Drawing On Experience With Bob Moran

Hello and welcome to the UK column and we are delighted to be joined by Bob Moran today. Charles with us as well. Welcome to well, UK column Tarrs. Thank you very much. It's great to be here. You have come in and for a chat and which is really great because we don't often get to do this sort of face to face this way. And well, I suppose we should start at the beginning because lots of people knew of Bob through the Telegraph and I think maybe the Guardian before

that. And was also did you also get published in social work, Socialist work as. Well, the Morningstar. Morningstar that's. Where it started out, yeah. Right. And but famously you decided you didn't want to work, or rather, the Telegraph decided that they didn't want to work with you anymore because you you wanted to speak out on certain issues. Yes, I, I mean, I've been in the Telegraph for 10 years and work my way up through the ranks and become their main political

cartoonist. And I was very happy. I mean, I'd worked for that since I was about 14. It was all I ever wanted to do. And I was in a very comfortable position by the time we got to 2020. And I was very sort of trusted by the editors and the readership. We're familiar with my work and

liked what I was doing. But it, it became increasingly difficult as that year went on and there were various rumblings behind the scenes about other journalists who had a problem with my position on lockdowns and masks and everything. And I, it's sort of, I was aware that potentially my job could be at risk, but at the same time, I was becoming increasingly frustrated by my inability to say what I felt needed to be

said. So in the end of 2021, when I was fired over some tweets, which is, you know, interesting in the context of what we're seeing now. Telegraph are currently publishing articles about how bad it is the people are being punished for what they tweet. But yeah, I mean, at that point I had sort of reached the stage where I wasn't sure it was right for me to continue in mainstream journalism anyway. So it was a blessing in disguise, if you like. What was it like to work in

mainstream media? Because obviously that's something that most people don't get access to. Yeah, I mean, first thing to say is when when you start out, I was 25 when I got that job at the Telegraph. It's incredibly thrilling to go up to London and be in this huge newsroom and everyone's running about and answering phone calls and going off for lunches with important people. And you, I was very green and I had loads to learn. You know, I wasn't really ready. I was thrown in at the deep end.

But it's very, very exciting and you do feel like part of a cog in this vast machine that keeps our world going round. And I'd never been particularly political. That's why I But from Morningstar to Guardian to Telegraph, it never bothered me. I didn't have anything personal to say about the state of the world. I didn't necessarily feel like the world needed changing. I just like drawing cartoons. And I liked the mechanism of satire and being able to criticize whoever needed

criticizing on a particular day. And so I thought, you know, we live in a democracy that is balanced by a Free Press. And yes, there's corruption and our politicians are bumbling and incompetent. I believe then. But the system is self correcting. And I never experienced any problems there. There were never any points where I really desperately wanted to Draw Something or say something and I wasn't allowed to. So I was perfectly happy.

I think there are, there are people in our movement, if you want to call it that now like myself and James Delingpole is another example, who were very much part of the mainstream media and have now been, they've they've moved out of it or in my case, been booted out of it. And it's useful for me now to have had that experience and to understand how it works, how these decisions are made, how a newspaper is put together.

You know, all of the arguments and phone calls and considerations that go into writing those articles and deciding what they want to tell the public or not tell the public on a particular day. I mean, you were, you were released by The Telegraph for comments that you made on Twitter to about Rich Rachel Clark. Looking back on that, do you have any regrets? No, I don't regret that at all. I think you know what, Obviously when I sent those tweets, it was.

Just just to put context on this, we should say that this you were criticizing her for demanding that people wear masks. Yes, I think she, she had been. She claims she'd suffered verbal abuse for wearing a mask on a tube or something rather. And I'd seen this, I'd seen her tweeting in support of lockdowns for two years. She had criticised all of the marches in London against the

measures she had encouraged. At one point she encouraged teenagers to go and get jabbed without telling their parents that that kind of stuff. She was someone who really, really frustrated me, who I never engaged with because often you see these things and you get crossed and you just put your phone down and go for a walk. But for whatever reason, on that particular day, I was particularly angry.

You see, my, you know, my family was very affected by all the measures because my eldest child is disabled and all of the lockdowns and the masks and school closures really affected her very badly. So I was reacting in my capacity as a father first, not as a Telegraph employee.

And I simply suggested that people like Rachel Clark, who had promoted such disgusting ideologies and ruined so many thousands of lives, if they chose to go out in public, perhaps the least they might expect is people to say mean things to them. I think that's probably the sign of a healthy Society of people who are that wicked, suffers that kind of consequence. I would obviously never ever have advocated for any physical abuse. I mean, I don't believe that's the answer to any of this.

But I think if you do that to people, that's probably what you might expect to happen is people aren't going to be very nice to you. So I don't regret saying that. I do stand by it. I'm not sure that when people look back in 10 or 20 years time, they would necessarily see me as a total villain for suggesting that.

You know, something that I have often wondered is what the people that are working in mainstream media, the people that were pushing these agendas or enabling these agendas working for mainstream media, did they believe that they were doing the right thing or, or do they know that? Are they aware of larger agendas? Agendas even? It's very difficult to know exactly who knows what in in various positions of influence

and power. I mean, Rachel Clark is quite a good example because she's fairly, she's got a fairly nebulous past. No, no one is completely sure whether she's even a doctor or not. She was one of these figures who emerged out of nowhere being invited onto BBC News and seem to be a spokesperson for the NHS. She was a palliative, she's supposed to be a palliative care doctor.

So you would think she would have quite a good understanding about the nature of death and it being, you know, a perfectly natural part of life that old people die. So you might think she would have understood that when the average age of death for the virus was 82.4. She might have been one of the people who said, OK, well, I think we've got this a bit wrong. So it is strange that she was such a keen promoter of lock

downs and masks and everything. I don't, I think it's more complicated than people think, this idea of people being controlled and people being aware of the agenda. I do think there are people in various positions who know what the plan is and they're told what to say and not say.

But people should understand that anybody with a with a high profile, anybody who is driven by ego, who's quite vain, who likes to be on television, who likes to have books published, they can be controlled indirectly simply by getting their book published, being invited onto television, making sure they're promoted when they say this or that. They don't necessarily need to receive a phone call every morning from some handler saying here's what we need you to say

today. So I the, this idea of controlled opposition or, or people who are aware of the agenda and driving it, yes, that happens, but it's not always the case. It would be, it would be too complicated, I think to have thousands of these people that you're trying to monitor. And I don't think you actually need to because you can rely on ego a lot of the time. In the, in the newspaper context, I mean particularly Telegraph, how, how does that side of it work?

