BBC looks at licence fee overhaul as whopping 300,000 fewer Brits sign up for £174.50 a year cost
The broadcaster's annual report released today says competition from streaming services has created a "moment of real jeopardy for the sector".
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A view of BBC Broadcasting House in central London
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An estimated 300,000 households have stopped paying.
The report revealed 23.8m licences were in force at the end of the year, down from 24.1m in 2023-24.
The drop means a loss of about £50m in revenue for the corporation.
It comes as BBC Director-General Tim Davie was shown to have been
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And
departing
Match of the Day
host
Gary Lineker
ended his time with the Corporation by
for the eighth consecutive year, raking in £1.35million.
Key points in the BBC Annual Report
Gary Lineker has
He was followed by Zoe Ball, who remains second best-paid at the Beeb despite her dramatic pay cut
More than two thirds of the broadcaster's top 20 earners received pay rises
BBC Breakfast star Naga Munchetty received a boost to her pay, but co-host Charlie Stayt's salary stayed the same
Disgraced presenter Huw Edwards did not feature on the list after his exit from the broadcaster
Meanwhile the number of people paying for a TV licence fell by around 300,000 last year - almost two per cent in all
BBC boss Tim Davie
Referring to the licence fee, BBC Chair Samir Shah says in the annual report: 'The fight is on, and it is vital we now think very carefully about the kind of media environment we want for the UK.'
Most read in News TV
He added they were searching for 'the best future funding model for the BBC'.
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Shah said: 'I have already set out some views on this and the board will be saying more over the coming months,' he said.
Masterchef meltdown as BBC asked John Torode to RESIGN over 'racist remark' before Gregg Wallace sacking
'But all of us are clear that we want to make sure we protect the BBC as a universal service and help it not just to survive, but thrive, for a generation and more.'
Licence fee income increased slightly year on year, totalling £3.8bn in 2024-25.
However, the small rise was down to the 6.7% inflationary increase in the fee to £169.50 a year.
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'The current collection method remains fair, effective, and good value for money,' the report said.
'As we approach the end of the charter, we will proactively research how we might reform the licence fee to secure the benefits of a well-resourced, universal BBC of scale for the long term.'
'Inappropriate behaviours'
Today's report also features a column by Dr Shah in which he references the "profoundly shocking revelations" involving disgraced News At Ten anchor
He announced in October the Beeb's board had commissioned an independent review into its "workplace culture".
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It came in the wake of Edwards, as well as "several further cases of inappropriate behaviours and abuses of power", Dr Shah wrote.
Top 10 earners at the BBC
Gary Lineker - £1.35million
Zoe Ball - £515,000 - cut from £950,000
Alan Shearer - £440,000 - up from £380,000
Greg James - £425,000 - up from £415,000
Fiona Bruce - £410,000 - up from £405,000 AND Nick Robinson - £410,000 - up from £345,000
Stephen Nolan - £405,000
Laura Kuenssberg - £395,000 - up from £325,000
Vernon Kay - £390,000 - up from £320,000
Justin Webb - £365,000 - up from £320,000
Naga Munchetty - £355,000 - up from £345,000
In his column, he added: "The first thing to say is that the BBC is a wonderful place to work.
"Our staff are dedicated, hardworking and treat each other with respect.
"However, there are pockets in the organisation where this is not the case. There are still places where powerful individuals - on and off-screen - can abuse that power to make life for their colleagues unbearable."
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It comes after former MasterChef host Wallace launched
The one-time greengrocer turned TV personality, 60, was axed after an
The bombshell inquiry, carried out by law firm Lewis Silkin for production company Banijay,
Most of them involved inappropriate sexual language and humour and a further 10 were made about other people -
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Davie was also asked today about whether Wallace's co-host John Torode
The director-general said: "There has to be follow-up, so the BBC, in some ways, we're quite simple on this, if someone is found to not live up to the values we expect, the independent company, Banijay, in this case, to take action and report back to us on what they have done.
"These aren't BBC employees, but we absolutely expect action to be taken, that's the first thing I'd say."
