Browse content similar to 26/08/2016. Check below for episodes and series from the same categories and more!
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Five years on since the start of the Syrian uprising, | :00:00. | :00:00. | |
Darayya surrenders after its near total-devastation. | :00:07. | :00:09. | |
Assad's soldiers chant their victory. | :00:10. | :00:13. | |
Thousands of civilians and hundreds of rebel soldiers are bussed out | :00:14. | :00:17. | |
of one of the first towns to rise up against their government. | :00:18. | :00:22. | |
Here in Geneva, the US Secretary of State, John Kerry, | :00:23. | :00:24. | |
has finished his talks with Russia's Sergei Lavrov. | :00:25. | :00:28. | |
Both leaders talked about narrowing their differences - | :00:29. | :00:30. | |
can they really make a difference | :00:31. | :00:32. | |
when it comes to ending the war in Syria? | :00:33. | :00:37. | |
We'll be asking a former Obama advisor | :00:38. | :00:38. | |
if the US has any leverage left in Syria. | :00:39. | :00:44. | |
Is the billion-pound parenting industry a waste of time? | :00:45. | :00:47. | |
We talk to the woman who's telling parents to ditch the books | :00:48. | :00:50. | |
and let their kids' brains do all the work. | :00:51. | :00:53. | |
The legendary tv critic Clive James on boxed sets, reality TV - | :00:54. | :00:56. | |
There was a wave of obituaries, of fond goodbyes, tears in eye, | :00:57. | :01:05. | |
And there I was, alive and reading it! | :01:06. | :01:12. | |
And our final Proms playout, Rick Astley. | :01:13. | :01:19. | |
The UN says that the world is watching, | :01:20. | :01:39. | |
this as hundreds of rebel fighters and thousands of civilians | :01:40. | :01:41. | |
begin to evacuate the besieged Damascus suburb of Darayya - | :01:42. | :01:44. | |
the longest stand-off between government-led forces | :01:45. | :01:45. | |
and rebels in Syria's five-year war is ending. | :01:46. | :01:53. | |
And as the US Secretary of State, John Kerry, | :01:54. | :01:55. | |
meets his Russian counterpart, Sergei Lavrov, in Geneva today | :01:56. | :02:00. | |
for further talks to try to bring peace, | :02:01. | :02:02. | |
they might do well to reflect on the story of Daraya, | :02:03. | :02:04. | |
that some of the first protests against Assad began. | :02:05. | :02:08. | |
committed one of the war's biggest massacres to date. | :02:09. | :02:13. | |
And after years of inaction from the international community, | :02:14. | :02:20. | |
it is here where the government forces are now resurgent | :02:21. | :02:22. | |
Four years of resistance against all the odds came to an end in Darayya | :02:23. | :02:46. | |
today. Besieged, starved and bombed by the Assad regime, residents are | :02:47. | :02:54. | |
being bussed out of this suburb and the army is moving in. Regime | :02:55. | :02:57. | |
soldiers chanted pro-government slogans at them as they left, some | :02:58. | :03:03. | |
in tears. Civilians heading for government-controlled areas, rebels | :03:04. | :03:04. | |
for opposition held it live province. -- Idlib. This man worked | :03:05. | :03:12. | |
as a media activist in the local council. He leaves tomorrow. | :03:13. | :03:18. | |
TRANSLATION: People are feeling profoundly bitter, is days the agony | :03:19. | :03:24. | |
of being sent from their homeland. These are the people who sacrificed | :03:25. | :03:29. | |
their lives to stand for the city, it is a very tough situation for | :03:30. | :03:33. | |
civilians because this is the very same regime that has been bombarding | :03:34. | :03:37. | |
them with napalm, barrel bombs, rockets and chemical attacks. It is | :03:38. | :03:41. | |
the very regime that has been besieging them and preventing food | :03:42. | :03:45. | |
from reaching them. If people had another choice, they would have | :03:46. | :03:49. | |
opted for it, but people have no choice. The story of Darayya is, in | :03:50. | :03:55. | |
many ways, the story of the Syrian uprising. It was one of the first | :03:56. | :04:01. | |
