Will 'Strictly' decide the General Election?

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1:11Hello 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 okay, but you're not well today. I feel like I'm slightly coming down with something, but it will all be fine. I tell you what I have been buoyed by though. Yes. Following my comments, I felt very brief comments on the of and claims to substance of Mr Guy Ritchie, our leading fauteuil, I have received huge amounts of feedback from both within the industry, people who've worked with him, people who've worked for him, and without the industry. And it seems there's a real community of people who shared my views.

1:47And so it was great to touch. I think we'll be returning to that well, as and when. Listen, it's a big hit. I'm buoyed by the fact I was filming House of Games on Saturday. And I realised at the end of the day, that's where all the Match of the Day pundits are watching all the football game so I went along to the match of the day viewing room to watch all the football matches of all the match of the day pundits sat next to Martin Keown on the sofa I slightly disgraced myself by spending the entire time talking to the exec producer about what the edit schedule was like how are you putting in this so you're editing as you go along on all six games and everyone's trying to watch the match I found it fascinating.

2:23Well do you know the first thing I ever wrote in a newspaper was when Des Lynam left the BBC match of the day and went to ITV and Gary, our boss, was moved up from, well, in fact, he still was doing Football Focus, but he became the Match of the Day presenter. I worked at The Sun at the time and they said, you can come and have access. And I came and watched Match of the Day, started doing Football Focus with Gary, then went all the way through the day. I sat in, in this little room that they used to watch it, where they had like nine tellies. It was Hanson, Trevor Booking and Gary. And they'd say, by the way, the only thing I'll tell you is that you will never see a goal.

2:56You'll always be looking at the wrong telly. Because it's quite old fashioned, from that you know it's quite analogue really they talked about golf the entire day obviously they all had their fairway tans and we had it was really fun but that was really i mean that was a long time ago when what am i thinking is it like 98 maybe wow long time ago and there's me thinking i've done something cool well you have done something cool i think it doesn't be cooler because you've been sitting there talking about the editing i didn't really know what to say i was on a green screen i remember that i'm thinking that was kind of futuristic that's very cool anyway listen that's match of the day but we're not talking about match of the day no we're not what We are talking about Margot Robbie has a new film announcement coming out.

3:32Her production company, Lucky Chap, who made Barbie and various other things. Another toy movie, this time for Hasbro, not Mattel, which was Barbie, which is Monopoly. Monopoly. So we're going to talk about that. And that will be interesting, I think. Toy movies in general. We're going to talk about Saturday Night Takeaway, which finished after 20 years on Saturday and what made it such an enormous hit. and then we're also talking about some really interesting research into all our favourite television programmes and the political voting breakdown of all their audiences so what shows the Tories like most and what shows the Labour voters like most so we've got an in-depth deep dive into that and there's some fascinating stuff in there.

4:10That's really I found that very very interesting anyway let's begin with Margot Robbie. By the way Monopoly movie they have been trying to make this thing for a long time because i remember 15 years ago i actually went and looked this up 15 years ago ridley scott was signed on to direct this genuinely it was announced he talked about it they said they were going to give it he was going to give it like a futuristic blade runner style sheen i mean it was all about greed you know i mean exactly you can imagine it anyway but they have been trying to get off the ground for a long time and hasbro who have had other properties that they have maybe battleship they did i saw battleships i've seen that with um Jesse Plemons Rihanna is in it Rihanna yeah and yeah in the end they do sort of blow up warships by saying A4 B7 it's an alien invasion I believe as I recall I've seen it once but yeah I would describe it as sorry for this one miss yes I'm afraid it was a miss and also that sort of told its own story of where that came maybe it came too soon because that was released the same day as the first Avengers movie oh was it how funny that's a sliding doors moment yeah a bit of a sliding sliding doors moment but anyway they're returning to the Hasbro well and Margot Robbie she's got this thing it's interesting I've heard her talk about this sort of stuff before one of her most early kind of eye-catching roles was she was Tonya Harding in that movie I Tonya I think she felt like sort of a lot of people know who Tonya Harding is and they might have very strong views one way or another she's not really that bothered she's got a real eye for these kind of discourse dominators if I can say you know and again she said about Barbie everyone knows who Barbie is you may not you may not like her you may you have but you know who it is and I think I suppose in a way that's the same with this IP and when we talk about IP sorry to be super basic people we talk about intellectual property and a huge number of movies are now based almost or it's really interesting if you look at the last the top movies of the decade top 50 movies there's about three that are not based on existing IP so IP So a Marvel comic would be IP.

