Featuring James and Dick Delingpole.
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↓ ↓ How environmentalists are killing the planet, destroying the economy and stealing your children's future.
In Watermelons, an updated edition of his ground-breaking 2011 book, JD tells the shocking true story of how a handful of political activists, green campaigners, voodoo scientists and psychopathic billionaires teamed up to invent a fake crisis called ‘global warming’.This updated edition includes two new chapters which, like a geo-engineered flood, pour cold water on some of the original’s sunny optimism and provide new insights into the diabolical nature of the climate alarmists’ sinister master plan.Purchase Watermelons (2024) by James Delingpole here: https://jamesdelingpole.co.uk/Shop/Products/Watermelons-2024.html↓ ↓ ↓
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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 screened, 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 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 it's a disaster, we must amend our ways and appease the gods, appease Mother God.
There we go.
It's a scam.
I love Denny Pole.
Go and subscribe to the podcast, baby.
I love Denny Pole.
Now listen to another time.
Subscribe with me.
Welcome to The Deli Pond with me, James Deli Pond.
And I know I always say I'm excited about this week's special guest, but...
Oh no!
No!
No!
Have you seen what the price of gold has been doing recently?
It's been going bonkers.
And I hate to say, I told you so.
But I did kind of tell you so.
But if it's any consolation, even though I do have some gold and bought some a while back, I didn't buy nearly enough.
It's like when you go to the casino and you win on 36 and you only put down a fiver and you think, why didn't I put down 50?
If you've got that feeling that you haven't got enough gold, or if you haven't got any gold and you really feel you ought to get some, the place to go is the pure Gold company.
They sell gold bullion and silver bullion in the form of coins or in the form of bars which you can either store in London or in Switzerland or you can have it delivered to your own home if you can work out where to store the stuff.
I think that gold, what do I know?
I mean, I'm no expert, but I've been right so far.
I think gold and silver right now are maybe even more so silver, actually, because silver, I think, has yet to take off.
Just my opinion.
I'm not a financial advisor.
I reckon that it's worth holding both of them at the moment.
And you don't want them, of course, you don't want to buy paper gold.
You don't want to buy paper silver.
You don't want to buy...
You want to buy the actual physical thing.
Go to the Pure Gold Company and you will be put in touch with one of their advisors.
And they will talk you through the process, which you want to do, whether you want to have it in bullion or in coins.
I mean, the advantage to having coins because coins are considered, well, Britannia is anyway, are considered legal tender, which means that you don't pay tax.
Weirdly this, but even my accountant didn't know this.
You don't pay tax at the moment on your profits.
Go to the Pure Gold Company.
They will talk you through all these things and follow the link.
Follow the link below this podcast and it will give you all the details.
Go to the Pure Gold Company and they will give you what you need, be it gold or silver.
Do it before it goes up even more.
I think you'd be mad not to.
Was that just about the worst possible start imaginable?
Well, what happened?
Because I've lost you completely.
And I'm now here eating a cream egg brownie.
I was going to say, what are you eating?
Cre...
It's appalling behaviour.
Cre...
Dick...
I thought you were aware by now that Cadbury's products are basically...
Cancer with a bit of cacao in it.
Well, these are beautiful homemade cakes from my friends who run a cake stall in Worcester.
And occasionally they plant things like chunks of cream egg inside their cake.
So it's almost like a little bit of evil wrapped up in goodness.
So that's what I'm going for.
It's a bit like life, except the other way round.
Life is very much like that.
I was watching a film last night, which I still can't decide whether I liked or whether I thought it was really a bit twee and vomit-inducing.
It was directed by Jim Jarmusch, and he's the director of one of my favourite films, Ghost Dog.
Have you seen Ghost Dog?
I think I have, but I can't remember at all about it.
I just remember watching something, because we use the expression ghost-dogging, don't we?
I don't know if it's from that film.
You like to go dogging.
I think that's what it is.
It's not the same.
It's not the same thing?
So, yeah, Ghost Dog is good.
It's samurai.
I mean, like, it's in contemporary America, but it's got samurai in it or something, or killing, or...
I can't remember what happens, but it's good.
Pigeons, I think.
But this one I saw was called Patterson.
And it's got Adam Drive.
I find it really hard to watch anything where you're not aware that you're being programmed.
It makes it even more fun now to try and work out what the programming is, because even if it doesn't look like it's there, it probably is.
Once you've worked out the programming, though, then you want to stop watching, don't you, really?
You don't want to be carrying on being programmed.
Well...
I don't know.
I think if you're aware of it, that's it.
You've already undone the programming.
I watched something horribly normie the other night.
Now, it's a bit like my having enjoyed Reacher and you having ruined it for me by coming out with a completely brilliant essay about why Reacher is possibly worse than some of the other things on TV that we think about.
Yeah.
And I think that last season of Reacher was just...
Shite.
I think they must have had different writers on.
There was no lightness of touch at all.
If the idea of Reacher and lightness of touch could possibly go together.
So this thing I was watching the other night, you'll have heard of it and you'll be horrified that I watched it.
But we struggled to find half-hour programmes and this fitted the bill.
It's something called Last Man Laughing.
Oh no, I watched it.
I reviewed it.
Oh, have you now?
I did.
Okay, so I don't even need to explain what it was then.
No, and I enjoyed it.
Good, because I enjoyed it, but I played the game of what are they making us do here?
Yeah.
Have you had a go with that one as well?
No, tell me.
You're going to outgames me here.
Well, you might poo-poo it.
I might be completely off track here, but I think they're demonising laughter.
They're controlling us so much that the idea that the one thing we've got left is to laugh and joke about things is now being, you're either just made acutely aware of it, or it's just being, be ready for it to be outlawed.
And Jimmy Carr is going to be the one that tells you you're not allowed to laugh.
No, I think you're not so far off beam.
And if you listen to my podcasts, which you used to do in the old days, remember we used to talk about them.
But now you don't watch my podcast anymore because you're too busy.
You're too busy rehearsing.
I'm just catching up.
I want to talk to you about that American guy and one or two others.
I'm always getting there, but I'm always playing catch-up.
So carry on.
We're back on Last Man Laughing.
So I did a podcast with Alastair Williams.
Yeah.
Which was very interesting.
That's very recent.
So, you know, I'm not going to have been there yet.
No, no.
I bet it's not even on general release yet.
I bet it's still on Special Lover.
Oh, maybe, but you're on the guest list, Dick.
Yeah, yeah.
So, that's no excuse.
But anyway, Alistair was saying that, yes, what they really, really don't want you to be doing, if you're a comedian, is comedy.
And you think about it, that...
All this coterie of sort of house stars, of establishment stars, which are going to get bought up by the BBC.
Are they doing stand-up shows around the country?
Not mainly.
What they're doing is they're appearing on panel shows.
They're sort of being slightly funny, but they're within the constraint of a format.
And the reason for that is...
Rather, as you're suggesting here, that laughter's dangerous.
They don't want you laughing at them.
They don't want you talking about things that don't make sense.
And that's what comedians are supposed to do, and they've almost stopped them doing it.
Yeah, and the comedy comes from watching people trying not to laugh at things that we know are funny.
