Trade Secrets Of Countdown

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1:30Hello and welcome to another edition of The Rest is Entertainment, the questions edition. Questions and answers edition. I'm Richard Osman. You are? Marina, hi. Lovely to see you. Very nice to see you, Richard. We're back in the same studio where your legs don't reach the floor. Yeah, my legs are still swinging like a small child on a swing. I've got some great any other business to begin with. You remember last week we talked about what happens if somebody throws a prop into the sea or to a river. Those are the kind of questions we have. Okay, well, Mel Thompson's written in. She says, I'm a freelance TV art director, so I've often dealt with props being thrown into rivers.

2:01Marina's correct with her info, but now we're more environmentally conscious, a new solution has been found. Water-soluble dummy props. A friend was organising a scene involving a scuttle on a party boat on the Thames, and there was concern about the prop gun being dropped into the water. To solve this problem, a prop maker made a replica gun which would dissolve if dropped into the river. I've since used this solution on two shows where mobile phones were scripted to be thrown or dropped into the water. these replicas are strong enough to be handled and can withstand some water, e.g. rain Wow, I wonder if you could smuggle one onto a plane a soluble gun It's really sad that you've taken something that's really amazing and creative and resourceful and just thought about doing a hijack with it That's what I do with everything I had so many other business, which I won't go into Jim Watso, thank you ever so much I talked a couple of weeks ago about the Saudi Arabian snooker tournament where they have a golden ball at the end which means you can get a 1-6-7 break and he's gone into the physics for me of how hard you would have to hit a ball made of solid gold to make it go into the pocket.

2:58It's fascinating stuff, but probably not for today. Is it measured in neutrons? No, I don't want to... You're right, why am I getting involved? It's certainly measured in something. Shall we get on to today's first question? This is one for you, I think, Marina. Alex Elliott. Thank you, Alex. Can you explain the difference between based on or this is a true story at the start of dramas? Okay, and there are many different variations of this now. Now, I recently watched the British film Wicked Little Letters. And at the start, it says more of this is true than you'd think. And there are many different variations of this.

3:30But in that case, it's something that happened in the 1920s and everyone in that was dead. And as I don't know, but maybe our listeners know, you cannot libel the dead. So you can say what you like about someone who is deceased. We were almost going to call the podcast that. Yeah, you can't libel the dead. You cannot libel the dead. Yeah, I know. That would be a good one. You know what? I'm going to have a good old go. Yeah. So I've got a few things to say about Frank Sinatra. You honestly can't libel the dead. Now, another thing that's quite interesting and related to this is that no individual holds the legal right to the story of their own life.

4:00So as long as you've obtained the information lawfully and without any sort of subsistence, then you are free to make a story about anything. However, as someone who's sort of been involved in various of these things before, there are competing rights. And the chief one is that you have the right not to have your reputation ruined or to be defamed. That is tricky. So what you'll find dramas which are based on a true story, for instance, ITV's Mr Bates vs the Post Office, I remember saying to somebody when they were writing it, have they done all that? Because that's really just quite complicated.

4:29And so many of those people had obviously been through the absolute ringer. What they'd done is they bought a lot of them up, as we put it. You pay someone the rights. And sometimes people, a friend of mine made a movie about someone who her true story was being told, but she had to have sort of poetic license explained to her to some degree. We have to make it like this for a reason. And so there is a certain amount of give and take. What writers often will end up doing in a complicated story like that is create a composite character, someone who serves the purpose of a number of different people.

4:58So it's not so bitty because real life is much more messy, of course. There are people who are not happy with the way their stories have been told. I mean, there's an old saying in Hollywood, where there's a hit, there's a writ. Well, there was that inventing Anna about the fraudster. The Vanity Fair photo editor has sued Netflix over her portrayal in that, saying that they made her look like a sort of horrible, snobby idiot. The Queen's Gambit, that chess player, is still suing Netflix for saying she never faced men within that drama because she felt, oh, that actually undermines my achievement.

