Has Morrissey Become Noel Edmonds?

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

Hi.

And me, Richard Osman.

Hello, everybody.

Hello, Marina.

Hello, Richard.

How are you?

I'm all right.

I normally ask what sort of week you've had, but I'm not going to ask you that this time.

I'm going to ask you a different question, which is, what sort of week are you about to have listeners

take a little listen at this.

It's pretty low-key, pretty low-key, Richard.

I, tomorrow will be boarding a flight for the cursed city of Los Angeles.

What could force you to go there, Marina?

I can't think.

You might say, I'm just going to go and talk to Glen Pal.

Holy moly.

I mean, friend of the podcast doesn't do him justice.

I don't think he knows he's a friend of the podcast.

And I'm not doing it.

I'm doing this.

I'm not about to.

By the way, I'm doing this for an interview for The Guardian.

Don't worry, when it comes out, you will have every cough and spit.

But that's what I'm doing this this week.

By the way if anyone has any questions I mean we're not really legally allowed to do it but send them into the restorsenttertainment.com and you never know Marina might be able to slip one of those in.

I might well do can you match it Richard?

Are you doing anything on that scale or that kind of a task perhaps this week?

We're still waiting.

I mean it really depends that

the M ⁇ S in Chiswick, as you know, is being extended and they said it was going to be reopening in September.

So is that going to happen this week?

I walked past it the other day.

It doesn't look like it is.

Can I get it over the line?

So listen, again, if you've got any questions questions for the team behind the M ⁇ S extension in Chiswick, wrestlersentertainment.com.

So it's either Glen Powell or M ⁇ S.

Could you put it in the subject line in case we muddle them up?

Can I just say though, and listen, I know you'd never admit to this, the only reason you're going is because of the podcast and because of our love for Glen Powell.

You got asked to interview all sorts of people, and I bet the second this came in your inbox, you thought, oh, okay.

this I can do.

I haven't done an interview for about 15 years.

So anyway, I'm very excited to do this for The Guardian.

And

let's just wait and see if it lives up to every single one of my enormous expectations.

I've been doing it for The Guardian.

Sure.

Sure.

I am, Richard.

That's where it's going to appear.

Contract.

But of course, we will discuss it further when the time comes.

Now, what are we actually discussing in greater detail this week?

Morrissey has released a statement.

Whenever someone releases a statement...

Yes, he has.

He goes, there are so many toys in this pram.

Anytime somebody releases a statement on their own website, we know that's an item for us.

He's released a statement.

We'll talk about what it is and we'll talk about why all bands end up suing each other.

They're not the only ones suing each other.

There is another band, actually much bigger, but much less newsworthy who are also suing each other at the moment, which we'll get on to.

We are also going to talk about the paper, the new sitcom, which is you can see on Sky and now here or in NBC in the States, which is a spin-off of The Office.

And we're going to talk about...

what that means.

Also, I think a little bit, what things like this get right and wrong about newspapers.

Oh, that's fun, because it's essentially the biggest sitcom launch in I would say five years.

Oh yeah.

So a lot hangs on it but yeah I'd be interested to know if it accurately reflects a newsroom.

I suspect it doesn't but you know I don't imagine that a paper office is like the office so and I enjoyed that.

We're also going to talk about Dan Brown's new book is out this week, first one in eight years.

All the big books have started coming out now, all the Christmas books.

So we're just going to take you through the runners and riders there and talk you through why they're released when they are and who might do the best.

I'm dying for that.

There's a lot of muscular malefiction coming with this.

Yes, in an era where we're constantly told that men don't write books anymore, this list would suggest otherwise.

For our many, many younger listeners or viewers, Morrissey, who was the least singer of the Smiths, is from Manchester.

He sort of has a reputation as a poet.

He's certainly an iconoclast.

He will always write about quite dark issues, very interesting issues, write about things you wouldn't necessarily normally hear in pop songs.

He had a reputation for being miserable when they came out just because the voice has a certain timbre to it, which suggests a miserableness.

But the Smiths and Morrissey himself had such a hugely devoted fan base.

Impossible to sort of overestimate quite how much the Smiths were loved by people who were...

How you reached into teenage bedrings and hearts and just spoke what was inside them.

Yeah, and a creature that probably couldn't exist in any other era than the 80s.

You know, Joy Division passed it on to the Smiths.

But the Smiths had happened to have this genius guitarist Johnny Mar who could write incredible pop songs as well.

So he had the the tortured poet who was with very very interesting imagery, the incredibly melodic guitarist, and this band kind of exploded out of nowhere.

So at that time, you know, he was a militant vegetarian, very happy to speak his mind about everything, very happy to go on the record and slag people off.

And just, you know, he spoke his mind long before speaking one's mind was a red flag.

Let's talk about bands.

Let's talk about Morrissey's morning.

Morrissey has put his business interests in The Smiths up for sale.

Yes.

He's actually headlined it a soul for sale.

Yeah.

A soul for sale.

Morrissey's soul.

Okay.

These comprise, according to Morrissey, the name The Smiths as created by Morrissey.

By the way, these are Morrissey's words, not yours.

Yes.

Oh, yeah.

And every time you say as created by Morrissey, Morrissey himself has written that.

He type that onto his website himself.

All Smith's artwork as created by Morrissey.

Every time he's doing it, he's thinking, is it double R Double S?

He probably finds it easier than I do.

Yeah, he's got a keyboard shortcut for it now, I think.

All Smith's merchandising rights, all Smith's songs lyrically and musically, all synchronization rights, all Smith's recordings, and all contractual rights for Smith's publishing.

The reason he's doing it, he says, I am burnt out by any and all connections to Ma, Rourke, Joyce, his three erstwhile bandmates.

One of whom is deceased.

