The Nick Abbot Habit

00:02 This is a global production. Oh, it's a good one for you this week. In these clips from two different shows from four years ago, we were talking about Fishy Sunak's financial affairs. 00:13 I got a sense of déjà vu. 00:16 I deal in a conspiracy theory. And there was a tale of retired sheep. Kate texts, what is Mrs Sunak saving for? Is she a philanthropist? 00:31 I don't know, do you? Can you tell us, says Kate. 00:36 Philanthropist. 00:38 See, you and me, we give money to charity. 00:42 The super-rich are philanthropists. 00:47 Lucy texts, I wish people would just give Starmer credit for being an honest man who left his high-paid job to try and improve ordinary lives. It is what decent politicians were valued for once. 00:59 Oh, yeah, back in the good old days. You know, like 15 years ago. Is that what you mean, Lucy? 01:06 Yeah, dim, distant memory. 01:09 Yeah, he does seem like a decent and honest man compared to the catastrophic clan show that we've got running this country at the moment. 01:18 I followed the ministerial guidance at all times. 01:20 I mean, really? 01:21 Listen to the man. 01:22 I followed the ministerial guidance at all times. 01:26 He is the leader of this country. Oh, no. We are doomed. 01:35 But, you know, Keir Starmer's problem is that he is not, he doesn't wave his arms around and go paw a lot and act like he's just stepped out of the Beano. 01:48 He doesn't have that. He's a real human being as opposed to a cartoon character. 01:56 or caricature, like a caricature of the rich. 02:00 The party, the Conservative Party, seemed to be a caricature of what poor people think rich people would be like. 02:09 And this guy is a case in point. You're better informed than I am. I don't know anything. I mean, he does seem to be like the caricature of a rich person that a poor person would imagine, doesn't he? 02:23 I don't know if he actually exists in real life. Is he a person or is it a hologram? 02:29 Is he real or is it Memorex? 02:33 Martin says, regarding Fishy's wife's non-dom status, can you imagine if this was Diane Abbott's husband? Oh, my God. 02:41 Yeah, I think the right-wing offshore billionaire press would have exploded. 02:47 They'd have had to rent out more space on the internet to pour their ire all over her. 02:56 Sue texts to just think what Rish's wallpaper is like. 03:01 Carrie must be sick with envy. I wonder how she could ever get her own back. I bet he just papers his walls with 50s. 03:09 Must do. 03:11 Or he has a whole new note minted just for him personally. Thousands. 03:19 Jack tweets, I believe everyone should have a choice if they want to pay tax or not. Just like the rich have a choice. I think that is a good idea, Jack. Yeah. I mean, if they have a choice, then why can't we have a choice too? 03:33 I mean, I could decide to voluntarily pay a tax, you know, just like the rich do. 03:39 Or not, as the case may be. Just depends how I feel. 03:43 They do it and they rely on us not doing it. 03:48 Because if we didn't do it, nothing would work. 03:52 They can get away with it because there's so relatively few of them, these super rich. 03:59 But if we all decided not to pay tax, then everything would crumble. 04:04 Nothing would work. 04:07 And so we run furiously in one place just to keep still... 04:15 And in order to pay the taxes that actually don't really seem to benefit us that much. 04:22 The government takes our taxes and they say... 04:24 Thank you. 04:25 And that's the last we see of it. 04:28 But it's worse than I've been explaining so far. 04:34 I'll take this call and I'll tell you the bad news. Hackney, hello, Richard. 04:38 Hello, Nick. You've kind of stolen my thunder because I'm going to say that I feel such an idiot. I mean, all of this time, I thought tax was compulsory. 04:50 I never realised it was voluntary. Foolish, foolish Richard. The amount of money I've given to the Exchequer, just to have them blow it on... heated stables and... 05:03 Cheese and wine. 05:05 And duck ponds. 05:08 Yes. If I'd have known I could keep it, I'd have kept it and I'd have, you know, spent it on my own duck pond. 05:15 Richard, you must feel like an idiot. 05:18 I mean, many people have suspected, but I didn't realise it was true until today. Right. 05:28 Let me get this straight. If we... 05:31 charge rich people tax. 05:33 Yes. 05:34 They'll go away. They'll leave, yeah. And they'll stop... 05:38 society will collapse because they're not paying tax anymore. 05:43 Yeah, they're not going to be investing in this country, which is the excuse that some minister gave for not enacting a windfall tax on the energy giants. They're making billions and billions of pounds, more than they could possibly ever have dreamed because of the high price of energy. 