Is Strictly Going Alt-Right?

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Hello and welcome to this episode of The Resters Entertainment with me, Marina Hyde.

And me, Richard Osman.

Good day to the Marina.

Oh, you're going old-fashioned.

How are you?

Yes, I'm not bad.

I'm not bad.

How has your week been?

Apart from this heat, or hasn't it been hot?

I mean, I love the heat, but you know, it is.

It's ongoing.

And we have a country without air conditioning.

Yeah.

Something's got to be done about that.

This is air conditioned.

I'm sitting in an air-conditioned conditioned place right now.

Let's never leave.

That's a really good idea.

That's why podcasting has grown, because everyone's just wanting to get out of the heat.

Anyway, listen, we're here to talk about the latest, freshest show business news.

It's a lowbrow festival today, Richard.

It really is, isn't it?

It really is.

Even for us.

We've got the Beckham developments in the Beckham family feud after...

a quite astonishing vow renewal ceremony involving Brooklyn and Nicola.

You love a vow renewal ceremony.

I love them.

Well, they didn't happen in the old days.

This is something that is entirely related to magazine buy-ups and online and social media.

Yeah, the only time they used to happen is when a marriage was seriously failing.

Yeah.

Or someone had forgotten to buy something for Valentine's Day.

Now it's PR.

We're also going to talk about the Real Housewives franchise.

This Real Housewives of London has just launched.

We're going to talk about the history of that, what it means, what it is.

What it means.

It's a big phenomenon.

It means everything, but also nothing.

Yeah.

Yeah.

And we're also going to tell you who's going to win Strictly Come Dancing this year.

The lineup has been announced.

I think there are a couple of curveballs in there which we will definitely are be talking about that tell us something about some british television i think and british culture but we will we will go through all of that later on but let should we start with the beckhams or the or should i say the beckham peltzers the beckham peltsers now we've discussed before on the podcast the sort of beckham family feud the idea of a feud between the original Beckham family, the OG Beckhams and Brooklyn, the firstborn, and his wife, Nicola Pelts.

They married three years ago in a big ceremony.

And ever since then there have always been rumors of this feud now they if they were plausibly deniable when they didn't turn up Brooklyn and Nicola didn't turn up to any of David's sort of several 50th birthday celebrations if it was plausibly deniable then it definitely definitely isn't now because this week um brooklyn and nicola unleashed a sort of huge photo dump of pictures from their very big wedding vows renewal ceremony very quick wedding vow ceremony.

It's almost like he's making a point about something.

Because after three years, what is it that's happened in the relationship that you're thinking, you know what?

I'd love, I would like to.

I mean, I say to Ingrid all the time, if I could marry you every day, I would.

But I'm not going to then do it.

But he'd never do anything else.

If you know what I mean.

However, you are quite a busy person, and I sense that these two have

a little bit less to do than you.

A little bit.

Now, photographs don't take a long time to develop.

I don't think he's a photographer anymore, actually.

I think that was about four careers ago both i and brooklyn would uh would beg to differ

so so anyway the ceremony the perennial ceremony

presided over by her aging kind of maga activist investor father billionaire nelson pouts so he was he was the sort of he was the officiator he was the celebrant

she wore

either way wow if you're if you're david beck i mean that's that's really making a point isn't it nicola wore her mother's old um wedding dress from the time she married nelson first time or fifth time?

I don't know.

How many times did they renew?

I don't know.

Well, they've got so many children.

They've got something like eight kids.

So I don't think they really had time for all that, but who knows?

Maybe they did.

Maybe they did.

The ways of Palm Beach are not our ways.

But there were no Beckhams present at all.

Apart from Brooklyn, he turned up.

Apart from Brooklyn.

That'd be a hell of a snub from the Pelts to the Beckhams if they'd done it without him.

Obviously, everyone has sort of said, oh my gosh, this is enormous.

Because the reason we're talking about this at all, I suppose, is because what is Bran Beckham?

Okay, if you have to talk about what is their actual brand, because we hear about Bran, and in fact, it's only because of them that we really talk about celebrities as brands.

They were the first to do it.

It's impossible to overstate how significant they were in like British celebrity culture and how much they caught, certainly caught a different wave of global celebrity culture.

25 years ago, no one talked about brands and narratives and all that sort of stuff.

I ended up writing about this on

last week.

Well, certainly there were brands and narratives, but not in terms of family culture.

Not normal people writing in newspaper comment sections talk about, oh, this is the the narrative.

They're controlling the narrative, the brand.

This has become completely democratized.

The royal family.

Maybe.

Would have been the one that you might have started thinking, this is a carefully controlled brand.

Well, again, some common plot lines here with that particular one.

Anyway, what their brand is, I think, whatever adversity is thrown at them, be it, I don't know, kicking Simeone or, you know,

not having to leave the Spies Girls or whatever it is, they get through it and it becomes folded into the story and it's a learning experience because this is a family that sticks together.

Their brand is honestly their family, and it has been.

And you look at how the children are always being used to sell their different products, but the notion of the family unit is indivisible from their business interest.

I mean, indivisible more than anyone I can really think of, with the exception of the Royal Family or the Corleonees.

Yeah, or the Corleone, or people who work in organized crime.

The family is indivisible from their business interest.

By the way, we're not suggesting that the Beccons work in organized crime or the Royal Family.

No, no.

Listen, we're not absolutely ruling it out, but

we're not suggesting that they are.

So all the products and the teams and the makeup and the image rights all is really funneled through that central idea of this family that sticks together and plays together and does everything together.

So what happens when there is so clearly and undeniably a schism?

Because one of the weird things about it all is that if you think about how they started the Beckhams when they were together, well, we've talked about this before, so I'll skip over it relatively quickly, but they immediately monetized the relationship and the family it was this is the years of okay magazine and so they sold you know brooklyn was sold before he was born his the the fact of his existence as a sort of embryo was sold and from then on he you know the first baby pictures were sold and then that was all that era and then simon fuller takes over and he's it's the era of big image rights and instagram which they lean into yeah and so as the children have got older and they've got their own instagram handles you're always tagging the others in the interest of selling things.