5:27I face men, I beat men. But they left that out because they thought it made the story better. You don't want to get sued by a chess player. No, you don't want to get sued by a chess player. And actually, they've tried to have it struck out. That is still ongoing and a judge refused to strike it out. So I think that one will go, that will happen in that case. They have very good defence. Yeah. Pam and Tommy, the drama about their sort of sex tape and their marriage, All they did, those people, was option a 2014 Vanity Fair article about how the sex tape came into the public domain. Pamela Anderson was really upset about that, hated the series, and made it very clear that she hated the series, but she didn't have any sort of legal recourse.

6:00She's doing her own one now. But essentially because they optioned the article, then all the kind of legal requirements was on the article. I don't think, I mean, in our country, as we talked before about libel in this country, you would have a lot harder time. In the US, there's a lot of First Amendment stuff, and it's quite difficult to sue for libel, slander, whatever. She's actually going to make a rival thing about her own story. There was something that I was asked to write and I still really want to write it, actually. The Paul Chuckle story. I can't talk about it because it's such a good idea that I didn't...

6:30I should say it wasn't my idea, but it was someone else's idea. It is the Paul Chuckle story. I felt like this is the way to do it, but it is only real life characters in it. Right. And some of them, funnily enough... The Richard Maitley story? Some of them were tabloid journalists, a few of them. And I thought, you know, the one thing I can tell you is that those journalists would be the ones to sue. Journalists love to be talked about. They're so thin-skinned. I mean, really genuinely, they would probably be the bigger nightmare than all the people who the drama was actually about, who were much more sort of significant.

6:59But if you portrayed someone in a way they didn't like and they were a tabloid journalist, in so many cases they would sue. It's absolutely ridiculous, even though they moan about legal all the time. So that thing at the beginning, based on a true story, or this is a true story, it's sort of a legal disclaimer and the more stark it is like this is a true story the more either A it's about dead people or B it's a very accurate reflection of what happened and they've probably been brought up they've been brought up by the company because otherwise you are open to a number of different legal actions yeah and this is based on a true story gives you a little bit of wiggle room and quite often they will say certain characters have been invented certain scenes have been imagined which you know as you say normal life is too complicated for an ITV drama By and large, you do have to sort of have composites of people.

7:44We once did a drama about snooker called The Rack Pack, which Sean Py and Alan Connor wrote about Higgins and Davis. And it's brilliant. I think it's still on iPlayer. And Jimmy White was in it. And so they had to, as you say, they had to go and talk to Jimmy White and say that you're being represented and make sure this was okay. And they said we're doing the bit where it's in the 1985 Goya Masters. And Jimmy said, yeah, I didn't play in the 1985 Goya Masters. and they had to go, Jimmy, you won it. But Jimmy White, as you can imagine, was an absolute delight and was very happy to sort of give his say-so.

8:19But yeah, you have to be very, very careful with real people. Yes. And people do have recourse. Oh, that's nice that they sort of bought up the stories on Mr. Bates so they're making good money. You have to buy people. And there might be various different pieces of source material. Say a celebrity has written a kind of early, one of her first autobiographies. You might buy that up. you might there's various different things and really you want to get them on side or at least not get have sort of complete enmity as what clearly is what happened with pamela anderson in that documentary because saying i was that document not sorry that that drama that drama was sort of about how exploited she was by the whole situation and clearly if she's out there the whole time saying i'm being exploited all over again effectively she didn't say those exact words but that's sort of what happened she didn't get paid anything for it it's not really great for your message of your big drama no one's listening anymore because they're all thinking what's the project that uh that you want to do uh well hopefully it'll come to light one of these days oh richard this is so one for you names in show titles chris reed asks why does alan carl have his name in the title of all his shows is this a branding thing he's deciding gets negotiated into every show he does i've also just remembered the full title of house of games richard osmond's house of games so i'm most definitely not passing judgment here again it's sort of like the true story one that it differs in each case now richard osmond's house of games is called richard osmond's House of Games because when we registered it there was a show in Sweden or something called House of Games so we couldn't call it House of Games so they had to call it Richard Osman's House of Games so it wasn't an ego thing on my part but that said when your name is in the title it's yeah that's good for branding and it's in the Radio Times and people are having to say your name out loud and it brings a sort of personalization to it so it's not unhelpful to have your name in the title it's sort of it has some prestige to it with alan carr again his name would be in the title because he often does remakes of other people's shows and you know does lots of great game shows and his name has great recognition he's cachet it's a draw yeah cachet so he did a show called picture slam now when you're looking at the epg on your television the electronic program guide so you see what's on and you can usually only see the first three or four words of a program.

