Episode Transcript
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0:02
This is London Calling.
0:07
I don't know why the crowd is booing Azareka. They
0:11
got the wrong player, really?
0:16
There is nothing to say. She
0:18
doesn't want to shake hands with Russian
0:21
Belarusian people. I respected
0:23
her decision. I did what
0:26
should I have done? Stayed and waited? There
0:29
is no thing I could do that would
0:32
have been right.
0:38
Welcome to London Calling
0:40
with me, James Delingpole, and my very good friend,
0:42
Mr. Toby Young. Now, Tobes, Brian,
0:44
the Evil Producer, and I have been speculating.
0:47
I can see an image of you. You've
0:50
got
0:52
some sort of palm-type thing, leafy
0:55
thing in the background. I glimpsed
0:57
your bathroom, which is absolutely gopping.
1:00
I mean, really hideous. I'm
1:02
doubting some of the furniture in your apartment,
1:05
wherever it is. You're obviously somewhere abroad, and
1:07
you've got a weird sort of wispy chin
1:09
beard, like a sort of, like
1:11
a blonde person just who hasn't shaved
1:14
properly.
1:15
No, I don't think my beard has changed,
1:17
but I am abroad. See if you can guess where
1:19
I am.
1:20
Well, I was going to guess, looking at the bathroom,
1:23
I was going to guess somewhere on
1:25
the front line in
1:27
the Ukraine, but
1:31
maybe somewhere ritzier than that. I
1:33
don't know. I'm in Ibiza. Oh,
1:37
are you? Oh, that's
1:39
interesting. I got here
1:41
on Saturday, and I'm heading home tomorrow,
1:43
Tuesday. Have you just
1:45
come to
1:47
do a bit of Mandy and hit
1:49
the space? Does space still
1:51
exist in Ibiza? You know,
1:53
I don't know. I was told yesterday, we were
1:55
at this restaurant yesterday, and people were singing the praises
1:57
of a restaurant called, of a club called DC.
1:59
10. But
2:02
I think manumission may still exist.
2:04
And I think they still have phone parties. I
2:08
thought manumission was the one where the couple
2:10
had live sex in front
2:12
of the, you must have got very wearing after
2:15
a time. Do you know about this? I
2:17
think that's right. Yeah. But to tell you
2:19
the truth, James, my wife only agreed
2:22
to come to Ibiza on condition
2:24
that we didn't go clubbing.
2:26
So we really haven't been clubbing. We're
2:29
here for a friend's birthday party, which
2:31
is actually today. And the
2:34
late lunch is due to start in about an hour. Yeah,
2:37
I was wondering about the odd timing
2:40
of this podcast. I must say you are very,
2:42
very diligent about you never
2:45
like to, I'm kind of yeah, whatever,
2:47
I'm on holiday, I don't care. But you're like,
2:49
I must allocate some time in my Toby,
2:52
my Toby way to make sure the podcast
2:54
goes out, which is which is to your credit.
2:57
So is Ibiza,
3:00
are you in Ibiza town or what? No,
3:03
we're in the country.
3:06
Overlooking a beach in quite a
3:08
nice villa. For
3:11
me, the bathroom seems perfectly fine. But
3:13
I didn't think you got a very good look at it actually. It's
3:15
actually, it's all very nicely done.
3:18
Okay. It's very comfortable. Sorry
3:20
for dissing your your you get on Airbnb?
3:24
No, no, we're actually staying as guests
3:26
of this friend of mine, his birthday.
3:28
Oh, okay. Okay. And
3:31
I'm sorry to grilly, I'm just I'm just
3:34
curious about the sort of thing because this is this is
3:36
no friction conversation. Do
3:39
you find it quite
3:42
as you get older, it's quite difficult
3:44
staying at other people's houses?
3:47
Do you find sleeping and stuff? And
3:50
Yeah, I'm, I'm, I'm always
3:52
inclined, always tempted to bring
3:55
my own pillow with me. The thing I find more difficult
3:57
than anything else.
4:00
is generally how uncomfortable,
4:02
how sort of solid the
4:05
pillows are. I like a very soft pillow, but
4:07
my wife is very scornful. She refers
4:10
to whenever I try and pack a pillow, she says
4:12
that's typical dayboy behavior,
4:14
harking back to her days as a
4:17
boarding school girl. And
4:20
so I find I'm too
4:22
much of a cuck to
4:24
actually pack a pillow very often. So
4:26
I do struggle to sleep with the kind
4:28
of very hard pillows. Well,
4:31
you know how you, Toby Young, have an anecdote
4:33
for every occasion. Weirdly, I'm
4:35
going to play the Tobes role here. And
4:38
I do have an anecdote about pillows. And
4:41
one of my friends, one of the very few
4:43
friends I've got left actually, was
4:47
in the SES.
4:48
You know, he was an officer rather than a
4:52
ranks or NCO who
4:55
were the real, who do the real fighting and stuff.
4:57
But nevertheless, he was in the SES. And
5:00
on his last
5:02
tour of duty, he
5:05
went to Afghanistan and
5:09
he took out with him his favorite
5:11
pillow.
5:12
And also,
5:15
I know that who's
5:17
that slightly sort of queenie shrill,
5:20
not David Starkey, but the
5:23
other one, TV historian, sort
5:26
of quite highly strong, what's his name?
5:29
Lefty.
5:33
Oh, I know he mean, who writes
5:35
a lot about the French
5:37
Revolution. Yeah, intense. Yeah,
5:40
Simon Sharma. Simon
5:44
Sharma. Apparently, I
5:47
bumped into some people who'd been filming
5:50
one of his series.
5:52
And I think I'm right in saying
5:54
he's very, very fussy about his special
5:56
pillow. And I think one day, his
5:58
special pillow may have been lost in.
5:59
transit and there was a massive... Major
6:03
meltdown. The massive... Oh, while
6:05
we're there, do your friends actually have
6:07
they retired to Ibiza?
