YouSaid · the spoken record

John Simpson

lines on the record: 46
first: 2022-03-16
most recent: 2022-03-16
sittings or episodes: 1
sources: podcast

Every line below is reproduced as it was said and linked to the record it came from. Nothing here is summarised or generated. Directory · Search · Corrections

“And excitement and joy went out of my family when he died. But that, you know, I was only born thirty thirty odd years later, but everybody in the family was still talking about Cody, Cody, Cody.”
2022-03-16 · Intelligence Squared · No Bullsh*t Leadership, with John Simpson · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“His circus. She used to stand against an iron screen and he'd ride around on his horse firing his gun at little glass balls all round her figure. Once he hit her in the thigh and to kind of maintain his reputation for accurate marksmanship, she stood there until the act was finished. And he was absolutely magnificent, much older than all the other young guys that were flying pioneers. He was already in his late forties, early fifties. And the only way that he knew how to land was to crash. So every flight that he took, including his first one, ended in near death. Just a wonderful fantastic charming bloke. And then one day in 1913 he took a new model plane up and it broke up in the air and he died instantly. And I always felt something kind of went out of my family, a bit of a glamour.”
2022-03-16 · Intelligence Squared · No Bullsh*t Leadership, with John Simpson · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Do you think Well, what a lovely question to ask. Thank you. Yeah, I was brought up in a sort of after glow of Colonel Cody. He wasn't a colonel and his name wasn't Cody. He was, to some extent, a con man, except where everything that mattered was concerned. So he came over to England. He was a brilliant rider and shot, an absolutely brilliant marksman. Those were facts about him. And he built up a circus. He called himself Cody because of Buffalo Bill Cody. And he ran off with my great-grandmother, who was a married woman with no fewer than four kids living in Chelsea. And he went toward Europe with...”
2022-03-16 · Intelligence Squared · No Bullsh*t Leadership, with John Simpson · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Never ever leave a story. I was in Angola and I stumbled together with several other people. I stumbled across a really big story at the time, a big story, a massacre that had been carried out by British soldiers, British mercenaries rather. It was ultra scary. It really was absolutely terrifying. And the BBC said, come back to London and do it. And I went back to London. And the people that I'd left behind got the story out before me and got a much better and more effective story than I did. I would say to any young reporter, never, never leave the story. Until you're absolutely certain that it's finished, and do not go out early because you're scared.”
2022-03-16 · Intelligence Squared · No Bullsh*t Leadership, with John Simpson · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“In the dining room, and they'd sit there. And if you sat near them, you'd hear all their old stories. But the stories all ended on the day they retired. And I just used to think, I really don't want to be like this. I don't want my life to end at the age of 68. And then suddenly the only people I can talk to who are interested to talk to me are people who remember all those things from the past. I don't want to be, I'm probably am anyway, but I don't really want to be the club.”
2022-03-16 · Intelligence Squared · No Bullsh*t Leadership, with John Simpson · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Go yourself for myself. Yeah, but I'm too mean to pay for myself after 50 years of being paid for. So, I mean, that's really what keeps me going. Also, I think it is to have something to add to the general conversation about a situation like this. I belong nowadays. I often think I'll get into trouble for belonging to the Garrick Club in trouble because it hasn't yet accepted women, though it will, of course. And when I first started as a member, lots and lots of famous old broadcasting luminaries like Robin Day and, oh, I don't know, endless others used to have a table in the...”
2022-03-16 · Intelligence Squared · No Bullsh*t Leadership, with John Simpson · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“No, I'm not. I really, really am not. Honestly, I'm not. But I just kind of get irritated that I'm not seeing it for myself, really. That's all. I mean, I'm having no secret, I think, about it. I'm having a real battle with the BBC at the moment because I very, very much want to go to Ukraine. And they look at me and they think this old boy is 77. And, you know, he's probably not going to make it. And so we're having a battle, I suppose they'll win. You might have to end up being like one of those.”
2022-03-16 · Intelligence Squared · No Bullsh*t Leadership, with John Simpson · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And on, I think, three occasions I've disobeyed instructions and stayed. And it was always the right thing to do. I mean, once when a group of people were hunting us down in Serbia during the bombing of Belgrade. And once in the bombing of Baghdad in 1991, again, the BBC ordered me out and somewhere else too. And, you know, I just think there are times when you've got to say to yourself, look, I'm probably not going to get out of this. So I'm going to do the best I possibly can while I'm here. And then Bingo, you do get out of it. So, I mean, it's, you know. Win w”
2022-03-16 · Intelligence Squared · No Bullsh*t Leadership, with John Simpson · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“To a young journalist who wanted to do these kind of things, I would say always go further than you think you ought to because your fears kick in quite early on when you're going around and loud bangs and all sorts of things happening you should get closer, always get closer. And I've passed that on to people. In my own case, I think if I can stand outside myself a little bit, I think the times that I have some reason to be proudest of is not those necessarily those times. It's when you're on your own and your organization orders you to leave.”
