Noel Edmonds And The Apocalypse

25:18Yeah, and listen, he wants his Caleb and, you know, the kind of stars of Clarkson's Farmer. You know, you can see him all the time trying to promote various members of his staff, but he sort of, he can't let them, he can't let their personality be the thing. It has to be his version of their personality. It has to sort of be filtered through him. Well, they're all his straight men, his foil. They're given these tiny walk-ons in scenes where the message is always a kind of sledgehammer. Noel is wacky. Noel has so many ideas. How are we going to do all Noel's amazing ideas? But you know what? He's a genius and he has vision.

25:49Yeah. Anyway. How many years? That's the problem. I wouldn't say estate management, but perhaps it's light entertainment formats. I'm not qualified to say. In that way, I really felt like he epitomises that life, you know, like it's egg, larvae, pupa, moth. It is, isn't it? It's like kids TV, prime time, bitterness, ironic documentary subject. That is actually, well, that's one of the light entertainment lifestyles. We've discussed the Utrey version earlier, but there is a darkness to those people. There is a darkness to some of those men. Not the darkness that we keep alluding to, but there is a sort of weirdness.

26:29There's something about it. Listen, all of us in our 20s and 30s have something wrong with us. By and large, we'll address that. I have to have loads of things wrong with us. Yeah, exactly. But we'll have the big thing that comes from our childhood. or whatever it is. And we'll either go to therapy or we'll marry someone who understands us and sorts it out for us. Or, you know, you go through things and you sort it out because life becomes unlivable after a certain point if you are difficult. Whereas if you have been as famous as that generation of presenters were, same with rock stars, you know, there is nobody to pick you up on your bullshit.

27:01No one's going to do it. And this is not to say that these people are uniquely bullshitting. They're not. Everyone has bullshit. Most people have it picked up on at some point. But if you are a rock star or if you're a TV presenter of the 80s or if you're a tech bro now, you are surrounded by people who do not pick you up on your bullshit. It doesn't happen. And if that lasts through to your 50s, it's slightly too late, actually, to become the person you were supposed to be. So you're stuck with this character who you were when you were 23, probably, and you never did the work on yourself. You were never able to be called out on it to the extent where you go, actually, do you know what?

27:35That's right. I'm going to become a real boy now. you are forever stuck in the person you were in your 20s and if you are that person but you find yourself in 2025 it's really really difficult because what do you do because it's an entirely different world and you keep butting up against reality and either you are wrong or reality is wrong only one of those two things can be right and i know which is wrong in noah's case well if you've gone through your whole life knowing for a fact that you are not wrong then of course it's reality that's wrong and of course you know you start looking at you know all sorts of different things that would make sense of the gap between you and reality that seems to have opened up so i'm not saying that about no necessarily but i'm saying that about that generation if you're the same person you were 30 years ago the world is a is a very odd place and and the way that you deal with that comes out in your personality i agree and i do think he but i do think it's really weird i was i think i think i was talking to chris morris about this he hit on something with that Noel's HQ show, which was this very weird show he did on Sky.

28:36It was genuinely 2008 to 2009. It seemed completely bizarre. He was railing against, I don't know, I suppose, to some extent he was railing against elites. And elites could even be members of the local council. He was railing against a world that didn't work, a form of broken Britain, okay? And it seemed to kind of liberals like me in our ivory tower, like, what are, you know, this is so ridiculous. But he was attuned to something that, in fact, completely defined the next decade, certainly from 2016 onwards, when we became powerfully aware that actually maybe Noz HQ wasn't such a nutty show after all.

29:13But it was really early. I mean, it's a long time ago. And it's so mad. But honestly, now you look at it and it could have been made yesterday. It's very, very 2025. It's very light, lots of those kind of things that have become very successful. GB News, all of those sort of things, people railing in quite a lo-fi environment about a world that doesn't work anymore. and actually he was ahead of his time on that, I have to say. I mean, listen, as we've discussed, he has much to commend him. I would really recommend watching this documentary. It's really well made. It's really entertaining however you want to take it.

