169: War On Iran: Aya-Tollad You So

24:33And you said to me the Daily Mail was marvellous in invoking the spirit of the other great wartime leader, Sir Tony Blair, who the mail used to not think of as particularly marvellous. That was the most extraordinary thing. You had the mail on Sunday headlines saying, you know, Blair says we should have gone in at the first moment. You just remember saying, guys, do you remember? You don't like him. You really, really don't like him. And you've been saying for decades what a disaster leaving America and going into Iraq was. It's extraordinary. I mean, even more recently than that, do you remember when Obama was supposedly interfered in the Brexit vote and said we'd be at the back of the queue.

25:10Do you remember all of the op-eds from people saying, oh, how dare this American interfere in Ireland? You know, they managed to sort of find their backbones there and be a bit patriotic about it. But no, we seem to have gone over entirely into let's just be the 51st state now, according to certain newspapers. But you, Adam, you have a very convincing theory as to why. The key thing about what's happening with a lot of, particularly our right-wing press at the moment, is that internet advertising is a lot more lucrative in America than it is in Britain. which is why the strategy of most of our British newspapers over the last five years or so has been to set up outposts.

25:45A couple of them were ahead of it. The Mail Online was ahead of it. The Guardian was long ahead of it, setting up operations in America. But all of the others have kind of been piling resources into New York offices and America-facing websites ever since then. And I think that's sort of... Because these days, actual print papers are largely a sort of afterthought, and it's all digital first. That whole mindset, I think, of facing an American audience is starting to filter back entirely into the editorial line that they're taking even on the British-facing stuff. Yeah. So we've gone very MAGA, basically.

26:18British newspapers are now semi-American products. As soon as you point it out, it's quite hard not to notice it anymore. It's fascinating. The Telegraph itself is absolutely seeing itself as a... Well, we did a story in Street of Shame, the Telegraph have earned themselves a place in the White House press room, which they never had before. It was a little seat at the back, which they have to share with one of the online outlets. But they are in there. And they were one of those, I mean, the Telegraph were amongst many people last week who appeared to be able just to phone Donald Trump up on his personal mobile and just kind of have a chat to him and say, would you want to slag off our Prime Minister?

26:52Yes, I'd be very close. Will you print that? Yes, of course I will. It was even worse than that when the Sun phoned him up. They seemed to have fed him the line. So they said something like, do you think he's just doing this because he's worried about losing the Muslim vote, basically, right? Is he afraid of offending Muslims? and Trump went, yes, I do think that probably is why it is. And then, sure enough, that was the splash. You can't ask leading questions in a British courtroom, can you? But you can if you're speaking to the leader of the free world? Well, I did think, I thought that was a bit of a rum thing and I thought, no, no, no, you shouldn't be able to trick the US president that easily.

27:22That's a him problem, isn't it? Can I just put in a word for the journalist concerned who is very, very objective. It was Harry Cole and it was part of his podcast, which is titled Harry Cole Saves the West. so absolutely he's going into this objective Andy's furious this podcast isn't called Andy Saves the West you don't even try and save the West Andy isn't that what Liz Truss's book was called yeah well 10 years to save the West she didn't specify who would be doing it I suppose but I don't know if you remember Liz Truss didn't actually manage to do it no I was thinking how embarrassing to have taken the title of your product from Liz Truss but that's a very good example of the phenomenon you're talking about right which is that Harry was political editor of the Sun for a really long time and he's now got an American-facing online show.

28:05So his audience is the MAGA base, right? Whereas even people on the British right are just not in that reflexively pro-American place that the MAGA people are. Yeah, I mean, the Telegraph certainly used to be the paper of the kind of Buffton-Tuftons and the retired colonels and things who are mostly popping up now to say, oh, you're not terribly wise if you're going to another war in the Middle East. We haven't really got the resources for this. But just sort of being ignored in this kind of, like, no, no. And the Buffton's, and you know, a lot of sympathy for them, pointing out that the running down of the British Arms Forces can't entirely be laid at the feet of Keir Starmer, given we've had 14 years of the Conservative Party not funding them.

28:45The fact that there isn't a navy and that the army is, as the eyes repeatedly point out, you know, has had its outsourcing volunteer and recruiting divisions given to someone else, means that it's almost entirely ineffective. But there does seem to be this willful thing of not learning from history anymore. I mean, I wonder if this is part of the war on woke, because we've been told for years and years by a lot of these right-wing papers that this is a terrible thing that people want to focus on slavery and the bad things that empire did. And actually, empire was marvellous. But it now seems to have sort of been extended to, well, about 2003, doesn't it?