2022-03-16 · Intelligence Squared · No Bullsh*t Leadership, with John Simpson · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I mean, if I'm honest, yes, it does, it can do at any rate. The first thing to say is that even reporting in war zones right up on the firing line is not often as dangerous, so it's not 100% dangerous all the time. I mean, I've had various, got various injuries, bit lumps of metal in me, lymph, death, all from bombs and guns and things. But those things usually happen not because you've pushed ahead somewhere you shouldn't be, but by chance somebody else has made a mistake in where you're bonded. I think the one thing that if I were to talk”
2022-03-16 · Intelligence Squared · No Bullsh*t Leadership, with John Simpson · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Oh, fantastic, sorry, unfunny stories and savage stories and nor always very comfortable stories either. And, you know, I mean, her first husband, Ernest Hemingway wasn't exactly one of her favorites either.”
2022-03-16 · Intelligence Squared · No Bullsh*t Leadership, with John Simpson · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Take it off the front page of the Guardian and a desire to go and see for themselves what's actually happening. And that is true of just about everybody that you've named. I mean, Martha Gelhorn, I'm proud and grateful to say was a real close friend of mine in the last six years, I think, of her life in London. And I had hours upon some of the”
2022-03-16 · Intelligence Squared · No Bullsh*t Leadership, with John Simpson · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“There is a stereotype, which is, you know, those characters that go around with those jerkins with all sorts of pockets and stuff like that and silly hats and say, you know, where's the front line? I mean, that is like that. They tend not to be from the big organizations. They tend to be kind of freelancers who turn up. And bless our hearts, they often do a superb job, but not my kind of person I kind of identify with really. I think the one thing that does seem to link all these people together is a willingness from time to time to set aside their own. Particular comfort and safety. And secondly, a real sense of curiosity about what's happening, an unwillingness just simply to”
2022-03-16 · Intelligence Squared · No Bullsh*t Leadership, with John Simpson · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“A great lover of football. And I said to him, the BBC has now given me a new program and a lot of opportunities to travel and broadcast their hearts. And I said to my son, I feel exactly like Lazarus. And my son said, oh yeah, who does he play for?”
2022-03-16 · Intelligence Squared · No Bullsh*t Leadership, with John Simpson · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“No, I mean, to be honest, and I'm perhaps being more than honest than I should be, for some time I was kind of pretty much hanging on the precipice. I mean, I'm now 77. And there was a definite kind of move to say, you know, cut the old boy loose, which I rather resisted. In the last two years, year or two years, I've kind of made a comeback. I've got a son 16 years old, lovely boy, not perhaps as well read in the classics as he might be. That's true of us. Surely true of us all.”
2022-03-16 · Intelligence Squared · No Bullsh*t Leadership, with John Simpson · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Well, thank you. But we're now going to hit at some stage this year, probably quite soon 500 million viewers, listeners, and readers around the world, half a billion people, its biggest audience of any organization broadcasting abroad, and an opinion poll, the independent opinion poll, just recently showed that the BBC was the most trusted broadcaster of any internationally. And these are things, you know, they're great, but of course, you can't just sit back and say, oh, that's fine, you know, that's where you've got to keep on working for it and to make sure that in a year's time, in two years' time, people are still saying the same thing.”
2022-03-16 · Intelligence Squared · No Bullsh*t Leadership, with John Simpson · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Well, I hope you're right. The listenership to the BBC Russian service on the radio tripled virtually overnight when the invasion of Ukraine happened. And, you know, this year, I'm sorry, I'm beginning to sound like a bit of a question.”
2022-03-16 · Intelligence Squared · No Bullsh*t Leadership, with John Simpson · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“public service broadcasting. It's not only the BBC from other forms of journalism. You know, it isn't, we aren't just the same as the Daily Mail or the Daily Telegraph or just working in a different medium. It's a different mindset. And I think that is really important actually.”
2022-03-16 · Intelligence Squared · No Bullsh*t Leadership, with John Simpson · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yes. I thoroughly agree. I think, I mean, this principle of the license fee, I think, should be something which hangs over everybody that works for the BBC. And, you know, I think you should be able to say to yourself, When I'm reporting on this particular situation, whatever it may be, I'm reporting to people who've got very, very different, probably opposing views of what's going on. And not that you can necessarily convince them, but the one thing that you do have to convince them about is that you're being honest and fair and that you're saying these things because you have evidence to believe they're true. And that, I think, is what differentiates.”
