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BBC Announcer
This BBC podcast is supported by ads outside the UK.
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Narrator
It's 2009 and we're in the German mountains. A man straps himself into a car on the world's most dangerous racetrack. He whispers to himself, it's time to
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Adam Fleming
put my balls on the dashboard as
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Narrator
he starts the engine.
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Podcast Narrator
In 15 minutes, he's in an ambulance, unconscious. In 15 years, he's a billionaire.
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Narrator
This is Toto Wolff, Formula One's most powerful team boss and the breakout star of Drive to Survive.
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Podcast Narrator
This week on Good Bad Billionaire, How Toto Wolff made his billions. Listen wherever you get your BBC podcasts.
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Adam Fleming
Hello. On Tuesday afternoon, Donald Trump posted a post on Truth Social for the ages. I'll read the whole thing out now because the entire world is talking about it and trying to work out what it means. He said a whole civilization will die tonight, never to be brought back again. I don't want that to happen, but it probably will. However, now that we have complete and total regime change, where different, smarter and less radicalized minds prevail, maybe something revolutionarily wonderful can happen. Who knows? We will find out tonight. One of the most important moments in the long and complex history of the world. 47 years of extortion, corruption and death will finally end. God bless the great people of Iran. That is what the President posted on Truth Social about Iran just a few hours before the latest deadline. He has set the regime in Tehran to to open the Strait of Hormuz and to stop retaliating in his war against them. So we will discuss what that post might mean along with some of the other day's big stories on this episode
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Alex Forsyth
of Newscast, Newscast, Newscast from the BBC.
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James Landale
Fat Boy Slim and me in the classroom doing our violin lessons.
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Podcast Narrator
I was the tattletale in the class.
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James Landale
Can I have an apology, please? I trust almost nobody that daddy has to sometimes use strong language.
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Adam Fleming
Next time in Moscow.
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Alex Forsyth
I feel the lulu with no salulu.
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Advertisement Voice
Take me down the Downing Street.
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Adam Fleming
Let's go have a tour.
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James Landale
Blimey.
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Adam Fleming
Hello, it's Adam in the newscast studio. And joining us down the line is the BBC's diplomatic correspondent, James Landale. Hi, James.
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James Landale
Hi, Adam.
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Adam Fleming
And joining us from Washington, it's Catriona Perry. Hi, Catriona.
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Catriona Perry
Hello to you both.
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Adam Fleming
So we're recording this episode of newscast at 5pm on Tuesday 7 April, which means the next deadline that Donald Trump has set the Iranian regime is one o' clock in the morning on Wednesday UK time, which is eight o' clock in the evening. Where you are, Katrina. I just wonder if actually what we should do is the buildup to the very incendiary post that Donald Trump posted this afternoon to help us sort of understand how his rhetoric has grown and grown and grown. So, Katrina, we saw quite a lot of the President over the weekend, for example, at this Easter egg event at the White House where he's talking about war and peace, while also kind of like painting Easter eggs with kids.
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Catriona Perry
Yeah, it's so unusual, isn't it? What a juxtaposition that Easter Egg Roll happens every year regardless of who's in power. I've been to it myself and it involves a lot of queuing up and a lot of sugar fueled children and people Dr. Big outfits and so on. And the President and the first lady always come along and they read stories and they give out eggs to kids and there are egg and spoon races and all those kind of festivities. And it has happened in the past that, you know, there's something very difficult or very awkward happening that the President is trying to navigate. And so sometimes their appearance is delayed as a result. Rarely do they actually speak about that kind of surrounded by the Easter bunny and kids and so on. But that is what we saw yesterday. And there's all kinds of photographs doing the rounds, taken from angles by clever photo where you have President Trump in front of the big bunny himself with his ears coming out of his head. And at the same time, you know, he's saying today is a very special day. It's a day where we celebrate Jesus. But also we've broken every record we can with our military. And just slightly odd putting of those, all of those things together. But that is where we are, I suppose, with this President and also with where we're at with Iran at the moment too.
