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July 3, 2023 - Uncensored - Piers Morgan
46:55
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Sporting Outrage Becomes Scandal 00:15:12
I'm Piers Morgan and says that tonight a sporting outrage becomes an international scandal.
Australia's cricketers didn't break the rules.
What's the point of winning without integrity?
As Putin's bombs pounded Ukraine, his top man in London hosted a lavish party with Blenius and Vodka to cheer on the illegal invasion.
What the hell was a lord representing the British Conservative Party doing there?
I'll ask him.
He joins me live.
Plus, we're joined by a well-known movie star and comedian who's now turned the spotlight on free speech and the vicious regime in his native Iran.
He'll join me live in the studio.
Live from the news building in London, this is Piers Morgan, uncensored.
Good evening from London.
Welcome to Piers Morgan and says, first of all, an apology for the state of me.
I have a summer head cold, those rare but vicious little things, which has reduced my voice to Barry White's secret brother.
So my apologies for that.
We'll have to just get through this together.
Now you don't need to be a cricket fan or even a sports fan to be incensed by bad sportsmanship every so often.
There's a sporting related abuse of basic fair play that's so outrageous it transcends the game to become a national or even global Furore.
The bedlam that broke out during the Ashes Test match at Laws yesterday most definitely met that mark on and off the pitch.
The home of cricket witnessed an act of unsporting treachery by Australia, which got the entire nation raging.
Let's have a look at it.
That's another short ball.
Ball now.
This is going to be interesting.
Johnny Bairstow's walked out of his crease here.
This could well be out.
So a double blow for Australia.
Out for 10.
Well England's Johnny Bairstow last week held a hero for dispatching just op oil protesters, ducks a ball and then scratches his mark inside the crease.
Something that suggests that he was in the apparently mistaken belief the over was finished.
That's what batsmen do when an over is finished.
The umpires were preparing to move on for the next over, so Bairstow wanders up the wicket to speak to his batting partner, England's captain Ben Stokes.
Again, this is what most batsmen would do at the end of an over.
But the Australian rookiekeeper Alex Carey threw the ball at the stumps anyway, and Bairstow was subsequently given out.
Now, according to the laws of the cricket, let me be clear, that was the correct decision.
The law says that is out.
Australia didn't cheat.
Well, not like they cheated a few years ago when they were caught using sandpaper to manipulate the ball.
That was cheating.
But what they did at Laws yesterday wasn't in the spirit of the game.
They knew, we all knew, that Bairstow wasn't seeking to gain any advantage.
He genuinely thought the ball was dead, the over was finished.
This was the equivalent of a footballer tapping the ball into an empty net when everyone else on the pitch believes the game has stopped.
And the reaction from the crowd, well, it was unprecedented.
Now, I've been going to Lourdes since I was a teenager.
I've never seen or heard anything like that, not in the hallowed confines of the pavilion.
Set the scene a bit here.
Laws is a place which embodies the genteel qualities of cricket.
Think of a braying English football crowd foaming with impassioned fury at every perceived slight, and then imagine the exact opposite.
That's, well, that's the Lord's Pavilion in particular.
Well-heeled members pay thousands for a spot in the long run, often waiting 20 or 30 years for the chance to become members.
That room dates back to the 19th century.
This kind of raucous abusive reaction, I have to say, was unacceptable, but it's also unprecedented.
And in a measure of the pain this has caused, Britain's biggest newspaper cleared its front page for the story, branding it out of order.
They quoted one outraged cricket fan who said, Australia, that is pathetic.
How can you possibly want to win an Ashes Test match like that?
That fan was me.
Well, Ben Stokes agreed with me and said the same thing.
And Britain's Prime Minister, Richie Sunak, agreed with both of us.
His official spokesman said he simply wouldn't want to win a game in the manner Australia did and asked whether Mr. Sunak thought that Australia's actions were not in keeping with the spirit of cricket.
The spokesman added simply, yes.
And that's the point.
There are the rules of the game, which Australia clearly followed.
And then there's the spirit of the game, which in my opinion, Australia ran over with a bulldozer.
It's hard to define exactly what constitutes the spirit of the game, but most sports fans, we kind of know it when we see it being abused.
It's why Diego Maradona, genius though he was, will always be thought of as a cheat by England football fans for his hand of God goal against us in the World Cup and why Paolo DiCaneo will always be revered by contrast when he did this while playing for West Ham.
DiCaneo sportingly, almost unbelievably catches the ball there.
What nerve does that take?
How many players would have headed that goalwards?
And the whole crowd rises to what must be one of the moments of the season.
The Everton goalkeeper was lying down injured.
DiCanio could have done what many players would have done and just scored the goal.
He hadn't injured the goalkeeper, but he did the right thing, the sporting thing.
And as a result, he'll always be remembered as a magnificent sportsman.
And let's come to a man named Trevor Chappell, who will always be reviled for once bowling underarm to stop Australia losing a match against New Zealand.
An underarm.
You ever believed it?
And that's a disappointing finish.
Disappointed Brian for kicking the crowd boom.
