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Aug. 10, 2024 - The Delingpod - James Delingpole

01:06:29

Dick Delingpole

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	Well, let's do it.
	Welcome to The Dallying Pod with me, James Dallying Pole.
	I know I always say I'm excited about this week's special guest.
	But it's not a special guest.
	It's Dick!
	Hello.
	Hello, Dick.
	I thought what we'd do, without trying to breach too much personal information, but we should talk about the kind of family crisis that I'm in the midst of.
	To keep people up to speed, I think I'm going to be quite light on the podcast in the next week or so because something horrid has happened to me or more specifically my lovely wife and um it's been rather um I feel a bit sort of planet struck frankly.
	I think your telegram readers will know more about it than your casual podcast viewers.
	I've got quite a small telegram audience and I think most people will be unaware that my wife's been really very seriously ill.
	You know, and I know, that the faun, as we've always known her, is the very last person we expected to get ill because she's super healthy and super, you know, just like... Well, she's thin, fit, young... Well, you mentioned the bingo card, didn't you?
	Hmm?
	You mentioned the bingo card.
	Yes, I mean, we've got a nearly 90-year-old father, and of course, all thinkers are pointing at him.
	Meanwhile, a perfectly healthy member of the family takes a hit, and so, as you say, it's not on the bingo card.
	And even though we're quite disparate in our characteristics, we're quite a close family, aren't we?
	Yeah, closer than a lot.
	I'd say.
	It certainly wasn't on my bingo card.
	I was fairly confident that I would be the first one to go taken out by the cabal in one way or another.
	It may still happen.
	But I thought that was more likely.
	I wasn't expecting I wasn't betting the four to get here and you can see, you can tell I'm still having trouble dealing with it.
	I go through these weird sort of mood swings.
	Sometimes I'm just sort of spaced out, which is my natural state anyway.
	But sometimes I'm sort of really angry and sometimes I'm Depressed.
	Well, not depressed, but just sort of, like, low.
	And sometimes my head is filled with dark thoughts.
	And sometimes, this is terrible, but sometimes I sort of have completely inappropriate thoughts.
	Like, you know, well, who am I going to marry next?
	And you kind of think, I think that's perfectly natural.
	When your mind is telling you not to think of things, it's like don't think of an orange, isn't it?
	It's impossible.
	Anyone who overthinks, and you are definitely in that category, you're going to get inappropriate thoughts about everything.
	This should be no exception.
	Well, I'm partly offering this podcast as a service to all those people out there who are going through similar tribulations, or just tribulations generally, that you're not alone.
	All the clichés come out, like, you know, living one day at a time.
	Makes you realise what's really important in life?
	That definitely is a period I thought, yeah, makes you realise what's really important.
	And also, realising, I mean, I think I probably am quite uxorious in that, you know, my life, most of my life has been with my wife, with the Fallen, rather than apart from her.
	And we just do everything together, pretty much.
	She doesn't come fox hunting with me.
	She gets frightened of speed and stuff.
	The spirit is there, but the flesh can't quite cope with jumping over hedges and stuff.
	She just doesn't like danger.
	But she comes gamely along with me to things like Columbia, even though I think she'd probably rather be lying on a beach in Cardamile, frankly.
	She doesn't like, doesn't really like anything risky.
	But we're, we're, we're life companions.
	And I tell you what was sort of, earlier on in the year, there's this, there were these, Red-eared partridges.
	Is it red-eared partridges or red-legged partridges?
	I forget.
	Anyway, they're kind of a bit crap in that they take off at the last minute and you're driving down the drive and often you're in danger of running over the stupid little sods.
	And somebody told me that these creatures mate for life, and at various intervals during the last few months, I've been terrified that one or other of them has been killed by some speeding driver.
	And the form kept saying, don't be so silly, stop worrying about those stupid bloody partridges.
	But I sort of, you start thinking, was it a sort of a premonition of, like my fear of being Parted from my loved one, which I have been for the last 10 days or something.
	I've been doing hospital visits, but it was all very sudden.
	Yeah, and you've suddenly had to have dealings with mainstream health, which is something we've all managed to avoid.
	Which has been really weird and quite interesting.
	I wonder whether God, having a sense of humour and all that, does these things to sort of, like, you know, another cliché, life is what happens while you're making plants.
	The John Lennon quote, allegedly.
	You and our sister Helen and myself, we're all massive sceptics of the healthcare system of Big Pharma and Rockefeller Medicine and all that.
	And suddenly we find us, and of course our NHS, which we can't stand because we think it's a killing machine, and suddenly we're placed in this position where we are reliant on all the things that we've kind of rejected
	for the survival of our loved one and and it's it's it's quite it's been quite an eye-opener so so so what happened briefly was was what do you know but two weeks ago wife started getting terrible pains in her stomach she thought it was gastric flu at the first and then and she went to the doctor on monday when it was went to the gp the nhs gp who i mean you know that they're decent well-meaning sorts but they're not you know they're not always
	Don't get their diagnoses right.
	He thought it was a urinary tract infection.
	So he said, try these antibiotics and the antibiotics didn't work.
	And then you've got people saying, yeah, well, of course, UTIs are terrible.
	UTIs.
	I've had a UTI.
	I've never had one before.
	They're really, really bad.
	And the antibiotics never work.
	So I was thinking, well, OK, so this is it.
	This is a UTI where the antibiotics are never working and so on.
	But by the second week, you're starting to worry.
