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May 5, 2022 - Uncensored - Piers Morgan
45:29
20220505_piers-morgan-uncensored-brian-cox-tina-brown-and-r
Transcriber: nvidia/parakeet-tdt-0.6b-v2, sat-12l-sm, and large-v3-turbo
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Time Text
Queen's Jubilee Stress 00:02:43
Good evening, I'm Piers Morgan, uncensored tonight inside the royal family with the legendary Tina Brown, the Navy SEAL who took up Bin Laden, reveals how he would deal with Putin, a TV's baddest dad and my favourite TV character right now, Brian Cox, is here live.
But first, it's my brain dump.
The Queen's Buckingham Palace garden parties are as much a part of British culture as strawberries and cream, Wimbledon tennis and moaning about the weather.
They're a chance for thousands of ordinary people who've often achieved extraordinary things in their communities to be celebrated and honoured in the presence of perhaps the greatest ever Britain.
So like many people, I was saddened today to hear that the Queen won't attend any of the parties this summer over ongoing health concerns.
Who knows if she'll ever be able to do it again.
She's 96 now, recently recovered from COVID and increasingly struggling with her health and mobility.
She lost her beloved husband, of course, of 73 years, Prince Philip, last year.
And the antics of some of the members of her immediate family will have added significantly to her stress.
My sadness isn't that she'll be missing tea and cucumber sandwiches with the great British public on the palace lawn.
It's that this moment in a way signifies the beginning perhaps of the end of a truly golden age in British public life.
This remarkable woman has steered the whole Commonwealth for 70 years with dignity, duty, stoicism, and that marvellous but increasingly maligned virtue of British stiff upper lip.
That's 13 years longer than I've been alive and I'm no spring chicken.
She's also this country's greatest export.
Ask anyone, from America to Australia.
It's hard to think of any living person who is viewed with more global admiration and respect than Queen Elizabeth II.
She's even held in grudging regard by those who want the monarchy abolished.
When the Queen finally passes on, and I hope it won't be for a long while yet, it will be a massive seismic loss to Britain and to the world.
But next month we have a chance to show her what she means to us with the Queen's Platinum Jubilee commemorating her seven decades on the throne, 70 years of selfless service that certain younger royals could do well to study.
She's a truly historic icon, outlasting 14 British prime ministers, 13 of the last 14 presidents she had personal meetings with, and she held more than 100 state visits for world leaders.
We should celebrate her reign like we've never done before.
Let her know she's loved and appreciated while she's still here to see it and hear it.
Oh, and about those garden parties, I once asked her about them.
I met the Queen three times over the years, and behind that smile, there's a formidably sharp mind and a wicked, waspish sense of humour.
And at a palace reception a few years ago, we stood together gazing out over her magnificent grounds and I asked her, Your Majesty, do you enjoy hosting your garden parties?
Top Gun 2 RAF Face 00:02:03
She looked at me with a little twinkle in her eye and said, well, Mr Morgan, let me put it to you this way.
How would you like 12,000 complete strangers trampling on your lawn?
I wouldn't, ma'am.
Now to my most eagerly awaited movie sequel probably ever, Tom Cruise arrived in style by helicopter last night to the premiere of Top Gun 2, reprising his brilliant maverick role after 36 years.
Here's a reminder of an iconic line from the original film.
You can be my wingman anytime.
Nah, you can't, I'm afraid.
Sorry, Tom.
Everything's changed.
We live in new times.
You can't be Iceman's wingman anymore because you're white and you're male.
At least that's according to, unbelievably, the British Royal Air Force.
This is a genuine leaked email from the RAF communications team looking for a representative to attend the Top Gun launch.
Do any of you have a pilot who is preferably not white male who would like to be the RAF face at a press event for the release of Top Gun 2?
So let me get this straight.
In an apparent attempt to prove to the wokies that they're whiter than white, our top military brass wants to stop white men from representing them in public at an event to launch a movie starring a white man.
What a load of virtue signaling nonsense.
In fact, what a load of racist, man-hating nonsense.
Unsurprisingly, the Minister of Defence rushed out a grovelling statement saying the language should not have been used, you think?
They apologised for any offence caused and added, we are determined, determined, we tell you, to encourage more people, no matter their sex or race, into the RAF.
Really?
Really?
Then I suggest you stop spewing this race-baiting, man-bashing crap, fire the idiots responsible and hire people who can fly planes.
That old trick.
Maverick didn't win shootouts in the sky based on his wingman's skin colour or his gender.
Zero COVID Policy Fail 00:03:56
Who wants to use gender-neutral toilets?
Put your hand up.
Nobody, right?
I mean, no one.
No one in history has ever publicly said out loud, you know what we really need to do in society?
Force men and women to use the same lose.
I've never met anyone that says that.
Ever.
Apart from seeing the odd person on Twitter who appears to be temporarily identifying as a pansexual gender fluid, who says it's a great idea.
