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UK Column On Location: Bristol—Bob Moran · UK Column Radio

0:06
Speaker 1: Right now.
0:07
Speaker 2: For those of you paying attention, you will have seen
0:09
Speaker 2: something appear on the screens which gives you something of
0:12
Speaker 2: a clue as to what's coming. Before they ever clapped
0:16
Speaker 2: eyes on the artwork of Bob Moran, I wonder how
0:20
Speaker 2: many people realized how profoundly their emotions could be stirred
0:26
Speaker 2: by a cartoon poignant, acerbic, wholesome and hilarious, sometimes all
0:35
Speaker 2: at once. Bob Moran's cartoons have charted the horrors and
0:41
Speaker 2: hopes of the last four years to perfection, and it
0:46
Speaker 2: is our pleasure to have him here this evening to speak.
0:49
Speaker 2: So please welcome Bob Moran.
1:04
Speaker 3: Thank you very much. It's really good to be here,
1:10
Speaker 3: and I'm very grateful to UK Column for inviting me.
1:14
Speaker 3: I'd like to take this opportunity to thank them for
1:16
Speaker 3: supporting me and my work throughout the last four years.
1:21
Speaker 3: In my old life as precocious ambassador for the mainstream,
1:25
Speaker 3: I spent time in the offices of the BBC, ITV,
1:29
Speaker 3: the Guardian, the Sunday Times and the Telegraph. More recently,
1:34
Speaker 3: as hardened renegade cartoonist, I spent time in the UK
1:38
Speaker 3: column studio in Plymouth. The most striking difference, of course,
1:43
Speaker 3: is that none of those other media outlets have pictures
1:46
Speaker 3: of Michelle Obama's penis on the wall. But another distinction
2:03
Speaker 3: is that the small, quiet headquarters of UK column is
2:07
Speaker 3: a place where real journalism happens. It's ironic that, despite
2:12
Speaker 3: working in newspapers my whole adult life, I didn't understand
2:16
Speaker 3: what real journalism was, inasmuch as early on I understood
2:20
Speaker 3: journalism to be a mechanism by which the truth is
2:23
Speaker 3: filtered to the public. Many truths never reach the public
2:27
Speaker 3: at all. I accepted this, I'd expected it. I liked
2:31
Speaker 3: being an insider. The truths I saw being withheld or
2:35
Speaker 3: drip fed were small details, gossip, plans for the budget
2:40
Speaker 3: when a snap election would be called, things learned over
2:43
Speaker 3: long lunches or hushed phone calls. But suddenly the truths
2:47
Speaker 3: being played with were fundamental, moral truths, truths that were
2:52
Speaker 3: supposed to underpin everything about our society and way of life,
2:56
Speaker 3: and their deliberate obfuscation was going to cause unimable suffering
3:01
Speaker 3: and death. That didn't seem as fun to me. Perhaps
3:06
Speaker 3: that's what distinguishes the real insider, somebody who revels in
3:11
Speaker 3: being privy to more and more gossip, the intrigue, the chicanery,
3:16
Speaker 3: like so much dinner party chat, as if the wider
3:19
Speaker 3: consequences can always be kept at safe distance. It was
3:23
Speaker 3: when I understood I wasn't a real insider that I
3:27
Speaker 3: became a real satirist. I was never very interested in
3:31
Speaker 3: politics or journalism as a child. We weren't a political family.
3:35
Speaker 3: While there were hundreds of books in the house, there
3:38
Speaker 3: was rarely a newspaper. I loved to draw. From the
3:42
Speaker 3: moment I could hold a pencil, I drew. I drew
3:45
Speaker 3: what I saw, and I always saw the world and
3:48
Speaker 3: the people in it in this glorious way that we
3:51
Speaker 3: know as the cartoon. When I discovered you could make
3:55
Speaker 3: a career of cartooning, I knew that's what I had
3:57
Speaker 3: to do. That the cartoonist exists in the pages of
4:00
Speaker 3: newspapers was fine with me. It meant a bigger audience
4:04
Speaker 3: for my jokes. I started at a telegraph at twenty five.
