The Rest Is Politics: Leading - 27: Feargal Sharkey: Teenage Kicks, Bobby Sands, and saving our rivers

Episode Date: July 17, 2023

Can we reverse the damage done to our polluted rivers and seas? What was it like to write Teenage Kicks? How has Brexit hamstrung the music industry? From punk singer to political activist, Feargal Sharkey is now the leading figure in the fight against sewage and water pollution in the UK. On today's episode of Leading he sits down with Alastair to discuss environmentalism, growing up in Derry, the success of The Undertones, and much, much more. TRIP Plus: Become a member of The Rest Is Politics Plus to support the podcast, enjoy ad-free listening to both TRIP and Leading, benefit from discount book prices on titles mentioned on the pod, join our Discord chatroom, and receive early access to live show tickets and Question Time episodes. Just head to therestispolitics.com to sign up, or start a free trial today on Apple Podcasts: apple.co/therestispolitics. Instagram: @restispolitics Twitter: @RestIsPolitics Email: [e-mail] Producers: Dom Johnson + Nicole Maslen Exec Producers: Tony Pastor + Jack Davenport Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Thanks for listening to The Restis Politics. Sign up to the Restis Politics Plus. To enjoy ad-free listening, receive a weekly newsletter, join our members chat room and gain early access to live show tickets. Just go to therestispolities.com. That's the restispolities.com. Welcome to the Restis Politics leading with me, Alistair Campbell.

Flying solo today without Rory Stewart, who is logistically challenged, shall we say, between airports. But I'm delighted to be joined by somebody who you'll have heard if you listen to the rest is politics question time a few days ago, and who has got a very, very interesting history. We'll talk a bit about your childhood. We'll talk a bit about your career, very successful career as a musician. But the reason why you're on leading is because in recent months in particular, you've become a really prominent and significant voice

in a very, very important cultural, political, social, economic debate. And that's a very important, that is water. So welcome, Fergal Sharkey. Hello, to Campbell. Thank you very much. And thank you for the glorious praise and wise words and insight. All of it completely untrue, of course, on how I will be now incredibly bashful and retire quietly back to my home in North London. I don't think you will because I think there's a wonderful quote from Roosevelt who said, people don't care how much you know until they know how much you care. Yeah. Now, I get the impression that you know a lot about the water industry.

that you do your homework, you do your research, you're mildly obsessive. Damn. But more importantly, you care. Yeah. Now, I guess your character is key to this. You've obviously got a personality that you're driven and if you decide upon something, you go for it. I just want to go right back to the beginning.

You ended up living most of your life in England. But how much of a Northern Irishman do you feel? But I would listen distinctly because it's what created me. and it is very Freudian but invariably tell me about your childhood and in my case that was quite an interesting childhood

my father was chairman of the Labour Party in Derry when there was such a thing yeah do you think by the way do you think there should be again oh I think there should be oh absolutely and that's ironically enough

when my father passed away the Irish Times did this quite big obituary and even in the 1950s he spent huge amounts of time in this ultimately futile effort of trying to to reach out to the Protestant community. On the simple basis that everybody needed to bury the hatchet of sectarianism

because the industrialists in Northern Ireland were using that division to separate the working classes, to diffuse their ability to make a cohesive, strong argument about pay conditions, holiday pay, maternity pay, housing and everything else. And it was used to exploit the working classes in both communities. Now, as it turns out, I could argue that my dad was clearly 40 years ahead of his time and trying to make that argument. And he never made the inroads to it. He was also a branch secretary of his local union, the electrician union. I'm still traumatized and probably spend years in therapy about being taken as an eight, nine-year-old child to a meeting, a union meeting,

and I'm in a room with 400 other men and my father. They're all referring to him as brother Sharkey. and as a confused eight-year-old I'm going to who the hell of these people. I've never met none of these. You're not my brother, you're not my uncle, you're not my dad's brother. I have no idea who you are. What are you calling my dad, brother Sharkey?

The truth is, in the Sharkey family, it wasn't my dad was the political powerhouse. Like all good Irish matriarchal families, that would be my mother. My mom was massively motivated about the civil rights movement, massively motivated about trying to preserve

the Irish law. language and culture and the arts and was friends with people like Brian Freel and Chano Casey and all kinds of people and it was my mom who on the morning of April 9th, 1969 demanded that the whole family climbed into the car, the dad drove us all to the opposite side of Ireland whereas a family we took part in the people's democracy civil rights march between Belfast and Dublin protesting against injustices to the Catholic community in Northern Ireland. You'd have been 12? I was 10.

