The Two Matts Q&A: On The New World at 500 and the Burnham bounce

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1:24one and Dermot's got a problem which he wants us to help solve and Dermot says it's a great problem my issue number 500 of the new world dropped through the letterbox this morning and it sparked a conversation in our house I am a hoarder and have not far short of the 500 editions in my loft because I've been loath to throw them out my wife says they are a fire risk I've tended to read them from cover to cover most weeks and whereas I don't expect to want to revisit much of the political coverage in them that you've written about the last 10 years, mainly because it would be masochistic given what things have been like, I am really reluctant to bin them mainly because of the literary and photographic gold you have covered in the cultural, social affairs and historical articles over the years.

2:12And my wife is a big fan of the art. this isn't even to mention your classic front covers i've tried to think of ways to avoid the inevitable be it taking out articles and grouping them into books or folders maybe saving some particularly momentous or classic issues or maybe just finding a charity that recycles so that at least i know that throwing them out would contribute to a good cause maybe i should take them down to the recycling but it would be like saying goodbye to a dear friend who has kept me sane on a weekly basis amongst all the crap that's happened in the last 10 years here's to the next 500 and hoping they will be reporting on saner times well matt what do you think should dermot bin it all or hang on what do you think you dermot that's a wonderful tribute and it's wonderful to know that and and And also that, you know, you're thinking in those terms.

3:05I mean, I'm a fellow hoarder. I have piles of magazines everywhere. And every month or so, I do a reluctant clearer. I do obviously keep The New World and a couple of others. But I don't have a there's no really easy answer to this, given that, you know, we don't live in infinite space. I often frame covers I like. and you know I one thing I think about digital media is that for all its brilliance and the fact that you can get anything on your phone now it still hasn't to me anyway and maybe I'm showing my age it hasn't come close yet and this is anyone really to the aesthetic beauty of print magazines and and speaking as a new world person you know one of the moments about that I look forward to in the week is is the process by which you and our brilliant designer martin nichols come up with the cover because having been a magazine editor myself it's you know i know how much thought and care and love goes into that and it's a wonderful thing to watch and i i hope we never lose that as an industry um so uh i certainly agree with dermot about you know it's nice to look forward to the next 500 in a spirit of optimism and um i wish i had a sort of uh massive i mean wouldn't it be wonderful to have a sort of uh huge public space where we could keep all all the magazines um for everyone to read one of the things actually just a side note on this that i found sad is that um because i you know i i occasionally try and offload books to to to people and and no one wants to no charity shops and things anymore want to take books and no libraries want to take books even you know um let alone magazines and so i think we are losing something as a culture um and i will carry on hoarding myself but you know even i have to have enough room for a bed and a desk so um there are limits it's a it is a structural problem i don't have a kind of uh silver bullet answer to it i'm afraid but i i feel your pain i've got i've got a slightly more buddhist view on possessions and i do try to get rid of as much as much stuff as i possibly can and for instance i I think I've probably kept about 20 or 30 different editions of the magazine over the years, but not much more than that.

5:27Yeah, yeah. Wow, that is impressive. I certainly don't keep every single one. I read them, I throw them out. And one of the main reasons I do is that they're all there in PDF form on the website. That's true, that's true, yeah. You know, if I ever do, and by the way, it's actually, I know it's not the great kind of serendipitous experience of reading a print magazine, but if you are searching for something specific, it's miles easier. You know, if I wanted to remember that great Matt Dancona article on whatever it may be. The great Reform Act of 1832. It's all I've got to put in is Reform 1832 and bingo, there it is.

6:03So they're all there. So I would say, Dermot, I would say get rid of them. Give them to somebody who will pulp them and turn them into new magazines. Bloody hell, this is going a bit Marie Kondo. Maybe keep a few, but think about what else you could put in the attic that is cluttering up your home at the moment and give you more living space, which is always a nice thing to do. And yeah, thank you. But above all of that, thank you so much for buying so many editions of the paper. It's so important and it's kept us going. And there are many people out there like you and the more the merrier. Thank you, Dermot.