And it's all over.
So what happened there was that New Zealand wanted six to win off the last ball in a one-day game against Australia.
So Australia's captain, Trevor Chappell's brother Greg, instructed him to bowl underarm to just prevent any chance of New Zealand winning.
That too was in the rules at the time.
They got changed later after that incident.
But it clearly wasn't in the spirit of the game.
England Stuart Broad summed up the Bear Stowe debacle perfectly.
I suspect that's true.
Alex Kerry, that wicketkeeper, will probably now always have an asterisk by his name as the guy that did that to Johnny Bearstow, as will his captain, who didn't withdraw the appeal.
And although some Australian media revelled in what happened, others were more embarrassed.
The Australian Daily Telegraph said Australia forever taints famous Ashes win.
And the sports journalist Phil Rothfield wrote, the greatest moments in Australian sport are often not about winning, but great acts of sportsmanship.
This Ashes win will be remembered, but not for the right reasons.
Well, exactly.
Where's the glory in winning a sport if in the process of winning you abandon basic honour, integrity and fair play?
Well, joining me is former England cricket legend Sir Jeffrey Boycott, Conservative peer Lord Marlin, who was at Lourdes yesterday, and the Australian cricket commentator Melinda Farrell.
I'm also joined in the studio by the associate editor of the Daily Mirror, Kevin McGuire.
Okay, well this is a great line-up to have.
So, Geoffrey, I read your brilliant column in the Telegraph, Daily Telegraph, earlier today, in which you demanded an apology from the Australian team.
Tell me why you think that is in order.
Well, I didn't demand anything.
I said it would be wiser.
Look, if he doesn't know the rights between playing right to the letter of the law and what is good for the spirit of the game, then I don't know.
I can't teach him.
In 1932-33, when the body line was played, it was Australia that first started it by sending a telegram.
They didn't like bodyline, which was within the rules, by Jardine and his team beating them.
And they sent a telegram to the MCC saying this is not cricket, it's not in the spirit of the game.
So, those in Australia who are siding with the Australians, so playing to the letter of the law, as it were, should go back to 1930-32-33.
And also, their captain told Plum Warner, who was the manager of the MCC team, who went into the dressing room.
And Warner got told by the captain of Australia there are two teams out there and only one is playing cricket.
So, they didn't like the way it was being played within the rules.
And they went further than that.
After the series was lost by Australia, they got England, pressured them to change the rules of the game, the laws of the game.
And they also said, When we're due to come to you in 1938 to play a tour of England, if you're going to bowl bodyline, we're not coming.
And MCC said, Okay, we won't.
And they came on the tour.
So they were the first to start this about the standards in the game.
And if Pat Cummings and his team don't know what standards are, then I can't teach him.
And if you want to win at any cost, that's not good.
And Jeffrey is also known for gamesmanship, underhand things.
Jeffrey, for those who are not massive cricket fans but are aware of this because it's all over the front pages and the TV news, in your estimation, what happened here that was wrong?
Well, first of all, Johnny Bairstow was dozy, daft as a brush for wandering around because usually you have to wait for the umpire at the bowler's end to call over.
That means the ball is dead.
You cannot be out then.
So he should have waited for the umpire to call over at the end of the over.
Or if he wanted to go down the pitch and tap down the pitch, which happens often, or talk to his mate, the captain, he looked should have looked behind at Carey and said, and sort of, is it okay?
Carey would have nodded and off he went.
That's the way you do it.
He didn't do any of those, so he was a bit daft and dozy.
Carey did what you do instinctively, emotionally, in the middle of a game.
But having reflected on it, Cummins, him, the team should have said, hang on, hang on a minute.
And if they couldn't do it then, they can do it now.
They can think, hang on, we win the game.
Brilliant cricket played by both teams.
Lots of wonderful entertainment for everybody.
You've spoiled it at the end.
You've tarnished it.
You've tarnished your good name.
You've tarnished cricket.
Put your hand up, say, hey, in the heat of the moment, we got it wrong.
We'd like to say we fulsomely apologised.
It won't happen again, that sort of thing.
Shake hands when you meet Ben Stokes.
Move on.
Everybody will be much happier because there's nothing wrong with anybody, me included.
We make mistakes, we're human beings.
Put your hand up when you made a mistake and say, hey, I got it wrong.
I'm sorry.
Don't do it again.
Melinda Farrell, you've heard that from the great Sir Jeffrey, one of the all-time great England cricketers and Ashes legends, who actually in his column also told a fascinating story, which I'll just quickly paraphrase, where he was playing against the Australians and he handled the ball and the wicket keeper, Wally Grout, actually said to him, don't do that, son, rather than appeal and get him out, which was an extraordinary act of sportsmanship.
That's how it used to be.
Melinda, you cannot be happy with what you witnessed there.
That's not how Australia would feel happy winning an Ashes game, is it?
No, it's not.
I think the players feel quite okay about how that's happened.
I actually agree with stuff, some stuff that you've said, Piers in there, and with Sir Jeffrey as well.
