00:00:00.46 alexei sayle Hi, everybody. Welcome to episode 97 of the Alexi Sale podcast. And the sound spontaneous. In fact, Talal failed to notice that Rish was just doing his audio through the um through the MacBook speakers rather than his own microphone.

00:00:18.15 Talal K Alright, you'd have to tell them that.

00:00:20.93 alexei sayle So we're now going to have to restage the spontaneous banter. that we we had it in the first episode, because it has to be that to be exactly the same. So, hi, Nish.

00:00:34.18 alexei sayle Thank you for coming on my podcast. it's a quick but It's a quid pro quo for me going on your podcast.

00:00:38.06 nish It's my pleasure, Alexi.

00:00:46.03 nish It was in the rider, the sail rider.

00:00:48.17 alexei sayle huh Ha, ha, ha, ha, ha. a

00:00:52.11 Talal K You bastards. You bastards.

00:00:53.69 alexei sayle Okay, I've got that out of the way. So, Nish, I mean, um you know, this tell me all about yourself, really. I mean, just ah really how you got started and, ah you know, the whole, the whole Magilla.

00:01:05.87 nish i like I've been doing comedy for nearly 20 years now, but I got started in the, ah I think the lowest form of artistic expression known to humanity, the student sketch comedy group.

00:01:17.31 alexei sayle What?

00:01:20.32 Talal K Oh.

00:01:21.67 alexei sayle Improv.

00:01:21.68 nish The student.

00:01:22.65 alexei sayle Improv? Ah.

00:01:23.86 nish Not improv, it was sketch comedy.

00:01:26.21 alexei sayle Right. So where was this at? Okay.

00:01:28.88 Talal K Okay. okay

00:01:29.66 nish Durham University.

00:01:30.87 alexei sayle okay

00:01:32.06 nish And so I started going to Edinburgh probably in 2000 and, uh, sorry, I definitely know it was 2006. I started going to Edinburgh in 2006. Um, and I was, I think very lucky to kind of be in a group with a bunch of people that I still am friends with today.

00:01:52.49 nish and like one of them, Tom Neenan, I who wrote, did was the head writer on the mash report and has done all sorts of work. We've done all sorts of work together. And the other one was Ed Gamble, who was a sort of, the the king of podcasting.

00:02:04.17 Talal K and

00:02:04.26 nish um

00:02:04.34 alexei sayle Right.

00:02:05.03 nish And I think they were like, Gamble was like much more across the professional elements of what being a comedian involved. So he knew about gigs and the circuit and that you had to email and call people to try and get those gigs.

00:02:21.41 alexei sayle Right.

00:02:21.52 nish um And so, ah yeah, I was pretty lucky to be coming in with those kind of guys.

00:02:25.18 alexei sayle Yeah. Well, it's hard to know, isn't it, whether that's like luck or, you know, you you somehow, so you seek out, you know, fellow people of talent, really.

00:02:36.55 alexei sayle I mean, yeah.

00:02:36.65 nish You've got to have a gang, I think.

00:02:40.44 alexei sayle Now, well, I always often quote that yeah the, you know, the Hall of Residence at the art school in in Madrid in sort of... I don't know, 1918, when, you know, Picasso P, ah you know, Miro J,

00:02:54.51 nish ah

00:02:54.64 alexei sayle and ah Dali S. I mean, there extraordinary just on that, you know just ah you know, there's just an extraordinary coming together of ah of talent, really, in that one institution. You know, I mean, a huge number of artists who subsequently changed the world. And so you don't know whether...

00:03:15.28 alexei sayle You what, what brings that about that kind of gestalt, I suppose it's.

00:03:19.73 nish Yeah, you definitely, you I think sometimes the temptation is to kind of venerate the individual, right?

00:03:30.31 nish And not necessarily appreciate that they sort of came out of the context.

00:03:30.55 alexei sayle Yeah.

00:03:33.71 nish Like I always think about it in terms of, ah you know, in terms of like, in the like i I was so such a fan of 60s. I mean, I'm literally recording this wearing a Jimi Hendrix t-shirt.

00:03:44.39 nish I've just realized as I look at my self-view camera, right?

00:03:47.89 alexei sayle Yeah.

00:03:48.49 nish And, you know, like the, you know, the Beatles were sort of in competition with the Stones and they were sort of in competition.

00:03:50.12 Talal K Thank you.

00:03:56.16 nish Like Brian Wilson listened to Rubber Soul over and over and over again and sort of was so fixated with its content that he it kind of drove him to do even more sonically interesting and experimental things with the Beach Boys.

00:04:08.53 alexei sayle yeah

00:04:10.64 nish And when, you know, when when they released Pet Sounds, it had the same sort of effect on McCartney. And, you know, the Beatles listen to Dylan, their lyrics become more... ah <unk>s sort of ambitious and introspective and Dylan listens to the Beatles and starts playing with the full electric band. You know, these things are always, everybody's always in conversation with each other.

00:04:32.52 alexei sayle Yeah.

00:04:32.52 nish I don't know how this leads to me doing the match report and Ed Gamble doing off menu.

00:04:35.80 Talal K Yeah, so were you Dylan or you the Beatles or?

00:04:36.51 alexei sayle No.

00:04:37.42 nish I don't know.

00:04:40.08 alexei sayle ah get a Yeah.

00:04:44.26 nish I don't know where this analogy ah leaves me and Ed Gamble.

00:04:49.98 alexei sayle And of course I was completely alone, so I didn't have any of that. I just, I just shut up.

00:04:53.84 Talal K No, you had a big group around you.

00:04:56.63 alexei sayle no There was nobody there. It was just me. I invented everything there's nobody else there what

00:05:05.97 Talal K Yes, yes, you did, Alexi, of course.

00:05:10.38 Talal K What was the name of the sketch group? I need to know, sorry.

00:05:13.24 nish That was just the Durham Review. It's a student sketch group. It still continues to exist to this day.

00:05:15.47 Talal K Oh, the Durham Review.

00:05:18.07 nish Yeah.

00:05:18.83 alexei sayle were you studying at Durham good

00:05:20.93 nish English literature and history.

00:05:26.26 nish But it will it sort of all went out of the window when I started doing... It's... it's I had weirdly such a vocational experience at university because all we did was put on comedy shows and like fly them and make the fires ourselves, do the postering.

00:05:44.72 nish used have to stand on the Royal Mile in Edinburgh trying to get people to see. That's a, which is, I mean, that's, that'll teach you humility.

00:05:51.17 alexei sayle Yeah.

00:05:51.28 nish When somebody says, I don't want to fucking fly it and it's got a picture of your face on it, that will definitely take you down a peg or two, which is probably a good thing for me.

00:05:51.93 Talal K Mm-hmm.

00:05:55.65 alexei sayle yeah

00:05:58.11 alexei sayle Yeah. Yeah. yeah What was it? Somebody said, a flight when I was up there this year, somebody said to me, can't remember what it was now. Are you interested in, you know, Renaissance?

00:06:11.78 alexei sayle Oh, I just said no. He'd never actually had that response before, really. said, no, I'm not. No, no, I'm the one.

00:06:20.02 nish How do you feel when you go to Edinburgh now and walk around the fringe?

00:06:24.71 alexei sayle um Oh, thank you for that, Nish. um i it's really i I find it... yeah Because i was up there i I was up there for a couple of nights this time just doing...

00:06:38.69 alexei sayle ah Just a nostalgia-shaped comic strip.

00:06:39.89 Talal K You're doing the comic strip thing.

00:06:41.72 alexei sayle Yeah, just Q&A.

00:06:41.89 nish Yeah.

00:06:43.81 alexei sayle um Which was fine, but... I... i

00:06:49.73 alexei sayle fills me with revulsion. I think, I mean, if it's, it' it's um ah the the desperation the sort of desperation really gets to me. I don't know. I mean, that this isn't i mean I'm not saying my views are valid, really.

00:07:09.69 alexei sayle It just makes me, it makes me uncomfortable, you know.

00:07:09.62 nish Yeah.

00:07:14.11 alexei sayle Yeah.

00:07:16.60 alexei sayle You know, it's only if it's Offenheim, it's one of the inventors. of Einstein? Yeah, it said, you know, when he heard about the nuclear bomb, if I had known what I was doing, I would have become a watchmaker.

00:07:28.93 alexei sayle I

00:07:29.63 Talal K ah ah

00:07:31.88 nish hey

00:07:32.28 alexei sayle um

00:07:33.06 nish That's what, that's what, yeah, that's why I'm interested in asking you.

00:07:33.30 alexei sayle i sometimes feel a bit like that.

00:07:36.40 nish Like, to some extent, we are all, you are part of, yeah, yeah ah you're part of a creation myth of British ah alternative comedy.

00:07:36.75 alexei sayle Yeah.

00:07:39.71 alexei sayle yeah I invented that shit. Yeah. Yeah.

00:07:45.88 alexei sayle Yeah. It's the truth. Yeah.

00:07:48.82 Talal K No, but Alexei was part of the first people to bring comedy to the fringe.

00:07:49.18 nish And just,

00:07:51.55 alexei sayle but The first, I was the first person said me and Tony Allen were were the first people to do.

00:07:53.71 nish yeah. that That's what I mean. I wonder how you feel Are you like Cillian Murphy at the end of that movie? Just in your hat in the rain, contemplating the destruction you've wrought.

00:08:05.72 alexei sayle Yes. Yes, exactly. Yeah. Yes, very much. um i So it's, so I mean, I think that it's all, I mean, it's, a I mean, it's a, it's an age thing in that I think it must, and then but there's probably ah and an element of, um of kind of envy here that I think if you could, that, ah that I think it must still be the most amazing experience if you're younger and you're caught up in it and,

00:08:30.75 nish Yeah. Yeah.

