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Jan. 26, 2023 - Uncensored - Piers Morgan
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Trump's Social Media Ban 00:01:41
Tonight on Piers Morgan uncensored, Donald Trump returns to Facebook in a stunning boost for his campaign to return to the White House.
Is he a victory for free speech or for hate speech?
We'll debate that with the censor social media star who's actually been advising Trump on his comeback.
Jesus was non-binary and Judas was a woman, according to a woke-washed reversioning of Jesus Christ Superstar.
His culture caving to the culture warriors.
Alaska Musical's legendary original lyricist to Tim Rice and stage legend Tom Conte.
Thus Oscar-loaded star Brendan Fraser says we should be more kind to the morbidly overweight.
But is body positivity one of the big reasons for the obesity epidemic?
Is fat shaming actually not a bad thing?
I'll be joined by top TV chef Tom Coach.
You lost 12 stones.
Come join me live.
Live from London, this is Piers Morgan Uncensored.
Well good evening from London.
Welcome to Piers Morgan Uncensored.
Worship him or detest him.
And it's usually one of the two.
Donald Trump can never be fully written off.
Hammered by lawsuits, humbled in the midterm elections, hemorrhaging backers to his younger rival Ron DeSantis, Trump still believes he can return to the White House.
And returning to Facebook and Instagram might be the first big step on an explosive march back to power.
Campaigning used to be about pounding pavements, bashing phones, kissing babies' heads.
Now the heat is where we all spend hours every day on social media.
That's why Trump's ban from Twitter, Facebook and Instagram was seismic.
The Real Problem With Twitter 00:15:59
The tech giants suspended Trump for glorifying and in their view inciting an insurrection on January 6th at the Capitol.
They choked off his ability to spend hundreds of millions of dollars, riling and rousing tens of millions of voters.
And most damagingly for Trump, they choked off his ability to be the center of attention.
This was why they did it.
It's a very tough period of time.
There's never been a time like this where such a thing happened, where they could take it away from all of us, from me, from you, from our country.
This was a fraudulent election, but we can't play into the hands of these people.
We have to have peace.
So go home.
We love you.
You're very special.
Well, it was a little bit late for that, wasn't it?
Because people had already started dying at the Capitol.
And it was an outrageously irresponsible thing that Trump did in relation to that event.
He whipped up his supporters into a frenzy.
If he ever steps alone again, then I'm sure he will be banned again because free speech always comes with some guardrails.
You can't incite hatred, demand violence, or shout fire in a crowded theater.
But banning Trump is at the heart of a much bigger debate.
Who gets to decide what those guardrails are?
Big tech companies themselves are unelected and unaccountable.
So why should they get to make decisions that literally change the outcome of elections?
A former leader of the free world, a man who got 74 million votes in the last election, was banned for inciting violence.
But the eye toller of Iran, who literally has called for America to be wiped off the map, still has a Twitter account which he uses to spew Holocaust denial and demand actual war.
The Communist Party of China has used Twitter to say its genocide against the Uyghur Muslims is about setting them free.
Putin's Kremlin still pumps out propaganda, even as the Russian army blows up maternity hospitals in Ukraine.
Human rights abusing despots in Venezuela and Saudi Arabia were deemed acceptable too.
Now billion them Elon Musk wants to fix this nonsense.
He spent $44 billion buying Twitter and he did that after one of his favourite satirical websites, Babylon Bee, was suspended.
This is what they do.
What?
My mom got you an apron.
This isn't an apron.
This is a message.
A symbol of patriarchal oppression and a shackle of cis heteronormativity.
I belong in the world.
Toppling gender stereotypes, objectification, inequality, and the subjugation of half the world's population.
Breaking news.
World War III has officially commenced.
As our nation goes to war, the president has declared that one able-bodied member of each American household will be drafted into the military.
On the other hand, traditional gender roles exist for a reason.
I'm your wife and I belong in the kitchen.
Well, you may not share Elon Musk's sense of humor, although actually I do.
Babylon B, which is a funny conservative satirical site, was actually banned for posting that a trans woman in the U.S. government, Rachel Levine, was one of their men of the year.
You might not find that funny.
You might even find it offensive.
That's your right.
But is it really more offensive than the eye toller of Iran tweeting that Israel should be incinerated?
Too often these decisions are taken by chin-stroking bearded hipsters who voted for Bernie Sanders and think Trump is the devil.
Ban people for breaking the law, not because they're not woke enough.
Well, joining me now as host of podcast, I'm Cara Swisher.
Seth Dylan, CEO of the saturated website Babylon Bee, who met Trump actually this week to discuss all this.
And we've got my pack as well, the broadcaster Alex Phillips, laureate and commentator Paula Roan Adrian and talk-to-be international editor Isabel Ogshot.
So a stellar panel of frenzied social media users, I might add, have all been gathered to debate all this.
Let me start with you, Seth Dylan, because you're really one of the reasons that Elon Musk ended up buying Twitter, if you believe his tweets, because he was incensed that people like you were getting effectively censored and banned by the former Twitter regime, and that this was only ever skewed towards conservatives.
Well, I don't think that we were the sole reason that he did that.
I think he was primarily concerned about restoring free speech.
And we were one egregious example of how just making jokes, you know, making jokes that you're not supposed to make was resulting in suspensions where our speech was being curbed.
