Dick drops by to promote the ‘Stand in the light’ festival: https://standinthelight.uk↓Good Food Project is hosting a Barbara O’Neill event at Cranage Estate in Cheshire from the 20th to 24th May. Visit www.goodfoodproject.co.uk, find the event link at the top of the homepage, and use code delingpole15 for 15% off your virtual ticket.↓If you need silver and gold bullion - and who wouldn't in these dark times? - then the place to go is The Pure Gold Company. Either they can deliver worldwide to your door - or store it for you in vaults in London and Zurich. You even use it for your pension. Cash out of gold whenever you like: liquidate within 24 hours. https://bit.ly/James-Delingpole-Gold
↓ ↓ 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 by James Delingpole here: https://jamesdelingpole.co.uk/Shop/↓ ↓ ↓
Buy James a Coffee at:https://www.buymeacoffee.com/jamesdelingpole
The official website of James Delingpole:https://jamesdelingpole.co.uk
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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 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, okay, if it is a scan, 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.
Welcome.
To the Dellingpod, with me, James Dellingpole.
And I know I always say I'm excited about this week's special guest, but I'm not going to say that this week.
And before we find out why, let's have a word from one of our sponsors.
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 950?
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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 write by each 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 having coins because coins are considered, well, Britannia is anywhere, 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.
Yeah, well obviously you guessed it.
It's because it's not a special guest.
it's dick hi everyone i don't know what's happening today because i just got a text message from our host here saying are you coming or what and he'd we'd arranged only what half an hour ago or so for this to start at 2 30 so at 2 32 he sends me a message to say where are you do you know what i was doing i was ready at half two then i realized i i'd I hadn't got my notes from the house.
I've got notes.
You've got notes.
I take notes.
I play it very cleverly and just keep it to one side and don't make it obvious, but I work to notes.
You always were the meticulous one.
You had probably the world's longest lasting...
The leather thing that people had?
The fighting in it.
What?
Filofax.
Filofax.
Well, this here.
1986 I got this.
And look, look at the photo I keep in the front.
Oh.
See how young my children are?
She's now left home and is about to get married.
And he's living in the attic.
I don't know what happened to him.
No, I don't know what happened to him.
Do you think anyone else anywhere in the world?
You're still using their Filofax?
They must do, because when I go to get the new diary pages in WH Smith, there's stacks of them.
People must still use them.
Do you know why I was on time today?
I'd love to know.
Because I'm on a very, very tight schedule.
So, at 4.30, I've got to be there for my bell-ringing class with Graham.
Fantastic.
You know, I can't miss that.
And I always feel slightly rude when I tend to turn up about ten minutes late.
And Graham's always on time.
If only there was some sort of warning he could give you that it was time to be there.
Exactly.
But before that, if I've got...
But I've got to make a shepherd's pie.
And the thing I've learned about shepherd's pie I think you need about two hours for the mince.
So yeah, so it gets soft.
How can you cook a steak in five minutes and that's overcooked and yet minced steak would take two hours?
It's just the way that the cookie crumbles with meat.
I mean, obviously, with steaks, you need to kind of sear it.
I mean, for my steak, I give about two minutes per side on a very, very hot heat, and I let it rest for about ten minutes.
I think that's sort of standard chef practice.
But here was the clue, which I was always ignoring.
You know how shepherd's pie always tastes better on the second evening?
Yeah.
As does a chilli.
Yeah.
That's the other thing, apart from shepherd's pie and spag bol.
If you want your shepherd's pie to taste as good on the first night as it does on the second night, you've got to let the meat just below...
So you're on a hiding to nothing trying to get this done in ten minutes before the bell ringing.
Well, you know, I'm operating on woman time here.
You know how woman time sort of does not obey the clock?
It's a kind of fantasy thing.
Yeah.
Honestly, I've been set a very similar task today.
My scooter's in for an MOT.
Yeah.
The place closes at 4.30, so I've got to...
They may call me any minute to say it's ready for collection.
So I've then got to cycle there, pick up the scooter, lock up the bike, bring the scooter home, drive back, put the...
And I've got friends who want to meet me for a drink in town who I haven't seen for a while at 4.30.
And on top of that, I've got to make the supper, which is your favourite vegetarian dish.
Red lentil burgers.
Red lentil burgers.
With that sauce.
At the moment, I managed to get that done.
I was so pleased with myself.
And they were simmering, and now they're just cooling with the lid on.
My God, our listeners are going to be bored of this.
This is so dull.
Actually, this will amuse you.
So I've just been to see...
Oh, right.
a much sorry I was in Worcester briefly but I had to zoom away again for reasons you don't understand yeah I know so you'll see me next week anyway alright so
You know how the firstborn often gets all the kind of toxic stuff from the mother?
What?
Do you not know this?
No, I didn't know this thing.
Okay, so when I was doing my Perrin technique, Ray Perrin, who sort of, as you know, perfected this treatment for treating things like chronic fatigue and stuff, to do with lymph massage and stuff, and he theorizes, plausibly I think, that, well, he said in his experience, the ones that tend to be affected by these kind of things are firstborn children.
