‘I do think we’ve got an unbelievably bad crop of politicians’ - Marina Hyde

Hello and welcome to Ways to Change the World I'm Christian Guru Murphy and this is the podcast where we talk to extraordinary people about the Big Ideas in their lives and the events that have helped shape them. My guest this week is a chronicler from In Our Time, she wins multiple awards, it's very, very funny every week on Channel 4 News, someone or another says: I wish we could get Marina to go into hiding, but she doesn't really do much TV nor radio, and I am delighted to say so. That she put her columns in a book called What Just Happened and that's why we have you in it.

In fact, thank you very much for inviting me. I'm very honored, well, I mean, I'm very surprised that you, you, you. In fact, I've come to do an interview about us because, since you don't normally do it, it's because I'm very old-fashioned in the sense that I just

think

I'm a writer and that's it, so I don't really do anything. broadcast, but I'm making a very honest exception with my book, um, and because I

think

that's probably fair to the publishers, so it's an exception, but now it's lovely. I read your columns every week, obviously, um. and you know, for one day Twitter will be full of did you see what Marina Hyde said?

Did you see Marina Hyde's line about X? but putting them all together for five years of politics is quite traumatic, it's really, you know, and also these things appear. I remember when we were, you know, when I was thinking, I was thinking about God, when I was putting everything together, I was thinking that they appear a or twice, twice a week and just the kind of relentless attack of how, but the story gets worse, you know? I had to think of somewhere to start, so I decided to put a pin in just a week, but about a week before the referendum, just after Joe Cox was murdered.

I really feel like that's the time. where we went almost maybe irrevocably, we certainly haven't come out of this yet in that kind of dark timeline and um afterwards and I remember when I was writing long after Brexit someone said to me oh God, you know this is so funny, but what will you do in a year when everything is done? I said God, I mean, I even thought that, I don't think it's all done in a year, but even I couldn't have predicted that in six years we'd be trying to get rid of it. what a deal we have and that things would have gotten crazier and more chaotic every year.

It's a smart place to start, though, because it takes you right back to that very, very serious moment, as you say, after Joe Cox's death. I really remember it. Well, because I interviewed Farage, that day and that's the column that you start with, and I mean, it's deliberate, because you're known as the hilarious Marina Hyde, that you started with something that actually reminds us how very serious that is. remember. people of what is at stake and the realities and you know in many ways the great unrest of recent years, so I thought it was a kind of good moment on the eve of everything, when you know that in people's heads there is still could have gone in either direction um and another reason I started so I guess is because maybe to some extent um I had written before, I had written, the first thing I really thought I found my voice was a kind of celebrity com called Lost in Showbiz at The Guardian, which we probably haven't covered celebrities before and I just said I finally convinced the editor at the time to let me write about them and somehow I found my voice in that and then I also found my voice in a sports column in a different way, but never in particular, I don't think ownership found my voice writing about politics, maybe I just copied other people or tried to do it and more derivatively or something, I just felt it in those weeks of Brexit and the referendum and right after I somehow found a new kind of voice to write about it and I think in some ways the best things I've written about have been since then, there's something about that event that It was extremely emotional for people on both sides of the debate, and you know there were a lot of people in my family who voted the other way, but it was an emotional thing and I don't know anything about it.

I wrote my way through and found a better voice to write about things that the things I wrote before just weren't as good. Did you care about Brexit? very deeply, I mean, I think your second column says that it turns out that Brexit was a zero-sum game and I thought that captured that moment after the Brexit vote very, very well because yes, there were quick winners and losers, yes , and it was actually extraordinary. See some of the people you know. I remember someone like Calvin McKenzie, the former editor of the Sun, appearing on the Today show about a week after the vote saying, "Oh, I have buyer's remorse.

I voted leave and now I wish I hadn't." I don't know what I've done, coming from him, who doesn't? I have a lot of regrets about a lot of things that I thought were extraordinary and, um, yeah, it really mattered and became, you know, us, the ones that were divided. lines that kind of that core value became the core value divide I guess from people in UK politics which side were you on, you know, people identified much more clearly with Leave or Remain than even if they were sort of a long time Labor voting family. Um or a long time ago, you know, they voted with them, they identified much more strongly with um, how they voted there and I guess in some ways it became a kind of identity politics and do you think we're still stuck there and if so? ?

