TRIGGERnometry - "2020 Has Been a Year of Mass Hysteria" - Andrew Doyle

Episode Date: December 30, 2020

Comedian, playwright, journalist, and political satirist Andrew Doyle joins us for the 103rd time! Join our exclusive community on Locals! https://triggernometry.locals.com/  OR Support TRIGGERnometry Here: Paypal: https://bit.ly/2Tnz8yq https://www.subscribestar.com/triggernometry https://www.patreon.com/triggerpod Find TRIGGERnometry on Social Media:  https://twitter.com/triggerpod https://www.facebook.com/triggerpod https://www.instagram.com/triggerpod About TRIGGERnometry:  Stand-up comedians Konstantin Kisin (@konstantinkisin) and Francis Foster (@francisjfoster) make sense of politics, economics, free speech, AI, drug policy and WW3 with the help of presidential advisors, renowned economists, award-winning journalists, controversial writers, leading scientists and notorious comedians. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Hello and welcome to Trigonometry. I'm Francis Foster. I'm Constantine Kishin. And this is a show for you if you want honest conversations with fascinating people. Brilliant and returning for the 100th time today guest. 103rd time. 1003rd time guest today is a comedian, satirist, writer the creator of the creative to Tadne McGrath. Brilliant a friend of the show who's been on, as I say, many, many times. Andrew Doylele, welcome back to Trigonometry. It is a great pleasure to be here again. As you say, it's becoming interminable.

Yes. Well, you know what? It's funny. And it's a special moment for us because this is probably, I think, the fourth time we've had you on. Is that right? At least. Plus, we've done some live shows together as well. But as we are recording this, we're about to break through 200,000 subscribers on YouTube, which is a lot. We're pleased. And you were actually probably our first sort of big guest that did very well. I remember being the, I was in the second episode. Yeah. Yeah. And back then you had a very different format. It was a very different format. It was a very different format. It was a very good. very minimalist, you know, none of this sort of elaborate set that you've got going on now. Yeah, it was fucking atrocious, me. What it was. I liked it. It was just the three of us around the table.

It looked like a seance spotlight. It had that sort of eerie quality, which I miss in a way. Yeah, he's lost weight. I've lost hair. We've all moved on. Yeah. Everything changes. It's all for the good.

It's all good. It's all for the good. But listen, man, it's good to have you back. With the reason we thought we'd get you back on is, you know, it's been an interesting year, to say the least, a lot has been going on. on. And, you know, we spent obviously the whole year talking about it in a serious way with a lot of people, but we just thought it's been such an absolute, I nearly said the word shit fuck, I don't know why, cluster, whatever it's been. We just thought we'd spend the last week sort of

trying to cheer people up and have a lighthearted conversation about what's going on, even though we will touch on the serious stuff as well. So of all the things that have happened this year, what has stood out for you as the sort of epitome of 2020? It's very difficult to say. because ultimately the year in of itself has been sort of the moment. I think it's going to be a very important moment historically because it's the moment when everything that we've been warning about for the last five, six years has come to fruition. So it's just been the complete explosion of the culture war into the mainstream.

So whereas I've always, and I know you have as well, I've always had to deal with this accusation that you're talking about a straw man, you're talking about something that doesn't exist. You're talking about a few overzealous students on campus getting upset. about certain things. You're talking about a few overzealous columnists, etc. And now, of course, the evidence of everything we've been talking about is everywhere. So people have actually stopped saying that to me now. You can't, it's not sustainable anymore. So all of those, all of those elements of the kind of postmodern social justice movement or ideology or whatever you want to

call it has now just completely broken through. And it's not really a matter of these things bubbling under the surface anymore. It's just a matter of acknowledging that they are out there front and center and now it's a case of what do we do about it. So I think when it comes to pinpointing something from the year, it's very, very difficult. I think, I think what's, but what's quite interesting is, is seeing how, seeing how that change has become actuated. If you go back to January, if you think about the story in January when, when over 300 Guardian staff members signed a petition against Suzanne Moore at the Guardian because they perceived something she'd written was, was transphobic. And I think this, actually, was, was this

February. Anyway, it was back near the start of the year. And, you know, that now, I mean, back then, people were saying, this is ridiculous. I can't believe this is happening. Now that would be seen as just, well, that's completely normal. That's completely standard. Such has been the sort of transition from a relatively sane society to this pseudo-reality that we now occupy. So it's a weird one. And Andrew, how much of that is due to social media, the fact that we're cooped up in our houses? And we tend to be mainlining Twitter into our eyeballs. I don't know. I mean, this is the thing.

I'm not an anthropologist or I'm not in a position to say while this has happened. A lot of people have speculated that there's been this, as you say, a kind of pressure cooker environment. And that early in the year, because everyone was cooped up under lockdown, this is why after the George Floyd moment, the explosion happened. This is why people were out there rioting. This is why everything went so insane so quickly. So if there is a psychological reasoning behind it, then I find that persuasive. But I'm probably not in a position to make the judgment as to its validity. But yeah, I think that's true.

I'm always wrestling with this idea of should I just get off social media? And then I mean, I sort of depend on it for what I do. And the problem isn't so much that, I mean, you're absolutely right. What is it? It's 80% of the country are not on Twitter. and the people who are on Twitter, I think it's something like only 5 to 10% of the people who do most of the tweets, right?

So it's a Twitter and social media generally is such a small minority. That's why so many people just don't know about this stuff. But the problem is that now it's very clear that the social media discourse is driving the rest of it. So stuff that last year we would have heard from the most overzealous blue check academics on Twitter is now being parroted by

Sadiq Khan, say, or people in Parliament, or, you know, the sort of mainstream voices, or the headmaster of Eaton, or whatever, you know, so that's the problem. It wouldn't matter if we could just disregard the whole of social media and just say, look, they're nutcases, they're insane. They are, and there's, there is that element of what Ricky Jervais talks about, like being able to see, you know, it's like being exposed to the scrawlings on the toilet wall now.

That's what, that's what it is. It's all there for you to see. the problem is that the scrawlings on the toilet wall never directed popular discourse before, never never migrated into parliament and into education and into the media and into journalism and all the rest of it. So that's the really dangerous thing now and I don't know how you reverse that really. Yeah, well, we're keeping a light already on the top of the show. So that's great, Andrew. Did you want this to be a bit more frivolous and flippant?

No, no, I'm just joking me. That was my way of injecting a bit of levity into it. But, you know, I was wondering, one of the accusations that I think all three of us to some extent have always got is that like we're delighted that this is happening. We're so happy because it validates what we've been saying. It gives us a job. It's like all of that stuff. And I can't tell you how desperately frustrated I am that everything you and I and I and Francis and everybody else has been saying is turning out to be correct. Oh, I know. I agree. I want to be wrong. I want to be wrong. I want it to go away.

You know, I mean, when people say that to me, I just think, well, that's really weird because my job never depended on this. You know, I've always written plays and articles and comedy. And in the comedic sense, I've always mocked the stuff in society that I perceive to be ridiculous, which is what we all do. And this is the stuff that I currently perceive to be ridiculous. I'm obviously going to talk about this. the idea that this is what is sustaining my livelihood isn't true for one thing. That is not to say I don't earn money out of the comedy that I write. I do. But if this wasn't going on, I'd be mocking something else and earning money that way. You know, that's what, it's a very weird accusation, isn't it?

