Amol Rajan

0:00Coming to you live from London, this is Gyles Brandreth with another episode of Rosebud.

0:26Hello, I'm Giles Bradworth and you're listening to Rosebud. This is a podcast that goes out twice a week. On Fridays, we give you interviews with remarkable people. On Tuesdays, well, we sometimes meet remarkable people as well, but more often than not on a Tuesday, my producer Harriet Jane and I sit down and we leaf through my diaries. On Fridays on Rosebud, we've had all sorts of guests. Well, we've had scientists, we've had sports personalities, we've had a lot of actors, we've had some politicians, we've had a range of people. On the whole, we haven't had too many journalists, not too many broadcasters.

1:05I think the reason for that is that I'm a journalist, I'm a broadcaster, so it doesn't feel as special to me as perhaps it should be. So we're making an exception this week. We have got a journalist and a broadcaster, but the reason he's here is that his own story, I think, is fascinating, and his view of his life, his upbringing, his parents, his grandparents, is to me very intriguing he's one of the presenters of the today program on bbc radio 4 but he won't be doing that for much longer because in september of this year 2026 he's um well he's off to do other things different things and he may tell us about that he's going to surprise you i think he certainly surprised me i'm really delighted to have him here he's a regular listener to Rosebud too, which is always nice.

1:59So would you please sit back and enjoy my conversation with today's Rosebud guest, journalist, broadcaster, former editor of The Independent, presenter on the Today programme, host of University Challenge. It is Amol Rajan. I hope I've got his name right. Better ask him when we start. Anyway, cue the music.

2:35Amol, before we begin, I need a quick briefing. Pretend this is University Challenge, and in a nutshell, in under a minute, explain how I pronounce your name, what is your real name, why are you called Amol? Am I saying that correctly?

2:53Amol Rajan: Nearly. It's pronounced, thank you so much for taking an interest. I've got so much to say, but I'll try and keep it to under a minute, even though I've never been on Radio 4's Just a Minute. And I'll do this without hesitation, deviation, or... Repetition. Repetition. My name is Amol. If you were in your garden and you saw Amol, you'd say, look, it's a... Amol. Nailed it in one. This has been a nightmare all my life, especially when, during my gap year, I worked at the Foreign Office. You ring people up and say, hello, it's Amol from the Foreign Office. And they're like, what? And this was in the year after 9-11, so it got very strange.

3:25Amol Rajan: I had, my late father was Tamil, which is Southeast India. The Tamil, my mum is from West India, a place called Pune, which is India's ninth biggest city, quite close to Mumbai, or Bombay as I still call it. And the Tamil naming convention is your name, is your father's initial, then a dot, then the name that you get given. My father's name was Vare the Rajan. I was born V. Amol. But when we came to this country, that didn't make sense. So we had to flip it. It had become Amol Varadharajan or Varadharajan. And then when we applied for British Passports in 1990, my father split his name into Varadharajan.

4:02Amol Rajan: So I went from being V.amol to being Amol Varadharajan to being Amol Rajan. Did I do that in a minute without hesitation, repetition or deviation? Ding, ding, ding. You got the prize. Well done. I'd be good on just a minute, wouldn't I? Yes, indeed. Is that an audition? That's an audition. I need this in my new career. You do. I know the producer. so I'll put in a good word for you. All right, Amol, we're going to begin now with my very first question, which is always the same. What, Amol Rajan, is your very first memory? I think my first memory is of the commute from Heathrow Airport in southwest London to Chiswick in southwest London when my family moved to this country when I was three.

4:47Amol Rajan: I was born in Calcutta, as I still call it, in northeast India, where my father, my dear departed dad, was posted. In 1986, Mrs. Thatcher very kindly let my family into this country. We could have gone to Grenada in the Caribbean or London, but because he loved the idea of knowledge and an education that might involve great universities, my father and mum chose this country. and I seem to recall at the age of three in that commute from Heathrow to our first house which was on Thames Village in Chiswick just off Hartington Road. It was my dad worked for a bank called Yuko Bank and they provided accommodation and I looked up and there on a bridge going from right to left was a Piccadilly Line train and I'm obsessed with trains and that image of the Piccadilly line going from right to left locates me and my earliest memory in London.

5:43Amol Rajan: It locates me with trains and it takes me back to a moment of uncontrollable, infinite excitement on thinking of this new life that my family and I were embarked on. Exciting. Just give us a flavour of their old life. You call it Calcutta and I've been there and I can see you coming from Calcutta because It's quite an old school city where they're not embarrassed about their heritage. Queen Victoria's statue is still admired by many people. And the old government house, probably designed by Lutyens. Lutyens, yes. Well, the ambassador's residence in Delhi, I think, is a Lutyens. Edward Lutyens, a great architect, I think is a Lutyens.

6:19Amol Rajan: And I would say that, how can I put this? Everything that I know about modern India is less embarrassed about the empire than people in Britain are. my father for instance absolutely revered i mean the empire is a complicated thing in india because um you know in the end they pushed it away you know and the manner of that departure the part you know the bloody amputation of partition was uh not a happy period in the lives of you know millions of families who became destitute or suffered the most appalling uh grievance uh and injury and loss but um britain did leave extraordinary things behind in india like a civil service, like the world's biggest train network, which employs, I think it's one of, is it possibly the third or fourth biggest employer in the world?

6:59Even more people in the National Health Service.

7:01Amol Rajan: Yeah, I think it's the Chinese army, then the Indian Rail Network, and then the House of Lords, possibly. And then the NHS. Thank you. But my, you know, my mum and dad absolutely revered England. And I do mean that as something very specific. I don't mean London or Britain. Britain is a political idea, a union between great nations, but England, which was an idea. Britain, I'd say, is a sort of a political settlement. And my mum and dad were both from extraordinarily poor families, kind of unimaginably poor, really, even to me. My dad was one of 11, son of a temple secretary in southeast India.

7:39What does that mean, a temple secretary?

7:40Amol Rajan: So he, his father, in southeast India, a place called 200 miles or so south of Chennai, is a place called Kumbhukornam. And Kumbhukornam has huge numbers. People will know somewhere called Trivandrum or Tiritripoli or Madurai. And these places, or Pondicherry is not far away, they have huge numbers of temples. And temples are a kind of way of life. You know, in our secular age, people sometimes forget that for most people, through most of history, religion has been a way of life. It's a form of community. And my father's father wasn't a priest or a vicar. He didn't take services, but he ran the finances.

8:13Amol Rajan: And he was extremely poor. And the faith was what? Hinduism. Hinduism. But Hinduism, and indeed India, I think it's very important not to, not that you would, but not to think of as being, how can I put this, contiguous with the Abrahamic faith. So Islam, Christianity and Judaism obviously have spawned extraordinarily different civilizations, but come from a similar place. And they have certain ideas in common and certain ideas are very, very, very different. One of the ideas they have in common, for instance, is the idea that history is a sort of line with an end point. It's rectilinear. Hinduism is very, very different.

8:49Amol Rajan: It doesn't see human history as rectilinear or having an end point. It's much more sees things as circular. And India, it's very important to understand, it's not really a country. I mean, there is a country called India. But India is really a vast civilization, which has about 50 different countries in one. My dad was from Tamil Nadu, which is a very small sea, conservative, ritualistic, shy place, or was in 1945 when he was born, one of 11. My mum is from Pune, which is a completely different universe. Fairer skin, still Hindu, but different cuisine. The staple is wheat, not rice. Different practices, much more liberal, much more good times, different appearance, sharper jawline and nose.

9:34Amol Rajan: And I would say, even in the year 2026, a Spanish person and a Slovakian probably have more in common than a Maharashtra and a Tamil person. Then how did they meet and what did their families make of them getting together? They had an arranged marriage, which worked rather well. My dad was a genius. My dad was the only one in his 11 siblings that made it overseas. And he was the cleverest person I'll ever meet. He was extraordinarily good at mental arithmetic. And he submitted most of the canon of English literature to his memory. He could do most of it verbatim. And I can do a bit of it, but not as much as him.

