 David McMillan here. Who the hell am I? For decades I ran a courier and contraband smuggling network across 50 cities, built my own equipment, created my own disguises and used almost every device imaginable to escape detection. Retired now I bring you the experiences of the underworld. I've met the worst and the best of 10,000 criminals and no people at a glance. You get the fine details of 40 years crossing borders concealing goods, escaping, hiding and becoming something else. Is this a life you could survive? Yes well Bangkok is a big one isn't it? Bangkok was or Thailand was Sam. And there's a country in Africa that has changed its name. Now what was it called Swaziland? I don't know but anyway it's they've got oh by the way you know those well what we would call it the looting that's going on in South Africa in the last couple of weeks. Supposedly a reaction to the jailing of former president or prime minister Jacob Zuma I think his name was. It's probably one of the you know founders of this Zoom network that I don't think so. The guy could barely wear a mask properly I think. But do you think it's actually anything to do with that or is just because the economy is in the toilet and they're using the opportunity to shop for nothing? Yeah there's always that thing isn't there? I think it's not underlying discontent in this in what we call oh that's all right. Sorry about that. No that's all right. The film producer mate so there we go there we go Martin Webster. Hello Martin for a name drop. What does he produce? Oh he's done two incredible films now. The first one was called The Diary of a Disgraced Soldier. Oh yeah okay. He was the gentleman that was in Iraq filming what looked to be some untoward beatings of Iraqi civilians. Yeah yeah. Then when he told his story through this documentary you suddenly learned a completely different side to what the mainstream media had put out and namely that it wasn't some unwarranted slapping around of these civilians. They'd been under attack for days and days upon end. They'd been shot at. They'd been had grenades thrown over into their compound and they faced this angry mob for days on end and finally their riot squad ran out and managed to you know. Right I understand that I wonder why the people were attacking them just because they didn't like you know westerners in their country or it's hard to say isn't it? Yeah these things turn don't they? They often turn they start off with the West being welcomed in and then when they find out that the West's intentions or George Bush's intentions and all the cronies that own him. I just thought since we're just starting off I should say hello to everybody hello everybody and I'm with Chris Thrall who is kindly allowed me into his map room. I can see you're plotting your campaigns for the war in the East behind you and you've probably seen me before on this program and I'm well known for blundering my way through a smuggling career of 40 years and being jailed in various hideous places from which I escaped or otherwise wriggled out so I'm alive today and we had a good time last time we spoke didn't we? We had an absolutely wonderful chat David and it's it's always nice or rewarding to meet someone who's been out there a bit and done a few things. I know what you mean sometimes and I'm guilty of this I'll make the wrong assumption that somebody is a little familiar with the areas that I'm talking about whereas I know with you certainly with your you know what would you call it wild rides up and down in a series of ongoing highs and lows that a lot of things are familiar to you that you know makes things easier. I tell you I did want your opinion on this you've probably seen the story over the last year or so of now what would you call him his name was Carlos Gusson had to pronounce because it's spelled G-O-N-G-H-O-S-N or something. Anyway he was the boss of Nissan Mitsubishi having come from Renault very high flying executive not just well paid but well respected having brought Renault from the brink of bankruptcy. Anyway he was arrested in Japan by Japanese authorities over his personal finances and how he used the money from the company. Oh fine a bit puzzling why they got involved but he was held in a Japanese prison and as you know that is not a fun ride in there okay nothing so bad about a mat on the ground is there Chris I mean it's actually quite good for the bet you know but he escaped from Japan he was bailed out eventually on a one trillion yen bail ticket which is kind of pricey isn't it and he put up Nissan shares for that by the way and it was a US special ex-services guy called Taylor I think his name was who got him out or organized the plan anyway and you're all familiar with the story? I'm gonna be honest David I stopped watching the mainstream media after can we say the events in New York back along well way back at 9-11 yeah I think when that's that's really bowing out from the mainstream I mean I look I can understand the point but what did you and I guess there's nothing that's happened that would make you feel otherwise I think that the mainstream news was too manipulated or you know getting top down editorial affecting everything? Yes I would probably hazard a guess this is just a rough putting it out there's probably 300 people can control what's goes on on this planet. Yeah what's that big conference in usually happens in Switzerland? That's it yeah it's spooky isn't it you kind of get this old fashioned whiff of sulfur about it where there's some dark secret cabal is going on you know a kind of modern-day illuminati where they're you know I often I'd think okay I only wish that the world was controlled by people who knew what they were doing even if I didn't agree with their cunning plans there'd be some satisfaction don't you think that somebody somewhere at least knew what the hell he was doing but no I can I can see how anyway it was a very jumbled story but he was taken out of Japan by private jet but to get on it since his house was monitored by private detectives hired by Nissan he was concealed he went he was allowed to go to the Hyatt Hotel for his meals he went down there got and then was transferred into a big box and the big box was the kind that's for concerts where they hold subwoofers massive speakers and then loaded onto the private jet a Turkish company flown to Istanbul then on to change planes there while not clearing through immigration in Istanbul and he already held I think French Brazilian and Lebanese passports but I think a couple of those have been surrendered but one thing about passports you can always get another you know the British have been actually quite good about that I've never had them say no you can't have another passport the police are holding yours they're knocking one out and you know just say look if you're planning on absconding from something don't tell us about it and you know people get ridiculously pally don't they they make eye contact with somebody and then reveal the whole plan I don't know why that is with people now so he got back there it so it's a happy ending he's in Lebanon but kind of everybody else got arrested the pilots got arrested sent to jail in Turkey for a well technical breach of the immigration rules the two American special forces guy well he was really one this Michael Taylor he'd grown up on army bases his adoptee dad was quite high in the military and he was a bit of a an early starter and had a private security company in Afghanistan mind you like a lot of those guys when they were used up by the the government they turned on him actually did 19 months over some supposed misrepresentation of his contract but it was better to do the plea deal which a lot of people find you know they get into a situation and and some prosecutors say well you've already been in nine months we'll give you 12 months and you'll be out you know in two or three months and otherwise you'll be bogged down in the courts for years who knows what we'll come up with it'll be very tempting to plead guilty to it but if if you were tasked with getting somebody out of Japan now you don't actually have to break him out of the prison that's a good thing but you've got to sneak him by what would you be thinking by sea by air well what comes to mind with your experience I guess one thing is getting somebody out of the country we had this situation in Hong Kong when I was there one of the guys I knew got busted with a big bag of ice by ice I don't mean diamonds I mean crystal meth and he was fake I mean you you know yourself Dave you you don't want to spend any time in an Asian prison let alone somewhere like China no I mean where did he get busted he was in Hong Kong wasn't he went to drop off a delivery only a small it would have been a bit of personal stuff to somebody in a bar in it they turn out to be drug squad oh great at this time to show you the level of seriousness and also the kind of confused chinese mentality at that time they busted a kid so a youngster in a nightclub who had one ecstasy pill on him as you know many people did back in the day the judge gave him 12 years what for one time for one pill at the appeal hearing they had to explain to the judge that you know it's ecstasy it's what most young people or a significant percentage of young people are doing at the moment it's not it's not you know it's not big and and he had his sentence reduced but I spoke to one of my triad friends just look can you help this guy and the triad sent one of their foot soldiers a guy I don't I don't know how high up in the chain he he was but obviously a guy that could get stuff done he came to meet me in a nightclub with a view to discussing how you know the possibility of getting this guy out the country and the guy got so drunk he just ended up with his head on the table and so the plan didn't develop very well let it know it didn't they didn't have a high is it the word propensity for alcohol no no and some people are kind of I think that's there seems to be some genetic link there doesn't there yes yes northern european genetics seem to take it okay but the more towards the tropics you get the less capacity to take it on in fact it's I think really something when I was living in Australia the people who were indigenous Australians really couldn't had it just took over their lives and and and ruinously so I guess really you know that it's it's the old and yet simple thing whoever's left standing in the room alive is for whatever reason been developed to cope with whatever's around the the poisons and toxicants the conditions the weather everything else and I'm thinking perhaps where people were in a relatively protected environment you know whether tropics you don't have the extremes of weather it's not exactly so you can pluck bananas and coconuts from the trees and don't have to do any intense farming but you don't get exposed to a lot of different things there there's no reason for the genetic line to you know put up a big coping mechanism with it but these try do you think from my experience with them they the Chinese have been more inclined to do things by underground agreement that is you get a passport through them it's fixed on the computer I was very lucky in Bangkok I mean you can imagine as we know with the scapes the where they fail is after the person's out more often than not and this is my guard dogs attacking something there I was out and then groping around the back of somebody's bathroom mirror for a promised envelope which would have the passport in it and that was a lot of promising you know people promise you lots of life don't they Chris do they deliver really indeed so I was well pleased to have the thing in my hand but flipping through it and then approaching the immigration disc I thought well I know here that this was a British passport freshly stolen about three weeks ago I guess my picture but it had the little slip of paper that you in those days you got when you went into the country I thought well gee if this is not on the computer that I see this guy tapping everybody through I'm screwed did my Chinese underground friends take the trouble to go down and talk to the guy who does their fixes at the airport open up the computer bang it in as a as a genuine entry into the country and of course by the time I'm actually standing in front of him I've convinced myself this is a wildly improbable that they would have gone to this extra mile so I was a bit glazed over and didn't like the furrowed brow on his head as he clicked another couple of keys and as I stopped breathing luckily the stamp of freedom was applied to the passport and I went on they the Chinese are in my experience always been very reliable once you kind of penetrate that barrier and I guess we have to make ourselves useful to people don't we you know if you and I go someplace say we head off to I don't know someplace which is fraught with peril like Iran or something and we've got some pretext for being there which I don't know what would be but we to survive we have to make ourselves more useful alive breathing and functioning than left open to be used as a pawn because I think and and from what I've read from your books it wouldn't be the first time that somebody has decided that I think who shapes up for this fall that Chris Chris will work her its way in there you know we just color the story around the edges and you know it'll be a drowning man within minutes and that's the thing if you don't um unbalance make yourself more useful doing what you do and then you're at terrible risk don't you think Asia is incredibly efficient right remind me of a story I was in uh God was I in Thailand and yeah I travel from Thailand into Cambodia and I wanted to go up into Laos and when I got over the border into Cambodia uh I'm not sure if it's Phnom Penh yeah that's the capital where no it was it was a it was a