THE ADAM BUXTON PODCAST - EP.198 - NIHAL ARTHANAYAKE

Episode Date: December 13, 2022

Adam talks with English radio, TV presenter and writer, Nihal Arthanayake about conversations and what happens when they go wrong.CONTAINS STRONG LANGUAGE!This conversation was recorded remotely on October 5th, 2022Thanks to Séamus Murphy-Mitchell for production support and Becca Bryers for conversation editing.Podcast artwork by Helen GreenRELATED LINKSDONATE TO ST MUNGO'SLET'S TALK: HOW TO HAVE BETTER CONVERSATIONS by NIHAL ARTHANAYAKE - 2022 (BLACKWELLS)NIHAL'S HEADLINERS PODCAST (BBC)BBC 5 Live's Nihal Arthanayake brings you in-depth interviews each week with the biggest names in entertainment, culture and the arts.PODCAST INTERVIEW QUESTIONS TO ASK YOUR NEXT GUEST by Baird Hall - 2019 (WAVVE WEBSITE) Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

I added one more podcast to the giant podcast bin Now you have plucked that podcast out and started listening I took my microphone and found some human folk Then I recorded all the noises while we spoke My name is Adam Buxton, I'm a man I want you to enjoy this, that's the plan. Hey, how you doing, podcats? This is Adam Buxton here, and I am reporting to you from a frosty farm track.

Frosty and icy out here in the east of england norfolk county to be precise towards the middle of december 2022 it is freezing out here though so far we have managed to dodge the snow which has fallen elsewhere in the country so grateful for that quick wintry sound effects break going to give you uh some walking on frosted grass and leaves Oh, that is nice and crunchy. I have Rosie on the lead, so she can't go chasing off. It's night time as I talk to you. Well, 4.30, but still a bit of dark blue sky over there so I can vaguely see what's going on. Whoa, Rosie!

What are you after? What is that, Rosie? It's probably a spooky rabbit. I didn't think Rosie was going to want to come out because it's so cold. But she was very keen. Over the weekend it was freezing fog out here. But then yesterday it was very clear and bright. Even the spider's webs were all intricately frosted and stayed that way the whole day.

That's how cold it was. It looked, well, a little bit tacky. It was like the art department had gone overboard. No, it was magical. And also a reminder that the spider community just doesn't take a holiday. Anyway, that's enough winter waffle. Let me tell you about podcast number 198, which features a rambling conversation with English radio and TV presenter and writer Nihal Athanaika. Nihal gets out phone. These gloves are supposed to work with the phone. Yeah, they kind of do. Well enough.

These gloves are supposed to work with the phone. Yeah, they kind of do. Well enough. OK, here we go. Arthur Nyaker facts. Born in 1971, Nihal grew up in Essex, south-east England, the son of Sri Lankan parents.

After leaving school in the late 1980s, Nihal got involved with the music world as an accomplished rapper, promoter and journalist, jobs he continued doing throughout the 90s. His first radio job, as far as I'm aware, in 2002 was at BBC Radio 1, where the Asian Beats show he co-hosted with DJ Bobby Friction was an instant hit, Friction was an instant hit, winning gold at the Sony Radio Awards in 2003. By 2007, Nihal was presenting the weekend breakfast show on Radio 1, as well as taking over from Anita Rani as the host of the mid-morning phone-in on the BBC's Asian network. Nihal's move to BBC Five Live in 2016 came along with a move to Manchester, where he still lives with his wife and two children.

His increasingly popular weekday afternoon show on Five Live features news and current affairs, as well as in-depth interviews with a dizzyingly wide variety of celebrity and non-celebrity guests. dizzyingly wide variety of celebrity and non-celebrity guests. Now I would like to gift you some sliding on an icy section of the farm track. This is dangerous. Yeah, look out there. Ooh, dangerous. OK, I'm going to stop doing that. That's irresponsible behaviour. My conversation with Nihal was recorded remotely

towards the beginning of October this year, 2022, and it was, in many ways, a conversation about conversations. I suppose that was partly down to the fact that we both earn a living having conversations, but it was also because Nihal has written a book called Let's Talk, which is all about the value of successful communication. And in it, with the assistance of various experts, he considers questions like, how do you talk to someone who doesn't want to talk to you? What happens in the brain when we're having a good

conversation? What effect have smartphones had on how we connect? In an age that increasingly encourages blocking out those we disagree with, Let's Talk puts the case for keeping channels of communication open. It was good fun talking to Nihal. Good combination of fairly serious and pretty stupid. Not the first time that Nihal and myself have spoken, of course. He interviewed me back in 2020 about my book when it came out, Ramble Book. I was on his Five Live show. I spoke about it with Joe the following Christmas on the podcast. And there's a little callback in my conversation with Nihal today as well. I'll be back at the end for a bit more waffle,

but right now with Nihal Arthanaike. Here we go. Ramble Chat, that's a full Ramble Chat. Arthur Nyaka. Here we go. Talking at the ESPN La la la la la la la La la la la la la la La la la la la la la La la la la la la la How you doing, Niall? I'm really, I'm really good. It's always a question, isn't it?

Because so often in life, we just ask people how they are doing without really caring about the answer. We just bump into people and they go, hey, how are you doing? You go, yeah, cool. But when you're in the presence of your good self and we're going to have a conversation, you have to really think about it, don't you? Yeah. My standard response nowadays, if someone asks me how I am, is to say, hmm, I want to give you an honest answer.

So let me just think about that. Because, yeah, I don't want to just go, yeah, fine, if someone's just died or something really grim. If someone's just died or something really grim. Of course. On the other hand, if someone has just died, you've got to pick your moment. If you're at a party and it's not, you don't want it to be a long chat necessarily, then you're not going to go for a, yeah, well, so-and-so just died. So there's that. I bumped into a guy on Monday at an event and I asked him how he was and he said he's just come out of a terrible breakup and rather than me going I'm sorry to hear that I lent in I said okay how long were you with each other for and so we ended up having I actually allowed him to really vent about it rather than

just go oh man that's anyway I'm sure you'll find love again are you on tinder and then move on was it someone that you knew quite well though no it was the first time i'd ever met him but i had played his music before on the radio and supported his music i mean you know singer songwriters they're kind of open books emotionally aren't they because they pour that emotion out into songs so it's very rare that you'd meet a singer-songwriter and not be able to have a conversation about their emotions yeah unless they're actually on the radio with you i find yes when they suddenly become absolutely monosyllabic and start getting grumpy with you if you ask them what the songs mean or the lyrics or anything like yes that's true i had a conversation recently

with david dean who's the former chairman of arsenal football club and i started asking him about his wife barbara and you know how they met and how you felt the first time you saw and he kind of he's a very charming man he's a lovely man he said oh this is going a bit personal and i said oh this is in your book okay i'm not asking you anything that you this is all in your book i'm not prying yeah that's true i've often thought about that i think that sometimes people feel comfortable in their whatever their mediums happen to be saying things that they wouldn't be comfortable saying in polite conversation or to someone at a party because they feel they're sort of narrow casting as it were. I do that in this podcast. I

say things to guests and just to the listeners that I probably wouldn't lead with in a conversation at a party or things like that. There's some things that I don't even say to my wife. She doesn't listen. I have the luxury my wife. She doesn't listen. I have the luxury of knowing that she doesn't listen. So it's really a quite private space for me, you know. And I think it must be like that if you write a book as well. I think you can get into a zone where you are feeling very confessional. I know that was the case when I wrote my book. Well, just this week, I interviewed Alex Scott, who's a very famous footballer and now a very famous TV presenter in the UK. And she had written a book about her childhood and about the very dark elements of her childhood, which involved her father's alcoholism. And she started to cry within four or five minutes of our conversation and i said on air look at any time stop and we will play something else. You don't have to do this. You know, your trauma isn't content.

Yeah. It's your trauma. And I think you're absolutely right. They'll put it in a book and then they'll come to sell the book. And sometimes I think we think of it as promo. It's just promotional. But you're being asked by people like me to relive that trauma and you're probably having to do it four or five times in one day and that is horrific when you think about it it's not

natural is it no it's a really odd thing and i've talked to a few people about this there's always a slightly queasy feeling around like what is the motivation here to what extent are you just being encouraged by the desire to sell your book and you know be truthful and authentic to just focus on these sad times in your life and is it necessarily a healthy thing to be doing to relive all these experiences? And, you know, when you're writing it and as we've said, when you come to promote it as well. I thought about all that stuff when I was writing my book and I don't know what the answers are. I'm conflicted, you know.

The thing is, is that there are some interviewers, I think, who, you know, that kind of old school fleet street, if it bleeds, it leads kind of philosophy where you can just feel them being drawn towards the maudlin. You know, it's grief porn for some people, I think. I mean, for instance, there was a very, very famous rock star. It's actually on the record. It's Jon Bon Jovi. And Jon Bon Jovi's daughter had had an overdose and had addiction issues. And his publicist came up to our guys and said before I was about to interview him. And I said, can you not discuss that with him?

And I said, why would I want to? Like, why would I want to? He hasn't written that down in the book it's not on an album that's not what I'm here to do to trawl through his personal traumas for the sake of what if I have an audience that are drawn towards me just dragging out dark moments of people's lives for the sake of it which has no relevance by the way to why they're invited onto the show that's not really an audience you want is it you know there are there are plenty of tabloid newspapers that want to do that kind of thing

but you're not coming to the adam buxton podcast or indeed anything i do on radio for that no but there's always you have to be honest with yourself as an interviewer, I suppose, as well, that if you do stumble upon a moment like that, if someone suddenly becomes raw and emotional, it cuts through everything. And it's very memorable for a listener as well. And it can easily go the wrong way because it can easily sound exploitative and sort of voyeuristic and cheap because it's like you're just pushing a button and getting a response from someone who's hurt. But, you know, if people suddenly do show a vulnerable

side of themselves, it is really moving and it is really it feels real, especially nowadays when every everything in the media is just a sort of desperate attempt to find something real because everything feels so unreal in so many ways. So those those emotional moments, as soon as someone starts crying, it's like it signifies something real. something real but then the downside of it of course and the side that my dad was always very suspicious of as an old farty conservative from a generation who felt that you should be very guarded with those kinds of emotions especially in public the downside is that it becomes banal and everyone expects it and everyone sees it the whole time and everyone's crying on every TV show. And it's like, well, what does this really mean anymore? You know, it's just more show and surface. Do you, so you must accept that there are benefits to that kind of stoicism? Yeah, sure.

And that was a big word for my dad as well. He loved a bit of stoicism. And maybe YouTube knows that because i've noticed a lot more recently popping up in my sidebar there's a lot of stoicism videos it seems that that younger people now or at least a certain section of the younger people are they're sort of fascinated by this idea of being more stoical in general. Maybe that's part of the appeal of people like Jordan Peterson, who have a philosophy of kind of, you know, take responsibility, pull your socks up, be a man, all this kind of thing. Twelve rules for life.

Yeah, there's something appealing about that for people, I think, for some people. The idea that you can follow these rules and life will just be a lot simpler because you won't have to things won't be so messy you know what I mean like that's the problem with talking about all this stuff is that there's no simple answers so a lot of the time you find yourself just getting into really messy areas that leave you feeling quite confused and conflicted afterwards yeah that's interesting with jordan peasant because i've interviewed him a couple of times and his thing is also though about men telling each other or people telling young men that they're worth something

that they have value that they're just not this homogenous group of patriarchal misogynists, that there's something more to them than that. Yeah. I find him really interesting, I have to say, Jordan B. Peterson. Yeah, I think the first thing I ever saw of his was the big Lion King lecture that he does when he breaks down what's going on in the Lion King from an evolutionary psychological perspective, as far as I can tell. He really admires the way it's written and it's got all these kind of timeless myths woven into it and

lots of important stuff about paternal dynamics and family dynamics and all sorts of stuff. So I thought, wow, this is pretty good. But then you occasionally he'll sort of make some fairly outrageous generalization about gender roles or whatever. And then you're kind of reminded, oh, yeah, he's a quite controversial figure. A bit like who's the other guy? Sam Harris. OK. So, you know, these kind of very, very intelligent people who know a lot about a lot, incredibly articulate, very thoughtful in certain ways,

but then they seem to have these blind spots. And occasionally, it's like they sometimes turn into logic robots. And they have trouble shifting perspective when it comes to certain issues like sex and gender and free speech or Islam, things like that. You know, the beginning of Jordan Peterson's slide into being this much more controversial figure was when he opposed this Canadian bill about gender pronouns and trying to legislate for how people use those. He felt that it was an infringement of free speech and a lot of

people were very upset with him because they felt his position was transphobic and he became one of these people who they receive harsh criticism for something they've said or an opinion they've expressed they don't feel it's warranted they think it's unfair and rather than shift perspective they just dig in and then they live in this kind of anger hole forever and ever afterwards and they seem unable to pull themselves out of it even though parallel to all of that you know they're still talking about a lot of other stuff that is progressive and thoughtful and potentially helpful to a lot of people. In my book, I interview this woman called Dia Khan, who's a filmmaker, and she won an Emmy

for a documentary she made where she essentially embedded herself with American neo-Nazis and white supremacists. And one of the things she said was that i had to stop defining them as that was all they were i had to stop saying you're just a racist and move beyond that and you highlight a really interesting issue there adam which is that people will only think of jordan b peterson as the guy who's transphobic quote unquote right that's it yeah he's that guy now in the same way they think of jk rowling in that way certain sections and no good will come from that right no good will come from it it may make you feel good that you can just dismiss someone like this but the whole point of writing about conversation was she spent a year adam with these neo-nazis

at which point i think about two or three of them left the organizations they were part of they just never hung out or spoke at any great length with any great detail with a muslim before let alone a muslim woman a brown-skinned muslim woman and it completely changed them equally in the book you know mary mccalee's the former president of ireland you know dealing with that the northern ireland peace process and her as a catholic speaking to loyalists it's really extraordinary that people are just so tempted to say oh you're that and that's all you are yes talking of mary mccalee's there was lots of really memorable bits in that section of the book a thing that she said one of the ways that she thought about talking to the two sides in the

conflict in ireland was saying I'm coming to you not as somebody who wants to change you, who you are, what you are, what you believe in, what your politics are, or your identifying symbols. I want to come as a good neighbor. And that is a great way of thinking about it, isn't it? Like you can't choose your neighbors, but you want to get on and you want to be able to have a polite conversation over the garden fence. Literally or metaphorically, even though God knows what they get up to in their house. You've heard some things. They don't sound good. And their bins are beginning to smell really badly yeah

yeah sure that's why those kind of nightmare neighbors shows are so compelling on tv because it's everybody's worst nightmare to to live next to someone that you just can't get along with or who's raising the conflict level to an unsustainable level where it actually just busts out because fundamentally most of us just want to get on with each other. Have you been there? Because I've had just two doors down from where he doesn't live here anymore, but absolute nightmares. I mean, police were involved and everything.

Have you ever had a neighbour like that? No, not nearly that bad. I mean, right now we're out in Norfolk. We're in the middle of the countryside. The worst we have to worry about out here is cows every now and again the cows will come in they'll bust out of the field and then they'll be wandering around the garden when we were in london we still live in south london and the people next door to us were totally fine but he had just bought a new surround sound system and so this is back in early noughties we had just moved into this house and it was that unbelievably appalling feeling

that you get after a couple of days you've just moved in you're thinking hey this is pretty good then you sit down one night we were watching 24 i remember just to frame the time period for you and suddenly from next door it's like and it's next door and he is he's playing a video game or something and he has cranked it right up. The speakers are obviously against the wall. So our house is basically turned into a big reverb chamber. And my heart just went through my ass and I just thought, oh, this isn't good. So we talked to him and he was fine.

How did you how did you talk to him how did you approach it you don't strike me as a particularly confrontational guy no so did you do it did you take the front foot on this i can't i'd like to say yes but it's entirely possible that i told my wife i think I did. I think I went round and sort of, maybe we both went because we're both such weeds. We'd already done the, hi, we're your new neighbours.

And, you know, here's a bottle of wine and just give us a shout if you need anything and all that sort of stuff. So this time it was like, oh, hello. Yes, sorry. Oh, I don't know why, but it sounds very loud next door very loud it's coming

through it's just wondering if i could turn it down just a tiny bit he's oh yeah yeah sorry yeah yeah okay yeah sure so it goes down a bit but then it goes back it creeps back up again and it just happened on quite a regular basis until until he started getting a bit pissed off. And then we had a baby. And so then it was like even worse. But then we had that excuse. It's like, well, it's a baby. It's a baby. And then when they got pregnant,

that was the greatest day of our lives because we just thought, ha ha, that's all over for you now. No more loud video games for you guys. And then things got better. How about your guy a couple of doors down with the cops is that when you're in london still no this is when i moved out of london to manchester it was quite interesting because he swung at me and one of our neighbors witnessed it so what he did we think he quickly jumped in his car and went to the police station and the next thing we get

is the police are accusing me of basically being racist to him and calling him a honky right this 70s term from starsky and the hutch for like white people now yeah I grew up in the 80s like I didn't grow up in Harlem right in the 1980s I grew up in a village in Essex it was the most bizarre kind of getting in a defense before we took it upon ourselves to call the police. It was a perfect example where you've kind of flipped racism completely on its head. And you as a white person think, OK, well, this was scary. I'll get something in to kind of suggest that I was reacting because he was racist to me. Well, what can I think of? What could he have called me? Honky. That's right. have called me um honky that's right it was the most bizarre even now i'm like did he did is he that guy and the police were like oh because it's a racist incident or something we have to

investigate it because it's got race attached to it oh Oh, my God. Right? And I'm like going, are you serious? And like, you know, like I said, we had various neighbours who were willing to go on the record that he was a terrible neighbour. And one side of him didn't talk to him at all. Who are a nice family. We didn't talk to him. The people next to us didn't talk to him. The people opposite us didn't talk to him. You know, he was just a bit of a weird guy he sounds like a terrible honky yeah

you can say that you can say that absolutely you can yeah you can say that about your people adam that's fine do white rappers go around calling each other honky i don't think eminem uh ever ever referred to his honkies they're not owning but they're not owning the term they're not all owning the h word as they say in polite company it was the weirdest kind of um waste of the criminal justice system i mean didn't go anywhere the police uh dropped charges and sadly they dropped the charges against him as well but yeah that was a nightmare and then we used to when we were in london we had these mature students living next to us who banged on the wall every time my son who's now 14 every time he cried when he was a baby in his cot they banged on the wall oh no

banging on the walls or hammering on the ceiling with the old broomstick or whatever it might be that is when you've run out of options isn't it and that's a total act of desperation i mean i've i've had it done to me i i must confess when i first moved out and i had a party in this tiny little flat that i'd moved into i was you know i wasn't thinking about my neighbors and suddenly they started banging on the wall. It was pretty late, but I was absolutely mortified because I just thought, shit, I've got to live next to these people. So I don't want to fall out with them, you know? So the next day I took round another bottle of wine and left a little card and said sorry about the noise last

night and that was really good from then on we got on great because he felt like okay you actually care i think the thing that drives people nuts is like you just don't give a shit just because you're not right in front of me you know it's like you couldn't give a fuck okay so then wait a minute when a cow wanders into your garden or a number of cows yeah does the farmer come and like profusely apologize give you a bottle of wine say like i'm really sorry about this again does that happen no right do you think that the farmer doesn't give a shit? Sometimes they act as if it's our fault. Oh. Because they sort of say, oh, well, someone left the gate open over in the field. I.e. you probably did.

Walking around, recording intros for your stupid podcast and going, I'm going out. Bye. I love you. Bye. Which they hear me doing occasionally when I'm walking around. But I don't leave gates open.'ve watched with nail and i i know that you're not supposed to leave gates open in the countryside no so wait a minute there's no contrition at all after cows have wandered onto your property your land if you don't have a shotgun i take. You don't strike me as a shotgun type either. No.

No, no. No, not really. I mean, they're fine. We get on fine, I'm glad to say. There's no animosity. No beef. No, there's no beef on the plate or anywhere else. It's poor cows.

I mean, I do feel bad for them. That's the other thing, because you do just think, you don't have a good life. Well, that part's good, isn't it? Where they're're kind of free but they just don't know what's coming to them i wonder what cows sounded like in a herd a thousand years ago or a hundred thousand years ago or before basically mankind started making their lives quite so miserable because now i listen to them of a morning when they're out there lowing and it is such a mournful sound it's like that i reckon before mankind got involved they probably sounded Perky. That kind of thing.

So right now in an alternative universe where cows are intelligent, sentient, advanced creatures, they're looking at humans who are not and thinking about human appropriation where you have imposed upon them what you think of as a sad sound which is actually their sound of absolute joy but this is human privilege at work here adam where you make an assumption about them based on no knowledge about the tonal qualities and the attachment of emotion to tonal qualities in cows. You've just assumed that that was sad. Well, actually, that could be their sounds of joy. That's true. That's absolutely true.

You've got dogs. I've got two dogs. What if we found out at some point in the future that the wagging of the tail is their way of saying fuck off? I could well believe that from Rosie. Considering how many podcasts

there are out there and the fact that yours is the 49th 49th 49th 49th 49th 49th most popular in the uk 49th 49th 49th 49th 49th 49th don't worry i'll move up 49th 49th 49th 49th 49th, 49th, 49th Don't worry, I'll move up a notch 49th, 49th, 49th 49th, 49th, 49th 49th, everyone's got a podcast 49th, 49th, 49th 49th, 49th, 49th 49th, that's an extraordinary testament to how good you are at what you do

49th Weirdly enough, writing this book has made me far less confrontational, especially on social media. I mean, I've had like a three-day Twitter spat with Tommy Robinson once. It was like two or three days. I made it into some of the papers.

And what did I get out of that? So now I'm trying to be, you know, my football team lost to our arch rivals over the weekend. And I got loads of the supporters of the rival teams just calling me a clown or sliding into my DMs to just be abusive. And I didn't rise to any of it. Whereas before I would have just gone, what? Right, let's go at them and try and patronise them and belittle them and do all that stuff. But what is the point

man like really what did you feel the best scenario was with you going hammer and tongs with uh tommy robinson did you did you was there a part of you that genuinely imagined that you might get some kind of um understanding out of him no because that's not what i was going for and that's the problem with social media right it's not a conversation like you and i are having you're not coming away from it thinking well okay tommy or stephen or whatever your name really is why is it that you are what you are help me to understand how you've come to the views that you've come to. I wasn't tweeting that. Can we find a rapprochement here between the two of us?

I'm sure that somewhere, Tommy, you and I could agree on many things. I wasn't. I was like a kind of pound shop M&M in 8 Mile trying to battle rap him out of existence by having better lyrics than he had. And also, it's performative right i know that i'm not in a direct private one-on-one conversation with him i know there are thousands of people on his side on my side are looking for the next swing the next jab the next right hook the next uppercut but that's the thing is the platform's designed for performance it's not designed for complicated conversations it's not designed for people spending enough time with each other that they'll get beyond their initial prejudices what's your twitter spat i mean mine

was so pathetic i sometimes think that my relationship with Twitter reflects worse on me than it does on Twitter, because it was all about how sort of precious and oversensitive I can be. Because like straight out abuse never really got to me that much, because I just thought, okay, well, you're just a bit mad. What tended to get to me much more was when my inverted commas group or gang would turn on me occasionally and it was generally misunderstandings or what I felt were misunderstandings about things I'd said on the podcast and the one I think that really stung was I was talking to Frank Skinner on the podcast and we were talking about like silly online insults and verbiage, things like calling people gammon and Karens and things like that. And then Frank mentioned the term TERF, the acronym. And he said, like, what does it stand for anyway?

So I defined it. I said, I think it stand for anyway so i defined it i said i think it stands for trans excluding radical feminist and he was laughing because he said well i mean turf the word turf doesn't really sound like it has much to do with that so we were sort of laughing about that not in any way casting aspersions on the whole gender critical feminism versus trans debate because why the hell would we but on twitter there was just a wave of really upset angry people saying like who felt that we were laughing at them or or we were somehow weighing in on the debate by laughing about it and they were absolutely livid and they were saying i used

to like your podcast but now you're just one of these kind of glib, giggling dicks who thinks this is also funny. And it's like, no, no, no. You have just totally got hold of the wrong end of the stick. And you obviously don't want to investigate which might be the right end. You know what I mean? That feeling of being misunderstood, I think, is is deadly. Yeah, there's been a few occasions where people have turned on me not dissimilar to what you went through one was when when biden won the u.s presidency i tweeted because i was looking at the language that republican voters especially hardcore republican voters were using against Biden supporters. And I saw parallels with how Leave voters were spoken to by Remain voters, being told that they had been lied to and calling

them idiots and saying that they were simpletons and believe these fake, false news so i suggested this parallel right oh my gosh and people got pissed off with that right how dare you compare us to republicans and we're not and it was quite interesting because it was like ideology wrapped up in self-righteousness and then performed on Twitter. And it was like, wow. And the second time was when Sajid Javid and Priti Patel got two of the biggest jobs in government. I tweeted, regardless of your politics, this is quite an extraordinary example of representation for my kids or for young British Asians to see.

And then young British Asians who weren't as young as my kids, probably in their 20s and some older, I mean, even Nitin Sawni, the producer, weighed in on this. They just went at me. They were just like, this isn't representation. They're sellouts. They're Uncle Toms. They used all of this kind of thing. Most of it was at patel not at sajid javid and my point that i kept trying to make sensibly i think they obviously didn't think any of it was sensible was that to my daughter who at the time was i don't know like 12 or 11 she saw a brown woman standing up in the house of commons not that she was watching the parliament channel she's on tiktok but if you know if if that came on she saw someone who looked like her in a position of power surrounded by all of these kind of largely white men similarly for

and my son so they were being specific about who those two people were what party they were i was just saying this is visible representation but also as well within that adam there was this whole thing about certain members of ethnic minority communities believe that if you're brown you must be labor and if you're not labor you're a sellout and i don't agree with that obviously i would never express my own political allegiances in public because i work for the bbc but it seems to me bizarre that you would think that just because you're a person of color you must vote only one way it isn't about we're just a voter bank for any particular party they were the kind of occasions where it just really kind of kicked off i've had a few pylons even

when you switch your phone off you just think oh there's just loads of people being horrible to me yeah right the place i find myself going to is like maybe maybe they're right. Maybe I am bad. Maybe I'm a bad guy. You know what I mean? Like there's a tiny little voice in your head every now and again. Yeah. Oh, well, I keep talking about how important it is to listen to people and how to think about other people's grievances and the way they see the world. So maybe I should take them seriously. Now, if they're so angry with with me then I owe it to them to take their irritation with me seriously so maybe they're right yeah when I joined five live I got a lot of the diversity hire stuff on social media you're just there because box ticking yeah they

need a brown person there and you're that guy and i definitely believed that to be the case you know for for a little while actually yeah i mean i definitely don't now i've gone completely the other way just think i'm the bollocks but that pendulum has swung way too far the other way but how did that affect you though when you were thinking that what effect did it have on the way you did your job uh it just made me more determined to prove them wrong and what's the lovely thing about it is that every couple of months i will get a tweet from someone saying when you first joined five live i thought you were rubbish and you were an idiot and but also as well you got to accept it i came from radio

one to bbc asian network to five live and bbc asian network to five live is a big jump right like it's you know half a million listeners to five million listeners station wise and the pressure's on and the expectations are there and you know i wasn't the finished article i'm still not the finished article so you have to look back on it and accept with a degree of humility that partially it's not i wasn't good enough because i wouldn't have got the job they just wouldn't have taken that much of a risk it was definitely good enough but i wasn't confident enough that was the issue i think i wasn't confident enough in my own abilities but but also as well, mate, you just got to keep doing it, haven't you?

And then you do big interviews and you nail them. Ricky Gervais tweets, you know, how good he thinks I am or Freddie Flintoff does. And then you're suddenly like, OK, this is good. This makes sense. You need external validation, right? You need it. I need it. Look how massive your podcast is, right?

49th, apparently. Oh, yeah. Sorry aboutth apparently oh yeah sorry about that yeah sorry about that yeah i knew i would be upset if i didn't do the callback yeah exactly i knew that would get brought up that number at some point yeah you made a jingle out of it i couldn't believe that he'd done that i couldn't believe he'd heard it and he had zeroed in on that because he knows my squirmy little mind. And he knows that when I heard that number, I would have been thinking 49. It was me betraying my massive ego and butthurtness.

But look, surely the success of what you've done with this podcast makes you feel great about yourself, right? Sometimes. Are you good at accepting praise well obviously not brilliant um or only because it feels like tempting fate you know i mean it feels like asking to be taken down somehow but I think that's more of a kind of social media mentality that I'm shedding gradually. I get really nice messages from people now and then. And actually, they do make a difference. And every now and again, if I'm hit by a real wall of self-loathing, sometimes I can talk myself out of it and just say actually you remember how you felt when you got that message and that person said in a very thoughtful and articulate way how much they appreciated the podcast well now is the time to cash that check that they sent you not literally sometimes people do send me checks like a check for 15 quid or something saying thanks for the free podcast i really like it i thought i checks, like a check for 15 quid or something saying, thanks for the free podcast. I really like it. I thought I'd send you a check. I haven't cashed any of those checks. You don't need to send checks, podcast. I appreciate your support in other ways. Wow. So what have you done with the checks?

