Shirley Valentine, Baked Spuds & Budget Bollox: It's Politics Honest
The Trawl
Jemma Forte & Marina Purkiss
4.7 • 867 Ratings
🗓️ 14 November 2025
⏱️ 41 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
From baked potatoes to pension raids, it’s another rollercoaster week in the weird and woeful world of UK politics.
Jemma and Marina pay tribute to the glorious Pauline Collins, salute a life well lived, and then plunge straight into the nation’s latest highs and lows, including the latest (Not Prince) Andrew news. It involves a late night snack and what amounts to culinary catastrophe frankly. Somehow this segues into chat about Kim K’s thongs with a difference, and Rachel Reeves apparently testing just how unpopular she can make saving for retirement.
Throw in a Tory montage, some tax turmoil, and a side of existential dread, and you’ve got a trawl that’s equal parts hilarious and horrifying.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | And you're a big fan of Jacket Potato, ain't you? |
| 0:03.4 | Who? |
| 0:16.0 | And welcome to The Trawl, where we scroll the Doom, bookmark the bat shit and collate the incredible goings-on on social media so you don't have to. I'm Marina Berkus. And I'm Gemma Forte. And in the last trawl, we chatted all things BBC buyers bollocks. Today we're talking upcoming budget bollocks. And then on Saturday's episode, yes, Saturdays, you're getting another one this week, we'll be talking musky bollocks. |
| 0:39.6 | Ooh, musky. I don't know that sound of that. So what you're saying is we're talking bollocks. |
| 0:44.8 | That's a really good bit of promotion there for us right at the top of our pod. Good point. But before all of that, |
| 0:50.7 | bollocks, let's start with a little tribute to somebody who really does mean |
| 0:54.6 | something to Marina and I, and indeed to anybody who has ever stared into space on a grey day |
| 1:00.8 | and thought, is this it? Because actress Pauline Collins passed away, very sadly, at the |
| 1:07.9 | age of 85. And of course, she was the star of the film Shirley Valentine, |
| 1:13.9 | for which she was Oscar nominated in 1990. So, yes, she probably will be, although she played |
| 1:20.6 | all sorts of parts, best remembered for that betrayal of disgruntled housewife Shirley in Lewis |
| 1:26.8 | Gilbert's award-winning film, |
| 1:28.9 | which was based on the stage play that Willie Russell wrote. |
| 1:32.2 | Willie Russell is such a brilliant writer. |
| 1:34.0 | He also wrote Educating Rita. |
| 1:35.7 | He wrote Blood Brothers. |
| 1:37.2 | It was absolutely brilliant. |
| 1:38.6 | So Marina and I thought that we would play a little clip from that fabulous film. |
| 1:45.0 | What's this then? |
| 1:46.0 | What? |
| 1:48.0 | What is this? |
| 1:52.0 | Well, all right, it's Thursday, but we're having chips and egg for a change. |
... |
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