In the wake of the allegations of rape and sexual assault against Russell Brand, Nish says his behaviour was an open secret, and Brand’s TV work dried up as people refused to work with him. Nish also reveals that there are others still working in the industry about whom production staff will say “oh we don’t send young women into their dressing rooms”. Coco highlights the wider cultural issues that lead to women feeling unsafe in the workplace and also unwilling to report assaults to the police.

Six months on from Dame Louise Casey’s damning report into the Metropolitan Police, we ask what progress has been made? Former Met Superintendent, Leroy Logan, tells Nish and Coco it’s not a case of a few bad apples, but of the “whole barrel’ being rotten. He also has some stinging criticism for Home Secretary Suella Braverman. Despite everything however, he says he’d still encourage his grandchildren to join the force.

You won’t be surprised to find that Nish’s villain of the week is a certain ‘lettuce adjacent’ politician, but you may be surprised by Coco’s hero…Danish artist Jens Haaning. Plus Coco steals Nish’s seat, and poses the question; what’s your favourite Beck album?

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Useful links:

In the UK, Rape Crisis offers support for rape and sexual abuse on 0808 802 9999 in England and Wales, 0808 801 0302 in Scotland, or 0800 0246 991 in Northern Ireland. 

In the US, Rainn offers support on 800-656-4673. 

In Australia, support is available at 1800Respect (1800 737 732). 

Other international helplines can be found at ibiblio.org/rcip/internl.html

Leroy Logan is patron of https://www.voyageyouth.com/

Guest:

Dr Leroy Logan MBE, former Met Police superintendent, and former Chairman of the National Black Police Association.

Audio credits:

Russell Brand: In Plain Sight: Dispatches (Channel 4/Hardcash Productions)

Red, White and Blue (Small Axe Films Ltd/BBC)

BBC News

TRANSCRIPT

Nish Kumar Hi this is Pod Save the UK.

Coco Khan I’m Coco Khan.

Nish Kumar And I’m Nish Kumar.

Coco Khan And this week the Russell Brand scandal.

Clip I was pushing him away Pushing him away and he wasn’t. He wasn’t backing off at all. And so I ended up having to punch him really hard in the stomach to get him off.

Nish Kumar We’ll examine the uncomfortable questions it raises for us all.

Coco Khan Plus, we’ll be saving the UK from bad cops.

Nish Kumar Leroy Logan, a former police superintendent, will be here to tell us how to sort out the Met.

Coco Khan Hi Nish, we’re together again. It’s nice to have you back, How are you?

Nish Kumar Yeah, good. I’m back. We. We’re recording this the other way round with change seating position. Yes.

Coco Khan You snooze you lose bro. That’s basically what this is.

Nish Kumar I didn’t know I was sat in the desirable seat.

Coco Khan Well, I don’t know either. Just for our listeners in audio. We normally have all six seats in the studio, and while she’s been away, I’ve decided to take hit. I like to think it will make me more attractive.

Nish Kumar See why I’m doing this.

Nish Kumar Well, you got into the political podcast. The guy was like, I go for more compliments about your appearance.

Coco Khan Exactly. No, but it’s true that everybody has a good side, right? So I’m just trying to. It may be that this is my good side sitting here.

Nish Kumar So you’re trying to you’re trying.

Coco Khan To show my best side to everyone else.

Nish Kumar Whereas I know whatever angle, it’s a six out of ten are best for me. I’m happy with a six out of ten, Whatever the angle is. You’re dealing with a certain quality you’ve agreed in. Oh, you just make the best of it. I mean, I’m sure I’ll hear from the four people on YouTube about whether this is my good side or bad side as far as far as I can tell. There’s. It’s all fine.

Coco Khan Oh, well, please do let us know in the most polite way possible. That would be great.

Nish Kumar I don’t know. There’s a polite way to say Either way is. But I don’t think there’s a polite way to say that at all.

Coco Khan Do you have any friends who are like the masterful let down? So I’ve got a friend who works in hospitality, and I think part of working hospitality is you learn how to do a sort of a big smile but tells the person no. Right. So they all say something big smile. I don’t think that would be possible. You know, there’s just a way that they do it. And that’s what I’m expecting in the comments. It’ll be like, you know, I’ve always liked how Coco looks most weeks. Big smile.

Nish Kumar But my friends are all stand up comedians. So they’ll they would prioritize making a joke over preserving face.

Coco Khan I’m worried that I’m sort of you know, as a woman trading in troublesome ideas, i.e. that a woman’s value is it’s about what she looks like and not what she says, which is obviously not why we get into political podcasting. But having said that.

Nish Kumar Well, I think what we’d like to buy it is a sense of equality that both of our values come from what we look like. Just to be clear, up outside the UK, we believe in true gender equality. We believe there should be superficial judgments had the doubt regardless of your gender identity.

Nish Kumar Yeah, exactly. Exactly.

Nish Kumar The two genders are fit and not fit. Look, it’s been just 15 days after MP returned from their summer holidays and Parliament is somehow in recess again. But this time it’s not for a holiday, it’s for the party conferences. It which is the opposite of a holiday. The major political parties in Britain have a conference. They have them one after each other, and it’s like Woodstock for decades. Over and over again. There’s still plenty that’s been going on, though, since our last show.

Coco Khan Yeah. So last night, Rishi Sunak took the very unusual step of releasing a video statement that seemed to confirm these leaked reports that I’ve been going around, that he’s essentially he’s going to weaken some of the government’s green pledges, the measures expected to be set out in a hastily arranged might we add press conference today include delaying a ban on the sales of new petrol and diesel cars? That’s due to come out in sort of 2030 and watering down the plan to phase out gas boilers. The PM said the Government was committed to reaching net zero carbon emissions by 2050, but in a more proportionate way. This is what car maker Ford has said this morning about pushing back the car deadline. Our business needs three things from the UK Government. Ambition, commitment and consistency. A relaxation of 2030 would undermine all three. Meanwhile, energy company E.ON has said this is a misstep on many levels.

Nish Kumar Yeah, I mean, if the car companies and the energy companies are criticizing your policy on climate change, your heartbeat away from Ronald McDonald and Colonel Sanders castigating you for animal cruelty on the other side of the political fence, the Labor Party, their leader, Keir Starmer, has been on a romantic sojourn to Paris to woo Emmanuel Macron and gave him an Arsenal shirt with Macron printed on the back. So Emmanuel Macron is a Marseilles fan, but Keir Starmer is an Arsenal fan. So he’s bought Macron a present that he would like for him. Like it’s like The Simpsons episode. When Homer buys a bowling ball for Marge, like he’s bought him a birthday present that he would want himself. And he also Macron gave Starmer some cufflinks with the Elise logo on them, which is reeks of we have a ball and I think I’ll go to the nearest gift shop. But of it was there because it’s trying to woo European leaders. And he said that he plans to renegotiate Boris Johnson’s Brexit deal, which has been let down by the right wing press accusing him of betraying Brexit.

Coco Khan So how he’s going to woo them is acting like one of my old boyfriends that would buy every single person Beck’s Odelay. Every birthday. Every Christmas. He loved Beck, and he really wanted everyone to love Beck Odelay. I’m just saying. Anyway, we’ve also learned that.

Nish Kumar Also Beck’s best album is Midnite Vultures. I’m not going to get into this now. Midnite Vultures like a better album than I would like. We don’t have time for this.

Coco Khan Who doesn’t? Who buys every person they know? Beck’s Odelay. Anyway, we’ve also learned that apparently senior government officials spoke to Buckingham Palace at the height of the pandemic to express their concern about Boris Johnson’s conduct in office. A BBC documentary revealed that civil servants even discussed suggesting to the Queen that she raised the concerns with Johnson during their private audience.

Nish Kumar And Wales is slowing down. The Welsh Government has made it the first part of the UK to reduce the speed limit in built up areas from 30 miles to 20 miles an hour. There’s already been some disquiet. A petition against the move has more than 200,000 signatures.

Coco Khan But of course, the biggest story of the week is the scandal around Russell Brand. We’ll be getting into that in a moment.

Nish Kumar Before we do that, just to point you towards our sister podcast, Pod Save the World. This week hosts Tommy Vietor and Ben Rhodes talk to former conservative politician and diplomat Rory Stewart about his new book, Politics on the Edge, which The Guardian calls a blistering insider portrait of a nation in decline. For more breakdown of the world’s biggest headlines, search pod Save the World. Wherever you get your podcasts and for a great audio experience, why not listen to Beck’s Odelay? Russell Brand story has dominated the news this week. The Sunday Times and Channel Four’s Dispatches dropped their bombshell joint investigation at the weekend, accusing brand of rape, sexual assault and abuse.

Coco Khan Four women have alleged Brand assaulted them between 2006 and 2013 when he was at the height of his fame. He was presenting on BBC radio and on Channel four before moving to Hollywood to star in films. Let’s hear a clip from Channel Four’s Dispatches program. Russell Brand In Plain Sight.

Nish Kumar I was pushing him away. Pushing him away. And he wasn’t he wasn’t backing off at all. And so I ended up having to punch him really hard in the stomach to get him off. And then he left. But finally. Then he looked at me, fell backwards, and I was crying. And he said, Oh, I only want to see your mascara run anyway.

Coco Khan So that was one of the accusers who was 16 when she had a relationship with Russell Brand.

Nish Kumar Brown denies the allegations and says that his relationships have been always consensual.

Coco Khan Since those allegations were at the Met. Police said on Monday that it had received a report of a separate alleged sexual assault in Soho in central London in 2003.

Nish Kumar The BBC and Channel four have launched investigations into the time he was employed by them. Both have also removed programs featuring him from their streaming services. All the remaining dates of Russell Brand stand up or have been postponed while his talent agency and two book publishers have parted ways with him. YouTube have suspended his channels for making money from adverts while the podcast platform ACOSS, said that the adverts were turned off immediately for his Under the Skin podcast. Meanwhile, the chair of the Culture Committee, Caroline Denney, has also written to Tik Tok to clarify whether brands still able to monetize content.

Coco Khan So initially when the rumors started to surface just before the weekend that Channel four were going to broadcast a potentially career ending exposé. People were saying it must be a comedian. You’re obviously a comedian. Did you know who it would be?

Nish Kumar Yes. Yes. This is a well-known open secret from the comedy circuit. Right. It’s been something that’s been talked about, certainly, to my knowledge, for at least the last five years. It’s something that’s been pretty openly discussed in the comedy industry. I think I remember first hearing about it kind of in mid sort of 2017. Subsequent dispatches and the Sunday Times exposed deadline ran a story about an incident that happened on a TV show called Roast Battle, where jokes were made, referencing brand being an abuser, and they were removed from the broadcast that that obviously happened on a studio floor. So that from that point onwards, it was common knowledge within comedy that there were several allegations about Russell Brand and specifically relating to sexual assault. So from that point on, it was well known. It was discussed by multiple comedians in Edinburgh. Fringe shows the following year, in 2020 18, like it was that well known.

Coco Khan But but wouldn’t you say it was well known like. What was known. Like, is it because I think that’s something that, you know, in the documentary they they talk about this idea in that is in plain sight. You know that it’s it’s on the line, but you don’t actually know that it’s crossed it.

Nish Kumar Well, look. To be completely honest with you, the story that I had heard was relating to a sexual assault. It was not. Covered in the documentary. Right. So it was a it was a it was a very specific and serious allegation. I was not aware of any of the stories in the documentary. I was surprised watching it how far back this had gone. Those weren’t stories that I’d actually heard about. So it is possible that there’s more allegations to come. And I think look, I think this is a real moment for everybody to consider. How this was allowed to happen and how this was allowed to go on for so long. And what are the systemic and institutional failings? And I think if you look at Russell Brand’s IMDB page, you see that his television work in Britain starts to dry up around 2019, 2019. And that’s simply because increasingly people were just not willing to work with him. Everyone was afraid to talk about it because of the threat of lawsuits. You know, and so the only power people had was to withdraw participation from shows involving Russell Brand. And that goes for everybody. That goes for comedians, I guess the people that work in production. You can see from his IMDB page that he starts to increasingly only work in America and work on his own podcast channel and YouTube channel and. That. Is an example of, I think, a systemic failing. You know, watching it as a male comedian, cisgendered heterosexual male comedian, you feel a certain sense of guilt and a certain sense of complicity because you’ve been working with production companies and producers who are providing an infrastructure that allows predators to thrive. I’ve been reading a lot and I’ve been following a lot of how the story has been covered. And there is this tendency, which I think is not an incorrect impulse to analyze the wider cultural context. The brand comes out of the twins, the kind of sort of after effects of nineties lad culture and the misogyny that was so culturally entrenched. But I think to focus too much on that would be. To take away from the fact that this stuff is still happening, that there are still people working in comedy who are the subject of open secrets. There are still people who work in comedy that we can’t name because, again, of the threat of lawsuits. And there are still people working comedy who people will say, Oh, we don’t send young women into that dressing room. Now, at that stage for me, that you should you should be sacked.

