BONUS: How the lettuce became Liz Truss’s nemesis, with Jon Livesey
Daily Politics from the New Statesman
The New Statesman
4.4 • 1.4K Ratings
🗓️ 21 October 2022
⏱️ 7 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
In this bonus episode of the New Statesman Podcast, Rachel Cunliffe interviews the Daily Star deputy editor-in-chief Jon Livesey about how a lettuce livestream helped chronicle the downfall of Liz Truss’s calamitous time in office.
They talk about why it cut through to the public, what’s happening to the lettuce now, and which vegetable will come next.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Imagine you, you in a nice comfy seat with your hands behind your head, |
| 0:07.6 | taking in the views instead of taking on the road, maybe even taking a nap. |
| 0:13.6 | That's the bliss of getting where you need to go without worrying about driving. |
| 0:19.2 | Book your train journey by at avantiwesscoast.co.uk and we'll take you there. |
| 0:24.4 | Avantiwess coast. Feel good travel. |
| 0:33.1 | For the New Statesman. |
| 0:41.5 | Hi, I'm Rachel Connelliff and today I'm talking to John Leversey, deputy editor and chief |
| 0:46.4 | of the Daily Star on one of the geniuses behind the letters cam. |
| 1:03.9 | John, thank you so much for chatting to us. The letters have sort of become a political story |
| 1:09.8 | in its own right over over the past week. How did that come about? |
| 1:14.0 | Well, it came from a throwaway line, I suppose, in an economist article. |
| 1:18.2 | One of the other deputies was read it. The article and just mentioned it to our editor-in-chief, |
| 1:23.6 | John Clark. I think he said something about the lifespan of the letters or the shelf life of the |
| 1:28.3 | letters and you know how Liz Truss was. It wasn't looking great in terms of how long she was going to |
| 1:34.1 | last saw. We we took that and ran with it and the rest is history. |
| 1:38.3 | For people who haven't watched it, which I don't think is anyone, because it really took over. |
| 1:43.2 | This was a live feed you could watch on YouTube of this letters lasting throughout the week |
| 1:49.9 | with various accessories. It had disco lights at one point. It had sunglasses. Was that you helping |
| 1:57.7 | to access or was it a team effort? Yeah, well, we tried to be as collaborative as possible |
| 2:02.7 | in between the print and digital teams and it was a decision that we made to do the live feed. |
| 2:07.9 | We sent somebody out to buy the letters from Tesco at 60p. They brought it back to their |
| 2:14.0 | flat and started filming it. Initially it was just a picture of Liz and the letters side by side |
... |
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