THE ADAM BUXTON PODCAST - EP.239 - ROB BURLEY

Episode Date: January 25, 2025

Adam talks with writer, TV producer, and editor of political interview programmes, Rob Burley, about the way we absorb politics from our parents, the story of Thatcher's undoing at the hands of political interviewer Brian Walden, Rob's fascination with scandals and why we loved Britpop.Conversation recorded face-to-face in London on October 3rd, 2024.Thanks to Séamus Murphy-Mitchell for production support and conversation editing.Podcast illustration by Helen Green PRE-ORDER 'I LOVE YOU, BYEEE' by Adam Buxton - 2025RELATED LINKSWHY IS THIS LYING BASTARD LYING TO ME? by Rob Burley - 2023BRIAN AND MAGGIE (TRAILER) - 2025 (YOUTUBE)EMILY MAITLIS INTERVIEW WITH STEVE COOGAN - 2025 (RADIO TIMES)BRIAN WALDEN INTERVIEWS MARGARET THATCHER - 1989 (YOUTUBE)EDDIE MAIR VS BORIS JOHNSON (FULL INTERVIEW) - 2013 (YOUTUBE)"You're a nasty piece of work, aren't you, Boris?" A spicy interview that nevertheless did not keep Boris from becoming PM.ROBERT A CAROT - THE YEARS OF LYNDON JOHNSON SERIES (PENGUIN)DAVID LYNCH BEING A MADMAN - 2020 (YOUTUBE)A nice, short tribute to Lynch by YouTuber Cosmavoid.DAVID LYNCH THE ART LIFE Directors: Jon Nguyen, Rick Barnes, Olivia Neergaard-Holm (2016)Lynch's life and career explored in more than 20 conversations recorded with him at his home.DAVID LYNCH - MEDITATION, CREATIVITY, PEACE - 2017 (YOUTUBE)HERE'S WHY SOME PEOPLE SEE A WORLD OTHERS DON'T - 2021 (YOUTUBE)A shorter encapsulation (with cheesy 'wellness' music) of Lynch's relationship with transcendental meditation. Sounds amazing.ISABELLA ROSSELLINI TALKING ABOUT BLUE VELVET - 1986 (YOUTUBE)Rossellini's interview is after Dennis Hopper's. DAVID LYNCH IN CONVERSATION - 2015 (YOUTUBE)DON'T LOOK AT ME (David Lynch doc) Directed by Guy Girard - 1989 (YOUTUBE) Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

I added one more podcast to the giant podcast bin Now you have plucked that podcast out and started listening I took my microphone and found some human folk Then I recorded all the noises while we spoke My name is Adam Buxton, I'm a man I want you to enjoy this, that's the plan! Hey, how are you doing, Podcats? It's Adam Buxton here, joining you from a really very windy farm track. Wow, it's crazy out in East Anglia towards the end of January 2025. Okay, it's blustery down here in East Anglia. It's a lot worse in Ireland and Scotland

at the moment thanks to Storm Eowyn, so I'm counting my blessings. Apart from the wind it's actually a rather beautiful day out here in Norfolk. The sun is out and most of the clouds have been blown away, which makes a change. It's been solid grey for the last few weeks here. Braving the wind with me today is my best dog friend, Rose, who is looking quite confused by the fact that we're out here. Fair enough, but we've got to get out, get some exercise, get out the compound. All right, this is actually ridiculous. I'm gonna wait till

we get to some tree coverage. Hang on dog I'm gonna sit on this log. Okay we're in the sunny woods now, slightly sheltered from the wind. So how are you doing anyway Podcats? I hope you're well and that things are off to a relatively decent start for you this year. You know, the news accepted. This episode of the podcast is going to be a bit of a break from all that, a bit of a retro fest. So let me tell you about my guest for podcast number 239. He's a writer, TV producer, and editor of political interview programs, Rob Burley. Here's some Burley facts for you. Rob was born in 1969 and grew up in Sussex,

later attending Nottingham University where he earned a degree in American Studies. He was a researcher for a Labour MP before getting into TV. He joined ITV in 1996, where he worked on shows, mainly as a political editor, with Jonathan Dimbleby and Trevor MacDonald, after moving to the Big British Castle in 2008. He became executive editor of Question Time. He was deputy editor of Newsnight and assistant editor of BBC Breakfast. Rob then became the BBC's editor of live political programmes in 2018, later becoming editor of Politics Live and The Andrew Neal Show. More recently, he's worked as executive editor on LBC's Tonight with Andrew Marr and with Kay Burley over on Sky.

Last year I mentioned how much I'd enjoyed Rob's 2023 book Why Is This Lying Bastard Lying To Me, which full disclosure I came across because we share a publisher, HarperCollins, and someone there recommended it. That's not the reason I mentioned it, I mentioned it because I enjoyed it very much. It tells the stories of various politically significant moments via a series of memorable TV interviews, which on the whole serve as a reminder of how difficult it's become to get a good interview out of a politician in the hyper-polarized social media age. A good chunk of the early part of the book is devoted to a

legendary TV confrontation that exemplifies how much things have changed in the world of political interviews, which took place in 1989 between then Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher and master political interviewer Brian Walden. That part of Rob's book now forms the basis of a two-part drama on Channel 4 called Brian and Maggie, which is going out in a few days as I speak. Hello Studio Buckles here. The show goes out on Wednesday the 29th at 9pm on Channel 4 with the next episode the following night, Thursday also at 9pm. Back to Windywood. It's written by James Graham and directed by Stephen Frears,

director of Philomena, starring Steve Coogan. And Steve plays Brian Walden in Brian and Maggie. Harriet Walter plays Thatch and it is, I think, a superlative Thatch. She absolutely nails her in a very three-dimensional way. Maybe it was too three-dimensional. In a Radio Times interview with Emily Maitlis, Steve Coogan said he asked for one scene in the drama to be cut because he thought it was too kind to a figure who was so controversial, thatch that is, and who remains bitterly despised for, to take just three examples, her role in shutting down Britain's mining industry,

the Section 28 law that prohibited local authorities from promoting homosexuality in schools and the community, and her introduction of the 1990 poll tax, or community charge, that required all adults to pay the same amount regardless of income or property value. My conversation with Rob was recorded face to face in London back in October of last year 2024 and we talked about our respective political journeys. Rob's journey was a little more eventful than mine, you won't be surprised to hear, and Rob tells the story of Brian Walden's momentous encounter with Margaret Thatcher. We also talked about the new book that Rob is working on, in which he writes about scandals.

And because I know that Rob used to be in a band, we also reminisced briefly about the glories of Britpop. In Why Is This Lying Bastard Lying To Me, Rob mourns the death of the long-form political interview and the social media-driven gotcha journalism that's taken its place. A typical trick in modern political interviewing, says Rob, is to do something like ask a politician how much a pint of milk costs, and then, if they don't know, to dismiss them as out of touch with the people they claim to represent.

