Gino D'Acampo & The Superbowl

0:03Hello and welcome to this episode of The Rest is Entertainment with me Marina Hyde. And me, Richard Osman. Hello, everybody. Hello, Marina. How are you, Richard? You've been somewhere very exciting. I've been over to LA, if you've ever heard of it. Little Hampton. That's not the bit I thought was exciting. And Palm Springs. That I did think sounded great. Which I've never been before, which I absolutely loved. It's so kind of 50s, it's like, you know, where Frank Sinatra lived. Like, all the roads are called Frank Sinatra Way and Bob Hope Avenue and all that. No, I absolutely loved Palm Springs.

0:31Could they not have just called it my way? Oh, that's so clever. When you move to the municipality, this is one of the first things you can suggest at your local council meeting. Yeah. And then you go, how do I get to the golf course? Well, you can either take my way or the highway. And I know that you've just been, whenever we come to Spotify, this is like behind the curtain stuff, they always have snacks and the snacks are things you've never, ever seen before anywhere. It's almost like a basket full of things that people bring onto Dragon's Den. And what have you just eaten? I've just eaten something called Kiyo Mango Crunchy Chips.

0:59If you could take something as beautiful and pure as a mango and turn it into sort of a form of what's-it that isn't nice like a what's-it. This is no offence to Spotify, who I love. Yes. The snacks are a war crime, and I'm being kind. But thank you for them. Obviously, I edited all. You did the whole thing, yeah. Oh, yeah, the whole packet. What are we talking about this week? We'll talk about this week's cancellations. I see it's another difficult year for men in television. Yes, Gino De Campo. Gino De Campo. We'll also talk about the sort of ongoing Carla, Sophia Gascon, Oscars, Amelia Perez controversy.

1:34I mean, that's a rolling cancellation there. What else are we going to talk about? Billie Eilish has a new fragrance out. We're going to talk about the history of celebrity fragrances. We're doing a deep dive into celebrity fragrances, which is one of my specialist areas. You know what? There's a lot going on. And it was the Super Bowl. We're recording this on a Monday morning and it was the Super Bowl last night. And obviously, we'll be talking about various sort of entertainment related angles to that. Shall we start with Juno? Okay, so we'll begin with Gino De Campo. Investigated by your own channel's news operation is never a good look, but we see it quite often.

2:05Normally the BBC. Yeah. And ITN are thinking, come on, surely we can get one. We must have a few. Look at our schedules. Dozens of inappropriate remarks down the years. Yes. And he's clearly been spoken to more than once by productions he's worked on. It's always to sort of, you know, people like runners who are having to come and tell him, you know, what the next set up is. It is just so boringly, awfully familiar. Yeah, and when you're one of those people who has to be on a crew and you're up at ridiculous times in the morning, you're working often for very low wages if you're in the really junior position.

2:34And also, by the way, you're just starting and you're thinking, this could be a great career for me and I'm not going to rock the boat and this is going to be exciting. Yeah, I mean, there's going to be a little bit of swearing in this episode, but it's only in the Gino quote mark. So if one of the things he says to you is, I'd like to turn you over and f*** you against the kitchen counter, I mean, the person who reported that one said, you know, people sort of tittered, but nobody confronts him and it's sort of interesting that nobody confronts in that situation and there's lots of different reasons there's a sort of reason that oh it's just Gino being Gino and there is a very much a persona that he has been encouraged to play up to so we'll come to that there's another reason which we know it's the type of shows he's involved in they're not very expensive if you go and take him away and say that that's going to derail you by you an hour or two and there's these constant clearly sort of value judgments of being made by people how bad is it perhaps this is okay perhaps we just Should we just get on with today and see if it hasn't been tomorrow?

3:26I'm afraid to say. I think that you can really feel that in so many of these accounts. I mean, there are other ones sort of, you know, that are almost comical in their awfulness. There's one that he says, if you don't get me a Cornetto, I'll f*** your girlfriend. Yeah, so ITV have shelved some of the shows that he was involved with and are not doing more shows. Now, it's interesting, isn't it? Because you could look at it on one level and some of the papers have done, and certainly a lot of the commentators have done, and just said, oh my God, really? you can't say anything anymore. And this is a huge overreaction and yada, yada, yada.

3:57This stuff does not happen. People do not lose their job just because they said a couple of things a couple of times. It's a pattern of behavior. It's upset a number of people over a number of years. And we've said before on this show, if you are in trouble as a presenter, but actually your crew loves you and the people who work with you just go, do you know what? That's just what they do. And he's a really decent guy. Then you don't get fired. There There has to be a whole series of things that happen. It has to go on long enough and for it to be tiresome enough, which is the word we never use, right?

4:30What it is, is tiresome. What it is, is people are trying to do their job and endlessly coming up against this. I was talking to a friend of mine who worked in the 90s with a very big Saturday Night Star. And she was saying day after day after day, it was sexualized comments all day, every day, always being laughed in by the producers, always being laughed in by the crew. In those days, there's nothing you could do. There's nothing you could do. There's nowhere to go because what are you going to say? You know, you said some rude words to me and upset me. There would be short shrift. And I think it's probably better that we live in a world where when enough people, and we've talked before, people who work in TV are pretty tough.

5:09I mean, they really are. These people are working long hours. You know, there's no very few hangers-on on a TV set. And if enough of them have come forward and just said, do you know what I'm just tired of all of this I'm tired I'm trying to do my job and I don't need sexualized comments every time I come in with a cup of coffee you know at some point if you're a channel you have to go okay I've heard enough now I am uncomfortable with having this person on my channel I'm uncomfortable with paying this person an awful lot of money where there's other people I could be doing the same to well I think that's a bigger part of it in lots of ways Don't forget that Gino De Campo provides, he starts as the chef or whatever on this morning, but he's slowly taken over bits of the schedule.

5:52But during that time, he will have become more and more expensive. And there is a certain point that you just think, oh, you know, we used to pay you this. Now we pay you this. And this is definitely not acceptable at this price point. Some of the show, people are saying, well, you know, they've been pulled from the schedules. All the shows have been pulled from the schedules. And I was thinking, can I have a little look at what some of these are? And I was looking at some of them. There was something, first of all, there's the existence of the channel ITVB, which many people may not even be aware of its existence.

6:22There was Fred and Gino on something called Emission Impossible, which is a show he did with Fred Siriax. That same sort of thing, he comes up through one type of show and then suddenly they're presenting all the shows. This one followed Fred and Gino on an epic eco-friendly adventure across Austria and Croatia as they discovered the true cost of going green. I was like, oh wait, they're not going to be able to show that again. Oh, no, surely contextualise and explain. Don't pull down that beautiful statue. I mean, really, some of these things, I think, but we're also seeing the Greg Wallace effect, let's be quite honest, which is that other people are thinking, well, I've put up with this nonsense with people I've had to work with.

6:59Again, someone who started off as in quite a small role and then became bigger and bigger and bigger and more and more and more expensive. And then people are just saying, oh, I don't have to be involved with it. Can we say a little bit, though, about the difficulty for certain, if you're not a master of intellect and nuance, and I'm not suggesting that Gino De Campo is or isn't, I think I am. If your persona is, you are an Italian cheeky chappy and we're going to let you cook in an apron with no clothes on on this morning because you said if they ever won an award, you'd do it. There is some sort of suggestion that your persona is supposed to be that.

7:32Yes. And that when you fail to understand the line, that's not just on you. I wonder how many times he was spoken to. And also, of course, he did Celebrity Juice. And Celebrity Juice, if you want to stray close to that line, I mean, it literally walked to the other side of that line almost endlessly. It's one of those shows that I suspect will age very, very badly. Yeah, definitely. I suspect, because it had a certain take which was of its time, and that time probably no longer with us. But yeah, he was encouraged on that show to be that character as well. And also, by the way, probably lots of that is his character.

8:05You are allowed to do sexualised banter in your daily life. You are allowed to do it if your friends like it, if your family like it, if the people around you like it. You are allowed to do it. If whatever club you belong to, if you're at the golf club and you do that and everyone's laughing all the time, you must absolutely go ahead. It's really great if you don't do it to people on sort of low to minimum wage who are just trying to get their start in the industry and are a lot younger than you. Exactly. So he is saying, I don't recognise myself in this, you know, which we've heard a lot of times before.

8:33He doesn't recognise himself. I don't recognise my behaviour. But it's surely the exact behaviour, but just a little bit more. I entirely recognise him in it. And I don't feel like he's a star for me. I don't really watch the shows he's in. Well, you know, he is a pretty big star. So he does Family Fortunes, which is a big show for ITV. He does the Fred Siriax, Gordon Ramsay and Gino DeCampo, their big adventure, which is ITV's version of Top Gear, really. Yes. And did very good numbers for them. He's a much-loved presence on screen. Whatever you think about him, you know, he has people like him, viewers like him.

9:05We are, of course, now in a world where that sort of doesn't matter. anymore because you know viewers are declining and you know you can replace people and nothing ever really happens which the the channels have started working out but you know he's a significant presence on that channel it's not like they've thrown someone under the bus who they don't work with or who does a series of shows that don't really work for them well firstly it shows that people are incredibly bored of having to work in those sorts of environments and by the way doesn't doesn't necessarily mean they're offended right because you know no one's particularly being offended by this they are bored by it because you know it's not they're not they're the butt of the joke yeah they're not they're not enjoying annoying and tiring in on the joke exactly and you know you can put up with that for so long but 12 people complaining i suspect tells its own story but also the world where you know talent is much more disposable now you know talents and channels which have been tied together yoked together for so many years that bond is completely breaking you know talent go off and do their own things and have their own you know brand extensions and make their own money channels have fewer and fewer bits of real estate and fewer and fewer new shows that they can give to talent anyway so it feels like just one of those things for itv maybe five years ago they wouldn't have done it 10 years ago they wouldn't have done it 20 years ago they certainly wouldn't have done it but now there's nothing stopping them someone's complaining about him they sort of agree they've asked around people have gone yeah that is actually what the atmosphere is like and they've gone okay we're done and of course gino de campos uh origin story was he came out of prison and then set up an Italian catering company but he went to prison people know this I think but anyone who doesn't it's one of the most extraordinary showbiz facts.

10:40He went to prison for burgling Paul Young's house. So Paul Young's house in North London, Gino DiCampo befriended his au pair, steals Paul Young's guitars, platinum disc video recorder, fax machine jewellery, cash all sorts of things. Was caught because he dropped a cigarette butt at Paul Young's house and his DNA was on it and went to prison for two years and that seems to be slightly swept under the carpet when people talk about what a cheeky chappy he is. Crikey. I think he knew that it was coming because there's an interesting interview he gave at the launch of some... I can't remember who he was talking to.

11:15And he was saying... This is just in October, by the way. I'm the most censored man on TV. He said, behind the scenes, people on my shows freak out because I don't know where to draw the line. I mean, really. And then he said, ITV freak out when they give me a show, but they know that I mean well and that whatever I say it comes from a good place. I don't do anything I wouldn't do in everyday life. And he says, thinking about how many people are being cancelled nowadays who came out of the spotlight for one reason or another, right or wrong, well, I'm still here and I have no intention of going anywhere.

11:44That was October. Oh no. Yeah, I think there is a sense though that all of these things are so sort of historical, well not historical, but they've just all been going on for so long that people have suddenly realised belatedly, obviously, belatedly, oh hang on, there are quite a few people before me but I've seen quite a few of them have been sent packing. And now there's not much of a firewall between me and the forces of cancellation. And I think that someone like him probably thought, oh, it's coming. There is a level where you know. The interesting thing for the future, of course, is channels won't be able to sack talent because talent won't need channels, exactly what we were just talking about.

12:17Actually, they'll work for whoever they want to. They'll work for themselves. They have their own brands. They have their own YouTube channels. So no one's going to fire these people. They're still going to have to have runners and they're still going to have to have directors and they're still going to have to have people working for them. But they'll be the owners of the company. They'll be the CEO of the company. They'll be the star of the company. They'll be on a platform that's not going to sack them. And actually, we live in the last days where a BBC or an ITV can actually fire you for this sort of behaviour.

12:45We won't be able to fire these people ever in future. I wonder who will be the last one. I don't think he'll be the last one, but we're near the last. It's the last days of those type of cancellations. Because if you look through lots of the comments, There's lots of people saying, I would not be offended by this and I don't care about this. It's not. They haven't. Many of those commenters haven't necessarily absorbed the power imbalance that we were talking about, which is it's really it's very, very different if you're a runner. And if he's saying it to, I don't know, his co-presenter, then fine.

13:16Yes. But it's very, very different. The power imbalance there is a thing. And also, by the way, they haven't understood that it doesn't matter if they wouldn't be offended by it. I mean, there's other things that they would be offended by that they would complain about. and this happens to be a thing that... They're offended by this cancellation. Yeah, exactly. You've logged on about that. And now I've got to hear about it. No, it's right. But, you know, and I think it's the same with the Greg Wallace thing. If you're able to do that banter with the people above you and they don't mind, there's an assumption you can do it with the people below you and they won't mind either.

