00:01.49 alexei sayle Hello, everybody. ah Everybody in the world, Emmanuel Macron's wife, Narendra Modi,

00:12.82 alexei sayle um ah some guy on a bus in Singapore. Welcome everybody to episode 92 of the AlexiCell podcast.

00:26.76 alexei sayle And Talal, you wanted to kick us off with a story of a thing that happened to you.

00:33.08 Talal K Yeah, man, I thought this would be interesting fodder for the podder. um I went to last week, or two weeks ago now, um ah went to Madame Tussauds.

00:43.71 Talal K Don't ask why, but I was there with some with my girlfriend's family. And you know how it's all like, it's very touristy now. It's mostly tourists. There's always tour buses out the front.

00:53.64 alexei sayle En

00:54.46 Talal K And just so happened when we came in, We came in at the same time as this foreign tourist group and they were all wearing these bright green hoodies.

01:06.51 Talal K And at one point I noticed that it had Hebrew writing on it. And of course they were all from Israel. And briefly I was kind of like, this is the first time I'd actually encountered Israelis en masse.

01:20.68 alexei sayle masse. En masse.

01:22.38 Talal K And obviously you find yourself talking like this, like yeah yeah you're speaking as ah of a whole nation. like And obviously i'm I'm coming at you because I got angry seeing all these Israelis around me, but I hate having to have that thought in my head that I hate this country.

01:31.63 alexei sayle Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah.

01:37.04 Talal K Because that's like the definition of racism like in a way.

01:40.98 alexei sayle Yeah. Well, except they are all on board. mean, polls show that the vast majority of them are on board with the genocide, aren't they?

01:49.42 Talal K And they accuse Arabs of being raised to hate Jews from birth, which I was never fucking raised to do that.

01:52.78 alexei sayle Yeah.

01:55.01 Talal K And no one in my family was raised to hate Jews, but we know for a fact that Israelis are kind of taught from a young age that Arabs are less than human, lesser than and deserve.

01:55.24 alexei sayle No.

02:01.00 alexei sayle Yeah.

02:04.43 alexei sayle Yes, fact, there's been a hoo-ha, Linda said there's been a hoo-ha with James O'Brien about, he had ah an episode a couple of days.

02:12.35 Talal K Yeah, did he say Jews or Israelis hated Arabs?

02:15.66 alexei sayle ah James O'Brien, I don't know.

02:17.99 Talal K But he was reading someone's text, wasn't it

02:18.12 alexei sayle um Letter, yeah, and then the campaign against anti-Semitism, which is in fact a campaign for genocide and ethnic cleansing.

02:28.13 Talal K and and he? didn't

02:28.79 alexei sayle We kicked off.

02:29.16 Talal K And then he's made an a formal apology, but he didn't once mention that, oh, by the way, this is a call-in show and i my whole job is to read messages from the public.

02:37.30 alexei sayle Right.

02:37.87 Talal K But I guess he didn't correct them or hold them up to a account.

02:40.24 alexei sayle I don't know. I don't know the details, really. I was on his show last week. I didn't. I wasn't on for very long. They got involved in some other nonsense, so...

02:49.36 Talal K Well, anyway, I was surrounded, completely flanked and outnumbered by Israeli, seemingly tourists. But then at a closer look, to cut the long story short, I soon realized they were all kids, apart from the adults who were chaperoning them, and they were all cancer kids ah in varying degrees of severity.

02:56.92 alexei sayle Yeah.

03:03.81 alexei sayle Yeah. Yeah. Yes.

03:11.59 Talal K Some of them were in wheelchairs, some of them had no hair. but they were all either survivors or patients of cancer. And now i'm stood there,

03:19.01 alexei sayle Yeah. Feeling extremely complicated emotions.

03:23.71 Talal K conflict of feeling sorry for them. And, oh my God, this is horrible.

03:25.52 alexei sayle Yeah. Yeah.

03:27.10 Talal K And what a nice thing to take these kids on a international trip. And, but fuck these are Israelis.

03:32.93 alexei sayle Yeah.

03:34.48 Talal K These are the people who we've been,

03:35.37 alexei sayle yeah

03:37.58 Talal K uh, gas lit and by obviously not the children, but you know, this is the nation that has been destroying Gaza.

