The News Agents: How water became a dirty word

This is a global player original podcast water is what makes life possible on

our planet and it is essential for our health and well-being oh hang on let me

just make a note that water makes life possible I didn't know that and it's

essential for our health and well-being wow that was the government minister

believe it or not responsible in the House of Commons today talking about

the crisis that has befallen Britain's biggest water company Thames water it is

looking more and more likely that the government might have to bail out Thames

water because the privatization of the water industry has just gone so badly

wrong so on today's episode we're gonna ask why and whether it simply adds to

the sense that nothing in Britain works anymore and the person who suffers most

from that of course is Rishi Sunak and this is going to be a podcast that is

going to be essential for your health and well-being welcome to the news agents

the news agents it's John it's Emily and it's Lewis and later in the podcast we

are going to be joined by Harry Kane well sort of well I've got a great

relationship with Daniel I think we'll have a nice conversation and we'll see

what happens we're going to be speaking to the person who plays Harry Kane in a

fabulous new play that's just opened at the National Theatre and we'll be

talking to the plays director and it's about football but it's not it's about

England and who we are and what we are as a country that's to come with

Rupert Gould who directed it and we'll close who plays Harry Kane but we start

with water everywhere and not a drop to spare right makes it sound like we've

had a leak yeah it's worse than that yeah it's kind of a collapse rather than a

leak and when you read the words that the government is drawing up contingency

plans for collapse you know that whatever problems Rishi Sunak thought he

started the week with things will only get worse worse exactly so he has faced

Kier Starmer in the Commons today on housing and the fact that he will not

reach his housing targets and that he couldn't name a single person who

thought that they would reach their housing target but it goes even more

fundamentally than that right now which is that the biggest water company in

Britain has a debt of 14 billion and no way of paying it down and we think that

Thames Water is about to go into administration yeah and look Thames

Water is the biggest of the privatised water companies in Britain it serves

millions and millions of customers across the South East and London and this

whole issue was some of the central business of the House of Commons today

after Prime Minister's questions which we're going to talk about there's an

urgent question from Labour about the potential for a bailout and this is an

issue water and the quality of water which on the surface appears really

basic but it has become in a way that I don't think anyone really expected a

really important and hot political issue going into the general election and

there was actually some real passion about it in the House of Commons so this

was Caroline Lucas the soon-to-be retired green MP and Labour's

environment spokesperson Jim McMahon. Water companies had no debt when they

were privatised since when they have borrowed 53 billion pounds and much of

that was been used to help pay the 72 billion pounds in dividends meanwhile

we have this appalling sewage scandal particularly in the southeast of England

we have a failing water company the southern water company that my

constituents have no choice but to rely on and it's considering raising bills by

£279 per year by 2030 largely to pay for the investment that they should have

been making in the previous years doesn't that just show that privatisation of

water was a serious mistake and it needs to be permanently rectified?

There is the secretary of state literally one of the largest water

companies in Britain potentially is going to go to the wall and the Secretary

of State is missing in action and it was clear to anyone looking on that a

culture that allowed vital investment in ending the sewage scandal and in

tackling water leaks sacrificed in favour of a gold rush for shareholders

just was never sustainable. So Jim I'm referencing the fact that Therese

Coffey the environment secretary was not in the chamber and instead we had the

pearls of wisdom from Rebecca Powell that we heard at the top of the episode today

