The Met Gala, The Rock & Clarkson's Return

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1:13Hello and welcome to another edition of The Rest is Entertainment with me, Marina Hyde. And me, Richard Osmond. Hi, Marina. Hello, Richard. How are you? I'm really, really well. We've got so much to talk about this week. There's about 800 things to talk about. And it's all great fun. We are talking about the Met Gala. Something I know, by the way, absolutely nothing about. I'm looking forward to learning about. But it's very jolly and we'll have a laugh through that. I mean, I did get invited this year, but other than that... And you said no. Right, right. Well, we'll talk about how you'll be frozen out forever as a result of that declining.

1:41What else are we talking about? We're talking about Clarkson's Farm, which has just come back on Amazon Prime, the first four episodes, and its future, I think, might be quite interesting as well. Yes, and we will also be talking about The Rock. Is he, in fact, not, as he would put it himself, the hardest working man in showbiz? Whoa, that's a teaser. Imagine if we got to that bit and we went, yeah, actually he is. Yeah, he absolutely puts in a shift, that guy. And you're like, I've literally listened to half an hour of you banging on about the Met Gala and Jeremy Clarkson for you to tell me that he really, really works hard.

2:11Don't worry, listeners, we're not going to say that. Let's start with the Met Gala. If you're listening to this on Tuesday morning, it is the morning after the night before, and the Met Gala has happened. This is a big, big event. It's the ultimate fashion event. I have to say, actually, it is the mega red carpet event in the world. But it leaves everything else for dust. Better than the Oscars? Yes. And you know what? A couple of years ago, someone got leaked some internal presentation from the Academy in which the Oscars were saying, we need to be more like the Met Gala. Well, I mean, how beaten is that?

2:43Is it better than the TV Quick Awards? OK, Richard, I know you've won there. I doubt it. You haven't won at the Met. No one wins at the Met Gullet apart from fashion-wise. But let's hold fire on the TV quick and we'll get to the end and see whether it is. One day we're going to do a deep dive. Okay. This year's theme is Sleeping Beauty's Reawakening Fashion. Okay. And it's sponsored by TikTok, which is very significant. We'll come to that. Now, it is to raise money for the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York and specifically the Costume Institute, which is the sort of fashion bit, a bit like the V &A bit of it.

3:12So it's for charity, but the charity is the institution itself. And it makes a lot of money. it makes, I don't know, 20 million a year, this one event, and it probably costs about 6 million. Okay, we don't necessarily care about the numbers, but there are some numbers that are really significant. We'll talk about it is a pop culture triumph. Okay, this thing by the time you're waking up on Tuesday, this will be beamed into your subconscious by every single possible platform. People are even discussing on things like discord. But Instagram was the main platform, because obviously, it's a very visual event.

3:40Anyway, back in the day, the Met Gala was one of a lot of New York charity parties. And there are a lot of sort of doyen socialites in New York, sort of older women who give money to the arts, blah, blah, blah. The sort of thing Frasier goes to in Seattle. Yeah, yeah. But Anna Wintour, the editor-in-chief of American Vogue, who is the most extraordinary Titanic figure who has in so many ways completely defined her era in fashion, she gets control of it in 1995. And in those days, anyone, you or me, could spend$150 if we had it and go to the after party. You could buy a ticket to the after party, okay?

4:14and the tickets for the event itself were$1 ,000. This year, for one ticket, it is$75 ,000, which is up 30 % on last year in this economy. In this economy? And you know what? You can just go there. But you've got to be approved by Anna Wintett. This is the most dictatorial event. So you've got to pay 75 grand and be approved. Oh, yeah. I mean, you're not getting... Is it like the David Lloyd Health Club? Yeah. Where you pay, but also, yeah, they show you around. You need to be approved. Yes, okay. Now, Anna Wintour chooses the theme. She chooses every last tiny detail. But what happened after 1995, these socialites gradually started sort of getting binned off in favour of celebrities.

