This is London Calling. London Calling, pretended to be a corpse is the
most difficult pose of all. According to practitioners, lying on one's back,
perfectly relaxed with an empty mind is, they say, virtually an unattainable goal.
Personally, I find the corpse pose the easiest of the lot. I
have an innate talent for lying down. The banal content of my mind is
easy to dismiss, and I'm looking forward to die. Welcome to London Calling
with me, James Dunn Pole and my very good friend mister Toby Young.
How's your week been well? James, Me and Nick Dixon and Will Jones
had our first ever live podcast recording on Saturday at the Emmanuel Center. Unlike
you, we did not sell out the nine hundred sea, but we did
sell out the two hundred and fifty seater and it went pretty well. I
think the audience seemed happy, and we had a kind of we were selling
not just general admission tickets, but a hundred people bought VIP drinks tickets,
and that meant they went to this bar with us afterwards, and we all
had a drink together till about midnight. But yeah, I know that the
people seemed pretty content. Quite a few selfie requests, you know, got
a lot of laughs. And Nick Dixon, who's you know, a professional
stand up comedian, was very funny. At one point he did an impression
of Jordan Peterson, which brought the house down to He left the stage and
came back on as doctor Jordan Peterson, wearing a blonde wig and a shirt
and tie and a jacket and answered questions as as doctor Peterson, it's Jordan
Peterson blonde. Well, he's blonder than Nick. He was a sort of
sandy haired wig. Yeah, okay, he's got lightish brown hair. Anyway,
he was. Nick's impression of Jordan Peterson is just supernaturally good. I
mean, if you don't concentrate, you would think, if you don't listen
carefully to what he's saying, you would think it was just you were just
listening to Jordan Peterson. People say that of my of my Jimmy Savile impersonation,
they say it's like having the Great Man in their presence. By the
way, is it true that there were Apparently, according to report I read
on the Daily Skeptic, there was some Team James people there. Despite it
being a very much Team Toby. Event, even there, you could not
escape the influence of Team James. It's true James. So Nick Nick Nicks
kind of. Nick did this kind of warm up routine before I came on
stage, and one of the questions he asked the audience was, you know,
hands up if your Team James, hands out, if your Team Toby,
hands up, if your team Nick. And yet some people did put
their hands up, and when he said, you know, who's Team James,
and I think now often would have been if if the Team James even
there that number, but the Team Toby, I mean that. Yeah,
I don't think you did out number. It was. It seemed quite close,
I have to say, but I don't think. I don't think Team
James out. Now. That's very generous of you to admit that, So
yeah, I admire honest. We then had we had a Q and A
at the end, and the first question was from a woman named Jess who
listens to both the Weekly Skeptic and London Calling, and she said, you
know, how much longer do you think you can keep London Calling going?
You know, quite often you sound quite irritated with each other, and it
can be the exchanges can be quite bad tempered. Sometimes you're talking past each
other. That doesn't seem to be as a conversation, as a as an
ongoing discussion cock up the conspiracy. It doesn't seem to be progressing. You
each seem to be in your respective entrenched positions and neither of you is budging.
So is there any point? And I said, well, I referred
it for that piece in the National Review and said that that this issue is
the nightmare we've all been put through over the past three years and the ongoing
scandal of the vaccine harms. Is it all cock up or is it a
conspiracy? That is an issue that is dividing friendship groups, even marriages all
over the world, But it's not a discussion which gets any kind of public
airing in the mainstream media. So I think it's important that we should continue
to have that conversation and model how it's possible to disagree about that and about
related issues like do we have to tear everything down and start again or is
the system salvageable. Important to model if we can how to disagree about that
fundamental issue without falling out, because it's a way for people who are at
risk of falling out even with their partners, to see how they can continue
to get along even if they fundamentally disagree about it. And people afterwards at
the VIP party said, yeah, I thought that was a really good answer.
And one couple even came up to me James and said, this is
the thing we disagree about and argue about all the time. And he pointed
to his wife and said she's team James said he was team Toby, and
it's usually the wife and the husbands. I think it's that women have been
shown that who's shown themselves to have more balls than men on this issue generally?
I mean not always. Um, I mean, look, I'm not
ruling out a violent break up at some stage, but I agree. I
think we do provide a sort of public service which sort of like a like
a sort of actured out therapy session for all the people, particularly couples I
think, who are going going through this this horrible because it's really annoying.
Isn't it that you might you might marry somebody and said, I see it
from my wife's perspective that you marry somebody who believed and all the kind of
what I would now consider unutterable normy shite, you know. I mean,
I used to believe in the British Empire. I actually I was actually pro
the Iraq War because I thought it was our duty to bring democracy to YadA,
YadA, yadda and so on. I used to I used to enjoy
war movies and all these things which I no longer believe in at all.
And yet sort of that was the person my wife married, and she probably
feels slightly cheated that she's now got this completely different bloke living with her.
At the same time, I as a somebody who's gone down the rabbit hole
and seeing the world for what it is, I find it almost incomprehensible.
Now at this late stage of the get of the game, well, we
really are on the verge of losing everything to the Satanic elite which runs the
world and always has done that. At this late stage where they're not even
bothering to cover their tracks anymore than they're not even bothering to pretend they're not
doing what they're doing. I do find the psychopathology of normals, I mean
that the wilful self delusion just bizarre beyond measure. I can't every week,
I just I just look at you terms, and I think, how continue.
I mean, look, you went to I know, it's not necessarily
meaningful of anything. You went to Cambridge, you went to Oxford, and
you went to Yale. Was it Harvard? Harvard? Yeah? So you
okay? So I mean they're all establishment normally training grounds. Really but nevertheless,
you're supposed to be bright, and yet you can't see the most obvious
scam on every level in the history of the world, which is now being
played out before us so obviously that it will take a blind matter not to
see it. I don't get it. One Cabriat to what you've just said.
You were you were implying that the things you used to believe in should
probably quite similar to the things I believe in now. Like yeah, I
supported the Iraq War and thought that, you know, Saddam Hussein was a
tyrant who committed jet side and we did have a sort of moral obligation to
depose him if we could, just as we we did Hitler. Um,
not quite as bad as Hitler, but but but but believing, you know,
believing in that cause neoliberalism, being a patriot, thinking that the British
Empire was on balance a good thing, a force for good in the world
historically, and also enjoying war films like Zulu. Those aren't any longer really
normal positions though. All those things are pretty much outside the Overton window.
I know we've disagreed about that in the part. I think you're further outside
the Overton window. But those aren't normal positions. Those are now, you
know, they are quite typical for for men, men of a certain age,
but I think they feel as outcast in their own way as you do,
holding the views you do. No, that's that's a slightly different argument.
I think that you're you're redefining normy to mean what you think it means,
and it doesn't that it's not It's not whether or not you're inside or
outside the Overton window. I mean, I think I think a lot of
a lot of Look, you and I we were both normalis we both We
both used to have discussions about about things, some of which were inside the
Overson window and some of which were outside. But it doesn't mean that when
we were championing the outside causes, we were therefore going down the rabbit hole.