	And so we went off to have a, to this place that does private, not MRI scans, but something else, but this sort of ultrasound or probes type thing.
	And they found this, this cyst like thing.
	They weren't sure what it was, but it's very, they couldn't identify where it was, but it's very large.
	Then you sort of go back to your doctor and the doctor says, well, the bloods aren't good.
	I mean, some of the urine tests came back and they were, they were, they were no good because they'd have been infected.
	So they couldn't, they couldn't culture, they couldn't grow a culture.
	They couldn't tell what the bacterial problem was.
	So there were things that, that, that went wrong, um, in, in inevitably in a sort of slightly flawed, sketchy system.
	So, The doctor was sufficiently concerned by Friday for us to... He said, look, I'm going to give you a note and you should go to this good hospital, this good teaching hospital.
	And he picked the right one.
	It was one of the best.
	And we sort of waited six hours in A&E with this note.
	But the six hours wasn't really like six hours of them, of you waiting in a queue, waiting to be looked after, you know, waiting for them to give a shit.
	It was more like they do a series, a sort of triage, a series of tests, you know, first of all the bloods and the urine, and then when they realise that the markers are sufficiently worrying, they then give you a CTI scan, and then Six hours later, you're admitted to emergency.
	You get the level end boss.
	You've got to fight your way through the minor levels to get to the level end boss.
	And you have to penetrate walls of scepticism.
	I suppose they're so used to people just using A&E as a kind of alternative to your GP.
	Understandably.
	Yeah.
	So you get the doctor saying, you know, well, it doesn't sound like anything's wrong with you because blah, blah, blah.
	But that's kind of his job, I suppose.
	Anyway, the hospital that we're in, the faun is in, I have to say, it's an awful cliché.
	But the nurses are just first rate.
	I mean, when I had my pulmonary embolism, I got a bit of experience of the NHS at the sharp end, and I would say the nurses were pretty Good.
	But the ones at this place, it's the John Ratcliffe.
	I mean, they are absolutely next level.
	And they're from all over the world, as you'd expect.
	There's a Nepalese girl, and a Jolly Kenyan woman, and a Filipino who runs the operation, and all sorts.
	All really Really good.
	And Egyptian surgeon, good, so far as I could see.
	Egyptian surgeon?
	Egyptian, yeah, well, of Egyptian origin.
	I mean, I keep committing these microaggressions by asking where they're all from.
	Because I'm curious, and actually, of course, it's what they want.
	They love a chat.
	And because I'm reasonably well-travelled, you know, I can talk to the Kenyan woman about the Masai Mara.
	I know a little bit about Darjeeling, which is where the Nepalese girl comes from.
	I can talk to the Filipino guy about Filipino politics.
	You can even tell the Egyptian surgeon about climbing the Great Pyramid.
	Do you know, I didn't tell him that, because my dealings with him have tended to have been inexcusable.
	Because it's not about you!
	No, well, but it's more the nurses you have a chat with, because...
	I think it's so bizarre, I mean, we know how the world runs, the way that the enemy, the cabal, have sowed this ridiculous notion that you can't talk to people about where they come from.
	As a quick deviation on that one, I will bookmark in my mind the point of this conversation, but remember when our Pa went into hospital just before lockdown and he had a heart defect.
	Which, thank God, was sorted out before the hospitals went into meltdown.
	Only thanks to...
	The fact that he chatted with his nurse, who was Polish, and he did the classic part, where are you from?
	Which is something he does when we're walking on the Malvern Hills.
	If he sees someone vaguely foreign looking, he wants to ask where they're from, mainly because he's interested, and he wants to chat with them, and he wants to make friends, and he always has an interesting conversation with people, having asked where they're from.
	So, this lovely Polish nurse, he asked, where are you from?
	She said Poland, and he'd recently been to Krakow, and so they started talking about Krakow, and they got on like a house on fire.
	But she was the one who imparted to him the knowledge that she thought a mistake had been made during his operation, and he was bleeding internally.
	Now he got home, and this massive internal bruise started appearing, and she said to him, listen, if anything like that starts to happen, call me straight away.
	So he did, and she got him recalled to hospital.
	And they saved his life, basically.
	They cut him back open, sure enough.
	He was leaking all over the place.
	So it was his curiosity, and his natural friendliness, and his refusal to play the game of Don't Ask Where They're From, saved his life.
	So, yeah.
	It does work, and that's probably where we get it from.
	And were both parents inveterate?
	Chatters.
	We talk to anybody.
	And long may that continue.
	I mean, it's been one of the great pleasures of my life.
	Just chatting to people.
	I mean, I suppose that's why I've ended up doing what I do.
	Really.
	You know, I mean, it's like Bussman's Holiday, isn't it?
	It doesn't feel like working for a living.
	Just talking to people.
	Talking to interesting people.
	There was one.
	So I was joking with the Kenyan nurse about how The form was saying if I could have my life over again I'd become a nurse because I'm so amazed by what these extraordinary women do and the shit literally they have to put up with and all that.
	They're amazing.
	Sorry, I'm sounding like a bloody cliché of the sort of thing one hates.
	Momsnet conversation.
	And I said, maybe I should retrain as a nurse.
	And Phil was saying, you'd be the shittest nurse imaginable.
	You'd forget everything.
	You'd get your patient's records mixed up.
	I said, it's true.
	And the Kenyan woman said, yes, but you make people laugh.
	And that is the most important skill of a nurse.
	You make anyone laugh.
	And it was good that she kind of Oh yeah, I can make... I was going around the ward making all the ladies laugh, all the ladies in the ward.