13:44And that's on you and that's also on the people above you. Yeah, if you haven't thought it through, there are people who are close to all sorts of lines and are funny, but it's all equal opportunities and they don't sort of punch down, as it were. and there are lots and lots and lots of talented, creative, comic people in television like that who will never get cancelled for reasons like this because they understand. But I just feel like he's completely failed to understand and also he's become expensive and they've probably thought, we can just create another person like you. We don't have to worry.

14:14The basic rule is this, I think. If it's someone's job to bring you a cup of coffee, they do not want to hear about your cock. But, you know, simple. Wow, well, put it on page one of Osman's Rules to Telly because, but you know what? It served you very well. And I actually, yes, I think that should probably be rule one. I should obviously say that Gina has denied the allegations and said that he's never been made aware of any of the matters previously. I'm a father, husband, and have worked with well over 1 ,500 people on around 80 productions in my career, which I've been so proud of. I take such matters extremely seriously and the suggestion that he's ever acted in an improper way is deeply upsetting.

14:50He has not denied Burgling Paul Young's house though. No. That he accepts. Now, from Gino De Campo to a very different sort of cancellation for a very different reason. This one in Hollywood, this one about the film Emilia Perez, and this one, the cancellation of the actress Carla Sofia Gascon. Who is the star of Emilia Perez, which is a sort of strange semi-fantasy transgender musical. She plays a Mexican drug lord who transitions. And as we've discussed before, somebody mined all the old tweets and found that racist disparaging towards Jews, Muslims, lesbians, Black and Asian people, George Floyd, perhaps most significantly towards the 2021 Oscar ceremony.

15:32This was acquired by Netflix. It's basically a French film that seems to have been shot somewhere just outside Paris, but is set in Mexico and doesn't really have any Mexican crew or anything like that. But it was 100 % going to win the Oscar. I mean, it was so far ahead in the Oscar race. In the betting, Emilia Perez was far and away the favourite. It's not now. Now it's definitely not winning the next one. Liberal Hollywood thought that this is the thing that they should like because it has a transgender person in it. I ended up writing about it last week and I said it was a five-star controversy for a three-star film, which I feel is...

16:06I think it's a four-star film. Okay. And a four-star controversy. So it's eight stars from both of us. It's interesting. They're now in this ridiculous situation because we know how much Netflix wants awards. As we've talked about before, when they thought they were in with a shout for Roma, they literally bought an entire marketing agency that does just the awards. So let me tell you when Netflix co-chair Ted Sarandos finds out who didn't go through the old tweets because that really should be day one. And one of the interesting things that people are talking about now is do you actually start tweet mining at the casting stage process?

16:40People will know. But I'm stunned that Netflix, you care so much about this. there'll be so many people working on this campaign, didn't go back and sort of delete all the tweets because... Well, it's interesting, isn't it? Because Emilia Perez, like Baby Reindeer, funnily enough, slightly came out of left field in terms of being a huge hit. You know, it's not one of those ones where right at the beginning Netflix were involved, you know, all overcasting and all that stuff. This thing came into them and everyone's excited about it. They acquired it after it was a hit at Cannes. Exactly. They acquired it.

17:07So the due diligence perhaps wasn't done in a way that it might have been with a show that was wholly owned or, you know, or had a lot of money behind it. Day one after you've acquired it, you should have done it. It's just sloppiness. But for everyone in every film? Yeah. To go through every tweet of everyone, that's a job I wouldn't wish on anyone. Oh, I think in a film like that, that it's going to be eye-catching for all kinds of reasons. Well, I didn't. I mean, everybody's now said, oh, it's another campaign that's done it. It's a form of sabotage. I don't actually think it is. And people inside the business don't think it is.

17:33They think it's just an enterprising journalist who started to go through all these things themselves. But it's interesting. So now everyone's watching all the politics and they had one of these, I think it's something like the American Film Institute or whatever, had one of their sort of pre-award season lunches anyway last week. And there was an Emilia Perez table, which had Selena Gomez, Zoe Saldana and various people from that film. Ted did not sit on that table. He sat with the TV lot from Nobody Wants This. But, you know, so people sort of notice things like that. I have to say in the case of this one, that that is the lesson that people will take out of it, which is that you have to be, you have to nail down everything on all of these things.

18:11There are some all sorts of other controversies now and people are saying, oh, they should rescind the nomination. And there are people who think that she should never have been nominated in the women's category. By the way, can I just as a little sidebar, I think it's ridiculous that don't forget, it's really stupid that the acting category is the only category that is divided. OK, we have best woman director, best male director. And this is purely because the acting branch of the Academy wants to maximise awards and attention. As many actors as possible. They're actors, right? And that's fine when you go to see the movies for actors.

18:43In my view, they should have 10 best performances, like we have 10 best pictures now, and it should be like that. However, and that would show up much more clearly that women do not get nominated in the directing category. They didn't get nominated in all sorts of things. This is a way of making it so that people don't even look at it and say, oh, look, there's lots of women have turned up and won. So I think that there's no... We're not talking about Olympic sport here. There is no advantage in the female category. I would say to you that it's much more important that we have directors, women represented in all of those categories.

19:18And, you know, the sound engineers, all the other many, many categories. None of these categories are divided at the Oscars. And this is purely an attention thing for performance that the actors branch loves. That sounded like something you've wanted to say for years. No, no. I just find it sort of funny that people, because it is sort of, you know, we talk about actor and actress and you say, you know, we don't even want to use those terms anymore. I do find it hilarious that, but what it does is it masks the lack of women in all the other categories because you end up seeing people in frocks getting awards and you've seen lots of pictures, but if you actually look, we'll go and have a look how many women actually win awards.

19:57We'll go. We won't go. We're going to go. We're not going to win. Well, we're going to the Oscars. No, I don't think we want to do that. Well, Gary Lennick is paying for us to go to the Oscars. But we'll see how many women won in all the categories if you strip out the acting category, which is a sort of thing of its own. And then you'll talk about what Hollywood needs to do in all types of representation, but particularly in terms of how many women have ever been nominated in the directing category. The interesting sidebar to this whole Carla-Sophia-Gascon thing is obviously Netflix are now not going to get the Best Picture Oscar for this.

20:27She's not going to get the Best Actress. But everything is being thrown behind Zoe Saldana are still getting best supporting actress. Oh, they've tried to firewall it. They've all like... Yeah, she's been very good and very impressive and talked about it. And I think she's going to manage it. I think they will win that one. I think she's, as you say, she's very successfully firewalled herself in this whole thing. And I think Netflix have thrown every single thing they've got into going, well, listen, let's get that one. Because that's a nice Oscar to get. Oh, it's all so ridiculous. Honestly, I can't say...

20:56I find it very difficult to take a huge amount of it seriously. But, you know, we shall see at the end how many women get energy. You know this is entertainment. Yeah, no, I know, but you have to laugh. Oh, the Oscars are ridiculous. You have to laugh. It's ridiculous, right? They're absolutely ridiculous. It's hard to take any of this in a sort of mega-serious way. You have to sort of laugh. In general, you have to realise that these are some of the most terrible people in the world spending vast amounts of money to win prizes that don't even make much difference to the bottom line because they really care about that level of self-regard and let's not take all of it too seriously.

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22:11Welcome back, everybody. What are we talking about now, Marina? Well, I hope this section of the show is coming to everyone in smell-o-vision or smell-o-audio. Yeah, you know, smell-o-audio. Smell-o-audio. Because we're going to talk about celebrity fragrance in the parlance of what it is. Billie Eilish has launched a new fragrance, which is called Your Turn. It's actually the fourth scent she's brought out. And if you're thinking, oh, that's not actually that Billie Eilish, is it? It doesn't feel like her vibe. Well, first of all, the people who you always make these fragrances in partnership with someone, and they said, oh, what's really, that's what it's her complete love of fragrance.

22:47Age 17, she had 120 bottles of fragrance, which is a lot. That's a party. and he's got top notes of peel, cardamom, fresh ginger heart notes of night blooming jasmines and coconut water and it dries down to captive musk's upcycled silver amber and Australian sandalwood captive musk sounds like a headline we want to hear in about five years time five days time if possible I'm very suggestible by the way if you say any of those things it's like giving me a glass of wine if you tell me what it tastes of I can taste every single thing you're possibly saying if you ask me to tell you what it tastes of can't tell you I don't know wine By the way, this is an absolute sidebar.