New Strictly Hosts & New Celebrity Traitors

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2:15Hello and welcome to this episode of The Rest is Entertainment with me, Marina Hyde. And me, Richard Osman. Hello everyone. Hi Marina. How are you Richard, other than extremely jet lagged? Yes, I've been on my US book tour this week, but I landed yesterday and I'm ready to go. Absolutely. I love that thing that you did in Dallas. I went to Dealey Plaza to see where Kennedy was shot. And while I did it, I was listening to the Restless Histories podcast about that day. It was so moving. Yeah. So you kind of recognize the place and you're on the grassy knoll and you can see the book depository and there's just a tiny little X on the road where he was shot.

2:56And I was listening to Tom and Dominic do this stuff. It was very, very, very moving. But it was a testament to the podcaster's art. Yeah. I'll say that. So thank you to the gents. How's your week been? You've been on a book tour as well. Also a book tour. Yeah. also booked a more book tour coming. And yeah, I tell you what, there has been a lot of love for the podcast. So I really like meeting all the audiences and there's been a lot of love for the podcast. One thing that I have noticed is that the first mention of Celebrity Traitors, there is like a sort of tremor through the audience. We are going to talk about Celebrity Traitors later today.

3:39I mean, it's like, we need this show. It's really interesting. People are, you feel something in the energy. It's really interesting. So we're definitely going to be talking about that. We are, yeah, because that launches this week. So we'll be giving you our preview. We're going to be predicting who's going to win. And I'm going to be, well, you can do it as well. But I want to say who I would choose as traitors if I was the producer. Well, also, it's a BBC special, really. So we're going to talk about strictly what happens when you launch a big show with new hosts. And essentially, what will the producers be doing on the Monday morning after a launch show?

4:11And we're also going to talk about incidents of cuts or censorship or remonstration after the complaints unit came down on a joke that Catherine Ryan made last year about Victoria Beckham on Have I Got News For You? And some Mitchell and Webb sketches have been taken off iPlayer because they no longer fit with our times. Or do they? Anyway, we will discuss this. Should we start with Strictly? Yeah, let's start with Strictly. So we've had the launch show already, but this was the first show where people were actually dancing. The first show where you really see Emma Willis, Josh Whittacombe and Johannes Radeby being the new hosts.

4:53Spoiler alert, people don't like it when you have new hosts or if you've changed anything at all about your show. It's interesting. Looking at the rating, I thought, OK, let's just see what we do know. We know about the ratings. Last week, the sort of launch show, which began with that incredible one shot, was ridiculous. That got 5.8. This week got much less, but you're up against the England game. It was up against the football, yeah. You're up against England versus not a rubbish international opponent. And you're also in that two and a half hour period of the show that is extremely long. In a way, if I was the producer, I'd be delighted I was up against the England game.

5:31So would I. Because you know the ratings that go up next week. Yeah, you've got cover. Because you won't be up against something that gets 4 million, 4.5 million on the other side next week. So the changes are, I mean, I find it quite difficult to understand the degree to which there is some form of backlash or not. And we can get into that. The changes are things like the way the dancers were revealed. They did a video showing them all signing up. And you can see why they've done that because it gives you clips of socials and this is what they're trying to do. Obviously, people want familiarity.

6:03and if you don't think there was a massive backlash when Bruce Forsyth left, there was one. I know. And then it settles into this thing where this is the only version of the show that can possibly be tolerated. Yeah. So the way the presenting duties divide, it was interesting because at the start, everyone said when the new hosts were unveiled, oh, I see, Emma will be like Tess down in the ballroom. Josh will be in the claudatorium doing the funny interviews afterwards and johannes will be a roving reporter now when you did your interview with them they corrected that and what they did actually say was oh we're going to be quite fluid actually yeah josh described as total football yeah everyone doing everything yeah well i think there might be tweaks to it because at the moment what happens if you haven't seen the show but you kind of maybe know the format.

6:53Down in the ballroom is Josh and Emma. Yeah. And Johannes is up in the doing the interviews once they run up the stairs and kind of have the diffusing moment. I have to say, I think that I would not have added another person. It's we've talked before about the unbelievable technical challenge of that little bit where people think it's so easy, which is so much harder than hosting general election coverage, as I've mentioned before, the bit that Emma has to do when you've got two exhausted people come off from doing their dance, they have to sort of get their breath back. You have to have a bit of chit chat with the judges.

