EP.239 - ROB BURLEY

I added one more podcast to the giant podcast bin.

Now you have plucked that podcast out and started listening.

I took my microphone and found some human folk.

Then I recorded all the noises while we spoke.

My name is Adam Buxton, I'm a man.

I want you to enjoy this, that's the plan.

Hey,

how you doing podcasts?

It's Adam Buxton here

joining you from a really very windy farm track.

Wow, it's crazy out in East Anglia

towards the end of January 2025.

Okay.

It's blustery down here in East Anglia.

It's a lot worse in Ireland and Scotland at the moment thanks to storm Aoin

so I'm counting my blessings.

Apart from the wind it's actually a rather beautiful day out here in Norfolk.

The sun is out

and most of the clouds have been blown away which makes a change.

It's been solid grey for the last few weeks here.

Braving the wind with me today

is my best dog friend Rose

who is looking quite confused by the fact that we're out here

Fair enough, but we've got to get out get some exercise get out the compound.

Alright, this is actually ridiculous.

I'm gonna

wait till we get to some

tree coverage.

Hang on dog.

I'm gonna sit on this log.

Okay,

we're in the sunny woods now, slightly sheltered from the wind.

So how you doing anyway, podcasts?

I hope you're well and that

things are off to a relatively decent start for you this year.

You know, the news accepted, this episode of the podcast is going to be a bit of a break from all that, a bit of a retro fest.

So let me tell you about my guest for podcast number 239.

He's a writer, TV producer, and editor of political interview programs, Rob Burley.

Here's some Burley facts for you.

Rob was born in 1969 and grew up in Sussex, later attending Nottingham University, where he earned a degree in American Studies.

He was a researcher for a Labour MP before getting into TV.

He joined ITV in 1996 where he worked on shows mainly as a political editor with Jonathan Dimbleby and Trevor MacDonald.

After moving to the Big British Castle in 2008, that's the BBC, just in case.

He became executive editor of Question Time.

He was deputy editor of News Night and assistant editor of BBC Breakfast.

Rob then became the BBC's editor of live political programmes in 2018, later becoming editor of Politics Live and The Andrew Neal Show.

More recently, he's worked as executive editor on LBC's Tonight with Andrew Maher and with Kay Burley over on Sky.

Last year, I mentioned how much I'd enjoyed Rob's 2023 book, Why is This Lying Bastard Lying to Me?

Which, full disclosure, I came across because we share a publisher, HarperCollins, and someone there recommended it.

That's not the reason I mentioned it.

I mentioned it because I enjoyed it very much.

It tells the stories of various politically significant moments via a series of memorable TV interviews, which on the whole serve as a reminder of how difficult it's become to get a good interview out of a politician in the hyper-polarized social media age.

A good chunk of the early part of the book is devoted to a legendary TV confrontation that exemplifies how much things have changed in the world of political interviews, which took place in 1989 between then Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher and master political interviewer Brian Walden.

That part of Rob's book now forms the basis of a two-part drama on Channel 4 called Brian and Maggie, which is going out in a few days, as I speak.

Hello, Studio Buckles here.

The show goes out on Wednesday, the 29th, at 9pm on Channel 4, with the next episode, the following night, Thursday, also at 9pm.

Back to Windywood.

It's written by James Graham and directed by Stephen Frears, director of Philomena, starring Steve Coogan.

And Steve plays Brian Walden in Brian and Maggie.

Harriet Walter plays Thatch, and it is, I think, a superlative Thatch.

She absolutely nails her in a very three-dimensional way.

Maybe it was too three-dimensional.

In a Radio Times interview with Emily Maitlis, Steve Coogan said he asked for one scene in the drama to be cut because he thought it was too kind to a figure who was so controversial, Thatch that is, and who remains bitterly despised for, to take just three examples, her role in shutting down Britain's mining industry, the Section 28 law that prohibited local authorities from promoting homosexuality in schools and the community, and her introduction of the 1990 poll tax or community charge that required all adults to pay the same amount regardless of income or property value.

My conversation with Rob was recorded face-to-face in London back in October of last year, 2024, and we talked about our respective political journeys.

Rob's journey was a little more eventful than mine, you won't be surprised to hear.

And Rob tells the story of Brian Walden's momentous encounter with Margaret Thatcher.

We also talked about the new book that Rob is working on, in which he writes about scandals.

And because I know that Rob used to be in a band, we also reminisce briefly about the glories of Britpop.

In Why is This Lying Bastard Lying to Me?, Rob mourns the death of the long-form political interview and the social media-driven gotcha journalism that's taken its place.

A typical trick in modern political interviewing, says Rob, is to do something like ask a politician how much a pint of milk costs and then, if they don't know, to dismiss them as out of touch with the people they claim to represent.

Sounds like a good idea for my interview, I thought.

Oh, and by the way, early on in the podcast, we talk about the fact that we were born very close together, me and Rob, and I mentioned someone else who was born just a few days before me, and that was former podcast guest Tommy Tiernan, just so you know.

Back at the end with a tiny bit more waffle and a small goodbye to David Lynch.

But right now, with Rob Burley, here we go.

In contrast to your

normal routine, like I've heard you in the past talking about plotting an elaborate map for an interview when you were doing shows back in the day and you know like the big interviews you'd spend a week Yeah figuring out every permutation of how the conversation could go.

I don't do that No, I've noticed that

This is rambly.

I mean sometimes I do have you know notes and things I want to hit yeah and I've got a couple of notes.

But you're not trying to prosecute me, are you?

I'm not trying to get one one over on you, I don't think.

I think this would be quite a clever tactic to actually do that because you'd loom into this idea that it's going to be ramble and then you just hit me with it.

It's not a gotcha.

How much is a pint of milk, by the way?

Fucking hell.

I buy the litres.

Is it about...

Do you know?

Yeah, I looked it up.

Is it about $150 for a litre?

For a litre, it's probably about that.

A couple of quid, maybe?

I don't know.

A pint is 85p at Sainsbury's and Tesco.

I never buy the pints.

The small, tiny ones are over before you know it.

I've got children.

80p, okay.

85p, 95 at Waitrose.

It's an annoying question, isn't it?

Do you think it's a legitimate question?

Well,

what it is, is an indication of how you manage your finances, isn't it?

And when I was really hard up for money, even then, I didn't know how much a pint of milk was.

Because that's just not how I really thought about money.

I mean, that's probably something I inherited from my dad, and part of the reason that my dad went bankrupt.

Yeah, yeah.

I'm quite bad at money, too, but I think the purpose of it in political terms is just to sort of demonstrate whether you are a person of the people or not.

It's to yeah, to demonstrate how much you are in touch with the kind of things that most ordinary people have to worry about.

Yeah, no, that's fine.

