A wee post-Christmas treat for all the lovely delingpod subscribers. James's brother, Dick drops in for a catch up and review of the recent festivities.
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Welcome to the DelingPod with me, James Delingpoll.
And I know I always say I'm excited about this week's special guest, but before we meet him, a quick word from one of our sponsors.
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Happy Christmas, everyone, and Happy New Year.
Well, you're not a this week's special guest, are you, Dick?
You're the...
The bog-standard Christmas guest.
Yeah, yeah.
I'm in my post-Christmas, pre-New Year, sort of knackered, shambolic-looking mode, with my Christmas hat from my daughter, my unwaxed moustache, and it's kind of like, that's the vibe, alright?
It's a good hat, but it looks a bit, it looks cotton.
No, no, it's pure new wool.
That's good.
Nothing but the best from my daughter.
She got it from some horrifically expensive shop in Stoke Newington, so it's going to be good.
Do you like my shirt?
What's the material?
I can't tell with the low resolution.
Well, that's the interesting part.
It is that slightly, and I was warned about this by the wife, because women know about these things.
It's slightly scratchy.
What is it?
Wool, I suppose.
It's a woolen shirt.
Right.
It's a nice texture and it's a nice colour.
It's called rui, as in the stuff you put in, you know, the sort of special mayonnaise that you put in fish soup, that sort of red stuff.
You know that.
No, I don't know that.
What's it called?
Oui?
Oui.
R-O-U-I-L-L-E. Oh, right.
Only you could wear that colour.
Mummy bought it for me.
Oh, did she now?
Well, rather, I bought it with some of her Christmas money.
Right.
I like to think that Mummy, through this shirt, is showing that she loves me more than her other children.
I've got a feeling she may well have brought the shirt that I'm wearing right now.
Chances are that happened.
Yeah, yeah.
Now, obviously there's only one topic I want to talk to you about.
Because this is a kind of, this is our post-Christmas, pre-New Year come down, sort of take stock type.
Well, that's assuming Christmas is some sort of high that you come down from.
Ah, no, that's a very, very good point you make there.
We can come to that in a minute.
But I'm just thinking, I'm going to have to make sure that Andrew, my little helper, my little Dobby.
Your elf.
Yeah, my little elf.
That he releases this generally instantly because otherwise people are going to be the delay on the release.
People will not want to be reminded of the in-between days between Christmas and New Year.
Although I'm quite enjoying them.
I had a lovely morning.
I had a walk with our sister and our father.
I saw her.
Did I? You did.
She's been doing the tour.
Once they've let her out of South Wales, there's no stopping her.
So she goes all the way round and about.
And she came to our usual 10.30 at British Camp car park walk.
And it was so cold and misty and horrible.
And as we ascended British Camp, we could see blue above us through the mist.
And the higher we got, it became clear that we were going to get one of those lovely inversions.
And sure enough, just as we crested British Camp, That the clouds dropped low enough just for the peaks of the Malvern Hills to be coming up through them.
And it was beautiful.
And the sun was warm.
Remember the sun?
Remember what that looks like?
I don't.
I don't at all.
And I was going to ask you about this.
Do you reckon that they planned it?
That inversion?
No.
I think this was God and nature fighting back against them.
But basically he keeps showing them that they're not going to win.
But it's clear that the weather we've had in the build-up to Christmas has been deliberately sabotaged by them.
You know in Psalm 2 where it says, He that dwelleth in heaven shall laugh them to scorn, the Lord shall have them in derision.
He's talking about all the bad people, you know, all the people who manipulate weather and so on, and the rest.
You know, obviously it includes Bill Gates and all the other paedophiles and stuff, obviously.
But given that God can just do anything, And laugh to scorn the idiot humans who think that they can somehow take over the world on behalf of Satan and do what they want, and they can't.
Don't you think it's about time?
I'm really sick of the weather manipulation.
I think it's about time God intervened.
When you learn the Psalms, the person who writes the Psalms, often David, is saying, Come in and sort things out, God.
Please.
You've forgotten us.
But we know also from the Bible how long God is prepared to have us oppressed.
I mean, how long were the children of Israel in Egypt?
Well, they kind of had it coming to them.
Oh, they had it coming.
They so had it coming.
I mean, look...
Our listeners are going, oh my God, they're on to God already.
We won't stick to God.
We're going to come off God in a moment, but I think it's an important point that he's raising.
We just need to get this one out of the way.
You and I, and the rest of our family, and actually probably most people listening to this, we are all descendants, direct descendants of one of the 12 tribes of Israel.
Because they...
After they got split up, they spread.
And some tribes ended up in Wales, England.
Some of them ended up in America eventually.
But we have not, as far as I know, you may have done, but I certainly haven't.
I have never put a child in the fire as a sacrifice to Moloch or Baal or any of those gods that God hates.
And yet, it seems to me that I'm being punished, nonetheless.
Well, when you consider that even while Moses was up on Mount Sinai, Mount Sinai, getting the Ten Commandments from God.
Yeah, they were building the car.
They were building the car.
It was like, sort of, look.
Behave yourselves.
I'll be away for maybe 40 days and 40 nights.
I'll be going up into that cloud that you know is God.
And they'll go, yeah, yeah, yeah, that's cool.
And he says, please don't do anything stupid.
No golden calves or anything like that.
Definitely no golden calves.
And he comes down and it's not just them that's done it.
Aaron has built it for them.
Yes, Aaron!
And it's sort of like...
What the hell, children of Israel?
I mean, you absolutely brought this upon yourselves.
I've never done anything like that.
He should know better being Moses' brother.
Yeah.