You're 10, then, okay. 10, 11. Now, just a minute, and just on your names, we know you as Fergal Sharkey. You're actually called Sean Fergels Sharkey. Shan. Oh, blacky, how long is he called, Sean Fergels Sharkey, right?

And just tell us who you're named after. If anybody knows a song, an Irish song called Shan South from Doriel. Can sing it, sing it. I'm afraid not even the Restless Politics podcast can afford that excessively modest fee. Shan South and Freglow Hanlon were killed attack in a police station in Northern Ireland

in January of 1957 a year before I was born My mother clearly without the aid of Ultrascan or other AIDS Clearly decided that if her newborn child was going to be But boy she was going to name him Shan Ferdle in honour of two dead IRA men Now what might that tell you about my mother's politics Well it gives me a fair indication that she wasn't maybe committed to the Labour Party cause as your dad.

And how do you feel about that? Well, listen, conversely, it's one of those things that I grew up in a household where it's extraordinarily thinking about it and it is incredibly fruiting but I hope it does answer your question. There was nights in my kitchen that the local plumber,

the electrician, the housewife, the local poet, the local schoolteacher would discuss bringing down the national government in Northern Ireland. And I watched as a 10, 11, 12-year-old child. I watched the local housewife electrician, plumber, or electrician schoolteacher

bring down the bloody government in Northern Ireland or play a ruling and achieving that. So I grew up in a house where, well, anything's possible. The other bit, my mom organised this festival called fish that I'll call him kill, which was all about preserving the Irish language and culture and everything else.

So other nights there'd be people having mad philosophical arguments about the merits and disdains of how much Seamus Heaney tried replicate William Butler Yeats and maybe he should get his own gig together so when I reflect upon it you just go on an extraordinary household

and an extraordinary opportunity to grow up in one of an extraordinary life they've led and would you say you share basic you share the basic politics of your parents Oh listen without exception I did there's no way around that whatsoever and I still have this very simple belief that society has an obligation

to protect the vulnerable and that's kind of my opening game and any game of politics whatsoever And so when did you leave Northern Ireland? That was the early 1980s, I think 83, 84. It'll come as no surprise that the early undertones, we tried quite hard to kind of still live there. I think we were incredibly conscious that, oh God,

will we going to be that classic little band, has a bit of a hit, and that's it. You're out of there within five minutes, and the next people see of you, you're in some national newspapers surrounded by champagne bottles and lots of cash. And we tried really hard to just, be those kids back in dairy.

But by the early 1980s and particularly when I was clearly focusing on going out to try and make my own records, invariably that was going to mean a move to London. And just tell me a little bit, I'm fascinated in the way bands come together in the whole creative process. I mean, just give

me a flavour of what being a young want to be professional musicians was like at that time. It was a completely random act of coming together. where there was literally two brothers and a couple of their friends

15, 16, 17 oh let's be in a band. Okay, but we've got no gear. And by the way, it does matter because nobody can play anything anyway. Oh, but well we need somebody to can sing because we're not good any good at it. Oh, well I know this bloke in school called Sharkey. He's on all these feshes and all these

Irish singing competitions. He wins loads of medals. I'll ask him. And maybe he'll come and sing. And the first time I turned up and met the other guys that were to become the undertones. Little did I know that all the kit they had, the guitars, the amplifiers, the drums,

they actually owned none of it. They completely borrowed every bit of it and as it turned out nobody could play a thing. So what are the chances in the big universe we all live in that five random kids with no outward talent ability or background could just

come together and within two years of created teenage kicks. How did that work? It was literally people just sitting around going, well, I've got this tune. I've got this idea for something, what do you think? And ironically enough, we were always driven curiously at the time by criticism and by people going, you can't do that.

See, there's more Freud and it just occurred to me. At the time in Ireland and around where we grew up, there were kind of tribute bands. So there was a local band that could play the whole of Dark Side of the Moon by Pink Floyd, absolutely note perfect. And that's what they do every Friday night, get up on a pub and they would play Dark Side of the Mountain by Pink Floyd.

Absolutely no perfect. They looked at us and gone and went, well, you can't play. Yeah, well, you're rubbish. And that would just kind of make us go and practice even more. And then we realised, well, they can't play their own songs. So you know what, we're going to write songs. That we'd no idea what we were doing. So we just made it up as we went along.