4:08
Speaker 3: What a jammy sod I'd made it. I guess my
4:14
Speaker 3: dream was to die at that desk. It didn't work
4:17
Speaker 3: out like that. It worked out better. I'm here today
4:22
Speaker 3: to share my book an illustrated record of the strange
4:26
Speaker 3: times we've been living in and my thought process in
4:30
Speaker 3: this period. The book is dedicated to my parents, my
4:34
Speaker 3: first victims. They can't take credit or blame for teaching
4:40
Speaker 3: me how to draw, most of that goes to Rolf Harris,
4:47
Speaker 3: but they can take credit from my understanding of what
4:50
Speaker 3: to do with this strange gift. The pictures I've created
4:53
Speaker 3: over the past four years all illustrate simple values. My
4:57
Speaker 3: parents take credit for those and for giving me the
5:00
Speaker 3: courage to defend my principles. People have been asking me
5:05
Speaker 3: to do a book since twenty twenty. I was reticent.
5:09
Speaker 3: I didn't want to bring it out too early. What
5:12
Speaker 3: man does, and besides, everyone already has a Giles Annual
5:20
Speaker 3: in their loop. Not that I mind where you choose
5:23
Speaker 3: to keep this book. It's up to you. The paper
5:27
Speaker 3: is conveniently strong and smooth, but I did want to
5:31
Speaker 3: make something special that reflected how much some of these
5:35
Speaker 3: images mean, the significance of this period, and my appreciation
5:40
Speaker 3: for everyone who's helped to share my cartoons around the world.
5:44
Speaker 3: I hope it was worth waiting for Countless subsidiary industries
5:49
Speaker 3: have sprung up around publishing. This is all well and
5:52
Speaker 3: good until it isn't. Some of these industries are creative,
5:56
Speaker 3: others are entirely parasitic. Our current council culture is probably
6:01
Speaker 3: an inevitable effect of pr. If you can generate publicity
6:05
Speaker 3: and guide sales with controversy something of nothing, then in
6:09
Speaker 3: time this will ripple out across the board. The controversies
6:14
Speaker 3: can be generated from less and less and will impact
6:17
Speaker 3: an agent, a publishing house, a distribution deal. Everything becomes
6:22
Speaker 3: another layer of bureaucracy, of sensitivities, of anticipation of potential sensitivities.
6:29
Speaker 3: All these mechanisms of censorship form the household names that
6:34
Speaker 3: then form the opinions of the household. I didn't want
6:38
Speaker 3: to censor my images. My audience has stayed with me
6:42
Speaker 3: because I don't compromise My cartoons resurface because truths remain
6:47
Speaker 3: the same. I didn't create this book because I want
6:50
Speaker 3: to garner a rave review from the Guardian, or to
6:54
Speaker 3: find a new audience next to David Walliams in Waterstones,
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Speaker 3: but to create something for them. People that have supported me,
7:02
Speaker 3: My supporters like the provocative, dangerous images. Usually they do
7:09
Speaker 3: not want a catalog where an editor has said their
7:11
Speaker 3: favorite images can't be included, and I don't either. I
7:16
Speaker 3: didn't always understand the machinations of journalism, and it turned
7:19
Speaker 3: out I knew even less about publishing a book. There
7:23
Speaker 3: are practical issues in putting a book together, layout, typesetting,
7:27
Speaker 3: page numbering, what paper to choose, and all the other
7:29
Speaker 3: technical details I had absolutely no clue about. I had
7:33
Speaker 3: help from friends that agreed with me, and from friends
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Speaker 3: that didn't. I am grateful for this common respect for
7:40
Speaker 3: the creative space. Our freedom of expression, conscience, and association
7:47
Speaker 3: relies on people that do not necessarily agree, recognizing sincerity
7:52
Speaker 3: of intention. The more reasons we are given not to
7:56
Speaker 3: work together, the easier we are to divide. In some ways,
8:00
Speaker 3: taking the opposite path to the mainstream is simpler because
8:03
Speaker 3: it is clearer, as UK column has and I have.
8:07
Speaker 3: But it is also important to remember that we are
8:10
Speaker 3: a society. The only people that benefit from our divisions
8:14
Speaker 3: is an elite group of the exclusively compromised. Their agenda
8:18
Speaker 3: can only be enforced on us by our neighbors. Our
8:21
Speaker 3: neighbors might not yet see our fight as theirs. By
8:26
Speaker 3: keeping our lines of communication open, perhaps we can dissuade
8:30
Speaker 3: them from making our fight harder. At my wonderful printers
8:34
Speaker 3: Henry Lying's I found on the floor that ordinary people
8:38
Speaker 3: who know something is up, even if they're not sure
8:40
Speaker 3: exactly what, enjoyed this chronicle, we can forget because of
8:45
Speaker 3: the voices that are amplified, that there are many silent
8:48
Speaker 3: observers who we can reach out to in friendship. Personally,
8:53
Speaker 3: it has been wonderful for me to see my pictures
8:56
Speaker 3: in a book. I create my work in a traditional
8:59
Speaker 3: way and ink and paint my cartoons on watercolor paper,
9:03
Speaker 3: and I love the process of making a physical object.
