Maisie: Page 94, the Private Eye Podcast

Helen: Hello and welcome to a new episode of Page 94, the Private Eye Podcast.

I'm a very gravelly Helen Lewis sitting in for Andy this week as

he recovers from being savagely attacked by a pack of wild koalas.

And with me are Adam MacQueen, Ian Hislop and Jane McKenzie.

First off, as we were recording our last episode, Justin Welby resigned

as Archbishop of Canterbury over his failure to follow up allegations of

sadistic abuse at a Christian summer camp by a man called John Smythe.

Ian, we're gonna have to start with you on this one because you took the

unusual step of writing an editor's note about your encounter with

Wellby and the last print magazine.

Is that the first such editor's note that you have issued?

Ian: no.

I did it once before when I had a very strange phone call from Julian Assange.

It was so bizarre, that I thought I, I can't not write this on the

whole, I try not to be, the person who puts themselves in his own paper.

One reader kindly said this week, oh God, you turned into Lev.

And I thought, okay, fair enough.

So that's what I was worried about.

But I did, I asked Francis Ween who'd written all.

The stuff immediately and, he said, this happened.

You've got to put this in.

So I, tried to write it up without being too self-serving, and just, register

my complete amazement that he should be there the day after he resigned.

At a public event, smiling, pretending nothing had happened, and literally making

a beeline towards me and saying hello.

And, I just, I couldn't do the politeness.

Adam: so I got a tip off last issue, and I came in very excited

to the office the next day.

I said to Ian, you're not gonna believe this.

Guess who turned up at the trustees meeting at the British Museum last night?

Completely shamelessly?

Only Justin Welby, the bloody Archbishop of Canterbury resigned

yesterday and Ian said to me.

Oh, about that.

Helen: Yes.

Ian: That, that, certainly prompted me to think about, doing some journalism.

Helen: And was there a big response from readers?

Ian: yes.

I mean they have overwhelmingly, written in, which is very kind to

them and there are a lot of vicars.

and there are a lot of Anglicans and they are very pleased, , that someone

has pointed out that they have to go on.

I.

day after day, including Sundays obviously, doing this job and

they feel very let down, by the people, supposedly in charge.

Helen: Jane, I wanted to ask you a bit about the fallout from this.

It's obviously a story that the eye has been covering for quite a long time,

but there does seem to been something that's happened in the wake of the

report and actually broader fallout.

Can you tell us what that's been since the last episode?

Jane: so yes, since the Macon report named a number of people who had

known for a considerable amount of time, That, what Smythe had been

up to and had failed to act on it or failed to act, properly on it.

so a number of people who we named last issue have, now had

their permission to officiate.

Removed, which is a kind of Church of England way of suspending people 'cause

they're not suspended as employees, but their ability to hold a service or sort of

Helen: Like having the WIP removed as an mp, I guess

Jane: It is.

It is similar, yes.

so a number of those people who we named last time have had their

permission to officiate removed.

Helen: Do you think that's where it ends?

Is there any sign of anything else that might possibly happen?

Jane: there's, a number of recommendations in the report itself that they, certainly

need to follow up on in terms of, making sure that people involved in this case

aren't involved in decisions about future safeguarding issues , and that

they do a better job in the future.

There's a lot of people who are named in the reporters failing terribly, who will

get away with it by virtue of being dead.

It has taken so long to reach this point where we finally identified.

Who knew things back in the 1980s and covered it up that all a lot

of the people involved in that first coverup in the early eighties

have evaded justice altogether.

Helen: There was an interesting piece of followup in the, The Times actually, which

reported that in 2007 well beat allowed Canon John Roberts to continue officiating

despite being told he was convicted for sex offenses committed in 1989.

Now that, Ian, that wouldn't have been news to Eye readers though

this was another Francis story.

Ian: Yes.

No, it was, one of those revelations that, unlike the ones in the

Bible happened very, frequently.

and yes, Francis had written this story about, and it was the same problem,

a refusal to take seriously the issue of, a pedophile amongst your midsts.

And, a desire to, forgive, which I know is, part of the

Christian mission statement.

know, I was there, I've sat in the pews.

I know that bit, but there, there was other bits about penance and

going away and sinning no more.

And, there are usually other bits that go with it.

And I think.

