Two Big Egos in a Small Car
A passionately laid back overview of the arts and culture scene in York and Harrogate with observations on journalism. This podcast is hosted by Charles Hutchinson and Graham Chalmers and regular guests.
Two Big Egos in a Small Car
Episode 268: AI and a former PM; Tim Key Live in Leeds; Jason Burke's The Revolutionists
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AI continues to find its way into every corner of our lives and even the bank balance of former PM, Rishi Sunak.
Graham is moved to discuss the strange success of comic writer Tim Key, whom he watched up close on stage in Leeds.
He follows this up with a new book of history that by being brilliant is missing the point - The Guardian foreign correspondent Jason Burke's new book The Revolutionists - The Story of the Extremists who Hijacked the 1970s.
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Good evening, Graham. Hello, Charles. It's Sunday evening. I'll pretend that nothing has happened today. Nothing significant. Dear, I dear, I dear. Someone didn't turn up. That was me, but someone else didn't turn up. But I won't say who. I won't say which part of it. The Mighty Wakes. They're not so Mighty Wakes. Anyway, let's move on swiftly. Something far less disappointing than that. So, Graeme, good evening to you and good evening to Anthony. This is Sunday evening, as I say. And let's start with uh well, it looks like a quick interruption.
SPEAKER_00Oh, yeah, you know I mentioned Richie Sunak the other week, the former British Prime Minister. Yeah, never mentioned Sunak. Yeah. MP for Richmond in North Alton and how I'd met him, but he didn't seem to realise he was going to meet me. And him and his team and his security guards seemed less than just about the local MP meeting the local reporter. And I remember and you remember how I said that the only question I was going to ask him of any interest was going to be, you know, why are you still just a local MP? Why aren't you doing something else? It would be up to a former prime minister's status. And it turns out that I was simultaneously spot on, but also woefully ignorant because it turns out that as of last October, he is an advisor not only to Microsoft, but also Anthropic. And Anthropic's a new AI company based in America, which has developed a new model called Claude Mythos or Mytho. And uh Grayson Perry's on chat had been in Channel 4 recently, the artist talking about he's seen the future and he's been to San Francisco and it's all about AI. And it was all he tried to be very positive about it, but it was all quite scary. Anyway, Rishi's up to his neck in that turns out. He isn't just a humble local MP after all, he's advising Microsoft and Anthropic. So I was sort of right, but sort of wrong.
SPEAKER_01It's all very depressing matter, I say, getting rid of 8,000 people just to replace them with robots. Gosh, how predictable. Well, apparently, but it's hugely beneficial to us all. No one's gonna lose jobs. There's gonna be a whole lot of new jobs created, and it's not that wealth is gonna go to an even smaller proportion of the population, apparently. Ho, ho, bloody ho.
SPEAKER_00Well, that's what Grayson was trying to get away from, although it did surface during the way from that channel.
SPEAKER_01Should do an interesting artistic response.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, he he he bottled it really. He didn't want to look negative or not cool with the kids, so he ended up being overly positive about the prospects. But anyway, Rishi was in news night just last week talking about how jobs for younger people are already being hit by AI. And he also said that companies now are talking about they're saying that flat is the new up, and by flat they mean that they can grow the company without actually employing many more employees, therefore turning it into pure profit as they grow. And Rishi was saying that he, you know, he thinks this should be a way of like making AI actually create new roles. And I thought, that's all very well, but you're advising Microsoft, who I'd be surprised if they were in the process of working out how to use AI to create jobs, because as everybody knows, the whole point of companies and business is to make as much money as possible. And why would you create a form of AI which, whilst increasing the size of the company and the amount of revenue, also increase the number of staff by you know a significant number of.
SPEAKER_01What will be fascinating is when AI puts AA AI out of work, that will be interesting.
SPEAKER_00Well, no, there'll be an AI competition. If you think that you know technology involved with phones and social media and online right now is constantly the software's constantly being updated, there's always new apps. Well, AI will be the same. There'll be new AI programs, ten a penny, that you have to pay for. And there'll be there'll be people who've got money or people who are fairly athlete, will get will be able to buy top AI apps, which do everything, and everybody else will either not have AI apps at all, or they'll have the budget version, which won't be as successful. So, you know, I I can't see in what how in what level, apart from making technological progress and maybe scientific and medical progress, I can see all that happening and being an improvement. I can't see how it actually benefits the economy in terms of jobs or equality or fairness of tax revenues.
