Prop Auctions, Celebrity Bodyguards & Football Chants

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1:28Hello and welcome to this episode of the Rest is Entertainment Questions and Answers edition. I'm Marina Hyde. And I'm Richard Osman, live from Morocco. I say live. How are you, Marina? I'm very well. I mean, I'm jealous in London, is all I can say of your Morocco jaunt. What's the weather like? I forget London. I forget what it's like Tell me about the old town It was alright at the weekend And it's taken a dive But that's okay I'm going to be back very soon though I'm back for the BAFTAs on Sunday Where House of Games is going to lose once again Excited to see who he is to this time Well it's always sunny on this podcast Richard Oh that's true It's always sunny on this podcast And we're about to get in some questions By the way I should say tomorrow We've got a bonus episode for our members You can join at therestisentertainment.com.

2:19And it's 50 years since the launch of Monty Python's Flying Circus. And we're going to start a little series on that kind of amazing moment in comedy and where it's spooled off into, which I think will be lots of fun. We've got some fun little stories in there, haven't we? Yes, we certainly have. But now let's get into some questions, shall we? I have a question for you, Marina, from James, who has not given us a surname. He will be formally fitted with one by you. I have a question from James Lexington here. Let's say he's from Nantwich. Thank you, James. James says, back in the 80s and 90s, it seemed like most big Hollywood movies had a song to go with them.

2:56Who can forget such classics as Backdance by Prince, Adam's Family Grew by MC Hammer and Everything I Do by Bryan Adams. Unfortunately, not me, says James Lexington. The trend seems to have declined in recent years and only James Bond films seem to have their own song. Is this a sign of change in the media business or just a bit of a lull? Hello, James. I think that what you're talking about is what officially was called a tie-in song, because obviously movies have always had music in them. And well, once they were an oral medium. And there were songs in 50s and 60s movies that became sort of successful things like Moon River from Breakfast at Tiffany's or lots of Elvis ones like Jailhouse Rock, things like that.

3:34Unchained a Melody was from a movie called Unchained and that became one of the biggest selling songs of all time in lots of different versions. And the Beatles obviously did their whole sort of, you know, they did Help, they did Hard Day's Night, the Yellow Submarine. And then something like The Graduate. I mean, those amazing Simon and Garfunkel songs. I think there are five or six of them. Mrs. Robinson, Sound of Silence, Scarborough Fair. But Mike Nichols was just a huge fan of Simon and Garfunkel and managed to persuade Clive Davis, I think, to let them write a couple for the movie. And in the end, they did more.

4:04But you are right that the formal tie in is started in the 80s. with the sort of summer blockbuster, you know, when everything sort of needed to be a blockbuster. But it went really stratospheric with Ghostbusters with that Ray Parker Jr. It went Gangbusters with Ghostbusters with that Ray Parker Jr. song. That one had the benefit, which I think is brilliant, of explaining the film's premise, the lyrics explain the film's premise, which is quite helpful. I love that. Because, you know, well, there was lots of sitcoms, don't forget, in the 80s, where they would explain the whole story in the theme tune.

4:40Different Strokes. Different Strokes is a classic one. We can't get into, that's another separate question. If you want to do theme tunes that explain the whole story, we could do that another time. Yeah, very happy to do that. But actually, they were a significant part of a promotion. But obviously, something like Ghostbusters where it is actually explaining the premise of the film and it's constantly playing on the radio, that is amazing for you. But remember, this is where MTV really takes off. And so you can have videos with footage from the film because they're an official song So they were basically an advert for the film.

5:10And consequently, the studios paid for these things. And then they did take a share of the profit. So there are certain things that, I don't know, you think of something like Eye of the Tiger, which we so closely associate with Rocky. That didn't even get appended to a Rocky movie till Rocky 3. But sometimes it was so dominant that the tagline derived from the song. because that moment, that emotional moment where it happened, like, say, Dirty Dancing, I've Had the Time of My Life, the tagline is you'll have the time of your life. Officer and a gentleman, it will lift you up where you belong. So, yeah.

5:47But then you get all these other ones. In the 90s, again, you have these huge songs, some of which is sort of slightly bizarre. Like one of the trivia questions that my husband often tries to ask me, because, you know, you have your occasion, you have a trivia question and you just, there's a sort of synaptic failure and no matter how many times you've been told it you can't quite remember ask me if you can get it from what movie is I Don't Want to Miss a Thing by Aerosmith, the tie-in song I Don't Want to Miss a Thing, I think is it Armageddon? it is, but there's no I would like to miss almost all of Armageddon.

