When Award Shows Go Wrong

12:50Richard Osman:And any book that's worth reading has a love of language and uses language in a certain way. And translation does not do that. But absolutely, you can translate a book for$100, but it will be beyond appalling. I mean, just terrible, terrible, terrible. So it's a tough gig being a translator. It's not as well paid as it should be. The best ones are absolutely worth their weight in gold. If I can give a shout out to some of my translators and every now and again when you go to other countries you meet your translators and that's what was my favourite things to do because they'll always have they've always got questions about the characters and they've always got questions about certain bits of idiom and they're always like I was worried that when I did this that actually you meant something else and so they've always got oh that's so cool yeah they take it incredibly incredibly seriously Albert Fuente Sanchez he does my Spanish translation these are just ones I met Sabine Roth who does the German one as well Roberto Corridan, she's the Italian one, Ingebritt Bjorklund from Sweden, but all of my translators, and I've met a few of them, thank you so much for everything that you do.

13:54Richard Osman:But it's a tough gig. And, you know, there's a reason why the best ones are in demand, because it's really difficult to translate a book. You can translate the words, of course you can, but can you translate the meaning? That's the skill of being a translator, I would say, is translating the meaning of a book.

14:11Marina Hyde:Right. I think it's time to go to a break now. But after the break, we have had so many questions about awards and we're going to discuss some answers that we've got from...

14:20Richard Osman:Like an awards special.

14:21Marina Hyde:Yeah, a second half awards special. We've got some answers from people who've run the Brits and people who produce the BAFTAs and they've got all sorts of different responses.

14:37Richard Osman:Hello, everybody, and welcome to The Book Club, a new podcast from Goalhanger, hosted by me, Dominic Sandbrook.

14:45Marina Hyde:And me, Tabitha Syrod. As some of you may know, I've been Dominic's producer on The Rest is History. And we even did a mini-series last year about all things books.

14:54Richard Osman:And since we enjoyed that so much, we have decided to roll it out as its own show. So it'll be coming out every Tuesday. We'll be doing a different book each time and digging into all the stories behind them.

15:06Marina Hyde:And we are going to be talking about the historical contexts behind some of the greatest and most famous books of all time. We're going to be digging into the remarkable people behind them, the unexpected stories behind the stories, and also unravelling the plot of each book a bit and delving into the depths of the story.

15:24Richard Osman:Now, you don't have to have read the books to listen to the show, but we hope that by the end of each episode, you will be able to pretend to people that you've read them. That is the key thing. And either way, whether you read them or not, we hope that you'll learn lots of fascinating facts. You'll do lots of great stories and maybe, Tabby, the odd laugh.

15:40Marina Hyde:We will be looking at thrilling Gothic bodice rippers like Wuthering Heights and Frankenstein, as well as iconic stories like The Great Gatsby or Little Women. And then also some more modern stuff. So Game of Thrones, Normal People, The Hunger Games, Hamnet, all manner of exciting stories.

15:59Richard Osman:So please join us on our journey into all things books, wherever you get your podcasts. Just search for The Book Club every Tuesday, and hopefully we will see you there.

16:29Richard Osman:It's even easier to enjoy your coffee your way. Sip for yourself. Shop Virtuo up exclusively at Nespresso.com. We're leaving today and entering a world of Mickey Mouse waving, princess meeting and greeting, lightsaber clashing, the Twilight Zone Tower of Terror dropping, Banshee flying, Space Mountain launching, galaxy rewinding, galaxy rewinding, fireworks igniting, World of Other Worlds. For whatever you love. Infinite worlds await at the most magical place on Earth. Walt Disney World Resort. There.

17:13Richard Osman:Welcome back, everybody. Now, we've always got lots of questions about awards ceremonies, so we thought maybe we would put some of them together and ask people who really know about these things.

17:24Marina Hyde:Since it's the season.

17:25Richard Osman:Since it is the season. Tis the season, exactly. We will start with a question from Lucy Rose. Thank you, Lucy. Lucy says, the Brits have become synonymous with sweary performances and award speeches. How do the decisions get made on what should and shouldn't be beeped out? Now, who's helped us with this one?

17:44Marina Hyde:Sally Wood, who is the executive producer of the Brits.

17:47Richard Osman:Thank you, Sally.

17:48Marina Hyde:There's a 30-second delay. In the truck, in the room next door to ours is ITV Compliance, a team of people. They're listening to the show. if they hear a swear word they write the time code down then they pass it down the line and then when we reach that time code they beep um now his when i first started they used to play birds tweeting and we used to get lots of complaints saying why are birds tweeting on the brits there's something wrong with the audio the technology has been updated now and it's just silence but there is a lot of bleeping on the show and kanye west who was booked 24 hours before because Rihanna had pulled out.