7:29Then the judges have to do their judging. I felt adding Josh in to do some jokes as well, it's quite complicated down there. I think that, and they've gone with three people, and I absolutely see why they've gone with three people. It makes a lot of sense to do that. The one thing I know for a fact is that's the first time the producers will really understand what it is that they have to do so whatever twitter and all this stuff say and by the way they i think even even but it's funny even by the end of the show they're going oh no actually it's okay you know after the first 20 minutes where they go oh this i never watch this again in the end again oh no sort of i get i guess it's okay um as i say when you're a producer and you just launch that show and it's a huge deal to have new hosts on a big show like that i'm just a huge deal so enormous they started again with that sort of it felt a bit like a one but it wasn't but backstage it's very cool unbelievable and you realize just the scale of the production going all the way through all the backstage corridors and everything i mean it is an unbelievable technical masterpiece every week but i can't stress too much that however many pilots you've done and launch shows and run throughs and stuff that the the producers are watching that more carefully than viewers are watching it the producers know and and by the way the hosts are watching it more carefully than viewers are watching it because you know you don't get it completely right the first time and they know they've got three very different um bits of talent there all of whom can do slightly different things all of whom will want to do slightly different things as well uh and you watch the first one you go okay i see what works what doesn't work yeah i think i think that uh the johannes thing is interesting because he at the moment he's doing exactly what claudia did which is you throw to johannes the producers have given him two talking points like oh here was the thing from the vt um here's the thing that the judges just said just raise those two things with the uh celebrity and their dancer but the manner is very different well that's the thing because the reason that it became that is that's the thing that claudia is incredibly good at which is honestly give me a couple of bits of vanilla content and it yeah god bless you this vanilla content saying oh and i hear you call your arm something when you're you know in it's always been that but it's always nothing and claudia is very very good at turning that into something that's what claudia could do now that's not what johannes can do that's not it's not his it's not who he is he's a trained dancer he brings something else so you have to work out what it is that johannes does instead at the moment they're doing you do exactly what claudia did we'll feed you these two bits of vanilla information you talk to the dancer and the celebrity and then we'll you throw it back to Emma and Josh.

10:09But Janice can't do anything with that. He hasn't got anything. So you go, oh, this is just two bits of vanilla information. Yeah, and it feels very reverential and very... It doesn't diffuse the tension in the way that having a laugh with Claudia used to get rid of the sting of the judges or whatever it is. And it doesn't become more than the sum of its parts, which is what you want. So they'll know that no one watching that will have thought anything other than that. No producers watching that thinking, I think we've absolutely nailed it there. Okay, they'll work out. And also, then you sit down with Johannes and go, what is it that you are?

10:45I mean, you're technically, you're an incredible dancer. You've been there before. So you have that kind of ex-player vibe as well. So there's different stuff that you can do. The two-hander between Josh and Emma, again, it's tricky because there is a history on that show of that being written for. and writing for two people, one of whom is a comic and one of whom is not a comic, is sort of impossible. You know, that is sort of impossible. Now, when you're a producer, when you're making that show, you've got a billion different things to think about. So the first thing you do is, okay, we'll put Jojo up there, we'll do what we used to do with Claudia, we'll put Josh and Emma down there, we'll do what we used to do with Tess.

