The Real Life Gossip Girl: UNMASKED

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

And me, Richard Osman.

Hi, Marina.

Hello, Richard.

How are you?

I'm really well.

Have you had a nice week?

I've had a lovely week.

It was too hot last week.

Yeah, it was.

I mean, I actually dare I say I like it, but there were moments.

I don't want to turn this into the rest is weather.

No, no, there were moments where I've access, surely.

I'm heading up to Manchester this week and looking forward to it because not only is it Manchester, which is a bit cooler anyway, I will be indoors most of the time.

Now, what are we going to talk about this week?

you're going to give me an education in tattle life this scurrilous website that seems to exist only to slag people off and the person behind it was exposed this week so uh i'd love to hear all about him and his motives and his um income we will talk about him uh we're also going to talk about dazone dazon you're right at d-a-z and Dazen.

But this is the broadcaster via which you can watch the scintillating competition, the Club World Cup taking place in the United States of America.

Very interesting why you can watch it on a competition.

It's very interesting why you can watch it.

It does.

Also, you last week, I know, went through an entertainment epiphany.

You went to see something that you thought was so extraordinary that we have to talk about it.

It leads us into a broader discussion.

But our final item will be about

that.

Shall we begin with Tattle Life?

Tattle Life, yes.

Now, Tattle Life is, if you don't know what Tattle Life is,

you know, put your rubber gloves on now.

It is a website that essentially comprises a selection of threads that you can talk about, mainly influencers, YouTubers, YouTube families, bloggers, that type of celebrity.

But having said that, that also has masses of traditional celebrities as well.

Are they sort of lumping those people together as the undeserving famous?

Is that well, I think everyone now in our era regards it is undeservingly famous.

I think that's a mood of the age

for definite.

It is self-described, TattleLife, as a commentary website on public business social media accounts.

By the way, it also says it has a zero tolerance policy to any content that is abusive, hateful, or harmful.

So, yeah, they say a lot of things.

They say a lot of things, Richard.

I saw they said they had 1,200 times more content moderators than Facebook have.

And you think that's just like they've got a guy

who does that who isn't that fussy about it.

It's full of of people's home addresses, pictures of their houses, places where they've been, places where they actually are in real time.

Caroline Hirand, the skincare influencer, says there's pictures of her grandchildren on there.

I should say that they have absolutely, as far as we know, huge numbers.

There's different ways that you measure all of these things.

So, you know, there are slight caveats with all of these figures, but they have around 11.5, 12 million.

monthly visitors.

Now, to put that in perspective, that is much more than, say, GB News.

It's bigger than the Times and the Sunday Times website, okay?

And it's lots of these threads that are happening all the time.

It is extraordinarily sort of vicious.

And it's in the news at the moment because it has been run for many years by someone called Helen McGregor.

Helen McDougall.

Helen McDougall, forgive me.

Helen McDougall has been running this.

And there had long been discussions about who Helen McDougall might be because she seemed impossible to track down.

And an Irish influencer couple took Tattle Life to court.

And as part of that, Helen McDougall's identity was disclosed.

And we will come to who Helen McDougall is.

A man, would you believe?

Spoiler, it is not Helen McDougal.

It's not Helen McDougal.

It's a man called Sebastian Bond, a 41-year-old person who, I think, grew up in England.

May now be in Thailand.

We don't know.

Let's go back a tiny little bit in the story and talk about

how this person was exposed.

And as you say, it was in the High Court of Northern Ireland.

A couple, they're called Neil and Donna Sands.

She's got a clothing line.

He's got various, various, I mean, small businesses.

And she was alerted to the existence of the site TattleLife when one of her friends rang her and said, oh, the young people at my work are laughing about you and stuff that's been written about you on this website, where she discovered a 45-page thread.

To be quite clear, she's got a small clothing business.

And anyway, it went on and it got worse and worse.

They did that thing where they tried to, they made it very clear that they were having a bad time, and which seemed to be.

So they wrote into Tattle Life.

They wrote a lot.

I know it's it's not swap shop they sent letters saying please desist this is not true this is causing us harm and it and it remained and it became more and more intense you know there were people saying reporting must have sat next to them in restaurants and reported their conversations or all sorts of things like that and by the way just to be on tattle life anyone can read this stuff um you have to become a member and then you have an anonymous account but but because it's open and anyone can read them these threads appear very high on google searches so people feel that their um their mental health seem, if they read it and care about it, which most people do read and care about these things,

and their mental health has been sort of destroyed.

But in many cases, their businesses have been destroyed.

And they decided, I mean, it will have been against the advice this, if you know anything about defamation law, it's just really difficult.

And they will, and they will have been advised not to sue.

However, Neil and Donna Sands decided that they were going to sue and they sued for harassment and defamation.

And they actually won.

they actually won not quite two years ago um but this week the northern ireland high court lifted various reporting restrictions and and different orders that have been protecting it and revealed that sebastian bond is the owner of this site and it's really interesting how they tracked it down they got some kind of data investigators as well as they also used other influencers and they did what the site does the site is that almost the methodology of the site if i can put it like that is looking at the stuff that people post yeah and saying, oh, there's a disconnect here.

Finding inconsistency.

People are always saying in this age that supposedly prizes authenticity above everything is we talked about this a little bit when we were talking about the Beckham family feud.

You're misselling yourself.

You are selling us a lie.

But the way these people talk about it, what's interesting in the wake of this, and I'm actually going to come further to this in a minute, but I don't think they would even realize how deranged it is.

It's like you're talking about this like it's Enron.

Like, what?

Someone forgot to say that something was sponsored, or maybe didn't forget.

Maybe an influencer didn't say that something that they were doing was sponsored but I mean so what maybe today they're saying I worry about my child's mental health and you go yeah but last week you were saying that your child was using these duplo bricks yeah yeah because I'm a human being I have inconsistencies in my in in my life yeah and what they do is that they track you down and they see you said this you said that in the background of your image is this but you must have moved house since you were doing that or maybe you don't even use your own kitchen in this or maybe it's a fake kitchen or whatever it is.

I have to say most ordinary people have never heard of.

If maybe you're obsessed with mummy bloggers and you follow lots of them, then maybe you'll know who these people are.

