Page 94: the Private Eye Podcast.

Hello and welcome to another episode of Page 94.

My name's Andrew Hunter Murray.

I'm in the Priva Eye Studio with Helen Lewis, Adam McQueen and Matt Muir.

And we are going to start off today by talking about social

media.

it's very exciting.

There's a new study out about this exciting phenomenon of social

media, which reveals everyone now hates it and has gone off it.

this is a report by Ofcom, isn't it, Matt?

Yeah, it's the latest.com data that was published last week,

into UK

media uses specifically

online

media, showed that, basically we all hate social media now,

or at least we are not engaging with it in the same way

that

we used to.

the numbers of people who are actually

going

online and

posting, for example, to Facebook

or

to Instagram,

commenting, liking

has dropped to just

under half of people.

And this has

led to a spate of articles that kind of hand ringing saying, is that it for

social media?

oh, now that we are banning it, are we all

just gonna stop using

it after all?

But that's not

quite what the data shows, I think it's important to, to push back.

Ever so slightly against this narrative because I dunno if you notice people,

still look at their phones a lot.

I dunno.

I like, I presume you still look at Instagram.

is it fair to say?

Well, I've

only just joined.

I'm a bit embarrassed about it.

Just as everyone else is leaving,

it's, not too late

to stop

No.

you can,

get out.

Andy's a proper content creator.

And isn't this current a part

of,

this?

What's happened Is that the casual How dare are you Oh, you are though.

I've seen you on there.

But the, kind of casual, like you might just post something for your

friends kind of stuff is dying away and it's becoming more professionalized.

part.

I think That's basically it.

there's,

a longstanding trope here.

The media, all media will eventually, in the same way that all life forms on earth

become krabs eventually.

So

all media,

what?

You just threw that one in

threw that one.

Is that true?

Hey, you can go look it up.

Ation is a real fact.

but all media eventually ends up being video and fundamentally social

media.

If

you think

that Facebook has been around for 20 years now, more or less,

And when

it started, it was a place

where you

went to connect with friends, to attempt to flirt with

people

that you went to

school with,

break up your marriage and post pictures of your holidays.

it is not that anymore.

it has

become a far larger, far

more complex platform series of platforms.

And effectively,

fundamentally, most social

media

platforms are now like television.

Whereas before they were lean

forward participatory things.

Now they simply tend to

be lean back.

So for example, you will log

onto Instagram and

rather than posting to your grid of pictures or seeing

the things that your friends have posted to their grid

of pictures,

you'll

instead be served a vast quantity of video content made by people that

you don't know that is designed to entertain you much like TikTok does,

which is exactly

what Snapchat does,

which is exactly what, YouTube shorts does.

Everything is basically now short term video.

And so it's not that people are using social media less, it's just the manner

in which they are engaging with it has

changed significantly

from being something, as I said, participatory to

something that is

fundamentally about

consumption.

we should say private.

I, as a traditional news organization, will never, ever pivot to video.

But your mention of TikTok iss interesting.

Because that is I think where the pivot really happened.

Everybody decided that the kind of the for you algorithm was just a much

infinitely superior way of content.

when it's

one of the, one

of the oddities of social

media, and whenever

you read people's surveyed about this, people always say

in conversations, you know

what?

I really

miss the old days of Instagram where I just

go on

there and it would be the

things

that my friend had posted.

And I would scroll through and it would go

backwards in time.

And

then there would be, and people always say this, but every single

study that has ever been undertaken by social media companies shows

that's bollocks.

And what

people actually is the algorithmic

feed

because they really,

being served this

continual

stream of infinite content that's tailored to their very specific desires.

And that

is basically a post TikTok, as you say, Helen thing, they

were the first people to perfect that.

And everybody's followed, suit

with this,

but people are posting a bit less, people are partly, because making video is

A faff as opposed to

words or

pictures

fundamentally that there's a slightly higher barrier to entry.

Not everybody

feels comfortable doing it.

And also we are now a little bit more attuned

to

the fact that having your face

all over the internet possibly isn't

a great thing for lots and lots of people.

Yeah.

women, it turns out, tend to have actually often quite a bad

time when they post pictures of themselves on the internet for a

variety of reasons, whether it be abuse or

whether

it be someone using Elon Musk's magical Uni unification tool.

to

turn them into

porn stars.

so you can see

why people might be

somewhat reticent,

and what are the other elements of the Ofcom study that was out last

week or the, their survey is the proportion of people saying social

media is good for their mental health.

That has come down to 36%, which I would say is,

still

who are these people?

remarkably

high.

if you use it a little bit and you just check in, see some funny videos.

most of my usage, apart from the dead Eyed brand extension

that

I'm up to is, just checking into seeing sketch comedy

and which I, don't mind, but.

two years ago, 42% of people said it was good for their mental health.

Now it's 36.

It does still seem very high, but it brings us onto one of the reasons we

wanted to talk to you today, Matt, which is of course, the chat about social

media bans, the huge lawsuits that have been happening against Meta and

YouTube, those are over in the States.

But here people are saying, do we need to regulate this quite firmly

and in particular stop children, under the age of 16 from using it?

So can you tell us law is on that, at the moment.

So

currently

the government is undertaking its one third of the way through

a three month consultation.

so there are soliciting

responses.

basically on the question of yes, should

there be a ban for under sixteens, what would be the

positive consequences of this?

What might be the potential negative

consequences of this?

so far they've had somewhere in the region, they've say they were

saying a couple of weeks ago of 30,000 responses, which by the

standards of government consultations

Is

a fairly big,

big uptake and

it's got another

two months left to

run.

There obviously, there's a lot of

interest behind this.

anyone respond to it?

Is it any member of the

any member of the public?

can do it.

There are three separate consultations.

One is

for parents, one is

for younger people, and one is for any other interested parties who

may have skin in the game for whatever reason, whether it

be professional or personal.

Exactly what's going to happen.

To what may well be a

hundred thousand responses.

How they're gonna be triaged and to what extent it's just going to

be fed into an LLM

because

that's

almost certainly what's going

to happen.

Yes, of

course.

Don't you think it'd be like, they'll do a sentiment analysis on it, essentially,

and they'll go, they'll, ask the LLM to say, what percentage of these said, I

hate social media and I want it banned,

if

get a word cloud, aren't we?

Yeah, Without,

a shadow of it.

doubt, a beautiful dashboard.

just a beautiful thing for showing you what it would've been like

if everyone said those words in a

different order and

and

I'll just say like in the middle of it, I'll just say feet.

What If I

don't like large language models, where do I express my views about that?

In a way that will mean someone reads it.

are really

not

going to like the future.

very

Okay.

Gosh.

Gosh.

Okay, so this consultation's running.

Am I right in thinking I've read that there are trials that are

happening in 300 homes, they're gonna actually experiment with.