29:43If you like him, it's entertaining. If you're not a fan of him, it's entertaining. There's stuff to be taken away. But as you say, he keeps telling you who he is, which you were able to do in the 70s and 80s. You were able to say, this is me, this is my brand, this is what I do, this is how it's controlled, and you were able to be that. you can't be that anymore you cannot tell people who are you have to show people who you are and so no one is telling you who he is all the way through this documentary but what he's really doing of course is showing you who he is it's up to you as a viewer to decide who you think that is he wants you to see him differently you may well do after this documentary one way or another but that's the central thing of it is we watch television very differently now we will make our own mind up and the more you try and tell us what the truth is the more we think huh well I wonder if there's something behind that I genuinely found it fascinating and I do as I say I've thought a lot about this over the last few days because you know I've worked with Noel for a while Glenn Hugo and Richard Hay did most of Deal or No Deal but I was there at the beginning and he was extraordinary extraordinarily brilliant great in meetings you know just a fascinating human being in many, many ways.

30:52And as I say, I do retain a fondness for him. And he made that show a bigger hit than it would have been if we hadn't had him. But being a great light entertainment television presenter, it's not really anything. You know, it's lovely to be able to do it and it's lucrative and it's great and it brings joy to millions. Being right about how to present a TV show and being right about how a TV show makes people feel does not mean you're going to be right about other things as well. In the same way that you can build an electric car company or a space company and not be right about how democracy should run.

31:24You know, skills are not necessarily transferable. So in my world, the world that I'm from, that I'm very, very protective of, the world of light entertainment and the world of bringing that entertainment into homes, I genuinely will always have my absolute admiration and respect. He always will do. This, I do think, you have to take his word and say, see what you think of me. And it's an amazing character piece, this documentary. You will definitely have thoughts after watching it, don't you think? Yes, absolutely. I mean, absolutely. And there are so many things that have changed how we see television in that way, actually.

31:56And I think obviously things like the documentaries of Louis Theroux, which ushered in that sort of need for people to show themselves and not tell themselves anymore. But also, it's so extraordinary. The creation of Alan Partridge is one of the most, it is so prescient that. Alan Partridge, obviously, who sort of has this brief firework of a light entertainment career, and then we just sort of exist in his bitterness for the last few decades, which I love. He struck so clearly on something about those guys. Yeah, he was very much based on the Noel Edmonds generation, definitely. and people who are less successful than Noel, but you can see bits of all of them in there.

32:35It's really completely fascinating how that particular streak of bitterness and that particular kind of way of talking about a lost country and all sorts of things, Partridge epitomised those things sort of before they happened or before you picked up on them, in lots of ways that he satirised the future. And so as these people have become more and more, as I say, moving in that life cycle from moving away from prime time and then they have their bitter period where they keep telling the newspapers this or that. And then they become subject of these ironic or otherwise documentaries with that ironic distance.

33:09Yes. This felt post-ironic, this documentary. Yes, I think so. I mean, you just had to point the camera. Yes, you just point the camera. I think the programme makers were quite bright. They just went, we don't need to over-egg anything here. It's very light-touched and you can see, yes. Can I say one other thing about Partridge, though? Yeah. Is one of the reasons we love Partridge so much is you also feel for him. You also see where it comes from. So you see him being ghastly to the people around him, all of that. But there's a bit of you that slightly roots for him because you see what he wants.

33:36You can see the thing that he needs, which is somebody to love him. You can just, you know, you see it. You know, at the time, I remember when The Office came out, I remember someone telling me that Stephen Coogan had said, is he such an amazing creation, David Brent? David Brent, you'd have a pint with, whereas Partridge, you wouldn't. Partridge has mellowed. He stayed with us because there's something about him that is slightly tragic tenor, Tenor, despite Noel Edmund's kind of relentlessly upbeat, supposedly positive and kind of zany persona, there is something that's, as you say, very Shakespearean about it all.