And it is just one of those random acts of creativity. You've been around it enough, Alistair. You can put five people from creative backgrounds in a room and nothing will happen. It'll be the most boring hour you've ever spent of your life. But you just put five different personalities in and for some own own

reason the way they interact and relate to each other suddenly this magic occurs and suddenly we the original idea was thanks to a guy in Belfast called Terry Huli who ran a little record shop who let us borrow 100 quid

to pay for eight hour studio time so one week we went spent four hours in the studio recording. We went back a week later and spent another four hours mixing it. By the way, we'd no idea what we're doing. And I still, to this day, think I was standing there going, well, a bit more of the blue knob,

please, but I've no idea what the blue knob actually bloody will does. And if you've ever seen the movie, and if you haven't, good vibrations a movie, it's about Terry. Yes, that did happen. We're there in the studio, and everybody else, we're just doing our thing, and everybody else in the studio sitting there listening to Teenage Kick

been recorded for the first time, just going, oh my God, we've never heard anything like this. And we're just going, yeah, but we're five kids from Derry and this is what we do. Brilliant. And you were on top of the pops? Yeah. On the night that Bobby Sands died.

Yeah. So what did your mum think of that? Talk about your life going in a different direction. I know, listen completely and that's, if you know, go back and look at the footage, you'll see that some of the band were wearing black armbands. Ah. See, the way you say, ah. Were you?

I wasn't, but some of the band did. Right. Why did you not? This is one of the most iconic developments within the whole piece, well the whole troubles was this Bobby Sand's hunger strike He became a symbol He dies

Without question Unfortunately in Irish history It was just repeating a game that had been played out Any number of times before So was it a monumental moment in Irish history? Yes, it was And that's invariably You get into those conversations of

Well we can not do it And would that be a protest But they'll just put somebody else on And by the way, for a three minutes slot on top of the pops. There'll be 50,000 other people out there, will take that, in which case nobody even knows you've done it, or do we do it, and without mentioning anything to the BBC,

do a couple of the band turn up wearing black arm bands, and the BBC just filament and broadcast it, and they'd no idea what was going on. Until it was explained to them several days later. All right, Fergal, lots more fascinating stuff in your life to come. After a break. Hi, everybody, it's Dominic Samark here from The Rest is History.

Now, some of you may have heard me on your show, The Rest is Politics, when Rory was away and I was filling in and enjoying Alistair Campbell's tremendous banter. And I'm back to tell you about our new series on The Restis History, which is all about Britain in the 1970s, a period with a lot of uncanny resemblances to our own. So right now we're living through a moment when oil shocks generated by war in the Middle East are rippling through the world economy, when Britain feels like it's sunk in a bit of a malaise. people are arguing about Europe, the government has got a few issues with the trade unions,

and we have a kind of, I suppose you'd say governing elite, a kind of political class that is really struggling to come to terms with all of these issues. And people are asking if Britain is governable at all. So there are a lot of parallels between that Britain that I'm describing, which is our Britain and the Britain of the mid-1970s. So in this series that's coming out on the rest is history. We'll be looking at these and other issues. We'll be talking about the rise of Margaret Thatcher, obviously a colossal figure in our political life even now, whether you love her or loathe her. We'll be talking about the very first Brexit referendum of 1975, a subject that I'm sure Rory and Alistair will have strong opinions about. We'll be talking

about the fall of the Labour Prime Minister Harold Wilson and we'll be talking about one of the grimmest moments in Britain's economic history, the moment in 1976 when we had to go cap in hand, as people said at the time, to the interoperable. International Monetary Fund, the IMF, for a then record bailout. Now, if that sounds good to you, how could it not sound good to you? Of course it sounds good to you. We have a clip for you to listen to at the end of this episode. And if you want to hear more, just search for The Rest is History wherever you get your podcasts. How do you feel about what's going on in Northern Ireland now? I mean, you know, just track back a bit. How have you seen Northern Ireland develop? How do you feel

about it now? Well, you see, ironically enough, Ireland's kind of an extraordinary place where the Republic of Ireland 30 years ago 85% of the population of the Republic of Ireland would go to mass on a Sunday and price we get up and poppets and tell 85% of the population what to do

and we would all do it so here's the thing in 30 years the Republic of Ireland became the first country in the world at a national referendum to pass a quality of marriage legislation has amended the Constitution not once but twice to legalise abortion

and contraception, and as we speak at this very moment in time, it's been governed by the openly gay son of an Indian immigrant and an atheist poet who was re-elected for second term as present. Well, what the hell were you people doing? I left you alone for five minutes, and look what happened. So it's true

