The Rest Is Entertainment - Kate conspiracies & the new James Bond

Episode Date: March 26, 2024

What are the press back channels that made the Princess of Wales release the video of her health update, and are we all complicit? Will Aaron Taylor-Johnson be taking over the role of James Bond from Daniel Craig? Finally, Donald Trump... how he is leveraging 'Truth Social' to bolster his bank balance? Join Richard Osman and Marina Hyde for the latest instalment of The Rest Is Entertainment. Twitter: @restisents Email: [e-mail] Producer: Neil Fearn Executive Producers: Tony Pastor + Jack Davenport Recommendations; Richard - The Trees Percival Everett (read) 🌏 Get our exclusive NordVPN deal here ➼ https://nordvpn.com/trie It’s risk-free with Nord’s 30-day money-back guarantee! ✅ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Introducing Tim's new Savory Pinwheels, the perfect flaky and flavorful snack for those on the go, like me, who's recording this while snacking. Delicious. Try the roasted red pepper and Swiss or caramelized onion and Parmesan pinwheels only at Tim's. At participating restaurants in Canada for a limited time. Hello and welcome to another edition of The Rest Is Entertainment with me Marina Hyde. me Richard Osmond. Hi Marina. How are you? We're apart. For the first time ever we're apart. I'm filming House of Games or I was filming House of Games yesterday so as as YouTube viewers will be able to see I'm in gritty Manchester with a brick wall behind me. It's very urban here. It's not our preference to be

apart but we're making it work and we're very happy to do so. I like you we're making it work. We haven't actually started yet. It might be a disaster. I mean thus far it's going brilliantly Yeah, I've heard you. I mean, what more do you want? I think it's working. I think it's working now What are we going to talk about? I am hearing every second word you're saying to me, which is absolutely perfect What are we talking about today? I sort of sort of like the Glastonbury Headliners of dreams, we're talking about Kate Middleton, Donald Trump and James Bond, I think. We are going to start by talking about Kate, the Princess of Wales, Kate Middleton, the various names, who on Friday evening, after an absolute frenzy of speculation on social

media, but I have to say also traditional media announced that she was receiving preventative chemotherapy for cancer. I think we should talk about how both the traditional media, the legacy media, in many cases the newspapers have covered this and also how social media has covered it. I think there's rather less clear blue water between the two. So essentially the newspapers are coming out saying it's unbelievable how Kate's been treated on social media. We're with you, mom. We're doing things the right way.

Is that how you're reading it? That has certainly been the case. But actually, before this kind of pretty bombshell announcement on Friday evening, don't let's forget that she had gone into hospital for two weeks and Kensington Palace had said she won't be back until after Easter, she doesn't want to talk about it, but she's going to stay in hospital for two weeks. So whatever even the original health issue was, was significant and serious enough. But people have got themselves into a complete frenzy.

There were masses of articles published every day, even if you're looking at say one title, if you're looking at Mail Online and The Daily Mail. And one of the things that they do, one of those old newspaper tricks is if you feel like you can't quite say the things yourself that you see are being said on social media, you say, there's a huge social media storm or American journalists are doing this or that. And what you're doing is kind of pointing in the direction of it. But really, what I think always comes across is that kind of annoyance that they weren't able to go further and write more speculation of their own. This is the traditional media in many cases, in many cases the tabloids, but also other newspapers too. And you get these sort of stories about complaints about the palace's

competence and comms strategy. There's a sort of rule in politics, it's never the comms. If you're talking about the comms, you're not really talking about it, you fail to understand the issue. And people saying, but they haven't given enough information. They've given you all the information that she wanted to give you. And because that wasn't enough, and because you're annoyed about it, and you feel like you're owed more, these are the techniques of titles who want to be able to report more or want to be able to speculate more.

And they push the situation to such a point that they feed into the social media speculation. Now this is not by the way to make this a sort of legacy media issue, it is a social media issue too. Can I ask you a question about legacy media? When you say they're frustrated that they can't say more, is the frustration that they have information they're not allowed to print and they want to? Or is the frustration even more frustrating for them? They simply don't know what the story is, which is the worst thing if you're a journalist.

