Kanye, Katseye & Jamiroquai's Hat

0:00The Rest is Entertainment is presented by Octopus Energy. Now, show business is full of people who start out as one thing, but then take on some completely new role that completely eclipses it.

0:11Richard Osman:And before we get on to how Octopus Energy has done that, a few examples. There are people who start out, you know, bands as singers, as actors. A good example would be Victoria Beckham. She started off in a band, Richard. She was in a band called The Spice Girls. Hey, you're going to tell me next that David Beckham used to play football before he became an advertising guy. They have earned far more from their second careers, these businesses they've built up, than they ever did in their first ones. So the idea that she's a singer, that gets her through the door, gets her known, the culture knows who she is.

0:43Richard Osman:She then thinks, I'm going to see if I can do something else. And she has the audience who, if she does it well, goes along with her. But do you know what it reminds me of a lot? Tell me. It reminds me of Octopus Energy, because Octopus Energy has also outgrown its own introduction. It's the UK's largest energy supplier, but is now also one of the country's biggest installers of heat pumps, solar panels and batteries. The list even reaches the driveway with a major electric car leasing business as well. Plan B is a backup birth control option that's there for you when things don't go according to plan.

1:13Richard Osman:It specifically works after unprotected sex and before pregnancy occurs by temporarily delaying ovulation. Plan B is available nationwide at all major retailers and through delivery apps like DoorDash. No ID, prescription, or age requirement. It's the number one OBGYN-recommended brand of emergency contraception, and it won't impact your future fertility. That's freedom to be. Use as directed. This episode is brought to you by DeeDee's Discounts. Back to School season is officially here, and DeeDee's has everything on your list. I'm talking bold styles, cool kicks, backpacks, and even dorm room essentials.

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2:12Hello and welcome to this episode of the Restless Entertainment Questions and Answers Edition. I'm Marina Hyde.

2:17Richard Osman:And I'm Richard Osmond. Hi everybody. Shall we start, because I just think it's a subject that people will be interested in. Yes. with this question from Sam. Kanye West has just announced a tour of Russia. Are American and British musicians blocked from performing in any countries by governments? Yes. Okay, this is interesting. It's not so much a tour. He's doing two dates in St. Petersburg at the Gazprom Arena. It's interesting this angle that you've asked about because we know about people being denied visas to perform and we've had various rappers that we've tried to keep out or whatever. But it can work both ways.

2:51I spoke to someone who knows all about sanctions about this.

2:55Richard Osman:Who knows about sanctions? That's a good job. In this day and age. Yeah. It's a good time, right? My God, he's busy. London's full of people who help people with sanctions. There's nothing to say he can't perform, but you might have lots of regulations and sanctions about transactions and payments and dealing with various sanctioned governments. So Russia doesn't amount to a blanket ban, okay? Americans can do business in Russia, But sanctions prohibit various categories of services and dealings. Performing isn't one of the categories that it prohibits. But if any of the arrangements that Kanye West makes involve sanctioned Russian identities of any type, he could get into massive legal complications.

3:40Richard Osman:It doesn't sound like the sort of thing Kanye would do. He's not someone to seek out trouble. Yeah, I know. He's just trying to have a low-key tour to Russia. So say the promoter agrees to pay him$5 million or whatever it is, Russian origin money itself is not prohibited. But if the promoter's sanctioned or any other aspect of the whole supply chain of these concerts is owned by blocked persons, then you can't transact with them. And your payment can't go through a blocked Russian bank at any stage in the chain. It feels like there'd be quite easy ways around that. It feels like there would be, yes.

4:14but actually making sort of separate entities. People do try to do that all the time and kind of offshore it in different ways, and it's actually quite difficult.