4:53And stars were desperate to get, you know, actors, musicians. The Kardashians tried for years to get into this thing. And Anna Wintour obviously would have had a lot of views about how complete trash they were and wouldn't have let them in. Then, you know, Kim becomes a businesswoman. She's interested maybe in prison reform, whatever it is. Something turns and she thinks, OK, she can get me a mega red carpet at a moment because this party is essentially all about arrivals. All the stuff you see is people arriving in this huge tented red carpet area outside. It actually obscures the front of the Metropolitan Museum of Art now, the red carpet area, which tells you quite how big this event is.

5:31And then you go up the stairs and you have to shake hands with Anna Wintour at the top. And I've spoken to people who go and say, you can genuinely see how scared the celebrities are to go up the stairs and shake her hand. So Kim Kardashian was never allowed into this event. And then eventually she gets in. And rather than, you know, what you'd expect people to do is think, yeah, fuck you, you weren't interested in me before. I'm not going to go. What you do is you say, thank you very much. What would you like me to wear? Because Adalwin, to a huge extent, approves what people are wearing, which labels they're wearing.

6:02This year, Lauren Sanchez, who is... Friend of the podcast. Big friend of the podcast. Jeff Bezos' fiance. Yeah, Jeff Bezos' intended Lauren Sanchez is going this year. Now, this is the level of Anna Wintour. There's been a lot of articles. Can I say, by the way, I've never seen you so happy. This is so cheery. I know. I love this. So people saying, Anna thinks that Lauren Sanchez dresses trashy, and so she's going to choose what she's going to wear. By the time you listen to this, we will know whether Lauren Sanchez wore Oscar de la Renta. First of all, it's one of Anna Wintour's absolute classics and go-to.

6:35She wears it all the time. it says yeah I'm mega rich but I've kind of got a foundation I have a job which is philanthropy it says that sort of thing like I'm not some rube who's going to turn up in Ralph and Russo okay with some great extra embellishments all over my dress okay Oscar de la Renta for that money I'd want Oscar de la Buyer you know what I mean this is all I have on the Met Gala I should say there are no comedians doing red carpet but there should be because you know you're getting people who have turned up essentially in a sort of $100 ,000 GIMP suit sometimes Kim Kardashian once had the completely covered.

7:07She was in a sort of Gimp suit, really. So this is the one every year with the most extraordinary looks. Yeah. Like people spend hundreds of thousands on that. Oh, yeah. And it's huge. And it's now built up and there's these dinners before. If you're asking me what happens in the party, there's very little. She's banned all social media. What she hates, apparently, is a party where people don't know what they're supposed to be doing. So everyone who works for American Vogue and a lot of other people besides are in there constantly saying to people, and now you go over here. There's some live performances.

7:34there's a dinner which I imagine nobody eats. I mean, actually, a Zen pic was pretty much launched at the Met Gala a couple of years ago. It all came into public, exploded into public consciousness when Kim Kardashian wore the dress that Marilyn Monroe had used to sing Happy Birthday, Mr. President, to John F. Kennedy, which is now owned by some attractions place in Vegas. And she'd said, I've been so disciplined. I've managed to get down into this size in three weeks. And everyone's like, wow, that's amazing. She just ate like that, steamed fish and vegetables. Like, yuck. I think within a few weeks, everyone realised, oh my god what is this thing called a zempick because what is this a zempick fish yeah seems to be yeah yeah that the steamed zempick fish and the yeah yeah so that was a big moment but these are these huge moments and it's quite interesting vogue has kept it all on the platform it comes out on vogue.com they haven't partnered with a tv network or stream or anything which they could do because it's quite you know it's obviously very watchable the arrivals but they belatedly got properly into online and now they've made all the right decisions.

