Marina Explains The Beckham Family Feud

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

And me, Richard Osman.

Hello, Marina.

Hello, Richard.

How are you?

I'm alright.

I'm quite hungover because we record this on a Monday.

That's not a spoiler.

And I was at the BAFTAs last night.

Spoiler it.

Did not win.

I'm better than when Phil and Holly turned up for this morning, still in their tuxes.

But yeah, I felt better.

I don't even have that shiny BAFTA to

make my head feel better.

And there's certainly more authentic bonhami in this studio than there was perhaps that morning after the NTAs with Phil and Holly.

I hear you.

Ingrid did say, just go in in your tux and pretend you've been up all night.

Well, speaking of authenticity or otherwise, we are going to talk about the Beckham family feud, a big story that's going on about the sort of supposed feud, which I think is definitely real between the Beckham family and Brooklyn Beckham and his wife, Nicola Peltz.

So that's.

Oh my god, that is, that could not be more up your street.

The first 10 minutes or so of the podcast, I can sit back.

I can just sit there and just go, come on, drink your tea.

Tell me everything.

Revive.

We're then going to talk about the horror director, Eli Roth, who's got a brand new way of financing films, which I think is very, very interesting.

I think it's a new way in this world where it's very hard to finance anything at all.

He's got a brand new way of doing it which I think is interesting.

And bringing up the rear will be those bafters Richard won't they while we discuss your experience.

Well I mean I watched it what it all sort of meant.

Yes but mainly what it's like to be at one of those things

a little bit of backstage gossip and all that kind of stuff and and what the mood is

in British television.

I would say by the end of the evening fairly drunk.

And also the very very early soundings soundings of what happened on Celebrity Traitors, which is just finished.

There will be no spoilers, I guarantee you that.

But the team are back.

Some of the celebs are back as well.

And so just I'm going to tell you the mood music that I found.

I can't wait.

Okay.

I'll have to.

Shall we start with our friend David Beckham and friend of the podcast, Brooklyn?

Yes, we shall.

Okay, this story is the story of a sort of fallout between Brooklyn Beckham and his wife, Nicola Peltz, and the bigger Beckham family.

And it seems to be quite a terrible fallout.

It all seems to be true.

Despite being in the UK last week, they didn't attend any of David Beckham's three or four 50th birthday parties as far as I can work out.

Really?

Brooklyn and Nicola?

Yes.

I'll tell you what I'm interested in.

I'm interested for two reasons.

The first is that the Beckhams as a brand are always interesting and their brand is enormously predicated on the idea of them as a family.

And they sort of invented the idea of modern celebrity as it exists in this country for us

and how they've created it, how they've adapted it, how long they continue to want to have that brand, even after it is absolutely not financially necessary to them at all, and how they continue to sort of live their life out loud in lots of different ways.

And the second reason I'm interested in it is because I think it's sort of emblematic, this whole story, of a complete shift in celebrity journalism, how we cover celebrities that has sort of taken place since the advent of Instagram.

And the evolution of celebrity journalism, and I suppose what you could even now call celebrity citizen journalism, as an ordinary people getting involved and having takes on whatever it may be.

I think it's really interesting that absolutely none of this story, which is played out in huge numbers of articles every single day currently in the tabloids and on news websites, none of that came from what we would have traditionally recognised as sort of old-style journalism.

Maybe a tip-off from someone in the inner circle, maybe whatever it is.

Maybe going through someone's bins.

Maybe going through someone's business.

Someone's phones.

What we call the good old days.

What we call shoe leather leather stuff, okay?

Now, so much entertainment journalism now comes from watching who is or isn't tagged in Instagram posts, who doesn't like certain posts, who doesn't feature in pictures.

Now, remember, these are pictures that a certain type of celebrity, about which the Beckhams are kind of probably top of the tree of that type, post religiously because they have become drawn to the upsides financial, brand, image-wise, of living out loud.

So filtering all these moments through these platforms, it allows ordinary people, just anyone who can follow the people, to speculate and to make connections.

Almost like everyone's got a constant yarn wall of different things on there, you know, alleging they didn't link to that, they didn't do that.

This is, it's all a sort of big conspiracy.

And it's a form of sort of mass criminology, really.

And there are whole sites.

Finally, we're talking about mass criminology.

Finally, finally, yeah, but it is in a way, isn't it?

There's these whole sites kind of dedicated to working out what tiny little changes in a celebrity's digital imprint mean, why they've happened.

And that is to me a complete cultural shift in not much more than a decade.

Effectively, anyone ordinary can be an Instagram sleuth and see, oh, you know, Romeo didn't tag that person, or why didn't that person wish Victoria Happy Mother's Day?

It feels like a sort of like the 19th century society balls and stuff.

all over again, which is, oh, it's interesting you turned up, but you were wearing a white handkerchief.

Or it's very interesting that the Duchess Dowager wasn't invited to dinner.

She was just invited to tea.

She wore violets, which symbolised X.

Or, you know, why didn't they take the quadrille together?

And so what you have is you have a whole army of internet sleuths that include ordinary journalists and ordinary people who are looking to see these tiny little changes.

And in this case, seem to have surfaced a story that is completely true.

One of the big things in our culture is, and because it's become so image-obsessed because of these platforms in so many ways, I think, is people thinking they are being sold a lie.

And that's one of the real it's like one of the sort of prevalent trends I think yeah um and

it's the great crime yeah it's the great crime of our age you'll be yes you're and you're you're set you're you're making false representations now the Beckhams themselves have been making representations as it were right since the very start their rise is so symbiotically linked with the real rise of okay magazine when it became a huge deal now that was nothing now in the same way as it once was but at the time these print weeklies hello and okay it was the upstart owned by Richard Desmond and they had the Beckhams okay now richard desmond in his book talks about going around to victoria's parents every friday night and they would literally drink champagne and decide what they'd concoct for the next exclusive and they had everything you know they had the story of the engagement they had the story that she was pregnant with brooklyn this is a child by the way who now may or may not be speaking to them the first pictures after the birth the wedding they sold every single thing the beckhams what's your value judgment on that because we come from a generation that we would just say oh god that's so tacky that's so gauche.

But is it?

Well, I think it is, yes, because I've never had a Instagram or a Facebook, even a Facebook account, because I'm actually mine about that.

But I'm certainly alone.

If you did, it would blow up.

Everyone wants to see your bookshelves.