18:25Marina Hyde:So it was a very last minute performance. And he broke the record for the most swear words on TV, 47 in the three minute song. So we were getting ready to deal with an Ofcom nightmare. Then Paloma performed in her beautiful rain performance. Show's about to end. Madonna comes on. She falls over. Our first thought is, has Madonna fallen over because of Paloma's water? That wasn't true. The water was not on stage. But that was my most chaotic memory from working on the show. It was Kanye swearing into Madonna falling over, us thinking momentarily it was our fault. Yeah, it was chaos.

19:08Richard Osman:Thank you so much, Sally. It's one of those things, isn't it, when you think you're going to get in trouble for Kanye swearing and then you think, oh my God, Madonna's falling over. This is going to get all of the publicity. I remember that they used to have the bird song on Big Brother as well.

19:20Marina Hyde:Yeah, I was going to say that when they were talking. It's so weird. swearing but mostly when they were talking about the game yeah or they're talking about the so that's why it went on forever yeah or yeah or libeling people yeah so if it went on forever you'd be thinking this is the longest swear while i've ever heard what is it i'd like to use it

19:37Richard Osman:myself one day super kind of fragilistic xb alley what i love a proper old-fashioned beep if ever on panel shows and stuff you have to um beep things we still have to even very often um but a beep is one of the few things that can actually keep a joke as funny as it was anyway yeah if that there's there's something about a beep and the way we hear a beep that actually you go oh no that's a when well time as a punchline exactly and it is split seconds that timing yeah and

20:05Marina Hyde:sometimes do you know it should be an award for best beat but it genuinely is sometimes you know

20:09Richard Osman:if you like do i lose the you know do i come in after the or do i come in before that uh and it's different each time and occasionally you'll get a three-er that someone's you know blah blah blah and that is almost if you if you can absolutely time those beeps perfectly then you can make it

20:25Marina Hyde:much much funnier than it was in the studio question from hannah about seating plans how do award ceremonies decide the seating plan in the theater everybody thinks about this are there unwritten rules about where nominees winners and industry power players sit now to answer this emma bear who's head of content and awards at bafta and has had to do a few plasma in her time has said this well if you've ever had to do a wedding seating plan you'll know how difficult it is and where to put people can be quite tricky if you add to that the fact that there are two and a half thousand guests as 46 films nominated everyone needs to sit within their production within their film it's a bit of a jigsaw to get around and with 256 nominees ideally you'd want everybody in the front few rows but that's obviously not possible so they're all spread out throughout through the room and nobody in that room knows the winners not the people that are doing the seating plans so it really adds that kind of tension and excitement about who's going to win we have this amazing person who is in charge of the seating and in terms of the skill to visualize who's in every seat it really is amazing so she'll be there on the night 10 minutes before we go live looking at the seats checking everyone's in she has this ability to know the names and the films and where they should sit and she can literally go d7 they're not here where are they and if somebody's in the wrong seat there has been the odd occasion where she can't remember faces so we've had a situation where she was walking jamie bell to a seat and there was someone sat on the end of that aisle she tapped them on the shoulder and she said excuse me are you a seat filler seat filler is not meant to be in at the beginning of the show please can you go backstage and the very polite adam driver did explain to her i'm actually a nominee and uh we've obviously never let her forget that oh my god can you imagine oh i always whenever occasionally if

22:27Richard Osman:someone's working on a show they'll send you a picture of it during the day and during the day everyone's faces are on sticks when they're doing rehearsals so it'll say Adam Driver and picture of Adam Driver's face and so if you know people who are working on a production you can work out who you're sitting next to as well but you always assume when you get there oh does this mean I'm not going to win or I am going to win and it's utterly meaningless sometimes people come from behind you to win sometimes people from in front of you you're always on an aisle anyway because the camera has to go up and down the aisle you won't sit in a theatre if you're not in an aisle I can't, I know exactly because people behind me go crazy.

23:01Richard Osman:Medically, I can't.

23:02Marina Hyde:Medically, I have to be in a winning seat.

23:04Richard Osman:Medically, I cannot. Never been in a winning seat, of course. At the Broadcaster Wars the other night, my wonderful producer, Tamara, who I've talked about before, said, oh, yeah, we've lost again, by the way. That is now 19 in a row. 19 losses in a row. It's ticking up, isn't it? Isn't it just?

23:20Marina Hyde:It is ticking up.