There are also lots on someone like Stacey Solomon, you know, Katie Price, who said that the stuff about her son, Harvey, who has many disabilities, is absolutely grotesque and disgusting.

She cannot take it down.

It's very, very difficult.

And many people say their home address has been revealed.

And it's really interesting because it's sort of such a sewer in a way.

But I honestly, because of this judgment, that Neil Sands has said, one half this couple the usernames of everyone who um has attacked us on this website are listed on the court order and we are going to take action against all of them oh that's fun so i mean this isn't necessarily the end of it and by the way obviously Anytime there's a legal judgment like this, it forms a precedent and all sorts of other people think, well, hang on.

The Sands rightly won compensation.

They won £300,000 and costs as well, which takes it to about 2 million on current estimate.

So other people think, you know, this has made my life hell.

Why would if you were Carolyn, Caroline Hirand, if you were Katie Price, if you were Stacey Solomon, why would you not think, well, I'm not going to be able to do that.

And it seems fair enough.

And I know people say the law's got other stuff to do, but if someone was to say that to you on television, you would go and sue them in a heartbeat.

And it's not saying fair comment.

It's not saying I don't like this person or I find this person's motives suspect.

But if you're making a direct allegation, which is provably untrue in public, then why would you not take that person?

No.

And I mean, I could, you know, when I write a column

in which you could be perfectly quite rude about someone, everything has to be based on facts, has to be defensible in court and cannot be libelous.

And if it is, I will get sued for it.

I'd love to see the first drafts of some of your columns, by the way, before the lawyers.

No, you must know by now what you're doing.

I know by now.

Can I ask you one question about Sebastian Bond?

So we have this site which is all about essentially undermining influencers and saying that influencers are the worst people in the world.

Can I ask you, and listen, viewers may be ahead of us here, what does Sebastian Bond do for a living?

Richard, he's a vegan influencer.

Is he?

I didn't expect that answer.

I don't know what that is, my darlings.

But what is a vegan?

He's done a cookbook under a different name, another different name, Bastian Derwood, but a vegan cookbook, I believe.

I mean, there is obviously an irony in that Tattlefield has defended their business model on various occasions prior to this, saying

that influencers who influencers who monetize their personal lives should be open to scrutiny as it's a totally unregulated industry.

I mean, so are gossip websites to some extent.

But it's interesting, the disconnect between how Helen McDougal has presented themselves or maybe Bastian Doward, vegan cookery influencer.

I mean, what is that?

Has presented itself.

It's a hell of a pseudonym.

It's a, yeah, it is.

I mean, it's quite eye-catching.

So there should be lots and lots of threads on Tattle Life about him slash Helen McDougal.

There aren't.

No.

I've had it.

Well, not that I could find.

They're certainly not up there with the sort of five tons of information that's pushed out every day.

That's weird because that's a perfect example of an influencer being something that they're pretending not to be.

You'd think

that would be perfect fodder.

There is that expression, no snowflake feels responsible for the avalanche.

And I just think people just simply have such a sort of deranged herd mentality now on lots of these sites that people just think you're lying to us.

They have got the lie, if it is one, or even the sort of poetic license or whatever it is, so completely out of proportion.

As I say, you'd think this was genuinely Enron.

You'd think think it was a huge financial scandal.

It's really not.

Well,

there is something about that parasocial relationship, isn't there?

And that we all sort of understand when we see a movie star, when we see Tom Hanks, when we see anybody, that his life in private is probably slightly different to what he projects because he has to because he's a human being.

goes to do his job.

He's got his family life.

You have to present a certain side of yourself.

We can usually tell if that side is entirely different to who they are as a human being.

Tom Hanks, you figure, is probably Tom Hanks when he's at home.

But a little bit of- That's how you get to be Tom Hanks.

Exactly.

But we, because we see them on a big screen, we pay money to go see them.

There's, there's a bit where we go, I understand that business model.

We can have fun discussions about, you know, whether that image is real or not.

But that's where that ends.

In the age of parasocial relationships, which is, I am an influencer, I'm going to bring you into my life.

I'm going to have conversations with you.

It's like a friend is letting you down.

Yeah.

So Tom Hanks, it's like someone else's friend in another town has done something.

And so you can have a good gossip about it, but not worry.

But this is like a mate of yours is lying to you.

And so you get into that mindset where you think, well, I'm not going to have this in the same way that when you're at school, which is what it reminds me of more than anything in the world, you're like, someone did something.

Your place in the pecking order is slightly in danger because of that person.

So you try and bring them.

down and just just like a like a whole website devoted to minor playground squabbles.

Yeah.

And they, what they describe, you know, you hear these phrases like doing God's work, a valuable public service.

I mean, imagine if this much energy, you sometimes see people have posted, I mean, hundreds of times in a day.

Imagine if you're putting this much energy into actual public service.

Maybe we'd have economic growth, Richard.

Maybe we would have economic growth.

Well, it reminds me of nothing more than, you know, those incredible investigative agencies who track down war criminals because they will see a shot of them on a grainy video and there'll be like a church spire in the background or there'll be a piece of graffiti.

Yeah, I know.

And they'll spend like a month working out exactly where that person is, you know, and doing that, which is doing God's work.

You can't be the Simon Wiesdenthal of Molly Mae Hague.

I mean, you just can't be, okay?

There's no, there is no world in which this matters in any possible way.

I mean, listen, it's a hell of a catchphrase.

I mean, it's my new Twitter biography.

Yeah.

It's all predicated on the fact that all of celebrity in the modern era, all of it,

is a business decision,

probably a grift.

Yes.

And that...

exposing it pertains so specifically to this age and not even I would say 10 years ago.

This is such a thing of now, this idea that these people must be hunted down and exposed and it must happen all day long.

And I think that genuinely, if they do start going after individual users, by the way, I mean, they would have been told not to sue the site in the first place.

It's interesting to see from a legal point of view where they'd get with individual users.

But saying we're coming for all of you.

I listen, it's, you know, oh no, it's the consequences of my actions.

Oh, no, yeah, there is a neatness to this.

There is a neatness.

Now, the interesting thing about this is, I think, I mean, there's lots of interesting things about it, but the fact that all these accounts are anonymized and what that does to our culture.