The response of a lot of people in this, a lot of Anglicans was, they

were too keen to forgive and not fast enough to administer justice.

Adam: in that particular case, there was extraordinary dear hell of Wellby

actually writing to the convicted pedophile in question to apologize to

him and say how awful it must be that one of his victims kept turning up at

the cathedral to hassle him, wasn't it?

It was an immediate jumping to his defense.

Helen: It was an assumption that I think the way it was reported was that Welby

had thought that the man had been the victim of a miscarriage of justice before.

And so had said to him, obviously, you mustn't officiate any services involving

children because it would be too easy for people to make more accusations.

And I think this goes to the heart of the, big debate, Which is.

Can, Wellby been assumed not to have known before 2013?

He admits that post 2013 there was more he could have done, but he says before then

nothing but this case, this can, and John Roberts case this guy had been convicted

of a sexual offense and then someone else made another similar accusation and that

didn't apparently ring any bells that.

Oh, hang a minute, maybe that didn't seem such a miscarriage

of justice in retrospect.

It's an

Adam: extraordinary thing that it, either goes in one direction or another.

'cause the other case I was remembering, which I think we also wrote about,

was the case of Alan Griffin, who was the, the Church of England priest died

by suicide in 2020, after a year when he knew he was under investigation.

And that turned out to be based not on any sort of accusation.

There was no accuser, there was no complainant.

It was just a bit of priestly gossip that had someone said

at their retirement interview.

Jane: Yes.

one of the interesting features of what went on with Smith after the

sort of 19, early 1980s investigation is that a lot of the people who

knew or knew a little bit had heard about it through priestly gossip.

There'd been, there was an awful lot of quietly on the side saying.

You just wanna watch out for him.

But people didn't ask the question why, or it was hinted, that he was a bit

kinky rather than that he was abusing dozens and dozens of teenage boys.

And people must have thought, that's what he does in his

private life, rather than that's.

Appalling and we

Helen: have to act The bit that, yeah, sorry.

The bit that I found hard to believe having grown up is, my dad's a,

deacon in the Catholic church.

Mom was eucharistic minister for a long time, Like priestly

gossip is a thing, right?

Ian: It just is.

And so is gossip amongst 16-year-old boys, even Christian boys at

camps, even boys who are, fully, convinced, by the, the rightness

of the people who are doing this.

They do talk, they do say things.

So I found that period of no unknowing particularly difficult.

To excuse, and small details.

someone write a letter saying, yes, after these boys have left school,

they carry on confessing, to Smythe.

if they're in a relationship with, say, their girlfriends and they confess

to him, and then he takes appropriate action beating them if they've

had any sexual design, you think.

Th this is the most appalling, interfering in young men's heads.

trying to convince them that any sort of sexual contact, is deeply sinful.

whereas the man, smashing them, around the bum, that in

itself is not of any interest.

Helen: But it also speaks to the one, the weirdness of this story, which is

that he didn't have an official position.

He wasn't ordained, he was a lay read.

This is...

it wasn't like he was taking any kind of official confession or anything

that had any official pastoral role.

He was a sort of freelance flogger.

Ian: Yes.

And the, denials by a lot of people, including the Archbishop at one

point, saying, he wasn't a member of the Church and he wasn't, C of E...

he was on specific camps, which was designed to create, , leaders of the

future for the Church of England.

Adam: and the knowledge must have been so widespread because those 16-year-old

boys was this 27, 29 of them went on to be priests within the Church of England.

They obviously had absolute knowledge.

it cannot have been.

That secret.

Jane: Yeah.

Internationally known about too, at one point, there's messages going between

a church in Paris and, , there's senior people in the church saying somebody

had made a disclosure to them and that people ought to keep an eye on this.

But again, keep an eye on it is not the same as taking proper measures.

Helen: Can I

Adam: just ask one question?

Helen: Yes.

Adam: Which is, why is Justin Wellby still the Archbishop country?

it's very obvious from your intervention that he doesn't understand the disgrace

part of resigning in disgrace, but he doesn't seem to have got his head

around the resigning part either.

He's sticking around till January, isn't it?

He's just been on an international visit, in his role.

this is not what happens when you step down from a roll,

can I reiterate, in disgrace,

you don't get to stick around to Christmas 'cause that's when you get to wear the

really nice frocks and do the service.