So, you know, he saw that as problematic and wanted to step in and do something about it.
And I think it's a great thing that he did.
Somebody needed to.
As Bill Maher said, Twitter needs a new sheriff.
They weren't doing a very good job deciding what's true and what's right and what's hateful.
Yeah, well, I completely agree.
And it always seemed to be skewed one way towards people on the right.
So Cara Swisher, I mean, that was my experience.
As somebody who sits, you know, pretty much in the middle, I like to consider myself.
I was watching this thinking, well, it is only actually people on the right who were getting slung off Twitter.
It's only people like Babylon B.
It's only people like Donald Trump.
It's never the hardcore left who sometimes can be just as outrageous and offensive.
Well, you know, the Babylon B thing was ridiculous.
I would agree that they shouldn't have been kicked off.
I mean, you can think the joke was funny or not, but there was nothing wrong with having satire and things like that on there.
And I think it gets more problematic when you have someone like Donald Trump possibly promoting violence.
And that's the problem here is that they had these rules and they were, they were just, they were never, they were random.
And that's the problem with it.
I don't necessarily think there's any beard stroking Bernie Sanders personally.
That's a trope also.
But that they were randomly put in place.
And there's actually been some new reporting also that they were too scared to take things down too of conservatives.
And I think that's the problem is that these companies were unaccountable to anyone, as you noted, have no ability to make rules that they stick to.
And that's the problem with Facebook, too.
They sort of did this two-year ban.
What's a two-year ban?
What does that mean?
Because they didn't have the guts to kick them off, I guess, or not.
Or don't kick them off if you don't think it's a real ban.
And so I think the problem is these are being made by singular people, even if it's Elon Musk.
He had the same problem this week with Nick Fuentes.
He brought him back on and he kicked him right off.
And I think that's a problem.
Yeah, Kanye West.
I think it's going to be a problem forever because they make these rules, they don't enforce them, and then they change them and nothing makes sense.
And that to me is the real problem is that you're putting people in place that don't have any business making decisions for the rest of society and including real societal harm possibly.
Yeah, I don't disagree with that.
I mean, Steph Dunland, you were actually with Donald Trump yesterday, I think.
You were having dinner with him.
What was his view about whether he should come back onto social media?
Because obviously he's had the invitation to come back to Twitter, which he hasn't taken yet because he has his own truth social media platform.
But did you get a feeling he is going to come steaming back?
I'm not sure.
I don't know that he's made that decision yet.
But he shares the concern that a lot of Americans can share that there's politically motivated viewpoint discrimination happening on these platforms.
He was a victim of it.
We've been a victim of it.
Whether it goes one way or not, I don't think is really the issue.
Sure, it's a problem if it's one-sided or the rules aren't being applied fairly.
But this is the public square of the modern age where people need to be able to have a voice.
There's a recent case that just happened.
You had this House Bill 20 was passed in Texas where they were trying to make politically motivated viewpoint discrimination illegal.
And an Obama-appointed judge enjoined that law.
And then the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals looked at it and they said, no, listen, there is no hidden right to censor in the First Amendment.
Censorship isn't speech.
So these platforms don't have a constitutional right to be able to censor you.
They need to let you speak and express your viewpoints.
They shouldn't be deciding what's true.
They shouldn't be moderating jokes because they think the jokes are hateful and saying things like, when Trump got kicked off Twitter, people don't know this, but Trump got kicked off Twitter for saying, I won't be attending the inauguration.
And he said, my supporters will have a voice long into the future.
What rule does that supposedly violate?
It's not unlawful speech.
It's not inciting anyone.
It's not calling for anything.
You have to read that into it.
And that's the problem is you should be able to express your opinions, say what you believe.
Even if it's not true, you have a right to be wrong.
Hillary Clinton said that his election in 2016 was illegitimate.
She had every right to say that if she wanted to say that.
I was going to make that point.
It was exactly the same thing about that.
They all said that that election was stolen from them.
There was no qualitative difference to anyone.
Cara, let me just say that.
That's not accurate.
That's not accurate.
Look, it was slightly different.
But to me, the generalized sort of overview of it all, it's not much difference between one group of people saying we lost that election unfairly.
But let me say one thing.
First of all, you're saying it's a public square.
It's not a public square.
It's a profit-making business and they can do whatever they want.
You can do whatever you want.
You don't have any right to be on Twitter.
You don't have any right to be on Facebook.
And I think that's the problem is we become to think of it as that.
I think the real problem is when the government does intervene, including in Texas, which is going to get going to get overruled because of the First Amendment, they should also be able to put on what they want.
And I think the problem is everyone's decided they own these things.
We did start the internet.
The U.S. taxpayer paid for the internet, and that's for sure.
But these businesses can do whatever they want.
The real problem is that it seems to me the most egregious example, I think, of what was going on was the New York Post expose of Hunter Biden and that laptop several weeks before that election, where we don't know what would have happened if Twitter hadn't banned the New York Post site completely and basically airbrushed that expose, which turned out to explain.
Right, but that was, let me just say, that was changed it really quickly.
You and I have talked about this.
They changed it really quickly.
They said they made a mistake.
He said it in Congress.
How did you get it?
Hang on, Cara, Cara, hang on.
Cara, they didn't change it until after the election.