My wife said, oh, you should cash it. They want you to have it. It's sort of disrespectful not to. But on the other hand, I just thought I can't justify cashing a check. It's really nice of you, but it's OK. I've got ways of earning money and I'm very lucky in that respect. But probably the main reason I didn't cash it is because it's a fucking pain in the ass to go into town. And it does that. That's a whole afternoon project is cashing a check.

Are you hoarding because you live in the middle of nowhere do you have to hoard like toilet roll and stuff like that do you milk in fact maybe you milk cows maybe you do that you steal his cows and milk them we we are hoarderish we don't need to be how far is is your local shop? It's really not far away. It's about 15 minutes away. Oh, okay. So it's totally fine. But I think because it is a little, you do have to plan a little bit.

It's not like walking around the corner. It looks a little bit survivalist in the larder. Can you identify off the top of your head what are cans in your larder that have been there for three years or more it'll be exotic beans um you know like the flagellates they fly off the shelves we're getting through loads of flagellates chickpeas sure no problem but i was trying to eat more vegan food. I still am. So got into a few of these nice recipes,

vegan recipes, and had to go and buy unusual beans a couple of times. And we'd be sat around and going, this is delicious. We're just going to eat this from now on. Unusual beans all the way for us. So next time we're at Sainsbury's,

it's like unusual beans, unusual beans, unusual beans unusual beans unusual beans and then the occasion never comes up again and so they're sat there for the next 10 years along with the uh obscure booze wait this is an advert for squarespace. Every time I visit your website, I see success. Yes, success. The way that you look at the world makes the world want to say yes. It looks very professional.

I love browsing your videos and pics, and I don't want to stop And I'd like to access your members area and spend in your shop These are the kinds of comments people will say about your website if you build it with Squarespace Just visit Squarespace comm slash Buxton for a free trial. And when you're ready to launch, because you will want to launch, use the offer code Buxton to save 10% off your first purchase of a website or domain. So put the smile of success on your face with Squarespace. Yes. Continue.

I see, I see. Oh, dog. I can see you. I love you. Come and give me a hug. It's cold out here, isn't it? How are you doing, podcats? Welcome back. That was Nihal Arthanaike talking to me there. Really enjoyed spending some time with him and waffling away. There is a link to his book, Let's Talk, in the description of today's podcast.

And if you enjoyed my conversation with Nihal today, I think you will enjoy the book too. Check it out. There's also a link to Nihal's Headliners podcast, where you will find in-depth interviews that Nihal has conducted over the years with the biggest names in entertainment, culture and the arts. Now, one thing that does occur actually after going back over that conversation with Nihal is that, yeah, in the bit about

people sending me checks, A, it doesn't happen very often. I think maybe it's happened twice. B, if you are in a position to contribute or support the podcast financially, rather than doing it for me, it would be great if you could support St Mungo's. They're a charity working to end homelessness and rebuild lives. St Mungo's frontline workers are out on the streets

every night helping to bring people in from the cold. You can help St Mungo's make it someone's last night on the streets and their first night of a new life by making a donation this Christmas season. If you're in a position to donate, please visit mungos.org slash Buxton. There is a link in the description. Thanks so much. Thank you also to everybody who sent messages in for the Adam and Joe Christmas episode, which is now recorded.

I went and visited Joe in London. We had a good stupid waffle. That will be coming out on Christmas morning, 25th of December, just in case you don't know when Christmas morning is. But I'm very grateful to all of you who wrote in it was really enjoyable reading all your messages and I did read every single one okay that's it my fingers are beginning to freeze now even though I've got my gloves on thank you very much indeed to Seamus Murphy Mitchell for his tremendous production support as ever. Thank you, Seamus. Thanks to Becca Bryars for her work editing the conversation in this episode.

Thank you so much, Becca. Thanks to Helen Green. She does the artwork for the podcast. Thanks to everyone at ACAST for their continued support. But thanks most of all to you, once again, for all your nice messages for the Christmas podcast and the kind sentiments that you included. As I said to Nihal, really appreciate those.

Makes a big difference. Thank you. Until next time, we share the same outer space. Oh, look, we need to have a hug, don't we? Come on, let's have a hug. Let's get warmed up. All right, mate. Look, I don't want to be weird, but I love you. So look after yourself, okay?

Bye! Like and subscribe. Like and subscribe. Please like and subscribe. Give me a smile and a thumbs up. Give me a smile and a thumbs up. Give me a smile and a thumbs up. Please like and subscribe. Like and subscribe. Please like and subscribe. Thank you.