00:08:39.12 nish yeah

00:08:41.14 alexei sayle You know, and it i mean it was when I went back in 2013, absolutely loved it. I was the happiest I've ever been, really. um And I still had that. I was, you know, because because it was so um because I hadn't done stand-up for 17 years. and just to be back in that mix, I can remember as being joyous, really. And I...

00:09:04.48 alexei sayle um You know, some of my unease about it now is, I guess, to do with just not being ah part of it, really.

00:09:12.97 nish Yeah.

00:09:15.66 alexei sayle I mean, I'm sure for, chauff for you know, if you're if you're if you're and if you're doing a show and It's all your mates.

00:09:26.62 alexei sayle And, you know, I suppose, yes, some of the realisation is just a realisation of age, really. um I mean, I don't know if i said this before. I mean remember when I did 2017,

00:09:38.79 nish yeah

00:09:39.16 alexei sayle ah and going out for a walk on the meadows one day and seeing this girl just sobbing and being, and a mother, a posh mother going, oh, it's all right, darling, we'll go and have a nice tea. And I ah said to my promoter, to David Johnson afterwards, what's that all about? And he said, it's Black Wednesday.

00:09:56.46 alexei sayle It's when you've you've got no reviews. and your venue is empty and there's a specific wednesday really when you know you're not going to get any reviews and you've wasted you know your time up there so it's it's savage as well isn't it really i mean which which is what perhaps what gives it it's also piquancy i mean reputations are made and reputations are lost i mean i certainly i was so i should i loved it in 2013 i was so happy and i loved the show that i was doing and

00:10:03.89 nish Yeah. Yeah.

00:10:10.47 nish yeah

00:10:22.90 nish yeah

00:10:26.20 alexei sayle In 2017, I was less happy with the show. When I just, I was five years old, four or five years old.

00:10:31.06 Talal K it's so It's always a personal experience as it's going to affect.

00:10:34.01 alexei sayle Yeah, yeah. yeah

00:10:36.95 Talal K But 2013, I think it was one of the last years, i think up to 2015, maybe that it was at its peak, really like good, good. ah you've You've done it a lot of times, I'm assuming, Nish.

00:10:46.60 nish I've done it a lot over the last... ah I've done it ah almost... think I've done full runs there almost every year, apart from 2017, 2020, obviously, 2021.

00:10:59.85 nish twenty twenty obviously and twenty twenty two and three. So I've, ah but i I, I, I, in some of those years I was up there for, for a couple of days, but like I've done full months for most of the last 20 years.

00:11:13.85 alexei sayle Wow.

00:11:14.24 nish And it is like, it it is interesting because you kind of go through an arc with it. Like I've done, I've done it at every level. It's possible to do it really like student stuff, free fringe shows where you pass a bucket round at the end, full whack paid venue, North Korean style propaganda posters of your face slapped all over the city.

00:11:35.18 nish And, and sort of then graduating into a kind of, like you know, ah ah I'm loathe to use the term elder statesman, but certainly like, kid who's been held back at school a couple of years and is bigger than all the other kids.

00:11:48.73 nish Like, ah it's like, it's, I've sort of done it at every stage.

00:11:49.44 alexei sayle Bye.

00:11:49.80 Talal K so

00:11:52.21 nish And it is interesting because, you know, you do see the kind of increased corporatization of it. And you do see the increasing costs that are slightly boxing out younger generations from being able to do it. And that does make me sad only because if you take away the sort of, um, the, um,

00:12:14.17 nish career making, career breaking, whatever it is, element of it. the The best thing about it really for me was for just a couple of years, i was doing stand up every day for a month and the kind of,

00:12:28.31 nish again, like I'm, I'm embarking on a metaphor that I don't fully feel confident in because I don't exercise enough, but imagine it feels like what being in the gym is when you're in a kind of period of, there's like a period of match fitness you get, you know, where you, you sort of come back in September and you're the first time you do five or 10 or 15 or even 20 minutes after doing an hour or every month, you're like,

00:12:51.51 nish this is child's play to me. Like this is nothing to like, this is nothing to me anymore. um And you, it definitely, i did five solo shows but ah consecutively, no, four maybe. No, actually it was five.

00:13:09.33 nish I did five consecutively. So every year I wrote a new hour of standup and i went and did it at the fringe. And the last two, I then immediately took on national tours. And I think, I don't, yeah I'm not sure you'd want to do that for more than that period of time. But what I will say is the experience of doing that has like stood me in a good stead.

00:13:31.55 Talal K Yeah.

00:13:32.30 alexei sayle Yeah, yeah, and probably there is a there's a sadness about me that you know I'm never going to do that again, really.

00:13:34.53 Talal K That's amazing.

00:13:38.02 alexei sayle but it did it So treasure these moments, Nish, please.

00:13:41.81 nish I was thinking more, I'm interested in your sense, how much of a sense you have of the like legacy of alternative comedy, the kind of did the legacy that you hold and the sort of space that you occupy in British comedy because

00:13:57.58 alexei sayle Yeah.

00:14:03.08 nish eat it's it's you know it's a really important part of the evolution of the medium and the art form in this country.

00:14:10.68 alexei sayle Yeah, ah yeah, it's all right.

00:14:14.45 nish But does that make you feel like a museum piece when people speak about you like that? That's why that's I think that's the thing that I'm interested in.

00:14:21.30 alexei sayle Well, I, yeah, so I, um when I sort of decided to go back to stand-up, I first of all spent like a year with the ah yong comp just going around and and going watching gigs to find out what well how the scene had developed, really.

00:14:42.18 alexei sayle And i I did really like the way when I went you know backstage in some dressing room, all the comedians would have to pretend to be excited that I was there.

00:14:54.17 alexei sayle ah that really Yeah.

00:14:54.17 Talal K They were standing in a row waiting to shake your hand.

00:14:56.65 nish you

00:14:57.61 alexei sayle but that gave me That gave me tremendous pleasure. I think...

00:15:01.07 Talal K ah

00:15:01.99 nish ah

00:15:05.66 Talal K love it.

00:15:06.16 alexei sayle um i i think it's... i mean, obviously, once... I think it's... I'm really very happy with where I am now because I think that my work is still...

00:15:25.48 alexei sayle innovative and is still is still connecting with a large audience, really. So I feel very um self-satisfied about that.

00:15:35.82 alexei sayle mean, tremendous sense of self-congratulation that you know with the dance videos and this, and you know some particularly Sandwich Bar and Radio 4, that that is still reaching a ah massive audience.

00:15:41.57 nish yeah

00:15:49.48 alexei sayle So I feel that... so i feel that um i'm perfect i mean I'm happy with that also being a kind of historical monument. It is fine because I think that my that i've i've moved yeah I've managed to move on and be as innovative in a way as that you knows to to do new things and to not... I mean, I think there is a...

00:16:16.09 alexei sayle i mean but you know that that that's I mean, I have friends who musicians who do like that rewind circuit.

00:16:21.90 nish Yeah. No.

00:16:22.54 alexei sayle um you know and you know they I mean, they're happy doing it and there's an audience there, but it's it's a it's it's it's not something I would...

00:16:33.62 alexei sayle you know i Well, you can't really do that with comedy. Well, maybe i maybe you can, I don't know.

00:16:35.37 nish no

00:16:36.86 alexei sayle but So, i'm i'm um um yeah, I'm i'm full of of complacent self-congratulation about the fact that I've...

00:16:43.05 nish yeah

00:16:44.23 alexei sayle ra i've I mean, but there was a i mean there were and there was a period. um i think there was a period like in the 90s. I mean, we were talking about a drink the other night with Sam here, but whether I was talking about 1990s Alexis Ale.

00:16:59.05 nish Yeah.

00:17:00.45 alexei sayle 1990s Alexis Ale was very unhappy, really, because he he was he was very out of fashion, really. I mean, there was a period... and now he's hanging around the Zanzibar club in his unstructured Armani suit with Anthony Warrell Thompson.

00:17:15.07 alexei sayle and, um and I know that I can't, know, I don't know, Lawrence Llewellyn Bowen, I don't know, other figures from, other figures from that Lee Dixon.

00:17:23.41 nish ah

00:17:27.12 alexei sayle And,

00:17:27.06 nish yeah that's a great That's a great first three 1990s names that you could think of.

00:17:33.22 alexei sayle yeah, yeah.

00:17:33.88 nish Anthony Morel Thompson, Lawrence Welland Bowen and Lee Dixon. That really sums up a specific version of the dig dig nineteen

00:17:38.64 alexei sayle yeah that That was, yeah, that was my life.

00:17:40.91 Talal K Wow.

00:17:42.69 alexei sayle Yeah. ah

00:17:47.05 alexei sayle There was a club, who was it? One of the other Lees, the footballing Lees that was married to, oh God. It was the girl in Quadrophenia. Oh Christ.

00:17:59.57 alexei sayle It's not going. it They had this club called Teatro. Did you ever go there anyway?

00:18:03.19 nish No.

00:18:03.69 alexei sayle In the West End. Lee, no, Lee Sharp.

00:18:06.49 Talal K Leslie Ash.

00:18:06.56 nish you like

00:18:07.45 alexei sayle Leslie Ash and who she married to, still married to him, I think.

00:18:08.33 nish Yeah.

00:18:10.87 Talal K Lee Chapman

00:18:12.17 alexei sayle Lee Chapman, yeah, played for.

00:18:12.87 nish Right, okay.

00:18:14.33 alexei sayle He did something very funny once though. He said, well, he was being interviewed. I was in there and I think he was being interviewed by a journalist or something. i came and said hello. And he said, oh, remind me, mate, where did we play together?

00:18:27.70 alexei sayle Which I thought was the most brilliant.