34:09It really is. I really recommend it. If you're not interested in Noel, do not watch it. No, no, no. By the way, my children have no idea who on earth he was. Of course they do. They were like, I mean, they were totally scathing about him. Totally. They didn't know who he was at all because obviously they haven't watched any of those things. They were born after he was off air in most of them. But they were completely transfixed by the character. There's only one currency these days, and that's authenticity. It is the only currency. And in the old days, in the 80s, you were able to fake authenticity.

34:41And you no longer can, or if you can, it's very, very, very hard to fake authenticity. Just be yourself. And if you're young enough to change, be yourself. And if you're not, then at least know. at least kind of think maybe this isn't me. I don't know. Whenever you meet with anyone who's involved in that world, all they want is stories about that generation of presenters. And by the way, some of the best stories in the world are Noel Edmunds stories. And they're not horrible stories, but they're just stories where you're just going, you are kidding me, that's unbelievable. Because he came from that era where he was so famous and the world was at his feet, and so mad stuff happened all the time.

35:17Whenever you tell any of those anecdotes, the Coogans of this world are listening, I think. When I was writing on the Guardian's diary column, we made him a bit of a character because he was constantly... Yeah, because it was in this real bitter phase. And he would get people to come and do an interview with him. And he'd be so proud of the fact that he had the largest estate in England at the time without any public right of way through it. And I can't quite remember why I had to end up taking him out to dinner. But we went to... Whoa, this is new information. Ended up having to take him out to dinner.

35:45We went to the Woolsey. And it went on a bit, I must say. and then do you know it was so funny Richard because when I got home he rang me on my home number quite a few times, it was after midnight but I didn't pick up, I don't know, perhaps I'd accidentally picked up something from the table or he left something, I couldn't put my finger on it very strange, anyway, those were in the years where he was searching for something perhaps Oh by the way, you know our argument about whether interior design masters was better than Citizen Kane I was chatting to Glenn Hugel who was the other genius behind Deal on a Deal the two of them, he was talking about this amazing episode where Noel was asking people's advice about what the person should do.

36:18That's the beauty of that show. You could sort of jump up and down and it could take the weight. And then he decides literally just on a whim to go outside of the studio, walk out, go up onto the main road, stop a car, get in a car while the steadicam's still with him. And Glenn was saying, you know, that's why I loved working with him. He said, that's the closest I think I've ever been to making either Citizen Kane or interior design masters. Very good. After the break, micro dramas. Micro dramas. They're going to change the world as we know it. Okay, very good.

36:49This episode is brought to you by Sky Cinema, the ultimate destination for movie lovers to enjoy the latest blockbusters, with Paramount Plus included at no extra cost. Now, Anora, this year's Best Picture winner at the Oscars, has just landed on Sky Cinema. If you haven't seen it, it follows a Brooklyn dancer, a Russian oligarch family, and a Cold War with the in-laws. It's sharp, it's stylish, with five Oscars to prove it. Add Twisters and Wild Robot to the mix, and Sky Cinema doesn't just offer films, it premieres them straight to your living room. Paramount Plus, as Marina said, included with your subscription at no extra cost, bringing you blockbuster movies, new originals and hit shows.

37:26The full series of Mobland is available to stream now, as well as exclusive blockbusters like Gladiator 2. That's on there. Plus, enjoy hit series like Lionesses and Landman, which I love, exclusively on Paramount Plus. One subscription and suddenly you're choosing between Togas, Turf Wars and Tornadoes. Search Sky Cinema to find out more. Paramount Plus Basic with ads included for Sky TV customers with Sky Cinema only.

38:14car the convenient way to carvana pickup times vary fees may apply this episode is brought to you by progressive insurance do you ever find yourself playing the budgeting game well with the name your price tool from progressive you can find options that fit your budget and potentially lower your bills try it at progressive.com progressive casualty insurance company and affiliates price and coverage match limited by state law not available in all states

38:51We talked for quite a long time about Noel Edmonds. For people who don't know him, I'm so sorry. It doesn't matter. My children loved it and you don't have to know him. You know the type. Now, let's talk about microdramas. Now, what these are, they started in China and they're essentially, they're sort of films but they're cut into one-minute chunks. So they are one-minute long episodic dramas. They're often called vertical dramas as well as microdramas because they are made to watch on your phone. They're literally made to watch with your phone held vertically. And you don't turn your phone horizontal to watch.