	I can do that.
	I'd just be shit at changing catheters and putting, you know, candlers in.
	So I'd be pretty poor at the technical side, but I'd be okay at the bedside manner, joking stuff.
	Which is exactly what Jimmy Savile said.
	So, you know, go figure.
	Yeah.
	Well, so, of course, it's my crack muscle, I'm sure, that has been causing the form Sleepless Nights.
	I mean, she's doing okay at the moment, but, you know, we're so not out of the woods yet.
	She had a six hour operation.
	On a Sunday?
	On a Sunday.
	That's pretty major, isn't it?
	And it would have been on a Saturday.
	Except trauma cases came in, so she got bumped off by a car accident victim.
	I mean, can you imagine being a surgeon going, you know, you're probably in on shift on the Sunday anyway, but there'd be a whole team of them working from, when was it, started at about 11am.
	Solid six hours of cutting people open.
	They don't think, obviously, they don't think in terms of weekends, oh it's the weekend, I better, so we've got a weekend surgeon, or that part of his schedule, we just have to be within it.
	He did say that he didn't want to start the operation after six.
	He said, I want to do this in daylight because it's going to be a biggie.
	Blimey.
	So on the Saturday, I spent the whole of Saturday Sitting by the bed, waiting, waiting, waiting.
	As they say, it's the waiting that's the worst part.
	And it was.
	It just went on.
	And then come six, you think, all right, OK, so she's got another night of misery.
	And then she's all over again.
	So you were in the hospital at the time?
	So I went home.
	And the next day, we went to church.
	And by this stage our sister, Helen, who as we know is kind of the nice one in the family, the really caring one, so obviously a designated caring one, Helen kindly came over all the way from Wales with her partner, the bear, who is allergic to cats and dogs, both of which we've got, and he was, you know, so he
	It's wonderful when your family make all these sacrifices for you and that's another thing, you discover who your friends are and discover who's good.
	Some people have been a bit autistic in their responses but most people have been full of just Kindness, and I'm sure even the autistic people meant well, they just didn't express themselves in a very helpful way.
	But yeah, I've been overwhelmed by the love and support I've had from those who know about this, which is not many people probably until this podcast.
	Anyway, so we went to While I was waiting for the bad news, I went to... I phoned this chap, this sort of near neighbour, who I met through hunting.
	They don't hunt anymore, they're too old for it, but I met them through the hunt.
	The four of them and I had been with them on a quiz, so we got to know them a bit.
	A village hall quiz, which is what you do for social life in the country.
	The husband, Gerard, Gerard takes the services because we haven't got a sort of an official vicar at the moment.
	And I love Gerard's services because he doesn't talk about sodding Ukraine or any of that.
	He doesn't talk about politics.
	He talks about things like, well, I think I mentioned this on a previous podcast, he'll do things like, does anyone here be conceived gallany?
	No, I haven't either, but I gather from those who have, There were these valleys, these very steep valleys from the mountains either side, and they whip up a storm, the air currents whip up a storm in no time.
	So he talks about sort of things like scripture and anecdotes, and he's solid and a God-fearing man.
	And I said, is there going to be a church service at your church tomorrow?
	And he said, well, oddly enough, we've got I told him about my predicament and he said, we've got the pets service, our annual pets service.
	And so we went along to the annual pets service with the dog.
	And it was lovely.
	They, the evil rulers of the darkness of this world, have been allowing us some nice weather recently.
	So it was one of those lovely days we've been having and it was out in the in the cemetery in the churchyard rather and there were lots of pets yapping dogs and stuff and our dog was there and all the dogs there was a lovely woman vicar person who um
	who took down all the names of the animals and how old they were and so we got sort of biographical details and we had we had two children on the ponies I saw the pictures yeah the farming family the the farming family who've got you know their They own all the fields that aren't owned by the owner of our estate and one of them is a fantastic jockey.
	I was looking at these children on their horses, about three and four, and they were sitting there like they were born in the saddle and I was thinking how wonderful it must be to come from one of those families where you ride as soon as you breathe.
	And anyway, I was talking to Gerard, the vicar that's not a vicar, about everything.
	And he'd already said a prayer for Thorn.
	And I sort of glanced at my phone and I saw the message, going into op now.
	And so it was a sort of good place to be.
	The Christian fellowship, I'm very glad that I found God in the years leading up to this, because it might have been a lot harder if I hadn't.
	Well, obviously she's been bumped up to the top of the prayer list for, well, me and all of those in my immediate circle.
	But she was also added to the prayer list at Worcester Cathedral when I talked about her on the Thursday Circle group.
	And my friend JP, who is one of the canons at the cathedral, made tentative inquiries.
	He said that her name won't be spoken in full or anything like that.
	But would you like me to add her to the list of people we're praying for at the cathedral this year?
	Now, I said, of course, that would be lovely.
	What a lovely thought.
	But it put me in mind of how this would have worked over the centuries.
	See, it would have been second nature to think of as a community to pray together for those particularly in need at any given point.
	And if you don't believe in prayer or the power of prayer, then it all seems like a load of nonsense.
	But once you do, it's actually the most natural thing in the world to mention someone who's in need of prayer to those who pray, to add them to their prayers.
	Definitely.
	At the very least, it's a huge comfort.
	But if you believe in it, you'd believe it as an essential part of the curing process.
	It's been very, very helpful.
	Of course, I was going to mention one of the less happy things that happens to you is that you then start thinking, well, am I praying enough?