It's a bit of both. They know some of the story and they probably, and they do know aspects of the story that aren't reported, and in many cases they may have leads on what they think might be the case. But mainly what they want to do is not hugely distinguishable from what people on social media want to do, which is get involved in the drama, drive the drama, feel part of it, really. If you look at someone, I'm just going to look at the Mail because it's a sort of useful title because it probably produces the most coverage of it because its online offering is so huge.

So you have someone like the columnist, someone like Sarah Vine, who really less than a week ago or a bit more than a week ago was banging on about the Mother's Day photograph saying you know why wasn't the ring on? The reason for that doesn't bear thinking about. I see it bears writing about does it? Having said all that she was saying there's only one way to put an end to it, come clean about what's really going on or risk drowning in a quagmire of their own making. The voice of the quagmire. The voice of the quagmire. And then obviously the Princess of Wales feels pushed into, and

we'll deal with the sort of that idea of bullying the royal family to do what you want in a bit, but she feels pushed into saying something which she has been with unquestionably by the situation. I'm sure she would have far rather said absolutely nothing. And then Sarah Vine has actually apologised to some extent in a column, but there are plenty of other male columnists who are saying, why can't we hear how, you know, Amanda Patel was saying, why can't we hear how Kate is getting on? She cares too much. She cares too much.

That's the problem. She cares too much. After the announcement said, how dreadful to think that even as she was undergoing chemotherapy, the online haters persisted in taunting her by peddling their loathsome conspiracy theories. No wonder she and William circled the wagons around their young family. You've got a situation that to me in lots of ways reminds me of Diana and stories about Diana, that the Diana death timing for traditional media, where everyone got their news from newspapers then, there wasn't a sort of online offering where

you were going to get the news as it was happening. You could see it on television as the stories broke through the night that she'd been involved in a car crash and eventually that she hadn't survived it. But the timing of it meant that the Sunday newspapers came out with the columns that were originally going to be written. And everybody wrote about Princess Diana at the time. And there were lots of the sort of female Sunday columnists who'd given her a real pasting. And because of the print times,

these things had already gone to press and had been distributed and were bought on the morning containing these kinds of columns that were really vicious. Now you can stop that and you can pull it. You can't if the paper's gone to press. The thing in print will always have the thing in print if it's gone, this has happened afterwards. But she did that speech Kate on the bench at 6pm so you're able to rewrite anything that's going in the paper for the next morning. But otherwise you could have been pretty sure that things which would have appeared would again have been critical of her. So it reminds me of

that. Also you have to think that, I of her. So it reminds me of that. Also, you have to think that, I think what's quite notable about this is that people who would consider themselves the good guys, you're kind of Stephen Colbert's in the US who presents the Late Show, you know, Blake Lively, lots of people who think they're the good guys have jumped on this, like, where is Kate Bandwagon and became part of the social media frenzy and speculation. So I think there was a lot of deleting of tweets. is Kate Bandwagon and became part of the social media frenzy and speculation. So I think there was a lot of deleting of tweets. And there is, have you ever heard that expression?

No snowflake in an avalanche ever feels responsible. Everyone thinks it wasn't them. Well, it's, it's, I always think opinions are like litter, aren't they? You think, well, my one little sweet rapper doesn't matter. And then suddenly you turn around, there's a huge pile of trash behind you and you think, well, you're equally culpable as everybody else. Yeah, there used to be a sign on the German motorways

that would say, or not on German motorways, on German roads that said, you're not stuck in traffic, you are traffic. Because people when they're on their car say, oh, I'm stuck in traffic. Yeah, it's like, yeah, you know. And I realized that this podcast in itself is talking about the issue.

So you're all part of it. And it's all, every time I write about it. I think though that it's okay for us to have issue. So you're all part of it and it's all... I think though that it's okay for us to have an opinion, you and me. It's just everyone else I'm getting tired of. But that's the problem with opinions, isn't it? Everyone enjoys their own. It's like karaoke, isn't it? It's always fun to do your bit, but you know, you don't want to hear other people.

