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Drawing On Experience With Bob Moran · UK Column Radio

• 0:18
  Speaker 1: Hello, and welcome to the UK Column and we are
• 0:21
  delighted to be joined by Bob Moran today Charles with
• 0:24
  us as well.
• 0:26
  Speaker 2: Welcome to well UK column. Tars.
• 0:29
  Speaker 3: Thank you very much, it's great to be here.
• 0:32
  Speaker 1: You have come in and for a chat and which
• 0:36
  is really great because we don't often get to do
• 0:38
  this sort of face to face this way. And well,
• 0:43
  I suppose we should start at the beginning because lots
• 0:47
  of people knew of Bob through the Telegraph and I
• 0:50
  think maybe the Guardian before that, and was also did
• 0:53
  you also get published in social.
• 0:55
  Speaker 2: Work socialist work?
• 0:56
  Speaker 3: The Morning Star?
• 0:57
  Speaker 2: Morning Stars started.
• 0:59
  Speaker 1: Out right, but famously you decided you didn't want to work,
• 1:05
  or rather the Telegraph decided that they didn't want to
• 1:08
  work with you anymore because you wanted to speak out
• 1:10
  on certain issues.
• 1:12
  Speaker 4: Yes, I mean I've been in the Telegraph for ten
• 1:14
  years and worked my way up through the ranks and
• 1:19
  become their main political cartoonist. And I was very happy.
• 1:24
  I mean I'd worked for that since I was about fourteen.
• 1:27
  It was all I ever wanted to do, and I
• 1:32
  was in a very comfortable position by the time we
• 1:35
  got to twenty twenty, and I was very sort of
• 1:37
  trusted by the editors and the readership were familiar with
• 1:40
  my work and liked what I was doing, But it
• 1:45
  became increasingly difficult as that year went on, and there
• 1:50
  were various rumblings behind the scenes about other journalists who
• 1:54
  had a problem with my position on lockdowns and masks
• 1:58
  and everything, and sort of I was aware that potentially
• 2:05
  my job could be at risk, but at the same time,
• 2:08
  I was becoming increasingly frustrated by my inability to say
• 2:13
  what I felt needed to be said. So at the
• 2:16
  end of twenty twenty one, when I was fired over
• 2:18
  some tweets, which is interesting in the context of what
• 2:22
  we're seeing now, Telegraph are currently publishing articles about how
• 2:27
  bad it is that people are being punished for what
• 2:29
  they tweet. But yeah, I mean, at that point I
• 2:33
  had sort of reached the stage where I wasn't sure
• 2:37
  it was right for me to continue in mainstream journalism anyway.
• 2:42
  So it was a blessing in disguise, if you like.
• 2:47
  Speaker 1: What was it like to work in mainstream media, because
• 2:50
  obviously that's something that most people don't get access to.
• 2:55
  Speaker 4: Yeah, I mean, the first thing to say is when
• 2:58
  you start out, I was twenty when I got that
• 3:00
  job at the Telegraph. It's incredibly thrilling to go up
• 3:05
  to London and be in this huge newsroom and everyone's
• 3:09
  running about and answering phone calls and going off for
• 3:12
  lunches with important people. And I was very green and
• 3:18
  I had loads to learn. You know, I wasn't really ready.
• 3:22
  I was thrown in at the deep end. But it's very,
• 3:26
  very exciting, and you do feel like part of a
• 3:29
  cog in this vast machine that keeps our world going around.
• 3:33
  And I'd never been particularly political. That's why I went
• 3:37
  from morning Star to Guardian to Telegraph.
• 3:40
  Speaker 3: It never bothered me.
• 3:43
  Speaker 4: I didn't have anything personal to say about the state
• 3:46
  of the world. I didn't necessarily feel like the world
• 3:49
  needed changing. I just liked drawing cartoons and I liked
• 3:53
  the mechanism of satire and being able to criticize whoever
• 3:58
  needed criticizing on a particular day. And so I thought,
• 4:04
  you know, we live in a democracy that is balanced
• 4:08
  by a free press. And yes there's corruption, and our
• 4:13
  politicians are bumbling and incompetent, I believe then, but the
• 4:17
  system is self correcting and I never experienced any problems
• 4:22
  that there were never any points where I really desperately
• 4:25
  wanted to draw something or say something and I wasn't
• 4:28
  allowed to, So I was perfectly happy. I think there
• 4:33
  are there are people in our movement, if you want
• 4:37
  to call it that now, like myself and James Dellingpole
• 4:41
  is another example, who were very much part of the
• 4:44
  mainstream media and have now been They've moved out of it,
• 4:50
  or in my case, being booted out of it. And
• 4:53
  it's useful for me now to have had that experience
• 4:56
  and to understand how it works. These decisions are made,
• 5:01
  how a newspaper is put together, you know, all of
• 5:03
  the arguments and phone calls and considerations that go into
• 5:08
  writing those articles and deciding what they want to tell
• 5:12
  the public or not tell the public on a particular day.
• 5:17
  Speaker 2: I mean you were.
• 5:20
  Speaker 1: You were released by the Telegraph for comments that you
• 5:22
  made on Twitter to abide Rachel Clark. Looking back on that,
• 5:30
  do you have any regrets?
• 5:32
  Speaker 3: No, I don't regret that at all.
• 5:36
  Speaker 4: I think you know what, obviously, when I sent those tweets, it.
• 5:43
  Speaker 2: Was just just to put context on this.
• 5:45
  Speaker 1: We should say that you were criticizing her for demanding
• 5:48
  that people wear masks.
• 5:51
  Speaker 4: Yes, I think she she had been. She claimed she'd
• 5:57
  suffered verbal abuse for wearing a mask on it or something,
• 6:02
  and I'd seen this. I'd seen her tweeting in support
• 6:06
  of lockdowns for two years.
• 6:10
  Speaker 3: She had.
• 6:12
  Speaker 4: Criticized all of the marches in London against the measures
• 6:17
  she had encouraged. At one point she encouraged teenagers to
• 6:22
  go and get jabbed without telling their parents that kind
• 6:25
  of stuff. She was someone who really really frustrated me.
• 6:30
  I'd never engaged with because often you see these things
• 6:34
  and you get cross and you just put your phone
• 6:36
  down and go for a walk. But for whatever reason,
• 6:39
  on that particular day, I was particularly angry. You see,
• 6:44
  you know, my family was very affected by all the measures,
• 6:47
  because my eldest child is disabled, and all of the
• 6:51
  lockdowns and the masks and school closures really affected her
• 6:55
  very badly. So I was reacting in my capacity as
• 6:59
  a father first, not as a telegraph employee. And I
• 7:04
  simply suggested that people like Rachel Clark, who had promoted
• 7:11
  such disgusting ideologies and ruined so many thousands of lives,
• 7:17
  if they chose to go out in public, perhaps the
• 7:20
  least they might expect is people to say mean things
• 7:22
  to them I think that's probably the sign of a
• 7:29
  healthy society of people who are that wicked suffer that
• 7:34
  kind of consequence. I would obviously never ever have advocated
• 7:39
  for any physical abuse. I don't believe that's the answer
• 7:44
  to any of this, But I think if you do
• 7:49
  that to people, that's probably what you might expect to happen.
• 7:55
  People aren't going to be very nice to you. So
• 7:57
  I don't regret saying that. I do stand by it.
• 8:03
  I'm not sure that when people look back in ten
• 8:07
  or twenty years time, they would necessarily see me as
• 8:12
  a total villain for suggesting that.
• 8:16
  Speaker 1: You know, something that I have often wondered is what
• 8:21
  the people that are working in mainstream media, the people
• 8:24
  that were pushing these agendas, are enabling these agendas working
• 8:28
  for mainstream media, did they believe that they were doing
• 8:33
  the right thing or do they know that? Are they
• 8:37
  aware of larger agendas agendas Even it's.
• 8:42
  Speaker 4: Very difficult to know exactly who knows what in various
• 8:49
  positions of influence and power. I mean, Rachel Clark is
• 8:54
  quite good example, because she's fairly she's got a fairly
• 8:56
  nebulous past. No one is completely sure whether she's even
• 9:02
  a doctor or not. She was one of these figures
• 9:03
  who emerged out of nowhere, being invited onto BBC News
• 9:07
  and seemed to be a spokesperson for the NHS. She
• 9:12
  was a palliative She's supposed to be a paliative care doctor,
• 9:16
  so you would think she would have quite a good
• 9:18
  understanding about the nature of death and it being a
• 9:24
  perfectly natural part of life that old people die. So
• 9:27
  you might think she would have understood that when the
• 9:30
  average age of death for the virus was eighty two
• 9:35
  point four, she might have been one of the people
• 9:38
  who said, Okay, well, I think we've got this a
• 9:39
  bit wrong. So it is strange that she was such
• 9:45
  a keen promoter of lockdowns and masks and everything.
• 9:49
  Speaker 3: I don't.
• 9:51
  Speaker 4: I think it's more complicated than people think, this idea
• 9:54
  of people being controlled and people being aware of the agenda.
• 10:00
  I do think there are people in various positions who
• 10:03
  know what the plan is and they're told what to
• 10:06
  say and not say. But people should understand that anybody
• 10:13
  with a high profile, anybody who is driven by ego,
• 10:19
  who's quite vain, who likes to be on television, who
• 10:23
  likes to have books published, they can be controlled indirectly
• 10:27
  simply by getting their book published, being invited onto television,
• 10:31
  making sure they're promoted when they say this, or that.
• 10:35
  They don't necessarily need to receive a phone call every
• 10:38
  morning from some handler saying here's what we need you
• 10:41
  to say today. So this idea of controlled opposition or
• 10:47
  people who are aware of the agenda and driving it, Yes,
• 10:50
  that happens, but it's not always the case.
• 10:54
  Speaker 3: It would be. It would be too complicated, I think.
• 10:57
  Speaker 4: To have thousands of these people that you're trying to monitor,
• 11:00
  and I don't think you actually need to because you
• 11:02
  can rely on ego a lot of the time.
• 11:06
  Speaker 5: In the in the newspaper context, in particularly telegraph, How
• 11:10
  does that side of it work? You know what the
• 11:12
  the the editorial control side of it. And when you
• 11:17
  were there, you're sort of place within that. I mean,
• 11:20
  what degree of organization is there? And I suppose retrospectively,
• 11:25
  do you get the sense that people were being pushed
• 11:28
  to write particular things or not to write particular things
• 11:32
  at that time or before?
• 11:35
  Speaker 4: There's there's always an element of control. As a newspaper
• 11:41
  there are we most people in the public have this
• 11:47
  impression that the way it works is the news comes
• 11:49
  into the paper, people sort out what the important stories
• 11:54
  are and just regurgitate them to the public. Because journalists
• 11:58
  are supposed to care about truth and informing people.
