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Oct. 24, 2019 - The Delingpod - James Delingpole
01:16:08
Delingpod 42: Iain Dale
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Welcome to the DelingPod with me James Delingpaw and I am very, I know I always say this, but I am very excited about this week's special guest.
It is none other than Ian Dale, who is...
Ian, you are everywhere.
I mean, I might almost call you a complete tart.
You've just had a successful run at Edinburgh doing about, what, two zillion shows?
We had 24 shows, two a day.
Yeah.
Okay.
So we'll come back to that.
You did that and you've got your LBC show and you've got your podcast with Jackie Smith.
And you used to run a publishing division of Backbite.
No, Biteback.
Sorry.
Biteback.
And I shouldn't get that wrong because you actually published me.
Biteback.
And what else?
You founded a Politico's bookshop.
Yeah, that was a long time ago.
1997.
That closed in 2004, so 15 years ago.
Anyway, my point is, you have been and you are hyper-energetic in your career.
Tell me a bit about your time at the Edinburgh Fringe.
Who did you interview?
Well, I got the idea because I'd been to the Edinburgh Fringe a few years and absolutely loved it.
And if you've never been, you can't quite understand the atmosphere.
It's quite addictive.
So I've been about, I don't know, four or five years in a row.
And I went to see Matt Ford, the comedian, who was interviewing the odd politician here and there.
And I thought, well, I could do this.
And he sold out Tim Lawton.
And I thought, well, if you can sell out Tim Lawton, you could probably sell out people who are a bit more high profile.
So I got a new agent last year, and he put me in touch with a promoter who's at Edinburgh every year.
And much to my surprise, he thought it was a great idea.
So I put together a guest list.
Quite eclectic.
It wasn't just politicians.
It was media people, Kirsty Walk, Vee Glover, Sarah Smith...
Plus the odd entertainer Christopher Biggins I interviewed.
You got the Biggins?
I got the Biggins.
In fact, it was really interesting because he came on my show, I went on his.
We did a radio panel thing together as well.
And you know how sometimes you're almost telepathic with someone?
You know what they're going to say before they say it, so you can bounce off them.
We just developed this...
Immediate telepathy between each other.
So it's really...
I'd never met him before, but an absolutely fascinating character.
Can I say, I'm very jealous of this, not least because I've tried to get him on the show.
I mean, is it a sort of gay mafia thing that I can't, you know, get in on?
I think that must be it, yes.
It's really unfair, that, because I was...
I once defended the Biggins, the mighty Biggins, in some kind of, you know, spat he'd got himself into.
And I emailed him to, you know, come on the show, and...
He didn't get a response.
He's quite bad at communications.
He's quite bad at emailing.
So keep trying because you'll get there in the end.
Same actually goes for David Starkey.
David Starkey, two years ago, I saw him at the Spectator Party and he kind of agreed to come on the podcast.
I see he's done it for Brendan.
Maybe he's changed in the last two years.
Well, David Starkey is one of my favourite people because you know what you're going to get with David Starkey.
He knows the game.
He knows what is expected of him.
And he was the only one at Edinburgh that got a standing ovation at the end.
No.
He was absolutely brilliant because he combines being informative, educational, funny, smutty, emotional.
I mean, he talked about how lonely he was after the death of his partner.
And it was...
It was just a fascinating hour, and I suspect we've put all of these shows now on a new podcast, Ian Dale All Talk, and I wouldn't be surprised if that's the one that gets the most downloads, because it was just so brilliant.
I'm very surprised you've told me that.
I assumed that Edinburgh Fringe is a bit like going to an Extinction Rebellion rally, that not many right-wing or right-sympathetic people there...
So what do you think?
Well, you are right in a sense.
They'd eat me for breakfast.
It's a Radio 4 type of audience and it's a bit like literary festivals.
You have to read The Guardian to go to a literary festival nowadays.
Surprisingly, I don't get invited to many.
I wonder why that would be.
Edinburgh, if you look at the guest list I had, there weren't many Brexiteers among the guests.
Now, that's because there aren't actually that many high-profile Brexit supporters that you would think would get a big audience in Edinburgh.
So people are accusing me of bias.
Well, sorry, if you're putting on a show, you invite people who you think will attract an audience.
I mean, I had the Hamiltons, for example.
They are Brexiteers, obviously, but that wasn't the primary reason for inviting them.
But I would quite like to...
I'm doing it again next year in a bigger venue, so I might have Mr Farage, because we know how popular he can be in Scotland.
Really?
So you've got to get security for that then?
Well, he would.
I'm not sure I would.
Interesting.
What's the deal on the door?
Do you get 50% of the take, or how does it work?
Well, the economics of Edinburgh are a nightmare because they showed me the budget and we had two venues, one holding 150 and one holding 220.
And I was told that we had to more or less sell out the whole run just to break even.
Why would anyone do this?
And I thought, well, there's no way we're going to sell out every single show.
We did sell out quite a few, but not all of them.
So I thought, well, the only way this can work economically is if I get some sponsorship, which I then did.
I haven't actually had the final figures back, but I doubt whether I'll have made hardly anything from it, even though it was considered a real success.
We sold huge numbers of tickets.
Every single show, I think, was a good one.
There was not one of them where I walked off the stage thinking, oh, that was a bit dodgy.
Yeah.
And the audience reaction was fantastic.
And, I mean, they want me to do it again in a bigger venue.
So clearly, from that point of view, it was a success.
But financially, it's a nightmare.
You've got a gift that I lack, which is the gift of reaching out to both sides of the political argument.
Now, I mean, I think that's a good thing and a bad thing.
We'll come to the bad thing in a minute.
But didn't you get Bercow?
Wasn't he one of yours?
No.
Imagine that.
I tried to get Bercow, but apparently I'd said something disobliging about him on the radio.
So instead of doing me, he did somebody else.
Did he?
Yeah.
I hope that show sold me.
Bear in mind, I mean, I published his book.
I've known him since I was at university.
So I was a bit hacked off about that.
But that says more about him than me, I think.
Oh, interesting.
Can you spill the beans on what he was like at university and...
Well, he was at the University of Essex, I was at the University of East Anglia, which in those days both were extremely left-wing universities.
Well, that hasn't changed much, I don't think.
Well, maybe, but there's a lot more shy right-wingers at these universities now than there used to be.
Interesting.
But when I went to UBA, which was 1981, there was no Conservative organisation there at all.
And I remember going to a debate during the Falklands War, thinking, naively, it would be a debate, somebody putting the government point of view, somebody putting Labour's point of view.
Not a bit of it.
It was the hard left against the soft left.
And I just sat there getting really annoyed.
And so for the first time in my life, I stood up and sort of contributed to a debate, and I quite enjoyed it.
So I said to my friend who's in the next door room, I said, why don't we set up a Conservative Association here?
We had no contacts with Conservative Central Office, didn't know anyone really.
So we just set up a stand at the Freshers' Fair in my second year.
And to our utter astonishment, we got more members than the Labour Party had.
Now they thought this was great.
Yeah.
whereas it was them versus the trots before that yeah so we'd go along to student union debates on a monday evening and um outrage them uh we would invite lots of politicians up to speak um remember cecil parkinson came up once and um 900 people in a lecture theater came to see cecil parkinson got standing ovation as we walked in and but the left had populated the front few rows and halfway through his speech and bear in mind his wife was on stage with us
they started throwing eggs all of which hit me and his wife none of which hit him He lost his rag completely and just screamed at them, which little rat threw that at my wife?
And then they tried, from behind, they tried to invade the stage, but I had anticipated this, and I got various friends from the UEA Rugby Club to act as security, and shall we say they dealt with them rather effectively.
So I had an absolute ball doing that, and that was really my introduction to politics.