and it's part of where politics fails, and it brings us back to Westminster. Is it divisive? Is it an affront to democracy in the modern world that there is not an assembly in Northern Ireland? Yes, there is. that is an outrageous situation and it's one that needs to be resolved

and I will point the finger both the politicians in Northern Ireland but I might add Alistair if you haven't seen it and in fact I think at this point it should be compulsory viewing for every single politician certainly in Northern Ireland

if not most definitely in Whitehall once upon in time in Northern Ireland the first episode there is a clear lesson and reminder that's where we've come from under no circumstances should we have any ambition to go back there But equally, I'm afraid I have to say it, Alistair, you end up tracing the world back to Whitehall and number 10 and the complete disregard and scant regard that number 10 and this government has shown towards Northern Ireland and the people of Ireland and the future of Northern Ireland, whether as part of Union United Ireland or not, but they have just shown little, if any, interest, if not utter disdain and disregard. And again, a plague of locust on all of the houses for that.

Northern Ireland's possibly on the age of going quite through a few difficult years and I would be really resentful to see that happen. Yeah. Yeah. So just give us a sense of what your life is like at the moment when it seems to me every time I turn the radio, the telly on they are talking about water. In reality, I actually had retired from life 10 years ago. And that, by the way, is an extraordinary thing for a man to be able to say that at

55, I kind of just went, that's it. I'm happy to hang up my boots and I've made my contribution to life. and I'm going to retire. And then by osmosis, an accident, found myself engaged in something. I have a huge passion for fly fishing. I became chairman of the oldest fly fishing club in England. You've now shed most of your listeners at this point.

And I suddenly realized that here was two and a half miles of river in Hartfordshire that for 185 years, a grip of men and women with an interest in fly fishing had looked after and preserved and 185 years later that river was about to die. It was suffering from eutrification. It had become nothing more than a stagnant pond.

And this is a chalk stream one of the rarest ecosystems on the planet. I, like a lot of people, thought, well, this is easy because there's a big regulator out there called the Environment Agency and Parliament set them up and give them all these powers and control.

And I'll just huddle off and have a quick meeting with the environment agency and go, this is dreadful, you need to do something about it. And I could then get on with my life. And I think it was about 10 minutes into that first meeting when my BS detector went off and went, oh my God. And then I realized that I was going to have to go and pick a big fight. It was that specific stretch of water that triggered this whole thing,

this whole campaign. Yes, to give you a little indication of this. Southern England is unique. There are about 225 chalk streams on the planet. They're a complete freak of geology. And think 50 to 75 million years ago when London was sitting somewhere off the equator and we were still joined in Northern France.

And there are 225. 85% of them are here in Southern England. And most of them right now are tatering on the brink of extinction because of the way we've treated them, abused them and exploited them. And the one that the ammo magnet, looks after we have been in charge of for, yeah, 185 years. It is one of the last remaining places on the very age of London where you can still find a breeding sustainable population of wild brown trout.

I know that seems like a silly thing to say, but let me put it this way, I suspect we might come on to it. There are, within the M25, about 200 miles of river. All tributaries of the Thames, I have walked every single mile of every single one of those rivers not that long ago they would have been full of hundreds of not thousands of populations of trout salmon seed trout we've decimated all of them we've killed them all off we've brought them to the eggs of extinction apart from one little two and a half mile stretching Hartfordshire and rather curiously I thought that might be worth saving

yeah so why haven't you saved the rest of a little well I'm doing my best right now which is why fully enough I guess we're here where the short version is I ended up working with a charity, taking the Environment Agency pretty much to the steps of the High Court, simply to get him to do the right thing. Now, I will admit that at this point we've resolved our issues with the Environment Agency. There is more water and plenty of water going down that river than we've seen in decades, but that experience of having to put the very government agency charged and given responsibility and the legal power to oversee and protect those rivers,

having to take them to court just to get them to do their job. That kind of pricked my curiosity. And as I sometimes explain it, that gave me an itch. And foolishly, stupily, naively, naively, I scratched that bloody itch. And every time I scratch that itch,

I just end up with an even bigger itch. So what's the biggest itch at the moment? Oh, simple fact, at a national scale, there is not a single river in England that is in good overall environmental health. every single river in England is polluted and it's our fault

and you scale that back most of that or at least a large deal of it is been driven by the water industry and this is an industry that is supposed to provide water supposed to collect and dispense with an appropriate manner our sewage but as we have now discovered and I hope I may have made some small meager contribution to help the public understand

this is an industry that has made off with seven $72 billion worth of our money from our pockets have left these companies in 60 billion pounds worth of debt, now spent 7.5 million hours over the last three years dumping sewage into our rivers, decimating whole landscapes and ecologies, and has now created a situation where, believe it or not, I can't believe I'm saying it.