You'd think.
Yeah.
And doesn't he come up with some really lame-ass excuse?
Like, but we thought you'd want it, God, because...
We only made it to please you.
It's a bit like putting your kids in front of a SpongeBob SquarePants cartoon to keep them quiet.
You know it's not good for them, but it kept them quiet.
Come on, you didn't want them making a noise all the way through your receiving of the Ten Commandments.
So, yeah, I do think this is my second reading of Exodus.
Now, just to finish off the biblical bit for the time being, Exodus...
Starts off great, doesn't it?
With the whole sort of like, let's get the hell out of Egypt thing.
And it ends with endless precise instructions on how to build a tabernacle.
Oh, it's so boring, that bit.
And I think I should skip read this, but then you can't really say you've read the Bible if you skip it.
It's that, you know, I know I've got to read it a bit, but I don't see what I... Oh, and what about the genealogies and the son of son of son of son?
We know why they're there.
We know it was once very, very important to know not to mix the fabrics and who begat who, and it's very important for lineage, etc., etc.
But for a white Englishman living in Worcester in 2024, it's not very relevant.
Well, it is.
It's your ancestry, Dick.
It doesn't have me in it.
I need the later edition that shows which tribe I'm from and hopefully not Dan.
Dick, son of Malcolm.
Son of Ken.
Son of Ken.
Son of William.
Yeah.
Yeah.
So anyway, how was your Christmas?
Terrible.
Oh, right.
But I'll tell you about that later on because I want to talk about the most important thing.
Yeah, yeah.
Which is...
The Gavin and Stacey Christmas special.
I knew you'd be all over that.
I thought, I wonder what James is doing now that I slap myself.
Of course he'll be watching the Gavin and Stacey Christmas special.
Not least because you've been so long without watching any James Corden.
I've missed James since he went to America.
Oh, what a sad loss that was.
It was awful.
Yeah.
But this made up for it.
No, I've heard, correct me if I'm wrong, that the reason it was so popular in the ratings is they kill the James Corden character quite horribly.
There's some sort of death of a thousand cuts that he has to undergo.
Your stupid nephew.
Yes?
What, I'm doing a podcast?
Mum could have told you.
What do you want?
What?
What meat we want.
What if they've got good bargains?
Get it.
I mean, have they got ribs?
Baby panda?
Why can't you just tell him to go away?
Okay.
Is that half price?
Well then, you know, get it.
It's always good.
All right.
Bye.
Look, they wouldn't do that on trigonometry.
They wouldn't take calls from their children.
That is a well-oiled machine.
It's like the tiger.
You need to be more trigonometry in 2025. It's like what's slow, ponderous, and not as good as people think it is.
Yeah, and it gets bogged down, and they can't repair it.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Whereas what are we?
Are we Panthers?
I think we're probably something obscure and actually more effective than people ever give it credit for.
Yeah, like what?
Something like a variation on the Panzer III. Right.
Yeah.
Light on our feet.
Not particularly sexy, but, you know.
I don't know, I'll have to give that some more thought.
We could put that, you know, there could be a sort of marketing strap line, a variation on the Panzer Mark III, the Dellingpot.
And some people would get it.
Yeah, possibly.
Possibly, hopefully.
If anyone will, it'll be our viewers.
Yeah.
So anyway, back to Gavin and Stacey.
Gavin and Stacey.
So yeah, apparently, no, I say apparently because I watched it.
Gavin...
He goes swimming in the Red Sea.
What?
Yeah.
And gets torn apart by the same shark that got the Russian guy, the Russian boy, to his ship.
That's a poetic justice for several of them, wasn't it?
Hang on, isn't Gavin's not the...
Gavin's...
Not James Corden, is he?
No, that's Stacey.
Stacey is James Corden.
Stupid me.
I'm actually not knowing that.
I'm slightly at a disadvantage here because I've never actually seen an episode of Gavin and Stacey.
No, it becomes clearer the more you talk about it.
Here's the problem.
The day after Christmas Day, I... In that kind of weird, desperate way you do occasionally.
Well, you know, you haven't got this problem, but as you know, my wife still takes a newspaper.
And it's breakfast time and you're thinking, what can I look at?
I can tell you what I have been looking at.
What's that?
A very interesting...
You know we don't do war anymore.
Hardly, except in obscure Panzer references.
What, we?
You and I? Yeah, yeah.
And obviously the odd reenactment weekend.
Somebody lent me this very, very good book written by a free French Spitfire pilot.
Oh, right.
And it's quite interesting because he's not English.
He writes in a different way.
His take on being a Spitfire pilot is slightly different.
It's not like The Last Enemy, you know, whatever his name was, Hillary.
What's generally thought to be the best fighter pilots, autobiography of the war.
The last enemy?
No, no, but I don't know that reference.
I mean, that's good, but this is from a Frenchman's perspective.
And he does interesting things, like he tells you what they say in the briefing before you go on your mission, which I thought was quite interesting.
Yeah, yeah, I'd like to hear that sort of detail.
Into great detail.
Things like, you get somebody who gives you the overall direction of the mission, and then somebody else comes on and says, right, this is the channel you want to use if we're going to fly basically at...
At sea level, until we reach the French coast, because we're going to fox their radar.
And then we're going to go up.
We're going to keep radio silence.
We're going to be flying at sea level for 18 miles, which is going to be horrible.
If anything goes wrong at that stage, do not use the radio unless in absolute emergency, in which case use this, use sea channel.
If you need to get back to England in a hurry, here is your bearing.
And they're writing these details on the back of their hands because they're thinking, right, yeah, okay, right, if I go down...
