The Rest Is Entertainment - Married At First Sight: Tip Of The Iceberg?

Episode Date: May 25, 2026

Is this the end for the hit reality dating show, Married At First Sight? Were the inaugural ‘Enhanced Games’ a hit or flop? And what does the end of Stephen Colbert’s Late Show tell us about where late-night TV is going? Channel 4 has pulled Married at First Sight UK from streaming in the wake of sexual abuse allegations by former participants. Richard Osman and Marina Hyde unpick what this means for Channel 4, and whether the controversial format is too toxic to save. The Enhanced Games saw elite athletes flock to Las Vegas for a contest where performance-enhancing drugs were encouraged, not banned. Will this herald a new age of sporting entertainment? Stephen Colbert has bid farewell to The Late Show, an institution of America's small screen. But what will happen to late-night TV without it? And what will Colbert do next? 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 & James Clayden Assistant Producer: Imee Marriott Senior Producer: Joey McCarthy Social Producer: Bex Tyrrell Exec Producer: Sam Psyk & Neil Fearn Filmed at www.westdigitalstudios.com Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

The rest of entertainment is presented by Octopus Energy. Now, the moment someone becomes properly famous, they stop travelling as a person and they start travelling as a situation. And yes, I am talking about the world of entourages. It's amazing. Any time you do a TV show when someone properly famous comes on, you can just have a spread bet as to how many people they're going to bring with them. Most people don't actually need a bodyguard and a fixer and a straw lady,

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You're no longer young people. You're just people. And people are either productive or dead weight. It's my first day of work, and I need to make a big impression. Were you just checking me out? No. It's too bad. I see at least 15 ladies I need to talk to before my beta block wears off.

My coworkers don't take me seriously. It's not a human. It's just a piece of meat. Someone bring a gurney. Hey y'all. It's Kelly Clarkson with Wayfair. Ever order furniture online and wonder, What if? Like, what if it doesn't hold up?

That sofa was four days old. You should have ordered from Wayfair. With Wayfair, there's no what if. Just style you love and quality you can trust. Visit Wayfair.com. Wayfair, every style, every home. Hello, and welcome to this episode of The Restless Entertainment with me, Marina. And me, Richard, hello, Marina.

Hello, Richard, how are you? I'm quite hot. Yeah, but we're in a new studio. We are in a new studio. And it's fancy. And it's air conditioned. Yeah, and it's, yeah, so, I mean, all's right with the world. It's easier to get to.

This is not anyone else is concerned. term but ours. No. But it is. The reason you're looking a little bit upset is because our producer Joey has just shown us that more of our audience had heard of phenotypes than had heard of popular entertainment format, Big Break. Yeah, so we polled our members. That's correct, right? I'm going to do some repel polling on that just to see how. It's not family fortunes. I'm not saying that would be the case on the high street, but among our audience, Richard. 63% of people have heard of, you say phenotypes, I say phenotypes. Let's call that. whole thing off. And just over 50%

had heard a big break. I don't buy that. No one's you know what, members, love you though I do, define it. No, they are right. They are right. I bet all of those 53% of people could define what big break is. Could those 60% of people define what have, they heard it because they listened to the entertainment format. They actually heard it because they listened to the episode. Listen, I knew what both were, so you should be glad.

Anyway, lovely to be in a new studio. We got a lot to talk about this week. We are But we are talking about married at first sight, which as everyone knows, has blown up over the last week with all sorts of allegations to contestants alleging they were raped and further allegations are continuing to come. And we'll say we'll be talking about that. We're going to talk about there was a big event this weekend, which combines a number of our bug bears on this show, which is the enhanced games, which is essentially tech pros meets abusive sport. We're also going to talk, it's Stephen Colbert's final show. So there were a little bit of a goodbye to all that and what's next for both him and perhaps even late night. Exactly that.

And also we are looking for your questions, please, for following our Paul McCartney interview and the Tom Hanks one coming up. We're talking to Stephen Spielberg. That's fun, isn't it? Mr. Spielberg. Mr. Spielberg. We don't come up with the questions. You do. You know how that works.

So please send any questions you have to the rest of entertainment at goalhanger.com. anything you've ever wanted to ask Stephen Spielberg and we will put your questions to you. I'm dying for it so much. So excited about that one. Shall we start with Married at First Sight? Married at First Sight, which is a Channel 4 show here. It's made by CPL productions.

Channel 4's biggest show. By quite some way. It's enormous. I mean, even things like Bake Off, if you look at the streaming figures, it's unbelievable. It's a million miles ahead of it. The Panorama investigation,

former contestants, two women say they were raped by their on-screen partners. Another said there was a non-consensual sex act. Some have said that actual violence has taken place. The men who have been at the centre of the allegations so far deny the allegations. CPL have pushed back and say that they have sort of highest standards of welfare on this program, Channel 4. We have removed every single episode of it from their service. Tuwey have ended their sponsorship of it, having initially paused it.

This is a show that is created. by the sort of high priest of modern reality dating shows, a guy called Chris Colan in the US. And there's a lot of stuff of him talking about the show, which I think will be interesting and we will get to. But they even have a new series in the UK that's yet to be aired. There is. And in the same way we talked a while ago about the Bachelor in the States

that they've had to can. I wonder if this is where that's going to end up with this being canned. I can't see a world in which that isn't where this ends up. Well, let's talk a little bit. because also Noor Nungi, who did the BBC Panorama investigations, talked a bit about how the investigation, it's always interesting when people sort of take you a bit behind the scenes, and that's become quite a feature of...

She also did the Greg Wallace investigation. In fact, she talks about it, she says, I think, because she's a culture correspondent, she says, I sometimes think people think that that's, it's sort of quite a lightweight area. And she says, I hope I'm sort of proving that it isn't, that actually a lot of what's going on in this world, you know, you can look at via culture.

So I think four marks to Norn Angie, what an incredible job. The premise of married a fair sight, sorry, if anyone isn't aware of it, you are matched with someone. You meet them for the first time on your wedding day. Actually, as you know, for a long time, which was my anxiety dream. You meet the person you're getting married to on the wedding day. And then you sort of live together and see where it goes. It's sort of like a marriage backwards. Yeah.