town in Cambodia I mean yeah it was one of the first towns you get to I can't but CM CM Reap oh yes that's where they have the mad magnificent monument and I went into the the travel agent and I said can I get a visa for um for Laos right and I was going to travel through Laos or Vietnam and I was going to travel up through Vietnam into Laos and then what year are we talking about here this is about 15 years ago now something like that and I handed my passport to to the girl in the the travel agent and I got on the bus and I crossed the border uh sorry I got on the bus from CM Reap to go to Phnom Penh or a truck or whatever it was and then it suddenly occurred to me I hadn't given them a photograph for the visa I just completely forgot and so I sat on this journey panicking as you do because I had to get into Laos I was I think I had an outbound ticket back from Bangkok in a few days time whatever I had to make this trip but can I ask this visa would have been either um a stamping your passport or a separate piece of paper or like when they clip the paper into okay so it was there was it but there was no picture on it well here's the thing I I got to Phnom Penh and I'm you know when you travel and you I don't need to tell you this these these little things that you really can get worried are going to screw every I mean I haven't I've I've got I'm going into Vietnam I've got all this stuff planned and I anyway I walked into the travel agent in Phnom Penh and as I put my hand on the the door handle and there's a glass door like they have over there I saw the girl at a back desk go and she reached in a drawer immediately and even by the time I'd got in the door she had her passport and was waving it at me all right and I said photo she went and she showed me this is going to sound really silly to modern people who use to technology and and you can just send a picture on your phone like that we didn't have that back there no no no there's my photo right they just had the foresight to scan the passport photo and use that oh that's great yeah it was a relief and just to reiterate why why this isn't as insignificant as it sounds is had I been in an English travel agent they would no way have had the initiative to scan the one on the passport I would have just got to the place and they'd say sorry sir there's a problem with your visa I'd like to phone the travel agent they say sorry sir you you forgot to give us your photograph you know but no in Asia so efficient they just won't scan that and I think you're right and the people and also we we have to bear in mind that travel agencies are really you know died over here because people don't need their services they're online and they did their expedia bookings or whatever but you know in in Asia when somebody goes to people who organize things whether it be for visas employment jobs in another country they put themselves in their hands and they a lot of the people their clients don't know anything from filling in forms they don't know they just leave it with them and they get used to dealing with all of it and usually do a pretty good job because they know it a bit like the if we even go down a level of where things even get rougher I know around the court buildings in streets in New Delhi or Mumbai or even in a Kabul you would find kind of scribe street and there'd be little guys sometimes women by time writers and a little card table in the street and people would be lined up to go to them to do everything any submission they needed to make to the court any representation any um comprehension of documents that they'd be giving and these people are into living by knowing what people's likely problems were and I know I'm sure they wouldn't sit there explaining the details of how I don't know some government department actually works they just say oh we know what you want we know what you need to do now you'll get programs like um those border crossing tv reality shows and some poor schmuck from asias saying oh well look I don't know the travel agent worked it all out for me and and they're scoffing at that say oh yes yes yes yes a likely story go and blame the travel agent but you know the statement here is that you never work such and such but in a way it's true um they would go to a travel agency and whatever was required to say the agency would know that and write it in there used to be a little trap about a million years ago with us visas if you wrote on the application the question was um how long have you um lived in the UK let's just say you said you were born here now a lot of people would write uh well let's see I'm 54 now so I guess I've been here 54 years and they'd write that in no that was a fail um you had to use the phrase all of life because if it was a number 54 years it would get flagged by the processing as we want to know where he was before then even though if they looked at the date of birth they should realize well in the womb I mean I didn't get a visa while I was in the womb but you know they let me go on that one um and there's a lot of little bits of crap as as as you were saying with your border crossing there um that you know how things can deteriorate for um no really sensible reason on on some tiny bit of rubbish because we've been through it before everything else has worked out in great detail and then on some part of the day you simply have to go there and come back for something but you don't get back because um they put you on a different flight and that meant you arrived at the wrong terminal and you had to go through some processing between the two terminals and that meant somebody else's nose was on you and they wanted to know all about your business and you weren't expecting to be having to explain about all your business at that point so you know I I had the same thing all the cargo was safe it was back packed in the UK ready to go back to Australia my only little problem was because of my travels I had ended my Australian passport didn't have an entry stamp for the UK so I said I was staying at the Portobello Hotel in London a nice kind of stylish sort of boutique hotel before they were popular a lot of drunken musicians up and down the corridor anyway I said to Chloe look I'm gonna whip over to Paris this morning right I'm gonna go over on it was a glorious piece of documentation Chris I think you're too young to remember them but they were called a British visitors passport they're a piece of cardboard you bought from the post office for uh I forget what like 10 pounds or something and it was good for the EEC countries in those days your photo was stapled or with a fancy-looking rivet gun thing so they had a couple of red stamps on it but the good thing about it was when customs saw it they just went to Europe this idiot and waved you on so I said well I'm gonna go to Paris on the cardboard job from the post office turn around at Charles de Gaulle take the next flight back and get the entry stamp with the Australian one so when I leave later on you know yeah it makes sense uh she said you're gonna take some luggage I'll take a bag but I'm really just so I'm not wandering around with nothing in my hand and I grabbed something or rather and emptied it and put a towel in there and a shaving kit and jumped on the plane now so this is a routine bit of housekeeping nothing should go wrong right I go to Paris fine with that jump back on another plane arrive produce Australian past foot stand in good I've got that stick that down my trousers and walk on through now I'm not carrying anything so I'm not really thinking of it I think except where I'm gonna have lunch and stuff like that I get to make sure terminal two at Heathrow normally pretty good in those days in fact it was a ghost town ah perfect um but there was one customs officer there now tell me what you think of this guy from a distance customs officers wear white shirt uniform usually standing around talking to a colleague or whatever this one by himself tall long hair yeah now we're talking about 1980s I guess but um very early 90s no it's 79 or something so there was a kind of fashion thing where even officials would have slightly longer hair but to my mind um they're the kind of official who wants to be a little bit rebellious within this group don't you think I mean did you ever have anybody who pushed the um the appearance code and the services kind of to the edge yeah like all of us yeah but one of the characteristics of that um thing is that so that the guy I guess the long hair is not considered useless at his job he actually makes a point of being rather efficient at his job so he kind of dives on me uh we've been at Paris oh yeah where's the ticket yeah and here's the problem my ticket is in a different name going over there so I can't produce that one so I whip out a passport but make the I don't give him the cardboard one in a stupid kind of well this is the last thing I used I should show it I've given him the Australian one and he's gone to town on that didn't like it there were Thailand stamps in it now I'll come over here I think this is taking time well I should be out of his the bag I've picked up carelessly at the hotel was one I've been traveling around just to uh what in flight uh soft carry bag hadn't paid any attention to it for months down in the corner of the front zip pocket was a little bit of hash they'd been floating around in there wanting to be smoked and neglected carelessly by all of us for all these months and there was he pulled it out and I knew at that moment Chris that my day was not going to be pleasant because I'm standing there I've got another passport down my trousers in a different name and uh they're gonna take me and give me a strip search and find that and get on to the airline's ticketing computers and look at all my movements and draw their own conclusions so yes it was a small bit of administrative travel you could say that I didn't give proper care and attention to because I was dismissive there were no kilos of a-class drugs there was no plutonium there was no you know gold ship and there was nothing that you would normally focus your mind on um I just needed a rotten bit of stamp in my passport it was um it's always the small things that trip you up oh yeah I mean vacancy I didn't get out of there until um I didn't get out of there at all it was midnight by the time um they've gone so they've checked the airline and they see that me and my girl are traveling out that night going back to Australia and um they want to know what we've been up to but she was a bit of a smart cookie old clayler when she was dragged in she was under a phony passport was checked out she was in a position to say I only met the guy in my travels in Thailand a good time charlie that's all he was to me nothing yeah but you know what uh she said well why all these different passports what's it I don't know but he did have a couple of big suitcases with him and then somebody came in Thailand and picked them up and he was all relaxed after that they're saying damn we've missed it it's headed off in another direction so she was she was good like that and um I came the wash up she was going to be nicked for having snotted a female customs officer because she took objection to being stripped her and supposedly flushed something down the the the loo which was where that she was taken for that but um I said look I'll uh I'll plead to the bit of hash I'll accept that and in return you let the girl go and she doesn't know anything she just needed oh well there's no way to talk all right we'll go for that um now there's one fly in the ointment here um as they've pounced on her where she's staying she's staying at the hotel but at the time she'd put her telephone number with some friends of ours now friends of ours I don't always tell you the background do they Chris I mean you ask somebody who's coming on something you clean you've got anything I should worry about something I need to know about any mischief I don't care mind you can you can you know be a cannibal for all I care I just need to know in case you know no no I'm good yeah fine that like shit turns out they've got um you know uh I'm sure it happened to some colleagues of yours turns out they've been uh arrested in bar fights in polket you know they've uh been forced marched out of Japan for disgracing themselves or you know there's still some uh prostitute who wants some money in Amsterdam that's put in a case against him you know these things come up now the people where she was staying they had a past indeed so they they were up to a lot of mischief nothing that day but what it meant was the cargo had come back into the Heathrow airport because it was in my luggage bags and her luggage bags uh but they couldn't find it when they opened it up it was just a machine um and they like a stereo player and very well made they they had to smash I think ribbons to find anything inside but you know I'm still looking at a 20-year sentence under that now everybody's happy with me taking the plea letting the girl go calling at a night I've called out some guys wearing a bow tie it was the opera because the case looked like it was going to lead to something big what with the the fulham road connection with the people there and the multiple passports um and but they're calling it on letting me go long hair the customs guy doesn't like it he's tapping this radio case thing saying wait yeah no no it doesn't what would he be so concerned that he actually wanted to make sure he had the right exit stamps something was still yet to happen of significance and I've dismissed all that with uh no no I just didn't want to have to explain why I had you know changed passports during travel because they don't like you doing that um anyway he his senior thought no look long hair we're calling it at night let him go the girl goes and said to me what are you