Prince Andrew and The Inbetweeners

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Speaker 2 Hello and welcome to this episode of the Rest is Entertainment Questions and Answers Edition.

Speaker 1 I'm Marina High. And I'm Richard Osman, and you are our our wonderful listeners, and we have a number of your questions.

Speaker 1 Hi, Richard.

Speaker 1 Sorry. No, I like that.
I was saying hello to the listeners.

Speaker 2 Yeah, I know.

Speaker 1 There are more of them than there are of you.

Speaker 1 That's like when I'm pointless, I used to say, well done, if you've got that at home, rather than well done for getting that, Zander. Because I figure that, you know, there's only one other guy.

Speaker 2 Come on, hit me with a question.

Speaker 1 Okay, I have a question from Chris Lindsay. He says, Virginia Dufray's memoir has come out and probably contains allegations that the Royal Family would prefer weren't published, correct?

Speaker 1 Who gets sued in this hypothetical posthumous defamation case?

Speaker 2 This has been a big topic of conversation, this whole book, for obvious reasons, and the fallout for Prince Andrew, who's actually one of the only men named in the book, which

Speaker 1 has had very, very good sales as well.

Speaker 2 And fantastic sales. Virginia Dufray is one of the victims of Jeffrey Epstein.
She was trafficked by him

Speaker 2 and she's famously the

Speaker 2 17-year-old runaway girl in a picture which has the Duke of York's arm around her and Julaine Maxwell kind of grinning in the background and it was Duke of York at the time.

Speaker 2 Yeah, Duke of York at the time, the erstwhile Duke of York. And the picture was taken by Geoffrey Epstein.

Speaker 2 Anyhow, he's made a number of claims about that photo, including that it isn't real, Julaine Maxwell said it isn't real. There's been absolutely zero proof that the photo isn't real.

Speaker 2 So anyway, the book has a publisher which is Knopf, which is

Speaker 2 a division of Penguin Random House.

Speaker 2 And so that it's been published in the book. And these claims, as I say, there's a reason that other men aren't named.
And there's a reason you can name Prince Andrew.

Speaker 2 And then the first extract of it was run in The Guardian.

Speaker 2 And all of the fallout of that has been now extremely widely reported. He could sue.
Prince Andrew could still sue.

Speaker 2 And believe me, every single one of these extracts and the book has gone through masses of lawyering and

Speaker 2 he could still sue.

Speaker 2 Normally, you know, you could of course have a claim against the person who had made the allegations as well as the publisher of those allegations because you can always pursue an individual themselves.

Speaker 2 But in this case, Virginia Duffrey obviously tragically took her own life earlier this year and so she's no longer around to be the subject of a claim at that. But her publisher could be.

Speaker 2 During the Noel Clark case, which was won by The Guardian, we talked about the two ways you can defend something and it's best if you can do it both ways.

Speaker 2 One on the basis it's true and second that the claims are so significant they have a public interest in publishing them. So you could definitely defend it in this way.

Speaker 2 The thing with Prince Andrew is it's quite interesting.

Speaker 2 You will still notice that

Speaker 2 in our

Speaker 2 press, as I always say in America, you can write almost what you want, but in our press our libel laws are very difficult. You will always see that he's been given a right of reply.

Speaker 2 They haven't replied, but it will always say that they've been approached for complimentary.

Speaker 2 Yeah.

Speaker 2 And any single new thing, one tiny line from the book, if you're rerunning anything and it's a new thing, you must go and do the right of reply.

Speaker 2 But I suppose when you're asking in the notional defamation case, what is libel? Libel is

Speaker 2 someone being able to prove that their reputation has been damaged by the publication of something.

Speaker 2 And there's a certain, we've got to a stage with Prince Andrew now where does he have a reputation to defend?

Speaker 2 And you have to decide that that reputation would have been materially damaged by the thing he's suing on. Also, is he going to sue everybody? I mean, you can't just sue sort of one.

