When Product Placement Goes Wrong

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Hello and welcome to this episode of the Resters Entertainment Questions and Answers Edition.

I'm Marina Hyde.

And I'm Richard Osman.

Last week we were just asking questions of the Adolescents Director and DOP.

This week we've got to answer the questions.

I'm so sorry.

This week normal services resumed.

Although all the questions are about adolescence again.

No, they're not.

They're not.

Don't worry.

Marina, should we start with you?

Peter White, which is an absolute director anagram of Peter Wythe, the old Aston Fiddle-striker.

Peter Wadam.

Peter says, just wondering, Peter's question is about his name being an anagram of Peter Wyth.

No, it isn't.

He says, just wondering why, is that a niche for anybody at home?

Anyone liking that?

I think that's incredibly mainstream anyone liking that really gone MOR there the Peter with material

you're long and strong in it yeah Peter asked this just wondering why so many films and stories centered on kids feature single parent households either that or the protagonist is an orphan being looked after by an uncle aunt or kindly grandparent is it just because it's easier to write something with fewer characters to worry about or could it be a simple way of gaining sympathy for the protagonist Good question, good question.

We'll steal single parents first and then we'll get on to orphans which is the even bigger category.

Single parents good because it sort of telescopes all of the much more of the action onto the relationship with that one with the one child or the one parent.

In a good couple, a problem shared is a problem halved.

We don't really want any of our problems halved in drama or fiction because that's less good for the plot.

So, this is why we have a lot of saintly but struggling fathers or mothers.

It's also ridiculously.

Mom's a stripper, but she loves me.

Yeah, really?

Yeah.

Come on, we're doing a podcast.

Mommy, I'm so sorry.

But also, it's one for your actor to pay.

As a writer, as well, you're like, if you've got a single parent and a child, that's one relationship you're dealing with.

If you've got two parents and a child, suddenly you've got three relationships.

You've got parent-child, other parent-child, parent-with other parent.

It's only going to really limit the plot.

And, you know, of course, you have sympathy for the adult, you have sympathy for the child.

Orphans is a very interesting category.

Now, orphans, they seem and they are vulnerable, okay?

You sometimes it gives you a backstory.

Batman's parents, which I'm not gonna remind me how they died, okay.

Then Batman's parents is a good name for a film, by the way.

Yeah, there's often with orphans, there's often no reason for them to have to stay somewhere and therefore not throw themselves into whatever quest or adventure or whatever has been sort of thrown up.

Cast that person as a sort of psychological itinerant rather than someone who's you know stuck somewhere.

We all know that home and family is a pull and it keeps you anchored.

So, as you said, as a writer, you know, everyone's lived experience is completely different, but as a writer, it gives you an immediate shortcut to get that person into the feeling yes there's no reason they have to stay where they are yeah there's no reason someone's going an adult is going to say to them no you can't do that yeah because we're supposed to believe that those parents have either gone or or they may not actually be an orphan we may discover that their missing parent is in fact the villain they might have um sort of surrogate or adopted parents as you say like uncles and aunts that it also gives you a quest to have to find out who you are which is a big part of lots of fiction they what we also want especially with children is reasons for them to have to step up in the event the adventure and do things that otherwise an adult will be saying, don't do it.

Disney is obsessed with orphans.

It's really interesting.

Something very bad happened to Walt Disney.

Sorry, this is a sidebar.

This is a sidebar.

Absolutely.

It's a Marina Hyde's absolute sidebar.

When he got some money, when he became successful, he bought his parents a house, Walt Disney.

Someone hadn't dealt with a boiler properly and they got carbon monoxide poisoning and they both ended up in hospital.

The mother died.

Anyway, that's not why lots of Disney movies, as we know, are based on fairy stories that have orphans in them, and fairy stories have orphans in them for the reasons we've just said.

Disney has had a particular kind of bent for orphans in all of its works.

And there was a year,

I think it was 2018, and they released something like 10 movies, and nine of them had orphan characters.

