The Chaser Report - In Liz We Truss | Henry Naylor

Episode Date: November 6, 2022

Charles interviews British comedian, director, and playwright Henry Naylor who is most known for his work on the satirical series 'Spitting Image'. Henry explains why England is going off the walls and they keep churning through prime ministers. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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Instacart, groceries that over deliver. The Chaser Report is recorded on Gadigal Land. Striving for mediocrity in a world of excellence, this is The Chaser Report. Hello, I'm Charles Firth, and welcome to The Chaser Report. And today we have very special guest, Henry Naylor, renowned, playwright, and also complete sort of dickhead, really. With the emphasis on the latter, more than the former, I think. Yeah, but yes. Now, Henry is based in England.

He has had a long career writing satires, dating back to, like, L.S. Smith and Jones and not the 9 o'clock news. Really classic sort of comedy is where he started. Yeah, and spitting images is a big one. I mean, that was, as a satirical man yourself, I mean, I think that was one of my favorite shows to do. It was great writing about the week's politicians. on a Tuesday and putting it on air on a weekend and sort of being able to see you work that quickly. Because I think one of the problems with TV is very often you write something in March and it

goes out in November and you've no idea what you're trying to achieve. Well, there's something beautiful about immediacy of doing switching image, which I'm sure you case a boy is now all about. Yes, indeed. But so I should probably explain, the reason why we got Henry on was because when I first reached out to him, Liz Truss was about to become Prime Minister and I thought, why don't we get somebody on who can tell us about this new Prime Minister, it'll be perfect, we can talk about it. But by the time we've actually recorded this interview, not only has Liz Truss,

you know, been Prime Minister, she's also no longer Prime Minister, which is a bit of a problem. I know. So what happened to her? Nobody knows. She's just crawled into a hole somewhere and disappeared. I mean, it's absurd, isn't it? We've had three prime ministers and two monarchs in the space of two months. You know, it's an amazing, ridiculous football score. You know, I'm sure it's sort of like, you know, no doubt Charlie or poppy's clogs by the end of the year. And we'll get three of each.

And also sort of the public is just so confused about what's going on. I mean, I think we're almost a bit weary about it all now. I mean, one of the most extraordinary things that's happening today is, is that there is, the former House Secretary, the House Secretary who worked under Boris, who is accused of basically being so neglectful that 80,000 people died unnecessary in his, under his charge. He was finally not because of what he did, but because he was caught snogging his researcher inside. inside parliamentary offices. And people were saying, oh, he didn't practice social distancing, so therefore he should be sacked.

And now he's going on, I'm a celebrity, get me out of here. And the Tory party have finally got off their bum, and they've sacked him as an MP for going on that show. They didn't care at all when 80,000 people were dying under his charge.

The thing that got them really exercised and really made them shove him out of the door was when he sort of, played on the show where he's going to be forced fantasticals. You know, frankly, I think more Tory MPs should be doing that, and we'd find them more endearing if they were made to sort of suffer in the jungle. I kind of think British politics, correct me if I'm wrong, but what I read on British politics is everyone lives in the shadow of Margaret Thatcher.

So everyone's trying to sort of out mean Margaret Thatcher, and she was really mean. And so that's, what Liz Trust did, that she came in and sort of said, we're just going to hate the poor. I mean, but all the Tories still keep trying to claim a legacy. That's one of the things that Liz Trusted. She was like, she was like saying, oh, well, we need to cut taxes. That's what Margaret Thatcher did.

And, you know, Thatcher, whether she did it well or not, believed it very much in spite the lower middle class worker. and her meritocracy in cutting taxes to help people improve themselves. But Liz Trust just did it in an utterly insane way. She just sort of said, right, we're going to cut taxes, even though we've got this huge debt because of COVID. And everybody just went, no, we can't do that. So we hoofed her out.

But yeah, so she should be in the jungle, eating tarantula. Testicles. She's having snakes shoved in her rear. You know, she can get them all. So I've noticed British Prime Ministers have an enormous speaker fees on the international circuit. Like Tony Blair, I think, makes £300,000 per speech. I'm just wondering, is that what Liz Trust now does?