6:12Yeah. A book would be IP. A toy would be IP. One of the movies I'm telling you about there is Elvis. That's not existing IP, but in a way it's kind of like it's a biopic. I mean, to some extent, to me, that feels slightly existing IP. With Margot Robbie's eye for popular culture, can the Air Fryer movie be far away? I wonder. It's interesting what's happened, which is that a company like Mattel, well, we'll use the example of Barbie because I suppose that's obviously the most runaway success. And it's kind of weird. That tells its own story. it's a weird movie about a toy that was kind of quite mainstream you go to the barbie headquarters mattel have got this place and they give you this brand immersion and there's one guy who serves as a kind of kind of willy wonker type figure and shows you all the way around and there are you know cultural exhibits about what barbie means or what hot wheels means or what by the way hot wheels don't laugh because jj abrams has signed on for that oh by the way these these are all things that are actually happening lena dunham's poly pocket movie that's happening there's a magic eight ball movie wow view there's a view master movie in development there's a uno movie vin diesel is doing rock and sock and yeah uno that yeah but if they can do monopoly they can do uno uh rock and sock and robots vin diesel is doing is that the one where you you punch and then their heads go up i assume it's not a toy i had so i don't know that one barney the purple dinosaur daniel kalua is doing i mean whoa okay margot bobby's agent did say oh no sorry greta gerwig's agent said and I think this is quite a good quote so I'm going to read the whole thing out is it a great thing that our great creative actors and filmmakers live in a world where you can only take giant swings around consumer content and mass-produced products I don't know but it is the business I think that tells you where we are I mean I find it quite depressing that these these sort of toy movies it's just another form of franchise first of all it's existing IP they are there to shift plastic let's be honest Mattel's I don't know I think it pushed up their sales but They probably make about, I think they made 1.5 billion off Barbie merchandise a year.

8:10And they love these kind of movies that are what they call toyetic, which means... Toyetic? Toyetic. It's a rather grim word used in the industry, which means it's kind of got these inbuilt merchandising opportunities. Basically, they want to sell you toys. So for all Greta's interests and Margot's interesting messages via Barbie, I still could never go over the fact that this is a movie in the service of toy IP. and I do think it's quite odd that all these brilliant talents are now kind of caught up trying to sort of come up with a Magic 8-Ball movie or whatever it is. And actually the toy company is now saying, oh, people are coming to us wanting to tell their stories now.

8:45And I was thinking, yeah, I know where they are. They're trying to sneak a story that they want to tell, thinking can I sort of reconstitute this around the Uno cards and tell the tale I want to tell because that's going to maybe get made because people have what they... The reason people love these kind of branded things is because they feel like, oh, half the marketing, not half the marketing has been done for us because, I don't know, Barbie costs$145 million. They spent$150 million marketing that. But that's on Barbie, which everyone knows what this is. So marketing is hugely expensive. And this has become a sort of new way of doing it.

9:18People think, oh, they've got an inbuilt affinity. They already know what this thing is. They're like Hot Wheels as a kid. Maybe they'll see the movie by J.J. Abrams. So you're saying, so if, for example, you are a writer and you've got an absolute passion piece for years and years, which is about the sensibility of animals and animal consciousness and the fact that in 50 years time we'll go, how on earth did we treat animals in the way that we did? And they have an absolute equality to us. And I've got this movie about it. If you are that writer, the thing to do is go to the makers of Buckaroo.