I'm talking about a completely completely different outlook. Okay, So you mentioned
Zulu for example, Um, if if you are a normy, regardless of
whether you are a sort of a blimpish old school reaction we like like you
and I were, or whether you're a kind of woke, woke person,
the Zulu can be appreciated as a war film. Once you're down the rabbit
hole, it's a separate thing. You start realizing that the entirety of the
British Empire was a construct that Cecil Rhodes, for example, was was in
in Cahots with the Milner Group, which was responsible for for the First World
War. That Cecil Rhodes was was involved in extremely dodgy staff like going around
the world sort of collecting collecting allegedly or trying to collect viruses in order to
to create sort of BioWeb. I mean, there's all kinds of stuff that
one learns about the British Empire and the people behind it that it completely at
odds with the say, the Nigel Bigger view of history, which is and
Toby Young view of history, which is on balance, it was a jolly
good thing. I'm thinking about stuff like like the East India Company. I'm
thinking about the people who really benefited from the British Empire. It was not
the British people, obviously, it wasn't the countries that were being colonized.
You know. Okay, maybe we gave them railways, maybe we gave them,
you know, a bureaucracy of functioning bureaucracy. But actually what we were
doing the British Empire is what the Americans are doing to the world now,
which is basically their their pillaging and raping the rest of the world, and
they're getting away with murder. And the people who benefit from this are a
tiny, tiny, narrow, evil predator class and they're the same ones that
they've always been with us. So that's why I can't look at Zulu now.
I can't applaud. Obviously, I still feel for the Red Coats holding
routs drift. That's great. I like them because they didn't that you know,
they were just servants of their masters, you know, as you are
when you join the army. But I can't look at that film and separate
it from the Imperial project and the people behind the Imperial Yet who were just
basically evil. Right, Well, I think maybe maybe the maybe we're all
we're disagreeing about is whether norm is the right word to describe people who hold
what would typically be dismissed as kind of old fashioned conservative, blimpish views.
If you if you express those views, um, you know, at a
university for instance, if you were to say at university, like Nigel Bigger
did that, he doesn't that mean he didn't even say that he thought that
the British Empire was on balance a fourth for good. He had. He
simply was heading up a research project looking into whether or not, you know,
morally, the British Empire was an unalloyed evil or had some redeeming qualities
and just saying that resulted in a very serious attempt to cancel him within the
academy. So I don't think you can describe even that view to lean my
view, which is that on balance it was a force for good. And
by the way, I think the main argument is not that we provided railways
and infrastructure and helped countries like India industrialized. I don't think that's the argument.
The argument is that for all its shortcomings, the British Empire was often
better than what it replaced in various countries around the world, which is why
it enjoyed the public support it did, and why we were able to maintain
it with a skeleton staff. That's a that's the normally debate, whether you're
on the bigger side of the argument or whether you're on the kind of the
rabid anti colonist lefty side of the debate, that is normally pantomime. I'm
saying that those of us down the rabbit hole completely reject everything you tell us
about history. We think it's absolute bollocks. We think it's dies okay.
And I suppose when you explained you said that was one of the difficulties for
you when trying to maintain, you know, cordial relations with people who disagree
with you about these fundamental issues, is that you think, why can't you
see it? You know, you're an intelligent person, you're an educated person.
Why why can't you see these patterns that I've detected? And I guess
from our point of view, when when you say things like what you just
said about you know, it being some kind of a conspiracy of some kind
to enrich a kind of tiny elite, and you said that some particular group
had conspired them, have you not even you haven't even seen they are?
You haven't even heard of the Millman group. Have you? You haven't.
You haven't heard of Carol Quigley who wrote Tragedy and Hope, which which who
was who was famously Bill Clinton's tutor. Carol Quigley was an American historian that
I think the Hoover Institution, who who blew the whistle, who gave the
game away kind of unwittingly. He wrote this book called Tragedy and Hope,
which revealed really how how the elites operate and how they run the world.
There was a version of events that get served up to people like you,
regurgitated every time in the newspapers there's an article about empower or whatever, and
you repeat all the kind of established history, which is established because it is
embedded in our culture. But just because it's embedded in our culture does not
mean it's true. I mean, in a moment, I'm just going to
Hope to discuss with you. I don't know whether you've read it yet.
The book we were both sent called Introduction to True Philosophy by nm Win.
Have you read it yet? Well, maybe we'll say it to another it's
only just arrived. Sure. But the fact that you haven't heard of these
people, the fact that you haven't heard of the Milner group. Is not
indicative that therefore it's unimportant. It simply means you haven't done your research.
And why would you, because I suppose you haven't yet been tempted to make
the heroic journey, which which is partly a journey of learning of research.
If you you know, I three times in the last three episodes, you've
you've bigged up Winston Churchill. You think he's a great guy, and you
think Hitler, you know, Churchill, great, Hitler, the worst thing
in the world ever. And it's more complicated than that. You know Churchill
was was rotten, but you're not going to You're not going to find that
out by reading Andrew Roberts's hagiography. It's just it's not how it works.
You're not gonna you're not gonna get any any different version from from the official
U nineteen fifties propaganda movie version of events on the on the Second World War
unless you start doing the deep digging. So I don't know that's the reason
for that. For the divide, it seems to me that it's a lack
of curiosity on your part, but coupled with perhaps a sort of unwillingness to
expose yourself to the potential ridicule which comes from taking unorthodox POI positions, even
if they're right. Well, I think I don't think if if we are
going to maintain cordial relations, I don't think it helps for you to try
and explain, at least to yourself why I disagree with you bye bye,
by imagining it's because I'm either paid opposition or because I'm too cowardly to it
to it. Well, you describe yourself as going on a heroic journey.
Yeah, it's sort of, it's it's it's it's a sort of I don't
know. I don't, I don't. I don't think it's to do with
who's the more morally courageous. I think we just disagree in good faith.
And I think I think when you when you talk about, you know,
the real causes of World War One, what Churchill was really like, he
was actually rotten, you've got it wrong. You sound like weirdly over emphatic,
as though there is an unequivocal, very simple truth about issues like what
were the causes of the First World War? That it's not that that that
any kind of discussion or debate about that or whether Churchill was a good or
a bad leader? Was he was? He? Did he have some shortcomings?
Of course he did? Did that make him a bad leader? No?
I mean it's it's it's it's it's sort of be your unwilling, your
your your insistence that there are kind of black and white answers to all these
unbelievably complicated questions. Um, it is suggestive I suppose of a kind of
a craving for for simplicity and moral certainty in a kind of increasingly confusing world,
which which makes me now now you're psycho. Now, yeah, I
suppose I suppose that's how that's that's my asis. Well, my equivalent,
and I'm sure your wife does this too, my equivalent of what you do,
which is to imagine that we're willfully blind or just too scared to kind
of confront the truth or find out the truth because we'd be too upset by
it would rock our worlds. I mean that that's your sort of way of
rationalizing why apparently sensible people whom you like or love disagree with you. I
think our way of rationalizing it in your case is, as you say,
it's to say, well, he's he's he's um, he's, he's,
he's. Well. To say you've gone a bit mad, I think with
me maybe putting it too far, or to say you were suffering from anyway.