9:07
Speaker 3: But in order to share them with the world, I
9:09
Speaker 3: scan them on my computer and post them online. Most
9:12
Speaker 3: people only know the digital version of my work and
9:15
Speaker 3: have only ever viewed it on a backlit screen, often
9:18
Speaker 3: surrounded by all the other digital content we choose to
9:21
Speaker 3: bombard ourselves with every day. It's a different experience seeing
9:25
Speaker 3: them printed, and even if they're not true to size,
9:29
Speaker 3: my originals are sometimes bigger, sometimes smaller. This is much
9:33
Speaker 3: closer than their digital reproduction. I immediately understood on seeing
9:38
Speaker 3: the first proofs come off the press, that we engage
9:40
Speaker 3: with images in a different way when we are holding
9:43
Speaker 3: them in our hands. A printed on paper even I
9:48
Speaker 3: noticed things in my pictures I had forgotten or hadn't
9:51
Speaker 3: spotted before, including some mistakes. I think there is great
9:56
Speaker 3: value in producing something by hand, in the time it
10:00
Speaker 3: takes and the thought it demands, which we forget in
10:03
Speaker 3: our hurry to get with the program. We instinctively appreciate
10:07
Speaker 3: an object created with care and attention, and we are
10:11
Speaker 3: at risk of losing this. The subtle, but inescapable imperfections
10:16
Speaker 3: between brain and brush a part of what makes something beautiful,
10:20
Speaker 3: that gives its soul, that makes it human. This is
10:24
Speaker 3: why I hate AI. It's not just that artificial intelligence
10:29
Speaker 3: sells itself on the premise that hands are obsolete. It's
10:33
Speaker 3: that it can't do hands, or faces or feelings. Artificial
10:38
Speaker 3: intelligence is artificial. True intelligence is to understand how to
10:43
Speaker 3: look at something and see beyond the superficial a likeness,
10:46
Speaker 3: a character, and mood, those intangible qualities that we know
10:50
Speaker 3: as our consciousness. AI is not able to see the
10:53
Speaker 3: world as we see it, but our enthusiasm for the
10:56
Speaker 3: technology might be able to condition us to respond to
10:59
Speaker 3: the world in this limited way. It's not about how
11:03
Speaker 3: AI might improve, but how quickly we can fall. I
11:07
Speaker 3: look at the content people make and share with these programs,
11:10
Speaker 3: and I think we are falling faster than we realize.
11:13
Speaker 3: I spend hours laboring over and worrying about a picture.
11:17
Speaker 3: I think everything through. It's a conversation I'm having with
11:20
Speaker 3: the viewer, who will also play their part. The most
11:23
Speaker 3: difficult decision for any artist is deciding when you finished.
11:27
Speaker 3: All this disappears with digital content creation. At least a
11:31
Speaker 3: meme maker might spend a moment considering the wording of
11:34
Speaker 3: their speech. Bubble aiart only requires a request. Keir Starmer Riots,
11:40
Speaker 3: Kamala Harris, Communism, Bob Moran's George Orwell cartoon. This level
11:47
Speaker 3: of mindlessness is degrading. It's beyond degenerate. It is the NADEA.
11:52
Speaker 3: I understand that its popularity might be another illusion generated
11:55
Speaker 3: by an algorithm, But algorithms do guide taste, they do
11:59
Speaker 3: form opinion. I believe that if we don't make a
12:02
Speaker 3: conscious effort to resist this shit, its popularity could become real,
12:07
Speaker 3: and we will surrender the greatest gift we have, creativity.
