prod wowza mod v14 test - Tuesday 20 January 2026, 10:45pm - ukc test
prod wowza mod v14 test
Tuesday, 20th January 2026 at 10:45pm
Speaking:
An agenda has not been published for this meeting.
Disclaimer: This transcript was automatically generated, so it may contain errors. Please view the webcast to confirm whether the content is accurate.
not true. But I feel that what it tells us about Richard Holmes. That's the main thing
I didn't pay to hear a 20 minute fictional storey about Richard.
Set in a library.
He's a disappointing figure though, isn't he?
I mean, he is.
The problem is that it disappoints me.
Now Frankie Boyle and all the young angry comics, they say that me and the older turns,
we should be more angry.
you know, like them about the Queen's vagina he was angry about, wasn't he?
It's furious, but...
My main response to the world is not one of anger.
As I get older, I find it's one of disappointment.
In people, like Richard Hammond, or in culture, or in government,
or a general disappointment as all the things that I valued as a child
are taken away from me and changed and I can't get them back.
And the last thing I want to do tonight is I'm going to tell you a storey
that hopefully will explain this disappointment.
It normally takes about 20 minutes, so...
Right, okay.
It'll be longer tonight though.
Now, disappointment.
When I was about 16, I had a stomach disorder
called Ulcerative Colitis.
In my 30s it became something called Diverticulitis.
The next stage is Crohn's disease,
but they've told me that I won't get that, which is good.
But I was hospitalised with it about six years ago.
I went into the Wishington Hospital in North London
and they did tests for a few weeks to see if I would have to
have a catheter fitted for life and be fed by injection.
And at the end of all this, I went to see the specialist in his room
and he did this thing where they get you out,
they get the results up on a screen
and then he just looked at them for ages without saying anything.
You've probably had this happen.
So after a while I said to him look you don't have to beat around the bush
I said to him my mother had Crohn's disease. I've talked to her about coping strategies
So you know don't prevaricate just give me the results just give it to me straight like a pear cider
That's made from a hundred percent pears
And he said I'm sorry what did you just say there
And I said, look, I'm not trying to tell you how to do your job, but I was on that ward.
You know, I talked to all these other guys there about what they'd had and...
So don't, you know, you don't need to cushion the blow.
I said, Tim, just give me the results.
Just give it to me straight like a pear cider that's made from 100 % pears.
And he said, I am sorry, I've not heard that phrase before.
Which struck me as odd, because in my family we use it all the time, we always have it there.
Particularly my grandparents' generation, you know, four or five times a day give it to me straight like a pear cider that's made from 100 % pears.
But it was only when that doctor pointed it out, I thought, yes it is odd, you don't hear, I didn't hear other people saying it, you know.
But when I was a kid it was absolutely ubiquitous, it was part of every day.
And so many of my most profound childhood memories are attached to that phrase, you know.
I remember when I was about 8, 9 years old, I had a little Jack Russell as a puppy.
And I called it Scarry after the kids writer, Richard Scarry.
And then he got this sort of gastro thing and my dad took him to the vets.
And when he came back from the vets, the dog wasn't with him anymore.
And I said to my dad, where's Scarry?
And he said, well I'll give it to you straight.
Like a pear cider that's made from 100 % pears.
I've had him given a lethal injection.
So that's just one example, but there's absolutely...
There's loads, cos it was all the time...
I remember when I was about six... five, six years old,
when I first found out that I was adopted,
I remember my mum bought a book back from social services called Mr. Fairweather and His Family
and the idea was that it explained adoption to young adoptees
and I remember being about 10 pages in and then saying to my mum,
why have you given me this, you know?
And she said to me, well I'll give it to you straight.
Like a pear cider that's made from 100 % pears.
We're not your real family.
But you know, you're loved.
And that's just two examples.
But in a way, they're not the best examples,
because they give the impression that the phrase was only ever used
for very traumatic things, and it wasn't.
It was part of the fun, the banter of every day as well.
You know, like your gran would be reading the paper,
and he'd say, so what's on telly tonight, gran?
You know, and he'd say, well, I'm not your real family.
And she'd go, well I'll give it to you straight.
Like a pear cider that's made from 100 % pears.
This Inspector Morse.
It wasn't always that, you know.
So that's, I hope you, yeah you see what I mean, it's always there.
But I do appreciate it was peculiar to my family and I was trying to think why that was.
Now I'm not a social historian, but my grandparents were shot floor at the Cadbury's factory in Birmingham.
But before that, before the industrial revolution when people came to the cities, going back thousands of years, hundreds of generations,
my family had been agricultural workers in Herefordshire, Worcestershire.
There's apples there, there's pears, there's cider manufacture.
Maybe give it to me straight, like a pear cider that's made from 100 % pears.
Or something they all said in the field, you know, for fun.