Introducing... The Rest Is Entertainment

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0:19Hi there, Alistair Campbell here from The Rest Is Politics. Now, we don't talk very much on The Rest Is Politics about one N Farage and his desperate attempts to keep grabbing as much publicity as he can by eating grubs and talking absolutely nonsense in the jungle. But is he entertaining the public? Not some people restue and I'm going to talk about, but our new sister podcast The Rest Is Entertainment will not be judging his contribution to our nation's political life, brackets and negative brackets, but instead they'll judge his ability to eat kangaroos testicles on national television. Hosted by the hilarious Marina Hyde and the very cerebral and talented Richard Osman, the show looks at telefilms books, celebrity gossip, all things entertainment is a taster of the first episode.

1:15Nigel in the jungle. Okay, so first of all, I'm a celebrity has been so long ITV's biggest show, I think, and it's still it's the biggest show of the year, actually, ratings wise, it is the biggest show of the year already. And Nigel Farage is, I think, the most expensive contestant ever at £1 .5 million. I think he is a good booking for ITV, and I will say that that's because what he's done is he's got people to watch the show who perhaps might not otherwise watch it or it's one of those slight marmalade droppers when you hear it and people think I'm going to tune in. And then I guess you hope that they get caught up in the stories and the other contestants and whatever, because by the way I don't think he's a fantastic contestant, but we can come onto that in a bit.

1:56Well, there's two things. They don't like Nigel Farage being given £1 .5 million, but I don't think anyone likes anyone being given £1 .5 million. Even your best friend says someone's just giving me £1 .5 million and you go, ah, no, that's annoying. And then the question of should he be in there, and is he attention to further his ends? I think this, I think that I'm a select by and large never does contestants much good if they're not particularly likable, and he's not particularly likable. I think what he thought was, I'm going to go in there, I am going to be voted for every single task, because I'm the bogeyman, I'm a guy, people love to hate me, and what's happened is people are gone, no, just don't really care.

2:37Now I think Farage, even said, he said in one of the first episodes, he was not voted for a task, so he wasn't voted, and genuinely shocked on his face, like he'd lost another by election. Okay, so he had that thing like, oh no, the dolphin has got more votes than me. And he said, if you get voted for the task, you get 25 % of the air time. Okay, so that's his game. He wants to go in there, he wants to set himself up as sort of a man of the people, but the beautiful thing about reality TV is you can try and be whatever you want, but people find you out. The trouble with Farage, I think, is that he's actually, and why he's not an interesting contestant, is that he's a very boring man, he has no sort of hinterland whatsoever.

3:18Can you imagine him listening to music? If he did listen to any music, it would be like a sort of CD that would have come free on the Sunday Times in about 2001. Absolutely no interest in anything. I once interviewed him and asked him for his favourite film, and genuinely he couldn't think of the name of a movie. And in the end, he just had to say something. And he suddenly remembered Richard Curtis as an idea and said, I think it would be one of those Richard Curtis things, so he was a really emotional human and said, and I love actually, it was the only one he could remember clearly. He literally, I was thinking, just say the greatest escape, say the damn buster, I mean, it's not hard.

3:52All I'm thinking of now is what's my favourite film. If I was being interviewed by Marina, what would I say my favourite film is, that's the thing. So Nigel Farage has spent a long time in politics. And in politics, he is a charismatic man because he's more charismatic than other politicians. However, if you put yourself in a room, if you put yourself in a room with Sam Thompson from Maiden Chelsea, okay, you disappear. He did a task where he had to drink various things, you know, cows ain't us, the usual stuff. Kangaroo's ain't us probably. And you could tell he was trying to be the sort of hail fellow well met sort of man of the people, alpha male.

4:26But you know, he's up against Tony Belieu, who's the world cruiserweight champion, who's like an actual alpha male. Right. And Tony Belieu is amazing for that show. He's perfect because this is a guy who's been through all sorts of challenges. And Farage disappears. I noticed this last night where they said to Tony Belieu, tell us, you know, Tony Belieu was telling the story and saying about that, he was sick fire and it was went out in the eighth round, but he can't remember anything about the eighth round. And he said essentially the referee saved his life. And then they said to Farage, tell us a story.

4:58And he said, do you know what, when I first did for Parliament, I didn't even care if I was going to win. And I thought, okay, hey, lucky. And the camera just sort of panned away because it's so boring. He is always on. He is trying to hit prepared lines on a reality format, which is just bizarre. He's treating it like he's going on one of the Sunday politicians shows. For a start, he had quite a few sort of prepared jokes. So he'd be like, well, I have some snakes. I've met some snakes in the European Parliament. And then, you know, like, when he had to eat someone's anus or rather, he said, oh, what was the thing?