Cutting social media

usage

for children.

That's absolutely right.

Yes.

So the, these are limited

trials that are

happening around the UK

simultaneously.

There's another study that was launched

last week, in Bradford, I

believe, which is an exceptionally large longitudinal study over

the course of a year that's going

to track

or seek

to track

the

impact

of social media usage on young people's, emotional wellbeing.

that's going

to run until

2027.

which does rather make one, wonder, okay, so we gonna take a

decision on this before we have all of this evidence,

because, it does feel possibly

slightly premature, But the interesting

thing

about this, and

one

of the really interesting things

about

the debate as a whole

is that

over the course of the 13 years

that I've been writing about these godawful companies

and the terrible things that they've done

to the world,

there

has been

a lot

of research that has

passed across my desk.

Debating the

impact of these technologies on

the mental wellbeing

of

both adults and

younger

people.

And what's been striking about it is the

complete lack of any

sort of consensus for every single piece

of research

that says,

these things are the worst thing for young people since we got

rid of

child

labor.

there's another that says actually they have no discernible

impact at all when you take

into account

all of the other things that are going

on in young people's lives.

And this

kind of comes to the

recent rulings

in

the states,

which while ostensibly

can be

seen as very, bad news for

social platforms, probably aren't

quite as definitive as the media has wanted to paint them,

We, we should say what those are.

There's, a case in California where Meta and YouTube were fined $6 million

for designing deliberately addictive, algorithms to get children in particular.

In, and the other was in New Mexico, which was a $375 million Fine.

Just, to

point

out Andy, that's

not

0.62%

of

meta's

income from

2025.

Okay.

It's a start.

that was over.

Claims that the products led to things like child sexual exploitation

Exactly.

And that the platforms weren't protecting children from being approached by

creeps or potential abusers online,

Exactly.

that kind of thing.

meta and YouTube are appealing those verdicts, but the aim is to try

and launch as many of the cases as possible to try and reign them in

basically,

yes.

the big one whilst the New Mexico one has a very big

headline figure.

meta themselves have laughed off defined frankly.

The one that's more significant

is the LA

case, primarily because

there are potentially thousands of

other cases

waiting in the wings that

were this verdict to be upheld after the inevitable appeal.

Would set obviously a precedent that

could then actually prove quite significant in

terms of potential liabilities

for the companies

and requirements on

them to modify their services to frankly, potentially avoid

any

sort

of huge long tail legal kickback.

The difficulty,

of course,

is that

a

meta is going to appeal and YouTube, has a very

strong ground

for appeal because I think they can make a reasonable

case that they're not actually

a social platform

in a meaningful

sense.

They are,

They really are just, they're

a video streaming platform and I think they can probably do that.

Meta is

a little

bit harder, but the case rests on

the fact that meta's

products are addictive

and

that's quite

a contentious

thing to prove.

So for example, there are literally

no studies

out there,

no studies whatsoever

that

show the technology products of any sort,

but specifically social media

have

the

same effects mentally.

As actually addictive

products, Like it is not the same as smoking or

doing heroin.

Right.

It does not

light

up the

it is, they are fundamentally designed to keep you looking at your screen and

keep you on that platform, aren't they?

I was talking to a, an anti-gambling campaign, or recently who made a

really interesting point, about even WhatsApp, which you think

of as being a sort of relatively innocent one, the two tick thing.

is designed to have you there, you've sent your message, you've

done whatever you're gonna do.

No, you're gonna stay there.

You're gonna keep looking if you're, oh, have they read it yet?

Has everyone in the group read it?

Has anyone, oh, someone's typing.

Everything is about keeping you on that path.

And you can feel that, I feel it myself when I'm scrolling through my phone.

There's a point where I just go

put

it down, Adam put it down and, I just There's A bit more.

you are entirely right.

They are designed specifically because fundamentally speaking,

that's what venture capitalists demanded when they invested very

heavily in these

services and they wanted to see user retention and all of

Interesting.

They're not very well designed for that these days.

I find, 'cause I'm, I was on Facebook for a long, time.

Left it last year.

Again,

exactly

the same problem coming up with Instagram.

Now that all I seem to be getting are sponsored posts.

About things which the algorithm is convinced that I'm interested

in, I'm, a bit of a geek, but I don't need to see 1 million posts

about those two episodes of Dr.

Who that turned

up

in someone's last week,

which seems to be all Instagram is giving me at the

Do you

also get heavily owned by the adverts?

I do.

'cause it's obviously clocked that I'm a woman between the ages of 40

and 50, so all it wants to talk to me about his hair loss and dry vaginas.

And you're just like,

Oh, Viagra.

Viagra.

Viagra.

I'm afraid.

Yeah.

Middle-aged men.

Yep.

Yeah, I'm

getting is Soler panels and

heat

pumps.

I had a

very

interesting experience last year where, for

reasons that I can't adequately explain, the algorithm on

Facebook

decided that

I was a gay

man for about a week.

And it was a genuinely fascinating insight

into a world that I

don't personally experience

lots of very beautiful, muscled men and incredibly handsome knitwear.

It was, Yeah,

It

was a nice time

Turn to at all, or

Not,

not yet.

I'll,

see

how it

limits, the powers of social media.

Can I, drag us back to the prospect of a ban, which would stop us seeing Australia

have just banned it for under sixteens.

They

and we

have, we've had our first kind of little glimpse of

how it's going.

It's

early, isn't it?

It's incredibly early.

It's been a couple of months effectively.

And

the first big

proper government mandated,

data on this is gonna come out, I believe in May

from Australia.

So

that's gonna be

the first proper official cut.

But,

anecdotal evidence, reports that

came out again last week

suggested that about 70% of Australian kids were

just swerving this.

The age verification stuff doesn't work particularly well.

It is actually quite easy to bypass.

And

we've all been teenagers

at various points

in the

distant past, and

we all know that there is nothing more powerful than a motivated

teenager that wants to do something you don't want them to do.

you always find a

way around and

social media bands are no exception.

So firstly, there's

the difficulty

in actually

enforcing this in any meaningful sort of

way.

secondly, there

isn't a coherent

evidence base that suggests that it is necessarily a factor

in young people's mental health Thirdly,

there's also an argument to suggest that by implementing a ban for under sixteens,

what you're effectively doing.

Is, letting these companies

off the hook slightly

because rather than requiring them to make meaningful changes

to the manner in which they operate, you're instead just cutting off a sway

of people from using them.

Whereas it could be argued, that it would make more sense to

attempt to make them change the

way in which, for example, algorithmic, content delivery

functions or the concept of an infinite scroll, which would theoretically

benefit all users rather

than simply

preventing one contingent from using the platforms.

I don't know how I feel about this.

'cause I think my analogy for this always is, tobacco and you are right there.

It is different in the sense that we just had ev straight up

and down evidence eventually by a certain point that was killing

people.

