Special Recording with Mystery Guest

Latin America Correspondent Jon Bonfiglio is joined by an illustrious, mystery guest. 

Transcript

Jon Bonfiglio 0:00

Hi everyone, welcome back to Latin America Correspondent, where today we have a very special mystery guest. Maybe this song will give you a clue. Yes, you guessed it.

Martin Kelner 1:07

The great man long John Baldry.

Jon Bonfiglio 1:10

And there is his voice. It is Martin Kelner, the National Treasurer of British Broadcasting, the Princess Anne to all the other Prince Andrews of radio, the Trotsky to their Lenins, the Jimmy Carter to their Reagans. How are you, Martin?

Martin Kelner 1:27

I'm absolutely fine, Jon. It's lovely to hear your voice again and everything. And I know I'm missing those days when we used to have a regular weekly uh round of what's going on in Latin America. Uh interesting enough, you if you were if you're listening in the United Kingdom to um talk sport slash talk radio, um you thought you may have thought once in a while, why why Latin America? Why not somewhere, you know, why don't we have a regular thing from Afghanistan? And it was mainly because you were not only very good at it, Jon, but also available. You are highly available.

Jon Bonfiglio 2:07

Eight years, Martin, of Friday nights. And I know you still do some slots with with Talk Radio, and I'm still on occasionally. I was on last night actually with uh with Paul Ross, and I think I'm gonna be on with him again. So maybe it wasn't that we were cancelled, maybe it was that the the powers that be, human resources just decided that uh they just had to keep us apart.

Martin Kelner 2:24

It may very well have been that. I think we may have been getting too popular, it's one of those things.

Jon Bonfiglio 2:30

And uh yeah, the the show came to an end in the year where you we were nominated for a for a broadcasting award.

Martin Kelner 2:38

We were, and uh you were well, I edited the uh the entry, you know, with my best bits, and you were very much part of my best bits. I think we were talking about Mardi Gras.

Jon Bonfiglio 2:51

So it was Milei and the Pope. I actually um I remember listening to the the submission for the radio awards and thinking and sort of half hoping that uh that we wouldn't win, because there was so much other good great material that we generated, and for you to to to to to force me into a corner talking about the Pope's relationship, the the Pope's romance with uh Javier Milei in Argentina, uh yeah, no, it was it was that.

Martin Kelner 3:18

It was that and we spent a lot of time on Javier Milei's uh haircut. Is it still uh is he still like the wild man? Is he still have that stuff?

Jon Bonfiglio 3:26

Well, because you and you and he have uh for listeners who are unaware, if you Google Martin Kelner, some images of him will come up. And that there's it's not a dissimilar haircut, uh hairstyle that you have to um to Javier Milei's. Is that is that unfair of me?

Martin Kelner 3:43

No, not at all. 1981 was when I had the no, a little bit before that, actually, late 70s, before you were born, John. Late 70s, I had the full well, what I used to call the jufro. It's like an afro. You know, it was uh yeah, I had that. But I was sort of modeling myself on Bob Dylan in a way.

Jon Bonfiglio 4:06

Well, because I mean uh uh you you you are a man of um uh of of uh pedigree. Um let's say you you have lived and you you definitely still do very well with your with your head of hair. Has has no um sort of men's hair products company ever come calling um asking for you to to sort of uh uh to be a uh a figurehead for them?

Martin Kelner 4:32

No, that it hasn't um it's interesting you say that because I'm always looking for you know possible sponsorship opportunities. I've reached the phrase, uh I've reached the point now where it's probably only going to be like exit the voluntary euthanasia society or somebody like that who's gonna pick up on sponsorship that or a retirement home, maybe. But uh you mentioned hair. My uh as I often say to people, my hair is holding up really well. I mean, the rest of me is falling to bits, but my hair is still holding up. So uh yeah, that's a possible I'm making a note of that. That is a possible sponsorship opportunity.

Jon Bonfiglio 5:09

I also remember you occasionally referencing the possibility of you being sponsored by other um men's medical products. Um, but I don't know whether that ever came to to fruition. You you would often refer to yourself and Pele in the same breath as being potential figureheads for um for uh how can we euphemistically refer to this, Martin?

Martin Kelner 5:31

Well, I think all we can say is Pele's storied history in that department um this just sort of outstrips not only mine, but probably virtually anybody's uh because uh that I've seen these most of these documentaries about Pele as uh as a young man, and um he did have Pele versus Maradona in that department. Where do we you know who gets the um who gets the ballon d'or?

Jon Bonfiglio 6:02

The ballon d'or, the ballons d'or. Um Martin, I thought maybe we could just have a little trip down memory lane today, as we were again. Uh my Friday night was always Martin Kelner at night. There was nothing else that uh featured in it for for almost a decade. And I just wondered from all of those broadcasts that we did together, what um are there any stories that you um that you remember that stand out that uh that trip off the off the tongue, so to speak, as regards uh them be their sort of unforgettable uh nature or components?

