The Rest Is Entertainment - Could You Be Suffering From Superhero Fatigue?

Episode Date: December 5, 2023

This week on The Rest Is Entertainment, Richard Osman and Marina Hyde ask if the Marvel franchise has finally met its match in audience superhero fatigue? Which of the Robbie Williams, David Beckham and Ronnie O'Sullivan documentaries come out on top, and the power the late Henry Kissinger wielded in Hollywood... plus how Richard broke Spice Girl Mel C's leg. Twitter: @restisents Email: [e-mail] Producer: Neil Fearn Executive Producers: Tony Pastor + Jack Davenport Recommendations; Watch Slow Horses Bobby Fingers on YouTube Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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Visit fidelity.ca slash all in one. Getting closer to your goals could start today. Commissions, fees and expenses may apply. Read the funds or ETFs prospectus before investing. Funds and ETFs are not guaranteed. Their values change and past performance may not be repeated. Hello and welcome to The Rest is Entertainment with me, Marina Hyde. And me, Richard Osman. Hello, Marina.

Hello, Richard. It's nice to be back. It's lovely to be back, isn't it? I didn't think we'd make a second show. It's incredible. I feel like I've won now, whatever happens. The podcast lottery. Lots of things to talk about today. You're going to be talking a little bit about what's up with Marvel. I'm going to talk a little bit about Robbie Williams, David Beckham and Ronnie O'Sullivan, those documentaries. What are we talking about third? Something I think people wouldn't think we're talking about. A little word about a recently deceased Henry Kissinger.

It may seem surreal that it's appearing in the entertainment podcast, but wear with us and it will become clear. Exactly that. And then lots of recommendations about what to watch, what to read, all sorts of things. And a little something from you, I hope, on what to do when your format hits an emergency. Yes, strictly this weekend, Nigel pulled out the worst possible time, if you know what I mean. And so I'm going to talk about format emergencies. Just a brief aperçu, and I'm going to talk about the worst format emergency I ever had, which involved Mel C.

Ooh, okay, looking forward to that. So we've got Henry Kissinger and Mel C coming up. They've worked together before, of course. Of course they have. Right, let's start with Marvel. Marvel is in quite a bit of trouble, which seems absolutely extraordinary in many ways because this is a cinematic universe

that basically launched in 2008. It's pulled in 33 billion, 40 billion in merchandise because let's not forget these things really need to shift plastic. That is a big part of their job. But today, as we're recording this on a Monday, today in New York, the trial for domestic violence starts of Jonathan Majors, who was slated, and then has been already unveiled and starred in one movie,

as their big villain for Phases 5 and Phases 6. Bear in mind, marvel talks about things in terms of five-year plans rather like some of the great monsters of the 20th century but i'm here for it i digress i digress so we started with phase one in 2008 we've been through the first four phases we're about to start phase we've we've technically started phase five did you did you notice at home we technically started phase five i should say at this point that the reason i've been fully immersed in marvel uh in the past couple of years is I'm writing on an HBO comedy, which is set behind the scenes on a superhero franchise movie. They have been masterminded really by one man,

a guy called Kevin Feige, who's the sort of president of Marvel Studios. They start in 2008. Bear in mind, they don't have very good superheroes. They have like second string. Now they seem like the biggest thing in the world, the Avengers. But at the time, you know, Thor, Iron Man. These are not Superman. They're not Batman. They actually do own Spider-Man, but they've licensed it to Sony. So they can't even use Spider-Man.

But what they do, I think what's so successful with Marvel films is that they've eliminated sort of endings. So you get a beginning and middle and then there's a new beginning. And each film begets another film and instead of putting out one film a year they were putting out three a year which fans felt like they had to watch in order to understand all the different plot lines and kind of interrelations and it's become this huge sort of sprawling thing which for a long time was unbelievably successful. Well these franchises have really taken over Hollywood. There has never

been a more successful, I mean, it's extraordinary, the universe that they've created. And there is a string of genuinely brilliant films as well. So it's not just they found some IP and they've sort of dressed actors up in costumes. They've made some brilliant films. Iron Man was a brilliant film. Iron Man 3, that's my favourite. There are some wonderful films and they go into comedy, they go into all sorts of different areas. So it's an extraordinary thing that they've created, which looked like it wasn't coming off the tracks, but you think now maybe the wheels are coming off.

I don't think the wheels are coming off, and obviously reports of their death are wildly exaggerated. They are still massively successful. But what they have got is a serious problem with what people are talking about a lot at the moment which is superhero fatigue and i know you say they've gone into comedy they've gone into these other genres i don't believe they have actually i'm rather less of an evangelist than you what they have is superhero movies everyone's saying i kevin feige sometimes says

you know we have all the genres we have a you know we have a female feminist legal drama i'm like is that she hulk you haven't you've got you've got a really bad superhero series that's on streaming. I haven't seen She-Hulk. Is She-Hulk a lawyer? I've seen things you wouldn't believe. I really have seen things. I've seen every episode of The Falcon and the Winter Soldier. So let me tell you, I am a completist.

