Three Word Slogans (with Cleo Watson)

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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 Amanda Unucci.

And it's Helen Lewis.

And this week, we're looking at the power of three-word slogans.

How effective are they?

How memorable are they?

And do they work long term?

Do they work?

But before then, what have you been up to?

Well, I've been reading, I know, I hear it's very popular.

It's not just the internet.

I don't know, everywhere you go, people's faces are down in a book.

You've got to get out more.

Right, exactly.

No, I've been reading Adam McQueen's new novel, The Inalienable Right, which is the third in his Tommy Wildblood series.

So they're political thrillers.

I was trying to think of the way I would describe them, and I think it's this.

They are both very horny and very historically accurate, which is a Venn diagram.

I think horniness is historically accurate.

I think it's historically accurate horn, yes.

It's a great overlap in the Venn diagram.

The first of the series is set around the fall of Harold Wilson.

The second one is set around the Brighton, very horny.

Then there's Jerry Healy and his sort of odd cult.

And then the third one is around Section 28 and Thatcher on that.

As I say, I love historical fiction.

And why is that?

I don't know why.

I really love history as well.

So I think it's it's sort of I was going to say it's history light, that's kind of rude, but I think it's history with more interpretation put on it and you can dwell on the characters.

And because you're it's fiction you're allowed to say what you think people were thinking in a way that

you can't.

You know, even the best history books are still a kind of accurate summation of something that happened in the past, but I suppose historical fiction, if it's done well, allows you to get some sense of what it must have felt like to be present in that past.

I felt like that very strongly about Hilary Mantel's War Corps series.

It restores the idea of the fact that, which is very political, actually, that all of the court really didn't know, is Kataran going to hang on or should we jump ship to Anne Boleyn?

And it restored that sense of it being in the present tense.

Exactly, yeah.

You know, we all know the outcome.

And I just think that's a very good way of thinking about politics, is that everyone involved in politics doesn't know how it's going to turn out.

They don't know whose faction is rising or who's going to make a bid for the leadership and splame out.

It's a reminder of the people in this story being told that they're in their present and therefore don't know what happens next.

You know, it's uh, it's that well, I've been reading some history, but recent history.

I've been reading a great book that was recommended to me.

It's called The Speech Writer.

Oh, yeah, it's written by a writer called Barton Swame, great name, which sounds like it's come out of an F.

Scott Fitzgerald novel, but he was the speech writer for Mark Sanford, who was the governor of South Carolina in the noughties.

I don't know if you remember.

I'm getting gay scandal that's coming through.

You've got scandal.

Yeah.

What happened was he disappeared.

He said he was off to the Appalachians.

Yeah.

He disappeared without trace for five days and then turned up saying, no, I was in Argentina with my mistress with whom I've been in love.

Oh, very heterosexual scandal then.

Yes, exactly.

Now, strangely in this book, that's not the best bit about it.

The best bit about it is, what is it like being someone who is charged with writing for a politician?

And basically, it just gets increasingly funny as he realises, you know, he was chosen, Barton Swain, he was chosen because he was good at writing.

But then he realises more and more that what he has to now do is write badly because the worse it is, the more it actually chimes with how the governor speaks.

And he gives this kind of great eye into understanding the kind of the mundane language that politicians like to use.

Oh, wow.

It's brilliant.

Yeah, those really banal filler phrases.

I think, but in spoken language, they're kind of forgivable because

a lot of it is stalling for time, isn't it?

It's thought clearing, isn't it, where you actually think of what it is that you want to say?

Well, someone who knows exactly what to say is our guest this week, former advisor to Theresa May and Boris Johnson, the author and broadcaster Cleo Watson.

Hello, Cleo.

Hello, thanks for having me on.

Pleasure.

Can I say that when you were going to come on, I remember my favorite anecdote from your writing work so far.

You were writing to promote Whips, your first novel, set in Westminster, and you had a great story about working in number 10 during COVID.

In which, what was it when Boris Johnson was either tested positive or actually had COVID, you constructed what I think you called a puppy gate

to keep him away from scandalously.

Poppy is a scandal or an actual physical game.

No, this is the one gate that isn't a gate.

It's a solid.

