Gary Lineker Leaves The BBC

24:06The speech is the Tim Davies speech, the Director General's speech, is the kind of kicking off of the charter renewal process. And he centred the whole thing on trust. And I mean, you know, I don't need to tell everybody that we live in a polarised world. And it's interesting. I mean, people, three quarters of people now say that the UK is divided and six in ten say they feel exhausted by these divisions. So he sort of reminded people that the BBC, you know, trust is absolutely central to what the BBC does and that we need that more than ever in a world where sort of things are falling away. I thought it was quite interesting how he linked it to growth and how the sort of discussion of the fact that countries where a sense of distrust is most prevalent don't do as well.

24:54Erosion of social capital, you know, kind of anti-growth in lots of ways. I mean, if any of us look at America now and think that its best days are almost definitely ahead of them, I certainly don't see it that way. It's really interesting how quickly that kind of, what's been built over 100 years can be eroded in 100 days in terms of soft power. and I think that the BBC and our creative industries in general are such a huge instrument of soft power. As I've said before, but we kind of export three things in this country, three really big things, financial services, weapons and the creative industries.

25:31And you and I are involved in only two of those. Yeah, exactly. Let's keep everybody guessing, but yeah. Different two from both of us as well. Yeah, different. And the UK is the third largest exporter of creative industries in the world. So things you might not be aware of if you believe everything you read. The trust in the BBC actually went up in 2024. It's used regularly. iPlayer grew faster in the UK than all other streamers. And it's sort of interesting how they want to continue and how much I think and agree that we need the BBC. You'd really try and invent it in countries which are fracturing, but we're lucky enough to have it.

26:11In a world of disinformation and misinformation, And whatever we think about the political events of any particular day, that's the great thought line that's going to define the next century. Yeah. Can we believe anything we see? Can we believe anything we hear? And it's very, very easy to build an army of people who don't believe anything because it's the simplest way to make a stupid person feel clever is to give them the arsenal that says nothing is true and be cynical about everything. and no one is trying their best and no one has your best interests at heart and no one is running a business or no one is running any sort of enterprise for anything other than their own good.

26:47So that's a very easy way to look at the world and a very prevalent way of looking at the world at the moment. And those people have been mobilised and those people also tend to be very radical about their beliefs. You cannot believe anything. And the way they've been sold it is everyone is lying to you all the time. And that's the battleground of the next century. And as you say, a place that we can find that does have trust, that a majority of the public can trust and trust for information and trust to tell the truth and trust to look for facts. And where you can trust to have two different people from different perspectives arguing with each other and not screaming at each other seems to be a very useful thing to have in the middle of our culture.

27:28At the moment, the whole of our culture, the online side of our culture is so hugely leveraged so that actually everything that happens now feels like it is run by people who are trying to tell you that, you know, nothing is true and you mustn't believe anything. But actually, most of culture is not that. We do still have a majority of people in this country who think roughly the same thing and who understand the world is incredibly complicated and who understand there are people out there who are trying to do their best. but they're going to be deluged sometime soon. So anything we can do to keep the fight to say, no, actually, as human beings, we're smarter than we're being told we are at the moment.

28:07Yeah, I mean, in this country, we have the world's most trusted global news provider. 94 % of people at UK adults use the BBC monthly. 75 % use the BBC News weekly, okay? Even young people in the top five, it's the only UK service that is in the top five most used for young people. OK, so it's really worth... Can I say, by the way, but this is not... The BBC is great because also the BBC, one thing that's fostered in this country is we have a number of incredibly powerful and smart news organisations. And, you know, ITN News and Sky News, you know, we actually have a very, very healthy news industry in this country.

28:46And I think a lot of that is because we have the BBC in the background, but we're not just saying, just watch the BBC. were saying we have a healthy news culture in our country. The bits of it aren't, of course, but we do have a healthy news culture. And the BBC is an example of that. Yes, in large part, we're talking about the other public service broadcasters. In fact, Tim Davies said, you know, we need a charter which allows the BBC to extend our partnerships with other public service broadcasters and enables the BBC and other players to build scale together. What do you think he sort of meant by that?

