Chat Show Secrets, Restaurant Reviewers & Glasto Sound checks

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1:43Financing subject to credit approval. Additional terms and conditions may apply. Hello and welcome to this episode of The Rest is Entertainment, questions and answers edition. I'm Marina Hyde. I'm Richard Osmond. Hello, Marina. Hello, Richard. How are you? Yeah, I'm all right. I'm okay. Lots of fun questions to get on with. I'm very excited by lots of these questions. This one I actually really want to know the answer to and I know you will. Kate Heath says, on the programme The Trip, the amazing programme The Trip, how many of the people in it are actors, e.g. when they're in restaurants, etc.

2:14are the staff actors or actual waiters? I'm really looking forward to the new series in Scandinavia. I'm so looking forward to the new series in Scandinavia. It's one of the best things ever, The Trip. I love it. It's so brilliant. this is michael winterbottom steve coogan and rob bryden go if you haven't watched it on various culinary tours and it's a sort of weirdly fictionalized but also not fictionalized sort of traveloggy thing where they go to beautiful places that eat beautiful food but do a lot of celebrity impressions do a lot of celebrity impressions it's it's yeah it's like gone fishing but for food but also slightly fictionalized because there's always some sort of little storyline it's absolutely fascinating as a kind of creative endeavor on every level and I completely love it.

2:53So yes, I'd like to know this too. I mean, presumably the waiters are so good and they must work in the places because part of that serving is so high end. Well, I spoke to a man called Rob Brydon. Do you know him? I heard of him. Yeah, I heard of him. So I asked Rob your question, Kate. He was delighted that you'd asked and delighted you were looking forward to the new series as well. He says that often it will be waiting staff or often it will be friends of the restaurant owners. So the restaurant owners know you're coming and they know you're taking over the restaurant or a section of the restaurant for quite some time.

3:25And so they will have somebody who they absolutely know and trust and, you know, will work for the whole day and they know will represent the restaurant in the way they want to be represented. And Rob says, you know, everyone's always excited to do it. He said, however, they eat each meal three times. So when they go to these restaurants, it's lucky they go to those sort of restaurants where they just sort of serve in like one cube of red currant jelly with a, you know, anchovy. it's that sort of thing and so they don't fill themselves up but he says yeah we we eat each meal three times well italy was a bit more of a challenge in that case because that wasn't that was a lot of food but because you've got michael michael winterbottom directing who's a movie director he wants to be around various angles he wants to do lots of different improv you know he wants to get the best out of everyone so do it three times different angles um retake bits and bobs so he said you know even the sort of most friendly of the owners waiters and waitresses you're ever going to get by the end of a whole day they're like oh you're doing that again yeah oh you're oh you're doing sean connery again rob okay what could be more scintillating than making making television yeah exactly but he does he says it's genuinely a really wonderful day of filming and the restaurants of course love it because it makes the restaurants look incredible and it's very respectful of food isn't it's one of those things oh completely but i mean it is very technical that the waiting and the serving of that type of food is very very technical so you could you You couldn't just say, just get an ordinary supporting actress to do it.

4:49With no offence to the ordinary supporting actress, but it is actually an extremely skilled job. A lot of the people I know have done a lot of supporting acting work have also done a lot of waitressing. You're right. That's a good point. But have they done it in one of those type of places? Because I always think that's when you're having a tasting menu done to you, and I often feel that it is being done to you, you can see that it's quite a sort of tall order. and then okay as you know around that there's there's all sorts of little narratives that um go on you know between the restaurants but yeah the bit in the restaurant they're there all day they eat three times but yeah the staff are the staff or someone that you know that the owners know and trust very very well and everyone has a jolly good time but i cannot wait for that new series first it always looks beautiful it looks incredible but there's something about the two of them together that is so um rob bryden they're amazing humanizes steve coogan in such an interesting way but you know what i mean by that yes he does he's a support animal yeah it's not a support animal because i literally love rob bryden more than anything and i it's so compelling and it is so warm but it is also so edgy and you know bitchy yeah and it's all of the things at once i absolutely love it i can't wait it's such a treat when it comes you just think sometimes i save it all up and think when i'm going through a bad patch but this i won't be able to on this occasion and if people haven't seen the previous series by the way absolutely catch up on them there's italy um there's one that's in in the uk and scandinavia but uh really really worth seeing and just is what you know those two two they're such a brilliant double i mean i'll watch rob bryden in anything and i'll watch steve coogan in almost anything and the two of them together is a treat.

