YouSaid · the spoken record

Justin Webb

lines on the record: 45
first: 2022-02-18
most recent: 2022-02-18
sittings or episodes: 1
sources: podcast

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“Has a prior cause which is true in the physical world, isn't it, when you think about it, everything is caused by something. If that is also the case inside our brains, from the entire universe through to each sort of fizzing neuron in our brain, then how is it possible that we also have free will? Where does that come from? Where are we if we're not rooted in the physical world? And it's not psychological, it's philosophical actually. To what extent are we any of us to blame for the things that we do? My mum, my stepfather, and we make a distinction between people who are mentally ill and not mentally ill, should we? Are we all just trapped in things that are inevitably going to happen? And again, you know, if I could write a novel, I would have written this as a novel exploring that, but this is the best I can do.”
2022-02-18 · Intelligence Squared · The Gift of a Radio, with Justin Webb · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, I hope so. That's exactly right, Poppy. I think that's exactly put your finger on it. The whole thing is just this great whirling complexity of human relationships. And we should be able to talk about them in the round and be open about them. And I think it's beneficial, both psychologically, but actually also in a sense almost sort of politically. We are just too quick to judge each other, put each other in boxes, you're this, you're that. And whenever this, whenever that, whenever quite all this or quite all that, whether it's masculine and feminine or right or left or good or bad or whatever, this extraordinary mix of stuff. I've always been fascinated by the, in fact, since university since it was first introduced to me in a tiny room in the LSE by a professor there, this idea that actually, do we really have free will if every event”
2022-02-18 · Intelligence Squared · The Gift of a Radio, with Justin Webb · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“In the early seventies was just weird and I don't think necessarily got her anywhere. So I think there were all sorts of, I think if there is something that I kind of take away from writing it, it actually does not damage but change your relationship with the person that you thought you had. And that it can be a bit of a disturbing thing, that, but I'm old enough. I'm in my 60s now, so I kind of am beyond being disturbed.”
2022-02-18 · Intelligence Squared · The Gift of a Radio, with Justin Webb · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I think the thing that really surprised me as I went through it was how much I felt more critical of my mother actually than I did. So I grew up to not only adore her and be close to her, but also to believe that she had done everything she could in her power to make everything okay, and that had been the driving force of her life. Not that she ever sort of said that in those terms, but that was the sense that I had from every interaction that I ever had with her. And actually when I wrote the book, I did think, I mean, not in a kind of critical way, but I just as an observer, as an outside observer of the two of us, I did think actually you made some quite catastrophic errors along the way. I shouldn't have gone to boarding school. There should have been more effort made to make my life more normal, a more normal woman, a less damaged woman, would have managed a lot of the kind of political stuff.”
2022-02-18 · Intelligence Squared · The Gift of a Radio, with Justin Webb · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Anything you like about people who are dead. So I did wait. Well, I didn't reveal to anyone that my father was Peter Woods until he had gone and his first wife as well and my mother because none of those people would have enjoyed the idea of it being written about. And I think there are things, I think there are kind of rules, as it were, that prevent you from causing harm by writing these things, even if it's good for you. And I wouldn't want it to. And my mother, I think she'd appreciate the book. She loved everything that I did, but I don't think she would have enjoyed the kind of spotlight being put on her early life, actually, which I think she felt embarrassed by and ashamed of, actually, because that's another thing that we had genuine shame. We had a kind of normative behaviors and stuff that we don't now have to this same extent. In fact, we're very keen never to always to say in society that nobody should ever be ashamed of anything. My mother was ashamed of her early life.”
2022-02-18 · Intelligence Squared · The Gift of a Radio, with Justin Webb · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“We didn't talk about death at all, and we do slightly more now, though. I don't think we're still very good at it. Yeah, I didn't go to my grandmother's funeral. There, I was at boarding school at the time and no effort was made. I was only an hour away. No effort was made to pick me up or do anything about it. The day wasn't marked at all. And I think those sorts of things are strange and damaging. And I think in a way we have moved away from that. Writing about people who are dead is interesting because you are, in a sense, having a conversation with them. And I very much feel with my mother that she should be amused by the book, but it's slightly horrified by bits of it, I think. But I don't, I feel, yeah, I feel it is, in a sense it is part of a continuing conversation with her and with my stepfather, who I didn't really know, and I don't think we treated particularly well, actually, neither my mother nor I. I mean, he didn't really do us any particular harm. It's a pity not to have been more able to have a conversation with him. And in a sense, a book is an effort to write that more widely, though, of course, you have a freedom to write.”