You can see that on Twitter as well, where you can be as anonymous as you want and the bravery that gives certain groups of people and the strength in numbers it gives certain groups of people.

And I think one of the really interesting things in the recent, even in the last six months or so, is the huge, huge rise of LinkedIn.

Yeah.

A year ago, if you talked about LinkedIn, I go, oh, yeah, that's where, you know, marketing PRs talk to other marketing PRs and people get jobs.

And I absolutely understand.

It was a total joke.

It really was.

It had become, having been there all along, sort of rumbling along as the joke social network.

A super lucrative joke.

It now seems to be the place, mainly because it is not anonymized.

It seems to be the place where people have gravitated to, everyone said, oh, it would be threads, it'll be blue sky, it'll be mastodon.

Yeah.

Remember, mastodon.

But actually, LinkedIn seems to be the place where a lot of journalists, a lot of PR professionals, people who actually want to read interesting things about interesting things have gone to.

With the author's name attached.

With the author's name attached.

You sort of can fake who you are on LinkedIn, but it's much, much harder.

You know, you have to at least have a phone number and email email address, which are, which are trackable.

Businesses get actually verified.

You're not paying $8 to be verified.

If you have, you know, if you have a verified thing, you know you're talking to the real person.

I'm not a LinkedIn member myself.

Nor am I.

But I'm sort of tempted to dip in now.

Every time, you know, you look at an article that's on LinkedIn, you go, oh, that's really interesting.

Yeah, I know.

I agree with you.

I have seen lots of interesting things.

Professionals in their fields telling you something.

about their fields and then the comments being from other professionals in their fields also talking about that.

The Times did it with their comment section, which the Times not that long ago said, everyone who wants to comment

must say their actual name.

And I read like absolutely tons of newspaper comments.

Jeez, that explains a lot about your personality.

I'm obsessed with mail online comments and read huge amounts of, actually, it was quite interesting this week because they ran quite a lot of articles on Tattle Ive, Mail Online, and Mail Online commenters.

Well, they said, oh, this is, don't be stupid.

The stories run by mail online are like, this place is completely other.

It's a sewer.

It's revolting.

And, you know,

this guy's been exposed.

People in the comments below were saying, oh, well.

you know, it's not anything worse than you'd see on the comments on this website.

And also, you know, I think it's valuable.

And

Mail Online is just trying to distance itself.

I mean, when everyone was saying nothing ever will happen with reform, nothing will ever will happen with them.

Because I spent so much time reading Mail Online comments.

This is a few years ago.

I could see just how often the simple comment in a result to any story was simply reform or I will be voting reform.

And this is when they were like right down on, I don't know, two or three percent.

And no one said, and they said, even if they get up to whatever it is, first pass the post makes this or that impossible.

But I remember thinking, oh no, something has already happened because it's always, they're saying the one-word response to any type, lots of different types of story was this.

So I felt like, and it's also a window into people who aren't sort of, of, you know, people like me chattering liberal twitteraty.

The Simon Reason Tyler Hague.

Yeah, exactly, as my biography is just about to say.

Those are still anonymized, those comments.

Whereas the Times, people use their real name.

And you can still find some quite lively views down there in the Times comment section, I would say.

But they are argued out.

And again, you can, of course, fake these things, but pretty much against someone's name.

Time of Life is still up and running?

No, I think the last couple of days, Google have restricted their ads on it, which is where you make sites like this make all their money.

That's where the money was coming from.

It's coming from ads and because they had so many monthly visitors and

that's the key with something like LinkedIn now is, you know, they're getting an awful lot of income because it is a safe place to advertise.

You know, Twitter's income, advertising income has gone down an awful lot.

LinkedIn has gone up an awful lot.

It made $17 billion last year, LinkedIn.

It's got 1 billion users, which to me sounds a few too many because that's like one in seven people in the whole world.

It's a big deal now, but anywhere that there's a safe port of call for advertisers is a good business model.

Twitter is interesting because the engagement on Twitter has absolutely fallen off a cliff.

Maybe not for some people, but you know, for even those people are complaining about being it's amazing.

I follow lots of sort of figures on the kind of wing, not American right.

And even they complain about being shadow banned.

The thing is, they'll look at they've got a million followers and you go, most of those are not actual people.

Oh, there's so many bots now.

It's just so many bots.

I thought you were supposed to be able to get rid of this.

It's so many bots now and it's just nonsense, endlessly weird AI versions of the same comment that are nothing to do with anything that anyone has said.

It's really odd.

It's eating itself.

There's that brilliant tool that which is you can audit anyone's Twitter account as was and it would tell you what percentage of their people are bots.

And even for like the top, top, top ones that, you know, didn't have any bots, it was like 33% bots.

And these days it's just an insane amount.

But so the yeah, the engagement is so small now on Twitter, which is a real shame because

you can use it for all sorts of interesting things.

And it is a good way to bring people together, was a good way to bring people together.

But Instagram, the engagement is still right up there.

LinkedIn seems to be up there.

But Twitter does seem to be falling off a bit of a cliff.

I mean, I still literally only go on it to put my articles on it after I've written them.

And I don't even really know why I do that.

But it's, I can't get into the new ones.

I'll have a look at LinkedIn, but I feel it's just a time suck.

Yeah,

I wonder if we don't need a social network at all.

Yeah, it's almost.

It's possible.

It's just possible that they've brought more harm than good, Richard.

I don't know.

I'm working on that theory.

It doesn't sound likely.

Yeah.

I mean, certainly we wouldn't have had the World Cup of Crisps without it.

I would just say that.

When the history is written.

I mean, that will be an indoor.

It'll be the World Cup of Crisps versus the rise of fascism.

And we will watch this space, right?

So Sebastian Bond, as you say, appears to be in Thailand.

somewhere.

Is he?

Helen McDougall as was.

The advertisers are

escaping that that ship.

But it's just something about the anonymisation of people's comments online and the fact that we talked a bit about it last week with Noel Edmonds, that thing of we didn't used to have all this feedback about the world.

We didn't used to have it.

And obviously, it's almost always the noisiest people we hear from.

And it turns out that only hearing from the noisiest people in any society is not good for anybody's mental health.

But it does to me say so much more about the commenters than the commented upon.