How do we escape from this man? God, if you know the way out, you have to tell me. I'm here to ask you. How do we escape? I don't know, yeah, we're still very divided, right? "Yes, we're still divided, but I actually think people are so fed up now that I think people at the grassroots level are trying to come together and do something and realize that those divisions have to be overcome, unfortunately." We are in a series of crises where the fundamentals are such that only our overlords can make these decisions, you know, whether it's the NHS or the cost of living, these are things we really need

politicians

to put things in order. leave behind that kind of identity politics, I don't know, and really try to govern based on everyone's national interests and not just go for these kinds of easy cultural victories that just don't help anyone, I don't think so, but you really believe that you know enough is enough because in a way that is like the thread of your columns for four years you know it can't get any worse, right? um, I mean, no, I don't feel like it's I don't feel like it's going to happen, but I do think that when you know, you hear about all these amazing charity initiatives that are expanding all the time to deal with these things and I really think that that It's from scratch. and it's amazing, but I look up and I think what are

politicians

doing to help people and what are they doing to put those divisions behind them and, in fact, I think they continue to go for these easy wins, culturally speaking or whatever, and it's just really not constructive.

I think ordinary people are doing much more constructive things to overcome divisions within their own families. Whatever you know, we all argue about it in my family. There were all kinds of things, but in the end everyone has to get along. and make something out of what's happened no, I'm not just talking about Brexit the way I'm talking about all the pandemic stuff, all I want to say, I think people are very aware of the fact that the machine It's falling apart and we have to fix it somehow it's the tone of your columns you know who you are you know and I guess I should just project onto that what I think it is, you know if you don't laugh you'll cry Yeah, aren't they all completely useless ?

I don't mean to undermine them completely, I say they are all lovely uses, but I do think we have an incredibly poor

crop

of politicians and we have to deal with much more serious things than people. I've had to deal with it in decades, um, but yeah, I think if you should try to laugh about it, I mean, I guess that's how I respond to things in my own life, is to just try and remember to laugh about it, um, but I. I've always tried over the last few years to try to be kind of a friend to the reader, who I think you know, like I say, on both sides people were just throwing up their hands saying, how is this still happening?

Haven't they solved this? How can the problems continue to get worse? I guess I always wanted to try to be kind of a friend to the reader and say, "Hey, yeah, I'm okay with this too, you know?" and it's quite cathartic for me. writing about it just writing about it is quite cathartic. I think it helps if you write this so I don't have unresolved news issues like many people in this country do, but rather to try to make people laugh about an experience. That's varying degrees of horror is something I try to do, but I think the way you make people laugh is unique to your column and I think that's why people love it so much, it's the skill in one line. or phrase. or even a word to just capture that you're very kind in that moment, you know if the one that keeps coming to mind, which is kind of inappropriate, but a lot of them are for Christie, which is like the reference. to Boris Johnson while we were going through the Christie moment um from the trial um I think that's a bit yeah, he does it in The Ether and you know, I write them all in the day and I don't have anything stored sadly I always wish I had it, it just comes out I do it all in the morning um and you know I'm done and dusted myself trying to get done and dusted at noon so how do you write your column?

You just, literally, just sit down. I sit down and start writing, yes, I get up early, I start, I understand, I'm not always at my desk around five, but that's partly because I'm also doing other projects, but I sit down and I sit there. and I just think what should I do today and then I write it all down at once um and yeah, I try not to because because you're often angry at whoever's in charge like kind of a fun distance, I think if you let the real anger out someone. he gave me some good advice about it, he once told me to just keep the anger out, you can use it, there are some columns in there where you can tell I'm really angry, but if you use it in moderation, otherwise I think it works .