Look, there's so much water valuery that comes into things like this when it happens.
And I think because passions are so inflamed, people often tend to see things through the prism of which team it's happened to, whether it's their team or the opposition, whether they like that team, and also whether they win or lose.
I think it's a great shame that this has overshadowed Ben Stokes playing the most magnificent innings I've seen him play since the last magnificent, ridiculous innings that he played.
And maybe that wouldn't have happened if it wasn't for this incident, because it fired him up to do something incredible.
I think the spirit of cricket, when people start talking about that, it can be very nebulous.
It can mean different things to different people.
You ask people and it's very hard to define because it doesn't really define anything much in there apart from...
Well, you know, Melinda, you know, I thought about this.
I've heard people say this.
I think it's undefinable.
There's no, if it was definable, it would be written in the laws, right?
The spirit of cricket, though, comes when everybody basically feels in their bones that something unfair has happened, I think.
And I don't think you can possibly look at Bearstow, who you see scraping his boot inside the crease, which is what batsmen do either with their boot or their bat to denote it's the end of an over.
And then to casually walk down to speak to his captain.
Every Australian player knew what he was doing.
They all knew he wasn't trying to get an advantage.
So to run him out in the way that they did, to stump him, as they tried to describe it, I don't think it's a stumping, but whatever you want to call it.
But for Pat Cummings, he's Mr. Nice guy.
After we had the whole incident, of course, around Sandpapergate, where all hell broke loose in Australia, and many Australians were as outraged as we were by Sandpapergate.
I'm just surprised that Pat Cummings, who seems a pretty decent guy, didn't do the right thing and actually make the world feel good about Australian sportsmanship.
Well, I think that's up to Pat Cummins as far as where he thinks that sort of dismissal falls.
I do know that a lot of people who have been contacting me say that you see this a lot in it's instinctive from the keeper.
So I don't think anyone has an issue with it actually being out.
And as Sir Jeffrey said, it was a mistake by Bear Stowe.
So he's made a mistake.
Herry hasn't done the wrong thing.
And it's something that a lot of keepers do do instinctively.
They had noticed he was wandering out of his crease.
And Bairstow had done something similar a couple of times.
No, the person I blame, the person I blame is the captain.
Because I've seen MS Doney, the former Indian captain, in a similar situation, actually reverse the decision, withdraw the appeal.
The Long Room Opportunity 00:06:53
This has been done before.
And those captains, by the way, when they do that kind of thing, they get revered forever in cricket folklore for being sportsmen.
And that's why, again, I'm surprised.
I want to bring in Lord Marlon.
Lord Marlon, I saw you on day one of the Lord's Test.
We were in neighbouring boxes enjoying the match.
And then you were there yesterday, I think, which is a very different atmosphere.
What did you make of what happened there?
And also, what did you make of what happened?
I was there for...
I'm sorry.
Yeah, I was there for three days, not yesterday, but...
Right.
Okay, so you were there the first three days.
But I presume you watched what was going on yesterday.
Oh, yeah.
What did you make of what happened on the pitch?
And also, what did you make of what happened in the Laws Pavilion, the scenes of which I've got to say, I found the spectacle of MCC members chanting cheat, cheat, cheat was pretty disgusting, actually.
And I'm glad action has been taken against him.
But it showed the measure of the anger in the ground.
What did you make of what happened and the fallout?
Well, I totally agree with you, which often I do, Piers.
It was very unsporting.
I think you're completely right that the captain should have on field made the decision.
Look, you know, well done, Kerry, but we're not going to call you out, go back to your crease, which would have been the sportsmanlike thing to do.
Of course, in defense of Cummings, it's a very instant decision you've got to make.
You don't have the opportunity of time.
You have to make a decision at the moment.
But I think the thing is defined by Ben Stokes in a way and what he said afterwards.
And I think Ben Stokes is one of the great sporting heroes that he said he wouldn't have done it himself.
And that for me is good enough.
Of course, the rivalry, you know, it is just another twist, isn't it, in the Australia, England, or the Ashes series.
It's not an attractive one.
They'll get booed every time they walk out onto ground.
If that's what they want, that's fine.
I totally agree with you about the behaviour in the long room.
It's very unseemly.
But, you know, cricket has moved on from this very polite life that you have at the MCC to a contrast of Edgarson, where I was also, where there's this rowdy crowd, really exciting atmosphere.
And so, you know, it's where's that balance?
And of course, the long room for that point of view is sacrosanct.
But it could be argued if you were out in the crowd, you'd have done that.
Kevin McGuire, you've been sitting listening to all this.
I mean, are we, as many Australians claim, you know, Melinda referenced the what about her?
There are episodes in England's cricketing past which wouldn't shine up very well if you put the spirit of cricket test to it.
I was at a game at the Oval in 2008 when one of the New Zealand players ran into our bowler, a complete accident.
He fell over and was run out and we didn't withdraw the appeal.
I thought that was completely wrong.
So I think I've been consistent.
I don't like any of this stuff.
What do you make of it?