6:10
Sorry to quit it. No,
6:12
they haven't. But we did, we're
6:14
sort of renting a house from someone
6:17
who rents villas to
6:19
numerous people and he lives quite
6:21
nearby and he had a party
6:24
on our first night and we kind of wandered
6:27
over to
6:27
his party. I mean, you
6:30
could go as far as to say we gate crashed because we weren't
6:32
formally invited and it was pretty amazing
6:34
James. It was exactly what you'd expect Ibiza
6:37
to be. So, you know, it was full
6:39
of kind of men in
6:42
their 50s and 60s, clearly
6:46
sort of pacing themselves and
6:49
girls in their
6:50
early 20s kind of dancing
6:53
and obviously high
6:56
and they were kind of amazing
7:00
kind of bowls full of
7:02
every kind of ichor and wine, cold
7:04
beer on tap. I mean, it
7:07
was just exactly what you'd expect Ibiza to
7:09
be. There was a pool, there was a DJ. Do
7:13
they have dwarves with
7:15
plates on their heads with
7:18
pills and lines of coke and stuff? No,
7:21
no dwarves. I think that's probably only
7:23
in the movies, but it was about
7:25
as close to the kind of movie
7:27
cliche
7:28
idea of Ibiza that you could possibly get. And
7:31
how these people made their money? Yeah, good question.
7:33
I think I did ask that actually of our host,
7:35
how did your landlord
7:38
make his money and he thinks that he inherited
7:40
it. So the old fashioned way. I
7:44
see. Well, okay. Well, I'm
7:47
sorry to have to bring you down temporarily from your Mandy
7:51
cloud to come down to the
7:54
reality of doing a London.
7:59
calling, oh, can I just bore you
8:02
briefly with my progress
8:04
on this sodding stupid
8:07
keto diet? So I'm in my
8:09
second week and I haven't even gone into
8:11
full ketosis. I've been peeing
8:13
on this little stick which changes colour
8:16
to tell you how much ketosis you're in and
8:18
I'm really, I'm only on the outer fringes
8:21
of it.
8:22
It just seems to me that
8:24
you make a slight mistake
8:26
and you come out of ketosis or maybe it's just
8:28
really, you've got to so restrict
8:31
every last tiny bit of sugar and
8:33
carbs that you can't, you
8:35
really can't eat anything apart from steak and
8:37
bacon and an egg and clotted
8:39
cream which is nice but it does get a
8:41
bit, a
8:43
bit wearing. It's hard to imagine
8:45
that that's good for you as well.
8:47
It sounds a bit like Jordan Peterson's diet. I've
8:50
signed up for something called the Zoe
8:52
program. Do
8:53
you remember during COVID
8:56
the Zoe app
8:58
would, there would always be data yielded
9:00
from the Zoe app which supposedly rivaled
9:03
the O&S data about
9:05
how many people were infected at
9:08
any one time and often
9:10
the data on via
9:12
the Zoe app was a bit more optimistic than
9:14
the data being produced by
9:16
various
9:21
public health authorities and
9:23
the O&S so we occasionally
9:25
reproduced some of the data in
9:27
Lockdown Skeptic than it then was. Anyway,
9:30
I've signed up, you can sign up to
9:32
a kind of Zoe health program and of
9:34
course they do monitor all your kind of
9:37
data and you have to kind of consent to that
9:39
but they also send you this kit
9:42
and you have to kind of poo in
9:44
a lovely sample bag of some kind
9:46
and send it back to them and they analyze your poo and
9:49
they analyze your pee and you tell them
9:51
what your typical diet is and after sort
9:53
of after crunching the data they then get
9:56
back to you and tell you how many
9:57
bananas you should be eating a day, what percentage
9:59
of
9:59
of your diet should be meat, what percentage vegetables,
10:02
how much rough would you need, etc. By doing
10:04
it with my wife and she persuaded me to sign
10:07
up to on the grounds that it would be something nice we could do together.
10:09
So I've signed up. Going bags
10:11
together. His and hers, poo bags.
10:15
When you're young, you
10:18
can go off to parties together, learn ballroom dancing.
10:21
But when you're our age, it's pooing in bags.
10:25
So I'll be able to join you on this weird
10:28
diet, oddest
10:29
time, James. You haven't had
10:32
any result, you haven't been told what you're going to do. They
10:34
haven't sent me the kit yet. I only signed up to it last
10:37
week. Has it occurred to you? You know
10:39
those things where
10:41
you can research your ancestry and see
10:43
whether you're descended from Genghis Khan,
10:45
as we all are, of course. As in
10:48
23andMe, you mean genetically. That kind
10:50
of thing. Yes, exactly. Those things.
10:52
And they seem like a tremendous wheeze
10:54
at the time. And everyone was exchanging
10:57
notes on how Mongol
10:59
they were or how
11:01
scanty they are. How
11:06
Jewish they are. Yeah, how Jewish
11:09
they are. I don't know how you measure that.
11:12
But I think that is one
11:15
of the
11:15
bits of data you get
11:18
when you do 23andMe. It tells you how much Jewish
11:21
ancestry you have and what percentage of
11:24
what percentage Jew you are. And one
11:26
reason I haven't done it, I'd be very disappointed
11:28
if I wasn't at least 50% Jew.
11:32
Are you? Well,
11:34
no, probably not. There's probably some Jewish
11:36
blubber. I'd only like
11:38
to be Jewish from
11:41
the actual, you know, proper
11:44
kind of children of Israel, sort
11:46
of Palestine Jews. You
11:50
know, the original deal.
11:52
I wouldn't want to be because
11:54
they want to be Ashkenazi,
11:57
not Shafar.
13:59
I think more likely, more likely, you know,
14:02
for vain, glorious reasons, he wants to be
14:04
the person who goes down in history
14:06
as having cured a major disease like
14:08
malaria used his money. You think he does?
14:10
You think that's even at the back of his mind that
14:13
he might try and cure any disease?