39:21It's a, yeah. So you can only fit about one or two people in any frame. Exactly. Which is quite sort of the aesthetic. The episodes are a minute long, sometimes up to three minutes long, but usually a minute, minute and a half. They all end with a cliffhanger. And as I say, there's about 55, 60, 70 episodes in each one. You watch the first few for free. And then if you are hooked, you then start either paying for them by watching adverts and earning coins, or you physically pay for them. So that's the business model, is these incredibly hooky and cliffhanger-heavy dramas, usually about werewolves or secret billionaires or all of these things.

39:53Very, very soapy. If you want to see some, by the way, there are platforms like Real Short. Real Short would be a big one. And you can easily just download it and watch hundreds of these. And you can watch the first couple and you don't have to pay at all, but you'll get the vibe of what they are. They started in China not that long ago. Within four or five years, they were worth more than the entire cinema box office of China. Within a few years,$6.8 billion a year were being made by these microdramas. Hollywood, California takes$9 billion, ideally, at the box office to retain its status as anything like the business it is now.

40:30It didn't manage to get all the way there. And if it doesn't, that industry contracts a lot. That gives you a sense of the scale of these things. Absolutely enormous. Very hooky, very, very addictive, very schlocky. But again, that thing we've often said, give people what they want. So this is enormous in China and it stayed pretty much in China. The Chinese government then cracked down on it because they felt that there was a vulgarity to some of them. They liked the ones that were about ancient myths and, you know, all of those things. But other ones they felt they didn't like so much. So these companies started looking to the states and started looking abroad, essentially, for their revenue.

41:05And so Real Short was begun. It sounds like a plucky young startup, but it's backed by Baidu and Tencent, two of the biggest companies in China. It's already worth billions, Real Short. In America, yeah. In America, in America. So now we have all these American ones. There's people from Hollywood working on these things, people on their way up, people on their way down who are making these things. There are lots of in-programme purchases as well. Yeah, in-app purchases is a big part of How to Make the Money. And, you know, you can, like, there's an episode, there's one. Real Short alone made a billion.

41:35Yes, Real Short alone made a billion. So KFC have made their own one. For example, about an ancient empress looking for a chicken leg in her kitchen and suddenly being transported into the modern world. That's some of the high end of these dramas, by the way. And finding KFC. But the interesting thing in America, firstly, the growth is exponential. It's massive. But they discovered that the spend on in-app purchases in America is six times what it was in China. Not only are they getting millions upon millions of people watching these things, those people are also spending an awful lot of money.

42:03So suddenly we have this thing, this entirely new medium is the truth, which is being unbelievably successful. You do remind me of something slightly, okay? I'll tell you the things that I think they have a bloodline from. And I don't know whether other people say this. They're a cross, by the way. It's a cross between Netflix and TikTok. So it's taking the shortness of TikTok, taking the narrative arc of Netflix and multiplying them together. and it's really, really, really worked and it's coming to a screen near you soon. In South Korea, they had those webtoons, you know, they had those series, mobile series, and a lot of people made those because they wanted to get bought and then made, which has happened with lots of the big K-dramas have started as a webtoon.

42:44Many of them have a sort of moral message. There's a guy on YouTube, I don't know if you know him, called Darman, and he does these, yeah, we're not just telling stories, we're changing lives, and he has these trite little sort of homilies, like mean girls shame a girl for her looks or mother smashes up Charles' PlayStation for gaming too much and they all have a little moral message. They slightly remind me of that. The acting is sort of terrible and funnily enough I've watched so many of these now and I've never dived in and gone for all the way and paid so I've watched lots of the start of them but it was really interesting.