SPEAKER_01I mean, as we're principally um an arts um podcast in many ways. I guess the question is how does AI benefit the arts? Because Grayson, did he offer any suggestions that that would happen?
SPEAKER_00Not really. He just let the mainly young people in San Francisco talk positively about using AI to do things as if by some magic it was going to create jobs as well. But he didn't, he he didn't really have any ideas to how it was going to create jobs. No one does. I mean, Rishi's been saying recently that you know, as employee numbers reduce, we're gonna have to get rid of national insurance tax altogether because it'll be useless for the government to have it. And it should be replaced by a cor a corporation tax, a new corporate tax. And I thought Rishi Sunak, the ex-Tory Prime Minister who works for Microsoft, is he really suggesting there should be no national insurance and replaced by a corporate tax? And I thought, I don't believe a word he's saying. I think what Rishi's doing is what Clegg did with Cameron. It's like a version of Greenwash. It's it's it's designed to make something which is going to have unpleasant consequences seem palatable. And I think that's that's the game he's involved with, just like Nick Clegg was Lib Dems in the Tory coalition. It made it makes bad news seem like it might be good news.
SPEAKER_01I think he put he still puts the rich into Richmond, doesn't he?
SPEAKER_00Well, yeah, he's got enough money to create UK companies, or at least to you know, to invest in UK companies to create AI that would help Britain if he wanted to. But he's actually getting money from Americans, so I don't know if it's a lot of people.
SPEAKER_01That's why that's where he first made his money, wasn't it? I mean, he was you know down in California, that's where he made his money.
SPEAKER_00Well, yeah, him and David Lamy, the uh Labour cabinet minister, they're both trying to big up the idea of Britain benefiting from AI and the British economy get involved with AI for British interests. And it it's it's a good idea in paper, but I really don't see without having any British or European major players in the AI world, how that's going to happen.
SPEAKER_01Correct. The A1 was far more significant in the history of Britain than Britain's contribution to AI discuss.
SPEAKER_00Well, no, well, yeah, we as usual, Britain come up comes up with a lot of the ideas and the science, but then doesn't have the money or the political will to actually capitalise on it financially.
SPEAKER_01Well, uh, that's a further depression on top of my initial depression to start this evening with. Let's go for a uh a hat-trick of this. Um, the strange success of comic writer Tim Kay, or Key, I should say, watch that Key up close on stage in Leeds. I'm assuming he played the Leeds City Varieties brand, would that be right?
SPEAKER_00Of course, yes, yes. The old music music hall recently renovated, which was first opened in 1865. And Tim Key is there in his Loganbury tour. And don't ask me what Loganbury means, because he he just picks uh names at random for his tours in general, and he was there, and it wasn't quite stand-up, and it wasn't quite anything else. It was like he was there theoretically to push his new book of poems called LA Baby. And when I say poems, I mean anybody who can string a sense together can call what they're doing poetry. So it isn't really proper poetry, but it is quite quite funny, and so he's there to push the book and to talk about himself and how successful and famous he is, or maybe he's not as successful as he thinks he is. And I suddenly thought back to Garth Merengi, the fake character who was there at least varieties a few weeks ago. And his character is quite the same where both him and Tim Key are talking about themselves the whole time and whether whether they're really successful, and they really want to be successful, but they also, in a self-deprecating fashion, suggest that they're not really that successful at all. And it was it was that sort of shtick that he did for the for the whole show on and off. Would would he have preferred Ballon Wallace Island not to have been successful following that logic? Well, he meant well he did he did sort of wittily mention in the past couple of times he said, you know, how many people are here because of the film. So he made a sh little reference to the success success