Fame, Fortune and Marina's New Show

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1:22Hello and welcome to this episode of The Rest is Entertainment with me, Marina Hyde. And me, Richard Osman. Good morning slash afternoon slash evening to you, Marina. Wherever you're listening. Exactly. How are you, Richard? Yeah, I'm not bad at all. How are you? Nice week? It was very nice. I hope you're going to update us slightly on the old Boris Johnson sales figures as a tiny little item before we begin. Well, we said last week that Blair sold 92 ,000, Thatcher sold 120 ,000, that Johnson had had a£2 million advance. So he would need to sell probably near that Thatcher figure, probably 120 ,000.

2:00HarperCollins thought he was going to do Prince Harry numbers, and he sold 450 ,000 in his first week. And he sold 42 ,000, which is so far below any of the expectations they would have had. They have overpaid massively. You're talking to certain booksellers. There is a lot of stock in the shops. One of the things you do, you send out a lot of stock. If you've got a book you think is going to sell a lot, you send out a lot. And there are piles and piles of that book in different bookshops around the country. I told you that one mega central London Waterstones said to me, we sold two yesterday.

2:37I see they've spun it as a triumph. Oh, a lot of people would kill for 42 ,000 books, but almost impossible not to sell that many when he's had free adverts on things. And he's very, very famous. But yeah, that's the Christmas bonuses at HarperCollins, gone. I mean, not that Johnson cares. He's already been given his two million and his money from the Daily Mail. But as so often, other people are being left to pick up the can there. But in better news, Rivals, which we spoke about last week, has debuted to unbelievable reviews and has a 95 % rating on Rotten Tomatoes, which is extraordinary. And that's on Disney Plus as a reminder.

3:11And so many great people are involved in that. So that's good to see it going down. And they've pulled it off. But anyway, that's just updates on last week's show. Yes. It's important to do. But what are we talking about this week? We are going to talk a little bit about relatives of authors taking on their books, sometimes living, sometimes dead. Nick Harkaway, John le Carre's son, has got a new John le Carre novel out called Carla's Choice this week. So we're going to talk about that, which is more prevalent than you'd think of relatives kind of taking on books. We're going to talk about the franchise, which you can watch right now on Now TV and Sky Comedy.

3:47Is it going to be a Boris Johnson or is it going to be a Rivals? Well, I hope it's arrivals. What else are we going to talk about? We're also going to talk about the idea of talent. Tim Davey from the BBC has said he's going to ban the word talent, that idea that on-screen people have, there's a slight differentiation between them and backstage people. And we're also going to touch on Liam Payne when we talk about that as well, about what it is to be talent, what it is to be othered, what it is to be sort of raised up by an industry and then left behind. So we're going to talk about that. In fact, I think we will talk about that first, shall we?

4:17We will do. I mean, in some ways, there can be two sides of the same coin. But Tim Davey, the Director General of the BBC, has said he would like to ban the word talent. Talent is a way of referring to people in front of the camera. So that can be presenters and it can obviously be actors. And I should say that it is sometimes, by the crew, used sarcastically. My understanding, having been someone who for many, many years wasn't talent and then was talent, it's always been used sarcastically, I think. And also by the talent themselves. There's very few bits of talent that would use that word unironically.

4:48But on film sets, there are things like you'll see things like catering things that say for the talent only. Obviously, if you are a completely brilliant cinematographer or, you know, or carpenter or any of the myriad roles that come together to make television or films happen, it's quite, it's slightly offensive, isn't it? those are the talented ones the ones who are absolutely impossible and are treated like golden gods and you who are doing what you might regard as a significant amount of the work are not talented once on a quiz show we had the talent stairs which were just so you don't meet contestants before you go on the show there's a different staircase and just this staircase had talent stairs written on the front of it now yeah it's interesting this idea of talent and as you say Tim Davey he's ace not your tongue in cheek and he has talked about this before and he's absolutely right but we should say that he's doing this as part of the they've got a big review into workplace culture in the wake of the Hugh Edwards situation Jermaine Genas possibly what happened on Strictly I don't know whether that forms part of its workplace review but there are various things that have made them re-evaluate their relationship with talent yes and you know have they become too powerful are they sort of untouchable you know is there a complaints procedure against them and losing the word talent is an interesting first step into dealing with that I would say that you you know, from years in television that the talent act like talent, but also the big exec producers and the big company owners and stuff like that are also, they act exactly like talent.

6:21They're not called talent. They're paid a lot more than the talent. But there is this culture, this idea that talent are somehow othered. Well, the history of the term, this is a term from the golden age of Hollywood, of like lots of these sorts of things. But it's a bit of a sop, isn't it? Calling them the talent. Stars back then were huge, whatever, But 100 % it was the movie producers and the people who ran the studios who had all the power and stars, talent were contracted players. And they often couldn't do anything. They had to do films that they didn't want to do. And they weren't allowed to, you know, be sold to other studios.

6:54You know, I mean, I don't want to say they were indentured, but they were basically looked after well. But they were slightly imprisoned by the nature of their contracts. So calling them talent was, you know, in talent agents and all the industries that sprung up around that. but as you say again it wasn't them that had all the power that this this was not the era of star power star star power comes later and star power gets bigger and bigger um but it requires the studios who came up with that term to sort of lose power for them to for star power to happen yeah so the question is what use are tv presenters okay that'd be my first and i'm going to talk about tv presenters rather than actors just because it's a world i know slightly better but i imagine you can draw similar conclusions from it so what use are tv presenters why are they treated with such kid gloves well a couple of things firstly being a tv presenter actually there is a sort of ego side to it which there isn't to other roles so on the day of a production itself you are actually working very hard you're putting yourself out there and so there is a certain amount of handling needs to be done unless you've got a presenter who just loves being on tv which is like all comedians and things like that so there is there is an element to which you do have to treat on-screen people slightly differently, I would say.

8:07But, you know, are TV presenters indispensable would be the question. And if they're not indispensable, why do we treat them as if they are? Well, I think there's two different types, right? And you get TV presenters, you do other things. So if you're, you know, Jimmy Carr, for example, think whatever you like of him, but he has another job, which is he is a comedian, and he can go out into the world and earn an absolute fortune from lots of other people. So he has an actual job. And if you're Michael McIntyre, right, has an actual job, can go out and do whatever he wants. But if you're just a TV presenter, say, and there's lots and lots of them, then you just rely on the fact that the public sort of like you.

8:46Being a TV presenter, a normal TV presenter who doesn't have another job, is sort of like being a singer in a band who doesn't write the songs. I mean, you look nice, you've got a good voice, people like watching you on stage, but, I mean, could somebody else take your place? I mean yes almost certainly and you talk to most sensible TV presenters and they'll say the same thing they'll say well yeah there are other people who could do my job that's for sure but the world of talent is so fetishized that actually the money people are paid is way above that talent level so listen if you want to pay pay Antentech whatever you want to pay them because they are doing a job no one else can do and they are bringing a huge audience to your channel they bring huge advertising to your channel so whatever you pay them they are earning it back but we have to accept that an awful lot of TV presenters are not like that.

9:31They're doing a great job, you know, and people love watching them. And, you know, as a producer, I watch them and see what they do and see how they make shows better. But they are replaceable in a way that an Anton Deck or a Michael McIntyre isn't replaceable. And I think Tim Davey understands that that level of people have been overpaid at the BBC, and they're overpaid at the BBC, because they're massively overpaid at the commercial broadcasters. So the BBC, you get paid an awful lot less than you would do on ITV or Channel 4, but still the money that is being paid to television presenters, to talent, is quite high.

10:07So he's got that in mind where he talks about talent, but also this idea of people being on pedestals, things like that. And we went to the World Television Society Day when lots and lots of sessions with very high-up people in television. And I think in the first two or three sessions, three or four sessions actually, Alex Mayhorn from Channel 4 was there Tim Davey was talking lots of proper people who really know what they're doing they all talked about we have to slightly stop fetishising talent and imagining they're sort of somewhere above us and putting them on a pedestal and then the next session was David Beckham being spoken to and the whole room went mad executive producer David Beckham yeah exactly but yeah the whole place went crazy the whole place listened to every single thing he had to say about the shows he was making and you go we spent the whole morning saying that we're not going to do that and now we've just done it.

10:55But, you know, because it's hard not to. There's something about people who are famous. It casts a spell on people. Yes, and even if you are indispensable and, you know, there's lots of sort of acting things where you think, well, of course, they're indispensable. I was trying to think of a funny story and just while you were saying that, and I remembered that Wesley Snipes, okay, when they come to do like Blade Trinity, right? I guess Wesley Snipes is indispensable because he's Blade. But he, by this stage, he's got some problem with the director. There was a scene where you're supposed to think that Blade is dead and he's lying on a sort of mortuary slab and then we found out he's not dead because his eyes open.

11:32By this stage, the relationship has broken down so significantly with the director that he will not open his eyes. And it's like, yeah, but you sort of have to open those because that's the scene, you know, you're not dead. He won't open his eyes. He's like, do it in post. So that scene that you now see in Blade Trinity, and by the way, I beg you not to watch the whole movie. Go and look up the scene. That's amazing. And this is how you hear about all the, you know, when you hear about Robert Downey Jr.'s contract to come back to Marvel and to the Avengers and to whatever, and he's going to be Dr.

