The Rest Is Entertainment - Can Song Lyrics Get You Arrested?

Episode Date: August 19, 2026

Can a rap lyric lock you up? Why are there so many radio stations? What does Netflix’s deal with GTA 6 mean for the gaming industry? Marina Hyde and Richard Osman answer your questions on film villains, the use of lyrics as evidence and the Edinburgh Fringe. The Rest is Entertainment is brought to you by Octopus Energy, Britain's most awarded energy supplier. Sponsored by Lloyds. Looking for extra value from your spending? You can bank on Lloyds to help your money go further. Search Lloyds Rewards in your app. Summer sale is here: get an annual membership for a third off with code SUMMER26. That's ad-free listening, every bonus episode, and full access to our exclusive members' series. Sale ends August 31st, so grab it before summer's over. Sign up directly at therestisentertainment.com. For more Goalhanger Podcasts, head to www.goalhanger.com Video Editor: James Clayden Assistant Producer: Imee Marriott Senior Producer: Joey McCarthy Social Producer: Emma Jackson Exec Producer: Ami Bennett Filmed at www.westdigitalstudios.com Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

The rest is entertainment is presented by Octopus Energy. Now, show business is full of people who start out as one thing, but then take on some completely new role that completely eclipses it. And before we get on to how Octopus Energy has done that, a few examples. There are people who start out, you know, bands as singers, as actors. A good example would be Victoria Beckham. She started off in a band, Richard.

She was in a band called The Spice Girls. You're going to tell me next to David Beckham used to play football, before he became an advertising guy. They have earned far more from their second careers, these businesses they've built up, than they ever did in their first ones. So the idea that she's a singer that gets her through the door, gets her known, the culture knows who she is, she then thinks, I'm going to see if I can do something else,

and she has the audience who if she does it well goes along with her. But do you know what? It reminds me of a lot. Tell me. It reminds me of Octopus Energy, because Octopus Energy has also outgrown its own introduction. It's the UK's largest energy supplier, but it's now also one of the country's biggest installers of heat pumps,

solar panels and batteries. The list even reaches the driveway with a major electric car leasing business as well. Hello and welcome to this episode of the Restors Entertainment Questions and Answers Edition. I'm Marina Hi. And I'm Richard Osman. Hello, listeners. Hello Marina. Hello Richard. How are you? I'm very well. I'm going to be interviewing John Grisham next week. So if anyone has any questions for John Grisham, I think he's one of the greatest thriller writers of all times. So any questions about writing about his specific stuff, the amount of movie.

They've made of his stuff, what he spends all that money on. Anything you want, if you send that into the rest of entertainment at goalhanger.com, and I will put your questions to John Grisham. But, talking of questions... We have many. Can we begin with The Fringe, which is currently going on in Edinburgh? A question from Bonnie, who says, I'm an American. Don't worry about it.

And I've noticed that quite a few American comedians are going to be performing at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival this year. In a past episode, you explained how the fringe is no longer the place where you get discovered. for a TV panel show, and it's expensive. So why would American comedians be performing for a month in Edinburgh? What's the benefit to them? Well, funny enough, because, yeah, we did a couple of years ago. We said, you know, now this thing, the fringe is very expensive, and it's not getting the career moves you once got, and that was an issue.

But it wasn't an issue for long, because, you know, as always, creativity and art sort of self-corrects. And so now you get the situation in Edinburgh where you don't have to suddenly put up eight million posters and spend a load of money on marketing and publicity because you were only ever doing that for about four people anyway who were the four exec producers of those big panel shows. And now you don't have to. All you really have to do is do a great show. Edinburgh, if you go up this year, it's got far more like it used to. You know, there's far more people just doing good shows. I talked to David O'Dohadie, sort of, I would call him the king of the fringe.

He would not call himself that. But, you know, he said the whole point of going to the fringe, he said is 28 days of doing the same show, absolutely honing it. You're seeing exactly what audiences respond to, what they don't respond to, and in a place where there's an audience who really, really wants to come and see comedy, he said, and outside of you doing that show 28 times and making it better, you're seeing 20 other shows that are better than yours. And so every day you think, okay, I need to be better than this person. I need to absolutely raise my game.

And that's what the friend you always was. and David is saying, well, that's what it's becoming again, because these marketing costs are coming down. And so if you're an American comic, it's sort of exactly the same. It doesn't really cost you any more than a British comic company. All you've got is an airfare to put on top of everything else. You know, accommodation is still expensive for acts who are up on the fringe. But certain venues now, like the monkey barrel,

very, very good splits on the door for the money you're making. So for the first time, if you talk to comics this year, people are starting to make a bit of money at the fringe if they're coming along with a really, really good show. If you're a first time, it's still different. Of course, it's difficult. All these things are difficult. And sometimes it has to be a lost leader.

But the fringe seems to be recapturing a lot more of what it was and a lot more of its spirit. And again, it's that amazing thing. And we talk about it all the time with AI, with everything, is creative people will find a way. And if there's something about what you've grown, which at the Edinburgh fringe has grown for years and years and years, it will endure and comics want to be there, comments want to be with other comics, comics want to find someone where there is an audience for what it is they do.

And it is finally becoming a lot cheaper and it's becoming a lot cheaper because they're not having to worry about getting on the panel show circuit and because so many of them are already making money by doing their own videos. And so many of the making money on Instagram and TikTok and things like that,

there's a lot of shows up there at the moment with people who are very, very online. So I think it's a rare sort of, think of you know, sometimes they go, oh my God, there's salmon back in the Thames. You know, somehow we've cleared it up. Yeah. And it feels a bit like Edinburgh this year. It feels a bit like the salmon are returning to the Thames, which is great.

A couple of recommendations from David. In fact, the thing about David Doherty is he always knows who's next. You know, he's the first person in record Sam Campbell to me, Lolliata phopee, loads of people. He's always on it. Paddy Young, he said his show is great. And Patty is the guy who is on the weekend update desk on. SNL, so people will already know him. There's a lot of SNL alumni up there this year.

Bella Hull, one of the writers, also doing a show up there. Bodywood Spider-Man, he says it's terrific. Kate Dolan, he says it's terrific. But again, this is why I love the fringe, and this is why it will never die. He says the show that everyone is talking about, it's a guy called Olly Horn, and the show is simply called The Most Toast. And the entire show is, Ollie, by the end of the show, will work out which audience member has eaten the most toast in their life. And as so often with Edinburgh, when you go,

but that isn't a show and then you turn them and go, oh, it is a show. Yeah, it's a miraculous creative journey. I love these. There's some really good ones. It's exactly what you want, right? Consequently, quite bad asking you the next question. Oh, okay. Is this a, Natalie Craig, who says, what's the worst thing you've ever seen at the Edinburgh fringe? Oh, that's a bonus points if you were involved in it. Oh, well, that makes my answer much easier. Because when I was 16, there was at Lewis Technical College were doing a play of Dantan's Death, which is sort of a play set in the French Revolution and I was in it.

So I went up for three weeks. We did an old Masonic hall. And I was up in Edinburgh. I loved it. I went to see people like absolutely starting out like Alan Davis and people like that. You could just go and see their show. And then you're doing this awful, awful.

We had to stand by the door in the interval so people couldn't leave. That was absolutely terrible. Or person often. Sometimes it's just, Or just one. Well, I mean, it's certainly not the worst show I saw, but the show where I was in the smallest audience was myself and someone else who's now a very big TV producer, we're in an audience of two watching a New Zealand comic who absolutely gave it his all.

And, you know, it was, but, you know, it's sort of, you know, you do have to make eye contact. And that was Reese Darby, who became Murray and Flight of the Concourse. Oh, my God. But it's right, that was the only year that there was two people at his show. Yeah, he's never had that problem. And again, that's the great thing about the fringe. You turn up and there's two of you and you're watching something, but you go, oh, actually, he's actually quite good, this guy.

And then the next year you come back and everyone's watching the same guy. And that's the beauty of it. And I'm so glad talking to David and talking to a few other comments who are up there at the moment, that that spirit seems to be coming back to the fringe. I've said before, I used to go up every year with my kids as well from the kind of age of seven or eight onwards. There's amazing stuff. Probably the best show I ever saw was the amazing bubble man,

where, you know, he put my son inside a bubble. I have seen him. It was incredible. Yeah. I've heard only good things actually this year from people who are there at the moment. So I think it sounds great. It feels like, and again, I mean, testament to the people to put it together and testament to the comics themselves and testament to that industry, which is it's, you know, it keeps regenerated. And Edinburgh is a great place to take the temperature of it.

And at the moment, the temperature seems fine. I have a question for you from Emily Brampton and her son, Connor. Thank you, Connor. They ask, what are your top three movies where the villain wins? Loads of my most favourite movies of all time this happens in. And I've got to have some honourable mentions that don't make the top three. I suppose things like Miller's Crossing or The Godfather, they're films about villains. So some villains win against some other villains. So I think I probably can't classify that as this, but obviously there are incredible movies.

seven, that's an honorable mention for that. The usual suspects, this is hard to leave this one out. Yeah, usual suspects would be my number one. Yeah, because it's so clever. Okay, there are some spoilers here. I mean, I'm not going to say, but if you've not seen these movies then. So I would say that at number three, Silence of the Lambs, I know that a villain gets down with, but the master villain lives on and wins.

One flew over the cuckoo's nest. And it's interesting, both those two of the only three films ever to have won all four major Oscars, best picture, best director, best actor and best actress. And the other ones, it happened one night, which is a sort of screwball thing. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's interesting. So that's the way to do a clean sweep of the others to have a bid on win. It's interesting.

And my winner, which is actually one of the very, very, very few films for the title to be the last word of the movie, is Chinatown. Yes, I thought China Town That was in my head And I thought of me so quickly And I realised it's funny There's a movie I really recommend If you haven't seen it Because people don't talk about it so much anymore

But I absolutely love it Is Robert Waltman, the player And it's a Hollywood satire And it's huge influential And obviously there's lots of stuff From the studio That we watch now Is kind of derived from it

But there's a very funny bit Where Richard Iguant is pitching the movie That they eventually end up making And he's like And he's trying to explain that At the end like you know, effectively the villains win because that happens.

And then in the end, this is not how the movie that they eventually make ends because it has to end on and up and have like Julia Roberts and Bruce Willis in it. But actually, I realised how many of my all-time favourites the villains win in. Yeah, and fun of the Chinatown,

it's not really a spoiler. I think you're aware from the beginning that Jack Nicholson's character is very put upon and he's not going to have a hero's arc. Another case crack, Mr Gettys. Yes. Can I add one more, by the way, because I thought it was almost perfect top three,

but I'd add no country for old men as well. Yeah. And again, sometimes if you've got like an Uber villain, the whole point is they're kind of unstoppable and unbeatable and you want them to come back. Because that happens. Because that happens. A terrific question.

Thank you so much for that. Should we go to some adverts? Let's go to some ads. This episode is brought to you by Lloyd's rewards. Now, a big mistake that people make is leaving the cinema as soon as the credits roll, because there might be a bonus. scene right at the end.

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In Toronto, every arrival is a statement, and nothing says it better than this. Cadillac Optic was the number one selling luxury EV in Canada for 2025. Find your rhythm across a seamless 33-inch display and an immersive 19-speaker AKG surround audio system. This city demands agility, and Optic delivers with precision to make every drive extraordinary. Let's take the Cadillac. Find out more at Cadillac Canada.ca. Luxury sales claim based on S&P Global Mobility Canadian New Vehicle Total Registrations for calendar year 2025 for the Cadillac definition of Thank you. Welcome back, everybody. Marina, Oliver Ing has a question for you. I like Ing as a surname. There's a wonderful writer called Willing. I've always liked it. It's his real name, not even a stage name. Hello, Will, if you're listening. Oliver Ing says, what are your thoughts on Rockstar Games announcing an extended preview of their new game Grand Theft Auto 6 on Netflix? The trailer will be available on Netflix six hours before it's on YouTube. What is in this deal for Netflix? And is it a significant move for the games industry? Yes, this is interesting. This is happening.

next week, I think it's August the 27th. The game doesn't come out until November the 19th. It's been more than a decade since the last game. And, you know, we should say, and obviously we'll be talking about it more at the time, but this is definitely a claim to be the biggest entertainment release of this year, definitely, on an in-n-thage. Absolutely. And it's definitely a marketing first.

I mean, some people are really angry because, you know, the gaming community is so relaxed. But some people are really angry because they say, you know, it's a pay-werewage. wall. It's like, okay, well, it's a paywall for six hours because they're going to have this thing. Yes, it's a marketing first, as I say, it might signal a new era where publishers team up with the streamers. For GTA, it's for Rockstar and for Tate II who make the game, Netflix will have given a great deal for this. It's almost more interesting to me in terms of why are Netflix doing this? Because we've talked about it again, we talk about it all the time. What they want is appointment to view stuff. This is basically six hours of appointment

to view. They think that they will get a few subscriptions. Now we talk about churn and maybe some people will just buy for a month so that they can be online and be part of the conversation online the second it's come out. And they don't want to wait six hours until it's free on YouTube. They want to be talking about it straight away. So maybe people will pay for a month and maybe they'll say, wow, Netflix, this is interesting. Okay, I've never heard of much about this thing. Well, that's the thing. One of Netflix is growth areas or areas where it sees there could be some growth is games, right? They want to get into games. And at least...

And they do not have... They are real... It's like a meme, you know. All of the stuff, people really laugh at them for their gaming. I'm sorry to say. And that's something that they have to turn around. So if they've got these people for six hours, then perhaps they've got something that they want to advertise off the back of that

or something they want to drive people towards. So if they are spending, if they've got money coming out of their gaming marketing budget anyway, this feels like maybe this is the biggest bang for your buck that you're going to get because it's such a huge deal. They really want event television. really want appointment to view. They really want anything that might drive new subscriptions, and they do want to establish themselves in gaming.

So it makes massive sense for them. It will be interesting to see what it does if we get any figures back. And for Rockstar, they sort of can't really lose. There might be a little bit of upset from people, but, you know, that's good, keeps you a name out there. It's only six hours anyway. They collaborate with everybody in different ways. I mean, as I say, this is like one part of an absolute,

massive marketing campaign, so which we'll be talking about it when it happens because it will be huge. Well, I wonder, the interesting thing about the whole rock star thing is, as you say, it's been 10 years since the last game. And I wonder what the psychology is, and we will discuss it when it comes out. They made so much money, just money that you couldn't spend in a million lifetimes. And what that does to their through line of where they want to go next and stuff like that. I mean, I'm very, very excited about GTA 6. But it's like they're a prog rock band from the 1970s who made so much money in 1972 with a US number one album that they don't come up with another one until 1981. Who knows?

Let's see. Yeah, let's see. Oh, a question for you about illegal activities in songs. Charlotte Keir says, often songs include references to illicit activities, most often in revolving drugs. I was wondering whether artists need to be careful about what they include in their songs. Have the police ever investigated an artist based on their song lyrics? or do artists have a form of lyrical immunity? Lyrical immunity?

Hi, I'm just flashing my badge. Yes. I have lyrical immunity. Yeah. It's such an interesting question, and it's really, really come much more to the fore in the last kind of five or six years in the British courts because of drill music and the lyrics to that,

and there's a culture around kind of boasting about things. And so there's been lots of cases where lyrics have been brought into courts as evidence, and weirdly there's been a huge increase in the amount of appeal. against convictions that were based on those lyrics. So it's a really, really, really current issue in the British courts particularly. In the States, yeah, it's always happened. I think that the first time someone was convicted on the basis of lyrics was in 1991.

There was a guy who was, you know, being accused of being a dope dealer, and he said he wasn't, and the police found lyrics including the lines, I am the biggest dope dealer in town. If it's a personal use, I think you don't get prosecuted. But if you're the biggest, dope dealer in town. And those lyrics were ruled as proving motive and he was charged. Harder these days to do that, so we understand that sometimes you might say that you're the biggest drug dealer in town, but you might just say that because it's a lot of stuff. It's a good lyric,

exactly. Um, uh, 2017, the rapper Tay Kay recorded his song, The Race while he was on on the run from capital murder charges. Uh, and the song and the video, uh, essentially because the lyrics described in some detail, his flight, uh, has, uh, has, uh, and the song. and illegal activities she did during it. So that was counted as admissible. And that's mainly what... It's so hard to cover your tracks. I know.

You just say everything. And as I was talking to a British judge about this week, and she was saying it happens a lot, right? There are a lot of times where lyrics now, especially from trial music, are brought into court. She says almost always now they are inadmissible. She said it's very, very easy. Any defence counsel, if the prosecution brings...

lyrics into court. She said they were literally just say, I put it to you that Bob Marley did not actually shoot the sheriff. He said, and that's such an easy way of just saying, that you can say whatever you want in a song. It doesn't mean that you shot the sheriff. She says, however, if there is evidence anyway about particular times and places and people,

and those are referenced explicitly in a song. No names. Yeah, real names. Real names. Yeah, exactly. And the lyrics absolutely mirror the evidence that is placed in front of the court anyway, then it becomes admissible. It becomes extra evidence in court and you're more likely to be prosecuted.

If you are referencing something for which there is no other evidence whatsoever, then it is not admissible in court. So it's such an interesting world. So as I say, there's lots, especially in real music, lots and lots of stuff, which is pure bravado, but also there have been occasions where, real crimes have been referenced. But the court seems to understand the difference of those two. And I think maybe five or six years ago,

they didn't understand it quite so much. But these days, if you admit to it, and it's something that we have other evidence for as well, then it will be used against you. If you say something that there is no physical evidence for, there's no sort of phone mask evidence for, there's no kind of eye witness evidence for, then it will not be admissible.

Interesting, though, isn't it? Yeah, really interesting. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Good question. Thank you for that one. A question for you, Marina, from Brenda. Your mom's been on? I don't think it's my mum.

My mum would have a very different question. Yeah. My mom's question would be, why can't I find Morse on ICV4 anymore? That would be my mom's question. Brenda says, I have a question about the proliferation of BBC radio stations. As I write, there are four versions of Radio 1,

two versions of Radio 3 and 4, four versions of Radio 5, keep it simple, Brenda. And Radio 6 has just launched Indie Forever. At a time when the cash-strapped BBC is ending, much-love TV programs, this does not seem to make sense. Ah, right, yes. Well, radio station extensions have done very, very well, particularly actually for commercial radio. People really, really like them. Yeah, absolute 70s, 80s, 90s. Yeah, like they're targeted versions that feel like they're

tailored for them. So you might say, well, I love the master brand of absolute and I've just want the 70s version, whatever it is. So it's good for audiences and it's good for commercial radio and therefore just radio in general. And it's really been the story of the evolution of radio in sort of recent times because they've been able to do this. But they've managed to do this by launching on the internet, which costs nothing. Because they're sort of just playlists really. And it's quite cheap.

It's not like the days of trying to get FM capacity, which was very hard to come by and was expensive. There's now DAB, which has led to much more capacity for the commercial stations. who were, they used to be really annoyed because the BBC had tons of FM capacity and they didn't. But DAB, DAB, DAB is still limited. So what they've come up with is this thing called DAB plus, which is a way of getting more radio stations into the same amount of capacity. It sounds like my signature dance means. Yeah.

Okay, but not every DAB radio is a DAB plus radio. So we don't, and by the way, data in radio is so bad. We don't even know how many radios are Dab and Dab Plus. It's quite old-fashioned the way we do the data still in radio. The Rajar figures, that's sort of like radio listening figures. That is done still really by a sample of people who fill in listening diaries. So you're live radio listening for seven days. And it's supposed to be representative.

They do have an app that's sort of slightly passively detects radio exposure. But it's kind of been done the same way in quite a long time. It's very 1950s. It's nice to have something that's still very nice. in our modern media landscape. Yes. And the data is sort of interesting in the way that when they say a station has X amount of listeners, what they mean is the estimated number of people who listen for at least five consecutive minutes

to that station in a week. So if they say, you know, you've got four million listeners, you just know that they've... Four million people have listened to at least five minutes. Five minutes consecutive minutes. Yes. So the BBC has embraced DAB, but they have struggled with DAB plus and the extensions. Because they, remember, the BBC warned. their stations to be heard by as many people as possible. They want to be as inclusive as possible

and not say, or because you've got the old technology or whatever, we're sort of cutting you off. Commercial radio has always pushes back against the BBC and says you shouldn't be allowed to do these various extensions. And the BBC's always had mixed success. You have to go to Offcom for permission to do these things. And they've, because commercial radio is always objected. But the fact they're doing more now is sort of them just catching up with what commercial radio has been doing for a long time. It's very popular. It's not, you'll talk about the cash draft BBC and your question. It's very cheap. Yes, presumably you're using the infrastructure from Radio 1.

You're using capacity they already have. So you don't have to, it's a really good use of licence fee payers money. You're not really employing more people. You're just cutting the same thing. You're dicing it in different ways. And what you're trying to do, as always with BBC and with a license fee and everything in general, is trying to make sure there's something for everybody. And the more targeted, so targeted radio stations are a good way to do it. And then they're not remotely expensive.

And also by the, yeah, that's the reason they've worked so well for people. like absolute because it serves a bigger audience and it's not adding a huge amount to your bottom line because because the infrastructure is pretty much already there. And now you can do it digitally. It's so much easier and you can, and now they've even found this way of fitting more into less. And so it's not expensive and it's good for license fee payers. So don't worry. That's not why other shows are being cancelled. I mean, some of them have been. I agree. But yeah, and you could probably run one of those stations for, you know, one episode of one of the shows that has been cancelled because, you know, it is, it's using

stuff that is already there and already being paid for in a, in a, even, even less. I mean, it's really inexpensive. There you go, Brenda. Right. That about wraps us up. For our members, we have episode two of our Bond series, the whole story of how they came, Ian Fleming came to get his books on film. That is at the rest of entertainment.com.

Otherwise, we'll see you next Tuesday. Tuesday.