What does she do now that she's sort of an ex-prime minister of Britain? I mean, even though she was just there for about three seconds. When I was Prime Minister, I went to the Queen's view. So it's like a three-minute speech. speech, is it? It's a three-second speech to speak a good prime minister. I think it's funny, though, well, I mean, a lot of these politicians, once they've

left power, they seem a lot more reasonable. I mean, sort of like, I went to see Tony Blair do a lecture recently. And there's a kind of sadness there, because like, I think had he not done the Iraq war, he would have gone down quite a good prime minister. I mean, apart from the

war crimes, he was great. But it was such a big error. It was It was such a massive mistake that that's all people about him. And it's similar with David Cameron. I mean, sort of David Cameron, who basically did the Brexit vote. I think he was very complacent and very arrogant. I think he kind of thought you didn't have to do anything. He would win it.

And so he didn't really campaign most of Brexit. And that has been immensely damaging for Britain. And so people are saying he's one of the worst prime ministers ever. You know, I mean, the bizarre thing about Liz Trusses, she made her major mistake as the very first thing she did when she came into office. Yeah, I suppose I'd say it's time. And five years of doing, and more of doing more sensible policies. From over here, from our perspective on England, you sort of see, you see these images of lorries lined up at Dover trying to get in. To what extent do you think Brexit is actually part of this whole?

problem. The reason why you've had this sort of cascade of different prime ministers is because Brexit. I know it's, I think people feel like that politicians feel like they can't say it because that is what the public wanted and they feel like they can't say to the public, you got it wrong. But on a micro level, you know, just going into the supermarket now, you can really feel the difference because like it used to be going to the supermarket and every single shelf was stopped. Now it's like when COVID was on, there's certain things are missing. So you go there, at my local supermarket around the corner, there's sort of things that I went in yesterday, there's no noodles on the shelves. And people aren't acknowledging this.

This is just taking as part of the fabric of everyday life. But it's like visiting the Soviet Union back in the 80s when they had food shortages. You think when are people going to make the connection? When does fast grocery delivery through Instacart matter most? When your famous grainy mustard potato salad isn't so famous without the grainy mustard. When the barbecues lit but there's nothing to grill. When the in-laws decide that actually they will stay for dinner. Instacart has all your groceries covered this summer.

So download the app and get delivery in as fast as 60 minutes. Plus, enjoy $0 delivery fees on your first three orders. Service fees exclusions and terms apply. Instacart. Groceries that over deliver. The Chaser Report. I mean, to what extent are we seeing the actual collapse of a Western capitalist democracy? You know, to what extent, is this the end for Britain?

I don't know. I mean, so Britain is remarkably resistant from that point of view. We're probably invades some foreign country and colonise them, which is what we've done for the past two of the years, not doing anything you sell ourselves, who just nicked it from over the government. You should re-invade India. That's what you should do. Re-invade India. Yeah, I'm going to just secretly sneak in there and try and try and do it.

You get a better cricket team out of it. I mean, isn't there a point that actually, like, England's going to be left on its own and, you know, Ireland's going to join as one and join back in the EU? It can't even be that. And sort of, you know, there's, even in England itself, you know, people in London are saying like, all right, We don't want Brexit, the rest of the country did, so can we be our own state? I mean, I don't know, it's going to turn into like Italy was in the 1800s. It's going to be all this little principality stuff like that.

I don't know. It's very, very sad. I mean, sort of, there's a feeling there's always been a feeling in England now. That when he comes to Scotland, I think English people, rightly or wrongly, feel that we're propping up the Scottish economy. And Scotland have always gone. think that they're propping up the English economy. They're saying, oh, we've got all the gas and we've got all the oil. And I think, sort of, you know, the value of gas and oil might become more diminished within the next 20 years, you know, if we do genuinely shift towards

alternative fuel. So it's going to be interesting, isn't it? Because like, frankly, with the Australian desert, you will be the new Saudi Arabia. If we finally learn how to turn the heat and the sun into a genuine, genuine sort of energy solution. Now, I just want to change topics a little bit to talk about a different story. You might not have heard about it over there, but you know Queen Elizabeth? She died recently. No. Yeah.