I think it's fine for to ask.

I think it's important is ascertain whether the person cares about those things,

has some grasp of what people go through.

But whether you know the price of a litre or whatever it is of milk, you might not because you might not ever buy them because you might always be in the office and they're always just there.

And it's like, does that really make you an arsehole?

I don't think it does.

Yeah, you might not like milk.

I prefer Alpro Vanilla soya milk.

That figures.

That's more expensive, but it's delicious stuff.

Is it?

So, like, you and I are very similar age, right?

I think I looked you up.

I think I've had one month more on Earth than you.

Oh, mate.

And that month made all the difference.

What a month it was.

I think that is the case as well.

Who else did I interview

who had been around just a few days more than I had and had achieved so much more because of it?

I can't remember.

Anyway, but yeah, so you're May 69.

May 69, yeah.

Yeah.

I'm June 69.

Which means we were conceived

in the sort of rebellious summer of 68.

Yeah, what do you think your parents were doing?

Were they high on drugs?

No, definitely, definitely not that.

They would definitely not have been high on drugs.

They never took any drugs, I'm pretty sure.

I like this thing about how the 60s is fascinating, but

we all love it.

And I remember sort of idolising the concept as a kid.

But they didn't go through the 60s in the way that it wasn't like they were all having a wild time in Carnaby Street.

Have you ever seen that bit of the Beatles film of Get Back?

They're on the roof and then they go down to the street.

Yeah.

And there's a lot of just regular people who are just like, what the fuck is they doing?

Yeah.

They're not touched by the 60s in the way that we imagine it was.

And my parents, I think, were pretty untouched by the 60s in that way, really.

What were your parents like politically?

Were they

sort of on the left?

Yeah, they were on the left.

So, well, yeah, my mum was...

She went along with that.

She would say she's on the left.

My dad was probably on the left.

Yeah.

He was that generation.

So he's born in 1928.

It's interesting, like the Chinese Revolution.

It's like quite a big thing for people like him.

They thought this was great.

And then they had to kind of explain,

the cultural revolution is a bit difficult.

They have to sort of somehow be an apologist for that.

But I remember him being, still being keen on it in the 80s.

It wasn't all bad.

I was like, Mao's like a really terrible man.

He killed a lot of people.

And he's like, well, you know,

there's a lot of change and there was resistance and things.

But he couldn't quite let go of it.

He wasn't like a Maoist in some big way, but it just shows that he was quite on the left when he was younger.

And I think that residual thing was there.

And he's in the 80s still.

So he was quite into it, but mainly he was a historian.

So he was just brilliant.

He just knew loads of stuff about history and about politics.

But he was always up the garden.

So I just spent a lot of time out in the garden with him talking about politics.

And that was that that and Telly were the things that got me into politics.

I think most people, though, they inherit their political views from their parents, don't they?

Yeah, there's a lot of that, I think.

And so

it's very difficult for them to think of other people with different political views as sympathetic because they've just never been around those kinds of people.

Whereas, you know, I grew up in a pretty right-leaning house.

Right.

My dad worked for the Sunday Telegraph.

My mum was definitely a Tory.

My dad was more conflicted.

He didn't have a lot of time for a lot of the Tory politicians, especially in the Johnson era and the Cameron era.

So, you know, I knew a lot of people with those kinds of views.

The people I met through my parents were probably going to have similar political views to them a lot of the time, I would think.

But I wasn't really politically aware when I was getting to know them.

So that wasn't the first thing I got to know about them.

Do you know what I mean?

Yeah, but did you start to think about it in the 80s?

Not so much.

I mean, I started to think about it much more in the 90s.

I made it through the 80s without really being affected by politics.

The only person who ever talked about politics that I knew was Ben Walden.

Ah, okay.

Son of Brian Walden.

Right, okay, yeah.

And he was very left.

Right.

And he listened to Billy Bragg, and he was, you know, but we were public schoolboys.

Yeah.

So he had a certain amount of kind of self-loathing about that.

Right.

That he had this privileged life that his dad never had, because Brian Walden grew up pretty poor.

Very poor, yeah.

But then Ben found himself in this strange position of being the son of someone who grew up poor, who was definitely working class, who had used

the money that they earned to send their kids to a fee-paying school.

And then, if you're someone who has the same views that your dad grew up with, for Ben, left-wing views, labor-right views, his dad was a labor politician before he eventually went over towards the right.

You look like a bit of a poser if you're a public school lefty who listens to Billy Bragg.

Yeah, it's a weird position to be in.

I suppose it is.

Yeah, I mean, I didn't know any public school boys, so yeah, you weren't privately educated.

No, I wasn't, I was.

I wish you'd told me before.

I know, it wouldn't have happened, would it then?

Yeah, I went to a comprehensive school.

It's funny,

it was in Selsey in West Sussex, so it's not really the Badlands, but there was a vibe in 70s and 80s comprehensive schools.

It was always a a bit edgy i remember getting there and on the first day being kind of like some physical manhandling by the older kids you know it's like this is the way it is and it was horrible but i was quite annoyingly on left wing when i was a teenager yeah the billy bragg records and all that stuff i think i changed because i ended up i ended up appreciating because of the work i ended up appreciating the different arguments so it's like brian walden's argument is essentially a meritocrat right He thinks the best way of doing things is to give people the best chance that they can get.

They'll compete and the best people will emerge and win.

Yeah, that's why he was on the same page as Thatcher.

Exactly, yeah.

And he thought actually to have a quality of outcome where you could sort of fix a world in which everyone would have the same thing, irrespective of their talents, didn't speak to him as a human being about his experience of what people are really like, which is they are different and some of them are driven and some of them have great ideas and others aren't driven or don't have good ideas and you should sort of reward that in some way.

And so I can understand whether I can understand where he's coming from.

Maybe the best way is some middle ground between those two positions.

But

because I started to appreciate people's arguments, which I'm quite into arguments, then I stopped thinking they're bad people.

I used to think they were bad, bad people.

I remember going to university and still having this idea, and

that whole never kissed a Tory thing.

That was sort of the idea, it wouldn't interest anybody who was a Tory.

If they had a Tory, they were just a fucking Tory.

The idea, I suppose, seems to be that if you do have that meritocratic outlook, then it's all very well if you're born with all the things you need to get ahead.

But what if you haven't been born with those things?

What if the odds are stacked against you because of where you come from or what you look like or whatever?

What happens to you then?

And does society have a responsibility to look after you?

And that's obviously the bit that most people felt someone like Thatcher or Brian Walden or whatever, whoever had that kind of outlook, they couldn't really care about those people.

Well, they would obviously argue they did care about those people.

The welfare welfare state was there and state education, all those things were still there under Thatcher.

She'd argue, but clearly, you know, she'd have a different outlook on it.