I thought that was interesting.
Yeah, it's very interesting.
You didn't get that in The Last Enemy.
It's all about, you know, I'm a fighter pilot and stiff upper lip.
So many things in history.
We forget that...
Future generations will be quite interested in the sort of details we're not considering interesting at the time.
Well, you say that, Dick.
It could just be us.
No, because I've shared lots of pictures with reenactment friends of incidental things, like photos in trenches that might show, for instance, what an officer might have on the shelf of his dugout.
And you're not going to think to photograph.
Here's my dugout, and this is what I keep on the shelf here.
Here's my shaving equipment.
And us re-enactors go, oh my god, that's the kind of brush we need to be looking for.
Or, oh, they did use solid soap, or any of these.
Really mundane things.
So photographing or commenting on the mundane, I think, is underrated.
Well, as opposed to liquid soap in one of those things.
Oh, I don't think about that.
Whether or not it was, it might have been in a squeezy tube or something, I don't know.
That sort of thing.
The distraction, sorry, anyway, I got distracted by one of my distractions.
We're going back to the telegraph that I had on the table.
And page three, so once you get past the, The headline page and the kind of boring detail page.
Three is the page for the important stories of the year that get your attention.
And half the page was given over to Gavin and Stacey.
And I was thinking.
Yeah, it got five stars by some whoever reviewed it.
And it claimed that something like.
Was it three million or five million?
Watched it.
And I'm thinking, hang on a second.
So what's the population now?
It's about 65 million, is it, or 70?
Who knows?
So, yeah, exactly.
Probably 80 million.
So probably 75 million people in this country did not watch Gavin and Stacey.
And yet, here is the Telegraph, and I'm sure all the other papers are the same, saying, this is the talked-about TV programme that everyone watched.
And you're thinking, no, they fucking didn't.
Hardly anybody watched this programme.
No one cares.
No one likes James Corden.
He's horrible.
You could be saying exactly the same things for Keir Starmer.
X amount of millions voted for him.
Yes, but many, many millions more didn't and absolutely hate him and haven't got the vaguest interest in anything he does.
But, you know, you take that positive number and you big it up, don't you?
And that's part of the big lie, isn't it?
Can I tell you what I did watch?
What did you watch?
It was a Christmassy thing.
Yeah.
It was animated by Nick Park.
You watched a Nick Park animation?
I watched Wallace and Gromit.
Chicken Run or something.
Wallace and Gromit, did you?
Yeah, I did.
How very normie of you.
Well, yeah, but Dick, I was the only non-normie, I think.
Oh, no, hang on.
Obviously, no, there were two.
So it was three against four.
Right.
Well, if you put up a bigger defence, you might have won.
No, actually, it was quite...
Well, it's a bit like going to see a sort of well-made film.
You know, a Hollywood mainstream film.
You know you're being manipulated, but you kind of enjoy some of it.
So, do you not like Wallace and Gromit?
You're putting me on the spot now.
I don't think I've got any feelings either way.
Oh, but wait a second.
What?
Wait a second.
I found you out the other day.
We're going to have this out in a moment.
You are in no position to judge me for watching Wallace and Gromit.
I was going to tell you about the interesting thing about...
Do you finish this one off?
It's charming and it's quite funny and it does the things...
It's structured in such a way that...
You get lulls, and then you get exciting bits, and then you get false hopes, which are dashed, and then an exciting ending based on the Italian job.
Lots of film references, lots of...
And it's not bad.
But...
Our sister...
We managed to snatch a moment of escape from the normies conversation.
And she said, Jay...
I enjoyed watching Wallace and Gromit, but did you see the subtext?
Did you see the agenda?
I said, well, what do you mean?
She said, well, it's about AI, and it's saying...
So this is how it progressed.
There's a...
Wallace or Gromit, whichever one is the man, designs this garden gnome, which can perform all sorts of household.
You know, gardening tasks and stuff.
It's become a sort of handy automaton.
And so I'm spoiling it for anyone who hasn't seen this episode, but sod it.
And then the evil penguin creature somehow accesses this gnome and reprograms it to do evil.
And the evil gnome builds a whole army of evil gnomes.
And the whole of Wallace and Gromit world is threatened by these evil...
Evil gnome things.
And then it all comes right in the end.
There's a sort of happy ending because Wallace or Gromit, the dog, Gromit, saves things, as he always does.
And so what's it actually telling the norm?
It's saying there's this thing called AI. It's inevitable.
It's going to be everywhere.
And you kind of like it.
You kind of need it because it helps you do your garden and stuff.
And, but things could go horribly wrong.
And here are some of the things that could go horribly wrong.
And then at the end he goes, but yeah, now you can forget about all that because it's had a happy ending.
And so AI is nothing to worry about after all.
So it's like the viewer has been programmed, gone through the process, sort of revelation of the method.
AI is really fucking dangerous.
It could, you know, destroy your garden and ruin your life.
But it's okay, because here's an artificially tacked on happy ending involving a dog.
Even Wallace and Gromit is delivering the Terminator message.
If you know the name, they're in the game.
Nick Park has got to be...
I'm sure if you ask Miri, she'd say that.
Nick Park.
I don't know how it works, though.
Oh, that was another thing we discussed, Helen and I, on our brief escape from Normandum.
When they commission these things, look, apparently Doctor Who.
Do you remember Doctor Who?
I remember when it was good.
You don't like Ngami Nkuti.
Is that what the current Doctor is called?
I don't know why.
He's something like that.
You see, I found that completely believable.
No, he is.
He is something like Ngami Nkuti.
Okay, right.
Probably one of the words I've got wrong, but he's definitely gay.