Speaker 2 If you've, you sort of have to sue everyone who's published. Where would you even start with this one?

Speaker 2 If that photo hadn't existed, by the way, I don't think this story would ever have taken off in the way that it has.

Speaker 2 There's something about that photo. You know, she's so young in it.
There's something about the existence of that photo that honestly, I think they would have denied everything.

Speaker 2 It's the only one, by the way. We don't see lots of photos.
We see aerial views of this island of Jeopardy Epstein. We don't see pictures at all.

Speaker 1 And this wasn't taken on his island. This is in London.
No, no, this is in London. But it has the main point.

Speaker 2 But we don't see any pictures from this story. And you don't think they exist? Because

Speaker 2 I think it's very interesting how he made his money at all. Because as you always find, you know, as people always say, he didn't trade with anybody.

Speaker 2 All these great big financial people in New York say, I don't understand how this guy became so rich because he never traded with anybody. Hmm, I wonder.

Speaker 1 And to be clear, so what are the allegations in in the book?

Speaker 2 The allegations in the book are an expansion and a different form of writing because before she was making accusations, and then this is a memoir. She's written it with the help of a journalist.

Speaker 2 And so the allegations are that she was required to have sex with him once when that picture was taken in London. She participated in an audio with him

Speaker 2 with around eight other girls on the island, on Geoffrey Epstein's island, and there's one other time she had sex with him.

Speaker 2 And he can issue legal proceedings. However, what is a very special case with this particular person is we know the royal family are against getting involved in any legal proceedings at all.

Speaker 2 And they always find a way of

Speaker 2 not having things come to court. And that goes for when the Queen suddenly remembered a conversation that Paul Barrel had taken lots of Gianna's things for safekeeping in his attic.

Speaker 1 Okay.

Speaker 2 Anyway, that case didn't come to court for whatever reason. And the case of when in the civil court, when

Speaker 2 Virginia Dufrey had sued the Duke of York, he ended up paying what's always reported as £12 million in damages. So he continues to deny anything happened at all.

Speaker 2 We must run that denial within this story of us even talking about this.

Speaker 1 Did he admit where he got £12 million from?

Speaker 2 No, he didn't. What's happened over the last couple of weeks

Speaker 2 with the publication of this book and the massive kind of farming of extracts from it is that people have taken the view in this country particularly rather than the US where as I say the rules are different that he won't sue because he has already done everything not to get into a courtroom.

Speaker 2 And by the way, sometimes newspapers will settle themselves in a case like this. Why would you settle with this guy?

Speaker 2 You want to push it all the way to the courtroom because the chances are he will fall before he ever gets there. How loose the royal family want to cut him is another part of this story.

Speaker 2 And so they will always try and keep this out of any courtroom.

Speaker 2 And he would probably want it to keep it out of any courtroom because you're just going to, all these other people, there are other victims coming out now saying that they remember all sorts of different things.

Speaker 2 And this is what's going to happen. Primarily, though, the law of defamation is about someone's reputation being materially damaged by a thing that was published.

Speaker 2 Can we honestly say that this has made it any worse? Maybe it's made it an infinitesimal part worse, but it was already so bad that the judge would say, well, you don't have a reputation to defend.

Speaker 2 And in some cases, this is why people used to get these libel awards of a pound or whatever, because people would say, you were not harmed by the publication. This is just a nonsense.

Speaker 2 And so I think it would be very, very, very, very difficult for him to win in court. So people have taken the view.
However, it remains possible that he could launch proceedings.

Speaker 1 And in the specific terms of the question, were he to do that, and hypothetically, were he to win damages, who would he win those damages against?

Speaker 2 He'd win them from Knopf, who published the books, they are the publishers, and he'd win them from

Speaker 2 anyone he sued who published the claims. Sometimes you'll find that claimants will sue one publication because they kind of hate them.