Yeah, I think of Ollie Pope and New Zealand in the slips.
There's an LBW appeal.
The Kiwi batsman wanders out, takes the stumps off, and Besto's all high fives and great fun.
I think we're in danger in England.
I wanted England.
The difference there is, though, nobody thought the play was dead.
Play was still active.
Well, I think the batsman did.
I don't think he thought there was going to be an appeal.
It was what he was waiting for for the umpire and the play would be deemed still active.
I think we're in danger of sounding bad losers and whining, whinging poms.
Look, it was in the rules.
This is the Ashes.
Fiercest sporting contest.
Are you an Aussie skipper going to give that away?
Ben Stanley.
I would say if your country has been through sandpapergate, where the captain and vice captain both had to resign their jobs in tears on television, this was a brilliant opportunity for Pat Cummings, who by all accounts is a good guy.
A great opportunity for him to reset the profile of the Australian cricket team on the global stage by doing something that he may not have instinctively wanted to, but felt actually was the right thing.
But it's not San Pibergit.
Sam Pipergit was clear.
Well, that was cheating.
Clear cheating.
This is not cheating.
It was within the rules.
The umpires upheld it.
What happened to the umpire's decision as final?
The umpires gave a man.
I agree with Lord Marlin though, the behaviour of the Hurricane's, the posh hooligans in the pavilion.
Look, they've got privileged access to the players.
It doesn't mean you have to smother them with kisses.
I didn't like that at all.
I thought that was behave like that at all.
And also chanting cheat, cheat, cheat, but they haven't actually cheated.
I thought that was completely wrong.
So, Geoffrey, let me come back to you for the final word.
I always like to do that.
The next test match starts in a few days at Headingley, your neck of the woods, your great ground where you broke so many records.
This, I would imagine, is going to fire up the England team like nothing else could possibly do.
It will also fire up that Yorkshire crowd like nothing else could possibly be.
It's going to be like the coliseum.
It'll be ready for them, let me tell you.
They'll be ready for them, no doubt at all.
What do you have to remember?
I don't like Kevin's point, because if everybody played to the rules, absolute letter of the rules, what would happen now is England and its players will be looking to get their own back.
So then we'll be tit-for-tat all the time, looking for gamesmanship, underhand things, and the cricket as we know it would disintegrate because players would be looking to score a point, get their own back.
Is that what we want at cricket?
No.
We want cricketers and teams just looking to get their own back, gamesmanship, underhand things, dirty things.
You know, I don't want that at cricket.
The cricket played by these two teams, they're fairly equal.
We've been daft enough to do stupid things at the moments when we were winning the match and we should have been 2-0 up, not 2-0 down.
We're equal to them.
We could easily beat them, but we're doing daft things.
But that's not the point.
It's not about the winning and losing it.
It's about the standards of the game.
And when you're talking about the members of MCC, they're not all Hooray Henrys with lots of money and gone to private schools.
It was an emotional moment.
I agree, it was unsavoury and they deserve a censure, but I don't think they deserve to lose their membership at all.
It's an emotional moment.
It certainly wasn't as bad as what the Australian captain didn't do.
And I agree with you, Piers.
He had a moment there, an opportunity to square things with the world because what they did in Cape Town was pure and simply cheating.
And that's why they got chanted in the long room.
Not just for that incident, it's for what they did in Cape Town.
That wasn't against the spirit of the game.
That's pure and simple cheating.
So, Geoffrey, as always, magnificent to watch you batting.
War, Peace, and Propaganda 00:07:25
Thank you very much indeed for joining me.
And Melinda, thank you.
£300, England are going to win the Ashes.
I'll stick to cricket.
I think we are going to win the Ashes.
3-2.
I think this will fire us to victory.
And Melinda, I want to thank you especially because we couldn't get any current or ex-Australian player or any other Australian media figure to come on.
And you bravely came over the parapet to defend your country.
Everyone's talking about cricket and the ashes.
So at a time when everyone says cricket's dying, let's just enjoy the packaging.
It certainly isn't dying now.
Great to see you, Lil Marlow.
Great to see you, Kevin.
Thank you very much indeed.
Well, it says the next two British peers are under fire for attending a Russia Day party organised by the Kremlin's man in London.
I'll ask one of those peers what he was doing next.
Welcome back to Peers Walking Uncensored.
Russia's ambassador to London, Andre Kellin, is banned from the Palace of Westminster over his country's illegal war in Ukraine.
But that didn't stop two British lords attending his Russia Day party last month.
According to the Sunday Times, Kellyn defended the invasion and condemned the British government while guests quaffed vodka and snacked on Bellinis.
One of the peers, Lord Balf, represents the governing Conservative Party in the House of Lords, and he joins me live from Westminster.
Lord Balf, what were you doing at a party celebrating Russia when the host of the party isn't even allowed to be in our parliament?
Well, it was Russia's National Day.
All governments have national days in London.
I was invited to the party.
I've been in Russia and in Ukraine several times.
I think we have to stop this war and we're not going to stop it by shouting at each other.