You know what the, the, the editorial control side of it and, and when you were there, you're sort of placed within that. I mean, what degree of organization is there? And, and I suppose retrospectively, do you get the sense that people were being pushed to write particular things or not to write particular things at that time or before? There's there's always an element of control of the

newspaper. There are we, most people in the public have this impression that the way it works is the news comes into the paper, people sort out what the important stories are and just regurgitate them to the public. Because journalists are supposed to care about truth and informing people. And that's not how it happens. It's never how it's happened, you know?

And I realised that as soon as I got there that actually there are all these different things that journalists are very aware of happening or about to happen next week in Parliament or bills that are being drawn up that the public don't know about yet or whatever. And various discussions will happen about, you know, when do we want to tell the readers this? Do we want to tell them at all? Or what spin should we put on this?

I wasn't surprised by that because again, I sort of assumed that there must be commendable reasons, understandable reasons for doing this. You hear things like, well, well, people aren't ready. You know, people might not be ready to hear about this yet. Who thinks? That they're in a position to make that decision. Yes, but again, that's the ego thing. I mean, these journalists feel incredibly powerful. It's a very. It's like a drug.

I think this idea that you're party to this secret knowledge that the public don't know about, and you're kind of deciding when they're allowed to hear about it. How, how does that balance against the, the sort of competitive element of it with other, you know, other networks or papers or, or whatever it is? How how you know if a if a journalist has hold of something, how sure are they that it's only them that's got that particular thing?

Yeah, I don't, I'm not sure. I mean that they can't be

absolutely sure. I suppose they the relationship, I think first thing to say is the relationship between politicians and the media has become more and more blurred or closer I suppose in recent years because as newspaper readerships have gone down and their ability to make money has diminished, they have obviously had to be much more reliant on sponsorship and advertising, which gets them involved with big corporations who are also them themselves tied up with different political

parties. So the waters become very muddied. And, and indeed, many of them went to school or college with, with people that are in politics. So yeah, so they're they're actually mates. And I would have it all the time. There'd be a situation where, you know, I start work at 9:00 in the morning and my job is to pick out a story or two that I think would be good for a cartoon and relevant tomorrow. And I'd do some sketches.

And I might take it to the comment editor who would say, ah, we can't, you know, we can't criticise him today because he's writing for us tomorrow or the others is having lunch with him, you know, or going to a wedding with him at the weekend where there's always things like that. And it wasn't really, it seems mad now, but it didn't strike me as a problem until 2020, when suddenly everything was at stake and the whole world has gone mad

and we were thrust into tyranny. And you were still hearing these things about, oh, well, you know, he's a friend of the paper. I mean, obviously with Boris Johnson being Prime Minister, the Telegraph had a really close relationship with him because he had been such a prominent part of the newspaper, and they kind of felt like some sense of responsibility in getting him into #10 but they weren't to

begin with. They were perfectly happy with me to take my line, which was very much a moral line against lockdowns and masks and testing and all these things. I was actually given quite a lot of freedom, more freedom than I probably had at any other point at the paper. And there were even talks at this about halfway through 2020.

There were sort of murmurings that or if Boris Johnson keeps doing lockdowns, we might, you know, have a Leader article calling for him to resign, which would have been a major step for the Telegraph. But a few weeks after that, obviously we then we then get the announcement of the jabs and then everything changed. And everything changed for me at that point, and I was back to being very, very restricted in what I could say and how I was allowed to be critical. So. So I saw a quote.

We will not, as a newspaper, publish anything against vaccines. Yes. That that was actually said. That's what I was told, yeah, explicitly that there's just no way that they would ever publish anything that that might be construed as anti vax. Now, this was before anyone had had an injection anywhere. This was at the point when they just announced that they've, you know, miraculously made this jab that apparently nobody could make and eight different labs that come up with it at the same

time. But I said, but well, obviously nobody's had it yet. So we don't know. I mean, and, and it's new, isn't it? Nobody thinks this is a, an old flu shot or something. We're, we're all, you're all publishing articles saying, isn't this fantastic? It's brand new. So shouldn't we wait to see what it does? And they said, well, it won't do any harm because we know all vaccines are safe. It's the most extraordinary thing to hear a journalist say, and I knew then that it was

going to be very difficult. And then the pressure started for me to create cartoons promoting the jabs and encouraging people to get them. So, so just to just to clarify this, up until this point, no one had ever asked you or told you to do a particular cartoon or asked you to cover a particular topic. No, that's not that's not accurate. I mean, no, obviously as a cartoonist at a newspaper, you get, you get steered in a

particular direction. You, you will often get guidance on what they'd like you to focus on on a particular day. Equally, you might go to them with an idea saying, well, I'd like to do a cartoon about this. And they and they would say no, sometimes it's perfectly understandable because they might say, you know, this, this other thing's going to happen this afternoon, which is going to be bigger, that's going to take over. So you, there is a, there's a

lot of control. Even when I got to the point I was in, in 2020 where I was actually very trusted and had relative creative freedom, you're still always controlled. It's, it's only when you're out of that system that you really understand, particularly in terms of satire, how mainstream political satire just, it's a bit of a fraud. It doesn't really work. It can't.

Satire can't really operate inside the machine, particularly when the machine itself becomes the thing you need to criticize so. Just a matter of interest, how long did it take from having an idea or agreeing something with your editor to that then appearing in the paper? So at the newspaper, generally the way it would work is I'd start about 9:00 in the morning. I'd go, I'd look at all the different papers, look at the news stories, pick a topic or two. I'd have to sketch out some

ideas. Around 11:00, I'd take some sketches to the comment desk, show them, and if they liked one, they would give it the green light. And then I'd have until about 6:30, seven o'clock at the latest, to get the cartoon finished, ready to publish. So it's very tight. You're working to a very tight

deadline. And obviously sometimes, quite often, once you've agreed an idea at 11:30, twelve o'clock, you might be halfway through doing it, another story will break, someone will run over and say right then that you've got to start again, do something new. So you're under a lot of pressure and in many ways the

pressure of that deadline. And I think this is true of all journalists, not just cartoonists, but that the pressure of the deadline can distract you from the principles that you're working with, the truth of the story you're telling. Because there's an empty space that needs filling, you know? And once you get that green light, some days it can be really difficult. Some days you get to 3:00 and you haven't even had an idea.

It's such a relief once you know right, this is what I'm drawing and it's going to be in the paper. And how many days a week were you doing this? I think I would sometimes do it was 4 a week, sometimes 5A week. That, that those are long days and a heavy workload that that's, yeah, that's pretty intense. Yeah, and it's a lot of work. And you're also helped in terms of your conscience, I suppose, in both the, the nature of newspapers and the cartoons in them being essentially

disposable. A couple of days later probably won't be relevant. Certainly a month later, people would look back and think, I can't remember what that was about. No idea. That helps you. You don't worry too much about how's this going to stand the test of time? Because the whole point of them is that it moves on. You know, political satire in the mainstream is, is a

constant. And you're not, you're not supposed to be trying to create something that will be relevant 2 years down the line, you know, and also being part of a newspaper and a brand, somebody doesn't like what you've done or I don't understand that. You can always say, well, it's the editor's idea, you know? Which I can't do anymore.

