Jeremy Clarkson For Prime Minister?

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1:21Hello and welcome to this episode of The Rest is Entertainment with me, Marina Hyde. And me, Richard Osmond. It's so lovely to see you again, Marina. It is lovely to see you, Richard. How are you? Yeah, I'm not bad. I'm not bad. I'm getting very nervous about our Albert Hall show. Nervous, but excited. Neither of us are natural performers. We are surrounding ourselves with natural performers. I say that. Lots of fun celebrity guests. I'm going to wear a big dress and a large number of pieces of Christmas paraphernalia. Oh, are you? Okay, I'll wear a Christmas jumper. We've got an amazing band, the Sensation Band, who played at my wedding, who were like, they are the best band I've ever seen in my entire life, if you're looking to book a band.

1:54So there's going to be lots of Christmas songs, but yeah, I'm terrified. But should we not worry about it too much? No, it's going to be really fun. It's a celebration. It's fun. It is going to be a party and it's going to mark the official opening of the Christmas season. I'm just agreeing that. Everyone knows each year that Christmas starts when the rest is entertainment live show happens. Fourth of December. Enough of that. What are we talking about this week? We are going to talk about the possibility of the emergence of a kind of celebrity politician in our country, whether someone like Jeremy Clarkson has the potential to kind of find a way through.

2:27I mean, if I was going to clickbait it, I'd say we're going to ask the question, could Jeremy Clarkson be Prime Minister? Yeah, and you have just done that. So thank you very much for that. What else are we going to talk about? We're going to talk about the Jaguar rebrand and whether a lot of people have said it's the worst rebrand in history. So we're going to talk about what happens when a brand collapses or perhaps Jaguar being cleverer than everyone else. We shall find out. And then I'm also going to talk quiz shows, which are the great new heroes of British television. And I'll say why and what might happen next with them as well.

2:55I am going to listen to that conversation and interject occasionally. Exactly that. So, celebrity prime ministers. Yes. Last week, the farmers march on Whitehall to protest about the changes in inheritance tax to farms. Jeremy Clarkson appeared at that march. I suppose that's probably the hook on which we're hanging this. And I suppose the question is, could someone in our political system, which makes it very, very difficult, by the way, for people to emerge from outside. Because in America, of course, they have a celebrity president. That is a president who was not a politician, was known to the public, and used that public leverage to become president, to run for president and to become president.

3:32So they have a definitive celebrity president. So Reagan, you could say, was a celebrity president, less so because he's been slightly more of a party animal, by which I mean someone who is interested in the party rather than a party animal. But Trump is an actual celebrity, became president. As you say, harder in the UK, although I'll talk about various reasons why I think it's possible now. But the question is, could it happen in Britain? And if it did, who would it be with Anne Clarkson, as you say, at that farmer's march? Various people started thinking, wow, a lot of people seem to like him.

4:03One of the people who sort of said, oh, I don't know, maybe I'm thinking about this is a guy who I've been talking to this week who is so interesting. He's called James Kanagasorium. He's the chief research officer at Focal Data. He is a pollster. He coined the phrase the red wall. That was my decorator. Yeah. It used to be called a signature wall. A feature wall. Feature wall. Yeah, that feature wall of British politics. He has also talked about Starmer having been elected on what he's called a sandcastle coalition in that it's very wide, but it's very shallow and it could easily be washed away.

4:36He's mega, mega interesting. And I was talking to him about celebrity politicians in general and Clarkson in particular. He pointed out that one of the really interesting things is that because of all the kind of convulsions and political turnover we've had since 2016 onwards, our political cycles have gone miles faster than our celebrity cycles. So we've torn through like tons of politicians. And broadly speaking, in kind of middle-of-the-road terms, the celebrities are the same, okay? So we've got the same presenters, the same sort of rockers, the same stars. The celebrities have had more staying power than the politicians, which...

5:11Are you saying that celebrities have more staying power than Liz Truss? Yeah. Unbelievably, people have been famous for longer than Liz Truss. Yeah, I've done pilots that have gone longer than Liz Truss's premiership. So many people have been thrown on the scrappy in terms of politics. So it's inevitable that despite the obstacles in our system, celebrities and people who come from outside politics are being considered. And also the fact that people do feel that politics is broken and that despite, you know, sort of landslide victory, it's not immediately clear how that feeling of brokenness is going to change.