And the bit on the telly

, Ian: Is he going to be doing that bit at Christmas?

I.

Adam: as he said, he's not at the moment?

who, who else stands in?

Do we get the Archbishop of York instead?

The only thing

I've heard is that one of the newspapers then approached, the Archbishop of

Country's office for a statement after the Eye's stuff appeared and it said he

doesn't comment on personal conversations.

And I thought may maybe he should have done.

It also just does strike me that this is the week in which we're gonna

see the Assisted Dying Bill in the comments, if there ever was a time

that certain people might be looking for some sort of moral guidance from

the head of the Church of England.

This would be it.

And he's not in a position to offer it.

Helen: that's the other side of this, is relevant to us, which is I felt

some of the slightly knee jerk defenses of him were on political grounds.

he's intervened on austerity, he's intervened on refugees and

therefore anybody coming from his sort of part of a, Tory plot,

and I think there's an unwelcome new.

Not exactly new entrant to our politics, but it's something you

see all the time in America, right?

That everything is now just so polarized that no one ever does anything wrong.

It's always just a plot from the other side.

And that's become an easy tool to reach for clearly on

this side of the Atlantic too.

Ian: And a basic failure to understand anything about the Church of England

and to what, the term evangelical means, what the term conservative means.

The fact that the Archbishop, intervened about refugees does not mean he was not

part of the conservative evangelical wing.

the muscular Christianity, all of that, particular lot are one group

in the Church of England and they...

They are not on the whole very liberal.

it's, a confusion.

and a desire not to be interested in the CofE, which I, I get, I understand

it may not interest anyone and there'll probably be people out there

saying, are they wanging on about it?

But if lots of problem people

Helen: At the moment, they still sit in the House of Lords, right?

CofE is an established church with a law making capacity for us.

I know that labor trying to remove that, but that is, we all have a

vested interest in the CofE at the moment 'cause they rule over us.

Anyway,

Let's turn our gaze inward next, because there is a smorgasbord of

stories about the media this week.

this is like gonna be a quick fire, Adam Round.

I'm quite excited.

Plenty developments since the last Street of Shame.

, Adam, first of all, let's do The Observer.

Two strikes called since we last spoke, over the sale of The

Observer potentially to Tortoise.

Adam: Indeed, and not just strikes by Observer staff, but the

whole of the Guardian, as well.

the NUJ chapel at the Guardian have voted by, 93% of them that

the east strikes you go ahead on the fourth and 5th of December,

and the 12th and 13th of December.

So it's gonna be a case of the Army being deployed in green goddesses with,

emergency, Yotam Ottelenghi recipes, people stockpiling Zoe Williams columns to

read by candlelight, that kind of thing.

Helen: you can't make me laugh when I've got a cold.

This is gonna sound terrible fit.

Adam: I'm sorry.

Yeah.

This of course is over the,

Helen: hobbled around their braziers burning only ethically approved charcoal.

Yeah.

Adam: Singing old folk songs about Owen Jones.

Oh, yes.

Ian: Can you get onto the detail, Adam?!

Adam: this of course is over...

We've talked about this on the podcast before.

We've written, quite a few pieces in, the magazine about it.

The proposed sale of the Observer by the Guardian Media Group.

Tortoise which is the startup...

sort of new media startup turned podcast factory turned.

Apparently now want to be, print newspaper publisher, run by James Harding, former.

Times editor and former boss of BBC news, , and he's got absolutely everyone

up in arms across The Observer and the Guardian who haven't traditionally

been particularly something is brought them together, united together.

Yeah.

But on this case, they absolutely are.

and the latest that has been said by Anna Bateson who is the CEO of

Guardian Media Group, is that should this sale to Tortoise not go through,

which seems to be what people at the Observer want it not to go through,

there will be 'difficult decisions' to be taken about the future of that paper.

So it's a bit.

Devil in the deep blue sea at that point, isn't it?

Whether they're better off going with someone who does want to own them or

someone who's made it very clear that they definitely don't want to own them.

Ian: That's a strange thing to be striking for; the right

to be sacked by the Guardian.

Adam: I think that is one of the issues in it.

It's, is the, rights to be sacked by the Guardian.