6:47You are so much less crazy than me. The gap is widening. It's getting embarrassing. OK, this is from Sandy, also about the 500th. Hooray! Congratulations on your 500th edition. I've bought the New European and now the New World since edition six. Where were you in the first five, Sandy? No, just kidding. and have not missed an edition. It's been a great source of insight, wit, and the occasional challenge to how I think. I appreciate greatly. My question is, what do you predict for the next 500 editions? If the last 500 were focused on the exit from the EU, the rise of Trump, horrors of Putin, what do you think the themes of the next 500 will be?

7:29What a good question. Such a great question. And I have actually been thinking about it. And I think technology is going to become more and more important to us as a theme. obviously with AI, but elsewhere, you know, just, I think we, the human species is entering a period of time from which we'll never re, you know, reverse out of, but it's entering a period of such high velocity change to how we function as, and it's good, and it's not just AI, it's everything, you know, we're talking about social care, I think that's going to be, The only way that we can pretend to have a really effective social care system is if so much of it is not human labor, if it's somehow automated, whether that's through software or whether it's through literal robots, you know, but all of this is going to come and it's going to come at us.

8:25I'll tell you an interesting question, Matt. At what point does real life overtake science fiction's even capacity to exist? You know, you went back 40 years, people, Isaac Asimov, you know, Arthur C. Clarke, imagining futures that have now gradually come to pass. It's almost impossible to imagine a future before it's already happening. the rate of change is so quick so i think that's going to be massive geographically obviously china is going to get more and more and more important to us all um and not just in a kind of threatening way absolutely not you know it's like what does this huge tectonic shift in in geopolitical power mean for us all um and i also think sub-saharan africa is going to become it's It's such a neglected area of work, of journalism, especially in the UK.

9:26But there's so much happening in sub-Saharan Africa. That's going to become more and more interesting. So, yes, I think the faces and the names may change, but I think we'll still be talking about Putin for quite some time. We'll still be talking about the residue of Trump. And, of course, on a hugely optimistic note, I really do hope one of those next 500 covers is dedicated to our seat at the new European Union table. Yeah. Well, I think that that's ever so. No, not slightly. Considerably more likely than it was a week ago. Thanks to your speech. So great question. And there's a lot of overlap, Matt, what I had listed, which is, I think.

10:12international collaboration and can it be made fit for purpose will be obviously for us as a title front and centre not um the arthritic institutions of the post-war era which are clearly along with much else coming to their natural end partly because they were designed after the war you know but we need a new uh structure that's designed to fit a multi-polar world and it's not obvious to me what that is and we need it because the problems of the 21st century are you know to more more international than they are national climate change pandemic resilience population mobility technology regulation i mean none of these things can be resolved nationally i mean they can be resolved nations play their part but unless you have international collaboration it doesn't mean anything um i mean trump really represents the the last hurrah or one hopes the last hurrah of the zero-sum game approach to that who wins ai wins uh well that doesn't mean anything other than we don't care um which brings me on to and i agree with you and this is a different way of formulating it what is what does it mean to be human i mean i think that the and i was trying to do that in the piece I wrote about AI and the sort of the self for the 500 based on the Sherry Turkle book about artificial intimacy which is that already even before AI gets going on destroying the world if indeed it does or taking our jobs the AI companions and chatbots are doing dramatic things to what it is to be a thinking feeling person and that's well advanced and you know to your point about science fiction how far will we merge with machines how far have we already you know William Gibson who has been writing about this for more than 30 years says we are already really living in the matrix we just don't think we are you know we are living through devices and haptics and goggles and meta spectacle you know we're already halfway there and it's clear that if we were having this conversation 20 years from now the and some of it will be great you know the possibilities of health tech and so on will be incredibly exciting but there'll also be big moral questions about implants you know about I mean it's clear that when Musk talks about Neuralink these implants into the brain he's not just thinking about how to help the disabled uh you know lead better lives which is an excellent objective but he's also thinking on behalf of the surveillance state how can and we get into their heads and that's a real you know and another related question is to which i think the answer is obvious but but it it's not clear where it leads is do we need to work and for how long and in what way to be fulfilled human beings you know that's going to be a massive so all the technology piece and the final thing i'd add which is sort of just one of my interests but i think it's becoming more and more interesting is the whole question of 21st century religion and religiosity which is the pope in france was just an extraordinary spectacle you know that that uh here you have a a society that has uh notionally embraced laicite you know secularization and yet there were millions of people and there were people taking confession in the streets you know in plein air with priests you see the growth and resilience of islam you see the return of gen z to religion you see the very worrying rise of apocalypticism um you know i noticed peter teal last week was taking his lectures to nashville you know he's taking it on the road now not just to elite audiences and so on and so it's going to be a century that is dominated on the one hand by the highest tech of tech but also i think the surprising resilience and survival and re-emergence of pre-enlightenment ideas.