Coco Khan Right absolutely.

Nish Kumar From that job. When you watched the Dispatches documentary and they talk about brands conduct in 2005 when he was presenting that ad on show for the reality TV show Big Brother. All of that conduct should be, at the very least, a sackable offense If you can’t have someone be around young women. They have no place in any kind of workplace. And the tolerance of it is something that we are going to have to actually have a reckoning with. There has to be accountability for Russell Brand, but there also has to be accountability for the decision makers who facilitated Russell Brand. For example, one of the allegations, one of the accusers called a talent agency to tell them about this accusation, and they responded by sending a letter from his lawyers. That was the response. I don’t know who that came from, but she contacted the talent agency and got a response from Russell Brand’s lawyers. If you don’t hold decision makers accountable, we will continue to perpetuate this culture of abuse. And that’s something that I think cuts across every industry. There’s of this clearly a specific problem that comes from this idea that. The talent, which is this awful word that people use to describe presenters, which is a complete misnomer. At the end of the day, you’re reading from a goddamn auto cue. You’re not you’re not a genius. You should be we should be eminently replaceable. And that there is clearly a specific problem that comes from indulging these kind of people that are perceived to be kind of great men. That’s clearly an issue. But the thing that cuts across all of the industries is there is never a moment where. Systems are in terror. Get it? We have a tendency to. Prosecute the individual and allow the system to go unconsidered. I guess my question is, why did people feel like they weren’t able to report the abuse or if they did report the abuse? Why were those complaints not taken seriously? We’ve either got a situation where the processes themselves are inadequate or people just feel like they can’t use them. Why are we relying on people being brave? That’s the question. Because the only people and I really mean this the only people to come out of this with. Anything approaching any credibility are the victims who have been brave enough to step forward and the journalists who have worked extremely hard to produce rigorous pieces of journalism so that they could get around the threats of a very powerful man’s lawyers. And. Until we start asking ourselves the hard questions. We never, ever, ever going to progress out of this until men start asking the hard questions about how we conduct ourselves. Until people in powerful positions start asking questions about why they’re indulging the whims of predators monsters. Until any of that happens. Nothing is going to change.

Coco Khan No, absolutely. I mean, you used the word systemic failure there. And like, you know, this account is just numerous systemic failures over and over again. It shouldn’t be left to the fourth estate to to be doing this, to be fighting for justice for these women. It should not be the job of press to be doing this. There’s that’s that tells you that something has gone very, very wrong not only with policing but also in kind of workplace protections. Also just in terms of like, you know, the support we give victims of sexual violence, in terms of, you know, being believed on a kind of personal level, it’s all gone horribly wrong because we live in a culture where, you know, women are routinely dehumanized, where they’re not believed. It’s propped up by a legal system that never prosecutes criminals. My God, we have so much work to do because one in four women have been sexually assaulted. That’s the stats. That’s the fact. In fact, I had a little look this morning on rape crisis website. They said in the last year that 798,000 women were sexually assaulted. That’s one in 30. So if, you know, 30 women, one of them statistically has been raped or sexually assaulted in the last 12 months, This is not a legacy problem. I completely agree with you. But like, you know, perpetrators. What is going on. To victimize that many people, you requires a lot of perpetrators. Well, I just think we just need to do so much better with our education around consent, like it is genuinely urgent.

Nish Kumar Yeah.

Coco Khan And again, you know, we’re thinking we’re talking a lot about, like the nasty naughties. But it’s important to remember that attitudes aren’t necessarily getting better. There was a study that came out recently that found that men under 30 are most resistant to gender equality policies. They see women as competition. It’s the Andrew Effect you could maybe call it. But, I mean, you know, they in this study, they compared the under thirties with other older generations and found them to be most resistant, not more so than the boomers. That’s crazy. It just yeah, it just really hit home to me how far we have to go. And yeah, just the lack of progress in this area.

Nish Kumar You’re absolutely right. Two of the people who are supportive of Russell Brand who have been publicly, one of them is Andrew. Take a man who’s accused of rape and human trafficking and has bragged about his misogyny. The other is Elon Musk. You know, he’s one of the richest people in the world and who recently bought a mass communications platform seemingly on a whim and is using that mass communications platform essentially to speak supportively about Russell Brand spreading conspiracy theories on the Internet. And on that, we actually have had a WhatsApp message from a listener called Maddie. Thank you so much for writing in Maddie, and this is what Maddie says. Hi Pierce UK Team. Although the Russell Brand allegations aren’t strictly a political story, he strikes me as a prime case study of someone who slid to the right and then used its conspiracy rhetoric to defend himself from credible allegations. The whole matter to the mainstream media schtick. I remember as a teen being excited by his leftist ideas about radical community, but I can’t help wondering if his shift further and further right since then is an effort to shore up power and security ahead of a backlash. I’d love to know what you both think as people with insight into British media and especially Coco as a journalist and what this can tell us, if anything, about where and how we source our political beliefs. Love and thanks for being the highlight my Thursday money.

Coco Khan Oh, thank you so much for for writing into us, Maddie. I mean, when I’ve been thinking lots about conspiracy theories recently, not just in terms of Russell Brand, but just in general, and I always think back to one of my first kind of interactions of the science of conspiracy theory, which was Jon Ronson. You know, Jon Ronson famously did a kind of deep dive into people that believe it, conspiracy theories. And one of the things he he honed in on was that a lot of people who buy into this, it’s because they’ve previously been tricked or they’re some sort of abuse of trust that has happened in their past. There is a reality that the average citizen has a right to say that perhaps their trust has been abused by the political system, by the media. Hillsborough Springs to mind. I’m all for being critical of the media. I think more criticism is great, more accountability is great, like to see more media literacy in school. But these conspiracy theories aren’t critical thinking. They’re kind of the opposite. They like they they want simple solutions to complex problems. You know, that idea that like anyone that’s been to therapy, knows two things can be true at once. As much as I have sympathy for people who distrust politics and distrust institutions, at some point you just sort of like grow up. In terms of Russell Brand, though, what I would say is it doesn’t surprise me that someone who allegedly abused their power sees abuses of power everywhere. Yeah, right, Right. Like if you’ve been a cheat, you probably imagine there’s plenty of cheating around. Yeah. If you’ve been protected by institutions now, no. One. Do you think that other institutions are being protected, too? So, you know, it doesn’t doesn’t surprise me that this thing is happening in terms of. Yeah, whether he slid to the right to shore himself up, I mean, I don’t know. But definitely just on that point about media and trust in the media, like it’s fine to be critical, but there has to be a limit to that and it has to be constructive. And yeah, choosing choosing to get your information from like credible places that are held to account in some way should be more, in my view, but have some sort of rules and regulations to abide by is critical.