Everyone wants to see your Plotzy removal guy, Pete.

Yeah, they probably, they come on.

But the Beckhams really did believe in all that.

And then, it's interesting, they evolved past that.

They became sort of too big for OK magazine, and they probably did think it was tacky.

And then once they come back under the sort of aegis of Simon Fuller, who understands image image rights and all sorts of things like that and they go to America he commodifies them in a different way and it becomes a much more sort of much more lucrative but huge image rights deals and huge kind of licensing deals and all sorts of things and you can see how they've evolved and then you can see how eventually we get to David's position of his sort of self-commissioned documentary, which was a huge success as we know for Netflix.

And Victoria is doing her own one because of that.

Yes, I will more on that later.

Watching how they've behaved on these platforms, and you'll see Victoria will post a picture maybe on their boat in Miami, and it will be a picture of their daughter, Harper, and it will say kisses to you, Harper7, or whatever.

And you think, why don't you just turn to her and say that instead of filtering it all the way up through Mark Zuckerberg's satellites?

And because the answer is, it's because it's part of the brand.

Okay, by the way, can I tell you, I just love this.

I don't look at any celebrities' Instagrams.

I just, I genuinely don't.

So this is all new information to me and will be for lots of people listening as well.

I absolutely love it.

That's crazy when you've got that much money as well.

Are they just locked into this loop?

I think they do remain sort of funny and authentic and that's why it continues to work.

However, they are ruthless brand managers and I do think that commodifying and you know to some extent you would say the children have already been sort of pre-commodified right from the stories of you know,

their first pictures all the way through.

There are other sort of strands to this which I would say that this type of journalism or this type of story is so driven by sites like, well, there's not really another site like it, but something like Tattle Life, which is absolutely huge.

I don't know if you know about Tattle Life.

I know about it.

I don't spend a lot of time on it.

Tattle Life is essentially a collection of threads where people talk about people in the public eye and basically tear them down.

But it's very interesting.

This is how the site formally describes itself, a commentary website on public business social media accounts.

And what actually that appears as is sort of obsessive threads about celebrities.

The essential thing that people are always saying on Tattle Life is: this celebrity is not who they say they are.

And obsessive amounts of content are drawn together from seeing what they've liked or piecing together their social media and saying, Well, this narrative doesn't make sense because you said something different in here.

She said this, she said that.

She must have moved.

I've noticed different things in the kitchen now.

You know, I mean, really extraordinary.

As I say, it is a form of criminology.

Stories like the Brooklyn Beckham and

Nicola Pelt and Wider Beckham Family Feud are sort of surfaced by these sites.

Now,

either traditional journalism has started mimicking these sites, because it is such a sort of good pipeline of people who have a lot more hours in the day to sit there and work out all these things,

or maybe these sites are influenced by a form of kind of tear-you-down journalism that existed long before that, which we know existed.

But what we do know is that other forms of entertainment journalism, to a large extent, have disappeared and given way to this.

And is that just because lots of forms of journalism have disappeared or it's just a much easier way of doing the stuff?

Well you don't have to go anywhere, do you?

I mean people used to be out when I first started in journalism people used to be out on jobs all the time.

I was the secretary on the Sun Shobers desk and people were constantly out and then after a while it became seeing if someone had said something outrageous or you know on Twitter.

In 1994 this woman who was an ordinary woman she was an earlier doctor of kind of internet forums, chat rooms, things like that, online participant in online communities basically she was called Carmen Hermasillo but she went by the name of humdog on a lot of as her little handle on platforms.

She published an essay called Pandora's Vox on Community in Cyberspace.

The central premise of this essay was that what people thought about the internet and computer networks in general was that they would lead to a reduction in hierarchy and it would lead to a great sort of levelling out.

But in fact, this is bear in mind in 1994, this is 30 years ago she's writing this.

She said what in fact had happened as a result result of computer networks is that people had commodified their personalities and have surrendered power and information information to corporations who own these networks.

Isn't that incredible to say that, to see that in 1994?

And she said, I've seen many people spill their guts online and I did so myself until at last I began to see that I had commodified myself.

And she's talking about whoever owned the little internet board she was posting on.

So, I mean, she says, that means I sold my soul like a tennis shoe and I derived no profit from the sale of my soul.

It's also interesting that, you know, coming into the bit of culture where your soul is available for everybody to see, if you've got any sort of online imprint, actually, if you are a Beckham or someone like that, the idea that you just go, look, I mean, we're going to be written about anyway.

We're going to be commented on anyway.

There's going to be photos of us anyway.

Why not just make them all ours?

Why not control that narrative entirely?

Why not be the people who are commodifying ourselves?

And I do think it must be very, very tiring.

But the alternative will be tiring anyway.

And they want to make money, and that's okay.

And only

want one's own sort of story and one's own narrative seems to be quite a smart thing to do.

The trouble is, when something like this happens, the Brooklyn thing, where you go, oh, this is one, in the same way that the royal family can't control Harry and Megan, and that's where the problem is.

They've always been able to, you know, people sort of tuck back into the fold one way or another.

But it came from openness.

It came from that documentary that she did right back in The Royal Family, the Queen.

It came from a form of opening up and a form of transparency.

Transparency will get you in the end.

Yeah.

What Carmen Espacillo said was that cyberspace absorbs energy and personality and then it represents it, a spectacle.

It represented it as a spectacle.

And most people lurk in cyberspace.

They don't really kind of fully participate.

But the ones that are most noisy, she saw at the time, were the ones who are most pleased with themselves.

People thought that...

the internet would be a place where they were free to express their individuality, but actually it's so much as if it has become a place now.

If you have any kind of public profile where it's about about truth in packaging, people are become incredibly angry about this and incredibly dedicated to exposing what they believe is some form of kind of vague image fraud.

We lie to each other all the time.

We present a public face of ourselves, which is subtly different to our private face.

I mean that's that's the world we live in and it seems incomprehensible to a generation of online commentators who are taking personal offense that that might be the case whilst also by the way telling us very very little about themselves and who they are.

Everyone, when you go into a new room full of new people, you become a slightly different version of yourself.

The people you love know you, that's the only important thing.

But any public-facing thing, it has to be mediated.

I agree with you.

Nietzsche, first time on the podcast, I believe.

I don't think it is the first time.

Is it not?

No, I think when we first.