It's a physical structure, but he was kept in his office, but for ventilation purposes and to keep an eye on him, we kept the doors open.

He was isolating at the time because I think he wasn't positive, but his now wife was.

And he kept crossing the threshold of the door.

He just couldn't resist coming out, not necessarily to do a lot of work, but there was a little table with lots of newspapers on it, and he liked to poke through that.

So in the end, we put some chairs

against the kind of threshold of the door.

And he used to lean on the seats of the chairs almost like a

howling.

Like a golden retriever, like howling.

He's giving me a biscuit or the Daily Express.

Yeah, exactly, exactly.

And that was the best.

You know how sort of children will play at having a shop?

It was a bit like that.

You could kind of, we've built him a little counter and he's going to stand up at the same time.

I love it.

It's one of the best bits of writing about Boris Johnson that I've encountered because I think it captured a lot about, I mean, you have a better insight into his personality than I do.

But what I felt was the reason that I think people indulged him in a sense was there was this labradorish, toddlerish quality to him, as well as all the other qualities it had.

One of the things that characterises Boris Johnson's career to me is indulgence.

When you're a 50-something man who was Prime Minister, you should be able to just sit in a room quietly by yourself and yet...

Yeah, you had to make it a game for him, basically.

Did you throw him treats every now and then?

He should have made a little crutch course.

He could have weaven in and out of some wires and run up a little

slide and then stuff like that.

Well, you couldn't have him getting out of breath at the time.

Oh, bless him, through a polytunnel on that other side.

The Boris Johnson trials.

And I don't mean criminal trials.

I mean like dogs and horses do.

No, but it was a very brilliantly told, double-edged anecdote that both told a very human story and reflected the reasons I think Boris Johnson's prime ministership took the course that it did.

So, my commendations on that.

It was that duality, wasn't it?

The fact that, you know, at bottom, he did appeal to a lot of people, but those very same people thought this wouldn't turn out well.

No.

You know, there was a kind of that split that people carried in their head.

But it'll be funny while it happens.

I mean, you still meet a lot of people who say, well, he was very funny, though, it's very funny.

Because you were in number 10 during COVID, which was a time that I think we all thought, well, the world world has changed

what was the first time you really thought oh this virus is heading towards us we're going to have to change the way we talk to the public about it i think the big moment for me was when it had hit lombardy in italy and hadn't yet come to the uk up until that point it was about i think the 8th of march We'd been getting information coming out of Wuhan, the World Health Organization were on the ground and trying to work out what was going on.

And

we had this meeting, it was a Saturday, and Johnson was reluctant to take on any draconian measures yet.

And then we walked outside, and there were big TV screens in the room directly outside his office.

And it was live footage coming out of a Lombardy hospital where there were people on stretches in the car park having heart attacks.

And it was kind of an unbelievable scene.

And he said, I've been to that hospital.

I've been on holiday there.

Their health service is really good.

How can they be struggling?

And it was this first, it was the first sense, not just that there was a health crisis, but that the NHS, if it came over to the UK, would be in real trouble.

I remember that period quite well because, as you say, being a kind of natural libertarian, I think he really struggled with the idea of lockdown measures.

And, you know, it was in sometime in March that went to a hospital.

I said, look, I'm shaking hands with everybody.

Which was, you know, and missed several of the Cobra meetings.

And it's interesting that it took that, I remember that footage.

It was like every movie you've ever seen about a kind of outbreak, you know, where, like, or like a bowler or something like that.

Well, it was playing where if you look at that footage, look at the expression on Chris Whitty's face when he says it.

Yeah.

You can see he's going, that's not the one thing you shouldn't be saying now

is why you're

happy to.

Actually, one of the things I think we should credit number 10 with during that time is that it did come up with some very good encapsulations and slogans about what people, when it did start taking the crisis really seriously.

So, hands, face, space, and stay at home, protect the NHS.

Those were good, snappy distillations of advice.

I remember Matt Hancock's sing Happy Birthday While You Wash Your Hands was slightly less fun than that.

It was something to do with you wash your hands for the length it takes for you to sing happy birthday twice.

But nonetheless, you know, was that a discussion that you were around and involved in, or was it something that was in your everyday experience in number 10 that people were having those conversations about language?

