Desert Island Dicks - IAIN DALE

Episode Date: June 9, 2018

For this week's episode I'm joined by LBC and CNN broadcaster, Iain Dale. Be sure to follow the podcast @Dickspod Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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Hello and welcome to Desert Island Dicks, the show that sees you marooned on a desert island after a plane crash with the worst people and worst things imaginable. Who they are and why they're a dick is up to you. And here to share their desert island dicks with us today is LBC and CNN broadcaster Ian Dale. Hello, Ian. Hi. Thank you so much for coming in. I've been waiting to do this for months. Have you?

I think you genuinely did. Well, you messaged on Twitter. Yeah, I just I can't remember which podcast I listened to first. It was sort of sometime towards the end of last year. And I just thought it was a really different podcast. Really enjoyed it. So, yeah, really looking forward to it. I appreciate it.

Well, you're more than welcome. Shall we dive in? Who's going to be your first person? Well, one thing that I've noticed in a lot of your podcasts is that people cop out and they pick a generic type of people rather than centering on an individual. So there's no copping out in this podcast. Okay, alright, I'm interested.

But the people that I'm going to pick, they do kind of represent a group of people and the first one I'm going to pick is Richard Madeley. Richard Madeley! Because I did Good Morning Britain from time to time with Jackie Smith and we do a podcast together for the

many and we used to do a double act on the Sky News pay-per-view. So we're quite used to each other's company. We bounce off each other quite well. So I've done a couple of Good Morning Britons with her. And normally it's either with Susanna Reid and Piers Morgan or Ben Shepard and Kate Garraway. Last week, it was with Richard Madeley and Charlotte Hawkins. And the day before, Richard Madeley had done an interview with the Defence Secretary, Gavin Williamson,

which got quite a lot of press coverage because he terminated the interview, which is something that as an interviewer you just don't normally do. And he'd asked Gavin Williamson about the time he told the Russians to shut up and go away. And Gavin Williamson didn't answer the first time, didn't answer the second time, then didn't answer the first time didn't answer the second time then didn't answer the third time and so richard mayley just terminated the interview just midway just absolutely just cut him off um and i thought that that was actually quite a bad thing for an interviewer to do and i as an interviewer myself it's what i do professionally if i had ever done that which i don't think i've ever done i would regard it as a failure on my part rather than the interviewees part definitely yeah so anyway the next day we go on and i was thinking

that good morning britain probably wouldn't have liked that because it probably means that gavin williamson will never go on their program again but at the beginning of the show at six o'clock there he is with all the papers in front of him um basically sort of saying what a brilliant job he'd done and i thought really that's a bit self-indulgent there's so many news stories you could talk about and you talk about your own story so 15 minutes later jackie smith and i go on and he starts again we thought we were there to talk about child child obesity that's that was in the news headlines and he says well it's the best press i've ever had what did you think of the interview? So Jackie, I thought quite funnily, just said, well, of course, the question you should be asking, Richard, is this, which, of course, is what politicians do when they want to avoid a question.

He then came to me and said, what did you make of it, Ian? So I said, well, Richard, do you not feel as an interviewer that you failed in your job in that interview and looked him straight in the eye? Because I thought, well, you might as well get your cock out and have a wank because that's that's what he was doing effectively and there was that momentary look in his eyes where he thought shit what do i say to that and he said well that's a fair point i suppose and then for the next 10 minutes he didn't look at me once and directed every single question to jackie really there was a preamble to that where we got there about quarter to six. I mean, why on earth do I do JMB at quarter past six?

Actually, because I like doing it with the presenters, actually, are really good. They always let you have your say. Anyway, walk into the make-up room, say, hi, Richard, because I had met him before. I'd interviewed him on my programme. Didn't cut him off, by the way. Yeah.

And he didn't acknowledge me at all. He's just sort of got his hairspray out spraying his magnificent mane of hair which it is magnificent very 1980s still but i'm i'm jealous because as you can see i'm a bit of a slaphead and he just didn't even acknowledge my existence and i thought you rude tosser because one thing i have learned in radio is when you have a guest in the studio, okay, you may be broadcasting when they walk in, but acknowledge them, make them feel welcome, and you're going to get a better interview.

But he clearly hadn't been to that school of broadcasting. So we didn't start off on a very good level really. So I'm picking on Richard Mayley, but he's not alone in that. And the problem is that there is a whole school of interviewers, not just political interviewers, but interviewers who think it's about them.

It's like this podcast. You know it's not about you, even though it's your podcast. It's about the people you have in and you let them talk. And that's what you need to do. Absolutely. And I take the view that if you have someone in to talk about something, let them talk. Because if you don't interrupt them all the time, they're not going to be defensive.

They're actually going to say something. It's like politicians. When they come into the studio, you know that they've been told by the spin doctors, you've got to get this message out. So you play the game a little bit. You let them get their message out. And if it's only a three-minute interview,

that's all they're going to have time to do. If it's a 10-minute interview, after a few minutes, they run out of things to say. So you then prompt them to say something interesting. But you have too many interviews who think that they have to be aggressive if you're aggressive to somebody their shutters go up immediately fern britain i think is one of the finest interviewers in broadcasting um she did an hour-long interview with tony blair on a sunday morning once and she got more out of him than any other interviewer had ever done because she was actually listening to what he was saying.

If you're on the Today programme, on most BBC programmes, they have so many producers. The producers have got to do something, so they're writing out questions. Well, if you have a list of ten questions in front of you as an interviewer, you're probably then going to read the questions out. So it's not a conversation, it's an artificial conversation. Whereas I don't like to have any questions there. I might have thought about what questions I'm going to ask,

but they've got to flow naturally. Yeah. There are so many interviewers now on radio and television who don't do that, and it's all about them. And I'm afraid, Richard Madeley, it's all about him. Wow. That does mean that I shall never be invited back when Richard Madeley... Well, in fact, I was invited back the next day on Good Morning Britain.