2022-03-16 · Intelligence Squared · No Bullsh*t Leadership, with John Simpson · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I know, I know, and how depressing that it should be. But, you know, I think that a balanced broadcaster has to take account of untruths and has to address the balance for the untruths, as well as it's just such a cop-out to say, you know, the remainers say this and the leavers say that. You just might as well not exercise a brain at all. You could just put their hand out side by side and read them out. I think that... Die for the principle of balance. I think it's the most important thing that the BBC can do and has ever done. Do we get it wrong? Of course we do. Loads of how I got it wrong, loads and loads of times. I'm not saying we do it right, but I'm saying that striving for it is the most important thing we can do.”
2022-03-16 · Intelligence Squared · No Bullsh*t Leadership, with John Simpson · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“To be unbiased, to be honest, to be open is, I think, the right way of doing things if you can do it. I think you have to accept it's bloody difficult, you know, to take off your carapace of opinions and background and so on and see things as they are. I think it is possible. I argue, would argue that it's entirely possible and should be done. What I don't think works any longer is what the BBC used to do things, you know, the government says this, the opposition says that. And you just leave it there. I don't think that's any... no longer really acceptable, and the judgment that say a government minister said something which isn't true, this is very much of our time. Because government ministers used to strive very hard not to tell lies in public.”
2022-03-16 · Intelligence Squared · No Bullsh*t Leadership, with John Simpson · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Well, yes, I mean, I think you should be too. I think you should always feel that you are. And I mean, just to, I'm not evading your question because I will come and answer. But I always think the right place for a journalist is in the kind of no man's land between the different sides. I get really uncomfortable about the idea of, for instance, talking about we, us, our that doesn't, I don't feel happy talking about that, whether it's about Britain or about the West or even indeed about human beings, although I suppose it's more acceptable if you're talking about the human race in general.”
2022-03-16 · Intelligence Squared · No Bullsh*t Leadership, with John Simpson · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Things to talk about which were slightly safer. But yeah, I mean, I didn't think that I didn't know that Saddam Hussein would invade Kuwait. Well, that's not a good example because nobody else did either. That was just his decision overnight. But I mean, so many things that I've failed at.”
2022-03-16 · Intelligence Squared · No Bullsh*t Leadership, with John Simpson · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Oh, I think it's got to be because if you don't hold people like me to account for what we've written, then what's the point of anything? Yeah, I've got loads of things wrong in my time. I actually do, I think, remember every example or most of them. I mean, these are usually quite trivial things. But, you know, there have been bigger things. And I've, well, as I say, fortunately, I didn't do any broadcasting about whether Putin was liable to invade Ukraine. But if I had, I would have got that very, very badly wrong. And I'm so glad that fate just held me back from doing it. And there were lots of other.”
2022-03-16 · Intelligence Squared · No Bullsh*t Leadership, with John Simpson · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Don't talk to me about Twitter. I fling my phone across the room every now and then with the stuff that people write. Yeah.”
2022-03-16 · Intelligence Squared · No Bullsh*t Leadership, with John Simpson · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“What's going on here? Journalism is such an inconsistent and unreliable guide to things. The fact is it's the only guide we actually have to declare.”
2022-03-16 · Intelligence Squared · No Bullsh*t Leadership, with John Simpson · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, it really does. You see, I mean, aside from my day job, I've written various books, some of them about journalism and looking back at, well, in one case, looking back at journalism right back to its very origins in the 1620s. I've been often very critical of British and other journalists for the way in which they've been taken in, the way in which they allowed their own preconceptions to color everything. I mean, please do not read the British press on the Russian Revolution because you'll scarcely get a single genuine fact out of it. But that means, of course, that that does weigh on me a bit. You know, am I doing the same kind of things that the British press did then or that they did, I don't know, at the time of Suez or something? Am I allowing my ideas, my principles, my affections often to cloud my judgment of”
2022-03-16 · Intelligence Squared · No Bullsh*t Leadership, with John Simpson · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“No, this was 1983. I think I went there. And, you know, what a fantastically brave and charming and funny man he was. Again, you know, if you were building a political leader out of Lego or something, you know, he is the one that you would want. He understood ordinary people. The first thing he did when he got into the this enormous palace, the Harajene Palace in Prague, was to order a couple of scooters so that he and his chief advisor could go down the corridors, up and down the corridors, talking to each other as they scooted. There wasn't anything that that man did that seemed to me wasn't absolutely. What a decent and wonderful political leader should do. There are loads of others, but those are the two best ones, the ones that I love, actually not just liked, but loved.”