Nish Kumar I will say this about a year ago I was having a conversation with a friend of mine with both comedians and I said, it’s incredible. He’s monetize this kind of conspiracy thinking. Also, it’s very strange because he’s living in England, but all the videos relate to right wing American conspiracy theories. There’s a lot of stuff about Foushee in there. It’s a very strange mixture. And I said to my friend, It is so weird, You know, I guess this is what he’s had to this is what he’s doing to make money now because he’s not able to make it anywhere else. And she actually said, no, it’s absolutely perfect, because when the allegations do come out, he’s going to say this, this and this. And what she did was essentially walk me through the beats of the video that he put out on Friday night to get ahead of the allegations. She literally said it was going to be. But I’ve been questioning the mainstream media. This is what happens when they question the mainstream media. A lot of not specific allegations, but kind of vague, sort of, you know, vague senses of some kind of unnamed conspiracy. It was exactly the base of the video, and it was an extraordinarily prescient conversation.

Coco Khan So if you’ve been affected by the issues we’ve been talking about in the UK, rape crisis offers support for rape and sexual abuse on 08088029999 in England and Wales is 08088010302 in Scotland or 800 0246991 in Northern Ireland. In the US, rain offers support on 800 6564673. In Australia support is available at 1800 respect. So that’s 1800737732. Other international helplines can also be found at i biblio so i b. I. B. L. I. O. Dot org forward slash rc ip forward slash i and t e. R and l dot html will put all of that in the show notes. I know that was a lot to take in, but there is support out there. There should be more. But if you need it, don’t be afraid to ask for it.

[AD]

Coco Khan It’s six months since Baroness Louise Casey released her damning report on the UK’s largest police force, the London Metropolitan Police. It found the Met to be institutionally racist, sexist and homophobic.

Nish Kumar The Casey Review was set up by the Met after one of its officers, Wayne Cousins, raped and murdered Sarah Everard the month before the review was published. Another officer and Cousins is unit David Carrick was jailed after admitting to 45 rapes over a 17 year period. Here’s Baroness Casey explaining what she found at the Met.

Clip Institutional racism, institutional sexism, institutional misogyny and homophobia are definitely present across the organization. We have weighty evidence that supports those findings. And finally, I think the Met is not able to assure all of us that its officers are of sufficient integrity and standards to be serving police officers. So it needs to clean itself up and use independent people to help them do that.

Nish Kumar Casey’s grim findings included rape cases being dropped because evidence was kept in a broken freezer, a muslim officer finding bacon in his locker and the Sikh officer having his beard cut. There were managers advising officers to delete incriminating social media posts and a firearms unit where officers held competitions to make female colleagues cry.

Coco Khan And in the months since, it keeps on coming. In August, another former met officer was jailed for raping a fellow officer and a 16 year old girl. The judge said the Met should be ashamed of its abysmal response to the colleagues complaint, saying that they were more interested in looking out for one of their own. Earlier this month, five former Met officers also pleaded guilty to sharing grossly racist messages on WhatsApp. And this is just London. The Met is one of six forces in England in special measures.

Nish Kumar This week the Met revealed over 1000 officers are either suspended or on restricted duties, while a third of officers have been removed from Cousin Carrick’s unit. The Parliamentary and Diplomatic Protection Command, which Louise Casey had called to be disbanded on the Daily Record. This there’s the news that a police officer will be charged with the murder of Chris Cooper, who was shot dead in a police operation in south London last year.

Coco Khan So six months on from Baroness Casey’s damning assessment, what is being done? Leroy Logan served in the Met for 30 years, retiring in 2013 as a superintendent. In that time, he ran policing for the London Olympics and was a founding member and chair of the Black Police Association. Thank you so much for joining us, Leroy.

Nish Kumar Welcome to Pod Save the UK.

Leroy Logan Yeah, great. Thanks for the invite.

Nish Kumar We have a lot of very serious things to discuss with you. But first, we just wanted to have a little listen to this.

Clip I just wanted to say I applied to combat negative attitudes. There are divisions and misunderstandings, and I think I could change that. I’m a lot. Of course you’re right. Attempts to interact with your people have fallen quite short. Recruits from your background might be better placed, perhaps to show where we going wrong. Wow. I agree with you 100%. I think we need to look each other in the eye, man to man. Given a chance, we’ll soon realize we’re not different. I’ve tried jelly deals, so if the boys are up for it, I’ll have a and rice and peas in no time. I promise you that. Thank you, Mr. Logan.

Nish Kumar What you heard there is John Boyega in the 2020 BBC film Red, White and Blue, part of Steve McQueen’s Small AX series. Leroy, what was it like? What was that like as an experience? because that’s job.

Leroy Logan Changing. It was life changing. I mean, when I first got approached about this about 2016, I thought. It’s a bit of a wind up because, you know, with you on that journey, you think nothing. Really sort of special around it. But when? Someone like Steve McQueen says he wants to make a film out of it, and then John Boyega wants to play me. He’s thinking, Well, that’s pretty cool. So my grandchildren think I’m pretty cool. So it’s a life changing experience that as open so many different gates of people opportunities and so many windows that I thought were firmly closed. I’m really, really very, very grateful, very humbled.

Nish Kumar For those who don’t know the story or haven’t seen the film, which I would really urge people to. The Small AX series in general is extraordinary. And red, White and Blue is an incredible piece of filmmaking. I really urge people to seek out and watch it. Can you explain why there was so much disquiet in your family when you said you were going to try and join the police?

Leroy Logan Well, the policing experience in the sixties and seventies when I was growing up wasn’t a very good one, similar to what it is now, you know, very, very heavy handed policing. But led to the Brixton riots. And my dad was really pleased that I was a research scientist. So there was that sense of, well, why would you turn your back on science? To become a police officer who they hound us and persecutors and criminalize us. And also the fact that in 82, when I was going through the application process, my dad was badly beaten up by police over a traffic matter. And he was in his late fifties and there was no reason for it. And on how he found out, which is in the film, said, Be good if people check it out. He wasn’t best pleased and he saw it as a double whammy. Terms of turn my back on science and becoming join the ranks of the officers who beat him up, which I can understand, but to his real character and wisdom. He did support me in the end.

Coco Khan It was interesting hearing you. You just said in passing, they’re like, Oh, you know, the policing was heavy handed as it is now. It was interesting to hear that comparison because, you know, you might think even though it’s not making enough progress, things are getting better with policing. But actually, as someone who’s got the long view, maybe not. Am I right in thinking that what you heard in the Casey review was no surprise whatsoever?