29:21We've decided to just rewrite that one as a complete... In fact, would you like to play a game of 2003 or 2026? Yes. Iraq or Iran? OK. I'm going to read you some quotes. Iraq or Iran. The sub-editor's nightmare. You have to guess. 2006 or 2003. This is brilliant. It's Iraq-U-I. That's the one. British spies are part of a deep cover operation to track down chemical weapons which could be used in attacks on neighbouring countries such as Israel and Dubai, the Mail on Sunday can reveal. The intelligence officers are working with American counterparts inside the country to locate sites which have been identified as potential hiding places for nerve agents.

30:022026. Yep, 2026. It was last Sunday. Yep, Glen Owen in the mail on Sunday. I love that. It sounded so... The chemical agents are like... Intelligence sources talking about chemical weapons and nerve agents. I'm wearing skinny jeans. I'm listening to the strokes. It's all coming back. Hans Blix is in the news again. Yep. Chemical Ali, he's back. Yep. Another one. This is an editorial. Britain remains a bridge between America and Europe even though its spans have been stretched to breaking point by the current crisis it should be a matter of pride that we who share so much in terms of democratic ideals with the great English speaking power across the Atlantic should have stood shoulder to shoulder with it Genuinely cannot tell, 2026 I say Nope, 2003 That's the Daily Telegraph on why we need to be right in there shoulder to shoulder with George W Bush Britain is left muttering about due process nitpicking over niceties proclaiming its loyalty to a legal order that others have abandoned.

30:54Far from making us look noble, it makes us look fatuous, shifty and unreliable. 2003. 2026. Dan Hanan, the man who is reliably wrong about everything, in the Sunday Telegraph last weekend. Right, one more. An abject lesson in making a laughingstock of Britain. The Prime Minister's slow and inept response placed Britons in harm's way. Other nations acted rapidly to evacuate their people. when it did act, its charter plane broke down and spent 10 hours on the runway. A good thing the Foreign Office wasn't in charge on D-Day. The Prime Minister was utterly misguided from the start. It raises the question, who on earth is advising him?

31:31That's got to be 2026. Surely the Dubai mention, surely. No, that one's 2011. And it's the Daily Mail talking about Libya. Oh. Do you want just one bonus question? Who said last week, when commenting on Donald Trump's justification, one of his justifications to the war, Trump said, if we didn't hit within two weeks, they would have had a nuclear weapon. Who said of that? He lies so often that he doesn't know the difference anymore. Is it Alistair Campbell? It's Chemical Ali Campbell! It is indeed, yes! The man of 45-minute WMD's dodgy dossier fame. So, yeah. Wow. We're not learning from history.

32:09We can't be bothered anymore. Can I bring us on to another element of the British coverage? because so much of the war has been about energy, what it's going to do to oil and gas prices. They've risen enormously over the last week, in particular oil, but gas is creeping up as well. So a large element of this discussion has been what Britain should do in response to this. Can anyone guess the prescription that's gone out far and wide about how we counteract this? Is it heat pumps? It's not, no. Oh, is it just drive less? It's drill, baby, drill. the reaction has been well let's drill the north sea which no one has thought to do over the last 50 years one example claire coutinho the conservative shadow energy secretary has been out there saying you know north sea north sea ed milliband is a dangerous fantasist we need to repeal the climate change act and get cracking to be fair she was saying that before the war with her own as well oh yeah and she was wrong then so don't you worry she's wrong then she's wrong now she's remained consistent which i do respect her for so i've been speaking to a few people about basically the reality of this so would it interest you to have a little bit of context about this whole discussion because it will happen a lot over the next few months your your heat pump time has come hasn't it really the solar panels how's your electric charging and your cross pavement charging solution working out for you top yeah yeah the price of the sunshine hitting my roof has not rocketed uh tenfold which is nice so i'm not going to be And because we haven't had any sunshine.

33:40No, I know. The way it's been discussed, in particular in the papers even today, is that we've got two days of gas supplies left in this country. This is a disaster. And it's absolutely not. This is how the industry works under normal circumstances. Most of our gas does not come from the Middle East. There's about 10 % at most. Most of it comes from Norway. A bit comes from the North Sea. Some comes from America. But we are not reliant for the actual supply of it on the Middle East. The problem is, of course, it's globally traded. The price will rocket, basically, because of these shortages. If this goes on for several months, there will be a concern about how we get that last 8 % or 10 % replaced, because Britain is really, really, really reliant on gas.

