Spanning the Globe from Wilkes-Barre to the UK

20:16Okay. So it's a very, very, very unique place. I think there's probably, during the summer, it might get up to 2 ,000, 3 ,000 people tops. It's a very quiet eight-mile lake, glacier lake, which is very cool.

20:34Shelley:Yeah. Because there are parts of it that are well over 100 feet deep, which is unusual. because a lot of lakes are man-made, but this one is obviously not. No, but that's so interesting. And the homes are beautiful. It's a quiet little town. It's a quiet little town. And it's just a big circle. I leave here in June. So tell everybody, you know, so it's a big circle with three restaurants. It is a big circle. What are the restaurants? So you've got Grotto Pizza. Right. Which your listeners will probably love to know this, that Grotto Pizza actually comes from the Wilkes-Barre-Scranton area. And one of the first ones was, in fact, the one that's at Harvey's Lake.

21:10Shelley:Right. And now it's at Dewey Beach and whatever. Now it's everywhere else. They were brothers, and they expanded their business. There used to be a great place called the Villa Roma, which shut down. Right. That was a great place. That's so sad. And there's a couple of other. It's a diner. There's a bar. Yeah, and there's a diner. Yeah. That's it. That's it. Don't go there if you're trying to lose weight. I'll tell you that right now. That is so true. It's not going to happen. That is so good. Because you're eating pizza and kielbasa and pierogies. I'll dodge it. I'll dodge it. Skillet. Oh, skillet.

21:45Man.

21:45Shelley:And then were you doing UK stuff while you were at Goddard Closet? No, we were not doing UK stuff. Ben had a great career. Only you and I may remember these two characters, but there was Harry and Louise. Right. Oh, yeah, of course. That was Ben Goddard's claim to fame. He created those two characters. Oh, my gosh. I did not know that. He brought down the Clinton health care. He was credited with that. Tell people what it was. Harry and Louise were these two characters that were professional actors that sat at their dining room table and evaluated that Clinton health care puzzle and said, oh, my Lord, I didn't know that this was in it.

22:28Shelley:Right. This is going to be really bad, Harry. And it became an icon in public affairs. Yeah. And he was credited with the first real advocacy campaign that we now see today. So were you a part of it, did you say? I was not. It came a little bit after my time. Oh, after. But he was picking up a great deal of business posts at Harry and Louise. And that's where I came in towards the end of it. Yeah, it was iconic. It was iconic. And he had wonderful clients. We had General Motors and AstraZeneca. we were one of the largest advertisers in public affairs firms in the city at the time. He came to me and said that he was interested in breaking apart from Clausen in an amicable way, because it was amicable, and said, would you like to have my minority share in the new firm, which he called Goddard Gunster.

23:27And I said, yes. Holy smokes. Very minority share, by the way.

23:31Shelley:No, but still, he called it Goddard Gunster. But he wanted to call it Goddard Gunster because there was a pathway for him to then exit, which he did. I mean, unfortunately, he passed away. But there was a nice little sort of payout to take over the company. And I actually own all the rights to Harry and Louise for what it's worth. Oh, my God. It's not worth much, but I own all the rights. No, I mean, it was, well, Claude is younger than us. It was a defining commercial. And what a wonderful relationship for you to have with a mentor. Yeah, he was a mentor. He was like a father figure to me. He got very sick, had a heart attack, several of them.

24:15Shelley:Was it sudden? No, he had several. He had really bad congestive heart issues and eventually killed him. So then it becomes Gunster Worldwide. Then it was all mine, and so I changed the branding to Just Me. and just sort of carried on his methodology and philosophy. Were you scared or psyched or both? I think a lot of people don't understand, Shelley, that the stuff that happens in public affairs, it's not that we wake up in the morning and make it up. Right. There is a lot of quantitative and qualitative research that goes into all of this. And now with all this tracking and social media sentiment tracking, everything is based on data like your message is based on is this the right message for the right audience and you can really like narrow it down to just a sliver of people all the time know how to communicate with women that are a certain age, men that are a certain age, they're political and you can micro target them all day long but you never get any of that if you don't do what Ben had perfected which was I'm not doing anything without some research my client says to me this is this is what I need, this is what I want, I will say, fine, we're going to test it.

25:31That's really smart. Because if you don't test it and you find out that it doesn't work, Right. Then you look bad. You'll look really bad. Yeah, yeah.