10:31Now, if that says Picture Slam, then you scroll past it. I don't watch that. I've never heard of it. So you go down to something you've heard of. If it says Alan Carr's Picture Slam, then it essentially says Alan Carr's, well, it'll probably say Alan Carr's P, but it will say Alan Carr. But you see the name Alan Carr, and you think, oh, well, I really like Alan Carr, so I'm going to watch that. So quite often these days, if you've got a celebrity who people like, you put their name first, because on the EPG you just see that. And other people have it contractually. Bob Monkhouse, he used to have lots of Bob's Full House and all sorts of things like that.

11:05And that, I think, is just a branding thing. I think he thought that was a good way to bring everything in-house. And again, people liked him. Lots of the documentary guys, or maybe there might be some ladies, have their names in the title, you know, whether it's Ross Kemp on this or that, or Danny Dyer. You know, they're sort of brand strands in themselves. Brand strands. Brand strands, sorry, I think I'm done a tautology there. You know what I mean. And again, that is simply because that is the format. There isn't a format other than Ross Kemp going to the front line or Danny Dyer visiting football's hardest gangs or Britain's hardest bouncers.

11:40So their very presence is that format. In the game show world, honestly, I've never heard of somebody saying, I want this to be called my name and the name of the show. There's not a negotiation I've ever had with anybody or an agent who've said, we want to do it, but it has to be Vernon Kay's all-star family fortunes. It's a deal breaker. And, you know, it's just not something that happens. So if it's useful for the show, sometimes they'll put the name on. As I say, in my case with Richard Osmond's House of Games, which, by the way, I never called it, ever. Although it's whenever you get... In conversation, that is true to say.

12:15I can confirm you will refer to it as House of Games rather than saying your own name. Although the acronym, like all TV shows have acronyms, like Have I Got News For You? I used to work on was always Hignophy. Would I Lie To You? Was Wilti. and House of Games is Roehog because of Richard Oswald's House of Games so we always call it Roehog but yeah by and large it's something useful for the channel to have people's names in the title things like Dale Winton the wonderful Dale Winton who sadly is no longer with us when he started Supermarket Sweep and he wasn't particularly known Dale at that time and said to all of the contestants would you call me Dale at the end of each of your sentences did he?

12:52so on that show a lot of the time they go yes I'm from Winchester Dale or oh I'd probably spend the money on a new extension Dale and it got his name out there so quickly and it's such a smart thing to do but that's not necessarily an ego thing because if you're a producer you want that as well you're taking a chance on a new presenter who you love because you've seen them you know do the pilots and what have you but you want that name recognition and so for you having them say Dale at the end of every sentence is also are incredibly useful. So it's one of those things. It brings people closer to it.

13:23But yeah, I've never, I genuinely, and I'm honestly trying to think, I cannot think of a single occasion where it's been an ego thing that someone says, I'll do it, but it has to have my name on it. But yeah, House of Games, it was because we weren't allowed to call it House of Games. Okay, good one. Next question on Marina Hyde's The Rest is Entertainment. This is from Connor Marlborough. And actually, it's off the back of the props thrown into water during filming. He asked, when shooting on location in terrain such as sand, snow, mud, how do productions deal with footprints left by cast and crew members between takes?