'Get a grip quicker'
Last week BBC bosses were
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Ofcom boss Dame Melanie Dawes insisted there is a risk the public lose faith in the corporation if coverage isn't pulled swiftly and investigations are lengthy.
The broadcaster had apologised after the band's lead singer chanted 'death, death' to Israeli defence forces during their festival set last month.
The regulator also stepped in to launch a probe into Beeb doc Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone,
The BBC previously admitted to breaching their own editorial guidelines by failing to disclose this to viewers.
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An independent probe into the documentary was commissioned by the broadcaster earlier this year.
The broadcaster spent £400,000 of licence payers' cash making the doc, which was branded a propaganda show for the evil terror group Hamas,
In a shocking revelation, the main narrator of the heart-tugging, supposedly factual exposé - 13-year-old Abdulla Eliyazour - was the son of senior Hamas official Dr Ayman Al-Yazouri.
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Tim Davie, Director-General of the BBC, has seen his pay rise despite controversies
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Punk Duo Bob Vylan during the controversial Glastonbury set on Saturday
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Gregg said he was 'deeply sorry for any distress caused'
Credit: Pixel8000
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Disgraced former BBC news anchor Huw Edwards
Credit: AFP
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The Irish Sun
24 minutes ago
- The Irish Sun
Naga Munchetty and Charlie Stayt look tense as they leave BBC Breakfast after awkwardly ignoring The Sun front page
BBC Breakfast anchors Naga Munchetty and Charlie Stayt looked frosty as they exited the show studios following their Saturday live episode. The pair appeared stern with serious expressions as they made their way directly to their cars outside the BBC base in Salford Quays. Advertisement 7 Naga Munchetty was seen leaving BBC Breakfast studios after Saturday's live show Credit: Splash 7 Her co-star Charlie Stayt is now 'under review' Credit: Splash 7 Naga and Charlie swerved The Sun's splash during the media review Credit: The Sun 7 It came after we revealed the feuds ripping BBC Breakfast apart Credit: The Sun Their exit came after they completely snubbed The Sun's front page during Saturday's four hour BBC Breakfast. During the paper review, which aired at 620am, they kicked off with a report in the I about US Vice President JD Vance's warning to the UK. They then touched on issues of children being safe in schools and checks on British travellers visiting Europe. Yet despite covering off a host of news stories from other publications they failed to mention our BBC Breakfast exclusive, teased on the splash. Advertisement It features an image of Naga, 50, and the words "Naga row grows." After their short media review, the presenting pair then swiftly moved on to a segment about BBC Four series, The Archers. It came after we put the spotlight on the BBC Breakfast feuds ripping the daily show apart - including Naga's meltdown on how her Marmite was spread. Yet this week we also exclusively reported how Charlie, 63, is joining Naga "under review" after a string of complaints. Advertisement The process will decide if the pair will face a formal investigation. NAGA MELTDOWN Previously, it was reported how under-fire BBC presenter Naga has a reputation for going "ballistic" at junior staff. Naga Munchetty interrupts BBC Breakfast to issue apology after guest is abruptly cut off in live blunder They also revealed that she humiliated an intern who didn't make her porridge perfectly. An insider told the Mail: "She has a reputation for going at young members of staff and making them out to be fools. Advertisement "She would kick off about the smallest of issues, including one time she went ballistic over her breakfast not being prepared exactly how she likes it by an intern." Naga then refused to eat porridge delivered to her by an intern during an ad break as it was too hot for her to eat in the time she had. Who are the current presenters of BBC Breakfast? The flagship BBC show has had dozens of presenters during its impressive 40 years on air but the current stars are: Jon Kay - Since 2022 Sally Nugent - Since 2021 Charlie Stayt - Since 2006 Naga Munchetty - Since 2014 Carol Kirkwood - Since 1997 "The guy walked off the set utterly humiliated and went back to chuck it away before trying again in time for the next ad break, it was pretty brutal to watch," the insider added. A BBC spokesperson said: 'While we do not comment on individual cases, we take all complaints about conduct at work extremely seriously and will not tolerate behaviour that is not in line with our values. Advertisement 'We have robust processes in place and would encourage any staff with concerns to raise them directly with us so they can be addressed.' 7 Charlie was seen carrying a coffee as he headed to his vehicle Credit: Splash 7 Naga covered up in a pair of sunglasses Credit: Splash 7 The pair were also stern on screen Credit: The Sun
