone all woke and all the rest of it.
00:36:17.840
So looking back, possibly I should have done that a little differently.
00:36:24.240
and you said that broadcasters, not just yourself,
00:36:27.240
everybody in the industry had to tread very, very carefully
00:36:29.880
when it came to discussing the Black Lives Matter organisation.
00:36:33.680
and if you made one misstep you'd be cancelled why is that why do you think it is that we've
00:36:38.860
come to this point where you can't make a legitimate criticism of an organization without
00:36:44.000
you well i think i can now but i think it would have been very difficult to do that
00:36:48.740
when it was all going on um i did i mean i did say that i thought that statues shouldn't be
00:36:55.400
pulled down all the rest of it i didn't think that was a particularly controversial thing to say but
00:36:59.320
but others did um uh and i did feel where that would end because i thought that it may well be
00:37:05.760
that over the whole country you might get statues being taken down i mean there were people wanting
00:37:11.240
to take this churchill statue down where where does this end charles moore's got a really good
00:37:16.280
piece in the spectator uh today where or maybe it's last week where he's talking about i can't
00:37:21.600
remember the guy's name but somebody who the british museum have now hidden away and he went
00:37:27.240
through what this this is somebody from the 1600s um what he had achieved but he had married
00:37:33.620
somebody who was the daughter of a slave owner i think and it was sort of guilt by association
00:37:42.400
and charles was saying well i mean if really that is where we're heading i mean this is why would
00:37:47.840
anyone donate money to the british museum if they think that they're going to sort of be trashed in
00:37:52.340
300 years i mean it's it is a very dangerous path that we've gone down here and i'm glad that it was
00:37:59.620
just that one statue that came down um and i'm sure there are i mean it is a difficult one just
00:38:06.060
from a moral point of view um i mean i'm sure there are people in germany who think that statues of
00:38:12.040
hitler should still be allowed to stand where do you draw the line everybody's going to have a
00:38:17.280
different place where they draw that line and i think the issue on the statue was certainly for
00:38:24.220
me i don't know whether this was the case for you but for me it was not so much the statue itself
00:38:29.040
it was the method by which it was taken down if the people of bristol had democratically voted to
00:38:34.280
remove it uh great i mean the people of bristol entitled to have any statue they want or don't
00:38:39.100
want but just randomly walking up to a statue that you personally dislike and pulling it down
00:38:44.340
with a mob, I don't think that's how it should be.
00:38:46.440
I mean, you know, my ancestors suffered from the policies
00:38:55.640
Do I get Francis and Anton, we go and pull that down?
00:39:01.040
I'm just going to say, I'm going to need someone in us
00:39:07.440
But, of course, nobody, well, very few people would suggest
00:39:10.580
that the statue of Gandhi in Parliament Square should come down.
00:39:17.720
But it's very difficult to be consistent on this.
00:39:25.160
I mean, the demonstrations that happened in London,
00:39:35.200
but there always are because they generally get hijacked
00:39:39.440
although i think the one in white hall uh i think it was the second one i mean that was on a
00:39:45.640
different scale i think when police horses were attacked and all the rest of it um but it's still
00:39:51.840
we're still at a point where it's actually still not really socially acceptable to question anything
00:39:57.080
on this and that's not a healthy state of debate and what about you bring up the the particular
00:40:03.740
riot and with the horses being attacked police woman being knocked off a horse hitting her head
00:40:09.220
I mean, I personally, to me, that looked like a riot, that particular one.
00:40:13.380
And it was reported by the BBC as being largely peaceful.
00:40:17.960
And that was something that a lot of people picked up on.
00:40:24.980
I mean, if you divided up the time, you could...
00:40:28.160
Well, World War II was largely peaceful by that sort of way,
00:40:31.220
because most of the time soldiers weren't fighting.
00:40:33.300
They were sleeping, they were eating, they were sitting around playing cards.
00:40:36.820
But on a six-hour demonstration, there was probably about an hour at the end where it got a bit hairy.
00:40:47.520
If I was a BBC executive, I could happily defend describing it in that way.
00:40:53.620
But I think they were a little bit, not just them, though.
00:41:00.880
they were quite reluctant to give the full picture
00:41:07.540
Well, the reason I bring it up is at the moment CNN,
00:41:14.580
where there's a guy standing in front of a burning city
00:41:17.100
going peaceful demonstrations, you know, all this sort of stuff.