more power rather than wow I think but never mind but the politics of this is

just amazing really in a sense as I was saying I don't think anybody really

would have expected that the quality of water would become such a central

political issue in Britain. I mean you talk to Labour people they say this

works for them on two big levels one the Conservatives are so not just this

government but obviously the long history of Conservative governments they

are so embryonically linked to the issue of privatisation that anytime it goes

wrong they think they can make political capital out of it but secondly also

this is so memeable like it's so good for internet culture and for internet

political attack ads the idea of there being sewage in the waterways slightly

not entirely related to what's going on with Thames Water necessarily but it's

all part of a piece you know the idea of being sewage in the sea the fact that

the idea that basically nothing in Britain is working anymore and that

that idea and you see all those rather disgusting looking emojis talking about

it that idea that they can't even stop you in ways getting in the sea even

though actually if you do look at long history this is actually always happen

to some extent but the fact that we now know that it is partly because of

checks that the government has introduced but nonetheless the fact that we now

know that it is serves an indictment for Labour not only of the privatisation

of the water industry but they will say of the Conservatives handling of our

major utilities and can be summed up in five words four words it's all a bit

shit and that is what they're going to do as they try to attack the government

on this record for me this is just an absolute classic example of where

privatisation goes wrong because look if you go back onto the sort of longer

history of this like so many other of Britain's utilities and industries it

was product the water industry was privatised in the 1980s and 1990s

alongside other things like rail and gas and electricity supply and so on and so

forth but of course water was a particularly unusual one because unlike

energy companies all to at least some extent railways although not completely

there is no competition in each region for the water companies you know if you

live in London you're going to be with Thames water if you live in a different

part of the country you're going to be with a water company in that part of

the country so there's no competition the idea of doing it like so much of the

other privatisation was to try and inject much needed capital to improve the

infrastructure argument was there are lots and lots of different demands on

the public sector balance sheet these companies need investment the government

isn't going to be able to do it so let's bring in the private sector but if you

look at the history of it now and you look at where these companies now are

you've got a situation where there are contingency plans as Emily said for it

to be bailed out effectively the company is owned by a number of pension funds

and sovereign wealth investors including the BT pension scheme the Canadian funds

omas and British Columbia Investment Management Corporation the China

Investment Corporation the UK Lecturers Fund the USSS and when it was

privatised the British Water Infrastructure had no debt since then

they've borrowed 53 billion pounds much of this has been used to help pay some

£72 billion in dividends interest rates are now rising rapidly and what have we

got for it we've got a water system which has huge problems in terms of the

quality of the infrastructure leaks relatively little new investment and a

situation where consumers are now facing enormous spikes in their water bills

just the time when everything else in terms of cost is going through the roof

but if you go back to the 1980s when those privatisations were taking place

and you've had BT and you have British Airways and others

water was the one that was seen to be out of bounds and the Tories tried it in 84

pulled back from it 86 pulled back from it with the 87 election and they decided oh

we'll go ahead with it and England and Wales became the first places in the world

in the world to have a fully privatised water and sewage system it never was popular

it was always seen as absurd and you go to 2017 and there was polls being taken

that 83% of people favoured the renationalisation of the water industry

you can see why because of all the utilities water is if you like the purist

I mean it is the one that you cannot choose not to use right you can choose

whether you use the train you can choose whether you use you know gas versus oil

how you heat your house you cannot choose not to use water and so from that perspective it's

kind of like privatising oxygen right it's the thing that my dears right okay if we think we're

past that one at this point I think we're not going to privatise oxygen look at the 19th century

it was the first bit of infrastructure to be nationalised because of course water-borne

diseases didn't discriminate whether they affected the poor or the wealthy everyone was affected

so you needed clean water supply do you remember when water-borne diseases

used to sound like something from the Victorian era before we discovered last year there was

actually shit in our sea right I mean that's where we are now we're now at a place where

there is so much pollution that we an island nation cannot even swim in our own seas ridiculous

and the latest stuff from the FOI requests about Thames water that the leaks were a five-year high

this is after all this borrowing so you'd have to say that the situation is bad getting worse

and the British taxpayer it looks like it's going to have to pick up the tap but the thing is is that

this isn't an ideological thing in a sense there are some people who were against all of the

privatisations which took place in the 1980s and so on people sometimes forget now just a sheer

extent of state involvement to an absurd extent in lots of industries you know travel agents were

a nationalised industry Thomas Cook the government had a significant stake in until Ted

Heath's government came along so that was privatised early on there are lots of privatisations

you can even argue telecoms as well which has been effective because you have had massive

injections of private capital you have had proper competition be set up and consumers have benefited

we can see however that there are a number of industries where that has not been a success

and what is interesting is that actually in terms of the politics of it though there was the brief

period with Corbyn obviously who was still wedded to the idea of renationalisation doesn't feel

that that is very likely under a Keir Starmer government certainly not going to happen under