Yes, you're quite right. But I do think that it does say something about the nature of the technology. It's so overwhelming and the feeling of being in on the joke to be part of the frenzy of the drama is so compelling and addictive that people have lost all sight of reason and certainly of their humanity because the thing we did know is that she had been in hospital for two weeks, which is really long to be in hospital for. And we're told that she wasn't going to come back until after Easter. So it's really reasonable to assume

that this person has had serious surgery, whatever you think. And that conspiracist mindset set in completely. And newspaper columns were written in a conspiracist mindset. All sorts of people who, this is such a sort of patronising phrase isn't it, should know better, but really should know better, speculated in a way that was pure conspiracism. Yeah, and listen, everyone's got a slightly different ingredient, but it's all going into

the same soup, is the truth. You know, everyone's coming from different angles, everyone's got different reasons for doing it, some people are being paid to do it, some people are doing it because they've got nothing else to say that day, but it all goes to the same place. You know, whenever you watch someone on TV getting a hard time, you'll get a thousand people saying exactly the same thing. And that's a problem because all of those thousand people are just single individuals going, oh I'm annoyed with this woman I've just seen on TV, so they'll send out a tweet. And then you go, okay now we've got a

thousand of these because it's, you know, snowflake in an avalanche is the perfect metaphor for it. But we've all become, you know, if you think back to Blair's government and Alastair Campbell and that idea of instant rebuttal and that idea of you get your spin in immediately, you have to always have the counter narrative immediately. And now everybody does that. Every single human being is a spin doctor. Every single person is an instant rebuttal unit every single person is trying to spin their version of a story and

They're all doing it as individuals But we live in a culture and all of those opinions all swirling around at the same time. It's really tiring You can't hear individual voices and you have to remember that when there's a human being at the heart of it Then that person is hearing it all too. My view is this, you should be allowed by law five opinions a year, okay? So publicly you can state five opinions. So think very, very, very carefully if you want to have an opinion about the thing that's just happened, because you're going to have five. Everyone's got five, so there's still loads of opinions, plenty of stuff going on, and obviously if something gets a lot of opinions we

know we're like oh this is a big story because a lot of people are using one of their opinions today if we're only allowed five then think about the things that would be very important to you but most people would have used them all by January the third well we wouldn't have much of a podcast richard and i certainly wouldn't be a newspaper opinion columnist. Once again, I think we are immune. Alright, I see. Yes, it's the other people. But that's the problem, isn't it? That's the problem is we all have the right to think whatever we want. We all have the right to say whatever we want and everyone doing it at the same time. The problem now is we get to hear so many more opinions than we used to.

We used to be able to block out, we used to be able to absolutely pick and choose the opinions that we were exposed to. And now we hear everything all the time. If you spend any time on Twitter or anything like that, the stuff that you see is absolutely mind blowing and it's very easy to get down about that. But I think one of the things you have to remember is almost every single person in the country is not giving their opinion. Almost every single person in the country is leaving things well alone. Almost every single person in the country is giving Kate her privacy. But the only people we're talking about, we live in a volumocracy, don't we? And the only people we're talking about are thinking about the people who are giving their opinions. So I think sometimes some perspective and remember that almost everyone is not talking

about it. My other theory is if you've been a sports fan all your life, you're completely used to it. This is nothing new to you. The whole point of sport is to give you something to talk nonsense about all day to all of your friends. I mean, that's all it is. Talk about players, to talk about owners, to talk about teams, to talk about who's going

to win, who's not gonna win. You know what most of what you're hearing is absolute nonsense. You know that everybody is insanely biased towards their team. So that's always been sports discourse. And now we have that for absolutely everything in our culture.

And I think as a sports fan, you can sort of laugh it off a little bit. But I think if you haven't followed, if you're not a West Ham fan or something then this this all this stuff must come as something of a shock. They've always been in the vanguard of that. Yeah. But one thing I do think is quite interesting is that she has been bullied into doing this she has been bullied by people into doing this but it does remind me even before we had this age of social media that is what happened with the Queen

after the death of Diana. Again, there were all these headlines, show us you care, all of these sorts of things. They wanted the Queen to leave Balmoral and come to London to, what, console them about the death of a woman that they didn't know and to leave that woman's two children in order to do that. People are deranged and they have perhaps always been deranged and it's the need in those situations that a lot of those people by the way bought all the newspapers and bought them up voraciously that printed the most intrusive paparazzi pictures of Princess Diana during her life and they were the market and they then rather as they

do now could say well, you know, I wasn't part of all that speculation last couple of weeks about Kate. It's a very similar thing. But everybody needs a villain and the papers also need another villain. This time they've said it's social media or the American press or whatever it may be. Back then, I remember talking to people at the Sun and they said, you couldn't believe the relief when it was discovered that the driver's blood alcohol level was over the limit because then it was his fault. They were off the hook. Yeah, the relief was apparently, it was almost a sort of physical sensation. People could feel it sort of sweeping through the newsrooms.

