Lisa Nandy, Tech Bros & The Sephora Crisis

23:59These are incredibly expensive things. And by the way, when I say expensive, I don't mean that when I had my first job I could have bought anything like this. This is like what you buy when you're in your 30s and you're into a number of jobs in your life. It's like an anniversary present. Yeah. You hear mothers saying, I would never buy this stuff for myself and yet my 10-year-old wants it. Obviously, Obviously, the first and most obvious thing is if you're 10, your skin's never going to be better than it is right now at this minute. And anything you buy is going to make it worse. You're not listening to this podcast, though, so it's irrelevant.

24:30And again, we talk a lot about how businesses in this particular in this era try and grow and they try and find audiences that are completely not their original audience. So whether that's be women watching Formula One or trying to get 10 year olds to spend£40 on something. I went on Saturday, they have girls, young girls, absolutely queuing. And they've got security guards and they're in a queuing system to just get into the shop. Where is the money coming from? There have been reports in America of them grabbing products out of the sort of 20 and 30 year olds hands. Because, you know, maybe they haven't learned the manners yet.

25:03They're quite young. And they just think, oh, there's only a few of these and I want them. But the influence of the platforms can't really be overstated. Obviously, they like TikTok and they like Insta. They're children, let's call them. Let's call it what it is. Is that unfashionable? Let's call them children. Can you say that anymore? But YouTube, because many people do put parental controls on their YouTube, is the chief sort of means of discovery of all this stuff. But this obviously doesn't contravene any parental controls. In the US, Gen A is now responsible, Generation A is responsible for 49 % of drug store skincare sales.

25:36And Gen A is 14 years old and under. It's unbelievable. I mean, that's, yeah. And this isn't just the US. It is everywhere. You go into one of these shops. I mean, if you wanted to see a woman, hi, walking around Sephora in Westfield White City saying to her daughter, that's my daughter, you are welcoming the jackboot of the patriarchy onto your throat right now. This is what you're doing. I am the ghost at the feast in that store. I'm available anytime I'm in there. But you're seeing these young girls in there saying this does this, this does that. They literally sound like they're PR reps for the companies.

26:12it's absolutely extraordinary and how are they being sold to? are they being sold to by adverts or by influencers? not really by adverts once again we see that thing of the collapsing complete collapsing of adult and child media these things were originally meant for kind of older women you know get ready with me videos all of those things they've become sort of tropes on any sort of short form video platform but they're meant for women in I don't know their 20s or 30s whatever it is and now because so much of media and children listen to the same music as their parents and they watch the same kind of videos.

26:47It's quite interesting. I was talking to Adam Curtis, the documentary maker about Generation A earlier this year, and he was saying they know everything because they've always had the answer to every single question in their pocket and they know absolutely everything. But what they don't have is quite understandably. They have not developed any form of emotional intelligence to fit with that knowledge. So they're really overdeveloped in one area and not in the other because they are still children. An awful lot of information, but very little processing power. Yeah. Anyway, so it is girls getting involved in this, but there's also a big trend on it for boys as well called looks maxing.

27:16And so you see all these looks maxing videos and there are child influences. So there are people like North West, Kim Kardashian's daughter and Penelope Disick, who's Kourtney's daughter, Kourtney Kardashian's daughter, Harper Beckham. You know, I saw a thing recently where she was saying, I want to create an amazing brand. It's like, wow, you're 13. OK, because it's on all the time. When I was growing up, you had monthly magazines and, you know, very occasionally there was a fortnightly magazines. but this is on all the time so the churn is wild and you see this is completely different to makeup for a start makeup is fun, makeup is dress up little girls have always liked makeup and it's much less depressing than skincare in lots of ways particularly expensive skincare is tied into all those notions of self-improvement of unattainable ideas of perfection I go back to the word regime and also you can't makeup you can immediately see the effects you can see what it does so you can see where skincare is.