areas to break out in peaceful protests against the regime five | :04:02. | :04:06. | |
years ago. Demonstrated carried roses towards government soldiers, | :04:07. | :04:11. | |
and the activist behind these protests was arrested, tortured and | :04:12. | :04:14. | |
killed. When the Free Syrian Army began to take control in 2012, the | :04:15. | :04:20. | |
response was brutal. A massacre of hundreds of people, blamed on Assad | :04:21. | :04:25. | |
loyalists, one of the worst the conflict had scene at that stage. | :04:26. | :04:33. | |
But over the years, more was to come. | :04:34. | :04:38. | |
After rebel forces took full control of the district, Darayya, like other | :04:39. | :04:44. | |
opposition held areas, was the target of the regime's air force, | :04:45. | :04:49. | |
blamed for the majority of deaths in Syria during the conflict. Darayya | :04:50. | :04:53. | |
is just a few minutes from the centre of Damascus and the heart of | :04:54. | :04:56. | |
the regime. It and other rebel held suburbs were besieged by government | :04:57. | :04:58. | |
forces. Food and medicine began to run out, | :04:59. | :05:15. | |
with residents reduced to boiling herbs. Despite pleas for help, the | :05:16. | :05:20. | |
UN managed to deliver aid only once in four years. The failure to break | :05:21. | :05:24. | |
the siege has angered many. Darayya was a symbol of everything that | :05:25. | :05:31. | |
revolutionary Syrians wanted for their country. It produced a | :05:32. | :05:37. | |
democratic local council, its self organised in a democracy. The | :05:38. | :05:40. | |
militias defending the town were under civilian control, unlike | :05:41. | :05:46. | |
elsewhere in Syria, they certainly were not jihadists, they were three | :05:47. | :05:52. | |
army fighters. It is a place which preserved its values of intelligent, | :05:53. | :05:58. | |
nonsectarian, revolutionary resistance. Today, unfortunately, it | :05:59. | :06:02. | |
is become a symbol of the slow annihilation of these democratic | :06:03. | :06:08. | |
hopes by the Assad regime and the collaboration of the rest of the | :06:09. | :06:12. | |
world. The regime accuses rebels of having helped people hostage in | :06:13. | :06:17. | |
Darayya, but others worried today's Benz will encourage Assad to | :06:18. | :06:23. | |
continue his siege tactics elsewhere. What lies ahead for | :06:24. | :06:27. | |
Darayya and the Syrian revolution? is our chief international | :06:28. | :06:30. | |
correspondent, Lyse Doucet. We saw rebels fleeing the town of | :06:31. | :06:38. | |
Darayya in that report, how much of a blow is this to the rebels? This | :06:39. | :06:44. | |
is a huge development, it is a symbol both in terms of the | :06:45. | :06:47. | |
symbolism but also the strategic value. For the Syrian government, | :06:48. | :06:53. | |
Darayya is the gateway to Damascus, there was no way they were going to | :06:54. | :06:57. | |
let Darayya fall, and that is what we have seen over the past four | :06:58. | :07:01. | |
years, every time we went to Damascus, we could see bombs topping | :07:02. | :07:05. | |
on Darayya. As the report said, the UN only managed once in four years | :07:06. | :07:10. | |
to distribute aid in the town. But the opposition, as we have been | :07:11. | :07:15. | |
hearing, it was a symbol of their resistance, and what was supposed to | :07:16. | :07:18. | |
be an icon of what the rebels wanted to achieve a cross Syria. And now | :07:19. | :07:23. | |
today it is a symbol of defeat. The Syrian government wants to send a | :07:24. | :07:27. | |
message to say to those who have been meeting in Geneva that they do | :07:28. | :07:32. | |
not need world powers to bring about peace in Syria, the Syrians will do | :07:33. | :07:36. | |
it themselves. But of course for the Syrian government, that is on its | :07:37. | :07:41. | |
own terms. Where you are, John Kerry, Sergei Lavrov have met today, | :07:42. | :07:45. | |