That you're cashing in by doing what you do for a living. That would mean that absolutely everyone is cashing in whenever they accept a paycheck. It doesn't make any sense. I would love to, I would love for this to go away. It'd be absolutely wonderful if the Titani McGrath character was redundant. It would be a dream come true. I want all of this stuff to stop. I want a society to get back to just being sane again.

That would be great. But it's not. It's not. Far from it. It's not. It isn't. Have we, as Rod Little quoted many, many times, have we reached peak wink yet, Andrew? Is that what he said?

Yeah. He didn't say we have. He's just a term that he used. Yeah. So what you're really asking me is can it get any worse? Yes. And I know the answer to this, but I feel it's important that we do it anyway. Well, you know, the obvious truth is yes, it can. And it probably will. I think, you know, we've seen over the last week or so the Law Commission trying to push for greater hate speech regulation, which would include criminalising things. that are said in the home, it would include a policing offensive comedy. The thing that they keep mentioning in the document is the cartoons of Muhammad, for instance.

So satire would be police. So it's going the other way. You know, what all of this stuff should be doing is like a wake-up call and people which should be saying, okay, well, let's abolish hate speech laws. Let's just repeal all of that stuff. Let's get back to liberal values. Let's do all. But we're not going the other way.

And it's, you know, everyone got a bit crazy when, Humpherson. the Yusuf and the SMP started pushing their hate crime bill through, which they are still proceeding with. But there was some consolation that, well, that's just Scotland. But now the law commission want that to be rolled out to England and Wales as well. So obviously, if that kind of stuff gets enacted, then things are going to get a lot worse, a lot quicker. I mean, people were very shocked, weren't they, at the start of the year, when it was reported that 120,000 non-crime hate incidents had been recorded by police over the last five years and that is a shocking figure.

Well, just imagine once, if this law commission's proposals are taken on board, it's going to be a lot, lot worse, that kind of thing. So, yeah, I mean, I'm not, the thing is I try to be optimistic. You can hear the sirens in the background. They're coming for Andrew right now. Yeah, they probably are. I mean, I don't want to be, I don't want to catastrophize. That's the first thing.

So I don't like talking about the idea that we're in this utter crisis and we're going to end up in the gulags and all the rest of it because I don't think that's true. I think we're still in that a precarious position where we can see the fissures breaking in the barricades that we put up to protect our civilization. We can see those fissures widening. And what you always have to do in every subsequent generation is defend free speech anew and defend liberal values anew. It's not something that can just be taken for granted. So I think it's very important that we do without catastrophizing, if possible. and also I think when you do that,

you give ammunition to the people who say that this is all just a concocted thing of the right, you know? So I think let's acknowledge that we're not living in a Soviet-style scenario at the moment, but we also need to be wary when it comes to this erosion of our fundamental values and rights. So, you know, yes, it can get worse.

In answer your question, yes, it probably will get worse. And then hopefully in about 10 years time, everyone will say, God, do you remember all that stuff? That was nuts, wasn't it? What happened? And what would be even better is if the people who are the practitioners of cancel culture who deny its existence, if in 10, 15 years time, they look at their own behavior and say, I can't believe we just lost our minds. We just went all hysterical for a moment. We started believing in all these invisible power structures. We became religious for a while there. And now we've realized that, you know, all of that was just folly. That's my hope. It's interesting the extent to which it's got, though, because you would probably have seen there's a story about a black boy who was sent a video of his classmate singing along to a rap song using the N-word. And he saved it for three years, waited until she applied to university,

and then released it for maximum impact, and she got her place at that university council. old. And so I think one of the concerns for me and where I agree with you about it getting worse is that this is now being embedded into young people's psychies where they think this sort of behavior is normal. And you talk about comparisons with the Soviet Union. I mean, obviously I grew up there. You know, the story of Pavlik Morozov, the boy who reported his father to the authorities, it's very reminiscent. I mean, I'm not saying there are gulags, but the way of thinking is very much the No, I'm not denying that at all.

I think you're absolutely right. And it's, it, it, these, the tactics of council culture are from, they are based on a totalitarian instinct. Um, that particular story is very troubling because of course, it's so calculated, isn't it? And then, of course, and then it was endorsed by the New York Times. And then you have people, uh, chipping in and saying, well, this is good because it means there's one less racist at university who, you know, it's like someone is condemned for, uh, something they said when they're 15.

mean and there's no redemption. It's, it's not about redemption. It's about, it's about just constant punishment throughout your life. You are, you know, so yeah, all of that is utterly reminiscent. And you're right to, to point out the echoes, because that's a really good way to expose it and to explain why we need to guard against it. I absolutely think that's, no, I'm not, I'm not denying that you should make the comparison. The comparison is true. I mean, the entire social justice movement is essentially totalitarian and revisionist. That's, that is what it is. That's what the print, the, You know, I mean, this is why you get the odd denial of history. And I'll give you a very clear example of this, which pertains to us, I think.

So you'll have noticed there's a lot of articles and writers for the Guardian now denying that the word woke was ever used to describe this movement, the social judge's ideology. They just say this is a word that's been concocted by right wingers and the conservatives to smear us, right? But you go back to 2018 when Nika Burns gave that opening speech to the Edinburgh Festival fringe in which he talked to. about how she was looking forward to the new woke world of comedy. She was saying she was looking forward to the next generation of woke comedians who are going to set the parameters for what is acceptable to talk about. No one, no one who reported on that said, hold a minute, isn't that word woke just a conservative word? No, everyone knew that that's just the word that they used to describe themselves. The Guardian repeatedly talked about wokeness and the woke world and all the

rest of it in its own articles without irony. And the good thing is we've got the internet that can prove it. But they just gaslight everyone to use their own term. They just are now determined to say that it was a word they never used at all. I think what's actually happened is because people like you and I mocked the term throughout 2019. Now the word is used by some as a slur and a smear. So now they pretend that they didn't use it themselves. So they're just completely, and they just say this. They just say what is palpably not true in the way that CNN can have a reporter with the city burning behind him saying that these are largely peaceful protests or the BBC can tell you that a protest in which 29 police officers were injured is mostly peaceful. So, you know, it's the very

definition of gaslighting, which is that term they gave to us. It's the term that they accuse other people of doing. Even their accusation of gaslighting is a form of gaslighting because they themselves are the ones that do it. It's just this, I'm really fascinated by this complete, this complete failure to engage with reality to push a force. false reality when the evidence is there before our eyes and they expect people just to go along with it. That's how little they regard humanity. They think that humanity is so stupid and malleable that they can just flat out deny reality, you know, in the way Donald Trump used to, he'll say, I didn't say that, and then you go on YouTube and there he is saying it. It's like, this is infantile

stuff. And I think it's something that I'm hoping in 2021 everyone will kind of get over, or at least have the courage to say, that's not true. What you're just, said just isn't true, you know? But the fightback has started, isn't it? If you look at, for instance, with Brexit, the Brexit negotiations have finally come to an end. We've signed the deal. We've now officially left the European Union. Surely 2021, we're going to see more of a pushback against this. Maybe, but I don't think they're going to let the Brexit thing go, because again, they're doing the gaslighting thing. They're saying that nobody knew what they were voted for. There was no political debate. Nobody ever did.