Everyone else thinks it's terrible, including me.
Yet this trend is spreading through society like the woke virus Elon Musk keeps warning us about.
The National Trust that conserves Britain's historic properties is the latest institution to become preoccupied with all this nonsense.
They've got formed for fawning to the wokies, trying to force volunteers to wear gay pride badges, issuing pointless mere culprit apologies for ancient buildings linked to colonialism.
Yes, that's because they're old buildings.
And now the trust is rolling out gender-neutral toilets and its magnificent manners for the benefit of, well, I've got no idea.
One horrified lady who visited stunning Tradega House in Newport said, first door I tried opened revealed a man peeing without the door locked.
Why should she be put through that?
And do you think this man wants to be watched by this woman as he does that?
And if he does, by the way, that's an even bigger problem.
None of this is right.
Nobody wants this.
Women don't want it.
Men don't want it.
I don't think pansexual, gender fluid people really want it.
We've all just been traduced into accepting it.
Typical National Trust members are middle-aged couples who like to spend their Sunday afternoons enjoying a bit of culture and a scom with clotted cream, perhaps with some strawberry jam.
For goodness sake, let them perform their ablutions in gender-specific peace.
Well, we're now more than two years into the pandemic and this week has brought a series of grim milestones.
The World Health Organization said today it believes nearly 15 million people have died as a result of COVID.
The death toll in the US this week passed a million, the most deaths of any country in the world.
We also have greater clarity now about which countries have fared better in trying to combat the virus.
One country that appeared to be doing well and was for a long time applauded for its zero COVID policy and low death rate was China.
But China is now losing control of the virus and that zero COVID policy is trapping its people in an endless cycle of inhuman lockdowns.
Be warned, what you're about to see is pretty shocking.
And coughing.
And I don't know anyone who has a...
Well, that's what a brutal zero COVID policy looks like in the age of mass vaccination.
Total hell on earth.
People literally sealed and caged into their homes.
Residents 100 years old locked up in mass quarantine camps.
Kids parted from parents for sometimes weeks.
Fights breaking out over worries that food supplies will simply run out.
Now, countries like Britain and America have got a lot of things wrong in the pandemic.
Both have suffered very large death tolls.
Terrible policy mistakes were made and official inquiries into why and how they happened should be scrupulous and unforgiving.
But the one thing both countries got right is moving post-vaccines to a policy of living with the virus and getting on with our lives.
This is what we all should be doing.
The zero COVID strategy that once seemed such a laudable aim has now been proven by China's current hell to be totally unworkable.
Now shortly before I came on air tonight, a story broke and I thought I've got to say something about this.
Royal Succession Coup 00:15:11
It's about one of the worst child abuse cases I've ever encountered.
It involved a young baby boy named Peter Connolly who became known as Baby P.
He was subjected to a relentless assault of the vilest torture and abuse by his own mother, her boyfriend and their lodger.
Baby P died aged 17 months after suffering more than 50 serious injuries including fractured ribs and a broken back.
His mother Tracy Connolly, a woman of unspeakable cruelty, was given an indeterminate sentence in 2009.
But today, the parole board rejected a government challenge against his ruling that she should be released.
So she will now walk free after serving just 12 years.
When I heard that, I was sick to the pit of my stomach, and I'm sure you will be too.
12 years for the systematic abuse of her son, leading to his death?
One of the most wicked and evil campaigns of abuse against a child in my memory?
What more would she have had to have done to get a genuine life sentence, to remain behind bars to rot where she belongs, to spare any other children from ever going through this again at her hands?
I always try and defend justice systems.
You look at this decision and you wonder what the hell were they thinking?
Well, the Queen is to miss this year's Buckingham Palace garden parties, a mainstay of the royal calendar, in another slightly worrying sign that we're drawing ever closer to a major transition in our monarchy.
The journalist and author Tina Brown has for decades had incredible access and insight into the royal family and her new book, The Palace Papers, is packed with juicy revelations.
And Tina joins me now.
Well, lovely to see you.
Well, it's lovely to see you.
And what an excitement to see Brian Cox in the green room.
I mean, the legend.
A legend, I miss a...
My favourite TV character.
Oh, my God, I'm a junkie.
I just wasn't.
Logan Roy.
I actually have what I'm going to tell him.
I have a WhatsApp chat group with my sons where I'm Logan.
I send memes as Logan.
And they actually all want to be Roman.
They want to be the fun one.
But we're going to speak to Brian on this in a moment.
Tina, what a book this is.
I didn't think you could beat your diner one.
This is better in a way because it's so multifaceted, covers so many people.
And right now, there's a really, I think, massive question mark.
When you see the Queen missing all the summer garden parties, you know she's frail, she's 96, she's lost Philip, she's got all this stuff going on with her health.
You think we're going to have to contemplate the unthinkable.
You know, for you and me, our entire lives, we've only had one monarch.