gonna take all this luggage with you to the jail you know we're gonna post bail because you had different passports I know give it all to the girl I mean she's had a hard time I've dragged her through the mud all right yeah that'll do so she's gone off with that she's got the cargo back and uh long hair doesn't like it um and they've all gone to sleep on it the next day um I'm in Brixton thinking well could have been worse I'm gonna uh have to plead to one of the passports but I think I can wriggle out of that because it wasn't British one and um yeah okay so a bit of hash what's the worst that could happen a few months Brixton in those days was a riot you know you could still prisoners could still have um one can of beer a day if they were on remand and they had visits every day on remand it was the visit center was a riot of exchanging of cargo and bits and things and numbers and of course it was before phones and all of that so all the messages for that you could see the big villains table they're all chunky sized and all lined up with their villains wives coming in doled up to the max because your villain in those days didn't like the missus looking like a bit of trailer trash so and through this carnival oh and on the other side was sort of the broken wrecks um through all this noise uh clearly I said well at least you've got the cargo back I mean you put that somewhere safe um not exactly uh when I got back I told our friend what the people used to be in the business and no longer the ones whose reputation causes most of this headache yeah yeah I told him that uh it was there I thought you know I went to you're to nobody to reveal something saying nothing god how many times have I said to everyone saying nothing and wait and see what happens this will pay off I promise you St. Peter at the gates of heaven will welcome you saying welcome friend because you said nothing and uh the guy in full um panicked over uh all of this broke up the container had a had put a couple of bits of it up his nose and then um said oh I could get it out of the house in frenzy ran down threw it in a tip or a dumpster or something or other because the next day was rubbish today um and um and that was it but it wasn't quite it because I said wait a minute wait wait wait so let me get this clear it's all being opened up it's everywhere you know the the marching powder and the other stuff from Thailand is this all a mess no no no they couldn't get he couldn't get to the inner container he only got to a little one for his personal use and this is in a rubbish bin somewhere so I gave him a number now I gave Claire I mean I gave her a number and this would be a bit like a number I don't know if we'd known each other before can you imagine um being woken up by um some young girl who said I'm David's latest or next or dearest uh he gave me your number because this is a little bit of a problem and you'd probably say let me have a coffee and I'll do some listening and she explains that um I'm locked up the stuff has been thrown in a in a rubbish bin which may or may not have been collected um and uh it needs to be retrieved and she needs to be put somewhere and stuck back on a plane and and got out of the country and he'll be eternally grateful and he'll be rewarded suitably anything yeah I've heard that before well um but that's what I did and this guy Robert um went with her and headed down to where the rubbish was uh like it was before wheelie bins but it was all piled up it was piled up except we've been cleared now they the girl and my friend Robert the capable person will call him with a cap similar to yours um arrived in time to see my friend from Fulham having woken up with a clear head and think oh my god I've just thrown out like a hundred thousand pounds worth of stuff on my mat so he's got himself a little gunny sack and running down the street after it uh my girl and and Robert are after it but they're not alone the customs of all had a good night to sleep on this and decided wait a minute we met we've handed over the stuff they've gone down to get it um but um fortunately um Robert was uh quite good at knowing what to do in those situations um he caused enough racket on the street corner so that the customs people spotted Mr. Fulham and thought ah now we're at it they got busy with each other meanwhile Robert went down there and the bin was empty so he went straight to the um the dump and actually found it I mean how you know found it within a very short space of time and it was still in its plastic sealed containers with allen keys that had been buried under resin took that buried it somewhere else because I told him look it's uh weatherproof and all of that um and got her back on a plane and all was well um uh well well except they built a car park over the thing where he buried it sometime later but that was a that's another story but it does go to illustrate where it all is started where this night of terror and me in a magistrate court getting six months for a bit of hash and a couple of iffy documents um it started simply because I was crossing a border doing nothing I thought but in fact as we all know it's when you think you're doing nothing and no harm done that's when you get into trouble and then don't you find that you know if you look back on your own things yes yes when you get laxadaisical yeah well it's I think so I've been in situations where you know you probably had friends who I don't know that and this particularly applies to weed marijuana they'll feel it should all be legalized fine who disagrees with that nobody but um because of that they get particularly brave and foolish because it's almost like they're challenging the world to go and arrest me you're doing something wrong you know I should be able to do this thing and you'll say them well yeah didn't we agree that the following precautions were going to be done yeah yeah there was a bit of weed in there a bit of weed and we can still go to the you know barry place with the keys and all of that um and in people's sense of what's right and wrong really interferes with their judgment over um I mean say you and I are going to I don't know Kazakhstan or Belarus um we're going to take into account the fact that right and wrong what we think is good and bad in the world has got nothing to do with anything what we've got to decide is how they operate how they play their game there what it is that um I mean we'd find somebody local that wasn't a troublemaker didn't have a cause or an extra grind but just knew his or her way through the the minefield of living in a totalitarian state um and look at that kid who got snatched off a plane um who fell to pieces I mean what a wimp um he was saying sorry the next day what was his name now Romeo Rotunda or something anyway I forget it but he um it was a bit over the dinner effectively hijacking the plane demanding it come down because of a bogus bomb threat wasn't it and then um there were already some um uh KGB types on on board who sort of disappeared um and then they grabbed this kid uh and he was a a blogger but it's it's all very well for him to sit in his studio flat uh mouthing off to his cell phone um and in a place well he wasn't in the place which had caused him he wasn't in Belarus at the time I think um but of course he's poked his thumb and nose at them and he probably thought well I'm perfectly safe there's nothing they can do in a way it's a a lesson to all you know all the people who think oh I'm immune from all this uh you know I'm young and cocky and nothing can happen to me of course it wasn't it was an overdone thing for somebody well what is he's just a mouth why should the why should the leader of the that country care one way or another um but probably when the opportunity came up I guess I'm spooked must have said look you know that flight that he's going on next week it over flies our country so uh here's our opportunity um and whatever happens to last week's outrage anyway Chris I mean you know people saying well there'll be sanctions over this oh yes yeah let's put in fact let's apply them to the individuals in the state control of wherever it might be they don't care so their wife has to go shopping in Paris instead of them you know it doesn't doesn't mean anything of course because as much as the government might leap to um their defense and say oh this or that take the case of that um the woman uh Zagari is it redcliffe Zagari she's uh the her husband's British he must be the redcliffe part and she's Iranian born so she has dual citizenship I think she's still there isn't she she's been held what over five years something like that yeah what she held for it was something well you know maybe something gets lost in translation with the Iranian but the Persian crime was um a spreading disinformation in the employee of a foreign agent or something to that effect a kind of low level spying um not uh and Boris he wasn't a PM in those days when she was first arrested but um he made it worse by missing not even taking the trouble to read from the foreign office what it was she was doing there she was seeing family or something um and she had a young daughter um he said that she was he seemed to think it was she was a teacher and um oh well why shouldn't a woman be able to teach children about freedom uh boss shut up you idiot so he's buried her um he's a careless kind of politician isn't he he's quite a gambler don't you think he he's opened up um from a kind of semi bogus freedom day thinking that okay a lot of cases not a lot of deaths he's made a friend in old comings isn't he what a traitor that guy is he's a right-hand man well the funny thing is about these individuals they are so far from enlightenment David and enlightenment is everything it's the only thing to live for to be to understand your place in this incredible universe want and to want for nothing except to just breathe fresh air these individuals they live toxic lifestyles I mean they literally fuel their body with the alcohol that's true and not just alcohol but over fatty food and they're all sexual perverts or most of them are because they've been through the public school system so they've been getting touched they've been beaten from an early age yeah they've been getting touched up since they were nine years you know not supposed probably six years old and this just if you don't work through these things which those individuals haven't because if they had they wouldn't be doing the job they would have to leave that job behind because it's so toxic yeah and here's the irony we don't just recognize that these incredibly toxic individuals but we we vote for well I don't I've never voted but the the the can we say the naive public go and go to the polls every four years or whatever it's and vote these sociopathic losers in a game under the mistaken belief that that they actually like care about you yeah not knowing that they serve one function and that's to protect the um the the the power hold the stronghold the Humphreys uh in the in the uh the mandates of government yeah exactly but I've got one for you David um tell me what you think of this my uncle um he's no longer with us now he lived a life uh to excess you could say right um a role model you might say just yeah if you you do that stuff if you live a rock and roll life you are going to die young you've got to learn to reign it in at some point right well yes if you want to be able to sit back and relax but I can't argue with somebody who goes out in a blaze of glory how what happened with your uncle well it wasn't a blaze of joy it was incredibly sad like like obesity diabetes alcoholism and all of that sort of stuff but anyway he found a new life for himself in Phuket okay haven't been a small scale kind of a dealer in this country um and anyway I didn't need to sort of go into his story too much but he came home to the UK once and he brought his his Thai wife wife with him and we're at my my late mother's house it was Chris we want to roll a joint and he thrust at me this tub like the sort of tub you have nutritional pills in with with a peel off the white one okay peel off lid he thrusts me this tub it was you know about so big um if you're listening on iTunes we're talking like four five five inches high okay and um I peeled off that it's full of weed Thai Thai Thai weed right and I sit to him how the hell because you know for friends at home it's the death penalty in Thailand probably still to this day but it always was for any kind of trafficking of narcotics so yes if you get caught at the airport the penalties are very much different from anywhere else and um I said how did you bring I mean I expected him to say I had it's hidden in my suitcase or had it down my pants or something like he went I'll just tell him your pocket I'm like okay is that does that technique work and I've been I've been through a few airports I know it's yeah and he said well I got to the uh the the customs but like the the security check for it and the woman in Thailand pulled me to one side and said as they do sir can I have can I have a word with you and she said could you empty your pockets he says so I just emptied everything into the the tray she picked up this pot peeled the lid off looked in and went put the lid on handed it back to me so um what do you make of that no what was what was your uncle's opinion that she knew what was in it but just couldn't be stuffed going on with it or she thought this was this conversation was about 15 if not 20 about 15 years ago now so I honestly can't remember but I have I don't know if she thought it was herbs she just didn't know I mean I'm sure being in that job you know what what we I was just thinking of the smell but that aside okay it could have been the thing going in his favor I I knew somebody once who um was on a kind of did a suicide run you could say from Costa Rica and I said well where did you have it did you get somebody to pack it or did you just no I just rolled it up a kilo of coke and my jeans and threw them in the suitcase and that was it it got through nobody even checked it but in this situation because your uncle didn't make any attempt to conceal it he didn't get nervous when it was produced it was sitting there on the tray with a whole lot of other stuff now the the woman who was checking it was security wasn't she that was her job making sure there's no bombs on board or weapons so uh she wasn't customs um and she she wasn't particularly you know a narcotics person as such though as you say working there you'd know all about it um I I suppose we've only got two ways of going on it either she's okay even if it was pressed squashed in to this economy multi-vitamin sized pill container it was still by weight that would be probably around 300 350 grams tops I guess because even if you squash it it's still quite a lot it's not in her hands a bomb not um you know sulfuric acid or something like that so it hasn't triggered any of the things she's you know programmed in to respond to and the fact that here it is your uncle is not saying oh I can explain that or whatever um but oh by the way when you keep saying you peeled off the the in the seal in the beginning had he glued that on that in a seal I'm guessing so um so if he'd done that and she and she peeled it off and then yeah whatever it was um you recall what the label was I mean if it said something like uh long time ago but whatever the label was no doubt didn't match in any way I like to think I like to think it was like the time I was working in a supermarket in Norway and I'm sat on the checkout and with the cameras that were the TV screens for the cameras and there were only two in the shop and generally speaking Scandinavian are the most honest people on the planet you could you know if you drop your wallet on the pavement and you return the next day to go and pick it up someone will be stood there and they'll say you know it's very inconsiderate of you to drop your in the middle of the pavement somebody could fall over that you know that's good I like that I mean I thought you were going to say you know we're waiting for you to come back for a while but he's gone the extra bit you know you're making a public nuisance in yourself leaving money where anybody could slip on it but I'm in this supermarket and I'm sat on the tour and a guy comes in and he's got a bag over his shoulder and I just looked up at the camera and I saw him I looked up at the TV screen and I saw him go to the back of the shop where all the beer was and he went grab two um I don't know they're like three or three liter bottles of beer or sort of two liter bottles put them in his bag and then he made a beeline out and as he uh as he came past me I I said something like I mean did he buy anything at all to at least no no no he made a beeline out yeah and as he passed me I said drink a duong me I said you like you drink beer or I said you like liquor duong you like beer and he went I wasn't I wasn't um you know the supermarket's gonna can take a bit of a hit I'm sure yeah anyway it was probably either wait if it was wealthy enough so he could buy it without you know it affecting the rest of his day he probably would have paid for it because he from what you say he sounds a bit nervous and so this was not something perhaps he did routinely but I understand what you mean even you know a job like that you think well am I seriously gonna run down chase this guy down the street and take the beer back of him just to you know spare the supermarket the loss of you know a hundred kroner or something like that well like fuck no you know good luck to him skull yeah well I I how long did you work there for um that was the best part of about six months uh it was actually in in Oslo sounds like the steadiest job you've ever had six months let me let me tell you a few things about it because it was fascinating first of all they had a they had a policy the supermarket I won't say I probably better not say the name now because of what I'm gonna tell you but they had this policy David if you could find an item on the shelves right and it went out of date either either if it went out of date on this day right yeah you could take it up to the counter and say excuse me this goes out of date today and they say okay it's yours literally give it to you for free right wow they must have had people in there doing that yeah if if you found an item that had already gone out of date legally they couldn't let you have it because it was out of date they would they would give you the value in money so what I started to do it became a hobby for anyone with that kind of I don't know not scavenging mine but but you know people beach combing let's be beach combing much better expression so I started to finish my work in the suit and then I'd go around all the others and one time I looked in the in the freezer apartment there's there's six sides of salmon and they've all gone out of date I'm just pick them up take them to the check the checkout and of course the side of salmon over there you're talking it's probably about 40 quid maybe yeah yeah it's still not cheap yeah I mean it's not cheap here but this is Norway of all places so they're giving me what do they call it lux don't they yeah lux yaks or grah grah lux grah lux when they bury it which is an ancient Scandinavian fish preserving technique for anyone who's wondering why you bury fish you do yeah I think they do that yes in sweden i've seen it and it stinks I haven't too that's yeah that's in Iceland they call it hawk hole which is a shark that's that's got so much your uric acid in it you can't eat it do you have to bury it for a year then you come back and this is all kind of you know inuit sort of technique but so that was that that that's what I would do um but the other thing as well I mean was that enough to um I don't know get a subsistence level living out of uh scanning the shelf well here's the thing right I was I worked there for six months and on the first month my pay came through and I went to the boss and he was a very nice Scandinavian is generally speaking they're a bit conservative but they're generally really nice and I said boss look you've you've I've got a student's pay I'm I'm I'm an adult they've given me the what you'd pay a student you know the minimal the minimum below minimum wage even and it never got sorted out despite me continually asking so by the time six months come around I kind of got a bit cross about it David and so what what happened was I get myself in trouble here but somebody would come in and you'd get a couple of things you'd get people that didn't want to cute cute cute or people in a hurry right they'd come running in and say Chris 40 smokes whatever the brand was there and you you'd give them 40 smokes and as you went to hit the tail they just thrust the money at you and they'd run well interesting at which point I began turning to the tail because there's a camera on me typing it in but without actually hitting a key and then surreptitiously hitting the till open button and the tail would go chinching and I put them you know put the money in close it and just making out that he'd give me the exact money and the other thing would happen is someone would come up save a crate of beer that's a lot of money you know talking it's very high tax on beer isn't it I talking maybe it's 50 pounds or something it's it's quite I mean one beer can be 50 crowns so 10 beer 500 crowns so it's so that's about 50 if it's 20 beers in a pack it's a hunt about 100 pack I mean it's quite a lot yeah so they come through put the beer on the thing on the conveyor belt I would turn I would scan it into the the tail right and then I turn and I'm rather than I'm right and no that's what I do I'd scan it into the tail and then I'd hit check price if someone has said Chris can you check the price for that for me I'm yeah sure so I'd scan it hit check price they'd look at the number that would come up you know let's just call it 100 krona yeah 50 50 crones and I'd look at them they'd then naturally hand me the money as you would still not real isn't I haven't put this in the till yet I've just hit no I've just hit the check price and then I hit the till open bunny button you get so good at calculating in your mind the price when you do a job like that you can yeah your mass just becomes instantaneous an instant in my mind I know what change I've got to give them I've hand them the change and then I just hit the button on the tail which said print last receipt okay and then the machine would go and the paper would come out and they'd never read it yeah by which time they're halfway out the shot yeah yeah and I didn't do it an awful lot David I have to say but in all the times I did it nobody ever turned around and said to me oh can I have the receipt had they done so I would have gone yes sorry it's not gone through properly I would have just screwed it up thrown it in the bin and then just and rung us through kind of can I have that back and then then done it sort of properly but let's just say I made a couple of quid to go traveling travel I mean that supplemented your wages commensurate which of the level of your value I like to think that it was balancing the books after all they were paying you as a student and study you did studied the formation of the till very well yes and one other thing I did I'm sorry if I'm giving young people no no no friends listening believe me believe it from someone who's been there I'll find being law abiding is just so much the best way not having to look over your shoulder and and wonder when your your liberty is going to be taken away it's tiring yes it's it's please believe me this is my young misspent youth but having given all those disclaimers give us another juicy bit okay so I get a bin bag you know big industrial kind of bin bag and when it was just me in the shop I I I knew where all the cameras looked so I knew how to tip it's a bit like a tom cruise movie I knew how to round the shop and all of that and I'd go around the shop and I just pick all my favorite food so tens of this joint joints of this a big pack of beer and I'd fill this bin bag and then I'd go and throw it in the skip and of course after locking up that evening if either I locked up or someone else locked up I'd just leave it and then I'd cycle back after hours in the dark again avoiding any the camera which is pointing sort of at yeah and I'd go open the skip pull out this huge bag of food and oh that sounds like a perfectly sensible way of getting through and wisely didn't knock off for the day and immediately run around to the skip that would have well I mean it would have worked once but if somebody saw you regularly going around to the skip you know it's that funny thing where I don't I I think karma is definitely a thing I think I've paid for my behaviors in life I think I've balanced the books I've paid the pipe a big time and I and I'm glad to learn from these lessons because it's meant my life is pretty balanced now but you've got to remember Norway have been blessed with actually living next to one of the biggest oil fields in the world I know it's extraordinary isn't it they have a sovereign wealth fund that's actually worth something whereas every other country I can think of in the west owes its gross net income several times over in in debts that they just rack up especially they say yet their their citizens are taken care of from cradle to grave for next several generations due to that it's if you go sick in Scandinavia Sweden or Norway you don't just get some like dole pay out for 50 quid a week or whatever it is we get here you get your full salary really I had a friend Steiner yeah which funny enough translated means stoner stoner and he was a big big stoner but he went he went away on one of these factory fishing ships where they scoop up all the fish and they've got the crew on board to fill it them as they go so they may double the money and get it tomorrow really quick and it gets frozen on board doesn't it it's frozen on board it's it's a you know big refrigeration ship as well and it's very boring hard work I did it on shore based in a factory for I managed nine months of it and he hated the job so much he took the fillet in life and they've raised a sharp and he just went wow pulled it across his palm put a a gash so deep it you can see the sinews of his oh but all the cables were revealed but he did it and then of course he got seven months off work full pay full pay and that's full pay even back then was probably two to three thousand pounds a month and we're talking again 20 20 20 years ago so probably about five five thousand pounds five or six thousand pounds now it was a lot of pay that you get on those ships I suppose though when you it sounds pretty gruesome but on the other hand um at least he didn't like stick a hand into a thrashing machine or or have his leg broken I've seen people with a new guy once who wanted to get to an outside hospital from within a prison that um went to the gym and and put his leg between two benches and said to a colleague oh listen grab that 50 kilo uh major weight there and drop it on my leg and after three attempts it shattered it into like a trillion little bits and um lucky bob that was his name he never walked properly again after that and didn't stop him trying to escape but your friend didn't you know made himself for life as bad as that cut was you could see it's on a thing that will heal up uh he might have gone a little deeper than perhaps he should have but you know David have you seen um uh billy's film oh billy moors yeah uh prayer before dying is that one yeah well I have and um I don't know what you thought about it but I thought it looked very good got a friend in uh lives in Thailand who um uh is wealthy and throws money into things and he um put some into that I don't know if it it must have done at least well enough to you know pay for itself um but as I say I thought it looked very good didn't have a great resemblance to life in there but it was don't you think after all more of a sports film than anything else you know young man overcomes adversity and uh fights his way out of trouble um and so it was it was good from that point of view as I say not only a passing resemblance to the real way of living in there because you know you know yourself that in captivity most of the time is intensely boring um and sitting around listlessly wondering whether you can improve the quality of your food or or something like that what's it like then because billy obviously had a big um yabba problem there so that's man well yabba I've um I kind of lost interest in the personal use of speedy things at relatively young age because they're in a hangover was so the fatigue afterwards so draining and the temptation to think oh look I just can't get through today with that little snifter of that to keep going and then anyway but the yabba thing friends tell me lingers I mean it's very slow to metabolize so it's kind of within your system for a long time and its name became muddied in Thailand and didn't need much mudding anyway due to truck drivers um going constantly banging at it and then getting to the point where they're not exactly sleeping at the wheel but they're no longer a conscious human being with the capacity to operate a truck plowing into half a dozen people um so um it it was considered you know quite serious but the life in the prison was um mostly a lot of people confined in spaces you know when people first come in anywhere um they get the worst of it and Thailand was no exception the searches were ridiculously thorough going in they especially if you were tired they'd cut the soap bars in half they'd squeeze the shampoo out onto a piece of newspaper as with every other liquid and and there was a behinder what would it be an old dirty beach towel for modesty was a couple of trustees with wearing gloves with two brown fingers and I think the fact that it was two fingers is insult to injury as they bent over but the fact that the gloves were made of wool was not helpful um I dodged all of that by various being a foreigner things and the chains but they they go into so the the first night in the first few nights you can get the worst of it so that you'll be encouraged to make things better for yourself we were lined up like sad deans it was so crowded in the first night cell um head to feet head to feet all down the line and then the um the cell boss the trustee who runs the first night reception thing with his little square of lino over in the corner and his own two sub trustees which were his servants and he makes a long speech to the newcomers which translates roughly as well I'm firm but fair you know he's sort of like the drill instructor for every us how we've ever met since school on went uh one thing I can't abide is people taking a shit in the place now that's out of the question at a pinch you can go and take a wee but be quiet about it nothing after midnight anyway um and then I think from there another place which was pretty awful packed in there the fan didn't work overcrowded bedbugs you're on the alert for all night squashing them because you could see a line of squashed bedbugs around the black and brown edges of the cell rim uh where people had fought these off so come morning you're ready and willing to strike a deal and the trustee because prisoners run everything in the place even opening the cell doors in the in the for the morning let out and locking them up the guards just stroll around with their own gang of uh odious trustees forwarding and laughing at their crappy jokes and uh giving them leg massage but as you know from major yourself uh there's nothing like a whole bunch of people in a small space to um bring out the organizational abilities of everyone and the Thai Chinese who really uh Chinese ties run everything in Thailand event you remember some years ago the government even they got sick of seeing Chinese names at the helm of every company at the management levels of the the graduations at the technical schools the engineers running the power station so they made the um Chinese ties of the second generation get Thai names of which they chose from a handful that had a phonemic sound that mirrored something lucky in in Mandarin but nonetheless it was still the Chinese running it and no exception with prison the Chinese ran the general store called the coffee shop for some reason and it kind of sold everything from rice to oh it had a little barbershop next door that was a subconcession you could go in there with two rickety ancient 1920s barbershop chairs in there um and you got there was some really Frankie Valley pictures around an early Presley um fading color photographs of the available hairstyles a little lending library a complete with um so you paid a fee for a a novel or something like that but most of its business was in um low-level uh pornography which had been put every page of the porno magazine for rent had been laminated punch hold and put in a folder uh and numbered so it had to be returned with all the numbers sequential so hadn't been torn out and thoughtfully laminated with something it could be sponged off and it was good form to sponge off your returned porno book in the morning at the corner of the general store was a bank you know it had a little teller's window cash was outlawed but the guard sitting there got his 10 and he took that from the 25 percent that the Chinese bankers in there had managed to do something how they got to your official prison account to get it what they did was and you saw none of the machinery of how they work this out was um they allowed prisoners who were well behaved to spend a small amount of their private money uh to buy i don't know jar of coffee or something that was the wedge in the door and the foreigners are a bit more uh of their money because they eat foreign things you know um i don't know what it was that we ate but caviar and champagne but it certainly seemed that way with what we were paying and so for every um uh every thousand baht that you take out in cash you had to um pay 12 50 or something like that uh so that was a good little business for them and not only that the cash that you've got you walk around the corner and you're paying it back to the same general store that store mind you had to bung the building chief uh and there were 10 major buildings each with 1500 people prisoners in there um that building chief wanted a big chunk of the profits from the coffee shop general store um even they had a kind of a very secretive phone booth in a little storeroom within the coffee shop with one of the earliest um because when i was there was 93 to 96 so um mobile cell phones were um in existence but the network was poor but nonetheless they had one so i could uh could make a call um and managed after um various bits of hell to overcome to get through a call to my friend michael uh that i've been business partners with but also a good friend and he hadn't heard from me for over a year and some rumor that i've been grabbed in uh asian was facing the death penalty and by the time i got to use that phone it must have been three o'clock in the morning when i connected through to his and um you know i'm pouring out or beginning to pour out a long explanation of what happened and why and everything michael said look they would don't explain anything we might be cut off on this line just tell me where i've got to be and what i've got to bring and that's what you want from a friend isn't it chris i mean sweet uh and i just i just want to tell you this wonderful story when tor hayadol built the kontiki raft so the bolsterwood raft to sail across the south pacific um it's a treacherous journey there's no like they haven't got a backup ship or anything like no it's a raft with a sail and all they've got is a world war two radio that they can get the odd kind of you know radio hang on if if they're lucky they'll get someone in bloody the blood of us talkers yes exactly right so and and when if they make it to the islands that they were trying to prove that ancient indigenous populations did even then they've got these treacherous reefs that they'll land on with these thunderous rollers coming in that will just they can just wipe them out and kill kill drown them all right so yeah it's it's what we would call a suicide mission one of those ones where you put the ad in the paper volunteers required uh mustn't mind dying yeah let's have a very feeble grip on reality and uh love of life yeah so he let me just finish this one he he he put the shout out to a guy called torstein rabbi who was i think he was the only swede on the raft and and he's this guy they've all been they've all been resistance up in norway during the war so all hard as nails they've been living in the snow eating moss and all this and spying on the the german ship and and stuff so they're not they're not opposed to you know harsh conditions so tor haido sent a telegram to torstein rabbi and said i'm sailing a bolster would raft across the pacific to prove that indigenous communities traveled this way i need volunteers and and the reply torstein rabbi sent back was i'm in so every time every time i'm asked now to do a challenge with i'm i'll say i'm in yeah that's the the answer that you want and tells everything i was just picturing that um the con contiki wasn't contiki yeah that was his first first expedition and as you say it was um a demonstration that was feasible to cross the atlantic um which i think everybody accepts that certainly uh scandinavian fishing extended that far to well newfoundland anyway yeah it's funny that they actually modern dna science has shown that the the polynesian islanders you know easter island this kind of that they actually are not related to south americans i think they're more related to new new zealand so they'd come that's right i mean that that is as far uh which way i'm going here east as you can imagine isn't that easter island um i think the thing they didn't realize is they didn't understand how steerable a raft is if you understand the technology right you have these things called centerboards that you shoved down it threw the raft into the water you you can have any number of them configured in various configurations right it means when the wind hits that sail you can actually steer against the wind and have complete control over your boat as opposed to the theory that you're just at the in the mercy of the wind yeah yeah so uh that that isn't there a kind of sail arrangement too that does a similar i forget the the nautical term for it but it's effectively when you look at the wind pattern and where it's going it's as though um you're sailing into a wind that should be pushing you back yeah where it but it's really a very close sideways angle where the wind is crossing that sail if you've done it right and instead of pushing against it is sucking it out so um the relative air pressures propel you well not absolutely forward but um on an angle so you can zigzag your way across the world um against what would be um a fairly standard trade wind though talking in essence isn't it yes yes that's right um what happened to him tor hadal i know that was um there was contiki too which was a slightly different design but there were also people who built um viking error replica boats that pretty easily enough seemed to go over there i mean when you look at them you don't you get a feeling these people must have been pretty hardy uh to to go out there with um okay that'll have a barrel no doubt with fresh water and a couple of back up one sealed so they don't get wrecked and um i don't know much fishing they do but um they'd have um everything that could be preserved by salting or or whatever and asking incredible isn't it they just lie down by their all when they need to sleep if they get wet sodden through that's it they're wet for the trip then um they've got a small chest of their possessions and they just go out raiding yeah yeah i think i remember uh reading details of the um viking raid down the same and an attack on paris um so i guess the real art to it will be figuring how you can get your loot back if that's what you're planning there was a it's been a quite a good set of studies in the last couple of years on using you mentioned genetics and day DNA tracing with the Easter Islanders but also with um the the accepted view of um how britain moved from the kind of people of the last of the romans in when it was a 410 ad or something that they uh officially left but of course they would have people who lived here at the time would have been well romanized for you know a couple of generations after that until they couldn't get the the tiles repaired or the hypercost fueled up underneath the their villas um but i think the real i can imagine just the economics it would have been the big difference if you haven't got a paid for army a occupying places and spending money it'd be like Bangkok uh went into a bit of a decline after the americans left vietnam uh a lot of the clubs closed so you haven't got uh post romans the insecurities too that it never shows you how stubborn in a way in in their their views the people were that they never other countries became very romanized in a sense if we look at um uh beyond italy to um to france and especially spain um what was called dasher and it was uh bulgaria today so much of their structures um remained administratively on the on the roman model um and when it was christianized after uh constant time um that kind of structure held