14:18And so it's going to be a very exciting century to write about. I've no worries about the kind of the scope of things we'll have to get our teeth into. And, folks, if you want any inkling as to why I am so delighted that Matthew Dancona is a key constituent element of the New World, well, then just replay the last five minutes and there's a manifesto of absolutely brilliant, intellectually driven ideas that any one of which would be worth your subscription fee so thank you for that absolutely it's actually that wasn't me talking that was claude you know so i'm back in the room though guys right next question from steve steve oh not i think the um well i don't think the jackass steve oh but who knows you never know um if it is jackass steve oh hello and if it And also, hello, thank you for your discussion on Thursday.

15:12I am really buoyed up by Burnham, but appreciate we have experienced similar moments of exhilaration in the past 10 years, only to have them crushed. Do you think Burnham is the real deal? And how do you think he will overcome the political realities that have crushed his predecessors? Would you recommend? Well, I don't think. Yes, I do think he is the real deal based on what we've seen. And so what does that mean? I think he is utterly authentic, and he's had long enough to think about what that personal authenticity means, and I think he's intellectually capable enough to see a head down the road about where the problems lie in his authenticity and how to overcome them.

15:55Look, there's no doubt that this politics is a crushing game and nobody gets everything they want in it, nor will Andrew Burnham. But I do think in terms of personal character, he feels like, at this point in time, he feels to me like the right man at the right moment. Yes. Because he's determined, because he's certain, and because he's smart. And I think those really are three characteristics that some of his predecessors since the vote, the Brexit vote, may have had two or three. Some had one of those three. Liz Chuss had none of those three. Maybe a determination. But I think Burnham has got a really solid set of references internally that are thought through and are unshakable, that he can really, whatever challenge is thrown at him, he will be able to resolve where he stands on them.

17:00And he's also got the missing magic, which, you know, Sunak never had and May certainly never had, which is probably what Boris Johnson did have, which was an ability to connect. Yes. So I think he is, I think he, and by the way, I pray he's the right guy because if he isn't the right guy and if in 18 months time you and I are having podcasts which are about what a disappointment this government's been then we it really is really really trouble time then I think that's exactly right I agree with every word and I think he i think he i think one of the problems to steve's question is that i mean first of all one thing burnham has said in interviews and in speech i think was was that um he's he's not just doing the job because he wanted the job so for example boris johnson just wanted the job okay which isn't enough you because then he faced a pandemic you know it's not enough to be leading the country through a pandemic if you just wanted to be prime minister and go and you know sit in checkers at the weekend with an easel i mean that's not enough i don't i don't think but i mean he wanted the job of course but he wanted it for a reason and that reason was very very reasons plural more to come i think um was very very vividly on display in liverpool so it wasn't just vibes there is substance i also think he's strong you know i do think that and i think this He's a politician who has been his his rise to number 10 has not been linear.

