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

I'm Marina Haim.

And I'm Richard Osman.

Hello, Marina.

Hello, Richard.

How are you?

I'm very, very well.

Thank you.

So many people got in touch after our bodyguard chat last week, the Taylor Swift thing.

We asked for casting ideas.

It's fair to say that people did have ideas.

Oh, people had a lot of ideas.

My favourite one, obviously, that someone suggested was Nitro.

Of course, he could do it for you.

He had the most votes of anybody.

Yeah.

Nitro.

Nitro.

Absolutely.

I mean, Harry, that's his real name, as we all know and now know from Strictly.

When he carried me on his shoulder in the Royal Albert Hall for the entire length of the Gladiators theme tune,

I realised that he could protect me in any way.

Yeah.

In any way.

You were very much the Taylor Swift of that piece.

I believe I was the principal in the technical parlance of

security protection.

Well, you're still here.

Yeah.

So he did a good job.

Loads of other other Tom Hardy has been suggested.

Damson Idris from F1 and lots of other things as well.

No?

He's shorter than I was.

Too slight.

I mean, she's going to tower over him with or without the glittery boots.

How tall is Taylor Swift?

I can never judge how tall people are because everybody in the world looks five foot seven to me.

It doesn't matter.

I don't think that's a bad shout.

Yeah.

Out in the boots taller.

I don't know.

I actually don't know the answer to that question.

Okay.

David Corrin Sweat.

I mean, why haven't they renamed him?

But no.

No.

This I would like because I would watch Channing Tatum.

Oh, yeah, Channing Tatum could do it for you.

Yeah, don't you think?

I'm not good with that.

No question.

Channing Tatum and Taylor Swift as well.

That's a good combo.

She needs someone that she can, because

she's not an experienced actor.

You need someone who's very

generous.

Yeah, okay.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yes,

he'd be good.

Pattinson, don't be stupid.

Oh, okay, yeah.

Right, who else people suggested?

Daniel Craig.

I mean,

let me,

I can assure you now, he's not going to say yes, but there would be something slightly hilarious about it.

But no.

Jodie Comer, I think, is a great idea as a bodyguard.

Gender Swap it.

Well, that is a whole different motion picture.

But don't you think?

I'd watch that.

So would anyone.

Yeah, Jodi Comer and Taylor Swift.

Okay.

Well, that jumped off the reservation and I love it.

So yes, yes to that.

It's a hard yes.

Ryan Gosling, don't be stupid.

Henry Cavill.

Oh, no.

I mean,

no one can make him happen for me.

I don't know why.

It's just never going to happen with Henry Cavill.

But keep trying.

God, people are obsessed.

I'm comfortable.

He's associated with the Snyder-verse.

Yeah, that's why.

You're comfortable.

Yeah, no,

he's a nothing to me.

Jack Loudon.

Oh, yeah.

I think there's nothing Jack Loudon can't do.

There's nothing he can't do.

I'm enjoying him in Slow Horses.

I think he's the beating heart of Slow Horses.

Yeah, we love Jack Loudon and everything.

Maybe he'll be James Bond.

We don't know.

But yeah, I would love it if Jack Loudon was James Bond.

I'll tell you what, if we go there and get a result, I would love that.

He's got to go to Barbara Broccoli and get something.

Oh, no, she's not it's not her anymore he's got to go to amazon and get something james norton it's not for him um aaron taylor johnson aaron taylor johnson he could do it but won't yeah uh my favourite suggestion i think the bodyguard but muppets taylor swift is the only human miss piggy is the jealous sister i i would love taylor to work with the muppets yeah we're by the way we're doing a bonus episode on tomorrow um for our members which best muppet to be a bodyguard

which who's the best one yeah fuzzy bear i think no animal just completely unpredictable that's interesting yeah but you don't want your bodyguard to be completely unpredictable i i maybe maybe you do well yes well hey actually no when you think about it maybe you do maybe you do i was on saturday kitchen last week plugging the book and the guys from pizza pilgrims other pizza restaurants are available but uh they look like hipsters but were really nice the pizza pilgrims well fancy those no but when i looked at when i when you first see them you think okay this could go either way and they were so lovely

but one of them i forget i think tom used to work in television.

