George Galloway's 'The Mother of All Talk Shows'

[Mandy]

Official announcement :

Subject : George Galloway's 'The Mother of All Talk Shows'

George Galloway's 'The Mother of All Talk Shows' will have the last broadcast on talkSPORT radio before the general election this Saturday 27th March 2010. The date of the next broadcast is uncertain, but George aims to bring back the show as soon as possible, including, if necessary, as an internet broadcasted show.

If you are interested in receiving the details, please sign up to the mailing list at :
http://www.georgegalloway.com/page.php?page=content/contact_mlist.html

You can also keep up to date by visiting : http://www.GeorgeGalloway.com

[faceless]

Does that mean his contract's up if he's not elected or that he plans to broadcast during the election campaign?

[Mandy]

Watch this space ....

[Colston]

Interesting... be a terrible shame if the show disappears.

[Mandy]

I second that Colston ... and hence why it won't disappear. It is too popular and George loves doing it.

[Colston]

[Mandy]

Thanks Colston. I think we all need to wait to see what happens next, and then spread the word.

[faceless]

well GG's basically confirmed that tomorrow's show will be the last ever Mother of All Talk Shows.

It's the end of an era!

[luke]

thats a real shame you'll have to see if you can find out what the score is mandy

heres an interview with george from this months total politics magazine talking about his radio show ( full article here also features ken livingstone plus right wingers gaunt and ferrari )

GEORGE GALLOWAY

I have persuaded 800,000 people to do something that no one would ever have imagined to be possible before: to switch off their televisions at 10pm or to refrain from going out to the pub on a Friday or Saturday night and sit around a radio set and engage in a political debate. This is tremendously heart-warming. It ditches the idea that the mass of the public are uninterested in politics.

I spent the last 35 years of my life driving, getting trains, going around the country speaking in buildings and church halls to hundreds of people. To be able to reach a mass audience on the radio is a fantastic exponential lift in my ability to work.

Sometimes my daughter texts me saying: "You're gonna have a heart attack." That happens but not that much. Contrary to what you might think, I am not any kind of uncontrolled person. If I am angry that'scontrolled anger. Racism is my particular red rag and that can get me going more than anything else. But I like to think I do it quite well.

People want personal anecdotes. Because I have been around for a long time there are a lot of things that I am able to draw personal experience from - "This actually happened, I actually saw this or Nelson Mandela said to me." It puts fl esh on bones. People like the fact that - they may have thought otherwise - but when they tuned in I am not monomaniacal about politics, at least politics in its narrow sense. We often talk about culture, you know: "Where did Simon & Garfunkel write 'Homeward Bound'?" We've had that twice sustaining nearly three hours of radio.

I could have gone for the jugular on an entirely populist basis about expenses but I argue - which is quite unpopular on the show - that we need half as many MPs and we ought to pay them twice as much. That's what I wrote in my book in 2004 and I haven't changed my mind about it.

Whenever there's a quiet night I say to the producer we have to cover Margaret Thatcher and dangerous dogs. Those two topics will light up the switchboard anytime - no matter how often you do it.

There's a disturbing level of demand for a referendum to get out of the European Union. I am a supporter of the EU, so I defend it. Not in all its works and how it operates and so on but as a concept, as an idea. As a person who hates nationalism of any kind, I argue for the greatest supranational development in world governance that we can get. The EU is a good place to start. But the listeners don't like that. Even the people who support me don't like it.

A lot of the show hinges on my personality. People wouldn't be listening in the first place if it wasn't me who was doing it. The audience for that slot was 80,000 when I took over, so it is 1,000 per cent more. But I don't do all the talking - not by any means. If you analyse the whole three hours, I am definitely not talking even half the time. Because we have such a huge audience and we get so many calls, most of the time the callers are talking or I am reading the words of the correspondence.

I believe that our media is absolutely partial - towards capitalism as a system, towards the British rule in the world, wars and our international stances in general, they are all absolutely taken as given by the British media. Each of these things are intensely controversial. So why shouldn't we have people who support this kind of thing and people who oppose it like me having absolute freedom to argue their case? I think that's the way the Tories want to go and I could be one of the beneficiaries of that. I think I could get backing for a station like talkSPORT that was left-wing.

[Mandy]

Thanks Luke. Good find.

If I learn anything about this development, I will let you know here on the couch.

[Brown Sauce]

Maybe we should all get on the "chat" tonight, as the show goes out.

Shame if it is to go to the net, I don't think it's mature enough, but if it does it'll help it's maturity, and it's a lot less regulated.

[Mandy]

[Mandy]

The Mother of All Talkshows - A statement by George Galloway MP

After a run of more than four years the highly popular radio show - The Mother of All Talkshows - has been killed off by the TalkSport management.

I believe this is a business mistake, but then I don't run the radio station and such decisions are not mine to take. I will always be grateful to TalkSport for giving me the opportunity to launch the Mother of All Talkshows, and particularly to Bill Ridley and Sean Dilley who got me started there. Both taught me a lot - and Ridley encouraged what became my trademark - a stand up delivery which gave the thing its public platform feel.

The show became something of a phenomenon. An audience of hundreds of thousands of people switched off their televisions or gave up going out, on Fridays and Saturdays between 10pm and 1am. These impressive listenership figures nonetheless under-stated the audience. For statistical reasons the Friday night show was counted in with Ian Collins Sunday to Thursday audience then averaged out. Anyone who has heard Collins show and heard the Friday night MOATS will understand how seriously that must have skewed the audience figures. The show's huge popularity amongst minority ethnic communities was also difficult fully to catch with the blunt instrument of Rajar market research. And the substantial listenership in other countries on the internet was of course not counted at all.

All in all the show became something of real importance to the people who listened and contributed, whether they agreed with its political thrust or not.

It will be obvious that I consider its demise premature, and I am determined to try to keep it alive. It is unlikely that the TalkSport management will change their mind and re-instate the show - but you never know. They say they want me to stay at the station, but they have not said for what when or how. Other stations are interested but TalkSport's national platform is unique. The BBC doesn't allow presenters to have a point of view. For all its faults TalkSport was special in that, even if now all the points of view are of one particular kind. There is no-one left to speak up for the BA strikers, the Palestinians, or to speak out against the wars to mention just a few of the most obvious.

That there IS an audience which either supports my views on these kind of issues, or that just wants to hear these views aired, is self-evident. So..

I'm going to launch an internet radio station. It will be called Rebel radio, it will host the Mother of All Talk Shows as well as other shows by me and other rebel voices, including radicals from other sides in politics. It will be free speech radio, beyond Ofcom and the kind of fate which killed off Top Cat on TalkSport. It will be controversial, funny, campaigning, informative, it will be Talk radio for thinking people. It will be radical and above all it will never ever be dull. In the beginning it will have to paid for by donations or by subscriptions or by both, we're working on that. If we can build and show a substantial audience, advertisers and sponsors may be attracted. But one way or another we will launch this rebel radio. The radio insurrection will begin soon. Stay tuned register your interest and be ready. Its just over the rainbow. And we are all going to get there, together.

George Galloway MP
House of Commons
March 2010

[joepiano]

I'm very sad about this great show being ended by bean counters at TalkSport...but alas, my other few favorite 'left leaning' and rational talk shows, here in the states, have also been killed off. Luckily for me and many other loyal listeners, they all have found a new life on the internet...Jeff Farias..Mike Malloy..The Young Turks..to name a few. It can work!

Long Live Top Cat!

Carry on GG; we need your spirit, your wonderful callers, and your voice!

p.s. I'm a 'self loving' Jew (though also very angry at Israel), who, proudly and loudly, supports everything George Galloway has so courageously been saying about, and DOING for, the Palestinian people!

[Mandy]