And if she does leave us, what happens next?
It's a very worrying moment.
It's a perilous moment.
I mean, she's been on the muddy for 70 years.
It's amazing.
I mean, we just can't imagine life without her.
And I think it's going to be a massive kind of tsunami of, you know, grief and instability in this country.
A kind of identity crisis.
I don't think we know how to be British anymore without the Queen.
It will be a remarkable moment, won't you?
Yeah, it will be.
And I think for Charles, it's a challenge.
He's going to have to be the one now to write this ship and to sail.
Is he up to the challenge?
I mean, from reading your book, there's so many great stories about them all.
And I think you've captured, from what I know about a lot of the personalities, you've captured them so well.
Charles has been the king in waiting for so long.
Is he up for this massive challenge?
Well, it's interesting.
If he were ever to become king, this is the moment.
Because, you know, his passions for conservation and climate change concerns, all of that stuff, is actually now absolutely in sync with his own people.
So he's kind of come into his own moment of time and he's going to have to be a transitional monarch.
He hasn't got a great deal of time.
And his role is going to have to really be to modernise and steer the ship to be ready for William.
His trump card to me actually is Camilla, who I know well.
I really like her personally.
I think she's been the one calming constant in his life, actually.
But we're already reading that Prince Harry is planning with his book coming out this year, which may ruin the entire Platinum Jubilee, that his book may be targeting Camilla as a kind of revenge for what he perceives his father did to his mother.
There's a great deal of concern that that's what he will do.
And I hope he doesn't, because actually I understand his bitterness because of the whole backstory, but Camilla has transformed Charles.
I mean, the man looks completely different.
A friend of mine who actually had dinner recently with them, Charles was actually, you know, stayed longer downstairs than Camilla.
And he said he'd never seen a man so happily take two stairs at a time to go and see his wife upstairs.
The man is just unapologetically happy.
And that makes a difference to him, you know?
Talking of happiness, is Prince Harry happy?
I mean, my views about him and Meghan Markle are pretty well known.
I'm not going to labor the point.
You do lots of fascinating research in your book about this.
I mean, you're pretty scathing about Megan.
I mean, you're sympathetic in some ways, but you're quite scathing.
I don't think I am scathing about her, actually.
I feel that I've got inside that situation in a way that has a lot of many dimensions.
Sum it up simply.
Megan simply didn't realise, didn't understand how different the monarchy is from the inside to what it looks like from the outside.
From the outside, it's palaces, it's global tours, it's being adored, it's being one of the most famous people in the world.
From inside, you know, it can be really dull.
It is grunt work.
But she gave it 18 months.
I mean, see, I just can't buy this.
I think she's genuinely planned the whole thing.
I think she thought, I'll come in, hoover up this prince, yank him back to California and become the new Angelina and Brad Pitt.
I think she thought, honestly, that she could play a different kind of princess, that she could actually...
I don't think she went in there thinking, I'm going to snatch Harry out of there.
I think she thought she was going to be able to be this global humanitarian princess.
The problem was that Harry was actually, by that time, sixth in line to the throne.
He's not, although he's a global superstar inside the palace hierarchy, he's not really such a big deal.
I mean, I don't really have a plan.
If they want to go and live in California and lead the life they want to live, everyone should be allowed to lead the lives they want to lead.
No one can force them to do what they do.
My central problem with the situation now is that they want to keep their royal titles, which make them all the money from Netflix, Spotify and so on.
They don't want to do any of the duty that comes with the titles.
And they want to go on national television quite regularly and trash the institution of the monarchy and the royal family as a bunch of callous racists, which causes incalculable damage.
I mean, you see it in the Commonwealth now when they're going on these tours and getting some adverse reaction.
A lot of that comes back to Meghan Markle, the first non-white member of the Royal Family, calling them a bunch of racists and not saying he was.
Well, I mean, I think that actually that Harry is on a pretty good mojo right now.
I mean, because he started inventing...
Do you think so?
I do.
He looks like that.
He's lost to me.
Well, you know, I did think that actually for a while, but I do think just recently he's got his mojo back.
I think that Invictus that he invented was a brilliant situation.
Yeah, it was.
I mean, this is his legacy.
And actually, for Harry, that should be his complete focus on Brown.
But he doesn't talk to his brother, William, right?
And that's pretty clear in the book.
It's a very unhappy situation between him and his brother.
And actually, I think it's weakening for William as much as it is for Harry not to have that fraternal bond.
They were a great team, Messenger.
They were a great team.
It feels like we've lost this guy.
He doesn't look that happy to me.
Someone who else is not remotely happy will be Prince Andrew.
And many will say, well, he shouldn't be.
The Queen, I thought it was remarkable at Philip's memorial service that she wanted Andrew to walk down the aisle with him.
It was a really big statement by the Queen.
I mean, I thought misguided, but actually, other people thought it's her son and it was his father he was honouring.
What did you think?