2022-02-18 · Intelligence Squared · The Gift of a Radio, with Justin Webb · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I chose to end it there because I think that is a sort of natural place in which to stop and I don't want to write about my later life. I don't think anyone would be the slightest bit interested. It's more normal and better kept out of the spotlight.”
2022-02-18 · Intelligence Squared · The Gift of a Radio, with Justin Webb · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I didn't really consciously think that, but I think it's a good thing always to look back and to realize that even in quite recent history, things were in some respects worse, in some respects probably better, but in some respects worse. We have just been through something pretty awful. And I think in a way, actually, I mean, although a lot of older people have died and there's a lot of sadness attached to that plainly, but actually what's happened to young people, what we've done to our school children and students at university and all the rest of it, we don't yet know in the next few years that we're going to discover the amount of damage that's been done. And I think it is useful then to look back and say, well, yeah, there will be damage, but there's also, there was damage in previous generations caused by other things we cope. We do get through these things.”
2022-02-18 · Intelligence Squared · The Gift of a Radio, with Justin Webb · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Happening in the country. And it is interesting to look back at it and see all the things that were awful about it, but also actually there is this kind of sense of nostalgia for some aspects of it. And I think the aspects that we do look back on and wonder about whether they were better is that kind of collective thing. We were all part of it together.”
2022-02-18 · Intelligence Squared · The Gift of a Radio, with Justin Webb · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“There were all sorts of other aspects of life we think of now as being the kind of end times of political disaster and everything going crazy and all the rest of it, but actually the 70s weren't genuinely. I mean, there was talk of a coup in the early 70s. There was a real possibility sense that the entire nation would collapse, that all of our industries would collapse, that inflation would become hyperinflation and the whole economy would fall apart and that in those circumstances maybe the army ought to take over. There was this real kind of sense of profound collapse alongside of course the IRA's bombing campaign which was really getting going. I think we forget how distressed we think of ourselves as being kind of end times of distress but actually it was significantly worse and that was the backdrop for all that was happening to me and it was the backdrop for what was happening.”
2022-02-18 · Intelligence Squared · The Gift of a Radio, with Justin Webb · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Of it. That was absolutely part of the 70s, but also the dinginess of it. So I describe in the book wrapping my granny in newspaper to keep a warm during the first minor strike in the early 70s because we were having power cuts and things. And Mom and I saw on Blue Peter this thing about how to wrap your granny up.”
2022-02-18 · Intelligence Squared · The Gift of a Radio, with Justin Webb · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“The assembly is interesting because there's been a kind of revisionist view of the 70s. Some historians now, and particularly Labour supporting historians, Andy Beckett, who writes for The Guardian, I think, and wrote a brilliant book about the 70s in which he sort of, the suggestion is that actually there are some things about the 70s that we shouldn't be so dismissive of, and particularly the kind of sense of collective us, whether it was because you're a member of a big organization, a union, a church, we were still the era where you could be a kind of mass movement, a football crowd standing together in the stands, that kind of sense of the us that there was in the 70s is interesting. I'm not sure necessarily I'd want to go back to it, but it is interesting that it made a psychologically, I think, feel different to how we feel now, much less atomized, much more part of things, even if we felt that we were part of an oppressed thing. We were still part of that.”
2022-02-18 · Intelligence Squared · The Gift of a Radio, with Justin Webb · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“With men. And it's not that I don't have men, friends, or haven't in my life, but there is a sort of sense of something missing, I think, without that balance when you're young. And we can kind of pretend to ourselves that it's not the case and it doesn't matter. And men and women's brains are pretty much the same and all the rest of it, which is all obviously true and masculinity and femininity of social constructs. And I'm sure that's true too, except that there are some real differences that come from the biological differences of male and female. And we've got very hooked in the modern world in discussion of masculinity and femininity and gender. We talk less about sex, biological sex, and the differences that there might be that spring from a different bodies and different ways of looking at the world that are linked to those bodies. And I think that's one of the interesting things.”
