The New Statesman. Who's had a worst week? The Labor Party or the BBC? I'm Rachel Cunneliff,

and this is the New Statesman podcast. And joining me today is author and journalist Lewis Goodall,

who is joining us from your holiday in Greece, is that right? Well, it was supposed to be a writing

holiday, you know. It's sort of events. I knew things were going to go that bad when we touched down on the tarmac and the first thing within five seconds was Tim Davy's stuff. I was like, oh, well, there goes the chapter. Never mind. So, comic publisher. Well, let's start there then, because you used to work at the BBC, obviously.

How would you sum up your time there?

I would say that it was a period of contrast.

I loved working on Newsnight.

You know, News Night was a show that was a sort of sad, politically obsessed teenager in Birmingham.

I used to watch it, you know, at 10.30 in my room, I'm a little telly in the room. And I never, it never got old when, you know, Kirsty Walk or Emily or whoever it was, you know, would say. And now our policy editor, Louis Goodall joins us or whatever it happened to be or he's been reporting on this. And that was always so thrilling. I always sort of lionized the BBC really. As I said in the piece that I've written for the statesman, you know, I think that I probably wouldn't be a political journalist if it was up for the BBC. And I think probably for a lot of kids from a working class background who were interested in politics, the BBC, particularly at that time when it was still more hegemonic was a kind of like gateway into different

worlds that you know that you just wouldn't have any exposure to both politically but also in terms of

other things as well so you know I'm very proud of the work that I did there on all sorts of

different things and work with some amazing colleagues under an amazing editor as may ren but it was

difficult it was difficult because I mean it was difficult from the from soon as it was announced, I was leaving Sky to do it because, you know, there were stories from somewhere in kind of, you know, the express and the mail, basically being like ministers won't go on news night because of this guy because they don't like what he's been saying about Brexit, Sky and whatever. And then it got kind of worse when, you know, Robbie Gibb, who joined the board,

who actually used to be my boss at the BBC, funnily enough.

I think maybe he thought he's had better, better days.

But anyway, you know, he, you know, started tweeting very vociferously about me

for a piece that I wrote for the new statesman about the exams crisis in 2020. And, um, you know, I just sort of felt his presence a lot, which was quite difficult. You know, people would often warn me that he was watching me or that was a target on my back. And as always with the BBC, sometimes I've heard people say this week or go on Twitter, no one's being able to say what Robbie Gibb or whoever, what do they do?

And the thing is, that misunderstands what the BBC is like. Very, very often, the BBC is one of

those organisations where no one says or no one needs to do anything. It's all through sort of

Chinese whispers. It's all through there's a feeling that things are being said. You should

be careful about this. And you try and sort of boil down,

well, what is that? Who is saying that? And no one wants to be concrete and no one wants to be

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