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- [00:00]
Narrator
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John Gibbs
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Glenn Oglaza
I got a hit in the new
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Glenn Oglaza
Wow.
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John Gibbs
I was groomed to become one of his wives this week on Disorder, the
- [00:50]
Glenn Oglaza
podcast that orders the disorder, an Epstein
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John Gibbs
survivor tells me her story and what
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Glenn Oglaza
justice looks like for her.
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John Gibbs
I want to see action and I am demanding action. Do not just talk the talk, you need to start walking the walk now. It's one of the most powerful interviews I've ever done in over 20 years as a journalist. Search Disorder in your podcast app to listen right now.
- [01:16]
Glenn Oglaza
Welcome to the New Books Network.
- [01:21]
John Gibbs
Welcome to this podcast from the New Books Network. Your host, John Gibbs. And this week my guest is Glenn Oglaza, author, journalist and poet. And if immediately when I realized I was going to be interviewing Glenn, Glenn O Glaser reporting reminded me of something of watching the 10 o' clock news on ITN, listening to Sky News, watching Sky News. And Glenn was a journalist with local radio correspondent, a senior correspondent of international politics and news with, as I said, local radio, also with ITN News and Sky News for getting on for four decades and now Glenn is also a prolific poet. We're going to discuss his poetry as well towards the end of this podcast. So welcome Glenn Ogaza.
- [02:08]
Glenn Oglaza
Thank you. Hi John. Hi everyone.
- [02:10]
John Gibbs
Well, Glenn, you've written two books. They came out simultaneously. They reflect on your career. They're called When I Stories. The first is When I Stories and then the other one is more When I Stories, although they actually did come out together and they take a wonderfully narrative chronology through your entire career, starting in local radio in the 80s through to the end of your career in the first decades of this century. I'll start with asking you this, really, why are they called When I Stories?
- [02:35]
Glenn Oglaza
Well, it's tongue in cheek. There was a 90 year cameraman called Paul Carlton who sadly died recently, who used to mock people for telling when I stories, as he called them. He had more when I stories than anybody. He'd covered just about every war since Vietnam, but he never told them, you know, he was far too busy drinking red wine and smoking himself to death, literally. So anybody who has sort of, you know, started a story when I was in Beirut or whatever, he would just mock them with no Wen Eye stories. So I thought what a fun title for the book. And the reason two books were published simultaneously was I wrote 340,000 words. I had two publishers interested. They both said, you need to get this down to more like 200,000. So I cut 80,000 words, which is basically in a short novel, and got it down to 260,000. One publisher said that's still way too many. But the other one said, well, how about we do those two books and publish them simultaneously? Which is a slightly bizarre idea, but that's what we did and it seems to have worked.
- [03:35]
John Gibbs
I can confirm that. I would hate to think that you would cut, madam. And disappointed, really. I sort of want the other thousands of words that sat on the cutting room floor now, really, because I'm desperately
- [03:46]
Glenn Oglaza
trying to write a novel which I'm finding a bit of a mountain to climb. But some of those 80,000 words I can reuse so it won't be wasted.
- [03:53]
John Gibbs
With the when I stories, was it. Was there an element of competition among journalists when they got together? Was one when I story have to top the other one?
- [04:01]
Glenn Oglaza
Always, all the time. Yeah, that's. That's what Paul didn't like, you know, because he had the best ones, but he would never deploy. So people would be bragging about, you know, when I did, oh, you did that. But I did this, you know, and he would just go, for God's sake. When I stories, one of the very competitive, especially with rival organizations, especially if that was a story that we won on, as it were, we'd be on.
- [04:23]
John Gibbs
One of the delightful things about this book, not only is a journey through a history that I. I remember from being a teacher and so on and teaching about this stuff, but also it's the insight into the world of journalism and being a journalist. Not just thoughts on journalism and so on, but actually the nitty gritty of being a journalist. One of the things that struck me in the early part of your first book, when I Stories was that you started in local government. Local government, Local radio. My daughter works in Local government. And I was reminded of John Humphrey's the T program presenter for years, who always was rather sniffy about journalists who came, didn't come up through local news. And I'm wondering if you thought that in a sense, like actors in repertory, you needed that grounding in local radio first.
- [05:10]
Glenn Oglaza
I think so. Local radio or local newspapers generally? I think so. There are some people who are, you know, taken on as graduate trainees straight out of Oxford or whatever and turn out to be brilliant, but they don't have. Most of them, in fact, I think, don't think any of them have that kind of, that kind of insight into, you know, what the story is, the human story, that this is people. And I think if you've done local radio, local newspapers, you know, you've had to get down to street level, as it were, talk to ordinary people in quotes, you know, and find out what makes them tick and what makes the story tick. So I agree the John Humphreys, which is an unusual thing for me to say, but, yeah, no, I think he's absolutely right. I think that grounding is. Is invaluable.
- [05:53]
John Gibbs
One of the nuggets of wisdom, I think I remember from your first book, was that rather like all politics is local, like that famous phrase in politics. But all journalism is in a sense, parochial, that it's always more newsworthy, the car crash at the end of the street than the plane crash in China. Is that in a sense, I mean, that's true of journalism. It's true. The craft of journalism, knowing, knowing, having an idea for the story. Does that say something rather negative about us humans, that we can't empathize with our fellow men in a grander way than we can.
- [06:25]
Glenn Oglaza
But I think it's what makes it more human if it's close to home. When I first left university, I went to see a few people, including the then editor of Panorama called John Kerry, and he said to me, okay, what's the biggest story? 100 people drowned in a ferry disaster in the South China Sea, Two policemen killed in Paris or a policeman stabbed in Birmingham? And I said, well, of course it's 700 dead in the South China Sea. And he went wrong. It's the policeman in Birmingham. And he was, he was, he was right. And that is what resonates with people. If it's happening, as you say, at the end of the road, it's more resonant than it is happening in another city, let alone in another country. I think we were all basically parochial, and that's just the way we are. That's where we're admired.
- [07:07]
John Gibbs
Yes, I can see that. And I think it's a troubling thought, though, isn't it? I mean, when you think of the. I sort of know why the Ukraine war is more interesting to us than the Sudan war. And it. And it shouldn't be, should it, really?
- [07:19]
Glenn Oglaza
Well, it shouldn't, but it is just down the road is in our continent, Europe, so. Of course it is. Of course it is.
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John Gibbs
The Ukrainians very, you know, look like us, as it were, you know. But you can see that from the reception Ukrainian refugees get compared to refugees from other places in the uk. They are like us. They look like us. I must say. It's true. I absolutely feel this myself when I see the Sudan crisis are living lives. I find it difficult to understand or empathize.
- [07:45]
Glenn Oglaza
Yeah, well, yes. I mean, we can sympathize but not empathize. I agree. And we kind of. We can see how wretched their lives are and awful, awful things. They're going through unspeakable atrocities, but it's not us. Whereas Ukrainians are like us. They're our European neighbors. And it's not just that they're white and people in Sudan are black. I think it is that they are much closer to us physically and culturally. So therefore we had more empathy. Was. It's difficult to empathize with. I know I've seen quite a lot of time in sub Saharan Africa, especially in Kenya, and it's more difficult to empathize with people who have totally different culture and lifestyle than it is with people who are neighbors down the road.
- [08:25]
John Gibbs
You ever feel that that was. I mean, you were a journalist on the front line. Did you ever feel that sometimes your editors were sending you to places when there were other things you'd rather be sent to? Or did you. Did you. You were the. You were the instrument, in a way of. Of a machine that was sending. You go and find a story here. Did you ever want to be sent somewhere else?
- [08:44]
Glenn Oglaza
All the time. All the time. We had a Hungarian speaker in the newsroom, but there's a story in Hungary who seemed to be the last person to be sent. So it was sometimes a little bizarre. Whereas if you had a knowledge of a country, your chances of being sent to that country seem to be less than if you knew nothing about a place. I think that was just, you know, it's all a bit random. I mean, you could lobby and people did lobby for particular stories or to go to particular countries, crises. But generally it was pretty Random, you know, you're next on the list, you're going to wherever it may be.
- [09:17]
John Gibbs
There's one thing about the life of the journalist, such as yourself, as a frontliner man with a microphone who turns up in the midst of events. Did you always have to keep a bag ready to go? Was your life always contingent upon. I made. Could you make a social life? I mean, I'll meet you next week or I might be. I might be in somewhere on the other side of the world.