14:15
Yeah, I think yeah, I do. Blimey,
14:18
I've got a new a new range of bridges for
14:21
sale. When you get back, you,
14:23
I can't wait to show you them to you.
14:25
Well, pictures, I've only got pictures,
14:27
but but they're a good, they're a special prize to you,
14:29
my friend. Yeah,
14:32
I think your
14:35
willingness to believe the worst of everyone
14:37
is slightly jaundiced. It's
14:43
like looking at, you know, across the room is a guy
14:46
with horns and a forked tail,
14:49
and he's got sort of, he's got this nasty
14:51
tongue, and he's looking at
14:53
us with sort of red glowing eyes, and you'll say, James,
14:57
why do you think, why do you want to think
14:59
bad of this guy? He's just like, obviously, he's
15:01
just born a bit, you know, with a with
15:04
a horn defect and a forked tail defect.
15:06
And, and he seems to like, oh,
15:08
poor guy, he's addicted to eating children and,
15:11
and but actually,
15:13
it means well, it's
15:15
a more accurate picture
15:18
would be, you know, you're looking at a guy sitting
15:21
opposite you. He's one
15:23
of the world's most famous philanthropists,
15:26
he appears to have devoted much of his fortune
15:29
to curing malaria and other major
15:31
disease. He hasn't, he's made like a bandit.
15:33
And you know, more likely, someone
15:36
sitting opposite with a halo over his head,
15:38
he doesn't, rather than horns and
15:40
a forked tongue. What
15:42
do you think he was doing on Epstein Island all those times?
15:45
Do you think he was just kind of admiring the view
15:47
and going for going for snorkeling? Well,
15:49
I have no idea what he was. I mean,
15:51
he went loads of times, we
15:55
should probably, we should probably not speculate too much about that. We don't
15:57
want to, you don't want to know he thought they'd only
15:59
have to speak. what he might have been doing on Epstein.
16:01
We know he was a regular visit to Epstein Island,
16:04
and we know that Epstein was
16:07
a complete pedo and pervert. So,
16:09
you know,
16:11
join the dots. Anyway, okay,
16:14
who's going to do the first ad? Shall
16:16
I do the first read? So let's hear
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17:30
before we move on to whatever agenda you wanted
17:33
to promote, I
17:36
just wanted to
17:36
mention something that I didn't mention last week
17:38
and should have done, which is has
17:41
the plight of my friend,
17:44
Abby Roberts, crossed
17:46
the free speech unions radar.
17:51
Abby Roberts is a comedian, a
17:53
very funny comedian and lovely person. I'm very
17:55
fond of her. And she went down to the
17:59
hearings for the stupid COVID
18:03
hearings. The kangaroo,
18:05
whatever it is. The hallet
18:07
in quorum. Yeah. And
18:10
she turned up to see Matt Hancock
18:13
arrive
18:14
and she shouted him at him that
18:16
he was a word beginning with C
18:19
and ending in UNT. And
18:22
I know that it's a rude word,
18:25
but I'm not sure that shouting
18:28
a rude word at Matt Hancock justifies
18:31
what happened to her, which she was held, she
18:34
was arrested and held in confinement
18:36
for 17 hours. So she was in
18:38
a prison cell overnight for
18:41
calling Matt Hancock something,
18:43
which is, I think, the very mildest
18:46
of terms to describe somebody with so
18:48
much blood on his hands. I
18:51
was wondering what your position would be on issues
18:53
like this. Should people be being arrested
18:56
for calling
18:58
terrible loser? Well, I mean,
19:01
psychopathic politicians, what they
19:04
are. Was she charged?
19:06
Do you know, when did this happen? But I mean, 17,
19:09
being held for 17 hours suggests to me that she was,
19:12
well, it was an abuse of police
19:15
power, isn't it?
19:16
Why did they need to keep her for 17 hours? Yeah,
19:19
I don't know. I don't know anything about it. I haven't seen the story.
19:21
When did this happen, James? Just before
19:24
our last episode.
19:26
So
19:29
before last weekend.
19:31
Right. Well, if she is
19:34
being charged with
19:37
being grossly offensive,
19:40
which is section 127 of the
19:43
Communications Act, then
19:46
we are defending
19:47
someone else who was charged
19:49
and convicted of being grossly
19:52
offensive. Do you remember, you talked about this before, but
19:54
when Captain Tom, the NHS
19:57
campaigner who raised millions of pounds
19:59
for the
19:59
NHS by walking around around his garden when he was 100
20:02
years old. When he died, an intemperate
20:04
Scotsman
20:11
tweeted, the only good British
20:13
soldier is a dead British soldier. And
20:17
friends of his contacted him to tell
20:19
him that they thought that was offensive.
20:22
And he might get in trouble. So he, I
20:25
think, deleted it within 15 minutes. But Police
20:27
Scotland already, it had already been reported
20:29
to Police Scotland by then. And he was
20:31
duly arrested and convicted under
20:33
Section 127 of the Communications Act.
20:36
And sentenced, I think it wasn't sentenced
20:38
to
20:39
prison, but he had to do community service and pay
20:41
a fine. We are helping him
20:43
appeal that conviction. And
20:45
we think it'll end up in the European
20:48
Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg. And we're
20:50
hoping that if we can get that conviction
20:52
overturned on appeal, it'll make it very difficult
20:55
to convict people in future of
20:57
being grossly offensive, which is often
21:00
why people like Abby Roberts are arrested
21:03
and sometimes charged for saying
21:05
things like that. Did that legislation
21:07
come in the grossly offensive? Was that a recent
21:10
thing? Does that come from the Blair era?
