Grand Designs & Made-up Bands

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1:25Hello, everyone, and welcome to this edition of the Rest is Entertainment questions and answers episode. I am Marina Hyde. And I'm Richard Osman. Hi, Marina. Hi, acing it there. Just getting that intro right down. Beautiful. Can we start with a tiny bit of any other business? We talked about the chase last week. There's a great question about what's in it for the chasers. And the lovely Paul Sinner on Twitter had been listening and said he's talking about the celebrity one. We were talking really about the main punter one. And he said, why do we try so hard to stop money going to charity? the simple answer is professionalism and we'd be breaking contractual law if we did also nobody would watch and quoting Paul Sinner allows me to quote the title of his autobiography he's got the best title of an autobiography of all time which is one sinner lifetime that's good right once in a lifetime I still love Leonard Nimoy's the two autobiographies the first one which was called I am not Spock and then one which came out a few years later which is called I am Spock do you have any oh sorry i have so many other business because this listen this is a fast moving and developing story and i don't want to get too heavily into it but i read a headline this week that said jeff bezos's fiancee lauren sanchez sued by former yoga instructor over children's book yeah this is huge i don't know if you're being sued by a yoga instructor about your book that came out the same day i would have to have a yoga instructor first yeah well this woman says that lauren wanted her life she is i mean i have to say she's father suit without a lawyer i don't know okay i'm reading stuff off that maybe i shouldn't but you know where there's a hit there's a writ as we know so we'll have to wait and see that's developing i'm gonna say maybe ex yoga teacher yeah yeah oh yeah she no longer teaches how to do any of the moves his name i can't remember so that is paul sinner and lauren sanchez dealt with shall we get on to the questions i'd like to ask you something about royalty free music on behalf of nico holroy okay nico in the changing rooms at my gym says nico they play music that's so generic and derivative that i often find myself driven to shazam it anything rather than do the work at the gym if you're like let me just let me just spend 20 minutes on shazam one particular song was called my voluptuous disease wow which is remarkable in itself after seeing the shazam results i did some very shallow digging and found that the artists have around 30 to 40 monthly listeners these artists are going through the effort of setting up artist profiles on streaming platforms so presumably they have ambitions of success so i don't think it's library music so how and why are these songs being discovered and selected uh firstly nico thank you for painting a picture with words uh we we know a lot about your life now you've you've uncovered quite a huge story here actually because there's a huge court case in the states a couple of weeks ago and this is part of the same thing which is it is ai generated music it is fake music and there are huge scams now of people creating music with AI creating band names and songs with AI and having bots just constantly listen to it I don't know why it's playing at your gym that I think is interesting so I wonder if it's like a playlist that they've somehow subscribed to because if they have something very dodgy is going on I think it will save you 20 minutes on the wait just do anything do you know what before I do my next reps I might go and talk to the manager about the copyright of the music he is playing he's not in it's fine I'll wait I will wait in reception yeah so in the states there's a guy called Michael Smith, who did exactly that.

4:38He was a musician himself. He started off uploading songs from music catalogs, but he turned to AI-generated music and essentially just absolutely flooded Spotify with huge amounts of music, huge amounts of bands, huge amounts of songs, and had bots listening to them. He made more than$10 million from this. No way. Yeah. $10 million. Before at home, you sit there thinking, perhaps I'll do that. That sounds like a great idea. He's currently in court. He's been charged with wire fraud conspiracy and a lot of counts against him. And each count carries a maximum sentence of 20 years in prison. So Michael Smith is in an awful lot of trouble, although he did make 10 million.

5:19But he's got nothing to do with My Voluptuous Disease. He is not the My Voluptuous Disease guy. He had an alphabetised list. Some of his songs were called Zygotic Laney, Zygotic Wash Stands and Zyme Bedewing. for some of the names of the artists. Calliope Bloom, actually not a bad name. Callus Humane. That's like a character in a Marvel movie. And this sounds like an Edinburgh indie band. Calvinistic Dust. So these are all fakes. This is a huge thing. People are uploading this stuff, getting bots to listen to it. Spotify is sort of obviously across it and finding ways to deal with it. But the very fact it's been played in someone's gym, well, that's interesting, isn't it?

