Full Disclosure with James O'Brien

He’s best known for his forensic select committee cross examination of cabinet ministers but the Labour MP for Rhondda lived multiple lives before reaching parliament in 2001. Originally a member of the Conservative Association at Oxford, Chris Bryant went on to become a priest before quitting and becoming a Hackney Labour councillor. In this remarkable and warm episode of Full Disclosure he speak...

In 1997 Chris Patten walked away as the final British governor of Hong Kong in a symbol of Britain's continual imperial decline. Having taken the blame for Margaret Thatcher's hated poll tax, he was ousted as the Conservative MP for Bath in the 1992 general election and has been described by The Observer as 'the best Tory Prime Minister we never had'. His book, The Hong Kong Diaries has been publi...

When he was elected as the MP for Ilford North in 2015, Wes Streeting achieved the biggest swing towards Labour from the Conservatives in the general election. Despite growing up in relative poverty and having family members in prison, Streeting attended Cambridge University and went on to become President of the National Union of Students. He credits his varied upbringing with being able to bring...

Known best for playing Gareth in Four Weddings and a Funeral, Simon Callow is a critically acclaimed actor, writer and director. Raised by a host of eccentric and strong-minded women, he eventually found his feet at the National Theatre at the Old Vic under the tenure of Sir Laurence Olivier - much to his mother's displeasure. Tickets for his latest show, the award-winning musical, Anything Goes,...

He’s known mostly to his younger fans for playing Ben Harper in the decade-long running sitcom, My Family and to an older audience as the eponymous Marxist in Citizen Smith. In this episode of Full Disclosure James is joined by the BAFTA and Olivier award-winning actor Robert Lindsay who discusses moving from humble beginnings in the Derbyshire industrial town of Ilkeston to being accepted at the...

An unusual episode of Full Disclosure: one in which the identity of our guest is not revealed. No name, no gender, no details about where they grew up or went to school. The Secret Barrister is a criminal lawyer, best-selling author and Twitter stalwart. Their latest book, Nothing but the Truth attempts to establish why the public at large thinks what it does about justice and explores why a young...

Irish comedian Ed Byrne was born in County Dublin and attended a school run by the Christian Brothers Catholic order. It was so badly managed that he had to leave. After one year away, he was back again, finding the local alternative even worse. Whilst not admitting it at the time, Byrne felt that comedy was always his calling. Tickets for his latest show, If I’m Honest… are available at edbyrne.c...

Hoards of men would troop past Andy Hamilton's window every Saturday on the street he grew up on in Fulham. Minutes away from Stamford Bridge, and despite being by his own admission a 'sickly child', he was eventually allowed to attend a Chelsea game at the age of 5. Best known as a comedian and game show panelist, Hamilton also co-wrote the much-loved and award-winning sitcom, Outnumbered. His no...

For as long as he can remember, James Wong has been obsessed with botany. He shares his small central London flat with 500 houseplants and has incorporated them into coffee tables and TV stands. Having trained at the prestigious Royal Botanic Gardens at Kew, his media career began with the hit series Grow Your Own Drugs and he’s written 6 best-selling books. Follow James on Instagram and Twitter @...

Simple lies over complex truths have always troubled the actor, Eddie Marsan. Growing up in London’s East End, Marsan rejected the racists who blamed their problems on other people, questioning everyone but themselves. As a performer, Marsan frequently plays the type of toxic characters he encountered in his youth. He stars in The Thief, His Wife and the Canoe, a true story about a man who fakes h...

In Central London in the 1970s, a household catering to sick Iranians housed Omid Djalili. Balancing school with his home life proved to be a challenge, and the effects of the noise and the chaos filtered into Djalil’s adulthood. In spite of it all, the actor and comedian made it onto the silver screen in Hollywood’s biggest blockbusters. Tickets for his latest show, The Good Times Tour are availa...

Jonathan Pie is a fictional broadcast reporter created and performed by comedian Tom Walker who is this week’s guest. Walker brought Pie to life in the aftermath of Jeremy Corbyn’s election as Labour leader and the character went viral, racking up millions of views almost overnight. His critically acclaimed sell out show, Jonathan Pie: FAKE NEWS is now available at jonathanpie.com

In this episode of Full Disclosure, James speaks to Mark Drakeford. Born and brought up in West Wales he started off his career as probation officer and youth Justice worker. A professor at both Swansea and Cardiff Universities before moving into politics full time he rose from councillor to First Minister of his beloved Wales In this episode of Full Disclosure, James speaks to Mark about his back...