6:22I suppose if you're destroying an asteroid then you don't want to miss it No, you don't. Is that the loose tie in there? I think that's the loose tie. Anyway, it was a huge song. And there were certain things like, as you mentioned, that Bryan Adams song. I mean, by the way, if memory serves, they thought that was rubbish and they stuck it on the end of the movie. You don't see that at the big romantic climax or whenever it is. In the way that in something like Pretty Woman, when they're parted, you do hear the rock set, it must have been love playing. And again, it sort of almost ventriloquizes what's happening on screen.

6:58But you don't see that Brian Adams song. It played over the titles. I don't think they thought it was any good. It does have footage from the movie in the video, but it became absolutely massive and it just stuck on the top of the charts in the UK and in America for a very, very long time. It does become much less fashionable in the 2000s. Things like hip hop were very big and you weren't going to put that on a movie for some reason. They were just very, you know, they're very risk averse. They do things like this. Although Julio had a huge hit with Gangster's Paradise from Dangerous Minds Again, another example of the song being much more enduring than the movie Oh my god, I watched that again the other day, by the way Culturally, Dangerous Minds is...

7:39I don't think it would get greenlit these days How did he have time to re-watch Dangerous Minds? I just wanted to see how much of a cringe it had become In the changing narrative of racial politics And I would say that quite a big one is the answer to that they'd sort of they've dropped off but for reasons which is that mtv is a nothing now i mean it was such a big part of when i was growing up and the idea that you could have this stuff playing all the time basically an advert for your movie and that every time it was played on the airwaves you thought about the movie because you maybe knew the video as well because you knew it all so well this doesn't happen anymore and so it's one of those pieces of what had become marketing that has become cut as you say the whole thing about who gets the bond song is a big big deal and it's it remains part of that specific franchise's marketing and this is why you get all the best people to do it you get you know Adele or Billie Eilish or whoever it is because it still remains this kind of prestige thing but for other reasons you don't mind your music being used but it's just there's none of that cultural purchase and there's none of the kind of symbiotic form of marketing for both your music and for the movie that used to happen, so that just doesn't exist in the same way anymore.

8:50Dua Lipa had a Barbie one, didn't she? A lot of the Barbie ones were pretty big. Yeah, it's just not quite, but it's not the same as what it used to be because you just don't have that MTV angle. The MTV with the big video, yeah, with Will Smith and Tommy Lee Jones in the middle of it, that remains as famous as the movie. You know, of course, Ray Parker Jr., who wrote the Ghostbusters theme, you know who successfully sued him? Who? For ripping off his song. Huey Lewis. Oh, yes, I did know this. Yes. I want a new drug. He sued. There was an out-of-court settlement. Huey Lewis was never allowed to talk about it.

9:25And then he did talk about it. And then Ray Parker Jr. tried to sue him back. And that's the 80s for you. Ray Parker Jr. versus Huey Lewis. That was the Jake Paul versus Mike Tyson of the 1980s. Yeah, it meant almost as much. It meant everything. Right, Richard. Andy Hunt says, I've been wondering how football chants work. Who writes them? How are they distributed to other fans on paper, website or word of mouth? Like a Sammer's Dat operation? Also, does anyone have any football or other sports chant under copyright? This is a question that occurs to all of us. I thought rather than us answer it, you know, Adam Hurry, who does the brilliant football cliches, social media accounts and the incredible podcast as well, which if you don't listen to, you must do.

10:13I thought this would be a perfect question for him. So I asked Adam and here is his answer. Hi, Andy, Adam Hurry here. Very happy to explore this underappreciated cultural process. Football club message boards have long been littered with tales of honourable but futile attempts to get football chants started about a new cult hero. But they're often to the tune of a relatively mainstream pop hit from any time in the last 50 years. But since football fandom is basically predicated on jealousy and one-upmanship, the easiest and most effective way to establish a new chart amongst a fanbase is to steal it from a rival club, which in turn will have been stolen half a dozen times already, and almost repurpose it with complete lack of shame.