It's it's a sort of it's I mean, you're like someone who's discovered
religion late in life. You've experienced this, this, this kind of road
on the that this kind of damask Damascus like conversion. Yeah, and and
and now you're and now you're now you now you have all the kind of
passion and zeal of a born again you know, member of this new religious
movement. And it reminds me in some ways that people who've kind of drunk
the woke cool aid, the kind of intolerance of descent, the conviction that
you and your fellow travelers are alone awake and everyone else is willfully blind or
frightened or in some cases corrupt. Um more curiosity. It's more curiosity as
to why why you are so incurious? So for exult, I mean,
let me ask you, do you believe that there is such a thing as
truth? And do you think we are capable of getting closer to the truth
or do you think it's a kind of a vainglorious vainglorious task force. Even
even imagine that in this world of repeating narratives we could possibly hope to differentiate
between truth and forsood Now, I think I think we can. I think
we can. We can certainly approach the truth. I believe you, I
believe that there is I believe in objective reality. I'm not a postmodernist.
Even historians, I think can have kind of useful evidence based debates about things
like the causes of the First World War? Was Churchill a good leader?
What would have happened if we'd come to terms with Germany in nineteen forty and
so on and so forth. I mean, I think, I think it's
possible to have intelligent, informed discussions that improve our understanding of the world and
maybe bring us closer to the truth. But I think the idea that there
are short cuts that you can kind of bypass all the complexity and nuance and
all the conflicting evidence and take into account bias. Where did I say that
there were short cuts? Well, it sounds like, you know, it
sounds like you know, you think, you think that you think you've discovered
that there was this kind of what I'm saying that this caused the First World
War, which was a conspiracy or something called the Miller Group. It sounds
a bit simple, mind the Millner Group. Look, I could give you
a whole list of things which I think I could fairly safe. You bet
that you have never investigated with any any degree of depth or even curiosity.
You haven't looked into the moon landings and whether they were really You haven't looked
into nine eleven. You haven't looked into the origins of the of the First
or Second World Wars. You haven't looked into the origins of the French Revolution.
You haven't looked to You haven't heard of the Milner Group. You haven't.
Yeah, you'd never read a book on the origins of the sixties counterculture
suggesting that actually that this was a CIA operation. All this stuff would be
you would dismiss this stuff because it's it's kind of outside the confines of acceptable
discourse. That's are they overtal window if you started talking about this stuff,
it would be by by your position in the mainstream media, you could never
you could never concede the possibility that that well, I mean, you wouldn't
even you wouldn't even see that you, by your position in the mainstream media.
Why did you throw that in, James as my motive for not read,
wouldn't even see brackpop book about why dinosaurs are surely surely that sance will
be hang on, okay, James, I will go and investigate these things,
so will I will look into them. I'm genuinely curious now to see
what your point of view is, because ultimately this is not a battle between
normalis and whatever rude term, disprousing term we tend to we use on one
another. It's ultimately the battle between truth and lies. And the only thing
I've said this to you before, the only thing that matters to me is
the truth. I don't mind being ridiculed if I speak the truth. I
don't mind as long as I as long as I do my research. Well,
I guess, I guess follow it without fear or favor. I guess
my, my, I think we've gone down this road before. But my
object, well, I think I think the the the the reason that's not
particularly convincing that it's only your fearless commitment to follow the truth wherever it may
lead that's led you down these rabbit holes. And my lack of curiosity and
cowardice and willing and wanting to maintain my position in the MSM is why I
haven't gone down them. The reason particularly well, hang on, let me
finish the point. The reason that's not particularly credible is because typically, James,
you just have to just have the slightest whiff of a conspiracy about something,
the slightest whiff. You read one article claiming that that that that do
you know that Paul McCartney died in nineties, and you can and you believe
it wholeheartedly. I think anyone who doesn't believe it is some normal cuck.
It's it's not as though you've kind of, I mean, to discover let's
say, you know, the truth about the Kennedy assassination or the truth about
nine to eleven. I mean, you'd have to wade through enormous documents,
not just one book written by a conspiracy theorists claiming to be a felist truth
teller, and there's an enormous, you know, mountain of evidence. You'd
have to wade through the impression that your commitment, I mean, if you
if your sole motive was discovering the truth and following it wherever it leads you'd
be much more diligent, intellectually diligent than you are. But actually you see
one you read one book putting a very contentious point of view which seems to
fit in with your general conspiratorial worldview, and you completely believe it, hook
line and sinkers, no critical growing. You're back your position that the truth
is attainable. You're now saying, oh, it's so complicated, no one's
got time not say it's not at table. But it takes real intellectual much
intellectual? Right? Is that the intellectual James, I don't get the impression
you've made so much information, so much information, that that each of these
subjects would require a lifetime research and it's impossible to attain the truth. That's
a very good coke terbes. And you haven't really explained to me why you
know, you haven't given me a convincing explanation as to why you won't examine
the counter arguments, which I believe the great argues. And you falsely accused
me, You falsely accused me of having you've invented this one single article.
I've read like, okay, what so so on every any given topic I
found the article where is this article? Is it? Presume it's on a
conspiracy website with this sort of garish print and stuff, and you know it's
not to be trusted. Yeah, is that how it works? Yeah?
Well, I don't get the impression that you dispassionately assess these contentious theories and
weigh them against countervailing evidence and try and reconcile them with everything we do know
about the events in question. Well, how do you know I get the
impression? How do we know you lap it up? James? You just
you conspiracy theory because you believe in so many of them, believe in one
of them. Then that might be intellect led you to reject a mainstream talking
about you. Why do you believe in every single conspiracy theory? Kim trails,
dinosaurs fake, Paul McCartney more there that I didn't even know about the
First World War at nine eleven? Are you a nine to eleven truth?
Are now too? I mean, it just don't you think it undermines the
credibility of any any single position when it turns out that you believe every single
one of these conspiracy theories. I mean, it isn't that a bit odd,
James? It's a good ranch. But he did not question you talked
about stuff that you talked about we know, I mean, how do you
know this stuff you seem to You seem to be implying that there is this
acceptable body of knowledge which which one cannot transgress that we know. How do
you know if you haven't looked into it. You haven't questioned any of your
assumptions. Have you about what anything? I mean, any of the issues
I met I mentioned. We'll cover evolutionary theory next week because you haven't read
the book yet. I'd quite like you to read the section on Darwin and
Darwin's own doubts about evolutionary through I bet I bet you imagine maybe I'm misrepresentative,
but I don't think I am. I bet you imagine that evolutionary theory
is completely kosher and explains how we're here. Well, we can discuss that
next week when you read the book. I don't want to discuss it when
I got the advantage of you. But there are many issues that I think
almost everything in the world that we have been encouraged since birth, and certainly
through the education system and stutady through the media to accept as as a truth
um of which there was. There was no reasonable doubt. Almost the more,
the things that we are most encouraged to believe are true are the ones
we should be most skeptical of. Evolutionary being good theory being a good example
of this, But there are plenty of others. Well, there was.
