Terrible Meetings, Terrible Paparazzi and Nick Clegg

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1:15Hello and welcome to another edition of The Rest is Entertainment, questions and answers. Just questions edition I think sounds better, doesn't it? I'm never going to get this right, am I Richard? Okay, hit me up with a question. Hello by the way. Hello. How nice to see you. I have a question we teased this last week. we said we were going to answer it. And it's from Jeremy Ainslie. Thank you, Jeremy. He asks, what's the biggest waste of time meeting you've ever attended? I mean, a lot of candidates, a lot of candidates. I'm trying to think of an interesting one. So I've come up with two, one of which is during elections, general election campaigns, you sometimes go on the battle bus, which is the sort of touring, you know, coach of one of the parties.

1:57And you watch them do a campaign event and you write about it and you come back to London. I went on the Lib Dem battle bus one day. I had to meet at some ungodly early act. Yeah, 2015, general election. So, you know, we'd all been through some stuff. Yeah. And it was with Nick Clegg. And we were told that we were going to watch him do a campaign visit in Cardiff. He had to present yourself at Trafalgar Square incredibly early in the morning, which I did. By the way, it's like 750 quid a day to go on this bus. You have to pay to go on the battle bus. Oh, my God, it's insane. Yeah, I don't think you're allowed to say that.

2:27But anyway. Like pay-per-view. This is a long time ago. And yeah, Nick Clegg now works for you. Well, Nick Clegg is now fighting Jake Paul, right? Yeah. Oh, yeah. No, he will be glossing the apocalypse for you. When the quantum computing error has ruined the world, Nick Clegg will be standing up there for Mark Zuckerberg saying, we will learn from this. We know we have more work to do. Anyway, we went all the way to Cardiff. And it was one of those things where they have sort of little curtains across the bus. We weren't really allowed to talk to him because we were going to do the campaign visit later in the afternoon.

2:51And we're trying to find out what was actually going to happen at the campaign visit. And it turned out that Nick Clegg would be making a pancake in a test kitchen. And you're thinking, how the hell is this anything to do with our democratic process? By the way, the next day he went to GoApe for the afternoon. So I can't even. You've got to have a day off. I'm going to shock you. They didn't do very well in that election. Anyway, we got all the way to Cardiff and they said, oh, we've just seen the test kitchen. It's absolutely tiny. So no one can fit in there apart from Nick and one person from PA News.

3:20So I went to Cardiff to not watch Nick Clegg make a pancake in a test kitchen. And then we drove all the way back from Cardiff. so that was an entire day and you paid£750 I personally didn't the Guardian paid it thank God because it's expensive to do these things they charge you it's like going to the party conference you actually have to pay to do it I know it's horrifying obviously you should be paid a fortune to do it but on the way back were you able to talk to him or was he busy cancelling student loans I'm trying to remember if there was one of those kind of coach picnic tables at the back where we went and sort of asked him a couple of questions but I don't really I've looked at what I wrote and there are no quotes from him in it so I'm sort of thinking was I really annoyed and thought no I'm not writing whatever PA have done when they've been that's the press association in the tiny test kitchen watching him do the pancake if they've written some stuff I was not allowed in there and I'm not going to write anything that happened in there I don't know I seem to have majored quite heavily on the fact that I went to Cardiff to not watch him make a pancake by the way can I congratulate you on your um your column about Christian Horner and Jerry Halliwell which you headlined um keeping up with the car crashians well it's an engrossing saga yeah it's uh that's amazing might be might be the best jokeable time this i can absolutely confirm it's not the case another type of meeting that i would say is not at all pointless and yet can sometimes see it my husband said what about writer's rooms where you spend like weeks talking about something and then in the end you don't do the episode like that at all and i would say that is not a waste of time that is part of the process and it might seem to lots of people like gosh you could go down a really sort of blind alley for a long time and then end up and do something completely different some of those things are somewhere where you've sat for many many hours a day and then you end up doing something completely different but that is part of the process so although it may seem in some ways a kind of wasted time it's not at all so i would contrast that with cardiff nick leg pancake i would say two particular types of meeting maybe three particular types of meeting that are always a waste of time but that you always have to do one any meeting with americans literally any you know you always back in the days of endermar you'd have to fly over to la and you know we're going to go great we're going to go pitch to the networks and you'd have four or five things that you know done well in the uk or whatever and you pitch before so you know you know you know what you're doing and you know you'd be in la and you know you go to cbs or something you'd have this meeting and you'd pitch some reality show or other and honestly at the end of the meeting you think you were royalty they would just be like listen i've been doing this job what 30 40 years that's the single best pitch i ever heard that idea that's the greatest that is the greatest idea not just in the history of television but in the history of ideas that's like when the wright brothers went up in their plane.

