Can celebrities dodge jury service?

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0:47Scientifically formulated to support physical energy, hydration, focus, mood, and social stamina. Liquid IV's new energy multiplier, sugar-free. Hydrating energy. Tap the banner to learn more. Hello and welcome to another edition of The Rest is Entertainment, questions edition. Questions and answers edition. I'm Richard Osman. And I'm Marina Hyde. Now let's have no preamble because I'm dying to hear the answer to this question, Richard, please. It is about jury service. Okay, Robert Buckley says, Having been called again annoyingly for jury service, I was wondering if celebs are exempt as I can't imagine David Beckham or Lorraine Kelly sitting in jury deciding the guilt of a shoplifting case.

1:25How famous is too famous to serve? that's such a good question do you know what i i literally i've asked a high court judge that exact question can a celebrity defer themselves service journalism can i just yeah isn't it just now she says that listen if you are like anybody if you're filming a movie or something while this is on and you can prove you are contractually then you can get out of jury duty you can defer a couple of times but she says no there is absolutely nothing stopping a celebrity being on a jury. So I went further and said, so for example, no one would go, it might be a bit weird if Lorraine Kelly is on this jury.

2:03And my friend said, no, unless it's connected to the case somehow, weirdness for everybody is not a ground for dismissal. I mean, if you ever looked at juries, there's much weirdness there and it doesn't, you know, Lorraine Kelly would be the least of it, I have to say. Yeah, she then goes on to say, I would make a celebrity sit just for badness, especially if it were you. so I won't be able to get out of it but isn't that interesting so you could go there and you know there could be Richard Madeley it could be anyone I would love that I mean not if perhaps if I was on trial Madeley can have some quite lively views and I'm not necessarily sure I'd want those because I would only be on trial for something I was falsely accused of if I was on trial and Richard Madeley was on the jury I think every single thing I'm saying I'm directing directly to Richard Madeley oh yeah because you know he's the foreman he will get himself elected as that foreman no question you know and I'd be going well the mobile phone cell I know it said I'm there but hey Richard you know sometimes technology right okay it can be wrong and then I say and of course I have forgotten what I was doing that Tuesday we can't always remember what we're doing am I right Richard just the whole way through well that's quite a sledgehammer way to incept him into thinking that you know you haven't actually done it you try and do it that way but some other thing completely would get inside his head something prosecution or the defence of Or he would say, do you know what, when you walked up I saw that one of your shoes, your left shoe, the shoeless was slightly looser than the other and I thought that means you're right handed so I think you did it I go, there's nothing about being right handed in the trial, what are you talking about Richard?

3:33He goes, listen, I've listened to everything, I think what I think, I think, Madeley, you've absolutely turned this on his head. It's perfectly possible by the way that Richard Madeley has been on juries if he has been on juries and you have been involved in any way in a case and Maidley was on the jury, please write in because I want to know, I want to make a 10-part series about it, actually. If I went into court, if I'm standing in the dock and Lorraine Kelly is on the jury, front and centre, if I'm guilty, I know I'm done. And if I'm innocent, I know I'm saved. Yeah, she'll get to the bottom of it, yes, in a way that perhaps I don't quite think Maidley would.

4:09So, yes, as I say. But also, if Lorraine Kelly's been on your jury, do write in and let us know. Yes, exactly. Any celebrity jury, actually. We'll take anything at this point. Who's the most famous celebrity who's been on a jury? That would be the question. She gives me the name of somebody who got off a jury because he was filming a movie. I won't say the name in case that's subjudice or something. Yeah, that's a nice place to start, isn't it? Thank you, yeah. But if you commit a crime, then Lorraine Kelly may well be judging you. And you better hope she is if you haven't done it. Okay, talking of going on trial and being judged by Lorraine Kelly, Richard Allen has a question.

