The Biggest Ever Comebacks

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Speaker 2 Hello, and welcome to this episode of The Rest is Entertainment with me, Marina Hyde.

Speaker 1 And me, Richard Osmond. Hello, Marina.

Speaker 2 Hello, Richard. How are you?

Speaker 1 I'm all right. Now, we're not doing a QA this week.
We've been set quite a fun challenge, which is the biggest ever comebacks. I think you're going to do TV and film.
I'm going to do music.

Speaker 1 I'm going to do books and I'm going to do comedy.

Speaker 2 Can we just get on to the fact of okay, if you're talking about a comeback, what is a comeback? Yeah. In my view, you have to have fallen out of the public taste for one reason or another.

Speaker 2 I mean, I guess it could be scan. It could be scandal, or it could just be a matter of everybody's moved on into you

Speaker 1 indifference.

Speaker 2 Yeah, the greatest enemy in showbiz.

Speaker 2 And then

Speaker 2 somehow you come back. There's a couple of I've put in mine, which I probably will then say, oh, no, actually, I think they just used to be cult heroes and then they became mainstream.

Speaker 1 I'm just looking through mine, I think, because I wasn't aware that you were going to be the person defining all the terms.

Speaker 1 I think it'll be okay. But we will absolutely keep it.

Speaker 2 You're welcome to argue with me. I think you know that by now.

Speaker 1 Oh, do you know what? That's not a bad idea. I I should start doing that.

Speaker 2 Okay, what should we start with?

Speaker 1 Biggest ever movie comebacks, biggest ever actor comebacks.

Speaker 2 Okay, well, I'll talk about. You're not going to love this.
I'm going to talk about actors, but then I want to talk about a genre as well.

Speaker 2 And I know, but why am I not going to love that? Well, maybe you will,

Speaker 2 but you'll see that it doesn't quite fit in either category. But okay.

Speaker 1 Oh my god, that was, yeah, that I don't like.

Speaker 2 In terms of biggest ever, I would say I know lots of people think it was John Travolta because Travolta was a sort of, you know, big star and he had

Speaker 2 grease and Saturday Night Fever and all of those sort of things. And then suddenly he has this like abysmal 80s and he's a nothing.
He's a serious.

Speaker 1 He's look who's talking type things. He was the first name.
I mean those were at least hits.

Speaker 2 I mean there's some other really you know nothing happens at all and he's almost on TV movies.

Speaker 2 And then Quentin Tarantino kind of rescues him from taboo and puts him in pulp fiction, which has a number of taboos in it. And then he becomes sort of cool again.
So I get it.

Speaker 2 It would probably be in my top three.

Speaker 1 That was going to be that was

Speaker 1 he, I will say rather than that,

Speaker 1 um, he was going to be in my top three. I'm not doing the top three for movies because I know you're in charge of that.

Speaker 2 Um, Nicholas Cage, I feel like Nicholas Cage, you know, because he's become quite ironist and he's become a person who's like ironic about being Nicholas Cage now.

Speaker 2 I went back and I was thinking of the early stuff.

Speaker 2 I mean, if you're telling me he doesn't get the joke of Nicolas Cage, which I've always felt was his USP as an actor, he does even in like Raising Arizona. He certainly does.
in Moonstruck.

Speaker 2 So, and then with that's going back to you.

Speaker 1 And I'm not sure he had a super fallow period, did he?

Speaker 1 I don't think he already did. He was

Speaker 2 Mickey Rourke and Brendan Fraser, I'm sort of bracketing together because they both did that thing where

Speaker 2 they have completely fallen away from the public mood. And then Brendan Fraser gets extremely

Speaker 2 fat and wears a fat suit for a role for the whale. And Mickey Rourke for the wrestler gets staples and stuff at the staple car.

Speaker 2 But it didn't last. So they do have this amazing comeback and everyone's like, oh, they're on the awards circuit and they're nominated and in some cases win various awards.

Speaker 2 But then you're not like, oh, what's Brendan Fraser doing now? It's like, yeah, no, I think think he did the comeback and then he's gone.

Speaker 2 What is Brendan Fraser doing now?

Speaker 2 I don't know. Kay Hai Kwan, who was short round in Indiana.

Speaker 2 I know, that's a lovely story because he eventually sort of basically leaves Hollywood because he thinks there are just no roles for Asian actors.

Speaker 2 And then suddenly, like, crazy rich Asians happen, and he thinks, oh, hang on. I mean, I guess there is a vibe out there.

Speaker 2 And it's, in fact, Jeff Cohen, who's one of his goonies' co-stars, says, you've got really pushes him for everything everywhere all at once. And he comes back into Hollywood and he wins an Oscar.

Speaker 2 Yes, that is.

Speaker 1 That is quite a comeback.

Speaker 1 I didn't think about that at all. So I think I'm having him as my three.
Oh, he's number three.

Speaker 2 We don't know what I have to do with top threes of all them, but number two, I know everyone thinks Robert Downey Jr. because obviously he had this great career and then he kind of threw it all away.

Speaker 1 But he's not your number one. I am already

Speaker 1 so annoyed to be my number one aspect.

Speaker 2 No, really.

Speaker 2 Well, I don't want you to be because she's amazing

Speaker 2 and a complete monster.

Speaker 2 But yeah, but

Speaker 2 so Robert Downey Jr., he has this kind of complete, he falls apart with drugs.