6:09This to me is better. Hold on. I got to call some people in. John, Debbie, come in here. These guys here have just made us billions. It's the greatest idea I ever heard. Listen, we're going to get straight back to you. I'm going to talk to some of the guys here. My God. Oh, this is huge. And you literally never hear again. Every single meeting you ever have with an American executive is them just looking at you like their child has just been born like the greatest joy of their life has just has just happened and then you sort of the first time you go to america you sort of come away from the meetings going oh my god this is amazing i mean we better and perhaps we have to move out here because we're gonna be clearly this is going to involve a number of life changes four shows we're going to make all of them and so yeah let's start looking at properties and then yeah you go back to england and you never hear anything and it's the same you know anytime you have a script meeting with an american executive and they're all kind of oh my god listen the script we've just got i think i think it's just i think we're ready to go i think it's the best thing i ever read and then you discover they sacked the writer the next day and you think okay i mean you could just say this is probably not for us or we've got something a bit like it or i don't know if the character arc really was just say you don't have to be relentlessly positive so any meeting with an american any meeting there's a sliding scale the bigger the celebrity if a celebrity has an idea dangerous and they ask to come in and you think well yeah and kind of by and large we had a very very famous american actress who had come up with with a show about antiques and wanted to come in by and large you don't have people from outside the company come in for lots of legal reasons but you know if it's someone super famous you want to meet them there's no point because you know the show is not going to work you know that the show is going to be some weird thing that they thought of on the treadmill at 5am and they badgered their agent about literally their agents just got them three meetings just so they can get it out of their system and all they're going to do is talk to you about the movies that they're in and that you know you will never hear about it again the more famous the person who brings you an idea is the more pointless the meeting i've had lots of points as meetings but those are meetings about pointless which is a completely uh different thing which weirdly have a point the other one so americans very famous people or hosts you're already working with and your show is a huge hit have another idea for you but you want you want to say sometimes you know that you didn't come up with this idea that's a hit you know that we did that we've had this massive hit and you're a brilliant presenter you're the front person for our idea yeah we do the ideas you do the stuff that we can't do uh but they'll go i've got another one for you what do you mean you've got another one for you for us you haven't had one in the first place we might have another one for you and we don't actually because we need to keep you working incredibly hard on that show so meetings you have to take you have to go to america you have to talk to americans about shows you if someone very very famous wants to come in you don't have to but you want to and if some if it's a piece of talent you're already working with you have to take those meetings as well so those i would say are my categories of the biggest waste of time meetings i've ever had but now i realize i haven't paid 750 pound to be on a battle bus to Nazi Nick Thug flip a pancake so I have not lived.