And I can remember only about three months after forming this, I got an invite to a reception at Number 10, hosted by Margaret Thatcher.
Well, I mean, I thought I'd died and gone to heaven.
I mean, I didn't even own a suit at the time, so I had to buy this sort of three-piece suit.
Drove down about three hours early from my home in Essex in my yellow Ford Cortina Mark III and met up with someone in the St.
Stephen's Tavern.
And then sort of went into number 10, met Margaret Thatcher at the top of the stairs where all the pictures are.
She sort of herds you into the room.
As she shook my hand, she kind of guided me into the room.
And there I stood for two hours, basically having bants with the cabinet.
Fantastic.
It was amazing, and I nearly threw up at her feet, because it wasn't wine in a glass, it was whiskey and water, which was her favourite tipple.
And just as she walked past, I took a sip of this and literally started heaving.
But luckily, luckily, I managed to avoid it.
What, are you allergic to whiskey or something?
Well, I just don't, A, I don't really drink.
Right, okay, right.
But whiskey, I just cannot abide.
Right.
And, you know, that could have been a very interesting incident.
But of course, if I had done it, she would have been the first to fuss around and say, no, don't worry, and she would have cleaned it up herself.
So basically, from that moment on, you were completely ruined.
You were never going to get a proper job.
You were always going to end up doing this kind of stupid thing that we do.
Because you catch the political virus, and it's still there.
I can't, I think I've got rid of it.
And then something will happen that outrages me and think, well, I should get back into politics.
But then it goes away again.
Now, the other day, I did a podcast with Chopper, with Christopher Hope.
And I'm guessing his politics are kind of, probably not unlike yours, kind of conservative leaning.
I mean, well, conservative, but not where I am.
Definitely not where I am.
And I remember him talking about...
Oh, I was slagging off my...
Well, I'm sport for choice here, but one of my least favourite MPs, Jess Phillips.
You say, I love her.
Yeah, exactly.
Now, this is exactly it.
And this is...
We come to the crux of one of the fundamental differences between you and me.
I am a radical...
Basically.
And you are a cuck-servative.
I mean, you are...
What does that even mean?
It sounds so insulting.
Oh, well, it's kind of...
What it means is I'm a fake conservative.
No, no, no.
No, it doesn't.
It just means you're a kind of squish.
You kind of...
You don't...
Well, it means that I'm not ideological.
That's what it means, in that I'm more pragmatic than you probably are.
Exactly.
And it's that P word, which really upsets people like me.
We should go back in time.
You probably don't remember this.
Remember the days of Thingy Doughty Street?
18 Doughty Street.
18 Doughty Street, which was, I see it rather rudely described on Wikipedia now as a failed internet...
But it wasn't that.
It was a pioneering internet.
Well, it was pioneering, but it also failed because it closed after, what, 18 months.
So from that point of view, it was a failure.
Having said that, it did blaze a trail in many ways for a lot of the things that you and I kind of do now.
And it was ahead of its time.
It was five, maybe even ten years ahead of its time.
And if it existed now, it would be hugely successful.
I totally agree.
It was far too much ahead of its time.
And I remember thinking at the time, this is the future.
It's where it's going to be.
This is like we are conservatives, talking in an environment where we are not made to feel shit about being conservatives.
But anyway, one day back then, you and I did an interview with me, and you had me on your show.
And I can't even remember who was in power at the time.
Was it Cameron?
Blair.
Was it Blair?
Okay.
And I remember we were talking about the future of the Conservative Party.
Yeah.
And I said something like, I would rather have a proper Labour government in to crush the current Conservatives and make them completely rebuild, rather than accept this kind of squishy, pragmatic Conservative Party that we're seeing at the moment who aren't really Conservative.
And you, I remember, were really appalled by this.
You were horrified that anyone could believe that Gotterdamerun was the solution to the Conservative Party.
And I was...
I didn't mention this at the time.
I was equally appalled that you could not see this.
Because I've spent the last...
Apparently, my wife tells me that when I met her, I wasn't political.
And people who remember me from my 20s and 30s say they didn't even know what my politics were.
So obviously, I was kind of radicalised, I don't know, in the Blair era, maybe.
I don't know.
But what radicalised you?
He says, neatly turning the tables.
No, no, no, no, no.
I was hoping you'd ask me questions.
LAUGHTER Because I mean, it is your bloody job after all.
I'm not sure that anything specific radicalised me.
I wrote a book Yeah.
Which was an A to Z of all...
Which James O'Brien then copied.
James O'Brien then copied.
You could have sued him.
Do you think I could?
No, you actually can't copyright book titles.
No, you can't.
But it would have been a fun case.
It would have been.
No, I think I enjoy...
I remember when O'Brien brought his book out and he was crowing about the fact that James Dellingpole's version of this book was selling for 99p or whatever on...
Well, I was thinking any book after 12 years after its publication date in paperback is probably going to be selling for 99D. Anyway, of course, his book is now, I think, in a similar predicament.
So anyway, I wrote this book.
To be fair to him, it actually sold really well.
Oh, did it really?
It sold over 100,000 copies, which by any stretch of view, it doesn't matter what you think of the content, that was a successful book commercially.
Oh my god, Ian, you've just ruined my day so totally.
I'm so sorry.
No, no, thank you for talking about it.
That's really, really interesting.
That shows that the public is much more susceptible to stupidity than I'd imagined.
I will defend James on that, in that whatever you think of him, he's not stupid.
I mean, he's actually very intelligent, very clever, and you can argue about how he puts his views across and all the rest of it, but one thing he isn't is stupid.
I'm sure you could make that case for a lot of bad actors.
I mean, you could probably make the case that Jess Phillips is intelligent and that David Lammy is intelligent and that they are just very, very good at playing stupid for effect.
And if that were your point, I would concede it happily.
Going back to your question...
I wrote this book, How To Be Right, A to Z, of all the kind of things that really just pissed me off about...
For example, I spent my whole days, every day, being triggered by something.
I remember going to my local swimming pool and there were these adverts from some anti-wife-beating charity...
And there was adverts telling with white middle-class looking actors in wife-beating scenarios.
And I was thinking, this is dishonest.
I'm sure that there is a problem with marital abuse in this country, in certain communities, and it ain't mainly white middle-class people.
How would you even know that?
Well, I think, look, I don't really want this to be a debate about the problems with Islam, but that would seem to me a fairly obvious example of a religion which...
It's more extreme adherents would be quite comfortable about sloughing their whites a bit.
First of all, I think, is it 3% or 5% of the population is Muslim?
Yeah.
So if you look at it in round numbers, you probably have got sort of white people, the vast majority of them...
No, I don't mean a vast majority of them indulging in domestic violence, but of the cases, I would say that it probably reflects the population.
So I don't see how you could complain about an advert like that.
This is you being Ian Dale, classic Ian Dale, taking the squishy centrist line and not fighting the fight.
Let me give you a more radical point on domestic violence then.
25% of domestic violence happens to men.
And yet, a lot of these women's charities refuse to even acknowledge her.
I remember being on a Sky News pay-per-view with Jackie Smith years ago, and I'd just done a phone-in on this on my show.
And whenever I do a domestic violence phone-in, it's predominantly men that phone in, having been victims of it, which actually takes a bit of balls to ring up a radio station and say, yeah, my wife has either psychologically tortured me or physically beaten me up.
I mean, not something that most macho men would want to admit in public.
But, I mean, that is a phenomenon which the left...
Absolutely refuse to acknowledge.
Oh yeah, totally.
So, well, we can agree on that one.
Isn't one of the Liberal Democrat MPs?
Well, Leila Moran.
Oh, that's the one.
I'm not quite sure how you can classify that.
Should we not go there?
Let's not go there.
She's actually a very nice person too.
