Martin Bell: The man in the white suit

Sweeney Talks

Global

Society & Culture, Politics, Government, News

4.2 • 1.5K Ratings

🗓️ 25 December 2022

⏱️ 40 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

A much-loved war reporter and one of the best writers in the business, Martin Bell has seen it all. As a BBC reporter, he covered foreign assignments in more than 90 countries and 11 wars. In 1997, Martin quit the BBC to stand as an independent anti-sleaze candidate against the MP for Tatton, Neil Hamilton. The two candidates waged an increasingly hostile and public battle. It saw some of the most surreal scenes of the election, finishing with Martin winning one of the safest Conservative seats in the country.

Transcript

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0:00.0	This is a Global Player original podcast.
0:08.0	Welcome to Sweeney Talks.
0:10.0	It's a podcast series where I get to interview people who've done serious stuff with their lives and then got into trouble.
0:16.0	Big trouble. I'm not here to lecture them about that. I'm kind of a professor of big trouble
0:22.2	ology myself. I've got history with the Church of Scientology, North Korea, Donald Trump,
0:28.7	Vladimir Putin, Tommy Robinson and the Russian army. I'm here to find out what it feels like
0:36.6	to be in the deep doo-doo.
0:39.3	How you survive it, and then how the hell you get out of it.
0:43.3	If you've been in trouble, you're not alone.
0:46.3	So, come along for the ride.
0:49.3	You might learn some new tricks.
0:51.3	You might have a laugh, but one thing is sure. The best stories aren't told
0:56.4	by the well-behaved.
1:02.5	And once you've listened to the interview, you can hear what I really think about it. In Sweeney
1:06.8	keeps talking. Find that exclusively on Global Player.
1:18.9	My guess this week is God's gift to the dry cleaning industry.
1:25.1	Martin Bell was a much-loved BBC reporter and, by common consent, the best writer in the business.
1:28.7	We became friends in the war in Bosnia. In 1997,
1:35.0	he quit the corporation, and in his trademark white suit, he went into battle against Neil and Christine Hamilton for Tatton and got into trouble big time. The Hamilton's attacked him.
1:41.8	His election machine was a disaster.
1:45.9	Everything seemed to be going wrong.
1:50.1	But then the underdog won a tremendous victory.
	...

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