4:21Richard Osman:But the sanctions guys are onto that. There'll be people that help you with that. But actually, it's interesting. Inside Russia, there's been quite, I was looking into it, there's been quite a lot of pressure to call off these concerts because he has obviously made pro-Nazi comments in the past. They're not a great fan of the Nazis for obvious reasons. In Russia, yeah, historically. And the anti-Semitic comments, all of those things. But there are some places in what you're asking about, where is actually banned. And Cuba, because of the Cuba embargo, you cannot perform there. You can record an album there, perhaps.

4:53I'm just thinking of something you could do if you've got special permissions. And I don't know what you'd have to say. There are other countries like North Korea where all travel is advice, anything other than essential travel. So I think if you decided to go and perform a concert there and then, you know, became suddenly interned or whatever, it's not like you won't get consular support, but you're not everyone's number one priority.

5:15Richard Osman:Yeah, if like suddenly Shed Seven are in a prison in Pyongyang, you're like, guys, you kind of brought that up on yourself. Iran is obviously also very difficult and Syria is also very difficult. I don't hear of any musicians who want to go to Iran right now. But, you know, I guess there's always one and it'll probably be Kanye. Yeah, no one's sort of putting out their tour dates and people going, Iran? Yeah. How about Iran? Oh, I see you're not going to Iran again. Yeah, it's actually really cheap to go. It's cheaper to fly there, you know, like people always say to you. I see you're playing in Wolverhampton, but not Iran.

5:46Yeah. Thanks, guys. So there are these rules and there are all these different categories and it's mainly always about payments. That's how they try and get you.

5:55Richard Osman:So you can perform, but it's very difficult to find someone who can pay you enough to perform, whose money wouldn't in some way come under some sort of sanction. In the chain. In the chain, yeah. If nobody in the chain has got any form of sanction, then you can take the money and run. Yeah, and it's quite hard to have enough money to book Kanye without at some point having got yourself on that list. Yeah, I mean, we'll see if they go ahead. But there is, as I said, there's a lot of pushback in Russia against it as well. Okay, this is not totally related, but it feels like it follows on. Liz says, hi.

6:25Hi, Liz. Watching the many musical acts at the BBC proms, I'm led to wonder how an orchestra ships its musicians and its instruments to faraway destinations. I've had enough musical training to know that many of their instruments are worth thousands or even millions. and some are so large they couldn't be easily loaded onto a commercial flight. How does this work?

6:44Richard Osman:In a number of different ways. Often if I have had this situation once myself where I sat very near someone who was sat next to a cello, if you have an instrument that is incredibly valuable, you can book it a seat. And therefore you have it under control the whole time it is right next to you. It doesn't have to go in the hold. It doesn't have to go through any kind of baggage system at the airport. So if you've got an instrument that is that valuable, you can have it next to her if you want. My daughter takes her electric guitar, we just shove it in the overhead. It's not... In the overhead?

7:16Yeah, it's not... Wow. It's a fender, but it's not expensive.

7:19Richard Osman:Yeah, it's a fender, but it's not... I know, but it's long. No, it's not like a one... But it's quite long to go in the overhead. Oh, no, it goes in every time. Does it? She's been taking her guitar since she was tiny everywhere she goes. Okay, but is that a full-size guitar? Is it now? I think it might be nearly, the electric. That feels like it's... It feels like it's too long for an overhead. It's fine. Yeah. It goes in every time. By the way, one of my greatest tricks is I can open the overhead without getting out of my seat. Yeah, on trains or planes. I can open it, I can put stuff up there and take stuff down and I can close it again without ever leaving my seat.

7:50That is so incredibly classy.

7:52Richard Osman:Thank you. Thank you. I love knowing that. Yeah, it's quite something. We need to fly somewhere. Okay, but carry on. Let's do that. And I'll take your daughter's guitar with me. So, yeah, if you've got a very, very expensive thing like that, You can have it yourself. Modern flight case technology is so insanely good now. You would trust, you know, your oboes, your clarinets, your things like that, a violin. You can put it. So bands, for example, will absolutely put very expensive guitars and basses, you know, into flight cases because the technology is so crazy. So the damage is not something that worries them.