you have been at negotiations like this before, what sense are you | :07:46. | :07:50. | |
getting of any possible deal? John Kerry has always been described as | :07:51. | :07:56. | |
an optimist, his aides tell us that he is going to work to the very last | :07:57. | :08:00. | |
day of President Obama's presidency in January to try to make a | :08:01. | :08:05. | |
difference in Syria, to try to fight against the so-called Islamic State, | :08:06. | :08:09. | |
which tilt controls large swathes of Syrian territory, but also to try to | :08:10. | :08:14. | |
bring about a truce. More than 12 hours ago, when he went into talks | :08:15. | :08:18. | |
with Sergei Lavrov, some of the negotiators said they had made | :08:19. | :08:21. | |
progress over the past several weeks in trying to narrow the differences. | :08:22. | :08:27. | |
It will be up to the foreign ministers to close the gaps, but | :08:28. | :08:30. | |
when they came out, they said, we made progress, we narrowed the | :08:31. | :08:34. | |
difference. Sergei Lavrov talked about dots separating them, John | :08:35. | :08:37. | |
Kerry said there was greater clarity on what it would achieve to take a | :08:38. | :08:41. | |
truce, and also strengthened cooperation between Moscow and | :08:42. | :08:46. | |
Washington. But they are not there, and Kerry said, we do not want to | :08:47. | :08:49. | |
announce a deal unless we are sure there is a deal. The big question | :08:50. | :08:55. | |
is, when can they achieve that? As always - Lyse Doucet, thank you very | :08:56. | :09:02. | |
much. Earlier I spoke to a form of foreign policy adviser to the Obama | :09:03. | :09:06. | |
administrations, Vali Nasr sits on the foreign policy advisory board to | :09:07. | :09:10. | |
the State Department. I began by asking him how much power the US | :09:11. | :09:13. | |
Government has when it comes to the situation in Syria today. The US is | :09:14. | :09:19. | |
negotiating without any leveraged, and without any ability to offer | :09:20. | :09:25. | |
anything concrete. So it is at a disadvantage. It is understood that | :09:26. | :09:29. | |
it can play a very important role, but not without much more engagement | :09:30. | :09:35. | |
in Syria. So what is the incentive from Sergei Lavrov to offer any | :09:36. | :09:39. | |
compromise? So it doesn't serve Russian interests to be seen as the | :09:40. | :09:46. | |
ones who are rejecting talks. They are always ready to talk, they | :09:47. | :09:51. | |
always give the positive signal, they always try to encourage the | :09:52. | :09:56. | |
process going forward. But without any US ability to cajole and | :09:57. | :09:59. | |
persuade, it is not going to go very far. And I would also say that the | :10:00. | :10:02. | |
Russians are every bit as interested in engaging the US, because they | :10:03. | :10:07. | |
think it moves the US somewhat more towards the middle and towards them, | :10:08. | :10:12. | |
and away from the opposition and its backers in the region. So for them, | :10:13. | :10:18. | |
the diplomatic process is part of the management of the situation in | :10:19. | :10:22. | |
Syria to their own advantage. How much is the position of John Kerry, | :10:23. | :10:27. | |
facing talks with Sergei Lavrov, how much is it the fault of President | :10:28. | :10:31. | |
Obama being ineffective when it comes to Syria? I think to a good | :10:32. | :10:36. | |
extent, because Secretary Kerry is trying very hard to find a | :10:37. | :10:39. | |
diplomatic opening, but diplomacy only works if the other side takes | :10:40. | :10:44. | |
you seriously, that they think there is a cost to not engaging, or a cost | :10:45. | :10:49. | |
to not doing the right thing. Right now, the only pressure that comes on | :10:50. | :10:53. | |
Russia and on Iran is coming from extremists on the ground, which is | :10:54. | :10:58. | |
not very good news, and they know it, that ultimately the West would | :10:59. | :11:02. | |