Yeah, there was certainly a lot of resistance to a theory of evolution when
it was first proposed. But we can do nine to eleven if you want
it. I mean, you know that it is my view. Well,
yeah, I mean nine to eleven was not planned by a man in the
cave, for example, It was not planned by some had been laden.
The some had been laden was a CIA asset. Now, I recognized that
those who still take the mainstream media seriously and who who are sort of buy
into establishment history will think that's out landish. But anyone has looked into it,
I think it is at least alige of the possibility that there were there
were inside insider hands involved in it. Well, um, yeah, I
I did. I remember, I did look into it in some depth.
James, when right, what did you find? What did you find?
And well, I examined claims that that that that the buildings were blown up
from the inside, that the planes themselves couldn't have caused the structural damage which
prompted the buildings to collapse. And and and they didn't really hold up.
Oh they did not. Oh right, okay, it was it seemed to
me that there was a perfectly rational explonent that that it was that there was
a beverly rational explanation for why the both of the towers could have collapsed,
having been flown into by aeroplanes packed with you know, UM jet fuel,
that the explosions would have been sufficient. And you based your your decision to
accept the kind of the excuse version on what did you say, the excuse
version. I mean, it wasn't. It didn't. It didn't. It
didn't particularly it didn't reflect particularly well on the United States. I didn't think.
I mean, it's not as if UM didn't reflect particularly well in the
United States. I mean, I think there's an order of difference between alleged
terrorists buildings. And you say, you say that one of your one of
your ways of dismissing what I think is probably the truth about nine elevens.
So well, that's the narrative that serves the kind of prevailing interests of the
powers that be, But it didn't really well it's well, it's rather it
made a look rather foolish for having kind of provided some have been laden and
otherm hudgeted in with IF weapons, you know, during the after Russia's invasion
of Afghanistan, if IF IF the small a small piece of embarrassment, minor
embarrassment, let them get away with the much bigger thing that they actually plotted
and executed. This then I think it was a very small price to pay.
I'm still nook. But the bigger thing it was, it was basically
a bit of a disaster, wasn't it. I mean it it goes like
this times, it goes like this every Okay, So this happened with with
Kennedy, it would happen with the moon landings, it would happen with with
nine eleven. So there is the event itself, which is with which the
narrative version is the one that's bombarded on us in the media and elsewhere.
You know, the look at the moon landings, look at the flags,
here's the president on the phone, or here's Kennedy being assassinated. It's the
worst thing everyone can remember where they are. Then you get that the dissenting
voices saying we'll hang on a second, this doesn't quite add up. And
then what you have is the official response to the counter narrative, which is
we we got this this magazine to examine the outrageous claim that that jet fuel
can't melts to steal but deal girders. We are going to cobble together this
clausible sounding excuse which makes these skeptics look ridiculous. And that's that's the line
that you you went for. Well, I think that's one difficulty. One
difficulty with your position being supposedly based on the truth, James, is that
you you've you dismiss any evidence that seems to contradict your position as being tainted
in some way, it's a motive to pull the wool over our eyes,
or because they're in cahoots with the cabal. How it works by nature and
plausible, but it but by the same top if a hypothesis is unfalsifiable,
then I don't see how it can be You can claim that it's true if
it if it can't be falsified, had you know it's true, if you
need to allow for any possibility of it being falsified, if you if you
say that any any evidence which contradicts this I'm going to dismiss as tainted and
therefore inadmissible in some way, Then how can you be in the print of
your position, It's it's certainly very very difficult in a world where, um,
the powers that be have they own the medium, they have all the
money, they have corrupted so many people in institutions that it is very very
difficult indeed, to to get to the truth because of that, because inevitably
they're going to How do you know those things are true? How do you
know? Well, do you deny the possibility that the world is is?
I mean, we know, we know that there are rich people, we
know that there, we know that there are super super rich people. In
part are you are you telling me that you don't believe that they're there.
Well, it's almost as though, James, you're not saying I've decided on
weighing up the evidence to conclude that these conspiracy theories are true. It's as
though you're starting with the with the premise that the conspiracy theories are true,
and that enables, you know, to dismiss any evidence that seems to contradict
in conspiracive theory said, the media can be corrupt, how can we trust
anything in the media. Well, you're taking granted that the media is corrupt.
You're not actually basing that on evidence because contradicted it. You can dismiss
because the media is corrupt. It's a circular Well, the media, you
know, that's a storm man. The media. The media, the mainstream
media isn't everything. There are other other avenues by which you can research things.
But why did you dismiss Andrew Roberts? Of course, why did he
dismiss Andrew Roberts as a historian? You seem to you seem to dismiss you
know, he's not just the mainstream media, but historians. Of course.
I think I think that a lot of the lot of the history books,
particularly any history books which become best sellers, because obviously the publishing industry is
part of this this line machine um books countering the official narrative ten not to
get published, tend to get suppressed, tend not to get generous views,
and in the newspapers it's the system is bent. But that doesn't mean that
it is not possible to investigate the counter arguments and find that they are actually
more compelling but obviously they've been they've been suppressed. That's that's how the world
works. Can you give me an example of um a conspiracy theory you encountered,
were tempted to believe, but but ended up dismissing because the counterwere evidence
was so overwhelming. M oh oh blome, I've oh we should you think
about that? Somebody, somebody must have been pocket darling with her. Yeah,
we should break for a first ad James yea, which is a message
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for Health. See you there. Yeah, so that's that was weird.
That was if I I could tell you who, that was just just somebody
I wasn't expecting to get a phone call from um Boris Johnson, Michael go.
Yeah, it was in that in that level of strangers. When did
you last talk to God? Still speak to him? Yeah? I spoke
to him, um U gosh, I think I spoke to him at a
party at Unheard about it was when Unheard launched their restaurants. I think it's
about three or four months ago, right, um And do you think do
you still talk to him like he's an honest broker. Yeah, I think
I can. I still have I'm still I still you know, feel a
certain amount of affection for him, um, and still like him. I
haven't. I haven't fallen out with him over our disagreement about the pandemic.
Well that's quite a big it's quite a big deal that. I mean,
the guy who I would find it difficult to to be great bred with,
with a guy who wanted to sort of continue imprisoning us indefinitely. Well,
I'd like, I tell you what I'd really like, James. I'd love
an opportunity to talk about him, talk to talk about it in depth,
and to find out, um, you know, what his reasoning process was
and why the decisions that were made were made. I'd love to, you
know, get a bit more into what they were thinking. So m but
you never give me a straight answer. But you know, slippery here is
I mean, he's he's he's belial, he's I mean they all are.