Yeah. Anyway, a woman who had been a bride's marriage. made at one of these sort of confected weddings at the beginning, came into the BBC and she sort of said there's made allegations of sexual misconduct and raised welfare concern. Noor Noggi says that when they started approaching the men, one of the men's legal firms told the BBC that their fees were being paid by CPL, which is the production company, which she thought was odd because the women felt somewhat unsupported for obvious reasons. The morning of the Panorama broadcast, Norni, says CPL,

production company, email participants warning against talking to the press. Well, I think even the week before, they were essentially they were calling the allegations wholly uncorroborated and disputed. They've got a new chief executive at Channel 4, Priya Dogra. At first, she didn't apologize and she said she felt sympathy. She has now apologized. Channel 4 have said that based on the knowledge they had at the time, they made the right decisions in proceeding with the welfare in the way that they did and with broadcast in the way

that they did, which to me suggests that the strategy for this is evolving quite erratically, or they would probably say pragmatically, but they haven't been aware of these allegations since April, because that's when the BBC first went to them, and we are in late May. So I would say it's quite interesting how they're handling it. What they have hastily now announced, now it's all become public, Channel 4, is that they've commissioned a review in two halves. So there's one in which a legal firm will look at how Channel 4 handles the allegations and allegations within the show,

and one which will look at welfare provisions and protocols. Which is the key. Duty of Care, we would always record it on TV reality shows, which is the responsibility you have to anyone who's a participant in a program that you've created and you've essentially put them on. Yes. So that's the background. And I think it's interesting because there is a sort of sense

that reality TV had sort of reformed after what is popularly regarded as the kind of wildest. West of, you know, 20 years or a bit more ago. And for me, I think reality has become very sort of class demarcated, that you've got the biggest shows and the most prestigious shows on television are reality TV and their celebrity reality and they're things like traitors or strictly or whatever it is. It depends what you mean by reality TV, but essentially we're talking about that kind of unscripted game shows that have members of the public slash celebrities taking part in some form of.

of artificial reality. Yes, and you look at it or a bubbled world or whatever it may be, which I think is relevant here. What happens with those sort of shows is that you'll get like some of the biggest stars in the world saying, oh yeah, I'll do it for 40 grand. You know, I'll go to Carson's Scotland for 40 grand. So you've got that. Then you've got a sort of middle class, things like Bake Off and things like that.

But then there is this giant underclass of shows that are very, very popular. Married to Persia. I would include Love Island. You know, there's Love is Blind, another Chris Colon. Yeah. And by the way, those three shows for the, their respective broadcasters and in lots of territories are three of the biggest shows in the world. They are huge money makers.

So love is blind, Love Island, married at first sight, enormous franchises. The money they are minting for the people behind them is absolutely off the scale. It's just worth remembering that. Marri first sight in, I think, 33 countries, definitely above 30. I mean, all of them are, and they are hugely successful. I definitely think this will be the first of a lot of stories. in this area. And so does, I saw one of the lawyer for one of them saying, oh, this is just the tip of the iceberg.

Lots more people, once they see people coming forward about these things, will come forward for all those shows. I mean, we already know that there are always concerns about those things. You know, there have been a number of suicides in the wake of Love Island. There have been all sorts of things. And we know they're in the US, which we'll get onto. I mean, there are numbers of complaints against these shows, particularly against these Chris Cullen reality dating formats.

if you're a UK production company and a UK public service broadcaster as Channel 4 is running one of these things, you must be expecting this to happen because you can look around the world and see that it happens everywhere that people eventually start complaining. And I think this is a bit like TV faker. We're going to see lots of stuff coming out now. I think that's right. And it's interesting to think what CPL are thinking, what Channel 4 are thinking. And it's very, very easy to get swept along on a tide of what's new in television and to understand that something like Married her first time. is a phenomenon around the world, and to kind of say, there's a new generation who grew up with reality TV, and when you put them on it, they really understand what it is they are doing.

It's not like, you know, the first, he was a big brother when everyone was walking into a situation, they didn't understand. I think people think, oh, no, they think this generation are cool. I think they understand it more than we do. Yeah, you know, so. That's handy. Yeah, isn't it handy? And I think that when reality TV started, duty of care is a very interesting thing.

Because as you say, it has always been there. There's always psych tests. Everyone that always undergoes, you know, criminal records, checks and all those types of things. And it's been tightened and tightened and tightened over the years. And, you know, follow-up kind of interviews with people have got more and more and more. But what has really changed is the form that reality TV is taking. When you look at that early reality TV, Big Brother, even, you know, the early series of Love Island Survivor, it is a closed world. It's a closed set and as producers, which also includes, by the way, psychologists and people involved in the duty of care,

you have some, at least illusion of control over what's happening because you have an entire world and every single inch of that world is covered because you have a camera on every single thing. The only time it's something isn't covered is if someone is under a sheet. You know, that's literally, but every single thing, you've got every single bit of footage, every single interaction between everybody throughout. So there's a world in which you can spot things very, very quickly. There's a world in which you can kind of convince yourself that you can be the master of that world. However, now reality shows a far more out in the real world and married at first sight. It's much less of a precinct. You know, it expands outwards.

The sense you're in a bubble for the participants absolutely does, but the sense they are in a bubble for the producers does not, and that's the worst combination of all, because people that still have that Stockholm syndrome, People still think they have to do what the cameras want. People still understand that there is fame to be got from either being lovable on a show or being dramatic on a show. All those things still exist. But the producers have less control over the real world aspects of it.

And I think that that's what's playing out here. And I think the avalanche begins now. I want to talk about Chris Colon shows, particularly because I think he's wrenching. He's talked a lot about this. of thing because they have had lots of lawsuits against their shows in the US. He's created these shows where you can't quite believe the premise, like, married at first side, obviously, you know. Well, you can't believe the premise because it's not real.

