Strictly's Secret Weapon

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

Oh, hang on.

Go on.

I have a question.

No, okay.

Is that how we introduce you to the question?

Can I start it again for you, Richard?

Hello, and I'm here.

Can I please?

Hello, and welcome to this episode of The Restaurants Entertainment Questions and Answers Edition.

I'm Marina Haim.

And I'm Richard Osman.

Hello, Marina.

Hello, Richard.

Yeah, very well.

Very well.

Enjoyed the.

I don't know if they're going to keep in in that version of the intro, but very much enjoyed it.

Quite something.

It's hard, isn't it?

I've only done nearly 200.

Yeah.

But maybe like 100, nearly the questions and answers.

So that's, it's, you know, it's.

Oh, yeah, we're catching up.

Yeah.

Have you got a question for me?

Yes.

Do you know what?

I have several.

I just got two questions which are sort of on the same subject.

We talked about The Rock and his movie, The Smashing Machine.

And Neris Morgan asked, the opening weekend for The Smashing Machine grossed just $6 million.

That's very bad.

Who should be the most concerned about their future in Hollywood?

The Rock A24 or Benny Safdie, the director?

And John Sharp says, to celebrate the premiere of The Smashing Machine and Dwayne's Shorefire Oscar win, what are your top three films starring wrestlers?

I love both these questions.

Okay, first of all, just to deal with the thing first, 6 million, this is sort of a movie about a man dealing with his, you know, demons and drug addiction.

And as an indie movie.

Yeah, 6 million is fine for this type of movie.

Unfortunately, it cost fifty million dollars, which is problematic to say nothing of the marketing.

That doesn't include the marketing, and it shouldn't have cost that much money.

Why did it cost fifty million dollars just because of the director and it's not, but it's not purely they had a lot of locations

that obviously the talent is significant.

I can't remember what the Rock got Rock maybe got four or five million for this, and Emily Blunt will have got a lot, and Benny Safdie wrote and directed.

And sometimes, when someone is a writer and a director and in charge of everything, it rather slows down the process.

So, anyway, whatever.

It shouldn't have cost that much.

It costs what it costs.

And then they did have this issue with, you know, in American presidential campaigning, they call it the October surprise, something that kind of comes out late and changes the race.

When Taylor Swift said, I'm putting my movie into

my sort of album launch party into things that same weekend, that was not great.

But actually, there will be a post-mortem on this, Stephanie for A24.

I think what we found out here is that they thought that MMA fans would come out and there are a lot of them, but they haven't.

And they might mix martial arts.

Mixed martial arts.

Maybe they should have known that because the Iron Claw, which was actually even better received critically, they didn't get anywhere near the awards conversation, which is what they want.

We'll see what happens with Sidney Sweeney's playing a fighter in something called Christie.

That's not afraid to, but that's going to come out, and we'll see what that does.

She's put on a certain amount of pounds for this role.

So, yeah.

Okay, so in terms of

who should be most worried, The Rock, don't worry, keep going.

I mean, he's not going to love it, what's happened here and you can see he doesn't love it but in a way it actually ties into so it actually works for him in some ways which is I'm not always just about big blockbusters that knock it out of the park I'm also about art and one thing that a flop says is art you know one thing that I don't think he keeps telling us that he's sort of transformed into people he that's a transformation too far for him he's going to be a lot happier next year when he's got like the next Jumanji and he's going to be a lot happier with that and he can go back and this can be all been a bad memory until he decides to to do it again which he will which he will do but having said that think about that fourth best actor spot because you've got probably locked on you've got leonardo diCaprio timothy chalamet which is the other safety brothers movie we haven't seen yet Marty Supreme Michael B Jordan for sinners and you've got George Cooney for Jay Kelly which again people haven't seen yet but that it's going to be a real fight for that fifth spot if anyone if you think he's giving up now no way okay if and if he gets nominated even that's a whole different thing okay so so he doesn't have anything to worry about the Oscars by the way you might think about nominating The Rock.

Because, you know, you want, you know,

you want ratings, right?

You want people to, yeah.

Well, again, they didn't come out to see the movie, so why should they see the Oscar ceremony, The Rock in?