4:45Marina, as a columnist, do you get legal indemnity from your employer against the cost of being sued for something you write? You do, and so you should. If you publish something in a newspaper, it has to go through a number of procedures. I mean, everything I write goes to the legal department. You're so square. I have become great friends with the legal department over the years. We have so much special time together, as you can imagine. And it should go through your editors. It should go through the legal department. And therefore, if it is published by your newspaper or your media outlet of any sort, they should obviously indemnify you.

5:17And so if you are sued, which, by the way, legal actions in this country for libel are sort of extraordinary. Our libel law is really pretty awful. And it costs, on average, I think 140 times more to fight a libel action in this country than it does anywhere else in Europe. And it almost doesn't exist in the US because they have that sort of freedom of speech rights. And it's really quite hard to be considered to have libeled someone in the US. what's happened in recent years is that particularly amongst sort of oligarchs kind of really extreme kind of kleptocrat business interests Richard Madeley for which London has become a complete magnet for some of those have taken to suing individual journalists they've met through the publisher of a book for instance there's a there's a great journalist who's actually got a new book coming out which I'll tell you about in just a second a guy called Tom Burgess who used to work for the FT.

6:06And he wrote a book called Kleptopia. Oh, I love that book. Oh, it's terrific. He's got a new one coming. I'm going to tell you this. He's got a new one coming out literally next week called Cuckoo Land, which is in the same vein. And it's absolutely fascinating on dirty money and how it gets hidden. And it's really brilliant. Also, Catherine Belton, who was the Moscow correspondent also of the FT, and she wrote Putin's People, which is an extraordinary account of how he rises from being a sort of FSB security, PGB officer to becoming Putin. And a much less good version of Pans people. Yeah, much less good.

6:36And both of them were sued. HarperCollins was sued, but they were sued individually by various oligarchs. And that is really very difficult. And both of them won those libel actions, which is really very difficult, or legal actions. The journalist won them. The journalist won them, which is very, very difficult. There's a second part of Richard's question I have seen, which is, if so, does the legal sort of indemnity cover your column only or extend to Twitter? Well, this is a much more interesting area. There are social media guidelines, all newspapers, publishers, whatever, will have them for their journalists or authors and will say, you know, you need to stay within these guidelines.

7:12Because if you write something on Twitter that is libelous, there's not necessarily a reason, in my view, given how expensive libel actions are to defend, that your employer should automatically stick by you. And sometimes people have been told many times not to say certain things on Twitter because they haven't gone through all those layers that we talked about, the editing, particularly the legal department. And you're kind of out there on your own. As I think we've said before on this podcast, it's fine not to tweet. It's absolutely fine not to post. Have the thought, but don't necessarily feel the need to put it on the end.

7:43Tell your friends. But in those cases, it is more complicated. and there are some instances where journalists have been sued over things that they said on Twitter but not over what was published in newspapers at the time and I have to say that I think it's pretty difficult you should probably take responsibility for within reason for what you write on Twitter if it's just about kind of maybe promoting a column that you've written or you're promoting a investigation that you've done and you get one word wrong I think reasonably you might hope that your newspaper would defend you in that situation but in other times if you're going out on a limb and freelancing completely and really not staying within libel law to a reasonable degree, then I think you have to be quite careful.

8:22By the way, I do think that certain things, as I say, I wish it was different. And I wish libel wasn't such a, you know, we're the sort of libel capital of the world. And another great book, sorry, I'm giving a real reading list on this one, a book by Jan is called Oliver Bullough, which is called Butler to the World, which details all the kind of image washing, all the legal, they call it lawfare, this type of suing so that you kind of completely silence writers who are writing often quite legitimately about your business interests or your kind of political misdeeds and London's the sort of capital of it and we have these whole strata of people who work in London who probably tell their mothers that they're a hotshot liar and you think yeah yeah but it's like being like a lawyer for the mafia I mean you should work in something like animal torture or something it's probably more moral so with the ones you sorry we'll go on slightly longer on this one because I think it's fascinating and it's a fascinating insight into it as well into a world I don't really know so the harper collins for example and these authors when they fought back that's quite a brave thing to do it's quite an expensive thing to do it's it's it's so expensive to defend a libel action it's you know automatically a lot of people just cave and yes because sometimes it's a small thing and you just think you know i'm going to be fine and what they um call these things you know that's why it's called lawfare because it's really easy you hit people with 25 different lawsuits over different bits of the manuscript of the book.