21:12
It comes from the Blair era. Yeah. Oh,
21:15
just like, you think the
21:17
things that people used to do in the
21:19
18th and 19th century to MPs,
21:22
they'd often
21:25
rough them up physically if they get
21:27
the chance. And they certainly would chuck
21:29
stuff at them and things. And
21:31
the idea that a word,
21:33
even if it's a rude word, I
21:36
mean, I have to say, I would,
21:40
if I were myself a vagina,
21:42
I
21:43
would be very upset about seeing my
21:45
name taken in vain to describe Matt
21:47
Hancock. I think that is offensive
21:49
to
21:50
vaginas around the world. But apart
21:53
from that, I see nothing wrong with it. I
21:55
mean, you think of what Matt Hancock is
21:57
and what he's done.
21:59
It's just small
22:01
beer, isn't it? Just tossing a few
22:03
rude words at him. I'll tell you
22:05
a story, James. As you know, maybe I shouldn't
22:08
tell you the story. Oh, go on. Because
22:10
it might be telling tales out of school, but it's
22:12
something that happened at the spectator party. But
22:15
why weren't you there?
22:17
Oh, when was it? It was on
22:20
Wednesday of last week. Was it?
22:22
I'm sure you were invited. Invited all the writers. Yeah,
22:24
I didn't. I... Do you
22:27
know what? It sailed over my head. Was it good?
22:30
Yeah, it was fun. Yeah, you know, like it normally
22:32
is. Thing is, Topes, I tell you what,
22:35
I mean, I
22:37
genuinely didn't know it was on. But
22:40
I, you know, I mean, people
22:42
often say to you, don't they, you
22:44
know, what's happened to James? Why
22:46
has he gone,
22:48
you know, absent
22:51
without leave? I
22:54
think there would be too many
22:56
sticky conversations, wouldn't there? You think?
22:59
It would be kind of awkward for me. Do you
23:01
reckon people would...
23:02
I suppose when they became sort of after they'd had a few
23:04
drinks and became disinhibited, they
23:07
might start asking
23:09
you about some
23:12
of the conspiracy theories. Oh, you know, I wouldn't mind
23:14
that at all. I totally love that. It's
23:17
just, I find it quite hard
23:20
making noise to people that you kind
23:23
of despise, you know?
23:25
That's the thing. Quite a lot of them
23:27
would be old friends, wouldn't they? Well,
23:29
I don't know if I've got any old friends. I mean, you
23:32
know, there you are, clinging on by your fingernails, Topes.
23:34
But we, you know, we're the
23:36
marriages. It's
23:39
rocky, but we, you know, we have
23:41
good makeup sex. But
23:44
I just think some of the people... Have
23:46
you broken up with most of your
23:49
old friends? Yeah,
23:51
no, it's not officially, not formally.
23:54
I haven't, I just haven't seen them and
23:56
it's just like embarrassing. I mean,
23:59
it would be embarrassing enough.
23:59
just seeing Dave,
24:02
Dave whom I last saw, well what,
24:04
I was smoking a splist with him in
24:06
Peck 3 in 1980.
24:12
I don't think Dave, David
24:14
Cameron was there actually, so
24:17
you wouldn't have had to see him.
24:19
Anyway, so what were you saying? So before
24:22
I went into this riff about... Well no, I just
24:26
swallowed, I just bit my tongue, but one
24:28
notable absence obviously of the spectator part
24:31
was Jeremy Clarke. I used to really like...
24:33
You know his coin-tobes?
24:35
Well yes, and his
24:38
memorial services today and I rather regret
24:40
the fact that I won't be able to go because I'm in
24:42
Ibiza. But yeah, and
24:46
they're not having it at St. Brides, they're having it at
24:50
another church in,
24:53
what's it called again? I can't remember now, but
24:55
a bigger church because they're expecting 500 people.
24:58
When I heard that James, I couldn't help but feel a
25:01
twinge of envy and think crikey,
25:03
how many people are going to come to my memorial
25:05
service? I doubt it'll be 500 people. They might
25:07
even be a memorial service for me, but anyway
25:10
he's having a memorial service and over 500 people
25:13
are expected to turn up. So yeah, that's a good... Bloody
25:15
impressive. That's a good turn up. I'm sorry,
25:18
are you telling me that because
25:20
I went on to my digression
25:22
about friends, you're not going to go ahead
25:24
with this industry anecdote now? You've
25:27
got to. Well no, I realised that if I do, I
25:30
could be accused of
25:32
telling tales out of
25:34
school what happens at the spectator party. I think it's supposed
25:36
to stay at the spectator party and
25:39
it wasn't too embarrassing. Well can't you lie and
25:41
say this conversation didn't happen at the spectator
25:43
party? I think it's too
25:45
late for that now James. Anyway, Matt
25:48
Hancock was there. But it's what you're famous for,
25:51
foot in mouth. You've written the whole book. Look, you've
25:53
made a career out of this. Well
25:56
I did, but I have regretted.
25:59
some of the indiscretions over
26:02
the course of my career, James. So for instance, in
26:04
How to Lose Friends and Alienate
26:06
People,
26:07
I wrote about an episode
26:10
at the Groucho Club. I was filming,
26:12
I was trying to arrange a photo shoot for
26:14
the cool Britannia issue of Vanity
26:16
Fair, this was in 96, and
26:19
it was a photo shoot with Keith Allen, Damien
26:22
Hirst, and the
26:24
chat from Blur, who's become a cheese monger.
26:27
Alex James.
26:29
And
26:31
as a condition of agreeing
26:34
to cooperate, they demanded
26:37
cocaine, not just to be plied with vodka
26:39
and as much as they could drink, but also drugs.
26:43
And so I had to kind of,
26:45
admittedly not terribly difficult to obtain in
26:48
the Groucho Club, I had to do a bit of kind of scrabbling
26:50
around. And it
26:52
behaved like complete prima donnas.
26:54
I mean, they couldn't have made my life more miserable.
26:56
They were like the kind of worst cliches
26:59
of kind of pampered, entitled
27:02
celebrities.
27:03
Like, you know, you mentioned Simon Sharma
27:05
throwing a hissy fit when his pillow got lost in transit.