6:29And that is a genre of one. And anything I think that is that original and unusual and kind of slightly hard to describe as obvious evidence. But anything that's a genre of one I think is always worth your time. Now, a question for you Marina. Should we stick with restaurants while we're on the subject? And should we stick with Kate's and Katie's as well? Katie Roberts. Katie Robarts. Is Katie Robarts or do you think someone has just mistyped that and it's Katie Roberts? I don't know. If you were called Robarts as your surname, you would spend your entire life having to spell it for people. So for Katie's sake, I sort of hope she's Robots, but perhaps she's Robots.

7:02To us, you'll always be Robots, Katie. She says restaurant reviews are usually really good and gushing or really bad. So they generally pick places beforehand they know will be more extreme either way to lead to more entertaining reading. Okay, that's really interesting. And I was actually talking about restaurant reviews with a friend of mine this week and thinking about what they are. It depends what Steve Coogan is writing. The Steve Coogan character, Steve Coogan in The Trip, is always writing it up for the Observer or the New Yorker. He's sort of doing an article. And there's something about that.

7:35Even in the fiction, they've hired someone who's going to riff on this and that, and it's not just about the food. Restaurant reviewers fall for me into two categories. Some who are real food writers and know all about it. I have to say, I think this is what I was talking about with my friend this week. You have to do some crowd pleasers. Some people think, no, I just want to go to great restaurants and foreground them to our readers. And so they'll go, you've got to accept that a lot of people are reading the restaurant review because they like your writing. Most people do not live in the place where the restaurant is.

8:06They're never going to go to those restaurants. And even if they are in that place, they won't get a table. And so, yeah, it's... And it's expensive or whatever. So you want to be telling them something about their world. And it might begin with a sort of riff on something completely different. And, you know, many of our most beloved restaurant critics will write a huge 500 words on something completely different. And then you'll hear a bit about the food at the end, you know, you just have to accept that you're in light entertainment. I mean, do you think I think I'm in the bit, if I'm writing a column about politics, do you think I think I'm in the business of changing the way governments do things?

8:36Don't be silly. I think I'm in light entertainment. And that is honestly how, even though you might feel grand and think I'm doing it. No, I don't think that. Light entertainment suits you. Yes. Well, I mean, you want to give people three or four good minutes for something. I'm sorry. I really, I mean, Calvin McKenzie, he used to edit The Sun and obviously I know people have a number of views about him but he used to just say about yes but he'd say about the paper i want to give people a good half hour with a paper and i feel often you know if you're writing anything really instead of thinking imagining yourself as someone who writes for a newspaper news outlet that you're moving markets or changing the world or anything like that think am i giving people a good three or four minutes with this with this thing i've written and that is i think a good half hour with a paper sounds like um a night after a particularly bad meal yeah and uh i can uh i I can certainly equate that with Kelvin McKenzie's tenure.

9:24But the point is that you're trying to serve the consumer in one way or another. And it should be entertaining. And so I do think that if you're reviewing restaurants, you do have to go and do something stupid. Like, even though everyone hates Salt Bay, I'm going to have to go and have a look. Or I'm going to go to some... As well as, you know, then there are obviously the bigger openings. And your editor might say, well, this chef's got a new one opening. and you'll go along because they're a sort of figure in the world. I mean, I remember my friend of mine was a restaurant viewer for a long time and I used to go to so many of them with him.

9:58And it is extraordinary. First of all, it is extraordinary when you go to that many because I used to often, often go with him. I remember, you know, someone had sent us to a place and said it was supposed to be quite good. It was, first of all, it was a disaster. And then the people were saying to us, I'm really sorry, chef likes to see clean plates. Wow. My friend said, I'm so sorry. I'd like, you know, a full head of hair and a washboard stummer. But we're all having to make compromises here. Does the restaurant know that the reviewer is in? They try to keep themselves secret. But sometimes, you know, if it's Giles Corrin, you're going to know who it is.

