The Rest Is Entertainment - Mike Tyson, Bluesky & Christmas Adverts

Episode Date: November 19, 2024

It was the event *few* were talking about yet they were talking loudly. Jake Paul took on Mike Tyson live on Netflix. Who were the big winners and losers of the night? The Guardian and others have said they'll no longer post on Twitter / X and more are moving over to Bluesky. Is this a false dawn of a peaceful online place of hope that can no longer realistically exist? And, we need to mention the C-word again. The big retailers have rolled out their Christmas adverts. Which are good? Which are bad? Do they make any difference to where you choose to spend your all important Christmas pound? *** Just a final few tickets remain for the first ever The Rest Is Entertainment Live at the Royal Albert Hall on 4th December remain. Get them now at www.royalalberthall.com *** Join The Rest Is Entertainment Club for ad free listening and access to bonus episodes: www.therestisentertainment.com Sign up to our newsletter: www.therestisentertainment.com Twitter: @‌restisents Instagram: @‌restisentertainment YouTube: @‌therestisentertainment Email: [e-mail] Producers: Neil Fearn + Joey McCarthy Executive Producers: Tony Pastor + Jack Davenport Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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["The Rest is Entertainment"] Hello and welcome to this episode of The Rest Is Entertainment with me, Marina Hyde. And me, Richard Osmond. Hello, Marina. Hello, Richard. How are you? I'm really well. Lovely to see you. Good week. Very good week, thank you. Although I must say the discourse on the bookshelf stacking and how people organise their bookshelves after our question and answers episode has kicked off.

It's taken up a lot of time, a lot of admin. We will be dealing with some of that admin on our questions and answers edition. A lot. Listen, there are a lot of arguments, there's some cute stuff, a lot of arguments, but a lot to talk about. But on today's show we're talking about... We're talking about the fight that was on Netflix on Friday night between YouTuber Jake Paul and actual boxer and unwell man Mike Tyson. Which I think we have different opinions on, which we will get to. We're going to talk about Blue Sky, the exodus to Blue Sky from Twitter. What's happening there? Does it matter? And we're also going to talk about all the retailers Christmas TV ads and whether they work and why people do them. Where they go next, exactly.

Now this fight, Paul against Tyson, people have spoken about little else on various forums for a very long time. Jake Paul, who is a YouTuber, used to do pranks, sort of became a boxer, called out various YouTubers, fought Tommy Fury, all sorts of things. So he's built this career. He was the world's best paid sportsman in 2022, Jake Paul. And he's a limited boxer. He's beefed up, but he's a limited boxer. He called out Iron Mike Tyson, probably the most famous boxer of all time, but an old man. I don't think he's the most famous boxer of all time.

Oh, oh no. Muhammad Ali is my son. So do you know what? You're absolutely right. The second most famous boxer of all time, arguably. Uh, and, uh, called him out. Mike Tyson, of course did. Yes, because there's a lot of money, uh, in it for both of them.

Netflix said, of course we will show this. The fight was on the early hours of Saturday morning over here Friday evening in the US. Arlington, Texas. In Arlington, Texas. Jake Paul won over one of the most stultifyingly boring contests of boxing you could ever see. Tyson threw 18 punches in the entire fight and probably made about a million dollars per punch. And the fallout has been, was this the worst spectacle we've ever seen

in our lives which we'll talk about but also did it work for Netflix did it work for Mike Tyson did it work for Jake Paul did it work for viewers okay so again you know sport is content and we've said this they keep saying we're not going to do any live sports and we're doing sports as adjacent events like the Beckham documentary or drive to survive. But they've also got two big NFL games for Christmas day. And we're going to come to that's a much bigger deal. However, however big we think Jake Paul V. Mike Tyson is, that's, that's the, that's,

that's the real one. But sport is content to them. And they got a whole week out of this, as you can see, cause you've got all this stuff in the, going up in the buildup and it, you know, it's bizarre bizarre it's the biggest crowd of Mike Tyson's career which so go figure. Yeah biggest ever box office gate outside Las Vegas. Yeah. In boxing history. Yes. I'm going to be controversial and I say I think it's quite a good idea isn't it? I genuinely know you said it didn't really work for Netflix I think it probably worked for them okay. I think it works for Tyson because you know he'd have got some money it probably worked for them. Okay I think it works for Tyson because you know, but I've got some money. It certainly works for Jake Paul

Kind of works for the audience. Can we just make it clear what we're watching here? But I think some people won't have realized okay this we're talking about a youtuber who has become a boxer after a fashion Yeah, he's got a 31 year old age difference with this guy who's 58 He's got a stomach ulcer. He's seen hospitalized quite a few times in the last few months, arthritis and a weed farm. Okay. So, you know, it was, I found it a really sad spectacle and it was totally bleak. There were elements of sort of, you know, savage, fast to it all. A lot of this is like what we've said about so many times before, all these

kinds of things are about sports having to reach beyond their traditional fans. savage, fast to it all. A lot of this is like what we've said about so many times before, all these kinds of things are about sports having to reach beyond their traditional fans. Maybe they're failing, you know, maybe they're the traditional fan base is dwindling, whatever it is, you've got to go after fans who don't like your sport. So if you see what's, you know, as we talked about in a kind of quite a simplistic way, but sort of women coming into Formula One, Viadrive to survive. YouTubers. So there was a moment when before the fight where a 14 year old YouTuber called Jasling Guerra interviews Tyson and... This is my

absolute favorite bit of the whole thing and sums up everything and this honestly I think this is the reason you find it so bleak this is the reason I absolutely love this as a phenomenon. Well, there we go. There's the difference between us. Okay, so she's 14 years old. She's got something called Jazzy's World TV. And she said to him, ask him a question like, what would you leave behind as your legacy? And he says, well, I don't believe in the word legacy. I think that's just another word for ego. Legacy means nothing to me. I'm just passing through. I'm going to die and it for ego. Legacy means nothing to me. I'm just passing through.