Yeah.

But you could say all the same things, which is that kids, would send their

mate, their older mate to the shop to buy,

cigarettes for them or or actually, should we ban it for kids or

should we try and drive the tobacco companies outta business altogether?

and I think all those things are true, but I think there is some social

power in saying we think these things are poisonous and we are against

them even if people get round that

this is completely fair.

And I

completely agree with you.

I suppose

the other point that I would make,

which is I think slightly ignored in this

debate, is the extent to which,

over the course of the past decade, these

platforms have become

infrastructural.

they're not

elective really anymore.

There is a certain extent to which.

Significant sways of modern life require

the

ability to navigate these

platforms,

whether it be for social reasons or increasingly for administrative reasons.

There's also

the fact that, okay, so

16 year olds are

going to be given the

vote, right?

Where, do most young people

currently get their news from?

Oh,

it's social media.

Do you

wanna, cut

off the place

that they are informed about the world, whilst at

the same

time giving them the power to

affect the movement of that world in

a more significant

sense?

I dunno,

it,

you're not being socialist enough here, Matt.

What you need to do is mandate them all to receive a copy of private

Eye state issued copy of Private

Are you somehow

telling me

that 15 year olds don't all private

eye?

Helen?

I hear there maybe some of them

don't,

they're not meant to, but you can send someone into the shop to get

for

you.

so

what,

happens next?

We wait for the

consultation to

end.

Although, the

Prime Minister

has been making increasing noises, about the likelihood of that

being a ban in some way, shape or

form.

the House of

Lords is obviously mad keen on this

Baroness Kidron keeps slapping amendments

onto every single bit of legislation

she seems

capable of doing.

Yeah.

she's she, this is

very much her hobby

horse

and

so this is be beam Kidd on the filmmaker

isn't it?

Who made a film

IRLA few

years

Yes, Exactly.

Which effectively radicalized her into believing that

all of

these companies should be

fundamentally torn apart.

so many

of these attempted amendments

there was one that was almost put through a couple of months ago

that would basically abandon under sixteens from using Wikipedia.

because it was so broadly written.

there's currently

one about

chatbots that

Barron's Kidron attempted to implement

into a piece of

legislation which would, I think seemingly ban, ban kids from using, any

sort of AI

related

thing, which if you consider how much AI has been injected

into all sorts of products becomes

problematic.

and this

was also in evidence at a common select committee the other week when, once

again the charming, I need to remember this ma name will Freda Fernandez,

who is, the spokesperson

for X on safety and

thankless job.

You

You know what?

I

get the impression

that he's very well remunerated.

and I think

he probably sleeps quite well

at night.

but he was

quizzed about,

X's algorithm and

whether or not

it's right wing or whatever,

and he gave

some very smooth

sounding

answer about the fact

that the algorithm was

transparent

and.

It wasn't challenged

by anyone.

And that's because

people don't really

unders, They use the word

algorithm as some sort of complexity thing as though they

actually know

what that means.

and in

most cases

they don't.

And so currently,

for example, the way the

algorithm on X

works is

that basically it, it throws stuff into

gr.

and ize, and no one knows how AI works.

So literally

nobody on the planet you can write, you can make that transparent.

But

there's a whole big black box in the middle that

nobody understands.

And lots of algorithms

are like

that now.

Like

the major social platforms are all built

on math.

recommendation maths that is so complex

that even

the people who built it can no longer really get a

comprehensive picture of exactly

how it functions in any given way.

we haven't really talked about

X

being now a. full of very euphemistic CSAM child sexual abuse material.

Which is, it's stuffed with it.

This is grok produced stuff.

Is

there any appetite to tackle that in a legislative way?

I presume this is in off comm's remit.

Because it's

AI services

Yeah.

That isn't

currently

under the terms of the

Online Safety

Act.

Come again.

Yeah.

Ai, AI

and chatbots don't currently fall within the remit

of the Online

Safety Act.

So

it'll require the online safety

Act to be tweaked.

which

even though they're within X

but it's a separate, it's, ai so it's different.

child sex abuse material is

illegal.

is that not just a fairly straightforward, should there not

be prosecutions under existing law?

Does it matter how it's produced?

One might, one might argue out the, you.

I'm, I'm very

to,

yeah.

I'm

very prepared to,

yes.

But, I suppose there

are also questions about, and without wishing to

get into.

Fairly unpleasant conversations about gravity of imagery and things like that.

There are questions about the extent to which it is

technically

falling foul of CSAM legislation as it is.

Whether it's a gray area, et cetera.

And that, is very

unclear.

It's also riven with code words, right?

It's all like

liter

or whatever it might be.

Like people make these arguments that what they're actually doing right.

It's like an ambiguous teenage person.

And I think that's something that the

AI thing is also quite bad for, 'cause people can argue that I never

prompted it to produce child sex.

I, I simply said, I want an extremely young looking girl, but of, legal

age.

It seems like there is an appetite in the UK to dish out a beating

to plenty of these companies.

It doesn't feel like it's a vote loser to say, certainly I

want these, things dealt with.

that's probably why Stama is leading on it.

it's something people

want to

It's, one of the few areas

where he can do

something that people seem to want and the difficulty of course is that,

and This is something we're gonna come

up against again and again, is

that there's an extent to which one could argue these companies are

fundamentally too big to regulate.

What meaningful sanction can

you place on

a company

that is worth literally trillions of dollars?

I hesitate

to say something

Polyannish, but I'm about to some sort of global coalition

that, where all the

world's countries

come together and

decide

to regulate

in

parallel.

And that's definitely not gonna happen.

When We've got a White House we've aligned themselves completely with any

sort of restriction on, social media.

Is a, is an attack on free

speech?

isn't it?

the

State Department and the decline of the

West.

The

State Department was quoted I think

a week ago.

Specifically calling out X as a positive vector in the war against

foreign influence and propaganda.

what are

you gonna do?

that's

oh, I'm depressed,

It's a cheering note to move us

it's Why you bring

me,

everyone?

Oh, am I going look at Instagram for a bit to cheer myself up.

Look at some cat

videos,

let's come now to the local elections, which are happening in a month's time.

I know anyone watching or listening to this would've been, excited already.

You'll have been watching all the launches, collecting all the pamphlets

you can get your hands on already.

But they are going to be very interesting and they're gonna be interesting partly

because this is, I think, the first big electoral test in a nationwide

sense of Reform UK and the Greens.

we had a little bit of it

in

the last general election, but since then their numbers have absolutely shot up.

we thought it might be worth finding out what reform and the greens

actually propose in policy terms.

obvious place to start on this is the fact that, reform have, said that they would

keep the triple lock on pensions, which is a kind of really interesting, move for

them because I, it was, I, thought it was a brave and good and therefore I couldn't

really understand why they had done it.