Because the mother, when she gives birth to her first child, dumps all her toxic load on the first child.
So by the time you came along, I'd already taken the hit.
Right.
I'd taken the bullet.
Well, if we were a family of Baal worshippers, that wouldn't have been a problem because we'd have been sacrificed by now.
If we were Phoenicians.
Yeah.
Maybe they were onto something.
Maybe they were.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Most of the time I was not fit for hunting, just feeling sluggish and brain foggy.
Although I've been able to cope, it's been really, it's been really tiresome.
Are you feeling good post-Michelle?
Yeah.
She said, oh...
You know, you really need to come and see me.
Your left-hand neck thing, whatever, cranial, blah, blah, blah, was all blocked.
She says, don't let yourself get to this state before seeing me.
Yes, exactly.
I think that's what she was very much.
So I am feeling a new man.
I could tell I was feeling a new man because I got back home and my one remaining normie job, which is every fortnight I write the TV review in The Spectator.
And I mean, it is my only normal thing I do.
and instead of agonizing over it for about three hours I just wrote most of it in half an hour Just, I tossed it off.
Did you remember to watch any TV to write about?
Or did you write about how evil television is?
I had something good for a change.
I mean, TV is absolutely shite.
Yeah.
But the Eternaut or Eternaut, No, not even heard of it.
It's on Netflix, which is surprising because everything on Netflix is shite these days.
it's all kind of propaganda produced by Edward Bernays'nephew to kind of warp our minds and pervert us and stuff.
That awful thing that we still haven't watched and we're never going to watch about the...
Young white kids are murderers.
Yeah, yeah.
So the Eternaut or Eternaut.
Right.
It's another kind of post-apocalyptic story.
But because it's Argentinian, The premise is there's been a polar reversal.
And it snows.
And the snow is so deadly that one snowflake So, as you can imagine, this is in Buenos Aires.
They're all out on the streets.
And everyone dies.
The street vendors, the kids playing football, the people with their arms sticking out, the bare arms sticking out of the car.
Everyone dies.
And it just so happens that our heroes are playing this game called Truco, which is a popular South American card game.
And they're in somebody's downstairs room drinking whiskey.
And they're our age, Dick.
Well, they're a bit older.
So the heroes aren't this...
They'd all be mixed race and young, wouldn't they?
And they'd be incredibly annoying and heroic, slightly heroic.
Here, they're just like these old boys and, you know, the odd wife.
And there's the young female bicycle courier who turned up at the right moment to drop off the whiskey so she didn't die.
It's a bit like a touch of To the Lake, in that To the Lake being Russian, they eschew all Hollywoodisms.
The Argentines probably do their own thing for their own reasons as well, but it's all anti-Hollywood.
They're pleasantly chauvinistic, so there's great emphasis on, you know, do we know this person?
Should we save him?
We don't know him.
Pablo, down the street, he's the baker, he's alright.
He's from the community.
And I kind of like that.
One of them is a Falklands veteran.
The hero is a Falklands veteran.
And you kind of feel bad about the Malvinas.
Watching this, I thought, we should have given it to them.
Why did we need it?
Why did we have to kill those poor Argentinian grunts on Mount Longden?
Everything being reassessed.
Yeah, yeah.
I recommend it.
It's good.
And it's not just the snow.
Be warm.
That's just the beginning.
Then the bad stuff really starts.
Oh, gosh.
When I say scuttly giant beetles, that might be a clue.
Is it a clue that there's going to be scuttly giant beetles?
Yeah, but I haven't told you what they do.
Okay.
Well, I've been getting ever more frustrated with the laughter bus.
And it's just...
What's the laughter bus?
I don't even know about this.
The zombie thing that's based on a video game.
I think we know.
The thing about lesbians, lesbians are only good in the version they appear in are adolescent fantasies.
Yeah, exactly.
But it's actually called The Last of Us.
I thought you were on board with my having rebranded it the laughter bus.
Oh, I see.
Yes, I did.
Last time we did it, and then I forgot.
Yeah, okay.
Well, re-remember now, but basically, episode one, you're introduced back to them, and there's this sort of pathetic, sort of, in the gated community, lesbian scene, and the conservative among them don't like it.
No, quite right, too.
Oh, I'm here, and I'm fighting, so grr, piss off, you bigot, that sort of thing.
Then episode two, spoiler alert, massive, massive fight.
And it's unbelievably...
Oh, so it's worth watching for that?
Oh, yeah.
I mean, it's sort of like you've been lulled into a full sense of, oh, this is all a bit meh.
But then they go and kill off one of the major characters, and you're left with just a teenage lesbian and a girlfriend.
I was going to say, I'll bet the lesbian survived and the Conservatives died.
Yeah, yeah.
It's kind of just...
And now you're going, well, Where's the counterpoint?
The critical drinker is very good on this.
He completely nailed it.
He said, you know, up until this point, you've got two very different characters playing off against each other.
Now you've just got teenage lesbians in the zombie apocalypse.
Oh, did the one from Narcos?
Yeah.
He died.
Well, he dies in the video game, so they're trying to stick to it.