28:09And you wash it off and it's been some fun. Skin is the sort of thing, we still talk about good and bad skin. There's not a lot of other areas that we talk about good and bad and you're just written off. What you're trying to do is get children addicted to the idea of routine. In my view, it's one of the many, many things that has kind of crept in as organised religion has been sort of driven out of society. But you know how it is. You read these things and you go into these places and they've got these things written on the wall like, all our products are blah, blah, blah. These are like catechisms.

28:37They're like the sorts of things that would have been written on church walls in the old days. It's very, very religious and it's very odd. Sephora even sounds quite religious. It does, doesn't it? It sounds very, very cult-like. One of the things that I think is most interesting, having thought about it, because now I'm close to it with one 10-year-old child, I find it utterly depressing that all her friends are trying to... Someone told me that this has happened when they were 10 and I was like, yeah, I don't think what happened to my daughter. and now I find myself just constantly trying to put the other side in a quite forthright way by saying things like, my face isn't my fortune and you're a lot happier, it's a much better route to happiness if your face isn't your fortune because there's only one way it's going to go after a certain age.

29:15Tell me about it. Listen, I traded off my looks for so long and now it's, yeah, that's why I podcast now. Back to why I think it's become a form of entertainment because it's ultimately, it is their entertainment and that's why we're sort of doing it on this podcast particularly because this is a generation whose entertainment has been intrinsically linked with products right from the very time they ever saw anything okay unboxing videos they've watched unboxing videos of you know all these sort of funny things that you think never heard of have existed little things like the lol dolls these dreadful little monsters i can't tell you about them but just suffice to say they are dreadful and they you know watching people unbox things like that in roblox the game the platform that they all play on and the gaming platform they all play on You know, people have now started, like Claire's Accessories have opened a world in Roblox, all these sort of things so that they can reach them there.

30:03They have an absolutely bizarre and I think incredibly depressing sense that in order to be paid for creativity, content creation, there needs to be a product. That's how they see entertainment to a huge extent. So that children, yeah, children, because they've seen so much of this stuff. They've seen so many content creators weaving sponsorship into the actual brand of things. And so they think it's quite a short step from there to thinking the product is the entertainment. And so with all these very expensive skincare things, nonetheless, it is a buy-in that's relatively simple because then you buy one of them and you make your own video about it.

30:40You're creating your own content. Are the companies complicit in this in a lot of ways in the same way that some companies when, you know, Europe stopped buying cigarettes, just took, you know, cigarettes to India and Africa and tried to open up new markets? is that what's happening here? Are the big skincare giants essentially trying to expand their market? Are they closing their eyes to what's happening here? It's interesting. I don't think it came from them. I don't think they had the idea that they could ever sell to this particular. I've looked as much as I can into the history of it. Your market research wouldn't necessarily tell you that a£48 face cream could be sold to a 10-year-old because you just wouldn't think it was possible.

31:18Where on earth would they have that money? No parent would buy it, et cetera, et cetera. And the child doesn't need it. But as they saw the phenomenon developing, and it is huge, and you can see it in the stores, it's absolutely bizarre. And you think, where are all these people getting the money? I don't understand any of this. Now they've lent into it. But also, these children are buying things with retinoids and stuff that kind of breaks down and destroys the skin barrier, which, by the way, when you're 10 is perfect. No one's listening. No 10-year-olds are listening. But if you happen to be in the car, your skin is perfect and it will never be better than it is right now.

31:49So all of these things that are really bad, they were buying all this stuff anyway because they just see it. And then they thought, oh, I need something else. Like all of these things, you know, it creates a problem and then you buy something else to fix it. Like lip balm. Yeah, like lip balm. I know since you spoke about this, every mother of a 10-year-old, 11-year-old, 12-year-old says exactly the same thing, which is this is an insane market which didn't exist 10 years ago and is now absolutely huge and is absolutely meaningless. actively harmful and dreadful and it's incredibly bleak to get children into these bizarre cycles of sort of improvement which is a scam a form of self-improvement which is a scam and as I say there are these kind of quasi-religious things written up on all the walls in the shops but it's interesting they're now sort of putting lots of stuff out saying here are the products of ours which are safe for children because they can't believe they've got this sort of stuff so Drunk Elephant will put out posts saying don't use retinoids if you're 10 but these are the ones you can use I tell you what else is interesting in it.

