Robert Downey Jr & the Death of TV Comedy

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1:15Hello and welcome to this episode of The Rest is Entertainment with me, Marina Hyde. And me, Richard Osmond. Welcome back to the country, Marina. Thank you so much. Thank you for missing me. Well, I didn't say that. I just said welcome back to the country. Didn't go that far. Yeah, come on. I missed you. You were holidaying it. You probably noticed that was an incredible lighting if you watched it on YouTube, because Joey set me up in some form of natural lighting as opposed to in this sepulchral studio where I look very ill, even though I have a suntan. Quickly, before we get on to entertainment, should I tell you my news?

1:45Yes, please. We have a kitten. We just got it from the Brighton RSPCA on Saturday. She's called Lottie. We haven't introduced it yet to Liesl. I was going to say. We've got that fun ahead of us. Yeah. But yeah, she's a beaut. She's a real showboater. Sings for a suffer. Yeah, she really does. So where's Liesl? Lisa is in the rest of the house. Lottie is in the West Wing. She is essentially in the entertainment complex. She is in a small room where she can feel safe. But honestly, she doesn't need to. She's like, yeah, what else you got? I go outside, I don't care. But that's been my entire weekend really.

2:19Well, that's pretty exciting. Monday was all Lottie all the time. From a moment of bathos, what are we actually going to talk about after that? Yeah, I think we're going to talk about Robert Downey Jr. coming in to save the Marvel Cinematic Universe. Yes, we are. Are we not? We most certainly are. We're also going to talk about Edinburgh and comedy, the Edinburgh Fringe and comedy, aren't we? Yeah, and about stand-up comedy and how the economics of comedy has changed entirely within two to three years. Every single thing has changed and the way you make money in comedy now, it's very different, so we're going to talk about that.

2:48Shall we start with the MCU and our friend Robert Downey Jr.? You know, our friend Robert Downey Jr. I just think he's sort of post-friend, really. I think he's in one of those categories of celebrities that are so removed from normal life. So the MCU, which you start off with Iron Man in 2008, and then we get Hulk and Captain America and Thor, and then they all meet with the Avengers with Black Widow, and then we move on and they get various standalone films. They all branch out. They're all in interconnected product, and the whole cycle sort of ends, several phases, with Avengers Endgame. Marvel has been in the doldrums of late in that they had sort of two pretty much, well, one underperforming film, Ant-Man, and then the Marvel's Witch flopped.

3:34And everyone was saying, is this the end? Has something gone terribly wrong? And bearing in mind how much of cinema has been given over to this particular genre, is that the end? Does dispel sort of disaster for Hollywood as well? Well, Deadpool and Wolverine came out. It's already the highest rating R or 18 film of all time. It's the eighth highest movie opening of all time. Both the combined totals of Deadpool 1 and 2. Now, it came at the same time as Comic-Con, which is the big sort of comic book fan convention. It's San Diego every year. And Kevin Feige, who is the boss of Marvel, always stands up and they've got this whole H that they do all their big events in.

4:08And it's a sort of cult thing. For a long time, you know, Kevin Feige would just stand up and announce about 15 projects, some of which would happen and some of which are still in development. Yeah, it would almost always be like the name of an animal followed by the word man or woman. And then sometimes they wouldn't even have a sort of, like a logo having done them up already. things like Blade which still by the way we haven't seen he would just randomly announce at the end this year he announces a load of stuff the Fantastic Four's Fantastic Car sort of flies over and you think oh my gosh and then they're actually on stage a car flew over the Fantastic Car the Fantastic Car the Fantastic Car their vehicle from the comic books yeah just a small little hatchback but souped up slightly yeah also listen you can get a lot of luggage in the boot you can if there's four of you honestly it's useful surprisingly roomy yeah exactly They used to have a Citroen, they swapped to the Fantastic R and they have not looked back.

4:59Now, so that seemed to be the big announcement that they were actually there. And then they're coming over to film in Pinewood. Lots of these films are now filming in Pinewood, which is quite significant in the UK. Another reason they were in trouble is that the next phase of Marvel movies, which are all in these phases, never ending respawning product. The big bad in it was a guy called Kang, who was played by Jonathan Majors. now and they introduced him in Ant-Man 3 and he was convicted of assault and harassment recently and they had to part company with him so all those plans have gone awry and hearing you talk about the Marvel Cinematic Universe is hearing like hearing my mum talk about her friends you know what I mean you go you go home and you'll get like a good 20 minutes and eventually you work out who's connected to who my mother says but you know of course you know them it's like I've met them once for 30 seconds in 1983 but we talk about them you know and so so what Deidre says You're going to have to tell me which Deirdre that is because I know there's been a number of them.