13:58Are people on the shoot simply banned from stepping on the untouched ground prior to the first take? So the actor's footprints are the only ones visible in shot. I recently watched Dennis Villeneuve's excellent Dune sequel, which was only slightly marred by the constant thought of how much of a nightmare masking all those footprints must have been. Broom or rake? Fix it in post? Connor has all sorts of suggestions. But again, a good question. what do we do about footprints okay normally there would be someone on set of course with a broom or a rake and they have to get it back to normal as best as possible like a golf caddy yeah pretty much um and there are many different surfaces and some things people have to wear the blue shoes you know the blue over shoes on lots of sets anyway because lots of sets have got great kind of nice carpets um whatever so most of the crew will wear those shoes i'm working on something at the moment that's got one set which is very beautiful and very shiny and someone is constantly mopping that between each or you know polishing it between each tape so it looks beautiful like the olympic curling yeah yes on something like june 2 they would have taken a lot of it out in post because you've got quite a lot of money and you can do that with vfx having said that given how spectacular it is and it is incredibly spectacular it's made for 190 million dollars obviously a huge amount of money but not compared to what a lot of the big franchise movies movies may spend another 50 on top of that easily so you don't want to take too much out in post although footprints are a lot easier and there's a lot of software now I've spoken to somebody about this and they said oh there's lots of software now that even if you're doing your own movies you can take it out yeah I spoke they call it they call it the Kate Middleton suite I spoke to a photographer who was interesting about this who said work out as soon as you sort of get out of your vehicle where you're going to be photographing because you're not going to be able to clean it up and make it look as beautiful as it was before and he said i've done things like that where i've thought right the place i'm standing is the bit that would have looked best in the picture so then it will have footprints and i think you can only sort of use it for one of those terrible trite instagram captions that says the longest the longest journey starts with a simple step and you've got some footprints in the sand or something like that you know take nothing but memories leave nothing but footprints oh the perfect one obviously okay so that sort of thing but in movies they do take them out and somebody is carefully raking between shots but there will still be disturbance to it and they will probably fix that in post but it's not the most expensive thing to fix in post it's one of those extraordinary things about any type of filming is there are people's jobs you would literally not believe the most extraordinary tiny little things that have to be done all day every day we've been making tv film or anything and one of the great things about tv and film is that infinite capacity to take pains to make something look as real as possible and never take people out of the story and it's there are just people whose job and they're so professional and brilliant at it is to make everything look perfect at all times which is why people love it when they're you know like a coffee cup is left on downtown abbey because they go finally i get what if we just left this to just you know if we just left this randomly you know this is how it would be all the time and it's amazing the incredible attention to detail that people have and often when you see really bad effects and stuff like Marvel movies, it's because they call it the crunch.

17:07They have no time and they've tried to fix everything in post. And it's a big part of why VFX labourers are trying to unionise now because it is an absolute nightmare and they're working like 18 hours a day and they can't fix everything in post. And it's become the sort of thing like, don't worry, we'll deal with that, we'll deal with that, we'll deal with that. And in the end, it's like, am I making the whole movie on a computer for you at the end? And it's just not possible in the timeframes. And these VFX houses are completely maxed out and the workers are exhausted and they are all trying to unionise now.

17:33Yeah, and please sweep up your own footsteps. Yeah, can you please at least not tread all over the side? Let us now go to a break, Richard. This episode is brought to you by State Farm. Checking off the boxes on your to-do list is a great feeling. And when it comes to checking off coverage, a State Farm agent can help you choose an option that's right for you. Whether you prefer talking in person, on the phone, or using the award-winning app, it's nice knowing you have help finding coverage that best fits your needs. Like a good neighbor, State Farm is there.

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19:07Welcome back, everybody, to the questions and answers edition of... Someone was furious last week because you said questions and answers. I know. So you have to absolutely stick to your dance. I have to make the same mistake every week. It's not a mistake. It's a disagreement. I think it probably was the first time, but it's become a thing. Okay, I really like this question from Jonathan Gare. I've always wondered if Susie Dent plays along while filming Countdown, or does she have a computer to help? They always ask Susie if the contestants could have done any better and she always has an answer.

