Our Most WTF Celebrity Couples

0:00The rest is entertainment is presented by Octopus Energy. Now they've looked at admin and decided it should behave much more like a game show.

0:06Richard Osman:When you provide your meter readings, they will give you a spin of a wheel, which allows you to win prizes, allows you to win octopoints, which you can spend in the shoptopus. Yeah, it's the gamifying of the boring bits of your admin. Now listen, you know how much I love Octopus Energy. The prizes, I'm going to say, are not quite up to the standard of the Wheel of Fortune. The biggest ever prize on the Wheel of Fortune. So over$1 million. What feels more similar is some of the random prizes they'll get on the Wheel of Fortune. They've had ceramic Dalmatians. I saw one where you could win a Gucci calculator.

0:41Richard Osman:You think, okay, that's two of my favourite things. There was an Onyx bin. Yeah, again, I'm not dissing the prizes, but I would have probably gone for the Dalmatian. None of these things you have to worry about with Octopus Energy. It is simply octopoints to spend in the shoptopus. Well, you have to submit your meter reading to earn a spin. And then you get prizes you don't actually have to persuade yourself you want, like money off your next bill. You can get£1 ,000 off your bill. If you get the top prize, which is 800 ,000 octopoints,£1 ,000 off your bill, just on the spin of a wheel.

1:13Hello, and welcome to this episode of the Rest is Entertainment, Questions and Answers Edition. I'm Marina Hyde.

1:18Richard Osman:And I'm Richard Osman. Hello, everybody. Hello, Marina. Hello, Richard. How are you? I'm very, very well. Don't forget we're doing a special Q &A very soon with Sir Paul McCartney. You think I forgot? I'm not forgetting that. You're not forgetting it. I'm thinking of genuinely very little else. But, well, no, you're thinking about this episode first. Oh, yeah, because above all, I'm a professional. Yeah, above all. If people say, what's one word you use to describe Marina? And let's say professional. I'm still excited I can do the intro to this particular edition of the show. You did great. Without messing up.

1:47I know. Every time I do it, I still can't believe I've done it.

1:49Richard Osman:You're like a little fist pump. A little Andy Murray fist pump. if you want to ask a question of Sir Paul McCartney we'll be giving your questions not ours it's the rest is entertainment at goalhanger.com but we are going to be answering your questions this week I'm sorry that's a disappointment because neither of us are Paul McCartney but we start with a question from Beverly G Beverly G is like an 80s New York rapper Beverly asks she's talking about House of Commons television she said could the House of Commons up the production value of their select committees finally Beverly someone said it if potentially millions of people are watching Sir Ollie Robbins reveal crucial information for our democracy, would it not be a good use of taxpayer money to improve the cameras and mics?

2:27Yeah, we have reached the Blockbuster Select Committee per phase of any government's life. And so, yeah, last week it was Ollie Robbins, this week there's been Morgan McSweeney and Philip Barton. Let me tell you something, Beverly G, which is that the filming in the House of Commons, and that means in the Chamber itself and the House of Lords and on all the committee rooms, is governed by incredibly strict rules, which were mostly established in 1989 when they let the cameras in. And some have relaxed a little, but I will tell you what they are, which will explain quite a lot. The main rules are that you have to focus on the speaker while they're talking.

3:08So this is why in the House of Commons, you've got this like static angle on the dispatch box and it's quite wide. You're not allowed to do a close-up though, which would just be a head. You have to do head and shoulders. all the things you'd want to say which is get me tights now because you want to do a cutaway you can't do that they have relaxed them slightly to allow cutaways at all but they can only cut away to the person who has been named or effectively by the honourable lady opposite or something you know who you're talking about they can only do that and you can't highlight a group of MPs you can obviously have no shots of documents of any kind and it's as i say it's got to be sort of medium angle shot where and you could you can and this includes in the select committees that yes all of it is very and it's kind of largely the same because you've got a speaker and someone who might be being referred to so you're in general switching between a kind of medium angle thing and a wide thing never close up and never split screen that's like that's you can't have anything like that i mean it was absolutely transformative

4:14Richard Osman:for the darts split screen maybe it could be transformative for democracy the dart so much you believe could flow from darts so many things could be made better by adopting more of the conventions of the darts well listen liberal democracy is in crisis i agree i just say why not throw a few balls in the air yeah you can occasionally in in the chamber have panning shots along the benches but only really occasionally and it's a whole sort of special permission thing christopher nolan did the thing when because he directed for a day didn't he and he turned the whole thing into like a like a tombola and so like it was like a jimmyriquai video that was i like that i liked that was a great day yeah that was a great day and they were all sort of keeping up they were sort of walking it a lot it was it i thought it was amazing wonderful wonderful but not enough guest directors and they only have actually they have they've got two sort of control rooms galleries really with you know the robotic cameras so do they have a director do they have an actual is there because presumably someone must be overseeing that someone has to oversee That's a boring gig.

5:07Well, it is.

5:08Richard Osman:I mean, listen, it's work. The main reason for all of these rules is you cannot trivialise Parliament. And this is why you cannot use any footage from Parliament in any entertainment programmes. You're not supposed to, you're not allowed to trivialise it. And it's supposed to be about recording it and creating a record rather than a drama. And you can see why everything, the most crucial thing is that everything has to be impartial. And you can see why even a cutaway could provide the idea of a slant. yeah and so it's almost like a visual version of Hansard and Hansard is literally they're just writing down every single word that's said just so future generations have that and I guess the idea is if we're filming it all we are doing is showing future it doesn't matter I mean whatever you think about what might be happening today you want someone in 200 years time to be looking at this and they just want to be able to hear what was said and by who and when exactly and also you do want them to be able to do their job and everyone I mean I'm going to shock you MPs are subject to vanities as anybody else and being always on is hard you know even the greatest actors in the world have to remember not to become a reaction gif when they're at the oscars in the audience you all have everyone has to remember that you're so eliminating that thing helps but obviously yes for the viewer beverly g you are you're used to tv being a pretty fluid system of close-ups and different things like that so it does seem um it would be expensive by the way to up the production values you know my dream is that you have when people are talking about Keir Starmer there's a camera on Keir Starmer wherever he happens to be to have the reaction or like a committee looks like when Tom Wamsgams is uh is in the committee in succession but yeah it's it's not going to look like that it's not one thing that therefore I would say is that I absolutely adore the work of something that is such a unique thing in our country which is the sketch writers and they can when it's done brilliantly there's so many great sketch right you know i love tom peck in the times john craze in the guardian rob hudson the critic i loved madeline grant's spectate i love her ones in the spectator and the ones the one of that committee that you're talking about the ollie robbins one was so good and i i haven't spoken to her about it but i would say that probably what she's done is even she's probably done this subconsciously because by the way you have to write your you have to file it so quickly after it's all over But the reason her one was really good of Ollie Robbins is because I think she subconsciously probably thought, you know, you're thinking it conforms to the conventions of a sitcom or ideally a sitcom, really, which is that you've got two lead characters here, Emily Thornberry and Ollie Robbins.

7:39the rest are just sort of bit parts and everybody doesn't like a third character who's not on screen and that's why it's funny who is Keir Starmer and it all sort of works because they conform to the conventions of a sitcom but they also tell you things that you can't see because of the way it has been filmed as you say it's this very dry way of filming and so what I love is when the sketch writers who are in the room and if they're not in the room people always say oh you can do it from the TV I've done occasionally you had to do sketches from the TV for one reason or another, or you're not allowed into the room when you're on the election trail.

8:12It's always worse. It's always so much better. It's like covering sport. You know, yes, technically you could cover a golf tournament off the TV, but it's nothing like doing it when you're there. And I really value the work of our sketch writers, particularly because they give you the little details, the little bits, what people were doing when the camera, you know, which you'd never know what the other committee members were doing, who was getting everything off their phone, who wasn't really concentrating. and I really value that particular thing and it's funny because it's not something that other countries particularly have it's just a British thing and so those accounts which often come out really soon after they've happened are a very good window into the actual drama and the actual you know they have higher production values if we could put it that way yeah and this idea of you

8:56Richard Osman:know could they have better cameras and better mics better cameras they don't need because genuinely it is they need a static shot so that's the shot they're going to get and mics is one of things anyone who's ever put on an event anywhere knows that mics always go wrong i mean that's you know if you if you want mics to always go right it's almost impossible you know if any village hall in the country or the second you mic somebody up um somebody's mic goes wrong they're just notoriously uh difficult to use and so whenever i do event i say can i have a handheld because you know at least you know if they're right or wrong and no one has to come and you know fiddle about with things but yeah microphones unless you're going to have a full-time staff doing that all the time, which probably is not what we should be spending on in our democracy, the microphones are always going to be an issue because microphones, God bless them, are always an issue.

9:41Richard, a question from Escher for you. Richard's previously mentioned that Freedom at Fadden was the best-selling author of 2025. It's since been revealed that she is in fact an American physician named Sarah Cohen, which I found incredible. How does she find the time? This has me wondering what motivates authors to write under pseudonyms in the first place and what leads them to eventually reveal their true identities?

10:04Richard Osman:Lots of different reasons, really. I mean, Sarah Cohen is a particularly interesting one. She didn't want to write under her own name because she had patients. And she's quite rightly thinking, if someone wants to go and see a brain surgeon, are they really going to go see someone who is sort of writing fiction in their spare time? And so I think very, very early on, she thought, no, this is a hobby for me. My job is brain surgery so i'm gonna give myself a different name uh and she's a brain it's just every every time i think of it it just blows my mind uh and frida is taken from a a machine they use in brain surgery as well so that at least yes it's a little reference to her job how does she have the time that's a slightly different question and an interesting question she does not do an awful lot of brain surgery anymore she is mainly writing all the time she did a really really good a takedown of people accusing her of using AI.

10:56Richard Osman:It was really, really, really good. She says, no, I can write two books a year. I can just do it. Plenty of people can. Some people can write four. That's just something I can do. Take a look at every single thing I've written, including before AI even existed. It's exactly the same. I don't use it. Shut up saying I use it. I use a different name because I was a brain surgeon. I don't do very much of it anymore. And this is how I write my books. And by the way, she doesn't add this, but people love her books. So she uses a pseudonym for that reason. I would only have accepted that from a rocket scientist.

11:29Yes, exactly. No, thank you. Anyone else making that accusation?

11:33Richard Osman:And there are all sorts of other people who want to protect their day jobs. Journalists quite often will write under different names. Sam Bourne is a pseudonym, for example. Just people whose day job and the writing job might clash with each other. They will use a pseudonym. So that's one reason. something like so E.L. James who wrote 50 Shades of Grey E.L. James is a pseudonym for Erica Mitchell who worked in television for many years as a production manager now she is using a pseudonym maybe because she's writing something that's vaguely pornographic and feels like maybe she doesn't want her professional name associated with that so that would be a reason that you would use a pseudonym sometimes perhaps you just don't particularly like your name a really really good example of why a pseudonym was chosen was Lee Child.

12:19Richard Osman:So Lee Child's real name is Jim Grant. And again, worked in TV for many, many years, like lots of writers. So he decides he's going to use a pseudonym for his writing. And he comes up with Lee Child. And the reason he uses Lee Child is because he's writing crime and thrillers. And he said that Child would be exactly in between Raymond Chandler and Agatha Christie. So if you're in a bookshop, it's between two people who everyone's looking at all the time. That is brilliant. I did not know that. That's one of the many reasons why he's a genius lead child. So cool. J.K. Rowling's an interesting one because there's two different things going on with J.K.

12:58Richard Osman:Rowling. I'll do the second one first, which is when she moved on from the Harry Potter books. She did the casual vacancy, but then she starts writing thrillers, the Cormoran Strike thrillers. And she writes those under the name Robert Galbraith. and she did that because she's very very aware that she had this unbelievably enormous success but you know would people just buy anything with her name on it i guess so she's thinking well i want to prove myself again i want to prove to myself that i'm a great writer and this wasn't a fluke or you know critics you know sort of sag off my books and i just want them to show i can write so she writes common strike under robert galbraith these books did not sell when they were under the name Robert Galbraith and it was only a few weeks but literally like nothing because that's what happens with most books you know it's it's really really hard if you're a new writer especially if you're Robert Galbraith because you can't really do any interviews you can't because you're not real and so you know but she used the pseudonym because she wanted to prove herself in a different way but you very very very quickly when Robert Galbraith was outed who knows who by uh suddenly those books became enormous bestsellers because they knew it was um jk rowling not robert galbraith but that was a reason for using one and jk rowling itself is sort of a pseudonym because her name is joanne rowling and she called herself jk rowling and this is a very very common reason for using pseudonyms because she didn't want people to know she was a woman she just thought i'm writing these books literally centuries that's been going centuries you know george elliott it's you know and but different reasons now now and now in a way I think she felt she wanted, we all know that girls read more than boys, and we all know there's a gender split between the sort of books that boys will read.

14:44Richard Osman:The numbers backed that up, and she thought, well, if I'm J.K. Rowling, no one knows if I'm a man or a woman, and therefore, you know, boys and girls can read me in equal numbers. I mean obviously with the success of those books it became apparent very quickly that people did know who she was but the idea at the start was if she calls herself JK then people won't know what gender she is so all sorts of different reasons for people to do it sometimes people just don't like their name sometimes people it is it you know their day job is not quite suitable for the sort of books they're writing and sometimes you just want to hide who you are you know Primary Colours was written by Anonymous for example just which sort showed that they were kind of an insider who couldn't you know freedom at fadden absolutely you can understand 100 she's thinking no i literally see patients day in day out i do not want to be sitting across from someone discussing something very serious and they've literally just read a thriller that i've written that would be awkward but now she doesn't really do it anymore so so so we know she's sarah cohen uh should we go for a break after the break if you are listening lisa kilroy you asked us a question and we are not going to answer it but someone very exciting is that'll be straight after the break welcome back everybody now as trailed before that break lisa kilroy has a question how do actors master crying on demand you know we just went to someone vaguely famous we went to meryl streep to answer this question meryl take it away So Lisa, your question is, how do you wrangle a good movie cry?

16:29And I think you mean when you're acting, or do you mean when you are a member of the audience and you feel yourself tearing up? That's a different question.

16:44Richard Osman:But as an actor, I remember a friend of mine in drama school, I asked her the same question. I said, God, Marcel, how do you cry like that? She said, how do you not cry? How do you not cry, given the world we live in? I thought, oh, I'm in a bubble. Yes. so I think if you leave yourself open to what real heartbreak there is in your surround and everybody has it you can get there Wow, how about that Lisa? The legend Acting Lessons from Meryl Streep we try to be a full service podcast but it's funny isn't it you talk to it because actors get that a lot because it's the one thing I think non-actors think oh I absolutely couldn't do that and um half the time it is yeah you you find something within yourself you know it's we've all had moments in our life where we have cried and one of the parts of being an actor is is you know you go inside yourself and you can do that but also you know there are tear sticks which are you know very sort of viscous things that you can put under your eyes just before a take starts that'll give you a little tear as well i will say that a lot of actors will tell you that if they have got themselves into that place where they can cry they are almost always thinking of something pretty it takes a while to come out of it they can't just switch it off so when cut gets called it's great if everyone on set realises that they must be in a place to have to have got there and they're treated quite gently so that either they can do the take again or whatever it is but yeah I think that it's worth remembering that someone in the room has gone to quite a dark place in order to be able to do what they're doing and everyone else if they're thinking about it has to respect that when you come out of the take.

18:38Richard Osman:Yeah, on a set there's always, you know, before a kiss or before a cry, that's when everyone knows they have to be absolutely on their game. Because if somebody is in a situation where they're going to, you know, they have to cry in the middle of a scene and as you say, it's usually that involves going somewhere quite dark. If you're about to start to take and then you go, oh, hold on, I just need to change a bulb. Yeah. You just, you can't. You know, that's the moment where you go, no, that person is, we have to turn over immediately because this actor is ready. So a lot of pressure on anyone.

19:12Richard Osman:And if you do have to abandon a take and an actor is halfway through, that's tough. They'll often do like a closed set for things like that, which is the absolute bare minimum of people to be, definitely for nude scenes, but even for kisses and sometimes for cries, because it's just helpful if there's not a million people, even silently changing light bulbs. Yeah. What a legend Meryl is. Oh my God. Because that's a great answer. Yeah. How can you not cry? Yeah. How can you not cry? Yeah. Wherever you may be. Follow that, Marina, because I have a question for you from James Brandon. James says, this week Netflix have announced they are releasing a film of Millie Bobby Brown's 19 Steps with Tom Hooper signed on to direct.

19:54Richard Osman:Given that this book was ghostwritten by Kathleen McCurl, how does it work with intellectual property? Millie is signed on as a producer and is almost presented as the author of the novel. Does the ghostwriter get a one-off fee or will they also get remunerated for the film? Yes, this is the book based on Millie Bobby Brown's grandmother's experience in World War II in the Bethnal Green Tube disaster. But she's done lots of things, Millie Bobby Brown, as lots of these young stars do. You know, she's got a Maycott line, clothing collaborations, a book as well. They're very diversified. But when this book came out, there was a real backlash about it, saying that someone else had written it.

20:31So much so that Millie Bobby Brown actually posted a picture of herself with Kathleen McHale saying, I couldn't have done this without you.

20:37Richard Osman:Yeah, no shit. No, but also ghostwriters have been around for absolutely hundreds of years. Every speech that you ever hear a politician give, nobody says to Nigel Farage, you didn't even write this, okay? Yes, but that's different to being an author. I agree, but being a ghostwriter is something that has existed genuinely for hundreds of years. It is a deal that you do, By the way, in answer to your question, no, she won't be getting anything out of it. I'm almost certain. You're a writer for her. It's a writer. It's like a contributor gig. You're paid a certain amount of money. I'm sure she got paid well for it.

21:12Kathy McCulls, she seems to have been still, you know, willing to do the picture with Millie Bobby Brown. So she knew what she was signing on for. And any agent has foreseen this and obviously thinks, as you can see how carefully Millie Bobby Brown's career, with all these different strands as being planned out will think she'll do the book and then we'll do the film of the book and knows all of this and it will all have been sewn up. So my feeling is I very, very much doubt that she, it's possible that they say if it is made into a film, you get a bonus, but it won't, it would just be that they could have that clause in.

21:46I very much doubt it. You don't need to give people that. You tend to just pay them for the ghostwriting game.

21:51Richard Osman:My thinking would be in this particular case because you're absolutely right because what you want to do is control oh, the amount of money the ghostwriter is getting so they didn't get a percentage or something. I think given that they would have known for a fact that this would be optioned by Netflix, it might have even been optioned just off an idea, it means that the fee that Kathleen would have got in the first place would have been significantly higher than she would have got without that because you're not just buying out the book, you are buying out the film rights as well at the same time because you must have known that those film rights will be lucrative and will be sold.

