agenda because a lot of politicians are on it, a lot of journalists or whatever. and the old media does a thing of picking up on what s said on twitter and using it to say, oh, this is happening, or this outrage or whatever. and so, what you get is, driving the temperature of discourse up happens via social media. but even as you re talking and very passionate and engaged, describing to me how twitter works and why it matters, i m thinking to myself, you re a really creative guy. you ve got lots going on in your life. you write children s books. you write other serious books. we ll talk about this one later. you know, you write jokes for a living. you re a comedian and a tv personality and all sorts of other things. why do you feel it s a good investment of your time to be almost literally 24/7 on social media? cause i follow you. thank you. you re on it, in that case. well, i am on it. why are you on it? but if you look, i m not on it anywhere near as much as you. well, there s two
so that s one reason. but there is another reason for me, personally, which is i have the kind of brain, thankfully still going, which thinks of a joke at 4:00 in the morning, thinks of something like, i really want to say this. i do want an audience for it because i m a comedian. i can t get an audience at 4:00 in the morning. during the pandemic, i couldn t get an audience at all. you can put that on social media and, yes, you might get trolled, but you might also get people saying really funny things back to you, liking it or whatever. and that feels like an outlet. and i know there s something shallow in there. of course, there s a narcissistic element to that, but at the same time, it is the same reason why i m on stage. and so, it sort of filters through to me as, like, that s why i m doing it, because at heart, i have got things to say to an audience. so, it s part of the evolution of your business of funny. yeah, it definitely is. yeah. i just want to ask you how you perceive
writer about serious things and a serious documentary maker. you ve already told me a little bit about yourjewish family history, you ve explored in documentary form holocaust denial. you have written a book this one, jews don t count, which looks at what you see as the failure of the progressive left, particularly in the uk, to take full account of anti semitism as one of the discriminatory prejudices that taint society, you think somehow. ..as your title suggests, jews don t count. is it easy to tackle these serious subjects when your reputation is that of a very funny man? i don t know. i mean, for some people, it will be. for me, it isn t. the book has got quite a lot ofjokes in it. i don t really see clear boundaries between funny and, i guess, intelligent or whatever you might call it. that wasn t a very intelligent sentence, so it doesn t bear that out very well.
through the day as this cold weather front sinks its way in. high pressure holds things steady for england and wales just light winds here, that cloud around, as i said. similar story for northern ireland. perhaps a few showers down towards the channel coast. but for scotland, rain will make its way as far south, i think, as the central belt by the time we get to the evening rush hour. some of the rain could be heavy. should be brighter for the northern isles through the afternoon, but it will stay windy. and then the rain progressively works its way into northern ireland and northern england through the evening. and then towards the end of the night, we ll see that rain pushing into the midlands, north wales and parts of east anglia. for the south of the band of rain, temperatures in double figures. behind it, here s a clue of what s to come temperatures in single figures, much colder air moving in, some pockets of frost to the north first thing friday. and that colder air flushes
here i am, here is my identity, but there s all these people who are not doing that, who will come out sometimes for comedy, as it were. they ll be brought out by a joke, and then they ll suddenly be really funny and witty and you think this is a marvellous thing. but i m intrigued by this idea that you ve given to me that you can t afford not to be on twitter, that somehow this is the conversation. of course, there are, frankly, millions of people in the united kingdom and many, many, many millions of people around the world who couldn t give a fig about twitter or social media. and in fact, interestingly, your own wife has told you she has no interest. she s not been on any form of social media. and so, when you say, oh, this is the real world of today, it s not actually the real world. no, i don t quite say that. what i say is i think it drives what s going on in the real world now. obviously, there are a lot of people who aren t on it, but there is a lot of people who are, i me