I think people feel like they're being harassed and yelled at, so there are some columnists that I actually agree with the substance of what they're saying, but I feel slightly like I'm being yelled at and I think the tone as I've gotten older, I think that tone is the most important thing of all in writing, you can't have absolutely nothing to say, but if you get the tone right and you say it in a right way, then people may think it's weirdly hugely overrated, but if you have something really important and cool to say but somehow you get the tone wrong, it can come out totally wrong and you know if that's really unfair because it should be more about substance, but I'm afraid. that style is a big part of it too, and do you think you talked about being read by people who don't share your political sensibilities?

Are you aware that people who don't know you read you? A lot of funny people write and say: that they read it, read it and enjoy it from time to time, even if they have been on the wrong end of a joke, but it's funny, I mean, only if you put Marina in, it hides the best lines on Twitter, oh God, the search results, which I just did before. We start with Dorian Linsky, John Sopel and Fraser Nelson, which is not a bad spread. I would say yes, great, there you have it. All the people quote your funny, oh gosh, okay, well, that's very nice of them all, but and, do it. people contact you, I mean do you get a lot of comments?

Yes, I like those who write to me from somewhere in Indiana and tell me you know I never miss one. Do not know anyone. As? As? As? of political journalism Elite and pack, you know? Do you like politicians? No, you hang out without a press kit. I don't do any of that. You see? I'm like you know. I only watch him at home on TV with Same as Everyone Else, that might make him feel a little more approachable overnight. Every once in a while I do something crazy like go to a party conference, but that's a form of access that you wouldn't have if you were just anyone else not remotely involved in the media just watching and drinking at home, but overall I write from that perspective, um, of what you can see.

I don't do that kind of inspirational stuff. A great Guardian writer from a dark and distant past called Neville Cardis who said that he never wanted to meet politicians because it would dilute the purity of their hatred and I think it's very difficult if you are friends with these people or see them socially. all the time for I know I would self-censor just for sort of, you know, terribly nice Brits like, oh geez, I met them at something. I think I've fucked my partner at some point.I just find it not entirely, but alone. a little bit and I think it's inconvenient, you know?

I also think a lot of them are just horrible people, mainly you wrote about this and I chose outside the quota, you actually said that getting too close to politicians from both sides of politics is always a mistake for journalists. You might think that access makes them a great contact, but the compromises and self-editing required to retain them mean it ends up just being a lie you tell yourself. Yes, I think there are some people, particularly in the Johnson administration, who have very, very close contacts within the administration, but have they reported fairly? you know, I know it gives you great access and you get great stories because they give you information, but I don't think they've fairly reported on it overall and I think that's really important and it's unless you say what your access is it's more well you know how you can believe any of that I just don't think it is at all it's just I don't think it's entirely clear you know I just never wanted to be involved in something like that and I wouldn't choose it at all for myself and you know I think you have the obligation to I don't know how to make a book about it later, I mean, what about your politics and your prejudices?

How important is that to what you do? The fact that you write for The Guardian. I try not to have a particular policy about any of that. I really mean, if I was doing the job of sketch writer you'd just be writing about whoever, I mean, I wrote a lot about the Blair government when and the Brown government when they were in power and if I went to Labor I'd be writing about them every week, the conservatives would be that kind of distant sideshow that gets it once every you know, get coverage, so to speak, much less, as is the nature of all political coverage, the fact is that the conservatives have been in power for the last 456 years, however long they are, I think, you know, it's going to focus primarily on what they've done, but yeah, because I'm not really, you know, sometimes it feels like a little sideshow, what's happening down the road, can you imagine being so cruel to a Labor government?

Yeah, I mean, I think I wrote that I was quite rude to Tony Blair and yeah, Gordon Brown's government while they were happening, so yeah, yeah, because I wouldn't believe there was a change of characters. Vision. I mean, you know, no one but me wants to start writing about Jacob Reese Morgan, but he keeps repeating himself. in us, look, about a year ago, you wrote Kia stalma he is still the kind of person who things happen to a reactor to events rather than someone who might have the potential to shape them. He feels like the hardened defender who waits for others to be judged and sworn.