And it's quite hard to know where the family stops and the selling begins sometimes.

But there's an incredibly sort of tyrannical, I would say, presenteeism about that kind of world.

And you notice it all the time now.

We've talked again about celebrity journalism and how people just say, oh, that's interesting.

So-and-so didn't like that post.

So you really have to show up and you have to like it.

You have to tag it.

You have to thank each other.

You have to at each other and everything.

And if you don't, then people start reading the runes.

And there are a million creminologists who will look at it and say, something's afoot here.

And they've been doing that for a long time.

And they did it over the wedding,

Nicola and Brooklyn's original wedding in Palm Beach, which, by the way, I feel we have to go back to the text messages.

Obviously, there was a legal case against one of several sets of wedding planners they had.

And if you actually go back to the text messages, these are some of the sacred texts of this.

She does have the slight vibe, doesn't she, Nicola, of a right little madam?

But anyway, anyway, we don't know.

But she says, she's saying the roses aren't white enough.

Oh, wow.

The white roses are not white enough.

Oh, really?

I asked for our invite list.

Invite.

She's so rude about everything.

He, Brooklyn, bless him.

His texts are things like, we should do a Brooklyn burger, like double or single burger, and a Nicola burger, which is not bun and it's lettuce instead of bun and meat for the girls.

Nicola replies merely with a vomit emoji.

That's fine.

But that's like anyone's, by the way.

That's always.

I mean, you feel for him because, like, that's any wedding.

Oh, yeah.

And your mom's trying to hide the cost of the makeup.

In this case, it's $100,000.

But, you know, everyone's got this stuff.

I've never had a family wedding ever where someone hasn't suggested, let's do like a groom burger and a bride burger.

That's always, you know, that's the thing.

And then the bride goes, no, we're going to do finger foods.

Yeah, we're doing it.

It's going to be canopes.

I've said it.

But the wedding planner did counter sue, obviously, because it's America.

And I think that's just literally the law.

I think it's the law.

So literally bring in the law out.

If you don't sue, someone sues you for not suing it.

Like a lawyer will sue you for not suing somebody just for

loss of earnings.

So the wedding planners countersued and they said that the one thing that Nicola and their mother had specifically said was that Victoria Beckham could not be informed about any mistakes in the wedding planning, especially to do with the guest list.

So there was obviously tension and they obviously found them difficult, right?

Because one of the funny things about this feud, I mean, not funny.

I'm not, I think it's tragic.

Any sort of family estrangement is just totally awful.

The thing is, we don't really know the real story, but one of the things is we know it exists, but we don't really know what it's about.

Were they difficult in the run-up to the wedding?

What was there?

It's very interesting to see that one of the guests who attended the Vau Renee, who's a great friend of Nicola,

put on Instagram and then later deleted.

This is the way that they all found it.

Go on, Columbia.

Put it on and said, they've had the courage to walk away from a toxic family.

Everyone's kissed the Beckham's asses for ages.

And come on.

No, no, all this sort of stuff.

You see, again, people follow the digital footprint of all of this there was a point where um cruise beckham said something like yeah it's staphylon syndrome people found these messages and then they were all mysteriously deleted quite apart from the family being um uh away from that vow and you're a lot of the friends were as well so because they they they move in that that nepo baby circle rocco ritchie was not there and ace gallagher yeah was not there the gordon ramsey clan they weren't there so all of brooklyn's kind of traditional friends they weren't there either it's you can sort of see what's happened and you know that if you do come from well i don't know if you can entirely see what's happened i in a way you think you can see what's happened i think i'm not sure that people do walk away from completely functional families well what i'll say is this i think that he comes from a very strong family that's for sure and there clearly is a lot of love there but but but but a family that has probably made kids jump through hoops they wouldn't ordinarily jump through.

It's not like we're going to go see your nan on Sunday.

Oh, God, it's we're doing an okay shoot.

Oh, God, you're going to be a photographer.

I think that he comes from a strong family.

And you you get to a certain age where you think, actually, I'm not the absolute result of my parents.

I'm my own person.

He's gone over to America to a very, very strong family.

I love, can I just say, the American money snobbery where the Beckhams are like a nothing.

Well, the Beckhams are worthy.

Well, they've had to be, he's basically had to sign a prenup.

I don't think David and Victoria thought that it would be their son signing a pre-nut when he got married.

The Beckhams are worth about half a billion and the Peltzes are worth an awful, an awful

lot more than that.

And I think they've accused the Beckhams of being tight.

And you're like, okay, I wonder what tight means when you're in that world it's so nuclear but so I think he stepped from one strong controlling family but at least who we know love him into another very strong controlling family with a wife that he clearly loves and so I imagine he's just thinking do you know what I'm my own person I'm Brooklyn I've got a support network around me here this is me making a point to the rest of my family and you know the brothers and the sisters and the grandparents that's what's going to bring it around you know you're a bet against parents don't you but you can see with Oh, no, they've unfollowed him, the brothers.

The brothers have, but Harper seems to be one of the real hopes for the future, that Harper and Brooks's relationship is still strong.

One of his few...

Do you see what's happening?

Colombo, this as well.

All his tweets pretty much are about Nicola, about his hot sauce brand, Cloud23, or about his in-laws.

But he did do a happy birthday to his grandfather, Ted.

So there are still, there are doors open.

Marina, that's all I'll say.

But don't you see how we're talking about it?

In the old days, people always used to say the Beckhams were actually our new sort of royal family and that they were a reaction against all that kind of nepo-privilege.

They were, you know, meritocratic, it was like a meritocratic thing.

They were the styles we've chosen rather than the ones that were imposed upon us.

But now we're just talking about them like they're the royal family with these, you know, a cousin could provide a rapprochement.

I mean, it's become.

It's like Jane Austen.

