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March 28, 2019 - The Delingpod - James Delingpole
01:20:31
Delingpod 13: Dick Delingpole
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Time Text
Thank you.
Hello, this is your friendly, smiling host, me, Jay Dellingpod, with a guest, that's a clue.
He's a guest, not a special guest.
Before I do that, I just wanted to give you a heads up about a very special event on the 7th of April, which is a Sunday, at 11.30 in the morning, in London.
This is a live podcast I am doing with Brendan O'Neill.
At the moment, can I tell you, the sodding, what are they called?
Romaniacs.
The Romaniacs podcast has got about twice as many guests as me.
I suppose it's because they're Londoners and everyone in London voted for Remain.
but there must be some of my people, my homies in London or near London, able and willing to come and see my event with Brendan at 11.30 on Sunday the 7th of April.
You can find the details at podcastlive.com.
Podcastlive.com.
Also, I'll be putting up on my website, delingpolworld.com.
So please come and you'll get to meet me and Brendan and lots of other special friends, I would imagine.
Bye.
Welcome to the Delling Pod.
And I'm so excited about my guest this week.
There's a clue there.
It's Dick.
Hello, I'm back.
He's back, he's back.
First appearance on the Delling pod.
Is it?
Well, yeah, since it's been a Delling pod.
Oh, should we let that dog in?
Yeah, go on.
She's got to behave herself.
Yeah, she's bloody well better.
Take a leaf out of my dog's book.
Well, she's going to be dog meat, that's for certain.
Hello, Dave.
Yeah.
Yes, yes.
Dogs are becoming a bit of a feature of our podcast, aren't they, Dick?
Well, I think they humanise us, don't they?
Oh, what?
You mean like Hitler was humanised by his love of dogs?
When the people say, he might have done some bad things, but he loved animals.
But what was Hitler's dog called?
I don't know.
I'm going to guess schmutzie.
It's completely random.
I think...
Why schmutzie?
That sounds German.
It sounds kind of...
Schmeisser.
Schmeisser would be a good one.
Commonly here, Schmeisser.
Yes, because that would explain why the MP40 got the nickname.
Right, because they named it after Hitler.
Because I imagine that his SS bodyguard at the Wolfschancer would have got to hear him saying, Schmeisser, Schmeisser, and they'd have thought, how do we flatter the Fuhrer?
I know.
We can name our effective machine pistol after his dog.
Interesting theory.
Interesting theory.
If only we could check with Andrew Roberts or some...
I'm sure our listeners will let us know.
Yes, I'm sure they will.
I'm sure they will.
So anyway, you find me in...
Angry mood.
And I know you wanted to stick a microphone under my nose while I'm still relatively seething.
Tell us both of them.
Tell us why you're angry.
I've had to drive down from Worcester today to see you in rural Northamptonshire.
So it's, you know, a fair old drive.
And what do you do in the car?
You have to listen, essentially, to the radio, don't you?
You do if you're like us.
And you've got crappy old cars with old-fashioned radios.
I mean, I'm dreaming of the moment where I can afford a car new enough to have the wireless apparatus which will enable me to play things like, you know, on Spotify.
Yeah.
That would be good, but I can't do that yet.
You and I are nearly always behind the curve on the tech front.
So, yeah, it's through the airwaves Radio 4 for me.
So what did I have to listen to?
As I was leaving Worcester...
The Now Show.
Yep.
Yep.
The appalling Now Show.
The Now Show.
I had to give it a chance.
I had to listen through to comedian after comedian.
Obviously, I use that term advisedly.
Tell our American special friend what The Now Show is.
The Now Show is an attempt at a sort of a topical panel show with comedians.
And inevitably the diversity is very important for the BBC. That is diversity of the race of the people taking part, not diversity of thought, mind.
So certainly no diversity when it comes to opinions on Brexit, conservatism, anything like that.
As long as they tick the boxes for Racial diversity, they're happy that they've got diversity of opinion.
It is one of my many, many beefs, as you'll hear at the moment, with the BBC, is that they provide these sinecures for these really unfunny left-wing comics.
The BBC promotes their careers, and the BBC has massive outreach.
It's got so many TV channels and radio.
I mean, something like...
90% I think of people, maybe 95% of people in Britain are exposed to the BBC at some time during their week.
So that's the kind of reach they've got.
And these crappy, unfunny lefty comedians have this cushy number.
BBC promoting their careers, promoting their geeks effect, give free publicity.
And the right-wing ones don't get a look in.
Well, the Now Show is one of the places where they are nurtured and hang out and the new upcoming so-called talent is given a chance.
And I really had to turn it off or I was just going to crash.
It had to go off.
So a little bit later I saw it was time for the news, so I put the news on.
At least you can sort of sift through the news.
No, you can't.
BBC News is just lies and propaganda.
Yeah, but I put it on anyway.
It's all about the curation, isn't it?
And then immediately after, it was Any Questions.
So, you've been on Any Questions.
I've been on about five or six times.
And you kind of live in hope that there's going to be someone on the panel that you won't be screaming at when they voice their opinions.
But this panel was particularly bad.
The most right-wing person they could come up with was Ian Dale.
Ian's sweet, but he's not very right-wing.
He was just talking about how he would never have Gerard Batten on his show because he's too much of an extremist.
I will never have Tommy Robinson on my show.
And it's sort of like, well, you weren't invited onto that show to virtue signal your left-wing credentials.
And one by one, whatever issue there was, obviously the big news was the The massacre in New Zealand and one by one they had to queue up to condemn it in the strongest terms and say how awful Islamophobia is.
But there was no straying from...
Having been in that situation, having been on the BBC, you know that you have no option, if you don't want to die, that is, in front of the audience.
You have no option but to say these safe lines about...
It's a given, isn't it?
That everyone thinks it's like the most horrible thing.
Well, you can tell by the audience reaction.
I mean, they got onto Brexit.
Someone suggested that the misattributed quote to Einstein, the definition of insanity is repeating the same thing, expecting a different result.
Should Theresa May listen to this?
Oh, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha.
And one by one, they came out with the same line.
Essentially, they were all Bremeners and They would love to see Remain happen.
And every time anyone suggested that, big applause from the audience, who they have to keep on stressing are completely self-selecting and they're not biased, blah, blah, blah.
And then finally, the question was this kiddie climate change march.
So this little girl...
Let me guess, let me guess.
I bet they all thought it was a complete waste of time.
No?
Well, no.
In a word, it was little girls saying...
I am a little girl and I have just been on the climate march and I would like to ask the panel why they are all fighting over Brexit.
When if they don't do anything about the climate change emergency, there will be no food.
Is that true?
Yeah, food absolutely will stop being...
I don't know.
How long?
In like five years?
It was just obviously accepted as being fact because a 12-year-old girl says so.
But it was...
The first one on was sort of, oh, well done, Katie.
No, really, Katie, well done.
You know, waiting for that audience applause, which inevitably happened.
And then one by one, all the panels said how wonderful she was, how appalling it was that the government weren't doing more to fight climate change.
Kids are great.
They're so wise.
They're lovely.
They have a wisdom.
It's kind of wisdom in ignorance, isn't it?
It's lovely that they know more about climate change than the founder of Greenpeace.
I think that is quite something.
It is.
Yeah, I think you're talking about Patrick Moore rather than...
Who is being quoted by Trump lately, which is fantastic.
Trump retweeted one of his things with the comment, well, how about that?
No, he is our emperor troll still.
He knows how to wind up the left.
Yeah.
He obviously featured regularly on the Now Show, sort of like, and hang on, we're five minutes in and no one's mentioned Trump.
Oh, there it is.
Do you remember it?
It was just like this with Ronald Reagan.
You know what, though?
We swallowed it as kids at that time because it was assumed, well, A, that he only became president because he was a film star, which none of us had heard of anyway, but not being American.
Yeah.
And then it was that he was obviously a bumbling idiot because spitting image made him out to be like that.
Because he was an actor.
He was a cowboy.
And there was never any positive coverage of his actual politics.
It was always caricature and ridicule.
And you're right.
They treated him in exactly the same way as they treat Trump.