Yeah.
You've got to hate Jimmy Carr.
He's establishment through and through, isn't he?
And the set and the slickness of the whole operation, the Big Brother House format of it, everything about it, it just makes me want to puke.
And yet it's really compulsive viewing.
I liked the naughty-taughty moment.
Yes.
That was the funniest bit.
I can't remember what Naughty Taughty was from.
Holding up their end in comedy.
Well, it's ideal for them because they haven't got to be funny at this point.
No, no, no.
They operate in a different way.
They can just be devious.
Which, let's face it, is what they're really, really good at.
It's what they're so good at!
Yeah.
They're so good at deviousness and relying on the fact that we feel slightly sorry for them because they're girls.
They completely play on the sort of, oh, I'm just a little girly.
I'm not going to do very well at this.
And then they ruthlessly take out the competition one by one.
It doesn't change, does it?
You've got to admire it.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Well, that's why it was all Eve's fault.
I don't think at any point Adam was going to be tempted by the snake.
He was quite happy with his gardening job.
He was.
Talking of gardening, I think I've got gardening poisoning.
Because I have been doing, because of this unnatural weather, this natural seeming weather that they've deigned to allow us this last month.
It's been weird, hasn't it?
It's been like a...
It's like when the 7th Cavalry go into this...
Canyon.
And the sergeant says it's quiet.
Too quiet.
Yeah.
It's like that, isn't it?
They're giving us this nice weather.
Something bad is going to happen.
All the crickets have stopped chirping in the jungle.
The cicadas.
Yeah.
Charlie's about to attack.
And it's going to be so bad, you're going to have to call down your artillery on your own position and just retreat to the bunkers and hope that...
Some bit, yeah.
What was I saying?
Because of this nice weather, you see, I remember vividly last year.
Last year, it was absolutely pissing it down around this time.
And I remember it because the snails went mad, and the slugs to a degree.
And they took out all the irises.
And as the irises were coming into, they're about to flower.
The slugs and snails would nip the stem and they'd just like...
And you'd think, that would have been a beautiful iris.
I hate you, snails.
But it was so wet and horrible, you weren't tempted to go out and deal with them.
Same with the bindweed.
The bindweed went mental last year.
Yeah, I remember.
This year, the weather is saying...
Come on out and garden, James.
Come and do some more gardening games.
Look, there's another job for you, and another, and another.
And you listen to the voice of the gardening son, and you obey it.
And the result is you get gardening poisoning, which is what I've got.
I've just got...
It's bad.
What, from the chemicals they've been putting in the sky?
No, just from excess of gardening.
Too much of anything is bad.
That's definitely a thing.
It never ends.
I tell you, it never ends.
You know why you've got to do yet more gardening?
It's because God wants you to be a gardener.
That's what we are.
We are meant to be tending the Garden of Eden in complete harmony with nature forevermore.
But yeah, back to Eve.
Thanks, Eve.
Thanks a lot.
Since you bring up God, happy Easter.
Well, it is Good Friday today.
Happy Easter.
Can we say that?
Well, I'm not sure whether you can say Happy Good Friday, because it's kind of like a pretty...
I know it's meant to be spectacularly good ultimately, but it's a pretty grim day for Jesus.
Do you know William Shatner asked that very question on Twitter today?
What, can you say Happy Good Friday?
Did he?
Yeah.
Is Shatner a yes or a no in the yes-no game?
He's an actor.
And he's part of Star Trek.
He was part of one of the great evils.
The Satanic Psy-Op.
Written by a Satanist, Gene Roddenberry.
I do know that much.
And who's that awful one who played the Oriental officer who's an absolute plague on Twitter?
Yes, I forget.
Sulu.
Sulu.
Yeah, that's what he was on.
He's awful.
Terrible.
But they're all terrible, probably.
Yeah.
Yeah.
This is why we don't do the yes-no game anymore.
No, we don't.
It's just no or shades of no.
No, no, no, no, no, no.
No, no, no, no.
Maybe.
Possibly on a good day.
Just.
Yeah, just.
But no.
Basically, no.
No, actually, it'd be quite good to have a revive, sort of a nostalgia version.
Yeah.
I wonder if someone's got a list of who was once a yes, but who's now a no.
Have they?
Your friend Mr Murray springs to mind.
He's been very much talked about lately.
Well, he did rather show his colours.
Do you remember the last time I had him on the podcast and he got a special...
Sorry, he went Dalek for a moment then.
The last time he was on the podcast, which was about three or four years ago, He rejected his special friend back.
I was there.
We were filming it live in London.
Remember?
And we went down to spend some time with that friend who had a yacht in St Catherine's Dock.
Oh, yeah.
That was at the same weekend.
And we were on the Tube, enjoying being naughty and maskless, where you could still get a little thrill from doing that.
Yeah.
But yes, I remember him then.
And I was a little bit taken aback by...
His refusal to take the special friend badge, that should have been a tell, shouldn't it?
He knew something that we didn't know.
Yeah.
I wonder if he was told, see if he can get Dellingpole on board, one last chance before we completely throw him under a bus, but, you know, it'd be good if you could turn him.
It's, do you know what, it's one of the reasons why I don't like seeing my old friends.
In case they're going to try and turn me.
In case they're going to make me an offer.
Dear boy, come and join the dark side.
I think you'll like the money and you'll like the young children and the eternal youth that we can give you through Adrenochrome.
Come and join us.
They'll take you up to a high place and show you the world that you could have.
And it's not that I'd genuinely be tempted.
I would just feel embarrassed about the overture.
Like when someone makes a pass at you and you just don't fancy them, you're never going to fancy them.
And you start to say, look, sorry, I'm just not interested.
I'm just not into you that way.
I'm not into Satan.
He's the bad guy.
Do you not get it?
Do you think, I wanted to check, who do you think Jesus loves more at the moment, you or me?
Um...
Um...
*shrie*
Um...
Dunno, on a day like this, I would like to take the high ground that it's you, brother, to surely you, because I'm just a miserable sinner.
Yeah, that's quite a good answer, because I was going to say, it's a trick question.
Because...
Well, I go to the bit leading up to the trip because, you know, now you've gone and ruined it.
Yeah, well, don't set me trapped like that.
I'm getting good at this.
You know you're Christian.
You're good.
You're good.
I went to a Stations of the Cross service.
Right, they're good, those.
It was great.
It was really enjoyable.
And how it happened, I hadn't been planning it.
I mean, one ought to, but I haven't yet got so committed that I go to the church in the week as well, even in Holy Week.
But I was at the Palm Sunday service, and this woman in front of me at the end of the service looked round and said, can you do one of the readings on Friday?
And I said, well, I have to consult my...
Diary to see whether...
I said, look, just turn up for the reading and then you can go if you want.
And I thought, yeah, okay, all right, yeah, yeah.
So anyway, I got roped in to do it because they needed eight readers.
Because each station of the cross had a reader.
And it was really good.
So we trooped around the church to the various stations, which consisted of a poster on the wall of Jesus, you know, or an image of...
Summoning up parts of the crucifixion.
And it does make you think about the different moments.
Like when they offer him that sort of vinegar on the sponge.