	If something happens to her, is it kind of my fault that I haven't prayed enough?
	Am I being punished for getting it wrong or for not caring enough or not willing it enough?
	And then you realize, hang on a second, it's not all about you.
	God has got this.
	Whatever is his plan, is his plan.
	And it's not going to be because you... It's not all about you.
	You can't will something into existence.
	That's God's job, not yours.
	What you can do is kind of...
	Pray for support and pray for... My other vicar friend, Richard, you know the one who went off to be an army padre?
	Yeah.
	Who you've met.
	When I first got the whole God thing a few years back, we were talking about prayer and he was saying, a thing that people don't realise with prayer is you're not telling God anything he doesn't already know.
	So if you say, oh my brother's wife is very sick, please look after her, it's not like God goes around saying, what?
	Tiffin is ill?
	Who told me about that?
	Why did no one tell me?
	If only I'd known, I wouldn't have let it happen in the first place.
	So it's a really obvious thing when you think about it that way.
	But I forget how it was he phrased it to me, but it's sort of like, that is no reason not to pray.
	So, it's kind of like, it's more complicated than asking God for a favor, and it's more complicated than telling God that there's some injustice going on.
	There's more to it than that.
	But, like everything with Christianity, there's a superficial level, which seems silly and pointless and impossible and ridiculous.
	But as you get down through the layers of the onion, it's more and more complex and more and more interesting.
	And that's, I think, where we are with praying for people.
	Well, I'm sure that as a result of this podcast lots more will be praying and I really appreciate that from those of you who do.
	Even though it's not all about me, obviously, I find that times like these you do think, well, this is God's sorted this situation out for a reason.
	It's not like some random stuff he's decided to do.
	It's about testing you and testing your faith.
	I mean, there's all sorts of things about Christians being tested and being put in the time of trial and so on, and the Psalms are always going on about this.
	Yes.
	Blessed is the man whose strength is in thee, in his heart are thy ways, who, going through the veil of misery, use it for a well, and the pools are filled with water. - Sure.
	They will go from strength to strength, and unto the God of gods appeareth every one of them in Zion.
	There's a psalm line for everything, but that's what faith is all about, and our relationship with God is all about.
	I listened to your Bishop Williamson songs podcast the other day.
	That was a rum one, wasn't it?
	That was a what, sorry?
	That was a rum one.
	How so?
	I loved it.
	I thought it was brilliant.
	It was great to get Bishop Williamson on the podcast.
	He's based, as they say, but he's He does this thing that Catholics do, which is they think that basically Catholicism is Christianity and everything else is just a kind of heresy.
	I was getting that rather strongly.
	And you were putting up quite a noble fight back in the most polite and respectful way.
	Yeah, with perhaps the lightest hint of affectionate piss-taking.
	I mean, I think the bit that got me was where he declared that Mozart was basically better than Bach, because Mozart is a South German Catholic, whereas Bach is a North German Protestant, and that somehow the Protestantism infected his music.
	Whereas I think, sorry, but Bach pisses all over Mozart.
	Mozart's... Whereas Bach is like... And it's significant.
	Well, we can maybe come back to this, but I was This has been a weird time for me.
	I've been living through a weird time.
	So, as you know, the other day we lost our fantastic friend Alexander Waugh.
	And you must have heard the podcast we did.
	It doesn't jump to mind.
	It might have been one I missed.
	Maybe this is new to you.
	Alexander War is, was, is in my mind, the son of Auburn War and the grandson of Evelyn War.
	And I sort of knew about Alexander, sort of about his existence, but I only really got to know him and his lovely wife Liza.
	Like two or three years ago.
	Okay, so before he got his cancer diagnosis, which sort of came out of the blue really, but quite late in his life.
	He's had the most extraordinary, interesting career.
	He read Music and composition at Manchester.
	So he didn't go the route that so many of my friends took.
	Most of my friends are Oxbridge, just because that's where I happen to go.
	But Alexander went to Manchester to read music, so automatically he's got a different kind of worldview, a musician's worldview.
	But because being Evelyn Waugh's grandson and Bron Waugh's son, he's also very Literally, he wrote several books, including one on God, actually, and one on time.
	But probably the most brilliant thing he did was his work on Shakespeare authorship.
	And Alexander was very much of the view, of which I am too now, largely persuaded by him, that Shakespeare's works were written by a scriptorium, which is kind of like one of those teams, the team that writes The Simpsons or the team that writes France, a sort of writers' group, but it was headed by the Earl of Oxford, Edward de Vere.
	Now, I'd sort of flirted with this before, but what Alexander did was The most extraordinary research which depended on his understanding of the Elizabethan mindset.
	The Elizabethans were very... Elizabethan aristocracy, that is.
	The thinking classes were very much into things like numerology, gematria, the sort of codes, geometry.
	For example, They would have been, if you'd been called my name or your name, the first thing they would have done is they would have romanized our names.
	So, you know, the J in James would be an I, and they would ascribe them their numerical, give them their number, and then see what the numbers, when you put them together, what they mean.
	Things like this.
	Alexander looked at the positioning of... you can look all this up on the internet.
	It's time well spent.
	I think it's that he looks at the first folio Shakespeare and looks at the positioning of the full stops, some of which don't appear in the obvious places, and By drawing the lines and working out the geometry and stuff, you find all sorts of clues.
	Anyway, I'm misrepresenting him horribly because this is a whole podcast in itself, but it's one we did.