5:52Yeah, perhaps I'm too close to this thing. Anyhow, on come all these masked people and they say that the new villain is going to be Doctor Doom. Now, who unmasks himself and is going to be playing Doctor Doom but Robert Downey Jr.? Now, I am going to do a spoiler here. If you don't know that Robert Downey Jr. is Iron Man and he dies in Avengers Endgame, you're like one of the last three people on Earth not to know this. So I'm sorry about that. What? You said what? That's the only one I haven't watched. So I'm sorry if I ruined it for you, but he does, and everybody knows this, right? And also there was sort of no feeling that even though, how can you bring him back?

6:28You can never bring him back. But they were thinking that in order to make Marvel work again, they somehow have to get the old gang back together, whether or not they do. So who's this film? He's going to be Doctor Doom, Victor Von Doom. I mean, come on. Victor Van Doom, excuse me. Who's going to a doctor called Doctor Doom? Doctor Doom, yeah. I think he's a doctor of letters. You know, if you ring your GP, you've got three choices. There's Dr. Patel, there is Dr. Robertson, or Dr. Doom also has. I am going to go with Patel or Robertson, I think. There's Dr. Doom sitting there going, why does no one ever like to come to my surgery?

7:02I tell you what, you're going to say any GP appointment you can, so I think you take to him, no problem. I can get a GP appointment, my God, yes, please. But not only that, it will be these two movies he's going to be the villain in are going to be directed by the Russo brothers. they did two of the Captain Americas but they crucially also did Avengers Infinity War and Avengers Endgame which are obviously the biggest movies when you say crucially crucially they are so to say Robert Downey Jr. is coming back in movies directed by the Russo brothers if you're a Marvel fan it is the biggest thing that they could possibly have announced it's like for Fulham fans when we heard that Ryan Sessegnon is coming back from Spurs it's the big guns the ones that have made them an absolute fortune before and made them a fortune by making great movies at the absolute height of has probably taken 600 million out of Marvel, maybe, maybe more, 600 million dollars.

7:51And they're paying them another huge amount to do this. Why? Well, it's clear that they needed something so enormous to rescue this. Don't forget that this is, however, the most successful run of form ever in Hollywood, ever in the whole history of Hollywood, the most successful entertainment franchise that has ever been created. It's pulled in over 30 billion at the box office and in 2001 marvel was sharing a tiny tiny little office with a company that made kites no really okay so it is a meteoric rise and it dominated the whole of entertainment do you reckon the uh the people in charge of the kite company still ring occasionally oh no they're massive they're absolutely enormous they're their defense practice contractor now they make defense kites okay and they laugh at 30 billion one of the things we've always said about marvel is that the IP is the start.

8:38Robert Downey Jr. is a rare one because he has got a Best Supporting Actor Oscar for Oppenheimer last year. But the Russo brothers, they go off, they make films, they do things for Apple, for Netflix, for Amazon Prime. They're not that successful. It's interesting, the Rotten Tomatoes score for the Russo brothers for their MCU movies is 89 to 90 percent. For their non-MCU movies is 39 to 40 percent. What have they done that's not Marvel? A very, very expensive TV series called Citadel that wasn't a particular success they've done a movie called The Grey Man they keep working with like Marvel stars they did something with Tom Holland which was called Cherry that was not which was basically a flop and again we're talking we keep talking about this the actors are not really the stars once people come out of the MCU their movies are often flops they may not be able to make it so it's really the brand that's the star it's like the Big Brother house when people come out you're like well now I'm not interested as soon as they're doing the interview with Davina you go oh no when you were in the house that was fun i was gripped now i recognize you're just some guy from letchworth and now now no longer it's interesting that robert danny jr would try and do this i have to say he's never going to be as famous as he is as when he's playing tony stark or in this and we'll come to how on earth sorry he's just been playing tony stark the most famous guy in the canon how can he now be a villain yes that's why i want to ask you marvel is now in its multiverse phase which okay you know put kindly it's like shows that there's all different you you know, different realities and different timelines where all different things are possible.

10:04But unkindly, I would just say anything can be anything. It's just a massive hand wave to kind of wave away plot problems or to bring people back from the dead when they're already... That's so clever. That's like that bit in Terminator when Linda Hamilton's trying to work out the timeline and Arnie goes, listen, your brain hurts if you think about that too much. But that was clever and ironic then. But now I just feel like it's a way to try and sort of spew out more money for this franchise. In one of the recent comic book versions of this, Doctor Doom bound a piece of Doctor Strange's soul to himself.