10:31And if it's Jay Rainey, you're going to know who it is. But Marino Lachlan, who wrote for a long time, and for the Sunday Times and also The Guardian before, has managed to keep her face secret. So people didn't know what she looked like. And that's someone who I would say is a definite brilliant food writer and understands all of that world. and it mattered that people didn't know what she looked like. You always see the numbers in newspapers and things. Do the pans, I suppose deep pans in terms of restaurants, do they get bigger numbers? Are those the ones that go viral when someone goes to a restaurant and really, really has a terrible time?

11:02Yes, I mean, and it's like one-star movie reviews. You know, reviews, people, if it's a five-star one, they do well, but I mean, I think one-stars probably do better than anything. And the difficulty is, you are when you're writing film reviews, of course technically dealing with someone's business but it's you know a big movie studio and you just have to live with it that there's something different about doing it to a i mean this friend of mine who was a restaurant viewer for once i remember when greg wallace had a restaurant open i mean again it was terrible but i slightly felt we'd gone along just so he could use the line cooking doesn't get rougher than this but you know it was a great line and i'm sure that one went viral too but they tend to when i've seen like the the proper pans it tends to be like if a restaurant has been opened by you know some huge restaurateur or someone with deep pockets they tend to do that they tend not to go to some 100 they tend not to go to a local neighborhood restaurant i assume if they go to a local neighborhood restaurant and have a terrible meal they just go i'm just going to leave maybe i just won't review yes i don't need to you don't have to review it you know i know like just as the film critics go along to lots of films and think you know there's actually no this obviously took a long time to get this little british film made i don't actually have to give it a huge kicking yeah i'll save that for the new jurassic or whatever it is um and yeah but as in general i think my personal principle is that you you probably are right you're in a form of light entertainment when you're doing any of these things political columnist restaurant reviewer yeah film reviewer it's all i sometimes think it when i present quiz shows i think you know in some ways this is light entertainment possible i'm in light entertainment you know obviously i don't really think that i what i think is i'm doing some great treaties on the human condition but sometimes i like i like to pretend it's light entertainment You know, what I like is that it just travels both worlds.

12:40Yes, exactly. Yeah, mainly, mainly light entertainment. Talking of treatises on the human condition, someone's got a question about House of Games. Bethany Squire says, you mentioned a possible House of Games special. Well, it's not even possible. How do you prevent contestants from interrupting questions? They seem to wait a few seconds before answering, which helps viewers at home. My husband thinks it's editing, not just your instructions. oh Bethany it's so annoying when your husband is right isn't it that's the last thing you want like Bethany's husband punching the air currently yeah you can buzz in at any time on House of Games and people buzz in before I said the first word sometimes when when when the things are up on the screen um uh and then at the end of each each show in fact the start of the next show I will then re-record all of the questions just because it's no fun to watch a quiz show at home if you were watching the show as it actually happens especially if you've got two competitive quizzes I get like one word of a question out so you would not have read the question at home and the person would have buzzed in and answered it's so awful the contestant has to realize they're on a light entertainment show as well yeah but the competitive thing i've done one before where i just literally felt like i have i know this answer yeah i gotta buzz in so you have to think it doesn't matter whether you win or not because you're in light entertainment i know but you sort of do want to as well because also they're spending all day together so there's a friendly competitiveness so no they they are absolutely they do not have to sit there as i go okay and now you may buzz they buzz in whenever they want we then edit all the questions in at the end of the show when um celebrities come on and watch it and they realize that they sort of they sort of are crestfallen and said like oh my god i thought i was good at this show because at home i'm like god i sometimes i'm halfway through the question i get it right and they like these everyone on the show is like waits forever and i go oh no but then they get there they go oh it's it's literally almost instantaneous um we we finally have our our bonus episode tomorrow is a is a day out at house of games we just finished 110 episodes as i said i think i said on tuesday and so we've got a day out where we talk to all the people who work on the show all the little secrets of the show what a day on house of games looks like so for anyone uh who is a member or would like to be a member it's a wrestlersentertainment.com uh we have a life in the day of house of games but no that's the one thing when i suddenly see some celebs who are good quizzers who are just thinking i'm going to absolutely ace this because i honestly i interrupt most questions before they even get read out and nobody does that and you go everybody does that i'm afraid but quite often on the show we'll be going oh my god that was a god you got in quick there or oh my god you're so quick and people at home must be going it's not quick it literally like every question is like waiting a second till after the thing but anytime you ever hear that it's because someone would literally buzz in before i've said the because they'll see it on the screen and they'll just get boom and straight in and it's um it's it's sometimes the bane of your life uh because every time they do it i'm like okay that's another pickup okay now i've got to do another pickup sometimes when you get people who don't buzz in i'm like great i will have no pickups at the start to the next show here but yeah the the first five minutes of me recording any episode is me recording all the questions from the previous episode until i think i've gone insane that is such a fun episode by the way that's such a fun bonus the bonus one yeah yeah um and i i recommend you will listen i hope it's interesting because basically there's lots of people i know telling me what they do because sometimes when on the floor you go oh of course that you do actually have a busier day than night yes of course you have to do that shall we uh listen to some adverts let's i don't know why we say that because we're not going to say no no so i'm going to say let's listen to some adverts yeah just let's do it right now

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18:12Welcome back, everyone. Marina Sarah Wilson has a question for you. She says, my family and I have just returned back from a theme park holiday in Orlando. Wow. That's like Ingrid's dream. And mine. Yeah. The two of you should go together. Yeah. Because I don't want to go. She said, we absolutely love the Star Wars Galaxy's Edge at Disney and the Wizarding World of Harry Potter areas at Universal. We were astonished at the level of detail in these zones. In particular, the Cantina Bar at Disney and the new Ministry of Magic at Universal Epic Universe. Looked exactly like they do. Ministry of Magic at Universal Epic Universe.

18:42Is it called Universal Epic Universe? Wow. Okay, guys. Absolutely. marketing much anyway they looked exactly like they do in the film how do they get these areas to be so accurate for theme park guests do they have access to the original set designs who signs off on the finished construction as you know I've banged on about on this podcast many times before I love set design I've seen so much footage of that Mos Eisley cantina and it's really amazing because when you watch the original Star Wars movie the thing about Mos Eisley is that a lot of it is the people who it's a wretched hive of scum and villainy so it's the people who are wandering through that cantina who make it but the fact that they've managed to make it feel like you're in the vibe of it you know you're only allowed like two drinks and then they move you out because people just want to stay there and they're playing the cantina music but also it's dangerous because some of the worst villains in the universe are there so yeah you know you don't want to stay too long bounty hunter to do something you didn't want to do yeah a huge advance in materials has been a huge advance because in the old days used to get like a lot of like fiberglass water everything was made of fiberglass including cinderella's castle cinderella's castle in except in euro disney where they were really so paranoid the Americans had a complete crisis of confidence and thought oh my god France is full of actual castles so we're going to have to build Cinderella's castle out of actual stone unlike plastic like we build all the other ones fiberglass yeah but it'll look much worse in stone yeah yeah yeah I mean the whole opening of that park is a five arc five episode arc of bonus episodes let me tell you so yes okay we spoke to George Lawton who is a theme park lighting designer and he said that's a cool gig I know and actually what George said is that um scene design in the states it's waning business really because so much more is CGI and so lots of the most talented people in that business are moving over to what is a huge growth market which is themed experiences and I mean the reason you can go in the old days you would go to maybe Universal Studios and Disney World and if you think how many different worlds there are now they've got the Star Wars, Harry Potter and all of those it's billions and billions every year to the US economy.

20:35George says that the accuracy comes from the talented nerdy people who spend years dissecting the plans and construction methods to bring them to life you can obviously 3d model everything and you can get people to walk through it for something like the wizarding world of harry potter and it's so detailed it's unbelievable when you're creating sort of hogsmeade or whatever even jk rowdy will be taken through the 3d modeling of all of it and by the way actually i've got the most brilliant book about this and you won't believe rich richard and ingrid came to my house on saturday night you will have seen that all the empty bookshelves which as you know because you're only moving in yeah exactly Given the issue with the bookshelves, which is coming down the slit way, I felt like it was a little bit like seeing one of those scenes at the start of an Oliver Stone movie, and it's just like a sort of Vietnamese rice field, and then suddenly all the helicopters come in.

21:21I saw a lot of boxes full of books, and I was thinking, are you just leaving them like that? You saw a pre-war zone. Perhaps this is your new system? Well, actually, one of the weirdest books I own, which is totally fascinating, there cannot be another book like this, is by this guy called David Younger, and it's about theme park design, and he sort of codified everything about theme park design. And I think he did a doctoral thesis about it. But because no one had spoken to anyone who builds all these parks, he went and spoke to all the Disney Imagineers, which is what they call them. And everyone told him all of these things and like, you know, how many fireworks you do and all about rollercoaster design.

