The Rest Is Politics: Bernie Sanders vs. Michael Foot, Universal Basic Income, and Boris Johnson's NATO ambitions...

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Welcome to The Rest is Politics Question Time with me, Rory Stewart.

And me, Alistair Campbell. So, Alistair, to start us off, we've got a lovely question

from Ellie Scott, who asks, share your best memories of Betty Boothroyd. And for listeners

who haven't heard, Betty Boothroyd has died this week. So, Alistair.

So, Betty Yorkshire-born, Dewsbury, she was a tiller girl famously, a dancer, and became

an MP for West Bromwich. And she was the first ever woman speaker of the House of Commons,

first female speaker of the House of Commons, labour to her core. But I think hugely respected

as a speaker. And of course, became one of the most famous speakers because it coincided

with television cameras being allowed into Parliament. She wasn't the first TV speaker,

but she was the first that was there for quite a long time. And she was a lovely, lovely,

lovely woman. If I had, I think about one, two memories actually that pop into my head

when people said that on the day she died. The first was, I remember during the period

when I was really under the cosh in number 10, when I felt like the Tories were after

me, the media were after me the whole time. Quite a few people on our own side were sort

of thinking, oh, isn't it about time we sort of dropped his head off. And I got a phone

call from the Speaker's Secretary saying, the speaker wonders if you'd like to pop in

for a cup of tea, which happened periodically. And so I thought, oh, God, not Betty as well.

It's going to be sort of, you know, ganging up on me. And I went there and we sat down

and we had a cup of tea and we dunked our digestive biscuits. And she could not have

been nicer. And she just said, listen, you're getting a lot of grief, you're getting a lot

of flak, but I just hope you understand that the reason you're getting it is because this

lot is scared of you. And they know that you're doing a good job for Tony. And that's your

job. And that's what you've got to keep doing. And sort of little acts like that. And then

the other really powerful memory she got involved in the People's Vote campaign. And I just

remember the first time, and obviously a lot of the campaign was full of young volunteers

and most of them, well, they weren't born when Betty was kind of, you know, on the TV

the whole time. And she came along and she did this speech and there were these young

people behind her, you can get a film of this, these young people on the stage behind her.

And you could see the impact that she was having as she told her story of why Europe

mattered so much to her. And she'd been to Germany after the war, and she'd made some

German friends. And the last time I spoke to her, I said this on the main podcast, the

last time I spoke to her is when she phoned me up after that Radio 4 debate I did with

Jacob Rees-Mogg. And so I can honestly say, I don't know what her actual last words were,

but I can say that her last words to me were, I will not stop, I will never give up on the

dream that we'll one day be back in the European Union, because this is an absolute total unmitigated

disaster. So I will take that with me as inspiration going forward.

Lovely. Now, time for you to ask me a question.

Mel Griffiths, how long did it take you to stop laughing when you heard that Boris Johnson

is hoping to be appointed NATO Secretary General? And same theme, my dog Bert, do you think

Boris Johnson seriously thinks he has a chance to become head of NATO? Isn't it common knowledge

that he's taken Russian money, visited bonga bonga parties where they obtained compromise,

put an ex-KGB son in the House of Lords and also sat on the Russia report?

Well, it's staggering, isn't it? He would be the most unsuitable head of NATO, I mean,

that's a job which has generally gone to quite thoughtful, serious people who work collegially,

who focus on the details of defence expenditure. It would be a great honour if Britain were

to get that job. It's been a long time since, actually...

George Robinson. George Robinson, yeah, and who did a very

good job and was a very respected NATO Secretary General, who'd been the Labour Minister. So,

Britain's been hoping to get that job back for a very long time. I know there's been

talk about Mark Sedwell, who's the ex-Cabinet Secretary, was in the running for it. Some

people think Ben Wallace might be in the running for it, but I would have thought Boris Johnson

would be short of making him the abbot of a trappist monastery. It would be difficult

to find a worse job. I also think that at the weekend, because

the only thing about NATO is that that position is decided by the heads of government, essentially.

