The TRUTH About The BBC | Nihal Arthanayake, Former BBC Radio 1 Presenter

45:20Because I get called lefty all the time. Well, I get this thing going, you lefties, right? So on social media, they'll go, you lefties, right? And I could never do this at BBC. But I always wanted to respond. I'm a property owner. I drive a really nice car. Both of my kids go to private school. What part of this, you know, I own shares in the stuff. Like what part of this is left? No, I'm not a lefty, but I am a liberal pragmatist. That's what I describe myself as, right? Liberal pragmatist. Right? Ed Vasey once said this to me, right? Which is an interesting thing. When the coalition happened, I said, oh, you know, so what's going on here?

46:04with you guys how the hell are you two going to be bedfellas and he went well you know we're there to give them common sense and they're there to make us human right that's very bad right and he also said and then he also said he said we're we're not remainers or brexit is we're pragmateers i quite like being a pragmateer pragmateer right because i'm not ideological jimmy yeah i mean i guess i'm ideological about anti-fascism and you know uh anti-antisemitism and all of that stuff, right? You know, no, I'm not anti-anti-Semitism. No, I am anti-anti-Semitism. Yes, I'm anti-anti-Semitism. Yeah, I've got that right.

46:42You've got that right. And I'm anti-Muslim hatred and all of that stuff, right? So I'm ideological in that sense. But that makes me, I'm an empath. I'm a pragmatic empath. That's what I would class myself as. I mean, look, I think... Are you aligned to a political party anymore, really? I think it's less so in that sense. Partly because I just think it's in so much flux, right? Yeah. Like, I mean, I think Kemi's actually doing a really good job. Seems to be, yeah. And I... Or Kier's just doing such a bad job. I mean, that's true. I mean, it is... I don't know when we're going to put this out. Yeah, yeah, exactly.

47:23We're recording this at the end of the Labour Party tearing itself limb from limb. Yeah, I WhatsAppped Andy Burnham. He didn't respond, really. Of course, man. He's busy. I just feel like I feel oddly detached from it all at the moment I feel like you know when people slow past going on the motorway past the crash that's how I feel like looking at the Labour Party at the moment or the country I know I'm like weirdly fascinated by it and then I'm like well this is not good were you not lured in by Blairism at all I was like 10 then right oh god I forget you you're way younger than me and he was a bogeyman And, you know, my dad was Tory MP and whatever, so he was sort of bogey-bogging out.

48:04Yeah, of course. Yeah, he was responsible for one of the biggest electoral humiliations the party has ever seen. He was. I'll tell you what, though, because what I want to get onto partly is conversation and interviewing, because you've written this brilliant book. But my word, when I went to go and see Tony Blair for an interview, that was quite sort of daunting, because he was, like, from my childhood. Yeah. So did you find when you gave an amazing list of names there earlier, like were you ever, like who were you most sort of in awe of? Who were you most nervous about? Like just what are those sort of, yeah, reflections?

48:45Did you always meet heroes there? Yeah. The one I'd been most nervous on wasn't a radio one. It was Professor Richard Dawkins at the Royal Festival Hall, right? because that's you and him in front of two and a half thousand people most of whom are incredibly knowledgeable of his work you don't turn up to a Richard Dawkins talk if you're a bit thick it's just not why would you do that? you don't pick up a flyer and think I might try that yeah right you're like okay god delusion you know debates with jordan b peterson taking out this person oh i want to go and you know i want to be intellectually rigorous and you probably you know um get you know some might be a bit pompous i think so before that one i thought this is going to be a real test yeah of interviewing conversational skills with someone who will have really little truck with you know this is not like me doing the ones i've done a number of times with rick hasley right right right where he's like really warm and he's gregarious and he wants to tell anecdotes and he's self-deprecating he's funny and all that this is a guy who's one of the world's leading evolutionary biologists and written a number of books the selfish gene the god delusion you know i mean insane right yeah oxford professor so and i'm a essex comprehensive school boy who left school not doing well at exams got cd and an e in my a levels went to through clearing tost mary's university in in twickenham you know none of this matches up does it right like it just doesn't match up because he's usually interviewed by other people who've been similarly academic and all of that so that was without question the most nerve-wracking doing liam gallagher was because i interviewed liam gallagher in a room not dissimilar to this at the top of a recording studio set up in central london so a tiny room and you had no idea which liam gallagher was going to walk into that room right was it going to be who the fuck is this guy wasting my time why do i want to be here with this prick or was it going to be right let's let's see where it goes right and it was the latter thankfully and i kind of got him on side quite quickly then we had a great conversation it made all the papers um the following day because he said some stuff about Noel which he hadn't said before so that was really really interesting real nerves I think Jordan Peterson the first time Jordan Peterson the second time was very very different very different because we did it in a boxing gym in Moss Side with 10 young men and he basically became again a clinical psychologist and was brilliant with these young men like absolutely brilliant talking about what it felt like to be a young man that was that was one of my favorite weirdly one of my favorite things was an interview with jordan bb it's just kind of strange i had a massive tear up with nick clegg massive on the bbc asia network like he was so angry afterwards so angry uh we had a really big tear up yeah because he came on to the bbc asia network thinking he was going to sell this big kind of diversity thing that he had cooked up.

