TRIGGERnometry - Why Can't We Just Get Along? - Iain Dale

Episode Date: September 13, 2020

Iain Dale is a broadcaster and author of Why Can’t We All Just Get Along: Shout Less. Listen More. Support TRIGGERnometry: 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

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I'm Constantine Kisham. And this is a show for you. If you want honest conversations, with fascinating people. Our fascinating guest today is Hugh laughs at the idea of being fascinating as he's introduced is the broadcaster and returning guest to Trigonometry. Ian Dale, welcome back. No pressure then. You've got to be fascinating.

Okay, I'll do my best. You are fascinating, and we just have to reveal it, as we have before. You've just written a book, which is absolutely fantastic, and, dare say, extremely timely, given some of the things that have been happening, which is called Why Can't We All Get Along? Shout less, listen more. You see, you even got the title wrong. You missed out the word just.

Which everybody does, funny enough, as on BBC Radio, Cambridge here, and they did the same. Well, I'm almost as good as the BBC. What can I say? No, no, BBC Radio Cambridge. Yeah, fair enough. I'm almost as bad as a regional radio station. Anyway, why can't we all just get along?

It's a great book that we really enjoyed reading it. But the title itself, let's talk about that. Why can't we get along? It seems like for the last four years, certainly and probably before then, I'm sure you'd argue. We've just been suffering some sort of collective hysteria, delusion, whatever you describe it, where the fever pitch of our public discourse has just taken off. I think one thing that has become apparent is that there are so many people in this world,

on the left and the right, who don't accept that somebody is entitled to hold a different opinion to them. And I argue in the book that unless you understand that somebody is not only entitled, to have an opinion, but you know from time to time they may be right. How can you marshal your own arguments against them? Because otherwise, you're just talking to people who agree with you. And that is really boring. I mean, my radio show, I prefer people to ring in to argue with me, not in a bad way, but just have a good debate. How boring would it be if I spent three hours every night just talking to people that agreed with me or thought I was fantastic? I mean, it would be wonders for my ego, but it would be very boring radio. There are,

radio presenters who thrive on that, who just want people who agree with them. They have a narrative. They want to get that narrative over. And anyone else who disagrees with them is immediately cast into outer darkness. Now, that's not what I think debate should be all about. But let's not pretend that it's just over the last four years this has happened. I think this, if you go back to the, I don't know, 18th, 19th centuries, you look at the political cartoons of the time. And there were really violent debates in the House of Commons. And our current House of Commons is fairly calm compared to that. But I think what's happened certainly over the last 20 years is the internet has intervened.

Now, in many ways for good, the internet has allowed people to have a voice. And everyone should be able to have a voice. But the destructive voices have come to the fore, I think particularly in the last 10 years, with the advent of social media. Back in the early 2000s, I was one of the first people to do a political blog. And I thought this, that blogging, as soon as I discovered blogs, I thought this is fantastic. I don't have to ring up my website person to change my website when I want to put something new on it. I can do it myself in a few minutes. Now, that was great because it gave ordinary

people a platform. It might be that they only had 30 readers in their local area. Well, so what? It still gave them a bigger voice than they had before. And I think blogging allowed people to put forward views that were different from what they were reading in their newspapers or hearing on the radio. But with the advent of Twitter, I think things have really changed. And Twitter is a great thing in many ways. But it's so spontaneous. You can react instantly. Now, that's sometimes a good thing, but very often it's a bad thing. If I tweet to you that you're a twat, your instant, your instant human reaction is to think, no, I'm not. I'm going to call him a effing twat. So you type it instantly. Now on a blog, you'd probably take a couple of minutes to think about that. And by the time

the couple of minutes were over, you think, oh, well, I better not do that. That's a bit rude. Whereas on Twitter, people don't think that there's no buffer on Twitter. And it's not, I think it's actually just sort of natural human reaction. If we're attacked, we fight back. If you look at the way that politics works on Twitter, if a conservative politician is in a scandal or something. The conservative tribes sort of circle the wagons and defend their man or woman. Same on the left. If Corbyn's under attack or was under attack, he would be defended in the same way. So it's like my country right or wrong. There's no shades of grey here. And if you've read the book, you'll know the word that I most often use in the book is nuance. There is no nuance on social media.

It's all black and white. And you're either for me or against me. You're in my tribe or you're not. And if you're not, then you're my enemy. That's not how public discourse should really be conducted, I don't think. And, Ian, don't you think part of the problem is when it comes to social media is that we, because of the nature of social media, it tends to promote posts that have the highest level of interaction, which tend to be, lo and behold, the most divisive ones. You know, all Brexiteers are racist, all Remainers are woke, or whatever it may be. So actually, these nuanced points, they simply don't get promoted.

because of the algorithms. No, and it actually, when you have people on both sides of the Brexit debate, for example, who don't, I mean, I've never called a Remain supporter a Ramona. I mean, I just think it's quite disrespectful. I might call them undemocratic sometimes if they didn't accept the referendum result. I think that's entirely legitimate. But I think if you indulge in sort of calling people Ramonas or Brexitters or whatever, I mean, is that really where we want to be in our society?

It's so pure, Alan. So you see the fact that people, when I, I once asked a newsnight producer, when I used to run news night literally every week, it seemed at one period. And even I was getting bored of myself on news night. And I said to one of the producers, I said, why do you keep booking me? Why don't you find other people? And they said, well, we see you as the thinking person's Brexiteer. And I thought, well, I've been called worse.

but because I was seen as a sort of more moderate voice than the likes of Andrew Bridgen or John Redwood or whoever, and I was actually willing to entertain the thought that there might be issues with Brexit. I wasn't sort of saying the land is going to be flowing with milk and honey. But that enrages the other side even more because they see somebody on their television screens or they hear somebody on the radio

that can put a reasonable sounding argument for Brexit and it destroys their narrative that everyone on the Brexit side of the argument should basically be cancelled because they're mad or racist or whatever. Yeah. And no, I mean, isn't part of the problem, and this is a very coarse way of putting it, in that woman. It's unlike you. I'd expect it from him, but not you.

But isn't part of the problem on social media, that you don't have the threat of physical violence? Because when, you know, if you're talking to someone face it, Are you advocating for physical violence? Is that what you're saying? I'm saying it's a deterrent. It is a deterrent, man. It's a punch in the face.

I mean, it's a modulator of behavior. Let's put that one. I'm six foot two like you're on a West Ham supporter. Yeah. I mean, this is a thing. I sometimes say to people who insult me on Twitter, you'd never say that to my face. And they'd say, oh, come on, big boy, I thought.

Yeah. But I guess Francis's point is, it's maybe more the car situation where you're in your car and you feel like there's a safe distance between you and another person, so you can give them all the finger salutes of different shapes and sizes. When, if you were standing next to them in a queue or something, you would never in a million years do that. I wish I'd thought that analogy because I'd put that in the book.