18:40You know, he was written off. It was his third go at the job of leader. And he'd been written off multiple times last year, you know, written off. He is very, very resilient. In fact, you know, I look forward to hearing Alistair Campbell talking about whether he's percivilient, which you may want to talk about in a second. um just thought i'd throw that one out um thank you thank you i i so i i'm i'm optimistic it is true to your point matt that you know he can't control the weather of of the weather or of geopolitics or of everything it's so it may be that the the the the exogenous factors are overwhelming but i don't think if he fails it will be because he's not up to the job I don't I'm actually pretty confident of that And thank you for the high lob which I'll smash back into the back of the court Yeah, come and listen to Alistair Campbell talk about Percivillians and he'll definitely be talking about Andy Burnham because he actually there's a passage within the new book about Burnham which is very prescient and anyway, Alistair will be talking with the great Michelle Hussain from the Michelle Hussain podcast Michelle who's one of the Bloomberg team now having left the BBC does a fantastic podcast the Michelle Usain podcast she will be talking to Alistair Campbell at Cadogan Hall in London's Chelsea near Sloan Square on October the 22nd the evening Thursday evening it is and there's still a few tickets left there's only well there's only literally a handful left in the stalls so if you want to get a stall seat do it right now um and there's a there's a few in the gallery as well it's a wonderful venue it'll be a wonderful evening both matt and i will be on site um so you can come along and harangus or thank us or shake our hands uh over the podcast that would be wonderful to meet you but yeah go to cadogan hall.com and uh and get your tickets while they are still available and the next question actually we'll take a little quick break i think before the next question and be back with you in a moment, dear listeners.

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22:34Welcome back, dear listeners. This is the Two Mats podcast brought to you by the wonderful subscribers of the New World magazine. And the next question comes from Mark the Elder in Norfolk. do you think that patriot platform should be prescribed in the same way that palestine action has been well i suppose i start i start from the proposition that i'm i um instinctively in favor of the very very cautious use of prescription and i wasn't happy that palestine action were prescribed and i'm not um i remain of the view that that was a mistake and i it may be um that Burnham, I hope he overturns it because it was silly.

23:17And it absolutely shouldn't be used for groups that we don't like or just find offensive. That's a misuse of prescription. Now, there's a particular reason why I think Mark's question is very valid beyond just finding Danny Tomo and his thugs offensive. Actually, the specifics, which is the grounds on which palestine action were prescribed were to do with believe it's not damage to property and which is you can argue again is that terroristic necessary i don't know but anyway that's why they were now patriot platform had been for all their sort of militia balaclava wearing behavior had been quite careful not to do things like that but danny tomo on september the 22nd made a real mistake when he slashed that boat i mean it was a disgusting it was a disgusting thing to do but it also crossed that line now wonderfully he's on remand until march so you know i'm looking forward to reading his christmas diary in a centre-right publication um couldn't think of a better person to spend crimbo in the jug than our danny um yeah by the he's a nasty piece of work this guy oh yeah yeah yeah i mean there are videos online you know horrible horrible person anyway sorry man well what is i mean look to answer the simple question if palestine action is prescribed social patriot platform yeah yeah no i agree i mean like you i think and we've we've we've put our um our pinned our colors to the mast on this one many times in magazine the prescription of palestine action was absolutely stupid and um uh should be rescinded immediately the idea that we the idea that we are criminalizing pensioners for walking around with placards saying i support palestine action is just the most stupid form of kind of anti-democratic anti-democratic authoritarian nonsense that any labor government in particular should be should absolutely resile from.

25:35But no, I don't think Patriot Platform should be prescribed at all. I think they should, they're doing their own cause enormous harm, I think. Yeah. You know, if their cause is to engineer a debate about immigration in this country, having a bunch of weird, gimp-looking kind of characters showing up in the middle of the night outside. I mean, I saw one video where they'd obviously found somewhere, I mean, whether they had the wit to realise that it had this appearance or not, I don't know, but it looked like the Brandenburg Gate, and they kind of walked through this archway with their silly balaclavas on in the middle of the night, talking about how Danny Tomo, you know, the spirit of Danny Tomo would live on and then carry on with them.

