Gregg Wallace. A Recipe For Disaster

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1:27Hello and welcome to this episode of The Rest is Entertainment with me Marina Hyde And me Richard Osman Hello Marina Hello Richard, how are you? Yes, I'm not, but what? I had norovirus this week, which I'd never had before I didn't mind, well, because I hadn't had it before, I didn't mind it, because sociologically I found it interesting Because I've heard so much about it, and suddenly there I was It's like, you know, watching a film that everyone else has watched But yeah, so it's fine, listen, I didn't love it But at least I thought, oh, okay, that's what norovirus is. Coming belatedly to the Star Wars of vomiting, you have decided it's quite good.

1:59The rogue one of vomiting. And I had to phone a friend on Who Wants to Be a Millionaire while I had norovirus as well, which is a lot of fun. How did you do? I can't tell you. I cannot tell you, I'm afraid. Okay. Well, pending, pending. Yes, exactly. Other things that are pending. Obviously, our Royal Abbot Hall show on Wednesday. Oh, no. But also, we packed it so full of stuff. It's running way over at the moment, I would say. It's currently nine hours long. Don't worry, we will get it down to a manageable, socially acceptable time of going out in London in the evening. At the moment, the producer in me is panicking, but the editor in me is looking forward to it.

2:36No, it'll be fine. We'll look forward to seeing everybody there. What are we talking about this week? Listen, it won't shock people what we're talking about first. We are talking about Greg Wallace, who is in hot water. Anyway, we'll come to the various allegations against the MasterChef host and how they're playing out and how he's helping or not helping that. We're going to talk about two documentaries, new documentaries out this week. Very different, I would say. The first is Meet the Rees-Mogs, about Jacob Rees-Mog and family. And the other one is Game of Throws, which is about the world of professional darts.

3:05So we've got Rees-Mog versus the darts. And we're also going to talk about how Moana is the queen of all she surveys. Moana too has come out and set box office records. So we'll talk about that and a bit about how Hollywood's finishing the year. And how about, depending on how old your children is, it's the biggest thing in the world and lots of people have never even heard of it. Yeah. Lots of people have heard little else. So our friend Greg Wallace, he's become the main character of the week. Greg Wallace presents MasterChef in all its many forms, professional celebrities, ordinary contestants, is a subject of numerous complaints of inappropriate behaviour, very sexualised comments, jokes, gestures, extremely personal talk also over sexual nature and various people including the broadcaster Kirsty Walk some of them went public Kirsty Walk went public last week there have been 13 complaints there are now many more as I understand it if I can start with a Mayor Culper because a while ago we talked about him because he had that boring day in the life and I stuck up for him because I think being boring is fine and also I did ask around and any show he's ever been on that I've been involved with everyone had nice things to say about him so I was like kind of oh no absolutely it's fine and then you think god you must always be so careful and you know i did think oh he's just a big personality and you know i hadn't heard stuff but now listen i definitively understand i have heard stuff i apologize for that but uh let's carry on and work out what's happened and what happens next let's work through okay so last week this story was sort of playing out there's lots to unpack in this story so we'll be diving off at different tangents it actually first started breaking this story in october that was the first time there were stories about this but he wasn't suspended he has now stepped away according to banajay uk who make master chef he stepped away from filming but he is still on the screens because there's so many of these shows coming down the slitway that you're constantly facing it's like a master chef cinematic universe yeah there's always something and there's one got the samuel l jackson of it all i'm afraid is the one in every film is greg wallace not that we're accusing samuel l jackson of sexualized behavior no we're certainly not anyway greg has dropped a number of videos since this story started coming out and the one that came on sunday morning i think about 7 a.m i'm gonna call it a pr gaffe okay wow breaking okay well he said that all the complaints are coming from middle class women of a certain age okay so he has absolutely successfully guaranteed he will be the main character of next week as well and okay there's a lot to say about that particular comment so we might as well dive in there well like yeah firstly women well yes it's largely going to be women because that's who you're making your sexualized comments and sexualized behavior to.