They actually extraordinarily.

for, I was gonna say for any newspaper, for any workplace in this country,

the agreed current agreement between the Guardian and the NUJ Chapel is

that there can never be any compulsory redundancies under any circumstances,

which is an extraordinary perk

Jane: Not sure even many trade unions have that an agreement for their staff.

Adam: It's an amazing deal that they've managed to get signed.

So the idea, certainly amongst Guardian staff, is that, if they can write off

The Observer, which they always thought was part of the family and was as

controlled by the Scott Trust, kind of agreement to keep the Guardian going.

It's 0.3 billion perpetuity, and it's 1.3 billion that it's got sitting in the bank.

or in a large basement.

Like Scrooge McDuck in coins is always how I always imagine it.

that yeah, they, don't get any part but part of that, but, Guardian stuff I think

are very concerned about, other rights and other longstanding understandings

being a whittled away as well.

What can you use the 1.3 billion for?

To keep the Guardian going in perpetuity.

That's what it is specifically for.

So it's been built up by all sorts of other businesses.

they used to own Autotrader.

Do you remember we wrote an awful lot of stuff about the, the deals they did

over buying and selling that, which were quite interestingly channeled financially.

I think Emap, the magazine group, they have been all sorts of investments

in the past and they've owned things like the Manchester Evening News,

which have come and gone and they built up this kind of war chest there.

But that is there, has been made very, clear now to The Observer

staff and to everyone else is just for the Guardian's own personal use.

Helen: But the thing that's hard about it is it has been quite a lot

of integration between the two papers rule that they, have sometimes ended up

with very divergent, editorial views, for example, on Iraq or on gender.

But things like the foreign desk and the sports desk are integrated.

So it's not entirely clear how you unweave that.

That rainbow, basically.

It's not

Adam: just that.

The Observer has never been allowed by the Guardian to stand as a brand

on its own, except in paper form.

So it has no, website.

So exactly what Tortoise are buying.

They're buying a print newspaper.

They don't have the ability to print it themselves.

They'd have to negotiate that with, now, I think it's now printed on the

Trinity Mirror presses, so it's not even something in there that's the

whole separate deal they'd have to do to actually print it and distribute it.

But also it's got no website of its own.

So they're gonna have to start that from scratch.

James Harding is apparently very sure he's gonna get lots of investment in

from all sorts of people, and lots of people will be keen to hand him the,

tens of millions, if not hundreds of millions that will be necessary to,

keep this going in the long term.

But, could the Guardian invest in it?

the Guardian have said they will retain, as part of this deal,

a financial interest in it.

So they will still have some, kind of say in the Observer, but it's the

details of, or if you talk to anyone at The Observer or the Guardian, everyone

feels the details are still very, murky.

The Scott Trust apparently who oversee the Guardian, were meeting this week to have a

say whether or not this is the final say.

I'm not sure on the, on, on the deal and whether it goes ahead, but at

time of recording, we don't know exactly where that one's going.

Jane, this is genuinely, watch this large space in the front.

Helen: Jane, have you ever been on strike?

Because it used to be like a rite of passage that all journalists at

some point had been warming their, fingers over a brazier at some point.

But I think,

Jane: I just don't know whether or not I've been at private eye a very long time.

Yeah.

we've never, had a work as we

Helen: should

Jane: work to rule over Ian's

Adam: tyranny.

no.

Famously there's those photos of, Michael Gove when he was on, was it the

Aberdeen Press Journal or something in his younger days, out on the picket line?

Warming, literally warming his f his fingers over a brace era.

It was bloody colder.

The picket line in

Helen: Aberdeen.

tell us also, things are not exactly happy in Murdoch land

Adam: either.

I dunno.

it, there is an extraordinary, just thought we do this roundup of kind

of, all these different newspapers that are in flux at the moment.

Murdoch land, the biggest flux that's going on we talked about before is.

secret and went on in a Nevada courtroom, and we don't yet have

a judgment on that, which is what happens over the Murdoch family Trust.

When Rupert departs this mortal coil, he wants everything to go to Lachlan, who is

his most right winging and trustworthy, progeny who will keep the fox and

NewsCorp Empires going on in the way that Rupert has always intended them to.

Rest of the family not so happy about it.

But also, they're not the only ones who are unhappy because last week

at the News Corp, a GM, , a bunch of shareholders started kicking up a

first, not for the first time either about the way that News Corp is set up

But if you asked most people who owned NewsCorp.