Well, we're not going to stop it by partying with the Russians when they're waging an illegal war, are we?
I think partying is not exactly the most accurate word for a diplomatic reception.
Well, it was a party.
It was a party there.
Yeah, it was celebrating the creation of a Russian independent and let's not squabble too much, but it was a reception.
Everybody was terribly well behaved.
Half the Commonwealth was there, which is something the Brits might like to note.
But my basic reason for being there is I want to get this war stopped.
And the first way of stopping it, we've got to get the Russians to say what they actually want in Ukraine.
It's no good running around the place smashing it up.
We need to know what they want so that we've got a basis for negotiations.
Well, the truth is they are running around smashing it up and they clearly want to take Ukraine.
Putin, I would say, clearly wants to restore as much of the Soviet Union as he can.
But either way, Kellen, the ambassador, gave a speech where he tried to justify the invasion of Ukraine and condemned Britain's confrontational foreign policy.
Did you, at that stage, interject and tell him that actually the invasion was illegal and that Britain's foreign policy is not confrontational?
I've already told him that the invasion was certainly unwise and incidentally illegal.
But no, you don't interject in situations like this.
But I did make it quite clear that I think the Russians need to work out a way of stopping the fighting.
And the first bit of that is to be quite clear as to what they want.
And it's no good wanting to conquer Ukraine because all they would do is they would end up with a civil war that would go on and on and on.
So we need a much clearer focus and shouting from the sidelines and arming them, I understand the latest idea is to give them cluster bombs.
I don't think that's very smart.
Well, the alternative is that Ukraine's...
Incidentally, I don't represent the Conservative Party.
No, I know you don't.
I sit as a Conservative member.
Sure.
I understand.
But you're there as a Conservative member of the House of Lords.
Many people were outraged that you were there hobnobbing with the Russian ambassador given the current situation.
It's not an unwise invasion.
It's an illegal, barbaric invasion where many tens of thousands of Ukrainians have been slaughtered.
And the truth is if we don't arm them in the way that we've been arming them, many, many more will be slaughtered.
I mean, that's pretty self-evident, isn't it?
Well, if we want to run a proxy war in the middle of Europe where two different sides kill each other mercilessly, go ahead.
I'd rather gate for peace.
Well, we'd all love peace.
We'd all love peace.
Stop.
We'd all love peace, but would you, would you, for example?
Ukrainians can go back home.
But we'd all love that.
With respect, Lord Balf, everybody would love peace.
Everyone in Ukraine would love to go back to how things were.
Unfortunately, they are having a war waged on them by Vladimir Putin and his murderous army.
Now, let me ask you this: would you have gone to a party, for example, if it was hosted by a Nazi ambassador at the start of World War II?
We don't have a Nazi ambassador.
Well, would you have gone to the German ambassador's residence for a nice party as the Nazis were embarking on their global domination plan?
If I'd have been interested in Germany, like Chamberlain and Rab Butler at the Foreign Office, I would probably have gone to the German embassy up to Czechoslovakia, but not afterwards.
All right, so you have party limits.
Yes.
Good to know.
Lord Balf, thanks for joining me.
Kevin.
Good.
I don't think he should be attending the party, the Russian ambassador.
I don't think he should be there saying this invasion was unwise.
No.
And I think he's got this rather quaint idea that so many of them have who sort of do these kind of things with the Russians.
We all want peace.
Well, of course we do.
But the Ukrainians haven't started this war.
Look, Richard Balth, Lord Balfour, is a useful idiot.
It's a propaganda coup for the Kremlin.
They can say they have members of the House of Lords and the ruling UK Conservative government from that party at their reception.
And we saw one of the latest atrocities: a dozen people, including three children, killed in a pizza restaurant, and he's going to somewhere where they're serving food and drink to hobnob with the ambassador.
I think he's got a misguided view of his own self-importance if he thinks he's going to have any real role with the Russians.
But to say it is unwise, that invasion.
I'm sorry, that sounds a little bit to me like an apologetic weir.
Barbie Movie Gender Optics 00:09:47
It does.
Look, it was an unprovoked aggression against a country that has cost probably now lies more than 100,000 on the two sides.
Many more people injured.
Ukraine trashed.
It's not a proxy war.
I'm a peacenick.
You probably won't get anyone more opposed to wars than me.
But I can see when Ukraine is invaded in this way, you can do nothing but send weapons and support it and hope Putin or somebody at some point will withdraw.
Kevin, good to talk to you and good to stay on.
Thank you very much indeed.
I'll sound so next.
Everyone's talking about Barbie, subject to the most hotly anticipated movie of the year.
But is she a secret man-hater?
Is that what this movie's all about?
We'll debate that next with three women.
I'll be on Kent's side.
Welcome back to Petersburg.
So Barbie has long been criticized by feminists as a symbol of unattainable princess-like perfection.
The iconic metal doll is now the inspiration for a Hollywood movie, one of the most anticipated of the entire year, capping Barbie's evolution from symbol of the patriarchy to feminist icon.
Barbie's small and so petite.