32:49And there's a lot of content comes from Korea, the so-called glass skin and things like that. South Korea is regarded, interestingly, by this generation is very, very aspirational. There's lots of interesting culture. And yet, when you look at the culture, the culture is quite, you know, dystopian and bleak. And if you look at the society, we know it is a massively patriarchal society. The birth rate is something like 0.8 per couple now. A society that is in a huge amount of trouble. and yet it does feel young people will watch all sorts of K-dramas. They've much more in many ways than they are influenced by America in the way that my generation used to be.

33:26America's gone for anyone under 16, isn't it? Well, they've got all the retro stuff, which is that they'll watch Friends and Gilmore Girls and stuff from ages ago, which feels quite sort of necrotic in itself as a sort of, it's not new culture, but they definitely look to South Korea, the glass skin, the things like that. That is a very big influence on this particular kind of culture and on the videos that they watch and all of those things. What can be done about it, do you think? As I've always, with all of these things, try not to buy into it. But it really makes me think, my God, I mean, all of these things, I don't want to be talking yet again about how things that seem like they progress have gone backwards again.

33:59But that is what I definitely feel. I mean, I just think it's extraordinary that you should be yoking yourself into this terrible, into a regime. It's called a skincare regime for a reason. Can I add one caveat for parents who are listening at the moment? Because it's the week before Christmas and it is very possible you have bought something in one of these ranges for your child for Christmas. If you have absolute free pass, listen, it's Christmas. We worry about this in the new year. In the new year, we fight. For now, listen, Merry Christmas. You can't. You have to just buy the present. It's lovely.

34:35Join me on the skincare barricades in January. Yeah, but honestly, amnesty for Christmas. Absolute amnesty. Should we continue with our remorselessly negative podcast? Sorry, everyone. Just getting a few things off our chest before the new year. It'll all be sweetness and light after that. Lisa Nandy. She's been getting something she's already got off her chest, again, off her chest. She is the Secretary of State for Culture. And she talked to The Guardian, I think, last week. And she said she had a very interesting suggestion for why it is that young people are watching streaming platforms. She thinks it's something to do with diversity.

35:10She said, if the shows that UK broadcasters make don't look like and feel like the country, if they're not relevant to people, if they don't directly connect with people, then they'll switch off. And that's what we're seeing. We're seeing people leaving TV to go to either streaming services or online. And that in itself is really dangerous, not just for the TV industry, but for the country, because it's atomising. I really think that TV won't survive unless it addresses this question. Okay. Where do we begin with that? Where do we begin with how wrong, how incorrect that is? It is so incredible.

35:42By the way, this is the second time she's attacked television in the month since she's been Culture Secretary. I am told, actually, from people closer to this than me, that she's spending a lot more time on football, which is obviously part of that great DCMS brief, the sport part of it, and not the only part of the sport part of it. She wasn't originally going to be the Culture Secretary. Tangham Devonair was the person that people thought was going to be the Culture Secretary, but she lost in Bristol West and Lisa Nandy was a sort of late addition, as it were, to the front bench that became the cabinet.

36:11Now, so maybe she has been playing catch up at the start, but sorry, who are your spads? This is not the reason. Does she actually, the reason that young people don't watch so much linear TV, first of all, linear TV, PSB TV, private service broadcasting, skews older, okay. But that's quite a metropolitan, lots of people do watch linear TV, many more maybe than, it's quite a metropolitan elite point of Lisa and Andy to make. The reason that young people watch streaming or they watch short-form video platforms is because they like, particularly, let's say streaming, because that's particularly one of the things you say.

