The Rest Is Entertainment - Coming November 28th!

0:02Hello, welcome to The Rest is Entertainment with me Marina Hyde. And me, Richard Osmond. Hi, Marina. Hello, Richard. This is exciting, isn't it? Let's get started on our long journey together. Wow, that's a good catchphrase. Already we've got a catchphrase. Let's get started on our long journey together. It's not the catchiest one. I think we'll come up with something better than that across the course of our many conversations. Over the next 12 years. Now, we're going to be talking about all sorts of things on the rest of the entertainment. Movies, TV. Books. Books. I've heard of them. Showbiz.

0:32Showbiz. Scandal. I'm annoyed I'm presenting it, so I'd like to listen to it. And the way that all these stories are covered, because I think that's always a big part of it nowadays. But really, just a lot of quite salacious stuff. Absolutely. And also lots of positive stuff about what people should watch, what people should read, all of that malarkey. Oh, as soon as I said positive, you slightly went, oh, no. No, I didn't, Richard. That's not what I signed up for. I'm positive about huge amounts of it, but there will be some negativity for me if necessary. Okay, I'll cover positive, and you can talk about Matt Hancock.

1:00Yeah, yeah. We'll be talking about the jungle for sure, talking about Farage but then we would have to go back via Hancock via Peter Andre We're going to talk about I'm a celebrity and I think we should Yeah I have been quite shocked by some of the reaction to Nigel Farage's appearance in the jungle which I think has tended towards the bedwetting With your reality head on Richard what do you think? Is it a good booking? Well it's a good booking for ITV Yeah For sure Is it a good booking for Farage? I mean he's making a lot of money from it but it's not going to rehabilitate him Literally about six years ago he said this is not something that you'd do in the height of your career.

1:32This would be something at the end of your career. And I'm not desperate for money. You think, hmm, what's changed? But has he not fooled himself into thinking that actually his great idol, in our country, what tends to happen is that you do reality TV when you're kind of washed up. And some politicians have done it, but it's the sort of downward slide. Now, his great idol, Donald Trump, of course, did it completely the other way. He was the biggest star of the sort of first golden era of reality television on that side of the Atlantic. And he parlayed that into something quite big, really, in the end.

2:01I think we have to be honest with ourselves. But he was the host. He was the host of The Apprentice. He was the host. He was Ant and Dec. Yeah, you know, we're a much smaller country and you take what you can get. And I think in Farage's case, I think he has convinced himself that this is a route back. He goes on a lot about young people watch this show. What do you think about that? Do young people watch the show? Well, it depends what you mean by young. I mean, young to me, like 35 year olds. Yes, but the idea that you're suddenly the kind of poet of the 18 to 24 year olds, I think is slightly for the birds.

2:33He's now got a TikTok account, which is bizarrely quite popular. I don't know how much of it is hate watches, how much of it is ironist watches, but he seems to think he's kind of reaching out and setting alight a whole new generation of fans. By the way, this podcast is sponsored by ironist watches. I just think Hancock tried to do the same thing. And, you know, he came third or something, but nothing happened. He didn't selling any books. He's not getting booked on new things. You know, he doesn't have a grime career. We have to say that the form book suggests that it won't do anything for him, that he'll either humiliate himself in a sort of way like George Galloway did on Celebrity Big Brother, or he'll get into trouble like Nadine Doris did for her experience on I'm a Celebrity.

3:14But will he be able to parlay into something bigger? The form book says no. Having said that, the form book has been thrown out of the window in quite a lot of different ways over the last few years. And I don't think it's beyond the realms that he could use it as a springboard back into something. I had more trouble with Hancock being booked because Hancock was a serving politician. He'd just been at the heart of such a huge sort of scandal and he was at the heart of an inquiry which still hadn't been concluded. And he was nakedly trying to rescue his reputation. Hancock, I think that was a great booking because I tell you what, that was our court really, wasn't it?