Just going back on on that and I think, you know, the, the sort of retrospective bit of looking at, I mean, the, the answer may be a flat no, but but are there some of the things that you look back at and you do sort of think more of why such and such a thing was either encouraged or rejected that you know that you had? You mean at the newspaper? Yeah, Yeah. Oh, absolutely.

Now, obviously we've all, we've all changed our perspective on things over the last few years, and particularly my the way I see the world has has totally changed. And the way I understand the media and newspapers and how the news cycle works and what it's actually there to do has shifted. And I look back now at lots and lots of the work I did, various stories I've covered over the years and can see it. I see it very differently. And I think, I bet, I bet that wasn't actually accurate.

I'm sure there was something else there. You know, I can sometimes I can remember being encouraged to take a certain line with something and particularly in the early days, you know, when I was right behind the ears and, you know, had so much to learn. Yeah, I can. I can definitely see that, that a lot of the things I did were

probably totally inaccurate. And I think that I, I certainly, although I was very happy with the work I've done before I was fired at the end of 2021, certainly from the beginning of 2020 onwards, I'm still very pleased about the work I did on the lockdowns and the masks and everything. I, because my understanding has shifted so much. And I was suddenly looked back at all the rejected ideas from previous years and, and start to think, hang on a minute, that

that was a great idea. And I'm pretty sure it was true. I ended up with a lot of pent up frustration. And what happened was when, when I was fired, it all kind of came out. I did an extraordinary amount of work through 2022, sort of producing three or four cartoons a week. But they'd be quite, some of them would be quite detailed. There'd be things I wouldn't necessarily attempt for the paper.

It didn't feel like I was busy at the time because I think I partly it was a lot of stuff that had been built up over the years, ideas that I could suddenly draw whatever I liked. So it was that, but it was also, I suppose, trying to kind of form a penance, I guess understanding that, look, I haven't got it right a lot of the time I've been part of this machine that's been leading people astray and giving them the wrong impression. So I felt a real need to try and

make up for that. Don't answer this if it's none of our business, but obviously you went from earning a salary to suddenly earning no salary and how hard was that and how did you deal with that? It was very worrying obviously to begin with because I had got myself to the point of the Telegraph where I was actually on a full staff contract, which I'd always been told when I joined they said no cartoonist will ever be fully employed by a newspaper again and they're not

generally that's true. And I'd, I'd managed to wangle it somehow so that from 2018 onwards I was on staff. So I had a salary, you know, paid holiday, pension, all the things that somebody like me now would never expect. I've got a wife, three young children, had a big mortgage. So it was really frightening to suddenly lose all of that. And not not just to lose it, but to be fired in a very public way and to be perceived in the way that I was by the rest of the

mainstream. You know, it's not like I thought, oh, the Daily Mail might offer me a job next week. I knew I was never going to work for a mainstream paper again, and I was just going to have to be on my own. That was really difficult for a few weeks. You know, I did. I did get very stressed about it, but it's testament to the kind of people in this movement and the people who've been following my work.

I've managed to build up an audience outside of the Telegraph readership that was actually much bigger than the Telegraph readership, and they were all over the world. And the amount of support I received was extraordinary. And I managed to keep going. I mean, that's when you really have to just rely on your abilities and your talent and hope that if you keep putting the work out, it will see you through. And it has. I mean, you know, financially I'm, I'm doing fine.

The only way I make money now is selling my original paintings. I don't monetize what I do in any other way. That was really important to me. It's it's really important that everyone can see my work. They never have to pay. No one has to pay to publish it. People who commissioned me to do things, I don't charge them because the message is too

important, you know? But I'm, I'm lucky that I made that decision years and years ago just for practical reasons, to start painting in an old fashioned way rather than doing it on a computer. And that means I have paintings and fortunately people want to buy my paintings and that's enough. So, so it's worked out fine, you know, and I'm totally independent now, which is fantastic. Yeah. And OK, so anyway, you left the Telegraph. It has had this impact in your life.

How long then how, what, what sort of time scales were you feeling stressed? And when when did you become comfortable again in terms of what you were actually doing? And the reason I'm asking these questions is because, you know, a lot of people are either have been for some time or are now in the position of needing to make a decision about whether they're going to stay in a job which they have, they can't ethically, they can't justify to themselves anymore.

And, and really I'm asking these questions because would you say that that was something that was a positive development in your life and that you're, you're really pleased that you've done? And actually looking back on it, if you hadn't been removed by the Telegraph, you probably would have done it anyway. And you would encourage other people to take that what is probably a very brave step? Yeah, that's difficult I suppose

because. So firstly, I think I would have left eventually because it was, it would have got too difficult. I don't think the cause for me to be disciplined or fired that had been going on for two years would have stopped. As we know, things have only gotten worse, particularly the situation with what's unfolded, people who've been jabbed and the way that's been covered up, the, the way the media has refused to acknowledge the gravity of it. I would have become too frustrated.

So I, I do think I, I would eventually have left. I, I still think my being fired was probably inevitable anyway, But it's different for me. And I, I do understand, I mean, I know there, there are a small number of journalists there who are still there who saw things as I did. They've compromised in a way that I wasn't willing to. And they did agree not to say certain things. But it's, you know, I'm a cartoonist. I do something that's really quite niche.

There aren't many people who can do what I do because it requires such a weird skill set. And then within that, I suppose I carved out a deeper niche for myself by producing the kind of work that I had and catering for this huge audience that felt isolated by the mainstream media. So it's not the same. It's not quite the same leap for me to take as someone who just writes articles, because there are thousands of people who just write articles.

So I can understand to an extent why those people would would be more worried about being independent. I would never go back now, you know, there's no, there's no mainstream newspaper that could offer me any amount of money now where I'd be tempted to go and have a job like that again. Aside from anything else, you know, I've, I've tasted freedom and it's delicious. No thanks. I don't, I just don't, don't want to go back to that

situation. But I, I think people should recognise how many, how many people are out there in the world who are desperate for integrity and the truth. And if you're willing to stand apart and convey that truth and do something brave, you will get the support. And there is an audience out there and they are generally speaking, lovely, lovely people. So I think people have got to be prepared to stand on principle now.

