I Regret Some of My Posts (with Sara Pascoe)

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Hello, and welcome to Strong Message here from BBC Radio 4, a journalist and a comedy writer's guide to the use and abuse of political language.

It's Armando Yanucci.

I'm here.

Helen Urs is temporarily off for a few weeks, so joining me to discuss bromance bust-ups, regret in social media is comedian, writer, actor, Sarah Pascoe.

Hello.

Now you looked me dead in the eyes and went temporarily.

Don't get any ideas, Pasco.

This is Helen's job.

Yes.

Actually, the first time we met was in us, it was in a radio studio.

Yes.

I was Richard Bacon's producer.

Yep.

Five live.

In episode of The Thick of It, yes.

And you were mostly surrounded by shouting people.

It was brilliant.

It was brilliant.

Yeah.

Peter Capaldi shouted at me and I had to stop smiling.

Excellent.

What a delightful experience.

I was folk in.

Rebecca Front says it is quite scary when very nice Peter turns into horrible Malcolm and you realise

he may be acting, but it feels very real.

But for me, as a fan of the show who'd already watched so many series, it was like a quantum leap where you get to be in a character's chair.

All right.

So you felt like you were going through the thick of it experience.

Yes, it was like a theme park.

We should have done that.

Nowadays, they would have it on the south bank next to Shrek.

It would be the thick of it.

And some, yeah, there's some poor robot made to look up like Markham Hoot for 10 pens.

Yeah.

They'll swear at you.

And lots of drama school graduates going, yeah, yeah, I used to be Joanna Scanlon down on the South Bank.

Yeah, great.

Yeah, the worst theme park I ever went to like that was I was doing a documentary about Charles Dickens and there was Dickens World.

Yeah, it was grim.

It was bleak

because

the story was a Dickens fan came up with the idea, got a business partner in, then died, leaving the business partner who didn't really know much about Dickens to run the Dickens experience.

And actually, there wasn't much in it.

You went in and a man came up to you and went, Hello,

I'm Mr.

Macauber.

And you think, oh, glad you mentioned that.

But there were no thrill rides apart from the Great Expectations log flume, which doesn't feature in the book.

And it's basically a five-foot vertical drop

on a river in a log.

Yes,

which is what happens if you think you are about to inherit and you find out they're not your real parents down, you go to

the slump.

It was a ride to

recreate the emotional journey that people go in Dickens novels.

You see, it may be the way you're describing it, this sounds fantastic.

No.

No, no.

No, because when I got off the rope from the actor playing the character of I don't know, I don't know what

he just turned to me and went, what do you think of this place?

It's a bit grim, isn't it?

And I think it shot about a month or so later.

But if you go on YouTube, my documentary, Charles Dickens, starts with...

Anyway, how did we...

Right.

Look.

Okay.

See, this is you're temporarily here.

Yeah.

Helen would never, ever

have got us onto theme parks.

My God.

Right.

And the topic of the week is,

the phrase of the week that we're looking at is, I regret some of my posts.

Yes.

Which I think is what Elan Musk tweeted ex.

It's all been going off with Trump and Musk.

Everyone's following it like hot gossip.

Yes.

And all of a sudden, is it over?

Yes.

He's sorry.

He said, he said sorry.

He's sorry for everything.

He said sorry.

But maybe back on again.

And similarly with reform, the big bust-up at reform.

Yes.

Azia Youssef, the reform chair, tweeting, texting, whatever.

He can think of better uses of his time

than running reform.

He bought it one night when he was drunk, and now he's so much.

I know that's back, but two days later,

it turned out he didn't have anything better to do with his time.

He tried.

He went to the garden centre, put the telly on, tried to organise the garden centre.

Absolutely, my time's stupid.

Let me give it back to you.

What I really miss is working 18 hours a day and online getting racist abuse.

Yes.

Also, because I didn't really know about this man, Zia Youssef, until you said we we were going to talk about him.

So I've done some research and he's incredibly, incredibly rich.

Yes.

From selling a company in his early 30s, and now he's working voluntarily.

So when they say he's really tired, I think it might be really exhausting to work for not money.

He sees it as charity work.

Yeah.

He's charity, yeah.