And the big unanswerable question now is what impact would it have had if the mainstream media had not all convinced themselves this was Russian propaganda and had actually gone after that story as aggressively as they should have done three weeks before an election, it could have tilted things Trump's way.
So you actually had a direct example of a social media platform banning a story and a newspaper from publishing that true story, which could have influenced the result of an election.
And you have the same thing with Fox and Dominion.
Should they have been able to broadcast those election things?
I mean, I think that's the problem is that these sites have so much power over everyone and yet they're private companies.
And so what is the solution?
In the case of Babylon B, it takes Elon Musk to buy it and let them back on.
And that's the solution, unfortunately.
A billionaire has to buy it.
I think the problem is, is we've gotten, we have these private profit-making companies making decisions for all of society.
And by the way, they're allowed to, even if they make a mistake, even if they make the wrong call, even if they say things like that.
We need to make a distinction, though.
We need to make a distinction between how it is and how it should be.
And like you just acknowledged, these private companies exercise a ton of power.
The primary threat to speech used to be the government.
But now, because people speak online, the primary threat to speech is these online forums that are owned by private companies.
And the question like Justice Thomas is asking is, should a common carrier doctrine apply to them?
Should we have rules in place, regulations in place where discrimination is prohibited?
I think a good argument can be made that common carrier doctrine could and should apply to these private companies, even though they're privately owned, so that people are not discriminated against unfairly and they still have a voice in the public.
Let me ask you, where do you think the line is with freedom of speech?
Nobody, I don't think, believes it should be completely unfilled.
In other words, that anything goes.
For example, Kanye West, for example, when he literally is brought back on Twitter and one of the first things he does is post the star of David with a swastika inside it.
If you were running Twitter, even with your zeal for free speech, which I share, would you have tolerated that?
Well, I do think there's a place for moderation.
I think that you get into really tricky places when you try to moderate people's opinions.
I think that people have a right to opinions, even opinions that are wrong.
But that's not an opinion.
That's a deliberate attempt.
I mean, that's not an opinion, is it?
That's basically inciting Nazi hatred against the Jewish people through symbolism, isn't it?
Yeah.
And these platforms should be able to moderate content that they believe is obscene and objectively offensive that isn't viewpoint related.
I think they absolutely should be able to.
They should be able to moderate unlawful speech.
I think that they give people a lot of tools.
For example, if you say things that upset me all the time, if you're trolling me or making fun of me and making me feel bad, I can block you.
I can mute you.
I have the control and I can control who I see and who I hear from.
Leave it in people's hands, what they see, what they consume.
Let them reach their own decisions.
Stop trying to decide for them what's true, what they're allowed to joke about, what they're allowed to believe.
The thought control and speech control that these private companies are exercising right now is having detrimental effects in society.
I just want to ask you one question because you were at this dinner with Trump.
And in the background of the picture of one of the other people you were with, the libs of TikTok, I think they call themselves.
They mock liberal people for doing silly things.
In the background, there's a picture of what looked like Nick Clegg, who's the spokesman for Facebook, who we know won over here.
Was it Nick Clegg?
Was he there?
I'm not sure.
I wasn't aware of that.
And I don't know who else was present.
I've got to say, either it's Nick Clegg or it's a dead ringer for Nick Clegg, which prompts all sorts of questions.
What the hell was he doing there?
Anyway, you put that response to that.
I've got to leave it there with you, too.
This was great.
Thank you both very much because you're both very tapped into all this.
It is a complex thing.
I personally am very glad Elon Musk is wrestling through it because I think he comes from a good place about it.
But we'll see.
He's found that pretty quickly.
It's tough.
It's tough in the jungle.
But Cara and Seth, thank you both very much indeed.
And Seth, great to have you back on Twitter.
I've missed Babylon B. You're hilarious.
So good to see you both.
Thank you very much.
All right.
Quick reaction from the pack.
You're staying with us for the show, so don't worry.
You've got plenty of airtime.
But Isabelle, it's complex, but would you have let Trump back?
Absolutely.
I think that banning him for as long as he was banned was completely disproportionate.
You gave brilliant examples in your intro about the Iranian Ayatollah, you know, the bile that comes and the nonsense that's churned out by the Kremlin.
It makes no sense whatsoever to ban Trump in that context.
And, you know, your interviewee made really important points about no one has to follow Trump.
I mean, you can just unfollow.
You don't have to read this stuff.
And I think the thing that concerns me, and they're right, that these are private businesses.
It's up to them.
But they mustn't masquerade as arbiters of the truth.
They mustn't masquerade as independent.
You know, perhaps they should say what their position is.
We are a left-leaning whatever.
So likely you're not going to get a fair hearing if you disagree.
Would you have let Trump back on?
I would have, actually.
And I know this is going to be a shock to you, Isabel, but actually there's a lot we agree on here.
Fair woman.
And the reason why I would have let him back on, actually, is because I want to be able to see him and I want to be able to hear him.
And I want to be able to challenge him.
And my concern is, is that if he doesn't have a platform where I can do that, if he isn't accessible to me, if I can't hear him, then he's going to continue to say these things and I'm going to be out of it.
Well, it's one of the reasons, actually, Alex, that I, for example, interviewed Andrew Tate twice in the last few months, because I was made aware by my sons, all in their 20s, that this guy has an unbelievable following, sort of below the radars, not on mainstream media.