8:27Richard Osman:Things getting lost worries them. Every single flight case has what's called an RFID, which is a radio frequency ID chip. on them. So if they do get lost, you know exactly where they are. If they get stolen, you know exactly where they are. If you're a pianist, for example, and it's very, very, you can't put a piano on a plane, you don't really want to put it on a boat either. So most pianists actually will, whatever place they are in, will just find a piano from the same maker, because they trust the maker enough that they will go to somewhere. They will obviously, you know, get there a few days early and work with it, but they'll get a piano from the same maker.

9:02Richard Osman:But bands, you know, most of their stuff, they can hire wherever they are. So if you've got, you know, you stick your guitars, you know, your drums, well, they can all go in flight cases, and they can be carried in a commercial hold. But anything you can't take over, you can hire abroad. There's a huge industry in equipment hire for classical musicians and for bands and things like that. And when you're in a country, you would usually, again, use the air because vans get stolen and that's the thing that you know worries you the most but so taking over there if it's super expensive and it can fit in the seat you'll put it in a seat if it's super expensive and can't fit in the seat you'll have to have a different version of it if it is small enough to go in a flight case it will go in a flight case and other things that i think are interesting in terms of when certainly when bands tour is they will often have two sets of everything certainly you know the backdrop and the lights and all that kind of stuff because you want to be setting up two venues at once and it is cheaper to have two lots of everything than it is to only play one show every two days but you know the basic answer really is anything that can go in a hold anything that is sort of small enough to go in a hold will go in a hold because the technology is so crazily good you know nothing ever gets broken everything is protected from being stolen if you've got a half a million pound cello, you can sit next to it.

10:27Richard Osman:Jamiroquai books a seat for his hat. I think that's a publicity thing. I think it's a publicity thing. But he was that the thing is always because his hat is such a big deal for him. He sits next to his hat. Basically, there are huge industries around transporting instruments around the world and also huge industries around hiring out instruments to any visiting orchestras or visiting bands or things like that. But you can if you want to, and you will see it occasionally, sit next to your instrument and put its seatbelt around it and just, you know, pat it every now and again when you're on a transatlantic flight.

11:02Richard Osman:Okay, now, following Sam and Liz, Andy says, you often hear movie fans talking about the final girl. How did this movie trope start, and why do you think it's become such a popular plot device, the final girl? Right, yes. In the film I recommended on Tuesday's episode Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma, Gillian Anderson is the sort of woman who was the original final girl in an original movie. Okay. Anyway, right. The final girl is something from slasher movies. It was coined by Carol Clover, who writes film criticism, and she wrote a book called Men, Women, and Chainsaws, Gender in the Modern Horror Film, which I have at home.

11:36It's very good.

11:37Richard Osman:Of course you do. But the final girl, it's a trope from slasher movies. It's basically the last person alive who ends up confronting the killer. So if you think of, like, Jamie Lee Curtis in Halloween, and it's interesting, they don't have to be brunettes. and in a nightie, but it does help. It's almost always a woman. Obviously, it's final girl, but men are killed way more in horror movies. Like sometimes people call them the expendable gender. There's something quite, I've got to say, there's something quite virginal about this girl. Because sex in these things, in horror movies, particularly often symbolizes death.

12:10And blondes often symbolize kind of licentiousness. If there's like a hot cheerleader, okay, it's tickets for her, she's going, right? You know that.

12:17Richard Osman:If you're a blonde woman or any sort of man, you're going. And you're like, hey, let's drink and do drugs at this party, okay? I'm telling you, you are going to get slashed, okay? So quite straight-laced to some degree, a bit of a sort of Mary Sue, you know, she's almost quite perfect. But we see the plot through her, and that's what Carol Glover writes about in this book a lot. Actually, people used to think, oh, it's really sexist, it's always whatever. But it's always, I don't know, a girl in a nightie or whatever. But actually what happens is that through those final girls, the movie is resolved and you see the kind of final scenes sort of playing out through them and they tend to be obviously victorious.