26:21If you thought we'd gone away, we haven't, all of this nonsense. They'd look so, so pathetic that they're almost fodder for comedy they're comedy gold you know if you want to take the piss out of a group of a group of grown men walking around with their silly little balaclavas on so afraid that they can't see if they're peaceful protesters take your balaclavas off who are you trying to intimidate what are you trying what are you trying to look like you know all dressed in black from head to i don't like the um i'm conscious of the arguments that are used to defend face coverings but i don't like it um no honestly i mean there's there's circumstances for wearing a face covering include religious ones all right or it's bloody cold that's why i've got a balaclava on and i ride the delivery bike even that some of that's deeply suspect but for any group of people to uniformly adopt a balaclava as part of how you dress to get across a political message well you don't have to know much recent history to know how resonant that is of real existential terror threats to this country and what are they trying to well you know whoever's giving them pr advice i.e nobody well somebody need somebody needs to step in and say guys you look like an absolute bunch of gimps take it off and make your point peacefully or otherwise the answer to the pr question is that that people have written wrongly that this is emulating the u.s militias it's not it's emulating the paramilitaries in northern ireland right totally yeah where tomo goes over okay yeah and how to put this i mean you you put it very well you know when the remaining secretary and paramilitary groups on both sides of the divide march or appear in their balaclavas they look pretty scary right this lot do not look very scary okay um um so that's that's the answer to that they just look they look pathetic and inadequate and sorry if that's a home truth if you're i doubt there's you know i don't like breaking bad news i don't like calling people pathetic and inadequate but honestly guys you just look like never let the sun go down on an argument exactly so um no we we can't go around prescribing people who are doing nothing illegal you can throw people in remand for months and don't cry about it if you go stabbing dinghies in the middle of the channel with people still on it expect that don't cry too much don't cry too hard try to keep your go fund me under a hundred grand you know that kind of thing when you've got tommy robinson saying you know this guy this guy is so worried about his family well here's a clue don't go out and stab boats in the middle of a channel and endanger lives if you're worried about the consequences you know anyway um so you can't prescribe them and and and the law is taking its course in in a perfect way no that's that's very true that's very true so uh next up from tony in salford uh it's a good one another good one does the manchester city scandal prove anything other than the reality that football has sold it's sold to corporate interests Matt?

29:38So instinct, I'm going to be a little bit nuanced in this, I mean Liverpool have been, if what's said about Manchester City and it looks like it increasingly is the case from what I can see, although I do note that Andy Burnham has said that they need to be able to make their case and appeal it, but if what's said then it is one of the it is one of the great um the great tragedies of modern sport because so much has been invested in their success and and as one of the great teams and the great managers and the great clubs to have arisen from utter mediocrity to become this great global power force you know so dominant in English football.

30:27If all of that is built on a lie, that is a great tragedy. However, I would say that in terms of corporate interests ruling football, this probably demonstrates that the opposite is true. You know, that there is such a huge backlash against Manchester City, that club, if this is proven, that club, whatever happens to them in terms of relegation, And I personally think if it's true, they should be bussed out of the league system altogether. They should do what happened to Glasgow Rangers, which was... Really, not just relegated, just kicked out. No, to the very bottom of the league. To the bottom of the league.

31:07And spend four or five years clawing away back up. I think that is the only kind of punishment that will restore a sense of justice to the Premier League. But I have to say that that, you know, even if they're just relegated to the championship that does demonstrate massive massive potentially existential consequences to this club which is hugely powerful and i think you know let's not forget that the development of manchester city as a football club has had huge positives you know yeah for for lots and lots of people around living around the etihad uh stadium in manchester and it's And also, you know, it's given great hope and joy to millions of fans worldwide.

31:56Although I would say as a Liverpool fan, it's also been crushing to think that, for instance, Steven Gerrard, who famously is not a Premier League winner, would have been, you know, if this is true and Manchester City weren't able to perform at the level that they did when we lost that league by a single point, you know. So I am slightly conflicted in the question. I think, yes, of course, corporate interests have taken over football completely. Just look at Gianni Infantini. The fact that he's still in a job is testament to that. But still, if there's been a crime committed here, the punishment will be so large that you would say, well, no, there is still a semblance of natural justice at play in football, which is a good thing, I think.

