This is Paul Adamson and I'm in conversation with Nick Clegg.

Nick Clegg is a member of the British Parliament. Nick, I realise when I say that, I'm not giving you much, doing much justice because, of course, you heard Deputy Prime Minister, of course, for five years until last year. You were a leader of your Liberal Democrats for eight years, also until last year.

How has the transition been for you since you stepped down from these positions last year?

Well, like everything in politics, when it comes to an end, it comes to an end suddenly.

I mean, that's just the nature of politics.

It's a very, it's a very sort of abrupt, it's a very abrupt business. And that has its kind of virtues and its vices.

It means that it's, you know, the change,

and particularly the change of sort of just sheer daily sort of velocity of your life.

It's extraordinarily kind of sudden.

And you have to get used to that, but I'm quite a sort of pragmatic

person and I, you know, I certainly don't believe in sort of moping around. And so, you know,

quite quickly I've tried to sort of gather together as a number of projects which I'm now involved

with, which is very different because there's obviously much less stress and all the rest

of it in my work. And I'm not more in control of my daily life. I get to see my old friends and my

family and I'm much more immersed in my children's homework than before. And these are all good

things. But also I'm able to, I've got the luxury now to think about and read and even write about things that just interest me.

Okay, we're going to talk about one or two of these projects you talked about.

Of course, in the short order we have this small matter of the UK referendum on membership of the EU.

Of course, your European credentials are impeccable. Some may say almost too impeccable because you know you're such a good european but um do you intend

to have some kind of role in the in the referendum campaign and if so what is it yeah of course i'll

have a role as someone who's you know a prominent advocate of britain's continued membership of the

european union but everyone i think has to play their sort of different roles. The primary role that needs to be played

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