34:27We use it for heating a lot of our homes in a way that most other countries don't. That is potentially a problem there. But that's if this lasts several months, the actual supply of it. In terms of how the North Sea might change the prices, it's almost completely irrelevant. That's the thing. Anyone who says to you, we should drill the North Sea, it is equivalent to your heroin dealer has raised prices a great deal should you start growing your own poppies. The answer is to get off heroin. Is that because it would now cost a huge amount to extract what's still there? It's gone. Or there just isn't any?

35:05It is a really, really what they call a mature basin. So, you know, Claire Coutinho has been saying, oh, well, Norway has been finding a lot. The amounts they've been finding are sort of up practically in the Arctic Circle. What is left on the UK continental shelf, it's pretty well done. Do we not own the Arctic Circle? Afraid not. No, not anymore. Cannot invade it. Seriously, I mean, honestly, I mean, you know, if I was writing a leader in a popular paper now, I would say in another blow to Starmer we failed to invade the Arctic. Quick, well Donald Trump's looking in another direction. Let's take Greenland.

35:41So the weird thing is, Adam, you've been talking about short memories. We have been through something very, very similar four years ago. Russia invades Ukraine. Prices spiked enormously. Attempts were made then to increase the supply of gas and bring it down. Prices still went up 15-fold. So you cannot North Sea your way out of this. So what can we do? I mean, the government has a lot of opportunities to say this is a crisis. You know, you look at countries like Spain, which have hugely increased their renewable capacity. They haven't been affected by quite the same spike in prices. So the government can make a lot of sort of quick decisions to signal, you know, whether that's we need to electrify our home heating, we need to electrify our transport.

36:21These are things we can do with domestic supply. Countries mostly have this thing of, have you heard of the energy trilemma? It's such a great phrase. We're about to. I'm afraid you are. Good. There are three things you've got to choose between when you're getting your energy supply. You want it to be cheap. You want it to be secure. And ideally, you'd like it to be low carbon. But loads and loads of countries have said, look, we've got cheap and pretty secure fossil. So we're not so fussed about it being low carbon. In a world in which these things are no longer cheap or secure, and where China is waiting, saying, would you like some batteries and solar panels?

36:56That really changes the discussion. And what's going to happen, I think, globally is that lots of countries will scramble for extra supplies and many will get them. Countries which have a bit less money to spend won't. This is places like Pakistan, which don't have abundant natural resources. And when Russia invaded Ukraine and gas prices spiked enormously, Pakistan was absolutely left in the lurch. What that led to two years later is Pakistan importing an enormous number of solar panels. And in fact, this year they've cancelled lots of gas shipments because they said we just can't take on that much gas.

37:29We don't need it anymore because China was there waiting to provide supply. So this was all very different in the oil price shock nearly 50 years ago. There are now alternatives which a waiting superpower is hoping to supply. That's so interesting to me because, again, I think there's a difference between some of the legacy media treatment of it, which is that net zero is a ridiculous thing and super silly and whatever, and the reform belief it should be rolled back versus the view of lots of other people around the world that this is coming to an end. The era of fossil fuels is coming to an end.

38:00And not least among Saudi Arabia, the producer of an enormous amount of them, right, where you will hear the crown prince talk about how he's got to find something else for the country to do in a post-fossil fuel future. Another example, Cuba, which might be next on the invasion list. It's certainly been blockaded for, you know, America's just turned off the oil taps. Cuba's now importing a lot of Chinese solar panels in an attempt, I mean, they're really struggling, you know, planes are struggling to refuel in Cuba. They want to keep the lights on. The one downside is that lots of big renewable projects take a lot of upfront investment.

38:28And if inflation is very high and interest rates are very high, it's harder to fund them. But in the long run, oil suppliers don't want their stuff to be inaccessible to lots of people. They'd like the price kept at a reasonable level where they make a lot of money and people can afford to actually buy it. And they're not desperately casting around for alternatives. and I think old Sparky will be returning to this theme in the magazine.

38:57Andy and Anna here from your new favourite podcast, No Such Thing As A Fish. Yes, we are two of the four hosts of the podcast that stuffs fascinating, amazing, weird, mad facts into your ears on a weekly basis. You got any good facts, Andy? Yes, how about this one? Anteaters have evolved on 12 separate occasions. Wow. Mysterious. Wonderful. The world really wants them to exist. What about this one? When Ronald Reagan left office, he left a note on the White House lawn for the squirrels warning them to beware of George Bush's dogs. So there you go. If you like fascinating facts and much more besides, we are no such thing as a fish.

