Speaker 1the Telegraph. Well it's been a week.
Speaker 2Russell Brand and David Walliams, well they've certainly dominated the headlines and given us plenty to talk about. Welcome to The Weekend Tea with me Michael Deacon and me Tim Stanley. Russell Brand was never part of lad culture. In fact at the time he was hailed as the antithesis of lad culture because lads you know they were seen as being eerie and blokey and boorish whereas Russell Brand he always presented himself as the opposite of that. He was camp, he was effeminate, he wore makeup, long hair and made a big sort of song and dance. He was a kind of Rococo type figure you might say. He was intellectual, he read Chomsky, he used arcane vocabulary. Yes. That's why the Guardian liked him and Channel 4 I suspect. They certainly didn't like us lads. But first of all I'd like to start with what I believe is the single biggest story of the week. I agree. Which is that Tim Stanley has bought a hat. That's correct. Tim.
Speaker 3Yeah let me get into that. But while I'm getting it out I just want to admire your shirt. Thank you very much. Yes I thought I'd come dressed as a sofa from the 1970s. I feel like I spent my youth sitting on that. So this is, there is a shop around the corner which sells tat from Turkmenistan. Yes. And about a year ago I went in and I saw one of these hats. This is called a papaka hat and it was too small for me so I've been going back every few weeks to see if they had got a larger one and I went in today and they have got one which fits. This is rather exciting. It's from the Caucasus mountains. I collect hats. You collect hats. I have a fez. I have a mink. I'm trying to get a nice astrakhan if one can recommend one. And this is supposed to be made from lamb's wool. But I've looked closer and it's got the it's got that kind of curly strong hair of a standard poodle. Right. I think. Do you have concerns Tim?
Speaker 2I think I'm wearing a poodle. Hang on a minute. You own a dog I believe. I do. Yes. Does your dog have any concerns about this hat? Or has the dog not seen the hat?
Speaker 3I try to avoid wearing real dog. So I just hope that it is an artificial dog fur. But the other thing is I think it makes me look a bit like a rabbi which is a look I'm trying to get going. I see. I see. Well that's very good. Well I think it's very fetching and don't let anyone tell you otherwise. I won't. I don't care what people shout at me in this room. I'm going to take it off because I know you don't like working with props. So I'm going to put it over there.
Speaker 2I think it's wonderful. But I suppose as much as I admire it I feel there may be one or two other slightly more serious stories we're expected to move on to. Deadly serious. One of them is to do with shall we say these scandals this week. We had Russell Brand and then we've had some serious allegations against David Williams which he denies but nonetheless this is what's dominating the news.
Speaker 3And there's also a second celebrity who's yet to be named because of an injunction. Injury. They just keep showing us a silhouette which is more sinister somehow than just showing their face.
Speaker 2Well yes. Well quite. But anyway both of these, the ones we know about anyway, both have been reading about, they're both former big BBC stars. Yeah. I've been interested in the way the BBC has handled this. First of all let's take Russell Brand. Once he was convicted last week they responded by putting a big article on the BBC News website. And this was the headline. I'm going to have to take issue with that BBC headline. Firstly because I myself was a small part of 2000s lad culture because in those days, well a couple of years, 2004, 2006, I worked for a lads mag at the time, Zoo. And the BBC helpfully illustrated its article about how lads culture is to blame with a picture of that magazine that I worked for at the time. So it seems to me the BBC is just possibly trying to pass the buck a little bit, shift the blame onto the lad culture. And I just want to counter that because yes, there's an awful lot of things you can blame lads mag for. Michael Deacon. Me for example. Perhaps the most obvious. I will say there's one thing you can't blame us for and that's the rise of Russell Brand. Number one, Russell Brand was never part of lad culture. In fact at the time he was hailed as the antithesis of lad culture because lads, you know, they were seen as being beer-y and blokey and boor-ish. Whereas Russell Brand, he always presented himself as the opposite of that. He was camp, he was effeminate, he wore make-up, long hair and made a big sort of song and dance. He was a kind of a Rococo type figure you might say. He was intellectual, he read Chomsky. Yes. He used arcane vocabulary. Yes. Yeah. I'll tell you that. Now it is certainly true that the lads mags at the time, we very heavily promoted the sort of edgy comedians of the day that our readers liked. For example, at Zoo Magazine we hired Jimmy Carter to write a weekly column for us. But there was one comedian we did not hire and neither, to the best of my recollection, did any of the other lads mags. And that was Russell Brand. Which I'll tell you who did hire Russell Brand in this period. It was the BBC. They first of all gave him a show on BBC. And then very rapidly promoted him to a plum roll on Radio 2, their biggest station. So I tend to feel that if anyone at that time was sort of providing cover to Russell Brand or promoting him, it wasn't us lads.