Perhaps not as badly.
But it was only in later years that I found out what an amazing President Reagan actually was.
Which makes me wonder.
I'm reading this fantastic book at the moment on the BBC by somebody called David Sedgwick, and he just takes it apart.
What's the book called?
Because I think he sent me a copy as well.
Has he?
What, by accident?
No, he spoke to...
Why would it be an accident, someone sending me a book?
I don't know.
Do you read books?
LAUGHTER Occasionally.
I always had you down as the arty type, Dick.
The guy who's good at drawing excellent pictures of soldiers available on cigarette...
Available as a full set of cigarette cards if you visit...
Can we just pause for a commercial break here?
Your cigarette cards, I have to say, and I'm not saying this as a kind of stooge or whatever, or the mark or whatever he's called, the person who accidentally plugs your product out of stupidity...
Your soldier cigarette card series is absolutely fantastic.
Well, they've really taken off in a way I wasn't expecting them to.
But, you know, you spend your life...
Well, yeah, but it's the unexpected way in which...
I used to paint big canvases, as you know.
And someone pointed out to me, in fact, my good friend Jonathan Miles Lee, who does amazing paintings of Stately Homes.
He's going to be on the podcast.
Is he?
Yeah.
Oh, fantastic.
So if you're listening on people, special listener on a computer, have a quick Google of Jonathan Miles Lee.
He does...
Miles with a Y. M-Y-L-E-S-L-E-A, double-barreled.
He said, you should be doing prints.
Don't sell paintings.
You know, you can get your paintings printed.
You can sell them forever.
So I started off doing smaller paintings and watercolor, doing what I love, uniform illustrations.
And then someone, I may have worked it out myself, I thought they'd make good cigarette cards.
And no one does cigarette cards.
In fact, most kids don't know what cigarette cards are.
You have to explain to them.
Anyway.
Maybe you should do vape cards and they might understand.
I did think of calling them vape cards, but to cut a long story short, and I'm afraid I haven't cut it short, but I've done these cigarette cards.
There's 25 in the set.
There's military uniforms.
They're all different military uniforms, and I'm selling a whole set of 24 for a fiver.
Yeah, Dick, you are under charge.
It's just stupid.
Yeah, well, that's what I've done now.
There's another member of our family who's also a genius artist who, again...
Doesn't charge enough for his work.
And it's kind of annoying.
Who's that?
Bear.
Oh, Bear!
Yeah, yeah.
I was thinking Charlie.
I was thinking Charlie is never going to undercharge.
No, Charlie's...
He's certainly a type of artist.
Charlie's red meat capitalism.
No, no, no.
David Winwood.
I think the problem with us artists is we are rubbish at selling ourselves.
Like...
I know I'm not an artist, technically.
No, you're in the arts world.
But, can I just say, I'm really, really shit at selling my product.
In fact, this is one of the points I wanted to raise.
For example, the other day, I got an email.
I got a series of emails from this guy wanting to give me money for the podcast.
And I couldn't get my shit together to tell him which...
He was having trouble paying through PayPal.
I think I did eventually get my PayPal working so that it can take payments from people.
But I didn't...
Because I got so overwhelmed with worky events, you know, having to kind of do a Breitbart column here and there and a Spectator column here and there, whatever.
I forget to do my money-making housekeeping.
And I didn't email back to this guy.
I said, look, I've done my PayPal account now.
You can pay me.
So he probably hasn't given me any money.
Either that or he has given me money.
I didn't even notice I'm so shit.
It ends up looking like we don't care and we don't want the money because I've been doing exactly the same thing with these paintings.
A lot of people have been emailing me saying, no, I really like them all.
Can I have the lot?
And I'm overwhelmed and end up sort of not even contacting them.
So a message to all of our supporters in that respect.
We love you.
Buyers of my work or supporters of you, we are just shit at the whole money side of things.
Yeah, and we do need the money.
Boy, do we need the money.
Yeah, we're kind of indigent and, yeah, we're struggling, yeah.
So, I don't know how to resolve this one, Dick.
I suppose what one needs is some kind of manager.
A wrangler.
Because when I interviewed Charlie Kirk a couple of weeks ago, by the time I listened to this podcast...
Have you listened to Charlie Kirk?
No, I haven't.
I listen to them as they come out.
Oh, well, yeah, Charlie Kirk, you haven't yet.
So you won't be able to comment on it, which is kind of annoying.
When did you put this one out?
Quite recently.
All right, okay.
But even so, I'm not sure that's an excuse.
It was not...
I think at the time of broadcasting this, of recording it rather, we're talking about maybe...
Two days you've had to listen to it and you've failed.
Yeah.
Okay, do carry on.
But anyway, Charlie Kirk has a PA or has a girl who comes with him and she organises him.
And we creative types are just absolutely rubbish.
At organising ourselves.
Yeah, because actors have agents, artists have agents, but what are journalists and I don't know even what I am?
I do have a theory on this.
I think the things that make us good at what we do are also the things that stop us being good at making money and organising.
Because if we had that kind of brain, we'd be accountants, wouldn't we?
Well, it's again why you won't make a politician, because you keep on speaking your mind.
Yes.
That sort of thing.
I'm so off the idea of becoming Prime Minister.
You know, I'm sorry to disappoint the nation here.
It's not going to happen.
You'd pretty much be one of the worst Prime Ministers ever, though.
I wouldn't, actually.
No?
Because you'd have lots of people helping you.
Well, what I'd do, first of all, is I would...
If you were the ideas guy, things would be fine, but you'd have to have some really serious support, wouldn't you?
No, because I would sack the Cabinet Office, because I think those are the people that do all the kind of nuts and bolts stuff.
Are they the kind of yes minister, sort of people pulling the strings type thing?
I think so.
I think they're evil, evil leftists.
What I would do, obviously, I'd...
Drain the swamp.
I'd say I'd sack them, but what I'd probably do, actually, is have them follow me ritually in chains.
I have a parade through the City of London.
Game of Thrones style.
Shame, shame, shame.
They'd be in cages and with lions probably following them.
And then I'd take them into the city dungeons where they'd be ritually strangled.
I think that would be...
To signal that the regime had changed.
And I like the sort of nod to ancient Rome as well, the ritual strangling.
Interestingly, again, this is a podcast that you haven't listened to yet because I haven't even put it out yet.
The Helen Dale podcast, which precedes this one.
Helen knows lots and lots about...
She's got the Latin and the Greek.
She should have been a judge.
And in fact, she did train to be a lawyer.
But she ended up writing novels instead, set in a kind of alternate universe where...
I've got one.
It's the next thing I'm going to read.
Because I won her little competition where she was the hundredth person to respond gets a free copy.
And it was me.
It's a small world.
And everyone said fix, but it wasn't.
So I'm looking forward to reading that.
I can't remember what interesting fact she told us about Rome, but anyone who listened to the podcast would know about it.
Anyway, oh yeah, we were talking about how the Romans were big on friendship and big on courage, not so good on compassion.
That came from Christianity.
I'm not sure what relevance that has to anything we're saying.
Let's move on.
To what?
What were we talking about before I digressed?
I can't remember.
I was racking my brain for what we'd leapt onto the cigarette cars for.
I'm so annoying.
Yeah?
Aren't I? Because you know how this works?
As a listener, because I listen in...
The meanderings are all well and good, but if you do remember what was deviated from, you're still waiting for that thread to be picked up on.
And so when it goes, I think people have got to accept that when it's you and me, the meandering is everything.
It's sort of that you are never going to get back to the main part of that river.
It's gone.
That's awful.
Yeah.
I know.
We could, seeing as we were talking about previous podcasts, do a quick flick back through, because I do go to the trouble of writing down the last ten.
I still think, Dick, actually you ought to be my office manager.
I could do it if I had nothing else to do with my life, but I have a day job, which is fairly tedious, but rather important financially for me.
Anyway, we're going to digress again.
The last one I listened to was Tommy Robinson Part 3.
Now, you can still not even say his name without ducking for cover.
I'm so annoyed about this.
And to what else I'm annoyed about, I, after recording the podcast with him, I went to his court case.
