Is Strictly Come Dancing In Trouble?

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1:11Hello and welcome to this episode of The Rest is Entertainment with me, Marina Hyde. And me, Richard Osman. Hello, Marina. How are you? I'm very well. How are you, Richard? I'm not bad. How has your week been? It's been good. I'm preparing to go on holiday, so I'm super excited about that. But other than that, it's the classic week before holiday where you have to do a million things. Does that mean you won't be doing the podcast for the next few weeks? Surely. Richard, this isn't always on podcast, which means that I will be doing. I'm actually going to be doing one of the episodes from Corfu.

1:40That is quite something. Yes, it is quite something. I like the fact you said you'd always do this podcast and it's always on. And what people can't see when you talk about still doing podcasting on holiday is that Gary Lineker is behind you with a comedy truncheon. Yeah. He'll wrap me on the head if I step out of line, but it won't hurt. Do you know what? It's only because he cares. Yeah. And it's only because I'm a professional, Richard, that you can't see through it. Exactly that. Now, what are we going to talk about this week? We are going to talk about what has now become a spate of Strictly in crisis stories.

2:10This is the business of the training methods of various dancers and the alleged trauma of various contestants that has sort of been building up and is now at the sort of classic BBC story crisis point. Has it become Strictly gate yet? It has not been fitted with its gate suffix yet. Let's do it. but yeah okay Strictly Gate so we're talking Strictly Gate yeah we're talking Strictly Gate is that okay Gary oh he's nodding yeah we are also the New York Times have um spoken to lots of different people and listed what they say are the top 100 books of the 21st century so we're going to talk about that we're going to talk about those books and also about why lists are important or unimportant why awards might be important or unimportant as well I have a view you can imagine and we're going to talk a little bit about the BBC have said they're going to spin off a radio two kind of golden oldies um station during some howls of outrage from some people who think they're catering with their stations to disenfranchise radio to listeners so more trouble for the bbc sorry it's yes it's not it's not a special um but shall we talk about strictly let's talk about this whole story started rolling um amanda abington who's the sherlock actress and many the other things she um left the show rather abruptly in the middle of the last series there was reports that she'd fallen out over the training methods she said it was allowed to be known that she was suffering from mild ptsd and her dance partner the professional with whom she was paired giovanni panichi is not going to appear in the next season of the show at first i suppose people didn't necessarily the story didn't gain huge amounts of traction but then two earlier of Giovanni's partners, Laura Whitmore and Ranveer Singh, also spoke to the BBC, we're given to understand, as part of their investigation to this.

3:58And now this has really turbocharged it. Sarah McDermott, the former Love Island contestant who appeared in the season prior. Who we love. Who we love. She was spoken to in the course of the BBC investigation and they reviewed footage that was taken within their rehearsal room and approached her. And some of this footage is apparently very, very disturbing. he has been let go we understand by the BBC so he had already been announced as one of the dancers for the next season and is now not going to appear he initially released a statement saying his drive to win may have affected my training regime and Zara McDermott herself has now released a statement in which she said you know people are probably wondering why I didn't speak out before and she said I was scared about the public backlash I was scared about my future and I was scared of convicting shaming obviously in such as the way we live now that all of these are now happening some people of course have said oh these people should just toughen up you know it's a it's a demanding show and it's called strictly for a reason yeah it's not called strictly for that reason but never mind never mind it's called strictly because of strictly ballroom for the australian film but yeah and of course the other thing the old law that the longer a story about a show on the bbc runs the probability of that story becoming about the bbc approaches one so this is now a sort of singularity yeah i think yeah yeah and so we see people talking about things like duty of care and the culture of a show and how come it's taken so long for it to come out we should say you know this is the biggest show on tv it is immensely popular as we say it's coming up for its 20th year anniversary i suppose the persona of the show in general is that it's an extraordinary place it's part of the story we tell ourselves about diversity and an acceptance and It's a dream factory.