So perhaps it's better to go back a step.

My previous experience with political messaging was the referendum and then the 2019 general election.

And

Take Back Control and Get Brexit Done were

very successful.

They were very successful three-word slogans, but crucially,

they were not slogans that Dominic Cummings came up with and then he put them into the field.

They came out of focus groups.

So he went all over the country on both occasions and he heard normal voters say, I want this sense of control, but I just want to get Brexit done.

I'm sick of it.

The interesting thing, I think, about the COVID messaging is that I remember the initial campaign from the Department of Health came through and it was perfect for a germaphobe, but it didn't really make sense.

It was this campaign of green handprints on like door handles.

Right, yes.

It just didn't have a kind of instruction.

It didn't really make much sense.

It kind of required a degree of technical understanding as to what these symbols exactly.

And it doesn't tell you what to do, apart from like, don't try to change things.

Exactly, be afraid.

And we've gone into a kind of nuclear age.

And at that point, the comms team made a decision to come up with what they wanted, which was,

in the first place,

I've got a stay home.

So I just kind of want to stay home, protect the HS, save lives

and hands-face space.

And then they quickly focus group, then put them into the field before those slogans were put out.

So it's actually a slightly unusual case where they just knew what they wanted, but people understood them.

And there was a 95% absolute understanding rate from the public.

I mean, that's interesting that they arose almost organically from, you know, taking the temperature of what people were thinking.

So it's no surprise that they then chimed.

It was as the pandemic progressed and the whole question and debate about do we open up, do we slightly open up, what do we do?

And those slogans started to change.

And that's when they became more prescriptive, as in they started in government and were kind of launched to the public rather than they seemed slightly more confusing.

People didn't quite know what some of them meant.

It's because there was discussions about bubbles.

Yes.

And I remember the tier systems and then the tiers changed and then we were in schools and then out of schools.

One of the things I thought was really interesting about language, and I think it's a general point about political language, is that line of protect the NHS.

I mean, you might have more insight into this, but my memory of it was that there is a core of people who are quite macho and they didn't want to do anything they thought made it look like they were afraid of a virus.

And that might have been Boris Johnson's sort of natural tendency of the world.

Exactly.

If I go cold water swimming every day, you know, I might get a sniff, but you know, I just shake it off.

Strong like bull.

Strong lull.

That's how he used to do strong like bull.

Oh, really?

And then he got COVID and that big possibility.

What did Chris Whitty say to that report?

I think he did a very subtle sir, Chris, did a very subtle eyebrow raise.

Right, but that's why I thought Protect the NHS was a really smart slogan on that, because it was like, well, you might not be afraid, but other people are more susceptible to this than you are.

And you can do your bit by keeping them safe and also save lives, save other people's lives.

Exactly.

And it wasn't just that.

It was asking people, if you've cut your finger, please don't go to AE.

Like, we need to try and stop the NHS being overwhelmed with stuff that, frankly, is a waste of time for AE E as well.

That was an important part of trying to keep this line down of COVID cases and NHS capacity was at least let's try and strip out stuff that can be solved.

Which is strength as well.

So we've talked in this programme before about the importance of strong, you know, stronger together, stronger in, lots and lots of political messaging about being strong.

And that was a part of the COVID messaging too then is this idea of you know, stay at home with your cut finger and tough that bit out so that we've got the beds for somebody else.

We need to do the weekly Thursday evening clap for carers and those at the front line

was a way of, you know, we were all in our isolated hods and bubbles and hoses, but a way of linking us all together was that communal

applause clap for carers.

That's right.

And it became part of the strong messaging became part of masks and eventually vaccines, which I'd left by them, which was we need you to protect others.

The masks don't necessarily stop you getting it, but it'll stop you coughing on granny.

And it's the same with the vaccine.

So it's trying to appeal to a sort of British sense of politeness, I suppose.

And

that argument worked best, particularly with mask wearing and hand washing, which was essentially.

I like that though.

That says something nice.

Actually, an altruistic argument, an argument that was about helping other people still worked.

It wasn't a kind of selfish argument.

It became a socially acceptable question as well.

So do you remember?