12:03Doom. This is in the published things of concessions he's been given. He's going to have a trailer encampment. That's in the published stuff he's been given. Okay, so we know that these people are given huge things. It's quite hard when you're given all this stuff not to think nothing can be done without me. I don't have to open my eyes in this scene, which is about me opening my eyes. Listen, the word talent is ironic. It's always been ironic. And most people understand it. But there is an irony. Say you're making a quiz show. For the month beforehand, you've got a huge team of people working incredibly well to put this thing together.

12:36And the month after the recording, you've got a group of people doing that edit. On the day, actually, you can't do without the host. It's one of the few things you can't do without. That host might be the 17th most talented person on that production. But on the day, you can't start till the host turns up. Whatever it is, whatever the talent wants to do, everything has to stop. So, yeah, there is this thing that talent does get, you know, treated with kid clubs because you've got 80 people all working, all working incredibly hard, all trying to turn out a product. And if the talent... The show pony isn't on form.

13:11...isn't on form, then, you know, the show is ruined. Or if the show pony is annoyed or doesn't want to do it. Yeah. And so it's... Like actual ponies, actually, which you will see. They won't do the jump. They won't do this. you've got to make you know yeah oh it's a refusal oh it's yeah yeah sit has refused won't go in the won't go in the truck yeah uh and so it's it's that weird thing if you are definitively not the most talented person on that production but the production cannot work without you there's very few people actually on the day that the show cannot go on without you know if the director is late occasionally the vision mixer can sort of take over or you know you bring someone else in you'll delay delay for various people but actually the day is completely cancelled if the talent isn't there and as i say honestly 95 of people who appear on television absolutely get the ridiculousness of that situation jimmy carr i just talked about there jimmy carr understands that he's working with a group of people who are incredibly talented some of whom will be more talented than him absolutely gets it gets what his thing is which is i'm going to turn up put on a show i'll do it properly, but understands that he's part of a huge team.

14:19And that is almost all talent. Any show, you know, I was a producer for many, many, many years, and the most talented people I've seen in my entire career have not been on screen. They've been in writers' rooms, they've been in production offices. There's a huge amount of talented people out there, and it's their show. Anton Deck is such a good example of this. Anton Deck happen to be brilliant producers as well, brilliant ideas people. They also understand that they need to surround themselves with talented people and they understand the value of those people if they're writers or producers or whatever they are and that's the way to be talent be brilliant be indispensable which is what they are but also understand that other people are brilliant and indispensable so that's the perfect way to do it hewed was and what happens around that and of course and other names of course we know have been in that realm is the exact opposite which is you are completely dispensable which by the way is probably why the ego does go through the roof because you You probably go home and you know someone else could do your job.

15:14And the talent are not the captain of the ship. The talent are the band. I'm first on that lifeboat, dare I say, in many people's experience. Yeah, exactly. Listen, certainly the first car that arrives at the end of the day is for the talent. And I've said before with talent, and it's an object lesson, isn't it? Talent who you're going to have trouble with think they get cars because they're special. Other bits of talent understand they get cars because someone needs to know where they are. and they don't trust them to get home by themselves and they don't trust them to arrive on time and so they've got the driver's number, they always know where the talent is.

15:45If they're in traffic, they know it. I don't want to tart anybody with a brush because honestly 95 % of the on-screen people I've worked with are dreams. I mean they really are, they're just lovely human beings who work hard, work in a team, understand the ridiculousness of their situation, ask for as much money as they can get, of course, but that's the thing they do. But the 5 % of them, it's a hellhole the way that they have to become enabled because if you do have someone who decides that they want special treatment you do sort of have to give them that special treatment because all the producers' job is to get the show done.

16:17Otherwise it's just, as we've said before on so many things, otherwise it becomes too expensive and you've got all these other people who are brilliant and not difficult hanging around who can't actually produce the show. Yeah, the squeaky hinge gets the oil. But can we move then from that, I suppose, from that side of looking at talent to obviously the totally tragic story of Liam Payne who died in Buenos Aires, who fell from a hotel balcony in Buenos Aires last week. And that seems to be the sort of utter, utter dark side of all of that, of having been put on this extraordinary pedestal at such a young age.

16:53And one thing, I mean, there's so many kind of very affecting and very kind of interesting things that have happened in the wake of this. There's quite a few people who've spoken about the whole idea of the X Factor, which now when you look back on it is already feeling such a sort of period piece. When I look back on the X Factor at that time, these shows that came from nowhere and started with something like Pop Stars, but became the absolute, you couldn't imagine Saturday Night happening without two or maybe three of these sort of things happening. It was a different sort of fame. You were famous overnight.

17:27Anyone who's in, say, take the Spice Girls, right? They're also like a put together band. but they had a long time where no one was very interested and no matter that they were doing all sorts of nonsense you know this is like one saturday you're famous and one of the former contestants on it katie wassell said they needed press to keep the show in the news all the time and the x factor stories were the front of the papers every single day and i mean there were some really sort of terrible things excavated about katie wassell's family and it was really you know this is sort of terrible things for someone who's really young and just wants to be a singer and cares about music also let's not forget the people in the auditions even who were bad at singing and suddenly you're becoming a sort of brief celebrity and there's millions of journalists on your doorstep because you know you sang flying without wings badly i mean it the power in that show and all the money really was simon cowles okay he made a huge amount of money people another thing that people don't realize but you know yes you're the talent and yes the cars and they were making lots of money but you have to work if you're in one of those bands people don't understand the work level they're like oh they're famous in those boy bands they work every single day of every week and every week of every year and it's like oh you're too tired to go on in soul or wherever it is don't worry we've got somebody can give you a shot for that and they are talent but they are sort of being pushed out there as the money maker now after liam payne's desk sharon osborne said you know we all failed you we let you down she said she eventually didn't find it quite difficult being involved in.

18:54And maybe she sensed something on the wind that the X Factor, there was something so brutal about turning people into stars. As I say, overnight, they have not had to do anything. And then suddenly they're an overnight star and they are going to get sped out and they might get dropped by Simon Cowell's record company in six months. And maybe that's, you know, some of the winners that happened to. The other side of that fame is that you, it's the level of isolation of that. I thought it was really terrible reading the opinions of, and I can see no reason these weren't their opinions of Liam Payne's family saying that if he hadn't been a celebrity then they would have called an ambulance in that hotel and that I found just so utterly tragic and probably true yeah I think it is true that's the enabling thing which is you know whatever the talent is going through you sort of you just let them go a step further and a step further you know you're absolutely right about the boy band and girl band industry and you know I think comes from a history of those bands historically being very short-lived and so you absolutely squeeze as much as you can out of them and you know i see that you know my brother was in a brit pop band so he's in suede and the one thing i absolutely saw there is the absolutely zero duty of care of the record industry they they were they find the new thing they promote the new thing they spend an absolute fortune the image is good the noise is good the sound is good they spend a load of money on it uh but there is absolutely nobody looking after those people and listen boohoo you're famous you've done incredibly well who needs looking after everyone needs looking after is the truth exactly that the young people and the people making more money are older people and they're older people who have seen this story before a number of times and know how it can go wrong it's not go crazy for a lot of people you know being in a boy band a girl band being in a brit pop band being a tv presenter great it works great but there's always going to be casualties and there's going to be a significant amount of casualties and the people who are in charge of it know there are because they've seen it again and again and again.

20:50So Bruce Springsteen saying it this weekend about Liam Payne saying, well, you know, my industry, it just puts a sort of remorseless burden on people and they just disproportionately high level of people to whom things like this happen. By the way, bits of the industry and bits of the record company, I know, do good work with people, but it is not enough because it keeps happening. It happens time after time after time. We started by talking about Tim Davy and this idea of not going to call people talent. and this is what he means in a way is if you start calling people something you other them and the second you start othering them you cannot deal with them as a normal human being none of it's good and you know we also talked last week about the paparazzi and saying has it got worse has it got better well the fact that the tmz published pictures partial pictures of liam pain's body yeah they took them down because they can now see the backlash because of social media makes it so much easier to see the backlash and those pictures now obviously exist forever because once they're up they're up and we talked about nothing having changed really and this the whole story of this is that nothing really has changed what is to be done i would say that i think most people understand it already is you know human beings are human beings and you know however much you think you know them uh however much you might envy what they have and what they're doing to remember all times that you know people's mental health is their own mental health and you know fans to understand that people are real human beings which i think fans by and large are pretty good at the liam pain stuff where the fans are stopping the media taking photos of the dad and stuff like that i thought was very moving because they they under they understood the situation in a way that no one else seemed to understand it so you know that's our role in it but also to those industries and to you know instagram to tiktok to all the record companies to all the TV executives, all of that stuff, there is a duty of care.