	I did it with Alexander War and he's done some other ones on the internet.
	But he established where it is, according to these clues, that Shakespeare is buried.
	And it's not at Stratford-on-Avon, which was... that monument was put up much, much later.
	1711, I think, which itself got its own significance.
	Again, numerological.
	And guess where Shakespeare is buried, according to these columns put on the first folio?
	No, where?
	In Edward de Vere's tomb in...
	Westminster Abbey.
	Oh, right.
	Just him, or they're together?
	No, well, allegedly Shakespeare's buried in Stratford, I think, isn't he?
	Yeah, I know, but is he in Edward de Vere's tomb with him?
	Shakespeare... No, the Shakespeare buried in Stratford is just a kind of... some random bloke that they pretended wrote Shakespeare.
	He didn't.
	So, they're not going to put this random bloke... Oh, I see what you mean, in the fact that it is Edward De Vere, sort of thing.
	Yeah.
	Right, of course.
	You got there in the end.
	Yeah, I got there in the end.
	Anyway, so... So, we went down today with Alexander and Eliza, in Zona Z, not far from where Evelyn Waugh used to live at Coombe Flora.
	And we saw all the kind of Evening War collections and stuff and had a fantastic time.
	Alexander was really, really special.
	He was one of the most, the kindest, politest, most erudite, thoughtful, deep, civilised people I've ever met.
	It was like, there have been certain people who in my life have been like waystations towards God and truth and stuff.
	One of them was our friend Jonathan Miles Lee.
	Another was Christopher Booker.
	Another was Alexander Waugh.
	I knew you'd say Booker.
	But so I knew both the previous two had died of cancer.
	And in both cases, I wished that I had got down before they died for a final farewell.
	So I was determined that this wasn't going to happen with Alexander.
	So I sent him because people who are dying can choose who they see and who they don't see.
	And because, you know, it's one of the luxuries of dying.
	You don't have to be polite anymore.
	And so I sent him a message saying, no, I'd really like to come see you.
	He said, no, no, it's great.
	I want you to come see me too, because I had this six hour vision the other night of the meaning of, about God and stuff.
	And I want to tell you about it.
	So,
	I found the nearest day when I could go down and drove down there and before I left I thought I want to bring him some stuff that might make him happy and I thought I'll give him some of that chicken liver pate I've just made and I know I will bring him the bottle of wine that I don't know what to do with and
	Do you remember when I went through a wine collecting phase, when I was a wine buff?
	Not really, no.
	There was about two years when I was really into my kind of burgundies and stuff.
	I mean largely it was my flatmate, remember Olly Wynn-James?
	Yeah.
	He was a complete, he probably still is a wine buff, he was just another of my passing fans.
	And we bought this 1990 En Primeur Burgundy because we'd heard in advance this was going to be a vintage year and you buy it before it's even been bottled.
	So you buy it En Primeur and then later on it's bottled up and we bought this really expensive stuff like Chambon Moussigny and Le Chambartin.
	And there was one bottle left of Le Chambartin.
	And I'd stored it very, very badly.
	And I had no expectation that it would be drinkable.
	And the label was coming off, so you could barely read what it was anyway.
	We had a sort of gothic script on the label.
	And while we could still read the label, we looked up how much it would fetch at auction.
	And I think it was over 2,000 quid.
	And I thought to myself, yeah, but A, we can't sell it because the label's so corrupt, and B, we can't vouch for having stored it correctly, and B, even if you've got 2,000 quid, what are you going to do with 2,000 quid?
	Isn't it better to have this wine that may work for a special occasion?
	But I'd never been able to work out what a special occasion was.
	So I took down the chicken liver pate, which went down a storm, and I said, Alexander, look, it could be really shit, this stuff, but it might be really good, and it's worth over 2,000 quid.
	He said, we don't talk about material things.
	I said, yeah, but doesn't it make it more exciting knowing how much it costs?
	Come on, come on.
	He wasn't having it, but... So, in the evening, After an interesting conversation I'll tell you about in a moment, we had this ceremony where, under Alexander's instruction, we pulled up the cork.
	and decanted this wine.
	And there was a sort of running commentary on it.
	Oh, this looks good, there's no ullage.
	Ullage is where the levels go down, which means it's probably turned to vinegar.
	But there had been no ullage.
	Anyway, long story short, the wine was really good.
	I mean, amazing.
	As you can imagine, wine costing £2,000.
	And don't forget, that's how much you'd pay at auction, how much you'd pay in a restaurant.
	Probably £10,000.
	So probably we had the experience of drinking wine that would cost maybe £10,000 in a restaurant.
	Like £1,000 a glass minimum.
	Yeah, you couldn't get a hold of it.
	And it was great.
	Alexander's boy Bronn was there, and his girlfriend Ada.
	And do you know who else was there?
	Eliza, obviously.
	Bob!
	Bob, the cartoonist.
	How come?
	Because he lives locally and Bob and I had sat by Alexander's bed in his study where he wanted to die surrounded by books in the Somerset countryside and we chatted to him and I mean it probably helped finish him off to be fair but also to be fair that's probably what he wanted special time talking about stuff with his mates
	And, you know, Alexander was down the rabbit hole.
	Alexander got it.
	And there's not many of us who do from that kind of background.
	You see, I think this wine had a much more interesting end than, you know, from the perspective of the wine and the perspective of you getting a fantastic story out of it.
	It earned its keep, didn't it, that wine?
	It did.
	Well, once I've asked Eliza's permission, Which I'm sure should be cool with but I think out of politeness I should ask her.