21:52It's so technical. It's absolutely mental. It's a completely weird book. What's it called? It's called Theme Park Design. It's like an academic. Wow. But it's the only time anyone's ever tried to put everything about that they know about theme parks. And you should see the quotes on the back from absolutely every single person who runs every biggest park in the world. Anyway, back to what George has told us. But you have to understand that these parks are all outside. And so the advances in the materials are really important because they're in all weathers. People are obsessed with making these things immersive because the whole thing about, you know, she loved going to the Mos Eisley Cantina.

22:21But if it's only just people in their shorts and T-shirts who are on holiday in a park walking around, you really have to make it work. So some places will even, if there are characters walking around, they'll train them in how to do it. So someone had to fly over from The Walking Dead. Do you know at Thorpe Park, they've got a Walking Dead ride, which I've been on several times. Some people from The Walking Dead flew to London to teach the actors how to walk for that, how to be proper zombies. Is it just fair? We all know how to walk like zombies. I'd like to be able to give my zombie before being told that I had to do it in a certain way, but okay.

22:52David Young's book is so weird and niche, but if you ever see a copy of it, I don't even know if it's still for sale anymore, but it's one of the only books I've taken out of my boxes. But he divided all visitors to parks into three tribes. He said there are thrill seekers, there are character huggers, and there are world travelers. World travelers are the ones who want the world to be so totally immersive. And so that's what you like, Sarah, is that you like, you're a world traveler when you're going to one of these parks. And the advances have made them so amazing. If you go back in the past, they were really quite basic.

23:21But I remember the first time I went to Disney World, and one of the oldest rides then was Pirates of the Caribbean, which they subsequently, I remember thinking, this is so weird, they're making a movie about a ride. But anyway, did pretty well, I heard. I remember thinking this is so amazing how have they done the ceiling like that that it actually looks like the night everything else looked like quite old and like these weird old puppets but the ceiling genuinely like it didn't look like there was a sort of black cloth over it it just looked like the night and I made my husband go around it about three times because I just wanted to see how they'd done the ceiling.

23:50Poor Karen. Yeah I know. That's one of my favorite things about visiting the Thursday Murder Club set was seeing the set people and seeing the designers and seeing what they'd made and just watching them sort of build the whole insides of flats. And that's the thing, they're just incredibly good at it. It's like the people who actually build castles and build, you know, people are doing this in the first place and these people have exactly the same skills, but they work in show business. So, you know, some of the flats in Thursday Murder Club, you think, God, I would absolutely love to live here if only it had four walls.

24:20But they're just beautiful and beautifully designed and, you know, attention to detail, every single thing. Every detail about your character's pasts things tiny little things reflected on the stuff they might have on their desk or i find it so amazing i remember when i worked on avenue 5 which was set in space and simon bowls was the production he's an incredible production designer for that you would see honestly on the back of these tiny little logos that no one could ever see like on the back of people's shoes the detail was beyond granular on every single thing it was extraordinary ingrid sometimes talks about you know going into the tardis and just how as an actor how you just feel because it's so brilliant you've genuinely feel you're there like it doesn't feel like a set it feels like this real environment and that's the the art of all those people and i'm so glad that because the experiential industry is now massive right and it's huge and the fact as you say that cgi took a lot of those jobs away but there's so many jobs now in the in this industry and there's only going to be more and more as well yeah okay richard for you from mike mcdonald i've been thinking about glastonbury sound checks says mike with normal gigs bands arrive early do a full sound check with nobody around and then the gig starts and everybody's set and ready to go how does that work at glastonbury surely there isn't time for any sound check yeah i'd always wondered that funnily enough and i'd never asked my brother so i thought i finally will because yeah anytime you ever go see a band or hang out on a band you you go and see their sound check in whatever new venue they're in and you know it's sort of half an hour and you know all that kind of one two two two all of all of those things firstly that that world has changed a lot for various reasons but yeah secondly so i talked to matt and they've headlined glastonbury and done all sorts of things and he said yeah you don't get a sound check uh at glastonbury so what you might get if you're a headliner is is a line check now this is interesting about the the oasis thing the other day so he said a line check will be your crew can play a previous live recording through the pa to hear how that sounds because they know how you normally sound so they'll so it's not you but they'll play a live recording and that was there's lots of clips that went viral when oasis played in cardiff and like the day before when people are going oh they're already here i can i can hear them playing and that was the crew doing exactly that playing playing a live recording through the pa to see how it sounded essentially which is a common thing to say but matt also says these days almost everyone has in-ear monitors yeah rather than so actually quite when you see those wedge monitors on the front of the stage which are you know the things that you know people put their foot up on when they're rocking out a lot a lot of those are faked and a lot of those won't ever be plugged in You've got in-ear monitors and you also have a thing which is called modelled amps, which is essentially AI for amps, which is a computer thing.