I'm gonna die and it's gonna be over. Who cares about legacy after that? We're nothing, we're dead, we're dust. She says, thank you so much for sharing that. That's something I've not heard before. And then he says, can you really imagine me saying I want my legacy to be this way or that? You're dead, what audacity is that?

Do you want people to care about me when I'm gone? Who the fuck cares about me? Okay Mike, she's 14, but I mean, this is the world's colliding of, you know, trying to bring in these young YouTubers. And we have to say for Jake Paul that he has done an amazing thing for lots of women boxers by really promoting them.

The Taylor versus Serrano fight, one of the greatest women's boxing fight of all time is on the undercard to this absolute Farago. But that's why I don't mind it. No one is pretending, no one is pretending that Jake Paul versus Mike Tyson is a boxing match. No one is pretending that. It's the ultimate sort of YouTube prank. You know, if you said 10 years ago, you know, all the kind of things that people do, the biggest thing they said you could possibly do, you could get in a ring with Iron Mike Tyson. That's what Jake Paul has done at absolutely no

risk to himself, because as you say, Mike Tyson is 58 years Tyson. That's what Jake Paul has done and absolutely no risk to himself Because as you say Mike Tyson is 58 years old He's made a lot of money. He's he says he's made 40 million. I don't think it's that much I would I would think it's I mean, it's a lot still it's 30 million odd But it's certainly not 40 million Tyson's made 10 million, you know, and that's nice him and he hasn't had to do anything He's just had a sort of guy is not that good at boxing throwing punches at him occasionally. Netflix have got a whole group of people who just want to watch this because they understand it as a spectacle they understand it as a sort of ridiculous WWE

fight and fans like it fans have got something they want which is you know a couple of weeks worth of entertainment wanting Jake Paul to get beaten they know he's not going to be but people who say it besmirches boxing, it makes boxing look bad. Have you ever seen boxing? Boxing has such a long history of this. This is just the latest. I agree. None of my, what I was saying was meant to deny that at all. Boxing is like, it only ever is morally complex at best. And it always has been. And it's like saying this is besmirched the legacy, the besmirch, the reputation of war. Okay.

It's, it's not very nice anyway. However, I think there was, I do think there's something very bleak about watching that. And it's a sort of sad spectacle watching careers kind of end like that. And if it's just about money. What's bleak? Yeah. Because he's an amazing boxer. He was a great boxer and it's just really sad seeing like that.

It's actually the plot this of a Rocky Balboa, do I want to say, which is like Rocky 6 and then he gets back in the ring. He's about 60s alone. It's sort of the plot of that. Yeah, but did you not just hear what Mike Tyson said to Jazzy? He said he doesn't care about his legacy. What he cares about tomorrow, he's just got 10 million quid. You know, he's just become relevant to a whole new generation of people. He doesn't care. Relevant? No, he's not living in the a whole new generation of people. He doesn't care No, he's not lip. He's not living in the moment This is a bleak vision and also if you could see it you were lucky at the start because they had Netflix It was beset by so many problems

which I've Thought Netflix might be the first to get punched in the mouth and they duly were because as we go through the undercard People's things were buffering them Everything was being reduced to those kind of big pixel boxes. And it was trending that they could, people couldn't see it. I think at least a hundred thousand people definitely had problems. Now Netflix have done relatively few big live events as a Chris Rock special they did the disastrous love is blind reunion show,

which was billed as like a big live event. You're going to be able to watch the lovers blind reunion show. That went so wrong. There was so many technical glitches for that. Now, anyway, you'll have people saying, well, I mean, oh my God, I'm so crushed. I couldn't watch the love is blind reunion live. And by the way, some people were, but your NFL games on Christmas day, they better have it right for that. Cause if they don't, I can't even imagine WWE raw, which they're taking, I think

they will have it sorted by the time they've got that on and you know, arguably that matters slightly less, but maybe not. But the NFL games on Christmas Day, if they don't get that absolutely perfect, people will go nuts. It's interesting why they're doing this as well. I think we should talk about that because there are lots of things they said they'd never do. They said they'd never do sports, they said they'd never do adverts, but as we now know, they do do adverts. Half of new subscribers are to the ad tier. And if you are selling ads, you need people to be watching something altogether live because then you can sell the ads for more. It's sort of basic. Well, I mean,

it's basically what we used to do in what we used to call normal television. I remember normal television. In America, they would call it cable. And one of the main reasons people don't leave cable, as they call it in America, is because it's for sport and news. Yeah. Will come to whether or not. So 90 of the top 100 rated shows in America on cable last year were NFL games.

Right. 90 of the top 100. If you want to sell ads all the time, they want lots of new viewers at once. in lots of ways Netflix is going to is becoming like cable as they used to call it because they've got lots of live events the prices are going up and up and you know there are many more many more adverts because even if you pay for no ad Netflix you get ads in NFL games and wrestling you're gonna have ads in WWE.