9:45Yeah. Now you've got a movie. But that's the interesting thing. Why should it carry the bucket? Why? Why should it carry any of this? Why are we overloading it with all of that stuff? And also, shouldn't we support it when it finally rebels? Yes. Instead of going, I can't believe I've lost, you should go, do you know what? Good for you. And the whole point of the game is just to wait until the donkey rebels and then support it. We all back the donkey. We'll have waited for it to happen anyway, haven't we? It's a slightly flawed game in some ways. But I... You think? Okay, game's master. Yes, I'm going to break the news that Buckaroo is not that good.

10:18Let's do 20 minutes on Buckaroo, shall we? I bet you've got a tight 20 days on Buckaroo. Listen, I could do The Rest is Buckaroo. I could be doing this all year. But the fascinating thing, so here's the thing, and it's twofold. So Barbie comes out, and it's a huge hit. And it's a huge hit for a number of reasons. It's a huge hit because Margot Robbie got involved and got Greta Gerwig involved. So that's an interesting, creative sort of union there. It's interesting because it speaks to what it was to be a woman in the 20th century and what that means in the 21st century. So there's lots and lots to talk about and what Barbie represented when it came out and what it represents now.

10:51So it's genuinely a fascinating area. What it's not about is people want to see films about toys. That is not what it is about. It's not people going, oh my God, there's a film about a toy. Great, I'll go and see that. Oh, there's another film about a toy, a Magic 8-Ball. I'll go and see that. But Hollywood immediately always take the wrong lessons from things. And we do in TV as well. Something's a hit. It's based on IP of a toy. Let's do some films based on IP as a toy. Rather than thinking, oh, why don't we do a load more female-centered films? that are helmed and produced by women. I agree with you.

11:25Why don't we do things about toys? And if you're a creator in that world, it's not like everyone goes, oh, we agree with you. It's for the next three years, that's the only way we're going to be able to raise finance. Because the studios and the people around the studios are the only people who can get a movie off the ground. So whatever direction they are sailing in for the next three years, as creatives, you sort of have to get on board. As I say, I think it is very depressing. Having said that, the Lego movie was great. Exactly. I have seen quite a few of them now as an accompanying parent.

11:56And once we got through the Ninjago, all the other ones, I was like, okay, I've seen the Lego Batman now. I've seen it now. But they want to build out franchises from all these things. And as we have discussed several times on this podcast, the story of the last however many years has been about trying to build out franchises so that every movie either is a sort of prequel to the next movie or a sequel. so everything can completely be built out but all of that is to do with familiarity and affinity and as i was saying that i think there is something in people people will go and see toy movies because of the toy well i'm from the world of television where familiarity is the key and getting a second series third series fourth series you know the second series of quiz show is a sequel yes for the first series television is completely built on sequels the movie business has always been built on uniqueness and you know what's the great or two are coming up with now and what's Coppola come up with now and actually television is that's a story yes oh isn't it which I'm sure we'll cover another point his uh his new movie which sounds amazing um but tv has always been you build on the same thing and you do another series and another series and you know like Saturday Night Takeaway which we're going to talk about in a bit it's been going for 20 years so every year a new series comes out it's still Saturday Night Takeaway but no one's going oh I can't believe that they're doing another Saturday Night Takeaway franchise it's that it's the same show it's the repeatability so i'm quite i'm comfortable with there being you know five mission impossible movies and six seven eight i don't i don't really mind that there's nothing else that's the trouble there's nothing else it has eaten the whole of the rest of cinema there are no original films in the top 50 of the last decade that's absolutely apart from you know tenet and as i say elvis you know these are hardly any movies and even then if you're hollywood they're going to go okay it has to be based on a toy or it's got to have five letters in the title that's what people are really going to see at the moment exactly but listen, next year when we co-write Buckaroo the movie we'll I'm sure have a different opinion of it now the interesting thing about Monopoly is there is actually an interesting film to be told about the actual creation of Monopoly so the film one assumes will be about rentier capitalism but that is what the game is based on so the story of the game is It was invented by a man called Charles Darrow in the early 30s after the Great Depression.

