The Secrets Of Tipping Point

This episode is brought to you by our good friends at Sky. Some things were just made to be together.

Salt and vinegar, Holmes and Watson, Tommy Shelby and a tailor who asked no questions, preferably while pouring the whiskey. Oh, salt and vinegar, definitely.

Now you can add to the list of those dynamic duos, Sky and Netflix. Now together on the Sky Essential TV package for just £15 a month.
One place, one bill, one less thing to think about.

Two entertainment heavyweights under one roof with shows like The Last of Us, Gangs of London and Squid Game, plus Sky Atlantic, Discovery Plus, and over 90 other channels.

It's your evening neatly stacked by someone with impeccable taste. You.
Sirius Randy for a front row pass to the shows everyone's talking about.

Lined up, turning your sofa into the hottest ticket in town. Minus the dress code.
Get Sky TV and Netflix for £15 a month, the best entertainment in one place. Ready whenever you are.

Visit sky.com to start. Requires relevant Sky TV and third-party subscriptions.
Sky Central TV includes a selection of Sky channels, 18 Plus UK, Channel Islands, and Isle of Man only.

Sparkle throughout the night with Born in Roma fragrances by Valentino Beauty. Each bottle holds the energy of Rome after dark.

Donna Born in Roma blends luxurious jasmine with rich, creamy vanilla, creating a sensual and vibrant signature scent.

Uoma Born in Roma fuses aromatic sage and smoked vetiver, leaving a lasting impression that lingers well into the early hours. Shop Born in Roma by Valentino Beauty, now at Ulta.

Oh, what fun! Holiday invites are arriving, and Nordstrom has your party fits covered.

You'll find head-to-toe looks for every occasion, including styles under 100, dresses, sets, heels, and accessories from Bardeau, Princess Polly, Dolce Vita, Naked Wardrobe, Coach, and more.

Free styling help, free shipping, and quick order pickup make it easy. In-stores or online, it's time to go shopping at Nordstrom.

Hello, and welcome to this episode of the Rest is Entertainment Questions and Answers Edition. I'm Marina High.
And I'm Richard Osman. Hello, Marina.
Hello, Richard. How are you? I'm very well.

Hello, listeners, as well. Now, listen, I speak for a nation when I am able to ask you the question that you so wanted to be asked about your dream dream life, Richard.

About the workings of your subconscious. Sarah Longford and others obligingly wrote in, following your come and get me play, a question for Richard.

Have you ever had a dream about a perfect episode of The Bill? Sarah, thank you so much for that question.

I did, yes.

Listen, this doesn't count as an official question, right? This is any other business.

Yes, I once, you know, occasionally, you know, they say that Paul McCartney dreamt dreamt the tune of yesterday in a dream, and occasionally things will come to me.

But yeah, I was once dreaming and I dreamt the perfect episode of The Bill. And when I say perfect, I mean it was faultless.

I could expect nothing out. Everything.
It had like the regular people in it. It had a good precinct to it.
It had a really, really good twist. Like the whole thing, but the whole thing was there.

And I woke up, it's the middle of the night and I could remember it. I could remember the entire thing.
And I always keep a little pad by the bed. So I thought, this is like free money for me, right?

Because you're thinking, I cannot believe. I didn't have to do anything.

I haven't had to do anything. My subconscious has done the whole thing.
I've got this entire thing. And even if it's not going to work for the bill, I mean,

it's going to work for something because it's great. And the twist was great.

So I wrote it down. And

it took me about half an hour, so I was writing down every single bit that I remember of it, the whole thing. So I'm writing down this thing.

And I get to the end. I'm like,

I go back to sleep. Money in the bank.
Anyway, I wake up and I forgot I did it. And then I thought, oh my god, I woke up in the middle of the night and I wrote down the perfect episode of the bill.

That's such good news. So I look over at my pad.
Now, this is what this is word for word what I wrote. Perfect episode of the Bill.
Which took me about 40 minutes to write. A man

throws a brick through a window, but

it is a different man.

And that was it. Different underlined twice.

Oh

my goodness. A man throws a brick through a window, but it is a different man.

Wow. I mean, I sent it off and they made it.

But honestly,

in whatever waking state I was in, I thought, I've absolutely got this. This is amazing.
This is so good. It's got everything.
Okay, I think there's something that still could be salvaged.

I will personally pay for you to go to one of those people who, you know, and puts you, maybe like not past lives, but past dreams therapy and tries to extract that particular dream.