2022-03-16 · Intelligence Squared · No Bullsh*t Leadership, with John Simpson · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Say that he opened the door a little bit to the corruption that's just overwhelming South Africa now. But in terms of the person that he was just quite magnificent, Vaclav Havel of the Czech Republic, a man that I got to know when he was a political fugitive, well, not a fugitive, but an ex-prisoner just been allowed out, ill, quite seriously ill from the way that the Czech authorities had treated him.”
2022-03-16 · Intelligence Squared · No Bullsh*t Leadership, with John Simpson · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Well, memorable for different lots of different reasons. I mean, I suppose it's a bit of a kind of reader's digest answer, but I suppose I've got to say, Nelson Mandela, because you couldn't keep your eyes off him. I mean, he had that fantastic star quality where even just standing up and picking up his walking stick was done like a star. And he was so genuinely charming. He was as real in private. And before he became president, as he was after his presidency. And I loved him. I absolutely loved him. He wasn't perfect and he made, you know, you can...”
2022-03-16 · Intelligence Squared · No Bullsh*t Leadership, with John Simpson · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Unscarred, I think. Unscarred by most things. Well, that's from having a deeply insensitive nature, really. But also unscarred by physically. I mean, I never was beaten up or roughed up, I think, as a result of any interview, except one, but that was the IRA and that was a long time ago. But I mean, in terms of going to Baghdad or something, no, you knew pretty much actually that you were going to get out of there, okay?”
2022-03-16 · Intelligence Squared · No Bullsh*t Leadership, with John Simpson · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Really, kind of complicated ways of getting her to confess that she was wrong about something. And the way in which she dealt with that, I used to think was a masterclass in interviewing. But that's the big difference. I mean, there's another difference that you're always with a man like Colonel Gaddafi, for instance, but there's loads and loads more. Emperor Bacasa of the Central African Empire, no less, one of the two emperors that I've interviewed in my time. You never knew really whether if you actually pushed them beyond a certain limit, you might not leave, well, even the room, let alone the country.”
2022-03-16 · Intelligence Squared · No Bullsh*t Leadership, with John Simpson · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Of a suitable and inoffensive expression to describe Margaret Thatcher. I mean, she was deeply autocratic in many, many ways, but she would listen to your questions and she would answer, well, often I used to think, give you a better answer than most other politicians, you know, who turn up with it all prepared and practiced in their minds. So she took you seriously. Yeah. Well, I don't know how serious she did. She pretended to take you seriously. She listened to the question she liked being asked difficult questions. I suppose that's it. She liked showing off and she loved it when she actually used to really enjoy it when I would try and find.”
2022-03-16 · Intelligence Squared · No Bullsh*t Leadership, with John Simpson · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Well, it is because for one very good reason that ordinary politicians, or at least elected politicians, they're used to answering questions. Dictators aren't. Dictators don't actually like being asked questions. When you asked Saddam Hussein a question, he'd rear up and look at you and say, who are you? What brings you here? You know, you are just simply my mouthpiece, my loudspeaker that I'm shouting into, you know, you don't get to ask me questions, and that is true, I think, of all the various dictators and weirdos that I've interviewed. And even the most, what shall we say? I'm just trying to think.”
2022-03-16 · Intelligence Squared · No Bullsh*t Leadership, with John Simpson · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“No, I haven't met him. I hope I'll do so in the next sort of month or so. I mean, again, confession time when I saw that a comedian was standing for the presidency and then that against the run of play, he had won the presidency. I'm afraid I thought, you know, this is the world in general. This is kind of going down the tube really, really fast. Yes, and what a magnificent performance that he's put up. I don't think any of the MPs and lords in the Commons and the House of Lords who watched him the other day will ever forget that experience as he sat there in his dirty overalls and he hadn't shaved for a bit, you know, showed them what actual leadership can really, really be like”
2022-03-16 · Intelligence Squared · No Bullsh*t Leadership, with John Simpson · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And I would never have thought that he would turn into this kind of character, obviously a very kind of suspicious and careful character. I mean, there wasn't anything very sort of open and pleasant about, except I have to say the risk of sounding, well, name dropping outrageously and so on. He did say nice things about my broadcasting. And ironically, even more ironically said burn nice things about the BBC to which he listened, he said on a daily basis to improve his English. And, you know, the same man would not say or do those things. Now, something has happened in the meantime. Has the power just simply gradually over the... Years gone to his head? It certainly has gone to his head. But is it more recent?”