James Bond Gender Farce 00:14:15
He'd been no platformed everywhere.
And I thought, well, this is actually a really odd situation.
And when I interviewed him, they both got gigantic viewer numbers.
I mean, off the charts.
It's a really good example you've brought up there because, you know, let's do an appraisal of what social media has brought.
It is the most pervasive and pernicious weapon of mass destruction, essentially, against society that's been created in San Francisco.
What does social media usher in?
It bombards young people, vulnerable people, with woke trends that see them mutilate their own bodies.
It enables traffickers to usher tens of thousands of people as human cargo across the channel.
It is fundamentally changing the fabric of society and it is penetrable and manipulatable by foreign enemies, essentially.
The GD is out of the bottle.
It's an unregulated wild, wild west in which life goes in parallel to regular life and bad, toxic things on the internet seep down and tear society.
You know the problem I have as a former newspaper editor, we were highly regulated in the newspaper game.
We're highly regulated now in the British television game by Ofcom.
But there's no regulation really that goes on with these tech giants.
And in particular, we've had these stories of these young girls who are getting sucked down rabbit holes on Instagram, taken to places that fuel suicidal thoughts and so on, with no legal accountability or regulation at the moment to stop these companies letting their algorithms do this kind of thing.
And that, I think, is almost one of the biggest scandals of all about it.
Well, we know about your own situation, don't we?
The terrifying situation where you've had death threats and it's there for everybody to see and everybody to read and yet the police will come back and tell you.
Well, I had it myself.
I mean, somebody made a death threat against me on my son's Instagram in public.
Clear specific death threat.
I reported it to the police.
Someone gets arrested five months later and a year after that, they come back and say we can't do anything.
So he gets away with it.
I mean, literally unbelievable.
I've got to leave it there for now.
I'm going to come back with you guys.
Quick question, though.
Was Jesus non-binary?
Certainly not.
Non-binary?
I don't know.
Was Judas a woman?
Hopefully, but name it Jesus.
You couldn't answer that question about Muhammad, could you?
Well, we're about to debate Jesus Christ Superstar, which has gone woke with a non-binary actor playing Jesus, the woman playing Judas.
Has the world gone nuts?
I'll debate that with Oscar-nominated actor Tom Conte and the original lyricist Tim Rice.
We're coming up, we're in the grip of the global obesity epidemic.
Should we be kinder to obese people like Oscar-nominated actor Brendan Fraser is urging us to do?
Or is it time for some straight talking home truth fact showing?
I'll ask a celebrity chef who's lost 12 stones.
Tom Kerry, she'll be on in a moment.
But first, more than 50 years since it first sparked controversy on stage, Jesus Christ Superstar has been resurrected.
And the 21st century plot twist has gone gender neutral, of course.
Jesus is non-binary.
Judas will be played by a woman.
And none of the apostles are men.
The production is required to keep the original lyrics, which means non-binary Jesus will be referred to as him rather than they, or rather confusing.
But joining me now to discuss this is the Tony Award-winning actor Tom Conte and Sir Tim Rice, who of course wrote the original Jesus Christ Superstar, featuring a red-blooded male Jesus alongside Andrew Lloyd Webber.
Well, welcome to both of you.
So Tim, let me start with you.
This is your baby.
This is your production.
Are you happy that it's gone all woke?
Yeah, I'm fine, basically, Piers, because if they sing the right words in the right place to the right tune, that's really all that matters.
We've seen all-girl performances of Superstar before.
I slightly resent you saying it's been resurrected because it's never gone away, if I may brag for a minute.
But the first time I saw it with an all-female cast was at St. Mary's Khan School in, oh gosh, I think about 1989 or 90, and an all-girl cast, and they did it brilliantly, but they stuck to the words.
So after a few songs, you forgot that Judas was actually being sung by a woman or Jesus being sung by a woman, and you get into it.
And this show, I gather, doesn't change the words.
And we said, fine, you can do it, but you mustn't start singing, I don't know how to love them.
Right, but this is where I...
Okay, I get it, but this is where, to me, it becomes a bit of a farce.
If you're going to have a non-binary Jesus, then you have to use the correct preferred pronouns.
The whole point of being non-binary is you don't get called he or she.
You get called them and they, which I never understand because there's only one person involved.
But if you're the guy here saying this is all fine, but at the same time insisting on the original lyrics, what you're really saying, Sir Tim, because you're very clever, is, yeah, you can have our production, but you stick to our words, which means actually Jesus is not non-binary after all, is he?
Well, that's their problem.
I mean, they can say Jesus is this is a non-binary production, but for far as I'm concerned, it is an all-female production, and they're not changing the show.
We've had lots of different productions of Superstar.
I've seen it in Japan, I've seen it in, you know, Mexico, we've seen it, Africa, Kenya.
It's been done everywhere, and the cast hardly ever bears an accurate resemblance to the original people.
What I did object to in this particular case was the producer, some chap, or I don't know whether he's a chap or not, but whatever he was, he was saying that the Christian community, he was saying that the Christian community had never really embraced Superstar, but that's absolute cobblers.
The Pope likes Superstar.
I'm not saying that everybody in the Christian community likes it, but it has definitely made a positive impact, I think.
That wasn't our intention we had.