Yeah.

But one thing I would say, one thing that I think is interesting is that obviously part of the permanent rolling myth-making was David's documentary, which was hugely successful for Netflix, self-commissioned by David.

Yeah, well, this is why we're talking about it this week, funnily enough,

what you're about to talk about, which I think is going to be very, very interesting.

Yes, because as a result of the success of that, they thought, well, we'll do one for Victoria, Victoria's self-commissioned documentary, executive producer David Beckham.

Well, he's proved himself.

Yeah, he's proved himself.

Yeah, he's had a hit.

He's produced Beckham.

That documentary is supposed to be coming to Netflix in the autumn.

Now, his documentary did contain reference to adversity.

So, but you're going back a long way.

It's like two decades past that some little liars accused you of an affair.

Which reminds me, Rebecca Luz is currently on SAS, are you tough enough?

And she was complaining and said, They just keep asking me about David Beckham.

You think, what do you want them to ask you about?

What is it you think that about your past and why you're booked that you think the SAS might be interested in chatting to you about?

She's like, I mean, listen, anyway, that's

a sidebar, but I like the bar.

I haven't watched this series yet, actually.

So here's adversity was like two decades ago.

And they actually, even when they were doing the headlines about it, doctored the headlines for the, you know, one of those sort of montage shots of oh dear.

But we know they're still together.

We know they love each other.

And so that's a very self-contained form of adversity.

And it's obviously in the past.

How can she have a documentary coming out when, as I say, the family is indivisible from their business interests?

And they have someone who's completely torpedoed this idea of a family idle and how can it not just be four hours of her talking to camera about what's happened well there's three things that can happen either they can postpone the documentary and we've been talking to people at Netflix all week and no one no one will say no one is saying anything

yeah or so that's one thing can I just say that they did with even though it was only for a little bit of time remember they did that with Megan yeah yeah because with her as ever documentary she was worried that you know it would pull focus from the wildfires They can either put it or she can use it as a documentary where she builds bridges, which is a weird way to build bridges with your family is to do it via a Netflix documentary but that's okay or she can go out all guns blazing and make it this is my side of the story and and when that happens of course if you're Brooklyn Beckham and Nicola Peltz and Nelson Peltz you just fund your own documentary and then we'll have

dueling documentaries.

I think that there may well be dueling documentaries if that happens.

But it's really interesting that normally it will look completely Soviet if they don't spend a huge amount of time on it.

But also, honestly so much of everything is predicated on this the idea of this you know the ties that bind of this family unit that it's very very difficult to see how it doesn't what do you i mean

well if it's me it's easy it's the perfect pr which is you don't forget you're the exact producer of this show so you tackle it absolutely head on you say mistakes have been made we miss brooklyn we understand you know this that or the other you don't make any sort of accusations you talk about how sad you are how unfortunate the whole thing is how you all miss him how you know you understand how these things happen within families, and you put that out without ever really addressing what the root cause of it might be.

You can't, I don't think you can go into why it happened, but I think you can just say, look, all families have issues and, you know, we've got our own, you know, that's what.

That's what makes us human.

But Brooklyn, we love you.

You know, you'll always, your brothers and sisters love you.

And, you know, we've always been a family.

We will always be a family.

Anyway, now let's look at into Miami and David.

But don't you then have all her friends who are already starting to come out of the woodwork saying they've endlessly manipulated the media.

media, they're doing it now.

Look at them, they're doing it now because that has always been the Achilles' heel of the Beckham.

The idea at Beckham's idea that they are pulling all the strings and that they're making that they're manipulating the public and that there is a narrative that they've planned out and it's cynical and they're selling something that's not completely true.

So, you almost open the floodgates and it's very difficult because there are so many moving parts and they obviously have no control over what the other side says.

And the other side, God love them, are not the brightest.

And that is, you know, we've got to acknowledge that.

But I don't necessarily think you could imagine that Brooklyn himself would think as strategically as he might.

And so, what are you going to do?

You're going to run the risk that they do a Harry and Megan or interview, or that their friends start coming out and saying, no, no, we're going to plant stories for our friends, just like you have.

Genuinely, I think it's fine.

I think it's inevitable that that's going to happen anyway.

I think it's 2025.

Nobody, nobody anywhere in the world has changed their mind about about anything for the last, I would say, 10 years.

And nobody's going to change their mind about anything until about 2031.

When we get over this little part of our culture.

When they did change their mind about the Beckhams, I think that people found them all sorts of ridiculous in their kind of peak tabloid, their first peak tabloid era, maybe we should say, but they found them all kinds of ridiculous then.

And they found them kind of boring and overexposed and or whatever it was.

But they actually came to think of them as people who had done done really well for themselves who'd settled in the country who'd gone to america who'd done well who did the right thing who queued to see the queen who when she was lying in state who finally after years of raging behind the scenes had been given the knighthood and i think there was a certain sort of order and calm and kind of respect bestowed upon the house of beckham which has now been torpedoed i don't think it has i don't think it has i don't think anyone who respected the beckhams no longer respects them and i don't think anyone who didn't respect the beckhams now respects them or what they think is anyone

is that it's all his fault and that it's his and the wife's fault.

That's what they think.

That's what people think, that the Beckhams have done nothing wrong and it's all his and the wife's fault.

And yet, do people become estranged from highly functional families?

I am not sure.

The thing I would really, really like to see, if I could have a time machine, a couple of things I'd like to do.

I'd like to go back to like the Keynesian times or Victorian times and go around places I already know and see what they look like.

Then I'd like to do that.

But the other thing I'd like to do is go forward 300 years and see whatever version of Wolf Hall has been written about the Beckhams.

I'd like that to be our kind of Tudors.

I'd like that to be the great tale of ours.

They're the Tudors of British celebrity.

They are because they're like the sort of the dynasty that wipes everything away.

Yeah, I mean, it's in

a world of increasingly fast attention spans, they're really serving up some content.

I'll give them that.

Yes.