5:40Yeah, it's a dream factory. People go on these amazing journeys. They say it changes their lives. I think what's kind of slightly significant is that, for me, it's changed. And part of the reason it's changed is part of the reason why it's very successful, because you'll be the first to say that these big formats, these amazing shows that continue to be relevant and super popular after 20 years, say something about their times. They reflect society, which they also delight. and when Strictly first started it was a lot more amateur. Yes and gentle. Because these are amateur dancers who are being paired with professionals and I think there's something about that that something has changed for me I think it's interesting first of all what we should say is that it's really very very hard some would say brutal to become a professional dancer and all of the professionals many of them left their families when they were young They are subject to brutal training regimes.

6:39It is normalized to some extent that within the performing arts, and I have a lot of friends who went through different things like this to try and go professional. Also, you know, we see the same thing with athletes. And what might be sort of one person's complete brutality semi-abuse is another the way we've always done it. I mean, I think that's the crack that has been fallen down here. and I'll give my reasons why Strictly has the ability to get through this. But the crack that's been fallen down is, as you say, Strictly sells dreams. That's the beauty of that show. There's glitter and there's stardust and it's just a journey and a delight and just seeing people really express themselves.

7:23The world of dancing, as you say, is a brutal one. Now, two other worlds that are absolutely brutal are the world of cooking and the world of military training. now when you do a cooking show you call that cooking show hell's kitchen or you call it ramsey's kitchen nightmares because you are saying this is brutal this is tough this is the world we're in when you look at military training it's sas are you tough enough and people are literally screamed at and thrown off cliffs and things like that but that's the point of that show it's about are you strong are you tough it's not about can you dream your dream and wear a glittery dress now Strictly for a long time has managed to have the best of both worlds which is it has all these professional dancers all of whom as you say have been through fairly brutal regimes to get to where they are and to get to the incredible skill level they are and it brings in lovely amateur celebrities and we sit with someone from Emmerdale yeah and we sit and watch and they get a bit better and they get a bit better the last few years it's so competitive now and people come in and the level of dancing is absolutely extraordinary and to get to that level of dancing if you're a celebrity and you come in which is by the way what most people i know would do most people at home you go and say i'm going to absolutely go for this as much as i can i want to get as much as i can out of the strictly journey that's what i'm going to do if you do that and say that to a dancer the dancer only has one way to respond to that which is oh well i know how to get the most out of someone who dances because that's what happened to me this is what was done to me this is what was done to me and so suddenly there's this never did me any harm never did me any harm and by the way i was talking to a Strictly dancer about this who shall remain nameless, but they were saying exactly that.

9:01If you want that level, then you have to do the things that I did. And this person is not a bully in any way whatsoever, but it's just saying it is really, really, really difficult. And when you get those two forces coming together, which is someone really, a celebrity really, really wanting to come and do their best, and a dancer who maybe has been raised in an environment where they were taught in certain difficult ways, you are going to get the issues that they have now got. So this is a fault line that was waiting to open up. It's a fault line that was waiting to open up. And good on Amanda Abington for saying, I'm not going to stand for it.

9:36And good on, I mean, Zara didn't come out with it, but a BBC crew member reported the footage of Graziano. It's a good on that crew member for doing that as well. But you can see with Zara... But strange in a way that it should be nine months after the event. For sure. You would have thought that that would be surfaced to the very top. and the fact that it hasn't been is going to be... So maybe it's more endemic. ...is the issue. And also, by the way, Zara's statement about I didn't want to make a fuss, she is, of course, if you go into a show that everyone tells you is a dream and that everyone says, oh my God, this is like the most magical journey, and for you it isn't, the first thing most people would do is internalise that and think it was their fault and go, oh, I'm letting everybody down.

