Andy Nucci

Hello and welcome to Strong Message here from BBC Radio 4, a guide to the use and abuse of political language. I'm Andy Nucci. I'm joined this week once again by Hugo Rifkind from The Times and Times Radio. Hello. Hello. Hello. We are going to look this week at the phrase fanning the flames. I wonder what that's going to lead to. The calculations politicians make.

Ei kuitenkaan laittaa mitään näkökulmia uudistamiseen, mutta olisiko se ollut suosittavaa kysymyksiä, jos kokoomus aloittaa? Silloin voisi tarkastella, onko kokoomus onnistunut oikeasti.

Okay, okay. You're bringing the light entertainment value of news to this podcast. I'm doing my best. Okay. I'm doing my best. Well, talking of light entertainment, I have a Taskmaster update. I said when Munia Chihuahua was on a couple of weeks ago, and he's done Taskmaster as well, I talked about coming up. There was a task...

In which I clearly had not had my afternoon nap and therefore I was just confused. But followed by another task in which I had had my nap and I was amazing. And it happened this week. But all that's happened is that as a result my social media feeds have just been full of comments along the lines of, do you not know how a light bulb works?

I mean, I will say, by having watched it, and with respect, you didn't appear to know how a lightbulb works. No. Let me talk you through. Please. This could be my Ed Miliband bacon sandwich moment. I do need a nap after lunch.

Metabolism-wise, my brain just goes into free fall. And I need a very, very short 10-minute nap. And then I'm brilliant again. Absolutely. How long does the nap need to be? 10 minutes. You've got to set a timer. More than 10 minutes, then you're groggy. But the phrase I do want to, I have no trouble with, is power nap.

I've always been an advocate of it in the middle of the day. It does recharge you. The example here being that the following task, I managed to see through the rules instantly and work out, even though I nearly missed that one because my nap was at Hampton Court. Am I boring you about my sleeping habit? No, it's just fascinating.

Olin Hampton Courtissa ja halusin nauttia ja löysin yö Hampton Courtissa, jossa oli vain koiria ja pöytä. Pysyin loppuun pöytässä, mutta 30 sekuntia myöhemmin 6-luvun ryhmä tuli ja kysyi, onko tämä kafe. Ajattelin, miksi tämä näyttää kafeesta ja miksi minun näyttää hankalasta Hampton Courtissa. Olen mies pöytässä.

He put a bag on his head like a parrot. That's not my work. Yes, yeah. I mean, Thatcher famously only got four hours. Yeah, but you could see it, couldn't you? Oh, God, yes. I mean, she did also sell off all her infrastructure. Imagine what would happen if she'd slept more. She'd have been like a liberal democrat. Mellow. Yes, okay.

Anyway, right. The phrase we're looking at is fanning the flames. There's a whole subset to this, like, you know, stalking up division, piling on, only making things worse, and teetering on those other two, which is politicizing and weaponizing. And politicians are always accusing other people of politicizing stuff, which makes you think, yeah, but that's what politicians do.

Emergency podcasts, they're very important. Or the emergency podcasts, yes, absolutely, yes. And I will look at the languages for age, but it did make me think, though, in that whole thing of, you know, are we just fanning the flames of this? You know, are we, are the jobs that we do, like...

Me olemme nyt tässä, ja sinä olet päiväkirjallinen ilmaisuusjärjestelmä. Siinä tarvitseeksi puhua, jos sinulla ei ole koulua Zoomissa tai mitä tahansa. Olemmeko me järjestäneet rauhoja? Olemme täällä analysoineet, mitä tapahtui viime viikolla. Onko se järjestäminen rauhoja? Onko se järjestäminen rauhoja? Ajattelin, että se olisi mielenkiintoinen kysymys. Vain kysymyksiä.

Since we ought to look at the emergency address, the phrase everyone responds to is pure cold rage. What's your take on that? It's a really interesting phrase, pure cold rage, because every word of that is interesting, right? Pure is interesting, cold is interesting, rage is interesting. Rage...

That sounds like it's not, but that also makes it sound like lukewarm rage would be worse than cold rage. I'm not sure that's right. Cold rage sounds slightly sinister, really. What is cold rage? Is that shouting? I don't know. I don't know, maybe it's a sort of withering rage? I mean, warm rage, a kind of chummy, inclusive rage, would be very odd as well. Cold rage sounds more hostile than hot rage, I'd say. Hot rage sounds, not that I'm endorsing hot rage, but...

If your rage was hot, it sounds like... Hot is sort of an obvious description of someone who's in a rage, isn't it? Hot-tempered, hot. You can't tell someone to be in a hot rage. If you're saying cold rage, it sounds very calculated. It sounds deliberate rage. We're not going to shout and scream right now. What we're going to do is in 24 hours time, we're going to shout and scream. We're going to plan this and synchronize it. That's the kind of the...

What he meant, rather than what he actually said, which was very studiously not quite what he meant. There was something that I thought, oh, that's familiar. When on, I think it was on Times Radio the next day, he said, I used that term very, very deliberately for your cold rage. I suggested that rage was put in a cold way, not a hot way. Okay, we've discussed that. The relative temperatures of rage. Putting rage in a cold way sounds to me...

Se on hieman sinisterempi kuin hot way. Premeditated rage is what it is. Yes. I'm trying to find words to describe his technique, which is a very specific speculation that hides a kind of...

Ja myös tämä kappale kaksi tasoa, kaksi tasoa poliisin, kaksi tasoa kappaleen, kun taas se ei tule olemaan niin normaalia, että lähes ei tarvitse kertoa sitä enää. Se tekee työtä vain käsittelemällä, käsittelemällä, eikö se? Joten kaikkea voi olla.

Onko se 2-kielinen? Olemme saaneet sen COVID-vaiheeseen, luuletko? Koska meillä oli erilaisia kielisiä...

My theory about the two-tier thing, it's just that Kea Starmo was cursed with a monosyllabic and eminently rhymeable with name, Kea. Because you get this two-tier Kea thing, you get this everything is too dear Kea, and you know, it's just...