00:18:28.19 nish ah

00:18:30.72 alexei sayle And I i kind of, I couldn't remember which teams he played in because as I thought I should have said Leeds. we but And it was a very funny thing for him to say anyway.

00:18:40.75 nish What great compliment on a 1990s Alexei Sayles physique.

00:18:45.81 alexei sayle Yeah, it's true.

00:18:46.41 Talal K and

00:18:46.81 alexei sayle Yeah, he was. He was slim and, yeah.

00:18:49.60 nish An out-of-shape ex-footballer is still an out-of-shape ex-footballer. That's still more in shape than 90% of the population.

00:18:55.27 alexei sayle Yeah. Oh, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. but well Why did I go? Oh, yeah. So, anyway, so um i really I really embrace and sort of wallow in that, the historical...

00:19:00.65 Talal K Albanian.

00:19:07.64 alexei sayle contest i'm very i'm very context of it happened and you know i i i both consciously you know mean that's partly a joke but it's also there's a know that i you know that kind of claim that i invented everything and there was nobody else it's partly just self-serving you know i mean again kind of kim jong-un kind of um

00:19:19.14 nish yeah

00:19:27.88 alexei sayle Yeah, i learned from there the Marxist-Leninist who I followed when I was younger. But it's also, you know, I think, so I don't mind doing a bit of that, really. But I think if if I wasn't doing work that was still interesting, I would have a different attitude to it, I think, really.

00:19:44.07 nish I wonder if it's easier for comedians to embrace elder statesperson status because by virtue of being a comedian, you're still producing new work. You know, like like you say, there is not a possibility or ah maybe there is.

00:19:58.31 nish And we're all just we're just not aware of it. But they if you're still working as a comedian, you have to produce new material. You can't really go out and.

00:20:07.04 alexei sayle Yes.

00:20:09.53 nish You know, I saw the Rolling Stones live.

00:20:09.62 alexei sayle No, you can't.

00:20:11.33 nish It wasn't, nobody was clamoring for them to do new songs. They wanted to hear, you know, satisfaction and you can't always get what you want.

00:20:15.50 alexei sayle No.

00:20:16.21 Talal K Yeah.

00:20:18.11 nish It's, whereas, um um maybe that's where sometimes musicians are more prickly about being perceived as like legacy acts.

00:20:18.28 alexei sayle Yeah.

00:20:26.01 alexei sayle Yeah, I mean, by definition, if you're still working as a comedian, you have to be doing new material, yeah.

00:20:28.96 nish Yeah.

00:20:30.60 Talal K yeah

00:20:31.41 alexei sayle So you have to be innovating to to to a degree, yeah. You can't go out and do the old... do the old, I mean, people have suggested I did go out and I don't know what it would be like to go out in a tight suit now and, hello, John got a new motor.

00:20:38.52 nish Yeah.

00:20:46.21 alexei sayle mean, I did towards the end when I was getting, I was really disillusioned um sort of in the late, sort mid nineties when I was coming up to stopping touring and I would do, it the i would do me hit at the end.

00:20:56.34 alexei sayle I would do hello, John got a new motor and I would start, i would start putting in kind of um demeaning line.

00:20:58.30 nish Yeah.

00:21:03.36 alexei sayle I'd say this is a bit but fucking pathetic. is I've been doing this for 15 fucking years and the audience could kind of go, Oh, this is a bit unsettling.

00:21:12.42 nish yeah

00:21:13.16 alexei sayle ah This man clearly isn't happy with his life. Um, so, yeah and I was glad to, i mean, I was, I was glad to bin all that, but, um, so I don't, I don't mind doing nostalgia stuff as well. I mean, it's like,

00:21:27.69 alexei sayle Talking about the comic strip or talking about the young ones, stuff like that, really. It's fine, really. I also think, yeah, I mean, and it is... i think there I mean, I think for a while, I mean, like I say, in the 90s, people really didn't... They rejected... I think there was a rejection of the history of... My sense of it is, and this may be...

00:21:52.91 alexei sayle that there was, you know, with the sort of, when that alternative, that first alternative comedy kind of came to an end and you got people like Baddiel and Skinner and people, you know, um i mean, the best you could say about their comedy was it was apolitical.

00:22:08.71 alexei sayle Yeah.

00:22:09.10 nish Yeah, it was yeah it was it was kind ah it was very apolitical because that this is this this is a comedy that I was watching or that was on a lot on TV when I was growing up really, like the sort of, the the the kind of, that sort of fantasy football era and it was, it was it was

00:22:19.11 alexei sayle Yeah.

00:22:24.61 alexei sayle Yeah.

00:22:27.52 nish it in it sort of seemed like it kind of didn't have a fixed political identity.

00:22:33.72 alexei sayle No, well, a probably, which makes it racial makes it um reactionary by definition, I think. but and But yeah, there was also, I've sensed an aggressive kind of rejection of the of ah kind of the you know the history yeah know the history of of comedy, of modern comedy, really.

00:22:51.41 alexei sayle And so I felt like I was kind of,

00:22:51.53 nish Yeah.

00:22:54.05 alexei sayle very much out of fashion for a few years. And then I noticed that started to change in the sort When I started to come back to to comedy, really. And, you know, but it... So it's also, you don't... I'm not...

00:23:07.29 alexei sayle It's, you know, I'm very grateful for that attention. i also know that there was a point when that attention wasn't there. That's also fine. You know, that's I think that's also something you've got to live with is, that is you know, the kind of the sine wave of of of a career that you will be in and out of fashion, really.

00:23:23.83 Talal K Thank you.

00:23:25.40 alexei sayle I think I'm kind of pretty much set now. I was...

00:23:27.96 nish did you Why did you become disillusioned in the 90s?

00:23:31.80 alexei sayle i was

00:23:31.86 nish but As in, with your with why did you stop touring?

00:23:35.40 alexei sayle Well, because i think because I felt like the wind had changed. So what I was doing was was no longer connecting with people in the same way that it did, really.

00:23:47.46 nish Yeah.

00:23:48.18 alexei sayle um And I just, I was, and I didn't have a, I didn't know how to, But I was, yeah, I was still doing, like I said, I was still doing me hit and all that. And I i ah felt like I was trapped a bit in ah in that. and

00:24:05.73 Talal K You had a couple of ah you tried to break America and stuff in it and you.

00:24:10.69 alexei sayle went terribly wrong, yeah.

00:24:12.34 Talal K You came back with your tail between your legs, that must have knocked your ego a bit.

00:24:14.29 alexei sayle Yeah. Thank you.

00:24:17.50 Talal K Yeah.

00:24:18.36 alexei sayle That's not, this isn't your role.

00:24:19.09 Talal K And you had like.

00:24:21.82 alexei sayle I think we're stepping outside our... I think there'll be an advert in Podcasts Weekly. Popular podcast looking for new.

00:24:30.20 Talal K the fuck? It's well established. You went and made a titty yourself in front of the Golden Girls and came back to London.

00:24:37.25 nish Ha ha.

00:24:38.98 Talal K that that You create the canon. I'm just reciting it.

00:24:47.54 Talal K The Golden Girls sent you packing.

00:24:48.90 alexei sayle ah

00:24:49.38 Talal K Said, fuck off out of America.

00:24:49.96 nish but

00:24:53.90 Talal K We want Omid.

00:24:55.00 alexei sayle Yeah, they did.

00:24:56.38 Talal K They brought Omid over.

00:24:58.21 alexei sayle They did.

00:25:01.28 alexei sayle but ah think it takes, I don't know, i mean, it takes me, it takes a long time to, when you've, when you've particularly when you've set a kind of ah template, it takes a long time to re-turn that um um oil tanker around, as it were, really to do that.

00:25:21.36 Talal K My analysis is you you were ah you were so like on the pulse and so underground and and that's what made you who you were.

00:25:22.00 nish Yeah.

00:25:29.49 Talal K But then the 90s, you were so you're too big. You were so famous and so successful. And then ah can't imagine going back to the stage and having to like keep trying to act like you're punching up when you are you are like the top of the top at that point.

00:25:47.22 Talal K So how can you...

00:25:47.60 alexei sayle Yeah, there was a kind of there was a contradiction in that, yeah. I'm still putting that ad in the podcast weekly.

00:25:50.66 Talal K and now

00:25:52.67 alexei sayle But, I mean...

00:25:53.89 Talal K but

00:25:55.28 alexei sayle ah

00:25:55.51 Talal K I wonder Nish, if ah ah you have you always been, because you're considered a political comedian, especially with the MASH report as ah as kind of being on in everyone's homes, you know, for a few years, that show is fucking great.

00:26:02.86 nish Yeah.

00:26:09.32 nish Yeah.

00:26:10.24 Talal K the But when you left the Durham review, was that kind of your intention? Were you political in your standup from the beginning?

00:26:18.22 nish I i mean, i should say that... There's probably one bit of my background that I've ah selectively omitted, and James Acaster is always very keen for me to stress and repeat this to people because when he found out about it, he said it made a lot of sense.

00:26:34.34 nish When I was at school, my, like, extracurricular activity was debating. So I was, like, in the debating society, and the thing that the thing that I did in my fucking debating speeches was fill them with jokes.

00:26:39.62 Talal K Nice.

00:26:47.48 nish So they would be, like, a kind of... argument that I was trying to advance. And then the way that I would move from one point to another was a joke. Like I would, write I would write stuff, funny stuff to put in.

00:26:58.74 nish And when I told James that, who I thought was my friend until he laughed in my face when he, when I told him this story, he, he, he thought he had betrayed me with his laughter.

00:27:03.81 alexei sayle Yeah, they always. Yeah.

00:27:09.95 nish He said, Oh my God, you should always tell everyone that because it makes so much sense of your comedy and personality.