I mean, they needed something.

But what they'd only served up for so long, they lived in an era without control at the start.

And actually, gradually, the story of the creation of this brand has been to control everything.

And they managed to control their own image.

And they managed not to be exploited by other people.

They managed to own football teams rather than just be a gun for hara in football.

You know, all of it has been about building this kind of legacy.

I mean, it's like succession with tattoos in some ways.

Careful what you wish for.

Yeah.

Careful what you wish for.

But they have become a form of royal family.

And the schisms and things I think reflect that.

Sorry, that was just that's trying to make it hybrid at the end.

No, but listen, it's perfect.

We have we no one would ever accuse us of not having RK Gan eating it.

Oh, yeah, you know, we got to do a nice sort of 25 minutes talking about the Beckhams and then make it sound like you know, at the end that we're sort of uh Roland Barth or something.

I wish that's perfect.

Oh, you wish you were Roland Barth.

No, I don't.

No, I don't.

So sorry.

So keep your eyes out for what happens with that documentary.

That's going to be a tale for our time.

Yes, is it coming in the autumn or perhaps not?

And if it does, what's in it?

And you know, if you were writing this great saga, the supporting cast is incredible.

You know, the big rapprochement, you know, may not come through Ted Beckham or Harper Beckham.

It might come through Elton John, who is.

He's done his best.

He's taken them out for lunch in the south of France.

Brooklyn's godfather.

Yeah.

They had a long lunch in Saint Trope.

In the most centre table of a vast restaurant.

Like if you were picking a restaurant where everyone could possibly see this was happening, you pick this one and say, just put me right in the middle.

Yeah, on one of those plastic lawn chairs.

That'll do.

Yeah.

I'll help myself to the buffet.

But he is still very close friends with Victoria and David, and he's still very close friends with Brooklyn.

And if anyone can fix anything, surely it's Elton.

But the people who have really been helping out Nicola and Brooklyn with advice, which makes you think all this is going to go away because, you know, I think

they have sage advisors.

Harry and Megan

have been advising them.

Megan and Nicola have had a number of heart-to-hearts.

Harry has backed Brooklyn unconditionally if we're leave reports.

So, I mean, it is a hell of a supporting show.

I don't know if I've been able to do that.

Do you know all we need now to make this the perfect story for us?

Christian Horner turns up.

That would be the

all the streams to cross.

There's something about a child not speaking to you that it's obvious.

I mean, I can't even imagine the thought of it.

It's terrible.

It's not a naturally spinnable story.

You know, when Gwyneth Paltrow got divorced, she made it sound like she was doing it in a more like romantically aspirational way than you even got married.

I'm consciously uncoupling.

What are you doing?

Are you getting married?

Oh my god, okay.

Okay, so you obviously don't love your husband.

Yeah, I love him so much.

I'm divorcing him.

But I don't think you can finesse a child just saying, screw you.

Yeah, it's tricky.

Listen, if anyone can, it's them.

Should we go to a break and afterwards we'll raise the tone with Real Housewives of London and a bit of Strictly as well.

Yes, let's do that.

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Welcome back, everybody.

Now, last night, the first episode of Real Housewives of London dropped.

You've seen it.

I have to admit, I have not seen it.

But it is an unbelievable franchise.

I mean, the money money it has made and the history of the thing.

And I just thought I would like to hear what Marina thinks about Real Housewives.

Well, it's sort of everything and nothing, like I said at the start.

When they started this format, it started by Bravo.

And there were two big shows out at the time, Desperate Housewives, which you might remember had Terry Hatcher and Yvellongoria and various other people.

Which is a drama.

Which is a drama, a sort of comedy drama.

It was kind of camp and whatever.

And then there was The OC, which was a kind of teen, a drama epic for a couple of series.

So the first one that came out was called The Real Housewives of Orange County.

They thought, if we put these two things together, you're going to basically get the vibe.

It was come up with by a guy who's made so much money, and this is what happens sometimes in TV.

There's a guy called Scott Dunlop, and he was just at a dinner party.

He lived in a gated community in Orange County, and he was there and just sort of, and everyone was sort of talking about getting their kids into college, and everyone was talking about how difficult it was when you had a, you know, a maid who stole from you.

And he was just like, this is sort of extraordinary, but I think people would love the soap opera of this so he shot his own sizzle reel he called it behind the gates it was a gated community actually one of the people in it became one of the real housewives as well so he shot this thing but it wasn't you know female dominated it was just kind of this is what the kind of california middle class do bravo took it in looked at the success particularly of desperate housewives and just said let's just do the women there's you know and then and by the way almost all housewives are not housewives that's the one of the great we're going to really come to that because my god this format has evolved and so scott dunlot will say, Look, Bravo were the ones, they were kind of the geniuses that turned what I had bought them into this desperate housewives type of thing.

And so, whatever happens with any of the many spin-offs of this show, and you're going to talk us through exactly what Real Housewives entails,

whenever it is shown anywhere, Scott Dunlop is sitting,

I presume, behind even bigger gates.

Gold gates, literally, gold and diamond gates.

If you haven't watched Real Housewives, briefly, it follows the

lives of groups groups of women, friendship groups, both real and confected, in cities across the US and around the world.

And there are about 40 iterations currently of Real Housewives.

There are 11 in the US, and there's 30 around the world, of which London is the newest one.

Because we've had Cheshire here for ages, haven't we?

Real Housewives is Cheshire.

But London is the biggest.

Under an orderly edge where lots of footballers live in.

London essentially gave us an excuse to talk about Real Housewives.

Yeah.

And there are super fans, you know, who will watch six or seven of the ongoing series concurrently which ends up being about 20 hours of programming a week it is a sort of defining characteristic for a lot of people and we've seen everything lots of wine tosses cancer um storylines cancer scams divorces everyone gets attacked tagging that there are now academic texts on this thing um there and then at the end there's a reunion show where they've seen how they've been portrayed so right at the beginning of every series they're almost sort of lined up like it's kind of sky sports football.