And the bit where they're trying to catch him out.
Are you the son of God or not?
And the Simon of Cyrene.
Simon of Cyrene.
Which, sadly, the boy reading it pronounced Cyrene, and I was thinking, oh, I could have helped you there, mate.
I should have had a word.
A lot of Catholic churches have the Stations of the Cross as permanent pieces of the architecture.
Yes.
They're built in as plaques, and you start to notice these things if you've ever done it the once.
And they're all around the church, aren't they?
You have to move around the church to see them as a group.
So did you do the Stations of the Cross today?
No, I didn't.
Yeah.
I had too much on.
That's the thing, you see, and that's why I was going to say, even though you might think that because I went, I did the Good Friday service, that Jesus might love me more, but no, he loves a sinner.
Well, a repentant sinner.
Yeah, but technically that doesn't mean we should be encouraged to sin because he loves a sinner.
That's what the Sabbatean Frankists thought, isn't it?
That actually when you do evil, it's good because it...
Yeah, that's just twisted logic, isn't it?
I think it says somewhere that once you've woken up to it, that's when the sinning is off the cards.
I think you can be forgiven your previous sins, but if you just carry on sinning, knowing that they'll be forgiven, that's kind of cheating.
I'm sure it says that somewhere.
If it doesn't, it should.
It's...
It's hard, though, because then you start asking, well, hang on a second, how much more stuff have I got to give up?
Do I have to become a monk?
What's the deal here?
I still think a lot about how much I enjoy being a monk.
By the time you get to our age, you've given up most of the really good stuff anyway.
So it's not like I'm going to miss raving and getting completely off my face.
So I don't know.
I think when you put on the habit and you get to walk around all monk-like and do monkish things, I think that would be pretty cool.
Yes, but you know what?
What?
I was reading a passage about this only last night.
The Way of a Pilgrim, which you've got to get your love Way of a Pilgrim.
It was this massive bestseller in Russia in the 1880s and this pilgrim character goes and talks about the Jesus prayer and the importance of prayer without ceasing and how you do it and stuff.
There's a scene at the end Where somebody says something very similar to what you've said.
They say, I'd love to become a hermit.
They're really fancy living in the woods and being a hermit and just concentrating on...
Just being on your own and everything.
And another character says, well, you know, there's a...
I paraphrase, obviously.
There's a danger here.
There's a danger that you could have a sort of surfeit of...
I forget what the concern was, but it was that it...
It wouldn't necessarily be good for you.
And then they argue about this, about whether it would be good for you or not.
But yes, I agree.
It's tempting.
Although apparently, according to another podcast you haven't listened to, one of my favorites, actually, my favorite recent ones, was with a guy who was a hermit.
Orthodox.
He was a hermit in Shropshire for many years.
He's called Aidan.
And he is an icon painter.
And he'd been a monk on Athos, which is another of my ambitions.
And I said, so what's it like?
And he said, oh, it's really hard, spiritual warfare.
Gosh.
Yeah.
So what sort of stuff does he have to put up with every day?
He didn't go into detail, but...
Is he under constant demonic attack?
I think that was the idea, that it's...
You think lots of olive oil, organic, and wholesome food and prayer and fasting and psalms and incense and the Spirit, the Holy Spirit.
But I think it's...
That's the romantic side of it.
Gregorian chant.
Well, I don't know whether...
Do they do Gregorian chants, the Orthodox?
No, but the order that I would join would.
Would they?
We'd probably do it all the time.
It would probably be our thing.
I was saving this for you, Dick.
What?
Do you know what I've started doing?
Bell ringing.
I thought, I'm really glad we established that that was bell ringing before you did the mime.
LAUGHTER *laughter* It's quite dangerous.
Yeah?
I mean, not as dangerous as hunting, I would say.
Whether the bell comes down on your head?
No, I think the bells are quite secure in the bell phase, as we experts call the bell.
The bells are quite secure.
I went up the bell tower the other day to look at one set of bells and, yeah, I mean, and unfortunately I failed to cover my ears before the chap could pull the thing to show me how the bells worked.
Yeah.
And it is quite deafening.
Can you imagine being stuck up there on a parachute in, where was it?
In The Longest Day.
Yeah, but what's the bit called where the 82nd Airborne landed?
Um, yeah.
Church of...
St. Mary Glees.
Yeah, St. Mary Glees.
There you go.
Yeah.
Yeah, Tinnitus would be the least of the worries.
But did they ring the bells when he was up there?
I don't think they did.
They did in the film.
Yeah, well, they would, wouldn't they, in the film?
The film is a lie.
All film is a lie.
As is history.
Imagine the circumstance in which they...
I don't know.
Did you know that you don't...
I haven't had a bell lesson this week.
Do you know why?
You've gone Dalek again.
Sorry.
All viewers, by the way, won't understand because this will have gone out completely smooth to you, but we're getting occasional bouts of bad communication.
So start again.
I have not had a bell lesson this week.
Do you know why?
A holy week.
Yeah.
You don't ring bells on Holy Week.
Right.
Apparently.
So we'll hear the bells again on Easter Sunday, which will be good.
But I won't be ringing them, Dick.
Do you know why?
You're reading?
You're attending the service?
No, I'm not good enough.
You've got guests.
It's...
That was a rubbish answer.
Yeah, but it's an accurate one.
Yes, okay.
And plausible.
Because it's...
So there's the...
There's two strokes.
There's a sort of...
You pull it down with one and then you sort of stop it and then...
I still don't understand how it works.
It's the stopping that makes the clacker go, isn't it?
Yeah, I think so.
Or one of them.
Because there are two separate motions and...
I should imagine it's very satisfying when you get a perfect peal, when you're at a full-size cathedral and there's several bells in there and you get them to go in the right order.
It must be quite entrancing.
Well, obviously I'm hoping that by Christmas I'm good enough to join in.
I think it's quite a thing that people do.
And then once you've got the skill, you go around to other people's churches.
There's this whole side life to the ecclesiastical world, isn't there?
I mean, I'm starting to learn a little bit about how the choirs work.
I mean, they're all...
The choirs, it's a full-time job.
They're paid choristers and, you know, they've got to rehearse.
They've got to do several services a day sometimes.
And they go round visiting other cathedrals and what have you.
I've told you how I like Evensong on a Sunday, and you get to sit within the choir stalls, and the choir come in and do their bit.
And it's everything from the kids from the local choir school, which in our case is Kings Worcester.
And then the adults are obviously drawn from professionals within society, in the surrounding area.
But they're all top-notch singers, and they've all got to be able to read sheet music.
And, you know, they've got to be able to knock out a psalm at a moment's notice.
And one assumes at some point they're spending time together rehearsing.
None of that can come cheap if the cathedral's got to pay for a full-time choir.
And that's just one of the choirs they have.
So you've got them.
You've got your bell ringers.
You've got all the volunteers, like the ladies who do the flowers, which, incidentally, our aunt is one of them.
Auntie Sheila does flowers at Worcester, I think, or used to.
So, there's a whole world, like there always would have been throughout history, revolving around keeping the cathedral running.
So, it's a fascinating world.
Well, it's the same with the churches, isn't it?