And Rourke is deceased.

Yeah, and interestingly, one of whom, Mike Joyce, is just about to release a book, but entirely coincidental.

Yeah.

He says, I have had enough of malicious associations.

With my entire life, I have paid my rightful dues to these songs and these images.

I would now like to live dissociated from those who wish me nothing but ill will and destruction.

And this is the only resolution.

The songs are me.

They are no one else.

It's like this podcast, isn't it?

It's all marina.

But they bring with them business communications that go to excessive lengths to create as much dread and spite year after year.

I must now protect myself, especially my health.

Any serious investors should make contact.

Eaves7760 at gmail.com.

And I read out that email address because if you send something to it, which I've done, it just bounces back.

It's not, it

doesn't appear to work.

Okay, there's a lot to unpack.

A lot of toys to unpack or pick off the top.

To put back into the prank.

The bit that seems to be really getting to him is that they bring with them business communications.

I mean, the admin of artistry does make me laugh a lot.

I mean, it's really interesting.

Actually, a lot of people...

much further down the tree who's never had anything approaching the success the Smiths have had say you know you obviously you're in a band because you love making music and you love performing and you love all of those things but just a huge amount is spent getting from A to B you know booking venues, dealing with the admin, just dealing with the admin.

Have we paid VAT on our German royalties?

Yeah.

And there's a huge amount of admin.

And it reminds me of various things.

It reminds me of things like we've talked about before, that even if you're a really big-time actor, a tiny amount of your schedule, of the pie chart really, could be you in front of a camera.

Actually acting.

All of the rest of it, in the case of Mark Wahlberg, as we frequently say, is praying, having a lot of showers.

Turning down selfies.

It's a huge amount.

And actually the thing that you're in it for is just a tiny amount of the day.

I think even if you're in just a small band that kind of has a few gigs, people say, oh, it's eight hours a week.

They did actually a study of up-and-coming Dutch musicians.

Yeah, no, it's really interesting.

Okay.

He's getting paid for that.

I don't know, but it's quite a fun thing to do to talk to somebody.

Was it university's duties?

Was it funded by Dutch musicians' mums?

I don't know.

I think Dutch musicians' mums, maybe at that stage, you're probably helping them out with the admin, driving them out.

By the way, great name for for a band.

Dutch musicians months.

And they found that like quite a large percentage of the week was spent on that.

And obviously most people, as we discussed last week, have other jobs.

Morrissey has one job, which is being Morrissey at all times.

Yeah.

That's a full-time job.

By the way,

that needs 150% of anyone else.

But the admin of it all seems to really get to him.

I think what you're hitting up on there is exactly right, which is when you start a band, I mean, I started with the question, why do bands all end up suing each other and most bands form in the sort of teens and twenties and it's usually quite a random collection of individuals there's absolutely no reason why it was Marr Morrissey Raw and Joyce it could have been any number and when you look into the history of all of these bands you know there's various people who sort of drifted in and out so it's quite a random collection of people you're with and you're with them in the Smiths case and in the case of this other band we're going to talk about

five years tops something like that and almost all your time is spent writing songs being fated for those songs touring those songs people going absolutely crazy about those songs also some arguing in the pie chart.

Of course, of course.

And towards the end, more and more arguing.

As you get more and more successful and the pie gets bigger and bigger, more arguments about who gets what chunk of that pie.

When you split up, of course, and when the phone stops ringing quite so much, your spirit is still exactly the same.

Your love for what you do is exactly the same.

Your love for your art is the same.

The feelings that you have of the fandom remain the same.

But there is less and less and less to do.

You know, you are not going into the studio every day with your mates.

You know, you're doing solo albums or, you know, solo tours that are slightly smaller.

You're doing all those things.

And so suddenly that idea of your legacy starts to rear its head.

And if you are the Smiths, there's lots of money there as well.

And, you know, reunion tours and things like that.

But that's when you get to the point of, but these are three random guys I met in my 20s.

You know, if you think back, listeners, to just a random group of people that you used to hang out with.

in your 20s and imagine now you've got a hundred million to spread out between you and it's it all comes down to which of you is the most talented.

You know, that's a heady brew.

It's not like these are the three musketeers and they'll never be split.

All bands, by and large, are made up of incredibly disparate individuals.

And the adrenaline of being in a gang when you're in your 20s is so enormous.

And the fan fare and all of those things is so enormous.

But when you're in your 40s and

you just bought a home in LA and you've got a home in Tuscany and you've got still got a house in Manchester and you actually need a bit more money or maybe you were the drummer and you're not getting as much money as the others, That starts to focus the mind into, oh, actually, it was fun, and I do love the art, but there was a lot of money, and I don't appear to have an awful lot of it.

And the singer, he does appear to have an awful lot of it.

So, Dismiss years ago, Mike Joyce and Andy Rourke sued Morrissey and Maher for a bigger share of songwriting duties.

And Mike Joyce got a payout.

Andy Rourke, who's sadly no longer with us, took an £80,000 payoff because I think he was desperate for the money at the time.

Mike Joyce held out a bit longer and got a bit more money.

But this happens to so many bands.

As I say, Mike Joyce has got his book about to come out.

It's called The Drums.

And that would be brilliant.

Everyone you talk to about Mike Joyce says he's just the nicest man in the business, just an absolutely rock-solid guy.

Unrelated news, unrelated news.

Unrelated news.

Is it also unrelated to the news?

Morrissey

is now in the headlines.

Is this current news also unrelated to the fact that Morrissey suggested doing a reunion tour?

And Johnny Maher didn't want to do it.

He didn't feel the vibe was right, which puts it quite mildly, I think.

Johnny Ma, who again,

everyone you talk to, because you do sometimes think with this thing, you think, oh, everyone's anti-Morrissey, everyone's pro-Ma.

