Celebrity Traitors and Rupert Murdoch

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1:13Hello and welcome to another episode of The Rest is Entertainment with me, Marina Hyde. And me, Richard Osmond. Hi, Marina. How are you, Richard? Yeah, I'm not too bad. How have you been? Busy? Well, I've been devastated. I did not receive a pot of Megan's jam, which I don't know if you noticed Megan sent her first product to 50 influencers. No, who got some? Some people, some various people I don't really know. What flavour is it? Strawberry. Is that okay? Yeah. Gosh, she's really gone out on a limb there, hasn't she? Yeah, she's gone out on a limb. Where did she get her ideas from? I guess we'll find out.

1:44But I didn't get that. What I did get is the Ava Mendes sponges. That we spoke about a while ago. That I paid for. By the way, this is not sponsor content. I'd like to say neither for American Riviera Orchard, American's company, nor for Ava Mendes' sponge company. But the sponges have arrived. If you're watching this on YouTube, I'm just going to hold it up. Oh, they look really spongy. Yeah, and this logo will fade when the sponges basically finish and you should throw it away. Long story short, says Ava, I found Skura sponges and I went from an obsessed customer to co-owner. Yes, co-owner. Told you I was obsessed.

2:19She really has cut that story short because there would have been lots of negotiations there. Yeah. She's done about a month's worth of kind of negotiations in one paragraph. It's actually the most interesting part, potentially, of the leaflet, which she's failed to realise. But anyhow, you will take one of those home with you today. Oh, my God, that's amazing. So next week, product review. Yeah. That's how we get people back in. Non-sponsored product review. Also, today, by the way, I'm going to exclusively announce the casting, or most of the casting for the Thursday Murder Club movie. So for those who celebrate, I'll be telling you who's in that later on.

2:48I celebrate, and I'm dying for it. And what else are we going to talk about? We are going to talk about, talking to people who haven't been cast in the Thursday Murder Club movie, Rupert Murdoch. Rupert Murdoch, yeah. We're talking about who, I suspect, wouldn't be solving the crimes in those books. Taylor Swift, also not in the Thursday Murder Club. We're going to have a little... Foolishly, very foolish. A rare misstep. A rare misstep from Taylor. Imagine just her with the Thursday Murder Club under her arm. Yeah. I love that. The book, not the... That's a book fluencer. Not the club. I bet she's got some of Megan's jam.

3:15And we're also going to be talking about a leaked announcement but possibly there's going to be a celebrity traitors. We're going to talk about whether there is going to be one and also about the history of celebrity television shows which seem to be everywhere at the moment. Dying for this, dying for this. Okay, well, let's start with Hugh Grant. You'll remember he has been one of the people fighting the cases against Murdoch for the longest time, really. He has settled reluctantly out of court his privacy claim, his claim against, it wasn't just for privacy, but we'll discuss this in a minute, against News Group Newspapers, which is the publishers of The Sun.

3:50People who've got these remaining cases against them, and by the way, they are for all sorts of, what Hugh Grant was alleging was things like not just phone hacking, medical record hacking, bugging, car tracking, burglaries to order. So quite a lot of... Wow, burglaries. Yeah, a lot of big stuff. The Sun has not admitted any wrongdoing. In Hugh Grant's word, as it's common with entirely innocent people, they are offering me an enormous sum of money to keep this matter out of court. I mean, I always pay people millions when I've done nothing wrong, but they've had to do this in a civil court. That's ironic.

4:21Yeah. The remaining holdouts, sort of Hugh, Prince Harry, there was Sienna Miller, are being offered these huge sums to settle. The trouble is if they don't settle and then they end up getting offered even a penny less in damages than was offered to sort of make the case go out of court, then you're liable for both your costs and the cost of newsgroup newspapers, which is a sort of quirk of the civil courts and means that he could be on the hook. But by now, I mean, it's definitely a seven-figure sum and it's probably an eight-figure sum, so it could be over 10 million. So if they're offering him 10 million, he says no to it, which, you know, you just think, oh my God, that would be amazing.