9:19Thank you Jeremy. Okay this is from Maria Mangel. How close to the real thing is W1A? So W1A is the BBC sitcom sort of behind the scenes at the BBC with Hugh Bonneville and Jason Watkins about the sort of upper echelons of BBC executives. As they try to do very small things and sometimes big things at the BBC and come up against the kind of institutional structure it's got jessica hines uh you've said he's yeah sarah it's it's terrific i would say that it is very close and that is why it really works and funnily enough i was talking to my husband about this in context of something else um because he works at the bbc and he said it was so specific and it was so realistic that they thought at the start people will just think this is absolutely bizarre but for the comedy to work always you absolutely need the specificity first and that's what Armando Yannucci says about the thick of it you know they really tried to get it like tell us who would be in this meeting which people you know from the press office would be in this meeting everything had to be so authentic in order for it to really work as a satire you have to make it really really authentic and it's funny because it does sometimes feel like how could anyone be laughing at this because it's a lot of people in politics when they first saw the thick of it was like yeah but this is like what an actual day is actually like and people at the BBC were like will people laugh at this I mean it is our day it has some eerie similarities with real life there's the Jason Watkins character who will never come down one side or another on whether something's a good idea or not there are there are genuinely people well it used to just be there were people at the BBC who could have a whole career of never sort of really venturing an opinion and just rising upwards and upwards and upwards and funnily enough as some of the indies got bigger and bigger and bigger you started getting people at the big indies who would just sit in a room i'd sit in a room sometimes talking of biggest waste of time meetings you'd sit in a room sometimes at endermall and there was no point being there because you were talking trying to have a creative meeting with people who just wanted to get out of the room without having any extra work to do and wanted to make sure that you weren't unhappy and that's a very BBC thing and it's become a big indie thing as well so though that's very true to life the Rufus Jones character who's sort of the entertainment producer I think is brilliant who's always saying oh lovely Claire Balding we love oh we love Claire uh you know that's very true to life I think it is I mean it's like anything else it's a satire and actually when you go to the BBC it's full of some rather brilliant people you know if you go and talk to Kate Phillips in entertainment you just you just have a brilliant meeting with somebody who's good at her job but whenever we used to have meetings at the bbc if ever you could tell if you haven't a meeting with someone high up like alan yentop would always walk past and just knock on the door and just start chatting to them about something else you'd be like okay i mean all right i've loved the bbc lamp and yeah this genius appeared and so there's the lifers there i think there was a certain culture it's quite different now i think it's quite lean now the bbc i want to about all of those shows is that the reason they work as incredibly successful workplace comedies even though they might be in quite a recherche world that's not the same as other people's world is because people recognize those things from their own offices and it might be a paper company in slough and it might be the kind of rarefied meeting room at the bbc or obviously w1a sprung from the 2012, which is a sort of satire on the preparations for the London Olympics.

12:51And actually, what makes them work is they're very, very specific to their milieu. But also, there's massive universality where people think, oh, my God, there's someone in my office who's exactly like that. There's always someone who passes the buck. There's someone who hasn't made a decision in my company for 30 years. And everyone can see it. So they're also specific on a human level. And so you need those kind of things that if you've got a very specific world, that people actually recognise those same things in their companies. So, yeah, the truth is it's quite close to the real thing. I have a question for you here.

13:22Cathy Motcham asks, in a recent episode you said that a great film editor can create a fantastic film through the editing. Is this done in conjunction with the director? If not, could it be said that the end film is the vision of the editor and not the director? Yet directors have the names on the posters and win the awards. Okay, well, Cathy, first of all, the director will always edit with the editor, but there are awards for editing and it is such an unbelievable and brilliant skill and actually we talked a bit about which I thought was so interesting the stuff you were talking about editing and even editing live TV and the vision mixer and all of that we talked a bit about that last week in film or even high in television scripted you'll have sort of about six stages in the editing and on the basic level they're taking the dailies they're taking each of the shots that are filmed and then they're logging them and then you'll start getting what's called the first assembly the dailies is just at the end of a day shooting, all that footage goes into the edit.

14:17Yes, and the show I'm working on at the moment, I'm able, I've got, there's a system which we all have some quite strong views about called PIX and you are able to see the dailies and so everything that's been shown. I would love to hear a group of writers having a strong opinion about the system. If you want to hide the nuclear code somewhere, put them on PIX because you will not be able to find them. Anyway, sorry, no disrespect by the way, they have an incredible helpline in Los Angeles that I've spoken to about one million times and they're always right there and they can let you get out of it.

14:40I have got to say, that is the greatest question I have ever heard in my life. I love it. I'm going to get some other people over it. Listen to this question I got from the UK. This is amazing. No, the helpline, they are lovely. Everyone on the Pix helpline, thank you, every time. So then you'll get, but then eventually you get a rough cut. Now, this is when the scenes are in order and you'll try for continuity and you might go for different ideas. And then you'll get the first cut. Now, this is accepted by the writer, the director, the producer. That, in films, often goes out to something like test screenings.

15:08And it's really interesting. This book that I mentioned on the earlier episode this week of the podcast, which is called Hits, Flops and Other Illusions, by a director called Ed Zwick, who directed things like Legends of the Fall, Last Samurai. He was a producer of Shakespeare in Love, Glory. He's really interesting talking about editing and how amazingly you don't really know, once the film is up and running and you're shooting, when you start to edit it, things that he'd shot, Glory, which has got Denzel Washington, Morgan Freeman, and it's about an African-American regiment in the Civil War.

15:40Now, as part of the different people who were in it, he thought they were all very religious and it would be helpful to have a scene quite near the start showing how religious they have, some sort of religious ceremony. When he came to cut the film at the end, he thought, hang on, to make this matter the absolute most, this should be just before the final battle. So it's a kind of start of Act 3 thing and it makes it so meaningful. And another thing he did, when he's got Legends of the Fall, which is a kind of long family saga with Brad Pitt and Anthony Hopkins and people like that. People like that, Brad Pitt, Anthony Hopkins.

16:09And your kids, all the big ones, Julia Armand. People like that. He took the film out to test screenings and there's a bit where Brad Pitt kisses his brother's wife and people really didn't like it. So he changed the movie. I think he took eight seconds out of it. And they nearly kissed, but they don't. And people loved the movie. And it's so incredible how these tiny little things, whole movies hinge on things like that. I've been to quite a few test screenings, quite early on and people and the director will often stand up and say look this is a really early car obviously we don't have proper sound on it and there are some blank scenes where action scenes will go in and then you fill in these cards at the end and you say you know what you feel about it now that's for a um that's that's for sort of probably independent films but in some of the big studio films they do these anonymous things and they'll go out and they'll take it to towns and everyone will get a free ticket and people will write their thoughts down and that is quite brutal and then you will definitely go back and totally re-edit your film because you've got what you've got and you've got to somehow make it into something to an extent that is the satisfying story that people want to see.

17:15People didn't want to see Brad Pitt kiss his brother's wife. They wanted him to nearly feel he could do it. But his brother didn't. No, certainly not. But it's really interesting that so, and then you get a fine cut and then eventually you get a final cut and that's the thing that goes out to the theatres. But that editing process is happening while you're shooting and it will take a long time to get down to what you finally see. So much of it is done afterwards. You'll go back and you'll get additional recorded dialogue. You'll get all of those sort of things. It's a long process and it's an utter art.

17:45It really is an art and it's the same in TV in a lot of ways. You know, I've shot pilots before that didn't work at all in the studio and actually you get the raw footage and you chop it into a different order and actually you can put together a pretty good tape to give to the channel. Then they commission it. You think, you know what, it really wasn't like that. so it gives you a problem but yeah you can I love sitting in an edit and making something that doesn't quite work really really work and as you say you you would think when a script comes in that that's it you film that script in order and then you put that out and actually the things you can do and the emphasis you can put on different things and the emotions you can play with with various editing tricks you know it is absolutely extraordinary but it's it's the editor and the director you would say absolutely editor and the director but also once something is happening once Once you're shooting something, it is different.

18:30And a brilliant comedy writer said to me this week, yeah, it's funny, you spend so long, months, maybe years, sort of writing this thing and thinking, yeah, this is what this thing is. And then once the collaborative effort starts and the actors are there and the production design is all up and you're on the sets or whatever, you think, oh, I see, this is what it is. It's not that thing I thought it was before, it's this thing. And so then you'll go back and rewrite because you've now got a clearer idea of what it is. It's so weird, isn't it? It's very odd that, and that's because it's not a sort of dictatorial kind of one person's medium.

