Speaker 1: Ladies and gentlemen in the Brady the UK. God, do
Speaker 1: the barrel down there a battle, come down, sun, God,
Speaker 1: he's back in the brady. Good morning, Good.
Speaker 2: Morning, Tiamack. How I've missed you? How are you doing well?
Speaker 1: Not only have you missed me, I've missed you. Ev
Speaker 1: have the listener. I get so many texts just in
Speaker 1: the last week or tender. Not the first week. Nobody
Speaker 1: kid in the first week, but the second week. They
Speaker 1: said where's eb And I said, well, he's doing his
Speaker 1: Walk of a lifetime. How did it go?
Speaker 2: It was very, very difficult, Tony, if I'm honest. So
Speaker 2: I was in the Amazon in Peru and it was
Speaker 2: five stages self sufficiency. You're carrying a rucksack with your food,
Speaker 2: a hammock, a rain fly cover to keep the rain
Speaker 2: off the hammock, and a medical kit. Now my bag
Speaker 2: weighed about nine point four kilos at the start. So
Speaker 2: I did three stages. I got to be close to
Speaker 2: the on the stage three and it was getting dark.
Speaker 2: I found the terrain extremely difficult to navigate and I
Speaker 2: had a good look around me. I've come to a
Speaker 2: river crossing in the Amazon, and I thought, you know what,
Speaker 2: I've kind of had enough of what they call ultra running.
Speaker 2: I'm a road runner. I prefer flat surfaces in Europe
Speaker 2: without insects trying to eat you alive. So I took
Speaker 2: Maruksack off. I sat down by this river in the Amazon.
Speaker 2: It was absolutely gorgeous. I took out a bar of
Speaker 2: chocolate and I drank some water, and I thought, I'm
Speaker 2: completely at peace with this. I don't want to go
Speaker 2: any further. So made my way back to the base
Speaker 2: camp where everyone was camping for that night, and about
Speaker 2: twelve other guys pulled out as well, and there was
Speaker 2: a bunch of South African fellas with a couple of
Speaker 2: Irish guys that they knew, and they'd organized a minibus
Speaker 2: from this settlement in the middle of nowhere. They've somehow
Speaker 2: conjured up a minibus and it took seven hours to
Speaker 2: get from this tiny village called Santa Rosa de Huakaria
Speaker 2: in the Amazon. It took seven hours back to the
Speaker 2: town of Cusco, and I was kind of in two
Speaker 2: minds is to stay on and kind of wait around
Speaker 2: to the end of the race. Two days later, and
Speaker 2: then this South African bloke very bluntly said to me.
Speaker 2: He said, big rugby guy. He said, mate, we're going
Speaker 2: where they have hot showers and cold beer. Are you in?
Speaker 2: And as soon as he said that, I said, yes,
Speaker 2: I am in. So we helped on the minibus and
Speaker 2: off we went. Peru. I have to say, Tony, stunning country.
Speaker 2: If you ever get the chance. Matchew Peachu blew my mind.
Speaker 2: Rainbow Mountain, the hike we went up on that, The
Speaker 2: scenery it was like Switzerland on steroids, and the food
Speaker 2: was incredible and the people were so friendly.
Speaker 1: Those events presumably well produced.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah. So it's a company called Beyond the Ultimate,
Speaker 2: very value, very well organized. They have medics and doctors
Speaker 2: and paramedics at every checkpoint every ten kilometers. They give
Speaker 2: you water, They check out the athletes. They do races.
Speaker 2: They've won in the Arctic, which I've done. They've won
Speaker 2: in Kenya, which I've done. The race in Peru. They
Speaker 2: have another in the Nibia in the desert, and a
Speaker 2: new one in the mountains of Kyrgyzstan. Believe it or not.
Speaker 2: So athletes from all over the world. But it was great.