19:36I was in Dictionary Corner recently. I'd never done it before, but it's hosted by Colin Murray now. And I've worked with Colin before. I've worked with Susie and Rachel before as well. So I said yes because it's a fun thing to do. And I've always watched Countdown and my grandparents used to watch it. I just remember my granddad sitting there with his pad and pen and writing down the answers. So I was delighted to go and do it. the way it works is the producer on that was a guy called damien edie who's a former countdown champion one of the greatest countdown champions of all time and he's career arcs of all time yes exactly he now he now runs that entire show um and the letters will come up and i'm trying to work out what the answer is susie's also doing it as well and kind of looking things up so in the gallery so susie and damien are both playing it just like they'd playing because they happen to be incredibly good at countdown yeah obviously i'm playing it as well and you know i don't think you'd be too shabby if i'm honest but slight slightly worse than suzy and a lot worse than damien ed now i don't think i ever got to the stage you can hear damien in your ear he always gets the biggest ones because he's just that's his thing there's a computer that can back it up if you need it but by and large damien is the computer and by and large suzy would have had it anyway when you use the computer as if there's a very unusual word in there that's again someone like Damien will always get because they know all the words but a word that needs explaining or a word that Susie wouldn't necessarily have at the front of her brain so she's got a computer for that and she's got an earpiece for that but the fun of making that show, they couldn't have made that show for so long if they're not playing along is the truth, so Colin is playing along, Susie's playing along, Rachel is playing along and when you're in Dictionary Corner you're also playing along and sometimes Susie will very kindly write things down for you and she'll write down an answer.

21:27Susie Dent Cribschie, I'd quite like that for life. She'll say, this is here or that's here. And I always make it a thing of it, if Susie came up with that, I always say, Susie just told me. Sometimes I watch it and there's people on there who sort of haven't got an answer and they go, yes, I've got Diminioid, which I think Susie, sorry, is that, I think it's something. I think, oh, she just told you that. But yeah, that show, because they've done so many thousands of episodes, I think it would drive them mad if they weren't playing along and you'd sense that there'd be a real niggle between the audience who would also know that they're doing it and there'd be a real I think there'd be a foie de attention within the Countdown studio which I don't think any of us ever wishes to see in all places that's a very happy crew on that show at the moment Colin and Rachel and Susie I think they've got it how they like it I recently made the argument which I stick by that Susie Dent is the longest running host in British television history, people often say oh it's Magnus Magnusson or Sue Barker but it's Susie Dent in terms of the amount of shows she's done and with Pointless they always said oh I did 2 ,000 episodes and I said well I'm a co-host on that so Susie does the same job and so she's the longest running host on British television but it's fun it's fun to do Countdown but it's fun to record because you play along and so if someone is a fan of Countdown it's an absolute joy Cats Countdown is fun to record as well but in a very different way because the first time I went on Cats Countdown which is a show I used to produce it's funny and Joe Wilkinson's mucking about and everyone's brilliant but a bit of you is going yeah just get onto the letters because I want to I've never played the first time I ever did Countdown was Cat's Countdown I was like I just want to play though so just let me and the numbers I'm like it's all very well Jimmy you're driving around in a tiny little car with Joe Wilkinson in a sumo suit on your back but I'm really trying to work out this sum so just bear with me but yeah Dictionary Corner is as lovely as you'd imagine it to be Thank you for lifting the curtain on it and not being something hideous behind it.

23:25Can you imagine? It's an absolute snake pit. Vicious. It will cut your legs off. Yeah, it is annoyingly, genuinely as lovely as it seems. But things, you know, you can see that on screen with shows, I think, sometimes. Definitely. I always think on House of Games, we have such fun recording it. And that takes away an awful lot of the producing because just the very fact of people enjoying themselves really sees you through. and I think there have been eras in Countdown History where they haven't enjoyed it so much. I was going to say, in a similarly euphemistic way, I think there have been eras in Countdown History where they haven't, yeah.

