Hello and welcome to the political party for the first time in the history of the show I'm doing a replay season

where I repeat some of the best interviews from the history of the show. It's been going 10 years. Now if you're not aware of why I'm doing this it's not out of laziness it's because I'm in hospital I'm having an operation for a tumor on my spine. I'm not recording this on the ward. I've recorded this in advance and I just

thought I would go back through the back catalog and pick out my favorite ones. Now often people

will get in touch by email, by Twitter, face to face and say, oh why haven't you

had someone on? And I'll often say, I have, but you are forgiven because it was a very long

time ago and I don't expect you to trawl through 10 years worth of podcast. So I've picked out these they're not in date order,

they are in just a fairly random order, but I've been through the entire feed and picked out my favorite ones.

I had to start with this one because whenever

I'm asked who the best guest I've ever interviewed is there is only one

answer and is Tessa Jowel. This is from September 2014, so nine years ago and whatever I'm preparing for these interviews

Obviously you have a view or I have a view and you have a view as a listener you think oh I've heard

of that person or I haven't and you if you have you bring a preconception about

and you think oh that'll be funny or that'll be interesting or whatever it is

I'd always been a fan of Tessa Jowl, as you would guess from

my politics and just from her approach to it and her approach to life. I was not prepared to be moved in the way that I was by this and I don't think anyone there on the night was prepared and I get so many comments about this interview to this day nine years later and it is purely because of the amazing person that

Tessa Jowel is. I can't bring myself to say what because this is a record of her

and her personality that is so special and this is the

closest thing to a spiritual experience I've ever had and I just this was a special moment in my life because of Tessa and because of who she was and

Whenever people get cynical about politicians there are plenty of politicians

out there that prove that cynicism wrong and hopefully you can think of many but top of that list

for me after this interview has always been Tesser. So enjoy, just the most

magical evening in the history of the show and I couldn't start this replay season with anyone else. This is the magical

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