43:18I saw so many actors and I was then googling to see if that was in fact the girl who was the best friend on Californication and whatever it was and it was. Well because there's no work around and suddenly there's work. And I actually spoke to someone this weekend because I knew we were going to talk about this and someone who said I just don't want you to say that I've done this. They live in LA, there is no work and they have done lighting on lots of these. They were telling me about what it's like to shoot one. Often the directors just like really don't know what they're doing but there's lots of seasoned crew.

43:46There's also lots of really enthusiastic film school graduates because remember these Californian places are still producing huge numbers of people who in the old days were almost doing a vocational degree and would end up going straight into the industry and now they're going straight no well i mean this issue there's there's there's a job there why why wouldn't you go here this real short has got enormous studios they're they're pumping out a huge amount of content they need a huge amount of people and as you say it tends to be people who are finding it hard to get work on traditional things plus film school graduates and they do it's it's totally non-union yes which is i've never quite understood how they get away with that but you can it's a different form of it's non-union on YouTube lots of people have complained about that in America and said that for all sorts of different reasons from safeguarding to the fact that the unions are very powerful but then they're becoming less and less powerful because they don't have any kind of aegis over any of these areas these new areas anyhow but this person was saying to me if you're shooting sort of high end drama you're not doing very many pages a day at all.

44:43Well this they can do 55 episodes in 4 days I mean they absolutely they've just absolutely nailed it yeah they do they do like minimum 20 pages a day and they really burn through it people don't want to say that they're doing it first of all is non-union i mean i think they're awful at the moment at the moment and i just have to say that if you if you go and watch these you'll be like oh my god this is this is truly sort of dreadful yeah it's the end of civilization but i wonder if you're about to say what i think yeah does it why should it be that's just some to someone hasn't made i think it's exciting i think it's as for a creative and lots of loads and loads of creatives listen to this on both sides of the camera.

45:19If someone says to you, look, it's one minute episodes and there's 55 of them. Yeah. Go away and think about it. Hold on. OK. OK. I can see the potential there. Brilliant people can do something brilliant with anything. And, you know, we said before once on this podcast when we're talking about public service broadcasting, we've got this thing in our mind that public service broadcasting has to be sort of delivered in one hour shows or half hour shows. Why? Why does it have to be? Why can't the BBC start making these? Why can't all sorts of people start making these? First of all, it's great because the barrier to...

45:51I like anything now where the barrier to, from where you think of it to where you can view it... To making it is very short. Because everything else that people are watching, you can do it and put it up the next day. You can be really agile with this. It's interesting. I saw that there was one... I haven't watched this one, by the way. There's one that's clearly based on... I just read about this, based on the Luigi Mangione story. I mean, imagine how long television would take to do the Luigi Mangione drama. and like see you in the 2030s, it would take a really long time. And so there is something about that that allows maybe traditional broadcasters to respond in that agile way because everything else they're dealing with, like we said before on sketch shows, how can you compete with a sketch show when you've got someone who can just do a really funny sketch about that day's news and put it on TikTok?

46:33And that's where all of the stuff is. By the way, some of the names of them, My Beautiful Maid is a Spy, The Double Life of My Billionaire Husband, I married a millionaire stranger, married to my boss's enemy. Fake husband, real feelings. There's like, you know. They sound like YouTube titles. I have to say, they sound like titles of YouTube videos or TikTok videos or anything like that, but particularly YouTube videos. The CEO who becomes my secretary. Yeah. Or Mills and Boons, actually. Yeah. Well, I was going to say, at the moment, it's about 74 % female skewing in terms of people who are watching these.

47:02Well, it's got ties with that romanticism, hasn't it? Exactly. And paying for them. And, you know, romanticism has absolutely saved publishing. You know, this is saving, you know, content. but uh jerry g and lots of other people in this space are going i don't see why we wouldn't start making things that are more male skewing i don't see you know if we think certain things are male and female skewing which of course some things are you know we could make more thrillers and you know war films and and all this kind of stuff that's what they want to do they've got so big real short so quickly the app you know it was it was it was outstanding tiktok at one point the uh the real short app um we have people coming into the industry who are going to expect different economics from that industry.