12:12
Speaker 3: This gift doesn't only belong to those that can make
12:15
Speaker 3: things of beauty. It belongs to those who appreciate beauty
12:19
Speaker 3: and grow from it. But back to my book. I
12:23
Speaker 3: have obviously benefited hugely from the Internet, but as someone
12:27
Speaker 3: who knows that an audience can be removed from them,
12:30
Speaker 3: I wanted to be able to share a physical copy
12:33
Speaker 3: of my work. A book can't be deleted at the
12:36
Speaker 3: click of a button. It has to be burnt. Boris
12:41
Speaker 3: Johnson's book came out last week. Coincidentally, it's also exactly
12:54
Speaker 3: three years since I was sacked by the Telegraph. My audience,
12:58
Speaker 3: the prestige of a brand, financial security, political affiliation gone.
13:03
Speaker 3: It was supposed to be the end of my career.
13:06
Speaker 3: All I had was my skills, my messages, and faith
13:10
Speaker 3: that that would be enough.
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Speaker 1: It was more than enough.
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Speaker 3: It's true that if I want to dress up in
13:15
Speaker 3: a suit and drink champagne with the neat and the elite,
13:18
Speaker 3: I now have to write the invitations myself. But when
13:22
Speaker 3: I was damned to the periphery, I discovered that that
13:24
Speaker 3: is where satire flourishes. It is from the outside that
13:28
Speaker 3: you are able, that you allow yourself to consider the
13:31
Speaker 3: bigger picture. It is from the outside that I came
13:34
Speaker 3: into my own because it is only with independence that
13:38
Speaker 3: you can attack any angle without fear.
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Speaker 1: Or favor.
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Speaker 3: My thoughts develop, my tone shifts, the topics I cover change,
13:45
Speaker 3: but my principles remain the same. This is what has
13:49
Speaker 3: made the last four years special to me. It's what
13:52
Speaker 3: presenting my pictures together shows. Grounded by this consistency, It's
13:57
Speaker 3: always interesting to me when advocates or detractors really hate
14:01
Speaker 3: an image or see it as out of character. I've
14:04
Speaker 3: heard I don't understand the meaning of my work. I
14:08
Speaker 3: wonder if this is part of a general delusion that
14:10
Speaker 3: allows people to pretend something can be meticulously delivered entirely
14:14
Speaker 3: by accident in a fit of incompetence. I've heard I've
14:19
Speaker 3: got it wrong. I think this is because the relentless
14:22
Speaker 3: drive to uniformity of opinion has left some people unable
14:25
Speaker 3: to carry an idea without the fiction of total concurrence.
14:29
Speaker 3: And they imagine that means I can't carry an idea either.
14:35
Speaker 3: I've heard my work is dangerous, and I know for
14:38
Speaker 3: certain this means it's been widely shared, and they don't
14:41
Speaker 3: like that. There is definitely a push to stop people
14:45
Speaker 3: expressing themselves artistically today. This hydra has many heads, social, legal,
14:52
Speaker 3: basic physical threats, but the more insidious attack on creativity
14:56
Speaker 3: is the sometimes innocent suggestion that you can be frightened
14:59
Speaker 3: away from drawing one thing, but you should still be
15:02
Speaker 3: brave enough to draw something else. It doesn't work like that.
15:06
Speaker 3: All these ideas are from the same thought process. I
15:12
Speaker 3: now see everything as part of the same story. But
15:15
Speaker 3: I understand some people haven't noticed anything at all, and
15:19
Speaker 3: those that haven't noticed something aren't necessarily ready for Big Mike.
15:28
Speaker 3: That's okay. This didn't begin for me with a grand conspiracy.
15:33
Speaker 3: It didn't begin with an intricate knowledge of Agenda twenty
15:36
Speaker 3: thirty or the administrative intrigues of the World Economic Forum.
15:40
Speaker 3: I came to my position not from the things I
15:43
Speaker 3: couldn't grasp, but from the simplest things I could. Our
15:47
Speaker 3: duty to our children, defense of private life, rejection of
15:51
Speaker 3: a state of fear. We are being persuaded to see
15:55
Speaker 3: ourselves paradoxically as insignificant, dangerous, and excps fundable. Our memory
16:01
Speaker 3: and our conscience are assailed at every turn. We are
16:05
Speaker 3: told discernment is ignorance, duty is recklessness, love is selfishness.