14:12He was a salesman down on his luck and he came up with this thing, sold it to Parker Brothers and made millions and millions and millions. First ever board game millionaire. But that's not where it comes from at all. He stole it. What it really comes from, there's a game. In 1905, a woman called Elizabeth McGee came up with this thing called the Landlord Game. And it was absolutely, it was an attempt to show the evils of rentier capitalism. and it was an attempt to show that the most important thing in the world is to have a wealth tax and a property tax, which is very fashionable now as well.

14:43So she came up with this thing, the landlord game, essentially to prove the evils of capitalism. Okay, that's what the game was. And you can see, if you go online, you can see the original patent that she got in 1904. You can see the boards. It's also one of the very first ever continuous boards, which is a board where you go all the way around the outside and then you go back around again. Now, it sort of fell out of favour, but a few people had played it and a few college professors took it up and started using it in economics lectures to show because it was a beautiful illustration of what is wrong with putting the wealth in the hands of landlords and taking it from renters.

15:18And over the years, people started making their own boards and at Princeton, they were playing it and Atlantic City, they were playing it, which is where the big Monopoly board is. So they were playing it. They had these versions. Charles Darrow goes around to a neighbor's house who play their version of this game that's been passed down the generations from Elizabeth McGee, he the next day rings them and said, could you type out all the rules to that game that you showed me? What a rat. Yeah, and they were like, okay, we'll type it out. They typed it out, by the way, with spelling mistakes that are still in the version of Monopoly which came out.

15:51Okay, so he took it to Parker Brothers. To be fair, he also created his own boards. He created a lot of the symbols we see now. He did a lot of graphic work on it, but it wasn't his. It came from Elizabeth McGee from 1904. Or, you know, a woman talking about the evils of capitalism. And suddenly this guy takes it over and sells it and makes a million from it. That's a movie. That's incredible. What a great story. I'm afraid I did not know that. And I think that's poor Elizabeth. The Landlord Game and the version of Monopoly we've seen now are quite different. But they were just over the years that it changed bit by bit by bit.

16:22But it all came from her original board game. I'd watch that. Yeah, absolutely. Because the same lessons apply. And I suppose that's why I know Mattel felt that when they're not plugged into the kind of status quo, then they become less relevant and they do less in sales. So they always want Barbie to be doing things that are related to her times or even slightly ahead of her times. When they took Greta Gerwig around, they said, oh, look, you know, Barbie went to space before most women in the US had a credit card and things like that. But really, with lots of these things, they want to become Hasbro, you know, they want to become a pop culture company.

16:57Yeah, so she's got the rights, they're going to put something together and we'll keep an eye on that. But it feels like a lot of those Polly Pocket, Magic 8-Ball movies are going to fall by the wayside. But you can be sure one of them will be a hit. The Polly Pocket movie is happening. I think Lily Collins is in it. Lena Dunham's written it and is probably directing it, I'm not sure. But it is extraordinary to have so many of the kind of best creators tied up in these kind of ridiculous IP movies, in my view. That said, if Bob Iger is listening, we are absolutely on board for Buckaroo. We're very much on board for Buckaroo.

17:26shall we move on let us move on to Ant & Dec oh Takeaway has finished after ITV's did a big Saturday night show for this time of year hosted by Ant & Dec who honestly you cannot find people to say a bad word about I have to say yeah adored by everyone inside the industry and outside the industry some of the biggest bitches in showbiz will not say anything mean about them which I find quite surprising but there we are there it is you can prod and prod and prod but also there's nothing nice to runners yeah you go to the heads of any department and they'll go oh yeah no they're great they are absolutely great to work with and I think that's part of the success of that show when it started out so it's 20 years ago now um takeaway it had no right to be a success is the truth they were sort of doing well they'd done smtv was the thing where we all went oh hold on these guys uh which was a Saturday morning show yeah um yeah back in the day when we had Saturday morning shows with them and um Kat Deely uh and they'd done friends like these on bbc which had gone for a couple of series they'd done pop idol for a couple of series then got replaced by Kate Thornton um so Takeaway came out um 20 years ago first series not a huge hit is the truth but I think you can kind of see that those guys are good at what they do so they've given another chance and another chance and it's turned into I think probably the best produced bit of Saturday night television imaginable it's a you know a show that's an absolute love letter to Saturday night presented by two people who clearly were brought up watching Saturday Night TV and I've spoken to lots and lots of people who've been involved in it this week and just sort of asked, what is it that they have and what is it that that show has that has made it such an incredible success?