10:09Amol Rajan: And my dad had six younger sisters. and he had a pretty ferocious father. And my dad got a first class degree and then another one, I think, by the time he was about 20 or 21. At which university? It was known as the Cambridge of South India. It was called Kumbh Kornham College. And my dad wanted very much to pursue a PhD in, I think, physics. And I'm afraid he got beaten up pretty badly by his own father, who said he's got to get his younger sisters married. And my dad had... Was he beaten up? Literally beaten up? He got beaten, yeah. Physically beaten? Yeah, oh yeah, absolute norm. back, I mean, this is, we're talking 19, early 1960s India.

10:44Amol Rajan: I think it was seen as a rather bumptious idea to pursue your own studies rather than do what was in the interest of the family. So he went up to Delhi, where his older brother was living. He did night classes. He worked extremely hard for many years, earned the money, which he sent back to get his younger sisters married, which is what he did. All six younger sisters were married. And in Delhi, he came across his older brother, my late uncle Srinivasan, who said he should really think about getting married. And Srinivasan worked in a city called Pune in West India. And he worked with a very, very, very clever, very, very beautiful, very, very popular girl.

11:20Amol Rajan: And he wrote her a letter which said, My dear Sunanda, I have mentioned to you that I have a younger brother. He is very handsome, fair of skin, because the fairness of skin mattered in 1970s India. Exceptionally clever, and he rides a Yezdi motorcycle. and this short beautiful letter written in English this letter was delivered by Indian freight train to Pune where it reached an ammunitions factory where my mum saw it and consented to meet with my father she was working in the ammunitions with my uncle she worked in an ammunitions factory with my uncle and um you know she was an amazing amazing 30 something or late 20s person.

12:04Amol Rajan: They arranged a... Oh, so she was quite old by... But Indian sounds exactly very... My dad was extraordinarily old. He was 32. They liked each other from the start, did they? I think that they took a shining to each other. I think you're allowed when you walk into... I mean, what an idea. Can you imagine in a room in Pune in 1977, six years before I'm born, two people come together. This is what happens still in India. You know, hundreds of thousands of people do this every year. You walk into a room and you know at the other end of that room. I felt a bit like that walking in here today to meet you, Giles.

12:35Amol Rajan: You're going to bump into someone who you're going to wake up to every day for the rest of your life, who you're going to raise a family with. You've got no idea, no idea if you're going to like them, no idea if you've got anything in common. You know, here I am. It moves me to tears. It's an amazing idea. Why did they leave India? Better life. Better life, glory of education. My father, as I say, was a genius. When he wrote and read an awful lot of English novels, he was obsessed with Shakespeare from a very young age. You imagine rural Southeast India, early 1960s, dreadful poverty. When the monsoon season comes, you hoard your resources, you share a blanket between all these siblings.

13:17Amol Rajan: Extraordinarily intense poverty. What were they all doing? They were all reading Shakespeare. And they were all committing Shakespeare to memory. I've got all these books where my dad, I can't even, you know, It's an amazing thing. Speaking what would have been his third or fourth language, because if you grew up Tamil, you'd probably speak Malayalam and Telgu. You'd learn a bit of English at school. 17, 18, 19-year-old young boy from a poor family, one of 11, reading in his fourth language. And he underlined, Giles, you know, he underlined all the references to the UK. So I have these books. It might be, he was interested in Thomas Hardy, and I love Thomas Hardy's novels.

13:51Amol Rajan: He would underline the references to a place called Battersea and Clapham, which my dad till his dying day called Clatham. I don't know why. He called it Clatham. I always try to say to my dad, because we grew up in Tooting, which is too soft. But of course he's right, isn't it? Because the PH is like... Should be Clatham. In phone. Exactly, exactly. He also called it the Piccadilly line, and I think it was not very much the Piccadilly line. But no, he had a love of England. He had this very, very romantic idea, which I've certainly imbibed, of an idea of England and of London. And it was, if I'm being honest with you, as I will throughout our wonderful conversation, it was really an idea bound up with great universities and education and was england welcoming to him oh fantastic so he arrived what was he planning what what were he and your mother planning to do when they got to england so my mum was didn't have a job my dad worked for a bank called the yuko bank and yuko bank put us up in a place called thames village in chiswick and i have this wonderful image of my mum obviously coming from a hot country um spoke a bit of English, but not great English.

14:50Amol Rajan: My dad spoke a bit better, but she came with Indian clothes. And so there's my mum in, what was that winter of, was it, was it Michael Fish in 1988? And there's a sort of hurricane ripping through the West of England. There's my mum on a bike in a sari, you know, um, you know, she'd bought some sort of warm, uh, cold weather clothes by then, but my mum came completely inappropriately dressed and she initially didn't work. When we then moved to, um, South London, my mum was a, is a legendary figure, um, became a nursery manager, a nursery teacher and eventually she left nurseries to work in administration at the foreign office but yeah they wanted to stay um we i think briefly in 1990 we got posted back to india and then we came back um but they wanted to make a better life you know they wanted to do what most migrants do is as your recent interviewee john major said uh to you and said to me most people came and do come came with hope in their hearts wanting a better life for their families yeah and they got a better life for their families oh they got the dream and hope stayed in their hearts.

15:45They had no bad experiences at all.

15:48Amol Rajan: I don't think you would ever come across someone more patriotic. I mean, you know those people who lie in the mall on sort of the golden jubilee waving flags in Union Jack shirts? You know, although my dad didn't have a Union Jack jumper, I mean, he was more patriotic than those people are for Britain. It's a very particular kind of love. It's the love of someone who welcomes you into their home and treats you as a guest and says um you've got to contribute you've got to pay your way uh you've got to obey the rules but if you do that we'll make a great life for you and look at what his children have got you know my you know i've had this life to speak for myself where i went to an amazing school in south london i went to the world's greatest university and had three incredible years i worked at the foreign office i've worked at the bbc i've worked in fleet street i mean the dream that my parents had has come true.

16:40And all very much English establishment notions. The BBC, Fleet Street, Cambridge University.

16:47Amol Rajan: And I wonder, because I wanted to be a cricket player, and once I worked out I wasn't quite good enough to do it, I wonder what it is in my psychology that has sort of always grasped for... I mean, I fell in love with newspapers growing up, but I wonder what it is that's sort of why I've had that quite a sort of establishment life in that sense. Before we get to your life in England, You were born in Calcutta, but can't remember it, I imagine, for the first three years. But you've been back since? I've been back to India many, many, many times. I've actually not been back to Calcutta since 1990.

17:15Amol Rajan: I would say that the most shaping experiences I had, the thing that really formed my character, where I became me as an adolescent, was from the age of about 11 to 17, every other year we would go back to India and we would get the trains. and I'm obsessed with trains and India's trains are just the most magical human creation. Amazing. And the train from Chennai, which used to be called Madras, to rural Southeast India, where my grandparents lived, was an overnight train. And in the first class cabin, so you get three levels. There's second class where everyone sits, there's first class and then there's AC.

17:58Amol Rajan: AC are those posh tinted windows where you can see outside but they can't see in. But me and my brother always wanted first class because Indian trains have a slightly different approach to health and safety. And Indian trains, first class, you didn't have a window, you just had bars. And so you could feel the wind coming in. But you would get cabins of four where on both sides you could pull down a bunk at the top. And me and my brother would, at night time, have our initial meal, settle down, use the slightly ropey toilets on the train, and then we'd go to sleep in the top bunk. and if I was to sort of, if a psychotherapist or indeed an incredible podcaster like Charles Brandreth were to dig, to root into the sort of origins of my personality right at the bottom of my brain stem, I think they would go back to that 12-year-old boy who'd climbed up to the top bunk of a rickety train, probably only doing 50 or 60 miles an hour, coursing through the night in South East India.