I mean, to be fair, they're not doing anything that hasn't gone on in the video game, but I don't think it was a wise move in the video game to kill off the most interesting character.
I like that guy.
Yeah, he's great.
I like his face.
You don't realise how important he was to the whole plot until he's gone, and then you just think, well, actually, I don't care about any of them anymore.
I hope they get got.
From what I remember of The Last of Us, the only thing I liked about it was the evil killer funguses.
Go fungus.
Go fungus.
So if I went to episode two, would I get...
It's an all-out battle, and they've got the stockade, and they've got a plan.
Lots of things get burnt, but it's an all-out sort of battle.
What I mean is, obviously I don't want to watch any more of it than the killing.
Than is entirely necessary.
Yeah.
So if I went to two, would that cover me?
That would do the job, yeah.
Okay.
I wanted to tell you about another thing I've been doing which is I've been taking I've been taking scorpion Of course you have.
You're James Dillingford.
That's exactly the sort of thing you do.
Okay, that's all I wanted to tell you.
No, you can't leave it like that.
Why?
Who told you to do this?
Where do you get hold of it?
It makes you feel a bit weird.
No shit.
Tastes bloody disgusting.
Tastes like sort of Right.
I was hoping, I was told that it might bring out, that the demons wouldn't like it, and that I might get intense nightmares, but so far I haven't had that, which is disappointing, because I wanted the purgative effect of demons being disconcerted by this stuff.
Anyway, the earlier thing you said reminded me, on the way down to, what I find now on car journeys is I don't listen to anything.
I just go through my Psalms and I thought, oh, can I do Psalms the whole journey?
I know what I'll do.
I'll do some prayers instead.
And so I did the thing where, which I think is how you're meant to pray, where you kind of have a conversation with God.
You sort of break the ice, you know, and sort of it gets awkward at first.
And then gradually you start chatting to him, talking to Jesus, whatever, like your friend.
It was really good.
There were bits where I said, so there was a bit where I was saying, this is really boring.
Sorry, I might be boring you with this bit, God.
But, because these details are a bit tedious.
He's got time.
And then I said, hang on a second.
You're God.
You don't mind at all.
You don't get bored.
Time is nothing to him.
You're responsible for everything.
Yeah, and it's not like he doesn't already know.
I've been reading various books, various sort of religious books, apart from the Bible, on my ongoing mission to discover what it's all about.
And I think the idea of prayer and praying for things is, if I can get this right, obviously...
But we have to ask him anyway.
Why do you have to ask him?
Well, the theory I've come upon, I think I'm reading one of the Orthodox fathers, I think, is that God's really...
God absolutely wants to give you loads of all the good things that you need.
But the reason you have to ask him is because it's the nature of free will or something that he that he that he has to.
In order to intervene, he you have to show him that you.
And So you have to let him in.
You're breaking up there.
Your viewers won't see it.
Viewers will see it normally, but you've just broken up into, yeah, because of the subject we're talking about.
Yeah, because of the subject we're talking about.
Essentially, he needs your permission.
It's a bit like the other side, how they have to tell you what they're doing.
Exactly.
And so there's the holy equivalence.
Bye.
Anyway.
Oh, I think there's definitely something in that.
Also, you see it in terms of, you know, a father-child relationship.
You know, you want to get your kids all good things and the new bicycle you know they want.
But it's even better if they've been asking for it for a long time.
And they're really looking forward to it, and they deserve it, and then they thank you for it.
Now, even if they don't thank you for it, you know they love it, you know they're really happy, but it's nice to be thanked.
And so I suppose even on the most basic level, you've got to think of him as a parent who just wants his offspring to be appreciative.
Yeah.
But back briefly to that prayer thing.
Yes.
I only finished off today, I think, your Laura Brett.
Ah, yes.
Psalm 63. I inverted it.
And she does a prayer at the end.
Now, I've seen with a lot of experienced Christians, she does that conversational prayer thing.
Yes, she does.
It's very much, like you just said, a conversation with Jesus as your friend sort of thing.
Yeah.
And it doesn't have to be church perfect where...
It's kind of like there can be ums and ahs and you knows.
Although I think Paul hates you knows.
I think he does.
I think he thinks it's sloppy.
You want it church perfect then, do you?
No, not church perfect.
I just think putting your nose in your sentences is...
Right.
I've noticed that, sorry Laura, I'm going to be seeing you very shortly, but there was a lot of you knows in her conversation.
Well, God doesn't like that, Laura.
I'm sorry.
You didn't pull her up on her?
She's really good at being a Christian, but that is definitely a failing.
But you're better at English.
Yeah, exactly.
I wonder what's going to happen when we go up to the pearly gates and go, well, you, you, Laura, we're a very good Christian, but.
Unlike James, you say, you know, far too much.
And as a result, I want you to wait outside the gates for ten years.
Well, here's James, here's your cloud.
And a lovely big pair of wings.
Oh, fantastic.
It's going to be great.
Laura gave me this book.
By somebody called Smith Wigglesworth.
She was talking about it.
She said, I must give you that.
I've been reading it in the bath.