They would say to you, Rupert Murdoch, do you know how much

of the shares in, in NewsCorp is actually held by the Murdoch family?

Helen: Have they got what the tech companies often do, which is they got two

tier shares, so they get special, extra good shares, and then other people get

crappy shares that are just of like a, like in the crystal maze, they get the

gold ones and everyone else gets, the silver ones actually deduct power from it.

Adam: That is exactly it.

They have 14% of the shares in the company, which is a tiny, amount.

But when it comes to the voting shares, the ones that actually give

'em the right, and the way that the, company gets managed, they have 41%.

So they've got a much smaller number of Sharehold...

other shareholders that they've gotta keep online in order for Rupert or.

In the future, Lachlan to get their way.

Now this was the bit that was challenged by shareholders, institutional

shareholders in Newscorp last week, and not for the first time.

So they are quite restless.

The kinda shareholders, they, in 2015 they challenged this as well and said,

we want a bit more, say we want to get rid of this, dual class capital

structure, which is what it's called.

2012, they had a go at it as well.

They were particularly exercised at that point over the handling of

phone hacking, on the British papers.

And that's when James Murdoch was in charge and proved himself perhaps

not the best heir, which is why he seems to be quite out of the picture.

And of course, in 2011, they actually had to settle, at a cost of 91

million pounds, $91 million rather, a.

Lawsuit from shareholders over Rupert treating the company to

quote a wholly owned family candy store.' and 'indulging in rampant

nepotism', which of course was when he paid, , $675 million for a TV company,

which just happened to belong to...

yes!

Yet another Murdoch.

That one was Elizabeth.

and shareholders argue that this was enormously overvalued and absolutely

shameless profiteering within the family.

And, it led to a court case

Helen: On one level.

I'm sympathetic to them on another level.

It's a bit like when people buy crypto and then get scammed and you think,

what did you think you were buying?

Adam: What, you were getting involved in Rupert Murdoch's business.

He's not a newcomer to this, you know what he's about.

You think you were doing here?

Ian: For many listeners.

It just feels like I've, been watching this for the last three years.

It's naturally succession, isn't it?

Adam: Absolutely the most pleasing, detail that came out after the divorce from Jerry

Hall is that one of the conditions of that divorce was that she wasn't allowed to

speak to the script writers on Succession and pass on any insight to gossip.

But to be honest, this acts like she really didn't need to.

Helen: gonna give you one sentence to tell me what's up with David

Montgomery, that little Scamp.

Adam: and as ever trying to, destroy journalism in all its forms as he has been

doing ever since his days at The Mirror.

for someone with a pathological hatred of journalists and journalism, it's

a very odd career choice he's made to keep owning newspaper companies.

his latest one is National World.

He's being challenged by shareholders in that, specifically a company

called Media Concierge, which owns a load of Irish papers but owns 24%

of the shares in the National World.

They're now challenging him.

They want to take full control of National World.

this may be because he actually sacked Media Concierge from their job doing

all the ad sales on the newspapers.

So their nose is a bit a joint on that one.

Helen: Okay.

And final question, what's the latest on the sale of a Telegraph?

Another, oh God, another saga that seems like he's been

dragging on for about three years.

Adam: we've now got to the point in the Telegraph where so many people have been

involved there recycling them because the latest, exciting new name is...

Nadhim Zahawi!

Former chancellor, another person who had to resign in disgrace, didn't he?

Yes, he did,

Ian: but not for long.

Adam: First of all, he was, on the Barkley family's side as a front man in the,

the debt payoff they did with the United Arab Emirates backed, company, which then

wasn't allowed to take over The Telegraph.

Then he reinvented himself along the way, getting a job as chair

of a Very, which is another one of the Barclay, families companies.

Then he tried to put together his own bid, so that 600 million that

was wanted for, at that point, The Telegraph and The Spectator.

Got knocked out of the running in that one.

And Dovid Eon, who is the owner of the New York Sun and the all minor journal,

started putting together his own bit, some of his funding's fallen through.

But guess who's just arrived?

Like a white knight on a charter?

Yes, it's Nadhim Zahawi.

And this time he's brought along another Tory Treasurer with him, a friend of

the Eye, Mohamed Mansour, who we've written about on a number of occasions.