22:22Richard Osman:So yes, I think you're right. She would not get extra for this, but that would have been baked into the original deal, I would have thought. Yes, and there are lots of famous ghostwriters. J.R. Murringer, who did Prince Harry's book, and he also did Andre Agassi's biography. He's brilliant. And ghostwrites lots of these things. The name wasn't on the front of the book, and it's sort of understood. She got a big backlash, I think. And I think that even her publishers felt that that was quite sexist and that you wouldn't, in lots of other cases, have a backlash like that. but as I say she clearly tried to get in front of it by posting this picture but in general a ghostwriter is always a defined writer for high gig and you've signed away future rights to this or that yeah and I think listen I absolutely understand why there's a backlash because you know writing a book there is supposed to be an authenticity to it and if you are a consumer who's not used to books and doesn't understand the world of ghostwriters if that's the first thing you've ever heard of it you've been going well this is absolutely insane if you write a book you write a book but as you say you know especially in autobiography in non-fiction um it is very very common and so long as you lean into it and admit to people that you've done it there are people out there who have ghostwriters who don't tell you they've got ghostwriters that to me is the worst crime of all but minnie bobby brown at least her ghostwriter has been acknowledged her ghostwriter has been paid and if she does another one she'll probably get paid again so you know it's it's nice money uh but if it's the first time that you'd come across this idea as a consumer i think you would your immediate reaction would be but i how on earth do you expect me to read your book when it is not your book it is someone else's i hope i'm saying your surname right rob fiend rob fiend says in your jet 2 discussion you didn't mention that jess glenn is in a long-term relationship with football presenter alex scott i don't know how i didn't because i live for this stuff i didn't know that i i'm stunned you've just we don't spend i said to you you need to spend 15 hours a day on mail online and then you know everything we consume different media which is which is why the podcast works um you don't you don't read snooker scene a lot right i dabble yeah rob says it's one of those b-tier celebrity couples that you only discover when you google one of them i was wondering what your favorite surprise celebrity couples are we can lose b-tier i think because because um jess glenn and alex scott i think that's that's quite a lot of star power uh right there as i say i didn't know um and you know that's uh that's on me yeah i guess you happy now you know i've been writing a book yeah you know i just it's sometimes i spend more time doing that uh but you know i do i think i'm beginning to question the wisdom of my 15 adits a day on these websites no listen you you keep it up i tell you a celeb couple that i i really like the idea of because i like both of them and i read that they met when they're like 15 or something they like met when they were kids at like a christian youth camp or something but it was only years later they became a couple uh and one of them starred in my favorite film of last year uh the ballad of wallace island kerry mulligan and marcus mumford i think that's a that's a fun couple isn't it don't you think they both seem so lovely yeah i absolutely think that that is a fun couple for sure um and yeah they did have that funny story where i think i think they were pen pals i think they started as like i don't want to get that bit wrong i like i'm a big fan of maya rudolph and paul thomas anderson that's one that always goes paul thomas anderson feels like someone who isn't real right because he's so cool and he's such an auteur and then you see a picture of him you think i can't believe you're an actual real human being and then you discover he's married to maya rudolph who everyone will recognize from every american film ever and sat in that live and stuff like that you think not only are you real but you're sort of you appear to be married to this wonderful woman as well how are you how are you making these how are you an auteur with a three-word name and yet you also just appear to be married as well listen i've for me the the absolute best of the best of course and i don't think it's unlikely though because you know when two people get together you think oh yes of course just watch stacy solomon yes please don't you think but you don't it's not like you don't know they're together you certainly do if you spend 15 hours where I spend it what was the question what was the last bit of the question unlikely ones that you had to sort of you know you had to think oh hang on a second are they together I just wanted to talk about them yeah I know if you haven't had a mention of them in each podcast you get very upset I'm going to stick with Mumford and Mulligan there okay it would be lovely to have the Mumford Mulligans round for dinner I mean that's the thing isn't it I wish they double barreled it but I don't think they have I don't think they have So again, Muddigan, Mumford and Thomas Anderson and Rudolph.

27:12Yeah.

27:12Richard Osman:Beautiful. Right. It is that time of the episode, Richard, the recommendations section, which this week is brought to you by Tesco Mobile. Yep. We love making recommendations. We love recommending film and TV things in the same way that friends and family always do. If someone tells you about a show, tells you about something to read, then it makes it that bit more important and also gives you a little insight into who they are. Sometimes you agree, sometimes you disagree. Yeah, that whole connection with friends and family is what Tesco Mobile is all about, which is why they're happy to be your second most important network.

27:43Richard Osman:Now, let's get on to our recommendations. My recommendation this week is for a book called London Falling by Patrick Raddenkief, which people are absolutely gripped by this book if you read the story. It's a story about a boy who becomes obsessed with the super rich. It's a true story. It's nonfiction, this book, and he pretends he's the son of an oligarch. His name was Zach Brettler and age 19, he jumped to his death from the fifth floor of one of those very fancy new tower block developments on the banks of the Thames. And it's the story. I mean, it's absolutely gripping. As I say, it's a true story.

28:17It's got it all gangsters, violence, and this absolutely tragic end, which isn't really an end because it's so unclear what happened. And even the coroner says, I don't know what happened. And it illuminates a world and an era, definitely, and a city, I have to say, and some of the things that have happened in London. And most particularly, his parents' search for their lost child and for answers. It's brilliant.

28:41Richard Osman:I'll also say I read anything by Patrick Ray and Keith as well. I met him at a festival last year and he's an extraordinary writer. He told an amazing story about how he was sitting with his son. He was watching one of his children at a baseball game and his other son is playing with his phone. And then he realises halfway through that his son is FaceTiming a Mexican drug cartel boss who he was writing an article about. Anyway, he wrote an amazing book. There's a selection of his things about rogues. I think it's called Rogues. And also he did Say Nothing. He did Empire of Pain. About Northern Ireland.

29:16Yeah, say nothing from the troubles and Empire of Pain, which is amazing about the opioids epidemic.