5:42and people want things to be different. And in terms of the way our system works, you know, famously it's always been, it's been impossible for an outsider to really come in and be prime minister because you had to be leader of the Tory party or the Labour party, certainly for the last 80 odd years. But as your friend James will attest, the speed of the political cycle means many things, but it means that actually those party loyalties have almost completely disappeared. You know, if you play to your base as a Tory or Labour politician now, that base is very small. Many more things can happen than used to be able to happen.

6:14Because the one thing people always say, yeah, but the thing is, you know, you could be up at that in the polls. But as with reform, it's hard to win the seats in Westminster. It's hard to actually win in a series of constituencies. That is going to go as well. So that's just a thing that we think can't be done. But of course, it can be done because so many people will gladly gravitate towards something new and shiny and something that seems to solve. So many people are unhappy is probably the driver of it all. Exactly, which has been the driver of politics forever. But by and large, you then had a binary choice between red and blue.

6:45And now, in our world of social media, you have greater choices. So all I'm saying is that opens the door for a celebrity to, A, start their own party and get into power in a way that they haven't been able to do before. But don't forget, Sunak and Starmer were both fairly new MPs when they became leaders of their parties. Certainly much quicker than had ever been the case before. and so you could also if you happen to join the Labour Party or the Conservative Party and be elected you could become leader of one of those parties fairly quickly in a way you couldn't have done 10, 20, 30 years ago so there I think there are two absolutely in that way that Johnson whilst being a creature Boris Johnson whilst being a creature of politics in lots of ways was also a sort of outsider figure and then suddenly was kind of surfaced you know ineluctably to the top yeah but there's a sidebar which is people might say oh but Johnson and Farage are celebrities I don't think either of them are johnson was a journalist and he'd been on one episode of have i got news for you farage was a trader or something and he became known through let's talk about what we're also talking about when we're talking about the subject which is why people feel that they're not really politicians is because so much of politics is now vibes based we talk about things in terms of personal atmospherics really and so johnson might seem like not a politician farage might seem like not a politician although as you say he has been a politician forever and the vibes of Clarkson if we can what I was going to say if you're interested in vibes based then that's entertainment that's all entertainment is that's why people become famous it's Riz it's being vibes based that's all it is so those two things are about to collide and stories which we talk about a lot and people in politics are always saying well you know people have just failed to tell a story you know Clarkson has made with the farm show an every man story out of farming which you would think would be quite hard to do.

8:30And we've talked before about him and his producer, Andy Willman, and there's a sort of story of the week. You know, something goes wrong, it's fixed, but there's ongoing kind of serious plot lines. But he is able to tell a very compelling story. Anyway, talking to James Kanagasorium, he said what Clarkson can do is he has drawn together different strands of Britishness that elsewhere are completely sort of bifurcated, right? So when you ask kind of young, urban, maybe centre-left professionals, you know what's the high point of Britishness they'll say something like you know Danny Boyle and the 2012 opening ceremony and blah blah and then if you ask other people they might say the people like who are drawn to Farage they talk about a nostalgia but there's a version to loss and that can feel quite a negative version of Britishness as well now with Clarkson what he's done is you've got the show and it's kind of it is elegiac and sometimes it's kind of banal but it's also magnificent and positive and emotional but the one thing he's got that neither the Danny Boyle nor the sort of Farage vision of Britishness has is that it's got that ironic nature of Britishness which is by the way such a key part of Britishness that kind of irony and the sort of humor neither of those versions has it which is you know not in any way to denigrate either of versions it it they just don't have it um so when he talked you know james was talking about the sort of notting hill to nottingham coalition of people on of the center right now most politicians would kill for that sweep because people have become either sort of urban politicians or rural politicians they're not able to be both which like it or not clucks and is yes he is i think exactly right i think it's very very telling that uh at a farmer's march he is asked to speak and not Farage that tells you everything for you know again Farage in the world of politics Farage has charisma we've talked about this before in in the actual world he does if you put Farage up with Jeremy Clarkson you see who Farage is which is a poor man's Jeremy Clarkson Clarkson has a lot of what Boris has which is they are journalists they are able on a sixpence to construct an argument whatever argument you want ask me what you want to do I can do it and I can do it in a you know 800 words I can make it funny I can make it relatable I can center myself in it the difference I think between Clarkson and Boris Johnson.

10:48I think Clarkson knows that. I think Clarkson understands that. I think Clarkson understands that if you're a journalist, you never have to really face the consequences of what you do. You can say whatever you want and people don't lose their jobs. Whereas Boris Johnson didn't understand that. Boris Johnson thought, no, I can do this and I can take the same energy and I can take this into Westminster. That's why I think that Clarkson wouldn't want to be prime minister because he wouldn't enjoy the consequences. Anytime he's been called out for his journalism and faced the consequences, is I don't think he's enjoyed it particularly.

11:17He has taken positions and he's made mistakes and he's up, he's down. And in many ways, he's had a sort of politician's time of it to some extent, but he isn't tainted by what people hate, which is machine politics. So although he has had those things, he's not tainted by that. And that in some ways makes him a sort of credible kind of populist possibility. Yeah, if I was a British Steve Bannon, say, which, listen, newsflash, I'm not. Which you so are. Then he would be my absolute perfect candidate. Because as you say, he's cross-genders, he's cross-ages, he's cross-classes. There's something he does.

11:57He's got that plain speaking thing, truth to power type thing. So Victoria Derbyshire makes the point that you've actually said, look, I'm going to buy a farm because this is a way of avoiding inheritance. You've literally said it. and Clarkson is saying well yes now I'm going to have to put it in the trust and this is typical BBC bias and what have you and it's so hard isn't it because Victoria Derbyshire has to ask that question because we live in a democracy and that's what journalists are supposed to do and it's true and it needs to be pointed out and there is a hypocrisy there Clarkson is able, you can just say that's typical BBC bias and suddenly people don't seem to mind anymore I think perhaps he regrets saying it was typical BBC bias I think it was a knee-jerk reaction but equally his answer which is yeah then that balloon has popped immediately you know 10 years ago it'd be a gotcha now it's not so as a journalist it's very hard when someone like Clarkson comes from outside politics to nail them to the wall for anything I agree with that having said that I read what he wrote in the Sunday Times this weekend and was quite surprised that he wrote what he wrote there was a sort of tinge of regret to it all he also said that the farmers had said to him after he'd done his speech don't represent us anymore on this issue and I think he regarded the BBC interview as a sort of you know that he had been had whereas I actually hadn't from watching it and from being there I didn't experience it as that and I was quite surprised he felt the need to walk back a large amount of it but he clearly did and it was interesting there was a bit where he was talking about Andy Willman the producer of Clarkson's Farm and long-term producer of Clarkson was there and saying oh yeah i don't know we sort of need an ending because he they're obviously going to do an episode when he goes to the farmers march and that's going to be part of it and andy willman was like basically you've got to do the speech because otherwise we haven't really got an ending for this episode and he sort of made it sound a bit like that then then perhaps there is that sense of sensitivity you were talking about earlier so yeah the the really interesting thing is as you say this whole thing has come to a head because of the speech he made at the farmers march and suddenly this sort of coalition seems to come together and in the article it becomes apparent that the speech is the product of Andy Willman, the producer saying, I wonder if you could do a speech.

14:01Otherwise we haven't got an ending. Otherwise we haven't got an ending. And so, of course, the natural thing is to say, oh, you know what? It was TV. It was artifice. But then you go, oh, no, but that's how you win elections. Yeah, it's kayfabe. It's what Trump's done all the way through. Exactly. You've got this front man, Jeremy Clancy, who does it, and then you've got someone like Andy Willman who knows exactly what people want, how they want it, and he says, do a speech now in front of all the farmers. Listen, it's a brilliant way to make a television programme, but I'll say it's also a brilliant way to become Prime Minister of a country.

14:30I would say that, and you need your Andy Willman behind you. I don't think he would want to be Prime Minister, would be my opinion, but I do think a celebrity could become Prime Minister. So the question is, if it weren't Clarkson, who might it be? Martin Lewis? Well, I was looking at the... MoneySavingExpert.com. I've got some views on this. I was looking at the list of Britain's most popular celebrities on YouGov, which is a really cool list. It's a really, really interesting place to be. And at number one, it's David Attenborough. He's Britain's most popular celebrity. It's how many people recognise you minus...

15:03He's literally older than Joe Biden. Yeah, he's 18 months older than Joe Biden. The popularity is how many people recognise you minus how many people have a negative view of you and David Attenborough scores sort of 92. And you go, it's got like about 500 names on this list. It's really worth looking at as you get into the 400s. but other people in that top 10 Trevor McDonald's in the top 10 Stephen Fry's in that top 10 number 2 on that list number 2 on that entire list of every single celebrity there is is Martin Lewis in terms of popularity everyone knows him and everyone who knows him likes him well just for background Martin Lewis if you don't know him which I'm sure you will is you know moneysavingspert.com he's found ways to help people through all sorts of things during the cost of the earliest phases of the cost of living crisis I have to say that he you know Rhys Mogg was business secretary an energy secretary you tell me what that guy did to help anybody he never made a public statement to help any single person okay Martin Lewis did more than about three government ministers put together just tiny things I'm thinking about little things like you know did you know that your thermostat is probably set to 74 and if you turn it down to 60 you're going to save 8 % on your energy bills why isn't Rhys Mogg saying that why is Martin Lewis telling me that okay so well I don't think I don't think Jacob Rhys Mogg has ever touched his own thermostat I agree.

16:20Obviously, I don't think he's on top. And I know, and that's a euphemism as well, okay? He just hasn't touched his own thermostat, okay? And we're going to do the re-smogs next week, by the way. Yeah, we are. Sorry, everyone. Just warning now, if you want to take a week off. Because they're doing a reality show. Okay, but everything, as I was talking to, you know, talking to James Kanagosori about this, he's saying, you know, everything that Martin Lewis has done in his career so far, it has been cost-free. He offers a sort of public good. He's done really good things for people. He's tried to help.

16:50But in a way that he has not been tested. So whereas Clarkson has been tested, he's been through these various fires, as I said, and although it's not machine politics, he nonetheless has been tested like a politician and a lot of his negatives are already baked in. We don't know Martin Lewis's negatives. And by the way, there are them because there are with every single human being in the world. I'm a big fan of Martin. He's recognised by 96 % of people in the country, Martin Lewis. Do you know what percentage of people who know him have a negative view of him? Tell me. 4 % oh my god that's pretty good going isn't it yeah but you have to take positions as a politician and a lot more you know you've got to we don't know what the negatives would be and by the way we also don't know if Martin would want to do this either exactly well so you've got you have two very different types of prime minister there Clarkson would be very much more the sort of Trumpian you know make grand gestures say grand things you know disrupt and then hope people can tidy up after you Martin Lewis would be far more of a sort of European Union technocrat, like someone who comes in and just said, should we just get the economy running right?

17:54Should we just make everybody 1 % richer and better off without coming in with, you know, and he has always seriously avoided taking a political stance on anything if he could avoid it. And there are ways and means of taking that into politics. You can have that as your narrative, which is, I am not taking a political stance here. I'm going to come in and I'm going to try and make the country better off. and that's an interesting way to go about it and he is someone who people would trust to do that. They are unhindered by the collective responsibility of being in the Labour Party or the Tory party or one of the big political parties where you have to toe the party line all the time.

18:31If Martin Lewis and Jeremy Clarkson ran against each other, I might get our lovely friends at More In Common to ask their people who would win a general election. For all your entertainment polling, this podcast. They've done for our Royal Albert Hall show that More In Common have done Britain's favourite. Christmas song and Christmas film, and then they've done it by political affiliation as well, which we'll do on the podcast after the live show. I'm going to get more in common to ask who would win in a general election between Martin Lewis and Jeremy Clarkson. Well, it would be Clarkson, I can tell you.

19:01Other names in that top ten, by the way. Claudia Winkleman is there. Wouldn't be interested. Mary Berry is there. Not me wouldn't be interested. She wouldn't be interested. I can officially confirm Claudia would not be interested in that. Another person very, very high up the list, David Tennant. Really? He's very high up the list. 13th most popular celebrity in Britain Has he ever played a Prime Minister? He's played everything, so I'm surprised he hasn't played a Prime Minister Do you know, I think he hasn't only because of Rory Kinnear, because I think legally Rory Kinnear always has to play the Prime Minister these days Richard Madeley is 234th Well that would be a wild ride Richard Madeley is 234th on the list Oh I thought you were saying he was in the top 10, I was about to say what?

19:39Carol Vorderman, 68th There are very few people in that list you think would want a political career Martin Lewis and Jeremy Clarkson about the only two. Jeremy Clarkson, by the way, on Britain's Most Popular Celebrities is 18th. Two places behind James May. That's an election I'd like to see. May versus Hammond versus Clarkson. So I do think we will have a celebrity Prime Minister in the next 20 years because I think the route is now available to do it because I don't think you have to go via the Labour Party or Tory party. And also if you wanted to go via those two, I think you probably could.

20:08But you do have to have an incredible heartland appeal. I don't think you're going to get a firebrand from the right or a firebrand from the left sort of suddenly winning over the whole of Britain. But we will find out if Martin Lewis or Jeremy Clarkson will win because it's an interesting part again. Yeah, right. I think we should have a break now. But when we come back, we're going to be talking about the Jaguar rebrand. More cars. More cars. More cars. And also quizzes, the new heroes of the schedules. We could almost call them Rolls Royces. Yeah, the Rolls Royces of our schedules. Lowe's knows how to help make your home holiday ready for less.

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21:58Welcome back, everybody, with the shock news that Dermot O 'Leary is now Prime Minister. Jaguar released a new advert this week, and it's got more publicity than the most new adverts got, Marina. I know we did Christmas ads last week, so not to turn us into the rest of the advertising, but Jaguar has been that sort of one of those, what we now call heritage British brands, you know, the Thai, British Racing Green, the sort of that font. None more British. None more British. Jaguar had to do something. They are being outsold by their stable mate Land Rover by something like six to one, right? And they're going full electric.

22:35and they've got some new, very, very expensive concept cars coming. So they have to do something, okay? They have to rebrand. Anyway, what they have done is release an ad. The car they're going to unveil at some Miami art fair. Miami art fair, where all the cars are unveiled. Yeah, that's all right. I would definitely do it. That's where I remember the first Ford Cortina, I think, wasn't it? Absolutely, on a big pedestal, you know, next to a Basquiat. So they released an advert. If you haven't seen it, it has been setting the internet on fire and not in a good way. can you set the internet on fire in a good way?

23:06I don't know, I mean setting it on fire permanently would be good but yeah no one's found a way how to do that I want to say that a lift arrives on a sort of pink planet out of it emerge several people who I, some of whom are sort of deliberately looking non-binary, some of them all wearing bright pink clothes, yellow someone's got a mallet, they're going to smash some things there are no cars and they've changed the logo of the sort of the famous growler they call it the the leaping the leaping jaguar the famous growler every time i've written these ad men talking all week about growlers i've just found it absolutely hilarious but with respect to all advertisers that's a rebrand let's call it the famous growler the famous growler yeah and they've changed the logo and blah blah blah anyway there's a tiny tiny teaser image of their new concept car which does sort of look from the corner of it quite extraordinary and amazing in that way that you know the tesla truck looks like a child sort of during a futuristic car it's got that sort of slight view we've only seen the sort of back rear end of it as it were again sorry that's the reality all we've seen thus far well we we haven't seen the famous but we we have seen the left rear end right as i say they do have to do something because they're they're they're all cars are currently off sale they're in trouble um and they say that they're going full electric and that the car's going to cost more than to£100 ,000 and they're only going to hold on to 15 % of their current customer base.

24:31Yeah. Well, I mean, are they going to hold on to 15 %? The trouble with this advert is some people will say, I think it's great. It's brave. It's this. It's not brave and original. It just looks like a load of stuff. It could be an advert for, I don't know, Debenhams five years ago. It doesn't make any difference. They've said it should encapsulate fearless creativity. Yeah, they want a fire break. They want a renaissance. You know, it's like the old world is dead and the new one is coming. It's like, you know, you still have to have customers, right? And you know that your primary business, sorry, car company, is selling cars, right?