He's like doing a day in a kind of Oxfam bookshop every Wednesday.

Yeah, but a really, really long shift.

But we know the reform, I'm sure, are very much up on the health and safety regulations and how they should be strengthened.

Yeah, because they came from Europe.

Well, you say that, but Andrea Jenkins, in her speech winning the Meritis, said, we're not going to pay for hotels.

If tents are good enough for France, they're good enough here.

And I thought, that's you actually agreeing to regulatory alignment with the rest of Europe.

You know, so she should be drummed out.

Yes, you've got a little gotcha from Amando Nucci.

Thank you very much.

One is in the post.

At this point.

I'm going to ask you, I know my job now.

Oh, God, Helen would have done done this much more professionally, of course.

I really miss Helen.

What have you been doing this week?

Well, now this might sound awful, and I don't mean it the way it might come out, but I've been tracking the parallels between fascism and the current day.

I'm not going to go into some crazy, crazy conspiracy theory, but I was watching for that reason a documentary on Mussolini.

And there was an event which I had no idea happened in 1927.

He was out campaigning.

He'd already admassed quite a bit of power but i think this was one of these trying to galvanize support for a bit more to make that final step into kind of totalitarian rule somebody tried to shoot him and it grazed his nose and so he then spent the next week or so campaigning with a large bandage across his nose to show how he'd managed to survive the assassin's bullet i just thought that is an amazing parallel with what happened with Trump and his ear.

I'm not in no way trying to suggest that the ear thing with Trump was deliberate.

I'm not suggesting that.

No, I thought you were saying it was a matrix we were living and they were reusing plots.

I am suggesting that.

Yes.

Yes.

And it was just a remarkable, just you pick up on this, because last week I talked about how when Trump was talking about we're going to make American showers greater again, I was reading in a book about Hitler bringing back the people's fridge.

Oh.

Do you think there is a playbook where there are people who are looking for things that have worked well before this is the first time.

We will go into this, I think, because there is a very,

very recognised playbook, which is to cause an event to happen that then requires you to deal with that event, take the credit for dealing with the event, even though you clearly caused the event in the first place.

Yes.

It's very much like every episode of The Figure, I have to say.

And this can be done at a small scale.

So, for example, we talked about Zia

resigning as reform chair.

And what prompted him to resign was a question in the House of Commons.

I think you had to.

Yes, so it's her first question.

I think her name's Sarah Pochin.

So she's just, she's the newest member of the Reform Party.

And so it's her first opportunity to ask a question.

She asks something that is not their policy, which is, are you going to ban the Burker?

And Yusuf tweeted the next day, it's stupid to, or dumb, dumb, to ask questions that aren't our policy.

He He resigned.

He came back.

But what then happened was the banning the burkha became an issue talked about in the media.

And so when asked, people like Farage and Richard Tyson, W Chair, said, Well, this is a debate that we're now having, isn't it?

So we ought to have this debate.

Yeah, we started this debate.

So let's have this debate.

And also, coming back 48 hours later, Youssef has now said that he would be in favour if it was policy of face coverings being.

Oh, that's new to me, you see.

Right.

fast-moving facts.

Really fast-moving.

Well, I really hope it's a fact.

It was on the internet.

Oh, that's fine.

Yeah, he didn't say it to me personally.

You know, if Donald Trump can sit a world leader down in front of him and show him or her posts on the internet and just say this is terrible, then I think that authenticates anything that you read on the internet.

I know, but I would like to think we're slightly better than Donald Trump.

I don't want to go, that's my bar.

I think a lot of people will say, you know,

you cannot better Trump.

What for, I don't know, but there are certain things that Trump is the absolute purest form of.

I think he's like, his personality is like the Dickens world that you went to.

Well, his head is like a...

His head is like going through a Trump experience.

Yeah, a Trump experience, yes.

It's a theme park with a five-foot log flume from one sort to another.

Yes, which representing the market responses to his tariff policy going up.

It all connects.

You're right.

It is a matrix.

Or is what Trump would call it the weave, which is his word he uses to explain him saying five different things simultaneously that make no sense when connected.

Yeah.

It's a weave.

It's taking language into the fourth dimension.

Oh, it's gorgeous.