And I think the most important head of government in relation to NATO is the President of America.

And this little mini-campaign, Johnson was running coincided with the revelation in one

of the suddenly newspapers that when he was discussing the protocol issues with some of

his colleagues, and somebody said, well, the Americans, we've got to do this to please

the Americans. He said, fuck the Americans. So, I'm not sure that will help him either.

More serious one, Rory. Nigel McPheet, which is the better option? For Ukraine to employ

the might of NATO military hardware to completely push Russia out of all Ukraine and so risk

World War III? Or for Ukraine to cede Crimea and Donbas in return for Russian troop withdrawal

from remaining areas and so avert World War III? It's a good question and it's one that

people have got to keep asking because obviously the consensus now with the West, US and its

allies articulated by Fiona Hill, who I hope people have a chance to listen to on our leading

podcast. She was good, wasn't she? She was very serious, very interesting and

worth definitely listening to. And for people who don't know, she's probably the leading

Russia expert in around the US government. Anyway, the conventional wisdom is no appeasement,

no compromise, arm Ukraine to the teeth and fight until Russia withdraws back to its pre-2014

borders, including giving back Crimea. But at the same time, we just can't get into that

lazily. There's lots to be said for it. It's absolutely true that Putin unless he's contained

is a horrifying authoritarian dictator who wants to get his teeth into the Baltic and

expand Russia in every direction. It's also true that if we don't stand up to him in Ukraine,

China and other countries, we tend to screw around elsewhere. So I think we're on the

right policy, but we've got to keep asking ourselves whether there is a route to peace.

And in the end, peace does involve compromise. We're just not ready to get there yet.

And one of the things that Fiona Hill said was that she worried that this becomes like

a kind of Iran, Iran-Iraq just sort of grinds on. But I don't believe that the Western democracies

will keep supporting it to the extent that they have been, which I think we both agree

has been impressive, albeit with some sort of hesitancy and some sort of slowness in

response at times. But ultimately, you're talking about a country here that's being

destroyed. And Russia, we've said this so many times, Putin is not going to give up.

He's the only person who actually could call this off. And he's unlikely to. And it feels

like a sort of stalemate at the moment. It feels militarily like a stalemate. Now, how

long can that go on? And how long can people keep saying, well, we have to just keep arming

them more and more? That's where I would like to be. But I fear that there was a big demonstration

in Germany at the weekend. The hard right in America, the sort of Trumpians are becoming

very kind of critical of Biden on continuing to sort of put so much into this. So the politics

are not going to get easier.

Yeah, it's not going to get easier. I think we both agree that the policy at the moment

is correct. It was correct to get in behind Ukraine. It was right to challenge Russia.

It's right to arm Ukraine. But it's also true that I've noticed over kind of 30 years

in and out of foreign policy stuff that the West often gets overly optimistic. I remember

in 2014, everybody predicting that Putin would be crushed by sanctions in six months. I remember

people predicting in 2011 that Bashar al-Assad could only last six months. I remember you'll

remember people predicting that, you know, Osama bin Laden would die of kidney failure.

I mean, there's a lot of what's called optimism bias in this stuff. And I think Fiona Hill

is more likely to be right. This is going to grind on for a long time. And it's going

to test our democracy's the limit. Here's a question for you from Evan Shaw Cross.

I was listening to the Question Time episode last week when you got into conspiracy theories

as well as dealing with grief. And I was wondering, Alistair, if either of you have lost someone

who were close because they changed their beliefs. Evan Shaw Cross. I, for example, am attempting

to deal with a way in which my father has fallen completely down the conspiracy rabbit

hole. We can no longer talk about anything because of his obsession over vaccines, among

other things. Have you experienced anything like this at all? What would you advise people

to do? Try and change their views, cut them out?

God, that's because normally, am I wrong about this? Isn't it normally that it's older people

who are worrying with about younger people, have you conspiracy theories? Or have I got

that wrong? This is a younger person saying that their elderly parent has got into this

stuff. Yeah. Yeah.