Speaker 2: You know, there was French people there. There was four French,
Speaker 2: twelve South Africans. There was me at two other Irish blokes,
Speaker 2: load of Brits everyone, a couple of Canadians. It was
Speaker 2: won by a Canadian guy. A female South African runner
Speaker 2: was the first woman home. A couple of Americans and
Speaker 2: a really nice kind of international mix and a great
Speaker 2: leveler because everyone has to pitch their hammock together in
Speaker 2: the evening, and you know you're just having a chat
Speaker 2: and around with a young American guy who is a
Speaker 2: wind farm engineer from Texas. There was a guy who
Speaker 2: does not blood transplants but bomb marrow transplants in Canada.
Speaker 2: You know, really interesting people and everyone just kind of
Speaker 2: plodding along. The jungle was utterly impenetrable. It was so
Speaker 2: humid and sticky, insects coming for you every single inch
Speaker 2: of the way. I saw some beautiful butterflies. If you
Speaker 2: look up online, Tony, this is the most beautiful creature
Speaker 2: I have ever seen firsthand. People talk about rhino and elephants,
Speaker 2: a blue morphom o r p ho. Google that, and
Speaker 2: this creature fluttered down in front of me with the
Speaker 2: most iridescent blue I have ever seen. And I was
Speaker 2: just like, if you whoever got whichever god you pray
Speaker 2: to or none. You just think, Wow, how beautiful is
Speaker 2: this universe?
Speaker 1: If phoe, watch what comes up?
Speaker 2: I've never seen anything like this, butterfly.
Speaker 1: A look at it in just a moment when you
Speaker 1: when you sit down and you have that moment. Is
Speaker 1: that pretty much the mind, body body talking to each
Speaker 1: other saying that's enough for now.
Speaker 2: Yeah. I genuinely couldn't go on, Tony. I mean, there
Speaker 2: was loads of super fit athletes who were capable of
Speaker 2: doing the five stages. I could have tried, and I
Speaker 2: think it would have ended badly because the terrain. You know,
Speaker 2: you were climbing up waterfalls at one stage they knotted
Speaker 2: ropes and you were going up a waterfall at one stage.
Speaker 2: It took me forty five minutes to cover a kilometer.
Speaker 2: So the vegetation, the growth, it was so thick, and
Speaker 2: the jungle is just sapping every last ounce of energy
Speaker 2: out of you, and body and mind were gone. And
Speaker 2: I just thought, you know what, I can have a
Speaker 2: really miserable day and try to do Stage four, possibly
Speaker 2: get injured or get sick. And then when I got
Speaker 2: talking to those South African boys, and the phrase the
Speaker 2: guy used was warm showers cold beer. Yeah, and you
Speaker 2: know me, Tony, I was just like, yeah, you sold it.
Speaker 1: To me, twist and shat if you don't mind, well, congratulations.
Speaker 1: So you're doing your make said really attractive. But you
Speaker 1: know it's very different to the things that you've you've
Speaker 1: previously done. And do you hope you're not going to
Speaker 1: be disappointed and beat yourself up around this because it
Speaker 1: is quite you know, to put yourself out there in
Speaker 1: the front end. It's just, you know, exquisitely exciting.
Speaker 2: I was at peace with a Tony, to be honest,
Speaker 2: because I wanted the experience. And look, I'll be very honest, Tony.
Speaker 2: I'm forty nine, as you know, I turned fifty coming
Speaker 2: up Christmas, and I wanted something big to train for.
Speaker 2: I wanted an experience. I've never been to South America before,
Speaker 2: and in all honesty, I needed a break. I just
Speaker 2: I've worked pretty you know our industry. You know, it's relentless.
Speaker 2: You're always on the go, you're always reading and interviewing people,
Speaker 2: and I just wanted a couple of weeks to just
Speaker 2: switch off. And it was great. And I'll tell you
Speaker 2: one little thing, Tony, without getting all to philosophical, it
Speaker 2: made me appreciate what I have, and it made me
Speaker 2: think I need to slow down and appreciate what I
Speaker 2: have because I'm constantly on the go and it's like
Speaker 2: what am I doing next? Bam bam bam, even with marathons,
Speaker 2: Like I mean, one day this year, I was filming
Speaker 2: in Switzerland in January and the next day around a
Speaker 2: marathon in Morocco, and that is not normal. And I'm
Speaker 2: only starting to realize that now that you know, just
Speaker 2: slow down and just kind of take it all in.