52:28But it was like a week after one of his MPs had resigned from the government over the Lib Dems kind of weakness in the face of strict immigration talk from the Tories in the coalition. So he came on trying to be all like, you know, we love you guys. It's all good. And I was going, well, wait a minute. she's just resigned because she said you. And I was like, well, why do you think she resigned? Well, you should ask her. Well, I'm not asking her, I'm asking you. Well, yeah, well, you should ask her. And I was like, wait a minute, you must know because she's been very clear as to why she resigned.

53:06So what's your reaction to that? And then I went a little bit Poundland Paxman because I came, my Asian network here was very much at the height of that Paxman Humphreys style of doing things. The thing that sadly Emma Barnett It still hasn't worked out. No one wants to hear anymore. That kind of badgering, kind of like, you know, yeah, pugilistic. You know, the thing that Michelle Hussain didn't do, but still managed to get loads out of people by just calmly dismantling you, right? Being forensic and clever, rather than that kind of Paxman pugilism. Not to say that John Humphreys and Paxman weren't really clever people.

53:47They were. But that was a style of its time. Of its time, yeah, yeah. Right? And I was like the pound shop version of that, trying to do a bit of that. And I remember very brilliantly, a producer called Bill said in my ear, after the fifth time, that I'd asked the same question, thinking, oh, I'm going to do a bit of a Michael Howard here on this person. He went, three times an hour. Never, because by the time you get to the third time of asking a question, the audience know they're not going to answer it. So why do you keep going on and on and on and on? Right? and I learnt a really valuable lesson Jimmy about not making yourself the centre of the interview which is something so many interviewers haven't worked out yet I think that's getting worse as well actually but that's podcasting isn't it that's kind of like you're coming on my podcast therefore I'll get to talk as much as you if you ever listen back to my 600 odd interviews on BBC Sounds I was always super conscious of do not hear me more than you hear the interviewer interviewee that's a failure isn't it right but saying that podcasts are different podcasts are much more meant to be a conversation than an interview so hearing 50-50 with you and me now wouldn't be a bad thing no it wouldn't but I'm always wary of it very much so but how else has kind of because you've written this book on you the art of conversation yep um which is brilliant and i really thanks to enjoyed it and uh what did you learn from it Or did it just reinforce what you thought anyway?

55:33No, I tell you what, the big thing that really, the thing that I'll be quoting about it, right, in a month's time, is the Good Friday Agreement all started with talking. And the way the process happened for that. Because it was such an obvious thing. I always think you take one or two things away from a book, basically. You don't really end up remembering that more. but it really made me think that is exactly the way that it happened. And it was interesting that sort of basically peeled back the layers of the people. Mary McAleese, yeah. Yeah. President of Ireland, yeah. She was fascinating. Do you know the thing that, I'm really glad you took that away from it, because in these intractable, seemingly intractable, eventually the Palestinians and the Israelis will have to talk.

56:26They've tried it so many times before and it's failed. But eventually the only way out of this is through talking. That is the only way. You keep bombing each other. You can keep committing horrific acts against Palestinian civilians or horrific acts against Israeli civilians like what happened on October the 7th. You keep doing that if you want. But eventually you're going to have to talk. eventually the south africans had to talk to each other eventually the irish had to talk to each other eventually the rwandans even had to talk to each other right so that was and the thing that i always think about what mary mccalee said when i asked her how did you start what was the point of commonality amongst people who were trying to kill each other not a single one of them wanted the same future for their children not one of them ran that the only thing they all agreed on first was actually, you know what?