03:39.44 alexei sayle No.

03:42.16 alexei sayle No.

03:47.74 Talal K It's fucking filled me with, yeah, complicated, conflicting emotions.

03:50.38 alexei sayle Yeah.

03:53.40 Talal K And they were there the whole time.

03:53.61 alexei sayle That's Yeah.

03:54.52 Talal K so I'm trying to enjoy it And for the benefit of my,

03:58.17 alexei sayle Actually, it's it's pretty terrible anyway, Madam Tussauds. All

04:03.92 Talal K it's funny when you're a bit tipsy. It is quite funny.

04:05.65 alexei sayle all right.

04:06.12 Talal K and yeah

04:08.15 alexei sayle Yeah, it's well, it's I mean, that i mean this genocide this genocidal nation, it does force us into all these complicated emotions, doesn't it? And, you know, you're forced to, because we are good people, we we have to wrestle. I mean, it's not as severe as you, but my my parallel to that is that there's a team in the Tour de France called Israel Premier Tech,

04:33.47 alexei sayle And there's been massive demonstrations. I id sent a voicemail to Ned Bolting because, you know, I did some commentary on the Tour de Ronde. they should really um They should really mention there's been massive demonstrations and protests against Israel Premier Tech. But also I'm sort of, I, there's several British riders who are riding for them. And I think I just kind of hate them, think of them as mercenaries. And also I keep hoping that they'll crash.

05:03.45 alexei sayle And in fact, they did yeah they did yesterday. um they they did They were involved in it.

05:09.64 Talal K They did crash.

05:10.59 alexei sayle they did There was a big crash in several members of Israel. Genocide Tech ah did come down, but it's just another sort of byproduct, I think, of this genocide that, um

05:25.15 Talal K It's filling our hearts with anger and and and and and hate, you know, and it's...

05:25.25 alexei sayle you know, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. was the Yeah, look what it's doing to us, really. You know, I mean, yeah. So, yeah. So, anyway, yeah, I but i was, but that I mean, yeah.

05:38.87 Talal K I don't want to be this person. i don't want to be wishing harm on a kid, you know? You can imagine the flip-flopping of thoughts that was going on in my head, you know?

05:42.18 alexei sayle Yeah.

05:45.87 alexei sayle Yeah. Yeah.

05:47.26 Talal K At one point, there was the bloody wax figure of Mo Salah. And i was like ah I was like, so I was curious to see how the Israelis would react to different mannequins.

05:52.11 alexei sayle All right.

05:57.14 alexei sayle Yeah.

05:59.63 alexei sayle Yeah.

06:00.25 Talal K But one of them ran up to Mo Salah and went, Habibi Salah! And said Habibi Salah at him.

06:04.28 alexei sayle Right?

06:05.87 Talal K And ah that confused me.

06:09.32 alexei sayle Yeah.

06:11.75 Talal K um And yeah, we're reaching new lows now and of depravity with Gaza, the footage.

06:13.08 alexei sayle That's just... That's just... Yeah.

06:18.56 alexei sayle Yeah. Or they are. i mean, we... Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

06:23.14 Talal K what we're seeing.

06:24.39 alexei sayle yeah

06:25.21 Talal K They don't look real. These these skeletal children.

06:28.58 alexei sayle yeah

06:30.03 Talal K It's like something from a, you know, Guillermo del Toro movie or something.

06:33.65 alexei sayle yeah Well, every every yeah every day brings new horrors. i was um I performed at this Medics for Palestine benefit on Saturday at the Voices for Gars.

06:46.51 Talal K Voices for Gaza and the Troxie.

06:48.86 alexei sayle Yeah, at the Choksi. So that was... That was very nice, real feeling of solidarity. Saw lots of people who I'd only met online before. Saw Taig, who we're seeing tomorrow.

06:58.75 Talal K Tiger.

07:02.37 alexei sayle Riz Ahmed, had a nice chat to him.

07:06.55 alexei sayle Nish Kumar.

07:08.42 Talal K who

07:08.71 alexei sayle Good people. Good people. All of them. Paloma Faith hugged me.

07:16.26 alexei sayle And it, you know,

07:16.46 Talal K Did Nish talk to you?

07:18.13 alexei sayle I didn't really. I felt felt i think i think I just said shook his hand in the corridor and said, I'm going now or something, which in retrospect I feel guilty about, really.