I thought you might have done.
He had an action against Cambridgeshire Constabulary.
Because the story goes, two years ago, and he filmed all this on his iPhone.
So he's in the pub.
After this match, an away match of Luton Town at Cambridge.
And he's with his kids.
And the reason he's gone there with his kids is that he doesn't get much quality time with his kids.
So the football match is a really great moment in his life where he can bond.
And he takes his three young kids and then he goes to the pub afterwards.
And the police, Cambridge police, spot him.
And say, oi oi, you can't be here, let's be having you, let's be running you out of town.
Now, on paper, or if you listen to Tommy's account, it sounds awful and it looked bad on...
It seems fairly clear to me that Cambridge police picked on him, that they were sort of virtue signaling, if you like, they were...
Because I think there is a sort of SJW tendency within the police...
Yeah, I mean, you speak to a lot of police, and I've got police friends, and they hate it.
But I'll bet there's one or two.
Oh, of course, and they're going to be given a lot of support, and they're probably the ones that get promoted.
Anyway, I think the long and short of it is, I think probably it was unfair what happened to him.
But, when I interviewed him, I said to him, he told me about all these lawsuits he was bringing, and quite a few of them.
It's going to be quite expensive and time consuming, I would say.
And he told me about this Cambridge case coming up, and I said, have you got a case?
Meaning...
Are you going to win this one?
Because actually there's no point going to law unless you're going to win.
He was offered, I think, £10,000 out of court.
Yeah, that's what he's been saying.
Cambridge police.
But he wants the confession rather than...
So do you know what he's done?
What?
He's gone and lost £38,000.
He lost his case.
He had to pay the costs of Cambridge Police, because they had a very good lawyer, as you would when you're using the public's money to pay for your brief.
Anyway, I went to the case the first day of it and it was shambolic.
It was just embarrassing.
His barrister was really not on top of it.
The defence barrister for the police was much more effective and had much more rapport with the judge.
Tommy wound up both the judge and the police's defence counsel by sort of grandstanding, by not answering the question, but by digressing.
And I was thinking, Tommy, even those of us who sympathise with your position are looking at this and going, you should never have brought this case.
It was not strong enough.
If you're going to prove, if you're going to demonstrate to the judge's satisfaction that Cambridge police are lying in this case...
and they abused your human rights, then boy, the onus on you is to demonstrate this beyond reasonable doubt to the court.
He didn't do that.
He hadn't even read his own brief, get that?
He had not even read the documents in which he would describe what his case was and his statement.
He'd not read it.
This is not a good look in a court case.
The judge doesn't go, oh, well, bless.
You know, Tommy, you're a working class lad.
I wouldn't expect...
You're thinking, this is a really shit case that you're presenting.
And your barrister should never have allowed you to do this.
Your solicitor should never let you do it.
You've just gone and lost 38,000, well, more.
You've blown it.
Well, there is a theme with Tommy that...
To some extent, he is his own worst enemy.
Well, even he admits that.
Yeah.
He admits that.
Where I am on Tommy, as I think I intimated in the interview, I find it an absolute pain having to go and listen to Tommy because it instantly makes you look like you're some kind of evil agent of fascism and Islamophobia and stuff.
And that's not the reason I'm doing it.
I just think this guy needs a fair hearing.
We give fair hearings to far, far worse people than Tommy Robinson, and yet somehow the establishment has found it convenient to label him as Emanuel Goldstein.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Anyway, so there's Tommy Robinson.
And people...
I don't really want to talk any further about that because I'm actually sick of talking about Tommy Robinson, number one.
It's great that you do that, though, because there are precious few semi-mainstream journalists who...
Almost nobody.
Almost nobody who gives them even a fair hearing.
So before him, there was Imam of Peace.
Now you...
Well, you couldn't get more of a contrast there, could you?
From Tommy Robinson to a Shia cleric.
He's an actual Imam...
I didn't realize how much they had to go through to become an imam.
I mean, that's quite a...
You don't just drop into it.
It's not like doing a correspondence course in theology, is it?
No, no, no.
You're not going to get that from the open university after a couple of years' study.
It's kind of like...
And he's a particularly high-end imam as well.
Are they called Hafiz's?
People even memorise the Quran.
He was handpicked by the Iranian elite, the Shia elite for this role.
You really couldn't go much higher.
He was their golden boy.
And wasn't it an amazing podcast?
Yeah, fantastic.
And it ended so very brilliantly, the last line.
Is it true that you get 72 versions?
He said, yes, it's true, but I'm not into that.
Why on earth not?
What am I going to do with 72 virgins?
He's good.
Sometimes you sit in front of a podcast guest, not today, unfortunately, but you're sitting there thinking, this is gold.
I cannot believe that these golden words are entering my Heil microphone and going into my territory.
Just doing a sort of Tim Henman air punch type salute.
Why Tim Henman?
Why Tim Henman?
Because he does this Tiger Tim thing.
Oh, does he?
It was, oh, yeah.
I'm glad we won't be seeing any more of that.
Yeah, that's what I was doing.
I was doing a pathetic little Tiger Tim.
Yeah, that's just what I was doing.
Thanks, Dick.
So, yeah, anyway, it was a great podcast and I'm glad you enjoyed it because I did.
Before that, there was a Lyme special, which won't be for everyone, but one of the many lost causes that you've adopted over your...
Well, not willingly, I have to say.
No, these things find you, like climate change and Tommy Robinson.
It's one of the things that is never going to make you money.
It's never going to make you popular, but you've kind of made them your own.
And I know Lyme found you rather than you finding Lyme, but there will be a lot of people out there wanting more information on Lyme because they're not going to get it from the NHS.
Do you think we ought to brand this podcast Dellingpod, the home of lost causes?
Yes.
Because it sounds pretty much like it is.
I did not want to get bitten by a bloody tick, and it's really annoying that I've had decades probably of ill health and weirdness and actually mental illness.
Just, that's the weirdest part of life.
I don't think it...
Does it affect everyone that way?
I think it affects all manner of people in all manner of different ways.
Well, we've got it in my family now.
I don't want to go too much into that.
But yeah, you know...
How it's affecting my family, and it's taken us in different ways, but we are on top of it.
And through your journalistic endeavours, the alternatives to going through a woeful NHS system with Lyme disease are now more known about.
So, you know, you've done a great service, even though you're probably never going to get any appreciation for it.
It's quite good being a journalist with Lyme disease in as much as you can...
Write about it.
Well, research it first, then write about it, and then be the beneficiary of all manner of correspondence from all around the world.
This is the good bit, isn't it?
I've become like Lyme Nexus, so I know much more about Lyme than 99.99% of doctors certainly within the NHS or...
The thing about doctors who don't know much about Lyme, rather than admit that is the case, they will tell you you haven't got it because they're doctors and it's much easier to say no, no, it's not that than it is to say it's possibly Lyme but I don't know much about Lyme.
Yeah.
One of my life lessons has been everyone is more shit at their job than you imagine they would be.
So MPs, way more shit at their job than you imagine they would be.
Oh God, and how?
Doctors, way more shit at their job than you imagine they would be.
Lawyers, well, they're a bunch of...
Judicial system in general.
Yeah, and on and on it goes.
Teachers.
Journalists even.
Yeah, teachers, really a bit thick.
I mean, obviously not a special friend of teachers listening to this podcast.
Obviously not, they've got taste.
They're brilliant.
I mean, they're absolutely really clever.
I love them.
Our special teacher friend, singular.
Oh, but...
Are we going to do Catherine Burblesing?
She isn't on the list because I think she fell into the gap between the Breitbart podcasts and Dellingpod.
I think she might have been the first one that you did that was just a YouTube thing.
When I went to Catherine Burblesing's school, the Michaela school, Which you can do.
You can apply to the school and say, I want to come and visit your school.
And this is a school which has the same intake as any inner city school.
So the kind of school where normally you would have x-ray machines for the knives, people would be juking each other in the corridors and...
Lots, I mean, mostly not white kids.
We're talking girls in hijabs, we're talking black kids, we're talking, I think there was one middle class white kid in the whole school.