of uh Valder Wallace Island, which he co-wrote with Tom Basden, and which was quite a hit for a tiny budget. Exactly. And it was a very interesting show. He's a very watchable man. He walks on stage in a suit with a baseball cap, 10 minutes for the start of the show when music is still playing on the PA, and he just wanders around the stage slowly, look at the audience for for nearly 10 minutes. Occasionally spots get someone's eye and just nods sort of like knowledgeably to the person in the crowd. And this went for 10 minutes, and then the show actually started. And when he started the show, it was all very dry, very droll, very clever. But every now and again he'd burst into like emotional language and start shouting almost at himself rather than the crowd about how he wasn't as successful as he wanted to be. And then every now and again he'd surprise you by being really vulgar and using a swear word. And it was like he was trying to manipulate and control the audience the whole time. And I know that stand-ups always do that because they have to, because it's you versus a lot more people. If you're not in control of the crowd as a stand-up, well then you're the victim of the crowd. But he was particularly whereas Garth Merengi, or the man playing Garth Merengi, was quite gentle in his persona in his handling of the crowd. There was something quite almost drool about Tim Key when he did it. And it's only comedy, so you can't get too annoying about that. But he was particularly rude to one member of the audience when he was he was talking about how he was very excited because he takes to make out himself the time. He's very excited to be having in a cafe in London and in walks Greg Rosetsky, the former British tennis player, and he's excited about that. So he started chatting to crowd about that and asked if anyone remembered Greg Ruzewski. So some guy in the balcony stupidly said yes, he did. And so then Tim had a quick chat with him, and the guy got an obvious fact about Greg Rosetsky completely wrong. And then Tim was very rude about this member of the audience to the rest of the audience, and when he did it, he then he did a look sort of like almost a wink to let the crowd know he wasn't actually serious, but it was still quite brutal, I felt. So it's strip Tim's a strange character on stage.
SPEAKER_01Uh so he's not low-key, obviously.
SPEAKER_00He's low-key, except he suddenly erupts in anger or with a bit of vulgarity or a swear word. Maybe that helps to unbalance the control balance you.
SPEAKER_01That helps the control, doesn't it? That you're not sure what to expect. You don't know what he's gonna say.
SPEAKER_00He suddenly turned up in the balcony in person at one point in the show and started chatting to two audience member audience members. He really does like you know, there's there's a set almost it's bizarre because he's just a man with a baseball cap and a suit. There's a slight element of danger.
SPEAKER_01The other man with a baseball cap and a suit is Donald Trump.
SPEAKER_00Actually, I didn't get that reference, but Tim is such a clever guy that's not impossible that that was in his mind. Possible. Anyway, the the weird thing was that I enjoyed the show, although I didn't laugh as much as for this the the uh support act, but then again, lots of famous stand-ups are fascinating to watch, but you don't always laugh the whole time. I enjoyed the show, but there was a real Tim Key moment at the end of the show because as we filed out of City Variety's, he had gone downstairs to do book signings of LA Baby.
SPEAKER_02Oh, yeah.
SPEAKER_00And I because we'd come downstairs to get out of the building, we knew there was a huge crew of people winding up the narrow stairs back to the actual auditorium. But when you left the building and you stopped and looked round through the open doors to where he was sitting signing books, you couldn't see the crowd, and it looked like he was sitting there on his own. I thought that's that's a bit of a Tim Key moment.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, absolutely. So, Graham, um, you've been reading books as usual, and this time this is a book by the Guardians foreign correspondent, Jason Burke. Actually, he's the international security correspondent. I got it wrong, Charles. International security correspondent, yeah, yeah, yeah. It seems to be quite a niche market.