Speaker 2 And you'll say, but hang on a second, it also was run by The Sun, the this, the that, you know. And if they're only pursuing one, that doesn't look great.
They have to kind of go after everyone.

Speaker 2 Otherwise, there are people saying, oh, maybe it's just a vendetta against one title. You know, everyone published this story.
There is great safety in numbers, obviously.

Speaker 1 But would there be a liability for Virginia Dufray's estate, for her co-writer?

Speaker 2 The person who publishes is liable,

Speaker 2 unless it's a tech company, apparently.

Speaker 1 But if it had been the other way around, so Chris and Izzy were talking about that someone had written a book about somebody who was dead.

Speaker 2 Well, you can't libel the dead. You can't libel the dead.
As we've always said, you cannot libel the dead. So you could have written anything about her at all now, and someone could still do that.

Speaker 2 And you can't do anything about that. You cannot libel the dead.

Speaker 1 But yeah, but Prince Andrew could sue.

Speaker 2 You almost can't libel Prince Andrew

Speaker 2 is probably the conclusion here.

Speaker 1 It'd be fascinating to see the amount of titles that get taken off him. It's interesting, isn't it? Because how far do they cut him loose?

Speaker 1 As you say, you want to keep him close enough that he's still relying on you, but far enough away that he doesn't reflect on you.

Speaker 2 Yes, except I think, you know, this is a non-fashionable opinion, but I don't think you can. I think the abdication was a mistake.

Speaker 2 And that's not very long ago in the great scheme of the existence of the British royal family. And, you know, whatever it is, 90 years ago.

Speaker 2 If you're starting to say, oh, we can swap in personnel, if they don't work out, we don't like them, we sack them, we get some different people in, then you're just like any other business.

Speaker 1 So did you just say that I still believe the abdication was a mistake? Yes, I do. Wow, I didn't think we were going that way.

Speaker 2 Yeah.

Speaker 2 If no one asked the question do you believe the abdication was a mistake? But there we go. I've just given my answer free.

Speaker 1 Yes it was. Thank you Dominic Senbro.

Speaker 2 Yeah it's you're welcome.

Speaker 2 Once you allow it to look like something that's just kind of like another business where you get rid of the ones that don't work and bring you you have I think if the royal family is weird and special so you have to just keep them all you have to play play the hand that you're dealt.

Speaker 1 You think so like nearly 100 years later you think it's still still a big issue?

Speaker 2 No, I'm saying that in 400 years time when we don't have a monarchy anymore and people look back at where you know where the where the gate was opened, it will be the abdication.

Speaker 1 I honestly think if you can replace Martin Fowler twice, you can replace a king.

Speaker 2 That's huge. I mean we'll have EastEnders still in 400 years time.
I can assure you of that fact.

Speaker 1 Yeah, we'll be on Martin Fowler 17.

Speaker 1 Right.

Speaker 2 An extreme shift in tone here as we move to the In-Betweeners, Richard. Sean Lamb says, what do you think of this potential In-Betweeners reboot?

Speaker 2 If you were in the writer's room, how would you make it funny?

Speaker 1 Yeah, I mean, we read about everything being rebooted every five seconds. The In Betweeners, written by Ian Morrison, Damon Beasley, you've got the four main cast members.

Speaker 1 If at any point in the next 50 years, those six people want to get together and write a story about those four friends, then

Speaker 1 I will watch it. Oh, so will I.
It'll be hilarious. It's brilliantly written by Ian and Damon, brilliantly acted by those four, all of whom are kind of friends in real life.

Speaker 1 If, you know, Ian and Damon want to sell the rights to their name In Betweeners us and you know they want to cast new people then

Speaker 1 absolutely all bets are offered could literally turn into anything so any time anything is rebooted you have to go has someone just bought the name in which case i mean it could be terrible i mean who's who's bought it if it's the people themselves i think in this this case ian and damon have both said yeah we'd absolutely get together with the boys and do something i think that How lovely to have a show.