07:24.64 Talal K Ah.

07:27.96 alexei sayle But he is, I mean, he's...

07:28.25 Talal K ah Yeah, because i've I've met him a couple times now and he's going to hopefully do this podcast around September time.

07:30.87 alexei sayle Yeah.

07:34.09 Talal K He'll come on as a guest.

07:34.33 alexei sayle Okay, cool. Good one.

07:35.87 Talal K He does great things.

07:36.03 alexei sayle Let's go.

07:36.79 Talal K He's got this this ah podcast called um Pod Save the World, I think it's called.

07:42.29 alexei sayle Oh, right, that's him, is it?

07:43.98 Talal K Yeah. And yeah, he's a good, very outspoken and a good speaker. He's very smart guy.

07:51.72 alexei sayle Yeah, yeah.

07:52.75 Talal K And I've spoken to a few people who, Taig said he was starstruck, seeing you in the flesh.

07:58.62 alexei sayle Yes.

07:59.69 Talal K Yes, of course.

07:59.90 alexei sayle Well, good. i

08:01.42 Talal K and

08:02.25 alexei sayle Who wouldn't be?

08:04.52 Talal K Yeah, c incredible lineup. Previous guests, Sami Abuwardi, Bassem Yusuf, Taig Hickey, all on that stage.

08:11.34 alexei sayle Yeah.

08:11.61 Talal K Future guests, Nish Kumar and Khalid Abdullah.

08:15.52 alexei sayle Abdullah.

08:16.68 Talal K His song is gorgeous, isn't it?

08:19.29 alexei sayle I didn't say. It was very difficult to hear anything, but it was so hot backstage, it was difficult, and you couldn't really get to the side of the stage. It was very difficult to see anybody apart from your own performance, as it were. So I didn't really... ah was just running around, talking to people, and I left at the interval.

08:38.32 Talal K Have you not heard his song though?

08:40.29 alexei sayle I haven't, ah no, but I will.

08:44.37 Talal K Oh, I kind of want to, I was half thinking of starting the episode with them playing it for you.

08:52.61 alexei sayle No, you could do.

08:53.81 Talal K I might play it for you.

08:58.61 Talal K there Is there a way I can download it anywhere?

09:06.25 alexei sayle He's very serious.

09:09.24 Talal K He is, isn't he?

09:10.09 alexei sayle Yeah.

09:19.47 Talal K Yeah, if you give me a minute, i'll be able to actually

09:24.13 Talal K play it to you. It's really beautiful. He is a very serious guy, isn't he?

09:28.73 alexei sayle Yeah, which is fine.

09:29.78 Talal K But

09:32.06 alexei sayle You know, the world just needs more than just flippant.

09:38.25 Talal K Well, bless you, Linda.

09:39.50 alexei sayle Yes, that was little noisy, wasn't it?

09:45.36 alexei sayle The world needs more than flippant nihilists like me.

09:50.13 Talal K Okay,

09:56.15 Talal K i nearly got it. I'm gonna play it for you, fuck it. Go fill the time, don't we?

10:00.86 alexei sayle Yeah.

10:04.43 alexei sayle The time is filled anyway, to misquote Samuel Beckett, but yes.

10:10.76 Talal K What's that in reference to? What does that mean?

10:12.78 alexei sayle It's from, is it from, ah is it from Waiting for God?

10:13.59 Talal K The time is filled anyway.

10:16.67 alexei sayle It passes the time. The time passes anyway.

10:23.52 Talal K Oh yeah, whether we pass it or not.

10:25.35 alexei sayle Yeah, it's from, it's a Beckett quote.

10:28.86 Talal K Okay.

10:32.00 Talal K Nearly there.

10:38.16 Talal K Oh man, is this going actually work?

10:45.58 Talal K Okay, so ah um've I've managed to figure it out. So ah yeah, a few weeks ago Khaled Abdullah wrote this song and posted it online. It got circulated and Annie Lennox is a big fan of it. She like posted it on her page and everything.

11:04.04 Talal K I'd love to get her on this show.

11:04.08 alexei sayle I went...

11:05.08 Talal K Do you like Annie Lennox?