Well, I mean, what is so fascinating about the Queen is where she's always been able to compartmentalise sovereign, H-R-H, you know, the Queen, from mother, grandmother, and a private world.
And actually, one of the things that I learned during this piece is that in the family, they all know who they're going to see.
Are they going to see the sovereign?
Because they're going to talk about matters of, you know, matters of import to them all.
Or is it mummy and grandma?
Or is it mummy and granny?
Now, like any big CEO like Logan Roy's family, I mean, they like to snip through sometimes.
I mean, he thinks he's dysfunctional, Logan Roy, wait till you see the royals, right?
Exactly.
But actually, it all works just the same as succession.
I mean, there's some fantastic descriptions of public figures in your book, Tina.
Who's this who you describe as an editorial swashbuckler, an 800-pound gorilla of British TV, and the young lord of misrule who revelled in transgression?
Any clues?
Stand up, Piers Morgan.
It is you.
It is you.
I mean, listen, you were the great, you were the great sort of Prince of the 90s, Piers.
Prince of the World!
List of the 90s!
Yeah, I mean, the Prince of the 90s.
I mean, you were unbelievable.
And actually, I still believe that your diaries are absolutely amazing classic.
And I want to see them, you know, on ice and singing and dancing.
A movie, maybe?
You know, I think they are a portrait of an age, the 90s, which are unbelievable.
One of the most amazing stories you tell in that diary is how when Princess Diana brought Prince William, no, you went to lunch at Kensington Investment.
Yeah, with William and Diana and Prince.
I mean, think about it.
Can you tell me?
Two hours of everything.
Two hours.
And what struck me, William was 13 and she told him everything.
Everything.
Absolutely everything.
Well, that was what's so incredible.
I mean, can you imagine today, I hope it might happen, but I suspect it won't, that the Duchess of Cambridge would invite you and you, Piers, over to lunch.
Well, if you're watching Prince George.
If you're watching Your Royal Highness, I am available.
They actually send their kids to one of the schools that my kids went to, the assistants.
But it was an ask-me-anything lunch, right?
No.
And you asked her anything you wanted.
You spend a lot of time in America, as do I. Prince Charles is trying to woo his American fans.
This happened yesterday, in fact.
He went to a school in South London and was shown how to throw an American football.
So before we show it, look at Tom Brady throwing one.
Oh, is that a good one?
Now let's cut to Prince Charles throwing his.
Actually, not bad.
I mean, I just thought that was good.
Given his age and lack of experience, Tina.
But you know who could have done that brilliantly?
It's Prince Harry, because I was actually told, which is very interesting, that Prince Harry, the reason that he was such a great soldier, such a great shot, he has perfect hand-eye coordination.
Really?
Yeah, he is brilliant at throwing balls out.
Well, let's end on a happy note with Prince Harry.
Tina Brown, the Palace Papers, it's a riveting read.
Honestly, I love the diner book.
I love this one.
I'm going to read it thoroughly, gorge on it, not least about myself.
Good luck with the book.
I'd love you to see you.
Thank you, Piers.
Good luck with this show.
Thank you.
Great to have you here in the studio.
Well, I'll say the next.
11 years on from the death of Osama's bin Laden, I'll be talking to the former U.S. Navy SEAL Rob O'Neill, who was the man who actually shot the terror leader dead.
And later, he's one of the most revered actors of his generation.
My favorite star on TV at the moment, Succession's Brian Cox.
Mr. Logan Roy is in the building and we'll be here live in the studio.
Welcome back to Piers Borgon Arts Censor.
As Putin continues his barbaric butchering of the Ukrainian people, it begs the question, is now the time to take down the tyrant.
11 years ago this week, this tense scene captured the moment President Barack Obama and his top advisors watched Operation to Kill Osama bin Laden unfold in real time.
If it's okay to take out Osama bin Laden, then why not Putin?
And could it even be done?
Well, joining me now is the perfect person to ask, forming Navy SEAL Rob O'Neill, a decorated Special Operations soldier who fired the shots and killed bin Laden.
Rob, great to have you on the show.
A real honor for me.
I've known you a long time and it's an extraordinary story that you have, not just with that operation, but pretty much every other great operation has had you with it.
So thank you for joining us.
Big question people are asking.
Big question people are asking, Rob.
Could we take out Vladimir Putin?
One.
And two, would it be a good idea to do that even if we could?
I don't think we could take out Vladimir Putin the way we did Osama bin Laden simply because he's the head of state.
He's got a lot more defense.
He's got lines of security around him.
You're not just going to be able to sneak in there under the radar like we did with bin Laden.
And I don't think it'd be worth our interest in potentially starting a nuclear war.
The way to get to him is to go behind the scenes.
And I know we have men and women in the intelligence service that are looking for a coup, looking for some sort of assassination attempt.
But unfortunately, we here in the United States have sitting senators who like to get on television and say that out loud because they're not really worried about getting rid of Putin.