57:21We don't want our kids to go through this. That's so powerful. I loved that chapter in the book. Yeah, it was Mary McAleese. She was great. There's some good people in that book, actually. Because you basically took a really interesting model for it. Almost every chapter was a case study of a great conversationalist itself. It's like Matthew Saeed and Kelly were another two. John Sutherland, who was the chief crisis negotiator, for the Metropolitan Police. He's brilliant. People love the chapter. But even Rick Haythornthwaite, who's now the chairman of NatWest Bank. You know, I interviewed him when I think he was chair of Mastercard at the time.

58:03So how did you meet... Well, how did you meet our mutual friend Al Lukies? Through Rick. Through Rick. So I DJed... I don't know, Al will like me telling this story in public, but I'm going to anyway. Sorry, Al.

58:21I DJed at Rick Haythorn Fakes 60th and I'm behind the turntables and I'm playing music and Al comes over with his amazing wife, Sophia, who you know, and, you know, they're like, God, you're really good at this. You know, have you, like, have you done this before? Have you played music? Like, it's really good. The music you're playing is really cool. And I was like, yeah, you know, I've done a bit of this before like you know you're like because you're obviously going to go yeah I was on radio or what because that would be really cheesy and horrible so I was like yeah yeah it's good yeah I've done a bit right so he wanders off and then he's gone got that guy you know he might have even said it to Rick but he said it to someone like that guy you know he's a good DJ isn't he near Harwell yeah and this person's gone to him and gone no he's on radio one right like at which point they've gone oh my god and he always brings it up that this was like the first time the first time that we met and he has been an incredible incredible North Star to me in many ways Al Lukey's CBE for those people who don't know he's kind of like the godfather of fintech in the UK you know fintech advisor to a number of prime ministers and good pal of ours Jimmy and as you know a force of nature right yes complete force of nature and someone that you know someone that should be at the highest echelons of helping to forge what growth looks like yeah right like what entrepreneurial flair looks like how you get the best out of people and you know as this is jimmy's jobs al is the one that's given me my post bbc job yes right he's the one who's taken me on this career pivot which I'm on now.

1:00:19He's 100 % a force multiplier. Absolutely.

1:00:27I have one more question I wanted to sort of ask on interviewing. What research and how did you go about structuring it for these kind of guests? So the straightforward answer is they've got a memoir out, right? Yeah. So read the damn book. You know, I remember once bumping into a Today programme presenter who was about to interview an incredibly famous football manager. He hadn't read the book. He said, oh, I better go and leaf through this. I'm interviewing so-and-so in 10 minutes. And I was like, but I guess if you've got a four minute interview, you can hide, right? You can read the press release, ask, you know, you only have to ask five questions max.

1:01:13Yeah. And some research can write them for you. I'm doing 45 minutes, minimum 30 minutes. Nowhere to hide. You interview Oliver Stone, right? You interview Damon Albarn, Tom York. These people are incredibly clever people, right? Who've been interviewed hundreds of times. Rod Stewart, Elton. You interview these people. Do your research. Tears for Fears. I remember interviewing Tears for Fears. and I'd found this fanzine they'd been in online and I'd gone through it and I'd picked out all these facts about them. And they were teenagers when this fanzine came out. I was asking them questions about stuff they didn't know about.

1:02:00Yeah. You know, and on quite a few occasions, guests would go, how do you know that? How did you know that? And you're like, because it exists in the world and you've done your research. so my thing was always two questions that i used to put in and this was pre-ai so i'd always go jimmy mclaughlin loves jimmy mclaughlin hates right into search engines and all this mad stuff would come up because at some point you've gone i hate lemon meringues right right or you would have said gosh i i hate ballet or something right and that would then lead you into a a conversation immediately um and richard dawkins was interesting because i just interviewed him a couple of days ago at the barbican because it's the 50th anniversary of the sheer of the selfish gene and i started that one off because in the opening for the 50th anniversary edition talks of a woman who was then a student who wrote a letter to him essentially saying that my teacher has said do not contaminate your fellow students with this book because it has meant that you now feel purposeless and we don't want to spread that so that was like the opening jumping off point so i'm always finding what is the interesting jumping off point to ask that first question i have no other questions planned after that but what i do have is a bank of research and I always compare it to a kind of Amazon warehouse of information, but what will happen is you'll say something, Jimmy, and then in my brain a robot will go, pick out that bit of information and then carry it to my mouth, right?