And Catherine talked about this, you know, we've got one middle class white kid.
The one whose parents didn't manage to get out in time.
No, I think you did.
Because I fled Hackney when...
It's not in Hackney, it's in Wembley.
In the same way, we left Hackney when the kids were at school age as a well-recognised fly to the white middle classes when they have kids from inner city areas.
Unless you've got money to go private, it makes absolute sense.
So you go to the school and you walk down the corridors.
And all the classroom doors are open and you can hear a pin drop.
And the teachers, the classes are conducted in absolute silence, save for the voice of the teacher, imparting knowledge and telling the kids stuff, not waiting to hear their point of view unless he or she invites them to give their point of view.
It's extraordinary.
The discipline, it is like a combination between a Trappist monastery and And Marine Boot Camp.
It's that...
It sounds bloody brilliant.
It's amazing.
Well, pretty much like the education that we would have had.
There would have been very little talking back from us during...
No, certainly not...
You wouldn't interrupt a teacher mid-stream, would you?
Although it's interesting, Catherine, who...
Talk to me.
Can you move your stupid phone?
That's what's making the bloody feedback noise.
Is it?
Yeah, it is.
When you put the phone nearby, it...
Because I haven't got my phone with me, so it must be yours.
So, Catherine told me about this.
She said, look, we can't treat our kids in the way that...
Our teachers cannot conduct their classes here in the way that, say, a teacher at Eton would.
Mm-hmm.
And the reason is simply that, well, A, our classes are bigger, and B, the sort of expectations and background of the kids here mean that they need much more discipline and rigor.
You can't sort of trust this.
You can't take the discipline as a given, as you would with Etonian kids.
Not many things give me hope for the future, but the Michaela School and Catherine Burblesinger are two of the things that give me hope for the future.
And also, I think Catherine's kind of hot in a...
I just thought I'd let one.
No, well, thanks for that.
She's great.
I can see where you're coming from in that, certainly.
Talking of hot, you had Lauren Southern on.
Yeah, Lauren Southern's great.
That was a good segue, wasn't it?
But I can't, you see, I can't let you after Lauren Southern quite so much because she's, Catherine is nearer my age group, whereas Lauren, not quite pedo because she's 25.
Right.
But it's probably, I'm not, if I came on to her, I'm not sure she dignified.
But she was great.
She was great.
She was good and she's funny and she's another cause for hope that there are people like that out there.
She's another of those people, a bit like you and me, who didn't really...
You know who we are?
We are Bilbo Baggins in Lord of the Rings.
Who does that make me?
Sam?
Yeah, you probably are Sam.
Oh, God.
Sam's quite loyal.
I know I'm loyal, sir, but I'm also a bit stupid.
That's true.
But there it is.
Have you eaten your elven sandwiches?
I think I dropped them down the mountain.
Actually, I have to say, Sam, that was one of your more annoying moments.
Dropping the sandwiches.
Yeah, it was a bloody stupid thing to do.
It was really stupid.
Wasn't that when the spider was about to get me?
Well, I think that was a little bit later, but it was when they were climbing that cliff.
But listen, your loyalty has been great, so...
Great.
You've just distracted me again.
Well, shall we move back another step to the next guest, Stefan Molyneux?
You see, oh Dick, this was just the coup.
It was like, I went...
He's a major, major name.
I went to Brussels and invited by the MEP Janice Atkinson, who's very good news by the way.
And I must have her on the podcast actually.
And it was like a gathering of supervillains.
Yeah.
There was Katie Hopkins...
I went...
Because I'm crap.
I can just hear the BBC audience booing with every one of these things.
Because I'm crap, I didn't look to see who was going to be there before I went.
I mean, this information was available to me, but I just couldn't be asked to...
A bit like Tommy Robinson and his brief.
Yeah, exactly.
You didn't read it.
Yeah, but at least it's not going to cost me £38,000 plus my own council's expense.
So...
I went out to Brussels and I went to the drinks party in the evening and actually my jaw did almost hit the floor.
So there is Stefan Molyneux, who obviously I hadn't seen before except in pictures on the internet.
Katie Hopkins.
There was Anne-Marie Waters from Fort Britain.
Yeah.
Who you have had on the podcast.
I've had on the podcast.
There was the Imam of Peace in all his regalia.
Mm-hmm.
Oh my God!
It's the Imam of Peace!
Lauren Southern, just when we had such fun.
Is that where Sargon was as well?
No.
Sargon was a different occasion.
And it was great bonding with all these people.
Like Katie Hopkins went out one night to a hookah bar.
Not a hookah bar.
A hookah.
A hookah smoking caterpillar.
Went to bar with the Imam of Peace.
Right.
And he's a lad.
This sounds like the first line of a really good joke.
He's such a lad.
Yeah.
And Katie actually, you know, she's got this kind of brittle manner in forthright when she's making documentaries and stuff.
But in real life, she's an absolute sweetheart.
She's so nice.
People won't believe that.
They just want to think she's a witch and they want to burn her.
No, actually, maybe they don't.
Not in this special space.
No, I think you'll find mostly fans and Dellingpod listeners.
Before that, it was Lance Foreman.
Lance.
He's great.
I can't remember what he did.
Lance, the oldest salmon smokery in Britain.
Oh, right, yes.
Yeah, he's one of the chosen.
And you know my views on the chosen people?
Like, oish!
I mean, I think I'm the world's most Jewish Gentile.
So I'm always bonding with...
And he was sound as a pound.
No, he was.
He was very much so.
Absolutely.
And he's got a very clever boy too, Oliver.
Oliver is now running Turning Point UK. Ah, right.
So everything connects.
Only Connect.
Do you watch that, by the way?
What, Only Connect?
Yeah.
I know I would like it.
She'll probably have to get on to it.
It's very good.
It's very good.
And I'll tell you what, one of the things that's good about it, it's one of those rare spaces in the world.
Is it on the BBC? It is on the BBC, isn't it?
It's one of those rare places which is somehow immune from politics.
Given that she's married to a lefty comedian and presumably her politics are quite lefty herself, she's very benign and neutral and nice and fun.
And the questions are genuinely challenging.
Maybe you should explain the concept of the show for our American friend.
That's the work of a whole podcast.
It's very complicated.
You've got the Horned Viper, Twisted Flax.
No, it's too...
The rounds have names after hieroglyphics.
The questions are very, very obscure.
No, it's too complicated to explain.
It's a good quiz show.
And I'll tell you how I've started getting into it.
By giving up on University Challenge.
Right.
You know, the University Challenge used to be the program in the week that I would absolutely watch without fail.
It was the thing that I, one thing that I would not miss.
And then do you know what happened?
It went SJW. It went woke.
What happened was that the questions started being altered to take into account contemporary woke values.
So they tried to make it more gender balanced.
So they tried to start introducing more questions about where the answer was a woman.
But there's only about five women from history.
There's Bodicea, Elizabeth I. I was going to say Elizabeth I. We're rapidly running out already.
Mary Queen of Scots.
Mary Queen of Scots and Marie Curie.
And once you've given those answers, you kind of run out of...
Well, it makes life easy, though, if you just keep those answers up your sleeve.
And if you're in doubt, fire one of them off.
You could certainly do very well on today's university challenge.
Yeah.
So, it's a bit annoying.
Well, more than a bit annoying, because I've pretty much given up watching it.
Rewind again.
Sargon was before Lance.
Now, I only relatively recently got into his podcasts, because I listen to them while I'm working, put my headphones on.
So you can do that?
Yeah, it's a really nice thing to be able to do.
And as long as I'm doing visual stuff and not doing stuff involving text, I can hear voices.
But otherwise, it has to be music.
Music and I can do writing-y type stuff.
But if I'm, say, doing some retouching in Photoshop, I can happily listen to someone like Sargon.
He benefits from having a really lovely talking voice.
You know, he's so well-spoken and chilled that, you know, that makes him very listenable for a start, before you even take into account that he's just so bloody reasonable.
He's very reasonable, and he's...
I think it's very impressive the way that he...