The commented upon are just having sort of yeah i'd like relatively minor careers in this or that yeah a deep sociological dive into why people comment i always think that like if if like kier starma or the telegraph or whoever tweets and just you look at the comments beneath and you think he's i mean he's not looking at them is it but you know what i mean that that that that thing of also and we've been doing this like 10 15 years now i mean we it's it's the same thing every single day and you're you're still going to do the comment it hasn't had any effect on your happiness it hasn't had any effect on kier starmer on the daily telegraph Nothing has changed by you doing that.

And yet, day after day after day, still it comes.

I get it, though, because, again, we're given the illusion of power in this world.

That's why there's a celebrities tweet, because they have this illusion that they have a platform.

And you think, I mean, no one's listening to you.

They're using their platform, Richard, as I believe.

They're using their platform.

Yeah.

Listen, it's.

Just sell me your words and be on your way.

Yeah, exactly.

Something like that.

I think it's interesting because it's yet to play out and you would really expect many other people to follow with legal action.

It'd be great to find out a little bit bit more about what Sebastian Bond's doing, maybe just on a beach, but let's find out.

And I'm really interested in the people who basically work for the site for free and provide all of this content all day long.

He was making, someone say, maybe half a million a year from this.

You know, it's not bad work if you can get it.

I bet that's more than his vegan cookbook.

I'm almost certain.

I now want to buy the vegan cookbook.

Do you?

Yeah, I just have to have a look at it.

Well, because you think he's going to be struggling for money now.

No, you're right.

Well, maybe I could just anonymously browse it somewhere.

It's obviously we should make the note that it has been very, very important in lots of societies to have anonymized accounts.

Like we get that, you know, Arab Spring and all these things, but that I don't think is a defense of, you know, calling a footwear influencer a bitch.

Yeah, I just don't think we can bring the Arab Spring into this particular one.

Yeah.

Listen, we try as we might.

But, you know, there is, you know, legally a good reason why some people would have anonymized accounts.

This doesn't feel like it.

And it's not a massive corporate fraud.

It really isn't.

There are lots of big, really serious frauds on the public going along, but none of these are it.

Influencers are interesting.

In We Solve Murders, it's available now.

It's a great summer read.

I do murder some influencers.

And

whenever people talk about it, they go, oh, you know, God, they're a real scourge, aren't they?

These talentless people.

I make sure in that book as well that I have an influencer who is somebody who would never have got anywhere in the mainstream media and is able to make a living doing something they love because because of the world of influencing.

And I've always often thought that there are people who are able to avoid every single gatekeeper who existed in the early 90s when I started, who are able to talk directly to the public.

So I think that the world of influencers has very positive things.

But at the same time, I recognize as well that, listen, there's a grift, but there wasn't grifting from the moment we turned.

It's really not one of the great frauds.

It really isn't, even if I mean, it really isn't.

Yeah.

And on that note, let's go and see what's being influenced in the break, shall we, Richard?

Clever, clever link.

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Hello to our lovely Wrestlers Entertainment listeners.

This is me, Marina Hyde.

And me, Richard Oswin.

Hello, everybody.

Now, our two-part deep dive into the chaotic production of Jaws, the first blockbuster, has been a smash hit, bit like the film itself, and that has been a huge hit with our club members.

Yeah, the response has been incredible.

Thank you all so much.

Deep dive is an unfortunate thing the same in relation to Jaws, but I know what you mean.

It's great to be able to do these deep dives into entertainment stories that are off the beaten track.

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Welcome back, everybody.

I think time for a bit of joy now.

Where were you last night, Marina?

Last night, I was outside the London Palladium Theatre, where Evita has just opened, but actually, yet to have its formal opening night inside, which stars Rachel Zegler, and you might well have seen because it's attracted so much coverage.

She comes out and at the start of the second act onto the balcony at the front of the palladium and sings, don't cry for me, Argentina, to everyone in the street.

And there's a camera following her and people in the auditorium are watching

from the camera.

And this is, anyway, as I say, it's a new production of Avita, the Andrew Lloyd Rebber and Tim Rice musical.

And it's directed by Jamie Lloyd, who is a sort of very iconoclastic.

He's a very interesting person.

He likes trying to make theatre an awful lot more accessible.

Yes,

he definitely doesn't come from a traditional theatre background at all himself.

And he really wants to bring more people into the theatre.

And

he's experimented with this a little bit before in the Romeo and Juliet he did, which had Tom Holland in it, Spider-Man.

There was some stuff out on the street.

He was called a Spider-Man and Juliet.

Yeah, Spider-Man and Juliet.

There was stuff on the roof, and there were drones filming there.

In his Sunset Boulevard, which has just sort of swept the Tonies, it's on Broadway now.

Joe Gillis, the screenwriter, who's played by William Holden in the movie,

it starts outside and there's a steady cam shot of him coming at this again at the start of the second act,

coming all the way up the stairs and onto the stage.

So he's experimented with this, but this is sort of, I don't want to say final form because I'm sure it could go many other places, but there's something so perfect about this because of the

story matter of Evita, which is, as you know, which is about Eva Perron, who's the

Madonna, right?

As far as she was.

She was Madonna.

She's Madonna, basically.

I've got the right story.

She's sort of a populist, and she was there, as she said, for the Adesca Misados, the shirtless ones, the people with nothing.

And it's, I have to say that I wanted to see, because I've seen, there's been a lot of coverage of this.

There's so much to say about this particular story.

Because it feels, by the way, could just be a stunt.

You think, oh, that sounds clever.

And, you know, we're used to celebrities sort of doing things in public and drawing a crowd and that being shared on Instagram.

You think, oh, good for you.

That sells tickets.

How actually is it as

a piece of art?

Well, I thought I wanted to go and see it.

And I just felt I must.

It has, obviously, it's immediately become an event.

I absolutely loved it.

I found it incredibly moving.

You're waiting there.

So you're waiting on Argyll Street, which is just by Oxford Circus.

There's a Habaldean Steakhouse right opposite if you need it.

If you need it.

Actually, looking up at the street, there's all these, you know, all different bits of London are continuing to happen.

There's a drummer playing.

There's all the noise of Oxford Street.

The blue pluck on the house just a couple of long from the theatre is the guy who started ordnance survey.

Oh, really?