But the thing about Brian Morden, of course, is that was exactly what happened to him.

His mother was a bookbinder, I think.

So there's a lot of books in the house only because that was her work that she did at home.

So he would get to read them.

She died very young, so he didn't have long with her.

And his father was almost all the time unemployed.

So he came from...

exactly the sort of environment you're talking about there.

Yet what he does is then he succeeds and he's what they do, people like that, is they extrapolate from that experience that this should be the way for everybody.

That surely, if you just have, if you give, you know, people will come through.

But yeah, I mean, the other bit of it is like you say, is what if, so what happens to those who don't come through?

A, is it fair?

But even if it was fair and then you've lost out, what should happen to you?

So you want a society which reflects that.

So yeah, anyway, I'm just saying that I think Walden would he would use his experience, the one you outlined there, as evidence for why he was right, not why he was wrong.

One of the other differences between you and I is that you grew up thinking that Weekend World, presented by Brian Walden, political discussion programs, which you would see around about midday on a Sunday

in the 80s.

You thought that was interesting.

I did not think that was interesting.

I thought the only good thing about that was the theme tune.

I'm glad you mentioned that.

That was incredible, wasn't it?

Yeah.

It was Mountain.

Nantucket Sleigh Ride by Mountain.

Yeah.

And I know you'll last to love

ever be.

Oh, it's a classic.

I absolutely love that thing.

I just thought, what is this?

And this is pre-internet before you could look it up and just know instantly.

So it was this mysterious

bit of magical rock.

And you say

I thought it was interesting.

It was more that.

I mean, so what would you do on a Sunday typically if you were at home?

Sunday, back in the 80s,

late 70s, earlier.

So you're about 9, 10, right?

What are you going to do?

Watch TV.

Right, that's what I'm doing.

Okay.

I love to tell you so much.

And one of the things about the house that we lived in, the environment we lived in, was...

Do you remember The Good Life?

Tom and Barbara.

Oh my God, it's such a brilliant series.

It's amazing.

And the thing about Margot and Mrs.

Thatcher, we should say who Margot is.

If listeners haven't seen The Good Life, The Good Life was about a middle-class couple, Tom and Barbara, who downsize and go and live somewhere where they can grow their own food and live an honest life.

He's an ex-advertising executive.

Correct.

Remember, it's in Surbiton, so it's not like they've gone to a farm.

Right.

They're going to grow it in the garden in suburbia.

Yeah, yeah.

And their neighbour is this very...

posh woman called Margot, who was a lot like my mum.

She was a car-carrying Tory.

It was as if if my mum had seen the good life and thought, I think I'm going to be like her.

Yeah, yeah.

She was wonderful.

She was brilliantly acted by Perlypy Keith.

Her husband was played by Paul Eddington.

He was terrific.

And so it was this fantastic juxtaposition of these sort of trendy middle-class lefties and their sort of right-wing neighbours.

And in a way, it started off as being about the goods, which is the good life, which is the one, the people that went self-sufficient.

But quite quickly, Margot emerged as the real star of the show.

And I thought, I remember because that series came on in about 75 about the

precise same year as Mrs.

Thatcher became leader of the Tory Party.

And so because I consumed TV so much, I sort of associated the two women in my head in some way as being similar or the same because they were quite the same.

Yeah.

And she, there's one moment when she says in the series, I'm not a citizen, I'm a resident.

This is in the face of bureaucracy, you know, and you kind of rooted for it because she was dealing with like intransigent bureaucracy.

But it precursors to there's no such thing as society the idea that i'm not partaking in this thing you want me to partake it i'm different from it right and um just kind of fundamentalist individualism yes right exactly and then so i thought god it's just so interesting to me that these two things came together and then i thought i just wondered whether anyone else had ever thought this before and so i ended up finding some clue that there's a guy who was teaching at a school up in Yorkshire who'd been a Tory activist.

Anyway, I've got a hold of him and it's true.

They used to say on the doorstep in the 79 election, I know she's a woman, and because people found it difficult to think that she should be a prime minister.

She's a woman, admittedly, but maybe what we need right now is a woman like Margot who can basically knock some heads together and subtext be better than those useless men, the wet husband.

And then he told me that he discovered that elsewhere this was being said as well.

So it wasn't actually a thing that people said.

And so I love that way in which culture and politics kind of interact with each other.

Yeah.

And it was just great to know that what was in my head in this little house was the same.

And also, my parents went self-sufficient did they yeah

they moved from a normal environment to a house in the middle of nowhere it seemed like where they um grew vegetables and had animals out in sussex yeah in sussex and they weren't doing this in a malevolent way but they just weren't interested in the outside world very much so it was all very hermetically sealed really and the only way i could see out was through books music and tv most of all and so it wasn't it wasn't that i thought that it was interesting weekend world which was a very very heavy political program just for people if they don't know is it was like 40-minute interviews, maybe with a film of 15 minutes before that, with interviews with, you know, whoever, trade unionists or whatever it might be, people of the day.

It was heavy and stodgy stuff with a great theme tune.

And it looked great, it had a brilliant sort of 70s CV studio feel to it.

And I had nothing else to do, you know, so I just watched it and thought, well,

it seems to be important.

And dad can tell me some stuff about this.

If I go and talk to him about it, and he might,

and it seems important, so maybe I should try and learn about it.

And then, and because of watching it over and over again, and then I started to understand what was going on in the news, then it sort of made, started to make sense.

It was one of the choices I had: listen to music, the limited amount of records that were not classical music in the house, and read or

watch Brian Warden saying something incomprehensible to somebody.

So I went for that quite a lot.

And when did it start becoming comprehensible?

I think it must have been about, I think, the early 80s.

So it was going...

Its heyday was between 70, well, he starts in 77 and it runs through till about 86 or something.

So the heyday would have been late 70s that well thatcher this is the thing thatcher she looms large i'm afraid like her or loathe her or like i mean i didn't like her but i do admire her more now more and more having sort of worked on the book and just thought about what she was like i think whatever her policies were she was very much up for the argument which is commendable but it was what she was doing was the thing that made people politicized in the early 80s because it felt like this was a wrecking ball you know to sort of the settlement and you know unemployment was through the roof and i was watching like the specials and Ghost Town or whatever on Tor the Pops, but it was all in the culture, you know.

And it was like, do you remember those programs?

They'd have like something else.

Do you ever remember that show?

They would have those kids, those kids' shows that were sort of, I mean, so much for BBC impartiality, they were just like pumping out left-wing propaganda against Thatcherism.

And then she won again.

You know, the Falcons was obviously quite exciting.

And in fact, that was a bit of a turning point for me, the Falklands, because I realized that maybe she was right about something,

which was a bit of a shocker.

Yeah.