Leroy Logan No. No. In fact, it mirrored the MacPherson inquiry in the late nineties, looking into the death of Stephen Lawrence and how the incompetence, the racism and the corruption of those officers prevented those suspects from being charged only to till this date has been put before the courts and then present moment. And we know one of the suspects died without even being spoken to by police. So, yeah, it’s very similar and it really needs the Met to really acknowledge that they have a problem and the police service around the country, if you don’t acknowledge it fully properly, you’ll go back to your default position when it’s cool to do so. You know, when the heat is off and at the moment the heat is off because the political will is that officers can’t do any wrong. You know, they just get on with what they want to get on with. And I think also, Cressida Dick, was the commissioner, really allowed the toxicity of the culture to go totally off the chart.

Nish Kumar In terms of the political will. So it’s really interesting that you brought that up because the Home secretary said the government has been critical of the police very recently, but around issues of the police. So, yeah, and using the word woke, I mean, I read stuff like that and think the Home secretary is not a serious person like that. That’s how I feel. I have no idea how you respond to those governments.

Leroy Logan It makes me sad. It makes me feel that the Home secretary a dangerous person because she’s into dog whistle politics that she doesn’t realize encourages rogue officers to be totally disrespectful and treat people without any dignity, think they can get away with it, you know, run roughshod not only on the public, but some of their colleagues as well. She doesn’t realize that when you say, oh, you know, don’t be building relationships with the community, whether it’s taking a knee or, you know, even being cheerful at Carnival, that’s nothing to do with Wokeism. It’s around building relationships. You cannot police without the public. You know, Sir Robert Peel said the police, the public, public are the police. That’s what it needs. So if you’re cutting your channels, you’re bridges with with the public, you’re literally policing with one arm tied behind your back. So I find that she set back policing in so many ways. I didn’t think Priti Patel was going to be trumped by her. But yeah, so I mean, that is, I think, one of the least effective and totally adept. And I don’t think she understands the impact of her words. But it’s not just in policing, it’s on immigration, you know, stopping the boats, everything. It just it beggars belief what’s comes up.

Coco Khan And, you know, you articulate there, the police are the public. The public are the police. I think that’s important. That said, to sort of hit home that, you know, the public confidence in the police is at historically low levels is a problem for maintaining law and order. I did come across this article recently where they were talking about the investigations into the, frankly, too many officers who have allegations of sexual assault levied against them. And there was they were talking about the paradox, which is the more you investigate these officers because you want to increase public confidence that well, sort of you know, we’re finding we’re getting to the rock. The more those stories come to light and therefore the more the public loses confidence because they hear more stories. How do you square that circle?

Leroy Logan What you have to dig is deep. The rot is, and unfortunately, you’re not going to attract the best candidates. Unfortunately, some candidates get drawn into this, could be joining the type of people I like into control and power. And you know that that sort of white nationalist type of agenda, because white supremacy is a real issue in the place that don’t celebrate diversity. That’s why there’s so many black officers leaving in the first two years. You’re four times more likely to to leave the police service if you’re black man in white officers, especially in the first two years. So it is a problem that. We’re not getting to grips with supervisors, you know, sergeants and inspectors especially. Get a grip of your constables. Now, it’s not a popularity vote when you have to hold your officers to account, maintaining that critical distance. And as a result of that, we’re seeing that a lot of supervisors allowing the complicit by the silence. They’re not stepping in where they see inappropriate behavior, whether it’s racism, sexism. They’re the supervisors somehow are protecting them. And, you know, one of the things that the case review showed was the department for up Professional standards or an internal complaints people, they were part of the problem as well. They would protect appear to be protecting people in a way that the process of misconduct hearings was drawn out. The federation, which is the police union in a way of of the rank and file officers, they were seen to be dragging things out. So you’ve got these organizations that should be better at what they’re doing that because you need those internal checks and balances. The supervisors, the federation, the internal complaints, all these things are necessary. And obviously the ethical leadership from the senior leaders to unemployed across the organization to hold people to account. You cannot allow things to just oh, no, no, it doesn’t matter. Because, you know, one of the things I remember John in the Met in 83 was something if you couldn’t take a joke, you shouldn’t attend. So in that in the term of humor, you can be racist, sexist, homophobic, you name it, because it’s just a joke. So if you’re reacting, you’re just getting a bit, you know, bit too thin skinned. You know, you’ve got a chip on your shoulder. But I always tell them I have to tips my shoulder, so I’m even keel.

Nish Kumar You’re balanced now.

I’m balanced now.

Coco Khan So what’s your how are you feeling in terms of Sir Mark Rowley’s ability to stop this? I mean, I remember reading a quote from him. He seemed really obsessed with this word, institutional. It would not accept this word institutional. Is it important that he accepts it or not? What do you think? Where’s your confidence?

Leroy Logan I think it’s important to the public that he acknowledges, especially the black community around racism, especially women and girls when it comes to sexism and misogyny. It has to acknowledge it’s a systemic failure because the definition that really is if you got disproportionality in your police powers or internal cultural hostility and you’re not doing anything about it. Well, the system’s allowing it to happen. So you’ve got technology, you’ve got a problem. If not, you’re going to go and do the same things, maybe two, maybe ten years later. But, you know, when they feel that the pressures off, they default back because that’s how they’re wired, because it attracts a certain type of mindset. And I remember when I was a police inspector, I went to Hengdian. So it’s like the in the late nineties. And I remember seeing the officers or recruits, rather, coming in. And within about two or three weeks, they talked like cold sweats, you know, like they’ve got two or three years and, you know, the vernacular, the swagger and everything. I in my book, I call it an internal radicalization. It’s a it’s just like they got totally brainwashed. And so if if you’re not clear on your beliefs and values and your principles, you can get easily assimilated into that stuff because, you know, you want to be part of the team. You don’t want to be seen as being, you know, different. Well, I didn’t mind being feeling different because I made it clear I’m a black man who happens to be a cop, not a cop. That must be black. So I will integrate in I work with my team. I will be a good supervisor. I’ll be a public servant, which I know I am throughout my career. And if I need to step in and deal with officers to develop them or even sanction them, so be it. I’m not going to be buying into the culture blindly, you know, falling into these loyalties. And some of them are extremely toxic because we’ve seen with Pat Pappy and others other specialist units.