19:01And yeah, the first thing that you're right in saying is everybody loves them and everyone loves them because they're incredibly collaborative. And if you're, the whole idea of the show, so Saturday Night Takeaway, I mean, it's a big variety show with Anton Deck at its heart, a variety show where, by the way, not presented by comedians, presented by television presenters. I mean, they are funnier than most comedians and their instincts are much better than most comedians, but that's not where they come from. They come from wanting to entertain a television audience. That's where they come from.

19:29But with any TV show, you have to have a hook, really. You can't just say, oh, no, it's going to be lots of bits put together. So Noel Edmonds, you know, he's in a country house and people come into his house. Okay, that's all the hook you need. And on this, it was win the ads. You won the product. For listeners who don't know, you won the products that were being advertised in the commercial break of that show and so even then you know you watch the last episode on saturday night it begins with the show that says don't just watch the ads win them and it ended with don't just watch the ads win them so whatever else goes on in between that's the hammock that we are sitting in is watch the ads and that that was come up with uh by a researcher and denise harrop she's called and that's shows an environment where everyone's comfortable talking and everyone's comfortable listening and wherever an idea comes from, that's the idea that you go with.

20:14And I think even two weeks out, they didn't have the name Saturday Night Takeaway. I think it was called 2000 AD or 2000 AD. There was some weird kind of… Yeah, ads. Yes, Ant and Derek and ads. And so they were kind of, is this something? And there's a great producer called Leon Wilde who's still in the business now. He came up with Saturday Night Takeaway, which is perfect because people have a takeaway on a Saturday night and you're taking away the ads and it's on Saturday night so you know exactly where you are. And I think the point of those two stories is the reason it's great is because it's collaborative and the reason it's collaborative is because it's got two great hosts who understand that you're made better by brilliant people being around you.

20:54And, you know, one of those people would be Andy Milligan who writes an awful lot. He's the sort of Eddie Braben to Anton Deck, Eddie Braben to Morecambe and Wise. He's there and, you know, he writes with them. And I talk to Andy a bit. I talk to some of the producers. And they all said, I go to them with a joke, I go to them with an idea. They look at it, I have a list. They go down, they pick the one I knew was good, which, by the way, hosts never do. Writers will take gags in and hosts will go down the list and you go, okay. That's the one you want, isn't it? That's the one you're going with.

21:24Right, interesting. They will pick the good idea. They will then sit down and make that idea better. Yeah. And that's a testament to great, you know, if a presenter is also a producer and is also a comedian, then that's the joy and you've got the two of them and they clearly love each other. Is there something though and not to introduce a down note into this but there does feel something like the end of an era not just the end of an era of Saturday and obviously by the way I should say that Ant and Dec still have the two other biggest shows on ITV which is Britain's Got Talent and they've got I'm a Celeb.

21:54Absolutely. Also Limitless Wind which is their own format which is not one of the biggest shows on ITV but which is their own format. Yeah. But isn't there something end of an era about this about Saturday night shows and you know I've talked to people in the business this weekend also and people were saying 10 years ago the show got 10 million yeah and now it gets four 4.5 five if you're very lucky and that saturday night has become that these shows are very expensive about a million pounds an episode and you know these kind of shiny floor shows really the remainders are britain's got talent and strictly but otherwise it's very very hard and these shows don't work anymore and they're just even big buzz shows that you're seeing i know it's not a saturday night show but even a show that gets like a massive buzz and feels like it's got a huge purchase on the discourse if i can use that word semi-ironically traitors that gets like four and a half it's really interesting talking to people about the itv saturday night schedule and what works what do you do anymore do you have like and someone described to me as like we have one main course and you're just trying to get this thing and you're that's something like the 9 30 10 o 'clock slot they have tried so many different things in that and they just do know what they don't know what you know They've tried drama in it, hard dramas.