Even this year, you're looking at things like, I'm just having to do this off the top of my head, but like Lilo and Stitch, Lilo's Orphan, Snow White, you know, it is a very, very big thing.

But it is incredible how significant like those family relationships are.

And if you look at even things like in reality television, where it's anchoring when someone becomes the mother of a house, like, I don't know, even, or even like a Mandarin series, one of the traitors or whatever,

Diane, you know, people say, oh, you're like a mother to me.

Those are the ties that bind.

And just as they do amongst, I don't know, animals in the African savannah.

many of whom are actually related.

When you have those relationships, when you have those relationships in things like reality TV, you're stronger.

This is why people create those kind of false families in a weird way

or pseudo-families when they're in houses or marooned on islands or wherever they are in reality television because you are stronger as a family unit.

And so orphans, to come back to that point, it just means that you don't have those ties and you're much more easy to throw into an adventure if you're the creator.

I think so.

There is also the thing of if you are writing a book and it's got lots of characters and someone and you're in a family environment, the smaller amount of people in that family, the better.

You know, there's nothing to stop you having a child with six siblings in your book.

But then, sorry, every time you see them, you've got to go, and there's John and there's, you know, it's limiting.

I was talking to Ian Rankin.

He was writing a Rebus book.

And

Rebus was sort of semi-retired, so he gave him a dog.

So he thought, oh, this is a nice thing to have.

And then he was halfway through his next book, and he thought, oh, God, I gave Rebus a dog.

I forgot.

I forgot I gave him a dog.

And he had to find a way of writing the dog out.

You know, if you can keep relationships quite tight,

if your book is not about a family, but there is a family in it, the smaller that family is, the better, the simpler it is.

It's not getting in the way of everything else.

One for you, Richard from Kieranahuja.

On University Challenge, when a contestant answers incorrectly, Amil Rajan often pinpoints exactly where they've gone wrong.

It creates the impression that he has an encyclopedic knowledge of every question's background.

Do the show's writers anticipate common mistakes and provide him with scripted responses, or is he really just that knowledgeable?

Listen, Amal, I love you.

He's been on House of Games.

I'm gonna go on i'll let me say he's not that knowledgeable uh

any any more than i am uh on shows

what what you would have if if it's a particularly complicated question for example amol will say look i'm pretty good on arts and literature i'm not great on science and so on a science question a number of things will happen things will be spelt up phonetically in the question um there will be if there's the holy grail of a question is you're saying on university challenge everything is spelled out phonetically no but if there's

no, only if it's like a word you would never have come across.

So, you know, if it's like an Incan tribe or it's a chemical compound, you know, there might be situations you will look through beforehand and go, how do I pronounce this?

It doesn't look like that's how I pronounce it.

Could you, for this word, could this word be phonetic?

The holy grail of any question is there is no grey area at all.

There isn't anything that they could answer that isn't an acceptable answer.

Quite often on university challenge, because they're dealing with people absolutely at the top of their game and people who are studying things, there will be the odd grey area and on those the question writers would have a little thing saying this is the answer and they'd have a thing saying accept another answer so if they say that you can accept it do not accept this answer which is a bit which is a common mistake that someone might make with this question but it's not right because

you know, of this reason.

It's like one of those conversation trees you get in their call center.

Yeah, exactly.

Your script.

Now you don't have that on an awful lot of questions, but what you definitely do, and it happens all the time on the university challenge,

is

if there is an answer which feels like it's very close to the right answer or feels like actually it's a different branch of the right answer they just stop recording that second you stop recording absolutely and you just go okay in the gallery the question editors will all sit together just go i mean is that could we accept that is that or is that pronunciation acceptable because it sort of sounds like that they will spend a minute a minute and a half and they'll say into a molzia no that's a not accept and they will give him then the reasons why he's not accepting it.

Or they'll say, it's an accept, but will you say that, give this piece of information as well, just so people at home don't go, why did he accept that?

Because actually the answer is this.

You're not watching a half-hour live show when you're watching University Challenge.