Rishi Sunak there are smarter ways you could regulate this you don't have to go back to full

nationalisation I'm not sure that's I'm not sure that's entirely true because I was thinking back

to the Keir Starmer conference speech last year and what he said very clearly is we will nationalise

on a basis of need right and I think what they have shown is they've got this green energy plan

which is the great British green energy thing you know it's got a big name hasn't it but it's

got a 28 billion price tag well I think that one probably has just slipped down the back of the

radiator for the time being but they have said we'll do what we need to railways when needed

I don't think water is something that would be top of the list until it was an essential thing to

renationalise and right now it kind of feels like maybe it is but you can regulate this better and

I think that's where we're going to need to end up in a sense which is that you've had a situation

where you have had repeated accusations within the water industry of asset stripping of companies

simply coming along and this doesn't only happen in water it's happening in other privatised

industries as well companies often foreign companies by the way coming in taking what they

can out of the companies loading them up with debts and then giving it to their own shareholders

while British consumers are left to pick up the bill so these guys are in Canada it's the

Ontario municipal employees retirement they've got 31% of water in Canada and Canada is renowned

for like trees and water well I'm sure we can all take some comfort this winter when if the times

is right in saying that annual water bills could increase from an average of about 450 to 680 pounds

plus inflation in parts of the country by the end of the decade that we can all take some comfort

that the good people of Canada in Ontario they are going to have a very good nice pension look

there is investment around the world the crazy thing is that when we have got a cost of living

crisis and we were talking last week on the news agents about the cost of borrowing and the cost

of having a mortgage and what that was going to do to you add on more cost like this and you can

see how this becomes it's not just toxic for all of us it becomes toxic for the government too

I'd worry about the government far less than I do about people who are struggling to meet their

bills but of course your ability to pay the bills was seized on in the commons today by the leader

of the SMP Stephen Flynn Mr Speaker on Sunday the Prime Minister patronised the public when he told

them that in the face of ever increasing mortgage bills that they simply need to hold their nerve

what a nerve so may I ask him the near billionaire when was the last time that he struggled to pay

a bill Mr Speaker the reason that mortgage rates are rising is because of inflation Mr Speaker

that is the root cause which is why it's absolutely the right policy to tackle

half inflation and reduce it back to target now that does mean that we do have to make

difficult decisions it does mean we have to be patient while the impact is two things I thought

about PMQ today one was that you heard it from soon out there and you heard him say to Starmer

repeatedly as well and what was again a pretty techie performance essentially the centerpiece

of every answer which is going to be what the centerpiece by the way is of the conservative

general election campaign is things are bad now they would be even worse under Labour and Starmer

now that is not much of a message it doesn't say much about the Conservative Party it doesn't say

much about their record but it is going to be essentially the cardinal message that we hear

from the Conservatives in the run-up to and during the next general election there was a report just

yesterday talking about how Sunak is apparently determined now to make issues of personality

and character also front and centre essentially setting up the idea that yeah as I say things

are bad they'll be even worse but also that Starmer can't be trusted so it is going to be I think

we're starting to see the glimmers now of what is going to be I think a really very very negative if

not quite dark sort of politics run-up to politics and election campaign going into 2024 the other

thing I thought is that you know what he's got to and I was talking to a talk about this a couple

of days ago Sunak doubtless under enormous pressure of course he is but he is starting to crack a

little bit in terms of when being asked questions not only by journalists but also in the House of

Commons as well you can start to see his frustration you can start to almost feel the walls really

closing in around him and he needs to retreat from that a little bit we saw that interview they did

with Laura Koonsburg on Sunday where sometimes he has this tone where he almost seems a little bit

affronted that he's being asked a question that he has this tone where he kind of looks and sounds

like he thinks he's just a little bit cleverer than the person he's talking to as this person said

to me it's something he's got to watch rather than lecturing the rest of the country and holding

their nerve why doesn't he try and locate his well mr mr speaking as it was he hasn't actually

taken the time to understand the detail of what we're doing so again I'm happy to it I'm happy