It's really, really important. And if you're a journalist who you know, who does genuinely care about the truth, you should be, you should really understand by now that you're not really allowed to uphold the truth in any mainstream publication. And I think you'll be rewarded if you if you put yourself in a position where you can put the truth out. You said that the that people out there are lovely people.

Since October the 7th you have published some pretty hard hitting commentary on Gaza. How have you dealt with? Because there must have been some backlash from some of those lovely people to to. I can think of 11 image in particular. So I would caveat my previous point by saying not everybody stays lovely. Yeah, that, that's been very interesting. And of course the the whole thing for me now, being independent and not having any editorial control, I don't work

for anybody. Everything I do is completely me. It's it's my ideas based on my principles. It's how I see the world. I sit in my attic and I draw cartoons and I put them out. Nobody else is involved. And what I do now is in the context of a total shift in perspective that I've had of how the world works and just how heinous and wicked things that took place between from 2020 onwards were.

And in my view, all of the world leaders, anybody in a position of power who was involved in that, you have to see them in that context. Now, if they do something else, if they start talking about some other issue, you can't just ignore what they did in those years. And you can't really, in my view, see any new story or new event that occurs as being separate from that. We're always being encouraged to see things as completely

separate, but I have not. Once I came to an understanding about what the agenda is and the place they are trying to take us to as human beings, I've not yet seen anything that for me didn't slot perfectly into that agenda and. The Israel. Gaza thing is no different at all. Well, I think this is a war against the very nature of humanity.

This is a battle for the soul. There are various things some people might see as ends, like population control and a kind of disintegration of democracy, restrictions on freedoms. I see all of these things ultimately still as just means. The end point is, yes, probably fewer people in the world, but I think the people doing all of this mean to change the very nature of what it means to be a human being.

Who we are, how we view the world, how we view ourselves and each other, our capacity for love, our kind of the spiritual connection we might have, our capacity to create, our understanding of truth and beauty. All of these things are what are under attack. Ultimately. There are threads that run through everything that's happened, in particular one I

bang on about all the time. It's the most important to me is children and the way children are viewed and treated and the idea that permeates everything that there are circumstances in which the lives of children don't count so much that the deliberate murder of children can be justified by certain situations or contacts, which I think is always a disgusting idea. But it took hold first of all, in the pandemic. You see it through all of the

trans ideology stuff. And then you immediately saw it with the Gaza situation where people were kind of adopting this stance of, well, they killed some children first, so it's OK for us to kill the children over there. I mean, when, when has that ever been a sensible position to take that if some children are killed, the, the, the just way to respond is to go and kill some other children somewhere.

I, but there are people now who've adopted this mindset and I'm appalled by it. And I think it's really, really dangerous now. I obviously there are lots of advantages that I've spoken about about being free now and independent. There's also a much greater way to responsibility. And if I'm going to use my independence effectively and kind of try and push satire to the limit, really work out what it can do, I have to take risks.

And one of those risks is isolating people who've agreed with me previously, you know, and actually, when necessary, criticizing my own audience, which is something I do more and more. When I put out that cartoon with addressing the the Gaza situation, I wasn't naive about the reaction it was going to get. And I was fully aware that lots of people who agreed with me on other things were going to be cross about it.

But the whole point of that cartoon was the reaction, the sort of, and part of the reaction I knew it was would get was just people screaming anti-Semitism about it. And in so doing, they more or less provided the punchline for the cartoon. And you know, I'm fine with the people who don't didn't agree with that and who no longer follow me and everything because I have to be willing to lose those people. I almost have to be willing.

I'm not sure I'm there yet, but perhaps to get to the point where nobody. Apart from me agrees with what I'm saying in a cartoon. Well, that's what I was wondering. It might be hard to get a sense of it, but but I think we all experience what you're talking about. You do you feel like you do lose people along the way You've just talked about, you know, your audience effectively outside of the Telegraph.

So obviously whilst you were there, you were, you were reaching people who weren't within your immediate orbit, but are you still finding that is happening now? So for example, with the, you know, October the 7th aftermath and people obviously having that reaction, are people coming in through a different door? Are you? Do you get a sense of that? People are new people are always discovering me, my work and obviously I'm I'm still fairly suppressed as we all are on social media.

So there are always new people who suddenly discover you and I'll say I can't believe I've never seen your work this whole time. I don't know about do do you mean am I winning any people back with? Well, but I yes, I suppose partly that I think also, you know, we talk about people that might be, I say faceless. I mean, you talk about people that that would follow a social media thing or, or, or publication, but I suppose perhaps people who are, you know, have more of a public

persona. Oh, OK, yeah, sort of other blue tip people. Who? Who? Well, you know, I mean, we talked about journalists there. There are a lot of people, if we specifically go back to the period we're kind of talking about the last four years, a lot of people who, and actually we were talking just earlier about a couple, Peterson, Jordan Peterson, Douglas Murray, for example, who appeared to be seeing the world in a particular way that made their subsequent

behaviour very surprising. But but I suppose, I mean, people who could be within that sphere who initially went in One Direction. I mean, you know, is that effective? Is there any a hope for for people being brought to their senses by what you're producing? Do you think that's realistic? I don't know.

I mean, obviously when I did that cartoon, the the cartoon called Kosher about Gaza, I wasn't necessarily expecting to change those people's minds and make them go, oh goodness, yes, I can see now how how we've been wrong. I, I was very much, I suppose, trying to make them own their position, that that was part of the reason I did that.

I thought, you know, I want you to be more angry and, and phoning the police, which lots of them did about a drawing than you are about what's actually being depicted in the drawing. That was the point. And they all did it. And maybe some of them might look back after a time and and think, goodness, that was a bit of a strange way to behave. But for some people, there's no hope.

It's very sad. It's very sad when people you really think get it and who are on the same page as you in terms of these core values that are under attack suddenly appear to throw them all away or they get sucked back in. There are people who are desperate to be given a reason to attach themselves to the mainstream again.

Or, or some, sometimes it's, it's old affiliations that people just can't let go of. You know, I, I think difficult there it is. We more or less have to let go of everything that we were attached to before. Everyone has something that they're just, you know, often it's a royal family. But, but for some people, it might be this strange sort of, I'm a conservative, therefore I love Israel idea that I didn't really understand before, but

clearly exists. And, and when that pops up, they, they kind of think, oh, thank goodness, this is this is a completely separate thing where I know where I am. And it's not controversial because, you know, some of these newspapers are on site and they feel a sense of relief. The thing people have to understand is this is all

deliberate. They however awake you think you might be, however aware of the agenda you think you might be, you need to understand that they will try and suck you back in. They will try and put things out to draw you back into their paradigm. And the most important thing we all have to do is just stay really true to our principles and not lose sight of who the enemy are and be OK with letting go of everything you know, because there are still real things you can attach yourselves to.