So he used to be a runner.

And he said, and when I was a runner, I started with one other runner at the same time.

And I'm thinking that poor other runner is just thinking, oh my God, the guy I started with is now running Pizza Pilgrims and making a fortune.

But the runner he started with was Sam Wrench, the guy who's directing the bodyguard.

Who directed the Taylor Swift Eras movie and many, many other concert things besides?

So imagine that.

On your first day, two runners.

One of them's running Pizza Pilgrims, the other one did Taylor Swift's Era's tour.

My God, what was the company?

Did you find out?

No, I should have done, shouldn't I?

But whoever looked at those CVs must be some kind of a genius.

Anyway,

we have questions.

Yeah,

what?

I know, right?

I have a question for you, Marina, from Craig Walker.

Craig says, on a recent trip to Italy, all right, Craig, someone's doing well.

My wife and I were holed up in our hotel room on a rainy day on Lake Garda.

Beautiful.

Lovely.

Just being able to watch television.

You can't go outside because it's raining.

Great.

Oh, my God.

That's the dream.

It's my favourite thing on holiday, not having to go out.

To pass the time, we had the Italian version of the Food Network playing on the TV.

Yeah.

On one of the shows, the rest of Entertainment theme music played over the preparation for one of the recipes.

I had assumed the theme music had been created specifically for the podcast.

Who makes stock music and how lucrative is it?

Is there anything put in place to stop two successful shows potentially using the same music at the same time?

Well, when I spoke to the powers that be a Goldhanger, they were like, it's really sweet that he thought that we might have commissioned our own music for each individual podcast.

But like all the other goal hanger podcasts the music we have is library music um and i'm going to come on at the end to why we like that particular bit because they did give us a big choice of ones yeah there's nothing in place to stop two shows using the same music and quite often people at goal hanger hear the various theme tunes being used elsewhere they've been in episodes of bargain hunt gillette adverts um but the best you can hope for really they think isn't that nobody noticed i think the best you can hope for is that you do notice and think wow what was that playing over the, you know, making the ricotta pasta or whatever it was.

Funnily enough, it's always sunny in Philadelphia.

That uses library-themed music.

Um, and as you know, I mean, I can't remember how many series there are up to, but it's a huge number.

17, I think.

Yeah,

um, and that's called Temptation Sensation, and it's by a German composer called Heinz Kiesling, and that's gone in millions of things.

It's been in SpongeBob's SquarePants, it's been in Rupa's Dragon.

Well, that's the thing: if you use library music, then you do not own it.

The composer still owns it, so the composer can use it wherever they want, which is the lovely thing about if you are a composer doing library music, is firstly, you can knock out 30 or 40 different things.

If you've got like a week when you're not doing anything, you can do all this stuff.

It exists in various libraries.

You can sell that over and over and over again.

You get some of the money.

The library gets some of the money.

But it's one of those things that just keeps ticking over and keeps making you money.

It takes a while to tick over,

people who do this will say, because the way it's done,

you have to go through publishers, then you have to apply when it's been used.

And they think it takes about three years for it to slightly come on stream.

But when it does come on stream, you're on stream, you're on stream.

Anyway, the music for the rest of the entertainment, I remember we were, when we first started doing it, they sent us lots of different ones that we could choose from.

And I really like this one.

I don't know what,

possibly a false memory of I Dream of Genie theme tunes, but it reminded me of those kind of supernatural sitcoms.

Can we play it now, by the way?

Just so people, I know people hear it at the start and the end of each one.

Let's remind ourselves of it.

The reason I chose,

well, I was like, I really want it to be that one, was because I thought it was slightly humorously ridiculous.

It reminded me of those sort of supernatural sitcoms of the 60s, American sitcoms like Bewitched, I Dream of Genie.

As you know, Richard, my dream is, could I come down a sweeping staircase in floor length carrying a martini to it?

And the answer, this one, absolutely, the answer is yes being carried by nitro yeah being carried by nitro yeah and the mod and me carrying the martini who's doing who's being more heroic i have to ask you and i just also thought it was quite light entertainment because i felt like when we were starting this i thought you know we're not trying to be prime minister here not there's anything wrong with it there was a sort of knowingness and a twinkle to it that i thought was fun now that music is cool it's called live in style it's by tim garland who is an extraordinary guy.

He's one of Grammy, Tim Garland.

He's worked with Chick Career, he's worked with Bill Bruford, he's worked with Ronnie Scott.

So I remember when we were shown the list of things, there's some big names

who make library music and do very well, one hopes very nicely out of it as well.

But yeah, that's Tim Garland Live in Style.

But we immediately thought.

It was so jolly.

Yeah.

The point this theme music is used for an Australian shampoo commercial as well.

Is it?

Yeah, so I often get messages from Australia saying, hey, hold on a minute.

Why is your theme tune being used?

Big shampoo, shampoo, it owes you a check.

And that's by Mark Sylvian, and that I think was a commission.

I don't think that is library music, but either way,

he's getting double bubble, which is the nice thing about doing library music is you can get double bubble.

It'd also be a really good name.

It's really worth going on any of these music library catalogues because the names are my favourite bit.

They all have to give these things names, and like horses, they soon run out.

Or nail varnishes.

Yeah.

Nail varnish colours.

Yeah, my favourite name in here.

But thank you to Tim Garland because that's such a great piece of music.

And he's done stuff for the Northern Symphonia and BBC Orchestra and all sorts of people.

So he can, this is very much below his pay grade.

Yeah.

He can do absolutely.

But we love it, Tim.

So we thank you.

But thank you, Tim, for the pleasure you bring us.

Right, Richard.

Question for you from Stuart Davis, who says, It felt at the time that winning X Factor during those peak years might actually have been a hindrance, as from my understanding, you were whisked away to America to record an album with Psycho, that's Simon Carl's record label, and away from the spotlight while the runners up were not so burdened and could release music much quicker.

Was this a false memory, or is there some data to back it up?

Yeah, Stuart, when I saw your question, I thought, oh, yes, because I sort of that feels right to me as well.

That idea that actually winning is not the best thing you can do.

So, thank you for letting me go into the annals and do a bit of statistical research.

I have an actual answer for you.

I just looked at X Factor contestants, you had number one singles and number one albums.

It's 43 in in all X Factor contestants who at various points have had a number one single or number one album.

The lowest anyone's finished and still got to number one is sixth.

And Ella Henderson finished sixth.

And Ella Henderson's had a huge hit single.

She had a number one album as well, Ella Henderson.

But she's the only one.

No one's ever finished lower than sixth and had a number one.

Fifth, there's only one number one single.

but it's an absolute cracker.

That's Chico.

It's Chico time.

So he finished fifth, had a number one single.

I looked at his follow-ups.

His third follow-up, which didn't crack the top 40, was called Curvy Coca-Cola Bottle Body.

And I had a little listen to it, and it is exactly what you would expect.

Tilly Wales came fifth, but has not bothered the number one chart, Rylan.

See, it's not all just about selling records.

No.

You see, that's the thing.

So finishing fifth, we have Chico.

It often used to feel like you were competing for the chance to get dropped by Simon Cowell in one year's time.

Exactly that.

And listen, it was a that's a that's you know, that's a special, that's a special thing,

isn't it?

Fourth place, we have two number one singles.

When we get to third, second, and first, by the way, that's where the big hitters come in.

But sixth, fifth, and fourth, got Eda Henderson, Chico and Ryden.

Fourth place, two number one singles, Diana Vickers

had a number one, and Cher Lloyd Swagger Jagger

was

both of which it sounds like you absolutely adore from your.

Oh, yeah.

Well, no, I mean, bless them, but yeah.

Now, people who finished third, okay, this is where One Direction come into the mix.

And I've had to really just take One Direction by themselves.

I can't go into all the solo stuff because then essentially it's, well, you know, is it better to be Harry Starles or anyone else?

And it's better to be Harry Starles than anyone else.

But people who finished third, four number one singles, five number one albums.

Four of those number one singles and four of those number one albums.

were from One Direction.

Okay, so the fact that they finished third means that it scores fairly well.