Nietzsche believed that appearance and reality have become the same.

Whereas someone like Baudrillard, again, that is his first time on the podcast.

He believed that there is such a thing as the truth beneath, the true thing beneath but that people had come to prefer the lie the the the appearance nature versus nature

i don't think that people people quite prefer the appearance here the sheer volume of stories that are being published about this thing right now this beckham thing is only matched by sort of megan and harry stories so beckham's 50 yeah

i'm willing to believe that tell me the story i don't know the story particularly what is the feud uh needless to say he has um he he has lots of different celebrations for his 50th birthday oh my god god his family and whatever i turned 50 during lockdown it was just a joy because i didn't have to have a party and they were going to come but they've got a problem with romeo's girlfriend or maybe they haven't or and anyway it's become a

with romeo's girlfriend brooklin's got a problem with romeo's yes i think the pair of them have they don't have a lot of time for nicola brooklyn's wife and she doesn't seem to have a lot of time for them who knows the ins and outs of it all but she's a billionaire heir yes

yes he nelson pelts is a sort of um big sort of financial figure he's a the activist in

him before.

We've spoken about him before.

Yeah.

Former Wendy's owner.

I read this thing the other day because he's got his hot sauce now.

Brooks has got a hot sauce company.

And there was something about the father-in-law saying, also has experience in the condiment area.

It's like, oh, I see he owned Hellman's and he owned about 100 different...

Yeah, he owned Heinz.

Okay, right.

But we had a significant shareholding in Heinz or something.

Yeah, no, it's not the same.

What's interesting now, I suppose, going forward is that a brand that they have so carefully curated around their family, but the biggest threat on it was the accusations of infidelity against David Beckham, which they have to address in that Beckham documentary that we've already seen, as you remember.

And actually, I think they even sort of rigged one of the headlines so it said something different.

So they could show a few headlines.

They obliquely discussed this was a really difficult time, but they didn't really go into the depth because they obviously didn't want to.

It's really interesting to see

Victoria, we know, is doing this documentary, and there will be a time when it's expected to come out and there will be a whole sort of structure around this thing.

And the point of Victoria as a sort of brand entity in the same way that, you know, is that she's a fantastic businesswoman, she's not, but she's a mother.

And the difficulty is if this is remains a live thing, then you can't really have, unless she decides to say to speak completely candidly about it, which I sort of feel like she won't, someone who's supposedly always been totally open about their family and pushed their family forward and whatever is left in a bind because this is another self-commissioned documentary, executive producer, David Beckham.

So it makes those sorts of things very different, difficult because the brands are so intertwined.

But I think, so to me, that's why that story is interesting.

It's interesting from

when you've so foregrounded your own family and made it such an important part of your financial brand

and continue to co-opt your children all the time in the kind of curation of that brand.

And it's also interesting from that sort of totally new style of citizen entertainment journalism, which is all just time to see these tiny little shifts in people's digital imprint.

And it's, if you can't, you can't imagine entertainment journalism now without Instagram.

It's impossible to imagine.

There would be no stories.

Everyone would have to learn how to go and get different stories all over again.

It's fascinating, isn't it?

Because everyone here will be thinking about their own families, and there's always rifts in families and all these sorts of things.

And if you take the biggest argument your family ever had, the biggest fallout that was ever had in your extended family, and imagine that playing out across the front pages of the newspapers for weeks on end, it would be weird for everybody.

So the beck, I mean,

there's I'm sure there is some sort of feud between them but I mean when isn't there in a family but if you commodify your family and if you commodify how happy your family is over many many many years and make a lot of money out of it suddenly those feuds become slightly more difficult to contain where's Cruz in all this I don't think he's a huge fan of Nicola really no hey listen he's got a you know 29 year old girlfriend he's yeah he's out there how old is Harper 13 14 oh okay that's that's like the sort of age I thought she would be I was If you said to me she's 35, I'd be like, oh, no, really.

She can legally get her own Instagram account now.

So, yeah, for people who haven't followed it at all, you don't need to follow it.

We've told you everything.

And for people who do follow it, yeah, I think there's some rather fun insight there.

Listen,

it's going to be great for the podcast over the next few years.

I'll say that.

Is it good for the podcast?

This is the chief question we ask of any single entry story.

Does it actually help the podcast?

I'm morally indifferent to it.

Just tell me, is it a numbers boost?

Thank you so much, Marina.

Shall we go to some adverts?

Let's do that.

And afterwards, we're going to talk about Eli Roth and we're going to talk about the BAFTAs, which I lost.

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Welcome back, everybody.

Now, Eli Roth, who is the Wundakind

horror director behind things like Cabin Fever.

which I think he made for $1.5 million, made $35 million.

We talk a lot about these low-budget horror films being one of the last things that hollywood does very very well and one of the last very very profitable things it does and eli roth is probably the master of those things he made hosted as well he made that for four million took 80 million at the box office and this will age it 180 million dollars in dvd sales as well so this is a business I would say that you want to get involved with.

You want to get involved with the Eli Roth business.

He made Hostel 2, which actually made less money, but that's Eli Roth says Hostel 2 was the most pirated movie of all time.

Somebody leaked a copy of it, and it was like downloaded over a million times in the first day.

He said two days after this film came out, you could go to any street market in Rio de Janeiro or Mexico City or Nanjing and you could buy my movie for a dollar.

He said, and it still made a load.

But anyway, it's a huge business.

Horror.

There's lots of money to be made in it.

And Hollywood are starting to put lots of their money behind it.

You look at Heretic with Hugh Grant, which, you know, award-nominated, made a lot of money, substance, a lot of money.

Eli Roth has always been quite interesting about the way he funds things.

His first movie was entirely self-funded.

And he has, we're all aware of Kickstarter.

We're all aware of what that is and Patreon and all these things.

He's set up a company called the Horror Section.

And the horror section, he said, this is where all my IP is going to live.

It's where my movies are going to live.

There'll be comics.

There'll be live events.

Everything horror-based.

There will be podcasts.

Yeah, exactly uh the rest is cavin fever so he set this thing up uh the horror section and he's done a kickstarter to put some money it's actually a site called republic isn't it a site called republic yeah i you i use the word kickstarter as as as the thing that we understand the

meaning the vacuum cleaner but it's actually yeah but it's a crowdfunding it's a crowdfunding thing on the republic he wants to raise five million dollars and in return for that you actually own a piece of his company you become what every executive producer in the world world is, which you're someone who puts money into something and share in the upside of a movie.

You become a part owner of the IP, of the character, which, by the way, in horror means a lot because if you look at how many iterations there are of each successful franchise, actually owning a bit of the IP and owning the,

I think

it's coming very soon, the next Final Destination, which is, I think, the sixth of that.

And

as I say, there's something like, I think there's a, I want to say 30 plus horror movies slated for theatrical release this year, maybe even more.

And Final Destination is one and they've just had another one, The Clown in the Corn.

Clown in the Corn.

Oh my god.

That costs less than a million.

First weekend out, 3.9 million.

It's a good business, I would say.

And listen, who knows if this thing will work?

But it's a new way of doing things.

And Eli Roth has understood, in the same way when we talked about biblical epics and using the Christian church money to make movies and make T V shows, he has understood this is an incredibly engaged audience who wants horror fans are like the second most engaged and obsessive community outside of evangelical christians which is weird

yeah listen i think so i think it's a great but you can print that you know what two sides of the same coin isn't it well now good well now good and evil but which is which so you can yourself uh invest in the horror section there's 42 days left on this thing he's trying to raise five million i think they've got 2.8 million so far something like 1700 people have already put in yeah it feels like you know it seems very open it seems very transparent a lot of people uh robert rodriguez who did dawn of the dead and and yeah films like that he's doing a similar thing but you own the ip in a particular project but this eli roth thing is the horror section you will own a part of that company you'll own part of the upside you own parts of directing fees that he would get exe producer fees that he would get you get some fun perks he's bundling uh the stuff he already owns into the company so so it will own the ip to hostel and to cavin fever and these things that can obviously be kind of spun off into extra movies into games into all sorts of things the perks are amazing normally if you if you like crowdfund a book or something and you get your name in the back of the book that's nice there's lots of smaller perks the best perk is that um this will cost you a million dollars if you if you put in a million dollars which feels to me like that's old school hollywood but anyway i i think this is just a headline thing to get people interested for a million dollars he said he's going to kill you on screen And he said, I will give you a death that for the rest of your life, everyone will be like, that's that's the most disgusting thing I've ever seen.

Wow.

A million dollars to have the most disgusting death in horror history.

The one thing he said,

he said, most people want their head chopped off so that they can keep the false head afterwards and put it on their desk.

That's lovely.

Isn't that nice?

That is a lovely touch.

And lovely, lovely little things.

If you put in $666.

If you put in 666, you get your share certificate and it's got a bloody handprint on it.

Real blood.

Yeah.

Real handprint.

Because again, rather like Angel Studios funding sort of Christian movies or whatever, the fan base is very engaged.

You know, they say they know what the fans want.

And I think, you know, they're right.

As we keep saying, Hollywood is not making movies that people want to see.

And they do turn out when you make movies that people want to see.

Something like that is happening at the moment with sinners.

That is a sort of huge phenomenon.

And you think, oh, well, I mean, perhaps if you made more movies that people actually wanted, then maybe more people would go.

But he wants to make unrated films, which he says, the studios won't let you do that.

You know, I want to be really fully disgusting.

And that's what the fans want.

So I'm going to be able to do that this way because I'm not going to have to take all the notes off the studio and not do what, you know, I can do whatever I want.

And, you know, he is making the point, and this happened in television with rate when people went to streamers, suddenly ratings became less important.

He is saying, I do not care about the box office take of these movies.

That will look after itself.

What I care about is the share price because that's what you're buying.

You're not, you know, you are literally becoming an owner of this company.

And if we have projects that do good business, the share price will go up.

And that's all I care about.

And your money will go up.

And it feels listen.

He's interesting talking about it, isn't he?

He's still charismatic, but he's very charismatic.

He's also in In Glorious Bastards, if you want to see him as an actor.

That's probably his most famous role.

He is a charismatic person, and he seems mischievous and sort of disruptive in a way that sort of horror is anyway.

But I do think that point you're making at the start is so interesting in terms of the mental profitability of the genre.

The big films last year, like Terrify 3 was the most profitable movie of the year last year.

That's another horrible clown movie.

It made 45 times its budget.

Now, compare that to the top film in the box office of last year, Inside Out 2.

That made 10 times its budget, but without marketing.

So maybe it's 50.

Five times its budget.

Yeah, second biggest of the year, Deadpool and Wolverine, six times its budget, but again, without marketing.

Right.

Now, as you say, Eli Ross catalogue where these films make absolutely multiple, many, many multiples of their budget, as Clown in a Cornfield did last weekend, and as Final Destination.

Clown in a Cornfield, isn't brilliant, isn't it?

It's like it's all up there in a title.

It's like cats in the cradle.

Yeah, and as Final Destination will, it's so, it's kind of completely profitable, almost without exception, if it's well done.

It's interesting, though, you talked about Kickstarter and said, this isn't, this isn't, as we say, this is on Republic and it's a different thing.

But Kickstarter themselves have got much more into indie funding.

They've got ahead of, you know, film funding now.

They've got some, that's someone's position at the company is to to do these kind of outreach things.

And they want to bring premium indie, not just people saying, well, I want to do my student film and I need you to, you know, kick in so we've all got some money here.

They actually want to have a slate of things that they have financed.

And they're really quite ambitious about it.

Taylor Shaw, who's the woman who they've got in to be the sort of head of film outreach, I listened to an interview with her and it's they're very ambitious about this.

That people are constantly now, as you see, trying to circumvent the old systems, which obviously aren't working in lots of different ways, but people feel they have new ideas that can yeah,

I genuinely think, and I do think obviously, film production money has, you know, films are costing more and more at the moment, but there's got to come an inflection point where films start costing less and less and less.

I mean,

we all understand the technology trend that is coming, and we all understand that that means that making content is going to become an awful lot cheaper quite soon.

And nobody in Hollywood seems to be

horror always understood it, but I think it means means that there are good times ahead for people who want to make interesting content.

That we constantly get told, and it's absolutely right, that the lowest common denominator always attracts the funding.

We absolutely get it.

So superhero movies, things like that, things that can reach a very, very big audience.

Things also make money are things with a rabid fan base.

And the lovely thing with a rabid fan base is they will invest in something if they understand it's authentic and they understand that it's going to be good and they understand it's a risk, of course they do.

But it is something they would be excited to get into.