Well, it's very encouraging, actually, that he gets lots and lots of listeners simply by talking in long form, what are they called, vidcasts, audiocasts or whatever, about issues which require a certain amount of intelligent thought.
That can't be just delivered in a single tweet.
Yeah.
No, he's good.
And it was a pleasure and a privilege to get him on the podcast, yeah.
The one before that was, I've got Dutton and Woodley, because I think then we're getting back into the Ireland thing.
Yeah, Edward Dutton and Michael Woodley of Meany.
He's got some sort of complicated title name, Woodley of Meany.
They've written the most fantastic book called At Our Wits End.
Now, I'm trying to...
I'm currently trying to...
Well, I haven't done anything about it, but I'm planning on selling this piece to whoever will be interested in it.
I think maybe a Mail on Sunday, maybe a Spectator, I'm not sure.
It's quite controversial, though, in as much as it's about how global IQs are dropping because of...
The opposite of selective breeding.
What's it called?
Dysgenics.
Right, but I suppose it can be seen as a tie-in with the fact that Western civilization is dying.
So it's another symptom of that, isn't it?
Well, you see, there is a chapter at the end where they talk about the rise and fall of civilizations, and this is what happens.
I can't quite believe that this is true, but they claim it to be so, that even in the Roman Empire, in the latter days, there was a kind of...
Welfarism, which enabled the poor who would previously have been sort of wiped out through starvation and disease and whatever, that it enabled more people of low IQs to go on breeding and therefore this contributed to the spiral, the downward spiral.
So it does seem to be what happens in empires.
As they rise, the sharper people are the ones whose progeny survive, and so the IQ rises.
And then in the dog days of empires, IQs fall, and we all descend into kind of animals.
Yeah.
I played you last time I visited, didn't I? The Mouse Utopia video that I found online.
So if Special Friend wants to Google that one on YouTube...
Mouse Utopia, yeah.
Google the...
It's only like a 10-minute film, and it's from a series called Today I Learned, I think.
Very, very good series.
Google the time they built a mouse utopia and it's a very very telling cautionary tale.
I won't say any more about it but just watch it and make your own conclusion.
It's fantastic but essentially it's the fall of empires in a 10 minute presentation based on mice.
Before I forget...
You remember our Christmas video special?
Unfortunately, this is not on video.
It's a shame, but we can't have video all the time.
Not until we get our audience back, because I've been so shit at promo.
I've been watching your numbers gradually go up, but, you know, it's not...
Nearly touching the audience.
No, I had gazillions of Breitbart.
And do you know what?
I sent them a couple of emails saying, can I have my feed?
And they just didn't reply.
And part of me goes, well, I don't want to be beholden to them.
And part of me thinks, well, isn't this a form of restraint of trade that I've built up this audience and you're just denying me my...
If only through your inertia, my audience who are probably wanting to...
I don't know what to do about it.
I'm not very good at dealing with bosses.
No, it comes back to this whole sort of artists being crap at selling themselves.
Yeah.
The one good thing is that they do hang around forever on YouTube.
I mean, that's a good thing and a bad thing because, you know...
Bad stuff hangs around on YouTube forever as well.
But, you know, people can go back and get your back catalogue, so to speak, with ease.
They can.
If they latch on to a particularly fine guest.
So, what we did was we thanked one of our lovely sponsors.
Oh, we love Twister T, don't we?
Well, I did a quick tweet for Twist Tea.
I felt like what you said about the stooge sort of doing the product placement bit, but it's a genuine nice thing for them to do.
They didn't have to do it.
They sent us a load of tea.
They sent me a load of tea.
They said they love the yes-no game.
And enjoy our teas.
And it has to be said, they're really very good tea.
A, it's bloody good tea.
And B, what nice people.
They just are, they keep on giving us tea.
Well, one of the things they sent was a sign-up for a year's supply of tea.
Yeah.
So every month I get a new box of tea, a different one each time.
I've recently been enjoying their variation on Earl Grey.
Earl Great, I think it's called.
Oh yeah?
That's really nice.
Well, it's got cheese in it.
Well, no, it's just...
No.
I think it's called The Real Earl.
I forget what it's called.
It's called Duke of Earl.
It's not called Duke of Earl.
Duke of Earl.
It's not called Duke of Earl, but maybe they will.
Because that would have been good because we could have done Duke of Earl together.
Acapella.
Acapella.
That's never going to happen now.
So twist teas, check them out online and order yourself some decent tea for a change.
Stop drinking that rubbish you're drinking.
But also...
Rather sadly, I got an email from this lovely man called Kurt, who's got a company called Travelling Dukes.
That's Travelling spelt in the American way with one L. Dukes.
Isn't that funny?
Dukes.
Travellingdukes.com.
And he exports from China.
Monk's monk fruit tea.
Right.
And he sent me some of that and it's really, really nice.
It's really sweet and yet it doesn't do all the bad things that sugar does.
It's got a very low sugar content somehow.
How come tea be made out of this monk fruit stuff?
Well, you get little bits of monk fruit in your tea bag.
Is that a fruit tea?
It's like a sweet drink, which is really nice if you have a sweet craving, but without any of the sugar.
Right.
Which is good for me because, you know...
Because you and your lime can't deal with the sugar.
I'm not meant to eat sugar.
Sugar feeds the beast.
Sugar is a no-no.
Although, I have to say, daughter made...
You had that cake.
Yeah, very nice.
How good was that cake?
I don't think it helps your lime that you've got a daughter who is so very good at baking.
And your son is a bit of a master baker.
He's going to be gay, isn't he?
He's got to be gay.
I mean, if you're showing those tendencies.
Yeah, Bake Off.
I think it's had a profound influence, a profound cultural influence.
Baking is now...
The new rock and roll.
It is the new rock and roll, yeah.
Do you want Dick's Interesting Music Facts?
Yeah.
Is this a new invention?
Well, we've done it once or twice before.
Dick's interesting music facts.
By the way, talking of interesting music facts...
Are you going to divert me now?
Yeah, but you've got your page, so you've got your reference.
Did you see Roger Daltrey talking about Brexit?
Talking to Sky.
To Sky.
And he pissed them off so much that they've taken it down.
They took it down.
So he was asked by the typical lefty anti-Brexit Sky interviewer how it was going to affect the world of rock.
And he said something like, we were fucking touring Europe before Brexit and we're going to be touring Europe after Brexit.
He's brilliant.
What a hero.
Yeah.
That generation, you see.
Yeah.
His generation.
Are you talking about his generation?
Yeah, yeah.
I'm just talking about...
Because people do try to put him down.
They do.
Yeah.
Because he gets around most of Europe.
Yeah, he does.
Brexit or no Brexit.
He does.
Okay, so Alan Parsons.
Is that going to start you singing?
I can't remember how the...
I am the eye in the sky...
Alan Parsons of the Alan Parsons Project was an assistant engineer on the Beatles' Abbey Road album.
I sort of half knew that because I knew he was a studio engineer.
And do you know there was another thing he was on then?
What other interesting album has he connected to?
He was the engineer on...
Did he play with Bob Holness on the saxophone?
He didn't, no.
On the blistering sax solo on Baker Street.
No, he didn't.
He was the engineer on Pink Floyd's Dark Side of the Moon.
Was he now?
That is quite impressive.
Of course, it will sail right over the heads of anyone who's never even heard of Eye in the Sky or the Alan Parsons project.
Well, it's a generational thing, isn't it?
Anyone of our generation would have had that album, surely.
Is it not the best lie ever that Bob Holm has played the sax solo on?
Yeah.
And where did it come from?
I don't know.
I think it might have been Viz or something like that, but it was just one of those urban myths that just got around.
You see, urban myths, they could thrive for a very long time.
Like my other favourite urban myth, which I hope is true, but I don't think it is, that the Queen's favourite movies are...
Assault on Precinct 13, the original one.
Right.
And deliverance.
And that she learned the banjo solo.
She took banjo lessons so she could play duelling banjos.
It can't be true, can it, Dick?
It can't be true.
This is the thing about the Queen.
Because she never lets on anything, unlike her dreadful son...
We project onto her.
We project onto her all our own views.
And there's nothing to say she doesn't share those views.