• 12:02
  Speaker 3: And that's not how it happens. It's never how it's happened,
• 12:05
  you know.
• 12:06
  Speaker 4: And I realized that as soon as I got there,
• 12:09
  that actually there are all these different things that journalists
• 12:13
  are very aware of happening or about to happen next
• 12:17
  week in Parliament, or bills that are being drawn up
• 12:20
  that the public don't know about yet or whatever, and
• 12:24
  various discussions will happen about you know, when do we
• 12:27
  want to tell the readers this, do we want to
• 12:29
  tell them at all? Or what spin should we put
• 12:32
  on this. I wasn't surprised by that, because again I
• 12:37
  sort of assumed that there must be commendable reasons, understandable
• 12:42
  reasons for doing this. You hear things like, well, well
• 12:48
  people aren't ready, you know, people might not be ready
• 12:50
  to hear about this yet. Yes, but again that's the
• 12:58
  ego thing. I mean, these journalists feel incredibly powerful. It's
• 13:02
  a very it's.
• 13:05
  Speaker 3: Like a drug.
• 13:06
  Speaker 4: I think this idea that your party to this secret
• 13:09
  knowledge that the public don't know about and you're kind
• 13:12
  of deciding when they're allowed to hear about it.
• 13:15
  Speaker 5: How does that balance against the sort of competitive element
• 13:19
  of it with other networks or papers or whatever it is.
• 13:26
  You know, if a journalist has hold of something, how
• 13:29
  sure are they that it's only them that's got that
• 13:32
  particular thing.
• 13:35
  Speaker 3: Yeah, I don't. I'm not sure.
• 13:36
  Speaker 4: I mean that they can't be absolutely sure. I suppose
• 13:39
  the relationship. I think the first thing to say is
• 13:44
  the relationship between politicians and the media has become.
• 13:49
  Speaker 3: More and more.
• 13:50
  Speaker 4: Blurred or closer, I suppose in recent years because as
• 13:53
  newspaper readerships have gone down in their ability to make
• 13:57
  money has diminished.
• 14:00
  Speaker 3: They have.
• 14:02
  Speaker 4: Obviously had to be much more reliant on sponsorship and advertising,
• 14:08
  which gets them involved with big corporations who are also
• 14:11
  themselves tied up with different political parties. So the water
• 14:16
  has become very muddied.
• 14:19
  Speaker 1: And indeed, many of them went to school or college
• 14:21
  with people that are in politics.
• 14:23
  Speaker 3: So yeah, so they're actually mad, and I would have
• 14:26
  it all the time.
• 14:28
  Speaker 4: There'd be a situation where, you know, I start work
• 14:31
  at nine o'clock in the morning and my job is
• 14:33
  to pick out a story or two that I think
• 14:36
  would be good for a cartoon and relevant tomorrow, and
• 14:41
  I do some sketches, and I might take it to
• 14:44
  the comment editor who would say, ah, we can't, you know,
• 14:48
  we can't criticize him today because he's writing for us tomorrow,
• 14:52
  or the others is having lunch with him, you know,
• 14:54
  or going to a wedding with him at the weekend,
• 14:56
  or where.
• 14:56
  Speaker 3: There's always things like that, And it wasn't really.
• 15:03
  Speaker 4: It seems mad now, but it didn't strike me as
• 15:06
  a problem until twenty twenty, when suddenly everything was at
• 15:12
  stake and the whole world had gone mad and we
• 15:14
  were thrust into tyranny, and you were still hearing these
• 15:18
  things about, oh, well, you know, he's a friend of
• 15:21
  the paper. I mean, obviously, with Boris Johnson being Prime Minister,
• 15:25
  the Telegraph had a really close relationship with him because
• 15:31
  he had been such a prominent part of the newspaper,
• 15:34
  and they kind of felt like some sense of responsibility
• 15:39
  in getting him into number ten. But they weren't to
• 15:44
  begin with. They were perfectly happy with me to take
• 15:47
  my line, which was very much a moral line against
• 15:52
  lockdowns and masks and testing and all these things. I
• 15:58
  was actually given quite a lot of freedom, more freedom
• 16:00
  than I probably had at any other point at the paper.
• 16:04
  And there were even talks about halfway through twenty twenty
• 16:10
  there were sort of murmurings that or if Boris Johnson
• 16:14
  keeps doing lockdowns, we might, you know, have a leader
• 16:18
  article calling for him to resign, which would have been
• 16:21
  a major step for the Telegraph. But a few weeks
• 16:25
  after that, obviously, we then get the announcement of the jabs,
• 16:30
  and then everything changed, and everything changed for me at
• 16:33
  that point, and I was back to being very, very
• 16:37
  restricted in what I could say and how I was
• 16:41
  allowed to be critical.
• 16:43
  Speaker 2: So I saw a quote.
• 16:46
  Speaker 1: We will not as a newspaper publish anything against vaccines.
• 16:49
  Speaker 2: Yes, that was actually said.
• 16:51
  Speaker 4: That's what I was told, Yeah, explicitly that there's just
• 16:56
  no way that they would ever publish anything that might
• 17:04
  be construed as anti vacs. Now, this was before anyone
• 17:08
  had had an injection anywhere. This was at the point
• 17:12
  when they've just announced that they've miraculously made this job
• 17:16
  that apparently nobody could make, and eight different lambs that
• 17:21
  come up with it at the same time. Ah, But
• 17:25
  I said, well, obviously nobody's had it yet so we
• 17:27
  don't know. I mean, and it's new, isn't it. Nobody
• 17:31
  thinks this is an old flu shot or something. We're
• 17:34
  all you're all publishing articles saying isn't this fantastic? It's
• 17:38
  brand new, so shouldn't we wait to see what it does?
• 17:42
  And they said, well, it won't do any harm because
• 17:46
  we know all vaccines are safe. It was the most
• 17:49
  extraordinary thing to hear a journalist say, and I knew
• 17:54
  then that it was going to be very difficult. And
• 17:57
  then the pressure started for me to eight cartoons promoting
• 18:02
  the jabs and encouraging people to get them.
• 18:05
  Speaker 1: So, just to clarify this, up until this point, no
• 18:09
  one had ever asked you or told you to do
• 18:11
  a particular cartoon, or asked you to cover a particular topic.
• 18:16
  Speaker 3: No, that's not accurate. I mean no.
• 18:18
  Speaker 4: Obviously, as a cartoonist at a newspaper, you get steered.
• 18:24
  Speaker 3: In a particular direction.
• 18:26
  Speaker 4: You will often get guidance on what they'd like you
• 18:29
  to focus on on a particular day. Equally, you might
• 18:33
  go to them with an idea saying I'd like to
• 18:35
  do a cartoon about this, and they would say no.
• 18:39
  Sometimes it's perfectly understandable because they might say, you know this,
• 18:46
  this other thing's going to happen this afternoon, which is
• 18:48
  going to be bigger, that's going to take over.
• 18:50
  Speaker 3: So there's a lot of control.
• 18:54
  Speaker 4: Even when I'd got to the point I was in
• 18:56
  in twenty twenty where I was actually very trusted and
• 19:01
  had relative creative freedom, you're still always controlled. It's only
• 19:05
  when you're out of that system that you really understand,
• 19:11
  particularly in terms of satire, how mainstream political satire.
• 19:16
  Speaker 3: Just it's a bit of a fraud. It doesn't really work.
• 19:19
  It can't.
• 19:19
  Speaker 4: Satire can't really operate inside the machine, particularly when the
• 19:25
  machine itself becomes the thing you need to criticize.
• 19:31
  Speaker 2: Just amount of interest?
• 19:33
  Speaker 1: How long did it take from having an idea or
• 19:36
  agreeing something with your editor to that then appearing in
• 19:40
  the paper.
• 19:41
  Speaker 4: So at the newspaper generally, the way it would work
• 19:45
  is I'd start about nine in the morning. I'd go
• 19:48
  I'd look at all the different papers, look at the
• 19:50
  news stories, pick.
• 19:52
  Speaker 3: A topical or two.
• 19:54
  Speaker 4: I'd have to sketch out some ideas. Around eleven o'clock
• 19:59
  i'd take some sketches to the comment desk, show them
• 20:05
  and if they liked one, they would give it the
• 20:08
  green light, and then I'd have until about half past six,
• 20:15
  seven o'clock at the latest to get the cartoon finished,
• 20:19
  ready to publish. So it's very tight. You're working to
• 20:23
  a very tight deadline. And obviously sometimes quite often once
• 20:27
  you've agreed an idea at half past eleven twelve o'clock,
• 20:30
  you might be halfway through doing it, another story will break,
• 20:34
  someone will run over and say right then that you've
• 20:36
  got to start again, do something new. So you're under
• 20:39
  a lot of pressure, and in many ways the pressure
• 20:43
  of that deadline. I think this is true of all journalists,
• 20:46
  not just cartoonists. But that pressure of the deadline can
• 20:52
  distract you from the principles that you're working with, the
• 20:57
  truth of the story you're telling, because there's an empty
• 21:01
  space that needs filling, you know. And once you get
• 21:04
  that green light, some days it can.
• 21:05
  Speaker 3: Be really difficult.
• 21:06
  Speaker 4: Some days you get to three o'clock and you haven't
• 21:08
  even had an idea. It's such a relief once you know, right,
• 21:14
  this is what I'm drawing, and it's going to be
• 21:16
  in the paper.
• 21:19
  Speaker 2: Don't worry any days a week were you doing this.
• 21:23
  Speaker 4: I think I would sometimes do it was four a week,
• 21:28
  sometimes five a week.
• 21:30
  Speaker 2: That there's a long days in a heavy workload.
• 21:33
  Speaker 4: Yes, yeah, and it's a lot of work.
• 21:37
  Speaker 3: And you're also helped in terms of your conscience. I
• 21:42
  suppose in.
• 21:44
  Speaker 4: Both the the nature of newspapers and the cartoons in
• 21:51
  them being essentially disposable.
• 21:55
  Speaker 3: A couple of days later probably won't be relevant.
• 21:58
  Speaker 4: Certainly a month later people would look back and think, well,
• 22:02
  I can't remember what that was about. No idea that
• 22:05
  helps you. You don't worry too much about how's this
• 22:08
  going to stand the test of time, because the whole
• 22:11
  point of them is that.
• 22:12
  Speaker 3: It moves on. You know.
• 22:14
  Speaker 4: Political satire in the mainstream is a constant, and you're
• 22:21
  not supposed to be trying to create something that will
• 22:24
  be relevant two.
• 22:25
  Speaker 3: Years down the line, you know.