Right.
And not altogether, not the whitest doctor.
Not the whitest doctor there's been.
Not the whitest doctor.
But apparently there was a long diatribe about Tories breaking lockdown rules or something like that.
And what you're not sure about is, is it Stephen Moffat, the screenwriter?
Is it just because they're all just so fantastically on message, they don't even need to be told?
Or, does somebody say, right, we want to talk to you about the new Doctor Who Christmas special.
Obviously, there are certain messages we want to slip in.
Like, if you could, maybe, something about...
Tories breaking lockdown, reminding people that lockdown was really important, and people in hospital with COVID, which is real, by the way, really real, not kind of made up at all, not a PSYOP, but real.
Got that?
I don't know.
I think it's the former rather than the latter.
And I say this because it's present in every walk of life.
I mean, I've been essentially in the advertising industry all my life, one way or another.
You're evil.
Marketing or what have you.
So evil.
And when you got the complaints about how come every family is mixed race, how come, you know, coloured people are so incredibly overrepresented in every ad and every picture.
Can't I? Coloured people.
No?
I don't know.
No?
I don't know.
Well, I might have to edit this bit out.
Because I'm quite sensitive about these kind of things.
OK, don't be finished.
So you know what I'm getting at.
You're being racist.
And it's not because they've been told by any sort of briefing from their owners.
That this has got to be the case.
They'll go, we know there'll be complaints if we stick a white family in this ad.
Let's head off the complaint at the pass and we'll automatically put in mixed race couples and do our DEI thing without even being asked to do so because it makes for an easier life.
You know you're never going to get challenged on that.
So they do it automatically.
All the pictures of pop stars going...
And...
And...
Or...
What's the other one?
This one?
No, is it that one?
This...
See, people are going to do screen grabs.
Oh, of course they are.
Of course they are.
Of course they are.
They're so odd.
It's so boring.
But what people always say is, yeah, but...
It's just they do it because they've seen other people do it.
They're just rock photographers and they just want to get a funny different image for the cover and so on.
You think, yeah, right.
No, I think everyone is so well trained.
I do think a large percentage of it is just going to happen come what may.
Like the names.
And they do it for an easy life.
Okay.
I think Moffat will definitely know to want to do it anyway, won't he?
He doesn't need to be told.
He loves it.
Yeah.
Anyway, you were going to have it out with me.
I was.
About my appalling TV viewing.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
We talked about this, didn't we?
We talked briefly about this and we cut ourselves off saying, nope, save it for the pod.
Save my dressing down from Big Brother.
Yeah.
I had to write it down while I've been watching.
You said...
I've been watching Dune, and I was thinking, oh, that's a bit late to be watching the film by that man with the Spanish-y name, or the...
whatever his name was.
What was the man with the Spanish-y name?
The arthouse director who made the Dune movies.
The first one was quite good.
Well, I've watched them both.
And liked them.
You liked the crappy, romantic, sort of generic Hollywood plot?
No, it had big noises in it all the way through.
Now be a sandworm thing.
That's the noise that precedes the sandworm.
Yeah, now be a sandworm.
I'm gone oh dude That could be my new party piece.
That's really good.
That could replace my David Bowie as my new party piece.
No, no.
No, no.
Come on.
David Bowie Sandworm.
We mentioned gnomes earlier on.
You didn't...
I didn't do laughing gnome.
No.
Haven't you got a gnome to go to?
Didn't I teach you to get your hair cut at school?
You look like a rolling gnome.
How many people listening to this, without looking, know what the B-side to Laughing Gnome...
You and I do.
What's the B-side?
This is about a Christmas quiz.
What was the B-side to Laughing Gnome?
Anyone?
At the back there.
At the back there.
Gospel according to Tony Day.
Gospel according to Tony Day?
Yeah.
It's just...
That is...
Uber obscure, isn't it?
What was all that about?
That would be a pointless answer.
Yes, on Pointless.
Obviously, I wouldn't go on Pointless.
Not now.
No.
You loved it once.
If I did...
Anyway, I was going to say something really tasteless about the Christmas University Challenge, but I'm just not going to go there.
If you didn't see it, you didn't see it.
I don't watch any happening now TV, being licence free, which of course you can't be because your last remaining normie job is your TV stuff.
But look, Dune, Prophecy is what I was watching.
Dune, Prophecy.
And you know what?
It's fine.
It's, Dick, it is so bad.
How many episodes did you watch?
I got, I lasted as many, I think, as one and a half before I just thought.
Do you think that's really giving it a chance?
Yes, I do.
I think if a thing hasn't got itself, got its act together by episode one, by the end, then you know it's going to be unwatchable.
And it is.
It's, well, I said that by watching Dune, Prophecy.
You're doing the equivalent of watching late period only Fools and Horses where Del...
When Del Boy's got married and it's all become very boring and unfunny.
Yeah.
I think that was a cruel and unnecessary comment.
On the money.
Have you noticed...
Obviously you haven't noticed because you don't watch intelligently.
But when you watch Dune Prophecy...
The characters, there's lots of exposition.
And loads and loads of exposition.
You've got characters in a room talking about stuff and explaining what's going on.
You're still none the wiser at the end of it.
And at the end of it, this portentous music starts playing.
And the characters are kind of shown looking significant.
Like you're supposed to have been excited by what's happened.
And you're thinking, that was really boring.
Why am I being tricked into thinking I want something interesting?
Dune was always the kind of boring end of sci-fi.
It was kind of like the...
Have you read it?
Yeah.
Of course you have, yeah.
But as a teenager, I'm not going to be reading that sort of crap now, but it's got its own...