And you know, the Paul Tyson match was heavily sponsored and you know, all of that kind of stuff. I genuinely, I'm going to get back on the hobby horse and say, I don't share this vision that it was anything other than some showboating, some sort of PT Barnum, Great Show on Earth stuff. I think it's easy to remember that, you know, whatever the hype around it, almost everyone in the world didn't watch it. 99.999% of the world did not watch it and did not care. But you know, the people who did made a lot of noise about it. It is in a sport which cannot in any way stand on any sort of high horse. I mean, the fact that this wasn't in Saudi Arabia was a shock. It's amazing really. Well done Texas. I think that's about the only state that would have

certified it as about. Oh, and it was genuinely certified as well. But you can go boxing. 1896, Bob Fitzsimmons, who was the great Cornish heavyweight, was fighting Tom Sharkey in San Francisco. Do you know who the referee was for that match, who they got in? They said, no one can referee this match. It's too much of a grudge match 1896 Charles Dickens not Charles Dickens Wyatt Earp the most famous sheriff of all time okay Corral all of that sort of stuff the most feared lawman in the West played by Kevin Costner in the movie Wyatt Earp so Wyatt Earp comes into to referee this fight Bob Fitzsimmons is a

big favorite he's a better boxer than Tom Sharkey. Sharkey gets knocked down, Wyatt Earp sees some sort of infraction while he's being knocked down, disqualifies Bob Simmons and gives the title to Tom Sharkey. And in America, Wyatt Earp was remembered for many, many years for being a bent boxing referee, more than for being you know, the okay corral or anything like that. Boxing is a circus. It's always been a circus. Now, people listening at home who don't like boxing have every right to say this Tyson versus Paul thing is disgusting. Anyone who does watch boxing, and I watch boxing, I like it.

We're reaping what we sowed. This is boxing and it works for everybody. But to take one of your great stars and to allow that to happen. Yeah. Tyson is responsible for himself. Tyson has made a series of decisions over his life, some of which went wrong, some of which didn't.

I'm aware he's made some poor decisions. Yeah, but you know, he has got agency. And he's got plenty of money now, by the way. His weed farm is very, very profitable. Do you know what his biggest selling weed gummy line is? It's Severed Ears. Oh, of course. After the Holyfield thing, the Holyfield shares, by the way, in the,

uh, in the profits from those weed gummies. So Tyson is in a place where finally he's got some money having been ripped off for his entire life. He's making plenty of money from this, which I think is good, but the whole history of heavyweight boxing is, uh, people, you know, being ripped off. And I, if Tyson wants to make 10 million pounds to fight someone who's not going to hurt him, then why not? Well, Casey Taylor said it really mattered to people in boxing.

It was the amazing Irish boxer who won on the undercard. And that was a great fight. She said that it really mattered to people in boxing that Tyson did well. Obviously, you saw Tony Bellew in the run up to all sort of trying to cause problems in all these 27,000 press conferences they had in the week before because it's all content. You know, I think that actually you have to offer a slightly more shaded view, which is that people, when people see one of the great people in their sport

or whatever, that allowing themselves, yes, completely allowing that to happen to themselves, they didn't have to love it. I disagree. I genuinely, I think, I'm honestly, Tyson has told us his view. He told it to Jazzy. You know, he think, I'm honestly with Tyson has told us his view. He told it to Jazzy, you know, he says, you know, when we're done we are nothing, we're dead, we're dust. He doesn't care about legacy. He knows that that's ego.

Legacy is this obsession with sport and you think no one really cares, you know, no one really cares about the legacies. Might be about three sports people ever but it doesn't matter. You know, sport is so proper, you know, there's this, there's gonna be a new EMB or sooner or later. You know, these things are cyclical and Tyson just, he doesn't care. And I quite like it because for years and years and years people have told him to care. He doesn't anymore. Tony Bellew doesn't really care either, you know, and Katie Tated doesn't really care. No, he cares about getting some clicks at the press conference.

Of course he does. However, no, I'm not sure. I thought it was a pretty bleak spectacle and I'm going to have to stick with that, but I'm glad you thought something different. I just think it was what it was. I think. Is, cause I was saying that thing about news and sport being the thing that keep people attached to, you know, not becoming call cutters as they call it and not leaving cable.

I do wonder whether Netflix given, I know they've said they're never going to do news, but it doesn't make me think, I wonder if you will try news because news is a really great way of keeping people watching adverts in, um, you know, real time altogether. And they, it's a big lie. You could, I mean, it's grim and you could probably switch off the notifications like this if they ever existed, but you could imagine push notifications coming on people's screens saying, you know, Donald Trump guilty verdict or whatever, because they'll always go back to whatever show they were watching

while you push that notification. And huge amounts of the big network news talent in the States now are being fired or, you know, had their pay hugely cut and they're all sort of setting up their own news organizations. So there are plenty of trusted anchors who would be happy to step straight into Netflix and be a sort of emergency response unit. Yeah, it's hard because clearly they're leaving those established players because the established players are not being able to make news work as a business. It's tricky to be involved in news and, you know, Facebook, that's part of the reason

Facebook's withdrawn from it. But that's a different thing in social media. I have to say that even though Netflix have said publicly they're not thinking of doing news, I know that internally they've talked about it. And, you know, it is a way of not getting people to leave the platform. I would be shocked if they didn't do news at some point. I think, you know, the great disruptor Netflix has stolen the clothes of traditional TV, you know, time after time after time, you know, they came in in a suit of armour and bit by bit they stole on the socks of terrestrial TV and the pants of terrestrial TV and the hats of terrestrial TV. They just

because that's what people like and you know, Netflix now has the eyeballs to be able to do that. And as you say, they said they weren't going to do sport. I mean, this wasn't sport particularly. Well, I mean, honestly, they haven't. Paul versus Tyson. If it was sport, it would have been on pay-per-view. And Jake Paul is smart enough not to put that on pay-per-view because firstly, you'd see the numbers and they wouldn't be amazing. And secondly, people would want their money back. With Netflix, they've already paid. So who's losing? Nobody's losing. Yeah. So I didn't mind it. And Netflix are going to do news. Those are the two headlines there.