Well, this is the thing.
You can be nice and not be a Conservative, James.
Ah, but you see, there's nice and there's nice.
I was having a Twitter debate about this this morning, actually, about Tamsin Omont.
She's a girl, Westminster-educated baronet's daughter, who is leading the baronet's granddaughter, rather, sorry, who is at the forefront of the Extinction Rebellion.
And she had her wedding on Westminster Bridge this morning.
Lovely.
Yeah.
And she wasn't even Japanese.
No, exactly.
So she came to my house once.
I think I may have invited her to my house.
I found her absolutely delightful.
She was charming.
She's attractive.
She's intelligent.
But I don't think that behind that niceness was any love.
I mean, my response to her was, here's Tamsin being nice.
I like her.
I don't think that she was being nice.
I think the niceness was purely as a weapon and that she would happily destroy me at the drop of a hat.
And I think this is one of the fundamental differences between us and them, that they actually do want to destroy us.
They do think that we are evil.
Whereas we think, I think, that the other side are misguided, ill-informed, stupid, silly, but not evil.
Very rarely do I think the evil, I think some of the things they do are evil, but I don't ascribe to them bad faith.
And they are always accusing us of bad faith.
I went to the Extinction Rebellion rally yesterday.
I got a lot of hate.
And in some of my...
Some of the people who confronted me, it was very clear from what they said to me that they believe that the only reason that I think the way that I do and write the pieces that I write is because I am paid to lie.
And that, you know, here...
Otherwise, I would be obviously singing the praises of Extinction Rebellion.
But because I'm paid by the right...
This is why I think your kind of centrism is not adequate to the task.
If I were fighting a war, for example, because I know that you are a really decent bloke, because sometimes, you know, when I'm going through bad shit, you send me nice emails, nice private messages.
You're a good person, but I would not have you on the front fighting the enemy.
I would have you running a hospital for...
That's what you'd be doing, Ian.
Oh, how you misjudge me.
Maybe.
So we'll defend yourself against my slurs.
I think that...
I don't disagree with everything you just said, but I think there are people on the extreme left who do match your description.
There are people who genuinely, their life's mission is to destroy the right, just as there are people on the right whose mission is to destroy the left.
Now, one of my weaknesses, I will fully admit, is that I tend to see the other person's point of view possibly a little bit too much.
I am not ideological in that sense, and I do recognise that there are issues where I have changed my mind.
I rest my case, sir.
Well, have you not changed your mind over the last 20 years on anything?
Yeah, I changed my mind on...
But the only thing I've changed my mind on is that I was behind Blair's second...
The second war against Iraq, and actually I think...
I feel that I was kind of misled on that one.
But apart from that, I've definitely changed my views on the idea of kind of neocolonialist military ventures.
I'm very anti that now.
But that's the only big area, I think, where I've changed.
Well, I've changed my mind on one or two social issues.
And it is largely because I've been doing 10 years on LBC. And I think, I mean, economically, I would compete with you for being as dry as dust, I suspect.
But on some social issues, I have changed my mind.
I'll give you an example.
universal credit which in theory is a good idea but the the the rollout of it has been a disaster maybe through government incompetence not necessarily political incompetence and i've never really bought this idea that you shouldn't criticize civil servants because actually they're the ones that are implementing government policy and if it goes wrong it is because generally not always but generally something has gone wrong in the administration
if you get three grown men phoning you up doing a phone in on universal credit and all three of them one after the other cry on the radio you kind of know that something is wrong yeah um Bedroom tax is a good one here, where in theory I can completely get the logic of it.
But again, that was done wrong, and so that's something I've changed my mind on.
I've probably...
Abortion is another one where I would have been, and I was in the 80s, 90s, probably maybe up until 10 years ago, dogmatically pro-life.
Now, I have become more pragmatic on that, again, because of the influences, I think, of people I talk to about it.
People who've been through abortions, talking about the reasons why they've had abortions.
I'm still intrinsically uncomfortable with the whole concept of it.
But in the end, if you take the dogmatic pro-life view, what you're going to do is actually cause more unnecessary deaths, women and children, because it will always happen.
It's like prostitution.
You can't ban prostitution.
prostitution has existed for thousands of years and always will women will always have abortions whether it's legal or not so therefore surely the responsibility of government and political parties is to come up with a policy that is the least worst option and that's probably roughly what we've got i would reduce the term limit to 20 weeks yeah but that that is about as far as i would go so you can describe that as being pragmatic lefty or whatever
but i just think it's sensible okay without wishing to to come across like a complete heartless bastard which i'm i'm i'm totally not but you know if i if you protest too much people think well of course he's going to say that um
I would say that one of the things that the left is very very good at is finding the heart-rending case and there always is a heart-rending case which proves just how heartless and wrong that the the conservative position is so the bedroom tax I can't remember the exact details but it was trying to the purpose of the of this policy was to try and what remind me.
Well, it was to try and encourage people to effectively downsize.
So if somebody was living in a council flat with three bedrooms and they lived on their own, they would then encourage people to downsize.
Now, that's fine if you've then got a supply of one-bedroom flats to move into.
And if they had said, well, everyone should have a spare bedroom because, I mean, obviously it's not a human right, but most people would think, well, sometimes you have people to stay, so that would be a good thing to have one spare bedroom.
Yeah.
we're going to sort of increase your rent or whatever I think there would have been a logic to that but it just seemed to be very very unfair and I know that's always the cry of the left oh it's it's not fair well life isn't fair there are some things that are never going to be fair yeah there are some things that are never going to be equal and in my view nor should they be I don't want I don't want an equal society I don't want everyone earning the same amount of money you We are human beings.
We are all different.
And therefore, we'll all have different aspirations.
We'll all have different levels of education.
And this is where the sort of blue blood in me sort of starts to rise, if you like.
When I hear Labour talking about sequestrating private schools' assets, that is red blood communism.
And I will fight that tooth and nail.
So we may have you on the private education division on that front.
I did not go to a private school, by the way.
No, no, no.
And I probably, if I had children, I think I'd have probably wanted the option, but I don't think I would have automatically sent them to private school.
No one in their right mind wouldn't, if they could afford it.
There are some really good state schools out there, but if you live in an area where there aren't...
Catherine Burblesink School.
Now, if I were in the Catholic area of that, my God.
Although, Catherine told me they've only got one middle-class child there.
Really?
Which is, yeah, but great school.
I mean, you've been there, haven't you?
I haven't been there, but I know her.
The staff, yeah, we all love Miss Duffy, but the staff, they are just amazing.
They're just like, I mean, I think a lot of them are Oxbridge.
They're really bright.
Well, I'll tell you a school that I visited.
There's actually a listener who's a head teacher at a school, or was, in Swanscombe in Kent, so not too far from where I live.
She would phone into the programme whenever we were doing education phone-ins, and she was just really interesting.
And so she invited me to go and see the school, so I did.
And this had been a completely failing school, just on the outskirts of Gravesend.
And she came in and completely turned it round within two years.
Got rid of virtually all the teachers bar three, which we're always told you can't do, but she managed it somehow.
And it was a revelation to me.
It became an academy.
She was the first head.
And from having, I think, 17% of the kids getting five decent GCSEs, that went up to 65%.
Yeah.
Now...
That, to me, it taught me that the leadership of a school is the most important thing.
If you haven't got a headteacher who can...
The whole place was spotlessly clean.
The kids were well-behaved.
Every single classroom I went into, there was no sort of discipline problems.
And she did that, and it has to come from the top.
At the podcast live thing, which we both went to at the weekend, I met the head of a primary school.
I won't mention her name, but it begins with P. And this woman, whose name becomes a P, she was on our side of the argument.
Can you imagine being in a primary school?
And I said, well, what do you do about all this PC shite that comes your way?