I was speaking as a Catholic.
I love Superstar.
He's one of the all-time great musicals.
All right, Tom Conte.
You've heard the witness for the defense here who actually wrote the words to this.
But I do think I've exposed a slight flaw here, which is if you're going to bill it as non-binary, but then not use the non-binary pronouns, isn't this really just a PR scam?
It's a little...
Well, I don't think it's a PR scam.
I don't know what it is.
Actually, I was accused of attacking the show.
I didn't ever mention. the show on the World at One.
I didn't mention Jesus Christ Superstar.
Helen Led with that.
And then we talked about it generally.
Tim Rice is actually more upset you didn't mention the show.
You gave a pretty animated interview to World at One.
But what is your take about this generally?
I mean, it comes back to the debate, for example, about James Bond, right?
Should James Bond be a woman, as some people would like him, her to be?
Should James Bond go non-binary?
Blah, blah, blah.
What do you think the line should be with all these calculations?
Well, it's very difficult.
I mean, I'm a liberal person, so I think people ought to be able to do what they want to do.
And if this guy wants to do this production, I've seen he's entitled to do it.
I don't want to go and see it, but I don't understand why.
I don't see the point in doing it.
I don't see the point in casting a woman to play Mark Antony, because then you begin to wonder, was he having an affair with Caesar?
And is that why he's so upset when Caesar was murdered?
You know, it opens all sorts of doors.
Well, also, if you write roles for women, then they're going to be different to the way you would write a role for a man.
I don't think you could just change gender.
You'd have to basically go back and rewrite the whole script.
That's right, because men and women are psychologically different.
They react in different ways to different situations.
You can't just change he to she.
But I just.
I think Tim is chumming at the bit to get in here.
Tim, what are you hearing that's wounding you up?
No, I was only going to say that there have been plenty of all-female versions of Hamlet or Orthello and this, that, and the other.
And as long as the basic work is the same, I don't really mind what people do.
I mean, I'm delighted that Superstar and other stuff I've done over the years can be done in lots of different ways.
But you can't change what's there.
If you don't like the piece, don't do it.
But if you do like it, then I'm delighted it's done in different ways.
But this is obviously not the way forward for something like James Bond.
I believe James Bond was written for a bloke.
I mean, the character has to be a man.
You can do lots of wonderful movies and plays with super dynamic female agents or non-binary agents, or whatever the expression is.
I don't really understand what non-binary is myself.
But the basic work is paramount.
Let me pick you up on that.
So that's very interesting.
So you think James Bond couldn't be non-binary or female, but you're happy for Jesus Christ.
Well, I think he would.
To be non-binary or female.
At which point I go, hang on.
Surely the two of them are inextricably linked to the fact they're men.
Well, yes or no.
I mean, there's no reason on earth why.
There's no reason on earth, I suppose, why James Bond couldn't be female, but he should still be or, God, I'm getting confused.
I'm getting into terrible rabbit hole now.
He's not using the word it.
Yes, but what does he have?
Does he have girlfriends if he's a girl?
That's the point.
If James Bond suddenly becomes a woman, what happens to all those dingy scenes at the end?
Well, I don't know.
I mean, it's not my problem.
I would not get involved with changing James Bond to that extent.
I mean, we had a case in New Zealand, of all places, with Joseph, which you would have thought nobody would be mad enough to change Joseph.
But they wanted to change the line, children of Israel are never alone, to children of kindness are never alone, which was meaningless and frankly sentimental drivel.
And we weren't sure why.
And we said, sorry, you can do the show.
We're delighted you're doing it, but you have to stick to the words that were written, even if you don't like them.
And they said, well, in that case, we won't do the show.
And we said, fine.
And in the end, as it happened in that case, they backed down.
But I think the work itself should not be altered.
James Bond is a slightly different case because there's no actual standard James Bond plot.
Right.
My concern about this gender issue generally is take the Brit Awards, which is just announced last year.
They're going to go gender neutral with the awards.
Right.
And I warned when this happened, Tom Conte, that when it happened, that what would be the inevitable result was that the next batch of nominations would probably all be men.
And then everyone would scream, how ridiculous it was.
That's exactly what happened.
So all five nominations for best artists turned out to be male this year.
And all the women who've been excluded quite rightly go, well, this is ridiculous.
I don't see any problem in celebrating women, femininity, female roles, female singers.
I don't want a gender-neutral Oscars, do you?
No, absolutely not.
And you deny someone an Oscar or a baffra, whatever it is, if you say, no, we're only going to give best actor, and of course, by saying actor, we also include the word actress.
Then one person doesn't get, you know, it should be two people getting an award, but now only one person is getting an award.
So who does that benefit?
Well, it doesn't benefit women.
No, it's only benefits.
But also, I mean, I know Dame Joan Collins very well, and she insists on calling herself an actress.
She's always called an actor.
She thinks men are called actors.
But this is all part of the sort of gender neutralizing of language generally, which I think is very problematic.
No, I agree.
I don't know why.
I don't know why this is happening.
It's bewildering to people.
People just say, well, I'm a stupid old white man, which is a kind of racist comment, but there we are.
But I don't understand why it's happening.
I don't see the point of any of it, really.
Tim Rice, you've actually, I think, hosted the Brits, right?
What do you think of the Brits going gender-neutral?