Gimme

Helen: the, the one line Wikipedia on Mohamed Mansour?

Adam: Tory Treasurer, knighted by Rishi Sunak, extensive

business interests in Egypt.

some of them down to the fact that he was in the cabinet of

Hosni Mubarak, notoriously corrupt and autocratic Egyptian leader.

and also extensive business interests, and dealings with Russia, which

went on for at least 18 months after the invasion of Ukraine.

So a lovely, savory crowd.

Helen: Is there any, small spark of joy happening in the British media at all?

Adam: the Christmas edition of private Eyes coming out in a couple of weeks,

Helen: talking about another group of people who aren't happy.

See what I did there?

Angry farmers.

So currently, I wish I'd not had to learn about these different

types of tax, but I had to.

Currently farms and farmland are eligible for two types of inheritance, tax relief,

agricultural property relief, or a PR and business property relief or BPR.

But in the budget, Rachel Reeves announced that these be scrapped from 2026.

Were farms worth over a million pounds or sometimes more.

there's been a quite a little backlash against this.

Ian, do you have any sympathy with the National Farmers Union position against

these changes to inheritance tax?

Ian: I, take the line of our correspondent, used to be Muck

Spreader, our new Bio Waste Spreader, who's been writing about

these things for a long time.

And, he's been fairly consistent in pointing out the problems of farming.

and it's a very, tough business to be in.

And he continually.

Tells you the things that are very difficult for farmers.

starting with Brexit and, the slowing up of the payments, the

squeeze from the supermarkets.

the Eye has been fairly sympathetic.

despite being described as a woke blobby, liberal North London Elite, both the

magazine staff and it's readers are full of people who live in the countryside

and they're quite interested in it.

, Helen: Jane, I wanna ask you something about this as kind of

resident nooks and therefore, in my view, Space and land expert.

It's a good thing to be an expert in.

I was surprised.

Jane: Geography...

Helen: I wonder, I was kinda interested like, how many farmers are there, right?

There are 209,000 farm holdings in the UK according to government.

Average size of 82 hectares, but half are smaller than 20.

So I thought that really complicated my version of it, which is there must be

some absolutely whoppers of farms that distort the average upwards, then you

were saying also that also lots of people who farm don't even own their farms.

Absolutely.

So there still are, around, 15% of farmers are tenant farming.

They don't own the land.

and they're paying, to be able to work it.

They're families will not be inheriting, because they don't

donate in the first place.

and that's more common in the north.

also where land in itself is, less expensive.

And then you, some of these very large farms are, those farms in the north,

doing what's called LFA farming, which is not large fluffy animals, even

though it is mainly sheep farming.

It's, less favored areas.

So the land per hectare is, Worth a lot less it'd be very hard to do

much gel with it other than farm sort of large, fluffy animals.

So build loads of lovely houses.

if you can persuade lots and lots of people to move to North

Ambria, yes, you make a fair point.

The transport links probably would've to precede that.

Ian: So there, there are 50% of people who none of these

inheritance things applies to anyway.

then there's a large percentage of them who, are just well below these thresholds.

Jane: And the people who, are Using farms in order to avoid inheritance tax, have

bought sort of lovely tracks of beautiful kind of arable farmland that's worth.

Lots of money in order to store their money.

but they're not, the people we would traditionally think as farmers and the

vast majority of them, I'm sure are all paying farm managers to do the farming,

not doing the farming, their ownselves.

on an

Helen: entirely unrelated note, Adam, I wanted to ask you about Jeremy Clarkson.

Cool.

he lived his life like a candle in the wind on this one.

Having gone through becoming, I'm gonna be the face of this to then

being basically told by the NFU, could you not be the face of this?

did you appreciate how the, paper suddenly decided that protest was good?

Actually, disruptive protests are actually great.

Yes.

Adam: yeah.

We, like some people coming down white hall, don't we?

When they're on toy tractors or they're wearing the right

Barbour jackets and Wellingtons.

Clarkson was extraordinary.

The thing that really struck me with that.

Interview that he did with, Victoria Derbyshire from the

BBC, outside Downing street was.

Quite how Trumpish he was, the moment when he tried to tell.