9:42And in the end, you want to get this thing out there. And so it's very, very difficult for publishers who aren't hugely rich in many, many cases. And they have to decide whether they're going to take a stand on it. And both these publishers, the publishers of Catherine Belton's book and of Tom Burgess's book decided to do that. And that is totally to their credit. But you can see, certainly with smaller publishers, you just don't have the money to do this. And actually, newspapers often don't have the money to do this. And sometimes people might accept, rather than a really long drawn out court battle you would get take the first legal letter and people might say okay well if we can't if it's going to become very complicated to defend this and they're not going to accept this and we're going to end up going to court and it's going to cost us hundreds of thousands of pounds in costs alone never mind what is awarded as a liable damage then maybe it's just not worth it and that is wrong and that's how it works and that you know the fact that we're the capital of the world for that sort of thing I don't speak to our credit at all.

10:35So yeah, it happens in England, it happens in Britain far more. Far more than it because of our libel laws. Our libel laws are sort of unique. And as I say, it's 140, on average, 140 times more expensive to defend it in the UK than in Europe. And it doesn't particularly exist in the same way in America. And do you have to be a UK resident to be libeled or can foreign nationals sue in the UK? Yes, people do that. The phrase libel tourism. And this is why often you'll read books and they will have sort of sensational details in and the British version will not have it in because if it is published in this country, then you can sue in our courts and that will make a huge amount of money perhaps for the person.

11:11So things that you can get away with publishing in America and in Europe, and then the British version of the book will not have those details in. And so it's quite odd and you'll often be able to look online and see that other people are writing extraordinary stories about the royal family or whatever. And if you read American publications, you might think you know all sorts of details about things that have happened in the royal family in recent years, but you haven't read them here because they'd be libelous and they'd be sued about. And it's hard to prove often those kind of gossipy backstage stories.

11:39And people don't want to necessarily speak on the record, particularly about the royal family. But to some extent, maybe these stories are well sourced. You don't know, but we just don't have it tested because we don't have them published in this country. Oh, Richard Allen, that's a good question, isn't it? You don't think you're going to get all that. Great. Okay, here's a good one for you, Richard. Musician's Income, Bob Bright asks, how many bands and at what level make a decent living? I know Richard's brother is also an author. Do the other members of Suede have other sources of income, or does the band provide enough to live on?

12:05Is all the cash at the very top end much like football? That's a great question, Bob. Obviously, I asked my brother this question. So my brother is in Suede, has been in Suede for 35 years now, something like that, longer than that maybe. And he said, you know, my brother's very sanguine about the music business, and he's an author as well, but he's full-time Suede still. and so suede make money matt says five percent of bands are making money and it's mainly the legacy bands my brother always said we sold albums in the 90s when that was the way to make money you sell records and now we tour which is the only way to make money now so obviously at the very top end your ed sheerans are doing very well suede and bands at their level you know the manics blur all those bands they're making money those those slightly older bands but he says uh you know these days for a new band it's almost impossible to make money you know you're not getting big advances there's no older audience to buy physical product anymore one of the big changes he said in the last few years is touring europe has become much more difficult and much more expensive post brexit so there's no there's no money to be made venues now who would take a cut of merchandising which is the only way that newer bands are making money at all so it's really really really hard for a young band So the last dinner party who have got the number one album, I had the number one album last week, are a very cool new band, but hard for them to make money.

13:29So they've sold records, but not the sort of sales of records you'd have made years ago. Well, they just have to tour. They have to tour. Well, that's the thing. And Matt says, if you can headline festivals, then you're making money. Festivals is good money, is it? Festivals is great money. Because people are paying 100, 200 quid to go there, and there's 40 ,000 people going. And so if you're a band like Suede or Blur or the Mannix, who are big around the world, you can do 30, 40 festivals a year in different countries. You can headline. You make good money. You make all of that legacy money. And so there's a good living to be made.

13:59But if you're a new band, you can't do that. You can't immediately go to headlining festivals. So The Last Dinner Party, for example, probably can now headline one of the second stages at Glastonbury so they can start making money. How long before they can tour? How long before a band can tour? Yeah, how long before... The Last Dinner Party, would you think that they could start selling out places already? Oh, definitely. Because of the different way that people listen to music these days. they've got quite a big following already. So they've been able to do tours, but not the sort of tours that can make you money.

14:28Essentially, the only way to make money in music is to have made it a long time ago because there was money around or to be big enough that you can charge a lot of money. It's like so much of culture, isn't it? Yeah, it's crazy. The mid-budget anything has gone. So you're either the mega franchise band, as it were, or you're the kind of low-budget whatever and you can make it work that way. but the mid-tier of so many different parts of entertainment has just been hollowed out. Yeah, and Matt is saying as well, when you've signed a record contract now, publishers quite often demand a cut of publishing and merchandising.

15:00They call them 100 % deals. So the pop world, and he's right about this, he says the pop world has basically reverted to the 1950s, which is like big songwriting factories who are making a lot of money, very pretty people who are making money as well, and that's it. You know, that's where the industry is. You know, actual bands and stuff, I mean, there's not a lot of it about. Matt says maybe about 5 % of bands you have heard of are making money, and all the bands you haven't heard of are not making money. But that is very, very, very difficult these days. You know, you can license your music to films and stuff like that.

15:34You can get lucky. But in terms of building a career, and Matt is right again, he's saying, look, either you're a band from the 90s, or you have a day job, or you have rich parents, and those are the only options left in the music business, which is very depressing. I mean, who knows what comes out at the other end of it? Yeah. You know, certainly, listen, at the end of the 50s and, you know, that system, you know, we have rock and roll and then punk and all that stuff. So stuff did happen. But it's hard to see it happening again when the income stream simply isn't there or the income stream is there.

16:04But so much of it is being swept into the record companies. It's hard to have that kind of creative backlash in the way that also the way you saw with something like Universal Artists. when that studio is set up right back in the day of the golden age of Hollywood. And it's set up as a reaction to everyone feeling that they were owned by the big companies. But it's really hard to do that against companies that are essentially tech companies now. Exactly that. Suddenly, yeah, you're working for a tech business. And, you know, they are very keen for you to make less money than you want to make. But if you're worried about my brother, he's doing just fine.

16:37He's okay. And by the way, he is an author and his wonderful book, The Ghost Theatre, is out in paperback soon. Oh, and I have read it and it's great. It's really, really good. Thank you so much, Bob. Okay, should we take a break now? Let's take a break. At Sierra, discover great deals on top brand workout gear, like high-quality walking shoes, which might lead to another discovery. 40 ,000 steps, baby. Who's on top now, Karen? You've taken the office step challenge a step too far. Don't worry, though. Sierra also has yoga gear. It might be a good place to find your zen. Discover top brands at unexpectedly low prices.

17:13Sierra, let's get moving. This episode is brought to you by Jack Daniels. Jack Daniels and music are made for each other. They share a rhythm in the craft of making something timeless while being a part of legendary nights. From backyard jams to sold-out arenas, there's a song in every toast. Please drink responsibly. Responsibility.org. Jack Daniels and Old Number 7 are registered trademarks. Tennessee Whiskey, 40 % alcohol by volume. Jack Daniel Distillery, Lynchburg, Tennessee. The new Popeyes and Hot Ones menu is fire flavour. Trust me because I'm about to eat it. That hits right away. Attempt the Popeyes Hot Ones menu in stores.

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18:00Okay, welcome back to the Restless Entertainment questions edition. Questions and answers edition. Questions and answers. I believe you have a question for me. I do have a question for you. Have you ever been on a jury? We have another Richard. Richard Myron. Myron? Listen, Myron, I'm guessing. Given that producing movies is so expensive, this is a good question, actually. Given producing movies is so expensive, why are there so many deleted extra scenes during production? You would think the script would be finalised by the time of production. Yeah, I mean, like a lot of these things, it's not totally logical, Richard, I would say, but it's so expensive to make films, even if you're making a low-budget film.

18:36by any other standards, you know, you're thinking, oh, I could just be buying a few hundred dialysis machines. It is just extremely expensive. So once you have everything sort of up and running, you should definitely always shoot much more than you need of everything. And this is why we do, you know, people, you shoot what's called coverage and you do the scene from how many different angles and you might shoot 20 takes of the same scene for all the different things. But what you want to give yourself always, because as anyone, not just movies, anyone will tell you, Editing is a huge part of all art forms and you need to be able to cut stuff away.

19:09And editing is obviously an incredibly creative role in itself. And when you meet a great editor, how they can make something not funny, really, really sing, how they can do little jumpy cuts. And suddenly you think you're in the presence of something kind of peppy and smart and cool. And it hasn't been at all. You've actually been given something almost dead on arrival. That is an art form in itself. Also, it's so strange how many times, you know, you've done something scripted and you've written, I mean, 30 drafts of one episode of television, maybe more, maybe 50 drafts of one episode of television.

19:38You see this thing shot and you think, huh, it doesn't make sense. And the amount of people who have been involved in every little episode of that, but until it's everybody is part of the film. And so the act, it's not just the script. The script is one part of it. The actors, it's always extraordinary. when you start talking to actors at the start of a creative process, maybe you're making a movie or a TV show or whatever, you think, I mean, I've talked to directors about this. You say, God, it's extraordinary. I've been with this film for how long, you know, trying to get it made. The actor already knows so much more about their character than me.

20:07There are so many moving parts that until it's up and running and you're out there and the cameras are rolling, you don't really know. And some things will work and some things won't. And this is why you might have lots of different alternative lines, particularly in comedy that might get shot. But even at the end, you will have reshoots because you will go back and you think, God, after all that process, after years of getting ready, we still need to go back and reshoot this bit because it honestly doesn't make sense. You need that give within what you shoot and what you record and the sound and everything to be able to tighten it to make the final product.

20:38The more money you would have, the more of that you would choose to do. And in terms of the cost implications, it's built into the budget that you will have to overshoot and presumably as well most of the cost of a film are like sunk costs you've got your crew you've got your location you know it's you're going to have to pay for all of those things anyway and actually adding an extra day or a couple of extra days it doesn't exponentially increase the cost of the movie you're not starting you wouldn't for example say oh we need a new scene yeah and it's going to be on a helicopter and actually and it needs to be in Barbados that you wouldn't do but you go look we have this set anyway we have these actors on contract anyway can we do an extra day with them and cover something and give the edit something else that they can work with i took this you're that's that i agree and this is the ideal version thereof i have to say that actually in keeping with your question richard there are so many movies now particularly the big franchise ones that have almost 50 of time again built in for reshoots because what happens is that they decide when they're going to release a movie and they release, they bags that weekend, months, maybe two years in advance, Memorial Day weekend in 2025.

21:52They have to hit that release date because it's really important. They spent so much money on this film. And they start these films and they repeatedly start films with no third act, which is so crazy to me. Marvel repeatedly do not have a third act for a movie. How does that come about? Because actors are available at certain times. They've got this date that they have to fix and they go through all. And it's now become part of their process that they will just do huge numbers of reshoots. Sometimes I've talked to people who their reshoots have been twice as long as the original. And that is a fiasco.