• 22:27
  Speaker 4: And also being part of a newspaper and a brand,
• 22:32
  somebody doesn't like what you've done or I don't understand that,
• 22:35
  you can always say what's the editor's idea, which I
• 22:39
  can't do anymore.
• 22:46
  Speaker 5: Just going back on that, and I think, you know,
• 22:50
  the sort of retrospective bit of looking at I mean,
• 22:55
  the answer may be a flat note, but are there
• 22:57
  some of the things that you look back at and
• 23:01
  you do sort of think more of why such and
• 23:05
  such a thing was either encouraged or rejected. You know
• 23:11
  that you had, you mean at the newspapers. Yeah, oh, absolutely.
• 23:15
  Speaker 4: Now obviously we've all we've all changed our perspective on
• 23:22
  things over.
• 23:23
  Speaker 3: The last few years, and particularly.
• 23:26
  Speaker 4: The way I see the world has totally changed, and
• 23:30
  the way I understand the media and newspapers and how
• 23:34
  the news cycle works and what it's actually there to
• 23:36
  do has shifted. And I look back now lots and
• 23:40
  lots of the work I did, various stories I covered
• 23:44
  over the years, and can see it. I see it
• 23:50
  very differently, and I think, I bet, I bet that
• 23:52
  wasn't actually accurate.
• 23:53
  Speaker 3: I'm sure there was something else there, you know.
• 23:59
  Speaker 4: I can sometimes I can remember being encouraged to take
• 24:03
  a certain line with something, and particularly in the early days,
• 24:07
  you know, when I was right behind the ears and
• 24:11
  you know, had so much to learn.
• 24:15
  Speaker 3: Yeah, I can definitely see that a.
• 24:18
  Speaker 4: Lot of the things I did were probably totally inaccurate.
• 24:26
  And I think that I certainly, although I was very
• 24:29
  happy with the work I'd done before I was fired
• 24:35
  at the end of twenty twenty one, certainly from the
• 24:37
  beginning of twenty twenty onwards. I'm still very pleased about
• 24:42
  the work I did on the lockdowns and the masks
• 24:44
  and everything. I because my understanding had shifted so much,
• 24:52
  and I was suddenly looked back at all the rejected
• 24:56
  ideas from previous years and start to think, hang on
• 24:59
  a minute, that was a great idea, and I'm pretty
• 25:02
  sure it was true. I ended up with a lot
• 25:07
  of pent up frustration, and what happened was when I
• 25:12
  was fired, it all kind of came out. I did
• 25:17
  an extraordinary amount of work through twenty twenty two.
• 25:21
  Speaker 3: I was sort of producing three or.
• 25:24
  Speaker 4: Four cartoons a week, but they'd be quite some of
• 25:26
  them would be quite detailed. There'd be things I wouldn't
• 25:29
  necessarily attempt for the paper. It didn't feel like I
• 25:33
  was busy at the time, because I think I partly
• 25:38
  it was a lot of stuff that had been built
• 25:41
  up over the years, ideas that I could suddenly draw whatever.
• 25:44
  Speaker 3: I liked that.
• 25:46
  Speaker 4: But it was also I suppose trying to kind of
• 25:51
  form of penance. I guess understanding that, Look, I haven't
• 25:54
  got it right.
• 25:55
  Speaker 3: A lot of the time. I've been part.
• 25:57
  Speaker 4: Of this machine that's been leading people astray and giving
• 25:59
  them the wrong impression.
• 26:00
  Speaker 3: So I felt a real need to try and make
• 26:03
  up for that.
• 26:05
  Speaker 1: Don't answer this if it's none of our business, but
• 26:08
  obviously you went from earning a salary to suddenly earning
• 26:12
  no salary.
• 26:13
  Speaker 2: And how hard was that and how did you deal
• 26:16
  with that?
• 26:17
  Speaker 4: It was very worrying, obviously to begin with, because I
• 26:21
  had got myself to the point of the Telegraph where
• 26:27
  I was actually on a full staff contract, which I'd
• 26:30
  always been told that when I joined, they said, no
• 26:34
  cartoonists will ever be fully employed by a newspaper again,
• 26:38
  and they're not generally, that's true, and I'd managed to
• 26:43
  wangle it somehow so that from twenty eighteen onwards I
• 26:47
  was on staff. So I had a salary, you know,
• 26:50
  paid holiday, pension, all the things that somebody like me
• 26:53
  now would never expect. I've got a wife, three young children,
• 27:00
  I had a big mortgage, so it was really frightening
• 27:06
  to suddenly lose all of that, not not just to
• 27:08
  lose it, but to be fired in a very public way,
• 27:12
  and to be perceived in the way that I was
• 27:15
  by the rest of the mainstream. You know, It's not
• 27:17
  like I thought oh that Daily Mail might offer me
• 27:19
  a job next week. I knew I was never going
• 27:21
  to work for a mainstream paper again, and I was
• 27:27
  just going to have to be on my own. That
• 27:29
  was really difficult for a few weeks, you know, I
• 27:35
  did get.
• 27:36
  Speaker 3: Very stressed about it.
• 27:39
  Speaker 4: But it's a testament to the kind of people in
• 27:42
  this movement and the people who'd been following my work.
• 27:46
  I'd managed to build up an audience outside of the
• 27:48
  Telegraph readership that was actually much bigger than the Telegraph readership,
• 27:52
  and they were all over the world, and the amount
• 27:56
  of support I received was extraordinary, and I managed to
• 28:03
  keep going. I mean, that's when you really have to
• 28:06
  just rely on your abilities and your talent and hope
• 28:12
  that if you keep putting the workout.
• 28:15
  Speaker 3: It will see you through. And it has.
• 28:18
  Speaker 4: I mean, you know, financially, I'm doing fine. The only
• 28:25
  way I make money now is selling my original paintings.
• 28:29
  I don't monetize what I do in any other way.
• 28:31
  That was really important to me. It's really important that
• 28:36
  everyone can see my work. They never have to pay
• 28:39
  No one has to pay to publish it. People who
• 28:42
  commissioned me to do things, I don't charge them because.
• 28:47
  Speaker 3: The message is too important, you know.
• 28:50
  Speaker 4: But I'm lucky that I made that decision years and
• 28:54
  years ago, just for practical reasons to start painting in
• 28:58
  an old fashioned way rather than doing it on a computer.
• 29:01
  And that means I have paintings. Unfortunately, people want to
• 29:05
  buy my paintings. Yes, and that's enough. So so it's
• 29:11
  it's worked out fine, you know, And I'm totally independent now,
• 29:16
  which is fantastic.
• 29:18
  Speaker 1: Yeah, and uh, okay, So anyway you left to telegraph
• 29:24
  it has had this impact in your life?
• 29:27
  Speaker 2: How long then?
• 29:28
  Speaker 1: What what sort of time skills were you feeling stressed?
• 29:33
  And when when did you become comfortable again in terms
• 29:36
  of what you were actually doing. And the reason of
• 29:38
  asking these questions is because you know, a lot of
• 29:40
  people are either have been for some time or are
• 29:45
  not in the position of needing to make a decision
• 29:48
  about whether they're going to stay in a job which
• 29:51
  they have. They can't ethically, they can't justify to themselves anymore.
• 29:56
  And and really I'm asking these questions because would you
• 30:01
  say that that was something that was a positive development
• 30:04
  in your life and that you're really pleased that you've
• 30:07
  done and actually, looking back on it, if you hadn't
• 30:12
  been removed by the Telegraph, you probably would have done
• 30:15
  it anyway, and you would encourage other people to take
• 30:18
  that what is probably a very brave step.
• 30:22
  Speaker 4: Yeah, that's difficult, I suppose, because so firstly, I think
• 30:30
  I would have left eventually because it got too difficult.
• 30:37
  I don't think the cause for me to be disciplined
• 30:40
  or fired that had been going on for two years
• 30:42
  would have stopped. As we know, things have only gotten worse,
• 30:48
  particularly the situation with what's unfolded, people who've been jabbed,
• 30:53
  and the way that's been covered up, the way the
• 30:58
  media has refused to acknowledge the gravity of it. I
• 31:02
  would have become too frustrated. So I do think I
• 31:07
  would eventually have left. I still think my being fired
• 31:11
  was probably inevitable anyway, but it's different for me, and
• 31:16
  I do understand. I mean, I know that there are
• 31:19
  a small number of journalists there who are still there
• 31:22
  who saw things as I did. They've compromised in a
• 31:26
  way that I wasn't willing to and they did agree
• 31:28
  not to say certain things. But it's you know, I'm
• 31:33
  a cartoonist. I do something that's really quite niche. There
• 31:38
  aren't many people who can do what I do because.
• 31:43
  Speaker 3: It requires such a weird skill set.
• 31:46
  Speaker 4: And then within that, I suppose I carved out a
• 31:49
  deeper niche for myself by producing the kind of work
• 31:55
  that I had and catering for this huge audience that
• 31:59
  felt isolated by the mainstream media. So it's not the same,
• 32:05
  it's not quite the same leap for me to take
• 32:08
  as someone who just writes articles, because there are thousands
• 32:11
  of people who just write articles. So I can understand
• 32:14
  to an extent why those people would would be more
• 32:19
  worried about being independent. I would never go back now.
• 32:26
  You know, there's no mainstream newspaper that could offer me
• 32:30
  any amount of money now where I'd be tempted to
• 32:32
  go and have a job like that again, aside from
• 32:35
  anything else. You know, I've tasted freedom and it's delicious.
• 32:40
  No thanks, I don't I just don't want to go
• 32:42
  back to that situation. But I think people should recognize
• 32:55
  how many, how many people are out there in the
• 32:58
  world who are desperate for integrity and the truth, and
• 33:06
  if you're willing to stand apart and convey that truth
• 33:13
  and do something brave, you will get the support and
• 33:19
  there is an audience out there, and they are generally speaking, lovely,
• 33:25
  lovely people. So I think people have got to be
• 33:34
  prepared to stand on principle now.
• 33:35
  Speaker 3: It's really really important.
• 33:39
  Speaker 4: And if you're a journalist who you know, who does
• 33:42
  genuinely care about the truth, you should be You should
• 33:47
  really understand by now that you're not really allowed to
• 33:51
  uphold the truth in any mainstream publication. And I think
• 33:56
  you'll be rewarded if you if you put yourself in
• 33:58
  a position where you can put the truth.
• 34:04
  Speaker 1: You said that the people out there are lovely people.
• 34:12
  Since October the seventh, you have published some pretty hardheading
• 34:16
  commentary on Gaza. Yes, I have you dealt with because
• 34:23
  there must have been some backlash from some of those
• 34:26
  lovely people to I can think of one image in particular.
