The Rest Is Entertainment - "I'm A Celebrity" Booking Secrets

Episode Date: November 18, 2025

Which leading Labour politician almost ended up in this Jungle this year? Will ITV sell its broadcasting arm to Sky for over £1 billion? And why has Sky Sport's TikTok channel Halo taken a ‘hot girl walk’ to infamy? Richard Osman and Marina Hyde discuss the casting for I'm A Celebrity 2026, who are the booking wins and which major MP was almost secured? ITV is in talks to sell their television business to Sky - but what would the deal actually look like, and what does this mean for the future of British telly? Join The Rest Is Entertainment Club: Unlock the full experience of the show – with exclusive bonus content, ad-free listening, early access to Q&A episodes, access to our newsletter archive, discounted book prices with our partners at Coles Books, early ticket access to live events, and access to our chat community. Sign up directly at therestisentertainment.com The Rest Is Entertainment is proudly presented by Sky. Sky is home to award-winning shows such as The White Lotus, Gangs of London and The Last of Us. Requires relevant Sky TV and third party subscription(s). Broadband recommended min speed: 30 mbps. 18+. UK, CI, IoM only. To find out more and for full terms and conditions please visit Sky.com For more Goalhanger Podcasts, head to www.goalhanger.com Video Editor: Joey McCarthy + Max Archer Assistant Producer: Imee Marriott Senior Producer: Joey McCarthy Social Producer: Bex Tyrell Exec Producer: Neil Fearn Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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Our special selection has something for every style and price point. Visit our Holtz holiday shop and store or online at Holtrenfrew.com. Okay, only ten more presents to wrap. You're almost at the finish line. But first... There, the last one. Enjoy a Coca-Cola for a pause that refreshes. Hello and welcome to this episode of The Rest is Entertainment with me Marina Hyde

and me Richard Osman. Good day to you all. Good day, Marina. Good day to you. Good day. How formal this is. Good day to thee. If there's a methinks in this podcast, I'm pulling the plug. That's it. It's one of the worst. Meethinks is so useful because if anyone ever says it on social media, you know you can immediately block them. Yeah. Block and report. Block and report. Yes. What are we going to be talking about this week?

A number of things. We are going to be talking about Sky and ITV, who may be merging. Well, Sky's going to buy ITV, maybe. Yes. I mean, that's what I mean by merging. It's like I merged with Ingrid when we married. Whereas really... Well, I believe you... Yes. We all know I was bought out by a much more impressive company. We will talk about this entire deal via the prism of your marriage to England. Amazing. And what it all means.

What it all means. We are going to talk about speaking. of Sky, they launched a TikTok channel specifically designed for women. How long did it last? For women's sports? For women's sports. It was born on a Thursday, Richard, and they read the last rights to it on a Sunday.

What happened? So that's quite fun. And we're also going to talk, well, we're going to talk about I'm a Celebrity. We're going to talk about so they're booking. I'm a Celebrity started last night. It's the 25th series of the ITV jungle-based format. Seems like more.

Well, yes. I mean, it's quite interesting. Anyway, so I suppose that's quite relevant to what we're saying is I think more than 300 people have now gone into the jungle. If you're one of the people, we're going to talk about booking a talent show because this has come obviously right after Celebrity Traitors, which is not everyone's favourite act to follow, I'm sure. Yeah, it's tough. But booking these reality shows and how you do it. The mix that you need. The mix that you need. And as I say, when more than 300 people in the entertainment industry sort of front facing have gone into the jungle, the pool is relatively small and it's quite interesting how you do it. But it is relatively small.

So, for example, before we talk about someone who we believe was about to go in and now is not, it's talking about the people who are there. So when we talk about the gene pool around these shows. So Martin Kemp is there. Always happy to see on my screens. Yes. now what you're doing with that booking is he is a well-known he's very well-known phase five of all sorts of different things you want a slightly older man you've got to have one of those in the camp your dad knows who he is because his son roman kemp has already done the format about five or six years ago i'll do the merry-go-round

for you so martin kemp has been on celebrity big brother he's been on celebrity goggle box with roman kemp he's been on 71 degrees north which was itv's a trip to the arctic with celebrities he's done eight go rallying with his wife Shirley, which was a show that Noel Edmonds was also on. He has done Masked Singer with Shirley as well. Roman, his son, as you say, has already done I'm a Celebrity. Roman is currently on Celebrity Race Across the World. Someone else who was on Celebrity Race Across the World was Kelly Brook. Kelly Brook is now in I'm a Celebrity. Kelly Brooke has also done Bake Off. She's done Masked Dancer and she's done Strictly. Who else has done strictly in this current I'm a Celebrity lineup? Well, Eddie Caddy has done strictly. Lisa

Riley has done strictly and Alex Scott has done strictly. Alex Scott also won Bear Grill's Mission Survive, which as ITV show, this is probably closest to I'm a Celebrity. She won that. There were only two series and the other series was one... You don't have to get baptized, I don't think to be un-I'm a celebrity.

