Hello and welcome to the political party. This one featuring Owen Smith.

Firstly, I should apologise for not being in episode last week.

I haven't been very well. I've had a bit of a chest infection, so I'm very sorry that

I didn't pull on out last week, but I wasn't in the best of health and needed to rest.

So apologies for that. But here we are with Owen Smith, former Shadow Secretary of State

for Northern Ireland and of course leadership contender just a couple of years ago.

As we explore at the start of the interview, I've no no in for quite some time.

I worked on his bi-election in 2006 in Bliner Gwent that wasn't successful.

And he's always been such a chirpy and friendly guy. He's always found the positive side in

things. And I've always wanted to interview him a long time, as I was obviously, as I

often say, and this is true. But he is one of the chirpiest members of parliament, I know,

and always managed to find a positive even in what have been difficult experiences for

him. And I really appreciate him coming on. He's had a lot of media requests this week.

So this is an exclusive. We talk about all sorts of things. It's got some great stories

of Welsh politics and the experience of dealing with the public. Not just the public,

many animals. And we talk about the nature is departure recently from the Shadow Cabinet.

It's a wide-ranging interview. You get a real sense, as you do often, with a lot of

Labour politicians, where they're coming from morally, what drives him, the causes that

he truly believes in. And there is obviously an air of sorrow about the fact that he's

not in the Shadow Cabinet at the moment, and perhaps the direction of the Labour Party.

He's very diplomatic about Jeremy Corbyn, which is impressive, given what he's been through.

So he's a brilliant guest, and it was a real mixture of an interview, some really, really

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