00:41:22.860
And it does seem to me potentially that the fear
00:41:27.580
that one ought not to criticize this thing, one ought to be extra careful, means that people are
00:41:38.100
hesitant to report reality. Now, maybe the reality is maybe you're right, that they were mostly
00:41:45.080
peaceful. But that isn't how we report riots. I mean, or violent demonstrations that have a
00:41:51.980
measure of violence if for example brexiteers had gone on a march or a protest in which 27 police
00:41:58.960
officers were injured i don't think that would have been reported as being largely peaceful no
00:42:03.420
no i think you're right um i think part of the problem here it's difficult to know what to
00:42:10.040
believe when you see pictures from demonstrations protests riots whatever how do you particularly on
00:42:16.800
twitter how do you know that it's actually from that particular one there have been so many
00:42:21.180
examples there was one last week i think where it purported to be from a particular event and it
00:42:28.560
turned out it was from something two years ago and this is where the fake news thing really comes in
00:42:34.340
because um i mean i've retweeted a couple of things and when i've just found out afterwards
00:42:41.480
well that wasn't what actually happened so then you apologize and delete i mean i was i don't like
00:42:48.040
deleting things on twitter because it looks as if you're trying to step up taking away
00:42:51.780
responsibility from yourself but because if you explain well actually that what i'm sorry i tweeted
00:42:56.680
that because that wasn't what it was people don't see that bit they just still see the original bit
00:43:01.180
so it's always a very difficult decision as to whether to delete or not no i mean that is the
00:43:07.380
problem isn't it is when it when it comes to something like twitter when you retweet something
00:43:11.480
that you believe in you turns out it's not what it initially appears but do you think we're in a
00:43:17.560
very worrying situation at the moment in with public discourse because i'll be honest with you
00:43:22.600
i'm quite worried about it yes i think we are um and the only the only kind of negative comment
00:43:30.160
i've seen on twitter about my book is somebody saying well yeah you've diagnosed all the problems
00:43:34.440
and but you haven't really come up with that many solutions and i said well did you actually get to
00:43:40.120
the end of the book because i've got 50 ways we can improve public discourse now if i'm honest
00:43:44.740
in retrospect should i have included those within the narrative i don't know but i think in the end
00:43:52.220
it is us as individuals that are going to be able to change this or not i know i've moderated my
00:43:57.280
behavior on twitter where i mean i i would get involved in ridiculous twitter spats and someone
00:44:02.120
once said oh ian does such a nice guy on the radio but on twitter he's an absolute beast
00:44:06.640
and they were right so i mean i've tried to change that because i'm not an absolute beast
00:44:13.020
i could mix it up with anybody i i can if i have to have a really loud debate with somebody i'll
00:44:19.860
i'll do it but i think we just have to try and calm down moderate our behavior and just try and
00:44:27.220
be a little bit nicer to each other i know this sounds like sort of kumbaya and sort of hug a
00:44:32.440
hoodie and all the rest of it but in the end i mean we're going to end up in a very very dark
00:44:37.320
place soon if we're not careful and how far on the path do you think we've gone and do you think
00:44:43.320
we can turn back i'd like to think we can um that's a no well sometimes it takes something big
00:44:54.500
to uh really make people sit up and think about what what they're doing and i think it does put
00:45:02.600
responsibility on people in the public eye a little bit where and people do tend to take their
00:45:08.200
i mean everybody has heroes and role models and all the rest of it and if they see their hero or
00:45:13.160
role model acting in a particularly bad way then they're more likely to imitate it and i do think
00:45:21.700
also and i i don't think i have put this in the book but i do think schools have a role to play
00:45:27.360
here in teaching kids how to handle social media and maybe they do it i don't know i'm not i haven't
00:45:34.520
they don't no well they ought to because i mean they do teach about safeguarding i know that
00:45:39.920
but this is more than safeguarding this is this is almost what when i was at school we would have
00:45:45.600
had a couple of hours each week a sort of general studies lesson where you civics is what it used
00:45:51.300
to be called and that's i think where teachers need to actually teach people about the art of
00:45:59.320
public discourse and how to debate and i'm not sure there's enough of that going on in our
00:46:03.760
education system at the moment no well absolutely not and certainly but we talk about the art of
00:46:09.880
debate i don't think politicians have got the art of debate in many cases you see the way they
00:46:15.240
interact with each other you look at question time now i mean what is question time but just a
00:46:20.460
series of people talking over one another as you know yourself well it is um i mean i find