Boris and Borison Gove. I did an essay about this about about who were
the greatest debaters of their generation? Boris and Borison Gove that they both um,
well they well they were they used to take part in debating competitions,
and there are there were others who who are also very good, but I
guess um they certainly. I think they were probably you know, among the
half of dozen best of our generation. Yeah, and we've we've seen them
in action, and that I mean, I think I think Gove probably has
Gove is more eloquent, Boris is sort of collection of of sort of of
tricks, isn't he of sort of comedy comedy terms, whereas go I think
is more supple and an agile. But yes, I mean, what what
are these skills being used for? They've been used to advance whatever cause is
of interest to their their sponsors. And they I don't just mean financial sponsors.
I mean that they're sort of their political overlords, the powerbrokers who pull
the strings. It's interesting, James, I think I think I was sort
of puzzling over why it is that generally speaking, the more intelligent you are,
the better educated you are, the higher caliber of university you're at or
you've attended, the more likely you are to have kind of embraced the new
woke religion, which is on the face of it, slightly counterintuitive. You
would think that, you know, the more intelligent and the more educated,
the better informed people are, the more independent minded they are, the more
capable they are of you know, thinking freely about these issues and not being
influenced by groupthink and not wanted to go along with the crowd. But actually
the opposite is the case. The further up the kind of cognitive food chain
you go, the more likely people are are to conform with the prevailing orthodoxes
in these institutions. Why is that? And I came up with three reasons.
One is that, well, of course they can see that it's in
their interests to regurgitate the kind of prevailing orthodoxes because they're likely to go further.
One of the reasons I think for the kind of extraordinary growth of the
kind of woke mindset is that it's become a hallmark of status. It's being
able to speak wokeish is a bit like being able to speak Latin or French
in the nineteenth century. It's a way of advertising your membership of the kind
of Brahmin class and it helps you, I think, get employed in places
like McKinsey and Goldman, Sachs and the rest of it. So I think
that's one reason for purely machiavellian careerist reasons. They just say whatever it is
and express whatever beliefs they think are most likely to kind of advance their careers.
But I think actually for most people, saying things that you don't believe
to be true, or pretending to believe things that you don't is actually quite
difficult. Most people find that pretty difficult. Most people are more honest than
that and can't let and a bit more scrupulous. Their consciences won't allow them
to be that unscrupulous. But the great advantage that smart people have is that
they can talk themselves into believing these things. They can kind of rationalize it,
they can justify it to themselves much more easily. And I think that
was going on a lot during the pandemic. A lot of people involved in
the promotion of lockdowns and vaccines persuaded themselves that it was in the public interest
and not just in their interests to promote these things. Because if they were
just doing it because it was in their interest, I think their consciences would
have allowed them to kind of survive for very long. It would would have
felt too guilty about it. But because they were smart, they were able
to talk themselves into it very easily. And then there's a third reason,
which actually comes up in a talk Churchill gave to Harrow's school, I think
in nineteen forty one, in which he says that intelligent people, the more
intelligent you are, quite often the more cowardly you are. And the reason
for that is because you realize, you know just how much danger taking a
risk is going to place you in. Because you because you have a kind
of more vivid imagination, because you're capable of imagining different scenarios and thinking about
the future a bit more clearly than someone less intelligent, you can see the
terrible consequences, the terrible risk you might be taking if you challenge woke orthodoxy
on campus, for instance. So that, I think is a third reason
for the extraordinary degree of kind of groupthink and conformity amongst the kind of cognitive
elite. Yeah. I've noticed this particularly among Etonians, having sort of seen
them up close, first, you know, having rubbed shoulders with them like
you did at Oxford and befriended quite a few of them, and secondly,
having had had a child there um and seeing the kind of values it in
culcates and I used to I used to think, in my in my set
of normal days before I was wiser, I used to think that Eaton was
kind of a bastion of of the values that that that I too shared,
so that everyone, everyone would be pro fox hunting and standing up for things
like small government and tradition and things things that want to like the sort of
sanctity of the English country. So I not not not despoiling it with wind
turbine, say, but keeping it for for proper things like grouse shooting and
hunting and nice views and stuff. But actually, over time, I've come
to realize that these what Etonians are above all, is creatures of the system,
and they are trained to develop these chameleon characteristics which enable them to blend
in whatever they do. So if the if the prevailing orthodoxy is that our
entire countryside should be be carpeted with bat chomping birds lighting eco crucifixes, They'll
do a reverse ferret and go, well, yes, I better have a
half dozen on my stage and and make like bandits like all the other friendly
capitalists scumbacks, because why not, It's it's the decent thing to do for
the environment, doesn't it what what what um? And I think this this
tendency among the upper classes and upper middle classes, the sort of I think
it's been with us for a very long time. There's a character called ablon
Ski in in Ana Karana and Oblonsky is his account. So he's in the
Russian aristocracy, and he's a very very likable character. Everyone loves Oblonsky.
And Oblonsky has no particular views of his own. He doesn't he doesn't really
believe in anything, but he's decided that he's going to the stuff he will
officially believe in is all the kind of liberal values. And he reads he
reads the liberal newspapers to establish what the latest liberal orthodoxes are and embraces them
accordingly, because he wants a comfortable life. He wants to blend in.
He doesn't want to make a stand. And I think you're right. I
think it is. I think it's the real purpose of the so called elite
universities. I used to think that Oxford and Cambridge and Harvard and Yale and
so on were designed to create a genuine elite, an elite that wasn't afraid
to think outside the box or I hate using that phrase, that wasn't afraid
to challenge orthodoxies and wasn't afraid to think originally on any given subject, and
that would make the world a better place because of their intellectual training. But
actually, and this applies especially to you, you tossenty did Ppe, it's
actually all it does is it trains people to to become a bit like sort
of senior courtiers in the Babylonian court. So you might be the cupbearer or
something like that, or you might be in charge of the administration or executions
or whatever. These are the people who work just below the level of the
of the absolute kind of oligarch arkee, and they do what they're told,
and they assimilate because they know they're going to get a pretty good position.
You know they're going to They're not going to be they're not going to be
slaves, they're not going to be bottom tier characters. I think that this
tendency has always been with us. You look at you look at the history
of I don't know, the Elizabethan court or the or the Court of Giles,
and it's all about pronius amgen. It's all about putting in with prevailing
orthodoxes, both to avoid being executed, but but generally to get a nice
seat at the table and get all the luxurism, they don't care about the
royal implications. Yeah, I think that's probably Yeah, that's probably been true
for time immemorial. I mean, the interesting thing is that you do get
kind of pockets of dissent within these institutions. And one of the things I
think which has changed about elite universities in the last forty years since we were
at one, James, is that when we were at university, you know,
if you were a conservative, you weren't nearly as isolated as you are
now, and the and the implications of kind of articulating your conservatism weren't nearly
as terrifying as they are now. There was a brilliant piece and if you
read it, James, from by member of the Oxford Feminist Society. It
was in the Telegraph this morning, about what it's like being a student at
Oxford today. If you're if you're if you're in a minority intellectually. So
she's a gender critical feminist. She thinks biological sex is real, that sex
is immutable and binary, and that puts her in an intellectual minority at Oxford,
and she says she has to kind of assess when she meets someone at
a party because she's writing, you know, a thesis about this, and
they ask her what she's working on whether to tell them, she has to
assess whether they're the sort of person who might hold it against her and try
and get her into trouble. And it's not just that the people who disagree
with you now just kind of don't want to be your friend, they actually
want to actively expel you from the university. So I'll go to enormous lengths
some of these some of these kind of you know, pinkhired activists to get
you into trouble if you express, you know, a dissenting point of view.