18:52Amol Rajan: The metallic smell of the light, which never worked, it would always flicker. And then you'd get to a station and you'd hear the same chants. chai chai garam chai chai chai vada vada vada vada vada and you just hear these incredible incredible agents of humanity trying to sell you things coming through and obviously selling it through the window and that's when i thought i want to make something of my life life is beautiful i'm blessed have you ever thought of going back i mean this is moving back yes because england is quite quite a small territory you could go back and conquer india in the way that you've been conquering so i have made a decision based on a lot of thought not to uh and that sort of gets into a race ahead but gets into kind of why i've actually left bbc news i'm at a kind of strange moment and a blessed moment in my life where i've had a lot of fun doing a few different things but if i'm really honest i'm you know having been in the news industry and very exposed to what's going on in this country and thought hard about it for a long time i can't tell you how much I love my country, by which I mean England.

19:54Amol Rajan: And I mean a very particular thing, which is the idea of England. But I'm very worried about it. I'm very, very worried about the state of things in my country. I think we've got some big, big, big problems that really need addressing. And one of the things that I worry about in that context is whether or not this is the best place for my four kids to grow up. My answer is, it is. So, you know, that's the vote of confidence that people might want to hear. But I tell you a very specific thing, which is that my worry is, I mean, this is a wonderful country. It's a peaceable country, actually quite low crime, great culture and civic institutions and parliamentary democracy and all these things.

20:34Amol Rajan: I love this country. I'm not sure that it is still a place where, as was the case five or six decades ago, history is being made. And I mean something very specific by that, which is that I've been really blessed with the chance to interview huge numbers of icons. And one of the things, if you try and study the story of great careers and success, one of the things you notice is they have extraordinary talent, they have extraordinary good fortune, often in being in the right place at the right time. But they also have this particular knack for being where history is being made. And in the 1960s and 70s, I think you could say that about England.

21:14Amol Rajan: the extraordinary cultural effusion i mean you were there you tell me the extraordinary cultural effusion that demographic dividend of the baby boom years relative peace today and this goes back to your question today um i've spent a lot of time in silicon valley wouldn't want to live there spent a lot of time in the east coast of america i've chosen not to live there spent a lot of time in continental europe singapore poland is going through an economic miracle india is definitely somewhere where history is being made india is the young country 1.4 billion people adds a million workers to the workforce every single month.

21:48Amol Rajan: It's extraordinarily exciting and energetic in a way that Britain at the moment doesn't always feel. Would you like your children maybe to end up in India? I would like them to experience it and then make up their own mind. Isn't that, I mean, you know better than me because you've got older children. Isn't that in the end what you want as a parent for them to make good decisions, for it to be their decision? Of course. So I've got a thing, my youngest is two, and it's just started nursery and is very unhappy today. so I'm feeling rather emotionally worn by it. But when she's a bit older and the long-haul flights are a bit less perilous, I'd like to go to India frequently and invite my children to fall in love with a civilisation that's in their blood.

22:35Let's get back to your story now. You come, you're living in London. This is your first memory. The underground train, I love all that. what sort of a home are you living in your first proper home describe the building the house the

22:50Amol Rajan: flat or wherever it was it's the ground floor flat in a non-gated community of small terraced houses next to the river thames and every bit of that in a gorgeous part of london called chiswick and every bit of that really matters because i have this very very strong sense of growing up close to the water. And I just have such sepia-tinged memories of the age of three to seven, playing outside. I have one older brother, and it was wonderful. And we had this sense of discovering England together. And did you eat English food or Indian food? I've got to tell you, I ate the best food in the world, and it was Indian.

23:28Amol Rajan: My mother, everyone says, everyone says that their mum was the best cook in the world. And everyone is wrong, except for me, Giles. My mum, Um, yeah, I don't know if you'd call her mission. My mum makes the most extraordinary Tamil food, the most extraordinary Maharashtra food, Bengali food. And women of my mum's generation in India grew up learning those skills in the kitchen. It was absolutely normal for them to cook really quite complicated things. You know, we made yogurt at home where you boil the milk and then you put some old yogurt in and you leave it in the boiler room and it curdles and comes into yogurt.

24:02Amol Rajan: So we had amazing food. It was quite, it was in a sense, quite an Indian upbringing. except in fundamental ways my parents ensured that I became very English. Maybe this is where the love of the establishment comes in because we just watched a huge number of British sitcoms. And did you talk in English at home? Yeah. Always? Always English. I'm a bit ashamed of that actually because I'm not... I mean, can you talk any of the Indian languages? Bad, very bad Hindi, no Tamil. My German's about as good as my Hindi. I feel kind of ashamed about that really. Who was your first friend outside the family?

24:32Amol Rajan: My best mate at primary school was Matt. Matt Wortham. There was a chap called Anthony Wiley, Mitchell Lewis. These are all friends from Hillbrook Primary School, which I went to in the early 1990s. And again, it was a happy, happy time. I had lots of very close, mostly male friends from primary school. And then I fell in love with cricket and it all changed. And when did you fall in love with cricket and why? Well, it was June the 2nd, 1993. And I can tell you why. because a young peroxide blonde Australian called Shane Keith Warren bowled his first ball in ashes cricket at Old Trafford against Mike Gatting, the, if I could say, somewhat rotund England batsman.

25:22Amol Rajan: Anyway, he bowled this ball and it became known as the ball of the century. So Shane Warren was a spin bowler, someone who, as they release the ball, tries to uncock their wrist to impart spin. And this ball swerved so vigorously in the air before pitching about the foot outside leg stamp. And if you don't understand cricket, don't worry, stay with me because it gets better. And it spun off the wicket, so off the pitch in the opposite direction. And it bowled, i.e. it took the wicket of Mike Gatting. And my dear father used to watch the nine o 'clock news as it then was. And I saw this ball in the headlines of the nine o 'clock news, which as a family we were required to watch.

25:58Amol Rajan: And honestly, that ball, I mean, I wrote a history of spin bowling and this is how it opens. That ball hijacked my childhood. because I then spent eight years trying to become England's answer to Shane Warren. I got quite good, sadly, not quite good enough, but I became absolutely obsessed with leg spin. And I am to this day. I've written a book about it. If anyone wants watching this, if anyone wants a free tutorial on any social media platform about how to bowl an off break, a leg break, a googly, a top spinner, a flipper, the Rajan mystery ball. I can bowl all of, I'm obsessed with it. And bowling a leg break, which is just about the most weird and unnatural thing to do.

26:30Amol Rajan: If you picked up a pebble and you're going to throw it across the river, you would throw usually round arm it's very unnatural to do with a straight arm coming over your shoulder then to decide to spin the ball okay spin the pebble okay this is really weird you're going to kind of cock your wrist this is starting to hurt and uncock it that is the weirdest most unnatural action in all sport and yet Shane Warnes ball of the century June 1993 was the summit of all sporting achievement all sporting history up until that moment was but prelude until that moment and all sporting history subsequently has been a mere postscript nothing any human will ever do will be more beautiful than that ball and i tried for eight years to recreate it we have limited success do you feel your life has consequently been a failure yes my entire career is a product of failure and i i say that with humility uh i feel a profound profound sense of failure i feel a profound sense of um inadequacy and i don't listen i'm not crying.

27:30Amol Rajan: I'm a very happy guy. Distill them the magic of cricket to lay people. Why do people like you? Why does it just keep them going, drive them through, keep them, you know, we mentioned John Major already, when he wants peace, when he ceased to be prime minister, where did he go? Straight to the Oval. Straight to the Oval. And that was release, security, freedom what is it about cricket i'm gonna have to give you a i can't say i'll do this in a minute but i'm going to give you a quick answer on three levels there's the aesthetic there's the intellectual and there's the historic aesthetically nothing could be more beautiful than the sight of a tiny five and a half ounce red cherry being hurled down at a piece of willow which is both a form of defence and a form of attack.