I still think so, I'm afraid to say that there is a great Spanish football writer called Diego Torres who codified the rules of José Mourinho's type of football, you know they want Mourinho to be on the good side, on the side, you made it once you moved forward. to the Champions League with only the final with only 19 per possession, so he has the kind of level of risk aversion and could have done it anyway Diego Torres codes this by saying you know, which basically shows Havarino's thinking in the position where even having the ball is a risk, therefore anyone who doesn't have the ball is stronger and I feel a little bit with Starman, you know, I absolutely think he could be Watch's opponent who fought him all the way up to number 10, but I mean, it's a bit like being at Wimbledon when you know your opinion is double faulted every time and you're like, "Oh my God, I'm holding the trophy." I can't believe it, but yeah, I think he's a very risk-averse person and I don't know if you are. can change that I don't think people change in general is one of my theories about life.

I don't think people change. I think they become more exaggerated versions of themselves and can deal with things a little bit, but I don't think that's it. you suddenly stop being risk averse, so I think he will. He is a very risk-averse person. Do you think he will be prime minister? God, I hate making predictions. I am against all predictions. um, I still don't know how to say. He definitely could be, I don't know if he will be or not. I have no idea and I am against a lot of journalism that has now become a kind of prediction that predicts events rather than reporting on them, which I think is really strange and you know enough has happened, that kind of Informed analysis of what just happened would be quite useful, perhaps more so than speculating, do you know how it might play out?

It seems quite strange to me. I think it's a pretty strange situation for journalism. having come in and in my mind it's happened more and more, you know, journalists always give us their predictions about this or that, who cares, no, no, you have a lot of my accent, but it's usually wrong. anyway, it's always, I mean how many times Boris Johnson went through, I don't know, the last two years, you know, he was completely written off, then he went to the hospital, the pandemic, everyone's easy, then 10 years go by, then it comes out again and you know this. it's like a crazy noise, you know, I'm with Dominic, it comes in things like this, it's just this crazy noise that happens all the time, no, I mean, that's what's really interesting about this book, you know, because it reminds us of what it happened, yeah, um and and it gives us a chance to work out what we think about it, yeah, I mean, there were huge amounts that I couldn't remember when I was picking things out, I thought, what were these things?

It was so strange and yet people were transfixed by them um I said in the introduction to this book that it was such a strange moment. I went to see a friend of mine who was doing a comedy tour and one of his first dates was in Worcester and I went to Worcester and I stayed in I got there and I stayed in this hotel and in the back there was some kind of bar type place and I went down to the bar at three o'clock to wait before going to the theater to see my friend's show and the bar was quite full, many groups of two, one, three, people with drawings absolutely glued to the screen, they were watching the Supreme Court hearing on the Pieroging of Parliament and I thought: What has happened to this country?

Something very strange and very bad has happened to him. In this country it was three in the afternoon on a Tuesday. It was crazy that people were watching these things at night and I don't know, I mean, I used to think my kids could do something like that because I had to keep watching these votes. I could do John Burko Impressions and I was thinking this is horrible. I feel like you know your years passed without this was so precious because what you said is this is politics as a reality show, yeah, I think I think that kind of crazy cycles. from reality TV that people were the kind of dominant cultural form of the early 2000s and it's not a coincidence to me that the biggest reality star of that era was Donald Trump and he couldn't have been president without you knew how to direct the American version of The Apprentice and become a figure in the American popular imagination that certainly hadn't been since the early '90s and I think you know the Simon Cowell thing about the constant voting on everything personal because people vote For all these things. the time Carol dreamed of a referendum-type TV show, she said, don't forget that Cameron ridiculously quoted his vote and Gordon Brown were desperate for him to anoint them too and he had the idea that I know the British public will be able to vote on all the important issues, not leaving it in the hands of politicians, and Downing Street would actually be given a red phone in the middle of the studio to call and give their opinion, if that were the case, you know we live in We live in it now, but I guess What that has also done is change the way politicians behave, hasn't it?