Because they're not really getting married. But it's sort of so extreme compared to what we used to see on, and he does all about, it's all dating, you know, there's love is blind, you know, when they're sort of dating through a wall, perfect match, which is, I don't think anyone's looking for long-term love there, but that's quite interesting. He calls it the summer fling to those other shows. then the ultimatum, the spouse has all of these things. The reason he says he's really obsessed with dating shows

is because he thinks the stakes are so high. And he says that Marriott at first sight is not format driven, it is story driven. He says, you know, what the shows are sort of asking is, how does attraction work? How can you tell if people are really in love? Can you manage it? Can you create it?

Chris Colon will always say, oh, it's all a choice. You know, I'm making a documentary. That's what he'd love to say. It's not a format. No, you're not making a documentary. You're aware of the fibrillity, is that a word? Something is feebrile of the situation you're putting people in, and you are ratcheting that up time and time and time again

because that gets ratings and ratings equals money. So we listen, which by the way is that's the age old story of television. You want ratings and you want money and that's what he's doing. But it's disingenuous to say anything other than that. He's not turning a camera on and just seen what happens. You know, he's not David Atenborough. The producers have always had an, unbelievable amount of control within these environments.

And by the way, when people say that, because people sometimes say, just to be clear, all these things are scripted, the end of the edit is X, Y and Z, really what the technique is to throw in a mechanic that changes everything and then sit back and see what happens. It's not, oh, we're going to do this and then we're going to do that, and then we're going to do that, and then we'll film that, and that's going to make that story. Genuinely, the idea is, like on any TV show, like on a panel show, is we have this structure, we do this, we ask this question, we pull this lever, and then we just see what happens. That's the thing that they want to do until the point where that runs out of steam and then we put another lever,

which by the way they don't really do in documentaries. No. What's gone wrong here is really a function of the idea itself in a way because it is all so unreal. You may be married, but you are divorced from reality by design. Any welfare is reactive. I've read a lot of people this week talking about it, former contestants in these types of shows, an interesting article by someone who is in Love Island

who said all the welfare and duty of care stuff is reactive and not proactive. And the fact is that when you are removed from everything and you're in a bubble, it's a bit like Karen and Goodfellas saying after a while it gets to feel normal. And a lot of people don't understand, when you're in a big immersive world

and you're isolated from your friends, your families, maybe even your phone, from all sorts of things, it's often that we already know this about, sexual assault or alleged sexual assault or anything. It's only afterwards that you realize what really happened and how undesirable a situation was. And it's, that happens anyway in cases of sexual assault. We understand far more about it than we ever did before. Never mind when you're in a sort of bubble and you really have almost all of your kind of normal checks and balances removed from you. You then also have a welfare team who worked for and are paid by the production.

Would not accuse a single one of them, by the way, of entering into this with any sort of ill intent. I think people are trying to make a great television program. And this is the show, you know, there's a big hit around the world, I think it started in Denmark. But, you know, Australia was the one where Britain really fell in love for this format. So, of course, you're going to make it. And Channel 4 excited. And they go, we'll make it. But we do have to understand that there are lots of issues here and we have to be very careful with it. and the producers would have taken that very, very seriously. It got so huge, such a huge show. So the marriage is sort of meaningless in a way.

It's what it leads to and the fame it leads to and the Instagram followers that it leads to. And it becomes such a juggernaut that the people, I think, who commission it and produce it do not have the capability. And these are very capable people. They do not have the capability to control the thing that has been unleashed. They have created something that feels like a sort of cutesy, really. reality experience we used to do and becomes a real world thing and becomes an incredibly complex and difficult real world thing. And it's not appropriate for that to be run by the people who are running it. Yeah. There is something else that Chris Cullen says that he aspires for his

shows to teach empathy and so on, but also that the conversations around the shows evolve with and reflect the culture. And one thing that I've just been thinking about this all week, because I've been thinking about it before, and I know I've talked to you about this before, but there's a sort of wider point about how toxic dating is in contemporary culture. And obviously the premise is absolutely crazy. You get married to someone and you've never met them. Only in a world where already everyone is being sort of matched by machines. Yes.

And people are completely exhausted and twisted by the apps. How much you hear about app fatigue and all of this. What used to be an organic human connection has. become a sort of algorithmically controlled market. It's an aspect of platform capitalism. It's twisted in its best sense, you know, not in its best sense, but, you know, your real world, if you're not on one of these shows or not on anything, even that experience for people is kind of miserable and awful.

Why not get married to someone I've met before on TV? Because everything else has failed. Well, only against that general real world backdrop that everyone is going through, can these kind of bizarre, weird artificial premises seem somehow maybe it's more real, maybe it's more desirable than just many of the kind of tech mediated alternatives.

And it's, you know, sitting around a table thinking up TV shows something I did for many, many years and it's a fun thing to do and it seems that we're at stage now where you think, well, just because you can doesn't mean you should. But it's, you know, it's hard not to when people, we have to talk about the complicity

of everyone here, which is the program makers, which are the channels and the viewers. It is one of those things where it is built and built and built. And, you know, we've seen different versions of this, different iterations of it. We love the drama, watching the drama of it. And it is very easy as a broadcaster, as a program maker, and as a viewer, to step away from the reality of the thing. You think, no, hold on, we're in a very, very, very toxic culture at the moment. we are putting young people on television who absolutely are digital natives, but perhaps they're not, you know, emotional natives. Perhaps they don't have absolute control over their place in the world. And the moment something like this happens, you have to stop and go, yeah, do you know what?

That's probably too far. That was probably enough. And I think that that's what I can't imagine they're going to show the next series of Married at First Night. I just can't see it because I just don't think it feels an appropriate thing to put people through with the knowledge we now all definitely have. That was always at the back of our brains, but wasn't the pleasure center at the front of our brains. One thing it does tell you about our culture is we do at least take these things seriously. Firstly, brilliant work from Nongi for putting this whole thing together. And the real measure of our culture is what happens next.