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Adam Fleming
And James, over the weekend we also got a truth social post which is the one that's become quite infamous because it had quite a lot of swear words in it. But the actual threat from the President was to Iran's civilian infrastructure.
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James Landale
Yeah, that's the sort of the shift that the Americans are trying to signal now that actually that if there is no deal, if the Strait of Hormuz does not open, then they will change the tactics of their attacks and that they will not just attack military targets, but they will go for civilian targets. So we're talking particularly energy infrastructure, power plants, things like that. That's the threat that is now explicit, as you say, involved in that extraordinary true social post that involved expletives and there were spelling mistakes and all manner of things. And I think that's the problem the Americans are sort of knocking up against at the moment is that they are making these threats, but it doesn't seem to be having any impact at the moment. And I think there's a clash there between the American understanding and of what they think Iran will do and Iran's understanding of what it's prepared to do. In other words, there's sort of Donald Trump, the dealmaker, coming up against an Islamic revolution, who's whose very ethos is survival and resistance. And that makes for very uncomfortable negotiating partners.
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Adam Fleming
And James, there's a bit of a clash going on amongst commentators about whether those threats are legal or not, whether it is within international law to blow up something like a bridge that's used by civilians or a power plant.
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James Landale
Well, as ever, yeah, I mean, it's very clear that attacking civilian targets is against international law. The question is where you draw the line. And each incident, you know, each event and attack will be considered, you know, in turn. If, for example, you would destroy a bridge that has been used at some point by a military vehicle, then you could potentially argue that's a military target. But if there are civilians involved in that, then it's hard to make that case. Equally, if you're attacking an energy plant, if you claim, as for example, the Israelis do, that some byproducts from that energy plant are used to make the fuel for missiles, that's the sort of argument you get into. But in overt terms, it's very clear international law says attacking civilian targets is against international law.
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Adam Fleming
Katrina. I sometimes feel Trump's statements and posts blot out everything else that's happening, which is very significant in itself. For example, the rescue of the two American air crew whose plane was brought down at the end of last week. And also a story that's been bubbling away now for a few months, the increasing number of senior military figures getting fired.
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Catriona Perry
Yeah, that's it. All of which significant on their own. And, you know, it's the way that we always say, those of us who are over here in the US Covering this administration, is any of these in an in normal, in inverted commas news cycle would be stories that would dominate for weeks, if not months on end. We saw that downed plane over Iran last week. Then we saw the rescue mission that went in to try and rescue those two individuals also coming under fire and a second aircraft going down and a second pilot needing rescuing. And then that longer operation to get back the weapons operator from the first plane that went down. And then the rescue mission that eventually came out also succumbing to fire as well. I know it's very hard to follow what planes were going in and out and coming under fire. But that kind of makes them, let's
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Mark Savage
put it that way.
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Catriona Perry
Yeah, exactly. But it just makes a point as to how intense, you know, they use the word in military circles, theater, how intense the theater is there. And a lot of people pointing to the fact of the president and Secretary Hegseth talking about how the Iranian air defenses have been completely destroyed. Well, have they? If these rescue missions were came under such fire themselves and Iran was able to put up a bit of a defense there. Now ultimately all of the servicemen members got out alive, some of them injured, but they are alive and they have been rescued. And then to the other point about the generals being fired, Pete Hegseth firing the Army Chief of staff, Randy George, General Randy George last week, just a year or so left in his post that has gone down like the proverbial lead balloon in military circles because he was an incredibly well respected individual that's been in service for decades and decades. Now. Again, you talk about the chain of command people, people I've been speaking to in military