discuss the customs union, no be able to discuss the single market. Again, you can go to YouTube, you can check the biggest debates of the time, the one that was in Wembley Arena, for God's sake, where within five minutes they're talking about what it would mean to leave the customs union in single market, you know, so they won't accept it, I don't think. So I don't believe it, it is the end of it. I think you've started the rejoin EU hashtag is now trending. people are going on about gamins again people pushing the idea that you are looking rather

gammony today I must say Andrew am I looking a bit gammony? Yeah you are you know this is so offensive to me because you know I'm a vegetarian very very upsetting very upsetting thing yeah you know no I don't think they are going to let it go and they're going to just cling

to this myth that this was all about race they're going to cling to the myth that you know it's it's very interesting isn't it, that this comes predominantly from middle-class people who don't know any working-class people and then don't know any leave voters. So it's very easy. I had a conversation just before Christmas with someone I hadn't met before. And she was saying to me, she was utterly shocked because she started going on about how, you know, people voted Brexit because they were racist. And I said, well, I voted

Brexit. And she was genuinely shocked. She said, well, I've never met anyone who voted leave. And she was, and then we got to talking. And by the end of the conversation, she almost came around to my way of thinking, I think. Because, because, you know, they just haven't. they've just willingly blocked their ears to the reasons why the genuine reasons why people voted and substituted it for this very simplistic, reductive, good versus evil thing, which does make it, it's an easy way of thinking. You know, I understand it. You know, our brains are built that way that we always go for the easiest way of thinking, but it's lazy.

They're not going to let that go. I mean, I've already seen people talking still about this idea that people wanted an empire. But, you know, the people who voted leave wanted their empire back. I mean, I couldn't, I couldn't find someone who thinks that if I tried. I wouldn't know where to begin. Where would you find someone who thinks that? It's just not a thing. You know, you could probably find one or two nutcases.

And I'm sure the BBC have done the best to find those nutcases and interview them because it promotes that narrative. But it's really not a thing. And yet, you had Vince Cable. You know, a major politician giving a talk where he talked about how the Brexit vote was because people missed the days of white faces and blue passports and a pink map. you know, the empire map, and it's like, nobody thinks this. And this just goes to show how isolated they are in their own fantasies. It's just lots of people talking to each other, reaffirming each other's false beliefs, false view of reality.

And that can't be sustainable, can it? I mean, you can only live that way for so long. You know, you've got to, you've got to, you've got to confront reality at some point. And I think that's going to be our battle, really, is finding a way to, to, to, to guide people back from their fantasy world and into the real world. And I don't know, you know, I'm not sure how you do that. But that's going to be the big battle of 2021, I believe. Look, I spend a lot of time telling you what's wrong with the world.

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percent off without code, which is, of course, trigger pod. All you need to do is go to the website, www.com. That's www.printitbig3D.com. I'm going to get Francis a new weapon. I like weapons. One of the big battles that I think is going to happen in 2021 is we've touched at it, well, some people more than others, but certainly whether the BBC has any sort of sustainable future.

What are your opinions on it? And do you think that we should be funding it publicly? It's really difficult. I mean, you know, I think that over the, you know, it's very difficult to be politically impartial as a broadcaster. And I think, and I think it's very hard, you know, someone like Andrew Neal is utterly brilliant at this because he will always challenge whoever he's interviewing

irrespective of his own personal beliefs. And that's what the, that should be the same. sort of ideal. And, and, you know, they will be damned whatever they do. You know, they've been called, they've said that there's, people say, accuse them having an institutional left-wing bias. People also accuse them having an institutional right-wing bias, for instance, against Jeremy Corbyn, you know. So, so that's very hard. But I think what is, and I so I have a kind of sympathy in a way, um, uh, when it comes to that, because I just don't know how you fully monitor that. But I think what is indisputable is that they are systemically woke. I think there's no

getting around that. And that is so built in. And woke isn't about a left-right thing. It's not. And so it's so built into every, into the way they think, the way they perceive. I mean, I just scrolled through some BBC article the other day and they were spelling female F-E-M-X-L-E. And, you know, it's like, well, the very fact that you do that and you don't even question that is evidence of this kind of systemic wokeness. So I don't know how they unpick that. I don't know how they would begin to do it. I think it's just too built in. You know, I've had enough conversations with people who work at the BBC. And this is not to say that everyone that works in the BBC feels this way, but everyone at the BBC knows that they have

to tow the line on this. They really do. I've had a situation where I was on a BBC show, as, you know, as you and I always are, the token fucking, you know, evil, bigger, whatever it is. speak yourself. But what I mean is they basically get you on to say the thing that a lot of them think, but no one is supposed to say at the BBC. And so I constantly find myself in this position where I am asked onto a show, and on camera, I am asked to defend positions which are presented as unreasonable and weird

and whatever antagonistic. Whereas off camera, the producer is saying to me, actually, you know what, I don't agree with this, you know, or that or whatever. So there is that conflict of the heart of it, and I'm not someone who particularly wants the BBC to be defunded. But on the other hand, I do agree with you. I think, yes, on economics, they may not be particularly left or right or may even lean to the right. Who knows? But when it comes to this woke stuff, they are very systemically woke.

And how you unpick that? I don't know. But maybe we should broaden it out to the media more generally because I think one of the things that has happened this year is, You know, I think the war in Iraq and MP's expenses, those were things that massively undermine people's confidence in the institutions of the establishment, like the media and government. But I think this year has been particularly bad for the media because there have been so many polarizing events, which they have just shown their true colors on. I think that's it. They just have to really maintain a rigorous high standard. You know, when, do you remember when there was that gathering, the Brexit gathering? I think it was Trafalgar Square and it was a BBC representative who was focusing on whiteness and the whiteness of the crowd and that kind of thing.

John Snow. Sorry? Well, no, that was the Channel 4 example. But it also happened with the BBC. It was a similar thing. And then every time that happened, and of course they don't say that at an extinction rebellion gathering, which is basically like a white rally, you know. So they don't do that then.

And those moments, you see, will always be seized upon by the critics of the BBC, and rightly so. And it makes their position unsustainable. So I think always with the media, it's about holding yourself to incredibly high standards. And that will be the way through it. And not saying things that are palpably false, for instance, not editorializing, as we saw with Newsnight. You know, just being really sharp on that and making sure that that doesn't. happen. You know, there's a reason why people don't take Channel 4 new seriously anymore because it, because it is effectively just a mouthpiece for the social justice ideology. And

so people don't really, you know, I mean, all the people I know who used to read The Guardian, they do still, but they don't really take it that seriously now. And so people are shooting themselves in the foot. So, yeah, I mean, and it is a worry. I talked to Peter Bogosin about this recently. He used the phrase the legitimation crisis. And this idea of the legitimation crisis is this concept where we no longer have any faith in authority figures. And that can be the media, it can be politicians, but it can also be academics and academia. And all of that is happening concurrently. So we're losing faith in all of these major institutions at the same time. And that's a very, very fundamental and dangerous, precarious situation to be in, because it means that

you do get this destabilization of reality. That's where we are now. And actually, it's really important to have. I mean, I'm all for a public broadcaster that holds the powerful to account, which of course is what the BBC is meant to do. And so I am troubled when it fails, maybe it fails to be impartial, but more than that, it fails to be perceived as being impartial. And the perception is absolutely everything, you know. And we saw this in America. Donald Trump very successfully cast aspersions on the, on the media, but it wasn't helped by the fact that the media often did represent what he said. So the simple solution to that is just tell us the news, right? Don't tell us what to think about the news all the time. Don't preach at us all the time. Just tell us what's happening.