8:33But Instagram used to take a lot of tables at this event and obviously it is most discussed on Instagram or was. This year it is partnered with supposedly soon-to-be-banned platform in the United States, TikTok. Okay. I mean, listen, it's got everything I love so far. Yeah. It's got fashion, it's got TikTok, it's got Oscar de la Renta. I know that you now love Oscar de la Renta. One of my favourite boxers.

8:58But anyway, so it will be on TikTok. Now, I think Instagram will fall away because people will just want to see it on TikTok. The only place that you see internally in the party is the loo where celebrities feel like this has kind of been licensed by Anna Wintour, maybe. So they have these kind of big group selfies where everyone is like mega famous and they're like sitting on the floor, like smoking in the loos. In the loos? Yeah. What are celebrities doing in the loos? Yeah, I mean, it's really hard to put your finger on it. Yeah, so they have that. But I wonder whether you'll see some TikToks from in there this year.

9:30I'll tell you what, I don't think we will see, but, you know, call me up on it next week if you do. You won't see any political protests at this event, OK? And if you do it at a party, you won't be coming back next year. I mean, it seems to me it gets its enormous cachet from A, being incredibly secretive, but B, people, listen, I'm not a fashionista. I don't want to break your heart or anything, but, you know, I'm not. But it seems to me that people who like fashion absolutely love fashion and this is the absolute ultimate night of it it's about a museum that is dedicated to fashion it's run by a woman who sort of sat at the top of the world of fashion for many many years and it is attended by people who literally adore it so anyone who is a fashion fan it's like the world cup for fashion it's the world cup for all red carpet things this is like please go avant-garde please like staples and fell around your head and look absolutely insane I know someone who once went to a celebrity party wearing a mask so people didn't know who they were.

10:25And he said, it's unbelievable that none of the other celebrities talked to me until I took my mask off. And then they all went, hey, you all right, man? He said, I understood. I understood then why people spoke to me because I was a celebrity. That is, yeah, that's a reckoning, isn't it? That is haunting. Yeah. So now people can flick through TikTok, Instagram, every single newspaper will be full of these incredible costumes. But it's come from nothing in, you know, less than 30 years to be not nothing but a party that was quite glamorous but I mean you wouldn't have even registered in the public consciousness now like everyone knows what this thing is and it's entirely eclipsed the Oscars but having said all of that if I can return to top and tail this yes please where do you think it ranks next to the TV Quick Awards I would say well TV Quick TV Choice that's the real debate sorry which of those is better but you know listen it's a decent third behind the two of them isn't it I was reading about So all the people who help out there have to be models.

11:24But one of the models last year was too good looking, so they fired him. Eugenio Kasnahi, all the photographers started taking pictures of him instead of taking pictures of celebrities. There's a picture of Kylie Jenner. Oh my God, get me a poison apple right now, because if someone is too pretty, if someone's fairest of them all, that's it. Yeah, listen, you can look him up. Eugenio Kasnahi, his non-disclosure has just passed, so he started talking about how they fired him for being too handsome. Oh, that's amazing. I mean, the waiters and things like that are effectively cast. It's like a casting process.

11:53Here's my question to you. What would we have to do? By the way, would you like to go to the Met? Oh my God, I would like to go. Anything like this, never even ask me. I'm a writer. I like to go and see these things. I would always like to experience what it's like. And I would stay right to the bitter end, try it like I do at every party. Trying to work out how it's all working. Yeah, I love that stuff. The dress code this year is based on a J.G. Ballard short story called The Garden of Time, which is an incredibly dystopian thing, sort of about rich people being overrun by the mob. So if you were this year, what would your outfit be based on J.G.

12:29Bellard's Garden of Time? I would like my outfit to be so enormous. It's like that time when Elton John went to a party and he had to go in a horse, who I love all his fancy dress parties, when he had to go in a horse box because actually the wig and everything was just so big. It's like, how the fuck am I going to sit down in this? Okay, don't worry, Elton, we'll put you in the back of a horse box. And he emerged in this enormous kind of Louis XIV flowing, you know, brilliant. I would like to have to have a dedicated vehicle, possibly a Pan-Technican, take me down Fifth Avenue. Yeah, yeah. Popemobile maybe.