00:46:29.640
i did any questions last week and it it's an oasis of calm compared to the television version
00:46:37.160
and the last time i was on which was a year ago now um i mean i nearly walked off the set because
00:46:43.540
i was just so disgusted at what was going on and um if i had done i mean it would have created
00:46:49.780
such a massive storm and i'm glad i didn't i did do it on good morning britain um a few months
00:46:55.420
afterwards because i was in the middle of a pincer movement from two people on the left
00:46:59.740
and i thought you know i've got better things to do than waste my time i i listened to grace
00:47:05.140
blakely for um about a minute and a half saying what she had to say i then got nine seconds out
00:47:11.860
before she interrupted me and then the guy to my left interrupted me as well and i went to speak
00:47:17.860
again and then they started i thought sod this for going the soldiers and i mean as i was getting up
00:47:23.120
i thought oh should i do this um but i have absolutely no regrets about it because i think
00:47:28.040
it did it it drew a line in the sand certainly for me so i'm just not going to put up with this
00:47:34.420
level of impoliteness and rudeness and what was the feedback like on that including from the
00:47:41.060
producers themselves very interesting um i mean i had to as soon as i because i literally walked
00:47:47.560
into the green room got my coat got my bag walked out to the car and i was i was furious and i people
00:47:54.000
say i flounced out i didn't actually i was very calm i walked out but i was very angry and the
00:47:59.760
producer sort of ran after me as i got to the car i'm really sorry really sorry and i said well
00:48:05.140
these things happen but and if you don't want to come on the program again quite understand but
00:48:08.920
i'm just not putting up with that oh no no don't worry don't worry and um the two presenters texted
00:48:15.700
me afterwards say really sorry we should have stepped in but we didn't and I then spent three
00:48:23.020
hours driving to Norfolk didn't look at Twitter I did put out a tweet saying well I can't remember
00:48:29.120
what I said but sort of hashtag kill Piers Morgan well it wasn't Piers Morgan sort of thus far and
00:48:34.500
no further and 90 percent of the tweets were supportive even people who don't agree with me
00:48:42.660
politically but then what i've worked out is that whenever i'm in the headlines for that kind of
00:48:49.380
reason or any reason the way the left think they can get at me is to retweet the video of me on
00:48:55.080
brighton seafront in 2013 when well according to their narrative i beat up a pension
00:49:01.080
doesn't sound very good does it well exactly um what actually happened and i i go into exhaustive
00:49:09.660
detail in the book on this because i don't i don't hide away from it um i actually pulled the
00:49:14.580
protester by his rucksack straps away he then tried to punch me missed the momentum of that
00:49:21.400
sort of made us fall over but according to them i wrestled him to the ground you will find no
00:49:28.160
evidence anywhere of me punching him kicking him doing anything apart from trying to restrain him
00:49:35.920
because my author Damien McBride was being interviewed.
00:49:45.580
Whenever I'm in the headlines, that's what they do,
00:50:01.760
But going back to the incident at Good Morning Britain,
00:50:04.300
And don't you find their apologies a little bit disingenuous?
00:50:15.420
where we talked about at the beginning of the issue.
00:50:32.600
with jackie smith former labour home secretary and we do the for the many podcasts together
00:50:37.020
which people like because we do get on and even though we come from different political angles
00:50:42.780
we have a laugh we in 210 episodes we've never fallen out um we analyze the week's news and it's
00:50:50.940
all very good natured and we we do it on good morning britain as well and the viewers really
00:50:55.720
like it you don't i don't think people at 6 30 people don't want a barney do they i mean i don't
00:51:01.580
really watch breakfast television but i mean if i did i don't think that's what i'd want at 6 30
00:51:05.820
in the morning every time they get me on that's exactly what they want yeah this is what i was
00:51:10.700
going to ask you about that do you think that they apologize and we're getting into the weeds
00:51:16.320
but i think there's a bigger point that goes beyond that particular incident which is more
00:51:20.380
about the media in general which is they apologize to you because you made a stand and it became
00:51:26.000
clear that a line had been crossed but if you just sat there and took it like a good little boy
00:51:30.580
they wouldn't have even noticed that something had occurred well maybe i mean look i i'm in their
00:51:39.260
position so i you know because you come on my cross-question program sometimes i mean sometimes
00:51:44.640
you do have to step in and say what i mean david starkey um who has been on the show several times
00:51:51.200
i mean he kind of knows that he goes on these shows and a performance is expected of him and
00:52:13.920
I mean, I can't remember what it was last time,
00:52:20.280
And we had a very sort of feminist left-wing woman on.