You just don't do what you're supposed to do anymore. I mean, you've got them all working independently, it's like the wild west, if you look at someone like Nadine Doris, who actually left Parliament for a few weeks to go eat some kind of Bush Tucker genitalia, whatever they do in the Australian jungle, and I'm a celebrity and, as you know, if you look at his kind of Twitter account, this kind of thing that he says that's what would even be described in the old days is out of control, he's self-employed , says things like that and there's no real discipline when you think about what, by the way, I also thought was terrible during the Blair years, the absolute discipline of the message, everyone has their little pages and you know, whatever Peter Madison Campbell told them to think, they had to say it out loud and be kind. of droids in the news now you have people saying all these quotes I'm becoming stars and some kind of weird reality Personalities in their own right and you look at what happened in the years after the Brexit vote and you know you heard these people kind of nobody knew who nobody knew who the deputies were suddenly you say, oh Mark Francois, you know Steve Baker, these people were.

I saw Steve break the news and say, you know I've been called Brexit. Tough man Steve Baker and I were like OMG. I mean, you know you're Wickham's MP. This never happened before. It was great. You know it was absolutely crazy and they got personal. They appeared on television more than anyone else. They are on television. More than Ollie, it'll be okay, they're on TV more because the government is less, yeah, so there's a space to fill and these people fill them and they become characters and I wonder what effects you think. that has to do with the quality of politics, the quality of government, when people can behave in ways that would have been considered outlandish, but they survive and become more popular, yes, those rules, the norms have been broken.

I must say that I think pondit TV that kind of thing has been imported from reality shows where everyone is reserved for conflict because it's much better if they yell and argue with each other in the Big Brother house and if everyone gets along and that It was imported into the daytime magazine type. show couches like this morning where they started hiring people like Katie Hopkins to say I wouldn't let my kids play with other kids with common names and stuff like that to create this kind of conflict and have arguments because I got a lot of attention to show but then I think news programs started, and in particular, continuous news stopped because it's cheap to fill the air.

I started hiring experts all the time, um, who were from pretty extreme ends of the spectrum. Sometimes you might have someone from the contributor alliance or someone from the other end of the spectrum who doesn't really represent the kind of middle opinion or whatever, but so many debates that we didn't even know were debates became completely polarized and um In that kind of environment, someone like Nigel Farage can thrive very well, and people who are willing to say all sorts of slightly marginal things become very reserved. I mean, they were just bookable guests and I think that has really ruined the quality of the debate.

Hasn't it created a lot of conflict and fireworks or news shows that maybe don't need it? But I guess what it's also done is bring popular culture and politics closer together, yeah, and maybe that's a good thing because you know, because it makes politics more accessible to the majority of the population, people who maybe just They wouldn't have bothered, they wouldn't have stayed up to watch the news at night and yet people are tuning out and I think that's what you think. They're yeah, I think I know a lot of people who just can't deal with the news, you know, and it's not because of the way the news is set up or whatever, but because this kind of hysteria has gone on for so long and, Of course, we cannot forget that all of this has been enhanced by social media, where now there are five or six news cycles a day, where before there was one at best and now all these things and then the latest.

In the afternoon, everyone reacts to what went wrong in the morning and you know, there's a kind of stop in the journey. I want to lower the quality of a lot of this and I think I hear from a lot of people who are not connected. with the media just saying I can't face it all anymore, explain, explain your desire for privacy, oh well, I remember reading about 10 years ago that the people you know, the young people, really valued connectivity above anything else and privacy was like number 20 I was like wait, privacy can be lovely, you know, I think my God, the art of mystery and things like that are being lost and, you know, in the old days I used to imagine that this world It happened in London where all the interesting people were. doing fantastic things in each other's houses and you know how to make brilliant conversations at fantastic parties on a Saturday night and you know, now you can see they're sitting there tweeting strictly and I think there's some Mis the Mystique has gone, I didn't feel the need to know everything, I wantI mean, I don't really think people don't think it ends well for people just putting all this stuff online, there was a trend, I mean, about 10 years ago, it was pretty lucky that all this Brexit stuff happened, I have to say. because about 10 years ago, you know, people were particularly women, they were always encouraged to write these kinds of first-person essays about their pain and whatever, I think, where is the pastoral care for these people once it's available? ?