London is now number nine on global cities most likely to run out of drinking water were now on a list, along with the likes of Cape Town, San Paulo, Mexico City and Jakarta. I should say, by the way, back to my point about nobody cares how much you know to the know how much you're sitting here without a note.

You kind of do seem to me to know this stuff inside out. What do you think it says about our politics that it's taken, you know, false modesty aside, it has taken you in a way to bring this to the head. Oh, well, the simple truth of the matter is we have a regulatory system that has failed.

And you're right. That makes me quite furious within the next 24 hours. will be yet another hearing and another select committee in Parliament calling in the chair and chief executive of the regulator, the leaders of Thameswater, and holding another inquiry.

My argument is, why are we calling in the chair and chief executive of Ofwat? We need the board in there. They're the public appointees. They're the ones appointed by the Secretary of State to act on behalf of government and therefore parliament and indeed to then act on behalf of the general public. They're the ones that set the policy.

They're the ones that set the strategy. Why are we not holding those people to account for the decisions they've made on our behalf and not some helpless chief executive? If you have to sort of, I hate the concept of apportioning blame, but if you had to apportion blame for the mess that we're in, just go through the various culprits. Well, you have to listen. You have to start. For me, there's a very simple thing, and I'm very happy and I can carpentatementalize things

quite quickly and simply. Did the water companies make an awful lot of money and was an awful lot of corporate greed involved or as Jonathan Ford from the FT refers to as the water industry is just a legalise rip-off. Absolutely. But that's why the regulators were there. And we've not got one but we've got two regulators

overseeing the water industry, off-watt, and the environment agency. And both of them, and I say this is a former regulator, both of them have been the most catastrophic failure I can think of. The impact that we're now going to be faced as society is there is a catastrophic

amount of money that now needs to be spent repairing the sewage system, securing London's water supply, I suspect we taxpayers and customers are going to end up picking up the tab for that incompetence and if we have any kind of will at all to ensure that you can, as I know as a passion of yours, walk into the nearest river and go swimming in it

without being confronted with the ugly underbelly of our sewage system. And I do mean wet wipes and sanitary products and contraceptives then we now have another even bigger amount of money to be spent and all of it is now probably directly and indirectly going to be picked up by the taxpayer and by the bill payer and all of it actually boils down to nothing more than utterly incompetent catastrophic failure of regulation. Okay, so that says to me that you're basically saying the regulations failed. Yeah. The companies are greedy. What about the very, the original decision back in 1989 privatisation? Did you see any merit in that at the time? Well, listen,

that personally speaking, no. But then as you know, I come from a socialist. background. Where here's the thing. 30 years later, England, so far as I'm aware, England is still unique in that we're the only country in the world that has an absolutely 100% privatised

water system. What does that tell you that there's not a single country anywhere else in the planet that went for that model? Clearly there may be some kind of inherent flaw to the whole design and application of it. There's any amount of joint partnerships with local authorities, national governments,

private sector that England is the only country 30 years later with a completely 100% private sector and clearly it's an experiment that has catastrophically failed. Even the Financial Times said that last weekend. This is an experiment that's failed. What do you make of the current,

I'm assuming, Theresa Coffey is the minister in charge? Without him just laughing, give me your assessment there. Well, listen to the best deception I can give you is, and I did it, it's a badge I wear with honour. and pride. If you go and do have a look at my Twitter profile. Do you say I've actually quoted on there, chunters on Twitter, quote, in quotation marks,

Theresa Coffey, Secretary State for the Environment, UK 2020. So that's clearly what Torres thinks of me and my little effort. Have you had any meetings with her at all? No, no, listen, I had one brief meeting four or five years ago with Rebecca Poy. And,

Alistair, you'd ask about kind of my encyclopedic knowledge of these things. I very quickly realized from my early interactions going back four maybe five years ago every time I spoke to somebody from government spoke to somebody from the environment agency off what or the industry

and I'm trying to say this as diplomatically as I should and maybe not as diplomatically I really should I quickly realized that at best I was been given a half-truth if not a downright fabrication of what the reality of the event and situation was and that's why I had to go and spend hours digging this stuff out

by instinct and just replicating the instinct you have as a journalist to many others you just know there's something going on here

and you're just going to have to keep pushing until you find it so whenever I sit down and people go oh well it's because

we've got this Victorian sewage system I'm really sorry we may as well blame the bloody Romans for traffic jams on the M2 in the M25

we don't have a Victorian system oh but government's got to spend $56 billion fixing this okay that's over 28 years.

