Eurovision Secrets & New Doctor Who

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1:30Hello and welcome to another edition of The Rest is Entertainment with me, Marina Hyde. And me, Richard Osmond. Hi, Marina. Hello, Richard. How are you? I'm really well. We've got so much to talk about this week. We have a huge amount. We have Eurovision, which we spent together. We did. More on that later. More on that later. We have the possible collapse of the movie industry. We will filter it through the prism of the fool guy. Yeah. And we also have... Doctor Who. Doctor Who, the return of Doctor Who. And, of course, it is now a Disney show. Yeah. It's now not just a BBC show, it's a Disney show.

2:03And that tells us lots of interesting things about the industry and whether that's a good deal for the BBC, a good deal for Disney, and a good deal for viewers. We shall find out. Quite right. Well, we won't find out, but we'll give our opinions on it. We'll get close to the bottom of it. We will approach the bottom of it with a scraper. Every week is an approach to the bottom. Exactly. Talking of which, last week we spoke about the wonderful Clarkson's Farm, which continues to do unbelievable numbers on Amazon Prime. I'd said during it that there's some artifice in it, in that Jeremy Clarkson is making jam using a Henry Hoover to Hoover up Blackberries and then making this jam himself.

2:39I said, but there's no way he did that himself. The man himself, Jeremy Clarkson, got in touch and said he did indeed make all that jam himself with the aid of a single Henry Hoover and made£230 profit on it. So, Jeremy, I apologise. Thanks for dialling in. Thanks for dialling in. We talked briefly, didn't we, about having a taste test between Jeremy Clarkson's jam and Meghan Markle's jam, but we can't get hold of any of Meghan Markle's jam. No, because that's a prestige product, as you know, a limited edition product, of which there are only, as far as we know, 50 jars. None of her friends have put it on eBay, I guess because she put a number on it.

3:11So gutting, isn't it? Yeah. I know the guys at The Rest is History got their pot each, but none of the rest of us. Do you know what, by the way? Also, we made several allegations against The Rock, and he has not been in touch. And that speaks volumes, I think. Well, he's quite lazy, was one of the allegations. And he literally, do you know what? I'm going to email those guys. Can't be arsed. Can't be arsed. I've got reps to do. He'll get around to it. He'll get around to it in a few weeks. Eurovision. Eurovision. Yeah. It's been described as the most political and chaotic Eurovision. Two things we, politics and chaos, two things we hate.

3:42Yeah, no thanks. Tell us how it panned out. We came around to your house. Yeah. Which was delightful for a Eurovision party. I was worried people wouldn't take Eurovision seriously enough, but it was fine. People were taking notes and what have you, which is what I like to do. Ingrid likes to keep score. She was glad that people were keeping score. Your kids were terrific. They properly entered into it. They didn't get bored. They understood the importance of whether the Croatian song is better than the Swiss song and so on. So we were in absolutely safe hands. Now, let's get on to the actual contest itself in a moment.

4:13But it started with the controversy of certain contestants thinking Israel should be banned from the from the Eurovision Song Contest. The Dutch contestants then being disqualified for an altercation backstage with a member of the crew. Yeah, if you were just watching this on Twitter, you would think it was an absolute nightmare. And obviously another part of the run up in the weeks ahead was many, many of the acts being pressured not to take part because Israel was being included. And I suppose the argument of that Russia was excluded after the invasion of Ukraine. I thought the online campaign against some of these artists was totally vicious.

4:53And whilst we can talk about cultural boycotts quite a bit, but I don't think that being in Eurovision, if you're sort of like a young act and you're not like some megastar rich, It's not the same as, I don't know, playing Sun City in the 80s, where lots of rock stars maybe broke the cultural sanctions against South Africa. It's not the same as kind of Sting taking a million to do some Uzbek tyrant's birthday party or wedding or whatever the ones he's done are. I feel that some of the pressure on them was really extreme. And I'm wondering whether it was slightly one of those campaigns that seems extremely important online.

5:29and actually, as you say, in real life, had overestimated its purchase. It's a tricky one because Eurovision, like an awful lot of brands, and this is the problem with brands, when they lean into saying, the thing about us is we are all about peace. We're all about inclusivity. As a brand, as a pair of trainers, we are about world peace. And as soon as corporations do that, and lots of them do, you then have to put up with people saying to you, well, listen, this goes against that. if you never set yourself up as a moral arbiter you do what you want if you just say look we're the ultimate display of pan-European kitsch with an arcane scoring system that you absolutely should fully get behind and some of the most hilarious staging you will ever see and I have to say my favourite entry was Finland Windows 95 man a man who can neither sing nor dance well I mean the singer could actually sing but the extraordinary leaping around sort of like a Bez figure was he He was not actually, as far as I can work out, operational within the band at all.