And she said, I've been it.
I've been everything.
And...
And I said, you can do that?
And she said, yeah, yeah, yeah.
And I just make it...
I indicate to my staff that we're not going to go in that direction.
So I found that very encouraging that people around the country are resisting the tyranny.
Well, I hope they do, because I was...
I came across...
I'm writing a book at the moment which you will hate called Why Can't We All Just Get Alone.
Oh, fuck off.
Fuck off.
How to disagree without losing friends.
Yeah, piss off.
Yeah, we hate you.
I know.
I'll make sure I have a denunciation from you on the back cover.
Yeah, you girly, lightweight.
Anyway, I started writing a chapter on climate change.
Which, actually, I suspect you will dislike less than most of the other chapters.
And I came across something I wrote in 2013 on my blog, and it quoted a text from a primary school teacher.
And he said that he views his job as to encourage people to think for themselves, to martial arguments and all the rest of it.
And he said they had just been told that they weren't allowed to say anything apart from the fact that all climate change is man-made.
Now, think about the implications of that, not just on the climate change argument, but for all other things, where the state is instructing teachers to teach a view.
Now, I think that's an appalling thing.
And this was in 2013, so God knows what they're doing now.
I'm liking this angry right wing Ian.
Am I starting to sort of...
I know another thing that completely boils your piss and I don't know why I'm using that phrase.
This is twice in the space of a week I've used it.
The podcast I did yesterday, I also used that phrase.
You know how phrases just come from nowhere?
Anyway, I would imagine that you feel as angry as I do about the...
The agonies suffered by Harvey Proctor and people like him in that appalling case brought by the Metropolitan Police on the say-so of this fantasist, paedophile, and You're the same age as me, and we grew up...
I mean, where the police had their faults, but I think we sort of trusted the police as the forces of law and order, that they had our best interests at heart.
I'm no longer feeling that.
Are you?
The police are the last great unreformed public service, and there are too many incidents that have occurred over the last 10 or 20...
Well, you can go back way beyond 20 years...
That have led to people losing trust in the police.
They will blame it all on lack of funding.
And they have a bit of a case on that, but not on what you've just mentioned.
I didn't know Harvey Proctor, only by reputation, when all of this happened.
But I was outraged when I read about what had happened to him.
He'd lost his job and all the rest of it.
We should just very briefly, for the American special friend or whatever, who hasn't heard of this guy.
I mean, he was a former MP, enjoying a happy retirement in a kind of semi-grace-and-favor apartment on a grand estate.
He was private secretary to the Duke of Rutland.
Okay.
I think that's the right title.
He was in his late 60s at that point.
He's now 72.
And the police raided his house because of allegations about historic sexual abuse offences.
It ruined his life.
He lost his job.
He lost his house.
He lost everything.
Which you don't want when you're in your late 60s.
You probably don't know this, but I was so outraged by this at the time.
And I had him on my radio show and he cried.
I mean, this is becoming a running theme at this point.
I'm crying on my radio show.
A 68-year-old man, a very proud man, actually.
And I launched a crowdfunding initiative to help him.
And you can imagine the reaction from the left to me doing that.
And I think we raised £12,000, which...
I mean, I'm not going to say that saved him in any way, but it certainly helped him through a very difficult time.
Yeah.
And I was pilloried, old friend of the paedophile, Ian Dale, all that sort of thing.
Really?
Oh, absolutely.
And I thought, I don't give a shit what people say, because I am convinced that this Nick is an absolute fantasist.
And look, I'm not a detective.
I've never solved a crime, but I can detect bullshit when I smell it.
And there were cases at the same time that did merit investigation, but this was not one of them.
And they didn't even look at his computer.
Now, I'd have thought that was a fairly elementary thing for any police force to do.
But they had been so tarnished by the Jimmy Savile scandal that they were effectively tasked by the...
CPS? Well, I don't know about the CPS, but certainly by the Commissioner of Metropolitan Police...
And indeed, other chief constables to get convictions almost at any cost.
And that's what drove this.
And it wasn't just Harvey Proctor.
I published a book by a woman who was married to a man accused of downloading indecent images on the internet.
It was called Fit Up.
And this guy was a photographer.
And I could spend a long time explaining the background to this, but I won't.
Suffice to say that after seven years, seven years of being put through absolute hell, the only reason that this guy was not charged was because he then employed a computer...
What are they called?
Forensic computer person.
To look at his computer.
And it emerged that at the very moment that he was supposed to have paid to download these actually relatively innocent images, it turns out.
At the very moment that he was doing that, he was actually at the altar marrying his wife.
Now, what a coincidence that is.
But without that, he would have gone to prison.
Yes.
Now, in the end, his wife stuck by and through the whole thing, but the pressure of it, a couple of years later, they split up.
Now, Paul Gambaccini, I published his book.
Simon Moore, I published his book.
And people are thinking, well, why is Ian Dale so on the side of all of these people who are accused of these offences?
Is he a secret paedophile himself?
That's the conclusion that people draw.
No, why I publish these books is because if it can happen to people like them, it can happen to any one of us.
Well, yeah, that's exactly it.
And part of the reason was I wanted to expose...
The terrible things that the police did to all of those different people in differing forms and to differing degrees.
And I have lost a lot of trust in the police.
You look at their lack of ability to even look into what I consider serious crimes nowadays.
I think burglary is a serious crime.
And yet, I mean, they just chalk them off as, well, we're not going to do anything about it.
Whereas herty words on Twitter will get you...
Exactly right.
Knock on the door.
And I do think that Cressida Dick has a huge responsibility in this.
Now, she hasn't been in the job for that long, but she's been in the upper echelons of the Metropolitan Police for a very long time.
And we're recording this the day after the IOPC issued their report.
An absolutely disgusting, disgraceful report, which has been slammed by everybody, and yet she seems to think that it's fine.
Nobody has lost their job over what's happened in the Carl Beach case.
In fact, I don't think any police officer has lost their job through any of this.
It's sort of always...
If any heads roll, it's deputy heads that roll.
Well, the guy in charge of Harvey Proctor's case, he is now Director of Operations for the National Crime Agency.
Now, if that doesn't cause alarm, it ought to.
He's on $240,000 a year, I believe, for his deserved success in dealing with this imaginary crime.
The thought came into my mind, as it often does, Priti Patel.
Wow.
I fancy Priti.
I think she's...
Well, did you watch her conference speech?
Because it was basically a 40-minute orgasm.
What, for the male viewers?
No, that she was experiencing.
I mean, I was standing at the back.
My producer at LBC said, oh, she'll go and watch Priti Patel.
I said, you really want to?
She said, yeah, yeah, I do.
I said, okay, if that's what constitutes a treat for you.
So we stood at the back.
And she's not a natural public performer.
She's not a natural orator.
I wish she'd pronounce her G's.
That does bother me.
There's an increasing number of people that don't do that, aren't there?
Yes.
And I don't quite know.
Beth Rigby is another one on Sky News.
Estuary?
Well, apparently it is an Essex thing.
Well, I come from Essex.
I have no difficulty in doing that.
I mean, people should talk how they like.
I think people who have a go at Beth Rigby, I mean, get a life.
I mean, if you don't like listening to someone, don't listen to them.
But, I mean, you're listening to her because of her political reporting and intelligence rather than the way that she'll pronounce a particular word.
But, yeah, Priti has got that as well.
But when she was talking about sort of my one goal is to abolish freedom of movement, and it was as if she was having, as Vince Cable might put it, an erotic spasm.
I didn't...
I must confess I didn't watch the speech, but I just think...
Look, I did a couple of interviews, hangouts with her before she became Home Secretary, and I just thought, you know, she's channeling Margaret Thatcher in a lot of ways, and it's really nice to have an actual Conservative talking about actual Conservative things in the office of Home Secretary and dealing with stuff.