00:27:10.20 alexei sayle Yeah.

00:27:16.40 nish Yeah.

00:27:17.12 Talal K Yeah, it does.

00:27:19.34 alexei sayle yeah

00:27:19.43 nish Like I, yeah, I think I was always interested in, po also, When I was a kid, one of the first stand-ups I ever saw and was conscious that I was watching stand-up was Chris Rock in those kind of late 90s, early 2000s HBO specials. The first one I saw was Bigger and Blacker.

00:27:38.70 nish And eat that stand-up show opens with him coming out and talking about the Columbine massacre. but That's literally the opening. Once he has said, thanks, nice to see you all.

00:27:50.97 nish Shout out to he's shouted out Brooklyn. And then he says, I was on an elevator and four high school age white men got on and I jumped off because I said, you're not killing me.

00:27:53.57 Talal K yeah

00:28:02.49 nish Like ah that's how this thing starts.

00:28:03.01 alexei sayle Thank you.

00:28:05.84 nish And so ah i think a lot of what I understood from minute one, what i i was conscious of the idea that if you could do stand-up comedy, and it would be it could be hugely politicised and it could like engage with real-world issues.

00:28:24.47 nish And I think if you watch some of those late 90s, early 2000s Chris Rock specials, you see a squeaky-voiced man of colour screaming about the news and you think...

00:28:35.12 nish I've not progressed far from teenage debating and Chris Rock ah HBO specials. But when when I was doing stand-up initially, it was all ah just like anecdotal because I think you have to learn i had to learn how to write jokes because I would try and do political stuff, but it would just be me sort of just... It it would just sort of me sort of slightly jokelessly meandering through some opinions.

00:29:02.02 nish And i i spent I had a couple of years where I learned the mechanics of joke writing and was slowly then able to integrate my opinions into my act in a way that was still funny, but also honored the passion that I have for a lot of those political opinions.

00:29:24.76 alexei sayle Me and Chris Rock also share something. We're both great stand-ups. We've been in some fucking terrible movies.

00:29:34.87 Talal K Yeah.

00:29:37.21 Talal K You said it. And a few good ones.

00:29:38.08 alexei sayle His career is a name.

00:29:39.82 Talal K A handful of good ones. Yeah.

00:29:41.23 nish I feel like Alexei's now trying to head Talal off.

00:29:45.12 alexei sayle Yeah, by getting there.

00:29:45.57 Talal K Yeah.

00:29:46.51 nish He's trying to get out in front of the story.

00:29:48.12 alexei sayle Yeah.

00:29:49.58 Talal K and

00:29:50.22 alexei sayle And I've never advertised a betting site like Chris Rock does at the moment.

00:29:54.78 nish what's What's going on? What? what

00:29:56.64 alexei sayle I don't know. I suppose it's that thing where you don't, it's in a foreign market, so you don't think your your reputation is at stake, really, so you can advertise any old shit.

00:30:04.33 nish But in the sort of internet era, it's not you're not there's no really such there's such such thing as kind of an isolated foreign.

00:30:07.33 alexei sayle Yeah.

00:30:08.97 Talal K Yeah.

00:30:10.31 nish but You can't really Bill Murray, lost in translation, whiskey advert your way through anonymously to a couple of million quid.

00:30:15.22 alexei sayle No, not anymore.

00:30:15.32 Talal K It's embarrassing. It's embarrassing, isn't it?

00:30:16.82 alexei sayle No.

00:30:17.87 Talal K But they are, you know, if you get offered five mil for half a day's work, like it's really hard to say no to that.

00:30:18.34 alexei sayle Oh,

00:30:22.75 Talal K I can only, I can only imagine.

00:30:22.74 nish I listen, I understand the economics of rich people.

00:30:22.90 alexei sayle yeah.

00:30:26.33 nish I think I've what I've realized is, and i listen, and I say this in full knowledge that I am much wealthier. you know, I am a wealthy person by any discernible metric, if you consider global averages and even national averages within the United Kingdom, I am a wealthy person, but I slowly am starting to realize I actually don't understand the economics of being a rich person.

00:30:47.48 nish Because sometimes you see somebody on an advert and you're like, why the fuck do you need to, what?

00:30:51.83 alexei sayle Yeah.

00:30:52.26 nish What are you doing?

00:30:54.19 alexei sayle No, doesn't it?

00:30:55.80 Talal K Is there any light you can shed on that, Alexi?

00:30:58.47 alexei sayle um

00:31:01.38 Talal K Because who you you don't really, you don't partake in that, but you must have friends that you see on telly and like, without naming names, but like, how do you, do you understand what that, is it as simple as what I said?

00:31:01.57 alexei sayle Well, it's also, yeah, it's... ah

00:31:13.22 Talal K It's like, they're just offered a massive paycheck for hardly any work and how do you say no?

00:31:16.57 alexei sayle Yeah, some of if you've got no if you got no morals or you know you fluid morals, that that helps.

00:31:23.12 Talal K Fluid morals, that's good.

00:31:24.56 alexei sayle um

00:31:24.54 nish Fluid morals is good.

00:31:26.04 alexei sayle gen but um i mean my I mean, my observation of so rich people is that you live in a world that's

00:31:37.23 alexei sayle You know, I mean, but's it's that line, isn't it, that money is how rich people keep score, really. so

00:31:41.68 nish Yeah.

00:31:42.59 alexei sayle So there they live in a world of you are more beset.

00:31:46.65 Talal K wow

00:31:47.38 alexei sayle by rules and by hierarchy. You're free of that if you're poor. The rich are continually ranking themselves and you have to wear this kind of fucking suit at this kind of dinner and you have to drive this kind of car and you have to go to this kind of place. And it's a kind of, it's a horrible kind of life really in some ways.

00:32:11.51 alexei sayle if you know if you're If you're participating in that kind of competition of the rich really.

00:32:17.32 nish There's a really great exchange in a succession episode that I think gets at some of that, where one of the characters is being is talking about receiving, think, $2 million dollars or $3 million dollars in a kind of settlement, and the other characters are disparaging that option for him and saying, that would make you the poorest rich person in America.

00:32:34.81 alexei sayle Yes.

00:32:38.32 alexei sayle Yeah.

00:32:38.95 nish And I always think about that.

00:32:39.07 alexei sayle Yeah.

00:32:40.35 nish of ah yeah i think I think that that exchange is part of why that show is so good because I think it got at something. It gets at something about the alternative reality that you start to occupy if you choose to become rich and then allow yourself to be untethered from reality.

00:32:55.12 alexei sayle Yeah.

00:33:00.69 nish If you completely change the sort of rules by which you view economics.

00:33:01.36 alexei sayle yeah

00:33:07.47 alexei sayle Yes, absolutely. yeah but But it's also that, you know, mean, it would be fine all that if they weren't also destroying the planet in there and their quest for kind of status, you know, but they are, they're monsters, you know, that the the genocide in Gaza is because of

00:33:15.58 nish Yeah.

00:33:19.20 nish Yeah.

00:33:25.73 alexei sayle You know, people in a way, you know, Henley Regatta in a sense. I mean, that's a bit of a, you know what mean? It's the whole hierarchy of of of the wealthy all across the world. is is It's all connected really, I think.

00:33:39.13 Talal K Of course.

00:33:39.17 nish Yeah, I think that there's, I think... you know, yeah it's having this conversation on whatever it is, Thursday after the Saturday, whatever you want to call it, protest, race riot, whatever that, whatever that thing was that happened in London.

00:33:56.99 alexei sayle Yeah.

00:33:57.92 nish There's an important image in that. And that is the image of Tommy Robinson, Stephen Yaxley Lennon stood next to Elon Musk on a video call because in that moment,

00:34:09.82 nish It's like the Trump inauguration having the CEOs of Google, Amazon, Meta, Twitter, you know, and a it shows you everything, which is there is a kind of alliance between there is an alliance between a kind of Christian ethno-nationalist, white supremacist, fascistic movement and deregulated capital.

00:34:12.89 alexei sayle yeah

00:34:29.17 alexei sayle Yeah.

00:34:29.57 Talal K Mm-hmm.

00:34:30.31 alexei sayle Yeah.

00:34:30.30 nish And theyre alld they they have the same ah objective ultimately, which is state smashing. And whether that's because you want to drag us back in social progress terms to the mid-19th century, or it's because you want to smash the state because there is huge financial upside in a lack of functioning government for a lot of these people.

00:34:34.85 alexei sayle Yes.

00:34:49.69 nish they they They have shared aims.

00:34:53.31 alexei sayle Yeah. Well, yeah. I mean, I'm not saying Chris Rock is doing that just because he does an ad thing.

00:34:57.51 nish Ha!

00:34:59.92 alexei sayle that's but ah Sky Bet or whatever is, Las Vegas.

00:35:02.42 nish We can't pin that on the giant Ray Winston floating head.

00:35:03.76 alexei sayle it Yeah. yeah

00:35:08.04 nish We cannot pin that on the floating Ray Winston head that appears when I'm trying to watch football and asks me if I've updated my acker.

00:35:08.89 alexei sayle No.

00:35:15.76 nish I don't know what an acker is, Ray. I just want to watch some people kicking a ball around.

00:35:18.80 alexei sayle and

00:35:22.04 nish Please.

00:35:23.02 alexei sayle Yeah, well, you go but well yeah, well, you can and you can't really. I mean, I think maybe Chris Rock just went to buy a boat and they gave him, I don't fucking know.

00:35:29.51 nish Yeah.

00:35:32.97 Talal K Fucking hell.

00:35:33.04 alexei sayle But um yeah, and no, I mean, but i mean we are, having moved on to that subject rapidly from Chris Rock, we are, it's hard to, um it's hard to overstate, I think, how much it feels that we are in a perilous ah tipping point, really.