That's amongst 11 water companies. That works out at 181 million pounds per company per year. To give your listeners a bit of context, just before Christmas, Thameswater declared 493.5 million pound profit in six months. Now, compare the supposed government grand scheme investment of 181 million pounds a year against Thames Waters' half a billion pound profit

in six months, just to put it into context. Do you feel you're making headway, or do you feel you're banging your head against the brick wall? Oh, no, and that's it. I'm happy to admit it, and I know some people in Whitehall find that I feel I'm being disruptive, but I'm genuinely not. I've lost control of this. Government's lost control of this. The water industry's lost control of this. If you're not aware, three weeks ago, Yukov did a poll. 69% of voters think that the water company should now be nationalised, and if I remember correctly. Do you think that's feasible, by the way?

Well, it's not because we can't afford it. You'd accept that it's economically... I think we can assume right now, and since we probably share a number of acquaintances, I think that if there is a change of administration at the next election, there's one certainty we can actually all

depend upon. The economy is just in such a catastrophic state that government will be utterly focused and just trying to maintain some basic public services and functions like education in the NHS and by the way, that nurse that needs a pay right.

Are you really going to explain to that nurse that you've just given several more tens, if not hundreds of billions of pounds of the public's money? So where does your campaign go? Oh, well, for me, it's very simple. Right now, it's all about the campaign and right now we have the situation

where Thameswater is now teetering in the bank of bankruptcy. There are four other companies to my certain knowledge are not that far behind. We now have the opportunity to now start dictating the shape and future of those companies.

And personally speaking, I think the legislation's already there. Government already has the power. The regulators already have the power. We need now to sit down with these companies and the shareholders and the bond managers and go, here's how this works. You're going to feel a lot of pain

for the next five, ten, ten, fifteen years. But if you agree to what we're going to suggest, you will end up with successful debt-free companies facing a profitable future and it won't have cost a taxpayer or a penny. So you have government control without government ownership? I'm going to give you the wherewithal for it. Section 18 of the Water Industries Act 1991.

Whoever drafted it predicted this very situation, and it was a very insightful judgment. Theresa Coffey, the Secretary of State, could fix most of this afternoon with nothing more than a stroke of a pen. She's had that power since the day she took office, the question actually becomes, why hasn't she actually used that power and that authority? Okay, well, Theresa, if you're listening, you can come on and explain at any point you like, and we might even get Fergal back from the show. Now, you mentioned earlier that you had experience as a regulator. So this is when you kind of went into the music industry.

Just describe what you did. Well, ironically enough, I did go off into the music industry. I got to you about 30, I think. And as I sometimes describe it, I began to have this reoccurring nightmare of waking up one day to discover I was the wrong side of 50 with receding hairling and a ponytail. and still deluding myself that I might be back in top of the pups this week

in thinking it's not a good look shirky it's really not grateful that I'd had the career I had the undertones a thing with Vince Clark and the Assembly my solo career there's three careers more than most people ever get close to

so I thought again naively stupidly arrogantly at 30 that I could make a whole career path choice jump and still end up doing something reasonably be productive and interesting in life, so I went to work for record companies. Along the way, because of my fly-facing thing, I managed to contract Wiles disease, which nearly killed me, but not quite.

That left me quite kind of a debilitated in mid-1990s. And again, I'm not blowing smoke in your direction, Alistair, but as it turned out, while I was recuperating from all of that, incapable of going back to work full-time, just physically not capable of it. and at the time there was a labour government who had introduced and was beginning to implement a set of recommendations by a man called Lord Nolan around the whole idea of propriety in public life and who tore apart and re-examined the whole issue of public appointees and it was the then Labour government that actually advertised openly competitive application process

for board positions on the radio authority. Now would this also be a government that you would exempt from some of the criticisms of the commitment to Northern Ireland? Yes. Thank you. I don't know unless I can get into that one on another occasion. So you then became?