12:55No, I don't want to spoil the entrance, so I don't want anyone to see me before I get out. Get me off the back of a sort of, you know, low loader like that. Low loader. Yeah, yeah. And just wheel me in. Yes, it's a little bit like a Dalek, isn't it? Can they go upstairs? Doesn't matter once you're in. Once you're in, but you've got to go up the stairs and shake your hand. So probably something like, well, I wouldn't want to really wear flat shoes, but underneath I think it might be wise if my dress was that big because I don't want to fall down the stairs. You don't want to fall down the stairs on the way to see Anna Wintour.

13:23Or they would. I could be shit once I've seen it one year. What do you think we would have to do by this time next year for you to get an invite? What would we have to do? I think it would be impossible. I don't know. I would love to see it. No, I don't think, I don't know because I don't think you're allowed to talk about it. I can't sort of stop myself talking about everything so I think I'd be the least welcome guest. This time next year? Yeah. I go, wasn't it the Met Gala last night? And you go, don't know. Oh, no. You got invited. I go, because she's being very quiet, isn't she? Or we'll do a link up from New York.

13:54And you'll be here at this studio. And I'll be like, sorry, it's still happening. I'm in the loo. Here's Kylie Jenner. I would absolutely love that. We should make that happen. Let's try. Meanwhile, yeah, have a look at all the ridiculous outfits. But it's all for a good cause. I mean, it's... Oh, yeah, up to a point. I mean, yeah. It's all for a cause. It's for a museum that's never going to go bankrupt. Let's put it that way. Shall we move on to something that probably will go bankrupt, which is Clarkson's Farm, which has just started again on Amazon Prime. It is a show, Jeremy Clarkson runs a farm, the Diddly Squat Farm.

14:31It's a farm he bought many years ago and the farmer who was farming it retired, I think, in 2019. And Jeremy said, well, look, why don't I farm it myself? And while we're at it, why don't we film that farming? which you know in the in the sort of realms of tv you think oh clansson's going to be a farmer if i was in that commissioning meeting i'd say how many series do you want it is dependably brilliant i think essentially it's exactly the same as top gear every single beat is exactly the same jeremy's got his sidekicks he's got caleb and gerald and charlie it is entirely confected in the way that top gear was but in a way that gives you such joy that it's very very watchable but also unlike top gear it does have like a copper bottom of reality to it which is why i think it's such an interesting and such a good show because while of course there's lots of artifice i mean in the first episode jeremy's getting blackberries off the hedge with a dyson and you know they're always those comedy bits and then next scene suddenly there's 800 jars of you know blackberry jam you think yeah have we missed have we missed a scene there between this thing of him sucking up kind of eight blackberries and then suddenly you've got this thing so that confection is all there and um caleb who's his um now the farm manager uh you know they have a bet about who can make the most money uh this year yeah that's the that's the spine of this season will be a competition between the two of them caleb's doing the arable land and jeremy's doing the non-farmable land basically who can make the most money which of course is nonsense because of course they're not doing that but you need that narrative spine exactly and that's why see i think the real hero of Clarkson's farm and the real hero of that whole career is Andy Willman who is the producer so he was the producer on Top Gear and Andy Willman is a brilliant producer because he understands what people want to watch but Clarkson we will get onto other interactions with producers but Clarkson's key strength is he understands how brilliant Andy Willman is and he listens to him and he understands which a lot of presenters don't understand the value of a really really good producer and what that producer can bring you and the fact that you are made to look so much better than uh you would ordinarily be because a producer is taking care of that program so Andy Willman did Top Gear he's never won a BAFTA Andy Willman well yeah yeah awards listen bullshit I've said it before I mean he looked sensational at the Met Gala I'll say that but he's he's he's never won a BAFTA um and then after the brouhaha the BBC when um Clarkson was fired rightly so I think I don't I think anyone would disagree with that.