00:52:24.120
and it was quite offensive and i just and i just said david you cannot say that you just cannot
00:52:31.060
say that judging by his face it was quite funny please apologize and to be fair to him he did
00:52:38.320
um but you know the great thing about david stark is that um he he just is gold dust in terms of
00:52:46.120
engaging even if you hate him you kind of you want to watch him there was one time we were talking
00:52:51.920
about um there was some story about pornography I can't remember what it was and he gave a very
00:52:59.080
erudite answer to it and I was about to move on to the next person and I just saw him lean into
00:53:05.080
the microphone saying but of course Ian as you know I love a bit of pornography
00:53:09.860
you know he's very funny David we had David on the show prior to the whole yeah Darren Grimes
00:53:21.580
thing and actually on our show he didn't say anything out of line at all um he was very
00:53:27.200
entertaining i mean he's obviously darren grimes is a much better interviewer he managed to get
00:53:32.320
him to say something super offensive but that actually that speaks to again a broader issue
00:53:37.360
which is what do you do now because we're so quick to judge people and to cancel them obviously
00:53:43.020
on your show you just pull people up and you say look you shouldn't say that or that's inappropriate
00:53:46.900
or whatever but what what do we do with with with someone like that who makes you know who's
00:53:52.460
a great historian a fantastic man in many ways but in some ways goes too far or says things that
00:53:59.180
might have been acceptable 50 years ago when he was growing up but aren't now
00:54:02.920
how do we handle that as as as a well i got caught up in this because i had seen um darren
00:54:10.780
grimes i think had tweeted that they were raising money for his reasons project and i like darren
00:54:16.780
i think he's a good guy um sometimes can be very naive i think he would admit that himself
00:54:21.720
um so i went on the crowdfunding page and put 100 pounds on thought nothing more of it
00:54:28.900
and then 10 minutes later somebody tweeted i can't believe ian dale is supporting this
00:54:35.400
after what david stalke said on this interview because i hadn't even seen this interview i
00:54:39.780
didn't even know it existed but it had been on the internet for a couple of hours but i just
00:54:45.040
hadn't seen it so i watched it oh my god and i thought well darren you really should have
00:54:52.480
challenged that but he didn't challenge it and i think i mean darren himself said that
00:54:57.560
starkie's always been one of his heroes and i completely get that and i think there was a
00:55:01.300
degree of being a little bit starstruck there um and i was like really getting serious dogs abuse
00:55:09.280
for this and i thought well i'm not going to sort of get the hundred pounds back i think actually
00:55:12.780
Darren Grimes is a good guy it's a it's a reasonable project and um but I had to in the end
00:55:19.900
I thought well I've got to condemn what David said so I did um and I thought I'm never going
00:55:28.880
to be able to have him on my show again because of this but I have you still feel that way no I don't
00:55:34.740
that's interesting so what was it for you I think what what changed it was David's apology now to me
00:55:40.140
it was a bit too late he should have immediately done it but it was two or three days after after
00:55:45.080
a couple of organizations have basically disowned him and um i mean david is actually a fundamentally
00:55:51.640
kind person very kind yeah and um i remember interviewing him at edinburgh last year and he
00:55:58.600
was i think he's the only one to get a standing ovation at the end and bear in mind as you well
00:56:03.100
know both edinburgh audiences are not exactly right-wing audiences no but he was very emotional
00:56:08.960
very personal talked about his partner's death and all the rest of it and i mean i like to think
00:56:15.340
i have a reputation of standing my people when they're going through difficult times
00:56:19.140
and i mean david sent me um an email after reading what i'd said and he was i think he
00:56:25.920
was quite upset that i had said what i'd said and i said well look you said it you've got to own it
00:56:31.960
you've got to take responsibility and you can't expect people to rush to your defense for something
00:56:36.380
as awful as that um and anyway i am going i'm having lunch with him in a couple of weeks
00:56:47.080
and um i wanted to come back on the program at some point because i don't believe in uh
00:56:54.860
cancelling people for i mean it was it was an awful thing to say and i'm not trying to
00:57:01.500