And, you know, there's almost like a squad picture with the biggest characters in the middle.

They all, yeah, they all have their little tagline.

Lisa van der Pump is my favorite.

She's got a

dog rescue center.

She said, I love dogs, not so keen on bitches.

It's, I mean, it's, it's, it is amazing, anyhow.

But the, so the vibe of it has definitely evolved and we'll come to that.

But remember, reality TV, when this started, it's like right back in 2006 or whatever it is,

it's unscripted drama.

And what they do with that is they create recognizable narrative beats.

So it's all working up to episode one of the London one, as an example.

It's all working up to a big party on International Women's Day, soiree, as they call it.

You can imagine how it turns out.

Everyone knows that everyone knows that the cameras are on them nowadays.

As in the whole of society knows that no one can be unself-conscious anymore on film.

Yeah, viewers know.

I tell you the people who don't know, and that's people of our generation who still go, but it's all fake who go, no, but

nobody who's watching this is thinking that we're watching it like a like an Attenborough documentary there are moments of authenticity and they always really pop and people are like oh wow that was incredible she couldn't hide that so it's sort of a soap opera mixed with reality and as I say they've had every possible storyline within them and when they started doing it on bravo you know how people say that sport is war by other means

this was sort of sport by other means.

This was aimed at women and gay men.

It really reminds me of sports.

Yeah, yeah.

It's something you can become obsessed with that, you know, doesn't in any meaningful sense matter.

Goodies, baddies, turnarounds, all sorts, yeah.

Drama, yeah, all of it.

Lots of feminists absolutely hate it.

And Gloria Steinen was like, this is disgusting.

They pit women against women.

It's so retro.

And then she turned up in Real Housewives of Hudson Valley.

That was really weird.

That was a real Voltfest, wasn't it?

But other fans, by the way, real fans, Rihanna, Michelle Obama, Tilda Swinton, I mean,

the big,

many comedy writers I know, because of course, you know, these moments of heightened reality or fake reality.

Anyway, the London one, there's however many women they're following, six women, just as pricey if you haven't watched it, which you won't have.

You know, you're watching people shouting at their housekeepers, is my makeup too much?

They tell you who they are, or they know that they have to tell you who they are because you've only got a little bit of screen time.

So you have to say, I'm like, Mama Mike, people are going to love me or hate me.

I'm never, I'm never fake.

I'm never non-authentic.

I always say it how it is.

They tell you they don't even work.

And you're thinking, but you are working because someone's come to your house.

You're on that, you know, Real Housewives.

You really want a product line.

You want to be an influencer.

You are working.

They are all on the make.

This is the hidden reality behind the whole thing.

So in the same way with WWF, you go in, you can be a heel, a good guy, whatever it is.

But the more an audience likes you, the more likely you are to be in the next season of WWF.

And the more likely you sort of move up that route.

And the subtext to every single franchise of Real housewives is they all want to be on the next series of real housewives.

They have to be the most housewives.

They have to be because there is relegation and promotion in these things.

You will get people who sort of come in tangentally and you're kind of going, oh, you're going to be a housewife next series,

which means we're losing somebody from this group.

They get paid about, I mean, different people get paid different things, but about half a million dollars for a series.

They get half of it up front and they get half of it after every single series has a reunion show at the end where they all sit and chat and talk over the highlights of the seat because then they've seen the edit yes exactly and that that's when they get the other half of their money and that's become so iconic the reunion show that when all of trump's administration were caught on that signal chat about bombing the hooties andy cohen who hosts hosts the union shows literally went on social media to say please let me host the reunion because the whole point is everything's like real housewives yeah andy cohen's amazing this is another sidebar again he's amazing he was he was a bravo executive really yeah and now is you know does all the reunion shows he does all the what are we watching type shows and is absolutely like a god across that universe of things.

And he is, listen, you know, I don't approve of executives becoming TV presenters, but he is really, he's, he, if there's a king of the Real Housewives universe, there are many, many queens.

Yeah.

And certainly not only the husbands.

There are some of the wettest men you'll ever see.

I mean, the two on the episode one of the London one, you see only two of the husbands, who I think are probably the two wettest men in London.

There doesn't mean anything like that.

But that's the joy of the thing as well, because you think, I mean,

the husbands have all sort of had to say okay, and the kids have had to say, okay, we'll do it.

And they've all got their different reasons for doing it.

And again, that's that's stuff that you can you can sit at home and you can discuss.

That's what you know.

Behind the fact that a lot of it is faked and you can see it's faked is reality.

And that's what how people are watching.

People are watching the reality behind the fake reality.

I agree.

It's really hard to explain it, but they are these kind of fictional archetypes to some extent.

And some people think they're like Edith Wharton characters.

One of them said once, oh, I think it's like Andy Warhol's factory.

You know, the idea of these players that come in and out, it's very interesting because I think probably it is, I mean, I can't think of anywhere else.

It is the leading manner in which middle-aged female friendship or frenemyship or social hierarchies are interrogated by our culture.

I mean, if you think of something that dominant that there's, as I say, 40 iterations of it happening right now, this is how

we understand middle-aged female friendship in lots of ways.

And when you watch, I mean, watch the London one and you'd be like, oh my God, then that's the most depressing thing in the world.

But actually, as you say, you have to strip away the fake reality.

And then you'll see behind it that there are people who are looking for love.

There are people who clearly are much more strivy, much more strivy.

They're not as rich as the other ones.

And, you know, the thing about working, because of course, the whole point was they don't work, but they are working because

they work on the show and it's a huge amount of filming and all of that sort of stuff.

and some of them have tried to unionize some of them have talked about labor practices i mean it's become so interesting but the whole point of it is that there are some that was like bethany frankel in the new york one she was a real sort of striver and she would sort of hiss at other ones i actually work for a living and it's become this thing where they they're all trying to do something they've all got some edge because whilst it might have been fun to talk about women in a gated community who supposedly do nothing at the start, it has evolved with the times times and with the economy and with all sorts of things that have happened in our world.

And so now everybody is trying to make it.

There's one that's a really interesting one, Teresa Juducci, who was on the, I think she was on the Jersey one.

And she was really rich at the start and she would buy, you know, loads of furniture, all this sort of stuff.

And then actually, several seasons later, she also served good drama, which is why she's still on.

But, you know, they'd lost all their money.

She was having, she was out there as a breadwinner.

She was teaching her daughters to make stuff for their cake, for her cake business, or whatever it is.

There's a woman with a cake business in the London one, and you get the feeling that she's not as rich as some of the other ones, and they're all you know, otherwise, there's lots of things.

The tropes are all the same, you know, those sort of grim walk-in handbag closets.

I mean, no, thank you.

The neon wall signs, or that sort of neon wall signs.

That's that's the thing that I mean, you see that in every episode of A Real Housewives, but you see that in every episode of Escape to the Country as well.

Yeah, the neon wall sign is the uh

it's it's brings everyone together.

Yeah, it's the worst, but there's one called panthea in

panthea like panthea turner yeah panthe turner panthea turner panthea in this one but she knows instinctively she more than any of them knows that she must retain her position as you say so she knows that what she's going to have to do for the international women's day party is turn up late

immediately start an argument like immediately like she could literally i is saying it as she's getting her coat off and she knows how to behave like a housewife so as you say the level level of artifice has become in such a way that no one minds that anymore because that's all we have.

All of our culture is assimilation.

So, what's the difference?

But it is, and again, for anyone of you know that whole generation who were born after Big Brother, it is easy to watch those things and go, Oh, but I mean, surely you can see that that's set up.

And yes, the point would be they can see that was set up.

They absolutely can.

In the same way, they know that wrestling is fixed, right?

They know wrestling is fixed, but they also know behind the event that you see on television, there are real human beings all fighting for contracts, all making money, all of whom have real friendships and not real friendships.

And you can attempt to decode what the reality is by looking at the non-reality.

And

that's what I find.

It's a drama in which you are not involved.

It's like, oh my God, this enormous drama just exploded on my friendship WhatsApp group.

Except it didn't.

I could just walk away from this anytime I want.

It's interesting how many people say, oh, I already got into it in the pandemic, or when my dad died, I started watching it.

Or so many people come to it at a time of personal trouble because it's escapist but it there's also something about it maybe when we're going through those dark times what we want is these kind of grim as in g r i double m as well as the other one that's right fairy tale archetypes but it's sort of aspirational glamour and relatable heartache yeah but at the same time it's not they always try to make it not aspirational in a weird way it's so rich and they've got all this money money money they talk about money incessantly in such a gassy way but what you're supposed to think is ah but they don't have you know you're supposed to see that it's a a flawed and um unsatisfying world and you always have been and that's been right that's the actual concept and yet everyone aspires to be on yeah and yet everyone you know so that's that's what i mean by aspirational it's not aspirational as in i would like to live the life that is being shown on screen it is aspirational as in i would like to be a real housewife Oh my God, that's one of my anxiety dreams.

No, I wouldn't.

But yes, I know what you mean.

But, and we see it, and it's absolutely led to all sorts of things made in Chelsea, Anyways, Essex, all of this kind of stuff, below deck, all of these shows, there is a fake reality to them.

But because we don't just watch television passively now, because every single time we watch a television program, we could follow every single one of these people on Instagram.

Okay, we can see what it is they're doing.

We can find out what the truth is behind the fake truth that we're seeing.

And that's a fun game for people.

That's

really, really compelling for people.

But I just, I just have to reiterate, nobody is watching this thinking I am watching reality, but they are watching reality.

But it's a reality that they will find from lots of different places.

I totally agree with you.

And I think that there's something very, as I say, like the way we've been talking about it, it so obviously means nothing and yet it means everything.

It's really.

We've done a lot of that today.

But I know we have.

But if you think about this show more than probably anything else, it's one of the most gift-memed things on the planet.

If you ever see a meme or a gif and you don't know where it's from,

it's from Real Haskell.

Without any question.

So what does it say about this, our particular era, our cultural moment, that this show more than anything else is the one to which people go for their little quick online reaction things and it's become a sort of form of

lexicography all of itself.

I think that's really interesting and that those women create these moments that then just flutter off and mean something in your WhatsApp group or when we're talking about politics.

It's really interesting.

When I started writing about politics in a different way, when I actually think I've sort of found my voice writing about politics in some ways, is when I thought I'm no longer going to write about politics in the way that I've tried to before, which is to do it quite seriously and try and copy lots of men who wrote about it quite seriously and actually always slightly look down on you because you didn't know something that happened with the Liberal Democrats in 1989.

And then I thought, but actually, I just want to talk about it in terms of pot culture and have and filter it through that particular prison because I think everyone understands that.

And also it's more fun and that's how we talk and that's how we live now.

And it's a much more fun way of talking about these things.

And I think cut through much more with people than than anything I've been doing before purely because of that.

And I think about these things all the time.

I mean, the idea that the first thought of so many people when that Yemen Signal chat was released was, oh my God, it's the Real Housewives, says something about the cultural impact of a show that, as I say, is everything and nothing.

Yeah.

And I think, you know, what reality is, is going to become increasingly important in the years to come because of AI and all that kind of stuff and authenticity.

And I think we always look at it the wrong way.

And I think the success of Real Housewives is exactly the same as the success of wrestling is we are absolutely in on it.

We understand that we're not being shown reality.

We understand that we are measuring people against reality.

And that, you know, I think this generation, I do think when we panic a lot about AI and kind of deep fakes and all this kind of stuff.

And we should.

But there is also a number of generations now who are much wiser than us when it comes to passing what happens in culture and understanding what they're being told to believe, what they're being told wink-wink to believe, and what is actually happening.

And so, I think weirdly, things like The Real Housewives have given whole generations a toolkit to survive in the post-truth era.

