The Comedians Crazy For Saudi Cash

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1:11Hello and welcome to The Rest is Entertainment with me Marina Hyde. And me Richard Osmond. Hello Marina. Hello Richard, how are you? I'm very well. Have you had a nice week? I have had a nice week. I had a very busy week. but I have actually noticed Richard that despite that busyness the Thursday Murder Club movie is number one in the whole world. Listen, let's not let's not go into that Can you talk a little bit about it later? Teeny bit, teeny bit. Yeah, I can talk about how the numbers work and what you need Your happy space. Yes, yeah We'll take you to a happy place with that later. Yeah, thank you.

1:45It's lovely but yeah, we can talk about that at the end maybe because we've got more interesting things to talk about I think starting with something I think is very interesting, which I'm not sure that many people know about. And I think that the people involved with it would love to keep it that way. We're talking about the Riyadh Comedy Festival, which is a comedy festival in Saudi Arabia, where I have to say I have never seen a line-up of comedians like this. It's an unbelievable bill. So let's talk about that. We're going to talk about Travis Kelsey. Who is he? Where did he come from? Who are the greatest power couple in the history of entertainment?

2:20and our Taylor and Travis are about to take that throne. And we're also going to talk about the incredible financial afterlife of Michael Jackson. We know there's a musical that's playing very well and there's also a movie coming which has been mired in particular difficulties but we can talk about all of that because that one's an interesting one. Yeah, now talking about people making money that perhaps they shouldn't be, the Riyadh Comedy Festival. The Riyadh Comedy Festival runs from the 26th of September to October the 9th. Tickets still available? I assume. Tickets still available. Now, the line-up, as I say, is pretty unbelievable.

2:59There are more than 50 top comedians. It has billed itself as the world's biggest comedy festival, whatever biggest means as a metric, but it may be up to late later. I certainly think it's the world's most lucrative comedy festival. Oh, yeah. I think Edinburgh or Monterey might both go. I think maybe we have more comics. Yeah, it's definitely the most lucrative. Okay, the bill includes, but is not limited to, Dave Chappelle, Kevin Hart, Jimmy Carr, Pete Davidson, Chris Tucker, Russell Peters, Trevor Noah, Hannibal Buress, Bill Burr, Nimesh Patel, Omid Jalili, Tom Segura, Aziz Ansari, Louis C.K., Andrew Shultz.

3:36There are a couple of chicks who've made it out there. Whitney Cummings. Well, they haven't made it out yet. Yeah, Jessica Kirsten. There's a couple. you'll laugh your head off won't you Richard you will laugh your head off I think as a little bit of background we should say that we talked a lot about Saudi investment in things this is part of the Saudi push for sort of cultural expansion and they've got a vision 2030 strategy it's called we talked about the Red Sea Film Festival which is now in its somethingth year and is attracting bigger and bigger people every year reportedly Bob Iger turned down Saudi as the location for the next Disney park which is now going to be in Abu Dhabi but you know they were obviously in that mix and the Riyadh season festival it's got comedy sport culture hospitality all of this thing anyway all of this stuff takes place in a place called and the comedy festival is going to take place in the place in Riyadh called Boulevard City in such generic name oh no they have um it seems like a sort of big entertainment district and it's got multiple theatre stages like outside our auditoriums and a central thing called Square which is inspired by Times Square I mean in some more generic name what do we think about people taking that Saudi money it's not completely cut and dried I mean it's funny isn't it Richard I don't think it is it's I am not I think actually just broadening it out from that very very specific geographical region.

5:00I'm not a huge fan of comedians taking paid for gigs from governments, even autocracies, you know, even autocracies. Here's my absolute starting point with this. If you go over to Saudi Arabia, if you, people do corporates, all sorts of things all the time, the money's right, and you're comfortable with who that corporate is, go and do it. And an awful lot of people on this list are not hand-ringy. They're not the sort of people who said, oh, I won't do this, I won't do that. They are people who have always sort of done anything for the highest price. If that's who you are, that's who you are.