00:35:52.85 nish Yeah.

00:35:55.60 alexei sayle ah Yeah. And, you know, the fact I mean, yeah it's to watch something like the Labour parties, Keir Starmer's Labour parties, connivance in this, you know, on a local level, is...

00:36:12.99 alexei sayle um I don't...

00:36:13.08 Talal K I support flags.

00:36:14.75 alexei sayle Yeah...

00:36:14.87 nish I was...

00:36:15.03 Talal K I've always loved flags.

00:36:16.59 nish I was talking about this... on my podcast yesterday, if

00:36:26.55 nish it's ah if you if you separate all the morality out of it, which I feel like I say constantly, and you probably shouldn't, you definitely shouldn't separate the morality out of things, you know, but if, yeah, you, yeah,

00:36:34.95 alexei sayle Separate the morality out of Jeffrey Epstein. take them just take just let's have this ah Just take the morality out of it. And then he was just providing a home for indigent young women.

00:36:45.87 alexei sayle Yeah, anyway, sorry.

00:36:46.32 nish well there there's a an after he yeah After Jeffrey Epstein died, Norm Macdonald, I would say, tweeted like one of the all-time great... Norm Macdonald had like a a really...

00:37:05.78 nish you know, string of extraordinary turns of phrase.

00:37:08.05 alexei sayle Yeah.

00:37:08.67 nish But I think his tweet about Jeffrey Epstein is like, is one of the kind of all time. It's, it's something it's, i'm I'm just making sure I'm just looking upside. Yeah. It's a man is a coin. No obverse without reverse.

00:37:24.91 nish If you like, remember Jeffrey Epstein is a monster destroying lives of the wicked nonchalance. But for me, I will remember him as the man who killed Jeffrey Epstein. Yeah.

00:37:37.27 alexei sayle That's brilliant.

00:37:38.40 nish RIP Norm. well That is it Yeah, completely.

00:37:39.37 alexei sayle Yeah. I mean, such a loss, Norm Macdonald. remember. just say yeah just i get random stuff comes up. that Just that bit where he's talking about dogs and how Hitler's dog really loved him.

00:37:51.59 alexei sayle mean, loved Hitler. I think it was just, yeah, that's a brilliant fucking line, though. I'm so envious of that.

00:37:55.92 nish and so It's a brilliant line.

00:37:58.04 alexei sayle Yeah, yeah.

00:37:58.85 nish But if you even if you take the moral obligations out of it and you take what we expect from the leader of the Labour Party... it feels like you're not learning the lessons of British history and the British politics in the 21st century, which is you can't defeat Nigel Farage by aping his rhetoric and,

00:38:12.07 alexei sayle Yeah.

00:38:22.47 nish Because the Conservative Party has been doing that really for like my entire adult life now.

00:38:28.47 Talal K Yep.

00:38:28.65 nish they They've been trying to do that for two decades. And it's taken them to, it's taken, you know, they sort of tout themselves as the most successful political party in in the history of global democracy in terms of their their election wins.

00:38:43.20 nish It's taken them to the precipice of total destruction, this consistent, because it's

00:38:45.40 alexei sayle Yeah.

00:38:47.67 nish There was a big study by a bunch of um you know but like academics, a pan-European study that warned centre-left parties that aping the rhetoric of the far right only legitimises them.

00:39:02.15 nish It doesn't actually do the thing that it's supposed to do, which is cut it off at the pass.

00:39:02.50 alexei sayle Yeah.

00:39:06.47 alexei sayle yeah

00:39:06.55 Talal K Yeah.

00:39:06.79 nish and And also it means that you're doing deals with, or you're trying to appeal to people that have no interest in you. Joe Biden... flew to Israel and hugged Benjamin Netanyahu. he joe biden Joe Biden's entire political legacy will now forever be associated with the genocide in Gaza and the return of Donald Trump to the presidency.

00:39:27.07 alexei sayle Yeah.

00:39:29.54 alexei sayle Yeah.

00:39:29.95 nish and and a huge part of Trump's return to the presidency can be pinpointed at alienating core democratic voters by supporting Netanyahu.

00:39:37.76 alexei sayle Yeah.

00:39:39.21 nish And Benjamin Netanyahu has recently said that if Donald Trump had been president in 2023, October 7th, wouldn't have happened.

00:39:39.29 alexei sayle yeah

00:39:47.71 nish So the guy that Joe Biden put his entire political stock in has had so little respect for him as a man and as a politician.

00:39:55.33 alexei sayle yeah

00:39:57.41 nish And it it's, it, It's very alarming to see Keir Starmer as the leader of the Labour Party be unable to learn basic political lessons from what's happened in America, but also probably more importantly, what's been fucking happening here for the last 25 years.

00:40:10.23 alexei sayle Yes.

00:40:12.91 alexei sayle Yes. Have you got any insights onto, is it just stupidity or is it, is it corruption that they're bought and paid for by, know, the billionaire oligarchs?

00:40:23.64 Talal K a

00:40:24.63 alexei sayle mean, have you got any insight into why they're doing that stupid shit?

00:40:26.40 Talal K The million dollar question.

00:40:28.84 nish I'm going to surprise you when I tell you the Labour frontbench is not in direct contact with our podcast and has not been hugely cooperative.

00:40:36.67 Talal K Oh,

00:40:40.10 alexei sayle Yeah.

00:40:41.87 nish We've had wonderful conversations with Labour MPs, but i it's probably worth noting very few of them are still part of the frontbench or how were part of the frontbench when we had conversations with them.

00:40:41.96 alexei sayle Yeah.

00:40:51.96 alexei sayle the

00:40:52.14 nish ah But ah i I honestly couldn't tell you I couldn't tell you, you know, it's an almost Shakespearean arc for Keir Starmer to go from being a human rights lawyer who defends peaceful protesters defacing ah military equipment that's going to be sent to Iraq and Afghanistan to a prime minister who prescribes a peaceful protest group as a terrorist organization.

00:41:00.78 Talal K Thank you.

00:41:03.73 alexei sayle yeah

00:41:12.00 alexei sayle Yeah.

00:41:16.58 nish ah It feels like a kind of, it it feels, it feels Shakespearean in its sort of tragic circularity.

00:41:23.42 alexei sayle Yeah.

00:41:25.97 alexei sayle Yeah. i mean my my I mean, my sense is I suppose, that that corruption the that the real him is, if there is an authentic him, is this guy. It's not the human life rights lawyer.

00:41:35.40 nish right

00:41:37.49 alexei sayle was just something he was doing on the way to become a... This guy, really. Whether he knew it or not, I suspect. I came to your podcast that the other the Sunday. i mean, I was on it.

00:41:48.92 alexei sayle And then I came the next Sunday after you had Zara.

00:41:51.96 nish To see Zara, yeah. Zara Sultana, yeah.

00:41:53.66 alexei sayle and Yeah, how How did you find that?

00:41:57.32 nish Well, you know... i think she I think there's something very depressing about the idea that the Labour Party doesn't have room for someone like her in it.

00:42:07.20 alexei sayle Yes, absolutely.

00:42:07.84 nish You know, especially at a time where we're talking about, hey, how do we animate young voters?

00:42:08.19 alexei sayle Yes.

00:42:11.39 nish How do we ah talk to our electorate that is consuming most of its media through online platforms in a way that feels authentic to those platforms?

00:42:18.61 Talal K Mm-hmm.

00:42:20.98 nish OK, so now you have here, ah you know, a young person who is an excellent communicator, really, really excellent speaker and is authentic and native to the very Internet platforms that you are desperately trying to get a foothold into.

00:42:36.21 Talal K here

00:42:36.55 nish So you have this like, you know, young, modern communicator who is trying to express progressive political ideas that we, you know, you would think that I would think most core Labour voters would subscribe to, which is, you know, addressing wealth inequality, uh, um,

00:42:55.79 nish ah if pushing like undoing the damage done by the legacy of the Cameron and Osborne austerity project, taking a stand against a genocide happening in the Middle East, ah standing up for ethnic minorities and standing up for women's rights and the LGBTQIA community.

00:43:01.54 alexei sayle Yeah.

00:43:14.67 nish I mean, this is fucking basic stuff like this.

00:43:16.20 alexei sayle but Yeah.

00:43:18.06 nish This is. if the Labour Party is not going to stand up for those things, then you start to question, well what is the Labour Party for?

00:43:24.62 alexei sayle Yeah. yeah

00:43:25.75 nish And again, you get into this not learning lessons thing. There's so much hand-wringing and analysis about what happened to the Democrats in the States. ah But a huge part of it is you cannot... ah The one thing I will say, we constantly talk about what we need to learn from this kind of nativist far-right project that's happened in the last decade in a lot of Western European and American countries.

00:43:49.91 nish They never alienate their core vote. The right never, ever wax its own base.

00:43:53.63 alexei sayle Right.

00:43:55.36 nish Now, look, sometimes, i listen, I'm proud sometimes. i'm The left is maddening because of the amount of sort of infighting and the amount of time we spend yelling at each other.

00:44:09.74 nish But in some ways, I'm proud that we actually still have progressive people still debate things with each other and still try and find, you know,

00:44:16.04 Talal K Yep.

00:44:20.16 nish improve ourselves as a movement by arguing. Sometimes it's the most frustrating thing in the goddamn world. Whenever I see in right-wing newspapers, are like cozy consensus on the left.

00:44:26.58 alexei sayle Yes.

00:44:29.21 nish I'm like, what fucking cozy consensus are you talking about?

00:44:30.34 alexei sayle but

00:44:31.47 Talal K yeah

00:44:32.38 nish What are you talking about?