11:06.29 alexei sayle Yes, I went to her wedding. To somebody. i doubt if she's still married to whoever it was.

11:11.33 Talal K Don't say that, Alexei.

11:12.67 alexei sayle Well, maybe she is. I don't know. I went to her wedding anyway.

11:18.04 Talal K Well, she's very outspoken on Palestine. We should get her on here.

11:20.86 alexei sayle Yeah, good for her. Yeah.

11:22.16 Talal K And she's got a rich history that she could tell us about.

11:24.55 alexei sayle Yeah.

11:25.98 Talal K So this is Khalid Abdullah with a simple song.

11:26.04 alexei sayle Yeah.

11:28.46 Talal K it's It's a bit long, so give me the signal if you want me to cut it off at any point.

11:30.12 alexei sayle It was in Chiswick. All right.

11:32.62 Talal K But it's absolutely stunning. Here we go.

11:39.31 Talal K You can turn the volume up on your mic if you want, if you want at the bottom knob.

11:42.86 alexei sayle I can hear it.

13:49.45 alexei sayle Well, that's lovely. I feel like I should get back to work, really. People can listen to it. Download it, presumably the funds.

13:57.49 Talal K Yeah, it's on YouTube, it's Instagram.

13:58.08 alexei sayle Money raised go to something.

14:00.10 Talal K I presume, I don't know about that.

14:05.81 alexei sayle Now they all go to CBS Records.

14:09.54 Talal K It looks like it's just out for anyone to listen to.

14:11.43 alexei sayle Right, all right, right.

14:11.77 Talal K I think just spreading the message.

14:13.28 alexei sayle Right, right, right, right, right.

14:15.29 Talal K But yeah, it's it's it's very pretty and very nice.

14:16.41 alexei sayle what's that? Yeah, yeah, yeah.

14:20.44 Talal K and simple i think the point he's making is it's fucking simple guys um it's a complicated situation like flu i'd rather not step in on making an opinion on this country it's simple

14:23.94 alexei sayle Yes, very simple point. Yeah.

14:32.03 Talal K fucking so

14:34.81 alexei sayle um Tomorrow, which will have happened by the time this goes out, since tomorrow will be yesterday or the day after, but... Whoa, you breathe, blow my mind.

14:46.16 alexei sayle um I think I'm going to... Palestine Solidarity Campaign wants to leave a thousand um empty pans... um outside Downing Street to symbolize the ah thousand Palestinians who've been shot dead at the Israeli yeah food, supposed murder sites.

15:08.56 alexei sayle ah So I'll be doing that tomorrow. But also news from the front line, actually. to and i went On Sunday, me and Linda went to the first meeting of...

15:20.15 alexei sayle Camden People's Alliance. The Camden People's Alliance will be the Camden branch of the new party when it finally comes into existence. And it was really interesting. I first was, Linda was like the star there. I was like just Linda's husband. Everybody was running up to Linda. Oh, Linda.

15:42.05 alexei sayle um But ah you know this I thought first because the way, obviously, people I know from the, particularly from the Jeremy years and from the Palestinian struggle, but it was great.

16:01.73 alexei sayle was really um very mixed, like young people

16:01.77 Talal K um Amazing.

16:06.27 alexei sayle Everybody, I mean, a very good chairwoman who kept everybody's contribution short, but nobody spoke for more than, mean, the speakers all spoke for like five minutes and then at the end, two minutes.

16:20.06 alexei sayle And everybody who contributed spoke for a minute or two minutes. And I think that that is vital, really, because what yeah one of the techniques I think that that's used to yeah weed out ordinary normal people, eject them from the political process is boredom, really.

16:40.73 alexei sayle And a part of that is is is speaking on and on and on and on and on. And it's really it's really crucial. More important almost than ideology or organisation is that commitment to just fucking not talking for longer than you need to.

17:00.76 alexei sayle And that was what was one of the things that was really, you know, it's a really vital aspect of it.

17:06.15 Talal K and Did she make a point of that before they started or or was it

17:08.09 alexei sayle she Well, she just kind of very gently, she said everybody was speaking. She just made a point that brevity was, you know, was her. In fact, the meeting finished early, which is I've never known.

17:18.59 Talal K Amazing.

17:20.23 alexei sayle I've never known her.

17:21.53 Talal K Was it busy?