They'd said they would scrap the triple lock up till now.

Essentially the issue with triple lock, it was brought in 2010, As a

way of saying we think that pensions have not kept up with inflation.

We're gonna introduce these three measures by which it will always rise

It's whichever is highest out of inflation wage increases.

Or 2.5%.

Exactly.

So even if inflation and wage increases are both on the floor, it'll still go up

two and

a half

percent.

Yeah.

Then what happened is obviously the acts as a ratchet and not

quite often you can get two bumps in a row from the triple lock.

So one, one measure goes up one year and the next measure goes up next year.

Yeah.

And actually it goes up way above inflation.

So we have this post-financial crash situation in which, in real

terms, working people's incomes have been really stagnant, but

there has been this constant ratchet

effect.

And this, the triple up brought in for very good reasons.

Pension of poverty was, extremely high.

We've now got a situation actually where I think if you take into account

housing costs, pensioning comes, are on higher than working income.

So in one respect, what ev someone she should be going is, thank God no, many

fewer grannies are freezing in winter.

Well done the triple lock job

done.

Unfortunately there is a problem, which is that the older people who get the

triple log also vote in enormous numbers.

So no party is willing to put any expiration date on

this constant up rating.

Essentially that outpaces

inflation.

And it's the only benefit that's pegged that way, isn't it?

is that,

Yeah.

in fact, working age benefits were for a long time under the coalition were frozen.

They weren't even being uprated by, inflation.

So actually losing money in, real terms for those.

so

yeah.

Yeah.

So reform have just said within the last week, oh actually no, the triple lock is a

lovely,

is a good idea.

And it's, they're not the only party being dishonest on this.

See, also.

Labor, the Conservative party, the liberal Democrats,

the greens have been dangerously radical in that they propose only a double lock.

They proposed removing the two point a half percent, and I think it's gonna

be whichever is higher out of, earnings

increases

or inflation.

Has anyone gone for the quadruple

yet?

Is

it gonna be like razor blades

Just more

and

more.

I think there was something, wasn't

that the last general election?

I'm sure

Cak

proposed.

Yeah.

So it's giving me vibes.

I remember this.

The really interesting thing is, I know I'm addicted to sticking my hand in wall

sockets in terms of things I talk about that the amazing defensiveness about

this subject is really extraordinary to me because as soon as you say, maybe we

should have a double lock or a single lock, maybe it should just go up with

one measure of inflation and Yeah.

And track the economy in that way.

People say, I've worked hard all my life, I've paid in.

Why don't you take it off immigrants instead, like the level

of defensiveness that you might slightly tweak this benefit Yeah.

Is really extraordinary.

People clearly take it in a spirit of you don't value me.

Anymore if you say you're gonna take away the triple lock, like I see

one of those things where it feels like a very emotional response,

whereas

I think it sounds like you're saying is that it's just not sensible

to say for every square on this chess board, I will put on double

the number of grains of rice.

At some point that's gonna become an unsustainable thing

to

do.

Yeah.

If you follow the projection, there would be a point at which it would

consume a hundred percent of GDP.

Okay.

If we, we logically take

it I don't see a problem with that.

and I think it's pretty weird and a bit, age phobic that you do.

I'm just

as the eldest

in the room.

Sounds good to me.

Yeah,

I know.

the thing that's really interesting about it is actually it has good

support throughout all age categories.

This is not a situation in which absolutely.

Pensioners love it and young people think, sold you actually most

people are in favor of the idea of

the triple lock.

Okay.

But it's one of those things that obviously at some point it's gotta

end and it's really fascinating game of chicken to see who will

be the one who actually finally

does it.

Yeah.

and given the mess that we've talked about before in this podcast, that

labor got into with even means testing winter fuel payments or restricting

them.

still

that's now

in, that's now come no radioactive, completely toxic.

Yeah.

there have been various other kind of gimmicky, events from reform.

Nigel will pay all your electricity bills for a year.

Nigel will give you some cheap petrol, but just you, and it's

become a very lotfi event,

in exchange for lots of your data about your voting habits.

Which has been very

useful,

learned off Vote Leave, who did an incredible job where they had a,

essentially like a pools competition for predicting, I think it was a football

thing, and it was like the chances of anybody correctly predicting all of the

games was infinitesimal, but in order to sign up for it, you had to hand over yes,

very important, valuable data about your address and email and, then you could get

text messages from the campaign seen as one of the great campaigning innovations

of the 2010s then, because a lot of people who weren't really interested in politics,

but were the kind of people who might vote leave if they could be got to turn out

right, registered and signed up for it.

So clearly Nigel Farage has learned, a lot of stuff about

campaigning over the last decade

and a half.

That's learning from social media as well, isn't it?

To go back to our first

talk,

the,

the email address point is actually

a really interesting and important

one.

So if you run

adverts,

on social media platforms,

you can create what are effectively called lookalike audiences.

So the idea

is that

you

have a database of people.

You have their email addresses,

you feed them into for the sake of argument, what, let's

say meta.

so to advertise

across Facebook and Instagram.

Meta will look

at all

of these

email addresses it has data about all

of those people.

And you can say, find me people who

are like that.

So

if you have

a database of reform voters, you can give them to

meta and meta will go out and

find you people

who it thinks are like those people and who

therefore

are also likely to vote reform.

So it becomes an excellent way of multiplying your potential reach with

very,

highly targeted advertising.

which

is

also how MRP polling works, right?

Is you essentially correct for sampling binds by looking at the

type of people demographically that are in every constituency.

And then you can have more a sense of what those kind of people you, where you'd

expect them to vote to check your waiting.

Okay.

But this is, which was now I think, it's very hard to talk about how politics has

changed just due to the huge amounts of data that we have on people, but they,

those are two very obvious examples.

Yeah.

However, there is also still a place for the brute force, 'Would you

like some free money?' Approach to politics also still very popular.

Very

popular,

yeah.

But the problem that is still dogging reform is personnel.

related.

That's a bit of a euphemistic way of putting

It They will keep on recruiting

those Nazis.

do

you mean the Welsh candidate who did the Hitler

salute?

the one

I was thinking

Yep.

there's also Simon Dudley, the housing spokesperson, who told

a discussion of Grenfell Tower, that everyone dies in the end.

Do you know what I just because again, wall socket

Wow.

Wow.

You're going to-

that wasn't, that comment was abhorent.

He shouldn't have said it.

It was a casual, flippant, cruel thing to say when lots of people lost their lives.

Yeah.

The point he was making, which is that post Grenfell housing regulations mean

that we haven't built a lot of housing and that has caused a lot of misery

and unhappiness from people who are stuck in moldy, horrible temporary

accommodation because of the missing houses that haven't been built.

Yeah.

Was a fair one.

Oh yeah.

And it annoyed.

The hell outta me that everyone got their free hit in on how terrible.