I think that was it.

I honestly think that was it.

I think that the issue was me waking up and, you know, it happens with ideas when you're waking sometimes where you go, hold on a minute, if I just come up with the greatest game show of all time, and then the next day you go, no, I haven't.

My notes app on my phone is entirely bad. I love

randomly bad ideas. I love random notes where you go, I have no idea what that refers to.

Or people to call. Who is this? I don't know anyone by that name.
But listen, if anyone wants, if anyone out there from any, I mean, Amblyn, we have a relationship already at Amblin.

If you're interested, the rights to that are still available. But it is a different man.
But it is a different man. Yeah, I had it.
Oh my God. It was so vivid.

A different man. I tell you what, it's only the plot of the next rock art house movie.
A different man. Yeah.
And maybe

he doesn't throw a brick through a window. He throws a rock through a window.

And the rock, the rock is his old career as a, you know, as a blockbuster movie guy.

And the window is the window between him and arthouse acceptance. So much symbolism.
So much symbolism. I love this.
Let's work on this

straight after this happens. It turns out I did not dream the perfect episode of the build.
It turns out I dreamt the perfect plot for a rock movie. Wonderful.

So we get onto our actual questions, but thank you to, that might be the most asked question we've ever had. So thank you to everyone.

And well done, Sarah Longford, for winning the raffle of being the person who got to ask the question. Rachel Fleming has a question.

We talked about this the other week and so we're going to have a think about it. She says, My sons are 11 and 13 years old.
This is titled Indoctrination.

My sons are 11 and 13 years old and I am desperate to educate them on the basis of good entertainment. We have all been there, Rachel.

Can I have a film, TV show and book that I should force them to consume to ensure they grow up with good taste? I love this question and I thought about it really hard.

I've actually got an 11 and a 13 year old and a 14 year old but I asked all of them and we discussed it and

I feel like

I feel like I should do the book first because actually everyone agreed on this and it was going to be the one I suggested too. It's Animal Farm.

They've all read it, they all loved it and they all found it really amazing that it could be a great story, but it could be a sort of allegory or symbolize something completely different.

And I remember reading it when I was pretty young. It's first of all, you know, not to over egg the whole short book thing, but it is a short book, Rachel.
It is a short book. And it's a great story.

But when you say, oh, and by the way, and did you know, and you can talk about it that, you know, the horse symbolizes this, or whatever it is, I think it's really interesting for young people and children to think, oh, I see something can say one thing and mean another, or allegory, which like in many centuries gone past, everyone sort of understood allegory all the time, but we don't see quite so much of.

I think

that's a really good one. Opens up a whole area of culture, opens up anything where you go, oh, I didn't understand the world could be like this.

Funny enough, Catcher in the Rye, that I read in my teens. That's a book where you go, oh,

I'm sort of inside the brain of someone from another time, but talking very interestingly and talking sort of how my brain worked as well.

And again, you just think, oh, people from other times are the same as me. That's exactly what my second book was going to, because as you know, I can't ever make a choice between that and that.

So that was going to say the second book.

my husband said oh my god catcher in the rye because my mother gave it to me I deliberately didn't read it and when it got oh I was older I read it and thought oh my god I should have read this ages ago it's brilliant so cat and all my children said catch her in the rye and I totally agree with you that I remember reading that and thinking

gosh this seems to have been written a long time ago but this is so how I think so that is a definite one but also with book because if you can have a lifetime of books that's a you know it's like it's like I always think I'm so lucky I like sport because it's it's given me a lifetime of joy.

And I'm so glad that I was introduced to books in the right way, that I understand that even if the first five pages of something, if I'm thinking, oh, I wish I hadn't started reading a book,

that actually I know that if you stick with it, it brings you the greatest joy. So you be so careful, the books that transition you from the famous five upwards.
Yeah,

I'm pushing a book on someone before they're able to understand. That's why I think I would have to say Animal Farm is the number one because I just think it's...
I've never read it. Have you not? No.

I know about it. Oh my goodness.
Well, I mean, really, well, it's not going to take you long.

No, it's not. It's fantastic.
It's really, anyway.

Right. Movies.
I don't know what age you are, Rachel Fleming, but I was thinking what I have really liked is to have movies from my generation that we loved. And again, my children said this.

They said, oh, modern movies are rubbish. That's not true.