47:41You would hope we would get to the point with this where the budgets are going up. And certainly, you know, the double life of my billionaire husband, it's like$300 ,000 for a film length thing, but that's more than, you know, you're paying 50 ,000 for some of these Chinese ones. So, you know, budgets can go up. I think creators will be very interested in writing these. Yeah, because at the moment, the scripts are basically like porn scripts. I mean, they're that bad. Well, people have said... And the acting's terrible. People have said, is it AI? Yeah. Okay. There are AI elements to it. Is this writing AI?

48:12And Joey Gia says, you know, in real short, we have in-house editors, we have in-house writers, and I'm absolutely sure he's, that's right. I will say this, you could do it with AI. You know, if, I mean. If this hasn't been done with AI, shame on those demons. One thing that AI can do is give you 55 cliffhangers in a row. That's the thing that it can do. It can't give you heart and emotion and interesting, you know, long form stories and stuff that really, really makes you weak. but it can tell you what a cliffhanger is and it can do 55 of them in a row for you. So as I say, I'm sure they're not using AI but they could.

48:44I watched a few ages ago and I've been interested in it getting bigger and bigger and bigger. But I was interested in a kind of oh my god, again, is this the fall of civilization? When you watch a few you're not hooked into the stories particularly, you are definitely hooked into the medium. Yeah, but early cinema is crap as well, so it's just it becomes an art form. Yeah, so it's micro dramas, vertical dramas. They'll probably come up with a slightly better name for it at some point. Yeah, they need a better drama. But it is definitively not going away. And I do think it's going to be an interesting world for younger creators or even older creators who are thinking, you know what, the gatekeepers have sort of shut the gates.

49:23Here's a place without gatekeepers. Here's stuff where I can get this funded and I can prove, you know, I can do proof of concept really, really easily. And I can make these episodes. and after 10 when we start charging, I will see if it's good because people will tell me if it's good because they will pay for it immediately. That is the dream for all creatives. The dream for all creatives always is the shortest possible line between the idea being in your head and somebody else seeing it. That's always the dream and this feels like a world in which it's possible. I think the romanticies will always win out but it feels like there is a market there and there's a creative opportunity there and if the two of those things come together, it might be quite an exciting world, the world of microdramas.

50:06Now, I think, because we were talking beforehand, we have the same recommendation this week. We do. I think we are both going to recommend Shifty, which is the new series of Adam Curtis films, which has gone straight onto iPlayer at the weekend. And it's absolutely fascinating and brilliant in the way that all his films are, but it's really interesting. It's a sort of, I suppose, social history of what it's felt like to live through the last 40 years in Britain and the huge shifts that have happened to do with power and money. But done through archive, done just through archive. So you'll be moving from something political to like incredible music to just the quirkiest thing, like clips you've never seen before for certain places, just tell you a story about Britain.

50:45And it's mesmeric. And so we, in fact, we both loved it so much. So he's going to come in and speak to us on our Q &A on Thursday. We're doing our first ever interview. Yes, we are. He's very easy to talk to. Oh my God, we're going to be so bad at that. Yeah, we'll be really terrible. But luckily he is very good at talking. So please join us for that. And otherwise, we will see you as always on Thursday. See you on Thursday.

51:25This episode of The Restless Entertainment was brought to you by Sky, who've made watching TV feel effortlessly smart. Just use voice control and ask Sky what you want to watch. It's so quick that before you've found your snacks you are already halfway through a series. It's basically TV with a six cents. Say show me crime dramas and suddenly you've got three new obsessions, a reason to cancel plans and a lead detective you inexplicably trust with your life. If you need suggestions, just ask what should I watch and Sky lines up recommendations based on the kind of things you normally go for so you can trust it won't miss.

51:53Got a favourite actor? Just say their name and Sky brings up a selection of what they're in. across all your apps and channels. No judgement. Whether you're after something niche, nostalgic or new enough to dominate the group chat or reliving Fudum's finest Europa League hour, 4-1 against Juventus, frankly, who wouldn't? Sky's got you covered. Search sky.com to find out more.