17:03They signed the biggest mega bucks deal you could ever sign with Amazon. I mean, you know, hundreds of millions between Clarkson and Andy Woolman and Hammond and May as well. And the Grand Tour has done great business for Amazon. But this is the show that's really, really done great business. I mean, it's probably a tenth of the price of the Grand Tour. Amazon Prime's most watched show in the UK, by far. And I have to say, if this was on Terrestrial, it would probably be the biggest show on TV. I think it's... It's hard to know where it would sit. Well, it's the only show I can think of, actually, that would work at 9pm on ITV and is a hit on a streamer.

17:37Yeah. You know, the streamers have not been able to do that kind of factual, light entertainment type stuff. And this absolutely knocks it out of the park. But the thing that's really genuinely great about it, because it comes from reality, I was talking to the producers behind it, and they said the very first, they made a little taster tape with Jeremy. Jeremy said, look, I want to do this thing. I've got a farm. And like anyone who comes in and says, I was like, doing this, you kind of go, oh no. But they said they went along. So the people helping him on the farm were Charlie, Gerald and Caleb.

18:08They were all there in place. The first ever Tasters Tapers got all of them on. They were really running this farm. Charlie's the land agent, we should say. And the advisor who's unbelievably good. Amazing. Because he absolutely does not play up to the camera. No. Anyway, his job all the way through, which is why it's such a great show. His clerks can say whatever he wants, whatever harebrained scheme. And then Charlie goes, here's the reality of farming. in modern Britain. And it's sort of devastating. Such a great character. Yeah, but it has this gravitas because you're hearing tragic stories and you hear the impossibility of making these things work.

18:42We should say he's probably getting about 10 million a series from Amazon, not Charlie. And he's very upfront about the fact why this works. It is fascinating that it is a show about something. I mean, Top Gear is not about something, is the truth. It's lovely it's got cars and we're mucking about, but it's not about something. This is a show, you can't watch a series of this and not understand the countryside more, and not understand farming more, and not understand that industry more, and not understand the difficulties people running any sort of business are facing. It has a lot of truth at the bottom of it.

19:11The thing that I do think that is absolutely great about Andy Willman is that he is like one of those old-style Hollywood producers, in a way, who understood a screen persona. And I would argue that there's a bloodline to Clarkson's Top Gear persona in this show, in that he is kind of like an amateur, but he knows a lot about the subject, and he has hair, brain schemes and what have you. And he now says, oh, I was just playing a character on Top Gear, which I think is, well, to some extent he is because it is a screen persona. And it is so brilliant, that screen persona. But it has evolved. Well, it's interesting that his whole career, I think he sort of is a bit of a wink.

19:44There's certainly people who do know him well and met him. You hear an awful lot of good things about him. But then, you know, you read some of the stuff, you go, there's a trouble with being a persona. You know, you can push it over a certain line. It's hard. And certainly a lot of people who play a persona for a long time become that persona because that's where the money is. And you can see that culturally at the moment. Lots of people who started appealing to a certain base, it's the only way they've got to go. Clarkson is able to pivot because he's got more to him. If you can't pivot, it is diminishing returns, I think.

20:13And you have to get more and more awful. But actually, you need to keep a version of yourself. It's interesting. I mean, sorry if I've told this story before. I feel like being on a podcast is a bit like being drunk. You're constantly thinking, did I say that five minutes ago? And also we're drunk. And also we're, yeah. For Humphrey Bogart, they didn't know what to do with him at Warner Brothers. They didn't know what to, Bogart played. I don't think you have said this before. Humphrey Bogart played Vickers. They kept putting him in movies thinking, who are you? Who are you? And eventually they put him, as I've said before, I've definitely said this one before, the third version of the Maltese 4-Compant.