1:03:50That's how I see it. That's basically how I see it, right? Long-term supporter of Jimmy's Jobs, Amazon. It's great. It's a shame it's at 62 minutes.

1:04:05that's how i always that's how i always see it and i tell you it's never let me down it's never ever let me down so you you completely i don't know if you saw my post on this but you completely changed my i did yeah i really touched no but it honestly because we sat in darver's office and had a conversation and darver's office about it and i had not really ever had any mentoring about interviewing and interviewing technique i'd read lots about it i'd ask people and whatever like you know i know nick romanson and so on but your thing about just have one question like keep your research however you do your research keep it the same but just have your first question ready and we could we talk about it being trusting the parachute and it's made so it's made the job a lot more um relaxing which is good in some ways but also i slightly missed the the adrenaline of it but it does make it i do all the research just the way that i used to so there's less adrenaline doing it this way now than there was before yeah why where was the adrenaline coming from before i think it was like i would just like get myself like right we've got to get to this we got to get to that thing we've got to get on to the next one oh so on okay so there was a bit more there was just a bit more like like with it but i i think i mentioned to you at the time that the tony blair interview i remember getting so worked up about that but three days before thinking, do you know what, I'm just going to ask what I want to ask him.

1:05:28Like, and I'm just going to pretend that I've got 40 minutes for Tony Blair, and I'm just going to, you know, the audience trusts me, he's doing this because of that, just go with your instincts. And that was one of the best interviews that I've done as well. So, but it's a great, it's completely changed my sort of interviewing style. So when I joined Five Live, there was this kind of weird, intellectually quite weak sense that get me a headline get me a headline get me a headline and my attitude to that was if if i go for headlines a couple of things will happen one the guest will get pissed off yeah the publicist will definitely get pissed off and you'll get nothing other than just an angry kind of email and you might get a headline but You won't get that artist again.

1:06:23The publicist won't put any of their guests with you again. Yeah. Because it's like you were just fishing. I remember interviewing Jon Bon Jovi. And the publicist said, can we not talk about his daughter's issues? Right. And I was like, I have no intention of dragging out their family trauma for entertainment value. I don't. I just that's not what I'm here for. but if you want that you can go and read the sun right but i'm not here for that what i'm here to do is have a really warm and curious conversation with a person who's achieved so much and you end up getting loads out of them you know because look how relaxed you are jimmy like this is it's like two people having a conversation right but why that is so much of what seems to drive of the media right it's the status game of generating more media yeah right like and that's it and that's part of this kind of like the gotcha question you know that's still quite prevalent on radio 4 and the today program right in terms of like we've got 12 minutes i know why do you think amal rajan is leaving to set up his own thing he doesn't just like it's boring yeah that that kind of gotcha gotcha gotcha gotcha whereas why do you think why do you think the rest is politics and the news agents and all of those things are so much that this huge yeah you can do a today program that could fill out the o2 yeah right but you can do that you can do the rest is politics yeah and a shit ton of people will come out to see that they won't come out and see today live why is that why do you think that is