Sounds like a good idea for my interview, I thought. Oh, and by the way, early on in in the podcast we talked about the fact that we were born very close together, me and Rob, and I mentioned someone else who was born just a few days before me and that was former podcast guest Tommy Tiernan just so you know. Back at the end with a tiny bit more waffle and a small goodbye to David Lynch. But right now with Rob Burley. Here we go. And have a ramble chat Put on your conversation coat and light your talking hat Yes, yes, yes La, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la Blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah the day and you know like the big interviews you'd spend a week yeah figuring out every permutation and how the conversation could go I don't do

I've heard you in the past talking about just that this is rambling I mean sometimes I do have you know notes and things I want to hit yeah and I've got a couple of notes but you're not trying to prosecute me are you I'm not trying to get one over on you. No, I mean, it should be quite a clever tactic to actually do that. Because you'd you'd loom into this idea that it's going to be ramble and then you just hit me with it. It's not a gotcha. How much is a pint of milk, by the way?

Fucking hell. By the liters, is it about, you know? Yeah, I looked it up. Is it about one fifty for a liter? For a liter looked it up. Is it about £1.50 for a litre? For a litre it's probably about that. Couple of quid maybe? I don't know. A pint is £85p at Sainsbury's and Tesco.

I never buy the pints. The small tiny ones are over before you know it. I've got children. £80p, okay. £85p, £95 at Waitrose. It's an annoying question isn't it? Do you think it's legitimate question? Well, what it is is an indication of how you manage your finances, isn't it?

And when I was really hard up for money, even then I didn't know how much a pint of milk was because that's just not how I really thought about money. I mean, that's probably something I inherited from my dad and part of the reason that my dad went bankrupt So yeah, I'm quite bad with money, too But I think the purpose of it in political terms is just to sort of Demonstrate whether you are a person of the people or not It's to yeah to demonstrate how much you are in touch with the kind of things that most ordinary people have to worry about Yeah, that's fine. I think it's fine for acid. I think it's important to ascertain

whether the person cares about those things has some grasp of what people go through. But whether you know the price of a liter or whatever it is of milk, you might not because you might not ever buy them because you might always be in the office and they're always just there. And it's like, does that really make you an asshole? I don't think it does. Yeah, you might not like milk. I prefer Alpro vanilla soy milk that figures that's more expensive, but it's delicious stuff. So Like you and I are very similar age, right? I think I looked it up I think I've had one month more on earth than you. Oh mate and that month made all the difference

What a month it was Oh mate, and that month made all the difference. What a month it was. I think that is the case as well. Who else did I interview who had been around just a few days more than I had and had achieved so much more because of it? I can't remember. Anyway, but yeah, so you're May 69?

May 69, yeah. Yeah, I'm June 69. Which means we were conceived in the in the in the rebellious summer of 68 yeah what do you think your parents were doing with a high on drugs. No definitely definitely not that they would definitely not be hard drugs they never took any drugs i'm pretty sure i like to think about how the sixties is fascinating but i'm will love it and i'm sort of idolizing the concept of the kit. we all love it and I remember sort of idolizing the concept as a kid but they didn't go through the 60s in the way that it wasn't like they were all having a wild time in Carnaby Street you know it's like have you ever seen that bit of the Beatles film of Get Back? They're on the roof and then they go down to the street yeah and there's a lot of just regular people just like what the fuck is they doing?

Yeah. They're not touched by the 60s in the way that we imagine it was and my parents I think were pretty untouched by the 60s in the way that we imagine it was. And my parents, I think, were pretty untouched by the 60s in that way, really. What were your parents like politically? Were they sort of on the left? Yeah, they were on the left. So, well, yeah, my mum was, she went along with that. She was, she would say she's on the left. And my dad was, was probably on the left.

Yeah. He was like, he was, he was that generation. So he's born in like 28. Interesting that the Chinese revolution was like quite a big thing for people like him. They thought this was great. And then I had to kind of explain it. Cultural revolution is a bit difficult to sort of somehow be an apologist for that. He was, I remember him being still being keen on it in the eighties, you know, it wasn't all bad. I was like Mao's like a really terrible man. He killed a lot of people. And he's like, well, you know, there's a lot of change and there was

resistance and things, but he couldn't quite let go of it. He wasn't like a Maoist in some big way, but it just shows that he was quite on the left when he was younger. And I think that residual thing was there. Yes. In the 80s still. So he was quite into it. But mainly he was a historian. So he was just brilliant. He just knew loads of stuff about history and about politics. But he was always up the garden. So I just spent a lot of time on the garden with him talking about politics. And that that was that and telly were the things that got me into politics I think most people though they inherit their political views from their parents, don't they? Yeah, there's a lot of that I think and so

it's very difficult for them to Think of other people with different political views as sympathetic because they they've just never been around those kinds of people Whereas, you know, I grew up in a pretty right leaning house. My dad worked for the Sunday Telegraph. My mom was definitely a Tory. My dad was more conflicted. He didn't have a lot of time for a lot of the Tory politicians, especially in the Johnson era and the Cameron era. So, you know, I knew a lot of people with those kinds of views. The people I met through my parents were probably going to have similar political views to them

a lot of the time, I would think. But I wasn't really politically aware when I was getting to know them. So that wasn't the first thing I got to know about them. No, no, no. Yeah, but did you start to think about it in the 80s? Not so much. I mean, I started to think about it much more in the 90s. Oh, okay. I made it through the 80s without really being affected by politics. The only person who ever talked about politics that I knew was Ben Walden. Ah, okay.

Son of Brian Walden. Right, okay, yeah. And he was very left. Right. And he listened to Billy Bragg and he was, you know, but we were public school boys. So he had a certain amount of kind of self-loathing about that. That he had this privileged life that his dad never had, because Brian Walden grew up pretty poor.

But then Ben found himself in this strange position of being the son of someone who grew up poor, who was definitely working class, who had used their, the money that they earned Ben found himself in this strange position of being the son of someone who grew up or who was definitely working class, who had used the money that they earned to send their kids to a fee-paying school. And then if you're someone who has the same views that your dad grew up with for Ben, left-wing views, Labour-right views, his dad was a Labour politician before he eventually went over towards the right You look like a bit of a poser if you're a public school lefty. Yeah, who listens to Billy Bragg. Yeah

It's a weird position to be in. Yeah, I mean I didn't know any public school boys Yeah, you weren't privately educated. No, I wasn't I was I wish you'd told me before I know wouldn't happen But I want it. I want to come pencil It's funny It was in cells II and West Sussex. So it's not really the badlands But there was a vibe in 70s and 80s comprehensive schools. It was always a bit edgy I'm ever getting there and you're the first day being kind of like for some physical Manhandling by the older kids, you know, it's like this is the way it is and it's horrible

But I was quite annoyingly on the left wing when I was a teenager. We had the Billy Bragg records and all that. I think I changed because I ended up, I ended up appreciating because of the work, I ended up appreciating the different arguments. So it's like Brian Walden is essentially a meritocrat, right? He thinks the best way of doing things is to give people the best chances they can get, they'll compete and the best people will emerge and win. Yeah, that's why he was on the same page as Thatcher. Exactly, yeah. And he thought actually to have a quality of outcome where you can sort of fix a world

in which everyone would have the same thing, irrespective of their talents, didn't speak to him as a human being about his experience of what people are really like, which is they are different and some of them are driven and some of them have great ideas and others aren't driven or don't have good ideas and you should sort of reward that in some way. And so I can understand where that, I can understand where he's coming from. Maybe the best way is some middle ground between those two positions, but because I started to appreciate people's arguments, which I'm quite into arguments, that I stopped thinking they're bad people. I used to think they were bad, bad people. I remember going to university and still having this idea and you know like the whole never kissed a Tory thing, you know

that was sort of the idea. You wouldn't interest anybody who was a Tory. If they had known they were Tory, they were just a fucking Tory. The idea I suppose seems to be that if you do have that meritocratic outlook, then it's all very well if you're born with all the things you need to get ahead. But what if you haven't been born with those things? What if the odds are stacked against you because of where you come from or what you look like or whatever? Yeah.