25:40Shelley:It's so interesting. I read something today in Politico or somewhere, and it said that every job looks easy if it's not yours. And I thought that that was really interesting, you know? I mean, I'm sure people think your job is easy. People think all of our jobs are easy, but it's because you're not doing it. Well, in my world, and this is something I learned from Ben, and I don't know if you know this, but I do lecture and teach at Georgetown right here down the street. Yeah, it's amazing, yeah. I can't believe it, Jerry. It's a three-day course. So you have to imagine that this is not just throwing stuff against a wall.

26:18And I always tell the students that if you're building a house, would you get a blueprint? And the answer is yes. So why would you launch a massive campaign that could cost you hundreds of millions of dollars, tens of millions of dollars, without actually doing the blueprint to see if it is going to work? That's a great analogy. And I'm going to point in my career, I'm 59 years old, I'm going to point in my career where if I look at the research and it's a losing issue, I will tell them. I am no longer in the world like, well, I think I can get through this and make a little bit of money. You're going to lose.

26:55Right.

26:56Shelley:Okay, well. And that's that. Right, right, right. Okay, so let's switch to winning then. So tell everyone about the beginning of your UK relationship and the first time you met Nigel. Nigel Farage. We're coming up on the 10-year anniversary of Brexit, believe it or not. I do not believe it. That'll be this June. Brexit was 10 years ago, and I feel like I got a little bit lucky because the people that wanted to see Brexit fail, the Leave campaign, which is what it was called, came here to Washington, D.C., and they interviewed all the big boys. All the campaign managers that you can imagine, they interviewed.

27:39And then there was me. And I talked to these guys, and they said to me, well, what's your strength? And I said, well, I'm pretty sure I'm the only one of all the people that you met with that their only line of business is doing referendum campaigns. Everybody else was doing candidate campaigns. Yeah. Again, something I teach in my course is they're very different. Very, very different.

28:00Shelley:Yeah, no, I'm appreciating that more than ever. Very different animals. And I talked to them about it, and they said, well, we haven't had a referendum since 1979 when we entered what was then like the European Council or something like that. we don't do it. So you do referendums. I said, yes, I do. And that's how I ended up getting retained by them. And who was the them? Was it Nigel or was it other people? There's a group called Leave.eu, which is where I got hired from. Right, but who was it? Which was supported by a handful of really wealthy Brits who felt like their country was not going to move forward if they were aligned with Brussels.

28:44Right. And they wanted to leave the European Union, whether it was business reasons or sovereignty reasons. This is why they wanted to leave. And it was a really interesting song and dance with these guys. Also, we just got along. The first interview, I got along and they said, oh, by the way, we're going to be in the Bahamas next week. And why don't you come and let's see how we get together. So I flew to the Bahamas and met them in the Bahamas. and we had drinks and ate dinner and just got along really well. And they're like, when are you signing the contract?

29:17Shelley:Oh, my God. And did you, like, do, I'm trying to think of a famous movie scene, but were you like, oh, my God, you were more scared, yeah. That's a very reasonable reaction. Brexit was not a term 10 years ago. If you asked anybody what Brexit was, they said, is that some kind of dance? Right. It was not a word. So people started throwing this, well, we're going to have Brexit. And I was like, wow, this is, I need to really think about this. I'm going to come back to Washington, and if I'm not even remotely successful, my career is done. Because I'm taking on David Cameron, a guy by the name of Jim Messina.

29:56Jim was Barack Obama's campaign director. He worked for the Remain side. I'm going up against these guys.

30:05Shelley:So you thought it was going to be called Leave versus Remain, and then they're like, no, let's call it Brexit, or it became Brexit. It became Brexit. And when did you meet Nigel? I met Nigel after I had signed the contract. They had asked me to come back to London, which I now do regularly. Yeah, you should have a dual citizenship. Yeah, I love it. I mean, it's a wonderful city. I know. We have to go together. But anyway, go ahead. They asked me to come back for a press conference. I sat at the table with a press conference, and Nigel was actually in the audience and not on the front of the stage.

30:41He was just in the audience listening to him. And that was the first time that I met him.

30:47Shelley:So he came up to you after your panel or something? And I said, I'm Jerry Gunz. He goes, I know who you are. And then I wasn't really sure what that meant. I wasn't sure exactly how to take that reaction because, you know, the impression of having an American come in to tell you what is going to happen. doesn't go over very well in most places. It was a massive risk. And trust me, I had a lot of conversation with my wife and other consultants in the business about exactly what I'm doing here because at the time, it was not going to win. All the polling was this remaining. David Cameron's got a machine behind it.