I mean, I think it even sort of...
Does it predate Star Wars?
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Aren't the Benny...
Is Benny Gesserit?
Yeah.
Are they not based on the Illuminati?
And isn't spice adrenochrome?
Ooh.
Is Frank Herbert that informed?
If you know the name.
Frank Herbert.
You think how many copies Dune sold?
More, I can tell you.
More even than the...
The revised edition of Watermelons, which is something like hotcakes, but it's not doing Dune numbers.
It still won't outstrip Dune.
No, it won't.
Maybe when they make the TV adaptation and you've got Travis Fimmel to play you, maybe.
Who's Travis Fimmel?
Do you know who I'm talking about?
He is the Australian actor who is playing exactly the same character that he plays in Vikings.
Yes.
In Raised by Wolves and in various other things that he's been in that I can't bring to mind right now.
He basically plays the same part and it's completely transferable roles as in sort of good-looking, ever-so-slightly psychopathic loner.
Oh.
And...
The dog...
The dog's shivering a lot.
Maybe it's what's feeding.
I don't know.
It's shivering more than it should be, I think.
Does that mean it's about to die or something?
We've worked out that your dog is over 12 years old now.
I know.
Should have a few years left in her yet, though.
Maybe she can hear her favourite uncle's voice.
Maybe.
I suppose with the dog hearing, you can hear through that.
Oh, see, that's where you're...
Of course, I forget that sort of thing.
No, it's not.
I think it...
Maybe it thinks it's feeding time and it's not.
Right.
They always think it's feeding time.
They do, don't they?
It's all dogs, is it?
They all think that.
I can't spend time in the house roundabout feeding time because I'm kind of maybe doom-scrolling on my phone and then my elbow will be flicked like this and it's Orca with her nose under my elbow flicking it up.
Very annoying.
Have we done...
Christmas yet.
I think there's possibly still one or two aspects of Christmas to cover.
I'll tell you what I got given by Boyd Ellingpole, actually, which is quite good.
It's a book about...
It was a huge...
Was it a bestseller?
Yeah, I think it was a bestseller.
In Russia in the 1880s.
And it's about the journeys of a pilgrim.
Do you know about this?
No.
Well, you'd like it.
We'll just keep it brief, because all the non-Christians are going, No!
Ah!
And their demon eyes, because they're all possessed, aren't they?
No!
He mentioned the name of the one we hate.
Jesus.
Yahshua.
Yahshua.
Well, maybe.
Maybe they're not.
Maybe they're just going, oh, just get on with it, get on with it.
Yeah, whatever.
So, I read the first book.
I mean, I say book.
They're very, very, the first section.
They're very, very small.
Only about six pages.
And it's this pilgrim.
Oh, I just lost you.
Have you?
And I just pressed the wrong button where you just spear off the screen.
He's a pilgrim and he's travelling.
Across Russia with nothing more than some dried crusts of bread tucked into his knapsack and his Bible.
And that's it.
And he's struck by the injunction of Paul to pray without ceasing.
And he's thinking, well, how do you do that?
How do you pray without ceasing?
What about when you're eating and when you're distracted by things?
So he keeps asking around.
And nobody gives him a satisfactory answer until he comes upon this monk who says, come back to the monastery and we'll have a talk about it.
And he says, pray without ceasing.
Well, there's this prayer, the Jesus prayer, the noetic prayer.
And so he tells him the Jesus prayer.
And he says, go home, go to your...
The pilgrim has found a hovel.
To live in for the summer.
He's given a job by a peasant of guarding his vegetable patch.
That's what he does.
He lifts in the hut and he's thinking, great!
Nice work if you can get it.
I'm so lucky.
I can live in a hut and watch vegetables and concentrate on prayer.
So that's what he does.
Following the monk's advice, he says the Jesus prayer 6,000 times.
He says, don't do any more.
Exactly 6,000 times.
And you'll start to feel that.
And he goes back to the monk and says, yeah, I think I'm getting there.
And the monk says, right, good.
Now you're there.
I mean, I'm paraphrasing, obviously.
The monk says...
No way.
This isn't paraphrasing, is it?
Go and do it 12,000 times.
And he describes that, the sort of wonderful, slightly aching feeling he gets from his, you know, his prayer, his prayer bracelet, whatever they're called, his prayer beads.
And, you know, this is sort of...
But I think, I quite like the way the Russian, I know I keep saying this, but the Eastern, the Orthodox are in touch with the sort of the mystical, Element.
You do like all things Russian literature as well, don't you?
Well, I do.
I do.
I do.
I'll tell you what I was bought, and it was by my good friend, and in fact a mutual friend of ours, Andy.
For Christmas, he bought me a beautiful old, my boyfriend, beautiful old edition of Imitation of Christ by Thomas Akempis.
Do you know the one?
Yes.
Yes.
It's a lovely, very, very old copy.
This particular edition is over 100 years old, and it's got something beautifully inscribed in the front.
Joanna from Cecily, or something like that, and a beautiful handwritten script, and Andy's rewritten the dedication to me in modern script, and there's a painful mismatch between how beautifully they used to write 100 years ago.
But the original dedication was, I think, 1901 or something like this.
But anyway, it's a lovely, lovely book, and I look forward to reading it.
Written in about 1400 or something, wasn't it?
I've just got it up on screen here, so I can...
Have you read it?
No.
It's one of those important books that Christians are supposed to read.
Oh, I'm sure.
I don't even know what he says.
So you can tell me in the next episode.
I can do highlights for you, can't I? You can.
I was going to crack an irreverent joke, you know, where...
What does this imitation of Christ sound like?