06:01 That's the one where they take away their business. and they stop employing all these people, half of which we're paying working tax credits to because the in-work payment is so low, it can't actually sustain you. 06:16 Yeah, that's socialism, but that's good economic policy. That kind of socialism where the money goes up to the rich, that's just economic prudence. But the bad socialism is where the rich have to pay for a lot of poor people and we wouldn't want that. 06:34 No. It just encourages them. 06:36 Right. So as long as they're not paying tax and they're not paying their workers, they can stay here. But God forbid they ever leave. 06:45 I know. Then we'd really be in trouble. 06:47 We'd really be in trouble. 06:48 All right. Thanks a lot, Richard. 06:50 All right. Here's the bad news. Two companies linked to Chancellor Rishi Sunak's wife both took taxpayers' money to pay UK staff under the furlough scheme during the pandemic. Hmm. 07:02 Fish's wife, who is estimated to be worth north of £700 million, has come under scrutiny for her tax-reducing non-domiciled status, as you know. But it's worse than that. 07:13 She is apparently the fashion designer daughter of the billionaire who founded the software firm Infosys, which furloughed 3% of its UK staff in 2020. Now, keep in mind that the owner is a billionaire. 07:28 The company was estimated by sources to have had up to 10,000 workers at the time, meaning up to 300 workers were furloughed. 07:35 Now, a billionaire could just have continued to pay their wages. But why would you do that when we poor dopes who pay taxes can? 07:44 42-year-old Ms. Murty also claimed up to £635,000 of furlough money at her gym business, Dig Me Fitness. 07:57 when it closed its eight studios in London and Oxford. 08:01 Is that true? 08:03 She's worth 700 million quid, and she claimed £635,000 of furlough money, which her husband was doling out, by the way. 08:16 Ms Murty had a 4.5% stake in Dig Me Fitness and was the director of the firm, but it collapsed, leaving the taxpayer, that's you, with debts of £415,000. 08:30 Figures revealed by the Daily Mirror in February 2021 showed that Dig Me Fitness had claimed between £50,000 and £100,000 in furlough money in December of 2020. 08:43 But it's worse than that. 08:45 because a later report in the Times in March 2022 then revealed it had received between £310,000 and £635,000 in furlough between December 2020 and September 2021. She's worth £700 million or more. 09:08 The chain, Dig Me Fitness, appointed administrators this February after struggling to relaunch itself online with live-streamed workouts and collapsed, owing around £6.1 million, amongst which £415,000 owed to you. 09:28 Specifically, owed to Her Majesty's Revenue and Customs. 09:33 which were said to be for unpaid VAT, PAYE and national insurance. That's according to the Times. 09:46 Well, you've got to have a laugh, ain't you? 09:53 Well, let's get back to it. By the way, if you are considering driving into London tonight, don't even think about it. 10:02 Trust me, throw your keys down a drain and walk away from your car. 10:08 I've never seen anything so blocked in my life. 10:16 A journey that would normally take about five minutes took an hour. An hour. I don't know, there was some... What was the march in London today? Extinction Rebellion. Oh, OK, some hippies. That's fine. Extinction Rebellion. 10:32 And so what did the police do? I mean, there were a few people in the middle of town when I came in. 10:36 A few, like they could have fitted onto the pavement. But what did the police do? Did they just let the cars go about their business? No, they didn't. Of course not. They closed every road in London for your convenience. 10:51 Struth, Cressida Dix left, right? It's actually got worse since she left. 10:57 I wouldn't have thought that possible. 10:59 Is there anybody running the police in London now? No. Or are they just running themselves, running around, clutching their heads, thinking, oh, what should we do now? I don't know, close a road. 11:09 Honestly, it's the worst I've ever seen it. 11:13 I had to park about three miles away. 11:16 Every single road going from here to wherever you want to go was shut. 11:22 Do not even think about it. 11:27 I wanted to kill somebody. But you're not allowed to kill somebody because of the European Human Rights Act. 11:36 Some texts and emails from last night. Kate texts, but you know me, I never complain. Stop whining. Kate texts, what is Mrs Sunak saving for? Is she a philanthropist? 11:49 I don't know, do you? Can you tell her, says Kate? 11:52 No, Kate, I don't. 11:53 What I do know is that when the rich give what to them is ten pence, they're called, you know, to charity, they're called philanthropists. 12:04 When we give a week's wage, it's just called, you know, we're doing our bit. 12:10 But they are philanthropists. Oh. 12:16 Most philanthropists are just giving away money to whitewash their reputation that they would ordinarily have paid in tax. It's just that they managed to swerve that part. 12:29 I'd like to be a philanthropist. I'd like to not pay any tax and then just give some of the money that I would have paid in tax to the charity of my choice. 12:38 And get my name on a building, perhaps. Wouldn't that be nice? 12:41 Marvellous. 12:44 Lucy texts, I wish people would just give Starmer credit for being an honest man who left his high-paid job to try and improve ordinary lives. 12:51 It is what decent politicians were valued for once. Keir really does his best to have integrity. 12:59 He is lying to our faces. Whoa, that took a turn at the end there. Do you mean that? Probably not. 13:08 He is not the person that you were just referring to there, Lucy, perhaps. Maybe you mean his imperial bodgeness is lying to our faces. 13:16 Yeah, yeah, yeah. Wait a minute. 13:18 I expect that that's exactly what you meant. 13:21 Martin texts, regarding Fish's wife's non-DOM status, could you imagine if it was Diane Abbott's husband? Getting a bit of déjà vu, which is a filthy French phrase, a European phrase. That's not what we want. 13:36 But I think I read those last night, but not this one. 13:39 Or maybe I did. Sue says, just think what Rish's wallpaper is like. Carrie must be sick with envy. I wonder how she could get her own back. 13:47 Oh, she's devising her way. Don't you worry about that. 13:51 I'm pretty sure I read that last night too. 13:53 I replied with something like, he papers his walls with 50s. 13:57 Jack tweets, I believe everyone should have a choice if they want to pay tax or not, just like the rich have a choice. Correct, Amundo. 14:04 Yes, if the rich have a choice... 14:06 If they're doing us a favour by paying tax, it's like, oh, all right then. 14:12 It's a little bit. Now shut up and go away. Wouldn't that be great? 14:16 If you just say, well, you know, I paid some tax last year. I don't think I'm going to pay it this year. I've done my bit. 14:24 But that's not for the little people, not leprechauns. 14:28 Adam texts, the telephone was invented before the television and we have 8K TVs and virtual reality devices now, yet we still have to refer to the phonetic alphabet when we make phone calls because the sound still isn't clear. What's taking so long? 14:43 My thoughts exactly. Why do mobile phones, some of which cost over £1,000, for a phone, why can't you use them as a phone yet? 14:56 Just asking. 14:58 You can use them as a compass. 15:01 You can use them as the world's most efficient map. 15:05 But can you use them as a phone? No. Not yet. 15:10 Architex, today was... This was from yesterday. Yesterday was Cressida Dick's last day in post. Why aren't you celebrating? Well, the reason I'm not celebrating, Archie, is because it's actually... The policing of London's got worse in her absence. It's hard to believe, but I don't know who's in charge now, but they need a damn good thrashing. 15:29 Metaphorically speaking, of course. 15:33 Honestly, there was not crowds in the centre of London such that you had to close the roads. And they didn't just close one road. They closed all of them. Every single one. I was sat in... How ironic. Extinction Rebellion. 15:50 You know, trying to save the planet. Is the entirety of London sitting in a traffic jam for an hour saving the planet? No. No, it's the opposite of that. 16:01 So I think I was running through, you know, because I had so much time on my hands. 16:07 I was running through, why are they doing this? There's no reasonable explanation. They're not saving people's lives. I mean, there wasn't swamped with people, the centre of London, and yet they decided to close everything. You couldn't go anywhere. 16:21 Apart from New Year's Eve, when it used to get absolutely berserk in the centre of town before they started ticketing the fireworks... 16:29 I've never seen anything so bad in my life. And there was no reason for it. They closed the roads, but the roads weren't swamped with people. You think if there were millions of people all over the roads, then they'd have to close the roads to traffic because people might die. 16:44 Now, I personally am prepared for a certain amount of death if it means me getting to where I'm going at the required time. 16:52 But that's just me. You know, I'm efficient minded. 16:58 But there was no reason to close the roads, so I thought, well, why are they doing this? Is it to make the public upset at the Extinction Rebellion people? 17:08 I bet that's it. 17:11 I bet the word had come from the top to make it as difficult as possible for everybody that wasn't on that march to get around London, just to make us hate them a little bit more. 17:22 Or to start hating them if previously we had supported them. 17:26 I betcha, betcha, betcha. Either that or it was just absolute, total and utter incompetence, the likes of which should not be allowed. 