27:07
I mean, they were like Simon Sharma, pillowless
27:10
times 10. And my
27:13
revenge was to write about just how appallingly
27:16
they behaved in How to Lose Friends and Alienate
27:19
People, because I mentioned the Groucho Club.
27:21
Matthew Freud, who was then one
27:23
of the owners of Groucho Club, banned
27:26
me from the Groucho Club. And I've been
27:28
virtually a founder. Yes, you are. And it was my
27:30
home away from home. And since
27:33
then, not only
27:35
am I not allowed to come as a member,
27:37
even if they haven't refunded my membership fee, obviously,
27:41
I'm not allowed to be taken there by anyone either.
27:43
If there's a book party, even now, or even
27:45
now. And so a couple of times
27:47
since,
27:48
people on the membership committee, friends of mine
27:50
have said, you know what, Toby, I think there's been enough
27:53
water under the bridge. I think we can get you back
27:55
in. Let me let me make a pitch to
27:57
the membership committee, but it would probably help if
27:59
you wrote.
27:59
the chair of the membership committee and proffered some kind
28:02
of apology. And so of course, I've duly
28:04
done this only to be then told, I'm
28:06
afraid Toby, the membership committee took a
28:08
vote on this and they've decided to uphold
28:10
the ban. It's like so humiliating.
28:12
It's bait and switch. I feel like the kid
28:15
in the Peanuts cartoon being baited
28:17
by Lucy with the football. And it's happened twice
28:19
now. And even though people still suggest to me,
28:22
even today, you know, I think I could get you back in.
28:24
I'm on the membership committee. Let me have a go. I'm like now,
28:26
like, no, I've been humiliated
28:29
three times over
28:29
this. Not never again.
28:33
I didn't even know the Groucho was still going.
28:36
That's how out of touch I am. Do
28:38
you think we ought to do?
28:40
Yeah, let's say from our Yeah, let's let's
28:43
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30:06
James, before we go on to Culture Corner, and we better
30:09
go on to Culture Corner because lunch is going
30:11
to be served now in about 20 minutes.
30:13
I just wanted to make
30:16
a minor piece offering
30:18
to you. I remember a few episodes
30:20
back, you said you thought
30:23
the kind of real reason behind
30:26
mass immigration and
30:29
the authorities'
30:31
tolerance for all the small boats arriving
30:34
there, the lack of any real will to do
30:36
anything about it. The fact
30:38
that net migration
30:41
in the most recent year was something like, was
30:44
it something like 800,000
30:45
highest number on record. And
30:50
you said, well, it's all part of the plan.
30:52
These are essentially the WEF's foot
30:55
soldiers who are going to turn on us
30:57
and start attacking us. I
30:59
think you were thinking it was
31:01
part of some diabolical plan to kind of assert
31:04
control, reduce our liberties, erode
31:06
democracy. But
31:08
curiously, I noticed that one of the
31:11
first things Macron
31:13
has suggested as a solution to
31:15
the ongoing rioting,
31:17
the outbreak of civil disorder across France
31:20
in response to the murder
31:22
of this 17 year old boy, may
31:25
not be murder, I don't think it's been tried yet. So let's not
31:27
preempt that. But one
31:30
of Macron's first responses was, let's
31:33
cut off the internet in these
31:36
areas where civil disorder has broken
31:38
out. Let's impose curfews. It was almost
31:40
to say they were building up to, let's
31:43
impose another lockdown. So
31:46
even though, I'm not suggesting that the
31:49
youths of North African heritage
31:51
rioting in
31:54
city on the outskirts of Paris are
31:56
doing it at the bidding of Klaus Schwab or
31:58
Bill Gates. Nonetheless, the
32:03
policy of mass immigration
32:06
in France dating back to the 1950s
32:08
does seem to
32:10
have produced a kind of tinderbox
32:13
which is now being rolled out as
32:15
an excuse to interfere
32:18
with basic liberties.
32:20
Right, yeah. I mean, it's
32:23
ultimately, I don't know how you pronounce it, is
32:25
it Kalergi or Kalerji? But
32:27
either way, Kalerji-Kudenhav
32:29
plan, which has been around for a long,
32:31
long time, it's white replacement. It's
32:34
part of the destruction of our
32:36
culture, the takeover. Yeah, but I also
32:39
think that in the medium
32:41
term, they want to use these people as
32:43
kind of police,
32:46
as paramilitaries with no loyalty to their
32:48
host community who are prepared to go in hard
32:50
and
32:50
crush any resistance
32:52
when things kick off. But
32:55
I mean, we're talking about
32:58
the devil.
32:59
The devil is ultimately in charge and
33:01
he controls things like the Tri-Atrial
33:04
Commission and the
33:06
Council on Foreign Relations and lesser
33:08
players like the WEF. And
33:11
we are heading for
33:14
very grim times, seven years
33:16
of tribulation. The problem with that hypothesis
33:19
is partly that the people
33:22
rioting are not exclusively
33:26
first, second, third generation migrants.
33:29
Some of them are seemingly white,
33:32
indigenous French people. And
33:35
it's as though, you know, it
33:37
seems to me to be more symptomatic
33:39
of a general lack
33:41
of respect for the rule of law,
33:43
a collapse in the
33:45
family,
33:47
Western civilization, teetering on
33:49
the brink and
33:52
not a kind of malaise that's just confined
33:55
to
33:55
migrant communities. So
33:58
it doesn't feel like it really is part of. of
34:00
a plot or a conspiracy. That's
34:03
a separate point, James. I mean, I mean,
34:06
I'm not saying that people
34:08
with fair skin
34:09
haven't got as much right to riot
34:13
as any
34:15
other nationality or skin
34:17
color or whatever. It's not that. I'm
34:19
just saying that if you import loads
34:22
and loads of people from an entirely
34:24
different culture to your country and
34:27
you house them in say, well, I mean, scarily
34:31
on ex-military bases or on
34:34
decommissioned airfields, which is what,
34:36
or you put them in hotels in every
34:39
single town around Britain
34:42
at massive expense to the taxpayer. And
34:45
France is analogous although
34:47
it's got its own problems. You
34:50
have to ask questions about why these people are there.