28:21Amol Rajan: You've got to use the willow to defend what is yours, which is your wicket, which is the other bit of wood behind you. And you've got to attack that damn ball and send it as far away as possible. There's an incredible thing. When you go to the cricket, there's an extraordinary incongruity between the hush, the ghostly hush. You see these ghostly figures on the pitch and there's total silence in the crowd. And then if you zoomed in with your ears to the ball and to the bat, there's this sort of grasping, rasping sound, there's unbelievable violence of of auditory violence up close so visually and in terms of auditory kind of violence cricket is just better to look at than anything else secondly intellectually cricket is more a game of strategy and calculation than any other physical sport it's extraordinarily demanding on the brain there's more to tactics and strategy than in any other sport because you have to think people out and at its summit test cricket which is over five days uh it's a bigger test of the intellect and of the courage of individuals because i mean it's literally called a test because it's so demanding a five-day test is this kind of epic drama that's why so many indians love it because of the epic uh nature of hindu um texts like the bhagavad-gita or the ramayana and then the other thing about cricket which gives it its ultimate meaning is that cricket more than any other sport is history by other means because the story of cricket is the story of imperial inversions where the english go and teach these uppity colonials this little eccentric weird sport with all these weird rules and the colonials get really good at it and then they humiliate the english and they often do it by specializing in something so indians had spin bowling and they're very good batsmen west indies had fast bowling australians just played harder and that story which is the story of centuries of history and politics and humanity by other means gives cricket makes cricket and cricketing contests kind of pregnant with meaning so cricket was for eight years central to your life yeah yeah i wanted to be i wanted to play for england i wanted to be the best and how far did you get i trey i was selected for sorry under 17 i had a trial for them selected for say on 17 i went to um a load of wonderful training sessions at the ken barrington center at the oval and then i had this incredible moment in my life when i was 17 um i was covered my skin was covered in really horrible patches and i developed a form of skin condition called psoriasis or eczema which really important for people listening today to know i'm now completely eczema and psoriasis free it happens a lot of people of south asian background who are going through puberty.

30:59Amol Rajan: Adolescence, yeah, it happens very common. But two things happen at the same time. The first is that my body, my knees, my elbows, bits of my face were covered in essentially fish scales, kind of purple, oozing, horrible things. I got very, very self-conscious about it. And at the same time, I got a bit of an elbow injury, which is the excuse I used. Really, I wasn't good enough. And I got dropped by Surrey under 17. My world collapsed. I went upstairs at the Ken Barrington Center and I cried my eyes out and I remember I was so upset I don't want to over medicalize it and sort of talk about depression it wasn't that I was just really upset um but my dad one of his heroes one of my heroes is a philosopher called Bertrand Russell and he wrote a book called The Conquest of Happiness so anyway I then um read The Conquest of Happiness decided to get quite academic applied to Cambridge and then that changed my life and it's made my life absolutely incredible single best thing that happened to me how about girls not very successful.

31:55Well, you painted this picture of you with psoriasis. That might have made you physically not attractive for a while.

32:00Amol Rajan: Physically not attractive. Probably for a few months. I was also a very rotund. I mean, the generosity of my boyhood girth knew very little about. Does that not affect your cricket? Crickets, the other thing I didn't say about cricket is you can play it when I'm quite fat, which worked for me. I was not very successful with girls. I mean, can you remember the first girl you had a crush on? Oh, God, yes. Who was that? I can remember the sort of first famous people I used to have a crush on. I don't know about the first person at school. Who's the first famous person, then, to give a flavour of your tastes?

32:30Amol Rajan: Rachel Stevens from S Club 7. Why not? I can arrange a meeting. Rachel Stevens from S Club 7 was a huge... I mean, she doesn't know this. And if she watches this, it's been so mortifying. Because, yeah, she was a huge, huge, huge teenage crush of mine. I mean, she was just... I mean, can I say this? I mean, she just struck me as the most insanely beautiful person in the world. I mean, and she could sing, and I was, what, 15 or something. So I don't think it was, it wasn't a complicated Freudian experience. It was a straightforward crush. It sounds quite natural. It sounds quite natural. Quite human.

33:08Amol Rajan: I think I had a huge crush on Rachel Stevens' Vest Club 7. Probably still do. I should get in touch with her and just say. We can set this up. We can set this up. No. It'll be our Valentine special next year. I'll be so, oh God, I'd be so, I'd be so embarrassed. I was not I could not be described by anyone as successful with the girls for many reasons one is I was quite self-conscious and one of the things that I think about a lot with my children is where does confidence come from where do you instill it you know obviously I've got incredible personality Giles as I'm sure anyone who meets me would would think but I was away with the fairies you know I was dreaming of cricket and committing a lot of Shakespeare to memory and I was pretty fat and I was covered in scales for about six months.

33:51Amol Rajan: This has not bode well for someone who kind of approaches. Do you remember the first girl you held hands with?

34:05No. What was your first proper relationship? What did you bring to it and what did you get out of it?

34:10Amol Rajan: My first proper relationship, proper, proper relationship was with my wife, who's my first proper girlfriend. And what I brought to it was... She's called Charlotte? Yes. And you met her at university? Met her at university, yeah. Properly got together after university, thank goodness, because we were very different at university. What I brought to it was being very different to her. And I think that there is a tremendous value in trying to acknowledge, keep and retain difference in a relationship. My wife and I couldn't be more different. She's from Devon. She's English. She's introvert. Whereas, as you know, I'm extremely shy.

34:54Amol Rajan: And I, you know, we're just opposites, absolute opposites. And I think that works, actually. And I think it's an interesting thing seeing it play out in our children because they have two very, very, my mum and dad were opposites. My mum, extrovert. My dad, introvert. Do you have disagreements? Do you have rows? Do you ever have rows? Rarely. I'm quite non-confrontational. I sort of just go quiet. Have you ever made her cry? Oh, I'm sure. She's made me cry. Yes. When has she made you cry? When she's told me the truth about something that I haven't done well enough. Because it's the truth that hurts.

35:30Amol Rajan: Can you give me an example of that? Oh, I like to think that... so for all you know if you looked at if you googled me you would think you had a sense of someone who's very driven and ambitious and achieved a few high status jobs you wouldn't have any sense that what really drives me what really motivates me and what I give by you know 90 to 10 percent what I give most thought to is what I call the inner life the interior life the domestic life my family basically my moral career rather than my material career and I have a sort self-narrative about trying to be the best dad in the world trying to be the best husband in the world son and all the rest of it and if i ever stop short of that partly because i'm at particular times giving too much attention to other things it's not too often but it does happen no one understand that better than my wife when she says it hurts more because it comes from a deeper sort of place so i think so would you cry in front of her or that oh yes yes absolutely yeah and i by By the way, I've cried most in my life when my dear dad died.

36:37Amol Rajan: And I've cried mostly in front of her. You know, yes, I've cried more. But she doesn't, I don't think she makes me cry that often. But it'll be when we're talking about the straight. Listen, it's not easy, as you know very well. When you've got two working parents and four kids, extreme insomnia, which I've had recently. And you go through grief. You've got a lot of other things going on. It's tough. I mean, I've got an extraordinarily blessed and happy life. I'm a really happy guy. I've really worked out, I think, not in an arrogant way, I just think I've worked out the meaning of life and I'm trying to pay it forward.