That it's basically the volunteers who are the lifeblood of the church, and then you've got the hangers-on, the officers, the officer class, the bishops, and the functionaries.
No.
No, I mean, all are vicars.
They're not called vicars, are they?
No, they're inevitably...
It's a bit like crows and rooks.
If you call them one, they're probably the other, but most of the time they're not vicars, are they?
They're rectors or canons or whatever.
We can't get a vicar.
No one wants to do it.
You don't qualify.
We're too rural, too...
Right.
Whatever.
But so, yeah, and it's just done by volunteers.
You know, the woman who badgered me to do the reading, the verger, all these people that just work so hard because they believe in it, despite the structure, despite the system, which is...
I mean, who'd want to work when your CEO was somebody like Justin Welby?
You wouldn't want to work for such an organisation.
But luckily, the church exists despite the people running it.
Yeah.
Well, sadly, my big ally within the church died the other day.
No.
A lovely man called John Paul, who...
Died suddenly the other day.
You know, I told you about my friendly vicar within the cathedral who does the singing, you know, does the responses with the choir.
He died?
Yep.
But the chap that you had a beer with?
Yep.
Gutted I was.
Just absolutely out of the blue.
How old was he?
Just at the age of 50. You didn't tell me this.
I thought I'd mentioned it.
So I'll never get to meet him.
It's dreadful.
No.
He had a young daughter as well.
I know she was at the age you do scouts, because when he had a drink with me, he'd dropped her off at scouts while he came to have a quick pint and exchange a few thoughts with me.
But he was well into the idea that I was doing Thursday Circle and things like that.
He was the one who persuaded me to come along to Evensong, and now we've lost another good man.
Very, very sad.
Did you ever...
Address.
Yes, it's a big subject.
Yeah.
And I think it was part...
I mean, obviously, I don't want to upset his family should this ever be thrust in front of them.
So, fair to say that, yes, he was.
So, we can speculate away.
Well, of course he was.
I mean, that's...
Because they were all under such pressure to do so.
What, even the church people were?
Yeah.
Yeah, obviously it's your duty to your parishioners to take it.
Oh dear.
Yeah.
Remember why I didn't go to my local church?
When I tried the church in St. John's, when I was first getting into the whole idea that I should be returning to church, and I had to sit through a sermon about the evils of the anti-vaxxers.
Did you?
I've forgotten about that.
I couldn't get out of the church quick enough.
I got up and walked out immediately after the sermon.
I thought, this is really not it.
This is not working for me.
If I've got to sit through this.
And it was a sermon on lies.
The theme of the sermon was lies.
And he was talking about the lies of Vladimir Putin and the lies of the anti-vaxxers.
Wow!
I wonder what's become of him.
I wonder whether he's some...
Yeah.
He may have gone, suddenly.
I mean, not that I'm wishing it on him, necessarily.
No, but this is the problem, isn't it?
You kind of, like, old me might have wished it, but obviously you wouldn't wish it on your very worst enemy, and there's too much of it about.
And we're always too polite.
To point it out, aren't we?
We're always...
I've got a very good friend who's terribly vax-injured at the moment from his flu jab.
And me and his son are both saying, "What the hell were you thinking?" And he just said, "Well, they said flu was going to be really bad this year." I said, "Who is they?" And he said, "Well, I don't know, everyone." And I know what it was.
He keeps Radio 4 on.
Throughout the day in his house, like a lot of old people do, the wireless.
You know, it's that comforting burbling along in the background.
And you end up taking it in.
You end up believing it.
You do!
And what you said just there is so accurate and apposite.
I don't know everyone.
That's exactly how it is.
They can't...
No one's ever challenged as to who is the they in this.
They say this and that.
Well, have a think about who they is.
Well, the newspaper, yeah.
And who's responsible for what the newspaper says?
It's just they don't think beyond the, well, I've heard it, so it must be true sort of thing.
And even people who would say, of course I don't believe what I read in the paper or what I hear on the wireless or what I watch on TV.
Of course I take it with a pinch of salt.
They don't.
They've absorbed it without knowing it.
So where else would you get the idea that flu is going to be particularly bad this year, therefore you must take this vaccine, which has obviously worked in the past, because every year you've had the jab, you haven't had bad flu, have you?
No, so it must be working.
That whole sort of like, well, you're taking this thing and you're not sure you'll ever know whether it worked or not, but you're still confident enough to take it.
It's madness when you break it down like that.
It does get harder and harder as one...
I mean, case in point, the Katy Perry going into space in what's obviously a kind of cartoon vibrator.
Yeah.
And it's been designed for anyone looking at it objectively to go...
That's ridiculous.
That's not a rocket.
That's a kind of cartoon vibrator.
Have you seen the comparison between it and the rocket in Flesh Gordon?
Apart from the Flesh Gordon one, it has a slight curve to it.
It's almost identical.
But that's exactly it.
And they come floating back down in their helmet.
That's exactly what I mean.
That they do this.
It's deliberate.
Well, even the normies are going, well, that's just bollocks, isn't it?
No, they're not, though.
They're not.
So many of the ones I've been talking to are saying, well, they didn't really go into space, did they?
They're not quite on the, yeah, space is fake and gay.
But they're saying, well, at best, they went up a few miles into the air and then free-falled down a little bit, which gave them a few moments of weightlessness.
But do not understand that's exactly how they do it.
That's precisely it.
That's how they legitimise the operation in the minds of the normies.
By getting them to all go, well, of course they didn't go into space.
They went to the edge of space maybe.
People will do mental gymnastics to justify what happened.
The fact that nothing ever left the ground even.
And they were clearly bussed into this location and then filmed coming out of this ridiculous flimsy little capsule with a door no more substantial than what I've got in the back of my house.
When you get onto a plane to travel abroad, the door is somewhat more substantial than the one that they opened on their little space shuttle.
But that's exactly what I mean.
You think that the Normists have seen through it, but they haven't seen through it.
They've actually, in their way, they've found their way of endorsing it.
Because they haven't gone...
The whole thing was faked.
And look at the patches.
That is a goat's head.
This is an occult thing.
This is essentially Luciferian stroke satanic.
The whole thing is fake.
They're mocking us.
They're not saying that.
They're saying, yeah, well they didn't go all the way into space.
They didn't go really high.
They just went quite high.
Well, that's not really resisting it, is it?
No.
What would you call that?
Limited hangout?
Yeah.
That might be the term.
Hmm.
I mean, that's how they...
And you see, they...
And people are comparing it, obviously, Elon Musk's rocket, which now looks completely believable in comparison, because his one comes back with all burn marks on it.
And it's just like, well, that one, let me compare it to Elon's rocket.
This was shit compared to Elon's rocket.
Now, you know, Elon suddenly looks cool and spacey.
But it's equally gay and fake.
Well, you see, there you are.
So then you've got the Indian space program, say, where you've got, obviously, leftover bits from the Clangers.
And a few screen grabs from space invaders.
Yeah.
But I would say that probably the Indians are in cahoots with NASA there.
That what this does is it makes NASA and Elon Musk suddenly look credible.
Whereas in reality, they're all, it's all made up.
It's all, NASA has never successfully sent a manned crew.