You know, they can, we've talked talked about this with

games testing as well.

You know, they can then become evangelists for these things before they come out.

It feels like a great business model.

It'd be lovely if, for example, in the world of British comedy, which has a great reputation.

worldwide, has a lot of fans worldwide.

This feels like something maybe that certain high-profile British comic actors could get involved with.

I just think in the next five years, an awful lot of people listening to this will become film investors somewhere in something.

In the same way, you know, when you can own like one 30 second of a racehorse and people go into a syndicate, you know, you can put up a bit of money and you know you're not going to make a huge amount, but you can go to a movie and just go, I'm one of the producers.

People investing in films to make money as opposed to somehow hide

their tax evasion would be a great idea.

I'm really, I'm hugely proud of it.

It's interesting.

Eli Roth first, he said, I first had this idea.

Again, it's probably nonsense, but he's a good salesperson.

He said he was on the Howard Stern show and the Howard Stern at at the end said, You know, if this guy was a stock, I'd buy him.

He said, I've always thought about it, and I thought, you know, what if I was a stock?

What if you could buy me?

And the news is you can.

So it's republic.com.

You can go on it.

Please, please, please, for the love of God, don't take investment advice from us.

But look at if you are a huge horror fan, if you love Eli Roth, and you look at the terms and conditions and there's stuff in there that interests you, you can go to republic.com, 41 days left, you can become an investor in the horror section.

But I do think over the next few years, the more you talk to creatives and creators these days, and I talked to a few people at the BAFTAs last night, the more people are working out that you can either be funded by one rich person or one rich organisation, or you can be funded by a thousand fans.

And actually, the thousand fans might be more useful to you than that one bigger than you.

A thousand very engaged consumers.

I was just thinking that Apprentice movie, the Donald Trump movie, when they had all sorts of distribution problems, in fact, they couldn't get a distributor, they got the money to get a distributor via Kickstarter.

They weren't funded at Kickstarter, but when they ran into problems, they managed to completely solve it and they got it distributed.

And, you know, they were up the various awards, and it all worked out.

And those people, of course, all see the movie and tell lots, many, many other people about the movie.

Listen, it's a bit of fun, I think.

I don't think it's going to make you a millionaire, but if you love entertainment, if you love film, if you love content, then there are going to be ways coming up that you can become a part of it.

I don't know if the big studios did this, if I would invest in the next Marvel movie, who knows?

Well, that's because people don't feel that they choose for them.

There's a sort of animus against the big studios because they feel that they're not necessarily making movies for them.

And every time they do occasionally coalesce in terms of interest, then people turn out and see it.

That's an animus sidebar for you.

Yeah, animus sidebar.

Now, Richard.

The BAFTAs.

The BAFTAs.

Yeah, so listen, I'll get your take on because I didn't, obviously, I didn't see the TV thing of it go out, but

I was there on the day.

I thought it might be interesting to talk through what a day at the BAFTAs is like, and then we can talk about the winners and losers and what it meant about British TV and what have you.

So it's at the Royal Festival Hall.

You turn up at like 2.30.

It was blazing hot.

And there's an amazing first person I bump into, Danny Dyer.

He's got the moustache, so you know they're starting filming Ryan this next week.

I think it's today they start.

How exciting is that?

So he's absolutely tashed up.

And he was up for Mr.

Big Stuff.

And I said, Danny, you've won millions of these.

He goes, I never won one.

I never won a BAFTA.

I was like, no way.

And he did later on.

So I was very happy with that.

I said, Damn, I've never won one either.

And

it didn't go my way.

And he did a very entertaining speech as well.

What's your streak now on Hasa Games?

I'm going to tell you about a very impressive streak later, my amazing sec producer, Tamara Gilda.

He's got one of the all-time great L streaks in

nominee history.

So you turn up there, it's blazing hot, and you're essentially when you get dropped, there's like a there's like a red carpet thing which so all the press photographers and all the all the kind of you know radio stations and things know where you are and you're you're it's it's like you're at the airport and you're you know you're in a queue you know with all the kind of things either side of you except like Toby Jones is in front of you and Anton Decker behind you.

But everyone's very, you know, that always happens to be at the airport.

Yes, exactly.

That's so what airport are we at now?

So everyone walks through that.

There's always, you always have to do like 15 million bits of social content now.

They just go, oh, would you do social content for the, what do you do BAFTA socials?

You go, yeah, okay, would you do BAFTA youth socials?

Yeah, yeah.

Oh, what do you do BAFTA social socials?

You go, is that different to BAFTA socials?

Yeah, of course it's different to BAFTA.

It's BAFTA social socials.

What do you do BAFTA TikTok?

Is that, I'm so sorry, just is that different to BAFTA socials?

Anyways,

and lovely Tom Allen and Susie Wuffle were doing the interview.

So, you know, you go through and you do all of that and you queue up for a really, really long time.

It's the only time I ever see celebrities queue and not complain because not because the thing if you're a presenter or something like that your food is brought to you like everything is like oh make sure the tenant's okay make sure the tenant's not waiting for a single second for a car offer some food and then this i think because everyone in the queue is is famous they're like oh i should probably i should probably queue up to have my photo taken uh then you have your photo taken by about 15 people then there's this amazing kind of tunnel which i avoided because i'm too self-conscious which i thought you were maybe exceeded the maximum half i exceeded i should have said

I would be ducking down.

I'm sorry, this is like a lorry that gets the top taken on.

Exactly.

One of those busy things.

Yeah.

Guys.

Guys, you know your bus is too big for that.

It literally says it.

Don't drive down there.

Anyway, I digress.

There's a sort of select group of people who are allowed on the red carpet, like members of the public.

And in return for allowing them, they have to get excited about every single person who walks past them.

And their job, whenever the people walk past, is to shout that person's name as loudly as they can.

Ego fluffer.

And try and get

exactly.

And by the way, they get makeup.

They have all sorts of things.

This group of people.

I think it's a fun gig because there's lots of fun celebrities there.

But you know, if you walk down there, they all shout Richard Richard.

And that's because that's the job.

That's what they've been asked to do.

And literally, I find that the most mortifying thing in the world.

So I went behind all the cameras,

and nearly tripped over a camera while I went round the other way.

So you go in, and then you're like, oh, God.

The first person I bumped into is Jonathan Price,

who is

really classy.

That's what he was saying.

This is pretty good.