I'm helping you improve, just sowing little seeds. Just little seeds here. But, I mean, we've talked about social media to death, and there's no question it's been a contributing factor. But one of the things that you talk a lot, lot about in the book is your industry, which is the media. And you say in the 18th, 19th century, similar things existed. And I'm sure you're right. But I certainly feel like in my lifetime, which is not all that long. The...

The... The sort of way that we talk about things has changed. It absolutely has. And I think we've seen this during the coronavirus pandemic, where you had... in these daily Downing Street press conferences, you'd have all of these big-name journalists asking questions to the various politicians. And generally, they were questions that were along the lines of, aren't you ashamed of yourself?

Why don't you resign? You effing idiot, obviously, they didn't put it that way. And so any fool could have seen that this was going to happen. And on the 13th of March, you said this, but now you're saying that. And I think the public saw through that, because all they were doing was looking for gotcha moments. They weren't looking to get information from the politician or an explanation.

All they were trying to do was to get the politician to say something that would give them the headline in the news bulletins. And you see this, and this is all broadcasters are guilty of this. So they ask questions, they just pick their own journalist questions to the exclusion of others, even though they may have been better questions and got more newsworthy answers. And then at the end of the press conferences, you'd have all of the regional and local journalists asking questions. And they were the ones that were actually spot on and actually got interesting answers from the politicians.

Well, what a surprise that is. In a way, the way the media has developed, it's inevitable that this has happened, where if you're doing three or four minute interviews, so on a breakfast show, where inevitably it's much more pacey than other times of the day, the politician goes into the studio with maybe one or two things that they're determined to say whatever the question is.

And the journalist starts off, not with a sort of softball first question, because you haven't got time for that on a breakfast show. You go straight in, why are you lying to me, Minister? Well, immediately the shutters go up. But if I start with an, if you started here with an aggressive question to me, immediately my defences go up, and I'm probably not going to say anything very interesting. You might think I haven't anyway. But, I mean, it's just, again, natural human nature.

And so I'm really pleased, actually, that the long-form interview is coming back, particularly on podcasts, where you don't have a time limit. I mean, your show is all an hour long. The podcasts I do sometimes, maybe two hours long, we just go and see how it goes. And you actually, I did a 78-minute interview with Andrea Ledson the other day. Now, many of your viewers think, oh, my God, I bet that was interesting. Well, actually, it really was. and I had so many people say, my God, I saw a different side to her.

I really like her now, which I'd never seen that in her before. And I mean, our job is not to make politicians interesting. They've got to make themselves interesting. But if you can bring things out of people in that kind of format, that's so much more satisfying, I think, than just trying to get some crappy newsline out of someone and embarrass them. But don't you think the problem is, Ian, in that a lot of the mainstream media,

they're finding it impossible to monetise, They're really struggling financially. This is the only way that they can make themselves seem relevant in many ways. Well, it may be, but it's going to be a short-term pleasure. And in the long term, they will just eat themselves. I mean, we've seen this week that there are now apparently two rival news channels being launched, because, well, presumably because they think that Sky News and the BBC aren't doing a good enough job. Now, commercially, I'm not sure I see how that can work.

Back in 2006, I was part of a team that launched an internet TV channel called 18 Downey Street. And it was, I mean, a bit like this. We did live programming, but also recorded programming, where there was much longer, you had a lot more time. And it was seen, I remember a lot of people rated up as always new Fox News, because we were predominantly on the right. Although we had people like Peter Tatchell presenting programs, it wasn't entirely on the right. Now, that was 10 years ahead of its time. and it only lasted a year. But, I mean, that cost, I think,

it cost about a million pounds over the course of that year. This is not a cheap thing to do. So although I think competition is great and I'd love to see a whole plethora of different style of news channels, that is a reaction to, I think, a widespread feeling that mainstream media news channels in a way aren't servicing their public properly. Now, a lot of the times you've got people on the, I won't say far right, but people on the right, people on the left, who think that the BBC and Sky are either right wing or left wing.

And then the BBC and Sky, I think, oh, well, if they both think that we're either right or left, we must be doing something right, which is the laziest way of thinking, I think. And it's interesting that Tim Davy, the new BBC Director General, has already, in his first week, stepped into this. And so, well, I think we are getting things wrong. We're not speaking to the whole country in the way that we should be. Well, good on him. And let's see what he actually does. I mean, we're recording this just after it's been announced that they've reversed the decision on the proms

and there will be singing. Now, in a way, not a massively important issue, but that, I'm sure, will have come from him. And that is a signal that something is going to change at the BBC. I hope he's right, because I think the BBC is a bit like an oil tanker. It's quite difficult to turn around. But let's wish him luck. I think the symbolism of it is quite important

because we've obviously gone through a period of time, where a lot of people feel like British history as a whole thing has been under attack. Yeah. And to see the national broadcaster sort of spearheading that movement, it's not what a lot of people... And the other interesting thing here is that the left have tried to pretend that this wasn't a story, and it was got up by the right. Well, and I was listening to the Fortunately podcast, which with Jane Garvey and Fie Glover, it's one of my favorite podcasts.

I mean, they are... After you. I regard you as a bit above a podcast. because you do it all on video too. So, well, I wasn't lumping. Good on. And they had Nezarin Malik, the Guardian Congress on. And they were talking about this.

And she alleged that this whole story had been fabricated by the right to enable Boris Johnson to look patriotic and all the rest of it. Well, the journalist who broke this story in the Sunday Times, Grant Tucker, who used to be my PA. So I spoke to him. I mean, the story happened. I thought, well, that is a really great story. good story. And so I talked to him about how he'd got the story, sort of what the sort of,

he didn't tell me necessarily who the sources were, but he actually had quoted name sources as well. I'm thinking, well, how can you say this wasn't a legitimate news story? So she's accused him of fabricating it, which I think is a really serious allegation to make. It wasn't a fabricated story. You can say, well, it's a stupid story because who, who wants to sing all these old-fashioned lyrics anyway, fine, have that debate, but it's a legitimate story to write. Oh, for sure. Look, I spend a lot of time telling you what's wrong with the world, so let me tell you about something that's actually right. Sleep, specifically getting more of it, better quality,

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No, because I voted Brexit, mate. Brexit means Brexit. I know that when you go on holiday, sometimes you don't speak the language, it can feel really awkward, a little bit like Francis talking to a woman. Do you want to learn another language? Now, I don't, for obvious reasons. But if you do, then Babel is quite simply one of the finest apps to use to achieve your goal. It is. It's got amazing, simple to use interface. They've got daily 10 to 15 minute lessons that you can do that have been proven effective in many studies is a great way to learn one of 14 languages that they offer. So it doesn't matter if you've got struggle with language for a variety of different reasons.