39:38Ian, I presume that when this issue went to press, you were thinking it would have something about the Gordon and Denton by-election on the front. I did I had a particularly fine joke about the plumber winning a by-election and I could put the joke the system is broken on there and I thought well that would do for the front by Monday it didn't feel like it was the biggest story in the world which is a great shame because it was really interesting not I think in ways that a lot of the press covered it this is extraordinary nothing like this has ever happened before which again it has quite frequently That is what happens in by-elections.

40:15And George Galloway must have been sitting there thinking, what do you mean? I've done exactly this at least twice. How dare anyone say this is a new tactic by the Greens. You know, I've set up new parties. I've gone for this vote. I've won. So there was a sort of feeling that the story had been somewhat missed, but we didn't really have time to go into it enough. So I think we could have a quick look now. Yeah, and this is really the short memory episode, isn't it? We've got a lot of short memories all over the place. So back to 2003, 2022, and now... To George Galloway. Week before last. Week before last, yeah, yeah.

40:53So I suppose the question that raises is, is Starmer screwed? This is a seat with a pretty big Labour majority that's just been completely overturned by the Greens with a very charismatic local candidate who, you know, was a very winning sort of plumber who kept doing a plastering course throughout the campaign because, you know, what if she didn't win the election? She was clearly very popular and liked, and the message was quite convincing. And she was up against Matt Goodwin, who clearly wasn't very popular and certainly not very well liked. We should say for non-news junkies who Matt Goodwin is as well.

41:22He's a man with an unfortunate surname when he then goes and loses elections and takes it very badly. He was both a reform candidate and, I think, probably at the time of recording, the UK's most popular political substacker. But that's only because Hannah Spencer MP doesn't have a substack, I presume. No, well, she was brilliant on social media. And I think that, you know, the Green Party generally under Zach Polanski has incredibly upped its game. And I think you're right, Ian. The reason I think people kind of panicked and freaked out about it, particularly on the right, was they sort of thought if there are angry voters who are rebelling against the system and the establishment, i.e.

41:53Labour, then the repository for those votes is reform. And then in turns, I actually know there's a left-wing version of that. And then people, if they are angry with Labour and still aren't willing to give the Conservatives a look, there's another party out there with just a very, very different set of political priorities that they might also go to. Because I remember sitting with you guys recording a podcast about a year ago and saying my feeling was that there are as many people out there who are as repulsed by Nigel Farage and reform and will do anything to keep them out as there are people who are going for the message that he's peddling out there.

42:24And I think this election has kind of proved that in a way. In a lot of cases, I'm not... Yes, the Greens are doing fantastically well. They're very appealing in terms of the social media stuff and all the stuff they're doing under Zak Rolansky. But I think a lot of people would... The dilemma for them in Gorton and Denton was finding which candidate was most likely to keep reform out. And I think that's probably going to be where the battleground is now in the next few coming by elections and in the next general election. It's going to be a case of reform versus whoever is most likely to keep reform out.

42:53Would you agree with that? There was a very telling instance. So Rob Ford, who's the professor of politics at University of Manchester, did a blog that ran through all the different options. And he said, you know, there's a path to victory for the Greens, but they need to be the alternative to reform. And sure enough, this got slapped all over their leaflets with like, if you don't want reform, vote Green, says... And he complained and said, well, that's actually not what I said. But it was a classic version of, you know, most of us who are politics nerds will know the concept of the Lib Dem bar chart, right?

43:18Which is just a mysterious thing. Lib Dems can win here and you find out that the axis has been massively manipulated. But that's exactly, you're right, Adam, is that it became a reform versus not reform fight. And the interesting thing is that lesson is that could be a very effective way of doing politics. The 2025 election was a Tories versus not the Tories. and voters were very good at tactical voting and sorting themselves. Are you in a seat where actually the Lib Dems are the best challengers to the Tories? You know, one of those maybe West of England seats. Is it, you know, is it going to be Labour the best place to get the Tories out or is it going to be reform?