37:08Amol Rajan: But I do cry a bit and there are strains. And on your specific question about when she would make me cry would be when she points out where I've fallen short of the standards that we set each other. We'll come back, if we may, to the grief and the insomnia. Let's now go back to the glory days. You get to Cambridge, down in college. You're clearly a clever clogs. Not really. You are. You read English? That's one way of putting it. I had a good time doing English, but truth be told, I would have preferred to study one of many, many other subjects. Philosophy is my first love. History. You know, I did all the reading for these other things and then ended up setting exams in English.

37:44Amol Rajan: And there were bits of English that I loved. I love Shakespeare and I love Milton and I'd happily recite vast, vast, vast tracts of both. But I didn't love medieval literature. I love Victorian novels. I don't love modern American literature. Did you do other things? Did you do the Amateur Dramatic Club? Did you play cricket for Cambridge? I didn't play cricket. No, by that stage, I'd given up on cricket because I was feeling so depressed about not being Shane Ward. No, I did journalism. I edited Varsity, which is the great... Of course. And it's a funny thing to think that Jeremy... University newspaper.

38:15Amol Rajan: University newspaper. And it's a funny thing to think that Jeremy Paxman, in a previous era, was the editor of Varsity. And I had a great time. But how bonkers that I decided in 2004-05 that what I should do is spend time in newspapers. why didn't I see that 20 years hence these wonderful institutions would be in a state of near collapse and what I should instead do would be to learn about this nascent field called artificial intelligence that's what I should have seen coming it's rather eccentric if I think about it now that I spent so much time in newspapers given how little I read them now

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39:30We're going to touch on this change of life that's now happening, the reason that actually we're here. But just take me through the high spots of your remarkable career because you began, I mean, you did Cambridge, and then what are we going to do afterwards? You emerge having got your...

39:46Amol Rajan: I think a lot of journalists are generalists, and I had this vague idea that I'd like to work in newspapers. I actually spent two years working on a Channel 5 show called The Right Stuff. Have you been on The Right Stuff? Back in the day. Back in the day. I was the chap in the audience with a microphone and a black T-shirt on The Right Stuff. Can you believe that? Because in 2005, Tony Blair was going for his third election. And this was May 2005, so just before my finals. And I was in the Varsity offices. And a producer of a TV program called up. And they said that they were looking for a student to take part in a Channel 5 program.

40:24Amol Rajan: I think if he's still around and if you're listening to this Tony please get in touch I think there's a chat called Tony Lee from Flame TV and I came down to Clapham or as my dad would call it Clapham South and I met Tony Lee and he said Tony Blair is doing a day with Channel 5 and in the evening he's going to be on a show called Talk to the Prime Minister where he's going to meet 15 ordinary people and this footage exists I can get it for you if you want of me I was the 14th of 15 people I was so I'm not going to swear I was so full of nonsense I was so up myself I'll talk like this I mean I'm wearing a Fred Perry jacket and I'm just and I gave him a hard time about single faith schools because this was shortly after the Burnley and Oldham riots anyway so I was on Channel 5 with Tony Blair and I went back and we watched it that evening and I was a bit of a famous person in Cambridge it was wonderful and off the back of that I got an audition after I graduated out of nowhere got an email saying would you like to do a screen test to be the mic boy on the right stuff I did that job for two years with Matthew Wright and then Simon Kellner, the legendary and visionary editor of The Independent, came on The Right Stuff as a guest.

41:32Amol Rajan: And in the ad break, I went up to him and asked him for a job. That's the way to do it. And as Simon Kellner walked out of the Whiteleys building in Queensway in West London, I did something that I've done three times in my life, which I strongly recommend to shy young people, which is I physically, he said in the ad break, give me your email address, whatever. And I thought, oh God, is he taking my email address? Maybe he'll forget it on a piece of horse, lose it, scrap of paper. I physically put myself in, I'm actually quite shy, in the way of Simon Kellner so that he had to walk past me to get out of Whiteleys.

42:06Amol Rajan: And as he walked out, he said, make sure you email me. And that second confirmation meant that I did email him, had an interview with independent senior people. And in August 2007, I started working for The Independent. And quite soon after, you ended up as the editor. Well, about five years after. And I was 29. I was on a stag do, which I'd organised in Barcelona. Got the call. I mean, I knew it was coming by that stage. But happy days and got married a month later. It was absolutely amazing. 2013. It was a summer. I know you're a big fan of Daft Punk, Charles. If you remember Daft Punk's Get Lucky.

42:39Amol Rajan: That summer that it was playing all the time everywhere. That was a summer that I got lucky. Well, you've had a lucky life. So blessed. So blessed in so many ways. because then we get on to, well, where you are now at the Today programme until September when that ends, but also you're doing University Challenge, succeeding Bamber Gascoigne, who I think you met. I knew him reasonably well many years ago. What was he like? Delightful. He was, in a sense, quite shy as well, actually, very knowledgeable. And then, of course, Jeremy Paxman, and now you. So all of that, this is glory time, which we can't go into any detail because the gear has changed.

43:18And I assume the gear has changed partly because of the death of your father. Yes. Tell us about your father, who's clearly the hero of your life. The genius that you clearly have, because you've done all these things so brilliantly, and you're clearly just listening to, you are brilliant. You give your father credit for that. Why did he die? How old was he when he died? How was your mother coping? What happened to you?

43:44Amol Rajan: So my dad was 76. he was um an infuriating man in the sense that he didn't like medical intervention and he had type 2 diabetes um and what i'd say to anyone listening now is that if you're of south asian origin or you're black your chances of getting type 2 diabetes are very high even if you're fit um and you don't want to get it and so as i sit here before you today i'm probably the fittest i've been for 25 years um and i'm very determined not to get type 2 type 2 diabetes and I've become a bit of a bore when it comes to the old longevity lark. I want to live for a long time. I want to look and sound like you when I'm in my late 60s.

44:23Amol Rajan: And my dear dad developed pneumonia. And we had a really hellish five weeks. The May before, so May 2021, I'd started working on the Today programme. And by the way, I just want to say something very specific here, which is that whenever I talk about any of the challenges I've had, I'm genuinely not whinging. I'm the happiest, luckiest person you've ever met. I really don't like that kind of victimhood Olympics that you often hear on, not just podcasts, but in our culture. I'm not complaining at all. I'm very, very lucky. But I did develop quite severe insomnia around the Today programme. Not because I was worried about doing the programme.

44:56Amol Rajan: I just couldn't get to sleep beforehand. And a combination of that and we just had our third child, which is, you know, a newborn is intense, especially when you've got two other kids at home. And then my dad was in hospital for really nightmarish five weeks. It was hell. It was the worst thing you could go through if you're me. And he was getting better and getting better, but he kept developing infections. And I was on my way to interviewing Ian McKellen, who's an extraordinary human being, for this series that I did. And I remember coming down, people know North London, I'll never forget, because I now think of it every single time, coming down the bottom of a road called Liverpool Road in Islington.

45:35Amol Rajan: You turn right past a station called Angel. As you turn right, you see Angel in front of you. And at that moment, I got a withheld call. and if your relative is in hospital uh having been there for five weeks um you don't want to get a call from a withheld number and the lovely nurse said please come immediately he's not responding please come immediately he's not responding and i said what does that mean she said please come immediately he's not responding i ran down there my mum was already in we went in we had a little chat with them and um they said that he passed away he had a cardiac like a rest, and going in there to see my dad, it was a beautiful, clear day, there was a plane, kind of, you know, going a bit like that Piccadilly line from right to left, which we sort of thought was possibly his last image, and he lay there, and you know, you must have tended to people dying, Giles, they looked like they were just asleep, they just looked like they were asleep, and he looked like he was asleep.

46:31Amol Rajan: And yeah, we said goodbye. And it was by a very, very long way, the biggest and worst thing that I've ever been through. And there was this strange arithmetic, which my dad would have appreciated. He was 76, I was 38. I suddenly felt like I was being yanked into the second half of life. And really, until that moment, I was a child. Because really until that moment, I was defined by his fathering of me, even though I didn't see him all the time. And, you know, I mean, we had a great relationship, but yeah, that completely changed me. What would you have said that you hadn't already said that he didn't already know?

