Well, hello, I'm Hugo Rifkin, and now we're going to be unpacking the politics of the day,

from Kirstearner's difficult week pending to Russell Brand, losing his place in the Bible,

and whether the king can handle the Donald.

And much like Charles, I'll be walking a diplomatic tightrope as I try and maintain cordial relationships between the Times columnist Libby Purvis. Hello, Libby. Hello. How are you? Oh, all right. My daughter finished the marathon yesterday. I just need everybody to know that. Your daughter finished the marathon? Yep, she did. That's deeply, deeply impressive. Do you know what? I was out running on Saturday and I passed someone and she said,

are you running tomorrow?

Good luck.

And I thought, I'm deeply flattered, but you must be mad. Of course not. So someone who actually did it. Absolutely in awe. Eight hours, 45, I think it was. That's pretty good. That's pretty good. And we're also joined by Seb Payne. Hello, Seb. Hello. I feel much of her, Libby, don't you don't sound very

happy this Monday morning. It's nice weather. It's a nice day. Lots of going on. She's tired. She's just for careously run a marathon. What did you do yesterday? Not run a marathon. I did do a run though. I ran 4.6 miles yesterday. No, that's not too bad. It's not a marathon now. Six months.

It's, you know, I do, I frequently do a quarter of a marathon.

Let's crack on. Let's start with Kirstearner. He faces yet another perilous week ahead, all stemming from his decision to appoint. Peter Mandelson as the US ambassador. His former Chief of Staff Morgan McSweeney is going to be grilled by the Foreign Affairs Select Committee tomorrow after claims he told the Foreign Office to just effing approve Mandelson's appointment. That's our own effing there for radio purposes. We're going to be taking that evidence live from 11am on Tuesday on Times Radio, so do listen in. We've almost never heard from Morgan McSweeney in public before. Seb, I'm guessing you'll have your popcorn out for that one. Yes, well the popcorn actually starts a bit earlier at 9am when Philip Barton, who is the former

permanent secretary of the Foreign Office, is speaking.

And in some ways, that's going to be the more significant hearing than Morgan McSweeney,

because Philip Barton is expected as per the Times is reporting to say that

there was pressure applied on the Foreign Office to get Peter Mandelson's appointment through

whether included the F word or not. Now that's something Kirstama of course has denied at the

dispatch box which could cause him some problems I'm sure we'll talk about later.

But Morgan McSweeney will be fascinating that I've met Morgan many times over the years.

He's very softly quite spoken, given the, you know, this kind of Raspute-in-esque figure.

You know, whenever you see Dominic Cummings, who is the kind of former occupant of this particular

constitutional role, he's very kind of loud and sometimes

abrasive, aggressive. Morgan is the complete opposite of that in terms of persona. So I think he'll be

very calm, he'll be very quiet, and he'll be incredibly careful about what he is saying there,

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