So

you're interested, because I listened to last week with Stuart Lee, and last week you were on the Nazis.

And this week, the Italian fascists.

So when I was at university, there was someone who didn't go to a university, but he was selling drugs out of a student flat and they got raided, the students.

And the students got arrested because they all studied history because of their bookshelves, which were covered in Hitler and Mussolini biographies.

And I'm just saying I'm worried that if someone was doing similar, just don't hang around with any weed dealers.

All right.

So they were arrested because

they were studying Hitler.

Well, because if you go into a flat and all of them, it would be like if you went in and it was all books about the Wests, you would go, oh, hang on.

Yes.

Yes.

What are you planning?

Let's at least interview you.

Yeah.

And they said to them in the interviews, Hitler, a hero of yours, is he?

And they're like, it's just on the syllabus.

Like, the very, very opposite to hero, but we have to know what they did.

And that's your life at the moment.

Yes, it's frightening, isn't it?

There are certain book bans going on in America because Trump has imposed this

lack of, we want to remove DEI from syllabuses or syllabi.

And so certain books have been removed.

And there's one in the American Naval Academy in the library.

They've taken out any books about slavery, but they've left in Mein Kampf.

That remains

because of that seen as history.

I don't know.

It's just a bit bizarre kind of doubling the thing.

Just going back to this circular thing, I wanted to talk about this last week, but couldn't because there was a by-election taking place in Scotland.

But what happened was Farage went up to Scotland.

And in the campaign, they released a video attacking Anas Sarwa, the Labour leader in Scotland, saying that he will prioritise the Pakistani community, saying this because in, I think it was 2022, Sawar,

in a speech celebrating the 75th anniversary of Pakistan's independence, said Pakistanis need

represented in every mainstream political party in Scotland and across the UK.

So that's that's you know, he was saying

something very reasonable.

Our parties need to reflect the kind of the makeup of the electorate, basically.

Yes, they need to be represented.

It should be so almost boring yes well yeah

how do we make it interesting uh reform posted a film saying he will prioritize the pakistan community and called him sectarian which in scotland is quite a loaded word that word was used very very carefully and now i'm lifting this off the bbc's website bbc scotland's editor james cook challenged farage on this saying it's not true farage then went and said i think the speech he gave was sectarian in its very nature you know we are the asian community we're going to take over the world Wow.

He didn't say any such thing, Cook said.

Well, he did actually, very, very clearly, Farage insisted.

And then when he left and came back down to London and was questioned about the row, he said, Well, there is a bit of a row going on in Scotland, which to me suggests we're getting something right.

So

there's that tactic.

And I think you should look out for this in any political party, which is start a row and then come away saying, My God, there's a row.

It's like he drove up to Scotland with a lorry full of swill,

tipped it out, drove back down and say, They've got a massive swill problem up there.

Why is no one dealing with the swill?

Why, you know, something needs to be done about this.

Everywhere I went that I'd spilled swill, there was swill.

Yeah, am I the only one who needs to point this out?

Look at my trousers, look at my shoes.

Something needs to be done about swill.

And then, you know, then there'll be an anti-swill campaign, and all swill must be removed.

Absolutely.

And we're all talking about swill.

We're all talking about it.

We're all talking about it in this context.

I now go into schools and they're talking about it.

Yes.

You It feels like Mad Hatters Tea Party in the sort of logic adjacent.

Yes.

It's really fun unless it's people's lives and racism that's at stake.

Yes, but to take hostage another phrase, two tier.

Is there a two-tier system we apply to personality politicians like Farage, which is we tolerate the eccentricity in them in a way we wouldn't tolerate it if it was Kiostama saying it or Kemi Bézano saying it?

I think you're right that we do, but I think it's because, unfortunately, in every family, there is an uncle who it's not worth arguing with.

So, you have grown up, every single person in this country has grown up in a family where you're extended family.

For some people, it's their dad, actually, but for lots of us, it's an uncle who just, when you've got on one, just eat your lasagna, drink your water, you can go to your bedroom in a minute.

Because you've tried arguing once or twice, and he never listened, and he always thinks he knows better, and you just drop it.

So, my question is: then, would you want that person in charge of running the household?