How do you find that quite difficult? I must be honest. I think all you can do is, do you

try and persuade them? I don't know if you try and persuade them. I think you try and

love them. And if you think they're at the end, towards the end of their life, I think

you just try and, I don't know, that's a tough one. That's a tough one.

It's a very tough one. And I guess, because I think one of the things that seems to happen

in my experience, particularly with men as they get older, is that their minds become

much more rigid. And I think it is a question of...

Not us, thank goodness. No, not us, thank goodness. But sort of getting people onto

another track, working out how you have the techniques to sort of move on. But the problem

is that Evan's dad, I guess, this question around his obsession over vaccines will be

more important to him than almost anything else. And he'll be reluctant to sort of move

on and talk about something else. And he'll sense that his son isn't taking him seriously.

So it must be very difficult.

I think in those circumstances, I would do my level best to try and park it, but that's

quite difficult. Okay, UBI, Universal Basic Income, Andrew

Oliver Riley, be interested to hear your thoughts on universal basic income.

Broadly in favour until you actually try to look at the detail of how it would be done.

So in my case, I'm very, very much in favour of cash, obviously, that's what give directly

the charity I work with does in Africa. I'm particularly interested actually in the impact

of one-time payments, which can transform people's lives if done at the right level,

one-time cash payments. And in Africa, because the levels of poverty, a dollar there is like

a kind of $100 in the United States. And $550 can make a transformatory difference in someone's

life. Obviously, to some extent, our welfare states

are based on the assumption that we should be providing cash support to make sure that

people can meet their basic needs. The question is whether we're adequately doing that and

whether the best way to do that is to make it universal as opposed to targeted on the

very poorest. Ed Miliband's book, Go Big, has a lot

on this, which is worth a read. Are you missing him? Do you think he should

be the intellectual powerhouse, the new labour movement?

Well, he's part of the shadow cabinet and he's doing the big green stuff. I think it

has grown out of leadership, as it were. Into a new position. Yeah. Here's a weird

question for you, Sam Wiltshire. As a youngish Aussie that moved to the UK in 2010, I don't

understand why Margaret Thatcher is constantly referred to as Mrs. Thatcher, whereas all

other Prime Ministers are more often referred to as John Major or just Cameron. How come

she has that distinction compared to Britain's other former Prime Ministers? You know what

he says, that's true, isn't it? I remember getting in real trouble from my constituency.

When I first addressed them, I would refer to her as Thatcher and they would get very,

very, very angry Conservative Association members. They thought it was deeply disrespectful.

I think there's two things here. The first thing, I tend to call her Mrs. Thatcher, whereas

I would not say Mr. Wilson or Mr. Major. Or even Mrs. May. You don't say Mrs. May, do

you? No, I'd say Theresa May, I think, or I'd

say May. Yeah. I think there is a sort of, this is back to the thing, I had one of those

terrible, you know, they still think about, am I the only person when I sit on a tube,

I'm sitting there on the tube and a woman gets up and I was just conditioned as a child

that you stand up for a woman, okay? Yeah. So now I'm sort of, I'm very reluctant because

I think if I stand up, I'm basically saying to them, I think you're older and less fit

than I am. That's good. Yeah. Yeah.

But the same politeness is, I think, what partly drives us calling her Mrs. Thatcher.

Don't forget as well, I think Thatcher became, people defined her as Thatcher in a very negative,

aggressive, hateful way. Rhymed amongst other things with Milk's

Thatcher. Yeah. Whereas with Cameron, I don't think

when people say Cameron, they're saying Cameron, that awful person, they're just saying Cameron,

who was the prime minister and we call them by their surnames. Whereas Thatcher became

quite a kind of, you know, if you said Thatcher, it meant you really hated her.