Do you agree with gender-neutral award shows?
Well, not really.
Well, I mean, quite a few of the awards, as it happened, are general neutral, gender-neutral.
I mean, best director, best whatever.
But I think the Brits have slightly shot themselves in the foot.
I did present the Brits back in the Stone Age when no one really took much notice of them.
But I mean, once you get into this whole gender thing, I mean, it's ludicrously complicated.
I mean, both Tom and I are slightly about as to what to say.
I can just go back to the same thing saying the work is paramount.
And if you want to do the piece, do it, but don't try and rewrite it.
Well, to me, yeah, you are rewriting it, aren't you?
If you've shut any having old women or old men playing women or the wherever, you are completely changing.
Well, in a way, you're not.
I mean, the Indigo Girls, an American female, all-female band, did a rather nice album of Superstar with only women singing all the parts.
And they stuck to the actual songs.
They got the words right, they got the tunes right, they made a great album.
I didn't mind that at all.
I thought that was nice.
That was an interesting way.
But if they changed it to I Don't Know How to Love Her or, you know, so you are the Lady Christ, the great Lady Christ or something, that would have been wrong.
I think you're heading into...
Once he starts trying to pretend it's non-binary, but the lyrics stay the same as if it's a man, then the non-binary thing becomes to me a complete farce because the whole point of being non-binary is you insist on being non-black.
I would agree.
They and them.
Where is this going on, this production?
Up in Scotland, in Edinburgh.
In Edinburgh.
Yeah.
Oh, they're very confused.
Well, we know, listen, we know what's happened in Scotland.
I mean, on a serious point, where this gender stuff takes you is it takes you right down this rabbit warren we get in Scotland with this trans rapist who ends up raping two women as a man, transitions before his trial and ends up being sent to a woman's prison until today when he's now being taken or she or they or them, whatever he or they want to call themselves.
He's a rapist, so I don't care about respecting his pronouns, but he's now been put back into a male prison.
And I would say quite rightly, but this is the problem.
Fat Shaming And Self-Responsibility 00:07:51
When gender gets that confused, people will exploit it.
And also this whole thing in Scotland of letting youngsters of 16 decide what they're going to be.
I mean, the synapses in the brain are not fully connected in the future.
They're not allowed to buy a drink legally in Scotland until they're 18.
But the brains aren't fully formed at 16.
That's the huge danger.
Yeah.
Tom Conte, Tim Rice, what a great debate with two legends.
Legends.
I don't use that word loosely.
Legends of stage and screen.
What a pleasure to have you both.
Good luck with the best.
And both, I presume just find that you're both identifying as male this evening.
Well, I'm trying hard.
I'm a bloke, I think.
I'm a fairly inefficient.
So all three of us are currently identifying as blokes.
Right.
Great to see you.
We've got to leave it there.
Thank you very much indeed, chats.
Much as well, coming up next, actor Brendan Fraser plays an obese recluse in his new film and says we need to stop the bias against fat people.
But is he right?
Do fat people actually need to be fat shamed into losing weight?
We talked to a man who lost 12 stone.
Superstar chef Tom Kerridge next.
Welcome back.
Brendan Fraser's portrayal of a morbidly obese recluse in the film The Whale has earned him an Oscar nomination.
He's spoken out about society's treatment of overweight people, calling for the need to stop the bias against those with obesity.
But in an age where the world is in the grip of an obesity epidemic, not least which in this country, is this whole notion of body positivity making the problem worse?
I'm joined now by great British menu star Tom Kerridge, who famously lost 12 stone and looking in magnificent shape.
You work out every day, you were just telling me.
I do.
I try to work out every day in different things.
So when I first lost a load of weight, it was through cardiovascular stuff.
So I swam.
So I used to swim a mile every day.
How big were you at your beast?
Oh, I was over 30 stone.
30 stone.
Yeah, you know.
In that moment, what was the trigger for you actually saying, I've really got to do something about this?
Age.
So there's a point where you get to, so I was approaching my 40th birthday.
And I think that's always a point of reflection, isn't it?
I think when you get to 40, I mean, I know it's not that long ago for you peers, but you get to that point where you just think, what have I achieved?
What have I come to?
And where am I going?
So I think there's a point 40 is always a real kind of a testing point for many people.
For me, it was, okay, what have I achieved?
What am I doing?
Career-wise, it was all going great.
The restaurants were fantastic.
The pub was great.
The recognition was good.
We were doing stuff on the telly.
So there wasn't a health scare, which I'm sure there would have been at some point.
There was no conversation.
Were mates of yours or family or viewers, whoever it may be, were people making comments to you that made you think, you know what, about your weight, about your size?
Was that part of it as well?
No, no, no, none of it.
It was all self-conscious.
So the thing about anything that you have to do, whether it's losing weight, whether it's an issue with addiction, whether it's giving up smoking, whether it's alcohol, whether it's gambling, whatever it is, whatever it's part of your life, none of us are stupid.
We all know it's bad for you.
If you eat loads of Mars bars every day, you know you're going to be in a bad space if you drink too much.
It's about self-responsibility.
So a lot of it comes to, you know, what am I going to do to change the bad habits?
My issue with the debate is that obesity rates we know are just going through the roof all around Europe, actually, but particularly in this country, where it's shocking.
And America.