You pretty much are, but there will be the odd moment where they will stop it and they will talk, talk, talk, and Amol will be sitting there chatting to the contestants and they go, okay, it's not accept.

And that's when you often sit and say,

yes, I can accept that, although the actual, normally we would accept this.

He's saying that very quickly, but that's been after three minutes of people upstairs working out what to do.

So he will, there'll be areas where he is able to extemporize for sure on areas that he knows about, but if it's something, if it is, you know, science or maths or something like that, there is a group of people, if there is an answer that could be construed as right or wrong, who will give him extra information.

Robert Buckingham has a question for you, Marina.

That's a good name, Robert Buckingham.

Has a creative work of fiction ever been so bad that brands have actively requested their product be removed from from being featured so as not to sully their reputation?

Or has a company ever reported a significant drop in sales because of being associated with a poorly received movie or TV franchise?

That is interesting.

I mean, in general, these things are incredibly worked out to the letter.

Sometimes that doesn't always happen, though.

You know, you know what you're getting into, and if it's not a hit or everyone hates it, that's too bad.

You agreed to it, you've done a deal.

There have been occasions of removal.

Danny Ball had to spend a lot of money digitally removing Coca-Cola and Mercedes logos from in Slum Dog Millionaire.

But that was just something that had been accidentally featured.

They didn't sort of reflect on it.

So he featured that anyway.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Here's one.

A young company maybe making a bit of a mistake they won't do again.

Peloton in 2021 were very excited because they thought, oh, our bike's going to appear on Sex in the City

and just like that, the reboot.

It's a very expensive product.

They didn't realize how it was going to be used, which is really, really.

They give them permission.

Yes.

Right.

Mr.

Bigg has a heart attack while riding his Peloton.

And actually, their stock value decreased the next after that it had aired.

And they thought, okay, fine, fine.

They have to try and think of a way around it.

Because, by the way, you've really messed up if you've done that.

And they got Chris Narth, who played Mr.

Big.

They thought, right, we're going to get him in our Christmas advert.

And he can.

I'll lean into it.

Yeah, I'll lean into it.

Unfortunately,

within just a few days, several women accused Chris Nathan of sexual assault.

And he was basically dropped by his agency, suddenly dropped by the Peloton advert.

They didn't think it through.

Almost the apex of product placement in lots of ways is James Bond.

And talking to people who've worked on Bond films, oh my god, I mean, it's a huge deal.

When product placement is happening, it happens quite a lot in those movies.

Like, it's like the watch is on set.

The watch is on set.

There'll be five guys from Omega

and, you know, they'll have a sort of briefcase basically kind of lashed to their hand.

And they're on set and they're watching all of those takes.

It's almost like an actor's meticulously worked out nudity clause, like how many seconds that watch is going to be shown.

No, we haven't quite seen it.

It reflected the light.

They're really, really fussy about it.

And there are many, many days where you've got those people on set.

I mean, we heard, when we were researching the franchise, we heard of them just leaving things like coolers blank so that you could just CGI the products in later because they hadn't sold it at that point.

Oh, that's clever.

Yeah, so I think that was in Doctor Strange.

They had this, and then it's really quite badly, but it's filled with some form of drink

afterwards.

But in general, people, it's very, very carefully worked out.

And there are teams on the set insisting you do it exactly right.

But yeah, Peloton, that was a bit of a ball drop, I have to say.

There's an interesting one at the moment, isn't there?

With White Lotus, if people are watching that and enjoying it, which I'm absolutely loving.

Some people have said this series is quite slow.

I love it.

I think it's my favourite White Lotus yet.

But Jason Isaac's family, who are that's one of the great families ever in any television programme.

They're so bleak, all in their different ways.

He's constantly wearing his Duke University t-shirt.

He's like a Duke man.

That's his thing.

He is going through such terrible trauma in that programme.

If anyone's watching it, he keeps thinking, you know, you keep seeing the images of him wanting to kill himself, always wearing this Duke T-shirt.

And Duke University,

they went public and just said, we think this is absolutely unacceptable.

It's taking it too far.

It's taking it too far.

I mean, they've had quite a few scandals.

Yeah.

Really unpleasant scandals, Duke.

It'll be interesting to see if they do try and

they've given, you know, it's the barbarousized effect of the fact that they've complained because everyone's now talking about Duke.

God, that family.

I mean, yeah, I can't even.

I'm loving this series.

I haven't seen the final one yet.

I'm taking a tactical ad break there just to cleanse my thoughts of that family.

God, I hope this is not Duke and Peloton.

That'd be so awkward.

This episode is brought to you by Sky, where you can watch unmissable shows, which includes the new season of the multiple Emmy Award-winning hacks, starring Gene Smart and Hannah Einbinder.

We love Hacks so much.

Absolutely love it.

So looking forward to this new series.

For people who don't know Hacks, Marina, talk us through it a little bit.

It's focused on the relationship between the older comedian who's played by Gene Smart, Deborah Vance, who's one of those real old showbiz troopers.

She plays Vega, she sort of does residency.

She's sort of, yeah, almost like a Joan Riversy type character.

She's the boomer, and Hannah Einbinder is a kind of Gen Zero.

It's really interesting on the stuff between the ages.

Yeah, so she plays Ava Daniels, who's essentially becomes Deborah Vance's writer.

So she writes for very cool things.

She's also been cancelled for a joke at the start.

So we start in the culture war and we continue in it.

But what I love about the show particularly is the absolute reverence for comedy and the...

the graft and the craft of it and what a tough kind of man's world it remains definitely definitely and so how hard it is to be a woman in that male dominated industry yeah amazing on showbiz amazing on comedy amazing on the industry, but also just the relationship between the two of them is a really lovely, generational sort of thing.

It's like a sitcom thing.

It's very dramatic, but a lot of comedy in there as well.

They've got some terrific guest stars in this season.

They've got Helen Hunt, Tony Goldwyn, Eric Balfour, and obviously the returning cast who are peerless.

Yep, the mix of comedy and drama is spot on.

You can watch season four of the Emmy Award-winning hacks right now on Sky.

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Welcome back, everybody.

Now.

Welcome back, everyone.

We've got a question for you.

Sorry, I'll put you off by also welcoming people back.

No, I liked it.

I think you should.

I stumbled over Callum H because Callum H has got a question saying, How do shows like Killing Eve come up with ways of killing people?

Some are very complex, so are writers having to learn about poisons and guns to think them up.

Thank you, Callum.

Well, I thought I have views on this with, because I'm always killing people, as you know.

But someone who has much better views on this exact example is Gordon Carrera, our friend from The Rest is Classified, which is all about spies and spying.

And he was a consultant on Killing Eve.

And Gordon has this to say to your question, Callum.

Hi, Richard.

Hi, Marina.

It's Gordon Carrera here from The Rest is Classified.

So a few years back when Killing Eve was being developed, I was asked to help as a consultant because it's all about assassins, as you know, and strangely perhaps the writers like Phoebe Wallabridge weren't actually experts in killing people.

Now, neither am I, but I know a little bit about it.

So I was asked to come up with a document which we called the kill list, which was all kinds of different, slightly crazy ways in which assassinations might take place.

Some of those were based on real events, like the killing of a North Korean official in an airport when two women approached him and sprayed something in his face, which turned out to be VX gas.

And that was then the model for one of the killings with a perfume bottle in the first series of Killing Eve.

And it's a reminder, really, that in the spy world, fact and fiction often collide, and it can be sometimes quite hard to disentangle the two, although that is something we try and do on The Rest is Classified.

Thank you, Gordon.

If you liked that, if you like talks to spies, then you'll love The Rest is Classified.

But yeah, I like thinking of ways of killing people, if you know what I mean.

Yeah.

Yeah, it's quite fun.

And, you know, writers tend to be quite imaginative people.

So, yeah, you can think of a million ways.

It's like getting away with things and killing people.

Well, you've told me that it is possible to get away with murder, which I absolutely love that all the crime writers are like, no, no, no, it was totally possible.

Yeah, because the whole point is the only murders we know about are the ones that got solved.

There's people out there who did it.

But the spy world is full of, you know, lots of the spy authors were spies themselves.

You know, Ian Fleming was in the Secret Service.

John McCarry at the very beginning of his his career was as well.

And they certainly move in those circles.

And anytime someone is killed, that information gets spread around to everybody in that community.

And then it's just like a race to see who gets to use it first in their book.

I mean, that works both ways.

You know, the spies will read something in a book and think, oh, that would work for us.

Or, you know, writers, if you're Mick Heron and you know, a spy sort of sends you an email just saying, thought you might be interested in this one, that material does go around.

You can see that stuff percolate into the world of fiction.

Just but everybody does because everybody loves show business.

Yeah.

And you could be like the highest-ranking spy in the

CIA.

You could be like privy to every secret there's ever been in the US, like every single thing.

But if you sort of send a little note to John Grisham and say, oh, by the way, this happened.

And then it's in a book, you're like, oh, my God, I'm in a book.

Oh, my God, this is so cool.

There are very porous barriers between the world of spy writers and spies and the world of crime writers and the police.

You know, there's lots and lots of back channels.

So quite often murders will be real ones.

I will.

I see my murder got a mention yeah

one for me but um almost always in that case you will see at the end that someone will credit they'll say oh thank you to so-and-so from the metropolitan police or thank you to so or it'll either say they're from the metropolitan police or which police force they're from or it won't say where they're from in which case they're a spy who did the murder that this was based on yes murders inspired by

exactly thank you to uh yeah murderer john edwards for uh all the information Thank you, Gordon.

Harriet has a question for you, Marina.

Hello, Marina and Richard, she says.

Hello, Harriet.

A question for you on whether TV shows have got darker.

She says, I don't mean genre, I mean visually less light.

It is often at the most dramatically interesting bits of a show, e.g., set at night time.

Do I need a new telly?

Has it always been like this?

If not, doubt it's accidental.

So why?

Okay, this has been a complaint, Harriet, for some years, and there are various different reasons for it.

It's a bit like I was whining about drone shots.

It's it's a cheap way of making something look expensive, the drone shot.

Dark is a sort of, in my view, can be, not always, but it can be a very lazy way to create atmosphere when you just feel like but a lot of people feel that they're completely peering at their television and like can't quite actually make out what's happening here.

Now, things are compressed for streaming and the bit rate can make it even worse.

So you might actually, just to answer a technical question which I'm terribly bad at, but there are things you have control over.

If there's motion smoothing turned on in your T V, turn that off.

You could adjust the brightness.

but there is artistic stuff that you have absolutely no control over, I'm afraid, Harriet.

And I mean, I think it's quite pretentious.

It's a bit like the one-shot, isn't it?

But the Game of Thrones Battle of Winterfell that was in the final season.

I've never seen it.

Never seen Game of Thrones.

I've never seen Game of Thrones.

Okay, but I have seen Game of Thrones.

The Battle of Winterfell is this epic thing.

It's in the final season.

I remember talking to the script supervisor on that.

She said it was 55 night shoots.

They were all

completely mental.

Okay.

Now, Fabian Wagner, who was the DOP DOP on that, said, because so many people complained that they couldn't even see it.

So even 55 points, no one could actually see it because it was very, very dark.

He said, everything we wanted people to see was there.

I mean,

that season had a lot of detractors, but it's not great, is it?

It's a bit like politicians thinking we need new voters.

No,

maybe the problem was with you, but...

He said people were watching it wrong and they weren't watching these sort of cinematic conditions.

And other people said, oh, no, but they've graded.

Grading is something you do in a post-production and it had a way of affecting the colours.

And they said that they graded the blacks even blacker.

Okay, so people think this whole thing started, this whole trend.

Normally, by the way, is when you're watching, you know, Love Island and you think, how is the pool that colour?

Yeah, how's it going?

Just because it's been through an incredible grade.

It's really, it's really interesting.

I was talking to a director the other day and he said, oh, God, I went to see an edit of my, and the editor had just done something that I'd asked him to do.

And I came and had a look and said, oh, my God, you've the whole life's gone out of it.

And it's just to do with a, you can put it back with a flick of a switch or slightly more complicated than that, but it was to do with the grading.

And he said, suddenly, like this kind of down mood, and it all.

Some of the great unsung heroes of TV, the graders, because if it feels like, oh, it's a filter you'd have on your phone, and it's sort of that, but immensely more complicated.

It also affects the tone of something.

And as I say, you know, nothing has changed in the dialogue, the cuts, or anything.

People think that the really dark trend started with David Fincher with seven.

You remember it was very dark, it was raining all the time.

Is it, by the way, this is a technical question.

Is it easier to light a dark room than it is to light a light room, if you know what I mean?

In the darkness, we need lights because we've got to see certain things, but is it cheaper to light for darkness than it is to in some ways, yes, and it also covers a sort of multitude of sins.

There's lots of things.

If you've got lots of animatronics, lots of props, painting it black will make it sort of just, you know, you won't see it anymore.

So there's in the spaceship in Alien, there's lots of stuff that in the end they just like painted loads of, because there was so much animatronics and things like that and puppets or whatever.

They painting it all black and then it just fades away and then it's a very dark, but obviously it suits the material.

But lighting, I mean, for really, for decades, black actors were not lit properly because in that same way that, I don't know, seatbelts are tested on men and not women.

And so there's this whole thing where, you know, lots of things are not designed for the people they're being used for.

Black actors were not lit properly and they were just lit in the same way you would light a white actor and their skin was different and it didn't work.

That isn't the case now.

But the whole thing about dark lighting, people just feel like they can't watch it at home on their TV.

And everyone sort of says, oh, you know, it should be like a cinema, but really, it's not.

It's at home.

Yeah, I get it.

And, you know, I'm visually impaired.

And there gets a certain level of darkness where there's no point me even looking at the screen, which a lot of people get when they're hearing impaired.

And I recognise that the way they cut lots of modern shows or mix them, they're literally, there's no point in them listening because they can't hear it.

And if I'm watching the screen, I mean, I cannot see it, like that Winterfell thing.

I mean, what's the point?

I cannot see anything that, you know, I need something.

I need some definition.

So, yeah, the second something's dark or if it's described as dark in a review, there's no point.

I can't see it.

So, it may feel classy to whoever's made it, but there's a proportion of people who are just that they're not seeing anything that you've just done.

Yeah.

And people are just not watching their TV at home on a cinema.

In cinema conditions.

Yeah, otherwise they'd be in the cinema.

Do me a favour.

Anyway.

Now, we talked about Last One Laughing on the main show this week.

We've had a lot of questions about it.

We might do some more on them next week.

But here's one that some people have asked.

David Hart says,

Amazon's Last One Laughing.

Why are there 12 writer credits at the end of the show?

What are they writing when it's about comedians in a house trying to make each other laugh?

If you watch that show, there are an awful lot of set pieces.

Each of the 10 comics, you know, has their own joker to play.

So they go out and they do a set piece.

And lots of comics have writers and lots of, certainly TV companies have writers.

So if you're making that show, the comedians are going in and you want to make it as absolutely natural as possible for them and them just to be able to be themselves.

We know they've had to prepare something, a joker thing, five minutes.

Some of the people will do that completely by themselves.

Some of them will say, Oh, I've got this thought, I've got an idea, you know, and they'll sit in a room with a couple of writers and put it up, you know, because it's five minutes and they want to make it good.

But also, when you're thinking about that format and you're thinking about six hours and you're thinking about ideas and how we do make people laugh, and if we've got a head-to-head thing, what is the stuff that we can do?

So, you know, there's a head-to-head between Bob and Richard where it said you have to make the face that you would have if, for example, you're on a plane plane and the pilot is breakdancing in the aisle and a big bald man's just come out of the toilet, something like that.

That's all written that way.

A writer has come up with that idea, yeah.

So when you're watching Telly, Jimmy's not kind of thinking, oh, what look could you do, I wonder.

Every single thing that, every single suggestion that's made, every single prompt that is given to the people has been done by producers and workshops.

And probably VAR writers.

Yeah, exactly.

Because although, as we say, the show sort of lasts six hours, as it were,

the development of it and working out what works, what doesn't what will be funniest has all been done in workshop i guess with writers and obviously there's a lot of furniture for jimmy and rashine particularly jimmy not to barry but furniture lines that he needs to come up with and those will be written by somebody yeah exactly and you know it's 12 people sounds like a lot of people that is not 12 people sitting in a room for the entire production process that will be oh we've got 10 different people doing these bits of work of so-and-so's coming in on day one someone so and so is coming in on day seven then oh can we do a day where we're just coming up with suggestions for the game where they have to do the faces oh why don't we get two people to come in and do that who's available oh they're not available so we bring in other people so you know in a three-month production process 12 writers will come in for you know a day or two each but yeah it's not 12 people sitting down and writing the stuff but when you watch that show every single prompt that is coming out of someone's mouth for those contestants somebody has written yeah one of the things i actually really liked about it is that they do give those people credit and i do think we've i would love to do something in fact on the main show i do want to do something at some point about who gets credit and who doesn't, and why, because development and things like that are really interesting.

And there have been a few sort of viral posts about people who did or didn't get credit for Bear Hunt on Netflix.

And there have been various things like that.

So, I think it would be interesting to talk about, and particularly writing credit.

Writers, so many people will say, I don't understand, I wrote so much in the show and I didn't get a credit.

And there's lots of interesting reasons for that.

So, let's talk about that on the main show.

That's a really good idea.

But for this, I mean, one of my very first ever jobs was Whose Lines It Anyway, which is entirely improvised.

And I was a writer on that show.

You think, well, how is there a writer on an improvised show?

You think, well, because Clive reads out prompts and suggestions and all cover, you know, and you're coming to a party and you need to be person X.

And a writer is not just writing a one-liner for someone.

It's coming up with comic ideas and comic thoughts that you then throw in front of the comedians and then they go and do their stuff.

So apart from the things where they're on stage and you know that that's been written, everything they're doing is made up, made up, made up.

But anytime a prompt comes out from the production, somebody's had to sit in a room and write that.

And when there's 10 different people and when there's lots of different stunts going on, then over the course of a production, probably 12 writers might have, you know, could be three because they're on for the whole time.

But if they're not, then it's 12 different writers, you know, one or two a day for different days.

Jolly good.

Right.

I think that wraps us up for today.

But we are going to be doing a bonus episode.

On Friday.

Yes.

About celebrity obituaries, some very funny stories about those, when they get written, who writes them, have people ever read their own obituary and been on the wrong way.

When they go wrong.

let's face it, there's quite a lot of when they go wrong.

When obituaries go wrong,

when obituaries attack.

And that's for our members.

And remember, if you want to sign up, you go to the restorsenttertainment.com, you get ad-free listening.

We've got a Discord server, and you get these bonus episodes.

But otherwise, we will see you for the main show on Tuesday.

See you next Tuesday.

Well, that wraps up another episode of The Wrestlers Entertainment, brought to you by our friends at Sky.

Now, what have you got on your must-watch list at the moment, Ray?

At the moment, White Lotus enjoying the latest season.

Oh, it's such a treat.

Oh, my God, it's incredible.

It's so good.

A dark treat.

A dark treat.

The visuals are really great, and with your Skyglass TV, you'll be able to enjoy it all in its 4K glory.

And also, the built-in sound bar means you can also listen to it in its full, whatever the sound version of 4K glory is.

But it sounds immense, I'll say that.

It is indeed.

It brings everything to life and it really gives that cinema experience at home.

It feels like Jason Isaacs is in your house.

Like sometimes I go downstairs, I'm like, Jason Isaacs, come on, man.

Cup of tea, please.

But he's not there.

No.

But for our listeners who want to experience this with Skyglass 2, visit sky.com to find out more.