It's, we will never have the sensible conversation that actually, for

example, the staircase requirements and things like that Yeah.

Are stopping houses being built.

And that is a huge crisis.

That means kids are growing up in hotel rooms.

Anyway, so that's my, I'm

today I've defended a reform

Look spokesman.

I

at you're sticking forks into every socket.

you can find.

let's keep playing.

I love this.

but Hitler salute guy.

I'm against that just

for

clarification.

Interesting.

Interesting.

Okay.

but they, I mean they keep having these, they've got their, they've

got their grab bag of former Tories.

many of the, best and brightest

you're talking about Bobby J

aren't Zha wick Braman,

which set do you think puls, boas, voters the most, do you think

it's the sort of Nazi salutes and, Grenfell appalling tasters or the,

the many members of Boris Johnson's

cabinet?

I

I

I don't think either of those are winners

in

terms of

attracting voters.

so I read Matt Goodwin's book.

I've done my, I've done my Time in the Minds.

Yeah.

And one of the things that was really interesting to me about that

book a, it's terrible, it's just a, wine of white grievance and like

it is actually, it's x in book form

in that it's very poorly sourced, overtly racist, and actually just

dull.

Not even the interesting racism, Andy, that's what I really object to.

But what's interesting about that is he got absolutely slaughtered for that

book in the Spectator, in the critic, in Unheard in all of the GB news.

On GB news.

He did a debate with Andy.

12 as a guy came.

And I thought, that's fascinating that there is no solidarity

on the right for this guy who is, who's just run as a reform

suggesting to me that the most repellent figure in reform is

actually, it's Matt Goodwin.

Clearly other people who have people who agree with his

politics hate him personally.

And I think that's very

impressive.

Do you think we can expect to see Goodwin caping for restore.

no.

They really, hate

him.

Is he not

racist

enough

for that?

They think he's a liberal squish who's no.

'cause they think you were in 2016, which is true.

He was writing articles for The Guardian about how terrible Islamophobia was.

They think you are just, you are just, you've just switched for, a tension.

Astonishing unanimity across the right for the h Matt

Goodwin.

Very impressively

done.

So maybe it's something we can all agree on.

I, thought it was

a bad book

and it turns out people who agree with the politics thing's

a bad

book that, that's, but it's selling like the clappers Andy, Sold more than my book.

So who's the real winner

here?

Should we come to the Greens?

why

not come to

green?

Okay.

their policies are.

double lock on pensions.

Very exciting.

And they've got a range of other interesting proposals, haven't they?

Which

I went back and I read the Greens 2024 manifesto and the Reform 2024 manifesto.

And they are interesting mirror images of each other.

So the reform is basically, we'll have tax cuts, huge tax cuts for both individuals

and businesses and we'll pay for that by scrapping all this net zero bollocks.

So essentially let's have loads of carbon and that's how we make our sums work.

Also, they claim they were gonna get 50 billion of savings from waste,

which is one of those ones that I love.

It's like planks constant.

You just put it in there to make your sums work.

So their one is basically tax cuts for people we like funded by more carbon.

The Green manifesto was direct money transfers for people we

like; pay rises for doctors more money into the care system.

Teachers funded by a tax on carbon.

Huh.

So there there is like giveaway money in exchange for, I think they were talking

about 120 pounds a ton tax on carbon.

Okay.

And, obviously this wealth tax of 1% on people who have more than 10 million or

2% on people who have more than 1 billion.

Yeah.

Of whom they're only, they think 171.

So it's questionable.

But they were just very interesting of two big money giveaway packages in various

ways, either through tax cuts or direct spending funded for by things involving

carbon, which I thought you'd appreciate.

Yes.

That's very

interesting.

They've both got a, carbon based thesis of the, of the economy.

and the other thing that's really interesting is that

they've both now got podcasts.

the

so both reform and the

Greens.

I've listened to the new Reform UK podcast, which is fascinating to me.

The first one's out, it's about 30 minutes.

It is produced and sounds exactly like a Radio Four documentary.

So it follows Nigel Farage.

It even has some criticism of him.

It has protestors blocking him.

It's never really said quite what they object to about him, but

there's, but then Boo Protestors

and it follows him giving a speech at a venue where it's a 900 capacity venue

and there's 300 people in the overflow.

So he goes and gives a speech to those guys and does a q and a with them too.

So the message throughout it is, the thing that's also funny is it's voiced in A,

B,

the same.

thing.

The same thing happened after the Sermon on the Mount.

There was actually an overflow The mount.

yeah, Small

there was A spin room as

well.

the spin doctors told you what he actually went,

Why he'd come out.

Christ has done a terrific job tonight.

He's really shown that

the peacemakers

are gonna be blessed.

Yeah.

Big night for the

Meek.

but

the thing that was interesting about that was also the thing funny, if you

listen to it, you're waiting for it to turn into a kind of Look Around

You style spoof, because it sounds so exactly like a, BBC dock around you.

And he goes, 'Nigel is coming down the road.' You are waiting for it to

go, like 'he's got an enormous fish',

but something completely bizarre and random.

So that's one approach, which that it is not visualized.

So it's up on YouTube, but me's audio, imagine

old school podcasting,

whereas the Green's version of podcasting is Zack Polanski's Bold Politics.

And this is much more what you have come to expect

from

the world of vodka

casting.

So say bold, politics.

I'm sorry,

I

had bold like keys in a bowl

and I

thought, oh, that's another green

I'm

not totally sure about.

Okay.

Compulsory swinging.

Yeah.

It's bold, but I think it's got something.

Anyway, so it's, Zach Polanski interviewing people,

basically.

Which is the classic.

Matt, you've probably listened to a million of podcasts in this genre and

you see it in the Sphe a lot, right?

The same circulating group of people all just interview each other

And Endless Or Gavin

Newsome Yeah.

You

Is there a nice brick wall behind

him with Yeah.

the standard podcast

setting.

Yeah.

And the

kind of slightly oste and the Branded

microphone.

Yeah.

but, it's, what's fascinating about that is a, it puts him in a

slightly kind of beater role, right?

'cause he's the interviewer, whereas Nigel would never do that, Nigel is the star.

So it's a slightly more humble approach in that sense, but also

he has basically transplanted the Corbe Knight intelligentsia wholesale

lock stock, and burial into it.

So it is James Medway who advised John McDonald on economics, grace

Blakely, Rachel Shabby, Owen Jones.

the, failure of Your Party becomes even more stark in this context, right?

Because there was clearly an establishment there and a group of outriders and

thinkers and the Green Party has just got them like they are now, all of them,

much more into Zach Polanski than, and, essentially it's gonna be interesting,

we'll rerun this election with a Jeremy Corbin who doesn't complain all

time.

You know what I mean though,

but like you do.

Yeah.

In the same way that, that, Reform podcast is Nigel far going and speaking to people.