Martin Kelner 6:41

Mostly your own exploits. I mean that's what how we first you know, the th the times you got stranded and your stories of um you know of being stranded, you know, being close to death actually on a number of occasions. They were always uh they were always an amusing stories to me. Uh so yeah, that's a lot of people.

Jon Bonfiglio 7:02

Yeah, that jungle I guess in particular that jungle episode does repeat, especially when somebody gets lost in in uh especially I mean the Amazon tends to be where people get lost these days. And whenever that whenever I see that story, I know that somebody's gonna call and ask me to to cover the story and to recount it from my own personal experience. I I guess yeah, we talked about that a few times, didn't we?

Martin Kelner 7:25

We did, but well, as you say, uh you know the opportunities always arose when uh somebody got uh got stranded, got lost, whatever. And you were stranded for how long?

Jon Bonfiglio 7:35

Oh, just a week. Just a week. But actually it it reminds me that um and that was that was in Mexico's southern jungle, but it reminds me that one of the stories which I always remember because I guess we covered it a few times as well, was you remember the Colombian children, the the plane crash in uh in the Colombian Amazon, and the the adults died, the um the pilot died, the uh the mother died, and I think there was another adult there, but all the ch but when the the wreckage was was found, all the children were uh were gone, and it was something like six weeks. Um if we get if I get this is all unprepared, so if I get some facts wrong, I apologize, I apologize in advance. But it was an extended period of time that these children were were lost in the jungle. I think the eldest was something like ten years old, and the youngest was a baby. The youngest um uh celebrated uh her first birthday whilst the four kids were lost um in the jungle. And that was an absolutely incredible story.

Martin Kelner 8:30

Yes, it was, and the other one that uh stands out to me is the narco hippos.

Jon Bonfiglio 8:35

Oh yeah, we we we we talked about that a lot, didn't we? Um the narco hippos and uh uh their their breeding and how biologists kept being ineffective at trying to to curtail their growth. Uh for anybody who hasn't come across the narco hippos, uh, these were Pablo Escobar's hippos because um again, if you'd followed the program through the years, um cartel bosses, cartel leaders have a thing for exotic animals. And Escobar in Medellin at his uh at his uh ranch um uh had per purchased hippopotamuses from somewhere, and then when he was killed, the hippos escaped into the nearby uh Magdalena River in in Medellin and started to uh to reproduce and had become a real real boner contention for the authorities uh and also for academics. Some academics um arguing that they should be removed, they should be euthanized, others arguing that it sort of returned the landscape to sort of a pre-human um uh uh landscape territory, um, if if if you will, and that was something that we returned to a number of times. Even at one point, we had a call with uh the the owner of a huge um sort of animal refuge in Sinaloa, and he they were gonna they were gonna fly in some of the hippos for to be protected there. Unfortunately, since the Sinaloa cartel, going back to um to uh troubles with uh with cartels, unfortunately, since the Sinaloa cartel started imploding, they've actually had to move all of their animals away from from where they were because there was too much trouble for them to be able to go about their their business.

Martin Kelner 10:07

Yeah, absolutely. Uh and obviously uh one of the things I remember is um you attached me to Cruz Azul uh because of my links with the concrete industry in the in the United Kingdom. Cruz Azul were the were the concrete team in um in the Mexican league.

Jon Bonfiglio 10:26

Yeah, that was a regular feature for us, wasn't it? Seeing how Cruz Azul were um were faring, um uh and obviously um disparaging their arch rivals Club America, um which I'll mention now because Club America, their their sort of traditional home, is the Estadio Azteca, uh with where the number of the World Cup matches are gonna be held in in Mexico City coming up this this summer. Um they've not been playing there recently because the Estadio Azteca has been uh has been uh refurbished, but I'm actually gonna be at the Estadio Azteca Martin on Friday because there are some uh a group of what are known as the lost lionesses of the Copa uh 71, uh which is sort of an unofficial uh women's World Cup that took place here, that are returning to Mexico for the first time in 55 years. And I'm gonna accompany them across events and I'm gonna be with them when they go back to the Estadio Azteca for the first time on Friday.

Martin Kelner 11:19

Brilliant. I think I saw that story somewhere, you know, because women's football was, you know, now of course it's uh uh you know it's a recognized part of the uh football calendar. But years ago, it was quite a shadowy thing, you know. There was uh women's football in the UK in the 1930s, 1940s, uh and uh attracted huge crowds. Uh and I think the same is true with these lost uh lionesses, you know, they're all.

Jon Bonfiglio 11:46

Yeah, and women's football was banned between just after World War One, um, after the they started getting these crowds, and then I think it was um legalized, allowed again in 1969, just before the Copa 71. And yeah, these these lionesses played to 18,000, 90,000 spectators here in in Mexico City. It was a huge event, and then of course they went home and nobody I mean, at best nobody cared. At worst, they were sort of almost blacklisted because of uh um their their participation. I I was also thinking before about other stories, Martin, that sort of just spring to mind. Do you remember the Miel Gibson story from Chile?