circles saying, well, you know, you remove one general, you reappoint the next person, in this case, a close military aide of Pete Hegseth is now the army chief of staff that on goes the US Military. And it's designed to be like that, to respect the chain of command and respect orders. But we're now well over 20 generals that Pete Hegseth has removed in the year and a bit that he's been in office. So that's a lot of institutional knowledge that's gone out the door. And it's, and it's leading to that nervousness that those who are opposed to the president and opposed to what he's doing in Iran have this nervousness about just what are they going to order and what are they going to ask of the members who are in the area? Now the flip side of that is I've been speaking to some former State Department people today and they've been saying, you know, when it comes to those bridges and so on that James was mentioning there, that the US Military will have given the President a long list of targets that have varying sort of priority levels attached to them, bridges, railways and so on, and they'll have graded them all in terms of which ones pose a greater or present a greater military threat or are used more for military than civilian purposes, as James has outlined there, and that they will factor in that you know, there will be some damage and there may be some casualties on a civilian front. But you're into sort of a discussion about proportionality there. And that's something that would be decided, let's say, by law, courts down the road. But also some people expressing confidence to me that they felt that if individual members of the US Military are asked to carry out acts which are very obviously illegal, very obviously in breach of international humanitarian law, that they may refuse to do so because they all swear an oath to the United States and to the Constitution, not to an individual president. We remember back to last year, we saw that come quite controversially to the fore when some Democrats who are former members of the military raised that exact point in a social media video and led to Senator Mark Kelly of Arizona actually facing a court martial at the time over that. So there is, I can't put into words how nervous the whole country is here. Not as nervous, obviously, as the people of Iran are at this point. But definitely just seeing these sort of posts coming from the President of the United States is not something that anyone is used to seeing, Republican or Democrat.
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Adam Fleming
Well, which brings us to the bombshell post that I read out at the start of this episode of newscast, the one about a whole civilization potentially dying tonight. James, where do you want to start with your parsing of that message?
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James Landale
Yeah, I mean, look, you can look at it from a purely moral position and whether or not that's an appropriate thing for anybody to say in strategic terms, what the President is trying to do is yet again up the ante and try and threaten something of this scale to try and see if he can shift the calculus, the thinking within Tehran. And there's a whole bunch of analysts out there who will say this is not the way to do it and that this is not the kind of threat that Iran responds to. And that Iran will respond to requires a different way of negotiation. The interesting thing, though, if you look at that post, once you've sort of moved on from the apocalyptic civilization remark, the President does go on to sort of, you know, sort of slightly praise the current leadership in Iran as being smarter and saying maybe they could do something revolutionary and agree a deal so he still leaves the door open for it. In other words, it's the classic Trump paradox, on the one hand, issuing a threat, on the other hand, you know, opening a small door for some kind of negotiation. The trouble is, is, you know, we're told that J.D. vance is, is involved in these negotiations. Well, right now he's in, in Hungary, you know, giving speeches in support of Viktor Orban. You know, he's. He's not in Pakistan, which is the country that's brokering most of these negotiations. If the Americans were serious about this, they would have sent somebody serious to ISL to have serious conversations with the Pakistani government. And that hasn't happened. Yes, there have been some conversations, but it's very indirect to the moment. I mean, Iran's ambassador in Islamabad today said that the talks, negotiations were reaching what he called a sensitive, critical stage. So, clearly, something's still going on, and he's still willing to try and sort of talk it up. But then in my experience as a diplomatic correspondent, you know, ambassadors always want to give you that extra bit of hope to suggest that, you know, there's still a possibility of talks making some progress and bearing fruit. And at the moment, though, the gap between both sides still seems enormous. Yeah.
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Adam Fleming
And, Katrina, what's the reaction been like in D.C. to this post?
