Hello and welcome to rock and roll politics the weekly podcast with me, Steve Richards.

Thank you very much for tuning in.

Hope you had a break if you've got one.

I had a short break, so the weekly podcast wasn't weekly for a few weeks.

It will be again now starting from this one.

Before it get going, a couple of announcements.

First of all, the paperback of my book on

Prime Ministers, reflections on leadership from Harold Wilson to Theresa May, as it was in the

hardback, is now from Harold Wilson to Boris Johnson. There's an additional chapter on Johnson,

which made me update some of the other chapters too,

because Johnson's rule, though not over yet, shines considerable light on the other leaders as well

in ways that I'm going to reflect actually in this podcast, because it's a good way of setting up

the autumn drama that is about to unfold.

So anyway, that's out on September the 3rd.

I'm also doing a few live shows this month, hopefully in a theatre.

It was really interesting doing the live streams of rock and roll politics,

which involved me sitting in front of a computer, but in ways that felt very engaged because the audience asked brilliant questions,

some of it carried on on Twitter afterwards, the equivalent of meeting at the bar after those

live shows. And so that was a really good experience.

You felt you were somehow defeating the virus fleetingly by doing those. But it's, of course,

not the same as being in a theatre. So hopefully I'll be at King's Place where also, because

obviously the audience is going to be very carefully socially distanced so there won't be as many as usual

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