I always tell young women who come and ask me about journalism. I'm just telling them not to write all those worse stories when you're very young. You may want to write them down when you're older and more experienced, but don't. I kind of put them all in there, I don't see all the guys writing about some horrible thing that happened to them after a party. I mean, you know, they're out there trying to write about politics or whatever. I really don't like that kind of trend of trying to make people waste their entire lives. online I think it's a but sometimes I guess you cross that bridge a little bit, right?

I mean, I saw one a lot in the book or not about um, about giving birth, yeah, I mean, there's very rarely I will. and sometimes if I feel like there's something in particular that I want to highlight, but generally, I don't know, he writes about me, but a lot of other people do it brilliantly and certainly often, but generally I think they're the types from more experienced people who can be very careful about what they reveal and what they don't. I'm very happy that this soap opera is being written about and it continues so I want to say, well, how did you do it? becoming a journalist I became a journalist, it's horrible to say because it has given me a good life, but by accident after university I worked for a second secretarial temp agency and they used to send me to most of them, it really wasn't fast enough writing. to be a secretary now I am, but I did it.

I was a receptionist, so I used to answer the phone and I did it in all kinds of places. um and I used to especially hate going to the city banks. I always find them to be something like that. horrible and it was a really sexist culture and I hated it anyway, what did you think you were going to do with yourself at that time? Oh I didn't know you were just feeling tired, yeah I did, I wasn't sure and you know I did. I don't really have the confidence to have those thoughts. Things really didn't seem like I could do them.

I didn't feel like I could accomplish more. I don't know, I mean, I mean, you've been to Clarksford University, it's super brilliant, great education, yeah, it's funny, right? I mean, yeah, I've gained confidence over the years, mostly from trying to keep my head down and fight, trying to get better at one thing, um, and now I feel a lot more confident about all kinds of things and now I'm writing for television. I'm doing all kinds of other things, but at the time I didn't feel that way at all. I felt like I wouldn't say loss. but it's definitely not like I could say embark on a particular career path anyway, so this temp agency sent me to different places and I couldn't really stand to go back to the bank one day, uh, that they had been sending me. but they told me if you don't want to do that there are three days answering the phone at the strange desk which was the desk for the Showbiz show in the Sun and I thought well I'm sure they'll hate me for my voice but anyway.

I went and I had so much fun, it was brilliant, I mean it was crazy, it was so eye-opening that I didn't realize at the time how many celebrities were in the paintings because they were literally ringing up to say do you want to? I want to know who I'm in bed with. I mean, it was crazy, it was completely crazy the whole time and it was so much fun, it was so funny and then I managed to stay because they needed someone longer and I just stayed. and I stayed and ended up doing the photography research and ended up doing all kinds of things, so it was really and it's not so horrible to say by accident that I got into this because, um, this temp agency had sent me.

I'm there and if anyone listens to me they think they don't know what he wants to do. I just think, God, it's funny how things turn out and you get a little bit closer to the things that suit you and then eventually you might find something if you're lucky that it keeps you going, but how did you get from answering showbiz phones to the guardian? Well actually I got fired from the sun but then I and then ca and I don't think anyone really wanted a harmony at all except the great Matthew Norman who will write the diary, they hired me to help him on the diary which was absolutely brilliant, it was about politics and that really introduced me to the idea of ​​writing about characters every day.

Matthew always says no. We have such ridiculous stories in this column, we have characters and we would bring them back every day and make stupid phone calls, really quite rude phone calls to various people in I don't know in Number 10 or in the government, then I ended up editing the newspaper on my own and then when a little bit more than that, 16 years ago, I ended up making a cut, I went to three columns a week, one that was about celebrities, one that was about sports and one that was kind of a general commentary but, Curiously, I wasn't allowed to write about politics very often.