So this isn't Ozzy talking about, this is a new talking about the tube. My brief anecdote

on this, I had a South African friend who was sent over as a young boy in the 1960s to

Britain, never been outside South Africa. And his dad had told him that in Britain,

you have to go around shaking hands with everyone, introducing yourself. So he got onto the

district line. And he walked down every seat saying, Hello, just like to introduce myself.

Oh, God, yeah, very good, very good. Right. Here's one for you. As you've been an MP,

Teresa Featherston, is there anything to be gained righty to your local MP? My MP seems

completely disengaged from her constituents. Her reply to the letter is a generic platitudes

and she hasn't held a surgery in 10 years. Teresa, do send us another question next week

to tell us who that MP is because I think MPs who don't deal with their constituents

should be outed and named and shamed. But yeah, I often tell people to write to their

MPs and I think sometimes it's worth it and sometimes it's not.

Well, so I think put it in context. So first of all, I'm very surprised that her MP hasn't

done a surgery in 10 years. I mean, nowadays, it doesn't matter whether you're Labour, Conservative,

Lib Dem, people are generally very, very assiduous constituency MPs. They'll be criticized a little

bit by opponents. But in my experience, people do their surgeries very, very regularly and

they aim to do on average one a week. And the post-spag is insane. I mean, my predecessor's

predecessor was this was Willie Whitelaw, who was Mr. Satch's deputy prime minister,

because I talked to his secretary when she was doing him in the 1970s. He got something

like four letters a week and he would reply to them by hand in the House of Commons Library.

But his greatest contribution to political discourse was to say that his job was to go

around the country stirring up apathy. So he obviously succeeded if he got four letters

a week.

Well, I, well, and then again, I remember talking to a Labour MP who claimed that his

predecessor had said to him on his first day in, let me show you how you deal with the

correspondence in a safe Labour seat and he picked up 200 letters on his desk and put

them all in the rubbish bin.

Oh, I don't believe that.

Those days, I'll tell you, the MP is in the next podcast, but the truth is, since then,

I think things have changed an enormous amount. I think all MPs really feel that the way they

hold onto their seats is by being very hardworking constituency campaigners, getting out there

leafleting. But I was receiving 23,000 emails a year from people a year. And if you think

about that, and every single one of them, I would write a personal response to, but

I needed a team to help draft those. So I'd read everyone, I'd edited a little bit, but

I needed a whole team to put together hundreds of these replies a week. And one of the problems

with the whole system, with the letters and going to see someone in surgery is, of course,

the active MP, which most of us are nowadays, really tried to champion our constituents.

And sometimes it actually works. So sometimes if you write off to complain to, I don't know,

the Difford Pensions Office, you'll write an injustice. Sometimes you will be able to

get somebody, you know, let off a parking fine, or you'll be able to get some influence

on a planning decision. But the truth is that it's a very odd system, because it's very

unfair to the people who aren't getting into their constituency MPs, because in a sense,

by getting a constituency MP, you're jumping the process. And I don't know what the truth

is that on the one hand, you want to say, the civil service should be able to deal with

citizens regardless of whether or not an MP writes in. But on the other hand, as an MP,

an elected MP, I want to feel that my letters are read by civil servants. I have an influence

that I'm able to change a decision.

Yeah. Yeah. And what about big letter writing campaigns? Like, you know, when you know it's

a campaign, you're getting hundreds of postcards from the same with the same line. Do you think

they have any effect?

Well, they do have an impact because you see them in your postbox, and it does drive you

to go to the whips and say, oh, I'm getting 500 emails this week about bachelors, whatever

it is. But we've learned over time, because these things just started getting going when

I began as an MP. Increasingly MPs will just post, if you write a standardized email, they'll

just have a standard reply on their website, because they will have got 300 of the identical

emails sent to them. So I think the influence those things are declining a little bit.

Okay, let's go for a quick break. Right, Gabrielle, I'm getting the sense that Roy and Alastair

don't do 50% of the housework and or childcare. I would guesstimate this is not uncommon.

But what is the justification for an unequal division of this work when both partners work?