minimize it and i'm sure if he does come back on the program i'm going to get a lot of abuse for
00:57:05.760
that well my shoulders are broad enough so it was the apology that changed it for you
00:57:12.040
yes if he hadn't apologized i don't think that i could have justified but i'm curious because
00:57:18.020
there were some people who were like well he just made a mistake or something well he did
00:57:22.860
make a mistake but it was a mistake that was i mean okay it was he was david likes to exaggerate
00:57:31.460
to make a point yes and that was i mean okay that's not a sin to do that but it was just that
00:57:37.300
the way he did it it was the timing of it as well yeah that nobody could defend it and i think in
00:57:43.820
the end he absolutely realized that no no my point i don't think he did it sure no i agree with you
00:57:48.560
my point is for some people there are some people like he did nothing wrong there are also people
00:57:53.300
for whom it was so egregious in their minds that you don't come back from it the apology doesn't
00:57:59.960
cut it like yeah he apologized as you say a little bit late but you know he's racist that's it done
00:58:06.880
dusted bury him now sort of thing well i don't belong to that school of thought in this case
00:58:12.700
i'm sure there might be other cases i mean if if somebody in a similar interview had said uh
00:58:19.160
i don't believe the holocaust happened i don't believe any jews died in the holocaust i'm sorry
00:58:23.820
never want to have anything to do with you again um i don't think that this was on that scale
00:58:31.140
and i'm not i'm not minimizing it it was a terrible thing to say um but in the end somewhere you have
00:58:39.960
to draw a line and do you think broadcaster's positions have become more precarious over the
00:58:44.560
years or do you think you've always been treading a fine line as a broadcaster you're always treading
00:58:48.720
a fine line not just on these issues um if you are if there's a terror attack and you're going
00:58:55.040
into rolling news mode um there is a line of speculation which you can't really go over even
00:59:01.040
if you are sure that it is a particular group that did this you until you've got some sort of
00:59:06.420
evidence you can't do it and i have seen broadcasters cross that line in the past because
00:59:11.100
they've got nothing else to say they've only got something to speculate on and that as i say is when
00:59:15.920
you really earn your money and i'm not a trained journalist i'm not a trained broadcaster but in
00:59:21.740
the end i've got to rely on sort of 30 or 40 years of experience of knowing what you can do and what
00:59:27.580
you can't do and so far i haven't sort of stepped over over that line and the parameters of what you
00:59:34.580
can do and what you can't do have they become narrower over the years in terms of what in terms
00:59:39.620
of what is acceptable and what isn't acceptable what is acceptable to say and what isn't acceptable
00:59:43.800
decision i think that i mean we are governed by ofcom rules on on certainly on words that you
00:59:51.300
can use and that you can't use i think there's been a little bit more leniency on on that side
00:59:56.400
um but if you take the example of mental health i do a lot of programs on mental health issues
01:00:01.040
and there are words that um 10 years ago would have been quite acceptable to say on the radio
01:00:06.380
which aren't now um and i don't think it's it's not just political correctness here it's actually
01:00:14.240
just common decency in the i mean if you think about it we all use the word nutter or for somebody
01:00:22.020
who's got mental health issues that actually is a really horrible word to use i remember pulling
01:00:28.360
up nick clegg for using it once live on air um and it and i explained why it wasn't a word that
01:00:35.580
we should really use in polite society and he's oh no I quite understand and then the next day I
01:00:41.700
saw him use it in another interview the same way and you might think well that's being totally
01:00:46.040
oversensitive but you you do have words have consequences and although I'm not going to say
01:00:53.600
any words should necessarily be banned I think the Ofcom rules on most swear words for example
01:00:57.320
are utterly ridiculous in that I can't say bollocks on the radio but I can say grollocks
01:01:14.920
If you want to call someone a bitch, just say they're a female dog.
01:01:17.020
I can't say that, oh, well, before I came here,
01:01:21.920
If I do that, the producer presses the dump button.
01:01:30.500
I said, if I was calling a female politician a bitch on air,
01:01:39.080
But not when you're using it in that kind of context.