Speaker 3It wasn't. I feel we're not to blame. Zoo Magazine didn't hire him. Nuts didn't. Scrotum didn't.
Speaker 2None of those.
Speaker 3None of those did.
Speaker 2All the greats. All the greats. None of them.
Speaker 3And look at you now. Yes. You see you're not in prison. Not yet. You're sat there dressed like a rhododendron bush. There you are. There. And it's true that lads culture led automatically to Brand or any of the other reporting people we're talking about now. And in fact, I think you're right. He was presented to us as almost a feminized version of him. Yes. Yes. But what confuses me is men didn't like him and women didn't like him. So who did like him?
Speaker 2Well, clearly a lot of very influential people in our- Just some commissioning editors at the BBC.
Speaker 3In our culture.
Speaker 2Yeah. But I just don't- And politics it might be said. We remember Ed Miliband. That's right. He was desperate to be on Russell Brand's podcast because he thought this is the way to win the youth vote, practically prostrating himself before Russell Brand.
Speaker 3Yes. Well, we were told that because he endorsed Ed Miliband, the Tories ought to be worried. Yes. Yes. And many years later, it's now Labour that is anxious about the association.
Speaker 2Well, quite. I'll tell you one other person who apparently was quite keen on Russell Brand for a time. I read in the showbiz magazine Variety this week, let me read this to you, "Russell Brand's pubic hair is no longer on display. It was on display at a London Museum of Curiosities following the comedian's conviction and sentencing for rape and sexual assault." Now, the question that invites to me is, why exactly was Russell Brand's pubic hair on display in a museum in the first place? Yes. What does that say about our culture? Yes. About the fact that it was ever there? It's now been removed because the curator of the museum says, "He has no place in my museum of horrors." Anyway- No. I like- Why was that? Even a law-abiding comedian- Yes. can't put pubic hair on display in a museum- Yes. for posterity.
Speaker 3No. I'm amused to hear that he had just gone too far for this particular museum. Right. Yes. We're happy to put a law-abiding person's pubic hair on display, but if they break the law, that's just a step too far. We take our pubic hair displays very seriously and we don't want to endorse anyone. I'm sure there are museums that took down the pubic hair of Fred West and Ted Bundy and various other people.
Speaker 2Anyway. One other thing I want to say about this whole business is the way that broadcasters have reacted to these stories. Yes. You get the BBC. As soon as the allegations about David Walliams were finally published, BBC immediately scrubbed all of his shows from the iPlayer, including Little Britain. Yes. They've all gone. Yes. To be clear, at this point, he's not been charged with a crime, let alone convicted of one, but the BBC has just gone ahead and gone, "Right. We're wiping everything." Netflix has taken a slightly different approach, so they've decided to keep up a Russell Brands' standup show from about 10 years ago, but at the same time, they're now making a documentary called Russell Brand Open Secret, which is going to be about his crimes and all the rest of it. I'm just a bit confused about what the rules are here. I want to compare the case of Michael Jackson. Now, Michael Jackson was never convicted of a crime, but in the last 20 years of his life, a lot of very serious allegations were made about his behavior. Then he died, but his music is still played all the time. In fact, just in May this year, a film about his life was made, not including all those allegations. And it had the most successful opening weekend of any biopic in Hollywood history. It made over a billion dollars. Yes. So, I don't know. What are the rules here? Either you can have all of your work immediately wiped, even though you've not been convicted, or people can go on making huge sums of money out of you. I don't know.