19:01Even whatever you've heard about directors, they might have a vision, but it will never be the thing that is completely realised because that is always a collaboration between so many different amazing craftspeople. It's amazing so many times on TV you don't really notice what you've got until it literally is broadcast. You've done everything and so many eyes have been on it and so many people have talked about it. When it goes out, you watch it and go, oh yeah, that's bad. I see, yeah. Yeah, that's bad. Of course that's bad. why couldn't I say that should have picked up on that anyway thank you for that one Cathy Richard here we go from Megan Friend do you agree with the phrase everyone has a book in them thank you Megan gosh do I agree with the phrase everyone has a book in them no but any more than everyone has a sculpture in them you know or anyone has fixing a carburetor in them there are things we can do and things we can't I think an awful lot more people have a book in them than think they do that's for sure and I think some people who think they have a book in them don't I think I think that's definitely true so I think everyone can write and if you enjoy writing you can find the version of writing that you enjoy whether that's a diary whether it's talking to friends whatever it is my aunt used to just text endlessly incredibly long texts and they were great and she loved doing it because she was enjoying the act of writing and she would never be interested I've considered myself a writer.

20:21Yeah, exactly. Being good on the chat is a real skill. Yeah, but it is a real skill, right? So if you love to write, then write in whatever way you want. If you don't love to write, don't even dare think about writing a book. If you don't read books, don't dare think about writing a book. Writing a book is such a long haul that you will need every single ounce of whatever you have in your brain and your heart and your soul to get to the end of it. so you better love writing and you'd better have some aptitude for it anyone who thinks they've got a book in them go ahead just write it you'll find out sooner or later you know either you sell it to an agent or you find an audience online for it you know writing usually finds a home but yeah I think that there are many things in life that I do not have in me a painting I'm not going to have I do firmly believe that you can be taught to do many of these things and I'm always really sad that we don't teach properly drawing in schools anymore.

21:19Everyone can be taught to draw so much better than people are able to. And I've seen these people who teach these incredible techniques. And in the old, many hundreds of years ago, people would have been taught how to do this and they would be able to produce competent drawings. You hear very many stories about people who say, for some reason I decided to take singing lessons. They're not a genius at singing, but you are taught to be skilled and good at it and you can absolutely be taught to write well. and you can be taught to write better for sure to be right to be right perfectly competently to be right perfectly competently I can't even speak perfectly competently sorry I can't even speak perfectly competently but um yeah you can be taught to write to draw to sing to ways that you know pretty adequate and I know that sounds like what faint praise but actually people who think oh I can only draw a stick man no you could do so much better if someone properly took the time to teach you and you took the time to learn you could do far far better than you would possibly imagine same with singing same with writing same with lots of these things that people think are oh I have to be possessed by genius well you can get a lot better just being just being taught or taking lessons finding ways to learn online yes please god don't be possessed by genius I mean that's we honestly don't want to read books or watch television programs by people possessed with genius I would say my basic rule of thumb is if you absolutely love reading and love writing and you don't think you're good enough to write a book you are good enough if you hate reading, hate writing and think you are good enough to write a book, you're probably not.

22:47Yeah. You're also a celebrity and probably have a 10 book deal with someone. Are you talking to me? No. I'm not talking to you. No, I'm not talking to you. I think it's been proved that you can write. Has it been proved I'm a celebrity? Yes. Yes, Richard. You are a massive celebrity and you're a brilliant writer. This is like being in an American meeting. Yeah, I know. You're not going to hear from me. I'm going to ghost you the second you've left. Yeah. How come the podcast split up? I don't know. I genuinely don't. I've literally sent her 100 texts, but she's like that, I guess. Shall we go to a break now, Richard?

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25:18Welcome back to the what I call the questions edition of The Restless Entertainment I know you like to call it questions and answers will we ever agree I have a question from Jeff Nicholson thank you Jeff is there any reason why when filming actors would use an empty cup and pretend there is a drink in it no actor alive can cover up the fact that it's an empty cup It immediately brings me out of the story. If you played a hundred, this is a bold claim from Jeff Nicholson. I hope you can back this up, Jeff. If you played a hundred clips of characters drinking from these cups, I could tell you with 100 % accuracy which ones had liquid in it, even if they were just carrying the cups.

25:56It is brutally obvious, says Jeff. That's a podcast. Okay. First of all, Jeff, you are not even weird. This is an obsession. People have been obsessed with this for ages. The AV Club, which is a sort of TV cultural arm of the onion, there was a guy who used to track empty cups in TV shows. Now, the sort of obvious practical reasons for it are, if you can see through the cup, it affects continuity, so it's just a lot easier not to have anything in it, but you can't have an empty glass. So they do normally have coffee cups. Wardrobe would hate you if you spilt it. I mean, even in the studio, we have to have a ridiculous sippy cup.

26:30Yeah, little sippy cups. Yeah, so wardrobe would hate you. It would cause a lot of trouble. You don't know how many takes you're going to have to do, so they don't put anything in them. I totally agree with you on the weight issue. This is also an issue with suitcases that you will see on TV where people are sort of flipping their supposedly heavy suitcase up very early and putting it on the rack in the train above their head and you think you couldn't do it. It's completely empty. I can do that. Now, I do also... Do you know something? I hate to go off on a sidebar. Why not? But I can stow my luggage on a train or a plane without getting out of my seat.

27:00How about that, Chris Gill? And I often do it because I know people get a kick out. They go wild for it, yeah. They love it again. Oh, my God. He's, sorry, boarding is stopped while Richard takes a bow for the stowing trick again. Yeah. Okay, the thing that you said about being able, Jeff, that people are able to tell, there's this museum of sort of illusion and perception called Twist. It's at Oxford Circus in London. And there's a really interesting exhibit in there where they make you say, you listen to the noise of boiling water being poured or cold water. and humans have internalized this so much that 93 % of adults are able to tell from sound whether water is hot water like from the kettle or from the tap and you if you do it you get every single one right and you're like I can't actually believe I've just got sort of 10 out of 10 on this and 93 % of humans you've internalized this noise so much you've heard it so many times and this is a bit like drinks on tv no wonder you can tell I believe you could tell with 100 % accuracy that there's nothing or something in those cups because we these little tiny little quotidian facts of our noises of our day we are so attuned to them and you know far more about so it is one of those things that sticks out and that i think is the reason why there's like a massive online community of people who talk a lot about cups and i should say that something like 21 people wrote in about cups this week i think i think there must have been a bulletin board somewhere is bulletin board is that a thing i don't know or or some or something has happened there's been some sort of egregious example of it on some show and maybe but it's it's an ongoing concern amongst people that there's nothing in that cup and it's really annoying me but in general yes you mustn't let talent anywhere near liquid yeah by like genuinely yeah you know on tell you because you split it down your shirt and then you've got to stop filming that's why we've always had tippy uh tippy tommy cups on pointless because zander spilled mint tea down and went literally on the first ever episode and it's you know it ruins everything but yeah that thing of continuity is fascinating on panel shows you always have to have mugs and not glasses because if you use an answer if you use the second answer first and then the first answer because for various reasons it works better and the their water keeps going up and down then you can't use it it's the same thing that if someone's wearing glasses and then they take them off when the camera is not on them and so the next time you look at them they're not wearing their glasses you have to make sure you've got a shot of them taking their glasses off or putting them you just have to make sure you've got that shot otherwise people go well this is insane very important pickup are they wearing it or not wearing it.

29:24That's different sort of glasses. There was a good bit in One Day, funnily enough. One Day is very good for having things like, you know, having to write letters to people and having cassette tapes, all these things that we lost long ago. And there's a great bit where Emma is carrying a really heavy suitcase. And you realize, of course, they didn't have wheels. Yes. It was pre the wheelie suitcase. Yes. So, yeah. But that looked heavy. Good. It needs to look heavy. That's definitely one of my bugbears. So, okay, that was a good one, Jeff. Thank you. Okay, question on libraries from Louise Kenny.

29:57Do authors get paid when their books are loaned from a library? Is it a set amount or a small amount per loan? That's a good question. Firstly, support your libraries. They're absolutely incredible. People sometimes say, I'm afraid I got your book from the library rather than bought it. I love it. I love it if people are getting the books from the libraries. The simple answer is yes, authors do get paid every time you borrow a book from a library. It's not an enormous amount, but it's certainly at the end of a year. The maximum you can possibly get is£6 ,500 if it's been borrowed lots and lots of times.