2022-03-16 · Intelligence Squared · No Bullsh*t Leadership, with John Simpson · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And I was introduced to him by the actual mayor, Anatoly Soject. And I just have a little faint sense of a short ginger-haired, rather kind of inward-looking figure whom I tried to be polite to but was probably rather dismissive of because he clearly didn't count and he clearly were never going anywhere. I've met him, talked to him privately and publicly over the years.”
2022-03-16 · Intelligence Squared · No Bullsh*t Leadership, with John Simpson · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Well, all I can tell you is that I've watched Putin over the years, over those 22 years and longer, actually. I actually first met him about a month after he became the deputy mayor or a deputy mayor of St. Petersburg.”
2022-03-16 · Intelligence Squared · No Bullsh*t Leadership, with John Simpson · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, no, I think you're absolutely right. It would have been really almost impossible, I think, for her to have, for instance, jacked up Germany's defense spending in a matter of weeks. But, you know, Schultz, he's a social democrat. It's not very easy for him to just ignore the mutterings on the left of his party. and do these things that we might have expected we might have associated more with a Christian democratic leader”
2022-03-16 · Intelligence Squared · No Bullsh*t Leadership, with John Simpson · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And Bingo, directly, the flag was up. There was Germany taking an extraordinarily tough and strong line. And there was Macron sharing all his information with the West. I mean, when did that happen? And acting as though he was a member of this team that suddenly didn't seem to be brain dead any longer.”
2022-03-16 · Intelligence Squared · No Bullsh*t Leadership, with John Simpson · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Possibly as Putin has. You're absolutely right. And, you know, all the signs were that we'd all sort of go running in different directions right up until the moment where it became clear that Putin was actually going to do it. There was France. I mean, how long ago is it since Macron said that NATO was brain dead? probably up four months, three months, some of the, you know, Germany brings in a left-of-center chancellor. Anybody would think he'll probably follow the sort of Gerhard Schroeder line from the past and will want to keep in with the Russians.”
2022-03-16 · Intelligence Squared · No Bullsh*t Leadership, with John Simpson · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“On Putin's part, I don't think it was so much a failure on the West's part. I think it was a failure of interpretation on his part.”
2022-03-16 · Intelligence Squared · No Bullsh*t Leadership, with John Simpson · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Well, I'm not sure about how inevitable it was. But I don't believe that it was a particular failure of the West. I mean, the West has failed in all sorts of ways in the run-up to this crisis. Countries do. People do. Individuals do. But I don't think it was a kind of clear-cut action or lack of action by the West that did it. I mean, you could say, for instance, that Joe Biden pulling American and therefore other Western troops out of Afghanistan last August was a suggestion to Putin that he was weak and that the West wouldn't come together. I mean, that's perfectly possible. Anybody who looked at the way that Germany has behaved. In the past over the Nords. Stream pipeline, for instance, would say they'll never do anything. You know, they'll always just sit there and take whatever we do. But that was a really serious failure.”
2022-03-16 · Intelligence Squared · No Bullsh*t Leadership, with John Simpson · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“No, I didn't. I'll be absolutely honest. I thought that the intelligence that we were getting out of London and Washington was a kind of wind-up to make sure that Putin was nervous and would step back from anything he was going to do. I didn't think that the intelligence was so accurate, so moment by moment accurate. And I didn't think Putin would be so stupid, actually. He's a very clever man. I met him. I've been Hugely impressed by him. But you know, one criminologist that I know said he really did just lock himself up over COVID and saw scarcely anybody. And, you know, I think these feelings of anger towards Ukraine simply welled up inside him until it did happen.”
2022-03-16 · Intelligence Squared · No Bullsh*t Leadership, with John Simpson · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And some very nasty other types of weapon and using them fairly discriminately against, indiscriminately against ordinary civilians. I mean, we've seen examples of that just even overnight this morning. So yeah, it's different. It seems different. And it's, I'm afraid, brought an end to that feeling which most of us had that things were kind of getting better. They've got very, very much worse now.”
2022-03-16 · Intelligence Squared · No Bullsh*t Leadership, with John Simpson · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, pretty much actually because, you know, you have to be even older than I am to remember when one country just marches into its neighbor and takes it over. Actually, of course, the Russians have got previous in this as well as so much else. I mean, they did march into Hungary in 1956 and into Czechoslovakia as it then was in 1968 and of course into Afghanistan in 1979. But that was a slightly different operation. So it's not true, therefore, to say it hasn't happened in Europe in my lifetime. It hasn't happened like this in Europe in my lifetime. The idea of just simply sending in your tanks.”
2022-03-16 · Intelligence Squared · No Bullsh*t Leadership, with John Simpson · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT