The Rest Is Entertainment - Bookshelves - The Nation Speaks

Episode Date: November 21, 2024

The inbox was aflame after last week's Q&A episode where Marina declared Richard a "psychopath" for the way he arranged his books. Today we'll get into your take on the matter. Who is right and who is wrong? And, how do you arrange yours? Did Rob Beckett really buy a Blankety Blank contestant a TV from his own pocket? Rob himself gives us the story. What winds journalists up most when they see a newspaper on-screen? Are nightclubs going to die?  You can send your questions to Marina and Richard at [e-mail]  *** A handful of tickets remain for The Rest Is Entertainment Live at the Royal Albert Hall on 4th December remain. Get them now at www.royalalberthall.com *** Join The Rest Is Entertainment Club for ad free listening and access to bonus episodes: www.therestisentertainment.com Sign up to our newsletter: www.therestisentertainment.com Twitter: @‌restisents Instagram: @‌restisentertainment YouTube: @‌therestisentertainment Email: [e-mail] Producer: Neil Fearn + Joey McCarthy Executive Producers: Tony Pastor + Jack Davenport Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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Hello and welcome to this episode of the Rest is Entertainment, questions and answers edition. I'm Marina Hyde. And I'm Richard Osmond. Hello Marina. Hello Richard, how are you? Yeah, I'm all right. We are going to be talking about Bookshelf Gate later on. Maybe we'll do that sort of in the second half of the show. Let's get some other questions out of the way first, but we are going to be...

Enter the bookcase of Siam with me, Richard, because I'm going to do battle with you. Well yeah, last week's episode was entitled, Is Richard a Psychopath? Because I hold my books by size and we're going to have an answer to the question, Is Richard a psychopath? I think. And whether somebody question is Richard a psychopath? I think. And whether somebody else might be a psychopath. I think we're going to have a different answer entirely, so see you for that later. Let us begin with a question from Steve Rich.

The BBC is very tight on advertising, says Steve, and you often hear presenters saying things like other crisps are available when someone mentions Pringles. How then does a show like Top Gear get away with it with what is essentially advertising various car brands similarly on Saturday Kitchen when they recommend wine? It's sort of quite simple, yeah. If you do, you're not allowed to make commercial references. So you know, you'll often see on shows, you know, people will talk about cooking with yeast extract or they'll talk about, you know, cooking with an Irish cream liqueur instead of Marmite and Baileys. And that's very, very traditional. You have to take those things out of scripts.

If on a comedy show or something like that, someone mentions Twix, you absolutely can get away with it by saying other chocolate bars are available. So as well as being just a sort of traditional joke form, other chocolate bars are available, actually it sort of works. I think probably legally it doesn't really have any standing, but by and large the lawyers led it through. With things like Top Gear and Saturday Kitchen, and also another way that you can get away with mentioning things is what you can't have is undue prominence. So if you do a show and you just talk about twicks the whole way through, for example, you would be chastised for it it the lawyers would say that you can't do this if Though you talk about Twix and you talk about 12 and you talk about drifter and you talk about Mars bar

Yeah, that's okay variety show exactly. You have a variety pack Yeah, if you will and there are celebrations in the lawyers office So if you mention other things and so that's how you know top gear of course every week They review cars every week They have different cars. And so they are not giving undue prominence to a particular brand. And it's a review show. It sounds ridiculous.

And it's a review show. So much more than a review show. So much more than that. And Saturday Kitchen as well. You know, if Olly Smith brings on a wine from Waitrose, you would sort of make sure across the series that next week's wine was from an independent retailer And then the week after it was from Morrison's and you just make sure that Undue prominence is not happening So when you do have to have products and you know Saturday kitchen that sort of review as well

You know you're recommending things you are allowed some leeway But you have to make sure across the series that no one is being represented more than anybody else And I do you know it drives especially in a comedy show, you know, you can't just, they could say, well, could you redo that joke, but say chocolate bar instead of Snickers. No, it's not funny. I absolutely can't. The specificity of it is so important. Exactly. It's specificity of brands. But, you know, God bless the BBC, it is hard for them because they are not allowed to. So if you can help them out by saying other chocolate bars are available or immediately talking about a Cadbury's cream egg, then you'll try and do that.