43:51And something similar happened here. And if you look at all the polling on issues, reform voters are very distinct from everyone else. They don't have a lot of overlap on social issues with other people. They're in their own kind of blob. So there is a kind of left block that people can move through and people who were Labour voters in 2025 are not going to find it particularly hard to end up as green voters. Right. Whereas it's going to be harder for those reform to capture any extra people. they can cannibalise the conservative vote but some of the people who are now still voting conservative are unlikely they're more likely to be perhaps more likely to be socially liberal or don't believe in the triple lock or whatever it might be which makes it very hard for them to be eaten by reform so the thing that political scientists say that they think about reform is that they probably have a high floor but a low ceiling in the sense of actually when it comes to it the next section will be about whether or not Labour can kind of squeeze, how hard can they kind of squeeze them.

44:52Any estate agent will tell you having a high floor and a low ceiling is very bad if you're six foot three. Yeah, yeah. No, the estate agent would say it's a really new form of living and it'll cost you over a million. Perfect for which estate agent you've ever met. Sorry. Perfect for horizontal living. I think I should attribute this to Ben Ounsell, he's a professor at Oxford, and he talks about the fact there's basically a left block and a right block in British politics. And that's the way we've got to kind of see it. There are two pools that people are fishing in. And Labour is doing this awkward straddling, which is why so many of them were unhappy with Morgan McSweeney as Keir Starmer's chief of staff, because he felt they were spending too much time going after reform voters.

45:31So traditionally white working class baby boomers in those north of England constituencies in Wales at the expense of younger, more socially liberal, pro-European voters that they were losing anywhere else. And the feeling is that Labour has been quite complacent about, well there aren't enough of those people and they're quite geographically concentrated because it's studenty places we don't just want to win brighton and london is that what they're saying yeah or bristol or wherever it might be but actually we'll be we'll really get a sense in the local elections in may about the fact that if there are lots of people who want somewhere to defect from labour to is are they going to go to reform or are some of these people going to go to parties on lib dems um the greens in scotland the smp and the same thing with i think the welsh elections will be a very interesting reform versus anti-reform.

46:16I was interested in her victory speech in which she said working hard in this country used to mean something and I thought which party is that? I mean it could be more or less anyone and traditionally you'd expect that to be a Tory or a Labour person trying to attract a Tory. No it's the Green candidate who has a job, you know, a proper job. She does stuff. She does stuff that people like. That is that workers and shirkers argument from the 2015 election. Absolutely. And actually, when I say that, I can't remember whether that was Ed Miliband or David Cameron that was pushing that particular line.

46:54That was Osborne in particular. Oh, was it? Right. OK. Were the workers part of Alarm Clock Britain? Or was that the Just About Managing? No, Alarm Clock Britain is Nick Clegg. Sorry. And Just About Managing is Ed Miliband. Well, Ron actually didn't have to say it as long after the election. And quiet bat people is the thick of it, which is the one you must not get confused with. I think just about managing this is Theresa May. The squeezed middle is Ed Miliband, you're right. But they're all identifying the same thing, which is people who are economically insecure. And the interesting thing is that we've been used to thinking that as people who are in de-industrialised parts of perhaps northern England.

47:28Actually, now it applies to 30-something graduates paying back their loans at 9 % of their salary, unable to get on the housing ladder thinking you know what is the point like when do i get to settle down and have a family and all those things i've been told constitute a good life yeah um so you know and those are that's the pool that the greens have been incredibly good appealing to they've got that novelty value as well which is what nigel farage had that's what stood him so far was he was one of these people who didn't feel like a normal politician and felt like he was an outsider coming in but then zach polanski's then got exactly the same problem that nigel farage had a couple of years ago right which is how do you staff all the positions how do you make it more than just you.

48:05But I think he's learned a lot from what has worked for Nigel Farage, which is both having a pop at the mainstream media and saying they're all a hate to say against us always works really well for populist politicians. But at the same time, making yourself really available. Zach Palancey has gone out and done a lot of stuff. Think about the number of interviews he's done versus, say, Kemi Badenoch, right? He's just a lot more visible. He's out there. And yes, he might get into sticky situations when he goes on the rest is politics or whatever. But fundamentally, he's just there in people's faces in a very fractured media environment in a way that I think, you know, but neither Keir Starmer nor Kemi Badenot, nor even really Ed Davey for all his I was going to say waterboarding, I don't mean that do I?

48:43Paddleboarding. He's waterboarding at Thorpe Park. Waterboarding at Thorpe Park. The worst day out ever. Well, that could be an American base for the time this podcast goes out. Okay, so we come back to where Keir Starmer's crew is. Yes. Right. I mean, Helen, you've been telling me for ages, Nigel is going to be the next prime minister? I think that we should be very open to the possibility because there have been huge swings and this was a massive swing to the Greens with the reform in second and Labour in third and what was previously a really great seat and the key problem... A solidly Labour seat.