11:24I think probably that's not going to work going forward. Because it was completely assumed that Josh would be up there by everybody. Yeah, exactly. and it sort of makes sense but it's did they try and do something really counterintuitive yeah you try and do something counterintuitive as well and also you think well jojo could go backstage because actually we don't have a lot of that candid stuff and it would also make great extra content and maybe those vts could be 30 seconds shorter i don't know that's uh but i've always thought that yeah um so it's absolutely one of those things of uh the one thing i'll tell you for a fact that no one's paying any attention to is twitter that's a really interesting thing so I went on Twitter just almost as a nostalgia kind of thing to see what they were saying about it and you could I mean you could you can just work out exactly what they're saying which is I mean everyone say well I'm never going to watch again that's it for me and strictly I'm afraid I'm never going to watch again I miss Claudia yeah I think there's a very small self-selecting group of people on that platform who are sort of effectively live tweeting it yes some of them are saying that yes and then the son of the mail are sort of saying well that viewers turn against strictly anything so the thing i wanted to talk about is what it actually is to be like the the producer on monday morning and the one thing i will say to you is no one is paying any attention to that because they know exactly what they have and they'll just find the way of just tweaking it slightly to show that on screen but no one is going to be looking at any social media and going oh my god what are we going to do this is a crisis because it definitively is not it is done purely to drive headline engagement and i really find you know if you look at the outlets all the reach titles i don't know express mail i i find to be honest i find these kind of genuinely pathetic stories and by the way the people have to write them yeah privately will tell you that they hate doing this sort of thing because it is a form of journalism where you take one or two or three social media comments and you spin them into a here's what people are saying story I find it like it's really difficult to understand the sort of death spiral of quite significant parts of journalism and decide you know and sort of chicken and egg it I don't know whether people being made to do this has compounded the kind of full-scale failure of entertainment journalism in lots of ways or whether just deciding to do this has it's very difficult to understand what came first but whatever it is it's just it's the most kind of plastic food it's so unnutritious it's just it's a nothing and there are about 10 of these things on even on something like mail online which is not so kind of we've talked before about people like the express or or the mirror and being stuck and having to do millions of different types of stories about Martin Lewis or whoever it is because it because it you know you can kind of repackage them all slightly differently but actually even on Mail Online there are huge numbers of stories about this I'm not at all sure how significant the public kind of outrage it reflects is I don't think it is and it's just a sort of nothing you can just find anyone to say anything and it's that kind of journalism has fled right out of entertainment and gone all sorts of other places but i do find it just very very poor and the other thing i would say is it fundamentally misunderstands what the show is this is a show about dancing journeys endurance and sort of self-discovery and also discovery of who the hell these people are it doesn't matter you know please let everyone tell me that they knew every single part of karen khani's personality at the start of last because i don't want to hear it okay but by the end you're like i'm in love with this person and you look at someone like lacey turner who i think is just so completely charming and you can feel that there's something about her that like lacks masses of types of confidence even though she's very very charming and incredibly sort of winning but and you feel like oh you could definitely go on a journey and you're trying to pick the horses that can go on the journey as it were in these shows that is what the show is ultimately about it really isn't about and i i should think that you know claudia and Tess would be the first people to say it, they understand that this is what the magic of that format is.

15:41Yeah, always has been, always will be. And nothing will change about that because how can it be anything else? Yeah. So I find the kind of, the predictability of it all difficult and really depressing. And actually it's a really pathetic form of journalism. And when I sometimes see people sort of whinging about cuts in journalism and things like that, I think, yeah, well, partly you're doing it to yourself. Yeah, I think when you look at the Strictly in Crisis headlines, you think, well, something's in crisis and it's not Strictly. Yeah. But something really is in crisis. I mean, because, again, it was nostalgia to go on Twitter.

16:18It really felt like nostalgia to go on Twitter because it used to be such a big deal when you had something like Strictly. It used to really add to it. And now it just doesn't. It feels like a thousand years ago. But is it because there's no one sort of good and funny doing it? Is it just like a series of bitter comments rather than people making funny jokes? Is there any of that left? No, you still hear that there are voices in the wilderness and there's still lots of nice comments. But you have to wade through a lot to get there. Now, you do have to wade through the 50 most obvious opinions a human being could have.