And then we'll, we'll do the rest. But Andrew, isn't the problem that you've got this, like you said, this woke ideology, it's in all these media corporations. But if the people in these corporations have this ideology, you're never going to change it. No, but they, Like you said, a lot of them don't. You know, I think it's just the ones that do are terrifying. I think that's all it is, right? So the people who will, you know, the people who you're nervous about speaking in the meeting with. I wrote an article about this reason, before the lockdown and all the rest of it happened, early in the year,

friend of mine was putting on a play. And the director was extremely woke and extremely, you know, always looking for something to be offended by, always calling out white privilege and toxic masculine and all this sort of stuff. he said that he found himself treating her like a dangerous dog insofar as because what you do is

you're really careful not to upset it because it'll bite and that's the way people behave around and I don't think I don't think a lot of the woke people know this about themselves how scary they are how people just shut up

when they're around because they don't want to risk being open God knows what this does to their relationships to their friendships I think a lot of them might be quite turned on by that revelation, Andrew, if I'm honest with you, may. Also, just on another

point, we treat dangerous dogs very differently in Russia, apparently. You put them down, right? Yeah, that's what we do. I'm not advocating for that to happen to woke people. No, you know, it's a very brutal race. We are more kind of compassionate over here. But I'm... Week is a word you're looking for. You are weak. You must all be put down. Do you watch problematic content online? Of course they do. They watch. They watch Trigonometry. Many ISPs log your internet activity and sell that data on to other big tech companies or other advertising companies. I know that is why I use ExpressVPN to hide my browsing activities. I bet you do. ExpressVPN is a simple app which you can have on both your computer and your

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That's EXPR-E-S-SvPN.com slash trigger. I love it when you spell things out. But it gets even better than that. ExpressVPN are offering Trigonometry fans three extra months free. Go to ExpressVPN.com slash trigger to learn more. But what I would say to return to the dog metaphor. Actually, I'll give you a better example. I was talking to a young comedian on the circuit.

This was last year. A new comedian to the circuit. And she said to me that every week, she goes to these open mic gigs. And every week, she has to go up to comedians afterwards and tell them what they shouldn't, shouldn't have been joking about. And she has to go up and berate them for the things that they've done. And what was weird about this, she said, you've no idea how exhausting this is to me, that I have to do this. And I shouldn't have to do this.

You should be helping. People like you should be standing up and, seriously. And I'm surprised no one's, no one's punched her. You know, like this is incredible, this kind of. But it was a sincere expression of exasperation. Why can't the whole world just change to suit what I want? Why can't that just happen? You know, it's this general infantile mentality that suggests a real lack of education.

There's something gone wrong in our educational system that people think like this, that they act like babies and scary babies. They're terrifying babies. I can't think of anything more frightening than someone coming up to me after a gig and saying, you shouldn't have said this and here. Look, I've made a list of the things you should have said. and but doing it from the position of valor and virtue. I mean, this is like, this is nuts.

So, yeah, I think, I think, and that's why to go back to the BBC point is that even if it's a minority of people at the BBC, it doesn't matter because everyone at the BBC knows they're not getting the promotion if they don't tow this line. Everyone knows that. Everyone knows that programs aren't going to be commissioned if they mock the social justice movement in any way. That's not going to happen. you know, you have insiders at the BBC telling the Guardian, well, there are no funny, anti-woke comics. Well, I don't think, I mean, I think all comics are anti-woke, really, aren't they? All comics mock the prevailing orthodoxies and the, you know, I mean, all that person was saying is they don't find it funny because it upsets them. I mean, that's fine. I wouldn't expect them to find it funny. But it's just simply not true what they're saying. And, you know, the idea that that there's a meritocracy when it comes to comedies is utterly ludicrous. So it is ideological. So if you're in, if you're working within those circumstances, of course you're going to shut up because you don't want the viper to turn on you. It's just, it's, it just makes sense.

So how you combat that, I think the only way is is a kind of a collective courage when everyone just says what they think. And we don't get this preference falsification where everyone's just saying what they think other people want to hear or they're saying the things that they think won't get them in trouble. Everyone just says what they honestly believe, then, I mean, imagine what society would be like. It'd be amazing. If politicians. There's no jobs anyway, so you can't lose your job. Well, that's true. That's true.

You know, just it's horrible, isn't it, in a way? Because in order to affect this change, you have to accept that a lot of people are going to fall, you know? A lot of people are going to end up fired if they do. If they take my advice, a lot of people get fired, right? But maybe you have to just, maybe that just has to happen. It's very easy for me to say, isn't it? Because I... Well, you know, something I always mentioned to Francis,

is that this is what Alexander Soljanitsyn talked about in the Gulag Archipelago. He said that if ordinary people had stood up and resisted minor tyrannies as they happened, then the major tyrannies wouldn't have been possible. Yeah. But yeah, sorry, go ahead. No. Go ahead. I compete with Alexander Soljanitsyn.

Oh, yeah. Fuck a mate. But one thing that I wanted to ask is, look, we touch on this again and again. and we've touched on it with various guests. I've got a friend, he's in academia. He was like, do you think I should come out and say something? And he's right at the beginning of his career as an academic. And my honest advice is no.

Coward. Why would you sacrifice your career? Why would you make yourself effectively unemployable because of your beliefs? If you know nobody around you is going to speak up and say anything, when we got cancelled, nobody in the club, even people who messaged me privately spoke, up. Because if you don't, then this will never end, I suppose, is the answer to that. Yeah, I mean,

it's hard. Look, because I'm speaking as someone who has never been censored, I, I've never been cancelled, I say what I want, and actually part of my job now depends on saying what I want. So, it's really easy for me. I don't have a boss who's going to fire me for something that I've said, you know. So, yeah, you could, you could accuse me of, you could, you could accuse me of, you know, of that and you would be right to do so. But I just don't think, I just, look, I've got a teacher friend who's going through this right now. He's on probation at this new school, right?

So he's got a year's probation. A year's probation? Sorry, that's a teaching term, which basically you're, you're being watched of the first year of your employment to make sure you don't put a foot wrong, basically. Yeah. And it's not a bad term. It's not like the term, it's not like criminal.

It's not what you're thinking. But he's not, if he, so he's being told, you know, you're going to have to talk about white privilege, teach kids about white privilege, all of this sort of Robin DiAngelo-style stuff. You know, he's even been told to read white fragility by Robin DeAngel's, stuff like this. So if you, if in his position he raises an objection, he's convinced that he won't have his contract renewed.