10:57As for the distribution, it has to be completely organic. It has to be a word-of-mouth success spreading itself through the blocks and rows of the stadium. If you print out the lyrics and hand them out, don't even think about doing that. As for copyright issues, no artist is on record for suing a set of football fans for performing a chant based on their work. But at the same time, it does feel like a landmark legal case waiting to happen. So are football chants carefully workshopped from scratch like a proper song? Or are they just endlessly reappropriated and cannibalised between fan bases to the point where nobody really knows what's original anymore?

11:31Turns out, it's a bit of both oh i love that thank you so much adam i always think you know that obviously he's right lots of them are sort of niche from uh other places and that that i think it was saint pauli in germany he did that um you know i love you i love you i love you and then i will follow i'll follow that one which is so weird it's from like a kind of 50s musical that just gets taken up and everyone else tries it i always think the best and i didn't know where it came from uh the absolute my favourite, creatively my favourite ever football chant. Not kind of as a clever pun or anything like that.

12:03It's just how did they come up with it is the Colo Tori, Yaya Tori Manchester City chant. It's just so extraordinarily unlike anything else and works so beautifully. And there must be someone sitting at home in Manchester. I literally did that. That was me. I was the first person to say it. I was the generator. I was the original generator of that one. Do you know which musical You'll Never Walk Alone is from? Yes, it is from Carousel. Yes. You know, the old Jeremy Corbyn chant, which of course is Seven Nation Army. And it was, oh my God, this is amazing, this old Jeremy Corbyn. But it was old Michael Van Gerwen.

12:41It was a Michael Van Gerwen darts chant. And before that, it would have been something else. We said old Bobby Zamora of Fulham. Oh, that is global, that one. That's global. They have in the US as well. That's gone everywhere. There's one, you know, the tune to Rotterdam by the Beautiful South. You think, how is that happening? to taking Rotterdam by the beautiful south and turning that into a chant. But they do. Question for you, Marina, and also a first for the show. We have our first three-time questioner. Crikey. Other people have, listen, they've got to raise their game because this guy's had three.

13:12Chris Ship is back. And he asks, I'm a big guy. He gets asked if you play rugby a lot. And as a primary school teacher, as a primary school teacher, that's good. My mum is a primary school teacher, God's people. He says, I could do with some extra money. My fiancé would like me to apply for Taylor Swift's security team. There's a lot going on here, isn't there, Chris Shipp? No wonder he gets so many questions answered. There is a lot. Yeah. I've immediately got an alarm bell ringing there, but hang on. OK. And he says, what does this entail, joining Taylor Swift's security team? What does it take to be a celebrity bodyguard at the highest level?

13:46All right. Well, we'll get on to Taylor in a minute. And what I hope your fiancé isn't trying to tell you. but almost all bodyguards, close protection officers, CPOs or whatever these days have had a career in the military and the police. It is not enough to simply have been an enthusiastic nightclub bouncer or a primary school teacher. So you probably have to have that. I don't know. Have you been to any primary schools recently? Convention and precedent says that you probably will have had a career in one of those things and you've probably left those things because it can be much more lucrative doing this.

14:20And by the way, at the top end, I spoke to someone who actually I happen to know who runs something like this. And you can get upwards of five thousand pounds a day upwards. But it's if you're looking after big celebrities. But for the I mean, for the era's tour for Taylor Swift, she had I think there were one hundred and fifty CPOs and she had four with her at all time. Her security costs an absolute fortune. So I think she spends something like twelve or thirteen million dollars a year just on that. OK, so there's a lot of money in it. But Chris, you're not going to see your fiance very much.

14:54Because you're working all the time. You're working very difficult shift patterns. If you're going to be Taylor's bodyguard, you're going to be away for like a year at a time, practically. But also you have really tough stuff to deal with. You saw the situation in Vienna where she had to cancel three nights of her era's tour when there was a terror attack foiled. last weekend Lady Gaga did a huge concert in Rio and there was clearly a significant terror threat at that which by the way she says she's found out from media reports I saw so doing the job well is harder than it may seem and another story that is sort of becoming live once more is that awful story about Kim Kardashian when she was in Paris and she was staying in this very very expensive place those burglars got in, tied her up put her in the bath she was all the jury was taken it was I mean it's obviously the most intensely traumatic experience and the more that's going to come out more and more um you know it's coming out of the course of this week and next week in this court case in France now the bodyguard there uh went off to a nightclub with I think Courtney and Kendall and she was on her own and yeah they fired their security after that but yes I think that's quite significant there is a always a difficulty with a bodyguard between in terms of keeping your principles safe and kind of squaring that with their desire to engage with fans or to um to be in the public eye you might often have to not notice quite a lot of bad things that they do you might be uh accused online of being the father of one of their children's again with one of the kardashians kylie's kylie um jenna one of i think they people suggested that her bodyguard was a father of her baby he isn't but these guys often go on and they quite a few of them now have quite big tiktok careers and a lot of following and they make quite a lot of money just from talking about their work or saying that they can't talk about their work but i would say it's a very very to do it properly there is a high turnover normally by the way with celebrity bodyguards this the guy i was speaking to was saying to me there's a really high turnover because people feel like that you you become comfortable with a principal and then you stop just like kevin costner says you know he can't get too close to whitney houston because then he can't protect her properly he was right wasn't he Maybe he was, Richard.

17:08Maybe he was. Actually, if you look at Taylor Swift, it's quite unusual. Her security team does stay with her. She's pretty loyal to her people in general, Taylor Swift. But she works phenomenally hard. She is almost always working. She has obviously spent the last however many years traveling a lot. So I think, Chris, your fiancé would not see you very often, but it could be very, very lucrative. But it is also very dangerous. It's really constant vigilance, especially now when the threats are so different to what they are. ever were. I mean, there's so much terrorism now and terror threats associated with these kind of soft target cultural events.

17:44So I would say it's a pretty I'm not sure quite how drawn to the job I would be. Yeah, unless Chris's fiancée is Taylor Swift and she's saying, oh, I'll see more of you. Well, that would be, that would certainly be a revelation for our podcast, Richard. Listen, Chris is going to slide into Taylor's DM so I've had three questions on the rest of his entertainment. You know, that's going to impress her, I think. Chris, can I say You know, glamorous though it sounds and lucrative though it is, please continue being a primary school teacher. Because it's very, very useful. I know it's not as lucrative and I know it's just as dangerous.

18:16But, you know, it feels more powerful in some ways. In many ways it does. Now, on that note, Richard, shall we go to a break? I'd love to.

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19:35Welcome back, everybody. This is something we get a load of questions on, is auctions, auctions of movie props, I suppose any form of memorabilia like that. Obviously, we know that people really want them and then they're kind of high-value items. So what rules are established on sets for people not to take them? Do they have to go through security scanners? I'm so sorry. You seem to have Thor's hammer in your pocket and you're going to have to put that back. No, I was just pleased to see you. it's interesting because years ago there were no protocols at all there's that famous story of someone who went to a fancy dress party dressed as obi-wan kenobi and sort of rented a the obi-wan kenobi costume from angels and burmans in london and discovered it was actually adic guinness's real costume so you know these these these these things were out on the afro market now they're they're much more lucrative and people sort of understand i think that there's money to be made Ronnie O'Sullivan in the snooker tournament last week when he had this queue that just wasn't working for him.

20:34And they're saying, will he throw it away? He said, no, I'm not going to throw it away because the merchandise people want it. It's like, okay. Everyone understands that everything has a price. And, you know, the prices you can get for some movie, things are extraordinary. I think the biggest ever price, $28 million for the Reby Slippers from The Wizard of Oz. So, you know, there's an awful lot of money out there. There's a few of those pairs, aren't there? There's maybe three or something, and they've all gone for ridiculous amounts. And again, because in any movie, you're going to get through more than one pair of slippers and you're going to get through more than one version of every prop.

21:08I wanted to talk about it this week, funnily enough. There's an incredible auction. It started yesterday, but it's on today as well. You've just about got a chance to look at it. So it's from juliansauctions.com. That's Julian with an E. And it's American, really. But it has everything from the very early days of television, from things like Gunsmoke and stuff like that, all the way through to you've got ER, you've got stuff from Mad Men, you've got stuff from The Sopranos. Can I take you through some of my favourite things? The stuff that I was tempted to bid on. I mean, some of this stuff is going for crazy money.

21:40They had a Lieutenant Colombo nameplate, you know, like the desk plate. Oh my God, you would love that more than anything. I know. What's the reserve on it? Yeah,$1 ,500. So you're like, okay. His number plate as well was up for grabs. Okay, you don't drive, but the nameplate for the desk, I can't believe you don't want that. Well, listen, I'd like it. I'm not going to spend$1 ,500 on it. I'd rather think, I can think of people who could use that$1 ,500 more than Julian's auctions. There's an amazing poster for one of Jessica Fletcher's books. The book is The Corpse Swam by Midnight and it's essentially on the wall of her office and it's all framed up.