be very worried about that. But there was no clear that the United | :11:03. | :11:05. | |
States may bomb targets or may get involved or may change the shape of | :11:06. | :11:10. | |
the conflict to their disadvantage. The US is simply trying to persuade | :11:11. | :11:14. | |
them to do the right thing, and that doesn't really go very far. Should | :11:15. | :11:20. | |
President Obama have pursued the idea of bombing in Syria in 2013? | :11:21. | :11:27. | |
Yes, I do think that diplomacy in a case like Syria would work if the | :11:28. | :11:32. | |
other side would have thought that the United States is willing and | :11:33. | :11:36. | |
able to get involved in a way that will change the facts on the ground | :11:37. | :11:40. | |
to their disadvantage. So they would be really incentivised to prevent | :11:41. | :11:44. | |
the United States from getting involved. If they think that the | :11:45. | :11:48. | |
United States is not going to get involved, there is no real downside | :11:49. | :11:51. | |
for them to continue the course that they are at. So the US lost | :11:52. | :11:55. | |
credibility, essentially, over the red line in Syria when it threatened | :11:56. | :12:04. | |
that it was going to use force and then it didn't, and since then it | :12:05. | :12:06. | |
hasn't even threatened to use force, and as a result the Russians and | :12:07. | :12:10. | |
Iranians do not see any threat to losing their position on the ground | :12:11. | :12:14. | |
in the war in Syria. So who could bring that threat? We are looking to | :12:15. | :12:18. | |
the next administration now, hypothetically, Hillary Clinton is | :12:19. | :12:22. | |
in power, a former Secretary of State, is she the person to bring | :12:23. | :12:26. | |
the threat? Is she the person to assert United States power when it | :12:27. | :12:31. | |
comes to negotiating over Syria? I think both the Russians and the | :12:32. | :12:34. | |
Iranians take her very seriously, they think that she is somebody who | :12:35. | :12:39. | |
believes in America's role in the world, its leadership role, and it | :12:40. | :12:43. | |
is willing to use force, and definitely even her track record at | :12:44. | :12:47. | |
the State Department on Syria, while she was in office, suggested that | :12:48. | :12:52. | |
she was much more willing to lend American power to support the | :12:53. | :13:00. | |
opposition, to provide no-fly space, to support forces on the ground | :13:01. | :13:04. | |
militarily in a way that would have changed the dynamics of fighting on | :13:05. | :13:09. | |
the ground. So I think, yes, but the Iranians and the Russians would | :13:10. | :13:13. | |
think that a Clinton Administration is likely to get a lot tougher, and | :13:14. | :13:19. | |
be willing to actually use hard power to force a change of opinion | :13:20. | :13:24. | |
in Moscow and Tehran. Does the United States have to accept that | :13:25. | :13:31. | |
Assad is going nowhere, he is firmly in place? I think it has accepted | :13:32. | :13:34. | |
that, although it cannot say it in public, because so early on it | :13:35. | :13:42. | |
associated itself with the need of Assad to leave power. The US has | :13:43. | :13:46. | |
done nothing other than rhetorical exhortation is about him leaving, | :13:47. | :13:51. | |
and the more powerful ices became, and the more American policy was | :13:52. | :13:56. | |
focused on Isis, the more the US sort of washed its hands of any | :13:57. | :14:00. | |
serious effort to remove Assad from power. Go by is Vali Nasr, thank you | :14:01. | :14:03. | |
for your time. Thank you. It's not uncommon for a new parent | :14:04. | :14:07. | |
to seek advice when it comes to raising a child, be it | :14:08. | :14:10. | |
from relatives, friends But a new book says | :14:11. | :14:12. | |
that books are not the answer. and allow our offspring | :14:13. | :14:16. | |
to develop naturally and forget | :14:17. | :14:19. | |
the traditional guidelines. People take classes, | :14:20. | :14:26. | |
visit online forums and read books. Doctor Spock's common-sense book | :14:27. | :14:33. | |
of baby and child care It was published in 1946 | :14:34. | :14:43. | |
and since then it has As the extended family went | :14:44. | :14:49. | |
into decline in the 1950s, parenting guides became | :14:50. | :14:55. | |
increasingly in demand. Raising a child became a skill | :14:56. | :14:59. | |
you could learn, with dos and don'ts that promised | :15:00. | :15:01. | |
to help anxious new parents raise Fashions came and went, | :15:02. | :15:04. | |
parents bought books advising them to leave their child to cry | :15:05. | :15:13. | |
and books recommending sharing They read about the benefits | :15:14. | :15:16. | |
of pushing your children to succeed Alison Gopnik, a developmental | :15:17. | :15:22. | |
psychologist at Berkeley, 30 years of scientific research | :15:23. | :15:35. | |
into child development, she says, has revealed how | :15:36. | :15:40. | |
remarkably sensitive Babies are naturals at learning | :15:41. | :15:43. | |
and they learn by playing, Parenting is going the wrong | :15:44. | :15:49. | |
way, says Gopnik. We shouldn't be using prescriptive | :15:50. | :15:54. | |
techniques to raise our kids. Just provide a rich, | :15:55. | :15:58. | |
nurturing environment and children's Well, Professor Alison Gopnik | :15:59. | :16:00. | |
is here to explain all. Thank you for joining me. So, the | :16:01. | :16:20. | |
book, it looks at the carpenter and the gardener, explain the | :16:21. | :16:25. | |
difference? OK, the idea about being a parent that comes from these | :16:26. | :16:29. | |
parenting books is that you can take a child and you can shape them into | :16:30. | :16:33. | |
a particular kind of adult if you have the right kind of techniques | :16:34. | :16:38. | |
and expertise, the way a carpenter can take a piece of wood and turn | :16:39. | :16:42. | |
that into a chair. I think that is not the view that comes from the | :16:43. | :16:47. | |
science, when you look at the science, the core thing in this | :16:48. | :16:51. | |
book, a better picture is a picture of a gardener, a picture of | :16:52. | :16:55. | |
creating, a rich, stable environment in which all sorts of Flowers can | :16:56. | :17:00. | |
blame and also has a surprising variable unpredictable things can | :17:01. | :17:04. | |
happen and it is not that gardening is not hard work, it is, but the | :17:05. | :17:08. | |
picture is not that you are bringing about a particular result, you are | :17:09. | :17:12. | |
trying to present a framework and an environment in which children can | :17:13. | :17:17. | |
develop themselves. You mention the science, give me a brief example of | :17:18. | :17:22. | |
the science behind this. If you look even at the very youngest children, | :17:23. | :17:26. | |
they have incredibly powerful learning mechanisms and they learn | :17:27. | :17:31. | |
best by observing the people around them in tremendously subtle and | :17:32. | :17:35. | |
sophisticated ways and be going into the world and playing. Those kinds | :17:36. | :17:38. | |
of learning, especially for young children, below the age of five, are | :17:39. | :17:45. | |
much more powerful than any of the kinds of variants that parents | :17:46. | :17:48. | |
self-consciously try to do based on things like the parenting books. So | :17:49. | :17:54. | |
the children, we don't have to make children learn, we just have to let | :17:55. | :17:58. | |
them learn. Is this book focused on children in the younger years? The | :17:59. | :18:03. | |
formative years? A lot of the research has been on children in the | :18:04. | :18:06. | |
first years and they know a tremendous amount of learning and | :18:07. | :18:09. | |
development goes on in those first years but I think the general point | :18:10. | :18:15. | |
applies also to school age children and adolescents and even | :18:16. | :18:18. | |
undergraduates, that we have a model that somehow there is a set of | :18:19. | :18:22. | |
self-conscious techniques we can use and we can guarantee we will get a | :18:23. | :18:26. | |
particular outcome. And a better way of thinking about this is a | :18:27. | :18:31. | |
children, by their very evolutionary nature, are designed to pick up the | :18:32. | :18:34. | |
material that is in the culture around them, the values, and change | :18:35. | :18:38. | |
them and shape them and advise them and turn them into something new. | :18:39. | :18:44. | |
Our job is to provide a framework in which that revision and change and | :18:45. | :18:47. | |
shaping and discovery and variability and exploration can take | :18:48. | :18:50. | |
place, not to bring about a particular result. Part of the | :18:51. | :18:56. | |
nature of a parent is to give a child all the tools they can | :18:57. | :19:01. | |
possibly give to succeed in an ever increasingly competitive world. Why | :19:02. | :19:04. | |
shouldn't parents actively teach children? It is very difficult, I | :19:05. | :19:09. | |
imagine, to be able to step back and say, developed at your own pace? It | :19:10. | :19:14. | |
is ironic because in the post-industrial world that we live | :19:15. | :19:18. | |
in, the tools you really need to succeed aren't any particular set of | :19:19. | :19:22. | |
skills or knowledge, the tools you need are the ability to be in a new | :19:23. | :19:27. | |
situation and in a new environment and create something create | :19:28. | :19:29. | |
something new, something that has never been before. That is what a | :19:30. | :19:34. | |
place like Silicon Valley thrives on and it is interesting that in that | :19:35. | :19:38. | |
context people realise that play is the best mechanism for doing that. | :19:39. | :19:44. | |
The irony is that by trying so hard to teach children to succeed, we may | :19:45. | :19:48. | |
not actually be giving them the tools that they need to succeed in | :19:49. | :19:52. | |
the real change in future that they face. The thought that comes from | :19:53. | :19:59. | |
the science is from an evolutionary perspective, the thing that makes | :20:00. | :20:03. | |
human beings so special was our very long extended immature childhood and | :20:04. | :20:06. | |
it is a puzzle about why our baby is dependent on us for so very long, | :20:07. | :20:11. | |
why does it take so much energy? A whole village and not just parents | :20:12. | :20:15. | |
but grandparents and cousins and friends to just raise a child? And | :20:16. | :20:20. | |
the answer seems to be that that protective period of immaturity | :20:21. | :20:24. | |
gives children a chance both as individual children and as a | :20:25. | :20:26. | |
generation of children to come out exactly the | :20:27. | :20:40. | |
way we want, it would be self-defeating, we will be defeating | :20:41. | :20:42. | |
the whole point of childhood. You are suggesting to a lot of people | :20:43. | :20:45. | |
that they go against their instincts and don't parent and that parenting | :20:46. | :20:50. | |
is a concept we should not adopt any more? What should we be doing as | :20:51. | :20:55. | |
parents? I think our instincts are good. I think people's instincts are | :20:56. | :21:00. | |
to love their children, articulate the values that are important to | :21:01. | :21:05. | |
them, can be the things that we think are important, care for them, | :21:06. | :21:09. | |
no matter who they are, unconditional, those instincts are | :21:10. | :21:13. | |
the right instance, they are exactly the gardener instincts that will | :21:14. | :21:17. | |
give children a good environment and the parenting idea is not something | :21:18. | :21:20. | |
that is instinctive, it is something that developed very late in the 20th | :21:21. | :21:25. | |
century, it is pretty strange, this way of thinking about being a parent | :21:26. | :21:28. | |
compare to what we have done for most of human history. It is a | :21:29. | :21:32. | |