Nish Kumar But that’s and that’s why it’s so important that we use the word institutional and systemic, because there is a tendency, there’s a willingness to try and portray someone like Wayne Cousins as being an outlier in an otherwise functional system. But what the picture you’re painting is that the rot in terms of misogyny, sexism, racism and homophobia, it’s it’s baked into the institution. So they turning out people who have those beliefs.

Leroy Logan Yeah. And so going back to your question about not only can he do the job well, he was around when Chris was allowing that to happen, and he’s come up through the ranks. He’s been steeped in that culture. Now, he might have had, as we say in the Christian reference books, a Damascus Road conversion. I don’t know. It might be, but he’s still not showing his real openness to change by acknowledging the systemic failures, institutional racism, sexism, etc.. So I’m the jury’s still out for me around what is is actually going to do. So far he seems to be lancing the boil to some extent with bringing was over 100 officers either on misconduct or suspended.

Nish Kumar So just to clarify that. So in the past year, 100 officers have been sacked for gross misconduct, which is up 66% of the normal rate. But there are a thousand officers who are currently suspended or on restricted do.

Leroy Logan Yeah, yeah.

Nish Kumar The numbers are it’s you know.

Leroy Logan It’s eye watering.

Nish Kumar Oversight. Yeah, it’s a horrific state of affairs. Yeah.

Leroy Logan You know, they say, you know, bad apple in the barrel. I think the barrel is rotten And that’s, that’s the thing at moment they don’t know how bad it is. So, you know, we are seeing, I think, the beginning of a very difficult period for them because, as you say, the more bad news is going to turn off the candidates that you need. And austerity had already reduced the numbers. They were trying to push through a lot and not vetting people properly and, you know, allowing all sorts of strange people into policing. You know, it’s going to be really challenging, to be quite honest. It’s going to be worse. And I think for the next year or so than a lot people anticipate.

Coco Khan I’m glad you mentioned austerity there, because that has definitely been something that people have spoken about a lot as you kind of articulated, like not being able to suspend officers because you can’t recruit more because you’re not paying, you know, salaries and things like that. But I wonder sometimes if too much of the conversation gets lost in the austerity point, if there was better funding, that would still need to be loads of work. Right? Or actually, is that a significant thing? And that’s the first thing that we as voters should be trying to kind of push for from our political leaders is like, get the police more budget.

Leroy Logan Well, funding I think is partly funding in terms of getting the right quality officers and getting as reflective an organization as possible, because the more you reflect the community you’re serving, wherever it is in the UK, the more effective you are in serving the needs of the public. You know there’s an extra viable link. Between how you serve the needs of a diverse personnel, so your better equipped to serve the needs of a diverse public. So you need the right quality officers as reflective of the public as possible. And they need to have good pay and conditions. I mean, one of the things around austerity, not only reducing the numbers of the officers, but their paying conditions was eroded. And so you’ve now got officers working for longer. So I signed up for three years. I did three years. Yes. Some officers signed up for 30 years. They’re now doing 35, possibly 37 years. So they’re working for longer for less money in the long term because even when they get pension, that gets taxed. So, you know, morale in the police is rock bottom. And then remember, when they lost so many officers, which to some extent they’ve got back, but you’re not got the experience officers. So there’s been this massive drunk brain drain of experienced officers. Policing is is going through this firefighting phase. They’re just reacting from one event to another. They’re not being proactive. And, you know, this really weird thing is that the Met is still the envy of the world. You know, all police service in the UK because, you know, other countries around the world can’t believe police officers don’t have to patrol which side arms. And they are very effective when they’re doing it right. But at the moment, it’s in a sorry state. But I hope with the right leadership, the right people and working with communities in a way that builds relationships. I mean, there’s I don’t know if you’ve seen this WhatsApp video where an officer is playing basketball with a group of black youngsters. It’s just it’s like a school setting. I think maybe a safer schools officer. And he slammed Dunstable and they love him. You know, I suppose. Well, they said it’s work he should be policing, you know, the heavy handed. But they will be more likely to talk to him about what’s going on with the guns along with the drugs or who’s with the next beef is then, you know, if you have a group of officers taser in them, you know, and that’s one of the reason why I set up a charity called Void Youth. It’s based in Hackney, set up over 20 years ago. And in fact, never. Lawrence is one of our patrons, and it’s around helping young people to know their rights and responsibilities and developing positive peer to peer mentoring. Because I know within young people they don’t help themselves as they should. Sometimes it’s the parenting, sometimes it’s the home, the community. But we have to help our young people to buy into their communities and work with authority figures. So yeah, it’s things that we we really need to to understand that we’ve got a tough time and the public have to step up. So if you want to come to work with voids, please, you know, go on our website, check it out.

Coco Khan Sally, I do want to talk to you about sexual violence and rape because we’ve just been talking about Russell Brand and of course, one of the, you know, the criticism levied at these poor victims who are so brave for coming forward is why didn’t you go to the police? They spent a time looking a bit of time looking into just the the huge problem of reporting sexual violence to the police. You know, how it can feel like you are the one being interrogated, how they go through your phone, how it takes so long, how rape kits get apparently left in fridges with people’s lunch, how people can be insulting. Like I get why women don’t go to the police. And I also keep thinking about this cultural point that Nic and I were talking about, about how so many perps don’t even realize that what they’re doing is assault because the language around consent is so poor. And I’m going to be completely honest with you, Leroy. I’m I’m maybe hopeless now that the police can actually be a good force for women in protecting women, do you think that I’m too hopeless and that there are models around the world where this is working? Honestly, there’s.

Leroy Logan Some models around the country. You know, I know Ten Valley has been doing a lot of great work. You know, it’s down to leadership. If you get that ethical leadership, you get that real sort of transformational type of approach where you work with people, get the best out to them. You see where the needs are and and also to to ensure that you have those checks and balances so that things are not diverting off track. You know, you can’t live in your office. I mean, one of the things I still love doing is creeping up on my offices. So I’ll jump on my bike and I’ll cycle round Hackney, you know, and I’ll catch them. Oh, okay. What were they doing?

Coco Khan That’s amazing.