	I'm going to release the video of Alexander instructing me how to open the bottle and it's a six minute video.
	And we've also got two and a half hours of chat which I hope is recorded of Alexander, Bob and myself talking about the nature of everything.
	And it's a very interesting conversation.
	Wow.
	I know.
	It's almost like the Jonathan Myles Lee recording that mysteriously disappeared into the ether that you and I were both party to.
	And that was his final communication, wasn't it?
	He died shortly after that.
	As Shakespeare didn't say, there are more things in heaven and earth than are dreamt of.
	Horatio, in your philosophy.
	Yeah, you think about that.
	If I'm right, God is so clever.
	I mean, he's just beyond anything that we could possibly imagine.
	But, for example, he so devised it that that particular bottle Would be lurking around where I keep the wine, and that it wouldn't go off, and that thought would go in my head to take it to Alexander, and that it would be fantastic.
	That he can plan things like that, you know, just as a kind of little... And he's doing this for everyone around the world, over time, over centuries.
	One of the expressions that I don't know whether it's a popular expression or whether it's generally known about God and his knowledge.
	He knows every hair on a red dog's back.
	Ah.
	Have you heard that one?
	Yeah.
	I haven't heard that one.
	I know about the sparrow fools.
	There's not a sparrow that fools without God knowing about it.
	Right.
	He takes care of the little sparrows.
	Sparrows and red dogs!
	But the reason that I segway, it didn't sound like a segway, the reason, maybe we can go back to Bishop Williamson, the reason that I mentioned Alexander, apart from the fact that this is kind of one of those conversations anyway, is that on his deathbed, or rather, you know, yeah, Alexander's
	Chosen Music was Bach and this again is another of God's sort of miraculous, you know, this is how it is.
	So I think Alexander asked one of his daughters to go in and fetch him some music from his CD collection.
	And she picked almost at random this piece of music by Bach, which was the last piece of music he wrote.
	I must look it up.
	Hang on, so I get Bach's last fugue.
	It's called The Art of the Fugue.
	He says you can tell when it ends, because it just suddenly goes, it doesn't.
	And he didn't leave any details about how it was to be played, what instruments it was, the parts were to be played on.
	It's a very complex piece of music.
	Luckily you've got Alexander talking about this separately.
	This particular version was played by the Juilliard Ensemble, the Juilliard String Quartet, who decided that they want to play one of the parts on a cello, I think.
	They had one specially built so they could play the bottom four notes, which would otherwise be unplayable.
	I'm probably sort of butchering the story in a way that Alexander would be amused by.
	He'd be very tolerant and forgiving.
	He wouldn't sort of be saying, you idiot, James.
	He'd be just amused.
	Anyway, Bach is the man.
	I think.
	And I'm sorry, Bishop Williamson, that you think he's not as good as Mozart just because he's Protestant, because I think you're wrong.
	And we talk about how Bach dedicated all his, every sheet of music he wrote, I think, it's all over his manuscript, you know, he did it as a sort of a gift for God.
	And of course, Bach is an expression of the divine.
	What I am doing after your Williamson podcast is learning Sancta Michael Archangeli.
	So I've been, I've printed that out and I'm... Sancta Michael Archangeli defended us in Prudy.
	Yeah, that's my current task.
	I thought about time I did another psalm but I thought no hang on let's get a bit of Latin under the belt and that sounds like an ideal one.
	Hmm?
	Devil hates Latin?
	I hated Latin as well at school.
	Does that make me evil?
	Dick, it does.
	It does.
	Actually, one of the things that Alexander was keen to impress on me, based on his vision and his insights over the years, is that it's more complicated than that there are goodies and baddies.
	Because I was slightly of the view that, well, Edward de Vere, aristocracy, Earl of Oxford, they're all basically Satanists.
	That there is a sort of godlessness in Shakespeare, and the whole humanist movement, the whole intellectual trajectory towards the Enlightenment was away from God and towards man.
	And that makes me suspicious.
	And it was propaganda for the establishment as well.
	You see that throughout Shakespeare.
	But Alexander was saying, yes, it's not...
	It's not just about goodies and baddies.
	There's both in each of us and God is within all of us.
	Anyway, I think it would be an interesting... No, I think they're right.
	I think it's way more nuanced than good versus evil.
	Sorry, the dog's just come into the office to say hello.
	We like that.
	I'm slightly distracted.
	Do you want to look at the dog?
	I did say... Look, can I just do this?
	Look at her.
	I can't see it, I only see a blur.
	Oh yes, there.
	There she is.
	I did say to... What's up?
	I did say to Helen that she should amusingly appear in the back and sort of wave and shit.
	Have you got her, um, doing the washing down by the river?
	Why aren't you doing your amusing waving show?
	Oh, well, I don't know.
	I thought if you'd come in, I'd come, but... Yeah, but that's not so... It's not as funny as if you'd come in, in real life.
	Well, I just thought, yeah, I didn't know what you'd be talking about.
	It might be serious.
	Yeah, but, you know... You're alright.
	Hi, Hallie.
	Look, I think what you should have done is appeared outside in the window.
	He can't, she can't hear you.
	Oh, right.
	Okay.
	Helen being, the problem is Dick, Helen being the kind of the caring one, was worrying about things like, but maybe you would, you'd be, I wouldn't want to interrupt when you're talking about something sensitive.
	Does she ever watch this podcast?
	I don't, yeah.
	Wait, Dick says... Dick says... No.