I'm happy to explain it again mr speaker because it's right but the tactic generally of saying

things are terrible they'll be worse under labor it's probably not a bad one in the sense that

people well what else have you got yeah number one and number two you know historically if you

look at it the theory goes that people will vote labor when they think the economy is good and they

can take a chance on it less so when the economy is bad I mean talking about the kind of paucity

of messaging out there and the just lack of messaging that the conservative party has got at

the moment it was sort of summed up for me earlier in the day when on twitter the conservative party

press office their twitter account we're trying to make light of what is it actually a pretty serious

issue one that we should talk about more in the future which is the labor party once again

retreating from another pledge that they had made not so long ago so there was a pledge around rent

controls and listen andy the shadow housing secretary said today that they're not going to do that

anymore it is just the latest of a long line of things that labor party under kia stammer said

they were going to do but they're not going to do anymore and the cchu sent out one tweet saying

labor flip-flopped on housing no less than a few hours ago house a flip-flop can preach about housing

is a joke and then followed up with another tweet with a little graphic which says zero

days underlined since last incident and you kind of see the sort of ability the parody potential

for this which is the conservative party from its own twitter account is tweeting out almost what

looks like a boast which is to say it's been zero days since the last incident everyone which when

you consider recent history you can see why that might be a problem for them look it's clear what

labor are trying to do as well yes they're going to be accused of making flip-flops now but will

anyone remember that when the election comes around next year but if you have to change the

metaphor successfully scraped the barnacles off the bottom of the boat and you're gliding through

the water more easily as a result of having got rid of some bits of policy that are awkward

ill-costed a bit of a millstone around your neck to mix the metaphors yet again there may be that's

a smart thing to be doing now rather than coming under pressure in an election campaign and then

having to go isn't it amazing how quickly the tone has changed in the sense that you know even a

few months ago we were talking pretty consistently about was there a possibility a strong possibility

of this being a 1992 election and sunak finds a narrow path and pulls out the bag the talk within

Westminster how we talk about it but the talk within Westminster increasingly it's not about 1992

it's about 1997 and you know i was talking to a couple of Tory MPs the other day who were saying

look the mood on the Tory about benches is such now it's less thinking about strategy than thinking

about our redundancy payments and literally looking into what are they got lots of colleagues

looking into what exactly do you get if you lose your seat what happens you know what's the process

and once you are in that kind of mindset as a party it's just very very difficult to come back

from yes when the electorate are thinking of giving you involuntary redundancy it's a very

tough place to be and you can see from previous parliaments those moments when the MPs whether

they're Labour whether they are conservative just think the game's up we're done we'll be back in a

moment with dear England again the mood of the nation through the lens of a football match well

a few football matches and the odd penalty shootout this is the news agents welcome back

a spectacular play has opened at the national theatre called dear england and if the words dear

england mean anything it's probably because of a letter that the england football manager gareth

southgate wrote to fans to footballers to anyone interested to the whole nation about the society

we are and that is the play that is being put on there at the moment and is directed by rupert

guld whose list of credits just goes on and on we were talking to tom hollanda yesterday

about patriots he directed patriots he is the director of dear england and is with us as is

will close who plays oh everyone how's it going having a good time you play harry k

first of all okay how did you we're going to come on to the big themes of the play

but now you've done the voice how did you get the voice it was literally a self-tape request

that came in before christmas i knew the national were exploring a project about the england football

team and they asked if you could go on tape just doing some words as harry k and wasn't even a

script necessarily it was just chatting to cameras if you're doing a post-match interview

so i had a couple of days to turn it around and just watched interviews for a couple of days and

then gave it a stab so what the self-tape is when you're actually on your own you just set up a

camera in your own room and you're sort of sending this in are you are you a football fan are you a

spurs i'm a big football fan i'm not a spur i'm actually an everton fan which is a terrible

affliction but yeah you do it on your own on your iphone most of the time stick a good light up and

yeah just chat into the chat into the camera as kane it wasn't something i knew i could do

beforehand or had practiced so just give us a bit more try to think of a line of text

well hang on i'm gonna i'm gonna ask you this question are you going to be staying at spurs

next season or are you going to buy a munich well i've got a great relationship with daniel um i

think we'll have lunch conversation and um we'll see what happens that is just uncanny that is just