2022-02-18 · Intelligence Squared · The Gift of a Radio, with Justin Webb · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“It does definitely go to things that we've thought about more in modern society than we would have done in the 70s. But in some ways, I think in the 70s, you know, the joy of it was you didn't have to think about it too much. I mean, for all that was wrong with the 70s and for all that, you know, we've talked about the treatment of women, the treatment of my mother, frankly, who was appalling, the life chances available and all of that stuff is true. But at the same time, there was a kind of freedom about being a man. I'm not that I shared in it. There was a freedom about being a man that I don't think there is now. It is masculinity is an odd thing, that kind of sense that you have that I always had that being brought up by a woman and loved by a mother was incredibly important and completely made me who I am, but that there is also something lacking. There genuinely is something lacking without the influence of a male figure and that kind of ability to be at ease.”
2022-02-18 · Intelligence Squared · The Gift of a Radio, with Justin Webb · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“The winter green cream and all the rest of it. And I can remember a real kind of longing to be part of that, to want to be included in this kind of brotherhood of masculinity that I had no idea of at home because I lived with such a damaged man, a reduced person, my stepfather, and obviously my father was a distant figure on the TV and there were no other men around. And I definitely had this desperation for that kind of release of being able to be masculine. But at the same time,”
2022-02-18 · Intelligence Squared · The Gift of a Radio, with Justin Webb · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I knew that there was something missing, something quite big missing, and I realized that part of it was the sort of physical side of just being a boy, actually, or maybe being a child boy or girl, but that kind of sense of freedom and just not worrying about stuff. And one of the things that I can definitely remember, the kind of the awe with which I approached it, I used to go to Bath Rugby. Bath was a very good amateur club. They had a proper setup. This is back in the days when rugby was a rugby union was an amateur game. But it was a big, big sort of deal and hundreds of people would turn up at the recreation ground in the middle of Bath. And there was this atmosphere of masculinity, actual violence. And yet at the end of it, they were all able to drape their arms around each other and kind of their blood would mingle and the bandages and the smoke.”
2022-02-18 · Intelligence Squared · The Gift of a Radio, with Justin Webb · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I mean, having your own children, it changed everything for me. I've got three children. And as I saw them growing up, you realize all the things that you don't have and all the things that were missing trying to get onto a wall and seeing if you fell off or being pushed off by one of the others or all the kind of banging into each other kind of stuff. All I wanted to do was to please my mother and make sure she was okay. I mean, from a really, really early age, then there's none of the freedom involved in my life.”
2022-02-18 · Intelligence Squared · The Gift of a Radio, with Justin Webb · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Progressive in so many ways were so utterly unable to grasp that they ran a school that was a hellhole or didn't seem to care about it, but in the wider sense, I think they could probably come back to me and say, well, we were all like that in the 70s. That was just what it was like.”
2022-02-18 · Intelligence Squared · The Gift of a Radio, with Justin Webb · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“As well, where people could just go caving for fun at the weekend, and they still do. But the school allowed the older children to go on their own without knowing anything about where they'd gone. And this guy, the headmaster, said he arrived in 1977, I suppose it would have been, and said, what's going on at the weekend? They said, well, the cavers just go off and they come back for tea. And he said, well, where? What's going on? How do I know where they are? And people looked at him as if he was mad. So we don't know, but they just go off. It's things like that that I think, can you imagine now at any school saying, yes, we have a caving society, we don't really know where they go, but we hope they will come back for tea. It's just completely inconceivable. And yet that was the way that things ran. So, you know, again, I'm not particularly blaming the Quakers, although I do think, well, I kind of am a bit because I think it was weird that the Quakers who regarded themselves quite rightly actually as being...”
2022-02-18 · Intelligence Squared · The Gift of a Radio, with Justin Webb · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Food was just disgusting, just a kind of dollops of stuff that you didn't even know what it was. And stolen mostly by the older children who wanted to get enough to eat. So when you were young, you hardly ate because it was handed down, kind of Tom Brown school days time down these benches, these long tables. By the time it got to the young children who were in the middle, there wasn't much left or what there was had been kind of spat on. I mean, it was really, really revolting. But also just unsafe. So I talked to as part of my research for doing the book, I tracked down the headmaster who came in my last two years. And he was fascinating. He said he arrived at the school. And the first thing he realized was that every Saturday there was a thing called the Sidkot School Speliological Society. So these were the cavers. And they had quite a lot of kit and it was in Amendip, so we were close to a lot of caves, the cheddar caves, etc, but actually a much smaller ones.”