I mean, it got slightly out of hand with people daubing in their neighbours, and arguably, some of that messaging contributed.

Driving to test their eyesight, things like that.

But there is a latent authoritarianism in a huge number of the British population.

This is one of the things I really discovered during COVID.

We were doing our regulated daily walk one of the times around the park, and there was someone in the early days who dared to sit down on the grass and read a book on her own.

And the police were there sort of moving her on.

And I thought, use some common sense about

it.

Oh, I do remember, and I've gone back and referred to rules, and and I know we weren't breaking the law but there was a point where we when it all got relaxed a little bit I remember us just going in the car just for a drive just round the house just to feel alive just to feel not getting out the car yeah thinking are we is this okay I think this is okay and we did check it it was okay but there was just that sense of at the time because we didn't know nobody had been through this before yeah and I think we gave everyone in power the benefit of the doubt we we felt actually we know that you don't quite know what's coming next so we're sort of with you but we rely on you to give us the best advice and to follow it.

And I think that's when things came apart, you know, initially with the Dominic Cumming drive to test your eyes and then the party gate stuff that started filtering out, where there was that disconnect then between what we were being told and us being happy to be part of one communal response to this.

And then discovering, oh, there are people actually who are opting out of this and they're the ones making the rules.

And I think a general attitude, like the compliance with messaging for that first wave was really, really strong.

Everyone was really frightened.

The reason we ended up closing schools in the end, which Johnson was so reluctant to do, is because no one was turning up.

Parents had just made that decision themselves.

And I think the, aside from, as you say, Party Gate and Barnard Castle, another problem for compliance was then we suddenly had the summer of

let's open up and oh my god the hospitality industry is dying on its ass and then suddenly September came and we were looking at winter and having, and that's really the point where it felt

the world has changed.

Will we ever not have masks on public transport, which you rarely see now?

Yeah, but that's

under five years.

What was that summer of that?

And then another slogan coming, eat out to help out, which again kind of sounded fine, but there's no, you know, a lot of

questions on how authentic that was.

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Suffs!

The new musical has made Tony award-winning history on Broadway.

We demand to be home!

Winner, best score!

We demand to be seen!

Winner, best book!

We demand to be quality!

It's a theatrical masterpiece that's thrilling, inspiring, dazzlingly entertaining, and unquestionably the most emotionally stirring musical this season.

Suffs, playing the Orpheum Theater, October 22nd through November 9th.

Tickets at BroadwaySF.com.

Based on the science.

Yeah.

But masks have become a form of political messaging in themselves.

I've just come back from California, and it was like stepping back in time because I would say about 5% of people you'd see in museums, on a train, whatever it might be out on the street, would be wearing masks.

Now,

lots of places that's culturally quite normal.

If you go to Japan or some of the other Asian countries, it's much more normal to wear masks all the time.

But it certainly felt like we went through a period and then everyone got the vaccine and happily demasked.

Whereas in America, it became a signal, particularly among people who are very worried about long COVID, about you know, you will still hear people on the left in America saying, Well, this, you know, the pandemic isn't over, we can't go back to normal life.

And for that reason, Joe Rogan once described it as the left-wing version of a MAGA hat, which was a kind of slightly incendiary thing to say.

But you would very rarely now see a right-wing person in America wearing a mask.

They kind of called them like a face snappy or something.

Tenor lady, tenner lady for you.

But I think one of the things that was helpful in having a conservative government during that period when the government was objectiving lots of things you'd normally associate with the political left was that in its messaging, it was kind of slightly counterintuitive.

In terms of the messaging, I think it worked at the time.

Like you said, there was a kind of 95%

adherence rate.

But subsequently, there's now become this discussion of,

well, now we're finding that the vaccines affected this or that,

you know, the number of people who were affected by the lockdown were this.

And I wonder whether, in terms of messaging, what wasn't explained to us at the time was the science was put across as being very definite

and not fallible.

Whereas in fact, weirdly, I know that there's science,

but science is not an exact science in that science is all about coming up with the best explanation, knowing that that explanation will be revised when new evidence comes in.

And we weren't being given that.

We were being given a sort of sense, what seemed like certainties about how the virus would work.