You're going to start off on that.

There isn't really one. And I can't, I mean, 50% doesn't even get close with me. I think

I am probably the least domesticated person that anybody's ever met in terms of doing

stuff around the house.

It's kind of weird. How did that happen, Alastair? Because you are basically a progressive

lefty. But the only odd thing about you is that you spend less time doing domestic stuff

than almost anyone I know. How did that happen?

I think probably having a mother who really looked after me on things. So I didn't learn

to cook.

Were you a very worshipped son? Were you the kind of favourite boy?

No, I wasn't worshipped. In fact, when I was born as the third son, when my mum died,

we found all these letters. She wrote this letter to her sister, my auntie Matty, who

died recently and having made 100. And she started by saying, it was something like,

he's very nice, but sadly it's another boy.

Oh, but that was you as a baby. But as you grew up, presumably you were the adored youngest

son, the last boy in the house, etc.

Well, certainly I didn't have to, I never cooked. I never learned to cook. I've cooked

one meal in my entire life. I'm not boasting about it. I'm saying it in some way. I've

never changed a plug. I don't know how to change a tyre. I am utterly impractical. I

don't know, honestly, when people say to me, how much money have you got? And I say,

I don't know. They think I'm just sort of ridiculous, but it's because I don't actually

know how to do online banking and Fiona does everything. And I'm not proud of it. I'm not

proud of it.

But I'm good at what I do. I'm good at what I do. And Fiona's really good at what she

does. It's just that she does stuff that I do, work stuff, and she does a lot of other

stuff as well.

I think it's, and actually, not to completely sort of let us off the hook, it's actually

true that in general, still men are not doing 50% of the work.

What about you? What about you? I was pretty good with the children. I was pretty good

when the children were growing up.

Yeah. Well, so I'm talking to you at the moment. Shashana's away in the States. I've got the

kids alone here. So I've had them alone for three, four days.

And were you cooked three meals today?

Well, I don't go much. They don't get very good food with me. They get kind of boiled

eggs with me. It's kind of a bit rubbish. It's a slightly rubbish situation. But they'll

get home off the school bus at half past four, and I will be with them from half past four

until seven when I'll read them a story and put them into bed. And then I'll start doing

some work at seven.

But no, Shashana does so much more of the heavy lifting than I do. And I think that it

is deeply unfair. And I think if you are a working woman and Shashana's managing a major

international charity with 300 staff, she's dealing with problems in Afghanistan and Myanmar

and she's worrying about all that stuff that you're talking about. And it's just impossible.

I think it's very, very tough being a working mother with young kids.

Callum Swanson, did Tony Blair ever seriously consider remaining in parliament after stepping

down as PM, perhaps even serving in Gordon Brown's cabinet?

No.

Okay.

Absolutely not. He was absolutely clear about that. He was going to go over the day resigned.

Okay. Here's Catherine Adams. What do you think about the four-day working week? All

my white collar colleagues are agitating for it. I get the benefits. But what about public

sector workers, NHS teachers, council services, et cetera? Seems unfair if it's just a corporate

sector. We've got a lot of questions about the four-day week.

Yeah, we do.

If I miss something, why is everyone excited about the four-day week?

There was a report a couple of weeks ago. Now, if I get this right, we should put it in the

newsletter. But essentially, it said that it was this experiment that was done with some

pretty major companies. And there was an interview with one of the guys who ran this big company

and he said that productivity had gone up. The workforce were much happier. The whole

thing had been a total success and they're not going back.

And they pay them the same. Is that right? It's crucially no loss of pay. So you get

paid the same for four days that used to be paid for five days. But it doesn't fit with

you, Alastair. You work like a seven-day week. I mean, the notion of you on a four-day week

is a bit difficult to get my head around.

Yeah, and I think you're a bit like that, aren't you?

Yeah. I think it is difficult at a senior level not to be working most of the time.

If you're in a responsible job, the idea that you can ever really turn your phone off or

take a weekend off is quite tough. And I definitely don't think you should afford four-day week.