Barbie has smart new styles for every occasion.
For dates with Ken, club meetings, Kennis.
He can be the first in outer space.
Meet me at the mall.
Listen!
Do you have a crush on anyone?
Does anybody know how big the brain is?
It is me.
Me?
What?
What's going on?
Why are these men looking at me?
Yeah, they're also staring at me.
So fantastic plastic feminist icon or sexist clap trap with the movie's outrageously dismissive tagline.
She is everything.
He is just Ken.
Has Barbie actually done a full 180?
Is she now anti not just Ken, but men?
Well, I'm joined by Talk TV contributor Esther Kraku and also by Talk TV presenter Rosanna Lockwood.
And also drum roll back from the world's longest holiday bye Grace Blakely, our socialist commentator.
I love calling you that.
Welcome back.
Welcome back.
We've almost missed you.
I have missed you very much as well, obviously.
Thank you for having me.
And you're wearing your Barbie outfit.
I have apparently been told.
And you've gone gloves as I last saw you.
You did this on purpose.
I mean, I did.
You did the same.
You are now Barbie.
You did this to seduce her.
That is a massive compliment, honestly.
If I look anything like Marlowe Robbie, I will take that.
So look, let's start with you then on this, given you come dressed as Barbie.
So there are a number of Barbie characters in the movie, right?
One plays President Barbie, one plays Dr. Barbie, one plays a Barbie with a Nobel Prize in Physics, one is a mermaid Barbie.
However, all the male characters in Barbie World are simply called Ken.
So it's pretty clear where this movie is going.
This is an assault on not just Ken, but all men.
I mean, I think men in general will have to be a bit kind of snowflakey to just they're being assaulted by a Barbie movie.
But I kind of think that's besides the point.
I mean, I think, you know, the questions that we have around this and whether or not Barbie is a feminist icon actually, well, I think it matters less than the fact that the Barbie franchise has commercialized the feminist critique.
So now you can be like, oh, you can feel like a good feminist because you buy a doll for $25.99, or you can feel like a hashtag girl boss because Barbie has a Nobel Prize or Barbie's an entrepreneur.
Whereas actually, feminism is rooted in the struggles of ordinary women.
It's about the fact that, you know, women often get paid less.
It's about the fact that women are on the front line of some of the hardest sectors to work in care, in our healthcare system, in social care.
It's about the fact that they do so much unpaid labor in the household.
Great question.
What are you talking about?
I love it.
Have you ever met a female bricklayer?
I don't know.
No, you haven't.
But I love the assumption that being a bricklayer is harder than caring for the terminally ill and dying.
Have you ever been a bricklayer in the winter?
But like, have you ever been someone like a broken-caretaker?
Yes.
Yes, I actually have.
Obviously, it's a very, very challenging job, isn't it?
It's not as hard as being a bricklayer.
In what sense?
Excuse me, you asked me if I've done it before.
I've missed it.
I have.
I have done it.
Whether or not it's physically challenging, emotionally challenging.
I mean, there are care workers who are running up and down between houses getting paid less than minimum wage.
I get that, but you don't make a fortune as a bricklayer either, and you're out in the elevator.
I just don't understand what you're talking about.
I'm going to argue.
These professions against each other.
It's a bizarre culture.
Let me try and get one single word in here.
So, Rosanna, look, Barbie's jobs include being an astronaut, a surgeon, Olympic athlete, downhill skier, aerobics instructor, TV news reporter, vet, rock star, doctor, army officer, air force pilot, summit diplomat, rap musician, presidential candidate, baseball player, scuba diver, lifeguard firefighter, engineer, dentist, and many more.
I mean, she's not a bad feminist icon.
She's done everything.
She's had over 200 careers, apparently, since she was first conceived.
But, you know.
Is she a feminist icon?
Look, when you said unattainable princess perfect like perfection, this is what you were thinking of.
These three women here who are, I think all three of us.
Perfectly imperfect.
Can we settle on that?
We probably all played with Barbie's growing up.
I'm going to guess that.
Given Barbie's enormous reach now, given how many different Barbie dolls there are, you can almost have a Barbie doll for any type, whatever.
Is she legitimately a feminist icon?
No, I don't think she is, but there are other toys available if she doesn't like it.
Why does Barbie need to be a feminist icon?
Why can't girls just play with pretty dolls?
I wonder why she should be a feminist.
Young girls don't understand anything to do with feminism.
I don't think that feminism should be co-opted by massive multinational corporations.
Well, that's fine, but I don't think young girls even need to be afraid of the menu.
But Grace, what about if it's shaping the way young girls are growing up?
Well, I mean, I think this is the problem people have with feminism.
This is why we end up having all these debates about like, oh, you know, feminism doesn't account for the struggles of ordinary people and it's just like very rich and wealthy women at the top of companies saying, I want more money.
It's because feminism, which is actually a critique of capitalism in part, has been taken over by big multinational corporations who basically say, look, we have three women on our board, so the gender struggle is over.
And it's just, this is a symptom of a wider problem.