I say this with great love for my boss, but in reality they didn't always say oh, you know who he was with. the same day, how did you understand it? I think, especially around the time of the Brexit referendum, and that's when they realized you were onto something. Well, I just said I'll keep writing about it if you don't mind and just do it every day and just put it online, it doesn't have to appear in the paper if not, and then I think because it developed kind of a following from that , but then no one told me not to write more about it.

Do you think the pace of events means we don't really take their seriousness seriously? God, absolutely, so yes, absolutely, it's very. That's why I wish journalists wouldn't waste so much time predicting things, because I think they really analyze events. a lot of things that are happening get pushed aside because of the frenetic part of the news cycle or whatever and we don't spend a lot of time thinking about a lot of things and you know the story of In my opinion, the last decade has been, largely extent, accept the fact that the financial crisis was by far the biggest event of the 2000s and I think people thought 911 was, and even at the time I don't think we realized the Waves and how the financial crisis would develop until much later and that should be a kind of warning.

The story in many ways is that what you think Brexit is about goes back in time. to the financial crisis, I think it's part of Brexit and a lot of Trump, yes, I think the failure to reach any kind of moral agreement after that was a big problem and people, yes, I think it was like that, I think that destroyed a lot of people's lives and didn't seem to destroy any of the people who caused their lives and I think people felt that there was a kind of culture of elite impunity and I mean, you know I tend to agree with them and I don't I can see why people ultimately make the decision to vote and lash out and just desperately try something different, yeah, and I can see that we didn't approach that at all in the right way, so where are we with Elite?

Do you think that impunity is still in the same place now? If not, I was surprised that Boris Johnson remained in office not just for breaking the law but for breaking his own law, but everyone else had had to follow him and that he had appeared on television every day. a single night to say that it was life or death that you followed this law, this blows my mind, yes it is totally impunity, in the end he did well, but the fact that he continued to walk around as if this was completely normal is crazy. and I just think that yes, the impunity of the elites, I think it has gotten worse.

The other thing I'm wondering if you're wondering is whether this year of politics and political drama has meant that we haven't really considered the impact of the pandemic. Yes, I think that is the case. but one of the great failures of the Sunday Times Insight team's book state, which was a kind of damning indictment of so many different individual decisions made during the pandemic and which, as you know, absolutely deserves its title. state failures, but what I found most interesting about that book in some ways was the kind of reaction that I wouldn't say was muted because a lot of people thought it was cool, but I think what I found most troubling was the people.

The important thing about this is that the British people clearly deserved better, but they didn't expect better and that to me is indicative of a country that is in some sort of decline, so do you have any idea how to change things? I mean, you sit there thinking if only we did this, if only we did that, yeah, if only I think if politicians weren't so interested in showing the type of person and being a type of person to play to the crowd , then perhaps it would make me think that thinking about how they appear in the media is a real kind of illness of this generation of politicians, in particular, who seem to care a lot about how they are portrayed and, in the case of Boris Johnson, simply do paralyzed him as a decision maker I think he made decisions very slowly and very poorly and with his mind on all the wrong things like how it would look and you know, I'm afraid you have to be a leader and how How long do you think you can continue like this?

You think about this You know you're going through this period where you know, like I say, I mean, I, um, I mean, when I bought this, it took me quite a while really oh. God, open it because I thought I would. I'm not sure I want to go there. Should I say no? I don't blame you, yeah, and you're in it, how long do you want to keep doing it? Well, I don't know, I do other things now too, so I write some for TV and stuff, and that's all fun, just different things, since you know it's good to do things when you're going to get scared again, so, what? what's happening? the new trade tell me about it, I know I've been doing it.

I've only been writing anything for television, just various comedies and you know, we'll see, we'll see how some of them play out. they've been on and some of them which ones they've been on and which ones on Avenue Five which one is for um uh for HBO which one is um the second season of that is coming up and then um um there's I have a new one uh that one I thought we were filming the pilot, which is kind of behind the scenes on a superhero franchise, a franchise movie, another workplace, so is this working in a writing room?

