Welcome to Under the Skin with me, Russell Brown this week we're talking to Loki, the prize winning author, he won the All-Wheel Prize.

Rulan Darren McGarvey in his book Poverty Safari, he explored attitudes to the working class, he's activism around,

the tragedy of Grenfell has garnered a lot of attention and he's personal insights into working class,

life have been illuminating and exciting and I hope to alter attitudes and infuse activism with the kind of, I don't know,

a new authenticity we talk a lot about education, addiction, grassroots politics, social mobility, it's a fascinating episode of the podcast

which took place last year we recorded it in Scotland and I think it was obviously this Grenfell tragedy had not long happened

and I feel that he talks a lot about it both obviously practically and but also as an emblem of warped social attitudes and a kind of physicalisation of the tasset condemnation and sacrifice of the poor.

I hope you enjoy this episode, if you want to come and see me live you can see me in Northampton at the beginning of December, look at Russell Brown dot com for DL under the skin.

Trying to achieve equality with the annihilation of category is not a successful route, that's exactly right.

We're in this era, we're turned out, we were never the boss.

What's beneath the surface of people with my ideas that define our time, the history we're told?

Welcome to Russell Brand.

Under the skin.

Darren, should we start off thanks for coming on under the skin mate.

Pleasure. Can we talk a bit about poverty safari, what compelled you to write a book and what you were hoping to convey?

Well I had always been writing about social issues to do with poverty, partly because it was the only thing I really knew because that's how I grew up.

So, um, run a bit 2014, there was a lot of social media activism going on obviously like Facebook and all that had really taken off.

And I was publishing like blogs about class and whether it was on Facebook or like WordPress or accessing kind of pro independence, new media that was emerging like sites like Bella Caledonia for example or national collective.

And I was just immediately struck by the response the stuff was getting and I'm aware sometimes people respond because it's kind of confirming their beliefs.

But at the same time I also started finding an audience that were really interested in class as something to talk about because it was something that was articulating their experience.

And so once I got a sense of that I started learning how to use social media to my advantage.

And over time people say you know you should write a book and my first thought was people like me the right books, that's the first line in the book.

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