I think the answer on the possible clash between private and public sector workers is that you

change the culture. What I enjoyed about our chat with Bernie Sanders is kind of, yeah,

this stuff's really, really difficult, but you've got to do some big, bold, difficult

stuff. And I think this is a debate that's coming.

Can I just get into that? Because this is question time. Paul Hilda, what did you make

of at Bernie Sanders on his recent visit to the UK?

Well, apart from the fact that he did far too many interviews, but apart from that,

I thought he made a very positive impression. And our interview obviously will be the best

of all the interviews that he did. I think he actually said that himself, didn't he?

He did indeed. And he went straight from us, I noticed, to your old friend Jeremy Corbyn.

They had a lovely photograph together, and he said how much better the world would have

been if Jeremy Corbyn and he had been ruling the world.

Yeah. Well, I'd guess that. Well, I think he's, I mean, just read his book. I don't,

I think he's, I see the similarities of Jeremy Corbyn, but there are also an awful lot of

differences.

I did certainly, we've not talked much about Jeremy Corbyn. Have you known him forever?

Was he like a big figure in the early 80s?

He wasn't really. No, he was, he was around and people were aware of him. And he was

a very good campaigner and he could get noticed and he made quite telling contributions. But

no, I don't think he was, I would say he was a, he would have been seen as a big player

on the political landscape back in the day.

No, just on this, because I never fully understand this, we never get into this much, but there

was a battle and the Labour Party wasn't throughout the 80s, which in a sense, you, Tony Blair

and Gordon Brown were part of. And Jeremy Corbyn was on another wing of the party. That

was like a, well, he was, he presumed that Jeremy Corbyn was no great fan of Tony Blair

to put it mildly.

And he'd personalize it in those ways, but he was no fan of what we were trying to do

to the Labour Party. But I think that battle in a way had had already been fought and when

Neil Kinnock took on militant and, but certainly Jeremy Corbyn was, he was well known within

the Labour Party, but I think he had his key issues that he campaigned on that he fought

on. He was very associated with the Irish Republican cause, for example. He was very

associated with Israel Palestine, as he is now, and always, I mean, I live not far from

his constituency, always, I would say, seen as somebody that within his constituency very,

very hardworking, popular, et cetera. But no, was he somebody that when we were planning

big things and big changes, were we thinking, well, how is Jeremy Corbyn going to react

to this? No, he wasn't. So I think I've said to you before that even the day that Ed Miliband

resigned, when I was actually in a radio studio with Jeremy Corbyn talking about the fallout

from the election that led to Ed's resignation, I honestly think if I'd have said on that

day, Jeremy is going to be the next leader of the Labour Party, I'd have been bundled

off in a wide man with the men in white coats.

The other person we don't talk about much, but who Bernie Sanders reminded me of a bit,

was Michael Foote. I mean, they both had that sense of a kind of highly sort of, quite

a sort of professorial, serious manner. Yeah, I think that's a better comparison because

the other thing I would say about Sanders compared to Jeremy, and this definitely comes

through in his book, Jeremy is very much a campaigner, and I think a politician, a protest,

whereas Sanders is very much about trying to get stuff done. I'm not saying Jeremy Corbyn

doesn't care about what gets done, of course he does. And I'd say the same about Michael

Foote. Michael Foote was somebody who had huge experience in government. Michael was

also an intellectual, he was a great writer, he was one of the most prolific readers ever.

He again lived very near to us, and we were very friendly with him right to the end. And

when he died, the few of us were given the opportunity to go around to his house and

just take whatever books we wanted of Michael's vast, vast library. And the thing you could

tell, you know, when you go into somebody's, see their bookshelves, you can tell whether

they're really a reader or not. And these were books that were, you talk about Mark

Francois with his red stickers on his page, these were books that were properly read.

So I think that is maybe a better comparison.

Good. Okay, well, I think we're coming towards the end, but have you got a last one that

you want to finish on?