They're worried about ratings for themselves so that they can get campaign fighting so they can get what every politician wants another term.
And that's it.
But I think the way is through a coup.
And I think they have something like that plan coming up, hopefully.
When you look at what's happening in Ukraine, as a military man, I mean, you must be sick, aren't you, of seeing these scenes play out on real time on social media now, which we didn't obviously have in previous wars, where you see maternity hospitals being bombed, you see Holocaust survivors being shot dead in their homes.
You see refugees being targeted as they try and flee with their children.
What do you think of it, Rob?
And how frustrated does it make you?
Well, it's very, very frustrating because a lot of these people that are taking other countries to war aren't doing it for the reasons they say.
Vladimir Putin said there was a Nazi uprising in Kiev, and that's what he's telling the soldiers who are massing on the border, or they're doing different kinds of drills.
And the Ukrainian people are defending themselves, but like you said, they're being executed.
Mass graves, there's death squads going in there by the direction of Vladimir Putin with no uniforms, just so they can kill people and take the spoils of war.
Even right now, May 9th is coming up called Russian, it's called Victory Day, where the Russians beat the Nazis, and they're going to celebrate it in Mariupol.
They're having civilians clean up a theater site where they've killed hundreds of people in a bombing, the place where it said children inside.
They had white flags outside.
They're making civilians clear that out now, right?
Just for food so they can eat so that the Russians can have a parade there and show the Russian people back home, look, look, we're winning, look over here.
Yeah, I mean, it makes your stomach churn.
The difference between him and Hitler is one thing.
Putin is armed with a nuclear arsenal of 6,000 nuclear weapons, and he's now starting to use that in a very threatening way to prevent people getting engaged with him, which is not supposed to be the point of the nuclear deterrent.
How do you deal with this new phenomenon of a nuclear power basically using the nukes as a protective shield to commit genocide?
I mean, this is just proof that Vladimir Putin has always been playing the long game for Mother Russia.
There was an agreement in the early 90s between the UK, the Americans, and the Russians that Ukraine gives up their nuclear arsenal that's a deterrent in favor that the Russians won't ever invade.
And he eventually invaded.
Ukraine Nuclear Deal Breach 00:10:49
And now he's got the will, plus he's also got the terminal illness where he wants to go down as a great premier, one of the best of all time.
And he's got the finger, you know, a guy with dementia, possibly two guys with dementia, their fingers on the trigger.
And they're just throwing around the word nuclear like it doesn't matter.
And to someone that old that wants to be, you know, go down in history, what's he got to lose?
I mean, maybe he'll do it.
It's very, very scary.
What we need to do is not just meet force with force.
We need to meet that deterrent with the potential of greater force.
And hopefully people close enough to Vladimir Putin.
I mean, maybe soon when he goes, you know, under anesthesia for surgery, maybe he just doesn't wake up.
Who knows what they're going to do?
Because Russians are smart.
I hope they're smart enough not to want to destroy the free world because you've got to figure a missile from Russia can be in the UK in under 200 seconds.
I don't have the exact math, but it's fast.
I mean, that is a terrifying fact, isn't it?
And, you know, he is saber-rattling.
And the question is, is he mad?
Is he bad?
Is he both?
And how, you know, is he sick?
We just don't know enough about Putin's state of mind to know whether actually it's in his calculus to potentially launch a missile.
We just don't know, do we?
I think it's all three of those things.
And his back's against the wall.
He was supposed to roll through there, have Kiev, and then put a puppet government up, like he did in Belarus when someone won a corrupt election, if you can imagine that happening in the world.
And that's what was going to happen.
They're going to keep the Ukrainian flag up.
Russia has that.
China rolls into Taiwan.
It's all part of the big plan.
But fortunately, and I don't think that Zelensky is the greatest hero that he portrays, but he was able to raise morale.
And it's the Ukrainian people that are fighting back, obviously with some backing from us, but they're really showing what it's like to love your country and to fight for it.
That's the only good thing, if you can call it a good thing, of this whole conflict or war is that Ukrainians are showing that you can stand up against tyranny and you can defeat it, which I think they're doing.
Well, he's certainly raising their morale and the people are fighting for him.
And I think they see him as an inspiring leader.
And, you know, I remember at the anniversary of what you did all those years ago, I remember being in New York.
I flew into New York that night.
And I remember just the unbelievable excitement that was in the air when news broke that Osama bin Laden was dead.
And then I had the great honor of meeting you and shaking the hand of the man that did it.
And I just want to thank you again for what you did because that was an extraordinary thing and we're all massively in your debt.
So great to talk to you, Rob.
Always, anytime, Piers, great to talk to you.
Great to talk to you.
Remarkable man.
Uncensored next, Amber Heard and Johnny Depp's grim soap opera continues.
Which one of them is giving the performance of her life?
Can we believe either of them?
Discussing that after the break.