1:08:09why do Rory and Alistair have a cut through well so I think on Rory and Alistair specifically I think there's this weird thing in politics where a lot of the political commentary is dominated by people that have not done it which is different in terms of football commentary that's so true like you think of all the sort of post-match analysis it's done by people that played it and so on and so yeah beth rigby laura coonsberg nick robin you know none of them been in those rooms they've been on the outside they know it incredibly very knowledgeable and so on ed balls might be the only one is he ed balls and probably yeah and even that he still finds out a bit like it's a bit it's a bit challenging you know stuff he ran into with zach polanski the the day which was a bit unfair but yeah it's yeah it's hard so i don't i don't know today program is yeah it feels like it has to set the agenda i suppose and it has to set the agenda by asking people you know the questions that they can't answer but i don't i mean i don't maybe it's because i don't consume that that anymore but i don't get a sense that the today program is setting the political agenda i think that there's just much more social media that's setting here i feel like you know you could argue that that um that nigel farage's tiktok has you know as much power to i think that maybe the chattering with westminster classes it does and ultimately maybe you could argue they run the country but if you're in stockport where i live no one gives a fuck right yeah but i tell you what an ai founder said something very interesting to me the other day running a very fast super impressive young woman running a very fast growing company and she said that journalism though does set the tone of the national conversation and i have been thinking since she is right right because in a way i'm sort of with you in like they're not as influential as they were you know they're no longer the gatekeepers they're kind of the curators etc etc all that's changing but i did think well it does actually set the tone quite a lot the media as a whole and I'm talking from the BBC through to the Daily Mail Sky News, all of it the chattering there's just a lot more chattering classes now I suppose there is but also as well it's just an absolute boon for Farage because the chattering classes seem consumed or subsumed by this melodramatic drama that goes on in Westminster when people can't get a train from, they can't pay their heating bill and the schools are not great and there's youth unemployment and there's poverty and there's all these things going on and Farage can point to them as he tried to do with Beth Rigby the other day when she was quizzing him about his£5 million gift you know this is why the mainstream media no one cares about you guys anymore and to be honest mate, the rise of reform and places like that didn't happen because the today program was setting a news agenda it's because facebook yeah and social media right if that that's what happened right that's what shaped it brexit didn't happen because you know people will go oh the bbc didn't do a very good job of and they kept platforming forage and yada yada but actually the spread of social media and disinformation all that you could argue that the tech companies are setting the agenda yeah right Well, actually, on purpose, if you look at who was standing around Trump.

1:11:42Right? Yeah. Right? So the tech companies and the social media platforms are clipping up this stuff, and the algorithms are feeding it into your feed based on what you've looked at before. So you could argue, actually, if someone in tech is saying journalists are setting the agenda, maybe you should ask yourself the question, why would they be saying that? Yeah. Because that's a deflection away from the fact that actually maybe they're the ones that are setting the agenda. But the last thing that they want to do, because that puts them in the crosshairs of government and legislation, is admit that actually they're pulling the strings.

1:12:22I've just got an observation. I'm not turning this into a Farage reform thing. But one of my observations of why Farage is doing well is that he has just been at it a long time. Oh, yes. Good point. And I think that is massively underestimated in terms of he's quite comfortable with himself. And he's just... I just think that we've got this thing in politics at the moment where a lot of people don't have much experience, often end up getting quite senior positions very quickly. And they just don't... And I just think Farage's been in this game 30 years and so on. And he's just kind of good at it.

1:13:00Yeah, he's very good at it. However much I loathe him, one thing I can't deny is the fact that as a communicator, it's extraordinary. It's extraordinary how a Dulwich College educated commodities broker has ended up persuading huge swathes of the working class that he has their best. Same as Trump. Yeah, same as Trump taking, you know, five million quid from a crypto billionaire has persuaded huge amounts of people that live in estates that he's their guy. I saw a roofer on Sky News saying, you know, the great about Farage is he never lies. You're like, that is wild. That take on, I mean, he literally sat on LBC with Nick Ferrari saying that the Speaker's office had essentially advised him not to do in-person things.

1:13:47And then LBC ran up the Speaker's office saying, did you advise? And they said, we would never advise an MP not to do face-to-face surgery. Yeah. like constituents and you're like you literally sat there and said this out loud like it was a fact I mean it's it's it's such a it's such a so do you enjoy this job is this the favourite is this the best job you've ever done doing a podcast yeah I think so yeah I mean I love number 10 like it was amazing wow and it was great but I felt I saw that picture that you put on it with Boris Johnson walking past it. Oh, yeah, coming in. Yeah, yeah, that was like...

1:14:29You haven't aged, by the way. I mean, it wasn't that long ago, but you look exactly the same. Which is pretty good. Well, do you know what the funny thing is, right? So I left not long after that because we were having our first kids. And I said to Boris, look, you know, I've run my race, I've done this. And it's, you know, time for, you know, fresh blood and whatever. And he sort of totally understood it and whatever. Did you use a cricketing analogy or Greek?

1:14:58You've got to stay at the wicket for a little bit longer. Yeah, well, there was a bit of that.