23:22Richard Osman:Isn't it just? Yeah. Listen, to scam interceptors, we lost to them, and that's a good show. It's a great show. Yeah. Honestly, there are times we've lost where I've been like, I don't know about that. And there are times we lose. I go, yeah, yeah, yeah. I think that seems fair enough. But 19 in a row, that's a bit. And wherever we're sat, absolutely meaningless. But also, the interesting thing is not just where people are sat. You have to, when you're in rehearsals for those shows, you see the shot that you're going to have every time a nominee is put up. So you know who your most famous people are.

23:54Richard Osman:So if you're at the Oscars, it might be De Niro. if you're at the BAFTAs, it's David Tennant, you know, it's Olivia Colman, whatever it is. And you can see the shot you're going to get of them either reacting to something or when they're nominated. And you can see the triangle, the little cone of people behind them as well. And sometimes you just want to make sure that that cone has also got famous people in it. It makes it look really, really deeply impressive. So you know your fields of vision. You know the people who are going to be in shot at any given time. And so you...

24:21Marina Hyde:You want it to look long and strong in stars.

24:23Richard Osman:Exactly that. You want a little bit of depth of field in your celebrity bookings. Thank you, Emma. We've got another answer from Emma, actually. Can we do this one as well? Because I thought there's an interesting bit of information in it. We had a question from Sean Gadfrey. Thank you, Sean. Who said, how are citation match-ups made? Those are the people who read out the nominees and what have you. And what happens when they don't stick to the script? So if we can go back to Emma, who has an answer for that as well. Thank you, Emma.

24:49Marina Hyde:So citation readers are the presenters. It's the fun part. you know it's one of the fun parts of the evening working out who goes where we have to think about all the our audiences so not only those that are in the room we have a broadcast at home on the on the bbc we have international broadcast but we also had last year 130 million views across our social platforms so we have lots of different audiences so we have to be as broad as possible and cater for all tastes when we're selecting those citation readers. When it comes to pairings, it's all about people that have worked together or know each other, our friends.

25:29Marina Hyde:We don't want bad chemistry. We all remember Mick Fleetwood and Sam Fox. So it's really important that we get that right. Recently, we had David Johnson and Amy Lou Wood, who presented the nominations that we did last month they actually knew each other at school so it was very joyful to watch them reunite and that really came across in a lot of fun when they were announcing those nominations and then we look at you know what's really important where is there a platform when somebody needs to say something and for me seeing Michael J Fox using that as a platform to make awareness of Parkinson's was equally important moment we do have moments when citation readers want to rework that script and they want to tweak it that's absolutely fine we're really happy we'd rather they do that and they add their thoughts and humor to that but we do sit beforehand there's only one exception that has presented a few times for us i won't name that person but they come and scribble something backstage flash it at us and go on but we allow that because this is somebody we know always delivers and has worked with us before so talking of citation readers i do have a little exclusive um richard and marina i'm really delighted that personal favorite of mine is going to present the children's and family film category this year and that is paddington bear he's coming to the royal festival hall we're very thrilled to have him there and we can't wait for him to present that category and obviously we are stocking up on marmalade sandwiches in the agreement.

27:05Paddington.

27:05Marina Hyde:Paddington. Are you kidding me? Animatronic feat. I hope when eventually

27:11Richard Osman:tomorrow and I do win an award.

27:13Marina Hyde:Yeah.

27:13Richard Osman:It's presented by Paddington.

27:15Marina Hyde:Yeah.

27:15Richard Osman:Oh my God. Perhaps that's what they've been waiting for. I don't need to get it from Nick Knowles.

27:20Marina Hyde:I would love to see you and Paddington in the same shot.

27:23Richard Osman:It would be so sweet. I would love that. Whenever I have my photo taken with people, they will say, I'm sorry, I'm so short. You know, I get my with children as well i mean it's it's okay you know cameras are designed for that um oh paddington uh i wonder who writes their own stuff hugh grant that's my bet you trust him right i don't know i

27:41Marina Hyde:would have said i would have provided that little piece of detail oh would you yeah yeah because that's a nice thing because they weren't it wasn't like and they never will work with us again well maybe that's a question we can have for next week yeah we'll ask we'll ask emma and we'll get

27:55Richard Osman:the name of that person. Do we have time for one final, I think we do, for one final question for you. Okay, a question for you from Claire. She said, off the back of your conversation about how the Academy Awards overlook comic performances, I'd also argue that outstanding voice acting performances have been wrongly ignored. What great voice performances deserved an Oscar?