	We're saying that you were worried about interrupting something sensitive.
	I was saying, have you ever watched this podcast before?
	But I don't know.
	Anyway, blah.
	It's infinitely interruptible.
	We've just been interrupted by the bloody dog, for God's sake.
	Oh, have you?
	I've told him off for answering the phone, especially when it's spam calls.
	Don't you think?
	Um, yeah.
	Because I know it's a spam call.
	Yeah, but still, you don't have to answer the phone, do you?
	Yeah.
	Especially if wife's in hospital.
	Okay, now, but she wasn't.
	She might have been.
	What a special treat for our listeners to get the three-way deling polling.
	I just think they should just suck it up.
	How I'm so looking forward to my fag and my cup of tea after this.
	Shall I go and put the kettle on?
	Yeah.
	Oh, that sounds good.
	Bye-bye, Hel.
	Our paths won't cross when I come down on Tuesday, so you'll be leaving as I'll be arriving for look after James duties, but we'll see each other soon.
	Yep, okay.
	I shall go and follow that tea making according to very specific instructions.
	Make sure you get the right mug and the right tea and the water's at the right temperature and you use the right milk and not too much of it.
	Don't stir it.
	Three minutes.
	Not anti-clockwise.
	Three minutes, yes.
	Everyone, look, all the listeners are thinking, how could she not know it's three minutes?
	Why does she think that's an abnormal thing?
	Have you heard about Potato Peeling Gate?
	They don't go in the compost.
	They don't go in the compost.
	I put mine in the compost.
	Again, can I just say, most people watching this podcast will know that you do not put potato peelings in the compost bin.
	Do you know why?
	Because they grow.
	No, you two don't, but everyone else does.
	Why?
	They grow.
	They sprout.
	They sprout.
	So you never put potatoes in the compost bin, not even a tiny pea, for that matter, because it ruins your compost.
	Dick, every day's a school day here.
	So I was peeling them, thinking this is something I can do in the kitchen that isn't going to get me in trouble.
	What could possibly go wrong with peeling potatoes?
	Actually peeling potatoes, thinking great, doing a great job, he comes in.
	No!
	It was, it's like one of those... I don't swear, do I?
	No, you don't.
	No, what a goodness, I thought.
	What have I done?
	Anyway, here we go.
	He's being wonderful.
	We're looking after him.
	Love you, Dick.
	See you soon.
	OK.
	Love you.
	Bye.
	Bye.
	See you soon.
	Yeah.
	Yeah, there's not much to be said for having your world, as you know it, collapse and be, you know, have your soul mate, like, In pain and misery and stuff.
	But there are two good things.
	One, I feel allowed to have more fags whenever I want them.
	You know, I've definitely upped my smoking and I don't feel bad about it.
	And two, it's been just like so nice having family You know, Helen came up.
	I've had Helen here all week and I would have just been lost without people around.
	I mean, I've been rattling around the house on my own.
	Instead, you know, the boy has come up from London, although he's sodding useless.
	I mean, he's absolutely sodding useless.
	It's another mouth to feed and his idea of helping.
	You're thinking, Why don't you volunteer to do one of the evening meals?
	Do one of your chillies or something.
	And instead...
	You've had an exhausting day, and I think I'll make a cake.
	And so the kitchen is covered in... And he means well, he wants to make everyone happy with a cake, but actually it just means the dishwasher is full of cake crap and everywhere... He's definitely your son, isn't he?
	Because that's the sort of helping that you'd have probably considered help at his age.
	He is so totally... So we had an argument today, actually.
	So he said, Dad, don't have your omelette, your breakfast eggs.
	I'm going to make a menemen for lunch.
	Do you know what menemen is?
	Menemen is this delicious Turkish dish, I think, of peppers, possibly tomatoes, but definitely peppers.
	And you then cook an egg in it.
	You have like a fried egg in it or something.
	We've got our podcast booked at three.
	And at quarter past two, I'm thinking, are you going to start making this menemen that I'm having for my lunch?
	And he said, yeah, he's watching the Olympics, basically, and doing a bit of work as well.
	And he said, yeah, yeah, yeah, in a bit, in a bit.
	I said, look, you've got three quarters of an hour to make menemen and for me to eat it.
	How is that going to happen?
	And he said, well we often eat lunch late.
	And I said, we don't eat like after 2 o'clock, maybe 2.30 to push.
	You're not going to get that menemen ready.
	And then Helen's saying, oh don't be hard on him.
	And I'm thinking, he's a stupid bloody idiot.
	Having told me not to have eggs for breakfast, why should I?
	And then, do you know what I have for lunch?
	Salad and a bit of cheese.
	Not menemen.
	No, and meanwhile he's frying the cumin for this menemen, and I can see it being prepared, the menemen that I'm not going to get.
	And he said, well, isn't Dick... Dick won't mind starting late.
	And I said, you don't... Helen, is Dick a time Nazi?
	I was texting you at one minute past three, as you no doubt know, going, where are you?
	I operate to a very tight schedule.
	I said to them, I have not known fear in my life, except when turning up late for a meeting with Dick.
	Yeah, I can take any hedge right into hands, but...
	That's really gratifying.
	I'm not at all sorry about that.
	I mean, I've done it with great white sharks.
	I can tell you, Dick, that being late for a dick appointment when you've is just that's really gratifying.
	I'm not at all sorry about that.
	I'm sure a lot of our listeners will see good timekeeping as being an absolutely essential part of just general decency.