What does he do?
Yeah, and then you'll get me to add it to my list of impersonations.
I don't think the impersonation of Christ is going to be the same.
Yeah, I don't know.
Do you think...
I think God likes jokes, doesn't he?
Yeah, but probably not at Jesus' expense.
But if they're affectionate, if they're coming from a...
There might be a fine line.
Yeah, but I think we're quite good at judging that line, aren't we?
We'll certainly know when that bolt of lightning comes down and takes us out.
Yeah, yeah.
Thomas Akempis was 1418 to 14...
No, he didn't know.
It must have been written 1418, 1427. So, written in medieval Latin as De Imitatione Christi.
There you go.
Obviously.
Yeah, well, you must tell me how it is.
How it ends.
Yeah, well, there's books we haven't read.
St. Augustine, for example.
Yeah, I think that's another one that's definitely on the reading list.
I started reading this very, very dense biography of St. Augustine.
By Thingamajig, that historian that does in the footsteps of Alexander and writes a gardening column.
People will know who I mean.
And before he became a Christian, he was in this sect where they were obsessed with, they thought farts were holy, I think.
Ooh.
Yeah.
Farts were considered...
They ate beans.
Seriously, I'm not making this up.
St Augustine, I think, was also famous for saying, make me chaste, but not yet.
Right.
Okay, that's a good line.
Well, it's a fantastic line for all of us sort of struggling to...
Yeah.
I've got to tell you about my...
My terrible thing.
So, sort of, since before my event, which even though I sort of quite enjoyed, I wasn't feeling on top form.
And I think my problem has been that I had two falls of horses.
And I haven't been quite right.
And I'm rather getting the feeling that maybe my problems are related to that, that I'm feeling a bit kind of slow, sometimes a bit sort of unbalanced, and that I need to recover fully.
Before I do anything stupid again.
But what this means is that I won't be able to go hunting.
And I'm feeling really quite bereft.
I'm feeling like it's possible that I'll never go hunting again.
Because obviously we've got the Labour government trying to shut it down.
Part of me is thinking, well, just say sod it, just go and die, because it's a good way of, it's a truly good way of dying, coming off a horse in the hunting field and stuff.
But then I think, well, you wouldn't necessarily die.
You might just get horribly injured and that wouldn't be fun.
What's his name?
Superman.
Well, yeah, yeah, whatever, but...
What's she called?
It's...
I'm...
So, I've had a horrible Christmas.
A, because I've been feeling like everything has been...
Like, my head just feels like sludge.
Oh, and I can't...
One thing I've noticed is that when I drink, particularly when I drink...
Even the tiny amount.
I should have noticed this before, but I didn't quite put two and two together.
When I drink, it definitely makes things much, much worse.
That I don't get a good reaction.
It just makes me feel unsteady.
Even small amounts.
So I can't drink.
Coffee makes me feel rubbish as well.
Actually, cigarettes kind of don't particularly help, but I'm not going to give up everything.
So I'm basically off the booze.
Well, not that I'm a big drinker anyway, but I'm off any booze.
I'm supposed to be going to a party tonight, and they're going to be serving margaritas, and everyone's going to be, yeah, yeah, yeah.
And I won't even have that sort of initial buzz of having had a margarita.
I'll just be going, and what do I talk about?
I can't talk about horses or hunting because it's just too painful for me.
It's like...
There's another scene in the Russian peasant book where he's going along and he gets mugged by these two soldiers.
And they steal his rucksack, which has got in it his only possessions, his valuable possessions, his most treasured possessions, which are his Bible.
And his book of essays called The Philokalia, which means the love of good things, I think, in a collection of wisdom from saints through the ages.
And because he's a pilgrim and he's giving us a lesson, he says, well, this is all part of God's plan because God is teaching me to, I can't remember what God's teaching him, but...
Do with less.
Something or other.
And I'm thinking, I'd rather, I'd been rather hoping that God would see me through this hunting season and let me enjoy it as kind of one of my treats for all the other things that, you know, the good things I do.
Yeah, spreading the word and stuff.
But according to this Russian saint, A Russian pilgrim author.
I don't think he's anonymous.
He says, look, what God really wants is for all...
He wants to save all our souls.
And sometimes he does this stuff to you, allows things to happen to you, that are part of your journey.
And you've got to kind of suck it up and realise that there's a lesson in there somewhere.
But...
You can see why I'm feeling not really...
The thing that I love most in my life has been taken away from me.
And I'm a bit bereft.
I think you'll be getting very limited sympathy from a lot of people on this, though.
Well, no, but why?
Because everyone's got a thing they love.
Yeah, I think they'd have to put it in those terms, though, wouldn't they?
Well, they bloody well should have.
They're incapable of empathy or intelligent thought.
But you've just got to be grateful that God's not going to go full Job on you.
Well, he might do.
That's always the danger, isn't it?
He might do.
I don't think I'm quite ready for that.
I don't think Job would have been, but somehow he was.
I couldn't do the Job.
I wouldn't have behaved like Job did.
I'd fold immediately.
It's a bit like somebody saying to you, you can never wear a military uniform again at a reenactment weekend.
You wouldn't be going, yeah, fine, whatever.
I suppose, yeah.
I suppose it's putting it in those terms.
I will have to face that moment at some point, though.
I've sworn off it when I turned 60. We'll see whether I keep to that.
But at least that's...
When it's your decision, it's not so...
When it's just kind of random fate, I think it's a bit...
Yeah, well, you've just got to get over one concussion before you give yourself the next, I suppose.
Yeah, that was a problem.
Yeah.