I said, no, thanks. Really? Yeah, because I just... Look, I'm 55 years old. I'm not going to do programmes that I'm not going to enjoy, and I knew that I wasn't going to enjoy that. So I hope they invite me back when Piers and Susanna or Kate and Ben are on

because I really enjoy doing that. But no, not going on with Richard Madeley anymore. Well, if you're a producer of Good Morning Britain, there's the message, right? they know I've told them no I mean just I'm only going to repeat what you've just said but I think uh it's just so important just to listen to what people are saying and react to them for what they're saying because you might have a list of questions in front of you but the most interesting thing is what they've got to say right so well I remember last year I did a phone in with theresa may which is

quite a brave thing for her to do in many ways because she's not a natural with people um and she was in the studio for 40 minutes and it was all going quite well from her point of view until somebody asked about brexit and um i then followed up with a question well if there's a second referendum how would you vote prime minister and the look of panic in her eyes at that question now i thought that would have been a given brexit is her government's policy she's the head of the government so surely even though she'd voted remain before it's pretty easy answer to say she'd vote brexit but she couldn't bring herself to do it oh and i i then had to follow up three or four times. And it was slightly buttock clenching. But it was one of those, it then went completely mad.

Every news programme covered it because she did that sort of gurning thing that she does. And they weren't very pleased with me at the end of it. It's not, I mean, I don't mind if they're pleased with me or not. But they seem to think that I'd kind of asked her deliberately asked her a difficult question well that is kind of your role as an interviewer but I didn't do it in a sort of aggressive harassing way it was a conversation and it made it more effective because it was yeah and you felt like she would have the right to have not the right answer she would have an answer for that well she ought to have had an answer because it was a question that I'd put to

Jeremy Hunt the health, a couple of weeks before. Now, he'd been a leading campaigner for Remainer and I was doing an interview with him at the Tory party conference and much to my surprise, he said, well, I would vote Brexit now because George Osborne's predictions of Project Fiat didn't come true and the European

Commission had been trying to bully us, so I would vote Brexit now. Now, he was obviously trying to curry favour with the Brexiteers if there's a leadership contest and all the rest of it so one of my retorts to theresa may was well if your health secretary can answer this question prime minister i don't quite understand why you can't and there was that again a slightly awkward but in the end i mean you can carry on as much as you like but i think if you ask somebody the same question four times you don't really need to go on. I mean, there's that famous interview with Paxman with Michael Howard where he asked the same question 12 times.

But it all became about Paxman and his interviewing style then rather than the fact that Michael Howard wasn't answering the question. So I sort of thought, well, let's move on after this. But, yeah, that was quite a moment. Wow. You must have to do stuff like that all the time though right when you're leading um uh phone uh call-ins and stuff like that yeah because part of the job is interviewing people um often i don't i only have two minutes notice of i'm about to interview the home secretary they'll come in my end say oh we've we finally got amber rod let's get her on and and i haven't got any prepared

questions so you just go in and do it and you're effectively using your political knowledge your political background to know what to ask and um you can tell a lot about a politician by the way that they sometimes try and avoid the question robert halfon who is a tory mp for harlow um he's great campaigner he was the the one that kept campaigning against the fuel rises. And he came on one day and he clearly didn't know his subject. So I gave him an absolute going over,

even though he's a quite close personal friend of mine, which is always slightly awkward when you're interviewing your friends. I've kind of got over the embarrassment of that now. And anyway, it was quite a tough interview for him. Later that evening, my phone went and I looked down and it was him on the phone. I was thinking, oh shit, he's going to have a real go at me. So anyway, I answered.

And he just said, Ian, I just want to thank you. I said, really? Why? He said, because that taught me a lesson. It taught me never to go into an interview where I was underprepared. And I thought, well, what an adult. On the other hand, Priti Patel, the former International Development Secretary, she was put up to do an interview with me on the day that Jeremy Corbyn became Labour leader. So I just said to her, well, what's your reaction to Jeremy Corbyn winning the leadership, expecting her to say, well, I'd

like to congratulate him. But instead, she just said, he's a danger to your family's security. He's a danger to the country's security he's a danger to the country's security and she just trotted out all of these pre-prepared lies that she'd obviously been given by some conservative central office spin doctor so i'd let her go on and she finally stopped i said wouldn't you like to congratulate him she said no it's not my job to congratulate him and i said no but it'd be quite polite if you did wouldn't it well she just then went on about how he was a danger to the national security after that. I've never interviewed her since. Oh, right.

And I imagine you may never again. No, and I don't really care. She didn't take the adult line. She just thought, well, he's being an absolute bastard. Why would I be interviewed with him again? Some interviewers, I think, do provoke politicians not to want to be interviewed by them. And you can do a very hard interview with a politician in the knowledge that they'll never come on again.

But it's a short-term bit of pleasure because in the long term you don't actually do your programme any favours if you're not going to get them on again. So sometimes you do have to play the game a little bit. Be measured, yeah. Okay. Had he had many dealings with... Sorry, to go back to Richard Maitland. Had he had many dealings with sorry to go back to

richard maybe had he had many dealings with him before this event i've interviewed him a couple of times once on the phone once in the studio and he is the sort of person who is great in an interview where you ask him a question and he'll just go on and on and on because i mean that's what he does for a living he talks and he's actually quite an interesting individual in some ways um but I just think sometimes particularly when you're hosting a program like that you've also got to be acknowledged that you have another presenter alongside you um which I didn't really feel that he did there and I mean Susanna Reid and Piers Morgan have created this rather good double act and she'll roll her eyes when he's going over the top and all the rest of it.