34:53
And I have to say that it tends to encourage
34:55
some people suspicions
34:59
that dark things are heading our way.
35:02
And we can only speculate on it because we weren't known
35:04
until it kicks off but there's something really odd
35:06
about it. Most people in
35:09
rural Britain are very disturbed about
35:11
the fact that there are these
35:14
hotels
35:15
where they were perhaps planning to have their wedding
35:17
or something. Suddenly the hotel's been closed
35:19
and shared loads of money has been
35:22
chucked at the hotel owner by
35:25
circa or whatever. I mean,
35:27
by the government, basically. to
35:30
house these people. And it's weird.
35:33
What are they doing here?
35:34
And what are they, have they all come to pick
35:37
fruit or work McDonald's?
35:39
I'm not seeing any evidence of this.
35:41
Well, I think
35:43
most of them, I mean, I think
35:46
I'd agree with you that the
35:49
claim that a
35:51
majority
35:52
of illegal migrants end
35:55
up on our shores because they're genuine asylum
35:57
seekers. I think that's probably not right.
35:59
But I think most of them are economic migrants
36:02
that they're coming here in search of better opportunities,
36:04
a better life, because we're
36:06
so much better off than the places they're
36:08
leaving. But I was thinking more in a specific French context.
36:12
One thing that struck, I mean, people say, you know,
36:15
it's because they have, you
36:17
know,
36:19
people in these communities haven't been properly
36:21
integrated. They feel alienated
36:24
by the French policy of
36:26
trying to impose French culture
36:29
on them. Yeah, they have a less kind of laissez-faire,
36:31
multicultural approach to assimilation
36:34
than us. And it appears to have backfired
36:37
the banning of the burqa and so
36:39
forth, has left these
36:41
communities feeling very alienated from the French
36:43
state. And they have much
36:46
more regard for, you know, their parents'
36:48
cultural heritage
36:49
than France's cultural
36:51
heritage and so forth. And that's what a lack of loyalty
36:53
to the French state is what's prompting this kind
36:55
of outbreak of civil disorder. I think one shortcoming
36:58
of that hypothesis is that many
37:00
of the rioters, when you see them, when they're
37:02
interviewed, seem very French. I mean,
37:05
they may not be white, but nonetheless, they have that kind
37:07
of, you know, Gallic arrogance. They
37:09
kind of have that kind of, you know, French insouciance.
37:14
And also, you know, it's virtually a tradition in France
37:17
to riot. I mean, there are
37:19
almost continuous riots in
37:21
French cities, but, you know, the
37:23
republics are kind of typically defeated after 35
37:26
or 40 years. Revolution
37:28
is virtually a cultural
37:30
tradition in France. So perhaps
37:32
the issue isn't that they haven't been properly
37:34
integrated. They're not French enough. Perhaps the issue is that they've
37:37
become too French.
37:39
Yeah, maybe. I
37:42
think it's probably the Sabatian Frankists who taught
37:44
the French how to revolt. I
37:47
mean, look, France was a great
37:49
power and a great country
37:52
and a great people. And I think that
37:55
the powers that be
37:56
have long sought to destabilize
37:59
France.
37:59
in different ways as they have
38:02
to destabilize Russia and
38:05
so forth. And I mean, you
38:07
present these things as kind of national characteristics,
38:09
but I'm not sure what they are, really. I'm sure that what
38:12
it comes down to is that the
38:15
forces of darkness know how to manipulate different
38:17
countries and push their buttons. And
38:20
I mean, I don't ultimately, I
38:22
think that the people who are controlling
38:25
these riots, you know, although the individual
38:28
writers may feel they have autonomy and that
38:30
they are they are they made the decision
38:33
and they're protesting. I think that this this this
38:35
this violence was fermented
38:38
by by bad actors.
38:42
But there we are anyway. OK, so
38:44
we should we take a break now for a programmatic
38:46
ad and then. Yeah, I
38:48
think we should.
38:49
Everybody James Lyle is here for the Ricochet podcast,
38:51
the flagship podcast. It's July.
38:53
That means it's hot. What better
38:56
to do than sit inside with
38:57
the air conditioning going full
39:00
blast? I listen to the heated, sparkly,
39:02
prickly fireworks like opinions of
39:04
Peter Robinson, Rob Long and myself
39:06
as we talk to. Well, you'll just
39:08
have to tune in and find out, won't you? That's Ricochet
39:11
dot com, where the flagship podcast can be found
39:13
every week.
39:14
Don't miss it.
39:17
OK, James, what have you
39:19
seen in the past week? Well, well,
39:23
I've I my
39:25
family have been watching Wimbledon
39:27
and the
39:30
third test, and
39:32
I there's no point
39:35
raining on their parade by saying this
39:37
is bread and bread and circuses. This is
39:39
designed to distract you from from
39:42
the horrors that are being imposed on you by the
39:44
elite. I mean, it's I
39:46
think it's typical that the BBC is all over
39:48
Wimbledon. The BBC arch
39:51
propagandist wants to keep
39:54
hold of these these cultural events and do
39:56
weird things like this. Have
39:58
you noticed this thing they do where? they
40:00
interview, they
40:01
stand up on the court
40:04
after the match and they interview them about 20
40:07
feet away from the player. What's
40:09
that all about? You know, I haven't, I'm
40:12
not sure. I haven't watched much of Wimbledon,
40:14
but so- Like a legacy of COVID.
40:17
Well, I'll bring you up to speed. All
40:19
the Brits have been knocked out.
40:21
Right, I didn't know that. Yeah.
40:25
Yeah, and I saw Andy,
40:28
well, I saw him getting back into
40:30
a match against a
40:32
Greek player, whose name I won't try and pronounce,
40:34
but- Sitsipas.