25:07That is their primary business. And I have to say, all these things take ages to do. This campaign will have been percolating for like, I don't know, I don't want to say a year, maybe less than a year, but at least, you know, a long time. And the trouble is, it just feels late. it feels like that era of a sort of woke capitalism. We've reached the high watermark of it. You know, I am a Shropshire-based cement firm. I must put something on our socials about Black Lives Matter. As we've said before in this podcast, it's fine not to post. You saw it also in the wake of the Queen's death, where you've got all these yoga leggings companies having to sort of tweet with Black Borders and Centre Park telling everyone to stay in their lodges and not come out on the day of the funeral.

25:49And you just thought, this is so mad. you know the tills in Morrison's being put on a low beep half mast yeah they are low beep yeah they were just the noise was required as disrespectful I was in Poundland um Poundland have now got their Christmas tills yeah and every time you buy something it goes ho ho ho merry Christmas so it's annoying but there's people working there and literally every single person who buys anything goes ho ho ho merry Christmas I think it's torture yeah I genuinely think I genuinely think that's torture to the people who work there now can I put the counter view on this so jerry mcgovern is the chief creative officer who does the branding for jaguar land rover so he's done all the land rover um branding which has been unbelievably good and unbelievably profitable so he absolutely knows his business uh and a lot of people going but you're sure you're showing us clientele wouldn't be able to afford your cars uh you're not showing us any cars all this all this stuff now william lyons who invented jaguar his absolute key line was a copy of nothing which is a great line and they keep this copy nothing here which i think is a very very strong thing to have are you aware of this in the erenberg bass rule no which is so erenberg bass institute university of south australia and it's the absolute sort of they're the gurus for all marketers everywhere in the world and they're the ones that came up with this the 95 5 rule which absolutely has kind of ruled advertising for the last five years or so the 95 5 rule says if you are selling a car so if you're jaguar only five percent of the people who might buy your car at any given time are going to buy it because most people bought their car six months ago or a year ago or two years ago so then they're not in the market 95 of people are not in the market for your car at the moment your advert drops five percent of people are so they said stop spending your money trying to attract that five percent actually what you want to do is build a brand for the other 95 so that when they are ready to buy a car they remember you first and they will start looking to the specifics of your brand and that's when you start bringing out the short of it which is the here are the you know specifics of our car here's a picture of our car here's it driving up an alpine pass and so this 595 or 95 5 rule which i think is is completely counterintuitive but makes absolute sense which is almost everyone you're advertising to is not going to buy your car in the next two weeks but almost everyone who will buy your car will do it in six months a year 18 months time so don't show a picture of your car driving up an alpine road now if you need to turn a brand around you just need to do something well i don't think the way that they've done it is going to do that at all let's talk about another advertising guru david ogilvy and he goes further back and you know he's a big he's a big presence in madman he's clearly um part of the inspiration for john draper he's a fascinating guy if you ever want to read his books on advertising i mean this is a guy who thinks a lot about the roman empire let's put it that way and the range of greeks and whatever but he is very very clear that advertising is persuading people to buy stuff okay you work for a retailer lots of advertising is bad and actively harms products okay and it's the idea that the idea that you know some all advertising is good and just by having someone paying for it you're doing something great for your product it's not at all true and it never has been and just because he's from a long time ago David Ogilvie the techniques of sales remain the same and one of his favorite copywriters once said I've seen an advert for basically the same product made by different brands in the same publication as it was at the time basic style layout everything and one of them sold 19 and a half times not twice as much as the other 19 and a half times as much as the other and so what it is it's the difference between one had the right appeal and one had the wrong appeal and it's one of those really basic things when you hear it you think yeah no that's just too simple but it's actually it is quite simple if you're saying to me that this particular jaguar rebound is going to sell which is its job is to sell in 2026 when they come into the market lots of hundred thousand plus vehicles yeah i will love to see it i just listen i have a thing where everyone is saying that something's wrong a bit of me thinks hold on a minute especially when when someone like uh you know jerry mcgovern has been very successful uh otherwise and i get what you're saying about david ogilvy 100 but they're not selling mars bars they are selling an incredibly expensive car of which they don't have to sell very many is the truth you know that's the business they're trying to get in now is the ultra high luxury we don't have to sell very many of these i mean listen instead of having car show rooms they're going to be having like kind of art installations where you know there's cordon blurb food alongside the the cars and what have you it all depends on this car which is going to be unveiled at the miami art fair uh if that is an amazing car if it does something extraordinary me if copy nothing genuinely you look at it and go okay i see what you mean then it could absolutely be a masterstroke because suddenly you're positioning yourself somewhere where nobody else is it could be a huge mistake it feels like a mistake because it feels old-fashioned i do think though if you're if you're sitting there thinking yeah but it's jaguars and you're thinking of the sweeney and you think of that that jaguar disappeared a really really long time ago that business disappeared a long time it's not like a great british business you're not just making cars for inspector morse you know they're there are different businesses these days now richard please talk to me about quizzes.