What happens to you then? And does society have a responsibility to look after you? And that's obviously the bit that most people felt someone like Thatcher or Brian Walden or whatever, whoever had that kind of outlook. They couldn't really care about those people. Well, they would obviously argue they did care about those people. The welfare state was there and the state education, all those things were still there under Thatcher.

She'd argue, but clearly, you know, she had a different outlook on it. But I think the thing about Brian Walden, of course, is that was exactly what happened to him. His mother was a bookbinder, I think. So a lot of books in the house only because that was her work that she did at home. So he would get to read them. She died very young, so he didn't have long with her. And his father was almost all the time unemployed. So he came from exactly the environment you're talking about there. Yeah, what he does, then he succeeds and he's what they do people like that is they extrapolate from that experience that this should be the way for

everybody that surely if you just have that, if you give, you know, people will come through. But yeah, I mean, the other bit of it is, like you say, is what happens to those who don't come through? Is it fair? But even if it was fair, and then you've lost out, what should happen to you? So you want a society which reflects that. So yeah, anyway, I'm just saying that I think Walden would, he would use his experience when you outline there as evidence for why he was right, not why he was wrong. One of the other differences between you and I is that you grew up thinking that Weekend World, presented by Brian Walden, political discussion programs, which you would see around about midday on a Sunday in the 80s. You thought that was interesting. I did not think that was interesting.

I thought the only good thing about that was the theme tune. I'm glad you mentioned that. That was incredible. Wasn't it? Yeah, it was. It was. It was. It was mountain Nantucket sleigh ride by mountain. And I know you'll last too long, I'll never leave Oh, it's a classic. I absolutely loved that thing. I just thought what is this? And this is pre internet before you could look it up and just know instantly. So it was this mysterious yeah bit of magical rock. You say I thought it was interesting. It was more that I mean, so what would you do on a Sunday typically if you were home?

Sunday back in the 80s. Late 70s earlier. So you're about nine 10, right? What you do? Watch TV. Right? That's what I'm doing. Okay. I love to tell you so much.

Yeah. And how and one of the things about the house that we lived in the environment we lived in was do you remember the good life? Tom and Barbara. Oh my God. It's such a brilliant series. It's amazing. And the thing about Margo and Mrs.

Thatcher, we should say who Margo is if listeners haven't seen The Good Life, The Good Life was about a middle-class couple, Tom and Barbara, who downsize and go and live somewhere where they can grow their own food and live an honest life. He's an ex-advertising executive. Correct. And it's in Surbiton, so it's not like they've gone to a farm. They're going to grow it in the garden in Suburbia. Yeah.

Yeah. So it's not like they've gone to a farm. They're right. They're gonna grow it in the garden in suburbia Yeah, yeah, and their neighbor is this very posh woman called Margo Who was a lot like my mom? It was a car carrying Tory It was as if my mom had seen the good life and thought I think I'm gonna be like her. Yeah. Yeah She was wonderful. She was brilliant. The actor by Pellepe Keith her husband was played by Paul Eddington He was terrific. So there was this fantastic juxtaposition of these sort of trendy middle-class lefties and their sort of right-wing neighbours. And in a way it started off as being about the goods, which is the good life, which the

people that went self-sufficient. But quite quickly Margot emerged as the real star of the show. And I thought, I remember because that series came on about 75 About the design the precise same year as Mrs. Thatcher became leader the Tory party And so because I consumed TV so much I sort of associated the two women in my head in some way as being Similar or the same because they were quite the same. Yeah, and she is one moment when she says in the series I'm not a citizen. I'm a resident This is in the face of bureaucracy, you know

And he kind of rooted for it because she was dealing with like intransigent bureaucracy But it precursors that there's no such thing as society the idea That I'm not partaking in this thing. You want me to partake in I'm different from it, right? And I'm just kind of fundamentalist individualism. Yes. Right. Exactly. And then so I thought, God, it's so interesting to me that these two things came together. And then I thought, I just wondered whether anyone else had ever thought this before. And so I ended up finding some clue that there's a guy who was teaching at a school up in Yorkshire, who'd been a Tory activist. And I've got a hold of him. It's true. They used to say on the doorstep in the 79 election, I know she's a woman, and because

there were people found it difficult to think that she should be a prime minister. She's a woman admittedly, but maybe what we need right now is a woman like Margot, who can basically knock some heads together and subtext be better than those useless men, the wet husband. Then he told me that he discovered that elsewhere this was being said as well. So it was actually a thing that people said. And so I love that way in which culture and politics kind of interact with each other. Yeah.

And it was great to know that what was in my head in this little house was the same. And also my parents went self-sufficient. Did they? Yeah. They moved from a normal environment to a house in the middle of nowhere, it seemed like, where they grew vegetables and had animals. Out in Sussex. Yeah, in Sussex. And they weren't doing this in a malevolent way, but they just weren't interested in the outside world very much. So it was all very hermetically sealed, really.

And the only way I could see out was through books, music and TV, most of all. And so it wasn't that I thought that it was interesting, Weekend World, which was a very, very heavy political program, just for people, if they don't know, it was like 40 minute interviews, maybe with a film of 15 minutes before that with interviews with, you know, whoever trade unionists or whatever might be people today. It was heavy and stodgy stuff with a great theme tune. I look great at a brilliant sort of 70s, CV studio feel to it. And I had nothing else to do, you know, so I just watched it and thought, well, they see it seems to be important. And dad can tell me to do, you know, so I just watched it and thought, well, they see it seems to be important. And dad can tell me some stuff about this. So I go and talk to

him about it. And he might, and it seems important. So maybe I should try and learn about it. And then because of watching it over and over again, and then I started to understand what was going on in the news, that it sort of made, started to make sense. It was one of the choices I had was listen to music, the limited amount of records that were not classical music in the house and read or watch Brian Warden saying something incomprehensible to somebody. So I went for that quite a lot. And when did it start becoming comprehensible? I think it must have been about, I think the early 80s, it was going, it's heyday was between

70, but he starts in 77 and he runs through to about 86 or something. So the heyday would have been late 70s. Thatcher's, this is the thing, Thatcher, she looms large, I'm afraid, like or loathe. I mean, I didn't like her, but I do admire her more now, more and more, having sort of worked on the book and just thought about what she was like. I think whatever her politics were, she was very much up for the argument, which is commendable. But it was what she was doing was the thing that made people politicized in the early 80s, because it felt like this was a wrecking ball, you know, to sort of the settlement.