So, that's why I'm going to be really fun at this party tonight, aren't I? You are, aren't you?
I'm going to be great.
Especially if you're known as possibly as being someone interesting to have along to their party.
Who would you have along to your ideal party?
Well, James Dellingpole would be good.
I don't know whether people say that anymore.
I mean, I think people who...
I went to the spa the other day and I was just walking to the sauna and this woman called from the swimming pool.
James?
Is that James?
I said, yeah, hi, sorry.
I didn't recognise you.
What's your name again?
And she said, no, you don't know me.
You don't know me.
I just happened to be a guest of the spa and I spotted you.
So those, her name was Helen, that those sort of people would obviously, they would like me at their party because I could talk about all the kind of rubbish that I talk about, you know, of interest to people who are down the rabbit hole.
But I think, I'm not sure that Normies really value my presence at their parties anymore because they know that it's, he used to be James Dellingpole.
He used to be a top journalist.
And now...
We can't talk to him anymore because he's one of those...
What is your sounding out patter for working out whether people are sound?
What's your entry-level probing question?
Obviously, where are you on dinosaurs?
Hey, look!
Look!
Look!
Ta-da!
Do you think that's...
You ought to sell those, Dick.
I should do, shouldn't I? At delingpolestudio.com.
They're nearly sold out, actually.
I've sold quite a few at our podcast live do.
I've got to do a reprint.
Maybe a different dinosaur.
I'm still shocked that you don't think people should sympathise with the fact that I can't go.
Go and go hunting.
No, I just think you've got one of the most controversial hobbies going.
I know you don't kill foxes or anything like that.
I'm not having that.
I wrote a whole substat essay on this.
Yeah, and I read it.
It was very good.
The world is run by Satanists and you care about fox hunting.
You're worried about fox hunting.
And for me, you don't need to read the piece.
That says it all.
I get it, but...
I can also see it's almost a bit of an eye roll that, oh, I don't get to go fox hunting.
I mean, even taking aside the controversial nature of it, it's a really you thing.
But I don't think people quite understand just how much it means to you.
Well, they bloody do now, don't they?
Well, yes, they do.
I don't see...
Well, how can you listen to my podcast and not know that I'm into fox hunting?
You corrected me on calling it fox hunting.
You meant to just call it hunting, aren't you?
Yeah, sorry, hunting.
Yeah, we don't hunt foxes, obviously.
Yeah.
Well, I don't know.
I think, like, love me, love hunting.
Don't love hunting, don't love me.
That's it.
Love me, love reenactment.
Yeah, exactly.
So, on a jollier note, what can we find on a jollier note?
Because I can't think of anything.
I mean, I'm just thinking just...
What last year, this ending year has brought me, apart from...
The best friends I've made all my life, certainly the last four year friends have been so much better than the ones I've ditched previously.
Back to that whole, I wouldn't have actually had the fake pandemic any other way when it comes to what I've learned and who I am now after all of this.
One of the best things has been discovering that I love playing the bass and I'm in a band and I've got gigs lined up.
I've got potentially gigs down in Bridport.
Where's that Narnia place in Devon?
Twinned with Narnia.
Devon.
Totnes.
Potential gig in Totnes.
And a festival next year.
So I've got all of these exciting things lined up.
It makes me very, very happy.
It's one of the most positive things I've found lately.
I love playing in a band.
So, there's my positive note to finish on.
Unregistered chickens on tour.
Right.
Well...
Maybe you should get an instrument under your wing.
No, I'm going to...
I'm probably going to follow up Graham in the church who does the bell ringing.
Oh, that'd be good.
He's going to give me a bell ring lesson, which would be good, but it's not going to be the same as jumping over hedges on a horse.
No, but I think that's a really good thing for you to investigate.
Do take pictures and stuff.
Oh.
Yeah.
Did you wonder what I was doing then for a moment?
I did.
I got there in the end.
It was campanology.
It's second to your sandworm impersonation, which I still think is the highlight of this podcast.
Yeah, you'll have to find out for me, and I'm sure for many others, how the hell you get the bells to play in order when the pulling on the rope is so detached from the noise that they make.
Yeah, I'm hoping also that being exposed to the sound of the bells will get rid of any demons around the neighbourhood.
Yeah, hopefully it won't cause you tinnitus or anything like that.
No, no, no.
You know about bells, don't you?
About getting rid of the vibrations.
No, is that what they do?
Oh, dick.
This is a whole new rabbit hole that you've got.
Yeah.
Demons don't like church bells.
Oh, it's more than that.
It seems that the Second World War was used as an excuse to gather up all the bells in the guise of melting them down for ammunition.
Right.
Which was never a thing.
A bit like iron railings to make spitfires out of aluminium.
They didn't like the...
The vibrations of the bells, the Kazarians or whatever.
I've seen a lot of stuff online about bells worldwide sort of being removed and hidden in bell graveyards and resonances and things like that.
I was thinking about this.
What in the old days did every house have, or at least...
Vaguely affluent household have in their house.
Bells to call the maid.
Well, that, yes, good point.
But I'm thinking more in the time-telling direction.
Grandfather clock.
Yeah, and what do they do?
Chime every hour.
Exactly.
We no longer get chimes.
What?
You see, we never thought about it when we had them.
We never sort of said, why is that clock chiming?
But I think that that may have been part of it.
Because obviously the chime is created by the vibration of some kind of bell thing, isn't it?
Yeah.
So it sends a particular frequency.
Well, I shall investigate further.
Before we go, the thing that I also want to investigate more is...
Did you listen to my Nathan thing?
I'm as Emma, way behind.
I shall catch up when I get back to work.
