Welcome to the Red Box Politics Podcast from The Times. I'm not

Matt Chorley because he's sitting opposite me looking slightly worried because

this is not normal. Basically what I'm going to try and do is explain what on earth is going on in British politics.

Why is gone so mad?

That's going to take about for five hours.

And then we're going to get a quick loop break

and we're going to finish with a stop.

Happy Christmas everyone. You've clearly reached the point in festivities where a podcast is required to give you a much-needed break from your family.

My name is Alex Jakes and usually at this point of the pod I'm on the other side of the glass.

But we've decided that even Matt is not enough of an eager test to interview himself

about his own one-man show, but he's not above plugging it. Well it's like kind of you Alex it's almost

embarrassing you've bought it up but as you have done it is probably worth me

pointing out that I am doing that this is not normal show once more in January

January the 25th the Bloomsbury Theatre in London

lovely theatre just near Houston you can get tickets on the Bloomsbury Theatre

website or you know look at my Twitter feed where I repost it about five times a day.

Yeah, tickets are on sale, they're selling fast, but if you haven't yet done your Christmas shopping

for that person in your life who has everything, I think tickets to the Bloomsby Theatre is exactly

what they're looking for.

So who came up with this idea?

Did you come up with the idea or did someone approach you?

So there's a bit of a long-winded story with this, but basically the Times sponsor

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