1:15:06When I saw lots of people a few weeks after having our first kid, they were like, because it literally arrived two weeks later, and lots of people were just like, you've got to be the only person that after three weeks of having a kid looks immeasurably better from what they did before. That's one number 10. Exactly. Everyone was like, you look really refreshed for having just that kid. So in all my interactions with you, Jimmy, you come across as a really warm, curious, really nice guy, right? But then you always hear that to do what people like you did in politics, it's brutal, it's backstabby, it's just vile, and you have to get down in the vipers' nest and get on with it.

1:15:49Is that true or not true? Or is that part of who you are is part of you kind of I can do that brutality if I have to I think there's an element of that I remember going around when I got the job and getting advice from everyone that had been there and so on and they were like one of the things that stood with one of them was what John Major said was if you're yourself you'll enjoy it if you try and be someone else that you're not you won't and that stuck with me and then the other one was from my sort of predecessor who'd done the business side of it, and they were like, you know, you will have to be a hard man, but don't be a hard man at the beginning, win the respect and then be a hard man.

1:16:27And there was some truth in that, that at times you did need to sort of, you know, you need to have quite direct conversations with people. I think that's... What does that mean? That sounds suitably ambiguous. What does direct mean? I think what happens a lot, and I talked to the team about it here as well. Malcolm Tucker direct. No, no, no, but you just chisel away a lot of the a lot of the sort of softer talk and what I mean by that is like you have everything is about work and you don't end up talking about what drives people sort of outside of their thing I remember working with a really great mate of mine in there called Tricky and we did lots together he sort of ran events and visits so we were often sort of doing stuff together and I remember just like after a couple of meetings that we'd had, I was like, by the way, I should have mentioned I got engaged last week.

1:17:21This was like one of my best mates, right? I'm certainly my sort of closest friend in there and I just sort of like haven't got round to kind of mentioning that. Is that to the detriment of progress or is it actually just protection so that you can progress without getting too close to anyone? I think there's an, I do think there's an element of that. my dad often talks about that actually as being chief whippers you couldn't have friends if you want a friend get a dog as they once said about the musical yeah and I don't quite agree with that because I do have friends from there but I don't know it'd be quite interesting to ask people because you did have to do stuff and have tough conversations but not my natural sort of style at all I mean think what Liz Truss had to do to Kwa Zikwatek right like she had to fire someone who the news was saying these were friends and they were and she had to do it to kind of save her own neck which obviously didn't happen but that right like how do you how do you navigate that when you think weirdly on the train today I bumped into Sam Allardyce and then we had a long conversation we got into this conversation because I asked him about who can you trust in a football club you know and he said it is really difficult to know who you can trust because you can have he said one of the things that he did was you'd always be nice to the all like the groundsman the kick guy you know that all the people that worked in the county like really nice to them because some of them will be moles yeah for so you in your role at number 10 surely you you would see, because they're not very good at hiding it, the kind of brutally ambitious ones, right?

1:19:10Who you know will kill you in a heartbeat to get closer to the Prime Minister. Yeah. Right? Yeah. Because they're not very good at hiding it, are they? Those people. I don't think so particularly. I'd say one of the things about number 10 is there is quite a lot of like upstairs downstairs vibe. In the sense of you have the sort of special advisors, the policy people, you know, the people that are sort of almost literally running the country And then there is a huge amount of support staff, secretarial staff alike. And so you've got to be, you know. How were you with them? Well, they were great people, right?

1:19:48Like, I'm always conscious of it. But I think... Did you know anything about them? No, but it goes back to a lot of it. I mean, the two ladies that were in the kitchen were called Alison and Marjorie, and they were amazing. and then I knew my diary team quite well because they would often sort of work miracles with it like Jenny and so on. But no, I mean, I think that is a, you didn't, you know, you were so stretched. And back then, you know, I was single and didn't have kids and whatever. And that's why almost all special advisors are under the age of 35 or over 50. No one does it when they've got kids at that sort of like tough age.

1:20:25Very few, basically. You know, Midderman talks about this in terms of the special advisor job takes over your life and it becomes who you are, a massive part of your identity. Can you be a really nice person, empathetic, really nice, and also be successful in politics? Yes, I think you can. I think David Cameron's quite a good example of that. But I do think you have to have your wits about you of when people are going to take advantage of you. And that's where you have to be quite careful as somebody who probably does have a disposition. I don't think I like the phrase nice. I think that's the problem.