but it didn't really hear but the the new studies of the dna seems to suggest that rather than a whole bunch of um scandinavians coming over here and um making the dominantly anglo sex and one from from the Celtic there is um a mix which is relatively peaceful your viking was more of a settler here uh than a looter because i'm guessing because it wasn't much to loot and it's expensive taking a loot back whereas um i'm sure a lot of property changed hands post roman and it there might have been because never been documented might have been a bit of a um a westward land rush you know after all scandinavians got limited um agricultural possibilities because uh it's much more seasonally strict whereas i think the land i can imagine a lot of more peaceful takeovers okay they came here and they might have had a little squabble but there's no there was no great finds of big battles or death or carnage and i do i suppose we have that to look back on that in the the lands in which we are speaking now have had relative peace for a couple of thousand years apart from what a crumb willy and civil war and a couple of catholic purges here and there a few crazy kings um but without any real effect and and yet um other countries have had disastrous things and a great sweeps of carnage and mongol invasions and uh and changes um where and yet um it was only i guess in the industrial revolution that um you know powered up britain to spread its wings a bit and go around and cause trouble in other parts of the world but at the same time you know export some oh a lot of railways anyway that's a good thing the gypo are expressed probably wouldn't exist did you ever take rail journeys for pleasure oh gosh yes you haven't lived a view if you haven't i mean some memorable ones spangkok to um it's not it doesn't go down as far as pukat does it pukat's an island but where um you can take the train uh from i think Chiang Mai i mean not one train but you change of people all the way down pass through Bangkok to the south to the malaysian border seratani seranat serat yeah um there's a crossing and i had some reason to check it out um i think it stops about um it used to stop about 50 miles shy of the border on the main line and there were buses crossing into Malaysia but i'm guessing now there might even be a proper rail link all the way down to the tip of Penang or something for all we know yeah i've i've um i mean did you get sleepers or just a bit of sleep on your seat or i've got i've got the sleeper from Bangkok down basically a state of state statement was staying at Kosamui so whichever way you get all right yeah wherever the ferry goes so i think it's seratani apologies if i've got that wrong i've done that trick which is just wonderful back in my drinking days you could buy a beer for 50p and just sit back in your chair come five o'clock or six in the evening they all come around say excuse me a minute sir they miraculously morph this chair into a bed comfortable bed me and my brother were um smoking joints out the window i've just dropped my brother in the shit there um yeah it was years ago yes it was a long long time ago but uh that was memorable i went from Moscow to st. Petersburg on one of the old just just a real old sleep sleeper train i got in the carriage there was a gentleman in there and i said hello and he said hello and uh that was the extent of his english i said english him he said um ruski and i said no he went portugese sing we both spoke portuguese so really he'd been um he'd been part of the rebel one of the rebel supporting the rebels for limo is it renan renan yeah um yeah something like that during this during during the civil war in Mozambique and i'd worked in Mozambique as a as a volunteer worker so so what were you doing uh what in a peaceful capacity volunteer worker was it yeah i taught in a street children's school for six months in a place called nicala porto and i'm just so lucky in my life david i can't believe i've had such incredible experiences like that on the on the edge of the indian ocean or the mozambique channel um well you know that's what we as as um english speakers at at worst that's what we can do where how many friends have you come across as well i i was a little kind of at the end of things then and so i taught english at uh something or other a local uh private school or a volunteer school my old friend uh john uh russell who was in in thailand uh with me for a while um after 20 years there finally let him go but he retired to um uh cambodia uh and lives there and that's one of his things that he does he he teaches um uh english and science at a local kind of free school and it's it's very very common i mean you don't get paid anything really if you're lucky you get a meal out of it or something like that but you do get um you make friends uh you get to meet the the regular teachers and um they'll help you out when we're another day you'll find accommodation so you know it is that a um english have an ability to survive uh on and not a great objection to you know taking that transition to to well you shouldn't and none of us should be too upset by having to live modestly though those who kind of adapt to that really uh are too tightly wound up in um the things they expect of life of the not just the material things but the social position and all of that nonsense which counts for nothing as you know um and it can be very relaxed encountered if this got you you you've lost the pressure to to meet i mean i'm you know looking at your life i am half surprised uh that you haven't um set up uh living in asia somewhere and um i don't know what doing but it's a conversation we have a lot in this house um i i will say paradise number one starts in our heads doesn't it yeah but secondly to have somewhere you can go out for a dip in the ocean every more i mean that that that that'd that'd be a dream wouldn't it that's like a double i mean i i've lived by the ocean here in the uk so i'm not that far away but it's a big difference plunging into a beautiful pristine blue sea in thailand than it is into the freezing cold uh you know where do you think would be uh where do you think it'd be good i always thought that the um the potential i mean there's only so much coast land in the world isn't there you know there's not going to get any more of it we'll actually get less of it as the seas rise um what happened to doggaland it's gone if we anything southern um cambodia um my enmar some of the uh lower islands down there that have serviceable links with thailand across the way well where do you think it'd be good to set up a near-do-wells last repeat hotel well i'm always going to say and i don't know how realistic this is now but off belize all right yeah there's a series of keys uh one of them's called kai kalka right and it's actually been split in half by a hurricane most so it's probably not the best place to to set up camp but i went there david and i've scuba dives i've been lucky to scuba dive in lots of locations around the world from from the arctic i've scuba dived in the antarctic i've scuba dived in gar i think i've scuba dived in argentina center america asia um egypt all these kind of places all red sea here's the thing most of the stuff you see on the dive sites in these places it's all dead the tourism has just killed every all the corals that dead that really yeah you go out in a group of maybe you're just 10 people in your dive expedition and you've got a guide that's showing you the local thing and they'll be like look look everyone crowds around with their underwater cameras and it's a little fish about that big and apparently it's like really rare but you don't really care about that then you go to belize right you're there in the blue hole for example big blue hole it's an underground cavern that's nice in pictures yeah very okay doc uh yeah it's black when you look down it's black it's black right you go down the wall of this crater and as an advanced diver you can go down 40 meters although you don't want to spend too long at that depth and you have to the deeper and longer you go you have to the stage your way coming back up yeah and also because air compresses at depth you breathe more of it a lot quicker and you can really get into trouble if you're not calculated your tanks properly yeah it's different now you have a dive computer on your wrist and it kind of tells you what to do but so I'm there I'm at the back of a group of fellow divers and the dive guides at the front and we're finning along and it's just it's wonderful it's it's just wetsuit no dry suit or anything and then the dive guide just just turns to me and says shark I turn around and out out of the deep blue come 12 sharks just swam right up to me literally just swam past my shoulder as if I wasn't even even there I reached for my dive knife just just as a precaution and the last shark was a bull shark so the the the other ones were fairly benign but there was a bull shark tagged on at the back of them uh bull sharks are known for the most attacks on on man not that I was in any way thinking that was a going to happen it was a beautiful experience but but but if you go in the national parks there that they've carefully preserved it's like hopping into a fish tank in your local pet shop it is just vibrant tropical fish everywhere huge lobsters like the locals they sneakily will put their mask and snorkel on go into the go into the nature reserve when and they'll stay down for 40 minutes with diving and they've got a metal gaff and they're basically going after the lobsters and they'll fill a huge bag um and it was just unbelievable to every guy if you do you see a big shark loads of other now this was um this was in Belize but it was on the keys you're saying off the coast yes off the coast and how is it set up is there a of course there's a dive center I guess but is there accommodation there yeah you just find um back then obviously it will all have changed now because this is a while ago but back then we had a guidebook it wasn't Lonely Planet because that was a bit cheesy that was kind of the main stream tourist the other one that was uh um a kind of somewhat grungier alternative to Lonely Planet it'll come to me but there was yeah there wasn't another one yeah there was Lonely Planet and then there was was it shoe string travel something on a shoe string yeah like they'd name a country um Central America on a shoe string and they've include places like for the Americas there was actually a deluxe book completely you know what very thorough yeah like like say crap analogy but port to wine you know or port to port to cider it was it was a real really refined book they put put a lot of effort into and it told you immediately you got to a place you went to the accommodation section right and you could go for the two star the three or the fourth so the four was like your you know the rits would be listed there the two or the maybe it was five star I don't know me but but would I just always go for the one star I'd get the cheapest dive I could find cockroach I'd hang up my mosquito net and and so in Belize that's what I would have done and you know in Belize uh um John McCaffey the um what was he the security programs for computers he was the founder of that company he went to uh to kind of as a sanctuary ended up in Belize got tangled up in a um a shooting there of a neighbor or something they're not saying he didn't but they're not saying he didn't uh and he kind of took off from there and got bailed in Costa Rica or something like that I don't know where he is now I mean it's always a bit of a he's dead now David oh that's right he died yeah he got suicided didn't he from what yeah yeah you're right I knew the reason that was the story was my head for something and uh what do you think that's uh uh it was a bit suspicious he's there's quite a few videos buzzing around of him on youtube where where in his where when he was on the on the hoof he did a lot of podcasts for people and he's an unusual sort of person wasn't he yeah quite an intense sort of guy but but you can tell what comes out his mouth he's lived a bit and he and he knows who's can pull in all the strings well yeah and he was um a good mathematician he uh um okay he sold the company early on and took the money and ended up living with some young kind of like half street girl uh but she was very attached to him and was always loyal to him but um it it okay what he says about believes I'll take with a pinch of salt because I used to have connections there when it had some very interesting banking for the independent minded person um you could set up a company there an issue um your banking cards to whoever you wanted it's just that when we were traveling and you'd have a say you went off with a new passport you'd want some uh credit cards to go with that uh especially so as the world changed and you couldn't do anything without using a card for it but rather than having a spin-off card an extra card from an account that was linked to something and the believes uh economy is a big banking sector so you could set your company up there and run it but it's unusual isn't it was British Honduras for a long time then uh had independence McAfee said it was notoriously corrupt and this and that and the other but yeah so what um you're going to expect that around that part of the world but we do think um I mean if we set up a hotel or or something that that would be stable enough environment for it um or pleasant enough to live in it is it is it it's full on tropical isn't it the weather yeah it's it's it's lovely I mean what we think of as tropical beaches as westerners very often you get to places and and it's not you're very surprised like for example Vietnam I thought Vietnam I just think tropics it's tropical yeah beaches are going to be paradise and no it's quite rugged there the