Bookshelves - The Nation Speaks

0:03When did making plans get this complicated? It's time to streamline with WhatsApp, the secure messaging app that brings the whole group together. Use polls to settle dinner plans. Send event invites and pin messages so no one forgets mom's 60th. And never miss a meme or milestone. All protected with end-to-end encryption. It's time for WhatsApp. Message privately with everyone. Learn more at whatsapp.com. This episode is brought to you by State Farm. Checking off the boxes on your to-do list is a great feeling. And when it comes to checking off coverage, a State Farm agent can help you choose an option that's right for you.

0:42Whether you prefer talking in person, on the phone, or using the award-winning app, it's nice knowing you have help finding coverage that best fits your needs. Like a good neighbor, State Farm is there.

0:56Lowe's knows how to get you ready for holiday hosting with up to 35 % off select home decor. and get up to 35 % off select major appliances. Plus, members get free delivery, haul-away, basic installation, parts, and a two-year Lowe's protection plan when you spend$2 ,500 or more on select LG major appliances. Valid through 10-1. Member offer excludes Massachusetts, Maryland, Wisconsin, New Jersey, and Florida. Installed by independent contractors. Exclusions apply. See Lowe's.com for more details. Hello, and welcome to this episode of The Rest is Entertainment. questions and answers edition. I'm Marina Hyde.

1:33And I'm Richard Osmond. Hello, Marina. Hello, Richard. How are you? Yeah, I'm all right. We are going to be talking about Bookshelfgate later on. Maybe we'll do that sort of in the second half of the show. Let's get some other questions out of the way first. But we are going to be... Enter the bookcases. See them with me, Richard. Yeah, exactly. Because I'm going to do battle with you. Well, yeah, last week's episode was entitled Is Richard a Psychopath? Because I order my books by size. And we're going to have an answer to the question, is Richard a Psychopath? I think. And whether somebody else might be a psychopath.

1:59I think we're going to have a different answer entirely, so see you for that later. Let us begin with a question from Steve Rich. The BBC is very tight on advertising, says Steve, and you often hear presenters saying things like, other crisps are available when someone mentions Pringles. How then does a show like Top Gear get away with it, with what is essentially advertising various car brands, similarly on Saturday Kitchen, when they recommend wine? It's sort of quite simple, yeah. If you do, you're not allowed to make commercial references. So, you know, you'll often see on shows, you know, people will talk about cooking with yeast extract or they'll talk about, you know, cooking with an Irish cream liqueur instead of Marmite and Baileys.

2:37And that's very, very traditional. You have to take those things out of scripts. If on a comedy show or something like that someone mentions Twix, you absolutely can get away with it by saying other chocolate bars are available. So as well as being just a sort of traditional joke form, other chocolate bars are available. Actually, it sort of works. I think probably legally it doesn't really have any standing. but by and large the lawyers led it through. With the things like Top Gear and Saturday Kitchen and also another way that you can get away with mentioning things is what you can't have is undue prominence.

3:08So if you do a show and you just talk about Twix the whole way through, for example, you would be chastised for it. The lawyers would say that you can't do this. If, though, you talk about Twix and you talk about Twirl and you talk about Drifter and you talk about Mars Bar, that's okay. Suddenly you've got a variety show. Exactly. You have a variety pack, if you will. And there are celebrations in the lawyer's office. So if you mention other things, and so that's how, you know, Top Gear, of course, every week they review cars. Every week they have different cars. And so they are not giving undue prominence to a particular brand.

3:41And it's a review show. It sounds ridiculous. And it's a review show. It's so much more than a review show, but it is a review show. It's so much more than that. And Saturday Kitchen as well. Well, you know, if Ollie Smith brings on a wine from Waitrose, you would sort of make sure across the series that next week's wine was from an independent retailer. And then the week after it was from Morrison's. And you just make sure that undue prominence is not happening. So when you do have to have products and, you know, Saturday Kitchen, that's sort of a review as well. You know, you're recommending things.

4:08You are allowed some leeway, but you have to make sure across the series that no one is being represented more than anybody else. And I do, you know, it drives, especially in a comedy show. So, you know, you can't just, they can say, well, can you redo that joke, but say chocolate bar instead of Snickers. No, it's not funny. You absolutely can't. The specificity of it is so important. Exactly. The specificity of brands. But, you know, God bless the BBC, it is hard for them because they are not allowed to. So if you can help them out by saying other chocolate bars are available or immediately talking about a Cadbury's cream egg, then you'll try and do that.