28:14Marina Hyde:Oh, there's so many good ones and I really, there was one, okay, I thought about this and I have left not quite making my top three. Here we go. is so let's say

28:26Richard Osman:number four would be another way of saying that

28:29Marina Hyde:well I'm not doing a top four is

28:30Richard Osman:well you are doing a top four

28:31Marina Hyde:the Jeremy Irons as Uncle Scar that voice is amazing but it's not probably it's not the most villainous Jeremy Irons for me it's not the have you ever seen Dead Ringers no

28:42Richard Osman:the Radio 4 impression show no not that

28:45Marina Hyde:Jeremy Irons plays it's like a horror a body horror Jeremy Irons plays twin gynecologist it's not a big chick flick let me tell you

28:53Richard Osman:yeah

28:53Marina Hyde:it ain't a date movie no psychopathic twin gynecologist Elliot in Beverly anyway doesn't matter he's number four yeah that's number four okay number three James Earl Jones as Darth Vader yeah and let me tell you something okay it's a shame you can't do C3PO but Anthony Daniels is actually also it's unbelievable that he's incredible physically but and also the thing about George Lucas's dialogue and this is incredibly bad and also incredibly good at the same time. You know, Harrison Ford famously said, George, you can write this shit, but you call it as sure as I can't say it. And there are other shows, I mean, when I think of, I'm trying to think of other things like that.

29:35Marina Hyde:Game of Thrones is also like that. There's a, you know, that line, when you play the Game of Thrones, you win or you die. Unfortunately, that line has to be delivered by Lena Headey, so it's a bit of an uphill struggle. But James Earl Jones can deliver anything. Anything at all. that kind of half sounds like a battle-rise version of the Bible, half sort of portentous. The Darth Vader, it's an unbelievable voiceover, and it makes it, it's so chilling. It's extraordinary. I mean, I really love those first three films.

30:05Richard Osman:Do we know if James Earl Jones ever recorded the famous Darth Vader joke? Which, you know, I know what Luke Skywalker got for Christmas.

30:12Marina Hyde:I don't know if he ever recorded this joke. Yeah, carry on. What did Luke Skywalker get for Christmas? Oh, shall we do it?

30:16Richard Osman:I won't do the voice, but if James Earl Jones did it, I know what Luke Skywalker got for Christmas. What did he get for Christmas? He got a Subutio set, a jigsaw and a new bike. Oh my God, how do you know that? I have felt his presence. I would love it if James Earl Jones did that.

30:38Marina Hyde:Could he elevate that? He could do anything. He reckon you'd do better than me. Yeah, I think he'd just edit that.

30:45Richard Osman:So he's number three.

30:46Marina Hyde:Yeah, he's three. Number two, Tom Hanks as Woody in Toy Story. The whole arc through the first three movies is ridiculous. But the bit when he says goodbye to Andy when he's going to college and he just says, so long, partner. That contains, that is Oscar worthy. I actually had to have a look what got the Oscar for Best Actor that year and it was Colin Firth in The King's Speech. Not even close. Not even close. Hanks, no. Hanks is number two. at number one because the sheer creativity of it it changed the whole way that people thought voiceovers could even be done is Robin Williams as the genie in Aladdin huge amounts of it improvised it was revolutionary in what people felt could happen with animation and the idea that there was something that was almost for the parents in these children's films all of these things it was completely groundbreaking I remember talking to Josh Gad a lot because I love his voice he is the voice of Olaf in Frozen and he said and he's obsessed with Disney he's actually obsessed with Star Wars as well but he's obsessed with Disney and he thought when he got that he thought even though it's just like a tiny little snowman or whatever the possibilities of the form because of Robin Williams having gone earlier and actually the Olaf voiceover is unbelievable and it became sort of iconic itself but so Robin Williams is the genie in Aladdin is number one it's just phenomenal

32:09Richard Osman:good top three perfect order a little bit of nonsense about number four but that's okay

32:15Marina Hyde:inevitable

32:15Richard Osman:yeah not bad at all

32:16Marina Hyde:I can't have no nonsense

32:18Richard Osman:tomorrow for our members I'm going to be asking you for book recommendations in the first of our series which doesn't have at the moment it's called Bookworms but I think I think that our listeners might be able to come up with a bit a better name than that

32:29Marina Hyde:but I'm really looking forward to it I've actually balked at it and then once I got into it I'm really looking forward to talking about these books okay fine

32:36Richard Osman:if you want to become a member it's therestorsentertainment.com you get ad-free listening you know early access to tickets It's all sorts of things like that. But for everyone else, we would be delighted to see you next Tuesday.

32:45Marina Hyde:See you next Tuesday.

33:02Marina Hyde:Thought Sweetgreen was just salads? Think again. There's a new way to do Sweetgreen. Wrapped and ready. These handheld wraps pack bold flavor and 40-plus grams of protein into something hearty, satisfying, and built for life on the go. From craveable sauces to satisfying textures, they're designed to keep you going without slowing you down. So put that fork down. Try the new wraps today in app or at order.sweetgreen.com. Available at participating locations only.