Yes.

Yeah, I think Simon's question is interesting because he spoke about a proxy war.

And I think that that happens in terms of overseas hostile states.

But it's also the amount of hacking that's gone on.

You know, they've been destabilising serious hacks that have, you know, cost British companies lots of money and been a huge threat to us.

So I don't know if we can draw as big a distinction between those things as we might once upon a time have done.

And I think that, you know, a day like today, I think everybody's got a lot of questions.

And if you take into account the emissions created by the burning of the stuff, even American-produced gas is basically the same amount of environmental damage as we produce.

[laughs]

A- and we, we just didn't win forever, but, um, God bless, uh, Antoine Hackford got us a goal away at Huddersfield, which is where we are on the first day of the season, and that was enough in the end.

We should've always stayed up, but we had a horrific injury crisis, but we still got Super Johnny Jackson, and he's crucially, at this level, a League One level, it's not about who you sign.

It's about who you don't let go.

And James Tilly is gonna stay.

Steve Seddon, who is massively popular, not least with the young lads 'cause they can go, "Steve"-

[laughs]

Um, mainly 'cause it's got a funny joke within the story i- itself.

So

I was on there in autumn 2023, and I was promoting my book.

And the book was quite a lighthearted book about masculinity.

Well, it was more specific.

It was called The British Bloke Decoded.

And it had some serious bits in it about relationships and how men sometimes lack the emotional language to deal with when things are going wrong or how to articulate what they're not getting from relationships.

Yeah.

quite reasonable, actually.

And this is John Curtice's argument, that what's actually going on is Labor has been losing not because Reform's been beating it, but because the center left coalition's divided, and Burnham knits it back together.

And I, I also, also think, um, with the rejoiners, I've, I've heard it, I think it's interesting the debate.

It's been the first Brexit chat we've had for a while, uh, politically.

I do think that in the same way that some Brexiteers thought that it was an absolute silver bullet for all of our problems, like, you know, the moment we go, we hold all the cards, and the German car industry will ride to our benefit.

There, there's a bit of delusion there.

I think the rejoin movement is beset by a bit of delusion now, where it's they seem to think that it will solve problems that preexisted the referendum even being called.

Mm

... feasible to have another referendum soon, and I don't think rejoin would win personally, because one of the big arguments, and, and probably one of the most persuasive arguments of Remain was, we'll never get a deal this good again, right? We did have certain exceptions and things.

Yeah.

Yeah.

I mean, you know, it's certainly good.

So I was, I was completely freaked out by that.

I arrived at this diversity meeting.

Not used to that level of scrutiny.

I'm not very good in the eye of a storm, stuff like that.

So when did that happen?

So is that, I mean, would you say it's captured? Oh,

well, one thing I would say is that there's almost no topical comedy on any television now.

People might not have noticed because a while ago there was, there was far too many shows all coming from the same point of view, right? There was like MASH Report.

There was, you know, there's Last Leg, Have I Got News For You.

Mock The Week.

Mock The Week, 8 Out Of 10 Cats.

And when it had a topical version.

What was that? What is a

the difference between left

and right.

Yeah, I mean, if you think that way, you are a conservative in some ways, I think.

And I actually think, weirdly, that's why stand-ups are all a bit conservative-coded, to use a normal word, because that is what stand-ups are supposed to do.

It's like, forget all the bullshit on the niceties.

This is what's really going on.

So I always kind of... could see that teenage boys were motivated by different feelings.

Right, being a

I can't remember what

it was.

But I sort of pointed out, you know, like when Doge was shutting stuff down, I was sort of talking about the fact that, you know, what the US debt is.

and how much it was likely to get to and what that equated to per person.

Maybe the problem is I didn't make a joke, but I did say that, you know, at some point it shouldn't be a surprise that someone said, maybe we need to work on this debt.

It was kind of like no one in the room wanted to hear it at that point.

What were you on? What was this? I think it was on News Quiz, actually.

comedian thinks? Did you, as a kid, did you like making people laugh?

Like in Venezuela, they're not doing great, you know? Yeah, I mean, look, it's

never, I get to see a sort of situation where it's dramatically worked out well.