Maybe you find it tough or maybe you're just English. Right now, Babel is offering Trigonometry fans six months completely free. All you've got to do is head over there, get the six month subscription and use our special code, which is, of course, trigger. Go to babble.com.com.uk slash play and use the promo code trigger on your six-month subscription. That's B-A-B-B-B-E-L.com.org-F-L-C-O-D-K forward slash play and use the code trigger. And we're not going to explain how to spell the word trigger because that would be patronising. But you mentioned this sort of new right-of-center channel potentially that people are talking

about. And I thought you said you didn't think it was going to work. Do you not think there's a huge gap in the market there? Well, I haven't said I don't think it's going to work. I think it's going to be difficult for it to work commercially. Now, there are lots of people with very deep pockets who might be willing to accept that it's never going to make a profit and that they'll happily subsidise it. I think it can work from a journalistic point of view. I think you can have a channel which allows opinion. I mean, I work for a channel where all the presenters are encouraged to express their opinions. And we have a very diverse range of opinions. So at one stage, it went from sort of Nigel Farage through to Ken Livingstone.

I mean, actually they weren't on at the same time. But I think that is the way probably to do it, rather than have just a whole stream of right-of-centre presenters who are inevitably going to give, I mean, it will inevitably be called a British Fox News if you do it that way. I'm not sure I would want to watch a channel that did that necessarily because why would you just want to watch people

that you might agree with all the time? I think you've got to be challenged. Otherwise, you just develop lazy thinking habits. And isn't this a problem that if we do have this channel, that it's just going to increase polarization and that people who agree with it are just going to watch it and they're not going to engage it. Well, we can see what's happening in the United States,

where if you're on the right, you watch Fox News, if you're not on the right, you watch CNN or MSNBC. I'm not sure that's very healthy for anyone, really. But that's where the point you made about the BBC is so important, And as you say, the mooting of this new right of center thing is a direct response to people, a lot of people feeling that the BBC has gone to the left. And so if the BBC under this new Director General can recover a sense of what their role is, which is to provide balance and unbiased reporting, if they can achieve that, which remains

to be seen at this point, then that threat of a right of center channel may dissipate by itself, potentially. It could do. And the BBC is capable of doing that. If you think back, and people forget this, if you think back to the Brexit referendum campaign, I thought they covered it really well. I think most people did. It was only afterwards when all the shenanigans started that you could tell that there weren't very many Brexiteers working in the BBC. And that is a problem. And the fact that they didn't really see all the sort of red wall thing coming up, to be fair, I'm not sure anybody saw it to that extent. A lot of our guest did it. Well, fair enough.

Sorry. We do a better, too. I mean, I certainly thought there would be a Tory majority. I didn't think it would be that much. People like Matt Goodwin, Paul Embry, that sort of caliber of person that we've had on the show repeatedly, they all predicted it with quite a lot of confidence because they were aware of what was happening. And the metropolitan centristism of sort of,

broadcasters in general, I think it was probably a big factor on that. There were two things. First of all, I don't think the BBC or anybody in the sort of London media bubble understands that Boris Johnson has an appeal outside the M25. And I was saying this, I've always said this. If you walk down the street with Boris Johnson, it doesn't matter whether it's in Kensington or Halifax. He attracts people around him in a way that no other politician does. People want to have their selfie. I mean, he is a He's got it. Whatever it is, he's got it in space.

And I've never seen that in any other politician with a possible exception of Margaret Thatcher. What about Ian Duncan Smith? No. And that's the thing. I mean, Ian Duncan Smith once said that you have 90 days as a political party leader to make your mark.

If you haven't made your mark after 90 days, you might as well give up there and then. And I think he's absolutely right to that. You can't create charisma. You either have it or you don't. One of you does and one of you don't doesn't. Sorry, man. But it's true.

You cannot, people see through it. Sometimes people try too hard. I'll give you an example. Liz Truss, I think, tries a bit too hard in this regard with her sort of Instagram photos. And they're amusing, but I'm not sure they did her any goods as a sort of creditable politician. She didn't actually add to her political credibility

by doing all of that stuff. People want, when Cameron had this phrase, keep it real. And you've got to keep it real. If people don't like your personality, you're not probably going to persuade them to it. You know, before Farad's just asked you a question just on David Cameron.

My wife is completely apolitical. You've made my wife, I think. Possibly, briefly. Maybe you haven't. But anyway, she's completely apolitical, couldn't care less about politics at all. But she said to me, she's not right or left or anything like that

but she said to me every time I see David Cameron on TV I want to throw up you just look so dishonest yeah yeah that was her take I can think of many politicians I could say that about but he wouldn't be one of them that's interesting she just thought he was a sort of very fake person

but anyway speaking of I'm interviewing him in a couple of weeks that explains that I'll put that to him put that to him why are you so fake Dave but speaking of prime ministers and prime ministers who've been criticized. Boris Johnson is someone who, during the hustings in the last election, you had a little bit of a run-in with his fans, it's fair to say,

and that's what I've always liked about you is, you know, you are probably centre-right on some issues, centre-left on others, but you are on the right, I think. I would self-describe as being on the centre-right. Centre-right. But when you... Nazi is how we describe it. Yes, exactly. With a few sort of lefty social issue opinions.

Right. So, for example, in immigration, you described as wet as a lettuce. Exactly. But when you were interviewing Boris Johnson, you actually pushed him quite hard to the chagrin of his following at the time. What do you make of Boris Johnson's nine months or wherever it's been in power so far? Believe it, it's over a year now. Wasn't it December? 24th, no, 24th of July.

Oh, right, of course. Yeah, of course. Wow. Yes. Yeah. My next book, which has come out in November, is a history of prime ministers, because in April 2021, it's the 300th anniversary of the office of prime minister. So I've commissioned 55 people to write an essay on each prime minister for this book, and I've written the Boris Johnson chapter.

Oh, wow. And I mean, I've written it up to the end of April. I might do a little, it's going to print soon, so I can't do much of an update. I said before Boris Johnson, and became prime minister that I thought he would be one of our great prime ministers or the shittest prime minister we've ever had. Now, it's far too early to come to a judgment now. I think he did what a lot of people thought would be impossible. He has got us out of the European Union, which I was beginning to doubt whether that was actually going to happen. So that's certainly on the plus side, which I mean, I wouldn't say that, wouldn't I? If he gets a free trade deal done of any meaningful form with the EU by the end of the year,

that will be a significant achievement. I actually do believe that that will happen. We already know that we're about to sign one with Japan, which we're told is actually better than the deal that the EU has got with Japan. I think that would be a landmark thing to do. If we've got a lot of the free trade deals rolled over from the EU by the end of December, again, an achievement. But he's not going to go down in history as the Brexit.

