Hello and welcome to this week's episode of Calling Peston, the podcast which knows it's

definitely one of your favourite too and is expecting an invite to feature in your Christmas

podcast bubble. I'm your host Shihab Khan and as the name of this podcast suggests I'll be

calling ITV's political

editor Robert Peston as we discuss how England has been reduced to tears. Our special guest

this episode is the television presenter and screenwriter Connie Huck. But first, there was plenty of

news this week. As my hilarious introduction mentioned, we've been told what Christmas will look like.

We'll be allowed to bubble up with two additional households for a period of five days around the Christmas period.

Lewis, are you looking forward to celebrating Christmas?

I am. Yeah. I mean, it's been a while since I've been home and I bought myself a car recently so I can drive home in a little bubble all the way

there. Home is Middlesbrough. People who don't listen regularly to the podcast. And yeah,

really excited. And there's vaccine news. So my grandma will be able to get the vaccine. My mom,

who's a carer. She'll also be able to get the vaccine. Yeah, we are. Had some good news this week

about the Oxford vaccine. We're obviously waiting for the regulators

to sign it off and for it to pass all its checks, but you're right. If it does pass its checks,

the government is keen to get some sort of rollout by the end of this year. And it seems as

though the target is that by the end of April, we might have a full rollout. So this Oxford

vaccine is the one that the government

had purchased 100 million doses off, so more than enough to cover the entire population.

So two bits of quite good news, I thought. We've had a long period of really bad news.

Yeah, it was a decent bit of a good news at the start of the week. And then the news today

of the tears and most people

...