10:17I'm not going to complain. This is just the normal way of doing things. You see that in relationships in all sorts of areas, and it's no different here. So I think the brutality of what it takes to be a dancer is something that's never been confronted on that show. Occasionally they go, oh my God, it was a really tough week this week, and we had to do two dances, and I was really put through my paces. But it's never really made clear. And now it has been. I guess it's the BBC's move as to what to do about that. Another part of it, I do think, is the change in the show. that I read in an article by Michael Hogan in The Guardian, this extraordinary statistic.

10:52I think this is mind-blowing, that in the first series ever of Strictly, one 10 was given as a score. And in the last series that we've had, 69 10s were given. Now, you could say, oh, maybe they're just chucking them out, but they're not at all. The standard of dancing has improved beyond. And I think that there's something interesting about that. As I say, formats have to evolve and shows evolve if they were to stay relevant. You shouldn't go for 20 series, is the truth. It's very, very unusual that a show would still be right at the top of its game after 20. You know, X Factor didn't last that long, but Strictly has been very good at changing its clothes.

11:30I agree. But don't you think it's saying something covertly about our culture? You see that fun amateur things now are, if you look at the world of fun amateur sport, it is just awash with performance enhancing drugs. There's an epidemic of this stuff. people who would once have spent that type of person would have once spent maybe an hour a day in the gym now will spend three hours obviously lots of this is being driven by social media but that the sense of like high performance that is applied to things which were really just leisure and amateur fun is across the board it's interesting that this has become so much more of a tough dancing show back in the day you know you remember john sargent being dragging his partner across the floor.

12:12But perhaps he saw that that was coming because he resigned from the show in 2010 because he felt like, oh, it would be taking a joke too far. He already felt that sort of sense of heart because the judges didn't like it. The other thing I think, because the longer a show goes on, the more the buildup of people who say it changed their lives. And you get this flywheel effect where people are thinking, oh, it's changed my life or it's made me feel whole or all these things. And so to some extent, some of the people who may be drawn to that are people who may feel they wish to have their life changed or may need to be made made whole so it may draw to some extent vulnerable people with a vulnerability of some type or another which when you put it in that particular fire pit can easily explode because as we say it is so brutal it's interesting therefore that unlike sort of best practice across almost all the other reality formats now they have psychological evaluations that decide whether you're able to do the show.

13:12And they don't have that on Strictly because in some ways it's part of that story, as I said, that we tell ourselves about diversity and changing lives and all this sort of thing and why would you need to have. But I think you do need to have that. They tend not to have it on celebrity versions of shows, is the truth. They have it because they were made to have it on regular editions of shows. But on celebrity versions of shows, it's, you know, wavers assigned and it's assumed that people can handle themselves. Well, I think we'll be assuming that they will be having it now after this, because this is continuing to unfold.

13:42Yeah. And clearly they are going to have to do a psychological evaluation test. I mean, there are other people who are saying they should shutter it for a year. Such a lot has been made of the 20th anniversary that I don't think they can or should perhaps do that. I don't think they should shutter it for a year. Do you? No, I absolutely don't. I mean, for practical terms, as you say, it's an enormous show and it's already well underway. and you know the contestants have already been booked for the next year and also it's very hard this there's certain shows that you see over the years where i think there's a toxic atmosphere behind them there are certain big big reality shows that you think yeah i'm not entirely sure i trust the motives of the people making this television show and strictly has never been one of those for me strictly genuinely from the point of view of the people are making it has been about joy and it's been about journeys and it's about transformations and it's about showing britain to its absolute best so it's always had somewhere in the brains of the people behind it there's there's been glitter coming out and actually what that can do is blind you sometimes to some of the things that are happening on your show and so it doesn't blind you from a bad way it blinds you from that that thing of over positivity and i'm absolutely certain that every now and again there have been rumblings about disagreements in in fact you you hear it all the time you think oh so and so contestant is quite difficult and looking back you go were they difficult or were they just saying that maybe I'm not being treated the way I should be but it's a brutal world that whole world is absolutely populated by dancers who as you say have been through that in the same way that the the gang on SES Are You Tough Enough have been through boot camps and are so happy to dish it out and I think it's one of those car crashes that was inevitable and was going to happen and if the BBC can show that it's taking it incredibly seriously can understand what's happening can not sort of say yes but you know it's tough because it's tough because if they understand actually culturally the world is changing people will not put up with the things they used to put up with that perhaps some of the people they have got as dancers also need a bit of help every now and again because of the way they've been brought up in the world they were brought up in if they can find a way well one of them has complained that we're not given sort of adequate enough assistance to face their own behavior which seems to me oh really what in one of the dancers who was no longer with the show is saying that they won't give enough support their sort of suit and counter suit now i mean i can i can get it two cultures colliding i agree and i wonder whether it is difficult then though to recalibrate when it has gone so far down the road of the performance have become much more technically adept and it's become much more professional yeah to go back and say a little bit of amateurism is fine it's fine to laugh at people it's fine when people honestly can't do it and we're just having a laugh when they're out there we used to be like this it's quite hard to go back to that yes when you've gone quite far down the road but it's a little you know as i say it's we see this across absolutely everything the sort of hardcore performance gains culture of lots of these things where the fun does get slightly wrung out of it um and that's not this is not just about strictly as i say this is about everything from triathlons to marathons to all sorts of things Do you know what?

16:52For me, the fun has really gone out of triathlons. Marathons likewise. Honestly, they used to just be a breeze. And now everyone takes them so seriously. There's something about the sort of professionalisation and high-performance-isation, not a word, of things that used to be fun. And clearly it's driven in lots of ways by social media and by the idea of perfection. But it's interesting that it's bled even onto this, which is a sort of fun Saturday show. Yeah, we've all worked in organisations where there are targets and you hit those targets and then those targets are raised and you hit those targets and they're raised again.

17:26And there is that sort of, you know, performance inflation that's happened with Strictly. And the BBC now have to find a way of stopping that happening, of reassuring people it's not going to happen again. Of bringing it into the show. Do you know what? That's exactly what I was going to say. This is what I'm saying about Hell's Kitchen and about S.A.S. Are You Tough Enough? you have to accept that it is very very very very hard to train to be a ballroom dancer you have to accept that those couples are going to have arguments when was the last time you ever saw an argument on strictly you don't do it and yeah by the way i understand why because that's not what they want to have people don't want to see this and actually you know that's not the strictly way so they've never ever shown it and i think you're right i think you have to slightly go do you know what this is not always you have to own all of it and you have to own it on camera and And it's quite interesting.

18:16You remember when we did that research that came from More In Common that said that this show skewed sort of most right wing, as it were, compared to lots of the other shows on television. It's quite interesting. If you read a lot of the comments about it, people are saying, this is rubbish, it's just dancing, it's not being in the SS, it's not any of these things. They're not training to be special forces. Now, if any of those people had a daughter and that daughter was kicked at work, they would have very, very different views. no one wants to watch that on Saturday night at all I should be very clear about that but folding it into the show but making it still kind of heartwarming and part of it that that is the challenge but we will definitely see that when we next see this show I think the big difference is there are things that you choose not to show viewers because you want them to believe a reality but as a production team if you start to believe that reality yourself you're in trouble and people can take a bit of reality yeah it's part of authenticity which we is one of the big sort of buzzwords of the time so being able to see both sides of it and there's absolutely no doubt that strictly has done some extraordinary things over the last few years and over the last 20 series and genuinely some extraordinary stories some extraordinary performances has made careers has brought a huge amount of joy and will continue to do all of those things but i think can only do it if they have if they they have to own the situation that they've created and the situation they've created is people who've trained in a certain way being asked to train other people in that same way and you have to deal with it you have to look at it you have to cut it off at the root and you have to show that it is really really really hard obviously i wish none of this had happened to anyone i think it's absolutely terrible without any question it's a terrifying thing for a producer to have to face because they've got their castle and it's completely built and they know exactly what it looks like but occasionally you just got to go no maybe maybe we let a little bit of the truth shine in by the way they let a lot of truth shine in on that show yeah almost everything you see there is true they're not lying to people but they are obviously at the bottom end of what's happening they're not being entirely honest with viewers and i think probably they haven't been entirely honest with themselves yeah and we always get lots of headlines when we talk about the bbc as well someone sent me two the other day and i was like what is this someone sent me a headline that said um richard osman breaks rule that will cost bbc billions i was like oh no what's this uh and it was the thing i said on the podcast about singing along to the words on the wheel.