16:55So has that type of second screening already sort of gone away? Well, no, because here's the interesting thing. And there's a point on – and this is why the journalism side of it and the Twitter side of it is so deeply irrelevant. We know what they're doing on Strictly this year, which is they're trying to do to it what they've done to Dancing with the Stars in the States, which has been a huge success story. They've really, really turned it around. For a show on our network, it's been a huge success story. And they've done it by talking to the TikTok generation, the Instagram generation. and that's what this show is absolutely squarely aimed at there's there's a point at which Anton sometimes Anton will say the the quiet bit out loud uh and I love Anton by the way Anton is the absolute these days the beating heart of that show in my opinion everything flows through him you could see Josh and Emma anytime there was an issue we go to Anton anytime we need to get ourselves out of a corner we go to Anton and Anton always delivers listen people could watch it and disagree with that but as a producer while we were watching yeah but like you know when a manager says oh my god so-and-so midfielder was the best player on the pitch you go huh does the manager see so as a producer you're going Anton is helping us out but when uh Cash Mercer from Love Island did his dance and he does he does like a street dance version of a ballroom dance and so it gets marked down because of it but but Anton says he says uh he said well you're a man for the TikTok era this will be all over tiktok and you go but that's thank you but thank you anton because you're you're exactly right just say the word name of the platform say the name of the platform and then they know where to second screen it but you know i think there was a particular worry that um you know the male celebrities weren't quite as strong but then you watch it and this is why the casting directors are brilliant you look at john nellis and you look at graham hall you look at sean white phillips and everyone's going to fall in love with them the women are absolutely taken care of you've got Danny Dyer, you've got Jamie Winston, you've got Dame Sarah Story, Delta Goodrum.

18:51I mean, that's great. But the men who people think, oh, I don't know who they are. Those are the journeys that we're going to watch. I mean, John Nellis could win the whole thing. And everyone in the world is going to know who John Nellis is. Listen, I mean, spoiler alert, a huge amount of the world already knew who he was. It's just they consume different media to the media that are consumed by another generation. Okay. But, you know, John Nellis is now going to, you know, he's going to become the singularity that unites us all. The Nellis singularity. The Nellis singularity, as I call it. But it's aimed at a different place now.

19:25It's aimed at a different audience. And it's aimed at being sort of visible across the week in different ways and in different forms and spreading the idea that there is this program on Saturday night to a generation of people who would not ordinarily be watching it. And yeah, just looking at that reaction last night, and I was looking in the places that I used to look and you do just think oh okay so this sometimes you go I see I see that this is completely changed now the old days versus the new days but um it's weird isn't it it just feels like it feels like we're in the olden days when you look at those yeah reports just don't cover it like that yeah it really is you could simply not cover it like that it's just old-fashioned and for people who are constantly saying the BBC need to innovate and be commercial and go where the audiences are why do you write like this then yeah exactly why do you say i haven't heard of these people when there's someone with 10 million followers he it's your job to know who they are you know it's okay if the public don't know they are but literally you should know exactly who they are and you should know that there's a big deal to get some of those people you can't just write he's somebody's hairdresser how is that a celebrity when he's you know the kardashian's hairdresser For 20 years.

20:36But I really enjoyed it. I loved Strictly. And there were people there I hadn't heard of, for sure. So what? That's not the show. I watch it with my House of Games head on. It's my last ever week on House of Games this week. Oh, God, is it? Yeah, so Michael Sheen takes over next week. But I'm always like, who here, who has not been on House of Games, would I love to have on House of Games? And, you know, you go, I'll have John Nellis immediately. I'll have Lacey immediately. I'll have Graham Hall immediately. I mean, there's loads and loads of names. And I always think that's a good sign. I think Josh will want, you're saying they're all happy.

21:11I think Josh will want a new formation. I think the one thing, but they know this already, they don't need advice. Johannes needs a slightly different role in the Claudatorium. He needs not just to be fed what Claudia used to be fed, because Claudia would turn that into something. And Johannes needs something, something a bit more it takes too, where you go into maybe some of the technical details or something a bit more. I'm not sure he can do the emotional journey in the same way that Claudia can or the comic stuff in the same way that Claudia can. Or the diffusing of the tension. Or the diffusing of the tension.

21:37But, you know, he can do other things. But if I was a producer, I'd be excited. And as they said, they've said it's going to be fluid. So now they can do what they like. Now it will be fluid. Yeah. The one bit of feedback I give to the producers, they don't need feedback. They don't want feedback. But I have one bit. And I'll only say this because I've said it a million times on shows that I've done. Please, please, please, can we never have another celebrity introducing themselves by saying, um you'll probably know me for or i'm best known as it is so embarrassing for every single person it's embarrassing for the show it's embarrassing for the celebrity it's embarrassing from the viewer you can just say look i train dogs on channel five right you it's almost certain you don't know me but here's a clip of what i do i i promise i promise you'll like me you don't have to say you may know me from i just come on fortunately we've got through that show but Just as a memo for autumn 2027, let's never see it again.