5:38Middle-aged, middle-class, yes, because they can afford to call you out. And a lot of people, junior people, can't afford to call you out. And if you think that middle-aged, middle-class women are snowflakes, middle-aged, middle-class women who work in television are the least snowflakey people I've ever met in my entire life because they've grown up in a system where they've had to put up with so much bullshit over the years from so many people. These are the last people. And the reason these things don't come out at the time is, by and large, someone like this happens, they just roll their eyes and get on with their job.

6:02But now you just think, well, if you're going to bring it to us, we'll bring it to you as well. And young people don't complain and, you know, for various reasons. And, you know, do you think Kirsty Wark needs to do this? Of course not. She's doing it because of people who don't have a voice. And, you know, women, ideally, you'll never be more powerful if you are a woman and you are middle class and middle aged. OK, you're at the peak of being strong and not giving any tosses, let's say. because really this is why middle class middle-aged women are involved in all sorts of activism and i have to say that you know these people are trying to i would have thought reach back and help the people below them through and if those words feel familiar i think i just stole them off michelle obama reach back yeah yeah another middle-aged woman middle class middle class women anyway also small side note going to war with middle-class women of a certain age you present master chef okay who do you think watches you right if you get rid of them all you've got left is inside the factory you're not sky sports your audience is middle-aged middle-class women okay so there we go anyhow i think sort of something that's quite interesting to talk about is the anatomy of scandals and how they often play out in this country in particular in the UK this first came out in October and it was sort of been bubbling along but clearly nothing has happened there hasn't been any suspension so more people came forward and some people like Kirsty Wart went public which meant that it was harder for Greg Wallace to ride it out and they had to say he's stepping away while we investigate and also by the way when people say someone went public it's not one day they think oh this trauma's been so much to me over the years I have to let this out it's someone sees that people are talking about Greg Wallace yeah that some people are defending him and saying oh no I'm sure that's not the case and you go well I have some information that might be useful to the British public here so when we talk about coming forward that's all that's happening there is you see a debate in the public domain and you think I've been through this I know what this is I can tell you my experience if that helps at all so they're not actually that you've got cover because other people are saying it too as always you know if you and also you're covered for them yeah because yeah you know that the first people to go on a limb do feel isolated So you just go, no, it's all right, listen, it's all right, it happened to a few of us.

8:17Absolutely. And so last week was bruising for him and he has stepped away or whatever euphemism they want to put on it. But the way lots of things play out in the UK is that you think, OK, if you get to the Sunday papers and there isn't much in it, then to some extent this will evaporate a little bit because you're suspended. However, there was lots in the Sunday papers and it's probably the lead story in the Sunday Times and it was a big deal. So at that point, you're thinking, which is that complaints were logged and it's not clear what the BBC did about them. So at that point, it's not great because it's come back in the Sunday papers.

8:51So, you know, it's going to go into the next week. What you do not want is your client, if you are the agent, releasing an Instagram video at 7 a.m. on a Sunday morning, saying anything, actually saying anything, let alone saying what Greg Wallace did say. and I have to say that this story I'm obviously my non-ironic and total sympathy is with anyone who's had to have difficult times with him and just relentlessly had to go to work and not necessarily the most important people on the show the celebrity contestants or whatever it is but people have to work on the crew. My sympathy is with anyone who he is alleged to have made these comments to who didn't like it Having said that Here we go, having said that, I like this Your agent, Greg Dylan Hearn, I've looked him up, he's a guy called Dylan Hurtn at Pangolin.

9:36Is Pangolin the one that can roll themselves into a total bore? Yes. Dylan, you must be in a total bore. I would love to speak to Dylan because I realise it could not be for public consumption, but just for my own personal archives. What a week. What an absolute nightmare having a client that you cannot tell to stop, to stop making everything worse. And he's repeatedly released these videos, culminating in the Sunday, I mean, real... Yeah, yeah. ...season finale of Greg Wallace video. Listen, we're certainly living in a culture where he could ride out what happened, because it sounds like, by and large, most of the allegations are of verbal, tiresome sexual banter, almost nonstop tiresome verbal sexual banter.