23:04They've tried, you know, funny things. They've tried all sorts of things and lots of things just don't work. They must have tried six different ideas. It's hard to make Saturday Night work now. And some people, I've spoke to a couple of people about this actually, and both of them said there needs to be some kind of genre reinvention. As happened, and one of them compared it to what he called the sort of, or someone else called to him the Lambertisation after Stephen Lambert of Channel 4, back in the sort of heyday when all these kind of um formatted factual shows came out brilliant yeah wife swap faking it super nanny all that sort of thing and people it was a sort of a new it was a bit of a mash-up of genres and you weren't quite sure what you're watching but it was really fresh and was what and both the people i spoke to this weekend thought i wonder just something almost needs to happen on a saturday night that's like that where people like hang on what is this but i'm into it uh do you do you feel that or do you feel that that such a thing doesn't exist and that we're just chasing a past that isn't going to come back i would say with all due respect to the people you spoke to that's a sort of a view from five years ago i would say which is we saturday night is dead like we can't do anything on saturday night anymore that that family audience is absolutely gone uh you know we're never gonna we might as well give up on saturday night why do we think it's any more significant it's not more significant in most countries american tv then saturday night tv is not a thing you know it's in australia saturday like tv is not a thing so it's only in britain and so people had had thought those days when we could get 15 million are gone yes they are definitely gone but we've got to the stage now we got to that post streaming malaise now yeah where we were constantly thinking oh we're only getting five million for this i think there is now an attitude in the television industry in the linear television industry that goes hold on a minute we are getting five million people yeah to watch this the anti-tech thing last night peaked at 5.6 i think that in any of the streamers in any bit of our culture we have is an unbelievably huge number number it's an insane number of people and i think we now slightly i'm making my bed we're making our bed differently and saying actually if we can get four or five six million this is amazing and occasionally strictly will hit 10 and I must have a level hit nine.

25:17But it's an extraordinary number of people. Now, ITV had these juggernauts for years and years on Saturday night that looked absolutely impregnable. You know, it had X Factor and Anton Deck and all this kind of stuff. And X Factor, of course, has completely disappeared. And now, you know, Anton Deck has gone as well. The thing you wouldn't have guessed five years ago is that BBC would have such a resurgence on a Saturday night. Now, the BBC, with the Michael McIntyre big show, which owes a lot to the DNA of Anton Deck, but is again brilliantly made and made by people who love television. The Wheel is a huge show.

25:53Bring Back Gladiators, that's a huge show. ITV have got The 1 % Club, which is a huge show. Yes, that does well. So what they're doing now, they are taking big comedians and giving them old formats. And people love that. So Romesh Ranganathan does Weakest Link. Michael McIntyre does a new format, The Wheel. you know, Lee Mack doing 1 % Club and it's really a shot on the arm for that Saturday night because Saturday night really was in the doldrums three years ago or so, really in the doldrums and now if your friends are writing that saying we can't afford to fund this at 5 million because they're very expensive but I think there's a sensibility that says if we can get 4, 5, 6 million on a Saturday night that's an awful lot of people and so can we find formats that we can fund to do that 1 % Club is not as expensive as Saturday Night Takeaway.

26:41And the ratings are almost on a level with it. It's a huge hit. The Wheel is not as expensive as Saturday Night Takeaway. And it can get 5 million. You know, Blankety Blank with Bradley Walsh. That's not a super expensive show to make. And it's getting 4.5 million. And I think we've got to the stage on Saturday night where people are saying 4.5 million people is a lot of people. And I think three or four years ago we were saying 4.5 million people is a disaster. and now I think it seems to me from talking to lots of people in the industry we're working out that actually we can build an industry on something that pulls in such an enormous I'm going to have to and we're going to have to yeah because the days of you know I did Confessions with Simon Mayer we got 10 million yeah you know and it's like which is great yeah but you know it's probably it's probably not going to happen again now but you know Ant and Dec are still going to be a staple of Saturday nights I think and you know everything they do they're just kind of a joy to watch right?