2022-02-18 · Intelligence Squared · The Gift of a Radio, with Justin Webb · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Peace loving, believers in equality, they're a wonderful religious sect, actually. I'm not a Quaker myself, but I have enormous respect for them and liking for them as people. And my mother was a very keen Quaker by the time I went to the school. And yet they ran this school that was really a hellhole. I mean, absolutely rife with bullying, physical violence from the masters, physical violence from the pupils to the pupils, and particularly the boys. And I don't think we stress this enough sometimes. We assume that all the violence, all the bad things came from on high, as it were. There was an incredible cruelty, almost encouraged cruelty from children to other children in the 1970s. And it was desperately uncomfortable too. I talk about the state of the lose. I can't say toilets, as you'll understand, but, you know, they were just absolutely disgusting, unheated, unsanitary. Why was any of that acceptable? Well, the answer is because it”
2022-02-18 · Intelligence Squared · The Gift of a Radio, with Justin Webb · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Two things actually. Number one, I think broadly speaking that this is a pretty obvious point, isn't it really, that children ought to grow up at home. It just seems to me that it's in almost all circumstances better for children not to go to boarding school young. I mean, later on the lives, possibly for all sorts of reasons, it might be a good thing if people have the money and all the rest of it. But actually, at the age of 11 or eight, I've got friends who went at eight, it just seems to me that that is a peculiar way to grow up. But then added to that was boarding school in the 1970s, it was a tough experience. And my school wasn't abusive in the sense that some very big public schools are now coming to terms with all sorts of awful things that happen and were done by masters to children, etc., or to boys. But what my school was, and the reason I write about it, and again going to this kind of complexity of experience, my school was a Quaker school. Quakers are”
2022-02-18 · Intelligence Squared · The Gift of a Radio, with Justin Webb · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And someone cleared their throat. I suppose my stepfather. And then we turned the TV off and put it away. And that was it. I knew then, and no reason to disbelieve her. So I sort of knew, I felt that that was the truth. But we had so much else. My mother and I had this very close relationship and then I went off to boarding school and all the rest of it. I actually didn't, it's weird how deeply you can repress things. And it really wasn't actually much of a part of my life after that.”
2022-02-18 · Intelligence Squared · The Gift of a Radio, with Justin Webb · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“One of the oddnesses about having Peter Woods as a father was the way it was introduced. We were just watching the TV. It was the thing about the balance of payments and there was a sort of lugubrious man in the corner of the room. And my mother just suddenly said, that's your father. And I said, oh, and I was probably about eight. And that was the end of the conversation. It was immediately incredibly obvious that she didn't want to go on. She didn't want to talk any more about it. And she didn't. And that was the complete end of the conversation. And frankly, it was the end of the conversation really for the rest of my life. He came once then, actually a very famous episode of Morkham and Wise, people of a certain age will remember it. They did all the newsreaders. The first time the newsreader's legs had been seen in public.”
2022-02-18 · Intelligence Squared · The Gift of a Radio, with Justin Webb · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Improves you as a broadcaster because you can have conversations that are understanding, comprehend the richness of experience and the complexity of people. And if you don't have that, if you're callo, if you seriously think that X has said Y so is obviously this sort of person or that sort of person and you're not willing to look at all beneath the surface, then I think you're not doing your job so ably as a broadcaster. So yeah, I think I'm not sure about in my case, but I do think in the case of people I know who have lived lives that have seen tragedy as well as triumph, I think it's a good thing.”