12:53The reason it's sort of so popular is because like all of these things, once it becomes a trope, it becomes something that you can ironize or you can make it knowing. And as I said, that movie is like so knowing about the final girl and about the relationship between sex and death in horror movies and all this sort of stuff. So yes, it's very, very appealing. And also some of the best horror movies just have this thing running through them. And I think it's kind of interesting.

13:18Richard Osman:Yes, horror movies now can absolutely, they've got such a kind of a history to play off. It's like in some ways, it's like crime fiction in lots of ways where he goes, we know all the things we have read before. We know that all the readers have read them before. And so you can have fun with them because you know the expectation as soon as someone turns up on screen. And for a screenwriter or for a novelist, that's an incredibly fun thing to play with. Yeah, it started with things like Scream and whatever, where it became so sort of ironic and meta. And now, as I say so often, horror is just this unbelievable, amazing genre where incredible young filmmakers and different people are talking about every subject under the sun.

13:57And it's not really about horror, it's about other things. It's about whatever. And the one I was talking about is like about female sexual satisfaction. It's so interesting. And all the interesting things, not all of them, but most of the interesting things I think are happening in horror. So all of these tropes kind of help, but we all understand them. It's become a very readable language.

14:14Richard Osman:It's that weird thing that more rules and tropes there are actually the more creative freedom you have because you've got all of these toys to play with. You're so right. It's just like sort of crime fiction, I guess. Yeah, yeah. Before we go to a break, we have a bonus episode for all of our members. We're doing the history of James Bond at the moment and this week's one is about the finding of Sean Connery, which is a great, great story. If you want to sign up to be a member, it's westersentertainment.com. You can sign up there, ad-free listening and all that sort of stuff. And talking of ads, let's have some now.

14:45This episode is brought to you by Lloyd's Rewards. Now, a big mistake that people make is leaving the cinema as soon as the credits roll because there might be a bonus scene right at the end.

14:56Richard Osman:Yeah, absolutely. One of my favourite things in the middle. Yeah, you never know. In Marvel's ones, there used to be a mid-credits scene and then there'd be an end-credits scene. I remember the first one I really remember. Well, two, I remember Ferris Bueller's Day Off where he tells you to go home at the end, but also Smokey and the Bandit with Burt Reynolds where they would do bloopers. It just feels like a secret little glimpse into a different world. Yeah, and it doesn't quite have to be over. Yeah, exactly. And it's just a lovely little added bonus. You've done everything. You've made your show.

15:22Richard Osman:You've given everyone everything. It's just a lovely little extra. Which is also the idea behind Lloyd's Rewards. Extra value appearing inside something you were already doing anyway. Your daily banking. From shopping to streaming, you can bank on Lloyd's to help your money go further. It's rewards like this that make 14 million people bank on Lloyd's. Search Lloyd's Rewards in your app. Eligibility criteria, terms and conditions apply, retailer offers and cashback amounts may vary. UK residents 18 plus. This episode is brought to you by Didi's Discounts. Back to school season is officially here and Didi's has everything on your list.

16:00I'm talking bold styles, cool kicks, backpacks and even dorm room essentials. All the prices that won't hurt your wallet. So don't sleep on Didi's. Whether you've got a second grader or a sophomore, more? Didi's has your whole family covered. Find a Didi's discount store near you and go check it out today. This episode is brought to you by ChatGPT. Hey, it's Bill Simmons from the Bill Simmons podcast. Have you guys heard about ChatGPT work? It's the new way to use ChatGPT for bigger multi-step projects. And when you need more than just answers, give ChatGPT work access to your apps and files, and it can create real work documents like spreadsheets, slides, and structured reports.

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16:54Welcome back, everybody. We begin with a question about book publication. Emma Wright says, I've recently been looking at upcoming book releases on Waterston's website. Other retailers are available. And notice most books are released on a Tuesday. Is there a reason for this?