Speaker 2: And I know, Tony, you're a big wine man. Peruvian
Speaker 2: malbek You ever see it in a shop? You ever
Speaker 2: see it in a restaurant? Oh my god. So the
Speaker 2: Argentinians and Chile have the market share dominated in Europe.
Speaker 2: As far as I can see about red wine. Peruvian
Speaker 2: malbec is off the scale good and it's twenty two
Speaker 2: dollars a bottle. It is outrageously good.
Speaker 1: All right, I'll check that out when we come back.
Speaker 1: We'll talk more about that, and we'll talk to you
Speaker 1: as well. The new nuclear plant which is coming on
Speaker 1: the Cans for the UK, and a couple of tributes
Speaker 1: as well. We'll do that next into Brady he's back.
Speaker 1: He's safe as well. He's part of a straighter everynight
Speaker 1: and de Brady is back with us. We usually talk
Speaker 1: to you about on Tuesday and Thursday. This week it's
Speaker 1: Wednesday and Thursday. If it goes to play for tomorrow,
Speaker 1: if this works, if this audition works out really well,
Speaker 1: we'll get to tomorrow as well, because there's a lot
Speaker 1: happening in the world. A textepropet to absolutely nothing. Could
Speaker 1: you just ask in attorney mech do you still pay
Speaker 1: TV and or radio license in England?
Speaker 2: Yes, we do. That's a very good text question. We
Speaker 2: absolutely do. So get this. Whether you watch the BBC
Speaker 2: or not. So you can have your satellite TV with
Speaker 2: all the services, you can just watch Sport, Netflix, Premier League.
Speaker 2: You may never turn on the BBC and you still
Speaker 2: have to pay the license fee. And I think we
Speaker 2: are paying somewhere in the region. I reckon it's about
Speaker 2: two hundred and sixty dollars a year we pay for
Speaker 2: the license fee. Now, the argument is that that money
Speaker 2: goes into the BBC coffers and they can create amazing
Speaker 2: programs and you watch Wimbledon and David Attenborough and all
Speaker 2: the Crown Jewels of sport that the BBC have. But
Speaker 2: I would say I watched the BBC on maybe how
Speaker 2: many shows do I watch on the BBC? I watched
Speaker 2: the Wimbledon tennis and I really like a family program
Speaker 2: called Race Across the World. That's pretty much it that
Speaker 2: I watch on the BBC, and I'm giving them two
Speaker 2: hundred and fifty bucks a year for that. Vira, No,
Speaker 2: don't watch us. I've found that too bleakly. Yeah, I
Speaker 2: rarely watch the BBC. I mean, if don't get me wrong,
Speaker 2: they're news. They've got some great journalists, but I get
Speaker 2: my news from other sources. I watch an awful lot
Speaker 2: of VPL on Sky Sports, which I pay extra for. Yeah,
Speaker 2: that's a very good question. Your listener is absolutely right. Yeah,
Speaker 2: we pay a lot of money here for that license fee.
Speaker 1: That's a question here too, which is often bet LABC
Speaker 1: is to the cost of it and what venue we
Speaker 1: as Australions get from it these days.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Look, I think the argument here is that the
Speaker 2: BBC is a cultural institution and you could land in
Speaker 2: the middle of anywhere Africa, Asia and say BBC and
Speaker 2: people will know what you're talking about, and it does
Speaker 2: spread British culture. But then a lot of people feel
Speaker 2: it's time to get some adverts in and advertising and
Speaker 2: raise revenue from other ways.
Speaker 1: Nuclear plants on the cads for which part of the
Speaker 1: UK if I go ahead.
Speaker 2: So a county called Suffolk, which is in the east
Speaker 2: of England, they are going to put in a new
Speaker 2: nuclear power plant at the cost of twenty eight billion
Speaker 2: Australian dollars. Now there's not a great deal of money
Speaker 2: left in the UK coffers. We know that Starmer has
Speaker 2: come out today and defended it and said that every
Speaker 2: penny will be accounted for and this will herald the
Speaker 2: golden age of clean Britain energy, which will ultimately power
Speaker 2: about ten million homes. It's probably going to take the
Speaker 2: best part of a decade to build it. But today
Speaker 2: the money has been signed off. He has miraculously found
Speaker 2: twenty eight billion dollars.