5:56Well, one of the other pieces of news this week was Lionsgate just turning over all their films and TV shows. to an AI company so that they can crawl all over it. And I quite like the idea. It's like Lionsgate. Right, right, okay. Are they training on Megalopolis, are they? Right, that'd be good then. And also, so they're getting paid a fortune for it, but obviously a one-off fee. But also that they are saying actually in return, it means that that particular AI will be incredibly useful to us in terms of cutting trailers and editing and stuff like that. So again, they are... And to our creators, whose work we've trained it on.

6:26Yeah, exactly. It's not great, is it? Not great, is it? Yeah. No, I don't think it's gone down like a delicious sandwich in the creative community. Yeah, exactly. I think the creative community, if they had a phrase for it, it would be my voluptuous disease, I think. Nico, thanks. That's an amazing question and really, really interesting story as well, the whole Michael Smith thing. But once you notice it, you'll start noticing it everywhere. But please don't go and listen to my voluptuous disease. Everyone's just going to go and listen to my voluptuous disease now, aren't they? I'm sorry, I'm going to do it.

6:54Yeah, okay. It'd be like Wet, Wet, Wet when they said, please, you have to delete love is all around because I can't bear people listening to it. My voluptuous disease guy is going to be going, please stop listening to it because the police are around. Still, listen, stops us going to the gym, doesn't it? Okay, something more wholesome for you, Marina, from Chris Spiller. Chris says, have you noticed that there appear to be around 30 new novels a month written by Japanese authors concerning cats? Is this going to be another AI story? I am in Waterstones now and can see we'll prescribe you a cat before the coffee gets cold, the Full Moon Coffee Shop, the Travelling Cat Chronicles, and about 10 others.

7:29I just wondered whether you had any insights into this Japanese feline literary cultural phenomenon. Right. OK, first of all, Chris, you are right. It is a phenomenon. And it has also, by the way, been a phenomenon for many centuries. I think the first novel in the world is like in the 10th century. And it is a Japanese novel called The Tales of Genji. And it's about a cat. And that is supposedly the first novel. They've got this massive, long literary tradition and they, you know, cat lit. They don't call it cat lit, by the way. Cat litter. Yeah, cat litter. But first of all, it's about a millennium and old, this whole tradition.

8:03By the way, they have so many cats. There are some of those Japanese islands where there are cats that number people eight to one. Also, let's be honest, a cat is a very good kind of character in a book. They kind of sneak around, you know, they're thinking things, you're not quite sure what they are. They're observant, maybe you're being judged. So actually one of the big satires called I Am A Cat, which is at the turn of the 20th century. It's a bit route one. But it was a big satirical work on the kind of ruling grand classes. And it was from the perspective of a cat. For that reason, there is a long tradition and it's been going on for genuinely centuries.

8:34But I suppose, I'm trying to think of how other countries have equivalents to some. I mean, it's not quite as big, but I mean, American writers and their dogs. There's quite a lot of, you know, Old Yeller and Call of the Wild and, you know, The Incredible Journey and all those sorts of things. So there's quite a lot of that. But I think that it's quite a unique thing. But obviously it exports very well, which is why you're seeing it in your Waterstones. But the first novel of all time was a Japanese novel about a cat. And by the way, this is like the 10th century and we don't have a novel. I mean, I think popularly the first novel in Britain is Robinson Crusoe, which is basically at the turn of the 18th century.

9:09You know, it must be 1710 or 1720, something like that. So that's the first novel. I didn't know that. So they've had one a lot earlier and it's about a cat. That's clever. So they had a cute novel before they had even like a crime novel. I've got a cat on the front cover of the new book, We Solved Murders. There's a cat called Trouble. Yes. So there you go. I didn't realise I was following in the footsteps. Maybe the Japanese will love that too. Maybe they'll see us. It will not be removed from the Japanese cover of that book, let me tell you. Can we make the cat bigger, if anything? Yeah, just put a huge cat on the front.

9:39Because there are cat cafes and everything in Tokyo, don't there? Owl cafes. Yes. I'm never sure about that, cat cafes, but someone told me they get very well looked after. and if they get stressed at all they've got quiet spaces they can go to There was one that opened up in London my children kept telling me saying can we go to I don't know if it's still going I'll find out but anyway Cats loom large in all sorts of their things in literature and strange things you know if you like the cat bus in My Neighbour Totoro which is amazing that's a real recommendation to get tickets for if you haven't seen that show my god it's been at the Barbican but it's coming back and it opens I think on the 8th of March next year at the Gillian Lynn Theatre and it is amazing all my children just sat through saying will they be able to do the cat bus it won't be possible to do the cat bus Oh my God, they do the cat bus.

10:17Oh, they did the cat bus. Oh, they did the cat bus. Don't you worry about the cat bus. Anyway, sorry, that was a deviation. Yes, which is, you know what? It's unlike us. Yeah. Normally we're absolutely straightforward. Oh, here's one on grand designs from Jackie McClellan. I've been watching grand designs for years, says Jackie, likewise. And after wondering what on earth makes people decide to embark on such mad projects with so little money and inevitably a baby on the way at some point, I really wonder about the final visit. At the end, they're always way over budget and struggle to finish the build, but the house is immaculately and expensively furnished.

10:45Does the Grand Designs company give them money to do this? Really hoping you can answer this question, which has been bugging me for years. Bugging lots of people, I suspect, love Grand Designs. So genuinely, I think it's a brilliant piece of television. And they actually sort of intervene far less than a lot of those shows, which is one of the reasons it's so great. The other reason it's so great is I think it has the most underrated television presenter working today. Kevin MacLeod, do you watch some of those shots that he does? You know, like the sort of one shot at the beginning of Goodfellas.

11:12you watch the shots of Kevin MacLeod where he's done does this sort of word perfect summation of everything we've just seen about life and about space and about the clouds above us and you just got a shot sort of going away from him away from him away from him like almost like 30 seconds sometimes absolutely fluff free beautifully done so I thought actually we would get Kevin MacLeod himself to answer this question for Jackie and here he is. Hello Jackie it's Kevin here and thank you so much for your question. No we don't pay our contributors, our grand designers to appear on grand designs. No, they do it out of love.

11:46And I think because they're looking forward to a really nice, expensive looking home video that we sort of prepare for them. We do give them a tiny little contribution towards their expenses in relation to filming alone. That's it. But no, they do it for the joy of it all. And aren't we grateful? Thank you so much. How about that, Jackie, the man himself giving you the answer. And he's right. I think that's the reason it's so great is they're not sort of saying to people, oh, would you like to do a TV thing and do Upper House? People are doing Upper House already say we would like to be on TV and they just follow it.

12:19The contribution he's talking about is literally nothing other than occasionally if a film crew is there, it will disrupt you by half a day and it will disrupt your work by half a day. And therefore... You're paid for filming, for being a participant. There might be trades who need compensating because, you know, so they're literally, it is your own money. but that's why it's oh my god i love well you could have the texture of the stories if they've fixed it and you just you can just tell you can really start to spot certain things and there are shows that are more like that and for various budgetary reasons or whatever they are you get it but something like that would be i mean you can't you can't fake that i don't think well you got something like great house giveaway that um simon o 'brien does on channel four which you know it takes two people who can't get on their housing ladder channel four give them some money to do up a house and they keep the profits of that thing.

13:05So that's, again, absolutely above board. You know exactly what's happening. And the idea of the show is to give people who couldn't get on the housing ladder, give them an opportunity to do it. But this is a show where, you know, up and down the country, there's lots and lots of people who do these things and do these incredible builds. And getting on Grand Designs is a huge deal. Lots and lots and lots of people apply. So it has to be something quite special, either emotionally or architecturally or just something unusual the story has to be unusual the property has to be unusual and there's a roaring trade now in airbnbs that are in grand design houses i've stayed in one i've stayed in the big green bus that was on george clark sports i've stayed in it twice it's a big green bus they converted into somewhere you could stay it's brilliant we loved it when we were little the children wanted to go there the whole time we went twice where's that well they had to move it it was in sussex and then they had to not too far but they had to move it from where it was to somewhere else i think it would be quite hard to drive anywhere now and it's a cat that drives it right yeah yeah big cat bus so you know grand designs is one of those shows that essentially it's a documentary essentially it's uh you know it's following exactly what happens and one of the interesting things is it feels like the problems are always solved they always find a way around their problems because the shape of the shows are often very very similar which is you know hopes and dreams then oh there's a problem then ah the glass hasn't turned up from holland oh i'm pregnant yes i'm pregnant uh suddenly the mortgage that the bank offered you has run out so you have to go back for another one they have to come back and value it again and then oh they're in there and everything's fine but the way that they are transmitted grand designs is it's one of those things like homes under the hammer like 24 hours in police custody lots of those things you only transmit them once the whole story has finished so a series is starting this week and there'll be a whole series of episodes and they are going out in this order because they are the ones that have just been finished but they are not the ones that have been started so some of those would have been started two years ago some of them will be six years ago so the story always feels the same but you always got to look at the gaps you always got to go like two years later yeah you know if it's like three weeks later it's fine and we all know the stories of those kind of like absolute devastating ones that became money pits and like you know there's that cliff house right down there is it oh my god i can't and and no one has ever watched an episode of grand designs without immediately googling whether that house is on the market or where it is and you know there's usually some good information the series that was on i guess maybe two series ago when it was every you know to all intents and purposes always felt like a normal series of grand designs and there would always be oh you know they wanted to get in for christmas but yeah actually they hadn't got in for christmas and it wasn't quite watertight and then it was it was just say february 2020 and you go oh covid is coming and every single episode you're just thinking it just felt like a normal grand designs where you're thinking i'm annoyed about you know the roof hasn't turned up and then you're thinking oh this is you've just got another 18 months of delays added on here now we're slightly post-covid in this series of grand designs but yeah so it feels like all problems are solved and all problems are eased away because actually the you know time is very very different in different episodes of it but yeah they are very non-interventionist but the reason it's so great is they turn up they point the cameras at what's happening anyway and you've got kevin who is such a unique combination i think in that technically he really understands what's going on so you'll turn up at the beginning and he'll work out what it is they're trying to do or work out what it should cost you never see him happier than if they got some new way of insulating or some new method that he hasn't seen before but he's also incredibly empathetic and so by and large you see when he's his final piece to camera he's usually found something emotional about the couple or the family or you know they built it on land that the grandfather owned or something he'll find something to do with that and he'll find something to do with the way they built the house and he'll absolutely knit them together in a way that's so difficult to do and he does it week after week he does it with real heart and real emotion and that's why I think it's the absolute granddaddy slash grandmummy of all of those property renovation shows.

17:07I'm just looking up the big green bus. I have terrible news for you. A YouTube family rented it out, left a barbecue lit and it burned down. What? Yeah. The little green bus is no longer. Listen, it's a lot to process. I get it. I'm absolutely devastated. It was an amazing place. What's the guy doing? What's he done? Is he doing something else? He's replaced it with a structure. He's okay. I hope it was insured. I'm assuming it was insured. Did it feel like it was insured when you were there? Well, I mean, I would have liked to have thought so, but yeah. It's a long time ago now. Yeah, exactly.

17:42You don't always check the fine print, do you? I'm outraged. Absolutely outraged. Okay, I'm going to find out who that YouTube family was. Exactly. And they are my mortal foe. Let that not take away from a lovely question from Jackie and also our thanks to Kevin MacLeod. Shall we go to a break now, Richard? I would love that. This episode is brought to you by State Farm. Checking off the boxes on your to-do list is a great feeling. And when it comes to checking off coverage, a State Farm agent can help you choose an option that's right for you. Whether you prefer talking in person, on the phone, or using the award-winning app, it's nice knowing you have help finding coverage that best fits your needs.

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19:46Welcome back, everybody. Marina, Ben Kelly has a question for you. Ben asks, while watching season two of Slow Horses, one of our favorites, I wondered if there were any restrictions on writing storylines in MI5 CIA dramas so as not to cause some kind of beef with countries portrayed to be the villains. In Slow Horses, for example, the Russians appear to be the agents planning attack in the UK. Do such storylines risk causing further diplomatic rifts with these countries? Ah, I mean, I'm not really sure that we could have a deeper diplomatic rift in some ways with Russia right now. I mean, we still have an ambassador on our soil, so I guess there are tensions.

20:23We've got, yeah, there are tensions. The pressure for this never comes from anyone, within the government or the agencies or anything like that at all. What it comes from is a commercial pressure and it comes from the companies. Now, we talked about this a couple of weeks ago. You don't see any Chinese villains in almost any of these companies now ever because everyone wants China. Apple particularly want China for their iPhone market and for the materials for use in their technology. This is what led to Jon Stewart departing from Apple, from the platform completely because he wasn't allowed to do any shows about China.

20:55You know, it comes from commercial pressure, that sort of thing. Guy Ritchie had a movie. Who? Guy Ritchie. He's the director. Don't know why you haven't heard of him. But he had a movie which was going to come out in 2022, which had some Ukrainian baddies, some Ukrainian gangsters. And you could see them in the trailer. And then he sort of repurposed it so that they were, I mean, you know, anything can be anything in one of his films. I don't think it's specifically, I don't think he'd done a huge amount of research. Anyway, so their sort of nationality was removed from that so he could release it.

21:27But that delayed release of that. Now, I'm trying to think of other shows. Tehran. Have you seen that? It's really good. It's about a Mossad agent that infiltrates Iran. And that has been completely paused since developments in Gaza. That's supposed to be coming back. And it hasn't come back for those reasons. So all of these are for commercial reasons. I mean, to some extent, sensitivities because it will affect commercial. So that is really what makes those kind of decisions. It doesn't come from the government or from the agencies or people saying, oh, this plot's a bit like something that we're actually doing.

22:03It doesn't come from them at all. And almost anyone who writes anything to do with the security services, there are consultants who you can speak to about things. And, you know, are very useful in terms of what would be believable, what wouldn't be believable, what might happen, what territories that might happen in. But if you watch an awful lot of things, if you really watch them, they quite often invent countries. Yeah. If you're ever in the Middle East, it's an invented Middle East country. Often in Eastern Europe, it's an invented Eastern European country. And that's not for sensitivities particularly.

22:33By and large, what that's for is because you just spent, you know, kind of 30 million producing a series. And you don't want something that happens in the real world derailing the thing that's on screen. So if something happens in the country that you happen to have portrayed, then it's difficult for you to show your program. Whereas if it's an invented country, it's sort of, it doesn't really matter. If they're doing a comedy, they don't want to insult the country. I mean, obviously, with the exception of Borat, which was pretty out there. But, you know, in general, people don't want to insult them because you're kind of limiting your markets.

23:03And then other people sort of think you're causing trouble in that way. But the idea that anyone from security services would speak to someone working in the medium of television and tell them something and say, just don't tell anybody. I mean, like the worst gossips in the world. You might as well hire a skywriter. if you say don't do it that's a bit like something we're doing that's it you're done all of your assets are now dead the minute that you left that person they've been straight on their whatsapp to tell someone I shouldn't say this but listen the worst gossip I have on very good authority that Slow Horses has an awful lot of fans very high up in the security services understandably it's like the mafia loved the godfather didn't they yeah you know a lot of actually what's drug dealers love the wire yeah exactly and a lot of how the mafia behaves now is down to they've just copied people on The Godfather.

23:49So, yeah, I suspect if there is a slough house in our security services where all the rejects go, I suspect everyone's now scrabbling to join it. David Simon said that, because obviously he was very heavily, because he was a reporter first and he was... So he was the creator of The Wire. He was the creator of The Wire. He was heavily involved always with the Baltimore Police Department because he always used to, you know, he got stories with them and he went out with them. And then when he based a program around them, then he spent even more time with them. But he said that one time the real police were listening to a real wire and they heard one of the sort of drug dealers they were following say, why are you calling me when the wire's on?