And obviously Richard had this wonderful partnership with his wife, Judy Finnegan. But I'm not sure he's sort of recreated that with others. Okay, I see. There's a few videos that I've seen circulate with Richard Madeley. Have you seen the one about the squatters?

Have you seen it? He did a programme about squatters and it's just cut together Richard Madeley quotes. And honestly, it's like a modern day Alan Partridge. It's unbelievable. Well, that's what a lot of people said about him doing this interview. It's the sort of thing that Alan Partridge would have done. And sort of coming from Norfolk a bit,

I can relate to Alan Partridge. Okay. He says, okay, relate to Alan Partridge. Okay. He says. Okay, yeah, Richard Maidley. There are other unbelievable Richard Maidley quotes online from his time on GMTV. Yeah, I mean, well, this morning mainly. This morning, sorry.

That was what he was known best for. This morning. And look, all good presenters have to have personalities and they're often Marmite personalities. You either love them or you hate them. And if you look at sort of all the presenters on ITV at the moment, they have that sort of Marmite factor. BBC tend to go for people who are slightly,

have slightly less controversial characters, shall we say. If you look at their breakfast programme, I mean, what is there to hate about Dan Walker? I mean, lovely guy. No one hates Dan Walker. No one hates Louise Minchin. And you can think of quite a lot of their other presenters that are like that.

But ITV, they've got to differentiate themselves. And they were in the doldrums when that programme started. And I think they're now catching up the bbc okay all right richard madley goes on as your first choice he's the first person on your island um who's going to be your second choice professor ac grayling okay do you know who he is james um i do vaguely know who who he is um but should the listeners not know so well he is apparently the country's leading philosopher yes very very respected written lots of books um i don't really have a lot of truck

with philosophers i think philosophy is a complete and utter waste of time i remember at university we were forced to do it in our first term and um we walked into the class or lecture theater one day and we sat there for 20 minutes thinking, well, has the lecture forgotten we're here? And he suddenly burst out of a cupboard and then said, what did I mean by that? And I thought, you're a dick. Simple as that. I mean, what else is there to think about somebody who does that? Well, Professor Grayling has become one of these people who has been driven mad by Brexit. Now, there are plenty of them on both sides, but I would say predominantly on the Remain side.

Lord Adonis, Andrew Adonis is another one, a very mild-mannered individual, somebody who is a minister in the Blair and Brown governments, nice man, very clever, obsessed by transport, but he's now become obsessed by how to reverse the Brexit referendum. There are plenty of others that I could mention. But Professor AC Grayling has recently gone to Brussels with the only Liberal Democrat MEP that there is, Catherine Bearder. They have been reduced to a rump of one in the European Parliament. And they were filmed on a programme, a documentary on Channel 4 called Carry On Brussels. And it was meant to explain what the european parliament does or doesn't do and she took him to meet giefer hofstadt who is a former

belgian prime minister but now the european parliament's brexit negotiator so quite an important guy um and he's been a bit of a thorn in the side of the brits in the negotiations now professor grayling said to him on film um what we would like you to do in the europe of the Brits in the negotiations. Now, Professor Grayling said to him on film, what we would like you to do in the European Union is to make these negotiations as difficult as possible for the British. Effectively, give us the worst deal possible so then the British people will then vote

in a second referendum to remain. Now, I have a word for someone like that and it's traitor. Because you're effectively betraying your own country's interests. Now, most Remain supporters that I know have come to terms with the fact that we voted for Brexit. And they accept that it's going to go through. And they want the government to get the best deal possible. That's what most normal people would think.

Yet there is a small group of Remainers. And I never use the term Remoners because I think it's actually really insulting. People have got every right to stick with their views. But to actually want the European Union to give us the worst deal possible, I just think it's beyond the pale. Yeah, it doesn't really make sense, does it? I mean, given the situation, I think you have to go with it and, you know, que sera, sera. But the debate has become so polarised that there are no shades of grey in this. There are people who believe on the Brexit side, well, it's got to be a pure Brexit,

so there must be no relations with the European Union at all afterwards, otherwise it's not a proper Brexit. And then on the other extreme, you have people who just have no respect for the fact that 17.4 million people voted Leave, and therefore all they're interested in doing is reversing it. Now, somewhere in the middle, there has got to be a compromise. And in the end, there will be, because that's what always happens with the EU. The negotiations go right up to the 59th minute or the 23rd hour, but in the end, you come to some sort of deal

which both sides can live with. And I suspect that's what will happen here. Do you think that's what the outcome will be? Well, I hope it is because we ought to want to have a deal. I think there are voices in the EU that are saying, well, we've got to punish the Brits for doing this because if they do it and it's seen to be successful for them, then the Italians will want to leave,

then the Spanish will want to leave. So you can understand that logic. But in the end, we are the world's fifth largest economy. I mean, so many of our imports come from the EU. Are they really going to cost millions of jobs of their own people by effectively cutting off trade links with us? I don't think so.

I don't think so. Okay, all right. Back to Professor AC Grayling. I read an article in preparation for this. When I say read, I skimmed. It said, what happened to the most hated man in academia? How did he gain that moniker? Well, because he's actually quite rude and elitist and supercilious.