Speaker 3I just guess that Michael Jackson is the human Enron. He's too big to fail. Right. That there are too many people making money out of him, and too many people love him, and he's too part of. Of the culture, that you almost can't un-stitch him and remove him from our world, because the whole edifice would fall apart. And that wasn't the case with Brand, obviously.
Speaker 2Yeah, clearly. Anyway, shall we move on to politics? Yes. One of the stories of the week is that, as we know, for about 18 months, Reform were leading the polls. But now, as of this week, according to a Telegraph poll, the Tories have finally overtaken them. Yes. What do you make of this?
Speaker 3I think it's a relief. One of the difficult things about being on the center-right for the last few years is you don't know who to suck up to, right? One minute I'm ringing Nigel and saying, "Oh, that Kemi's rubbish, isn't she?" Then I'm ringing up Kemi and saying, "Oh, Nigel, he's a nutter, isn't he?" So all this time, we've all been secretly thinking, "Would one of you please just overtake the other one?" Right. Definitively and for good, so that I can pick a winner and nail my colors to that particular mask. Right. I see it. If I can find a good five to 10-point lead over Reform, I can finally say, "Well, I never liked Reform." Right. Okay. I understand. But this is contingent upon it going back the other way. I want to make this absolutely clear, because I'm a man of principle, if it's Reform that develops a five to 10-point lead over Reform- 10-point lead over the Tories. I'll do the other one too. I just want you to darn well make up your mind, please.
Speaker 2It's important to be open-minded, Tim. I'm glad you're keeping your mind open to both of those possibilities. It's tricky for you at the moment because I was just looking at the numbers here. So according to a polling average, the Tories are currently on 21.73% and Reform are on 21.66%, which means the Tories are currently ahead by a margin of 0.7%. So, I mean, it's on a knife edge. I don't know. We're going to have to meet up again next week and see how it's gone.
Speaker 3And then I'd have to say the complete opposite. There you are. But so long as the polling is within the margin of Rob Jenrick, very small, it's impossible for a man to choose. What's a gal to do? You know, some days they ring me too, and I just feel like the prettiest girl at the dance. I really do.
Speaker 2That's very moving, I think. What an image that is. I think I won't dwell on that. I'm just going to move on to Royals now because I have to say I was really impressed.
Speaker 3We're going from the. The sordid to the ridiculous to the royal.
Speaker 2To the royal. And, of course, they are neither sordid nor ridiculous. No, they are not. Thank you, Mr. Stanley. Certainly not. This is the Daily Telegraph. No, they are not. I want to talk about Prince George's drawing. Yes. He's done a drawing of a kingfisher, which is being printed in Country Life magazine. Oh, I thought, my goodness, it's brilliant. It's a brilliant picture. I don't believe he did it. How did that. Right. Straight to the Tower of London. Off with his head. That is disgraceful. That's close to regicide. That is disgusting. It's too good. It's a treason. I call that treason. It's too good. It's an excellent drawing. I bet a butler did it. I will not stand to hear this kind of talk. No 13-year-old child can draw anything that well. This is calumny. It's treason. You're going to the Tower of London. Anyway, what I wanted to say about that was, you know, I know how William felt as a dad because, you know, I always loved it, you know, whenever my son has done drawings for me, particularly when he was smaller, he would do it all the time. You know, I'm very soppy and sentimental about these things. I keep some of his drawings up on the wall, above my desk where I write my columns, that sort of thing. I'm very soppy about it. But there was one drawing in particular that I love the most, and it was when he was at nursery. He was about four years old, and he came home one day, and he said to me, Dada, I drawed a picture of your hair. And he showed it to me, and it's a scrap of paper, and all it is is a massive, wild, black scribble. They're absolutely crazy. So to be fair, it's a very good likeness. But anyway, I thought this was funny, so I took a photo of it, and I put it on Twitter with a caption saying, Dada, I drawed a picture of your hair. And one person who liked that tweet was J.K. Rowling. Wow. So I was very excited about that. Not for the sake of my son. Wow, he's the world's biggest children's work. Forgotten all about him at this point. I was thinking, hang on a minute. Is she interesting in buying the original artwork? Where shall I start the bidding? Like 80 million pounds, maybe 90? An original deacon. Well, there you go. Unfortunately, I've yet to receive any offers from her. But J.K., if you're watching, it's still available. Still hasn't found a buyer.