• 34:31
  Speaker 4: So I would caveat at my previous point by saying
• 34:35
  not everybody stays lovely. Yeah, that's been very interesting, and
• 34:43
  of course that the whole thing for me now being
• 34:48
  independent and not having any editorial control. I don't work
• 34:52
  for anybody. Everything I do is completely me. It's my ideas,
• 34:59
  based on my print sports, it's how I see the world.
• 35:03
  I sit in my attic and I draw cartoons and
• 35:05
  I put them out. Nobody else is involved. And what
• 35:12
  I do now is in the context of a total
• 35:19
  shift in perspective that I've had of how the world
• 35:22
  works and just how heinous and wicked things that took
• 35:30
  place between from twenty twenty onwards where and in my view,
• 35:36
  all of the world leaders, anybody in a position of
• 35:39
  power who was involved in that, you have to see
• 35:44
  them in that context now. If they do something else,
• 35:47
  if they start talking about some other issue, you can't
• 35:49
  just ignore what they did in those years. And you
• 35:54
  can't really, in my view, see any new story or
• 35:59
  new event that occurs as being separate from that. We're
• 36:05
  always being encouraged to see things as completely.
• 36:08
  Speaker 3: Separate, but I have not.
• 36:11
  Speaker 4: Once I came to an understanding about what the agenda
• 36:14
  is and the place they are trying to take us
• 36:17
  to as human beings, I've not yet seen anything that
• 36:21
  for me didn't slot perfectly into that agenda. And the
• 36:26
  thing is no different. Well, I think this is a
• 36:32
  war against the very nature of humanity.
• 36:36
  Speaker 3: This is a battle for the soul. There are various.
• 36:40
  Speaker 4: Things some people might see as ends, like population control
• 36:46
  and kind of disintegration of democracy, restrictions on freedoms. I
• 36:51
  see all of these things ultimately still as just means.
• 36:55
  The end point is, yes, probably fewer people in the world,
• 37:03
  but I think the people doing all of this mean
• 37:08
  to change the very nature of what it means to
• 37:10
  be a human being. Who we are, how we view
• 37:14
  the world, how we view ourselves in each other, our
• 37:18
  capacity for love are of the spiritual connection we might have,
• 37:23
  our capacity to create, our understanding of truth and beauty,
• 37:27
  all of these things are what are under attack. Ultimately,
• 37:32
  there are threads that run through everything that's happened. In particular,
• 37:35
  one I bang on about all the time. It's the
• 37:38
  most important to me is children and the way children
• 37:42
  are viewed and treated, and the idea that permeates everything
• 37:46
  that there are circumstances in which the lives of children
• 37:49
  don't count so much, that the deliberate murder of children
• 37:55
  can be justified by certain situations or contacts, which I
• 37:59
  think think is always a disgusting idea, but it took
• 38:03
  hold first of all in the pandemic. You see it
• 38:07
  through all of the trans ideology stuff, and then you
• 38:12
  immediately saw it with the Gaza situation, where people were
• 38:17
  kind of adopting this stance of, well, they killed some
• 38:22
  children first, so it's okay for us to kill the
• 38:25
  children over there. I mean, when has that ever been
• 38:29
  a sensible position to take that if some children are killed,
• 38:34
  the just way to respond is to go and kill
• 38:36
  some other children somewhere. But there are people now who've
• 38:40
  adopted this mindset, and I'm appalled by it, and I
• 38:43
  think it's really really dangerous now. Obviously, there are lots
• 38:52
  of advantages that I've spoken about about being free now
• 38:54
  and independent, there's also a much greater way to responsibility.
• 38:59
  And if I'm going to use my independence effectively and
• 39:05
  kind of try and push satire to the limit really
• 39:10
  work out what it can do, I have to take risks,
• 39:12
  and one of those risks is isolating people who've agreed
• 39:15
  with me previously, you know, and actually, when necessary, criticizing
• 39:21
  my own audience, which is something I do more and more.
• 39:26
  When I put out that cartoon with addressing the Gaza situation,
• 39:35
  I wasn't naive about the reaction it was going to get,
• 39:37
  and I was fully aware that lots of people who'd
• 39:40
  agreed with me on other things were going to be
• 39:42
  cross about it. But the whole point of that cartoon
• 39:46
  was the reaction this sort of and part of the
• 39:51
  reaction I knew it would get was just people screaming
• 39:54
  anti semitism about it, and in so doing they more
• 39:57
  or less provided the punchline for the car. And you know,
• 40:03
  I'm fine with the people who didn't agree with that
• 40:06
  and who no longer follow me and everything, because I
• 40:09
  have to be willing to lose those people.
• 40:12
  Speaker 3: I almost have to be willing.
• 40:13
  Speaker 4: I'm not sure I'm there yet, but perhaps to get
• 40:16
  to the point where nobody apart from me agrees with
• 40:20
  what I'm saying in a.
• 40:21
  Speaker 5: Cartoon, well, that's what I was wondering. It might be
• 40:25
  hard to get a sense of it, but I think
• 40:27
  we all experience what you're talking about. You do you
• 40:30
  feel like you do lose people along the way You've
• 40:33
  just talked about, you know, your audience effectively outside of
• 40:39
  the telegraphs. Obviously, whilst you were there, you were you
• 40:42
  were reaching people who weren't within your immediate at all. Bit,
• 40:47
  but are you still finding that that is happening now? So,
• 40:50
  for example, with the you know, October the seventh aftermath
• 40:55
  and people obviously having that reaction, are people coming in
• 40:59
  through a different door, you do you get a sense of.
• 41:02
  Speaker 4: That people are new, people are always discovering me my work,
• 41:09
  and obviously I'm still fairly suppressed, as we all are
• 41:15
  on social media.
• 41:16
  Speaker 3: So.
• 41:18
  Speaker 4: There are always new people who suddenly discover you and
• 41:22
  now say I can't believe I've never seen your work
• 41:24
  this whole time. I don't know about Do you mean,
• 41:29
  am I winning any people back with well, yes, I
• 41:32
  suppose partly that. I think also, you know, we talk
• 41:36
  about people that might be I say faceless. I mean
• 41:40
  you talk about people that would follow a social media
• 41:45
  thing or a publication. But I suppose perhaps people who.
• 41:48
  Speaker 5: Are you know, have more of a public persona okay, yeah,
• 41:54
  sort of other blue tip people who who well, you know,
• 42:00
  I mean we've talked about journalists. There are a lot
• 42:04
  of people, if we specifically go about to the period
• 42:06
  we're kind of talking about the last four years, a
• 42:08
  lot of people who actually were talking just earlier about
• 42:10
  a couple Peterson, Jordan Bets and Douglas Murray, for example,
• 42:15
  who appeared to be seeing the world in a particular
• 42:19
  way that made their subsequent behavior very surprising. But I
• 42:24
  suppose I mean people who could be within that sphere
• 42:29
  who initially went in one direction. I mean, you know,
• 42:33
  is that effectively? Is there any a hope for people
• 42:36
  being brought to their senses by what you're producing? Do
• 42:43
  you think that's realistic?
• 42:46
  Speaker 3: I don't know.
• 42:47
  Speaker 4: I mean, obviously, when I did that cartoon, the cartoon
• 42:54
  called Kosher about Gaza, I wasn't necessarily expecting to change
• 43:01
  those people's minds and make them go, oh goodness, yes,
• 43:04
  I can see how we've been wrong. I was very much,
• 43:10
  I suppose, trying to make them own their position. That
• 43:13
  was part of the reason I did that. I thought,
• 43:15
  you know, I want you to be more angry and
• 43:23
  phoning the police, which lots of them did about a
• 43:25
  drawing than you are about what's actually being depicted in
• 43:28
  the drawing. That was the point, and they all did it,
• 43:32
  and maybe some of them might look back after a
• 43:36
  time and think, goodness, that was a bit of a
• 43:41
  strange way to behave. But for some people there's no hope.
• 43:47
  It's very sad. It's very sad when people you really
• 43:50
  think get it and who are on the same page
• 43:53
  as you in terms of these core values that are
• 43:56
  under attack suddenly appear to throw them all away, or
• 44:01
  they get suck back in. There are people who are
• 44:03
  desperate to be given a reason to attach themselves to
• 44:07
  the mainstream again. Or sometimes it's old affiliations that people
• 44:13
  just can't let go of. You know, I think difficult
• 44:17
  there It is we more or less have to let
• 44:19
  go of everything that we were attached to before. Everyone
• 44:23
  has something that they're just you know, often it's a
• 44:26
  royal family, but for some people it might be this
• 44:29
  strange sort of I'm a conservative, therefore I love Israel
• 44:33
  idea that I didn't really understand before but clearly exists.
• 44:36
  And when that pops up, they kind of think, oh,
• 44:38
  thank goodness, is this is a completely separate thing where
• 44:41
  I know where I am and it's not controversial because
• 44:45
  you know, some of these newspapers are on side and
• 44:47
  they feel a sense of relief. The thing people have
• 44:52
  to understand is this is all deliberate. They, however awake
• 44:58
  you think you might be, however aware of the agenda
• 45:02
  you think you might be, you need to understand that
• 45:05
  they will try and suck you back in. They will
• 45:08
  try and put things out to draw you back into
• 45:11
  their paradigm. And the most important thing we all have
• 45:17
  to do is just stay really true to our principles
• 45:21
  and not lose sight of who the enemy are and
• 45:29
  be okay with letting go of everything, you know, because
• 45:33
  there are still real things you can attach yourselves to,
• 45:38
  and there's a whole new security you can find in
• 45:44
  fellowship people who see the world the same way as you.
• 45:48
  Speaker 2: So that sort of brings me onto the issue of division.
• 45:52
  Speaker 1: Yeah, because obviously October the seventh is a body of
• 45:58
  people that have come together over cod would suddenly split
• 46:01
  into over that, and we're now saying more division. For example,
• 46:07
  Mike Eden's just put a video wide saying that ivermectin
• 46:11
  is this massive poison and now that now in social
• 46:14
  media there's a big division happening over ivermectin because various
• 46:18
  doctors that were, you know, treating people with ivermectin, who's
• 46:23
  who saw results of people surviving serious illness because of ivermectin,
• 46:29
  are taking massive offense to this. And so we're seeing
• 46:33
  another division point, and there are more and more division
• 46:35
  points appearing. What do you worry about that or do
• 46:41
  you see a way of of Is it just a
• 46:44
  case of, as you've said already, you stick to your
• 46:47
  guns and you move forward as you see it and
• 46:50
  people will eventually come back again. Or is there anything
• 46:53
  that you think that we could all be doing which
• 46:56
  helps perhaps amitting, get or minimize the effect of this
• 47:01
  these divisions that appear.