Day after day of revolting revelations in court isn't making either Johnny Depp or Amber Heard any more popular.
There's certainly a lot of attention they crave for their toxic relationship.
Amber Heard is on the stand this week and giving what some think is the performance of her life.
Others think she's a real victim.
We were in the bedroom this whole time, but up against the wall of the cabin and slams me up by my neck and holds me there for a second and tells me that he could f ⁇ ing kill me.
Felt so embarrassed that he could kick me to the ground in front of people.
And more embarrassing, I didn't know what to do about it.
He's howling like an animal while holding the dog out of the window.
Everyone just froze.
He.
Proceeds to do a cavity search.
Well, TV host Tommy Lehron joins me now.
Tommy, I just don't know what to make of this case.
Other than I seem to have spent half my life listening to these two in courtrooms, slagging each other off and making vile accusations about each other.
I don't know who to believe.
I don't know how much of it is true.
They're two actors.
What do you think?
Well, you nailed it.
We've got two actors, so we're going to get a performance of a lifetime probably from both of them.
But I got to tell you this.
It makes sense to me that Amber Heard is of Aquaman fame because everything is seeming a little fishy here.
But I'll tell you, Piers, what really bothers me most about all of this is that we learned this week that the ACLU, they were actually the ones that drafted the op-ed for the Washington Post in the first place.
And they wanted to time the release of the op-ed to the Aquaman press tour.
So all of this seems fishy.
All of this seems very performative here.
I'm sure that they had a very toxic relationship.
But in the court of public opinion, I would say Amber Heard is not making out too well.
I mean, to be fair, I don't think he is either.
And I think that they're trashing each other's reputation so badly that whoever ends up winning, the damage is kind of done.
And in the court of public opinion, like you say, reputationally, I think they're basically talking themselves into being unemployable, aren't they?
You would think so, but I do think that at the end of the day, Johnny Depp is looking a little better here.
I think Amber Heard is talking herself in circles.
Now, I'm not saying that she didn't experience horrible things.
I think he probably did as well.
It seems like a very toxic, disgusting relationship.
But we start hearing about how they wanted to time the release of this, talking about domestic violence, the ACLU's involvement in all of this.
It seems like she was looking to get a lot of attention off of his name.
And that all just reads very cheap to me, especially when we're talking about something as crucial and important as domestic violence, not something to time to movie press.
Yeah, I mean, I just, I don't know.
I don't know how this all washes up, but I just, it's almost unlistenable.
You listen to the details are slowly getting down to severed fingers and feces in bed and stuff.
It's like, please, just pass the sink bucket.
I can't hear any more of it.
Yeah, I think at the end of the day, too, Amber Heard, it's going to be really hard for her to recover from all of this.
You know, once you talk about feces in the bed, I know that Johnny Depp got kind of a good laugh at that, though he certainly wasn't trying to on the stand.
It's going to make it very difficult for both of them.
But like I said, in the court of public opinion, I think Amber Heard is playing off far worse, at least in the perception of those watching.
We'll have to wait and see, though.
It's not over and we'll probably still be talking about it next week.
And there'll probably be another court case next year.
We'll have to put up with this all over again.
Before I let you go, Tommy, I want to play you a little clip.
This is doing the rounds on TikTok.
I want to get your reaction as an American woman to what this, well, all we know is she's a Latina living in Boston.
That's her description of herself.
And she posted this.
Men who look at the bill too long are broke.
If I'm on a date and the guy reaches to pick up the check and doesn't immediately look over the bill quickly, put his card in and call it a day, I will think that he isn't used to picking up the check regularly on a date, which will make me think that he actually can't afford it and has no money, which means he cannot afford me.
I'm sorry, I find that so despicable.
And money digging and all the rest of it.
Can you try and defend it at all as another American woman?
Listen, she's not wrong.
From my experience, if somebody does look at the bill for too long, it probably means, listen, I think just from experience, it's this.
Now, I think that she might be a little money-hungry here.
She might be looking to get a free meal.
So, that's you know, her and her personal life and whatever she does on a date.
But I will tell you this: it comes across very beta male to me when somebody asks a girl, a woman, out on a date and then doesn't necessarily want to pay for it.
Listen, it's going to cost me a lot of money to get my hair, my makeup, my outfit.
The least you can do is pick up dinner.
You know what?
My golden rule.
I think that's a very alpha male thing to do.
Well, I would say throughout my adult life, I've always paid for dinner with another woman.
However, I've always remembered the names of the women who never offered to go halves.
I would never let them, but I never forget the ones who never even offered.
Tommy, I've got to leave it there.
Lovely to talk to you.
Come back soon.
Thanks so much.
All right, now I'm excited.
The most ruthless boss on TV, my favorite character from Succession, the great Brian Cox, is in the studio.
Great to see you.
Come on.
All right, I'm officially excited here because my favorite TV character, Logan Roy from Succession, is here.