However, as you rightly say, what is the star is the IP, is the brand. And fans have come back and back to the cinema for the brand. And one of the sort of, I think, upsetting things that that means is that people don't really go to the movies for movie stars anymore. You go to see the brand. You've, you know, as Marvel will show you, three guys can play Spider-Man even in one movie. You know, tell me, what is a Tom Holland movie, other than, I hate to say it, a bomb? If he's not wearing the suit, they don't do well. And, I mean, even the same with someone like Jennifer Lawrence,

who, when she's in a franchise, the movies perform very well, but otherwise, it's hit and miss, and it's more miss than hit. But isn't that good? Isn't that the producers and the writers making the hits rather than actors? Well, I don't know. That's what I've always dreamed of. I'm a romantic.

I want movie stars to open movies and i don't really want the sort of greatest actors of their generations to be stuck in these properties where they're kind of having to make these things do an awful lot of kind of heavy lifting and you have to say oh i'm you know we're exploring really interesting themes of i don't know colonialism or um anti-imperialism all this it's like are you really? I mean, I honestly feel I'm watching a superhero movie. And we used to have lots of films that did that. We had films that actually did that rather than did it wearing a cape. And now the problem is that there's nothing left.

There's no room for that. The mid-budget film has been killed by these things. Everyone feels they need a universe. And so obviously in the summer, you all saw mattel's barbie i mean that is a toy movie i personally really liked it and so did lots of other people but it is a toy movie greta gerwig was working for mattel mattel have some extraordinary other properties in that burgeoning universe lena dunham's polly pocket movie i know you're thinking that's a joke but it's actually real daniel kaluuya's umney the Purple Dinosaur movie.

No, come on. I'm not joking. Is this one of those ones where you give me three and one of them is true? I'm afraid they're all true, Richard. They're all true. And when they first announced that Barney the Purple Dinosaur movie, they said, yeah, it's going to be very surrealistic, quite dark, quite A24. Anyway, and of course, they have now course corrected

and they've said it will not be an odd movie. So just in case anyone thought they might be getting something quite dark and surrealistic with the Barney the Purple Dinosaur movie, they won't be. Oh phew, I worried it was going to be a bit Mike Lee. Genuinely, I will seed fund that. He may end up directing one of these things.

I'm joking of course, but actually young directors, that's the sad thing that has happened as well. They call it the Sundance to Spandex pipeline. And they get these really hot young directors. You've had some indie hits and they grab you at Sundance and say, we'd love to see your take on whatever property in the franchise they're being given. Of course, what they really mean is that they don't want to see your take at all. They want to use your indie cred and they want you to make an exact copy of other marvel movies you know and so someone like edgar wright who directed shauna the dead hot files all those sort of things actually had to exit and not

do ant-man anymore because they say they want an edgar wright movie but they don't they want a marvel movie he said he said he can't watch it as well so edgar was saying recently he said he thinks that possibly they're releasing these things too close to each other, which I think they are because they have so many different superheroes that if they release one Ant-Man every three years, they're also releasing an Iron Man, they're also releasing Avengers. So I think it's become like EastEnders. I think the storylines now are so convoluted that I worry I go into one and I think, oh, where's Dot Cotton? She's not here.

I don't even know who the Brannings are let alone the new cousin who's come along you've got no heritage and I think but I think it's like that I think it's slightly my son is encyclopedic so you know he will know absolutely he'll go Thanos is doing that because of what happened like five movies ago and what's going to happen in four movies time and like oh you mean like when dirty den came back from the dead when they put him in the canal uh so i think it's got too confusing and i think egger is right that they there's so many of them if you look at grand theft auto and the trailer just launched this week the trailer just launched this week and people went

insane and that's because it's been 10 years since the last Grand Theft Auto. That's made $30 billion, Grand Theft Auto. So they're doing all right for themselves and they're doing one every 10 years. Imagine if Marvel did that. That'd be amazing. They'd still make money. In the meantime, we could have lots of lovely indie films that really were about colonialism and about, you know, feminism in the legal industry. And, you know, every 10 years we go, oh, great. We get Robert Downey Jr. is back in his suit.

The question now is, where do they go? For people who say they plan everything meticulously, the Jonathan Majors trial that is happening today, which is obviously a pretty awful story, however it shakes down, there's also a report of domestic violence coming from the London police from while he was over here. And I cannot see a way back for him although they have not said that yet they've never been in these sort of territories before do they be cast it do they

replace it some people are saying with Dr Doom a much better character anyway they say the fans the fandom is another horse you have to ride the thing the thing I would do is it's my solution to anything in in Hollywood Paul Mescal Paul he's the answer is he let's hang him Paul Mescal. He's the answer, is he? Let's Kang him. Paul Mescal as Kang. Okay, that's a suggestion. Honestly, who's complaining? Well, I'll tell you what, the fans will complain because they complain about everything. It's quite a lot managing the fandom.

That's like Pointless. Whenever we change the rules on Pointless, people go crazy for a couple of weeks and then they're fine. If they introduce Paul Mescal as the co-host on Pointless, people for a couple of weeks will be like, oh no, and then they go, I really like him. Wow. You know what, I really like him. i really like him marvel stands versus pointless stands i this is a battle i would love to see there's a film yes it is i i wonder sort of in another way why they became so popular at the time they did i was looking back at the history of cosplay the other day and cosplay

comes up uh cosplay gets really big in j Japan right after the Japanese financial crisis in 1991. And people retreat. Obviously, there's been huge institutional failure. And young people retreat from a world of sort of uncertainty and, I guess, kind of structural failure into this kind of Manichaean world where things are good and evil and things are very simple. But it's also allied to a real aromanticism. And it's very sort of non-erotic, and it's very almost childlike and infantilized. And then I look back at when Iron Man was released and becomes this massive hit, and it's 2008, the global financial crisis in 2008. And I wonder if there's something similar that people have retreated into these quite simplistic worlds where someone is coming to save you in a world where we know that the institutions consistently fail us. Well, you know, the biggest franchise of all in the whole world,

by a mile, bigger than the MCU, bigger than Star Wars, bigger than any of that stuff, bigger than Call of Duty, biggest one in the whole world, by almost double, is Pokemon. You know, the Pokemon universe. And that's exactly what you're talking about. Did you know what I thought you were going to say? Oh, no, what? The Bible. Do you know what, Marina? It's interesting you're talking that, because I know a superhero. There are people trying to make the Bible

into a franchise. Oh, they'll go crazy. They're like, great, it's not even copyrighted. This is IP. So this is IP out there for the exploitation. I mean, there's a lot of money in that isn't there the Bible franchise I mean it could be huge there are those kind of quite far right Christian films

that do quite well that are sort of siloed off which we should do a deep dive on at some point really interesting the actors that are involved in those and they're kind of siloed off in a part of the world that you don't necessarily see if you perhaps like you and me are not interested in those particular things.

But they're really big business. I'm interested. You're interested in seeing what Kevin Sorbo's doing now, are you? Yeah, of course I am. Because I'm interested in what Christ is up to. Yeah, of course. And what the former star of Hercules is up to. Exactly that.

That is right in the centre of your Venn diagram in that case. I mean, literally, when I approached Goldhanger first, it was I wanted to do The Rest is Christ. And I want to do it with Kevin Sorbo. Yes, please. Can I ask one question, which is this? I always think that culture is a pendulum and you swing so far one way

and when you get to the very end of the pendulum, it swings back. Do you think it's possible, with production getting slightly cheaper, certainly with actors getting cheaper because the star system has broken down a bit, that we might be ushering in another golden age of Hollywood where we can start making mid-budget movies and lower budget movies and story movies? Do you think that Marvel, when it finally does fizzle out, will actually lead in to have a vacuum which will be filled with meaning and romanticism and

all of these things? God, I mean, I'd really love to think so. I think times are really tough for theatrical release. For movies that you actually see in cinema, times are really hard and very few things make money in cinema. Horror still makes money in cinema, which I kind of love, which is a really interesting story. Five Nights at Freddy's.

Yeah, I mean, it's extraordinary the amount of quite low-budget horror films that do make money in the cinema and are still out there kind of keeping the lights on uh family to some extent makes money and it can be very hit and hit and miss yeah i would love to see a return to sounds ridiculous 60 million dollar movies which um explore all sorts of interesting questions and which i mean the other funny thing about it is are they capable of winning winning awards? All movie studios want awards. And Kevin Feige was so happy when Black Panther got their Oscar nomination and maybe felt like, oh, now we're being taken seriously in all our movies.

But what else are you ever going to nominate? Black Panther was a good movie, but there are so many other ones that are complete draws and they're never going to get nominated. But then you have this completely absurd situation where the awards circuit is movies that no one goes and watches. I mean, these things fall off the screen. I was looking at the Oscar contenders this year and it was like, nope, nope, no, wow, no. I mean, I hadn't heard of any of them. If you were in a position where

you were about to make a film about a full pensioner solving crime, would you be confident or not confident about the box office? You know what it's based on one of my favorite entertainment properties richard the thursday mother of love so i'm pretty sure that the movie based on your book very much very much the pokemon of its day um so yeah marvel i honestly i think they've done brilliant things i think they've done some extraordinary things i think there's too much of them i have lost the thread and i'm hoping that at some point the huge amount of money that's gone into that can spread out amongst Hollywood and we can have another sort of five or 10 years

of just great movies again. Trickle down economics. Trickle down. When has it ever worked? But yes. When has it ever failed? Let's take a quick break. And when we're coming back,

we're talking about Ronnie, Robbie and Bex. fidelity.ca slash all-in-one. Getting closer to your goals could start today. Commissions, fees, and expenses may apply. Read the funds or ETFs prospectus before investing. Funds and ETFs are not guaranteed. Their values change and past performance may not be repeated. What day of the week do you look forward to most? Well, it should be Wednesday. Ahem, Wednesday. Why, you wonder? Whopper Wednesday, of course. When you can get a great deal on a whopper. Flame grilled and made your way, and you won't want to miss it. So make every Wednesday a whopper Wednesday, only at Burger King, where you rule. Best Western made booking our family beach vacation a breeze, and it felt a little like... life's a trip make the most of it at best western welcome back to the rest is entertainment uh i want to talk about three documentaries and i've

lumped them together because they're all about men three men who were born within 18 months of each other uh all working class lads all fit in a game of uh shag marry kill it would be shag shag shag with these three's I think and it's and it's the documentaries on Robbie Williams David Beckham and Ronnie O'Sullivan now you've seen all three I've seen all three I'm afraid there's an avoid in there for me. But that's good. Well, let's start with what I think will be your avoid, because I think it's creatively the most interesting, which is the Robbie Williams documentary. So Robbie Williams documentary, it's that classic thing now of it's all archive. But what we also have is this sort of goggle box thing, which now comes into everything, which is

Robbie Williams watching the archive himself. So the only footage we got is stuff that happened at the time. And we got Robbie talking about it. And people I think have found him quite solipsistic in it. And I think the reason for that is, he is able to comment on everything that happened, whereas nobody else is. I wondered if there was anyone left who would speak up for him. I really got that impression. Can I just say he also does this, commenting on the footage, he is sitting there in a vest and his pants in bed most of the time. He's pretty good on talking about his self-loathing but I think he's rather quiet on his self-love which I have to say shone quite heavily through for me. That's the problem I think. No one else gets a word in so there's various moments he breaks up with Guy Chambers who he

had this incredible songwriting partnership with and you watch them slightly fall apart and all you get is Robbie sort of it's it's quite unpleasant and you think oh my god they must absolutely hate each other and you look into it actually they started working together again but all it would take is for Guy Chambers to go yeah that was that was a difficult time for us so you have that he gets back with take that which to me is a very moving moment and they write the flood which is the greatest Robbie Williams song of all time probably the greatest Gary Bardo song of all time as well um big talk but it is I don't I listen I can't think of what would beat it so he gets back with them and you think this is very moving so a lot of the film is about how bitter he was left by leaving Tate that.

Suddenly you think, oh, this is lovely, the sort of therapy of getting back together with the boys. But because you just have him talking about it, he doesn't really talk about it a great deal, and you don't have Gary or Mark saying, do you know what, it was so lovely to have him back in, because all you're seeing is archive. But why don't you have that?

Is it that they won't turn out for him, or that he won't even give them one second of the airtime? Because the other two documentaries, which we won't get onto yet, but we are going to talk about, you can't move for people who want to talk about Ronnie O'Sullivan and you can't move for people who want to talk about David Beckham. And I was left feeling, as Robbie paced his various mansions, that he either didn't want them to speak or else they didn't really want much to either. I think it's a directorial choice and I think it's one that served him ill. So it's all going to be archive.

Great. We get that. But Robbie, you're going to be watching the archive. So that's the creative proposition there because the archive is brilliant. There's some great stuff of Robbie when he's very young. And you realise, by the way, how open he always was about his struggles. He's being interviewed by people he's literally telling them yeah he's telling them i'm i'm i'm well i'm ill i'm unhappy

like and they're going oh but could you say something about looking forward to the gig as well that stuff is really mesmerizing is it's like a kind of um like a sort of horror movie where someone is telling everyone and no one can hear them it's really it is really extraordinary and you go back and look and think gosh you know i probably watched some of those interviews on telly while they were happening yeah and you're going oh robbie always had a drink that one hasn't anything oh no he was you know he was he was clearly um suffering but that's the pitch and once you said that look it's just you watching this stuff so you know there will be other voices in it but you know it's like jerry hallowell is in it because there's lots of lovely home video of her guy chambers is in it but all through archive you

can't then say, oh, why don't we get Guy to do a piece to camera? Because that's not the style of the film. There's no space for that. There's also, interestingly, in the Robbie thing, he talks about a gig at Roundhay Park in Leeds, and he says this was the real low point, and this is where it all fell apart.

But he finds himself incapable of watching it. He said, I can't watch this. So they fast forward through it. So you are not ever told what happened. So all the way through this thing, which feels clever, which is it's just archive and Robbie's watching it, it stops the storytelling. You don't hear from his parents. You don't see his parents at any point.

Presumably there's no archive. And you think, I can't really get a full picture of you unless I know who they are and where they were at various points. I think there's a much better documentary to be made. I get why they made it that way. And it sounds great. But the real star, and she appears about three or four times, is Robbie's daughter, who comes in occasionally. Robbie's in his vest. That's looking so miserable. And his daughter comes in and is so delightful. What are you watching, Daddy? And he goes, I'm afraid I'm watching a real low point of my life. You're going to have to go into the other room.

She goes, oh, come on, can I watch? And he goes, no, you can watch when you're older. But at the moment, yeah, I'm afraid this is really bad for Daddy. And she gives him a big cuddle. And off she goes. And there's clearly love there. It's the only time in the whole film you see genuine love. And it's delightful to see.

But yeah, I think he's ill-served by the format of it. Whereas Beckham, he obviously had complete control over his documentary. love and it's delightful to see but yeah i think he's ill served by the format of it whereas beckham he obviously had complete control over his documentary and it is just brilliant well this is this is the one that's made by fisher stevens who some of our listeners may know better as he's a brilliant documentary maker but you may know him better as hugo from succession and it's really funny when i was like talking to some of the succession writers and one of the big questions they kept being asked when the final episode of the show was like, oh, my God, would you ever do a spinoff series? And for a joke, they were always like, yeah, only one with Hugo, though, because they all loved Hugo so much.

They love Fisher Stevens. He's a fantastic guy in real life. And he he is he is the maker of this documentary commissioned by its subject. Although Beckham now has a new uh he has a new brand manager he was with Simon Fuller for many years and he's got this guy called uh Jamie Salter who's got this big big company called Authentic Brands he's the one who's driven this particular project anyway carry on no I think but it's it's exactly that it's so prestige and as you say it's the exact opposite of Robbie in that everybody wants to talk about him you You know, every single person from the world of football, I mean, everybody wants to chat about him.

Every single story in it you know if you're a sports fan. You know that he scored from the halfway line for Man United. You know the stuff that happened with England. You know him going to America before he should have done. But it's so genuinely compelling to watch all that and watch him. So they have him watching, which is beautiful. But then they've got Gary Neville talking. Yeah.

And I think that's what Robbie needed. You know, he needed Jonathan Wilkes to come in and say something about him. What I find really fascinating about it is that after all this money and all these years and all the sort of dramas and scandals, they still love being famous and they really, really want to be famous and to stay famous, which is why they are doing this. And I find that there's something quite sort of unapologetic and very American about that. They're not they're not very English at all. They're not. But it's fascinating because Robbie is the same. Fame is killing him. But the second you see him, there's a brilliant bit where he goes to America.

So he's literally you see a whole load and he's like massive, like in Europe and in England and everybody loves him and it's upsetting him, right? It's too much for him, right? There's no privacy, you know, and then he goes to America where they don't know him and that absolutely kills him. People sometimes call LA rehab for famous people because everybody's famous. But he can't handle either of the bits. He has to be famous and he can't be famous. I mean, he must have expensive therapy, Robbie. Listen, Rudebox was not a great album, but sometimes we do stuff that's not great. But every single time he fails, it kills him.

And then he comes back and does The Flood with Gary Barlow and that to me would be, that's the end of the movie for me. Yes, that should have been. Like credits over the flood if we come on to ronnie o'sullivan which i suppose i'd have to say the waning of a sport because can you just give us a sense of how big snooker was in the 80s yeah yeah so snooker was snooker was enormous and had a sort of gradual decline and they brought back barry hearn about 10 15 years ago and actually it's sort of in rather rude health again because it's huge in China.

Yes. Okay, that's it. I mean, properly huge in China. Well, they're all going off to play exhibition matches, aren't they? All the time for a lot of money. And, you know, the big champ, I was watching the UK Championship this week because my wife Ingrid is off filming a serial killer drama for Sky.

So I had some snooker time. And the final of that was Ronnie against Ding Junhui. And that would have been a lot of people watching and the final of that was ronnie against ding to and we and that would have been a lot of people watching and a lot of money up for grabs so snooker i i think the the thought is oh it's had its day its heyday was a long time ago and you know it's disappeared and it sort of hasn't it did disappear and now it's um now it's back but poor ronnie who all he wants to do with is get out of snooker the money they keep bringing him back in because there's stuff for him. So that documentary, it's much lower budget than the other two.

The producer is David Beckham's Studio 99 company. There you go. Mogul. It all ties in. And again, there's a lot of Ronnie lying on his bed looking up at camera. But he's very, very open in a way the other two aren't. And Ronnie's always been open. And he the other two aren't and Ronnie's always been open and he talks about his father he went to prison for um murder he talks about his battles

with drugs he talks about his battles with authorities and because it's snooker which in one way feels very low stakes but in another way is sort of so exacting you know to to knock a snooker ball into a hole is almost impossible you're watching this stuff it is like is sort of so exacting you know to to knock a snooker ball into a hold is almost impossible you're watching this stuff it is like a sort of sacred geometry it is absolutely extraordinary you could stand up out of your seat just watching some of the clips in this yeah it's it's unbelievable i mean and it's interesting so steven hemdry saying i you know i think he's actually the greatest sportsman ever to have lived in any sport yes exactly i think steve it might be a bit much but yeah i hear you he's certainly good at snooker yeah i mean he's of all these three subjects he's

the only one who is the best to have ever done it absolutely at the top of a game and of a game where you you can't make robbie williams or david beckham money but you can make good money but snooker desperately needs ronnie of course and it's always i mean he's so you know it's like like blondie needs debbie harry it's like there is there is no snooker without um ronnie of course and it's always i mean he's so you know it's like like blondie needs debbie harry it's like there is there is no snooker without um ronnie and so they're so desperate for him to stay in the game and every tournament he just goes i think that might be it for me i think i'm done you know i'm so bored with it and then he goes and sees uh steve peters his psychologist uh and steve goes well maybe just maybe just sort of do one more ronnie and he goes oh i'll do one more and Ronnie. And he goes, oh, I'll do one more.

And he goes back in, and every year he's got a new, I'm just going to play for fun now. He says, oh, I'm just going to play to stop other people winning titles now. Oh, I'm just going to play because I'm bored. I just want something to do. And he's never, ever going to find peace with this game, ever. There was a moment at the end of the Ronnie documentary that might be one of the most tragic things I've ever seen in any documentary I mean

right at the very very end you just hear he's picked up on his mic talking to um uh his family and it's genuinely as a piece of television I love it because it's completely unvarnished I'm sure Ronnie had you know final approval on it but like he cares you know he couldn't bet when he saw it played back he just said, I think I better try and give up. I don't think this has made me happy at all. Seeing it set out like that. I know. The talking heads who were talking about him are Ronnie Wood and Damien Hirst.

OK. I don't know about duty of care. But again, they clearly adore him. This moment is so powerful. Absolutely no spoilers because you must watch the documentary. But it's such a mood, isn't it? You see him in these sort of in hotel ballrooms in klandudno or having his breakfast in these little seaside hotels where the piers are falling into the sea um on the phone to people

back home saying well if i get beat i'll come home otherwise i'm quite enjoying it here it's just me and the mobility scooters and he's you know it's a it's you sort of get the sense of a world slipping into the sea really i've i found it really elegiac in a lot of ways. And a documentary, whatever you do with a documentary, however much control you have over it, people will see who you are. And I think you see Robbie, Beckham, Anno, sort of in slightly different ways.

After this, I was again watching the final of the snooker last night. You can't watch him play and the expression on his face without thinking of that documentary and the stuff he talks about and the stuff he talks about during games. And it just makes him, it's like, you know, Drive to Survive has kind of made Formula One. I was going to say that a lot of these documentaries are because the streamers don't have sport. Obviously, Netflix doesn't have any sport, so they have to have quite a lot of sports adjacent content. And they've got Beckham, they've got Drive to Survive survive which we must talk about in more in full and on other occasion can

i pitch something to netflix right now please do um drive to survive but for darts huge i mean it would be insane i don't know why i haven't done it because every it's why are you doing this they green light anything i mean just there's a south park episode where it's just like a huge call center and it's netflix and it's just people pick up the phone go yeah that's a green light green light green so yes i'm sure you could get that green but that would be amazing and then you could you could probably get the right stuff i mean dance is huge again barry hearn barry hearn is a genius but i would just i would absolutely i would love to watch you know michael van gerwen at home or Or, you know, just these... The dance players, the backstories and the home stories

are always absolutely exceptional. Michael Bully Boy Smith. You know, I'd love to see... Best ever dance nickname was Mark Frost, whose nickname was Frosty the Throwman. But anyway, those three documentaries, I really recommend all three of them. They're genuinely...

You come out of them with an opinion but I think the person who you want to hold close to you after watching all three of them is Ronnie okay third item on this week's podcast and the most unusual is uh Henry Kissinger Henry Kissinger uh diplomat statesman and a number of other things besides has died aged 100 now Kissinger's an extraordinary figure. As a child in a classroom, he remembered hearing that Hitler had been elected chancellor in Germany. His family managed to flee and he rose to wielding immense power under Richard Nixon and Gerald Ford. Heard of him.

So he was a diplomatic and strategic mastermind, but he also embarked on a number of foreign policy gambits which were secretive bombing campaigns and many acts which were almost inarguably war crimes but we'll leave putting him into those perspectives to our colleagues on the west's politics all the rest is history because our businesses today i think is one of the other major drives of his life which was he was a huge star fucker wasn't he Richard yeah he really which which I didn't know about he loved celebrities and strangely given his political activities celebrities couldn't help loving him there's a sort of fantastic article in the Hollywood Reporter that came out after he died which

pulled together some of this I mean can I just take the listeners back to 1972? Oh, could you? You're like Alan Fluff Freeman. I am. The Godfather is about to come out, and Bob Evans, who is a big producer at Paramount, and actually his book, The Kid Stays in the Pitch, is one of the great Hollywood books.

Anyway, but US casualties in Vietnam have hit 60,000. Kissinger has prolonged and widened the war. But anyway, the Godfather's coming out and Marlon Brando pulls out of the premiere and Bob Evans thinks, I need a really big star. I tell you what, I will go to Henry Kissinger. Kissinger, by the way, had just been voted in a poll of Playboy bunnies, top of the list of men I would like to go out on a date with.

I mean. He is Nixon's national security advisor at the time. Anyway, and so Bob Evans gets him to come. Got lots of stars already at the premiere, like all the stars of The Godfather apart from Brando, Jack Nicholson, Ali McGraw, and Time magazine says the superstar was Henry Kissinger. So many people wanted to be seen talking to the president's national security advisor

that the curtain was delayed for 15 minutes at the godfather i mean he had affairs with jar Jar Gabor with Liv Ullman with all sorts of uh actresses there's there's a bit where they say you know he he liked an unknown actress is what he really liked i was reading he was uh he he dated a stuntwoman at Larder St Edmund and i thought i'm gonna have a look at her and she's amazing she was she was ballet dancing on Broadway at 12 went to Hollywood became a go-go dancer on a on a TV show in the 60s but Reynolds said to her you should become a stuntwoman she became the the highest paid stuntwoman in Hollywood she crash tested the first airbags oh my gosh yeah she made she got $25,000 payout because she broke both her ankles testing the first first airbags oh my gosh yeah she made she got 25 000 payout because she broke both her ankles testing the first ever airbags she's now 76 years old and she's a personal trainer so if

somebody if somebody should live to 100 i would say lana st edmund but yeah kissinger was was was was doinking everybody and i must say that even as late as i mean really i remember not so much longer than probably about 15 years ago covering the story when Angelina Jolie was invited to join the Council of Foreign Relations, which is an extremely sort of serious US think tank, foreign policy think tank, of which Henry Kissinger was obviously one of the leading lights. And he said, well, you see, I'm doing this, it's my only chance to get to meet Angelina Jolie. And it felt like the sort of blackest of satires, because you thought, I mean, what have they got in common? She's just adopted a Cambodian orphan and he's certainly created a few of them.

And I have to say that reading over some of the stuff that he did in his life, there's just no modern analogue of that. I just think of the idea that, you know, having a national security advisor, imagine sort of Christopher Nolan this summer ringing up Jake Sullivan, President Biden's national security advisor.

I really need you to sprinkle a little bit of stardust on my premiere. Well, there was, I mean, our version of it in the UK would be Lemba Opik and Gabriella from the Cheeky Girls. Sadly, sundered partnership now, of course. Yes, like many of his partnerships. Yeah, he's an interesting one. Including with the electorate, yes. Yeah, I saw he got kicked out of the Lib Dems, Lemba Opik. Oh my goodness, that's so hard.

That is really hard. That's really hard. Well, if I tell you what he did, he did a talk at the Conservative Party conference called How to Stop the Lib Dems. I mean, that would do it, right? That would do it. But yeah, we don't really have it.

David Lammy and Jim Sarpong. No. That's about as glamorous as we've got, isn't it? Kissinger, essentially, he sowed his oats across all of Hollywood in the 70s. He sort of borrowed the tools of the celebrities he rubbed up against to create in his post of politics life, he became a sort of unbelievable self publicist, and a controller and a sort of director of his own comms. I mean, I want to say the Taylor Swift of international diplomacy. He is the Taylor Swift. Before I say that, why don't we end this item?

Yeah, I think we'll leave it to the rest is politics and history to really contextualise him. But yeah, he famously said power is an aphrodisiac. The greatest aphrodisiac. Exactly. I didn't realise that was his hinge profile, but clearly it was. Henry Kissinger.

Of course, the other terribly sad death this week, Shane McGowan. Next week, we're going to talk about the race for Christmas number one, because I'm obsessed with that sort of thing. And we'll talk about Shane then. Recommendations this week. Well, firstly, Squid Game, the final episode is dropping this week.

We talked about it last week. Absolutely loved it. By the way, we talked about how wonderful Studio Lambert, the makers, are. It's also made by The Garden, John Hay and the gang there, who make 24 Hours in Police Custody, which might be the greatest television program ever made and that is back this week more people on grainy cameras saying no comment for an hour and a half which is but it's hypnotic i absolutely love it of all of those shows it's very much the best ones made by the garden um one thing i'm going to recommend this is a weird one last week we're talking about jeff bezos and i sent you this video there's an irish comedian and artist called bobby fingers

and he's done this is hot you've got to set up set aside half an hour he's done a half hour video about him making and sculpting a model of jeff bezos's face and then turning it into a boat and if that sounds barking it starts off barking it gets it gets weirder and weirder and weirder but it's so beautifully and elegantly made and so funny so if you google bobby fingers careful uh and it's a face made out of jeff bezos's boat that is my big recommendation for this week my big recommendation is it's back it is slow horses on apple and it's an absolute if you haven't caught this, it's absolutely brilliant. This is the third season.

Gary Oldman stars as Jackson Lamb, the sort of maestro of a band of down-at-heel and down-on-their-lark spies. Yes, all the spies who get sort of thrown out of the big shiny offices. Of the proper service. And they work in a place called Slough House. It is based on the books by Mick Herron and showrun by a great friend of mine who is absolutely brilliant,

Will Smith, former Veep. Not that Will Smith. Not that Will Smith. And I can't recommend it enough. It's such... Yeah, and the books as well. Mick Herron's books are absolutely terrific. But Yarmouth's So Horse is the show.

And start at season one if you haven't seen season one and work your way through. Oh, super quickly, I was going to do my format emergency. So Nigel Harmon pulled out strictly this week, and at the start of a series, it's fine, because you build in a little buffer in a series. You can get rid of two people one week,

or you can have a week where people don't leave. But right at the end, there's only five people left. So they've got a whole show. There's only five dancers in it. Now there's only four dancers in it. So they've got to fill about 12 minutes there. They've got a whole show there's only five dancers in it now there's only four dancers in it so they've got to fill about 12 minutes there they've got a result show on sunday which 10 minutes of which is the dance off and the voting stuff so they've got to fill that so i watched it they filled it very well you know scores are carrying over the next week but all the

way through i was thinking those poor producers and you could see that the vts were all extended by about 30 seconds each and the judges were talking a little bit longer than they normally were. And on the results show, you know, they were showing some stuff from It Takes Two from across the week. You don't normally show this, do you? And Craig's talking a lot more. But it's those things that sometimes if you're doing a live show that happen. The worst one that ever happened to me, we did a show called The Games for Channel 4. Yes, I remember this.

Oh my God, it was such fun. Which is celebrities doing sports. We did it live. We're up in Sheffield, which is where we filmed all that. And we would do, the female celebrities were doing judo on one particular day. Okay, listen, it was stupid. And we're doing the heats in the afternoon. And Mel C is fighting against Azra Akeen.

And I don't need to tell you that's Miss World. And they're doing the heats and we're live that evening. Anyway, Miss World throws Mel C. She breaks her leg. It was like harrowing. She's screaming. world and they're doing the heats and we're live that evening anyway miss world throws mel c she breaks her leg it was like harrowing she's screaming so all the other celebrities as gail porter there's josie darby all sorts of people were like oh no and they were going we're not going to go on this evening there's no way we're too that was that was too traumatic for us and you know so mel's off at hospital and blah blah blah uh and we think oh no what do we do here and we had a the series producer, a woman called Karen Smith,

who now runs a company called Tuesday's Child, who make all sorts of brilliant shows. Karen is absolutely no-nonsense. She says, let me go talk to them. So she goes off, comes back five minutes later, goes, yeah, everyone's fine to fight this evening. And we're like, wow, how did you do that? She never told us.

She's just one of those people who just went in and said, yeah, everyone's cool. And you wouldn't have known. But yeah was uh and mel c by the way who i've met many times since who was one of the most wonderful people you could meet and you know because it affected her for like a year she had to call off a tour and stuff like that but uh those moments where you think oh my goodness how are we with there was a few more on the games because that was live and it was uh all sorts of trouble but yeah miss world breaking mel c breaking Mel C's leg was one of the biggest ones for me. That's my Nigel Harmon.

Plunging the show into chaos in the parlance of the newspapers. Plunging the show into chaos. Yes, show bosses have revealed. Yeah, exactly. We've covered a lot today, haven't we? Marvel, Ronnie. Kissinger. Kissinger.

Mel C. It's been all good. Shall we do the same next week? I think we should and again at home if you're watching stuff if you're reading stuff stuff you love

do let us know and we'll see you next week bye bye