That might be true. But here's the alternative. Maybe most people are secretly thinking the way that he is thinking. And maybe if he were to say something, other people might say something. And then maybe you get this kind of tipping point where every. everyone just says, yeah, actually, the emperor does have no clothes on. So, and it does take that, even in the most horrendous of circumstances, and I've used this analogy before, but I think it's exactly right. If you take what happened in Salem, Massachusetts

with the witch trials, now, there was a point where anyone who cast any kind of skepticism on the girl's testimony on Abigail Williams and all the others, all the girls who were saying they could see spirits and devils and all the rest of it, anyone who did cast aspersions on that, or just say, this isn't real, the girls then turned their fingers on them. and accused them and they got hanged, you know? And ultimately, what is it? 18, 19, people were hanged in Salem. But there came a point where too many people started saying,

no, this isn't real, this is a myth. And the reason, and they couldn't hang everyone. And the real turning point was when I think the governor's wife was accused by the girls. And at that point, of course, people felt a bit more empowered. So maybe it will be when this stuff starts affecting the people on their own side, you know, or something like that. I mean, already you're getting this. kind of this kind of change.

But I'm getting more messages than ever from people within either the comedy community or the arts saying, oh, this is going a bit far. You know, I've always been on board with this woke stuff, but it's going a bit far now. I'm a bit nervous about it now. And I think you will get a Salem tipping point where everyone just says, and it does have to start with a few sacrificial lambs. Unfortunately, you know, it does. I don't think I'm wrong about this.

his eye and as he said that. But you talk about the governor's wife, Andrew. One of the interesting things for me that's happened, I think a lot of the people who, you know, Boris Johnson said, lent him their vote. And I include myself on that. I used to be a Lib Dem voter, voted label the previous election. For the first time ever in my life, I voted for the Tories. And that was mainly because I thought, well, even though I voted Remain, I thought Brexit had to be done. Because you're a Democrat, right? Right. Yeah. Unusual. given my background, but nonetheless. But I thought Brexit needed to be done, so democracy was important. I thought that Corbyn was useless, obviously. And the third thing I thought was, look, Boris Johnson

has hinted that on this cultural stuff, you know, he's going to be, you know, he's not, I didn't think he was going to be some anti-woke warlord, but I didn't think he'd be particularly work. And my sense is both, to use your metaphor, the government and the governor's wife, I actually solve work or on that on the path to that. Yeah, although you know, you get these sort of moments, don't you? Like with Liz Truss's speak. Yeah. The other day or.

Can be bad to knock also. But I feel like that every now and again, they come out and sort of throw a steak to the dogs. But the rest of the time, it's a meager diet. Yeah, it is. And I remember during the height of the Black Lives Matter stuff and I was, and all the critical race theory stuff, I spoke to someone within, you know, within the government. who said the trouble is no no one can say anything

you know because it would it would have to be a person of colour for a start to say anything and and and and so few people understand what's going on and everyone's very nervous about it understandably eventually because I mean kemy baddenok did did stand up and say and actually all she did was reiterate the point that that

you have to be impartial when it comes to teaching politics in schools but of course because they hadn't associated critical race theory but it is such an essentially political discipline so um so that you know that shouldn't be a controversial thing. But you're right. Yeah, I mean, I think a lot of people did lend their vote to Johnson for the same reason. I think Brexit was the big thing, though. But I think those other concerns were, were there as well, that maybe the Tories would stand up. Well, if anyone was going to stand

up against this ideology, surely it would be the Tories. But of course, it's so pervasive now. Its tentacles have reached out so far that it's in the Tory party as well. So, you know, which means that don't really have an option. I mean, can we really rely on the occasional victory? Can we really rely on the occasional speech by Liz Truss or someone like that? Is that sufficient if the cabinet itself is too cowardly to stand up to this stuff? I mean, I don't know. But Andrew, going back to The Crucible, which is a brilliant play for those who you haven't read it, at the end of the play, because I used to teach it, John Proctor says, you must leave me my name. name. It's the only thing that I have to my name. But isn't that what people are worried about when

the confronting this stuff is that they will have their name and their reputation slur? They'll be tarnished as a racist, a bigot, whatever else. And you know, we joke about it, but those labels really hurt. And they're very, very, very destructive. I love that you've brought in a literary illusion. It's really raised the tone. It's so high brown now. Now you're right. John Proctor says, leave me my name. He's like, he doesn't, in a sense, being executed is one thing. But reputation, yeah. I mean, it's more damaging than people understand, I think. I think it's different for us because we're just so used to being called these things. You know, I think you just get used to being called a Nazi or whatever.

And you just learn to ignore it. Because it's, well, firstly, it's probably not true. It's also weird because it's the exact opposite of my belief system. It couldn't be further removed from what I believe. So in that sense, it's not worth getting upset about, you know. but I understand, you know, if you're being accused of these things, it's hurtful. This is why, ultimately, I think the Brexit vote went the way it did. I think it tipped over the edge because we had months and months of the media saying

that if you voted leave, that means you're a racist. And of course, because the vast majority of people who voted leave aren't racist, they resent the accusation. And therefore, it's almost a kind of, well, I'm going to do what I want then. you know, it's a kind of fuck you, which I get. I get that because nobody responds well when they're being insulted. And this is ultimately why the tactics of council culture won't, just don't work. All they do is intimidate and put people in a state of fear. But everyone can see that it completely lacks basic human empathy and compassion. And most people are just decent people who

react against that kind of inhumanity. So, you know, it's, in that sense, there's something to be very optimistic about it. And I don't think those tactics will work. And you're right, you're right to mention the crucible and that speech at the end. And that does explain why people are nervous about it. Rightly so, because you won't get a job. If you're called racist on social media, you won't get a job. You know, because most employers now just Google you, don't they? And they have a look at what's been said about you. And they're not going to take the risk. It's all right. We're hiring a trigonometry. No, problem. Right. But that's interesting, isn't it? The fact that that tactic can work undermines the

purpose of the tactic. It can only work because we live in a society in which racism is not tolerated. That's the only reason it works, right? Whereas the people who use the tactic of smearing people as racist, they do so because they believe our society is built on that. It's actually, it actually proves the opposite. The fact that everyone's so terrified of being called a racist, why would we care? If racism was normalized and was mainstream in our society, why would you care about being called racist. Wouldn't affect your job prospects, it'd be fine. You know, and this is, this is the, one of the many contradictions at the heart of cancel culture. Andrew, it's interesting, you've obviously talked about Brexit quite a bit, and I brought in the lack of cultural

activity from the Tories. You put those two things together, and it seems to me like we are sort of preparing the ground for another kind of potentially popular revolt, because if the democratic system isn't representing a significant viewpoint in the public, then what will eventually happen is there will be some kind of uprising against it, not a violent one or anything like that, maybe a democratic one through some kind of other party or whatever. Do you think that the lack of representation of the cultural concerns that people like us, I think, voice and represent will eventually lead to a political movement, and that will be the only way that any of this happens? I hope so. Yeah, I mean, I'm all for that. I think as many new

political parties as possible, as many voices in parliament pushing back against this stuff. It's not even about winning the general election. It's about making those voices heard and not just having an opposition that just echoes what the, what the current government says when it comes to these particular issues. Obviously, they have many points of disagreement, but when it comes to this stuff, they're all in lockstep. And I think that will be the case. I don't have any illusions that we can transcend the two-party system. But I think electoral reform would help if we can somehow get proportional representation, and maybe if we could get other smaller parties rising up.

