The Rest Is Entertainment - The Baby Reindeer Controversy

Episode Date: April 29, 2024

Netflix "true story" hit Baby Reindeer has led to real world fallout, but what compliance protections are in place around shows such as this? Liz Truss's book hasn't set the publishing world alight, however the PR would lead us to believe it has been a success... what is the real story? And celebrity chatbots, another indication we can't trust what we read, see or hear? Richard and Marina get into the entertainment stories of the week. Twitter: @restisents Instagram: @restisentertainment YouTube: @therestisentertainment Email: [e-mail] Producers: Neil Fearn + Joey McCarthy Executive Producers: Tony Pastor + Jack Davenport Recommendations: Richard & Marina - Baby Reindeer (Netflix) 🌏 Get our exclusive NordVPN deal here ➼ https://nordvpn.com/trie It’s risk-free with Nord’s 30-day money-back guarantee! ✅ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Hello and welcome to another edition of The Rest is Entertainment with me, Marina Hyde. And me, Richard Osmond. Hello Marina. How are you Richard? Yeah, I'm okay. I'm not too bad. I'm in the midst of a very big deadline this week. But this is a lovely little relaxing kind of amuse-bouche. Yeah, before the horror begins. Before the horror begins, which is the subtitle of our show this week, because we're talking about Baby Reindeer and Liz Truss. Yes.

Are we not? And indeed AI celebrity chatbots, so really the full banquet of... Some lovely bits in there as well. Yes, some jolly bits as well. The AI chatbot thing is something that you drew my attention to this week, and it is one of the most terrifying, weird weird sort of dystopian things I've ever heard of in my life. So keep listening for that. Shall we start with Baby Reindeer though? Let's start with Baby Reindeer.

It's a huge show. It's on Netflix starring the comedian and written by Richard Gad, a true life story about a time when he was stalked and various things that happened after that. And it has been an enormous hit for Netflix, what they call a breakout hit, so big it was even featured on Gogglebox. In fact, when it was on Gogglebox, I kept waiting for them just to be on their phones and Googling. Because you know that's how everyone watches every TV show now. You can't watch an old Top of the Pops without Googling where the bands are now. You can't watch any of those American series of true crime things. You sort of have to wait till the end before you all you want to do is Google who every single person is because of course you do.

That's what human beings are. That's how we watch television and drama producers know that as well as anybody. So you have to be so careful at all times if you are trying to hide people's identities that it is impossible to find out who they are. It's the story of Richard Gad's stalker and also of his relationship and interactions with a TV producer who was sort of older and more powerful. And without any more spoilers, I won't say anything more than that. And certainly, yeah, it's become the most talked about show for a long time for a couple of reasons. One, of course, these extraordinary ratings, and I suspect that Jessica Gun Jessica Gunning who plays Martha will be up for every award going as well. But

two, because it does depict real-life events and is sort of bled out into the real world this week. Apart from the cold open, the first words you see on screen are this is a true story. Now that is actually even within the genre of based on a true story, so that's very unusual to see this is a true story rather than based on a true story. But last week what has happened is that because the show has become such a massive hit and it says this is a true story at the beginning, people have got caught up in an absolute frenzy of internet sleuthing. The woman who Martha is based on has been identified. You know, and obviously she did a very bad thing.

A journalist outside our home, she's suffered huge numbers of sort of threats online. And the TV producer has been misidentified. I don't know about correctly identified, but certainly people have been wrongly identified. Richard Gad himself has had to issue a statement saying, please stop this sleuthing. This is not what our show was about. Hmm, well we'll come to that. And it is an absolute sort of frenzy and I've talked to a lot of people involved in shows like this this week and it's a big hot topic in the TV industry at the moment. Everyone is talking about this show and as I say Netflix made this, there are

shows to which it owes certain things that that sort Of first-person point of view it doesn't break the fourth wall There's a lot of fleabag in there to some extent which was also based on an Edinburgh show Richard Gad did two Edinburgh shows we should say because that might become relevant later I may destroy you which was Michaela Cole's story of her own sexual assault and the attempt to sort of unravel that and Exploration of the idea of consent and all sorts of things like that. Anyway, now both of those were on the BBC and in the case of I May Destroy You was a co-production with HBO.

But there's something called compliance in television. And I mean, all the writers and all the producers and all the executives I spoke to this week were like, this thing that's happened with Baby reindeer, right, should not have happened. I don't know what Netflix have. You know, maybe if they had a proper compliance department they wouldn't be able to pay their chief executive $50 million a year, but who knows? In fact, Martha is very close in various ways to the real life person who stalked Richard Gad. It is easy to identify. It's been very easy for people to identify her.