20:36No. Yeah, exactly. Which, of course, they just don't show. But that was the headline. Who wrote that story? Do you know what? I'm going to Google it. Guess which newspaper? Daily Express, who also did Richard Osmond Talks of Fears after last House of Games recording. What were your fears? No, that was me saying, oh, we've just finished recording for the year. And you saying, God, I hope no one misbehaves in between now and Christmas. And we're like, yeah. And again, that's the headline on the Daily Express. And that's someone's job. Do write in if you're listening to this in the Daily Express, and I'll suggest the best news lines from this.

21:05Those previous ones weren't it. No. And with that, Richard, I think we should go straight to a break. Shall we? This episode is brought to you by Jack Daniels. Jack Daniels and music are made for each other. They share a rhythm in the craft of making something timeless while being a part of legendary nights. From backyard jams to sold-out arenas, there's a song in every toast. Please drink responsibly. responsibility.org jack daniels and old number seven are registered trademarks tennessee whiskey 40 alcohol by volume jack daniel distillery lynchburg tennessee the spirit of innovation is deeply ingrained in america and google is helping americans innovate in ways both big and small from improving emergency response times to protecting against cyber attacks local state and federal governments are innovating with google ai this is a new era of american innovation find Find out more at g.co slash American Innovation.

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22:37Welcome back, everybody. Now, what should we do now, Richard? Shall we talk about the New York Times Best Books of the 21st Century? Yes. Firstly, it's a really, really great list, I would say. It's one of those things where if you're looking for something to read, there will be like four that you would be interested in here, and they're very good at saying if you like this, you will also like that. they've got about 500 people to do this by the way yeah they ask lots and lots of writers and critics and celebrities and yeah it's very american based i would say definitely say that that i would definitely say but that's kind of interesting in a way because there's books there that you don't know which is quite interesting if it had been over here i think we might have known more of them so i wanted to do a couple of things i wanted to go through the list and suggest books that people might actually like to read because i read that's quite a lot on there that i don't think people would like to read there's quite a lot of what i would call you know books that people think you should read.

23:27Oh, there's a lot of that. And to some extent, their society is not exactly the same as ours. Quite a lot of sort of politically correct things you ought to read and you think, oh my God, this is a hard yard. I'm not going to, no, I'm not going to read that. Great, I've now read the paragraph about it on a list and that counts as me having read that one. A lot of the non-fiction is very American based. There's hardly any non-fiction. We can skirt over it. There's a few. But I was stunned by that, that there was so little non-fiction and there was really hardly any, I thought. and that was it was like a few you know some great stuff like tony jub post-war nickel and dimed barbara erenreich by the way if you haven't ever read any barbara erenreich she died not that long ago and she's absolutely wonderful you see and this is the interesting thing because a lot of people are certainly inside the industry go oh what why do we have lists why are we going to have a list of the best books of the 21st century of course they're not the best we shouldn't compare books and if we didn't have this list you wouldn't have just told people about barbara erenreich and there will be people at home who buy Barbara Ehrenreich's book and love it and it's added to their life.

24:26And that is the reason we have lists. I was at a thing last night with lots of booksellers from all the different Waterstones, Smiths, all the Indies and what have you. For your new book. For my new book, I was. But listen, we don't need to worry about that just yet. We're talking about other people's books for now. All right. Much as I would love to talk about We Solve Murders. Get the title in. I was talking to them about lists and prizes and they said they're an absolute godsend. It's not like there's a big TV show every week about books on British television. They tried it a million times.