5:00Imagine just saying, no, I'll have my day in court. And he has his day in court and the court 100 % says, this happened, we award you£5 million in damages, suddenly it's going to cost him an absolute fortune. He's got to pay all of their costs. That's crazy. Yeah, it is. And actually, having spoken to him, what he was really trying to achieve with this civil trial, where the judge was going to find such sort of awful behaviour because it would be heard in open court, that the CPS and the police would then start a criminal case. Regrettably, I would say that that was probably not going to happen because I have to say that in my experience, and also my opinion, but also my experience, the police investigated this always in the most quarter-arsed, eighth-arsed way.

5:42I mean, I'm going down to the teenth-ars. To me, I suppose what's sort of interesting about it all is that, or particularly interesting, first of all, Murdoch has now paid over a billion. They've settled 1 ,300 claims. Yeah. But in terms of court time and settlements, he has paid over a billion keeping this out of the courts. He would argue, oh, it's incredibly expensive to litigate, so these people are a nuisance to me. I'm going to pay them some money to keep it out of court. There is an argument that other people might make that he is actually saying, I don't want things to be in court, so I'm willing to spend some money.

6:16Whichever of those is true, and I'm sure we both have a view, is costing over a billion. Which is an extraordinary amount. When you think also that they settled in the US with Dominion voting systems, which lots of the Fox News anchors wrongly accused of being caught up in some completely nonsense, confected conspiracy about how the election was stolen from Donald Trump. They settled that for about 800 million. But these are sort of bigger conspiracies in many ways. If true, and of course, News International, newspapers have admitted no wrongdoing. But as we've said before, if true, this is a far bigger criminal conspiracy than anything E.G.

6:51Sienna Miller was involved in. This is extraordinary. The biggest story of all was the way the stories were got. And I think that's really fascinating. And I also think what's fascinating, I'm afraid to say, is that the fact that I say that I don't think that the police investigated properly. Also, don't forget there was another whole strand of this, which was payments to corrupt police officers for information, for giving stories and things like that, which sort of petered out, really. So in your view, is there a reason police didn't investigate this quite as thoroughly as they might have? Well, we know that the police were caught up in some corrupt payments.

7:23I think the scale of it is much more widespread, much, much more widespread. And I think lots of people who've worked in tabloid newspapers would say the same. and I feel that what's so sort of interesting about this is the way that Murdoch, who always presented himself as the outside of the Australian, the scourge of the establishment, the establishment has really completely closed ranks. It hasn't probably been investigated. It won't come before the courts. He's become the ultimate insider. They've closed ranks to protect him. A lot of things in public life in many countries remind me of that shot at the end of Raiders of the Lost Ark.

7:56Remember when they got the Ark of the Covenant and he's like, what's going to happen? They say, oh, we've got our top men, our top men looking at this and you just see it being wheeled into this warehouse along with all the other stuff they're not looking into. And I suppose people are thinking, well, what's Keir Starmer going to do about press regulation? I don't want to call it now, but I would say not a whole lot. And why would that be? I think Angela Rayner wants to do stuff to be with press. Well, yeah, I mean, maybe that's, you know, So to some extent, I mean, I don't want to cast it in such a sort of simple light, but it does feel a lot to me with this current Angela Rayner story that there's a sort of establishment closing ranks on someone who is a working class woman.

8:40This is a tiny amount. If it's alleged that she has committed this, I can't even, can you call it fraud? Snafu. Then it's sort of£1 ,500 or something. and this is being driven by Michael Ashcroft, a non-domiciled tax avoider, Rishi Sunak, whose own wife was a mega tax avoider and it's sort of like, I mean, really, it does sort of slightly feel that the establishment is dealing with her in some ways. I don't know, that's a bit of speculation, but I would say to you that Angela Rayner is more solid on press regulation to some extent, whether or not you agree with it, but in terms of what she is more solid on doing something, on improving it, than I think Starmer will be.

9:24But that's, you know, maybe I'll be proved completely wrong. But like all of these things, like, oh, we're really into electoral reform, we're really into press reform. You're not, if you win with a landslide, you're not into any of these things. I'm going to ask two things then. Firstly, I want to ask you about what the culture was like in the tabloid newspapers back in the day, because I know you were adjacent to it. And secondly, from what you've just said there, whether things have really actually changed. You know, I think back to the 90s and 80s and before, you look at any front cover of any of those newspapers from 20, 30 years ago, and it's sort of mind-blowing, the things they used to say, the things you used to get away with, the hypocrisies.

10:02And it was seen as very much part and parcel of that's just what the British press was. And you weren't able to complain because if you complained, they would immediately come down hard on you. So there's a generation of journalists there, some of whom you must know. Do they know what they were involved with back then? Is there sort of guilt and culpability among some of them? It's really interesting. Obviously, some of them have become whistleblowers for the culture. I remember just sort of being part of it, being around and listening to people talk at the time, and you think, this is in the early 2000s.

10:33I don't know if they felt that a celebrity was lying to them, as in maybe the celebrity just doesn't want to talk to you about the thing. Then almost anything, for some people, not for all, not at all, but for some was fair game to prove that they were not telling you the truth. So, you know, there was some sort of moral obligation to spill your guts to, I don't know, the news of the world or whoever it was. I think that they, at some level, they got caught up in a sort of, the newsrooms were often very unpleasant, quite vicious places, where it was regarded as a kind of status symbol to scream at people and to abuse them because that's what had been done to you.

11:14It was like a sort of hierarchy of bullying as it passes down a school or something like that. And I think that at some level you think you're doing God's work. But then different things have happened. So as I said before on the podcast, I mean, I don't really, you know, what are the big showbiz stories now? They're just things people want you to know. People just sit there on Twitter and Instagram and who's unliked someone or who's followed someone or who doesn't, you know, who hasn't liked someone's post in about three weeks. And that becomes a story. I mean, I just can't remember the big last big showbiz expose.

11:43and I'm sure people will write in and tell me what it was and it was two weeks ago, but I'm just not conscious of it. It was such a big driver of the tabloid economy. It was on the front all the time, the showbiz. And then, first of all, you have all of this happens, all of the phone hacking, all of this stuff comes out. It was investigated by, it was done by journalists and investigated by journalists. But this happened so that there were all these court cases and some people went to prison. And then the big political shocks of 2016, politics became the new showbiz to some extent and politics was on the front of the tabloids a lot.

12:15And showbiz has sort of, to some extent, melted away. So showbiz, do you think, was at the heart of the real sort of avarice and problems in the tabloid press back then? It's hard to say, but in my view, the people who started doing it, the sort of patient zeros of this thing, were working on showbiz. And then it bled out because you hear about this great trick that you could use to just find stuff out and wander around effectively a form of electronic burglary because you're wandering around in someone's private places on their message systems or whatever it is. But then, of course, it would spread to the royal reporters and people like that.

12:54But it was a particular time. And I think that they thought it wasn't illegal. Yes. Although it probably was. And did they think that... Because it wasn't explicitly banned by law because it was just sort of new technology that people didn't really know. But it was covered by probably misuse of communications and other laws that were pre-existing, but maybe they didn't think at the start it was illegal. But did they think even if it were illegal, they would sort of be protected and that they were working under a sort of mafia don who would make sure? I'm sure they thought they'd be protected. And also the things they thought that were in the public interest was essentially anything the public was interested in.

13:29I mean, there are still remaining privacy claims. Prince Harry still has a privacy claim against the sun. And people are saying, well, will he be the one? Because last time he said, I'm slaying dragons and the work continues after his last case. But I'm afraid he has now dropped one claim against the Mirror. But whether or not he will continue against the Sun, him and Doreen Lawrence, the mother of the murdered teenager Stephen Lawrence and Elton John, they still have a case against the Mail, against Associated Newspapers. So that will go forward. But again, it's difficult with these court payments.

14:02So they all face the same problem that Hugh Grant faced. They do. It's slightly different with a privacy claim, but it just depends. Even Prince Harry, who people imagine has limitless funds, but as he keeps selling everybody his security, who knows what the actual truth is? He certainly dropped a claim against the Mirror and even he may end up feeling obliged to settle. Well, I'm very glad to start a crowdfunder for Doreen Lawrence. If she's going to lose money on that, we should all pitch in, shouldn't we, for the sake of our democracy. So Murdoch, he was at the helm of Sun, News of the World, News International for all of that time.