Smith Wigglesworth was an extraordinary man who worked miracles in his life.
I mean, he was a very, very godly man.
We're not in the game.
We're basically going to burn in hell compared to Smith Wigglesworth, or indeed Laura probably.
He actually raised the dead.
Right.
That's high-level stuff.
High-level stuff.
He gave an account of it.
He gives an account of it, because I obviously flicked through it.
He can't write for Toffee.
I mean, he speaks English like he uses his third language.
Right.
And apparently, early on in his career, he couldn't preach at all.
And then he acquired the Holy Spirit, gave him the gift of preaching.
But I was thinking...
How bad must you have been before you got the Holy Spirit?
Because even now reading your stuff, it's...
But you can tell he's...
I mean, it is odd, his language, but he was clearly a man of God.
And there was one night where he spent this woman with this young woman who was dying of TB and then did die.
And he wrestled with Satan.
Brought her back to life.
And reading it, he's not the kind of guy who's going to boast about bringing somebody back to life if he didn't.
So I think you can trust him.
I wonder how many more people there are out there who've...
Because, I mean, that's what happens in Acts, isn't it?
That they go out and they can...
They get given authority over...
I mean, it all starts kicking off big time in Acts, doesn't it?
I'm just halfway through Revelation for the second time.
Yeah.
And did you see that tweet I posted the other day about the dimming of the sky?
I missed that one.
Oh dear.
I've got it on my phone.
Yeah, go on, show it.
I'll read that little bit out.
So it was just after all the sort of governmental sort of dimming of the sky stuff is happening.
And now I've got to find the very precise bit.
So this is from the RNIV, the one that's my C.S. Lewis Bible.
The fourth angel blew his trumpet, and a third of the sun was struck, and a third of the moon, and a third of the stars, so that a third of their light was darkened, a third of the day was kept from shining, and likewise the night.
I mean, it's all kind of revelation stuff they're throwing at us, isn't it?
And did you see, I noticed one of my rare forays into Normie Newsworld, that...
What was all that about?
Dominic Cummings apparently created the department, which is in charge of...
Dominic Cummings that I used to hail as a hero.
I mean, I just think...
With Toby, yeah, I know.
With Tobes.
Who had that on their bingo card?
Dominic Cummings being called out by Toby Young for his...
Yes.
And then I said, well, who's the bigger dickhead?
The guy calling you out, or the guy, you, who's responsible for setting up the solar dimming operation.
What are we dealing with here?
It's crazy times.
I just find it bizarre that there was a time in my life, not so long ago, where I was writing pieces in praise of Dominic Cummings.
I believed all the Brexit narrative and that Dominic was a Brexit hero and that he was anti the civil service and he wanted to slim it down.
He's not.
He's an evil technocrat.
Well, I've been like J.D. Vance and like Peter Thiel and all the other people.
Well, you know, there was a time when you'd have Michael go for tea.
There was a time when I was praying Boris Johnson didn't die.
I would still have Michael go for tea.
Would you?
Yeah, I would.
Okay.
Do you know, the weird thing is, despite everything, I still love Michael.
Well, you did say at the time he will always be my friend, but I might not agree with him.
But I think it's very noble of you to say that you would still have him for tea.
But it would be an interesting conversation, wouldn't it?
I could pretend that this is the good Christian in me, but I think it's just me being stupid.
I just, like...
You know, it's quite hard to...
Obviously, I feel sad that he's probably going to burn in hell for all the bad things that he's done.
But at the same time, I still love him.
Do you think it's a case of it's a lot easier to hate someone that you haven't met?
Yes.
Because everyone was saying, well, how can you do that?
And you said, well, you've never met him.
Actually, he's all right.
Actually, it is true.
I mean, I've met Alistair Campbell, for example, and although I do kind of hate him, I'm sure I don't hate him as much as I would have done if I hadn't met him.
It's a tricky one, that, isn't it?
The whole IRL thing.
Well, as I haven't met Tony Blair.
You can count your blessings on that.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Hey, listen, unless I...
Having got my notes from...
Well, last time, I didn't mention once my upcoming festival, which is very, very soon, two weeks' time.
Unregistered chickens will be playing at Stand in the Light in the Lake District.
And if the weather is...
But tomorrow, I've got to go to London with the rest of the band.
We've got to rehearse.
We've got a six-hour slot booked in a Methodist church hall with our second organist, Kwaku.
Who, as you can guess from his name, isn't from Herefordshire.
He's not even from Worcestershire.
But he is our second keyboardist.
And he'll be joining us on stage.
And so we've got to go down and do a rehearsal with him.
This is serious business.
This is like absolute slog of being in a band.
But I'm absolutely loving it.
So have you got organs?
Are you going prog now?
Well, they are electronic organs, but there is certainly a proggy sort of element to it.
I can just see it now.
These, like, epic half-hour organ solos.
Well, it's a tough thing to do so.
Can I be your Mellotron player?
I can't play the Mellotron yet.
Well, funnily enough, we haven't got church bells in it yet.
And I'm thinking, what is your instrument?