And you know, unemployment was through the roof. And I was watching like, the specials and Ghost Town, or whatever, on top of the pops. But it was all in the culture, you know, it was like, do you remember those programs that have something else? Do you ever remember that show? They had those kids, those kids shows that were sort of, I mean, so much with BBC impartiality, they were just like pumping out left-wing propaganda against Thatcherism. And then she won again. The Falklands was obviously quite exciting. And in fact, that was a bit of a turning point for me, the Falklands, because I

realized that maybe she was right about something, which was a bit of a shocker. Will Barron Yeah, well, again, my mum had an opinion because she didn't like those Argentinians. Right. And so she thought that she was doing a terrific job there. Yeah. My dad used to, my dad also thought it was the right thing to do. That was an interesting moment for me because it was like, here's the thing, well, I'm supposed to feel one way, which is that is bad. Yeah.

And actually I didn't think she was wrong and neither did my dad, crucially. Mm hmm. And so it's like, oh she was wrong and neither did my dad, crucially. So things might be more complicated than that. And then you've got all the debates going on on Weekend World and other programs. And in the end, this becomes quite exciting. It's really good and I'm really into it. And so I became a true believer and fan of that genre. And actually that's made my career out have it. I love your face so, like a painting by Picasso. The eyes to the right, the nose to the left. Other faces make me border, but your features are all in a nice order.

The big event in the Walden universe, as far as you're concerned, and for a lot of people, I suppose, was 1989 after Weekend World when he's doing the Walden interviews. And he had that big showdown with Thatcher. And you write about that. That's the sort of centerpiece of your book why is this lying bastard lying to me yeah the quote incidentally is robin day right no it's um famous made famous by jeremy paxman made famous by paxman but not had not originated by pax and originated by somebody a guy who worked for the times uh who was a foreign correspondent who said at one point when i speak to politicians i think to myself why myself, why is this lying bastard lying to me? In other words, you're looking for another motive.

But anyway, in terms of the Walden moment in 1989 is an amazing moment in political TV interview history. Probably it's our frost Nixon, I suppose. And you write about it really well. I thought it was thrilling that whole section right at the top. It's an amazing story. They're doing a TV version of it, right? They're dramatizing my those two chapters from the basis of a TV show that's going to be coming in 2025. Yeah, Steve Coogan playing Brian Walden and Harriet Walter playing Margaret Thatcher. Wow. Which is obviously, yeah, I mean, unbelievable. And it came and for me, the real that all starts because I'm in my student hovel watching that day. It was 1989. So, I mean, unbelievable. And it came and for me, that all starts because I'm in my student hovel

watching that day. It was 1989. So, you know, I was at university. I was not really that obsessed by Weekend World at this point, or the Wall and Interviews, but Thatcher was in trouble because in the previous week, Nigel Lawson, remember Nigel Lawson? Sure. Nigella's dad. Nigella's dad, yeah, who was the Chancellor of the Exchequer for six years. So right beside her throughout the half of the Tory years, the Thatcher years, and he resigns in 1989. And he resigned because he got fed up of being criticised by some guy.

Yeah, some guy called Alan Walters. Now Mrs Thatcher thought this was all a pretext. So basically, there's a guy called Alan Walters, who was her economic advisor. And he was always shouting his mouth off about fiscal policy or the economy and about tax and whatever. And he was always saying stuff. And Nigel Lawson found this increasingly irritating because he seemed to have a free rein to just say whatever he liked and take people to lunch and blurt things out. And so that was the pretext. I think actually there were deeper reasons for this that have been going on for ages. But by the time he gets to 1989, he's looking for I think he's probably looking for a way out. And Alan Walters provides it because he goes to see her one day and he says,

it's either me or Alan Walters, you either get rid of this advisor or I will quit. And she's not willing to do that. She's the Prime Minister. She's not willing to call up Alan Walters and sack him. So she doesn't. And in the end, he quits that day, which is a massive blow to her authority because he's a big figure, as I say. And also the other thing to remember is that, do you remember her saying, we have become a grandmother? This was a really weird moment that was hard to understand. How could she be so strange? But when her son Mark had a child, she appeared out from us through the door of number 10 and said, sort of clattered into the middle of the street

and said, we've become a grandmother, which was really odd. It sounded like she thought she was the queen or something, or in a way that we've all had a grand, I don't know what it was, but it was very odd. And it was alongside that, there were other things that seemed to be a bit erratic about her. She was, you know, she was pushing through the poll tax. Remember the show, yeah, all that stuff. There's riots and, you know, there's a lot of stuff happening. It was quite controversial and she seemed to be slightly different. She wasn't quite the person she'd been before. And so people thought she was a bit strange. That's going on and then Lawson resigns. So it's a big crisis moment. And she'd already agreed at

that point to do an interview with Brian Walden, who just got his show back a new show on ITV having had that weekend world show there was a gap and then he comes back with his own show. And she agreed to appear on it months before so it's very very lucky for Brian Walden for ITV that suddenly we've got the hottest interview you could possibly have there's a crisis. She's going to do 46 minutes, which you'd never do now. And they were pals straightforwardly by that point, right? By this point, yes. I mean, yeah, that's a good point. So he was a Labour MP and a very well regarded one. Everyone thought he was going to be something big, but he didn't really like Parliament very much in the end. He didn't enjoy it very much. In the meantime, she's rising up through the ranks. And eventually he leaves and goes to work on Weekend World. Before he left, he was moving further and further right.

And he was kind of Thatcher curious by the point we get to 1975. Like, she's speaking my language and I quite like her. He was recruited to come and take over on this show and become the interviewer. And even there's no experience of it whatsoever, but for some reason they're alighted on Brian Morden as being a good idea to do this show.

So his very first interview was with Margaret Thatcher. And you watch them and they, alighted on Brian Morden as being a good idea to do this new to do this show. So his very first interview was with Margaret Thatcher and you watch them and they find this is in the TV drama which James Graham the playwright has written from my book. But you see this really interesting relationship developed between the two as he's sympathetic to her but he draws her out. They're worthwhile conversations. There's not much conflict there. It's more like he says that's very interesting what you say there. She likes that. And then they start to, and then intellectually,

there's a kind of romance going on. And that keeps on going all the way through the 80s. And then you reach the point in 1983, which is in the book. Do you remember when Kenny Everest- Yeah, let's bomb the bastards. Yeah, yeah. Let's bomb Russia. He didn't say to bomb the bastards. No, he says, let's bomb Russia oh hey the bomb the bastard he says let's bomb Russia and he wanted to kick away yeah let's kick Michael foot who was the label leader the elderly label leader let's kick Michael foot stick away

classic Kenny classic Kenny in front of this audience of Tories with big foam hands on did you remember how big a deal that that show was that Kenny Everett's yeah yeah yeah I loved love really big thing. Wasn't it? Did you love it? I did love it. Yeah. I had no clue that he was like, it was quite weird when he came out suddenly as

this Tory guy and was at the Tory conference. Was it a conference? No, it was a special rally in the middle of the election campaign in 83. They're all going Maggie, Maggie. They've got t-shirts. And it's all the squares. It's like Tarbuck, Steve Davis, who, hasn't he turned out to be like a massive techno music fan or something?