29:17I think that we are going to get to the stage. We all know how much the industry is changing. We all grew up with television being a certain thing. And at some point, we're going to have to face the unfortunate thing that they're all going to have to team up, you know, and that whatever branding they might have, BBC, ITV, Channel 4, they're all going to slightly have to become the same thing. They're all going to have to share resources on streaming. So everything's going to have to, you know. So the iPlayer, which came along way before a lot of other streaming services, is so blue chip. It would be crazy not to use that as the streaming service.

29:53But ITV and Channel 4, they're all going to have to team up and have one streaming service, I think, in order to compete. To explain why, OK, the commercial public service broadcasters, so that's ITV, Channel 4 and Channel 5, their business model is advertising. Right. Now, what drives success in advertising is reach. It is a reach based business. But who ironically has the most reach and yet doesn't do advertising is the BBC, because, you know, iPlayer, as you've said, is this hugely successful thing. They've spent 15 years making it big as best. It's the fastest. It grew far faster in the UK than any other streaming service last year, including Netflix.

30:33And but what the BBC care about, because they're much more like Netflix in some ways, they are a subscription service. They want people to feel okay about paying the license fee. They want people to feel that there's value there and there's value for all. So if you put them together and ITV, Channel 4 and Channel 5 shows were available on iPlayer, then what you're doing by getting them in is you're giving them reach because they're getting the reach of iPlayer, which is incomparable and you couldn't possibly build a new brand now. Why would you bother? You've got this amazing thing. and what they're getting, you're giving them reach and then you're getting value because people are seeing all these things on iPlayer, on a service as it were.

31:14So it's a sort of win-win. And of course you would still have ads in ITV or Channel 4 or whatever shows. People understand this, okay? Within the iPlayer you wouldn't have ads in BBC shows because that's how that works. But we've lived with the linear EPG or whatever it is for a long time and people understand that when they flick between channels you get different things and sometimes the programmes will have ads and sometimes they won't. And I totally agree with you. I think that then everyone would win from that particular situation. I think everyone, listen, there will be holdouts and certainly people would like, you know, those organisations need to negotiate in their own way.

31:51But I think everyone understands that. I think everyone at the BBC, ITV 5, less so 5 maybe, but Channel 4 certainly understand at some point they're all going to have to come under the same umbrella. They tried to do it a number of years ago with Project Kangaroo, which was 10 years ahead of its time. At that point, everyone goes, no, this is crazy. Why on earth would you do that? And we find ourselves now in the situation we're in with the streaming services and the collapse in funding for lots of terrestrial TV. We find ourselves now in a position where we go, now it makes sense. Now it makes a lot of sense for everyone.

32:21Everyone can keep their independence, but they share an awful lot of backroom stuff and they share a streaming platform. I don't see a way in five years that there isn't a streamer which has all of those BBC terrestrial, although it has all of those terrestrial broadcasters in the same place. I agree with you. And it's obvious that it should be iPlayer because it's already built. The one thing I would say is... By the way, they will call it something else, but you will use the infrastructure of iPlayer. I would have thought they would call it something else. Why would you try and build a new brand?

32:50In this economy? I just think you'd be mad. Build the one that's already the fastest growing. Yeah, but there's ego involved, of course. And I don't mean that in a bad way. We're all human beings. But if you're ITV or you're Channel 4, you don't want to see it as being subsumed into BBC iPlayer. You want it to be a joint venture. It says we're all different. We all have completely different skills. We need to call it something. There's no way they're going to say, no, we're going to call it iPlayer. No way in a million years. Well, they should say they're going to call it iPlayer. That's an act of madness.

33:19And I don't care about the individual people's ego, because actually what's far more important is the future of public service broadcasting. However, speaking of which, the Media Act, he was really pushing the government to kind of get on with the Media Act. Tim Davey. Yeah, Tim Davey was. But it's interesting. I know I've talked about this before, but you know, they've left out remote controls of this act. You know, when you get a telly in this country and because of clever lobbying and whatever, you've got a Netflix button, you've got a YouTube button on your remote control, right? Why don't you have an iPlayer button or a Freely button, which is the collaboration between them?

33:53But they've left it out. is either because Ofcom or the government have either ducked it or forgotten about it or whatever. I was talking to someone in Netflix. 80 % of Netflix journeys start with the Netflix button on the remote control, okay? It's such an unbelievable, that type of prominence. And we've talked before about prominence in news. You know, like when you buy a phone, if it's got Apple News or Upday or whatever it is, lots of people sort of carry on with that. The BBC has spent a really long time trying to build BBC News and it's actually become bigger than that. But before then, most people just have what's on their, have what's on their remote control, have what's on their phone, smart speakers, all those sorts of things, pre-programmed stuff in cars.

34:31All of that really matters. So in a way, we already need a kind of a media act too. But that's another interesting thing that we haven't talked about on the podcast, what people are saying about the Department of Culture, Media and Sport, which, I mean, I think is a real mess. And what I'm reading now and what I keep hearing from people is that they're thinking of breaking it up. And so they're going to put it, break up the whole department and split it between treasury and education and business. And that seems to me like a really would be very bad. It's a huge mistake. I think culture needs a seat at the cabinet table specifically.

35:06I don't know what's going to happen to Lisa Nandy because there's constant talks about what's going to happen to her. And people are saying, oh, maybe Peter Kyle would go in. And he, again, seems to me someone who is, I saw Elson John call him a complete moron on Laura Coomberg's show yesterday, which was, I wouldn't necessarily say he's a first class mind, but I do think captured by the tech companies is that there's a lot of people's opinion about him. So I do think they're in quite a dangerous situation and you really need a culture department that is willing to drive forward that media act and actually add more to it, as I've discussed on things like remote controls or whatever it is like that.

35:46Yes, I think if government has a role and, you know, government roles have changed many times over many years. We live, we talked about this on the podcast a number of times, we live in an era where the march of technology feels inevitable. OK, it feels absolutely inevitable, like, you know, AI, the search engines, all of these big companies. It feels like they're so powerful. There is sort of nothing we can do about it. And we can, you know, raise our voices every now and again and shake our fist every now and again. But the future is going to be the future. And actually the role of a government is to say, I wonder if we could define future in our own way.

36:17In the same way that the setting up of the BBC, they didn't have to do that. They just chose as a society to do it. In the same way, we didn't have to set up the welfare state after the war. We chose as a society to do it. There are times where you can choose to do something. And I would say now with the march of AI into so many industries and into all of our lives, now is a time for a government to say, as a country, the point of being a government, The government is not a government is there to say, who do we want to be as a country? Who do we want to be as a people? Are there big, giant bullies that we want to see off?

36:50That's the job of a government. And culture is such an easy place to start with that because it's so ever present all the time. And it's so popular and everybody, everybody consumes it all the time. So I would have thought that a few very well-aimed cultural blows to some of the big tech giants and to the future of AI wouldn't be a bad way to start the next part of this century. Absolutely. I really think that it's worth boosting something that other countries would invent if they could. Yes. If only there are examples of polarised and fractured media landscapes for us to look at right now and see what the political result is.

37:27Yeah. And also, by the way, some people want that because we all know people who thrive on chaos and that's how they want the country to go. But those of us who don't, we can put our foot down. I thought also Tim Davey talked very smartly about how the future of the BBC is also on social media. And I think BBC is already the biggest news brand on Instagram, which is an achievement that shouldn't be overlooked. And talking about going to TikTok and YouTube and all of those things. and again if anyone's sitting at home thinking oh god this we don't need to be trendy we don't need to do this side the other you do i mean i'm afraid that's where the audience is i mean there's there's no point saying why don't you just commission more challenging programs on bbc one and beef up the news because yeah that's not where the audience is they're not going to see it and this audience is real this audience has a hunger for information and intelligence and don't forget if you're in a generation that grows up in an age of disinformation and you're smart which an awful lot of this generation are.

38:27You're looking for something. You are looking for someone to give you something. You cannot roll over and just let the algorithm give you everything. There is a group of people hungry for things, hungry for information, hungry for news. And I felt, having listened to Tim Davies' speech, that that's something that he at least understands and will hopefully drag the BBC towards. Absolutely. And as you say, the remit of all these people is public service. It's not public service as we've always known it, half-hour, one-hour programmes or news in a particular style. It doesn't have to be any of those things.

39:03It just has to be public service. And so, as you say, to go where the audience is and to do all sorts of different things is part of the future. And we also have to be grown up and understand that the BBC is not going to be perfect and that there are always going to be issues and problems and difficult people who work there. And, you know, I'm compromised. I do a show there. I mean, it's not, it's a small part of what I do, but I definitely do work there. So you can take everything I'm saying with a pinch of salt. I couldn't absolutely be in the pocket of big BBC. I'm not, I think we have a fight for our culture ahead of us.

39:37So it's hard for me to talk about the BBC. My husband works at the BBC. I feel, you know, passionately pro it in every way. But yes, of course, we have to talk about it. And I, you know, it is difficult. And another thing we have to talk about is this speech, which I'm afraid was a bit overshadowed by an Instagram repost by Gary. And it's difficult. He's now leaving Match of the Day and he's not going to host the World Cup coverage. Essentially, I was thinking this morning and thinking, you know, that saying all political careers end in failure. I have to say that all stellar BBC careers can often end badly or sadly in one way or another.

40:15And it's just, there's something about the organisation. There are so many idiosyncratic things about the BBC, the way it reports on itself all the time. There were all of those things we know about them. And in some ways, these things are sort of slightly irresistible, as it were. But I do think when a speech is all about trust and when the future is all about trust, I know that what Gary, I certainly haven't spoken to him about this, but I've read what he said, saying, you know, I think the situation in Gaza is more important than BBC. You know, of course, of course. But I think that's a false binary.

40:47I think many, many things are more important than the BBC. But what is absolutely vital is the free and fair and trusted reporting of those things being brought to the world. And it always has been. And if in any way you are undermining that trust, then you are undermining something much sort of more important about those things. however well-meaning however well-meaning however compassionate and I should you know I think that's really important to say I and I do slightly feel that in lots of ways and I understand how so many people feel they can't do anything apart from say things on social media at this time and we live in an era where people feel like you know if you don't say something on social media then perhaps you have you don't mind about it which isn't necessarily the case but I do think that when so many posts on Instagram and Twitter and whatever are helping two very specific situations.

41:43And those are the situations of Mark Zuckerberg and Elon Musk. The more we know about these platforms and the more we understand how they, you know, monetize discord and how they monetize anger and how they monetize people staying on the platform. I sometimes think that all of us have the potential to be working for those people for free in a way that actually doesn't sort of help anything particularly. Yeah, culturally it's fascinating because if you do care a great deal about something, you have two choices if you have a social media following and that is to say something or to not say something and people mustn't think that if someone is not saying something then that is them not caring.

42:24There is a choice you can make to think if I say something, is it going to advance the cause that I believe in? Is it going to make the end of the situation I want to end quicker or if I don't say something is that going to actually advance the cause or if I say something is it is it going to uh actually work in the opposite direction I think the way our culture works at the moment there are arguments for both of those things so I absolutely understand why some people use their platform in that way and I understand why some people don't but I also understand and by the way I think Gary understands and Tim Davy understands that there comes a point where the place the BBC needs to go and the place Gary Lineker needs to go are different places and that's okay because they are different and I think probably they all shook hands together rather happily you know you get people who've worked at the BBC for a really really long time and they genuinely care passionately about it and who then leave and you talk to them and they just go I can wake up in the morning and I don't have to panic that, you know, suddenly I'm going to be on the front page of something.

43:27I don't have to panic about every single word of every single thing I say, you know, being picked over. I agree, that thing of being picked over, but it's who's doing the picking over sometimes and I think that those people are often the BBC's enemies and it does make me laugh somewhat mirthlessly when I read the sheer amount of coverage of something Gary Lineker said in, like, The Times or The Sunday Times and I think, oh, well, I mean, I wonder who's been more of a poison to this world. Is it Gary Lineker or is it Rupert Murdoch, whose own presenters in America we saw undermining American democracy, something we all took for granted until quite recently and now no longer do.

44:06The amount of poison dripped into that body politic by Rupert Murdoch, and yet you'll never read about that in The Times or The Sunday Times. So when I see them making endless hair out of it, we wish them all well, but it is a reminder that we are all in the gutter. And please, please remember that. And we're all in the gutter. Some of us are looking at the stars, but one star we're not going to be looking at for much longer on the BBC is Gary Dennecke. Thank you for winding that up so neatly. That's what we call a button in the business. We sewed a button on the end of it. So we talked about Diddy and the BBC, but now we are going to talk about the biggest news of the week, which is what you did last Thursday.

44:41You were in a long queue for a disappointing reason. it's never much of a happy reason is it being a long queue but i was in the queue for a le boo boo let me briefly describe this thing it is a little key ring about i'm about this big it is half monster half fluffy thing um it's a sort of bag charm i guess um rihanna's popularized them lisa from blackpink anyway this sort of came a thing last year they cost 17 pounds 50 at retail price. Anyhow, I promised my daughter one for a reason. She worked very hard on something that I'd slightly dropped the ball on and we had to do it quite quickly. She said, can I have one?

45:23And I said, yes. Obviously, I thought you'd be able to buy it on Amazon, like every other thing that comes into my house. Just a constant river of money flowing one way towards Jeff Bezos. And also, to be fair, towards Lauren Sanchez. And towards Lauren Sanchez. Which you resent far less. I'm happy to. I'm happy. If anything, I just want to buy it. I'm going to leave here and buy some more stuff anyhow so i i said i'll go on thursday she said oh you have to go on thursday because they have drops of the new merchandise of this stuff and um i said okay but i'll go on thursday because like everyone's at school right so there's not going to be a queue okay i got to westfield white city which uh any regular listeners of this podcast will know i believe to be in a cursed space and i got there 45 minutes before the shop opened the queue i thought was about 250 people but i I hadn't actually realised it went round a corner.

46:07It was about 400 people long at that time. By the way, they're not mothers like me buying them for their children. They are, you know, in their 20s buying them for them, OK? And it was a very respectful queue. It's really depressing, though. Everyone was just on their phones. No one spoke. There was no camaraderie. It's not like Prime where, you know, as our producer, Joey, mentioned you just punch someone in Asda and then you can get a bottle. That's not like that. Not that particular craze. I had three and a half hours in this queue. Three and a half hours? Yes. And when I got 10 people from the front, the very nice people who work in the shop came out.

46:43And I've discovered during this queue, by the way, that I wasn't even queuing for the toy. I was queuing for a ticket for the toy that I would come back later before 9pm to get the toy. Okay, so once I'd got over that, I'm 10 from the front and they come out and say, I'm so sorry, we have now sold all our stock. Wow. I know. Wow. So I thought, I'm suddenly getting a podcast. item out of this in fact that's what i was thinking about so in the queue i was thinking about this is one of these toys it's kind of like lots there's been a proliferation of these types of toy crazes over the past few years for me it used to be sort of generational obviously go right the way back to when i was a child there was cabbage patch kids and then you know there were beanie babies and things like that it's almost generational it's kind of once every 10 years or whatever it is.