4:40I have a question for you, Marina, and it is from Isabella Lloyd Webber. Isabella Lloyd Webber. Firstly, all of us Lloyd Webbers absolutely adore your podcast. I don't know if she's from the famous Lloyd Webber family. It is a hell of a flex if she's not. If she's just from like a, you know, just, yeah, my mum, Maureen, my dad, Steve, Steve Lloyd Webber. We all love the podcast. Let's assume she's from the Lloyd Webber family. We discuss it on our family WhatsApp group weekly. Oh, my God, that's going to go off this week, isn't it? It is going to kick off. On the Lloyd Webber WhatsApp. Goodness me.

5:13What do you think of the news? She has a question as well. And that's the end of that. She also has a question. Isabel asks, what do you think of the news that the Night Times Industries Association has predicted there will be no nightclubs by 2029? Oh, that is such a good question. And it's so miserable, isn't it? If they close down the Starlight Express, I'm going to lose my mind. I'm sure you will. Now, one club is closing every two days, are they saying now? I think there's a lot of reasons behind this. And some people would say, oh, people are drinking less. which I mean not if you go out in central London anyway.

5:47It's a global issue. There's lots of different things. There's certain like individual factors like safety and things have changed like that. Experience, culture, the rise of that, people willing to spend their money on that but not other things. The biggest one, the pandemic, obviously that was a disaster. It created lots of people who don't necessarily, you know, made people feel much more sort of homebound. At the same time as the capital costs of anyone who owned those big buildings and running those big buildings, some decided to call it a day and never got reopened. And they're changing into apartments because it's trying to address housing and what have you.

6:16I mean, it's interesting what type of nightclubs you're talking about, Isabella, and you're probably talking about all types of them because they're all under threat. The ones where the party itself was the focus and the dancing and all of that, you've got those huge places like, I don't know, Studio 54, all those ones that become... Cinderella, Rockefellers. Cinderella Rockefellers. Roxy's. Yes, all of those. Yeah, Embargo. Embargo, God. Yeah, God, I'm thinking of experiences in all of these. Okay, not Studio 54, I should say, but I would have 100 % ridden in on a white horse like Bianca Jagger.

6:45I think we all know. And I can say I definitely would have had a blue WKD at Romford Embargoes. There was one in Eastbourne called Tuxedo Junction, which I love as a name, but they then tried to make it cooler in the 90s called TJ's, but I think everyone knew what was going on. Anyway, you've got a cool lot. And then the kind of clubs that I used to go to a lot, the ones that grew up out of rave culture. And what happened with all of those clubs to some extent was that they were a story business, that it was about the club. And it was about the atmosphere. And, you know, people talked about them as substitute churches, as families.

7:16And not just the big sort of dancing super clubs, all sorts of things. And people thought of them like that. But then they became a stars business. DJs became huge. You know, once you're hearing that DJs are flying all the way around the world and going to different places, lots of local people were kind of priced out. I think that the modern problem with clubbing, let me tell you some stuff that killed clubs, right? Like, bottle service killed clubs. I hate bottle service in clubs. What's bottle service? When they bring a bottle to your table, right, and it's dickheads ordering, like, oh, I'm going to order some champagne in a club.

7:47This was just not a thing. I mean, basically, when you were growing up, going to all those kind of big clubs, like, say, we go to Cream in Liverpool or, like, Gatecrash or any of those ones, Club UK. I've never seen you so animated. No, but, okay. I feel like you're reliving your youth. Everyone was drinking water for obvious reasons, right? So bottle service is one of the things. She's making a drug reference. No, I am. No. Well, I do think that's another thing that has killed it. Wow. To some extent, the drugs in use, and it's not everyone in the club is on drugs, but whatever, at any one time, inform the type of experience.

8:12Just imagining the Lloyd Webber WhatsApp right now. Isabella, wow. No, no, no. What have you uncovered? What I'm saying is that there's actually a really great book about the music industry called Black Vinyl White Powder. Yes. And it's by a guy called Simon Napier-Bell. And his sort of thesis is that the music evolved in response to what kind of drugs were the kind of big prevalent ones at the time, which in some ways it's really obvious. and when psychedelic drugs come in, the music obviously changes in a relatively obvious way. But there are other ways that are sort of less obvious. But it's an interesting thesis and it's actually a great book about music.

8:42And punk comes in with speed. Yes, and all that sort of stuff, right? Now, if you look at what's happened in football with cocaine use, it's like all the bad things have come from the fact that coke is everywhere now and it's cheap and it's horrible and it's a different type of experience. Whereas ecstasy was this kind of great communal thing and that has changed a lot in clubs. Booths, that's called nightclubs. Booths? You know, booths. Yeah, like little seating areas. I mean, you don't need a seating area in a nightclub. Do you know what? I'm not a nightclub guy, but I would go if there was a booth.

9:09Well, don't worry. There was one everywhere and then they're all closing, right? So you've got, like, they've had a broken economic model. They have appealed to the biggest dickheads in the world, right, who want... There's now these whole rituals with drinks when someone orders champagne in a club. It's very performative. They've got a whole sort of thing and sometimes there are flares going off. It's all ridiculous, right? So they've optimised for the ultra high-end person. And this is happening at Equinox in Kingston? But I'll tell you what else is, is people are on their smartphones all the time.

9:37So people are taken out of the communal experience. So all of these things. So it's cocaine plus COVID plus smartphones. Booth, bottle service is a big one. That's the 21st century right there. Yeah. Look at what happened to Ibiza, OK? Ibiza was a really cool hippie island that had lots of fun things. These big super clubs spread. But it's now full of the worst people in the world and the biggest chisellers in the world. It's like the perfect marriage where they want to sort of rip everybody off. and people want to be ripped off because they're just taking pictures of themselves and it's all performative and it's all grim and there's no soul, okay?

10:07So all of these broken economic models, what happened is that they priced local people out because you were optimizing always for kind of... Like football. Yeah, like football. It's very, very similar. And you see so much of the sort of... I don't know, when you're thinking back to that Wembley final of the Euros and all the trouble was that. It's like, that's people who can't get in and can't have tickets and there's lots of drugs and wash in that. lots of things have it's the economic model broke and they broke it themselves having said that there are now lots of pubs with djs i am loving this so much this is a big thing now that people are doing which is that there are pubs and you they start off as pubs in the evening but they've got until a 3 a.m license and they kind of become something different as the night goes on and there are quite a few of these i don't think that nightlife will truly die because it can't because people want to be out there if i walk into a pub and it says there's a dj uh i do that grandpa our Simpson meme where I just go no, do you know what I'm walking straight down but often these pubs it doesn't start that you know if you go in at 6.30 there isn't one but by the time it gets to midnight there is one and there are places that are sort of adapting like that I really hope that if again there's a sort of change in the type of drugs that people are using and the type of no but it's true you have to say it because it's part it's a big part of the scene do you not think it is?

11:21I do you know what? clearly come on yeah listen I'm not a nightclub guy you know never have been never will be but listen I respect their right to exist my main experience of nightclubs is my favourite Channel 4 show Night Coppers set in Brighton which is always fights in nightclubs and fights outside nightclubs and what have you but yeah listen I guess they were ubiquitous then as you say they got commodified but yeah those 80s nightclubs you know there's still the odd one or two in every town right I'd love to know our listeners 80s 90s nightclub names. Oh please send us your provincial can't be London Not Eastern London All capital cities No Manchester No Glasgow It must be Like Tuxedo Junctions In Eastbourne Yeah what was Kettering's Main nightclub In the 90s I'd like to know There you go Isabella Got more than you bargained for There didn't you Sometimes they ask Marina questions And I don't know If she'll have an answer to this But boy does she have An answer for that Oh look there's a really Good question about Blankety Blank And prizes from David Audis Who says he saw Rob Beckett On Blankety Blank He missed the main You know that Rob Beckett is literally next door right now.

12:28He's doing Parenting Hell with... Is it a question about Rob Beckett? Yes. In the next door studio. If they haven't started, grab him. Oh God, they'll be in the middle of something. Let's see, can we send... Joey is going to get him. Are they having any of us out there? Maybe we'll get him. David, if we get Rob in... Here he comes. Here comes the horse's mouth. Here comes the horse's mouth himself. How dare you. Are we all ready? Can we just do it? I'm sorry. Yeah, I'm a real professional. Rob, David Audis has asked a question. He said, I saw Rob Beckett on Blankety Blank. He's very good on that, isn't he, David?