3:48Because even the COVID inquiry does not have statutory powers. that might be the best justice that you see meted out to Matt Hancock. That is our Hague. Yeah, I realise that makes us a pretty depleted country but this is the way it is. It's not a kangaroo court, it's a kangaroo testicle court.

4:07I was reading about a Taylor Swift cruise which I thought was quite a hilarious thing. It's not an official Taylor Swift. It's one of the only bits of her merchandise she hasn't sewn up. But they're going to have a cruise boat and it's going to set sail for Miami the day the Eras Tour ends. Wow. And it's going to be four days of making friendship bracelets, dressing up in your different eras and genuinely kind of having a Taylor Swift time. It is almost completely sold out. That's a reality show I'd watch. Yeah. I thought Taylor Swift cruise, she'd married Tom Cruise and I'd miss some big... That would be a...

4:41That would certainly break the internet and perhaps the planet. That's an empire, isn't it? Yes, that would be one. But the New Kids did a cruise, I think. Cruises are really big. I mean, Disney, as we were talking about not that long ago to each other, Disney Parks and Cruises makes twice what all the movies and entertainment make. I saw an interesting one that Netflix has been doing, which are Bridgerton Balls. Wow. And they go around to various towns. This podcast is sponsored by Bridgerton Balls. And they go around to various towns. They've been absolutely massive sellouts. Everyone gets dressed up as, you know, they're called Lady Whistledown's Balls or whatever they are.

5:17And everyone gets dressed up. They are hugely profitable. All these kind of sideline things of entertainment are absolutely massive. Gwyneth Paltrow's got her cruise, the Goop Cruise. Goop Cruise? I always think that was great, isn't it? I know you have to have sort of an hourly enema and it's not really a holiday, is it? Maybe that is paradise for some. For some people. For some. That's what the Scientologists always used to do. When you got to the inner, inner, inner layer, they used to tell you the secrets that Hubbard had written down out on the ship at sea. And I always felt that they do this because at that point you're like, no, it can't be.

5:50I can't have spent like upwards of$400 ,000 over the years trying to get to this point. And you have to be told it at sea because then there's no escape. And it's international waters, of course. You can say what you like. But you can say what you like. That's why all the oligarchs have their yachts sort of like two miles offshore, isn't it? It's the oligarchs and people being told that actually aliens came to Earth in exact replicas of DC-10s and just screaming into the void when they realise they spent all their money on this knowledge. Is that the secret? Yeah, that's one of the secrets. Wow.

6:19In Ashdown Forest, where I grew up, grew up in Sussex, you always see, like, John Travolta's always there, Tom Cruise is always there. It's those sleepy little Sussex villages, absolutely full of Hollywood A-listers because the Scientology church is in East Grinstead. Yeah, I had a builder once who just left a bathroom half-finished, half-finished, and he kept going away. And I said, could you just let me know which days you might be coming? And he said, I'm basically spending most of my time in East Grinstead now. And I said, oh, do you have family there? And he said, no, I'm a Scientologist.

6:46And I thought, it's never getting finished. It's never getting finished, is it? A Scientologist bathroom? Yeah. How's the grouting? He never finished it. I had to get someone else to finish it. So the self-improvement was in inverse proportionate to my home improvement. And whatever it did for him, it certainly didn't do a lot for my bathroom. That's amazing. I thought all Scientologists were actors. I didn't know they had, like, bathroom fitters. You know, they have to get non-celebrities to pay the bills. The foot soldiers, as it were, the people who, you know, walk out forever and ever and don't have to go to a specific church called the Celebrity Centre.

7:18Have you ever driven past that in LA? No. It's a building and it literally says Scientology Celebrity Centre off at the top. Oh, wow. That's aspirational, isn't it? I mean, I suppose perhaps you could argue that some Renaissance churches are essentially that showy. You know what I mean? They should do that and the rest is history. That's the podcast. Got a crossover episode, Church of Science, Celebrity Scientology. Is it the same as the Reformation? Thank you.