Yeah, yeah, he's a DJ. Also, he very much regrets that part of his. Oh, does he really? Yeah, he does. He's very much a lefty now. Oh, yeah. He was there with Tarbuck and with, oh, Michael Wiener, obviously. And they were all there saying, we love you, Maggie. And then Everett appears appears which is completely surprising and then he then says these things which are regarded at the time and it's really outrageous things to say they were a bit they were quite naughty but it was funny and anyway she gets very pumped up so can you imagine her like what a scene

what they would do Kenny that was very funny I know what they were she's like used to the young people liking her. Yeah, yeah. Kenny's there, fires her up. So she leaves Wembley, having done this massive gig at Wembley, early that morning she'd been interviewed on ITV by Brian Walden. Then she goes to the rally. And later that evening she needs to record the final election broadcast, which is her final appeal to the country to give her a second term in power.

And she's got a guy there who's waiting for her as a speechwriter and She he is not as pumped up as she is here and he's not in the same mode that that she is in which is kind of you know, very excited and She wants a different script. She sends him away and they think well who can come and write the script for us They think and they think they think and they decide to try Brian Walden Who's literally that day just interviewed her as an impasse journalist, who will continue to interfere after the election. And who has not come out and expressed specifically pro-Thatcher statements beyond being sympathetic in interviews.

Yeah, I mean, you don't even know really if you pay really close attention to sort of the press, you know, reading the diary stories about that he was regarded as a bit of a Thatcherite, but he wouldn't know otherwise. And he shouldn't have done it. He said yes. They ring him up and he says yes. And he shouldn't have done it. It was breaking all the rules. And he got up, apparently he'd been out for drinking that night because it was the end of the series. And then he was slightly sort of worse for where it arrives and writes this script with her. Because he used to be a politician. He's turned on by all this. He thinks she's great. sort of made I know he was thinking he was flattered

I suppose you would be wouldn't you the Prime Minister's calling for you anybody should never have done it and he did it and that's how close they were right so they were very close anyway a few years past weekend world ends but he still does he still he writes a column he becomes more openly Thatcherite actually after that because he's no longer got a TV show for a bit and he's writing columns in the Sunday Times interviewing her for the like a newspaper interview very very sort of flattering and then he gets this show called the Walden interviews and This pretty much coincides with this event in 1989 when Nigel Lawson has resigned so the two are gonna come together again because this interview has been pre-anned. And they're coming together at the moment of real crisis for her. And he has to decide how to tackle that interview. And the atmosphere in the press around this, particularly

you know, people on the left was that, oh God, so when she's really on the ropes, who does it fall to, to have the chance to interview her? But Brian Walden, who's that guy who likes her, and they get on and you see what he writes in the Sunday Times a few weeks ago? He may have a TV show again, but he's a Thatcherite. And there was a piece, the morning of the interview, there was a piece in the Independent newspaper, which was an attack piece on him and really said, you know, this is a moment of truth for you. Can you rise to this? We don't think you can. You're not actually a proper journalist effectively. And it fell to him to make a choice. And he chose to go down the road of the toughest interview that he could possibly

deliver. So it included a lot on the mechanics of what happened. And she was blindsided, did not expect that. And I'm standing here watching this right as a 20-year-old watching it on telly as as a student I'm thinking she'll be fine. She's always fine. But there it was a chink in the armor finally when she appeared sort of ridiculous she kept saying he was unassailable Nigel Lawson well he wasn't was he because you did you kept your advisor and he didn't get rid of him and you know she was I don't know why he resigned and he was like you don't know why and he was really tough on her but then the absolute cherry on the cake with that really was that he then also decided to reflect back to her what people were saying about her,

which was people in Westminster saying, and his quote was that you are off your trolley. If you think about that, it's quite a thing to say to the Prime Minister, especially when you are her friend. So it was a moment of real time human interaction. You wouldn't have known all those, we now know the nuance, right? So we can watch it now, you can watch on YouTube, or you can watch the dramatization that's coming. I really appreciate the human forces underneath that that were going on. At the time it was a bit just more that she seemed thrown and wasn't able to defend herself, but that was probably the reason

she regarded it as a kind of betrayal. And they never spoke again after the interview. That was the last time that they ever communicated. When I watched the interview, I thought, when he mentioned the off your trolley thing, I thought that he was trying to get her to come back. He wanted her to defend herself more robustly to show that she wasn't as out of touch as some people thought she was. I think you're right. And that's not the only

moment there are moments where he says almost like you let people think you're this awful person. Yeah, I know you're not. You never ever show it he says at one point. Can't you just come on, come on Margaret Rice the occasion but she just doesn't it just doesn't compute for her she just that isn't the mode she's in when she's in that chair so she wasn't she wasn't able to be nimble enough to see that he was giving her an opportunity to say something back because she was she must be stunned by off the trolley off your trolley yeah but it's almost like a son confronting his mother at a certain point and saying, look, mom, you've got too cranky. This is, this is what people are saying about you.

Yeah. Now I'm grown up enough that I can talk to you about this stuff and here's your chance to change it. And if you've ever had a conversation like that with your parents, especially if they're the kind of parents that I had, you know that that conversation generally doesn't go well. They generally don't go, Oh, you know what? You're right. Yeah, I'll think about it. All these years I've been doing it wrong. Yeah. Let me put this to you, Prime Minister. It's a point that's always interested me, and I think it's now politically relevant.

It may be the case that in private, you will have a lusty argument, and you will listen to other people's opinions, and that you're only too happy to accept a suggestion if it's correct. But you never come over in public like that. Ever. You come over as being someone who who one of your backbenchers said is slightly off her trolley,

authoritarian, domineering, refusing to listen to anybody else. Why? Why cannot you publicly project what you have just told me as your private character? Brian, if anyone's coming over as domineering in this interview,

it's you. It's you. You think so? You're tethering things out instead of just talking them in a conversational way. Yes, you're very domineering at the moment. He's reached the point where he has to stop being like he was being with her. He stops being her friend or she's the prime minister, right? I mean, wherever he, even though he was a significant person, number one is Mrs. Thatcher.

Yeah. And she was getting all the time from him reinforcement of that effectively intellectually personally and this is the moment where he says you know i have to name me for what you are which is a bit off your trolley which is a difficult thing to say to her and the power dynamic shifts almost on air as you watch it you can feel it kind of well maybe i really it feels like to me as I watch it now, that that power that was, if you can remember her, she was everywhere. She was always there. She was untouchable. And suddenly she was a human and she was a bit discombobulated. And a year later she was gone. So in many ways, I think you could say that this was the beginning of the end. And I was watching it on telly, I guess, delivers on TV just delivered for me in my life, you know, yeah, these moments,

it was just extraordinary. And it was always in my head ever since that was in my head. And then when I got a chance to write the book, which is not about that, but I couldn't not tell that story. And then, you know, now it's a TV drama. It is very dramatic. Yesterday I was watching the second dramatisation of the Emily Maitlis, Prince Andrew. Oh did you watch it? I haven't seen them both. I watched Scoop, which was the first one, told from the point of view of one of the producers, played by Billy Piper. Sam McAllister, yeah. She's a friend of mine, yeah. Right. And that was fine.

But then last night I watched the new one, which is called A Very Royal Scandal. This is Emily, Emily Maylis' version of events. Yes, I think so, yeah. So she's a producer on this version, although I don't think she wrote it. Oh, okay, right. And she is played by Ruth Wilson.

