The Warning Signs Britain Ignored - Colin Brazier

**Colin Brazier** (0:02)
Growing up in Bradford, which I think shapes you, and growing up there has given me an early warning clanging in my ears.
It's massively segregated. There was a tolerance because people didn't think it mattered. I think the British state dropped the ball by allowing people we would later call Islamists to burn the satanic verses. We now have sort of de facto blasphemy laws. It was a scene of the biggest race riots involving British Asians this country has ever seen. They were an expression of territorial reality in my opinion.

**Konstantin Kisin** (0:32)
I know you had some small attempts to raise issues of this nature when you were at Sky. What was your experience?

**Colin Brazier** (0:38)
Organizations like Sky News can't tackle these subjects.

**Konstantin Kisin** (0:41)
Why not?

**Colin Brazier** (0:42)
Because they don't give a s*** about their customers anymore. I think Bradford is a very powerful and cautionary tale about future.

**Francis Foster** (0:52)
Many of you have commented that you're seeing too many ads in our videos. We've listened to your feedback and disabled YouTube ads in the middle of interviews. Can we ask you a favor in return? According to our analytics, most of you who watch our show aren't subscribed. Please help us to continue to bring you fantastic content by subscribing today, hitting like and leaving a comment with your thoughts on this video.

**Konstantin Kisin** (1:18)
Colin Brazier, welcome to TRIGGERnometry.

**Colin Brazier** (1:20)
Lovely to be here.

**Konstantin Kisin** (1:20)
It's great to have you. We've really both been enjoying your work of late, particularly some of the monologues you're putting out. Before we get into opinions and views and recent events and future events and so on, tell us your story.
What's been your journey through life that leads you to be sitting here talking to us?

**Colin Brazier** (1:37)
It includes growing up in Bradford, which I think shapes you. It's a really big city.
Got the youngest demographics in Europe. It was the place where I think the British state dropped the ball by allowing people who we would later call Islamists to burn the satanic verses. We should have jumped on them. We didn't. We now have a de facto blasphemy laws. It was a scene of the biggest race riots involving British Asians this country has ever seen. It's the 25th anniversary this summer of the Bradford riots in 2001 It's a really important city. Growing up there, don't sound like I grew up there, I did grow up there, has given me an early warning.
Clanging in my ears that something needs to be said and done about the direction of Britain today. What else has shaped me? Being widowed 10 years ago, and then eight or nine years ago with six still quite young children shaped me a lot because adversity is apt to concentrate the mind and necessarily concentrated mind, but it also makes you a bit braver because you've seen horror, you've gazed into the abyss a little bit. So that was hugely shaping. My Catholic faith shapes me a lot. I'll give you three, that'll do.

**Konstantin Kisin** (2:48)
Why don't you sound like you grew up in Bradford?

**Colin Brazier** (2:50)
It's a really good question and what I'm uncomfortable talking about. I didn't upgrade deliberately. I still say last and fast.
Was it Alan Bennett talked about when he was Oxford, he lived in fear of being ambushed by the letter U. I think people who are trying to put it on will come unstuck. It's funny, we believe in flexibility in all things. People can move in lots of different ways, but actually when it comes to transitioning to speaking a different way, people are quite uncomfortable. Aesthetically, I like to enunciate what I say.
I think it's inclusive. I never get recognized by people with one exception. It happened to me last week at a hospital, a Tanzanian guy came up to me. I was there with my son. He said, your dad used to be on. The number of African men who've come up to me, because they used to watch Sky News when I worked 25 years, they would watch Sky News as a way of improving their English and the way that people just listen to the BBC World Service to improve their English and the vernacular.
These people have learned English, people who come to the UK from books very often. I think the gap between how we speak English and how we write English needs to be as close as possible. But actually, if you come from Africa or Asia or South America and live in London, you won't hear English spoken in the way, in the one way, that RP way. I'm not RP, but I try to speak clearly, because I think it aids clear communication. I don't like glottal stops either. I think it's ugly.