'cause he loves doing that.

He loves Jason.

People going, oh, the Guardian won't like this.

Zach Polanski loves going and talking to people saying, oh,

the Daily Mail won't like this.

Yeah.

Both of them

have got that always on content creator ability.

And David ppl, who ran the Obama campaigns and the ka the Harris campaign, wrote

an op-ed in the New York Times last week that said essentially this political

candidates now are content creators.

You need to have a studio, you need to be 24 7 pumping out your

messages, owning your audience.

Yeah.

Like on, And that is, to me, is what distinguishes Nigel Farra and Zack

Polanski from Chemi, badnock and Ki

it

all comes back to

social media again.

To square the

circle

slightly.

because

it's all about video now.

You need to

be punting out video because that is what fills these platforms, and

that is where people get

their news.

And that's cross demographic now.

Fine.

Okay.

So older audiences still go to mainstream media

first.

Yeah.

But

for

pretty much every other

Coterie 50

below,

like

it's, mostly

social based

discovery now.

It's,

it's in feed.

You see your headlines or people commenting on the headlines, or

podcasters pretending to podcast about the headlines that they might have read

yesterday or heard about from some other

podcaster.

It's, a soup,

basically.

Yeah.

And

the politicians that do well are the ones who are good talkers.

That is the kind of table stakes now to entry, which is why So

Angela Rain is going to launch a podcast, which is exactly what you

would do if you wanted to be labor

leader.

Is it her and gov?

the first

episode?

I wouldn't bet against that.

That sounds like the kind of thing that would happen.

It's very interesting.

This is a separate point really, but podcasting has a reputation

or a feeling of being authentic.

And that's why you often get people to say controversial things.

Stick their fingers in wool sockets on podcast is 'cause people think, no one's

listening.

Or

I

don't

mean that about, I don't mean that about

their, this

podcast, which gets terrific numbers, it's more conversational.

It's more intimate

a medium.

It's cozier.

I think

that's the

co thing.

So both the things interesting is that Nigel Fr was like a fake documentary.

that was essentially, it was, designed to sound like BBC content, but it was

all about how great Nigel Farage was.

Which is really interesting for that audience.

Yeah.

Whereas the, Zach Polanski one is basically look at all these

people who are terrific friends.

You are among friends.

being on the left is not a minority opinion.

Lots of us are socialists.

We should come out and say it.

And, creating that idea of a kind of here is a, gang that you can be part of,

I

think

is really, It's really interesting, again, it's, all things are

fundamentally tied together.

But what we were talking about with the changes in social media in the first part.

are Moving from a, social connection where it's your friends and you're

seeing what they've done and, what that and their holiday pictures to

a sort of parasocial one where you are following these, high profile,

celebrities or politicians, whoever.

And it's exactly the same thing with that, isn't it?

It's you are being invited into the gang and invited to, to, come along

with the person rather than it be the politician at the lecter and who's

just making speeches and things.

And it does well.

there is an Army out there of people, you will probably see

some of 'em in the comments under underneath this, this very podcast

as we speak, who are absolutely vehement a bit like they were with Jeremy Corbin.

they're fully signed up to the calls and will accept no criticism

I see even legitimate things.

and Zach Klan's been very good at this when there have been legitimate things

in, in the right winging press about, his stances and his background, absolutely

said, these are smears and I will not be cowed by, the right wing media.

And it's, that's a great narrative, isn't it?

I will not be cowed by the right wing.

Media is a very good phrase under almost any circumstance, no matter

what you've been caught doing.

and I, and my big criticism is Zach Lansky, I think he's incredibly

talented political performer in a lot of different ways, but that he has got a,

an appetite and a talent for reinvention.

Yes.

he

was

Lib Dem.

He was at Lib dem at the height of austerity.

Yeah.

His, he changed his name because he wanted to embrace his roots more authentically.

he's somebody who, he was an actor.

I think you find out all the criticisms that people made about

Tony Blair, he was a bit too

slick.

I feel like there's a journey of discovery that people are gonna be

gone when they, in 10 years time, they might go, oh yeah, that guy, he was a

bit too slick, but works very well now.

Works

very

well.

Can I give you my personal scoop on Zach Polanski?

Yes.

Yes.

I was

in the same gay pub as him on Saturday

night.

Get out

out

that's what they said to me.

No

brilliantly

with my top investigative journalism hat on.

Didn't notice.

Hang a

minute.

He didn't notice

you?

no, you wouldn't

expect

him to

notice me.

Okay.

I didn't notice

him, We went in, had a look round thought.

Oh no.

It's all straight women.

It's all head nights.

We'll have one point

go

home.

Zach

Polanski was there on the dance floor the entire night.

Apparently.

The only scoop I can give you, 'cause of a friend of mine is very nice

shoes.

What was

he

dancing

to?

I do, I do not know.

I was, you're

Can you go away and do a journalism on

this, one.

It's

good playlist at the, food and Fruit.

Sam,

Island.

Free

drinks,

please.

Lovely.

There

we go.

We've entered this with Pon Con, so that's good that we brought this house

full

circle.

We're finally going the proper podcast.

route.

Yeah.

We've got a very exciting new format.

this week we are going to be doing a play.

Adam, you have been following.

The very convoluted, long Messi and expensive trial between Prince Harry and

colleagues and associated newspapers, the daily mails, publishers, and I

believe you have got a dramatic extract

us.

we've talked a lot about this on podcast three, so I'm not gonna go into all

the ins and outs of it, but essentially the story of this at the, end of the

trial last week, David Sherborne, who was the kind of inevitable barrister as

he is in all of these celebrity cases for the, the, claimants was reduced

to, a closing speech in which he said that he needed, although he couldn't

offer a lot of specific evidence for instances of, unlawful activities being

undertaken on behalf of Associated,

he asked the judge to extrapolate from what evidence he had been able to find.

his

on.

That's, not

allowed, is it?

this has been the ongoing argument in fact between, Mr. Justice Nicklin and

David Sherborne throughout the trial.

and I do mean argument though, have been, days I was in court, there was

some extremely, TSE words exchanged between the judge, and, the barristers

for Prince Harry and his pals.

what, Sherborn said in his, in, his final speech, and this lovely image,

but I'm not sure it's a winner.

It's

a bit like playing pin the tail on the donkey with us

being partially blindfolded.

That is happened.

the Tel donkey

traditionally

would well fully blindfold.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Partially,

it just becomes a

very

easy

game

a look

if you're

Very,

it's not the

it's backend

with us being partially blindfolded and there being very little donkey

left for us to pin the tail on.

which Does not sound like the best party game ever does it.

But what he was saying in that case was

that, that

they've been unable to, to find a lot of specific evidence

for instances of unlawful,

un unlawful information gathering.