I think the SDP is basically right on everything. And I think it would be great. And I would have voted for them if there was a candidate standing in my constituency, but there wasn't. So I spoiled my ballot. But I think if we could get someone like that into Parliament, then, yeah, you would get sensible adult discussion restored, I think. I don't know about a revolt.

I think if any revolt has to come, it has to come through the ballot box. You know, if you want to live in a civilized democracy, that's what's got to happen. Agreed. You know, so hopefully, yeah, I think that would be great. I mean, I'm not getting into politics. God forbid, you know, I would never consider that.

You should do it. Why don't you start a trigonometry party? You know, I think that would be very well. The trigonometry party. Why not? Oh, mate. I think we get enough hate as it is. I'd love to see you in Parliament.

I'd love to see you in Parliament. Right, the thing is, right? You know, you can do that. What about them fucking pedos? I think it happened, like Glenda Jackson became a very successful politician, you know, you can be a, you can do this, you can follow her route.

What do you think? Go on, man. Go on, Francis. No, absolutely not. One of you has got to step up because I'm not going to do it. I think being a politician is terrible because, firstly, everyone obviously,

well, particularly if you've been a comedian, because, you know, anyone who's a politician, the media are going to dig into everything you've ever said. And as comedians, we've said a lot of offensive stuff inadvertently, actually, because I'm not particularly offensive comedian. But you could take some lines from my stand-up and certainly paint a grim picture, as you could with any stand-up. But also, I think it's just towing the party line.

I couldn't bear it. I really feel for those politicians, but they're on question time or something. And they can't answer a question because they know that their honest answer would go against the party whip. And so therefore that you see them squirming. And I think it's really, it's an unpleasant thing to watch. and I wouldn't want to participate. Unless you just go full Trump and double down on everything

and just be completely unapologetic. Yeah. Gain a massive fan base. I'm all for this. I want, as I said earlier, I want politicians just to say what they think because at the moment, all we're ever doing

is trying to fathom what they're secretly thinking and trying to work out. That's impossible for one thing. You can't actually do it. And it's just a waste of everyone's time. So if everyone just said what they honestly thought, then we'd know who we were voting for and we could,

could elect the people that represent our values. And it would be, I know this, this sounds like a really shocking system, right? It's so basic. It's so basic. Do you think everybody should be a little bit more like Andrew Adonis? More like Andrew Adonis. Do you not follow him on Twitter, mate? He is the best account.

He's way better than Titani. I'm sorry to say this. But look. You know, I love you. I think you're a great writer. But Andrew Adonis is a much, much higher quality of troll on the internet. I know, but look, the people like that, Andrew Adonis and Priamvada Gopul at Cambridge and David Lamy and all the professional trolls on Twitter, right?

But they know what they're doing. And when you talk to them, you know, I was recently trolled by this academic, I can't remember which university he was at. And it was like some truculent teenager had got drunk, had raided his parents' vodka cabinet and was like, it was just incredibly aggressive and rude and weird and not listening and all the rest of it. Then I heard him on Radio 4 talking to Melvin Bragg, and he was really polite and seemed quite nice.

And I bet the same is true of like, of Lammy and Gopal and yes, Adonis, who you've met. I'm sure these are really nice people. And I bet I could sit down with any of them and have a sensible conversation. But as soon as I left, they'd be on Twitter saying, oh, that scum, Nazi Doyle. It's, you know, that's, and that's a weirdness. There's a weirdness about it. There's a kind of performativity about it. I have no doubt that sometimes Adonis puts a tweet out there and thinks, I don't.

really, I don't think that. Do I? I'm just going to, I'm just going to stay up a bit. The day after the Brexit deal, he went on Twitter and said, I think the best policy for the United Kingdom is to rejoin the European Union immediately. You cannot, you cannot get better than that. We've got, right, we've got to give him the benefit of the doubt and assume he's lying, right? Because otherwise, he's just being stupid.

And I don't think he is stupid. So I think, no, he's a lovely man. He's a lovely man. As I say, we interviewed him on the show. We both voted Romaine. it was fun. But there's a level of deludedness about that, that I can't believe that he actually is that deluded.

But most people are just nice, aren't they? Most people are just nice. When you meet them and talk to them, I bet even the most vicious trolling you get, if you spoke to them, they'd be just really nice and probably a bit embarrassed by what they said. And I'm sure the same goes for these kinds of people.

But yeah, I mean, yeah, I think with Adonis, I could literally cut and paste some of his tweets and put them out as Titania. I've done that a few times from prominent sort of celebrity activists, you know, and it's always quite fun to do because I'm continually told that the stuff that she says is like a straw man and these people don't exist. But this is why when I wrote the first book, it's interspersed on every page with quotations from real-life activists, which are exactly the same as what Titania is saying. You know, I'm trying to make the point that it is the same, it is the same thing.

and actually the accusation of straw manning is completely demonstrably false. You know, I could put out some of Adonis's tweets or Lammy's tweets, and you would say I've made that no one would actually say that. Well, yeah, it's actually a member of the House of Lords who said that, you know? But do you not find it a little bit depressing, using David Lammy as an example? So Lammy ran about 2011, you would say that he'd be very much a blue labour acolyte. Those were the policies that he espoused, the policies that he supported, and all the rest of it.

and we've slowly seen him drift towards that extreme. We've seen people who are sent to right drift towards the other extreme. Do you think as a society was simply not going to get more and more polarised? Maybe. I mean, I hope not. I think, again, people went a bit mad. You know, I've come to, I mean, I'm really torn on this because I've essential optimism about humanity and the goodness of human beings.

But I also can see so much evidence from the past four years of the propensity for hysteria. And there's no other word to describe it. The stuff about Brexit, you know, our democracy is sustained on the loser's consent, as you know. And the utter hysteria of going out in droves, painting your face in the EU flag, and screaming gammon at everyone

and calling everyone a fascist about membership of an international trading bloc that you didn't care about before 2016. You didn't pay it a second thought. You cannot be this passionate about something unless what it is is a kind of religious devotion. That's the only explanation for this. I mean, sure, there have been some people

who have always been passionate about the EU, but you could fill them in like one church hall or something. There's not many. In fact, most of the people who were talking about the EU, most of the discourse about the EU from the past 30 years in advance of the referendum was, in fact, people who wanted to leave. You know, he had the referendum party back in the 1980s. And then, of course, UKIP and all the rest of it, and Nigel Farage.

So it wasn't people who were celebrating the EU and talking about how wonderful it was. They didn't care about it. They just didn't care. And I don't believe you can go from complete apathy to, extreme zealous passion where you hate anyone who disagrees with you. I don't think that can happen if it's been thought through from a position of rationality.