But can you imagine how gut-wrenching it would be if you had an audience with the Queen and you thought, I've got to seize this moment.
I've got to ask.
Ma'am, I'm not supposed to ask you questions.
I know it's not formed, but please just tell me, did you ever have banjo lessons so you could play the theme?
I think the best way to do it would be to be in a room with her and you've got a guitar and you go...
And she has a banjo on her knee and she replies with...
Oh, that would be just...
It would be a life-changing moment, wouldn't it?
It would be a life-changing moment.
It's actually worth...
We could almost go to the Buckingham Palace now, just have that experience.
I would learn to play the guitar again, because we both learned the guitar badly in our youths.
But just to do that, just to play duelling banjos with the Queen.
Dueling with the Queen.
So that was Dick's interesting music fact.
Oh, is there only one?
There's only one per poddy.
I mean, it's not going to...
I haven't got enough.
Oh.
But I have got Yes No lined up.
You know who I want on the podcast.
You're meant to be more excited about me having a Yes No game lined up.
Sorry, I was just thinking...
Well done, Dick.
Well done, Dick.
Just holding you on that thing before we go there.
You know who our secret fan is?
Is it the famous fan?
The famous fan?
The famous rock star fan.
Oh, right.
Yes, of course.
I want him on the podcast.
I mean, how good would it be?
It would be very, very good.
I mean, I've been listening to his stuff since I was at art college.
Dear Mr.
Fantasy.
Yeah.
There were three men came out of the West.
Brilliant.
Right.
Yeah.
Okay.
He'd be good.
He'd be very good.
He'd be good.
Now, oh, Dick's interesting film facts.
Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, please.
Do you know this one?
Where does the line, a jumped up pantry boy who never knew his place, come from?
It comes from the servant?
Who's the star of the film?
It might have been Dirk Bogart or Albert Finney.
It's Michael Caine and Laurence Olivier in Sleuth.
Oh sorry, it's not from The Servant.
Is that okay?
Yeah.
So who delivers that line?
I think Olivier delivers it to Michael Caine because he's a jumped up little star.
Can you do an Olivier impersonation?
Well, he's so changeable, isn't he?
But I think in this one he goes, You're just a jumped-up pantry boy who never knew his place!
So it's that sort of delivery.
But of course, it's in the song, I'm a jumped-up pantry boy who never knew his place.
This charming man.
This charming man, yeah.
Right.
Launching into the yes-no game.
Yeah.
Straight in there.
Now, there's a few curveballs in here.
There's one or two that may or may not have appeared before.
But let's launch into it.
Okay.
Benedict Cumberbatch.
No.
Peter Shilton.
Oh, that's a curveball.
Literally, because he was the England goalie.
England goalie.
Is he still alive?
Yeah.
I imagine he's probably great, isn't he?
I think he's a good one.
I think why I wrote him down must have been he said something positive about Brexit.
Good old goal!
Russell Brand.
Actually, not goal, because that would be bad in his case.
That would be bad in his case, yes.
Save!
Russell Brand.
Well, I'm assuming no.
Although he did interview Candace Owens.
It's a difficult one, isn't it?
It's a difficult one with Russell Brand.
He's a sweaty junkie.
With too much hair.
He's shagged too many birds.
Too much sex.
Yeah.
He probably smells, doesn't he?
I shouldn't think it's personal hygiene.
Do you think he smells really musky?
I think he's the sort of person who would probably put on a load of perfume instead of washing.
Patchouli.
Yeah.
He would wear patchouli.
Oh, God, dear.
Girls probably like that kind of thing.
Well, clearly the amount of sex you supposedly had.
Girls like filthy...
This is the thing about girls.
On the one hand, they want to pretend that they're all kind of pure and clean and that men are these unwanted advancing things that rape them and stuff.
And at the same time, present them with a kind of unwashed smack addict.
Dirty, filthy.
Dirty filth.
They're all over him.
Yeah, who smells patchouli.
It's so wrong.
So that was Russell Brand.
I've got Russell Harty.
He's got to be dead.
I think so, but you can still have a yes or a no.
Yes.
No?
Yes.
I think probably yes.
Oh, I see this Russell theme going on.
Yes, yes.
Russell male.
Oh, I think he's horrible, isn't he?
Or is he?
No, who is he?
I'll do a mime for you.
you this is going to work well for a podcast you look like a walrus playing the piano I was doing sparks.
Oh, we like them.
Yes.
Yeah, of course we like them.
Sorry, sorry.
So he's a yes.
He's a yes.
Jolly good.
Ken Russell.
Oh...
Yes?
Probably.
You know what?
I write these lists so long ago, I can't remember why I put the names down.
Yeah, yeah, he did a list of them.
He did Tommy!
We were just singing earlier before we started this part.
Tommy, can you hear me?
Yeah.
Leo Varadkar.
Leo Varadkar.
Who do you think he is?
I don't know, but if I had to hazard a guess, I imagine...
Sounds like a wrong'un to me.
I think he's some kind of hairless rodent.
Like a blind mole rat.
A blind mole rat.
That's exactly what he is.
Well, not good.
They're quite cute in comparison.
I think they are related to...
There's a similar Canadian species.
So he's a no.
He is such a no that there is not a negative strong enough to express how negative he is.
And what are Ireland thinking?
I mean, I know they have a system where you don't necessarily elect your T-Shock.
Do you know what saddens me about Ireland?
T-Shock.
Is it T-Shock?
It is.
Well done.
You've got the T-Shock.
It looks like Tower Siege, but it's pronounced T-Shock.
That's the idea that they annoy me.
People who spell their names with Irish names in order to show how bloody Gaelic they are and how not English and how much they hate the English.
who's the the presenter of the weak thing Brian O'Brien O'Brien O'Brien O'Brien O'Brien O'Brien O'Brien O'Brien O'Brien he's one of them yeah um Mario Kunashek you know Mario Kunashek Kunashek the Austrian defence minister He sounds cool.
Yeah, he came out with some very strong statements against the EU army, so he immediately went in as a yes.
Well, because...
There's some pretty sound Austrians out there.
Austrians.
I mean, they are kind of the foil to everything that's bad about Germany.
Although there's so much good going on in Germany right now.
We know that the AFD lot and the people who treated you for Lyme.
Oh, yeah.
Listen, I love the Germans.
I know.
I just...
Germans are just great.
I mean, apart from their politics.
I mean, apart from Angela Merkel and stuff.
But I thought Germans...
Germans as a people...
This is kind of why, as Brexit gets more and more convoluted and even unlikely, when you just look at the rest of Europe, even Germany, even France, you just think, well, the EU is dead on its feet anyway.
Why worry about it?
Even if they were to tell us tomorrow that, no, we're sticking with the EU, I'd go, it's all right because us leavers will get what we want one way or another.
Because either we leave or the whole thing's collapsing anyway.
And, you know, it's a race to the bottom, which is going to happen first.
I didn't hear any of those words, Dick, because I was thinking about something.
I was going to ask you...
Sorry, but you distracted me by mentioning Germany.
Do you not think...
No, that's not a do not think question.
Do you think that in the next war we'll be against Germany...
Or fighting alongside them?
What do you think is most likely?
Because you've now got me thinking in terms of the equipment we'll get if we're with them.
Obviously we'll get really cool tanks.
Well, will we then?
Haven't we got better tanks than leopards?
I think you're talking about a 1970s tank now, aren't you?
Yeah, but it'll be the Leopard 5 or something like that.
I'm really not up on German military hardware.
Who is Leopard 5?
Yeah.
Well, I suppose somebody who works for Jane's Defence probably.
The thing is, it's back to this whole tank argument.
I mean, are they yesterday's weapon?
Yes, they are.
They really are.
It's a shame though, isn't it?
It is.
Dominic Grieve.
This is back to the yes-no again.
That wasn't a curse, although it should be.
I think it's Nour.
Nour.
In his case.
He's a traitor.
I think they recently gave him the Légion d'honneur, didn't they?
Dominic Grieve and Lionel Barber of the Financial Times.
These people are traitors.
Hmm.
Yeah.
Who...
