The Rest Is Entertainment - Have We Found The New Kardashians?

Episode Date: September 7, 2026

Who are the new Kardashians? Can internet stars save The Grand Tour? And is Anna Wintour’s reign over high fashion finally coming to an end? Netflix wanted TikTok sensation Alix Earle and her family to be the next Keeping Up With the Kardashians, but their new show falls flat. Why can't traditional formats keep up with online stars? Amazon has launched its Grand Tour reboot with three fresh faces taking up the mantle from Hammond, Clarkson and May. Why is hiring ‘unknowns’ a return to form for Top Gear? Anna Wintour is in hot water for her support of controversial designer John Galliano, who has cancelled a major exhibit at the Met due to bitter backlash. Is this the end for the ice queen of fashion? 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. For more Goalhanger Podcasts, head to ⁠www.goalhanger.com ⁠ Video Editor: Louis Mealing & Lorcan Moullier 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, entertainment loves keeping business in the family. Yeah, it's no secret that that's traditionally been an easier route, perhaps, into show businesses. It's not necessarily the only way to get into the business. However, there are lots and lots of examples where it really has worked for people. The Coppola's stretch out beyond film, into music. Nicholas Cage, though, changed his surname from Coppola. He's Francisville's nephew, and he changed his surname just so that he could just be Nicholas

But one assumes that in LA they didn't know that he was a copular. He stands alone for me. I always think Stedarskaard is an interesting one because lots of his children became very, very famous and he always calls himself a nepo dad because as his children got more and more famous, people started to come to him more for roles. That's a nice way around. So entertainment has some remarkable family machinery, but however useful the surname, it isn't always the only way in. No, Octopus Energy, for example, didn't inherit his place in the energy industry. It's proudly independent and one way it does things differently is having each customer's account looked after by the same small team of around 10 energy specialists. They know exactly who you are.

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 luxury. Hello and welcome to this episode of the Restis Entertainment with me Marina Hyde. And me, Richard Asman. Hi, everyone.

Hello, Richard. How are you? Yeah, not about well. It's Monday morning and we did the Restis Fest at the Southpect Centre over the weekend. Yes. And we weekended together essentially. We weekended. And our live show, I loved. brilliant. So did I. Thank you to everyone who came along. Most especially to our amazing guest. If you ever want to see a showbiz guest that sings for their supper, Joe Marla was peerless.

He's just amazing. He's amazing. He was absolutely fantastic. My favorite thing was when he turned out and he's obviously he's wearing his t-shirt and his shorts and his slides. And then they were saying, before we get you into makeup, Joe, will you, when do you want to change before or after? It's like, sorry, change. What? If anything. You don't know me very well. He was amazing. I see we're in all the papers. We did a joke about the release date of celebrity traitors.

And they've said, they've accidentally let it slip, which we didn't because we don't know when the release date of celebrity traitors. And I don't even think it is then, by the way. So I don't believe an embargo has been broken. But anyway. So if you have read anything there, we don't know. No, we don't know. And it doesn't feel like that would be the date. I don't think it would be either.

Yeah. Anyway. It will be in October, it's my view, but what do I know? But last night we had to shepherd the Restis Fest quiz where it was like the rest is politics US versus the rest is. classified versus the rest is football. That, I would say, was chaotic. You did an unbelievable job. I've hosted a few quizzes in my time. Was that? Yeah. That was intense. I felt, yeah, I felt like a primary school teacher. Anyway, what are we talking about this week? We are talking about the sort of eternal race to be the new Kardashians. And Alex Earle, who we've talked about before on this

podcast, is sort of somebody who came to prominence on TikTok and is a big influencer, she's got a big new show in which she and her family are attempting to do just that and we'll discuss TV families how they work. The runners and riders. We're also going to talk about the new grand tour came out this week, which is essentially top gear by any other name. And I want to talk about how I think they nailed certain things and about succession, you know, how you pick new hosts and also a little something, which will come into Alex Earle as well

about how you bring YouTubers to television. Yes. And we're also going to talk about Galliano Gate. The John Galliano retrospective that Anna Winter tried to push through at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York that's all tied to the Met Gala and all that sort of thing has met with such a backlash that it's been pulled and we'll be talking about what it means for Anna Winter and her power and the Met Gala itself. Let's start with Alex Earle. And we'll maybe we should start with the Kardashians just to remind you of how our kind of foremost... I have not heard of them. Yeah.

Let me remind you how our sort of form. almost reality TV family became bazillionaires. Kim had a sex tape. It was leaked. I fundamentally now believe, having never thought this, that they had something to do with it. And they did a reality show off the back of that

that was sort of keeping up with the Kardashians. Why do you believe it now when you didn't believe it before? Because I just didn't believe any woman would do that to themselves. But now you believe that she did. Having read and watched so much about it, I believe that they had something, that her and the mother had, something to do with it.

And the mother. Yeah. Wow. I mean, to be fair, I just couldn't believe it of the situation. And yet, now I don't. If you told me that, I think I would like to watch a reality program about those two. Yeah. Well, they've got a lot of plot lines, let's put it that way. And they had a reality show that was viewed as trash.

And no one had any idea that their endless parade of sisters, beginning with a K, would become this huge. They leveraged that attention into absolutely multi-billion dollar businesses, personal brands, social media distribution, obviously brand tie-ups. It's the most extraordinary kind of 21st century story. I mean, as we'll talk about with the top gear thing later, it is an object lesson. It happens time and time and time again that if you want to build a multi-billion dollar franchise,

you sort of do it accidentally. Very few people have ever done it deliberately. It's often it comes completely out of left field, creating something that no one else has ever created before, finding a little niche that no one's ever seen before, and that's the way to do it. they proved it. Top gear, as we'll discuss later, proved it as well. But now people are deliberately trying to do it, right? Yeah. I think I would like to talk before we move more fully on to

Alex L is a little bit about the idea of as the family as sort of TV pay dirt, but also the idea of a family as a kind of mirror to societies and countries kind of changing norms. because you always used to be the center of every Americas and therefore Riles, best-love sitcoms. And so you had nuclear families first in things like Leave It to Beaver, and then you get to the 70s and you get more realism and social satire. They were the Brady bunch. They were a blended family, which we, you know, see.