14:37people went to prison on his watch we know that he has signed off an awful lot of money to stop these things going to court we know that and as you say the tabloid press and the press in general even still today seem to be having this sort of weird power over us in a way that is not commensurate with the amount of people who read the tabloid press now what is Murdoch's power now what is his hold over the the establishment of Britain now I still think people just don't want to cross him. And there was a whole thing when all this happened and people said, oh, the spell is broken. He's lost his power, but he hadn't lost his power.

15:12And he has many, many meetings still. Also, I think that politicians are not of a particular high calibre and they don't necessarily make those judgments that you make. They think, oh, it's much better. You know, Alistair Campbell always used to say it's better to be riding the tiger than have it ripping your throat out. But that was in 1997. That was a long time ago. Yeah, that tiger's dead. Yeah, I mean, I don't know how Well, maybe it isn't, because the amount of private meetings you'll see that even Sunak has had with him, people still believe that he wields immense power. Also, I think a lot of what he does is to protect Rebecca Brooks, who I think he sees as a kind of like a daughter figure as well.

15:48And she was acquitted in one of the phone hacking trials, and she's now the chief executive. But, you know, the summer party, he had a summer party last summer, and everybody was there, you know, Starm was there they all still bend the knee and they all will again this summer you'll have to see who perhaps we'll clock in with it again but you'll see they'll all go but also it's a failure of imagination to some extent that they think it's absolutely necessary I promise we'll start talking about celebrity traitors in a bit we'll do some showbiz in a second but you do think God what for what was it all for Rupert all of this stuff I think he's loved it yeah of course he has listen different people have different personality times don't they I think he's had a great ride I think he's got a different personality to me that elite thing is fascinating you can see it everywhere now Liz Truss has just written a whole book about being brought down by elites you're a Prime Minister I'm against the people in charge that says the person in charge that's clever isn't it shall we go to some adverts talking to people in charge and then we will talk about Celebrity Traders for which by the way Murdoch would be an amazing booking I genuinely don't think he'd understand the format but Murdoch what about Murdoch and his fiancé.

17:00His newest fiancé. Not the one he had a few months ago. Yeah, so listen, that's a story for another time. When he has his next wedding. Oh God, I'm going to be all over it. All over that. Yeah. I'll talk to you in a moment. Eczema isn't always obvious, but it's real. And so is the relief from EBCLIS. After an initial dosing phase, about four in 10 people taking EBCLIS achieved itch relief and clear or almost clear skin at 16 weeks. And most of those people maintain skin that's still more clear at one year with monthly dosing.

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19:14Hello and welcome back. Now I believe we are going to talk about celebrity editions of civilian shows, if I can refer to them as that, Richard. Yeah, so there was an announcement this week, an announcement this week, and one of the papers said, the BBC is set to announce, set to announce, Celebrity Traitors. And you think, well, is this true? And then later on it said, it is suggested that Claudia Winkleman will be hosting. You say, yeah, think? That's how you knew it was absolute. This is what I mean, showbiz now, the pinnacle of the reporting sections. So, Celebrity Traitors. And when it was announced, everyone was saying, oh no, come on, that's going to ruin it, or this isn't right for traitors or why there's so many celebrity shows.

19:54So I just wanted to talk about it. I wanted to talk about whether it's going to happen. Spoiler, yes. And whether there really are too many celebrity TV shows. And also a little experiment I did with some great people online about what the first ever celebrity version of a civilian TV show was. Oh, I wonder whether... Yeah, okay, very good. Oh, you think you know? No, I don't think I... Yeah, it goes back a long time. It does go back a long time. Yeah. Yeah. Is it in the 1970s? We will find out, won't we? We will find out. You see, that's formatting. Yeah. And we'll find out in the third section of this item on this podcast.

20:31Exactly. Very good. So, Celeb Traitors, is it going to happen? Yes, it's definitely going to happen, because there isn't a single television show, really, a successful television show that doesn't have a celeb version, game show or reality show. This is just a very, very brief rundown of some of the shows, which were regular shows and became celebrity shows. The Chase, Bake Off, Pointless, Tipping Point, Mastermind, MasterChef, SES, Are You Tough Enough, Child Genius, University Challenge, Only Connect, Big Brother, Love Island, First Dates, Lingo, Bridge of Lies, Strictly, of course, the mummy and daddy of them all, Bargain Hunt, Antiques, Road Trip, Weakest Link, Spelling Bee, X-Factor Apprentice, Countdown, Deal or No Deal, Tenable, Escape to the Country.