00:44:34.05 alexei sayle yeah

00:44:34.22 nish But it's, but the the thing that, and, and, ah and watching right-wing parties over the last decade, just, ah la you know, reasonable conservatives allowing themselves to be dragged into supporting hard-right nativist projects.

00:44:49.37 nish that they You know, every Republican, there's a quote about them talking about how unfit Donald Trump is for office. You know, David Cameron comes to power as conservative leader in this country, and he says, we need to end our obsession with Europe, and talks describes Eurosceptic conservatives as, ah I think it's...

00:44:55.93 alexei sayle Yes.

00:45:07.97 nish loonies, fruitcakes and closet racists.

00:45:10.66 alexei sayle Yes.

00:45:10.67 nish That's Cameron's phrase for Eurosceptic Conservative MPs.

00:45:10.98 alexei sayle Yes.

00:45:13.62 nish And then he ends up handing them the Brexit referendum. So yeah the the that that it is a thing that I'm frustrated by. I think the right wing of politics has not done enough infighting.

00:45:27.89 nish But what i would say we can learn from them is they they you you you never want ah to alienate your base.

00:45:28.86 alexei sayle No.

00:45:34.90 nish The progressive parties should not be trying.

00:45:35.21 alexei sayle No.

00:45:37.80 nish It should be work not alienating young voters, which are a huge part They should be animating young voters to get. The problem with young people is that historically...

00:45:44.05 Talal K Yeah.

00:45:47.33 nish they've just never voted enough in elections, right? In terms of if you're viewing it through the lens of a progressive party. So what you don't want to do it alienate the young people that do vote because statistically they are likely to come out and vote for you.

00:45:59.53 nish And what you don't want to do is alienate minorities of any description because again, that they, you and also like we're not naive, like the minorities of this country are not naive enough to believe that we've always just picked the least racist party and voted for it.

00:46:05.49 alexei sayle Yeah.

00:46:15.25 nish You know, we're not, we're not,

00:46:15.52 alexei sayle Right.

00:46:17.58 nish unaware of racism that has is is and has existed within the Labour Party. but we we We know about it. we just We know that they're less racist than the fucking other guys.

00:46:29.46 alexei sayle Yeah.

00:46:29.45 nish So like why you would want to alienate those people is sort of beyond me.

00:46:35.13 Talal K Well, that's assuming that's assuming labor is progressive, you know, that, you know, which they're not anymore.

00:46:35.13 alexei sayle Yes, a puzzle isn't it? What?

00:46:39.54 nish Yeah.

00:46:39.97 alexei sayle Yeah, true. Yeah.

00:46:41.88 Talal K You know, it's clearly they're not. Something has corrupted them at the core.

00:46:45.22 alexei sayle Whereas like Lenin said, that you know the the the yeah they the Labour Party you know supports the working class. it is actually It is controlled by the bourgeoisie and the worst of the bourgeoisie. that as as And Lenin could see that in there the 1910s. They are the worst. of the In many ways, they're the worst people in the world. I think the Labour kind of right wing, they're just terrible beyond belief. Yeah.

00:47:10.73 Talal K Yeah.

00:47:10.95 alexei sayle But, I mean, it's yeah it's also, it's in I mean, that that's interesting. I mean, people sometimes say, if i was talking to, you know, let's just have a left party which replicates the right in its effectiveness.

00:47:25.42 nish Yeah.

00:47:25.53 alexei sayle And the trouble is we can't do that, can we?

00:47:25.61 nish Nah. Yeah.

00:47:27.37 alexei sayle I don't i don't think it would work. I mean, if it if you could, if it had work, then fine. You know, I'm kind of a charismatic person.

00:47:32.88 Talal K yeah but Unfortunately, we have fucking standards.

00:47:37.69 nish so

00:47:38.18 alexei sayle Yeah, yeah.

00:47:38.27 Talal K Which is...

00:47:38.83 nish yeah

00:47:39.47 alexei sayle But I know and it's ah it's ah it's a fucking nuisance, isn't it, to have morality.

00:47:42.74 Talal K Uh.

00:47:43.89 alexei sayle It gets in the way of, you know, of of all kinds of things. But I don't...

00:47:48.26 nish And also, it's easier to be it's fundamentally easy to be conservative.

00:47:49.37 alexei sayle Go on.

00:47:52.46 nish And part of that is because if you say anything vaguely supportive of conservative movements, there is a very sophisticated Goebbels-like propaganda operation willing to disseminate that information.

00:47:53.06 alexei sayle Yeah.

00:48:05.49 nish I mean, you know, people wonder how Brexit happened.

00:48:06.90 alexei sayle Yeah.

00:48:09.53 nish But if you look at the front pages of the Mail, the Express, the Sun, the Telegraph, ah Even ah there's been some terrific journalism done by the investigative journalist units at the Times newspaper, but the op-ed pages of the Times have just been filled with bile about immigrants and immigration.

00:48:26.17 alexei sayle Yeah.

00:48:27.51 nish And there was this, you know, this naive idea that social media would be this new democratized space. But social media companies are um owned by tech oligarchs and they have the same ah agenda as...

00:48:38.55 Talal K Yeah. Yep. yeah

00:48:40.17 alexei sayle Yes.

00:48:44.27 nish the You know, Murdoch and Musk are not dissimilar people. they they You know, Musk might dress differently and he might ah behave in a way that Murdoch might find crass, but they have the same basic objectives. They're the same fucking guys.

00:48:57.32 alexei sayle Yeah. Yes, absolutely. Yeah. Just, you know, updated technology. I think as well, if you want to be a right wing person, all you have to do is just take the worst part of your personality and just give it free reign. Just say, I will never, I will never, know, kind of mitigate my envy or greed or just give it, off you go, son.

00:49:19.36 nish but you

00:49:21.05 alexei sayle the darkness within us just there you go and then immediately you'll be a you know you'll be a right-wing supporter whereas what the left is trying to do is is is to is to offer people i think that you have to be the best person they can be but that needs that sort of requires a bit of intervention doesn't it in a sense you have to you have to think hang on a minute you know what You know, my anger, with you know, my anger is misdirected and I don't know where I'm going with this, but, um,

00:49:51.26 nish Yeah. Well, you you also have to, you can't,

00:49:57.54 Talal K Thank you.

00:49:57.66 nish there isn't a left but or progressive version of make America great again or take back control because they're both phrases that imply ah recapturing a a lost time that we have to get up ah our country back to.

00:50:04.11 alexei sayle no. no

00:50:17.42 nish David O'Doherty, one amazing stand-up and one of my my great pals. you said but In kind of 2016 and 17, he did a bunch of shows about the experience of living in Ireland, but ah duke but spending a lot of time in the United Kingdom working.

00:50:35.59 nish And as the United Kingdom brexited and started to sort of seemingly kind of embrace much more regressive political ideas, Ireland started doing things like legalizing gay marriage and allowing women to have abortions.

00:50:45.43 alexei sayle right.

00:50:51.57 nish And he had this kind of, he had he did these shows over that period where through various routines, he talked about the sort of strange experience of ah feeling proud of Ireland and like feeling proud of his country, especially in contrast to the way its immediate neighbour with whom he has obviously a historically fractious relationship was behaving.

00:51:04.45 Talal K Hmm. Hmm.

00:51:12.19 nish But he had this great thing about how ah on the back curtain, he sometimes tapes up, he tapes, he uses white tape and write puts DOD on the back of the curtains. And at one of the shows, he, on the back curtain, it said M-I-R-F-T.

00:51:27.46 nish F-T-F. t ah ftf ah

00:51:35.94 nish for the yeah but anyway it was an an acronym that i am i don't have the ability to remember whilst also talking at the same time but it wasn't explained through the show and at the very end he talked about how make america great again can't translate to ireland because the history of ireland is so miserable and he said the only way you could do that would be and it was the acronym spelled out make ireland reasonable for the first time and he was like that that's partly what he he he hit the The premise of the routine was, in some ways, it's easier for Ireland to be progressive because right-wing Irish people can't point to something imagined.

00:51:49.88 alexei sayle Right, right.

00:51:53.96 alexei sayle Yeah.

00:51:58.83 alexei sayle Right.

00:51:59.19 Talal K Bye.

00:52:02.30 alexei sayle Yeah. Good bit, yeah.

00:52:08.03 alexei sayle oh well I was going to say, start at such a low bass, yeah. Yeah.

00:52:14.55 nish you know ah Even if it's not even if it's totally leave it if it's fabricated, there isn't even the kernel of truth. you know I think and for white Americans, I think there is this sort of...

00:52:21.75 alexei sayle Yeah.

00:52:24.85 nish um You know, nostalgia for the 50s, maybe the Eisenhower era. ah they for I think for, you know, for a lot of the British aristocracy, there is this there is a genuine nostalgia for empire.

00:52:29.69 alexei sayle yeah

00:52:38.10 nish You know, there is an idea that Britain was the center of the universe.

00:52:42.23 alexei sayle Yeah.

00:52:42.27 nish And that is the specific time they're trying to get back to.

00:52:43.22 alexei sayle Well, it was.

00:52:45.11 nish And and you can't really say that.

00:52:45.24 alexei sayle Yeah.

00:52:46.99 nish anymore You can't just fully say that because you can't say what you really mean, which is, I wish we still owned black and brown countries.

00:52:49.32 alexei sayle No.

00:52:53.47 alexei sayle India. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

00:52:54.79 Talal K Yeah.

00:52:55.79 nish but So you sort of couch it in, you know, we need to take our flag back. We need to take back control. And, you know, control of what is the sort of interesting question.

00:53:05.63 alexei sayle Yeah.

00:53:05.73 nish And when you start pulling at that thread, you realize, oh, okay, it's actually a sort of, the whole thing is sort imperial white supremacist fantasy almost.