17:38 So, anyway, if any time you want to come back, Cressida Dick, yesterday we said bye-bye, but we might say hello any time soon if things go on the way they are. We had no idea how lucky we were. 17:52 I just want to tell you all how happy I am to be back in the studio, making a picture again. 17:56 Well, I'm happy to be back in the studio. I never thought I was going to make it. For a while there, I thought, I'm just going to have to abandon the car here, right in the middle of the road. I just don't care anymore. 18:08 And they'll tow it, and I'll go and pick it up from the pound later on. It'd be worth, you know, paying the extra. 18:17 Paying the extra would be less financially painful than missing a show. 18:25 But, like I said, you know me, I never complain. 18:29 Vince texts, my fear is that because the last pandemic went so well for the super-rich, they have already got the scientists in Wuhan working on an even bigger and worse one. What, the mad bat disease? 18:40 You wouldn't put it past them, would you, says Vince? No, I most certainly would not, Vince. 18:46 I would expect it of them. 18:48 It is remarkable. The super rich have done so fantastically well. And it's really, it's just incredible, really. I mean, the rest of us have suffered like we've never suffered before outside of wartime. 18:59 And the super rich have got ever more stratospherically rich. I mean, Fishy Sunak's wife has put on 200 million quid on her wealth in a year. 19:10 Oh, it's just the politics of envy. 19:14 The useful idiots. 19:17 Woodwork squeaks and out come the freaks. 19:20 Rachel texts Dodo Harding following her success as track and trace chief. 19:24 Applied to be the chief of NHS England. Fortunately for us it was unsuccessful again. Well, maybe she'd like to apply to be a head of the London police. 19:33 Traffic division. 19:34 What could possibly go wrong? What could possibly go worse? 19:39 Pete texts, who's in charge of the karaoke at an illegal party? The head of ethics. 19:47 We no longer need carry-on films. Armando Iannucci, you're out of a job. We don't need satire or comedy. We just need Boris Johnson and friends to become a reality TV sensation. The truth is really more messed up than fiction. It's more messed up than his hair. 20:03 How many more of these have I got from last night? Oh, loads. I'm never going to get them. And there's more coming in from tonight. How do these people get my number? 20:13 Simon says, how many taxpayers in one year would it take to pay for the wasted PPE? I don't know. Is this a joke? 20:20 How many taxpayers in one year would it take to pay for the wasted PPE? 20:25 He says, assuming it's an average taxpayer, I haven't got enough fingers to work it out. I don't get it. 20:35 That's not funny, Simon. 20:37 Very disappointed. 20:39 Rob says, I'm off to France. I'm going to seek non-DOM status and a bit of skiing. 20:45 Well, I'd like to go to France. I mean, I'd like to go to Italy. The traffic's probably better in Rome than it is in London at the moment. Can you imagine that? 20:53 And Italian drivers are famously out of their minds. 20:58 I bet there's still people who are stuck in the same traffic jam that I... Because I just started following cabs. 21:05 who were doing U-turns all over the place. I mean, they sat in traffic for a little while and they thought, right, that's it, I'm leaving. 21:11 And I thought, well, they must know where they're going, so I'll follow them. 21:16 Then it occurred to me after a while, well, I don't know where they're going. They might know where they're going, but it might not be where I'm going. 21:23 but I just started randomly following cabs to see where it took me. 21:31 I swear, every single police person in the entirety of London has got cones behind them waving traffic in the opposite direction to that which they want to go. 21:40 Why? 21:42 Why are they doing that? 21:44 The march was over ages ago. It's an ordinary Saturday night crowd out there. Why have you closed the whole of London? Other than to make the public more irate with the hippie protesters. Must be. 22:00 There's no other logical explanation. It's not to protect lives. Come off it. 22:06 And there was van after van after van after van. How many police does it take to close the centre of London? All of them. 22:15 But I'm not complaining. Whinging and whining and moaning. 22:20 Well, it's not saving the planet, is it? 90% of the cars in the traffic jams that are clogging up the centre of town would have parked and turned their engines off by now. Instead, they're just sitting there, thrumming away. 22:35 Each one losing tiny portions of their mind with each passing second. 