Irish Times
8 hours ago
- Irish Times
Alison Spittle: ‘I'm treated more like a human being now I've lost weight'
Alison Spittle is so competitive, she's had to apologise to people after board games. It's one of her worst traits, but she's also 'kind of proud of it' and knows that 'if you're not competitive, you don't win as much'. When she won the trophy on quiz show Pointless Celebrities , her family took pictures of her with it 'like it was the Sam Maguire'. An official BBC clip shows Spittle explaining she's a superfan, then screaming as one of her early-round answers is revealed to be pointless (the best outcome). Her elation is pure. But the episode, which aired in January, was filmed two years earlier, and Spittle now feels deeply protective of the person she was then, which is to say the same person, only 'significantly fatter'. READ MORE 'When Pointless came out, I watched it with people who were like: 'Oh my god, you are half the size you were then, look at you there.' And I'm looking at myself and I'm thinking, 'That was the happiest day of my life.'' What she regretted about her appearance on the show was that she and fellow comedian Fern Brady didn't win the elusive charity jackpot, not her size. Now the feelings elicited by this encounter with her past self are at the crux of Spittle's new stand-up show, BIG, which comes to the Dublin Fringe Festival in September after its current, month-long run in Edinburgh. 'I really don't like the idea of denouncing myself,' she says. 'I liked the person I was. I did, and I know I f**king did, and that's the annoying thing about losing weight. You're expected to denounce the person you were.' Being a 'public fat person' has taught her that there are others who will do the denouncing for her anyway and she's sad that poster rules at the Edinburgh fringe mean she couldn't use her original title: Fat Bitch. Alison Spittle was eight when her family settled in Ballymore, Co Westmeath. Photograph: Karla Gowlett 'If I have a bad interaction with a stranger, there's always a 'fat bitch' in it, and sometimes I see it as a trophy. Like, 'You've resorted to that, I've won'.' Whenever she went on television, the online comments would either be women – mostly thin women – declaring 'go girl, you're an inspiration', or they would be men harassing her by demanding to know what she was putting on her bread and accusing her of glorifying obesity simply by being on TV. 'When I got messages like that I would wake up over a toaster and be like, 'Little do they know, the more they attack, the bigger I become'.' In the show, she talks about how she started 'roaring and shouting' at one man who called her a fat bitch on a train, embarrassing him in front of other passengers. He hadn't been anticipating a confrontation. 'He thought he could just dismiss me with 'fat bitch',' she says. ''Fat bitch' is like 'goodbye' for a lot of people.' The worst part about losing weight is noticing how strangers are nicer to her: 'People treat me more like a human being now, which is messed up.' A lot of thin people who have a go at me about being fat, they think they're better than me She never wanted to change for the benefit of 'a**holes' who would only afford her dignity if she was a certain weight. 'People would keep telling me I was not conventionally attractive, and, like, it wasn't an interest of mine to be conventionally attractive. So that was kind of my process. My process? I don't know, I've been fat since I was eight years old.' She hung on to an 'element of defiance', she thinks, in order to reject the validation of the sexist, classist comedy culture she came of age in – one in which women were there to laugh, not make others laugh. 'That's what I loved about being on telly. Men would get angry with me because they weren't being titillated. Their erection wasn't being catered for on mainstream TV.' Recently she was crying on the couch to a fat female friend about the emotional fallout of weight loss. 'She goes to me, 'I hate to break it to you, Alison, but you're still fat'. And I said, 'Thank you'. I was delighted.' But she has lost a lot – with the aid of Mounjaro injections – since the trigger of a health crisis. She contracted cellulitis, which led to septicaemia, hospitalising her. 'Ireland's too small a country to have a women's weekly gossip magazine.' Photograph: Karla Gowlett 'The doctors were like, 'You do have to lose weight now'. And when you're attached to a drip and you're not able to move for weeks, you're like, 'Okay, fair enough, yeah'.' Our interview takes place over a pot of late-afternoon tea in the top-floor bar of the Aloft hotel in Dublin 8. It's her first caffeine on a day that has so far involved a missed flight, rebooking drama and two podcast recordings and will end with a gig at Iveagh Gardens. 'It's been a mad one, a mad one!' She's snacking on popcorn – 'which is funny' – but only because she's hungry. Before, her eating would go beyond hunger, beyond comfort; she would eat until she was uncomfortable. 'I would eat until I couldn't feel anything any more, because I didn't like feeling the way I felt about stuff, so the feeling of being overly full overtook everything else. It was like a comfort blanket, an anxiety blanket.' [ Alison Spittle's Spotify playlist: 'I love Kanye. He's an idiot, but I'm overwhelmed by his talent' Opens in new window ] Mounjaro has suppressed her appetite, meaning food is just fuel now, and she does sometimes miss the dopamine aspect. 'It's like doing your laundry, you're not eating for pleasure any more.' She has no time for celebrities who 'suddenly found willpower' just as medicines such as Ozempic and Mounjaro came to the fore. 'They go, 'Oh, it's the power of walking'. You're on the jabs, just say you're on the jabs,' she says. 'I tried losing weight without the jabs and couldn't do it, so I'm on the jabs, and if you are the same, you shouldn't feel ashamed. 'This whole idea of attaching morality to the size of your body absolutely disgusts me and now the idea of morality attached to the way you lose weight as well, it makes me so, so angry.' She knows she has a 'full-on addiction to food', and it's still there, unfixed, even if the self-injections are preventing her from acting upon it, but she had to sort her health out before it got any worse, she says, and she's scathing about people who insist weight should be lost the 'natural' way. 'They're just telling a fat person they should be in pain as punishment for being fat in the first place. Why do they want that off a person? It's very Calvinist or something. It's very Opus Dei, like whipping yourself on the back. I'm like, no, I'm not going to do that for you. I don't you owe you pain.' BIG is at Project Arts Centre, Dublin, September 16th-20th, as part of Dublin Fringe Festival. Photograph: Karla Gowlett It's not hard to understand why Spittle was compelled to devote a show to this subject yet is wary of the personal risk it carries. 'It is very vulnerable putting your wares on display and saying, 'Consume this, review this!' I'm very scared about that aspect,' she says. 'Even when I'm talking to you, I can feel myself getting animated. I can feel myself get emotional about stuff, and that's only with us chatting.' There are, she stresses, 'loads of jokes' in the show. Our conversation is joyously soundtracked by the bar's penchant for Noughties classics. Identifying them – which music fan and trivia-master Spittle can do within seconds – becomes her occasional side-quest as she tries to explain how she feels. Her sense is that stand-up is the 'one and only medium' where she can truly do that. People mistake her choice of 'loud' clothes for confidence, but she doesn't feel confident most of the time; she just likes colour. With stand-up, that's when she's at her most powerful. She has the microphone, she has the control. 'I can never get across how I feel about stuff, properly, unless it's through stand-up.' It would be mad to say I'm happy with my life, because I don't think anybody is happy with their life She has 'built a whole career', she tells me, out of being the funny friend. Born in London in June 1989, Spittle moved around a lot when she was kid, including a nine-month spell in Germany, as her father, a builder, sought work. It meant she was never the 'established friend' in a friend group, which prompted the discovery that making people laugh was the quickest way to befriend them. 'A lot of thin people who have a go at me about being fat, they think they're better than me, but the thing is I had to develop a personality when I was younger. 'They're f**ked! They have absolutely nothing now. And I feel sorry for them, because there's going to be so many fat people getting thinner, they won't know what to do with themselves.' She was eight when her family – she has four siblings – settled in Ballymore, Co Westmeath, where there was 'a definite pecking order' on her council estate. Being 'fat and eccentric' was her way of removing herself from it. To be 'valuable', she became 'the nice one, the people-pleaser'. She felt she didn't have the option of any other identity. [ 'My motto for life is, be sound' Opens in new window ] She 'fecked up' her Leaving Cert, but this turned out to be serendipitous. During a media course at Ballyfermot College she did work experience at Athlone-based iRadio, where comedian Bernard O'Shea was DJing. He told her she should try stand-up and booked her a gig, giving her two weeks to prepare. 'He said do your funniest joke at the start, so people trust you, and do your second-funniest joke at the end, so that's what I did, and I loved it. I had this massive rush coming off stage. I had so much adrenaline, I felt like I was in love.' 'So I moved to Dublin then, and ... Aw, I love this song! Sorry. It's Nelly Furtado, Turn Off the Light!' In Dublin, not far from the Noughties-loving bar where we meet, Spittle rented a box room for a cheap rent from a non-gouging landlord, making it possible for her to live in the city while she performed stand-up and wrote plays. After encouragement from a producer who saw her at the International Bar, she and her boyfriend, Simon Mulholland, wrote a script for what became Nowhere Fast , a sitcom that aired for one season on RTÉ in 2017. 'I was a baba. A little baba. I had people coming up saying, 'Oh my god, you're making this and you're this age'. When you're young, you don't realise that you're young. Nobody's going to say that to me now!' In 2018 she and Mulholland moved to London, from where she has developed her stand-up career and scratched her old radio itch through podcasting. A BBC-commissioned podcast, Wheel of Misfortune – she presented it first with 'best pal' Brady, then with 'icon' Kerry Katona – means people in the UK sometimes recognise her when they hear her voice. It's over now, but she has a new one called Magazine Party, where she and co-host Poppy Hillstead dissect the wild stories contained in That's Life!-style magazines and compile their own 'Women's Bleakly'. 'Ireland's too small a country to have a women's weekly gossip magazine. You'd read a story that goes, 'I slept with the ghost of my husband,' and you'd be like, 'That's Mary from down the road, I knew that'.' [ Alison Spittle's Christmas: I'll explode if I get another bath bomb Opens in new window ] She would 'totally love' to emulate Brady and star in a series of Channel 4's comedy gameshow Taskmaster – 'I would kick a child to get on Taskmaster' – but Pointless Celebrities hasn't been the only TV outlet for her competitive spirit. She also flew to Glasgow to film five episodes of Richard Osman's House of Games in one day. 'I fell down the stairs at one point, out of excitement, and made my shin bleed. We had to pause filming for 10 minutes while we found another pair of tights for me.' Swooning reviews for BIG have since poured in, but as we speak she's still a week away from the start of Edinburgh and so conscious of her desire to do her show justice, she's waking up every morning with a pain in her chest telling her to get out her Post-it notes and work on finessing it. [ Women in comedy: 'We're not allowed to be okay... It has to be good' Opens in new window ] 'My problem is structure. I have several bits of the puzzle that I'm still working out now, and I'm moving house as well, so it's ... Dido, Thank You.' We listen to the mildly depressive first verse of the singer's 2000 hit. 'Very chill. Very pre-September 11th, an innocent time,' is her verdict. She wasn't 'a learned scholar of the craft' of stand-up. Her approach used to be 'just be as funny as possible with what you can remember'. Being around other comedians, and their love for the art of comedy, has inspired her to distil what she wants to say into a narrative and hone her onstage persona. 'My persona is I am becoming less of a people-pleaser, and I think I need to become even less people-pleasey, because it doesn't do my comedy any favours. Likeability can only get you so far.' I compliment her on a photo shoot for BIG in which her head emerges from a triangular cloud of multicoloured netting. She made it herself by ripping apart shower puffs and attaching them to a bridal petticoat using a stapler and hot glue. 'There is a part of me that just wishes everyone was like a floating head,' she says. She sings along to Kids by MGMT as she checks what time she's meant to be at Iveagh Gardens, then we talk more about her show – her walk-on playlist will be entirely women artists who have been labelled fat – before leaving the bar. The hotel wasn't open in her Dublin 8 days, though as we look down Mill Street, she gets a nostalgic thrill when she sees one stretch of wall is still home to the painted outline of a bear asking for a hug. 'It would be mad to say I'm happy with my life, because I don't think anybody is happy with their life,' she had said in the bar. 'But I really like the turns my life has taken. I couldn't really imagine it happening before.' Alison Spittle's show BIG is at Project Arts Centre, Dublin, September 16th-20th, as part of Dublin Fringe Festival 2025. Details at .