13:00He missed the main prize for the contestant. You shocked me. Oh, no. I'm quite going to Blankety Blank, but that was a tough one. So he bought the contestant a 75-inch TV out of his own pocket. Is that true? Yes, correct. Oh, that's a nice thing to do. Oh, that's lovely, Rob. And he's asking, do celebs often similarly cover those things? It's hard when you're on a show like that and you lose someone money. Yeah, well, normally, when you do it, it's not down to you exactly it's like you're involved in a big thing and you've got normally a charity one is you go on it you raise money for the charity you've got the actual punters but this one I got to the final one and this guy was like 75, 80 and they loved him he had a pink suit on he was dancing and he was going like the prizes he won were terrible it was like podcast equipment he didn't even know what that was and then I think he won sort of like the contents of a fridge or something mental like that and then he went to Bradley all I wanted though I just, I can't, my eyes are going and I can't see the telly and I love watching football and I can't see them play and I don't know who's who.

14:01So, you know, if I did win this money, I'd buy a telly and then we lost and the mood in the room was horrific. I just said to him, I went, I'll get you a telly, I'll get you a telly, I'd have panicked. And, you know, obviously you get paid to go to that show so I thought, I'll just have a bit less that day or whatever so I got him a telly but he's cheeky though because he said 75 then when I went through it, it was 85, wasn't it? I think the eyes his eyes are gone but yeah he was a lovely old man it was a good episode there but I don't normally happen but that was particularly heartstrings appalled Rob thank you so much I know you're in the next room doing your podcast with Josh keep it up see you soon thanks Rob bye oh that's a heavy door thank you so much to Rob Beckett for that again Isabella Lloyd Webber got more than she expected and David Ordice gets more than he expected as well and it's interesting we had the same thing we did we did a the only time i really remember it was doing uh pointless celebrities children in need and mark foster was in the final round and he got down to one point and it was like five grand for children in need and it genuinely as rob just said the mood in the studio was so awful so i said i sort of looked over at zander i don't really get is he's okay i said we'll cover that we'll we'll give you the five grand because you were so unlucky to get that and after i said to zander was that okay he went if you hadn't said it i would have done heartstrings were pulled as Rob said.

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17:31Welcome back, everybody. Now, last week we had what began as an anodyne discussion about how you might order domestic bookshelves. You know what? It didn't even start as that. It started as a question about just bookshelves in the back of shop. Yeah, coffee table books. I'm afraid it quickly spiralled into something much less pleasant and it's been raging on social media and via email, in fact. So my system is, by and large, I'll put big books all together, smaller books all together, which you thought was psychopathy of the highest order. We have a system at home which I believe is a form of gaslighting.

18:07However, unfortunately, I'm required to read a legal statement for my husband before we go any further. I gotcha. He would like to say. Our books are arranged by genre. Film, TV and music are separate but next to each other. Also in non-fiction, a sport, biography, history, politics, digital, philosophy, science, journalism, reference and travel. There's also a growing section of whimsical memoirs that needs a brutal pruning. In fiction we divide novels after 1945 from before which means there are roughly the same number of each. These are arranged alphabetically by order. Then there are plays and lastly poetry.

18:42We go with my system and not Marina's because I bothered to have one. If we went with Marina's system, all our books would be piled on either her desk or beside the bed in the order of whichever one she last took off the shelf and didn't put back. There is confusingly a separate shelf of Hollywood books that for some reason had to be moved into a different room for the rest of film. But you know, happy wife, happy life. Wow. Can I ask a question about your husband? Well, I have a number of questions about him. But the first one would be, does he run a Waterstones? Because it sounds like it. So I would like to say, Kieran, I'm very grateful for so many of the things you do for me.

19:15And you'll be hearing this on your commute. Thanks for doing the tax return and all the stuff you did when I was in America for the podcast. But it will be a cold day in hell before I accept about half of that. OK, it is a gaslighting system, Kieran. And unlike a lot of people who use that term, you and I have both seen the film. OK, we know what is happening to the wife in that. We know what is happening. okay and if you don't agree with any of this stuff then you should start a podcast and argue back yeah i like kieran very much he is we all do richard he is well i would hope you do he is very very very wide of the mark here i mean that is a lot of people a lot of people have got involved can i just say that i actually this is controversial i do agree with kieran's system i don't agree that that is what's happening with that system in our house currently agree with that system Yeah.