And also, they like lots of things. But they all loved Ferris Bueller's Day Off when we showed it to them and they watched it multiple times.

It's nice that they like a thing that we like when we were about their age.

And so, if that's not the era of you, Rachel Fleming, and that's a bit earlier than your era, which it might well be, something that you've sort of loved that some things, you know, they couldn't really get into the matrix, which I thought was quite because I remember thinking, okay, well, that's just like the best movie of the 90s or the most important movie.

Some things age, though, don't they? Especially things that are sort of sci-fi sometimes ages. Well, they're redoing that we're redoing.

When we were talking about Mike DeLufer and Pam Maddie, they're going to redo The Matrix at Warner's.

I was going to suggest part fiction but then I remembered the ages and I'm already in trouble for pushing

unacceptable things on.

I'm already in trouble for apparently showing a nine-year-old the shining but so I'm probably not going to yeah so I'm probably not going to recommend part fiction because it's not not suitable having although maybe if you want a Stephen King adaptation maybe Shaw Shank Redemption is a nice good movie to watch at 13 because there's nothing too terrible in it.

IMDB is very, very good, funnily enough, in that sort of nanny state bit of when it tells you all the bits of a film that might be problematic.

Because you can remember watching a film when you were growing up and then you show it to your kids and you suddenly go, oh, I'd forgotten that happened in this film.

And it's a four-minute long sequence. But IMDb is your friend there because it will tell you if there's anything that's...
that's awkward about films that you loved.

Because these kids would have seen Back to the Future already, right? Yeah,

they might not have.

Yeah, I mean, that was the other one that we said yeah I just feel like pick something from your era because then it's nice to have that at least connection so if I'm just naming movies that came out too early and they weren't a big thing for you find one that is because then you will you have that thing but also re-watch first because the movies are not always what you remember no so look up the IMDB thing just to make sure everything is fine but also just re-watch because you might go

Why did I like that? Yeah, I know. It's strange.
I remember showing my kids the Pink Panther movies.

I thought, great, we'll watch the Pink Pink Panther movies because I just remember just being in tears of laughter when I watched them when I was a kid, and you know, Peter Sellers and that.

And we were watching it, and like 20 minutes in, you're thinking, this is very slow.

Well, that's the thing, is that a lot of things now, because everything just suddenly starts with a hot action sequence. If it doesn't, you're like, sorry, you're establishing character and building.

But also not in a particularly interesting way.

Because, I mean, there's loads of films where, you know, the establishment of character, you know, Short Shamp Redemption is a very slow burn, but every single bit of that that burn pays off.

Whereas there's some films you just think there was no reason for you to start this slowly or continue this slowly.

At the time, of course, it was an amazing movie and I loved it, but there are certain things where the sensibilities have changed. So watch it yourself first, just to make sure.
Okay, yes.

I agree with that, or at least read the synopsis. And then

TV shows, it was interesting. I was trying to think, oh, you know, people can be quite fussy about laughter tracks because that's just a thing that doesn't exist anymore.

And yet, lots of people, as you can see, lots of young people watch friends and they don't mind it so you can obviously kind of say let's watch Seinfeld or let's watch something that's brilliantly plotted and that they might absolutely love but I was quite interested my children said documentaries I wrote you made us watch documentaries and I really like and there was so weirdly World War II in color they thought was totally amazing because it's something that you will have learnt about at school and the other thing is a really good series called Explained this is this is documentaries this is like like entry-level documentaries and they explain everything from things like credit to sugar addiction to all sorts of like absolutely wild and wonderful things um and they're all about 15 minutes long and you learn such a lot but it's done in a really engaging way so i'm surprised not to be recommending like a sitcom or something um but to be recommending documentaries but often you can otherwise sort of think that that because otherwise they're only going to watch very very short form things but these are quite some of these can be quite short form but it's the world war ii in colour thing is sort of incredible because it's definitely something that I'll have learnt about at school and then to see it like that is kind of revolutionary whereas I absolutely would recommend the American Office or Brooklyn 99 both of them from season two onwards and because I just think that's a that's that's a lifetime of joy you're bringing your kids and there's nothing too terrible but but at the same time you know there's interesting stuff in there you know it's not they're not for children but there's nothing in there that's going to scare the horses too much.

Yeah, both of those, I would absolutely endorse those messages. It's a great question though.
And again, anyone listening,

if you've had something that's worked brilliantly on anyone that age, just something where you showed something to a kid and it opened up a world to them, absolutely let us know and we'll read some of those out next week as well.

So it's a great question. Here's one that is destined for you from Helen O'Sullivan, Richard.
When a novel's published, it's usually in hardback first with a simultaneous Kindle release.

In the Times bestseller lists, do the Kindle purchases count in the hardback or paperback charts, or both or neither? Also, how is the price of a Kindling edition decided?

I've just looked at the new Robert Galbraith, and the Kindle edition is £3 more expensive than the hardback. Seems hard to justify that difference.

Yes, as always, capitalism will give you the answer to why that is, but I'll get on to that. Yes, those Sunday Times charts, they don't include Kindle or

audio.

Do they not? No, 10, 15 years ago, that would be fine. No, so if you see the numbers next to a book in their first week, will literally be print copies.
So the Robert Galra.

When are we going to change that? Well, we'll find out.

There's a reason why the Kindle isn't in there. The audio, I don't know why it's not in there.
But the Robert Gow Bracebook, I think, has sold 50,000 copies, but that's 50,000 hardback books.

And these days, Kindle, fun enough, is taking a bit of a die, but audio is going absolutely great guns. So you could probably add another 30,000 to that.

I would have thought between those two formats. So it looks like 50,000, but she's probably sold 80,000.
And the money is the same.

In fact, you could slightly more for audio and Kindle the reason Kindle historically has not been in there

is because there are a huge amount because Kindle is its own ecosystem and there are a huge amount of books on there for 99p or for you know 15p or something like that so you can get enormous volumes of books which are sort of virtually free or might as well be and lots and you know buy 10 of these books for a pound each and so it's it's it makes the charts look a bit peculiar sometimes and it's entirely lost leader so no one's making money out of a 99p book other than you know bringing you to their other books so that's why kindle has never been in there it it seems unusual now that audio books would not be in there because it's it's massively growing and I look at you know the sales of mine across the years and and audio is becoming a bigger and bigger and bigger part of it and people are putting a lot more money into it and you know I've said before I listen to a lot of audiobooks because my eyesight's not great and there's lots of people like that.

And

I think that if you're reading on hardback or Kindle or audio, it's exactly the same thing. I mean, it's identical.
So it makes no sense that it wouldn't be included.

As a rule of thumb,

you know, you can add on maybe another 50, 60%

to the hardback sales if you're looking at audio and Kindle. Later on, when the paperback's out, that comes down a little bit.
But it's a huge business. They should change it.

Yeah, I think so certainly for audio they should do it I mean I would love it because it's you know I can I see what the numbers say and then I can see what the actual numbers are and those two things are very different I mean it's I've never seen a situation where the audio and Kindle would make a massive difference to the charts in terms of the positions so that Yuval Noah Harari his last book would went insane on audio for whatever reason I mean insane on audio but you wouldn't ever see that shown anywhere and again the bookseller will show you chart the audio charts and things like that but not it's not not in the weekly things and not in the Sunday times things in terms of the price well the reason for that is

that

hardbacks will come out so the Robert Galbraith thing I think had a recommended retail price of £30

but you're not really you're not paying £30 for it in most places because you know hardbacks they put them at that price so that booksellers can

discount them and everyone's still making money on that

but there are an awful lot more bookshops than there are places to buy kindle books and audio books and so there's much more of a captive market in kindle and audio so if you've got a 30 pound book by robert gal braith you know you can get that for 12 pounds on amazon perhaps 18.20 at your indie bookshop because as we said before they've got to pay their tax they've got to pay rents and all sorts of things so no one's feasing you and so it's heavily discounted whereas on kindle there's no there's not really an economic reason to to discount it particularly because

where else are you going to get it from? So, you know, the recommended price will be the same, but the discount will be much lower.

And so it ends up, as the headline is saying, it's £3 more expensive than the hardback. And that's purely because there are fewer competitors in that market.
And so it's that weird thing that

does happen. And that's why they're more expensive.
But yeah,

it wouldn't make a huge difference to the ranking of the charts, but it would certainly make a difference to the amount of copies people can see you sold and and if you are one of the publishers it's great having that big headline um uh hardback figure but the the money you can get the scale you can get from audio and you can get from kindle because you're not having to print anything you're not having to you're never having to reprint you know every time you know you've sold a load of books you have to reprint and you have to send them out to the shops and that's you know you've got reps and you've got lorries and you've got distribution warehouses and you've got all of that stuff none of which you have uh for kindle and audiobook so it's a very very nice business to be in i would say that for everybody if you're if you are you know if you if you are taking a cut of ebook and audiobook which the publishers are that's it's it's it's the last kind of lovely bit of low-hanging fruit and it's really growing in audio rather like in the same way that YouTube podcasts or whatever it is.

Well, maybe because your book, The Impossible Fortune, is out next Thursday. It is, yeah.
A week, a week on the on the 25th. So maybe we can talk a bit more about about how the split and reform.

Can we talk about that when it comes out? I think it's really interesting. So I would like to.
Of course, we can. But yeah, that's the reason.
But you get it a lot.

People are asking why is the Kindle more expensive? And the Kindle is more expensive because there's fewer places to buy it. Uh-huh.
Okay. Well, on that note, shall we proceed to a break?

Let's do that.

This episode is brought to you by Sky Sports, home of the WSL. The confetti's fallen, the trophy lifted, the medal stowed carefully in the safe.

A liner summer etched into history, but now the celebrations give way to anticipation for the upcoming WSL season. Yeah, after a summer of country is now all eyes on club.

Not national pride, but rivalries that run deeper. Battles across every city, every ground, fixtures that feel personal.

And with 90% of matches live on Sky Sports, every rattling tackle, every threatening cross, every stoppage time winner gets the spotlight it deserves.

Chloe Kelly, Ella Toon, Lauren James, teammates in July, opponents in September, suddenly marking each other out of the game.

Players who've conquered Europe now chasing glory at home in a league that refuses to play second billing, week after week, stadium after stadium, story after story.

The WSL is back, the lights are on, and every kick is ready for its close-up. Watch the biggest names in women's football live on Sky Sports.

Go to sky.com/slash TV slash sports slash football slash WSL today.

Oh, Hilton stay, oh, Hilton stay. Your beds are soft and cozy.

No lumpy couch, no stiff bouton. No shower wine at crack of dawn.
Oh, Hilton stay, oh, Hilton stay. When you want holiday comfort, you can count on.
It matters where you stay.

Enjoy comfortable rooms and friendly service when you stay with Hilton instead. Save up to 25% this season when you book with Hilton.
Hilton for this day. Terms apply.

The Who's Down and Who Newville were making their list. But some didn't know.
Walmart has the best brands for their gifts. What about toys? Do they have brands kids have been wanting all year?

Yep, Barbie, Tony's, and Lego. Gifts that will make them all cheer.
Do you mean they have all the brands I adore? They have Nintendo, Nespresso, Apple, and more. What a bad.

So the Who answered questions from friends till they were blue. Each one listened and shouted, From Walmart? Who knew? Shop kissed from top brands for everyone on your list in the Walmart app.

Welcome back, everybody.

Now, Julia William has written in with a question about tipping point.

She says, in tipping point, how are the counters put into the machine? These are the questions we love. Yeah, I love this level of stuff.
Okay, and is it emptied after every game?

I'm also in a feud with friends, quite rightly, about what material the coins are made of. Please settle this once and for all.
Thank you, Julia. I'm not going to settle it.
That would be unfair.

But, Julia, this feud is about to be settled, and there is no one better to settle it than host of Tipping Point himself Mr. Ben Shefford.

Ben we have a feud can you answer all of Julia's questions please? Hi there Marina and Richard Ben here on the set at Tipping Point with

filming series 15 and Julia sent in her question. I thought it would timely place to record it would be as we are refilling the machine.

You can see here that's Will. Who's there? Wave Will.

He is our counter counter and there's Julie who is a very important our adjudicator What happens between each show? We have to empty the machine, then we refill the machine.

There are 80 counters on the bottom shelf, and there are 80 counters on the top shelf. Every time there's a drop, Will comes flying in.
I say how many there are. He confirms that by counting them.

We do the pickups, and then they get taken out, and then Julie confirmed how many are out the back. So everything has to be very carefully counted and considered.

Because, of course, we want to make sure every drop is carefully counted so everybody gets the exact money. It's very competitive.
And also the question, Julia, about what they're made of.

Here you go, I'll show you this. This is one of our counters.
I can assure you they are plastic. They aren't metal.
We get a lot of people suggesting we're using magnets in the machine.

I've never yet found a magnet that can control plastic, but the counters are plastic.

And then in the edit afterwards, we have lots of brilliant sound effects which makes it sound like it's jingling and jangling down.

So there you go, a little insight into the magic that goes on when we are putting a tipping point together.

And as you can see, the machine now, as they are putting them up, is starting to take shape, as you see at the top of the show. And the machine is pneumatic as well.
So the shelf is propelled.

It was created by a guy called Webbo, who, Richard, I'm sure you know Webbo.

He has created all sorts of amazing things in the world of television, including the crystal dome at the end of the crystal mace. There you go.
Love the podcast, guys. Any other questions?

I'll look forward to hearing them. Wow.
Okay, number one. What a pro.
What a pro.

Thank you. One take.

Incredible. We don't know it was one take.
Could have been 50. There was someone in the gallery going, yeah, sorry, Ben is still doing this listing for the rest of his entertainment.

He'll be a little bit more than that. I just love the

punctuated by the sound of them shunting the counters around. That just reminds me of every show I've ever done.
I love it.

I love just watching the people behind it, just the things you do just in between shows, just to kind of start the counter-counter.

I mean, listen, it raises the stakes for everyone else who answers the question for us. That was very impressively done.

If you are listening to this, it's worth having a little look at that on YouTube as well. That's great.

That was so great. And Webbo,

thank you for your incredible contraption and also to have done the Dome in the Crystal Maze. I mean, really.
It's a bit of a, I mean, you could retire on that. Listen, don't Webbo, but you could do.

That's so cool. Oh, Ben, thank you so much.
Thank you for that question, Julia. And I hope, I wonder, I wonder what side of the feud Julia was on.
I hope she was on the plastic side.

I was bought into the sound effects and thought it was metal, but I hope she was plastic. Yeah.
I hear it's all magnets.

Whatever show you do, there's always some idiot at home going, no, it's fixed because they do that. You think, okay, all right.

All right, smart ass. Marina, a question for you from Alan Roach.
Marina, when you see someone reading your column in public, do you ever get tempted to ask them if they found it funny?

No way, not in a million years.

There'd be a clue, surely, if they found it funny. But well, yes, but also

that experience of seeing people reading your things, which used to be much,

well, I'll move on to how you can have it in a different way now, but it used to be, I used to often sit on trains when people had newspapers and you would see, and believe me, many is the time when I saw someone basically look at it and you know they've read like the first maybe two or three sentences, I don't know, and then turn over the page.

That is a great lesson. By the way, I forget this lesson like probably every time.
So don't look at my next column and think, oh, well, you didn't really learn that lesson.

But it taught me to put something, you know, I know it's basic, put something good at the top to do things differently.

I mean, there are columns I've written that have, you know, I've had a sleepless night and there's like one good joke and I've honestly put it in like the second sentence and it's a complete sleight of hand that people have laughed at the top.

Then they

could learn from that.

Yeah, I mean, good point.

But I mean, by the way, as I've spoken before about the Guardian's analytics, which I really value and that they've allowed us to see our data, and you can see, you can see a sort of remote version of that.

You don't actually have to watch the physical excruciation of them kind of checking out. But actually,

you can see when people bail out of an article because you... I thought you were going to say you can see where they laugh.

No, that would be good.

Yeah, that would be great.

But you can see where they've bailed effectively because we have five clocks. And so I would always hope to get five clocks.
If you get five gold clocks, then

they've savored every word.

Um, but if you can see, and by the way, this is no shade on people who sometimes you'll see that there's a news story that's got one clock, and you know that that's because that's just one of those one-fact news stories in a way that people see the headline, think, Oh, I must know the answer to that, and it's it necessarily has to come in the first or second paragraph, and then they stop reading.

But you can see how long they've read, how long they sat with it, where they go afterwards. So, I really value all of that.
So, I can see a virtual representation of that. That's great,

not that bad though, because it doesn't take that long to write a newspaper column, if I'm honest.

But I have spoken to directors who have sat on planes next to people who've watched someone turn on their movie and then just like bailed on it after honestly two minutes.

Like, just a few years of my life doing that.

And a lot of directors will talk about

people just walking out of, you know, I mean, Lars Von Trier used to enjoy making people walk out of his premieres.

Jean-Luc Goddard used to say there was a movie called Weekend, and there was a sort of traffic sequence. It's sort of about capitalism.

And when people found it really boring, obviously, and walked out, he said, well, this is a sort of, that's part of the film statement about consumerism. Is that you, yeah, yeah, okay, sure.

But a lot of people, directors, I've spoken to so many directors who've said that experience of being on a plane next to someone and seeing them watch your movie and then watching them switch off.

which is probably more painful because it took an awfully lot lot longer. The thing about laughing in public is interesting, isn't it? Because that's the thing that every writer wants.

If ever you see someone reading what it is you've done, and which you do in public, quite often it's if a family member or someone is reading something you've done.

If you see somebody laughing, if I see someone laughing on a train,

it takes every single ounce. of what I have to not go up and say, I'm so sorry, can I just stop you? Because I just asked which bit you were laughing.
Which was the joke.

That's all, that's the only thing that I'm saying. If anyone I know and I've seen reading something, then I want to say, what were you laughing at?

Because I want to know, yeah, you want to know which bit landed the best. Yeah, if you ever say to a writer of a sitcom or anything, oh yeah, no, we really enjoy the show.

There's lots of good laughs, they go,

where? Where were the last? I'm so sorry. Just which bits did you laugh at? What do you think gave you the biggest laugh?

That's the heroin hit for any writer, isn't it?

Did it make you laugh out loud? What was the bit? What was the bit? What was the joke that made you laugh out loud? I understand.

And there are so many times, you know, and actually, often when you're writing something, an actor will find a joke where there wasn't a joke.

And you'll, I've, I've actually found some of weirdly the ones that have made people laugh the most have been when I'm writing so quickly on a deadline.

Like, say you're just doing something and it's a live thing. And you haven't actually realised that you've written a joke.

And weirdly, some of those, there's something about the spontaneity and just the, like, you're so in the zone when you've written it that you think, gosh, I could have spent all day trying to come up with something good.

And something I didn't almost realise was a joke because I was writing so quickly quickly has has hit and landed much better than anything else would.

The different version of that, funnily enough, going back to Kindle, so it's not jokes because it never applies to them, but on any book's Amazon page or Kindle page, you can see the bits that have been highlighted the most.

So you know on Kindle if there's a section that you like you can highlight it and there's an aggregation of that.

I've never read a book on a Kindle so I didn't know that. Yeah.

So that's the equivalent of me like turning pages over and doing all of that. So, yeah, as an author, you can see the bits of your book that have been highlighted or highlight the most by

Kindle reasons. That's interesting, isn't it? That's fascinating.
You must love that. That's interesting.
As I say,

it's never the jokes, and it's always something short and pithy, and usually something that's about life, usually like a life lesson, is the thing that people are highlighting.

It's the thing that it's something if you're only highlighting because it's something you need at any given time. That's usually some sort of.

I often think in your books, oh, that's such a good point about, yeah. And even though I laugh lots, but yes, I see.
So people highlight those things, like Lessons for Life.

Lessons for Life, yeah, exactly. That's fascinating.
Yeah.

Is that us, Dan? I think that is us, Dan, for today. That was great.
Lovely question. I really enjoyed that.

We will be back tomorrow with a bonus episode about the absolutely maybe all-time classic, The Rocky Horror Picture Show. That's for our members.

If you want to become a member, restasentertainment.com.

That'll be where you can find all the details, add free listening, all that kind of stuff, and all of our bonus episodes, this cracking little library being built up now.

But for everybody else, we shall see you next Tuesday. See you next Tuesday.

This episode is brought to you by the TV Fun Sky, Skyglass. Think of Skyglass as the pit crew Ferrari didn't know it had.
Fine-tuning every detail for the perfect lap.

It keeps the drama where it belongs, on screen, never in your setup, and turns your living room into the podium.

With Skyglass's 4K HDR picture, colours burn brighter, shadows swallow you whole, and Auto Adjust optimizes to whatever you're watching, from race day glare over Italian hills to the low-lit drama of Enzo's dining table.

Plus, crisp Dolby Sound delivers every roar, rumble, and whisper in rich cinematic detail.

Wire spoke wheels hiss over wet tarmac, gear shifts crack like a starter's pistol, and quiet confessions carry the weight of a checkered flag.

And with your apps and channels all in one place, finding Ferrari or whatever you love is as quick and precise as a pit stop without the tire smoke.

Watch Ferrari on Sky Cinema now or visit sky.com for more information. Requires relevant Sky TV subscriptions, broadband recommended, minimum speed 30 megabits per second, 18 plus.

UK, Channel Islands, and Isle of Man only.