16:10
Speaker 3: We are told not to stand firm, but to give
16:13
Speaker 3: way for a moment and another moment, while our fear
16:17
Speaker 3: of inescapable physical death condemns us to a worse fate
16:21
Speaker 3: where we are outwardly alive but inwardly dead. We should
16:26
Speaker 3: feel more confident about sticking to these small answers because
16:31
Speaker 3: they are the cornerstone. We are being presented with stories
16:34
Speaker 3: in a way that suggests there is a story that
16:37
Speaker 3: can justify abandoning our moral foundations. This is the wrong
16:42
Speaker 3: way up. It is an inversion. Our moral foundations must
16:46
Speaker 3: survive any story if we can persist in showing things
16:51
Speaker 3: the right way up. I will not leave my grandmother
16:54
Speaker 3: to die alone. It is harder to pervert these basics
16:57
Speaker 3: into being with my grandmother as she dies will kill her.
17:03
Speaker 3: We are continually presented with the problem and the solution
17:07
Speaker 3: as if they are the same thing. Rejecting an appalling
17:11
Speaker 3: solution does not mean you deny there is a problem.
17:15
Speaker 3: It is that the proposed solution cannot be justified. There
17:19
Speaker 3: are certain things that all these supernationally coordinated solutions have
17:22
Speaker 3: in common, vast amounts of money, collaboration at a global
17:26
Speaker 3: level between corporations and governments, and uniformity in mainstream media output.
17:32
Speaker 3: But most significantly, all these problems require us to delegate
17:37
Speaker 3: we are being asked to outsource our skills, our production
17:40
Speaker 3: of food, the care of our family members, the education
17:44
Speaker 3: of our children, the condition of our environment, the drift
17:48
Speaker 3: of our conversations, how we share our information, our thoughts themselves,
17:53
Speaker 3: until we cannot trust what we can see in front
17:56
Speaker 3: of us. Of course, many of us here, for many
18:01
Speaker 3: of us here, we don't accept the problem either. It's
18:05
Speaker 3: true that the response to the pandemic was always wrong,
18:09
Speaker 3: but it is also true that most of us don't
18:11
Speaker 3: believe in the pandemic. In much the same way, we
18:14
Speaker 3: may reject the solution to climate change as the carbon
18:17
Speaker 3: collector in favor of the tree, but we also challenge
18:22
Speaker 3: the problem. This is more frightening. We are in an
18:26
Speaker 3: unfortunate position whereby for many different reasons, we can see
18:31
Speaker 3: a story other people can't see. It's demoralizing because this
18:36
Speaker 3: has clearly happened before and probably forms much of what
18:39
Speaker 3: we understand as history. The official stories self perpetuate. But
18:45
Speaker 3: there is a reason that people come back to eternal truths,
18:49
Speaker 3: and that is that they are truths, and they are eternal.
18:53
Speaker 3: I neither want nor expect every person that sees my
18:56
Speaker 3: book to enjoy every cartoon that would be really boring.
19:01
Speaker 3: I will be happy if my book starts some memorable conversations,
19:05
Speaker 3: or at least can be wielded as an excuse for
19:07
Speaker 3: many ruined Christmas dinners. I hope that a lot of
19:12
Speaker 3: people will have this book in their houses all year round,
19:16
Speaker 3: or at least have an opportunity to see it and
19:18
Speaker 3: flick through it at some point. Because this book is
19:21
Speaker 3: full of ideas that were systematically and relentlessly labeled as dangerous, controversial, backward.
19:30
Speaker 3: They are ideas that are under attack, but they aren't
19:33
Speaker 3: just my ideas. They are noble ideas that are shared
19:37
Speaker 3: by millions of people around the world, very strongly, ideas
19:41
Speaker 3: that people remembered when they were ordered to forget. It
19:46
Speaker 3: is also a record of all our efforts in this period.
19:50
Speaker 3: When people argue no one could have known, it is
19:53
Speaker 3: simply not true. People did know, and they did speak out,
19:57
Speaker 3: and they kept on speaking out, even when they demonized
20:01
Speaker 3: and villified. I am grateful to all those people. I
20:05
Speaker 3: hope our number grows. I want future generations to know
20:10
Speaker 3: that we pushed back against the official narrative, so that
20:13
Speaker 3: when this happens again, they too feel able to stand
20:16
Speaker 3: for Thank.
20:18
Speaker 2: You, Absolutely fantastic, and I'm pleased to say that we
20:40
Speaker 2: have a little bit of time for some questions, So
20:43
Speaker 2: if anyone's got one right at the tip of their brain, Gemma,
20:46
Speaker 2: we will have a question please.