It's actually actor Brian Cox, of course, his portrayal of Logan Roy has earned the show numerous awards to become probably the most talked-about show in the world.
One of my personal highlights was when Logan's son Roman accidentally, well, you know what happened.
Right this way.
This is Tom Womskans.
Chairman of ATM News.
Hi.
Hi.
Tom.
How are you?
Shiv Roy, President of Domestic Operations.
Sit wherever you're comfortable.
Thank you.
I need
five.
Do you know why I love that scene?
Because I've got three sons in their 20s.
I know you've got four kids.
I was just picturing that scene and imagining how excruciating it would have been.
Brian, great to see you.
Nice to see you.
Start with succession.
I've seen that you said that you kind of thought it was going to be a big hit because you could feel the quality of the scripts.
But when it went as big as it did, have you ever experienced anything quite like that in your career?
The debut of the last season at the Royal Festival Hall, I walked on, being the eldest member, I walk on first, and the audience reaction was astonishing.
And I actually thought somebody had come on behind me, like some kind of, you know, like some Iggy pop or something like that.
Or Mick Jagger had walked on behind me, and I don't know, there was nobody there.
Cancel Culture Hypocrisy 00:07:35
And I thought, this is weird.
Do you get a lot of people coming up simply wanting them to you to swear at them?
Absolutely, all the time, all the time.
And of course, it's the easiest thing to say.
And do you do it?
Of course.
Of course.
I mean, there's nothing.
You know, I love it.
The great thing, I think, about you, Brian, is you said recently you've reached the age of mid-70s and you don't care anymore about saying what you think about things.
And you talked about how when you were younger, you would temper your words, your opinions, and stuff, but now you don't care.
We're in a very odd place in society, I think, with this kind of cancel culture mentality.
People walking around on eggshells, terrified of expressing opinions, because they're getting fired, they're losing jobs, they're being shamed and abused and vilified and so on.
What do you make of where society is going and what do we do about it?
Well, it's a kind of modern-day McCarthyism, really.
It's a kind of raid on people's sensibilities in order to kind of reduce them and make them.
I don't know.
There's so much hypocrisy involved with the whole thing.
I mean, I find the whole thing completely hypocritical.
Who is the one, you know, there's a thing, I mean, I'm not religious, but there is a thing in the Bible when it says, let him without sin or he, she without sin cast the first stone.
And there seems to be a lot of casting of stones, and it's like a virus.
Well, Elon Musk calls it a woke virus.
Well, actually, it feels to me like what's ironic to me is the people doing it, they claim to be liberals.
There's nothing liberal about it.
No, there's nothing.
It's the opposite.
It's almost a form of fascism.
It is total fascism.
Yes, it is.
You're absolutely right.
It is total fascism.
And people are behaving more and more in the kind of hypocritical.
You see, it's hypocrisy again.
The hypocritical notion of, oh, I'm being liberal.
But actually, you are being fascist.
Yes.
And people should just stop it and behave themselves.
I completely agree.
And again, the irony is fascism would be the one thing they would all say is the thing they hate most.
Exactly.
And they're trying to counter.
But in fact, they're practicing it themselves.
Exactly.
And you're absolutely right on that.
I just, I find it appalling.
I really do.
When you see what happened to someone like J.K. Rowling, you spoke about, I think one of your kids brought you up to speed on what she'd said.
And it was, you know, women menstruate, for example.
And you were like, well, I don't understand what all the fuss is about.
And yet she was exposed to death threats and all sorts of attempts to cancel her and so on.
Again, I just felt everyone's losing their minds.
Well, I couldn't understand that whole thing at all.
You know what I mean?
I thought, well, this is not an area I am not necessarily permitted to tread upon.
But at the same time, I thought there was something deeply unjust about it.
I just felt that.
And it's happening time and time again.
And it's not only the people who are cancelled, it's also the people like their families, like their children, like their parents.
It has such ramifications.
It creates a sort of like an earthquake situation.
Yeah.
On J.K. Rowling, she was, she said, standing up for women's rights.
We've got to a strange place again where politicians, Supreme Court nominees, are struggling to say what a woman is.
They're too scared to say it's an adult female.
Yeah, but we've fear of the mob.
But we've never examined.
You see, the point is, we're beginning to examine things that we have never hitherto examined before, particularly the relationship between men and women, and particularly the sexual relationship between men and women, and how that relationship is operated.
And it particularly affects young men and women because they don't know how or what or how or should they express themselves in certain ways.
And there's a kind of form of fascism because of knockdown effect where they, you know, I, you know, there are kids who just do not know how to approach one another now.
And it's...
Well, they're too scared in that.
Well, yeah, it's too scared.
But it's also, we're a lot to blame because we haven't attended to it.
We haven't actually had schools of study about how those, what those relationships are.
Well, you talk about study, I mean, I'm incredibly depressed by what's going on at university and colleges and campuses around the world, where you see the New York Post did a piece about five professors who all got cancelled.