Prime Minister, which is what he thought he would. He's going to go down in history as the COVID Prime Minister. And I don't think even his greatest fan could say that he's got a stellar track record in handling this. Statistics don't lie in the end. And although I think the British public are very forgiving, there are things that were done over the last four or five months that could have been done differently, could have been done more quickly. And it's easy for anybody to say in hindsight, oh, well, you should have done that, you should have done that. But there were people, for example, on lockdown, there were plenty of people saying this should be done a week or 10 days earlier than it was. And I think that would have been, that that was the main error that was made. The fact that he was out of

action for, or a month, six weeks, the fact that I think he's still suffering from the after effects of that. And I think this is leading to speculation that, I mean, if he does get the free trade deal and say the economy has gone back to a semblance of normality by the middle of next year, it's entirely possible that he might think, well, I've done what I came to do. I quite fancied the thought of earning millions of pounds of being for being an ex-prime minister. I don't think he's enjoying it as much as he maybe thought he would. I mean, how can you enjoy being prime minister at this kind of time. It's not like being in a war, although people make the war analogies, it's not like fighting a war. And I just get the feeling that it's not

the job that he thought he was going to be doing. And so it wouldn't surprise me if by the end of 2021, his Dominic Cummings father-in-law, I think was suggesting that he might go before Christmas. I can't really see that. But it wouldn't surprise me at all. If by the end of 2020, I mean, his Dominic Cummings' father-in-law, I think, was suggesting that he might go before Christmas. but it wouldn't surprise me at all if by the end of 2021, he thought, or maybe into 22, he thought, okay, I've done what I came for, let's get someone else a chance. Now, it's unusual for a prime minister to give up office voluntarily, but Boris is an unusual politician, so nothing would surprise me. I don't think he's done overall as bad a job as his critics would necessarily say,

but I think if you were marking him, it would be quite hard to go above a be minus and that's probably being kind. And Ian, there's quite a few people who said that he was quite weak during the Black Lives Matter protest. He wasn't particularly visible. And when, you know, the statute of Churchill was being defaced, he should have taken a stronger position, upheld, you know, law and order. Do you agree with that? I think it's really difficult for a conservative politician on those issues, because whatever you say is going to be taken down in evidence and used against you. I think things were mishandled in some of those.

I mean, to my mind, the protest shouldn't have ever gone ahead anyway, given that we were right in the middle of the serious part of the pandemic. And all social distancing rules just were ignored. Interesting that this week, of course, and it will be a few weeks by the time this goes out. But Pierce Corbyn, fine 10,000 pounds for breaking. The better Corby. It's starting from a low base there, right? I'm not so sure about that one.

The Madder Corby. The Madder Corbyn. But, but, I mean, he did the same thing as the BLM protest. He went out and organized and participated in a public protest. I think the difficulty here, and I found this, when all this was going on and I was covering it on the radio every night, I knew that one word out of place, if I'd sort of made any derogatory marks, remark about what was going on. I mean, that would have been a really serious thing. I mean, it was, if you're a politician or a broadcaster on those things,

you are one word away from losing your job or ending up on the front page of one of the tabloids. And I was very careful to try and distinguish between the Black Lives Matter movement and the Black Lives Matter organization. As we were. But that gets lost in translation of all the people. And I don't know if you saw, I had a call one night from a woman called Denise in Enfield. And she took me to task for what I was saying.

And so I was looking at it through my white middle class prism, which I took exception to. And we had quite a bit of a ding-dong about this. And then I'd sort of let her talk. And she was then saying, well, of course, what you don't get is that black people, we don't get the same chances that white people do. And I said, well, no, I do understand that. And she said, as a black woman, it's even worse. And then she's saying, of course, on your radio station, you've only got one female presenter.

You've got no black presenters at all. I said, well, Madrid Nawaz is not black, but he's Asian Muslim. And we had, she just signed Rachel Johnson, so we got two. And then she said, yeah, and I wonder how she got the job. And I said, well, she didn't just walk through the door and come into a studio and broad. She's actually been, she's about four years, I know that she's been doing all auditions. She wasn't just offered a job for the fact that she's the prime minister's sister. She actually had to prove that she could do it. But again, that's got nothing to do with skin color.

No, it hasn't. But she said, I wouldn't get through your front door. And I thought to myself, do you know what, you're right? So I said, okay, come and present the program with me tomorrow. Because there was something about her that I thought, and we ended the program. And I was thinking all the time I was saying this. Because I said, don't you think I've made these points to the management here that we need to up our game on this? I said, I have done. And as I was saying, I thought, I'm probably gone a bit too far here. And I said at the end of the conversation, well, if I lose my job, if I'm not here tomorrow, Denise, it's going to be your fault. She's all, can I have your job? I said, we'll come in tomorrow. I did see this, yeah. Come in tomorrow. And she's been coming in for an hour

every week or every fortnight since then. Now, we're not going to give her a job just because of that. and just because she's a black female, she's got to prove that she can do the job. Because believe it or not, sitting behind a microphone for three hours a night is not just sitting there and having a little chat with somebody. You've got five things going on in your head at any one time. You've got to be able to handle a breaking news story,

a terror attack, and not go to pieces. You've got to be able to handle MH17 being shot down over Ukraine. And that's the only thing that you know. You go into rolling news mode, and that's the only piece of information you've got And your task is to keep people listening, but not bore them to tears just by repeating the fact you've got to talk to experts on it. You've got to actually have an understanding. I mean, how does a plane get shot out of the air at sort of 20,000 feet?

I can tell you all about it. So, I mean, people think that I must be sort of like a pig and shit, just sitting there doing what I love doing, talking. But you're constantly thinking, right, I'm interviewing the cabinet minister next. What's my first question? I'm talking to somebody. my producer's talking in my ear. All sorts of things are going on. And at the end of the three hours,

you are mentally exhausted. I mean, you're physically exhausted sometimes, depending on what kind of program you've done. So you can't just sort of give anybody a job just because they think they can do it. But, and I do, I have talked to enough people on the radio over the last 10 years of black heritage,

of Asian heritage to know that there is discrimination, whether it's conscious or subconscious, there is. If your name is Undabaningi, you are less likely to get a job interview than if your name is Francis. That is just a fact. There's no point in us denying it. It is a fact, and that has to be addressed. And we're not being fair to people if it isn't addressed.

I don't think we're a nation of racists. There are racists among us. We all know that. But I do think there is a degree of subconscious racism in a lot of people. People who don't like to think that there is. It's the sort of I'm not a racist butt kind of syndrome. So I have a lot of sympathy with some of the aims of the people who were demonstrating in some ways, but I can't support a movement that wants to defund or abolish the police,

depending on who you talk to, or abolish capitalism. I'm sorry, I'm not going to say that I can support that organization. And one of my regrets is that when this was all happening, in the first week, we had a minute's silence for George Floyd on LBC or on all of the global radio stations. And I was given a statement to read out after this, which in retrospect, I think I should have said, well, I want to amend this, because it didn't wholly reflect my views. I was the messenger. And what was that discrepancy? I can't remember the exact details. But I do remember at the time thinking, well, should

I sort of challenge this. But the problem is it was being read out on every other global radio station. But what was the gist of it is what I'm getting at? Well, I think it was about the organization as well as the general aims. So you were sort of being asked to declare your support for the organization? Well, it was me on behalf of the whole organization. And it was, I just, I think in the end, came to the conclusion that it probably wasn't worth the fight. But I mean that that was also not long after Nigra Farage left

and it sort of played into this narrative that developed on Twitter that sort of I've gone awoke and all the rest of it. So looking back, possibly I should have done that a little differently. And we talk about the death of nuance and you said that, you know, broadcasters, not just yourself, everybody in the industry had to tread very, very carefully when it came to discuss in the Black Lives Matter organisation. and if you made one misstep, you'd be cancelled. Why is that?

