Hello, hello, I'm Hugh O'Rifkin, and now we're going to be unpacking the politics of the day

from whether Kier Stama can survive the week to questions over Donald Trump's fitness for office

and what reforms idea of a patriotic curriculum actually involves. And with me to unpack that,

no national anthem required. It's Matthew Paris. Hello, Matthew. Hello, hello. How are you? Pretty good. Just rushed from Paddington Station, but here in time. With your marmalade sandwich, I trust. And Cindy, hello, Cindy. How are you keeping? Good, thank you. Where have you just rushed from? The canteen, next all. That sounds easier. Look, we've got loads to get through, but just quickly,

Matthew, well, we've been trudging through the news. You've been in Namibia. I'm very jealous. I never quite made it to Namibia. I tried and broke down in the Kalahari on the way. A wheel fell off. It was traumatic. Did the chaos of Westminster and the world reach you while you were there? No, not at all. There really wasn't a lot of connectivity. There wasn't any Wi-Fi.

And you, just for a little while, managed to switch off our own preoccupations here.

And how do you think about Southern Africa? It's a really interesting subcontinent, and a lot of good

things are going on there. Did you find yourself in the red deserts? Yes. Oh, fantastic. I mean, sand dunes more than a thousand feet high. Wow. Dozens and dozens of them. And we went sandboarding down them. You sit on a kind of tray and we... Oh my gosh. It's just great. Well, you're basically sledging down a June? Yes.

Oh, that sounds absolutely glorious.

You ever sledge down a June? No, I haven't. I really want to. I'm kind of terrified of skiing, so maybe the sand version is not much better. As long as you start off sitting down. Yes. No, it shames me. I never met it up. I spent a year living in South Africa

but we just

as I said

we never quite managed it

we sort of got

quite a lot of the way there

and then a wheel

popped off

and we got stuck in the desert No, it shames me I never made it up. I spent a year living in South Africa, but as I said, we never quite managed it.

We sort of got quite a lot of the way there, and then a wheel popped off and we got stuck in the desert.

But it's a massive continent, isn't it?

I mean, it's not just like popping up to Birmingham, to be fair. Well, I lived in Zimbabwe. It was then Rhodesia for 11 years.

And we never went to what was then called South West Africa.

...