10:38How did he do that? Hand wave, hand wave. Maybe he can bind a piece of, Tony Stark can bind a piece of himself to Doctor Doom. Who knows, who knows. They'll find a way to make it work. Because they have said, oh, Iron Man can't come back. Kevin Feige has repeatedly said, oh, I think, you know, to the fans, we've said that he's died. But, you know, it's not a surprise if you don't lay the ground for him never coming back and then oh my god he comes back so really in a slightly depressing way anything can be anything they can do anything they want they can put it in a different timeline and kevin feige will think i know exactly what the fans can swallow and if they want it and the fans will swallow it then why can't we do it it's tricky isn't it because where's the jeopardy then nothing has any consequence nothing really there's there are no stakes because no one can really die in lots of these things the narrative stakes are not enormous I would say even though the fate of the entire world is always the stakes supposedly in every film but I don't think the narrative stakes are enormous one of the things Robert Downey Jr.

11:37said on stage at Comic-Con was you know what can I say I like playing complicated characters and I have to say that we like our complicated characters simple in the MCU it's like oh what Tony Stark he's really selfish but he also makes a really noble sacrifice a libertarian is a bit of a dickhead but he also wants to save the world I mean it's that kind of complicated so I'm sure his Doctor Doom will be a same version of that kind of complicated. So Robert Downey Jr. is the greatest comeback story in the history of Hollywood, from where he was to where he ended up. You know, he went to prison for a year, you know, he's found with guns and crack in his car, persona non grata, came out, he had a slight comeback, I think it was at Animobile and things like that, but then he's found with drugs again, and now the best paid actor in Hollywood.

12:22And that's all because of Marvel. And because they took a shot, they really wanted him to be Iron Man. Bear in mind that Marvel was nothing before Iron Man came out at all in terms of a film franchise. I heard that they used to share an office with a kite company. Yeah, I mean, can you believe it? I don't know where I heard that. Can you believe it? But they were nothing then. And to say, oh yeah, we want to bet the farm on a guy who has, we're going to have to drug test every day and all these sort of things, it seemed a really odd decision. But it became, obviously, as we've said, it quickly became enormous.

12:50let me tell you what Robert Downey Jr's day would have been like on Oppenheimer okay he's a supporting actor I thought you're gonna say what his day was like just previous just before his arrest yeah I mean it's a little bit of a blur Christopher Nolan really is always the biggest person on any of those sets um on one of the things in his new Marvel deal which was actually something I already knew he had but now this has become clear in this latest Marvel deal he is part Part of his contract is he gets a trailer encampment. His trailer is not on the set, okay? There's a whole separate area where he has a whole bunch of trailers, some multi-story trailers, and he's completely separate from everyone else.

13:28He can't have that anywhere else. He can have that in the MCU. His trailer's on a different timeline to anyone else who's on the set. What do you think he has in his trailer encampment? I think he has, you know, various on-call chefs. He'll have his own private gym. He will have posts where he can survey the rest of the set, probably with a set of binoculars. I think, God, look at them having a terrible time having to eat. Podcast studio? Yeah, I mean, the lot. Escape run? Yeah. Yeah, just, I mean, the fun stuff, really. Table tennis. And on Oppenheimer, he's just got a regular Winnebago, like, you know, anyone else.