All right, you mentioned gender.
The Bank of England says anyone can get pregnant of any gender identity.
They've offered to help staff to pay for gender reassignment treatment, including...
Now, this has all been going on in your absence ad nauseum, some might think, this whole gender debate.
But this concept that anyone of any gender identity can become pregnant is obviously ludicrous.
I mean, I'm going to start before even opening up into this discussion, talking about, yes, I've been away for nine months and I've come back and watched how our entire political debate has become dominated by this tiny, tiny fringe issue.
We have this massive moral panic over an issue that affects so few people.
It's not a fringe.
While the climate is literally like the earth is a problem.
There's a massive cost of living crisis going on.
Hang on.
I was honestly just shocked that this is what we're talking about.
You can care about the climate and you can also care about the full frontal attack on the integrity of women's sport because of transgender athletes.
You can care about men rapists being put into female prisons.
That cost Nicola Sturgeon her job, by the way.
You can care about all those issues too.
And yet, I would have thought you would have come back and gone, you know what?
I've seen the light peers.
You're right about this.
And yet, this is what we're talking about.
There is a reason that we are talking about this issue rather than the Bank of England just raised interest rates.
That's going to mean that millions of families are not going to be able to repay their debt, repay their loans.
They're going to be pushed into poverty.
And here we are talking about some, you know, certain thing about women.
I think you've just hit the nail on the head because shouldn't the Bank of England be more concerned with bringing down inflation rates than, you know, offering their family?
I'm sure this was just some sort of random thing that we're doing.
Well, I know that's not a problem.
Hang on.
Backline.
Or economics expert.
If you look at the crux of the issue, this was actually probably a freedom of information request.
Stonewall.
The Bank of England applied to Stonewall to say, we want to be in your top 100 list of diversity and inclusion sort of index thing.
This was last year they made this application.
The information has only been revealed now.
And I would say that that is the Telegraph and other papers capitalizing on the argument that the Bank of England has lax monetary policy and they're trying to make the argument that they've been too focused on diversity.
It's playing up to cultivate the female.
But let's be clear.
So you can waive a brigade.
Well, you can have 120,000 genders, as many as you like.
Only women can get pregnant.
But like...
I mean, that's just a biological fact.
Only women get pregnant.
You can have as many gender debates as you want.
You can feel like a mouse for all I care.
But you can't actually pretend anyone other than a biological female can have a baby.
Sure, only people who are born women can get pregnant.
You accept.
People who are born women can also become men.
Not become a person.
And the people who have to be not men can also legitimately become mothers.
They can't become men.
They can.
Biological men are biological men.
Yeah, I mean, if you're not born women, you can become pregnant.
They can be a trans man.
Let's settle on that.
Why do we have to change it?
I mean, I agree.
I made this point to you like years ago, and I thought we kind of settled it.
You know, you have cis women and trans women and cis men and trans men.
We don't have to get all up in arms about all this stuff.
It just doesn't matter that much.
I'm so glad you do still get up in arms about this.
Iran Women Face Death 00:07:35
I really miss this.
Esther, I mean, I agree with you.
The Bank of England, get on with fixing economic crisis.
Is the optics of this perhaps even more frustrating because you don't want a news story of the Bank of England paying for their employees' gender transitioning when there are clearly bigger issues at hand here?
But I think it's just this obsession with companies that feel like they have to talk about these issues all the time.
I'm just happy for a business to function as a business.
I don't need to know their stance on gender identity or anything like that.
Shockingly, I actually agree.
Well, that's in itself a shocking moment.
Do any of you have a view about Johnny Best and the way he was out at Lord's?
I saw this.
My dad showed me.
This was the clip where...
What did your dad say?
My dad said that it was perhaps slightly unfair to have knocked him out and that there should have been, what did he say?
That it should have been reviewed or something and that ordinarily that that's what would have happened, but there was some president.
Your dad's right.
Okay.
No idea.
No view.
No view.
Brilliant pack today.
And great to have you back.
Lovely feedback.
Really?
Nearly almost enjoyed that segment.
It's been great.
I've really missed you.
I'll say this and next, the comedian writer, star of the stage and screen, Ahmed Jalili joins me live.
We'll talk Iran immigration by the late Queen unchancelled it.
Strawberry twist.
Welcome back to Piers Morgana Sesa.
My next guest is best known as an actor and stand-up comedian.
He's now turned the spotlight on to free speech and the vicious regime in his family's native Iran.
Ahmed Jalili joins me now.
Omit, great to have you back on the program.
Let me start before we get to Iran, which is a passion thing that you want to talk about, and I get that.
This Rwanda story ongoing about how we're going to deal with the small boats, with refugees, asylum seekers, and perhaps people trying it on as well.
What's your take on it?
Well, you know, I'm very, as a proud Iranian, I'm very happy to tell you that on the UN building, there's a Persian poet called Saadi who has his poem on the building.
And the translation says, if you do not feel human pain, the name human you cannot retain.
And I think that's really powerful because where I live in Suffolk now, I've got to know some Iranian asylum seekers who've literally run away.