Yeah, really, yeah, you'd have loved it.

Well, you're sitting there waiting and you're looking around.

Was that Sebastian Bond?

It was not Sebastian Bond, no.

Anyway, so you're waiting there, and there's such an expectation.

And

I don't know, I'm not, it's not for me to over editorialize, but it does feel like it's a crowd of people who would not necessarily be in the theatre normally.

And, you know, I go to the theatre a lot, and I, you know, I sometimes love theatre people and I sometimes hate them, as in the people who go and the type of crowd.

and you know that's I'm one of them so whatever I get that but there were all sorts of different kind of people lots of very young people

everyone's waiting to catch it with their phones I do slightly feel like just have the experience but anyway I had the experience I completely loved being a part of it.

I completely loved it.

I will always remember it.

It happened last night at about 9.10.

On other nights, it's happened about two minutes past, five minutes past.

I don't know.

It's the start of the second act.

So be there.

Be there just before nine.

She comes out.

There's a long retractable arm of a camera that comes right out to capture her she comes out and obviously she's got her hair that's sort of you know platinum and blonde now and all these diamonds um and

and it is absolutely amazing first of all Rachel Zagler, I mean, God, what a troop of K, because she has not, we know she was in the so-called woke Snow White.

She's had so much online vitriol and, you know, people have got all sorts of views of her.

First of all, I love him for staging it, Jamie Lloyd for staging it like this.

But for for her for agreeing to it in this particular year, you don't know what you're going to get on the street.

You do when you've got a nice crowd at the palladium and I'm sure they'll all be, you know, they've all paid to see you and they want to see you.

But you don't know what could happen out on the street.

And I mean, to me, it's so sort of courageous after the year, particularly that that started.

But again, people on the street are not anonymized.

You can see them.

Yeah.

You can look them in the eyes.

I mean, they're real human beings right there.

Nobody sang along, which I thought might happen.

I didn't know.

Maybe they do on other nights.

I don't don't know.

So it's Don't Cry for me, Argentina.

Don't cry for me Argentina, which is the biggest song.

Now, she makes it feel incredible.

I mean, it's, and as I say, it's so

in line with the subject matter of the show.

She, she makes it feel like it's all about you.

You know, I was millions of people back.

There were hundreds and many more than a thousand people.

Wow.

And it's going to become, I think it's going to get even bigger because, as I say, and there's a reason this is interesting, the musical has not formally opened yet.

What happens with any of these things is that

any stage show, as you probably all know, is that things happen in preview and the critics can't come.

And then there is a formal opening night.

Now, that isn't till July the 1st.

Okay, so that's the press night, and that's when they go to the next one.

That's the press night, and that's when you may write.

There's an embargo, meaning you can't publish anything before a certain time or date.

Anyway, so I have to say that

there's that, like, do you remember there's a famous, really famous Kenneth Tynan, who is the theatre critic line from right back from the 1950s when he saw Look Back in Anger.

And he said, I doubt if i could anyone i could ever love anyone who did not want to see look back in anger and i have to say after seeing it myself last night i don't think i could ever love anyone who didn't think that this was just totally cool and brilliant challenge accepted so now on to the backlash which is now the front lash because there's been so much negativity about this and i have to say it's it i'll tell you why let's if we try and unpick it obviously it's the biggest song in a vita it's the one everybody knows

um and people have said oh i'm so sorry the tickets are so expensive.

You're telling me that she doesn't sing it to the people you've paid, just to some sort of random people in the street.

All of that negativity

has happened.

And maybe we have some sympathy with that.

I have to say that from what I can gather, I have not seen the show inside.

And if I could, perhaps I wouldn't be allowed to say as a member of the press.

But

it does appear more than once in the show.

Oh, does it?

Yeah.

There's one on the

balcony of the Casa Rosada, which is the Peron residence, and once in her final broadcast.

So maybe the people, I don't know, I haven't seen this show, so I don't want to say for definite.

But I have seen in comments, newspaper comments, some people saying, oh no, I went and it's, you get it twice.

But the press reaction in general has come across as so negative.

I mean, there are lines in these things.

You just think, oh my God, are we still in this era?

Like, you know, there's a huge but coming.

But in the Times, Mr.

Lloyd is to be commended for his innovation.

Yeah, but.

And it's like, oh, my God, do we still talk like this?

What happens, of course, when something like this happens is that people scrape the negative reaction off social media.

Users are saying, yes, saying, I loved it.

Fans are saying.

Fans are saying, people are saying.

And I think that a part of that, and I'm wondering whether part of that is this sequencing, because I can already see the curtain call for this on TikTok.

I can see all sorts of stuff from inside the theater.

And as we know, they get very angry about things being filmed in theatre.

Or do they?

Lots of the productions now effectively invite influencers in and they let them do things like the curtain call do whatever and that it builds that infuriates me i wish there was a site i could uh i could slag them off on yeah well i mean i i listen if i find one i'll let you know and then you can start a big thread about it but what what we don't have to balance out this supposedly negative reaction of people saying oh this is a gimmick this is a whatever is an in-the-round review of all of this from someone who's in the theatre because the critics can't publish their reviews till are they filming the audience as well by the way when they're doing that is is in the forgive my ignorance of a vita but is that song sung to a crowd yes it's sung to a crowd you know she's a

crowd it's the balcony scene it's the balcony of the casa rasada and she's singing to the people and her people were perfect oh my god it's so cool honestly and people

the mood was just there was such a mood of expectation it was the hottest day of the year so far and then people at the end people just arrived but they were so silent when she'd gone back in what what was the uh what was the mood like amongst oh my gosh, I mean, people were saying, oh, I wish I could go and see it.

By the way, it goes without saying, he's so clever.

I mean, I might not have gone and seen Evita, but I now desperately want to go and see it from the inside.

It is a huge PR driver.

And we've talked before about things that become...

a life of their own.

They're not a stunt.

They become written about on all the news pages.

And so every day, hundreds of media outlets are basically, this is being written about in America.

I saw it in the Hollywood Report and New York Times.

Everyone's writing about this thing that is happening outside on the balcony of the London Palladium.

It's amazing for Rachel Zegler as well, because as you say, the last time she was in the public consciousness was for the Snow White movie, and this immediately puts us somewhere back.