When he was forced to move 800 miles away from the outskirts of Hollywood to Idaho as a boy, Curtis Stigers was furious. After school he gravitated back towards the centre of things - to New York City, where his career as a musician began in earnest. He’s worked with the likes of Elton John, Eric Clapton, Prince, and Rod Stewart and achieved commercial success in the 1990s, most notably with the i...

When she was a teenager, Caroline Criado Perez found feminism embarrassing. But then she read a book which changed her life. It documented how our language is used to make women invisible, and set her on a mission to make the specifics of the female experience as self-evident as men's. Her book, Invisible Women is a #1 Sunday Times best-seller and you can sign up for the Invisible Women newsletter...

He was nearly shot on one of his first jobs as a 25 year old, and throughout his illustrious career, John Simpson has continued to dice with death, reporting from thirty war zones and most recently during the US withdrawal from Afghanistan. In the context of his early years it looks like fate; whilst Simpson was still in the womb, a V-1 bomb fell on his neighbour’s house but within a week of his l...

The Leader of the Opposition, Sir Keir Starmer has had a meteoric rise from his humble beginnings in a small Surrey town. The Starmer household was a busy three-bed occupied by his parents’ four children and four dogs, and in 1985 he became the first to graduate in his family. In this episode of Full Disclosure, James speaks to Starmer live at the Leicester Square Theatre in support of Global’s Ma...

Known across the world for fearlessly holding dictators to account, Christiane Amanpour, as a young staffer at CNN found herself kicked off the network after a disastrous first attempt at reporting. The knock-back did not stop her; Amampour went on to cover conflict hotspots in the Gulf and Balkans, later the humanitarian crises of Hurricane Katrina and the 2011 Japanese tsunami. She is now the Ch...

Born to Jamaican parents, Beverley Knight grew up in a dedicated Pentecostal household where church attendance and music performance were inextricably linked and singing was an act of devotion to God. By the time Knight was a young adult she regarded her passion as a serious professional prospect, and as she completed her philosophy degree her records played in the clubs of Cheltenham. She’s now s...

As the younger son, Adil Ray was given more freedom to pursue his creative instincts than his older, more academic sibling. Before moving into the mainstream, Adil spent his student days in an elderly Jamaican woman’s loft hosting a pirate radio show. He now appears on millions of television sets across the country presenting ITV’s Good Morning Britain, hosting the revival of game show Lingo, and...

Charlotte Church was catapulted into the spotlight at the age of 11 after singing down the line on television show, This Morning. Within two years Church had performed at Rupert Murdoch’s wedding to Wendi Deng, opened for Shirley Bassey and played the Royal Albert Hall. As a teenager she had her phone hacked and was hounded by the tabloids - but these experiences also helped her find her political...

When ‘Teenage Kicks’ by The Undertones was released in 1978, legendary DJ John Peel took the unprecedented step of playing it back to back on Radio 1. The lead singer was 20 year old Feargal Sharkey and the band were formed out of a desire to prove that five young men growing up in the Derry conflict zone could successfully learn to play instruments, write their own songs and hit the big time. Tak...

Despite being named by The Times as the best current English-language comedian in the world, Stewart Lee insists that nobody really knows who he is. His absence from the panel show circuit, resistance to social media and use of multiple on-stage personae may be contributory factors. In the first Full Disclosure of 2022, James tries his hand at getting to know the man behind the accolades. Tickets...

Realising there was nothing he could not do, Johnny Vaughan left school and did nothing. Before becoming the presenter of the Big Breakfast and the drivetime host on Radio X, Vaughan spent much of his life navigating a host of hostile institutions and forming unlikely friendships. In this week’s episode, James speaks to Johnny about his life before broadcasting. Johnny Vaughan presents on Radio X,...

When Sue Perkins was asked by her manager to present a programme about competitive baking, she declined the offer on multiple occasions. After lots of persuading, Perkins finally agreed to work on the show that would go on to become the most-watched programme on British television. At its peak, The Great British Bake Off attracted an audience of 16 million people. This week she speaks to James abo...