26:54And you can recreate any amp sound through it. So if you've got like a 70s vintage amp, it can literally make that sound for you. It's not perfect if you're going to Glastonbury. Of course, it will sound perfect on TV because the TV will take the soundboard feed, which you're able to control completely. You know pretty much how you sound in these areas. you know the the in-ear monitors and all those things are so amazing these days that actually you need a sound check less but yeah the sound at glasgow won't be the perfect sound that you want but for the headliners if you're like 1975 they would have tested every single bit in some big shed outside london two days beforehand so they can you can control everything you possibly can control it is uh some of it will be in the lap of the gods but if you're listening on tv that sound should be perfect thank you matt let's finish with this from mike collins this is an observation more than anything, but it's a fun one.

27:43I'm a bit of a talk show fanatic, love watching them all. From the UK, whether it be Jonathan Raas or all the US late night TV shows, Letterman will never be beaten, says Mike. Agreed. But over time, I've noticed the positioning of the host tends to be to the left of the guests in the UK and to the right of the guests in America. Why so? That is definitely true. And it's really interesting. I definitely think it says a slightly different thing about the status of the talk show host in American culture. Western readers read things left to right. And so your eye sort of comes to rest on the right hand side of the screen.

28:14And therefore that's regarded as the more sort of prestigious place because it's where the eye comes to rest. And by the way, and that works in visual mediums as well. If you think about watching a film, weirdly, you are watching from left to right is the weird thing. And actually in Hebrew or Arab things where they don't have the same thing because it's a different way of reading. In the US and the UK, we read in the same direction. It was Johnny Carson who originally started that whole kind of desk late night format. And he put himself on the right. and so therefore people sort of just copied Carson to some extent and apparently there were kings used to sit there and state banquets and things like that but British and Irish talk shows have often had the host on the left if you think of things like Wogan or Graham Norton or anything like that and Parkinson I slightly feel like it's because we defer a bit more to the primacy of the guest rather than like this is my show, I'm the boss here, I'm the guy behind the desk whereas we sort of I think slightly defer more to the guest Jonathan Ross when he went to ITV did go over to that US thing of being on the right.

29:12It's interesting, actually, it happens a lot in portraiture as well. People's faces face left to right and that's regarded as a sort of, the dynamics even of painting, even you go right back to the Renaissance and people are doing it like that, you'll feel like someone's got a sort of forward dynamism. It's a power move. But in Breakfast TV, funnily enough, we think, oh, the status is the person on the left of the screen. And there's always a lot of furore. We're like, why is the man there and the woman there? and then some people will say oh no no one's eyes read across and it's like but actually people think oh they put the senior presenter on the left on breakfast tv when they're both on the sofa together keep an eye on that all the time there's also a camera shot thing with most people are right-handed and shaking hands in a certain shot you know you want you want to see if you shake hands from the right with your right hand i'm not seeing you whereas if you shake hands from the left of holding up someone's book you don't want to reach across yourself if you're um if you're interviewing someone so that that's part of it too but mainly it's the is the divine right of kings yeah the divine right of the american late night host yeah as so often in tv thank you marina thank you so much we did we've got our bonus episode tomorrow which is a day in the life of house of games talking to the whole gang there the producers question writers directors just wardrobe just all sorts of people who do all sorts of different jobs on that show which i which i hope people find interesting i have no idea if it's interesting because yes i found it really interesting okay that's good i really loved it if you're not a member you can sign up at The rest is entertainment.com.

30:32But other than that, I'll see you next Tuesday. See you next Tuesday.

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