That has to be a kind of hysterical phenomenon. That's what that is. And, you know, I think when you see people tweeting in the way you've described, they are succumbing to a hysteria. When David Lammy talks about how the ERG are worse than Nazis or whatever it was, he said, and paraphrasing there, that's someone succumbing to hysteria. That's not someone who's thinking rationally. And because I have a belief in him as he's a,

obviously intelligent man. So I believe that in about five years time, he'll be able to look back on that and say, yeah, he'll be able to put his hands up and say, that was stupid, wasn't it? He will. Because we all have the capacity to say stupid things in the heat of the moment, particularly when emotion is heightened. Who hasn't? I have. You have. Who hasn't done that? And I think most of us have the humility to be able to say, yes, that was a mistake. And I do believe that will be the case. I believe in about 10 years time, all of the people who have the, what is it, FBPE, hashtag, the real angry, you know, the bullies online,

the really vicious ones, you know, I think they'll look back and say, I cannot believe I behave so disgracefully. I can't believe I smeared all these people as Nazis, and I can't believe I lost my senses. And I do believe that will happen, particularly once we're out in the EU, because, I mean, it's not something that anyone would rejoin sensibly.

I mean, this was one of the strongest arguments I thought during the Brexit debate. If we weren't in the EU and the debate was about should we join, that would have been a very difficult argument to win, you know, not least because the EU has such a terrible track record of economic growth. But quite aside from that, it's borderline racist policies when it comes to immigration and things like that, would have put a lot of people off. It's complete bureaucracy. It's complete democratic unaccountability. All of this stuff, you know, if you said, we're going to subscribe to this thing that's going to make anywhere between 30 and 60% of our laws and regulations, but we will have no means to vote these people out. The left would

never have got on board with that. Certainly not. And you would never be able to persuade the population to get on board. It just wouldn't have happened. So I think ultimately, you know, look at someone like A.C. Grayling, who is a tremendously talented writer. I mean, he's a philosopher, obviously, but if you've ever read any of his books, he is calm, he's measured, he is collected, he is forensic in some of his analysis. And yet his behavior on Twitter is like a child when it comes to Brexit. It's like it's like a child who hasn't even thought this through can only think in terms of good versus evil. Who can only think in these black and white.

It's almost sad to see someone of such stature degrade himself to this degree. And I just wonder, again, I hope there is the possible. of redemption, I hope. I mean, I look at some of those tweets. I'd be so ashamed to have written those tweets. He can't see it at the moment. But you make the point, Andrew, this is where, even though I'm very optimistic, and I was hoping we would have a more light-hearted conversation,

but it is what it is because that's how we feel. My concern is that with the existence of social media now, in the past, if you'd made mistakes, those mistakes could only be used against you for so long before they were sort of purged from the public record. You know, if you made some innocuous or maybe inappropriate, but it's not particularly major comments 10 years ago, you know, people moved on.

It wasn't really there easily accessible. It was hard to find. It might have been covered in a newspaper article or whatever, but it wasn't really a thing. Nowadays, all your history is there forever. And I think that also, one of the things that does is it actually makes it quite a lot more difficult to go, you know what, actually, I don't like the person I used to be.

And to me, you know, I've always thought about it. If I don't like the person I was 10 years ago, I've always seen that as a sign of progress. I've always thought, well, of course I think I was an idiot at 18, right? Because I'm now bigger, better, stronger, more intelligent, more emotionally intelligent, whatever. I'm not sure young people or, frankly, anyone at this point, has that luxury anymore. because if you start to move away from your previous position, someone is instantly going to pop up and go, well, this is what you said, you know.

Yeah. And the example you gave of the 15-year-old who put that video out. Yeah. That example that's going to be held on to. Yeah, that's true. But I think the reason to be cheerful with this is that everyone knows this to be the case, right? Everyone, I mean, I remember seeing a play at the Edinburgh Fringe by a friend of mine. And she writes for the Guardian.

She's a very, very pro-social justice writer, a very good writer. And the play was about how anyone's life can be ruined. If you have complete access to everything they've ever texted or tweeted or written in an email, there is no one who would not fall foul of that because anything can be selected, can be taken selectively against you and used against you. And also people change, like you say, and people make mistakes, more importantly. And no one is morally pure or morally infallible.

and so the expectation that people should be is actually unworkable and I think because everyone knows that even the woke they know that because so many of them get eaten by their own everyone's just living in this continual state of fear

and that's not something that anyone wants is not desirable for anyone so I think yeah that's something I really wish we could change I wish we could change this idea that just because you said something 10 years ago

it still counts against you and that's not to say you don't take responsibility for the things you've said. But you should be allowed to change your mind. You should be allowed to grow as a person and move on as a person. I mean, these are basic principles of humanity more than anything else. And I hope we can do something about that as of next year.

This is why I think we need to be better as well. I think people on all sides of this debate should not be dragging up things that our opponents have said many years ago. I think it happens on both sides. And of course the temptation is there because you want to point out the hypocrisy of someone. I mean, I saw this happen the other week where I, I won't mention name. It's a very, very famous left-wing journalist who loves to engage in council culture

and call people out. Well, someone called up something that he'd written while at university and put on the internet and it did paint him in a very bad light. But I thought, you know, if we start doing that, then we lose all moral high grant.

Everyone's just got to stop doing that. That doesn't mean not holding people to account. It doesn't mean challenging people when they say things. But it does mean just not drag being through people's past and expecting everyone to be morally pure, because that just gets us nowhere. Why happens if you destroy someone with facts and logic?

Like me. Is that what you, that's what you guys do, isn't it? And that's how you label your videos, isn't it? Destroying libtards with fact. No, we've never seen. We've never, ever used the word libitards. I know. I was mischaracterizing you.

You are. You're smearing us with your bigoted right-wing opinions, Andrew. I know, I love that, though, because that's, I get this all the time. I'm called an edge lord. and oh, so I love this though, because whenever someone does this to me online and they say, oh, your whole career is bitching about snowflakes and libtards.

And I just say, can you find me one example of when I've ever said either of those things? Just one. Because if it's my whole career, if it's my whole schick, this should be a really easy task for you. And the fact they can't find anything because I've never done it.

I love it. Like the claims of, I had one the other day, some academic. Oh, no, writer, I think he's a journalist, saying that I've, I'm bit, I'm winging again, because I wrote an article about my experiences when I came out as to Tanya amongst the comedy community. And he was saying, look at him again, winging about how he's got no voice and how he's being censored all the time and being cancelled. And he can't say what he thinks.

But here he is being paid to write an article. I'm like, I've never made the claim. I've never made the claim. And if you think that's all I ever do, you should easily be able to find an example, shouldn't you? And if you can't, maybe you might want to reflect on the validity of your criticism. But of course, that would take a degree of introspection that a lot of these people do not possess. Well, I never, I never, I would never use the word LipTard, mainly because I'm liberal myself, right? Right.

And I just also don't find that sort of language unhelpful. Andrew, so let's let's look at some of the, what has been amusing you the most this year? What have you found really funny? There have been loads. There have been loads of things. So I actually made a little list. Oh, did you? Of the various things that have happened this year.

And some of the amazing ones, I mean, there's some of the, so many. So I was just going through the year and I was thinking, what happened when? And there's just been some astonishing things happening. So like in January, for instance, when the pink news started praising Pakistan because they said they were going to subsidise trans surgery. And of course, the reason the government was doing that is because if you're gay, you're in a lot of trouble. So it was actually a homophobic thing. And then the pink news, which is meant to be a gay publication, were praising this homophobic policy. I thought that was hilarious. A bit scary, but quite funny.