He's another one, like Richard Mayley, who's got a magnificent head of hair for somebody who's well into his 60s. I interviewed him once with Jacob Rees-Mogg in the studio. And again, that was a slightly butter-clenching interview, because whatever you think of Jacob Rees-Mogg's politics, he's actually a very polite person and would never, ever be rude to somebody, even if he fundamentally disagrees with them. Professor A.C. Grayling did not look at him once in this interview. And bear in mind, I'm the presenter presenter I've got both of the interviewees so one on the left one on the right they're about three feet apart and he didn't

look at him once and he spent the whole time just insulting Jacob Rees-Mogg on a personal level and it was I found it a very unpleasant experience to to host it's a low blow and you feel as if you then have to defend Jacob Rees-Mogg as the host, but actually he can defend himself. And it was all about, it was for a Brexit podcast that I used to do. And it was just an unpleasant experience. It sounds like he's trying to sort of prove his relevance

and have a point. It's just that mindset that some people have where they think they know better than everybody else. And because he's a professor, because he's known as the country's leading philosopher, therefore his view must take priority over everybody else's. And the fact is that Mrs. Miggins at 32 Acacia Avenue, Scunthorpe, she has a right to express her view in the same way that Professor Grayling does. And all this thing about, oh, well, we didn't know what we were voting for and the implication that people who voted Brexit were thick is just so elitist and insulting. And he sort of personifies that. OK, all right. AC Grayling, a.c grayling anything else on professor a.c no i think we've said enough about okay we're on the island um and your third choice who's going

to be your third choice here you might think my third choice would be somebody that i'd want to be on the island because he could obviously make all the food um it's jamie oliver jamie oliver who i cannot abide for many many reasons the first one being that i grew up in a village five miles away from jamie oliver okay i used to as a teenager would go to his parents pub fantastic pub the cricketers in clavering in essex for anyone who wants to go um they did fantastic food it was known as the the best pub in the area if you wanted to go and have a meal and i would spend probably I'd probably go there twice a month, sort of when I was 16, 17, 18. And I'm going to ask you a question now.

Does my voice sound anything like Jamie Oliver's? Does my accent sound anything like Jamie Oliver's? No, not at all. No, because he's a fake. He's a fake mockney. Okay, yes. And I didn't go to private. I went to the local comprehensive.

Jamie went to the local grammar school. So in theory, his accent ought to be posher than mine. Okay. And it isn't, is it, really? So he's built this character. He's built this character, this sort of lovable rogue, and it's complete fake. Now, I don't know whether he speaks like i do in his normal life or whether he puts that accent on when he goes on tv i don't know

but the other thing that i really can't stand about jamie oliver is the constant lecturing us on what we should be eating and cooking now obviously tv chefs they're there to show us their recipes and all the rest of it and And he's obviously got a massive following. But when he starts trying to tell the government what they should do in terms of obesity, I then turn to the menus at his restaurants and look at the calories and look at the sugar content. And I actually did this on one of my programmes. I actually read it all out. I should have brought it with me.

You should, yeah. And it is just so hypocritical. Some of the things on his dessert menus for example and he was pictured in the paper the other day you know the government now want to ban um tony the tiger and cartoon characters from from food packages yes i've seen this yes yeah well there he is pictured with a cartoon character to try and sell one of his very sweet desserts now if you have a strategy for combating obesity fine but carry it out yourself and the third thing there were quite a few things i like yeah the third thing that slightly goes

back to our last discussion about brexit um quite a few of his restaurants have had to close they've gone out of business right and he blamed brexit for it i'm thinking hang on a minute mate we haven't even left the EU yet. Other restaurants seem to be doing quite well. Can you really blame Brexit for this? And then I looked at the locations of some of his restaurants. His restaurant in Tunbridge Wells, where I live, which closed, was on a street that has no footfall in the evenings.

Right, OK. So you think, well, look in the mirror and tell me that that is brexit that has closed your restaurant in tamadras it's not it's because you put it in the you you got the wrong lease on the wrong building yeah and i just think he's a walking example of fakery and hypocrisy wow i don't think that's libelous is it no so much as i would probably quite like to eat a lot of his food on the desert island i'm afraid i would forego that because he would drive me absolutely insane okay yeah first thing where did you pick up that accent jamie um interesting yeah you see he comes on lbc quite a lot but he always goes on with james o'brien who worships the ground that he comes on LBC quite a lot but he always goes on with James O'Brien, he worships the ground that he walks on, he's never been on

with me, I wonder why Have you been vocal about this before? Oh yeah, obviously you said Whenever there's an obesity subject and he's on it I have a real go at him and my producer hates it because she says, well he'll never come on your programme I say, I don't want him on my programme, I don't want fake people on my programme

thank you very much so we'll have to do without the delights of jamie oliver in future jamie oliver i mean he just seems so friendly and lovable right in his programs i'm sure he's a perfectly nice guy but i yeah okay i think you have to as david cameron used to say you have to keep it real and i don't think that he does that all the time maybe none of us do maybe I'm being unfair it's your no it's your desert island it's exactly who you want to put in don't let me swear you um okay Jamie Oliver for his fake mockney and general fakery I do think that that's a bit it's a bit off isn't it to say you should be doing this you should be doing that across the country when he's not really upholding that in his restaurants.

No, and I think the other thing is, I have been to his restaurants on a couple of occasions and his prices are always two or three quid above what they ought to be. Okay. And obviously they've got his name on the door, so I suppose he can use that to have higher prices than a sort of than a competitor but i don't think it's paid off for him in the long run no probably quite more reasonable than other celebrity chefs though right well it's interesting that a lot of the celebrity chefs have

had difficulties when they've opened restaurants gordon ramsey has i think greg wallace has um and in a way thinking about it there are very few of these celebrity chefs that i really like i don't find them nice personalities particularly i think we need to go back to the days of delia smith and fanny craddock remember fanny craddock you're too young or the galloping gourmet do you remember him graham kerr he was an australian chef and he was on itv i suppose in the mid 70s and he was really good i mean he was on ITV, I suppose, in the mid-70s. And he was really good. I mean, he was a genuine person. There was no sort of showbiz element to him.

I think the problem is they're all trying to be funny. They're all trying to be something that actually they're not. And, I mean, Greg, what's his name? Greg Wallace and John Turow. What's the programme they do? MasterChef. MasterChef. Yeah.