5:33I think that the money that's being paid for it and the potential audience size there is over there, you have to accept that you are not being paid for punters coming through the door. You're not being paid for a promoter to make money. So you are being paid by the Saudi government. I think you have to, there's no, again, no judgment. But if you're going over there, the reason you're being paid that much money is to promote South Africa. You're worth it, not because you're going to bring in the ticket sales. You're worth it for something else. Exactly. So you're there to do PR for the Saudi government.

6:06We can argue about whether that's a good thing to be taking money for or not. But I think that has to be the starting point. And a lot of the comedians have come out and spoken about why they're doing it. Yeah, because they all have they will either have podcasts or go on podcasts the whole time to talk about it. Yeah, but it hasn't bubbled through, I don't think, to the mainstream at all. And I don't think people really know this is particularly happening. But if you listen to lots of these kind of humorous podcasts or you listen, some of them have talked about them on really big podcasts. Yeah, but they're keeping it relatively quiet.

6:35I think it's fair to say for various reasons. If I can talk about the general thinking of the comedians of our doing it, Jim Jeffries, who's huge in the States. He has said, because of course, the murder of Jamal Khashoggi is the real sort of lightning rod for Saudi human rights abuses. This is the journalist who was murdered in 2018, dismembered in the Saudi consulate in Istanbul. Jim Jeffries says, people have been going, oh, how dare you go over there after, oh, they killed a reporter. That was the big one. There's been a reporter who they killed. You don't think our government kills people?

7:06Oh, I think Jeffrey Epstein was bumped off. You know what I mean? He said, you know, you can be angry about how they treat their people, how they treat that reporter. You can be angry at golfers that live golf. But we are basically freedom of speech machines being sent over there. They have not at one stage asked to see our material, bracket citation needed. They haven't asked. so he is a freedom of speech machine he talks so much about they've got all these edgy people isn't it Chris Di Stefano who's playing he justified it as well he said he was talking to another comic who said he wasn't going to do it and Di Stefano says well I didn't want to do it either I was contemplating I was like maybe not and then Jasmine his wife was like well we're getting married we've got the house who knows we'll probably sell it again I was like I can't do it and then she was like you're going to take the fucking money no mention of Jamal Khashoggi at any point in that conversation well Bill Burr has done a lot of routines about people working, ordinary normal people working for crappy corporations and saying, you don't have to, you don't have to do this.

8:03I mean, this seems very much that you don't have to for Bill Burr as well. To engage with the first point. Yes. Last year, I ended up having dinner in one of New York's sort of most exclusive gentlemen's clubs with a very much... You live a life. Yeah. With a much older gentleman. With a much older... Long story short, We are now married. With a much older... Is this Prince Andrew? No, it's not. It's a much older American guy, very eminent. And it was really interesting being in this club in the first place because he was saying to me, David Cameron was still just at that moment foreign secretary, and he was saying, oh, last week, you know, your foreign secretary, he was in here with these people from the Chinese government in this tiny little room.

8:47And I was like, let's see. It's interesting all the things that go on in gentlemen's clubs, isn't it? Anyway, and we ended up talking about Saudi Arabia and he said at a certain point, oh, you know, it's such a shame really what's happened. And I said, oh my God, I know you chop up one journalist. And then he just looked at me and he raised his eyebrow and I said, oh, I see you're saying we do things like that but we just don't get caught or we're less amateur or whatever. And then he just raised the eyebrow again and I thought, well, given who you are, you would most certainly know about this.

9:22But that is the Jim Jefferies point and it's the point of lots of these people, which is if you live in any sort of commercial world, then you are doing a deal with the devil almost all the time. And just because people are jumping on one particular issue doesn't mean that they're not being hypocrites. If you want to read all of these, by the way, there's a really good newsletter called Humorism that is run by a guy called Seth Simons. And it's sort of about the dark side of the comedy business, but it is. And he's collated all of what people have been saying about the Riyadh comedy festival. And then Tim Dillon was talking, saying, this is a good one.