Nicholas Bowles has resigned from his thingy today for the same sort of reasons as all of...
Resigned from his local...
Do you remember Nick Bowles from...
You must have...
When you used to come and see me in Oxford.
Right.
Do you remember Nick Bowles at parties?
Oh God, Nick was sort of...
He wore dressing gowns.
He wore sort of elaborate dressing gowns.
That was what he sported.
Some sort of Wickhamist thing.
And he was very kind of grand and queeny and entertaining.
Here's good old Nick.
He gave no...
Intimation of the kind of horrible, ghastly, cuck, squish.
Well, David Cameron didn't either, did he?
No, that's true.
Everyone was hiding their true intentions.
Do you think there were any intentions?
So I don't know what it is that made...
I don't understand what it is that made my generation of politicians go bad.
You know, Gove even.
It's a mystery.
Gove's been put out in support of the kids going on these climate marches.
It's just like, I almost think that Gove's whole career is an elaborate troll of me.
Yeah?
I just think he's...
That's a good theory.
Yeah.
What other explanation could there be?
Possession?
Possession.
Yes, well, Demonic Possession is the other one.
Yeah, yeah.
I mean, it sounds crazy, but...
It has happened.
I've seen The Exorcist.
Yeah.
I haven't seen Gove's head spin round yet.
Well, they wouldn't do anything so obvious, would they?
Megan Windsor.
Has she taken the name Windsor?
I think it's pronounced Megan.
Megan.
Megan Windsor.
Megan is going to...
You've got to admire her.
She's like a kind of...
One of those missiles.
Those really advanced missiles that when it locks on, your destruction is assured.
And that's what she's doing through all family.
I was thinking more of those things that worm into your feet and give you a disease.
Chickers.
Yeah.
I've had those.
They're horrible.
No, Megan's worse than that, I'd say.
I mean, the rumours are that Harry isn't as happy as he has been in the past, let's say.
Look, it's really sad, isn't it, when your mate or, you know...
When somebody gets a girlfriend and you want them to...
You all know she's ghastly, but you can't tell them that because they're mates.
Because they'll hate you for it.
Even if you're right.
Yeah, and then she destroys...
It's just that he's living out this for all of us to watch.
It's terrible.
A gender neutral child.
Did she not consult on what the royal family represents before she decided to?
I think she did everything necessary to get in there and kept her powder dry and now she's in.
I wonder what the Queen thinks.
Well, no one will ever know, will they?
Because back to what we said about the Queen, you know, she's ultimately discreet.
I'll bet if she were playing her banjo and thinking about this.
She probably does.
There's probably a bridge over the D in Balmoral.
Right.
And she sits there with her legs dangling down.
Yeah.
With her banjo.
Yeah.
The trout nibbling at her toes.
Yeah, yeah.
Watching canoe parties go underneath.
Yeah.
And she probably thinks about Megan and thinks, shall I just end it all now?
Shall I just drop into the river and hope there's not a ghillie around to rescue me because is it really worth it?
Sad, isn't it?
It's really sad, actually, that, if that's true, which I think it is.
Ian McShane.
Yes, I think.
Yes, I think so.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Yes, yes, yes.
This is dating my list.
Jussie Smollett.
Jussie, he's great, isn't he?
He's fantastic.
You may have expected me to say no, but actually I think...
If you're not being paid enough, it seems to me quite an impressive move to pull.
Yeah.
To pay two guys to beat you up in order to get a pay rise.
Well, this is when your poison pen letters laced with fake ricin don't work.
Yep.
Obviously, that's your first move if you're after a pay rise.
Then you get two big Nigerians to beat you up.
But...
And then you ask your boss for a rise, I think, is the last ditch thing you would do.
Do you think I could persuade Breitbart to give me my feedback?
Well, start with the poison pen letter, obviously.
Where are you going to find a couple of Nigerians to be?
Yeah, but...
But what would that prove?
Isn't there a rule where you can't be victims of racist attacks if you're white?
Yeah.
Maybe you could get...
Maybe if I black up.
Is that acceptable these days?
I think not just acceptable.
I think it's encouraged because they call it racial appreciation.
Do they?
Yeah.
Okay.
So take it from me.
You can do that.
Anyone else listening?
I think Dick's a sensitive advisor on these issues.
Yeah.
Being the sensible brother.
Yeah, well done.
I've got Prince Harry, Lily Allen, Keith Allen.
I mean, obviously, they're all no's.
Oh, don't give me clues!
People are going to be...
Okay, special friend.
Let's rewind.
Prince Harry.
No.
Lily Allen.
No.
Keith Allen.
No.
Keith Allen in Kingsman 2 being fed into a meat grinder.
Yes.
Michael Gove.
I'm on the horns of a dilemma here.
You knew.
Maybe you find the next one easier.
Judas Iscariot.
What's he done now?
He's had bad press in the past.
Yes.
Yes.
Really?
I think that Jesus has a lot...
Going back to our conversation earlier about compassion destroying the Roman Empire via Christianity.
Yeah.
I'm not sure that Christianity...
I know Tom Holland's just written a book about how Christianity's made everything well.
So you're saying, Christianity, is it worth saving?
I don't know.
Might somewhat isolate us from our special American friend in that respect.
No, I do like Jesus.
He wasn't on the yes-no list.
He said controversially.
If we shove Jesus on the list, does he get a yes?
I think either you're pro-Judas Iscariot or you're pro-Jesus.
This is what it's all leading to, isn't it?
Although, unless you argue that he was part of the Lord's plan.
Ah, double bluff.
Yeah, so I say yes to Judas Iscariot.
Okay.
Well, without him, there would have been no betrayal, no crucifixion.
No resurrection.
Exactly.
No religion.
Yeah.
No religion to...
Just imagine.
Yeah, imagine.
Imagine that.
Genghis Khan.
Our ancestor.
Is he?
No.
Oh, he's everyone's ancestor.
Everyone's ancestor.
Trick question, yeah.
Yeah.
Sadiq Khan.
He's far worse than Genghis Khan.
Take Genghis over.
Take Genghis over Sadiq.
If Genghis was mayor of London.
Yeah.
He'd sort out knife crime.
He bloody would.
He certainly would.
He'd make it compulsory.
And do you know what?
He wouldn't have any problem about Beachbody ready adverts on the tube.
No.
He wouldn't bother about food adverts.
Oh, the shocking food adverts on the tube.
Yeah.
Pictures of supermarket trolleys with meat in them.
I know.
Terrible.
Yeah.
Kanye West.
Do you know, I think he regularly appears on the Yes No because he can change with the weather.
He changes with the weather.
Is he a yes or a no right now?
Do you know what?
He's like the climate change of the music world.
I do not know where I am.
Who does he know?
Does even Kanye know whether he's a yes or a no?
I think it would be frankly insulting to pin him down.
Right, okay.
Dominic West.
He's actually oddly a yes-no.
Or a no-yes.
Yeah, yeah.
You want to like him, but he keeps on...
He does, but he didn't...
Well, I think we talked about this before, so I'm not going to get on again.
Michael Caine.
Yes!
Absolutely resounding yes.
He's another one of the talking-about-my-generation type things.
He keeps on going against the grain that everyone wants him to...
He's generally a good egg.
He's just great.
Nearly there.
Nish Kumar.
You're looking puzzled.
That's good.
That's encouraging.
He's a popular BBC-based comedian of the Asian position.
Do you know what?
I was going to tell you about this.
What?
I am going cold turkey on the BBC. Right.
I do not want to watch or listen to anything by the BBC ever again.
I'd already narrowed it down quite a lot.
I'd already realised.
We were talking at the beginning about the car journeys.
Mm-hmm.
And until such time as I rig up my vehicle so that I can...
I'd love to be able to listen to podcasts.
I'd love to be able to have...
That's where a lot of our listeners listen to their podcasts.
It's an ideal time.
This podcast serves the fact...
It was always its intention.
Well, pretty much always.
Was to be the...
If you turned on the BBC and it was good instead of shit, this is the programme you'd hear.
Every programme would be like this.
Well, not every programme, but lots of them.
