The Rest Is Entertainment - Quiz show cheats and could Bullseye return?

Episode Date: January 25, 2024

The art of filming managers on the touchline, why are antique shows addictive viewing, does cheating in quiz shows ever happen regularly, and what are the chances of Bullseye returning to prime time? Marina Hyde and Richard Osman work through those burning entertainment questions and more. Twitter: @restisents Email: [e-mail] Producer: Neil Fearn Executive Producers: Tony Pastor + Jack Davenport Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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Apply now at careers.timhortons.ca Hello and welcome to the Rest is Entertainment questions edition. Questions and answers edition. Yes, yes, very good. Lovely to have you here. Thank you very much because last... Not you, I didn't mean it's lovely to have you here, of course it is. I meant people listening.

Now, any other business, we're starting with any other business, which is the wrong way about it, because last week we talked a little bit about cooking shows and food being, what temperature is it served to the judges? And Jay Rayner, cooking show judge, and listener to the show. Fan of the pod.

Fan of the pod, has written in, and he says, Richard is right that it's often not exactly piping hot, but that's only part of the story. Food show producers go out of their way to present the dishes to the best of their advantage. If an ice cream is involved,

it will be stored in the freezer. Oh my God, you know what? They say TV producers are thick. Where's the ice cream is involved it will be stored in the freezer oh my god you know what they say tv producers are thick where's the ice cream uh it's in the oven i think okay if it's a chocolate fondant which might go solid if left too long it is prioritized but the food we eat in the master chef critics chamber however is served hot yeah it's staggered start for the chefs as it was when the critics cut it off against each other for the glorious special broadcast between christmas and new year Usually there's a gap of about 40 minutes, so you're allowed to eat the food straight from the kitchen. But there are other ways.

A couple of years ago, Jay was a guest on the huge global cooking show for Netflix called The Final Table, which weirdly didn't get recommissioned, I imagine, a.k.a. he's being ironic there. Each episode was themed to a different country with appropriate judges who rode a judging platform that rose 90 foot into the air surely not this sounds brilliant i must dig it out my colleagues for the british episode were kat dealy and sunbroke called gary lineker the choice of judges was i believe anybody british with a valid o visa on that show the judging on camera was going to

take so long that there was a pre-judging in a room off the floor the moment the food was finished so it was hot and i hope that helps that really does help and that's like um eurovision isn't it the uh the juries watch the rehearsal and you watch the live one aha i didn't know that yeah it's exactly the same as the final table with jay reina kat deely and gary lineker thank you jay that's very kind of you okay i've got a question for you richard that comes from donald he sent this one on on twitter what is the cheapest type of tv show to make his guess is that it's a chat show like wogan or norton presumably the main expense is the presenters fees would the guests typically charge a fee or is exposure for their book film etc payment in kind it's a very good question um chat shows are actually quite expensive for a couple of reasons firstly if you want to get

american stars over you have to fly them over first class and their entourage over first class and put them up in incredibly nice hotels um but mainly because you only film one at a time and the way to make cheap television is to make five of them in a single day so quiz shows are probably the cheapest just you know the most expensive thing about making a tv show is the studio and the crew in that studio and if you make one show a day the studio cost is exactly the same as if you make five shows a day so quiz shows are probably the cheapest they're certainly the cheapest in terms of bang for your buck because they rate very very highly and they're crazily expensive to make clip shows if you own the catalog of the clips are very cheap to make if you're the bbc and you own top of the pops it's very cheap to bung a few kind of chyrons across a

top of the pops and say give us a fact about shawody waddy that's cheap essentially anything in a studio is fairly expensive and unless you make a lot but things like you know bargain hunt is not crazily expensive but yeah chat, chat shows, weirdly, are very expensive. All right, you've mentioned Bargain Hunt, so I've got to go on to another question, which I think is quite interesting, this one. Kath Venable says, why is there so much antique-related programme, Barry?

That's a good question. Why would you think? I don't have the answer, by the way. It is hugely popular. Funnily enough, I suppose, this isn't a reason why it exists by the way but it is quite it's people in the antiques trade who i and i have talked to someone in the antiques trade about this who's really funny about it who said that basically people now come in and they've

learned and what they believe is the negotiating technique which you're very funny on from bargain hunt or whatever and so they say no you know i've seen this is i've seen this on bargain what's your best price i should get this you know i should get this discount he's like yeah yeah but that for the same reason you were saying uh on a previous episode of this show the reason people are getting those discounts is because it's you know you're on television and this is the sort of thing that happens on television another thing he said that happens is that people so people have learned because of those shows how they think they negotiate with these people it's obviously been great because it does send people out into the business and it's been a boost for kind of fairs and all sorts of different types of sales. But also, if people feel they have a piece that's similar to something, we'll send photos of it and we'll say, as seen on, you know, Salvage Hunters, and therefore we'll expect the same price.

And again, he's like, yeah, the reason you're getting the same price for the thing is because this happened on television so it has whilst it's been brilliant for the trade a lot of people have had to sort of say yeah it doesn't happen quite like this off the television it's not exactly representative and also you know it's very hard to pick up three things retail and then sell them at auction for a profit it's like insanely difficult and it's not necessarily the thing you do but it's also one of those things it's got an amazing hook the key thing with formats is ask a question in the first five minutes which is not going to be answered till the last five minutes but that you want to know the answer to and it's almost impossible to see someone buy like a brass plate for 15 pound and not think oh i wonder what they're going to sell that for you know this

it eats away at you i was watching one where where they bought this old bicycle with a shop sign on it, and they'd really smashed too much. They paid 175 quid. Honestly, I had somewhere to be, but I thought, I'm going to have to wait to the end because I think they're going to lose money. I think that's crazy they spent 175 pounds. They've asked me a question that I want to know the answer to, and I'm going to have to wait through six other purchases and then i'll find out and actually that bite sold

for about 220 so he did a great job but the beauty of all those shows and all the antique shows almost all of them end with an auction so every single time you're shown something at home you can kind of go ask clar, it's Clarice Cliff. But it's not a full set. It's a tiny, and there's a tiny little chip, isn't there? I'm going to go a 70. What if they paid 90? I don't think so.

Antique shows have got a great little hook, which is you've got something. You can have an opinion on that. And at the end, you discover if it makes money or loses money. And you're pretty happy either way. Okay, a question uh for you marina by the way can i just say the questions we get are so good yeah but if you have sent something we've literally got hundreds and hundreds and hundreds so there are plenty that we will get to in time but please do keep sending them exactly because every week there's like a new one you think oh we have to answer that uh ken asks, when I watch football on TV, after a goal is scored, they always have a full replay

of each manager reacting, starting from before the goal is scored to after. Does this mean it's the job of two people to each track only them with a camera and nothing else for the entire match? Well, I think this is a brilliant question. I'm going to come on to another little bit related to it in a minute, but some people connected with this podcast

do have something to do with football and so we've been quite lucky yeah like quite lucky to have Rory Stewart has given us this no he's given us has given us this fantastic answer okay which is since the advent of Sky live matches have been covered by an increasing number of cameras including one which is called the reverse camera so this is actually on the opposite side of the pitch that the normal broadcasters cameras cameras are on. So you can't really show anything from it because otherwise it would look like all the players are running in the wrong direction.

So the biggest job of the reverse camera is to get reaction shots from the benches, which are usually positioned on the same size as the main cameras. However, with the advent of the manager as a major character, which I sort of love, which is sometimes more important than players themselves. Main character energy. Yeah, huge main character energy. And the game's been up by broadcasters, often with two cameras covering the benches permanently.

So that's why there's so many reaction shots. Now, a brilliant movie critic called David Thompson, who's also a big Chelsea fan, and he wrote a very interesting book about television. And I really love the way he talked about the evolution of football after it became, essentially as it is now, a television event because so many people,

obviously people have been priced out and most people experience, in this country experience football as something that they see on television because it's very, very, it's much harder to get to the games. Now, what's interesting is how that has affected what you see,

which is that footballers have become like performers. Their celebrations are far more operatic than they ever used to be back in the days when it wasn't. So many cameras now track them. They know that they are being filmed and they are part of a system of slow motion and close ups. And it has affected how they behave. And they are far more operatic in the way that they behave, which is very interesting. What I find also very interesting is that now when I watch my son, if he misses, he turns really slowly away and puts his hands up to his head really slowly in that slow-mo disappointment shot that he's seen so many times. So I find it really fascinating the way it percolates down. I was literally just thinking as

you're talking there, there was a thing they used to have on football shows which has percolated into our culture now which was the tense in which a footballer would talk about when watching their own goal back oh yeah i've gone down the wing i've crossed it linica's headed it in i was delighted you know so there's a weird tense and now that's what they do on reality shows if you watch the traitors example, they will be showing a round table and they will cut to someone in an interview going, and I'm thinking, what on earth is going on? The footballer's tense has come into reality shows. The great TV writer Jack Rosenthal used to call that the football continuous.

It's as though it's always happening while we're all, everything is happening now and always. Well, that's all American reality shows and now UK reality shows are in the footballer's continuous studio shows by the way it's a similar thing you will you will if you've got say two panels and a host you'll have a camera which is called an iso which will constantly be showing the host and there will be two cameras which are iso'd on the two teams so you've got the two shots and then you'll have three roving cameras who are picking up other shots so you will often have an iso camera

which is just picking up the thing that in the edit you know you're gonna need in football it's live but in a in you know any sort of entertainment show it's just so wherever you are you can go via any of the people on the screen via iso cameras and sometimes they're locked off which just means they don't even have a camera operator so So people don't get bored. I worry about a camera operator just on an ISO camera because that's not fun. That's like all day. Here's another one for you, Marina. Stuart Patterson asks,

what does it mean when on-screen talent gets an executive producer credit? In the latest season of True Detective, Matthew McConaughey and Woody Harrelson both get credits, even though they don't appear in the show. What do they actually do for that? Asked Stuart.

Aha, well, okay, that's a good one. I don't know the specifics of this, but what will have been the case is that they were obviously the stars of the first season of True Detective. And in order probably for that show to get greenlit originally, you would have had to have had two big names attached.

And part of the deal that their agent got them was that they would be named an executive producer. It's to some, a vanity credit. And they will take money, probably, even though, you know, the new season, which I must actually look at, apparently it's fantastic with Jodie Foster in it. But it wouldn't have got off the ground had they not been attached. You'll see a lot of writers named as different types of producer. I'm currently working on an HBO show in which I'm an executive producer. It essentially means writer.

There are some extra things you might do, but really production in the sense that anyone from the outside would understand it is being done by someone who is a proper sort of line producer. And we'll find the locations and we'll deal with the studios and the sets and the builds and all those difficult things. The thing you need to understand, I guess, about US showbiz particularly is this is unbelievably unionized. And so part of the reasons why writers are given sort of things like different types of, you know, you go down the credits, you get executive producer, co-executive producer, supervising producer, consulting producer, all of that can basically just mean writer. WGA and agents really push for those because you get different types of fees and it's a way of being credited that is a medium that really venerates writers I guess and particularly a broadcaster

that does HBO I mean Will Ferrell is listed as an executive producer of Succession and you'll see his name up in the title I think what's Will Ferrell got to do with the show in fact Adam McKay who directed the first episode of Succession and set a lot you know that first whoever directs the first episode is very significant because it creates the whole sort of visual tone of it and the way the camera moves. And, you know, a lot of that was sort of, you might think was quite influenced by the big short or whatever, which is an Adam McKay film. So Will Ferrell has been, as a producer, he has a production company with Adam McKay and he's been on there right since the start. Sometimes the

awards people, I am told told can get quite fussy about people turning up to award ceremonies when they're listed as executive producers or whatever on shows who clearly don't have any form of involvement with the show at all and they can be really quite sniffy about it but some people still turn up and still try and you know so the answer the question what do matthew mcconaughey and willie harrelson do for their credit they they they bank the checks yeah they bank the checks. Now, that's what they do. But they got it made in the first place.

Exactly. They're the ones that, yeah, made the money in the first place. Okay, now let's go into a break. This episode is brought to you by Fidelity Investments Canada. Make investing simple. Fidelity's all-in-one ETFs are designed to do just that. In fact, Fidelity does the heavy lifting, including rebalancing these ETFs to help navigate changing market conditions.

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only at Burger King, where you rule. Best Western made booking our family beach vacation a breeze, and it felt a little like... life's a trip make the most of it at best western welcome back everybody to this question and answer episode of the rest of entertainment or the questions episode if you are marina hyde richard this is a really good one tom adcock says cheating in quiz shows do you think it happens have you ever suspected it and any sympathy with the theory that charles ingram who obviously famously was accused and found guilty of cheating in millionaire who wants to be a millionaire that he's innocent it's a good three-part question i'll take the last part first no i don't believe he's innocent uh i think nor do i absolutely bang to rights one of my

lovely um producers i won't name her just just in case it's sub judice but um she was the one who walked past the window as he and his wife were discussing what happened. And the wife was berating Major Charles Ingram for making things too obvious and messing it up. So she was one of the star witnesses in court. Yeah, I mean, he definitely did it. But when they did the, sorry, I've got a little tiny something on this,

a snippet. When they made the ITV drama Quiz, which was written by James Graham and directed by Stephen Frears and was sort of absolutely brilliant. It was a huge hit a couple of years ago. People from within Cellar Door said they no longer think it was done by coughing, but they know he cheated. However it was done, yeah, he definitively cheated.

It's quite hard to cheat on quiz shows, mainly because you are mic'd up all the time and your sound is isolated to the booth. So if we're presenting Pointless, for example, and somebody is talking, then we can hear it. On the Pointless Celebrities, people cheat nonstop. We once had someone on and I think it was Arnda said, oh, you need to stop conferring. And she said, we're not conferring, we're just talking about the answers. you need to stop conferring. And she said, we're not conferring, we're just talking about the answers.

So, okay. But honestly, occasionally it's like running a South London minicab office sometimes in my ear during Pointless Celebrities because everyone's sort of chatting away. It's really hard to cheat, I would say. I guess you could hack into where the questions were. I don't know where you'd find them and they are very siloed as well.

They're sort of taken care of I have all the answers written down so you could I'd turn them over if anyone's anywhere near but no one's cheated as far as I've known there was one TV show I can't remember what it was called but it was produced by a guy called David Young

who did The Weakest Link and stuff like that and they'd filmed I think think, 50 of them. And a camera operator on the last episode just said, I think if you're on podium four, you can just about see the presenter's screen. There was no indication that anyone had cheated. But the fact that if you were on that podium, you could sort of lean and see the screen.

David Young said, I'm scrapping everything. i'm going to fund a whole new series it's not you know i can't because it's bbc and i don't want anyone to be accused of cheating he said he just paid 40 million quid for his company so he was he was all right um but you know he just said it's it's the integrity of the show is absolutely everything it is it is on all those shows so he said i'm funding a whole new one of the series. I wonder if they went back and saw how many Podium 4s are A-stack. My understanding is there was no evidence of that at all.

I have that thing on my screen on House of Games, like anyone's going to cheat on House of Games, which means you can't see a screen from a certain angle. You know that sort of privacy screen? It means I can barely see it when I'm looking at it but um yeah really really hard to cheat on quiz shows pop master they all cheat on don't they you could hear that if one ken bruce's pop master yes um that uh the occasional person is on wikipedia that you know they'll say who had a hit with too shy in 1981 they go oh i don't i don't know i don't know um kajak gugu yeah yeah it is i guess i guess it is kajak gugu uh but so you know you can cheat on that but um

you know if there's no big prizes it doesn't really that's why on house of games there's no cash prize or money for charity just so people can do what they want marina i have a question for you i am going to demand an answer it's from Adam Ford. There is no question that they are good, but is it really the case that no one else apart from Ant & Dec has done enough in the last 100 years or so to deserve a Best Entertainment Show gong? Discuss. Okay, I guess this is about Ant & Dec winning the National Television Awards.

The NTAs. Whatever, the NTAs. Every single year for the last 22, I can't remember what the exact number is, but it's a huge number of years. I guess the thing is they present the biggest shows on television and it is a voted for by the public award. Now, do I think that that is open to gaming? Should we put it? I mean, they don't have the UN election officers taking a look at this particular voting. So I suppose you can vote early and vote often. It often skews quite ITV heavy.

Yeah. I'll just say that. Do they have armies of voters? You know, are there Macedonian troll farms pulling down the other elections just to do the NTAs? It's possible. I must say, there is clearly you can sort of, as I say, you can vote early and vote often.

So that sort of thing could be manipulated. Having said that, they present the biggest shows. it would be nice to think that claudia wrinkleman might get it for the traitors one year because i think that maybe that's maybe it will turn out that that's been the biggest show if if they don't and it continues to be itv heavy i suppose at some level we must have our own suspicions but yeah i will also say that they sort of demonstrably are the best as well and whether they're 22 years in a row the best i don't know but i think of our generation they are the the greatest presenting duo i mean they're just amazingly great at what they do but um and they've had the best shows yeah and that it's very hard to get past those two facts the

best shows and the biggest rating shows and once you have all of those it's quite difficult to imagine in a voted for by the public award. In a sense, they're voting for the public every time they turn on to one of their shows. And that's why they are the biggest rated. So I suppose it's but obviously the hegemony must be broken at some point. Finally, you said it. Right. Let's end with this question from Mary Wilson Brown. Given the surge in interest for darts and bringing back old shows do you think we'll see bullseye being revived and if yes

who do you think will make a good host um i mean they did bring it back with dave spiky yeah as host i mean yes i guess that a channel would bring it back you know it's like one of those people we always say oh they should bring back blockbusters and you're gonna go yeah they they brought it back like five times. Simon Mayo did it. Lisa Tarbuck did it. Dara O'Briain did it. These shows that sort of come back and then slightly disappear.

I think that probably it wouldn't have the mass appeal of a Gladiators for obvious reasons. It's some quiz questions and then some people throwing darts. So I would guess no. And what we want, as we discussed before, is that what people really want now is people will love the series behind the scenes in darts.

You know, the sort of drive to survive of darts would be a much more fascinating thing. The kind of tastes have changed to some extent and people will love that. I think that will be love that i think that will be very i think that'll be fascinating to see how that does actually yeah but i don't think there's a rush to bring back big break or um or bullseye anytime soon there's a there's an amazing true crime documentary which is called the bullseye killer which is a guy who appeared on bullseye so

they just got loads of clips of him on bullseye then he's a murderer you think that i don't and the bulls i think has nothing to do with the rest of it it's correlated not causal yeah yeah exactly jim bowen was not involved give him a break at any point so you'll never beat you'll never beat jim bowen nor should you want to nor should you want to thank you so much for listening again do keep the questions coming in the rest is entertainment at gmail.com we will see you next tuesday for our regular episode i hope you enjoyed this one yep keep those questions coming in thanks so much bye