special thing that came with industrial schooling and a thing | :21:33. | :21:36. | |
that came with the fact that for the first time, people were | :21:37. | :21:48. | |
having children who had not actually experienced much raising of children | :21:49. | :21:52. | |
before but who had done things like work and go to school and therefore | :21:53. | :21:54. | |
thought that raising children are caring for children was a kind of | :21:55. | :21:57. | |
variant of working and going to school. That is not our natural | :21:58. | :21:59. | |
instinct, that is something that is quite unusual and historical, it is | :22:00. | :22:02. | |
only just becoming dominant in the last little while. Alison Gopnik, | :22:03. | :22:04. | |
thank you for joining us this evening. | :22:05. | :22:07. | |
It's a black joke in showbusiness that death is a great career move. | :22:08. | :22:10. | |
One person in a position to bear out the double-edged truth | :22:11. | :22:13. | |
of this is Clive James, the TV critic, memoirist, | :22:14. | :22:15. | |
He was diagnosed with leukaemia in 2010. | :22:16. | :22:20. | |
Soon after he went through a very public estrangement from his wife | :22:21. | :22:24. | |
after revelations about a long affair of his. | :22:25. | :22:27. | |
In wry observation, he says he was willing to accept | :22:28. | :22:30. | |
He spent much time binge-watching television series and used | :22:31. | :22:36. | |
the little energy he had to read and write. | :22:37. | :22:39. | |
Out of the crisis came some of James's most admired work. | :22:40. | :22:42. | |
With the help of groundbreaking drugs he is still here and is taking | :22:43. | :22:45. | |
what some might see as a morbid pleasure in what he calls | :22:46. | :22:48. | |
Stephen Smith went to see him at his home in Cambridge, | :22:49. | :22:54. | |
where he's just written a book about his passion for TV boxsets. | :22:55. | :23:02. | |
If I look like a heap of sh*t or a wreck, let's just | :23:03. | :23:05. | |
I'll write it into the show for you, I promise. | :23:06. | :23:08. | |
The methylamine keeps flowing, no matter what. | :23:09. | :23:16. | |
Breaking Bad, an acclaimed drama about a man who is buying himself | :23:17. | :23:27. | |
some time through drugs, has been entertaining Clive James, | :23:28. | :23:30. | |
a man who is buying himself some time through drugs. | :23:31. | :23:34. | |
I must say that, straight away, I have been useful, haven't I? | :23:35. | :23:40. | |
Because I have brought you into a new field. | :23:41. | :23:43. | |
The appeal is you can't stop watching. | :23:44. | :23:45. | |
It is like getting on a train and never stops. | :23:46. | :23:50. | |
I used to be in the TV criticism business years | :23:51. | :23:52. | |
ago and when I left it, the wind-up piece that | :23:53. | :23:56. | |
I wrote in my last week, I predicted that American TV | :23:57. | :23:59. | |
I made a slow start with Game of Thrones. | :24:00. | :24:11. | |
I didn't really want to start, actually, because it's got dragons. | :24:12. | :24:13. | |
And I saw five minutes of the first episode. | :24:14. | :24:20. | |
I didn't even want to see them hatch! | :24:21. | :24:24. | |
I was talked into it by my younger daughter. | :24:25. | :24:27. | |
And I found myself, against my expectations, | :24:28. | :24:30. | |
If you look at what the terrestrial channels here still provide, | :24:31. | :24:37. | |
recently we have had things like The Night Manager, | :24:38. | :24:40. | |
War and Peace, Peaky Blinders, even dear old Downton Abbey. | :24:41. | :24:45. | |
No, no, the ones you name, you just happened to chance upon | :24:46. | :24:51. | |
the shows that I think are nowhere beside the American ones. | :24:52. | :24:55. | |
What was the one that was set in Egypt? | :24:56. | :24:58. | |
I thought it was pretty close to being nonsense, that one. | :24:59. | :25:08. | |
And if I were still in the TV criticism business, | :25:09. | :25:10. | |
Are you to blame for reality television, Clive? | :25:11. | :25:16. | |