Which he pins, if you like, on the fact that, there is very little paperwork

remaining from the period in question, which does initially look very, suspicious

until you remember that the period in question is going right back to the

1990s and, into the early noughties.

And

the point that Associated lawyers made, when they were on the stand was that, you

don't retain documents for all that long.

Can I ask you a question, which is,

were there perhaps any amazing emails or text messages between Prince

Harry and members of the press reveal

during this trial?

I see

what

you are doing.

Objection.

She's leading the

witness.

She absolutely is.

Harry's evidence right at the outset of this case, when, everyone was

taking a lot of, a, lot of notice of who was turning up at the high court,

was that, he said it was heartening.

He genuinely was on the verge of tears in the witness box on the 21st of January.

He said that the mail on Sunday had a campaign and obsession of having every

aspect of my life under surveillance so they could get the run on their

competitors and drive me paranoid beyond belief, isolating me, and

probably wanting to drive me to drugs and drinking to sell more of their

papers.

It was suggested to him at that point, actually back in the day, he was quite

keen on talking to, journalists himself and members of his social circle, his

kind of friends who he, he was ping about with back in the, early noughties.

were,

leaky that they,

were giving stuff to the press.

He, said, absolutely not insist they weren't leaky.

He said he would immediately cut off anyone he even suspected

of talking to the press.

"For the avoidance of doubt," he said, "I'm not friends with any of these

journalists and never have been".

Now in a sort of mic drop moment in the last week of the trial.

Yeah.

A tranche of Facebook messages we're back to Facebook and social media again were

revealed between Harry and Charlotte Griffiths, who was, the diary editor

on the Mail on Sunday, kind of high society diary that she used to run.

they did.

Appear to show quite a lot of evidence of him being friends with her, certainly

for a period the period in question

in December,

2011 to January, 2012.

Now

we have to specify, 'cause Harry is now recreate, he's the sinner that repented.

he's entirely a campaigner against the press.

he's very right on now him and Meghan supporting all

sorts of progressive causes.

This is not that Harry, this is Harry back in the days of, partying.

This is not long before those infamous pictures of in Las Vegas,

questionable, fancy

naked

billiards,

fancy dresses is a bit before

that.

This

is bu out Vegas.

har.

this is

Slightly

pre bu Mount Vegas, Harry.

This is when he is training to apply Apache helicopters, between two stores

of service in Afghanistan for the Army.

But specifically it's exactly the period of the frost

bitten

penis,

ah, frost nipped.

I think you'll find

technically

Frost nipped

penis,

which he revealed

a, a,

that sounds

wrong.

That sounds really, wrong.

he revealed the existence of his frost nipt penis in,

his autobiography spare a couple of years ago.

So we cannot say we

are

invading his

This is a privacy.

invasion.

he did himself with the peon detail that he treated it with Elizabeth

Arden cream, which was the

same,

smelled like his

mum, smelled like his mother.

Why Have you written this

down?

Is

Yeah.

Is

a point to

this

line of

of questioning?

There is.

I am merely, your honor, setting

the

context for which the following exchange of emails should be,

considered.

I

have for

you

a script.

Great.

Oh, would you oblige by being Charlotte Griffiths?

In this

scenario.

Should I go like 10%

posh.

I've highlighted.

Go.

I would p

posh

it

up?

I

would absolutely posh it up.

What she said was that, she got the bulk of her stories

from her high society friends.

Matt, this is very unusual.

We don't normally have dramatic

readings.

I'm, here for

the

Amra.

Yeah,

This is

great.

You've

got

a partner.

Hang

on.

Oh.

whoa.

Wow.

Sherlock Griff's

evidence in her witness statement on the 6th of March was that she had high

society contacts from school days, and she continued to socialize in high society

and with the, with the aristocracy, throughout her, journalistic career.

I am gonna take the part of Prince Harry in this, if that's all right.

Matt, appropriately can

you

take the role

of

Facebook

and, and give us the concept.

So we're reading from the bottom here.

This is the full exchange of messages.

I, really, emphasize it.

There isn't a role for

you.

You

just

have to sit

one out.

I'm sorry.

You?

be, if you wanna be Mr. Justice Nicklin.

You can simply sit there and huff and puff a bit at this

if

you

like.

Oh,

okay.

okay.

But I just do have to emphasize, this is not something we've made up.

This has not been written by the private eye jokes team.

Like the WhatsApp messages from the Prime Minister.

This, these are genuine.

I asked for these from, from, the lawyers last

week, right back to my school play where I didn't get a

good

job role in

that

either.

I was the narrator every year in the nativity.

Still,

Scott,

that's switch.

It's noble

profession.

No,

narrat.

No.

You don't get, no, it's just like you can read, but you're

at

acting.

it

prefigures a journalism career,

doesn't

it

No,

Yeah.

Source, yeah.

Okay.

Okay.

Right far away.

I'm so excited.

And

action.

December 4th, 2011.

8:36 PM.

it's

h in case you're confused by name and picture.

kiss.

December 5th, 2011.

Hello, Mr. Ms. Shave was indeed confused by both effing.

Awesome pick.

Do you get home okay slash did you actually find your car and did

you beat Arthur down the motorway?

More importantly, what a fun weekend of naughtiness.

Can't we all get up to No good in the countryside every weekend?

Jam it smooches CG string

kiss

December 5th, 2011, 4:15

PM

Ha

It was

you and the blue girl that pulled over to let me and Arthur Pass know

I did beat him, but by accident, I think drove most of the way.

my eyes closed, I found myself eating pizza with Skip of all people.

Two exclamation marks

was

without doubt

the

best of those weekends I've been to what a crowd never lost.

So, much in 24 hours, Mr. Mischief.

How do I get that title?

I was surely no worse than anyone else.

Ooh.

Apparently a Cinderella shoe was found outside

that door,

so it can relax.

Please stop

panicking.

Three

exclamations.

You've got a bit.

Terry Thomas at the end of August,

terrible.

hour.

December

6th, 2011.

12:17

Yeah, that was me.

My windows were so steamed up and I'm afraid my little golf GTI was

just no match for your bloody Audi.

I had a children

of

moment.

This

is inexplicable.

Presumably by this she means she looked out the window and

saw Pam Ferriss being brutally

in

a refugee

camp

in

Beck

I

dunno, I

can't.

I think that's a bit where, yeah, where the car and that one continuous shot

where they're being shot at rather than, or she looked out the window and realized

there were no babies in the world anymore.

Who

can

say,

how did you not end up eating Chinese?

You must be mad.

I dominated a duck pancake or two or five.

Wow.

I respect that

Mr. Mischief is definitely a compliment.

By the way, you weren't worse than anyone else.

We were all competitively out, naughty each other, which is

why we all had so much fun.

Few about the shoe.

I was very worried you'd have to spend a fortune picking up the phone and ordering

a new pair of freebies from Amanda

Yes.

ps.