But is that true?

So I tried to speak to lots of people who've been in their orbit and Ma comes up with a pretty clean bit of health as well.

People love him.

And yeah, he absolutely turned down the tour, which would have been a lot of money because he would have felt...

It would have been a huge amount of money.

The other thing, which relates back to something we have often said, and particularly last week, is that the money now comes from touring.

And so you have to actually

be back in the same place together.

I mean, you have to say that Spinal Tap, the new Spinal Tap reunion thing, is so in the wheelhouse of contempo culture because they are all,

I mean, in the old days, you say, what band that old would have gone out on the road?

Of course they wouldn't.

But it's now like, oh, all of them.

They will all do this unless they literally want to kill each other.

I mean, the money that Oasis are making is, and very few bands can make that money, by the way.

And the Smiths wouldn't make that money.

Oasis have a particular place in the heart of our culture and even in America that they're able to do that.

But the Smiths would be making a lot, certainly more than Morrissey and Maher have now.

So Morrissey, I think, weirdly, historian reminds me of when we were talking about Noel Edmonds, which is Morrissey is unable to let go.

what he was in the 80s and how he was seen in the 80s.

And he was seen as countercultural.

He was seen as incredibly intelligent.

He was seen as, you know, somehow kicking, you know, swimming against the tides and doing so in an incredibly artistic way.

That's the legend of Morrissey.

And that is not how he's seen anymore.

And he continues to swim against the tide, but, you know, he's flirted with the far right and things like that.

He might be surfing the tide now.

He is.

It's hard to know what he's doing.

He's certainly doing something.

So he recorded an album in 2021.

Morrissey, and it's called Bonfire of Teenagers.

And it's about the Manchester Arena bombing.

That's That's the lead track.

It's about the Manchester Arena bombing.

And nobody will release it.

So no one will release this album.

When he talks about it, you do think there's a touch of the Edmonds about it.

He was dropped by his label, BMG, because he said he blamed that split on the label's new plans for diversity.

That's what he said about that.

He said he's taken this new album to every major label in London.

Now, every major label in London has refuge this album, quotes, while also admitting that it is a masterpiece.

And it doesn't.

I get it.

He's also, he's called the record the best album of my life.

And he says, the madly insane efforts to silence the album are somehow indications of its power.

Otherwise, who would bother to get so overheated about an inconspicuous recluse?

So that's what he's saying about this.

You can't.

He's had it every way in that particular, in just in those three sentences.

He has more unbelievably, on one of the songs, I Am Veronica, the backing vocals were done by Miley Cyrus, because she was a huge Morrissey and Smiths fan.

So she did that.

She then asked for her vocals to be taken off.

And again, you know, he said Morrissey said.

Did you retroactively make vocals off the record?

Apparently.

I think if you're Miley Cyrus,

but for that, Morrissey blamed the Legacy Press.

So the Legacy Press had something to say.

But so listen, we've heard that...

playbook played many many many times before but the reason he really reminds me of noel edmonds is if you listen to the songs from this album if you listen to bonfire of teenagers it's one of his best one of the best things he's done in his career.

Genuinely, I mean, wherever it comes from, it is a great song.

And anything that's on that album that is publicly available, it's absolute prime vintage Morrissey.

If you don't like Prime Vintage Morrissey, you won't like it.

If you do like Prime Vintage Morrissey, this is music that is absolutely up there with anything else that he's ever done.

Interesting, intriguing, agree or disagree.

Musically, it's absolutely a Morrissey album.

And it is interesting that nobody will release it.

I do find that interesting that no one will release it.

And I'm aware that he comes across as an old man shouting at clouds.

And I'm sure there is a part of that.

But also, he is a guy just going into the studio doing what he's always done and making this stuff.

And suddenly he's in a world where nobody wants to.

Well, do you think he might be in a different world now?

Because as we've said, there has been a sort of cultural sea change or the sort of end of what feels like a sort of cultural decade of direction.

Is Morrissey now not more likely to get a hearing certainly there is a fandom out there for him and if he wanted to um it's perfectly uh possible to you know self-release these things and there's there's money in that but I think what Morrissey wants is to be significant I think that's what he wants and because he was significant and I think that there's a certain type of personality that if they feel they're not being as heard by as many people as they used to, they don't go, oh, okay, that's the way life is.

Instead, they shout louder because they thought, oh, I must not be shouting loud enough because it used to be like everybody listened.

And now almost nobody is listening to me.

And this is an example of that, this thing that he released, The Soul for Sale.

That is him shouting as loudly as he possibly can.

And now he has got a reaction.

People are going, oh, yeah, Morrissey.

Yeah, I remember Morrissey.

He is in a very interesting thing, just that Noel Edmonds thing, because both sort of children of the 80s, both children of a mono-culture.

You know, the Smiths.

I can't believe this is the first time I've heard them yoked together.

I really can't, Richard.

Edmonds and Morrissey.

Yeah.

This is my favourite take.

But you know what it is?

No, I get it.

You know what I'm saying?

I love it.

They are beasts from a different jungle, and now they look around them and go, well, I don't understand this.

I kind of get the kind of primal yell of the thing.

But as I say, everyone I speak to, if you talk to them about Ma or Mike Joyce or the late Andy Rourke, have nothing but good things.

to say about them and there would have been a lot of money for a reading unit tour and they would have had their reasons for not doing that tour which we can imagine one way or another.

Johnny Maher has influenced a million guitarists.

Yes, that's for sure.

But whether the Smiths have that place in pop culture, I don't know.

But a band that are much, much bigger were the police.

I hate the police.

Wow.

Let's cut that out out of context.

No.

Would you

defund the police?

I hate the police.

You hate the police.