People sometimes say so and I am very flattered but | :25:17. | :25:19. | |
The truth is, I put the reality shows that were being made elsewhere | :25:20. | :25:23. | |
Some of them extremely improbable, like the Japanese game show, | :25:24. | :25:35. | |
If you are worried that there is such a thing as a television | :25:36. | :25:43. | |
producer who wants to roast people in a plastic box, | :25:44. | :25:45. | |
bomb them with pepper, dress them as bats and hang them | :25:46. | :25:48. | |
upside down with their pants full of cockroaches, | :25:49. | :25:50. | |
ask yourself what you would rather he was doing instead? | :25:51. | :25:53. | |
What happened next wasn't funny at all. | :25:54. | :25:55. | |
They all became believable and we started to do them. | :25:56. | :25:59. | |
I may have been a participant in the biggest deterioration | :26:00. | :26:04. | |
What an ironic end thought for such a high mind? | :26:05. | :26:13. | |
Some of the reality TV shows don't work. | :26:14. | :26:15. | |
One of the channels not long ago tried one about ski jumping. | :26:16. | :26:25. | |
Yeah, but that was the problem, wasn't it? | :26:26. | :26:32. | |
Because there are not that many actual celebrities. | :26:33. | :26:34. | |
You can't really send Helen Mirren over a cliff! | :26:35. | :26:36. | |
Now, you have described this time as your posthumous years. | :26:37. | :26:41. | |
Because I was really on the way out, then. | :26:42. | :27:03. | |
I picked the exact moment in history where preventative medicine | :27:04. | :27:15. | |
for the thing that I have got, which is leukaemia, | :27:16. | :27:18. | |
It has got a wonderful name, it's called ibrutinib. | :27:19. | :27:27. | |
And as I have said in my new book, it sounds like a piece of film | :27:28. | :27:31. | |
dialogue, doesn't it? | :27:32. | :27:33. | |
You can see Russell Crowe playing it! | :27:34. | :27:39. | |
It has got an overdeveloped neck, hasn't it? | :27:40. | :27:44. | |
The granddaughter of the Girl from Ipanema is the princess of that | :27:45. | :27:53. | |
The former prime-time host has had time to read his obituaries and, | :27:54. | :27:59. | |
with a book of poems, to write a few of them, too. | :28:00. | :28:04. | |
I was rather embarrassed because I did almost die in 2010 | :28:05. | :28:07. | |
and 2011 and I think it was the second time, | :28:08. | :28:10. | |
Please don't take this the wrong way. | :28:11. | :28:25. | |
The only sensible thing to do would be... | :28:26. | :28:29. | |
You have become the Julian Assange of leukaemia, in a way, haven't you? | :28:30. | :28:36. | |
Everyone is waiting for the next development. | :28:37. | :28:41. | |
Everyone is waiting for Julian Assange to starve | :28:42. | :28:43. | |
I'm not so sure he was very wise to go in there. | :28:44. | :28:51. | |
Well, I suppose if one might be harsh and personal, | :28:52. | :28:59. | |
one might say you should have faced the music a bit earlier | :29:00. | :29:02. | |
You could try that but you're not going to get far. | :29:03. | :29:07. | |
You wrote that lovely poem about a maple tree in your garden. | :29:08. | :29:20. | |
All about, essentially, how it would outlive you. | :29:21. | :29:23. | |
I may have to write another poem about that but at the moment I am | :29:24. | :29:32. | |
A replacement tree, much smaller, but I like to think sturdier, | :29:33. | :29:37. | |
All week we've been giving you a taster of the BBC Proms | :29:38. | :29:49. | |
and tonight we've got a very special guest. | :29:50. | :29:51. | |
He performs at Proms in the Park in Hyde Park on Saturday 10th | :29:52. | :29:54. | |
September in the finale of the festival, | :29:55. | :29:56. | |
But here with us, singing us out with his current single | :29:57. | :30:00. | |
from his new album "50", is Rick Astley. | :30:01. | :30:02. | |
# Sometimes I just don't feel like waking up. | :30:03. | :30:09. | |
# Sometimes I feel like I am breaking up. | :30:10. | :30:19. |