32:50Yeah, I mean, I'm obviously not a great follower of the game, but I'm also, and I think we've talked about this in the pod, I'm really fascinated because if you look at sort of trust figures and the institutions that have maintained trust, football is one of the few that has, you know, and it's a glorious embellishment to national life and local life, but not just economically. it sort of it represents something that has a continuity and a significance and it matters and i know it matters to you and it matters to my sons and my friends and so i watched this you know not not not read into it as it were but with with a degree of alarm because i don't want the game to be damaged by this and so i'm relieved to hear you what you say because the only good thing that can come out of this is a major line drawing moment of accountability and if that happens that's good because the to go back to trust one of the problems there's been the whole of this century so far has been a sense that of impunity that people in the end get away with it and if you have a mega team like this with global reach massive commercial interests and wealth and pay structures that is nonetheless called to account in the way you described matt hard as it is i think that is a very healthy thing um yeah i mean i wish it might be worth just mentioning because a lot of listeners won't really understand what's happened yeah yeah and and the sort of simple backstories is that premier league football clubs are bound to it's changed this year but as of before this year they were bound to only spend 70 of their total revenue on players transfers agents fees and players wages and the accusation against city is that the uh they were their revenues their annual revenues were bolstered massively by fake advertising and marketing deals that that were put through in some cases by firms that really didn't even exist but they were funded by Abu Dhabi.

35:08And so their revenues were enormous and they could spend 70 % of their revenues on acquiring the best players in the land. And other clubs that were legitimately reporting their total revenues had much less to spend. So that's the accusation that they basically inflated their total revenues massively to be able to become this super force in football um and they've and they've been they've been caught out you know there was a time where manchester city were reporting the greatest revenues of any club in the world i remember jamie carrigan the liverpool really the jamie carrigan was really good on this and said i think as much as anybody could say publicly without inviting a defamation case was saying you know this is impossible it's impossible that they are suddenly bigger than real madrid you know all of a sudden and uh or manchester united you know or barcelona and but that is what happened so fair play to the premier league um it's it's a premier league investigation because uefa the broader body um was unable to get to the bottom of it and get a resolution but the premier league has and this is why i do think that the internal commercial pressures within football so obviously Liverpool Manchester United Arsenal will all have been saying come on this is just bullshit this is obviously right so so yeah how has it sold out of course it has but um there is still obviously a line over which one cannot tread so anyway um Matt we'll move from football to film which is much more down your strasser um and the question comes from jerry in winchester i see that the new tom cruise movie digger has totally split critics some really hate it some completely love it i haven't seen it yet but it made me think that some of my favorite movies were originally seen as duds or received pretty mixed reviews shawshank redemption is one the big lebowski another do the mats have a favourite movie that was mauled or tanked at the box office on release?

37:15It's a good question and if people aren't familiar with the movie because it's just come out I made it the lead in Friday's newsletter so you can read about it on the site now. This is Alejandro Iñorito's eighth movie he's a four-time Oscar winner. It stars Tom Cruise but not the Tom Cruise of Mission Impossible He's wearing a stomach prosthetic. He's playing an old guy with a hairpiece and, you know, big paunch. He's an oil tycoon called Digger Rockwell. And the premise of it is that it's he has a field up in Greenland where there's an explosion and a bit of ice detaches, which heads for Norway with catastrophic climate related consequences.

38:01And what follows is a sort of combination of Doctor Strange love. And there is a huge twist so big that I will not even dream of spoiling it because I think you shouldn't. But it is a no holds barred, no apologies, massive scale satirical movie that has, as Jerry says, more than any movie I can recently remember of this scale, really divided people down the middle. I really liked it. A lot of people loathed it. I mean, really passionately. And I like this because I think that, you know, when people really care about movies rather than just go on board with superhero franchises or I don't like the Odyssey because it's got a black woman in it or something stupid like that.