Yeah, I do.

I think they're really emotionally hollow and just it's very polished.

And I think that

you know,

it's not insignificant that the most emotionally deep song really is all about power and control.

Every breath you take.

Yeah, I believe we're going to be talking about it today.

Well, yes,

because that's also what the lawsuit is to do with.

So Sting takes a large proportion of the royalties for police songs, but you've got Stuart Copeland, who's the drummer, and you've got Andy Summers, who is the guitarist.

And they are now suing Sting.

42 years after Every Matthew You Take.

They have...

42 years, it seems longer.

They have opened up the wound again.

Sting sold his bat catalogue

for 300 million back, Sony.

There's a lot of money.

Andy Summers is older than the others.

And Andy Summers said, I did the guitar riff.

That's one of the reasons this is one of the biggest selling songs of all time.

I agree with him.

I agree with him that the guitar riff, because he brought it up.

Because this, I believe, is now the court of law for such things.

Sting wanted to do it on a sort of Hammond organ or something, and they were like, no, we're a guitar band.

And without that, without the guitar, I mean, I think it is quite different.

He also wanted to do the drums with a drum machine.

I see Sting.

What does Sting know?

It came off synchronous to do this, and they are really in the final, you know, his God complex by this stage.

But it's their last album.

Yeah, as a band.

It's their last album as a band.

As you say, everybody falls out in the end, or sooner rather than later.

So, again, let's see how the police formed.

And this is not three people who met at school and were lifelong friends and all this.

The police form

in the 70s in London, just where sort of prog rock was on its way out and punk was on its way in.

And Sting was in like a jazz fusion band called Last Exit.

He saw Stuart Copeland playing drums in the prog rock band Curved Air in Newcastle and gave him his number.

And they hooked up when he went down to London.

And then they were both asked to join a band by an ex-member of Gong called Strontium 90.

And the guitarist in Strontium 90 was Andy Summers.

So they thought, well, let's get Andy Summers in.

And he, by the way, is in his 30s.

He's much older than the others.

But essentially, they're kind of three jazz fusion prog rock musicians all of whom are quite interested in punk and funny enough when they when they

at least two of whom have a gob complex and when when they turn up in the public consciousness it's with that bleached blonde hair that short bleach blonde hair and sort of punk look and that is entirely due to a wrigley's commercial a chewing gum commercial that tony scott was directing and they he needed someone to play a punk band so they cut their hair short dyed their hair and it's never aired this avert but somewhere there's the three of them with a six-foot pack of wrigley's chewing gum being carried around Styling by Tony Scott.

Styling by Tony Scott.

So that was the police.

So they are three people from very different places who got together and I think genuinely, because Stinger's an unbelievably great songwriter became the biggest band in the world.

By 1993, Rolling Stone is saying this is the biggest band in the world.

So it's all well and good being the Smiths.

This is the biggest band.

They did one ill-fated reunion tour in 2007, 2008.

And in 2009...

They have played together.

They've got together for nights and various things like that, benefits, no doubt.

There's a bit about them that makes you think they haven't fallen out with each other.

I think Sting slightly regretted the reunion tour.

He certainly said that he had, but they were the highest earning musicians in the world in 2008.

And that was the highest grossing tour of all time when they reformed.

And he'll still do your oligarch's wedding for a million dollars, Sting, just in case.

He's yet to answer the question, how much money is enough?

Well, I guess we'll find out in the High Court fairly soon.

So, yeah, Andy Summers and Stuart Copeland are after this money.

Now, Stuart Copeland is someone you would not want to be sued by.

This is why I would never say I hate the police.

You know who his dad is?

No, tell me.

You don't know who Stuart Copeland's dad is?

Wow.

Okay, you're about to regret saying you hate the police.

His dad is Miles Copeland, who was a very, very, very senior member of the CIA.

He was one of America's top spies.

I do remember reading

anything about, you know, Philby and the Cambridge spies and all that.

Miles Copeland is always somewhere in the background, in the Middle East in Lebanon but also his mum was a spy a Scottish woman she was also a spy so he comes from a family of spies Stuart Copeland and is a is a is a tough nut that's for sure so he's taking Sting to court that's why if I was Sting I'd just pay up immediately he's got his brother so glad you're not Sting yeah

his brother who is who is another Miles Copeland managed the police went on to manage Sting for many years as well so that there is you know this is a band that there shouldn't be all that much acrimony but there is.

But they found him so controlling that it was beyond.

Well, he said, again, you team up with people in your 20s,

you're all musicians, and you all have different musicianships.

But if you're a creative and you're in a room with three people, all of whom want to be doing their own thing, and it isn't the thing that you want to do, there comes a point where you go, I just have to be me.

I have to go and do what it is that I want to do.

So, actually, if you are controlling, then the only thing to do is become sting, you know, and leave the band, which is which is worse.

He certainly has become Sting, hasn't he?

But yeah, it's all really about every breath you take.

Almost all of it is about, which

it's interesting that it almost telescopes onto one song.

Which is one of the very few, you know, we talked about touring being the only place to make money.

Every breath you take is one of the few songs you can still make money.

It's one of the sort of 10 biggest radio-played songs in the history of the world.

And of course, with the sample in

the P.

Diddy song as well.

It was in when

Phyllis gets married in the US office.

It's played at her wedding by Kevin's band, which is called Scrantonicity.

Oh, yeah.

So they're in the High Court at the moment.

That's only today's first mention of Dunder Mifflin.

Yeah, by the way.

Stuart Copeland's other brother, Andy Copeland,

also worked in the music business, but I think might be the only person in history.

This is a sidebar, this is the ultimate sidebar, might be the only person in music history ever to have dated both Marianne Faithful and Courtney Cox.

Oh,

that's a

intergenerational That's a Van Diagram.

Isn't it, Just?

Yeah.

So

Morrissey is clearly trying to divert attention from this Mike Joyce book, which will be brilliant.

The drums.

I mean, even if it doesn't settle scores, which I don't think it will, knowing how mild-mannered he is, but I think it will be an incredible

interesting read.

I think so.

The police are in the high court as well, but so many bands...

end up in court because when they are young, they have the energy and the adrenaline that they're with people who,

you know, in an ordinary bit of life, they'd move offices and they wouldn't be friends with in 10 years' time, but they are yoked together forever creatively, and they have people who talk to them about that other person forever creatively.

Meanwhile, there is a huge pot of money somewhere which could be somehow sliced up between all of them.

There'll always be someone coming along saying, you know, they got a bit too much there.

You know, they got a little bit too much.

And so I think that's why all bands

end up suing each other.

If you don't sue your manager, it's much better to have it siphoned away into suing the manager.

And, you know, the Rolling Stones have just got that litany of managers who rip them off about 65p.

But, you know,

there's certain people in bands who will always be more of the record keeping persuasion.

Well, that's what

Jagger's definitely like that.

And McCartney, when people say, oh, he sued the Beatles, I mean, he was trying to get rid of Alan Klein, exactly, who was the manager.

And that all seemed to end well for everyone.

Journey, the Don't Stop Believing band,

they went to court because one of them wouldn't let the other one use the banned credit card.

Paula Notes have been in

and there's only two of them, and they've been in court cases forever.

You know, and again, because

in our popular imagination, those two are like best friends, and you know, but they're just two guys who met each other, and now, you know, they've got half a billion pounds to share up between them.

And so, but what else are you going to do?

No one really wants Steve to go back in the studio, so you might as well go into the courtroom.

It made me think, I was fortunate, I went to go see Coldplay, and I want to write a pamphlet called In Defense of Coldplay, because I think they're

pamphleteering is, oh, you're just coming into them

even Chris Martin at the end just said well done for tolerating two hours of cold play I think that's a real achievement

that's him at Wembley you think but again you talk to people about cold play and nobody has a bad word to say about them they say everyone who works for them has worked with them forever they pay their crew properly.

There have been charities that have been in trouble that have been bailed out by ColdPlayer and told, do not say a word about this.

Everyone, you know, you go see, I mean, there's an awful lot of we all love each other and all this at the gig.

Well, my favourite line in We Solve Murders is actually quite negative about Coldplay.

Which I feel bad about.

Which made me laugh, which made me laugh so much when I read it.

Yeah, there's a gangster in St.

Lucia who's wearing a Coldplay t-shirt.

And when someone was asked about shooting him, he said that, well, the Cold Play t-shirt made it easier.

So, Chris Martin, if you're listening, that was, I just, it was, listen, you know, it's a useful joke.

And it's all money.

But yeah, that's a band who I think have been equitable about where the money goes for a very long time and seem to actually like each other and look after each other.

But it's very, very, very rare that you see that.

So what's this space for Morrissey and the police developments?

Right.

Well, after the break, we're going to talk about some thrusting, quite old guys who've got some very, very big books out in relation to Christmas.

And we're going to talk about the future of sitcom.

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Welcome back, everybody.

Marina, the paper has just come out.

It is a semi-spin-off of The Office, which means everyone's got incredibly excited about it.

Greg Daniels, who's the guy who adapted The Office for American TV, amongst a very, very big team of people, he's behind this as well.

There are, well, certainly.

Along with Michael Komen, who's behind Nathan for You, one of the co-creators of Nathan for You.

It has one of the stars of The Office in it.

There are other site connections, which we won't say if people have not seen it yet.

But because this is seen as the first real spin-off from The Office, there's been a huge bet on this show to be the thing that really revitalizes sitcom in the States.

Yeah, it's made by NBC, as The Office was, obviously, and you can see it here on Sky or now.

And it's set in a, we can do the talk about the premise of it because it came out last week.

It came out on Friday, I think, in the UK.

And it's set in Toledo, Ohio.

and it's set in the offices of the Toledo Truth Teller now.

Which is a newspaper.

Which is a newspaper.

And they do call newspapers things like that in America.

This is like the Cleveland Plain Dealer and stuff like that, isn't it?

They've got some great names.

Anyway, this newspaper is owned by Ennovate, a conglomerate that previously bought Dunder Mifflin, but they have other types of paper.

They obviously have that.

And they also

make

Lou Paper.

That's their much bigger seller.

And

it's got a very good cast.

It's got Donald Gleaton, Sabrina Impatiatore, who you might remember as the receptionist in

the hotel manager in

White Lotus the season two.

It's got our own Tim Key in it.

Scott Benasola Ikamele, who's brilliant in Black Ops, if people love watching Black Ops.

So it's got there's a big British connection to this as well, which is why I think

it's a particularly exciting one for us.

It's interesting.

It definitely says a lot about newspapers,

but it also says a lot about comedy.

It is so hard to get new comedies off the ground now.

I mean, it's that, you know, that in many ways, what they've tried to do as every single person does in with film with anything now is to do things off existing IP to say to sort of it's in the office extended universe.

It's the Dunder Mifflin universe.

Yeah, yeah.

And it almost feels now that it's so hard to get a new comedy off the ground.

Well the biggest new sketch show in Britain is the Michelin Webb one on Channel 4.

And by the way, I'm delighted they're back.

But that's the, you know, how else are you getting anything off the ground on terrestrial television if people don't know it already yes greg daniels is sort of inst interested in these institutional stories in lots of ways and obviously there was had the office but parks and recreation which was sort of about government and big and small government That's the other thing I noticed because I was interested slightly in sort of, oh, I remember what it was like when I first saw the office.

And I remember what it was like when I first saw the US office, which by the way, a lot of people were kind of snarky about at the start and didn't think it was good as our one.

It became, it's completely its own thing.

And it is is absolutely amazing and it's a huge part of the fabric of america

i always say to people if you want to watch the us office start at the first episodes of season two yeah same with brooklyn 99 funnily enough if you start with episode one season two you you you'll you will never see a bad episode you will yes there are a lot of laugh lines in those first episodes of those shows and i think it says something about what has slightly happened to comedy in that A lot of comedy now is what I would call comedy drama.

And although there are obvious laugh lines in this, it's

even though, and it's come from the same team and they're and they've got some of the same things where some of the performers are also in the writer's room in the same way in the original office.

BJ Novat, Mindy Kaling, those sort of people were in there.

I actually think Toby from HR is in the variety's room with this one.

Oh, is he?

Yeah.

Yeah.

I also, it's funny when you just say he's literally just a writer, and whenever he's in the background of any scene, he's a regular actor, though.

Yeah.

Yeah.

It's anyway.

So I found it sort of interesting.

The prize of a big hit sitcom is so enormous now.

If you look at any of the streaming data,

just the shows that are making money forever, you know, the offices up there, Parks and Recs, the Family Guy, just these things that are now going to be watched in perpetuity forever and ever and ever.

And if you can be one of the few people who can sneak another new one under the wire so that in 10, 15 years' time, you are watched forever and ever and ever, that's the real prize here.

Well, that's what they want because

on the day before the series dropped, they green lit it for a season two.

And they obviously want to kind of prove that that old style, I suppose, networking that like by the way, they hadn't immediately decided to do two series.

They're going, do you know what?

Just the day before, I'm not sure.

I'm absolutely not sure.

Do you know what?

Maybe we should do it.

Well, you know what?

It's the day before.

Why don't we just wait one day and see what people say?

No, do you know what?

I'm so confident.

But oh, you could have done that six months ago.

You've had the tapes for ages.

No, I've really been thinking about it.

And actually, well, I'll tell you what, either

just go one day.

No, I'm not going to wait one day.

I'm recommissioning.

So, in terms of like how it actually reflects a newspaper office, I would, I mean, there's a lot of things that newspaper offices, and newspaper offices used to be places of significant numbers of staff and glamour.

And, you know, you know.

Yeah, what was it like sort of in the absolute heyday?

If you, if you walk through the office of one of the big tabloids, what's what's the atmosphere like?

Oh my god.

I remember that my first day when I went to the sun, but I was like going from a temping agency to work on the Shabis desk.

And I got to the door and I didn't realise,

obviously I didn't have like a security pass running because I was just temp and it had this massive sign above it that said walk tall, you are entering sun country.

And then this guy said to me, Can't you get in?

Don't worry, lucky me, lucky you, you met me.

And I was like, I wonder who that is.

Anyway, that was the editor, Stuart Higgins.

Anyhow, Stuart Hurricane Higgins.

Higgins the human sponge, as Kelvin and Mackenzie used to call him.

Anyway, and it was, yeah, there's a sense of like total,

we're the best in the business, we do everything right.

It was, it was really, it was really cultish, I thought, but you know, what can you say?

But a machine that was making an awful lot of money and had a lot of vibals on it.

Yes, but I think it was tipping over then, and they were worried about the mail coming up behind them at the time.

And obviously, they were eventually overtaken by the mail.

So that was all sort of thing.

It's still the place to be in terms of if you want advertising revenue.

They were still the masters of the universe at that point.

Yes.

Yes, they were.

But this is a sort of different thing, this show, because it's set in local news.

And that idea of local news, which is is so important has been so completely hollowed out um and it couldn't be like a more important thing and we sort of know it but we don't do anything about it and there are all sorts of trying initiatives to try and do something about it that that that era of like spinning newspapers in in movies where it meant like oh this is the most important thing yes there is there used to be a sitcom trope which is a spinning newspaper now there's a sitcom trope which is 14 seconds after someone says something people come in and going oh my god you're trending on twitter yeah so it's all the god that was quick yeah i mean it's usually they update it once an hour don't they it's usually still whoever, you know, Alexander Isak, but the thing you just said is now trending.

It's yes, it's interesting.

I do think that this decay has been happening a lot longer than we.

I remember I had a great friend who eventually came to the Guardian, who was older than me.

He was a guy called Albert Scardino.

Now, he and his wife, Marjorie Scardino, had a little local newspaper.

This is what this sort of slightly reminded me of.

They had a little local newspaper in Georgia called the Georgia Gazette, and I think it never sold more than 4,000 copies.

I remember him saying, We had a story once about the mayor, and we thought, oh, it's a bit on his private life.

Maybe this isn't quite right.

Don't worry, if he's made this mistake, he'll make another.

So they left it.

And then, of course, anyway, eventually they win a Pulitzer for exposing local corruption, blah, blah.

Marjorie Scardina goes on, she becomes the only woman running a FTSE 100 company.

But even that had to shut.

That shut in like 84

because they just, you know, you can't get enough eyeballs.

And it's very, very difficult in this world.

I think it is a good place for a sitcom, but I'm not sure.

It's funny.

People don't seem to care about journalism in that way in local journalism, even though they know they should.

That journalists are not sympathetic figures.

Yeah, I know.

I wonder how that happened.

God, that's so odd.

I mean, journalists are played a lot, and there's something coming up, The Hack, which is coming up, which is the same team as Mr.

Bates versus the Post Office.

And David Tennant's going to be Nick Davis, the Guardian journalist who exposed phone hacking.

That's written by Jack Thorne.

I mean, that's going to be big and splashy.

By the way, even more, listen, I'm very excited that David Tennant is in it.

I'm more excited that the person playing Rupert Murdoch Murdoch is Steve Pemberton from Inside Number Nine.

Come on.

And I've just seen the pictures of him.

And obviously they've aged him up quite a lot.

But he looks amazing.

It's an interesting place to set a show, but it's really interesting to try and get a mega kind of network comedy off the ground nowadays.

And

we'll have to watch to see how that happens because they've put so much into this.

The office is the sort of show that people...

watch in their delivery rooms and deal and watch around the you know we're re-watching the whole thing at the moment it's so good yeah and Oscar from the office is in this is in this there is one little uh who Ingrid once did an escape room with in LA she didn't he's lovely apparently and good at escape rooms oh this is great to know yeah but I think if you're a fan of the American office at all definitely give this a watch and as I say it's so lovely to have that British connection in there as well so we we all wish it incredibly I mean listen there's people out there who make billions out of it it does well but we'll all we'll all do well out of it if there if there's a great new sitcom on the block absolutely books Richard now we're moving into a very busy swashbuckling season, correct?

Yes, more than usual, in fact.

So this is roughly the time when the big Christmas books come out because you get your first rush of sales in September.

And then as Christmas gets nearer, you sell more and more.

So the big beasts all come out in September.

Including you?

Well,

we needn't worry about that.

I'm going to talk about everyone else.

All these books are about to come out.

I think it's the most packed autumn there's been for many, many years.

The key thing to do, we've talked before, is everyone avoids each other.

So everyone brings their books out on different days.

So last week, Robert Galbraith's book came out, The Hallmarked Man.

That's the J.K.

Rowling's pseudonym with the Corman Strike novels.

So that is out.

It's another 900-page behemoth.

So that'll be number one.

But this week, in fact, today, the new Dan Brown is coming out, The Secret of Secrets, the sixth book in the Robert Langdon series.

So, you know, what we know as the Da Vinci Code series.

It's been eight years since his last one.

So there was an awful lot of hoopla around this book.

It'll sell very, very well particularly in the states

i would i would love listen you you must choose weapons advisedly but i i would love to beat him that would be nice wouldn't it but uh but he's listen he's i actually i'm quite a big fan of dan brown i don't i i don't know why but i i enjoy reading the books but the secret of secrets um is coming out uh this one's about to consciousness and a scientist uh disappears and a manuscript is lost but it could change the way we think about the brain forever does it ch contain a a hot age gap inappropriate relationship, or do we not yet know?

Well, I think Robert Langdon is eight years older than he was last time.

Oh, great.

Well, then that could be even bigger the gap.

Yeah, but I think this missing professor, who is a woman,

I suspect she hasn't been aged eight years, but we'll find out, I guess.

He says it's by far the most intricately plotted and ambitious of my books yet, and dare I say, the most fun.

Oh, okay.

So that's got to come out around the world today, and particularly in the States.

That's going to be huge.

But we've talked a lot.

There's something in the air about,

you know, men are not allowed to write books anymore.

And, you know, and fiction is

a female-dominated industry much more than any of the other arts.

And that seems to infuriate people because, you know, I mean, let women have one of them.

So, you know, the biggest sellers, Sarah J.

Mars, Rebecca Yaros, Colleen Hoover, these are the big-selling books.

But this autumn,

pretty much all the big books are men.

So we've got, well, we had J.K.

Rodden, we've got Dan Brown.

Mick Heron has his new Snau House book out on the 11th.

That's called Clown Town and is as good as all his others.

And by which I mean I love his others as well.

Yeah,

he's absolutely brilliant.

And I'm doing an event with him, funnily enough, quite soon.

We're both talking about our new books.

Then Ken Follett is back.

Ken Follett is another one of those kind of big beasts

of male literature.

Circle of Days.

Circle of Days.

That's about the building of Stonehenge, right?

Yeah, exactly.

He's done a lot of research.

No, but his books are always, you know, they're the kind of things they can, they'll keep you going for weeks and weeks and weeks.

But again, around the world.

Archer, he's there as well.

he's got a new one out um so follett archer brown heron philip pullman has uh the rosefield which is the the third book in the the book of dust series so that's out as well so all of these big hitters there's a new jack reacher out in november as well all on the different weekends there is one new name to join the absolute big hitters because actually that list is sort of can be fairly unmoving and the big name that last couple of years has released books and they've done all right but is absolutely now in the top tier is bob mortimer So Bob Mortimer's the long shoe, and he is, for all the talk of celebrity novelists, none of them really sell.

No.

But Bob Mortimer is now in the absolute A-list and he sells a lot.

He sells a lot in hardback and he sells a lot in paperback.

So he now becomes someone you have to avoid as well.

So his book, you know, he's in the first two, we'd be like, oh, they're avoiding everyone.

And now everyone's avoiding Bob.

And his is out on the 9th of October.

The long shoe, that one's called.

So in a world where, as I say,

we're told, we're asked, where where have all the male novelists gone?

All the male novelists will be in Waterstones and W.

It Smith's and your local independent in the run-up to Christmas.

Can I just say something?

Because I knew we're going to talk about this today, and I'm interested in this because I read this whole deep dive.

That the pipe for sort of literary fiction or for people to become maybe literary and popular, whatever, has sort of closed.

Because this is the thing that I read that I found was really extraordinary.

The New Yorker has never published a piece of fiction by a white male born after 1984.

Ever?

No.

So

they've published lots of millennial fiction, you know, many, many pieces of millennial fiction, but not, but none by a white male.

Now, because younger white men don't write these type of books, right?

Is that correct?

And yet

all of these guys

are, I mean, these guys are of a certain age.

I'm not putting you in that age bracket, but I'm just saying that these guys, yeah, yeah, and you don't care about things like that.

I know you are.

But a certain age, right?

And it reminds me a little bit of that thing that we talked about before in movies where the biggest stars are actually the biggest stars of who they were 20, 30 years ago, you know.

And there hasn't been this new generation come through, right?

That that's not the case with you because you've done something different.

And by the way, although your books are very confident, they're different to this type of, in some ways, quite a male book.

And I'm going to qualify that in a minute.

So just hang on to that one.

But

there hasn't been a sort of way through in that in literary fiction, I guess

male writers are sort of worrying about either casting themselves as some kind of victim or just thinking people like me are the villain.

But popular fiction has no such qualms

and also not such few sales.

So what does that say about the type, you know, that people already want these books?

Another thing that I think is interesting is that

books by men skew about 50-50 in terms of on the gender readership, so about half and half read by men and women.

Books by women skew miles more heavily in favour of women readers.

And as you know, maybe women read more, whatever it is.

So they've been on the up.

But

something that I find quite interesting is that there's so little publicly available data in publishing.

Why is that?

I don't really know who buys these books.

Yeah, I think it's because there's so few actual big publishing companies that are seen as commercially sensitive, you know, because there's all these different imprints, but actually all of them are owned by the same four or five companies.

So so long as they're sharing that information internally, they have all the kind of do you see things like that?

Yes.

Do you?

Like who sells and do you see breakdowns of

absolutely gender, age, everything.

For you or for others?

For me, I guess I could ask for others, but

well, I just think it's always interesting.

The more you know, I think it's interesting.

I think so too.

I think what the point you're making there is...

there's not a shortage of male writers.

There is a shortage of young male writers.

All of the young writers.

What's the next journalist for those people?

Yeah.

All the young.

And I'm not saying that's, you know, that's wonderful and it's great.

And as you said,

let the chicks have something.

You didn't put it like that.

I just

really want to qualify that.

But it's interesting that a generation hasn't come through in that way.

I mean, maybe arguably even to some extent in literary fiction, but they haven't come through in that same way, a generation of kind of...

Yeah, and I think the interesting thing will be, despite the fact you've got all of these heavy hitters and, you know, the Dan Brown book will have so much money put behind it and all of that kind of stuff.

And look, you know, probably the biggest selling fiction book leading up to Christmas will be a paperback, which is very, very rare because it's almost always hardbacks.

And that's Freedom McFadden, who we talked about before, who in October has a new book called The Intruder that's coming out.

And because she appeals to younger readers and because she appeals very directly to female readers, which is where the money is and where the eyeballs are, I think a lot of these books will do.

very well, perhaps not as well as some of them might have done in their heyday.

But I wonder if Freedom McFadden might top them all.

I saw Beckham reading that on his Yacht holiday, A Freedom McFadden.

Did you?

Yes, piece of metrosexual.

He was reading it on the deck of his big boat.

Okay.

Gosh, he'd be delighted.

Honestly, if he tucked a Thursday murder club under his arm, I'd be like, you know what?

I'll take that.

But all of that stuff is coming out this autumn.

And by the way, I can't think in that whole list, there'll be a bad book.

So whatever sort of stuff you like, there's great stuff there.

Please, please, please go into bookshops and buy these things if you can.

If you can't, if you know shot down brown a bone you know

but go into shop buy whatever you want in there but just but do visit do visit bookshops because this three months leading up to christmas is absolutely make or break for so many wonderful little local independent shops and they'll do incredible deals and incredible events and i've said before if they are charging you more than amazon it is not because they are taking a bigger profit they are not gouging you at all they have to pay all sorts of taxes they have to pay their rents they have to pay staff all of that kind of stuff so if you can, if you can afford the extra couple of quid, if you can't, then you absolutely just read, just read, just read.

If you can afford an extra couple of quid, then those bookshops will still be there in five years' time and ten years' time.

And that's what we'd all love, isn't it?

Just read, just read.

Just read.

A book

is the best present you can buy someone because

it's the only present you can get for under a tenor that's easy to wrap and lasts a lifetime.

Any recommendations this week, Marina?

I have got a recommendation.

I saw a really fun play.

It's called Born with Teeth, and it's a two-parter, and it stars Shuti Gatwa and Edward Blumel.

And it's basically imagining a writer's room with Shakespeare and Christopher Marlowe.

And

it's really funny, it's really sexy, it's

really highbrow.

I like all this stuff, but it's also really trashy.

Those are four things I really like.

And I thought it was, I really liked it.

I think young people, younger people, I know people are always trying to get younger people into theatres.

I think it would be great.

It's very spirited and great fun.

I really enjoyed it.

So I'm going to recommend The Dog House on Channel 4, which is back for another series, which is the lovely show where it's all to do with dogs who need a home and families who come in who are looking for a pet and just working out which pet suits which people.

So you get the stories of the people, you get the stories of the dogs, and usually a happy ending as well.

But it's just, it's just,

there is nothing not to like in The Dog House.

I think it's the biggest show show on Channel 4 this week as well.

And I'm not at all surprised.

What about Bake Off?

Even bigger?

Do you know what?

I forgot Bakoff.

I forgot Bake Off, which we will talk about at some point, I'm sure.

It is the second biggest show on Channel 4 this week.

Thank you.

Well, we will be back on Thursday for the Q ⁇ A episode.

And we also have a really fun bonus on Waterworld,

the famous Kevin Costner flop, or was it?

Or was it a FOP?

Often seen as one of the biggest fops of all time.

Hmm, was it, it, Marina?

If you like stories about films going wrong in the filming of them, and you know we do.

Yeah,

it's a very good one.

Anyway, that's you can join at the restisentertainment.com.

Otherwise, we will see you on Thursday.

See you on Thursday, everyone.

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