• 47:04
  Speaker 4: It's very difficult, and I think but I think it
• 47:07
  was always inevitable. I also think it was very much
• 47:11
  part of the plan. It's a very very clever, well
• 47:14
  orchestrated plan. It's the reason why we had two years
• 47:22
  where they sort of launched the attack, if you like,
• 47:25
  and this movement formed of people who understood why it
• 47:29
  was wrong. They were totally united and totally focused on
• 47:35
  who their enemy were and what the enemy were trying
• 47:38
  to do. And I went on some of those marches
• 47:41
  in London where it's people from all different backgrounds, all faiths,
• 47:48
  all races, all different walks of life, the most amazing atmosphere,
• 47:56
  very very angry about what was happening.
• 47:59
  Speaker 3: I mean.
• 48:01
  Speaker 4: Absolutely livid like we all have been, but peaceful. I
• 48:07
  think that's really important for people to remember now that
• 48:10
  millions of people went on those marches. No one smashed
• 48:13
  anything up, in set fire to any police. Fans didn't
• 48:16
  loot any shops, there was no rioting, because I don't
• 48:21
  think normal people do that. They have to be pushed
• 48:24
  into doing that. But we were together as a movement.
• 48:28
  Now that kind of built a momentum and reached a
• 48:33
  point where we had things like the truckers protesting Canada
• 48:37
  and various big things happening.
• 48:41
  Speaker 3: And then it seemed as though.
• 48:46
  Speaker 4: The people forcing this agenda sort of thought, oh, hang
• 48:48
  on a minute, they seem a bit cross, We've got
• 48:52
  a lot of resistance. Let's we better stop. But I
• 48:56
  think it was always the plan that they take their
• 48:58
  foot off the gas at that point. And we had
• 49:01
  this period of about a year and a half where
• 49:04
  nothing very much was happened. Everything sort of petered out,
• 49:07
  and everyone suddenly thought, oh a lot of us. I
• 49:11
  was of the view, I don't know about you, that
• 49:14
  it was just going to go on escalating and escalating
• 49:17
  until kind of twenty thirty when there was nothing left.
• 49:21
  So we were all slightly taken off guard when they
• 49:23
  dropped the vaccine mandates and they kind of don't do
• 49:26
  any more lockdowns, and then various trickles of stuff comes
• 49:31
  out about vaccine harms and things like that. Now, part
• 49:36
  of what that did was we all had this energy
• 49:40
  as a movement that we had something to focus it on.
• 49:43
  Speaker 3: Suddenly we didn't.
• 49:44
  Speaker 4: The energy sort of dissipated and we turned it on
• 49:47
  each other, and it's created all this division and they
• 49:54
  then they start throwing in all these other issues. They
• 49:56
  throw in Ukraine and the Gaza thing, and then you've
• 49:59
  got the immigration and stuff, and then let's have another
• 50:01
  election and it all separates people more and more and more.
• 50:04
  Monkey pox they've brought back. Now, Yeah, like a King
• 50:07
  Kong sequel. Nobody asked for its extra and that's taken
• 50:10
  me by surprise. I really I didn't think they would
• 50:13
  go for the monkey pox. Again, there's obviously a good
• 50:16
  reason for it, though, there's obviously something about that that
• 50:20
  they they know they can use in a particular way
• 50:25
  that what's also happened is you've got the division that's
• 50:29
  occurred on our side. On the other side, on people
• 50:33
  who were only slightly suspicious about what was going on,
• 50:37
  they've more or less forgotten all about it. Which was
• 50:40
  always the biggest worry for me is that this will,
• 50:43
  if this does come to an end, at some point,
• 50:47
  it just won't be addressed. It will be glossed over,
• 50:50
  it will be shelved as an episode that happened, and
• 50:52
  now we've all moved on because I understood very early
• 50:55
  on that this is intended to continue.
• 50:58
  Speaker 3: They, if they succeed.
• 50:59
  Speaker 4: Are doing this once, they will do it again and again,
• 51:02
  and it will work again. If people have forgotten, and
• 51:07
  lots of people have, but you know they are.
• 51:10
  Speaker 3: Going to do it again. You think so absolutely.
• 51:14
  Speaker 1: I don't you think are I going to do it
• 51:15
  as a health thing or they are they going to
• 51:17
  do it as something else.
• 51:18
  Speaker 4: It may not be, it may not be exactly the
• 51:23
  same format as a pandemic lockdowns, but the psychological breakdown
• 51:33
  has occurred. The control structures are in place, the infrastructure
• 51:40
  is there, lots of things, lots of laws have been brought.
• 51:45
  Speaker 3: In that are going to make it harder for people.
• 51:49
  Speaker 4: To refuse to you know, consent and go along with things,
• 51:58
  and in various ways. I mean, there's all kinds of
• 52:02
  things they can they can do. You know, we've got
• 52:04
  this riot, this far right stuff, and the immigration thing,
• 52:10
  social clamped down on social media. They're talking about bird
• 52:14
  flu and monkey pox or mpox or whatever they've renamed it.
• 52:19
  We've got wars, we've got the financial situation, which you
• 52:24
  know could go bang at any moment. Basically, we've got
• 52:27
  the food crisis that again most people aren't aware of,
• 52:30
  but within the next two years there might not really
• 52:32
  be any food.
• 52:34
  Speaker 3: I think.
• 52:36
  Speaker 4: That they're going to having bombarded us in the kind
• 52:41
  of surprise ambush with pandemic and then the jabs probably
• 52:47
  next time, they're going to throw all kinds of people
• 52:49
  things of people at once.
• 52:51
  Speaker 3: Caught off guard.
• 52:52
  Speaker 1: We are, we're already starting to feel the effects of
• 52:56
  the soil called poly crisis that they're trying to poly
• 52:58
  crisis crisis good term and well that's World Economic Forum terms,
• 53:03
  so I'm not going to claim any but so that's
• 53:11
  already it's already sitting there, just on the verge, just
• 53:14
  keeping things bubbling along quite nicely at the moment. Yeah,
• 53:19
  at some point, my personal view is that that war
• 53:23
  is much more likely to be rather than health is
• 53:26
  likely to be the next thing, because the emergency legislation
• 53:30
  you can put in place using war as the excuse
• 53:34
  is so much more and it might be that war
• 53:36
  might be civil war.
• 53:37
  Speaker 2: I'm quite happy to consider.
• 53:39
  Speaker 1: That that this country is almost at the point of
• 53:43
  exploding against itself.
• 53:46
  Speaker 4: And it's interesting to look back at how they seeded
• 53:50
  the idea in a fairly kind of jolly, nostalgic way
• 53:53
  at the beginning of all this about the war mentality,
• 53:58
  you know, right at the start, remember how they were
• 54:00
  saying it was a bit like the blitz, but it's
• 54:02
  sort of fun because you've got Netflix. You know, it's
• 54:03
  only a virus. But let's all pretend it's we're in
• 54:06
  the war and Johnson is Churchill, and they planted that
• 54:13
  idea right at the beginning, which I don't think is
• 54:16
  a coincidence the way we're ramping things up now and
• 54:22
  there's this talk of conscription and things, which kind of
• 54:25
  was presented as a misstep by the Tories, but I'm
• 54:29
  not sure it is, because the same thing is being
• 54:31
  talked about in lots and lots of other countries at
• 54:33
  the moment.
• 54:34
  Speaker 1: Well, we've got to remember that the idea wasn't presented
• 54:37
  by the Tories, was presented by the gene, the chiefs,
• 54:40
  the chiefs of defense chiefs, and so I don't think
• 54:47
  liberal is going to do anything different.
• 54:50
  Speaker 4: Of course, if you if you develop a kind of
• 54:53
  war scenario which may or may not be an actual war.
• 54:59
  But let's say at the very least the impression of war. Like,
• 55:02
  just like they created the impression of a pandemic. You
• 55:06
  can then pretty much throw everything else into that and
• 55:10
  make it much more believable. Or the financial problems, food shortage,
• 55:15
  food rationing, and virus stuff. Obviously, Oh, it's biological warfare,
• 55:22
  you know, Russia's just sprayed a load of monkey pocks
• 55:24
  on us. It fits very well. So I think, really,
• 55:31
  what people have to do is, you know, I no
• 55:34
  longer think we're in a kind of battle to save
• 55:38
  the world here.
• 55:39
  Speaker 3: I mean, I.
• 55:41
  Speaker 4: Thought at the outset for certainly in the first six months,
• 55:44
  this is so obviously wrong, This is so obviously mad,
• 55:47
  that if enough of us just point out these obvious truths,
• 55:52
  it will all blow over and go away. Because I
• 55:55
  still trusted the machine I was in, you know, I
• 55:57
  still believe that the debate worked, and people had debates
• 56:02
  in civilized democracies, and not that I thought, well, this
• 56:08
  shouldn't even be debatable, these ideas.
• 56:10
  Speaker 3: It's so insane.
• 56:11
  Speaker 4: No argument actually exists logically, scientifically, or morally for doing
• 56:16
  any of it. Therefore, it can't possibly go on for
• 56:18
  longer than a few weeks. And then as soon as
• 56:21
  I realized, no, this is not None of that stuff
• 56:24
  is going to work. It's not being allowed to happen.
• 56:26
  Nobody pointing out that it's wrong. Not even people saying
• 56:32
  it's conspiracy. I don't mean that people saying there's no
• 56:34
  virus or whatever, or gender twenty thirty. I mean just
• 56:37
  people saying you can't. The government has no right to
• 56:39
  lock people up and do this. They were silenced and
• 56:43
  canceled and demonized. That's when you understand, Okay, this is
• 56:48
  a plan, and they are going to see this through.
• 56:51
  And they're smart. Not are politicians. I don't mean they're idiots,
• 56:54
  but the people above them are very, very clever and.
• 57:00
  Speaker 3: Not sure.
• 57:01
  Speaker 4: It's so much for us to try and stop it.
• 57:05
  I think we are in more of a process of endurance.
• 57:09
  The question for everyone is how much can you resist
• 57:13
  this stuff, these ideas.
• 57:14
  Speaker 3: How much can you stay.
• 57:15
  Speaker 4: True to your principles, principles of love and truth and
• 57:20
  beauty and the importance of family, and because if you,
• 57:26
  I think, if we can sustain ourselves and sustain our
• 57:30
  humanity for long enough, what they're doing won't work. In
• 57:34
  the sense that they're so bonkers and evil and they
• 57:39
  don't have any of those things. It's important to remember
• 57:41
  that these people don't understand love, they understand beauty, they
• 57:45
  don't understand creativity. They will end up devouring themselves because
• 57:51
  it's the only way that they can go if we can. Yes, yes,
• 57:59
  so you have to be smart and you have to prepare.