20:05You agree with splitting literature into pre-war and post-war, for example? Yes. Or because you're thinking, hmm, what should I read? So do quite a number of notable university courses. But okay, yeah, no, sure. No, I do agree with things like that. I do agree with force of categorization. So you would be aware at all times that something would be pre-war or post-war? Your life very much, there's a schism in the middle of it. Do I look like someone who doesn't know whether someone came before or after the war? Come on. That is quite something. I mean, but also, that's quite a long time ago. So the post-war must be growing and growing and growing.

20:35That's my worry about it. Well, I read a lot of very old stuff, and I'm not talking about stuff in the 1980s, Richard. I mean, why don't you, for example... Do you know what? Why don't you? I would love it. But the war seems like an unusual thing, and also, presumably, you've been... The war seems like an unusual national event, which, I mean, it did change quite a lot of stuff. How long have you been using that system for, would be one question. God, I mean, a lot... Decades? Decades, okay. so I think at some point you have to move that forward I think the fulcrum event from okay so pre 9-11 and pre the financial crisis let's say if you've done it for two decades we'll move it forward and say that you have pre the first Slade album and post the first Slade album just so you have equal numbers for each okay I'll pass it on to Captain Gaslight and we'll see what he says so anyway people at home they think I'm not a psychopath and lots of people are saying of course you have to put books in order of height because sometimes you have unusual It's all shaped shelves.

21:33Most of them. What? Most of them are saying I'm not a psychopath. Richard is not a psycho. Let's see the first thing here, Matthew Lee. My heart goes out to Marina's husband. My heart goes out to Marina's husband, but it is foreign to me the notion you would organise books so they can be easily retrieved. That is almost as pathological as organising books by colour. Sorry, why would you not organise books so that they could be easily retrieved? Well, how big is your house? Oh, a rare silence. And I don't want that edited out. in not even a second of it because that was about nine seconds. Okay, why wouldn't you?

22:06Right, how big is your house? What's that supposed to mean? How many shelves, how many yards of shelves have I got? I'm not Umberto Eco's library, let's put it that way. If you live in a library, if you lived in an actual library, for sure, then you have an issue of we need to make sure that these books are easily recoverable. Almost every single person in this world, possibly not the Lloyd Webbers, but everybody else, right, has houses where, it's not like we've got 40 rooms, you think, oh my God, how am I going to find that book? Our books are sort of, they are where they are. It's not like we're going, where are I?

22:35I can't find it anywhere. Well, it's in one of the kind of five bookshelves you might have in various different rooms. You don't need some sort of, you're not the Smithsonian. Let's let some listeners do some more talking. Yes. Right? Max McGennity says, I'm now a proud member of the Hyde Hive. Marina's bookshelving system is the only correct one and the rest of you are indeed psychopaths. Yeah, so the only correct one is to have alphabetically pre-war and post-war in terms of your fiction and then some other wishy-washy system I couldn't work out. Stop talking about the war. Really, stop talking about the war.

23:07Stop talking about the war. You know it's quite important. John B. Yeah, I do. Wow. You know what? You and Trump both. You want us to forget, don't you? John B. says, I must admit that until today's podcast, Marina was very much my fantasy woman. For perfor disappointment. However, her book filing system has shattered that illusion and I no longer wish to throw my hat into the ring should she decide to leave her husband. See, it is a form of gaslighting. The old wife trap. See, I think that most people do not have enough books to have a system that needs any sort of categorisation other than...

23:41I mean, by and large, you just want books to look nice on a shelf and look nice next to each other. And I just don't think most people need to retrieve their books in the way you're saying. I need to retrieve my books, though. You know we had a discussion on Twitter with a guy who runs Bother's Bar, Brig Bother, who works at the University Library in Cambridge, which is the biggest library in Britain and they organise things by size as well because it is the most efficient way to organise things. As I said, Tim Richard, when people need to find a book in that library, they type something into a computer and they get the number of the stack and they have to go and find it.