And he's in the Thursday Murder Club movie.

So we sat and chatted.

And I've got to chat to him about Glen Gary, Glen Ross, my favourite movie of all time.

So it's lovely that you get the opportunity to do that sort of thing.

And then you're ushered in, and the Royal Festival Hall is for like 2,000 people.

And you imagine just getting that group.

You know, like in any, if like you're a teacher or something, you're trying to get everyone to sit down.

It's a nightmare.

Imagine trying to get everyone to sit down.

And they are all celebrities who are used to being the last person to sit down in any room they ever go to.

Like every single person there is going, no, no, I'll go at the last, I'll sit down the last possible minute.

That's what I'm used to.

And the poor floor managers and stage managers getting everyone in.

But it's BAFTA, I have to say,

it's unbelievably well put together that day.

You then sit there in the auditorium and I think it was three and a half hours.

You have no idea when your category is being read out.

And of course, you can't go to the toilet just before yours is about to be read out uh and ours

i think we're like about the fourth from the end so i'm like three hours 15 minutes into this thing i

it was very hot medically speaking that's we had drunk a lot of water honestly i was thinking the only reason now i want to win is so i can go to the toilet are they not giving you champagne beforehand yeah there's they they they they sort of bring but you have to you're aware you're going to be sitting down for three and a half hours and you know with with people who you worked with 30 years ago so it's probably better to go in sober if you can.

Yeah, it's really, really long.

I'm not sure how they can make it shorter because they weren't mucking about.

You know, there was...

No, no, no.

They do chop through it.

And there's things that have gone.

Sort of investigative documentaries or whatever, things like that have gone off the...

There were two musical interludes, Tom Grennan and Jesse J, who both unbelievable.

I wasn't 100% sure.

Were they on telly?

Yeah.

Were they?

I couldn't quite work out what that had to do with anything, but it's a bit of fun.

Other than when your category hasn't been done, you're like,

I'm still sitting here.

And this is great, but you could have pre-recorded this bit because

we want to get to best daytime.

Yeah.

And then best daytime comes up, which is our category.

It's right to right towards the end.

And everyone in the audience.

They should have a quiz category, can I just say?

Yeah, well, this is.

Sorry, quizzes are performing better than anything.

And there are how many of them?

They should have a quiz category rather than lumping it in with daytime.

But anyway, please.

Sorry, I'm interrupting.

We were up against.

No, please.

We were up against Loose Women and Morning Live and Clive Myrie's Caribbean Adventure.

That's ridiculous.

And

all good shows.

But yeah, it's an unusual category to be in.

So we turn up there.

And listen,

I say this with genuine truth in my heart.

It does not matter.

Like, it could not matter less if you win or you don't win.

However, when you're there, and everyone, like some people have just won.

And you think, oh,

maybe, maybe it'd be fun to win.

I have sat three and a half hours of this, and I do really need a Wii.

And if you win, you get to go backstage, so you don't have to watch the rest of it.

That's the thing.

If you win, you're on stage, and then you go and do a press conference.

The off-ramp.

It's the off-ramp.

So you're literally thinking, oh, my God, if we win, first you get a BAFTA, which is nice.

But more importantly,

I don't have to watch the rest of the show.

I've done two and a half hours and I've enjoyed it and I've clapped lots of people.

But anyway.

we didn't.

Gilda perk.

My exec producer, Tamara Gilda, who is one of the greatest producers in the business.

She's just, she is amazing.

Cut her teeth on all the Anton Deck shows and things like that.

She has, since she started working with me,

she has, she said,

she is on a hell of a streak.

This was Tamara's 17th awards ceremony in a row being nominated and not winning.

She is on a 17-show

losing streak.

She's the Scorsese of Dayton.

Yes, isn't she just?

For pointless, we never won anything.

Not a BAFTA, not an RTS, nothing.

For house of games, we've never won nothing.

And Tamara has been sat in the audience for every single one of them.

Even the Scottish BAFTAs

she went up to and we didn't win.

So a 17-show losing streak.

And again, it doesn't matter.

But it's quite funny.

And because she's so brilliant.

And what you really want to do, another reason actually that you want to win is you get the opportunity to go up on stage and thank people,

which is just a nice thing to to be able to do and you get to thank the team and i i would have been able to uh thank tomorrow and tell tell the world how brilliant she is but you have now everyone in that room knows she's brilliant anyway but yes 17 in a row have i ever told that vitas gerulitis story before no you know the the the american tennis player of the 1970s yes but you haven't told this story so he uh the first 16 times he played jimmy connors he got beaten and their next match Vitas Geralitis beats Jimmy Connors.

And he goes into the press room afterwards.

He puts a big bottle of champagne down on the table and he says, nobody beats Fetus Geralitis 17 times in a row.

And I thought, well, listen, nobody, I would have said nobody beats Tamara Gilda 17 times in a row, but they do.

But will anyone beat her 18 times in a row?

Will they?

Let's just wait and see.

That's the question.

But yeah,

it's a really interesting one because, of course, when you're there, you do want to win.

And we were...

gutted.

But then you see something like Would I Lie to You, which has been nominated eight times for win.

That's the first time they'd ever won.

And I just assumed that they had won it, so did I, but I didn't realise that.

And Rachel Ablett and Peter Holmes, who make that, you just, it's lovely, you know, they had the baffed again, it doesn't matter, but it's it's nicer to win than not to win when you're sitting in that boiling hot room.

How did it come across on TV though?

Well, please, can we talk about it?

Considering it is about television as a television spectacle,

it's so odd.

You know, television is something that basically most people in the UK are watching quite a lot of every single day, and they engage with it a lot in in this particular era.

How then did this feel so sort of out of date and in the past?

And I can tell you one of the issues, which for me, by the way, something like Mr.

Bates versus the post-operative.

I obviously, well, how much have I talked about it on this show?

maybe a year and a bit ago about how you know about how um how amazing that was as a show and what an amazing thing it did and how it moved on the conversation and all these sort of things i absolutely love those guys i absolutely love them it won its first big award 14 months ago.

I mean, it aired almost 18 months ago, not quite.

We were talking about Marmalade Dropper Moment from Traitors, not the series that I

aired in the January we've just had, but the one before that.

Now, I think they've got a big problem with their eligibility window if

this is the time of year they're going to have the ceremony, right?

The eligibility window runs from something like the 1st of January, in this case, the 1st of January 2024 to the 31st of December 2024.

Now, if the show is held almost six months after the eligibility window closes, I know that they have to convene the juries and they have to do all of that.

But I think in an era

where people are very, very engaged with television, talk about it while it's happening.

Lots of our big viral moments, it's a big part of social media.

It just seems so sort of...

something of the past to be talking about shows, you know, Baby Ranger, again, that was 13 months ago.

Again, I'm not sort of, this is absolutely no disrespect to the shows themselves.

The Emmys went through something similar when they had to postpone them because of the strikes, where they were in a position where you were honouring the bear season two two months after the bear season three had started.

And everyone said, oh, this is absurd and we can't have this.

But this is a sort of matter of kind of routine now.

And I think

because I felt exactly that, because if you had a year ago pitched Mr.

Bates versus the Post Office against baby reindeer, then that's that's

really compelling because we're all talking about it.

And this year, of course, you want to see how adolescence does.

So, yeah, that window closing would be super useful, I think.

And, you know, as you say, that traitors, like this stuff moves on.

And, you know,

there hasn't been like a big hit sort of in the last couple of months that was available for people to vote for or cheer for or anything like that.

And yes, if it felt like we were, and it was great to be able to,

you know, give Mr.

Bates versus the Post Office all of those awards.

Yeah, absolutely.

But it would have been, it would have been, and it's tough.

I mean, the second you start actually looking at the kind of dates and how to do it, it's tough for Baffin.

Yes, I realise that.

If they can move, I mean, just even six months, I mean, just give us a little bit more of a window, I think, would really.

It's the impression that the industry is so far behind.

And in a way, it's such a sort of vital movement, as I say,

vital medium because people are talking about it all the time.

And it's a big part of what people talk about online and how they talk with their friends.

And if it's for things that they think, oh, yeah, no, I remember that,

that seems extraordinary.

And it seems embarrassing given that this is television about television and so it but you know it rated okay it rated very you know i mean sunday night which helps picked over three million yeah yeah um nothing as much as country file but yes listen but nothing you know as i've always said

nothing gets as much as country file uh in terms of the mood music that i've i found interesting uh there was some optimism there which was great you know there's producers there who are finding new ways of making things new ways of funding things who are finding interesting new talent so i thought that was interesting.

Not a single talk about tariffs from any, I mean, that story just hasn't is made.

It has in film, but he hasn't said anything about television.

So maybe that's why.

I know, but again, the uncertainty is the thing.

And actually, no one seems

particularly worried about it, including producers who make a lot in America and who make a lot in the UK and

export their IP.

The most exciting thing, I think there were a few people there who had just finished Celebrity Traitors, and there were some of the production team as well and I of course because I'm a newshound yeah if I'm any oh I know you're a service journalist I'm a service journalist exactly I spoke to every single one of them and all of them were admirably tight-lipped as I knew they would be but you've got you you look in the eyes right that's of course you do that's the way you do it um

it seems like it went well I think everyone seemed pretty happy the production team were pretty happy with what they've got I talked to a couple of people who who had actually been on it a couple of the contestants I think by the way, the

full lineup is being announced today.

So if you're listening to this in the morning, I think it's coming out this afternoon.

If you're listening later, then and yes, as I've said before, we do not know the full lineup, but we will find that out today.

Yes, I was talking to people who did it, and their basic thing was everyone who did it is a fan of the show.

They wanted to be in the space.

Which is why such good people are doing it.

Why it's such an amazing lineup.

But

the thing that everyone was saying was, it is a lot more intense than you think it's going to be it is a lot more intense if you if you are to win it you're there for two weeks there's no phones you're not watching tv i mean you're kept sort of isolated because of the nature of the game and i think even for these you know lots of presenters and actors are sort of used to having a bit of control over the product that goes out or at least a lot always be in a dialogue with the producer and the director and stuff and this is a show where you are not in dialogue with the producer or the director in fact quite the opposite you you it's imperative that you that you are not in dialogue with them and they said it was really really really

intense i can't wait for this show i have to say i am absolutely dying for it as we said before that's what's so fun about it it will be completely different yeah with people who have a public profile and people who know bits about each other already and where there is a status difference where there's an immediate status difference yes uh so yeah i listen i can't wait and i talked to various people's agents as well who are clients in it so everybody seems happy.

The production team certainly seem happy.

Claudia was there and was keeping very tight-lipped about the whole thing.

But it feels like we've got a treat in store coming up.

So yeah, the BAFTAs, I mean,

it doesn't matter, but it's interesting.

I thought it was beautifully put together.

I think they need to change that eligibility window because

it's fascinating that Baby Reindeer.

won nothing apart from Jessica Gunning.

Everyone was so happy that she won.

The ones that went down really well in the room, Jessica Jessica Gunning winning, went down really well.

Would I Lie to You winning?

Yeah,

Lenny James went down very well.

Well, that was now that was relatively recent.

That was October, I think.

Yeah, and that's what you need, essentially.

You sort of needed maybe it would be too late to get an adolescence in there, but that's what you need, especially if things are released in January.

You're not going to be at the BAFTAs for there's so many of these old sort of super tankers, which, as you say, are still big and rated well, but just don't feel like they're keeping pace with the nature of the conversation around television whatever it is that just

they're moving at a different speed to the thing that they're celebrating and i think it showed up a lot but listen the king thing to look out for next year is will tomorrow gilder lose her 18th nomination in a row listen i i wouldn't put it but she can do anything

when she puts her mind to it tomorrow can achieve anything i think i think she can lose 18 in a row go tomorrow yeah go tomorrow have you got any recommendations yeah richard i have I mean, listen, PokerFace has started again, but I talk about PokerFace all the time.

So instead, I'm going to send you in the direction of a documentary on iPlayer.

It's a half hour long, made in 1979, I think.

But it follows a very young, I think, 21-year-old Eric Bristow.

around the country doing like signings and playing just for the benefit of our listeners who maybe not fully versed in darts can you explain yeah sorry i know there aren't any but could you explain i'm gonna have to explain who eric bristow is yeah i think mine you know what i resign

Eric Bristow was one of the great first wave of darts players, world champion.

This catches him just before he's world champion.

And it's such a period piece now.

It's 1979, and he's in working men's clubs and he's playing darts against people and what people are wearing and all some of the stuff he's saying.