Well, that's what a lot of people say, isn't it?
Well, look, if it was fake, how come several countries independently verify that they have filmed things on the moon?
And it's like, well, yeah, it's not like they're not all in cahoots with each other.
Even Russia and NASA, you know, have an agreement.
And people find that more difficult to get their head around than the idea that this thing has gone...
10,000 times further into space than anything we can do now.
That was another thing I got pushback on from my awake audience.
When I did a podcast with somebody who...
Something called Rurik Skywalker, not his real name.
I've seen that one lined up on my to-view list, so yeah.
So Rurik's line is that Putin...
You may think he's your friend because he's the enemy of the deep state and the deep state hates him and Victoria Nuland hates him and Zelensky hates him.
But actually, he's just another bad guy.
And so many awake people want to believe that Putin is different because, like, if all these terrible people in the West hate him, he must be a goody.
He must be our guy.
He must be coming to say us.
And he says these...
He says this anti-woke stuff, and that's great, isn't it?
Isn't that what you want?
And he's a Christian.
And this guy's saying, no, no, no, it's not like that.
But you've never been a Putin fanboy, have you?
No, not a fanboy, but I've written pieces before saying that he had a casus belli over Ukraine, that this was provoked by the colour revolution in 2014 and stuff.
No, it's not the same as being a fanboy.
I've never taken my shirt off and ridden the back of a polar bear in honour of that photograph where he was riding the polar bear or whatever.
I haven't gone that far.
I think you made up the polar bit.
I think it was just a bear.
A polar bear would have been too dangerous.
Maybe that was the mistake I made when I got my arm ripped off.
So, I have been through phases where I was thinking, maybe if I can learn Russian, and maybe I can get a nice dacha somewhere, not in Moscow, but somewhere where it's not too cold.
Like my duster?
The Crimea or somewhere.
No, not like a dash.
I thought it was pronounced Dacia.
Is it pronounced Dasha?
Dacia.
Dacia.
Yeah.
Or Dacia, if you want to be completely wrong.
But isn't that where it's from, Dacia?
Yeah, because it's the old name for the country, isn't it?
Well, then it would be called...
So Dacia is the right name.
I think they pronounce it...
I don't think they pronounce it Dacia.
Yes, but of course they do, because they're the car industry, and it's kind of...
The whole thing is wanky, and probably...
And probably satanic.
And the logo probably looks like it's got horns.
I was going to go there, and you took...
Yeah.
I'm glad we're on the same page.
I'll tell you what I saw the other day.
I've been trying to find things...
Just returning to the earlier theme.
That film I saw, by the way, was called Patterson.
Jim Jarmusch.
Right.
And it's about this bus driver in a town in America.
Guess what the town's called?
Hang on.
What's the one in The Simpsons?
Springfield.
Yeah.
Is it called Springfield?
No, it's called Patterson.
He's a bus driver called Patterson who lives in a town called Patterson and he's a poet.
Well, that's unlikely, isn't it?
The whole thing is unlikely.
He's a poet and he drives buses and he's got this implausible Sweet girlfriend.
And they have an implausibly sweet relationship.
That's what started me.
She makes cupcakes.
She makes cupcakes.
And you planted the idea of cupcakes in my head.
I was slightly...
I thought it was slightly twee.
Anyway.
Is there anything you would recommend at the moment?
Yes.
There is.
I was about to recommend it.
Have you...
I was going to demonstrate through the medium of mind, but I'm not sure I can do it.
I'll try.
In my hand, you've got to imagine that these are chess pieces.
And, hang on.
You've still got a bit of Easter...
Oh, you've got an Easter chick on your thing still.
Hang on.
I've got rid of the Easter bunny.
I can't.
It's...
Chick.
Okay.
This is more realistic now.
Whatever it is, I'm definitely going to watch it.
You've got to watch it.
It's really good.
What is it?
You've got to use your skill and judgement to work out what the film is.
I'll tell you what, Dick, at this point, people who are watching this on video are screaming at the screen.
They know exactly what I'm talking about.
Right, because the mind was so brilliant.
Yeah.
Okay, I'll give you a clue.
I'll give you a clue.
Last book of the Bible.
Revelation.
Yeah.
Okay, second clue.
Revelation seal.
The seal of revelation.
Revelation sea lion.
Seven words.
No.
Seven letters.
The?
Oh, the seventh seal.
Right.
So, I was, as you probably know...
I prefer the seal of revelation.
Boyd Dellingpole is a movie buff.
And so we were saying, because there was so much shit on TV, so much shit.
Just like, there's nothing on to watch at the moment at all.
Just nothing.
It's just really, really bad.
So, we...
We've been watching classic films or trying to find classic films on the BFI platform thing.
And it's only $4.99 a month, which is actually quite reasonable.
And we said, we want something...
We said, what can we watch?
He said, The Seventh Seal.
I said, no, but we want something charming.
And so he said, I'll have a think.
And he came back and said, watch The Seventh Seal.
It is charming.
I said, what?
But it's about death, playing a game of chess.
Anyway, because it's about death, playing the game of chess on the beach, and it's directed by Ingmar Bergman, everyone thinks, oh, this is a really heavy, Nordic, Nordic film that I'm not going to get on with.
But actually, it's really...
It is quite charming.
And it's very striking.
It's about...
Do you know what it's about?
Apart from the death bit, I wasn't even aware that he was on a beach when he was playing chess.
Max von Sydow.
I think that's how you pronounce his name.
Who's...
Max von Sydow?
Yeah, who we probably used to call Max von Sydow.
Well, possibly Max von Sydow.
Yeah, but that's probably wrong.
Yeah, but I know.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
He was in Three Lays of the Condor, which is one of my favourite films.
He's a much younger man in this film, because it was made in 1959.
He comes back from the Crusades, and he's apparently washed up on a beach with his squire, and death appears almost immediately and says, right, I'm afraid it's time.
And Max von Sydow says, just have a bit longer.
And Death says, they all say that.
And he says, well, here's what we'll do.
We'll play a chess, a game of chess.
And while we're playing chess, you agree not to kill me.
And Death goes, you realise I'm good at chess.
And he says, yeah, I know, but yeah, let's do this.
And so they do.
They play chess.
And it's good.
You know where he got that idea from?
Woody Allen.
No.
Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure.
Funnily enough, that scene was indeed inspired by...
All of these come from the greats.
It's interesting.
I mean, Max von Sydow was very striking as a young man.
Very sort of blonde hair with that sort of elongated face he's got.
I suppose...
Do you think he's Illuminati?
He must be Illuminati, mustn't he?
If he's kind of Swedish...
If he's a Von.
Aristocracy.
I mean, Swedes are really, really...
Just, like, into dark stuff.
Is Midsommar...
Is that Swedish or Norwegian?
Anyway, bad things.
Really bad things.
Terrible things.
I think it's one of the worst.
Right.
But the film itself is...
It's very striking.
Well, it's like reading War and Peace.
I suppose it's one of those things you've got to watch, doesn't it?
This was exactly the problem I had with why I'd never watched The Seventh Seal, because I'd formed this image of what The Seventh Seal was about, and it had nothing to do with what the film was really about, only about my preconceptions.