24:53These things don't particularly rate. There's a brilliant Between the Covers, which is on BBC Two. But that's about as far as it goes. People who like books absolutely love them. Most people don't come into contact with them. It's the truth, culturally. As soon as you have, say, the Booker Prize. So the Booker Prize, when it was won about, it would have been 10 years ago now, and they shared it between Margaret Atwood and Bernadine Evaristo. And there was controversy that they'd shared. because they never shared it before. And they go, what's the point? You know, firstly, we shouldn't even have prizes.

25:20And if we are having prizes, why give it to two books? And so actually, suddenly it was on the front page of newspapers. And Girl, Woman, Other then sold in absolute bucket loads. And the whole of Britain got to find out who Bernardine Evaristo is. And Bernardine Evaristo's backlist then sells and sells and sells. And she made some incredibly credible contribution to our culture. And we got this new star in the firmament just because we had a prize. And these book lists are... They didn't like ranking things. There's nothing wrong with that. Well, listen, you know, to me, there is no culture without ranking culture.

25:51Do you know, I was reading an obituary last week about a journalist called Pat Hartridge, who was the first person to compile the Sunday Times bestsellers list, because we didn't have it until the 1970s. In the US, they've always had bestsellers lists right back to the sort of 19th century. And in Britain, it was seen as very un-English. And it was seen that actually books should not compete with each other. And it was Harold Evans at the Times who got Pat Hartridge to compile this list, which she did by ringing 200 bookstores and getting them to literally physically tell her the numbers of books they'd sold that week.

26:24And she would then compile it and compiled it for many, many years. And the argument that we shouldn't compare books, there's something in it. But the moment that there are real book charts, publishers have always known what's sold because they can see their sales numbers. but publishers don't always want to tell people what that is because publishers actually just want to Oh my God, they're so secretive. publish their friends and publish their mates and give their mates more money and actually when you actually see what people do buy the meritocracy comes into order a little bit more and suddenly books that people actually like and books that people actually read suddenly command bigger fees and bigger advances and things like that so putting those books in the charts and comparing them actually really, really improved the health.

27:04Speaking of which, where were the genre books on this list? There were none. Where were the romance? Where were the mysteries? There's no romance. There's no crime fiction. There is absolutely zero genre fiction on this list, which is fascinating. Which tells you various stories, including about the people who answer the New York Times call to rank them. Well, I did a cross-reference of the 100 best books on this list, 100 best books of the 21st century, and the 100 best-selling books of the 21st century in the States. I knew you'd have done that. Yeah, exactly. That's why I didn't. And I think there's four in there.

27:36There's Demon Copperhead, Barbara Kingsolver, which has sold a load. There's Wolf Hall, which sold an absolute ton as well. Elena Ferranti, my beautiful friend. She's got three on that chart. And The Underground Railroads. Those are the ones that crossed across both of those, which tells you, by the way, how great all of those books are. No Sally Rooney. No Sally Rooney. No NASCAR. Yeah, no sort of anyone. No poetry. You've read no poetry. People say that poetry died like 100 years ago. Yeah. No. Did it not? No. That was the publication of The Wasteland. They think that that's the sort of poetry-cidal event.

28:16Oh, really? Have they not heard of Pam Ayres? Well, there you go. She wasn't on it. So it's a fascinating list, and there's 100 books on it. And honestly, I would recommend having a look at it. Honestly, most of it need not detain you, is the truth. There is a type of literature which appeals to people who really, really get literature, and that's literally that uses words in an incredibly interesting and unusual way. And I get it. And people who really know their business can recognize it, understand it, appreciate it and admire it. That is not what most people want to read. So I'm incredibly happy it's respected and shown and that people who love that sort of thing can buy it.