So, he told me about his life as an Illuminati assassin, but I neglected to ask him about the most interesting thing, which is the healing power...
Of linen.
Do you know about this?
No.
Well, every fabric has its own frequency.
And the ones, as I understand it, with the most beneficial frequencies are linen and wool.
I bet silk is good as well.
Because those worms.
Anything made by...
Nature.
Silkworms has got to be good, hasn't it?
Well, where does cotton come into it?
Yeah, not as good.
Not nearly.
Well, you think about it.
Think about the cotton trade and cotton...
You don't have to get slaves to pick it.
Mass production and stuff.
What about the poor silkworms?
So, linen has...
Apparently one of the things he does is he goes around buying up linen and sending it off to...
People so that they can be healed by it.
Right.
Well, this will explain why hippies have always been into hemp and linen, and they always wear a lot of it.
Absolutely.
I'm just going to check what this shirt is made of, because if it is wool, I suppose at least it's not...
I mean, having something next to your skin that is a bad...
Fabric is obviously not a good start.
I hope it's not synthetic.
Phew.
What?
100% Len.
All right, there you go.
But it does, as I say, although the...
Unlike you not to have checked the label beforehand.
I know.
Well, I assumed it was an expensive French shop called...
Called, what does it say?
Octobre.
Oh, no.
That's not the name of the shop.
It's a shop that girls like at the moment.
Cezanne, it's called.
Cezanne.
Do you know what that would go well with?
My pantalon fantastique.
I was thinking about your pantalon fantastique.
Oh, by the way, one more thing.
We went to see the Van Gogh.
Exhibition.
And I don't know whether it's just my state of mind, but my take on Van Gogh is that I really don't like him after he goes really mad.
You know, the sort of the starry, starry night, when he does the cypress trees, all those sort of curly...
I really don't like those.
We're taught about his descent into madness and how it's reflected in his increasingly mad paintings.
So, yeah.
And why do we have to see that?
I like his earliest.
I like the colours.
Yeah, because he's the classic tortured artist, isn't it?
Yeah, but why are we sort of encouraged to celebrate that?
To see the artist as some sort of savant?
Yeah, the poet Modi.
Yeah.
Which I've never quite got.
I've never understood why, just because you've got some sort of God-given talent to make daubs, that you should also be gifted with the ability to discern what's going on in life.
It's an odd double gift, and I don't think everyone's got it.
Yeah, I suppose it's just a sort of gut thing.
I find myself feeling really queasy in the last room where you just get the really mad stuff.
And you're thinking, no, go back to your earlier style.
I mean, you only had about two years painting by the looks of it.
At least judging by this exhibition.
I didn't even know it was on, so I've very much lost touch with the art world, especially being out here in the sticks.
Yeah.
No, well, I wouldn't even bother with this stuff if I didn't have it.
I've had to spend most of my life unlearning what I learned at art college, you know, being told that postmodernism is the dog's bollocks rather than a load of bollocks.
Rather than a CIA invention.
Yeah.
So, you know, I've got to undo my own brainwashing.
Right.
I'm now going to make a white sauce to go with the fish pie that we're going to have tonight as a sort of reaction against all the kind of Christmas food we've had.
Right, fish pie sounds good.
I wish I could eat fish pie.
It's anti-Christmas, isn't it?
But with my largely vegetarian household, I've got to go out and buy some button mushrooms to go into my chickpea and mushroom curry that I'm making tonight.
Right.
Just be grateful you're not in my household.
Um...
Yes.
Um...
Well, that's it.
We've done our Christmas thing now.
We'd better go out soon, otherwise people won't get the context.
Apart from the second bit where it gets a bit depressing, but there we are.
So, thank you everybody.
Happy New Year.
Happy smile to finish.
Happy New Year.
And, yeah.
See you next year.
Well, that should be this year by the time they watch it.
Really?
Yeah.
Maybe not.
Of course it will.
There's still a boring weekend at home and a couple of days before the new year.
Not very much.
Yeah, they'll be watching it.
I imagine most people will watch this in the new year and they'll be going, what are they talking about?
It's already happened.
Yeah.
Moxer.
Right.
See you, Dick.
Right, bye.
Bye.
Global warming is a massive con.
There is no evidence whatsoever that man-made climate change is a problem, that it's going to kill us, that we need to amend our lifestyle in order to deal with it.
It's a non-existent problem.
But how do you explain this stuff to your normie friends?
Well, I've just brought out the revised edition to my 2012 classic book.
Watermelons, which captures the story of how some really nasty people decided to invent the global warming scare in order to fleece you, to take away your freedoms, to take away your land.
It's a shocking story.
I wrote it, as I say, in 2011 actually, the first edition came out, and it's a snapshot of a particular era.
The era when...
The people behind the climate change scan got caught red-handed, tinkering with the data, torturing till it screamed in a scandal that I helped christen ClimateGate.
So I give you the background to the skullduggery that went on in these seats of learning where these supposed experts were informing us, we've got to act now.
I rumbled their scan.
I then asked the question, OK, if it is a scan...
Who's doing this and why?
It's a good story.
I've kept the original book pretty much as is, but I've written two new chapters, one at the beginning and one at the end, explaining how it's even worse than we thought.
I think it still stands up.
I think it's a good read.
Obviously, I'm biased, but I'd recommend it.
you can buy it from jamesdellingpole.co.uk forward slash shop you'll probably find that one just go to my website and look for it jamesdellingpole.co.uk and I hope it helps keep you informed and gives you the material you need to bring round all those people who are still persuaded that oh it's a disaster we must amend our ways and appease the gods appease Mother God There we go.