And there's a whole new security you can find in fellowship, people who see the world the same way as you. So that sort of brings me on to the issue of division. Yeah, because obviously October the 7th is a, a, a body of people that that have come together over COVID suddenly split in two over that. And we're now seeing more division. For example, Mike Eden's just put a a video out saying that Ivermectin is this massive

poison. And now that now in social media, there's a big division happening over Ivermectin because various doctors that were, you know, treating people with ivermectin who's who saw results of people surviving serious illness. Because if ivermectin are taking massive offense to this. And so we're seeing another division point and there are more and more division points appearing. What what do you worry about

that? Or do you see a way of, of is it just a case of, as you've said already, you stick to your guns and you move forward as you see it and people will eventually come back again? Or is is there anything that you think that we could all be doing which helps perhaps mitigate or minimize the effect of this these divisions that appear? It's it's very difficult and I think, but I think it was always

inevitable. I also think it was very much part of the plan, very, very clever, well orchestrated plan. It's the reason why we had two years where they sort of launched the attack, if you like, and this movement formed of people who understood why it was wrong. We were totally united and totally focused on who their enemy were and and what the enemy were trying to do.

And I went on some of those marches in London where it's people from all different backgrounds, all faiths, all races, all different walks of life, The most amazing atmosphere. Very, very angry about what was happening. I mean, absolutely livid, like we all have been, but peaceful. I think that's really important for people to remember now that millions of people went on those marches. No one smashed anything up and set fire to any police vans, didn't loot any shops.

There was no rioting because I don't think normal people do that. They have to be pushed into doing that. But we were together as a movement now that kind of built a momentum and reached a point where we had things like the truckers protesting Canada and various big things happening. And then it seemed as though the people forcing this agenda sort of thought, oh, hang on a minute. They, they seem a bit cross. We've got a lot of resistance. Let's we better stop.

But I think it was always the plan that they take their foot off the gas at that point. And we had this period of about a year and a half where nothing very much has happened. Everything sort of petered out and everyone suddenly thought, oh, a lot of us, I was of the view, I don't know about you, that it was just going to go on escalating and escalating until kind of 2013 when there was nothing left.

So we were all slightly taken off guard when they they dropped the vaccine mandates and they kind of don't do any more lockdowns. And and then the various trickles of stuff comes out about vaccine harms and things like that. Now, part of what that did was we all had this energy as a movement that we had something to focus it on. Suddenly we didn't, the energy sort of dissipated and we turned it on each other and it's

created all this division. And they then they start throwing in all these other issues. They throw in Ukraine and the Gaza thing and then you've got the immigration stuff and then let's have another election and it all separates people. More and more and more. Monkey Pox they've brought back now, yeah. Like a King Kong sequel nobody asks for. It's extraordinary. And that's taken me by surprise. I really, I didn't think they would go for the monkey Pox

again. There's obviously a good reason for it, though. There's obviously something about that that they they know they can use in a particular way that what's also happened is you've got you've got the division that's occurred on our side, on the other side on, on people who were only slightly suspicious about what was going on. They've more or less forgotten all about it, which was always the biggest worry for me is that this will, if this does come to an end at some point, it just

won't be addressed. It will be glossed over. It will be shelved as an episode that happened and now we've all moved on. Because I understood very early on that this is intended to continue. They, if they succeed at doing this once, they will do it again and again. And it will work again. If people have forgotten and and lots of people have, but you know they are going to do it again. You think so? Absolutely.

I don't. You think, are they going to do it as a health thing or are they going to do it as something else? It may not be. It may not be exactly the same format as pandemic lockdowns, but the psychological breakdown has occurred. The control structures are in place, the infrastructure is there. Lots of things, lots of laws have been brought in that are going to make it harder for people to, to refuse to, you know, consent and go along with

things and in various ways. I mean, there's all kinds of things they can they can do. Now we've got this riots do this far right stuff in the immigration thing, the social clampdown on social media. They're talking about bird flu and monkey pox or M pox, whatever they've renamed it. We've got wars, we've got the financial situation which you know, could go bang at any moment.

Basically we've got the food crisis that again, most people aren't aware of, but within the next two years there might not really be any food. I think that they're going to, having bombarded us kind of surprise ambush with pandemic and then the jabs probably next time they're going to throw all kinds of people things at people at once. Well, they're already doing that.

Caught off guard. We are, we're already starting to feel the effects of this so-called Poly crisis that they're trying to. Poly crisis? Yeah. Crisis. Good, good term. And, well, that's World Economic Forum term, so I'm not going to claim any. Yeah. But so that's already, it's already sitting there just on the, it's just keeping things bubbling along quite nicely at the moment.

Now at some point, my personal view is that that war is much more likely to be rather than health is likely to be the next thing because the emergency legislation you can put in place using war as the excuse is so much more. And it might be that war might be civil war. I'm quite happy to consider that that this country is almost at the point of exploding against itself.

And it's interesting to look back at how they seeded the idea in a fairly kind of jolly, nostalgic way at the beginning of all this about the war mentality, You know, right at

the start. Remember how they were saying it was a bit like the Blitz, but it's sort of fun because you've got Netflix, you know, and it's only a virus, but let's all pretend it's we're in the war and, and, and Johnson is Churchill and they they planted that idea right at the beginning, which I don't think is a coincidence as the way we're we're ramping things up now.

And this is talk of conscription of things which kind of was presented as a misstep by the Tories, but I'm not sure it is because the same thing is being talked about in lots and lots of other countries at the moment. Well, we've got to remember that, that the idea wasn't presented by the Tories, it was presented by the, the chiefs, the chiefs of defense chiefs. And, and so I, I don't think Labour is going to do anything

different. Of course, if you, if you develop a kind of war scenario, which may or may not be an actual war, but let's, let's say at the very least the impression of war, like just like they created the impression of a pandemic, you can then pretty much throw everything else into that and make it much more believable. All the financial problems, food shortage, food rationing and virus stuff, obviously. Oh, it's biological warfare. You know, Russia's just sprayed a load of monkey pox on us.

It's it fits very well. So I I think really what people have to do is, you know, I know I no longer think we're in a kind of battle to save the world here. I mean, I, I thought at the outset for certainly in the first six months, this is so obviously wrong. This is so obviously mad that if enough of us just point out these obvious truths, it will all blow over and go away. Because I still trusted the machine I was in.