22:37You know, there really is. We've seen this story too many times now. It just goes on and on and on and on. I don't want to be talking about this with somebody else in a year's time, but I suspect we will be. Right. Shall we take a break now? Let's. At Sierra, discover top workout gear at incredible prices, which might lead to another discovery. Your headphones haven't been connected this whole time. Awkward. Discover top brands at unexpectedly low prices. Sierra, let's get moving. Eczema isn't always obvious, but it's real. And so is the relief from EBCLIS. After an initial dosing phase, about 4 in 10 people taking EBCLIS achieved itch relief and clear or almost clear skin at 16 weeks.

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24:38Welcome back everybody Can we do a quick advert of our own Marina? I'm quite excited about this one Do you know what? I don't know if people often use the word ill-advisedly but we have ill-advisedly agreed to do a live show have we not for Christmas? It's festive It is festive And it will be super festive It is on the 4th of December at the Royal Albert Hall, the Restless Entertainment Live. Get us. Yeah, get us. Tickets will be on sale this Thursday. So we'll push it again in the question and answer edition. So to members on Thursday and to everyone else on Friday. Listen, I imagine there'll be some tickets left after the members have had their full.

25:11Don't worry about that. So Thursday tickets for members of the Restless Entertainment Club and then Friday for everybody else. Can you believe it? I actually told one of my children this and he said, I would like to, unfortunately it's my extra homework club that night. Extra homework. So if you would like to see a show that the critics are already calling less exciting than extra homework club, do we have the show for you? So the Royal Albert Hall, you can get the tickets from there and we'll go to thewrestlesentertainment.com. As I say, members, thank you for signing up by the way. Lots of people, you can get special access.

25:47But yeah, we'll be doing all sorts of Christmassy things. We'll be finding out the greatest Christmas song of all time. We'll be taking questions from the audience. There might be a few celebrity guest questioners as well. There'll be all sorts going on. It's going to be a huge amount of fun. Yeah. I love it. Both of us immediately went no, and then our respective partners both said, are you mad? It's Christmas. It's going to be amazing. Yeah, exactly. So it'll be a Christmas extravaganza. 4th of December. At the Royal Albert Hall. I mean, come on. And listen, for anyone saying, are you going to come up to Scotland?

26:16Are you going to come to Manchester? If this goes well, yeah. and if this goes badly no we will not so listen if you hear us next year announcing a tour it's because this went well and if you never hear anything more about it you go oh that must have gone well mustn't it the Albert Hall thing sorry I'm just looking up the word hubris on my phone but listen listen you've got to have a go haven't you you've got to have a go it's Christmas yeah and it will be a laugh and there'll be lots of stupidity I think we're going to exchange gifts and all sorts of things aren't we oh I've already got you something I've already got you something which I think listeners to the podcast are going to like very much.

26:53Listen, if you want to come, we would absolutely love to see you there. We try to keep tickets prices as low as we can as well. We will see you there, or more likely not see you there, but very much your choice. Right, let's pull out of this. Onwards. Yes. Can I talk to you about the franchise? So the show, anyone who's listened to the podcast for a long time would know this is a show you've been working on. It started last night, the franchise, on Now TV, so people can see I think the first three episodes. Or Sky Comedy. Or Sky Comedy. So just what I wanted to do in the same way that when I talked about my book release week and the machinations of how that happens, can I ask you just a series of questions about how a television show gets made?

27:31Tell me then about the first time you had heard about the franchise and how they hooked you in and what it was that you were employed to do, if that makes sense. Well, this thing is quite interesting because it had been around in the ether for a while. Sam Mendes, the film director, thought he wanted to pitch some ideas to Armando. they thought we must have lunch and they had a really fun lunch and sam says oh you know i pushed him loads of ideas i don't think he liked any of them so i just told him a load of really hilarious stories about working on the bond movies so if you're like an indie director and you're suddenly pushed into this massive studio machine and kind of it's sort of crazy directing you're here and then someone's directing second unit and showing you all on an ipad and it's just this kind of pure chaos all the time um and amanda at the end of lunch said no now i think there's a show in that And obviously because Marvel had become this kind of huge, in some ways, the premier kind of cultural product of our time, I suppose, the defining one.

28:23But lots of different sets of writers had sort of had a go with it, all via HBO. Doing a sort of a takeoff of behind the scenes in the Marvel universe or a superhero movie. Or behind the scenes of superhero movies. And they'd done it all sorts of different ways and it hadn't sort of got anywhere. and then John Brown who's utterly brilliant who is the show writer on this who is just amazing and if he hears this he'll be so mortified he wrote on Succession he wrote on Succession he had his own show called Dead Pixels he was like one of the top writers on Succession he's very very brilliant he should call himself John Q.