Gillian Anderson played her in the other one. And Ruth Wilson does quite a good vocal impression of Emily Maitlis, although it's, it's very low. She does. So Emily is really quite gruffly spoken, um, with a low voice, but it's quite a good impression. Anyway, I thought it was good. But it's quite a good impression.

Anyway, I thought it was good. And I thought it also delved a bit more than the previous one into the whole thing about what do long form political interviews mean nowadays, right. And especially in the internet and social media age, because surely that is the thing, you know, your your book why is this lying bastard lying to me is all about your love of the long-form political interview and you're considering in there why it's not something that people do generally and thinking about all the reasons for that and you do go into the fact that obviously a big part of that is the internet and social media. How has that changed things?

Well, I say it's a big, it's a big topic, but it needs to be contextualized. I mean, the point about it's not that I just love them because I just like, yeah, it's like they're important. What happens in democracies is that we need, we're supposed to have elections every few years and we're supposed to make an assessment of people, governments, decided to vote. And when they're in power, we judge how they're doing. And we do that. How are we going to do that? Personally, I don't find Parliament as a very effective way of that happening. Assessing it, holding it into account, talking about what they're doing. I don't really think Prime Minister's questions does that in any way that's particularly useful for anybody. I don't think most of the broadcast opportunities people have does that. Question time is, you know, often I don't really watch it anymore because I find it unwatchable. Other programs have interviews that last about six minutes at most.

No one gets anywhere. Everyone's just being performative. Politicians generally go into those interviews trying to avoid saying something rather than wanting to say something. Often broadcasters go into them trying to make a splash with a sort of big moment that can be on social media. So why am I banging on about long performing political interviews? It's because that's the only that's the best way that we can do that. A very important function which is hold our leaders to account because we can only do it effectively if we actually sit with them for a long enough period to develop a conversation and argument, know well the background, the journalist knows as well as the subject, the background, and can put them under pressure. And when we don't have that, we lose a lot. You know, Mrs. Thatcher in that moment, it wasn't good for her, obviously,

but it was incredibly important moment in British political modern history. And it wouldn't have happened at all if we hadn't had a culture at that time of valuing commitment to that sort of length of time for interviews. Yes, last night, you sent me Is it the introduction for your new book? So it's not finished. So you're getting a very early sneak preview only because I know that you're interested in the subject matter, which is about scandals. Yeah. And so I thought it'd be interesting to show you what I was, how I was coming at it, because I don't really want to come at it in a traditional way. So I came at it slightly differently, really, which is to tie it in with, as we have some of our conversation, I think tying those events that you are in the news with your own life or with other cultural factors that are going on. That's kind of how I'm coming at the scandal thing. I'm reading at the moment or I'm audio booking. Does that count as reading? I mean, yeah. Yeah, let's say yes. I am reading Robert Caro's biography of Lyndon Johnson and I'm reading it because I heard Rory Stewart mention it and he was interviewing Mary beard who I had on the podcast

and I saw this interview they did and Rory Stewart said to Mary beard if you haven't read Robert Caro's extraordinary four volume biography of Lyndon Johnson do and So I thought okay Sounds interesting. I'll look it up and he was mentioning it because they've been talking about kind of political monsters. Yeah. And so I looked it up and just the audio book version, the audio book of all four volumes comes to a little over 130 hours. So I worked out if you read every day for an hour, like if you read the actual physical version, it'd take you four and a half months just to read the first four volumes. I think there's a fifth. There's a whole coming, isn't there?

He's still alive, isn't he? He's still writing away. He's still writing away. The first one came out in 1982, The Path to Power. Wow. How much have you listened to? Uh, I'm about 13 hours in and it is absolutely brilliant. Wow.

Robert Carra went and lived in Texas in the part of Texas in the hill country where LBJ grew up and he lived there for three years, interviewing people and researching the land. You know, there's all these passages in the beginning of the book about what it was actually like to farm land up in the hill country of Texas back then. And, you know, he talks about the ecology of the place and it's also beautifully described and he talks about it being this trap because as soon, you know, it had been untouched for hundreds of years and it was this beautiful, pristine landscape, fertile landscape, but then only a few years after it started being cultivated,

it was totally destroyed. And it stopped being somewhere where you could make a good living as a farmer. And it just became this punishing country to farm. That's interesting. So that's kind of sufficiently general to appeal to people, right? Yeah, yeah. But then the thing I thought is, am I really going to care about this 1923 act into, they're debating and how we got the vote through? Is that stuff fascinating as well? I'm I'm I'm I'm I'm I'm I'm I'm I'm I'm I'm I'm I'm I'm I'm I'm I'm I'm I'm I'm I'm I'm I'm I'm I'm I'm I'm I'm I'm I'm I'm I'm I'm I'm I'm I'm I'm I'm I'm I'm I'm I'm I'm I'm I'm I'm I'm I'm I'm I'm I'm I'm I'm I'm I'm I'm I'm I'm I'm I'm I'm I'm I'm I'm I'm I'm I'm I'm I'm I'm I'm I'm I'm I'm I'm I'm I'm I'm I'm I'm I'm I'm I'm I'm I'm I'm I'm I'm I'm I'm I'm I'm I'm I'm I'm I'm I'm I'm I'm I'm I'm I'm I'm I'm I'm I'm I'm I'm I'm I'm I'm I'm I'm I'm I'm I'm I'm I'm I'm I'm I'm I'm I'm I'm I'm I'm I'm I'm I'm I'm I'm I'm I'm I'm I'm I'm I'm I'm I'm I'm I'm I'm I'm I'm I'm I'm I'm I'm I'm I'm I'm I'm I'm I'm I'm I'm I'm I'm I'm I'm I'm I'm I'm I'm I'm I'm I'm I'm I'm I'm I'm I'm I'm I'm I'm I'm I'm I'm I'm I'm I'm I'm I'm I'm I'm I'm I'm I'm I'm I'm I'm I'm I'm I'm I'm I'm I'm I'm I'm I'm I'm I'm I'm I'm I'm I'm I'm I'm I'm I'm I'm I'm I'm I'm I'm I'm I'm I'm I'm I'm I'm I'm It feels like watching a mini series all these characters are beautifully drawn he kind of hammers away at things as well so that they stick in your mind quite well you get to know the characters and his mom and dad and brothers and sisters and the people around them and then people he went to college with and. It's really really well done i might don't mind do it i would recommend it even if you've got no interest in the actual politics.

Anyway so your approach with your scandal book though you have a personal angle on it. So I remember the Jeremy Thorpe scandal. Do you remember that? I know what you're talking about but I don't remember it at the time. So it was in 79. So I was 10 and you were 10. That's another one that I only know through a dramatization Yes, indeed. Well actually dr. I think I think actually one of these I want to write about is dramatizations because there's quite a few stuff

That's the Hugh Grant one. Yeah, it's really that's brilliant It's actually Stephen Freer's directed that he's directed the one about Walden and Thatcher that I've done I remember the Thorpe one was it's an extraordinary story about you know, the leader of the Liberal Party But being well, he went he was acquitted but went went to court, you know, accused of the attempted murder of his gay lover. There's all sorts of things that were there, that were kind of, what on the news were just, what is this all about? He's a male model and he's, it was all this kind of slight innuendo and and then there was this summing up by the judge, very supportive of Thorpe and very dismissive of the guy who actually had been, his dog was shot in the attempt, the attempt on his life allegedly, you know, he didn't, he was acquitted for this. But he went through a trauma

and he was the one that the judge was kind of castigating in this in a very homophobic way in his summing up of the case. And so that was all going on telly. So that summer in 79, Thatcher becomes prime minister, Jeremy Thorpe trial happens and he's acquitted. And so again, it was just that thing of it being in the culture, you know, scandals in the culture. This is a sidebar, but my dad had a relationship when he was young with a woman called Bronwyn Pugh and she was a model.