22:34That is the only criticism I think that is acceptable of the first Strictly show. Now, we're going to talk about the other BBC One juggernaut after the ads, which is Celebrity Traitors, a few predictions, and also should we be censoring comedy as well. So we'll see you after these.

22:56this episode is brought to you by lloyds now show business loves a club i love all these sort of unofficial groupings of people there's two brat packs i'm a big fan of there are two brat yeah there's two brothers because there's the movie brat pack all of the judd nelson and you know rob lowe and charlie sheen and all those guys everyone in the breakfast club yeah and then And there's also the Brat Pack of those kind of turn of the 90s novelists, Bret Easton Ellis, Jay McInerney, Donna Tartt. And that's the thing, creatively, it's actually very, very useful to hang out with other people who are incredibly talented because you drive each other on to do things.

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24:41Mr. President, my company told me of the explosion on our rig. On October 2nd. Causing massive water displacement and triggering a tsunami. They all heap the blame on me. Tom Cruise is. Digger got us into this mess. And Digger's gonna dig us out. From the director of Birdman and The Revenant. What would happen if I stopped doing it? You starve, you freeze to death, that's what. With great power comes great deniability. I'm not the first daddy. Digger. See the trailer online. Only in the years October 2nd. Rated R. Under 17 on a minute without parent.

25:18Welcome back, everybody. Now, before we get into further BBC juggernauts, we are going to say that on Thursday, your interview with John Grisham is coming out. Yes, well, my interview, but with questions from our listeners. Yes, so the Q &A will be a John Grisham special. It was an absolute treat meeting him. And also to say that your Brilliant Big Brother series is continuing for members with Tim Hinks and Kate Lawler. The Bond series that we're in the middle of, don't worry, that's just on hiatus because that's talking of juggernauts. There's going to be a lot more episodes of that. So it's just on a brief pause.

25:51So we're doing the Big Brother thing. We will be back to Bond, I promise. Yeah, we're picking up that thread. Don't worry. But I loved the first Big Brother episode. It's great to hear. Oh, that's so great. It's great to hear Tim Hinks on a podcast. God, he's so good. I absolutely love it. So is Kate. Fantastic. Yeah, yeah, yeah. She's really so clear-eyed about it. You can see, actually, she's so strategic. You can see how she won. Yeah, no kidding. Yeah, we said, why did you do it? £70 ,000, tax-free? Yeah, everything about it is super. So that's the rest of the week. But for now, traitors we're about to talk about.

26:20But let's start now with BBC censorship and sort of getting rid of jokes and... Offensive material. Offensive material. There we go. You might have seen a Catherine Ryan joke that she made on her I Got News for You when she was hosting a bit less than a year ago has been censored and she's been admonished for it by the BBC Executive Complaints Unit. Complaints have been upheld. Yeah, the AC12 of BBC Complaints Unit. So we'll get to that. And also, some Mitchell and Webb, as part of the sort of 20th anniversary of that Mitchell and Webb look, they've put the show back on iPlayer and they've taken out some sketches because they say they no longer sort of fit with our times.

26:58We'll get to those later. Let's talk first about the Catherine Ryan thing. The joke was, it's really weird. It's one of those jokes that sort of, when you're hearing, every time I read it, I keep thinking, at the time, this must have made lots of sense. I yield to absolutely no one in my admiration for her. I love her. They'd quoted David Beckham's email when he was raging about not being given a knighthood when he called the Honours Committee, I think he called them a bunch of C words. See you next Tuesdays. Yeah, it's a bunch of see you next Tuesdays. And then later in the show, she says, I don't know that we're allowed to broadcast the C word, but you did reference Victoria Beckham earlier.