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Catriona Perry
Just an extreme sort of shock and nervousness. Democrats are moving already to call for the 25th Amendment to the Constitution to be enacted, which would basically involve the vice president and a majority of the Cabinet moving to remove Donald Trump from president, and it would need to be voted on by Congress as well. So I don't think at this point in time, that's anywhere near a realistic suggestion, given the level of support that President Trump enjoys amongst the members of his Cabinet and indeed many of those in Congress. But. But there is a sort of disgust at the tone of that message, which, you know, this is how President Trump rolls, isn't it? You know, he rolls up the sleeves of his shirt and sort of gives that tough talking as James has been outlining there. So is it a tactic? Does he mean it? I'm not sure that President Trump would want to have on his legacy the wiping out of a civilization, or however he put it. And also the discussion has moved to, well, is he imp there that he intends to use a nuclear weapon because of what J.D. vance said in Hungary earlier today when he said, you know, the president has given Iran this deadline, and if they don't respond by then, then we have all these tools in our toolbox that we haven't even used yet, which people were interpreting as nuclear warfare. Now, the White House has since come out and said, that's absolute nonsense. That's not what he was implying. The great US Military has, you know, lots of capabilities way before you get to a conversation about nuclear weaponry. So they've denied that that is an option, thankfully for everyone on the world at this point, you would say, but there's still a sense of, well, what is he aiming at here? What is his end game? You know, just before I came into studio, the Wall Street Journal was reporting that the Iranians have said they've now called off all the contacts that they were having with the UN that they feel there's no deal to be done at this point. So the clock is ticking down to that deadline. President Trump hoping for something to be achieved by talks. If the talks aren't happening, well, where does that leave us? And who knows? I mean, things. James knows better than anyone, things go on, on the sidelines and well away from the media that we're not probably being told about. So maybe there is still some back channeling going on, but it's looking quite dark at the moment.
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Adam Fleming
James, just coming back to your first remarks about this, that actually you can read it in so many different ways, and reading the Post typed out or printed out can feel different minute by minute, depending on your own mood as a human being, because there's so much in it. It's not just one message.
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James Landale
Yeah, no, that's absolutely right. And look, let's step back a minute. You know, we, all three of us and many others, we are all professional Trump watchers, interpreters, and we've been doing this for several years now. And we should always apply a dose of salt to everything that Donald Trump says because, you know, he could say quite the opposite just a short while later. You know, do we actually think he is attempting to threaten the extermination of an entire civilization that's lasted, you know, thousands of years, going back to Darius and Xerxes and Cyrus? Probably not. It's probably just the sort of language that he uses as sort of aggressive. Yeah.
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Adam Fleming
Synonymous regime, maybe.
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James Landale
Yeah, yeah. And, you know, the trouble is that, you know, to the rest of us, it's a comment that produces, you know, quite a startling reaction to him. You know, does it actually mean that, look, we don't know. And the thing is, as ever with Donald Trump, you know, let's see what he actually does. And tomorrow, you know, overnight and this evening, American time, you know, we will find out whether or not Donald Trump wishes to escalate or whether he wishes to find a way out. And that that is. That is the only choice before him. Now, as people have said earlier today, what was a war of choice for Donald Trump has now become a war of necessity. And he has to work out how he extricates himself from this. And it could be that this Civilization comment is a reflection of that frustration that he and the White House now find themselves in. Remember, this was a war that there were people in the Israeli government and in the American government that were telling the White House, this can be over in a matter of days and Iran will cave. We forget that now. We're now in week five, six. And I can remember at the beginning of this conflict, I spoke to a diplomat contact of mine who's anyway very senior in the system, and I said to him, what do you think? And this was after the first 24 hours. And he said, either this is a masterstroke in which Donald Trump is the guy who solves the 1979 revolution problem of the Iranian Revolution after almost 50 years, or he's locking himself into a military quagmire from which he and his presidency will not emerge and extract themselves.
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Adam Fleming
And at the moment it looks more like the second. James, I'm going to let you extract yourself from this episode because you've got lots of other things to do. So thank you very much for your time.
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James Landale
Always a pleasure.
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Adam Fleming
Thank you.
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James Landale
One thing I will say is that when mentioning all those generals, remember all those generals that have been removed by Peter Hegseth, the Iranians are now using that for their own propaganda and they're putting up all these pictures of all these generals and putting a big cross over their faces and underneath just saying regime change.
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Adam Fleming
Battle of the memes.
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James Landale
Battle of the memes.
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Adam Fleming
James, see you later.
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James Landale
Thanks so much. Cheers.