36:43So why might they watch Netflix? They like the variety and the quality of the content. They like fiction, particularly humorous, so that's expensive to make. And they like things based on relationships. And they also like short-form video, which I don't think anyone is suggesting linear TV companies produce, the public service broadcasting. And they also like older US shows for some of the things we were just mentioning, Gilmore Girls, Friends, Suits, whatever, for nostalgia. Which are not diverse. Please, they are the least diverse thing in the world. And actually, do you remember, Richard, when we did that Royal Television Society conference where we were expected to roast Ted Sarandos, the Netflix co-CEO, at the end of the day, the person who went on before us was Lisa Nandy.

37:26I don't know if you remember this. And so we watched her and whoever interviewed her asked her, you know, what she'd been watching recently that she liked. And she looked so completely nervous and said, oh, my advisors are looking at me. And I was like, oh, my God, what is it? And there was a really long pause. And then she said, Emily in Paris. OK, you've just won a landslide general election victory. And what you're too wet to say that you like Emily in Paris and other of the whitest shows on TV. Let me be honest with you. this is it all over but you're watching Emily in Paris you're on the streamers is it because it's not is it because Emily in Paris is diverse I don't think you'll find it is yeah there's always been a diversity issue in television I agree there's always been a diversity issue in any middle class profession you walk into parliament there's a diversity issue you walk into the law courts there's a diversity issue and then TV ever since I walked through the door in the early 90s into a company full of public school boys there was there's an issue and I didn't feel represented and actually I went into the world of entertainment where actually it is quite diverse.

38:26And you are working with lots of different people from lots of different classes. And if you want to go to a quiz on a weekday and see the crew working on those shows, if you want to see a diverse workforce, there is one for you. It's right there for you. And TV has been very, very good at trying to increase diversity and diversity on screen. Bits of it haven't. Documentaries, news, current affairs, I think are still very, very middle class and white dominated, which perhaps are the bits that Lisa Nandy sees most or is around most. but television at the moment is in an absolute crisis and the industry of television is a crisis is in a crisis and 70 % of freelancers are out of work so if you are in charge of British television from a government point of view which Lisa Nandy is there is a huge job to do and saying to people your problem is your things are not diverse enough and that's why people have gone to streamers it makes no sense to anyone who works in the industry who have worked their socks off to try and make their industry more diverse over the years, but have seen people leaving to the streamers, which were funded by venture capitalists, were funded by money from America.

39:27Well, all the money goes to America. All of it is going there. They are not making shows that are more diverse than on British television. The people behind the scenes are not more diverse. All that look and feel like the UK. What do you do? I mean, something like sex education, it's set in that kind of Netflix never space. It could be anywhere, really. And that's what you want. You want shows that you can sell into any territory. And that's why a lot of Netflix shows look the way they do, and not just Netflix shows, other streamer shows, and they sell them all across the world into all sorts of different cultures.

39:56And actually, diversity in TV, I couldn't agree with you more. We need more of it. But it is expensive to achieve, right? So maybe she could consider, in fact, the government wants to cut the DCMS budget, and they want to continue to freeze the licence fee, which they've frozen for so long, which means that it's real terms cuts every year. So diversity is very expensive to achieve. And the evidence suggests, I'm afraid, whether or not she likes it, that it will lead to a smaller market for you. Because in lots of ways it can be sold into fewer territories. That doesn't mean you shouldn't try to do it at all.

40:29But the idea that it sort of axiomatically leads to growth is so wrongheaded that I'm stunned that the culture secretary could possibly hold it. Because it's simply not the case. And the reason I was able to work in television is because I was on just the very end of that time where actually we looked after kids from working class families and kids from low income families. So I could go and get a job for six months. It wasn't hugely well paid because I didn't have a debt from university. That had all been paid for. I got the housing benefit when I first moved to London. These things were there.

