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?
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.