22:41 Josh says, not one of this shower of a cabinet is at all worried about winning the next general election. They have smashed and they have grabbed and they do not give a damn about the wreckage they will leave in their wake. I'm not sure that that's true. Certainly not the first part, anyway. I do believe that they have smashed and they have grabbed and they don't give a damn about the wreckage. That bit seems absolutely true. But I bet they are worried about winning the next election to the point that they seem to be fixing it. 23:08 Or what's a more legal term for fixing? 23:13 One moment, please. Oh, here we go. 23:15 Yeah, they're very, very upset about the Liberals and the Labours. 23:20 Labour and the Liberal Democrats, and this is going to come as a shock to you, that they actually might have finally believed that it's true, got their act together. The Labour Party and the Liberal Democrats. Can you believe that? No. I know. Hard to believe. 23:36 Labour and the Liberal Democrats have fuelled speculation about an informal non-aggression pact in next month's local elections. Non-aggression. 23:46 I bet they, on sight, they start punching each other to the ground and the Tory party will just step nimbly over them and win. That's what I bet. 23:56 Data from nominations which closed this week reveal that the two opposition parties appear to be giving each other a free run against the Conservatives in many of their key target seats. Well, about blooming time. 24:09 Across swathes of the Red Wall battleground in the Midlands and the North, the Liberal Democrats are fielding candidates only in a fraction of the seats up for grabs, leaving the field clear for Labour to take on the Tories. 24:22 The situation is mirrored in the so-called Blue Wall in the south of England, where the Lib Dems are perceived as the biggest challengers to Conservative rule. It's a pincer movement. 24:33 A senior Tory source said... 24:39 They said the two parties appeared to be using next month's polls as a trial run for a possible electoral pact in the next general election. Well, about blooming time... 24:51 A senior Tory said, if you look at the nomination data for certain parts of the country, it's quite clear that Labour and the Lib Dems are trying to give each other a clear run in areas where they think one of them has the best chance. It's totally cynical and denies the voters a proper choice. Oh, please. 25:08 Like, that's your main concern. 25:11 It looks like a trial run for the next election and them laying the groundwork for some sort of coalition, says a senior Tory source. Pow! 25:24 Totally cynical. I mean, how could he or she, sexist, say that without cracking up? They're being cynical. OK, then. 25:37 Labour and the Lib Dems deny collusion. Collusion. 25:42 This is the mail I'm reading this from. Collusion. But the Financial Times reported this year that the two parties have already begun to work on a non-aggression pact at the next general election, which is the spring of 2024. 25:54 Bodger Johnson's Deputy Chief of Staff, David Canzini, warned senior Tories last month that the May 5th elections will be very hard for the Conservatives with a real risk that the voters will use the polls to punish the government over party gate and the cost of living. 26:08 I thought we'd been instructed to forget Partygate. Weren't we told that it was just the fluff of politics? 26:14 You're better informed than I am. I don't know anything. 26:16 You've had your instructions. Stop thinking about it, people. 26:21 Senior Tories are braced for a wipeout in London. And we're not talking about surfing. 26:27 And they are concerned about potential losses in southern England. But they remain hopeful that they could hold ground in the Red Wall areas that put Johnson into number 10 in 2019. Hey, you Red Wall areas. Are you feeling as though you've been had yet? 26:41 Hmm? 26:44 How can they have the nerve? How can a senior Tory have the nerve to say that the Liberals and the Labour Party working together in order to beat the Tories are being cynical? The Conservative Party is the party that are introducing, trying their very best to introduce an ID law to vote. 27:01 And they got the idea from the Republicans in America who are trying on the same thing. 27:06 Now, the idea is the poorer you are, the less likely you will have a photo ID, less likely you will have a driving licence or a passport, the poorer and the younger, of course. Now, the younger you are, the most likely you are to not vote Conservative. 27:23 So the calculation is that three and a half million people will be taken out of the election, thereby swaying it for the Tories. Now, they're pretending that they're fixing a problem that actually doesn't exist. 