From this morning's Today:
Nick Robinson: Without the pain would there have been the music?
Eric Clapton: Probably not. No. I think the only part that is regrettable, the most regrettable part is, I got drunk. And that part - it's like 20 years of drinking - where I did really offensive things. I was a nasty person, which I say in the movie...
Nick Robinson: You focus on an incident you are often reminded about in which you say you were 'semi-racist'. I mean you were racist on stage. You were fully...
Eric Clapton: Full tilt, yeah.
Nick Robinson: Words we don't normally use on the radio. Words like 'wog'. Words like 'coon'.
Eric Clapton: Yes.
Nick Robinson: To describe the people you wanted to get out of the country.
Eric Clapton: Yes, so I mean as a simple-minded working-class villager like me, which is what Brexit is all about, there was a sort of air of this around the early 70s. And I'm not excusing myself. It was an awful thing to do.
Nick Robinson: In a way that view had then...you praised Enoch Powell at the time...you think the roots of that are in Brexit?
Eric Clapton: I think so. Yeah. I think it was a gut-feeling referendum. I had ceased to be xenophobic and I was very concerned about all the people that had come here who might be asked to leave, so I voted to remain.
At which point Nick Robinson asked him if he was being offensive again now by smearing 17.4 million people as 'xenophobic'? No. He just moved on.