Oh, the one I loved in January was the Sheffield University paying its students 9 pound 34 an hour to spy on fellow students in case they said any racial microaggressions. That was amazing. I mean, you talk about comparing

with the Soviet Union. That was pure. That's pure Soviet style, isn't it? No, it's not pure. So let's not get our wires twisted here. It's much better than the Soviet Union. those jobs were unpaid. That's true.

Yeah. So at least you're making a buck out of it. Exactly. Exactly. So capitalism at work. This is brilliant. I mean, yeah. So that was incredible.

The constant cancellations throughout the year and yet people talk about how cancel culture is a myth. That's really funny to me. That's really funny to me. There's a thread online. I should send you the link which it records every instance of cancellation. It's thousands long. And it's just, it's just nonstop. and the very people who perpetuate it say,

yeah, it's just a right-wing myth. No one's, no one's being cast. No one's lost their job because of something they've said. No, that's never happened. It's like, that to me is just hilarious. That's really great. I quite enjoyed the Oscars. I quite enjoyed the Jane Fonda,

having ethically sourced diamonds. I love the hypocrisy of that. I love Natalie Portman with her Dior cape, embroidered with the female directors who should have got the nomination. that was quite funny. Just the incredible lack of self-awareness when the most privileged people in the world are hectoring everyone else.

Of course, we've had that with Megan and Harry as well. I mean, they're particularly funny because they'll hector everyone about their carbon footprint and then fly off to out on John's house for a private party in their private jet. So that's inherently funny. You know, it's just funny when someone's telling you about privilege.

You know, he did a big thing about white privilege. It's like, you're a prince. You're an actual. Prince. You're not in a position to lecture us about privilege. You're just not. So there's all of that. There's what else has been quite good? Oh, yeah, all the revisionist stuff has been quite interesting. Like I think the removal of the Native American Indian from the Landerlakes butter pack, Uncle Ben's rice, that's been dixed, all of that kind of stuff, as though this will do anything at all. I mean, in the case of the Lander Lakes thing, that was designed by a Native American artist. If anything, this is attacking that person. cultural heritage, but in the name of progress.

So all of that's been quite interesting. And of course, all the, the, the, the, the, you see, there's, there's been something disturbing about the mobs tearing down statues. And I don't want to undermine how, how anti-democratic and problematic that is, right, to use one of their phrases. But by the same token, the overreach of some of it has been, has been funny. When they start targeting Mahatma Gandhi, because he didn't, what did he ever do? Or, or, you know, Winston Churchill, you know, the man who defeated fascism.

Or Abraham Lincoln. I mean, wanting to tear down statues of Abraham Lincoln, you'd think he'd get a free pass for the whole abolition of slavery thing. You would think, but it's not there. But my favourite was the British Library. You know, they have this decolonising working group at the British Library,

who decided that they need to revisit all of their Western manuscripts. Why? It's a library. It's a repository of historical artefacts, you know? So you don't need to go through it and flag up where things are problematic. They even made the mistake of saying that Ted Hughes was now a problem

because of some tenuous relationship to an ancestor from the 16th century, who he wasn't even related to, you know? And the best thing about the decolonizing working group at the British Library is that they claimed that the architecture of the building itself was colonial because it looks a bit like a battleship. So that stuff is funny to me. So all of this stuff, these things are, they're great, they're ripe for comedy if they weren't quite so sinister.

I really like this so, Andrew, because if you think about it, like the historical aspect of your descendants being punished for the... things you say like there is a guy who descended from me four centuries down the line who is absolutely fucked, doesn't he? Yeah. Oh yeah. You're, I mean, you are, you are ruining your I mean, you don't have children, right? No, not yet. So right. Well, maybe you shouldn't because you're basically condemning them, you know. Exactly. I'm not a breeder so I don't have to worry about that. But, you know, I love that sort of sins of the father business. I mean, you can't even pin that on me because all of my ancestors were, you know, Irish in the bogs, you know,

being sort of colonized themselves. So, I mean, you know, I don't get to inherit that guilt. But did they have their pronouns in their bio? They probably did. They were good people, unlike you and yours. Good moral people. Yeah. Andrew, listen, it's been great having you back, man. We wish you all the best. Give our viewers some thoughts about what you see happening in 2021. What are you excited about for next year? I've written a book on free speech, which I'm very excited about. I wrote it in lockdown. So, you know, silver linings, you know, it forced a kind of disciplined work ethic on me.

You know, it was meant that I had nowhere to go, so I was writing, which was good. And that is called Free Speech and Why It Matters. And that is going to be published in February. So it's all very quick and very excited about that. And the idea of that is I wanted it to be like, it's not a long book, it's a short book, It's a short punchy sort of covering all what I perceive to be the most important arguments in relation to this, the free speech battle. And I do perceive it as a battle insofar as I, like I said, I don't think we're there yet. We're not facing, but we are definitely experiencing the early signs of some very disturbing road that we're going down.

And I think we need to be well equipped to deal with that, to have the arguments in place, you know. So really what the book is doing is going through systematically all the various reservations that people understandably have. you know, because everyone hates it when you hear some idiot stand up and say the most horrible thing. And your instinct is to shut them up. It makes sense that people want to phone the police and all the rest of it, you know? And so I'm trying to approach that from a sympathetic perspective. I'm not just saying, oh, everyone's got to man up and stop being snowflakes, which is what people will doubtlessly say that I'm saying, because they won't read the thing.

But I think we need to understand why people have reservations about free speech, understand why they want limitations on it and then talk about the dangers of that and explain to people why however well-intentioned that might be that is a perilous road to go down so that's what I'm quite excited about that because I think it's

it's nice to have a book out that isn't written as a 24-year-old woman you know because the last two books I've done have been Titania books and so a book in my own name would be rather nice and yeah and then I'm I'm also working on another book which should be ready by the end of next year about the culture war so those two things are happening

I'm hoping that I can tour with Titania later in the year because that tour has been postponed you know the live Titania show which was meant to be last March and then it was this March and so hopefully that will be in November hopefully the show with Douglas Murray will be going ahead the show at the Hammersmith Apollo, which is scheduled at the moment for late June. So who knows?

I have to wait and see what happens with the vaccine and the regulations and the lockdown and all the rest of it. Hopefully, that's what I'm looking forward. I'm really looking forward to everything getting back to normal, right? Am I being stupidly optimistic there? He is a comedian.

Yeah. That's what I want. That's what you want. Well, thank you so much for coming on the show, Andrew. Your books will be released in February and later on. The one question that we always finish with is what's the one thing we're not talking about, but we really should be?

And I knew you were going to ask that because you ask it every time, and yet I still don't have an answer. Isn't that interesting? Why couldn't I have simply prepared something? Why can I have done something? Then I could have finished on a flourish. And as it is, it's a damp squib. It is. But at least you told us, and all of yours, about the books you're now using to cash in on your right wing biggest. So there we are. Exactly. So, you know, the threats to free speech are great for my bank balance, apparently. I'm just getting in there early because that's what people are going to say. Your entire career depends on these two books about how you've been censored.

As The Guardian Review will no doubt say, Andrew, it's been great having you back. And thank you all for watching. This has been our final interview of the year. We wish you all the best. We'll see you in 2021 when hopefully all us will be cancelled and then it's not going to matter if you've been cancelled. Absolutely. If you don't get cancelled, the virus will get you. See you soon, guys.