This is a global original podcast.

Hello and welcome to full disclosure, a podcast project that is designed chiefly to let me spend a little bit more time or a lot more time with somebody that we find interesting than is ordinarily available on the radio show.

Although this week's guest,

the First Minister of Wales and Leader of Welsh Labour, Mark Draper, has been quite a regular feature on the radio show in recent years, for which we're very grateful. You're described often

as a politician who never sought the spotlight, but the spotlight found you. Do you like it?

The spotlight, not particularly. No.

You know, I am a politician by accident rather than by design.

But it goes with the business, doesn't it?

You like talking about yourself, Mark?

I sense it's probably not your favourite subject.

No, no. I'm, I've always been interested in politics, but I'm interested in politics because of

ideas and policies and the difference you can make and all of that and I find all the rest of it,

well, slightly uninteresting.

Yes, you're at odds with the zeitgeist in a way. We seem to be living in an

era of attention-seeking preening popping jays. And yet I think part of the reason why you've won

over so many people outside Wales during the period of the pandemic is because of this

slightly odd habit you have of trying to answer questions honestly. It comes to being a university

professor, you see.

This is a great problem in politics because as a, if you're teaching a university,

you're taught to try and answer the question.

I can't get out to the habit.

Let's begin at the beginning.

...