And she said it's almost like it sounded like she did actually uses analogy,
but it sounded like almost like being in you know, East Berlin during
the kind of communist era in which everyone around you could be a member of
the stars. So you have to kind of figure out, before you know,
saying anything that could get you into trouble, whether the person you're talking
to is going to report you or tell you tell her friends about it and
try and kind of organized to try and get you expelled. From a club
or a society, or start tweeting about you on Twitter. I mean,
it sounded so much more unpleasant to be in a kind of dissenting minority at
Oxford now than it was for us when we were there. I mean,
how, what what percentage of the undergraduate population do you think were Tories?
That it was about twenty percent when we were there, must be about two
percent now probably, I don't know, I don't know. I would just
interested to say, how you say, it's almost like um the stars and
you're not going to get thrown in prison. You're just gonna You're just gonna
lose your friends. Yeah, but these are these are these are false consolations,
because the point about living in you know, behind the Iron Curtain in
the seventies and eighties was that you knew that the um that the people in
charge were lying, lying scumbacks, and that that you had a moral duty
and a sort of um. It was an interest of self survival to try
and circumvent that the system as best you can, and to keep your private
conversations to those people you could trust, if anyone could be trusted, and
so on. You know, A bit like happened in um under you know,
with with Vaslav have all you know that this the sort of the vulgt
revolution, and so on, all the all these these tricks they had to
do to try and survive and keep their social groups in intact and in defiance
of the system. That we've almost got it worse now because we've got all
these STARSI light restrictions in everywhere from the workplace to academ and yet the majority
of the country is still persuading itself that we live in the free world and
that none of this stuff actually, that this stuff will all pass, that
this is not deliberate, but deliberate and well orchestrated over a period of decades,
and that we are we are reaching the point of no return where we
won't be able to resist anymore. I find our position more frightening than that.
Then, in a way, that the situation must have been in the
East, because at least back in the days of communism, they could always
look across the West as a kind of as as a counter example that maybe
maybe Western values will prevail and rescue them, or maybe the underground movement would
succeed in in defeating the communist regime. I get no sense what we're experiencing
now that anywhere near enough people as a percentage of the population recognize the severity
of what's going on, and therefore I think that we are going to get
strangled overwhelmed before we can build up an effective resistance. Well. Actually,
one of the one of the interesting points that it's an anonymous article in the
Telegraph by this Oxford University feminist. One of the interesting points she makes is
that actually the view that sex is binary and immutable, a belief in the
reality of biological sex, probably isn't a minority of view, even on campus.
It's just that there is an extremely aggressive kind of vanguard of woke activists
who will jump on anyone who expresses that view in order to enforce their particular
orthodoxy. And I think that's a bit like you know, what things were
like in Eastern Europe up until nineteen eighty nine. I mean, I think
it's it's you people. People probably suspected in East Germany that most people were
quite cynical about the regime and weren't true believers, but they didn't know that
because people were prevented from speaking out. That that's one of the advantages a
regime has from suppressing free speech, it conceals the fact from ordinary people that
their dissenting points of view are actually the majority of view, because once that
dawns on them, then they're much more likely to speak up and the regime
becomes much more fragile. And eventually, I think that is what happened.
I mean, when the Berlin Wall collapsed, people realized that actually the system
wasn't nearly as robust as they had been led to believe, and they no
longer needed to kind of falsify what they actually thought. And as they spoke
up, it became clear that other people felt the same way, and it
had a kind of domino like effect, and that's why all the regime's collapsed
like dominoes, so quickly, one after the other. So I'm hopeful that
we can see a similar Berlin Wall like effect, at least as far as
the kind of woke her genemy is concerned. And I think we are beginning
to see signs of the wall collapsing. So I'm optimistic that the atmosphere at
Oxford won't remain, you know, as maoist as it is at the moment
for much longer. And I think the fact that people are. People have
actually spoken up to defend Kathleen Stock, and following this particular brew her Hart.
But Kathleen Stock, gender critical feminist who has hounded out of Sussex University,
she had been invited to speak, has been invited to speak at the
Oxford Union on May the thirtieth, and the Oxford LGBTQ Plus Society condemned the
fact that the Union had invited her because she's, according to them, transphobic
and campaigns against trans people and is in favor of conversion therapy. All these
ridiculous exaggerations and lies they told about her whipped up everyone into a kind of
well not everyone, but the other activists into a kind of moral frenzy.
The invitation has been condemned now by numerous JCRs, including James. I regret
to tell you christ Church JCR and the Union have come under enormous pressure and
that the Oxford Oxford University Students Union ALZO have even said, or did it
a couple of weeks ago, say to the Oxford Union, you know you're
going to have to rescind this invitation, and the fact that you haven't means
that you can no longer exhibit at fresh As Fair this year, which is
a really severe blow to the finances of the Oxford Union. You pick up
about half their members each year from exhibiting at fresh As Fair. Anyway,
the Three Speech Union intervened. Various academics wrote a letter to the Telegraph protesting
about this, and I think as you have now done a U turn,
so the Union will be able to exhibit at fresh As Fair and the talk
is going ahead. It hasn't been canceled yet. The LGBTQ activists have said
they're going to organize a big protest and it's going to be you know,
it's going to be a lot of argi bargie on the day. But the
fact that it hasn't been canceled, the fact that oursu have been forced to
do a U turn, the fact that forty five academics signed a joint letter
to the Telegraph, the fact that another group of undergraduates have got another letter
in the Telegraph this morning. I think it's been signed by over one hundred
saying these activists don't speak for us. We actually believe in free speech.
We don't necessarily agree with Kathleen Stock, but we think she ought to have
an opportunity to set out her stall in the public square where people can engage
and debate with her. I mean, you know, you're beginning to see
the emergence of a kind of counter movement at Oxford, and I think that's
encouraging, So I don't think it's inevitable. And one curious thing about about
what's happened in the past kind of twenty five years is it's almost as though
the situation has been completely reversed. So now it's almost as if we look
to the kind of former communist countries of Eastern Europe for you know, model
behavior have had a push back against some of these kind of authoritarian intrusions interferences
in our liberty, because they have stronger antibodies towards it, because they in
living memory, they can still remember the horrors of the kind of Marxist control
system. So it's almost as though, you know, a source of hope
for us is to look over to Eastern Europe and see how, you know,
they push back against these things in places like Poland and Hungry. Anyway,
well, I think that the point I was going to make, which
got slightly lost, is that because because generally speaking, the people who dissent
from progressive orthodoxy at elite university's now are in a much smaller minority than they
were when we were there forty years ago, and because the consequences the risks
of publicly dissenting are much greater now than they were then. The handful of
people that are willing to stand up and publicly defend free speech pushed back against
woke gobbledegook on campus challenge net zero and all its nonsense implications. They are
remarkably impressive people. They have a kind of moral courage that is really admirable.