And I know you can play the piano, but we really are kind of chock-a-bock block with pianists at the moment.
So I was thinking, yeah, there's definitely a place for church bells.
It could be like that classic rave track, The Testimony by the Finney Tribe.
Which has got the Balearic bells sampled on it.
Yes, it starts off with the bells, doesn't it?
No, well, I'm sorry, what am I thinking of?
Fluorescence.
Fluorescence with the man with no name starts with a dong, doesn't it?
Does it?
Yeah, those are great days.
There's a church bell in that.
Those were great days.
So just to finish off festival, you can still get tickets.
If you use the code CHICKENS10, you get 10% discount.
Of your £80 ticket, £80 for a long weekend, remembering it's the bank holiday.
That is really good value.
And that's your camping in the Lake District.
Even if you don't even leave your camper van or tent, you've got a bargain.
But it's just the best festival.
And I think it's tragic that you can't come, because I know what a good time you would have.
Oh, I totally would.
I totally would have a good time and I'm going to be totally I can't even It's complicated.
I know it's complicated.
You have a complicated life.
And I think that's all my notes.
Michelle was asking me.
I really, you've suggested I should do a podcast with Darren, and I should, with Daz.
If I can squeeze one in.
Well, it would have benefited the festival, but you and your shite organizational skills.
That is the problem.
I hope Daz understands it's more that than any form of unwillingness to speak to him.
But...
Well, we've got two weeks to go.
And also, he will be massively busy right now.
Well, this will help anyway.
Yeah, hopefully so.
This will definitely help.
Of course it will.
because I'm really influential.
In fact, I want anyone who has bought a ticket But also to say, you know what, Dick?
I would have missed all of this had it not been for you.
That would be nice.
that will make me feel glad in the face.
How, did you tell the story on the last podcast about the mysterious thing that happened at your meeting?
I think we did because it was relatively recent.
The demonic glass going off the table and having to do various prayer things.
I've had another Thursday Circle since then, and I took the precaution then of laying down salt, of sort of doing a mini exorcism of the room.
Now, at the Comcast show, the one in...
Kegworth.
at the Kegworth do, a lovely old chap came up to me and he gave me this salt that has been blessed by a bishop.
And he told me how to do an exorcism.
And basically you sprinkle some of this blessed salt on the four corners of the boundaries of the area you're going to be in, while saying...
And so I pretty much exorcised the room beforehand, and it was a much better vibe.
The people who had had misgivings about the venue said they felt a lot better about it.
And I explained to them what I'd done before they came in.
So maybe there's something in that.
Yes.
No, I can well believe that actually.
It's all a bit woo, but you know, Why would a bishop bless the salt if it didn't work?
It is all a bit woo, but isn't what we do woo?
The bits that they're trying to take away from us is all the woo.
They don't want us involved with this sort of thing.
It's like what Laura was saying.
We all have the authority to drive out demons and to heal.
What went to the apostles has sort of come down to all of us.
We've just got to be a little bit more confident and authoritative about this.
It's a shame that we don't also have the power to kind of, like, lightning that comes out of our fingers.
Something more visibly dramatic.
Well, I mean, obviously, healing and casting out demons is cool, but I mean, Lightning fingers would be better?
Well, there are so many baddies out there.
And, you know, we can't get shotgun license.
Well, you've got your...
But, I mean, it's quite...
Yeah.
I would struggle shooting someone.
I really would.
It's nice to have a shotgun licence, but I think the police can be confident I really wouldn't be able to pull the trigger on someone.
Yeah, we're just too nice.
We're going to be the characters in the movie that just die.
But, you know, our death is unfortunately part of the deal, isn't it?
We just hope for a swift one.
Yes, and then we get eternal life, which is nice.
So, what else does your Filofax say that we must talk about?
Well, actually, the notes aren't in the Filofax.
They're in...
I keep notebooks like this so that...
Oh, look, that's the page in which I designed the...
Ah.
That's like a kind of, what are they called, a Da Vinci cartoon?
Yeah.
These were the prototypes.
So don't always get there first time.
I quite like the crap dinosaurs.
Can't you just...
Like the pathetic sharks, but as dinosaurs.
Yeah.
The ancient filofax is just to tell me what to do and on what days.
Did you see that thing?
somebody put it on YouTube.
I should have...
Twitter.
I should have retweeted it more.
I think I may have done a bit.
Somebody put up a video of how the elephant evolved.
Oh, I've seen those.
Yes, it comes from a sort of a slimy sea creature.
And it just morphs ever so quickly.
And you can say, well, that makes perfect sense.
And there's another one in how the chicken became a T-Rex.
It's great.
A creature that didn't exist.
Then another creature that didn't exist.
Then another made-up shit creature.
They morph through several phases of completely believable, ah, now that makes sense.
Now, if they could prove that any one of those creatures ever existed, it might mean something.
But just because your computer animated it, it's a bit like morphing someone's face into a monkey.
I mean, it doesn't prove anything.
It just shows that they've got eyes and a mouth and a nose.
The AI is so evil.
Yeah, but it's kind of so evil it's almost kind of fun.
Yeah.
