The Rest Is Entertainment - Has Strictly Saved Itself?

Episode Date: January 9, 2025

With Chris McCausland winning Strictly Come Dancing and the Xmas special being especially feel-good, has Strictly saved itself as the raft of upheld complaints and accusations that preceded the most recent series? Richard lets us know if it’s possible to appear on several quiz shows and what producers are looking for in contestants. Plus, was 2024 ‘the rise of celebrity surgery’ and will certain trends carry on into 2025? 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] Producers: Neil Fearn + Joey McCarthy Executive Producers: Tony Pastor + Jack Davenport Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

They are through with us From the director of The Greatest Showman Comes the most original musical ever I want to prove I can make it Prove to who? Everyone So, the story starts Better Man

Now playing in select theatres 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 Richard, now how are you? Yeah, I'm not too bad. You? I'm doing very well, thank you.

I'm doing very well. I've got a question that relates almost to things that have only relatively recently occurred. It's about strictly. We're going straight in, are we? Oh, no. No, listen, I get it. It's been a tough new year, all of that. I get it. Let's just go for it. This is the new me. I'm like super efficient. I've been in question training. As you see, there was a slight stumble in the intro, but otherwise I think I'm acing it.

Excellent. This is 2025 Marina. Yeah. She's a triple threat. She's a quadruple threat. So Strictly you say. Yeah. Sorry. I said I've got a question about Strictly. Would you mind answering it?

Oh, I'd love to. Tom Clark says, do you think the positivity of this year's Strictly has effectively put out the fire caused by the recent scandals? Oh, that's nice. That's like an opinion question, isn't it? Yes. I do. recent scandals. Oh, that's nice. That's like an opinion question, isn't it? I do, I think that the scandal was very, very short lived in the end and it didn't seem to catch fire.

And so I don't think it took a lot, but this year strictly did remind us of what it can be at its very best, I think. And you know, certainly Chris Winning gets you an awful lot of plus points. You know, it's a very beautiful piece of television. It's very, very life affirming, very, very heartwarming. They did actually have to pull off a perfect 10 version of Strictly and they 100% nailed it. But the thing is with Strictly is they often do. You know, there's so many finals. You know, it's not so long ago, Aileen Ellis was winning in an absolutely extraordinary way.

You know, something that they're very, very good at. But yeah, it's one of those things. Normally, if there's a crisis on a show, there will be story after story after story after story in the tabloids or, you know, in the broadsheets. And it didn't quite seem to happen with Strictly. There didn't seem to be that long tale of stories or problems that people were having. And I think that it was fairly quickly overshadowed by the excitement about the new series. I don't know, what's your take on that? I think the report drew a line under it to some, there was no sort of terrible smoking gun and I don't think that lots of, some things were upheld but most of it wasn't.

I think that took some of, a lot of the heat out of it actually. Yeah and there may well be more to come, it's the truth, because often these things can come out at unusual times. But I think that they seem to have weathered that storm. Certainly, I think they showed what can be great about Strictly. One hopes they will take the complaints very, very seriously. I think they would have taken so much of that on board.

I mean, as we once talked about on the show, there is a dissonance between people who have a professional dancers and have trained incredibly hard and often incredibly brutally their whole lives and people who are just sort of coming into it and who feel that you have to say you're on a happy journey and then sometimes it can feel slightly different certainly on down days and clearly there will be better processes in place for dealing with lots of that and for making

sure that everybody feels happy and supported. But it's definitely a question of has it put it to bed? No, because if something else comes up again it immediately gets reignited. But it certainly made people love Strictly again and if nothing else comes up again it will soon go into the bottom drawer I think. But if there are other smoking guns, then absolutely, they're not out of the woods, but it's at the moment they don't appear to be forthcoming. Marina, David Kenner has a question for you. There have been lots of obvious and drastic celebrity transformations recently. Lindsay Lohan, Christina Aguilera, Brad Pitt, Shania Twain, Kate Beckinsale, et cetera. How do these get planned and executed? Are celebrities allowed to make the decision to get a facelift and do it with their own

volition or are agents, publicists and managers involved? Good question David. I'm sure many of those above-mentioned names would say they have never done anything other than drink a lot of water. But the answer is that it's actually as old as the surgery that basically permits it. I mean, Marilyn Monroe, her agent told her to get her nose, and I think she had her chin done as well. Agents and managers have always suggested things

to clients and they don't even care. But I must say that stars themselves are perfectly insecure enough and feel that they have to do things that, you know, as we talked about on previous episodes, it's very difficult when your face is your fortune. It's very, very difficult to detach from not doing things. I think sometimes people, a lot of people do it and some people think it makes them less good at acting because they're just not

able to use their face in the same way. I mean, I often think with someone like Nicole Kidman, I mean, I wonder why the reason that she now constantly plays an ice queen with lots of secrets is that she has how to put this, she has acquired a face that hides emotion. She's got a resting ice queen face. Yeah. So it's difficult. It depends what type of actor you are. Equally, you get people. I never know. I mean, whoever organized the complete overhaul of Demi Moore, there was a point in her career where she did it and it completely revitalized her career. I mean,

now she's now starring in acts of, last year she starred in that sort of grim horror satar, really good actually, the substance about this sort of thing. But she, oh my goodness, she had a complete transformation. Finally, I once asked someone who knows where all these sort of people are and I said that who was the person who did that? It's amazing. I suppose someone American, he said, Oh, no, no, he's in Regent's Park now. I said, what's he doing in Regent's Park? And he said, Well, there's there is money in LA, but there's not proper money. The proper money is in London now. Oh, really?

I'm afraid that the proper money has taken flight in the last couple of years. In general, your agent might suggest things, and they do often, and they do suggest it. Even with young stars, I notice that that buckle fat removal, which is the removal beneath the cheeks, where, I mean, there are a lot of young stars in Hollywood who have done that. And I find it quite a lot, really very alarming and very sad. And they look very,

very gaunt and ill. I would like to think that the agent doesn't suggest it as a duty of care, but in general, historically, they might suggest, but most likely it will come as always, with all of us from the insecure person themselves. But it's become so utterly normalized in LA. I mean, it's not even a sort of dereliction of duty of care as an agent because you've grown up in that industry, in that town and that industry, and everyone's doing it all the time. So it would sort of seem like a completely normal thing to do. Yes, completely. And, you know, it could be planned. But if they go to somebody bad, that becomes a problem and you might need to send it to send them to the brilliant person in

who may no longer be in Regent's Park because the money isn't there anymore. But who will correct the bad work? Okay, Richard, shall we have some adverts? money isn't there anymore, but who will correct the bad work? Okay, Richard, shall we have some adverts? No, I don't think so. I don't think we should. I think we should we should push back. Oh, I'm being told sorry, I've got Gary Denneker telling me yes, we'll go to some adverts. Hi, everyone. It's Katie here from the rest is politics US Anthony Scaramucci and I want to tell you about our new series

that looks at one of the darkest days in modern American history, the Capitol riots of January the 6th. You know, four years have passed since Donald Trump supporters stormed the Capitol building and tried to overturn the 2020 election results. And Cady and I are going to explore the tensions and the personalities at the heart of that storm. Yeah, we're going to look at the whole story, starting off with, of course, the 2020 election result itself, Joe Biden's victory, Donald Trump's attempts to undermine that result right up until January the 6th and those horrifying scenes that all of us watched on television back then.

So don't miss it. Go and search The Rest Is Politics US wherever you get your podcast to hear just how Donald Trump tried to defy American democracy. And we've included a clip from the series for you to listen to at the end of this episode. Do what he says, Richard. Welcome back everybody. And there is a question that is only for you, Richard. Jack Lowe wants to know, if I wanted to appear on every game show in the UK, would this be permissible? Assuming recording schedules didn't clash, has anyone appeared on more than one game show and what did they win accumulatively?

When you are sort of the casting director for a quiz show, you're looking for all sorts of different things. Some personality, you're looking for, you know, if you're booking couples, you're looking for an interesting vibe between the two of them. You're looking for what their levels of general knowledge might be. You're not necessarily looking for the cleverest people. You're just looking for a mix. But one of the key things will be, they will ask you if you've been on other television shows. So you will always be asked the question. And if you lie, they'll sort of know because the casting people on these

shows all know each other. Can I ask, did they always do that? Or in the old days, did people manage to like squeak through? I mean, people do still squeak through. If you're launching a brand new quiz show, for example, if you've got a sort of big new sort of daytime quiz on BBC One and no one's ever heard of it, you're launching it, you were almost certainly gonna have a few people who've been on quiz shows before

because you can't be quite so picky. And you want to have people who are smart, you wanna have people who've been through this before. So if you want to get on a new quiz show, you can absolutely do it. And there's lots of examples of people who've done it. But by and large, if you've been on another quiz show, you will be at the bottom of the list when it comes to being on this quiz show, you try and have people who've not been on things before. There's a whole other world of quiz shows though, which is the university challenge, mastermind,

only connect side of things, where the idea is that you are almost a professional quizzer. The idea is that this is something that you are very, very good at, like a sport. And so if you have been on mastermind, it's absolutely not gonna stop you being on only connect. And if you've been on university challenge, it's not gonna stop you being on mastermind,

quite the opposite, you know, but those are different. Those are not sort of entertainmenty things. Those are who are the best quizzes, Mark Labette, who's the beast on the chase. He's been on University Challenge. He's been on Mastermind. He's been on Countdown, Countdown, another one, just, you know, it's not about getting new people, it's about getting the best, it's about getting the best people you can find. He's been on Grand Slam, which was sort of almost like

a World Cup of quiz show champions. He's been on Who Wants to Be a Millionaire, been on Only Connect. So he's been on all sorts of things. And the record that I can find is a maths teacher from Ripon called Cornelius O'Donovan. Oh my God, surely in your next book. Come on. Yeah, come on. He's appeared on 31 TV quizzes. Wow. Yeah. He won £12,500 Cornelius O'Donovan, including £1,000 from Two Tribes My Quiz. He is sadly no longer with us, Cornelius. So he's 31 is where he's going to end it, but that's an impressive run. So he

obviously found some clever way to beat the system. Natural charm I imagine. I love that stuff in Quiz, you know the James Graham thing about the millionaire scandal or that whole community of people who like try and get you what try to get people on millionaire. Yeah. And had this and they had that whole sort of, you really got a sense of the sort of quizzes underground community, some of which was just people just exchanging tips of how to get on these shows. And some of which seemed to be slightly more nefarious. And with Who Wants To Be A Millionaire, of course, there isn't a casting process. That's

the point of it. There's ways and means of qualifying. But any show like Pointless or The Chase or any of those shows where you apply to be on, you will go along for a day and do a rehearsal day and they will put you through your paces. But the absolute single thing that's at the top of the list is have you been on another quiz? If you've been on a smaller quiz that people don't really know, you'll probably be all right. But certainly if you've been on the chase, you probably wouldn't be on pointless and vice versa. So there are things in place. But that world of professional quizzing, the eggheads university challenge, only connect well, that is different. That's like saying, you know, Cole Palmer plays, you know, those guys are artists. Yeah, those guys are artists.

Exactly that. It's like sport. They're the best at what they do. So shows that need the best at what they do will look at those people. But yeah, you couldn't, I'm afraid, Jack. I'm so sorry. Marina, Simon Fiegrade has a question for you. For years I've wondered about and been irritated by film trailers being so similarly structured as it makes very different films seem very samey. I remember reading how there are agencies that make trailers and that they do indeed work from a template.

Why do filmmakers and studios accept this? And how happy is Richard that the Thirsty Murder Club film will undoubtedly fed into this trailer sausage machine? A bit of that question is for me, it seemed, at the end. It is some of it. Okay, well, Simon, basically trailers are advertising and you may love the idea that they're an art form, but they are very expensive to try and get into people's sight lines one way or the other. And so they need to be concise and they need to sell the product, which in this case is the film.

So conventions in those situations are really helpful. And we talked a bit about the trailer voiceover before, which has now sort of, I've noticed that that's sort of gone out of trailers now and you have these very quick cuts between things. That's a big part of not putting any spoilers in because people have become so, lots of trailers now, the sort of template that you're talking about, Simon, you see a lot of quick cuts between things. You think, I wonder how all this relates. And it kind of feels mysterious and like you might want to watch it but people are so fussy about spoilers now that they're not able to do trailers in the same way that they used to. You'd

often in the old days see a trailer and think yeah well I think I've seen the film now. People go nuts about that now and there's a huge online pushback about all of it so but first of all I should say that the person who is making the trailer is not the person who, as you say, who is making the film. Like in the case of Thursday Murder Club, Chris Columbus will not be directing the trailer for the Thursday Murder Club. Someone who's bread and butter is directing trailers does it. Martin Scorsese, I think is doing it. Yeah, I think. Yeah. Of course, Richard think, is doing it. Yeah, I think, yeah.

Of course Richard has got someone incredible, you know. But actually, and I know, I mean, I've had, I know directors who've said to me, I was so angry. You know, they took half, they basically took a really funny scene in my movie and they used half of it. So they kind of ruined my joke in the trailer. But they didn't care about that

because they are just advertising a product. and the studios use the same people, they use the same people to do voiceover. That's why they do get a bit of a look. But ultimately in the same way that we talk about how lots of those shows in the morning, in morning television, whatever, they have a very similar look and they tell you about what's coming up. It's because that template people are familiar with it and they know where they are and they tell you about what's coming up. It's because that template, people are familiar with it and they know where they are and they want to know where they are. I'm thinking of a trailer that I'm trying to think of a trailer I saw recently that didn't follow those rules.

Oh yeah, okay, I've got one. That film that didn't even end up getting a theater release in the end with Brad Pitt and George Clooney called Wolves. I saw the trainer of that in the cinema and I had, and that's with someone trying to be clever. I had genuinely no idea what genre of the film was what it was about anything at all I could see that there were two people who were dressed the same and they were George Colleen and Brad Pitt I think they were I maybe I

was supposed to laugh it wasn't at all clear to me whether it was a comedy or something blacker or it was so unclear and that's because whoever did that thought they were being really really clever and they should have sent it to the normal slice and dice house where they'd done a trailer and then I would have had some clue. One of the first uses of AI in movies when people were talking about AI and we didn't think of it as a sort of malevolent thing that or a worrying thing now, 20th Century Fox had an AI program that used to tell them what audience would most like to see a particular

film based on its trailer to help them with what trailers of their own movies to screen before that film. It was so like, yeah. So they used to do that. I am a big fan of trailers where you know what you're getting. And I'm sorry if that's a boring advert and Simon, then I think it's better than me sitting there thinking, what on earth is this film about, of Wolf's? I'm not gonna say, as it turned out,

even the releases thought we can't put this in theaters, but I didn't know what it was at all. And you need to know. It is a product, you are just being sold something. As I say, a 30 second spot is so expensive. And also you haven't got time to make the trailer if you're the director. They're asking you for shots for the trailer. And there are now several stages of trailer for all movies. They'll have the teaser trailer,

and then you'll see what the fan reaction is. And then it'll be retooled and you'll have the next one. So it's really someone's full-time job to do all this. And they need to follow conventions. And in terms of Thursday Motor Club, yeah, I couldn't agree more is the truth. A 30 second unbelievably snappily cut trailer, which can be seen everywhere is such an incredible advert, not just for the film, but from my perspective for the book as well. And you find when books come out as movies, it's the trailer that really

shifts extra copies much more than the film itself. movies, it's the trailer that really shifts extra copies much more than the film itself. So yeah, I don't want an esoteric kind of just like a fox hiding behind a bush and like a whisper on the wind. For pensioners solving a murder. Yeah. As I had no idea what the Brad Pitt and George Clooney film was about. If we don't realize that by the end of that trailer, then we've got a problem. Fan reaction, and I'm going to be part of it, will push back and they will have to do a new trailer.

Yeah, exactly. When we realise conventionally what the movie is about. Yeah, if it doesn't have Helen Mirren saying something cool, then send it back. Then I'll be in the YouTube comments. Thank you so much for all your questions. Do please keep sending them in to therestisentertainment at gmail.com and other than that I think we will see you next Tuesday. See you next Tuesday everyone. As promised, here's a clip from the Rest is Politics US mini-series. Trump is naturally a conspiracy theorist fueler. He will fuel the fire of any conspiracy theory because he's always seen himself as an outsider

and he wants to foment the people from the outside to attack the people from the inside. So he's developing these ideas that he eventually uses in January, on the 6th of January. And the ideas are there's misinformation out there. There's lies out there. Let's use these lies as fodder to attack the people on the inside. He's doing it with COVID. I think hydroxychloroquine works. You may remember this.

I took hydroxychloroquine. Mr. President, you took hydroxychloroquine? Yeah You may remember this. I took hydroxychloroquine. Mr. President, you took hydroxychloroquine? Yeah, yeah, I'm on it. I took it. And this is the beginnings. This is the kernels of what's about to come. And it all starts with COVID. And it leads up to this insurrection, or as the president says, a very peaceful group of tourists descending upon the Capitol building. If you want to hear the rest of the show, go and search The Rest Is Politics US wherever you get your podcasts.