17:22.93 alexei sayle Yeah, there's about 150 people there.

17:25.27 Talal K And what kind of, were there any kind of solid plans or anything?

17:27.34 alexei sayle So, do you know yeah no yeah, no, I mean, Andrew Feinstein was obviously the sort of the leading, he's the figurehead and will presumably be you know our parliamentary candidate.

17:43.74 alexei sayle Now, a lot of people talked about the corruption of Camden Council. You know, a lot of them work for or have interests with property developers.

17:55.19 Talal K Hmm.

17:55.94 alexei sayle They talked about housing. So they talked about local campaigns, but they they also, and then they just talked about, you know you know, what I've been talking about for years is that, you know, you can't just set up a a left-wing party in the same old way as you always have done, you know, call it the socialist, Labour Socialist Workers Alliance Party, Alliance Party, you know, front and, you know, have a top-down of a top-down kind of leadership and just ask people to vote for you. This is about both community activism and ah parliamentary, you know, a struggle for council seats and then parliamentary seats.

18:40.68 alexei sayle And it, you know, it was, i mean, and that takes time, I think, which is the, which is, you know, you know, which we we joke about Jeremy talking to everybody in the world really before he sets up his party, but it is,

18:52.98 Talal K yeah

18:53.88 alexei sayle that what they plan to do, as I understand it, is have have ah of a ah grand conference and then all the delegates, all the council, prospective council, um people standing for the council will be chosen by the membership from the bottom up.

19:08.43 alexei sayle And, you know, that they they, you know, so...

19:12.10 Talal K I've just started to get bored now about it.

19:12.37 alexei sayle All

19:15.15 alexei sayle ah right.

19:15.54 Talal K I see your point that you're making.

19:15.83 alexei sayle Yeah.

19:17.18 Talal K It's also it's so off-putting, isn't it?

19:18.94 alexei sayle I wasn't delivered. I wasn't delivered. But, um yeah. Yeah.

19:21.48 Talal K but's so i'm not good i'm I'm not saying to shut up, but I'm saying I get the point now. Like, it's it's government.

19:25.35 alexei sayle yeah yeah yeah well that always was it was so you know and they do trade unions do it you know um student union politics that was always just the fun unless you're a fucking slimy piece of fucking ambitious garbage like somebody like west street and you would not for a second put up with

19:27.79 Talal K Politics is so off-putting, isn't it?

19:50.77 alexei sayle You've got better things to do with your life than sit in meetings for hours and hours and hours. you know And that's one of the ways that they've... It's one of the many ways in which decent people are excluded from the political process. And so I do think you know brevity is actually... And you know i was I was impressed to see if brevity is um essential for this process.

20:14.43 alexei sayle So, yeah, it was it was very heartening.

20:18.69 alexei sayle um and uh i mean i can't i mean turnout is so low in local councils i can't i would have thought it would be relatively easy to get to yeah to get yeah take over the council get our people elected really

20:31.62 Talal K Take over.

20:38.96 alexei sayle um And there was, yeah, there was representatives from the ah Bangladeshi community, from the black community, you know, young people.

20:50.90 alexei sayle um That was great. So if you live in Camden, join Camden People's Alliance. If you live in Southport, join Southport independent s livepool liberal Independence, Independence.

21:07.33 alexei sayle Majority in the Northeast. um Preston Independence.

21:13.04 Talal K Has each district, it's constit constitution as each has each constituency got their own different name and different group that you have to join?

21:17.24 alexei sayle Yeah, so I mean...

21:21.54 alexei sayle Yeah, so these are all these are all separate independent organisations at the moment. They will when the party forms.

21:31.17 Talal K So how will we know which one to join?

21:33.21 alexei sayle Well, you'll know because they'll be in there'll be whatever the party's called. They will be then become local branches of the part of the party, you know, whatever it's called.

21:39.73 Talal K Yeah, we have to wait for that.

21:43.82 alexei sayle We Are Many or Aspire or Pilchards. ah

21:51.17 Talal K Pause that thought. I've just noticed I'm recording on the wrong microphone. I've been recording through my laptop's mic rather than this mic in front of me for this whole time.

21:57.49 alexei sayle All right.

21:59.83 Talal K So sorry, listener, about the poor audio quality. My end, about to switch over now.