Do you not...
She doesn't get you excited?
Not massively, no.
I've known Priti Patel for a long time, and I've always liked her, always got on very well with her.
But there was one incident that...
Really marked her down in my book where she, on the day Jeremy Corbyn was elected leader of the Labour Party, she was put up by the Conservatives to comment on it.
And so she came on my show and she started saying, well, Jeremy Corbyn is a danger to the country's security, to your family's security.
So I just let her go on because obviously that's what she'd been told to say.
And I just said, aren't you going to congratulate him?
She goes, it's not my job to congratulate him.
And I said, no, it'd be polite though, wouldn't it?
And then she just kept on about this national security thing.
Well, I mean, I kind of agree with her on it, but I just thought, I mean, anybody with an ounce of human politeness would have actually said, well, obviously I congratulate Jeremy Corbyn, but...
Right.
And she then didn't do an interview with me for about three or four years after that.
Whereas, Robert Halfon, conservative MP for Harlow, nobody's got bad words to say about him.
I absolutely tore him to shreds on something.
I can't remember what it was now.
And he then phoned me later that night.
And I was thinking, oh God, shall I answer this?
And he said, I just want to thank you.
I said, what do you mean thank me?
He said, well, because that experience taught me something.
It taught me that I need to prepare better to go up against an interviewer like you.
I thought, well, that is an adult reaction, whereas hers was a petulant flounce.
Interesting.
I think we've found another of our fault lines.
Because, look, Etonians, for example, old Etonians, are famously polite.
They use politeness as a weapon.
I actually applaud Pretty for not congratulating Corbyn on his appointment on your show.
Because it seems to me that this is exactly part of the problem with politics.
I was very conscious of this when the conservatives, Boris's conservatives, started sacking people like Nicholas Soames.
He never mentions this, but he's actually Winston Churchill's grandson.
I didn't know that.
It's a bit like...
Peter Hayne would not like it to get out.
Madiba was his close personal friend.
Did you know that?
He was Mandela's bestie.
I have to say, I did know that.
Did you?
Because I published his autobiography, which you regard me as a traitor for doing, I imagine.
How did you squeeze this information out of him?
Well, it was difficult, but I told him he had to write a chapter on it.
In the end, he wrote about 17 books.
Okay.
So going back to...
And this is actually almost the thing that annoys me most in the world right this second, actually.
So you've got Well, ever since Margaret Thatcher, the Conservative Party has been run by Liberal Democrats.
Well, that's simply not true, is it?
No, no, no.
Don't argue with me.
Well, Ian Duncan Smith is not a Liberal Democrat.
William Hayne, when he was leader, was not a Liberal Democrat.
You can argue the toss now.
But he is appalling now.
Anyway, okay.
Just go with my thesis.
I'll indulge you for once.
This is where proper Conservatives like me actually think it is.
So, okay, so finally, finally, the Conservative Party starts purging itself of people who have been holding the party back, completely ruining it for the rest of us.
And the response of people like my very good friend and endlessly polite Michael Gove...
Is to start, is to make out we can't get rid of these people.
And the reason he doesn't want to get rid of them is not, I don't think, because these are powerful talents who are really advancing the conservative, the cause of conservatism.
Some of them were, or are.
Maybe.
We can argue that in a moment.
But the reason is because basically they're all...
They're all in the same building.
They all work together.
It's all like, it's professional, what's it called, when you look after your own.
Because they're, you know, it's as though once you get into the Houses of Parliament, you know, you've all been through this process.
Therefore, you know, the public owes you a break.
You should stay in place forever because basically you're all mates together.
I don't like that at all.
Absolutely.
And that politeness that you talk about, this congratulating...
No.
These people are elected representatives and they are mostly complete shit.
They are just...
They may work very hard, but they are useless.
Some of them are.
Some of them are.
Including David Lammy, including Jess Phillips...
Well, you keep naming those two.
I mean, if your case was that strong, you would be naming dozens, if not hundreds of others.
I'm sure there were lots of ones that I don't know about who are equally crap.
I'm just talking about the ones who are prominently annoying.
I mean, I'm sure Parliament is awash with complete non-entities.
If we're talking about people being annoying, fine, I'll agree with you.
Just Phillips can be incredibly annoying.
So can David Lammy.
So can virtually anybody.
That's because we're human beings.
It's not because they're politicians.
No, I think it's worse than that, Ian.
I really do.
I'll tell you my problem, well, one of my problems with Jess Phillips, and it's this.
Back in the day, I think we can agree that the Labour Party saw its function as to look after the workers.
That ship has sailed long ago.
Now it's all about identity politics and posturing on Twitter.
Which is fine if you're like me, if you're basically an amusing troll.
It's fine.
But when you're in Parliament, really...
If you're going to bang on about...
And I had this out with Hope when he tried to stick up for Jess Phillips.
He said, well, she stands up for women's rights.
Well, hang on a second.
Women's rights, where it really matters, where it's a real problem, is in the Muslim world, for example, where women really are second-class citizens.
Which, to be fair to Jess Phillips, she has spoken out about.
But in this country, in this country...
I have sons and daughters.
I worry far, far more about the sons than the daughter, because this is a culture which discriminates against men now.
Post me to, well, even before me to, the pendulum has swung so far the other way.
So I'm not really applauding Jess Phillips for banging on about the non-existent gender pay gap and things like this.
These pretend issues, which is all the left seems to do these days in Parliament, and quite a lot of Conservative MPs too, This is what bothers me.
I don't think we should give them a break.
I don't think we should treat them like nice people who are just, you know, our mates at dinner party.
Well, I mean, I like Jess Phillips partly because she is a character and there aren't that many characters in politics.
I'm fed up with interviewing the sort of speak-your-weight-machine type of politician, so I enjoy interviewing her.
Again, in Edinburgh, she was certainly one of the top five shows because she was entertaining.
She is a real person.
She's what you could call a mensch, I think.
I would totally agree with you.
If this were a game of The Island with Bear Grylls, who would you like in your group?
You would love Jess for it.
She'd be great.
David Lammy maybe not so much.
No, David...
I don't know.
I don't think he'd be very practical.
If there were any general knowledge questions, he'd...
If there was a quiz where you could win a fish, he'd be good at that.
I'm not disputing for one second.
Is Jess Phillips a person you'd like to have sitting next to you at a dinner party?
She'd be bloody great.
Is she the kind of person I'd want...
I've got you to say something nice about her.
Oh, yeah.
But this is why I want to explore this particular fault line.
because I think there was a difference between being a character and being an MP.
It's possible to be both.
Of course there is.
I mean, if we go back in time, when we were in our 20s, there were MPs like Anthony Beaumont-Darck or Terry Dix, people on the far right, the right of the Conservative Party, who were characters who would constantly get quoted in the papers, just like Jess Phillips does today, because of who were characters who would constantly get quoted in the papers, just like Jess And being an MP. It's possible to be both.
They happen to be useless politicians, actually.
Whereas I think she, whatever you think of some of her views, she has been quite effective in getting things done.
Particularly, I know MPs do things for their constituents, and then there's sort of the national scene.
I think she, in her short time in Parliament, she's only been there since 2015, I actually think she has achieved things.
Yeah, this is another area where you see, I would worry about your brand of conservatism, which is that I think that being, applauding process is actually a kind of a left-wing thing.
How does that applauding process?
Well, because you were saying she gets things done.
Well, is that a bad thing?
Well, yeah, if the things that she gets done are shit things, yeah.
That's the thing.
I mean, look, Ian, I'm an ideologue.
I absolutely, I'm...
I think we've gathered that.
Yeah.
I'm an ideologue.
And I'm not.
So, exactly.