In the same way with War and Peace, I thought, well, I'm never going to read that, it's too long, and you've got all these Russian names in it, and you're never going to get through it.
This is what idiots had told me.
Yeah, I think that's part of the PSYOP with War and Peace, isn't it?
It's so long, you'll never read it.
It's the classic book that's so long, you're never going to read it, and notable for only being read by the sort of people who read really long, complicated books, and so you're put off ever reading it.
Of course, the biggest victim of this, if you want to call it a victim, is the Bible.
One doesn't want to become one of those people.
Bible basher.
Somebody who reads...
There's something sort of like pious, sanctimonious about reading the Bible.
This is how it's perceived.
And that's not why I read the Bible.
I don't sort of read it at night to go show off so I can tell people I read the Bible.
It's really interesting.
And it's kind of...
I've started doing a thing...
I read the Bible in the morning at work because I arrive really early at work having had a swim and I use the work shower and I do a bit of stretching and what have you, make myself some breakfast.
Then I have half an hour of Bible reading as people come in and sometimes they're milling around me.
Now they're all much younger than me.
And every now and again I will hit them with a little bit of what I've just read that is either amusing or apposite or shocking.
And I go, wow, get this bit, guys.
Let me just read you this.
And I'll read them something.
And inevitably, they listen.
And they kind of take it in.
And they, oh, well, that's good.
Or that's surprising.
And they will get the point.
So little by little, I'm getting a bit of these things across to them and making sure that they understand that this book I'm reading isn't just a sort of pious, sort of dry, irrelevant thing.
And I don't know.
I think, in a way, I'm doing a little bit of evangelism.
Yeah.
I mean, give it another 50 years, and you will have drip-fed them the entire Bible.
Including the very dry bits of Leviticus.
Do you know what my worst bits of the Bible are?
And I know I'm going to get so much stick for this.
Go on.
The Epistles.
There are always some good bits that sort of jerk you out of your slumber.
Exactly so.
You'll normally get to the end and suddenly there is an entire chapter of one of them that is just solid gold.
Just great.
Wow!
How was that hiding in amongst this...
Sanctimonious sort of love your brothers type stuff is going on.
I'm glad you agree with me, Dick.
It's little bits within it.
You're kind of grateful to get on to the non-Pauline bits, aren't you?
To get on to the epistles from someone else.
So I'm doing...
I'm on Chronicles at the moment of my Old Testament reading and that's fine.
We're sort of going through again the story of...
Well, I'm on Solomon's Sums at the moment, Jeroboam and Rehoboam and stuff, and you get a bit of argy-bargy and backsliding and stuff, and that's all good.
But then I turn to the New Testament, and my heart just sinks.
I'm thinking, I can't wait to get back to the Gospels again, because you've got Jesus in them, and you've just got Paul.
My parallels at the moment are, I've just finished Joshua in...
And I'm moving on to Judges.
And in New Testament, I'm on to Paul.
Sorry, to Peter.
No, John, sorry.
Epistles of John at the end.
They're very good.
And I know I've got Revelation just two pages away.
Some of the other names are all right, aren't they?
James.
I was very happy the last time I read James.
That your namesake was a good one.
He's all right.
Although he was the first apostle to be killed.
I thought that would have been Stephen, but he wasn't an official apostle.
He wasn't an apostle.
He hadn't taken over from Judas, had he?
Yeah.
Stoned.
Yeah.
I don't...
I think James went quite a good way.
He just had his head chopped off.
Right, at least that's quick.
It's not been flayed alive.
One of them was flayed alive.
The one that went out to...
Actually, I think it was flayed alive in somewhere like Ethiopia.
Right.
Another one was sawn in half.
Yeah.
With a wooden saw.
No, that was...
That was Elijah.
That was Elijah.
Old Testament.
Yeah.
Yeah, we've got all this to look forward to.
Yeah, I know.
So, anyway, just going back to...
Oh!
I mentioned, didn't I, my other discovery?
Murakami.
I mentioned that last time.
Right.
I probably wrote it down.
You've got to...
I mention it because it's got a Skinny Alive scene in it.
Very vivid.
To the point where you almost don't...
You really can't.
Barely.
It's good.
It's good.
It's weird.
It's sort of Japanese-y, but...
But good.
So, I don't know how one gets round this.
There's going to be people out there saying, oh, you don't understand.
Look, I think we had this conversation before.
Romans.
Dear, wonderful James Fox, whom I love very much, and gave me my copy of my sort of modern translation of the Bible, which I read in parallel to the King James.
He gave me the NIV version, which some people sort of sneer at because apparently the translation is...
Yeah, everyone has something to say about every translation.
He said what you should do is learn the whole of Romans.
And I'm thinking...
It's like saying learn the phone directory or learn this really boring laundry list I've written.
I know that...
As a Christian, you're supposed to go, yeah, Romans, it's great.
Yeah, it sort of defines my faith, but...
Romans is the bit...
Romans 9 or 13, where it says you have to obey the monarch.
Right, it's Romans 13. 13, yeah.
That's the bit...
Which, of course, every awake person has an issue with.
It would say that.
There are explanations.
There are...
One would hope.
Yeah, it's like you've got Ephesians 6 and you go, yeah, that's, you know, principalities and powers and the rulers of the darkness world, yeah, yeah, and put on the armour of God and, yeah, totally get it.
But that guy also wrote just paragraphs and paragraphs of just tedium and...
I mean, there's even, I just read the bit last night where he says, well, ideally, if you're like me, you're not going to have any sex.
But I recognise that some of you are going to still want, you're going to have these urges, so get married, because it's better to marry than to burn.
Which is what the Wife of Bath says, quotes in the Wife of Bath tale.
But do you think he, this is not my, this is not what, I don't like this person.
It's a tricky one.
You know I've got that C.S. Lewis Bible, the NRSV version, with annotations throughout and relevant quotes for each passage from C.S. Lewis.
So you read the C.S. Lewis bits with it.
You know the conversation we had the other day about...
The bits in the Old Testament where God is just having entire populations wiped out and put to the sword, men, women, children, donkeys, everything.
Yeah.
And we're kind of like trying to dwell on it too much as to don't like the sound of Old Testament God.
Well, C.S. Lewis had a really good answer for it in one of these passages, and he says, don't ever think.
The mistake we should never make is to think that there's any element of God that is bad.
What we've got to assume is if we don't get what he's up to there, it's because we don't understand and there will be a completely reasonable reason.
For instance, the...
The Heiser answer to the fact that he's trying to get rid of the spawn of the Nephilim.
Seed of the serpent.
Yeah, trying to eradicate it completely, and the children of Israel keep failing to do so.
But it's not because God is bad, it's because we haven't quite understood it yet.
And I think it's quite a simple answer, but I think it's quite a good one to assume that your first read-through of the Bible, what, 10% of it makes sense?
If you're getting 10% more out of it on each rereading, you're not going to understand it fully, if ever, until at least the 10th reading at that pace.
Here's the thing, though.
When God says to the children of Israel, I want you to exterminate the Edomites or whatever, not just the women and children, but even all their animals.
I don't want a thing left.