40:58None of those things are there anymore. If you want working class people to enter this industry, they're not going to. I know if you're a low income kid, you want your first job to give you a wage packet. You need safety. That's the thing you need because at the end of the week, there is nothing to fall back on. And if you don't have those things, you're not going to go into those industries. And TV at the moment, you're not going to go into because the money is not in there because everyone's gone to the streamers. So if you want more diversity, I'm afraid you have to let working class kids find a way to support themselves in the first couple of years of their career.

41:28And that feels like something a government should be able to do. The things that lead to growth always, always have been having hits. And having hits requires having a diverse group of people coming up with those hits. It's always been the case. But Endemol, for many, many years, we would always try and think outside the box and bring in people who didn't come from, you know, the place that people traditionally came to. And it made us an awful lot of money over the years because different people from different backgrounds have different ideas and those are the ones that sell. So that's what we always did.

41:55And I think it'd be almost impossible to watch this weekend strictly, for example, and not say, I cannot think of a show that more looks like Britain and more speaks about Britain than that. It doesn't speak to all of Britain, I get it, but it's almost impossible to speak to more people at the same time in such an interesting way as Strictly does. That's not a show at the moment you're going to see on the streamers. By the way, the streamers do great things. The streamers also have all sorts of, you know, ways of getting more diversity behind the scenes. But they don't have to. It's not their raison d 'etre.

42:28The BBC, for many years, there's got big production bases now in Glasgow, in Belfast, in Manchester, which allows workers in those cities to stay in their own city, to stay in the city they are from and have a job and have a career, which is something that you don't have to do if you're Amazon Prime, if you're Netflix or if you're Disney, all of those things. That is what the public service broadcasters have done. And they're very heavily regulated on all sorts of points. What about Netflix? Is it regulated at all? Is Apple regulated? I mean, I saw this. There's all sorts of mistakes made with news via Apple.

42:57Maybe you should regulate Apple News. Maybe you should turn your thoughts to this rather than a TV industry that is sort of on its knees in lots of ways and has gone further to try and achieve this in so many other industries in this country. And it just simply isn't the case that doing this is going to create hits. The industry is on its knees because of the way where advertisers have gone. Yeah. And because the BBC has had its license fee frozen. That's why the industry is on its knees and it's not going to get back off its knees. And I'm saying by all means, say, your industry has to be more diverse.

43:29It's an absolutely acceptable thing to say. The same could be absolutely said for Parliament. The same could be said for so many places. But don't say it now and don't blame what's happening on it because those two things are not true. And if your advisors are telling you they're true, then I don't know what they're reading. And please don't think that fixing it is going to lead you to growth. Oh, 100 % not. Because that is really that South Park episode, you know, number one, collect underpants, number two, question mark, number three, profit. I mean, that really is it. So if you're saying, if the shows you co-broadcast don't look and feel like the country, if they're not relevant people, people will go to the streamers.

44:04Harlan Coburn, for me once, the biggest show in the world last year. That's like a big ITV show. I mean, it's great. It's a brilliant show, but it's not telling us anything about the country that we're not seeing on BBC or ITV. Sarah Lancashire and Keira Knightley in Black Doves. It's the biggest show on Netflix at the moment. It's not telling us anything about our country. It's not representing people who aren't represented on the BBC. I mean, it's nonsensical. Baby Reindeer, The Gentleman, Friends, the fact that huge amounts of viewing on these forums are Friends and The American Office and all of these shows.

44:34To say that the lack of representing your country is the thing that's sending the people to streamers is just plain wrong. And either she is misspoken because she's absolutely right that we need more diversity, but she for some reason decided to say, and if we don't get it, then people will go to streamers. It's just incorrect. It's a fundamental failure to understand the entire televisual and short form video landscape. At a time when an awful lot of people are out of work and are looking to the government to somehow give them tax breaks or find a way of reinvigorating this British industry. It's hard to think of a time in history when there's been a better creative skill set in any area than there is in British TV and film right now.

