The Rest Is Entertainment - Introducing: The World Cup Of... TV Theme Tunes

Episode Date: July 21, 2026

This week, Richard is joined by Bella Hull and Ivo Graham to discuss... TV Theme Tunes. To hear the rest of the episode, head to our website and become a AAA member. Our Summer sale is here: get an annual membership for a third off with code SUMMER26. That's ad-free listening, every bonus episode, and full access to our exclusive members' series. Sale ends August 31st, so grab it before summer's over. The Rest is Entertainment is brought to you by Octopus Energy, Britain's most awarded energy supplier. Lloyds. 250 years on and still backing the nation's aspirations. 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 For more Goalhanger Podcasts, head to www.goalhanger.com Video Editor: Joey McCarthy Assistant Producer: Imee Marriott Senior Producer: Joey McCarthy Social Producer: Bex Tyrrell Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Hello everybody. Welcome along to the Rest is Entertainment World Cup of Special. I am joined by Bella Hall. Hello, Bella. Hello. Very nice to see you. And Ivo Graham. Hello, Ivo.

Hello, Richard. Thanks for us. Just absolutely full disclosure. We are recording this just before the England World Cup semi-final, which is why Ivo is wearing what he's wearing. That may age very badly. Wear it all year round. Who knows?

Stopped clock. Listen, we all age badly. Now, our World Cup this week is the World Cup of T-Ewe. TV theme tunes. Okay, what we've done, we've sent a whole long list of TV theme tunes to our friends at focal data.

They put all of those to the British public and we have a list of the most popular ones in the world. We will draw various of these themes into four quarter finals. We'll chat about them a bit.

At the end, we will discover which TV theme the British public thinks is the best. I warn you, as I always warn you, the public are pretty much

always wrong. Okay. So we can talk about our own favorites as well. Yes, yeah, yeah. Okay. Shall we take a look at our first quarterfinal? We must.

Okay. It is this. The Adams family. Against Peky Blinders. Ivo. So two very, very different eras, two very different songs. But two, in their different ways, quite sort of gothic. Yeah.

Quite scary, right? They're scary songs. Mischievous. Yes. They're more than just mischievous. They're both... The piggy blinders were full of mischief. Yeah, they were mischievous.

Is it mischievous or mischievous? Mischievous, I think. Mischievous. I think you know that, but you also know how much more fun it is to say mischievous. You've made the right decision at every point in. But they were really naughty. Yeah, they were naughty boys for God to say. Yeah, they really were.

They were deviance. They really were deviance, to be fair. I'd have called that show The naughty deviance. The naughty deviant. I'd have called it. I'd like to think that Nick Cave would not have granted permission for his iconic song Red Hand to be used in the show, The Nauty Deviants. The Norty Deviance of Birmingham. So the Peekeey Blind of the scene tune, as you say, it's Red White Hand by Nick Cave.

I think it's the only one of our quarter-finalists that was like a song that originally existed. It's been covered by about a million different people. It's been covered by two of his exes. What? Yeah. What do you think about that? Wow. God, he must have been amazing in bed.

Can you imagine? Or I haven't heard the cover versions. Perhaps they're terrible. Or terrible. I mean, I just don't know who I would have to go out with for them to, for me to want to cover one of their songs after the breakup. I'm a musician. A musician, yes, we'd have to be a musician to start with. But also, I just, to honour someone after they've presumably broken your heart.

Yeah. Well, maybe he really leaves footprints in people's hearts. Or perhaps they split up with him. They were like, I go throw this guy a bone. Yes, yeah, yeah. I'll do a BBC live. lounge style. Yeah, and PJ Harvey's thinking, do you know what, Nick, I do feel bad, but that song you did, what's that song you did?

You're always playing. Oh, my God. Yeah. Why don't I just knock off a version of that? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Oh, it's quite patronising. It's like redoing it. Have you thought about doing it like this?

Amy Winehouse went out with a member of the Zootons. You know what? I'll make you an insane amount of money singing Valerie as long as you never contact me again. Let me deal with this. But it has also been covered by Jarvis Cocker. And Snoop Dog. Wow. Red right hand.

I think it feels very in line with the show, do you think? Yeah, I'm afraid to say. I've not actually watched very much Peeky Blinders at all. It completely fits what I imagine Peaky Blinders. Yes, it is exactly like that. But I'm coming at this from a very biased position because I think more than any other song we're going to be discussing, I'm obsessed with Red Right Hand.

I hosted a Nick Cave-themed party last year where I hired at not insignificant an expense a tubular bell for the party. So we could do karaoke to Red House. curry at hand and clang the bell. Wow, we've really hit upon something here. Did you have a bowl of bad seeds? We didn't, oh, Bella, we did not have a bowl of bad seed. And what do you think is the worst seed?

The only one I can think of is cheer, but it's always served me very well. Once I had a chia seed pudding and I went to what I can only describe as tummyache town. Oh, really. And ever since then, I have not really been able to touch the stuff. Well, that's why we didn't bring any seeds at all to the Nick Cave of the Bad Seeds Party. But that was a bad seed, for sure. Was this Halloween? No.

No, it's just in March, March last year. A few friends and I had gone to watch Nick Cave live. We'd been very moved by it. We were talking about all the friends we wished we'd taken, but he wasn't doing any more tour date. So he said, we'll just have a Nick Cave-themed costume party. I said costume. Everyone had to wear suits.

What's this an impression of? No, no, come on. Someone receiving a text from Ivo Grave. Brackets General. Is that what you did when I texted you a picture of a random... Picture of Richard's on this morning. And we didn't go to his last one we're going to have. I know we're going to have to go to this one.

People did feel obliged to come to my David Bowie party because they hadn't come to the Nick Cave party. See, David Bowie is a bit, I suppose it's sort of a bit easier. At least isn't. You're telling me you don't want to spend a Friday night wearing a suit and clanging a tubular bell in time to red-right hand. Not really. Listen, I am very appropriately self-deprecating about many aspects of my, by many measurements, disastrous life. but the Nick Cave themed party was an absolute triumph

and it was adored by everyone who attended it. Favorite Nick Cave song? Jubilee Street. And there's a bit where he sings in Jubilee Street. She had a little black book and my name was written on every page and two nights before the Nick Cave party I got home drunk.

I had a little black notebook and I wrote Nick Cave on every page in the book so that during the party during that song I could start flicking through it. You really wrote his name on every page on the book. Of course. That's what it says in the song. There's like 400 people going, so why is that? Well, because it's in the song.

Oh, sorry, is that in the lyrics to the song? It's in the lyrics you've just heard right now. I'm going to rewind it. Let me go back 30 seconds. What I love about a lot of the things that you do is it feels like... I'm dreading this, Richard. She might love it, but not in a kind way. It feels like a sort of obsessive 15-year-old has been cryogenically frozen within you.

Okay. And you let them hold the reins at all times. Wow. I suppose that is boarding school. Yeah. That's what that's what they're doing. They freeze your cryogenic teenage self. Yeah.

They pop it in and that just dominates everything for the next 50 years. The older I get, the more I am just actually doing and liking a lot of the stuff that I love when I was 15, though. Of course. That's life. I mean, that's the only reason I like the World Cup, really. Yeah, exactly. Prince William turned out very differently to you, though. You don't think he's still acting on his cryogenically frozen 15-year-old self?

Yeah, maybe he is. When you see it turned out very differently to me. I mean, of course, in some ways, but what are the main differences? Well, I saw his last Edinburgh show, and it was, honestly, it was too one-liner for me. I like something a bit more autobiographical. Such a damning review of the fact that I don't have any jokes. What's the one thing that you don't associate with that a short joke that you can tell your friend? We both have.

Can I put the case very briefly for the Adams family song, though, which is it has the line, the houses in museum, when people come to see them, they really are a scream. The Adams family. I really love that. And you know why I love that is the rhyming is in itself mischievous. And that's in spirit with the melody as well. Because the lyricist is like, this is kind of cheeky and this is going to piss some people off. Yeah. Oh my God.

This is going to piss some people off. Yeah. This is going to piss some people off. This is going to piss some people off Mr. David Mitchell. Yeah. When they work out, I've rhymed museum with scream, people are going to lose their minds. People are going to throw their TVs out the window and possibly hit a squirrel on the way down. So that's what I quite like about it.

It feels in keeping with the melody as well. Ivo, there is an argument that red-white hand is sort of a rip-off from way down in the hole by Tom Waits, which uses the theme tuned to the wire. I'm afraid I had to explicitly forbid people from saying that at my party. There was to be no, no suggestion that anything that Kov has done is derivative. Ivo, you're going to go for beaky blinders, I suspect. I think the Adam's family theme is great. And I love how it survived generations and it's been updated like the Adam's family title sequence. Like there was a 2019 movie where they'd match the reality.

original sequence of frame for frame. It's the same song. But yes, I have not organized a party around it. So it's not yet for me. Bella. I'm going to go with the Adams family theme tune just because I love Scream. Yeah, it's really good. I mean, for goodness sake, that's so silly. Yeah, and I just am a big fan. And I do think Peeky Blinders has amazing music all the way through. It really does have great music. But it's not an original song. I don't know. So I would have to go for Adams family as well. Should we find out what goes through to our semi-final? on British public. Whoa.

It is the Adams family. I did not expect that, actually. Sorry, Ivo. At least you didn't have to hear any more about Ivo's party. I hope you enjoyed that free little 10 minute teaser. If you want to hear the rest of it,

you can go to Wrestorsentertainment.com. Sign up to be a member. You get ad-free listening. You get loads and loads of different bonus episodes as well. If you don't want to do that, as always, that is absolutely fine.