47:14Amol Rajan: I think I'd have said, thank you again.

47:18Amol Rajan: And my big thing is I would have said, I'll justify all the sacrifices you've made. And I'd have said, I'll look after mum, which I will and do. Um, I certainly don't have, and it's an incredibly important point for people to understand, I certainly don't have the feeling that there was a huge amount unsaid. And can I tell you a very particular and strange reason for that? So during COVID, I went for a walk with my dad, which I did not thinking he was going to die, because he seemed in good health at the time. but I've always wanted to sort of prepare for that moment by you know saying thank you dad being very emotionally open with him he's quite a closed guy shy kind of Indian guy but I tried to sort of register with him emotionally by saying do you feel dad that your sacrifices were justified when you and mum came and he didn't really want he just couldn't engage on that level emotionally and do you know what he said he said um of course because look those people that I joined the bank with who stayed in India, you know, their daughters, you know, they didn't even go to university.

48:25Amol Rajan: I mean, he understood his life's achievement entirely through the prism, through the fact that I went to Cambridge. And my brother actually went and did a doctorate at Cambridge 10 years later, after me. And so the fact that he came to this country and his two children went at different stages to Cambridge University, that meant the world to him. And though we didn't register on the same level emotionally. I do feel I'd kind of prepared for his death in that way. And the one thing I would say to every single person listening to this who has a relative who's aging is you don't want to think about it, but they are going to die.

49:03Amol Rajan: And if they're in their, sorry to say this, but if they're in their mid seventies, they are by definition really quite ill because old age is the star in the solar system of illnesses. All these other illnesses sort of orbit old age and you want to prepare for their death and if you told yourself you've got five minutes or ten minutes with them or ten days what would you do and whatever whatever it is that you would do just do that tomorrow you know get on with it and do it because by preparing for that death you can make it less painful and it is so so so painful we both know because we both love shakespeare that all that lives must die passing through nature to eternity it's what happens it's line from Hamlet and Hamlet is all about a young man who can't cope with the death of his father and it throws it really throws so many stories of people being completely thrown by it.

49:58You have decided since your father died to change your life radically. Totally. Now as an outsider looking at you you've achieved lots of things but they could be things that in terms of what your father valued he got you into Cambridge just as my father got me into Oxford and then in my head I thought well to be honest newspapers they're fine but you're reporting telephone it's fine but you're just entertaining radio is fine but you're other people are doing it I'm not the prime minister I'm not the minister making the decision I'm just trying to ask questions and you think actually I want to do something with my life is that part and parcel about why you've changed yeah and by

50:43Amol Rajan: the way i have the utmost i didn't know that was obviously the provenance of your decision but i have the utmost respect and i sympathize with that sense that you have i mean maybe it's a separate podcast but i'm rather down on the practice of journalism if not the idea can i just say one thing about hamlet um because it is maybe you know it's part inspiration for a podcast called Rosebud. I'd be interested to know, Jamie, I'm not trying to interview you, but I'm interested to know what you think he means by Rosebud when he says Rosebud in Citizen Kane. In Citizen Kane? Well, later he dismisses it as a cliche that he's embarrassed about.

51:19But at the time, he is simply giving you the moment that really mattered. The one moment of security. His childhood, the last time he saw his mother. That's what it's about.

51:31Amol Rajan: Yes, but isn't it also the thing, the only thing that you can remember accurately with certainty. In other words, Rosebud is written on this sled and it's there. It's the words. Everything else is impressionistic. A bit like me with the Piccadilly line train, which is maybe why you start with that. It's impressionistic. It's like very broad brushstrokes. But that sled in the ice that Orson Welles, I think the greatest of all actors in the Western canon, he knows it said Rosebud. It's the certainty, right? I tell you a funny thing about Hamlet is that Hamlet's father doesn't say revenge me. He uses the word revenge once he says remember me.

52:08Amol Rajan: But Hamlet misremembers the words remember me. It is. I played Hamlet Senior when my son was playing Hamlet at the Park Theatre 10 years ago. And you're going to make me cry now because for me the most powerful moment my son was playing young Hamlet and I'm the ghost of Hamlet is the scene when the ramparts I as Hamlet Senior embrace Hamlet, Prince Hamlet, and say the words, it happens twice, remember me. Remember me. And what I'm saying to you is, it's clear from everything I read about you and talking today, is that you are going to remember your father. He is central to your life. Remembering him.

52:50And what I'm really asking you now is, this is how you've coped with this grief. The insomnia you're saying is incidental because it's capital because you happen to have a job where you have to get up at three in the morning. and what are you going to do now? How are you going to make your life worthy of being, of your children saying to you, when you say to them in years to come, remember me, what will you have done in your life that is worth them remembering about you?

53:16Amol Rajan: I think 99 % of the answer to that question is not going to be professional. So the reverence, respect, adoration and love that I have for their mother is the single most important thing that they'll see, my unconditional love for them and the time I spend with them. It's interesting, men get a bad rap. I don't know about, you know, if it's the Andrew Tate Gen Z generation. My generation of men, we're fantastic. Fantastic dads, you know. I am an incredibly attentive, brilliant, present dad. So that's mostly the answer. But there is a bit of the professional example. And I want to build something.

53:52Amol Rajan: And I also want, if I may say, and I'm sure this will get me in trouble, which is all the more reason to say it perhaps, I want to fight decline. I have spent 20 years in my career, a really good time. I've been paid really well, worked with fantastic people. What more do you want? Doesn't it intellectually satisfying? And perhaps in occasional instances, morally useful as well. I mean, incredible. But it's also been a form of disaster tourism. I've made a habit of joining industries 20 years too late. I joined the Independent in August 2007. It was set up in October 1986. I joined BBC in 2016.

54:26Amol Rajan: I am bored of missing golden ages and pining for the ages gone. Now, I'm also pragmatic enough to know that one of the reasons I've had a chance to do all the things I've done is because I have been there at the kind of, you know, at this period where there's collapse and decline all around. And I mean, it makes it easier to kind of, you know, rise up the ladder. And I've worked incredibly hard, you know, not necessarily harder than the cleaners who clean the toilets at the BBC, but I've worked really hard and conscientiously. But I've been in an atmosphere of decline my entire career. Do you know, Giles, I'm 42.

54:58Amol Rajan: I've never worked anywhere growing or profitable. And I've never worked anywhere that wasn't making redundancies. And I want to experience growth. I'm really worried about the state of this country. I love this country. But I'm really worried about the state of the planet. And to be honest, I've spent a lot of time reporting technology, not to get too downbeat for the wonderful listeners of Rosebud, quite worried about our species. And I think that the great mission of the age is to fight decline of our institutions, decline of our minds, decline of our planet, decline of our species. and I want to do that.

55:27Amol Rajan: And you've got a plan? Is there something exciting you can share? YouTube. Yes, I do have a plan. I've got a plan. I've got an incredible plan. There is this incredible economy which has grown up and I've seen it. It's always been there in the distance and just around the corner. I've seen it but I've had such a good time in newspapers then at the BBC and by the way, the BBC is, God, we could talk about that all day long. The BBC is such a noble, sacred institution and parts of it are still incredibly important to the life of the nation but um i want to be part of this incredible revolution in media where storytelling news information analysis thought conversation has gone from being few people to many uh to being all to all and wall to wall and on social media on youtube which i don't think of as a social media youtube's a video search engine on blogging platforms like subsnack and through streaming platforms you can with very low barriers to entry create incredible communities and i don't need to tell you that because you've done it with rosebud i mean look people come here because they know you they like you they respect you and because they know that they're going to get a nice hearing from you and you've had some enormous days which is quite humbling to be sat in this chair where you know a few weeks ago john major was sat here but what you've done is you've built a community I'm part of that community.