I have a question for you Marina and it is from Isabella Lloyd Webber. Firstly all of us Lloyd Webbers absolutely adore your podcast. I don't know if she's from the famous Lloyd Webber family. It is a hell of a flex if she's not. If she's just from like a, you know, just yeah, my mum Maen, my dad, Steve, Steve Lloyd Webber, we all love the podcast. Let's assume she's from the Lloyd Webber family. We discuss it on our family WhatsApp group weekly. Oh my God, that's going to go off this week, isn't it? It is going to kick off.

On the Lloyd Webber WhatsApp. Good as me. What do you think of the news? She has a question as well. Oh, right. And that's the end of that. She also has a question. Isabella asks, what do you think of the news that the Night Times Industries Association has predicted there will be no night clubs by 2029? Oh, that is such a good question. And it's so miserable, isn't it? If they close down the Starlet Express, I'm going to lose my mind. I'm sure you will. Now, one club is closing every two days, are they saying now?

I think there's a lot of reasons behind this. And some people would say, oh, people are drinking less, which I mean, not if you go out in central London anyway. It's a global issue. There's lots of different things. There's certain individual factors like safety and things have changed like that. Experience, culture, the rise of that, people willing to spend their money on that, but not other things. The biggest one, the pandemic, obviously that was a disaster. It created lots of people who don't necessarily, you know, made people

feel much more sort of homebound. At the same time as the capital costs of anyone who owned those big buildings and running those big buildings, some decided to call it a day and never got reopened. And they're changing into apartments because it's trying to address housing and what have you. I mean, it's interesting what type of nightclubs you're talking about Isabella and you're probably talking about all types of them because they're all under threat. The ones where the party itself was the focus and the dancing and all of that, you've got those huge places like, I don't know Studio 54, all those ones that-

Cinderella, Cinderella Rockefellers. Cinderella Rockefellers. Roxy's. Yes, all of those. Embargo. Embargo, God. Yeah. God, I'm thinking of experiences in all of these. Okay, not Studio 54, I should say, but I would have 100% ridden in on a white horse like Bianca Jagger, I think we all know. And I can say I definitely would have had a blue WKD at

Romford Embargos. There was one in Eastbourne called Tuxedo Junction, which I love as a name, but they then tried to make it cooler in the 90s called TJs, but I think everyone knew what was going on. Anyway, you've got a cool, okay, and then the kind of clubs that I used to love as a name, but they then tried to make it cooler in the 90s, called TJs, but I think everyone knew what was going on. Anyway, you've got a cool, and then the kind of clubs that I used to go to a lot, the ones that grew up out of rave culture, and what happened with all of those clubs to some extent was that they were a story business that you were, it was about the club and it was about the atmosphere and you know, people talked about them as substitute churches, as families, and I'm not, not just the big sort of dancing super clubs, all sorts of things. And people thought of them like that. But then they became a stars business. DJs became huge, you know, once you're hearing

that DJs are flying all the way around the world and going to different places, lots of local people were kind of priced out. I think that the modern problem with clubbing, let me tell you some stuff that killed clubs, right? Bottle service killed clubs. I hate bottle service in clubs. What's bottle service? When they bring a bottle to your table, right? And it's dickheads ordering like, oh, I'm going to order some champagne in a club. This was just not a thing. I mean, basically when you were growing up going to all those kind of big clubs, like say we go to Cream in Liverpool or like Gatecrusher or any of those ones, Club UK.

I've never seen you so animated. I feel like you're reliving your youth. Everyone's drinking water for obvious reasons, right? So bottle service is one of the things that... She's just making a drug reference. No, I am, no. Whoa. Well, I do think that's another thing that's killed it. To some extent, the drugs in use, and it's not everyone in the club is on drugs, but

whatever, at any one time, inform the type of experience. Just imagining the Lloyd Webber WhatsApp right now. Okay, well... Isabella, wow. No, no, no. What have you uncovered? What I'm saying is that there's actually a really great book about the music industry called Black Vinyl White Powder.