I suppose so.

There's certain things.

If it's him or, you know, JK Simmons, you just think, who would you go for?

So Benny Safdie, he got the best director at Venice.

I do think we should talk about film festivals and what are they actually for at a certain point.

Remember, this got a sort of 17-minute standing evasion and the rock ride, blah, blah.

This is probably their most expensive movie, and they may say to

each other, why have we done this?

We're probably going to stay out of the fight game for a bit.

Yeah.

Because we've had a couple that haven't got, if he doesn't get nominated, or whatever it is.

Benny Safie, as I say, got best director, I think, at Venice.

So I would have thought he would be thinking.

But

so the most worried, what, Bernie Safty, of those three, but nobody's very worried, okay?

No one likes a flop.

No one likes a flop.

But these are three people that you can find.

But this isn't really a flop.

This wouldn't be a flop if they hadn't spent so much money on it.

This would be a fine movie.

Given they did, it is a flop.

Yeah, Darren Aronofsky's The Wrestler, which Mickey Rort was in, took a lot longer to get to that sort of money.

And, you know, he nearly got best actor for that.

So, whatever.

Which brings me on to the next bit of the question,

especially movies starring wrestlers.

I've adapted this question to say movies wrestlers are in, because there are not that many movies that are actually starring wrestlers.

Yes, yeah, yeah.

Okay.

In ascending order.

No.

Yes.

Ascending, which so I'm putting the three first.

No, but that would be descending order.

Well, in numbers, yeah, but ascending, going up to the top, the pinnacle of the list.

Okay, is that another common thing?

I don't know if I recognise it.

Yeah, maybe.

All right.

Well, let's put it.

Starting at number three.

Number three, Mickey Rock and the Wrestler, which it did have real wrestlers in it from WWE, and because Darren Aronofsky wanted to make it, and also sort of much lower circuit wrestling because he wanted to make it real.

I love that movie.

I thought it was brilliant.

Number two, I have Rocky Three, where Halt Hogan plays Thunderlips.

Do you remember what like what this is like at the you know rock the premise of it I'm not gonna spoil it.

I thought you'd go for that instead of Mr.

Mom.

Yeah.

Okay.

Yes, I am because Rocky 3 is brilliant.

It's got a fantastic training montage, not the best training montage, which is obviously the one from Rocky 4, the Cold War one with dragon and whatever.

But at the start when Rocky's kind of like, you know, he's got, he's just become a celebrity, he fights Thunderlips.

And Stallone said that

Hulk Hogan almost killed him because he was so strong and he like really threw him, you know, and obviously, you know, I'm going to break some news.

Stallone is quite tiny in real life, and Hark Hogan wasn't.

Everyone's tiny in real life.

Yes.

Well, not the next guy, but

funnily enough, at number one, my movie starring.

Oh, I know what it's going to be.

I know what it's going to be.

You do.

It's going to be a guy who'd look right down on you.

He's seven foot four.

It is.

Andre the Giant as Fezik in the Princess Barbara.

Oh, my God, yes.

It's wonderful.

I'll tell you what, that, you know what?

It's absolutely wonderful.

I didn't love the way the list started, the ascending, descending thing.

I love loved the way the list finished.

Yeah.

Now, Andre the Giant was a proper wrestler.

He'd been a wrestler in Europe and in France.

And then he came to the WWF.

And he had sort of big feuds within the WWF with Hulk Hogan, Jake the Snake Roberts.

I can't remember who the other ones were with.

But he was a champion in 88.

Now, he was seven foot four.

So as I say, he would have patted you on your head and floored you with an elbow drop.

Wrestling teaches you,

you really have to be good at timing.

And his comic timing in that movie is fantastic.

Everybody loved him.

He was hugely popular.

That is number one, that movie for me.

And also, I mean, I absolutely love the Christmas bride.

So many lists.

In so many.

You could have asked me in so many different lists, and that movie would have been number one.

But an absolute bonafide

wrestler in a significant role in the movie.

And wrestling has really given him something, which is the comic timing is very, very good.

I saw a quote from him where he said,

children either run towards me or run away from me.