31:24This is a bunch of radicals that want to do this. And I met a couple of people in the UK, which I will not mention their names, but these people were actually Remainers. They wanted to vote to remain in the EU. They told me privately, we think you could win. There's something that's happening here in the UK. We think you can win. These are serious political consultants and elected officials who were going to vote to remain were telling me there's a possibility. That's when I said to myself, okay, here's what I need to do. I need to bring this thing just close. Like I can hold my head up high if I can just return to America with like a 52, 48.

32:05Yeah, yeah. 51. Yeah, yeah. Like, let's make this interesting. Let's not get blown out.

32:10Shelley:So what were your first steps? I worked with them. You tested the message, right? The opinion research, I worked directly with their research firm to relook at the way that they were doing their opinion research and their message development. They had already had the basics of it. They had a good group of people who were doing it. And I just added some different flavor to it to make sure that we were testing everything. And what we learned in the U.K., which was sort of the aha moment, was one of the upfront questions that I put in there was, do you feel like the country is headed in the right or wrong direction?

32:51Right. Which, by the way, is typical of what you do as a holster.

32:54Shelley:Everybody asks that. Everybody asks that. Right direction, wrong direction, yeah. The wrong direction in the UK at that time was almost 68%. And when I saw that, I said to my client, this is really important. You may not know what you're looking at, but what you're looking at is people who are dissatisfied with the direction of the government. They need someone to blame, which was the bureaucrats in Brussels. So you had your boogeyman. Yeah. So it wasn't David Cameron. It was Brussels. It wasn't David Cameron. It was Brussels. It was sovereignty. And it was not. Pride. I think the sovereignty thing was big.

33:36It was border control.

33:37Shelley:Yeah. You look at the United Kingdom and you look at the history of our English friends. They didn't have immigration. This country's built on immigration, the United States. The U.K. is not built on that. They've been around for a couple thousand years. Right. They don't never wanted nor needed immigrants. And I'm not saying it's a bad thing. But now it's rampant. But that started happening. And it wasn't like our culture. Like, bring them in, figure out a way to get them jobs. They're going to be great for them. That is not the attitude. Well, that was the thing. I mean, I've always very much respected the U.K.

34:14Shelley:and think it's a fantastic country. And I thought that they were right at the time. I remember thinking they're too great and storied of a country. And I mean, look, I love France. I live in Italy, but they seem to go along. But I agree that it was too great of a country to be ruled. And plus, if you've ever been to Brussels or done anything politically in Brussels, I mean, it's stultifying. It's horrible. It's awful. It's bureaucracy. It makes, you know, it is a much more elegant bureaucracy than we have here. but it still is as or slower, except that they have better meals and they're in a nicer place.

35:00Shelley:But it's horrible. I'm a Euroskeptic. That's just what I am. What does that mean exactly? That means that you are skeptical of a union of countries getting together and trying to be the United States of Europe. It is not possible. These are countries that for the most of their history, other than the most recent history, have fought each other. Yeah. They've killed each other. Yeah, yeah. Over territory, over rights, over channels, this and that. And you're going to tell me different language, different history, different cultures. Yeah. And we're going to be the United States of Europe. It doesn't work.

35:42That's Euro skeptic.

35:44Shelley:So you meet Nigel. You get along terrifically well with Nigel. Nigel and I got along really well. Right. And so the campaign took how many years? We don't run campaigns. They don't run campaigns the way we do. Okay. They have basically a 45-day window where you can start publicly doing the campaign. Prior to that, you can do all the legwork. Right. So how long was this effort, would you say? I think I was in and out of the U.K. for at least six months. Okay. That's it? Maybe a little bit longer. The interesting thing about the Brexit vote was that David Cameron was the one that had to call the election.

36:25And again, very different from what we do here. You have to call the election. It's what they call a snap election. He wasn't willing to do it. And then he got enough pressure to say, all right, I'm going to win this thing now. So let's have this election. So then the clock starts at 45. then starts.

36:43Shelley:And did you live in London for 45 days? I was there for weeks and weeks on end. I tried to come back, which I did, but I was there for weeks on end. And again, the reason is because I could see an end. Of course, right. 45 days is digestible. There's an end. I mean, any spouse would be like, okay, I get it, 45 days, you know? Yeah, and she's very open. No, I'm saying anybody. She married it. So then you have 45 days and you have obviously a bunch of allies and then you win. We won. What was that feeling like? It was surreal. I bet. Surreal. That evening we had a election party and the scrum, if you want to call it, was really unbelievable.