I met quite a few people like that at the National Conservatism Conference last
week. But you know, and there's a real sense of camaraderie amongst them,
and they take real sucker from kind of being together and giving each other
moral support because they are such a beligue with minority, and they are taking
such huge risks by kind of standing up and saying no, I'm not going
to stand for this nonsense. I don't believe it, it's not true.
I'm going to call it out. That's difficult and career threatening, destroys their
social lives and the rest. So they're an impressive bunch and the fact that
they exist, it feels to me like that rump is going to be that's
the bedrock on which they kind of fight back will be based. Okay,
should be doing another break. So this is a message from Indeed. There
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That's Indeed dot com slash London. Terms of conditions apply. Need to hire
you need indeed. Um is it culture Corner? Now we can go to
Culture Corner. Yeah, yeah, one more to do? Okay, um,
yes, what have you? What have you been watching? So?
I think I'm still on Silo and and Sanctuary Silo and Sanctuary. Yeah,
I'm I'm I'm still plodding through the things I have been watching. So I
haven't quite got to the end of playlist yet. Um, and I'm still
wading through the last season of Succession. I've just watched the Eve of Election
episode. I haven't yet watched the election episode. Oh, we've got to
talk about that. That's what we should talk about with the equal election episode
Eve of Election. So you don't know, that's right. I think I
don't know who's won yet either. The last episode, I thought that it
kind of climaxed with a party at Shives. Yes, yes, obviously we're
not going to give because I know some people are playing catch up. But
I've really been enjoying I think that since we are allowed to say that he's
died, aren't we I think we're allowed to say that. Yeah, yeah,
okay, so he's dead. Um, Logan Roy is dead. But
since he's died, I think they've stopped treading water. But I think I
think the first in some ways, the first well, the second third series,
we're really kind of rehashes of the variations on the theme of the first
series. Yeah, just just the kids kind of monking around while dad gets
on with the business of doing business. But now now the dad has gone,
it's really interesting trying to work out which of the children is going to
win. And I'm enjoying there there or their machiavellian scheming, backstabbing and so
on. What what say you? Yeah? I agree? I agree.
The death of Logan Roy was the kind of catalyst that was needed to kind
of kick what is it seven? Season five into life And yeah, it's
it's, it's it's It's got a lot more interesting and a lot more fun
the episode before, So I think the episode. I think that I think
what I'm up to. I think I've just watched episode seven, which is
the eve of election episode, so I think I've got episode eight to go,
and then there are going to be two more. I think maybe the
episode nine released today, I might have got that wrong. But but the
episode before the Norway I watched last night, Well, there was the one
set in Norway, which was absolutely that was that was fantastic. Yeah,
that was great. And then there was the episode after that in which Kendall
is preparing to kind of make his pitch as the kind of new CEO of
Way Star, and he's talking about the homes of the future, which will
be a kind of a fancy nancy retirement village where he claims movie stars will
drop into static cruises that like that, the like cruises, but but but
they're not not on water. It was and and you kind of and it
was just the build up to him kind of making his pitch in front of
all these kind of you know, investors and journalists was kind of you just
you were you were terrified he was going to crash and burn, make an
absolute fool of himself. Don't tell us what happened, because I won't tell
you what happened, but I agree it was it was very well done.
That And I tell you my theory about about about Succession, which hasn't which
hasn't really changed. Um that Jesse Armstrong is a perennial piss taker, as
I mean, you're presumably a fan of Peep Show, Yes, yes,
of our greatest comedy series. And he's all about the jokes. He's always
about the he's always looking for the angle, the comedy angle. He's not
really interested that the serious stuff is just there to provide a foil to the
to the gags. Yeah, and I've always felt that, Okay, well,
research though it is, And and they've got writer's rooms now with a
team that presumably looking to have business works. I think that the overarching theme
of Succession has always been that these kids have not got an effing clue how
to run a business. They're just they're just bickering, spoil in even ship.
Yeah, yeah, they're they're bickering and sport. And I think that
that's what really um, that that he's telling us about these about these isn't
Yeah. So yeah, so I think you're right. I think Jesse Armstrong
is a kind of a moral satirist. Like I don't think there's I don't
think there's a there's there's a there's a serious it's not informed by a kind
of a political world view. He's not trying to score political points. He's
not trying to make the kind of our capitalist overlords look ridiculous as a way
of, you know, turning us against capitalism. It's just looking for the
ridiculous, looking for comedy, looking for fast wherever he can find it.
And of course in that world it's pregnant with with comedy. And that's true
too, isn't it of Martin Amis? Who who? Who died a couple
of days ago, don't Yeah, so gelt corner, I think we ought
to discuss, and also a second but oh yes, let's let's do that.
So say, have you got some Amiss stories? Because I have?
Have you? Okay, let's let's um. I was just going to say,
I think, I think just I think Martin Amis was, you know,
a brilliant comic novelist, and I think like many brilliant comic novelists,
like his father, like evel In War, like PG. Woodhouse, you
know, it was the primacy of the comedy, finding the comedy which made
him such a did comic author. And but he was aware. I think
that there was this kind of he had in order to be taken more seriously
as a novelist, he needed, you know, a bigger agenda. He
needed to be painting on a more serious canvas. So he often shoehorned in
these big themes like nuclear armageddon, Stalin, the Holocaust, uh, and
the environment. You know, that's in the information. The information is that
the world's going to end because our planets dying. Um. And that that
that that that was always you know, it always felt there was slightly grated
Um when everybody wanted to know thought about the Holocaust, about Stalin, They
wanted the jokes, they wanted the dead babies, dead baby, tell me
you're tell me you're So It's only it's not a very exciting that I have
to say, Um, it's I'm not going to do with Martin Amis impersonation.