Yes. I think it's a yeah, it's a horrific story and it's not just on the channels and the producers. It's on us viewers as well. But so we all have to, I think, kind of get around the table and just go, what is okay and what isn't okay. And this feels like maybe it's on the other side of the line of what is okay. And here's the real issue that's going to happen is, you know, we're in a situation now where CPL have duty of care and Channel 4 have duty of care. and we as viewers are, you know, part of a long lineage of reality TV shows. But if we think it's the Wild West now, all of this stuff is now starting on YouTube.

All of these new formats are starting on YouTube where there is not that oversight. The money you can get for making a reality show on YouTube now is absolutely immense. The sort of personalities you can run these sort of shows are as well. So we are going to get an awful lot of experiments in the next. two, three, five years along these lines, which we have almost no oversight over whatever. So the whole situation is going to get much, much, much, much worse because all of these protocols that broadcast television has had to develop over the years, they do not apply to this new generation of program makers and they will make new mistakes.

Talking about the fall of civilization, after these adverts, we're going to be talking about the enhanced games, which was on Sunday. And I would say it's quite a spectacle, but perhaps not in the way that the organisers were hoping. This is the athletic competition where all competitors are allowed and, in fact, encouraged to take performance-enhancing drugs. Yeah. This episode is brought to you by Lloyd's. Now, I love it when characters are part of the club. You wouldn't know anything about that, would you, Richard?

The Thursday Murder Club in some ways reminds me of the A-team. I would now like to map each of those characters onto the A-team and feel I probably could. I mean, Elizabeth is Hannibal and it's not even. and close. That's exactly right. And Ron is howling mad Murdoch. Well, there are definite perks to being in a club. Just ask the members of Club Lloyds.

Because with Club Lloyds, you can bank on Lloyds to give you more wherever you are. If you join Club Lloyds, there's all sorts of benefits you can choose between. There's, for example, six free cinema tickets. They've got an annual coffee club and Gourmet Society membership, which would be mine. And also something that the Thursday Murder Club would enjoy very, very much indeed. To top it all off, you have fee-free spending abroad, which means wherever you are. You won't be charged by Lloyd's to use your debit card when you're travelling. Now, joining this club costs £5 per month, but that is refunded in any month that you pay £2,000 into your account.

Now, that is a club that's worth being part of. Check out Club Lloyds today. You'll need to be a UK resident and aged 18 or over to apply. Hello, it's Marina Hyde from the rest of entertainment. Now, Tom, it's fair to say there isn't normally a huge amount of crossover between our podcasts. Well, Marina, I know that we have both on our respective podcasts discussed bin Diesel's ambition to play Hannibal. So I've always thought that perhaps there is potential here for the rest of history and the rest of his entertainment to combine and produce something beautiful.

Yes, in a crossover, nobody saw coming. The worlds of reality TV and historical high society collide live on the South Bank Centre stage. Yeah, the real housewives of Regency England will see us cast a TV reality show eye onto the women of the early 19th century. And when we say the women of the early 19th century, we are talking about some of the most extraordinary, most charismatic, most scandalous women in the whole of British history. Exactly. Think Lady Hamilton, Jane Austen and my chaotic queen, Caroline Lamb. Yeah, so Marina and I are planning to pull out all the stops for a reality TV tour of Regency London, complete with superb dramatic recreations and unbelievably exciting, a special celebrity guest from the world of the real

real housewives. The Restis Fest is running from the 4th to 6th of September at London's South Bank Centre. Members of The Restis History and the Rest is Entertainment can get tickets on the 28th of May. General Sale goes live on the 2nd of June at 10am, visit southbankcenter.com.uk to find out more. Welcome back, everybody. Now, the enhanced games, Richard, swimming, sprinting and weight lifting, I believe. 42 athletes.

I was going to say, not as you know it, but maybe as you know it, because everyone's on drugs. It's described as the Olympics on steroids, but in this case, literally. And it happened on Sunday. You'll be shocked to learn where it happened. Actually, there's two places it might have happened.

One was Riyadh, it wasn't there. The other was Las Vegas, and it was there. Perhaps next year it would be in Riyadh. and it is a competition where athletes, some of whom are genuine Olympians in the swimming sprints and in weightlifting, attempt to break world records by using performance enhancing drugs. It's run by a guy called Christian Angamaya, who made a fortune from Sider Sabin tablets, magic mushroom. He's like AI, psychedelics and crypto. Yes.

Yeah, absolutely perfect store. Although the more I read about it, the more I liked him. I'll say that. Yeah, we will get them. It's also backed by Peter Thiel. Donald Trump Jr.'s venture capitalist firm are investors as well. Now, it's called the Enhance Games, not because, oh, it's, you know, games, but it's enhanced. It's called Enhanced because it is sponsored by a company called Enhanced.

And that is Christian Angamey's company. And they will essentially sell you peptides and testosterone and all of these things, all of these things that we've spoken about before. And we talked about looks maxing and all that stuff. this world in America that seems to be getting less and less regulated, especially with the rise of RFK, where you can improve who you are. All the biohacking, all the self-optimisation, all the longevity, particularly that these guys are heavily invested in. And the event was connected to a platform where you can...

The event was connected to a shop. Yeah. Let's call it what it is. I mean, when it first came out, Sebco, he was chairman of World Athletics at the time, said, oh, this is all bullocks. I don't get sleep this night's over it. No one's going to watch. and no one's going to, people thought no one would screen it.

It's like, have you lived to the media over the last few years? Don't worry. Someone will. And it was actually on Roku's YouTube channel. Yes. Which is not nothing, by the way, these days. No, no, no, no, no. We live in a completely different media landscape.

And as we've just talked about before the break, don't think that no one will screen it because someone will always screen it. Yeah. They had it last night, but they had a training camp a few months ago in Abu Dhabi. That was in Abu Dhabi. Yeah. And again, it's all like, I don't know where the stage of this is, but it will obviously, because it hasn't come out.

yet because they will obviously have to take in the games itself. But really Scott's company was going to make a documentary about it. And it was going to be produced by Rob McElheny. Obviously, welcome to Wrexham. It's all just content, isn't it? It's all, yeah. Well, it's not even just content. It's an advert. And so it's fascinating. We talk a lot about how sport is is the only game left in town, really, on broadcast television and because you have to watch it live and because it has this sort of genuine drama. But, you know, if you look at, so Enhance, which had had an IPO and is worth over a billion. million dollars, this company that will sell, petise, and all sorts of things. You know, in their

entry to the Securities Exchange when they had their IPO, they described the enhanced games as simply a marketing tool. This is not their company. They're not building this thing. You know, this is literally a marketing thing. And, you know, they've encouraged all these sports people to come and do it, and they put it on on Sunday, and lots of people watched it. Now, the interesting thing about it is the sports people who were doing it. And there's all sorts of people who did it. Fred Curley, who was an Olympic 100 metre medalist. He did it. He did it clean, weirdly. There's a few athletes in this Hunter Armstrong, the swimmer as well. You've competed clean. Yeah, I saw him be everyone clean. Which way we'll get to literally the only clean athlete.

You've ruined the advert. Yeah, you've ruined our advert, Hunter, whether they are clean or not. Because they can't dope test them. That would be against it. We have to get to the basics of, for how many years of people have said about the Olympics, oh, I don't know why they didn't just let them all take drugs and get on with it. Well, okay, firstly because it's dangerous and also it's ethically bankrupt, etc. This is a more interesting thing that it first seems, because the first site it seems like a circus. You think, oh great, the tech bros, of course, are pumping people full of drugs and then, you know, winding them up like toys and looking to see if they can break world records. But actually, you look at someone like Ben Proud, who's the British swimmer, who's a silver medalist in the Olympics. I mean, there's about as good as you can get.

And then, you know, lots of people swim. It's really difficult. and he's one of the very, very best in the entire world. And, you know, he says, I don't make any money out of it. So I don't make any money out of it. Someone has said to me, I'll give you a million dollars if you break a world record. Yeah, the prizes at this games were extraordinary, really, like, really big money. Someone has also said, I'll give you $250,000 if you win the race, and there's only four people in the race, by the way.

He says, well, that's 13 years of national championships. You know, I would get the same money. I saw 46% of elite athletes earn under 15%. $15,000 a year. There's track and field and swimming and weightlifting. They've chosen very, very wisely because these things are high profile, but you don't make an awful lot of money. If you're using Bolt, you make a lot of money.

Most people do not make a lot of money. So there is a group of people who are incredible athletes, who, by the way, throughout their entire career, have been at the absolute cutting edge of how to train. You know, the cutting edge of this is a new way to do it, a cutting edge of perhaps you can take this powder, the cutting edge of seeing people who they're in a dorm with, taking something illegal and not getting caught. This is the world that they've grown up with. They have grown up in a world where they absolutely are sort of put through the ringer physically and mentally for the entertainment of other people, but for not very much money.

So when someone says to them, what we will do, we will take you to Abidabee, we will give you a series of chemical interventions, all of which are legal in the real world. Yeah. And then you come to Vegas. And if you win a race against three other people, I'll give you $250,000 pound. And if you break the world record, I'll give you a million pound. Very, very hard to imagine what other than some internal morals would stop you doing that as an athlete. Because how else are you making the money?

Ben Proud would have been training since he was a child. Just all day, every day, putting his body through extraordinary things. Now, Ben Proud will be aware that there will be children watching this happening. and they might be tempted to follow him, and that's on his conscience. But everything else involved, you think, well, I sort of get it. How much longer have you got in this sport, five years, six years? You want to finally make some money, and so that's what he's doing. So I understand why the athletes are doing it.

And WADA, quite rightly, is saying that we don't know what these drugs do. And he said, yeah, but these people, they're like Formula One cars. You know they've been put through, like, unbelievable training regimes, which are absolutely not natural on which bodies are not supposed to do. Well, people have always harmed themselves. You know, from the Coliseum probably before, we've always watched people really... I think it was less voluntary than Coliseum. But we've watched people harm themselves for our sporting entertainment.

What about boxing? Well, I was going to say, come on. What about what we know now about contact sports and degenerative disease? I mean, we know all these things. And in some cases, people are trying really slowly to find out because they don't want to stop watching those contact sports. So they don't want to have to change the rules of those contact sports because maybe it's just or maybe it's this or that. We know this. We already know that people are being made to do extraordinary and awful things to their bodies in the cause of our sporting entertainment.

Yeah, that Ussic fight over the weekend, which ended very controversially. So that sport, so that sport, that's okay. And this thing in Vegas is not okay. All I'm saying is morally is a very, very thin line between the enhanced games and what sport is anyway. The one thing you definitely don't want is to encourage the massive amounts of putting drugs together in untested ways, you know, and so all the doctors are saying, we don't know what's going to happen. And of course, you don't know what's going to happen. Is it like that scorpion fight in Jarrehead, but they just, like, you'll watch anything and you'll bet on anything and it's just sportotainment.

I think, you know, most sports governing bodies, the absolute key thing they understand and really know is people want what they're watching to be fair. That is one. So most sports governing bodies are some of the worst people out there. Of course they do it very, very badly, and they have mismanaged their sports for so long that now other opportunities are suggesting themselves. I'm not saying that that's necessarily this,

but many, many other things. And you can see, like, all sorts of breakaway things will happen because people will feel like, I'm sick of this. You run it badly, and I get no cut of it. And there's all sorts of different ways in which these kind of hegemonys and monopolies are going to break up. Yeah. Now that you won't ever say, or will he screen it.

Yeah. Now that, you know, there's so many sporting billionaires now that there are people in lots and lots of sports who are going to start saying, I mean, I might just do this myself. I might just find a way to make this slightly more interesting for me because the sports people are the ones who were drawing the crowds, not the sports administrators. And I think that if I was an administrator in pretty much any sport,

I think people have got a lot better. I think that's definitely true. But this feels like when you look at it at first sight, it looks absolutely appalling. And when you actually pull back the covers, you go, this is sort of what's always been happening. But they are being very, they're sort of telling the truth about it. That's their narrative. And if James Magnuson, the Australian swimmer, I'm sure that his body can probably take more than, say, mine. you know and if I was on the same regime as James Magnuson who by the way came forth in both of his races

I think you can take two lessons one sport has always been very very very very dodgy and this is almost no less dodgy than most sport has always been but on the other side the reason that sport makes so much money is people love it and when people love it you have that phrase again a duty of care to the people who are watching and if you're enhanced this company then you sell these products anyway and so obviously you believe them to be positive then you know you have to have a little look in the mirror and not just be thinking god I look young. RFK is about to is about sanction more and more and more of these things so that you know lots of these things are going to be legal in America doesn't mean they should be legal and this is an advert for that so sport on this side

I think it's fascinating what this says about sport and how actually as a sporting thing I kind of go we've always done that. On the other side, it's, my God, what sort of a society we're becoming? I agree. The one thing I would say as a positive was, I don't think it played that well for them in some ways because the thing that you and I adore, almost above all things in sport, is its complete unpredictability. And the fact that some of the people who take in the most drugs were far behind and clean athletes won, you can never fully control this thing. And I sort of love that You couldn't control it. It didn't work the way they wanted to.

The first thing they had was one of the women's weightlifting. They had two events. They were fairly sure they were going to get a world record. I think they must have done in training. One was the women's weightlifting, which didn't quite come down to a world record. And the other was Christian Columnier in this room, because he'd already broken a world record on drugs. He'd already been given a million dollars last year as part of their marketing push.

And he was the only one who broke a world record. So he's now made $2 million out of this, which is quite something. But, you know, Ben Proud on one of his races, so he's got a quarter quarter of a million dollars. You know, I sort of get it. But as you say, Hunter Armstrong wasn't on drugs. He was winning. Fred Curley, the sprinter, he wasn't on drugs. He won the 100 meters in, I was going to say, a slow time.

Like I can run 97. But, you know, he run 9.97 or something like that, which is, I mean, it's competitive. It would have put him last in the Olympic five. or, but, you know, he beat all the drugged up athletes. But they reminded me of advertisers, particularly the organisers, because beforehand they kept saying, oh, you're going to see so many wild records broken. A bit like when I look at an advert for some face cream,

you're going to exercise. I was like, yeah, no, you're not. Okay, it's all a big. Listen, I'm going to buy it anyway. I'm going to buy it anyway. But it's all a big load of hype. And when it actually happens, I'm not seeing the thing you told me, which is really what happens with all of these things.

Yeah. And also, you know, a lot of the swimmers are wearing the speed suits. which are illegal as well. I mean, they show, the interesting thing is the regime they have been on had made very,

very, very little difference to their performance. I don't know if that's always going to be the case. Yeah. What we want to think is, oh my God,

if you did take all of these things, then suddenly, you know, you'd be running 9.4 or something. It's just like any old retail in the sort of health of beauty space. You know, in five years time,

if they keep doing them, surely they're going to beat world records because also more and more and more people are, are going to do it because as I say, if you are an athlete and suddenly it's happened this first time and, you know, the world didn't end and you haven't made very much money in your career, but you do feel that your body has been abused and you've been pushed to do things you don't really want to do and you feel like you've been running against people who are doped up

and all of those things through your career. I don't know why athletes in their kind of early 30s wouldn't be going, oh, do you know what, next year I'll do enhance games. You know, we'll go to Abidabie. There's doctors there. I get it. It's all supervised. It feels like more and more athletes would do it. It feels like where you go, I can't name the particular football club, but it feels like where you go where they have the special medicine and the special doctors. There's a football, not in our country, where people used to go towards in their twilights and do very well sometimes.

And maybe it will be a sort of twilight staging post. Yes, like the senior snooker. Which would I want to say is clean. It's drug-free. There's no drugs in that sport. There are no beta blockers. They used to have beta-blockers. And, you know, that's poor old Bill Wurbenyuk had to drink 16 pites before a match because he wasn't allowed beta-blockers.

Now, the organiser, they didn't release individual athletes regimens, but they revealed that 91% of the athletes used testosterone, 79% used human growth hormone, 62% used stimulants such as adderol, 50% used metabolic modulations, great band, 41% used EPO and 29% used an adabolic steroid agent such as Deco and Gerobolin. So these are all the things that people have been banned for over the years, lots of which are perfectly legal in lots of places. But they're sort of finding different combinations of these things. And that's what we don't know what happens when you combine all of these things. I thought it's, listen, as a spectacle, it wasn't amazing.

They didn't break any records. I think it's a fascinating sign of things to come, though. but as parents or as, you know, just human beings, be wary of the huge amounts of money that are going in now to marketing peptides to you and marketing things to make you look younger, train harder. Essentially, that whole thing in Vegas was an advert treated as such. Right, well, the last episode of The Late Show with Stephen Colbert and indeed The Late Show at all has gone out.

Remember that CBS axed it in the midst of the Paramount Skydance deal, which they needed approval from the Trump administration from, and ended up getting it. Stephen Colbert said it was an honor and a privilege. You know, the honor of my life to be here is in that sort of very good bye to all that way. The President Trump, needless to say, posted about it in very, very derogatory ways like he's talentless, he's whatever. I mean, and it's all gone. The end of a huge era, not just his. era. So in some ways, I can't really say the sun is setting on late night, but you know what I mean? Yeah, but I think the really interesting thing about it is, is when this first happened and Colbert was taken off air, it was absolutely seen as a harbinger of, oh, okay, now we have state controlled media and this is Australia out of a playbook that we're very familiar with.

And then, you know, when Kimmel was suspended as well, we think, oh, here we go, the whole of late night is being dismantled, satire is being dismantled, we know this playbook, we've seen this and many times before. But actually, in the time between them announcing that Colbert is coming off air and now, Kimmel is still there. If anything, you know, we've got more powerful. Seth Myers is still there. You know, everything else is still going. It feels like, you know, the FCC, who were Trump's lap dogs in this, as in so many other things,

seem to have lost some of their bite. You know, they try to have a go at the view and the view a bit back. So it feels like it's unfortunate for Stephen Colbert, of course. course, but it feels like this was the wake-up call perhaps that the American media industry needed. Yeah, it's interesting. The last series I saw got three times its normal audience, because if you say to people, you're not going to have this thing anymore and this is why, people actually showed up for it. In the way that after Kimmel came back off his suspension, there was a huge sort of surge of viewers. But we have to accept equally. By the way,

I don't think you can stop any of these things because, as we said earlier in this very episode, there are many, many places that will screen things nowadays, and we will definitely get to that in a minute. We have to say that late night itself used to be massive, and even though it was incredibly expensive to produce, you've got huge writing staffs, you've got big production, you've got all sorts of other things like that. It was profitable, and you had sponsors and you had lots of ad revenue because people watched it in a linear way. and when you look at all the wars, the late night wars are the 80s, but most particularly the 90s,

even then though, these shows were mega expensive and it's a little bit like buying sporting rights or something like that. You kind of want to have it going through your pipes or you want to have it show in your channels, but it does, and it's also something that's always been there.

You know, some people will say now to you about comedy commissioning, why am I commissioned a comedy? I mean, just because we always commissioned comedies, why am I doing that? because actually people aren't watching them. And definitely the point at which I think the late show had got to, it cost $100 million a year to make and it made $60 million.

So you can see that it is a lost leader. It's there for prestige, yeah, a lost leader. And also it's there because we've always had things like this. It's interesting. All the other rival shows ran reruns sort of out of respect. Against this last episode. Against this last episode. You know, you can see what's happened.

The clips are bigger than the shows. I mean, the clips get huge amounts. of the opening monologue or some funny sort of moment of vignette from them that night show. But they are also part of the old monoculture that is dead. In the old days, obviously, you know, you would, to put it in the most crude terms, red and blue state or, you know, Republicans, Democrats, all watch these shows. They were part of the shared monoculture. Now all of these shows are seen to be kind of hotbeds of kind of democratic degeneracy

or whatever it is. And all of them, they are part of. of one complete siloed side of things, which was extraordinary and never existed in the old days. There is not a shared monoculture anymore that these shows sat at a sort of broad centre of. It doesn't exist anymore. And as I say, yeah, it was hallowed and whatever. It's interesting what he did next, Stephen Colbert. And I find this really interesting because he did this.

He popped up on public access TV, which as you know is like mega loafi. And back in the old days, we thought, oh my gosh, I can't believe America has this. where like almost anyone can make TV in Wainzworld. Like Wainzworld. And it's now like, all right, we live in a culture where almost everyone makes TV all the time, you know, whether you're putting on TikTok or YouTube or whatever. And he hosted only in Monroe, which is a community access program, it's a town of Monroe, Michigan is a town of, I think, 20,000 people.

And he did this actually the night before, or just before he took up the reins at the late show back in 2015. And on his last night in the actual live, late show chair, he said, the last thing I did before I took up this job was I hosted this public access TV show called Only a Monroe and 12 people watched and show business being what it is, that's probably where you'll next see me. Indeed, 23 hours later, he was hosting Onea and Munro. He made it really incredible. He interviewed the two women who are the usual host. This is a town of 20,000 people, Monroe. It's a tiny, and when you see that, I mean, this is very sophisticated. They don't have a sophisticated setup as this, that we're sitting in our podcast

studio. They had some of the sort of chairs and a little pop plant in the middle. But he got Jack White to do the music off a stereo and a reel-to-reel. He got Eminem came on. It's kind of like, they called Byron Allen and talked about what he was doing. Jeff Daniels was there. Steve Bishemi, they happened to find that there was somewhere in Monroe called Bishamie's Pizza or something like that. Steve Bishemi, zero relation, did an advert for them. So they had all sorts of fun things. And obviously he can create something wonderful. But it It is the first thing that's on his new YouTube channel. There is now one thing on Stephen Colbert's newly minted YouTube channel,

and it is his appearance hosting Only in Monroe. It's sort of interesting. Lots of people are wondering what he'll do. We do know he will be writing with his son, Lord of the Rings movie. Yes, that's crazy, isn't it? That is nuts. Yeah, some sort of like small section of something from the Fellowship of the Rings. So I'm sort of imagining something a bit like Rogue One.

It's kind of a Star Wars story, and it sits within the whole law. But anyway, but then why would you not? go and do a show if you felt like it on YouTube. Leaving aside the political side of it for now. And that's, you know, why I persisted this by saying that all these other shows are still on. And there's quite a lot of them. They don't really need that many, is the truth. But as you say, that's...

There are only three daily ones. And then John Oliver's a totally different thing. It's just like a one night a week thing. But it's still a lot. Yeah. Yeah, this was... Didn't make any money at all for CBS. Stephen Colbert was obviously paid.

Now, there is zero way that's... Stephen Colbert is going to earn less money next year than he earned on that CBS contract. Because of his name and because of YouTube and because he can directly get paid, you know, the advertising money, he will be making more money. He will be making much more money. But the show itself will be profitable. Because everything has become, we're on one now. You're on a form of TV chat show now. You're on a screen visual chat show. So he will make a fortune in the same way that Conan makes a fortune from his show. So CBS are not only saving that $40 million, they're making a lot more because the thing that's replacing Colbert in The Daily Show, I think is very, very interesting, which is Byron Allen, who's this amazing guy. He started as a gag writer for stand-ups at 14, Byron Allen, and then he did a bit of stand-up, and he just absolutely loved at TV. He's now a multi-multies, a billionaire, his company, which is entertainment studios worth over $4 billion. dollars. He has always run this show called Comics Unleashed, which to us would be like a panel show, really. But it's comics doing a monologue and it's sort of lightly kind of tied together. He also does another show called Funny You Should Ask, which is very similar to Celebrity Squares. So he's run those two shows for years and years and years, Byron Annam with loads of different comics. And if you want to know, by the way, how satirical they are, Norm MacDonald once said about Comics Unleash. I think it would be impossible.

to be more leashed. So, you know, and Byron Allen will always say, don't do anything topical because I want these to run and run and run. I want to be able to repeat these whenever I want to do them. So he does these two shows. And they've been going out after the late show, funnily enough. And now he said to CBS, I will pay you for that slot. I will give you money for that. So I will buy that slot from you if you let me keep the advertising, which he was doing years ago, Byron Anna.

He's really fascinating. He's made a load of money by always having smarter ideas than anyone else. So now instead of Colbert, you will have comics unleashed, or comics leased, and funny, you should ask, just all day, every day. CBS is saying we're doing this until we can work out how to replace the late show, but I don't know why you would not just keep doing it, because they're getting paid for it. You know, Byron Allen is taking all the risk. He's keeping the advertising money. He thinks he can find a way of doing it. He can run that without making a $40 million loss that CBS was making. So that's what's replacing it, which is hugely more.

vanilla. For sure, it is hugely more vanilla. But does America really, really need another show that's costing an absolute fortune? No. Not paying its way that does the same thing as other shows, because Stephen Colbert can go and do that, because he will be doing that elsewhere. You know, again, everyone wins. Yes, he can make a show for, I don't know, for $20 million a year, and literally 15 of that will be profit. And he can take 10 people or whatever it is from the late show, and they can do it and we already know that fun viral TV does not have to be as we've always thought of it. But the other thing is that show can't be controlled by anybody.

Even if Brendan Carr and the FCC and all these people want to play sort of whackamol with people getting out of line or people speaking against the great dictator, so what, okay? There is a massive democratized thing out there that anyone can be a hit on and you can be sure if he decides to be a hit, Stephen Colbert, and he will be. And really good people will come there and then no one will control. them and they won't get to YouTube and they won't stop because if he can't possibly control any of that because otherwise I mean it's impossible for him to do that so against legacy old-fashioned things he might be able to exact you know a measure of revenge or whatever but you are just growing a whole load

of other rebels and as well as dispatching a rebel to someone you just can't be controlled at all yeah that's the irony of the thing they're shooting themselves and their foot by releasing these people from late night because late night they do they have levers that they can pull right on YouTube they don't have those. They don't have the levers. So I think Colbert is going to make more money from it. CBS is going to make more money from it. The shows that are competitors to the daily show are stronger than they were at the time when Colbert was taken off the air. So, you know, watch this space, but we, Colbert is going nowhere. You won't be able to keep these people down? Of course you can't. And that I think is very, very positive. Conan has never been bigger or richer

than he is now. Your reminder that we'll be talking to Stephen Spielberg soon. Any questions you've ever wanted to ask Steven Spielberg, if you send them to the rest of its entertainment at goalhanger.com, and we will ask him the best or the most interesting. Any recommendations? I really want to recommend Dear England, which is the new James Graham show. It's based on his play, but it's expanded beyond the Gara Southgate verse into the Thomas Tugler era. And I actually appeared in front of a select committee last week. We haven't talked about that. We haven't talked about it.

I know. What hell was it? It was really interesting in lots of ways, but it was an absolute privilege to sit next to James. I think it's so fascinating. He's so interested. We talked a lot about local stories and he talked a lot about doing stuff in Nottingham and doing stuff with Sherwood. But he's also interested in these kind of very popular, populist kind of national stories. And to write something about the England football manager, just as when he did that play quiz, which became a brilliant TV series, about the millionaire

our coughing scandal. He just does things that people are really interested in the thing. And I think he is a most fascinating and interesting person. And it was a privilege to sit next to him, Dear England, about the Garrow Southgate era and beyond as part of, you know, the start of World Cup programming. Can I say, I watch the whole of that committee. I thought you were terrific. But all the way through, and he was great. He had made lots of very, very good points. But he did keep saying, and as Dear England, which is on BBC on Sunday, you never once plug the podcast. I can believe it.

You could have just said, and by the way, we're talking to Stephen Spielberg if you have. Okay, I don't want to talk about only in Monroe and what it normally gets

as public access television, but I can assure you that committee hearing would have got considerably fewer viewers than that. So I'm sorry I didn't plug the podcast on it. You'd save your ammunition.

Okay. I actually didn't think it was necessary to do that. If they always... And I didn't want to use any of my time that I could have been giving them,

useful statistics to plug our podcast, Richard. And I have to say that I don't think it is a huge audience, that particular live stream. ABC, always be closing. Always be closing. I'm going to recommend three different documentaries so they're all on Netflix and two of them have something in common. The Jamie Vardy documentary, which is part of the untold story,

that I watch all of the American untold, which are just sort of smaller stories from sport. They've told Jamie Vardy's career. It's not, you know, White Cuthierristo or anything like that. It's just this extraordinary. story of him going from non-league and, you know, really becoming a pro at like 25 and what happened and then Leicester City is really, really great. And also the miracle of Istanbul, which is about the Liverpool Champions League triumph as well, is in the same series. That's

great. And the Kylie documentary, which is wonderful. It's so great. Both that, though, actually, the Vardy one and the Kylie one. Again, how many times do you have to see this? The tabloid press were scum. They were scum. They were the worst of the worst. Every time you look into what they did, you're like, wow, there must have been people there. You think, how on earth are you sleeping? Oh, yeah. I mean, the Jamie Vardy one, they do something so unnecessary and so cruel that it boggles the mind and Kydie as well. And it's, it boggles the mind. Anyway, that aside, those three documents, I enjoyed them all very much. They're all on Netflix. Now, for our members, Marina, you just started this incredible series

is that last week's one on Tradwise, I absolutely love it, which was free to everyone. But now it's for members only. This week's one is about... I'm talking to the brilliant poster James Canningasaurium, who's plugged into masses of currents in a much more technical way of our times than I am, just doing it all on vibes. And this one is talking about, you know, was Chalemy, Timothy Shallowry write about ballet and opera,

and we get into whole light, is classical music a dead, art form, or actually people listen to it, but they didn't really realise they're listening to it. And stats based, really. He's got everyone. It's really interesting. It's so fascinating. Anyway, so that is for our members.

If you want to join for ad-free listening and bonus episodes, it's the rest is entertainment.com. Otherwise, we will see you on Thursday. See you on Thursday.