49:19Yeah, was that there was a large constituency of quite socially conservative Muslims. There was another bit of the seat that was white graduates essentially. Now those are two groups that have some things in common but actually electorally you'd imagine want different things. And for one party to be able to get 40 % of the vote out of that seat is quite impressive. And a big problem for Labour, because it doesn't say that there's one weird trick that they, you know, why don't you just be meaner to immigrants? Might win you back some of those people, but none of those people. Why don't we be more liberal on social issues?

49:49Well, that's going to turn off some of those people. Where do you go? You know, both of them united, by the way, one of the few things they're united on is Gaza, to take us right back to the start, right? Both the kind of, you know, white college graduates and socially conservative Muslim voters, both of them very worried about Britain's involvement in wars in the Middle East. So that was something that Zach Polanski pumped quite hard during that violation. But it can't all be about that, can I? When Matt Badloos came out immediately and said, actually, this is all down to the Muslim vote and down to family voting and corruption and everything.

50:19But, I mean, if you're going to get a load of socially conservative Muslims to vote for a woman candidate and an openly gay Jewish leader, that's a hell of an achievement, isn't it? Yeah, it just proves that they ran a very good campaign that spoke to people on the issues that they cared about. That said, there are bits of that campaign I didn't like. In the same way that I think that reform quite often play white grievance politics. I don't like the Green Party putting out adverts which is showing Keir Starman with Modi to say, look at him hanging out with a Jew. And then Netanyahu to say, look at him hanging out with a Jew.

50:52that to me is pressing a button that I don't really want people carving up Britain into different ethnicities and tailoring their message differently or on religious sectarian grounds I mean that's the Zach Goldsmith going for London mayor tactic isn't it? Absolutely. Yes. Was it a Hindu family saying he'll take your gold? Right exactly I find it a continuation of the fact that there are people who are madly obsessed with Sadiq Khan that he's trying to impose Sharia law on Britain and just say just because he's a Muslim I think that's all you need to know about him that kind of politics is really Show some respect Helen, that's the President of the USA you're talking about Really, really ugly wherever it comes from But they've correctly identified that talking about boring old green stuff is not especially interesting No one cares about the heat pump For listeners of the podcast there was a section in which Andy was talking about energy but we've cut it Oh no!

51:44Kemi Badenow's Conservatives got 1.9 % of the vote and that I think shows that she's done the work of reducing the vote to its core and you can build from that. And her reaction was to say that Keir Starmer is finished. I love that. That was brilliant. Mirrored by a lot of the press. I mean, you pointed this out, but... Yeah. Harp, starboard. They lost their deposit. All right, we should end this orgy of gloating. We haven't even done Dubai influencers. Imagine such a thing, Andy. Look at all the gloating that I've got pent up inside me. We get big, big views on YouTube from Dubai. Okay, I'll say nothing.

52:19Yeah, yeah. I've always loved the UAE and I believe that everything they do is great. Absolutely. I know who protects us. You have to say that when you move to Dubai, which Helen is doing. You've revealed where we're broadcasting from, where the bunker is. That is it for this episode of Page 94. Thank you so much for listening and for watching. If you would like to get a copy of Private Eye, it's available in your local newsagent. And if you'd like to get a subscription, it is available at private-eye.co.uk. the latest issue of the magazine has a terrific report from dr grim a human rights correspondent about what life has been like in iran under the ayatollahs and under the regime and it's got plenty more fantastic coverage fantastic jokes fantastic cartoons it's a fantastic magazine and the price has not spiked tenfold yet so rush out and get it right now thanks to ian helen and adam and thanks once again to matt hill of rethink audio for producing bye for now Andy and Anna here from your new favourite podcast No Such Thing As A Fish Yes, we are two of the four hosts of the podcast that stuffs fascinating, amazing, weird, mad facts into your ears on a weekly basis You got any good facts, Andy?

53:32Yes, how about this one? Anteaters have evolved on 12 separate occasions Wow Mysterious, wonderful The world really wants them to exist What about this one? When Ronald Reagan left office, he left a note on the White House lawn for the squirrels, warning them to beware of George Bush's dogs. So there you go. If you like fascinating facts and much more besides, we are No Such Thing As A Fish.