27:36 Voter fraud. There is no voter fraud in this country. I mean, you might be able to pick up one or two people that voted for somebody that wasn't themselves by accident. But like in America, they're pretending to fix a problem that doesn't exist. I think that is the very definition of cynical. 27:54 I mean, the Cabinet's own research says that only half of those with no ID will apply for some to vote. So, I mean, that's like 1.75 million people that would not vote Conservative who have just been taken out of the next general election in one fell swoop with these photo ID laws. 28:15 And they have the nerve to talk about cynical. 28:18 And they want the Electoral Commission to follow the government's instructions, which is another thing they've got from the Republican Party. 28:26 Anybody that has control or authority over the electoral cycle or the elections in general should be beholden, should take their instructions from the government of the day. 28:39 How crooked does that sound? 28:42 And ministers will decide what campaign activities are allowed a year before the election. 28:48 and which other parties could be gagged from campaigning, like Greenpeace or the eco-hippies that the police decided to blame for bringing London to a halt. 29:02 So that sounds a little bit more cynical to me, just a tiny bit more cynical and dangerous and alarming and concerning and worrying and all those other words that end in ING. 29:14 But I can't actually believe that the Liberals and the Labour Party have got their act together to the point that they might actually work together, you know, in their common interests. That does seem unlikely. Yes? No. 29:29 Paul says, throwing £100,000 at your ex-public school is a slap in the face for the poor and the old who can't turn their heating on. What an out-of-touch Chancellor. I am scared for our country. He threw £100,000 at his old public school. 29:41 What do they need the money for? 29:45 Like a flower arrangement? You are joking. He threw a hundred grand. He went to Winchester, didn't he? 29:53 One of those places. 29:54 What do they need the money for? I mean, that's just rubbing it in our faces. 30:01 Hey, Redwall people, you're feeling like you've been had yet. 30:04 Just asking. 30:07 James says Meghan Markle. Oh, Meghan Markle. I expect all of this is her fault. Yeah, thanks a lot, Meghan. Thank you. 30:14 Meghan Markle must be thinking she married the wrong Brit. If she was Fish's wife, she'd be able to get away with anything by the right-wing media now. 30:21 She has been out of the press for a little while. I mean, there was a couple of stories about her and Hazard. Hazard and Sparkles, they were going to the Invicta Games in... Is it in the Netherlands? Yeah, I think it's the Netherlands. 30:33 And they were saying, you know, it's absolutely disgraceful that they didn't show up for the Queen Mother's Husband's Remembrance Service. 30:43 but they're going to go and show up for this. 30:46 And, of course, they can't really say too much that's bad about the Invictus Games because, you know, of what it is. 30:55 But they're trying. Don't you worry about that. You're not off the hook yet, Megan. Still the Wicked Witch of the West. 31:03 It's amazing how much they've taken against her, isn't it? 31:08 I mean, in the absence of any other news on any given day, there's always some Megan news to boo at. 31:17 Gary says, when we knew what we voted for with Brexit, we also knew we would take a big dip in the first few years. We are only two years in. Give it five years and we'll be thriving. 31:28 You're funny, Gary. 31:30 I mean, at least you gave me six exclamation marks there to show that you are serious. BUZZER You know, like most serious people do. Six exclamation marks. Like he's yelling at me. 31:44 Rose texts. I think very often it's about self-image. A sense of status is more important even than income. If you vote Tory, you are allying yourself with the winners. The top people. 31:59 Well, you know what? There may be something in that. I mean, the Conservative Party seems to be, like the Republicans, the winner-takes-all party. Now... 32:09 The winners write the laws and the regulations to suit those who have already won. The problem with this is if it's a train that you want to get on, unfortunately, it's already going too fast for you to get on it. You're vanishingly unlikely. You might throw yourself at the side of the train, hoping to cling on, but almost nobody will. Unless you were born rich, it's almost impossible for you to become rich. 32:38 But people feel that by allying themselves with the party of the rich, that there is a possibility that they might, at some point in the future, become rich themselves. 32:48 And then they'll be happy because they'll put the party that is acting in their interests as a rich person, they'll put them in power. 