- [09:34]
Glenn Oglaza
Yeah, it's difficult. And when you're young and single, it's great because the bag is packed, the passport's ready and you're eager to go. Then I got married and had a child and suddenly my priorities changed. And it's interesting that if I was away, say we were in Moscow, I would be looking for stories in Kyiv or Vladivostok, you know, because the idea, the object of the exercise was to stay as far away from the newsroom as possible for as long as possible. But I sometimes have people with me, camera crews, producers, who wanted to be home by the weekend, and they were the ones with small children. And it took me years until I had small children of my own to understand that, because I was just gone home. Let's go. But, yeah, I've left weddings, I've left all sorts of events because the phone's gone and I've had to go to the airport. And it is difficult to have a social life because, you know, you might have to go to Berlin or Birmingham or Bangkok or somewhere, but people read that as can't be bothered. I'm really sorry, I can't leave the dinner party because I've been sent to wherever it may be. And so the invitations start drying up because you're unreliable. Same with going to concerts or going to the football. There's no point. There was no point in me booking a ticket for a concert three months hence because I didn't know where the hell I'd be. So it does really impact your social writing.
- [10:44]
John Gibbs
I mean, that is one of the things that comes out strongly in both books, is that feeling that you were here and then you were there and you were kind of everywhere and the phone might ring and you'd be somewhere else. It is a. It is a very hectic life, which. And we will get on to some of the grand events and great events and the prime ministers you saw and reported on in a minute. But one other thought I had on that was, I was thinking of Fergal Keen, the journalist who has been Very open about his mental health problems, depression, anxiety and so on. And one of the themes that comes through in your book is, is the, is that drinking with friends was part of the social life. It was part of the way of dealing with anxiety. It's also potentially a problem. In other words, I think it's almost a cliche. Alcohol and the journalist, the hard drinking journalist. There are so many ways in which you could damage yourself. Being the leading.
- [11:31]
Glenn Oglaza
Yeah, I mean there was a. Looking back in retrospect, I think we were functioning alcoholics. You know, first, the amount of alcohol consumed was phenomenal. I hardly drink at all these days. I can't, you know, just fall asleep. Back in the day, we did drink a hell of a lot. I don't know if it was a way of coping with stress. Maybe it was more, I'd say, letting off steam. A friend of mine read my book, the first one when I stories, and she said, how come you don't have ptsd? And I said, well, I don't, you know, it's never occurred to me it's not a problem. Stories are stories. You just do your job, you switch into professional mode and you do your job as best you can. So I don't think we were all kind of, you know, suffering from stress or anxiety, but we certainly did drink. Oh boy, we drink.
- [12:13]
John Gibbs
Was it ever difficult to be the objective observer of events reporting as explaining it to the audience back home? I mean there is that. There is that ambiguity about the journalists. They fly in and they fly out, you know, and they leave behind whatever they're looking at sometimes. I mean, even if emotionally it wasn't you, you still were going to be gone from those people's lives in a short period of time. Was it ever difficult?
- [12:36]
Glenn Oglaza
No, because I think the spotlight just moves. But I often felt we ought to go back six months or a year later and do a follow up story to see what happened. And as far as sort of traumatic events are concerned, I covered a story of a baby called Doreen Mason who was beaten to death by her mother or mother's boyfriend. And it was orphaned and they dashed their head against a wall. Terrific. And there was a trial at the Old Bailey, which is the Central Criminal Court. People don't know. And so I was covering the story, went back to the newsroom and the then head of foreign news at itn, Maggie Eales, who had children, said, I don't know how you can tell that story. And I, you know, being sort of brazen and blasey and a young Keen report going, well, that's just another story. But as soon as I had children of my own, you know, I then had to cover Baby P was Peter Connolly was also murdered by his mother and her boyfriend. Horrific story in Haringey in North London. And it really cut me up, you know, my wife and I were both in tears. And so things change. You change as a human being and although you're still covering the story and being professional, all the rest of it, it can be quite traumatic. The only other time I felt any trauma was covering Dunblane, the school masquerade. Dunblane, which happened on a Wednesday. I was the first television news reporter there because I was working out of Glasgow at the time, being ITN Scotland correspondent. And so I covered the story for three days. And on Saturday morning I flew back home to London and of course, the newspapers were still full of dumb Blaine pages and pages. And I was in floods of tears on the plane and I said to my wife, you know, I don't know why, but I've been crying. I think I'm a bit traumatized. She said, I'm not surprised you're traumatized. The whole country is traumatized. Of course you are. But other than that, I've never. None of it's really affected me directly in a way, you know, just sort of just. You just put on your profession, you know, like being a policeman or a farm, and you put an incarceration taste and get on with it. I remember one of the first stories I covered at ITN was the King's Crossfire at King's Cross Station, which was horrific. The smell coming out of the station was horrendous. And the firemen were coming out of this thick hackard smoke and just slumping to the floor, you know, I said to one what's. What's a lie down there? He said, it's hell. And they were clearly quite traumatized, but they just getting on. They were just getting on with their job. And I kind of felt the same way. And afterwards, do you reflect? Yes, sometimes. But the thing is, you just move on to the next story, you know, as you were saying, you know, you're just on to the next one and you just put that one behind you
- [15:05]
John Gibbs
was the transport protective shield, in a way, the professionalism, you know, yeah, turkey. The craft you'd learned, you had to get the story out, you had to get the story to your editor, you had to find the right people to talk to. So you would. In a sense, that was that. That was the way you could be involved in the job. I must be like being in a. In a casualty ward for a nurse or something. You're just busy doing the things you do.
- [15:27]
Glenn Oglaza
Yeah, I think it's very similar. Obviously it's not all life and death and, you know, we're not doctors and nurses and, you know, respect them from where respect my colleagues in journalism. But it's not entirely the same that. In that your attitude, you have to switch to that professionalism.
- [15:43]
John Gibbs
Let's start with moving through your career, which the book does so wonderfully. You educated St. Paul's School, you go to Aberdeen University. For our non British audience, that's a very ancient and illustrious university in Scotland, about as far away from London as you can go. You study English and you're clearly very good at English. You do get some awards and things while you're a student. And I think one of your areas was French poetry. How did. How did English and French poetry lead to journalism?
- [16:13]
Glenn Oglaza
You know, I've had to. Verlaine and Baudelaire and so on. I couldn't put you a single line now. All forgotten. So I was. I was, you know, approaching leaving university. Didn't really know what to do. I thought, I want somebody to pay me to travel and write. You know, I'd always wanted to do that from a very young age. I mean, if I could act, I'd have been an actor. But I can't act. My wife used to say, I can always tell when you're lying because your eyes give you away. And it's the same with acting, you know, I couldn't get totally into character because my eyes would give me away. So I wanted somebody to pay me to travel and write. And I was watching News at Ten and I thought, that looks interesting. I didn't realize it involved, you know, being shot at. So, yeah, so that's kind of. So I wrote to every radio and television station in Britain, but absolutely nowhere. And so I came back to London and then I got two job offers at the same time. One in Newcastle, one in Glasgow. And so I took the one in Newcastle and had three and a half very happy years there. And what was interesting was that when I got my feet in the door, I saw what happened to all these tapes and letters that, you know, hopeful graduates used to send in. Basically the letters went in the bin and the tapes were reused. Quite cool. That's the way it was. It is. That's why my Jimmy. That's what happened to my tapes and letters.
- [17:23]
John Gibbs
A couple of them got met. I Mean that, that's. I wonder why. I mean, did you ever find out why? Why me?
- [17:30]
Glenn Oglaza
No, I never asked the answer to that. Just grateful to be there.
- [17:35]
John Gibbs
Talked about how the, how you learned the craft of journalism in local radio. You were there during the miners strike, am I right in saying. And that was, that was one of the first big. And we're looking back on it. One of the themes in the book again is being present at the turning point of history. Seeing the pages of history turns work. I mean, looking back, that was one of the great turning points, wasn't it? I mean, that's the beginning of. Beginning of the deindustrialization, the changing British economy. You can trace the whole way down to the end of. To Donald Trump and reform and the rise of those politicians who were dealing with, responding to the consequences of that changed the world. So it was there at the beginning of something big. We didn't know it at the time. What was your experiences of the Ministry?
- [18:15]
Glenn Oglaza
Well, without sounding pompous, I wanted to go into journalism, to be the eyewitness to history. And there have been some stories and that was the first one, I think, the first big one where I really did feel at the time, you know, this is a seismic change. This is Thatcher destroying the unions. You know, the miners were notoriously obligerent. They were led by an idiot and, you know, walked straight into the trap. You don't call a strike in spring when coal stockpiles are at their very highest. You know, you do it in the autumn when winter's coming. The miners were fantastic. I spent most of the time with Northumberland or Yorkshire miners and they were great. But their leaders were, you know, Scarborough and Mitt McGachie were absolutely hopeless. You know, it was, it was, it felt, they were optimistic, but to me it felt doomed from the start because I think, you know, it didn't have a level playing field at all. They were just completely outmaneuvered.
- [19:07]
John Gibbs
They were, they were trying to refight the successful battle they'd had under Heath Door. And now I'm using the same tactics and the, and Mrs. Thatcher was waiting for them.
- [19:16]
Glenn Oglaza
Waiting for them. Absolutely. And the thing that people who don't come from a mining community don't really grasp is that in a mining, in a pit village, if you shut the pit, that's the end of the village because all the income is coming from people working in the pit. So the local garage, the local shops, the pub, they're all, they're all done because there's no money coming In. So, you know, it was really sad to witness the death of a whole culture, really.
- [19:40]
John Gibbs
There was a story in the Guardian the other day of Easington, one of those northern towns which. Which I did, mines that ran out under the North Sea. And it went from a vibrant community to where it is still today. High levels of drug addiction, lots of unemployment, falling population, derelict estates. Really quite a dismal place.
- [19:58]
Glenn Oglaza
I think that's where Bobby and Jackie Charlton are from, Easington, and they have this incredible underwater underground mine. Well, all mines are underground, but underwater under sea mine, which stretched two miles out into the North Sea and they're bringing the coal two miles back to land. It was an amazing operation and. Yeah, and, you know, a very sad demise. And as you say that the whole place has been ruined, destroyed. I remember my first, one of my first contacts with Margaret Thatcher when she was Prime Minister, where she came up to the northeast of England and she was announcing the opening of a company, they were called Press Production Systems, on what we would now call a brownfield site, but was an industrial wasteland. There's a very famous image of her striding across this industrial wasteland. And at the time, the northeast of England had the highest unemployment in Britain, apart from Northern Ireland. So our questions for her were about unemployment, basically, and, you know, what's. What's going to replace, you know, the mines, the steelworks, as well as big steelworks at concert in County Darren, which also closed. The shipyards were closing. The whole industrial base of the northeast of England, which had been such a pan, was all shutting down. And she just turned around to me and said, now stop it. Stop being a moaning midny. A moaning Mini was the headline on the front page of just about every newspaper the next day. So I was that moaning Mini.
- [21:16]
John Gibbs
Yes. Well, we may well get on to Mrs. Thatcher. You know, Mrs. Thatcher, well, she's one of the great figures of British history, like. Like her or Loatha. And one of the things she seemed to understand, or the people around her understood was how to. How to, you know, the. The power of the photo op. Picking up. Picking up litter or striding across a landscape or giving a pithy answer to something. I mean, was that the tank?
- [21:40]
Glenn Oglaza
Yeah.
- [21:40]
John Gibbs
That sort of housewife scarf?
- [21:44]
Glenn Oglaza
Yeah. Bizarre. Yeah.
- [21:45]
John Gibbs
And was there. Was there a sense then what they were discovering, what Thatcher was discovering, the people around it, maybe Sachi and Sachi and so on. You can manipulate the news. Did you. Did you feel manipulated at times?
- [21:56]
Glenn Oglaza
Yeah. You knew that it was a photo op. It was too good to Resist. That was the problem. And also, you know, everyone else was going to get it, so you better get it as well. So there was that kind of rivalry with other news organizations, pressure to get the picture. Make sure you got that image, because that'll be the front page of every newspaper tomorrow. So, yeah, we knew. We knew. Kind of saw what they were doing. Kind of admired it, really, because it was. They did it very, very well. Sargeant. Sargeant. Tim Bell. You know, they did it extremely well, and we had little choice, really, but to follow.
- [22:27]
John Gibbs
I was struck by that thought. That thought during Trump's first election, when he first won his first term of office, and there was one of the. One of the candidate broadcasts with a series of Republican hopefuls and Trump. And at the end of it, in the press room, the press had gathered around Trump and the others are being ignored because he would say something ridiculous, something appalling, something outrageous, and that was good news that I guess unseen somewhere or another, and it was part of his success.
- [22:57]
Glenn Oglaza
Yeah, yeah. Say something newsworthy and you'll get on the news. Simple. Even if it's outrageous. In fact, sometimes the more outrageous the better, which is what he does now, of course. You know, every day, it's relentless every day. You asked me earlier about being objective and how difficult that is, and when I was, you know, working, particularly as a political journalist, it was sometimes quite difficult to be objective. You know, you couldn't. I was not allowed to express my own personal view. Even if I thought particular government policy was a load of absolute rubbish, I couldn't say. So I had to say, well, the government's saying this, the opposition saying that. You know, the other lot are saying this. Whereas now I'm free and I give it to Trump. You know, we're both ferals on Twitter all the time, at Facebook and anywhere else. So I'm, you know, there's a new freedom.
- [23:40]
John Gibbs
I often feel that when they would have a press conference and Mr. President, would you agree? And it's so politely said, you think, well, I just. If I was in that position, I'd just want to say something very rude to him, really, Even if that was. It served no purpose at all and would probably just make more headlines for him.
- [23:55]
Glenn Oglaza
You can't be rude, but you can dress it up. You know, Mr. President, some people are saying, blah, blah, blah, blah. You can't actually do it. But the American media, especially the White House court, are incredibly differential. I don't know if you've seen the West Wing seen in the West Wing where this woman doesn't stand up when the President enters the room and the President Martin Sheen Bartlett turns around and says when the President stands, no one sits. And that's, you know, that's the way it is in the White House. And I remember more than one occasion being there. And the Brits, we didn't stand up when the President entered the room and they did not like it. But we're not Americans, so why the hell should we.
- [24:34]
John Gibbs
In some ways what I'd love as a Brit is to see and for our American audience, I'd love to see Donald Trump face Question Time in the House of Commons. There's nothing where a hundred or so more people are setting about to make you look like an idiot.
- [24:49]
Glenn Oglaza
I think he'd probably do quite well because it's very combative and he likes that, he likes a competitive atmosphere. So, you know, he'd talk complete rubbish and he'd been called out for it and he'd be accused. You can't accuse somebody in House of Commons of lying. But his, you know, veracity would be questioned. Of course it would. But I think he'd probably do quite well. I'd rather see him on Question Time with a live studio audience, you know, facing questions from, in quotes, ordinary people than have, you know, 650 MPs bang for his blood. Although it would be fun to watch,
- [25:18]
John Gibbs
we must hope for a good,
- [25:22]
Glenn Oglaza
a
- [25:22]
John Gibbs
good witness to history that you're, when you're interviewing them was, was your account of interviewing Alexander Dukcek and how he. This is the leader of the, the Prague Spring, the Czechoslovakian leader. This was after the fall of the communist regime in Czechoslovakia and Dubek had been sequestered away in his house for decades and was brought out and I think you got the interview with him and he turned out to be a less than useful interview. Witness to history.
- [25:49]
Glenn Oglaza
Yeah. So we got so The Prague Sprinklers, 1968 and after the fall of the Berlin Wall in November 1989, the next location was Czechoslovakia. And we went there and it took me two weeks of talking to his confidants, various people, no people who knew him, to get the interview, but we did get the world exclusive interview which was fantastic. However, he hadn't been interviewed for 21 years and he was a very old style, you know, admittedly reforming communist, but an old style communist. So I asked him the first question, which was a nice open ended one about, you know, because it wasn't a done deal yet. The, you know, the revolt, revolution hadn't yet succeeded. So it was ongoing. And I sort of asked him something like, you know, what do you think about what's happening in the country? You know, what's going to be the end result? And 20 minutes later he was still talking. And back in those days, you had to change tapes every 20 minutes. So the camera had to stop the interview, change tapes. And he was on. I kid you not, he was on shoe production in the early 1970s. And he was just stultifyingly boring editing. It was really hard. And it was the lead story for new Z10. Fortunately, we had this brilliant interpreter who did simultaneous in translation. He was. Yeah, he was absolutely brilliant because we could not have edited him without that. And you know, even so it was very, very tight for the top of new Z10. But yeah, he was Emily. He was very interesting. Of course he was the things he'd lived through and seen and witnessed. But he was very, very long winded.
- [27:14]
John Gibbs
Was the interpreter capable of saying, well, that's just more about the shoe factor.
- [27:19]
Glenn Oglaza
I think his job was just to
- [27:21]
John Gibbs
translate, give it to you exactly as it was coming across?
- [27:24]
Glenn Oglaza
Slightly.
- [27:24]
John Gibbs
Yeah, yeah. And another character, again, we'll go back to more of a chronological view in a minute. But another character that comes out of your book is not as dull as you might have imagined was John Major. It turns out to be reasonably charming. I mean, yet he was the gray man of Spitting Image and. And so on.
- [27:42]
Glenn Oglaza
And with the. With the.
- [27:43]
John Gibbs
With the dull personality.
- [27:45]
Glenn Oglaza
Yeah.
- [27:46]
John Gibbs
Very, very ordinary, parochial sort of chap in theory, not really in practice.
- [27:50]
Glenn Oglaza
No. And also, he's taller than people realize. People don't think. People think of him as being quite short. He's not. He's 6 foot and he has charisma. You know, he's like Blair or Clinton. Clinton has it in space. Of course, when that person walks in the room, you know, someone's walked in the room and John Major had that. He had charisma and it just didn't come through the screen, didn't come across on television. And of course, you know, he let himself in, you know, I mean, Spitting image. More page dear. And all that stuff was very unkind. Yeah. Alistair Campbell took the mickey out of him mercilessly for apparently. For tucking a shirt into his underwear into his own. There was this poster of John Major as Superman and he said he's back and this time he's jolly paved. And that was the image, you know, that this was this peevish little man. But actually he wasn't. And he actually had a vision as to what he wanted to do as Prime Minister, what he wanted to do in the country. Whether he agreed with it or not, he had a purpose in being there. It's not always the case.
- [28:46]
John Gibbs
Absolutely. Was there a lot of classism about Major because he didn't go to university, didn't go to a private school. He was, he came up to grammar school, I think, like, like Harold Wilson, you know, and his parents were circuit performers. I think it really quite ordinary, but not really very ordinary, but not the classic sort of Oxbridge sort of chap. Do you think there was an element
- [29:09]
Glenn Oglaza
of that sniffy about it, undoubtedly within the Conservative Party? Yes, I think undoubtedly. I used to say that they were leading the wrong parties, that Tony Blair should have been the Conservative Party leader and John Major should have been leading labor because he had quite a lot of socialist, you know, impulses and ideas. You know, I think, I think instinctively his approach was much more socialist than Tony Blair's in many ways.
- [29:35]
John Gibbs
And he's. And he's proved to be quite a good ex Prime Minister in that way that Jimmy Carter turned up a very good ex president. Not such a good president, Andrew, when he, when he appears on the news, he seems to. I thought, well, you weren't this impressive when you were Prime Minister in a way.
- [29:50]
Glenn Oglaza
Yeah, I think Jimmy Carter suffered from much the same thing. He seems, you know, dull and ineffective, but actually he wasn't. And I think both of them slipped into that elder statesman role with ease. And I think, you know, now in major talks, I don't know who listens, but some people are listening even. It's certainly in his own party because he's captured that elder statesman role above politics.
- [30:11]
John Gibbs
So Glenn, we were talking about the, the unexpected charm and charisma of John Major. Before we leave that behind, I was thinking while you were talking about someone, who else had a reputation for being doer and what doer, I suppose is the best word for it really. That would be Gordon Brown. And yeah, he was supposed to be quite funny and charming in private.
- [30:33]
Glenn Oglaza
Very. And he's got a very dry sense of humor. And that again, didn't come through the screen, didn't come across to people. But he's very, very funny and very, very clever and, you know, saved the world in 2008 and all that. So yeah, he was, he was a brilliant, brilliant man. He, he liked to micromanage everything though, unfortunately. So. And you know, he was a cannabite workaholic. So he'd be at the, at his email at 5 o' clock in the morning, waking everybody up with, you know, whatever he wanted them to do that day. But he must have been just exhausting to work for. And apparently, like all of them, you know, had a bit of a temper as well, and notoriously long phones across of them. But brilliant man and very, very funny. Unfortunately, he sports Wraith Rovers, so that was his fatal sport. But he genuinely, genuinely was interested in football, unlike David Cowan, who supported Aston Villa, United, West Ham or whatever it was. And, you know, Tony Blair, who pretended to have seen Jackie Norden playing for Newcastle and so on and so forth. But Gordon Brown, I think Gordon Brown and John Major were more genuine in a way. Less. Less actor. Because they say in an. All Prime Ministers are either actors or vicars. And I think Major and Brown were the classic vicars and Blair and Cameron were classic actors. I think Thatcher was probably an actor as well. She had a bit of both.
- [31:50]
John Gibbs
I mean, that implies in a way that the best politicians are the actors, I suppose. And that's, you know, what is it? Groucho Marx said something like, authenticity is the most important, important thing in politics. And if you can. If you can fake that, you're made.
- [32:07]
Glenn Oglaza
Yeah, I thought it was Walter Cronkite. It was of what was in quality. And he said sincerely, if you can fake that, you can fake anything. Maybe it was Groucho. Maybe they both said it in different ways.
- [32:19]
John Gibbs
Well, I'm probably going to Google that now, Gordon, sticking with Gordon Brown for a moment, the moment you mentioned there about him saving the world. And he, of course, is in the House of Commons in that question time. And he said, yeah, he accidentally says, I've saved the world, when he meant to say, I saved the banking system. And then there was either of the Liberal Party, Liberal Democrats, who said, you know, you're the. You've gone from the iron chancellor to Mr. Bean. And they were roared with laughter. I thought, history is going to be kind to Gordon Brown. He wasn't that bad.
- [32:49]
Glenn Oglaza
I think so. And it was his role in the IMF more than anything else, which made the other countries, and of course the most important one being the United States do what they did, because otherwise we were literally. It was overnight from ATM machines not working and the banks completely crashing. So it was very, very, very difficult time. And, you know, fortunately, he and Alistair Darling, the Chancellor at the time, were the right people to have in charge. We were lucky because it could have been Cameron and Osborne and it would have been disastrous. Not that they are disastrous. You know, they've got Very fine qualities of their own. But the things they were saying at the time were completely wrong.
- [33:22]
John Gibbs
Well, you mentioned his cleverness and one of those thick. It was like he was made for that moment. He understood how bad it was. In a sense. He was a man, as you said, he could deal with a task in front of him. But maybe not all the tasks rushing at once, which is what Blair was the consummate dealer with those things. You know, how you could turn down on the charm.
- [33:40]
Glenn Oglaza
Yeah. Because Gordon was obsessed with detail. So he would pour over the detail of things, whereas Tony Blair would say to people, this is what I want to get to get me there. And then. And then, you know, relying on other people to work out the details. He was very broad brunch, whereas Gordon Brown was the opposite. You know, very detailed, focused.
- [33:59]
John Gibbs
I remember I had a school party of sixth formers politics students, and we were standing in Westminster hall and down the steps in Westminster hall came Ed Miliband. And they all muttered to each other. He was at the time late of Labour Party and he must also lead Labor Party, Ed Miliband. And he sort of shyly looked away from them and then behind him came Tony Blair. We immediately gave them a grin. Wade said, hi, guys, and came over and chatted to them. And I thought, well, there's the difference.
- [34:26]
Glenn Oglaza
There is the difference. They basically elected the wrong miniband, you know, which was a whole, whole other story, which I got into my book, that it was Labour Party conference in Manchester. And to cut a very long story short, the unions had. First of all, it was anything to stop David Miliband because he was seen as the Blairite candidate. So first they threw their way behind Ed Balls and they realized he wasn't going to win. So then they switched to Ed Miliband and they made sure it was a long campaign because a short campaign, David Miliband would have won. And he did win among the MPs. They have a very strange electoral system, but he won among the MPs in the constituency party, but not with the union vote. And, you know, the argument is he should have spent more time wooing the unions, but nobody in the top of the Blairite and inverted commerce Labour Party had been wooing the Union since 1994. You know, they just weren't interested in doing. And they were in many ways their policies were directly in opposition to TUC policies. So that wasn't going to happen. So, yeah, they basically elected the wrong Miliband. And Ed Miliband's a lovely bloke. And he's quite clever, but he's not his brother and he doesn't have any of that charisma at all. And he is very shy, as you say, and he would not get bounding up to people saying, hi, guys, somebody. Somebody at the Department of Trade and Industry told me a story. A senior civil servant. I went there with Cameron once and there were the cameras all lined up outside the building and Cameron strode straight. David Cameron strode straight over to the cameras and started talking to us and talking to people. And he said, it's very interesting that, because when Gordon Brown came, he ignored the cameras. He came and talked to us and asked us really, really difficult questions. Whereas this one just seems to be more interested in this public image and, you know, actor or vicar and of.
- [36:07]
John Gibbs
And of course, if you're going to play the game of politics, you say choose the. Choose the televisual, charismatic Camilla Band. And not the Shire one.
- [36:17]
Glenn Oglaza
Yeah. So the cleverer one with the grasp of foreign policy and so on. Yeah. And David is very, very clever. His nickname at Downing street, coined by Alistair Darling, was Brains from Thunderbirds. So we all laughed a lot when he went off to run International Rescue in New York. And your Brains goes to International Rescue. Hustlebar is only.
- [36:36]
John Gibbs
Let's go back to some of the grand events. When we mentioned a minor strike. You were nominated for a BAFTA for your coverage of the poll tax riots. Another moment in the Thatcher era. What was it about that that was particularly admired in a way? You reported the poll tax riot from London.
- [36:55]
Glenn Oglaza
I have to say, although I was nominated, it was the bravery of the cameraman. Were won us that nomination because they were right, basically. There's a huge riot in Trafalgar Square and, you know, everything's flying. People were wielding scaffolding poles. Somebody threatened my camera and I was next to the time with a scaffolding pole. I had to give them 20 quid to go away, only go away wasn't quite the phrase I used. And it was, you know, hairy. And they were right in the thick of it. Right in the thick. There was a huge fight. Please. And they were right in the thick of the fighting. Very, very, very brave. So down to them, not me, really. But the Poll tax, of course, was the end of Thatcher. That was that. That's what did for her, really. Very, very unpopular.
- [37:33]
John Gibbs
I mean, she really did seem to like a bit like Blair in the Gulf War. She seemed to lose. I mean, consummate politicians who seem to seem to be able to play the housewife, economist. And yet get that so wrong. The politics was a truly terrible idea. Who invented the idea of a new tax that would tax a lot of people that weren't paying it before and it was bound to be massively unpopular. Tried it out in Scotland and it was disastrous there. And then rolled it out in England.
- [38:00]
Glenn Oglaza
Yeah, amazing. I personally think that 10 years is too much to be Prime Minister because I think both Sasha and Blair in their different ways, cracked up. You know, they were both absolutely adamant, the lady's not for turning. I ain't got no reverse gear. You know, those were their quotes and they were absolutely convinced that what they were doing was right, even though everyone around them pretty much was saying, this is the wrong thing to do. So I think, you know, three terms, not. I don't know what that does to your mental health, but probably not very good things.
- [38:29]
John Gibbs
Yes. Maybe you start to surround yourself with people who agree with you or something of that kind. Or start to believe the publicity.
- [38:35]
Glenn Oglaza
Yeah. I think you start believing your own myth. Yeah, that's what happens.
- [38:39]
John Gibbs
You mentioned cameraman there. I mean, let's. One of the themes that comes out in your book and let people get a good mention are the fix. The fixers, the cab drivers, the helpers, the cameramen, the other chaps who are around you doing the thing. You're in front of the camera, but they're there as well.
- [38:54]
Glenn Oglaza
Yeah. Something like, I would say probably at least 80, if not 90% of television uses logistics. It's having a good producer who will get you in the right place at the right time is most of the battle. And then having a really good camera. They see things through their lenses. They're standing right next to me. I can't see. It's not just because they can zoom in, they just see stuff. So, yeah, the real credit for good quality television news goes to them. Not. Not. It's always a reporter that takes the glory. We don't deserve that.
- [39:24]
John Gibbs
And that, Doug, that. That modesty does come out in your book very considerably. I was thinking of the Today program journalist who was Anna Foster, who's on there at the moment. And she was a few years ago. I remember seeing that she got quite a coup. She was doing your kind of job. She was out there in the field and Turkey during the Turkish, terrible Turkish earthquake a few years ago. And I think she off her own back, really, for the BBC, just jumped into a taxi and said to the taxi driver, take me to the worst bit. And they somehow got through checkpoints and they got round piles of Rubble. And she found herself being the only journalist on the scene. Did her career world of good. But also, I did think at the time, well, what she. What she got with her, Was she staying that night? You know, how is she? How she. Has she got a toothbrush? You know, when you. When you're on the move, do you have, you know, where do you sleep at nights and clean your teeth and so on?
- [40:15]
Glenn Oglaza
Sometimes it's wherever you can, and sometimes you don't have a toothbrush. And there are. There have been times when we've worn the same clothes for days on end and really starting to, you know, it's starting to smell a bit unpleasant. So, for example, at the end of the first Gulf War, I spent almost a month in the mountains with the Kurds, who were being driven from their homes by Sudan's helicopter gunships. The war was over, but he was allowed to keep helicopters because so many bridges had been destroyed. So the idea was that in order for the country to function, he could use helicopters. He was not allowed or supposed to use them as helicopter gunships. And eventually, you know, after we were reporting for three weeks or so saying, these people need help. They need it now. The British and Americans set up an Xry zone and did. But what was happening during that three, three and a half weeks was, you know, there were all these refugees in the mountains, very cold, and Iran let them in and the Turks refused to let them in. And they literally had a line of soldiers standing shoulder to shoulder, pushing him back and not letting them circuit for sanctuary. And we were sleeping wherever we could. You know, we were sleeping on the floors in people's apartments, tent for a couple of nights, and, you know, didn't have a change of clothes or a toothbrush. It wasn't very pleasant. And we, you know, eating whatever we could and always feeling guilty because we knew that those people weren't eating, they were dying. And in Romania, Romania in 1989. So after the fall of the Berlin Wall and the Velvet Revolution and Czechoslovakia, the next one was Illustra Ceausescu, Romania. Christmas day in Romania, Christmas Day lunch was a hunk of stale bread and a piece of cheese. That was it. But it was great. I absolutely loved it. It's fantastic to be writing them in with huge story like that.
- [42:03]
John Gibbs
That was.
- [42:04]
Glenn Oglaza
That. That.
- [42:05]
John Gibbs
That account was very vivid in your book as well, because it wasn't so velvet, that particular revolution, was it? There was a fair amount of shooting and stuff. Cesco himself, there's a time on YouTube, a rather grim image of him Being dragged, you know, shot and preemptively given it, given something like a trial, which is basically, we. We hate you. And Mrs. Ceausescu, his wife declaring, what? What have I done? She said, what? How have I hurt you? Lack of personal insight. But there was a lot of killing involved in that revolution.
- [42:35]
Glenn Oglaza
Yeah, there was the. When we were fighting the Securitate, who Ceausescu's Praetorian Guard, in effect, and there was a lot of shooting, a lot of. It was a, you know, it was a hot revolution. There was a lot of fighting, and it all pivoted on which way the army would turn. One point, would they back Ceausescu or would they back the rebels? And they rose up against him and that was the end of him. But it was dangerous. Very, very dangerous. I had a friend, a Belgian picture editor girl called Ingrid, who. We were in Plut, which was a northern town, which was the headquarters of one of Ceausevki's sons. Nikko and his security people were fighting the army and they were in the middle of the town square, which was the wrong place to be, and the car got hit and her correspondent was bleeding out, and she was lying hiding behind the car in his blood. And it was just, you know, she really was traumatized by that. I'd spent quite a lot of time after that with her weeping in my arms.
- [43:37]
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- [44:02]
John Gibbs
I wonder if that. If that revolution is in a sense, jumping to. Making a sideways jump, really, to current events in Iran, where much will. I mean, Trump seems to think that if you bash a few things, the Iranian people can run into the streets. But it much depends on the army and the military. Who will turn? Will they. Will the. In other words, will the regime fracture like it did in Romania?
- [44:25]
Glenn Oglaza
Yeah, and we just said no. We don't know how deep that regime goes. Is it just a thin veneer at the top? I mean, the revolutionary cards over the last 20, 30 years seem to be pretty committed to the Iranian revolution. They are tolerant and all that. So we just don't know which way it'll go. But I think we should have learned from Iraq and from Libya and to an Extent from Afghanistan, maybe even more so from Afghanistan, that you have to have an end state. You have to know where what you know where you want to end up. They don't seem to. They just seem to, guns blazing, very American. The consequences, it seemed to have made
- [45:03]
John Gibbs
a virtue of not planning it. Almost as if that was the plan. The plan is somehow it'll take care of itself. No plan is good because if we have a plan, we'll get locked into something long and committed and we'll have to have responsibility. So if we go in with no responsibility, that's a plan.
- [45:20]
Glenn Oglaza
Yeah, seems to be. And they tend, seem to have learned the lessons of recent history.
- [45:24]
John Gibbs
History. We mentioned the, the miner strike as being one of the moments in British history anyway, in world history. You were there, you mentioned it before when the Berlin Wall came down. I remember reading it on the news. I was teaching it, doing teaching exchange at States. And I guess it's one of those things like when we. Where were you when Elvis died? Or something of that kind of. Where were you when JFK was shot? Before that. It's one of those things. Where were you when you heard the Berlin Wall come down? Well, where were you when. Berlin Wall.
- [45:48]
Glenn Oglaza
Yeah, as in Berlin it was. And people sometimes ask me, you know, what's the best story you've ever covered? And the fall of the Berlin Wall is right up there, if not at number one, because it was the most incredible time. We couldn't believe it. You know, people were dancing on top of the Berlin Wall and they weren't being shocked. And the whole thing was kind of surreal. I remember a couple of days later we were. We were interviewing the German Western, as was. I think she was the housing minister, a government minister called Elsa, and she was nearly an hour late for the interview. Best excuse I've ever heard from anyone for being late, especially a government minister. I said, why are you so late? She said, I've been dancing in the streets. And it was the most incredible, incredible atmosphere. Once it was done. It was a little bit fraught at first because again, you don't know which way soldiers are going to go. Will these German guards actually shoot people? Well, they didn't. They turned on their own leadership.
- [46:41]
John Gibbs
There's always a slight concern the Russians might think this is going a bit too quickly and sort of, sort of come back or something.
- [46:47]
Glenn Oglaza
Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. We all brace for that because the Russians, of course, had lots of barracks, lots of troops in East Germany. So, yeah, everyone was waiting to see what Gorbachev would do.
- [46:57]
John Gibbs
What was your impression when you traveled into East Germany? I guess you'd been there under the DDR, but yes, Afterwards, when you actually got through the. Through the Czech points in Germany, what was it like?
- [47:10]
Glenn Oglaza
Well, I've been there quite a few times and I'd actually at that point been in Germany for a little while as well. I'd gone over to cover Helmut Kohl's State of the Union address and then stayed. And there was no hint in his State of the Union address he was the German chancellor at the time of what was to come. I don't think he knew. No one knew. And the thing about East Germany was it's brown and gray and depressing, you know, and even from West Berlin to East Berlin, you cross from this bright, colorful, you know, vibrant, lively city full of, by the way, very expensive, top of the range Mercedes cars to this miserable, dour place with cabins and Wartburgs and things spewing out smoke. And it was just. People were miserable, just miserable. And they knew that just over the Wall there was a much better way of life than also the presence.
- [47:58]
John Gibbs
Now, when I returned to this country after teaching abroad for a year, it was just not so. The Berlin Wall had gone. That year I was born and I was on the M6 and I saw a Trabant heading up the M6 and I thought, well, there he is, he's got his Trabant and he's going somewhere. And it was rather like a lawn mower with four wheels.
- [48:16]
Glenn Oglaza
Absolutely. And all the smoke billing out the back. There was one, we found one with an ITN registration plate and honest to buy it and bring it home, but I didn't. I wish I had.
- [48:24]
John Gibbs
Yes. Many years later I went with my daughter into Integer. We were doing holiday in Germany and went to an East German town and it was not that distant, not that different. West German town wasn't far from Berlin. But they was a little museum of East German life. And you could see they were quite sentimental. It was a feat. There were all the things they'd had, the old tins of food, and they said, this is what we did as a weekend. This is what we did. And so. And I thought, yes. You feel you've lost something.
- [48:49]
Glenn Oglaza
Yes, I think so. Basically cradled grave socialism. And they quite like that. They do. And there was a feeling going back subsequently, you know, a year or two later, and subsequently there was a feeling that something had been lost. Yes. They recognized that the future was brighter to their children and they were part of the world now and part of Europe and it's much, much better. But there was still a slight feeling of nostalgia for what was lost. That's obviously true.
- [49:14]
John Gibbs
Well, you were as we mentioned earlier, reporting on some fairly grim events. The Dunblane massacre, shooting in a British school, very American style shooting in a way. And then the, the Hillsborough disaster that comes. He's mentioned quite a bit in your book. And one of the features of the Hillsborough was the. Was the death of these 90 or so Liverpool fans in a crash that was in incompetence by the police, then criminally covered up and so on. But within that there's also a story about journalism and the way it was reported as well. But shot shone a light on the rather unsavory element of journalism.
- [49:49]
Glenn Oglaza
Yeah, there were stories in the sun which nobody in Liverpool even now buys or very few people about Liverpool fans urinating on dead bodies and so on. My own personal experience was so there was a way for the Liverpool fans to get to the stadium and from the other end for the Nottingham Forest fans to get to the stadium. For those who don't know, it was the semi final of the FA cup and Nottingham Forest were playing Liverpool and there was a report in the sun about Liverpool fans smashed up my publishers. So we went to the pub and we spoke to the landlady and it turns out this was at the Nottingham Forest end. So it was a Nottingham Forest pub. There were no Liverpool fans there at all, none involved and there hadn't been any trouble. You know, a bit of algy bargy and a bit of raucous youthful high spirits. A couple of glasses got broken. That was it. No fighting at all. So that was totally fabricated. And I discovered this at a very young age when I was in the National Union of Students Scottish Executive Committee and we were at an NUS annual conference in Blackpool and some trots on the far left tried to suggest that we have a hold of collection for the ira. And the National Executive from the platform had thrown that, you know, dismissed that out of hand and so they still went around with buckets and nobody put any money in. Half a page spread in the Daily Mail the next day. Students collect for ira, you know. Well, that didn't happen. This is not true. But there's an agenda, isn't there? Newspapers. It's not. It's not like broadcasting. Well, certainly in this country, in Britain, you know, we are regulated and there are laws but they don't apply to newspapers and they don't apply in the States either. We couldn't really, although we've got GB News. We couldn't really have a Fox News in this country because the landscape would touch and so different.
- [51:31]
John Gibbs
That's interesting. I was going to say when you, when you talk about that, that we used to say very proudly that we had the best television in the world in this country with all worst newspapers or something of that kind. Some of the worst newspapers but. And then Fox News and see, you don't think that kind of very partisan. It's basically, it's almost a propaganda for a particular view which they see as correcting some sort of liberal bias that's been there for years in some way or another. You don't think that could translate to this country?
- [51:57]
Glenn Oglaza
Well, I think it could, but I think if it went too far, the regulator would have to step in because there are rules. We are bound by broadcasting rules and you know, we have to maintain an element of neutrality. So I don't think it would work here. I always say Fox News with the news bit in inverted commas because it isn't news, it's just propaganda. And they are perfectly in Russia Today
- [52:20]
John Gibbs
and Fox News are perfectly capable of doing the old tabloid stuff of just making it up.
- [52:25]
Glenn Oglaza
Absolutely. That's what they do.
- [52:27]
John Gibbs
Are the British newspapers. I mean they're not, they're not what they were newspapers along with the miners. The newspapers are not the. They were, but they. Are they as bad as they used to be? I mean is the old days of make it up and sell the newspapers get, get, you know, stick, stick the camera through someone's letterbox, barge your way into places. Is that, is that over? I mean it's been the close down of the News of the World and
- [52:47]
Glenn Oglaza
yeah, I think the whole phone hacking scandal changed the nature of how you behave in a tabloid newspaper. We shouldn't. I hate where people lump the media together because then it's so very, you know, a world of difference between the Economist and the Daily Star. And I don't think you should lump newspapers together either because some of them are doing a very good job. But you know, if we talk about specifically some tabloid newspapers, I don't think they can get away with what they used to get away with. I think people are wise to it. And also since the phone hacking scandal, you know, they've had their fingers burnt so they're behaving a bit better. And also, as you say, newspapers don't have the influence they used to have. I don't know anybody under the age of 30 who reads a newspaper. Why would they? It's all on screens. And the newspapers are. I'm amazed that they all haven't gone the way of the Independent and, you know, gone to. Gone to screens. I think they will. I think their days are numbered.
- [53:40]
John Gibbs
About television news is that. Is its days numbered in the way you remember it? We mentioned the polarization politics in the United States, but the challenge, I guess, to TV news now is the multiple news channels that people will get there. Is it some statistic that people get their news now more likely through social media than they do through television news?
- [54:00]
Glenn Oglaza
Yeah. And YouTube. Yeah. I mean, you know, my kids, 19 and 27, they're on YouTube and they're getting, you know, my son, who's 19, is reading the most horrendous nonsense. And I'll say, well, that's not true. And he goes, yeah, yes, I saw it on this. Yeah, well, why don't you look at the BBC or Sky News or, you know, and get it from a proper news source? Because that isn't news, that's just nonsense, rubbish. But I think it's a very dangerous time because we are bombarded by so many words and images and it's, you know, it's difficult, it's getting increasingly difficult to know what is true and what isn't. You know, we've got deep fakes because there's makeup videos of people saying things they didn't actually say. And it is, I think, a very dangerous time. And it's very difficult to hold the line. You know, I come from an age when there was the BBC and there was ITN and that was about it. And then CNN came along and then Sky News in 1989, and the Landscape started to change. Now every country pretty much has got an English language television news channel, some of them mortgages propaganda than anything else for their country. And so it's more and more difficult to see what's true and what isn't. And of course, you've got, you know, Trump's not talking about alternative facts and just lying, basically. And it's becoming increasingly difficult. And I think it's really dangerous because I think without being hysterical about it, this is a bit like embryonic fascism, where the idea is not even to tell a big lie over and over again, but actually to convince people that they don't know what they should believe. If you don't know who to believe, then you don't know what's true or what isn't. And that's really dangerous.
- [55:36]
John Gibbs
Well, when millions of people believe that vaccines are dangerous, including not, or when they believe that there's some sort of great conspiracy to replace us with immigrants or something of that kind. I mean, the conspiracy theory world, which I guess is amplified by the megaphone of social media.
- [55:55]
Glenn Oglaza
Yeah. And we're all living in echo chambers. You know, most of my social media is bashing Trump, which is great fun, but isn't really reflecting what's going on in the United States, because for every one of my Trump bashers, there's probably a Trump supporter out there waving the flag in the nugget hat and saying how wonderful he is. Well, I know they're there.
- [56:11]
John Gibbs
I mentioned, you mentioned Walter Cronkite. I mean, he's the archetypal kind of people would say, let's find out what's really happening. Walter Cronkite will tell us. And my dad, we listened to these say, be quiet as I Kid. It's the 9 o' clock news, it's the 10 o' clock news. We have to listen to what's happening in the world. Has that authority gone, do you think, from. From what is now sometimes derided as mainstream media?
- [56:35]
Glenn Oglaza
Yeah, I think so. I think the days when we all gathered around the television at 9 o' clock or 10 o' clock is long gone. But, yeah, I think, I think, I think, I think when things, you know, when a song has really hit the fan, people do tend to turn to trusted sources. The BBC, the oldest example. So I think that that's still. That is still true to an extent. But, you know, with each passing generation, does it become less and less true? You know, my, my. Because. Because Trump was bashing the BBC. My son announced the other day he hates the BBC. And I said, what are you talking about? You hate David? What are you talking about? Well, I mean, BBC News, fake news. I said, it's not fake news. Trump is lying. And we have this, you know, and we have this intractable argument because, you know, I just can't believe what he's believing. He doesn't believe what I believe in. It's very difficult.
- [57:25]
John Gibbs
And it's the power of the visual image, isn't it? You know, it's fake. If it's a fake, if it's an image, television image, if it's on YouTube, then it must be real.
- [57:33]
Glenn Oglaza
Yeah, well, the camera never lies. Is not just not true anymore, is it?
- [57:37]
John Gibbs
Before we move on, plenty of your poetry, which I'd like to get to. Yes. Talk about the moment, the power of the visual image. You know, famous photographs of the girl running down the road in Vietnam. The. They can change history. Or Michael Burke. Michael Burke in Ethiopia, looking at the biblical. The scene of biblical horror, that's when the journalist is actually making history in a way. I mean, they're not just not reporting history, they're making history. Did you ever feel that was a mo. You had a moment like that when you thought, I've reported something which the report itself is significant in this history?
- [58:11]
Glenn Oglaza
Yeah. I mentioned earlier the Kurds and the mountains at the end of the first Gulf War. I think we changed government policy. I think it's the only time I'm going to change government policy, because we were repeatedly every night on News at Ten saying, these people are being murdered, they're being slaughtered, they need help and they need it now. And eventually the British and American governments moved into something about it. So I think those images were very powerful and I think they had an effect. Obviously, there'd been lots of other powerful images, people dancing on the Berlin Walls, for example. I can't, you know, I can't say I had an influence on that at all, but there have been times, and I think Michael Burke in Ethiopia, 1984, was a classic example. He was just reporting what was going on, but he did it so well. And the images were so moving and emotional emotive. That had an effect, actually.
- [58:58]
John Gibbs
Actually turning the. Turning the page of history itself. The journalism is actually an instrument of change. So, Len, you retired from that life after Sky News. We could talk about a difference in Sky News and ITN News, I guess, but you moved on to Sky News and that was the next day, a great innovator of news. And then after that, you. You retired around about 2011.
- [59:20]
Glenn Oglaza
13.
- [59:21]
John Gibbs
2013.
- [59:22]
Glenn Oglaza
We were halfway between elections and I thought this was not a bad time to do it. I thought in 2015, at the election, either the Conservatives would win outright because Angela Merkel, the warned Nick Tate over Lib Dems many times that the junior partner in a coalition gets hammered at the next election. So I thought, either we're going to have another Conservative Lib Dem coalition or the Conservatives will win outright, which is what happened. I didn't see Brexit coming at all. And I think that was an act of monumental cowardice on David Cameron's part, especially when he lost the referendum, then flounced out saying, oh, well, good luck. So, yeah, so that felt like the right time to do it. And the really essential difference between working for ITIN and working for. For Sky News is that at Sky News, we had a whole channel to play with ITN News bulletins. Like all terrestrial news bulletins, are really very, very, you know, it's a half hour program. You strip away the commercial breaks and then you earn the weather and the sport and you're talking about 20 minutes of that to tell the whole day's news. Whereas we could spend that much time on one story on Sky News, if not more, if it was worth it. So it was very liberating. Smaller audience but select and all the players, all the politicians were watching. So yeah, it was very different and great esprit de corps which IGN had had and was losing by the time I left them in very early 97. My first day at sky was the day that John major called the 97 election. And by the time the ITN political editor, Michael Brunson had done his one live at lunchtime, Adam Bolton, the Sky News political editor, had done about 15 lives. And I thought, oh my God, whatever, self informed. But I quickly, quickly got into the swing of it. It was fantastic to have as long as the story needs to tell the story.
- [61:03]
John Gibbs
I've often felt that about Channel 4 News, the BBC, the television Channel 4 in this country, there's a sort of style difference. The BBC seems to hurry through stories and Channel 4 will say, we'll do one or two. Well, so that was sty. They were more interested in getting into it some depth.
- [61:20]
Glenn Oglaza
Yeah, absolutely. And interviewing a couple of extra people, not just one quick talking head and off to the next story. Channel 4 News, which is an ITN production, tends to do fewer stories in more depth than I think that's why that particular audience likes that. Same with Newsnight on BBC2, people get more depth. It's difficult to do depth in terms of something once worked out. I think that there are same. The same number of words in user 10. It's just on the front page of the Telegraph. So the number of words you've got to play with is very, very limited.
- [61:50]
John Gibbs
So, Glenn, the coalition was. And David Cameron was your last great political assignment, as it were. If you were now still working, would you. What political assignments do you wish you were covering at the moment?
- [62:02]
Glenn Oglaza
Oh, I'd love to be in the White House. I would hate it and love it at the same time. And I would find it quite difficult to control myself. You know, you can't be rude to the President of the United States. You have to respect. Same with Prime Ministers. You respect the office even if you don't respect the man. But I'd love to be there. That would be fantastic, you know, or in Ukraine. I've been to Kyiv before the war. I'd like to be back there reporting on that, you know, what's happening in Ukraine, which is appalling. And I think I'm quite hawkish about how we should be standing up to Putin much more than we are. I've written quite a few poems about that.
- [62:34]
John Gibbs
Yes. Glenn, thank you for mentioning your poetry. Because you ask you, I think, am I right in saying that poetry is. It's been a later development in your career? It's something that you've done since retiring, or were you always writing poetry? You just decided it's time to get that in publishing?
- [62:50]
Glenn Oglaza
Well, I had my first poem published in the school magazine when I was 8 years old, and I wrote quite a few when I was young, between the ages of 17 and 22, which had been lying in, you know, notebooks and scraps of paper in drawers and cupboards ever since, until I pulled them together a while ago and I put them into a book. But I don't know whether to publish it or not because they're not very good. And my publisher says, oh, yeah, go for it. Go on. It's, you know, because it's kind of on its time walks and all, but it's really since the pandemic. So I wrote my. When I Stories, books, my anecdotal memoirs during the pandemic. You know, some people learned Spanish, I wrote books, and then I sort of got a flavor for it. And I. I'm incredibly prolific. You know, I'm churning out book after book and, you know, I don't know how it happens. A lot of them just seem to write themselves. Some have to do quite a lot of work on. But usually I have an idea and it just flows onto the page quite
- [63:42]
John Gibbs
easily in quote, it's five. Five volumes I've got in front of me now. Religion, Fake News and Other Misdemeanors. No word. No words. And always. And I think, of course, Spam.
- [63:56]
Glenn Oglaza
Yeah. And I've got a new one coming out in a couple of weeks time, actually, called Baby Boomers, which speaks to my generation.
- [64:02]
John Gibbs
Next one having really having read some of your poetry and as you say, I mean, I remember an interview between Philip Larkin. Interview, not an interview. It was a. There was a. It was a filmed encounter between John Betjeman and Philip Larkin. And Philip Larkin, who wrote famously, very few poems and John Betjeman wrote lots. And they both one said, I feel that Larkin says to Betjerman, I feel the pressure to turn them out. You must feel. And so on and you could see that Larkin envied the ability to produce poems of that, you know, and. And on the other hand, Bedroom was, like, defensive about the number he'd produced.
- [64:37]
Glenn Oglaza
Yeah, I was having this conversation with a friend of mine only the other day, and he's written a novel, and it's very, very funny, and I haven't, but he writes poetry and he says, I don't know how. Exactly the same conversation. I don't know how you churn them out like this. How many did you write a day? Because I'll spend a year agonizing over one poet. And I said, you've got to let them go. You've got to just, you know, let it flow, let it go and move on. So a bit like covering the news, really. Move on to the next story.
- [65:02]
John Gibbs
And do you have. Do you find that one of the reasons you can, for this flow of poetry is that you're drawing on. I mean, you draw on your life, you draw on relationships, divorce, you draw on your journalism. I mean, you can guess what religion, fake news and misdemeanors that the kind of nature of some of the stuff we've talked about comes up in that. Essentially, you're mining your life.
- [65:26]
Glenn Oglaza
Yes, totally, completely. I mean, not all of them are autobiographical by any means, but I think all of them, from some aspect, some part of my own experience somewhere, some of them are historical. The far Fame, for example, which is about Jewish people being liberated from Bergen belsen. Or Constantinople, 1453, which is about the second Constantine. Nothing to do with my life. I've written a few historical ones like that, but mostly. Mostly, though, drawn from my own experience. Absolutely.