Well, again, my mum had an opinion opinion because she didn't like those Argentinians.

Right.

And so she thought Thatch was doing a terrific job there.

Yeah.

And my dad, you see, my dad also thought it was the right thing to do.

That was an interesting moment for me because it was like, here's the thing, where I'm supposed to feel one way, which is Thatch is bad.

And actually, I didn't think she was wrong, and neither did my dad, crucially.

And so it was like, oh, so things might be more complicated than that.

And then you've got all the debates going on on Weekend World and other programs.

And in the end, this becomes quite

exciting, you know.

It's really good.

And and I'm really into it.

And so, I became a true believer and fan of that genre.

And actually, that's made my career out of it.

I love your face, so like a painting by Picasso.

The eyes to the right,

the nose to the left.

Other faces make me border, but your features are all in a nice order.

Order

The big event in the Walden universe, as far as you're concerned, and for a lot of people, I suppose, was 1989 after Weekend World when he's doing the Walden interviews.

And he had that big showdown with Thatcher.

And you write about that.

That's the sort of centerpiece of your book, Why is This Lying Bastard Lying to Me?

Yeah.

The quote, incidentally, is Robin Day, right?

No, it's Famous, Made Famous by Jeremy Paxman.

Made Famous by Paxman.

But not originated by Paxman, originated by somebody, a guy who worked for The Times, who was a foreign correspondent, who said at one point, when I speak to politicians, I think to myself,

why is this lying bastard lying to me?

In other words, he was looking for another motive.

But anyway, in terms of the Walden moment in 1989, it's an amazing moment in sort of political TV interview history.

Probably it's our Frost Nixon, I suppose.

And you write about it really well.

I thought it was thrilling, that whole section right at the top.

It's an amazing story.

They're doing a TV version of it, right?

They're dramatizing those two chapters from the basis of a TV show that's going to be coming in 2025.

Yeah, with Steve Coogan playing Brian Walden and Harriet Walter playing Margaret Thatcher.

Wow.

Which is obviously, yeah, I mean, unbelievable.

And it came from, and for me, that all starts because

I'm in my student hovel.

watching that day.

It was 1989, so, you know, I was at university.

I was not really that obsessed by weekend world at this point, or the Walden interviews, but Thatcher was in trouble because in the previous week, Nigel Lawson, remember Nigel Lawson?

Sure.

Nigella's dad.

Nigella's dad, yeah.

Who was the Chancellor of the Exchequer for six years?

So right beside her throughout the half of the Tory years, of the Thatcher years.

And he resigns in 1989.

And he resigned because he got fed up at being criticised by...

Some guy.

Yeah, some guy called Alan Walters.

Now, Mrs.

Thatcher thought this was all a pretext.

So basically, there's a guy called Alan Walters who was her economic advisor.

And he was always shouting his mouth off about fiscal policy or, you know, the economy and about tax and whatever.

And he was always saying stuff.

And Nigel Lawson found this increasingly irritating because he seemed to have a free reign to just say whatever he liked and take people to lunch and blurt things out.

And so that was the pretext.

I think actually there were deeper reasons for this that have been going on for ages.

But by the time he gets to 1989, he's looking for, I think he's probably looking for a way out.

And Alan Walters provides it because he goes to see her one day and he says, it's either me or Alan Walters.

You either get rid of this advisor or I will quit

and she's not willing to do that she's the prime minister she's not willing to call up Alan Malters and sack him so she doesn't and in the end he quits that day which is a massive blow to her authority because he is a he's a big figure as I say and also the other thing to remember is that do you remember her saying we have become a grandmother

This was a really weird moment that was hard to understand.

How could she be so strange?

But when her son, Mark, had a child, she appeared

through the door of number 10 and said, and sort of clattered into

the middle of the street and said, we've become a grandmother, which was really odd.

It sounded like she thought she was the queen or something, or in a way that we've all had a grand.

I don't know what it was, but it was very odd.

And it was alongside that, there were other things that seemed to be a bit erratic about her.

She was pushing through the poll tax.

Remember the

all that stuff.

There's riots.

And

there was a lot of stuff happening that was quite controversial.

And she seemed to be slightly different.

She wasn't quite the person person she'd been before and so people thought she was a bit strange that's going on and then lawson resigns so it's a big crisis moment and she'd already agreed at that point to do an interview with brian walden who just got his show back a new show on itv having had that weekend world show there was a gap and then he comes back with his own show and um she has agreed to appear on it months before so it's very very lucky for brian walden and for itv that suddenly we've got the hottest interview you could possibly have there's a massive crisis she's going to do 46 minutes which you never do now.

And they were pals straightforwardly by that point, right?

By this point, yeah.

So, I mean, yeah, that's a good point.

So, he was a Labour MP and a very well-regarded one.

Everyone thought he was going to be something big, but he didn't really like Parliament very much in the end.

He didn't enjoy it very much.

In the meantime, she's rising up through the ranks.

And eventually, he leaves and goes to work on Weekend World.

Before he left, he was moving further and further right, and he was kind of Thatcher curious by the point we get to 1975.

Like, she's speaking my language, and I quite like her.

He was recruited to come and take over on this show and become the interviewer and he even had no experience of it whatsoever but he for some reason they alighted on brian warden as being a good idea to to do this new to do this show so he his very first interview was with margaret thatcher and you watch them and they find this is in the tv drama which james graham the playwright has written from from my book but yeah you see this really interesting relationship develop between the two is he's sympathetic to her but he draws her out they're worthwhile conversations there's not much conflict there it's more like he says that's very interesting what what you say there.

She likes that.

And then they start to, and then intellectually, there's kind of a kind of romance going on.

And that keeps on going all the way through the way through the 80s.

And then you reach the point in 1983, which is in the book.

Do you remember when Kenny Everett was?

Yeah, let's bomb the bastards.

Yeah, yeah, let's bomb Russia.

Oh, he didn't.

Oh, he didn't say the bomb the bastards.

It says, let's bomb Russia.

And he wanted to kick away.

Yeah,

let's kick Michael Foote, who was the Labour leader, the elderly Labour leader.

Let's kick Michael Foot stick away.

Classic Classic Kenny.

Classic Kenny in front of this audience of Tories.

With big foam hands on.

Do you remember how big a deal that show was there?

Yeah.

Kenny Everett.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

That was a really big thing, wasn't it?

Did you love it?

I did love it, yeah.

I had no clue that he was like, it was quite weird when he came out suddenly as this Tory guy and was at the Tory conference.

Was it a conference?

No, it was a special rally in the middle of the election campaign in 83.

They're all going, Maggie, Maggie, they've got t-shirts in him.

And it's all the squares.

It's like Tarbuck, Steve Davis.

who isn't he turned out to be like a massive techno music fan or something.