Had the children of Israel obeyed his orders, God would have thwarted his own plan, wouldn't he?
Because we'd all be living happily ever after now, because there'd be no seed of the serpent ruining everything.
Whereas God knew all along, he must have known, because presumably he can...
Well, he sees everything.
He's outside time, isn't he?
He must have known that it's not going to end any other way than it does with what we're living through now and what we're heading towards with, you know, the Seventh Seal.
The Seventh Seal's being opened and the horses up to their necks in blood and all that fun stuff.
Yeah, well, it's the whole...
He knows everything that's going to happen, so what is the point in even having free will if it's all...
Well, then we come to the whole question of predestination, don't we?
Which doesn't exist, or does it?
I don't know.
And it makes free will pointless?
Do you know about this new one?
Well, it's not a new one, it's an old one that people talk about.
Some people think that we are already living in Satan's little season.
Satan's little season.
Yeah.
I haven't looked into it.
But that we are in that stage of the apocalypse that, well, the apocalypse just means awakening, doesn't it?
And what does it mean?
It means unveiling.
That we're further advanced down through revelation than we might think.
Oh, right.
Some are saying we're not there yet, and some are saying we're further than you think we are.
Yes.
And then you've got people like Alex Thompson, who says, oh, yeah, no, it already happened.
They already did the...
when the destruction of the...
it happened in, what, the third century or something, or the destruction of the temple and...
oh, I don't know.
Well, then there's the whole theory that we're not living in the year that they say we are.
Do you like that one?
I've got a big problem with it, which is...
We left about 300 years according to this one, didn't we?
Yeah.
The problem with it is that in order to understand it, you've got to read this very, very wordy book by this Russian, which apparently has not been translated or translated that well.
Whenever people sort of point me to this issue, they say, here's this 30-hour podcast series, and I did listen to some of them, and it sounded very, very interesting and very plausible.
Is there a tilde?
I wanted the tilde.
I wanted it to be condensed into a tweet, please.
Yes, exactly.
And then I'll give it my due consideration.
What I did understand from what I listened to, though, was that all the dating of old events is, particularly the further back in time you go, is really suspect.
I mean, incredibly suspect.
I don't know whether it was Jesuits who invented the timescale, but definitely what we think about the past.
The timing, the chronology of the past is not accurate.
There's not least for the months problem.
The weird 29 days in February, some months had 31. There's that whole, if there were 13 months in the year, they would each be 29 days and it would always be equal.
There wouldn't need to be leap years.
Then there's the question of The names of the months don't correspond to the number they should be, like December should be the 10th month of the year, that sort of thing.
It's clearly been fiddled with.
Sorry, hold that thought.
It's a man in a yellow vest wasting a bit through the window.
I'm going to eat more brownie.
Look at that.
It's got bits of white cream egg in it.
Because he's out of the room.
Don't tell him when he comes back.
Because I know he's not going to edit this out.
He says he will, but he won't.
I don't think he even knows how.
I don't think he's going to be a good one.
Hmm.
Hmm.
So what...
What was all that about then?
I was in delivery.
All right.
But I felt sorry for the guy because, I mean, they get their legs chopped off if they don't deliver enough.
Only first offence.
Oh, is that right?
Okay.
Sorry, you were saying?
Yeah, the months of the year.
The year was supposed to start in April or March or something like that.
And December 10th should be the 10th of the month.
Et cetera, et cetera.
It's clearly been fiddled with in not a good way and it sort of only just works and we've completely grown to accept it.
So is today even the day on which they crucified Christ?
No.
We're celebrating a day which has probably changed several times throughout history.
It's a movable feast, that's why.
Yeah.
But yeah, I agree with you.
It's odd.
We know Christ wasn't born on the 25th of December.
It's just when they choose to move it to a pagan festival, when Christianity came to our shores, etc.
And it doesn't take away the fact that we've given a day of the year to recognise this thing.
And is there any real way of knowing when it did happen, when the months have completely lost their meaning?
I'm sure that for the same reason, this is why they muck about with our British summertime and we change the clocks.
The lie about the Scottish farmers is just so transparent.
It's about messing us up, messing up our body clocks, just messing with our heads.
Yeah, just maintaining control.
It comes back round.
I know we keep coming back to TV, but I wanted to talk about this a bit because I've been getting quite into the psychology behind severance.
Have you?
And it's part of the foreshadowing thing that they do.
The way they sat in this office doing a...
Pointless, but apparently really important job, you know, moving those numbers around the screen and dropping them into a little box.
And I know there's a point during the series in which you find out what they're really doing, but it's ever so important.
What's it called?
Macrodata refinement.
And they're not even quite sure what it is they're doing, but clearly it must be important if they're doing it.
How many of us have jobs like that?
You've got to go in there and be doing it, and it's important that you're doing your job.
And you get pointless little rewards for doing it, like a melon party or a little gonk to go on your desk.
Have you got to the brass band?
No, I haven't seen the brass band yet.
I've had the time when they're outside and they're in this park with the frozen lake and what have you.
It's all...
And the Heli R bit.
When Irv realises who Heli R is.
Very cleverly.
The Irv character is brilliant.
How does he roll it out?
Because I think he asked...
She was acting in a way that was mean and spiteful.
And he said, Heli R, your innie isn't like that.
She wouldn't be spiteful.
She wouldn't have said that thing that you said earlier.
And he's twigged it just through that.
John Turturro.
Yeah, it's, it's, I just think the whole thing is brilliantly done.
But I think as far as a foreshadowing thing is, it's almost too much of a giveaway, the way that they run our lives, the way they want to run our lives, the amount of surveillance they're under.
They're not sure if they're being watched absolutely all the time, but they're pretty sure they're being watched.
That's the way we are.
And it's frightening how close to where we already are Severance is.
I do love it, but it's one of the few things I'm enjoying at the moment.
I started watching The Laughter Bus again the other day, the new season of that.
What is this thing?
The zombie thing.
Last of Us.
Oh!
I call it The Laughter Bus.
It's a family thing.
Yeah, I...
Apparently it's not about zombies anymore.
It's about young lesbians, of course.
Everything's about young lesbians.
That's way more important than...
It's...
If there were as many lesbians in real life as there are on, particularly on Netflix, we would be swamped.
Ankle deep in lesbians.
Ankle deep in lesbians.
Yeah.
We would.
Yeah.
You'd be a lesbian.
I would be as well.
Well, I tried to be the other day, didn't I?
And it failed miserably.
Because apparently trans women are men now.
That's a whole...
I just...
I so don't care about that.
I so don't want to see a picture of J.K. Rowling smoking a cigar on a boat.
Doing A-team quotes that no one gets.
There are so many worse things happening than...
Than that.
It's not a victory, it's a distraction.
Yeah, it's like that theme park thing.
Is it Jules who's been making brilliant memes and it's sort of like, I forget the one that was for the things are going really tits up, bring out the theme park.
It's like, do you not know we're getting a new theme park?
This is Labour's new gift to us.
No, is it?
Yeah, yeah, a massive theme park.
I don't follow this sort of news thing.
That's the problem.
No, I only get it by osmosis.
I only get it because someone's talking about it on Twitter, and that is my...