01:01:47.760
There was that quite well-known example of the radio producer
01:01:50.440
or the radio presenter who temporarily lost their job then reinstated
01:01:54.160
because they doubted the existence of white privilege
01:02:00.500
well see to me that is that is a debating point right i mean i think it's unquestionable that
01:02:06.560
that uh particularly white males do even if they can't bring themselves to admit it do
01:02:15.460
get white privilege i do think that there is a case for that but to actually question it doesn't
01:02:20.800
mean to say you should lose your job and you've got it in the bbc where ian lee lost his job as
01:02:25.720
breakfast presenter on three counties radio for um arguing with a woman caller who was basically
01:02:33.020
saying she was a devout fundamentalist christian type who was saying terrible things about
01:02:39.040
homosexuals so ian lee took her to task for it and called her a bigot now if i'd done that on lbc
01:02:46.840
my boss would praise me for doing it he got the sack for it that's really interesting isn't it
01:02:53.260
Well, Ian, on that note, before we ask you our last question, perhaps, you know, why can't we all just get along?
01:03:02.320
You've given a list at the end of the book of 50 things.
01:03:05.560
But what do you think, you know, you said that we as individuals have to solve this problem.
01:03:11.480
so if we as individuals were to do one or two things each to really start to to dial back the
01:03:21.700
rhetoric to to start to be able to have conversations and good faith again what would we be doing well i
01:03:28.080
think two things one of which i've already really covered but one would be um to calm down take your
01:03:33.500
time reflect a bit before you respond to anybody where where you feel the sap rising just stop for
01:03:40.960
a few seconds and think do i really want to say this do i really want to get into this fight um
01:03:46.960
and second of all i think just to try to accept that somebody else is entitled to have a different
01:03:54.520
opinion try to understand their opinion try and understand where they're coming from with it try
01:03:59.640
and understand why they argue what they do because as i said before if you if you don't try to
01:04:04.820
understand how can you argue against them apart from just saying you're wrong i don't care what
01:04:09.440
you say you're wrong well you need to articulate an argument you can't just get away with with
01:04:15.920
just saying you're wrong or you're a dickhead or whatever um even if it's true you might say that
01:04:24.360
so i mean there's there's no this is not rocket science i mean this is um i mean it was actually
01:04:31.640
comparatively easy to come up with 50 ways i always hate these things when people do lists
01:04:35.800
of 29 ways you could could you think of the 30th one but yeah i could have gone on to 100 i suppose
01:04:41.400
but in the end you have to stop somewhere but i think you're right really it's about a sort of
01:04:45.580
self-discipline yeah about restricting yourself from your inner demons taking over and running
01:04:50.960
amok yes it is and look i'm not a saint on this i have tried to i've i mean i was on jeremy vine
01:04:58.660
the other day with jemma forte and she was basically saying that boris johnson was terrible
01:05:04.820
you got this wrong you got that wrong and any fool could have worked out that that wasn't going
01:05:09.000
to i said hang on a minute why don't you actually stand for election you happily come up with all
01:05:15.340
this criticism but and i probably went over the top a little bit of my tone and what i have to
01:05:25.000
accept as a 58 year old white male no no i am 58 i know it's difficult as a 58 year old white male
01:05:31.580
when you argue with a woman on television it's not a good look if you even look as if you might
01:05:38.000
be slightly losing your temper yeah um and i mean i have to do panels now where there's two or three
01:05:46.020
women and i just generally then sit there smile sweetly and speak when i'm spoken to because i
01:05:52.100
know what it looks like if you get involved in a in a sort of feisty debate which if it was three
01:05:57.240
other men you wouldn't hesitate in doing but that's the world we live in nowadays constant
01:06:01.820
is russian he doesn't have any of those that's why they bring me on good morning britain just
01:06:07.080
shout at the women yeah yes let me tell you why you're wrong be quiet woman it is my turn by the
01:06:13.200
way that powder that you put in my water earlier that's why he hasn't touched the water very very
01:06:21.040
prudent uh yeah it only works in hot liquids apparently yeah racist only works in hot liquids
01:06:29.660
but we have as always one final question for you
01:06:47.140
which you might find a little bit uncomfortable
01:06:53.600
and i didn't really think anything about writing this because it it didn't traumatize me at the
01:06:59.820
time and it doesn't traumatize me now um but the observer rang me up and so they they were doing
01:07:05.300