47:29It's now almost, now so many toys come like this. They come in drops. There's scarcity. Well, I'll get onto this in a minute, but it reminds me a lot about how De Beers controlled the diamond market, which we'll get to. Very similar. Well, actually, do you know how I used to buy diamonds? In fact, they still do this. De Beers, they completely controlled the diamond supply. That was what was crucial, okay? So they had rough diamonds, and they had to constantly create the exactly right and calibrate the illusion of scarcity. and they have something called the Central Selling Organisation, which is effectively a cartel.

48:02If you were a buyer, you were called what was called a site holder and you were summoned to London 10 times a year and you go to the Central Selling Organisation and there is a private room with a chair. This is genuinely how it happens. There's a chair and a table and they distributed you one cardboard box like a shoebox. It was a blind box, rather like these LeBuboos, can I say, which you don't know what you're buying. It's a blind box. You don't know what's inside. and they distribute you one cardboard box, like a shoebox, and it was an assortment of rough diamonds. They chose for you. You were a diamond cutting factory.

48:35They chose for you. They gave you what you thought you needed or what they thought was appropriate for the world diamond market, and that was it. It could be a million dollars worth or it could be$30 million worth. You got what you got, as my daughter's teacher used to say. You get what you get and you don't get upset, and that's it. And you pay cash. They never, ever reduce their prices. This is just like Lububu, right? but what they do is they cut back supply so they can create that kind of world within the market. So blind boxes is very interesting. And I love the idea that your version of a blind box is diamonds because my version of a blind box would be something different.

49:09So when you buy a Labubu, as you say, you literally get a sealed box. You do not know which version of the Labubu you're going to get because there's all sorts of different versions. You know what version, but you don't know what doll within that version. Yes, yes, exactly. So you don't know exactly what you're getting and some are scarcer than others and so you could open the box and get one that's worth a lot of money or you could open the box and get one that you know everyone else has got and there are online marketplaces where you can swap and all those sorts of things so it's a market so it's almost a form of gambling agreed agreed what it's exactly like is panini football stickers yeah so panini football stickers you'd be you have no idea which six or five stickers you're going to get in your thing you open them up some of them you've been waiting for ages for you go into the playground and you can swap them it's that but every single one of them as you say costs a lot of money and most of the people who are collecting them are in their 20s so it's it's it's a it's a weird sort of older online marketplace and funnily enough labubu is this obsession of course with japanese and korean culture at the moment and it's interesting that labubu really really took off when lisa from blackpink had one hanging off a bag and lisa from Blackpink is virtually the biggest star in the whole world.

50:21Younger podcast listeners will know her from Blackpink and from her own solo career. Older podcast listeners will know her as Mook from White Lotus. She starred in that. She bestrides the whole of our culture like a colossus. But the US is not the cultural centre of our world anymore. You really realise this when you go into this shop. It's sold by a retailer called Popmart. And it's all just, it's Korean media. But that's the interesting thing is because Korea and Japan have got a stranglehold on our popular culture. And China have been going, hold on, why don't we have a stranglehold on popular culture?

50:58And actually, LeBoubou is Chinese. So Popmart is a Chinese company. I think it's not the sort of thing that the Chinese government were thinking, this is the thing we want to spread Chinese culture worldwide. I think the 70 year old men who run China think this might be a bit trite for them. They prefer Nerja, the big movie they loved, and Wukong, the video game leacings that are based on kind of ancient Chinese lore. So I think that Lububu was not the thing they were looking really to break Chinese culture abroad. But this is the first big Chinese entry into the market, which has been dominated by Korea and Japan.

51:34But yeah, anyone in their teens and 20s, the whole cultural axis of the world has shifted, right? We were obsessed with America. They are obsessed with Japan and Korea. and that's why you're queuing up for three and a half hours. So you didn't get anything? No, no, I didn't. But they're also obsessed, I think, or they don't know any better than, which is my old voice talking, the gamification of the buying process. And I've seen some people say, oh, it's called gambolification or whatever it is, but that kind of blind box culture where the kind of risk and uncertainty and weirdly like actually disappointment is part of the appeal.