27:40Yeah oh absolutely absolutely completely and as I say they've still got the other two biggest shows on ITV Exactly have I ever told the story of when I first came across them I used to write in my very early days in television I wrote with David Williams as was David Williams as he is now and there's a lovely man at Children's BBC at the time called Chris Pilkington he's a proper old school BBC exec and was lovely and Biker Grave had just finished and he said I think there's something in these boys, Ant and Dec, I think I'm going to give them a show and it was called the Ant and Dec show on Children's BBC and Chris said to me and David would you go up and have a meeting with these boys and we're like okay so we went up on the train to Newcastle and met them and we must have been 22 so they must have been 17 something like that and he just sat with them for half an hour and I think oh my god you are great, you know if you're any sort of a writer and you find a performer who's really got chops So you're like, oh, I can just go away and just write this forever.

28:39Now, it turned out I couldn't, in the end, I couldn't do that show, but David could. So David wrote for them for like three years. He was their kind of head writer on that show. And it won BAFTAs and all sorts of things like that. But yeah, from that day onwards, you're just thinking, well, I mean, I think that you can do anything. Even just back then, you could see the way they were sort of bouncing off each other. I wouldn't have predicted that David would be on the Britain's Got Talent judging panel when they were hosting it. No. I mean, that would have been a different one. Different timeline.

29:06Exactly. But, and that's the other thing. Sometimes when with David's books and people say, oh, do you know, oh, I've heard he doesn't write them. I think, well, I'll tell you this for nothing. He's always was an unbelievable writer. I mean, and for kids as well, just absolutely. The second he's in with Ant and Dec, just the stuff he would pitch, you just go, oh, kids are going to go absolutely crazy for this. So in a way you could have predicted. Yes. The success of all of them in a way. But, yeah, it's amazing from that day that their career is, with a few little bumps in the road, has just gone stratospheric.

29:35and as you say the key thing is I've yet to meet a single person who has a bad thing to say about them there's another couple of heroes who should be mentioned I think the first couple of series it took a while to find its feet there's a producer called Ed Forsdick who is no longer with us Ed and he I think was what the person who just said okay I'm going to just take this by the neck and just really kind of just absolutely kind of format it and streamline it and he did and he worked with them for many many years I think he has a lot to do with the success of it. And I know the producers now are brilliant as well, but Andy Milligan as well, he writes with them.

30:10But what an amazing 20 years. And again, I often talk about why I love TV, but if you started watching that show when you were six years old, with your mum and dad, or with your mum, or with your grandparents, wherever you were, you are now 26, and it's been absolutely a part of your life, and will be a part of your life forever, and Ant and Dec understand that, and that's why they make television, and they make it for families and they make it for people and they make it for memories. And that, I think, is their great gift, is understanding who is behind the camera. I have a story about Chris Pilkington, who sort of launched one.

30:46He was once, he was at Endermore, ran children's TV at Endermore for years, Chris, and he was the loveliest man, but always in a blazer, Chris. Glasses, blazer, very, very proper. We had a company called Zepatron, it was Charlie Brooker and all those boys. Chris had said, I'd like to have a meeting with you. so I just wonder if there's anything you can do in the kids TV area and they were like yeah of course and they were super cool all those boys and so they're sitting in the room waiting for Chris and he's a bit late and he comes in five minutes late and he's like harried and he just goes oh my god I'm so sorry I'm late those f***ing CBeebies so there you go that's kids TV for you but anyway listen let's raise a glass to Anton Deck what an incredible raising my coffee mug to Anton Deck to Anton Deck 20 years of genius and I look forward to many many more Shall we now go to a break?