And I see people, for example, I remember a while ago, a model in America, she was a plus-sized model called Tess Holiday.
She appeared on the cover of Cosmopolitan magazine here.
She was over 300 pounds and about five foot tall.
And there wasn't a single word in the whole piece which did anything other than celebrate her supposed body positivity.
I felt that was incredibly harmful.
in terms of making people think this is actually a positive thing.
That's morbid obesity.
That's going to kill someone.
So I think the positivity, that's a mindset.
Yes, okay.
I think if you are, if you're morbidly obese, I mean the word morbid in front of it is frightening and it's something that you have to reflect on on yourself.
But then at the same point.
But my point is, does fat shaming, if you, you know, when I put on a bit too much timber, I can absolutely rely on one of my sons who are all pretty fit or my brothers who are not as fit actually, but like to dig it out.
The first thing they'll do is say, God, you put some timber on, right?
And that will always make me go back to the gym.
In other words, I believe that a bit of fat shaming goes quite a long way in making you think, actually, really?
Okay, I've got to do something about it.
Well, not all of us are in the same fortunate position as me and you, where we can go to a gym.
We have a gym that we can go to that we're members of.
Yeah, but we all know that if it's not something that you actually enjoy doing, it's not something that you're going to continue to do.
So the exercise that you need to do, the way that you can do it, is by finding something that you enjoy doing.
Do you think fat shaming is wrong?
Yeah, I think a lot of it is about education.
A lot of it comes down to education.
A lot of it comes down to poverty.
And if you think of the majority of places where you'll find that most people are morbidly obese are places where they come from economically challenged areas, where the foods that they can afford are down that process line.
So a lot of it will come down to food poverty.
So it's not necessarily about eating too much.
It's about eating the wrong foods.
And the problem with those wrong foods of processed foods that are saturated fat, high in sugars, they lead to what you think is those processed carbohydrates fill you up, but they don't last very long.
So you eat more and you get into this very vicious circle.
And it's not about fresh vegetables.
It's not about, and that's also a food education point of view.
You gave up alcohol completely.
I did, yeah, I stopped drinking.
How big a factor do you think in your dramatic weight loss was just killing the boots?
Well, massive.
So I have an issue with alcohol.
So first and foremost, that was a big part of giving up and losing weight was an issue with alcohol.
But also, even if you're a mild drinker or someone who just drinks at a weekend, alcohol changes your mindset.
So it does lead you to going, I'll have cheese on toast, or I'll go for that curry or I'll have that cabal.
No question.
So it's not just about the lost calories or the weight that you could put on from alcohol and the sugars that are in it.
It's actually from the mindset that changes.
See, I'm on a bit of a health gig at the moment.
So I've had barely any alcohol in five weeks, eating very healthily, going to the gym two or three times a week, pellet on the other days, right?
And I'm getting quite fit again, as I have done sporadically.
But there's always a moment when I'm going to hit that wall when I just slightly lose that steely, self-disciplined streak.
You came through that.
Yeah.
And most people don't.
Especially in dry January and so on.
What's your advice to people to breaking through the wall?
There's a mindset.
But it's very, very different when both me and you now are in that point of middle age where you're struggling every day and you're trying to find that balance between everything.
Where if you're morbidly obese, at the point where I was well over 30 stone, you're then at that point that your life is so unbalanced, it's completely out of control that one thing is, you have to unbalance it completely the other way.
So you have to remove whether it's carbohydrates or sugars or lower calories and alcohol.
And it becomes unbalanced the other way.
If you have a relatively balanced diet, which sounds like you have now and you go up and down and you're kind of in control of it like everybody else and that's okay.
What you do is okay, you know.
But it is that point where you do find yourself that you are overweight.
It is a structured mindset.
And most of it does come down to finding food.
And I would say the most motivational thing in my life over the years about losing weight was actually reading Ali Ross's TV column in the sun, where this pasty-faced little from Aberdeen would regularly torment me for being fat.
Now, I thought he was right.
So it made me get fit.
So I think there's an example where being fat shamed actually can help.
It just cuts through all the crap.
That works.
You are too fat.
That works for you, but there's many people.
Mockery Of Trans People 00:03:51
You don't know their situations.
You don't know where they're at.
You don't know why their mindset is like that.
And the only way that you're ever going to lose weight or you're only going to do that is if you can do it.
That's true.
You have to do it yourself.
And somebody telling you, you already know you're fat.
I mean, you have a shower every day or a bath and you get out and you see yourself in a mirror, right?
You know, you know you're overweight.
It's actually going to be...
Currently I'm seeing a lean, lean fighting machine.
Exactly, that six pack is shining through.
Thank you.
It is going to be that point where you have to make that decision and it can only come down.
It doesn't matter how many people take it.
In fact, that could probably make it worse.
If you have some form of insecurity and somebody's telling you, you know, you comfort eat.
If you're comfort eaten anyway, and then you're constantly getting told that it can only lead to worse.
Tom, I'm going to leave it there.
I want to talk to you again another time about pubs because I was brought up in a pub and I share your passion for pubs and there's a war on pubs as we know, a lot of them going under.
So we'll do another debate on that another time.
But it's great to talk to you about this.
It's a really big issue.
A lot of people out there at the moment doing this dry January, doing V January, which I'd rather shoot myself than do.