Yeah, yeah, he's a DJ.

Also, he very much regrets that part of his.

Oh, does he really?

Yeah, he does.

He's very much a lefty now.

Oh, is he?

He was there with Tarbuck and with, oh, Michael Winner, obviously.

And they were all there saying, we love you, Maggie.

And then Everett appears, which is completely surprising.

And then he then says these things, which are regarded at the time as really outrageous things to say.

They were quite naughty, but it was funny.

And anyway, she gets very pumped up.

So can you imagine her, like, what a scene.

Kenny, that was very funny.

I know.

She's not used to the young people liking her.

Yeah, yeah.

Kenny's there, fires her up.

So she leaves Wembley, having done this massive gig at Wembley.

Early that morning, she's been interviewed on ITV by Brian Walden.

Then she goes to the rally.

And later that evening, she needs to record the final election broadcast, which is her final appeal to the country to give her a second term in power.

And she's got a guy there who's waiting for her as a speechwriter.

And he is not as pumped up as she is.

And he's not in the same mode that she is in, which is kind of, you know, very excited.

And she wants a different script.

She sends him away.

And they think, well, who can come and write the script for us?

They think and they think and they think, and they decide to try Brian Walden, who's literally that day just interviewed her as an impartial journalist, who will continue to interview her after the election.

And who has not come out and expressed specifically pro-Thatcha statements beyond being sympathetic in interviews.

Yeah, I mean, you'd only know really if you'd pay really close attention

to sort of the press, you know, reading the diary stories about whether he was regarded as a bit of a Thatcherite, but you wouldn't know otherwise.

And

he shouldn't have done it.

He said yes.

You know, they ring him up and he says yes.

And he shouldn't have done it.

It was breaking all the rules.

And he got, apparently, he'd been out for drinking that night because it was the end of the series.

And he...

slightly sort of worse for where arrives and writes the script with her.

Because, you know, he used to be a politician.

He's turned on by all this.

He's yeah, he thinks she's great.

He sort of maybe I don't know what he was thinking about.

And he was flattered, I think.

Yeah, of course, you would be, wouldn't you?

The Prime Minister's calling for you, and he, but he should never have done it, and he did it.

And that's how close they were, right?

So they were very close.

Anyway, a few years pass, weekend world ends, but he still does, he still, he writes a column, he becomes more openly Thatcherite actually after that because he's no longer got a TV show for a bit.

And he's writing columns in the Sunday Times, interviewing her for the like a newspaper interview, very, very sort of flattering.

And then he gets this show called The Walden interviews and this pretty much coincides with this event in 1989 when nigel lawson has resigned so the two are going to come together again because this interview has been pre-planned and they're coming together at the moment of real crisis for her

and he has to decide how to tackle that interview and

the atmosphere in the press around this particularly you know people on the left was that oh god so when she's really on the ropes who does it fall to to have the chance to interview her but but Brian Walden who's that guy who likes her and they get on him have you seen what she writes in the Sunday Times a few weeks ago he's made he may have a TV show again but he's a thatcherite and there was a piece the morning of the interview there was a piece in the independent newspaper which was an attack piece on him and really said you know this is a moment of truth for you can you rise to this we don't think you can you're not actually a proper journalist effectively and it fell to him to make a choice and He chose to go down the road of the toughest interview that he could possibly deliver.

So it included a lot on the mechanics of what happened.

And she was blindsided, did not expect that.

And I'm standing here watching this right as a 20-year-old watching it on telly as a student.

And I'm thinking, she'll be fine.

She's always fine.

But there it was, a chink in the armor, finally, when she appeared sort of ridiculous.

She kept saying, he was unassailable, Nigel Lawson.

Well, he wasn't, was he?

Because you kept your advisor and you didn't get rid of him.

And, you know, she was, I don't know why he resigned.

And he was like, you don't know why?

Anyway, he's really tough on her.

But then the absolute cherry on the cake with that, really, was that he then also decided to reflect back to her what people were saying about her, which was people in Westminster saying, and his quote was that you are off your trolley.

If you think about that, it's quite a thing to say to the Prime Minister, especially when you are her friend.

So it was a moment of real-time

human interaction.

He wouldn't have known all those, we now know the nuance, right?

So we can watch it now.

You can watch it on YouTube, or you can watch the dramatization that's coming and really appreciate the human forces underneath that that were going on at the time it was it was a bit just more that she seemed thrown and wasn't able to defend herself but that was probably the reason she regarded it as a kind of betrayal and they never spoke again after the interview that was the last time that they ever communicated when i watched the interview i thought when he mentioned the off your trolley thing yeah

I thought that he was trying to get her to come back.

He wanted her to defend herself herself more robustly to show that she wasn't as out of touch as some people thought she was i think you're right though and that's not the only only moment there are moments where he says almost like you let people think you're this awful person yeah i know you're not you know you never ever show it he says at one point you know can't you just come on come on margaret rise the occasion but she just doesn't it just doesn't compute for her she just that isn't the mode she's in when she's in that chair

so she wasn't she wasn't able to be nimble enough to see that he was giving her an opportunity to say something back because he was much, she must have been stunned by off the trolley off your trolley.

Yeah, but it's almost like a son confronting his mother at a certain point and saying, Look, mum, you've got too cranky.

This is this is what people are saying about you.

And now I'm grown up enough that I can talk to you about this stuff.

And here's your chance to change it.

And

if you've ever had a conversation like like that with your parents especially if they're the kind of parents that I had you know that that conversation generally doesn't go well they generally don't go oh you know what you're right yeah I'll think about it

all these years I've been doing it wrong yeah

let me put this to you Prime Minister it's a point that's always interested me and I think it's now politically relevant it may be the case that in private you will have a lusty argument and you will listen to other people's opinions and that you're only too too happy to accept a suggestion if it's correct.

But you never come over in public like that, ever.

You come over as being someone who one of your backbenchers said is slightly off her trolley, authoritarian, domineering, refusing to listen to anybody else.

Why?

Why cannot you publicly project what you have just told me is your private character?

Brian, if anyone's coming over as domineering in this interview, it's you.

It's you.

It's hammering things out instead of just talking them in a conversational way.

Yes, you're very domineering at the moment.

He's reached the point where he has to stop being like he was being with her.

He stops being her friend.

Or she's the Prime Minister, right?

I mean, even though he was a significant person, number one is Mrs.

Thatcher.

Yeah.

And she was getting all the time from him reinforcement of that effectively, intellectually, personally.

And this is the moment where he says, you know what, I have to name you for what you are, which is a bit off your trolley, which is a difficult thing to say to her.

And the power dynamic shifts almost on air as you watch it.

You can feel it kind of, well, maybe I'm really, it feels like to me as I watch it now, that that power that was,

if you can remember her, she was everywhere.