00:53:15.00 alexei sayle Yeah, yeah. yeah

00:53:16.18 nish Because we don't pull it, but like, we just talk about like patriotic things that you're patriotic about. And none of those campaigns ever sort of go, you know, if you were being patriotic, it I mean, I think sort of, I do find patriotism loosely embarrassing, but if I was being patriotic and I was really trying to think about things that make me proud to be British, you know, the National Health Service is...

00:53:38.90 nish It is genuinely ah e sort of miracle. You know, ah well it's not it's obviously incredibly complicated and there was a huge amount of wrangling. It took a huge amount of effort from a lot of people.

00:53:50.55 nish But one day people in this country woke up and even if they were poor, they could go and see a doctor for free.

00:53:55.86 alexei sayle Yeah, yeah, yeah.

00:53:57.46 nish Like that is something that I would be... really like the Beatles, you know, that the fact that like working class kids could go to art school in the late fifties and early sixties form bands and then produce a band whose tax revenues are so extraordinary.

00:54:05.54 alexei sayle Yeah.

00:54:08.15 alexei sayle Yes.

00:54:14.45 alexei sayle Exactly. It was economically advantageous.

00:54:15.88 nish Yeah.

00:54:16.85 alexei sayle I was just thinking, I think there was a, we could try and get back to a week. There was a week, I was thinking it was John Smith was still alive and was head of the Labour Party.

00:54:27.05 nish yeah

00:54:27.85 alexei sayle The mini Metro was launched. The English football team was Lineker, Lee Dixon,

00:54:35.64 nish You really love Lee Dixon.

00:54:36.02 alexei sayle Gascoigne. Yeah.

00:54:38.28 nish the The only thing that's really surprised me this podcast is the amount of affection you have for Lee Do you not count Kenny Dalglish?

00:54:42.62 alexei sayle Well, he's... I've only met him, I think I've met him twice. He's the only footballer I've ever met, I think. I've met Kenny Dalgles. But, um yeah, but he symbolises.

00:54:56.39 nish Because everyone from Liverpool has met Kenny Dalglish.

00:54:56.89 alexei sayle No, I do. Yeah, no, that was... Yeah, yeah.

00:55:02.00 Talal K you say mini metro?

00:55:03.77 alexei sayle the mini i'm i'm I'm trying to conjure a kind of ah a sunlit week in the history of Britain when Britain was still an economic powerhouse.

00:55:07.10 Talal K One week in history.

00:55:09.22 nish I don't

00:55:11.93 alexei sayle The mini metro, for you know at a hatchback, a little hatch a nippy little hatchback. John Smith, a benign and you know decent person, morally decent social democrat.

00:55:23.80 Talal K Oh.

00:55:26.49 alexei sayle A football team you know infused with...

00:55:29.59 Talal K That was...

00:55:29.75 alexei sayle Talent in very short. Short.

00:55:32.68 Talal K So make make britain make Britain October 1980 again.

00:55:32.80 alexei sayle Lineker.

00:55:32.83 nish ah

00:55:33.96 alexei sayle Lee Dixon.

00:55:37.93 Talal K that what it's?

00:55:38.22 alexei sayle 1980s. Yeah, there you go. That was it. We could just fucking get back. October 1980. Then... Probably...

00:55:47.72 Talal K M-B-O-N-A.

00:55:47.89 alexei sayle then

00:55:49.83 nish had the cla Had The Clash released London Calling? i think that I think London Calling might come out that year.

00:55:52.34 Talal K Mabona. yeah

00:55:54.34 nish It's a great album.

00:55:56.07 alexei sayle probably

00:55:58.18 Talal K Mabona would be the ah an acronym of that.

00:56:00.66 alexei sayle ah Somewhere in Crouch End, Annie Lennox and Dave Stewart were working on the lyrics for, um you know, and Sweet Dreams.

00:56:12.23 nish Sweet dreams.

00:56:14.75 alexei sayle studio In a home studio in Crouch End on an eight-track cassette machine, Dave Stewart and Annie Lennox are working on the lyrics of Sweet Dreams. A young comedian called Lexi Salish failing to sell out the White Rock Theatre in Hastings.

00:56:33.19 alexei sayle The mini Metro is launched. Later that year, he will meet Lee Dixon backstage at How I Got News View. That was later, I think. So, well yeah, let's aim for that, I think. There's a single week when yeah that we reach that pinnacle of of of Britain, and then from then on, it's been a descent, John Smith,

00:56:47.63 nish Yeah.

00:56:51.98 Talal K Let's not fool ourselves. These, you know, these fucking fascists have always been around. They've just never had. I've, They've just got the self-assuredness now that they shouldn't deserve, that they shouldn't fucking be. It is scary.

00:57:07.48 Talal K But like, I've seen firsthand how violent and gruesome these people can be just by the way you look.

00:57:07.90 nish ah It definitely feels like... um

00:57:14.62 Talal K You know, I've seen some in Ealing.

00:57:15.52 nish Yeah.

00:57:17.63 Talal K Not even, you don't have to even have to go up north to see it.

00:57:19.33 alexei sayle Not an e-link.

00:57:21.11 Talal K I saw a brown guy, I was 15 years old in the early 2000s, I was on a double decker bus in Ealing and I heard a ruckus happening downstairs and me and my friends, we all ran down the stairs to see what's going on.

00:57:22.17 alexei sayle An e-link.

00:57:35.02 Talal K There's these three blokes just beating on this brown chap.

00:57:40.04 nish Jesus.

00:57:40.20 Talal K on the bottom decker and just absolutely pummeling the shit out of him. And his white girlfriend was with him and she was like, going please stop, please stop.

00:57:45.91 nish Jesus Christ.

00:57:49.04 Talal K And everyone on the bus was just sitting there watching until finally the fucking bus driver came out of his little booth and like opened the door and like manhandled them out.

00:57:59.13 Talal K And he was the only ah like the only other ethnic minority on the fucking bus, him, me and this guy getting his head kicked in. Everyone's just watching. And then I realized, oh, it's he's sitting with a white girlfriend and they must have been offended by that.

00:58:13.37 alexei sayle what

00:58:13.98 Talal K And, you know, and I'm walking around, I have a white girlfriend.

00:58:14.05 nish Yeah.

00:58:16.50 Talal K I was born here. I like white girls. And, but like, it's, it's, no, I mean, I have a white girlfriend.

00:58:21.25 alexei sayle Just so getting fucked.

00:58:22.05 Talal K I live with her and i

00:58:22.39 nish Yeah.

00:58:25.05 Talal K can't help but feel actually intimidated and scared by what I'm seeing on our fucking streets, you know?

00:58:29.54 nish Yeah.

00:58:31.57 Talal K And even you think, oh, a flag is harmless, I'm just showing my patriotism, but we know the subtext of that and it is intimidating and you know,

00:58:31.89 nish yeah

00:58:40.01 nish Well, and also the premise of these marches, the I think, you know, we thought, well, everyone's tying themselves in knots about how to talk about this without, you know, because you you have to try and persuade at least some of these people to, you know, that this is the these this is not in their best interests.

00:58:57.35 nish You know, like this it's like Tommy Robinson and Elon Musk are not working in the best interests of the white working class in this country. Like that that's just, know, that's... just

00:59:05.51 alexei sayle no

00:59:06.30 nish you know that's it should be self-evident, but it isn't. But also it's difficult to explain to people. I've, I, you know, I, like i I was at the stop Trump March thing yesterday and a guy came up to a bunch of us and was saying, look, I was at the Tommy Robinson March on Saturday. And I, I think that that you a lot of the characterization of it is unfair.

00:59:29.64 nish And the thing that I was trying to communicate to him was, you know, the intent of that, the you know, with so much talk about the Gaza marches, hate marches, this, that, and the other.

00:59:41.38 alexei sayle Yes. Yes.

00:59:41.49 nish The premise of those marches, the premise of why they're being organised is to protest murdering children.

00:59:41.59 Talal K I

00:59:49.35 nish Really, at its core, it is to protest the murdering of defenceless civilians, right?

00:59:49.43 alexei sayle yeah

00:59:54.96 nish That's why they're there. The premise of the Tommy Robinson march, what is the premise of the Tommy Robinson march? The premise of it is that this kind of immigrants are a drain on British resources at its core.

01:00:06.56 nish And that is demonstrably and has been demonstrated on many occasions to be untrue.

01:00:09.53 Talal K fucking lie.

01:00:12.96 nish So if you're propagating that myth, then what is that if not racism? So whether people on the march ah are or are not racist, the premise of the march, the the idea on which that convening of people has happened is at its core racist.

01:00:30.90 alexei sayle Yeah.

01:00:33.27 alexei sayle That's a very good summation of, yeah, because sometimes you do, as you say, there are who are not malign, who are on that demonstration, but they're being seduced into a malign ideology, aren't they?

01:00:33.47 Talal K Absolutely.

01:00:46.60 nish Yeah.

01:00:51.31 alexei sayle Marx predicted all this, of course. so Simple dialectical. Unfortunately, didn't he then he said, ill i I'll do the answer next week. Then he went out and died of his carbuncle.

01:01:02.94 alexei sayle So he never really came back and said what the answer was. He said, I've got the answer.

01:01:08.25 nish ah

01:01:09.30 alexei sayle I've got the fucking answer, right? Dialectical and historical materialism says, you know, a gradual move towards autocracy. But ah ah next week on the Das Capital podcast, we'll do, how we're going to fix it.

01:01:25.70 alexei sayle And he never did it. He died.