6:31He didn't actually have a role other than kind of general loon. And I hugely enjoyed every moment of his lunacy. Well, that's it. Once we were there, so, you know, I genuinely, I just listened to Talk Sport on the way in. And Jeff Sterling's very anti-Eurovision. He was having none of it. He caught a bit of it, Jeff. And was saying this is tripe. And I bow to very few people in my love of Jeff Sterling. But Jeff, listen, come on. it's genuinely wonderful entertainment eurovision always has been i've loved it since the mid 70s i've always adored it but the finest moment of my career was reading out the votes for the uk jury a few years ago oh my god it's the best thing i've ever done in my entire life doesn't it's been downhill since then oh my god it's been down here was you know do you know what it was downhill all the way to there and it's been downhill all the way since so that was amazing.

7:21I've got to say, this is London calling here the votes of the United Kingdom jury. I had to stand completely stock still in a very dark warehouse near Heathrow for about nine hours before I did that 15 seconds of... It's like being extraordinarily rendered by the CIA isn't it? It's like you've gone to a black side. It's like being extraordinarily rendered by the EBU. It's exactly what it was. Here's the thing, on that they said, right you have to write down exactly what you're going to say. It has to be exactly 15 seconds long and you rehearse it for them like five or six times during the day there's lots of run-throughs you have to say um hello this is london calling um good evening sweden good morning australia wherever you are and here are the here are the votes so it's absolutely you're only allowed to say that and then you watch it on the night and they're all they're all going off script you know they go to like moldova and they're you know they do like a tight 20 about something and i thought i could have really i could have outlined some of my political views yeah there's all sorts i could done but you know what because i'm a producer yeah i've read the lines i told him i was going to read because you've got code but anyway that was the best thing i ever did so i absolutely love eurovision i'm sorry when i think about the great sort of dignified protest moments of various cultural biker all sport or even sporting whatever you're thinking of like you know john carlos and tommy smith on the podium at the mexico and peter norman actually the australian who backed them at the 68 Mexico Olympics and they've got their arms raised and their heads bad and all of that.

8:47I mean, Europapa pretending to fall asleep at a press conference. No, thanks. Go home. Is that what he did? Yeah. What I do think is quite interesting is the public vote and how Israel and Ukraine really snuck in on that inside rail. I don't know. I am not, you know, I don't wish to be a conspiracist. But one thing I would say about them, they both as countries have very good cyber operations. Okay. And obviously, you know, if the UK also has probably quite good cyber operations, and if we wanted to, I think the vote itself, the public vote, is open to manipulation. I don't want to say that it was at all because, but I, please don't write in on this particular subject, but I'm just saying that it's possible.

9:26I honestly think, well, I'll get onto that because there's a really interesting thing about the running order of Eurovision, which people I don't think know. But in terms of the public vote, I think this is the situation. If they're, let's say there's a pro-Israeli vote and an anti-Israeli vote. the anti-israeli vote of course is split 24 ways because there are yes other countries competing against them the pro-israeli vote all goes to one country which is israel so actually you would expect them to get an awful lot more votes in the public thing if if there is a schism even if if only a small amount of people are pro-israel they're still going to get quite a lot of public votes because all of that vote goes to one country so i think that explains the israeli vote explain In the moon landing, sir.

10:06Because why is the flag blowing in the air, Richard? Leave me to my conspiracy. That's true. Yeah. So, yeah. So, I think that about that. But definitely, there are ways you can manipulate the result of the Eurovision Song Contest. Now, for years and years and years, Olly Alexander reference, for years and years and years, there were, it was completely random, the draw of who goes where in the Eurovision Song Contest. So, you pick numbers out of a hat. Now, famously, if you perform later in the Eurovision Song Contest, you're much, much, much more likely to win. So out of 24 countries, I think 17th is the average starting position of a winning country.

10:42My God, I love this. The last 20 years, in the last 20 years, only three songs that have appeared in the first 10 songs, only three have won. And those appeared in positions 9, 10 and 10. And lots, by the way, from 20 onwards, including this year, which was Switzerland, who went in 21st position. Now, something that's changed this year, the producers now have much more say on the running order. So bits of it are drawn out of a hat, but the producers have their own choice as to who goes where in the running order. So very late on in the running order here, Switzerland, Croatia and France, all of which were big favourites with viewers already, all of which were countries who had said to the EBU, you'll be very, very happy to host Eurovision again next year.