5:28I think I got the back end of this deal. I'm not thinking you've got about four days left of this material. And then you're kind of on your own with your own personality, which isn't enough. So when people say, I think we shouldn't have booked him. The BBC should not have booked him 30 times for questions. Right. Because question time is easy for Farage. Because again, he's up against people who have zero charisma, usually. And something like that is what Boris Johnson is very good at. If he knows he's got three minutes to answer a question, he knows he can say exactly what he wants. And so long as he keeps going and keeps going, nothing will come back at him.

5:58In the jungle, you can't do that. In the jungle, you can say occasionally he tries to say something political, Fred Syriac says, is he anyone who really picks him up on stuff? And you can see, finally, Farage is like, this is what I'm here for. I'm going to talk about the fact that there's too many immigrants coming into the country. And you think, nice, this is not where we are. And Fred is actually doing some useful things around the camp. You're just like one of your dad's friends. But he does this sort of, he goes to the Bush Telegraph, which I guess is the equivalent of Big Brother's Diary room or something like that.

6:33And there was a thing, a monologue he did where he said, you know, a lot of people are saying, just what about Little Old Me? What happens if the Conservatives lose the next election? And does Nigel become leader of the Conservative Party? I don't want like this, you know, thinking, are people saying this in the camp? This is so weird, you look ridiculous. I have not heard Marvin Humes ask if you're going to be the next leader of the Conservative Party. No, actually they have asked him if he would run again. They're really unclear on where the Prime Minister, how you become an MP, anything like that, in the main.

7:03Clearly what he has taken as his sort of impetus. Obviously, Nigel's idol is Donald Trump, who famously was the biggest reality star of the first kind of golden era of reality TV. If you can go all at that, which I personally thought it was an amazing, particularly a time. But Trump, as the host of the apprentice, the US apprentice, had he not done that? He would not have ended up as US President. It was absolutely key. It kind of put him right into everybody's homes. He became a sort of famous person again, having been a kind of a big deal in the 80s. I guess Farah is thinks he can use I'm a celebrity to parlay his way back into some, if it does happen to him, by the way, and if he does somehow, you know, and he does become re -admitted to the Conservative Party and become significant and senior within it, it won't be because of this show.

7:49But anyway, Richard, can you just, as someone who obviously has lots of reality TV experience, can you talk to me about booking? The booking, see, it's interesting with Farah, so he's got 1 .5 million, which is a lot. And ITV knows he's not a great booking. He's an okay booking because, mainly, I think, honestly, because people don't really think he's authentic, so they wonder who he really is. So that's an interesting booking, because Matt Hancock, you think, I don't know, I have no idea who you are. And the generation who grew up watching reality TV knows that they will find something out about this person.

8:21They know the first three days he's going to do his pre -prepared lines, and then the mask will slip. So it's an interesting booking in that regard. Here's the thing, when they're booking that show, you want to get a mix of people, right? So they've got Marvin Hume's and Josie Gibson, so that's the ITV mainstream, absolutely covered off. That's show pony stable. Beautiful. That's people, you know, absolutely, we feel safe, we feel at home. They know Sam Thompson is going to be very funny, and he's sort of, people are slightly recognising, but don't quite know him yet, so they know they've got someone to introduce to the wider public, who the wider public are going to love.

8:56Nella, they're thinking great, we've got sort of a YouTuber, which is, that's the obsession with all these things, have we got a YouTuber? It's like when Strictly got Joe Sagan, they're like, we've got a YouTuber, guys, guys, we've got a YouTuber, you know, that's where the claxon goes off. What they didn't have there was perhaps somebody older, somebody more mainstream, a more establishment who, you know, that's, you sort of want that. They were in talks with Boris Johnson, they were in talk, I know, well, he would be a night era, I mean, that I would watch because he really would show himself up.

9:28He got quite far down the line, I think he would, I think he, at some point, well, I guess he'll look at see what happens to Farage, which in my view, won't be a whole lot. Yes. And then he will decide whether or not to do it, but he'll get desperate eventually. So they get, they can't, they can't, well, listen, Sue, we're going to have Boris Johnson on TV news, and we're going to be doing a podcast when that starts. And that's the thing I'm looking forward to most in 2024, because he is a guest, not a host. He is going to be a terrible, terrible host, and they will have paid him an awful lot of money, and like everyone who pays Boris Johnson an awful lot of money, they are not going to get their money's worth.

10:02But I digress. They get him in a golden handcuffs deal, and then it's them wearing the handcuffs, yes. If you'd like to hear the first episode in full, search the rest of the entertainment wherever you get your podcasts.