Yeah, yeah, I don't like them, oh, it's really fun, you know, it's really cool to have other people. is totally different and, of course, you know, I mean dozens of drafts of a script, whereas in journalism, like I say, I did it before lunch, you know, and that's a totally different way of writing and it's a lot more collaborative and it's for me it's something totally new, so I'm really scared and worried again, which is good. I think it makes you feel a lot younger to do something different in a strange way because I associate that feeling of being nervous and not knowing what it was. having to do with being younger just because I've been in the same business for a while, so being scared again, you know, I'm definitely going to try to find something when I'm 58, something new to do again to scare me because, even though You are much more, you know, I'm tired from doing too many things at once.

I feel a little rejuvenated by that and yeah, being in the writers' room is a lot of fun if they're really nice and you know all the ones I have. been in has been great, what I've never understood about the writer's room is who really writes, like how do 10 people write a joke? Well, it depends on how your room works and everyone works in different ways, but you could have, you know, a few months of although or a few months or a few weeks where everyone talks and decides what makes each other laugh and then, gradually, on this whiteboard it might come up sort of and then individually they might go and use and write your episode, but then it might, depending on the show you work on, it gets broadcast to other people and everyone feeds off and you know what happens through so many different iterations before you finally think it's done, although someone said that He told me the other day that you know no script is ever finished, they just threw themselves into production, which is quite journalistic in a way, that feeling that I don't care if it's finished, it's the deadline, you know, eventually at some point.

I just have to say Okay, I appreciate this. I started by asking you about, you know? Know? Do you think everyone is useless in this generation? Sorry, you said that these types of generational policies are particularly bad. I mean, I have something to say. As for that, aren't we a little deluded by the fact of World War II into thinking that actually, you think about 19th and 18th century politicians, you know they're horrible atlargely, overall, horrible, but Because of where we got on the timeline, you know I was born in 1974, but because after World War II, many of these people who had been forged in the fire of this terrible national event Then they got ahead and became politicians.

There are often incredible things both in wartime and outside of war, but in business or whatever, and you know it's interesting and maybe not surprising that there was a period of consensus and some really incredible people entered politics and I think the caliber has now increased enormously. went down um I personally would pay more to MPS um and I think the caliber has really gone down and I can see why people just don't want to get into it and you know there are real weirdos that get into this somehow because the la nature of the work attracts, I mean, would you like to do it?

I used to want to do it when I was a kid, yeah, when I was a kid, since I was five, I wanted to go into politics, I thought you know, I really want it. I got into politics and when I got to university I joined the Oxford Union thinking, well this is good, a lot of politicians start out and I was so shocked when I got there that I thought it's horrible to say these people are so horrible, I mean, and suddenly I had this scale. From the moment I thought, Oh my God, you know I didn't just have a bad harvest, that's what the people who are doing this are actually like, and so I thought well, I'm never coming back here, so I spent all this money. . joining this thing that I never went to and I thought this is fair and that's the end of your place, that was the end of me thinking I wanted to be in politics because I just thought this is not for me at all, we should go back and check who your contemporaries were, so you're a little bit, you're a little bit okay if some of them I guess yeah, a little bit before, but yeah, yeah, some you certainly look good in that, uh, I had a tough role around.

I'm joking of course, um, um, but yeah, yeah, some of these people have done really well, so if you could change the world in some way right now, yeah, what would you do? It would reduce the UK tax code from whatever it is now. I think I would like people to pay their taxes correctly. The Hong Kong tax code, which is, uh, I think consideration is the closest test of evasion in the entire world. It has 350 pages. Ours currently has around 25,000 pages. It has been expanded. For both the Labor and Conservative governments, someone who evades a lot of taxes told me why do you think they do that if they don't want you to find ways out of this and I think people should pay their taxes.

I think building tolerance and prosperity would be one of the most important ways to help that happen and I really fear that if people just think that they can opt out of these things, that's what I really believe in, I really believe that Philanthropy begins with paying taxes. Marina hello, thank you very much, thank you very much for having me. I hope you enjoyed, you can watch all these interviews on the Channel 4 News YouTube channel, please give us a rating or review so other people can find our producer's podcast. I'm Freya Pickford until next time, bye.