2022-02-18 · Intelligence Squared · The Gift of a Radio, with Justin Webb · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“That's very true, yeah. I mean, that's the thing, isn't it? We all bring to everything we do the kind of weird complexities of who we are. And I think I've always felt that the people, the kind of broadcasters that I've worked with who've been particularly good are the ones who have proper life experiences. And the obvious one being John Humphries. And, you know, for all John's faults and for all that he was thought of as an argumentative old, what's it and all the rest of it? But actually, you know, the thing sitting next to John, which I did for the best part of a decade, is you realize that he's lived a life. He's all sorts of disasters have befallen John and all sorts of triumphs and he's seen things happen and in his own life seen things happen and that actually adds to a kind of richness of being as a person which I think really really”
2022-02-18 · Intelligence Squared · The Gift of a Radio, with Justin Webb · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“set me on a path to thinking actually that's what I want. I wanted to say things that people hear I didn't really know what I wanted to say, but I had this real sort of sense, this almost narcissistic sense of performance coming from a boy who lived in complete silence in a weird household where face to face we saw almost no one but I knew even then that I wanted to do it.”
2022-02-18 · Intelligence Squared · The Gift of a Radio, with Justin Webb · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yes, God knows why. It's just so strange. I wrote to Women's Hour because I heard them talking about rape, and I didn't know what rape was, but it appeared to be something that was bad and involved men and women, and I knew that I was male, and we seemed to be getting the blame. So I wrote a sort of single line to Wimzar, and I put my name and the address, but asked for it to be withheld. I don't know where I could have known to do those things. And I wrote, please make it plain that not all men engage in these things. And they read it out. Suma Gregor, actually, must be one of the first things she ever did on a woman's side. I read it out. And I can remember this kind of extraordinary sense of power when I heard my words that I'd written being read out, and it was definitely, I mean, there's no question at all that that kind of set me on, it's weird how these things happen, isn't it, this single thing?”
2022-02-18 · Intelligence Squared · The Gift of a Radio, with Justin Webb · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I think it's because I like silence. And this is possibly the Quaker upbringing as well, as well as my own odd upbringing in our little house where there was complete silence most of the time. I'm quite comfortable with silence and I don't like people chattering on. I like the idea of live radio where you're actually almost talking to someone. I'm less comfortable actually with the idea of something in the background or something that I need to listen to while doing something else. And I'm really conscious that people listening now are listening to this while doing something else. This is not a criticism of you. I'm genuinely delighted. You're listening that I find it really difficult, actually. I find it, I walk my dog sometimes in the park and everyone's wandering around with headphones, almost all of them listening to an intelligent squared podcast. I can't actually. I just can't do it. I'd prefer to talk to the dog.”
2022-02-18 · Intelligence Squared · The Gift of a Radio, with Justin Webb · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Over this medium because of its liveness and the fact that anything could happen. Podcasts slightly get over that because, of course, anything can happen and you're likely to leave it in. But what you don't have on this podcast or anything that's recorded is that jeopardy of live radio and the warmth of the conversation that is actually happening at that moment. And I think that's the big thing that radio still has. And radio when there was nothing else in the 70s when I first switched on my radio, that was it. And it was that incredible. Incredible lifeline.”
2022-02-18 · Intelligence Squared · The Gift of a Radio, with Justin Webb · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“In the modern world, well, with things like podcasts, there is a lot of stuff around that we can listen to and engaging and all the rest of it. What there wasn't then was obviously all of that and there wasn't the internet, et cetera, et cetera, but there was this one outlet, actually, and TV was recorded apart from the news every now and again. The one outlet where there was a live person talking to you. And it didn't matter whether it's a disc jockey, as they used to call them on Radio One or something on Radio 4. I used to listen to Radio 4 long before I could really understand what was going on or the world tonight, I remember, as well, in bed at school. And that kind of sense of someone talking to you who was actually there and that amazing intimacy that there is in radio talking out to you, to you particularly. And that, I mean, to an extent actually still exists, I think. And I think it's Radio's single advantage.”
2022-02-18 · Intelligence Squared · The Gift of a Radio, with Justin Webb · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Not just having the children, which is a shock to everyone when you have them, but also the fact that the children would laugh with each other and have a life with each other that wasn't necessarily involving you. And that sort of, you never have that if you're an only child. And if you're an only child in weird circumstances, it kind of accentuates all the oddness that there is around you. And I'm not the only person to have noticed that or for it to have happened to. But I think it is an interesting thing about the way that children grow up and the extra needs, as it were, possibly that you have as an only child, but possibly also the extra strength you get from being the center of so much attention.”