Bloody hell, we're really.

Bloody hell.

I mean, really.

I mean, literally, all we talked about are the Beckhams and Real Housewives.

You think we're a restless philosophy?

Yeah.

I wish I could say we got something highbrows to finish on, but we're going to talk about it.

I don't.

Of course, we haven't.

win strictly.

Tell me who's going to win strictly, Richard.

So everyone has been announced now.

I'm just going to go through people who I think we might have an opinion on, who listeners might have an opinion on as well.

The first of whom I have to mention, because he is a hero of both of ours and a hero of children and adults throughout the land is Nitro from Gladiators.

Harry Aikens Ariti is taken to the ballroom.

I'm so happy he's doing it.

Obviously, it won't be as important in his life as bearing me on his shoulder into the Royal Albert Hoare.

However, yeah, that was his absolute highlight.

Oh my God,

he's the nicest person.

He's absolutely terrific.

And he had an injury, so I'm really glad he hasn't got an injury.

Yeah.

And he can do it now.

Because I think they were planning to have him on last year.

So do I, yeah.

He was injured because he did the special, the Christmas special.

I know that.

But yeah, he's coming on.

People, people will.

I don't know if he can dance, but people will absolutely love him.

I literally love him.

He's wonderful.

He's wonderful.

It's just that thing of whether people still, like whenever we have gladiators on House of Games, you know, people people always say, oh, they should be in gladiator thing, you should call them fire or nitro.

And I've always said, you know what, we'll just, we'll just, I'm, you know, I'll mention that they're gladiators every now and again.

But, you know, it's, it's seeing him as himself.

It's like seeing Matt Morse, who's legend on

Would I Lie to You and stuff like that.

It's, you know, it's fun to see these people when they've got a personality.

And he really has got a personality.

So he, I think, is going to be great.

I'm going to tell you who's going to win.

when I get to the end of all of this.

As I say, I'm not going to go through everyone.

Danny Dyer Jr.

is on.

D-A-N-I.

D-A-N-I, but it means, of course, that we'll be seeing Danny Dyer Sr.

in the audience, and that's almost as important sometimes as Strictly is.

He'll have a lot of views about having to sit there for seven hours every Saturday.

I mean, this is the thing they never tell you.

Yeah, that's not the most fun show.

He won't keep it under his hat, I don't think.

There is no way he's sticking around for the whole thing.

I would say now to the Strictly directors, get your cutter off

while you can,

because he will be in the car home by the time Chris Robshaw is on.

Chris Robshaw, the England rugby captain, former England rugby captain, Karen Carney, the former lioness, and now the pundit she's on.

I think people are going to like Karen Carney.

It's always good to have a lioness on the show.

And it's fascinating thinking about how strictly bookers kind of work their way through things.

You know, you need your kind of temp pulse.

So someone like Nitro is great because he's gladiators.

Everyone knows that.

Danny Dyer, everybody from a certain demographic understands that.

Anyone who likes the kind of the more successful reality shows knows Danny Dyer.

Then you do have people people like Karen Carney and Chris Robshaw for sports fans.

Stephan Dennis is on for those of our generation.

Paul Robinson from Paul Robinson from Neighbours.

Don't it make you feel good?

Yeah.

If you can essentially, if you know how the hook to Don't It Make You Feel Good goes in your head, if you're in your car now on your dog walk and you are singing that, then you are going to be voting for Stephan Dennis.

Some interesting ones.

Eddie Goldstein, who is the model with Down Syndrome, has been on the cover of British Vogue.

Lavoie, the dread queen, is coming on.

Today, an interesting one who's coming on is Thomas Skinner.

This is this is where it's been a lightning rod for controversy.

Yes, it has been.

I mean, that's really why we're talking about it because I wanted to talk about it.

I think it's interesting.

So, Thomas Skinner is that guy, the sort of cockney-wide boy who says Bosch all the time, who was first on The Apprentice, and now his social media is full of things about knife crime and all sorts of things.

So, he said he joins that stuff.

He's always up in the morning doing, you know,

ready to see

making content, really, aren't they?

Exactly.

That.

So it's an interesting one, that, because, as you say, kind of the strictly die-hards up in arms that this person is on, but Strictly has always been, you know, it's always prided itself on being diverse and inclusive.

And it's done such incredible, genuinely, some of the best moments of TV in the last five years have been, you know, extraordinary things they've done with Rose, Ailing Ellis, and, you know, Chris McCausaland and stuff like that.

But it seems that the inclusivity has stopped for certain people when it comes to booking someone like Thomas Skinner, which is, which which is, and I make no comment on that other to say

it's interesting.

Okay,

I'll make a comment on it.

Great.

I knew you would.

This booking, I mean, you'd think they'd want a quiet life after

the couple of years they've had with all this book.

This is not going to give them that.

No, this is not going to give them that.

It's like they've imported the culture war into Strictly.

I have to say, when I see people describing this guy as far right, I don't know, he's slightly passed me by.

I don't know a lot of stuff about him, but and like a fascist, I do wish people would use these words correctly.

But anyhow, I saw he went to a barbecue with J.D.

Vance.

I mean, JD Vance, like it or not, and I don't love it, it's the vice president of the United States.

That's a hell of a guessless.

First of all, our research, when we did that more on common polling, and it found that Strictly was the show, the big primetime show, you know, that skewed the audience skewed most right-wing.

That's correct.

Okay.

So I do think that we are seeing across the board, and this is in terms of like people who are hired to be pundits on news channels, all sorts of things, there is a correction against the sort of quite prescribed certainties of the past decade.

And you can see that people are thinking there's been some sort of vibe shift.

We don't have to have,

we're not going to do everything in the exact same way as we do, where everyone's just like a sort of liberally approved person to go on TV shows, spouting a form of orthodoxy that actually everyone really agrees with.

You know, he's still going to be dancing.

He's not going to be.

I don't know.

I think it's quite interesting.