56:51Amol Rajan: I've listened to dozens of back episodes of this, and I feel a sense of membership. And I'd like to build a community. That's the kind of people side of it. I'd like to build a business, which is an empire of ideas and IP. At the heart of it is going to be a podcast, which has a YouTube channel. I'd like to write, and I'd like to own it. I want to join your community. You can join my community. Before we go, you mentioned, of course, you've interviewed a lot of people. You'll miss out, of course, not being on the Today program. Yeah. feeling part of something happening, which is very exciting, being part of the news.

57:25But you won't really miss it because you've been there. And you're also, you are exhausted, are you? Yeah, I find the,

57:32Amol Rajan: I hate to be this guy, but I have to say, I feel awkward complaining about it because the producers on the Today programme, who are the most sedulous, brilliant, hardworking, industrious people I've ever met. What does sedulous mean? Sedulous means exceptionally committed in your endeavour. So hardworking, sedulous. They are incredible. But yes, I tend to do it having not really been to bed because I've got these four kids. And listen, it's still a privilege. It's great. But yeah, I take four painkillers. I'm often, you know, there was one time last year, I remember I was interviewing a representative of the IDF, the Israel Defense Forces, particularly, how can I put this?

58:08Amol Rajan: He's on a front foot, this chap, in defense of Israel's actions in Gaza. And I remember he was the 810 slot, which is the premier slot. And 25 minutes before, I felt like I had a woodpecker in my head. and I took two codeine. And I thought that's suboptimal. And I've probably taken four or 500 painkillers over the last few years. So I want to get away from that and I want to be fit and healthy and I want to sleep and I want to rediscover all that. So it's about a new stage in my life. Why not politics as part of your life? Because I think that I've thought so hard about this. First of all, I'm genuinely not, which is a useful thing because I work at the BBC, I'm not party political.

58:45Amol Rajan: There are things on which, you know, I genuinely, I think it's useful analytically and intellectually to approach things through the prism of impartiality. I've probably got some views where people think that's really right wing or some people think that's really leftish. But I'm not party political. I wouldn't know which party to join. I've never been a member of any political party. That's one problem. Second thing is, it's hell. I mean, it just is hell. Compared to when you were chief whip, we have social media. We have a very, very low level of trust in politics. And I know there's one answer, which is to play the game and work within the system to try and improve it.

59:20Amol Rajan: But my argument against that is I'm afraid I think that politics, and you'd know this much better than I would, I think it's 90 % luck with timing. If I think of two of the great political figures of my lifetime, Barack Obama and Tony Blair, two of the most consequential world historical figures. Extraordinarily talented people, but they were also just in the right place at the right time. Now, they pounced after John Smith died in 1992, Tony Blair, so 94, Tony Blair pounced. Barack Obama pounced at the end of the Bush years after Iraq and before the financial crisis. And he had the talent and ability to make the most of that opportunity.

59:55Amol Rajan: But they're in the right place at the right time. And I've known a lot of people of my generation from university, a bit older, a bit younger, not been in the right place at the right time. And no one's ever heard of them. In your conversations with great people, and you heard everybody, did you nail Bill Gates on his association with Epstein? One of the things I'm proudest of on the Amol Rajan interviews, they're all there on iPlayer, is that I asked the awkward questions of very powerful people on their patches. You can check out what I asked Richard Branson, and I asked Bill Gates, and I kept at it with Bill Gates.

1:00:28Amol Rajan: On Epstein, over his affairs, I mean, I didn't fail to ask it. Bill Gates did give me my favourite answer. to any question I've ever asked, which is he had a bit of a reputation in those early years of being a tyrant at Microsoft. And I asked him about this because he used to memorise the number plates of the people that came into work at weekends to make sure that, you know, who was working hard and who wasn't. And I said to him, Bill, if you think about those early days, were you a bit of a tyrant? And he really thought about it, Bill Gates. He thinks hard about his answers. And he sort of said, yeah, I probably was.

1:01:00Amol Rajan: But then everyone who worked for me at the time of their lives and left with tens of millions of dollars. fair enough yes fair enough and you know what they they wanted to be there three more things and then we're done you've told us about your moment of sadness because it must be the death of your father but a moment of joy just what comes into your head when i say a moment of joy is it going to be a cricketing moment cricketing and family mixed in one um i walked down the aisle at our wedding in the Guildhall in Cambridge. The first couple, I have to get married in the Guildhall. It was a sort of funny anti, sort of pro-feminist thing or something.

1:01:38Amol Rajan: I can't remember why we did it. But I walked in second after my wife. My wife walked into Handel's music for the Queen of Sheba, is it called? And I came in after holding my parents' hand and I was so nervous. And my dad, oblivious to the fact that we were about to walk down the aisle together holding hands, asked me if the trains had run on time that morning. From London Kings Cross to Cambridge. But we walked down the aisle. I walked down the aisle to the theme tune from Test Max Special. Because that song, which is called...

1:02:15Amol Rajan: It's called Soul Limbo by Booker T and the MGs. And I'm spiritually... We've talked a lot about India, but I'm spiritually Caribbean or specifically Jamaican. I love reggae music. I love Jamaican food. I have a daughter called Jamaica and another called Nesta. after Bob Marley. And in that moment of ecstasy and elevation, cricket, family, Caribbean, and all the people I love came together. Later tonight, I'll be lying in bed thinking, what should I have asked him? What should I ask you that I haven't asked you?

1:02:53Amol Rajan: What the true source of happiness is? What? Amol is the true source of happiness for you. Amazing thing is it's not just for me, it's for everyone. The true source of happiness, I've worked it out, Giles, I've been to the mountaintop and I've seen the promised land. The true source of happiness is connection. It's other people. And it takes you a long time in life to work that out. You know, when my dad was in intensive care, I was driving down from north to south London to see him in St. George's. and Richard Osman who is a great podcaster, great author, TV exec, extraordinaire was doing his Death Island Discs and he said before introducing his final song he said that he was in his 50s now he's on a second marriage he'd worked out what life was about and he had this phrase where he said all that rocket fuel that I had as a young man all that rocket fuel's gone sort of I know what it's about now and somehow that idea of rocket fuel really resonated with me you know my god I had some rocket fuel you know the age of about 18 to 36 38 till my dad died and I'm not saying the rocket fuel is gone because actually my rocket sort of fell a little bit off launch pad but it's now kind of coming back to center and it's about to take off again but I really do know the meaning of life and a bit like you I've been very lucky I've spent time around a huge number of very rich people I've spent time around a lot of very famous people I've been on red carpets I've been to the Oscars, I've been to those swanky parties, those people are deeply, deeply unhappy.

1:04:22Amol Rajan: In the end, what makes people happy is their relationships, their bonds, their connections. And I think there are two types of wealth. There's material wealth, which is money, your career, the stuff on Wikipedia. And then there's moral wealth, which is love, and your relationships. And it's those that people talk about your funeral. And so the source of happiness is the relationships and the connections that you have and if you tend to them and if you give them your your all in the end you'll be all right how is your mum she's fantastic she's whatsapping me with such vigor and ilan from india where she's having the time of her life for a holiday or for a holiday no for a holiday and um she's because it's not easy being a widow is it no it's not at all well here's a terrible true thing to say but i say because it's true and despite it being terrible it's been a kind of liberation for my mum you know my dad was a anti-social guy I wish more than anything I'd give this you know I'd give anything for five minutes with him but um he was a anti-social kind of guy and my mum is a pro-social kind of lady and she's traveling she's seeing people she's doing a yoga group she does every morning she wakes up oh she's blossomed and you know I hope she has 25 amazing or 30 however many years of freedom and you know one of the main reasons I'm going to work incredibly hard and make this future venture an enormous success is because I want to be able to say to her something I never quite had the means to say to my dad, which is, Mum, you're getting on that plane, and when you do, you're going to turn left.

