safe struggling to provide the best safe care for our patience?— care for our patience? thank you very much- _ care for our patience? thank you very much. good _ care for our patience? thank you very much. good to _ care for our patience? thank you very much. good to talk- care for our patience? thank you very much. good to talk to - care for our patience? thank you very much. good to talk to you, | very much. good to talk to you, thank you. now it's time for a look at the weather with stav danaos. hello there. it has been cold this weekend, particularly factoring in the easterly wind, but things are set to turn even colderfor this upcoming week as we pick up an arctic northerly airflow. an increasing chance of snow, particularly across northern scotland and nights will be very cold by the end of the new week with widespread hard frost. in the short term we've still got these easterly winds driving in showers to eastern scotland and eastern england. quite a bit of cloud as well. for most overnight, best of any clear spells will be towards the north west of the country. in one or two places, further south and east where we have more cloud then lows of 3 to 6 degrees. monday's looking pretty similar to how the weekend's been, rather cloudy skies for many and northeasterly winds this time not quite as strong, feeding in further showers to north sea coasts. best of any brightness again, scotland, northern ireland, maybe western fringes of england and wales. temperatures range from 5

to 8 degrees, but it turns very much colder. as we move through the new week, we pick up that strong northerly wind. there'll be plenty of sunshine around in the south and lots of snow showers in the north. now on bbc news, the big interview. # i am beside you. # look for me. # i try to forget. in your conversations with sean o'hagan for the book, you talk about the album ghosteen as an imagined world where arthur, your son, could be.

was it your desire to create that album for him or actually for you as a family? you never have any concrete reason why you make a record. you go in and pull tiny threads together and hopefully come up with something. you don't have a grand plan. because the whole thing is so difficult and so tenuous, the process of making a record. # i think they're singing to be free. there was something that was going on with that particular record that was different than other records. and it became a kind of parallel mission to me within that record, within the state of mind that i was where i felt that it was a place that arthur could inhabit on some level. # look for me.

# if i could move the night, i would. # and i would turn the world round if i could. # there's nothing wrong with loving something. # you can't hold in your hand. the music is so beautiful. there is nowhere for you to hide. you are so front and centre. and it is very revealing and exposing, in a way, to be that person that is out there in front of the music, when you are singing about things that are so painful. i think there is a lot of pain in ghosteen but there is a lot of... i think most of the songs just have this lovely upward lift, the trajectory of the songs is, they all seem to move upwards like that and so there was a lot i got from that in a very positive... there is a weird joyfulness about

ghosteen that is often overlooked. # well, the moon won't get a wink of sleep. # if i stay all night and talk. in the conversations, you talk about a very definite difference between being spiritual and being religious. you know, i think religion asks something of us. it asks something of us. and spirituality is a little bit more amorphous, and we can all be spiritual and we are all spiritual and, like, well, of course we are all spiritual. but religion requires... it's spirituality with rigour. it requires something of us. and that action, i think,

is probably what it is all about. so, what does being religious require of you? for me, i am more inclined to do religious things, like go to church, pray, read scripture. i mean, i have always done these things anyway, actually. even in my most chaotic times, i've done those sorts of things. but i feel that when i walk, when i read scripture or when i walk out of church, i feel less... i feel my scepticism is a little less. it is more distant. you put it at bay. yeah. but that struggle, the struggle is very much where i am, in regard to religion and the ideas of god and christian ideas. it is a struggle.

i have by no means arrived anywhere on that kind of thing. do you think that arthur's death strengthened your faith? yes. i think a lot of things happened. i think the writing of the book, weirdly enough, did that. the book itself starts with a... ..a kind of nervousness around questions of faith, and ends, ends more firm about those sorts of things. when i talk about... when we are talking about faith here, i am also talking about doubt. you know, these two things, for me, go hand—in—hand. and, you know, a deep, ingrained scepticism i have towards these sorts of things. and the faith that i feel is that occasionaljourneying away from that scepticism into something else. and i find that really a powerful