Speaker 1: Twenty eight billion dollars Kitchen kachin Kitching. Would people be
Speaker 1: familiar with the name of Frederick a Fourth Side, great
Speaker 1: journalist and some wonderful books their novelist.
Speaker 2: Yes, so look, people may not have heard of him,
Speaker 2: or might not remember the name, but you will know
Speaker 2: the name the day of the Jackal, of course, very
Speaker 2: famous novel which in recent years Sky have taken on
Speaker 2: and they've remade it with as a TV series with
Speaker 2: Eddie Redmain. They actually kind of changed everything in it
Speaker 2: to the point that he said in his last interview,
Speaker 2: So he passed away this week. Frederick Forsyth. He said
Speaker 2: in his last interview that even with the name The
Speaker 2: Day of the Jackal, he said the TV show Sky
Speaker 2: recently made with Eddie Redmain was so different. He said
Speaker 2: he couldn't have done them for plagiarism because they changed
Speaker 2: absolutely everything he had come up with, and I got
Speaker 2: the impression he didn't really like it. So great journalist,
Speaker 2: an extraordinary, towering literary figure, sold about seventy million books
Speaker 2: all up. And I loved one quote he gave, and
Speaker 2: I'm paraphrasing here. I read it in his obituary today.
Speaker 2: He said, some people, he said, there are several reasons
Speaker 2: people write books. He said, some people write books because
Speaker 2: they have a burning passion to get a story down
Speaker 2: on paper. He said, some people write books because they
Speaker 2: absolutely love writing. He said, Others write them because they're politically,
Speaker 2: are actively driven towards a topic. And he said, and
Speaker 2: then there's me. He said, I just love the.
Speaker 1: Money, which he is brutally honest that I love.
Speaker 2: Yeah, perspect that you have visions of these kind of
Speaker 2: you know, creative artists who fall out of bed in
Speaker 2: the morning. I must write six thousand words this new
Speaker 2: plot twist as I've just dreamt overnight. No, he just
Speaker 2: loved making money.
Speaker 1: Yeah, this isn't that wonderful? I think that's great. Tell
Speaker 1: us about the I've been watching this in the last
Speaker 1: forty eight It is intriguing because I think you and
Speaker 1: I have talked about it. How important it is for
Speaker 1: the payments to for people during the depths of your
Speaker 1: winter to have support for a range of riss been
Speaker 1: well documented. Where's that going now?
Speaker 2: So big U turn Starmer initially took this money away
Speaker 2: so pensioners in the UK every winter, regardless of whether
Speaker 2: you're on your basic state pension, which is not very much,
Speaker 2: or you could be a multimillionaire in your seventies, everyone
Speaker 2: was given approximately six hundred dollars, regardless of their income
Speaker 2: or the size of their house or their savings, six
Speaker 2: hundred dollars towards fuel payments. So it gets cold. December
Speaker 2: January February it's grim in the UK. You've got the
Speaker 2: gas on, you've got the heating on, and for as
Speaker 2: long as anyone can remember, every single pensioner couple in
Speaker 2: the UK or single pensioner got six hundred books from
Speaker 2: the government. Starmer came in and looked at it and
Speaker 2: he thought, well, hang on, we can't afford to pay
Speaker 2: that anymore. I'm going to stop it, and he did.
Speaker 2: The end result was local council elections, but he didn't really.
Speaker 2: You know, it makes me wonder how smart he is.