We see her singing an incredible thing to an adoring crowd every single night.

I mean, you couldn't have better.

As a flawed, slightly impossible woman.

Yeah.

I mean, it is so on every level.

It's very, very cool.

It feels from Jamie Lloyd's perspective, it feels like something that's utterly in keeping with the mood of the piece, but also an incredible PR coup.

And if I was sitting watching that, I mean, you you can go and watch a video however you want with just someone standing there belting that song out, but you can hear that on a CD.

But to go to something that has some point of difference, some bit of extraordinary,

something that takes what Andrew Lloyd Webb and Tim Rice did and puts it in a new context, you know, presents it in a different way, it feels to me like everybody is winning there.

I couldn't agree with you more.

I would be, I would think, oh, I went to that amazing production where she actually went out onto the street and sang because it's so, as I say, it's so,

it's not a gimmick given that it so fits with the matter of the piece, as it were.

And I would think I was part of that.

And yeah, I sat in the auditorium and I watched it on screen, but you can see the people below.

It's, it's, I think it's amazing to, I would love to say that.

And I don't feel like, oh, I would resent that I didn't see the biggest number.

And maybe you do.

We don't yet know because the critics have not yet been able to write what they see.

So maybe they do do it again later in the second.

and jamie lloyd has a history of trying to make theater tickets more accessible and cheaper and bringing different crowds into the theaters as well so

what his motives uh are probably not to be questioned in this he's not just going oh i'll get a load of people paying on absolute fortune to come and see this he's trying to open the stuff out he's trying to get these things seen and always has done uh yeah i think it sounds amazing you know if we want to people to

theater audiences who are lucky enough to already be part of the crowd that can pay that that much for a ticket.

And there are lots of £20 tickets, I should say, all that, as all productions now try to do.

But if we want people to grow up and love theatre in a way that means that theatre can continue, then we just have to find different ways of getting people in.

And Angelo Weber is who's suddenly having such a sort of moment in lots of different ways.

Again, and Somerset Boulevard's obviously just swept the Tonies and he's been really interesting, I thought, on the AI bill.

But I think one of the things he said, I actually, I wonder whether we're going to be allowed to keep doing this, because which was written up in an incredibly negative way, as he said, I, you know, Lloyd Reber fears something bad happening, whatever it was, but actually, it's becoming so big.

Just the size of the crowd.

Yeah, it's becoming so big that it disperses incredibly quickly.

Once it's over, it's over.

And you've had this moment.

And you're in the middle of London.

You can, you know, head off somewhere.

I do think the social media stuff is interesting, though, because you can see lots of this stuff.

And I know that critics have various critics have said, I spoke to a critic this week who said to me, I would love to be able to write about this show and what actually happens and whether people really think it's amazing, how it works on the stage, but I can't until July the 1st, which is quite a long time away from the time you can see all the social media videos of this,

see all the sort of negative reaction to this because the papers haven't necessarily got anything else to write about, see all the

in-theater videos of

curtain calls and so on.

And it's quite a long lead-in time.

It's like working for one of those mad defense periodicals where it's got sort of four-month lead-in time.

And finally, you'll be able to see the reviews of these on July the 1st.

I get it.

There's lots of good reasons for things being able to exist in preview in the way that they do because things get changed.

And

especially with a,

well, with any complicated production, even though this, I think, is quite paired back.

Yeah.

You want people to be able to find it completely on stage before you invite them.

But on this, when you're literally wearing your pants outside your trousers, it's quite hard to

keep the colour of your pants a secret yeah it is but i have it but if you are passing near oxford circus and you're there

as i say it happened about 10 past nine when i saw it um but i think it's happened as close to sort of a couple minutes uh after nine just go and be part of it i find

it's worth a trip in isn't it and it's as you say you know you're done by quarter past nine you can go home but and it's the sort of thing that would go out

theater richard

form theatre yeah very short form theatre but it is what an incredible experience seeing a world-class singer singing a world-class song outside a world-class theatre with a thousand other people and just competing with the sounds of the rickshaws on oxford street and the madness of all of it and everyone with their phones even though it's a period piece and everything it's all it's so kind of vital and fun and i absolutely loved it i couldn't love anyone who didn't want to see that people are going to start dressing up for it aren't they at some point oh i hope so they're all going to turn up as um one as arians yeah well it's a great look you know 1950s yeah 50s dress and a load of diamonds yes please and then revolution

well anyway i loved it and i strongly recommend anyone who finds it easy to go and see it

talking of revolution oh talking of it disone the sports company d-a-z-n you'll

why have they done that richard why have they given their company a name they there are so many videos of them getting sports people to actually say how you say it you pronounce it desone even though you you spell it Dazen.

Yeah, I look, yeah, like how many eggs really like?

Dazen.

I think it's, I like things like that because people, it makes people feel like they're a part of the in-crowd when they can.

I mean, don't forget the biggest sportswear brand in the world is either Nike or Nike and still, and still no one knows.

And

the next biggest one is either Adidas or Adidas.

But they haven't deliberately tried to...

create this obscurantist name.

Yes, but because names have run out.

Like there are no names.

That's an unbelievable take.

Sorry, I just, can I just get that once more for the microphone yeah names names have run out names have run out that's why all companies now you know have to like call themselves like they take all the vowels out of the names or or or something like that why did you think why can't they call themselves dazone then well i imagine

it's done on i imagine

i imagine there is a does own already otherwise they probably would have called themselves that there'll be a does own something somewhere well let's go back to the start of them they began in london in 2016 they're now owned by uh len blavatnik who is uh um who bought them, I think, for 25 million.

So he's made his money, you know, minerals, petrochemicals, huge cultural donor and a knight.

How often they're related?

He runs A24, for example, that one of the big, one of the huge kind of broadcasters that are having an incredible few years.

Well, yes.

I mean, I think the people who run A24 run A24.

But yes,

he's one of those figures.

I just think it's easier to run something when there's a billionaire who you've got on speed dial.

That's my experience of the business of television is, you know, it's handy to have a billionaire owner.

It's very much like football

running a studio.

If you've got a billionaire owner, everything just goes a little bit easier.

Well, speaking of football, the reason we're talking about them is because they currently have the broadcast rights to the Club World Cup, which is taking place in the US now ahead of next summer's World Cup.