I'm joking, I'm sure you don't with Bear Grills. It's not mandatory. And the only other person to win Bear Grills Mission Survive was Vogue Williams, who's also in I'm a Celebrity. So there are a lot of people who've been around a lot, and that's before we get to Ruby Wax, who's done Fame Academy, Only Fools and Horses, which was Endemol's very short-lived celebrity show-jumping show,

celebrity apprentice and master chef. I'm so sorry, could you just take me back to Only Fools and Horses? Only Fools on horses. Only Fools on horses, but actually? Yeah. They were jumping over really, really small. That's not, the height of the jumps actually isn't my primary preoccupation with the show concept.

Yeah. But amazing. Okay. I'm trying to think, do I remember who else is on that? It was quite saying. They're very much hoping you forget, but I will be exhuming the full passenger manifest. Hera Ferguson was involved with it. That's cheating.

Or perhaps we were going to do an American one and she was involved with that or something. It's really interesting. Back in the old days, if you did any of the sort of three big celebrity reality formats, I'm a Celebrity Strictly or Celebrity Big Brother, you couldn't do any of the others kind of thing. It was like, oh no, they've already done one. Now, as we've seen from so many different things, particularly in the US, where 100% reality TV is a career and people just do all the different formats. You know, Jack Osbourne on the first episode turned out to be quite good at cooking

and no one else could cook of Vimalibati that aired on Sunday night. And he said, just want to say that, you know, I came second on cooking with the stars or something like that. Yeah, exactly. And by the way, Tom Reid Wilson, who's about to go in as well, he won. I think he was second on Britain's Best Home Cook. They've all been around two newcomers. They've got, as we talked to an awful lot about reality shows, making sure that you get that

younger generation on. They got H, the rapper, and they have got angry. Ginge, who actually came across rather well, I thought. Very well. I'm surprised to see him up for the trial. No, because he's got a huge fan base. So you think they just voted because it would be funny and they want to see him doing? Every single other streamer. I don't think that's why they voted for

Ruby Wax. Let's talk about Ruby Wax, because that is a good booking. Because from second one, you think, oh, this is, because the first half of the people they bought in yesterday you're thinking, oh, this is, okay, it's a little bit identical, a little bit pleased with itself. And then in the second half, you think, oh, great, because Ruby Wax comes in and absolutely. She'll sing for her

supper or lack of supper and she'll repeatedly and deliberately misunderstand that we're like why am I doing this? Why is this happening to me? Of course you understand the format. So I was talking to lots of celebrity bookers and they, you know, they said, you know, the whole thing is a pantomime and you do need, you know, you need your big names. You need those names that that people who don't really understand tell you think are amazing bookings. Like, you know, you get Jerry Hall on strictly or you get Noel or Nigra Farage and I'm a celebrity where people go, oh, okay, it's a, it's a big name. But actually those people tend to fall away. And it's the it's the Joe Marders of this world.

Everybody says that you need the sort of marmalade droppers for show one. And then afterwards, the group dynamics kind of take over and you discover it's either a show about either as a particularly conflict heavy series or it's one about comradeship or whatever. And actually the bookings that, the people are on much lower money. You know, I think the lowest paid ever was Georgia Toffalo from Made in Chelsea's who won it. Sam Thompson won't have got made in Chelsea's their cheap bookings, sorry to say. And Jill Scott, you know, again, so people sort of fall in love with the...

I saw a list of the salaries in the sun and I was like, I know those are wrong. Yeah. They were completely wrong. There's some people on huge amounts of money. But a lot of people will do it for 20 and less. 20K and less. You're either doing it for 20K or you're doing it for a million. No one's doing it for a million this time.

This time, I think people have done. In that line up, there's no one where you go, oh my God, they've got who now? And a couple of years ago, Ant and Debt. said, we are not having any more politicians on this show. After Farage, they said, you know what? This is not what we want to do. Because let's remind ourselves who they had, much longer ago, actually, they had Nadine Doris, but that was

under Cameron. Kisha Dougdale. Yeah. One big Marmolo dropper was Matt Hancock, him going into it. That was a good one. And then Farage. And they said, and I think ITV said, right, you know, no more politicians. But, you know...

Then a name will come along. For example... Someone will come out and they're pulling you back in. And this year, my understanding is Ed Davy was offered to them. They said, no, listen, we've said, no politicians. Well, I think Ed Davies people have got sort of, he's got a team of people who think of stunts that it might be helpful for Ed Davy to do. And I think they thought if you give it to charity. But I tell you, yeah. There was another name that came along that I think ITV found impossible to say no to.

Well, it would have been impossible to say no to Angela Raina going on it. Now, she got really quite far and her people in talks to do this. And, I mean, what a moment for her. I mean, if you thought last week was chaotic for Labour, try and imagine this week if Angela Raina was now basically running a proxy leadership campaign. On ITV, prime time. By the medium of eating kangaroo testicles on ITV prime time. Take that west street.

Yeah. So Angela Rainer, I think everyone knows who Angela Rainer is, the former deputy leader of the Labour Party, now no longer. And the Labour Party seemed to be undergoing some sort of possible, you know, season four of succession. And she would be in line for that. So she's a very, very, very significant current political figure. Obviously she wants to return to frontline politics. That's very clear.

And in fact, having always said, I'd never want to be leader. She's now stopped even denying that. And I think, were she to do this, you are leaving during parliamentary time. I mean, again, it'd be fun seeing the fall out of the budget next week while she's eating, you know, emu-a-ness. Yeah, which, by the way, we'll all be doing after the budget next week. So she obviously wishes to return to frontline politics. And there is a line that politicians can say about doing the show,

even though you're leaving parliamentary time. And you could say, I don't think we're reaching ordinary people. We've got to go to where the people are. And this is what they all say, which is, I will just go where the eyeballs are. I will go and try and reach out because whatever it is. By the way, she would have been an absolutely terrific booking for me. that's the thing we talked just now about your Jerry Hulls and people like that, which are sort of like a one-week wonder.

Someone like Angela Rainer, you would get all of the publicity up front and she would be a great booking as well. But I think what happened is that obviously she does wish to return to frontline policies. It was made clear that were she to do something like this, there wouldn't be a way back. By the way, I don't think the people who would have made that clearer in a position to say who does or doesn't have a way back. Anyway, we've seen their briefing operation.

So we'll have to wait and see. But, yes, sadly, that booking did not occur. But this line-up makes more sense when you realize that I think ITV felt that maybe this was going to happen. Well, I think they felt it got very far. There were always people who pull out genuinely, like big bookings, and they're often the ones they spent a lot of money. I remember there was Boris Becker a couple of years, maybe just after he got either just, I can't remember his prison sentences. That's not like him to pull out. Oh, my goodness.

It's outrageous this morning. Is that your new catchphrase? Yeah, no, it's not. I'm trying it out and it didn't work. But yes, Colleen was obviously, Colleen McLaughlin was a huge, Colleen Rooney was a huge booking, and they paid a million and a half.

She's the highest paid ever. You've always got those people you might put in and you would pay a lot for. By the way, I'm not saying that Angela Rainer was one of those people. No, no, no. That would be terrible to take that sort of, you know. Agreed. I think you kind of have to guarantee.

I think if she were going to do it, it would be for the profile. file and to sort of... And maybe give it to charity. I don't know what you do. I mean, Hancock didn't give it to charity, obviously. Yeah, got paid 320 grand, gave reports, suggest 3% of that to charity.

The nature of this particular format is interesting because on something like celebrity traitors, it's really... I'm not saying it's easy to book for because it's nothing is easy to book for. It's very, very difficult to book these shows. But you don't have to talk about your personal life. It's, you're constantly talking about the game. It's prestige. Yes, you're there for a reason.

There's no privations. You get food. But as you say, more and more people are getting into this, or just seeing it as a career. So you're so used to just telling your stories and being that kind of anecdotalist. Yes. And so, you know, the real kind of what you really want as a celebrity booker, again, spoke to people who've booked lots of the big shows. You do want someone who has not been on a show before, but it's going to be great. That's what you want.

But though, you know, they are few and far between these days. Angela Raina definitely would have been one of those people. Where you can do it is with people who were earlier in their careers, like angry, Ginge. This rise of YouTubers and Twitches and streamers and all this is incredible because they come with a very, very big fan base already, but they have not done these shows before. So they are new

to most of your linear TV audience. So Angry Ginge is a new booking to a lot of people but he brings a lot of people with him. So that's sort of a perfect thing as well. So yeah, and solid bookers, you know, they're sort of two types. There's the celebrity in the world. And there are the celebrity who

you sort of want, who are the people who just know all of the agents and who can pick up the phone to everybody. And, you know, I've done shows before with Celeb Bookers and they know every single thing about every single person who's going on that show. They know who's going to threaten to walk. They know who's going to be difficult. They know who's going to come good in week three when, you know, they've got a little bit more confidence.

They get all of that stuff. And as you say, when someone drops out at the last minute, I mean, that's, it's like suddenly seeing a superhero because you go, oh, my God, we've lost two of our main cast and the Celebrate Book is going to overdrive. And like the next day, they deliver you. We should say that there are people who are going on I'm a Celebrity who are not in there yet. Well, Vogue Williams and Tom Reed Wilson didn't go in on the first day.

And also, we'll both be amazing. Tom Reid Wilson is a great, great, great booking. Because lots of people don't know him, but everyone is going to fall in that. And may well be the most inexpensive person in that lineup. I think I would guess. I mean, he is someone from that lineup who you would stick straight into celebrity traitors. Yeah. Yeah, as you say, you know, it's been on 20 odd years and when it started, it felt, you know, the idea that it was stripped across the week was this extraordinary event and it made it feel unmissable.

And now just 20 years later, it makes it feel missable. I have to say, it's a great team behind it. I do think there's some great bookings there. Anton Deck are as amazing as ever and their writer Andy Milligan is as amazing as ever. So it's still a treat coming up to Christmas. Those last minute dropouts. I'm weirdly on strictly this year. you know, Danny Dyer, but literally at the last minute dropping out. And she would have made a big difference, I think, to... She was injured rather than pull out of the last minute. Yeah, yeah, exactly. This line-up makes more sense if there were an Angela Raina type figure in there as well. And also some other quite big bookings as well, just sort of like a big celebrity. But, you know, people just do at the last minute kind of get cold feet.

And then some people are just professional reality people. Now, I think it might be time for us to go to a break. Oh, let's do that. This episode is brought to you by Sky Cinema, the go-to destination for film lovers this Christmas. Every year Christmas sneaks up like a sequel you get to star in. The tree goes up, advent calendar doors open, and the TV starts reciting familiar lines from our favourite festive films.

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lift, sculpt, push, and go. Explore the new Peloton Cross-Training Tread Plus at one peloton.ca. Welcome back, everybody. Marina, there's a huge story right at the heart of British TV. at the moment, a possible joining of forces of two of the major players. Very, very big news in the UK broadcast landscape and even beyond, which is that Sky, who by the way, sponsored this show, are looking to buy ITV for a 2 billion, at the moment, around about 2 billion it's being quoted as. So ITV studios are the people who make the television programs and can sell them around the world. ITV is essentially, it's the channels.

Yeah, it's the networks on. It's the free-to-air public service broadcaster of ITV, That's five channels and the streamer ITVX. It's a place that makes all its money from advertising, essentially, whereas ITV studios, as much as one can. So Sky are owned by Comcast, although Comcast don't particularly talk about Sky because Sky was bought for about $39 billion, I think it was, and they've seen quite a lot of that written down in recent years. But anyway, the UK Sky is being empowered to go for ITV. In terms of why, basically both these businesses are in trouble and they will be held. by the scale of being together.

And they're both in trouble, by the way, just because... Well, they're in trouble for different reasons. Yes, exactly. Sky is too small in pay TV, basically, and ITV is too small in advertising. So if you go to scale and you can share lots of costs, I mean, Sky's got various things, it's got, but it's a platform.

Yeah. And it sells boxes and it sells bundling deals. They don't make huge amounts of TV. They have, they've hung on to those kind of people who pay for Sky Sports and have it by the box and all of that sort of stuff. And that is an extremely expensive, you know, that's the sort of real luxury consumer. But in terms of sort of content and services that they have, lots of things are going. Like at the moment, they have now TV, which is their streaming service.

But lots of things on now, all the HBO stuff is going because Max is going to start in the UK. We'll come to that in a minute of like what all these things are doing. So Sky needs its own content, really, is a subscription service. In terms of ITV, we are on a declining advertising business. This previously would not have been able to happen. There's no way that the government would have allowed this to happen. Well, they have turned it down before, haven't they? There were thoughts about this many years ago, and they said,

you would control too much of the British advertising market between the two of you. ICV has looked for different people lots of times, but actually I think it always comes back to Sky, and I think that is probably the best fit for them. Don't forget, it doesn't mean they don't still have, public service broadcasting obligations, that license will carry on until 2034. And by the way, ITB1 will still be there in ITV2 and ITVX. So it doesn't affect that particularly.

It would be a mash-up of ITV and Sky's stuff, I think. I think you would combine Now TV, which is their streaming service, as I say, with ITVX. So you'd have the Sky Tech, which is slightly better. But then you would use ITV's free content to upsell like a subscription tier. There is a pay tier on ITVX, okay. So Sky would still be a platform, but they would have a much better service of their own. And they would give prominence that service. Prominence is like, sounds so boring, but it's one of the biggest issues in UK TV.

What is why M&S will always rent a shop on the high street rather than a street to things down. I mean, you go where people are. You go where people are. And then they'll become a much bigger force in ad sales. I think they probably wouldn't be as big as some people say they are, but they would be like half the ad market. Then you're thinking, okay, this seems like it is. If this happened, this would be a huge remaking of UK's broadcast landscape

and it wouldn't be the end of it because then you're going to say, okay, the other parts of the market, they're going to need protection. So if you're Paramount and Five, UK TV, Channel 4, you're probably going to need to gang up together to say, well, we need to have a way of competing with them on ad sales. It makes sense at the moment for everyone to try and aggregate content because then you've got bigger players who might be able to go,

compete with American streamers. This is the thing that's happened, by the way, isn't it? Is for many years, people weren't really allowed to merge because in our market, it would mean there was a player that was too big. However, because of the Netflix's and what have you, and more importantly, actually. And the desperate straits of half the start. Because of YouTube and because, you know, this argument that you can't control too much of the advertising take in British entertainment, I mean, that's not on linear TV anymore.

I mean, it's somewhere completely different. So actually, Linear TV is going to have to join together in order to have scale, in order to be able to sell advertising in a way that it's online competitors. I saw some reports last week when we were talking about this, and they were saying, oh, they control 70% the ad market. It's like, wake up, no, they don't. I mean, they control 70% of 15%. Yeah, yeah.

But then you've got to think, okay, kind of the big story is maybe the BBC would say, well, in all these negotiations with government, well, okay, if that's going to, to happen, then you have to let us merge with Channel 4, and you have to say public service broadcasters have to be given more prominence, like mandatory prominence. So what you could say is, there has to be an I play a button on remote controls sold in our country. I mean, and prominence is so weird. It's like, because you'll see on your remote controls like, oh, I can press Netflix and press YouTube. Sorry, why can't I break? If you allow certain things like this to happen, in order for the market to be fair or to give value to people who kind of

pay into these things, you might want to say, we have to have a, if, say, BBC and Channel 4 merge as one option. So you'd have to say we want prominence in that sense. Anyway, in terms of jobs, that is a significant thing and what people are thinking, because if, obviously, if two operations merge, ITV, I think, is quite lean. It's certainly probably leaner in some ways than Sky and convert to any American operation. It's obviously isn't even compared. In general, these are very difficult times, but people need scale. Even Comcast, they want an outside, they want an extra US and outside of the US operation. And I think it's quite interesting this thing, how it fits into the whole wider picture

of what's going on. We knew that there was going to have to be masses of M&A, merger and acquisition activity in entertainment. And actually, you know, a lot of those guys, a lot of the big studio bosses, a lot of the big media companies, a lot of the big, they voted Trump really because they wanted to be allowed for this to happen. But this has absolutely exploded in the past few weeks. So you've got Larry Ellison, or his son, you know, Kendall Ellison,

David, real name, but buying Paramount. But no sooner was inked dry on that than they're saying, we want to buy Warner's. And Warner's are now saying, well, okay, we are up for sale. And everyone, I think everyone thought the Ellicons will get it. Now we discover that Comcast are also looking at Warner's seriously. And actually, amazingly, so are Netflix. and I mean I know there's one absolutely

mega, mega big power broker and Kingmaker who thinks actually maybe Netflix will get warners because there's a certain point around us is going to say, no, I don't want to see this I don't want to keep this, I don't want to keep it happening. I don't want my right was to get too much bigger. Well, there's enough for three big things at the top to be in the top three.

Netflix is at the top. Okay, we can argue about YouTube but in terms of these kind of more traditional well, certain sort of services you've got Netflix, Disney and there's space for a third. Now, maybe that's like Paramount Warner's. Maybe it's something to do with Comcast. Everyone has got bits of these businesses that they want to fit into their things. In the same way that with ITV, people thought, well, hang on.

In the UK, other players thought, well, we could buy this and we could slot it into our broadband services. Everyone is trying to get bits of these businesses because there is a big prize. To be number three in that is kind of everyone's prize. But then you also think, well, maybe the Ellison's won't get it. But equally, what if the Ellison's, The Ellison's get TikTok in the US, which remember Trump said it has to be hived off from the kind of Chinese mothership. And he's talked very favorably about the Ellicons to that. Now, if they had Paramount and Warner's and TikTok in the US, then you've got a completely different type of company.

And then they would be number three for definite. And they maybe could go further. Maybe they're quickly bigger than Disney. It's hard to say. But there are so many different people now, predators, just like walking around trying to get bits and fit it together with their business. And we're going to see much, much more of this. Just to try and be big enough. Everyone is trying to solve various puzzles.

And they've all got different missing pieces. But everyone wants bigger scale because you can't do anything without scale. So if I had to put some money on it, I would say that the Sky and ITV deal will go through, which as you say, never would have occurred before, never, because the government will think it will have to. And at some point BBC and Channel 4 has to happen. I know that I know no one publicly is going to say that or ask for it or anything like that. But it just has to because it doesn't make any sense of. all. Channel 4 doesn't make any sense.

You're watching it happen now in real time really, really quickly and people are saying, and also, you know, ITB, I know there'll be, there's resistance to all of this, but ITB might be worth half what it is in just a year's time. Yeah. And there's just a sense that they have to go for all these different things. We don't know what, Warner's coming to the UK, Max is going to launch in the UK and you're kind of thinking, oh, they have, well, hang on a second. TNT sports at the moment is a joint venture between BT and Warner's, but BT have said they might give all those. There's so many, this is so complicated. It's ridiculous, but they might give their, if they give their sport to Warner's and then they've got all of the HBO stuff, and by the way, that includes the new Harry Potter things, the full, you know, they're trying to build. Warner's is trying to build up in the UK. So everyone is trying to do these different things, but this kind of teeming activity is making things and dominoes fall very, very quickly in a way that they would just never have been able to in the past.

Just think of it as everyone trying to do a land grab to try and solve their puzzles. Lots more things will happen. But I think this particular thing will happen and it will change broadcasting the broadcasting landscape as we know it in the UK for definite. Yeah, I would say five years time, BBC and Channel 4 are the same thing streaming-wise. ITB and now TV are the same thing streaming-wise. And there's a sort of HBO Max is out there with lots of other things. And then Disney, Apple and Disney, Apple and Amazon still have their, because they have other businesses, you know, bigger than broadcasting. they're able just to have their streamers as a lovely little add-on.

All the maps are being redrawn. I think it's fair to that. And you just keep watching because it's happening very, very quickly. Moving on to something else, Skyrelated. Halo, which was Sky Sports's Wars. Halo Goodbye. Hello, hello, hello goodbye. Sky Sports is TikTok channel for young female fans.

Sports fans. Yeah, sports fan, described as the little sis, Sky Sports. launched on Thursday their head of social said I couldn't be prouder and more excited about this launch proud because this has been driven by the women on our team

and embraced and supported by all across the business put out of its misery on Sunday we've listened we didn't get it right as a result we're stopping all activity on this account I'm so proud

we're learning and we remain as committed as ever to creating spaces where fans feel included and inspired now What the hell happened? Anatomy of a fall.

Anatomy of a fall. It was a, they crucially said it's quite interesting. It's not a women's sports account, but sports content through a female lens. That means it's tapping into trends and content types, which frankly wouldn't pop up on my FYP and applying to all sports. So an FYP is the for you page.

Yeah, what did that mission statement actually translate us? As I said, we only had it for three days. We knew it so little. But it had, I mean, there was a lot of content about Barbies, Labuboos, Matcha, Pink and Peach branding and lettering, heart emojis. What is this Matcha thing, by the way? I keep reading about, they kept mentioning Matcha. It's literally like some word they're vaguely aware as trending on the internet for various. It's like a sort of, you know, it's, you know what Matcha is. I know what Matcha is.

Yeah, I just don't know what I have, when it became gendered. Yeah, I mean, that, yes. I'd have called it Match of the Day. Match of the Day would have been amazing. But we can't. It's just, it's dead to us now. But, and it was, it has had an absolute deluge of opprobrium from people, women saying this is so patronising. How can you? I mean, it was kind of mad.

There was a moment where someone, someone, a woman, said, I can't believe you think this is what female sports fans like. And the official Halo account said, can't believe you bought that energy. Wow. I mean, really embarrassing. It's really interesting. So in terms of the matcher thing and how they would integrate such a concept in, they had a clip from the Bournemouth game

a couple of weeks ago where Rayan Chirkey did those incredible two assists for Harland. And the way they explained that clip was how the matcher and Hot Girl Walk combo hits. It's like, what is this internet word salad? I'm aware that you've... Let's go through this again. How the matcher and Hot Girl Walk combo

hits. How the matcher and hot girl walk combo hits. So Ryan Churkey is the matcher. Erling Harland there is the hot girl walk. What's a hot girl walk? Hot girl walk is like it's like some sort of aspirational like going walk and think about your girls kind of mean. Okay, which is what Erling Harlan does a lot. I mean, okay, I am a chick

I watch that game, yeah, breaking. And this is bizarre. This is not at all. This is not at all how I reacted to that, to either of those moments. It was, you know, it was a great fun game. I was like anyone normal reacted and thought, fuck, Chelsea could have bought him two years ago, but no, no, we would have had to sell 37 of the other not very good players that we would have had for definite on the books at that time in that position.

But let's not go, let's not get sidetrack. I can't get into sidetrack by that now. But they thought this is a way that you must talk about sports. So I think I thought, I remember when Josh King's goal against Chelsea went and was disallowed, I thought about that that literally every single Fulham account is like, is all Hot Girl Walk. It's all Hot Girl War. The whole thing.

No one was like, this is one of the great injustices in world football. And World History. In World History, I would say. I was like Hot Girl Walk. I was like Pastel Hearts. When you don't get the Luboo or when you've already got the Labubo when you open the blind box. I said, I think I tweeted, Can't Believe Varra bringing this energy.

So, okay, we'll never now know what slightly dated cultural references they had. Someone would have been having a brat winter. There would, you know, some, there was, you, they would have had to wait for a certain scoreline maybe to get the six, seven meme in now. I don't know, but it would have been. Oh, they definitely would have. They've got six seven in without any question. The second it goes to like three or something, it goes, God, this is going to end up six seven.

Easy. Easy. Easy. Easy. Easy. Easy. Easy. Easy.

little cis content is annoying. Actually, there are people, the people who do do this quite well, where you're able to have a central brand and then you kind of spin it off into something different, fashion and beauty can do this. I mean, they are the most remorseless female targeted industries ever. They've got basically centuries of experience of how to do this. This wasn't it. It's so dramatic that they then pulled it and that they did it this badly.

And I think we're always fascinated when things like this go this wrong because it reminded me a little bit about the, which I know we talked about on the podcast when it happened, the Jaguar advert where do you remember that was basically this time last year when Jaguar had a new advert with no cars in it. What they did have, I think, was sort of eight diverse non-binary models who came up in an elevator onto a pink planet. And you did watch it and think, oh my God, this is in house as well. How did this happen? How did this happen? And the answer is, I suppose, you know, it was probably conceived of at the high watermark of a certain type of culture. Six, nine months later when it finally aired, it was three weeks after Donald Trump's victory

or something, there had been a distinct vibe shift. And I was like, oh, what is this? This is so bad? And I guess, is that what happened with Halo? I mean, I don't understand, you know, women were apparently involved in the making of this. I mean, it all comes down to that fundamental misconception because, I mean, essentially, it was a football account, really. And the thing about football is nobody is watching football differently to anybody else.

There is nobody of any age or any gender who is watching football differently to every single other person who's watching football. We all watch it in exactly the same way. It is not gendered. And the only way of, you know, female football fan is another way of saying it, which is football fan. Yeah. I mean, so they are...

Could a woman. do it. I mean, I don't love any, you know, I've got to say, I don't love the lionesses. I don't love this girl can, which I think is sporting. You love the lionesses. You don't like the lionesses, but I can't say the word lionesses. England, I just have. I know, but I can't talk, I can't say it in conversation. I would say England. Yeah. And I can't, I don't love this girl can, which I'm sure maybe it's, you know, that's sport England's initiative of guessing women and taking exercise. Again, I hate the title. Maybe it's really successful as an initiative. I do think that when people say inclusive, you know, even though I was inclusive about a car

that costs upwards of 100 grand. I mean, you're being ridiculous. I remember actually when Nigel Farage, they debanked him, Coots, and they said, we're really committed to inclusivity. It's like, you need three million pounds to open a current account. I'm so sorry. Sometimes maybe it works, this kind of a level of that what you've seen more and more of. I know you're saying that no one watches football in different ways. Fine. I get that. But you're seeing a lot more of this kind of omni-channel branding.

Give you an example. Mail on, they've got Mail Plus, which is their sort of paid tier on. And one of the things you can get on that is you can get a showbiz newsletter that's sort of written almost like a substack. And it comes, it's called The Spotlight. And it's written in this absolutely extraordinarily non-male way where it's like when you're a dare, you don't need the grid, the math simply refused to math. All these kind of like, you know, they're talking like bits of the internet. And what they're linking to is stories that are written in the classic male online style, not like this.

I don't know whether that's working and I don't know whether it's getting lots of subscribers and drawing people into the website, simply because it's written in a different way and driving to people towards their content. That's clearly what Haley was trying to do, which is to talk about it in a way that they, you know, like, although I fundamentally believe. they misunderstood Han culture. They misunderstood. Oh yeah, I did my degree in it. Hun culture?

Hun culture, yeah. Like, it's a, you know, this is not the rest of history. Amazing, amazing. I mean, I also did my degree in that. It's a combined course, the two types of hung culture. But they are, but they try, so they're trying to drive you towards their traditional content. In the same way that Sky is trying to, you know, drive you towards their sport content,

but do it in a different way. I think consumerism has become much. more complex and just saying, oh, we're just going to go after little, you know, young women. I don't think that's really how these things hit anymore. It sounds like no one was trying to be mean. They were trying to be funny. But it's just a bit of it's, but it's no malice. It's an idea out of time. But also it's excruciating because I actually think that the reason the pushback is so big is because we're sort of constantly thinking that the man, and I do use the term advisedly in this particular case, is trying to sell us something. And

when they do it badly, like they do it with a Jaguarad or like this, it's like, the backlash is so extreme, because most of the time you're too weak and feeble to resist. You're just being overcome by a constant influencing sales pitch. But when it doesn't work, all of the energy gets concentrated into tearing this thing down. And I mean, the backlash was like absolutely mega, to the point where they just said, we've got this completely wrong. You know what? I bet there were three days is fine because people will forget about it.

So anyone who's been working on it, it's okay. I think they had miles and miles of that kind of synthetic sass that they could deliver to audiences. But audiences did not want what they were serving. I don't talk like them for a minute. What a packed show we had today. Thanks for listening, everybody. Any recommendations? I am absolutely loving the, there's a book called 1929 by Andrew Ross Sorkin, which is about the stock market crash of 1929.

He writes things so brilliantly. You know, he writes it like a page term. and it's absolutely fascinating and I know there's all this sort of like when you read these books like the now of it but actually it's just an extraordinary story and I recommend that So 1929 by Andrew Ross Sorkin

and I saw the last show of the first half of Nick Muhammad's tour show pony where he as Mr. Swallow if you only know Nick from Ted Lassau or from celebrity traitors he's had this character Mr Swallow that he's done for years and years and years. This tour is brilliant this show is so brilliant

All of his shows have been brilliant. It's right in my wheelhouse. If you like very, very clever and very, very stupid all at the same time, then... Is it still going? Is it coming back? You told me something about this. It's coming back next year. So he's touring lots of places and touring much bigger venues as well.

So there will be tickets available. I know tickets for these things are expensive. But this is one of those things. It's a proper treat. I'm definitely going to that. So it's a really, really great show. So it's Nick Muhammad as Mr. Swadow in Show Pony. Right.

I loved it. We will be back on Thursday with... an interview with Kate Phillips, who is BBC Chief Content Officer. So she literally probably has more impact on what you see on television than anybody else in Britain. And it's a Q&A, so you've already sent us lots and lots of questions. So thank you for that. We'll be putting those questions. Everything, everything.

We'll be putting those questions to Kate on Thursday. I'm very much looking forward to that. We'll be talking about traitors. I'm going to talk about political stuff as well, but we'll be talking about... Yeah, I've heard they're in the news a bit at the moment. So we'll probably be talking about that. And also for our members, we have the third. and final part of our series on Story of MTV.

Now, you can join for ad-free listening, special bonus episodes, all the rest of it, at the rest isentatainment.com. Otherwise, we'll see you on Thursday. See you on Thursday, everyone. This episode was brought to you by our good friends at Sky. The Skyglass TV is a television that insists on dressing for the occasion, transforming your living room from background noise into a set piece premiere worthy of Sky Atlantic. As the nights get longer, it's the perfect time to settle in for a movie night with quality

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