Irish Times
8 hours ago
- Irish Times
‘It takes a week to learn the rules of whatever office you're in. Some of the things, I was, like, what the f**k is this?'
Caitríona Daly originally wanted to be an actor but fell into playwriting at the age of 10 out of necessity – 'because even at that age,' she says, 'I knew there weren't good parts for women'. She first made waves in student theatre, with Sluts, a biting, fast-talking comedy about the labels women throw at each other and the double standards that let men off the hook. Its combination of righteous anger, whip-smart intellect, unexpected tenderness and lacerating humour has become Daly's trademark. The 37-year-old Dubliner has written for stage and screen, including a stint on the long-running BBC daytime drama Doctors, for which she won a Writers Guild of Ireland Zebbie Award. Soap, she says, taught her a huge amount about story and structure, and its role as a tool for public empathy and education deserves more respect. 'It's the most accessible art form we have,' she says. 'Its reach is huge. I remember the storyline about Todd being gay from Coronation Street in the early 2000s – that was huge. I don't think I ever really knew what being gay was before that. Similarly, with the teenage pregnancy, it can take a topic that is divisive in society and help society to understand it a little bit better.' READ MORE What unites all of Daly's work, whether on a BBC soundstage or in a black-box theatre, is her commitment to moral ambiguity, emotional nuance and sharp absurdity of modern life. In her breakout play, Duck Duck Goose , which ran at Dublin Theatre Festival in 2021, Daly tackled the social impact of sexual violence from a rarely seen angle: that of the bystander. Loosely inspired by the nine-week Belfast rape trial of 2018, it features a protagonist, Chris, who is neither accused nor accuser but a friend of the accused, slowly unravelling under the weight of what he knew, what he didn't and what he refused to see. 'I felt very strongly that if every story we see around rape culture is from a survivor's perspective, we begin to think it's the survivor's problem. And it's not,' Daly says. 'We have to be having the more difficult conversations.' The play became an international success, with acclaimed productions in Bulgaria, Australia and New Zealand. But at home the reception was more complicated. 'We were very well reviewed, which was great,' she says. 'But I found some of the reactions quite held back.' [ Duck Duck Goose: An uncomfortable, insightful portrayal of sexual violence's social impact Opens in new window ] Part of the unease, she suspects, came from its proximity to the real-life case – the four defendants were acquitted – and the discomfort of unspoken social truths. 'It brings in the question of doubt and the question of redemption, or whether you want to believe in it,' she says. 'I left the play ambiguous, because I wanted there to be space for conversation. If we're to take men on the journey with us, we need to have room for their voices in it too.' Daly's latest play, The Lunch Punch Power Hour in Conference Room 4, strikes a different tone – chaotic, comedic, full of noise – but the questions at its heart are no less urgent. Set at a bland corporate firm, it centres on three employees spending the company's social-responsibility budget. Their lunch hour becomes a warped gameshow of points, prizes, dress-up and one-upmanship. Water pistols are drawn, spinning wheels spun. Wrestling matches unfold on a boardroom table. The play quickly unfurls from office dramedy into a satire about power, survival and the rituals we invent to endure capitalism's grind. The absurdity is deliberate, but so is the recognition. Daly first seeded the play in 2010, during the economic crash. 'I was working in an office that was pretty much abandoned,' she says. 'It was on St Stephen's Green. This entire block of offices being used by the company I worked for. Such a desolate place. And I had this idea where a load of workers re-enact The Late Late Toy Show . 'It was about millennials and how we all grew up being told we could have anything, and we could do anything we wanted, because the world was such a rich, plush place in Ireland in the 2000s. And then the crash happened, and all those dreams of Barbie cars just went out the window.' Daly has always been drawn to that collision between expectation and reality, between the self and the system. Lunch Punch extends that, exploring coping mechanisms, language games and power plays that flourish when actual power is scarce. 