9:58He said, oh, my agent calls me, says, I don't know if we should do this because this is an endorsement of Saudi Arabia. And I said, well, okay, but let's be frank. I'm living in a country right now that is endorsing another country's behavior that I don't agree with. I mean, all entertainment money is effing blood money one way or another. Disgust. I mean, obviously not all entertainment money. Money is blood money. It's not all blood money. A lot of it is. Oh, yeah. I mean, I've heard what they say about House of Games, but we can't do it today. I don't know how they're funding the new Balamori, but certainly they're being opaque about it.

10:28There's a lot of countercultural comedians who I think have been, especially in America, who've been told for the last five, ten years, you can't do this, you can't say this. All the cliché stuff of you can't say anything in comedy anymore. And they have absolutely quite rightly said, you can say whatever you like in comedy. And I do. You know, you choose your moments, you judge your audience, so I say whatever I like. but having been lectured to for such a long time and having been on the right side of some of those arguments and the wrong side of some of those arguments actually if you are presented with a thing like this you do kind of go ah but you know i always do i always do the thing that's not expected of me i always do i always do the counterintuitive thing you know because i believe in free speech we should be allowed to do what we want put me in a box i'll just climb out of that you can't you can't put me in a box and some of those comedians will definitely believe that for sure.

11:17For some of them, it's quite convenient. I mean, listen, they've got a call. They're going to go somewhere for 48 hours and pay paid an awful lot of money. I mean, an awful lot of money. And so if you can find even the slightest justification as to why that might be okay, which is human rights are abused everywhere. I think it's important that I spread freedom of speech to a new group of people. Then you do. Then that's what you do. But they are people in quiet. Can we have a slight sidebar on this? The idea of cultural boycotts? Because a lot of People say I don't agree with cultural boycott.

11:45I mean, I always find the person who's saying I don't agree with cultural boycotts is someone like Sting, who's just been paid like a million dollars to appear for some. I remember he did one like Sting for the former Uzbek dictator's daughter. That sounds like a Gilbert and Sullivan song. The former Uzbek dictator's daughter. Yeah. If you could fit in funny rhymes for boiling your enemies, child slave armies, killing your own people if they protest, then 100 % it's a Gilbert and Sullivan song. Hold on a second. What was the second one? but Sting, I remember saying, when people found out that he'd done it, he said, oh, you know, I don't believe in cultural boycotts.

12:21It's like, okay, but I want to spread my artistic ideas. It's like, yes, but I don't think within the palace you are spreading your artistic ideas. And they had one sort of publicly open concert and I think that the ticket price was something like 45 times the average as well as monthly salary. So you are still involved in a cultural boycott. And there will be a lot of these comedians who say, oh, but I'm bringing my ideas to, can I just say it again, the boulevard. Yes. Maybe doing a gig in Square. Wow, you're playing Square? You're playing Square, yeah. Oh my God. You're harder than this fear, but this sounds so much better.

12:53You've sold that place out? Oh, you haven't sold it out. No one's sold any of these out. Okay. Yeah. Louis C.K. and Jimmy Carr are doing a joint gig. That's interesting. Yeah. There's a lot going on there. A lot going on there. A lot going on there. So I suppose you're saying, is comedy the front line of the fight for liberty? Is it? By the way. Or is it full of mercenaries? Or is it somewhere? Do you know what? it's interestingly both those things yeah i think it's definitely full of mercenaries yeah and but of course it is but there isn't a branch of show business that isn't it's all blood money rich it's all blood money but it is full of people who are dancing on the tightrope of what you're allowed to say you know either either either you're charming and funny and you're saying something unusual or or you are sort of trying to push an envelope so it's understandable that culturally this is a group of people who believe their opinions perhaps to have some impact and some importance they're They're not held back by self-doubt, are they?

13:42They are not held back by doubt. Although they tell you they are all the time. I would say, to give an example, there was a really big Saudi, the biggest Saudi comic, and there will be Saudi comics on this bill, by the way, but the biggest Saudi comic for a long time, and people used to call him the Jerry Seinfeld or Saudi Arabia or something, was called Fahad al-Bittari. He was filling stadiums. He was a groundbreaker. He went over to LA. He did a bit of work. He moved to Dubai. But he was married to one of those women's rights activists who were arrested for driving. And she managed to sort of get away.