the very rocky coastline wasn't it yeah rugged windswept coastline I don't mean rugged as in like normal I mean it's the winds blowing it's it's whereas as you know in Thailand you go to a beach oh some of them are great they're shattered and it's stunning absolutely stunning um Belize is that it's that one it's the snow is it okay yeah because I looked geographically and it seemed to have a lot of um in the more north in Belize you went in a lot of it was mattress kind of swamp land um and I'm mentioning all these mosquitoes but I think um so you would you'd be your inclination for your tropical haven would be more likely to be that way than say Asia it's it's a difficult one because I was in Australia for example and you you all my life I'm that age and and obviously you know this too David that that lots of poms emigrate to Australia because they think it's the land of milk and honey it's going to be this big big life and and I'm not saying it's not Australian incredible country especially when you get up into into the tropics but what I found is is I found the expats there were really bland almost no no yeah that can be the case you know they were just bland they were like a football shirt and not not much up top and I look at when you go to Portugal and you look at the expat a British community there they are pretty dull yeah yeah dull just not the sort of people you think not party animals anyway yeah or not even interesting people but I tell you what though if you were on the run or something that would be the place to mingle into like a not a particularly high low level Spanish away from the coast you know British expats nobody you could be splattered all over the TV news and your neighbors say I don't think I've seen that guy around no no yeah he's talking to her you've got quite a strong connection with Australia David haven't you I I never really yes of course and I spent many early years there yeah and a little when I was 12 I wasn't like one of the net channel nine networks um they had a junior news for kids and I read that for a while fell in love with my co-presenter I was 12 she was 17 it wasn't oh I've done that I've done that that hurts oh it was tragic I was uh very deeply moved and um she became a ballerina of all things I don't wonder what happened to her but it's the only ones that last isn't it I tell you what I wish you could bottle that oh the intense feeling that you had young love when you've got a crush on someone and they're older oh oh gosh you'll be sotted we went to France France on a school trip and we were like 10 years old and they'd got one of the former pupils to come as a sort of chaperone for the kids and she was the grand old age of 14 or something right yeah and she had boobs and everything and and and I I just developed this massive crush on her well it's how you were moaning about her uh well when we got back I had the most horrible holiday crush I just crawled into bed under the dewgame apparently I had all my clothes on out and my backpack still and I just crawled and then when we went back to school one of the teachers had kindly um taken all these wonderful photos with it with his decent camera and we had all the we had all the tanks on the beach at Aramonch and all this sort of stuff and every photo I bought had this girl picture of Lorna at Lorna in it and there she is on sitting on a tank and there she is out so the Eiffel Tower and they I bet I bet you treasured those photographs for years oh I don't know I've no idea where they are now I think they've long gone by the vibe but I met her in a pub about six or seven years ago and I did you and I bet you then there was no this was like meeting a totally different person I'm sure yeah the thing is though and this is the thing about I talk about enlightenment a lot being an enlightened person and and not is if someone came up to me in a pub and said do you know what I've got to say I had a massive crush on you like I'd really understand how important that was in that person's like I would I would now I probably wouldn't have done in years gone by in fact I can tell you I I the same thing happened to me um I won't I won't go into it it sounds like there's a story there Chris well yeah let's just say that that was quite a and did did this person let the crush on you ever express the depth of the love that was felt to you wow I I've gotta be careful yeah I know what you're heading with this I gotta be careful I say but my god she come up to me said this girl come up to me on a random night out I was in in in in in the city and and she went you're Chris do you remember me and I was like no should I she went and then she hit me with all this kind of undying love yeah I mean Baxter's holiday camp in 1968 yeah it was that kind that kind of that kind of like what was actually a one-night one-night romance but but the thing with this this Lorna was I think she was a bit kind of maybe not embarrassed but but she was like oh right okay and then I felt I felt the big idiot David for pouring my heart out well that's the thing is I mean ideally you want uh you want her to say it's oh yeah I remember you yeah you were a cute little thing or something you could have just said oh that is so sweet yeah thank you you know it but she was like oh really okay what does that mean you're my stalker now are you the guy that's been shitting in my letterbox I wonder who's been nicking my underwear off the line yeah uh it is um I think adults are very quick to dismiss and belittle what um preteens and and adolescents think about you know their attachments to things but um we do so at the loss of uh some of the things that remain only in uh deepest night time dreams when you know you you wake up and think wow yeah I remember because in a dream of course people embody different shapes and forms and personalities from the past but and you said you said well I really haven't felt that level of intensity about anything for uh I wonder whether heaven's like that that you you know you get back that sharp edge of sensation with with things but I don't know and perhaps uh the future of humanity lies in um I always suspected it might lie in simulated worlds where the intensity of our feelings is in a cranked up a bit to 11 on the old dial um what about the feeling and here's another one for you when you've just cleared customs and and it's all good and and you're away to your hotel and you're not I I'm not trying to discharge myself of any wrongdoings in this but I never actually I only ever took stuff for personal use so you wouldn't want to be nicked with it so when you clear the zone of death when I when I went through the airport in India I was on my way to Thailand and I had a blim of hash I had one of those animal watch straps develop develop once and I I'd always I either would place my my blend there and just put the watch strap over it or I do or I have Tiva sandals with the velcro and I'd pop it in the middle of there and by the time you put the velcro and sort of crush it down a bit it's pretty innocuous but but then of course what did they start doing they started scanning the shoes didn't they oh look there's lots of nuisance things um I uh I had a uh I did a bit of banking once uh the age of 16 and I had to wear a blonde wig and after that I realized that when you're wearing a full wig you have a little gap at the back of it that can hold a couple of ounces and in generally speaking nobody asks you to take your hair off but with the advent of terrorism a lot of things um you know you're right you didn't expect to get your shoes taken off even by not long before I retired I had to kind rewrite the manual for people traveling around you know as guidelines as to what to do with specific airports and they do this here and there like there was one out of uh where is it Aruba north of um Columbia if if you set off anything on the walkthrough on that um airport machine then they make you take shoes off for so for all the people doing footwear runs had to supply them with plastic belts and make sure the zips of their pants were also non-ferrous um it made everything you know quite a lot more more difficult like that I was going to ask you what's uh what's on your plate these days have you got um have you done any audio recordings of your your books no I wanted to talk about writing with you probably one of my favorite subjects well yeah I've just released the audio version of unforgiving destiny and um having recorded it I was going to say this to you you'll find if you do that it's a quite a bit of a different experience um listening to the audio version it's not just like because it happened to you and you're the one saying it it's not like um just a actor's narration of the thing it becomes its kind of unique form it's something um perhaps you're and a lot of people um that's certainly the the kind of uh viewers I get there might be 7 000 subscribers but I think all but uh only you know I don't know 500 of them are particularly avid book readers but um a lot of them like to listen and um you probably find the people who watch your videos flick from time to time at the screen but mostly they're listening yeah and what we're saying now will be listened to a lot more than let me run some practicalities for you so first off obviously you've got the perfect voice to narrate any book let alone your own book well yeah I didn't have to hire somebody and I thought it was better coming from yeah and you're very very measured when you speak David which is what you need isn't it you need to be uh consistent um look that was the great hurdle the technical one in the beginning I had to understand what it's run by a real mafia the amazon audible thing they're the only game in town and even the big publishers have to count out to them now their recording standards are quite narrow it must be between minus 18 and minus 24 I can just solve that on even on this this isn't my I've got sure microphones so basically the best ones yeah sure that are good yeah but also just this is cheap yeti blue I can hit all the levels for for audible once you understand how to use audacity yeah yeah no it works fine you need a probably you could use the yeti maybe add a pop filter on it because that does have an effect anyway the the timings for it you need a half to one second before each chapter the chapters can't go longer than 120 minutes you leave three seconds at the end of it there's some other minor formatting issues like it has to be in a certain kind of mono but all that's you could deal with all of that so you could produce your audio book instead of going to an outside company providing you pad the room up with enough blankets you can knock it out yourself rather than paying what would be about the equivalent of 11 or 12 grand to get involved with the studio how long did it take it took me a long time because when I listened to it back and I listened to a lot of other recordings on the edit for it I decided to take out most of the breaths between speak and between sentences and even in parts of sentences except where they were part of a bit of dialogue or it was necessary for the effect where I was surprised or I needed a the intake of breath was important and something's you know action and gasping for breath but most of the routine ones I took out which took a lot of time you don't have to but and I've also found that listeners to them often listen to them at multiplied speed at one and a half times sometimes more and if the breaths are in there then they can stand out there is a you can use a very active this very carefully in audacity you can import from I think they're called noikis filters they're around about on the web it's a noise gate what it is as it's audacity is listening as the level drops off say when you've stopped speaking and you take in a breath that breath on the recording levels is only at about uh well it's like minus 35 db or something so you can adjust the noise gate to cut out anything that's there but I also wanted to cut it out in terms of time not just the sound of the breath so that was a bit of fiddling but I don't think I'd recommend probably against it don't worry about the breaths especially with your story which has got action in it it's got despair it's got highs it's got lows I think more personality comes through when it sounds like a living person I was too affected by the kind of robotic examples that amazon were giving me and the turnaround time's a lot quicker too it used to be months before you'd hear back from them because a human being had to listen in scammers of course they were getting robots to read out text calling it a book banging it up getting uh oh yeah the nightmare so they they had to get a human involved at least to scan through the chapters did you get the audible plug-in the checker yeah yeah I've got that and it will sometimes tell you something that you can't credit I mean you've made your little studio as quiet as possible you put up a bit of foam and so on but um you you the chapter is too long you can't check the whole thing it'll be too slow and it won't give you much information but you say you take a two three minute section of it run it through the checker acx checker and it says your noise floor is is too noisy you know it's above the minus 60 which is that cutoff point but it might not necessarily be the case and um so you don't you can hear it if it's too noisy but here's the thing they would don't want absolute silence between the parts you're speaking and not speaking or the beginning the end because the machine's got to pick up the yes a new chapter has started or yes a chapter is finished so they want a little what do they call it room tone uh in there there's a way you can copy and paste that isn't there well I did that in the end because I was manipulating the um taking out sections which were pretty dead like minus 120 