I can't watch them. No, okay. I just can't. It's like a double act Mary Berry I interviewed her for an hour once she's an interesting character not quite as nice as she

really I know I've committed sacrilege by saying that I also made her cry which I felt very guilty about all in this hour all in this hour this is an interesting hour please do divulge.

Well, her son was killed in a car crash. And I mean, I had, to be fair, about until she was on whatever that show is. What's it called again? The Bake Off. That's the one. I had never heard of Mary Berry. So she was quite new to me. So I had to read up quite a lot about her to be able to interview her for an hour.

And obviously, one of the things was her son was killed in a car crash an absolute tragedy and I thought well I can't really go through an hour talking about her life, her career without talking about some personal things and I have a tendency to be, shall we say, fairly lacrimose anyway and I'll cry at Emmerdale

so I was quite worried about approaching this because it is a really really sad story um and clearly i mean it happened quite some time ago but it obviously i mean if your son is killed in a car crash that never goes away no of course and um she did get a bit tearful which of course then made me a little bit tearful and i mean from a radio point of view i suppose it was good radio, but I really felt for her. But she's quite, apart from that, you can see why she's got to where she's got to, because she's quite determined. I won't say she's hard, but she wasn't quite what I was imagining.

Not in a bad way, necessarily. But I used to do this. It was all to do with her autobiography that she published. I used to do this book programme on LBC. We're slightly veering off the subject here. No, no, no. It's interesting. Yeah, no, no.

But I interviewed Miranda Hart, who I love. I love her sitcom. But she was a hard interview. Really? And I don't like Call the Midwife. And so we started talking about that and i i just said well it's not program i really like very much which i don't think anybody had ever said anything negative to her before about any program that she'd done but i thought well i said to her well

there's no point sugarcoating it if i don't like it i'm going to tell you i don't like it's not not my sort of thing you didn't open the interview with that did you no that was about sort of 20 minutes okay but then it got to near nearer the end and I said, so Miranda, what are you doing next? She said, well Ian, I'm going to make another series of that programme you don't like. And it wasn't said with any humour whatsoever. That was a man.

Wow. I wonder, were these interviews videoed for youtube or anything no you see that was in the days now about three years ago we got this brand new studio which is effectively a tv studio so it's got 14 cameras in unfortunately at that time there weren't cameras so i used to i remember doing an hour joan collins and our joan rivers um absolutely amazing interviews and i was really nervous about doing them because both of them i i really liked and i just with joan rivers i mean all you can do in an interview with her um obviously this is before she died uh is just play the straight

man to her you you just sort of lob her balls over the net for her to volley back and she was hilarious and joan collins was another one where you knew that if you hadn't done your research if you asked her a stupid question she would let you have it back with bells on okay um but uh fabulous personality i wonder if there's something in um them not being uh videoed because they're having to switch it on on tv all the time right mary berry and miranda hart they have to mary berry has always got this smile on her face, you know, on the camera. She's always very happy to be there.

And I wonder, in a radio interview, when they're not being seen, they let their guard down a little bit. That's a really good point because when you do a phone-in with a politician, they genuinely don't know, obviously, what a call is going to say. When the cameras are off,

obviously you have some idiot that comes on and asks a stupid question or tries to get one over on them. And the politician can look at you as the host and do a wanker sign. Well, you can't do that if the cameras are on, can you? Of course not. And also, Emily Thornberry, who I really like, she comes in quite a lot. She came in during the election. I was doing the Saturday morning show. And she turned up looking as if she'd got out of bed. And I said, Now, Emily, I have to tell you the cameras are on oh fuck she's she's got um quite a quite a potty mouth and um but she didn't really care George Osborne when he came in just before the referendum he

wouldn't have the cameras on because well this is radio I said yeah but radio has evolved over the years we now if you say something interesting we're then going to do a video clip put it on facebook and twitter and all the rest of it and that's the reason why we now have uh on lbc more listeners in the 15 to 24 age group the many music stations because they they see all these things on their twitter feed so they they listen to us whereas they might not have done before um it's been really crucial to us yeah and they see a clip oh it's only a minute and a half i'll look you know which is frustrating for me because i always want much longer clips i know all the social media people tell me you the best ones are 30 seconds to a minute yeah absolutely

yeah because people think oh that's you know i can chew on that it's quick you know so what i try and do is make them when they put it on the website, you have the clip at the top, but then you have a full interview if people want to watch the whole thing. I wonder how that affects the interview that you get, though, having the cameras there or not having the cameras. I know that it's essential now to get that audience, but I wonder, would you get a slightly more open interview

if there wasn't a camera, or a less guarded interview? I think on some occasions that's probably true, but you can't actually see the cameras. They're sort of hidden in the roof and in the walls. So they're not thinking about it. They're not thinking about a camera. I always tell them the camera's on because it's unfair if you don't. But I think by and large it's a

positive thing. I mean I know that Theresa May interview that we were talking about, that would not have been as big as it was had there not been pictures of it. Sure, absolutely, yeah. Somehow we got there from jamie time to move skip the hassles of selling during the holiday season and sell your home directly to opendoor request an all cash offer in minutes close and get paid in days you can even pick your close date so you can move after new year's start your move at opendoor.com or download the Opendoor app. Opendoor is represented

by Opendoor Brokerage, Inc., licensed 0206-1130 in California, and Opendoor Brokerage, LLC, and its other markets. Terms and conditions apply. At Sierra, discover joyous deals on great gifts for everyone on your list, like cozy slippers, ski gear, fishing poles, bikes, large kayaks, even larger canoes, which might lead to another discovery. Robbing gifts is the only sport you need to stay fit this season. Tis the season to discover great gifts at unexpectedly low prices. Sierra, let's get moving. Ian, now mercifully among the wreckage of the plane, there was some food and drink left over. Unfortunately for you, it's your least favourite food and drink in the world.