1:05:51Well done. That's a lovely wish to have. Do you have in your head, to finish with, any lines by Shakespeare or John Milton that come immediately to mind and that are favourites of yours?

1:06:03Amol Rajan: Can I do one of each, please? Please. I'd love that. do you know i'm so torn because my dad's favorite poem is thomas gray's elegy written in the country churchyard and i've just realized that if i do that i'm going to cry and i don't want to do that give us gray's elegy because it's such a beautiful poem and then we can dedicate the dedicate the podcast to the memory of your father because it's been all about him really anyway thomas gray's elegy written in a country churchyard is the poem that defines my life and defines my father's life because it's about the nobility of the poor and thomas gray was in a churchyard in Stoke Poges in Buckinghamshire and there are a number of stanzas which are too beautiful to be able to do without crying but he's if you imagine someone in the mid-18th century looking at all these gravestones and saying things like let not ambition mock their useful toil their homely joys and destiny obscure nor grandio here with a disdainful smile the short and simple annals of the poor the boast of heraldry the pomp of power and all that beauty all that wealth ever gave awaits alike the inevitable hour the paths of glory lead but to the grave and my favorite stanza but knowledge to their eyes her ample page rich with the spoils of time never did unroll chilled penury repressed their noble rage and froze the genial current of the soul and the reason that's my favorite stanza of any poem anywhere ever is because my dad felt that his life was one of chilled penury repressing his noble rage in other words he was too poor to be able to study.

1:07:36Amol Rajan: And therefore, he came to London to give his kids a chance that he didn't have. Well, he gave you a good chance and you've used it well. Yeah, I've still got a fair bit to do. We're only halfway through. We're halfway through. Of this podcast. Now, your story. Oh, thank you so much. Here's to the next 42 years and more. Thank you, Amal. Honoured to be here and a very proud member of your burgeoning and amazing community. And I'm going to be joining yours. Thank you so much, Josh. Amal Rajan, thank you so much. Well, I found that completely fascinating and unexpected. What amazes me is that I haven't met a mole before today, because I feel our paths should have crossed over the years.

1:08:19Anyway, he surprised me and delighted me, and I hope you found it very interesting too. And I wish him all success in the future. So, well done him. And well done you, actually, for listening and for sending us nice emails. Do, when you write to us, obviously you can write about anything you like, but if you're somebody who has had a kind of fascinating heritage like Amal and wants to tell us what your experience of that has been, particularly if it's been different from his, we love hearing contrasting views. You know, we love hearing from you and all you have to do is drop us a line, usually via email.

1:08:57It's simply hello at rosebudpodcast.com. Simple as that. hello at rosebudpodcast.com. That's the way to email us. People do occasionally write to us, old-fashioned pigeon post, and they write to me, Giles or Harriet, at Rosebud at Grosvenor House, Park Lane, London, West 1. Oh, I visited Judi Dench once at her home, and she's got, I think, on her fridge, with a magnet attached to the fridge, a letter that was delivered to her house. the letter was simply addressed Dame Judi Dench, England. And it got to her home. The postman brought it up the garden path and said, Dame Judi, I think this is for you.

1:09:40Dame Judi Dench, England. Isn't that fantastic? Anyway, so give it a go. Actually, why not drop me a line and see how far it gets to Giles? That's G-Y-L-E-S, Branworth, B-R-A-N-D-R-E-T-H. Go for London. Just go for London. And let's see if it gets to us. And if it does, I'll report it to you. First class stamps, please. All right. Before we go, here's an email from Annie Fowler. Hello, Giles and Harriet. Firstly, can I tell you what joy your podcast has brought me? And it is my very favourite thing to listen to at bedtime and in the middle of the night if I can't sleep. Well, Amal can't sleep either.

1:10:19So maybe he's listening to this in the middle of the night. He can't sleep because he can't get used to getting up at three in the morning to go into the Today programme, which is one of the reasons why he's giving it up. Anyway, this is Annie writing now. I wondered if you might have any thoughts on my quandary. I have a collection of letters between my parents dating from around 1956 through to the early 1960s. So they include their courting days, their wedding in 1957, the stillbirth of my brother full term in 1958, and my birth in 1959. My mum and dad died 30 years ago And I have still never had the courage to read their letters But as I'm now 66 I think it's time I decided what to do Do I publish as a love story?

1:11:08Do I create a farewell ceremony and never read them? Would I be prying learning something about them? Would it all be too sad? To make things a bit trickier It is almost impossible to read my father's handwriting I would be so grateful for your advice with my very best Annie well you have a dilemma there and it's a dilemma I share because in a box in my basement I have letters sent between my parents to one another during the second world war when my father was stationed overseas my mother was in London and I know there were some trying times and I think there may have been some emotionally turbulent times as well and I know that before she died my elder sister Jennifer began reading my father's private diaries personal diaries from the 1920s and 1930s when he was a young man and before he was married and she found it quite distressing to read about his problems then his emotional problems his relationship problems his difficulties with his parents and his brother.

1:12:19She found all that quite unsettling. So there's no guarantee. You don't know what you will find. But my feeling is these are family documents. They might be historical documents. Who knows? They certainly will give you a bit of social history. And you have the distance of time now. Your parents are no longer here. You love them. You respect them. But the letters weren't thrown away. They didn't choose to burn them or bury them. They've kept them. They're still in the family. So if I were you, I would read them in chronological order, take your time to do it, and then reflect. Do I want to publish them for the family?

1:13:02Just get them, you know, printed up. It'd be nice to have. If they are, if it is an extraordinary love story, who knows? You could turn it into a book or a novel, or it could be just something that's too painful. Well, put them back in the box and let your children or grandchildren discover them again in time. And as to the indecipherable handwriting of your father, I have the solution. Last year, I wrote a biography of the children's writer, playwright and novelist A.A. Milne. And I went to the University of Texas, where at Austin, they have all his papers, including his letters. correspondence in indecipherable handwriting what they allowed me to do was take photographs of each page and then you can blow up the photograph increase the size so instead of trying to decipher tiny indecipherable letters you can actually blow them up so they become bigger and bigger and bigger until you can read them so you'll be able to read your father's letters and your mothers in chronological order then decide what to do and it is fascinating being dipped into an earlier age may have heard me and harriet chatting on a tuesday about my archive and recently um my grandson rory's girlfriend olivia has been sorting through some of my material and she's been going through some of the early boxes that contain uh i suppose you call them love letters correspondence that I had when I was you know a teenager young teenager some of this we've given you a flavor of in our episodes of the diaries on a Tuesday year on Rosebud so if you haven't heard them all go back to the beginning and listen but what Olivia has been telling me and she's 18 is that it's fascinating in the age when people no longer write love letters that here are girls aged 14 15 16 17 18 the age she has recently been writing letters to me now 60 years ago so this modern girl who's now 18 is getting a flavor of what girls of her sort of age were writing in love letters 60 years ago and what she is finding is that the emotions don't change, the experiences don't change, but the way of expressing them does.

1:15:28And the nature of the relationship between boys and girls may have changed subtly. So she's very intrigued by it. She, in fact, thinks I should publish them, but I'm not sure that I'm going to or can. But anyway, that's intriguing. So that's another reason for doing it. So that's my advice to you, Annie. And thank you very much for writing. Anybody else wants to drop us a line? You know the address. it's simply hello at rosebudpodcast.com. That's it for today. My thanks to Amol, and look forward very much indeed to being with you whenever it is next time. Bye for now. Oh, cue the music.

1:16:26The End

1:16:49Rosebud is a Plain Jane production produced by Harriet Jane, hosted by me, Giles Brandreth, with music by Phil Leppard, and recorded this week at the JW Marriott Grosvenor House in London's Park Lane. Room service.