place to be, especially imaginatively and creatively. in the book, you say that religion can be a shepherding force that holds communities together. there is an argument to say that religion is not always a force for good. that is very true and there are many arguments why religion is not a force for good. but when i walk into a christian church, i walk into something that i feel i belong to. it is my thing, it is something that i was raised in as a child, there is a sense of nostalgia, a sense of safety about that. i don't step into that and deny anyone else their religious beliefs or whatever. itjust feels like it is my place, and i don't say that in any divisive or nationalistic way or anything like that. ijust never connected to eastern

religion, let's say. you know... that was too spiritual, in a sense. so i neverfound the language, the aesthetic, anything about it particularly compelling, for me, personally. and i always found something in the figure of christ that was deeply compelling to me. it always was. even as a child. # i don't believe in an interventionist god. # but i know, darling, that you do. 1997, the song, into my arms, "i don't believe in an interventionist god." and you have also,

as you say, changed your idea about faith and doubt. i mean, that particular song, if you know, that particular song to me feels like a person on the point of conversion. i think that's what that song is saying. # well, not to touch your hair and your head leave you as you are. # he felt he had to direct you and direct you into my arms. but it's a good, serviceable song because it, well, it services the atheist and the believer. and pretty much everyone can kind of play that at a wedding or a funeral or whatever. it's done me very well, that song. because it's kind of a broad church, shall we say, and, and everyone can collect within that song. but for me, it's essentially a religious song and it's that i don't believe in god, it's that i don't believe in an interventionist god. # into my arms. # oh, lord.

# into my arms. the red hand files, which seem like a kind of act of generosity and i wonder if they came directly out of your son arthur's death. no. well, in the sense that i didn't know how to speak about arthur. i was getting a lot of people writing to me in response to arthur's death, telling me their stories. not so much in sympathy but rather, this is what happened to me, this is what might happen to you. that was, i saw those as these kind of momentary flashes of light that i grabbed hold of and felt... i felt helped by those responses. and so some, i think a couple

of years later, i just started up the red hand files, in a more general kind of way. ask me anything. i'm a musician, ask me anything. but the questions very quickly became about other things. and it wasn't. .. it was both me and the audience pushing the conversation outwards. it seemed like it was a salve for you and a salve for the people that were writing the letters. it was, yeah. when you say it was an act of generosity, i think that works the other way too. i feel that when people write in to the red hand files and spend a lot of care and attention around what they write to me, they are acts of generosity as well. and i mean, you get thousands of requests. it's a difficult decision, isn't it? because you can't answer them all. you can't answer. yeah, no. i have to balance them and look at...

you know, i mean, sometimes there's several in a row that are kind of grim and i try and lighten the mood with another one and so forth. so it is a little bit of a balancing act. and i wonder in that sense if there's anything that's off limits that you would have to answer? yeah, there's a lot of things i won't answer, mostly because i don't think those questions have necessarily come in good faith, i would say. and so i don't... there's too much in there of value to write about. i wonder if the red hand files were a form of ministry. well, i wouldn't. . . that seems a little highfalutin. you know, i never saw it in that way. i think the red hand files for me was a way to learn how to articulate certain things that were going on me with the help of the people who wrote in. so it felt like something

we were doing together and that that's been enormously helpful. and i think it's been helpful to other people, too. and that's. .. ..how to write about something. it's actually quite difficult, quite different than how to speak about something. and i think with sean's book that we wrote together, i learned how to, through these conversations, how to speak about these matters as well. issue number 210.

i had made some ceramic pieces when i was a teenager, and they were not bad. but there was nothing to suggest that i had any particular talent with clay. still, my mother liked them, so i thought it might be fun to make some more. get your act together. and if you do and warren, mardy, jim, and i ever get around to making a new grinderman record, you can come and play on it. grinderman, as a matter of policy, only work with the very old, the out of shape and the extremely foolish. we are the obscene and joyous embodiment of a fool's errand. that is a particular act of generosity! he can come and play with us. i mean, anyone can come and play with grinderman. that's my other group. but you have to be old and you have to be irrelevant. another question, which again, a man wrote to you and talked about a musician that had passed

away and the fact that a supreme courtjustice in america who he really despised loved this musician, and he was very annoyed about that. and he was appalled that this musician was liked by this judge because it kind of negated, he thought, i think, what he thought of the musician. do you believe that your music is for everyone? i mean, would you ever say, no, i really i don't want that audience? i mean, look, i get a lot of pushback from what i write, and i got an enormous amount of pushback with that particular question because it opens with, i've, you know, i've cast my mind around and i can't come up with a single person that i wouldn't want to listen to my music, and that got, or that didn't deserve on some level to listen to my music. and i got a lot of rage back about that. and people saying, what about this person and what about that person? but the point i was really trying to make in that particular letter

is that music is fundamentally a good thing and it makes people better, in my view. so...um...so... even if there is someone that you might consider deplorable or despicable, i think that... that they might be listening to my music feels that they may be a little bit better by the end of the record. i don't know. that's what i was trying to put forward. i guess it's more that i don't want my music ever to be used as a form of punishment or that i deny my music to, to certain people because of where they stand, politically. i mean, where do you even begin with something like that? you know, where do you draw the line anyway? well, i mean, i suppose the whole thing about separating art from the artist as well is another, the flip side of looking at that. and so, you know, i suppose the most

recent one of that would be kanye, you know, is accused of anti—semitism, so therefore, you know, should you be listening to his music or should he actually be shunned? i mean, are you completely open on that? well, on some level, i don't care what kanye has to say on things, but i... but i do love kanye's music. ifind anti—semitism in particular... . . particularly distasteful. and so it's very disappointing to hear these remarks and such sort of obvious... ..boring, kind of reductive tropes that he's actually peddling to be incredibly disappointing. however, it's a personal choice as to whether you can go on and listen to that person's music. i personally can. i love kanye's music. i feel that he's done the best music

of anybody in some time. the most interesting, challenging, bold music. and maybe... i mean, this is a complex argument, but maybe there's something to do with a transgressive personality that... ..that makes a person willing to take certain kind of risks with their music. because kanye does that. and it's... it's exciting. that aspect of what he does is exciting, but no way... you know, what he was saying is obviously... ..disappointing. # cindy is my honey. # the sweetest in the south. # when we kiss, the bees would all swarm around our mouth. # and we'll get on home. as you get older, you're more self reflective, do you think? yeah.

well, of course, you wouldn't want to be the other way. some people are. but do you think you... do you think you are more open to people? i, i... ijust think... i don't know if i say this in the book, but i think after my son died, i personally think i became an actual person and that before that happened, i was an incomplete or unformed human being. i had a very narrow view of the world, a much more strident view of the world. # i've travelled this world around. # far and there are answers that refuse to be found. # i don't know why. # and i don't know how. # but she is nobody�*s baby now. there seemed to be some correlation between my stridency

about things and my lack of understanding about things. in fact, the less i knew, the more opinionated and certain i would become. and there's something that happened when my son died that smashed all that to bits and i could see the world in a much more... ..nuanced way, i think. and a much more empathetic way. because in a way, griefjust becomes part of who we are. yeah, i think so. i think that that's our common bond, is that we all... ..havea... particularly as we grow older, we are all kind of creatures of loss or grief. you said in faith, hope and carnage, "we are, each of us, imperiled insofar as anything can turn

catastrophic at any time." do you think that's true? that we're never really equipped to deal with that dreadful loss and shock? you know, it seems to me that... ..grief is notjust one thing. it's notjust how you feel about the loss of one thing. it's a kind of... i find all the griefs tend to kind of collect around the new thing. imean... that sounds terrible, the way that that came out. but i think we get better at it or we get more used to the state of being. you know, i remember my mother who died. she was 93 and people were just dying all the time around her, her friends. it was you know, she would say,

such and such died today and, two months later, such and such died today, you know, and, she's just grieving everybody. which is what the very olds do. and it's... i don't think she's plunged back into that same thing again and again. i think you just become... ..these kind of, i don't even say, this is sounding depressing, but it's not meant to be. but i think we just become... ..used to it as a part of... ..living, you know. your wife, susie, says it takes great courage to be happier. i read she said that. did she say that? yes. she's clever. she also said she had time to be amused by the way. that point about, it... it takes courage to be happy. i think that's a really interesting thing to say. yeah, well, it's, um... it's a defiant position.

it's a defiant position, happiness, very often. and it's hard—earned and it's not... it's a deep thing. happiness is a deep thing because... because i don't think there is such a thing as simple happiness. i think you lift the lid and there's all sorts of stuff going on underneath a person's ability to be optimistic about the world. and... you know, so...so to me, happiness is a...is a... i agree with her. i agree with everything she says. but it is a form of defiance, i would say. and you practise that defiance? i would say. basically i'm a, a happy person, you know.

# take a little walk to the edge of town. # and go across the tracks. # where the viaduct looms like a bird of doom. # as it shifts and cracks. you're also having a moment and a connection with new fans through the theme for peaky blinders. you know, in a way, much like kate bush has it with stranger things. yeah. i mean, that's not recent. that's been going for, for years. and that song, which is, to be perfectly honest, not my favourite song, i've got to say. there's a lot of songs that i prefer playing live, let's say. but the response to that song is sort of massive. so we continue to play it and... ..i find different ways to do it. and, you know... but, yeah, that's been following us around like a, you know, a nasty old dog.

but doing... but you know, it does...it�*s good for us. both: # they call me the wild rose. # but my name was elisa day. # why they call me it i do not know. # for my name was elisa day. just before i finish, you have personal great friendships that last many years. and i wasjust thinking back to your work with kylie minogue, which was in the �*90s. yeah. i mean, would you do work again with kylie, would you? yeah, sure. you know, i mean, i've worked with a lot of people. i've sung withjohnny cash and, you know... but i really think it was that record i did with kylie minogue, which i really hold in a very

special place in my heart, because we both took an enormous risk to do that. she was instructed, i think, i believe, by the people around her, don't go near this guy. you just don't want to be associated with nick cave, especially back then. you know, i wasn't in showroom condition, shall we say. but it was also people saying, you're going to do a record with kylie minogue, you must be crazy. so there was... jeopardy for both. yeah, there was a potential for disaster for both of us. but she just entered into that, in a, you know... ..with just a whole lot of love. and it was really an amazing thing and it worked really well. so we've remained, even though we don't see each other very often, we've, we love each other, i think, genuinely. you know, and it's always a joy to see her. and if she wants to make another

record, then maybe there's a where the wild roses grow part two, or something like that. maybe she could write to you in the red hand files. put her application in. nick cave, thank you very much. thank you, it was a pleasure, thank you. # into my arms, oh, lord. # into my arms.# hello there. it has been cold this weekend, particularly when you factor in the easterly wind, but things are set to turn even colder for this upcoming week as we pick up an arctic northerly airflow that will see an increasing chance of snow, particularly across northern scotland, and nights will be very cold by the end of the new week with a widespread hard frost. in the short term, we have still got

these easterly winds driving in showers through eastern scotland and eastern england. quite a bit of cloud as well for most overnight. the best of any clear spells will be towards the north—west of the country. this is where we will see the lowest temperatures. a chance of ice in one or two places. further south and east, where we have more cloud, lows of 3—6 degrees. monday is looking pretty similar to how the weekend has been. rather cloudy skies for many and north—easterly winds, this time, not quite as strong, feeding in further showers to north sea coasts. the best of any brightness, again, scotland and northern ireland, maybe western fringes of england and wales. temperatures ranging from 5—8 degrees. but it turns very much colder as we move through the new week and pick up that strong northerly wind. plenty of sunshine around in the south and a lot of snow showers in the north.

this is bbc news. i'm ben brown the headlines at 5.00pm. england prepare take on senegal in the last 16 of the world cup, with the winners facing france in the quarterfinals. the government says it is putting contingency plans in place to minimise disruption from a series of public sector strikes expected in the run—up to christmas. whether it's our military personnel that we've trained up or a surge capacity that we can actually make sure things like borders are safe and protected, and of course, people's lives are not disrupted. the group that represents train companies says it's offered unions a deal that could avert strikes before christmas. iran's attorney general says the morality police,

which enforces the strict islamic dress code, has been