01:01:30.22 Talal K shit but if i can say anything to listeners at home like you know this shit isn't harmless and if you hear people talking bollocks fascist racist shit in the pub like you know have it is on you unfortunately like have the balls to stand up and tell them ah they're talking shit um

01:01:31.59 alexei sayle fucking annoying really yeah

01:01:31.67 nish Listen. ah

01:01:39.71 nish Yeah, yeah.

01:01:45.76 nish It's it's definitely's on all of us.

01:01:47.65 alexei sayle yeah

01:01:47.70 nish Yeah. It's all of our responsibility. you know like we It's a collective responsibility. Because the thing is, if Farage takes power and if reform are in charge, it's terrible for them. like you You look at America's suffering.

01:02:02.16 nish Because, you know, Trump can't finance cut tax cuts without cutting Medicaid. Like poor Americans are absolutely suffering here.

01:02:11.67 Talal K yeah

01:02:12.03 nish I'm now also slightly distracted by imagining Karl Marx having to say, and join us next week on the Das Capital podcast. ah In the meantime, if you're HelloFresh is a great way of getting...

01:02:18.98 alexei sayle Freddie Engels will be back, yeah. LAUGHTER LAUGHTER LAUGHTER

01:02:23.96 Talal K ah What fucking adverts would he have?

01:02:29.46 nish is getting is a way of if you're spending a lot of time trying to ah think about how to overthrow the capitalist system HelloFresh actually takes a lot of the stress out of meal prep laughter laughter

01:02:31.16 alexei sayle yeah

01:02:38.81 Talal K No, he wouldn't. He'd be like us. He'd never had adverts and just just rely on Patreon ah supporters. ah We have to wrap. We have to get to the end. So actually, i need to promote our Patreon.

01:02:50.39 alexei sayle so it's

01:02:51.26 Talal K This is the only advert we do on the show is please support this show. It's a grassroots show. We have no budget, no adverts, and we never want to have adverts. So please head to patreon.com forward slash AlexiCellPodcast.

01:03:03.29 Talal K That's patreon.com. dot com forward slash Alexa podcast to support the show. I am in fact, because we've had a couple weeks off recently, um i wanted to make up for it by finally pulling my finger out and I'm editing episode two of Alexi, Lisa and Nigel watch the young ones. And so that is currently going to go on the Patreon very shortly and it will be only for Patreon subscribers to sign up there.

01:03:27.69 alexei sayle noy Lucky, lucky, lucky people.

01:03:27.86 Talal K um And we can't end without asking Nish a bit about his podcast, Pod Save the UK.

01:03:32.96 alexei sayle Yeah, well, you say I was going to say, is there anything you want to plug to angry loners who live on the fringes of,

01:03:35.45 nish Yeah. put it please this but Please listen to Pod Save the UK.

01:03:41.03 alexei sayle Yeah.

01:03:41.00 nish A good episode to start would be ah the one that came out ah three weeks ago because it features a conversation with Jen Brister and Alexi Sale. um

01:03:52.42 Talal K hmm

01:03:52.50 nish and ah And it was, yeah, it was a Gaza special that we did in collaboration with Amnesty International. um And yeah, it was a great chat.

01:04:01.70 Talal K yeah also had mr ddo on there the

01:04:01.65 nish But yeah, it was, Yeah, it was an extraordinary conversation with YL.

01:04:04.41 alexei sayle Yeah, gosh. um I mean, to be in the presence of that man and man who has suffered on so many different levels, is it was kind of unnerving, really.

01:04:09.87 nish Incredible.

01:04:13.65 nish Yeah, it was really special.

01:04:14.26 Talal K say one I kind of wanted to try and fit in asking you some advice for podcasting, not podcasting, but like growing an audience and stuff.

01:04:15.50 alexei sayle Yeah.

01:04:23.90 Talal K But yours is like a spinoff of an American one, right?

01:04:27.58 nish Yeah, ours is a spinoff.

01:04:28.13 Talal K And your first episode was, you got to sit with Jon Favreau and like get interviewed the American one.

01:04:32.77 nish as ah as ah As is just a spin-off, as is a spin-off show. Like, I have no i have no good advice about podcasting. from ah Like, i it's ah it's it's, the whole thing is a mystery to me.

01:04:45.49 nish Like, I, it's, it's sort of, on but I like, i'm ah I'm a kind of first-generation podcast listener because of my age.

01:04:48.75 alexei sayle Me too.

01:04:54.60 Talal K yeah

01:04:54.79 nish And you sort of, ah you know, I still, it's, I still listen to the same 10 podcasts I did about 10 years ago.

01:05:02.19 Talal K Same, man.

01:05:02.42 nish Marc Maron stopping podcasting is like genuinely interfering with my weekly schedule.

01:05:03.26 Talal K Fucking same.

01:05:08.09 nish I'm happy for the guy, but still, fuck him.

01:05:08.33 alexei sayle but

01:05:11.86 Talal K Yeah.

01:05:11.97 alexei sayle when you When you were at the BBC, did they invite you to shit?

01:05:13.70 Talal K He's done it long enough.

01:05:14.97 alexei sayle Did they like invite you to Wimbledon? Did you have a connection with your show?

01:05:18.77 nish No, i didn't get I didn't go to Wimbledon. I would have loved to go to Wimbledon.

01:05:21.46 alexei sayle They didn't invite you to win.

01:05:22.38 nish love the tennis. I love the tennis.

01:05:26.08 alexei sayle I got one visit to the proms at the BBC once.

01:05:28.93 nish Wow. Wow.

01:05:32.67 alexei sayle And I've never been invited back since.

01:05:32.65 nish Wow.

01:05:33.09 Talal K Wow.

01:05:36.56 Talal K Well, let's all...

01:05:36.85 alexei sayle I don't know why I bring that up, really. I just thought because you had this successful show on the BBC for years, they might have invited you

01:05:42.89 nish My relationship with the BBC whilst I was hosting that successful show was a little...

01:05:47.52 alexei sayle was it they sent me a thing the other day it was from something like the the environmental comedy unit and it was like a it was like it's a division of the bbc something i think is is supposed to ring humor out of

01:05:47.83 nish Yeah.

01:05:57.09 nish yeah

01:06:06.32 alexei sayle environmental issues and they wanted me to come down to the welcome institute and do a kind of speed dating thing there'd be drinks and canapes and then i'd sit with a variety of influence you know ecological influences and talk about how we how we could um you know advance ecological issues so i mean i would just say you know your monopoly capitalism is the root of all evil next

01:06:13.40 nish Yeah. Yeah, right.

01:06:23.43 nish yeah right

01:06:33.00 alexei sayle I mean, so I don't think it, but it just made me laugh that they've got this, whatever the fuck, also that they invited me to it.

01:06:35.33 Talal K Fucking

01:06:42.58 alexei sayle I've been at the BBC. we ever Did you have a staff pass?

01:06:45.10 Talal K hell.

01:06:46.34 nish No, I've no i never had a staff bus.

01:06:46.54 alexei sayle Sorry, I'm getting, no, I've never had a staff

01:06:48.13 nish No.

01:06:48.99 alexei sayle I've never, I've never ever.

01:06:49.39 Talal K Oh, I did.

01:06:51.10 alexei sayle Yeah, you did. Yeah, that's right. But I've never ever had to not argue my way into the BBC to do my own show.

01:06:57.97 nish Yeah.

01:06:58.57 Talal K the

01:06:59.85 alexei sayle Every week. I mean, when I had was doing stuff, it was like, i'm no, look, I'm recording.

01:07:05.20 nish yeah

01:07:05.48 alexei sayle You're not on the list, mate, Mr Doyle.

01:07:07.31 nish It was funny, because there was a point where I was actually, made me even like before the TV show, when i was I used to host a radio show for them. And so, you know, it was like it would run sort of 12 weeks of the year. And it was like three months of my year, really.

01:07:25.55 nish And no pass.

01:07:27.76 alexei sayle No.

01:07:29.24 nish No way, man.

01:07:30.85 alexei sayle You're not getting

01:07:30.87 Talal K If they can, they could bring you on as freelance rather than staff.

01:07:33.75 nish Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

01:07:34.09 Talal K It would be, well, my years at the BBC consisted of getting so shouted at for things that weren't in my control, ah being ah listening to Paul Daniels being casually racist and watching dancers sexually harass each other on Strictly.

01:07:35.12 nish yeah

01:07:47.83 nish Oh my God.

01:07:49.11 Talal K ah so

01:07:50.28 nish Jesus Christ.

01:07:50.51 Talal K ah

01:07:51.46 alexei sayle Pretty standard then.

01:07:52.28 Talal K Yours sounds way better. ah

01:07:54.50 alexei sayle All right.

01:07:54.47 nish it Still, is an institution worth defending?

01:07:57.30 alexei sayle Yeah, absolutely.

01:07:57.34 nish I still defend the BBC.

01:07:58.06 alexei sayle I love the BBC.

01:07:58.67 Talal K Oh, yeah.

01:07:58.70 nish It's really important.

01:07:59.26 alexei sayle It's just, it's ah it's like an abusive marriage, I think.

01:08:01.20 Talal K Absolutely.

01:08:01.97 nish yeah

01:08:05.78 alexei sayle Tim Davey comes around and says, you're fucking fat.

01:08:12.26 alexei sayle You're not going out wearing that, are you? Fuck off. This food tastes like shit.

01:08:21.25 Talal K Yes, Tim. Thank you, Tim.

01:08:21.78 alexei sayle No, that's me and Tim.

01:08:22.36 Talal K Yes, Tim.

01:08:24.06 alexei sayle All right, Nish, thank you very much. It was fantastic. I think we we really covered some interesting ground there. All right.

01:08:29.78 nish Thanks everybody Nice to see you both See you soon

01:08:31.63 Talal K That was really nice.

01:08:32.05 alexei sayle Cheers. ah mind

01:08:33.84 Talal K Free Palestine.