And I do sometimes feel that's the case with social media. There is not as much clear blue water between what, if you're publishing 10, 20, sometimes 30 online articles a day about this situation, then are you really so different? Not that many people tweet 30 times a day, even if they're saying something dreadful or whatever. And also they're irrelevant. They're just ordinary people. You should have a better responsibility. And you also know that people are prone in our country, but I suppose that's the market to these kind of weird hysterias about the royal family. And as you say, we live in a kind of siloed culture or in a polarized culture, and there are a lot of people who are like either their team Harry and Meghan or their team William and Kate, and it has become to some extent like a sort of sport thing. And so you know what you're feeding into when you

publish all that stuff. And the one thing that you can be absolutely sure of on all sides is that nobody thought her feelings mattered. She said she didn't want to discuss it, and that was the least relevant possible thing. Also, speaking of being taken away from your children, as the Queen was taken away from William and Harry in order to sort of address the nation, they didn't mind what her children thought or saw either. And people should just be realistic about this. They fed into this, they don't imagine it's a real human and they really don't care what her feelings are at the start of it and you can say well I had no idea I didn't realize it was a serious medical issue,

didn't you? Because you've been in the hospital for two weeks so why didn't you? What's wrong with you? Marina what's the process? What are the back channels here? When you talk about the media forcing the Queen to come back from Balmoral, you talk about the media forcing Kate to make this announcement, and you know, so many stories over the years, Stephen Gateley when he came out, he was forced to do that. Who speaks to who in that situation? Is there a physical force at play? In the case of the Royal Correspondents and the newspaper editors, they always feel they are owed a certain amount from the royal family. And they feel that they are owed it. And if they don't get it, then they will do something to say, here we are. And that's really why the son published

that video last week where she'd gone to a farm shop catering. People say it wasn't her, this is sort of complete genuine and conspiracy nonsense but they published that even though they were because they felt like you are not giving us enough information and it is a sort of thing to say you see what we can do we can do this every day if you don't tell us more and that I think would probably have been a sign for the palace that the kind of British presses will hold the line not that they necessarily do, was breaking down and they're going to have to do something about it. Right back when William, I think, was at maybe

at university, yeah, they were told that they would get a certain amount of pictures approved and you know you'd be able to have some access. They didn't feel they got enough access and I think it was the news of the world at one point just saw, right, so they published some paparazzi pictures of him going to the supermarket or something to say, hi, we can do this all the time if you don't honor your half of the bargain. And they talk about it in a way that is totally transactional and they expect they say we are owed coverage, you're required to do a sudden amount. And if you don't, then oh, look what's happened, social media will talk in this way. But it's not what they believe is that there is a deal. They have a number

of reporters on the Royal Beat. They get a lot of favorable coverage for turning up to the ribbon cuttings and the openings of this is and that. And really what they say is that they are owed a certain amount of personal information in return for that. Well, the wrinkle in it is, is they sort of are owed it in that, you know, the Royal family keeps its place by consent, the consent of the British public, and the media are a sort of filter through which we see that.

So they have been in that dance for many, many years, haven't they, the media and the royal family, and both understand what they need from others. It's like if you're an F1 driver, you have to do your post-race interview, otherwise you don't get paid. You know, when you sign up, that's your contract. That's where your money comes from, is the media and so it's moments like this

I guess when that dance sort of goes awry a little bit when we really start noticing it when one side tries to flex Its muscles and the other side tries to flex its muscles back. Yes Everyone here is really asking who should control this relationship Yeah The press want the roles to turn up on certain days and do the photographs they ask. They want to have back channels to all their private information and it is part of their business plan. And the royal family obviously don't want that, particularly the younger members of it, and it's become very attritional.

It's fascinating for us to talk about because it tells us a lot about power in our country. It tells us an awful lot about media in our country and what it does. But it's worth reflecting for everybody involved that it's just a series of human beings at the heart of it. Yes, and like a lot of conspiracies, it really hurts lots of human beings at the heart of it. That was fascinating, Marina. I'd absolutely love listening to all of that.

Shall we go to an advert? I think we should go to an advert now. Welcome back. Now, let's talk about another long running British soap opera, James Bond. And the succession thereof, it's been reported that Aaron Taylor Johnson might be going to be our next James Bond. But this is another British sport. It's the most, it's been nearly 20 years since the

last Bond was announced. It feels like every year it's always in the news. It feels like an incredible publicity machine for the Bond franchise, this idea of who's taking over. Nothing is as good as getting itself talked about as this franchise. It's unbelievable. I think Daniel Craig originally said in 2016, I'm not going to do it anymore. And in fact, he did actually go back and do more. But eight years of pure speculation the entire time. It's the mark of doing well in any form of British acting. You haven't done well in your show.

Even though like James Norton did brilliantly in like Happy Valley and all sorts of things like that. People are like, when you're someone says to you, now how about you being the next James Bond? It's because for some reason we have to say to all our British actors, this could be you. What do you think about the chat? And they have to sit there in an interview and answer it. And there are so many. I've been trying to think of the people over the last few years. Idris Elba, who's now probably aged out because the speculation has gone on so long. I thought he'd have been great, Tom Hiddleston, James Norton, Roger Jean-Page, Chaupe D'Orissou, there are so many more of these people, that's just like scratching the surface of the names. They would

all be great, that's the beauty, it's like having co-hosts on Have I Got News For You, it's a positive when someone loses their job and someone else takes it because you can take it into whole new worlds like Doctor Who as well. Suddenly it becomes a completely different show. I think James Norton would be a great James Bond, or I think Idris would have been a great James Bond as well. But it just gets you talking about Bond

and what it is and what it represents. And the Bond of the books, the Fleming books, is a very particular character. But essentially over the years, since the 60s, Bond has come to represent so many different things. Every time a new actor comes in, it sort of represents where Britain is as a culture and that's, I think that's a great thing, but it'd be a terrifying job to take. It's the sort of job that it'd be

nice to be, like the England manager, it'd be nice to be linked to it, but you wouldn't want to do it. I do think that, yeah, I do think that thing about it being a sort of bellwether. There are certain things in British life that always used to be seen as bellwether. Like if they were doing well and were good, then in some ways we were good. And things like the M&S underwear department, like if M&S is doing well, everyone's like, yeah, no, it's working. Otherwise it's like, why is MNSF, the man United platform? Not great currently. So, but things, there's certain things like that, that are regarded as like almost institutions in themselves. And bond is definitely one of those. I do think you're right that what it means to be born changes with the times. I definitely thought with Daniel Craig,

the amount he talked about the toll of the role and how difficult it was being Bond and having to get into shape and This was something about masculinity in this particular era That the difficulty that the trainers he had all his trainers would go on the interview circuit and say yeah I was able to add 10 inches to his thighs by this or that I was thinking gosh This is getting quite hard for men out there, isn't it? There's something different about his particular thing. No one works as hard as me. And you thought, in the end, really, mate,

you've sort of just got to have sex with some beautiful women in like a nice hotel and drive a hot car. It's not agonies. I mean, I don't think it's a particularly agonizing role in lots of ways, but there was a lot of angst that he brought to it. So I would quite like the next person. I don't want to say that they should be able to, as Roger Moore does in Octopussy, turn

to a snake and say, hiss off. Although I'd like it. Yes, I'd like it. I mean, he was a sensational Bond. I mean, I definitely think it's time for a fat Bond. That would take a lot of pressure off off British men, wouldn't it? I feel for Daniel Craig It is it is that thing from sort of when he took over which is 2006 something like that that a man suddenly had to Be a certain thing. Everything got very men's health

And as well as being a terrific actor, which he is he suddenly had to be super buff That also must be quite tiring to do that for 15 years, to stay in that sort of shape. And when he got Benoit Blanc in the Glass Onion films, he must have thought, oh, at last I can just do acting again and I don't have to be up at 4.30 in the morning for leg day. It's always leg day, but this is like Marvel movies where it's such an unbelievably punishing schedule. The fitness is 75% of the day and then there's this tiny little bit where you're saying your lines in front of a camera but mostly it's leg day.

Yeah, I mean it wouldn't have happened in Timothy Dalton's day, that's for sure. But funny enough, Connery, who was the first bond of the official Eon films, he was a bodybuilder, he's a Scottish bodybuilder, super super fit cast because he was unbelievably handsome. And you know, it's always been a sort of exemplar of manhood, hasn't it? Yeah. And Lazenby who took over from him. I mean, he was a car salesman in Finchley, George Lazenby, then started modeling, became the best paid model in Britain.

And then Cubby Broccoli said, well, this guy's handsome enough for me. And so he got the gig as well. And it's never been, let's give this to some schlup down the pub. Pierce Brosnan was insanely handsome, almost impossible to be more. The only person more handsome than Pierce Brosnan when he became James Bond is Pierce Brosnan now. You know, it's the only person who can beat it. So I get it. And when Craig got the job, I think everyone was furious because he didn't have exactly those looks. I think there were two headlines,

one called him James Blonde and one called him James Bland. And I think Cubby Broccoli usually does pretty good job in choosing Bond. And I thought Jenny Craig was a terrific Bond, took it in a new direction, took it probably closer to the Fleming books than anyone else had, had that sort of cold eyed thing that Bond had been missing for a little while. Well, that was Barbara Broccoli. She's taken off the franchise after her father and I think she runs it with her half-brother actually. That's right, Michael G. Wilson, yeah.

They do a terrific job, as we say. It is something that is in the conversation. Obviously, there are many years between each movie because they take a long time to make. They're a big, big action franchise. They're kind of fascinating how enormous they are, really. But constantly between those release dates, people are talking about who will be the next Bond, when this next Bond retires, will this person now be in the queue? It's unbelievable.

It's the most self kind of perpetuating form of gossip that I can think of in the whole of movies as it's far bigger than like Superman and Batman and all those sort of things. They kind of die away and then they say, oh, we're rebooting in, it's going to be darker and grittier or whatever it is. But this one just keeps itself on the boil forever. I mean, fair play to them. Also, one of the interesting things is they keep the same team behind the scenes. So as you say, Barbara Broccoli and Michael G. Wilson, and you know, just a lot of the crew. It's a lot of the same people all the time. You know, the scripts are written by similar people. So actually, they're taking care of Bond. They're taking care of who Bond is and the story and the narrative

and where that's going. It's just the shop front they're changing. It's like a lovely sort of Selfridges Christmas shopfront where they go look at this shiny new thing we have with us. Can I ask you the sort of question that you hate? Yeah. Who's the best Bond? Who's the best Bond? Well, I like Bond as a humorous role, so I love it when Roger Moore says his self to the snake. And because I quite like it that it doesn't take itself that seriously. But Daniel Quake has been a fantastic James Bond. Obviously Connery's a brilliant Bond.

I mean, between those three I can't even choose, because they all bring something so different to it. But I do... The humilisness, I'm not a huge fan of it being totally humilis, because it's such a silly thing in general, really. And I think that we can have a laugh again, can't we? But I think occasionally it has to be a bit serious. I think it's been OK to have Daniel Craig doing what Daniel Craig did. Yeah the next one, you wouldn't

want to go darker next time. Not darker and grittier. Yeah Aaron Taylor Johnson you think would take it in an interesting direction, maybe a slightly lighter more fun direction. Do you think he would? Yeah I'm not convinced by him as a sort of lighter and fun player, not that I don't think he could do it but I don't really see that as his screen persona. George Lazenby, who only did it once and then his agent persuaded him never to do it again because he said Bond is not going to last the 70s. You mustn't get yourself shackled to this franchise. One of the all-time great agents there. But Diana Rigg said about George Lazenby when she'd worked with him, she said, I can no longer cater for his obsession with himself. And then Desmond Llewellyn, who is that wonderful old actor who played

Q said, I draw a veil over the chap. Amazing. How devastating would that be Desmond Llewellyn said, Marina Hyde, I'm afraid I draw a veil over her. I can well imagine him saying such a thing about me. But yes, I'm sure I deserve it. But yeah, that's, it's, well, that's a bit funny to a musicer, isn't it? And so the question is, is it going to be Aaron Taylor Johnson? And the way that this rumor mill works is sort of twofold. Occasionally the Bond people will kind of put out a name because they're trying to entice

that person. And occasionally an actor's PR will put out their name saying, oh, I think our client would be a very good bond now in the second Instance when the PR puts it out It never works essentially if it ever comes from someone's PR, you know that they sat around they've had a discussion They said why don't we say? James Norton. I'm not saying that's what happened him Why don't we say that you're in the running to play the next bond and they'll go? Okay, and they go by the way, if we say that you're in the running to play the next Bond? And they'll go, ah, okay. And they go, by the way, if we say that,

you are definitely not going to get the part of James Bond. That we know for definite. But what it does mean is we elevate you into the pantheon of young, hot, great British actors. And so that's the deal they're making there. They can kind of go, let's say you're in the running for Bond because essentially that says something to other producers in Hollywood and other producers in the UK to say this is the guy that you should hire

But Aaron Taylor Johnson seems to have come from the from from Eon the the bond organization But they have also been on slight fishing expeditions They there's a lot of like we would love Christopher Nolan of course to direct one of our movies There's a there's a bit of a bit of ame-clea issued to Christopher Nolan. Because he's directing this episode of the podcast, isn't he? Because we're in two different places, we have to give it to a new director, so Nolan is in doing this. The whole thing will unfold backwards as well, which will make it autistic as opposed to just... I can see he's drinking some tomato soup just in the corner there.

Oh, he's shy, he won't say hi. Can't you incept him into saying hi? Oh yeah, I'm going to incept you into saying hi. Oh he's fallen asleep. That's good news. Yeah it's good, it's great news from Nolan. Okay, are we now going to move on to talking about Donald Trump? We've done Bond, we've done Kate, let's talk about Trump. Yeah so, I mean firstly he's gonna win the election. I think, I can't see a way in which he's not going to but one of the things that stands In his way is the fact that he owes half a billion dollars In a civil fraud case in New York, which he has to pay back

He's sending out mixed signals in that his camp are saying he can't pay you that and he is sending a message saying I have 500 million dollars In my bank that I can spend. You think, all right, Don, I'm not sure you do. So he could bankrupt himself, but, but, but, and here's the issue, and there's something in this issue which I don't understand, which we need to talk to Robert Peston and Steph McGovern about. So Reddit, the social media sites, had its IPO last week, and it was very successful

IPO, and the shares really, really rall week, and it was very successful IPO, and the shares really, really rallied, and it's sort of valued at about 10 billion. But it's a big site, Reddit, with an awful lot of users and an awful lot of history, and with plans for drawing more advertisers into it. The story of Reddit is an interesting one, and let's talk about it in future weeks.

But the basic principle is it was a very successful IPO Yeah now Trump's company which is Trump Media and Technology Group, which essentially is is just truth social his alternative to Twitter And by the way, Trump Media and Technology Group was set up by two former contestants on the apprentice us unbelievably Imagine that so he has this group and it owns Truth Social. Truth Social makes no money, loses a huge amount of money. We've talked about various other organisations who've done this before. It's got 860,000 active users, which is like so absolutely nothing. It's not even apparently

in the top 100 downloaded social media apps in the Apple store. It might as well be zero. It's the only social media platform that Trump uses. Trump no longer tweets or anything like that. In fact I think he's got a clause that says anything, any public pronouncement must be made on truth social and they've got a six-hour exclusive window before he's allowed to say anything anywhere else. So this is very much his sort of playground. But that's the crucial thing because you think how much Musk so wants that one user to combat the platform because obviously he was banned, we should say he was banned in the wake of the January the 6th insurrection and once Musk took over Elon Musk, he's allowed technically

back onto the platform. His account has reactivated and he could post if he wants to, but he doesn't. Now for Musk, who is obviously in quite a lot of trouble at Twitter, it would be terrific if in the run up to the leadership of the free world presidential election, this guy came back on and don't forget, he basically ran the world off Twitter last time he was president. So for him for that one user to come back is crucial. I'm amazed he's been able to be self controlled enough not to come back onto it because he would have huge, he has huge amounts of followers on Twitter and he gets

the dopamine that he clearly thrives on. But he has disciplined himself into only posting on social as you say. I mean, there's one thing that focuses the mind for Trump and that's money. So he he owes half a billion where on earth is he gonna get that from so they're launching the Trump media and technology group Probably even this week. Okay, they're floating it and they're doing you don't need to know all the details But there's a company called Digital World Acquisition group which is a shell company which is gonna merge with this Trump company and suddenly it goes public. Everything about it smells terrible doesn't it? Yeah it's a really complicated shell company transaction it's gonna be like yeah of course. You'll be shocked to learn some Russian money involved in there. There's all sorts going on but this company Digital World Acquisition Group is

for a couple of years they've said this is what we're going to do so it's been on the table for a long time and in the same way with the, with, um, you know, the GameStop thing, where people started buying shares in something just so it kept going up and up and up. And losing money. A lot of Trump supporters have started investing in this shell company as a way of giving money to Donald Trump. And, you know, and it's seen as a patriotic thing to do to buy these shares. And so the price of that company has been pumped up so much before this float this week that at the current levels, if they were to float next week, Trump's stake would be

worth $3 billion. $3 billion for a company that doesn't really do very much. And the whole thing supposedly worth $6 dollars because he's got a 50% stake or whatever it is. I mean once again I feel like I don't really understand money. You're gonna have to explain to me how something that is could be. I suppose it's all predicated on the idea that he, as you say, it's like a meme stock and it's predicated on the idea that he will become president of the United States and then it is suddenly going to be worth a lot of money. So it's a sort of speculation. But it's crazy that something with that few active users

could be valued at six billion. How much would Richard Osmond's House of Games be worth? I wonder. That's two million every day. If you were going to be the president of the United States, presumably more. Well, do you know what? I might do. If that's the money involved. If that's what it takes to actually earn some proper cash, then why not? But yeah, I can see a big valuation if it suddenly becomes the only place where the leader of the free world talks.

I can sort of get that. But all these people who pump the money into this shell company who are, you know, supporting Trump and, you know, wanting to make money, there's something in the in this merger and the documents in this merger that say that Trump cannot dump his stock immediately he has to wait six months before he dumps this stock okay so if it's worth three billion he can't do anything about that for six months unless there's a little codicil in that merger thing that says unless the boards say that Trump can do that and who is he appointing to the board? Donald Trump jr

There's Linda McMahon. There's essentially all his old cronies from from four years ago and from his businesses around the world So the moment that this floats The board will of course say oh Trump can get rid of his shares He cashes out of so obviously the second a founder cashes out in their shares after an IPO, the price collapses because it says, the founder doesn't believe in this company, so why should we? So he will cash in, he'll be able to pay off that half a billion like nothing, and every single small investor who put their money into this shell company is going to lose the lot. I mean, that's exactly what's going to happen.

If only there was a metaphor for something, if only it was a metaphor for a wider political movement, but yes. It's an insane pyramid scheme as so often in this, but that idea where you think he's going to owe so much money to so many people for being found guilty of fraudulent activities, there's no way he can raise this money. And he thinks, oh, he seems to have raised it off a social media site that nobody uses. It is extraordinary.

And as you say, it could unfold really quickly in the coming weeks. The whole thing stinks to high heaven. We'll check in on it again next week if it has floated. Well, I'm buying shares. Yeah, of course. Why not? I'm dumping them just three minutes before he does.

And that's the sort of thing we need to ask the rest his money about, right? Preston and McGovern would tell us how something which has never made any money at all, which shows no sign of making any money at all, which advertisers don't show any sign in having an interest in advertising on, how that can suddenly be worth $6 billion. Yeah, because then we need to do it ourselves. That's us done for this week. Can I give a quick book recommendation? Please do.

It's their rare thing, a book that won the Booker Prize, but is a wonderful read. And it's Trees by Percival Everett, which is sort of a down-home murder mystery in the deep South in America. And it's just it's very very funny Very smart has very short chapters, which I love as short chapters and yet it won the Booker Prize What a dream riddle me that but yeah the the trees by Percival Everett. I'm really enjoying So would I see you on Thursday for question and answer you most certainly will and please do keep your questions coming to the rest is Entertainment at gmail.com

they are terrific and we should be answering many more of them on Thursday. See you on Thursday. See you on Thursday.