If you have vaguely heard of DeZone, it would have been by and large for boxing, mixed martial arts.

In other territories, it does all sorts of sports, but it's really concentrated on those.

And that's Eddie Hearn has done a big deal with it and match from sports.

But lots of those deals didn't work out.

They did, they tried like lots of these startup things that try and get these rights.

You know, they're going to show the Premier League in Canada or whatever it is.

You know, they're showing things.

They tend to be, can we pick up the rights for this out of territory?

Even though their core markets are, I think, UK, Germany, Japan, whoever they are.

Yeah, exactly.

They had done things like Canelo Alvarez.

They signed him up for a 11-fight deal, which is $365 million, which is out into it, so the most money anyone's ever given to an individual athlete for an individual deal.

So that stuff, again, as I said before, the sort of thing you can do when you've got a billionaire owner who's happy to

dip in.

However, they didn't manage to buy BT Sport, which is one of their plays.

They didn't manage Warner Discovery, got that.

They wanted to.

But here's the fascinating thing and why we're talking about the Zone now.

Just before Christmas, we got this thing, the Club World Cup, which is, you know, a FIFA thing.

It's the World Cup, but for club teams, enormous prize money.

It's like a billion dollars in prize money.

Do zone get the worldwide rights to the club World Cup?

When you say get, is it a little bit like the way people get World Cups now in that, in many cases, a lot of people don't actually want them?

So, Dozone bid for the Club World Cup, bid a billion dollars for the Club World Cup, which is something that, you know, it's people don't really know.

They didn't have a broadcaster.

By the way, FIFA didn't have a broadcaster.

So FIFA got, can't sell it, can't get a broadcaster involved.

You have to kick this off.

You have to get a broadcaster involved.

Suddenly, Dozone comes in, gives them a billion dollars you think oh that's interesting i wonder what their business plan is i wonder where they got the billion they then say oh it's going to be free to air we're going to provide it free to air for everyone so over here you'll see it on channel five and in various other territories it's on places so you think okay

you're a company the zone they lose about a billion dollars a year already the zone as you say they're speculating to accumulate which is often the case with with big media conglomerates so they're losing about a billion dollars a year they spend a billion dollars on this and a lot of people have said

well sorry, where's this money coming from?

Is this this billion seems to, and they go, oh, no, this is from our reserves.

And this is, you know, we're not looking for any extra funding.

You know, this is just part of our business plan.

And everyone's going, okay, I wonder if an announcement is due.

So they do this in December, a billion dollars.

In January, a subsidiary of the Saudi Public Investment Fund, which is the Saudi state, they buy a stake in the zone.

less than five percent we're not sure exactly what it is but certainly less than five percent do you know what they pay for that stake i i i don't know why i'm getting the figure of one billion they pay one billion dollars for a stake in the zone so this thing which is owned through various saudi subsidiary companies which by the way absolutely you're allowed to launch a club world cup absolutely nothing wrong with that uh has saudi teams which are which are also under pif um ownership suddenly now has taken a one billion dollar investment in a company who just put a one billion dollar investment into their club world cup and then you go that's why it's free to wear everywhere that's where the zone got the money from.

Listen, as I say, it may just be entirely a coincidence, but it's certainly.

Dazone's emerging markets executive is a guy called Pete Oliver who said there was a lot that happened, but these things are not necessarily connected in any way.

Pete said a number of other things as well, which I'll come to.

There's definitely a world in which they might not be connected.

There is definitely that world.

I wonder also there's a world where they are connected as well.

I mean, listen, I don't love this messenger, but Set Blatter said Saudi Arabia has taken control of international football set blatter was of course the disgraced as they say often our former fifa president it's now run by a guy called gianni infantini friend of salt bay oh my god friend of salt bay uh he was one back from i think the oligarchs the oligarch alley at the um trump inauguration i remember

yeah well this week and then he was did you see this week they had juventus in the over oval office who literally just stood sort of massed around trump they looked very uncomfortable they look yeah i mean they look they literally looked like they were defending a kind of last-minute free kick from just outside the area it was literally everyone was like this and then he was saying things like could a woman be on your team they're like i didn't sign up for this the weirdest thing was there was nine of them standing up and one of them was lying down on the floor

and it was and infantina was there sort of smiling over all of it but i do think in general it's it's interesting just before we get back onto the zone but people do say everything out loud now in football um which for a long time you know fifa would say i'm trying to grow this ball i'm trying to do whatever we're just interested in people being able to watch this or anything for a while you know people talked about the footballers products and content and that seemed dreadful now I think it's beyond parasitic it's like what I'm using football to do it's just it's honestly just to write a random plot device completely companies want the ability to reach consumers and get their data because everybody wants to be a tech company and these people just want to be a tech company they want the tech company and crucially they want the tech mummy yeah so football is just like some random MacGuffin, some thing that they can use in order to extract those things.

Yeah,

the history of the last 15 years or so in the media has been you want to be valued as a tech company rather than a media company because your multiple of your earnings is

hugely enhanced if you are a if you're a tech play rather than a legacy media play.

And the zones certainly feel like they have an air of tech play about them.

But again, it sort of doesn't matter what you are if you have PIF, the Saudi government behind you one way or another, because you can deficit fund absolutely everything.

Another deal Dazone have just done, again, unrelated, is Live Golf, which again has been Saudi-backed for many, many years, has always struggled to find broadcasters.

That's one of the key things.

It has now found a willing production partner in that by the name of Dazone.

So they are now selling those rights to 200 territories.

So, you know, Live Golf is also going to go through Dazone.

Club World Cup is going to go through Dazone.

Lovatnik says he wants this to be the Netflix of sport, which is interesting in itself because, you know, we still can't rule out the fact that Netflix is going to want to be the Netflix of sport.

They always did what was called sport-adjacent content, as we've said.

They've now done an NFL game.

They've now done, well, they did a sort of stunt fight, but they're going to do lots of other stuff.

So every time they say, we're not interested in getting into sports, they weren't interested in a whole lot of things.

But it's interesting that someone is trying to be that global sports platform.

Yeah, it is.

And I like the fact that it's a British company.

I like that.

That's a nice one.