27:32and we'll allow that. It's quite a sort of convoluted... Anyway, and then there's a sort of a little bit of a reaction in the room and she says, oh, I didn't expect that. I like her really, I didn't expect that reaction. And two viewers said it was gratuitously offensive. Now, anyway, they've had a long investigation into this and they've said they've upheld this complaint. Jimmy Marville, who runs Hat Trick, who may have I good news for you, has issued a big statement. And by the way, Jimmy Marville never met a row he didn't like. Yeah. Now, Catherine also, she fronts up to everything. Her explanation, she says she'd had a baby 10 days before.

28:06I mean, she is amazing. She's like such an unbelievable workhorse. Got three really young children and an older daughter. She said, I was suffering them from a condition called matrescence. It's going to be a tough one for the feminists because I was a woman going to work, but I did call another woman a C-word. Sometimes I forget celebrities aren't my friends. If I'd called Jimmy Carr a C-word, he wouldn't have minded. Joanne McNally, C-word, she wouldn't have minded. but this was described by the BBC as a slur, as though C words are part of a protected group. I mean, I have enjoyed all the statements about this.

28:38And she says, if you watched it on the day, it was clearly a joke. The whole audience went gasped. And then I said, whoa, I love her. I don't know about this one. I don't love what they've done here. First of all, I think the joke is oblique. What the BBC have done here. Yeah, no, I don't. I think the joke is so oblique. And okay, two people found it gratuitously offensive. Two people can find anything. I actually think they should have sort of left it. Jimmy Marvel has gone in really hard against it. I mean, Catherine's sort of tried to, yeah. I don't know. People complain that it's not near the knuckle enough, have I got news for you.

29:10And then when something like this happens, she said, you know, she wrote to Victoria Beckham and said, I'm really sorry, I just, you know, I don't think it's that big of a deal. I think it's a tricky one. I think that the issue is if you complain to the BBC, they have to investigate. I mean, that's part of the charter. And even if two people do, they have to investigate. And I guess if you investigate that joke and you see it in black and white and you take it slightly out of context, I guess it's hard to say anything other than, yeah, I suppose it is sort of offensive. It's so hard to understand the joke when you read about it.

29:42And that tells you everything about what we're probably going to end up talking about for the rest of this particular item, which is context. But, you know, Catherine herself, you know, by the fact that she's sort of, you know, she got her apologies just brilliant. That's how to own something. Yeah. She's so smart. She's a sponsor of everything. I really like it. Yeah, I think she's even saying, yeah, you know what? Yes, I sort of get it. Yes, I sort of inferred the C word against another woman who I don't particularly know, slightly out of nowhere, without a huge amount of justification. But I did it because it was sort of funny in the context of what I was doing.

30:18It was funny or shocking in the room. Yeah, exactly. So it's not, no one has, apart from two viewers, no one has actually taken offence. But if you have to, it's like VAR, when you say, look, someone's fingertip means that someone else, that a goal is offside or onside. At some point you have to go, by the absolute letter of the law, we have to disallow that goal. Comedy VAR, wow. But it is comedy VAR. A more deadening poor manto, I can hardly imagine. If you are going to force me to give a judgment on this one way or the other, and you are forcing me to do it because of the way the BBC charter is done, then I guess I sort of have to go I suppose it's a bit offensive I mean even the BBC are not kind of going we will make sure this is never ever repeated Catherine will not be working with us again we will not be working with the producers of this show Yeah it's not one of those BBC rows No one actually cares No one cares Yeah but it is exactly VAR and have I gotten news for you because it's edited overnight and it's been going forever you're going to have that stuff every now and again I mean that's the point of it so I do think it's In a way you should be glad you have it because it shows that you're still at times, you know, you go beyond the line or whatever because otherwise people will always tell you you're too cosy.

31:28But does Victoria Beckham care? No, I'm absolutely certain she doesn't. Does Catherine Ryan come out well out of it? Yes, she does. Is Jimmy Mulville happy because he gets to slag off the BBC? Yes. So it's sort of everyone's happy. I do think the Michelin Webb thing is more interesting. Yeah, let's get into that. More intriguing because there's more sides to that, I think. To go over it, the BBC's removed 11 that Mitchell and Webb look sketches from iPlayer. This show ran between 2006 and 2010. And so it's kind of like a 20-year anniversary. That's why they're putting it back on. The sketches were, and again, it's even hard to explain.