21:09We go on, but it's almost impossible to have a show. The only one I could really think of that hadn't done a proper celeb version was Dragon's Den, and even then, this series, they've had celebrity dragons on there. Yeah. Gary Neville and so on. So why is that? Well, they really, really, really work. There's certain shows now, Catchphrase would be one, Family Fortunes would be another, where they only do the celeb version. They call it All Star Family Fortunes. I'll be the judge of that. When you start pitching those things, you do think, how can I just not call this celebrity the name of my show?

21:44So Pointless Celebrities was an absolute gimme. and it used to trend every week because people would use the hashtag to say who they thought to talk about Kim Kardashian or whatever. The best one I always think was Tipping Point, which is Tipping Point, Lucky Stars. That's clever, isn't it? It's got stars in it, it's got stars in the game. Oh, they're lucky to do that. Yeah, exactly that. But yeah, they work. There's that bit at the start of every single game show which drives people mad where you say, and who are you and where are you from? And you say, I'm Marina, I'm from London. What do you do for a living?

22:15Do you know what? All sorts. Largely, I bash Murdoch. So you have that bit of the show. And having a celebrity version of the show is essentially that. It's essentially saying, some of these people, you'll know who they are. Celebrities come along, you know they're used to what to do on camera and stuff like that as well. So hopefully it's just an easy way to do a format that people like already. That's the idea behind it. We knew Pointless was doing well, went after about three series, they said, do you want to do some celebrity ones? You think, oh, okay, we're now in the big league. But now they do it after the first series of things.

22:46So Bridge of Lies, which I love on BBC One, the Ross Kemp show, I think went to a celeb's sort of immediately. So now it's almost sort of pre-promoting programmes to say, oh, this one's a big hit, look, we're doing a celebrity show. So every single show does have a celebrity version. And I've been on a few. So for celebrities, it's quite a nice gig. I went on Celebrity Catchphrase and made£56 ,000 for a really lovely charity I support. you think well that's lovely and easy isn't it I went on a million hours Do the celebrities also get an appearance fee Richard? On some shows they do yeah if ever I do a celebrity show yes you would always get paid The reason that they're often for charities is because people always imagine celebrities to be Richard's Creases and they don't want to watch celebrities being made richer on television I don't want to watch H from Steps winning£1 ,800 on the Bridge of Lies It's just unacceptable but there are often quite good appearance fees as well Yeah almost always occasionally things like Bake Off for Stand Up the cancer children in need shows you wouldn't get a fee but other shows you do get a fee if you go on who wants to be a millionaire or something like that or celebrity catchphrase most people and listen i don't choose to speak for everyone most people donate that as well their fee exactly you don't have to of course and no one's checking up that you do or not at the same time by the way the channels are still making their advertising money production companies are still making their cut and everyone else is getting paid so listen by and large it's a good thing and but people love them you know the the ratings for the celebrity ones are almost always higher than the ratings for the regular ones you know there's a reason why weakest link now is just a saturday night show with celebrities and it's because more people watch it funnily enough though the u.s i think u.s killed millionaire with this millionaire died out really who wants to be a millionaire died out really much too early really in the u.s because they went all celebrity which for me and i'm sure you would agree just a fundamental misunderstanding of that format which is kind of like in a night you change your entire life and it's a huge cash prize, blah, blah, blah.

24:41I mean, it's literally the title of the show. Yeah. I mean, who is already a millionaire? It doesn't have to have been less successful. They knackered it completely and they killed the format. Yeah. The UK won Millionaire as one of the few that still has regular contestants rather than celeb contestants. The other thing people do now is you'll have a show like Blankety Blank, which is on Saturday night. The Wheel, which is a great show where it's regular contestants, but you have a panel of celebrities you've got your celebrities covered. Your spirit animals are seated around the edge of the wheel and you.