In the 80s. Cosby show. Well, I was about to say 80s, it's money. And the Cosby's, the Huxibles, were rich. The 90s, you get into all these kind of working-class struggles. So you got the Conners in Roseanne. And then ultimately you get to something like modern family, which is huge, the Pritchits, and they're very modern, they're blended, they've got all sorts of, you know,

that there are gay people in it, they've adopted children, and they've got a much younger wife, all of those things. And they really matter, they're huge. These matter much less now in our culture, but the family as a kind of engine and a mirror has migrated to, and this is a big catch-all to reality, really. It's to other platforms and delivery systems. So it's these reality brands and they, you know, and it's the Kardashians, the Beckham's, the YouTube families. And what you do is you, I suppose, what you ideally do when you're trying to make one of these as an engine of kind of money, you find a charismatic family, you turn their intimacy into content and then you turn all of that attention into wider business opportunities.

And you can see the appeal because you've got sort of, if you've got lots of them and they're all doing their own things and there's friction like all families, Then you've got a sort of content dynasty and you've got all these things. Now, many have tried and failed to do this. Most, by the, almost all people have failed. There is an amazing subsector of things that I absolutely love. And they're quite hard to find because they don't get pushed into your algorithms, which is, you know, we know that families are huge. We know that, you know, putting your makeup on in the morning is huge.

Finding those but that nobody watches. So, but, you know, you know, seeing everybody is trying to do this. And the only ones we ever get pushed are the ones that succeed. Yeah. I find that an incredibly interesting subgenre of online content. It's actually quite a funny idea for a sitcom, isn't it? Just go back to it. A family who are just not getting any hits.

They're doing all the stuff that you're supposed to do. They're having arguments in the kitchen. They're putting their makeup on the morning. Everyone's doing their bits. But nobody's watching. And deliberately sabotaging themselves in really, really increasing ways just to get the number of cancer. Like divorcing. Sorry, I'm just.

pitching this literally as I'm thinking of it. And then they're getting into these, yeah, and they're getting into these real-life situations and it's, yeah, but nobody's watching. Yeah. And like their friends sort of come around. So why do you, why are you getting divorced again? This seems, yeah. Oh, it was for number, it's because we had 17 views of the first time.

We got 23 when I suggested it. So that's an uptick of 47%. Well, okay, exactly. We'll take this offline, but yes. The people who've tried, the D'Amilios are kind of the big ones. Okay, the two sisters, Dixie and Charlie, Charlie was the most followed person on TikTok. And this is the thing that keeps happening, which is that people come on the platforms. And by that I'm talking about not the streamers.

I'm talking about, you know, TikTok or YouTube or whatever. And then the streamers think, okay, how can we sort of migrate this fame? What is the fame? How can we migrate it? How can we monetize it? And people said, oh, these are like the Gen Z Kardashians. And they got them a show that the Demyla. I can't even remember what it was called.

But it just didn't really work. They were already really famous in a way, but they didn't seem to know how to capitalize on or suddenly the people are producing the show or to magnify that fame. Again, before we go back to Alex Earl, it reminds you of a conversation I had recently with a very, very, very big TV producer out in LA

who does a lot of work with influencers now in bringing them onto streaming and onto television and things like that. And this idea of the family is, once you're massively famous, where do you go next? And one of the first things they do is, oh, my husband's going to come in,

my kids are going to come into it. Because this producer was talking about formats and how if you ever pitch a format to an influencer, it doesn't compute. It's not like they don't understand it. They'll go, wait, so we do this, and then next week we do the same thing. And you're like, yeah, well, because there's a series arc

and we have to do this or the other. And this producer I was talking to, she was saying, you know, and at first I was like, but surely you've got to see this is like an incredible way for you to build your brand and make money. And she said, like at one point, one of them said to her, you have to understand that repetition kills retention. And she said from the moment they said that actually every meeting I had with a YouTube. I thought you have built a huge business. You've built some incredible content industry your own way. And so I get it. And I absolutely accept it.

I love a format because that's the generation I'm from, but I understand that you see this very differently. And so they won't, the traditional thing we would do if we built up a load of followers is you get little formats, little offshoot. And, you know, little games, stuff like that. But they don't do that. So actually they only have one way to go, which is to expand their life a little bit because all they're showing is exactly what happens today. And it has to be different to what happened yesterday. So to expand their life out into families, which is what Alex Earle has done, right? So Alex Ores reached a certain level.

Where do you go from there? She's not going to do a game show because repetition kills retention. So actually what you do is here's more of my, I'm going to widen the circle of my life for you. Well, exactly. That is what she's, that's what she has tried to do. It's called Earl Meets World.

It's on Netflix. It's doing quite well in the child. So it's not like it, but that's here. So it might be bigger in the US. But it's sort of in the top five. To go back to who Alex Ehrlich, she's a social media,

star she started on TikTok. She did get ready with me videos when she was at college. She went on dancing with the stars. She cried. She had famously an ill-fated deal with Alex Cooper's podcast empire on well, Alex Cooper from call her daddy. And there's been this whole kind of beef and drama which we've covered before on this podcast. And there's always been the sense that something big went down, which we'll get to on this by the way. Something big went down and we're going to find out about it at some point and the tea is being held back but it's all there and it would be kind of hugely destabilising to Alex Cooper, whatever. She's now got her skincare, a skincare line of course because that's where you make all the actual money from is by rolling it out into an actual

product. That's the other thing this producer was saying to me. They're saying that all of the production companies now are chasing YouTubers and saying, have we got to sign people up. We've got to do X, Y and Z with them. And she was saying, you cannot make money out of these YouTubers because the way they make their money is they have a sweet line or a makeup line. They just want that. That's what that industry is. You can't possibly offer them what that will. You know, Haley Bieber had like eight products and she sold the company for like a billion.

I mean, it's mad. It's not an eight episode dockey drama on ITV. So she's got this show. Who are the principles? Okay. So there's her, obviously. There is her sister Ashton. there is her father manager, a dadager, I suppose, if you want to adapt it from the Chris

Jenner thing. And the stepmother, Ashley, she's got a really interesting story because she was one of the cool girls who the New York Governor Elliot Spitzer, which was caught up in the whole scandal of that. She's got her mother, Elisa. There are some younger... Sorry, everyone in this family begins with A. Yeah, I know.

The little ones don't actually. Oh, do they not? They've messed that up from a Kardashian point of view. There's some younger children who seem to live with some giant pet menagerie in New Jersey. It's really weird watching the younger ones. They're already, I found it incredibly bleak. They're already on that kind of brand building path. They already speak in that, you know,

I've spoken before about how I thought that American children were always just better at acting because they were sort of naturally performative. I don't know. Something that they osmotically absorbed via their culture that just means they're better at performing. But I now find the timing of all these people. and on almost any documentary and talking heads and everything is so mannered. Some people are just so reflexively bent to the requirements of whatever format they're on that, you know, when you speak, when you were a talking head,

or the kind of people who do the little, you know, the contestants on something like Hell's Kitchen, who do the interstitial bits, who go, so I was saying to Chef Randi, it was like, wow, you've really held it together for the producers here and they can stitch it all together. You know exactly what you need to do. I'm starting to really hate it. It's starting to force me to turn off.

It's so glit. Those are called MIVs, by the way. That's called what? MIVs, which is your master interview, which is the thing you record after you've recorded everything. And you're absolutely right. People absolutely have the language. In the same way that football pundits worked out a long time ago,

you know how to speak in a certain way. And players don't say nothing after games. Yeah. And people just go, yeah. And I'm thinking, well, if he votes for me, I'm out. And you think, well, you know already. You know already. Yeah, the sort of internal continuous.

Yes, the eternal continuous. It's so kind of, but I hate it because it's so glib and predictable and you're such a good little TV soldier when you're doing it. I just feel like you're such a cog, aren't you? I love them. I love them. I hate them. Okay. But she says, Alex Earlin, this, there's a side to the creator economy you don't see.

Now, bear in mind that something like 57% of American Gen Z does want to be a super creator like her or super influencer or however she described herself. So they are trying to transplant that one type of platform fame onto another thing. But I didn't think it worked. I will say this to anyone listening to this. Definitely watch it. Oh, it's, yeah. Because it's sociologically, anthropologically fascinating. And why is it not like the Kardashians?

I'll tell you why it isn't like the Kardashians. They are very, very quotable and memeable. The Kardashians, yeah. I mean, you know, obviously they're like the master memes of Kim. There's people that are dying and the things that are just sort of iconic. But they had very distinctive looks as well, the Kardashians. They changed completely the way women saw their body. I mean, they have completely changed what silhouettes were acceptable.

It's really, they brought curves back in a way that you couldn't have predicted. Alex Earl is sort of different because she's very bland and neutral and she kind of looks like everyone else on Instagram who gets to push brands because they all have sort of the same type of work done and they also kind of look all the same. It's a very AI look. Yeah, it's really bland. So there's not something kind of distinctive and weird and kind of like hot. Adam's family. I mean, I think all the Adams family are hot. But you know what I mean? There's not something like that about that. Yeah. And by the way, that's what she looks like. And so that's absolutely fine. But it's interesting that that's a look that is now the people want to go for.

Yeah, I agree. But it's incredibly homogenized. All the stuff that happened on the show, I didn't care about any of it. There's interesting stuff like, oh, she can't be trusted not to report conversations that someone says, but then it's glossed over. But the mega plot line, and this is what I found so extraordinary. thing that we've been talking, people who were interested in this feud and whatever, have been talking about for months is the idea that what happened with Alex Cooper, because they've really gone at it in public saying, I could say a lot of stuff, I could say a lot of say, okay, well, you've got a TV show now, so you probably should say a lot of stuff. I think she teed up beforehand that you're finally going to hear the truth about Alex Cooper,

you didn't see it in this show. It doesn't happen. All of it's dropped. There's a lot of stuff on this TV show about how and when she's going to spill this tea. but it's endlessly edged but never actually concluded. It never ever happens. I found myself in a position of genuinely not caring, but equally being annoyed that they hadn't told me.

That's a bad combination. You cannot be the producer of a show and allow that to happen. But you can. And that's the new media landscape we're in. And it is, having had various conversations with people. The rules have absolutely changed on what you can put on. There are things that I grew up understanding as a producer, the arcs that I understood, the beats that I understood,

all of those things, the jeopardy that I understood, the stuff that's in the DNA of a generation, three or four generations of television producers, has all gone. You can do what you want. There is just a different grammar to the thing, and it's not just the people making, it's the people watching it.

There is a different grammar, and they watch it differently, and they're not expecting those beats. And the same way that, you know, movies became very, very, you know, we understood exactly, you know, Robert McKee's story structure. We understand where we're going at all times. Well, that's happened to TV, and we've internalised all of it.

And this generation of content creators, they do it completely differently. Now, at the moment, what that means is we get this documentary, which I thought was, I didn't enjoy. No. But it's not for me. I don't think people will enjoy it there. But I think what happens next, of course, is there is a generation of content creators who are like that, but who have creatively interesting things to do with this new freedom. that they have and then they'll bring new forms about and I find that quite interesting but we've got to

have five or six years of just oh we're just going to watch that are we? I agree with you I definitely agree with you that they don't have to do it in the same way and that they don't really understand the rhythms of these things and those rhythms are kind of not dead but they're just part of a legacy system having said that I do think that the lesson of a lot of social media is that you have to outstrip your last video you have to do whatever and the fact that she doesn't deliver is going to annoy the fan base because she has constantly teased and people don't like that. They want you to do, even on the platforms on TikTok or YouTube or whatever, if you constantly tease something, you have to deliver it.

And the fact that she hasn't done that, I think, is really interesting and amazing that that was allowed to sort of occur. In terms of what the life is, because she says, you're going to see everything and it's like, wow, is this it then? It's literally her saying, oh, I don't know. Am I posting? I can't post. I don't like the reaction I'm getting to my posting.

You are a complete slave to the algorithms. It's like death of a saleswoman. It's like a, you know, it's like death of a saleswoman. Okay, it's like a really messed up American dream thing where, you know, she isn't quite know what to do. You know, and she just, she works for the man or whatever it is. But what's interesting about it is that all of that is outside the show. Now, when you make these videos on YouTube,

or TikTok or whatever, what they're brilliant at these creators is they own all the drama. And that's what we've seen in lots of this stuff. You know, the posts that go most far are the ones where you're talking about it. But if it's happening outside the show, off platform somewhere,

somewhere more relevant like TikTok, the conversation about it is not contained within the medium. You don't control it. I mean, the interesting thing with all of these people is literally they've controlled the frame. They've set up the shot. And I mean that physically and emotionally,

everything is in their control, which is another reason, by the way, they don't like to do formats because they need to have an indispensability. And actually, with a format, they go, well, sorry, couldn't someone else do this? But it is absolutely, you know, keeping themselves in that frame. It's harder to do. It's not impossible to do on something like Netflix, but harder to do. And if you do it, it's incredibly boring.

Yeah, but the conversation when you control the frame on TikTok or YouTube is happening beneath it. And it's happening and you're tagged in it. And it's all organically part of where you're distributing it. Whereas when you see it here, like, okay, you can't build any of this into, you know, you're not second screening it. There's nothing. So it just seems to me a fundamental sort of mismarriage.

And I think it is, I think it will just disappoint people. And also people just, it doesn't feel native at all. It will, and I think it's interesting. So we have not found the new Kardashians in conclusion to this. But I absolutely understand why Netflix are doing it. Netflix need to bring that generation into Netflix. I sort of understand why Alex Ear is doing it because she does. actually, she sort of understands as well that there are huge swathes of America who don't know

who she is. If you say her name, she's so used to being so world famous within a certain group. And as you say, any time she sort of posts anything, so you get huge amounts of feedback. But, you know, there'll be places where she goes, where everyone goes, I know, I'm so sorry, I don't know that name. And so I understand that she wants a different type of fame. And it is going to be, as I say, having talked to a series of producers, just working out what that sweet spot is, that what the Netflix is and Amazon Primes can get from people who come from this different culture and what those people can get from the Amazon Primes

and Netflix's of this world. And I do think that we're going to see some terrible, terrible television in that sort of vein in the next few years. But we're also going to see some amazing stuff, I think. But we have yet, family-wise, we have yet to find. So where are the new Kardashians? Where are they coming from? Someone will get it right.

And they may get it, they'll most likely get it right on one of the social media platforms rather than, I think, on Netflix. But that's hard to say because, as you say, you need to then distribute it to, you know, normies. The furies have had a good go, isn't it? Yeah, they have, but equally, they haven't made a dent in anything. They haven't become sort of. But if they can't do it because they've got everything you need, in every generation of that family and every opposite of that family, something mental is happening all the time. Like the royal family. And it feels like it has an authenticity as well.

You think, oh, that is, that mental thing is actually happening in your family. But yeah, I think, again, it'll be what people prize more than anything is authenticity. And it will come from somewhere in the same way that, you know, we wouldn't have predicted the Kardashians. There'll be a family out there. Please, no one listened to the podcast. Or if it does someone listen to the podcast, at least come and do an interview about it when you are, because of the Kardashians. But my view is, I think it's hard when you get your family involved in these things.

And I get it. And I get it when they say, no, but the thing is our kids want to do it. You know, they like doing this stuff. Well, yeah, because they're 12. If only there was a cautionary tale or 90 of them just out there at any one time. But yeah. So, yeah, the search continues. But it's so interesting that the family continues to be the kind of apogee of all this stuff. But I would definitely, listen, you absolutely do not have to watch this documentary.

but if you're interested in that sort of world and what's happening to I thought it was interesting so many YouTubers I see I get, you know, I really, really, really try and work out the appeal of everything

if it's successful. You know, if something is big, you go, but there's a reason this is big. And one of the few areas, there are some YouTubers I see and I thought I cannot find

there's even the edge of the carpet to start putting it up. I can't work out why this is. Sometimes you see them, you go, yeah, absolutely get why you're watching this. But, yeah, the Alex Earl world, you're like, I just can't quite, I can't quite get a take on it. But yeah, do watch it, but equally don't watch it.

Right. We will take a break now, I think. We will. And then, funny enough, I'm going to talk about a good use of YouTubers when we talk about the new Grand Tour. This episode is brought to you by Lloyd. Now, show business loves a club. I love all these sort of unofficial groupings of people. There's two brat packs that I'm a big fan of. There are two brats.

Yeah, there's two brats because there's the movie brat pack, all of the Judd Nelson and, you know, Rob Lowe and Charlie Sheen and all those guys. Everyone in the Breakfast Club. Yeah, and then there's also the brat pack of those kind of turn of the 90s novelists, Brettey Stenellis, Jay McEnany, Donna Tart. And that's the thing creatively, it's actually very, very useful to hang out with other people who are incredibly talented because you drive each other on to do things. Because a lot of the British novelists in the 80s, Martin Amis, Julian Bar,

Ian McEwen, they all used to sort of go and have lunch and go and have dinner. And you could just tell you, you know, they would talk about stuff and they would make each other's work much better. And that's the benefit of being in a group, being in a club. It becomes more than the sum of its parts. Clubs really do have benefits like Club Lloyds, an elevated everyday bank account with exclusive benefits, plus a lifestyle perk like cinema tickets. And you get no fees on debit card spending and withdrawals abroad. An exclusive mortgage rate discount, interest on your balance.

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But what if we could replicate that glow inside our bodies and what if doing so could help us save lives? Because Cancer Research UK scientists, They're investigating whether a special fluorescent dye that sticks to prostate cancer cells could tackle an ongoing challenge in the operating room, removing every single trace of cancer. Because when cancer cells are glowing and easy to spot, surgeons can precisely remove them, leaving healthy cells untouched, meaning there's less chance of the cancer returning and fewer nasty side effects. Cancer Research UK's vision is a world where everybody lives longer, better lives free from the of cancer, with breakthroughs like this leading to kinder, more effective treatments.

For more information about Cancer Research UK, their research and breakthroughs and how you can support them, visit cancerchuk.org slash rest is science. Welcome back, everyone. We're about to talk about the grand tour, talking of grand tours. I'm off on tour this week, book tour. Ticket still available at Birmingham Symphony Hall. That's the only one. Be lovely to see you there. I think you're going on tour as well for your book of columns. I am going on tour later in the month and I'm going to be in lots of different places. I'm going London, Oxford, Bath, Birmingham, Brighton. Oh, I'm doing it with Jesse Armstrong in Brighton.

I'm very excited. And Edinburgh with Frankie Boyle, Manchester, Liverpool, all dates in late September. Why not Sunderland? I'm sorry. Why not Newport? Okay. Oh, I see you hate Tiverton. I'm going.

I'm going to talk about my new book. What's the time to be alive? We're going to have lots of fun. You can ask any question. I can't promise I'll answer it. But we will have an amusing evening. Lots of great chairs and I'm really looking forward to it. That would be a lot of fun.

It will be fun. Talking of tours. Yes. The Grand Tour, which is back on Amazon Prime this week. So the Grand Tour, as you know, it was what came out of Clarkson, May and Hammond leaving Top Gear. So they left Top Gear, they then went to Amazon and made pretty much exactly the same show, but with a budget about 15 times the size. They have now also left Grand Tour.

And so there is this sort of succession going on. How do you replace Clark's... May and Hammond. We all know, by the way, there's a side thing where Top Gear is coming back on the BBC as well. And again, there's the succession thing here. But on Amazon, they've got this. It's a huge brand. It's a big deal for Amazon.

It's done huge business for them. And Clarkson's Farm, of course, does huge business for them as well. So how do you replace the three of them? It was their biggest ever premiere when it came out, I think. The trouble is we never know with Amazon because they don't tell you the numbers. And obviously, it's nothing compared to, we'll come on to first as Top Gear. I'm just looking at the budget for the first. episode of this next one, I think, I think it has worked for them.

Yes. They seem happy to have thrown some money at this. So they've replaced the three of them. And the simplest thing to do, the obvious thing to do, the 10 years ago thing to do is let's get three celebrities in to do this. Traditional celebrities. Yeah. Faces that people know. But that world has changed.

So actually they bought in three people and people are going, oh, why, they bought in three unknowns to do this show? And, of course, then not unknowns. They bought in James Engelsman and Thomas Holland from the Throttlehouse YouTube channel, and they've got like 3 million followers. They've got 3 million subscribers. So yeah, they're not unknown. People know who they are. Unknown to you is not unknown. And they have also brought in, and this is the masterstroke of the thing, Francis Bourgeois, who became massively famous for his incredibly enthusiastic TikToks about steam trains and other trains.

He's on it. He used to be an automotive engineer as well. And again, he is quite famous in a certain demographic. I saw someone describe him as like almost enthusiastic enthusiast. Yeah. I always get mixed up with France's bull from Maiden Chelsea. In my head, I've always been confused about why people loved him so much. Yes.

But now I get it. Contemptworthy of it. Yeah. So what they've done, they bought these three in. And the first episode went out this week. And I'd say it's a triumph. I think it's brilliant. It's so good.

It is absolute continuation grand tour. the three of them are great in the same way that Clarkson, May and Hammond were great. It looks a million dollars, and it cost a lot more than a million dollars, but it looks incredible. The three of them, I think, are great. Francis Bourgeois is such a stellar star. And this is the point. There's all these people on YouTube, there's all these people that people are throwing money at and saying, or this person's right, and you kind of see who they are and they're boring.

This guy is amazing. He's so great. He's very genuine. He's a great television. Again, as a producer, I'm like, oh, we got one. Yeah. We finally, I absolutely get this. I absolutely understand how he's built his empire because everyone who sees him, loves him.

And they've stuck him in this format, and he can do this too. He's not kind of going, I know this is all about me. He's like, oh, I understand what it is you need me to do. The three of them absolutely. He is a complete, yeah, I really agree. So firstly, this idea that they replaced them with unknowns, and it's fascinating because they are unknown to a certain demographic, but they're not unknown to another demographic. Secondly, the fact that they haven't gone for a big name at all. And thirdly, it's an exact replication of what they did with Top Gear in the first place.

And I think that's the interesting thing. Top Gear in the first place. All three of them really, Clarks and May, to a lesser extent, Hammond, were sort of motoring journalists. They wrote columns from magazines, the researchers got them in. I think John Bentley, who was, I think, started as a researcher on Top Gear, became one of the producers, you know, had just read a couple of clocks and columns and go, oh, this guy's got an interesting take on things. And Richard Hammond was like an afternoon local radio DJ,

but then started doing a bit of work on Men and Motors. So when they started on Top Gear, they were as unfamous as these three. In fact, they were far less famous than these three are now. But what they were is producers had seen people who had written about cars for a very long time, done radio shows for a long time, done the graft, done the work, bought them in, and they absolutely flew. And that's the same with these people. You know, James and Thomas, by the way, Thomas Holland. Can we just talk about... We have another Tom Holland. What's going on? What's going on in public life? So now we got Tom Holland, Tom Holland, Tom Holland, Thomas Holland and Tom Hollander.

Yeah. Come on guys. Guys, that absolute moratorium on anyone entering public life until one of those just decides to leave and go and live on a desert island. Yeah. And this is the thing, you know, this is where YouTube. is going to come into its own is in the same way that James May and Jeremy Clarkson had years and years of writing about cars. These two have had years and years of talking about cars and producing a show. They don't just go on and say, oh, this is me. I wonder what I'm going to do today. They do a job of journalism. People in television are able to watch that go, oh, you really know

what you're talking about. You're incredibly personable. Let's get you in. Let's screen test you, and it turns out that they can do the job. I've seen a couple of reviews saying, I said this quite stilted, the banter and stuff like that. And you go, take a look at the first series of talking. Well, don't take a look at the first series, because James May was not on the first series. He was on the second series. There's a guy called Jason Dorr was the original third Amigo on that.

One of the most mental reactions to all of this that I've seen, and it is really prevalent in the same way that the one is like, these people are nobodies, I've never heard of them, is they should not replace it. You cannot replace it. It's like, okay, that's interesting. So you're saying that a form. Matt that makes unbelievable amounts of money, does great business.

What is wrong with people, Richard? What is wrong with people that people think you just shouldn't even try to replace it? Even the interviews they gave, you have to speak to that tendency. Can I just give you some of the, it's so funny, some of the quotes from them, bless them, because they've had to do this. The new hosts. Yeah, from the new host, right. Here we go.

We've all had the same reactions that the audience has had to every part of this process, like, who would do that? What an idiot? That's one of them. We've done our absolute best, and the critics will be critics. and I hope that we'll prove them wrong. And another, have a watch, and if you don't like it, you're well within your rights. I can't force anyone to like anything.

They've all had to do this because you have to prostrate before the bit of the fandom that genuinely thinks, a thing I like should die, should die with the previous host, and it should not return. I actually find that just completely so mad. There should be no car programme on Amazon because I can't have my original car program. It's really genuinely ridiculous. But it's a huge thing out there that people just feel. It really is. And I get it. But also, we've talked before about how we keep putting older movie stars in things despite a younger audience telling us that they don't know who they are anymore. And that to them is not a movie star. And any time we put a younger movie star in, that audience goes to see them. And that's not, by the way, oh my God, isn't it tough? It's just that's what happens generationally. We like our own stars. And, you know, Clarkson, May and Hammond, who've given full backing to this. I mean, they are, I mean, Hammond is my age and he is very much the young.

youngest of the three of them. They've done this for a really, really, really long time. You see, with them, you know, they all appear in various points of this series. They absolutely get that this has to move on. They don't want to do it anymore. They've all got other things on. They're all, you know, working very hard. I think they're very proud of all the things that they've achieved in that.

And they would like it to continue. Be nice if there's a program about cars because people like them. Yeah. I'll say one thing about Clarkson. This is, I mean, my God, that man's got a business brain. So they all turn up at some point, which is really, really lovely. May turns up and chats to them, Hammond does as well. Clarkson turns up right at the beginning.

It doesn't just turn up. They've worked out this schick, and this will be Clarkson and Andy Wilman is produced. They've worked out this schick that the three new hosts are going to visit the big tent where the Grand Tour was originally set, where they had the live stuff, to ask if they're allowed to use the tent. Okay, so I wonder, because we're about to do the Grand Tour, can we use this tent? So they walk in. And of course, what is the grand tent now? It's the farm shop at Diddley Squat.

So they walk in. Clarkson is there. He does a great job on it as well. But he says, well, you can't really use it because, look, I've got a butcher's. I've got, there's a sitting area where you can get a coffee. There's an off license. He's essentially telling you all. All his businesses.

And he goes, also, it'd be hard to film here because it's really busy. It's like you wouldn't so much have an audience, would you? You'd have customers. He does it in a way that feels completely authentic. where you don't kind of think, oh, come on, man. But absolutely. But ironic as well. It's hilarious.

It's really, really well done. So I think, you know, to the three new host to Francis and James and Thomas, because I've seen some of those interviews and everyone's on the defensive. It's like when Claudia was doing her chat show and she was saying, well, it might not work. I mean, I'll give it a go. You sort of have to do that. I would say to the three of them now, I thought you were brilliant. Yeah.

I thought genuinely you were the right people for the job. If that is your first episode, then you're going to be great. Yeah. They had really good chemistry. They're really good chemistry. You can tell that James and Tom Holland III have worked together before, and France is an amazing connection into that. Now, it looks incredible.

I'll say that. It's no longer made by Clarkson and Clarkson's company. It's no longer owned by Clarkson and Clarkson's company. It's now made by Studio Lambert, who make all sorts of, you know, make the traitors and things like that. The production has been in the Phil Church with Alex Wenton, near Yamo, an amazing team, an amazing team of camera operators. But interestingly, Andy Willman, who we've spoken about our respect for before, who's the sort of creative brains with Clarkson behind that whole empire, consulted on this series.

And when you talk to anyone is on that team, they just said he's so brilliant. Yeah. You know, like without ego, but he just gets how to tell a story. He gets how to shoot something. He gets, you know, how to build a segment and he gets how to tell stories. But I wanted to, as I was sitting there watching in this first episode, they've got three supercars and they're doing a race against a fighter jet in the Mojave Desert and on this enormous budget. And it made me think about reinvention, how you reinvent something. And I think they've successfully reinvented that.

And Top Gear actually is probably the greatest example of how to reinvent something in our culture. It's extraordinarily done. It is nearly 50 years old now, Top Gear as a brand. And 1977 was the very, very first one. And it was a regional BBC Midlands production. So producer called Derek Smith said, I wonder if we should do a monthly program about cars and, you know, roadside assistance and, you know, how to fix your car and stuff like that.

And I've got a note, it's called Top Gear. And BBC Midland said, yeah, okay, let's do that. And it was presented by Angela Ripon in the first series. And a guy called Tom Coyne. And so I did, as I like to, a deep dive into Tom Coyne. Now, people in the Midlands, older listeners in the Midlands might know Tom Coynes, he did the regional news for a long time. But Tom Coyne, as I say, I'm sitting there watching fighter jets in the Mojavee Desert

and these incredible supercars. Tom Coyne was the very first host of Top Gear. He started his career in the early 1950s with Children's Hour on the Light Program. Oh. Okay, that's where he began. So that's where Top Gear began with somebody who was on the Light Program just after the war on children's hour. So they did that.

The National BBC said, oh, actually, yeah, I think we could use a motoring magazine. So they bought Top Gear into National Television. Noel Edmonds took over all sorts of other people. People like William Woodard, again, they would get journalists to do it. Went and went and went and went. It always did pretty good business.

They bought Clarkson in in 88, I think, and he was the sort of catalyst to change it a little bit up from just a kind of, magazine into something where you think, oh, this is interesting. It's got an attitude and a personality, which was sort of ahead of its time there. Now, the key thing that happened, and this is where, when you revamp something, this is the thing to always think about. The BBC at the end of the 90s, just the ratings weren't quite where they needed to be.

So the BBC say, okay, we're going to rest top gear. Okay. Now, all of the top gear team immediately took all of their expertise, all of their presenters, and went to Channel 5 and did a show called Fifth Gear. So they said, we're going to do the same show, and we're going to do it on Channel 5. Everyone did that apart from two, and those were Jeremy Clarkson and Andy Wilman. And they did a show in the 90s called Jeremy Clarkson's Motor World, where he'd gone around the world and looked to Carl Culture and different things.

And I think that was the catalyst for this. They said, actually, we're not going to go and do that same show. We think the show should be completely different. They're the ones that came up with this template, pitched to Tokyo gear, got it made, and that was sort of the beginning. So it's the same brand, but they did, they supersized it in that incredible way and turned it into what it is today. And for people who don't know, it was like officially recognised as the world's most watched factual TV show. They always told you it reached 350 million.

It was in 212 territories. It's so much bigger than you can possibly imagine. A lot of people just think, yeah, because they sold it via worldwide and it just became this unbelievable thing. Yeah, it's made so much much. for the BBC. And at first, Clarkson and Andy Wilman had a piece of that. They then, they didn't have a piece of it, but of course they then had a piece of Grantor, which now they don't have a piece of, they've sold that Amazon. I did some back-of-the-envaloed maths, and I think that Wilman and Clarkson have made certainly north of a hundred million pounds from this franchise.

Yeah. From this show that really began with a man from Children's Hour in the 1950s. Clarkson wrote some funny articles for a magazine and some and John Bentley thought, oh, it'd be interesting. Maybe I'd chat to him and bought him in. And then his friend from school, Andy Wilman came and also did some on-screen stuff as well, Andy Wilman. And when the BBC got rid of it and everyone went, no, you can't get rid of it. It has to say the same. It has to be the same people.

People like this show. We're going to keep doing it. They did exactly that on Channel 5 and that disappeared. But two of the people in it went, no, we can reinvent this. We can do something different with this. They did it. They did it amazingly. Made a fortune for them. It's made a fortune for the BBC. And now we find ourselves with the next generation of it. And I think they pulled off the same trick again, which is they understand how to do it. They understand we're going to get new people and we're going to get the right new people. People who know what they're talking about, people with a bit of personality. And then we're just going to shoot the head out of it and make it look incredible and serve an audience that knows exactly what they want and we know what it is they want. I just think what on object lesson, 50 years. And this thing is just, it's completely transformed, but it's the same thing. It's the triggers bring of television.

So a fair play to everybody behind this. And also, good luck to those three hosts as well. Don't listen to the critics. Right. Finally, we are going to talk about Galliano Gate. Yeah. This is a big New York story that has, it's interesting because it's taken in the world of fashion and art and New York politics and the media.

John Galliano, the fashion designer, was given a huge retrospective. effectively by Anna Winter, who kind of made him as a designer and who now presides over the Met Museum of Arts Costume Institute. If you go to it, you go around and you'll go back to go down the stairs into it, her name is literally hewn in stone above, yeah, it's the Anna Winter, you know, that's very trumping. But there's been a huge backlash and it's now not happening. So by way of background, sort of who is John Galliano, he was a brilliant designer. It's unquestionably a brilliant, brilliant fashion designer.

He went to Central St. Martin's. He had his own label. Then he went to two of the biggest houses, to Givanchi and to Dior, which is the sort of apex of anything. And latterly, he's done other things. But there was an incident in 2015 where he was recorded saying terrible anti-Semitic things. And it was all on camera. And it was a complete sort of fall from everything. Since then, he's sort of made gradual attempts at rehabilitation.

and it's interesting. Fashion has now sort of basically accepted it. He went to Maison Margiela, which is a very sort of avant-garde label, and coming up, I think, later this year, he does some collaboration, something with Zara. So that's huge.

So he's working again, he's making money again and all that stuff. So inside the industry, there's, he has attempted, you know, various forms of, well, within fashion. Yeah, yeah. But I think this is quite interesting

because fashion is not the real world. But often fashion has been much more powerful in the past. This Met exhibit is always tied to the Met Gala. And it was going to be called John Galliano Horizons. It's in spring 2027. The Met Gala's always in the sort of first Monday of May or whatever it is. And they always have a very big exhibition to which it's tied. And I did say, you know, we'll confront his racist, his anti-Semitic behavior. But remember, anything at the Costume Institute is basically an Anna Winter. She is the legendary editor of Vogue, you know, who Miranda The Precenaed in The Devil Wears Prada was based on.

She became the sort of editor-in-chief. She remains some sort of, you know, presiding role at Condé Nast. And she's used, by the way, to when she says something is in or out or okay again or not okay again, she's used to that being accepted. Yeah, beyond. She makes the weather. Yeah. She's actually, you know, talking to various people about it, a lot of people say, I mean,

she's a huge fundraiser in democratic politics, but there is a very very, you know, significant sort of Trumpian element to her, which is when she decides something's going to be, then it just has to be, in reality, it's just going to have to bend around it. As soon as you have your name carved into stone on a building, there's a... Well, you know, maybe the Met Gala's bought in $300 million or something, or some people say $500 million to the Costume Institute over the years. But remember, it's become this huge cultural behemoth that it never was before. It was a sort of party for New York Society.

And now it's become this unbelievable thing. I'll get to more about it. It's like the Super Bowl of fashion. But it's beyond. It's ridiculous. She's, she has backed him Galliano for decades, and she says he's a creative genius who's shown remorse. So when there was this backlash from lots of different Jewish leaders, she tried to have meetings with them. But there's all sorts of things. The backlash has become so intense that the plan has collapsed. And he has sort of apologized. He has apologized again and withdrawn. And Anna Winter has sort of supported him in that and said it was courageous, which. is so her to sort of let him own it and be a victim as well, maybe, and not take any form of responsibility for this herself. You know, she loves tennis. She's famously a mega tennis fan.

She's even after all of this, which is a huge kind of humiliation in lots of ways. She's turned up at the US Open. But all of these things... Can we do a tiny sidebar when you're talking about the US Open? Yeah. Which again, we talked about it, like everyone wants to get influences everywhere. And the US Open is like invited like 100 influences,

just to try and get a different audience. and I don't think it went brilliantly. And there's one point where Sabalenko as well said, I have to leave the court because the smell of dope is so overpowering. And people saying you've never actually watched any tense before. You have to be quiet while it's happening. They literally had no idea how to behave. But anyway, this slightly reminds me of one of those BBC scandals

that might be about something else, but in three days' time automatically becomes about the Director General. This is now really become about Anna Winter. By the way, the Met Gala, this coming, year when this exhibition would have been tied to it, it was turned out to be on Holocaust Remembrance Day. So this is why, this is a, you know, and in a city with so many kind of incredible Jewish cultural donors and being as heavily involved in democratic politics as she is when the issue

of rising anti-Semitism, she knows how much anguish that is causing in those circles. This is such a huge miscalculation to have to pull this thing. And it's interesting because, you know, maybe people in fashion still. love him or forgive or whatever. But what this makes clear, and the reason why we're talking about this, because I think it's quite interesting, is what people in fashion think matters is so much less important than it was in previous decades. What Anna Winter thinks matters or she can get away with doesn't matter so much anymore.

And it's interesting that neither seems to have seen this coming. It's really kind of fascinating. As I say, she's got this kind of Trumpian thing where she drives things through and she's a bulldozer and she's always been a bulldozer within Condé Nast and you can still see her power within the empire

interesting the vanity fair who's got a very good editor at the moment vanity fair Mark Djujici who's kind of who's really breathing

life into it and it's very difficult to do that into magazines these days but that Proust questionnaire you know their famous Proust questionnaire this month it's John Galliano

it's like did he choose that or was this imposed upon him people saying this was pushed through the donors and the trust of the Met. It's way too sensitive. You know, fashion's in a bubble. And it reminds me, yes again, of this kind of sense with her that it's the end of a era. As I said to you, when she

started being involved in Lauren Sanchez's wedding, it's like you get, gate kept these awful people as she would regard it, out of fashion for decades. And now what you, you allow, they hosted the Met Gala, Lauren Sanchez and Jeff Bezos. And she chooses the dresses for the wedding. Talking to people who are involved, like, know about the Met Gala is absolutely wild. talking about how influential she is. Okay. Say a table costs 350 grand. Say for some reason I have 350 grand and I take a table.

I can't say, well, I have Richard and Ingrid because they've got to see it. They'll find it his time. No, no, no, no. She decides, you pay the 350 grand. She decides who sits on your table and, you know, what clothes they wear. Like every single tiny thing is hers. So you don't get to invite anyone. You can pay the money.

And you're saying, I see Anna that you said I'm sitting next to Tom Holland. I just need a little bit of clarification about which one. Yeah. And also who he's wearing. But there was this year, there were these rumours because of this that maybe Chanel weren't going to take tables, maybe LVMH, so the really big names that you need to take tables. It does raise a lot of money.

But what's interesting about the Met Gallo is that it's stuff, you can people, the culture, and clearly lots of the artistic patrons at the Met Museum are becoming kind of grossed out by the spectacle, that it feels like an event that's eating the museum, you know? And as I say, you know, it's really interesting that her power, she's miscalculated to this on a grand scale, in a very, very public scale. And it seems to me something that's really, really speaks to the sort of fashions of the times.

The idea that a gatekeeper can say, John Gagliano is having an exhibition because I made him and I'm going to restore him, that way of doing things is so non-authentic. the idea of controlling every little thing is becoming non-authentic. Well, also becoming impossible. I mean, we spoke before about context collapse, and it's exactly that, which is everyone exists everywhere all the time now. There was a time in which Anna Wintel could run the whole of fashion because nobody outside the world of fashion knew what was going on

or cared what was going on, and they cared about their things. Now, your Instagram feed is showing you the MetGarlet, even if you're not interested in fashion. So it becomes something that you have an opinion on. And that's happening in every single area. absolute context collapse, which is the thing that you are trying to do is now being seen by everybody and most of them have no idea about the small nuances inside it. So you can't, you can't keep these little. And they have dramatic reactions to it that are often blowback

against an institution. I mean, you know, it's sort of crazy that this party has become as well known as the museum or something. But all of that thing, all of those things that she represented, gatekeeper, you know, which she's now tried to move the times and bring all these kind of influences in. But all of the gatekeeping that she represented is sort of dead, as we all, everything we talk about in this podcast is like the barriers to entry are totally different now. People are doing things. And the old people who said, yes, you can do it, you can't. That just seems so kind of antediluvian and old and whatever. And it's not, it's not fashionable ultimately, which is so funny that we're talking, she's so out of fashion, you know.

This is gatekeepers are out, messy authenticity is in, and, you know, not to be able to smell something on the wind, which is what fashion is all about, just having something in the air and knowing that what people might want just down the line. It's so interesting because she's failed on all of those fronts here. And I've said before that, you know, her kind of revolution is over and she effectively lost because this world was not the world that she sought to create. And this really, I think it's just so interesting how it brings it all in. I mean, I don't know what they'll do. What will they do instead? Some people, lots of people are saying, oh, they should cancel the MetGarla next year. It's like, wow, okay, well, that's... That's not going to happen. It's not, but lots of... That's like, clearly, lots of people...

I agree, but lots of people at the museum are like, you know, are there other ways we could do this. It's very expensive to put on. Yeah. So even though it brings in a lot of money, it's very expensive to put on. One person seems to control it. Other people could do it. Maybe someone else should control it for a bit.

But the idea that, you know, it's, as I say, it's this kind of monster that's almost consuming their institution. They don't love. Yeah, it's like Beckham at Manchester United. Sometimes. There came a point. There came a point. And where is our Sir Alex Ferguson at the Met?

Where is someone with a shoe in their hand? Yeah. Any recommendations this week? Well, we talked before about James Marriott, he's a great writer of The Times. He's got a great substack as well. And he wrote that fantastic essay about the sort of end of reading in the dawn of the post-literate society

and he's turned it into a kind of book. He writes so beautifully. He does. And it's so warm. It's funny. And it's called The New Dark Ages. So that's by James Merritt that's out now. I think it's so important.

It is horrifying what has happened. I mean, we are measurably becoming more stupid and stopping reading. And we don't understand basic things that we used to anymore. And it's, I mean, it is from the phones. And he's a great writer. I love him because he's sort of a man out of time. Yeah.

And you sense his despair, but then he also has a little bit of optimism. Yes. And as I say, he's funny, so I forgive everything. And, you know, it's a short book. Amazing. You love it when I say that. And anyway, so I recommend that. What about you?

I recommend a book called Black Out Loud by Jeff Bennett, which is a history of black comedy in the United States of America. And it's essentially sort of a sequential thing that takes us from kind of the traveling minstrel shows all the way up to the early black comedians who broke through to white audiences, then takes you up to people like Red Fox, who was in Sanford and Sun, funny enough, one of the huge U.S. sitcoms. then up to Richard Pryor and Bill Cosby and Eddie Murphy and then leaves us where we are now. So it's a really, really biographically fascinating, sociologically fascinating thing about American black comedy.

And I couldn't recommend it enough. Jeff Bennett is called it. There's just this. Black out loud? Black out loud. It's called, yeah. And that's us done, I think. Our Q&A this week was your questions for the new Strictly host.

So I chatted to Johannes and Emma and Josh. And I put all your questions to them about the new series of Strictly. also lots of other things as well. So I hope you enjoy that. It's really, really good fun. They're a really fun combination as well. And our bonus episode are The History of James Bond continues this week.

Again, thank you for your incredible feedback about that. They now are people who come up to me in the street saying how much they're loving that Bond series. So that's our, if you want to become a member, at Wester's Entertainment.com, ad free listening or all that kind of malachy. As always, you do not have to become a member. But if you do, there's all sorts of goodies there.

Other than that, let's see you on Thursday. See you on Thursday.