Why do you think it is that we've come to this point where you can't make a legitimate criticism of an organisation without you? Well, I think I can now, but I think it would have been very difficult to do that when it was all going on. I did say that I thought that statues shouldn't be pulled down or the rest of it.

I didn't think that was a particularly controversial thing to say, but others did. And I did feel where that was, would end because I thought that it may well be that over the whole country you might get statues being taken down. I mean, there were people wanting to take the Churchill statue down. Where does this end? Charles Moore's got a really good piece in The Spectator today where, or maybe it's last week, where he's talking about, I can't remember the guy's name, but somebody who the British Museum have now hidden away. And he went through what this, this is somebody from the

1600s, what he had achieved, but he had married. somebody who was the daughter of a slave owner, I think. And it was sort of guilt by association. And Charles was saying, well, I mean, if really that is where we're heading, why would anyone donate money to the British Museum if they think that they're going to sort of be trashed in 300 years? I mean, it's, it is a very dangerous path that we've gone down here. And I'm glad that it was just that one statue that came down. And I'm sure there are. And I'm sure there are, There are, I mean, it is a difficult one, just from a moral point of view. I'm sure there are people in Germany who think that statues of Hitler should still be allowed to stand.

Where do you draw the line? Everybody's going to have a different place where they draw that line. I think the issue on the statue was certainly for me, I don't know whether this was the K for you, but for me it was not so much the statute itself. It was the method by which it was taken down. If the people of Bristol are democratically voted to remove it, great. I mean, the people of Bristol entitled to have any statute they want or don't want. But just randomly walking up to a statute that you personally dislike and pulling it down with a mob, I don't think that's how it should be.

I mean, you know, my ancestors suffered from the policies implemented following Karl Marx's work. There's a statue of Marx in London. Do I get Francis and Anton, we go and pull that down? Well, that's not that incompetent. I'm just going to say, I'm going to need someone and us to handle it wrong. You could probably handle Gandhi, though, because I mean, Gandhi was a racist.

Yeah, absolutely. But, of course, nobody, well, very few people would suggest that the Statue of Gandhi in Parliament Square should come down. There were a few people on Twitter. Well, maybe there were. There always are on Twitter, mate. But it's very difficult to be consistent on this.

But my worst fears weren't realised on that. I mean, the demonstrations that happened in London, I thought, were... generally well handled. There was violence in a couple of them, but there always are because they generally get hijacked by the usual suspects. Although I think the one in Whitehall,

I think it was the second one. I mean, that was on a different scale. I think when police horses were attacked and all the rest of it. But we're still at a point where it's actually still not really socially acceptable to question anything on this. And that's not a healthy state of,

debate. And what about you bring up the particular riot, and with the horses being attacked, policewoman being knocked off a horse, hitting her head. I mean, I personally, to me, that looked like a riot, that particular one. And it was reported by the BBC as being largely peaceful. And that was something that a lot of people picked up on. Well, if you, it was largely peaceful. I mean, most of it, I mean, if you, if you, if you divided up the time, you could. Well, World War II was largely peaceful. by that sort of way, because most of the time soldiers weren't fighting. They were sleeping,

they were eating, they were sitting around playing cards. I think that's scratching it a bit. But on a six-hour demonstration, there was probably about an hour at the end where it got a bit hairy. I mean, I'm not defending it. If I was a BBC executive, I could happily defend describing it in that way.

But I think they were a little bit, not just them though. I think Sky were exactly the same. They were quite reluctant to give the full picture of what actually went on there. Well, the reason I bring it up is at the moment CNN, I don't know if you've seen these. I've shared a couple of them on my Twitter where there's a guy standing in front of a burning city going peaceful demonstrations, you know, all this sort of stuff. And it does seem to me potentially that the fear that you are talking about or the concern, that one ought not to criticize this thing.

One ought to be extra careful means that people are hesitant to report reality. Now, maybe the reality is maybe you're right that they were mostly peaceful. But that isn't how we report riots. I mean, if or violent demonstrations that have a measure of violence, if, for example, Brexiteers had gone on a march or a protest, in which 27 police officers were injured, I don't think that would have been reported as being largely peaceful.

No. No, I think you're right. I think part of the problem here is difficult to know what to believe when you see pictures from demonstrations, protest, riots, whatever. How do you, particularly on Twitter, how do you know that it's actually from that particular one?

There have been so many examples, there was one last week, I think, where it purported to be from a particular event and it turned out it was something two years ago. And this is where the fake news thing really comes in because, I mean, I've retweeted a couple of things and I just found out afterwards, well, that wasn't what actually happened. So then you apologize and delete, I mean, I don't like deleting things on Twitter because it looks as if you're trying to take away responsibility from yourself. But because if you explain, well, actually, I'm sorry I tweeted that

because that wasn't what it was. People don't see that bit. They just still see the original bit. So it's always a very difficult decision as to whether to delete or not. No, I mean, that is the problem, isn't it? When it comes to something like Twitter, when you retweet something that you believe in,

it turns out it's not what it initially appears. But do you think we're in a very worrying situation at the moment, Ian, with public discourse? Because I'll be honest with you, I'm quite worried about it. Yes, I think we are. And the only kind of negative comment I've seen on Twitter about my book is somebody's saying, well, yeah, you've diagnosed all the problems, but you haven't really come up with that many

solutions. And I said, well, did you actually get to the end of the book? Because I've got 50 ways. There's a list of 50. We're going to improve public discourse. Now, if I'm honest, in retrospect, should I have included those within the narrative? I don't know. But I think in the end, it is us as individuals that are going to be able to change this

or not. I know I've moderated my behaviour on Twitter, whereas, I mean, I would get involved in ridiculous Twitter spats. And someone once said, oh, Ian Dell's such a nice guy on the radio, but on Twitter, he's an absolute beast. And they were right. So, I mean, I've tried to change that

because I'm not an absolute beast. I could mix it up with anybody. I can, if I have to have a really loud debate with somebody, I'll do it. But I think we just have to try and calm down, moderate our behaviour, and just try and be a little bit nicer to each other. I know this sounds like sort of kumbaya and sort of hug a hoodie and all the rest of it.

