Introducing: The World Cup Of... TV Theme Tunes

0:09Hello, everybody. Welcome along to the Rest is Entertainment World Cup of Special. I am joined by Bella Hull. Hello, Bella. Hello. Very nice to see you. And Ivo Graham. Hello, Ivo. Hello, Richard. Thanks for having us. Just absolute full disclosure, we are recording this just before the England World Cup semi-final, which is why Ivo is wearing what he's wearing. that may age very badly. Wear it all year round. Who knows? Stop the clock. Listen, we all age badly. Now, our World Cup this week is the World Cup of TV theme tunes. Okay, what we've done, we've sent a whole long list of TV theme tunes to our friends at Focal Data.

0:44They put all of those to the British public and we have a list of the most popular ones in the world. We will draw various of these themes into four quarter finals. We'll chat about them a bit. at the end we will discover which tv theme the british public thinks is the best i warn you as i always warn you the public are pretty much always wrong okay so we can talk about our own favorites as well yes yeah yeah okay shall we take a look at our first quarter final we must okay it is this

1:29The Addams Family Against

1:54against Peaky Blinders Ivo so two very very different eras two very different songs but two in their different ways quite sort of gothic yeah quite scary right they're scary songs mischievous yes they're more than just mischievous they really are they're both Peaky Blinders were full of mischief yeah Yeah, they were mischievous. Is it mischievous or mischievous? Mischievous, I think. Mischievous. I think you know that, but you also know how much more fun it is to say mischievous. You've made the right decision at every point. But they were really naughty. Yeah, they were naughty boys, for God's sake.

2:28Yeah, they really were. They were deviants. They really were deviants, to be fair. I'd have called that show The Naughty Deviants. Yeah. I'd have called it. I'd like to think that Nick Cave would not have granted permission for his iconic songwriter. hand to be used in the show, the naughty deviance. The naughty deviance of Birmingham. So the Peaky Blinders team team, as you say, it's Red White Hand by Nick Cave. I think it's the only one of our quarter finalists that was like a song that originally existed. It's been covered by about a million different people. It's been covered by two of his exes.

3:02What? Yeah. What do you think about that? Wow. God, he must have been amazing in bed. Can you imagine? Or, I haven't heard the cover versions, perhaps they're terrible. Or terrible. I mean, I just don't know who I would have to go out with for them to, for me to want to cover one of their songs after the breakup. I mean, a musician. A musician, yes, would have to be a musician to start with. But also I just, to honour someone after they've presumably broken your heart. Yeah. Well, maybe he really leaves footprints in people's hearts. Or perhaps they split up with him. They were like, I gotta throw this guy a bone.

3:34Yes, yeah, yeah. I'll do a BBC Live Lounge style rendition. Yeah, and PJ Harvey's thinking, do you know what, Nick? Yeah. I do feel bad, but that song you did, what's that song you did that you're always playing? Oh, my God. Why don't I just knock off a version of that? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Oh, it's quite patronising. It's like redoing it. Have you thought about doing it like this? Amy Winehouse went out with a member of the Zootons. I was like, you know what? I'll make you an insane amount of money singing Valerie as long as you never contact me again. Let me deal with this. But it has also been covered by Jarvis Cocker and Snoop Dogg.

4:08Wow. Red right hand. I think it feels very in line with the show. Do you think? Yeah, I'm afraid so. I've not actually watched very much Peaky Blinders at all. Wow. It completely fits what I imagine Peaky Blinders is. Yes, it is exactly like that. But I'm coming at this from a very biased position because I think more than any other song we're going to be discussing, I'm obsessed with Red, White, Hand. I hosted a Nick Cave themed party last year where I hired, not insignificant at expense, a tubular bell for the party. So we could do karaoke to Red, White, Hand and clang the bell. Wow, we've really hit upon something here.

4:41Did you have a bowl of bad seeds? We didn't. Oh, Bella. We did not have a bowl of bad seeds. And what do you think is the worst seed? The only one I can think of is chia, but it's always served me very well. Once I had a chia seed pudding and I went to what I can only describe as Tummyache Town. Oh, really? And ever since then, I have not really been able to touch the stuff. Well, that's why we didn't bring any seeds at all to the Nick Cave of the Bad Seeds party. But that was a bad seed, for sure. Was this Halloween? No. No, it was just in March. March last year a few friends and I had gone to watch Nick Cave live we'd been very moved by it we were talking about all the friends we wished we'd taken but he wasn't doing any more tour dates so he said we'll just have a Nick Cave themed costume party I said costume everyone had to wear suits what's this an impression of?