Yeah,

what you usually want with those people, ideally, is stronger people around them.

So,

they get to be the mouthpiece, but other people make the decisions.

Actually, with looking into this and the fact that it was a new member bringing up this question at question time, and now it's like this is a tension economy.

If you're in a tiny party,

if you're in it for the likes, people to be famous, to suddenly be on interview shows, to be discussed on shows like yours and Helen's, she's just away, she'll be back.

Slash Sarah brackets temporary close brackets.

Then how exciting to be, to feel like you're going to discuss things, get things on the table, and then these things can move into lots.

Change happens.

That's right.

I mean, and it has been a trend that we've been drawing on for the last few weeks on this show, the attention economy and how policy almost is there, not necessarily to be enacted, but to draw attention.

I mean, we see it with Trump.

You know, he's moved on the tariffs thing.

Again, China and America, as we record this, are close to an agreement on trade.

So the whole business of raising the tariffs was a temporary thing, a temporary tactic.

It caused the headlines.

It caused, you know, market scares.

You know, the log flume, the great expectations log flume of financial discord.

And the Musk thing was possibly a headline grabbing thing.

And

Trump has now moved on to the LA riots thing yeah which if we remember was about several hundred people in two streets in LA yeah which Trump then said was going to tear the whole city apart which justified his bringing in the National Guard which is sort of classic disaster capitalism isn't it but there wasn't even a disaster there wasn't he's had to claim a disaster about something that wasn't so that he can behave as if there was and it wasn't even capitalism well it was bad capitalism because apparently the cost of doing all this was $134 million.

As long as he gets what he wants, that's the main thing.

What does he want?

Well, here we go.

Headline.

This is what keeps people up at night.

I think it is a tension economy, and I think it...

I try not to think about it.

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I think partly he likes that, you know, that he wants us to not take what's going on seriously because it allows him to do it and not be challenged.

You know, if our worst challenge to Donald Trump is a series of jokes rather than the courts, then

something's not working.

So it's about not just the attention grabbing, the headline grabbing, but it's the diversion of attention from somewhere else.

You know, while this riot event takes place in LA, people all around the USA are being rounded up and shot in the vans and illegally deported

massive prisons in places.

You know, and the and the and the emphasis isn't on that, it's on what's going on in LA.

We discussed, Helen and I discussed this, you know, the use of like totemic phrases like genocide and what is a woman, which reduce the discussion to a debate about those phrases, which then means you take your eye off what's actually happening.

Yes, yes.

So I don't know if you read Johan Hari's book about attention.

So lots of people don't like this author, but he wrote a really great book called Focus, which is about how difficult it is to collectively do good things.

Yes.

Because you know, there is a huge amount of power in a group of people.

Yes.

And you don't have that if you don't know what you're focusing on.

Yes.

When you're absolutely bombarded with issues, at the end of the day, you think, okay, another day I spent doing all of that stuff.

When are we going to deal with, you know, the fact that the world's on fire?

Yeah.

Yes.

Yeah.

Yeah.

I mean, this is the greatest.

attention diversion that's been going on because you know the science is clear about global warming but I don't think even in this podcast we've discussed global warming.

It's almost like the politicians have succeeded in taking that discussion off the table.

You know, we can't deal with the climate at the moment because we just can't afford it.

So I think really, let's get our house in order.

And then, you know, the world's not going to go away.

Yeah.

Brackets.

Yes, but have you read the science?

Close brackets.

P.S.

Can we come in Obunka?

Yeah.

I mean, and it's succeeded.

It's been a sort of drip feed of, you know, Trump coming in and and undoing a lot of the climate agreements, speculating about whether the science is accurate.

And it's validated other politicians who share that opinion to voice it.

But it's also encouraged other governments.

to not look like they're out of step if they say for economic reasons we can't do X, Y, and Z about the climate.

And also because the polls are showing.

You know, so it politicizes the issue as something that's actually bad for politics, if you even mention it.

So we now can no longer...

It's

in the summer.

We'll talk about this at Christmas, okay?

There's one other circular thing I spotted this week, which was the restoration of the winter fuel payments for pensioners.