22:17And that is currently$600, 13 bids on that so far. Oh, that's so cool. Oh, I've got to look at this catalogue. Oh, it's amazing. You literally go through and just go, yeah, I want that. Ingrid was looking at yesterday and she goes, they've got Hawkeye scrubs from MASH. And, you know, they've got this. And she goes, you didn't tell me they had some of Alexis's dresses from Dynasty. I was like, of course, I should have led with that. Of course, I should have led with that. They got set stuff from Mad Men. They've got these amazing speakers from Mad Men. The thing that's going for the most at the moment, they've got all the furniture from Frasier's apartment.

22:52and they've got that iconic coffee table, you know, with the sort of ball legs. And at the moment, that's going for$60 ,000. Oh, my God. There's two things that are on for a bigger reserve, but no bids as of yet. One is an entire Wonder Woman costume. You've got the corset, which in itself is$100 ,000 to$200 ,000. You've got the boots, which are$30 ,000. There's a lot of steel in it, though. There's a lot of steel in it. To be fair, and with the tariffs, actually, you're making money on it. And the headband is$30 ,000 as well. The most expensive thing there. Well, firstly, they've got Norm and Cliffy's Barstools from Cheers.

23:32You've got to have the pair, by the way. You've got to have the pair. You've got to buy them in a pad. Don't break up the set. They have a reserve of$20 ,000 each. But they also have the Cheers front door, the original front door of Cheers Tavern, you know, with the Cheers sign in it. And that's on for a guide of$125 ,000. Oh, my God, my dream of a basement bar in my house would be fully perfected if I were able to install that on the entrance to it. Well, they've even got, interestingly, like, photos, sports memorabilia photos from the wall of Cheers, which you can bid on. Honestly, all of these things, and again, these are taken from prop masters, all sorts of things, because people didn't know they were worth any money.

24:12Actors will sometimes take things home with them. When the BBC closed down, everyone was taking, you know, the signs from the walls. so by and large if you're on a set and you're you know a member of a set you you're allowed to take stuff home unless it is a particularly valuable thing that might be needed for a second series or a second run or a follow-up in which case the props masters will keep it there comes a point there when the prop masters got this store full of things 10 years later everyone else has moved on and they still sort of got them and they kind of own them so it's it's a complete mix some sets They wouldn't even dream of something that's there being particularly valuable.

24:49Some of the prop masters own everything. Some of the production owns everything. Some of the actors will take things home. But at that point, they're sort of available to go to auction. But this particular site, you'll keep going through. They've got like a military trunk from MASH. They've got some amazing things from so many different shows there. They've also got, by the way, some of the furniture from the Cosby show. And they've had quite a few bits on that. They've got Roseanne's sofa. so it's very very american heavy so different things for for different shows but certainly after a statute of limitations i think it is it is yours to sell we once did a a pre-titles thing on pointless on the set of the queen vic uh and i said very politely could i take a beer mat and they said of course i could so i've got a queen vic beer mat at home uh and i've got a bbc green room sign did you literally just prize it off the walls no they they they slid out so they could be easily put in a bull again.

25:44And yeah, by the time the BBC, there was literally not a thing there. If he turned up, it was like England during the war when they took all the signs down to foil the Nazis. Or when they storm a presidential palace when there's been a coup. Yes, exactly. And they nicked Saddam Hussein's paintings of a horse and things like that. It's like House of Games. You can't, no one can ever, I've got the House of Games decanter as the only one I've got. It's the only one where you can't really see my face. but if a show is ongoing it's very hard to to get any props from it at all because they will keep everything but you know Fraser's apartment is not going to be used again so whichever prop master owned those things is now quids in.

26:22Marina a question for you from Ian Jones. Ian says it is commonplace for professional reviews of film, tv, theatre, music books to headline a star rating usually one to five stars. Is this star rating purely a decision of the reviewer in question or do they have a list of criteria to apply in order to provide an element of consistency in a publication's reviews? Oh, Ian, I love the idea that it might be very scientific and based on a complex system. The history of star ratings is actually quite interesting and they started in travel guidebooks because it was like a really easy way, right back at the sort of turn of the 19th century and then the Michelin restaurant guide.