It didn't take any actual sleuthing. No. You can Google certain phrases and it comes up immediately. Certain phrases are used in the show. Now, you know, some people may say, oh, well, maybe now she can see what it's like to have people sitting outside her house and getting horrible messages over the internet, which is what happened then. But, you know, I don't feel that we should criminal justice should happen in that way.

If you talk to people involved in things like the BBC, they say, you know, we've got, what clearly in this show in Baby Reindeer, there are vulnerable, both contributors and people on whom it's based, deeply vulnerable people. And you have someone who is, the BBC have, have a part-time commissioning executive who deals with these types of issues and would have advised. In something like I May Destroy You, they made sure the defining characteristics of the lead characters were really different so that people didn't say, oh, I wonder if it was this, I wonder if it was that. There is a sort of slight sense of Netflix, it's a bit of a Wild West, and now at the moment of his big professional triumph, Richard Gad

is right in the eye of a storm and so are maybe other people upon whom the show is based or not based. Well, that's the interesting thing. As you say, there's a very, very serious thing that happens with a male comedy producer and Richard Gad, who, as you said, did the show in Edinburgh and has been very open to people in the industry about who that person was. So people in the industry know who that person was. Well, that's the difficulty, you see, the complexity of him having put the material out there before

in another format. And obviously that person hasn't been prosecuted, has never gone to trial, but everyone knows who he is talking about. Now it comes out now and a completely different person is identified, someone who has produced Richard Gad before but is definitively not the person in any way. But the person they've cast in that role looks like this other guy. Looks like the guy who's been falsely accused. And it's such a weird, bizarre thing to do. Because this poor guy is now, he's had death threats and he's had to issue a

statement and say it's not me. And it is not him. Definitely not, because people in the industry know who it is. And it is definitely not him. Richard Gadda said it's not him. Yes, Richard Gadda said it's not him. Honestly, I think they had no idea it was going to be such a huge hit. I think they had no idea it was going to become such a huge phenomenon. Yeah, because it arrived sort of without fanfare. It really did. But there's something very compelling about that first person narrative that just draws

you in and it is very, very compellingly told. Yeah, it's sort of unlike anything you've ever seen before in an interesting way, but I can't think they would have predicted it. And so maybe the eye was taken off the ball. Yeah, but's sort of unlike anything you've ever seen before in an interesting way, but I can't think they would have predicted it. And so maybe the eye was taken off the ball. Yeah, but they should have predicted it. And actually in terrestrial public service television, they would have had to have predicted it and somebody's, you know, net would be on the chopping block if they hadn't because I have huge sympathy with both, much lesser extent with Netflix who I don't necessarily have huge sympathy with, but with Richard Gabb, because are we saying now

in this era of social media that people can't tell their stories of what happened? People have always told their stories of what happened to them. And to a large extent, what's happening here is, this is TV companies failing in this case, to do stuff that they actually wouldn't have never have had to bother with in the era before social media,

because it wouldn't have been possible to do this. And these frenzies, that phrase we've used before that no snowflake thinks it's part of an avalanche you know you're writing this you're sharing this thing you're saying maybe this thing you don't realize that we don't think you're not conscious that another hundred thousand people have shared that thing as well in an interview to promote the show he said of the real life Martha we've gone to such great lengths to disguise her to the point that I don't think she would recognize herself.

Well, I'm afraid that isn't the case and it's certainly not even the case with really quite half-hearted sleeping on social media that people recognized her. You don't have to be Colleen Rooney to work out who she is. Now, I believe that, you know, it is the job of TV companies that are hugely rich and powerful to understand what era they live in. You're telling me Netflix doesn't understand big tech? Well, I think it does. It is big tech, okay, to some extent. It is. And I really think it's extraordinary that it's got to this stage.

Lots of stuff wasn't changed. So you're left with Richard Gadd, who I do think of course should be able to tell his story. And he's done so brilliantly in it, blah blah blah. But these things should have been better disguised. And I don't think this would have happened. I don't think for a minute this would have happened at the BBC. And I don't think it would happen at ITV. I think far more care would be taken with compliance.

And you don't know how this story is going to end now. And I should say that. You've just got to be so careful. You know, when I was thinking of talking about this, I was thinking about something in my own life that I could perhaps use to shed light on this this morning when we were chatting. And I thought, you know what, I'm not going to do it because even I, and perhaps because I'm in the news media, but I can see around the corners and I could see how people could uncover what I was about to say. And I could

see how people could find people who about whom I may talk. And you probably think you're keeping this so vague. I don't actually know what you're may talk. And you probably think you're keeping this so vague, I don't actually know what you're talking about. And I suppose that's the point. I am trying to keep it very vague because I can see around the corners. It was their job to see around the corners and they failed to do so.