37:39We had every reporter from everywhere around the world in our campaign office. And it was like a scrum. I've never seen that many cameras and that many people trying to get a hold of Nigel. Just surrounding him. I got nowhere near any of them. In fact, I was like, I got to get out of here. I was thinking, how many bottles of champagne did you drink?

38:01Shelley:A lot. We had a great night. We had a good night. I like that. This is a true story. we were winning and the scrum happened and i knew that this was going to go on all night i don't know i think a 10 o 'clock flight the next day 11 o 'clock i got in a black cab and went back to my hotel i was gonna say you're like jerry mcguire you know what i did the airport what i lost my phone in the black cab oh no it's a true story now anybody this is a great anybody that knows me knows that yes you really lost your phone of course you did jerry i lost my phone in the black cab oh my god i fall asleep my hotel phone is ringing off the hook i think around 5 30 because that's when they called it like 4 or 5 30 uk time i thought it was my wake-up call to get to the airport oh no i was like god this is a call really early and it was one of my colleagues said you better turn on the tv and i turn on the tv and they called the election downstairs have a cup, coffee, have tea.

39:05I still have no phone. So I'm loading up my computer trying to text messages. I'm getting text messages from the entire campaign people asking me where I am. I'm like, I was in bed.

39:17Shelley:That's how cool I am. I can't believe this, but I was in bed. That's amazing. Yeah. I go downstairs. I have coffee, breakfast with my colleagues. and David Cameron comes on the air about 8 a.m. and resigns. Stands up in front of number 10 door, walks out there, says we gave it our best shot. The people have decided I have to resign. He resigns. I'm literally packing my bags to go home without a phone. Did you feel like you were in your own movie? It was so strange because when I did find my phone. How did you find your phone? Well, I got a new one, but once everything loaded back on the text messages, I went back and looked at the history, and people were asking me where I was.

40:05Congratulations. What a moment. Right. This is going to be on your tombstone. Yeah, right.

40:09Shelley:It might. Actually, no, seriously, he's very well known for this. It'd be better than the Nigel Whisperer. You don't want Nigel on your tombstone. Yeah, exactly. What it's interesting to me is how you're in the middle of it. you're working with. But then there's also, you talk about the scrum, but there's reporters and things even back here in the States that are being reported. And maybe it's true, maybe it's not. Maybe it's not the whole story. Did you catch yourself watching new stories? I was shocked when I returned to America and I think the first thing I saw was CBS telling the American people that this passed and it's very likely that the British people didn't know what they were voting on.

40:56Yeah. I left the UK in a black cab where people were beeping their horns and celebrating. Not necessarily all of London, but like the blue collar, if you will. I was so happy for them. And then I come home and I'm reading these stories. Well, they didn't know what they were voting on. And then the second part that started to come out was, do you think they got money from Russia?

41:24Shelley:I vaguely remember that. Do you think that it was the Brexit Russia Russia was before the Trump Russia Russia? There were two parts of it. One, two parts. Number one, it was that the British people did not know what they were voting on. I actually have the language for the ballot measure that I show my class. It is literally 17 words. Should we leave or remain a part of the European Union? Yes, remain. No. Well, no. Remain or leave. No, yes, no. Remain or leave. It's 17. I mean, I've literally studied these 17 words and I've said to my friends and my students, I'm sorry, but this was as clear as crystal.

42:14Shelley:Let's talk about the Russia, Russia, Russia stuff. The Russia, Russia thing. Because it's so prevalent here. It is. Or was. Before there was the Trump, Russia, Russia, there was the Brexit, Russia, Russia. And right after Brexit, and I was asked the question earlier, like, what was your moment in time? What did you do? Relax. It was really hard to relax because I was being flooded with letters. I was being flooded with letters from the Ethics Commission in the UK to provide documentation of where I received my funding. That is – I'm so glad we're talking about this. What's nuts about this is this funding came from a guy by the name of Aaron Banks.

42:54And Aaron's probably going to listen to this. Aaron's worth a couple hundred million. It's really bizarre that they were asking questions about where$10 million came from. But they were absolutely convinced that it had to be Russian influence. I was providing them, Shelley, receipts, literally of like when I went to Starbucks at Dulles before I got on the plane. Because they want to know where the funding came from. It tied me up for months. I had to get legal representation.