But in the end, I mean, we're going to end up in a very, very dark place soon if we're not careful. And how far along the path do you think we've gone? And do you think we can turn back? I'd like to think we can. That's no. Well, sometimes it takes something big to, really make people sit up and think about what they're doing. And I think it does put responsibility on people in the public eye a little bit,

where people do tend to take their, I mean, everybody has heroes and role models and all the rest of it. And if they see their hero or role model acting in a particularly bad way, then they're more likely to imitate it. And I do think also, and I don't think I have put this in the book, But I do think schools have a role to play here in teaching kids how to handle social media. And maybe they do it. I don't know.

I'm not. They don't. Well, they ought to because, I mean, they do teach about safeguarding. I know that. But this is more than safeguarding. This is almost what when I was at school, we would have had a couple of hours each week a sort of general studies lesson. Where civics is what it used to be called. And that's, I think, where.

teachers need to actually teach people about the art of public discourse and how to debate. And I'm not sure there's enough of that going on in our education system at the moment. No, well, absolutely not. And certainly, but we talk about the art of debate. I don't think politicians have got the art of debate. In many cases, you see the way they interact with each other. You look at question time now. I mean, what is question time?

But just a series of people talking over one another. as you know yourself well it is um i mean i find i did any questions last week and it's an oasis of calm compared to the television version and the last time i was on which was a year ago now um i mean i nearly walked off the set because i was just so disgusted at what was going on and um if i had done i mean it would who created such a massive storm. And I'm glad I didn't. I did do it on Good Morning Britain a few months afterwards

because I was in the middle of a pincer movement from two people on the left. And I thought, you know, I've got better things to do and then waste my time. I listened to Grace Blakely for about a minute and a half saying what she had to say.

I then got nine seconds out before she interrupted me. And then the guy to my left interrupted me as well. And I went to speak again. And then they started, I thought, sod this for going to soldiers. And, I mean, as I was getting up, I thought,

oh, should I do this? But I have absolutely no regrets about it because I think it did, it drew a line in the sand, certainly for me. So I'm just not going to put up with this level of impoliteness and rudeness. And what was the feedback like on that, including from the producers themselves?

Very interesting. I mean, I had to, as soon as I, because I literally walked into the green room, got my coat, got my bag, walked out to the car, and I was furious. People say I flounced out. I didn't actually. It was very calm. I walked out, but I was very angry.

And the producer sort of ran after me as I got to the car. I'm really sorry, really sorry. And I said, well, these things happen. And if you don't want to come on the program again, quite understand, but I'm just not putting up with that. Oh, no, no, no, don't worry, don't worry. And the two presenters texted me after to say, really sorry, we should have stepped in, but we didn't. And I then spent three hours driving to Norfolk,

didn't look at Twitter. I did put out a tweet saying, well, I can't remember what I said, but sort of... Hashtag kill Pierce Morgan. Well, it wasn't Pierce Morgan. Sort of thus far and no further. And 90% of the tweets were supportive,

even people who don't agree with me politically. But then what I've worked out is that whenever I'm in the headlines for that kind of reason or any reason, the way the left think they can get at me is to retweet the video of me on Brighton Seafront in 2013 when, well, according to their narrative, I beat up a pensioner. It doesn't sound very good, does it? You're a West Ham.

Well, exactly. What actually happened, and I go into exhaustive detail in the book on this, because I don't hide away from it, I actually pulled the protester by his rucksack straps away. He then tried to punch me, missed. The momentum of that sort of made us fall over. But according to them, I wrestled him to the ground. You will find no evidence anywhere of me punching him, kicking him,

doing anything apart from trying to restrain him from getting into the TV picture. Because my author Damien McBride was being interviewed. But the left have edited this video to make you look far. worse than it was. So they just retweet this video. Whenever I'm in the headlines, that's what they do, even though it's seven years ago. And so I just blocked them. I mean, I really couldn't give a monkey's ass how many times they do it, because I know what happened. Most normal people can see what happened. And, yeah. But going back to the incident at Good Morning Britain, don't you find their apologies, a little bit disingenuous? Because let's be fair, they engineer that. They create that

atmosphere. That's what they want. So then you get the clips which go again where we talked about at the beginning of the issue. Hey, shut up. I want to get back in Good Morning Britain. I've done it like four times. You've done it. You see, I totally get why you say that. And I think there is an element of that in most of these types of programs. But I do it every Friday morning at 6.30am with Jackie Smith, former Labor Home Secretary. And we do the for the many podcasts together, which people like because we do get on. And even though we come from different political angles, we have a laugh.

In 210 episodes, we've never fallen out. We analyse the week's news, and it's all very good natured. And we do it on Good Morning Britain as well. And the viewers really like it. You don't, I don't think people, at 6.30, people don't want a Barney, do they? I mean, I don't really watch breakfast television. But, I mean, if I did, I don't think that's what I'd want at 6.30 in the morning.

Every time they get me on, that's exactly what they want. Yeah, this is what I was going to ask you about that. Do you think that they apologize? We're getting into the weeds, but I think there's a bigger point that goes beyond that particular incident, which is more about the media in general, which is they apologize to you because you made a stand and it became clear that a line had been crossed. But if you just sat there and took it like a good little boy, they wouldn't have even noticed that something had occurred.

Well, maybe. I mean, look, I'm in their position. So, you know, because you come on my cross-question program sometimes. I mean, sometimes you do have to step in and say, I mean, David Starkey, who has been on the show several times. I mean, he kind of knows that he goes on these shows and a performance is expected of him. And the other three guests who are on the show,

I don't know, have you been on with him? No. No. The other three guests on the show know that effectively it's the David Starkey show. And on each occasion, I have had to pull him up for something that he's done or said, which won't come as any surprise to anybody. I mean, I can't remember what it was last time, but it was, it was quite a sort of misogynistic thing that he said. And we had a very sort of feminist left-wing woman on, and it was quite offensive. And I just said, David, you cannot say that.

You just cannot say that. Judging by his face, it was quite funny. Please apologize. And to be fair to him, he did. But the great thing about David Stark is that he just is gold dust in terms of engaging, even if you hate him, you kind of, you want to watch it. There was one time we were talking about, there was some story about pornography. I can't know what it was.

And he gave a very erudite answer to it. And I was about to move on to the next person. And I just saw him lean into the microphone saying, but of course, Ian, as you know, I love a bit of pornography. I thought, oh, God. You know. He's very funny, David. We had David on the show prior to the whole Darren Grimes thing.

And actually on our show, he didn't say anything out of line at all. He was very entertaining. I mean, he's a lot of us. Obviously, Darren Grimes is a much better interviewer. Yeah, obviously, he managed to get him to say something. something super offensive. But actually, that speaks to, again, a broader issue, which is, what do you do now? Because we're so quick to judge people and to cancel them.