And then became Lady Aster. Oh Christ, Bronwyn Pugh, I was a model and then became Lady Asta. Oh Christ, Bronwyn Pugh, I do know the name. That's right. Yeah, I know. Yeah, I know she is. Yeah. He had a relationship with her. Yeah, yeah. Oh. My mum always resented the fact that my dad was so, you know, there's always, sometimes there's that person and you sort of think, well, what would life have been like if I'd ended up with them?

Well, history might have been different because Lord Aor was, you know, I was never going to speak, of course that was Clifton wasn't it? It was where it all happened. Yeah right. So yeah what was the deal? So she... So Stephen Ward, who is the guy, the strange, at the heart of the Produma scandal is the strange man Stephen Ward and no one quite knows what his motivation was, but he befriended young girls or young women and facilitated them meeting men who were sometimes powerful or aristocratic or whatever. He had a permanent cottage in Cliveden, which is the stately home of Astor. Bronwyn Pugh would have been Lady Astor. So at the period of time when Stephen Ward had this little cottage and when in 1961, was it? I think it was, he came to the swimming pool there

with Christine Keeler. And that was where Jack Profumo first saw Christine Keeler and I think made a mental note that he intended to get to know her better on the basis of that occasion at the swimming pool. And that happened, that subsequently happened and the whole scandal goes from there although I'm actually quite interesting Christine Keeler but Stephen Ward is the kind of he's at the center of it but I think Christine Keeler is quite a fascinating subject actually because she was hated for years yeah yeah that was it seemed like that was a fairly straightforwardly kind of misogynistic angle that people had on her what did

she do wrong I mean Jack Profumo was have to check, but I think he's 40s or 50s. He has a sexual relationship with a girl of the age of 17, who was very innocent of the world, certainly wasn't mixed in his social circles and got involved with this. And years later, when do you remember the film came out, Scandal? Yeah, Headshot Boys did the soundtrack. They did. And John Wally Kilmer was in it. And yeah, it was really good. And well, I loved it.

And Sue Lawley was standing in for Terry Wogan. Again, it's Telly. And she was doing the Terry Wogan show where Christine Keeler and John Hurt came on. John Hurt was playing Stephen Ward. So Christine Keeler is there and they're talking about the movie. And one thing that's interesting is that it seems amazing now is that there was a lot of opposition to this movie ever being made because it was felt it was reopening this awful scandal and we shouldn't be talking about this thing.

But it was made and it was controversial it was made and so Lawley was saying you know why have you made it it's a terrible thing. So that's the implication and then she said um hasn't John Profumo and his family soft enough and she was saying well I'm the one that they're all calling a vice queen. She was the one that's been sort of ostracized and hated. And then she comes back to me and she says, what possible good can this movie do for John Profumo? And I sort of thought, wow, it's amazing how we would view that from today's prism.

But she was, you know, the cold hatred of her even many, many years after the events, you know, it's an amazing story really. And her son is really great. He's been leading a campaign to kind of rehabilitate her reputation. I had a good chat with him. So that's how I'm trying to come at it. But it's early days. It used to be in bands, right? Bad bands.

Did you have any success or were you just a total amateur? A total amateur, yeah, total amateur. But it was quite fun to go through the process of doing it. But yeah, we had a band like when I was 16 and we tried to, nothing happened. And then we had a band, a Britpop. Oh yeah, what were you called? We were called, I think we had a terrible, the latter band was called The High Kind. The High Kind? I don't think it's a name. Where does that name come from? Fuck knows, it was just terrible.

It was awful. It's like a line from a poem or something. Yeah, it's not good, but it was alright to do it. It was good to go through the process. Sometimes you just need to look. I remember thinking, you must hang out with bands and stuff. Sure. Do they have a good time?

Do they have a good time? Yeah, do they have a good time? They seem to have an amazing time before they get successful. Right. And then as soon as success comes along, it's fun for a year or so. And then it seems to be a real ball ache. Yeah. And, and then they fall out and then they split up. And if they stay together, then it's just nonstop stress, as far as I can tell. Because I'm not that it was ever close to anything happening, like success wise, but just the sort of drudgery of like doing it and how getting guitars, all the practicalities.

I thought, imagine if this actually happened. It wouldn't be that great, really. It's quite fun writing songs and like being creative. That's the fun thing. But yeah, the cliche is always like when you're out playing shows, when you tour, then it's fun when you're on stage, but everything around it is not so fun. Yeah, I mean, I've never got anywhere near it I just remember thinking this probably wouldn't be that much fun. So it's probably fine from the Rockstar. Do you still play music? No, not really. What was your instrument guitar? I was guitar and vocals, but no, I don't do I don't do anymore. In fact, I'm really yeah

It's almost like I don't want to touch a guitar again. Really? Yeah. Oh dear. A bit like that. Just became, just became, you put your heart and soul into it, it just becomes, you just think, I'll do other things that have been much better at, so it's fine. It broke your heart. In many ways it did. Oh mate. Yeah.

That's no good though, because music's the best thing in the world. It is fucking amazing. I love it so much. But it was great to not have, to forget you know, like it's almost that thing of you just as soon as here's the thing I wanted to do. Yeah. I wasn't good enough at it. So let's just move on from that. And that feels good. Yeah. Okay. Fair enough. You made you, you, you came to terms with your mediocrity. Exactly. And you went in and did something that you could properly be good at. Exactly. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. That's all right. Isn't it? I suppose so, but don't turn your back on the guitar. Hey man, not when it's played by other people

and it's lovely, but I don't really wanna play it myself. Did you ever find your voice though, at least? Were you able to sing in a way that sounded sort of authentic or were you always doing an impression of someone? I think it was a bit authentic. It was all really into, really influenced by Britpop. Yes. Britpop was exciting. It was. People forget about it. It was all really into really influenced by Britpop. Yes. Britpop was exciting. It was. People forget about it.

It was really great because suddenly like records you liked were like number one. I liked it because I felt disenfranchised from that American scene of kind of industrial metal that was getting more and more popular. Nine inch nails and the limp biscuits and that harder edged rock. Yeah. I never got with, and then I was never a raver. Were you eventually? Yeah.

But not in like 1988, more like 2000. Okay. The whole thing with like dance music was just everywhere. It was everything. And it was going to Ibiza was quite fun. I think my problem was that I wasn't into the drugs and I couldn't Deal with the music without being intoxicated. I didn't get it I think I missed out but for me Brit pop was suddenly like oh, this is much nicer

Yeah, because at the end of the 80s all the the first wave of rave Left me cold. Yeah, me too. Actually, like I say, it wasn't until later I got, I understood it a bit more. Yeah. But when Supergrass came along, that was the main thing. When Oasis came along, I just thought, I dunno, it sounded a bit too status quo. And then Supergrass, I thought, yes, please. Cause it was more silly and quirky.