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Adam Fleming
And Katrina, just in terms of the next few hours, and obviously people will listen to newscast at different times depending on their day. Is there a sort of timeline leading up to this deadline? I don't know. Are we going to see Donald Trump? Has he got a news conference scheduled or are we all just waiting for a truth social post? And in the past, actually some of his updated deadlines, he's done a good few hours before the original deadline, hasn't he?
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Catriona Perry
Yeah, you're getting a good insight into my life now, Adam. So now the President has a number of things on his schedule, but right now they're all behind closed doors. Now we know from past experience that can change at any moment and he something that's listed as a policy meeting or executive time on his diary all of a sudden can become an in person before the cameras news conference. So I wouldn't rule that out at this point in time, but otherwise we are just waiting for that 8:00pm Eastern, 1:00 clock in the morning UK time to, you know, come and go and see what happens? Israel has already started bombing today, the bridges and railways. We heard that from Prime Minister Netanyahu earlier. So, you know, maybe that 8p deadline is not as hard a deadline as we've seen. And also it has been extended already by President Trump several times over the last week. You know how long he was giving Iran to come up with the deal. And he always has that off ramp where he can say negotiations are proceeding. I'm going to give it another day or two days or whatever. And we don't really have any way of verifying that. We'll have to take him at his word, but very much in a holding pattern for now.
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Adam Fleming
Katrina, thank you very much.
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Catriona Perry
Talk soon.
- [21:39]
Narrator
It's 2009 and we're in the German mountains. A man straps himself into a car on the world's most dangerous racetrack. He whispers to himself, it's time to
- [21:48]
Adam Fleming
put my balls on the dashboard as
- [21:50]
Narrator
he starts the engine.
- [21:51]
Podcast Narrator
In 15 minutes, he's in an ambulance, unconscious. In 15 years, he's a billionaire.
- [21:56]
Narrator
This is Toto Wolff, Formula One's most powerful team boss and the breakout star of Drive to Survive.
- [22:02]
Podcast Narrator
This week on Good Bad Billionaire, How Toto Wolff made his billions. Listen wherever you get your BBC podcasts
- [22:09]
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Adam Fleming
And now here's a story we were talking about earlier on Tuesday, the wireless festival which was going to take place in North London over three, three nights in the summer with Kanye west appearing every single night has been pulled after the UK government said that the singer could not travel to the uk. This is after he has spent years and years and years making anti Semitic comments and producing anti Semitic music. So I was talking about that story with two people who've been following it as it's been bubbling for the last couple of days. Alex Forsyth was at Westminster.
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Alex Forsyth
Hello, Adam.
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Adam Fleming
It's been too long.
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Alex Forsyth
Yes, it has. I've missed you.
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Mark Savage
You.
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Adam Fleming
We'll have an offline catch up because people don't need to hear about our holidays. Although maybe we could do a spin off travel podcast.
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Alex Forsyth
I'm up for it.
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Adam Fleming
And also the person With, I was going to say the best job in the BBC, but it's kind of joint best with mine. It's the BBC's music correspondent, Mark Savage. Hello, Mark.
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Mark Savage
Hello. It's nice to be here.
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Adam Fleming
Before we get into today's news, who are some of the amazing musicians you've interviewed recently?
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Mark Savage
Recently, Foo Fighters. I've interviewed. You see, my mind's gone blank.
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Adam Fleming
As soon as you say that, I always. I'm reminded of when you've met Lady Gaga. Twice.
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Mark Savage
I have met Lady Gaga. That was last year. More recently, we've interviewed Pink Pantheress, Nile Rogers from Chic. Just, you know, everybody, self esteem. It's been award season. So basically I've interviewed every pop star
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Adam Fleming
on the planet on a red carpet. Yeah. So we're recording this bit of this episode of newscast at just gone 3 o' clock on Tuesday. And Mark, just shortly before we came into the studio, we got the breaking news alert that the Wireless festival, the entire thing is. Is off now. Yes. Just explain why. Why one person, Kanye west, not being able to go potentially leads to a whole thing being pulled.
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Mark Savage
Well, unlike a lot of festivals, this year's wireless was built around the presence of Kanye West. It's something they innovated. Last year they invited Drake over and he headlined all three nights of the festival. And during the day he'd kind of semi curated the lineup as well. So it was friends and collaborators of his. And then special guests would come out during his headline set and they were hoping to do the same thing with Kanye West. This year he's on a bit of a rehabilitation tour after basically half a decade of saying some of the most abhorrent racist and anti semitic things. And with a new album to promote, he was booked to come play three nights at Wireless. Almost immediately it kicked off. A lot of people were very unhappy about it.
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Adam Fleming
So basically without, without Kanye or ye or whatever we're meant to call him now, there would have been a festival anyway.
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Mark Savage
Certainly they'd not announced anyone else on the lineup. And I think when you lose a big visible headliner like that, and there's a very short time in the world of music before this festival takes place in July, it would be difficult to book a headliner of that caliber that would allow fans to keep the tickets they'd already bought and feel satisfied.
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Adam Fleming
And Alex, why is it that when I was having breakfast this morning, it sounded like Kanye west had a visa to come to the uk, but after I'd finished lunch this afternoon, he didn't?
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Alex Forsyth
Well, you're Completely. Right. That's kind of because that's what we were told. So for the past few days, there's been this question rumbling on about whether or not the government would step in and stop Kanye west coming to the UK to take part in the Wireless Festival. And this morning, when you were having your toast and tea or whatever else, it was Adam, there was an interview on Radio 4 with one of the people behind this festival, one of the organizers, a guy called Melvin Benn, and he was suggesting that Kanye west already had a visa. Now, there was a little bit of unpicking that went on after that, where we were contacting the Home Office, other journalists were doing the same. There was the lobby briefing in Westminster. Everyone's going, well, has he got a visa? Has he not got a visa? And all we were hearing was that the government was keeping this under review. And then shortly after that, we had confirmation from the Home Office that actually he had applied for an eta. So that's an electronic travel agreement. Authorization.
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Adam Fleming
Authorization.
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Alex Forsyth
Thank you. Which allowed. Would have allowed him to travel to the UK yesterday, but the government has stepped in and blocked that, so they've now prevented him coming to the uk, which is in the government's gift.
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Adam Fleming
And, Alex, the political pressure had been building because I. I actually covered this story when it first made it into the headline last Tuesday, when I was standing in on Newsnight. So the pressure had been building for. For nearly a week now, or in fact, a week.
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Alex Forsyth
Yeah. And I think it's probably fair to say that it felt like it was building in a sort of inevitable direction, because we had had public comments, including from the Prime Minister himself, Keir Starmer, who said that it was concerning this was a couple of days ago, that Kanye west had been invited to headline this festival, given those abhorrent comments that he'd made in the past, albeit comments that he later apologised for. But, you know, know, Keir Starmer was still. Said that it was really concerning that he was doing that. You had, like, Chris Philp, the Shadow Home Secretary from the Conservatives, saying that the Home Secretary should step in and stop him coming to the uk. Ed Davy, the leader of the Liberal Democrats, has said the same thing. And then we had Wes Streeting, the Health Secretary, out this morning, basically saying he didn't think that Kanye west should be headlining this festival at all. So it felt like there was really a kind of inevitability to getting to this point. It seems now that we've had a bit more detail from the government that they were Maybe waiting for him to apply for travel permission in the form of this ETA before they then took the decision, as they now have done, to block him. And the reason they've given for that is they say that it would not be conducive to the public good for Kanye west to come and headline this festival. But yeah, I mean, the condemnation from the political spectrum was pretty all round. The only one who differed slightly was Nigel Farage, who was asked about this actually on Tuesday, kind of around half past 12ish, before we had confirmation of the government deciding to block him coming, he was asked whether he thought he should be blocked. He said the comments that Kanye west had made in the past were absolutely vile, but he thought the idea of blocking somebody coming to the UK because of something that they'd said was a slippery slope. So he took a slightly different position. But there was a sort of political traction around this.
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Adam Fleming
And Mark, can we remind newscast listeners what some of the things Kanye west has said in the past? And I'm not sure what we've decided as an organization, how precisely we want to repeat the words he's used because some of it is pretty, pretty horrible. So I'll leave it up to you to explain it how you want to.
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Mark Savage
No, of course, I think for context, Kanye west has throughout his career been a contrarian. He likes to take the opposite view to everyone else. And so that starts back in 2005 when he's at a fundraiser for the victims of Hurricane Katrina and he says George Bush does not care about black people. Then he invades the stage with Taylor Swift, a very famous moment, and says that Beyonce should have won the MTV award that Taylor Swift won, setting off off a decade long feud. But things started to get really dark around 2020, 2021. He starts to engage in more extreme right wing views. He wore a T shirt to a fashion show that said White Lives Matter, which is obviously a slogan that emanates from the far right. He then started making very incendiary, anti Semitic and racist statements online and in person. He did an interview on a podcast with the conspiracy theorist Alex Jones where he said that he admired Hitler and that he had some good ideas and positive contributions to society. He then apologized for a lot of that behavior and then doubled down on it again last year, releasing a song called Heil Hitler and also selling merchandise at his concerts that had the swastika emblazoned on it. He has again apologized. In January, he took out a full page advert in the Wall Street Journal and said that essentially he had been off his medications. He suffers from bipolar disorder, that he had also had an undiagnosed brain injury from a car accident that he was in in 2002. And that's a very famous incident that his debut single he recorded while in hospital wearing a neck brace from that injury. But he said that there had been some brain damage that had affected his thought processes. And he then updated that statement this morning, Tuesday morning, saying he apologized again to all of those people that he had hurt, that he was aware of the conversations around the wireless festival and that he would like to meet with Jewish communities in the uk saying, I know words don't count for anything, but I would like to take some actions to repair the damage I've done. And these concerts, he had said, would be concerts of unity and peace, not division.
- [31:16]
Adam Fleming
And Alex was talking about Melvin Ben, the promoter of the wireless festival, and the fact that he was on the radio this morning explaining why he thought having Kanye west headlining the festival was okay and talking about some of the things he was preparing to put in place for it to be an okay event.
- [31:32]
Mark Savage
Yes. And, you know, as with all festivals, there will be somebody who has control of the mixing desk. And if Kanye west had gone off script and started performing one of those songs that has the objectionable lyrics, then they would have cut the microphone because of course, that would have, you know, violated all sorts of laws. And. But also, Melvin Ben was saying that we need to extend an olive branch to people that have been castigated like this. He says he has lived for more than 15 years with somebody with mental health problems. And he said it is not something that disappears overnight. People suffer with psychotic behavior and bipolar behavior for many years, and that you have to have some understanding and forgiveness. I think for a lot of people, given Kanye's reputation and his history, he's been given a second chance and a third chance. And they are suspicious that this apology will fall apart like the previous ones have, particularly because the timing of it coincided with him signing a major new record distribution deal and announcing all of these comeback concerts.
- [32:34]
Adam Fleming
And I suppose Alex is quite often a conversation about separating the artist from the art. In other words, you can still listen to music produced by Kanye because the product is separate from his views. But I suppose in this case, when it's the actual performer themselves coming to do a hugely high profile thing over three nights, that's not separating the art from the artist. That is the artist.
- [32:58]
Alex Forsyth
It is the artist. And to the point that was made, for example, by Wes treating the health Secretary when he was very critical of the decision to what he was saying, platform, the artist here. So it isn't just about, as you say, somebody choosing to listen to a song. It was about giving a headline platform opposition to somebody who'd made these comments. And when Melvin Benn, the festival promoter, was explaining what he thought was the justification for inviting Kanye west to take part in that festival, I mean, there was condemnation, for example, from the Board of Deputies of British Jews who, you know, was talking about the impact that that would have on the Jewish community in this country. So I think that was a real part of the concern that this was very much giving center stage to somebody who had made these comments and, and yes, has, as we've explained, apologised for them, but then gone on to double down later and apologise again. And I think that there was a sense that, particularly given the context in this country at the moment where we have heard, you know, politicians from all parties talk about their concern about the levels of antisemitism in this country that exist anyway, to then put somebody in that high profile position, it was getting a lot of condemnation from across the political space.