You know, I still believe that that debate worked and people had debates in civilised democracies and not that I, I, I thought, well, this shouldn't even be debatable, these ideas, It's so insane. No, no argument actually exists logically, scientifically or morally for doing any of it. Therefore, it can't possibly go on for longer than a few weeks. And then as soon as I realized, no, this is not, none of that

stuff is going to work. It's not being allowed to happen, nobody pointing out that it's wrong, not not even people saying it's conspiracy. I don't mean that people saying there's no virus or whatever or Agenda 2030. I mean just people saying you can't. The government has no right to lock people up and do this. They were silenced and cancelled and demonized. That's when you understand, OK, this is a plan and they are going to see this through and they're smart.

Not our politicians. I don't mean they're idiots, but the people above them are very, very clever. And I'm not sure it's so much for us to to try and stop it. I think we are in more of a process of endurance. The question for everyone is how, how much can you resist this stuff, these ideas? How much can you stay true to your principles, principles of love and truth and beauty and

the importance of family? And because if you, I think if we can sustain ourselves and sustain our humanity for long enough, what they're doing won't work in the sense that they're so bonkers and evil and they don't have any of those things. It's important to remember that these people don't understand love, they understand beauty, they don't understand creativity. They will end up devouring themselves because it's the only way that they can go if we can.

We don't get. Divided along with them isn't. It. Yes, yes. So you have to be smart and you have to prepare. But ultimately this is about spiritual endurance. I think that's, and that's what what I focus on now with my work is how can I help people to stay focused on the things they need to focus on, not to forget these values that are so important that are under attack and have something.

To do you think the people that were that have been rioting in the last few weeks have forgotten those values? Yeah, I know. I'm not completely sure who the people writing actually are. I'm, I don't think a lot of them are the same people who would have been on those marches in against lockdowns. And like I said before, I, I don't think that kind of behaviour does happen organically. I mean, nobody has ever had more reason to riot than they did in 2020 and 2021.

It didn't happen. Now also for the last three years I have said, I've heard other people saying, look at some point in order to get us to where they need to get us to, there are going to be riots. And the riots are going to be based around this confrontation with illegal immigrants. And it's going to be obviously hyped up by the media and the idea that it might escalate into civil war because obviously that will give them an excuse to bring in much more control.

That's, that's the key to digital ID. Basically, if you, if you do it enough, if you make people frightened enough, you will have, you don't force something like that on them, but you will have them begging for a solution, you know, and then you present them with these. There's this sentiment, which I by the way, I understand the anger about illegal immigration and I do absolutely understand how people feel that we have lost a lot of our cultural

identity and. The values that we're supposed to have as a country, although I would ask people to remember that the biggest threat to those values is our government, not any Muslims that have been brought in by the same government, but it's, it's a legitimate concern to have. However, if you're being treated, you know, this two tier police system, if you're being treated like a second class citizen in your own country and you start demanding that that stops. I want to be recognized as a

legal citizen of my own country. And the police are then saying, well, how can we tell? We can't just tell whether you were born here or not. Well, give us a way to prove it. Oh, funny you should mention that. Here's your digital ID. It's very easy to see how this is going. And it's so easy that it, it makes me very suspicious of these riots. I just, I don't think they're organic like everything else. It just fits into perfectly to what they're trying to do.

Well, I couldn't agree more. And I used talk there about people having lost their cultural identity and and earlier you said that the people above politicians, the people that are setting policy and so on are clever. And my question would be are they clever or are we dumb? Because, because it seems to me that if you look back at how these people have run their operations for decades, if not centuries, they, they pull the same gag every time.

It's the same kind of modus operandi every time. And people fall for it every time. And you were talking earlier about, about people, some people having forgotten already what happened in 2020 and 2021. And and so, you know, and when we talk about cultural identity, this is something how can we lose that? OK, there are people have come into the country, but if we had strong communities, we wouldn't be losing our cultural identity.

The point is our weakness, not the fact that they're here. And then, and then you hear people talking about, well, they're going to outbreed us. And, and then then I said to myself, well, hold on a second. How have we got ourselves in a position where we don't want to have children anymore? And, and we get, we've got ourselves into that position because we've accepted LGBT, we've accepted the the cost of

living. We've accepted a whole of economic changes which meant that you need two salaries to buy a house now and all these kinds of some really basic things. Great to be injected with a drug that probably makes you infertile, right? So yes. So, so, you know, it seems to me you're talking about a spiritual battle.

This is actually, it's, it's not only spiritual, it's, it's, it's, it's the battle is with us as individuals and, and our willingness, isn't it to, to be part of the, the, the cultural identity that we want to be part of and be proud of that cultural identity. And we're not anymore. We've we've, we've allowed ourselves. To be we're not. Embarrassed about it? Almost. That's true.

We're not. At the same time, we, you're right that these, these things used to be so much more alive when we had proper communities and, you know, we upheld our traditions and, and things felt smaller and the state didn't intrude in, in our personal lives in the same way. But we also had institutions that we relied on that we thought were the guardians of those ideas, like the church and the royal family, for example, who I think probably leads

people. If you believe that you, you might be quite apathetic about protecting those things because you think, well, we have, we have the king. We have the queen who, who is there specifically to defend those things and to uphold them. And then it became clear to me that, you know, obviously when all of those things were under attack, the royal family went along with it immediately and

did nothing. They the only thing they were there to do. And pretty much the only time it was actually tested, they they did nothing. So, but again, not everyone has understood that yet. And and the royal family is another thing people really want to cling to. So I don't want to call people stupid. I mean, you make a good point, Mike, that it is on us as as the people to uphold these things. But like me, you know, I believe the system was self correcting. I thought we were in a democracy.

I thought the Free Press worked and I thought there were certain things that just couldn't happen. And even when they did happen, it took me a long time to understand. Therefore we're not in a democracy. We probably never were. And the Free Press is a complete lie.

I don't. I wouldn't call someone stupid for for not having let go of that yet and still trusting that you know that The biggest problem that all of this comes down to is the refusal of most people to believe that people in power wish them harm, actively want to harm them. That is the the hardest thing for most people to accept. And there are a lot of people who just won't do that, even if they're quite aware that things aren't right.

And you can talk to them about this and that and they're open to it. But once you reach the point that they, the people in control, are actively trying to harm you, that's too much for them. And I think we we have to, that's not something you can just tell somebody. You have to wait for them to actually see it for themselves. This is the biggest problem we're up against. Well, I think you're absolutely

right. News like you were saying earlier, losing that fear of letting go of things and, and that all these parts of belief systems are part of the, the, the things that need to be let go of. It's obviously a terribly difficult thing to do because in effect, there's no safety net. You know then what? Yeah, that, that's the. That's who's going, who's going to save us. This is the big problem and this is another thing is they they, they presented people with saviours. Right, right.

So that was going to be my next. Question. Oh, perfect. OK, what do you think it's? From It's a different plan then. Yeah, and, and, and again, and following on from that, what's your view on the on the idea that people have that there's going to be some kind of knight in shining armour that's going to come along and save us all? I mean, I think it's a big mistake.