What are they and why are they so bad? Well, let's start with the food. I've tried not to go for things that you've already had people say in other podcasts, but I'm afraid this is the one area where I am going to relent on that. Okay. But I'm going to go for a combination. It's my nightmare starter, and this did happen to me once. Okay.

Where I was served prawns, avocado, and anchovies all on the same plate. Okay. Now, any one of those would have made me want to vomit, but all three together. And it was one of those occasions where you knew that to vomit but all three together and it was one of those occasions where you knew that you could not refuse you had to eat it okay and um when are you in this situation well it was at a dinner i'm trying to remember who it was i can't remember i'm not going to say who it was because it would be unfair okay but it was it was somebody quite famous and i don't go to lots of famous

people's dinner parties and i don't really do the sort of the political circuit either partly because believe it or not and nobody ever believes me when i say this i'm quite shy i don't like going into a situation where i don't know all the people there i mean walking into a reception where there's like 100 people and i don't really know anyone i hate that sort of thing okay but you have to do it from time to time and this was a dinner party where there were about 10 people there and i was probably the least well known of them and the hostess was very well known and um i just thought i've got to do this somehow without vomiting. So you hate all of these things. I cannot stand prawns.

Avocado. I do not understand how anyone can eat it. The texture of it is so horrible. And the taste is even more disgusting. And anchovies. There is a joke. I don't know many jokes, but this is one that I've always remembered because my sister told it.

Okay. Can I tell this on a podcast? No, I'm not sure. You can, absolutely can. If you think it's too terrible, you can edit it out. Okay, go on. What's smellier than an anchovy? Go on.

An anchovy's fanny. Well, you normally have comedians on here, so I thought I'd throw in one joke. And that's where we hook them. I'll put that at the top. Exactly. Okay. And anchovies are just... Just even thinking about them makes my skin crawl.

I'm only ever encountering an anchovy on a pizza, though, you know. They have to be taken off. I cannot, they can't be mixed in with anything. I mean, I am a very, very fussy eater. I don't like olives. I don't like nuts. So I'm a pretty bad person in terms of sort of pre-meal food. Snacks and stuff, yeah.

Crisps I love. Any flavour of crisps I can happily have. So that's my food, which, I mean, on a desert island, the likelihood is you might be forced to eat a prawn from time to time, I guess. Yes, well, yeah. Possibly, and I don't know where anchovies come from. I mean... I don't even want toibly. I don't know where anchovies come from. I mean. I don't even want to speculate.

I don't know. Probably a farm somewhere near where. I don't know. But yeah. And avocado. Should an avocado grow on the island, the fats and the salts and everything that you get from it would be really good for you, surely. Well, I think probably on a desert island, you have to eat what you can get hold of.

Absolutely. But I see coconuts, I wouldn't be very good with them either. No, you don't like coconut? No. Wow. Bananas, love bananas. When I...

My first school exchange to Germany in 1977, I was known as Banana Boy because that was all I would eat. Because I wouldn't eat the German food. I love German food now. You just didn't want to try it at the time? No. What caused you to be a fussy eater do you think my mother okay who was a lovely lovely woman but she didn't drink tea or

coffee i don't drink tea or coffee she didn't eat fish or cook fish i don't eat fish okay so i i and i i kind of blame her for my sweet tooth because I've also got type 2 diabetes. And it's because anything sweet, it doesn't matter what it is, I will eat. If I get a tank of petrol, I will then buy a Mars bar or a packet of fruit gums or whatever. So I do kind of blame my mother for that. Okay, I see. So then obviously because you didn't have it when you were younger, then... I think over time, I mean, I used to have pizza without cheese because I didn't like cooked cheese.

I'd eat normal cheese, but I didn't like it cooked. And I wouldn't eat tomatoes. So I do eat these things now. So I have become slightly more... Did your mum eat cheese and tomatoes? Yeah, she did actually. Okay, interesting. interesting but see my dad i remember once she decided that we all ought to eat porridge because it's healthy right so she

cooked it she slopped it in the dishes put it on the breakfast table i've got two sisters and my dad were there as well and my dad refused to eat it so therefore we felt licensed to refuse to eat it too okay right i see well when you were younger if you didn't eat if you didn't want to eat it too. Okay, right, I see. When you were younger, if you didn't want to eat something, did you get something else or was that it? I don't ever remember anybody saying you'll sit there, either of my parents saying you'll sit there until you eat it. I do remember saying that to my dad once when for the 50th anniversary of D-Day,

I took him to the Normandy beaches with a couple of others and we rented a house and uh went to a restaurant one night and i can't remember what was put in front of him i probably chose it and uh he just sat there and like pushing it around his plate and i do remember saying to him he was would have been probably about 75 at the no maybe 70 at the time. And I just said, you'll sit there until you eat it. And he did. Because when your parents get older and you sort of take them under your wing a bit, the roles reverse.

Right, okay. And I found that on quite a few other occasions. I took him, again, when he was in his early 80s to Arnhem. Because he grew up in, he was born in 1929, so he was a teenager during thes to arnhem to because he i mean he grew up in he was born in 1929 so he was a teenager during the war and lived on a farm and his entire adult life has been dominated by the war he would just watch war films read war books um and so we took him up well i took him to arnhem and then we also took we one of our relations we found an uncle of his had been killed in the First World War. So a few years ago, we took him to Belgium to find the grave, which we did, which was a really emotional experience.

My two sisters came along as well. And but again, it was like he he was turning into the child and we were turning into the parents and slightly uncomfortable in in some ways. Yeah. And I remember also taking him to the playoff final in 2012 when West Ham played Blackpool. I'm a West Ham season ticket holder. And he had supported Blackpool during his early years. And they were the sort of Manchester United of their day. And it was the first time he'd been to Wembley

since the 1948 Matthews Cup final. And again, I felt really protective towards him because he was a bit immobile by that point. And I knew that he couldn't walk very far, but it was, yeah. The role reversal. It was a complete role reversal. Okay, I'll look out for that. This is like a Ronnie Corbett monologue, isn't it?