And you're a prime example of how you can do it.
So congratulations.
Thank you, Adam.
Cheers, Chief.
We're coming up.
Scotland finally sees sense.
A transgender rapist will be moved out of a women's only prison.
How did it ever come to that in the first place?
That's next with a pack.
Well, after waving the flag for transgender rights, Scotland's first minister was forced into an embarrassing climb down.
Isla Bryson, or Adam, as she used to be known, and raped two women as Adam before changing gender at trial, was awaiting sentencing in a women's prison in Scotland after a huge outcry.
She, he, they will now be moved to a jail with male inmates.
Returning is my pack.
So, Paula, complex issue, but this goes right to the heart of me, of what I've always warned about this.
The moment you allow limitless gender identity, you're going to get people trying it on.
This guy's ex-wife came out here today.
He's never had an inkling or mentioned a word of any of this until he got done for two rapes, realised he was going to prison for a horrific time in a men's prison and put his hand up, transitioned, and then goes into a female prison with women he can attack.
And let's not be surprised here of a criminal not telling the truth, Piers.
I accept that.
It happens.
Of course it does.
And people, you will always find somebody who's going to try and test the system to its limits.
I get that.
But in terms of equating this horror story with the transgender debate, that worries me because they're two separate things.
And do you still think it's perfectly okay for six foot three inch former male swimmers to now be smashing women's records in swimming pools in America, for example?
So what I think is appropriate.
Is that okay?
So what I think is appropriate is that the IOC is a...
So what I think is obviously not okay.
So what I think is okay is that the IOC, who have done the research, who have spoken to the scientists, who have spoken to the other athletes, and who have decided that from, I think it was 2004, that transgender athletes could compete.
They're the ones who are making the decisions.
Look, this to me, this whole gender thing is getting hijacked by very aggressive lobby activists from the trans side.
And people are simply too terrified, actually, to put their head over the parapet and call foul when it creates a new unfairness.
Well, this is the thing.
It's actually not a complex debate, is it?
We had a position.
We had positions in place that if people had gender dysphoria, they had counseling, they had medical treatments, they went for surgery if that is what was suitable for them.
And they were part of the community.
I don't think that there was a huge uproar.
I didn't know about a huge uproar about trans people until very recently.
Most trans people I know are very upset about all this.
Hypocrisy In The Guardian 00:03:21
Right, what's being presented to you?
It makes a mockery of them as trans people.
They don't agree with the new unfairness that has been created in all these different areas.
And that seems to me, you know, I want to take care of trans people who just want to get on with their lives and have fairness and equality.
That's where my concern is.
Creating a new unfairness and eroding women's rights in the process is not the answer.
Well, I agree with Alexa.
I think this is actually really simple.
And I think there's a very simple way of approaching it, which is that if you commit a crime as a man, particularly if it's a violent sexual offence as a man that only a man can perpetrate in that way, then you should be tried and charged and sentenced as a man.
It doesn't matter if you fiddle around with your sex afterwards, you're going to be punished as you were for the crime that you carried out.
And I just can't see why you need to complicate that any further.
Okay, now I've got a little moment silence here of thought and prayers for the Guardian newspaper and the chief woke publication in the world who have just been accused of institutional racism in a comical turn of events.
Producers working for The Guardian on a podcast about The Guardian have discovered links between its founder, John Edward Taylor, and slavery.
Good.
A linked email said a key issue is a lack of any serious desire from The Guardian to face and interrogate its own historic role.
I think we can all surely share our dismay that these wokeys have been caught with their racist translation.
Isn't it gorgeous to watch the left being self-cannibalizing?
The battle of the rights, the battle of the world.
This is always what's going to happen.
I think we just sit back and go, go on.
Paula, you must be a guardian reader.
Well, you'll be pleased to hear I read lots of different publications.
Do you mean The Guardian?
I have done.
I have done.
I've read The Sun.
I've read The Times.
I've read The United Post.
I've read The Variety.
I've read, you name it.
I've never read it.
But there's a point about this.
My point about this racism charge, about when you go back in history over every institution, I just think it's a waste of people's time and energy and money.
What are we trying to prove that The Guardian, which does endless...
Look, let's be clear, they do a lot of very good work about racism.
And now they're accused of being a bunch of racists because the founder, whenever it was, 200 years ago, had links to slavery.
And now it's all been abolished many, many decades ago.
I don't get the point of it.
And I don't either.
I have to say I was confused by the story and where they were going with this because I'd have to say that I think many people would struggle to go back 200 years and not find something.
I love to think that The Guardian would learn a lesson about this.
And what lesson would that be?
Well, not dig back into history.
Will not be endlessly hypocritical.
I mean, just absolutely ridiculous.
It's the kind of story The Guardian would love to expose about somebody else.
Completely.
You know, we've had the Enlightened era.
We've had the Renaissance.
It seems to me we now live in an era of persecution and that everything about society is a lot of people.
Well, it's the sale in witness trials, isn't it?
It's basically, it is.
It's McCarthyite, actually.
The woke fascists are trying to behave like McCarthy.
And we've got to stand up to them.
And I will stand up to the Patreon.
There's no such thing as a woke fascist.
Yes, there is, Paula.
There's no such thing.
You can have a cultural war.
Got to leave it there, whatever you're up to.
Keep it uncensored.
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