Leroy Logan The feedback. And. Oh, and they’re not expecting to see me on my bike, you know, And, and as a result of that, I want to ensure that my strategy is being been. Sold out by my officers with the impact and the outcomes I want. I’m what the public deserve. I can’t just live by a spreadsheet or a computer screen. I’ve got to go out and confirm. And it’s also good for me to see how things have moved on, hopefully for the better. But getting to your point, there are there are examples of good leadership. I know there’s several forces in special measures and I suppose HMRC inspector constables are actually getting their act together, finally holding these larger forces, you know, the Met, Greater Manchester Police, etc., and starting to say, okay, we’re not just going to be passively coming to look at you and giving you advanced warning so they can take all the boxes and then move on. Now bring in those checks, you know, unannounced checks. Really get into supporting those units that need that support, not to protect them, but to hold them to account. So I know it’s you know, they say the the night is dark is just before the dawn and it is dark. But I don’t want people to be totally helpless. There are examples. And to be quite honest, I’m not hopeless on you know, I’m still hopeful that it can be turned around. People have to come together and ask the right sort of questions. And and sure, if we need to go to the courts, because I find the courts only the best places to hold police to account. Patsy Stevenson, you know, one of the young people and one of the young women arrested at the Sarah Everard vigil, she’s just been compensated because she was not willing to just give up. You know, and and we know that the Sarah Everard vigil was a real turning, but it’s a turning point for a lot people because they saw all of a sudden. Hold on, that police are not as objective and reasonable as we thought because was a lot of people used to think to trust the police. Any time you’re.

Coco Khan Probably familiar with this kind of growing call to abolish the police, which is coming from lots of quarters of activism, from, you know, feminist activism, but also for people of color. I mean, I just, you know, ask someone who’s dedicated their life to policing but has also seen the role. What are your thoughts on this notion of abolishing the police? And as I understand it, just for our listeners, as I understand it, abolishing the police doesn’t mean dismantle entirely the police force, but rather take certain services that is frankly failing at stuff like sexual violence, you know, issues of community and religious community problems and putting them away from policing. What what’s your.

Nish Kumar Thoughts?

Leroy Logan No, I agree that police needs to be restructured in a big way. I, I don’t think, equipped to deal with people with mental health. We know their shortfalls when it comes to dealing with women and sexual offenses. So part of the new approach is not defund the police, but it’s actually the public health approach. So that that shows that it’s not just police have to deal with this. There’s like a triage approach. So you work with health practitioners, you know, specialists, so you don’t deploy just police officers to a mental health case or if you have to, sexual or not. You have a charge approach when it comes to sexual offenses. So again, it’s not just seen as an enforcement issue because, you know, the the the enforcement and the victim needs as much of a sense sensitive care and a more softer approach, which a lot of officers are not used to. You know, because if you think about. Most of the time they’re flying from one event to another, blue lights and sirens. They go to an event or an incident and they escalate everything. Very rarely they de-escalate. So one of the things that I’m working with, with Middlesex University and other collaborators is seeing how we can assist officers to be more trauma informed and trauma responsive because it’s all well and good when you see someone is traumatized and you ignore it. You have to be responsive to that. And so especially when you’re dealing with vulnerable people, you know the thing about child. Q and that young lady being strip searched, you know, well, actually, she’s intimately searched on a menstrual cycle in a school, which must’ve been the safest place. Those officers quite rightly have been told they’re going to go through a misconduct in the last few days because you cannot do that on the reasonable. There was no reasonable grounds. So you violated that young lady in a school. So if there were trauma informed and trauma responsive, they would realize, no, we can’t do this. Even if they said, oh, she might have some drugs in it. Oh, right. Get the appropriate adult, the mother, the parents, whoever the family members take and, you know, to ensure that they can do this thing in a responsive and respectful and dignified way. So these are all the things that people need to start seeing every day. It’s not just, oh, when the heat on the unit, you know, trust is earned and there’s certain people where trust has been rock bottom like the black community. And now we’ve got women and girls. You have to earn their trust as well as the black community. So they’ve got a bigger case and they’ve got a lot to do. And they’d better crack on and do it and do it effectively and in a sustainable way.

Nish Kumar And we’ve got let you go. So I appreciate you taking the time to talk to us. I just want to ask you one final question that, you know, we start this interview talking about you being a young man in your twenties who left a kind of promising science career behind to join the police and the disquiet that cause within your own family. I just want to ask you, what would you say to yourself, your equivalent today, a young black man in his twenties, considering joining the police, maybe leaving a different promising career behind? What would you say to that person today?

Leroy Logan I would say do do a lot more research. Know the organization. You go into how it works, get a mentor and understand that it’s not going to be perfect. It’s going to be challenging. And that’s why I’m really pleased that they bringing in the policing degree before they even apply so that it shows your commitment to policing in in a sense that it’s not just around controlling power. You understand your role, what skills you have to bring in before you even apply sometimes. And or you can do the degree during your first few years in the organization. We need to professionalize policing. Unfortunately, the perception is the police are a bunch of thugs. So yeah, but still join. So, you know, my grandson said, Granddad, you know, I want to join. I wouldn’t stop him, but I’ll make sure he’s prepared as much as possible to be an effective officer.

Nish Kumar Right. Thank you. Thank you so much.

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Nish Kumar So Coco, tell us who is the PSUK Hero of the Week?

Coco Khan So our Hero of the Week is a Danish contemporary artist called Yens Horning. So he creates socially conscious, I guess you describe it as like political work. And basically he was commissioned to recreate an earlier piece of work of his that represented the average income as banknotes. Right? So he gets his commission. He’s lent over half a million kroner to do the work. But when he sends the work back, that’s complete. It’s actually just a bunch of empty frames. The series of frames is called Take the Money and Run the Work By the way, it was displayed. But then the museum asks for the money, back to which Hani refused. He claimed that taking the money was the artwork. The museum accused him of theft. So this is what he said. This is what he told Danish radio. And I quote, The work is that I have taken their money. It’s not theft. It is breach of contract. And breach of contract is part of the work. He added, I encourage other people who have working conditions as miserable as mine to do the same If they’re sitting in some shitty job and not getting paid and are actually being asked to pay money to go to work, then grab what you can and beat it. So if you’re probably wondering why is this being included on a political podcast, aside from just being really funny and one of my personal interests to follow the madness of the art world, never forget that a couple of years ago, Art Basel, an artist, stuck a banana to the wall, said it was art. Then another performance artist ate it, leaving all critics around the world to write these deep op eds being like, What does it mean when someone eats the work? So, I mean, I love all of this, but also there is just a general question, political question, which is about bad work. Work doesn’t pay. It’s not giving you the security. It’s becoming more precarious. And at some point successive governments need to address this problem of bad unfulfilling work. It’s not always on the agenda, but this is a deep seated problem that is bubbling up. And so actually Jens Horning pushed it to the top of the agenda in the most hilarious and flamboyant way imaginable. And for that reason, he is our Hero of the Year. We should probably mention that a court has asked him to pay the money back ordered actually not asked, which you know, is maybe not quite the ending that we wanted. But also at the same time, the court order is probably also part of the work. You know, it’s great. So that leaves you with the job that you love. Nish So who’s your best UK villain of the week?