Sort of going off in all different tangents. It's my job. It's my job to edit. So, Ian, prawn, avocados and anchovies are going to be your food choice What's going to be your drink choice? I'm going to choose, I'm going to cheat and choose two Milk and whiskey Milk and whiskey And there is a connection between the two

I always hated milk as a child And in those days, bearing in mind this is like the late 60s, early 70s We had school milk in these little third of a pint bottles. And it had always sort of gone off a bit at the top. And the milkman would deliver it and they'd leave it out in the sun. And it was the most disgusting taste. And I just refused to drink it. I remember once they made me drink it and I was sick on the floor.

So they never did that again. And this actually, I think, led me to become a firmer buyer of Margaret Thatcher made me drink it i was sick on the floor okay so they never they never did that again and and this actually i think led me to become a firmer buyer of margaret thatcher because she abolished free school milk when she was education secretary about 1971 so i thought there must be something good about her but the reason i go for whiskey is also to do with margaret thatcher because in 1983 um i'd set up uh i was at the university of east anglia and known in those days as university of easy access and um i had set up a sort of conservative group there because there hadn't been one it was very left-wing university in those days and anyway in january

1983 she invited all the different chairman of the different universities to go to downing street well i mean this is like a dream come true. I didn't even own a suit at that point. So I had to buy a suit. Off I trotted to Downing Street, walk up that staircase with all the pictures of the prime ministers. She's at the top looking minute

because she's literally five foot two. Everyone thinks that she must have been quite tall. She wasn't. And she had this knack. She grabbed your hand to shake hands. And then as you were shaking hands with her her she would kind of move you into the room which was quite a skill I suspect so there we were

I didn't really drink at all at that point in fact I don't really now partly because I have a very low tolerance to alcohol even on that 6 foot 2, 16 stone two vodkas and basically I'm anyone's but you feel a bit of an idiot at those occasions if you don't have a glass in your hand so i had two glasses of wine and the waiter comes along and brings another glass so i thought well okay i don't want to

be without a glass so i took one and i started to take a sip of it and just as i did that she kind of walked past me so i took this sip but it wasn't wine it was whiskey which was her favorite tipple oh and i found myself just as she was walking past me sort of starting it and i was nearly sick at her feet the thing is had i been sick at her feet she would have completely taken it in her stride and she would have cleared it up herself right she'd done that i remember there was an anecdote with jeffrey how where he spilled something over his lap at a dinner and she immediately of course the the waitress who'd spilled it was horrified and mortified at what she'd done and apparently

margaret thatcher just took charge and said don don't you worry, my dear. And she got all sort of cloth and cleaned up all up herself. So that is, I mean, I've never been able to drink whiskey to this day. Whiskey and milk as well. What a combination. Wow. What an amazing story. Okay, Ian. Sorry.

Fortunately for you, you won't be without entertainment on the island. The plane's entertainment system continues to work. But just your luck, it only has two working settings one is your least favorite film of all time and the other is your least favorite song what are they and why i'm going to pick paddington two as my least favorite film um paddington you might think well why did if you hated paddington so much why did you watch paddington Well, the first one was actually okay, but the second one, all the reviews said it was absolutely brilliant. So I was sitting there.

You know what it's like when you're really looking forward to watching a film and then it's such a disappointment. And I actually switched off halfway through because I couldn't bear it any longer. I just thought it was just so false. And the storyline was just very, very weak. I thought the acting performances were dire. Hugh Bonneville, I thought, was awful.

And it was a real disappointment. But I picked that as an example of the genre of follow-up films which just don't live up to the initial one. I think if they don't, don't put them out. Or don't even try to make them. You look at Speed 2 or X-Files the movie. Have you seen that? No, I've not seen it. I mean, I was a massive fan of the X-Files, but the Have you seen that? No, I've not seen it.

I was a massive fan of the X-Files, but the movie was just... I couldn't follow it. It didn't seem to have a plot. Most Star Wars films don't seem to have a plot, do they? That seems to be the thing nowadays. You can have all the sorts of brilliant special effects and all the rest of it, technology,

and don't really worry about the storyline. That doesn't work for me at all. Maybe I'll showing my age. No, no, it's them trying to eke out more money, but damaging the reputation of the brand, right? But there are brands that, I mean, James Bond, for example, is one where that brand has not been damaged at all. You look at, what is it, the Tom Cruise one,

where they've done three or four of those. I can't even remember. Mission Impossible. That's the one. You know what you're going to get, and you're not disappointed. And I just think sometimes with these sequels, Home Alone 2, for example, you think back to that. There's all sorts of ones, examples that you can give.

They vary. Independence Day, too. Now, Independence Day is my all-time favourite movie. Absolutely love it. But the second one just wasn't half as good. I didn't even know there was i wouldn't really bother with it um airplane two again um you're looking as if you've never heard of airplane no i know airplane but i didn't know there was an airplane too

it's not a patch on the i can still watch the original i remember going to see that on a double bill with the life of brian which i found deeply unfunny, at Cambridge Cinema back in about 1978. And I probably seen Airplane, the original one, 15, 20 times. And I still find new things in it each time I watch it that I hadn't noticed before. It's because it's got a certain subtlety. So many levels. So, yeah, it's sort of sequels that I don't really like. OK, interesting. I think, it's sort of sequels that I don't really like. Okay, interesting.