10:17And there'll be people in lots of workplaces up and down the country who will recognize that sort of character and how boring and tiresome it is. There is a world in which, in six months' time, people will let that go. And because, you know, nothing illegal has happened and Greg can come back. The second you come out and say, no, no, I'm being persecuted, you do have to take your medicine here. You clearly, you know, this is a pattern of behavior over a very long time. And people from different shows and people from different levels on those different shows have said the same thing about it. It's clearly a personality quirk of his.

10:49It's clearly something that he needs to work through with somebody. And he has inflicted that on a production for years and years and years. But, you know, just go and get a bit of therapy and come back and do something else. But now this going on Instagram and blaming the people who are complaining, that is sort of beyond the payout. And that makes it very, very, very difficult to come back from. And rightly so as well. Yeah, you should because you get paid a huge amount of money to do this. And part of the tax on that is, you know, certain standards of behavior are expected. And if they haven't been met, then we can talk about all sorts of reasons why they haven't met or maybe not even enforced.

11:25Yes. but what happens when this comes out is that you say i am sorry if i made anyone uncomfortable and yeah lots of people will say that's an apology apology and maybe it is we're in a culture now where you can say i'm an old-fashioned guy and one of his producers was saying i keep saying to greg you can't keep saying these things and he goes oh yeah no i get it i do get it i do get it and so you just come out and say look i'm an old-fashioned guy i talk in a certain way i sort of understand now that i shouldn't have done i'm really sorry to everyone i hurt but that yeah listen i get it I'll move on I'll try and be different and you know that's kind of we live in a world where we can forgive for this level of what we're talking about for this level exactly that what we're talking about currently and I have to say all of this is alleged and we don't know what we're talking about but I think this level of things that we're talking about this is something that you potentially could manage Kirsty Walk said that you know one of the things when she spoke to Shine about it which is a production company that it was almost some kind of affliction someone else had said no I don't think so what I think is interesting as well and I haven't seen this touched on but since this is a sort of behind the scenes entertainment thing you and i recognize that a lot of these lines that he's being pulled up on i think are sort of pre-written lines if you look at lots of those lines it's someone's told about the way they handle fish is like a rapist trying foreplay you know there's a clip of katie brand and and he says about munching on her tar i can't even remember the exact lines of it but actually the mechanics of these shows as we know is that there's lots of waiting around and greg will be in his dressing room this is all speculation but we know how these type of shows you and i work i wouldn't even call it speculation there's no way this stuff is off the cut it's off the cut it isn't it's planned and you know someone comes in one of the runners and says katie's doing a lemon tart or whatever she's doing and he'll be sitting there thinking of about five lines that will be good for this and some of them won't make the cut because a lot of this and rod stewart saying you humiliated my wife but you cut that bit out didn't you so there's obviously lots of stuff that doesn't make the cut so when you see some of the things that we can see the clips of you're thinking crikey but that is i think significant is that lots of these lines are either written for him i don't know more likely i think he comes up with them in the waiting around periods yes i think they would be what they are premeditated what we call in the business model zone yeah which is the presenter themselves comes up with them yes i do think that and now it's interesting about the production company you're talking about Shine there, because the BBC get it in the neck and all this, and just saying, oh, why didn't you know?

13:50And you keep control over everyone. I wonder if it's interesting to talk about how TV is actually made. This, I think, I think there is a problem in the complaints procedure, and I think that people keep falling down the same gap time after time after time, which is this. If you make MasterChef, then you work for Shine, which is the production company that makes it, or Banerjee, as they are now. And they are the people that you deal with. If you're the exec producer, you might deal with the BBC a little bit. The BBC has a commissioning editor who is sort of in overall charge of the show. What's that?

14:20What the budget is, is in charge of kind of compliance, things like that. We'll go down and have a set visit every now and again. But by and large, every single thing on that show is done by one entity, and that is Banerjee or Shine as well. The production thing. If you are at any level on that show, from a runner to an associate producer to hair, makeup, anything, you do not deal with the BBC at any point. There is no point at which you would even talk to someone from the BBC, by and large. And if you've got a show like MasterChef that's on Series 500, whatever it is, probably the BBC won't even come down to the set at any point, because there's a team there who know how to make that show.