She was always there.

She was, you know, untouchable.

And suddenly she was a human.

And she was a bit discombobulated.

And, you know, a year later, she was gone.

So, you know, in many ways, I think you could say that this was the beginning of the end.

And I was watching it.

I'm telling you, again, it's just, it delivers.

TV just delivered for me in my life, you know, these moments.

It was just extraordinary.

And it was always in my head ever since.

That was in my head.

And then when I got the chance to write the book, which is not about that, but I couldn't not tell that story.

And then, you know, now it's a TV drama.

It is very dramatic.

Yesterday I was watching the second dramatization of the Emily Maitless Prince Andrew.

Oh, did you watch it?

Okay,

I haven't seen them both.

I watched Scoop, which was the first one, told from the point of view of one of the producers, played by Billy Piper.

That's

Sam Acalcorn.

She's a friend of mine, yeah.

Right.

And that was fine.

But then last night I watched the new one, which is called A Very Royal Scandal.

This is Emily Maitlis is a version of Events, isn't it?

Yes, I think so, yeah.

So she's a producer on this version, although I don't think she wrote it.

Oh, okay, right.

And she is played by Ruth Wilson.

Gillian Anderson played her in the other one.

And Ruth Wilson does quite a good vocal impression of Emily Maitlis, although it's very low.

She does, Emily is really quite gruffly spoken with a low voice.

But it's quite a good impression.

Anyway, I thought it was good.

And I thought it also delved a bit more than the previous one.

into

the whole thing about what do long-form political interviews mean nowadays,

and especially in the internet and social media age.

Because surely that is the thing, you know, your book, Why is This Lying Bastard Lying to Me, is all about your love of the long-form political interview and you're considering in there why it's not something that people do generally and thinking about all the reasons for that.

And you do go into the fact that obviously a big part of that is the internet and social media.

How has that changed things?

Well, okay, so it's a big, well, it's not a big topic, but it needs to be contextualized, I think.

I mean,

the point about

it's not that I just love them because I just like, yeah, it's that they're important.

What happens in democracies is that

we're supposed to have elections every few years and we're supposed to make an assessment of people, governments, and decide how to vote.

And when they're in power, we judge how they're doing.

And we do that.

How are we going to do that?

Personally, I don't find parliament as a very effective way of that happening, assessing it, holding into account, talking about what they're doing.

I don't really think Prime Minister's Questions does that in any way that's particularly useful for anybody.

And I don't think most of the broadcast opportunities people have does that.

Question time is, you know, often I don't really watch it anymore because I find it unwatchable.

Other programs have interviews that last about six minutes at most.

No one gets anywhere.

Everyone's just being performative.

Politicians generally go into those interviews trying to avoid saying something rather than wanting to say something.

Often broadcasters go into them trying to make a splash with a sort of big moment that can be on social media.

So why am I banging on about long performing political interviews?

It's because that's the only best way that we can do that.

A very important function, which is hold our leaders to account.

Because we can only do that effectively if we actually sit with them for a long enough period to develop a conversation and an argument, know well the background, the journalist knows as well as the subject, the background, and can put them under pressure.

And when we don't have that we lose a lot you know mrs thatcher in that moment

it wasn't good for her obviously but it was it was an incredibly important moment in in british political modern history and it wouldn't have happened at all if we hadn't had a culture at that time of valuing commitment to that sort of length of time for interviews

Yes, last night you sent me, is it the introduction for your new book?

It's so it's not finished.

So you're getting a very early sneak preview only because I know that you're interested in the subject matter, which is about scandals.

And so I thought it'd be interesting to sort of show you

how I was coming at it, because I don't really want to come at it in a traditional way.

So I came at it slightly differently, really, which is to tie it in with, as we have some of our conversations, I think tying those events that you are in the news with your own life or with other cultural sort of factors that were going on.

That's kind of how I'm coming at the scandal thing.

I'm reading at the moment, or I'm audio booking.

Does that count as reading?

I mean, yeah.

Yeah, let's say, yes.

I am reading Robert Carrow's biography of Lyndon Johnson, and I'm reading it because I heard Rory Stewart mention it.

And he was interviewing Mary Beard, who I had on the podcast, and I saw this interview they did.

And Rory Stewart said to Mary Beard, if you haven't read Robert Carroll's extraordinary four-volume biography of Lyndon Johnson, do.

And so I thought, okay, sounds interesting.

I'll look it up.

And he was mentioning it because they'd been talking about kind of political monsters.

Yeah.

And

so I looked it up and just the audiobook version, the audiobook of all four volumes comes to a little over 130 hours.

So I worked out that if you read every day for an hour, like if you read the actual physical version, it'd take you four and a half months just to read the first four volumes.

I think there's a fifth.

There's another one coming, isn't there?

He's still alive, isn't he?

He's still writing away though.

He's still writing away.

The first one came out in 1982, The Path Path to Power.

Wow, how much have you listened to?

I'm about 13 hours in, and it is absolutely brilliant.

Wow.

Robert Carro went and lived in Texas, in the part of Texas, in the hill country where LBJ grew up.

And he lived there for three years, interviewing people and researching the land.

You know, there's all these passages in the beginning of the book about what it was actually like to farm land up in the hill country of Texas back then.

And he talks about the ecology of the place and it's all so beautifully described and he talks about it being this trap because as soon

it had been untouched for hundreds of years and it was this beautiful pristine landscape, fertile landscape.

But then only a few years after it started being cultivated, it was totally destroyed and it stopped being somewhere where you could make a good living as a farmer and it just became this punishing country to but that's interesting so that's and that's kind kind of sufficiently general to appeal to people, right?

Yeah, yeah.

But then, like, the thing I thought is, like, am I really going to care about the sort of 1923, like whatever it is, act into they were debating and how he got the vote through?

But is that stuff fascinating as well, though?

Yeah, it is because it's in the context.

He creates this picture of LBJ as a person that is really compelling.

I mean, it's very cinematic,

and it's like it feels like watching a mini-series.

All these characters are beautifully drawn.

He kind of hammers away at things as well so that they stick in your mind quite well.

You get to know the characters and his mum and dad and brothers and sisters and the people around them and then people he went to college with.

And it's really, really well done.

I might do it.

I would recommend it, even if you've got no interest in the actual politics.

Anyway, so your approach with your scandal book, though, you have a personal angle on it.

So, I mean, I remember the Jeremy Thorpe scandal.

Do you remember that?

I know what you're talking about, but I don't remember it at the time.

See, it was in 79.

Yeah.

So I was 10 and you were 10.

That's another one that I only know through a dramatization.

Yes, indeed.

Well, actually, dramatization, and I think I think actually one of the things I want to write about is dramatizations because

there's quite interesting stuff.