db which is virtually no sound uh to make sure that at least the beginning and ending um room tone was accurate I made some room tone at minus 72 db uh and cut and paste those in there so that they were always consistent but it's worth doing there's some um if you go ahead with it I'll tell you some other pitfalls about it um in the way they do their accounting they let them do returns you see uh and canny subscribers don't will save their credits on audible by returning a certain amount of books they're like given seven days to return it and you know what audible is a subscription thing so they get their money regardless of what somebody listens to or doesn't listen to they when a book gets returned they claw the money back from you your your slice of the royalties when it doesn't cost them anything when it doesn't affect their subscription they still get their money why should you pay um it's quite unjustified and some people but on the other hand I'm looking at my first couple of weeks figures it's I've had one return out of 400 sales so wow um it's as Sean Adwood said to me don't worry about that it's it's nothing they're uh you know you can rely on them to have worked out the algorithm so they can but they make sure that they don't lose their money and it's only us the suckers at the cold face of the entertainment industry you could say it and it's most general um I think you should take all of your catalogue and read it through I I I've been working towards doing it for so long now I've I've got um my podcast manager Luke hello Luke has come on board and I'm gradually putting everything his way but the training to be able to do YouTube which we're having like three hour training sessions it's funny I I've no doubt there's probably people watching now that think oh it's YouTube it's just to like put your zoom on and then chuck it up when you whoa whoa you think of the editing time I've looked at your edits and they're they're quite complex and they're they're good now um I if I've got silly ideas myself and thought oh I'll put background pictures of this and I'll make sure my the part I'm speaking about lines up with this bit of background animation I thought it slows the whole thing you know you've got to set aside a whole day to um edit the thing into shape even and um the the editing programs some of them are good but you need a pretty powerful computer to make it run on a reasonable time length otherwise you're standing at the lift waiting for the numbers to come down all the time fortunately we've got the computer but that's the minimal thing really I mean that's that you at least you can pay money and buy that thing yeah yeah we can't buy time and and that's uh what none of us have enough I suppose the the issue is that I I get up anywhere between five and six thirty so fairly early riser and because sport or fitness is part of what I do then I've got to go for my run I haven't got to I I love to go for my run in the morning so I start work very early what time do you go to bed uh oh well this is the thing I don't generally finish work till nine every night I take time off after my my lad gets back from school obviously to spend with him to eat with him to watch it some telly to go out and kick a ball around or whatever but I need to put that in and work till probably nine or ten every single night from five five or six in the morning just to make just to get through your day properly just to get YouTube sorted I'm not saying make any money from it then you know I'm saying just to get the videos up and no I no we don't make what I said I haven't monetized mine and I don't think it's any hope of it but um I in theory um whatever else we do uh whether it be books or whatever uh should be producing enough income so you can keep on doing what you're doing well this is it Luke Luke's helping me out and I'm gradually he's he's a becoming a wizard at editing he he's an audio guy anyway because he's um a guitarist in the in the the world's most popular u2 tribute band which is what what's it called YouTube YouTube all right I get it yeah and he does my social media which is another that's nightmarish anyway I mean just to respond to comments and things oh it's just such a drain on resources and time so basically Luke's doing that and the reason is I I need to move on with my life I need to be coaching speaking and doing the audio books and and writing more books and but it's catch 22 if you're not a millionaire you can't pay people millions of pounds to do all this stuff for you you you have to work with what you've got not only that and um I've often asked Sean how do you manage to knock out another book every uh uh nine months or year and a half or something I just don't seem to be able to wedge that time in um yeah I dictate it so I'm gonna wherever I am I go straight on my phone recording thing and gets typed up uh yeah I have no idea how he manages to do oh he's lost his girlfriend I mean he's got no social life um but he's determined sort of fellow um you know we were going to do a thing on the Isle of Man which was a talkfest thing but um he pulled out of that because to take three days off to travel somewhere to do something like that the loss to him of output which he's committed to to to keep his channel up he's got 700 000 subscribers which is good but the demand on that is content content content and when it comes to people like us and not making anything off the channel uh unless we if we had 10 books out there that were doing okay and and you new readers listeners watchers were coming in through the um through the youtube channel then okay you start to see a living but without 10 books uh it's not like we're short of an idea for 10 books I get them every week um but uh you know I don't want it to be shit really I'd like to research something that find out something more I don't know about or or why something and also you get kind of sick of biographical stuff after a while there's other people and things you've come across that you think now there's a story in that people would like to know about that um if you get a podcast going you'll get some advertising money for it if it's very very popular there are some murder mystery ones uh I think suspect was one of the first big ones uh I don't know how it's really works I I might know in the end of the week because I'm on Friday I'm recording for the Michael Anthony show which is some kind of a podcast I have no idea what the download numbers are so it's going to be an interesting time now David for for podcasts and channels because obviously during this recent fiasco everyone was locked you know under house arrests so many people started a podcast what oh yeah you're right about that everybody in their dog thinks they've got a youtube channel in them or something what what they probably didn't realize is when you go back to work if you think you can work full time and do a podcast unless you're incredibly loaded and you can pay people to do everything for you which they're then going to do pretty much second rate possibly because they don't know you and what then your your your podcast is going to crash so not only that if they're hobbyists who are doing it on a whim they can drop out in a crucial moment just when you're building up the numbers to the other side of the coin of course there's not so many people watching podcasts now because everyone's gone back to what to their daily lives so lots of things have dropped down for us on the other hand we're strong we're still going we're a very popular uh yeah um look a lot of those people had no uh real content uh how depressing is it when you see some absolute half-wit on TikTok with extraordinary numbers who uh goes on for 24 seconds uh blows raspberries for the first 10 seconds turns around and fats at the camera and then he's got eight million people going I love that my grandson comes up and shows me all this shit every day that's the thing I call it the satanic algorithm if you if you put evil stuff out then by evil I don't mean like dressing up and killing sheep or whatever I mean if you put stuff out that it's just bad for young people your statistics will go through the roof oh if they get told they're not not supposed to watch this then and they'll draw them in yeah but it's just anything that anything that uh triggers the narcissistic left brain pleasure receptors pleasure now and of course you're right I see we're getting at the um the level of response that somebody growing up now would be instant gratification instant return uh demanding low capacity for focusing on something and taking something I notice with anybody who all of the kids you know around within my family and whatnot for the most part if I try and explain to them some technicality or how a steam engine works or whatever it might be I can see them drifting within 35 seconds because there hasn't been an exploding cigar so the the irony here the chat that we've just had this chat that that people are watching now is not just one of the greatest conversations that's ever taken place but it's more value than anything that has ever been uploaded to tiktok ever in history well that's not a very high about to jump over but I know what you're getting at you know this is true watching someone dance in their underpants or whatever the hell yeah it triggers your brain for five seconds and then you get bored see watch another one and that just oh oh oh it's a sheep's gone shopping wow oh it's a pig riding a cow no no and and not only the content people are in denial about um where the demographics shift up to very popular with uh 99 percent of guys between the ages of 18 and 31 um I was showing something the other day uh she's funny isn't she she's not funny she's a bimbo she's cute she's cute as hell but that's all she's got uh that's why well frankly all your wankers out there are watching it it's um it's it's more but I think um quality content will pay off in the long run you'll get people um certainly hopefully and it will look back upon your material and think oh no I've got a I've got more to see here I can go into this and you know I'll say what I should explain for our friends listening it stuff David and I are talking about now and I'm not saying we're up there with a great orators or what what what what what what what what what I mean is it's stuff like this conversation that when I was young I would have just been all years picking up on all the little nuances about travel and passports and Thailand and bought and I'd just be I'm gonna do that one day I am gonna I am gonna track and it was that curiosity and that interest in not just life in general but an investment in my life that got me everywhere I ever wanted to go around the planet every single place I ever wanted to go I've been I've been that's good that's uh it's why the podcast is called bought the t-shirt right but and the thought that had someone introduced me to say Xbox at nine years old and and TikTok at at 13 years old and and then Instagram at 14 or whatever the age is that I would have spent instead of having the most amazing life of adventure really being a happy fulfilled person now that I'd still be my age playing pretend soldiers or yeah no oh I know what you mean there's a there's a huge gulf of difference in that to a life lived in a synthetic simulation of one that's not even real I even put out a video once say it's three o'clock in the morning what the hell are you watching this for get out and do something you sad sack yeah I don't I don't judge people I understand it all David but they'll be pulled out there that are listening now that go do you know what Chris I I get what you're you know I get it I I we learn by experience don't we you can't you can lead a horse to water and all that sort of stuff that's true and that's true but if but if someone listening now thinks do you know what yeah I'm not suggesting you smuggle stuff across borders folks but I am suggesting you want to see a bit of this plan you want to get a back well look okay uh and I think the life I've lived uh oh on the one hand I wouldn't want to get so deep and dark on the other hand I'd be reluctant to trade off the things I've seen and the things I've learned now if somebody can vicariously sack the useful parts out of my miserable existence uh and gain some understanding so that when they travel they know what they're looking for and the same from your material and your life then it's a good thing they haven't wasted their time so hopefully they'll do that well you know Chris it's been two and a half hours I see that we've been rattling on and the call of not the wild but the call of the lunch is very strong and I don't blame you David it's been uh wonderful I'll send you this video as soon as it's yeah whenever yeah yeah that's fine that's good please look after yourself come back and talk to us soon mm-hmm uh it'll be we yeah we should do this a little more often because I think it was uh must be nine months ago now or something yes I don't know still and good to see you're looking healthy obviously you're enjoying your morning runs I'm just as fit as I've ever been I think in um 51 years old I'm doing this still doing the stuff I did at 18 in the marines we did a uh group of us veterans did a nine mass speed march the other day for charity yeah well now be careful no one you dropping did from somehow today I don't think I'm quite there yet although I've got a I've got a bit of a weekend coming up I must say but um all right then good to see you and um uh if anybody's got any questions they can always ask them down below and we'll probably even get around to answering them some yes we'll put all the links both of us below the videos folks so feel free to ask anything put something in the in the questions and for everyone I hope much love look out okay and for me too goodbye and enjoy the rest bye ding