SPEAKER_00Well, he's very niche because he's been doing this thing for 30 years. So the new book, which is published by The Bodley Head, which of course is part of Penguin Random House, inevitably, the new book, The Revolutionists, the story of the extremists who hijacked the 1970s, it's 600 pages long. The footnotes are almost as long as the book, and you can tell this guy absolutely knows his subject inside out. He's probably met lots of these people. Yes, and he's probably knows guys in the CIA, blah blah blah. And you can tell that because the the quotes on the book cover from people you've got ex-Tory cabinet mister Rory Stewart calling the book astonishing, you got Channel 4's international editor, Lindsay Hilms Hilsom, calling it riveting. You got Fergal Keane, the BBC's best forest correspondent, apart from uh the uh fantastic guy who almost does in the least, whose name I've forgotten. I know who you mean. Yeah. Jeremy Bowen. Jeremy Bowen. Well, Fergal Keane called it like a great spine thriller, and it is like a great spine thriller. It's very good on detail, very dramatic, very human, and he quite sensibly doesn't judge the extremists who are doing all these hijackings, which almost inevitably led to deaths. Yeah, of course. He's got a neutral tone, and he says, I'm not going to call them terrorists because you know terrorism's in the eye of the beholder. But I remember the hijackings in the 1970s, which ran on to the 1980s. I remember the names in the news like the Red Army Brigade, the Bader Meinhof Gang, Angry Brigade, The Weather on the Ground in USA. And it lasted about there's about 15 years of them kidnapping, hijacking, bumping off people. And it was it was the difference between it then and now, and this is what the book trust the book trust tells the story of how mainly left-wing, Marxist-influenced freedom fighters in single quotes of the 1670s ended up turning into Islamist, you know, like dictatorial authoritarian terrorists of the 1990s and current day. And I remember when in the 70s and 80s, those groups they were enemy number one, but they were quite cool in culture. Like the clash were always mentioned, the Red Armour Brigade in dressing in their gear. On the T-Rock explode second album Wilder 1981, there's a song called Like Leela Kalla Said, which Leela Kalla was a uh member of like the then PLO who was doing the hijackings. So it was it was different days then when you could do that sort of stuff and not be uh outside the mainstream entirely, and and it wasn't outside the mainstream, it was almost part of the mainstream game in a way that isn't anymore.
SPEAKER_01Yes, I mean to think that uh that teardrop explodes actually did a song about Layla Carla said exactly. Um trying to think which modern band might be doing such a thing now, probably not.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, well you get kneecap, etc., and Bob Villain, who are obviously against uh Israeli attacks on Gaza, etc. Yeah, but I don't think kneecap in real life actually have any affinity with Hamas and Gaza. And if they met them, I'm not sure how well they'd get on because they're a world apart. I think the difference between then and now is that those extremists in the 1670s weren't a world apart from mainstream Western politics in the way that uh today's terrorists are if you're gonna call them terrorists.
SPEAKER_01You're suggesting that the the the book is missing the point though, so reason for that?
SPEAKER_00Well, it's it's it's a bit like he's a really clever writer, really clever bloke, Jason Burke. It's a really great book, and the details are fantastic. And you pick up little bits like in 1968, the Israelis who never take anything lying down, they responded to pro-Palestinian hijackings and attacks abroad by sending special forces to Beirut and Lebanon, even though Beirut and Lebanon hadn't really been involved. And they blew up 12 Lebanese civilian airplanes on the airport uh in Beirut in some sort of strange retaliation against the nascent early version of the PLO activities. But one of the special forces, a young man who was part of that group who went into Lebanon and blew those planes up was Benjamin Netanyahu. So you get all these fascinating little details pop up in the course of the book. So it's it's hard to be critical of the book, except for one thing. He doesn't tell the story round the growth of that sort of hijacker, extremist, terrorist, whatever you want to call them. And the backdrop is that politics and culture in the Western world were different in the 1670s than they are now, and he doesn't seem to be getting into that whatsoever in the book. And so, although the book shows the transition into the present era, which have developed after the Shah fell in Iran, and Islamist revolutionaries started to be the big thing in the least rather than left-wing influenced terrorists, because even the PLO were into She Guevara and Marxism, it shows that really well. But there's only a small number of actual Islamist terrorists right now, and there's only a small number of left-wing terrorists back then.
SPEAKER_01Yeah.