an article on a tv series called i will destroy you and there's a male rape scene in that so they
01:07:10.800
said can we do an interview with you about this so i spent about half an hour on the phone to them
01:07:15.840
and the article wasn't about that at all it was just about me which was a bit of a shock
01:07:22.860
in a way um so i then did a phone in on it and i'll be seen the following night for two hours
01:07:29.320
and the number of men that phoned in say yeah this happened to me or either happened to me
01:07:35.300
or nearly happened to me or my mate or whatever and i do think this is something that society
01:07:41.980
doesn't really talk about we've got a lot we've had a lot of taboos in society and this is kind
01:07:46.500
one of the last ones i think 12 000 men were raped last year um i think only about a thousand
01:07:53.660
of the cases ever got to court i don't know how many um actually were convicted uh the average
01:08:00.880
how long do you think it takes for a man who has been a victim of a sexual assault whether it's
01:08:07.700
by and often it's actually a straight male that is doing it um really yeah how long does it take
01:08:16.000
for a man to tell anybody about it on average i'm gonna guess like 20 years 26 years yeah wow
01:08:22.800
now you think of the mental health aspects of that where somebody is bottling up inside and i know
01:08:27.760
several people that this has happened to it just in my sort of circle of contacts and i think well
01:08:34.080
if i know sort of it's probably four or five what about the ones that i don't know and you think
01:08:42.520
well this this is something that needs to be addressed and there's a charity called survivors
01:08:48.360
uk which i've now kind of adopted and sort of if i give money to charity they they get it because i
01:08:53.840
think this is a really big issue that i mean people don't want to talk about for obvious reasons it's
01:08:59.580
a very uncomfortable subject but it's also i mean there's also and again i've i've the day one of
01:09:07.060
the national newspaper commissioned me then to write a long read feature on it which in the end
01:09:11.900
they decided not to run which i was a bit annoyed about because i spent a lot of time writing it
01:09:15.840
researching it so i've actually put it on my website now um and i i just think that it's
01:09:23.740
something that people need to understand that it happens and it's not just men on men it's actually
01:09:31.560
women on men as well bizarrely i mean okay it's slightly more difficult for a woman to rape a man
01:09:36.980
but there is a lot of um i mean if we just think of the sort of me too things about sort of
01:09:42.340
female employers groping female staff or making inappropriate comments to them
01:09:47.120
um i remember back in the 1990s where i was um i mean a woman that i worked with just grabbed my
01:09:57.820
crotch now imagine if i as a man did that to a woman that didn't traumatize me at all i just
01:10:04.040
said do you think that's appropriate um mo mola when she was northern ireland secretary at a
01:10:09.800
labor party conference she had a picture taken with me and my partner we were running the
01:10:13.440
bookstore and she stood in the middle of us put her arms around us and started kneading our buttocks
01:10:18.060
that's sexual assault oh again i didn't i thought it was quite funny at the time but in today's
01:10:26.500
environment you can't call it anything else so there's so many issues around this that i think
01:10:32.920
we shy away from talking about so that's very long-winded answer to your question no but it's
01:10:36.560
a very good answer and if anyone i'm sure there will be people in our audience who unfortunately
01:10:41.220
have had this sort of experience survivors survivors uk survivors uk should they should
01:10:47.380
reach out to i mean have a read of the article it's on iandale.com and i mean i literally had
01:10:53.480
dozens of people contacting me on twitter about it and saying well i thought i was the only one
01:10:58.320
and you can understand why well the uk's most prolific rapist was actually a man who wrote
01:11:04.540
yeah absolutely right well that's a nice way to end yeah it is cheery as ever cheery as ever
01:11:12.180
thank you so much for coming back enjoyed it thank you for having me back it's a pleasure
01:11:15.720
to have you back i recommend everybody gets the book why can't we all just get along uh it's
01:11:21.200
fantastic read and it's an audio book as well in your voice i read the whole thing the interesting
01:11:26.680
thing is i've had a lot of people who say they've read the physical book but they can hear my voice
01:11:30.580
in every sentence which is actually the biggest compliment they can pay me unless they don't like
01:11:34.940
my voice it is really a great read because you've woven your own story into into the way they talk
01:11:40.120
about things but thank you for coming back uh thank you for watching and we will see you very
01:11:45.180
soon with another brilliant episode or a live stream which all go out 7 p.m uk time thank you
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