11:31So they were all very, very... So there is a conspiracy, but it's Big Producer rather than... Yes, Big Producer. Rather than the equivalent of the CIA. Yeah, but Big Producer is the equivalent of the CIA. I've worked in this industry a long time. They've got an office at Langley. It literally has it on the door. Exactly that. So most of what the producer is doing, by the way, is making sure that ballads, you know, there's not four ballads in a row and stuff like that. So, you know, the argument that producers should be able to choose the order of the entries is that you get a decent running order and you get a very smooth running order and the Swedes are the absolute geniuses that Krista Borkman who is the producer this year and has been for a few years he's very good at getting that flow but definitively he knows what we know which is Ukraine went number two Switzerland went number 21 Ukraine are not going to win no one's ever won for number two ever in the entire 70 odd year history of Eurovision No one's ever won.

12:23And Ukraine, by the way, would not particularly want the mantle of hosting Eurovision next year either. So he gets a great big favourite out on second place, but that he's not going to win. So he knows that for a fact. And later on, he's got Croatia, Switzerland and France, the big favourites all in one place. Interestingly, puts Israel in sixth, which is sort of nothing, if you know what I mean. It's certainly not a place you put a song if you wanted it to win or if you wanted to highlight it. or if you wanted it to be a big deal. But where you go in that running order will almost certainly define where you finish at the end, is the truth.

13:03You'll see it next year. If you win from that top ten, you're doing an incredible job. I love knowing this. And the producers now have an awful lot more control over that. Someone else who was at your lovely Eurovision party was the brilliant music writer Pete Paphidis. His book Broken Greek, if you've not read it, is terrific. And I was thinking, what if I'm the geekiest person here? and then I saw Pete just making so many notes. With a barrow and paper. I loved it. Honestly, I was in my tribe. And we were talking about how to win it. And the last two times we've won it, one was Katrina and the Waves with Love Shine a Light.

13:36And that was a song that was written for a charity in Swindon. It was literally written for an advert. This is all Pete told me, all of this. He takes credit for all of this stuff. Written for a charity in Swindon. And Jonathan King said to Katrina and the Waves, have you got any songs and the drummer said what about that song we did so that one and before that making your mind up which is based on a hook that the writer had written for a sanitary towel advert and a fellow writer said there's something in that there's something in that and that became making your mind up so if you want to scientifically work out how to write a Eurovision number one it's impossible because you know those are your predecessors so I think you have to take it seriously I think you have to love it and I think you just have to you know wish for a bit of luck But every year people say, I know, I can fix this.

14:22I know how to do it. And honestly, if you said last year how to fix it, you'd go, why don't we put Olly Alexander in with a disco banger and incredible staging? That should do it. So if that's not going to do it, it's very difficult to work out what is other than something out of left field like Sam Ryder. Yeah. But it'd be lovely. It'd be nice to, you know, just be in amongst it. I mean, look at Ireland. We wouldn't have chosen Ireland's song Bambi Thug. I thought that was so extraordinary because honestly, within our lifetime, time Ireland was sort of a theocracy really but really and I mean apparently being represented by a sort of satanist this or a witch she's I believe she may be a witch sorry I found but there was a pentagram on the pentagon you know that was one of those on the floor there's a lot of crossover between yeah I think you know they they're kissing cousins as it were but anyway it was something to behold as usual it was and you know the way it's been reinvented in the last 20 years Eurovision has slightly fizzled out as a phenomenon certainly in the UK It had ratings were way down.

15:17And now it's huge again. It was 8.5 million on Saturday night. I imagine top 10 million by the time everyone's done. So it's a huge show. It's a wonderful kind of celebration of things. And I do think that the controversy, the Israel controversy, at least it's been aired for the last week. At least we're hearing people's opinions and people's views and people are arguing about it. At least it's a big cultural moment where we are discussing important things in the world. I do think that Eurovision has overreached It's just a song contest That should be their slogan for next year Did you want to talk very briefly about block voting?

15:54Yes please Which is the thing whenever you talk about Eurovision People go, oh no, it's too political When you look into it, there's proper big, big academic studies into it Oh god, there's a huge amount Online, you can see masses of this stuff Have gone crazy It definitely doesn't help the UK Because nobody votes for us Cyprus and Greece are the biggest two sort of circle jerkers I would say it's usually 12 and 12 Moldova and Romania as well Russia and Belarus when they're Russia and the Nordics Sweden, Denmark and Norway always do very well and they always vote for each other sorry the Swedish entry were Norwegian I was putting it out there I know right I'm going to call for a steward's inquiry but if they'd won I would that's because it's the Eurovision Song Contest not the Eurovision Singer Contest so long as the song is Swedish ah okay you see that's how they get away with that it's just a song contest it's just a song contest the way I would fix it I would say you nominate three other countries that every country is not allowed to vote for so you would say for example Cyprus you would say obviously you can't vote for yourself also you can't vote for Greece yeah you know maybe just one maybe just pick one country that they can't vote for alright what about the geography of Eurovision I'm not a great big fan of the inclusion of Australia I have to say in general you boycotted home and away for years yeah I love him anyway.

17:13I will not buy a Danny Minogue album, Marina's always saying. I'm not sure that Australia should be in Eurovision. And obviously there are a lot of people who think maybe Russia and Israel and some of those kind of more peripheral, arguably not European places. Well, that's the thing. And the people have said that forever. It's not the European song contest. It's the European Broadcasting Union, which includes lots of Middle Eastern countries. Eurovision, a vision of what Europe could be if it wasn't what it is now. But so North African countries are very welcome to enter. Middle Eastern countries are as well.

17:46By and large, they boycott because of Israel and always have. But the last time one of the North African countries was in, it was 1980, I think, when Israel weren't in it. And Morocco entered in that year. I was going to say, was it Morocco? Yeah, and they haven't since. So it's the European Broadcasting Union, and that includes other countries. So it's not crazy that countries outside Europe are doing it. Australia I think is just because Eurovision is quite expensive to put on which is why the big five get put straight through to the final because they essentially kind of fund the whole thing and I think Australia loved Eurovision so much and Australia had some money they could put into it as well and you know Australia they're virtually yeah the same as us aren't they the Australians and so yeah I think they came in because it felt like a they wanted to and b they had some money so like a poker game at your friend's house yeah exactly all right well that was pretty fun shall we now go to a break richard um okay 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 whether 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.

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19:56Welcome back, everybody. Now we're going to go on to cinema and The Fall Guy, which came out a couple of weeks ago in the US. And it's become slightly symbolic of a worry that the UK and US movie industry now has. The Fall Guy is a sort of action comedy starring Emily Blunt and Ryan Gosling, who, by the way, were in the two sort of biggest films of last year, Oppenheimer and Barbie, respectively. They were not the leads in those. And we will come to that later. As you say, it came out on Memorial Day. Now, Memorial Day is one of the big, big weekends for movie release in the States. Now, The Fall Guy, this movie cost, they say it cost$130 million.

20:35I reckon it cost a bit more than$130 million. The stunts are very expensive. Sorry, we should say originally it is based on some IP, which is the original Fall Guy TV series. From the 80s? From the 80s, so early 80s. I don't know. It's a Glenn A. Larson series. I'm going to come back to him later because he's one of my absolute TV heroes. But say it cost about 150 million and a big part of that is star salaries. They're then going to have to spend another 100 million to market this thing. So in order for this movie to break even, you need to make 250, 300 million dollars at the box office. Opening weekend is a huge part of that.

21:16And they would have hoped for 45 ish, I would have thought, maybe plus. And they got 28 million. That is not enough because they have actually been quite lucky in that it's held. It's been quite sticky and it did all right second weekend. Not too bad, not too much of a die off because normally there's a die off. So you really need it to be big on opening weekend. But it wasn't. Now, it might just eke out a profit. As I say, these are two movie stars who come off the biggest things of last year. And they talked about it in their interviews, Emily Brunt and Ryan Gosling. This is now the big narrative you hear so much.

21:50we are about movies that get people to go to the cinema we are about theatrical release we're about big studio movies we want everyone to turn up and you know movies are a uniting experience all this sort of stuff and this one by the way is very emblematic because it's not part of the marvel cinematic universe it is not a sequel to a pixar thing it's one of those good old-fashioned here's two movie stars in an original script although based on something that has male and female appeal. If this doesn't hit big, then what is going to hit big? Yeah, if we can't make it with this, then what can we make it with?

22:23So this is perhaps why it's caused quite a shiver in Hollywood that's already shivering. I would argue there are issues with this. Let's talk about the stars first, okay? You've got Ryan Gosling. Now, I said on this podcast a few weeks ago that he was a B-movie actor. I was sort of mildly joking. But what I'm saying to you is, can this guy open a movie? And it's very interesting. this is not the first time Ryan Gosling has played a stuntman because he played a stuntman in Drive, which is much more of like an early Ryan Gosling movie in that it's violent, it's brutal, it's kind of, you know, it's not some big mainstream big studio movie.

22:57It's a fantastic movie. I love it, by the way. But his screen persona now seems to have evolved into this. I felt he was playing Ken in a way again. By the way, I absolutely love this movie. it's a proper treat which puts those figures into we'll talk about whether you did I caveat this but carry on so I absolutely loved it but yeah from the moment he appears on screen there is Shadow of Ken for sure now I would have thought that actually that sort of Shadow of Ken is probably quite a good thing because people liked Ken and people want more Ken but I don't think that persona's got legs I worry that Ryan Gosling's got to that stage in his career where he's thinking I want to make movies that my kids can see whenever an actor says that I always get really worried I always think why don't you spend time with your kids and make movies that we want to see.

23:41Because, but don't you think that? You hear it all the time. It's like, I don't really care. This is not, your childcare is not my issue. Could you please? Anyhow, so let's go on now to Emily Blunt, who I really like as an actor. I love her. She's great in this as well. I really like her screen. Well, I love that screen persona she has where she's quite buttoned up, but underneath it, you know, there's huge mischief, but she's slightly frustrated and harassed because she's got to hold it together because other people aren't stepping up. And this is why she can sort of play Mary Poppins, in a way why she can play Kitty Oppenheimer in these really different roles.

24:12But she was in the biggest movie, the second biggest movie of last year. Oh, actually, we're not counting Super Mario Brothers, and I'm not, even though I should do. She was in Oppenheimer, but she's not the lead in Oppenheimer, and that is really a Christopher Nolan film, and that's the marquee that you'll get. That's what people are turning out for. He is opening the movie. Christopher Nolan, unusually for a director, is opening the movie. Sometimes it's a brand. Marvel opens a movie. If you look at her big openings, things like Jungle Cruise, that is based on a ride. Maybe people are turning up for the Disney ride, but they're turning up for The Rock.

24:44He has opened that movie and maybe the ride has opened it. So is the ride your nickname for Jack Whitehall? Always, always. He was super in it, by the way. But can anybody open a movie these days? Well, that's the question. That's the era we just come from, you know, Stallone. I'll tell you who can open a movie. Okay, what about, I'll tell you something else that's also in theatres now. Also, these people are quite old. I don't mean to be, they're younger than me. But, you know, Ryan Gosling's 43. Emily Blunt is 41. God, I remember being 41. Yes. That's a long time ago. I like the fact that someone who's much younger than me is now much too old.

25:19Yes, but I mean, this is the reality. Kevin Nygor at ITV often says, if there's not a young person on the screen, young people are not going to watch that particular thing. And I think there's something to that in movies. I'll tell you who can open a movie. Zendaya Challengers is out at the moment. Now, that is obviously a much smaller budget movie. That probably costs 50 million. And probably 10 to 15 of that was for her. This is easily going to make its money back. I'll tell you who can open a movie. Timothy Chalamet. Oh, my God. That guy can open it. And he's so like Bigfoot, one of the last people who can do it.

25:50He actually pulled off in the last eight months the number one and two movies at the box office, which were Wonka and June 2. And he is basically the start of both of those. Now, you can see why Warner Brothers have tied him up with a big first look deal, because that guy can open a movie without any question. Yeah. June and June 2 are not gimmies in terms of box office. No. This is definitely going to do 100 million in its opening weekend. And they both did. And June 2 was much, much, much bigger. Oh, that's interesting. So you think perhaps that other generation, perhaps now we have to go down a generation.

26:24We have to go down into people in their 20s to really open movies. When we talked about the biggest people who are earning money, and a lot of them are getting it from streaming, which is fine, but movie stardom has become very old. You know, the people who are still regarded as people who can open a movie are in many cases much, much older than they ever were. It's fine, but is it the future? Can we talk now about the IP? Because I think that is a really interesting part of all this. And by IP, I know we've talked about it before, that's intellectual property, which is any movie that's based on something that pre-exists, whether it's a book or an old TV show or a toy or anything.

26:57So this is based on the 80s TV series, The Fall Guy, which to me is like a real, well, I'm going to make you rank some properties from that exact time. Because that was not a bit, that was, I mean, I was very much, that was my era. It was not a big show. It was a perfectly acceptable show. And everyone remembers the theme tune, The Unknown Starman. Lee Majors was in it and he was a big star. Yeah. Who turns up in the credits to this. So if you're watching the film, stick around to the end. But yeah, it wasn't one of the big shows. Okay. Can you please rank for me? Yeah. The Fall Guy. Yeah. Magnum P.I.