I suppose that's what it comes down to, isn't it?
I'm an ideologue, you're not.
But I'm accused of being an ideologue.
I mean, for example, on Brexit, I'm accused of being an ideologue.
You're so not.
Well, I think I probably...
I mean, if there is a current issue where I have nailed my colours fairly...
Well, I say fairly firm.
No, firmly to the mast.
Yeah.
I mean, I hated Theresa May's deal.
Surrender.
Admittedly, if I had been an MP in the final round, I would have supported it on the basis that 70% out is better than 30%, but that ship sailed.
I'm now of the opinion after, and again, we're recording this on the day that Angela Merkel has basically scuppered everything.
Well, in a good way, I think.
Are you happy about that?
I think that Boris Johnson should now withdraw from the negotiations.
Totally.
It is quite clear.
They are trying to annex Northern Ireland.
Now, Selmayer, the beast of Berlimont, remember about a year ago, he was caught saying, well, the price for Brexit is Northern Ireland.
Yeah, yeah.
Well, they're now trying to deliver on that.
Well, good luck to them on that, because any prime minister...
That went along with that would be toast, and deservedly so.
And I may not always have been Boris Johnson's biggest fan, but there is no way that he is going to accede to anything like that.
No.
Where are you now, Boris?
I kind of...
I do slightly swing in the wind on him because...
Oh, you surprised me.
Yeah, I know.
I know.
I'm giving grist to your mill, aren't I? I swing in the wind shock, Ian Dale.
Says Ian Dale.
I always remember the first time I interviewed Boris.
It was on 18 Doughty Street.
Oh, yeah.
And it was the day that he announced he was going to stand for London Mayor.
Yeah.
And he came to the studio accompanied by Katy Perry.
And he was his spin doctor at the time.
Yeah.
And it was pre-recorded.
It's going to be half an hour.
So, I mean, normally you just have a gentle question to start with.
So my first question was, it's day one of a Boris Johnson mayoralty.
What's the first thing you do?
Well, Ian, yes, I think I'd...
Good question.
I think I'd...
And I thought to myself, should we start again?
And I thought, fuck it, no.
Let's just continue.
If he can't answer a simple question like that, then why on earth is he running?
Now, I actually think he wasn't a bad London mayor.
No, he's pretty good.
I think he did better than virtually everybody thought.
Even Ken Livingston has said that.
Did I ever think that he was the right person to lead the Conservative Party?
In all honesty, no.
I think running London is very different from being Prime Minister.
I didn't ever...
Well, because I was chair in the Hustings, I never ever expressed a preference.
But you can tell me now.
Well, if I could tell you, I would.
I was more impressed by Boris in the Hustings than I thought I might be.
There were several moments where I thought, no, you have got it.
There was one guy, a 16-year-old in Manchester, a British Asian guy, stood up and said, I suffer from chronic depression and I've got other mental health problems.
How are you going to make my life better?
I don't know about you, but I was sitting there thinking, fuck, how would I answer that?
And I didn't know how I would answer that.
He gave the most brilliant answer, totally speaking to the guy, as if the rest of the thousand people in the hall weren't there.
And I thought, well, credit to you for that.
That is something I wasn't expecting you to be able to do.
No.
But then again on other things he was kind of away with the fairies.
I mean giving just bluster and incoherent answers.
Jeremy Hunt I think for people attending those hustings most of the people I talked to who came in undecided went away saying they were going to vote for him.
Because he's a slightly reassuring figure.
He's got that sort of doctor thing.
He's the gynecologist.
I wouldn't say gynecologist but I know what you mean.
Um...
So, I can't say, really, because I didn't come to a firm conclusion.
I didn't have a vote, and I'm not a member of the Conservative Party, so I didn't have a vote, so I didn't feel I needed to come to a decision.
I think most people, because they knew of comments I've made about Boris in the past, probably assumed that I would be on Jeremy Hunt's side, but neither of them came up with a coherent Brexit plan.
I just hope they had one in their bottom drawer or something.
But I'm not sure that actually Boris did.
I think there was a plan, dreamt up by Dominic Cummings, but the prorogation and the Supreme Court and the Benn Act have completely scuppered that, and I'm not sure there's a plan B. No, I don't want to talk too much about kind of nitty gritty of politics.
It'll be out of date by the time this goes out.
Everything's going to be out of date, exactly.
I just wanted briefly before we go, and this could have, I could have me spend another couple of hours with you.
I did a two hour podcast the other day.
And was it, were you kind of played out at the end of it?
No, well, it only happened because I was in Manchester and Jackie was wherever she was.
And then suddenly Chris Mason, the BBC politics guy, texted me, we were going to have lunch.
And he said, oh, I'm in the same hotel as you.
So I said, oh, come up and join the podcast.
So he did.
So he did an extra 40 minutes to what we'd normally do.
I haven't had a single complaint for anyone saying, oh my God, two hours, what are you thinking of?
And if you provide the material, people will stick with you.
I totally hear that from the...
One of the...
I think what...
Lots of bad shit has happened as a result of the internet.
Like, for example, we can't earn a decent living from journalism anymore, from newspapers.
They used to pay us.
Even for a rock review, you'd get loads of money and travel pieces and stuff, and you can't do that anymore.
But I think one happy development is that the long-form interview and...
It enables us to do stuff like this.
And there are people out there who will listen to this shit.
Listen to you and me just talking away.
That's nice.
But we ain't doing it for the money, are we?
Well, we hadn't discussed a fee, but if you want to grease my palm.
We're both in the podcast game.
and I do this at the moment for the love and I suppose there's a little voice in my head saying oh you keep at it you might be able to monetize this this one day um but we do it because it's like an addiction isn't it it is a little bit I think anybody that does this sort of thing, we might as well be honest, we like the sound of our own voices.
I do think that the long-form interview is kind of public service broadcasting that the BBC ought to still be doing.
It doesn't.
It was criminal.
When they asked, not this week by Andrew Neil, but Straight Talk with Andrew Neil, which was a half-hour programme.
It only went out on BBC Two and the News Channel.
Very cheap to produce.
I mean, it probably had one producer.
They had a black studio.
There was virtually no cost to it, apart from Andrew Neil's exorbitant fee, no doubt.
Yeah.
And they axed it.
And the only program on the BBC now where you get a half-hour interview is Hard Talk with Stephen Sacker.
Now, I think that's criminal.
And the BBC politics department ought to be doing, not necessarily this, but something where you can actually really examine people.
And, I mean, I do it all the time now.
On a Tuesday, Thursday, 8 o'clock, I have an hour often with one person.
Well, where else do you find that on the radio or television?
And I find that...
I mean, obviously, if a politician goes on a, like, there's a day programme for five minutes, they know exactly what they're going to say.
Whatever they're asked, they're going to trot out the party line.
And it's actually quite boring.
I'm reading John Humphrey's book at the moment, and I mean, he recognises this completely, but what can one person do about it within the BBC? Yeah.
So I love doing long-form interviews.
That's why I do a book club podcast where I can interview authors for as long as I want, really.
I do these hours on the radio where sometimes we'll take calls, but often it's just me and the other person.
And they're not necessarily always famous people.
Some of the best ones are people that often people have never heard of.
But I know from the feedback I get that people love it.
And I very rarely ever get any critical comments about a long interview.
No.
And I think another thing that's happened, which I think has been good for people like us, is what you hinted at just then, that the BBC is no longer fit for purpose.
Yeah.
I bet you've got a more nuance for you than me.
I don't want to hear it because it's going to be...
None of your nuance here.
You don't want to hear it from me yet.
I'm your guest.
Yeah, I know.
But what it will do is it will fill space of you being nuanced when I want to talk to you about other things.