• 58:03
  But ultimately this is about spiritual endurance, I think, and
• 58:09
  that's what I focus on now with my work is
• 58:11
  how can I help people to stay focused on the
• 58:15
  things they need to focus on, not to forget these
• 58:18
  values that are so important that are under attack. And absolutely,
• 58:23
  do you.
• 58:23
  Speaker 1: Think the people that were that have been writing in
• 58:25
  the last few weeks have forgotten.
• 58:28
  Speaker 2: Those values?
• 58:29
  Speaker 4: Yeah, I'm not completely sure who the people writing actually are.
• 58:34
  I don't think a lot of them are the same
• 58:37
  people who would have been on those marches in against lockdowns.
• 58:40
  And like I said before, I don't think that kind
• 58:45
  of behavior does happen organically. I mean, nobody has ever
• 58:49
  had more reason to wriot than they did in twenty
• 58:53
  twenty and twenty twenty one. It didn't happen now. Also
• 58:57
  for the last three years, I have said, I've heard
• 59:00
  other people saying, look at at some point in order
• 59:04
  to get us to where they need to get us to.
• 59:07
  There are going to be riots, and the riots are
• 59:09
  going to be based around this confrontation with illegal immigrants,
• 59:15
  and it's going to be obviously hyped up by the
• 59:17
  media and the idea that it might escalate into civil
• 59:20
  war because obviously that will give them an excuse to
• 59:23
  bring in much more control.
• 59:26
  Speaker 3: That's that's the key to digital I D.
• 59:30
  Speaker 4: Basically, if you do it enough, if you make people
• 59:33
  frightened enough, you will have you don't force something like
• 59:37
  that on them, but you will have them begging for
• 59:40
  a solution, you know, and then you present them with
• 59:45
  this sentiment which I by the way, I understand the
• 59:49
  anger about illegal immigration, and I do absolutely understand how
• 59:55
  people feel that we have lost a lot of our
• 1:00:00
  cultural identity and the values that we're supposed to have
• 1:00:05
  as a country, although I would ask people to remember
• 1:00:09
  that the biggest threat to those values is are government,
• 1:00:12
  not any Muslims that have been brought in by the
• 1:00:16
  same government. But it's a legitimate concern to have. However,
• 1:00:25
  if you're being treated you this two tier police system,
• 1:00:30
  if you're being treated like a second class citizen in
• 1:00:32
  your own country, and you start demanding that that stops.
• 1:00:36
  I want to be recognized as a legal citizen of
• 1:00:40
  my own country. And the police are then saying, well,
• 1:00:44
  how can we tell. We can't just tell whether you
• 1:00:46
  were born here or not. Well, give us a way
• 1:00:48
  to prove it. Oh funny, you should mention that here's
• 1:00:50
  your digital idea. It's very easy to see how this
• 1:00:53
  is going. And it's so easy that it makes me
• 1:00:56
  very suspicious of these riots. I just I don't think
• 1:01:00
  they're organic like everything else. It just fits in too
• 1:01:03
  perfectly to what they're trying to do.
• 1:01:04
  Speaker 1: Well.
• 1:01:05
  Speaker 2: I couldn't agree more.
• 1:01:06
  Speaker 1: And I you talked there about people having lost their
• 1:01:09
  cultural identity, and earlier you said that the people above politicians,
• 1:01:17
  the people that are setting policy and so are clever.
• 1:01:20
  And my question would be, are they clever or are
• 1:01:23
  we dumb? Because it seems to me that if you
• 1:01:27
  look back at how these people have run their operations
• 1:01:31
  for decades, if not centuries, they pull the same gag
• 1:01:36
  every time. It's the same kind of motors operandi every time,
• 1:01:39
  and people fall for it every time. And you were
• 1:01:41
  talking earlier about about people some people having forgotten already
• 1:01:46
  what happened in twenty twenty and twenty twenty one, and
• 1:01:49
  so you know, and when we talk about cultural identity,
• 1:01:53
  this is something how can we lose that? Okay, there
• 1:01:57
  are people have come into the country, but if we
• 1:02:00
  had strong communities, we wouldn't be losing our cultural identity.
• 1:02:03
  The point is our weakness, not the fact that they're here.
• 1:02:07
  And then and then you hear people talking about, well,
• 1:02:09
  they're going to outbreed us. And and then then I
• 1:02:12
  said to myself, will hold on a second. Have we
• 1:02:15
  got ourselves in a position where we don't want to
• 1:02:17
  have children anymore? And and we get we've got ourselves
• 1:02:20
  into that position because we've accepted LGBT, we've accepted the
• 1:02:24
  cost of living, we've accepted a whole of economic changes,
• 1:02:29
  which meant that you need two salaries to buy a
• 1:02:31
  house now, and all these kinds of.
• 1:02:32
  Speaker 2: Really basic things.
• 1:02:33
  Speaker 4: Great to be injected with the drug that probably makes
• 1:02:35
  you infertile, right, So.
• 1:02:38
  Speaker 1: Yes, so it so you know, it seems to me
• 1:02:41
  you're talking about as spiritual battle. This is actually it's
• 1:02:46
  it's not only spiritual, it's it's it's it's the battle
• 1:02:49
  is with us as individuals, and and our willingness isn't
• 1:02:52
  it to be part of the the the cultural identity
• 1:02:56
  that we want to be part of and be proud
• 1:02:58
  of that culture identity.
• 1:02:59
  Speaker 2: And we're not anymore. We've we've we've allied ourselves.
• 1:03:02
  Speaker 4: We're not embarrassed about it. Almost that's true, we're not
• 1:03:07
  at the same time, we You're right that these these
• 1:03:12
  things used to be so much more alive when we
• 1:03:14
  had proper communities, and you know, we upheld our traditions
• 1:03:19
  and things felt smaller and the state didn't intrude in
• 1:03:25
  our personal lives in the same way. But we also
• 1:03:31
  had institutions that we relied on we thought were the
• 1:03:37
  guardians of those ideas, like the church and the royal family,
• 1:03:40
  for example, who I think probably lead to people if
• 1:03:47
  you believe that, you might be quite apathetic about protecting
• 1:03:51
  those things because you think, well, we have we have
• 1:03:53
  the King, we had the Queen, who is there specifically
• 1:03:57
  to defend those things and to uphold them. And then
• 1:04:01
  it became clear to me that, you know, obviously, when
• 1:04:05
  all of those things were under attack, the royal family
• 1:04:09
  went along with it immediately and did nothing. The only
• 1:04:13
  thing they were there to do and pretty much the
• 1:04:15
  only time it was actually tested they did nothing so
• 1:04:19
  but again, not everyone has understood that yet, and the
• 1:04:23
  royal family is another thing people really want to cling to.
• 1:04:28
  So I don't want to call people stupid. I mean,
• 1:04:33
  you make a good point like that.
• 1:04:35
  Speaker 3: It is on us as.
• 1:04:38
  Speaker 4: The people to uphold these things. But like me, you know,
• 1:04:44
  I believe the system was self correcting. I thought we
• 1:04:47
  were in a democracy. I thought the free press worked,
• 1:04:51
  and I thought there were certain things that just couldn't happen,
• 1:04:56
  and even when they did happen, it took me a
• 1:04:58
  long time to understand. Therefore, we're not in a democracy.
• 1:05:01
  We probably never were, and the free press is a
• 1:05:04
  complete lie. I wouldn't call someone stupid for not having
• 1:05:12
  let go of that yet and still trusting that. You
• 1:05:15
  know that the biggest problem that all of this comes
• 1:05:18
  down to is the refusal of most people to believe
• 1:05:22
  that people in power wish them harm, actively.
• 1:05:26
  Speaker 3: Want to harm them.
• 1:05:27
  Speaker 4: That is the hardest thing for most people to accept,
• 1:05:31
  and there are a lot of people who just won't
• 1:05:33
  do that, even if they're quite aware that things aren't right,
• 1:05:37
  and you can talk to them about this and that
• 1:05:38
  and they're open to it. But once you reach the
• 1:05:41
  point that the people in control are actively trying to
• 1:05:45
  harm you. That's too much for them, and I think
• 1:05:50
  we have to That's not something you can just tell somebody.
• 1:05:54
  You have to wait for them to actually see it
• 1:05:56
  for themselves. This is the biggest problem we're up against.
• 1:06:00
  Speaker 5: Well, I think you're absolutely right news like you were
• 1:06:03
  saying earlier, of losing that fear of letting go of things,
• 1:06:07
  and that all these parts of belief systems are part
• 1:06:12
  of the things that need to be let go of.
• 1:06:15
  It's obviously a terribly difficult thing to do because in effect,
• 1:06:19
  there's no safety in there.
• 1:06:21
  Speaker 3: You know, then what that's the Who's going to save us?
• 1:06:25
  This is the big problem. And this is another thing
• 1:06:27
  that is they presented people with saviors.
• 1:06:31
  Speaker 2: Right, right, So that was going to be my next question.
• 1:06:33
  Speaker 3: Perfect what do you think trying to different plan that?
• 1:06:35
  Speaker 1: Yeah, and again and following on from that, what's your
• 1:06:41
  view on the on the idea that people have that
• 1:06:45
  there's going to be some kind of night and shining
• 1:06:47
  arbor that's going to come along and see us all.
• 1:06:49
  Speaker 3: I mean, I think it's a big mistake.
• 1:06:50
  Speaker 4: I think even if there is somebody out there, don't
• 1:06:56
  rely on it. Don't triddle your films waiting for somebody
• 1:06:59
  to here or believe that there must be somebody somewhere
• 1:07:03
  behind the scenes trying to rescue all of this. It's
• 1:07:06
  up to us to do something about it. The onus
• 1:07:11
  is on all of us as individuals. And yeah that
• 1:07:15
  you know that there's Donald Trump there with the rest
• 1:07:21
  of them. And this is very interesting. You know, this
• 1:07:24
  is another area where I challenged my own audience because
• 1:07:28
  loads of people are still they still believe, more so
• 1:07:32
  now because of recent events, that Donald Trump is some
• 1:07:36
  kind of messianic figure who's going to save us all,
• 1:07:40
  you know. And and God stopped the bullet or made
• 1:07:44
  his ear miraculously heal in three days, or you know,
• 1:07:48
  it just deflected the bullet into this this fireman who's
• 1:07:54
  worth less than Donald Trump or whatever. Donald trum Trump again,
• 1:08:02
  for me, is an absolutely perfect figure for anyone who's
• 1:08:08
  designing an agenda and wants to move us in the
• 1:08:10
  direction that we're going again, Like the Queen, for example,
• 1:08:16
  when it came down to it, it totally failed. He
• 1:08:19
  was in a stronger position than almost anyone at the
• 1:08:23
  beginning of twenty twenty to change the course of all
• 1:08:27
  of this. You know, if the lockdowns and everything hadn't
• 1:08:30
  occurred in the States, it's hard to see how it
• 1:08:32
  would have been able to continue elsewhere. But Trump was
• 1:08:37
  absolutely behind signing all the executive orders that made all
• 1:08:41
  of those measures possible in the States. And then, of
• 1:08:43
  course he claims to have initiated Operation Warp Speed, which
• 1:08:49
  obviously didn't happen. Okay, there was obviously no Operation Warp Speed.