1:20:59My mum hates it. Okay. But I think you can be a kind, lovely person, but you've got to have your wits about you. Do you have to have a brutal switch? That you can just go, I need to kill this person now. Obviously not literally, but I need to just, this person is in my way. Yeah, I mean, there is a... And I can't have any sentimentality towards it. Yeah, because I'll tell you why it is, Nihal, because you end up thinking, I have got a I am here to serve the Prime Minister I have to drive her agenda through I have to make that happen like when she's having a shit time which she was for a long time that I was there you owe it to her to kind of like ram this stuff through and if there are people in the way and being persistently in the way then yes they need to be dealt with right any regrets?

1:21:48not on that side I don't think so what was interesting was I was taken back by who stayed in touch afterwards and who sort of helped out and whatever and who just wanted, I mean, I'm aware, right, you know, it's Jimmy from number 10 on the phone, I'm very aware that it's the number 10 bit of that that's important. Nihal from the BBC as opposed to Nihal from, you know, tech hockey, right? But Al's a great example of somebody who always became like a bigger champion afterwards, right, and so on. Yeah, same. So that's quite, you know, that's important and so on. And I remember another bit of advice that one of my predecessors gave was you are going to you're in a privileged position of being able to speak to business every day about this job you will have colleagues that fall on hard times and end up getting caught in the crossfire of things so make sure that you pick up the phone whenever day happens to them and help them careers advice business wise make introductions whatever because the male strong we were operating it i might not have done that every time but i was quite sort of consistent with doing that and so on.

1:22:54So yeah, we should get you back and interview me. Mate, I'm fascinated by your world and what you've seen and that because it's quite interesting what proximity to power does. I mean, I remember asking Oliver Stone about how far or short the distance is to barbarity when there are no rules and he said the distance is incredibly short when there are no rules when there's a young GI in the middle of a village in Vietnam who knows that he can get away with doing anything he wants it's not a long distance to barbarity and I just wonder how long is that distance to kind of uncivility when power becomes because power is I've been close enough to not where you've been for sure but you know i know some incredibly powerful people and it's a weird thing i mean it you know i mean obviously i'm working for elton john who is a really nice guy but just seeing that circus you know and how it changes people around yeah when they get into that yes and a lot of people who are famous say it didn't change me it changed everyone around me but that's not true it's not that's not true you know there's no question i mean i've known ed sheeran for many years and ed sheeran is without question as lovely now as he was when i first met him before really anyone knew he was right and he's still a lovely guy but he's also a guy that is worth hundreds of millions of pounds right and lives a life i got into a conversation with him and a premier league footballer and then they started talking about wine collections and i was like guys i'm out like i'm just out right this is this is not my world but still just a really really chilled guy with it but that political it was so interesting being at the labor party conference the last one and watching the spads watching these earnest people who are so pumped up on their own self-importance they're so young and they're wandering around like and they are walking around like every every single npl minister is a rock star yeah like he's a god like they're they're fawning they're just like everything you know and they're on the mission a little bit like you're describing about where you were at with theresa may which is that you're you're an exocet missile right yeah you're going in a direction and anyone gets in the way of that direction they're in the way of a missile right they're not in the way of a kind of care bear they're in the way of a missile and i just saw these people and they're and also as well just because i was in davos as well for my first davos this year courtesy of al lukis and indava and wow politics and is so brutally transactional in the way that the relationships seem to work right at conference and at davos they're the two i mean behind the scenes i wouldn't know but just the way that some of those people like an mp would come up to me who knew me who'd maybe listen to me on radio one or whatever but the spad would be looking me up or not spad spad not spad but um they're whatever their person that runs around with them just looking me up and down going you're not important because you know i wasn't dressed in a suit i wasn't you know and i was like wow okay that's and you think these people are rock stars yeah They do, do.