Because correct me if I'm wrong, but I thought Rachel Reeves' argument was initially we have to show the markets that we're very, very tough on

spending because we don't want to spook the markets.

So unfortunately, we have to remove winter fuel payments from quite a lot of people.

Because

we now have reassured the markets and they are confident in our ability to control spending.

We can now give those fuel payments back to people.

So it's basically we can give you your fuel allowance because we took it from you.

Yeah.

If you had to show that.

Yes, we had to show that we would, and it wasn't yours, it's ours.

They loved that, but they'd love you to spend it on fuel.

So we're going to give it back to you.

But it's just the fact that, you know, that I had to convince the markets that we were okay.

Oh, they're convinced now.

All right, I can spend money.

Yes.

Or this tiny little piece of money that actually didn't, or it didn't really reassure them that much.

So we were going to talk about regret people saying things because this is the thing.

Yeah, yes.

Go to Musk has said, I regret some of the posts I said about.

This is the funny thing, because you know, when their Youssef resigned as the reform

chair, it was very funny for 24 hours.

Aaron Banks, one of the top donors to reform, saying the champagne corks will be popping.

There were lots of criticisms of it.

Farage says not everyone liked him.

Other people said, thank goodness, a long time coming.

He's not been an angel.

He deluded himself into thinking he ran the party.

Nigel showed him who's boss.

With him, the culture at Reform HQ was like an abattoir.

And then the next day he came back.

Yes, with a different job.

With a different job, but just that.

Yes.

What are the conversations going to be like?

Yeah, it's going to be.

Yeah, he he didn't seem very popular.

I felt for him in lots of ways, especially because, I mean, he was making a moral point.

I know that's all been blamed on exhaustion.

As a Muslim person, this

really from left field band the burqa is brought up.

It's really incendiary.

It does hurt individuals and that it's a very small group of people that it affects.

And actually, Nigel Farage said that he'd had lots of vile abuse and he'd overreacted to it.

And I thought, can you overreact to vile abuse?

Isn't that just just reaction?

But Farage, his go-to phrase when anything like this turns up is, it's just politics.

Yeah.

You know, that's politics.

You have to just excuse it because it's politics.

It's funny because I think he's a very interesting man, and I think he's someone who has to hide with bravado that it does really hurt to be criticised anyway.

But I think...

Are we talking about Farage?

Farage, yes.

But I think when people experience abuse that's based on race or disability, I think it makes you lose faith in humanity.

It's not the same as, I don't agree with you, I don't like your work.

Oh, I don't think you look very handsome.

Like, you know, all of those things hurt on an ego level.

I'm vile on Twitter.

There's loads of people, I don't think you look very handsome.

Don't add me.

Poster campaign.

Yeah.

All those things hurt you on an ego level, but when it's racist abuse from the people that I know who've experienced it, it actually makes you think, why am I doing all of this work to help people or entertain people?

And also, it's in the light of, you know, if Farage said that about,

you know, you've just got to suck it up.

It wasn't like that when he was analysing something that Anasawa said about the Pakistani community.

There it was like he was very quick to label it sectarianism and hurtful.

Whereas anything that his own ex now re-joined

recently hired, fresh, full of ideas.

It's like, you know,

you have to be thicker skinned to tolerate that.

So it is a a kind of strange, two-tier approach to vile abuse.

Yeah.

I was put in a dressing room once with Nigel Farage.

And what, as a challenge?

I think so.

Well, it was a gig that was put on by The Guardian.

So I do think they were playing a trick on both of us.

How long were you in the room with him?

Maybe 15 minutes.

It didn't seem like that.

It did.

So it was a gig at the Palladium

pre-Brexit vote.

And so The Guardian had put on a range of people.

I didn't really have any stand-up about it.

I'm not a political comedian, but I had a couple of silly bits.

And then there were speeches from, and as you know, it was the Guardian.

It was supposed to be entertaining.

Ah, you know,

and both sides as well, everyone represented.

And

Nigel Farage was already in the dressing room when I got taken in.

And they said, oh, they actually didn't tell me who he was.

They knew that I knew.

He's a rock star.

So they were like, Nigel, this is Sarah Pascoe.

She's a comedian.

And the door slams.