• 1:08:53
  Nobody was in a lab desperately trying to create a vaccine,
• 1:08:57
  you know, for this terrible pandemic, and Trump said, do
• 1:09:00
  it quicker, and they said, oh, eight of us have
• 1:09:02
  made it. At the same time, I think anyone who
• 1:09:04
  knows anything about this drug understands that this was not
• 1:09:10
  just cobbled together in a rush. It's extremely sophisticated and
• 1:09:14
  specifically designed to do exactly what it was doing. It
• 1:09:17
  was made years and years ago and fully tested on,
• 1:09:21
  you know, to do what it's doing.
• 1:09:22
  Speaker 3: Now, there was no Warp Speed.
• 1:09:25
  Speaker 4: People come up with these weird theories about Trump that
• 1:09:27
  or if he hadn't have made it quicker, then.
• 1:09:32
  Speaker 3: Something I can't even remember what.
• 1:09:34
  Speaker 4: They say, he made it come out more quickly. So
• 1:09:37
  the lockdown's finished, and it saved people because they could
• 1:09:41
  all see that the jabs were dangerous. It's extraordinary the
• 1:09:45
  way people try to make out that Trump somehow, I
• 1:09:49
  hear it, he's not, and he still calls himself the
• 1:09:54
  father of the vaccine. And again, this is one of
• 1:09:57
  those things where there are people who look at the
• 1:10:02
  jabs as if it's some little isolated incident, if somebody
• 1:10:06
  got that wrong. Oh, that was just a little blip.
• 1:10:09
  But look, they've said other good things said. He says
• 1:10:11
  great stuff about trans or whatever. You know, he's really
• 1:10:14
  good on immigration or whatever. And I really want to
• 1:10:17
  stress this point. The mass injecting of more than half
• 1:10:23
  the world's population with that drug is the worst thing
• 1:10:28
  that has ever happened in the history of our species.
• 1:10:31
  Speaker 3: And it has happened now.
• 1:10:32
  Speaker 4: And I know that's very, very difficult for a lot
• 1:10:34
  of people to accept, particularly people who've had it, But
• 1:10:38
  we are now living in the aftermath of that, and
• 1:10:43
  the repercussions are.
• 1:10:44
  Speaker 3: Going to go on. I'm afraid for a very long time.
• 1:10:46
  Speaker 4: It's not like lots of people died and now they've
• 1:10:49
  finished dying, and obviously we want justice. People will keep dying,
• 1:10:56
  keep being extremely ill, probably be infertile, affected in all
• 1:11:00
  kinds of different ways for years and years, I'm afraid,
• 1:11:03
  and people have to kind of accept that that thing
• 1:11:11
  took place, and anybody who was involved at any kind
• 1:11:15
  of high level with making that happen is not your friend,
• 1:11:19
  has to be discounted, should not be allowed anywhere near
• 1:11:22
  power ever again. And Donald Trump is one of those people.
• 1:11:27
  Speaker 1: Then people will say, well, he's the best of a
• 1:11:30
  bad blood, or they'll make.
• 1:11:31
  Speaker 4: Up, well, nobody's perfect. I get that all the time.
• 1:11:36
  You know, don't let the perfect be the enemy of
• 1:11:38
  the good. And I'm not looking for perfect. You've got
• 1:11:42
  the kind of deepest circle of hell with the likes
• 1:11:44
  of you know, Fauci and Bill Gates and doctor Rachel Clark,
• 1:11:50
  and you know these people in and then in the
• 1:11:52
  kind of just a hair's breadth above them, you've got
• 1:11:55
  to figure like Donald Trump or Elon Musk or whoever
• 1:11:59
  it is. And you're saying, that's but that's nowhere near good.
• 1:12:04
  I'm asking for somebody, you know, somewhere near good, obviously
• 1:12:09
  not perfect, but because that's all people have, they they go, oh,
• 1:12:15
  this is that he must be a good guy. Then now,
• 1:12:18
  if you haven't got Trump. If you haven't got Elon Musk,
• 1:12:22
  if you haven't got whoever is Lawrence Fox, with whoever
• 1:12:27
  these people, and then you've got nobody, And you need
• 1:12:30
  to be okay with that, because you've got yourself.
• 1:12:34
  Speaker 3: It's about you. It's you stop looking for.
• 1:12:37
  Speaker 4: Somebody to like you say, ride in on a on
• 1:12:40
  a white horse with a bleeding ear and save.
• 1:12:43
  Speaker 3: You all.
• 1:12:45
  Speaker 5: That sounds that you know you personally, you're you're very
• 1:12:49
  much at ease with that now. And are you are
• 1:12:54
  you aware I mean, either sort of person or professionally
• 1:12:56
  of their of there being a growing number of people
• 1:12:59
  who you've feel have that sense of calm within themselves,
• 1:13:04
  that they're that they've done what they need to do
• 1:13:08
  in their lives two effectively sort of ride this out.
• 1:13:17
  Speaker 4: Yes, I mean, I think obviously there are a lot
• 1:13:19
  of people who've made various preparations for what may or
• 1:13:24
  may not be coming, Like getting out of the cities
• 1:13:31
  is one big thing people can do. None of us
• 1:13:35
  can be sure about what's around the corner, you know.
• 1:13:40
  I mean, I'm like I say, I think I have
• 1:13:45
  a fairly good grasp of what they are, where they're
• 1:13:47
  trying to take us, and what the story is. And
• 1:13:50
  you know, sometimes people say I'm a you know, like
• 1:13:54
  a prophet, because I appear to know things way ahead
• 1:13:57
  of I'm not a prophit. I just understand the narrative
• 1:14:03
  and I skipped ahead a few pages. You know, that's
• 1:14:05
  all that's happening. But I'm not sure exactly what order
• 1:14:09
  things will happen in or how.
• 1:14:12
  Speaker 3: None of us can know exactly how prepared we should be.
• 1:14:17
  Speaker 4: And I think it's a fear. You know, we're afraid
• 1:14:20
  of what might happen, and we're afraid of physical death.
• 1:14:26
  They're all about us being afraid of physical death, and
• 1:14:29
  really what people need to be frightened of is spiritual death.
• 1:14:33
  Speaker 3: Well, I think that's what I mean.
• 1:14:34
  Speaker 5: I think I mean sort of psychologically or spiritually or
• 1:14:37
  you know that that. You know, do you feel that
• 1:14:40
  people are reconciled with taking on the mental battle to be.
• 1:14:47
  Speaker 3: To the limit. I'm not sure. I mean.
• 1:14:55
  Speaker 4: I hope, so I hope people understand that that's what
• 1:15:00
  they need to do. And I suppose have faith, even
• 1:15:04
  though it's not religious faith, but have faith in themselves
• 1:15:06
  that that will be enough. I think that's very important,
• 1:15:10
  you know, for people to believe in themselves and their
• 1:15:13
  capacity to endure.
• 1:15:17
  Speaker 1: Come in Bob, right, So what can we say about this,
• 1:15:22
  this fantastic picture. And I've got to say a massive
• 1:15:26
  thank you once again for this because we managed to
• 1:15:28
  get number one, which is fantastic.
• 1:15:30
  Speaker 3: I didn't realize you had number one.
• 1:15:32
  Speaker 2: That's great and who all's in here? And balls in here?
• 1:15:36
  Speaker 1: And I saw you were you were tweeting out that
• 1:15:38
  the Olympics.
• 1:15:39
  Speaker 4: Had I think I may have accidentally influenced the Olympic ceremony. Yeah,
• 1:15:44
  I hate to think they might be looking at my
• 1:15:46
  cartoons for ideas. This was this was a kind of
• 1:15:51
  It started as just an idea about showing all the
• 1:15:56
  figures together in one place, having a great time at
• 1:16:01
  our expense, you know, and sort of I thought they
• 1:16:04
  need to be literally bathing in the blood of innocence
• 1:16:09
  pretty much.
• 1:16:10
  Speaker 3: I thought, well, how could I do that?
• 1:16:11
  Speaker 4: And it I happened to take my children to bath
• 1:16:14
  to the theater that a few days later, and we
• 1:16:17
  walked past the old Roman baths and I thought, oh, yeah,
• 1:16:19
  that's that's it.
• 1:16:20
  Speaker 3: That would be good.
• 1:16:21
  Speaker 4: I do think there's a kind of obviously links with
• 1:16:24
  the Roman Empire or the fall of the Roman Empire.
• 1:16:27
  Speaker 3: So I thought it would fit quite well.
• 1:16:29
  Speaker 4: And this is an example of the kind of image
• 1:16:33
  not just because of the explicit nudity, but just the
• 1:16:36
  scale and the detail of it that I just couldn't
• 1:16:38
  have done in the paper. When you have those kind
• 1:16:40
  of deadlines, you can't. You might think of an idea
• 1:16:43
  like this, you immediately throw it out because you don't
• 1:16:45
  have time to do it. And the great thing is, now,
• 1:16:47
  if I want to, I can spend you know, a
• 1:16:50
  week or more doing something like this.
• 1:16:55
  Speaker 1: Everybody that walks in here and sees this picture, and
• 1:16:58
  I noticed it on Twitter. You put had a crop
• 1:17:00
  version and then you said, oh, we can't not let
• 1:17:03
  you see big mic here. Yes, every everybody notices that
• 1:17:06
  particular eye is drawn drawn to a particular.
• 1:17:09
  Speaker 2: Corner of the and we're just getting a.
• 1:17:12
  Speaker 3: Big mic the.
• 1:17:16
  Speaker 2: Yes.
• 1:17:17
  Speaker 3: Yeah, And.
• 1:17:20
  Speaker 4: It's interesting because he's obviously right over in the corner.
• 1:17:28
  And the idea is that Blair is the sort of
• 1:17:31
  focal point of the picture, but it's kind of unavoidable
• 1:17:36
  that people's eyes are immediately drawn here.