5:25no no come on someone receiving a text from Ivo Graham brackets general is that what you did when I texted you a picture of random picture of Richard What does this guy want? And we didn't go to his last one. We're going to have one. I know we're going to have to go to this one. People did feel obliged to come to my David Bowie party because they hadn't come to the Nick Cave party. It's true. See, David Bowie is a bit, I suppose, is sort of a bit easier. At least there's a... You're telling me you don't want to spend a Friday night wearing a suit and clanging a tubular bell in time to red right hand?

5:55Not really. It was... Listen, I am very appropriately self-deprecating about many aspects of my, by many measurements, disastrous life. but the Nick Cave themed party was an absolute triumph and it was adored by everyone who attended it favourite Nick Cave song? Jubilee Street and there's a bit where he sings in Jubilee Street she had a little black book and my name was written on every page and two nights before the Nick Cave party I got home drunk I had a little black notebook and I wrote Nick Cave on every page in the book so that during the party during that song I could start flicking through it my friend went you really wrote his name on every page of the book.

6:34Of course. That's what it says in the song. There's like 400 people going, so why is that? Well, because it's in the song. Oh, sorry. Is that in the lyrics to the song? It's in the lyrics you've just heard right now. I'm going to rewind it. Go back in 30 seconds. What I love about a lot of the things that you do is that it feels like... I'm dreading this, Richard. She might love it, but not in a kind way. It feels like a sort of obsessive 15-year-old has been cryogenically frozen within you and you let them hold the reins at all times. Wow. I suppose that is boarding school. Yeah. That's what they're doing.

7:08They freeze your cryogenic teenage self. Yeah. They pop it in and that just dominates everything for the next 50 years. The older I get, the more I am just actually doing and liking a lot of the stuff that I loved when I was 15, though. Of course. That's life. I mean, that's forever. It's the only reason I like the World Cup, really. Yeah, exactly. So I liked when I was 15. Prince William turned out very differently to you, though. You don't think he's still acting on his cryogenically frozen 15-year-old self? Yeah, maybe he is. When you see it, it turned out very differently to me. I mean, of course, in some ways, but what are the main differences?

7:37Well, I saw his last Edinburgh show and it was, I just, honestly, it was too one-linery for me. I like something a bit more autobiographical. Such a damning review of the fact that I don't have any jokes. What's the one thing that you don't associate with every grain? A short joke that you can tell your friends. Can I put the case very briefly for the Addams Family song, though, which is, it has the line, the house is a museum, when people come to see them, they really are a scream. The Addams Family. I really love that and you know why I love that is the rhyming is in itself mischievous and that's in spirit with the melody as well because the lyricist is like this is kind of cheeky and this is going to piss some people off yeah oh my god this is going to piss some people off yeah this is going to piss some people off this is going to piss off Mr.

8:21David Mitchell yeah when they work out I've rhymed museum with Scream people are going to lose their minds people are going to throw their TVs out the window and possibly hit a squirrel on the way down so that's what I quite like about it is that it feels in keeping with the melody as well. Ivo, there is an argument that Red White Hand is sort of a rip-off from Way Down in the Hole by Tom Waits, which uses a theme tune to the wire. I'm afraid I had to explicitly forbid people from saying that at my party. There was to be no suggestion that anything that Cave has done is derivative. Ivo, you're going to go for Peaky Blinders, I suspect.

8:54I think the Addams Family theme is great. And I love how it survived the generations and it's been updated like the Addams Family title sequence. Like there was a 2019 movie where they'd match the original sequence sort of frame for frame. It's the same song. But yes, I have not organised a party around it. So it's okay for me. Bella? I'm going to go with the Addams Family theme tune just because I love Scream. Yeah, it's really good. I mean, for goodness sake, that's so silly. Yeah, agreed. And I just am a big fan. And I do think Peaky Blinders has amazing music all the way through. It really does have great music.

9:26But it's not an original song. I don't know. So I would have to go for Addams Family as well. Shall we find out what goes through to our semi-final? Come on, British public. Whoa! It is the Addams Family. I did not expect that, actually. Sorry, Ivo. At least we don't have to hear any more about Ivo's party.

9:44I hope you enjoyed that free little 10-minute teaser. If you want to hear the rest of it, you can go to wrestlersentertainment.com, sign up to be a member. You get ad-free listening. You get loads and loads of different bonus episodes as well. If you don't want to do that, as always, that is absolutely fine. I love you.