14:54They make it very well, and so they're trusted. So if you are essentially working on that show and you have a complaint to make, you will make it to the production company. Now, most production companies are very good at reporting those things back up the line, but if you're a production company, often you're working on very small margins, you do not want to ring the BBC unless you absolutely have to, because it's a hassle for you. And so the natural instinct is to keep everything in-house as much as you can. Try and deal with things in your own way and deal with things in-house and not pass it up the line.

15:24So two things happen there, which is one, the BBC doesn't get to hear about this stuff, and two, often production companies become way too secretive and way too unhelpful to whistleblowers, because they don't want the hassle. And if they go, oh, it's just Greg. Greg's always been like this. Greg being Greg. Greg being Greg and you know culturally if you've been part of that show for the last 20 years if you've been his producer for 20 years you kind of get it you know what Greg is you know who he is you know probably deep down he's not the worst man in the world he just has his awful sort of just behavioral stuff that is kind of every now and again comes up and so there's a bit of you that sweeps that under the carpet and so I think for the BBC it's hard because they don't hear this stuff but I think that there has to be something put in place where a production company and the BBC have to have some sort of joint committee where any single person of power on any television show, if you're an exec producer, if you're a presenter, if you're a producer, even if you're a commissioning editor, there has to be automatic feedback.

16:20Every single series, from every level of that production, there has to be automatic feedback on all of these people. Anonymised. Anonymised. Yeah, I agree. And it has to be read and taken seriously. It has to be discussed between those two companies and it has to be shown to a third party again that's not the BBC are not deliberately closing you know putting their head in the sand and production companies I sort of see where they're coming from so I think you just have a system in place where somebody else has to have a look at it and then I know it's everyone's woke everyone's a snowflake but it's important because these are people's careers and you know you get young people who might be put off what they're doing it's just it's such an easy thing to do you know teachers have it you know university professors have it most people who are listening to this at work they will have some sort of assessment each year and people will be independent people will be looking at what it is they do it's just that because 99 % of the time there isn't a problem you know tv is such a wonderful place to work but in the times there are it becomes a really big problem because you do have these power dynamics you do have these fame dynamics and so but there's such a simple way of dealing with it which is just automatic feedback on just on not just presenters because we all know exec producers who are difficult human beings we all know people who work for channels hyper channels who can be difficult human beings we all know people who run big production companies who are very difficult human beings so just feedback on all of those people all the time and if a pattern develops there we go i completely agree with that i think we're also i mean the trouble is is that we're now in any time that one of these scandals happens on a show whether or not the bbc make it as we've said before the probability of it becoming a massive story about the bbc approach is one and that's where we're on that trajectory already about this this is going to be people are talking about logging that some people something was logged and then nothing was dealt with I don't know the truth of that as Mimir the broadcaster said she complained in 2017 and said quite explicitly I don't want people to say nothing you know if it happens again I don't want someone to say well we never had any idea about this because you have now because of me well that's an interesting thing because I think she said that to Kate Phillips at the BBC again is very very smart and I listen he's been suspended for a reason now and one assumes it's not a one-off thing, one assumes it is because there have been these allegations before another one has been made and therefore the pattern has become too much.

18:30I would guess that's the case. I agree with that. I heard an MP this morning on the radio talking about it and I just thought, oh my God, please don't let us have to hear from you lot about any of this. We don't need to hear from any MPs about this, about what's going on at the BBC, what's going on in your palace and I'm afraid you will hear from it and they'll have some sort of select committee nonsense about it all. I would also say that people saying, oh, well, why does this happen all the time in television? Good and badness is equally distributed in all workplaces. There are power imbalances, yes, in television, but there are power balances in all sorts of places.

19:03You hear about it in television because television is a place where if you say something, something might actually happen. There are lots of people in workplaces up and down this country who are never going to say anything because they know very well that nothing is going to happen. So you hear about it more in television because there actually are procedures and it does get dealt with. You can't go to the papers about your nameless boss just doing inappropriate banter because nobody cares if you just work in, you know, for want of a better, a paper merchant in Slough to bring the David Brent analogy.

19:34But, you know, most people have all sorts of things like this in the workplace and nobody cares and they can't do anything about it. You hear about it in television because there have been various scandals and you do actually hear when people make a fuss and when there are complaints. Nothing really happens in the Palace of Westminster, as far as anyone can tell. They didn't even have any form of robust procedure for anything. Nothing independent. It's a complete mess. So I don't want to hear from any more MPs about this. Thank you. But I will. Yeah, I bet you will. And this idea also that, oh God, it's a snowflake thing and you can't say anything anymore.

20:03That is definitely not the case because he is absolutely, he can say whatever he wants at all times. the moment someone complains and someone and your line manager says maybe next time just don't do that listen i get it that's how you are but it's been taken this way you're going to go okay it's interesting and then the second time it happens they go oh again it's just this is someone different as well by the way i just said this sort of makes them feel slightly uncomfortable you know slightly creeped out by it so just maybe because we're at work and so everyone's at work and everyone's working hard maybe just it and then the third time you're like oh i'm so sorry it's a third person now and it's it's exactly the same thing so what's happened is he's been told time and time again not to speak in that way to people when he is at work okay he is at work he's under contract he's with a load of different people from a load of different backgrounds we all have this okay this you have to get along with people he's been told time and time again that is why he's in trouble because he constantly does the same thing constantly has been told off for doing it and has ignored it and even now doesn't seem to recognize that it is an issue it is alleged it is all of this is alleged but this is not a world in which you can't say anything this is a world in which you cannot keep saying the same thing at work and be complained about and just keep doing it at some point you just have to go oh maybe it's me yes i mean i do think it's quite psychologically interesting when i mean speaking for him to have a go at middle-aged anybody you know that's your your age that's your cohort yeah but when you are a middle-aged man of a certain amount of power in television i do think it's quite interesting to watch how many scandals every year we have yeah And if you yourself have been subject to a few warnings, not to think, huh, I better be really careful now.

21:39I think that's psychologically so interesting to me to think, oh, but this isn't me. We're not talking about people like me because this person is similar. We are talking about much worse things. We're talking about, I don't know, assault or deliberate campaigns of harassment or whatever it is. But to be undergoing warnings, allegedly, and to still think, I'll just carry on, sort of with impunity, is quite mad. to allow all these scandals to pass by in the sort of general timeline and think, oh yeah, but that's not me. Well, it's interesting as well. This is a really, really minor point, but I wonder if it's interesting.

22:11Is the BBC 10, 15 years ago had a class problem, really probably had a class problem. They understood with Brexit and all these things that perhaps they didn't have enough working class representation on screen. They still definitely don't, by the way, and they definitely don't have enough working class representation behind screens. I know people are trying to do things about it, but that's the case. So by and large, that meant let's have Northern presenters. but Greg Wallace it was your sort of token Cockney so you think well this is good because actually he does cut across with certain viewers who don't watch the BBC normally and so he has slight leeway for his personality type if that makes sense and his personality type on screen by the way is not you don't hear most of this banter on screen it disappears and goes into the edit bin what you see on screen is a larger than life cheeky chappy I wonder if he ever watches his shows back because if he doesn't watch the shows back he's thinking well I do seem to be quite popular and he is popular and I do a lot of this sexual stuff and so people really seem to like it.

23:06It's possible he doesn't watch it and doesn't know that a good producer protects their presenter if you say something, you know, you get your words wrong or something like that, it gets cut out. In this case if they're protecting him by cutting out sexual banter then, you know, he doesn't know that perhaps for all he knows all this stuff is going out on air and he's thinking well people seem to love it. I've been on many shows where you have people who can be hard work you know. Did you all know? I've been on many shows where, you know, there's behavioral issues. And the first thing you do, you just have to front up and say, this is not acceptable on this show.

23:37We've fired people before because of things. And we've certainly taken people aside before and just said, that's not how you behave on this. But certainly somewhere along the line, this is why I think it's just some sort of independent verification thing. And it's not, how is my AP doing? How is my runner doing? It's, how's my commissioner? How's my exec producer? How's the head of the company? How's the presenter? Yeah. Done. I agree. In conclusion, I think from talking to people, I think there's lots more on the bone of this story and we're going to hear lots more about it. Shall we go to some adverts?

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26:13Welcome back, everybody. Well, now, Richard, we're going to talk about two documentaries, one of which you were the person who said, why aren't they doing a documentary about professional darts? Well, we are. It's called Game of Throws and it's on Sky. And then we're also going to talk about Meet the Rees-Mogg, which is on Discovery Plus and is a sort of fly on the wall kind of reality thing about Jacob Rees-Mogg and family. Which, by the way, is not something I suggested they make. Nor did I, actually. Yeah. Now, we've watched both of them and they're both very, very different. Shall we just talk about them a bit and then see what we learn?

26:47So the Rees-Mogg documentary first, which is sort of a horrifying prospect. it's interesting both these documentaries the dance one and this one are set against the background of extraordinary events so the re-smog one is set as the election has been called and you know as the election goes on and he loses his job the darts is set against the world championship of last year which was the huge one with luke humphries and luke littler so amazing things are happening for these documentary makers but they've taken them in very different directions so this re-smog thing yeah what do we think is it is it an attempt to sort of turn him into a character to rehabilitate him to teach us about british politics it seems a slightly fall between a number of those stools yeah i mean honestly i this is going to be an unpopular thing to say and i have said it to you which is that i feel i know all this i know how people like this are i spent a lot of my life trying not to hang around to not to get stuck in this particular world i just wanted to leave all that and come to london and meet people who wrote books and did comedy and things like that so i feel i i know all this about them um so he lives in a big stately home in Somerset they've got a big house in London not entirely clear where the money comes from I suspect you might know six kids the wife the mother staff all that kind of stuff so it's a very very Downton-esque thing but with Jacob Rees-Mogg at the heart of it.

28:03And yet it follows to me completely the sort of tropes of reality television and the family weirdly that it reminded me most of was the Osbournes because you've got that well I know but you've you know which is one of the absolutely original reality TV families right back in the early 2000s. You've got the father from whom the fame essentially flows, but you've got this kind of matriarch, this mother who actually keeps the show on the road, and that's Reece Mogg's wife, Helena. She's an awful lot more impressive than he is. Massively so. And then you have the two sort of, in the case of the Osbournes, Kelly and Jack, but the sort of licensed sarcastic fools.

28:39And in the case of Reece Mogg, you've got the two youngest sons, you know, who are charming and provide. Well, most of the rest of the kids are off at boarding school. Yes. Yes. It is, I think in a way, we talk a lot on television about stakes and things like that. You know, what's the worst that can happen? And the trouble is if you know that their financial situation is not even going to be affected by him losing his job, the children are saying, when they're saying, you know, daddy might lose his seat, I've never actually heard of anyone losing their job. I mean, one of them says, I've never heard of anyone losing their job.

29:06Yeah, so it certainly never happened to anyone in this family. Yeah, it's a little bit like, you know, in Breakfast at Tiffany's, the window of Tiffany's, nothing very bad could happen to you here so in terms of stakes yeah what is actually the worst that can happen so it has to then in that case it has to sort of function as a sort of curiosity piece like here's a man who's got his own chapel and he's got a selection of you know fake religious here's a bit of the at one point he's like here's a bit of the crown of thorns yes maybe and you know there's so there's all those sorts of things and then you know the faithful retainers who have to sort of scrub the words posh twat off one of the election signs in the village as someone who writes about politics of course you get very caught up in writing about it from one side and not from one side but from the idea that reese mogg is a kind of general national figure of fun etc that's fine if you're it's at a distance it's odd when you see it close up people um like i found the sort of labor guy who ran against him a real i didn't want to him at all there was a sort of extremes of politics the kind of visceral dislike people have for people you actually when they're sort of pottering around their constituency think is all the hatred of all of this stuff overblown i mean but you know wherever people stand on that i'm so when to some extent perhaps it does sort of go some way to humanizing the business of politics because the first two episodes are so tied to the election yeah and did you think this is interesting that lack of states because the darts one which we'll get on to the states could not be higher because you've got two people playing for the this extraordinary thing you know one of whom has tried for his whole life one of whom's becoming this huge phenomenon genuinely it could not mean more but yeah as you say they try they kind of go look this is the biggest election in generation the tories are going to be eviscerated you know daddy might lose his job and you just think you have such an enormous house you have an incredibly enormous house in london you've got this nanny who was your nanny as well you don't care if you lose your job but i'm sure it's fun for you to turn up at the house of commons and lounge on the things like a cartoon character but it's not something you need to do you know you're not going to be able to not pay the bills so as you say there is zero jeopardy in fact a bit of you thinks i'd probably be quite happy to be out of parliament because you know he can get on with you know being in his hedge fund or whatever but the one thing i found was fascinating so as you said no jeopardy so you have to build this as a sort of is it a fun cartoon even then it's not really i mean he's just sort of a slightly i've seen the cartoon yeah there's a funny bit where he talks about not actually making an even an imprint on the sheets yeah which because you know how weak monty burns is in the simpsons i love it like if he treads on an ant then the ants like push backwards and they topple him over but it's much funnier when the simpsons do it i'm not really interested on him not leaving any marks on his sheets i tell you a program i would like to watch is some sort of self-understanding some sort of self-knowledge which by the way maybe he has about you know genuinely i would be uber religious if i was born into his family because the luck that man has had the extraordinary you would just think well i mean it can't just be fortune There must be some sort of divine kind of law behind this.