20:49
Speaker 4: Yeah, it was just about creativity actually, like a lot
20:52
Speaker 4: of people think that the creative part of us is
20:54
Speaker 4: the part of us that is closest to Spirit, to God,
20:56
Speaker 4: the universe, whatever you want to call it, and that
20:58
Speaker 4: deliberate attempt to stand out is part of something deeper.
21:02
Speaker 1: Well, I feel it is.
21:03
Speaker 4: I mean, i'd like to get your thoughts on that.
21:09
Speaker 3: Yes, I absolutely agree with that, and that's not necessarily
21:14
Speaker 3: something I understood until the last few years. One of
21:19
Speaker 3: the things that began happening with me when all of
21:23
Speaker 3: this started and I felt so passionate and desperate to
21:26
Speaker 3: be creating images that would get the right messages out,
21:31
Speaker 3: my ideas would start coming to me in a different way,
21:34
Speaker 3: sometimes where I wasn't quite sure where they'd come from,
21:37
Speaker 3: and almost as if they weren't exactly my ideas, Because
21:41
Speaker 3: some of the best creativity does come in that way
21:44
Speaker 3: where you're channeling something else and that frequency if you'll
21:49
Speaker 3: or whatever you want to call it tuning into God.
21:52
Speaker 3: It's all the same thing, basically, is something they are
21:56
Speaker 3: trying to shut down, both with the proper game under
22:00
Speaker 3: and how they manipulate us, how they educate us also
22:03
Speaker 3: I think probably chemically as well. It's one of the
22:05
Speaker 3: things that the jabs were designed to do. Sadly, yes,
22:10
Speaker 3: so it is. It is one of the most powerful
22:12
Speaker 3: things we have as human beings, is the creative impulse,
22:16
Speaker 3: and it's what sets us apart. You know, other living
22:20
Speaker 3: creatures don't really create in like we can. You know,
22:24
Speaker 3: it's what makes us specials.
22:30
Speaker 5: Hi, I just wanted to say that it was great
22:32
Speaker 5: having your pictures go out there because as most of us,
22:36
Speaker 5: all of us probably know that it was very difficult
22:38
Speaker 5: to share any information. But when your pictures came out,
22:42
Speaker 5: I heard that AI doesn't understand visual thinking. Take that,
22:51
Speaker 5: and your pictures didn't get deleted. So thank you. It
22:56
Speaker 5: was great to share your pictures. And it said the
22:58
Speaker 5: point of everything is brilliant.
23:00
Speaker 1: Yes, there's there.
23:01
Speaker 3: There is probably some kind of technical thing like that
23:03
Speaker 3: where the algorithm struggles to pick up on what's in
23:07
Speaker 3: a cartoon. You know, perhaps you can't read genitals that well.
23:12
Speaker 1: I don't know.
23:14
Speaker 3: But aside from that, there's there's also I realized early
23:17
Speaker 3: on there is something about a cartoon and sharing an image,
23:23
Speaker 3: one single image that sums everything up that someone has
23:26
Speaker 3: obviously spent hours painting, so they must really care about it.
23:32
Speaker 3: It's much harder for people to argue with than if
23:35
Speaker 3: you're just engaged in a Twitter exchange typing out messages.
23:39
Speaker 3: You know, there was lots of people have said to
23:41
Speaker 3: me once they shared my cartoon, the people more or
23:45
Speaker 3: less buggered off because they didn't know what to say,
23:47
Speaker 3: which I'm very pleased about.
23:58
Speaker 2: Would your book be dangerous to give two normal friends.
24:03
Speaker 1: Yes, in all the best ways, Yeah, I would. No,
24:07
Speaker 1: I would.
24:07
Speaker 3: I would urge people to try giving the book to yeh,
24:11
Speaker 3: normal normal friends or normal family members.
24:15
Speaker 1: It's not.
24:16
Speaker 3: And I deliberately didn't put anything in the book other
24:20
Speaker 3: than my cartoons.
24:21
Speaker 1: You know.
24:22
Speaker 3: Obviously I thought about maybe having newspaper articles or some
24:26
Speaker 3: of the government propaganda, but I thought, no, let's just
24:29
Speaker 3: have the cartoons on their own as a narrative. I
24:32
Speaker 3: don't want to cloud anyone's thoughts or reminding them about
24:35
Speaker 3: the because I mean that propaganda is so powerful, you know.