- [65:55]
John Gibbs
The Constantinople poem jumped out of me. I thought of all your poetry, which, again, so there's the theme. The themes of what it's like to be alive and loss and so on, and just the events of your life. And then it's this. I thought, it's a curious date to have come up. How did that poem into your mind?
- [66:13]
Glenn Oglaza
I was reading about it and I thought, oh, that's a good. That would make a good poem, you know, because it was so brutal, was so horrific. You know, it was a major atrocity, really, at Stack of Constantinople. And I thought, you know, I could write a bit about that. And so I had to work quite. That's one of the ones I had to work quite a lot on because it wasn't just flowing out of my own experience. I had to put some effort into it. And of course, you know, my natural default position is lazy Putting more effort into things than I have to. But I've got a new one coming out later this year called Mad Thad and the Orange Imbecile. And I think you could probably imagine, well, that's.
- [66:48]
John Gibbs
What possibly could that be referring to?
- [66:50]
Glenn Oglaza
So I think, you know, if you look at my books, they're very. They're kind of all over the place. So, you know, there'll be a poem about a hedgehog called Mrs. Tikiwinkle. So then they're really visceral about what an evil bastard Putin is. You know, he's a mass murdering, genocidal lunatic. And then there'll be one that takes a mickey out of Trump. Then there'll be one from my own experience of, you know, love and loss, and then be ones where I'm trying to reflect on the human condition and so on. So they're kind of all over the place. And I was talking to my publisher and she and I said the same thing at the same time, which is, you know, why don't you pull the Putin and the Trump components together into one book? And I said, yeah, we have to brand it as satire rather than poetry, satire and verse. She said, yeah, you should do it.
- [67:36]
John Gibbs
So we are where they are florid. But Dickens couldn't come up with characters like those two. Really awful. In my classroom at school some, before I retired, I used to have a cardboard cutout Putin, the cardboard cutout Trump, that stand by the doors. These students as they came in, actually, they're in my garden shed. And they frighten people when they enter there because their life size, the tall trunk and the somewhat smaller Putin standing side by side, but they are. They have become grimmer figures than I. They were more figures of fun when I did it the first time.
- [68:13]
Glenn Oglaza
Yeah, well, Putin, when, you know, when he first became leader, I mean, George W. Bush used to refer to him as Poot Poot, you know, and they joined the G7, which became the G7 plus 1, then the G8. And they were. It felt like they were being welcomed back into the international fold away. And he's just turned into this absolute monster. And it still could see. I interviewed him. He's the most terrifying person I've ever interviewed. I mean, Thatcher was quite frightening because she'd fix you with her gimlet eye, but Putin would kind of reach into your soul and put an icy hand around your heart. You know, who didn't like a question? There's a death stare. Very frightening, man.
- [68:50]
John Gibbs
What were the circumstances of that interview? When did You.
- [68:52]
Glenn Oglaza
Oh, he was. It was when he was talking. Friendly. He was visiting London. I can't remember. I think Blair might have been Brown, but I think Blair was Prime Minister time. So, you know, it's a state visit.
- [69:02]
John Gibbs
That was the trip where they took him to South London. And you saw it was a monument. It was a statue of Peter the Great or something. Yeah, rather had a look at it. I mean, that he. In a very big and. And very dramatic way. He is an example of what we said about Blair and Thatcher. They began to believe their own myth. I mean, he's cut off, almost cut off from reality and convinced he's on some sort of mission to. To be a czar, I guess.
- [69:27]
Glenn Oglaza
Yeah, I think he is. I think it's exactly what he wants. He wants to make the Soviet Union great again. Yeah, precisely. Become a czar. But not a good czar. Not Peter the Brave, more like over the Terrible.
- [69:37]
John Gibbs
Dude. Yeah. Your poetry is wonderful. It's accessible because it speaks to life and a life lived full of all the events that we would recognize and I say. And somewhat that we absolutely couldn't recognize unless we were you. Which was to be a journalist who had his experiences, which very few of us will have. But do the various books have a. Have a theme to them, you think?
- [70:02]
Glenn Oglaza
No, they don't. I think they're very. They're very. Each one is a very eclectic mix, which I hope means that people will find something in there that resonates with them or that they like or that they kind of, you know, identify with. That's. That's the exercise, as well as changing the world, of course, which all poets want to do. So, yeah, they are very eclectic, and hopefully there is something for everyone in them. No editors ever said to me, you know, you should have a theme. Why don't you do one that's just love poems? Or why don't you do one that's just, you know. So the only. The only one we've done which is yet to be published will be later this year is Mad Flat and the Orange Imbecile. And that is solely my horror at Putin and my, you know, kind of horror as well at Trump, but more kind of recoiling in kind of disbelief at Trump. Well, I don't pull any punches.
- [70:49]
John Gibbs
Definitely not.
- [70:51]
Glenn Oglaza
It's Saturday Night Live in Poetry.
- [70:53]
John Gibbs
Are you up for poetry readings? You do that?
- [70:55]
Glenn Oglaza
Oh, yeah, absolutely. Yeah. I'm very happy to do this. A friend of mine said you should do an audio. You should do audiobooks. I just think that would Be a bit too boring for people. But. Yeah, no, I've done a couple of readings. I've enjoyed them.
- [71:05]
John Gibbs
So you're so. More so when I stories and more when I stories are not on audio because you'd be the ideal person to
- [71:11]
Glenn Oglaza
read them with your. With your.
- [71:13]
John Gibbs
With your rich brogue that you have.
- [71:16]
Glenn Oglaza
Thank you. Yeah, no, they're. They're not. And perhaps they should be. You know, publisher hasn't shown any interest in doing an audiobook, and it's a lot of work and I'm not sure. I'm not sure. I mean, I think with audiobooks, you know, I think novels work better because, you know, you're telling one continuous story and that, you know, it's a bit of a page turner. You want to see what happens next. Well, so I think with my books, they're kind of the. Like. Each one is so. Each chapter in the When I stories and more When I stories is about a particular event or series of events. Each poem stands on its own. So I don't think they quite flow. It's my view as all the other. I'm really disgusted, but I don't think they flow as well as audiobooks. My friend who said I should do audiobooks says when I read your poems, I can hear your voice. You know, I can hear you. And you should therefore do audiobooks. But he's my friend. Different opinion with poetry.
- [72:08]
John Gibbs
We're going back to the early part of that, this discussion about the pressures of being a journalist. The things you've seen, the things you've done, reflecting upon it. Is there a degree of therapy about these poetry? Poetry can be very personal, yet it's trying to be universal as well. But is it in a sense that you're being. You are treated, Dealing with some of the. I'm going to be too dramatic about this, but dealing with something in the past.
- [72:31]
Glenn Oglaza
No, I don't think so. Although, again, you know, there are 12 friends who disagree with me. They say I'm reading one about divorce. That's you, isn't it? That's you and Nellie. And I recognize that. And yes, it is, but it just. It's not. It's not. It's not therapeutic. It's just. It's not. I'm not getting anything off my chest. It's just words thrown to the page, and there it is. It's a poem and it works. It's. It's more. It's. Maybe it is, but if it is, it's very unconscious.
- [72:57]
John Gibbs
You mentioned the possibility that poets Changing the world. Is that possible? I mean, who. You know, in a sense, poetry is a very select audience. Poets will complain they can't make any money out of poetry and so on. Most poets through history have been gentlemen of leisure and so on, so on. Is it a luxury or could it change the world, you think?
- [73:18]
Glenn Oglaza
Well, I think it is a luxury. And the audience for poetry is comparatively small, which is a bit sad. But I think, you know, rock music sort of has taken that mantle. Rock music can and has changed the world in a way that as mere poets, you know, words on a page in a book, we don't seem to be able to do. But I'm still optimistic. I want people to read them and think, wow, yeah, that's right. We should rethink that. I want people to think as well as feel when they read my work then.
- [73:47]
John Gibbs
I enjoyed both books immensely, partly because I'm a teacher of politics and partly because of how I retired to a certain age and so remember these things, reading them in from the. Reading them in the newspaper, watching you on television also. I think, though these books would be wonderful for a journalist student, for a student of history and for someone who wants to know what it's like, I think that came most strongly for me, what it's like to do that job you did, which very few people do, and is quite extraordinary. So that came as a wonderful document for your career and your poetry was a delight. Of course, I love reading poetry. I do read poetry. I'm one of those people that reads poetry. I'm the reader, so. Well, you had some copies of your books, and I thank you for that because I think poetry is always a delight. Glenn Oglaza, thank you so much for joining me on the New Books Network.
- [74:43]
Glenn Oglaza
Well, thank you, John, and thank you for the opportunity to talk to the New Books Network. It's been a pleasure.