absolutely So moving right along, I know we've kind of mentioned artificial intelligence a little bit through our conversation so far, but in simple terms, where do you see artificial intelligence fitting into water and wastewater operations?

And so many ways, because there's everything from digital twins to, you know, what we're talking about in terms of training to, you know, sandboxes for, you know, for utilities to play around with in terms of if I change out this equipment.

So, you know, I see it as being good at what it does well.

And I always liken it to the best chess players aren't chess players or chess computers.

They're players who understand how to take the information from the computer and act based on it.

So it's very much a human in the loop where you're getting the right decision support.

And some things can be run in an automated fashion.

I'm not dancing enough

Yeah.

And then you start seeing, you know, people.

I've just finished listening to, uh, Alexei Sayle's, um, audiobook, which is from a few years, a few years ago.

I, I only just re- got around to listening to it, and he talks about in the sort of mid-'80s being approached to advertise a car brand 'cause he had done a bit in his act about that.

And so you really start to see it ramping up in the kind of late '80s, and then in sort of mid-'90s it kind of explodes a little bit as live comedy becomes a much, much bigger thing and you start getting guys like, you know, I think about Jack Dee doing the John Smith's adverts, which then became Peter Kay doing them in the kind of early to mid-2000s, which were even bigger, and they became these sort of, as TV ads did at that time, these sort of slightly seminal cultural events because it was like, oh, maybe we'll see it during this ad break and we can see that Peter Kay advert everyone wants to, everyone's talking about.

And so I think there was a very transactional relationship there in that comedians were hired because they had profile, um, because they were entertaining and popular.

But it was still you would hire someone to be in your ad.

Yeah

Mm.

Back in 2015.

Uh, his lovely wife Marcel was, was there at the front desk, and we, we formed a friendship.

He would always give me a call every time he would come into town, and I would make a reservation for him.

Of course, I would be there right at the front door, VIP service for, uh, for Mr. Adam West.

And it was just a great relationship that I formed with his family.

Um, kind of a backstory, his brother was a farmer here in Walla Walla, and they were good friends of my family, so he kind of already knew that.

Mm.

Yeah.

Because you, you, you have, as exactly as you say, had that kind of massive shift where, um, I think because obviously, you know, we all know in terms of the last couple of years, the kind of, you know, dwindling budgets within TV, there's been a lot of external pressure.

I talked in the book about some of the things, you know, that hap- that have happened to the, you know, the BBC is in- increasingly in the last few years particularly been a kind of a political kind of punching bag, whatever your opinion of it.

There are external pressures and forces and scrutiny on it now that maybe there, there weren't before.

And you also had, you know, if you go back 10, 15 years, the kind of the idea was when you start doing well on the circuit, you would then make that step up to, exactly as you said, the panel shows.

And now I know there are some of those, so you've got obviously "8 Out of 10 Cats Does Countdown," which has been going a long time.

But again, that's a, a much more established type of comic on there.

Yeah, yeah.