The Mother of All Talk Shows was a British talk radio show hosted by George Galloway

George Galloway

George Galloway is a British politician, author, journalist and broadcaster who was a Member of Parliament from 1987 to 2010. He was formerly an MP for the Labour Party, first for Glasgow Hillhead and later for Glasgow Kelvin, before his expulsion from the party in October 2003, the same year...

 on talkSPORT

TalkSPORT

Talksport , owned by UTV radio, is one of the United Kingdom's three terrestrial analogue Independent National Radio broadcasters, offering a sports and talk radio service broadcast from London to the United Kingdom....

. The program used to air each Friday and Saturday night between 10pm and 1am.

Since its inception on March 11, 2006, The Mother Of All Talk Shows had pulled in record call numbers and the highest ever ratings for a weekend program. The show started with the theme song from 1960s cartoon Top Cat

Top Cat

Top Cat is a Hanna-Barbera prime time animated television series which ran from September 27, 1961 to April 18, 1962 for a run of 30 episodes on the ABC network. Reruns are played on Cartoon Network's classic animation network Boomerang.-History:...

, followed by an extemporary monologue by Galloway, dealing primarily with political issues, economics, international relations, political philosophy, and other topical issues. The title refers to "The Mother of All Battles

The mother of all

The mother of all... has become a stock phrase in English-language public discourse and popular culture. It implies the largest or most significant example of a class, which completely overshadows all other cases in the class...

", a phrase used by Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein

Saddam Hussein

Saddam Hussein Abd al-Majid al-Tikriti was the fifth President of Iraq, serving in this capacity from 16 July 1979 until 9 April 2003...

 in reference to the 1991 Gulf War

Gulf War

The Persian Gulf War , commonly referred to as simply the Gulf War, was a war waged by a U.N.-authorized coalition force from 34 nations led by the United States, against Iraq in response to Iraq's invasion and annexation of Kuwait.The war is also known under other names, such as the First Gulf...

.

Galloway halted presenting the show on 27 March 2010, due to campaign commitments in the 2010 UK General Election.

Format

After the opening monologue, Galloway invited callers to challenge his views, with a preference for those who disagree with him and women callers. Galloway occasionally called his program ‘The Great Debate’, and is different from other talk show hosts in that he willingly and ably debated hostile callers, and encouraged those who strongly disagree with him to call ‘if you think you’re hard enough’.