2022-02-18 · Intelligence Squared · The Gift of a Radio, with Justin Webb · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Oh, hugely, hugely, yeah, yeah. And the book, I mean, you said very kindly at the beginning it had humor in it, and the book is meant to be as well, a bit about the kind of hilarity of... All of this, and particularly hilarity in the 70s. And I think with humour, which was, you know, my mother was, again, another addition to her complexity. She was enormously humorous. She could really see the funny side of everything, including herself. And that is a rescuing mechanism, it seems to me. I think we sometimes don't emphasize enough in our lives, actually, the need to be able to laugh and the need to have a sense of humor. And I think people with a sense of humor rescue both themselves and people around them. And I've always been, it was the most glorious, wonderful thing with my own children who live in such different circumstances than I did. But apart from anything else, they're just able to kind of laugh among themselves. And I took slightly and only child thing. I was talking about all of this weirdly with someone who had sort of semi-similar circumstances the other day. And they were saying that the biggest shock to them about growing up was having children.”
2022-02-18 · Intelligence Squared · The Gift of a Radio, with Justin Webb · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yes, absolutely. And we tend to kind of over glamorize the violence that is sometimes associated with mental illness. People being dangerous. Most people who are mentally ill. I'm talking about serious mental illness. Most people who are mentally ill are not dangerous. I don't think my stepfather was dangerous. But they can be deeply, deeply deranged and in need of help without being dangerous. And we tend to think either people are kind of semi-OK or they're attacking people with axes. It's not true.”
2022-02-18 · Intelligence Squared · The Gift of a Radio, with Justin Webb · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“In his books plural actually that what it feels like when you feel your mental health going downhill and it really interests me that nobody I don't think ever talked to my stepfather about what it felt like it was a kind of shameful thing that we just covered up and you know Charles is up again in the middle of the night playing bach at maximum volume or going out to the garage to change the doors because he thinks someone's coming in to fiddle with the car and all those things you just sort of cope with behind net curtains and never talk about never talk about to other people but really crucially i think doors they never talk about to him which is you know desperate”
2022-02-18 · Intelligence Squared · The Gift of a Radio, with Justin Webb · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Was quite significantly mentally ill. This wasn't a sort of mental health crisis. He was mentally ill. He had what was diagnosed as schizophrenia, although I don't think they really knew quite what that meant. Even the people who did the diagnosing. And they just gave him valium and said, you know, all the best. Let's hope it all goes fine. And it didn't really go fine for him or for us or for anyone. And again, I suppose now you would have better treatment and more treatment. But I think the big thing actually more than the treatments is just the attitude of society. You'd be able to talk about it. And I mention in the book Alistair Campbell. And Alistair, I think, has been able to describe in his book”
2022-02-18 · Intelligence Squared · The Gift of a Radio, with Justin Webb · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Well, on the one hand, huge progress. I mean, there's absolutely no question at all that we treat the whole idea of mental health and mental illness. And of course, they're two different things in a sense. So mental health, we think, of the broad, you know, unhappiness and depression, ranging from clinical depression through to just, I feel I can't cope or I feel panicky or whatever, all those kind of things that are perfectly normal part of many lives we're now able to say that none of that could be talked about. I mean, really couldn't. It was an admission of, if not sin, then weakness. And it's a good thing that that's all gone. Mental health, when it comes to actual mental illness, I wonder actually if we've made so much progress. I mean, it's probably better treated if you can get to see the right treatment, but we know that that's not easy. But my father was my stepfather.”
2022-02-18 · Intelligence Squared · The Gift of a Radio, with Justin Webb · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Upbringing, but we genuinely thought when I say we, mum and me, we thought we were superior to everyone, pretty much, and actually does really give you kind of bolsters you in a way as a child. So from the age of eight, I think I genuinely thought I was superior to most people I came across. And only all the way through really to going to university, actually, and realizing with a bit of a shock that I wasn't, you know, and that in a way it's a survival mechanism, and it actually does work.”
2022-02-18 · Intelligence Squared · The Gift of a Radio, with Justin Webb · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Hand holding in public, eating in public, actually doing pretty much anything in public was frowned off. Yeah, there's a whole list of things that were not acceptable. Anything, as you say, scent and perfume. So anything that is French and has been translated into English or Anglicized like perfume is completely unacceptable. And you're just, and if you say those things, then you're done for. And I think the really weird thing about it, as well as the longevity of it, that inasmuch as it still exists in me, is the kind of also the way in which actually when you feel that you're superior, even if you live in desperate circumstances, in my home life, I mean, we weren't dirt poor, but we didn't have much money, but we lived in weird, weird, weird silence. We had no friends, no one coming to the house. It was a really odd upbringing. And in many ways, a deeply unhappy.”