24:38
Speaker 3: I don't want we don't really want people to be
24:40
Speaker 3: seeing it anymore. And so I'm hoping that you know,
24:44
Speaker 3: it's a long book, there's a lot in there. Hopefully
24:47
Speaker 3: even your most normal friends might find one or two
24:49
Speaker 3: that they find funny.
24:51
Speaker 1: And that's the key.
24:51
Speaker 3: Once you get someone laughing at something, especially if they
24:54
Speaker 3: don't really mean to laugh at it, you've opened up
24:56
Speaker 3: a part of their brain and they're suddenly ready to
24:58
Speaker 3: think about things.
25:02
Speaker 1: Thank you.
25:03
Speaker 5: Have you ever taught drawing? Do you think you could
25:07
Speaker 5: come to Hope and run a workshow, because we've got
25:13
Speaker 5: a lot of budding artists who would love to Yeah,
25:16
Speaker 5: who do a lot of sketching. Yeah.
25:19
Speaker 3: I have taught drawing. Yes, not professionally, but I have
25:25
Speaker 3: gone into schools and done drawing. I did when my
25:28
Speaker 3: children were still at school.
25:29
Speaker 1: They're not anymore. We home school. I highly recommend that.
25:32
Speaker 3: But when they were still in school I did, maybe
25:36
Speaker 3: four years ago, I did a day where I went
25:38
Speaker 3: in and taught them all how to draw Donald Trump, which.
25:42
Speaker 1: Is really good fun. So yeah, I'd definitely be up
25:46
Speaker 1: for that. It would be great fun.
25:53
Speaker 6: Well, first, I just want to say I didn't know
25:55
Speaker 6: you're a comedian. As well as an artist, a drawer,
25:59
Speaker 6: but also a great speech. But also I don't know
26:03
Speaker 6: if it's common knowledge, but what was like the turning
26:06
Speaker 6: point from when you were at the Telegraph and working there?
26:09
Speaker 6: What was the thing that made you think, you know,
26:10
Speaker 6: I need to leave this and do something different or
26:13
Speaker 6: you sacked?
26:14
Speaker 1: What was it? I was sacked?
26:17
Speaker 3: Yeah, so that that sort of made up my mind.
26:25
Speaker 1: But no, although I obviously.
26:29
Speaker 3: For about a year maybe prior to my sacking, I
26:33
Speaker 3: was feeling very uncomfortable and I wasn't sure about whether
26:37
Speaker 3: it was going to be right for me to be
26:39
Speaker 3: in the mainstream media long term.
26:42
Speaker 1: You know, it's just.
26:43
Speaker 3: It's very difficult, obviously, because you have all that financial
26:47
Speaker 3: security and protection, and you know, all of the legal
26:52
Speaker 3: protection you get with the brand and everything like that.
26:55
Speaker 3: And I'd worked my whole life to get there. So
27:00
Speaker 3: it's possible that I would have left had they not
27:03
Speaker 3: fired me. Actually, you know, it was the best thing
27:06
Speaker 3: that ever happened to me, and I'm really glad they did.
27:08
Speaker 1: No thank you.
27:15
Speaker 2: Do you do you have a favorite character or villain
27:18
Speaker 2: that you like to catoon.
27:22
Speaker 3: That's really difficult? Yeah, not this Charles. I know Charles
27:32
Speaker 3: is that portrait I did of Charles is almost such
27:37
Speaker 3: a good summary of the man, I don't really feel
27:39
Speaker 3: like drawing him again. I I do quite enjoy Bill Gates.
27:47
Speaker 3: I like I like drawing Bill Gates because he has
27:49
Speaker 3: a very a very interesting face. He's very forlorn, almost
27:53
Speaker 3: innocent looking face of a child, and obviously he's one
27:56
Speaker 3: of the most evil people alive. So I enjoy playing
27:59
Speaker 3: with that. And Donald Trump. I do really like drawing
28:04
Speaker 3: Donald Trump, not just because he's visually interesting, but because
28:06
Speaker 3: it upsets so many people on our side whenever I
28:10
Speaker 3: put him in a cartoon. Oh, Justin Trudeau, obviously, Justin Trudeau.