That's the Hugh Grant one.

Yeah, it's really brilliant.

Actually, Stephen Freer has directed that, and he's directed the one about Walden and Thatcher that I've done.

I remember the Thorpe one, it's an extraordinary story about, you know, the leader of the Liberal Party, but being, well, he went he was acquitted but went went to court you know accused of the attempted murder of his gay lover there's all sorts of things that were there in that that were kind of what on the news were just what is this all about he's a male model and he's it was all this kind of slight innuendo and and then there was this summing up by the judge very supportive of thorpe and very dismissive of the guy who actually had been his dog was shot in the in the attempt the attempt of on his life allegedly you know he didn't he was acquitted for this but yeah he went through a trauma and he was the one that the judge was kind of castigating in a very homophobic way in his summing up of the case.

And so that was all going on, Telly.

So that summer in 79, Thatcher becomes Prime Minister.

The Jeremy Thorpe trial happens,

and he's acquitted.

And so, again, it was just that thing of it being in the culture, you know,

scandals in the culture.

This is a sidebar, but my dad

had a relationship when he was young.

with a woman called Bronwyn Pugh.

And she was a model.

Oh, yeah.

And then became became Lady Astor.

Oh, Christ.

Bronwyn Pugh, I do know the name.

That's what, yeah.

I know who she is.

I know who she is.

Yeah.

And he had a relationship with her.

Yeah, yeah.

Oh.

My mum always resented the fact that my dad was so, you know, there's always sometimes there's that person.

And you sort of think, well, what would life have been like if I'd ended up with them?

Well, history would have might have been different.

Because Lord Astor was, you know, I was never going to enter this.

Of course, that was Clifton, wasn't it?

It was where it all happened.

Yeah, right.

So, yeah, what was the deal?

So, so she.

So, Stephen Ward, who was the guy this the strange at the heart of the presumer scandal is is the strange man stephen ward and no one quite knows what his motivation was but he was he befriended young girls or young women and sort of facilitated them meeting men who were you know sometimes powerful or aristocratic or whatever and he had he had a sort of permanent cottage in clivedon which is the the stately home of Astor.

So Bronwyn Pugh would have been Lady Astor.

So at the period of time when Stephen Ward had this little cottage and when in 1961 was it I think it was he came to the swimming pool there with Christine Keiller and that was where Jack Buffumo first saw Christine Keeler and I think made a mental note that he intended to get to know her better on the basis of that that occasion at the swimming pool and that happened that subsequently happened and the whole scandal goes from there although I'm actually quite interested in Christine Keeler but Stephen Wood is the kind of he's at the center of it but I think Christine Keeler is quite a fascinating subject actually

because she was hated for years.

Yeah, yeah.

That was, it seemed like that was a fairly straightforwardly kind of misogynistic

angle that people had on her.

What did she do wrong?

I mean, Jack Profumo was, I'd have to check, but I think he's in his 40s or 50s.

He has a sexual relationship with a girl of the age of 17

who was very innocent of the world, you know, was very certainly, you know, wasn't didn't mix in his social circles and got involved with this.

And years later, when do you remember the film came out, Scandal?

Yeah.

Pet Shop Boys did did the soundtrack.

They did.

And Joan Wally Kiln was in it.

And it was really good.

And well, I loved it.

And Sue Lawley was standing in for Terry Wogan.

Again, it's Telly.

And she was doing the Terry Wogan show when Christine Keiller and John Hurt came on.

John Hurt was playing Stephen Ward.

So Christine Keeler's there, and they're talking about the movie.

And one thing that's interesting is that it seems amazing now is that there was a lot of opposition to this movie ever being made.

because it was felt it was reopening this awful scandal and we shouldn't be talking about this thing.

But it was made and and it was controversial it was made.

And so Lawley was saying, you know, why have you made it?

It's a terrible thing.

She thought that's the implication.

And then she said, hasn't John Profimo and his family suffered enough?

And she was saying, well, I'm the one that they're all calling a vice queen.

She was the one that's been sort of ostracized and hated.

And then she comes back to me and she says, what possible good can this movie do John Profimo?

And I sort of thought, wow, it's amazing how we would view that from today's prism.

But she was, you know, the cold hatred of her, even many, many, many years after the events.

You know, it's an amazing story, really.

And her son is really great.

He's been leading a campaign to kind of rehabilitate her reputation.

And I had a good chat with him.

So, you know, so that's how I'm trying to come at it.

But it's early days.

You used to be in bands, right?

Bad bands.

Did you have any success or were you just a total amateur?

A total amateur, total amateur, yeah, total amateur, but it was quite fun to go through the process of doing it.

But yeah, we did.

Yeah, I had a band like when I was 16, and we tried to,

nothing happened.

And then we had a band of Brit Pop.

Oh, yeah.

What were you called?

We were called, I think we had a terrible...

The latter band was called The High Kind.

The High Kind?

I don't know if it was bad.

Where does that name come from?

it was just terrible it was awful it's like a line from a poem or something yeah it's not good but it was uh it was it was yeah it was all right to do it it was good to go through the process sometimes you just used to look

i remember thinking you've you've hung out you must hang out with bands and stuff sure

is that do they have a good time do they have a good time do you think they have a good time they seem to have an amazing time before they get successful right

and then as soon as success comes along it's fun for a year or so and then it seems to be a real ballache.

Yeah.

And

then they fall out and then they split up.

And if they stay together, then it's just non-stop stress, as far as I can tell.

Because not that it was ever close to anything happening, like success-wise, but just the sort of drudgery of doing it and getting the guitars, all the practicalities.

I thought, imagine if this actually happened,

it wouldn't be that great, really.

It's quite fun writing songs and like being creative.

That's the fun thing.

Yeah.

The cliche is always like when you're out playing shows, when you tour, then it's fun when you're on stage but everything around it is not so fun yeah i mean like i said i never got anywhere near it but i just remember thinking this probably wouldn't be that much fun so it's probably fine if i'm not a rock star do you still play music no not really what was your instrument guitar i was guitar and vocals but no i don't do i don't do it anymore in fact i'm really yeah it's almost like i don't want to touch a guitar again really yeah oh dear a bit like that just became just it just became you know you put your heart and soul into it it's just it becomes you just think i'll you know i'll do other things that i've been much better at so it's fine it broke your heart in many ways it did oh mate yeah that's no good though because music's the best thing in the world it is amazing i love it so much but it was great to not have to forget you know it's always that thing of you here's the thing i wanted to do yeah i wasn't good enough at it so let's just move on from that and that feels good yeah okay fair enough you made you you

you came to terms with your mediocrity exactly and you went and and did something that you could properly be good at exactly yeah yeah yeah that's all right isn't it i suppose so but don't turn your back on the guitar.