Nish Kumar Well, it’s Liz Truss. It’s always Liz Truss. I don’t know how many more weeks I can continue talking about her, but she’s been claiming cash from the public fund awarded to former prime ministers around their offices despite serving for 49 days. Talk about work. Pay is unbelievable. She’s already claimed £23,310 in her first five months after resigning. The pro rata on Liz Truss is absolutely spectacular. Clearly, the only job that pays now, based on what we can see is being a shit Prime Minister because she is absolutely it in and she did absolutely shit job. She’s also writing an absolutely by the sounds of things dog shit book called Ten Years to Save the West, the title of which and the subject matter seems to be indulging some pretty unpleasant conspiracy theories that come from the hard right. But the problem with this is what is the continued impact and influence on the Tory party? One of the things that she called for in a recent public address was a rowing back of net zero policies and Rishi Sunak appears to be dancing to that tune. So we’ve got someone who is objectively fucking shit at her job continuing to have an influence on the person who’s taken over from her. I don’t know. At what point are we able to exile her to Albert like Napoleon? Is there a way we can put Liz Truss on an island with no phones or internet? The continued sort of shit stain on British public life, that is Liz Truss is needs desperately to be cleaned up. She’s a skid mark on the underpants of British politics.

Coco Khan Well, we do love to get your emails and comments into the show, but we also really love hearing your voices and we’ve had this lovely voice note in from Clara.

Nish Kumar Hi. I’ve been like disenfranchized with politics for most of my life. I’m I’m 19 now. I’m an art student. I grew up with an immigrant mother. So not being involved in politics has never really, like, been an option for me. When I was probably like 12 or 13, I got really, like panicked about climate change and kind of growing up with that and seeing how the government treated people like me from similar backgrounds, in less privileged backgrounds of mine and how they were ignoring us, you know, when we were screaming for help really about the future of the planet. I’ve just been really disenfranchized for years. Like I don’t remember an John Tory government. I don’t remember the NHS working well. And I got like politics can become a real point of anxiety for me. But I’ve been listening to parts of the UK recently and it’s helping with all of that. Like, I feel more engaged with politics, I feel like more hopeful and I feel like I can organize now. Like I feel like that’s not. A waste of time and going to end like leave me with my heart broken type thing, You know, I feel like I can do that. And that’s in large part like your podcast, and it’s great and I love it. So thank you. I’m going to go back to bingeing, upload something right now.

I don’t have anything to say other than crying emoji.

Nish Kumar Yeah.

Coco Khan Coco is so sweet.

Nish Kumar It’s a really lovely thing to hear. And also, I think that’s such an interesting point to raise about people whose lives are politicized. You know that if you’re at it’s for so many people in society, if you’re an immigrant family, if you’re a member of the LGBTQ community, if you’re broke, if you you know, if your family’s broke, if you’re a woman, you know, you don’t have a choice in being engaged with politics because it’s thrust into your day to day life. And I do think that’s such an interesting such an interesting point to raise about people whose existence is inherently.

Coco Khan And it was managed well here in class. I oh, I don’t remember the NHS being good and I don’t remember not having a Tory government. I don’t really remember to be honest. I’m older and I don’t really remember. This has been going on for so long. Yeah, I don’t blame lots of people for sort of being tuned out, you know, and it can sort of feel like, you know, to tune in is, is some sort of form of self-harm.

Nish Kumar Yeah.

Coco Khan You know, it’s really nice to imagine that all those Fast and Furious drinks is sort of helping somehow. But like genuine, we talk a lot about like, you know, being hopeful and the nature of being progressive has to be hope. Yes, it has to be relentless, radical hope all the time. You have to keep going. So, yeah, any way that we’ve been able to help do that is is genuinely music to my eyes. So thank you so much, Clara. I think it’s only fair that we should tell people we also get slagged off.

Nish Kumar I mean, comfortable dealing with people’s like emails. Yeah, that’s a much better position for me. That’s a much better position to be to be at. But thank you very much for contacting us.

Coco Khan Well, in the last episode, Nick, you also told everyone about your dad’s homemade cold remedy. It got people thinking so from act in so serious. I think that’s meant to be. I’m so serious. Maybe Heath Ledger. Yeah. Friends, we respect it. That’s old, weird South Indian cold remedy. It sounds like raison lull except for the honey. I imagine adding honey to Rassam would taste vile, but maybe just raw. Some itself would work for the cold. I love Russia. What is racism?

Nish Kumar It’s like. It’s like it’s a it’s kind of like. Like a thin soup. Like it’s like a drink that you drink when you’re real or just because it’s delicious. It is really delicious. So Rassam, to be clear, is much nicer than the black tea. With garlic, it’s like a spiced soup thing. It’s I fucking love it. So I like, say so delicious.

Coco Khan This episode was brought to you by Rassam.

Nish Kumar Yeah, I would love that. I would love to be sponsored by. If anybody works for okra just in any way, I would love for us to be sponsored by okra. It’s my vegetable of choice. I absolutely love it. It very well works for big okra. Big Bendi. I’m in 100%. We love where you get to touch us. Is it genuinely such a gratifying thing? You can do it by emailing PSUK at reduced listening dot co dot uk. We also love to hear your voices, so do send us a voice note on WhatsApp. Our number is 07514644572. Internationally, that’s +447514644572. We’d love to get your thoughts on what we’ve discussed in this episode or nominate your own heroes of villains. Or maybe you’d like to send in a question for your favorite political agony aunt and uncle, or just your thoughts on Beck’s Odelay. Do you think its by its best album? What other giants of nineties alt rock would you like to discuss on the show? Email us at PSUK at reduced listening dot co dot uk.

Coco Khan Pod save the UK is a Reduced Listening production for Crooked Media.

Nish Kumar Thanks to senior producer Musty Aziz and digital producer Alex Bishop with additional production support from Annie Kietzdor. And Dawn Emory.

Coco Khan Video editing was by David Koplovitz and the music is by Vasilis Fotopolous.

Nish Kumar Thanks to our engineer, David Dugahee.

Coco Khan The executive producers are Dan Jackson and Madeleine Heringer with additional support from Ari Schwartz.

Nish Kumar We’re on the Pod Save the World YouTube channel. You can also follow us on Twitter, TikTok and Instagram, where we’re at Pod Save the UK.

Coco Khan And hit Subscribe for new shows on Thursdays on Amazon, Spotify or Apple or just wherever you get your podcasts.

Nish Kumar This episode was brought to you by okra and Backside Odelay.

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