43:23Shelley:I'm so sorry that you're telling me this, but I'm so interested. Go ahead. That is what happened. And then it was leaked to the U.K. publications that somehow all of our involvement had to do with funding that came from Russia. It was so discomforting to wake up. Did you have to get a lawyer? Oh, gosh, yes. I lawyered up. They wanted me to come to the U.K. and testify in front of the Ethics Commission, which they said he's a U.S. citizen. He's not coming. He'll provide you whatever detail he was. We were eventually exonerated of all of it. But it had to be the Russians because there's no way that the people could have made this decision on their own, which is absurd.

44:06Thus comes the Trump story with Russia, Russia, which tied up this country for three or four years. It was one of the low points of my career. And I paid for all of that, all those legal fees on my own.

44:19Shelley:That's horrible. To protect myself, my company, and my reputation. Of course. And you couldn't get the fees back like once you won? No. Yeah. I would love to find a way. I know. It's a fairy tale. What are you going to do? But when those stories get out there from The Guardian and other places, then people start to look at you differently. They start to think that, well, did Jerry work for the Russians? I mean, you know me. There's no freaking way I was working for the Russians. I don't even know. I've never been. It's not even part of the conversation. As Farage would say, I really like vodka, but I've never been to Russia.

44:50Shelley:Tell us where Nigel is now. And we have to talk about what's going on with Nigel, what's going on with Keir Starmer. And you have to discuss or describe, please, the very circuitous, isn't the right word, obtuse to me, political framework that is going to be in place or what's going to happen. And at the end, we have to talk about Prince Andrew, which today means that he's, you know, in deep trouble. I didn't come prepared to talk about Prince Andrew, but I read it this morning. Everybody's prepared to, yeah, right. First of all, we have to remember that the UK system is parliamentary, which means the following.

45:34If there are a group of people whose party gets elected, Shelley and Jerry party, the party then chooses who's the prime minister.

45:45Shelley:Okay. So we pick that person. He's not voted per se by the people of the United Kingdom. Okay. They're picked by the party. Okay. Which is why you see sometimes the party has a vote of no confidence. They kick them out. Okay. Which Keir Starmer is very close. Correct. To that happening. Do you think that Prince Andrew, so obviously this is going to be old news, but Prince Andrew, what is the word? He is indicted? Andrew has been accused of misconduct in public office. Andrew, not Prince Andrew. Well, is he Prince Andrew? I'm not sure what to say anymore. Prince Andrew has been accused of misconduct of public office.

46:23Right. Essentially what that means is that he had in his possession material, confidential material, that found its way to Jeffrey Epstein.

46:34Shelley:Right. Whether it was used for trading stocks, making money, or showing off, it doesn't really matter. He shared public or very private confidential information about the UK government to a non-citizen. That's misconduct for sure. Unbecoming of a royal. Horrible. Now, I find the fact that they did this on his birthday says a lot, which basically is we're not screwing around here. We are going to make this humiliating for you. Do you think that that's brother to brother or is that too, you know? I don't know. I mean, you have to imagine that. Yeah, they're pissed. The king is aware. Exactly. I mean, he is the king.

47:21Shelley:Well, he put out a statement and he was like, you know what? Let it happen. Yeah. Okay. So if the Peter Mandelson thing and maybe Prince Andrew, which I guess is separate but along the same lines, if Keir Starmer resigns because he has a vote of no confidence in the Labor Party. I think it's coming. Right? The Labor Party. I think it's coming. Yes. Then what does that mean for Nigel or the Conservative Party or the Reform Party or what happens next? Well, what would happen next is that, first of all, there is an election in May at the sort of county and local level. This May. This May, where the Reform Party is very likely to pick up a ton of seats and it will be a big embarrassment to Labor.

48:09Shelley:What is a ton, like 20 or 50? No, that's a really good question. I don't know, but these are like local. A lot. Or Wilkes-Barre County seats, kinds of things like that. But it will make some headlines if they pick up a lot. So that's going to be a really defining moment. And then there is an election that's supposed to happen in the next, I think, three years from now. Right. Which is a little bit worrisome because you just want Nigel and the Reform Party to hold on for that long. Or move more quickly. Things could happen in those three years. Exactly. Yes. Now, unlike the United States, they could call a snap election and say, okay, we need a snap election.

48:51But there's no way the Labor Party would do that because they will lose. And they know that they will lose. So then what happens?

48:59Shelley:So let's say, so May comes, the Labor Party weakens. Yes. Keir Starmer's out. I think he's out. Okay. I think he's out. Who replaces him? Well, it will be somebody from the Labor Party. Yeah. Maybe the devil you know. Right. Okay. We really don't know who the next person would be. It could be, frankly, worse. Correct. But all of that lines up, and again, you wish the best for the United Kingdom, but all of that lines up nicely for a big change in the reform, which is reform. Isn't there an avenue, though, that Nigel and his party or whatever combination of parties could have an election this year, or is this year never going to happen?