14:00Yes, he would have performed in, you can't have ridiculous demands. You can have some ridiculous demands because you're Robert Downey Jr., but you're in a supporting role and everyone's sort of saying, I'm thrilled to be working with Christopher Nolan. but there's nobody bigger on any single a marvel set than robert downey jr and that is easily counts the directors robert downey senior very very senior the most senior he's also guaranteed an unbelievable amount sort of things like back end and points on all this the russo brothers themselves who are coming back are getting they get incentives pay reward incentives that kick in when the movie passes 700 million dollars and a billion which by the way these will definitely pass you can see why they're all doing it and it makes sense creatively is it fascinating i don't think that they're creatively fascinating anyway as movies hollywood hasn't really got any other ideas you know these are so unbelievably successful they were like an over-performing hedge fund they were like made of really except without a kind of creepy 17th floor where actual all the ponzi scheme is being run out of they were like this unbelievably guaranteed way of making money and everyone tried to switch to them universal tried to and failed to create their own sort of dark universe which didn't work all the studios try to pivot to this type of movie making and if it doesn't work anymore what do you do now so it's a huge relief that deadpool and wolverine has done so completely well and that obviously now they've got they they when they bought fox they bought got certain other properties okay let me tell you who they bought back in the world they bought the x-men that's why they can do wolverine and they bought the fantastic four so these are some new guys the guys with the fiat the guys with the fiat yeah the guys with the fantastical fiat fantastica and and they brought them in and so now they can do more and they can do the crossover things of which they become very famous and and there maybe is a way out reports of the the death are very exaggerated which is is good news for lots of things see that's the that's one of the very interesting things about it is as you as you said right at the beginning literally one of the most successful if not the most successful endeavors in the history of hollywood building of the marvel cinematic universe i mean you might argue star wars universe but this is i mean and even this gets to the point where everyone goes they've lost it oh my god they're so useless they can't even run this properly yeah and what a flop and you think my god it's impossible to end a career and success isn't it it's absolutely it's impossible they all end in failure but i i think their failure will be staved off for a while yet and also there are no really other ideas how to fill multiplexes and so bottom line so these films will be coming out when do we think so fantastic four will come out in 2025 by the way that is that as of last week that started filming a week ago at pinewood both of these two new massive avengers films will also be filmed in the uk i would have thought at pinewood that's so great and it's a in a difficult time for the industry because what people don't understand when if you film at pinewood or something you bring a few execs and stuff over from america but the entire crew is british will be british you know and that's that's a huge group of the support crew for a film is absolutely massive.

16:57So many thousands of names. There are thousands of names. Obviously, some of those are VFX and they'll be in different countries in the world. But a huge number of those will be British jobs. Exactly. I go down to the Thursday Murder Club set at Shepparton. You go around all the different stages and everybody is British and everybody is a craftsperson. Everyone has a skill and everyone's doing this incredible job at a very, very high level. And it's so great. You can just feel the economy throbbing and growing when you're on a movie set. So thank you to the MCU for that. For bringing it all to the UK.

17:31So are these films going to be called Doctor Doom? They are. Doctor Doom will see you now, I would call it. I would call it Carry On Doctor Doom. They're going to have to do a sort of earlier one than they thought they'd do, which is a sort of interstitial thing to make sense of a slight conceptual leap they've done, which is going to be called Avengers Doomsday. And that will come out in 2026. And then Avengers Secret Wars in 2027. My view of that Marvel Cinematic Universe is this. a lot of them are terrible a great MCU movie is a great movie and you think with the people behind it we might have a couple of great new movies on our hands though they will be huge new movies also I mean huge and great are different though yeah I think I agree with you and I'm afraid I don't think they're necessarily great movies oh listen in two years time let's review them yeah and we'll play that back I imagine they'll be very very successful movies but if you ask me if I think they're great movies no I don't and I think it's bizarre that this is the premier cultural product of our time and it doesn't reflect well on us as a society.

18:28That sounds like a cue to go to an advert. Yes, I think it does. Anytime I hear Marina say, I don't think it reflects well on us as a society, I think, hello, let's talk to some more advertisers.

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20:47Welcome back, everybody. I think we're going to talk now about the Edinburgh Fringe. We are going to talk about stand up comedy because the Edinburgh Fringe Festival is on right now. It's in Edinburgh. A whole month of stand up shows, theatre, works in progress, lots of amazing things up there. If you've not been, it's well worth going. But it made me start thinking about the comedy industry as it stands at the moment because it's very emblematic of that. Edinburgh always used to be. This is the place you go to be discovered. So this is the place where you go unknown and you leave a superstar.

21:18I remember going in the early 90s. I've been going to the Edinburgh Festival for 30 odd years now, more than that. And the early 90s, I remember going up there and David Williams and Matt Lucas had a show, Armstrong and Miller, Mighty Boosh, League of Gentlemen. They were all in smallish venues and they all really, really cracked it that year. People would come up and see these shows, have meetings with these people in London, put them on television and then they become superstars. From university, I went twice and did the Oxford Review and performed for two years. Did you? Did you perform? Yes.

21:48Wow. Like sketches and things? Yeah. Did you have to do any voices? I had to do a lot of voices. And, you know, you get reviewed by people and we had reviews of our shows and it was really sort of, there were big comedy producers, people like Avalon up there and everyone was trying to get spotted and noticed. And it has always been that springboard. And then, obviously, in later years, you've had things like Baby Reindeer or Fleabag or Nanette that start off as Edinburgh shows. Yeah, Taskmaster started off as... and Edinburgh shows. So, you know, it's always been the place that you would go to be found.

22:17And therefore, actually, it's become quite expensive as a comic to go up there because the rewards are so big. You are willing to spend a lot of money to play in a very small venue and not take a huge amount of the cut of the gate and, you know, put yourself through that and get yourself into debt because the upside was absolutely massive. Now, the interesting thing more recently, that industry of going to Edinburgh, being found by television and then making your money has collapsed. and when I mean collapsed it is non-existent just about pre-pandemic we saw the very end of it I'm gonna say the last comic to now be big on television the last Indiana Jones to sort of roll under the door as it was closing was Maisie Adam so Maisie is on loads of shows and she's brilliant since then the television industry the television comedy entertainment industry has completely disappeared there is now no conveyor belt if you used to be in Edinburgh you would have meetings with 10 20 30 development producers straight afterwards because there were lots of independent production companies they were all developing shows they were all doing pilots some of those pilots we made into series they all needed comedians to be in that the smaller the pilot the more the newer the comedian you needed so you're always looking for somebody who you knew you could book but who was brilliant and no one else had found yet and it was just the age-old story so many of our comics so many of our big stand-ups you know in the in that place i've seen Romesh in a tiny little room you know Josh Whittacombe in a tiny room you know just all the big names of now if I go way back to my first ever festival I was seeing Alan Davis in a tiny room who by the way I think did probably the best hour of stand up I've ever seen in my entire life which back in the mid 80s that was but and you met people who helped you in your career I always thought I remember God I remember doing weird things I remember Simon Monnery who had this character called the League Against Tidium which is an incredible and he used to run this thing called Club Zarathustra.

24:07I remember me and Sally Phillips going on for a couple of nights in that show and doing Weird. But then you met all these other comedians and they pulled you up and they helped you. And it was really good for that, for the cross-pollination of all those sort of things. Yeah, it's been an extraordinary breeding ground and an extraordinary breeding ground of gossip and all sorts of things going on and an amazing place for comedians. As I say, that's why it became rather expensive because the venues in Edinburgh by night will take 60 40 of the ticket price rents have gone up and up and up and up as the fringe has got bigger and bigger and bigger um you know the costs of brochures and advertising all that stuff so everything got very very expensive now you come back from the pandemic the television entertainment comedy entertainment industry has disappeared you know it's genuinely disappeared all those panel shows like millions of them they are all gone and the people at those production companies who are in development they have all gone but the Edinburgh Festival has not caught up with that at all so the Edinburgh Festival is still incredibly expensive but it is not a springboard to anything and when we say incredibly expensive like just for the month it's costing people sometimes 12 grand it can go up to over 20 depending on how big your little company of what you're doing is because you've got you've got to accommodation is killing people in the old days you could swallow that you know just about for a year and certainly the big agents would pay for you to be there one of the big agencies would not pay for you to be there they would pay for you to be there you would then have to pay them back one of the very big agencies i wonder who that was put you up there and you'd suddenly you're in debt to them forever but other agents would go honestly i'm going to cover this because i'm going to launch you what's happened which is absolutely fascinating i think i'll presage this by saying there is not a crisis in the comedy industry there's definitely a crisis in the comedy television industry that that has gone the comedy industry is absolutely booming i mean it's insanely lucrative if you're a comic and you can tour, you're going to make an awful lot of money, like a huge amount of money, because your costs are not particularly high.

26:07People love going to see comedy. If you put on a decent show, you're getting 80-20 probably of the ticket price, maybe 70-30. So if you can do a 100-date tour, 200-date tour to decent numbers, you are making an absolute fortune. There is one thing that helps you with that, and this is the biggest thing that's changed in the last, maybe it's only sort of three years or so really in comedy, is comics every single time they do a club gig they film themselves with four gopros and they do crowd work for the first 10 50 minute and crowd work is when you're talking to the person on the front row he's saying where are you from mate what do you do for a living and then you sort of roast them and have a laugh with them so you film that every single night and then you cut that up into one minute clips and you put it on tiktok and you put it on instagram and that industry is enormous the reason they do it with the crowd work is by and large if you're a comic but you write a set and it's quite hard to write a set.