Every time I'm forced to use it at work, say, I kind of have to grip my teeth and just do it.
But just being aware of what you're doing is part of the game.
I haven't used it yet.
You remember how when Cass And I resisted getting one.
There's newfangled things for years.
So you used to go into the counter and write out a check and pass the check over the counter.
Yeah.
Hello, Mr. Dellingpole.
Here's your £25.
I didn't like this technology thing.
Yeah, you had a good instinct for the fact that I don't like the way things are going.
Yeah, and with this AI thing, I haven't worked out how you use...
Obviously, when I say this to the kids, they're going like, it's just easy!
It's an app!
Or whatever they say it is.
And I'm just thinking, look, it's another...
Grok is part of Twitter.
There's a part of Photoshop that is now AI that you never asked for, but it's there.
For instance, if you wanted to expand a photo, say it's a sunset with palm trees, and you wanted it to be twice as wide for use in a wide format.
You haven't got to try and copy and paste the existing palm trees in.
You just go wider and you say, look AI, do your thing.
And it generates completely new, completely believable palm trees.
It continues the mountain range without copying and pasting the existing ones.
It knows what's going on in there.
And it uses its vast database of what palm trees look like and which angle the sun is coming from.
And it gives you three options as to, you want this one where the mountains fade out, this one where the mountains get bigger on either side, one where there's more trees to the right that there's so many it's so bloody clever does it's important to remember that it's not clever it's just using what clever humans have already done does it make up that So, say I took a picture of some mountains, yeah?
Could it do the thing where it showed me all the mountains that I hadn't photographed, as they actually are?
Not in this option, no.
I'm sure there's something out there that could, that would identify where those mountains are.
Because that would be disturbing, wouldn't it?
It can't be far off.
There was a desktop pattern on my Mac at work, and it showed a really interesting rock formation that looked like a kind of mesa with an ancient building on top.
It had to have been an ancient building.
And I said to someone else, one of the youngsters, I said, that's amazing, isn't it?
Do you think that's some sort of ancient temple?
They said, I don't know, mate.
I said, where do you think that is?
Oh, I'll find out.
Oh, that's called Factory something or other, and it's in Monument Valley in the States, and it just looks like a building, but it's not.
And it can tell you what that image is.
It can geolocate where it is through its massive database of that picture.
So you show AI a picture.
It doesn't cleverly know because it knows everything.
It uses its database of pictures.
It's been building up for years.
So the problem is when people ask AI things and they take AI's answer as better than you would get...
Well, it's not going to affect me because I'm not going to go anywhere near it.
Yeah, but you might find yourself in court with the judge being an AI.
Yeah, as the old saying goes, you might not be interested in AI, but AI is interested in you.
AI is interested in you, exactly.
Good.
Yeah, well, we've done AI.
What else?
What's happened?
I went to Florence.
You did go to Florence.
I would probably rank Florence as my favourite city, definitely top five.
I've probably been about three or four times.
Do you know what I call it?
Florence, I hope.
Firenze!
No, I don't.
I don't actually.
Wasn't Forenze...
I think it might have been.
I don't think it was.
I hope it wasn't.
Because that would be whoever wrote Harry Potter.
Whoever wrote it.
They've got that on their conscience, haven't they?
Making a gay unicorn.
Well, I mean, it was gay as read by Stephen Fry anyway.
It's going to be, isn't it?
Yeah.
No, Florence is great.
And I feel kind of guilty about...
Did we do bad things when we were in Florence?
We were at that age where we...
I think we were pretty good because we were with my old friend and yours, Dave Bennett, and he was the member of staff with our school trip who was leading our particular section, split up like infantry sections, And we were the elite, heavy-drinking, heavy-arting squad.
And we would...
We were on fire.
We were.
Gallery, monastery, bar.
Gallery, church, bar.
Presumably we were smoking as well.
Yeah.
Good.
Yeah, all of this.
Gallery, monastery.
Smoking.
But we absolutely loved the art.
We weren't dismissive of it.
Dismissive of it at all.
What was the tower that Nick Kirkham, you and I, were up?
It would have been the Campanile at the cathedral.
Oh, would it?
Yeah.
Do you think?
Yeah.
Okay.
No?
Maybe.
I don't know.
I was wondering that.
Did you have one of the Chachata, I think it's called.
Chachata?
The bread that they've got.
No, all the things that you did were...
But I think we have different needs now.
We're looking for ponce pastries and elegant cocktails.
You're right, it was all about the price, wasn't it?
Back then it was about beer.
Strong coffee and just getting the art done.
You'd be looking out for those exclusive little things that only you know about.
I had it with, as I mentioned in my piece on Substack, I had it with pistachio.
Right.
And pistachio paste and brown pistachio and Parma ham in this chachata.
Really good.
It was almost like the best thing I ate.
When I was there.
You know what we didn't do when we were there?
Because it was closed?
The Carmine Chapel.
The Brankatchy Chapel.
You did do the Offizie quite comprehensively, didn't you?
I did the Offizie again and had exactly the same experience as I had before, which is that by about the fourth room you are so arted out.
This is not with any big gallery.