'The play's really trying to explore the things we do to feel like we might have some power over something,' she says, 'even though most of us don't have much power over the structures in place.' The setting is Gresham Professional Services. It's entirely fictional but also a recognisable kind of nowhere, with rigid structure and absurd stakes. The rules, Daly says, are familiar to anyone who has temped or worked in an office. 'It takes you a week to learn the rules of whatever office you're in, and they're not the written ones. Like, you can't do this, or say that. Some of the things I had to do in offices, I was, like, what the f**k is this?' A receptionist named Jess becomes the audience's entry point. She's a smart, curious outsider with a PhD in anthropology and an interest in the individualistic construction of western identity, who is both underestimated by and quietly threatening to her colleagues. Daly, who has temped in countless offices over 15 years, brings a lived-in authority to Jess's role as observer. 'I love reception work. I've done it in so many places: doctors' offices, cement companies, law offices. The receptionist is always a silent observer, rarely noticed. I used to love going into new worlds and figuring out how people work together. The pettiness is incredible. Like, in one office, at least once a month a woman would come out and tell me there was poo in one of the toilets.' If Duck Duck Goose dealt in silence – what isn't said, what isn't acknowledged – Lunch Punch is awash with language: jargon, acronyms, appropriated anthropology, and pop culture. Daly took inspiration from the choreographed fights of professional wrestling and the conflict-heavy theatrics of reality TV. 'I worked with people who thought they were in a video game or in The Real Housewives ..., by how they spoke. You can feel someone doing a dramatic pause. Nobody knows how to do office culture naturally – it's performative. 'There's a line in the play where Jess asks about a no-uniform day, and they say, 'We don't have a uniform.' But of course they do. Office culture is performance: costumes and scripts.' The scripts extend beyond offices to modern life. 'The play's littered with references: The Real Housewives ..., Come Dine With Me, Father Ted, Arrested Development. They're not obvious. They're diluted, so you don't really know where they came from. But that's where we're at. TikTok is this stream of references. We're living in a Jenga tower of weird meta existence.' Despite its satire, Lunch Punch resists cynicism. 'I didn't want it to be cynical,' Daly says. 'The world is difficult enough. If you wanted to die by cynicism right now, you could. I want this to be semi-uplifting, while being truthful about the world we're living in.' The play shares thematic echoes with The Good Place , Mike Schur's TV series, which explored ethical complexity in a broken world. Daly welcomes the comparison. 'You've nailed it,' she says. 'What I wanted the end to feel like was the end of the first season of The Good Place. It's an empowering ending. They won't be shut down, you know?' [ Why we love 'The Good Place' and its star Kristen Bell Opens in new window ] That instinct for resistance, both political and emotional, pulses through Daly's work. She cites Ursula K Le Guin's idea of the artist's treason: that we've been taught that only pain can be intelligent, that joy is naive. 'I see joy and playfulness as everyday resistance. That's what I was trying to get across with Lunch Punch – just finding pockets full of joy. We're taught that happiness is stupid, and artists often deny us the banality of evil and the boredom of pain.' Resistance has limits, of course, especially in Dublin. Daly speaks frankly about the precarity of making art in Ireland: the economic hostility; the shrinking opportunities; the cultural ambivalence. The play touches on this and on the often-forgotten struggles of those outside the capital. 'I'm very seriously concerned about our country,' she says. 'Everything is entirely Dublin-focused. We've left most of the Midlands without an industry. With the closure of Bord na Móna's ESB plants, a lot of young people had no choice but to leave. I used to mention that to people in Dublin, and they'd say, 'Oh, did they? What's that?' We can be in a bubble – myself included.' What keeps her hopeful? Daly doesn't hesitate. 'We're very resilient. I'm hopeful for some kind of creative revolution. Bureaucracy is killing theatre. I'm looking for punks. I'm looking for some punk stuff to happen soon, because it's important.' She smiles, the conviction steady beneath the humour. 'The win is getting to do what you love,' she says. 'That's it. That's the whole thing.' In a world built on distraction, exhaustion, productivity and profit, choosing to keep making art and telling stories might just be radical. The Lunch Punch Power Hour in Conference Room 4 is on the Peacock stage of the Abbey Theatre , in Dublin, until Saturday, September 6th