Speaker 2: Sometimes pensioners vote young people don't. Pensioners watch the news,
Speaker 2: they read the papers, they have opinions, and they would
Speaker 2: majority of them vote well. Starmer felled out to his
Speaker 2: cost in the recent council elections. Reform hammered labor in
Speaker 2: many places, and the big issue on the doorsteps was
Speaker 2: we're really annoyed that you've taken away our winter fuel payments,
Speaker 2: so lo and behold three sixty U turn yesterday. He's
Speaker 2: suddenly got to find two and a half billion dollars
Speaker 2: to fund it, but he's put in a little caveat
Speaker 2: If your household income as a pensioner is under seventy
Speaker 2: thousand Australian dollars. You will still get the payment. If
Speaker 2: you've got more than seventy thousand a year coming in
Speaker 2: between the two of you, you won't be getting it.
Speaker 2: So the majority of pensioners in the UK will now
Speaker 2: be getting their six hundred books come winter.
Speaker 1: I see Hugh Laurie having a birthday today. I think
Speaker 1: he's sixty six. But I was going through some of
Speaker 1: the things that he's done over the years. You're very
Speaker 1: famous in America for doing House, which was a great
Speaker 1: series from our four through to twelve. But then you
Speaker 1: look at other programs of which he was very involved.
Speaker 1: Black DDA would be one that jumps to mind, which
Speaker 1: you would only just remember the great Black Head a
Speaker 1: Hu Laurie birthday boy.
Speaker 2: Yes, and he used to be a TV show called
Speaker 2: A Bit of Fry and Lurry. Of course it was
Speaker 2: very funny, so Leaves and Muster. I think he was
Speaker 2: in as well, you know, the old kind of traditional
Speaker 2: English establishment Butler comedy. Yeah, funny guy. And I mean
Speaker 2: you're right, he is absolutely huge in America. And I
Speaker 2: would wager Tony because his accent is so good as
Speaker 2: an American, I would bet there are a lot of
Speaker 2: Americans who don't actually realize he is an English actor's
Speaker 2: super Yeah.
Speaker 1: I've seen him interviewed a couple of times, and he
Speaker 1: can cross between those interviews if he's doing so the
Speaker 1: COOLBA program, he can do it in a beauty in
Speaker 1: his hometown accent from off Oxfordshire, or he can do
Speaker 1: just an American accident. If you didn't know, you wouldn't know.
Speaker 2: Yeah, talent, talented guy. Very happy birthday to him. Were
Speaker 2: blessed to have him.
Speaker 1: Well, we're blessed to have you back on, Dick.
Speaker 2: Do you recaver now?
Speaker 1: You go straight back into work mode?
Speaker 2: I was. I was in work today, made two TV
Speaker 2: shows today and it was fun at the Dutch government
Speaker 2: has collapsed. The Dutch government has collapsed, and Bulgaria is
Speaker 2: joining the Euro currency as of next year. So it's
Speaker 2: a bit busy. But I'll tell you what, Tomy, it
Speaker 2: was just lovely to walk back into work today and
Speaker 2: people are happy to see me. I was just like,
Speaker 2: I almost tears in my eyes. It has only been
Speaker 2: gone a fortnite. How lovely is this?
Speaker 1: It's a nice it's a lovely feeling on a Saturday night.
Speaker 1: You and I have been watching very carefully as many
Speaker 1: of the listeners, this dreadful story coming out of Austria,
Speaker 1: where ten to eleven losing their lives, a lot more
Speaker 1: people injured. It's just dreadful. Young kid only twenty one
Speaker 1: with two weapons.
Speaker 2: Yeah, shocking. So he's an ex pupil of the school
Speaker 2: and the whisper or certainly what's going around online is
Speaker 2: that he claims he was bullied at the school years ago.
Speaker 2: He legally held these two firearms and he's gone back
Speaker 2: in and slaughtered people. Absolutely shocking. I mean Austria, I've
Speaker 2: always thought it was a very very safe country. Never
Speaker 2: makes the news nowadays for this kind of thing, and
Speaker 2: there you go, out of nowhere, a school shooting in
Speaker 2: a small town in Austria.
Speaker 1: Aging well like we much said tomorrow. Thank you Winder
Speaker 1: Brady in the UK keeps us up to date with
Speaker 1: all things to do with the news of that part
Speaker 1: of the world at the cereals on the way your
Speaker 1: calls coming up the other side of stranger overnight