Speaker 3Of course, in the royal family, every picture is of an heir. Well. I'll let that sink in, but heir, heir, heir. Oh, come on. I'm here all week, though I probably won't be after having said that. I'm going to leave that one for the producers. They can decide whether that stays in or not. Do you think that the royals put these things on the fridge? The fridge? They put them in Country Life magazine, for goodness sake.
Speaker 2Fridge? Goodness me. Anyway, I've got a test for you now, Tim. Because next week, I believe it's on Monday, Monday night. It is the 800th series of I'm a Celebrity. Get me out of here. Now, I appreciate they're not all telegraph readers. Don't put me in there. We'll be big fans of that show. But the reason I want to mention it is, I just want to find out, Tim, how many of this year's celebrities have you ever heard of?
Speaker 3Right. Okay. It's like mastermind.
Speaker 2I'm going to go from one to one very quickly. I'm going to say the name of a new contestant, and you're going to tell me who that is. Okay. Wayne Rooney, footballer. Okay. That's good.
Speaker 3Ricky Wilson. One of the. Oh, no. Sorry. No, no, no, no, no, no. I know this. No, no, no, no, no. I know this. They. I'm going to have to rush you.
Speaker 2I'm going to have to go full Paxman here.
Speaker 3No, in all seriousness, no, what's that band from the 60s? They sang Wouldn't It Be Nice? No. The Beach Boys?
Speaker 2He's a beach boy? No, he's the singer of the Kaiser Chiefs. They're only from about 20 years ago. That's a bloody hell. There were a lot of Wilsons of the Beach Boys, let's be fair. AJ Adudu. No idea. TV presenter. Okay. Leomi Anderson. Oh, married to Gerry of Thunderbirds fame. Model and co-host of Glow Up, Britain's next make-up star, it says here. Chloe Burrows. Never heard of him. Love Island finalist. Mariela Frostrup. Come on.
Speaker 3Oh, no, we all know Mariela Frostrup.
Speaker 2Yeah. Presenter, TV. Fashion guru, yes. There we go. She's fantastic. Joanna Page. Never heard of her. Gavin and Stacey star.
Speaker 3Sharky. Oh, he sang You Little Thief.
Speaker 2It says here, one of YouTube's. Beat us, squad. What? I don't know. Don't look at me.
Speaker 3Jack Skipper. No idea.
Speaker 2Stand-up comedian, social media star, apparently. Claire Sweeney. I don't know. Actress, Coronation Street. Right. And I'm afraid I can't pronounce this person's name, so do forgive me if I'm wrong. Ade Adipitan. I do apologise. Never heard of him. I do apologise. Anyway, Paralympian. So there you go. Are these people all on YouTube? Two out of 12, I think that was. Almost certainly. Right.
Speaker 3OK, so why is TV putting YouTube stars on? Can they find no one from Antiques Roadshow or something? Well, all I can say, Tim,
Speaker 2you're going to have to start watching this show because, you know, you're clearly out of touch with popular culture. I think I am, frankly. I had a piece of paper telling me the answers. Nothing could ever force me to watch a nutty tabolic.
Speaker 3Well, there you go. I think one celebrity you've surely heard of, Mr Gordon Ramsay. I certainly have, yes. And he put a photograph of himself online, topless, at 60. That is right.
Speaker 2Yeah. He was 60 years old last Sunday. Yes. And he marked this milestone in his life by taking his shirt off and posing for a photo topless and putting it on Instagram to his almost 20 million followers. Yes. And I have to say, I wasn't impressed. Hmm, really? Well, let me rephrase that. Because I'm looking at the shirt, Michael. I know. Please don't take it off. Let me be clear. I am not body shaming Gordon Ramsay. Right. There's nothing wrong with his body. In fact, for a man of his age, it's a very fine stick.
Speaker 3In fact, it's lean and it's muscular.