So when you start to uncover exceptions to that rule, it then suddenly becomes a kind of doubt on all science.

But actually that initial slogan of stave the NHS

and so forth, that's when we knew the least about COVID.

We didn't know it was airborne, so masks actually weren't recommended initially.

All we knew was about hand washing.

Yeah, I interviewed Dominic Cummings for my series on actually precedently on kind of group texts and political communications.

And he said at that time that the numbers were coming through from NHS England on a fax machine.

And I'm like,

who still has a fax machine?

And it was a real insight into political communication, in many ways very sophisticated, in many ways actually lagging behind the private sector.

I think he also said they didn't have a private file sharing system.

Yes.

And IT in government is always notorious.

So even in Washington, it's like that.

It's always...

Well, in Washington, there's an ideological reason behind it, which is that, you know, they hate putting money into government.

Republicans, it wasn't that line from PGA or the Republicans say that government doesn't work and then go about trying to prove it.

Yes.

I came across just on the science thing.

I came across a great phrase a couple of weeks ago, just explaining that sense of not really explaining that science is always adjusting itself to new evidence, which is the problem was that they didn't embrace the error bar.

Have you come across that phrase before?

The embrace the error bar, which is accepting that what you're saying is the best explanation so far for what's happening, but we may have to update it a little bit.

I know that's true, and I think things like the mask guidance changing were quite damaging.

But I'm also, again, it's about that attitude of being quite forgiving.

Yes.

In that I think in political communication, you can't go out and go, well, look, what Chris Whitty reckons is this.

I'm presuming this was the kind of conversation you were having.

Like, we're going to have to just tell people, stay at home.

Like, we just stay at home, stay at home, stay at home.

We can't have a discussion.

Yeah.

It's just got to be.

It's something that's just being unpicked now because of all the different exceptions.

It was a huge challenge for Chris Whitty Whitty and Patrick Balance at the time.

He'd have these meetings with us and they would say, you know, our best estimate is XOZ.

And we'd say, yeah.

The thing is at five o'clock, you're going to go up to the press conference and we need to know what we definitively can say.

And that exactly, do you say it's really challenging and saying, trust the science, trust the science, is hard when two weeks later, actually, more study has been done of this disease and we understand how the virus actually works.

And, oh shit we do actually need masks gang sorry now on that were you at all privy to any of the discussions going on about who to give the contracts to for PPE

half me

hopefully I was not part of that that's a very

Department of Health

was going on were you well well funny enough the stuff I was aware of was this sort of international arms race almost for PPE.

So I didn't know that there were contracts going on around the UK so much.

I knew that Dyson was drafted in to help build certain parts.

And I knew that some of the NHS staff were just duct taping bin bags onto themselves.

I mean, it was really critical.

With all this going on, we had members of the civil service, particularly in the Foreign Office, trying to track down shipments all over the world, trying to avoid the Americans, the Chinese, the Australians getting it before us.

And it was a real bum fight getting PP that already existed.

And, you know, there were cases where we would send an RAF plane to Turkey to pick up a shipment and the Americans had beaten us to it.

So I don't know anything about the PP in VIP name, but I do remember the very feverish sense of trying to get hold of this stuff as soon as we could.

And it just didn't feel at the time like these things never do.

You don't think, oh, well, how will the inquiry deal with this eventually?

But it just felt like we've got to get this stuff.

It doesn't matter how much it costs, it doesn't matter where it comes from.

We've just got to get it because we can't have people wearing like scuba masks in care homes and that kind of thing.

Can I, before you go, can I give you our quick fire questions?

Yes, you may.

What is the best political speech you've ever seen?

So I was very fortunate.

When I was at university, I got to study in America for a while.

I worked on Obama's 2012 re-election campaign while I was there.

I was down in the South somewhere and Michelle Obama gave a speech.

The way the Obama's fundraised back then is genuinely very interesting.

80% of their money, which was a huge war chest of billions, came in from donations under $200.

And it was sort of the first campaign, I think, to do the micro donations right now.

Exactly.

And they managed to

do that again in 2012 versus Mitt Romney, which now just seems such a like happy,

happy time.

It's so funny, isn't it?

I remember when Matt Romania was.

It's so gentle.