They've been here since January.
They've run away from the regime.
And they're very frustrated because they can't work.
They love Iran.
They don't want to be in Britain, but now they're here.
They want to contribute.
One of them is a tennis player.
And we did this Turkey-Syria benefit gig and they spoke.
They spoke so powerfully.
They were saying, why can't we make love and unity the dictatorship?
Why can't we see the world as one globe is very, very important?
I think we saw Fiona Bruce on question time asking, Do you agree with the Rwanda?
It was amazing.
It was amazing.
Not a single hand went up.
It was mainly a conservative.
Conservative.
Yeah, I thought that was a really wonderful moment.
And it really gave me hope that British people are good.
And we understand that when people run away, they're running away from awful regimes that we were going to talk about, where if they stayed there, they'd be killed.
They're not all running from awful regimes.
No, not all.
I mean, we have the issue with a lot of Albanian, young Albanian economic migrants coming and so on.
Where do we draw the line?
What is the right way to handle this?
Well, I don't know, but all I can tell you is that knowing these Iranian asylum seekers, and they're asylum seekers in the sense that they can't work until they have their residential papers, we have to speed things up because they've been here for five, six months.
They're desperate to control.
The processing system is completely broken.
Yeah, exactly.
And that's causing a lot of the irritations, I think.
There's a great story that the Queen was upset with the BBC for editing out your migrant joke about Rwanda.
It was ITV.
I think there was a little segment where the night before we had some practice nights and I did this joke about please, for God's sake, don't send me to Rwanda.
And ITV said, I think we'll drop that for the Queen.
Oh, it was ITV, right?
It was ITV.
It was for the horse show.
It was a pageant, the Jubilee pageant.
And she was a bit upset because she heard that because what happened to the Rwanda joke, it got cut.
And she was a bit annoyed.
But then again, I understand because you can't show the royal family commenting on governmental policy.
Interesting that she would have preferred it in.
They've got a great sense of humor.
They do love a laugh.
I did do a joke about how thanks for choosing us over the state opening a parliament.
It was the big elephant in the room.
She did that thing with her hand, like, you know, you're very cheeky, but I like you kind of thing.
So it was fun.
Let's turn to Iran and the women of Iran in particular.
This has been a big running story now for a while.
Do we care enough in the West about what's going on here?
Is there enough of the light being shone?
Well, on the one sense, there is a women-led revolution going on, and we're all surprised that the Western press are not picking up on it.
But there is this campaign, which I'm very proud to stand with, which is called Our Story as One campaign that reminds everyone.
And a lot of Iranians don't know about this.
40 years ago, 10 women, 10 Baha'i women, and of course, they're part of a faith which was outlawed in Iran.
They were asked to recant their beliefs or face the death.
And they didn't.
And it was an amazing moment of standing up for freedom of expression, freedom of thought, and freedom of belief.
And all 10 were hanged.
And one of them was a 17-year-old girl called Mona Mahmoud Najad, who then became very well known, not just for being someone who was very powerfully stood against the regime, but she also became a poster person for child executions.
Six years later, there was the United Nations put these things where they had to stop child executions because she was 17 years old.
And unfortunately, the only country that still carries out child executions is the Islamic Republic of Iran.
You, because of your outspokenness on this issue, and it's been very courageous, but you've had a huge amount of attacks on social media from Iranian bots and so on.
We saw what happened to Salman Rushdie, of course, which is a vicious attack on his free speech.
Yes.
Do you worry about this?
I worry a bit for my mental health because what I'm doing is I'm trying to give my social media over to the voiceless because you know what they do first before they start killing people they cut the internet.
So through VPN, they put out a couple of videos and those of us go through it and they're really horrific.
And I can only put out a few things which I think are palatable for an English-speaking audience.
But at the same time, I think it's very important to get stories out.
For the 10 women of Shiraz, what we did, we did this little video about an English girl playing the last moments of her life.
And the question was that just because it's not happening here, it doesn't mean that it's not happening.
So I think that even though I'm being attacked, I am more worried about my own mental health, seeing all these horrific videos.
But at the same time, social media is our weapon and you've got to keep putting it out.
What's your key message to people watching this about what's happening in Iran?
It's basically get involved, have a look what's going on.
The Our Story is One campaign is also a creative one.
Have a look at how we can support the women of Iran.
And also, we have to say, with Salman Rushdie, was being attacked and killed, and there were all these videos of people, the Islamic Republic of Iran.
He's still alive, obviously.
Yeah, he's still alive.
Yeah, but still.
They tried to kill him.
They tried to kill him, but the Islamic Republic are putting out all these videos, asking jihadists to kill people, blow up embassies, blow up libraries.
And we're asking the big question, why is it?
Why is it that ISIS, there was a concerted effort to eradicate them, but the Islamic Republic of Iran, vice chairman of the General Assembly of the United States?
Great to see you.
Thanks for coming in.
I appreciate it.
Thank you.
That's it from me.
We're here up to.
Keep it uncensored.
Good night.
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