I bet it's a lot of fun to work there.

I imagine being high up at Dazone and having been at high up at Dazone ever since it started is probably quite a fun ride.

But as you say, what it really does is it shows very nakedly what the levers of power are doing at the moment in the media and with their money.

And if you do have a billion dollars to launch a tournament, if you and I wanted to launch a Club World Cup, nothing's stopping us.

We could go and see, well, there is now.

If we decided five years ago to do that, we would be about a billion dollars short of being able to do it.

And Dazone have found a way to not be a billion dollars short.

And the Saudis have found a way to, you know, get a production partner.

And as you say, FIFA, Dazone,

PIF, everyone seems happy.

Well, I mean, lots of football fans aren't that happy, and that's obviously the crucial point.

But it's.

I mean, I'll say this.

I mean, I've been around a long time, and I've never known a time where football fans have been happy.

I agree.

Another interesting sidebar to this, well, it's not even a sidebar really, is that, so it's been showing on channel five these

games, in the same way that channel four this week have been showing the England 1021 team, that these games are getting somewhere around 600, 700,000, 800,000.

Now, five years ago, that would have been a disaster for any terrestrial channel, which is why football was always on, you know, sky sports and these things, where if you get those numbers, you're absolutely delighted because it's an an audience who are paying you and an audience you can really, really focus your advertising on.

But the world of terrestrial TV now is of such that if Channel 4 can get 7.5 million for two hours, and if Channel 5 can get 600,000 or 700,000 for four hours, then

that's a good return on their investment for them, especially as their investment in this case, the Club World Cup, is very, very small.

So there is a world now where there are huge amounts more markets for sport because something that can get you half a million is valuable in virtually every country whereas it wouldn't have been 10 years ago it'd have been meaningless you'd have had to go to a payball 200 countries then yeah exactly if you could if you can stick lift golf on channel five across the weekend and channel five are getting eight hours of coverage each day

very, very heavily deficit funded and are able to get three, 400,000 people to watch that, then that's working for absolutely everyone in a way that it wouldn't have done.

And so i think there was a a moment maybe last weekend where channel five was showing club world cup game auckland city fc were playing by and munich this was the 10-nil yeah they were an amateur they're an auckland team they're new zealand team

they were yeah but they're getting like 10 million to take part in the club world cup so you know and and they get to play against buyer munich so i think they're okay so that was on channel five uh the england under 21 match was on channel four and soccer aid was on i tv and i think on bc2 there was the world Athletics.

And you think, okay, I know sometimes people complain there's too much sport on TV, but that's four of the five terrestrial channels, all showing quite long-form sports.

They also complain there's not enough sport on terrestrial.

So there we go.

But it feels like maybe there's going to be more of that to come.

More wall-to-wall sport on television, deficit-funded by various regimes.

Well, we'll be talking a lot about that in the run-up to the World Cup next and all the sports broadcasting things about that.

I see people already calling for people to boycott it.

The next World Cup?

Yeah.

Is that America, the next one?

Yes.

Yes, next year.

So, yeah, that's why they're.

I'm at an age now where I've lost, I've lost track of World Cups.

If you'd told me when I was 16, 20, 24, there would be a time where I would have forgotten who won the last World Cup.

I'd have thought you had lost your mind because I could have told you every result, every player, where every player played for at their clubs, every single thing that ever happened, every goal that was ever scored, where the player then went afterwards.

And now I'm like, I don't remember who won the last one.

It's because you're old.

There's been so many of them.

Yeah.

Now, any recommendations this week?

Yes, I'm reading a book that I'm absolutely loving, which has just come out, I think, last Thursday, which is Barry Diller, the legendary television film executive,

media executive, really.

And he's written a memoir and it's called Who Knew.

He is.

a brilliant writer.

It's really well done.

It's a great tour through his time in show business and deal making, really.

I mean, he's a, it's really, it's fascinating.

I mean, he, he tries to work it, but it's also hugely actually a mat about his, his kind of repressed sexuality when he was younger, then the um, the fact he completely falls in love with Diane von Furstenberg, which is a turnout for the books.

Yeah.

Uh, and um, it's, it's an anyway, it's, it's brilliant, it's really well done, and it's an it's a like a great showbiz deal-making memoir, and I'm loving it.

So, Barry De Laura.

Who knew?

Who knew?

I saw a clip of him, and I can't remember what his answer was, but someone was asking what what was the most coke-addled production he ever set foot on, and he said, Popeye, the live-action Popeye.

Ooh, with Robin Williams.

Yeah.

That feels like a bonus episode waiting to happen.

Gosh, I need to look further into that.

But anyway, I haven't got to that bit in the book, but what about you?

I will recommend the second series of The Gold, which you can see on iPlayer.

The first series

I loved, which was about the Brinks Matt robbery written by the brilliant Neil Forsyth.

I think it's one of our greatest writers.

The first half deals with the stuff we know about Kenneth Noy and John Palmer and essentially half of the Brinksback Gold, but the other half of the Brinksback Gold has never been found.

And so Neil Forsyth has sort of written there's bits of fact in there, but there's like composite characters

about what might have happened to the other one.

That's really good.

It's so good.

He's such a great writer, and the performances are absolutely terrific.

If you haven't seen the first series, really, really recommend that.

If you did watch the first one and haven't yet caught up on the second one, strongly recommend it.

It's a real rump.

Yeah.

I would say.

Did I tell you about my cabby the other day whose dad was one of the great train robbers?

Really?

Oh, that's a good one.

No, No, he didn't.

He's the one, the one that got away.

Oh, really?

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

That was interesting.

How funny.

Listen, we do not have time.

We do not have time for

Barry Dilla's clone dogs.

Barry Dilla's clone dogs.

I'm sure at some other point

that will come up.

But Danny, if you're listening, thank you so much for all the insight.

Q ⁇ A on Thursday.

Q ⁇ A on Thursday.

We have a Q ⁇ A on Thursday.

And for our members' bonus episode on Friday, we're going to talk about our summer reads, our recommendations for summer reads, mine and my actual summer reads.

We'll just read 20 minutes of recommendations about stuff you can take on holiday with you.

Nothing more complicated than that, but loads and loads of great books to talk about.

See you on Thursday.

See you on Thursday.

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