Speaker 2There's nothing wrong with it. Yeah. Yes. He looks better at 60 than I do at 46, or indeed as any other previous time in my life. Yes. I just feel, hang on a minute, you're 60 years old. I just think you could possibly have a little more dignity. I mean, I just feel at that time of life, I understand it may be when a very young man would do it, but that time of your life, are you still sort of, you're desperately fishing for compliments from people on social media telling you how muscular and hunky you are? Really? Come on, shouldn't you be settling down with Songs of Praise or the Antiques Roadshow? I mean, come on.
Speaker 3You know, in the 80s. I don't mean to sound ageist,
Speaker 2but I just feel.
Speaker 3You know, in the 80s, Martin Amis went to. My grandfather never did this. Martin Amis went to Hollywood and he made a really bad science fiction film. I forget the name of it now. Saturn 3, was that the name? That's well done. And it starred Kirk Douglas. And he was told there has to be a scene in it in which we see Kirk Douglas' bottom. It's in the contract. Kirk Douglas, it looked good for 84. Yeah. But he insisted on showing his bottom on camera. So he had to write something in that would excuse Kirk Douglas taking his clothes off. Well, he ended up writing this into Money,
Speaker 2his novel of 1984.
Speaker 3He did, that's right. That was all based on his. Based on his experiences. But my problem with the photo of Ramsay is he's very muscular and lean and he's a chef. Right. Now, a chef should look enormous. I look at that and I think, you don't know anything about food. There's a man who doesn't enjoy his food. Yes, you clearly don't eat.
Speaker 2He's not tasting his own food. Perhaps he just. What, does he not like his own food? Yeah. Does he just sniff it? No, thank you. Yeah. I can't believe that. This man has won two billion Michelin stars. Come on. He does not like a chef. Surely he's got to eat now again, right?
Speaker 3Yes. A topless chef should have boobs like a page three model. Yes. Not all skeletal. Exactly right. So there you go. So there you go.
Speaker 2I think you're absolutely right. Anyway, here's a weird story for you. Okay. A poll was found, the most delivered item of the year by sort of, you know, delivery service, Deliveroo and so on, that type of thing. Yeah. Okay. What item do you think have people ordered most by courier this year? Toilet paper. It's not toilet paper, although, of course, over the last couple of weeks, thanks to the scaremongering for the government, it actually might be now. Tins of baked beans and bottled water. And bottled water. But certainly up to that point, the answer is ice cubes. People are having ice cubes delivered to their house. I'm afraid I don't understand this. Do they not know the recipe? Are there people there going, I don't know how to make these things. I've got to order them from a supermarket or a shop because I don't know how to. If anyone is watching who doesn't know how to make ice cubes, I can give you the recipe now. It's put some water in the freezer.
Speaker 3Yes. Anyway. But also, I don't know about you, but food, I find, is always delivered. Late, after a couple of hours. So the ice is going to arrive melted. In which case, the customer is going to say, this is no good to me. What do I do with it? To which the delivery boy then says, my recommendation is you put it in the freezer and make some ice.
Speaker 2Yeah. By the way, that's 20 quid. So there you go. Yeah, lovely. Okay, this is even weirder, okay. A man was rushed to hospital this week after drying his hair too vigorously with a towel. Apparently he's got a trapped nerve. He sort of snapped his neck doing it. And I've got to tell you, I felt a little bit smug about this, because let me tell you, I never dry my hair with a towel or at all. I come out of the shower, hair's wet. I apply the product. The Bumble and Bumble Styling Cream. Yes, well, it says on the packaging, it says apply to wet hair and leave to air dry. Really? That is what I do. I always dry and then gel. It says on the packaging with this particular product, that's what you do. And you know, after a couple of hours, it's dry by normal. That's what I do. So I'm in no danger of snapping my neck, at least. Yeah. A hairdresser recently told me actually, that what I'm doing is actually very bad for your scalp. It could even potentially cause a fungal infection in your scalp. Oh, no. As far as I'm aware, I've not got one, although, of course, I can't see my scalp, so I'm not certain. I'm feeling it now as if I'm going to find it. I don't think so, but on the other hand, at least I won't break my neck, so there we are.
Speaker 3Well, also, I'm just pleased the towel didn't go up his bottom because usually hilarious medical stories all involve things, you know, the top ten things discovered in the anal canal. They're all accidental, though.
Speaker 2Oh, completely. As you understand, they're all accidental.