Um. But I when I was younger, when I when we just
left the university, Martin Amos was the person I most wanted to be because
he was an old faun ter eveler of you know, he was one of
the young British novelists. I think that he was the you had to read
it in the same way that for a slightly later generation, Will self was
that was the author that you had to have to be ever quite had the
same stage. No, no, no, I agree. Amos was was
the thing. And he and he was good looking, and he and he
smoked cigarettes and looked you know, got got big advances and he was a
rather attractive girlfriends as well. Yeah, and he sort of had this scow
which which, by the way, I think his scow was not a product
of him being a kind of dark, brooding figure. That he was simply
embarrassed about his teeth, which he later got fixed. So he didn't he
didn't want to be seen smiling. He was obsessed with his teeth. If
you if you read Dead Babies, it's about it's that there's a character who's
completely obsessed with his teeth. Yea, and that um so I longed to
be master Amos and I finally got to spend time with him on this,
I think in twenty ten at the Dubai Literary Festival. For some reason,
I got I got sent out to the Dubai Literary Festival and with my my
friend David, whose sister was organizing it, who happened to be there were
both sort of mischievous sorts, and both sort of of an age where we
might sort of remember the cult of Amos because for veryone slightly London younger,
they wouldn't know who he was. They didn't care because his later career was
a bit, a bit of a bit of a flop um. And Amos
was so he was he was staying in this in this same hotel as us,
and he and he and he, so he couldn't really avoid his fellow
writers, and although he tried to, he was always looking. You'd find
him, whether it was quiet as you'd find him having a sort of solitary
read, trying to escape everyone else. And I remember once going with David
to sort of on an Amos hunt, and we we tracked him down and
he was he wasn't exactly rude, but he clearly was not happy to be
buttonholed um. And we thought, we said, we thought it was a
bit cruel to to to kind of linger, you know, a bit like
Greg trying to insert himself into one of those with with the Norwegian investor um.
But I remember the weirdest thing was going to out into the desert with
Martin Aamers to watch this um hawk, you know, birds of prey being
hawking taking place, and we were we sort of smoked these hooker pipes and
did desty things. I wish I could say that there was some sparkling piece
of dialogue that I remembered from Namers, but now I didn't. I just
I just had a weird experience of Martin Namers before he died, right right.
I made him a couple of times, but I don't really have any
good anecdotes involving him. My best Martin Amis anecdote, it's sort of Martin
Amos adjacent, is that I once got into an argument with will Self at
Green Street, remember that rather Yahemian aristocratic watering hole in Mayfair. Anyway,
we were there at the bar, and will Self was a contributor at that
time to the Modern Review, which I was editing. I think I actually
discovered will Self. I think I published his first ever published article, or
at least I think when I first met him he wanted to be a cartoonist,
and we published some of his cartoons. It weren't too bad, but
he decided, you know, he wanted them to become a writer. But
he'd already I think, been taken under the wing of Martin Amos, who
was a friend of his then brother in law's, and he felt very defensive,
you know, he was kind of Martin Amos's chief disciple and defender.
And I was sort of sounding off about how idiotic I thought it was that
name has spent god knows what it was, thirty thousand pounds fifty thousand pounds
one getting his teeth fixed, and that spoke of the kind of vanity that
was unbecoming, you know, of a serious man of letters. And he
got so cross that he picked me up and threw me into the fireplace.
Um, and it was no, it wasn't. That wasn't that's what happened,
James, that's one No. Um, No, there wasn't a fight
in the fireplace at the time, but that, yeah, it was.
It was possibly one of the last literary feuds ever in London. H Imagine,
you know, people fighting in a bar because they're disagreeing about something of
their favorite novelist has done. Unlikely these days, I imagined, but anyway,
Jeremy Clark. Yeah, like you, big fan of Martin Amiss,
and some of his best books are really really good and worth rereading. And
I'm thinking actually rereading the information. Yeah, Jeremy Clarks. That Jeremy Clark
was a Spectator writer who for quite a long time it's been writing the Low
Life column in The Spectator, which is more or less inherited from Jeffrey Barnard,
but I think is actually better, was better than Jeffrey Barnard. So
The Spectator has these for those who aren't aren't familiar with Britain's oldest continuously published
weekly. It has a High Life column written by Tacky and a Low Life
column which was until a couple of weeks ago, written by Jeremy. But
Jeremy was first diagnosed with I think prostate cancer in twenty thirteen, and ten
years later. Wow, that's a long you know. I mean, I
have to say I am, having read his last columns, I am very
happy for him that he's finally been his finally shuffle off this more core because
he was it was WinCE He was being very brave about it, but it
was WinCE inducing. Sounded very pain that he was going through and not even
pain that not even morphine could could quite get him away from. So I'm
very happy for him wherever he is. I think he had Jeremy, did
you ever go on a bender with him? I didn't, and no,
I kept up. I sort of, you know, I would. I
hung out with him a few times at Spectator parties. Yes, got quite
drunk, but I never went on to anything. I know. Maybe I
did actually once, or maybe once I did go on to a couple of
other bars afterwards, but yeah, no, I never went on to kind
of fully fledged benders the kind he used to occasionally write about in Low Life.
No. I liked. I like the fact that he he operated in
this media. Where he'd be, he'd find these rather good pubs in the
West Country generally where where he lived. Doesn't really I think his mother run
the nursing home or something where you were like as likely to take all manner
of interesting drugs as you were were beer. I mean, he wasn't that
He introduced the spectator to read ship to the concept that there was there is
a world of of intoxication beyond alcohol. So I thought was I thought was
good and healthy. And he wrote beautifully, he wrote beautifully. He was
and sometimes he was he could be very, very funny. Just I was
just reading some of the kind of highlights of his columns over the years,
and The Spectator compiled this kind of sort of almost the greatest hit compendium on
the website, and I was reading them last night. Some of them just
had me rolling about. It was so funny. But I'll tell you,
I'll tell I do have a quite I do have a great Jeremy Clark anecdote,
which is I was at the Spectator party one year and we got chatting
in the garden and you know, around the bottle of whiskey, and he
said, Toby, mate, it's something I've never told you. When I
when I'll tell you the story how I became a writer, I said,
tastic, tell me the story. Said So when I was I had a
pretty checkered career, left school with two O levels, M I got done
for breaking and entering. You know, yeah, my life was going nowhere.
But I wanted to be a writer. That's what I really wanted to
do. That was my dream, becoming a writer. Anyone was hitchhiking from
I think it was us. I was like sumhere in Devon Exeter, and
this very nice lady picked me up. A single lady quite unusual if you're
hitching, you know, single ladyes don'tusually pick up many look like me.
Anyway, she picked me up and she gave me a lift to London and
she asked me what I wanted to do, and I said, well,
what I really want to do is I want to be a writer. But
I don't know how to go about it. I mean, I've got no
qualifications, I don't know anyone in that world. I never really tried to
do it properly, but that's what I really want to do. And this
lady she said to me she was a writer, and she said, you
know, you don't need any qualifications. She just got to do it.
You just sit down and do it. You know what's stopping you? You
know anyone can do it, and if you want, I can introduce you
A couple of people could be helpful. And you know, she convinced me
that to ever go. If she hadn't convinced me, I never would have
done it, and I wouldn't be if I can't picked me up, I
would have had a totally different life and do you know what, soby never
told her this before. That woman was your mum. That was your mom.
That was and it wasn't a joke. It was my mum. He
described. Believe it. At first, I was like, really, are
you sure? He described the car and my mum did drive at that time
from Devon to London, would often pick up hitchhiker's and she was a writer
and exactly the kind of thing that she would have said to someone like that.
So, yeah, my mom, what a nice story. That's pretty
lovely. Well we'll end it there. That's that we cannot be could to
proven that. That's good. Well, we've got one more message, James,
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will be happy to help. Good Okay, James, We will go next
week, all right, say then bye bye. Ricochet joined the conversation