14:15But then they were both grabbed, her in UAE, I think, and him in Jordan. And they were taken back to Saudi. She was in prison. She was tortured. She had electric shocks, beating, waterboarding. And she's finally released in 2021. And she's still under a travel ban, okay? And two months ago in Saudi Arabia, they executed a journalist for a tweet. It was called Turkey Al Jasser. He had two social media accounts, one called Turkey Al Jasser and another sort of anonymous one, which was apparently dangerously satirical. So to me, this is like a real tale of two cities. Like either you're in the Riyadh where you get grabbed and executed and tortured and all of those things, or you're in the boulevard.

15:04This kind of outward facing, but let's not kid ourselves that you're doing it for anything. I think they're all doing it for the money. I'll be really honest with you. I would love all of them, all of them to say how much they're being paid because they, hey, listen, these guys, what do they say? Free speech machines. But also if you're Jim Jeffries and you are a free speech machine and genuinely, you know, I think he has an argument that says that. But if you are a free speech machine, here is the perfect forum, the perfect set, the perfect place, the perfect material. Take what Marina just said.

15:35Talk about that. Talk about that. not only on stage, but talk about that with your handlers. Talk about that with the people who are taking you to your car and then taking you to the prescribed bar. Just talk to them. If you are a free speech machine, this is amazing. You're a machine. This is perfect. You know no other way other than to promote free speech. That's the thing. You're a machine. You get turned on and that's what you do. That's how you run. I agree. This is the absolute perfect test of being a free speech machine. It's the perfect test for a lot of those comics of saying, you say that you say the unsayable.

16:06You say that you're trying to change people's minds and people's views. Here we go. I mean, if you are at the forefront of the culture wars, if you are at the forefront of where we're going next, here is the perfect opportunity to absolutely put a flag in. Show your true colour. Show exactly who you are and what it is that you do. There has never been a better time or a better place to do it. They are not going to kill you. You could all do it. It could be like a bake-off of the best set on Saudi human rights abuses. You could all do it and make it funny, you know, because you're brilliant. You're the very top of your game.

16:39And by the way, there are people on this bill who I think are doing it for the right reasons. So I disagree with you slightly. They're all doing it for money, of course they are. But there are people who genuinely believe that going to Saudi Arabia, that engaging in Saudi culture, this country is not going to become geopolitically any less important anytime soon. So there are strong arguments. There will be people in NGOs, there will be people in government who say it is really good to go and engage with Saudi Arabia. it's a really important place to you know i'm like the guy i was talking to it's such a shame if you don't yes but it's such a shame they had a snooker tournament there last year and there was nobody watching anything and that's the point where you know they go they play snooker in china and it's absolutely rammed so if you are doing that you do and i'll say this to the comics as well listen if it's absolutely full of just normal saudis really laughing men and women are really mixed crowd and it may well be by the way come back and tell us if it is great you've done your job but also be aware that it has been partially staged for you yeah but be aware if it's not the sellout you're hoping be aware of who it is that you are working for and just run that through the machine i would say yeah i think it's really i think it's really interesting and what i find most interesting is it has had so little coverage in anything that would sort of resemble mainstream publications and i think that's because people are trying to keep it under the radar i i want every cough and spit from this thing though i would read a massive oral history about it 15 seconds after it's happened so i hope everything is being documented and smuggled out one way or another yeah jimmy car if you're listening please just write it all down now jimmy is someone who thinks very deeply about things he will have a justification for why he's doing it but i would love to read just from the moment the plane touches down to the moment they leave with a suitcase full of cash i'd yeah i would like to read every single thing a very very long read every conversation that is had yeah and i want a full rundown of what the boulevard and square look like.

18:31And I want to see a full transcript of the acts just to see quite how freedom of speechy they are. And footage of the crowds not Will Smith style which has been making me laugh all week. Will Smith's AI concert fans. Oh my goodness that is... It's unbelievable. If you haven't seen it you've got this. Was it his? Scarborough gig? Yeah it doesn't necessarily have the immediate vibes of Scarborough but if you look at the footage yeah they've composited a lot of stuff together. He is high-fiving an awful lot of seven and three-fingered people. in that AI crowd, isn't he? It's amazing. I really want to know more about that as well.

19:04But anyway, that's a sidebar. Yeah, the Riyadh Comedy Festival. I mean, listen, Edinburgh started small. Yeah. You know, perhaps in 40 years' time, this will be the thing. Everyone will go, oh my God, the Riyadh Comedy Festival's got so expensive now. Yeah. You know, and you won't be able to find accommodation. Yeah, if you, I mean, it's... God, I used to be able to get like a two-bed flat on square for like, you know, 300 quid for like the whole run. And now you're miles outside Boulevard. Shall we go for a break? That was very bracing. Let's do that.

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20:32welcome back everybody now on to uh more pleasant matters travis kelsey and taylor swift they're getting married as she said your gym teacher is marrying your english teacher but we know about taylor swift but travis kelsey who is a a sports star essentially but now is a a huge entertainment titan as well. I think perhaps over here we know a little bit less about him. It's a genuinely fascinating story because he is an NFL player and he obviously has entertainment, comedy, ambitions. Not the first time. You know, obviously we have Terry Crews. Obviously, if you thought the ground was salted after OJ Simpson, not at all, not at all.

21:15But there is a better way in the form of Travis Kelsey. He is extraordinarily diversified. He's still playing. He retirement will come relatively soon, pretty soon. And he's the real deal in terms of American football. He's won the Super Bowl three times. He's a Hall of Famer. It's just been an unbelievable run on all possible fronts. It's sort of hilarious. He's had a good decade or so. Because we should say that all this was happening, all this diversification and becoming a sort of multimedia brand was happening well before he met Taylor Swift. There's a forgotten dating show called Catching Kelsey that happened on the E!

21:55Channel in 2016. He didn't find true love on that, thank goodness, saving himself for this cultural moment. He did a deal with Pfizer to promote COVID jabs, which got him a lot of backlash, but also a lot of people saw it. He co-owns a steakhouse with his chief's teammate, Patrick Mahomes. He's got a clothing line. He's got a nutrition brand. And he is going to host Are You Smarter Than a Celebrity on Prime, I think. He was in an episode of one of those Ryan Murphy horror sort of anthologies, grotesqueries. He hosted SNL, which was a big sort of extraordinary thing. He's invested in an indie movie.

22:32He's invested in some hot sauce, a brand I particularly like. He has got a bit. Oh, really? Yeah, Cholula. The classic, the Cholula, which has got the little round wooden head bottle. It's really nice. Oh, yeah. Oh, I know exactly what you're talking about. The classic Mexican restaurant one that's in all of them. Cholula. He's invested in that. That's Travis Kelsey. Yeah. Wow. Not just him, but he did... There's other people. Yeah. Sounds like you're invested in that company. I'm invested as a consumer. I told you, you did the Grow a Garden collaboration. That is massive, though. All of those people seeing you and being interested in you.

23:00So I suppose we have to say, who is his manager or his branding agency? Yeah, where's this come from? Listen, he's obviously got a kind of spark in him that wants to be in the conversation and wants to do entertainment. Well, he's got it, which is helpful. but it's really interesting there are these two brothers who are his business managers and they're called Andre and Aaron Eanes and Andre Eanes was a childhood friend of Travis Kelsey's roommate at the University of Cincinnati where he obviously was a brilliant college footballer etc and he started a sort of events thing even while he was at college and Travis Kelsey was apparently the life and soul of all parties and wanted to get like you know kind of free tickets or kind of VIP passes or whatever and meanwhile his brother Aaron Andre Ian's brother was studying sports management and what he thought was oh I want to be not a traditional type of sports agent I want to be a bit more like someone who manages a musical artist and who you know where you're doing all these other things and you're thinking which other brands could we bring in something more like that anyway and they were trying to pitch all this to obviously what they had access to was college footballers and trying to say but all of them just want a football agent and they want to go big and that's what they want So Travis Kelsey became their second client.