1:26:29There is a lot of that. They're like groupies. Yeah. Oh, yeah, yeah, definitely. I think the... It's interesting on this one about saying. I think kids has changed me more in terms of it has made me more clinical than I was in terms of my time. Because I do sometimes think I don't give people as much time as I used to. And I think that's just because it's being an entrepreneur. it's having kids just I think I can almost be more transactional now that I was when I was there you just to be clear you'll never give your kids enough time yeah ever minus 16 and 18 now and it's gone like that right and and they even my son said to me that day you know you weren't around that much you weren't around that much and I was like well yeah well weirdly enough they weren't letting you go to private school for free so that that had to be paid for that had to be that had to be worked at to be i can't wait i mean i think with with so many of us that's why the grandchildren think so important right right it's because it's like i'm gonna give them so much time so i've got to live long enough to be able to hold them and spend time with them and take them to the football matches and actually to be fair i took my son to every football match I could probably 90 % of the football matches I was there watching him and I was really really clear about that we had a very special day uh a few weeks ago because we um that was the one thing my dad always pretty much did as well in fact that's amazing my dad has an amazing story when um well with family folklore but Derby got promoted in 1996 so I'm 10 years old so like football is everything before I've discovered girls and all that football is life Derby get promoted into the Premier League and I'd been going a couple of seasons as well so I really knew what it was all about and my mum was when we got home was like well we know when the fixture list comes out that it'll be Man United at home don't we for when we're on holiday fixture list comes out a few weeks time Man United at home for when we're on holiday and dad is like I'm so grumpy on this holiday in Ireland so grumpy and I remember well I remember so many things about it I remember listening to the results coming that night on probably five live.

1:28:51And we weren't in the first three. And so dad was prepping me being like, look, that means Man Utd are going to have won. Because it'd be in the headlines if Derby had won. But actually they drew one all. But basically my dad just sort of, early on in the holiday, said, look, I promise you I will take you to Old Trafford away. Just cheer up for your mum, please. Basically it was the bargaining chip. How old were you? So I was 10. right so like quite a sort of like awkward age basically just playing on a football pitch on my own in the west coast of ireland and so anyway that's that's april so that seems like you know months and months away and of course it's april 1997 as i mentioned dad's tory mp yeah just thinks god was the election june of that year it was may oh was it may it was may so he basically four weeks out of the election had to take an entire day off to take his son up to go to Old Trafford and a lot of people on the day were like I'm quite surprised to see you here Patrick and he's like some things are more important than politics Was that a major government then?

1:30:00Yeah so he's right at the end of the major government basically, Tories on for obliteration potentially losing the seat Remember my dad's a coal miner before he's a politician so he's not exactly got a career to fall back on. Anyway, it was the most incredible day of my childhood because it was the day that Paolo Wanchot made his debut for Derby. If you remember and scored that incredible goal. I don't remember but I remember Paolo Wanchot. I'll be sending you the link. That was his debut. We won 3-2 away at Old Trafford. It was the most glorious. Do you know Grenson's shoes? Have you heard of Grenson's?

1:30:32Beautiful shoes. Beautiful shoes. So they're owned by Tim Little and I'm going to introduce you to Tim Little because him and his son Ivan are massive Derby fans. Oh, are they? Huge Derby fans. Home and away. Like, home and away. I'll probably recognise them. But to finish the story... You should get him on, actually, about jobs, talking about jobs. He's an interesting guy. Well, so, but to finish the story, two weeks ago, we took my eldest to her first game at Derby and it was this sort of, like, three generations going and whatever. Oh, wow. And she was actually quite into it. So, yeah. Oh, wow.

1:31:03Well, my son's kind of given up slightly on top of it. You've had a tough season, right? he has a Spurs fan for the uninitiators I'm a Tottenham fan yeah it's a fair thing what's time I know we have to like I just want one more thing reflection thing when you left the BBC you were like I'm going to go be a stand-up comedian yes and I maybe we should get you back another time and talk about it but that was one of the things that I was sort of toying with doing yes so I did a gig on Saturday in Bisham Abbey Marlow and I have to say Jimmy so the first time I interviewed Richard Dawkins I was terrified and really nervous and like wow this is going to be I don't know I'm just going to get humiliated here since doing stand up I interviewed Richard Dawkins a few days ago on stage at the Barbican I've never been more calm if you can do stand up there's no kind of presenting that presents any kind of challenge for you after you've done I've only done five gigs but at the end of every single one I have felt ten feet taller to be continuing for each time thanks so much for coming on lovely to see you Jimmy and what a blessing to be on this pleasure

1:32:36you