And talked to me a lot about being over and covering Trump rallies and the way

that he turns things back on the media.

oh, if

Helen: Jeremy Clarkson wanted to be our Trump, he absolutely could be

Adam: but the moment when he said, that's just typical BBC, and when she

pointed out she was quoting his own words back from him literally, that

he'd written in the Sunday Times.

Yes.

Because he's written everything he's ever thought in one of

his newspaper columns, he said,

Helen: facts, This is typical BBC saying things are facts.

And she said.

You, said them.

Adam: But then he turned to the crowd and just said to them, to

these crowd, slightly hostile crowd around him, are you hearing this?

And I thought, that's the moment, isn't it?

That's the Trump thing where you just say, I've been asked

a question I don't like, I.

Biased media and turn the supporters who probably didn't even hear

the question but are quite happy to go along and boo with it.

that, that really did strike me as a moment.

And I thought, oh my God, we are looking at President Clarkson now.

He's just, one of his last columns at the Sunday Times was about how

he thinks we're gonna get rid of the Monarchy and, have a president.

And he was warning how awful it would be have President Blair.

I thought, oh my God.

They, no they'd elect Clarkson, wouldn't they?

It would be, and I just had this sudden horrible moment.

Ian: But he Do a fairly rapid reverse ferret, didn't he?

after he saw how his appearance had gone down, he then said, it was terrible.

I was on painkillers.

Helen: Yes, he'd had, some back injury and he'd, therefore

he was slightly spaced out.

But also that he then said that actually Andy Willman, his long-term producer

on Top Gear had said that he had to go make a speech at this rally in order to

quote, have an ending for the episode.

Which is a great way, it's an almost Liz Jones approach to your life, isn't it?

Just make things happen in my personal life for content.

Ian: he then wrote, in one of the columns afterwards that,

do I want to be a politician?

and he said, I, suddenly realized I don't, I'm a journalist, I

like throwing things at people.

I don't wanna be the person who gets thrown at them.

And then I think he must have watched himself with a journalist,

IE Victoria Dobish saying, look, you've, you said this, and now you

are saying something different.

, and blaming me for bringing it up.

And I think part of him must have thought I.

I was a journalist for most of my life.

I do realize what she's doing.

I am now the person who is having things thrown at him for talking nonsense.

he said, I originally bought this land for tax.

Then he said, oh, I was lying.

Then I didn't buy it.

to avoid tax, I bought it to have a shoot, but I thought it would be better to tell a

lie and say I was buying it to avoid tax.

So you just think, how do we know whether you're telling the truth now?

It, there are too many reverse, the ferret disappears, and also it's not

necessarily, there's a farming metaphor,

Helen: that's good.

Adam: it's not necessarily the thing that you want to hear either as a farmer who

has turned out in Whitehall concerned rightly or notley, whatever the statistics

day about losing your livelihood and not being able to pass it on to your kids.

To read in the Sunday Times that actually you are just a bit part in

an episode of Clarkson's Farm in the end, that he actually did just need

a kind of end of episode crescendo.

Does it?

You wouldn't speak.

But speaking

Helen: of somebody who read the last Diddly squat book, I did my time in

those minds, I think the great tragedy of Clarkson is that he's putting it on.

He's basically a kind of sweet, he recycles And he has to work himself

up into this kind of, ooh, Brussels.

I, just, he voted to remain.

His friends are all media lovies.

I guess the person mostly in the US he reminds me of is Tucker Carlson, who's the

same, he wears like loafers without any socks and preppy drag and then has to hang

around with people talking about how he's been attacked by demons because that's

what he thinks the crowd wants to hear.

And.

I don't, to be clear, I don't feel sorry for either of these people on the

basis they built large and expensive houses on the back of playing these

caricatures, but I sometimes wonder if the reason that they're so angry

with journalists is because they know fine that the person is pointing

out something that they're aware of.

And that's when they get very defensive about it.

Adam: I just think when it comes to the farmers as well, I mean there are so many

other financial things that the government is not showing any sign of tackling.

the, kind of elephant in the room, the large un fluffy

animal in the room, I guess is.

The fact that they are vastly, underpaid by supermarkets for

the food that they are producing.

And that's another really difficult conversation with the government.

'cause in the end, that's gonna mean higher food prices than the supermarkets

for the rest of us as consumers.

But it's also, I mean that's the main problem with farming that

makes it financially unviable.

Jane: another issue that's facing farming is it's massively aging.