I became one of the people that were responsible for regulating the commercial radio industry in the United Kingdom. So as it turns out and I kind of, it's a bit late. Now early in my little challenges, my little approach to the water industry and stuff,

I clearly made quite a lot of effort to make sure that nobody actually vaguely knew. I might actually know something about regulation that it's not how it worked but it's no idea. So I would like to think that when I openly and furiously criticize

the likes of Offwood and the Environment Agency, I would like to think that I can do it from a position of some strength, knowledge and experience having done that kind of job myself in the past. And then you were also CEO of British Music, right? UK music. So how does that work? Is that about getting them

the money they deserve from all the different... Yeah, actually again it goes back to the Labour government. And at This is not a kind of loving for the Labour government, by the way. It's a great government, though. Rory says this all the time. You know, Labour government was fantastic. The then Labour government had been making overtures for the music industry for a number of years going,

you know what, we obviously think the creative industry is utterly fantastic. And we want to do everything we can to try and help them out because when it comes to music, film, fashion, design, writing, reading, the UK punches way above its own weight in the international stage. and is glory recognized and admired for the contribution it makes. So as a government, we want to try and do something to help support and make sure you're getting everything you need from a government. At the time, the music industry was full of its own warring parties,

and I very loosely describe it as traditionally, all the recording artists hate the record companies, and the record companies all hate the publishers, and the publishers all hate the lawyers, and the lawyers all hate the songwriters, and the songwriters all hate the managers, and everybody all hates their agents and on and on and on.

And I was tasked by the industry to basically put the 12 warring sectors in a room to help them develop consensus, to help them create an ambition and a vision for their own future and help them to bring that deferition. And the structure that was used to achieve that

is UK music. I'm pleased to say that 12, 14 years, 15 years after I put the thing together, it's still there, still providing the heart beat. I can still remember phoning a mutual friend of ours who I won't name, who at the time was an advisor at number 10, and telling him what had just been done, and the voice on the other end of the phone, slightly more colourfully than I'm about to say, it simply went, oh my God, that's all the talent and all the money in the same rim. Yes, and by God, does that give you strength and power?

enormous. And I think it was a valuable lesson for the music industry. And after that, the British music industry, there's any number of challenges. I'm not going to mention the B word, but I will. Well, I want you to actually. I want to know what the impact of Brexit. Well, it's certainly devastated the live music industry. There are two teams in the Premier League in the global music industry. There's the North Americans and the UK. And it's no disrespect to the rest of the planet. They're all playing Sunday League morning football and Hackley Marshes. It's nice you're there, you're having fun, but you're nowhere near the two big boys. And that Anglo-American catalogue, as we call it generically in the industry, loosely would account until right quite

recently, would loosely account for about 80% of the market in Europe. And now we've just gone, made it massively more difficult for herself that when the government should be sitting with UK music, on behalf of the industry and going, we like this 80% stuff, do you think we could make it 85 or maybe even 90 and can we come up with a plan and a strategy that'll deliver that and all the benefits that does to our GDP and income and joins employment and VAT and everything else?

No, we've actually made it more difficult if not downright and possible for British artists to now go and work and tour in Europe and I've recently believed that this government actually was made several offers by the EU. They try and find a resolution to this

and flatly turned them all down to such an extent even the likes of Elton John, who's just finishing off a global tour, which, according to the newspapers, that one tour alone generated $700 million worth of income, and even Elton was complaining he was finding a difficulty deal with the bureaucracy and the paperwork needed to go and actually do dates around the rest of Europe. So I'm assuming your mum raised you to want to one day see the United Island. Do you still want to see that and you still think you will?

Well, ironically enough, I never thought in my lifetime I would ever use the word unified Ireland and remotely be taken seriously, thanks to Brexit, has clearly put that now in the table. I wasn't being particularly insightful about it, but at the time I did try to make a clear to as many people as possible. If Brexit happened, that was going to force a border down the middle of the Irish Sea, and that invariably would make people in Northern Ireland, socially, culturally, economically look more towards the Republic than England. We're now in a situation where Sinn Féin is the largest party in Northern Ireland. There's a distinct likelihood at the next election in the Republic of Ireland,