Hey, man,

not when it's played by other people.

I know it's lovely, but I don't really want to play it myself.

Did you ever find your voice, though, at least?

Were you able to sing in a way that sounded sort of authentic, or were you always doing an impression of someone?

I think it was a bit authentic.

It was all really into really influenced by Brit Pop.

Yes.

Brit Pop was exciting.

It was.

People forget about it.

It was fun.

It was really great because suddenly, like, records you liked were like number one.

I liked it because I felt disenfranchised from that American scene of kind of industrial metal that was getting more and more popular, nine-inch nails and the limp biscuits and that that harder edged rock I never got with.

And then I was never a raver.

Were you?

Eventually.

Yeah.

But not in like 1988.

More like 2000.

Okay.

The whole thing with like dance music was just everywhere.

It was everything.

And it was going to Ibifa was quite fun.

I think my problem was that I wasn't into the drugs and I couldn't deal with the music without being intoxicated.

I didn't get it.

I think I missed out.

But for me, Britpop was suddenly like, oh, this is much nicer.

Yeah.

Because at the end of the 80s, all the

first wave of rave left me cold.

Yeah, me too.

Actually, like I say, it wasn't until later I got I understood it off a bit more.

Yeah.

But when Supergrass came along, that was the main thing.

When Oasis came along, I just thought, well, I don't know, it sounded a bit too status quo

and then supergrass i thought yes please because it was more silly and yeah quirky and yeah and then pulp pulp loved it amazing and yeah and i liked blur as well yeah i thought they were great they were very good and i saw them live and

wow they were a lot better live than anyone else really do you ever see pulp live there no not back then i've seen them since i saw them the night of the more the night after he did the thing with michael Jackson, the Brits.

Oh, yeah.

Which is so funny if to watch that back, if you ever do, if you watch the coverage, there were like people

on GM TV, or it wasn't then, the next morning going, it's just really serious about how terrible it was, was and what had happened and what he'd done.

It was just so awful.

Yeah.

You know, like, what a disgrace it was.

He'd really disgraced the Brits.

I know.

I look back at it now, it's like, well, it was just wonderful he did that.

It was great.

I know he had a really terrible time.

Yeah.

He was vilified.

It's incredible, isn't it?

Just for jumping up there.

I think the spin that they tried to give it was that he hurt some of the children.

No, I think that was Michael.

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Continue.

Hey, welcome back to Windy Wood Podcasts.

That was Rob Burley talking to me there.

I'm very grateful to Rob for making the time to come and chat.

And yeah, I didn't realize when I was talking to him that the Brian and Maggie drama was going to be coming out this January.

So I just wanted to put this episode out before that dropped.

I've seen it, really enjoyed it.

As I said, Harriet Walter is spectacular.

They're all very good.

Coogan, always good, but Harriet Walter, wow, what a thatch.

There's also links in the description to the original Brian Walden and Margaret Thatcher interview, and there's a link to Rob's book, Why Is This Lying Bastard Lying to Me?

which I recommend for an often humorous and insightful perspective on the world of political TV.

So yeah, it's already been quite an eventful 2025.

But one of the things that hit me on a personal level was David Lynch's death.

That was one of those moments where I felt genuinely sad that someone I never knew was gone.

He was on my podcast guest wish list from day one.

but it never happened, obviously.

I just thought he was great.

And in the last few years, he's one of those people that I just spend a lot of time watching in interview form on YouTube.

I've probably spent longer watching interviews with him on YouTube than I've actually spent watching his films, much as I like them.

Here's some Lynch notes.

He was the perfect artist, I think.

His life and work seemed to me like an extreme illustration of what it is to be human.

He was capable of tapping into and portraying in dreamlike, disturbing ways the absolute worst that people are capable of and the hell on earth that we can create, which is there, of course, in so many of his films.

There's the nightmarish isolation of Eraser Head.

There's the cruelty of the mob in The Elephant Man.

everything about the character of Frank Booth in Blue Velvet, which is a film that I walked out of when I went to the cinema to see it with Joe and Louie when it came out in the 80s.

And I was watching Mark Camode do a nice tribute to David Lynch the other day and he walked out of it too.

But like me, he later came to think very differently of that film.

Not too long ago I was watching Isabella Rossellini speaking about it and

That's worth looking up.

But he was so interesting because

that there was such a stark contrast to all that in his personal life.

He was so sort of sweet and

kind to people as far as I can tell.

He's always very funny, like really funny.

And he was a champion for peace and love and blissful appreciation of existence through transcendental meditation, which was a big part of his life.

I've put a few links in the description to some profiles and documentaries that look interesting.

Some of them I haven't seen, others I have.

The problem with a lot of profiles of David Lynch is that they're made by people who love him so much that they feel they need to try and evoke his style somehow.

With the framing of the shots, with the music, with a kind of slightly obscure approach to the interview questions.

But I think that he was at his best when people just came at him fairly straight.

And I think you can see that in a very short but nicely put together tribute made in 2020 by a YouTuber called Cosmovoid.

And it has a slightly clickbaity title, David Lynch being a madman for eight and a half minutes solid or something.

But it's a really good little compilation of moments and a moving encapsulation of

what made him so great.

But if you want to delve deeper and spend longer, which I do recommend, I don't think you'll regret it.

I really love the documentary, The Art Life, which I've mentioned a few times on the podcast, I think.

There's a documentary about the speaking tour David Lynch did a few years back in which he talked about the importance of transcendental meditation in his life.

I haven't seen that yet.

I'm looking forward, I've seen a bit of it, and it looks good.

I want to find out more.

I mean,

the way he talks about it is

well, it makes me want to try it.

Maybe this year.

So farewell.

Excellent David Lynch.

Okay, that's it for this week.

The podcast will be back on a more regular basis in a few weeks.

I'm not sure exactly when, probably towards the end of March, when I'll be with you putting out episodes regularly.

Thank you so much to Seamus Murphy Mitchell for his invaluable production support on this episode.

Thanks to everybody at ACAST for their continued hard work keeping the show on the road, liaising with my sponsors, etc.

Thank you to Helen Green for her beautiful artwork.

She's still busy refining a new image of my face for the cover of my book, which

is, I think, weeks away from finally being completed.

Maybe even less.

There is a link in the description so that you can pre-order it.

I would greatly appreciate it if you did.

It should be out in May.

I hope that's the current plan.

Thank you most of all to you for coming back and joining me.

Very nice to be with you again.

Hope you're doing okay.

Come over here, let's have a hug.

I've got my ski jacket on, so I don't smell too bad.

Good to see you.

All right, doglegs.

Let's get back to that warm kitchen.

And until next time, we share the same outl space.

Go carefully, and for what it's worth, I do love you.

Bye!

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