38:56That's not that's not responding to art. But this is this is kind of I hate Tom Cruise for doing this or wow, that's all that. Or, you know, there's another camp saying this is one of the best movies for several years. So I like that. It's good to have difficult, challenging movies that make people argue, I think. Now, so the question, is there a good example of a movie like Shawshank, like Lebowski that didn't that is now massive and etched in the culture that wasn't at the start? the answer is loads and here's i'll just give you two that i love and they're both quite surprising so the first is is is perhaps um not as well known but it is a total classic and often makes it into the top 10 of movies ever which is the night of the hunter in 1955 robert mitchin directed by the only movie charles lawton uh uh directed and it is a complete classic and it was a total dud when it came out people hated it no one went to see it but more recently and one that i think may surprise people because it really does live on and it's everywhere and people have memes and refer to it and quote from it all the time is the shining which um really didn't fly when it came out really i had no idea it got in there's an american system called cinema score which is their kind of audience polling system it got c plus right no way it did okay at the box office but not given the fact that it was a cubrick movie and based on a stephen king book and you know all the rest jack nicholson not brilliant and pauline kale in the new yorker who uh was at the time the world's most this doesn't really exist as a system but in those days was the world's most influential film critic said yeah you know um that was kind of technically okay but she said though i mean this is really damning with faint praise though we admire the effects we're never drawn into them well guess guess what pauline you know here we are what is it um 46 no more um yeah 46 years later everyone still talks about it have you have you ever heard that seen that clip of robert duval the great actor um talking about the shining and saying how he thought all of the performances in it are terrible yes it's brilliant it's amazing i mean you sit down obviously it's robert duval so you say okay you have to take it seriously you know and he's and he said you know kubrick was incapable of getting a great performance out of the actor you know it's an astonishing little perspective isn't it the one that i um the one that i really love uh and it is i think it probably is you know in my top three fave movies which didn't really tanked it never i don't know whether it was expected to do anything but it didn't do anything at box office when it launched maybe maybe got close to washing its face and its production fees but has since become a absolute cash machine is with nail and i oh yeah and and uh you know it It was a low budget movie.

42:02It's a really good example. Handmade films, but came out and was received, I think, well, but didn't set the world alight. But now, you know, I think is one of the, well, all I can say is it's one of the films that I think defines movies in my lifetime, you know, absolutely. Oh, God. It's such a joyous film. To the extent that, and probably to a lot of people's enormous irritation and I'm one of the irritants um there are people who can literally quote from it you know and I'll tell you who else can quote from it right and I'm sorry Steve but you deserve it um our editor Steve Angleson so occasionally just because it's fun I will send Steve during the day a quote from um from uh from Withnall um you know and he knows the next line so when I was at the conference a couple of weeks ago in Oxford, I just sent him a quote saying, oh, Oxford, with a picture.

43:07And he did the Uncle Monty, you know, with a picture of Baudelaire, you know, brings back such memories. You know, it is like, it's a very, I think this is mainly a male problem, but it is, you're quite right, it was not. They had terrible difficulty funding it. I think George Harrison helped out. and you know Bruce Robinson had to pay for you know the scenes where they're actually driving up and down he had to pay for that himself because George Harrison said no I've given you enough and Robinson said well I can't the film cannot be without these scenes, he didn't pay for it himself and they didn't close any roads which is amazing in the film because normally in those scenes where you've got Withnall driving and making time you know the they didn't close any roads which is incredibly dangerous with a film crew on the back of a truck and everything no you're right that's a better example actually because it did it did a i think it was okay but um no it didn't hundreds of thousands in box office it was all right and you know it cost it didn't cost you know the world it cost you know under two million i think yeah and it and contrary to what people now say it didn't launch uh its two stars um immediately onto the world stage of superstars rich d grant and paul mcgann i mean paul mcgann is not he's a great actor but he's not a star he's not a listener richard d grant has become yeah in late middle aged a sort of great treasure and a cameo performer in in hollywood films but it it wasn't what it was meant to be, which was the sort of a, the beginning of Bruce Robinson's great directing career, but also these two young actors, you know, launching themselves in the world.

44:56It wasn't that at all. Brilliant. Well, thank you, Jerry, for such a great question. Send in your questions, dear listeners, to twomats at tnepublishing.com for next Sunday morning's Q &A. I look forward to reading that. Any feedback you've got, just fire it in. We always love to hear from you. do subscribe to the new world go to thenewworld.co.uk forward slash two mats that's the number two m-a-t-t-s and see all the fusses about 500 editions this week and uh we're very much looking forward to just getting started just only just getting started um so uh finally thank you to the third matt matt withers for producing the show thanks matt and uh until next thursday at latest have a wonderful weekend

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