30:26For how many libraries? For all the libraries? Yeah, not per library. No, per all the libraries. For the public lending rights. I see, okay. You get a cheque for how often you're... Well, you don't get a cheque, do you? It just gets put in your account. Yes. It's not 1983. So, yes, authors do and it's incredibly useful. Some for them. There was a huge problem recently because the British Library was cyber hacked and the payments all got held up and they usually come through just before Christmas, which for a lot of authors is very, very useful and it got held up, but now it seems to be fixed so that money's coming through.

30:59So yeah, every time you borrow a book from the library, yes, the author is getting paid and also you're doing an invaluable job in your community. So do do that. Know that you're contributing and also to all librarians, thank you so much for everything you do. We must support libraries. Do you know if you have a library card, you can also get some free online subscriptions to all newspapers. Oh, can you? Yeah, you get PressReader. Because if you go into the library, you can read the newspapers. And so, yeah, you get a PressReader thing. All you've got to do is put in your library number and you get free subscriptions to the newspapers as well.

31:32I mean, they're really good libraries. I was told off in my local library not that long ago. I was typing in there and someone on the table said to me, sorry, you type incredibly loudly. I was writing my column. and I looked around the rest of the table to be like, you know, typing loudly is not a thing face and everyone went, you're typing incredibly loudly? And I had no idea. I type incredibly loudly. Ingrid's always saying, it's like there's an elephant typing. It's like I'm using a typewriter but it's a Mac. Yes, yes. I mean, I'm really quite embarrassed. And I was chastened, I was shamed, but it was pretty clear.

32:10So then I thought, oh, I'm going so slowly. I'm not going to finish my columns. I must have to go and leave and do it in a cafe. Yeah. But do you think that's because we come from an era where we did have to use typewriters? I still remember using it. Oh, I'm Angela Lansbury. Every time I'm typing a column in the titles of Murder, She Wrote, I'm just banging away. Yeah, no, I'm shocked. I'm on my bicycle in Cabot Cove. No, I'm... Anyway, but I do type very loudly, and I'm quite embarrassed about it now. I've got to see something about it. I'm a loud typer. Yeah. Let's... I'll tell you what we'll do.

32:37We'll go to that museum at Oxford Circus, and we'll both type, and people have to guess which one of us is typing. My mind is still blown by your hot water, cold water. It's so fascinating. Do you know that everyone listening to this is going home, unless you've got a mixer tap. If you've got a mixer tap, does the hot water sound, and you put it on hot, does it sound? Yes, it's something, sorry, now I'm going to really mess up the science. It's something to do with this. People can hear some sort of difference in the motion of the molecules effectively, but you'll have to look at it about everyone.

33:07I don't want to get the science wrong, but it's 93 % of adults. And at this museum twist at Oxford Circus, there's a way of them doing it for you. But you can really do, this is definitely an experiment you can try at home. I think that one is doable. But also, every single person that's listening to this at home is no longer listening. No. They're literally, well, they're listening but over the sound of taps. They've been mandated to make a cup of tea. Exactly. And everybody listening to this in the car has sped up so they can get home. And make a cup of tea. Do we have time for one more? I think we do.

33:35I think we do. Come on. Grace Rowan asks, oh, I want to know the answer to this as well. And I bet you'll know. How often are celeb paparazzi photos staged and how can we tell the staged ones from the real ones i'm going to have to think carefully how i answer this question quite often they are staged um it's like you've got a tiny little lawyer on your shoulder yeah it is i have got my tiny lawyer is is on is on my shoulder i mean paparazzi pictures even princess diana towards the end of her life there's recordings of her on the phone to the paparazzi who she worked with quite a lot at that time a guy called Jason Fraser say, have you got enough?

34:12Have you got everything? And I suppose someone who was victimised to a huge extent by the paparazzi at some point, people think I'll turn the tables myself and I'm going to own my narrative. Nobody said that, by the way, in 1997. But anyway, we say it now. Often a lot of people used to feel the paparazzi are hanging out on the beach. If I give them one set of pictures and say, can you now leave me alone for the rest of my holiday in Barbados, then they would do that. So you would see a lot of that. Sometimes people just think, I look really good right now and I want to have some pictures done and I will split the money with a photographer if they get into the paper.