49:37Shelley:No, this year is just not going to happen. It's not going to happen. It is remotely possible that it could happen before the next year, what we would call the next general election. Right, right. That's three years down the road. Yeah, that's too long. It's too long. So if it's not— It would have to be a failed government. If it's not this year, then what can Nigel and the Conservative Party and the Reform Party do in the interim? I think it's fascinating because he's almost acting like de facto prime minister right now. He really is. I mean, he went to Davos. Right. He met with President Trump.

50:10He was helping negotiate the Chagos deal on the Diego Garcia military base that we share. Not Keir Starmer. That was Nigel Farage that was doing all of that. He's acting as de facto prime minister anyway. They just need to continue to grow, which they are, and continue to push out everything that they're pushing out, which is the survival of the United Kingdom really does rest on a change of government. You're listening to Lunch with Shelley.

50:39Shelley:So tell me everything about being an associate producer on that incredible HBO show, which is not a bucket list per se, but sounds so cool. This was a project that Ben Goddard picked up, and it was then Goddard Gunster at the time. And he was asked by Sam Nunn and Ted Turner to create a film for the Nuclear Threat Initiative. What was the purpose of doing that? The purpose was to show what would happen if enriched uranium the size of a phone ended up in the hands of terrorists. Could they create a dirty bomb? And it was so precise that the movie was boring to the point where we literally met with operatives around the world to explain exactly how this could possibly happen.

51:30the size of what an enriched uranium bar would look like, et cetera, et cetera. And that was the genus of the film. It was the movie before Al Gore did his. I mean, it really was. It was a movie.

51:46Shelley:Well, you had Fred Thompson. Fred Thompson. You had really good actors. We had Fred Thompson. We filmed a thing in Canada. Fred Thompson was the president of the United States, I'm sure. Yeah. When he was alive, I would have wanted to be that. Yeah, right, right. And there was a guy who did Napoleon Dynamite, who was Uncle Rico. Yeah, I know there were a lot of recognizable people. Bryce was in the film, too. Yeah. It was really fascinating. As the executive producer, I mean, Ben, it was Ben's. Oh, not associate. You were executive. I apologize. It doesn't really matter. Ben, obviously, it was his brains.

52:24but someone had to track all of these people, do the contracts, make sure people were getting paid. That was my role. I was not on the creative side. I just made sure that people showed up when they were supposed to be. Brett Thompson had his trailer.

52:39Shelley:Right. Actually, I'm a little disappointed only because you're very creative. I feel like that. But you didn't get to be creative on that. Not so much. But you got the credit. I weighed in a little bit here and there, and Ben was fine to take it. Right. But it was his baby, and it was Sam Nunn's baby, and it was Ted Turner's baby. Are you a SAG member? I was at the time. That's so cool. Did you get like$13 a year or something? I got a little bit of money. Okay. This is probably my last question, although I always hate to do this, Claude, as you know, because I want this to last forever. I know.

53:13Shelley:But if you were going to have lunch anywhere in the world, where would it be, and what would you be eating? Wow. That's a great question. I love Rome. Me too. Love it. Me too. I love it more than any other city in Italy. Yep, Florence. Everyone loves Florence. I love Rome. Was somewhere in Rome with homemade pasta, a carbonara. Right. Something like that. Are you eating outside or inside? Oh, definitely outside. Yeah, okay. At a piazza, whatever they call it. Yeah. That's it. I think that's perfect. No question about it. Well, Jerry, it was so great to see you. I'm so glad that you are on the podcast.

54:01Shelley:And more importantly, I'm so glad to have a leisurely lunch with you because this has been really fun. Shelly, it has been wonderful. And I've always said this to you that the two of us have come a long way. Yes, we have come a long way. I agree. From the Sperry's Cretan area to having a podcast in Washington, D.C. And being the genius behind so many things in a European country. It's amazing. Jerry and I always have a pinch ourselves moment. Claude, it is so good to see you. So thank you so much for being on. Your next one's going to be Farage. We're getting Farage on the podcast. Yeah, we're getting Nigel on.

54:40Shelley:But right now, Jerry, you are amazing. There's a lot of love at this table. You too. Thank you so much for being on. Everybody, thank you for listening. Check out other episodes if you want to hear more at www.lunchwithshelly.com or wherever you get your favorite podcasts. And in the meantime, and as always, peace, love, and lunch.