And when you've got a mega hit like that, by the way, this has been like number one in loads of other territories, not just the UK, it's massive. And they didn't particularly promote it. I wasn't like aware of it as one of their big shows that was coming. They should have understood this and they must understand this going forward in an era of social media, which we've been in quite some time now Yeah, I mean so Richard Gad who has been around a long time and has won Edinburgh Awards and done

You know incredibly interesting very unusual shows Edinburgh for years and years and yeah, this should be his crowning triumph He's taken something that happened to him, something that was clearly very traumatic. He's written, I would say, a fairly great piece of art about it, a very unusual, very compelling, searingly honest, too honest it turns out. And it's his huge break. And suddenly, he's got the thing that he always wanted. And you know, judging by the quality of what he's written, the thing that he always deserved as well. And it has led immediately to absolute panic for everybody involved. So it must be a very, very unusual and difficult place for him to be. I mean, it's almost, it's so odd because it's so sort of meta, it's echoed in some ways

in the show, within the body of the show itself. And it, you know, as I say. Yes, he sort of goes viral in the show itself. And so, yeah, you would think that it was dealable with. I wonder if because it did stances the show itself and so you would think that it was dealable with. I wonder if because it did start as an Edinburgh show and so all these things have been aired already. Which is such a smaller environment and you're not going to have this great social media kind of... But perhaps the filmmakers and Netflix were thinking, well, this has been pre-legaled.

But as you say, an Edinburgh run. You know what? An Edinburgh run and a very minor Netflix show might have similar audiences and similar issues, but an Edinburgh run and the biggest show in the world for a week have very, very, very different audiences. And as you say, that's the point of all the money that is spent on compliance and aftercare and all of those things is just in case.

And this is the absolute classic example of just in case. Maybe we can talk a little bit about, based on a true story, particularly via Netflix. Some producers just almost think it's an IP genre in itself. It gives a show such a lot of, and obviously sometimes shows like Fargo say this is a true story and it's not, because that's a different reason. It's a sort of, you know, it's a trope, it's a sort of fictional meta of something. But in the case of true stories, which Netflix have really tried to corner the market in, they're very sued even in the US, which is quite weird, where they sort of regard libel like cheap

gas as their birthright, you know, they just read First Amendment, I can say whatever I like all the time, things like that, inventing Anna. Now that, which is about this con woman, one of those kind of scam artists, it's often the sort of supporting characters in shows like that, because real life is messy and it doesn't quite fit, sometimes those supporting characters become quite caricatured in order to wait, you know, without getting too technical in the writing, to make the story work when you're coming to tell it as a fictional thing. They have to be a certain sort of engine. Exactly. And because they're a supporting character, a side character, they're kind

of there as not entirely as a plot device, but they're there to help that. Now, a lot of those supporting characters are suing Netflix. And in the case of Inventing Anna, that case is going ahead in the US. Again, as I say, it's quite hard to prove defamation in the US because they're kind of allowed to say anything very much unlike the UK. And Netflix is becoming a very sued entity by people who feel they've been misrepresented in these so-called based on a true story shows. I like that you're being a sued entity. Yeah.

There's a lot of these cases that are either going forward or in the pipeline and whether we'll get to hear them or not. Um, but I really think that if you say this is a true story and there are elements of this story, by the way, particularly involved in the resolution, which are not what happened in the true story. So talking to executives and commissioners and all sorts of different people this week, some of them said to me, yeah, I think even based on a true story would have helped in this. But it's saying right off the bat, this is a true story.

And the online chatter about it is always is absolutely, oh the bat, this is a true story. And the online chatter about it is always, is absolutely, oh my god, this actually happened. Yeah. Well, this is real, that's a real person. It's such a, I'm sorry, and I guess the reason I brought this up is that people love a story that was real and they can't believe it. They, they, you know, a huge amount of it is like, oh my god, it blows my mind that this whole thing is true.

Yeah. But now people are talking about things that happen. If you look at the online chat about it, they're saying, oh, well, all this sort of stuff happened. And you're thinking, yeah, but that was the bit in the This is a True Story that didn't actually turn out in that exact way. And so... There's like a breakdown he has at a gig, which is so you would maybe look for that footage and that footage doesn't exist because as you say, that's a plot line. Well, I would say that the sort of legal resolution with the stalker did not occur in the way

that it is presented in the show. But people think that the show is complete fact. Yeah, they knew one of the pieces which is in a court case, which we won't go into details of, but didn't happen. I mean, didn't happen and people have assumed, of course they've assumed, because it says it's a true story, that it did happen and it's part of the story and it's not, it's an imagination. Yes, it is an imagination and without getting too deeply into it, I think that it is obviously is presented as fact because you're constantly thinking it's a true story. It's quite tricky