23:57Yeah, those eras are now over. They are. Yeah, or that era is now over. Just memories now. By and large, it's been fun from start to finish with the odd blip. A question from Andrew Shearer. He asked, I don't think there's an answer to this, but I think it would be a very good subject for a PhD. He asked, re your discussion of social media short clips and dopamine i wanted to ask was you've been framed our gateway drug oh my god that's like i feel like that's a sort of 15 000 word deep dive that i would 100 % read yeah it was like youtube before youtube wasn't it because it's been going so i'm gonna get this wrong for three it will be close to four decades maybe say 35 issues if i've got that wrong please write in and tell me that i'm wrong right back at the start of that by the way how expensive would video cameras have been?

24:44They were quite a, it was quite a sort of thing if you got these things and some of them began as perhaps TV bloopers from other countries almost. Yeah, well, all the clips were from America by and large. We once, 20 odd years ago, I think Channel 5, they had bought an archive of Russian home video clips and said, could we do something with them? And a lot of them, by the way, you couldn't. But there are a few we did. Yeah, and we made a show called Light Camera Accident. Brilliant. But it was all based, they bought this archive. The Prattful Trauma Zone, the Adam Curtis documentary, where Adam Curtis is amazing.

25:16He made these incredible films, which you can still see as all his amazing work on BBC iPlayer, where he was given the entire archive of every single piece of news footage shot in the BBC during, in sort of former Soviet Union. And he told the story of the collapse of communism and then effectively the sort of collapse in some ways of capitalism giving way to gangster capitalism. That's Trauma Zone, but you can see it on iPlayer. but that sounds to me like the pratfall trauma zone where you've got lights camera accident was like that but classier yeah yeah yeah yeah exactly yeah so essentially companies started in the 80s they built up huge libraries of these clips they would just buy clips and it wouldn't cost them a huge amount and everyone would go oh my god I could make 250 quid if I sell this it was 250 wasn't it yeah someone's built this enormous empire off the back of these clips and they failed to build YouTube why didn't they just build YouTube the original producers must have gone do you know what we are the cleverest guys in the whole world we're making money out of 15 second clips we produce an hour of ITV content every week we're making nearly seven or eight grand a week out of these clips we are the greatest geniuses but it's true Silicon Wall-E's but I used to nice is that the series you're doing?

26:27I want to apologise for that so please don't write in because I'm apologising having just made the joke I used to absolutely love You've Been Framed again because it is laughs per second I remember once there was a best of You've Been Framed and I remember I can't remember who I was talking to I just said well that's got to be the best program ever made because You've Been Framed is the best program ever and this is the best of the best program ever that's the best program of all time but you know it tends not to win all the BAFTAs but when Harry Hill used to do it I used to watch it with my kids when Harry Hill was doing the VO on it as well He is peerless Yeah They've made a brilliant show even better but now there's so many millions and millions of clips and it's funny that that show doesn't really exist anymore because the whole of our culture is that show thousands of people's day is watching short clips immediately, anything in their pocket.

27:13It's a good question. So the answer is... Please, can someone point me in the direction of a 15 ,000 word deep dive on it? Because I would 100 % read. Yeah. I knew it the moment I saw Jeremy Beadle. I knew it. I saw the future. Once again, he's the precursor. The harbinger. Beadle was the harbinger. That's all we have time for today. That was a lot of fun. That was much fun. thank you so much as always for listening or for watching if you're watching on youtube keep sending in your questions to the rest is entertainment at gmail.com and if you want to continue on that deep dive down the props i don't know where this will take us by the end we'll be like okay we can't have any more props questions but it's very interesting yeah when people wear hats they do actually anytime you wear any costume they take a photo of you don't they so they can see exactly the angle of everything but listen yes continuity is fascinating it doesn't sound but it actually is we'll do that alongside our four part Scrappy Do series that we're we're planning to do thanks for listening everyone we'll see you next Tuesday we will do bye bye bye