I I think even if there is somebody out there, don't rely on it. Don't twiddle your thumbs waiting for somebody to appear or, or believe that there must be somebody somewhere behind the scenes trying to rescue all of this. It's up to us to do something about it. The the onus is on all of us as individuals. And yeah, that, you know, that there's Donald Trump there with the rest of them.

And I, it's very interesting. You know, this is another area where I, I challenge my own audience because loads of people are still they they still believe more so now because of recent events that Donald Trump is some kind of messianic figure who's going to to save us all. You know, and, and God stopped the bullet or, or made his ear miraculously heal in three days or, you know, it just deflected the bullet into, into this, this fireman who's worth less than Donald Trump or whatever.

Donald Trump, again, for me, is an absolutely perfect figure for anyone who's designing an agenda and wants to move us in the direction that we're going. Like the like the Queen, for example. When it came down to it, he totally failed. He was in a stronger position than almost anyone at the beginning of 2020 to change the course of all of this. You know, if the lockdowns and everything hadn't occurred in the states, it's hard to see how it would have been able to continue elsewhere.

But locked Trump was absolutely behind signing all the executive orders that made all of those measures possible in the states. And then of course, he he he claims to have initiated Operation Warp Speed, which obviously didn't happen. OK. There was obviously no Operation Warp Speed. Nobody was in a lab desperately trying to create a vaccine, you know, for this terrible pandemic. And Trump said do it quicker. And they said 08 of us have made it at the same time.

I think anyone who knows anything about this drug understands that this this was not just cobbled together in a rush. It's extremely sophisticated and specifically designed to do exactly what it was doing. It was made years and years ago and fully tested on, you know, to do what it's doing now. There was no warp speed, people. People come up with these weird theories about Trump. That or if he hadn't have made it quicker than something. I can't even remember what they say.

He he made it come out more quickly. So the lockdown's finished and it saved people because they could all see that the jabs were dangerous. So it's just, it's extraordinary the way people try to make out that Trump somehow or hear it. He's not. And he still calls himself the father of the vaccine. And again, this is one of those things where there are people who look at the jabs as if it's some little isolated incident. If somebody got that wrong, oh, that was just a little blip.

But look, they've said other good things. I said he says great stuff about trans or whatever. You know, he's really good on immigration, whatever. And I really want to stress this point, the the mass injecting of more than half the world's population with that drug is the worst thing that has ever happened in the history of our species. And it has happened now, and I know that's very, very difficult for a lot of people to accept, particularly people who've had it.

But we are now living in the aftermath of that. And the repercussions are going to go on, I'm afraid, for a very long time. It's not like, oh, people, lots of people died and now they've finished dying. And obviously we want justice. People will keep dying, keep being extremely ill, probably be infertile, affected in all kinds of different ways for years and years, I'm afraid. And people have to kind of accept that that that thing took

place. And anybody who was involved at any kind of high level with making that happen is not your friend, has to be discounted, should not be allowed anywhere near power ever again. And Donald Trump is one of those people. But. Then people will say well he's the best of a bad lot or they'll make. Up. Yeah, the best. Of a bad lot this is. Well, nobody's perfect. I get that all the time. You know, don't let the perfect be the enemy of the good.

And I'm not looking for perfect. I, I, you've got the kind of deepest circle of hell with the likes of, you know, Fauci and Bill Gates and Doctor Rachel Clark and you know, these people in and then in the kind of just a hair's breadth above them, you've got a figure like Donald Trump or Elon Musk or whoever it is. And you, you're saying that's, but that's nowhere near good. I'm asking for somebody, you know, somewhere near good. Obviously not perfect, but

because that's all people have. They they go, Oh, well, this, he must be a good guy then. Now, if you haven't got Trump, if you haven't got Elon Musk, if you haven't got whoever it is, Lawrence Fox, whoever these people, then you've got nobody. And you need to be OK with that because you've got yourself. It's about you. Stop looking for somebody to like you say, ride in on a on a White Horse with a bleeding ear

and save you all. That sounds like, you know, you personally you're, you're very much at ease with that now. And are you, are you aware, I mean, either sort of personally or professionally of there of there being a growing number of people who you feel have that sense of calm within themselves that they're that they've done what they need to do in their lives to effectively sort of write this out?

Yes, I mean, I think obviously there are a lot of people who've made various preparations for what may or may not be coming. Like getting out of the cities is probably 1 big thing people can do. None of us can be sure about what's around the corner. You know, I mean, I'm like I say, I think I have a fairly good grasp of what they are, where they're trying to take us and what the story is.

And, you know, and sometimes people say I'm a, you know, like a prophet because I appear to know things. Way ahead of. But I'm not a prophet. I just understand the narrative and I skipped ahead a few pages, you know, that's all that's happening. But I'm not sure exactly what all the things will happen in or how none of us can know exactly how prepared we should be. And I think it's fear, You know, we're afraid of what might happen, and we're afraid of physical death.

They're all about us being afraid of physical death. And really, what people need to be frightened of is spiritual death. Well. I think that's what I mean, I, I think I, I mean sort of psychologically or spiritually or, you know, that, that, that, you know, do do feel that people are reconciled with taking on the mental battle to the, to the limit. I'm not sure. I mean, I hope so. I hope people understand that that's what they need to do.

And I suppose have faith, even if it's not religious faith, but have faith in themselves that that will be enough. I think that's very important, you know, for people to believe in themselves and their capacity to endure. Yeah, That's, that's cool. That's. Come in, Bob. OK, right, So what can we say about this, this fantastic picture and I'm going to say a massive thank you once again for this because we managed to get #1 which is fantastic. I. Didn't realize you had number one.

Yeah, that's great. And who? All's in here and ball's in here. And I saw you were you were tweeting out that the Olympics had had. I think I may have accidentally influenced the Olympic ceremony. Yeah, I don't. I hate, hate to think they might be looking at my cartoons for ideas. This was a this was a kind of

big. Well, it started as just an idea about showing all the figures together in one place, having a great time at our expense, you know, And sort of I thought they need to be literally bathing in the blood of innocence, pretty much. I thought, well, how could I do that? And it happened to take my children to bath to the theater that few days later. And we walked past the old Roman baths. And I thought, oh, yeah, that's, that's it.

That would be good. I do think there's a kind of obviously links with the Roman Empire or the fall of the Roman Empire. So I thought it would fit quite well. And this is an example of the kind of image, not just because of the explicit nudity, but just the scale and the detail of it that I just couldn't have done at the paper. When you have those kind of deadlines, you can't. You might think of an idea like this. You immediately throw it out because you don't have time to do it.