I think it's a lack of consideration maybe. They just sort of rush into these things and it's like, okay, while the iron's hot, let's knock another one out so we can make more money. Yeah, it's a bit like books, I suppose. I mean, I've spent 20 years in publishing. And if you do a successful book book the temptation is always to do a follow-up and it very rarely works um i did one called sex lies in the ballot box all about funny things that happen in politics which sold phenomenally well they then did a follow-up called more sex lies in the ballot box and it hardly sold a copy you think well why haven't

the people who bought the first one bought the second one? Because clearly it did well. But hey. Why doesn't it work? Ian, what's going to be your song choice? My song choice is a song called You Say It Best When You Say Nothing At All by Ronan Keating. I'm so interested in this. Why this song? I actually quite like the song. Okay. But I don't like it sung by Ronan Keating

because Ronan Keating in many ways has a great voice, but he's one of these singers that over-sings. So instead of singing, you say it best when you say nothing at all, he'd say, you say it best when you say nothing at all. Okay. And I hate that. I hate over-singing singing and he is the primary exponent i think of over singing and i went to see chess the other day the musical which i it's my favorite music i've seen it a dozen times in different productions all over the

country even saw it in a dinner theater in boulder colorado once that was an experience okay um and it was on for a six-week run just finished at the coliseum and i was really looking forward to it michael ball was in it um and alexandra burke was played the elaine page role and there were two others who one of them um i can't remember what the woman's name was who played the barbara dixon role from the original and all three of them oversung the whole thing which often happens in musicals and it just didn't work michael ball was fantastic but the rest of them i just thought were too determined to shouty sing and shouty singing is never good no i see over singing and pushing

yourself to try yeah is there a version that you enjoy can you think of a um i'm sure there is but i can't remember who i, obviously that was a cover version because virtually all of Westlife's... Was he in West... No, he was in Boys' Zone, wasn't he? All of their songs are cover versions. And some of them actually work really well, but not the ones where he's the lead singer on them.

Cutting. Controversial. They'll be playing this on Magic Breakfast. Ian, and finally, the island is overrun by the biggest dick of all the animals. Which animal is it and why? It's kind of an obvious one because I think this animal creeps everyone out. It's the rat.

Rats. I cannot stand rats. And my experience of rats, because I have one, is that I grew up on a farm in Essex. And my dad decided that one of the things he wanted to teach me about, because bear in mind, I was born in 1962 and all of my family were farmers. So by rights, instead of doing this podcast with you now, I should be mucking out the pigs. Because the oldest son always took over the farm. Well, I kind of haven't. And so when I was, I don't know, six, seven, eight years old, my dad thought he would show us how they used to do the harvest when he was that age.

And of course, there weren't combine harvesters then. There were binders. And these were sort of contraptions that you'd tow behind a tractor or even a horse, and it would make sheaves of wheat. Yeah. And so he did this, and he grew a kind of wheat that you and it would make sheaves of wheat yeah and so he did this and he grew a kind of wheat that you could make corn dollies out of because believe it or not a lot of people would pay money for that and so we would stack these sheaves of wheat on pallets in the barn

and then at six seven months later if it hadn't sold you'd then just burn it so you'd take the wheat sheaves away off the pallet. But of course, as you did that, rats would start running out because that's where they had kind of nested. And you'd get to the last pallet, which literally was moving because there were so many in it. So you'd lift it up and literally there would be 100 rats that would run out. You had to have your trousers over your Wellington boots

because they would run up your trousers. And we had a golden Labrador and a Jack Russell. Well, they thought their Christmases had come at once. Yeah. And so they were sort of killing them left, right and centre. And we were sort of stabbing them with pitchforks and whatever. I mean, looking back, it was horrific. It's quite horrific, yeah.

As a child, it was great fun. Okay, yeah. And at the end of it, the dogs would have bloody muzzles because the rats would obviously bite them. And they were absolutely knackered. So I grew up with rats, I suppose, because when you would go out in the fields combining, there would always be rats running around

and they'd be running around in the barn. You'd shoot them with an air gun. And you see, in those days days we didn't have any health and safety legislation to speak of so at the age of eight i was in sole control of a gun i was in sole control of a combine harvester and my dad would would have a trailer pulling would have a tractor pulling a trailer full of wheat and half of the village boys and girls would be on top of the trailer going along the road my dad would be arrested now for doing that yeah and yet we had the most fantastic

childhoods because of it um and i'm really actually quite sad for kids nowadays that they can't experience that sort of thing because a their parents wouldn't let them and b the farmers would just be arrested yeah but you can see maybe why they don't do it, right? Well, I can, but I still think it's... I mean, you can argue, well, if you have one or two deaths a year, but, I mean, obviously to the families concerned, it's a bit difficult one to argue. Yeah, exactly, yeah, absolutely.

Rats, yeah, I mean... There was a great book that James Herbert wrote called The Rats, and it was all about Epping Forest, and my uncle used to manage a farm on the edge of Epping Forest so I kind of knew all the areas and I loved James Herbert books. I got to interview him about a year before he died and it was kind of like interviewing one of your heroes

but one of your heroes who was in their dotage and he was a bit doddery so he was a bit disappointed but his horror books were sort of my staple reading as a teenager. I got all my sex education from his horror books as well, which is probably quite worrying. Yeah, that's interesting. I'll always remember the gym scene in The Fog.

Best not go there, though. For any fans out there. Ian, thank you so much for coming in and doing this. I really enjoyed it. It's been an absolute pleasure. Thank you so much. Ian, if people want to hear more from you, where can they hear you? My radio show is 4 to 7pm every weekday on LBC. I'm on CNN

midday, Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays on CNN Talk. You can follow me on Twitter at Ian Dale, I-A-I-N. And you can listen to our podcast, The Four, The Many podcast, which I do with Jackie Smith every week. It's a sort of humorous look at politics and current affairs. And we get a bit smutty as well, as you can probably tell from this podcast. You've done that before.

All right. Thank you so much, Ian. I really appreciate it. Thank you. Bye.