28:49If I was going through that list and things that people haven't read, Elena Ferrante, of course. George Saunders' Lincoln in the Bardo is in there, which is a brilliant book that people love. And if you're not sure about it, there's also two of his short story collections in that top 100. 10th of December is one of them. So you can dip in and if you like his writing, go for Lincoln in the Bardo. Donna Tartt, who wrote Secret History, her book The Goldfinch is in there, which is one of those books. It's really long, but one of those books I was happy it was long, which is very, very rare for me.

29:16So that's in there. Anne Patchett is in there with Bel Canto and the Underground Railroad as well. Kate Atkinson was in there, which I was delighted. If you want to winnow out all that. I mean, there's a huge amount in there on sort of racial politics that, you know, Britain is not America. so you may find some of the preponderance of that on that list. Maybe you wouldn't perhaps create exactly the same list over here. But when you go through and you see things like, you know, Line of Beauty or Never Let Me Go or Zadie Smith or Wolf Hall, as I say, if you just want to win or out the British, it's a really good list of, say, the best 10 British novels of the 21st century.

29:52They've got that pretty much bang on, I would say. You know we always have to end with a number one. Yes. Of course, you understand that. Of course. So in the top 10, actually the corrections is in the top 10, which I love Jonathan Franson but he's number five Wolf Hall is number three and number one it is Elena Ferrante my brilliant friend which if people haven't read there's four of them and that's a proper it's a page turner and it's literary but you will absolutely love it and I genuinely I love it when we have lists and I love it when we have awards when people talk about you know Oscars and book awards and they say oh it's so self congratulatory and you think no it's a money making exercise Yes, and also most people are not congratulating.

30:32They're just shouting at the television that you got it wrong. And that's the massive part of lists is, oh, my God, they've completely messed this one up. Or, you know, yes, you're correct. That is the best book. So people just like to either define themselves against it or to say, yes, well, you've been right. Or to predict it, to predict what will be there. But if anyone is saying, oh, we shouldn't compare art to each other, then I tell you a number of industries that would disagree with you. The movie industry, the TV industry, the book industry, the music industry as well. they're all like no please please compare because it absolutely proves a boost to our sales and every now and again like with bernardine everisto a new name comes from nowhere that just would not have come if it hadn't been for those awards can i compliment by the way the new york times editors because as you can imagine the real fun of the list actually is the comments which are as awful as you can imagine yeah nothing drives reader engagement like a list which is i mean the whole of Buzzfeed to some extent was born of people just loving a list and either raging against it or you know cheering for it but I have a series of people who are cleverer than the list here who've responded I seem to be unable to find the wind-up bird chronicle by Murakami on your list did I miss it or did you to which the long-suffering New York Times book editor says yes that was published in the 1990s so great uh someone says the fact that the warmth of other The Suns is not on this list, is a tragedy.

31:53I'm very disappointed. To which the New York Times editor replies, it is number two on the list.

32:01Another one, I can't believe Demon Copperhead was left off this list. I never, ever read the same book twice, but I've read this one twice, and I'm sure to pick it up for a third time sometime soon. He goes, it is on the list. It's number 61. Well, it should be in the top ten. Why don't you read the list twice? There you go. But honestly, it's a great list, and I defy anyone not to find something on there that they want to buy. But this is me in defence of lists and in defence of making comparisons between different types of art, because it's incredibly good for the industry. We'll, on a whole separate occasion, talk about power lists, which are the scum of the earth.

32:38But we'll talk about that. But in lots of other ways, brilliant. That's the dream to be on a power list, isn't it? Oh, yeah. I once saw, the GQ once did one where David Beckham was more powerful than Rupert Murdoch. There was one details magazine in America, Kevin Federline, who was at the time Britney Spears' unemployed Bacchic dancer husband, I think he was more powerful than Bashar al-Assad, the Syrian leader. I mean, listen. Is Bashar going to do the photo shoot? And in the end, it's like, who will do the photo shoot? Yes, who's going to be there? GQ men of the year who are available. Here's something I would like to see, like a British power list, either media or politics or whatever it is, that has both Alastair Campbell and Rory Stewart in it.