And he says to me, I don't find comedy funny.

And I'm obsessed with that as a statement.

I don't find comedy funny.

Comedy funny.

And I'm obsessed with it because he didn't say, I don't find, because everyone has opinions on comedy.

I don't find some comedy.

Even if I don't know women's comedy or I don't modern comedy or stand-up comedy even as a genre.

To say I don't find comedy funny, and comedy is defined by its funniness.

Yes.

So he sort of unexisted

as a genre.

And I thought, I don't find food nutritious.

Yeah, I don't find food edible.

Yeah.

It then becomes not food.

Yes.

So is it like being tone deaf?

When he hears comedy, does it just so recognize words?

It's just another speech.

Could be Enoch Powell.

He doesn't care.

And I think that's the power actually of his language.

Right.

That he doesn't deviate from it's not a thing if I don't.

So if I heard your speech and I heard that it was favouring a subculture in Britain, then it's sectarian.

Yes.

I heard that whether it was there or not.

Yes.

I heard it, so you said it.

So you have.

Now we're all talking about it.

It's like,

I went and looked at some Nigel Farrar's just quotes in general.

And some of them are brilliant.

On some stuff, he's actually quite good.

He was great on breastfeeding.

Right.

Does he not find it funny?

He doesn't find it funny.

It's awful if you say they do find it funny.

The only thing's funny?

Tits.

No, he was.

You're not allowed to say that these days.

Because you know that.

He says in a show.

On some things, his attitude is actually right.

So with breastfeeding, he said it's a two-way street.

Breastfeeding people shouldn't be embarrassed by an establishment establishment telling them to stop.

And also, most women who feed their children that way know that there are situations where it's not appropriate.

And you go, yeah, that's all you have to say.

We don't need to debate it.

Use your common sense about breastfeeding.

I'm reeling from the I don't find comedy funny.

It's great, isn't it?

It's kind of shocked me to the core.

Yes.

It's challenged my entire identity.

But it's made me also think, and again, I'm not trying to draw a parallel

between politics now and what happened in Germany in the 1930s.

But dictators don't like comedy.

They don't.

Especially they don't like jokes.

They don't like jokes about themselves, but they just don't like jokes.

Do you know why?

Because laughter is spontaneous.

You cannot control your response to a joke.

It's the exact opposite to power as well, comedy.

I know that people do try to align the two, and there is some...

I guess soft power in that people will listen to you if you're entertaining them.

I think, because I looked on this quote thing, he also doesn't like and claims not to read or watch television or like music.

Okay.

This guy does not want to be titillated in any way.

I think he just likes lunches.

But isn't it a suspension of power to be in an audience, whether that's in a group of people in a pub, or especially if you've said to someone else, I'm going to sit here, you're going to make me laugh,

there's a giving over of something that a politician won't do.

Yes.

We normally ask our guests, temporary or otherwise, some quick questions before they go.

One is,

what's the best political speech or interview you might have heard?

I thought about this, and actually, what I've got is a quote, so it's not a whole speech, but I thought you'll either absolutely know this quote, or you might like it.

It's Marquis Dessard, who I don't agree with the stuff he did, but this quote, I think about all the time, and he says,

Do not topple their idols in anger, pulverise them in play.

Oh,

and I think that's so powerful.

The use of the joke,

the use of silliness,

which is you know, a flippancy can be so disarming, and

you can really stick by your beliefs and your morals.

And there are people who do manage to get on really well despite having very different belief systems.

And the sense of humour is the thing that will do that.

Okay.

Oh, well, that's kind of given me assurance that we should carry on making jokes.

Well, I suppose the work that you do, I mean, lots of people would find out so many things about the runnings of government.

Yes, through that.

Yes.

It was a sort of documentary, I have to say.

Yeah.

political phrase that you'd get rid of and so I can't think of a specific but I really hate the phrase as a mother

followed by something mother as justification I used to hate it before I was a mum because I'd had a mum and I thought there wasn't a just there was no superiority in having made any people and then and since becoming a mum I even more stand by that now that it doesn't mean anything and it doesn't mean you are better or have more feeling or understanding than anyone else.

I think it's used by politicians to

help us, it's used by politicians to justify their involvement in the discussion, I suppose,

and to kind of imply some connection with the audience.