It's almost like you've got to deliberately do it in bite-sized chunks, which isn't...
But I have to say that unlike the Mona Lisa, the birth of Venus and the Primavera, the two big Botticellis, they're just great.
Yeah.
when you see them in the flesh they're much better than they are in reproduction and I think when you look at frescoes Obviously, they have to be seen in location.
Being part of the structure of the building, being painted into wet plaster, you've got to see them like that.
But they make sense when you can see, say, the Fra Angelico ones in the individual monks' cells.
And imagine how important they must have been to the monks living in those cells.
You know, the sort of, their one devotional painting.
You make me think I didn't...
I don't think I saw them.
There's a particular monastery, and I would have been able to reel this off 10, 20 years ago, but I'm sure it won't take our viewers slash listeners long to find out where those are.
It might have been the one that we didn't go to.
You could stay for a month and still only scratch the surface.
Unlike Prague, which I did feel I'd completely nailed within three days.
Yeah.
On the fourth day, I was trying to think, oh God, I'm struggling here.
I loved Prague, but I do feel I kind of nailed it in that one trip.
Whereas Rome and Florence, you feel that you could really do with living there for a few months just to check them out properly.
Well, one of the times I visited was when Wilton had an apartment there for a while.
Yeah.
And I remember it was so hot, I was sleeping on his floor.
There was a marble floor, because all the floors are marble.
Yes.
and lying against the floor trying to soak up a bit of coolness because it was so bloody hot and he had no air con, which for an American must have been horrendous.
I think I had a similar...
But luckily, we then went on this road trip from Florence, down the heel of Italy, across to Sicily, round, and back up again.
He was king of the road trip, wasn't he, Wilton?
well i wonder if he still is he's i wonder if anyone anyone listening to this oh That was weird.
What?
So...
Anyone watching this who's wondering who's Wilton is?
Wilton Barnhart.
He's now a professor of literature at a university in North Carolina.
University of North Carolina, I think it is.
And he's a novelist.
And he used to take Dick and I on these incredible road trips.
So yeah, so we went to this restaurant.
I tell the story on the Substack again, but we went to this restaurant, a fairly non-touristy restaurant outside the walls of Florence, so kind of not on the tourist trap bit.
And the deal is you have to share a table with these random people.
We didn't realise this, but you do.
You turn up at 7.30, there were queues outside, and everyone...
And you just go where you can grab a table.
So we sat down and we started introducing ourselves to the people.
And this girl at the end of the table says, You're James Dellingpole.
I've been to your house.
I've had dinner at your house.
And like 25 years ago, she had come with Marty, who was a friend of Wilton's.
I remember Marty.
Marty.
Always wore a baseball cap.
Yeah.
Marty, was he a record producer or something?
I forget.
Or a studio engineer?
Lovely guy.
Studio engineer, I think.
Marty.
Marty.
And Marty had apparently brought her as his guest round for dinner at our place in London.
And luckily we've been nice.
Because you imagine if she'd been 25 years, she'd been nurturing this.
Yeah, I've met James Dellingpole.
Bit of an arsehole.
He's there!
I hate him!
Yeah, yeah.
Well, she's written, I think, 40 books.
That's doing quite well.
I mean, even if they're all shy, I'm sure they're not.
That's 40 books.
That's sort of like 30 more than you.
You're going to have hits and misses, aren't you?
You know, I've taken, I think, five years to write the book I'm writing about White Pilled.
It's like sex, isn't it?
When you talk about it, you don't...
You always talk about it.
It means you're not getting it.
Well, I hope I get to do the cover because I'm thinking it's going to be white.
How much whiter can it be?
Exactly.
Just embossed, maybe.
Just embossed letters.
Your name and the pill.
Just the whole thing done in embossing.
How much do you pay for the embossing?
Probably extra.
Yeah, of course it's extra.
And I would even suggest UV varnish, but we can discuss that at a later date.
What varnish?
UV, ultraviolet.
It's when you get shiny bits.
That aren't covering the whole thing.
So you might find for your big names that the name will be embossed, there'll be gold foil, and there will be UV varnish, which is just like a peel-off type thing that makes certain parts of the matte cover look shiny.
And do I need to explain it with a subtitle, or do you think I just go, no?
It will help people.
I mean, some of your books have had incredibly long titles.
Yeah, what's the subtitle for Watermelons?
How environmentalists are killing the planet, stealing your...
Well, it's very snappy, clearly.
Yeah, stealing your children's future and something else, I don't know.
Yeah, just all bad stuff.
I think it's the done thing right now to have a subtitle.
Anything that might get you a few more sales.
But to be fair, it's a different book, because when I started writing it, I was still at the phase where I was thinking, because I wanted to talk about all the conspiracy stuff that we talk about now as a kind of matter of course.
And at the time I was going through the phase where, you know, remember Helen warned me, she said, Jay, you don't want to go into this because you'll get killed, you know, by the forces of darkness.
Whereas now I'm thinking, well, A, so what?
I mean, I can't not talk about this stuff, can I?
Because it's true.
It's not like this wacky thing I've chosen to do.