28:19
Speaker 3: How can I forget Justin Cha? I forget him because
28:22
Speaker 3: it takes me about three seconds to draw Justin Trudeau
28:26
Speaker 3: the way I do it. But yes, turd out, Yes, I.
28:36
Speaker 5: Was wondering how you see your future from now on
28:39
Speaker 5: now that you've finished the book.
28:43
Speaker 3: Well, yeah, that's interesting. I mean, one of the exciting
28:45
Speaker 3: things now is I don't really have any idea exactly
28:48
Speaker 3: where my career will go now.
28:50
Speaker 1: There's no plan as such.
28:54
Speaker 3: The book has been great, but you know, it's been
28:57
Speaker 3: a great time for reflecting on the last few years
29:00
Speaker 3: and looking at everything I've done and thinking about some
29:03
Speaker 3: things I might like to do next. I mean, I'm
29:09
Speaker 3: going to get back to just doing cartoons and try
29:11
Speaker 3: and put them out a bit more regularly. Obviously, I
29:16
Speaker 3: might do another book at some point. It probably won't
29:18
Speaker 3: be the same kind of thing as this. It might
29:20
Speaker 3: be a different type of book. But no, that's not
29:23
Speaker 3: very good answer, is it. I'm you know, this is
29:25
Speaker 3: a great thing about being free. I haven't really had
29:28
Speaker 3: a need to decide challenge right, just shout it out.
29:34
Speaker 1: I will.
29:39
Speaker 7: So I want to talk about AI for a sex.
29:42
Speaker 2: So I've been.
29:43
Speaker 5: Playing around some of the picture I Scotland.
29:48
Speaker 7: Now we've gone to the point where it could be
29:51
Speaker 7: an approximation for what you want, but it doesn't quite
29:54
Speaker 7: do what you want. But I find that for a
29:57
Speaker 7: lot of people, you know, it's especially for all these
30:01
Speaker 7: executives at the big sort of music and film companies,
30:05
Speaker 7: that it tends to be good enough, especially since they've
30:08
Speaker 7: been gone and down and a lot of the other stuff.
30:12
Speaker 7: So I'm just wondering where you'd see this stuff hidden,
30:15
Speaker 7: especially since there's been strikes about it.
30:20
Speaker 3: It's a very good point because that's one of the
30:24
Speaker 3: things that worries me and I find unbelievable is that
30:29
Speaker 3: people produce this stuff and it's it's more and more
30:32
Speaker 3: in the mainstream now. I saw the other day The
30:35
Speaker 3: Evening Standard had some article on kir Stammer and they
30:40
Speaker 3: just generated an AI image of kir Stump and it
30:42
Speaker 3: looked nothing like him. I mean absolutely nothing like him
30:46
Speaker 3: at all. It just had the right hair style and
30:48
Speaker 3: then somebody else's face. And what I found amazing is
30:51
Speaker 3: that people put in their commands and it gets blipped
30:54
Speaker 3: back and they look at it and go, yeah, that's fine.
30:58
Speaker 3: I don't understand why they don't look at it and go,
30:59
Speaker 3: that's absolute shite.
31:01
Speaker 1: We can't possibly use that. You know.
31:05
Speaker 3: This is what worries me, is this lowering of standards,
31:07
Speaker 3: and it's because nobody's made it, so they don't care,
31:11
Speaker 3: you know. I hope I hope that maybe eventually people
31:16
Speaker 3: would start to realize again it's another one of these
31:18
Speaker 3: things where the onus is on us, the consumers, to
31:22
Speaker 3: say this is rubbish, why are you doing this? You know,
31:25
Speaker 3: And hopefully there'll be enough people left who can still
31:30
Speaker 3: draw and paint and create by hand that we won't
31:35
Speaker 3: have to put up with these awful AI monstrosities.
31:41
Speaker 1: Yeah, lovely, I think that is a hope.
31:43
Speaker 2: We will have to conclude this part on If you
31:47
Speaker 2: have not listened to the amazing interview that Bob gave
31:51
Speaker 2: Uk Colinn to Mike and I some weeks ago, please
31:55
Speaker 2: do listen to it. It is a phenomenal recording. And
31:59
Speaker 2: if you thought you were to leave here without one
32:01
Speaker 2: of his books, then I suggest you think again. There
32:03
Speaker 2: are still some there. So Bob Bran, thank you very much,
32:07
Speaker 2: indeed for joining us today.
32:08
Speaker 1: Thank you