uncanny i suppose the question that then comes and i love the play i loved going to see it and

she was laughing so loudly at times did you worry that the portrayal of the footballers was caricature

maybe a bit patronizing they were tongue tied they were slightly inarticulate could the tone be that

the play was sneering at the footballers well you know we did absolutely and actually it was

something we talked a lot about as as it played in front of the audience especially at the national

they're the danger that there's a sort of liberal so-called cultural elite laughing at the the

nation sport and then their players we were really aware of that but james graham who wrote the play

has this wonderful ability to to be incredibly affectionate and make you feel very affectionate

about groups of people and and you know he's done it in much i did a play with him a few years ago

about the early days of the sun newspaper in rupert murdoch which again was not an obvious

subject matter for sort of liberal theater goers and he made you really fall in love with that

group and perhaps most controversially he did the tv show about the brexit vote where with

benedicomberbatch playing her comings and and even in that group you know you could really

find sympathy so he's really good at seeing how teams come together with disparate comic

individuals and blend into something greater than that but but yeah we were and actually we did

change it a bit during rehearsals didn't we and yes it grew except some of the laughs we just

when the audience laugh at harry kane do you get nervous well i don't get nervous because i feel

like if i do my job properly across the two and a half hours of the play then you actually will

go on a journey with them so them laughing initially isn't actually such a bad thing because i think

when you first meet him it does lean in slightly more into the general sort of perception of kane

perhaps or a lazy perception some people might have about him and it leans into that and it's

quite funny and we all we all can enjoy it but then each time you meet him you find out more

and more about him it gets more and more tender and i hope actually by the end it's a really

heartfelt sincere character that you've sort of then ended up really empathizing with and feeling

for because i mean it's all about penalties it's about football and fear and failure and penalties

without ever actually having a football on stage was that a decision that you made early on yes

it was you know sports on stage in general is really hard you know i did once see an experimental

show about badminton but of course badminton a shuttlecock moves very slowly so you can hit it

hard it moves slowly a football and a you know like like a tennis ball or something you're never

going to find a level of virtuosity and of course you know football you know we're so

literate in in watching it on tv and anatomizing and so we know exactly what it looks like when

it's done properly and for all the many skills of people i will it probably eludes them so so

that absolutely was a starting point yeah not to have any any footballs and i should say about the

the penalties in cane you know we didn't actually have a script until after the Qatar World Cup so

we were we were waiting to see how that played out to work out what the end of our play was

because when James and I had started working on it we were really looking at particularly how it

was affecting the the euros in 21 after covid and coming to Wembley and what that felt like and then

those three young black players missing the penalties and what that meant culturally it for

the nation in that moment but we always knew that there would be this final act and we didn't know

what it was was it going to be either triumph or ridicule and i remember texting james on the night

after we went out and we knew that it sort of had to be about cane at that point in a way and that

that somehow there was this in a way the player has at its heart just to remind people he scored the

first penalty he scored the first penalty and the second one was against laryse his own team captain

and that was the moment where he missed he sort of became the new south gate exactly in his own

and of course he sort of as an arsenal fan i say and say this with with much hurt he never

misses and so that he did miss was was particularly extraordinary and i think you know without being

too grand about it is in some ways almost like a greek tragedy that the the furies that pursued

south gate sort of come to cane as well and maybe come to the nation and at the heart of the play

is this actually in some ways it's a family story there's a sort of surrogate father and surrogate

mother to this son that is cane which is south gate and then this this character pippa grange who

is much less known about but was the psychologist at south gate brought in to

revolutionize the team's culture and prayed brilliantly by gena mckay in the play love her love

her you talked about a nation coming to terms with its own i don't know sense of defeat or realism

in a way of what it can achieve james groehm as you say is written sort of extensively about

the nation's mood not least about brexit i wonder if you felt this was a sort of post brexit play

yes i think i think it was it was partly about brexit and and how we can feel

less complicated about about nationalism and patriotism but it's also about leadership

really that's probably it's his central inquiry is about what does a leader mean particularly in

in these times and how leadership failed us whatever side of the divide you are through