20:46And they're like, oh, I see you're Humphrey Bogart. But it took a while to realize, strangely, and then forever after you play that persona. But this is what the old studio in the golden era of Hollywood, they spent ages trying to find out what your persona was. And then, as lots of the actors ended up hating, you're made to play a version of that forever. And to get back to Clarkson, he has adapted that. And that is the key thing. But it retains elements of the original. And I think that this version of him, which I suspect is slightly nearer the truth. Yeah. I think he can say all this very, very, very, very nicely for the rest of his career.

21:20As you say, it's really serious issues. And he's highlighted so many, the kind of farce of British bureaucracy, which is what, because season two was, I guess, the narrative spine of that was, we want to open a restaurant, and they managed it, and then it's like, now the restaurant has to be shut. It is honestly like, this has a bloodline that goes back to things like Passport to Pimbico and things like that. And it's an understanding of a particular type of British farce, weirdly. So lots of the time I think of this as a show that works so well because it adopts those tropes of fiction and the structures of it.

21:52You know, that you'll have an A plot in an episode and a B plot and sometimes a C plot. And then, of course, it looks effortless when you're watching it. And I know this is something we expect, but the reason this works so well is because someone has thought about it that carefully all the way through and it comes off as effortless, which is how you know it's a win. I mean, it's interesting with Clarkson because obviously the reason he got fired from the BBC was supposedly assorting a member of the production team. Because he didn't get a hot supper. Because he didn't get a hot supper. After filming.

22:17I spoke to people again on this show who said he could not be nicer. So, you know, you have to sort of applaud that. My two real encounters with Clarkson, the first one was after he'd been fired, the first thing he did back was he hosted Have I Got News For You? So Have I Got News For You? got him as a guest host. So he hadn't been on TV, certainly hadn't been on the BBC since he got fired. And I was on the panel that week. And, you know, I'm, of course, I'm a fully paid up member of the producers' union. so you know i'd never try and be horrible or mean to anyone but i absolutely did jokes all the way through at his expense yeah people were furious on twitter it's the only time really i've ever on twitter gone oh this is that's interesting this is what people like and it was fascinating that everyone would write exactly the same thing like there was a template that you would copy and you would send on so i found it sociologically interesting yeah one person who didn't take offense at all jeremy clarkson really lovely chat after he's you know i was doing stuff off the cuff He's the chairman on that show.

23:14He's getting paid 10 times more than the panellists. All his jokes are there. So I'm just riffing. And then I was on Who Wants to Be a Millionaire when he was hosting. And there's a lifeline now, which is Ask Jeremy instead of Ask the Audience. And I used that lifeline on the question that cost me£90 ,000. So he got his revenge. I get it. I get it. And of course there are issues with Clarkson's public behaviour and what have you. But if we're just taking this one show on its merits, I think it does an awful lot of good for the world. He's done that very rare thing, which he's created something that is loved by people in the industry in which it concerns.

23:52And also people who know absolutely nothing about farming. That is the true gift. If you can bestride it all so you can have the specificity so that people in farming recognise all these things and think, yes, finally someone's saying this. And then people who have nothing to do with it think, God, that's a lot harder and think more about how the things get onto their plate or whatever it is. One thing I will say is, where do you stand on this idea that Countryfile, which is the BBC show notionally set and dealing with similar issues perhaps to this, has sort of stopped talking about those things and has now become, I do not want to use the word woke, but we're using it as a...

24:28Well, Jeremy Carlson's become woke. Yeah, Jeremy Carlson has become woke. And as that interesting audience research that we covered a couple of weeks ago on the podcast shows that that show now skews Labour voting, Johnson's Farm viewership. So that shows you, yeah, he's followed a mainstream, as it were. Yeah, he's a bellwether. Yeah. Sorry, he's a bell something. He is the Overton window. He is, exactly, yeah. And there is a sense among some people that this is a better way to explore those issues and that Countryfile, to some extent, has got kind of sidetracked talking about other things that don't really reflect the experience of life on farms in the countryside and the issues.