Speaker 1 I mean, you know, those guys were not 16 when they were making the show. They were they were older than that, but I think they pulled off looking younger fairly well.

Speaker 1 They've all gone on to do very, very varied and very, very interesting things

Speaker 1 in their own right. But how lovely to think maybe every 10, 15 years, forever, you can get back together and do stuff and do stuff.
Suddenly

Speaker 1 you can watch them as old men.

Speaker 1 So I think it's absolutely one of those things as with any reboot is what do you mean by reboot? Is it the original people? In which case, it is not a reboot.

Speaker 1 It's It's like going from the likely lads to whatever happens to the likely lads, both works of genius, because it's the same writers, it's the same performers, and I know they're not at school anymore, but that show is not funny because they're at school.

Speaker 1 That show is funny because Ian and Damon are at the same time.

Speaker 2 But also,

Speaker 2 it can be brilliantly done that if you look at something like the comeback with Lisa Kudrow,

Speaker 2 the huge gaps between seasons of that,

Speaker 2 it's really interesting sort of what happens.

Speaker 2 You're not sort of picking up, it's a deliberate, huge time jump.

Speaker 1 I think those things can be really interesting so it could be brilliant you know I really hope they do there's so many books that are inter you know follow the same characters over 50 60 70 years which of course you can't really do so much in film and television it's much harder to do because of the aging process but you definitely can do over 10 20 30 40 years oh god it's cost so much potential

Speaker 1 but there are six people there all of whom are making a great deal of money in lots and lots of different ways.

Speaker 1 The last thing Ian Morris did was that amazing My Oxford year on Netflix, which is like, I mean, it's very, it's a listen, it's, it's, you wouldn't think that that and the in-betweeners were made by the same person.

Speaker 1 But I think that I would love to see what Ian and Damon did with the in-betweeners.

Speaker 1 And if all four of those boys want to do it, and if the two writers want to do it, then I think we've got an absolute treat in story. It won't be set in a school.

Speaker 1 Okay, just to warn you that, this, that they have gone beyond that stage, but it'll be about life and it'll be about four people and it'll be about what people do after school and how people who are close friends 10, 15, 20 years ago go and do very different things and then suddenly they're brought back into each other's.

Speaker 2 It's all about Edgar Wright movie the world's end. Yeah.

Speaker 2 Which is

Speaker 2 one vision of

Speaker 1 how it can go. Well, anyone who's ever been to

Speaker 1 a 15-year reunion from their school and seen the various different paths you can take in your life can immediately see whether comedy comes from there.

Speaker 1 And Ian and Damon will be able to see whether comedy comes from there. So I think that, to me feels like a piece of very, very good news.

Speaker 2 Right, shall we go to a break right now?

Speaker 1 I would love that.

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Speaker 1 Welcome back, everyone. Now, can I say thank you to Martin Naylor for an amazing segue.
Martin, thank you.

Speaker 1 I know you didn't realize it was a segue, but we've just come off the adverts and Martin asks, what is your favorite telead

Speaker 1 of all time?

Speaker 2 I love this question and

Speaker 2 I thought really hard about this because I really, I've always been really interested in advertising. I'm afraid I don't think adverts are what they used to be for obvious reasons.

Speaker 2 There's not so much time.

Speaker 1 I love that. Adverts aren't what they used to be.

Speaker 2 Well, actually, well, by the way, one of mine is obviously the Hovis 1973 advert.

Speaker 2 Both of mine have directed by Ridley Scott, which I think is interesting because Ridley Scott was a big commercials director.

Speaker 1 Listen, honestly, 1973 feels like remarkably modern. given your talk of the abdication.

Speaker 1 I feel like what I'm dragging you through.

Speaker 2 Which is a mistake, and I'll take a TV advert out to say so.

Speaker 1 Yeah, abdications. Not for me, thanks, love.

Speaker 2 Right. Okay, the Hovis advert is.

Speaker 2 I'm always interested in the stories behind the adverts and why they work and what, you know, I'm fascinated by David Ogilvy as a kind of person.

Speaker 2 If you ever read any of the Ogilvy books, they're so interesting on how you sell to people. We've talked about them on the podcast before.

Speaker 2 But so the Hovis Advert 1973, which I think it's a Colette Dickinson-Pierce, and what it does.

Speaker 2 Yes, they work.

Speaker 2 So, obviously, either that or a solicitor's. But what it did brilliantly was that it created, it's the one where,

Speaker 2 by the way, I don't know any classical music except for classical music from the adverts, and that's Vorjak. And it's the one where he's pushing the bike up the hill, and it looks like a pit village.

Speaker 2 It's not actually a pit village.

Speaker 1 It's Shaftesbury in

Speaker 1 Dorset, isn't it?

Speaker 2 And it creates nostalgia for a time that either didn't exist or we didn't know it ourselves. And that's a really big advertising technique.

Speaker 2 And what David Ogilvie, the master of advertising, would say, is what was great is it drove a huge increase in sales. That's what it has to be.
It's about, did it actually sell artists?

Speaker 2 And if it doesn't, and it's a piece of art, then you're just wanging on about something, and you might as well like art, okay?

Speaker 1 So I love you might as well like art.

Speaker 2 But you might as well go on about liking art or whatever. Advertising is supposed to sell you something.
That's worse.

Speaker 1 You know, that's worse. You might as well go on about liking art.

Speaker 2 No, but advertising is supposed to sell you something and it's a different discipline. And so you should think about that.
Anyway, so they created this fake heritage.

Speaker 1 I mean, who are you talking about?

Speaker 1 It genuinely feels like you're talking to someone very specific so you should think about that no because I don't think you're talking to me because I don't think I bang on about art a lot I mean I like art you like it I know what you like I know what I like you know what you like yeah I feel I feel like that was directed okay so right listen so um really Scott directs this it creates the force nostalgia it does masses and masses of sales um funnily enough you know even in the um

Speaker 2 in gladiator which is not an advert what they were going to have they wanted to show a have a scene that illustrated how um Maximus was getting bigger than the Emperor, and they were going to have him, the Emperor was going to go down and open some new building in the financial district,

Speaker 2 the forum or whatever it may be. And then there's going to be a huge picture of Big Russy Crowe advertising some olive oil on the, he's going to say that, paint it over, paint it over.

Speaker 2 But in the end, they decided they weren't going to do it because they wouldn't do that because it wasn't necessarily historically accurate because gladiators did.

Speaker 2 advertise things but they were kind of they were still enslaved so it didn't really count so that is one reason they advertise like painted adverts on the side of buildings and stuff it's not it's not totally clear and so um Russell Crowe was like I don't think people are going to buy this because it's just too sort of on the note anyway so it didn't end up in the finals you know

Speaker 2 they did have things on the chariots yes they had olive oil browns they had all sorts of stuff not vodafone though not not vodafone mercedes yeah yeah so that's one my other one is also a Ridley Scott ad and because this is absolutely amazing and I remember seeing this and it was like a sort of weird film um and that is um Apple 1984.

Speaker 2 It's the Super Bowl advert. So we always have to be obsessed with the Super Bowl because everyone's more obsessed.

Speaker 2 By the way, Raiders beat Washington that particular year, but no one cares because it wasn't very interesting Super Bowl. But what was in large part, this ad was

Speaker 2 it just completely shifted the conversation. And Steve Jobs was asked, someone said,

Speaker 2 you know, can you do an ad for the Super Bowl? And he's like, what's a Super Bowl?

Speaker 2 Hold on, Steve. I've never seen the Super Bowl.
And they were like, well, it's quite a big thing. Anyway,

Speaker 2 and so

Speaker 2 it was

Speaker 2 Lee Clower at Chiat Day and Ridley Scott. They said, okay, hang on a second.
It was a year and a half after Blade Run had come out.

Speaker 2 And everyone was thinking a lot about technology and whether it could be used for good or for real. I mean, not much changes.
And he wanted a real...

Speaker 1 It was used for good in the end, wasn't it? Yeah, exactly. It was real good.
It was used for good.

Speaker 2 I thought it was, yeah. You know, an apple were a huge part of that.
Yeah. And he wanted a...

Speaker 2 a strong woman because it was, you know, they were inspired. Ridley Scott also,

Speaker 2 he wanted a strong, powerful woman. Think of all the things he ends up making, you know, know, Ripley or Thelma Louise or whatever it is.

Speaker 2 So they thought they would use 1984, because it was 1984, as a sort of hook for the ad.

Speaker 1 Where do they get their ideas from?

Speaker 2 Yeah, well, so they wanted, but it was amazing when you think about it now that a populist, a completely populist, like mega, mega ad that's going out in the Super Bowl, could lean so heavily on a work of literary fiction.

Speaker 2 And that you could, people would say, oh, I know what that is. I don't think you could do that now.
I don't think 1984 as a literary property would mean the same as it did then.

Speaker 2 But they had this print ad and it was basically individuals versus corporations because they wanted to position themselves as the plucky young upstart against IBM.

Speaker 2 And if you remember, what happens is this woman running and there are all these,

Speaker 2 they had to have all these people who look like the huddled masses and the kind of the people who are downtrodden by Big Brother and she ends up smashing Big Brother.

Speaker 2 But they had to hire people who either would like to have their head shaved or, and I'm sure you you can see where this is going, already were skin heads. So

Speaker 2 quite a lot of those people who are the kind of shaven-headed kind of

Speaker 2 controles of Big Brother at that point, I think were basically neo-Nazis. But this advert when...

Speaker 1 Every single, every single person who lived in my town had shaved hair in 1986 because they were filming a war film at the Bluebell Railway, which is just up the road from us. And we'd all just left

Speaker 1 school. And

Speaker 1 the advert went in the job centre, and everyone, I was away

Speaker 1 so I didn't do it but yeah I came back and everyone was a skin

Speaker 1 yeah

Speaker 2 you need to understand what's happened here yeah

Speaker 2 well anyway so but it was a completely I mean it's strange what's happened and I don't know if you'd really think of Apple any longer as the plucky little upstart against the horrible big corporations but it exploded into people's consciousness that it sold huge amounts of units and I think the story behind it is really really interesting.

Speaker 2 So those two and both directed by Vit Ridley Scott, which tells you how, you know, you need to tell a story in an incredibly short space of time.

Speaker 2 And so, I probably say those, but there are other ones, I love TV advertising, so there are other ones that just kind of make you think of it.

Speaker 2 I'm always trying to find old ones that I remember on YouTube, and there's so many that you can't find from when I've, you know, used to find out.

Speaker 1 And a lot of them are bad as well. Yeah, it turns out.

Speaker 1 I'll go back to

Speaker 1 I'm gonna go to the 1930s. I'm not gonna go to the 1930s because I'm not you.
I'm gonna go to 2022, and we're talking about telling a story in a short period of time.

Speaker 1 It's you know, like when you read a great short story, story, but someone who within, I think it's a 60 second long advert, the John Lewis Christmas advert, I know, keep listening,

Speaker 1 when you see a middle-aged dad and he's trying to learn to skateboard. And you think, oh, I know what this is, this guy's just trying to learn to skateboard.
And at the end,

Speaker 1 a foster child comes in with a skateboard and he's got a skateboard under his arm, just goes, oh, yeah, I skate a bit.

Speaker 1 And it's such a beautiful idea, beautifully realized, very, you know, very, very undemonstrative.

Speaker 1 It's just a beautiful thing about what human beings can do for other human beings and you know it doesn't make me want to go shop in John Lewis

Speaker 1 you know the the chocolates do that but it's just I did that that to me is telling a story in one minute and it's a rarity and those Christmas adverts are actually one of the only places where the budget

Speaker 2 and the amount of time they're going to buy allows you to create these things that actually were almost sort of to a penny in the 60s, 70s, 80s, and we used to watch those sort of things all the time.

Speaker 2 Now you've got such little time. The Christmas ads can still do that.

Speaker 1 And it is that thing that, you know, one has to sell. You say, well, yeah, well, how is that selling? How is that selling? But actually, everything is context.
Advertising knows that.

Speaker 1 So if you've got a print ad, it's a certain thing. If you've got a print ad in a certain publication, it's a certain thing.

Speaker 1 If it is a Christmas ad, you're aware there is a mood abroad, which is, we would like everything to be better than it was. We would like to regroup.
We would like the world to be a better place.

Speaker 1 And so actually, that is the perfect advertisement.

Speaker 2 Well, it was fun last year when we did a roundup and what they were all saying. We must do that again this year because because it really is a sort of mark to market, isn't it?

Speaker 2 It's a look at state of the nation. Christmas has our state of the nation.
Be interesting to see what they come up with this year. We'll take another look this year.

Speaker 1 Yeah, but I would love it if any of our members or any of you would like to write and tell us what your favorite adverts were because that feels like that would be a very good bonus episode. Oh, yeah.

Speaker 1 Just going through everyone's favourite advert because there's a million that one forgets. So I'd love it if you do have a favourite.

Speaker 2 I keep searching for one at the moment, which was for some sort of body spray or something in the 80s. And it was called Liberty.

Speaker 2 And this woman had a a postcard arrived on her doormat and you could tell that it was

Speaker 2 you know from her friends having a nice time and the song went something like wake up liberty no one says you got to stay and then she got on a plane and she went and sort of joined them and I remember as a child watching that thinking I want to have a life like that.

Speaker 2 I want to just be able to, I want to be someone who can just like say, oh, I can go and do that. I can do anything I want.
I can travel. I can do anything.

Speaker 2 I remember just like dreaming of having, being able to do something like that. And I can't find this advert.
If anyone anyone can find this advert, which I definitely didn't dream.

Speaker 1 You can't find the advert because that's become your life. Look at you going out and interviewing Glenn Powell.
Marina, it happened.

Speaker 2 Just

Speaker 2 a postcard dropped from him on my doormat and I was like, yeah, I'll go. Yeah.
Stick me on a plane to LA right now.

Speaker 1 One of my biggest ever

Speaker 1 rating tweets was, did we ever find out if it was Maybelline?

Speaker 2 Question for you, Richard, from Lily Holly's.

Speaker 2 During a recent trip to the Churchill war rooms, I learnt that Winston Churchill was made to undertake a medical assessment before an advance on his book was given by his publisher, so the publisher could take out life insurance.

Speaker 2 Is this standard practice for publishers and TV shows?

Speaker 1 Thank you, Lily.

Speaker 1 It's an interesting one, that, because

Speaker 1 I work in books and television. And television, if you literally appear for like two minutes on this morning, you have to sign like a 500-page medical assessment.

Speaker 1 Every single time you appear on anything, you have to sign this form, a statement of health, it's called. And it goes to the insurers.

Speaker 1 I assume no one ever sees it it is exactly the same form you filled I must have filled it in 200 300 times I sort of want to write on the top at just the same as yeah always because it's long it's a long form and it's have you had this this this this this this this this you know it's a weight is height it's all of the it's like properly complicated just to be a guest on something but any show you ever go on it's always well it's always waiting in my dressing room because they always send it before and I've never filled it in but actually you wait for so long in a dressing room actually I just think, well, one thing I can do is do the statement of health form so I can do that.

Speaker 1 So for every single TV show, you absolutely do that. And if you are presenting a show as well, you will often have to have an actual medical.
And actors go through it a lot as well.

Speaker 1 If you were engaged to sort of be on something for six months or nine months, you will go and see, you know, if you're in Manchester, you go into Manchester, you're in London, you go to Harley Street, you go see someone, you know, they do various things and then they send off a report to.

Speaker 2 And there were some answers I remember

Speaker 2 about a a certain person. I say, oh, no, why hasn't he been on TV for so long? They would say, Don, he's uninsurable.

Speaker 2 There is the sense that some people's lifestyles are so unhealthy that actually, do you actually want to hire them for six months of filming when something could happen?

Speaker 1 TV, you absolutely always do. But I've signed five-year book deals and I've never had a sniff of a health form anywhere.
I mean, possibly when I enter my 60s, I will do.

Speaker 1 But yeah, thus far in publishing, they don't seem to mind.

Speaker 1 In television and film, absolutely non-stop and and very, very detailed. And

Speaker 1 the longer you're on something and, you know, the further up the cool sheet you are, the more invasive that procedure will be.

Speaker 1 But it is absolutely for insurers because if you can, you know, if you do have 200 people making a TV show or making something like that and somebody's off for a day, it's a huge deal and you do need to claim on the insurance.

Speaker 1 Whereas I guess with books, I mean...

Speaker 2 I'm amazed that it happened with Churchill, actually. First of all, he didn't write most of the books.
And second of all, you just wouldn't think it was something from,

Speaker 2 you wouldn't have thought it from

Speaker 2 that day and age. You wouldn't have thought advances were such a big thing.

Speaker 1 My assumption in this would be this was not just an advance on one book. This would be like maybe an advance.
You know, I say over the next 10 years, I will deliver you six books.

Speaker 1 And by the way, I want to be paid up front.

Speaker 2 Is it true you drink champagne for breakfast?

Speaker 1 For example. And so they're going, we absolutely will pay you up front because we would like all of your books.

Speaker 1 But we have to hedge against the fact that we might not get 10 years' worth of books from you.

Speaker 2 Because you do the champagne for breakfast thing.

Speaker 1 Yeah, so let's find out. Whereas if he was just been paid a normal advance,

Speaker 1 I've never heard of anyone have to sign, you know, if you just is 12 months ahead, you know,

Speaker 1 you take the risk, I think. You know, publishers are used to not getting their advances back.

Speaker 1 So I imagine this was a special case because he asked for an absolutely enormous amount of money over a very, very long period of time.

Speaker 1 And so they thought, I mean, maybe, I know you're Churchill, but maybe we can do this. But yeah, in the TV and film businesses, non-stop statement of health and insurance medicals and all that stuff.

Speaker 1 But in publishing, thus far, I've yet to come across it. You've escaped it.
Yeah.

Speaker 2 Well, I think that about wraps us up.

Speaker 2 We will, of course, be back tonight, moments after 10 p.m. Thursday,

Speaker 2 episode 8 of the Traitors for a full debrief.

Speaker 1 And also, probably we'll chat a bit more about the abdication and, you know, the problems of it.

Speaker 2 Sorry,

Speaker 2 it was was in context.

Speaker 1 Was it?

Speaker 1 It wasn't really in context.

Speaker 2 Well, I'm just stating, I'm saying it.

Speaker 2 That's where it went wrong.

Speaker 1 Okay. It's like, you know, Gary and Mika and Alan, they could be talking about Intermilan.
They don't start talking about Vesuvius.

Speaker 2 I'd love it if they did, though. Yeah.
Why can't they do a breakout? Why can't they do a little sidebar? Anyway, we'll be back at 10 o'clock with remorselessly focused on

Speaker 2 Traitors Fallout.

Speaker 2 And then we've got a special bonus episode tomorrow in which which the brilliant Chris Lockery and Ollie Richards pull apart all the Oscar contenders and they've seen every single one and we'll be looking at runners and riders.

Speaker 2 We'll see you next Tuesday Alvin. Yeah.

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