I think we're seeing corrections.

And I'm interested that they would.

I can imagine the meeting that went on where

he was okayed.

And I do think culturally, it's probably good to have Thomas Skinner on a show where there is a drag queen and there is a, you know, Down syndrome model.

And there are, you know, yeah, I don't think it's necessarily a bad thing to have him on that show in that group of people.

And, you know, we're, we're allowed to see these people on.

television.

We're allowed to sort of and also to have them mix with a group of other people.

The more you kind of entrench somebody and, you know, the only people they can hang out with are JD Vance, you know, that's, that's when we have a problem in our culture.

The problem in our culture is not that, you know, we're all too similar to each other.

It's, it's, we've absolutely siloed everybody.

And Strictly has been unbelievably good at showing shifts in attitude, shifts in society, you know, just showing, not telling, always, always, always.

And I think that it's not crazy.

They've lent into the vibe shift.

They've lent into the vibe shift.

And listen, we may be in the same way that people thought it was a good idea having Donald Trump on the apprentice.

You know, maybe in five years' time we'll all say, oh my God,

it started with strictly like, you know, Boris Johnson doing, have I got news for you?

He said, that was a, you know, a great idea.

And maybe, you know, we'll say, why on earth did they do that?

But I do think it's a booking that is controversial.

But it'd be better if we lived in a world in which it wasn't controversial and we could get this group of 15 people and we could see their differences and we can see their similarities and we could see some empathy from everybody.

But it's, listen, I get it, I get why people are exercised.

I'm sure you will, but people, I'm sure that we will see those things that you've just said.

But I do think that people will work really hard to look for

controversy simply because you can write news stories about it.

And it will be

an incredibly noisy

B plot to the entire series

as long as he remains in.

And after that, it'll be a conspiracy as to how he was voted out.

Yeah, certainly if I were a national newspaper or an online commentator, I'd be rubbing my hands with glee, thinking, great, I can use this to divide people.

And my hope is maybe you can use things like this to unite people, because there's an awful lot of people in this country who disagree with each other.

And that used to be okay.

And if anyone can ever fix anything that's wrong with our country, it's strictly.

This might be a step too far for them.

But I think it's a very, very 2025 move to make.

I will say that.

I do think it's brave.

I do think it's probably,

in our culture probably quite a good thing to say we're allowed to have someone on who we fundamentally disagree with on the show we really really are quite apart from uh him if we move on to other people

george clark the youtuber is on george clarkey yeah um who you know has like x million i mean whenever they talk about youtubers they all they say is how many million followers are that but he he seems to have a lot his his dad is managing director of artman animations Oh, really?

So he's one of the few people who absolutely bridges the gap between KSI, because he works with KSI, and wallace and grommet so he's absolutely he's he's he's making money out of them both george clarkey they call him but again you know it's fascinating to see how that works alice kingston that's a classy booking i would say and vicky pattern who i think will be great people will absolutely love her if you're going to put a bet on if she can dance she's a shoe-in i don't know i don't know if she can ross king oh it's on ross king always does the hollywood report on the rain i love ross king and people who know him always he's a trooper

is he the other kind of trooper we'll have to see we'll have to see him once he gets the shoes on is he a super trooper but um he'll be fun to watch but um i'm throwing all my weight behind christian nairn who is the uh the irish dj but also is hodor in game of thrones because i always think i would never i would never do strictly anyway i always say i never have time to do all the training and have the affair but christian they always think i at six foot seven i'd be too tall to do it christian nairn is six foot ten

That's the tallest ever strictly contestant, six foot ten, Christian Nairn.

So I am going to be cheering him on on behalf of all the tall guys everywhere.

All the tall guys unable to dance everywhere.

Christian, I'm behind you.

Or, you know, Jimmy Floyd Hasselbank.

But I do think that Thomas Skinner thing, I think, is we've talked a lot about sociologically and philosophically interesting things

today.

And I think that is...

another one.

I think we just have to sit and let it be and have a little think about where our culture is and why it is where it is and whether this is the worst thing that's ever happened or not.

Of course it's not.

And perhaps it's not exactly.

It can strictly hold its fragile coalition together of viewers.

I think they'll manage.

I think they will.

I think they will manage.

It skews, as you know, as I say, we used to skew Tory, now skews Berry reform strictly.

So it's, it's, you know, it's, um, I think, I think that's an acceptable booking.

I really do.

Richard, most importantly, because I value this, who do you think is going to win?

I think if Eddie Goldstein or Vicky Patterson can dance, I think

they will be the favourites.

But I think without that information, Vicki says she can't dance, but often they say they can't dance.

But I'm going to take it at a word.

I would say Danny Dyer.

Any recommendations, Richard?

I'm going to recommend.

I always love it when a new sports documentary comes along on Netflix.

And SEC any given Saturday is my recommendation.

It essentially follows a season in the SEC, which is kind of the universities of the South, you know, Florida and all around there.

And it's just, I love those things so much.

I love them because in the same way as, you know, Real Housewives, they introduce me to people that I don't know and lifestyles I don't know.

But also because it's American sport, I don't know what happens.

I have no idea who wins.

And I don't really know who these incredible coaches are who are getting kind of $18 million a year to coach a university football team.

And I don't know who these players are who are, you know, heading off to the NFL to be on multi-million pound contracts.

So I'm literally just watching a group of people that I'm just getting interested in with no idea

what's going on.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Well, thank you so much for that and for the whole lowbrow show, Richard.

It was fun, wasn't it?

We will really

forgive us, everyone.

I hope that was so.

Yeah, I loved it as well.

We will be doing a QA QA episode as always on Thursday.

And speaking of lowering the tone, for our bonus, for our members, for our bonus episode, we are doing the whole story of Studio 54, the legendary New York nightclub that burnt so brightly for such a short time.

Anyway, that's for our members.

If you want to sign up, it's arrestorsenttertainment.com.

And for everyone else, we'll see you on Thursday.

See you on Thursday.

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