22:24And you should never make movies like that. And it's extraordinarily expensive. And it's kind of creatively idiotic because you're constantly working under a really hard time pressure. And you're sort of rebuilding the plane mid-flight. And it's not an efficient way to do it. and it's and many but on marvel they'll say to you oh no no no you need to tell us where your third act is at least going to be set and the directors and the writers will be like we don't really know yeah so what they do is they scan they fully scan the scenes and then say right well if we have to go back to this we just do all on cgi so everything is now there's so much of it cgi so they'll fully scan sets and whatever and say if we have to go back to it we'll do it like that and then in the end sometimes the producer will just say right you've got the choice of three locations for your final battle because you haven't told us where it's going to be and it's going to be here.

23:11Which is, again, not something, a way to make a piece of art. In your experience, if there is a sum of money on the table to make a film, every single filmmaker will spend every single penny. Oh, yeah. And then some more. And especially on these kind of bloated franchisings, they go over budget, but they are made in a chaotic way. And sometimes that's part of the process. I mean, Tom Cruise will always say for those Mission Impossibles, they deliberately have a tiny amount of script and much of it's you know a lot of things are built around the stunts that he's going to do and they don't really know what what they're going to do but that is part of their process i think ideally you wouldn't do it like this but it's become so it's become such a trope of those type of movies that they just kind of completely throw the whole thing out while they're making it and try and rebuild it and you know you can see the creative results oh you're you're another one i really want to ask you richard sarah milton says richard having written several best-selling crime novels and being generally immersed in the crime genre for years, do you think you could commit the perfect murder should the need arrive?

24:10I like should the need arrive. Yeah, I mean, just... Listen, you never know. Only if called upon could you do it. She's very much given me the benefit of the doubt there, Sarah, isn't she? Honestly, yes. What? Is my answer. I obviously thought your answer would be no. Really? Yeah. You don't think... I mean, you could commit a perfect murder, surely. No way. What if we had like four days to plan a murder? Of course we could. Well, who's investigating? Is it like Jane Tennyson is investigating, in which case I don't think I'm going to go up against that. I have bad news. It's Lorraine Kelly. All right.

24:39She'll go to the point of anything. But what? You do think you could? Of course. Because, you know, the whole point when you write a crime novel is you have to find a murder that is difficult to solve. But then there's always a fatal flaw, which means you can solve it. So just do that, but without the fatal flaw. And there are sort of brilliant technical consultants most crime writers use. So Val McDermott is one of our finest crime writers. Yeah. It's brilliant stuff. And she has a great relationship with this amazing woman called Dame Professor Sue Black. Oh, yes. And I think she's at Lancaster University, but she's a forensic science.

25:12Yeah, I know about that, yeah. Yeah, she's absolutely brilliant. Val will take Sue out for dinner and just go, what are you working on, Sue? And Sue will outline to her some new technique that forensic science has got. And then Val will go, but hold on, if I turn that on its head, that means I can get away with murder. and Sue was telling me one time she told Val something and Sue was about to go to a conference she had this big new something about human bones that she'd discovered and she was about to, you know, she'd done a paper on it and she was about to give her first ever speech about it and then she read Val's new book and it was like the main bit of the plot and she said, I haven't even announced this yet Val.

25:48So, you know, you talk to someone like Sue Black who can give you various ways of getting away with murder, which is usually how to hide evidence, how to obfuscate evidence things like that but it's working out the ways that you can solve murders which is usually these days cctv phone records um it is you know dna exactly traces and stuff like that but once you take all of those out of the equation i think it's possible to commit the perfect murder don't by the way uh i always think the way to commit a perfect murder really wait All you don't have to worry about any of that stuff is to... Sorry, this is a weird thing to be talking about now.