Speaking of which did you manage to get your new phone number organized?

Good that she's doing the journalism.

I respect that she slipped

that

in

December 6th, 2011, 2:29 PM

Wish

it

had been Chinese, but

Skip

wouldn't allow

it

sadly

emoji.

No new phone number yet,

but sticking

with

redacted

phone number, but yet handed

over

for

now

serious

withdrawal symptoms.

Still had to make polite conversation with strange people at a dinner

last night begging them for money

for charity.

Really

fun.

Not reunion with Josh.

Sounds fun.

Hope work wasn't too dull.

Wherever you are.

Just

to specify at this point.

He said he was completely unaware that Charlotte Griffith was a journalist

when he first met her and wanted nothing more to do with her when

he

found out

at

that

point.

December

7th, 2011, 6:57

PM

we

have been missing out on some serious bans on the group email front.

I'm gonna go in big with an amazing Marco Snapped to make up for lost time.

Few this week.

Hibernating in the frozen waste under Parson's Green is, it would

be Parsons Green, wouldn't it?

New Ham was heading towards this conversation.

Almost thirsty Thursday though.

Sounds good.

Josh is such a ledge.

Oh my

God.

This

is

like

just a, you get his flashback.

Purest

infernos in 2011.

calming any of anything to make anything better, but January's oh, so far away.

I think a team reunite might be an origin before the weeks' out,

non

December

14th, 2011.

7:34

PM.

Okay, I'm very unimpressed.

Your Skippy surfing seems to have inadvertently trumped all

of the scandal on our weekend.

Damn, you bloody maverick.

And now you are all heading to BVI.

British Virgin Islands.

Double trumped.

Double hump.

Thirsty Thursday.

Plans kiss

December

15th, 2011.

3:00 PM I win right

me.

New heading to the B thes.

eyes

Got too

much shit to

do.

Got dinner with some friends.

Gonna be hung over again for the third

day running.

You missed a good party Last night, Skippy was

on great

form

Ma.

January

22nd, 2012.

11:00

PM

hbo,

bomb.

we missed you so much at Arthur's last week.

Skip cracked out some serious moves, but I did pack for my three week

skiing holiday after a night with him at the box and forgot to pack

skis, boots, jumpers basically.

I've been very cold since.

God damn drunken packing.

Any who after some chirping in Valdi and Maribel.

Yeah.

Casual whatever.

No.

What

Eves,

sorry.

important.

Yeah.

I've arrived in clusters and been watching some center barley snow polo.

Does that mean you are here and I can dominate you off the black

runs slash steal one of your ski boots and feel tres non guilty.

Is

there much more

of

that?

You got

one more

message?

and

it's

a goodie

January 22nd, 2012,

11:00

PM

Haha.

Charlie.

I wish I was there.

Sugar but unfortunately stuck in Cornwall doing Army stuff.

Sad face emoji.

Otherwise I would've been there playing and

then drinking you under the table of

three exclamation marks.

The whole thing raised a load of money, so I'm pretty happy.

Just wish I could have been there, especially now that you are there.

Do you ever work?

Double exclamation mark, question mark.

Bummed beyond belief to have missed authors as well.

I've been seriously busy since I last saw you, but plan on getting back in

the mix for Feb. You best be around hope you're really well Griff, miss arm movie,

snuggles.

I'm off comms all week in case you think I'm being rude,

but

keep

posted.

kiss,

kiss, kiss,

kiss.

Wow.

And

we

have it.

Little

insight

A tour de

force.

So what you're saying, Adam, is he, did hang out with journalists

and he was communicating and having

movie

snuggles

with

them.

This

would certainly appear to suggest that at that point in his life, he had a, we

could go so far as, say, quite intimate relationship with certain journalists?

I

think

who among us has not had movie snuggles

for the

journalist,

so

that he

was without sin cast the first

another, And so now

the case

has ended.

the.

The.

what's the

upshot?

Mrs. Justin Nichol has retired to, consider his verdict.

he said it's

gonna take him

some time

Betty wishes he could

We're expecting it at some point in the summer.

In the end of it, I come back to the point which, we made on this podcast the outset

of the trial in January, when Ian said,

can't

they both

lose?

and after

that, that dramatic rendition, I

really

would

quite

like them

to,

essentially I would be very surprised if the case goes in,

Harry and the others direction.

And there is, beyond all this, there is a really, serious issue in

this, which is Baroness Lawrence, which a part of this case.

, the evidence on which her part of the case was based largely came from

Jonathan Reese and Gavin Burrows to very discredited, private detectives.

There

were, there are rumors, certainly within the mail camp that she was not

keen to, as she was trying right up to the last minute to drop out of this

this

litigation.

She was the, imp premature on this, the, bit that made it serious, if you like.

this, was the, just as with the original phone hacking scandal, which Les

we forget,

did start off with royals.

It was the hacking of Harry and Williams, Royal household at that point, and,

their, and their kind of communication secretaries and, and senior staff

that kicked

the whole thing off with the news of the world in 2006.

No one got really, excited about that scandal in 20 until 2011

when it emerged that news of the world journalists were also

hacking

the

of

Millie Dowler, the Missing School, G, who later

turned

out

to

been murdered.

The

hacking and illegal activities.

and taking to target, Doreen Lawrence would be of a similar

kind of, gravity, I think.

if

that verdict goes

against

Doreen Lawrence.

And it's discovered that the male were not doing that.

Not only is it completely destroyed a relationship which was extremely

strong between the daily Mail, and the Lawrence family, who,

the male famously championed them right the way through in a way that

surprised quite a lot of people.

that, that, front page that said, murderers, it names the, five

suspects, two of whom have since been found guilty and sent to prison for

Stephen Lawrence's

murder.

Yeah.

I've said before that Paul Daker literally had that front page in

his office, To him, that was the c

crowning pinnacle of his

editorship.

He stood up for a young black guy who got murdered by, as he saw it, thugs and

and like to, to him.

So I think this case was

extremely

personal.

the

result of that one, I think is the really interesting one to watch.

'cause that's outside of the sort of realm of celebrity tittle tattle,

however, upsetting these people may have found intrusions in their privacy.

So there is quite a lot at stake within this, and it will be very

interesting to see, that judgment

when it

finally

comes

through.

Yeah.

Okay, we'll wait and see.

And of course it's gonna be in private eye when it happens.

That's it for

this episode

of page 94.

We'll be back in a fortnight with another one.

Until then, thank you to Helen, Adam, and Matt.

Thank you to you for listening.

If you would like to get more jokes, stories, journalism, cartoons, all

of that private eye is available now.

If you would like to subscribe, you can Do so@privatehyen.co.uk.

that's it for now.

Until next time, the only remaining, thanks, go to Matt Hill

of Rethink Audio for producing.

Bye for now.