Yes. And it's by a guy called Simon Napier Bell. And his sort of thesis is that the music evolved in response to what kind of drugs were the kind of big prevalent ones at the time, which in some ways it's really obvious. And you know, when psychedelic drugs come in, the music obviously changes in a relatively obvious way. But there are other ways that are sort of less obvious. But it's an interesting thesis and know when psychedelic drugs come in the music obviously changes in relatively obvious way But there are other ways that are sort of less obvious But it's an interesting thesis and it's actually a great book about the music. And pump comes in with speed. Yes and all that sort of stuff Right now if you look at what's happened in football with cocaine use

It's like all the bad things have come for the fact that like coke is everywhere now and it's cheap and it's horrible And it's a different type of experience whereas ecstasy was this kind of great communal thing and that has changed a lot in clubs. Booths, that's called nightclubs. Booths? Yeah like little seating areas. I mean you don't need a seating area in a nightclub. Oh fuck, you know what, I'm not a nightclub guy but I would go if there was a booth. Well don't worry, there was one everywhere and then they're all closing right? So you've got like, they've had a broken economic model, they have appealed to the biggest dickheads in the world right, who want, there's now these hold rituals with drinks when someone orders champagne in a club. It's very performative

They've got a whole sort of thing and sometimes there are flares going up. It's all ridiculous Right, so they've optimized for the ultra high-end person and this is this is happening at Equinox in Kingston I'll tell you what else is is people are on their smartphones all the time So people are taken out of the common experience. So all of these things. And so it's cocaine plus COVID plus smartphones. Booze, bottle service is a big one. That's the 21st century right there.

Yeah. Look at what happened to Ibiza, okay? Ibiza was a really cool hippie island that had lots of fun things, these big super clubs, but it's now full of the worst people in the world and the biggest chisllers in the world. It's like the perfect marriage where they want to rip everybody off and people want to be ripped off because they're just taking pictures of themselves and it's all performative and it's all grim and there's no soul. So all of these broken economic models, what happened is that they priced local people

out because you were optimizing always for kind of- Like football. Yeah, like football. It's very, very similar. And you see so much of the sort of trial, I don't know, when you're thinking back to that Wembley final of the euros and all the troubles outside, that's people who can't get in and can't have tickets. And there's lots of drugs and washing that. Lots of things have, it's the economic model broke and they broke it themselves. Having said that, there are now lots of pubs with DJs. I am loving this so much.

Look, this is a big thing now that people are doing, which is that there are pubs and they start off as pubs in the evening, but they've got until a 3am license and they kind of become something different as the night goes on. And there are quite a few of these. I don't think that Nightlife will truly die because it can't because people want to be out there. If I walk into a pub and it says there's a DJ, I do that Grandpa Simpson meme. Right? I just go, no, do you know what?

I'm walking straight out. But often these pubs, it doesn't start that, you know, if you go in at 6.30, there isn't one, but by the time it gets to midnight, there is one. And there are places that are sort of adapting like that. Yeah. I really hope that if again, there's a sort of change in the type of drugs that people are using in the time. No, but it is, it's true.

You have to say it because it's a big part of the scene. Do you not think it is? I do. You know what? Clearly. Come on. Yeah, listen, I'm not a nightclub guy. You know, never have been, never will be.

But listen, I respect their right to exist. My main experience of nightclubs is my favourite Channel 4 show, Nightcoppers, set in Brighton, which is always fights in nightclubs and fights outside nightclubs and what have you. But yeah, listen, I guess they were ubiquitous. Then as you say, they got commodified. But yeah, those 80s nightclubs, you know, there's still one or two in every town, right? I'd love to know our listeners 80s, 90s nightclub names. Oh, please send us your provincial, can't be London. Yeah, not London. Or capital cities, no Manchester, no Glasgow.

It must be like Tuxley Day Junctions in Eastbourne. Yeah, what was Kettering's main nightclub in the 90s? I'd like to know. There you go, Isabella, got more than you bargained for there, didn't you? I didn't, sometimes they ask marine questions and I think, I don't know if she'll have an answer to this, but boy, does she have an answer for that. Oh, look, there's a really good question about blankety blank and prizes from David Ordis, who says he saw Rob Beckett on blankety blank.