- [34:14]
Mark Savage
And as well, Finsbury park, where wireless festival would have been taking place, is an area with a high concentration of a Jewish population. And I read comments from people who live in that area saying that if the concert went ahead, they would have been scared to get the tube to their own house that weekend. So I think that's something that had to be taken into consideration as well.
- [34:34]
Adam Fleming
And Mark, do you think this sets a new precedent both for artists from abroad coming to the UK or artists who are British and performing in Britain and who maybe want to say, say controversial slash unsavoury things?
- [34:46]
Mark Savage
I mean, this is not the first time that a festival headliner has been banned from the uk. Tyler, the creator, was supposed to headline the Love box festival about 12 or 13 years ago and his visa was revoked over previous homophobic comments that he had made. There was also Chris Brown who was banned from the UK for a number of years over the physical abuse that he had meted out to his then girlfriend, Rihanna, and some absolutely horrific pictures that a lot of people would have seen of, of the afterma of that incident. But then again, he was allowed back last year and did a highly successful arena tour that thousands and thousands of people went to. So I don't think it is a new precedent. And, you know, we've seen in the last year police investigations over the comments made on stage by kneecap and Bob Villain. People do police these things quite seriously. But of course, in those latter two cases, they were found not to have caused an offence.
- [35:41]
Alex Forsyth
It's also just worth saying that, you know, it has been for some time in the gift of the Home Secretary of the. Whoever that may be to choose to exclude people from coming to the uk, and they've done so for various reasons. Exactly as Mark says, sometimes musicians in the past, I think I'm right in saying, but correct me if I'm wrong, Mark, Snoop Dogg for a while was stopped from coming to the uk and then there was a sort of legal battle, then he was allowed. But you know, this. And it isn't just musicians, you know, I was reading a House of Commons, they produced these briefing papers on when the Home Secretary stepped in to prevent people coming to the country before. And it's, you know, they were referencing hate preachers or people that breached extremism. So, you know, this is a sort of, this is, there is a, there's a sort of precedent. This is a new, not a new precedent. This is something that's happened before and I suspect it's maybe something that will happen again in the future.
- [36:29]
Adam Fleming
And Mark, are we meant to be calling him Kanye or Yay? Because I've lost track of how he styles himself.
- [36:34]
Mark Savage
Now we're supposed to be calling him Ye. There was a lot of confusion the other week when his album Bully came out because in some places it was listed under Ye and some Kanye west and people didn't know where to find it on streaming services. That's a lot of people did. And you talk about separating the art from the artist, but it was the number three album in the UK last week. Kanye or Ye still has 74 million monthly listeners on Spotify. However abhorrent you may find the comments he has made in the past, people are still prepared to listen to and accept that music.
- [37:07]
Adam Fleming
Mark, thanks very much.
- [37:08]
Mark Savage
Thanks for having me.
- [37:09]
Adam Fleming
And Alex, good to catch up with you too.
- [37:11]
Alex Forsyth
Pleasure as ever. Foreign.
- [37:18]
Adam Fleming
That was my conversation with Mark and Alex from earlier on. And as luck would have it, if you'd like to know more about the Home Office, Chris and I made a three part miniseries looking at the most controversial department in the government, which we put in your newscast feeds over the bank holiday weekend. It's three episodes looking at the past, the present and some of the, the everlasting perennial issues in the Home Office. And it's well worth listening to and we've got lots of good reviews from newscasters about it. So if you haven't listened to it and you want to fill the time between, I don't know, any impending deadlines. Those three episodes are available to listen to now and we will have another classic episode of Newscast coming your way very soon.
- [37:59]
Alex Forsyth
Bye bye Newscast Newscast from the BBC
- [38:02]
BBC Outro Announcer
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- [38:28]
BBC Announcer
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