Now after that condemnation of rampant commercialism, shall we have some adverts? Please, for goodness sake, let's have a palate cleanser. Now talking about the great fights of our time, we've had Paul versus Tyson, Twitter versus blue sky. That's what we're talking about now. I mean, this is an even more depressing spectacle. Let me say that right from the get go. Stay with us listeners, but.

This is one of those things I don't know my view on. So I'm going to talk to you about it and then consider my view in opposition to whatever yours is. Okay. Obviously people have got lots of issues with Twitter now and various people have left the Guardian, where was, you know, where I wrote newspaper columns,

announced that it was no longer going to post its stuff on Twitter, which was massively supported by readers. I don't know, I mean I noticed that the Clifton Suspension Bridge, that account has stopped posting. Yeah, yeah, there's quite a few. How am I going to, so now I've got to go to Blue Sky. He said for all your suspension bridge, I didn't say he, maybe it's a lady. Maybe she's a lady, the old Clifton Suspension Bridge. Elaine Clifton, my full name, Elaine Clifton.

Sorry, that's my mother-in-law's name. Elaine Clifton? Does she span the Bristol Channel? I'm not sure she's been to Bristol. Okay, so Clifton Suspension Bridge. Yeah, anyway, the Clifton Suspension Bridge, right? The Clifton Suspension Bridge has stopped posting. The Guardian has stopped posting.

All sorts of people have stopped posting and saying, I'm going to blue Skype, right? I find it quite odd that people have spent a long time howling about social media, always on social media, by the way, and the evils of it and the iniquities. And now they're just going to start the whole depressing journey all over again. That's the worry. Well, yeah. I mean, I think that the journey is on so many platforms. And by the way, before there were platforms, this was the way with like even, you know, usenet groups and things

like, you know, usenet groups and things like you know, internet communities. You get this thing and it's really fun at first, then there's a sort of development of a what I would call a blue skyocracy, you know, the sort of elite posters who does and then it becomes, I see that people are already chiding people for not being nice enough on blue sky. So that's, they've already got some policing happening and then there will be all the purity spirals and then you know purity spirals and then like the worst people sort of move in you know and it becomes that sort of like slight survival of the shittest really isn't it and that's what I mean look at to it now that's what it's you're sort of left with and I

suppose the question is do you want to start the whole journey all over again? I just feel like I'm not going to lie on my deathbed thinking, oh my god, I wish I'd been on Blue Sky more. So maybe why not even begin the journey? That's the interesting thing, isn't it? And since the Trump election, I think it's really gathered a pace. I think there's 1.5 million people joined Blue Sky since the Trump election and Twitter, a certain sphere of Twitter is full of people leaving and I absolutely get what you're saying.

I think anybody who's not of our generation, anyone from a younger generation finds it genuinely incomprehensible. They do not understand what the discussion is that, you know, people of our age are having and what upsets them quite so much about Twitter and what they're looking for in blue sky. And I do think that it comes, can I be sociological just for a moment? Oh really, why don't you do it?

So the boomers who get a very hard time of it for buying cheap houses and all this, they did at least grow up in an era, it was post-war, something was being built. They genuinely came from something, built something up and created something and they had a sense of purpose. Now our generation, that post-war consensus broke down in the 80s as a Thatcher and Reagan. Then in the 90s, suddenly we had Blair and Clinton and suddenly this liberal progressive idea that actually the post-war consensus

could be put back together. We were building a world and building a world that progressed and was moving towards liberal democracy. It became a very real thing. At the end of the 90s, genuinely there's a group of people who had hope, like proper hope. My daughter said to me the other day, she said, I only realised about a year ago that actually your generation, you actually had some optimism. She said, because we have never had any of it, but we had it, we had that hope in the late 90s and we thought the idea of the end of history, all of that sort of stuff,

there's a whole generation thinking, perhaps our generation's battle is to include the excluded, is to progress politics, is to make the world a happier, better place. And Twitter started almost exactly when the credit crunch happened. So 2009, credit crunch happens and the end of that sort of global liberal, you know, progressiveness was just about starting. Twitter started and everyone thought, oh, this is

the place we can build again. We can build this beautiful liberal democracy where everyone's kind to each other. We can look after each other. You might say it's naive, but it's a real thing. It's a real thing inside people. And it was that for a few years, I think, for those people. And then the real world comes knocking. And I think psychology is very difficult for people. And they're searching for that thing again. They're searching for things they had in the late 90s, which is hope and optimism. And people are good. And also we can reach people. But actually, the more people you meet through social media, the more you realize that almost everyone is different to you. There's that. and then there's also the fact that some people

found it very economically useful to have Twitter. There's no question of that. I do think that's very difficult, and for how to have that, and lots of people, writers and things were found via their Twitter accounts. I actually found the way that people talk on social media media and I think it's really deceptive and I think it's, I actually think there are only about 10 approved joke formats in circulation at any one time. And so you'll see people just, you just see 400 versions a day of someone saying no notes or whatever it is, whatever the little buzz phrase it is.

And I find it incredibly limiting. I think it's incredibly easy to think you're being productive and all it is is a massive time sack and you can easily spend hours on it and just get absolutely nowhere from it. Well, I think sometimes we conflate Twitter with our phones. Yeah. We're like, I was spending all my time on my phone. You're actually spending all your time on Twitter, you know, chasing after a high that you had a while ago that's never going to come back. So you need more and more and more of it and it's an addiction but the economic side

of it and it was incredibly useful for lots of people and people say but it was so great here because you know I could promote my business you know people were genuinely interested in stuff and it was useful for me and you think well yeah but it was free that's the point I don't mean to be a curmudgeon about it but it was free somebody was paying for that and like an awful lot of our entertainment in the first two decades of the 21st century, it was paid for by venture capitalists. It was paid for by people taking a punt at a time of very low interest rates. And so you were able to promote your business and you were able to grow your

business and you were able to meet people and you're able to fall in love with people all for nothing because somebody almost always in California was paying for that. And at some point, when interest rates go up, they stop paying for it. You can't have this perfect thing of it's free and it's making me money. I agree with that. And I also, one of the things I thought was very interesting last week is that report that came out just saying that the rise of boredom amongst people, that it was, as you say, all of these things of idealism, you know, you've got the world, you've got a computer in your pocket, you've

got, you should never technically be bored. People have never been so bored. People have never been so bored. And I don't think- That's a great trailer for this podcast. The reviews are in. Yeah, and people have never been so bored. Tickets available Royal Albert Hall. Fourth of December. Now, yeah, so I think the sort of, I do think it is an unbelievable time suck and I think people lie to themselves like all addictions that they don't spend that long on it, that it's actually, you know, they can stop whenever they want and it's actually helping them in X, Y, you know, I would never, you know, it's like addictions to anything and people say,

could it help me grow my business? It's like, yeah, but it also I would never, you know, it's, it's like addictions to anything. And people say, but it helped me grow my business. It's like, yeah, but it also kept you on there for four hours a day. So that can't about you grow your business much, can it? Why don't you actually spend time in your core business, your business? Yeah. But the, the, the hope thing is interesting though. And that idea that genuinely, I just, as I say to any younger generation who thinks we've all gone mad, I think that's where its roots are that we

generally thought that we were, we had won a certain battle. But the interesting thing about Twitter is because it makes you a broadcaster, it gave the illusion of influence as well and that's the real danger of something like Twitter is you think that something bad happens, you can see that someone's been hypocritical, I'm gonna point that out, we'll fix that, we'll fix that straight away. Everybody became their own individual instant rebuttal units, Everyone became a spin doctor. Everyone became a narc. Everybody became their own spin doctor and everyone had this illusion of power and that's such a dangerous thing to have because the world is spiraling out

of control and you think well maybe one tweet at a time I can do something about this, I can change this and it's become apparent for a very long time that you can't. This blue sky thing, I get it, I really get it, but I think it's the fumes of an old hope. Totally, and all the narcs are already telling you you can't talk in a certain way. They love it. Get more followers, it's a real, just do the whole thing again. I am not going to do that particular rerun. So you're not going to blue sky?

I can't, at the moment I just think, am I going to lie? Honestly, at my age, am I honestly? At my age? I honestly my age No, but with these knees. I would rather I would rather fight Jake Paul a long time That would be consent at least you've us is that would be business I think I might new podcast episode we get out of it Oh my god, you should be worth. I know I'm listen. Listen bonus episodes there on there. Don't want to fight Casey Taylor Let me tell you that much. No, right. No. No, I just think you're a long time dead and you're just simply not going to lie on your deathbed thinking why didn't I spend more time on social media? You simply aren't. And any of the supposedly accrued benefits, I think more and more the time suck and the kind of nonsense of it all and actually the creative limitation to it, as I say there's only a few number of joke formats in circulation at any one time. Those outweigh in my view the positives and we've also spent like how long explaining that social media is terrible and we all know this and blah blah blah.

I mean people talk about it all the time as I say always on social media but you know when are we gonna wake up it's just you know I think I perhaps the addiction cycle should be broken. They're trying to rebuild the thing. I saw a tweet from George Monbiot, who's the sort of, he's like an environmentalist, never quite sure what he is, but he's certainly, he's very Twitter visible. But he's saying he's gone to blue sky. You'll be shocked to hear.

And this, again, I genuinely understand why people are trying to do what they're trying to do. It's genuinely they're trying to do. It's genuinely they're trying to keep themselves safe and other people safe. So I completely get it. He says, one thing I'm very much appreciating on Blue Sky is what we once had on Twitter, reasoned disagreement as opposed to the tsunami of willful idiocy here, which crushes real debate. I don't want an echo chamber, but nor do I want this bedlam.

And that's at the heart of it because of every single word he says there is true. Of course it's true. But there's no forum for getting it because the world is Bedlam and all social media does is show you that. You know that if you said anything he said out loud in a pub and I'd let everyone to talk to him, he would see Bedlam and I just don't know how they can rebuild that world because I don't think that world existed in the first place. I don't think that world exists in the first place. I think that is definitely true. I think that all of these platforms and forums and whatever, there's been so much research and it degenerates in the same way and I can promise you that at

some point lots of people will be saying I'm gonna be leaving Blue Sky because it's really horrible and it's now full of awful people and I don't like the way it didn't used to be like this and I'll be going somewhere else and it's just how long you want to continue the great migration I think I'm getting off. Well they say there's it there's the sort of optimum number for any community or any organization I think it's 150 they always say there's the various reports that say it's 150 and beyond that the center cannot hold and that's when things become factional and that's where

you know sex develop but CTSs develop and you know that's when everyone tries to bring things back to where they started and where they belonged you know you see it in big businesses all the time it's where you have to hive off various different bits of your business when when you get too big and you certainly see it in you know villages that turn into towns that turn into cities and it's the same thing I know it feels like it's digital but it's real it's people. Yeah. I mean a lot of it's not people. It's a human impulse. Yeah exactly it's a human impulse and it gets too big and the center can't hold but people have lost something you know genuinely and I get it I get the grief for what

it was and what it gave people over the years I see it and you know I'm not saying I would go I am going to go to Blue Sky I'm okay on Twitter at the moment it's not I'm not saying I would go, I am going to go to blue sky. I'm okay on Twitter at the moment. It's not, I'm not making money for Elon Musk. He's losing money, but you are working for him for free. Elon Musk. Yeah, sure. You're working for a loss making tyrant for, yeah, I work for Gary Lineker for free, mate. That's what I do.

That's how I live my life. But, um, you know, I find that there are interesting people still there. I've never had, you know, I've blocked so many words and so many people and stuff over the years that I try and... I've never blocked or muted anybody on Twitter. Well, you know, the algorithm is what's changed and that's why people are seeing different things.

You can bypass the algorithm by, you know, just, you know, so I just look at it for for Loom News and friends of mine and it still works for me because I never wanted it to be anything else. But yeah, I think they're chasing a high that is not going to be reached again, I think. And that's bad for them in the first place. And lots of people, lots of businesses are leaving Twitter and I get that because that

is you do have to be very careful what you're alongside on a feed. But lots of the social media managers are saying, oh, I want to leave Twitter. And you go, why are you leaving Twitter? Good, well, it's just one less thing I have to do, isn't it? One less thing I have to post to you. So, you know, place it to other people's hands as well. Okay, let's end on a nut because all the big TV Christmas ads by the retailers have come out and you know, the John Lewis one is always the big one, but they've, you know, Morrison, Sainsbury's, Coke, Gregg's have got one this year. We're not jealous, we'll come to that one. And Iceland, you know, all of these ones, whether they do them or they don't

do them, it is now a huge part of the calendar. But it feels like it's been around forever. And really, if we can trace back an origin story, it's probably 2009. I think it's 2007 that they do the first John Lewis Christmas out. But the first John Lewis Christmas ad that we really think of. It's 2009, which is a new agency who did that one. Adam and Eve. And they came up with the one where the parents are creeping upstairs to leave the present

for the kid, whilst the kid is creeping downstairs to leave a present for the dog. And that's the first. And it had a lovely sort of emo version of Sweet Child of Mine on the soundtrack. And I think that's what we think of when we think of the big John Lewis Christmas adverts, I think 2009. So it's like 50, it's about the same age as Twitter, if you remember. Remember Twitter? Yes.

And these adverts have become huge things. Your normal ad, say you've got the, I don't know, the John Lewis account or the Waitrose account, your normal ad agency does them, but a big part of their pitch to the retailers is, you know, what you would do at Christmas. Now someone I talked to about this, who's really interesting, is a guy called George Nott who works at the Grocer magazine. Now like all trade publications, the Grocer covers like grocery sales, like all those kind of niche publications.

It's totally fascinating. Oh, if ever there's like, again, like a tweet from the grocer, you're kind of going, what did you just say about crunchies? Yeah, it's really interesting. Okay, so George is really interesting talking to him about it. And he said, look, all of these retailers, it's so obviously this quarter, they call it the golden quarter. Okay, so it's the biggest thing and it has to work. Their sales really, really matter. We're spending about 14 billion in the run up to Christmas in the four weeks before Christmas. I mean, if you have a good Christmas as a retailer,

your year is made. If you have a bad Christmas trouble. Absolutely. Now, so some years that the retailers have sort of made a big thing, like Iceland made a big deal of saying, we're not going to do one last year of these Christmas adverts. We're going to put the money onto sort of cost savings and steps like, okay, thanks for my 0.001p off a box of mince pies. But in general, these big, big ads have become part of the Christmas furniture. Now what's fascinating is, is that no one is really clear at all whether this stuff moves the dial. It's really interesting.

It's a real arms race. Yeah. It's an arms race, but it reminds me a lot of actually that was mostly a lot of I was reading a pay a political paper last week, this earlier kind of obscure political paper about saying how leaders campaign visits in politics, like, which by the way, is the entire general election campaign is the leader is somewhere every day. They don't think it like makes it such a negative difference or it's like a nothing and it

costs so much money it's like you're endlessly traveling all these places. It's why I say all the time to my publishers stop putting up billboards. Yes. They cost an absolute fortune and nobody is looking at them. Yeah. Absolutely nobody. It's sort of vibes based. They don't understand whether it's kind of causally related or it's just correlated they just don't't understand. But anyway, but what they are is signals of intent. By the way, if you work at an advertising agency, and we look back at some of the great adverts and we look at things in the 90s and 80s that were really artistic and we loved them and you know, this is the whole, I'm going further beyond that, the whole madman era. Advertising

is now relatively boring compared to what it used to be. There's so much less scope to do arty things. It's just all different. So much less money to do arty things. So much less money. But this is a thing where you know they're going to spend a lot of money and say go and have fun and do something weird. So one of the things we're starting to see are like characters that are returning. So you've got like Kevin the Carrot. The Morrison's oven gloves are back. That was widely... did how is a carrot returning by the way the one thing famously about carrots is that yeah don't last long well the oven gloves that that Morrison did last year are back this year for you yeah well maybe they

would that was the everyone thought that was the best advert last year so you got these like returning characters it's kind of crazy it's sort of like a Christmas special there is another very interesting company can I please talk talk about System One? Now System One is a marketing research and effectiveness company, right? System One. Yeah, System One, I know. They get together ordinary people and they've already started doing this this year so I can tell you some of the scores for these adverts. They make them watch the ads. They have a methodology by which they observe their facial movements, their emotional cues, and you get a test your ad score,

which is from one star to 5.9. So 5.9 is the maximum. 5.9? I know. Listen, there'll be a reason for it. Yeah, well, it's like the East German figure skating judge in the Cold War, you're never getting six, okay? That's just not happening, okay?

It's like Craig, it's like Craig on Strictly. Okay, now only 1% of normal ads are in the five star range, but it's really common at Christmas to get in five star range because brands save all their big spends for this. Okay. So we've already got 5.9 this year for like Aldi, Sainsbury's, Little, Cadbury, Amazon, M&S food, all of those ones. They keep coming back and retesting them with people.

People love these adverts. Now something like Nigella, Greggs have done an advert this year which again is like a bit of a breakthrough and Nigella has done that. They did a few years ago, they did the sausage roll nativity scene didn't they? Yeah. Listen, let's say broke through. Yeah, it broke through. Nigella's done this one now, they've got a 4.4 score for that. Now if that might, might think oh but they're not in the fives that's unbelievable as a breakthrough ad where you haven't got this thing to so she's done really well that same with David Beckham for Ninja now for Ninja is that like the food it's an appliances thing isn't it Ninja yeah like it chops up your food yeah

yeah yeah those sort of things yeah yeah well David Beckham's done very well for that that's like up in the fours. So these adverts really kind of have a breakthrough, which brings us to an advert, which has scored 5.9. No. And is the Coke AI advert. And I don't know if you've seen this, the Coke has done an AI advert. You might've heard about this because it's basically sort of recreation

of many previous campaigns, all done by AI. It's scored exactly as highly as previous campaigns, which were not done by AI. Okay. Huge positive emotions, almost zero negative emotions. Okay. And Coke have been really clever with that. I mean, in a sort of grim way, which is that they've thought, okay, we're going to announce that our ad is purely AI. That means everyone is going to do a news story saying, oh, Koke has done their AI. Everyone's going to show it. Everyone's going to show it. You've got free advertising on all the news pages because everyone will write a story about saying Koke has done their whole first advert by AI. Okay, that's what you always want with anything is that people end up writing, even if you're like it's a TV program, anything like that, if people are writing news stories or features that are off the back of it, you are constantly having your program advertised in a really organic kind of engaging way.

It doesn't seem like an advert. It's not just in the ad breaks. No, newspapers have essentially been running adverts for the Coke advert now and people love it and they don't think it's any different and I think it is eerie and weird but maybe it's because I already know. Well and also it's one of those interesting things you know our fear of AI which we've talked about before but I think this is where AI is really going to go in the creative industries I suspect we'll talk about this next year which is Koch have AI'd their own material so they've allowed AI to use their own archive and to produce something based on their own material. And by the way, there would have been a lot of hands across it as well. They can say it

was all AI, all they want, but it would have had an enormous amount of human prompts. And all of the big AI partnerships with Hollywood, with television companies are essentially saying, can we use AI on say, back to the future? Yes, you can. Let's sign a deal. Everything you do though is ring-fenced towards to the back to the future universe You can't use anything outside back to the future But you still have to pay us, you know 30 million pounds or whatever it is and Coca-Cola are saying of course AI You can use the coke advert, but it is owned by Coca-Cola and it doesn't go anywhere else and we get a cheap advert

But it's based on the fact that we spent an awful lot of money and creativity on these efforts over the previous years So in a way you kind of go, Coke can do what they want because it's theirs. And you know, they've already paid for it and it's their stuff. But there's loads of humans behind all these AI things. And there are going to be for so many years to come because it's kind of, you can have fun with AI and it can do certain things and do it quicker, but it's not working without the prompts. It is not working without being given a target. And the target that's been given is always by the human so I think interesting that that AI ad is a sign of things to come which is

companies can use it on IP they already own rather than just say just create me a brand new ad out of nothing and that's why people love the app because they know all the imagery in the ad you know they get it all already and it makes them feel something and Coca-Cola think, probably within their rights to do whatever they want with their... Sure, but all of those creatives who are involved in those will never see another... You know, you do sign a contract saying, you own my work, but then... Yeah.

And I'm afraid that all those people over all those years will have their work taken and they're not going to see anything. I'm sure it makes great sense for the Coca-Cola company. Yeah, but don't forget that it's being run by AdExEx who had this idea and they're not going to see anything. I'm sure it makes great sense for the Coca-Cola company. Yeah, but don't forget that it's being run by ad execs who had this idea and they're just using, you know, any type of, every TV show I've ever done, House of Cams, I never forget another penny after I walk up set, people can do whatever they want

with it forever and ever and ever. But, you know, the whole point, I talked to Ross Neal, he was at VCCP, a creative director there, whenever I talked to him, I said, but surely what's happening with adverts though? Because surely there's less money. And he goes, no, there's not less money. There's less money for TV adverts.

He said, but I've literally never been busier. And he says, even at Christmas, companies of course want to have these ads that, you know, run in Coronation Street and I'm a celebrity, but they need so many different variations of that ad to run on socials and to run in the cinema and to run on digital radio. He said that, you know, it's become a much more fragmented thing, but having that vision at the core of it. Waitrose this year has got like a big sort of, almost like a mystery thing with Matthew Maffatian as a detective, which can be chopped up into five seconds, 10 seconds, 15 seconds, 20, you know, can go sort of anywhere in the whole thing. It goes across all these different media. When we've talked about the advertising

problem, the advertising problem is for a terrestrial TV, actual advertisers. There's plenty of money coming in. But I do think that in the same way that TV companies and advertisers use AI when they're pitching and when they're putting decks together, I think if they own something already that they paid for and they paid good money to people, I think they're probably allowed to sort of have a bit of fun with AI on IP they already own.

Well, one thing, speaking of humans at the end that George Knot pointed out to me when I was talking to him, George Knot from the Graser, was that actually a huge part of these adverts are almost a morale based to do with the company's own staff. And it has a huge impact because you're going into the golden quarter. It is totally exhausting, obviously. And so having something the staff feel like is behind that and that they really like

is actually a big part of it because they are huge, huge employers as we know. And if you go into waitress at the moment, the staff are wearing t-shirts of the different people in the hood, I think whoever did it. By the way, whichever advertising agency is behind that, I would have been available. Yeah, I can't believe they didn't ask you. If you need someone to do a bit of a... I mean, hi, Mr. Waitrose was right there. Or will you be revealed at something later on in the campaign? I wish you would be.

That's clever. But Asda's adverts got like just two staff who have to call on an A team of gnomes to help them. Now plot lines, plot lines, because they've just cut 500 staff at head office and people saying more cuts are coming. So people are like, huh, well, that's quite ironic, isn't it?

There are only two staff left to do. So there's a whole, there are whole other things that we're not necessarily think about, but they are really important for staff morale. So given how important that golden quarter is, you can see that these adverts, whilst not being particularly quantifiable in terms of actual effects on the bottom line, have huge vibes based importance. They do have huge vibes, and that's the whole of advertising, huge vibes based importance.

The John Lewis one this year is, I think it's the first time ever. They were actually inside a John Lewis store, which is a new, um, best Christmas advert ever, can I tell you my favorite one? The most expensive one was the, um, the man in the moon one, you know, with the, with the telescope, which costs 7 million, I think. Uh, and then the one, the one, the year after the dog on the trampoline costs 1 million, so they saved 6 million in a year. I think the best one ever is the one that John Lewis from 2022, I think, with

the guy you see practicing skateboard tricks and getting them wrong. Yeah. And then the girl comes through with a skateboard at the end. I'd be watching that the 50th time and still crying. They're fun to work on. Yeah, exactly that. But yeah, so it's a celebration of an industry that actually appears to be in rude health in some ways, but it's nice to see them flex their muscles every now and again.

Right then. Any recommendations, Richard? Yes. On iPlayer, there's a three-part documentary about the search for Lord Lucan. And if you think, oh my God, I've seen that story a million times before, it is told in such a completely different way. It starts off as quite a traditional, this is seen that story a million times before. It is told in such completely different way. It starts off as quite a traditional, this is the story. Uh, this is the man, where is he?

But you follow one man's search for Lord Lucan and that man has a particularly strong reason for wanting to find Lord Lucan and, and the documentary becomes his story. And it's, it's sort of very moving in a, in a, in a, in a really, really interesting, very unusual way. It's three parts. It's on iPlayer and I really recommend it. That's good.

I'm going to recommend something that I found incredibly compelling and watch so many of, it's a YouTube like data visualization by this guy called KeesonStats. He'll cover things like size of individual countries, economies, rankings of them as well from say 1600 to 2024. I mean it's amazing you know watching the East India Company. What's like the bar charts of the different links as they change positions. And you sit in front of these things for a long time as you're just thinking oh my god look at the East India Company go oh look it's merged with the British Empire or yeah look at it go back down again now all the way all the way. That's

really interesting there was another one I was watching of, I don't know if your children play Roblox, I found this really compelling. My children are in their twenties. No, not yours. Yours as in the listener. I'm so sorry, I'm using a you plural. Yes, I understand. Do forgive me. You what now?

It's all about you singular. Yeah, exactly. I am going to go on Blue Sky and have a go at you about that now. Why don't you police me? That's what it's going to be. Go on, knock on me. Anyway, so yes, the games on Roblox that became like dominant and, you know, oh my god, the hegemony of Adopt Me and if you know that game, you know it. I thought Roblox was a game. No, no, Roblox is a platform. There you go. And what else? Oh yeah, you know, YouTubers. So you watch like who are the biggest

YouTubers in the world and then you just like what mr. Beast like just start to go entertaining data But it's so compelling Keeson stats Keeson Keeson Keyson anyway really interesting and it's very compelling if you just want to sort of sit amazing now listen We're gonna do a question and answer Edition on Thursday and we're gonna talk about bookshelves. We will talk about other things as well. We will talk about other things. I will begin with a legal statement from my own husband.

Oh, excellent. We've disagreed a lot in this episode. Yeah. I quite like it. That's showbiz. Yeah, that is showbiz, isn't it? See you on Thursday. See you on Thursday. The End