Yeah, I know.

Every successive American president makes you reappraise the previous ones or previous meetings.

Yeah, and this just feels like people like, well, Theresa May, I mean, she's decent.

She's absolutely fine now, yeah, yeah, yeah.

It's classic, isn't it?

And anyway, so she was doing this speech somewhere somewhere down the south, I can't quite remember.

And this was older women from black communities, some church groups, knitting circles.

I mean, these people are clubbed together whatever they could.

And she gave this speech, and it was almost like a gospel preacher or something.

So

she's got Obama's style of, you know, that slightly folksy way of talking, those pauses in between.

Hers are a bit quicker, I'm happy to say, because I find it's a bit slow.

But it was.

It's a call and response as well, isn't it?

Because I would say the best speech I've ever seen, and I mentioned this before, is Michelle Obama warming up for Barack Obama at the DNC last year.

Similar thing.

And she was in, again, it was Chicago.

It was a hometown crowd.

It was a strongly black audience.

And she had got that exactly that preacher's cadence from the black church that they were so in tune with.

And it just doesn't sound false at all.

No, and the audience was just

rising and rising and rising.

And obviously they're responding so well to it.

And no one's embarrassed about being like, woo!

You can't do it at Live Down Party Conference.

So it just sounds lame.

And it was really, it was really electrifying, actually.

And she was doing probably three of those a day for nine months.

But it just, it was wonderful.

Can I ask you if you have a phrase for the dustbin, one you'd never like to hear again?

Oh, I can't stand I've been absolutely clear or a variation on it.

Let me be absolutely clear.

And followed normally by a word salad.

And I just,

again, it's a bit like the speechwriter.

Speechwriter, it's basically just four seconds while you get your thoughts together.

And it's,

I just, I find it disingenuous and annoying.

And everyone does it.

Everyone does it.

And I'm sure every country has its own version of that.

What is the kind of busking for time phrase?

That's right, yes.

Final one.

Best political communicator.

I think we're at a particularly low ebb at the moment.

I don't think he's a political communicator, but I think someone like Martin Lewis, the money-saving expert guy,

He's very trusted and he comes across as straightforward and genuine.

If I are working in number 10 at the moment and bills are going up and people are worried about their benefits, I would be begging Martin Lewis to do some kind of appearance with the Prime Minister.

I kind of felt that until I saw him appear in the Celebrity Taskmaster over Christmas.

Oh, I've seen that.

He's very intense.

And by the way,

I thought if I spent more than five minutes with you, I think I would be very annoyed.

Name a British politician.

Don't feel like that about it.

Exactly.

But that's just a minor.

That just means, okay, don't go on Celebrity Taskmaster if you're a finance.

Bad move, Martin's agent.

Know your man.

Well, there we go.

That's that.

No, there's a comprehensive answer to it.

Were you around when Theresa May said nothing has changed?

Which was the 2017 election?

Yes, I was.

You've just shut your eyes and I can't.

Well, it's just that was quite a heady period

because obviously things changed very quickly there.

I mean, that election is interesting for various number of reasons, but for YouTube as broadcasters and you, Helen, as a journalist, I always think about, I once got to interview Julie Etchingham, who asked Theresa May that question about the naughtiest thing she's ever done.

The weakest thing.

Funny enough, that's a perfect example in SW1 where the world has changed because

every politician has prepped for that question now.

No, I like that.

The cheat sheet that your spad gives you is now like, what's the price of Milwaukee's price?

What's the the naughty thing you've done?

So you become more human.

Yeah.

Yeah.

And it's like, be cool, make it not illegal, but then make it a bit.

Yeah.

Jeremy Corbyn had a good answer for that, which is I think he just sort of smiled and went, I'm not telling you.

Which I thought was a better answer, just hinting at deep hinterluds of

criminality.

I remember going on a live...

Sorry to be so name-dropping here, but I did this film with James Gandalfini, who played an American general in the loop.

And normally he doesn't do publicity, but he liked the film.

So he agreed to come on a live local radio station with me at the Sundance Film Festival.

And he was asked a kind of question like, you know, a silly question like, you know, what's your favourite cartoon character that you would love to be or something?

I don't know.