Obviously, on your show, you just pull people up and you say, look, you shouldn't say that. Or that's inappropriate or whatever. But what do we do with someone like that who makes, you know, who's a great historian, a fantastic man in many ways, but in some ways goes too far or says things that might have been acceptable 50 years ago when he was growing up, but aren't now. How do we handle that as a... Well, I got caught up in this because I had seen Darren Grimes, I think, had tweeted that they were raising money

for his reasons project. And I like Darren. I think he's a good guy. Sometimes can be very naive. I think he would admit that himself. So I went on the crowdfunding page and put £100 on. I thought nothing more of it. And then 10 minutes later, somebody tweeted,

I can't believe Ian Dale is supporting this after what David Starkey said on this interview. Because I hadn't even seen this interview. I didn't even know it existed. But it had been on the internet for a couple of hours, but I just hadn't seen it. So I watched it. Oh, my God. And I thought, well, Darren, you really should have challenged that, but he didn't challenge it. And I think, I mean, Darren himself said that Starkey's always been one of his heroes.

And I completely get that. And I think there was a degree of being a little bit star-strel. there. And I was like really getting serious dogs abuse for this. I thought, well, I'm not going to sort of get the hundred pounds back. I think actually Darren Grimes is a good guy. It's a reasonable project. And but I had to, in the end, I thought, well, I've got to condemn what David said.

So I did. And I thought, I'm never going to be able to have him on my show again because of this. but I have... Do you still feel that way? No, I don't. That's interesting. So what was it for you? I think what changed it was David's apology.

Now, to me, it was a bit too late. He should have immediately done it, but it was two or three days after. It was after a couple of organisations have basically disowned him. And I mean, David is actually a fundamentally kind person. Very kind. Yeah.

And I remember interviewing him at Edinburgh last year. And he was, I think he was the only one to get a standing of eight. at the end. And bear in mind, as you well know, both Edinburgh audiences are not exactly right-wing audiences. But he was very emotional, very personal, talked about his partner's death and all the rest of it. And I mean, I like to think I have a reputation of standing my people when they're going through difficult times. And I mean, David sent me an email after reading what I'd said. And he was, I think he was quite upset that I had said what I'd said. And I said, well, look, you said

it, you've got to own it, you've got to take responsibility, and you can't expect people to rush to your defence for something as awful as that. And anyway, I'm having lunch with them in a couple of weeks, and I wanted to come back on the programme at some point, because I don't believe in cancelling people for, I mean, it was an awful thing to say, and I'm not trying to minimize it, and I'm sure if he does come back on the program, I'm going to get a lot of abuse for that. Well, my shoulders are broad enough. So it was the apology that changed it for you? Yes, if he hadn't apologized, I don't think that I could have justified him.

But I'm curious, because there were some people who were like, well, he just made a mistake or something. Well, he did make a mistake, but it was a mistake that was, I mean, okay, he was, he was, David likes to exaggerate to make a point. And that was, I mean, okay, that's not a sin to do that. But it was just the way he did it. It was the timing of it as well. That nobody could defend it. And I think in the end, he absolutely realized that.

No, no. My point is... Which I don't think he did at the beginning. Sure, no, I agree with you. My point is for some people, there are some people, like, he did nothing wrong. There are also people for whom it was so egregious in their minds that you don't come back from it. the apology doesn't cut it. Like, yeah, he apologised, as you say, a little bit late.

But, you know, he's racist. That's it. Done, dusted. Barry him now sort of thing. Well, I don't belong to that school of thought in this case. I'm sure there might be other cases. I mean, if somebody in a similar interview had said, I don't believe the Holocaust happened.

I don't believe any Jews died in the Holocaust. I'm sorry. Never want to have anything to do with you again. I don't think that this was on that scale. And I'm not minimizing it. It was a terrible thing to say. But in the end, some way you have to draw a line. And do you think broadcasters' positions have become more precarious over the years?

Or do you think you've always been treading a fine line as a broadcast? You're always treading a fine line. Not just on these issues. If you are, if there's a terror attack and you're going into rolling news mode, there is a line of speculation which you can't really go over, even if you are sure that it is a particular group that did this, until you've got some sort of evidence, you can't do it. And I have seen broadcasters cross that line in the past

because they've got nothing else to say. They've only got something to speculate on. And that, as I say, is when you really earn your money. And I'm not a trained journalist. I'm not a trained broadcaster. But in the end, I've got to rely on sort of 30 or 40 years of experience of knowing what you can do and what you can't do. And so far, I haven't sort of stepped over that line.

And the parameters of what you can do and what you can't do, have they become narrow over the years? In terms of what? In terms of what is acceptable and what isn't acceptable? What is acceptable to say and what isn't acceptable to say? I think that, I mean, we are governed by off-com rules certainly on words that you can use and that you can't use. I think there's been a little bit more leniency on that side.

But if you take the example of mental health, I do a lot of programmes on mental health issues. And there are words that 10 years ago would have been quite acceptable to say on the radio, which aren't now. And I don't think it's not just political correctness here. It's actually just common decency in the... If you think about it, we all use the word nutter.

Well, for somebody who's got mental health, health issues, that actually is a really horrible word to use. I remember pulling up Nick Clegg for using it once, live on air. And I explained why it wasn't a word that we should really use in polite society. And he's, oh, no, I quite understand. And then the next day I saw him use it in another interview the same way. And you might think, well, that's being totally oversensitive. But you do have, words have consequences. And although I'm not going to, I'm not going, only say any words should necessarily be banned. I think the offcom rules on most swear words, for example, are utterly ridiculous in that I can't say bollocks on the radio, but I can say

grollocks. And everyone knows what I mean when I do, and I do that. And you can't use the word bitch anymore. Even to describe a female dog? I don't know the answer to that. If you want to call someone a bitch, just say they're a female dog. I can't say that, oh, well, before I came here, I heard constant in bitching about Francis. If I do that, the producer presses the dump button. It's outrageous. And they did that to me not that long ago, and I said, don't you ever do that again? I said, if I was

calling a female politician a bitch on there, absolutely. I never would, but if I did that, fine, but not when you're using it in that kind of context. It's utterly ridiculous. But we have also seen the examples. There was that quite well-known example of the

radio producer or the radio presenter who temporarily lost their job, then stated because they doubted the existence of white privilege or they criticized it. It's a guy on Manx Radio, wasn't it? Yeah. Yeah. Well, see, to me, that is a debating point. Right. I mean, I think it's unquestionable that particularly white males do, even if they can't bring themselves to admit it, do get white privilege. I do think that there is a case for that. But to actually question it, it doesn't mean to say you should lose your job. And you've got it in the BBC where Ian Lee lost his job as the breakfast presenter on three counties radio for arguing with a

woman caller who was basically saying she was a devout fundamentalist Christian type who was saying terrible things about homosexuals so Ian Lee took her to task for it and called her a bigot now if I'd done that on LBC my boss would praise me for doing it he got the sack for it that's really interesting Well, Ian, on that note, before we ask you our last question, perhaps, you know, why can't we all just get along? You've given a list at the end of the book of 50 things. But what do you think, you know, you said that we as individuals have to solve this problem. So if we as individuals were to do one or two things each to really start to dial back the rhetoric,

to start to be able to have conversations in good faith again, what would we be doing? Well, I think two things, one of which I've already really covered, but one would be to calm down, take your time, reflect a bit before you respond to anybody, where you feel the sap rising, just stop for a few seconds and think, do I really want to say this?