• 1:17:41
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 1:17:42
  Speaker 4: It's good, it's it's funny, it's you know what's interesting
• 1:17:49
  to me now is that obviously I've been drawing cartoons
• 1:17:53
  my whole life, and when I was younger, particularly as
• 1:17:57
  a teenager, you know, I would draw the kind of
• 1:18:00
  naughtiest things possible to kind of provoke a reaction, and
• 1:18:03
  it's quite a good way of making friends at school
• 1:18:06
  and that type of thing. And obviously you have to
• 1:18:08
  get a job and you've got to tone it all
• 1:18:10
  down and you learn about actually putting comment, intelligent comment
• 1:18:16
  into your work and saying something with it. But then
• 1:18:21
  once I kind of learned how to do that and
• 1:18:27
  no longer work at the paper, I'm kind of able
• 1:18:30
  to combine the two things now. So use that kind
• 1:18:33
  of I suppose juvenile sense of humor, but actually use
• 1:18:39
  it to say something important and depict real people. And
• 1:18:44
  obviously they are they are all very much naked in.
• 1:18:49
  Speaker 3: A sense in my viewers, and yes, very exposed people
• 1:18:54
  should should see them that way.
• 1:18:58
  Speaker 2: And David Cameron there with a pig.
• 1:19:00
  Speaker 4: Oh yes, David Cameron's pick, which these little things are
• 1:19:04
  interesting because obviously lots of people in other countries have
• 1:19:08
  no idea but who he is.
• 1:19:10
  Speaker 3: Or mine, there's a pig there, So it's quite good fun.
• 1:19:13
  Speaker 4: Sometimes you can point people to the stories and they
• 1:19:16
  can look it up and you know, obviously when you
• 1:19:19
  tell them, they don't believe it's true.
• 1:19:22
  Speaker 1: And a lot of people maybe don't notice Jimmy Saville
• 1:19:24
  up in the corner there.
• 1:19:26
  Speaker 4: Yeah, there's a Jimmy Saville statue there. Next to this
• 1:19:30
  is probably Satan. I can't remember who this chap was
• 1:19:34
  supposed to be. You've got the owl which is a
• 1:19:38
  reference to Bohemian Bohemian Grove dark Lord Sauron, and then
• 1:19:44
  the Baphomet statue behind ball and yeah, all sorts of
• 1:19:53
  things going on.
• 1:19:57
  Speaker 1: The one person that isn't there is was w Bush.
• 1:20:02
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 1:20:04
  Speaker 4: Here, there are various people who were considered for this.
• 1:20:10
  There are a few different sketches that had some other
• 1:20:13
  people who didn't make it.
• 1:20:15
  Speaker 3: I mean, George Bush is.
• 1:20:19
  Speaker 4: He's not been front and center for the last few years,
• 1:20:22
  you know, he doesn't pop up that often. It's always difficult.
• 1:20:27
  We were talking about this before about when you're doing
• 1:20:32
  something like this and choosing who to put in it.
• 1:20:35
  I think are people aware of all these characters? You know,
• 1:20:39
  how familiar are they with people? What do they do
• 1:20:41
  they know the backstory? I mean it's incredible. For example,
• 1:20:44
  the Trudeau there are still people who don't understand why
• 1:20:48
  I draw Trudeau like that with you.
• 1:20:52
  Speaker 2: That's true.
• 1:20:53
  Speaker 4: No, no, they'll say, well, where's where's Justin Trudeau? And
• 1:20:56
  you say, when he's behind Donald Trump and they don't know.
• 1:20:59
  But you know, again, it's fun because you can just
• 1:21:01
  send in the photographs.
• 1:21:04
  Speaker 2: Yeah, brilliant, brilliant. Okay, let's go and have a look
• 1:21:06
  at the other one then okay, yeah, And this one.
• 1:21:09
  Speaker 1: Is a lot darker, of course in some respects in
• 1:21:14
  sense of the choice of the colors and so on.
• 1:21:16
  Speaker 2: But I suppose the subject matter, well.
• 1:21:19
  Speaker 3: This is this is sort of interesting.
• 1:21:21
  Speaker 4: I mean, unlike the last one, there is some hope
• 1:21:24
  and optimism in this because it's it's more about the
• 1:21:31
  the dark forces being pushed back, yes, by the good side.
• 1:21:37
  So this one came about because Wright said, Fred had
• 1:21:42
  a single that they were going to release, cool Spiritual War,
• 1:21:46
  and they just asked me if I would do an
• 1:21:47
  artwork to accompany it. But it's an idea I'd sort
• 1:21:52
  of had in my mind for a while, and I
• 1:21:56
  basically thought, oh, this is great. It's an excuse to
• 1:21:59
  do some thing like the image I'd had in my
• 1:22:02
  mind about you know, well, basically depicting all the characters
• 1:22:09
  who are ruining our lives as these sort of demonic creatures,
• 1:22:16
  and it was a lot of fun and that this
• 1:22:18
  was the at the time, this was the most detailed
• 1:22:22
  thing I'd ever done, I think.
• 1:22:25
  Speaker 2: And it's mostly the same people that are in the
• 1:22:27
  other one, I.
• 1:22:28
  Speaker 4: Think, except who mostly But some of these are just
• 1:22:33
  my own creations. So this is just a kind of
• 1:22:37
  trans demon I suppose you would call it. Yeah, it's
• 1:22:40
  nobody in particular, and saying that this here's a sort
• 1:22:43
  of vaccine creature. That the pig is obviously Boris Johnson.
• 1:22:50
  Speaker 3: Who else have we got there?
• 1:22:53
  Speaker 1: Oh?
• 1:22:53
  Speaker 4: Jacinda, who I don't think is in thee She's not
• 1:22:56
  in the other one. Sam Smith didn't appear in the
• 1:23:02
  blood Bath as a Lenski is also not in the Baths. Oh.
• 1:23:09
  Speaker 3: In Piers Morgan? Who is.
• 1:23:15
  Speaker 4: Piers Morgan? I think is I've drawn him a few
• 1:23:17
  times because for me, he's just a good figure to
• 1:23:20
  use to represent the mainstream media and the kind of
• 1:23:25
  disgusting sellout.
• 1:23:27
  Speaker 3: Yes that he is.
• 1:23:31
  Speaker 2: Brilliant.
• 1:23:34
  Speaker 4: Well, I'm very glad that they're here, and you can
• 1:23:37
  all you can all be distracted by all the little details.
• 1:23:42
  Speaker 2: Well, I mean it's studio.
• 1:23:44
  Speaker 1: We put the one in the room downstairs because of
• 1:23:46
  course big windows everybody walks past, see is that yeah?
• 1:23:49
  And yes it gets some looks.
• 1:23:52
  Speaker 2: So it's good.
• 1:23:53
  Speaker 3: It's brilliant.
• 1:23:54
  Speaker 2: I think we've got it.
• 1:23:55
  Speaker 1: Well, we'll finish this and my last question to you
• 1:23:59
  then is what's next for Bob.
• 1:24:01
  Speaker 4: Oh, Yes, I do need to talk about this. I
• 1:24:04
  completely forgot I'm doing a book. So I've got a
• 1:24:08
  book coming out in October.
• 1:24:11
  Speaker 2: Which what's is Yes, excellent.
• 1:24:13
  Speaker 3: It's eleventh of October.
• 1:24:15
  Speaker 4: It's going to be out and it's going to be
• 1:24:18
  very well.
• 1:24:19
  Speaker 1: You have copies at the UK Column event on the nineteenth.
• 1:24:22
  Speaker 3: That's right.
• 1:24:23
  Speaker 4: I'm doing the UK Column event on the nineteenth and
• 1:24:25
  I will have copies there and I think I'm going
• 1:24:27
  to do a talk.
• 1:24:30
  Speaker 3: Around the book.
• 1:24:31
  Speaker 4: So people have been asking me to do a book
• 1:24:33
  for the whole of the last four years, and I
• 1:24:36
  was reluctant for several reasons, partly because it felt too
• 1:24:39
  early for a long time, but mainly because I just
• 1:24:43
  I didn't want to be one of these buy my
• 1:24:44
  book people who were popping up everywhere. And you know,
• 1:24:50
  because a lot lots of people immediately brought books out
• 1:24:53
  about what was going on. But you know, I've got
• 1:24:56
  to I've got to accept that I am now one
• 1:24:58
  of those people. Please my book, but obviously I'm sort
• 1:25:04
  of having to do it largely myself. It's being printed,
• 1:25:09
  but it's not I haven't got a publisher, so it
• 1:25:13
  will be available to buy via my website, and it
• 1:25:18
  covers all my work from the last four years. It's
• 1:25:20
  going to be very nice hardback book.
• 1:25:23
  Speaker 2: So it's got over two.
• 1:25:25
  Speaker 4: Loads and I think one hundred and eighty four cartoons
• 1:25:30
  in it or something. But it also has lots of
• 1:25:32
  sketches that people haven't seen before, some of my preliminary
• 1:25:36
  sketches or ideas I didn't do for whatever reason. So yeah,
• 1:25:42
  and I've written a sort of long essay at the
• 1:25:45
  start of it that's all about the nature of cartooning
• 1:25:49
  and kind of satire and what's happened to satire. So yeah,
• 1:25:53
  I'm really pleased about it. It's been quite a big project,
• 1:25:56
  but useful, useful to kind of look back at everything
• 1:25:59
  I've done and think about where I go from here.
• 1:26:05
  Speaker 5: And so the eleventh of October, Sorry, Charles, it's just
• 1:26:08
  the other thing that people need to know. Where can
• 1:26:11
  they watch the recorded version of art Apocalypse.
• 1:26:15
  Speaker 4: Yes, my live show art Apocalypse that I did that
• 1:26:19
  I wasn't able to put on in many places unfortunately,
• 1:26:23
  I kept getting canceled. Is the easiest way to view
• 1:26:29
  it now is to go to my Twitter. I've put
• 1:26:32
  it live on my Twitter profile, which is at Bob's
• 1:26:37
  Cartoons on Twitter, and I think it's pinned at the
• 1:26:40
  top of my profile, so it's free to watch now.
• 1:26:45
  Speaker 3: So yes, please do watch that.
• 1:26:47
  Speaker 4: A lot of hard work went into it and it
• 1:26:49
  was a lot of fun to make, and I may
• 1:26:52
  not be doing it live again unfortunately, but it's there
• 1:26:56
  online for people to find.
• 1:26:59
  Speaker 2: Brilliant Bob.
• 1:27:00
  Speaker 1: I'm going to say thank you very much for joining us,
• 1:27:03
  and well we will see you on the nineteenth, yes,
• 1:27:07
  but you know, hopefully we'll see a lot more of
• 1:27:10
  you over the coming weeks and months.
• 1:27:12
  Speaker 3: I hope, saying it's been a real pleasure, Thank you
• 1:27:14
  for having me. Thanks Mite, Thanks