Speaker 3You sit down very fast. It's very unfortunate. The next thing you know, you've got your Academy Award up your bottom. This one truly horrified me, and I'm reluctant even to read it out. Okay. But at a Peru airport, someone opened a case to discover more than 3,000 tarantulas hidden inside a smuggler's socks.
Speaker 2Right. I read this story, and I was just grateful that he wasn't actually wearing the socks at the time. You know, I was thinking, now, that's a brave smuggler, I've got to say, especially there's 3,000 of them in there. Yes. My God. I mean, you'd think people would notice. Your ankles are. You've got very bad cankles there, mate. You're really bulging.
Speaker 3But also, you know that episode of One Foot in the Grave where they go to the Chinese restaurant and they come back with the rice dish? Ah, yeah. They put it on the table and it starts to scuttle away. I sort of have this image of the suitcase on the conveyor belt suddenly moving off in the opposite direction. But these things are apparently being smuggled in order to be sold to collectors in Europe. What pervert collects tarantulas? I'm sorry, I cannot accept this. No. If you. If I see one of those, I'm stepping on it. I don't even dare do that. Well, quite. I mean, I've never stood on a tarantula. I'd call the police. What do you do? If you came over and found a tarantula, what would you do? I assume I'd call the police. They look pretty strong, by the way, so I don't think you'd stand on it.
Speaker 2You could fight back. It wouldn't be enough.
Speaker 3Oh, it's awful. It's a thing of the devil. I've never understood it. Also, anyone who does keep it, like famously former Tory government minister Gavin Williamson. Yes, he did. It just screams Bond villain. Yes. It is one step away from having a shark pool in your home. But that's why Gavin Williamson did it right, because he was Chief Whip at the time. Yeah, and he thought it would be scary to have a tarantula on his table.
Speaker 2There's just something about his sort of Frank Spencer appearance and Frank Spencer voice that perhaps wasn't intimidating enough to Tory MPs. So he introduced a deadly animal. He had to get a deadly animal to get them to do what they were told and vote the right way. Anyway, just finally, one more story. Obviously, we're all watching the Christmas TV ads at the moment.
Speaker 3You can't escape the wretched things.
Speaker 2Yes. There's one for Tesco, which basically involves. I'll try and recap it as quickly as I can. Tesco delivery driver delivering the goods, turns over the house, it's the wrong one, calls the customer, customer says, whoops, I've put our old address, we don't live there now. And then the Tesco driver very kindly drives all the way back up the motorway to the countryside where the customer now lives. Yeah. Oh, yes, and then the customer meets halfway a garage and then they hand over the goods, the customer's car broken down. So then the Tesco driver drives it all the way home with the goods and all the rest of it as well. Anyway. Meanwhile, the ice has completely melted. Completely melted. Real-life Tesco drivers have apparently been watching this ad and say, well, blimey, that's all sackable offences. You can't do that in real life.
Speaker 3Tesco would sack us if that happened. This is certainly not my experience, where the goods get delivered so often to the wrong flat. And no one makes any effort to deliver it to you, let alone climb up a mountain as one tends to see in these Christmas, but I think, to be fair, a lot of what Santa does when it comes to delivery is probably a sackable offence too. Hang on, who's going to sack Santa? Who's his boss? I know, but doing it all one night and dropping it down the chimney, it's taking a mick a bit, isn't it? You think he should sort of spread it out over the course of a year? I think the unions would have a word, wouldn't they? Have you enjoyed any of the Christmas ads?
Speaker 2Well, I tell you, I like the Tesco one a lot more than I like the John Lewis one. That one's pure evil. Everybody hates that, don't they?
Speaker 3That's the one with the grandma with the. The nasty grandchildren. being
Speaker 2persecuted by these revolting, spoiled, entitled brats. Yes. And nobody says a word to them. Yeah, yeah. It's elder abuse, I call that, personally.
Speaker 3When it comes to advertising, I've always preferred the Soviet approach. Just have a very short advert with a gruff voice saying, Is Christmas by Sprouts? That's all I want to see.
Speaker 2John Lewis should give you a call for next Christmas. That would be a lot more popular.
Speaker 3It's Christmas by Turkey.
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