Yes,

that the barest form of it is, you know, as a person,

I'm very upset by this, you know, and I think something should be done.

Yeah.

As someone with a house.

Yes, but it says, yeah, exactly.

So what you're underlining is the people who don't have this factor couldn't possibly feel as much about this as I do.

Exactly.

It happens.

Are not entitled to take part in this discussion.

Yeah.

Yes.

So I don't like that one.

But that can go.

Yeah.

Okay.

And also as a father.

Well, yeah, that's it, because usually that's what happens if someone's been accused of a horrible assault.

It's suddenly like, but why would being a father of daughters like that?

Give you some insight into how the justice system should be.

I own some women.

I've got some at home.

If anyone touched them, I'd be furious.

Like what it reinforces is really actually more dangerous yes yeah well who's the best political communicator that you've come across or at the moment at the moment I I don't know I'll tell you who's amazing as I think Nish Kumar is amazing I don't know if you've met him or seen it yeah Nish and seen his stand-up because he's he really

there are comedians who fake it and that's part of comedy like Stu was saying last week a lot of it is and and there are issues that audiences care about and the comedian doesn't but they can push some buttons.

And that is a skill, so I'm not dismissing it.

Nish really cares, and he's so funny while he does it.

You can hear his anger.

Yeah, he's angry.

And he's angry every night, and that's exhausting.

He's angry every night.

He's touring the world being angry.

So he's just been in Australia and New Zealand.

I don't know if we could harness this energy for...

Well, I think, unfortunately, that this is your choice when you're as good as he is at public speaking and interested in it.

Is there's this sort of career in politics looming.

Yes.

But you know, that would be such an unenjoyable life.

Whereas comedy is really fun,

right?

Well, we have a thing here called the Kiostama metaphor tree, where if there's an odd metaphor that Kiostama says, and he's prone to these, we hang it up in the tree.

This is a sort of adjunct to it, it's the Ed Miliband metaphor tree.

He was talking about the commissioning of nuclear power and so on.

He said, Today marks a monumental step in unleashing a rooftop revolution as part of our plan for change.

Yeah.

It's like

stop that sentence earlier than you'd have.

Or, unless this is coding.

So, what if Ed Miliband has sort of

maybe he's got the rage and actually he would like us to overthrow the existing government, overthrow democracy?

Really?

That's what he wants me to do.

Have a revolution.

Yeah, he wants us all to get on the rooftops.

Yeah, my heartbeat changed when I heard that sentence.

So I've had enough.

That's it.

That's it.

Yes.

Yes.

Imagine, I mean, I'd love Ed Miliband to sort of suddenly, you know, just have like a third act

where he's like, yeah, Gandhi said you could never be violent.

I disagree.

Let's take to the streets.

Right.

Well, we should

keep an eye on that.

Yeah, keep an eye on him, actually.

He's simmering.

He's about to boil over.

Well, thanks very much.

I think I'm still reeling, obviously, from

I don't like comedy.

I know.

I don't find comedy funny.

I don't find comedy funny.

No, that is words.

The words are important.

Lots of people don't find some comedy funny or don't find comedy funny.

Anyway, the wording was so important because the unexisted it.

I am going to be Ashen for the rest of my life.

So, Sarah Pasco, thank you very much.

Thank you for having me.

Thanks for listening to Strong Message Here.

I'll be back next week and we'll be joined by journalist Marina Hyde.

All our episodes are available in our feed, so make sure you subscribe on BC Sounds.

Goodbye

from BBC Radio 4.

Scott Lidster, you've directed another terrible film, the 15th in as many years.

When are you going to stop?

No Room.

As soon as they told me that they were setting up a commission on race and ethnic disparities, I said, well, as long as Tim, Tim, Tim, Tim, and Tim are on the team, you'll have everything sorted before the tea and biscuits arrive.

No Room.

Jack wasn't familiar with my BAFTA award-winning style of walking around my guests' house before the interview starts and saying uncomfortably forced and awkward boring things.

Michael Spicer, No

It's a sketch show with lots and lots and lots and lots of Michael Spicer's.

Listen on BBC Sounds.

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