That's true.
I mean, I did talk about the rocket thing, so I'm guilty.
Yeah, yeah.
You can't help picking some of it up, but it's like fag ends by the time it gets to us.
Yeah.
What were you saying?
Oh yeah, so you're saying you like Severance, yes.
I like Severance, but I don't like the laughter bus.
Yeah, yeah.
I...
Yeah.
I...
I found the plotting that...
One only wanted to watch on fast-forwards to the bits where they encountered the zombies, and after...
Yeah.
The bits in between, I just couldn't bear.
Yeah, I'm almost getting sympathy for the zombies, you know.
It's got that bad.
I want the zombies to win.
I'll tell you what I really, really, really, really hated.
Go on.
This should be good.
Well, yeah, I...
So, as I say, I was in a real quandary about what to watch.
There's nothing, nothing, nothing about.
And I saw an advert.
Oh, I think Apple TV.
Free trial.
Watch this Paramount Plus series called Mobland.
Do you know about Mobland?
No.
Okay.
Is it like Gangs of London?
It's like Gangs of London, but different.
It's written by Ronan Bennett, who did Top Boy.
And you enjoyed Top Boy, didn't you?
Did you see Top Boy?
Yeah, Top Boy's great.
Top Boy's great.
Directed by Guy Ritchie.
Less good.
So it's got gypsies in it, by any chance?
Funnily enough, I haven't seen any gypsies yet, but...
They'll be there.
Watching, waiting.
But there is a gangster in a Georgian house fly-fishing from his lawn, which is quintessential Guy Ritchie, isn't it?
It's that kind of...
In Tweed.
Yeah, in Tweed.
And it's got...
Piers Brosnan, as the family chief, they're Irish gangsters in London.
He's married to Helen Mirren, and Tom Hardy is their fixer.
He makes everything all right, you know, with his sort of negotiation skills and his hard man, you know, his quiet voice, hard man routine.
And the problem with it is that there is no...
Wit or charm or...
You're never given a reason why you should sympathise with these psychopaths.
They're just horrible, horrible, horrible people who make their money out of criminality and they kill people.
And anyone who gets in the way gets killed or gets bullied and gets threatened with being killed.
And you're thinking, come on, come on guys, give me an excuse why I should root for these utterly amoral...
Thugs.
And at no point are you given that reason.
And I realise that we've reached the stage where the audience is so brutalised now by this exposure to violence and, yeah, criminality is great and killing people and slapping people around and threatening them and getting the machine guns out and drilling them.
They're so used to it now that they don't need to be given a reason to make it okay.
It just is okay.
It's kind of fun.
It's cool.
Well, there's your double message there for the foreshadowing and the predictive programming.
Violence is an acceptable way of dealing with things you don't like, and people are so horrible that it's just as well they're dying.
So humanity isn't worth saving, and the more brutally they can be wiped out, the better.
Job done.
Yeah.
And I sort of read some of the reviews, and to me it was so obvious that I was amazed that anyone could think differently.
But no, I think people will watch it, because...
Well, it's got all the right ingredients, hasn't it?
Yeah.
Gangsters and wealthy people in mansions, and yeah.
We've gone over the hour already, which has sailed by very quickly.
I haven't had my tea yet.
I'm really looking forward to another cup.
I've been guzzling it down today, but I did have an excessively salty lunch, so that's probably why.
So you're going to church on Sunday again, presumably?
Yeah, yeah.
I kind of feel guilty about not having gone today now.
I might have a look on the cathedral website to see if there's some sort of evening thing I can do.
It's not a competition day, I don't think.
No, but it's good for...
Good for my soul.
It's good for my...
I feel happier having done it.
If I know it's the right thing.
It's for me.
Yeah.
You definitely do feel happier if something happens.
Yeah.
Oh, can I tell you briefly about the weird thing that happened at Thursday Circle?
Please do.
We had a woo moment.
Oh, yeah.
I was down at the bar, actually, getting another drink, and the rest are upstairs.
And George, who's one of our Catholics, you've met George, he's lovely.
He's been taking full Catholic instruction.
And he's just full of golden material at the moment.
He comes out with stuff all the time.
And during the break, he was just talking casually about how in some chapter of the Bible where it says, if the resurrection never happened, then our faith counts for nothing.
I think it's a quote from Paul.
And as he was saying that, A full glass of water that was sat in the middle of a table, away from anyone else, slid along and just dropped to the ground and emptied.
It's not like it was on the edge and it flipped over.
It moved and then dropped in front of everyone, just as he was saying those things.
And I came back to find several people quite freaked out as to what had happened here.
And it was accompanied by what George was saying at the time.
So they explained what had happened.
They said, Dick, we've already done the 23rd Psalm.
I said, oh, I think I should probably do the prayer of the Archangel Michael as well.
So we did a few things and we all said the Lord's Prayer together, knowing how powerful that is.
And it was kind of a case of, yeah, they're here and they've come for us.
I wasn't all that surprised, but a few of them were a bit freaked out by how overt it was.
But it was our first proper woo moment in Thursday Circle.
And so next week I'm thinking of using the blessed salt that I was given.
You know, the stuff that's been blessed by a bishop.
You're meant to pour a bit of it in each corner of the room in which you are.
What about your exorcism chant thing?
Yeah, well, I might use that as well.
Exactly.
I just wanted to tell you something, a really good story that I heard today from an Orthodox friend.
I'll just read it out to you because I don't want to get the details.
Where is it?
Okay, I'll read it out.
It's a good Easter story, this.
I heard this story at church this week, which was pretty incredible.
A couple told me about how they met a man from a Christian family in Iraq, but he was not a Christian.
He didn't believe, and so was always the black sheep of the family.
Then at some point, ISIS came to his home.
They asked his family, do you believe in Jesus?
His father said yes and was murdered in front of him.
And then they asked him, do you believe in Jesus?
And although he thought he didn't in that moment, he said yes.
And that was his conversion just before martyrdom.
Even more incredibly, they slit his throat, but he managed to survive.
Blimey!
You do wonder what will happen.
Under those circumstances.
As a kid, I always thought, well, you just say no, I don't, don't you?
But now I'd probably just go straight for the throat slitting.
Well, I think God gives you the words, doesn't he?
I mean, that's one of the things that they explain in Acts, that don't worry about what you're going to say, because that's taken care of.
Gosh, blimey.
So he lived to tell the tale.
I wouldn't want to survive a throat slitting, though.
It's kind of like a...
God, my toe looks never so turkey-like.
You'd have a bit of a throat neurosis the rest of your life, wouldn't you?
Yeah.
But presumably he's got bigger things to deal with now.
He's probably giving his life to God, I imagine.
Great story anyway, isn't it?
Yeah, it's good.
Anyway, so Happy Easter.
Yeah, and to you.
And to all our lovely listeners.
Yeah, Happy Easter.
Watchers.
Lovely listeners.
Christians and non-Christians alike.
Yeah.
Okay, brother.
Speak to you soon.
I'll see if I can make...
Can I make the bunny set on my head for the last...
It is very good.
That is scary, isn't it?
It could be the black rabbit of inlay.
We've got trigonometry levels of production values now.