I mean, it's funny. It's such a, I'd be very intrigued to hear what you think from an Australian perspective here, because the Republican debate has kind of gone quiet. over here. When it immediately happened, there were a few people like saying, well, she's, you know, that's it for the royal family. In the last few weeks, maybe because all these other things are happening, that debates disappeared. I think that one of the, one of the, one of the, an interesting theory I heard about Liz Trust was, though, and one of the reasons why she didn't survive very long, was that belief, was, was, was people were blaming it on the queen

effect. People in Britain felt very destabilized after she died. She died. She was kind of like a fixture, a certainty. She was kind of, and I think over here, I mean, I was bizarrely affected about it. I mean, I would say I'm almost a Republican. I don't really care, really, to be honest. But when she passed away, it just felt like there is so much invisible propaganda. Her face is on every single coin, on every single stamp, on every single banknotes. and for that to suddenly go that's all I've ever known I'm 56 that's all I've ever known is this figure in the background and she's always been protected and I think she always did seem to have a dedication to duty when she passed away even even sort of Republicans over here were like saying well she gave it her best shot she was committed to it and she spent her life dedicated to

to service, whether that institution should exist or not, is a different question. But she did probably about as well as you can do, given the circumstances, and she tried their best. And so there was a lot of sadness, and on the radio phoning there were, people were phoning up in tears and stuff like that. And I went to have a look at the flowers outside in Green Park, and there were just loads of them. And people at Splank made a real effort. They've done all these carefully done drawings of her and holding hands of Prince Philip and sort of Paddington Bear. And people, I think, I think living

in London, in a sort of like amongst a liberal arty, farty elite, you kind of forget what people feel like in the provinces, I think. People were genuinely, genuinely moved by her. And again, sort of like there's a lot of people from the armed services that turned up and they'd laid flowers down and they'd sort of you know i think sort of it gives your life meaning i think if you are serving this figurehead of the country who represents the country if you're a serviceman and so their love for the queen was something that i personally find quite hard to understand as a sort of like a cynical satirist i think uh yeah You know, so it was quite eye-opening to get a gauge of what the nation really is.

I don't know if that was the same in Australia. It was the same. I mean, sort of like, do people feel sad about it? Or were people going, right, let's move on, let's have a republic. Yeah, well, the support for the Republican movement plummeted about 10 points in the immediate aftermath. But I think also what then happened was, like there was just, I wasn't here, luckily, I was overseas for those three weeks. But apparently it just got just incredibly boring. Like just the ABC had wall-to-wall coverage of the Queen is still dead.

The Queen is still dead. And, yeah, so I think after a while, I don't think it will dent the Republican movement long term. I met her once, Charles. I met when I was nine years. Well, I'll tell you what, if you, that would have made a one-hour documentary on the ABC over here. if you'd met her, there's far less tenuous than most of the people they interviewed. What happened? Well, she slagged out.

What happened was, on her Jubilee in 1977, this is me, show my age. She did a big tour of Britain, and she went around a lot of local communities. And one of the things she did was she came to Bairnsley, where I'm from, which is a fairly grim northern town. and we were told she was coming and so they got all the kids in the area to paint her this sort of bayou tapestry style mural and I was nine years old

and there were older kids there about 16 and stuff like that and they obviously took control of it and there'd been a display on the Thames a sort of a where they had a flotilla or sort of like a boat display and one of the things that happened on the Thames was they had a giant inflowice

relatable man lying on his back and said, yeah, well, the queen was at this event, so she'll definitely remember it. We should paint this floating man in the Thames. So we painted this thing, and it looked like a suicide victim. And the queen sort of came past, and you're not meant to talk to her, right? So she kind of walked past me, and I was, in a bit, a bit of a huff, because she'd ignored me. And then she just took one look at this picture. And she said in this really confused noise, she went, what is it? I was elbowing this 16-year-olds out of the way and said,

there's a floating man in the Thames. Do you remember? And she went, no. What's on? Henry, we're going to have to leave that there, but we've got our scoop. You had a brief indirection with the queen 40 years ago. That is, that's a huge news, especially out here for the ABC. We'll catch up with you again next time you have a Prime Minister, which I think will be pretty soon.

Who do you think will be the next Prime Minister after Rishi Soon? No, it might be my third. It's probably my go, isn't that? I don't know. I've not. I don't know. I've got a lot. Anyway, well, next time, yeah, we'll invite you back, Prime Minister Henry Nailer.

Thank you very much. Our gear is from road microphones and we're part of the ACAST-Created network. Catch you tomorrow. When does fast grocery delivery through Instacart matter most? When your famous grainy mustard potato salad isn't so famous without the grainy mustard. When the barbecues lit, but there's nothing to grill. When the in-laws decide that actually they will stay for dinner. Instacart has all your groceries covered this summer.

So download the app and get delivery in as fast as 60 minutes. Plus, enjoy $0 delivery fees on your first three orders. Service fees exclusions and terms apply. Instacart. groceries that over deliver.