Talk about made-up shit for my amusement.
It's how things are.
And you can't not talk about how things are if you're interested in how things are.
No, not quite.
You have to stop being yourself.
We don't choose this stuff.
It chooses us.
Yeah, exactly.
So, and also I think I'm better at, because it's about my Christian journey and I'm better at, analyzing it now and what it all means and making sense of it and the chapter I'm going to write about the devil is going to be much more and I'll have read it I'll have read enough of the Bible to know what happens in Revelation but you know which I haven't before when I started so and then Yeah, I've read Enoch 1. It's very good.
Yeah, I'm going to do it next when I...
I don't understand how it's non-canonical, because it backs up so much.
Well, it isn't for the Ethiopians, is it?
Maybe we should join the Ethiopian, become Copts.
Copts.
Copts.
Yeah.
Because then we could potentially get to guard the Ark of the Covenant.
Yeah, but then also, what are the chances of getting a hymn you know in the church service?
I would miss the Belters, where you go in there and you think, do I know any of today's hymns?
Oh, this one!
Fantastic!
And you can actually really look forward to it, rather than the ones that you just about know it by the fifth verse.
Is it the first thing you do when you go to church?
Yeah.
Yeah, me too.
I check them a lot.
Those quiet moments when you're meant to look solemn before they all come in and you stand up.
It's sort of like, right, let's check the...
Oh, that one.
It's got a good tune.
Oh, no, they're using the secondary tune.
Yes, they do.
They always go for the secondary tune, which is really annoying.
And I find that I sometimes have unchristian thoughts when they're ones I don't know.
Yeah.
You were quite kind of phlegmatic about it with your response there.
Whereas I'm like...
I'd never be quite that demonstrative No, I try and keep it Is he married?
Why hasn't he got his wife?
Does she hate Christ?
Yeah.
What's he doing with a helmet?
Because I often take the scooter to get there.
Little things like that.
So I don't want to draw attention to myself.
Dick, very briefly before we go, you haven't talked about the most exciting thing in your life.
Your new uniform.
Oh.
Dick.
I was hoping it would be visible in the background there.
But it wasn't.
There's various bits of it.
I had a fantastic weekend in South Wales with it.
And the full kit has now arrived from Russia.
There you go.
Seven points to the grenade.
Seven flames is legion.
If it was line infantry, the only difference is that they would have a number.
So that's a little lesson for our viewers.
Let me just show you this other thing.
Hang on one moment.
We almost forgot this.
I can't believe it.
This is all the stuff, all of this wonderful stuff that came from my seamstress, who is Russian, operating out of France.
This wonderful thing.
Ceinture bleu.
This is your special blue belt which wraps around your waist and it is a uniquely legion thing.
And do you know how to tie it?
Well, no, I haven't managed to...
It's that sort of theory.
But I had a fantastic weekend wearing it.
Which is in Kent, I think.
It is the biggest 20th century reenactment in the country and it sort of attracts hundreds of thousands of people.
And so me and the gang who are putting this impression together are going to be down there this year in our Legion kit.
How many are we going to do?
Combien?
I think there's only about four or five of us at a push.
And does any of you have rank?
They all want to give themselves rank, and I don't think that's on, because things start getting complicated with rank in the Legion.
You have non-standard items that you wear, and the rank insignia isn't just a stripe you put on your arm.
There's a little bit of piping that you add to the cuff, and lots of little things like that.
I don't think we've got time to do that.
The officers are all French, aren't they?
No, it wasn't unheard of to be commissioned through the ranks.
But by and large, it's foreign troops and NCOs.
And then, yeah, the officers are French.
And what year are you?
1900.
The Legion started in 1831, and I've been reading about their escapades in Vietnam or French Indochina, you know, as the reason that the French were there, Diambien Phu.
So it was sort of like...
Imagine the Vietnam films you've seen but in kit like I just showed you.
Well, I think that some of the people at Dien Bien Phu were ex-SS who joined the French Foreign Legion.
So they say.
I don't know how overstated that is, because there have been a lot of Germans in the Legion, but bear in mind they might have been from Alsace and Lorraine, because that was one of the main reasons the Legion was founded, because there were people who identified as French, but couldn't join the French army because they were part of Germany.
I got you a surprise.
Can I tell you what the surprise is?
What is my surprise?
A book about the French Foreign Legion.
Have you?
What's it called?
Have you got it?
If it's called Our Friends Beneath the Sands, then I have.
If it's not, then I haven't.
Why do wives always move things?
Oh, it's gone.
After all that.
That title sounds worryingly familiar, but it...
Hey, listen, I've only been lent the book, so if it is it, then...
Oh!
And you should definitely...
This is an actual gift with love.
Yeah.
There's a dog down there.
Lemmy?
Lemmy?
Say hello.
Lemmy?
Come on, chew my arm.
Chew my hand.
Chew, chew, chew, chew, chew, chew.
When I put my hand across, it doesn't go into your picture.
No, he's not interested.
he can't smell you he wants to send disappears disappears We'd better go.
We'd better go.
I've got two missed calls to say my bike is ready.