52:14I know someone whose daughter got two boxes for her grandmother for Christmas and they were the same. That seems to me just so rotten, you know, because it's so hard to get them. And rather like gamblers are actually addicted. When people understand gambling addiction, they understand that gambling addiction is an addiction really to losing, because that is actually what you know most of the time, that it's a form of it is a complicated and difficult form of self-loathing and all sorts of things like that. But weirdly, just the things that they like, disappointment is part of the appeal. and almost thinking of buying things and consumerism as a game of chance, a spin of the wheel.

52:49The interesting thing is, you know, if blind boxes are banned in China, so, you know, for children, the Chinese government understands that's a form of gambling. So, you know, you are not able to buy blind boxes if you're a child in China. Is it sad? I don't think it's new. I think Panini football stickers were always this. Just, I guess they were a little cheaper. Yes, but that's for children. I realise I was trying to buy this for a 10-year-old girl, but in general, as I said, I was a freak. I was the freak in the queue. I was not the 20 to 28-year-old person who's buying it for themselves. And the thing itself, you know, people call it like, OK, so let's think about the thing itself, this fluffy little cutie, slight little monster thing.

53:32There is a sort of infantilisation to all of these things, to sort of wanting something like that, I think, in your 20s. And, you know, this is not, I'm not saying this is a judgement. I've talked before about cosplay and how that sprung up in Japan after the 1990 financial crisis. That retreat in a world that's basically failed young people. And I really do believe it has the retreat into childlike things and and to comforting things and little treat in the absence of being able to sort of have any wider purchase on society, I think is is linked. And also people do talk about that thing, the lipstick index, you know, that sort of economic indicator that sales of affordable luxury items, which I think you'd class this as, increase in economic downturns.

54:19And people think that actually it's a sort of canary in the coal mine. And if you see these things happening, then what's around the corner is a significant economic downturn because, you know, the kind of market knows before you. Don't take investment advice for me. I thought after talking about Diddy and the Gary Lineker thing, I thought this would be a lovely light end to the show. And you're saying this is a precursor to economic Armageddon. I'm not saying it definitely is. Listen, I don't know, but there's something odd that has happened to consumerism where that is tolerated as part of the process.

54:50The blind thing, that came from... What were those dreadful little tramps? I hated them. The LOLs. OK, you don't know what those are. LOL surprise or a little doll? Sorry. They're dreadful little things. no um and now those lol surprises those were blind boxes and that was a sort of and you know you see the whole the whole unboxing culture of all of it but you don't know what's in it the idea that sort of risk and disappointment is a welcomed part of the consumer experience i mean i was honestly i love it you love it i love i love yeah i love that sort of thing because oh yeah but i do but i enjoy that sort of thing i you know you go to a shopper it just makes shopping more fun i don't care about shopping right doesn't interest me in any way whatsoever what I do like is a little gamble is a ring quest you like a ring quest to get a key ring right okay yeah that did me fine now what did your daughter say when you came home without your Lubaboo she was oh sorry Lubaboo she was massively disappointed and I tried to explain that I came for three and a half hours and hadn't done actually any of my work which I was very worried about it didn't cut any mustard then somebody told me that down the back of a the address of a shop where you can buy one for yes 38 pounds so basically double right and there's no queue you just walk in and this is so the people buying all the sets are going and then reselling them in in shops for and i'm actually quite surprised they only do 100 markup because honestly after so i'm afraid i spent an absolutely disgusting amount on it my husband kept texting me I'm so surprised you're doing this.

56:25Not the spinning up of the markup. I don't think he was surprised about that. But I can't believe you're in the queue. I'm so surprised you're doing this. I'm honestly surprised. You're really surprising me now. Leave the queue. And I was like, I can't. I'm getting closer. But that's it. You see, you were hooked. They've got you hooked immediately. Yes, that's bad. Do you think? You're going to be hooked on something. You might as well be queuing up for a little toy. I'm hooked on a little stuff. I don't need anything more. I don't need to be hooked on keyring queues. I can't be. I'll tell you what I did think was quite interesting in a slightly more positive thing is that lots of cinemas have started doing like those, you know, like, oh, it's a surprise screening.