Sinn Féin will become the largest party in the Republic of Ireland. So here's the thing, thanks to Brexit, that chess piece is now out on the table. I think if everybody's been really clever, thanks to that Susan Mackay book that Rory mentioned a couple of episodes

back, it provides a remarkable insight in that there's a community in Northern Ireland right now resign to the fact that change is going to happen, but feeling desperately insecure and unsupported and isolated. And I think politicians on both sides of the border in the North and the Republic will want to be

very sensitive about that point and that community and their future. And let me remind you all, thanks to the Good Friday Agreement, the people of Ireland get to have another referendum. So they get to have another decision and another bite at whether or not Northern Ireland wants to become part of United Ireland and by default rejoin the EU. There's a lot to play for. I mean, it is amazing when you think of it, Fergal. There's you as sort of, you know, punk rocker

who had the foresight to see that Brexit might lead to the necessity for a border down the Irish sea. But Boris Johnson didn't have that foresight. Well, listen, the simple fact the matter is... And you didn't even go to Eden, did you? Well, fully enough, I didn't. I find myself in the clutches of the Christian brothers. But if it helps, Alistair, many, many, many, many, many years later, you don't have to go to Eaton

because many decades later I found myself standing in the middle of Catania the capital city of Sicily looking at the Roman ruins thinking bloody hell I can still translate that damn Latin inscription

so you don't have to go to Eden to do those things To do you Latin very good Have you ever thought about going into politics? No because?

Well I know a lot of politicians they're nice people but I have no ambition in that direction none whatsoever I'll listen it's kind of kind of somebody to offer You're not going to run out of campaigning zeal, though. I can sense that.

No, listen, I am being very honest about it. I was quite happy minding my own business in my retirement. Go on, you must love it. Walking around Hampstead Heath as you were the other day and bumping into me and Fiona and Fiona say, you're my new hero. You must love it. Given Alastair, here's the weird thing.

All of my adult life since I've been 20 years old. I can go all kinds of weird places in the world and if people do that, and they wouldn't want to talk about music. and records and gigs and t-shirts and interviews and stuff they'd seen and heard, and what a glorious, glorious life to lead and want an existence that these random people who you've never met will never ever see again just want to talk to it enthusiastically and engagingly about music.

Yeah, but now they want you to change the world because they want you to get their water clean. Well, now they want me to talk about, if I can say it, now they want me to talk to me about shiting rivers. Well, guess what? I'm really looking forward to when I can go back to talking about music again and stop talking about shiting rivers. I think you've got some time to go before you've got to talk about shighting rivers. Well, I'm clearly depending on there being a change of administration

in about 12 months' time that then I can go and hang out my sewage boots and my sewage gloves. Do you think that would be enough, though? Oh yes, no, I was very genuinely, I was essentially asked this question by the chair of the EA about five years ago as to what was drive me, motivated me.

And I guess it was back to that childhood and grown up in Northern Ireland. It's when I realised that this country is full of incredibly decent little community groups full of incredibly decent committed local people. They're not militant. They're not campaigners. They're not activists. They're not entomologists or hydrologists.

They're just decent local people that have known for decades that their river is slowly dying. They don't understand why. They will go and organize petitions outside the local. supermarket, they'll present it to the Environment Agency, they presented to government, they put their trust in the system. And the bit that made me furious was the system

took that trust and abused it and dismissed it. And that was all the motivation I needed it. Now part of the thing I don't like about the system, Purgle, is the honour's system. Right. And you took an OBE. Now where's this empire? Where is this empire of which you've

allowed to the order? What did your mum think of that? Well, you see, ironically enough, here's the weird thing. One of my earliest childhood memories, I spent a lot of time thinking about this, as you can probably understand. As it turned out, my father actually worked part-time for the British government.

And when he retired, he was offered the British Empire Service Medal. And I can still remember, I must have been 12 or 13, this massive row going on at home. And it was the only time I really saw my parents fall out with each other. And that's because my mum didn't want him to take it. There you go.

And it left me completely traumatized. And my family probably hearing this for the first time. I was so traumatized by the whole thing. I actually ran out of the house and went to a local telephone box and called one of my older sisters to go, you have to come quick. I think my mom and dad are about to start falling out with each other. They're going to get divorced.

You have to come quick, come quick. Listen, ultimately, I have my own family. I have my own children. I have my own creed and ambitions for them. And I suddenly thought, you know what, might have provide some motivation to my own children to say you can go out in the world and you can't take on incredible challenges. And you can take on things that people will tell you are impossible and undoable and you can deliver it and you can have the recognition for it.

And I know it may sound like a bit of a cop-out, but I did sit there thinking, what a valuable lesson for my 18-year-old daughter to learn. Very good. Well, I think you definitely deserve something for your campaign. but whether you're doing it for the planet or the empire anyway it's been an absolute joy talking to Virgil No now, listen I'm just I'm fascinated, I'm delighted

and pleased and flattered that you even asked me to come and do this and it's a huge privilege and thank you very much enjoyed every second of it