Martin Kelner 12:23

I don't, I'm afraid.

Jon Bonfiglio 12:24

This is genius. This is obviously related to Mel Gibson, and some bright spark in in Chile um decided that they that there was uh because m uh Mel Gibson and Miel in Spanish is honey. So they were marketing their honey uh that they were harvesting under the name Mel Gibson, just adding an I to the name Mel Gibson to make it Miel Gibson. The only problem was that Mel Gibson found out and launched major lawsuits against them, which rumbled and rumbled rumbled. This is like some woman working out of her sort of her her back room to to to generate and sell these uh this honey. So it wasn't really doing any kind of international damage to to Mel Gibson. It made him just look um like I mean, it didn't present him in the best light. And if anything, it did an an amazing amount to promote and market this um this this woman's honey. And then I'm sure you remember this one. Do you remember uh this was actually not that long ago? This was last year, I think at some point in the middle of the year, maybe when this uh this Brazilian woman wheeled her dead grandmother into the bank, insisting that she was alive in order to claim her sort of a pension check.

Martin Kelner 13:36

Cracking story. Absolutely. I I do love those stories where dead people are uh transported around. Well uh it happens from time to time on uh planes. I think the the most recent one was somebody on a Ryanair plane where his mates carried him onto the plane, put him into a seat, and it became apparent that um he was no longer living. So they had to um they had to put down, they had to uh uh land the plane somewhere else, that's fly back basically. And uh yeah, that's always a good story that's a good way to ruin a holiday, isn't it?

Jon Bonfiglio 14:19

I also remember I would like to bring up how you uh stood me up in Tijuana one time, uh, where we'd agreed that you were going to cross over because your daughter was working in in LA. She probably still is, I think, isn't she?

Martin Kelner 14:30

She is working in LA, she's actually in Japan at the moment, but uh on holiday. But yeah, she's uh in the mad, you know, the every we we speak virtually every night about the madness that's going on in the United States. And uh wonder how you know I've had a bet on Trump not lasting out the year, not for any other reason other than health reasons. I mean, he seems to me to be um I mean he always was sort of firing from the hip and all over the place, but at the moment he does seem to be uh suffering from well not just delusions, but he seems to be mad.

Jon Bonfiglio 15:13

I mean, I I guess the one upside of um uh it it's Martha, isn't it? That's uh one of the upsides of Martha being the covering the United States, um probably North America first guy in in the UK is that it she's probably about as high it's uh about as high profile a gig, a reporting gig as as it's possible to get out there at the moment.

Martin Kelner 15:36

Absolutely. Well, she's been cover she she was in um Minnesota, Minneapolis, covering uh which covered both the shootings and the protests. Uh so she spent a fair bit of time in Minneapolis when when it all kicked off with ice. And um we were speaking sort of shortly after that, and she said, um I've had it, I've had it with Sky. I'm not you know, she wanted to give a job up, and I said, You you're probably suffering from burnout, you've probably got post-traumatic stress disorder, you know, because she's staying in hotels and she's in different time zones, you know. I went uh in Los Angeles, and then she's in uh in Minnesota, and then she's in Washington. So you're doing all that, different time zones, but it which is fine if you're just covering one's story, but it just went bananas, you know, and uh ending, isn't it?

Jon Bonfiglio 16:35

Um I was in LA for um the sort of the tail end of the of the unrest there of being in Chicago. It's also um it it's not um impossible to but to imagine that I will bump into Martha Kellner on a street corner, on some American street corner at some point in the next few months. And uh so so warn her that if somebody random uh that looks like me comes up to her, taps her on the shoulder and says, I I was on radio with your dad for eight years, that um that it is actually me, and uh uh to uh to not just assume that I'm some lunatic off the street that's uh that's stalking her.

Martin Kelner 17:16

I'll tell I'll tell her that actually. Uh bizarre, she did meet somebody in Los Angeles who subscribes to my podcast. Oh wow. Amazing to have one subscriber in North America and umet him.

Jon Bonfiglio 17:32

Martin, uh we should we should do this again. I've forgotten how fun uh it is talking talking to you. We should have regular get-togethers.

Martin Kelner 17:41

We should. I mean, I'll I'll keep uh an eye on it, uh, you know, store it like I used to. I you know, stories and uh and send them to you. And if you fancy a recording, we'll do it.

Jon Bonfiglio 17:51

Yeah, absolutely. Always, always. It's an absolute pleasure to to have you on the on the show again to listen to Long John Baldry, how uh how I have missed that um that tune, and I look forward to to catching up with you soon.

Martin Kelner 18:06

Yeah, excellent. Cheers, Jon.

Long John Baldry 18:09

The love we had here's just a shadow now...