Okay. Well, I have been postponing doing this podcast and finding every excuse not to get around to it.

I'm in New York City, which is fabulous. I flew in from Los Angeles yesterday, and you would be impressed.

You would be truly impressed by the number of irrelevant things that I managed to convince myself were really important for me to do there so that I didn't have to sit down and have this conversation.

I've been dreading this podcast for days since the arrest on Monday of one of the most influential Australians of his generation at the age of 83 on allegations of sexual assault of

young men who mostly worked on his radio show. But to be honest, I've also sort of been

dreading it for years, really, because I've never spoken publicly about the nature of Alan Jones's relationship with

me when I was a producer on his radio show in my early 20s. But now the man who infuriated the

left and had prime ministers on speed dial faces the prospect of dying behind bars, and much of the public and the

media establishment have responded to this news with a kind of breathless, prurient glee,

like a sort of salacious schadenfreude at the comeuppance of such a divisive figure. I would normally read

some of the tweets to give you an impression of the tenor of the conversation in Australia at the

moment, but I mean, they're so bad that I'm afraid they would be defamatory or prejudicial to the court

case, so I won't. But, you know, comparisons to the worst people alive, to

Harvey Weinstein, to Jimmy Saville, the British entertainer who, after his death turned out to be

a serial child rapist, you know, rot in hell, all that kind of stuff. And meanwhile, Alan Jones's

allies have nothing much to say that's particularly intelligible.

They're either tight-lipped or they're railing into the void about it being a witch hunt

without actually addressing the moral gravity of what's going on.

And I understand that this is one of those situations where conversations kind of break down.

Like it's very hard to discuss this thoughtfully and delicately and courageously without sounding

like you're either prejudging a court case or defaming someone or disputing the victim's

pain.

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