24:24Here we go. One from Josh Kilmister. That was Lemmy's real name, wasn't it? He was Ian Kilmister. Yes. From Motorhead. Yes. Wow. Right, okay. Lemmy's boy. Lemmy's boy says, in the latest final episode of the Grand Tour sob on Amazon Prime, the crew are shown launching a VW Beetle off the side of a cliff. how if at all do they go about cleaning up the mess they leave all the way down the cliff I asked Jeremy Clarkson this question he was furious to be asked it he said he said look we absolutely make it clear on the show we are not interested in your call because the whole life if ever you push anything off anywhere on any tv program people are like oh I hope you cleared that up you think yeah of course we've got a television program we're literally like we've got the law of the land we don't just go yeah come on let's just leave it at the bottom of the cliff shall we we're the grand tour we do whatever we want so he says listen i am not interested in answering this question in any way but i will say of course it was cleared up but that's the point with all these things if a car goes off a cliff for whatever reason someone eventually goes and clears it up you know a recovery boat or a recovery movie stunts can take weeks to clear up like you know you've you can't just like fly tip a freeway in the atacama desert if they've built one they will have to clear it away whatever stunt they've done and take every piece and it can take obviously the stunt is filmed often with only a couple of takes because it's so difficult to repeat and then the clean art is just weeks and weeks and weeks and weeks and the joy of the grand tour is it looks like everything's very casual and it looks like they're being crazy and it looks like and you know they are of course and there's a lot of fun being had but yeah everything is cleared up um jeremy says they probably turned it back into a car by now he's saying you know it is absolutely cleared up if there was any oil that's all been cleared up the whole every single thing you ever see on television movies is the absolutely environmental protections are through the roof yeah so fun though it is to launch a vw beetle off a cliff there is three weeks of less fun which is not being filmed afterwards by the way at that rts event that we did last week which we talked about a little on the the other show andy willman who is the the producer of the grand tour and top gear and clotson's farm all that kind of stuff he was talking we talked about how brilliant he is before he was great and he was fascinating talking about those shows but one really really interesting thing that he said I thought was he said oh when we went to Amazon people started saying oh my god you'll be able to get away with anything now yeah and he said there was nothing I couldn't have got away with on the BBC he said the BBC was so incredible with us with Top Gear that anytime however ridiculous the stump we suggested or the thing we wanted to do they would find a way of making it happen and I thought how great you know after the obviously there was a breakdown in relations between everybody how great that he still stands there and says what an amazing job the BBC did on that show so I thought that was very very interesting he was sort of funny about it when they said you know oh you'll be able to do anything like it it's like have you seen the show we did in the BBC I mean they were doing anything they were doing anything yeah yeah I agree with that so thank you to Jeremy thank you and by the way we asked that question because so many people asked it I mean I know that it came out recently that final episode but we've been asked that question so many times I felt we had to ask it so the answer from Jeremy Clarkson is please don't ask me that question but brackets rest assured everything was okay here's a question that this is one of those ones that everyone always wants to know if we were doing this podcast in the 80s firstly people are going what's a podcast but secondly they would ask this question but it remains a question people always want to know the answer to and Sandy Cleland has asked it so when I was a kid in the 80s there was a small white and black flickering box that would appear in the top right corner of the TV screen when an ad break was coming up why did it do that and it still happens to this day yeah it does sit on some live things that's the QDOT that went from like the 80s to the early 2000s on everything and it would i think i'm right in saying that it was a minute before the ads and 55 seconds there was the queue dot and then five seconds before the ad it was removed this was when there were all sorts of regional variations of programming all around which there still are to some extent and regional variations of adverts and regional variations of adverts so if you're in the control rooms of those places then you could queue things up because you knew it always went five seconds before people at home often used to think it was just their cue to think oh i see i'll be able to make a cup of tea in a minute it was all about them it's actually nothing to do with the viewer at home whatsoever it just happens to be with people in the controlled towers yeah and it shows quite quite how much actual manpower there is in the actual people pressing buttons who make things like adverts and stuff like that to work and you'll still see it on live broadcasts and stuff like that it's just if people are out on ob's outside broadcasts and somebody else is queuing something else in remotely essentially it's just a way of sending that feed and letting somebody know that the button they have to press they are going to have to press as you say in a minute's time and then when it disappears five four three two one and then an advert for uh for sofas in daventry yeah it will come up even though it's in the middle of you know and if you're in scotland watching the royal wedding coverage on itv you're going to get something different so it's it's done mainly in those massive live events like sport and and and kind of big televised live things which are mainly royal things in our country but it's fascinating it's one of those things isn't it that for years and years you saw and everyone knew about it and absolutely nobody knew what it was and it would always be just in the top right hand corner sometimes in the top left hand corner now now that i'd like to know why that's changed yes uh and you'd be like oh it's only go oh adverts coming up.

29:51So, yeah, it's that. So it's that. Yeah, Q dots, they're called. And they are literally because somebody is sitting with their finger over a button and they need to know exactly when to press it without being told in their ear. Well, I think that winds us up, does it not? Oh my God, it winds me up so much. I'm like, come on, just count from a minute. Yes, I think we're done, aren't we, for another week. But I'll see you next Tuesday, I hope. I will see you next Tuesday.

30:20Thank you.