He missed the main part. You know that Rob Beckett is literally next door right now. He's doing parenting hell with the, is it a question about Rob Beckett? Yes. Should we get it? Should we? In the next door studio. Should we see?

If they haven't started. Oh God what's really started in the middle of something Let's see. Can we send Joey who's going to get him? Oh, they haven't even started now Maybe we'll get him David if we get Rob in He comes Bobby Beckett's mouth. Here comes the horses Rob David orders has asked a question said I saw Rob Beckett on Blankety Blank. He's very good on that, isn't he, David? He missed the main prize for the contestant. You shocked me. But hold on a minute.

I'm quite going to Blankety Blank, but that was a tough one. So he bought the contestant a 75-inch TV out of his own pocket. Is that true? Yes, correct. Oh, that's a nice thing to do. Oh, that's lovely, Rob. And he's asking, do celebs often similarly cover those things? It's hard when you're on a show like that and you Yes, correct. Oh, that's a nice thing to do. Oh, that's lovely, Rob. And he's asking, does the slaves often similarly cover

those things? It's hard when you're on a show like that and you lose some of my money. Yeah, well, normally, like when you do it, it's not down to you exactly. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's like you're involved in a big thing and you've got, like normally a charity one

is you go on it, you raise money for charity. Yeah, for you, yeah, exactly. But this is actual punters. But this one, I got to the final one and this guy was like 75, 80 and they loved him. He had like a pink suit on, he was dancing and he was going like, and the prizes he won were terrible.

It was like podcast equipment. He didn't know what that was. And then it was, and then he, I think he won like sort of like the contents of a fridge or something mental like that. And then he went, I went to, he went to Bradley. All I wanted though, I just, I can't, the eyes are going, I can't see the telly and I love watching football and I can't see him play and I don't know who's who So, you know if I did win this money, I'd buy a telly and then and then he we lost and the mood in the room was

Horrific. Yeah said to him that I'll get you a telly. I'll get you a telly. I panicked Yeah You know obviously you get paid to go that show so I thought I'd just be a bit less that day or whatever. So I got my telly, but he's cheeky though because he said 75. When I went through it, it was 85. The eyes, his eyes are gone. But yeah, he was a lovely old man.

It was a good episode there. But I don't normally happen, but that was particularly heartstrings appalled. Rob, thank you so much. I know you're in the next room doing your podcast with Josh. That's fine, no worries. Love the show, keep it up. See you soon. Thanks Rob.

Bye. Oh, that's a heavy door. Thank you so much to Rob Beckett for that. Again, Isabella Lloyd-Weber got more than she expected and David Aldis gets more than he expected as well. It's interesting, we had the same thing. We did the only time I really remember it was doing Pointless Celebrities' Children in Need and Mark Foster was in the final round and he got down to one point and it was like five grand for Children in Need and it genuinely, as Rob just said, the mood

in the studio was so awful. So I said, I sort of looked over at Zander, I didn't really get his okay. I said, we'll cover that, we'll give you the five grand because you were so unlucky to get that. And after I said to Sandra, it was okay. She went, if you hadn't said it, I would have done. Heartstrings whupled, as Rob said. We're going to talk about bookshelves, but shall we have some adverts first? We'd better. This podcast is brought to you by Humber River Health Foundation.

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Welcome back everybody. Now, last week we had what began as an anodyne discussion about how you might order domestic bookshelves. And- You know what, it didn't even start as that. It started as a question about just bookshelves in the back of shop. Yeah, coffee table books. I'm afraid it quickly spiralled into something much less pleasant and it's been raging on social media and via email, in fact. So my system is by and large, I'll put big books altogether, smaller books altogether, which you thought was psychopathy of the highest order. People seem to have supported me.

We have a system at home which I believe is a form of gaslighting. However, unfortunately, I'm required to read a legal statement for my husband before we go any further. He would like to say, our books are arranged by genre, film, TV and music are separate but next to each other. Also in non-fiction, a sport, biography, history, politics, digital, philosophy, science, journalism, reference and travel. There's also a growing section of whimsical memoirs that needs a brutal pruning. What? In fiction, we divide novels after 1945 from before, which means they're roughly the same number of each. These are arranged alphabetically by order. Then there are plays and lousy poetry. We go with my

system and not Marina's because I bothered to have one. If we went with Marina's system all our books would be piled on either her desk or beside the bed in the order of whichever one she last took off the shelf and didn't put back. There is confusingly a separate shelf of Hollywood books that for some reason had to be moved into a different room for the rest of film. But you know, happy wife, happy life. Wow. Can I ask a question about your husband? Well, I have a number of questions about him, but the first one would be, does he run a water stones? So it sounds like it. I would like to say, Kieran, I'm very grateful for so many of the

things you do for me, and you'll be hearing this on your commute. Thanks for doing the tax return and all the stuff you did when I was in America for the podcast. But it will be a cold day in hell before I accept about half of that. Okay. It is a gaslighting system, Kieran. And unlike a lot of people who use that term, you and I have both seen the film. Okay. We know what is happening to the wife and that we know what is happening. Okay. And if you don't agree with any of this stuff, then you should start a podcast and argue back. Yeah, I like Kieran very much. He is-

We all do, Richard. We all do. He is, well, I would hope you do. He is very, very, very wider than Mark Keir. I mean, that is a lot of people, a lot of people have got involved. Can I just say that I actually, this is controversial. I do agree with Kieran's system, I don't agree that that is what's happening with that system in our house currently. You agree with that system? Yeah. You agree with splitting literature into pre-war and post-war for example? Yes. And that would be the system? Because you're thinking, what should I read? So do quite a number of university courses, but okay, yeah, no sure, no I do agree with things like that. So you would be aware at all times that something would be pre-war or post-war?

Your life very much is there's a schism in the middle of it. Well it looks like somebody doesn't know whether someone came before or after the war. Come on. That is quite something. I mean, but also that's quite a long time ago. So the post-war must be growing and growing and growing and that's my worry about it. Well, I read a lot of very old stuff and I'm not talking about stuff in the 1980s Richard. Wow, I mean, why don't you for example, why don't you, you know what, why don't you. I would love it. But the war seems like an unusual thing and also presumably you've been. The war seems like an unusual national event, I mean it did change quite

a lot of stuff. How long have you been using that system for would be one question. God, I mean a lot, decades? Decades, okay. So I think at some point you have to move that forward. The fulcrum event from, okay, so pre-911 and pre-the financial crisis. Well, let's say if you've done it for two decades, we'll move it forward and say that you have pre-the-first-slade album and post-the-first-slade album, just so you have equal numbers for each. Okay, I'll pass it on to Captain Gaslight and we'll see what he says. So anyway, people at home, they think that I'm not a psychopath and lots of people are

saying, of course you have to put books in order of height because sometimes you have unusual shaped shelves. Most of them. What? Most of them are saying I'm not a psychopath. Richard is not a psycho. Let's see the first thing here, Matthew Lee. My heart goes out to Marina's husband. My heart goes out to Marina's husband,

but it is foreign to me the notion you would organize books so they can be easily retrieved. That is almost as pathological as organizing books by color. Sorry, why would you not organize books so that they could be easily retrieved? Well, how big is your house? You all are rare silence. And I don't want that edited out in not even a second of it because that was about nine seconds. Okay. Why wouldn't you?

Right. How big is your house? What's that supposed to mean? How many shelves? How many yards of shelves have I got? I haven't got an Umberto Eco's library. Let's put it that way. If you live in a library, if you lived in an actual library for sure, then you have an

issue of, we need to make sure that these books are easily recoverable. Almost every single person in this world, possibly not the Lloyd Webbers, but everybody else, right, has houses where it's not like we've got 40 rooms. You think, oh my God, how am I going to find that book? Our books are sort of, they are where they are. It's not like we're going, where, I can't find it anywhere. What it's in one of the kind of five bookshelves you might have in various different rooms. You don't need some sort of, you're not the Smithsonian. Let's let some listeners do some more talking.

Max McEnity says, I'm now a proud member of the hide-hive. Marina's bookshelving system is the only correct one and the rest of you are indeed psychopaths. So the only correct one is to have alphabetically pre-war and post-war in terms of your fiction and then some other wishy-washy system I can work out. Stop talking about the war. Really, stop talking about the war. Stop talking about the war. You know it's quite important.

John B. Yeah, I do. Wow. That's what, you know what, you and Trump both, you want us to forget, don't you? John B. says, I must admit that until today's podcast Marina was very much my fantasy woman For perfect disappointment however her book filing system has shattered that illusion And I no longer wish to throw my hat into the ring should she decide to leave our husband see it is a form of gas I see the old wife trap See I think that most people do not have enough books to have a system that needs any sort of categorization

books to have a system that needs any sort of categorization other than, I mean, by and large you just want books to look nice on a shelf and look nice next to each other. And I just don't think most people need to retrieve their books in the way you're saying. Even if they did. I need to retrieve my books though. You know we had a discussion on Twitter with a guy who runs Bothers Bar, Brig Bother, who works at the University Library in Cambridge, which is the biggest library in Britain, and they organize things by size as well because it is the most efficient way to organise things. As I said, Tim Richard, when people need to find a book in that library,

they type something into a computer and they get the number of the stack and they have to go and find it. Okay, I'm not suggesting that anyone has a domestic stack, you know, with a computer where it tells you what shelf number you might find the book. And if you do, then we're all going to the Hague, right? Admit you would like that. Well, I would like that. No, I wouldn't. I'm not sitting down on a computer you might find the book. And if you do, then we're all going to the head. Admit you would like that. Well, I would like that. No, I wouldn't. I'm not sitting down at a computer. I like the system.

I can't believe it. Am I coming around to Ciaran's system? I'm just saying that the system doesn't work quite as well as he thinks it does. Listen, there are worse methods. Okay, here's a few. Sheila Russell, Sheila, God bless you and thanks for listening, but come on. She said, I used to sort all fiction alphabetically, but separating male and female authors. This was a big thing. Lots of people said this.

I was much criticized for this so I went to mixing them, but it hurt me to put Virginia Wolf next to P.G. Woodhouse. But I did it in the spirit of non-discrimination. However, I still have all my detective novels still separated by gender, so Richard is not next to Sarah Paretsky. Wow. That's quite something, isn't it? Gender divided. Gender divided was a really big thing and lots of people wrote in and said that they divided according to gender, which I thought was crazy. But I really like Rachel Marshall's one. This is her pre-marriage arrangement, by the way. They were organised by vibes,

or rather the mood of mine I'd want to be in to read them. And okay, here are our categories, challenging books, sad books, fun books, cosy books, favourite books, et cetera, okay, which I have to say I love. I quite like that. I've got a lot of time for it. I quite like it. A lot of time for it. This does not happen any longer because my husband used to be a bookseller and it was going to give him an aneurysm. Oh no, I don't mind that.

I don't mind that actually. I don't mind that. Size-based and vibes-based. A lot of people have sent pictures of colour-based, which I sort of get. I can kind of see it looks nice and if you have a certain type of personality, that's helpful. I just, I think yours is the worst of all worlds is that it's not simple and at the same time it's not, doesn't optimise space. I don't see that it has anything to commend it. The system is without merit. Well, take it up with the librarian. Now, there was one Andrea McCulloch wrote and she said, I only have 2% of my former library as I'm now in

a care home, but my oldest books, some from childhood are all close together. And she sent me a picture of her shelves and they're really, you know, it's like my family and other animals, Nella Last's War. Wow, that's such an amazing book. If you've never read that, that's absolutely brilliant. There's so many nice ones here. Okay, so she's got, I can get that, that she's got the childhood ones all together as a sort of... Andrea makes the best point of all there, I think, which is any of us who do even have to worry about how we organise our books are lucky to have all those books in our life, I think. And Andrea has 2% of hers left and she, you know, you narrow it down to the ones

that really mean something to you. But books are such a joy and such a beauty. If you want to do them by colour, you want to do them by size, you want to do them with Keira and Amorine, this ridiculous system. I think it's beautiful to live with books in your life. I just love that this has sparked beyond about 10 times more debate than literally anything else we've done, some of which have been quite controversial. People feel incredibly intense emotions about this, which I have really enjoyed. So in some ways, I'd like to shut the door on it now, because I think it's impossible to go past what Andrea says that. But if you have an even weirder system that you just think we'd like to hear about, then do tell us. Or if you live with somebody, perhaps

more importantly, who has an even weirder system, then do tell us. And that's bookshelves. We should do a podcast called And That's Bookshelves. If you have to rap on bookshelves it would be really controversial. Richard Alexa Wheeler would love to talk about coming up with names. I know you're a big fan of 70s sneaker players for coming up with names for characters in your book. She says, I'm currently reading We Solve Murders and have a question about how you name characters particularly in stories that take place more or less in our world so not including fantasy names. What's the thought process when you choose names

and make sure no one important already has them? Oh gosh there's two good questions. I love coming up with names and often when I get the name of a character I get the character and so you know Rosie Dantonio who's the novelist in this book that when I got the name I sort of knew where I was. So usually they just pop into my head. As you say, quite often I'll take 70s or 80s snooker players. I've used a lot of their surnames. But funny enough for We Solve Murders,

there's a character in that called Justin Scroggie, who is a sheriff. And he is named, quite often, you'll auction off the rights to have your name in a book. And people pay good money to have your name in a book. And I do- For charity. For charity, yeah, yes, exactly exactly it's just you know it's just another nice way exactly for charity and I did a crime festival would have been two years ago I

guess in Oxford and there were loads of crime writers there we had an evening and I was doing a speech and I thought I'm gonna auction off naming a character in my book because it was for access to education I thought this is a really lovely thing to do so I said well look got a character in my book because it was for access to education. I thought this was a really lovely thing to do. So I said, well, look, I've got a character in my book. I will name that character after somebody in this room. And bidding went up and it was lovely and it went up to about three grand or something. It was a really nice kind of, you know, someone bid. And the person who won was a guy called Justin Scroggie, which I thought, great, that is a name that I can use. Sometimes people win, and you're like, I just, Alan Smith, I don't know, maybe. So Justin Scroggie

wins this, I'm happy, and the charity is happy because they've made money. So we're just about to finish that off when Chris Brookmyre, the brilliant Scottish crime writer who I love, just said, you know what, I quite like that name. I was like, oh, and he said, no, I just finished a book and I do actually need a name I need. So he said, so why don't we bid against each other to win the name? So Justin Scroggie in the end doesn't have to pay anything because me and Chris Brookmire then start bidding against each other to win this name to put in our book. And I eventually, I outbidded Chris Brookmire. So Justin Scroggie is in my name, which he should have paid for, but I ended up paying for. And so, you know, Justin Scroggie is the name.

Can I ask, did you know that he was going to be the sheriff or did you think I'm going to use Justin Scroggie somewhere in this book? I had not really started writing at that point. I'd sketched things out. I knew who the main characters were, but yes, I didn't know my plot. But very, very early on I had this sheriff in South Carolina and I thought, come on, Justin Scroggie. I mean, that's what you'd be called, wouldn't it? But yeah, it's again, it's like certain people's bookshelves. It's very vibes based when you come up with names, but I love it. And when you've got a good one, it's very, very redolent. But yeah, quite often I'll auction off names in books.

So keep an eye out for it. But next time someone's going to pay me. I have a question for you, Marina from Laura Russell, who says when newspapers or news articles appear in TV or film, does someone have to write all the headlines and or articles that are visible? Or do they use real newspapers? Ah, very good question. Yes. They do write the headlines and journalists who love talking about their industry have a complete conniption any single time they see a headline on screen because it's all wrong. It doesn't sound like a headline. It's got that thing that Rupert Murdoch absolutely hates which is white space in it like if there's yeah I'm not paying you to put white space in my newspaper they're so badly laid out yeah this sort of thing enrages journalists

more than the fact that they're being portrayed as kind of venal alcoholic essentially petty criminal because that's true yeah but the headlines and the layouts are not accurate as they would appear. So people really care about that. But the headline will always be so on those. It'd be Bradford Man in jail for attack on local pensioner. Yeah. I think that's... It just wouldn't be that. So in general, they get very angry about that journalist when they see it. Oh God, there was a program, was it called Press? And it had Ben Chaplin and Priyanka Burford in it. And they it and she was a broadsheet

editor and he was a tabloid editor. Oh, how are they ever going to get along? Yeah, okay. But the entire show on Twitter at that time was just journalists saying it would never look like that. The headline doesn't look like that. The layout's all wrong. Why's everyone like, you know, oh my God, look at the story. So they get very annoyed about it. So someone has to write that, but it tends not to be journalists and they get very annoyed about it. The other thing is occasionally, like in that Beckham documentary, because I think they wanted to include the stories about the affair, but unfortunately all the affair headlines

were clearly not approved by executive producer of the Beckham documentary, David Beckham. So they created, I think, some, I'm sure they'd call them composites, so that they were able to quickly flash up things but it wasn't the actual headlines that had appeared. That's in a documentary setting so that's slightly different. But sometimes they don't even use the same font, which I don't understand. Presumably they can do, they're allowed to. Because by and large people who make props for television shows are unbelievable. Are meticulous.

They are just brilliant. and I've never understood even some of the highest class dramas when you'll see a front page or something. It just doesn't look like a front page and it obviously doesn't look like a front page. And it's not that hard to do, which a lot of journalists will be devastated. It's not actually some arcane sorcery. It is quite easy to do. So it's one of those things that takes people out of, particularly journalists, out of the action. But yes, in general, sometimes, however, I have to say what would be a wootie headline or a punning headline. I mean, not necessarily about a dead body, but you have to have... It's murder out there.

Yeah. Murder on the dance floor. You have to, well, mind you, you have to see the thing that occurred and it has to be done in quite an on-nose way so you can see it. But yes, the font, the right fonts would be great and not loads of white space off to one side, which just sort of stops halfway along the line. If a headline is two lines, it needs to be justified as they, you know, justified margins. If you've ever seen that front page, I think it's the Manchester Evening News where the

headline is two bodies found in Cheadle Hume. And then there's an advert that says the killers to play at Manchester Arena. And you're like, okay. I haven't seen that one. It's you know, there's a similar thing, but I forgive it in Only Murders in the Buildings. I love Only Murders in the Building, but their podcast is all over the place. What is it that they're putting out that people are listening to there? Agreed, but can I just say that every single show now, the B-Post, the B-Pot is like, oh, I don't know, they've got a podcast. Yes, it's always crime-siving podcasts.

Yeah, for instance, in that nobody wants this, everybody wanted it because it raised it very highly. The B-plot is they've got a podcast. It's now the B-plot in a whole load of shows. And I mean, I suppose that's... If you're a detective writer, then it is useful because people are investigating. And if you're writing police procedural, fine. But then there's a genre which is amateur detectives which can but why are they detecting podcast is sort of perfect in a way because yes they're amateurs but yes we understand why they're detecting and we understand that their job is to investigate and people understand it but there are so many of them now yeah

there's too many podcasts many too many on that note perhaps we better draw this one to a conclusion yeah not permanently. Not permanently, yeah. Although. Episode finale, not season finale or even series. Yes, let's do that, shall we? Looking forward to seeing all sorts of people at the Albert Hall on the 4th of December. That's going to be fun. And we've said before, if it goes well, we will go around the country. And if it doesn't go well, we will not go around the country. So apologies for that. And the other thing I will say is that we have just recorded some new episodes for the membership club and they are on, I've spent a lifetime, almost a lifetime preparing for

two on the event known as It's a Royal Knockout. Yeah and it's the podcast episodes themselves are both Royal Knockouts. I'll say that they are well worth listening to if you'd like to join the membership club. All the details at therestisentertainment.com where also you can put your questions for future episodes of the Q&A. Restisentertainmentatgmail.com. What did I say?

I just said restisentertainment.com. I'm so slapdash. That I believe is for the membership tier. So both addresses are relevant. Both addresses are relevant, okay. And on that postal term we will. Oh, by the way, so the addresses are relevant. Both addresses are relevant okay. And on that postal term we will. Oh by the way so the rest is entertainment.com is for anything to do with the rest of the entertainment which is pre-war and the rest is entertainment at gmail.com that's for anything post-war. Let it go. See you next Tuesday. See you next Tuesday. I'm a man of my own I'm a man of my own