32:03There must be a reason why I've got this enormous house. And people iron my sheets, despite the fact I'm a deeply ordinary, perfectly nice at times human being. You must seek to find a way to justify the life that you have. That I'd be interested in seeing. I always think it's fascinating. On House of Games, this is such a sidebar. But we always do a practice round of rhyme time. And we do a thing where we have a picture of Kermit the Frog and a picture of Jacob Rees-Mogg. and say, who is this and who is this? And everyone always goes, oh, it's Kermit the Frog and that guy, Rhys Mogg. The name recognition is weirdly not there in politics.

32:39It feels like he's a huge deal. He's no Moggad. He is no Kermit, exactly. So he doesn't even quite have that. He doesn't quite seem to have the courage of his convictions. He's not completely bonkers. He's not completely committed to the conservative cause. You know, you're just not sure what he is or who he is, other than a very, very, very, very fortunate man who was very lucky where he was born, very, very lucky to meet the wife he met, I have to say, and to have six healthy, happy kids. You just think, I'm not sure what it is I'm looking for here. Absolutely. I'll be interested to watch, in terms of upcoming reality families, I'll have a look at Alec Baldwin's doing one.

33:22Is he? Yeah, with the wife, Hilaria, real name Hillary. Wow. with their seven children. I'll look at that. Their kids have probably got the same names as the Rees-Mogg kids. Very, very probably. Well, I mean, they'll have fake Spanish names. There's some good names, some of the Rees-Mogg kids. I'll give them that. Anselm is a good name. Yes. As I say, I think it's fatally undone by the lack of stakes and the failure to dive deeper into some of the sort of what it feels like to really have. But perhaps you don't know that you have lack of stakes if you really, you're fortunate enough never to have known it.

33:53whereas the darts oh my goodness i mean how great is that first of all can i say these people do know people who have lost their jobs yes i think there's a baseline let me tell you that and talk about stakes here that is enormous tell us more about the show well yeah we're behind the scenes at the world championships of last year and you know so sky commissioned it and uh dorothy street productions made it and you never know when you're following something like that what's going to happens you don't know who's going to get through they start following luke littler for example three weeks before the championship start now if you know about darts you sort of knew about Luke literally he'd won a few sort of development tour titles he was going to be a big thing but not this year he wasn't going to be a big thing but I think they thought oh that'd be fun we'll follow him he's so young the age thing makes the thing if he wins his first round we've got our first episode that's really really lovely and then you've got Luke Humphreys who is this guy who a few years ago he was great he was kind of overweight he was quite depressed and he absolutely sort of took himself in hand and said no you know what the thing I want to be most in the world is world champion and I'm going to do everything I can and you know went on a fitness regime practice regime and that season real training montage yes it's real not so much rocky as rocky road yeah uh and that season had been the best player in the world and so coming into that championship it was his time essentially and everyone in darts wanted him to win because he's clearly a good guy as you see from this documentary and suddenly you've got these twin forces going through different halves of the tournament, this kind of, these two juggernauts and it sort of, it becomes, you kind of think, oh my God, these two are actually going to play against each other.