So more than half of farmers are over 55.

Ian: And bio waste spreader, points out that the inheritance tax,

relief put up the price of farms, which meant, buying your own farm.

Was outta the question for any younger person who wanted to

enter the farming business.

Helen: a new departure for Page 94, we are going to hear from an ai, are

we gonna hear from an AI correspondent or is this going to be terrible?

I'm very excited by this.

Ian: it's not an AI correspondent, it's an EI.

Did you see what I did there?

Yeah.

Yeah.

Correspondent, we've done this, the whole segment, making

the joke and work backwards.

I spoke to our producer and he said, you need something to end the episode.

Helen: these are the thoughts of Bio Waste Spreader brought to you via

the magic of artificial intelligence.

Tell us, what did you see at the protests

' AI 'Bio Waste Spreader': Starmer, the Farmer Hammer,' read the banners attached

to the front of tractors in Whitehall, some of which had been driven from

as far away as Yorkshire, but making such long journeys with such slow

moving vehicles should have given the drivers time to question whether they

shouldn't be addressing the broader challenges facing British farmers post

Brexit, rather than simply wailing about a tax that everyone else pays.

More than 250,000 people have now signed a petition to overturn the

family farm tax as the National Farmers Union has labeled it.

But did it not strike the mast ranks of green tweed or brushed cotton gille ver

clad farmers that it would be disastrous to allow professional petrolhead.

Jeremy Clarkson, To grab the lion's share of media attention

surrounding the protest.

Do they not see it?

Clarkson is not their white knight savior.

He's a public relations disaster and arguably, at least partly

responsible for the tax exemption.

Helen: I just suddenly reminded me halfway through of the weird period

in British history where you weren't allowed to hear Jerry Adams' voice.

Yeah.

And they're simply worried that Bio Waste Spreader is gonna radicalize people if

we're actually allowed to hear his voice.

so I have another question for you.

AI Bio Waste Spreader, which is what, issues is this

actually a distraction from?

There's a whole raft of them.

The accelerated loss of the old EU subsidies will be tough on tenant

farmers, many of whom will not be able to renegotiate their rents with

their landlords for several years.

The hike to the minimum wage will impact heavily on an

industry notorious for low pay.

Then there are the significant increases in employers', national insurance

payments, and the proposals to impose carbon taxes on goods like imported

fertilizer and steel, which will increase the cost of farm machinery and the cost

of fertilizer by 50 pounds per ton.

The London protest could have brought all of these issues to public attention.

It could also have asked how farmers are supposed to meet such cost increases when

trade deals bringing in imported food.

Signed by then trade secretary Liz Truss.

Don't require equivalent animal welfare or environmental standards.

Helen: One final question for you, AI Bio Waste Spreader, which is, what do you

think the outcome of all this will be?

AI 'Bio Waste Spreader': Post Brexit, UK farmers' interests are no longer protected

by the common agricultural policy, so they need to be extremely careful about the

issues they choose to protest and who is invited to voice those concerns for them.

Your correspondent was crossing Westminster Bridge.

Soon after the farmers had departed Central London Streets and pubs, two

young men picked up a discarded placard that read Bullocks to the budget.

No farmers, no food, no future.

Where have they all gone now?

Said one back to their big country estates, I guess laughed the other.

Helen: and that's slightly bizarre way to end it.

Next, I'm not sure that AI is going to replace us yet, Ian, I think

we've got another couple of, podcasts in US before we're all replaced

Ian: Yeah, this is my secret agenda but I think, Bio Waste Spreader, but it is

very, worried, that, he might, be outed.

as someone who's not entirely, uncritical about Jeremy

Clarkson, which quite an offense.

Helen: Okay, then he won't be seen that the local ferret wrangling again.

That is all for this episode of Page 94.

My thanks to Adam, Jane and Ian, as well as AI BioWaste Spreader.

If you like this sort of thing, then you can head over to

private-eye.co.Uk and subscribe.

The Private Eye Annual is also in the shops why not pick a copy up for that

for yourself or a loved one as ever.

Our thanks to Matt Hill at Rethink Audio for producing and editing.

See you next time.

AI 'Bio Waste Spreader': I have been asked by the editor to assure

listeners that we won't be using EI or indeed AI voices again and

will in future employ live actors.

I am fired.