33:00 Because it doesn't work unless you get rich. That's the important part. 33:05 But if as a poor person you vote for a party that seems to have the interest of the rich at heart, then, well, you really are sort of crossing your fingers and hoping for the best there, aren't you? 33:16 Like buying a lottery ticket, I suppose. 33:19 If you're not in it, you can't win it. That is true. 33:22 Chris says, so if I buy bargain potatoes from Aldi and sprinkle mud over them and put them in a rustic wooden crate, can I resell them at my local farmer's market and make 100% profit? Absolutely. 33:35 I believe that's how it's done. 33:39 Let's have Narbuth. Neil. 33:43 Hi, Nick. 33:44 How are you doing? Good, thanks. 33:45 Good, good. I was just thinking about what you're talking about, the voting scenario. One of the things that no one ever talks about is the postal vote. 33:55 The Tories haven't banned that yet because they know a lot of their supporters go out and do a postal vote. I've been doing a postal vote for years now. It's so easy. 34:05 I'm sure the older you are, the more likely it is that you will have a postal vote, no? 34:12 Yeah, I've been doing it since about 30. 34:15 But why? 34:16 What for? It's easier. I mean, you get something for the post, you just tick a box, you send it back, it's done. Job done. You haven't got to go out and stand in with some, you know, the great unwashed and... Speaking of unwashed, Neil, were we just in the loo with you? 34:33 No, no, you were actually in a barn with some sheep at the moment. Oh, OK. 34:37 It did very much sound like a toilet flushing for a while there. Sorry about that. 34:41 No, it's a metal trough. Right. 34:46 Well, that's not making me feel much better. 34:48 So it's a metal trough, not a toilet. OK. No. 34:52 the sheep to eat out of. 34:54 Right. 34:55 Gotcha. But yeah, the postal vote thing, I think people should do that more. It's so easy and you haven't got to worry about this voter ID business. Well, I kind of like the trip down to the voting place. 35:11 They're never very far away. It's just at the end of the street and you get to smile at the nice ladies behind the trestle table. 35:18 Oh, painful. Painful. No, no, no, no, no. Absolutely not. I'd rather spend my time with my sheep than people in the boating booth, thank you very much. 35:26 How's that whole sheep farming thing going? 35:29 Well, I don't farm sheep, I rescue sheep, so I've got 30 sheep that are retired and their offspring and stuff like that, and they're just here now as rescues. 35:42 They're retired? 35:43 They're retired, yeah. From doing what? Well, we bought a small holding in Wales about six years ago, and there was about 100-odd sheep on the land that we were buying, and we said to the farmer, well, go get them off, but can we keep a few? Because there's lots of grass here, and we could do finding a way of keeping the grass down. We were speaking to animal welfare and things. I'm a vegan, sorry about that. And, yeah, we adopted 12 sheep. 36:18 Some of them were pregnant. 36:20 Some of them are pregnant already. 36:22 Big Rammer, who's the daddy of them all, is looking at me now. Big curly horns. 36:28 So you don't ever sell any of them on for other people's dinner? 36:32 No, no, no. They rule our lives. We spend all our lives just coming out here looking after our sheep and our ponies. 36:39 But isn't it likely that there's going to be, before long, thousands of them? 36:44 No, because the girls basically aren't really mostly interested in that sort of thing anymore. And the boys we've had seem to. 36:57 They just want a quiet life. 37:00 Absolutely. 37:00 Well, that sounds a delight. 37:03 It is. Rama's a good boy. He was a beast when we first got in, but now he's a... A big curly-horned baby, and it just comes up to me now like a dog. 37:11 Well, when I retire, can I come and hang out in your field? You're welcome any time, Nick, honestly. All right, thanks a lot, Neil. It's a date, 0345 6060 973, Friday, Saturday, Sunday night at 10, Nick Abbott, LBC. 37:25 Leading Britain's conversation, LBC, with Nick Abbott. 37:31 Are you trying to tell me that this is your act? 37:33 Jim says, I see Bodger has been to Ukraine today and made absolutely certain that if Vlad the Insaner decides to launch a military strike against a NATO country, it will definitely be us first. 37:46 No, I wouldn't think so, Jim. 37:48 I mean, the Conservative Party seems to be a wholly owned subsidiary of the Kremlin. 37:54 They're not going to bomb that. 37:56 It'd be like bombing their own bank. 37:59 I mean, the Great Britain is less GB, more KGB. 38:04 And on that very alarming note, that's it. If you subscribe to this podcast, the next episode will get squirted up your life as though by magic on Tuesdays and Thursdays. 38:13 Also on Tuesdays and Thursdays is the one that I do with Carol McGiffin. 38:18 Talk about kooky. 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