particularly those brexit discussions and then debates and then on through covid and obviously

we're going through the inquiry now and and south gate is an unlikely form of leader as

is hurricane as well and and that's what the play is is really looking at is is what is it to be a

leader and particularly an english leader in this moment and you also have fleeting appearances

of prime ministers where they miss the target each of them yes and there used to be more of them

particularly the second half of the play is sort of like this mad vaudeville really and which was

particularly through that covid period where you would sort of blend up football and politics and

contemporary music and dance and i suppose we were trying to capture just the strangeness of that

sort of 19 to 21 period really where it all just was folding in on itself and in a fun way and i

don't think the fact that part of the reason it feels so kind of a lesk in the national

which is a wonderful big theater almost like a sports day you know in a way is i can really

feel the audience is loving being back in the room in a rowdy way and i still think for our art form

we're still only really coming out of covid i think and the sort of what it means to be

you can see a classroom this weekend couldn't you like how thrilled people are to be able to pack

together and enjoy something together you keep choosing plays that don't have an ending because

they are so current you did this with 47 which was a pre-election play about the american the

u.s presidency i mean it is kind of seat of your pants stuff it's kind of our world when did theater

not not have its last act worked out i mean i think this was a seat of pants as it could be

but i think there's a kind of thrill i think i first had it with a show i did called enron which

was over 10 years ago now about the enron collapse and that that had led to all sorts of problems

within the u.s financial sector but it was the first time i suppose i'd been rehearsing a play

where skilling who was the the ceo of enron was in prison and i think the trial was still ongoing

about whether he would really be released and when you're making a piece of work with a bunch of

actors knowing that the real people are potentially able to even to see it or comment on it it gives

this sort of pressure cooker of the making a particular thrill and and so tell us about this

presumably have you been in touch with harry cayne no no southgate southgate james met during

rehearsals yeah went up to st george's park and southgate's family i think have been i think he

might come i remember when i was working on art which was a play about male friendship years ago

the arsenal back four all came at the famous adams bowl dixon winterburn what was interesting is

they became football fans and gary linica who is a big theater fan actually incomes quite a lot and

he he's been to see the show and it was really supportive it's important to you that southgate

likes what you've created i i'd be lying if i said it wasn't actually because i think the i think

the inquiry of the piece is that it's about something very special that gareth has done and

that he has at some level radically detoxified masculinity in this country and that's not

all he's achieved and of course he would say he's all about winning football games and he hasn't

reached the top of that yet but i think the piece is really celebratory of of what he's tried to do

that was the thing that struck me as well about the play in in the role that you've played as

harry cayne and robert the general direction which was that for all the unleashing of the

furies by the mist penalty and all the rest of it you dwell quite a lot on the reaction of the

nation afterwards where there isn't the fury that there was after the euro penalty shootout final

against italy or you could call it racism yeah yeah well that's an interesting question in itself

about the extent to which was that because we'd become a better nation after the world cup after

katar or was it because it was harry cayne a white guy that had missed the penalty and it wasn't

you know sancho and marcus ratchford and vika yasaka i don't know how much the racial aspect

played in that discrepancy of reaction i would say there was certainly less anger and there was a

more calm acceptance of what had happened post-katar which felt like it wasn't just to do with

cayne and the actual the the taker of the penalty it felt more to do with a

a pride in the performance that was on show and the way in which they seem to speak to

the fans and the country and the respect they had for each other and less arrogance and less ego

and just a general sense that even if you aren't a football fan remotely there's a feeling at the

moment oh oh there yeah there are a nice bunch of guys actually that's what we felt that in the euros

i mean we really did and that was when the letter was written this letter that southgate wrote

which is about the patriotism of the players don't ever forget that they feel this is strongly as

anyone watching at home yeah well look i think the play also is about the fact that the lost

during southgate's reign and southgate himself was an unlikely late promotion to be manager in the way

that to reason may or arguably all the promises we've had since that point have been and you know

the ideas of what the british nationalism means between 18 and 23 have changed hugely and i think

probably those euros did come in a particularly fevered time you know we were back at home

we were just just post-covid yeah but it would be it would be absurd to ignore the racial