But there are lots of people like me now who a few years ago would have given the BBC the benefit of the doubt and thought it was something that you could still treat with.
For me, that is no longer the case.
I just think the BBC is an abomination.
But the glory of that is that there are lots of people out there who feel as I do, who are yearning for audio or visual or written entertainment, which they would have got back in the day from the BBC. They no longer go there.
In the end, the BBC will be successful or not because people will listen or watch it or not.
Now, there are loads of alternatives now.
Yeah.
So, I mean, why is Five Live on a downward spiral?
Why is LBC on an upward spiral?
It's because we're giving people what they want and Five Live patently is not.
You look at all sorts of other bits of the BBC where, I mean, they constantly claim they haven't got enough money.
Well, I think I could do quite a good job running the BBC with three billion a year.
But the thing that really irritates me about them is their liberal-left bias.
It's not a party political bias.
It's just an institutional mindset.
Totally.
And where they can quite happily put someone like James O'Brien on Newsnight as a presenter...
Do you think that somebody with my political art would ever get that chance?
No.
And people always say to me, oh, you must really want to be on the BBC. Well, no, I don't, because I wouldn't be allowed to do what I do on the BBC. And I think in the last 10 years...
I have proved myself as an interviewer.
Have I ever had an approach from the BBC? Not a single one.
Now, I've come to terms with that.
Now it doesn't particularly bother me, although just having said it, people will think that it does.
But I love what I do on LBC. I'm given total editorial freedom to do what I want to do.
And I know that if I did go and do something on the BBC, I would have pre-prepared lists of questions.
I'd have these massive briefs that I would have to war-game interviews.
Well, if they say this, you need to ask that.
So it wouldn't be temperamentally right for me anyway, but I know that they would never ever do it.
That's what I wanted to ask you.
How much research do you have to do for your interviews before you...
Excellent.
I'm so glad you said that.
It was hilarious.
I went on the media show on Radio 4 with Amal Rajan, and I was on with Andrew Marr and Rachel Sylvester.
And it was all about the art of political interviewing.
And Amal Rajan asked me, well, how do you prepare for an interview?
And to the horror of all three of them, I said, well, I generally don't.
Now, if I'm interviewing the Prime Minister...
I will have maybe four bullet points on a piece of paper just to the subject areas that I want to cover.
But if I have a list of questions, I'm a human being, and I will then ask the list of questions.
Yes.
Whereas I want a conversation with somebody.
And to be fair, John Humphreys in his book says, look, I wanted all my interviews to be conversational.
If you actually listen to his interviews properly, they're not actually that aggressive.
They are quite conversational.
And I find...
This is a terrible thing to say in many ways, but the more preparation I do, the worse the interview becomes.
And I learnt that in Edinburgh, where if you're doing something new, you're kind of apprehensive and you want it to go well.
So in Edinburgh, I did for the first two or three...
I would have a bit of a cue card.
But then I thought, this is meant to be in conversation.
So the next one, I just went on without anything at all.
And it was much the best thing to do.
So you have to have self-knowledge.
And I know now that I'm much better in interviews when I adopt that approach.
And it's quite convenient in terms of workload.
Or what?
Imagine if you had to do that Edinburgh.
Imagine if you had 24 interviews.
Well, you couldn't, could you?
Well, particularly for no money.
I mean, for the people, most of the guests I had either interviewed before I knew, there were a few that I didn't know or hadn't interviewed.
And yeah, I might have looked them up on Wikipedia just to sort of get a few things in my mind.
Yeah.
But I mean, you're not much of an interviewer if you can't carry out a conversation for an hour, are you?
No.
The only danger of that approach, and by the way, I totally agree with your approach, but there's a risk, of course, that you're going to interview somebody like Donald Trump and not be aware of the key fact that he's president of the USA, and that maybe you should have asked him about that.
But I think other than that, no, it's much better to discover...
You're acting as an ordinary member of the public and you know some vague things about this person and you hope they'll emerge in the course of the conversation.
The skill of the interviewer, I think, is to bring people out of themselves because sometimes, particularly when you're interviewing a member of the public, and if it's of any length, they're not used to the environment.
They are nervous.
Yeah.
And you've got to relax them, and therefore you want to have a conversation.
It's not that you aren't looking to be confrontational, even if it's somebody who probably you might want to be confrontational with.
You've got to put them at their ease.
And I can't think of an interview that I've done where I've come away thinking, if only I had prepared more for that.
I'm sure there must be examples of that.
But, and I often find that if I'm doing, say, a half-hour interview, and there is pressure on you at a radio station like LBC to get a news line out of an interview.
Yes.
And I have found on quite a few occasions that the news line comes in minute 29.
Right.
Just when I think, oh my God, I've got nothing out of this.
I will ask a question right at the end, whether they're lulled into a sense of forced security or not, I don't know.
But that's happened on many, many occasions now.
I remember interviewing Theresa May in Downing Street, where I was told I had eight minutes, which I stretched to twelve.
And at the end of it, I thought, this was a completely awful interview, because as you know, she's not exactly the most forthcoming person in interviews.
I've heard this.
Yes.
And then, so I was walking up Downing Street with my producer, saying, oh God, that was terrible.
What are we going to make of that?
And they said, what are you talking about?
You've got four golden news stories out of that interview.
I said, what were they?
So they told me, I said, oh yeah.
What were they?
I can't remember.
But I can't, I'm totally useless at judging...
If I've got a news story in an interview, and generally you do, but it's because I'm concentrating on the person I'm interviewing.
I'm not thinking, oh, that's a brilliant news story.
Oh, haven't I done well there?
It doesn't work like that for me.
Is this my scoop?
Piss poor prepared Ian Dale.
Ian Dale, busiest man on the media, lazy fucker.
Yeah, well, no, I love you even more than I did before, Ian, that revelation.
I think it's fantastic.
Even if I am too pragmatic for my own good.
Yeah, but look, we can still get along.
I felt the same way when I read...
Well, that's the title of my book, you see.
You are living proof.
Okay.
I felt the same way when I read...
Did you read the recent Matthew Parris piece in The Spectator?
On what?
On...
Why I, despite all the evidence to the contrary, why I'm a Conservative?
I mean, that wasn't the actual title, but he...
I did read it.
I have to say, I'm a massive, massive fan of Matthew Parrish.
You won't be surprised to hear.
But, in the last couple of years, I cannot read him on Brexit.
And that's not because I want to live in my own echo chamber.
I find, in the same way that Andrew Adonis and Alastair Campbell and people on the other side of the argument...
They've all got Brexit derangement syndrome, and I find I do not want to read what they've got to say on it, which I hate myself for in some ways, because I ought to be reading them.
But Matthew, I don't know.
Do you have any theories on Brexit derangement syndrome?
Because I've noticed this, that certain figures who one had come to treat...
I mean, I was a massive fan of Matthew.
I used to do radio shows with him, you know, as a guest, obviously.
And I found him a delightful company.
I still think when he writes an article on a subject not about Brexit, you know, his home in Spain or whatever, he writes beautifully...
He's just absolutely fantastic.
And I don't know about you, but when I read him and many other columnists, I think, I can never write like that.
And I've always had...
No, I never think that.
Well, I do.
I don't enjoy writing particularly, and I've never felt that I was a very good writer.
I used to have a column in the Telegraph.
My mission was to explain David Cameron, haha.
And every time I pressed send, I assumed they would send it back saying this is rubbish.
So I've got this real imposter syndrome.
But going back to the previous discussion, I remember one of those Telegraph columns I bashed off in 20 minutes and that was the best one I wrote.
Sometimes the muse comes.
I mean, I can write quickly, which is a blessing in today's environment, but...
Well, it's something you share with Boris, who is absolutely fantastic at turning around pieces.
I tell you what, we were talking about regrets earlier on.