And he just looked at the presenter and said,

I don't feel I have to answer questions like that.

And it just, you know, because suddenly it was like, oh, Tony Soprano is telling me to shut up.

I better shut up.

Yeah.

And would that work for Theresa Mate?

Would people have thought, God, she's really serious and like, let's not mess with her?

Or you saw our old servants.

But

the strange thing is that when politicians do this, I've got some human things to say.

And then it's a weird example.

Because when Tony Blair went on Desert Island Discs and he was asked about his book, he said, Ivanhoe by Walter Scott.

That's a deep cut.

And I just thought, Has anyone ever read Ivanhoe by Sir Walter Scott?

Where did that come from?

And he couldn't quite explain why that was his choice either.

And I don't know whether that was placed there as a bet that he was unaware of by one of his advisors.

Desert Island Discs is revealing that I remember Ed Miliban's love of ABBA being a subject of much discussion.

But it's very hard.

I imagine that a lot of it now gets focus grouped.

What makes me what's distinctive enough that I don't just say best of the Beatles?

But also what's not so weird that people go, who reads Walter Scott?

I even know.

There we go.

I'm going to end with an email we've received.

Kia Aura from Aetaria, New Zealand.

Andrew Gunn says, hello, I love the show and would appreciate your thoughts on the phrase drinking the Kool-Aid.

It's often used in a political context trying trying to true believers who seem beyond reason.

Nevertheless, I do find it jarring given its dreadful origins.

So for anybody who doesn't know, I'm going to say it's Jones' Turn.

It's one of those American cults in which everybody thought doomsday was coming.

So the Kool-Aid, which is a brand American soft drink, poison was put in it, everybody drank it, dozens of people died.

Yes.

I mean, I think there is probably a statute of limitations, essentially, you know, when people use invoke historical events.

Well, yes, except as we discovered in last week's episode about gate, which is people forget it was to do with Watergate.

It's just become the phrase that is used for a scandal.

Yes, Amos Santina Evans made us both feel very old by going, oh yes, I never think about Watergate.

And I wonder if Kool-Aid is like people have now been born after the event and don't really appreciate what the Kool-Aid is referring to originally.

Does Kool-Aid exist now?

They probably have...

I've taken that off the market, sure.

You know, I think it's all influencers prime and those sort of blue drinks that you get monster.

I think it does still exist, but it's the same as going postal, isn't it?

Go on.

Which obviously is about postal workers shooting people and, in fact, shooting at the places that were in America.

But people say going postal as though to say, well, going off the reservation.

Like, lots of these things.

Off the reservation is also one that people pick you up.

And also beyond the pale.

Those also refer to historical incidents that are not fondly remembered.

I think that is the problem, though, is that so many, I mean, it's like when you try and go and find out what words and phrases of ours come from, Shakespeare, it's just huge numbers of them.

The etymology of words and phrases is so hard.

You know, English has got so many words in it, so many phrases, that I'm sure that no one is ever intending any offence.

And actually, they have no idea that the phrases come from specific historic incidents that other people are.

Talking about forgetting the origination of a word, I do remember when there was a papal visit to the UK, and an outspoken ultra-Protestant objector to the papacy was objecting to the Pope talking about political issues.

And he actually said,

the Pope has no right to pontificate.

Yes.

Anyone's got a right to pontificate.

It's the one thing the Pope has a right to do.

It's very good.

That's great.

Well, on that pontifex-related note, thank you for listening to Strong Message here.

We'll be back next week.

All our episodes are available in our feed, so make sure you subscribe on BBC Sands.

Goodbye.

Goodbye.

Hello, Russell Kane here.

I used to love British history.

Be proud of it.

Henry VIII, Queen Victoria, massive fan of stand-up comedians.

Obviously, Bill Hicks, Richard Pryor.

That has become much more challenging, for I am the host of BBC Radio 4's Evil Genius, the show where we take heroes and villains from history and try to work out were they evil or genius.

Do not catch up on BBC Sounds by searching Evil Genius if you don't want to see your heroes destroyed.

But if, like me, you quite enjoy it, have a little search.

Listen to Evil Genius with me, Russell Cain.

Go to BBC Sounds and have your world destroyed.

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