SPEAKER_00And the reason they're both important isn't because just because they kill people, it's more that they represent something, they represent a lot of people in a real situation. So now Islamist terrorists represent nations who are under threat from someone else, sometimes Israel. And back then you had very strong trade unions, you had left-wing parties which actually were left-wing as opposed to the middle of the road. So the small number of hijackers in the 1670s had resonance because the mainstream culture was more left-wing than it is now, and and he hasn't bothered going into that. No, probably because it was start, it was it was spelled the plot. You could see uh you could see a TV series coming out of this book. Absolutely, yeah. So uh recommended reading or not? Definitely, it's really well written, it's really fascinating, but the endless toll to I mean, lots of lots of the hijackers got killed. It isn't just that they killed civilians, like the terrible Munich Olympics, yeah, village disaster where they killed all their Israeli hostages. Yeah, they themselves got killed a lot. It was a very dangerous profession or cause to take up. Of course, and it does get a bit wearisome that everything that happens in the book ends in death. It's just like, oh yeah, new hijacking, new terrorists, new reason. Uh it becomes wearisome just death after death after death. I would rather hear about the ideas. I would rather hear about what they think they were doing, what do these people think they were doing by doing what they were doing? And it's more of a narrative than it is a discussion. And I would prefer if the book had been more of a discussion.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, I can understand that. Um I mean, it's interesting that you know we can vividly remember hijackings in the 70s. Vividly remember the political intrigues that went with that. Um well, I would suggest more than any other decade we would remember that.
SPEAKER_00Well, yeah, because it was on the news a lot, and it almost became expected that there was a chance you'd get hijacked and flown to Cuba or you know Jordan or somewhere. I mean, but it was all around the world. There was a Japanese Red Army as well, so it wasn't just a PLO. It was you know well educated Western middle class ex-student protesters or even musicians and journalists became terrorists. Whereas the Middle East terrorists tend to come from a background where either they themselves had been displaced by the creation of Israel in 184 in 1948, or the the there were the children of people of families that had been affected when Israel was created. So there was a link there between the two that was they weren't even compatible in some ways. What linked them together was the fact that they both uh were interested in left-wing politics and Marxism. And once uh Middle East groups stopped their interest in Marxism, which happened uh basically because Thatcher and Reagan killed off the left wing in the West, they looked to religion then as the driving force uh of their activities, sometimes murderous activities.
SPEAKER_01Which is always a frightening thought that religion is used in such destructive ways, but uh well it wasn't the West.
SPEAKER_00I mean the the Crusades were uh pretty damn nasty, and that wasn't a Western invention.
SPEAKER_01Absolutely, and and you could say um the conduct of uh slavery as well, taking it taking over people and uh uh as well as forcing them to do labor, but also imposing religious uh beliefs on them as well and doing in doing that.
SPEAKER_00Exactly. Anyway, and I'd like to know as the time is running out, you know that Shed Seven are touring again this November.
SPEAKER_01They're doing their Shed Sumber Shed Shed Sumber 10.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, although it's in November, so it's more like Movember.
SPEAKER_01November and December.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, yeah, yeah. And of course, they're doing like all the sort of O2 Academies across Britain and including Brixton Academy. And they're playing Leeds O2 Academy twice because the first one sold out pretty damn quickly. So uh their amazing revival of recent years seems to be continuing.
SPEAKER_01I still think the question is why on earth are they not playing the arena? Uh not the arena, playing uh play yeah, playing first direct first direct bank arena now. Surely they could fill that now.
SPEAKER_00Well, I was thinking why aren't they trying arenas? If if David Byrne can do arenas, if Fontaine's DC can do arenas, there's so many acts there that are jumping into arenas. I was quite surprised that they didn't have the moment to do it, isn't it?
SPEAKER_01This is the moment to do it, I would have thought.
SPEAKER_00Well, perhaps they don't think they're quite popular enough to fill Leeds Arena.
SPEAKER_01Maybe they also just like the O2 Academy, maybe they like that environment.
SPEAKER_00That's true, that's true. And also, although Rick Witter is a very good frontman and a great bloke, as we know, because we've known him on off for a long time. He he's actually quite modest. Um he probably thinks that he doesn't really want to do an arena and act like you know, Billy Big, what you would call it. Yeah, so to speak. Tim Key would have said that.
SPEAKER_01They're also playing at uh Peace Hall Halifax, they're doing uh the uh anniversary of uh Maximum High, so they're gonna be playing the album in full there, of course. So that's uh as we're in the anniversary of uh the album that produced five hit singles, of course, Graham.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, no, amazing, amazing record. Uh for an unfancied band, they've done exceedingly well. They have, they have indeed.
SPEAKER_01You've been listening to the podcast Two Big Egos in a Small Colour. Your hosts were Graham Chalmers and Charles Hutchinson. This was a Baltic sub-production.