Enough of them to make sticking with the BBC worthwhile.
So I realised that there were only two...
Two things I can listen to on the BBC anymore.
One of them is Radio 3 most of the time, except even now.
They've got a thing called, you won't know about this, but they've got a thing called Composer of the Week.
And it's absolutely brilliant.
You just get a straight biography of, say, Bach or Beethoven or whoever.
And it's really interesting and you get excerpts of their works and you learn stuff.
And they've started ruining it now by introducing female composers and things.
It's just like, do we care?
So there's that, Radio 3, because it hasn't got too much politics in it.
And the other thing I listened to is the Sunday night rock show with Daniel P. Carter.
And I also like their hip-hop show.
What's that on?
Radio 1?
Radio 1.
Really?
There's no politics in their hip-hop show at all.
They're just kind of black people.
I imagine they're black.
Maybe they're not.
Talking about, you know, just rapping.
And Daniel Piccata, The Rock Show, he doesn't really go into politics either.
But everything else is just awful.
So I've basically stopped watching and listening to the BBC. I think it's an abomination.
I think it's so...
This book, briefly, you were mentioning.
Yeah.
Yeah, because I think he sent me the copy as well.
Is it called Britain Brainwashing Corporation?
Something like that?
Yeah.
I'm going to have him on the podcast.
The thing about it is, it's a great book, it's well researched, it's got some amazing stuff, but it's not going to be read by the people who need to read it.
It won't be read by people who love the BBC and see no problem with it.
There are people out there who think that the BBC has a bias problem that is right wing.
Yes, but they are very hard leftist people.
Do you think they genuinely believe that or do you think they're just saying it just for the sake of balance?
I don't think that...
So they can come out with that old thing of like, well, you know, some people say we've got a bias to the left and there are people who say we've got a bias to the right.
So we think on balance we're doing a good job.
Left-wing people don't use evidence or reason.
It's about...
It's about the narrative.
And the narrative says that the BBC is a right-wing entity.
Therefore, that's what they believe.
But they don't think in the same way that we do.
And I do think that there is going to be an increasing...
The liberal left is always whining about how everything's becoming more polarised.
But the reason everything's becoming more polarized, it's them.
They've taken over, in Gramsciite fashion, they've taken over the institutions, the publishing, the BBC, Hollywood, everything mainstream.
The newspapers, I mean, even the Daily Mail has been taken over.
The health service.
Health service.
Legal service.
Legal system, everything.
So it's no wonder that a bit like the characters in Atlas Shrugged, a bit like the producers, we all bugger off beyond the mountains in Colorado to, what's it called?
Galt's Gulch.
Right.
Because we want to opt out of their tainted civilization.
I would like one of these people who claim the BBC has a right-wing bias to sit with me and listen to either the Now show, like I had to put myself through on my journey here, or that any answer, any questions, rather, and take the points made one by one and say, what do you reckon, unbalanced left-wing or right-wing?
And try to get them to say...
Even one point being made was remotely right-wing.
And of course, by saying you're right-wing, now it's sort of like, well, there is no right-wing.
It's only the ultra-right.
It's only the extreme right.
I think, look, for the benefit of American and Australian special friend, BBC is, ABC is, CNN is for Canadians.
What's the Canadian one?
Don't know.
CBC, is it?
Probably.
CBeebies.
Sue Beebe's, yeah, that's it.
That's what they watch in Canada.
Well, they have to because they've been infantilised by Justin Bieber.
Yeah, President Bieber.
Have we put the world to rights?
Just checking my list.
Check your list.
Check it twice.
Check the list.
Find out who's been naughty or nice.
Can...
I'd briefly say about my wonderful crowning glory moment of being back at our old school running.
Oh, tell me, Dick.
Tell me about this.
This Tuesday, both you and I were heavily into our cross-country when we were at school.
Because we were shit at ballgames.
Because we're shit at everything else.
We're not team players.
Any team sport, forget about it.
Why is that, Dick?
Because we're into the solitary sports.
What, wanking?
I was going to say that.
I didn't think we were allowed to say it, but it is basically, isn't it?
So we liked our cross-country.
We're at school in Malvern, which has fantastic countryside to run in.
So we've got enormous hills to run up and down.
Enormous hills.
We've got good at that.
And the annual race, the Ledbury Run, starts in Ledbury on the other side of the Malvern Hills, runs seven and three-quarter miles and ends up, over the hills, ends up in the school ground.
Over the hills and far away.
Over the hills and far away.
And I went back and re-ran it with the school.
A gruelling, near eight miles of ploughed fields, stiles, steep clay banks, river banks.
How was shit alley?
Was it?
It was in full flood.
It was shitty.
It was slimy.
Did you have spikes?
No, I was in trail shoes.
A new innovation.
Because, you know, I bought some spikes to do the letter two years ago when it was cancelled.
Right.
Last year when it was cancelled.
And I was going to run it with you this year.
And then my doctor told me, don't exert yourself while you're curing yourself from Lyme disease.
And the ultimate exertion has to be the letter.
But I met another old boy there on the day who was also foolishly running it.
Who was that?
Jonathan Waterhouse.
I remember Waterhouse, yeah.
He was in the year between us.
And because he was in a different house, I didn't particularly know him.
We got on great.
Didn't he do art?
I don't know.
Anyway, we ran the thing together.
And we pretty much came bang in the middle of the whole school.
You know, we certainly didn't disgrace ourselves.
And it was...
Beautiful sunny day after a dreadful start with wind and rain.
The moment the race started, the sun came out, the wind disappeared, the rain stopped.
It was fantastic.
So I was back there again on Thursday to do a careers evening to take part in a sort of like they got various old boys to be there to talk to the kids about their profession.
So I was talking to them about, you know, being a graphic designer, basically saying, Don't do this if you want to earn money.
And talking about my really quite boring life.
That's what I say to people about journalism.
I was telling them.
I was saying my brother, when he gives this talk, he says, if you're thinking about being a journalist, I do urge you not to.
Totally.
And then if they come back to me, I say, no, still don't.
Still don't.
And then if you must.
So that's what I was doing for art and design, basically.
But these kids came into the class and they were buzzing.
They were going, oh, that last talk.
That was so good.
That was amazing.
And I was thinking, who have you just been to see?
And they said, this guy, he was in the SAS. He was amazing.
He does hostage negotiations and he's been all around...
How the hell am I going to compete with that?
So I didn't, basically.
I thought you were going to tell us that you'd stripped off or something.
Well, one of the kids in my last session had been the boy who won the letter that day.
So we talked about the letter.
Oh, and one of the girls was the second fastest.
So we talked a bit about the letter and what a great thing it is and how...
If you went to Malvern, it was the thing you'll talk about.
I hope it is.
I hope it's not sodding cricket, because that was...
Because I think Malvern thinks of itself a cricketing school.
Yeah.
I'm not sure that I approve of...
Well, I like the idea of cricket, but not...
I like the idea that Malvern is different enough and not up itself so much that it can have a solitary sport like cross country as being its thing.
Yeah.
It's quite a nice idea.
I cling to that.
Well, you would cling to that and I would as well because that was our sport.
That was our thing.
Yeah.
And it is unique to Malvern.
So, you know, any school can play cricket or rugby or what have you, but only Malvern has the letter.
Yeah, but other schools used to be just...
They all have their own things, yeah.
Shrewsbury was pretty good at cross-country.
Who else was good at cross-country?
Jonathan has links to rugby, and they have the equivalent run that is quite flat, but all the old boys take place.
We've got the hills.
Not many schools have got...
No, having the hills is the thing.
I think someone like Sedba might have hills, but that's more of a rugby school.
They probably don't even...
Yeah, anyway.
So, yeah, that was the other thing I wanted to mention.
So, basically, this podcast is going to peter out like it's just run an eight-mile cross-country race.
Yeah, but it goes across the line with its head held high.
Does it?
With pride.
Do you want to walk the dog?
Yeah, let's do that.
Okay, right.
You're listening to The Delling Pod with me, James Dellingpole, and my guest, Dick Dellingpole.
Another podcast next week, I guess, if I can get my act to go on.
Thank you.
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