And the great thing is now if I want to, I can spend, you know, a week or more doing something like this. Everybody that walks in here and sees this picture and I noticed it on Twitter. You put out a a crop version and then you said, oh, we can't not let you see big Mike here. Yes, every everybody notices a particular. Eye is drawn. Drawn to a particular corner of the and and we're just getting a big.

Mike there, yes, yeah. And it's interesting because he's obviously right over in the corner, and the idea is that Blair is the sort of focal point of the picture. But it's kind of unavoidable that people's eyes are immediately drawn here. Yeah. It's good. It's it's. Funny. It's, you know, I, I, what's interesting to me now is that obviously I've been drawing

cartoons my whole life. And when I was younger and particularly as a teenager, you know, I would draw the kind of naughtiest things possible to kind of provoke a reaction. And it was quite a good way of making friends at school and that type of thing. And obviously you, you have to get a job and you've got to tone it all down and you learn about actually putting comment, intelligent comment into your work and saying something with it.

But then once I kind of learn how to do that and no longer work at the paper, I'm kind of able to combine the two things now. So use that kind of, I suppose, juvenile sense of humor, but actually use it to say something important and depict real people. And obviously they are. They are all very much naked. In a sense, in my view was in very exposed and people should should see them that way. And David Cameron there with a pig. Oh yes, David Cameron's pig.

Which these little things are interesting because obviously lots of people in other countries have no idea what who he is or why. There's a pig there. So it's quite good fun. Sometimes you can point people to the stories and they can look it up and you know, obviously when you tell them, they don't believe it's true. And a lot of people maybe don't notice Jimmy Savile up in up in the corner there. Yeah, there's a Jimmy Savile statue there. Next to this is probably Satan.

I can't remember who this chap was supposed to be. You've got the owl, which is a reference to Bohemian, Bohemian Grove, Dark Lord Sauron, and then the Baphomet statue behind Ball and yeah, all sorts of things going on and. The one person that isn't there is George W Bush. Yeah, he there, there, there are various people who were considered for this. There are a few different sketches that had some other people who didn't make it. I mean, George Bush's he's not been.

Front and centre. The last few years, you know, he doesn't pop up that often. It's always difficult. We were talking about this before, about when you're doing something like this and choosing. Who to put in it, I think. Are people aware of all these characters? You know, how familiar are they with people? What do they do? They know the back story. I mean, it's incredible. For example, the the Trudeau there are still people who don't understand why I draw Trudeau like that with.

Me. Black. They can know that. That's Trudeau. No, no, they'll say, well, where's where's Justin Trudeau? And you say, well, he's behind Donald Trump and they don't know. But you know, again, it's fun because you can just send in the photographs. Yeah, yeah, brilliant, brilliant. OK, let's go and have a look at the other one then. OK. Yeah. And this one is, is a lot darker of course in some respects in sense of the choice of the colours and so on. But I suppose the subject matter well.

This is this is sort of interesting. I mean, unlike the last one, there is some hope and optimism in this because it's, it's more about the the dark forces being pushed back. Yes, by the good side. So this one came about because Wright said Fred had a single that they were going to release Cold Spiritual War. And they just asked me if I would do an artwork to accompany it. But it's an idea I'd sort of had in my mind for a while. And I basically thought, oh,

this is great. It's an excuse to do something like the image I'd had in my mind about, you know, well, well, basically depicting all the characters who are ruining our lives as, as these sort of demonic creatures. Yes. And it was a lot of fun. And this was the at the time, this was the most detailed thing I'd I'd ever done, I think. And it's mostly the same people that are in the other one. I think. Except what? Who's who's this? Mostly, but some of these are just my own creation.

So this is just a kind of trans demon, I suppose you would call it. Yeah, it's nobody in particular. And saying this here's a sort of vaccine creature that the pig is obviously Boris Johnson. Who else have we got that? Oh, Jacinda, who I don't think is in. She's in the other one. Right. She's not in the other one. Sam Smith didn't appear in the bloodbath. Zelensky, who's also not in the Baths. Oh, and Piers Morgan of. Course. Who is Piers Morgan?

I think is. I've drawn him a few times because for me he's just a good figure to use to represent the mainstream media and the kind of disgusting sell out that he is. Brilliant. Well, I'm very glad that they're here and you can all, you can all be distracted by all the little details. Well, I mean, it's studio. We put the one in the room downstairs because of course, big windows, everybody walks past, sees that and yes, it gets some looks. So it's good.

It's brilliant. I think we got it. We'll we'll finish this. And my last question to you then is what's next for Bob? Oh yes, I I do need to talk about this. I completely forgot I'm doing a book. So I've got a book coming out in October, which what's that close is yes, excellent. It's 11th of October. It's going to be out and it's going to be very. Well, you have copies at the UK column event on the 19th. That's right.

I'm doing the UK column event on the 19th and I will have copies there and I think I'm going to do a talk around the book. So people have been asking me to do a book for the whole of the

last four years. And I was reluctant for several reasons, partly because it felt too early for a long time and but mainly because I just, I didn't want to be one of these by my book people who were popping up everywhere and, you know, because lots of people immediately brought books out and about what was going on. But you know, I've got to, I've got to accept that I am now one of those people, please buy my book. And but obviously I'm, I'm sort of having to do it largely myself.

It's, it's being printed, but it's not, I haven't got a publisher. So it will be available to buy via my website and it's covers all my work from the last four years. It's going to be very nice hardback book, over 200 pages, loads and I think 184 cartoons in it or something. But it also has lots of sketches that people haven't seen before. Some of my preliminary sketches or ideas I I didn't do for whatever reason.

So yeah. And I've written a sort of long essay at the start of it that's all about the nature of cartooning and kind of satire and what's happened to satire. So yeah, I'm really pleased about it. It's been quite a big project, but useful. Useful to kind of look back at everything I've done and think about where I go from here. And so the 11th of October.

Sorry, Charles. And now it's just the the other thing that people need to know where where can they watch the recorded version of Artpocalypse? Yes, my live show Artpocalypse that I did that I wasn't able to put on in many places. Unfortunately, it kept getting cancelled. Is the easiest way to view it now is to go to my Twitter. I've put it live on my Twitter profile, which is at Bob's cartoons on Twitter and it's I think it's pinned at the top of my profile.

So it's free to watch now. So yes, please do watch that. A lot of hard work went into it and it was a lot of fun to make. And I may not be doing it live again unfortunately, but it's there online for people to find. Brilliant, Bob. I'm going to say thank you very much for joining us and well, we will see you on the 19th, but you know, hopefully we'll see a lot more of you for the coming weeks and months. I hope so. It's been a real pleasure. Thank you for having me. Super. Thanks, Mike.