24:14Wow. Yeah, it's cool, isn't it? That's really cool. You know what? Whenever I hear a story like that, all I want to know is, who's the first one? Yeah, I know. That's what I was... Yeah, it's not clear. I did actually try and find that out, but I couldn't. So sorry for failing on that front. Now he's got sort of four football agencies with CAA. He's got publicists and creative strategists and all of this stuff. But they planned his sort of crossover from way before he met Taylor Swift. They wanted him to be like The Rock. Oh, that's good. like The Rock but for football yeah well The Rock started in college football then he went to wrestling and then obviously you know now he's The Rock having remember he got his name back he no longer has to be Dwayne Johnson because he got The Rock back he was briefly called A Hard Place wasn't he yeah yeah and that was like Prince phase but as I say he wanted it and he's got that ambition and just he obviously has got that charm which is very very particular things like he really wanted he's always wanted to do SNL and he said I want to do SNL.

25:11So they managed to get him to go to an after party at one, you know, when maybe when he was nearby or he was in New York or something. And he made a beeline for Lorne Michaels, talked to him. And then as soon as he won the first Super Bowl, they were literally around the next morning and said, OK, fine. That's the thing sometimes when someone's ascent looks absolutely effortless is because they are incredibly charismatic and good at what they do. And so every time they send a letter or every time they have a meeting or every time they bump into somebody, that person follows up you know with them because they're like oh this guy has got it all so it's not like you're having to scrabble you're having to hustle you're having to grift you just turn up be yourself and immediately people go oh i couldn't i can make some money out of you the whole sort of persona is interesting because he's huge he's a kind of in a big big macho sport but the whole thing with taylor swift where he's like hey i'm just a plus one i'm really happy to be here is a really really kind of good vibe it's interesting that she would sort of end up with him in a way because she you know she came to london famously and she had all these kind of english boys these kind of artistic souls you know and matty healy and uh i'm joking don't be silly he's done he's very successful and now he's she's with this kind of someone you would think was like a big meathead slice of americana but actually it's so much more than that yeah and that's what so he's he's really interesting the way he talks about himself he's like he's like a cute alpha yeah it's okay for everyone to like him and that's like i'm talking like red state blue state he's a bit a little bit like the rock in that way where i mean although i find the rock infinitely more absurd as you know and i hope and i and you know i like that in my celebrities but that's fine but they're all different and so i like they're all different they're all different that's why we love celebrities because they're all different but there is something incredibly charming and magnetic about him and to be so to be really sort of amusing and funny about being her plus one is just a sort of it undercuts so much of what you might think came with it's an amazing cultural moment by the way they're in I think they're in love with each other oh my god of course they are which is great I'm just checking because sometimes I miss things but they're in love with each other but to get to the point where you are so unbelievably famous like he was and then you think actually the best thing I can do for my brand now is to show how unfamous I am by marrying one of the eight people in America who is more famous than me.

27:33It kind of works so beautifully for both of them. How lovely. I mean, one hopes it lasts forever and ever and ever. We haven't even mentioned what he has, which is he has his New Heights podcast, which is absolutely huge. With his brother. Yeah, with his brother, Jason. And that's the way that people have got to know him because I suppose you just, as we know, you're talking for many hours a week. And it's really, that's been very significant. Obviously, she released her, she announced her latest album. But the thing that he always says is, and I think in terms of what he's interested in doing, acting, all these things is, oh, I know I'm coachable.

28:03The brand is a form of humility, weirdly, which when you're kind of six foot five and all conquering three times Super Bowl champion is actually quite hard to retain, but definitely hard to pull off and make it believable. But because we have access to this podcast where you can hear him talking all the time, you do believe it because you sort of feel like you can't be anything other than authentic. It's hard to be authentic for that length of time. Every week. Well, in TV, that's a lovely thing. But TV, you can definitely be authentic for a whole career if you're only doing like an hour a week on Saturday nights.