I think that I would have so much more life if I didn't allow myself so much time to write articles.
I just think...
So when you write your spectator column, how long does that take you?
Well, when the muse takes me, I can do it in a couple of hours.
But sometimes it can take a whole bloody day.
Really?
And I hate myself when it happens.
See, I've never ever done that.
Even when...
I remember the Mail on Sunday rang me up just before Christmas last year, wanting me to do an article on the decline of public discourse.
Yeah.
And I nearly said no...
And I had to write 1,600 words.
Quite a long article for anything.
That's a biggie.
And I think it was due to come out the day after Boxing Day or something.
No, I had to write it on Boxing Day, which is about the last thing I really wanted to do on Boxing Day.
Yeah, but that's the time to get...
But I did spend quite a lot of time on that, but it was nowhere near the whole day.
And it was that article that has really been the spark for the book.
Because it got such a reaction.
And so it's...
That's why you've done so much more shit.
And you probably earn much more money than I do.
Because you've got this...
Well, I mean, I looked at your schedule for the day.
You've got about five different things.
You are my only thing today.
I mean, after this, I'm going to go home.
I'm going to do some Breitbart stuff.
But I haven't got five things in the day.
It exhausts me.
Well, I wouldn't say today was a typical day.
I mean, tomorrow I shall spend most of the day doing some more writing of the book and then I'll come into LBC, get there about four.
So what I try and do is I have one day a week where I do pack everything because I don't actually like coming into London early.
So I will pack as much as I can into one day so I don't have to spread it over two or three.
I'm not going to ask you how much you get paid by LBC, but generally speaking...
A shitload.
Well, yeah, well, I sort of, I wish that were true, but I'm kind of...
No, it actually is true.
Oh, is it?
Oh, okay.
And I don't say that to boast in any way, shape or form, but it's the job that I've enjoyed most in my life.
Yeah, and the one that pays best.
And the one that pays best.
So what's not to like?
Bloody hell.
Okay, I so want a job on Talk Radio.
We need many more white middle-aged males on LBC. Ah, I don't play that identity politics game.
I think...
You see, there you are again.
You are betraying your appalling...
Yeah, I'd never get a job on LBC. And, you know, I wasn't...
Talk Radio.
I was...
There was a stage where they were like...
So what's that?
They were...
One of their guys was like really mad keen on my stuff.
Just loved the podcast, loved everything.
And...
And he was wooing me, and then it went quiet.
And I'm convinced it was Elizabeth Murdoch, is it?
Did she have control?
No, Rachel...
No, that one, sorry.
Not Elizabeth.
Rebecca Brooks.
Rebecca Brooks, who for some reason, I'm guessing maybe...
She must be a neighbour of yours.
No, I live in the poor man's Cotswolds, which is Northamptonshire, so I'm not.
But I suspect that because she's mates with Dave, and I once dissed Dave, or I have dissed Dave, and because probably she thinks bollocks about the environment, I'm guessing...
Well, that may well be true.
She might have missed it.
In some ways, you ought to be a speech radio dream, because you are a controversialist.
I am, I think.
And you would provoke lots of calls, which, let's face it, talk radio need, because they don't get that many.
Yeah, no, I think I'd be really, really good.
And also, I think I would really deserve lots of money.
I just think...
Seriously, I don't have enough money, and I need it, Ian.
So I'm...
Yeah, I'm envious of you.
I think, look, I think we should stop talking now because I want you back and we can just digress another time.
Where else can we have this type of conversation?
I know.
Maybe I should have you on my radio show for an hour.
Yeah.
Do it.
But one thing before I go, and I've been warned about this so many times and I never do it.
Hello, special friend.
Please, will you subscribe to this podcast?
I never remember to do this.
Subscribe!
Subscribe, subscribe.
Say it, Ian.
Tell them to subscribe.
Please do subscribe to The Delling Pod because you know it makes sense.
Exactly.
Some of the time.
And don't forget that I'm soon going to be selling when I can get my act together and sort out the words to go on my website.
I'm going to be selling badges like the one that I'm going to give to Ian right now, which is...
Ian, are you all excited?
Well, I am very excited.
You tweeted this earlier, and people keep thinking it's a Sinn Féin badge.
Or, sad fuck.
Do you want the sad fuck badge?
Which one do you want?
I've got 23, 21, 24.
What do you mean?
They're all numbered, aren't they?
Yeah, they're limited edition.
Are they?
So no one can forge them.
I think I have 21 because that's an age I quite like.
Okay.
Or used to like, anyway.
Can I plug my own podcast?
Of course you can.
I do four.
Oh.
The main one is called For the Many.
It's a weekly podcast on politics, but we do a lot of humour and smut as well with Jackie Smith.
Smut, yeah.
And I do the Iandale Book Club, twice a week at the moment, different authors about their books, Cross Question, which is our version of Any Questions, that comes out on a Wednesday, and the Edinburgh one, Iandale, All Talk.
You complete whore.
I know.
Happy to have you plug your things, but actually that's just prompted a thought in my head before we go.
What are the best three books you've read in the last year?
Wow.
I'm a very slow reader because I tend to just read in bed and I'm out like a light after three pages.
I'm reading Cameron's book at the moment, which I'm really enjoying.
Absolutely.
It's authentically him.
It's got his voice coming through.
You will hate it, obviously.
So that would be one.
I've read Giles and Mary from Gogglebox.
They did a diary.
I love Gogglebox.
That was quite entertaining.
I interviewed them about it, and they are exactly the same in real life as they are.
They even call each other nutty in real life.
What else?
Andrew Roberts' Churchill book.
I'm about halfway through that, and I've just started Charles Moore's Thatcher book, in which I feature in the index, which I'm incredibly proud of.
There's so much shit out there to read.
No, there really is at the moment.
The thing is, though, all of these books are so massive.
They're all 700,000 pages long.
Douglas, to his credit, he's written quite a short one.
I have bought Douglas' book and I haven't read it yet because I think it's going to be relevant to mine, so I can plagiarise it.
It'd be good.
You can wit through that one.
I mean, Tom Holland's book is quite a doorstopper.
What's that about?
Dominion.
Very, very, very interesting.
I'll tell you one book that I read recently.
I interviewed him.
Jason Webster has written a history of Spain, which you think, well, why would that be particularly interesting?
But I think Spain is a country we don't know an awful lot about.
It's called Violencia.
And it goes right back to the year dot and takes us through to the present day.
And it's a really good book.
I'd like to read that, although thinking about it, Ian, there's probably lots of countries we don't know much about.
I mean, Germany.
You probably know about Germany, but I think most of us don't.
I just bought a massive biography of Bismarck, who is kind of one of my heroes.
Is he?
What politics is the art of the possible?
I think he's...
I'm not sure he's my friend.
Well, I'm not sure he's a friend, but I just think that what he did to unite Germany was just an incredible achievement and a really interesting character.
So I'm looking forward to reading that.
One thing I think we can agree on before we go, I love the Germans.
I absolutely bloody love the Germans.
Why?
Why do I love the Germans so much?
Because they're like us.
But this is the thing.
People accuse people like you and me of being anti-European.
Well, we're not.
No.
At all.
I used to speak German to such a degree that no German knew I was English.
I was that fluent.
Oh, that's good.
Unfortunately, not anymore.
And it is just the most amazingly diverse country.
I mean, it does have a massive middle class and then a sort of underclass and a bit of an upper class.
It's very different to this country in that way.
But I just love...
Everything about it.
I mean, I can't think of...
If you said, what don't you like about Germany, I'm not sure I could think of an awful lot.
Maybe a bit too much sausage?
Nothing wrong with a bit of sausage, James.
You can't have enough sausage.
And on that note, goodbye.
Thank you for listening, special friend.
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