Speaker 2 And anyway, he comes back and he has to be drug tested every day. Anyway, as we know, it goes on to become the greatest ever run of massive hits in Hollywood history.
So he's my number two.

Speaker 2 Number one,

Speaker 2 going back into Hollywood's past, is Joan Crawford. Now, let me tell you the story of Joan Crawford.
Joan Crawford was a star at MGM. MGM was the prestige studio.
It was beauty. Everyone.

Speaker 2 It was the most glamorous. When she was at her peak, there were like three mega stars, and it was her, Greta Garbo, and Norma Shearer.
She's huge. But then...

Speaker 1 That's which is now the lineup of the rest is football. Yeah.

Speaker 1 Is that right?

Speaker 2 Exactly.

Speaker 1 Exactly.

Speaker 2 God, I wonder which one she'd be.

Speaker 2 Not Gary.

Speaker 2 She becomes absolutely huge. But then she then starts her film Stop Making Money and

Speaker 2 she is the person described as box office poison. So she becomes that thing.

Speaker 2 She finally sort of basically is allowed to leave because they don't even want her anymore because stars back then were contracted then. It was really important.
You couldn't do anything else.

Speaker 2 You have to work for a studio and that was it. And she's not getting any good parts.
She goes to Warner Brothers,

Speaker 2 which are a much more scrappy studio, not in the top tier, but she, through absolute force of will, she is an incredible force of nature, like I said, complete monster.

Speaker 2 But she stars in Mildred Pierce and she gets the best actress, Oscar. So that is amazing.
But then it all falls away again.

Speaker 2 And over the whole of the, you know, most of the 50s, she is completely, she can't get arrested. And then she comes back in 1963.

Speaker 1 She doesn't double come back.

Speaker 2 Yeah, that's why I'm putting her in. With whatever happened to Baby Jane, with her and Betty Davis.

Speaker 2 And from then on, she passes into the, and she becomes an sort of iconic scream queen because she goes into sort of horror and thriller and things like that.

Speaker 2 And also, women got written off in such an extreme way in that, in that era, more even than now,

Speaker 2 by a long way. And through sheer force of will, and, you know, force of nature can be a euphemism, and certainly was in Joan Crawford's case, she pushes her way all the way back.

Speaker 2 So I think for me, she is the ultimate comeback machine in movies. Right, but I've got to say one more thing because

Speaker 2 this thing, a genre, the Western. The Western was the biggest thing ever in America, movies, as we know, for how long.

Speaker 2 And then the great thing they always say about Heavenscape Michael Gimino's like legendary flop is that it kind of murdered three things.

Speaker 2 It murdered the idea of the new Hollywood, all these directors being given kind of infinite powers.

Speaker 2 It murdered a studio, United Artist, which actually is collapsed by it, and it murdered the Western genre, like no one's going to make a Western after that.

Speaker 2 Not entirely true, because you do get certain ones and you get things like, I don't know, Unforgiven or Young Guns or like the Hateful Eight, and things come back, but you never really think

Speaker 2 this genre is kind of had its day. And yet, what are all Taylor Sheridan shows, if not Westerns?

Speaker 2 And it's a really big sense of itself, part of its sense of itself, that bit of America, the kind of Western ideals. So you've got Yellowstone, which is obviously explicitly basically a Western.

Speaker 2 But even shows like, you know, Landman, it's a kind of frontier land shows. It's a place where normal rules don't really apply.

Speaker 2 Even like Tulsa King, where it's set in a city, it's really very much a new Sheriff's in town. And so I think that that idea, that idea that like Westerns were dead, Westerns have never been bigger.

Speaker 2 They are the biggest shows on TV.

Speaker 1 It's a sensibility. Yeah.

Speaker 2 But Vartal Sheridan, I think that that,

Speaker 2 I would say that they're all, I mean, I think Landman is a Western. So I would say that genre that really seemed dead is not dead at all okay okay shall we move on to comeback singles

Speaker 1 which I always think is interesting the albums and stuff I think is boring but like a comeback single that that rescues an act from kind of from despair because that's what can happen with music you just release an absolute banger and everyone goes everything else is forgiven and forgotten that's it's the great thing about music is you can just do in three minutes

Speaker 1 you can absolutely transform your career I'll do a top three as well that my top two I've absolutely got in order. My third one is slightly trickier.

Speaker 1 I've gone with UK ones really because I find that much more interesting. And the three I've gone for, I remember early 90s,

Speaker 1 Blur had turned up and had done There's No Other Way and had sort of like a

Speaker 1 baggy dance top 10 hit. And suddenly there were all these guitar bands and Blur were absolutely in the dumper.
They'd had two or three singles that went to kind of number 34 or something like that.

Speaker 1 And they looked like they were going to be the also rans of the brit pop movement there's all these other bands starting up at the same time and you think oh those chances from chelmsford who did that sort of sight indie dance tune they're uh they're disappearing then i went i went to see them at the town and country club um don't go looking for it it's not there um in kentish town and they played girls and boys and you were like whoa what is the gap between that and there's no other way i mean not long

Speaker 1 but it seems like forever because they had so disappeared yeah yeah But you know, they had, as all bands do at the start of their career, you know, look at Radiohead with anyone can play guitar.

Speaker 1 You know, you think,

Speaker 1 what do we need to do? How do we have a hit? How do we become successful? They do that very quickly. And then a smart band like Radiohead or Blur goes, no, actually, who are we? What is it that we do?

Speaker 1 So they go away. They wrote the sweetest songs that became Park Life.
Girls and Boys comes out, gets to number five. A year later is Blur vs.
Oasis.

Speaker 1 And Blur are one of the two biggest bands in the country. But anyone who goes back and remembers that time, Blur were absolutely, they've been written off.

Speaker 1 And they came back because, well, firstly, they had that song Girls and Boys, which absolutely were introduced them to people. And then the Park Life album blew everybody away.

Speaker 1 So I was sort of thinking about them for number three. Then I was also thinking about Duran Duran, who really had absolutely disappeared from the scene.

Speaker 1 And you know, Duran Duran fans still love them, but they were seen as a you know, a band from the 80s, and they were seen as pretty boys and all that type of stuff. They then decide: you know what?

Speaker 1 Forget studios, forget expensive producers. We are going to go and sit in someone's living room and record some songs.

Speaker 1 And they came back with, I think it's the greatest comeback single of all time, Ordinary World.

Speaker 1 And even to this day, Weirdie, with all their hits, it always tops the poles of Drowned Round Fast's favourite songs.

Speaker 2 Because it's about being in the wilderness and, you know, or just having to just make your peace with not being.

Speaker 1 And it's also just brilliant. Yeah, it's a brilliant song.
And talking of people who are seen as boy bands, my other contender for the number three spot was Patience by Take That.

Speaker 1 Because again, you know, Robbie had gone. You know, the career, surely their career is over.
They come back with Patience. They follow it up with Shine.
So you're like,

Speaker 1 that's the way to come back. And they're still with us now because of that, because they went away.
They wrote a load of amazing songs.

Speaker 1 So back they come. So take any one of those as your number three.
Number two.

Speaker 1 This is six months after, I'm going to talk about share.

Speaker 2 I really wanted you because you said you were were going to talk about British people, and I was like, what?

Speaker 2 How are we not going to get it?

Speaker 1 No, of course I'm going to talk about Cher. Six months after, she has a number 23 hit in the UK charts with a cover version of I Got You, Babe, which is Cher with Beavis and Butthead.

Speaker 1 Oh my god.

Speaker 1 Rob Dickens at her record label is looking around for songs for her 22nd studio album. And there's a song that's been kicking around for a while called Believe.

Speaker 1 And lots of people like the chorus. They offered it to St.
Etienne. And and St.
Etienne said, no, everyone who's offered it said, I like the chorus, I don't really like the verses. That's fine.

Speaker 2 I didn't know they offered it to St. Etienne.
I can slightly imagine her doing it.

Speaker 1 Yeah, you could have it. In her own very distinctive way.
They do a good version. I think it'd probably be quite hard to do a bad version of Believe, the final version.

Speaker 1 So Rob Dickens then sends it out to some other songwriters, and they write completely new verses. And it goes to Cher, and Cher hears it, share, like everyone says, oh, I love the

Speaker 1 chorus. That's pretty good.
She said, you know, I like the first verse, but the second verse, this woman is still whining. So she goes, let me rewrite the second verse.

Speaker 1 She writes it as a much more positive thing. Doesn't get a writer's credit, by the way.
But even to this day, she said, oh, it's the biggest regret of my career. I should have just said.

Speaker 1 So she rewrites that. They go into a studio and do it.
Again,

Speaker 1 shares share, but she hasn't sort of had a huge hit for a very, very long time.

Speaker 2 She has actually, though, had one previous comeback.

Speaker 1 Absolutely. Absolutely right.

Speaker 2 Because there is a long period away between the whole Sonny and share business and her being up on the USS Missouri in a thong singing

Speaker 2 If I Could Turn Back Time.

Speaker 1 Listen, she's had many comebacks, share, but I'm talking about just

Speaker 1 she always will. She's probably having one as we speak.

Speaker 1 So she goes into the studio, they record this song. The producers do that

Speaker 1 vocal effect, which is, they said it was a vocoder. But it wasn't.
It was actually auto-tune, but they didn't want to admit that auto-tune existed at that point.

Speaker 1 So they were still saying, oh, no, this is, oh, oh that that's a that's a vocoder but auto tune actually has a share effect um button now so she goes in she records that song it is one of the 20 top-selling singles of all time absolutely relaunches share everywhere she doesn't have to do a follow-up to her um cover versions with beavers and butthead sold 11 million records believe by share and all for a song that saint etienne turned down and that they had to completely rewrite the whole thing.

Speaker 1 But that's why, you know, that's the thing about music. Again, just that little piece of bottled lightning.
Number one.

Speaker 2 I was going to say, what's number one then?

Speaker 1 Number one is a guy who was about to be dropped by his record label, a guy whom there was a huge amount of hype over and

Speaker 1 a huge amount of, okay, this is going to be our next huge worldwide star. Record company put a huge amount of money behind him.
Started off with a cover version of a George Michaels song,

Speaker 1 freedom it's robbie williams we're talking about he then releases three tracks off his uh first album so he released old before i die lazy days and south of the border none of these are huge hits and south of the border that's number 14 which back in those days might as well be number 108.

Speaker 1 yeah the record company is thinking oh my god we've have we backed the wrong horse here when when take that split up well should we have backed gary and everyone's thinking this is the end for robbie there's absolutely you know and also people are not sad about it because you know he does his Robbie's arrogance works when he's successful yeah when he was unsuccessful it looks like arrogance when when he's successful

Speaker 1 yeah exactly

Speaker 1 there's there's nothing worse than unsuccessful charisma yeah uh and which

Speaker 1 way he was going into charisma deficit at that point so the record company thinking oh my god what do we do here this was good this was our big big swing we were thinking this is a guy who if everything goes right if absolutely everything goes right, this guy could sell 50 million records.

Speaker 2 They want him to be. It's so explicit, the choice of that George Michael song, which is just like, hey, he used to be in a boy band, right?

Speaker 2 You remember, like, like what am, and then he becomes the most credible recording.

Speaker 1 You remember, like George Michael. Yeah.

Speaker 1 And so fourth singles off albums are generally not the best singles. You know, if you're Michael Jackson, you can get away with it.

Speaker 1 But if this is a failing album and you're releasing your fourth single, it's not great. So they release a single, it only gets to number four, but it's Angels.

Speaker 2 It never made any sense to me, that because I just still don't understand why you can't see that that's a massive track. I'm sorry, I would have not released the others beforehand.

Speaker 1 My view,

Speaker 1 and I do not have insider knowledge of it, is Robbie probably chose, he probably had the power to choose which songs that he wanted to release, and he probably felt that was a bit M-O-R.

Speaker 1 A little bit he wanted to go, no, I'm cool. Probably Freedom, he's thinking, he's aware that's a George Michael track.

Speaker 1 And he's thinking, come on, you know, I want to be my own artist. So he's releasing songs that he thinks are cool.
So he's doing Old Before I Die, Lazy Days, and South of the Border.

Speaker 1 South of the Border is a good song. So he's probably thinking, I don't really want to release that big ballad.
And they release that big ballad.

Speaker 2 And they're like, now you're up for us. Yeah.

Speaker 1 Never went to number one. But immediately the album goes to number one.
It'd been out for 27 weeks at that point and had not troubled the top of the charts.

Speaker 1 Suddenly it does trouble the top of the charts. And they do not sell 50 million records for this guy.
They sell over 80 million records off the back of Angels being a hit. And if it hadn't been a hit,

Speaker 1 absolutely he would have been dropped. So I think that is the biggest ever comeback single.
Okay. Agree, disagree? I think

Speaker 1 I don't know. Because

Speaker 1 Cher would have made it. I think Cher definitely would have come back at some point with something.
Oh, she's a survivor, Richard.

Speaker 2 Yeah, exactly.

Speaker 1 That's why I just thought Robbie just edged it.

Speaker 2 No, I think you're right. I think you're right.
I defer.

Speaker 1 Should we do some efforts? Then we'll get on to TV, books.

Speaker 1 I've got a little coder on comedy. Oh, yes, please.

Speaker 2 Okay, very good.

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Speaker 2 welcome back everybody marina television biggest ever comeback biggest ever comebacks okay i thought a lot about this and i'm good this person i'm sort of going to just use as an example of quite what happened to quite a few people but she was particular so at number three i would say

Speaker 2 paula abdol in american idol she was i was not expecting you to say the words paula abdul no but yeah but there's something about she obviously had a, it's weird because she obviously had a big music career, but she had completely fallen away.

Speaker 2 And the way Simon Cowell selected the judges for those shows, the way he saw something about her, and let's be honest, it was that she was slightly nuts, she was, but to sort of pull her back out of nowhere and give her that job and no one really knew what these judging shows were at all.

Speaker 2 And she, she, it became, obviously it became so completely massive. It was the number one show by far in America.

Speaker 2 And Paula Abdul, who who had just been on the scrap heap really, was suddenly bringing her particular brand of cray-cray.

Speaker 2 And because it, because also, you're taking her from one genre and putting her another and saying, anyone can do these things now.

Speaker 2 Anyone, and it was a time where you were just thinking, Oh, TV's totally different now, and reality TV, and all the things we know about like what makes a sort of good presenter, and all of those things were slightly going out of the window, and we were seeing a different thing.

Speaker 2 So, I'd say that was big. Now, you'll probably find this ridiculous, but sharing number two, yeah, I have

Speaker 2 a sharing position. Yeah, I don't think that's a good thing.

Speaker 1 Well, then number three is number four.

Speaker 2 Well, okay, fine.

Speaker 1 So Paul Larida is number four.

Speaker 2 Okay, Paul Larry's number four.

Speaker 1 Oh, my God, you're doing the top four. Yeah.
Okay, great.

Speaker 1 Sorry, is this the biggest ever list?

Speaker 2 Listen to me. It is.

Speaker 1 Is that what you say now, huh?

Speaker 1 Is that what you say?

Speaker 2 Larry Hagman, JR.

Speaker 1 Oh, great.

Speaker 2 Joan, in Dallas, and Joan Collins as Alexis Colby and Dincy. Really good.

Speaker 2 Because those things, okay, Larry Hagman had had had like I Dream of Genie, which was that, you know, one of those kind of, but it wasn't that big, it was not that big rating, but he was quite well-known.

Speaker 2 Like a big

Speaker 2 supernatural things, a bit like Bewitched or any, you know, a married image or anything like that.

Speaker 2 But he has a pretty, you know, non-existent 1970s until he is cast as

Speaker 2 J.R. Ewing in something that no one's sure is going to work at all.
And it's just, you know, and it obviously becomes absolutely massive. And he is the biggest thing in it.

Speaker 2 And the whole plotline about who shot him, it's very hard to explain to people who weren't there just how big those soap operas were.

Speaker 1 And who shot JR was in the middle of the day?

Speaker 2 Who shot JR was the most enormous thing.

Speaker 1 If you thought who voted for Joe Marla was a big one. Oh, yeah.

Speaker 2 Then who shot JR? It doesn't even come close. Yeah.
Okay, and the next one is Joan Collins because she started, I mean, she started as a, you know, with the ranked film organization.

Speaker 2 She started as a sort of starlit. And then even the 60s really are much of a desert.

Speaker 2 The 70s, there's this kind of idea that there are these new genres kind of struggling to be born the bonk busters and things like that so she's in the stud and the bitch and it's they're huge but then she goes absolutely stratospheric as Alexis Colby in Dynasty and she becomes such a huge international star she's but it is actually bigger the plot line of who shot JR is enormous but she is the biggest star and she really I mean that's a comeback an extraordinary comeback when you think of her being like a starlit in the 50s it really is absolutely enormous yeah and it's interesting some of these comebacks where there is always that seed of what they are to become in these massive comebacks.

Speaker 1 You know, so Joan Collins had all of that stuff in her. It just she had not had that amazing lightning rod to bring it all out in front of a new public.

Speaker 1 And, you know, when suddenly the right person gets the right role or releases the right song at the right time, then everything just blossoms.

Speaker 2 So it's like magic in a bottle. It's just something about it.
But now, as you can see, I've thought of my actual number one on the hoof.

Speaker 1 Oh, wow. This is the.

Speaker 2 My actual number one has to to be.

Speaker 2 I'm sorry, my actual number one has to be who had fiddled around and had done various television documentaries and was kind of a media star, but then it all falls apart.

Speaker 2 But then he comes back as the host of a US reality show that becomes the biggest reality show, which is called The Apprentice.

Speaker 2 And I'm sorry if you don't think that because of okay, that is surely the biggest. I realized while I was talking about Paula Abdul.
Oh my god, I know someone who's a bit bigger than Paula Abdul now.

Speaker 1 Not much.

Speaker 2 Right? So

Speaker 2 that has to be surely the biggest ever come back because nobody knew or cared. Like, kind of like an 80s personality and a big thing in the 80s, and then it all falls apart.

Speaker 2 And then to come back in the 2000s and be the biggest reality star of that era. I think actually bigger than Cal, although Cal was very, very big.
I think he'd have to be number two of that.

Speaker 2 And then, you know, he's gone on to do some other stuff too. So I have to put Donald Trump as my biggest ever TV comeback.

Speaker 1 Wow.

Speaker 2 I think, realistically. And I only realized it while I was talking.

Speaker 1 That's why you're Britain's greatest journalist.

Speaker 1 I'm going to talk about books.

Speaker 1 There are three very different types of comebacks here. The first one I'm going to talk about is Donna Tarte.
So I love Donna Tarte writes a book every 10 years. Yeah.
Oh my God.

Speaker 2 I've got to tell you.

Speaker 2 That's you. You'll be living your best life one day.

Speaker 1 No, because that's, I mean, what are you doing the rest of the time? I presume she does stuff.

Speaker 1 But it doesn't, I mean, that's that's like

Speaker 1 essentially she's writing a paragraph a day. Wow.
Wow. Anyway, so listen, they're good.
Yeah, yeah. Oh, I mean, listen.

Speaker 2 Nice paragraph.

Speaker 1 It's it's it's working, Donna. So Secret History comes out in 1992, one of the greatest novels of all time.
I think very, very, very hard. to follow that up.

Speaker 2 And a complete cultural vibe moment. Books opened in the 90s, like mega, mega, mega TV series open now.
Like, and then if they take off, everyone's talking about them. That's what 90s books was like.

Speaker 1 And that's a great book. Also, if you've got older teens as well, it's an absolutely great book for them to read.
I know

Speaker 1 it's sort of a museum piece now, but it's so beautifully written.

Speaker 1 It's a museum piece like Middlemarch is a museum piece, so, you know, it's great. So 10 years later, she brings out The Little Friend, which is sort of a disappointment, I would say.

Speaker 1 I think it wouldn't have been a disappointment if she bought it out two years later.

Speaker 1 But when it's 10 years later, and you're thinking, well, you've only done a paragraph a day for the last 10 years, so this is going to be spectacular. And it is slightly fallen off.

Speaker 1 So 10 years on from that, she brings out another novel. And that's at the point where people think, think, it's been 20 years now since The Secret History.
You've got to write a good one.

Speaker 1 And she writes The Goldfinch, which I think is better than The Secret History. So I think it's a wonderful book.
Some people disagree. I think it's an absolute masterpiece.

Speaker 1 So I think somebody who had started an absolute, you know, just,

Speaker 1 it's hard to start your literary career in a more spectacular way than The Secret History. 20 years later, the pressure on her for that.
And that could have been the end of everything, but no.

Speaker 1 The goldfitch I think I'm gonna put that number three greatest ever book comebacks number two I am gonna talk about one of the loveliest men in all of literature Mick Heron so Mick Heron in 2003 writes a book called Down Cemetery Road about a private investigator it doesn't really trouble the scorers he does a few more no one is buying these books and this is an incredibly familiar story for an awful lot of writers so people

Speaker 1 they're publishing more of them because people can read that he's great. You know, his publishers know that he's great.
So, he thinks, okay, and he works at Incomes Data Services.

Speaker 1 He's sub-editing the employment law brief.

Speaker 1 That is mixed-day job, all the way up to 2017, by the way.

Speaker 1 Probably our finest contemporary writer.

Speaker 1 So, 2010, he's thinks, okay, I'm going to move in a slightly different direction. I'm going to write like a spy type thing, but I want it to be funny.

Speaker 1 So, he writes Slow Horses, which of course now we know is this huge runaway hit, and everyone absolutely adores it. Writes Slow Horses.
Nobody really reads it. I mean, you can read it now.

Speaker 1 You'll see what a brilliant book it is.

Speaker 1 And he writes the follow-up to Slow Horses, which is called Dead Lions. And his publisher, Constable, reads it, says, sorry, Mick, not for us.
I'm afraid this is...

Speaker 1 It's not going to happen. You know, you've written these...
four books in the other series. Now we've got this, you know, we've seen Slow Horses.
We're giving you a go with that.

Speaker 1 It's just, it's not for us. So his agent takes it around to various other publishers, and they all go, well, it's sort of a follow-up to something that another publisher released.

Speaker 1 I don't know what we would really do with it. And also, it's, what is it? Is it a thriller? Is it funny? I mean, I don't really know what this is.

Speaker 1 The tone, Mick, with respect is absolutely all over the place. You know, I can't see a world in which people are going to love this.
So Mick returns back to his day job thinking, oh my God.

Speaker 1 An American publisher, Soho Press, says, we love slow horses.

Speaker 1 We will publish two more we will so they they said we will take dead lions and they'll also take real tigers which was um the next one and so he's still writing there's still money coming in but again there's not sales coming in 2015 john murray which is a different publisher because see that's the thing is

Speaker 1 all these books were brilliant yeah and anyone with a proper eye can see that they're brilliant and this is no shade on constable his publisher by the way it's you can't keep throwing money at something if you're not selling it so they could know it's good but they they think there's not a lot we can do john Murray says, look, we must be able to reissue these and do something with them because they're so great.

Speaker 1 Again, not really. You know, nothing was really happening.
2017, Waterstones pick Slow Horses as their thriller of the month.

Speaker 1 Now, this is a book that was written seven years ago and that no one really wanted to buy the follow-up from, but over the years, you know, enough people have liked it. They pick up that book, 2017.

Speaker 1 Suddenly,

Speaker 1 it becomes a hit.

Speaker 2 Does someone just read it and thinks, this is great. Everyone should know about this.
And because they have the power within the organization, they just say, please let it.

Speaker 1 Yeah. And the same thing, by the way, was happening in America.
Like NPR, the public radio, which is a big deal for books over there. One of their presenters had picked up Sohorses as well.

Speaker 1 I was like, everyone, you have got to buy this book and read this book. And there are lots of books, by the way, that don't have this.

Speaker 1 You need a little bit of fortune along the way as well. But the truth is, Mick was always an amazing writer.

Speaker 1 So everyone who picked up these books would have the same response, which is, sorry, why is everybody not reading

Speaker 2 and were there a couple? So there are a couple more by that point, so you can already get on into it.

Speaker 1 Exactly. So

Speaker 1 Mick's got all his back catalogue and you know, just continues writing, gives up his job, as I say, in 2017, which is the same year as that Waterstone is making the thriller of the month.

Speaker 1 And you go all the way back to 2003, that Down Cemetery Road. And that's now on Apple TV with Emma Thompson and Ruth Wilson playing the main parts.

Speaker 1 So Mick Heron, who also is just one of the nicest men you will ever meet, and one of the most talented men you'll ever meet. But how about that from a comeback from his publisher saying, I'm sorry.

Speaker 2 That was more than on the ropes. That's really on the floor.

Speaker 1 No more of these books to being one of the best-selling authors in the UK and America. But my number one in book comebacks is a character.
Oh, really?

Speaker 2 I thought you were going to say one day. Okay.

Speaker 1 Oh, I would be. Well, you tell me what you thought afterwards.
Okay. 1887.
Arthur Conan Doyle releases a study in Scarlet, the first Sherlock Holmes novel.

Speaker 1 Mere six years later, he's only written two novels, but lots of short stories as well. And the public has gone crazy for Sherlock Holmes.

Speaker 1 They love Sherlock Holmes, Strand magazine that it's published in. It's just, you know, it boosts their circulation by so much.

Speaker 1 Arthur Conan Doyle thought of himself, he only sort of dipped into detective fiction because it started becoming fashionable. He thought, I reckon I could do an English version of this.

Speaker 1 And so he's done these Sherlock Holmes things, but he saw himself as an historical novelist, really.

Speaker 1 He said that Sherlock Sherlock Holmes was sort of taking away from

Speaker 1 the real work of his life, which are these historical novels, which have been lost to time. And so six years after the very first appearance, Arthur Conador goes, I'm going to kill him off.

Speaker 1 So he kills him off in a short story called The Final Problem.

Speaker 1 He goes over the Reichenbach Falls with Andrew Scott, I think.

Speaker 1 You've spoiled the Reichenbach Falls.

Speaker 1 I can't believe you sport Andrew Scott. And refuses to write another one for 10 years, just won't do it.
And the Strand magazine says, we'll give you literally any money you want.

Speaker 1 He goes, no, I'm not going to do it.

Speaker 1 It's the first real example of fandom and all these groups that were around Sherlock Holmes who loved Sherlock Holmes and were incredibly angry that there was no more Sherlock Holmes.

Speaker 1 So 10 years later, he had genuinely had no desire ever to write another word of Sherlock Holmes. 10 years later, finally gives in and writes The Hound of the Baskervilles.

Speaker 1 And Sherlock Holmes is now the fictional character who's appeared on screen more than any other in the entirety of cultural history and for 10 years he had he was dead and then Arthur Conan Doyle for reasons best known to himself I imagine a tax bill

Speaker 2 thinks I'm gonna bring about so I think Sherlock Holmes has to be the greatest comeback in in literary history that is very okay I agree with you I agree with you the person I was going to mention wasn't a character and I think a character is much better was George R.

Speaker 2 R. Martin because he starts as a sort of science fiction and a horror writer to some extent and he has like some success and he does, you know, he makes it a career to some extent.

Speaker 2 But then he goes to Hollywood or to television and becomes a TV producer and TV writer and all of those things. And I think there's 12 or 13 years since he's published a book.

Speaker 2 And during that time, he's thought,

Speaker 2 I actually want to do something totally different. I don't think I'm, you know, I'm not really going to do science fiction to some extent, although there may be supernatural elements in it.

Speaker 2 And he comes back with a Game of Thrones. Yeah.
And I think that's pretty. Because he's almost, he's in another career by this point.

Speaker 2 So I think, but it's not the same.

Speaker 1 Yeah, it didn't quite fit my idea of a comeback in that way. I agree.
I didn't realise until recently that Game of Thrones is a pun on the.

Speaker 1 It's based on the Tom Daly knitting show on Channel 4, A Game of Wool. A Game of Wool, yeah.
Yeah, yeah.

Speaker 1 Which is so much better. It's based on that.

Speaker 2 A Game of Wool. It really works as a title.

Speaker 1 So I think George R. R.
Martin had obviously watched A Game of Wool. I thought, A Game of Wool, hold on a minute.
This is about thrones. A Game of Thrones?

Speaker 2 Okay, that's a good one. There's one.

Speaker 1 This is fun, by the way. I really like this.

Speaker 2 In terms of sort of biggest ever impact, these are the ones. Can I just give you a couple that I felt couldn't specifically fit into any of the

Speaker 1 category?

Speaker 2 Well, yeah, sort of.

Speaker 1 And then I'm going to mention one person.

Speaker 1 One person who I think has had the greatest comeback in British entertainment history. Okay, good.
That's where I'm heading.

Speaker 2 The ones that I was going to mention was I would say that when

Speaker 2 20th Century Fox buys Star Wars,

Speaker 2 they are in so much financial trouble that they are basically, people think they're going to fold. And this kind of weird space opera becomes...

Speaker 2 It's so enormous to that company that even in that money, it earns something like $100 million in the first few months. They are buying all forms of other companies.

Speaker 2 they essentially become a conglomerate because of this film and the share price go is absolutely tanking and it's down at six and it goes up to something like 25 within three months all because of this film so i would say that that is a kind of amazing story because that could have completely folded the other person i find absolutely fascinating in terms of like two halves is lucille ball because she because this is a huge television star and um obviously she and her life story is absolutely amazing there's some great books um about her but she kind of leads everything with I Love Lucy for as long as it's on television and she's married to Desi Arnaz Jr.

Speaker 2 and they have a company production company which ends up sort of producing her shows called Desi Lou and then they divorce and she buys him out of Desi Lou and she becomes a television producer and she is an extraordinarily adventurous and committed television eventually by the way Desi Lou is sold but um to Garfin Western and it becomes Paramount TV that it's built But can I tell you the shows that she personally said I think we should go ahead with these?

Speaker 2 A little show called Star Trek.

Speaker 2 She's the EP on all these, but they're all Desi Lou shows. Mission Impossible.
Wow. The Untouchables and

Speaker 2 all of these shows, which are huge kind of, I mean, you know, there's still IP that we talk about and that people endlessly remake. Star Trek particularly is such a weird punt and she takes it.

Speaker 2 It's more of a second act in some ways than a comeback, I suppose.

Speaker 2 But in terms of how difficult it was when her marriage ended, she had this company, and rather than sort of giving it up, she just revolutionizes her role within it.

Speaker 2 And instead of always being the star, she becomes this producer.

Speaker 1 I'm going to use this power that I've got.

Speaker 2 And I just think Lucille Ball is amazing, so I have to have her in my biggest ever comebacks just because.

Speaker 1 So, Star Wars and Lucille Ball.

Speaker 1 Yeah, yeah, okay.

Speaker 1 Tell me. Well, no, I was thinking about Bob Monkhouse firstly, because Bob Monkhouse,

Speaker 1 who was a comedian, obviously, an actor, joke writer, and had got into a sort of rut of hosting game shows. Yeah.
Bob's Fool House, all sorts of different things,

Speaker 1 which he was very good at, but he sort of became slightly wiped clean.

Speaker 1 He was doing a lot of them a day. He could do them very easily.

Speaker 1 You watch Bob's Fool House, and the first 14 minutes of him doing a monologue to a non-existent audience, literally to a floor manager and some camera operators.

Speaker 2 And so... What a pro.

Speaker 1 What a pro. But I think a generation grew up thinking that there was some smarm to Bob Monkhouse.
Yeah.

Speaker 1 And then in the late 90s, early 2000s, proper comics started to really look at what it was he was doing and started going, he's not what we think he is. This guy's really writing his own stuff.

Speaker 1 The stuff is great. There's some amazing material.

Speaker 2 And it's really odd and subversive in lots of different ways. But people just felt because of the game show Gwen and the Sue, oh, I know what I get.
But it wasn't at all.

Speaker 1 And he's got that real, you know, he's taken his look from, you know, American TV of the 60s and 70s,

Speaker 1 which is that very, very polished.

Speaker 1 So when you first look at him, people were turned off inside. But the comedy community worked out just in time, it turned out that actually this guy was one of the greats.

Speaker 1 And there's an amazing documentary you can watch called Bob Buncast, The Last Down from 2003, where he does a gig at the Albany Comedy Club, a small little gig, and invites an audience of young comics to come and watch him do this amazing set of just great, great, great jokes.

Speaker 1 And it's the last thing you'll ever see of him because he died a few months later of prostate cancer.

Speaker 1 And how lovely, though, that at least he had had that comeback, that he'd been turned from a figure of, you know, that was unfair to what it was, and the comedy community goes, no,

Speaker 1 this guy's a real deal. Anyway, so I was thinking about Bob Munkhouse, and that's a great comeback.
But I think

Speaker 1 I just want to do something that's very, very current. So I'm thinking about, it's 2013, I think.
We're on series seven, episode six of

Speaker 1 Would I Lie to You? And it's the first time I've ever done it. I love Would I Lie to You, so I'm on Would I Lie to You and I think it great.

Speaker 1 And it was also the first ever appearance of Bob Mortimer.

Speaker 1 And

Speaker 1 Bob,

Speaker 1 it's easy to forget that in 2013, so Vic and Bob have been absolutely massive, and Shooting Stars have been absolutely massive.

Speaker 1 And they'd done things like Randall and Hotcut deceased, and they'd done like Catarik, which is a crazy sitcom. So he was always around and about and doing things.

Speaker 1 But I think he was at the stage where vic had started doing his own things bob was sort of doing his own things he'd done his own panel show called 29 minutes of fame yeah on the bbc which hadn't really yeah yeah done anything vic and bob had teamed up again to do house of fools which is a another sitcom and he was in danger sort of floating through british culture that people liked

Speaker 1 he still loved but a legacy person exactly and you go oh

Speaker 1 vic and vic without bob and bob without vic is this yeah maybe maybe this isn't going to work and um Rachel Ablett, who's who's the producer, Would I Lie to You, says even that, she said, I remember talking to him and saying, you should come and do Would I Lie to You?

Speaker 1 And Bob said, I don't think I'll be very good.

Speaker 1 And he went on to did that. He said, since, this is the show that's had the most impact of anything I've ever done

Speaker 1 in my whole career. And from that moment, bit by bit by bit, I would argue that he is in 2025, our greatest entertainment national treasure.

Speaker 2 He's bigger than he's ever been.

Speaker 1 Bigger than he's ever been. His His appearances on that show are huge.
His appearances on Last One Laughing were absolutely massive.

Speaker 1 People are absolutely fuming that he hasn't been on Celebrity Traitors yet. His appearance on Taskmaster is absolutely huge.
His books are amazing. Everything he does

Speaker 1 exactly, White House and Mortimer Go Fishing, everything he does.

Speaker 2 As an author, as you say, is sensational.

Speaker 1 But in 2013... Genuinely, he's in one of those positions, and it happens to lots of stars, where they're like, I don't know the thing to do next.

Speaker 1 The British public don't quite know how to define me because people didn't know what it was that he could do and who he was.

Speaker 2 Turns out almost everything.

Speaker 1 Turns out, yeah, exactly. Everything.
You know, they were used to seeing him as something else. So I genuinely think that decision he made to do what I lied to.

Speaker 1 On that very first episode is the one where he says that he can tear an apple apart with his hands. No spoilers.
I wonder if he can.

Speaker 1 And from that moment on, I think that was the beginning of him becoming our current greatest national treasure.

Speaker 2 Biggest and most heartwarming ever come back.

Speaker 2 Yeah.

Speaker 2 There's not a single person in this nation who would begrudge him.

Speaker 1 Yeah. And the loveliest man.
Yeah. The loveliest man.
That was really, really good fun.

Speaker 2 That was great fun. I enjoyed that very much.

Speaker 2 Yeah. Yeah.

Speaker 1 Our biggest ever comebacks. If you have opinions on those, do please tell us as well.

Speaker 1 We'd love to hear you because we must have missed people out.

Speaker 2 I know I will have. For definite.

Speaker 1 For definite. But we should do more of this sort of.
It's a good subject. Yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly.
Not comebacks. We'll do something else.
Yeah.

Speaker 1 It's fun to do.

Speaker 1 It's fun to do lists every now and again. Yeah.
Yeah. Thank you so much for listening, everybody.
Don't forget we have a bonus episode tomorrow.

Speaker 1 If you want to sign up for ad-free listening and bonus episodes, it is therest as entertainment.com. It is.
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