Do I really want to get into this fight? And second of all, I think just to try to accept that somebody else is entitled to have a different opinion. Try to understand their opinion. Try and understand where they're coming from with it. Try and understand why they argue what they do. Because as I said before, if you don't try to understand, how can you argue against them, apart from just saying,

you're wrong. I don't care what you say, you're wrong. Well, you need to articulate an argument. You can't just get away with just saying you're wrong or you're ridiculed or whatever. Even if it's true. You might say that. So, I mean, there's no, this is not rocket science.

I mean, it was actually comparatively easy to come up with 50 ways. I always hate these things when people do lists of 29 ways. Could you think of the 30th one? But I could have gone on to 100, I suppose. But in the end, you have to stop somewhere. But I think you're right. Really, it's about a sort of self-discipline. About restricting yourself from your inner demons,

taking over and running a mock. Yes, it is. And look, I'm not a saint on this. I have tried to... I mean, I was on Jeremy Vine the other day with Gemma Forte, and she was basically saying that Boris Johnson was terrible. He got this wrong, he got that wrong, and any fool could have worked out that that wasn't going to... I said, hang on a minute. Why don't you actually stand for election? You happily come up with all of this criticism. But... And I probably went over the top a little bit of my tone. and what I have to accept as a 58-year-old white male, no, no, I am 58, I know it's difficult. As a 58-year-old white male,

when you argue with a woman on television, it's not a good look if you even look as if you might be slightly losing your temper. And I mean, I have to do panels now where there's two or three women. And I just generally then sit there, smile sweetly and speak when I've spoken to because I know what it looks like if you get involved in a sort of feisty debate, which if it was three other men, you wouldn't hesitate in doing. But that's the world we live in nowadays. Constantine's Russian. He doesn't have any of those.

That's why they bring me on Good Morning Britain. Just shout at the women, mate. Yes, let me tell you why you're wrong. Be quiet woman, it is my turn. By the way, that powder that you put in my water earlier. That's why he hasn't touched the water. Yeah, no, we only put it in the tape. Very prudent.

Yeah, it only works in hot liquids, apparently. So racist. Only works in hot liquids. Do you know that? Does it really? Yeah. Yeah. I don't drink to your coffee, so I'm safe.

You are safe. But we have, as always, one final question for you. Which is, what's the one thing we're not talking about as a society that we really should be? West Ham's prospects for next season would be one. Absolutely. But I'm going to introduce something now, which you might find a little bit uncomfortable. in the book I wrote right about a time that I was nearly raped and I didn't really think anything about writing this

because it didn't traumatise me at the time and it doesn't traumatise me now but the observer rang me up and so they were doing an article on a TV series called I Will Destroy You and there's a male rape scene in that so they said can we do an interview with you about this so I spent about half an hour on the phone to them and the article wasn't about

that at all. It was just about me, which was a bit of a shock in a way. So I then did a phone in on it and I'll be seen the following night for two hours and the number of men that phoned in. So yeah, this happened to me or either happened to me or nearly happened to me or my mate or whatever. And I do think this is something that society doesn't really talk about. We've got a lot, we've had a lot of taboos in society and this is kind of one of the last ones, I think. 12,000 men were raped last year. I think only about 1,000 of the cases ever got to court.

I don't know how many actually were convicted. The average, how long do you think it takes for a man who has been a victim of a sexual assault, whether it's by, and often it's actually a straight male that is doing it. Really? Yeah. How long does it take for a man to tell any. about it, on average. I'm going to guess like 20 years.

26 years. Yeah. Wow. Now, you think of the mental health aspects of that, where somebody is bottling up inside. And I know several people that this has happened to, just in my sort of circle of contacts. And I think, well, if I know sort of, it's probably four or five,

what about the ones that I don't know? And you think, well, this is something that needs to be addressed. and there's a charity called Survivors UK, which I've now kind of adopted, and if I give money to charity, they get it because I think this is a really big issue that, I mean, people don't want to talk about for obvious reasons.

It's a very uncomfortable subject. But it's also, I mean, there's also, again, I've, one of the national newspaper commissioned me then to write a long read feature on it, which in the end they decided not to run, which I was a bit annoyed about it, because I spent a lot of time writing it, researching it. So I've actually put it on my website now.

And I just think that it's something that people need to understand that it happens. And it's not just men on men. It's actually women on men as well, bizarrely. I mean, okay, it's slightly more difficult for a woman to rape a man. But there is a lot of, I mean, if we just think of the sort of me-to things about sort of male employers, groping female staff or making inappropriate comments to them. I remember back in the 1990s where I was, I mean, a woman that I worked with, just grabbed my crotch.

Now, imagine if I, as a man, did that to a woman. No, I didn't traumatize me at all. I just said, do you think that's appropriate? Moe-Molem, when she was Northern Ireland secretary, at a Labour Party conference, she had a picture taken with me and my partner. we were running the bookstore, and she stood in the middle of us, put her arms around us, and started needing our buttocks.

That's sexual assault. Oh, again, I didn't, I thought it was quite funny at the time, but in today's environment, you can't call it anything else. So there's so many issues around this that I think we shy away from talking about. So that's a very long way to answer to your question. No, but it's a very good answer. And if anyone, I'm sure there will be people in our audience who unfortunately have had this sort of experience.

Survivors? Survivors, UK. Survivors, UK, so they should reach out to. I mean, have a read of the article. It's on Ian Dale.com. And, I mean, I literally had dozens of people contacting me on Twitter about it and saying, well, I thought I was the only one. And you can understand why.

Well, the UK's most prolific rapist was actually a man who raped for men. Yeah. Absolutely right. Well, that's a nice way to end. Yeah, it is. Cheery as ever. Cheery as ever. Biddy, and thank you so much for coming back.

it. Thank you for having me back. It's a pleasure to have you back. I recommend everybody gets the book. Why can't we all just get along? It's fantastic read. And it's an audio book as well. In your voice? I read the whole thing. The interesting thing is I've had a lot of people who say they've read the physical book, but they can hear my voice in every sentence, which is actually the biggest compliment they can pay me unless I don't like my voice. It is really a great read because you've woven your own story into the way that you talk about things. But thank you for coming back. Thank you for watching and we will see you very soon with another brilliant episode or a live stream which all go out. 7pm UK time.

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