The one album that was number one by third-place finisher that wasn't One Direction, Journey South.

Oh, yeah.

Remember Journey South?

I'd have completely forgotten that.

Two brothers from the North East.

I loved it.

Because I used to love the Journey South and same differences in the early days of X Factor.

I always went for the band.

Difference God doesn't come out of them anymore.

Two shoes.

Yeah.

That was my stuff.

So, second place.

So at the moment, we've got four and five there, so nine number ones, really.

If you you came third, if you come second,

we have 18 number ones.

Christ.

18 number ones, nine singles, nine albums.

The nine singles are all

JLS and Ollie Murrs.

So JLS and Ollie Murrs finishing second, really, really was wrapped up finishing second.

So nine singles, the nine albums, so JLS and Ollie Murrs have had number one albums.

I'll tell you who else has had number one albums.

G4.

Oh, yeah.

Do you remember that?

The four guys who sang sort sort of.

I've not thought about these people since, you know, a year after my departed.

Well, get ready.

Ray Quinn.

Oh, God.

Yeah.

Had a number one album.

And Jermaine Douglas

also had a number one album.

By the way, there's only ever been one number one

from anyone who's ever on the voice.

And that was Becky Hill, and I think she finished about ninth.

That's so weird.

Yeah.

So 18 we have there.

Now, winners.

So I'm not even going to count the sort of one-off number ones, you know, like the Leon Jacksons and Ben Haynows, who had an automatic number one.

So even leaving that out, winning is the best thing you can do.

We got 23 number ones.

We got 13 number one singles.

Leona Lewis, James Arthur, people like that.

By the way, there's more than 13 number one singles, but I'm not counting the, you know, that's my goals of this world.

Bleeding Love, massive worldwide hit for Leona Lewis.

Unstoppable, massive worldwide number one hit for James Arthur.

10 number one albums, Little Mix, of course, Leonard Lewis, James Arthur, number one albums.

Steve Brookstein had a number one album, Shane Ward had a number one album, and Sam Bailey had a number one album as well.

So you got 18 number ones if you finish second, you got nine if you finish third, but if you finish first, we have 23 number ones, and that's not even including the cheating number ones of those.

What you're saying is false memory.

False memory.

False memory.

But I have the same false memory as Stuart.

but i think essentially it's if you finish top it's very very good news apart from that if you are jls ollie murs or one direction it's very good news but finishing who haven't struggled who have not struggled but finishing top is what you want to do on the x factor it turns out Shall we go to an advert?

I think you need a rest after that.

That's quite a lot.

Oh, I enjoyed it.

And after these adverts, we're going to be talking, of course, about Thomas Pynchon and Strictly Come Dancing.

Yeah.

It's very us.

Guess which one of us is talking about which?

I've got some things to say about Stritley as well.

I've got some things to say about Thomas Pynchon.

See you after the break.

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Welcome back, everyone.

Letitia Edwards has a question for you, Marina.

She says, My husband is obsessed with Thomas Pynchon, the author, and can't wait for his next book to be released in October.

But how does he keep his anonymity?

And she's talking about Thomas Pynchon there, not her husband.

It's really fascinating, isn't it?

Can you tell us who Thomas Pynchon is, by the way, because he keeps his anonymity so well.

Thomas Pynchon is one of the great American authors whose I guess his biggest book is Gravity's Rainbow, but he's rather like J.D.

Salinger or various others, but th those two of them are I guess the most famous.

And he's also the author of Vineland, which is brilliant.

And actually One Battle After Another, the new Paul Thomas Anderson film with Leonardo DiCaprio that's just come out

is based on that.

And he's also

he's one of the great gods of American literature.

I mean, a critical, absolute darling, one of the kind of greatest writers of a generation.

They're always referred to as recluses because they

didn't have, or in the case of Salander who's dead, didn't have any public profile.

They're not doing Saturday Kitchen.

They're not doing Saturday Kitchen, but, you know, would love to watch it.

It's really interesting.

We do actually know things about Thomas Pynchon.

And, you know, he lives in Manhattan.

He's married to a literary agent.

He's said to be very kind of sociable in company.

But so there's not, I wouldn't say it's a conspiracy, but there's a consensus that people don't want to sort of out him and say who he is or take photos of him or whatever.

But as a result, incredible sort of folklore has attached itself to him over the years.

People used to say he was the unabomber and things like that.

I mean, no, but really, you know, and there have been all sorts of conspiracies, but people used to try and go to where Jodie Sandra lived.

There's a photo of him.

And it's, you can't tell whether he's about to hit the camera or whether he's almost like shielding his face, like almost like something from the birds, almost like a still from the birds there's photos like that where it's so obvious that people don't want to be photographed for me it's like outing someone now it's like we we know that that's something that no one would do do you know thomas pynchon i once had a message sent via someone to me about something that he thought about something about my writing.

It was, it was sort of it.

And I was like...

Was it strongly anti-absolutely hated it?

Hated it.

Like I really

used to drive by, but by a proxy.

You were like, Thomas, I could enough of this at home.

Yeah.

And I said, oh my goodness.

And then I heard much more about how he lives and I thought it was very interesting.

So it's a sort of, it's like an open secret thing.

But I definitely think you couldn't be that way if you came of age now as a writer

in the age of the social media.

You know, all writers, I speak to so many young writers, and what publishers have said to them even is, yeah, but do you have a sort of social media presence?

Can I say something about that?

Because

I read it a lot.

Do you think it's a nonsense?

I think publishers definitely say it.

I think publishers are definitely saying, oh, no, you really need to put yourself out there.

You need to connect with people.

You do not.

And publishing needs to get its head out of its backside on this one because it doesn't work for anybody.

It just doesn't work.

Maybe it worked five years ago, ten years ago.

It doesn't work.

What works is going around the country, going signing books, you know, book clubs, stuff like that, meeting real people in real life.

You don't have to sell that many books that social media is all that useful.

What you need to do is get out there, meet people, show people your work.

That's the thing you need to do.

And if a publisher says to you, you need to have more of a profile, one of two things.

Either that's their excuse because they didn't like the book, that's absolutely fine, but everyone needs one.

Or you say to them from me,

if it's helpful, you are 10, this is 10 years ago thinking.

You have to stop thinking this way and you have to start building writers' careers in different ways.

You have to stop relying on them to do the work that you are getting paid to do.

You know, that's what publishers are supposed to do.

Publishers are supposed to break you in different ways and find.

And the amount of times they would just say, Oh, could you do this?

Could you do this?

You think, no,

could you do it?

Could you do it?

So I just wrote a book.

Yeah, because otherwise I'll just self-publish.

I couldn't agree more.

And there's many other things.

But it's become an absolute truism now.

And if a publisher is saying it to you, there's sort of a point, which is you have to put yourself out there for sure.

You have to make contacts.

But that is not via instagram or x or any of those things you know that's a that's a that's a 10 years ago thought of how you're supposed to do these things and i think you could be thomas pynchon these days but the one thing you do have to do is make just make sure that you are connecting with readers in some way if you're young and people know you're young i'm not sure you could be thomas pynchin and i tell you why because i i do think that the whole idea so much of the modern and the young internet now, I mean, it is what it is, is about sleuthing and is about sort of trying to put one thing together with another and work out the answer.

Everything's an Easter egg.

But Alina Ferrente would be a very good example

of one of the biggest authors in the world who goes under a pseudonym.

And, you know, there's lots of people who have views as to who

they are.

But, you know, I think it's doable.

You know, Banksy gets away with it.

Well, I don't think Banksy does.

And I think Banksy has been outed lots of time.

But there's a reason for that because I think certain type of people think this is criminal damage.

And and I'm just going to, you know, try and out the person.

And they also think there's a sort of dissonance between what they perceive to be his sort of middle-classery and what he's doing, which they perceive to be some sort of street-level.

I like Banksy.

But you can see why newspapers would

have set out to kind of capture him.

But that's the lovely thing is newspapers have told us who Banksy is many times as indicative of the fact that no one reads the newspaper.

That no one still knows the answer.

It's still a secret.

People have still written to us saying, who is he?

Yeah, exactly.

People still say to me, who is the banker on dealer no deal?

I mean, he's been outed like 12 times.

Yeah.

I mean, we said his name.

Do you have the website, google.com?

So many times.

That's the fun thing:

you're still an enigma to almost everybody.

Except, I do think that there's something that social media has done is just turned everyone into a knock, and people are all because, yes, it is.

It's so suitable and it's so useful for the tech companies to have completely downgraded privacy as anything remotely idealistic.

And the result is what we have now, where, you know, all sorts of things have suffered as a result of this, not least IQ or whatever.

But it's people are trying, people are constantly trying to catch people out or to expose

someone who's not who they say they are.

And everyone is a sort of horrible kind of keyboard narc.

And that's something that they've ushered in.

So I actually think it would be quite hard.

if you were writing a Zeitgeistie novel of the type that Thomas Pinchable was writing when he was in you know when he sort of exploded onto the scene I'm sorry I think that people would now if you manage to maybe those books don't exist anymore maybe they're not books anymore maybe they're short form videos who knows but people would try and track down who you were because that's what they do maybe but I honestly if there's one takeaway it's

if you're an author and a published assist, you need a social media presence.

Please tell them that you don't.

Yes,

I absolutely concur with that.

Yeah, to the entertainment behemoth that is Strictly, Lottie Blacklock has written in to say,

yeah, very good.

Me and my partner watched the Strictly Launch Show, and one of the professionals said, I knew it as their celebrity walked through the door.

Do they know who will be on the show before this reveal?

I can't help but think some professionals may not know who the celebrity is if they just walked through the door.

Or are they all frantically googling who Tom Skinner is during water breaks?

Thank you, Lottie.

Yes, they do know because there is always a meet-up before the partnerships are chosen.

All of the celebrities and all of the professional dancers will have a day together or a morning together or afternoon where they meet.

Various couples are tried out.

You see who dances with who.

And it's just to give the person.

They meet in the groups, then rather than they know who they are.

In the groups, yeah, they have no idea who...

which celebrity they're going to get and the celebrities have no idea which professional they're going to get.

You might dance with four or five of the professionals.

you might dance with four or five of the celebrities.

It's really, it's for cameras, it's for chemistry, it's just to get everyone to understand this is one big Strictly family.

So when you do get the reveals, they are genuine, but the celeb knows,

I mean, the celeb already knows that it's going to be one of sort of 12 or 14 dancers, but also the dancer knows it's going to be one of the people that they have already met, unless it's a late replacement.

And so, yes, when someone comes through the door, they know they all are all, a couple of people I talked to who have been on Strictly.

In between the bit where they've met all of the dancers and the bit where they find their dancer, they genuinely have strong views as to who they would like.

I mean, anyone who watches Strictly knows that there are height things and various things.

They're quite a small pool of people that you could be put with.

So, you usually know within three or four people who it might be.

But

the excitement when you get the person you really want is real.

Of course, there's going to be moments where people are like, oh, especially with the professional dancers, they go, oh,

I'm going to go home in week three.

Okay.

I absolutely understand that.

But yeah, it's absolutely, you can veto with Ellie and things like that.

You can tell

the ones where you think, okay, they think they're going to be here for a long time.

Jojo and Alex Kingston and stuff like that.

But it's,

again, with strictly this year because they had those two late.

put out since they were, you know, Danny Dyer putting out.

And you do think...

It's gutting for them.

Yeah.

Really gutting.

And you think, oh, perhaps it'd be underpowered.

But then you watch the first episode and you go, okay, I'm

skin.

This is going to be so great.

And our friend of the podcast, Nitro, we love Karen Carney, was amazing.

And that's, that's, that's the lovely thing about it: is after even just one week, you go, oh no.

So previously, when you go, Louis Cope, who well, I don't know who Lewis Cope is, and then you watch him, you go, it really doesn't matter.

Yeah, now I know who he is.

And yeah, and it's

I am hashtag Team Nitro and Team Karen, but I am, listen, might all change.

But yeah, they do all meet provided.

We had a question, funnily enough, about Love Island, which is a similar thing

when there's rumours going around that two of the contestants actually previously met during a dry run.

And again, yes, on Love Island, they will always do a dry run of that show, just for cameras, just for new little formats and things.

And they will always people that with

it'll be so they'll have eight contestants they love on Love Island.

There'll be a few they're not sure about, and so they'll put them in the dry run.

And they go, oh, actually, we saw her on the dry run, she's amazing.

We saw him him on the dry run.

He's amazing.

And so, yes, two of those people might then, you know,

make the cut.

And they have met each other.

You know,

those things definitively happen.

There's also a question about phone voting on Strictly because they're not doing, the BBC said they're not offering phone voting anymore.

Hyacinth Leslie, that is a great name.

Hyacinth Leslie.

Okay.

Said, what's the reason for this?

And will other programmes follow suit?

Yes, it's all going online.

All the big voting shows, basically Sports First, Personality of the Year, Eurovision, that sort of stuff, is all going online.

It is outdated.

You get a tiny number of phone votes.

We'll talk about the heyday in a second.

And it's a huge hassle.

It's a huge hassle.

But also, BT used to run these services and they're not going to do it any longer.

And the old sort of PTSM phone work, phone network, that's being phased out and going to sort of digital voice.

So everything is,

there's so few people who now phone, but in the heyday of it all, it made so much money.

Oh my God.

It made unbelievable amounts of money.

Well, they could fund Millionaire off the phone votes.

Yeah.

That's what you need to know about that.

And other shows were having the same amount of money.

Millions and millions per series of X Factor.

Oh, yeah.

All of those things.

Crazy money.

And

it became completely addictive.

The idea that people were engaged was meant because they were phoning in and spending money to do it.

Simon Cowell's big idea was to have a show.

This is before we had a referendum.

He said, I think people would love to say we do a referendum every week and we're going to have a tele red telephone.

No one was a referendum ever again now, but

a red telephone in the middle of the stage, and we're, you know, Downing Street can call in if they want because the people will be speaking every single week.

But actually, he doesn't lack confidence, does he, Simon Cowell?

There was a hilarious interview where he said, Oh, the great thing is seeing it take off around the world.

You know, we've kind of he said they've got it in Afghanistan.

Um, we've given democracy back to the world, which I found absolutely hilarious.

Thank you.

But hang on a second, because Afghan, Afghan star, I think it was called, that ran for about 17 series.

It was amazing.

And there's some great documentaries about it.

And then the Taliban cancelled music.

So

it doesn't exist anymore.

But it was huge.

And I think by a certain amount of series, a woman was the first woman to win it.

And it was a huge thing.

So what?

So he essentially did.

Well, I don't know.

He did a lot more for them than Joe Biden.

Let's put it that way.

Let's put it.

Simon Carl did more for Afghanistan than Joe Biden.

Let's put it that way.

But yes, but phone voting was such a mega deal and it's not, but it's not any longer.

And by the way, all of ITV's things are online or in the app or whatever it is now.

I mean, it was hugely monetizable and now is not anymore.

You still, I mean, you know, that was the era.

Weirdly, we were watching an old episode of CDUK the other day because I can't remember.

Well, I think because I'd just been working with Cat Deely on something and England is a huge fan of CDUK.

So we're just on YouTube, we just watched it.

And again, just in the ad breaks, just those phoning questions, the very, very easy phoning questions.

And I mean, the money those things would make is absolutely crazy.

And now, yeah,

it's just not a thing anymore.

No, and people will say to you, oh, but you're disenfranchising certain people who want, it's like, no, you're not.

Okay, there's a level of digital switchover, which I will tolerate the discussion, but that is not it.

And they get vanishingly few votes by phone now.

So, yes, that's why you can't do it any longer.

But you can still vote

in the modern ways.

Thank you so much, everyone, for those wonderful questions.

Tomorrow, for our members, we have an episode about the Muppets, the Muppet Origin story, which

took a long time for the Muppets to become successful.

Lots of stories before.

Oh, there's graft there.

There's absolute puppet graft.

There really is.

If you want to be a member, you get ad-free listening, all that kind of stuff.

It is therestersenttertainment.com.

But for everybody else, we'll see you next Tuesday.

See you next Tuesday.

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