And then Pulp. pulp pulp loved it amazing and Yeah, and I liked blur as well. Yeah, they were great. They were very good and I saw them live and Wow, they were a lot better live than anyone else really do you see probably no not back then I've seen them since I saw The night of the more the night after he did the thing with Michael Jackson, the Brits. Oh, yeah. Which is so funny to watch that back if you ever do that. If you watch the coverage, there were people on GMTV or what it was then, the next morning going, this is just really serious about how terrible it was, what happened and what he'd done. It was

so awful. What a disgrace it was. He really disgraced the Brits. I know. Look back at it now, it's like, boy, it was just wonderful he did that. It was great. I know he had a really terrible time. Yeah. He was vilified. It's incredible isn't it? Just for jumping up there. I think the spin that they tried to give it was that he hurt some of the children. I think that was Michael. This is an advert for Squarespace. My name is Yandru, author of the well-selling book The Secret of Succeeding at Success, and I have a question for you.

Why did 2024 suck so badly? Was it because you bought all those clever books but didn't read any of them? Was it that you didn't give up enough fun things? Was it that you didn't start your days at 4am with an intensive cardio workout while managing your crypto? No, it was because you never got round to building that website. 2025 is the year that changes, with Squarespace. With their superb easy-to-use templates and tools, you can have a professional-looking website ready to launch in literally a short time. Then monetize content, check analytics, post videos, gather subscribers, send newsletters

and much more with Squarespace. Just visit squarespace.com slash buxton for a free trial and when you're ready to launch, use the offer code BUXTON to save 10% off your first purchase of a website or domain. Go to squarespace.com slash Buxton now and start making 2025 not suck. Squarespace cannot guarantee that 2025 will not suck. Eight. Continue.

Woo hoo. ["Wendy Wood Podcasts"] Hey, welcome back to Wendy Wood, Podcats. That was Rob Burley talking to me there. I'm very grateful to Rob for making the time to come and chat. And yeah, I didn't realize when I was talking to him that the Brian and Maggie drama was going to be coming out this January. So I just wanted to put this episode out before that dropped.

I've seen it, really enjoyed it, as I said Harriet Walter is spectacular, they're all very good. Coogan, always good, but Harriet Walter, wow, what a thatch. There's also links in the description to the original Brian Walden and Margaret Thatcher interview, and there's a link to Rob's book Why is this lying bastard lying to me? which I recommend for a often humorous and insightful perspective on the world of political TV. So yeah it's already been quite an eventful 2025 but one of the things that hit me on a personal level was David Lynch's death. That was one of those moments where I felt genuinely sad that someone I never knew was

gone. He was on my podcast guest wish list from day one, but it never happened, obviously. I just thought he was great and in the last few years He's one of those people that I just Spent a lot of time watching in interview form on YouTube. I probably spent longer Watching interviews with him on YouTube than I've actually spent watching his films much as I like them. Here's some Lynch notes He was the perfect artist, I think. His life and work seemed to me like an extreme illustration of what it is to be human.

He was capable of tapping into and portraying in dreamlike, disturbing ways, the absolute worst that people are capable of and the hell on earth that we can create, which is there of course in so many of his films there's the nightmarish isolation of Eraserhead there's the cruelty of the mob in The Elephant Man everything about the character of Frank Booth in Blue Velvet which is a film that I walked out of

when I went to the cinema to see it with Joe and Louis when it came out in the 80s. And I was watching Mark Komode do a nice tribute to David Lynch the other day and he walked out of it too. But like me, he later came to think very differently of that film. Not too long ago I was watching Isabella Rossellini speaking about it and that's worth looking up. But he was so interesting because there was such a stark contrast to all that in his personal life. He was

so sort of sweet and kind to people as far as I can tell. He was always very funny, like really funny. And he was a champion for peace and love and blissful appreciation of existence through transcendental meditation, which was a big part of his life. I've put a few links in the description to some profiles and documentaries that look interesting, some of them I haven't seen, others I have. The problem with a lot of profiles of David Lynch is that they're made by people who love him so much that they feel they need to try and evoke his style somehow. And they, with the framing of the shots, with the music, with a kind of slightly obscure approach to the

interview questions. But I think that he was at his best when people just came at him fairly straight. And I think you can see that in a very short but nicely put together tribute made in 2020 by a youtuber called Cosmovoid. And it has a slightly click-baity title David Lynch being a madman for eight and a half minutes solid or something but it's a really good little compilation of moments and a moving encapsulation of what made him so great but if you want to delve deeper and spend longer which I do recommend I don't think you'll regret it.

I really love the documentary The Art Life, which I've mentioned a few times on the podcast, I think. There's a documentary about the Speaking Tour David Lynch did a few years back in which he talked about the importance of transcendental meditation in his life. I haven't seen that yet. I'm looking, well, I've seen a bit of it and it looks good. I want to find out more. I mean the way he talks about it is... well it makes me want to try it. Maybe this year. So farewell excellent David Lynch. Okay that's it for this week. The podcast will be back on a more regular basis in a few weeks. I'm not sure exactly when, probably towards the end of March when I'll be with you putting out episodes regularly. Thank you

so much to Seamus Murphy Mitchell for his invaluable production support on this episode. Thanks to everybody at Acast for their continued hard work keeping the show on the road, liaising with my sponsors etc. Thank you to Helen Green for her beautiful artwork. She's still busy refining a new image of my face for the cover of my book, which is I think weeks away from finally being completed. Maybe even less. There is a link in the description so that you can pre-order it. I would greatly appreciate it if you did. It should be out in May, I hope. That's the current plan. Thank you most of all to you for coming back and joining me. Very nice to be with you again. Hope you're doing okay. Come over here, let's have a hug. I've got my ski jacket on so I don't smell too bad. Good to see you. All right doglegs, let's get back to

that warm kitchen and until next time we share the same out all space. Go carefully and for what it's worth, I do love you. Byeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee. I take a pant when me bum's up Give me like a smile and a thumbs up I take a pant when me bum's up Like and subscribe Like and subscribe Like and subscribe Please like and subscribe Give me like a smile and a thumbs up I take a pant when me bum's up

Give me like a smile and a thumbs up I take a pant when me bum's up I take a pant when me bum's up I take a pant when me bum's up I take a pant smile on my thumbs up I'll say good-bye when everybody's up I'll say good-bye when everybody's up I'll say good-bye when everybody's up I'll say good-bye when everybody's up I'll say good-bye when everybody's up I'll say good-bye when everybody's up

I'll say good-bye when everybody's up I'll say good-bye when everybody's up I'll say good-bye when everybody's up I'll say good-bye when everybody's up I'll say good-bye when everybody's up I'll say good-bye when everybody's up I'll say good-bye when everybody's up I'm going to be a little bit of a little bit of a little bit of a little bit of a little bit of a

little bit of a little bit of a little bit of a little bit of a little bit of a little bit of a little bit of a little bit of a little bit of a Thanks for watching!