40:36
Sitsipas, that's it. And he,
40:40
and I didn't watch him, it looked like he was gonna go
40:42
on to win that. I mean, he came back from one set down
40:44
to then take the next two sets and
40:46
then
40:47
match, the play was stopped because it was quite
40:49
late. And then he resumed the following
40:52
day and lost, which I thought was
40:54
pretty disappointing. What is it though?
40:57
Is it? I was watching, I was
40:59
watching my favorite
41:02
player, obviously,
41:04
cause he was Novak's and stuff, Novak's
41:07
Djokovic. And he's
41:10
just so good. He's so
41:12
good that I find it hard to believe
41:14
that in 2013, Andy Murray beat
41:16
Djokovic
41:18
in the finals. How
41:21
did that happen? That could only have been the noisome
41:24
partisanship of the Wimbledon crowd, which
41:26
I find loathsome. I can't
41:28
bear it. I find it pretty loathsome too, yeah.
41:31
The way that they cheer when the
41:33
player that don't like misses a shot or fluffs
41:36
a shot, or maybe the ball hits
41:38
the net and doesn't go, it lands on the wrong side,
41:41
luck doesn't go their way. And they
41:43
boo and it's awful. I
41:45
thought we were supposed to believe in good sportsmanship. I
41:48
think
41:48
they should sit there and watch and shut
41:50
up.
41:51
Yeah, I agree. I think that is very
41:53
poor form. Did you see that
41:55
when the Belarusian woman
41:58
lost to the Ukrainian woman? the
42:01
crowd booed the Belarusian
42:03
as she walked off. Not
42:07
realizing that Belarus is a completely different
42:09
country from Russia.
42:10
I suppose they think of it as a Russian ally. I
42:13
don't know. Anyway, so much for Wimbledon. Have
42:15
you seen anything else? Not
42:17
much on TV. I tell you what, I tell you what I've been doing books
42:20
wise. We have finally reached the point, wife
42:22
and I, where we can no longer
42:24
bear to
42:25
listen to another book from
42:27
the Utrecht series. I've just had
42:30
enough of the shield war
42:32
and wasp sting and the smell
42:35
of shit and blood and guts
42:37
and detailed descriptions of people being
42:39
disemboweled and trodden on
42:41
and the jabbing of wasp sting and blah, blah,
42:44
blah, and how tough it is in the shield.
42:46
I think enough already. I've had enough.
42:49
I've heard every variation
42:52
on the theme of combat in
42:55
the era of King Alfred.
42:58
I don't want it. So we've moved on to
43:00
Trollope. We
43:02
listened to 100% Trollope now rather than
43:04
just on Cardiones. And we're listening
43:06
to the second one with the Irish name.
43:09
I
43:12
keep forgetting his name. Isn't it
43:14
something Finn, about the Irish MP? Finnius
43:16
Finn. Yeah, something like that. Finnius
43:18
Finn. I don't know why I keep forgetting the name.
43:21
I mean, it's a really odd
43:23
book title because
43:27
a book, oh, I suppose it's like Anna Karenina. I suppose
43:29
that's an indeterminate person who doesn't exist as well. But anyway,
43:31
Finnius Finn just doesn't do it
43:33
for me. There's
43:36
a lot of 19th century politics.
43:38
Yeah, that's the second in the palace of novels, isn't it?
43:40
Yeah, yeah, yeah. There are a few hunting scenes
43:42
in there. I seem to recall. Oh, yes.
43:44
Oh, Tobes, the hunting scene
43:47
where he stakes his horse or
43:50
whatever the term is when you're jumping
43:52
up a river and your horse
43:55
goes headlong into the other side and breaks
43:57
its neck.
43:58
And yeah, oh Lord, what's his...
43:59
face breaks. Actually, Lord Watts's
44:02
face has the same injury that I had
44:04
when I was hunting with the Heathrip a few years ago,
44:07
where he breaks his collarbone and several ribs.
44:10
And
44:11
so I had great sympathy for him. Yeah,
44:13
the hunting scenes are really good. The
44:16
politics scenes are just so done.
44:18
You think why, Anthony,
44:20
why are you taking this crap seriously?
44:22
Yeah, well, they're all a bunch of charlatans. Stop
44:24
it already enough. Yeah,
44:26
I know that I love the Palace of novels, and I still
44:28
got one left, actually, in that series. I haven't read
44:30
The Prime Minister's Children. I've read all
44:32
the others. Very, very good. And I'm currently
44:35
listening to Framli Parsonage, which
44:37
I think is the
44:38
fourth novel in the Barts to Chronicles.
44:40
But yeah, very good as well. He's an
44:43
eminently listenable, readable
44:46
writer, isn't he? I mean, it's better, would you say?
44:49
I think I think the Barts to Chronicles,
44:52
marginally better than the Palace of novels, but they're
44:54
much, much easier. You don't get, do you? They're all
44:56
narrated by Timothy West,
44:58
which is, he's a joy, isn't he, to
45:01
listen. He's so good. He's a really,
45:03
really, he was always like he was born to read,
45:05
to read Trollope. Born to do it. Absolutely.
45:10
What's so extraordinary is I find when he does, he
45:12
does like, women's voices. I mean,
45:14
he does, he's great with accents. But
45:16
what's really impressive is that when he does a woman's
45:19
voice, you
45:20
know, you can completely believe it's
45:22
a woman talking. He's
45:25
just remarkable like that. You're
45:27
absolutely right. He's brilliant. I was going to
45:30
ask you, does the
45:32
kind of the clerical stuff get in the way
45:34
and the way the politics does in the political novels, or
45:36
is it handled lightly?