Andrew the Giant said.

He was so wonderful.

He was Samuel Beckett's chauffeur, briefly.

Yes.

Yeah.

He's had a very interesting career.

He was an amazing person and really interesting.

This is a very good question because I watched this episode.

Lydia Miller

says, my sister Amelia and I appeared on Dragon's Den last night.

And this was last week, pitching our business, Stephen and Deborah invested.

Amelia and I were in the den for over two hours being questioned by the dragon.

So my question is, what actually goes on in the editing room?

Are producers creating a narrative first and then fitting the footage around it, kind of like they're writing a scripted episode?

Do they storyboard character arcs and get those approved before editing?

Please shed some light for me.

Your show is the bomb.

Oh, thank you.

You guys.

That's nice.

Hello, Lydia and Emilia.

I watched it as well.

I mean, you can see why people invested in them.

They were very, very good.

What they've got is a platform to help people, particularly women, get back into work after a long period out of the workforce.

It's called Ivy, and they wanted 75K for a 3%

stake.

The pitch was incredibly charming and personable.

They were very, very good.

One of the all-time great starts for a pitch because they sort of decide personalizing.

They go, I want you to imagine somebody called Carol.

So Carol has a career in marketing.

She's done incredibly well.

She decides to take some time out.

She has three children

and then finds she can't get back into the world of work.

And then they go, and two of those children are here now.

And you think, oh,

Carol was your mum.

Oh my God, the Carol woman was, that was your mum.

What I was immediately thinking was they're going to love you because you've given them an organic reveal that you've borne them.

You're like TV people already, Lydia and Amelia, because you've brought your pitch contains a reveal within about, you know,

42 seconds.

So you have literally saved the editors probably half a day there of going, how do we get across that it's them, that it happened to their mum?

Have we got an interview with them where they say, oh, the reason we're doing this is because of our mum?

Or can we get Peter to say what was the inspiration behind this which they would have to do otherwise because you're Lydia is quite right they're building a story so the thing that's happened in the den is true which is they bought in this business plan and the reactions of the dragons were what they were and the investment they got is what it is but that story has to be told to viewers in a way that firstly we want them to get an investment so either we love their business plan or we love their story so you have to get that across and secondly understanding how that investment comes about and also putting some jeopardy uh into the idea that maybe they won't get i slightly love the question because

saying we were in there for over two hours and i reckoned their thing was like 16 to 17 minutes

guys only you can tell us what really happened in there yeah and then you can maybe sort of retrofit what they did afterwards but i thought it was perfect because two very um personable charming people who are very very on it come in and ask for not a huge amount of money you're not going to get 17 minutes out of that unless you can create, as all TV fiction writers will tell you, TV eats plot.

And really, you know, to get 17 minutes out of something.

It's actually 20 minutes.

The first one.

Yeah,

each one is 16 minutes, 16 minutes, five minutes, which is the, or sometimes two and a half, two and a half, which is a couple of people who came in.

And then this final one, which was, which was 20, just over 20 minutes.

As you say, that is actually, that's the length of a sitcom.

So you might have been in there for two hours, but actually getting 20 minutes out of two hours is, I mean, that's more than you would expect to get out of two hours.

You'd expect to get maybe five minutes out of two hours.

So to get 20 minutes is going at some.

So both of us went back and watched it.

You've got your great reveal at the beginning.

Brilliant.

They would have loved you for that.

For anyone who wants to, you know, bring along something like that, because that really works.

And also,

they're not even, you know, the vision mixer is cutting to the dragons.

They're not pretty much not having to put an editor.

There'll be little bits they've clipped out here and there, but you have done such a huge amount amount of work for them that otherwise they would have had to do.

That is something that they would have had to do, which is why do I care?

So you've told us absolutely why we care.

This is your mum.

Okay, got it.

We are absolutely on board.

I mean, listen, the pitch might still be terrible, but we are on board.

We want you to succeed.

Then they said, well, we're actually still in the active testing.

You guys said, we're still in the active testing phase.

We've only been going a month.

Then listen to the music, because then the music suggests peril.

Like, okay, oh, okay.

Then you're seeing the cutaways to everyone going, oh, I see, okay, maybe this isn't as good as it sounds.

If you watch American reality TV or something that's kind of made in America, even if it's shown here, something like Hell's Kitchen Now, it's deafening the music.

British reality TV producers don't really like music.

They have a bit like this, and it's very subtle in Dragon's Day.

In America, like no section, you can't have a single sentence without this incredibly kind of portentous music being layered on top of it.

And also, by the way, the second that you know someone

When they said how long have you been in this only a month you would then cut to a master interview of Amelia or Lydia shot afterwards going and that was the point they asked about timing and we had to say oh my god It's only been a month.

I'm looking at them like

Amelia's look at them as well.

We're thinking oh my god, we've blown it here and then just in case you could just in case you can't work out from their faces

because it's that you have to be your own, you know, you have to to gloss your own appearance then suddenly there was an intervention from joe wicks and it was like oh i see that's nice he really likes he was the sort of guest dragon that week um and then it was like oh hang on a second you could see everyone he said i loved you i and also i like people who i love quitters because they both left their jobs to do it yeah and that was a nice line and so you saw the others smiling and then you're thinking oh hang on and then there's some hopeful music so you're like hang on have they got this in the bag so again i mean lydia's absolutely right there is a narrative that has to be written here and with all reality shows the thing you have to remember is the editor knows the ending so the editor knows where we're headed the editor knows that we are going to be pleased at the end because they know the beginning which is oh we like these two and we like this story we know the end which is they are going to get money so in between those two things they have to think of a series of things firstly there are five different dragons all of whom have slightly different takes on what this is and all of whom have to be edited in you can't sort of you know just because tuka decides he wants to be out, you can't just go, oh, let's forget Tuca, it doesn't matter.

Let's just say old Tuca was out.

So you have to edit all of those things in to tell that story.

You also,

as you say, I know what's going to happen, which is they're going to make the money.

I have to inject some jeopardy into it that suggests they might not get the money because as a viewer, you know, so that has to be in there.

And then it happens that the offer they get is quite a complicated one because everyone pretty much wants a piece of it apart from the bit you know I think Peter and Tuca both go out early but everyone else wants a piece of it and then they have a negotiation as to what different pieces of it they want and this is be where the two hours is there would have been lots and lots of extra discussions about all sorts of things and the editor has to go what does the viewer actually need to know here?

What are the final terms?

I know what the final terms are which are you're going to get this percentage, you're going to get this percentage, you're adding a little bit extra, Stephen, for this.

So I know that.

I know what wasn't involved in the final conclusion.

So anything that doesn't get involved in the final conclusion, I can lose.

All these other kind of minor little points, I can lose all of that because I'm heading towards one particular place, which is Stephen puts some money in, Deborah puts some money in, Stephen offers something extra, a little else, Sarah slightly gets gazumped.

Those are the only things that's the story I need to tell because that's the conclusion.

And with that edit, you saw, saw, okay, so if Stephen gets to be there, it becomes slightly Stephen's story.

So Stephen at first looks very skeptical.

Oh, it's you're going to be going for a month.

Then he says, well, hang on, scaling a social network is like chewing glass.

Again, if you're in the edit, you love that because it's very, very evocative.

You two did a response to it, which was like, well, we can chew glass.

We can chew glass, which is the perfect.

And then you're like, okay, great.

So

you understood how that would work as part of, I mean, he understood.

And later on, by the way,

when he is then thinking, when other people are in, he's kind of going, but listen, I can chew glass for you.

I can do that.

Well, he wants to chew so much glass for you.

I've already chewed it.

Yeah.

They actually left too much of the phrase chewing glass in because it was so evocative.

But anyway, there was nice sort of cutaways for all of that.

And then at the very end, the cheeky counters to it, they always like if people have a little bit of fight in the conflab at the end.

Yeah, you have the going to the wall, which is very, very useful in the edit because that's the point where the two of you are able to, you know, I think they say to each other, we said, look, 6% is the most we can possibly go to.

So again, we kind of get something there.

They come back and counter, I think it was Lydia

counters Steven.

So they deal with it in a very smart, very

tough way.

But essentially, it is, I know you're in there for two hours, but 20 minutes is a lot of television.

The editor knows

what happens in the end and has to make that satisfying for a viewer, has to make it understandable.

for the viewer and has to make it triumphant for the viewer.

Absolutely.

I think the fact she's asking this question is significant though, because maybe it felt far more formless

in the moment, and this order has been imposed on it in retrospect.

I wonder if that's why Lydia asked that question.

But only you can tell us, like, how long you spent at the wall, how long.

I mean, I'm fascinated by it all.

And also, just as a tiny little coda to this, you know that they heard that they'd got the spot on it when they were on their way back from Glastonbury, and they basically had to sort of divert.

Oh, no, yeah, I know.

They had 12 hours in a hotel room to just like refine the pit.

So it's a real like they had to rush and do that.

And, you know,

they put it all together in a kind of last minute.

And it was a real

thing that came off the house.

And all of it is nice.

And you get the posting afterwards.

They all say, look, these two are just super investable.

And they are.

And so Stephen puts in 50 grand and has got them like working in his office.

And that was like, and also I can add that you can work in my office and have this office space.

And you're thinking.

He can't say office space.

He has to say penthouse.

Yeah, yeah.

Of course he does.

Well,

he can sell, can't he?

Uh, but you're thinking, Stephen's thinking, great, I've got two unbelievably talented people, and they're literally on the floor below me, so I can just you know, that's Stephen's getting something out of that as well.

You know, it's uh, but it was yes, great storytelling, but uh, what a lovely question to get from somebody who's been in the middle of that process.

But I hope that you also felt you were properly represented.

And if you don't, then you should have done because you came across brilliantly, yeah, you did, you really did, yeah, and thank you for saying that the podcast is the bomb.

Thank you.

All right, shall we now go to a break?

Yes, please.

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Welcome back everybody.

Andy Stafford has a question.

This is a think piece.

This question.

I'd be interested in your view.

I don't know what I think about it, so I'm happy to discuss.

Andy Stafford Saffa says, Do you think there is any mileage in producing a version/slash cut of the traitors where the audience are also unaware of the identity of the traitors?

Okay, the second I heard this question, I thought, oh, like, would Romeo and Juliet be better if you didn't know they were going to die?

Sorry, what?

It's in like probably the eighth line of the prologue, Richard.

So, I'm not doing this for you.

I was looking at my programme.

I had my Maltese.

Okay, right.

Well, if you watch it again, they say in the prologue that they're going to die die in Raymond Juliet.

It's crazy.

What's he thinking?

Oh, my God.

I don't know.

You know what?

It was a hit.

Well, yes, I suppose I say.

Those are a hits, business, Richard.

Those are hits, business, and this one is a hit.

I never absolutely,

when I watch a TV program and they have like a big thing and then it goes three months earlier, I'm like, oh, I don't know.

Yeah, that's annoying, I agree.

But you know what?

Well, it often works.

Well, that's dramatic irony.

If we know,

sorry, and that's the traitors is an absolute prime example of dramatic irony: is that you know more, the audience knows more, and it really adds tension, it adds comedy.

Let's go back.

The mole, which is a show,

a similar-ish show, okay?

They didn't tell people, which is a different, another format, they didn't tell people.

There were clues hidden in the episodes, various,

and the editing,

both visual and verbal clues.

All editions kept it that way, wherever they had the mole.

People who were involved in that said it made it hard because so much is then on the edit and you have to create suspicion with the edit and also Stephen Lambert himself the head of studio Lambert who

makes the traitors has said

he thought that that was maybe a drawback to that one and actually he thinks it's great that you know more and that you you don't you're not watching a show where you feel like you're being lied to in the edit

and you know you're given all the information he acknowledges that when it um was the original format which was um in holland it was a hard sell for the people who originally came up with it because they were were like, and sorry, you give it all away by just saying who the traitors are right from the start.

And they're like, no, no, no, that will be like the real, that will be the good bit.

The roundtable is the dramatic heart of the show.

They've obviously made the tasks much better and they've done that principally by making them hilariously gothic and camp, which I love.

But you want to watch the round table.

Now, without our knowledge of who the traitors were, that experience would be significantly diminished.

Why would you diminish it by not letting us know?

By the way, Andy is right.

There is a part of that round table that would be improved.

And there's one part of that roundtable which is we would see the person get up and say if they're a traitor or not a traitor.

And in traditional game shows,

that's a big, big, big moment.

But what you gain on the swings there, you do definitely lose on the roundabouts because even when you have that reveal, you know that you are going to see the people seeing that reveal as well.

It's essentially like watching a football match.

And, you know, you you to watch a football match, you do, you do have to hear from both sides.

You do need to know what tactically is happening and the show is much improved by hearing the traitors talk about what's just happened and you know what their tactic is and how they feel like you know i can't believe that alan said all done uh you know out loud to me just all of those sort of things so instinctively it feels like you shouldn't know because guessing games are very very important but this is not a guessing game this is a this is a strategic game show

and to watch a strategic game show you need to hear the strategy.

I agree.

So think about what it gives you dramatically.

You know, as we've always said, you know, the trader is a strong position because it allows you to control the game.

Often think about these things as though they were fictions.

And it really helps you understand what's happening because...

People trying to control events, often good people trying to control events or good people doing bad things.

You know, at one level, it can be Walter White in breaking bad and events have a way of going beyond your control.

Or it can be Alan Carr having a meltdown over the lily pollen murder.

It's like, you know, sometimes good people have to do bad things.

And knowing that that's what's happening really gives you something.

And drama is often a quest.

And it's it, and when I'm talking about drama, yes, I'm talking about fiction, but I'm also talking about what they're trying to create here.

It's definitely a quest in this.

And it helps you in drama to know what will happen if the hero or anti-hero, because it's kind of an anti-hero show, what will happen if what they want and what will happen if they don't achieve their goal drama comes and the conflict and all the stuff about drama comes the things that basically prevent or divert the hero from reaching their goal and they may attain it in the end or they may not but it helps to know that they're trying to reach that goal and it helps to know who the hero is or isn't it helps to know yes absolutely and it helps to see how they're becoming diverted um and it helps to know what will happen if they don't get that yeah uh and we know all of those things one of the key driving points of the entire format and the entire show is seeing the powerlessness of the faithful yeah and just seeing them desperately try and find something and and seeing how hard that is for them and if you did not know who the traitors were that would also be you yeah as a viewer you kind of think I

sort of don't have enough information to be going on here and I'm not going to find out that information until episode 12 or you know something like that it's just you lose so much by not knowing you lose so much of the joy of the gameplay and this traitors is only one thing and it is gameplay that's yeah all that's happening happening heroes and anti-heroes nothing else happening but gameplay and if you are only seeing half the gameplay you're not seeing the game so it it feels like we would like you know it feels like it would be a fun intellectual exercise to be able to watch a whole series not knowing who the traitors were and it would be a fun intellectual exercise for sure but it would only be a fun intellectual exercise having watched it knowing who the traitors were in other series and i have to say just as a tiny little coder to all of that your question which suggests that you know you could just produce a cut the other way

is like, okay, the level of intricacy and it's no mean thing to make, it takes months to make

it an entirely different program.

It would take you months because to create a cut, and it is a brilliantly edited show, is the work of months.

And so to say, could you just knock me off one while we don't know?

It's like, yeah, have you got six months?

Yeah.

This is a lovely question from Stephanie Schrubb.

On Strictly This Week, Ellie and Vito danced to a version of Elton John's Your your song which had been specially rearranged to be in three four time to fit their waltz i'd like to know how far in advance the songs are selected and if the original track needs more than a simple edit what do the couples rehearse to my god genuinely the the the the whole uh so dave arch who uh runs the the band on Strictly and is like a genius.

He's a conductor.

He's got like a million credits as well.

So he's like,

sometimes people go, oh, Dave Archie is the Strictly guy.

He is a lot more than that, but Strictly is a thing that he's obviously known for

in the public eye.

It is one one of those things you think, oh, I hope that's kind of simple.

I hope that's fun for Dave and his incredible band and his incredible singers.

It genuinely sounds like one of the toughest jobs in show business.

So you will be getting essentially what the songs will be on the Sunday.

So Dave will have that on the Sunday.

So he'll know roughly what the songs are and his band will know what the songs are and some songs they'll know, some songs they won't.

They will also know what dances those songs are going to be for so they'll have an idea of you know timings and this that or the other It is then a sort of back and forth across the whole week.

Dave Arch has spoken about this extensively.

It's a back and forth across the whole week of exactly what the dancers want, exactly what Dave thinks works entirely, you know, in terms of what you can edit out of a song, how you can shunt a song together.

So they will be essentially the start of the week, they are definitely not rehearsing to the final track.

It is a back and forth.

And it's only on the Friday, I think, that they have the first rehearsal where it's Dave's final version of the track and the dancers dancing to that song as well so it's one of those things where it is just a dance between the two sides of these things but because Dave is so brilliant and because his musicians are so brilliant because his singers are so brilliant Dave can be more flexible than the dancers can be.

Essentially, what the dancers want has primacy in terms of here's the choreography, here's the thing I need it to be, here's the length I need it to be, I need to not have that middle eight, I need the...

I need it to be a different time.

It's so complicated.

I don't know how they do it.

I need the chorus to repeat.

Especially at this stage when you've got this many happening.

You've got that many happening.

Exactly.

You know, and listen, most of you've got this incredible band who can play everything and anything.

But they also, they're going to be doing this live and they don't have a huge amount of rehearsals.

And anything you get wrong is immediately apparent to the...

dancers and is an immediate issue to the dancers.

Dave Arch even says, even, you know, I've been in this 20 years years and I still have sleepless nights.

He says, especially like on a Friday night, I literally will have a sleepless night because I'm aware of all the things that can go wrong.

But it is a testament to the skill of musicians who played everything forever.

And it is a testament to the producers, to be fair, who are between the two, the choreographers and the band, and just making sure that everyone is kept in the loop at all times.

But if there is any sort of dispute, then the musicians will have to come over towards the dancers.

Apart from, you know, if there's something that physically cannot be done, but everything will be done to make sure the dancers have the things that they need because they're the ones who are practicing all week.

But

Dave has to be incredibly flexible in what he does and how he does it.

And I genuinely, when you see it and you hear it, and it's it feels seamless, absolutely phenomenal.

I literally, it will give me a sleep this night if I even try and think how they do it.

Dave asleep this night, and he knows he knows how it's done.

But it makes you think because he looked so jolly at the beginning of the episode.

And the band, you know, you know, belting out these amazing songs and, you know, singing this.

And just the, again, with Strictly, so many people at the top of their games there.

And Dave Arch and his band, what they do.

And the incredible gang of singers he has as well.

It's really, really, really difficult what they do.

And you would never notice.

You would never, ever spot how hard they are all working all the time and the things they've had to do and the compromises they've had to make half an hour before.

Sometimes it's, you know, it's it's it's tiny little

tweaks going right up to the last minute, but it's uh, I genuinely you have to take your hat off to everyone involved there.

It's so phenomenal.

The production on it is so phenomenal.

The sets, the costumes, everything about it is the sort of apogee of what you'd want to be working on.

Um, he wrote the theme tune to GM TV, Dave Arch.

Paul Farah got in touch, the guy who wrote the chase theme.

Yeah, he writes like every, he's like one of the great kind of TV composers.

yes and said he really enjoyed all the whole chat about it and said but yeah no control so it's as well as being the theme for the chase it's also the theme for the nightly news in the philippines and romania so the chase theme tune is so i like that yeah if you're if you're in a romanian hotel room and suddenly you're going oh the chase oh no it's the news oh and paul farre also so he helped us out with um some stuff on the um on theme tunes and he said something about the 40 towers theme tune and now he's in john kleese's new book which is all about 40 towers but talking about the theme tune.

So that's nice.

Lovely.

Yeah, right.

I think that about wraps us up for today.

I very much enjoyed that.

And we'll be back with a bonus about

reality TV Impresario monster

hilarious figure, Mike Darnell.

And other than that, we'll see you next Tuesday.

See you next Tuesday.

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