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.
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.