56:59So you don't know what you're going to get. And Netflix has that thing, doesn't it? You know, play me something or whatever it's called where you can see. And there are there are various things that people feel perhaps people feel like they've been able to curate and decide and whatever too much. Maybe there's an element of that where an element of chance coming into it is kind of fun and surprising. But yes, I mean, it's not for me, but, you know, I'm 104, so why would I have enjoyed the queue? But LeBubu, they're available in your local shop. Yes, you're probably not available in your local shop.

57:28They're not available. Please don't tell anyone they're available. Again, don't take LeBubu advice from me. I'll tell you what you didn't used to get when we were growing up or even in our 20s and 30s. You didn't used to walk down a high street and suddenly, for absolutely no reason, see a queue of 49 teenagers outside a random shop. Yeah. And now every time you go anywhere, you think, oh, it's an enormous queue for people who are just at the shop, Either it's for like bell buns or it's for trainers or it's, you know, a model railway shop. You think, OK, that's interesting. They love they love queuing.

57:58Yeah. Well, there's been a drop. It's the gamification of all of it. I'm going to end on a negative if I carry on much longer. I'm wrapping up here, Richard. I love I see. I love it. My whole career has been a gamification of something or other. I disagree that I don't see that as a reading of your career at all. And I think your career has been something much more. open and living. Listen, you would know more about my career than me. I know, I wouldn't, but I don't have that reading of it. I don't feel that you've tried to rip people off and create hype and despair. Oh no, definitely not that.

58:28I don't think gamification is that. I think gamification is just making something more fun. It's having quests, is achieving things. That's what I like. Well, let's end on your incorrect opinion then. Have you any recommendations? That's a head of a catchphrase, by the way. No, all my recommendations, I'm afraid, would be watching the Giro d 'Italia with Italian commentary, which I'm absolutely obsessed with. Is it coming past the house? It is, yeah. So we're not going to be able to get out of the house tomorrow. But I love listening to foreign language commentary on something because I have no idea what they're saying at any point.

59:00They do not stop talking at any point, but the rhythms of it are so familiar to me. And I know when they're doing a gag, I know when they're doing banter. I know when they're talking about someone being disappointing, the whole thing. I've loved watching, but I know that doesn't count as a recommendation. I apologise to everyone. That sounds like being with me on this podcast. But anyway, we have a questions and answers episode coming up, as usual, on Thursday. And for our members, if you want to join, it's therestisentertainment.com. We have a bonus episode about Pixar, the whole story of Pixar, which is a really interesting one.

59:34Can I say, because I know people worry that Liesl and Lottie are being well looked after. There's people living in the house looking after Liesl and Lottie. you mustn't worry. Well, while we're in Italy, they are being loved and fed. Thank you so much for that. And I look very much forward to seeing you on Thursday. See, we did end on some good news. See you on Thursday. See you on Thursday.

1:00:11Well, that brings us to the end of another episode of The Rest is Entertainment, brought to you by our friends at Sky. I have been catching up on The Last of Us recently, such a gripping watch. Absolutely right. The critics are fairly unanimous. It's dark and intense, brilliantly done, they're all saying, especially on your Sky glass with its high quality screen. Even those very low lit scenes, every flicker, every detail, it really pulls you in. One minute you'll be stretched out on the sofa, the next you'll be gripping the cushion and that is not a euphemism. The picture quality really just brings everything to life from the comfort of your living room.

1:00:39it feels properly cinematic, like the room fades away and you're in the thick of it. Until the clickers show up, then it feels a bit too real. Well, that's when you reach for the blanket, the perfect night in. Couldn't agree more. So for anyone wanting to upgrade this screen time, head to Sky.com and check out Sky TV.