Yeah, talk about it. It's another one about books, Rory. Jam Norman. You often talk about

books you've enjoyed. Do you both always plow through a book even if you don't connect

with it? Or is there a point where you just put it down and say it's not for you?

Oh, I give up very, very quickly.

So do I. So do I. What about Shashana? Is this a man-woman thing? Fiona, I have sort of

seen Fiona torture herself by reading books that after five pages, she said, this is really

crap. And then days later, she's still reading it. And I'm saying, why are you reading a book?

She said, because if I start a book, I have to finish it.

Yeah. No, I'm completely unlike that. I think I've got at the moment something like 1700

books on my Kindle.

I've got about 11 by the bed.

The Kindle saved me. I used to travel with 20 books in my suitcase, because I couldn't

trust not to hop between them.

But how does that fit with your only-ever-take hand luggage, which is a rule of life that

must be obeyed by everybody?

It's incredibly important rule, and it's become much easier since I moved over onto Kindle.

Right. Now, we were just going to finish with book and TV recommendations. So Sarah McCabe

asked for some Jordan book recommendations following last week's Israel book recommendations.

On that, I would actually suggest weirdly that one of the things to look at if you're going

to Jordan is books buying about the royal family. So Abby Schlame's Lion of Jordan,

which is about King Hussein's worth reading, but actually the book by the current King,

King Abdullah, Our Last Best Hope, which focuses on the Middle East peace process, and perhaps

to put in a plug for another Jordan prince, Prince Ghazi, his thinker's guide to Islam.

So there we are. There are three Jordanian recommendations for me.

The King Hussein book, his funeral was one of the most incredible events I ever went

to in my life. I mean, as you know, I'm not much of a monarchist, but he really did seem

to have something very, very special that held people together.

Well, let's get a recommendation for you. What have you been watching?

I'm reading a book called Life in the Balance by Jim Down, who is an intensive care unit

doctor, and it's his stories of life in intensive care, including looking after Alexander Levignenko,

including dealing with victims of bombings, but more, that's the kind of dramatic high

profile stuff. But actually, it is really interesting about the kind of emotional and

sometimes moral dilemmas that doctors have to live with. And also, the fact that he's

somebody who gets very anxious about stuff as well. And it's just a very emotional account

of what it's like to be an intensive care unit doctor.

Oh, good. I like that. I've also been watching on Netflix. I know other people enjoy watching

foreign language stuff, but I've been watching Sacred Games, which is a Hindi series, a crime

series.

Have you finished Only Murders in the Building?

You know, I really liked it. And then my mother and Shashana got completely fed up with it

and refused to keep watching it.

That's interesting because I got fed up with it. Fiona's sticking with it and she's now

into the second series. I got fed up with it. I found it very funny to start with. I

quite enjoyed it. But a bit like some of the books by my bed, I gave up after about four

episodes.

Well, the other thing I've been stuck on Twitter on is a huge conversation about the

Marvel multiverse and people trying to tell me which the 24 to 26 movies starring Iron

Man, Thor, and the rest I should be watching. But my recommendation this week is Sacred

Games. So it's on Netflix. And it stars a slightly overworked Sikh policeman in Mumbai.

And it's sort of strange, kind of half thriller, half mystery, but also quite a sort of gritty

portrait of changing Indian domestic life from the 1970s through. And I also enjoyed

trying to get my Hindi Urdu a little bit better because it's got subtitles.

Very good. Very good. Well, you're obviously not working hard enough. You've got time to

watch all these television series.

Oh, exactly. 100%

I've just been working very, very hard and I've not watched anything.

Well, you're much more serious person than me. That's the main thing to conclude this

question time on. Right. Thank you very much.

Right. Well, I'm going to have my turnip on toast for lunch now.

I'm going to have my turnip on toast and read a bit of Hegel for lunch.

Excellent.

See you later.

Bye. Bye.

Machine-generated transcript that may contain inaccuracies.