2022-02-18 · Intelligence Squared · The Gift of a Radio, with Justin Webb · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“But it was quite a struggle. And there were really sort of deep seated things like that. My mother's obsessed with how you pronounce words. Controversy was one. So if people said controversy, she thought they were useless. And so I've always said controversy. It was just slightly more difficult way to pronounce that word. Why does it matter? Well, of course, it doesn't matter at all. And yet, actually to me, I know, although intellectually I know it doesn't matter, I know kind of viscerally it actually rather does. And it's that amazing way in which those things, those sort of snobbery things that you learn very young in life actually do stay with you. There was lots of them that I didn't know.”
2022-02-18 · Intelligence Squared · The Gift of a Radio, with Justin Webb · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Reflected on it, or what's changed since then and now. Well, I mean, two things have changed. What part of the book is about the 1970s and what the 1970s were like, and we forget really how enormously, enormously different they were, what was acceptable in terms of how we saw other people, not just in class actually, but in race and in all sorts of areas, in how we treated women. So there are a whole load of things that were possible then that now thankfully are not. But what really interests me is how, in spite of that, there are things that just that are in your upbringing that are so deep-seated that you can't get rid of them. So my mother wouldn't say toilet. She would only say lavatory or loud. And I can't either in a BBC script, I cross it out. I actually can't bring myself to say the word. I manage there.”
2022-02-18 · Intelligence Squared · The Gift of a Radio, with Justin Webb · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“and who she was, and I write in the book about how she kind of passed that down to me with mother's milk, as it were, but also at the same time she was a thoughtful person. She spoke Spanish in her later days. She was in Amnesty International, CND. She was a humanitarian. And it's those complexities, that odd fact that we are all of us mixes of things that I think is what drove me to write the book, and particularly it's a bit of a cliche, but particularly in the era of social media where we're all so quick to judge people on what they said yesterday rather than on the fullness of who they are. So, you know, if I've been a novelist, I'd have written this as a novel, but I don't have either the imagination or the literary ability to do that. So here's my effort.”
2022-02-18 · Intelligence Squared · The Gift of a Radio, with Justin Webb · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“In religion, in me, and what would happen to me. With that change, her life took on a kind of inner seriousness that she kept for the rest of her life. And why is she interesting? I just thought when I look back at my life and my mother and my very, very peculiar upbringing, I thought one of the interesting things is how people are capable of changing during the course of their lives and how complex they are because you mentioned snobbery. She was a staggering snob. I mean, she really did talk about the lower orders without irony. That was a phrase she used. I can remember it. She loathed our neighbours because she thought they were lower middle class. The people she hated most were the ones who were striving. She quite liked working class people, provided they knew their place. She hated Mrs. Thatcher because she was trying too hard to speak the Queen's English. Snobbery was a huge part of her life.”
2022-02-18 · Intelligence Squared · The Gift of a Radio, with Justin Webb · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Guess to start things off, I'd love to just ask about your mum and whether you could tell us a little bit about her because she's so crucial to the experiences you share. Who was your mum? Gloria Webb was her name, complex, complex person, a person who changed midlife from being hugely involved in the fripperies of life, if not always to her great advantage. And part of that, I think, led to her having me. So too much booze, too much fast living, but a constant sense also, rather sad sense of being used and as not knowing who she was. And then once she'd had me, this kind of extraordinary change that we are all capable of where she became intensely serious, albeit in a slightly weird kind of a way, she became a kind of Quaker Maoist is how I describe it in the book. She suddenly became enormously interested in the world.”
2022-02-18 · Intelligence Squared · The Gift of a Radio, with Justin Webb · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Talk about it. Welcome to Intelligence Square, Justin. Thank you so much for having me. No, it's an absolute pleasure. I really enjoyed reading your book”
2022-02-18 · Intelligence Squared · The Gift of a Radio, with Justin Webb · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT