The Rest Is Entertainment - Take A Break's AI Fake Mistake

Episode Date: July 29, 2026

What actually happens at a movie premiere? Who is behind the fake food brands you see on TV? Does anyone actually read magazines anymore? Richard Osman and Marina Hyde answer questions on documentary intros, movie premieres, and AI writing in magazines. You can email any questions you have to [e-mail] The Rest is Entertainment is brought to you by Octopus Energy, Britain's most awarded energy supplier. Sponsored by Lloyds. Looking for extra value from your spending? You can bank on Lloyds to help your money go further. Search Lloyds Rewards in your app. Summer sale is here: get an annual membership for a third off with code SUMMER26. That's ad-free listening, every bonus episode, and full access to our exclusive members' series. Sale ends August 31st, so grab it before summer's over. For more Goalhanger Podcasts, head to www.goalhanger.com Video Editor: James Clayden Assistant Producer: Imee Marriott Senior Producer: Joey McCarthy Social Producer: Emma Jackson Exec Producer: Ami Bennett Filmed at www.westdigitalstudios.com Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

The rest is entertainment is presented by Octopus Energy. Now, we're going to be talking about an expression which I hadn't heard till seven seconds ago, which is someone getting their flowers. Can you tell me what that means? Well, it means like you've been around a long time, but people suddenly think, hang on a second, you're amazing and you should be recognised. So you're finally getting your due, you're getting your flowers. And you're being garlanded. Now, I would say someone like this is someone like Jean Smart, who plays the lead in Hacks.

She plays Deborah Vance. Okay, Jean Smart is extraordinary. she did a huge amount of TV and stage work. And there was a sense that she was sort of always brilliant. But then this one role came along, Deborah Vance and Hacks. They literally just give her the Emmy every year now. She gets her flowers every year. She gets her Emmy every year.

As we always talk about Octopus's customer service, your accounts run by about 10 or 12 people. You've got a small team. They know who you are. Yes. And they are permitted to send flowers every week to a customer who might just be going through something, whatever it is.

So they can recognise it's not an apology. It's just because someone was going through something and they get your flowers. Another example of they seem to do business in a very interesting and customer-focused way. Imagine if Gene Smart is an octopus customer might get her flowers twice. Yeah, every week. This episode is brought to you by Accenture. When your advertising operations fall out of sync, everything else follows. Spotify and Accenture are working together to reinvent the rhythm of ad sales,

using automation, analytics, and smarter workflows to simplify campaign delivery and access better data across the business. The result? Less time spent on operations, more time connecting brands with the moments and fandoms that matter most. Learn more at Accenture.com slash Spotify. My name is Peter Parker, but I'm also Spider-Man. This Thursday, we're faced with a threat. That could be anyone. The world may have forgotten Peter Parker.

I'm just a neighbor, friendly neighbor. But he hasn't forgotten them. Sometimes Spider-Man has to do the hard thing. That's my responsibility. Dr. Banner? I didn't know you could get that big. Spider-Man, brand-new day in theaters Thursday. Hello, and welcome to this episode of the Resters Entertainment Questions and Answers Edition.

I'm Marina. And I'm Richard Osmond. Hello, Marina. Hello, Richard. How are you? I'm all right. Hello, listeners. How are you? Okay, good to hear. Oh, I'm sorry to hear that. Shall we start straight away with a question, as you know, I always like a question asker with a good name.

And Stefan Rocket has stepped up to the plate. Thank you, Stephen Rocket. And Stefan says, I was watching Coronation Street and they were having a breakfast of chalky crocodile cereal and Wallam Stowe's bread. Are these fake brands and packaging made up just for the scene, or do they have a warehouse full of different brands for use as and when they need them? This is called graphic prop design, this whole section of things. There are so many of these and they're all really good. Corrie's got a lot because, you know, it's about everyday life. And so they've got – they've always had like Dempsey's Crisps, the beers, Newton Riddle, obviously.

Kenner's chocolate because, you know, they've got the cabin, so, you know, it's like a newsagent, you have to go in. Although, funnily enough, Ken Barlow always used to go in and say, Guardian, please, Rita. And Freshcoe, the supermarket. They've got all these things. They have higher magazine, you know, instead of Hello magazine. Simpsons have Duff beer. You'll often see things on computers, like a pair. instead of an apple. Sometimes people, I'm moving out from Beyond Corey in graphic, prop design,

because, I mean, I saw once on an episode of Grey's Anatomy, someone ordering a goober. Right. Okay. Sometimes they just make it just a little, it's like it's so phoned in. You know, the hotel's called The Five Seasons. I just, I don't, when they do that, I find it a little bit. I'm saying at the Hilt off. Yeah. But it can be the most incredible art.

And there's someone who I'm absolutely obsessed with called Annie Atkins. who is a graphic prop artist. I know I've said before, if I haven't done what I've done, I would love to have worked in props. I find it. And I would have loved to have done graphic props, particularly. There's still time.

There's still time. We all need a side hustle. I know there is. But she is the dion of this, Annie Atkin. She's a graphic designer. And so many shows have a graphic designer working on them. And she started on the Tudors, which is Showtime's big kind of prestige series

about the Tudors. And she didn't really know anything about the Puts. period. And so you're being given these jobs like he wants his wife's head cut off. And that would have to have happened on, you know, there would have to be some sort of warrant or royal order. And she said, I just had to think, what on earth would that look like? And obviously you're staining all the paper and the tea and all this. She's worked with Spielberg. But where she's had the most kind of epic collaboration, I think, is with Wes Anderson. So if you look at something like the Grand Beedipest Hotel, which is sort of like a masterpiece of all of this stuff, there are so many

graphic props in that and the idea of the cake boxes and all the things that are supposed to create this world. Corrie would look so weird if they were eating out of plain packaging, but you need to create things that suggest like a supermarket suggest... And by the way, you have to do that because you are not allowed in British TV at least to use the actual real brands. That's called undue prominence and you can't say, for example, you can't have them eating Coco Popes without saying it's ad-funded

so that's why they have to have chalky crocodile cereal so you have to have brands because it gives the truth of a situation but you're not allowed real brands I always in like on TV constantly someone would do a joke about Toblerone and the lawyers will go

no sorry you have to take that out you think what you the joke the Toblerone is part of the punchline to that joke it doesn't work kind of triangle shaped Swiss chocolate or like whenever you're watching Bake Off and they say and you're using yeast extract in this,

they use in Marmite. Honestly, it's okay. It's fine to say. But you're not allowed to say. That's why they have to replace all these things for legal reasons. But creating these sort of fictional ephemera, it needs to look like it comes from that world exactly in a way. And it takes you out of the world.

Like it really, you know, when you see someone orders a goober, you're like, oh come on that, so stupid. Just do something else. Just, you know, liftly or something. Yes, that's good. Anything else. But in order to create these incredibly,

immersive words. You have to, and so much of it actually is done by lettering, which is why so many of these people started off as graphic and particularly font and calligraphy designers. And it is so interesting. I mean, Annie Atkins has done books about how she builds these worlds. And it's amazing how much of our world is lettering and packaging. And if you're making a new world, however fictional, that world must have its own

lettering and packaging. And how, if something looks off, it looks off to all of us. We all get the language of the thing. That's why, you know, with these chalky crocodile cereal, it just, if it looks 5% off, it'd completely take you out of the scene. That's an amazing job to do. I would absolutely love to.

And still, and we talked about it before, they still can't get newspapers right. No, they always get newspapers wrong. There's masses of white space, so the headlines don't scan, and they just look really, yeah, they never seem to be able to get it right, which, by the world, I never think it's that hard, not to be, not a kind of, you know,

de-romanticize that trade. But I don't think it's that hard, so I never understand why they... But that takes people out of things a lot. It really does. You'll be watching the best drama and suddenly a front page of a news paper, which would never, ever, ever happen.

You're like, oh, no, now I'm watching some actors. Yeah. Which is the last thing I want to do. Anyway, look up Annie Atkins. Look up all... There's so much online about her worlds and how she's created and how she did it. Or, you know, it's all done by hand.

It's absolutely just like an absolute artist, honestly. And by the way, I literally just said that, oh, plain packaging would be like East Germany. And I remembered that I bought a book of East German packaging. And it's so brilliant. Oh, my God, can I borrow it? I think it's a Fiedon book or something like that. But just, yeah, all the kind of packaging. And it's really, really great.

Oh, my God, I would love that. I might buy that myself. I would love that. So I take it back because they actually had amazing packaging. Okay. Although at the time it must have felt very utilitarian. But now it looks great. Yes. It's a vibe.

Yeah, it's a vibe. It certainly is a vibe. Okay, this is another brilliant name. Mertel McDonald. It is good. She says, I work in the film industry, and I've just been invited to my first actual premiere. I obviously said yes straight away, but I realised I don't really know what it entails. Is there lots of hanging about?

Should I dress up? Bring my own snacks. Any advice appreciated. God, that's a great question. It is, God, it's like one of those, like sort of running a marathon going to a film premiere. It's like, Murtel is right. If you're invited to one, you sort of, there's no way you can't not go. But yeah, our view of film premieres is very much we see the edited highlights of just the big stars on the red carpet and what have you.

Well, that's fun to watch. Oh, yeah, absolutely. It's like to stand a bit back and watch them doing it. And you really can, and you're inside the barriers, as it were. When you walk along that red carpet, Myrtle, it's sort of, it's got kind of two tracks. There's the track for the people who are going to have their photo taken and be interviewed by the papers. and then there's the other track. The trick is you can walk as slowly as you want

along that other track. You don't have to, you know, A, you'll be in the back of lots of shots, B, you will see all the stars what pass. But the key thing is do not speed through that little bit because once you're inside, you're in for a big disappointment. That's roughly what I would say. Once you're inside, you'll be shepherded into various places. Sometimes in premieres, if they're in one of the big kind of multiplexes,

there will be two or three different screens all showing it, all the different audiences and those audiences will be kind of you'll have the people who are in the film will be in one and then there'll be

like the influences another and then there'll be like an overspill thing oh no we've invited fans to this one so you'll be in different places yes definitely bring your own snacks

if you can I mean occasionally they will have like you know if the film is if it's Wonka you will definitely have a bar of Wonka chocolate on your chair

they will often give you popcorn and a drink I have to say they will often give you popcorn and a drink. I remember when we wouldn't see the Adam Partridge, Alpha Puppa, Premier, you had a shock damaged chocolate orange was on your seat. So there will be stuff, but you can't absolutely rely on it. I would say that. And sometimes it will be some sort of, they'll have done a deal. So the popcorn is actually just some new artisan popcorn from a company who, you

know, some venture capitalists would put some money into it. And you're like kind of halfway through, you're like, this isn't proper popcorn at all. So I would bring. my own snacks. So the thing is, yeah, it is, you will be shepherded about a lot because the PRs are trying to run the day. What they all they really want is those photos, right? That's all they really want. And they want people to feel like they've had a good time and post it afterwards about how great the film is. That's the influencers. The stars are having their photos taken. If you are there, I would say just slow down the walk. Stay outside. They never hurry you along, I don't think. They don't care. They just care about those people at the front. If you want to goreper them,

I realised when I went to The Devil Where's Prada to Premier recently, just a couple of months ago, whenever it was, that I've just become something that I would have hated when I was younger. It's like, I'm not interested in any of these stars. My friend said to me, oh, you know, that's so she runs the parks for Disney in Europe. I was like, get out my way. I want to speak to someone from parks. I'm really interested. I want to know everything about the tourist economics, every single thing about this. I was less interested in the stars than Disney's kind of like arcane corporate hierarchy, and I really wanted to know more about the parks.

But my main piece of advice is stay outside for as long as you possibly can. There will be people, because it's their absolutely their job, who will be trying to shepherd you through to various different rooms. You can just say, oh, no, I'm okay. I'm okay, thank you. Watch it as a spectacle of everybody. Yes. Performing their little jobs and getting what they need out of it.

Yeah, and bring your own snacks. But as you say, sometimes they're great snacks. But you can't rely on it. That's what I'm saying. You can't depend on it for sure. so lovely big top hat with a bit of picker mix inside it that'd do you we must do something by the way at some point about

the new popcorn bucket industry in the States which is if anyone wants to ask a question about that about popcorn buckets for next week we will deal with that because it's fascinating Sarah Baker has a question for you Marina oh my God Sarah you're so right

what's with the trend where footage of interviewees sitting down and chatting with a crew gets included as part of the intro it happens on Netflix all the time, but I'm pretty sure it also got used on once upon a time in Northern Ireland. It's become a meme on TikTok and Instagram, so I'm not the only one who has noticed. You're certainly not. You're definitely not. It is, my God. You know that. In case you're not totally sure what Sarah is talking about, it's like when

people are just getting settled and like, you know, putting their mic on. Before, are we rolling? It's like, you know we're rolling because I'm watching this, right? Also, by the way, you're fiddling with your mic and yet we're hearing you with perfect sound. Yeah, which is not, it's literally not possible. But it's interesting. Okay, so for this, we have to go back into the whole history of sort of talking heads on documentaries. For a long time, you couldn't really have them because sound was really tricky. So you had that sort of voice of God.

But then in the 60s, there were sort of two movements in documentary making. There's like direct cinema, which kind of grows out of the US. And that's observational. You're capturing real life on the wall. They don't have interviews. They thought that was a sort of form of artifice. Then in cinema verite, which grows out of France, there is lots of interaction. between the filmmaker and the subject, and you hear on-camera conversations.

And both of those, even at the time, were a sort of discussion about authenticity. The director-cinema bunch thought that, you know, asking people to explain events afterwards changed the truth and it wasn't real unless you were sort of watching it happen. But Cinema Verite, the people who sort of subscribed to that, felt it for emotional context and reflection that went deeper, considering everyone knew you were actually sitting in front of a documentary, so let's be honest. I knew this would come back to Cinema Verity. I just knew it.

But the seated interview, the thing that you're talking about, which we see a lot now, that became very popular in the 70s because it's really good for exposition. You know, you see tons on the BBC or PBS or whatever it is. Because telling a story just through your own footage or through archive, actually quite difficult. As if Capadu does it amazingly, all his documentaries are just archive. But the second you go, oh, I could have someone just telling the next bit of the story here and someone who was involved in it as well.

It becomes incredibly useful. Especially if it's in concert with the B-roll. So you can see it, then it's very, very, So, you know, and then they change the style of these things and they kind of made a much more shallow depth of feel. They make it more cinematic. They change the light. Sometimes they put the eye line off camera, whatever it is.

But the thing you're talking about. They sit you at the front of a warehouse and you shoot all the way to the back. Oh, my God, so often. I've seen James Holland in a lot of warehouses talking about wars. The thing you were talking about comes back in the prestige documentaries of the 2010. So things like the jinx. I don't know if you, my God, that's a documentary if you haven't ever seen that. that's a sort of true crime thing.

OJ made in America, right up to sort of Tiger King, which as you know was a big thing in the pandemic, the stuff that's the bit before the camera gets rolling, it takes longer for something to become a cliche than you would think, but it's now been rolled out everywhere. For me, part of why they have rolled it out everywhere

is that there are obviously so many documentaries and it gives a flash of authenticity, but there's something undone and deconstructed to it because I think things have become so polished. Yeah, it feels real. So I think it comes by the way, I think it comes from a real place, which is your sat in an edit, and you're watching every single, you know, bit of sync you get in, every single interview you get in. You do see them at the beginning, sitting down saying, and where do need to look.

And as an editor and as a director, you're thinking, this is the time at which this person feels the most natural, the most real. It would be useful for me for people to buy them as a natural and real person. Actually, this would be a really, I wonder if I could just keep this in. It does a lot of work for me. It makes it feel natural. It makes it this as a real human being. you understand everything that's going on. I think that's where it comes from is that they saw that footage and went,

it would be great to have this in. That's what they most weird. Well, Adam Curtis always says, all the footage he ends up using is after people stop doing the thing that they were supposed to be doing. So you're doing like a little quick piece to camera and, I don't know, Sarajevo or wherever it is. And the stuff that happens afterwards becomes the usable stuff because it's when people's guard is down or whatever. But again, saying, you know, are we good to the director or whatever you're saying, all of it is supposed to sort of acknowledge the artifice

and therefore kind of remove some of the artifice because we're always talking about authenticity in documentary making. So that is why. But I agree that it's become such a cliche now that I don't want to see it anymore, like lots of things. I'm drawing shots. No, thank you. It's also been taken advantage of it.

There's a particularly egregious version of it in the Vardi documentary where they're doing the, oh, I'm sitting down, but it's like a scripted, it's like a really eggy scripted piece to bring a particular prop into the thing. and you think, no more of this now. I like it. I like seeing people, you know, slightly, you know, off guard.

I like the naturalness of it. But now they've started using it. And honestly, on that Vardy thing, it's very, very, very early on that Vardy documentary. Let the cycle turn over again. I'm bored of it now. Let the cycle turn over again. But, you know, honestly, if you sit in and edit on a TV show and the bits that aren't really on camera, the bits where someone's just talking to the audience or the bits in between,

the shots, you think, oh my God, there's such a naturalness here that is so great. And documentaries can use it. You can't use it in entertainment shows. That's why sometimes you'll see after the credits of a TV show, they'll use a little bit from the recording where people are just kind of, you know, slightly off mic and mucking about because it does bring a real truth to things. Right. Shall we now go to some adverts?

Yes, we're going to take a break. And after we take a break, we're going to talk about Take a Break, the magazine, who are using AI for their fiction. Now we'll be discussing that. This episode is brought to you by Lloyd's rewards. Now, a big mistake that people make is leaving the cinema as soon as the credits roll because there might be a bonus scene right at the end. There might be one of my favourite things in the middle.

Yeah, you never know. In Marvel ones, it used to be a mid-credit scene and then there'd be an end-credit scene. I remember the first one I really remember, well, too, I remember Ferris Bueller's day off where he tells you to go home at the end, but also Smoking and the Bandit with Bert Reynolds where they would do bloopers. It just feels like a secret little... glimpse into a different world. And it doesn't quite have to be over. Yeah, exactly. And it's just a lovely little added bonus. You've done everything. You've made your show. Right, you've given

everyone everything. It's just a lovely little extra. Which is also the idea behind Lloyd's rewards, extra value appearing inside something you were already doing anyway, your daily banking. From shopping to streaming, you can bank on Lloyds to help your money go further. It's rewards like this that make 14 million people bank on Lloyds. Search Lloyd's rewards in your app at a Criteria, Terms and Conditions Apply, Retailer Offers and Cashback amounts may vary. UK residents 18 plus. When you're a mid-sized business, you need every competitive advantage you can get. Like an AI solution that works for you, not against you.

SAP Grow is built with AI embedded at its core, working across every system. And it's ready to go from day one so you can hit the ground running. Bring it with SAP Grow. AI Cloud ERP for any size business. Welcome back, everybody. Now, Sam Barakuff has a question that I think we both want to talk about. It says, Take a Break magazine is replacing all of this short story writers with LLM's large language models, revealing that all of their fiction is now going to be AI generated. Is the magazine industry in that much trouble that we need to replace writers?

Wow, yes. This is, this was first reported by Press Gazette, which is a brilliant trade publication. But it's Take a Break is a women's weekly magazine. and it's got all sorts of different true life stories and things like that and the real thing. But they've also got Fiction Feast, which is a sort of spin-off, which is all short stories, written by various contributors. The AI checking service, Pangram, says that all of these stories are now 100% AI generated. And they have had to acknowledge this now. So an email has gone out to people who would normally be contributors. And it said, so the July issue of Fiction Feast has been created using a combination of stories, some writer commissions.

and some in-house creations from the Fiction Feast Team. Wow, the Fiction Feast Team is doing a lot of heavy lifting. And so nine stories are credited to the Fiction Feast Team, and those seem to be completely written by AI. Now, there has been a massive backlash from writers, as you would expect. And it's interesting, these women's magazines are, you get paid in the sort of low hundreds of pounds for one of these stories, but they are one of the last remaining paying markets for short story writers.

And also, by the way, it's just a great, A, nursery slope, or B, just way to, if you're writing novels as well, this is a, it's just a nice gig. It's a good way to get published. There's not a huge amount of money in it, but there is money in it. And it's a very specific tone, and it's hard to get it. And once you have it, people are very skilled at it. And it's kind of lighthearted and it's stories about romance or families. Your question is, is, are things really bad? Yes, they are bad. There is no click-through, really, from Google. I'm sure Bauer would argue that they're trying to protect their remains. human writers, etc. And by the way, take a break is a big magazine. It's one of the top ten magazines in Britain.

It's got, you know, quarter of a million readers every week. This is not some sort of minor thing at the edge of the magazine industry going, oh, you know, we're going to take a chance on this. This is one of the absolute big hitters in the British magazine business doing this. But we can already see, because the pictures went first, they used to have illustrations and illustrators who would, you know, read the story. Now they have AI slop, and I'm afraid it's very difficult. On the one hand, I mean, I think this is incredibly depressing.

Yes, agreed. Without any shadow of a doubt. And they don't pay very much. You might not. It's only very low hundreds that you would get for writing a whole story. And that takes you a long time. Yeah, and if you can't pay that, then you don't have a magazine. I mean, you shouldn't be continuing with it.

It's crazy. The counterpoint, I would say, not particularly in this case, but the counterpoint is the other struggle for fiction magazines and publishers, anyone who takes submissions basically, is getting through the massive quantities of AI-generated submissions that are now coming in. If your job is reading submissions for whatever it is for a magazine or for anywhere that publishes fiction, and that includes publishers,

how do you know whether you can't tell from the outside whether it's AI, you have to get through it. And there have been really interesting cases. there's a science fiction mag called Clark's World who quite often have to say we're stopping taking submissions now because they're getting so much AI stuff and sometimes they pause it,

sometimes whatever. It's really interesting because what happens is that there are lots of sort of grifters who make TikToks and YouTube videos saying, oh, there's easy money here, how's you? And they make these videos saying this is how you write the prompts that generate a fictional short story.

It's a huge industry now. And it's really interesting. like Clarkswald said they pause at various points and they say the reason they pause at those particular points is because someone with enough followers has done a video saying these idiots you can make money off these idiots really easily and so they see a huge spike in AI stuff coming in and that's when they have to pause.

It is difficult to fight. But if you are take a break, they've used, you know, they use quite a small pool of contributors have done for a long time I mean, you know, they are naturally protected from that by using people that they've always used. And now they're choosing not to. Because, you know, the writing of stories, it has a weird place in this AI universe. Because it seems like the kind of first thing that people worry about. And we said before, it's the thing that AI is worst at.

They can't do it. And there was a good report last week about different industries and their use of AI. And it says 6% of people in publishing use AI regularly. in their job, which is the lowest of any industry that they polled, and the lowest by quite a way of any industry. And that's because publishing is just very, very aware of this thing. It's very, very aware of this threat to the sort of existence of what it does. I don't think it is a threat because I have always thought that AI is not very good at writing novels, and publishing is very good at writing novels.

So I think, weirdly, is much lesser a threat in publishing than it is in other industries. but fascinating that within the offices of publishing, the resistance to AI is huge. Some people were saying, oh, it shouldn't even be 6% and AI slopping books. But it's not talking about books being AI. It's talking about people within publishing and the tools that they use in their daily jobs. And in other industries, it's much, much bigger than it is in publishing. Because publishing is sort of both the first and last bastion, the first and last line of defense against this stuff. Which is why this take-a-break thing is particularly depressing.

because it was human beings writing stories for other human beings and just the idea that they believe they can now get away with it. If you look at the stories, by the way, the AI written ones, they are very, very prosaic. I saw someone who as a normal contributor had sort of gone through and analysed them and said, you know, this is not characterization, this is not how I would do it. This is, you know.

Yeah, it isn't anything. But we know that already. You can read it if you want these machines. and write it if they want, but it isn't anything. It isn't the future of anything. It's a last swish of something. So I think it's a real shame. I think it's great that that magazine used to exist and used to sell copies. And now you think, well, I mean, now it's just some computers making money for some other computers. Now this little chat is brought to you by Lloyd's. Lloyd's dark horse anti-fraud technology helps to protect customers by monitoring

activity and spotting when something doesn't look right. Yep. Entertainment has developed this very own elaborate backstage version of that. There's fake production titles, red scripts, we'll get onto what they are, and also just the world of quiz shows and how we stop people seeing answers beforehand, all the elaborate things you go to protect the privacy of your production. So films, they do it a lot, right? Oh my God, film and TV. By the way, if you want to get onto a film studio lot,

it's like a maximum security stockade. You are not going to get in there. And yet even on the lot, lots of productions have like faking it, like a house of the dragon, they called it Red Gun. And I remember thinking when I was walking past it, nobody could get in here at all. It's so unbelievably secure. If you're out on the streets,

I remember the guys on Succession saying they didn't really realise by the time they were filming their second series and so it would just say Succession. And it became a complete sort of nightmare. They're like, all right, hang on, we need a code word for our production. Because if you see ever tied to lamp post, they have those sort of arrows.

And that's because you have to, if you're filming on a different place, you have to send all the trucks to the right place. So you have to tell people where it is, but you have to give a fake name if it's a big show that because anyone can find where your unit base is or your set is. And the scripts are so completely, I mean, you get so paranoid about not like giving your script in at the end of the day to the scripts supervisor and not getting shredded and whatever. They're all watermark.

They know exactly who's script is who. They're red, so you can't photocopied. Yeah, you can't photocopied. You can't photocopote. Red with a watermark saying like Marina Hyde, cross it and diagonal. If it's yours, it's going to be really, really obvious that. got loss, you have to give it back in at the end of the day. I mean, more prosaic, but in the world of quiz shows, one of the absolute keys is it has to be

fair. You have to make sure no one's seen any of the questions. You have to make sure that, you know, no one knows what happens. And every single quiz show has an independent adjudicator who is in charge of all of that stuff. It keeps everything under a lock and key. It should be like with a handcuff to a briefcase, and then they should open the quiz questions like that. I mean, we used to do that with the prize money on a million pound drop. For sure. I mean, that was, that never came off a handcuff at any point. Because it was real money. We wanted to have real money there. But in terms of quiz questions, there was one quiz, which they recorded a whole series.

I won't say what it was called. And they realized that the person on podium one could just about see over the presenter's shoulder where the question and the answer were shown. They didn't think anyone had done it at all. But the very fact that they could have done it meant they scrapped the entire series. Everything has to be complete. Not on House of Games because there's no surprises are meaning this. but on a normal question or a millionaire or something like that. The people know that.

So it's absolutely the security of it. Deal or no deal as well, where you literally have an independent adjudicator by themselves, putting all the bits of money into the different boxes using like a random number generator. I mean, nobody could go anywhere near it. And the privacy you have to have on your computers just because someone could hack into the questions.

It's a huge, huge deal. Because if you lose that integrity, you lose every. And so the hoops you have to jump through on a quiz show to make sure nobody can ever find out an answer. So much more watertight than many government departments. Interesting. It really, really is. Yeah, it really really is. So beneath the fake titles, read scripts, answer checks and phone bans, protection rarely comes down to one dramatic locked door. The real work is quieter, controlling access, watching what's happening and noticing when something doesn't fit.

Yeah, and that's the principle behind Lloyd's dark horse anti-fraud technology. It uses intelligent monitoring and real-time alerts to help spot suspic. activity, checking more than one billion transactions every month. That's an average of over 20,000 checks a minute. Lloyds has invested £100 million in technology to protect customers from fraud, less visible than a locked film set or an arena security detail, but considerably busier. Dark Horse helps keep customers safer from fraud, but people still need to stay vigilant around potential scams.

Search Lloyds, How We Protect You, to find out more about how Lloyds helps keep you and your money safe. on Lloyd's Banking Group data, 2023 to 2025. There's a question from Stuart Best. He says, I was browsing in a W.H. Smith, and I found myself thinking, who is buying all these magazines? I don't mean Vogue or The Economist, but the many publications on fishing, caravans and gardening. So we talked about Take a Break just then, which quarter of a million people a week. That's one of the top ten magazines in Britain. There's very few magazines.

Yeah. Magazines used to sell millions of millions. The biggest magazine in Britain is TV choice, which sells about 850,000 copies. a week, all the biggest magazines, in fact, well, TV choice, what's on TV and Radio Times, all in the top four, the Economist in third place, just over 400,000. And the rest of the top ten, you've got Take a Break, Sliming World magazine, Private Eye, which has done unbelievably well.

It's just an unbelievable success story. But, you know, they've absolutely concentrated on the thing that they are best at. And it's been, I think it's underestimated what Ian Hislop has done at that place. I think it's extraordinary. It really is because in the world, we're always. magazines are failing and he keeps it a really really it's one of the top ten magazines in the podcast is brilliant all the things they've spun off yeah and then you've got good housekeeping uh BBC gardeners world and women at home they're in the top 10 if you get much much further down the list of the

audited bureau of circulation you get to the sort of ones that stewart is talking about you've got things like cycling plus Scottish field air fix model world classic car weekly garden answers model rail bird watching and these are all selling i mean eight or nine or ten 10,000 copies, which is not a lot, certainly not really a sustainable business in the long term. But what a lot of these magazines are doing, and we talked about it on Tuesday, funnily enough, is they are super serving a niche audience. So in a way, this sort of 10,000 thing, just being on the shelf at all, is slightly a lost leader, but they can make enough money at advertising to a very, very, very specific targeted audience. A lot of click-through on... But like a lot of click-through,

which is for, you know, if you can get a lot of orders on 10,000 readers, then you do have a business. Lots of them have event arms as well and have merchandising arms. If you look at all these magazines that look like they're very niche, you think, yes, that's why they are there. It's because they are very niche and because they understand how to serve that audience. And if you can, if you've got 10,000 people a week or a month who are buying this sort of...

It's almost like an... advert for your business, you know, buying a magazine like Scottish Field. But the business inside is advertising its events. It's all of that kind of stuff. So every single one of them, the more niche it looks, the more reason it has to be on the shelves. And lots of these have consolidated. And there used to be like 100 cycling magazines and hundreds of model train magazines. And they get there's fewer and fewer and fewer and fewer. But the money is there. The advertising money is there. The people buying things is there. The event side of it is there. And the magazine is almost just like a poster in a shop window for these things.

So it's really, really, really hard to be in the magazine business. That's for sure. But if you can really super serve an audience, then it's worth it. There's now a lot of things in America and stuff like that where people are starting to publish magazines because they see them as an advert for their events business or for their merchandising business. They just see it as a shop window for that.

But that's where the money is coming from. The money used to come from, I can sell 100,000 magazines a week and take all of that money, and I've got the advertising on top. Now they tend to be advertising and events businesses, which have this lovely shop window of a magazine. But if you're in the top ten magazines, please don't feel the need to give jobs to machines

because you will ultimately cannibalize your own business. I fundamentally believe that. You are 100% right. And, you know, take a break. It sells a lot of copies. It has lots of good journalists working there. Lots of people who cut their teeth on, take a break. It must be harder everyone who works there, I think.

Just awful. Yeah. And on that uplifting note. Sorry. But listen, you have to call it out. You have to call it out. It's the thin end of the wedge. And we all know that AI is going to do more and more and more things.

We absolutely get it. We understand it's use. But there are moments where you do have to say that's just not acceptable. It isn't acceptable. It's not a way to run a business. Certainly not a way to run a creative business. and it's, you know, whoever, I'm sure they had their reasons for doing it, and I'm sure they think they're protecting editorial jobs and what have you, and I get it.

But it's the wrong thing to do. It definitely sends out the wrong message, and it's, yeah, it's not the way to run a creative business. Agreed. Right. That said. On that note, we will see you next Tuesday. We will, and it will be really us in person. Thank you.