And I was, you know, sometimes you listen to things that would just remind you, because like a lot of people on the online right now would see me as some of, a lot of them would think I'm a lefty.

You know, I get more stick now off right wingers than off lefties by a massive margin.

Because I've sort of, to me, I've stayed very still, you know, socially liberal, economically right wing.

But as the culture over to Windows moved, you know, I guess I must seem like

So like, what do you, I don't care about like what Owen Jones says, he's not going to convince any of my followers anything, but maybe Jeff Norcott might because he's also on the right.

Yeah, there's a danger, you know, like when your own turn on you, but this is where I think like, I do think that the woke right thing does land as an idea because for me, the biggest problem I had with the woke thing was ideological purity.

I don't want to be misunderstood.

No, but it is emotive in a way.

Money's not...

Well, I don't know if I fully agree.

I think money is emotive to me.

You know, like I've been doing a thing on my podcast called Piss Take Prices, which is just a fun throwaway thing about those things that have got so expensive.

It's not just you go, well, that's a bit steep.

Because people say, how can you ever trust the Tories again after those years? But it's a different bunch of people.

How do you trust self-rating of happiness? Yeah, mother's

ruin, all that sort of stuff with the gin.

I do think that in terms of having a generation of young men who don't feel that they have purpose or place or value is such a huge problem facing us.

And that's something I've really focused on uh recently because like if you if you're worried about the rise of the far right i am too you know because i'm center right you know i'm worried about the rise of far left too but that rarely gets i don't know how many like it's so weird with the far left is that people whatever you say people always think of like fucking john lennon and you know nice stuff whereas yeah but but it is what it is think of stalin yeah Yeah, exactly.

Right, exactly.

But, you know, at the moment, maybe it's a more visible risk, I guess.

But the net result of that is if you're worried about it, you have to engage with what's happening with and to young men and be sympathetic and think about how things could be better.

pathetic.

isn't it yeah

tremendous I mean could sell ideas to me that I don't like yeah and you know and Farage this is where like it's so funny with all these figures you get now whether it's Musk Trump or Farage is like they inspire such either devoted followings or fanatical critics that that people can't admit that they're a mixed bag of things like you can say that's good that's bad and Farage it's a rhythm thing I mean it's like what stand-ups all strive for is there's a way you know that Nigel talks where every third or fourth word will have an emphasis and it keeps you involved and if you look Obama did that as well can you do Obama I can't, all I remember is a change is on the way.

That was it.

But I'm only doing an impression of another guy doing it.

But like the first rule of politics, communication, if you can't sell an idea, you're nowhere.

Like you're dead in the water.

So it doesn't matter what all the policy or all the well-meaning, maybe Keir Starmer is a great bloke that really wants great things.

Yeah.

shag that.

Yeah.

Like, look, call me old-fashioned gentleman.

Like, I just, it's just, you know.

No, it wasn't on.

No.

And I was like, I woke up, saw this all kicking off because it happened the previous night.

Yeah, well, I

think that actually

happened? Well, it just takes some thin-skinned king, doesn't it? Thin-skinned king.

You know, like you get short kings now.

Anyway, see, this is me getting frivolous.

Stay with the subject, Jeff.

That's how my mind works.

But yeah, it became risk averse.

Have you got examples? I don't want to put you on the spot because it's quite hard to think of, of maybe a joke you may have written where either you went, you know what, this would do really well, but I'm not going to be able to say

He's really good.

Yeah, I would say.

I mean, I can't speak for Henning, but certainly the way that some of his views presents would appear to be at least small c conservative uh there's simon evans as well oh yeah brilliant and if you look at something like news quiz they have andrew doyle andrew is politically left wing maybe culturally a bit more conservative so i'm not the only one but i look i wouldn't push back on the idea that yeah i've uh i've been lucky to get you know a fair bit of exposure through that means how did that sort of happen So I started talking about my politics in 2013.

There've been a few accounts of my career that have said that I just saw the Brexit thing and then jumped into it in a sort of cynical way.

No, I was cynical long before that.

It was actually 2013 and my wife, I was doing the Leicester Comedy Festival and I said to my wife, Because I was a very club comic then, which I love, by the way, and still love.

Club comedy is a great scene.

It's somebody from the BBC just