Oh, he's cute. Mr. I can never sleep when I'm traveling. He's hugging his pillow like a sloth on a branch.

He couldn't sleep before. Now listen to him. Sounds like an elephant with a chest infection.

Well, they call him a dreamer. And now they're right.

All aboard, Mr. I can never sleep when I'm traveling.

Find all the comfort you need in the quiet lounge.

Piando Ferries, there is another way.

Hello everyone, welcome to this very special live recording of my podcast, the Brendan O'Neill show with me, Brendan O'Neill.

Before we kick off with this tonight's brilliant guest, I just want to say thank you to everyone for attending this evening.

If you're attending that means you're a spiked supporter and we really couldn't do what we do without

spike supporters. We rely on the generosity of our readers to keep doing all the brilliant stuff that we do. So thank you so much for that and obviously spread the word. Tell everyone else to become a spike supporter too. Now on to our guest. She really doesn't need an

introduction. You are all familiar with Melanie Phillips. Melanie is a

seasoned broadcaster, a prolific writer. You will have read her stuff in the Times on her

substack, Melanie Philip Substack.com and in numerous other places as well.

She is in my view one of the great voices of reason of our time and I'm really

thrilled to have her here for the live discussion tonight. Melanie welcome to the show.

Thanks so much Brendan, always a pleasure to be with you. So Melanie there is a lot I want to talk to you about in a pretty short period of time

at this evening but I want to kick off by asking you what life is like in Israel right now. You spend most of your time I think or certainly a significant

chunk of your time in Israel at the moment. What's it like there? It's been eight months now since the

Hamas pogrom against the people of southern Israel, and we've seen the fallout not only between Israel and Gaza, but also in the west with the growth of increasing new forms of insanity and I want to talk to you

about some of those this evening as well but firstly what's life like in Israel is it

relatively calm are people pulling together? Is it odd? What is it like there?

Well, you're right. I spend most of my time there, although I'm currently in London. I come to

...