45:17in terms of the facilities we have, in terms of the people we have and the training they've had, in terms of the hits they've had, the awards they've had. There is such an extraordinary group of people in Britain. And film. And in film, exactly that. And Lisa Nandy's absolutely right about if we're scattered to the four winds when it comes to media, then there is atomisation. Well, genuinely, I would say to her and I say to that whole department and whoever has come up with this, you have an enormous opportunity. If you don't want the world to be atomised, You've got some of the greatest creative minds in the world.

45:49You've got some of the greatest creative facilities in the world. But they're going to need a bit of money. They're going to need tax rates. They are going to need the BBC and Channel 4 and ITV to be able to work together. You know, these things that governments can actually do. You know, it's there. But simply saying I need stories that represent Britain and otherwise people to go to the streamers. It's insulting to a generation who have made extraordinary things and have tried to bring Britain together and have tried to represent where they're from. And the amount of people who got in touch with me after reading that was absolutely extraordinary.

46:22Yeah, same with me. I thought that some people having a go at Channel 4 was bad. This is like double Channel 4. Yeah. It's like Channel 8. It's quite something. And maybe she misspoke. What is the second time she's attacked TV since she's had the job since July? Maybe there's some grand scheme behind it. I certainly hope so. But yeah, you've got an industry that's in an awful lot of trouble. And the reason you're saying it is in trouble is incorrect. I'm very happy to go on record as saying that. Likewise. Any recommendations? Because it is Christmas. Okay. Yeah. I would like to recommend a sub stack by a guy called Richard Godwin who writes about cocktails.

47:01He writes about drinking brilliantly. and he wrote a book called The Spirits which is very good and his newsletter is called The Spirits and it is it comes every Friday afternoon honestly at about four o 'clock so there's wonderful writing and he talks all and then he teaches you all these different cocktail recipes and I mean there's one every week more than that and he teaches you how to make all the sugar syrups and all of that I really like it there's something about it's the most perfectly timed newsletter I get dad for a common friday yes please please explain to me about something i'm gonna and he sometimes gives you your advanced shopping list it's really really good it's richard godwin's the spirits and i would listen week before christmas um just the best present you can get for the least amount of money as a book you know go to any secondhand bookshop go to any independent bookshop buy a paperback buy a new hardback if you want talk to the booksellers they'll tell you something great for christmas but it's it's something that you can give that doesn't cost a huge amount of money but that lasts forever and ever and ever.

48:01Go to the book trust if you want to donate books for kids and things like that as well, which is a lovely present. No one will ever mind you giving them a charity present. But books, books, books is what I say. You don't even have to buy mine. But just... But buy Richard's, please. They're also easy to wrap. There you go. And finally we end on something nice, an easy to wrap present. See you on Thursday for Q &As? Absolutely. See you on... Oh, we will have to... I'm sorry, there's a significant amount of Quality Street discourse that we will have to address. My goodness. I mean, we should just make the rest of Quality Street it turns out.

48:38Or bookshelves. The rest is bookshelves. See you on Thursday. See you on Thursday.

48:59and Doug. Lemu and I always tell you to customize your car insurance and save hundreds with Liberty Mutual. But now, we want you to feel it. Cue the emu music, Lemu. Save yourself money today. Increase your wealth. Customize and save, we say. That may have been too much feeling. Only pay for what you need at libertymutual.com. Liberty, Liberty, Liberty, Liberty. Savings vary underwritten by Liberty Mutual Insurance Company and affiliates excludes Massachusetts. Your sausage McMuffin with egg didn't change. Your receipt did. The sausage McMuffin with egg extra value meal includes a hash brown and a small coffee for just$5.

49:38Only at McDonald's for a limited time. Prices and participation may vary.