26:59And you don't really want to give that away too much. You don't want to give away your set. Whereas if you're just talking to people at the front of the audience, that's free because it's different every single night. Now it didn't start with this guy, but the reason that everybody does this now is this guy, Paul Smith. Are you aware of Paul Smith's work? So Paul Smith, I don't recall him being on television. You know, he's not someone who's been on, you know, Would I Lie to You or Taskmaster or anything like that. He's a Liverpudlian comic Paul Smith. he started doing this sort of thing in 2010 he was connected with a company called hot water in liverpool hot water comedy club who were clearly very very forward thinking who now got what they say is the biggest comedy club in the world then they worked out there was one in san francisco that was bigger so it's the biggest comedy club in europe up in liverpool but they said to paul smith in 2010 they said just put some of your crowd work on just put clips of it mate and paul smith said oh come on i mean he's going to watch that they said just do it and he did he is now pretty much the biggest touring comedian in Britain.

27:55You know, he is doing a 200-day tour. He's doing the Wembley Arena. He did a 12 ,000-person gig up in Liverpool. His latest video on Instagram is, one of his most recent videos on Instagram is him buying a Bentley Continental, right? So there is money in comedy and Paul Smith is making an awful lot of it. And he did it by building up his own fan base and by putting stuff online and on socials. And that is what every single big new comic is doing now. You're not getting big through Edinburgh. You're getting big through YouTube. You're getting big through podcasts as well. And you're getting big through TikTok.

28:32I mean, it's interesting. This year's festival was launched. Edinburgh Fringe Festival was launched in the TikTok headquarters. The money you can make in touring and comedy is huge. I mean, even in the good old days of TV money, it's nothing compared to touring money. Touring money is the, you know. Short of a Netflix special, which you do quite well at. Yes, you can do quite well at that. But if you take Paul Smith, for example, and I'm not saying this is him, but if you do a 200-date tour, say, and lots of these big comics do 200-date tours, and that includes all the legacy comics, you know, the people who did start on TV, the Diary of Breein and people like that.

29:04If you're doing a 200-date tour, you're doing maybe 1 ,000 people a night, and you've got an 80-20 split on the box office, 35 quid a ticket, then your tour just grossed 5.5 million pounds, right? and what are your overheads there by the way apart from a rail rover you know it's like you're not a band you're not someone having to do this incredible stage show you're not someone having to have lights and lasers a really funny person standing up there connecting with an audience night after night it doesn't cost very much i do think there's something very democratic about it i'm going to take one example it's a guy called um vittorio angeloni who i went to see edinburgh two years ago i think so vittorio had a really good edinburgh is a proper is a irish stand-up very funny mainstream you can stick them on telly tomorrow of course you can't stick them on telly tomorrow anymore because there is no more telly right it's gone and every single place is filled by legacy comedy acts so vittorio you think well what can you what can you do with vittorio but he and mike rice have a huge podcast now and he has loads of youtube clips and vittorio can now tour and he didn't didn't need television he didn't need any of that stuff he didn't need all of these people who anytime someone is young and talented who absolutely just swoop on that person and if you have youtube and if you have podcasts the really interesting thing that happens is you cut out so many middlemen and yeah the reason so many comics do podcasts and the reason so many of them do their own stuff on youtube is you remove every single barrier between you and the advertiser where people are getting paid when they do anything sort of on on on television you know every single a channel has gone you know you don't have a channel you don't have a production company you don't have any of that stuff the money runs straight to you and you can do the act that you want to do you can do the work that you want to do you find out very quickly who your audience is what your audience likes what it is they like about you stuff that you can push them in this direction and that direction so i think creatively it's a very very interesting thing people always say that the smaller the screen that you work on the better your prospects currently are in entertainment.

31:09So if you do something that can be seen on a phone, you're doing well. If you're working largely in the theatrical exhibition window, you're having a few problems. Yeah, it's exactly it. And there are so many examples. Adam Rowe does have a word podcast with Dan Nightingale, George Lewis doing a big tour now. All these people who have had absolutely no TV exposure really. But of course they have had TV exposure because what does TV mean now? It means a screen. It means you're looking at some clips of somebody. Edinburgh, what happens to Edinburgh? Well, I was talking to David O'Doherty about it who still does Edinburgh every year.

31:41He says, but look, it's soon just going to become what we would call legacy acts, which is comics from years ago. And he says, and of course I'm going to come to Edinburgh every year because I love it. He says the most, you know, it's just great. And David O'Doherty, he's sold out every single show he's done at Edinburgh for 10 years in a big venue. So he's not someone who would worry about the economics of it, but of course he worries about it, about other people because he's an incredibly big supporter of younger comics. and he said Edinburgh have to work out a way to make it worth the while of a 23 year old, 24 year old, 25 year old to come to Edinburgh and do their first show because at the moment there is nothing.