And the whole thing is framed around this amazing interview with an interviewer on Radio Trent, whose name, I think, Chris Ashley.

And he's really putting...

Bristow through his paces and Bristow's loving it.

Bristow smoking in the studio.

It's one of those things where you go, it's a Britain

that we have lost.

And it's a really lovely.

Obviously, if you like dance, you'll enjoy it.

But even if you don't, there's something about it.

I love that.

In this Adam Curtis thing that's coming, there's a lot of footage from the 80s of just parties that people had in their houses, just like with their neighbours and friends.

And there's something, and you think, yeah, that's what parties were like.

And all sort of different types of them.

And there's a couple of sort of, you know, people having sort of square dancing things and just in their front rooms and having the sofas.

It's so weird.

I always think we must remember when we watch anything like that, we must remember that we're living in the past right now.

We must remember it in 30 years time.

Just think about where you eat dinner and what you do in the shops you go to.

and what you're wearing and what the street furniture is and think 30 years time when someone's got footage of that and how ancient it's going to look.

We are living in this wonderful nostalgic past every day of our lives.

And it's called Arrows, half an hour long.

So I'm BBC iPlayer and I absolutely loved it.

On that very positive note,

please join us for our question and answers edition, which is going to be in part a Eurovision special because Eurovision is coming up on Saturday.

As like you didn't already know.

I know.

Hopefully we'll be talking.

We could have talked about it this week, but in a way it'd be more fun to talk about it next week.

But yeah, but on the QA, we've got lots of Eurovision people.

You've sent in so many questions and we've got answers from the horse's mouth on many of those.

Lots of other questions as well, by the way.

But

we will have a few on Eurovision.

And if you want to listen to that episode now, you can do if you're a member of our club, which you join at thewrestsentertainment.com.

Otherwise, as usual, it will be available on Thursdays.

And we have actually got a bonus episode on Friday, which is continuing the Monty Python story.

Yeah.

We're busy, aren't we?

We are busy.

We are busy.

And on that mode, see you on Thursday.

Thursday.

Well, that brings us to the end of another episode of The Wrestlers Entertainment, brought to you by our friends at Sky.

I have been catching up on The Last of Us recently, such a gripping watch.

Absolutely right.

The critics are fairly unanimous.

It's dark and intense, brilliantly done, they're all saying, especially on your sky glass with its high-quality screen.

Yeah, even those very low-lit scenes, every flicker, every detail, it really pulls you in.

One minute you'll be stretched out on the sofa, the next you'll be gripping the cushion, and that is not a euphemism.

The picture quality really just brings everything to life from the comfort of your living room.

It feels properly cinematic, like the room fades away and you're in the thick of it.

Until the clickers show up, then it feels a bit too real.

Well, that's when you reach for the blanket.

The perfect night in.

Couldn't agree more.

So, for anyone wanting to upgrade this screen time, head to sky.com and check out SkyTV.

I'm David McCloskey, former CIA analyst, turned spy novelist.

And I'm Gordon Carrera, national security journalist.

Together, we're the hosts of another Goalhanger show.

The rest is classified, and we bring you brilliant stories from the world of spies.

Here is that clip we mentioned earlier on.

June 5th, 2013, this first article drops and it's a massive one.

It is a massive one.

The world doesn't yet know that the source for this article is Edward Snowden.

All they get is this remarkable story.

And I mean, I remember it dropping and thinking, where has this come from?

It just felt so kind of unusual as a story.

We should explain what it was and why it's so significant.

It's a court order to the company Verizon that demands it hands over the details of every phone call in America.

And what it was after was what's called the metadata, not the content of the call.

So it's basically saying these two phones connected at this time for so long, not necessarily what was said in that phone call, but it allows the idea for the NSA and then the FBI to kind of carry out searches on it to look for terrorists or other suspects.

The point being though that this looks like domestic surveillance by the NSA.

And that was stunning partly because the U.S.

Director of National Intelligence, James Clapper, just a few months before had been asked in Congress by a senator almost a question which suggests that the senator knew about this program because the senator said, does the NSA collect any type of data at all on millions or hundreds of millions of Americans?

And Clapper's reply was no.

There is a tremendous gap between the understanding of this program, I think, inside sort of the upper reaches of Congress and the intelligence community and the White House.

and what the American people think is happening.

And that's where this article is such a bombshell because Americans prior to this, ordinary people, did not have an understanding that any of this was authorized.

Exactly.

I think what's interesting, if it had just been that one story, it would have been big, but actually it's really an American story.

It's about the kind of American constitution and legal protections.

But, and I think you can imagine U.S.

officials going, okay, well...

you know, that's bad.

But then the Guardian tells U.S.

officials who they're in contact with that they've got another story coming down the line.

And I think that's important because it makes clear that it's not just a single document that's been leaked, but there's more and it's coming from what looks like inside the NSA.

So the next day, there's a little race, but the Guardian publishes a story on something called Prism.

Now, this is another biggie in terms of a reveal.

And I think for a lot of people, this is perhaps, particularly around the world, this is the more famous one.

This is about the content of emails and communications, which are coming from big US tech firms.

So this is about basically the idea that the NSA had access directly directly to companies like Microsoft, Facebook, Google, Apple, to things like Gmail, Outlook, Photos, all the data that people are sending around the world.

This is in some ways a more stunning revelation because everyone around the world uses American tech companies.

You know, those were basically the only companies you used for email and for everything else.

And suddenly this program is being revealed saying the NSA appears to have access to it and is able to target and get particular accounts and details of it.

But if you go back to that time, I mean, if you then talk to people now about what it was like in GCHQ, you know, Britain's intelligence agency, I mean, there is blind panic.

Ian Lobbin, who was then the director, later said, when I heard the news, I lay awake saying to myself, I hope this isn't a Brit.

Because, you know, they realize they've got a leak.

Some of it looks like it relates to Britain.

He's reported to have gone round colleagues asking, Is anyone in your teams at GCHQ taking a long holiday?

And I think, meanwhile, in NSA as well, there's this kind of desperate panic as they realize their secrets are being unfurled.

But what's interesting is that they are kind of narrowing it down and they're certainly kind of heading towards Snowden if they don't know it already at this point.

Typically, someone who'd done this would keep himself secret.

But luckily, he's a massive narcissist with a

massive ego.

And if you want to hear the full episode, listen to the rest is classified wherever you get your podcasts.