30:58Yeah, so quizzes are sort of, you know, the last remaining workhorses of terrestrial television. They're the things really keeping it afloat, you know, apart from, you know, your Strictly's and I'm a Celebs, these sort of big tentpole things. You know, in a world where almost every smaller show has gone under. In a world? In a world. On Monday, so on Monday, just to give you, like, ratings sort of standard bearer, Channel 4 got 700 ,000 was the highest rating on Channel 4 on Monday, right? In prime time? in prime time yeah across the whole day the following shows all got over two million pointless university challenge only connect mastermind house of games the chase that's six quizzes all of them getting over two million which is about three times the maximum thing on channel four and often by the way on bbc2 anything outside of quizzes on bbc2 also that's that's the sort of ratings they're getting so ratings going down and down and down and you've got these shows which are getting really good ratings they're getting very high audience appreciation index people like to watch them.

31:56They're not sort of like, you know, just kind of sitting there and, you know, chewing gum for the eyes. That's a great Father Ted joke, where Father Dougal is watching TV and Ted goes, chewing gum for the eyes, and Dougal goes, no thanks, Ted. So these shows are getting good ratings. They are also unbelievably cheap in the context of how television works. So an episode of I'm a Celeb, something like that, it's a million pound an episode. something like even the wheel would be four or five hundred thousand pound episodes yeah exactly huge you know seven figures per episode for all of this at least something like pointless a house of games only can at university challenge 50 grand an episode probably uh so you can do 20 episodes of that for the price of you know another prime time show so you're getting these incredibly cheap shows which are getting incredibly good ratings they're rating like the soaps that's wild to me.

32:50I mean, because the story of the soaps, which we will definitely talk about in the future, but the soaps used to be by far and away the biggest things on British TV, and I'm talking about, you know, EastEnders and Coronation Street, which was it, and Emmerdale's behind. Now they're all sort of on parity. But they're rating the quiz shows. Yeah, there are weeks in which Only Connect outrates EastEnders. That is extraordinary. Which is, yeah, extraordinary. And also a show like Only Connect. Most of these quiz shows, in fact, they are idiosyncratic they have not been made by committee you know they're not they're very unusual shows that people come to feel very loyal to and it feels like a very unusual flavor and you get a very very very loyal audience who love to watch a quiz show if you've got a daily quiz show as well people just love it the chase has been just for itv has been such an extraordinary hit yeah over the years and now plays in prime time for for bigger ratings but has just been enormous and you know pointless have been on for 15 years now for the bbc and just absolutely delivers these solid numbers in a world where nothing delivers solid numbers, where everything is falling away.

33:51So what happens? We know that Terrestrial TV is on its way out, and they rely more and more on these quizzes, the shows that people love. And the thing has always been, these shows are working great for Terrestrial because they have a slightly older audience profile than some other shows. But that is changing. And suddenly a lot more people are watching these shows on streaming. So House of Games gets half a million every day on catch-up. Only connects half a million every day on catch-up. People are working out. An older demographic is working out they can watch things, not necessarily on terrestrial TV.