And it's happening all over the place.
One of them was actually giving a lecture given for 20 years where he talked about the usage of offensive language.
And to illustrate this in the lecture, he said some offensive language.
And he got cancelled because people didn't have the brainpower to understand what he was doing.
Well, this is part of the virus.
And it kind of, I don't know, it just makes people behave in the most idiotic, insensitive, and again, as I say, hypocritical way.
You know, they feel one thing, but they practice something quite else.
What's the answer to it?
I don't know.
I mean, we're in a very sad place at the moment, really.
I think with what's going on both in Ukraine and what's been going on in America, especially in the last seven years, you know, I mean, it's just been a very bad time.
And we're so confused, we just don't know what to believe anymore because all our belief systems are falling apart.
And so we're like vigilantes.
We have vigilante belief groups, which is what I believe the whole woke culture is.
It's a form of vigilante.
It is.
It is McCarthyite.
It's exactly the same mentality, rooting people out for perceived indiscretion and then basically evaporating them from society.
That's right.
And there's no, we go, why is the reason?
And of course it's catching.
I mean, it's catching.
In my business, it catches because suddenly projects...
I mean, Bill Murray the other day, and a wonderful, I mean, he made a remark and it was taken in a way as being offensive.
And the picture he was making was stopped.
Stop the whole thing.
Now, Bill went on, I think it was CNN, and explained himself.
I thought rather brilliantly, actually, saying, you know, it's about times that have changed.
I lived and grew up in one time and I'm meeting another time and it's very hard to know how to approach that time.
Where do we go?
How do we come in?
Where is the entryway to make a conversation and just make even a joke with one another?
Well, anyone can take offense at anything and they can then weaponize the offense.
Exactly.
And that's where we've got to.
And it's almost impossible to defend yourself because the court of public opinion passes verdict immediately.
That's right.
Let's turn to a happier thing.
You went to Lambda.
You attended Lambda, the great drama school.
My middle son went there.
He's a young actor.
And he remembered you going there and doing a QA speech.
And he said the most memorable thing that you said was that you should always carry a picture of yourself as a child to remember to maintain childlike enthusiasm.
Exactly.
Do you do that yourself?
I do.
I actually keep it on my phone.
Hopefully it will come up.
There it is.
And it just came up.
I think we've got it on that.
That's it.
That's on your phone.
You're showing me it here.
And we've got it on screen.
When you see that little boy, have you lived up to every dream that little boy had?
Vegan Pigs Scenario 00:02:46
I have to say, pretty much.
I have, actually.
I mean, I recognize the look.
I recognize.
And the look is always different on every day.
But today is going, you know, it's not bad.
When you've got to the stage, did you ever think you'd get to this stage of your life and your career, and you would suddenly be in this monster hit, brilliantly written, with amazing actors all around you?
And everywhere you're going, they think you're Mick Jagger.
I mean, it's pretty amazing, right?
Yeah, it's kind of crazy.
I mean, I think, you know, I've been in this business now.
Believe it or not, I have now entered the seventh decade of being in this business.
Amazing.
And is this the highlight for you?
Yeah.
It has.
No question.
And it's sort of moved in that direction.
I mean, the map of my life has been really, I think, I mean, full of extraordinary tragedy and heartbreak, but really quite remarkable.
And made me very respectful.
And how like Logan Roy are you in real life?
Well, as a father.
As a father, I have certain difficulties.
Because I didn't have a father.
And I think that's something Logan Roy and I have in common.
And the difference between Logan...
We are both disappointed with the human experiment.
We are deeply disappointed with it.
But I'm an optimist.
I believe it will get better.
He isn't.
Now, I've heard reports, rumors, that you maybe think you're going vegan, is that right?
Well, I'm thinking of going plant life.
I mean, the problem is I like the taste of hamburgers.
I actually rather like that.
Well, here's my problem with it.
You know, there are some wonderful plant life hamburgers, and I couldn't tell the difference when the son got me.
Here's my problem.
My problem, you talked about hypocrisy earlier.
These are Percy pigs.
Are you familiar with these?
I don't know.
So they took them vegetarian.
They're now taking them vegan.
And I've got to do this to show you what we do here.
Play this.
Here's my problem.
They're making these vegan, Percy pigs, but they're pigs' heads.
Why would any vegan want to be seen eating a pig's head whilst claiming to be virtuous about animal culture?
Well, let me give you the scenario I would think.
So he looks at this, or she looks at this, and she says, ah, pig.
Now, a pig is a vegan.
A pig is a natural vegan.
Pigs, they don't eat meat.
They tend to...
No, but you're still eating the pig's head.
Yes, but that's in respect.
Brian, I've got to leave it there.
What a pleasure to see you.
Thank you.
And thank you for fighting the cancel culture, mob.
We need more like you out there.
That's it from me.
Keep it uncensored.
Mike.
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