element as well because that's clearly been a part of it can i just tell you one funny thing

that happened on the night i saw your play was i bumped into ed milliband and he'd seen it and

obviously there's a big discussion about fear of failure and whether southgate is the man

prepared to lose as opposed to the man that wants to win and then milliband came up and he said

you see emily it's just about not being scared to lose and i was like right god forbid anyone

ever takes that one out of context but the question at the heart of that is was southgate or is he

you know to be fair there are people who haven't unpacked their bags from katar yet it's very very

close and southgate is still our manager and i think on the night we saw it they just had a you

know seven billion we're amazing but is he the man who is just showing england that losing doesn't

have to be so bad do you think in your portrayal how a nation deals with its defeats with dignity

and empathy is is as important as its victory certainly of course you could say southgate you

mean he's had a great generation of players but then there were other managers who had great

generations of players and i think he has both in his relationship with the media but also how

he's made the players accessible to the public and the players have made themselves accessible

for whatever reason his alchemy has happened where we're really fond of them and we see that like

seven nil the other night and i think at the age was important as well it was a sort of freshness

to them that that was really appealing i think the play really captures the change in the way

the footballers are perceived now i mean if you think back to the wags and the beckham era and the

the glitz and the glamour and you know spenior and ericsson and it was all kind of all very flash and

these great individual talents and it didn't gel as a team or you go back to the sort of drunken

antics of having been in nightclubs until two or three o'clock in the morning you've got a bunch of

lads who are kind of getting free school dinners for kids and and are quite humble and that's the

impression you get from the team and kane exemplifies that yes the modesty and just removing that

more toxic element of those behaviors do you think that with the actual england team that's

something that comes through they don't want to drink they don't want to kind of it seems that way

i mean there was a lot of flak wasn't there for grilish a few weeks ago because he dared to have

a few days sort of partying after winning the trouble but i think that was yeah misplaced

because they're allowed to let off steam of course they are they're all individuals but i think

generally speaking their partying if you want is maybe more moderated now i mean i'm certainly

really more about kane he you know if he doesn't really drink in the season he'll say there's a

couple of cocktails in the summer on his holiday and that is about it you know was that a study

in imitation or interpretation like how much do you watch kane's movements and kane's i mean even

the voice wobble is so kind of extraordinary it's a very specific sort of sound yeah when he has

sort of half a laugh in the in the utterance it gives it kind of like a wave i think there's a

fine line isn't there i mean i think for all of us playing the players and for joe as well of course

when you're playing public figures that are very well known joe finds we should say hey south gate

who honestly when he walks on you think exactly oh brilliant he's going to do himself fine yes

yeah um that quite quickly you realize that you're you know an impression isn't going to be

enough you know it's still it's still a character in a play that you're going to have to need into

and find more obviously when when there are moments where you can get that real authenticity like a

certain tick that they might have or a vocal trait and that adds a you know a nice freesong

but you want them to be three-dimensional characters in a play like they would any other

i just want to give some directing advice here because i'm such an expert your goal celebration

when kane scores is wrong the jump your jump the jump got we did have the jump in it you got

the first season ticket holder taking no no harry doesn't celebrate you know taking up the

roof but there was a jump at one time i think that scene got cut that had that particular

celebration and do you do you get the kind of fan adoration to be i mean there was a moment for me

where i forgot i was in the theater and everyone's on their feet and presumably you want kind of

cheers when you mention the teams and and it has the drama of being at a football match

rather than a sitting down play yeah and on a good night there when the players all come out they get

booed or cheers depending on the partisan nature of the crowd fantastic look thank you very very

much indeed thanks for having me wonderful to have you with us thank you pleasure thanks

this is the news agents

and that's us done no emily tomorrow no emily no no no so you're gonna have to

make do with us too yep uh she's uh oh come on lewis goodall we rely on you to think of

somewhere exotic and far-fetched that she will be sunning herself for we all know what she won't

be doing she won't be going swimming not on any britain's waterways that's what comics call a call

back everybody a call back for the episode today we'll see you tomorrow bye bye bye this has been

a global player original podcast and a persophonica production

Machine-generated transcript that may contain inaccuracies.