	Can I tell you other thing?
	Okay, so apart from the wondrousness of my family and the loveliness of my supporters, and I'm sorry, by the way, I'm really sorry.
	If you're one of those supporters that I bit your head off for saying what I consider to be an inappropriate, insensitive remark, you know, I don't mean it.
	I'm going through bad shit at the moment and I'm not altogether in control of my emotions.
	But I discovered something really interesting.
	Homeopathy really, really works.
	I've had some good experiences with it in the past, but I've always been lightly sceptical about anything other than armica.
	So, you're aware that our sister is a sort of qualified homeopath.
	Well, she's trained, but she never completed the equivalent of the bar.
	She never did the final thing.
	So, she overheard me describing her homeopathy skills on the phone, and I said, yeah.
	And my assistant, she knows a bit about homeopathy.
	I think she did a sort of weekend course or something.
	And afterwards, she said... That's it, thank you.
	as if on cue she said Jay I overheard you on the phone the other day saying that my sisters dabbled a bit in homeopathy she said You realise I did a five-year course in it?
	So anyway, so... Oh, I was just being modest on your behalf.
	Yeah, quite.
	So I've got this homeopathy kit that she's... Have you got her homeopathy kit?
	Yeah, the emergency bag of all things.
	So, the reason I don't use it as often as I should is you look in the instruction manual and you say you've got terrible headache.
	So you look for terrible headache or headache and it's things like anxiety, characteristic mood, blah blah blah of characteristic.
	It's all this sort of woo language which talks around it.
	Better for cold or better for hot?
	Yes, exactly, that's it!
	Which side of the bed are you sleeping on?
	And are you sleeping on your front or on your back?
	Therefore, silica.
	If not, arnica.
	Yeah.
	You've nailed it, Dick.
	You've nailed the problem of the civilian coming into the world of homeopathy and trying to kind of self-diagnose.
	You just can't bloody do it.
	So, having had a long tap, I'm saying, right.
	I'm feeling really, really angry right now.
	Just kind of, just, you know, sort of panicky and just like... And she'll say, oh, that sounds to me like it's either, could be Nuxvon, or it could be Ignatia.
	And then she'll I think I can't tell you, only because it's a secret thing that we can't talk about in the family.
	But that secret thing happens and then I will discover whether or not it's Nuxvom or Ignatia.
	And I take the Ignatia.
	I've been going through them.
	I've been on Argnit.
	Argentumnit.
	There's another one before that, a different mood, kind of, whatever.
	And what I found is that on each occasion, when the correct remedy had been found for me, using this Helen's skills, and the other element that I can't mention to you, the secret element, the bad feeling Just went, not in five minutes, but like whoop.
	Just like that.
	And homeopathy can't sort of take away all the bad feelings, but it can make it a lot, lot worse.
	It is very much about the correct diagnosis, and you've got to get through the, is it better when you think about eagles or sparrows?
	It's like, if you actually stop to think about it, you know what?
	I was thinking about eagles and my palms went hot.
	Oh!
	Pulsatilla.
	Dick's taking the piss.
	He's saying, he's saying, is it better when you think about eagles or sparrows?
	And Dick's saying, well I was thinking about eagles and my palm went hot.
	You're taking the piss out of me.
	No, taking the piss out of homeopathy.
	Oh, homeopathy.
	You know it works.
	We do know it works.
	We do know.
	The discussion of... Well, you can tell her the discussion was the fact that it does work.
	You can take the piss out of things for longer.
	Bye, Dick!
	Bye Hal.
	But I'm sure a lot of our listeners have seen, and if they haven't, I urge them to go to YouTube and find the Mitchell and Webb homeopathy hospital one.
	It's a brilliant sketch.
	It's funny.
	Apart from the fact that it's the ghastly Mitchell and Webb.
	Yeah.
	So, do you think I've covered off What we need to cover before I go off and have my tea time.
	We did that and all.
	I had a load of things written down as if we were ever going to get on to anything else.
	So we can do all that another time.
	It's all pretty heavy shit anyway.
	Let's do another one soon, Dick.
	I mean, we tend to do one a month, but if you could do one sooner, because particularly in these times, I kind of need a... Well, when I'm down with you, we could almost set one up with cameras and sit side by side outside.
	Can we do another one then?
	We could.
	Let's think about that because we'll have time to do brotherly things.
	We will.
	And also tell me which meat you want me to get from your favourite butcher which happens to be closer to me than it does to you.
	You don't need to tell me on the podcast, but you'll have to make me a comprehensive list so I can bring you the gift of meat.
	When you said which meat, instantly my thought was which hunting meat.
	What's a hunting meat?
	Oh, meat as in double E T. Yeah.
	Right.
	He's got a one-track mind.
	That's another story.
	I don't think I'm going to get any hunting in.
	This is how it all works, isn't it?
	They come up with a crisis that becomes a reason for draconian measures.
	And it's happening left, right and centre at the moment.
	Mostly left.
	I think that I think this is just the beginning of the awfulness.
	I think we are living in end times.
	And thank God we've got God, is what I say.
	Yeah, well if the last government was cancer, this one is turbo-cancer.
	I mean, we've got God and we've got the good people.
	And there's lots of good people.
	And that's nice.
	Yep.
	Really nice.
	Right, I'm going to have my fag now.
	You have your fag, I'll probably go and have a cup of tea.
	Well I'll see you very soon!
	And thank you everybody for listening, thank you Dick, and please pray for my lovely fawn.
	See you soon.

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