45:38
No, not, no, no, it's
45:40
all handled quite lightly. I mean, you have to kind of,
45:42
you know, you're immersed
45:45
in the kind of
45:46
office politics of the Church
45:48
of England. But that's all
45:50
quite interesting. And you realize, I
45:52
mean, it's amazing contrast between the Church
45:54
of England today, but back then, you know, being
45:57
an archbishop, being a bishop,
45:59
in the Church of England was a position
46:02
of extraordinary prestige. Even
46:04
being a dean or an archdeacon
46:07
was, you know, you were virtually at the top of
46:09
the kind of Victorian social hierarchy.
46:11
And it's in such, it's so different
46:14
today, isn't it? Oh, totally. In
46:16
my fantasy, my
46:19
historical, if I had to go back in time and be anyone
46:21
anywhere in history, I would be,
46:24
I'd
46:24
have a nice rectory, I
46:27
would be a hunting person and I would save the souls
46:29
of my parish.
46:32
Yeah, so I can imagine you being very happy doing that. I can
46:34
easily imagine you doing it. I'm so happy. I
46:36
can picture you now in a dog collar. Yeah,
46:38
golden horses. I'd be really
46:41
happy doing it. And
46:44
also I'm finishing, I'm
46:47
on the home straight of Anna Karenina. And
46:49
the disappointment about reading
46:52
Anna Karenina is realizing
46:54
that
46:55
you will never read a book, a
46:57
novel as good as that again. It is absolutely
46:59
peak literature. It will never
47:01
get better, in
47:03
my view.
47:04
And are you reading that or listening to it?
47:06
I'm reading it. Okay,
47:07
I've just come now completely
47:10
switched to audio books. I've gone, I
47:12
find it hard to read a book. But having said that, I
47:14
have just read most of What
47:16
About Men, the new book by
47:18
Caitlin Moran,
47:20
which may surprise you to learn. I read
47:23
most of it because I'm writing about it in my spectator.
47:25
I was going to say you're being paid to write to read it otherwise.
47:27
I'm not
47:30
recommended that one, James. It's all about
47:33
how men, the mental health crisis, the
47:39
identity crisis amongst men, particularly
47:41
young men can be addressed. And
47:44
she's concerned that they're turning to these
47:46
toxic gurus like Jordan Peterson
47:49
and Andrew Tate. What they really need
47:52
at James Dalico, what they really need are wholesome
47:55
gurus like Caitlin
47:57
Moran. And she thinks
47:59
that women have taught themselves,
48:02
the feminist movement and its successes
48:05
over the past hundred years have an enormous
48:07
amount that men can learn from. So
48:10
she portrays the community of kind of liberated
48:12
women as
48:16
being a kind of joyful community
48:19
in which they share each other's, they share
48:21
their problems with each other, they give each other mutual support,
48:24
they're very quick to come to each other's aid when they get
48:26
into trouble. It's this sort of utopian
48:29
picture
48:29
of the kind of feminist community and
48:32
contrasts it with kind of these poor, sad,
48:35
lonely men who can't talk about their problems,
48:38
never come to each other's aid, end
48:40
up kind of feeling suicidal, suffer
48:42
from acute anxiety and
48:44
so on and so forth. But first
48:47
of all, it's such a cliche. It's sort of,
48:50
you know, you wouldn't even, you'd even
48:52
expect Prince Harry to come up with something
48:54
more original than the reason men have
48:57
got problems, it's because they don't talk about their feelings
48:59
and cry enough, you know, but
49:01
of course that is exactly, but that's exactly her
49:03
hypothesis too. And yes,
49:06
James, you wouldn't believe this, but she talks about,
49:08
she says, you know, virtually everything I know about Jordan
49:10
Peterson is secondhand, so I decided to take
49:12
the plunge and listen to some of his podcasts. And
49:14
she listened to this podcast of him with Russell
49:16
Brand in which towards
49:18
the end of the podcast,
49:20
Jordan Peterson starts crying and having
49:22
encouraged men to cry more and
49:25
having kind of railed against the taboo against
49:28
crying amongst men. She then absolutely
49:31
ridicules Jordan Peterson for crying
49:33
when he was talking about his feelings in
49:35
this podcast. And also says, you know, you
49:37
think you've got problems as a successful man,
49:40
you have the occasional stalker. What about successful
49:42
women? They get rape threats all the time. They can't
49:44
disclose the fact that they have children unless male
49:47
stalkers go to their children's schools and attack
49:49
their children.
49:50
You've never had it so good, Mr.
49:52
Peterson, you don't know what, you don't know the half
49:54
of the trials and tribulations of being famous.
49:56
And it's like, so having encouraged him to cry
49:59
when he cried.
49:59
she then ridicules him for being a crybaby.
50:03
So yeah. It's
50:07
what they do. Because
50:09
they're not bound by the rules of
50:12
logic or let alone the Mark
50:14
Wishes Queensborough rules. They're just, they
50:16
play dirty.
50:18
Anyway, I've written about it in my spectator columnists
50:20
week. Oh, good. No, I actually look forward
50:22
to reading that that really, you know,
50:24
good. But you
50:26
want to go and snort some lines
50:29
off the back of a dwarf.
50:31
The dwarves heads. Yeah. Now that I can
50:33
see the dwarves beckoning James. So that's
50:35
what Freddie Mercury used to do. Apparently, that's why
50:37
I brought it up. Apparently, these patches,
50:40
they used to have dwarves with cocaine on
50:42
their silver trays on their heads, I think.
50:45
Right. And I'm afraid this is very middle
50:47
aged and sedate by comparison. Anyway,
50:51
is it is the is the sky blue?
50:53
And is the sea
50:56
clear? The sky's maybe
50:58
a little bit hazy and
51:00
can't quite see the sea yet.
51:03
But I'm hoping it's going to clear up. We're going
51:05
to have an azure sunset later
51:07
on. Good. Well, have a good
51:10
have a good time, Tabs. I envy
51:12
you. Thanks, James. Bye.
51:15
Back next
51:15
week. Bye. This is
51:17
London Calling.
51:34
Ricochet. Join
51:37
the conversation.
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