that now and I think they really are going to have to think much, much harder going forward because social media is a fact of life and these companies are definitely not going to look after anybody, the TikTok or Twitter or Instagram or any of the places where people are trying to do their sleuthing. Yeah, I think that certainly if you are making a show now for any of the streamers or for anybody that is about a real person, then this week your compliance just got tightened by about 8000%. I think this will be the sort of patient zero of Netflix compliance. Maybe they've got a big department. I don't wish to speculate, but they're not doing a very

good job. Richard Gad says in the most 2024 sentence ever, this story is emotionally 100% true. By the way, I absolutely get what he means because he has taken his trauma, which is genuine and turned it into a piece of art Yeah, and we must be allowed to do this because people have done this forever and they must be allowed to do this I would say though as a counterpoint is it a counterpoint that it's yeah, it's it's really worth a watch Oh, yeah, I mean a little pinch of salt and please don't do online sleuthing and all the usual caveats I do think Jessica Gunning who plays the stalker is going to win every award going.

Oh she's fantastic. She's brilliant. Performance. It's very interesting and it's an interesting case of what happens when you suddenly have an enormous hit on your hands. If there's even the slightest crack in the foundations of that hit then it will open into a chasm and that I think is what's happened here. I mean it's, I'm sure they're happy. It's an enormous hit. I think Clark and well films make it and Richard Gad and Netflix must be fielding an awful lot of calls this week and rightly so. Shall we go into a break and then return with the cheerier subject of Liz Truss's book sales? Let's have a break. I'm Anthony Scaramucci, former White House Director of Communications and Wall Street financier.

And I'm Katie Kaye, U.S. special correspondent for BBC Studios. I've been covering American politics for almost three decades. Welcome to The Rest Is Politics U.S., brought to you by Goalhanger. In this pivotal year for the United States, democracy, and world affairs, Britain's biggest podcast, The Rest Is Politics, is launching stateside. Uncovering secrets from inside the Biden and Trump inner circles

and how they shape the world's most important economy, but also the global economy, too. New episodes are released every Friday morning. Just search The Rest Is Politics U.S. wherever you get your podcast. Welcome back everybody. Shall we talk about Liz Trust? Don't turn off. We're talking about her book sales. Don't worry. We're talking about Liz Trust as a publishing story. Yes. I promise it's fun. I don't think we'd describe her as a publishing

phenomenon, would we, Richard? Well, I think, yeah. A lot of things are phenomenon, it's a thing. Yes, exactly. So her book, Ten Years to Save the West, ten years to monetize her brief moment in number ten. A lot of hoopla about it serialized in all sorts of places. I've even seen articles this week, I'll go on to one in the Spectator, which is the single worst thing I've ever seen written about the book industry of all time.

Well done guys. We will get into it. But yeah, I've seen Hoopla saying it was a bestseller. It sold 2200 copies, which I'm going to go on record as saying- Is that in the UK? Because it's had a UK and a US release, we should say. In the US, there are charts that go down a long way. It is not in those charts.

The UK was the one. It went in at number 70. And by the way, your first week, that's your big week. Week one after week one on two. Because that's when all your promotion is happening, everything. And if you can manage to get yourself in the top 10 in week one, then there should be a long tail, etc. Yes, you can build. Also week one includes every single pre-sale. So every single person who pre-ordered that, that all counts in week one and that all led up to about... We should say it was serialized in the Daily Mail. All over the media. She was number 17. Number 59 selling 3,300 was the sticker dolly dressing magical kingdom. My

daughter's got that. Oh well there you go. Yeah I haven't got the Liz Truss book. And that wasn't even in week one. That's just nicely bobbing along the old sticker-dolly-dressing magical kingdom. So yeah, it's a very low seller. Sold fewer than Matt Hancock's book sold in its first week. That, by the way, Richard, is at certain weeks of the year, not the weeks you release your books, obviously, but at certain weeks of the year, that is enough to maybe scrape you into the top ten. You might scrape in at ten. You might scrape into the top 10 hardback non-fiction.

Well... You have to keep adding extra words. Richard, this is Matt Hancock's Pandemic Diaries. I think that would be doing quite well if he'd done that. It went down to 600 the week after, I think. First of all, it was published by Byteback, and Byteback have got a good... In general, they've got quite good economics. They only paid, by the way, £1,500 for the publication rights to this book. By the way, Liz Truss has only got an American agent, which I sort of love. Yeah, I don't know. There's someone called Javelin. Javelin was

the code name of Donald Rumsfeld's wife and Donald Rumsfeld, former chief of staff, runs this book agency. Wow. You forget he was married to Phantom of Whitbread, don't you? wife and Donald Rumsfeld, former chief of staff, runs this book agency. Wow. You forget he was married to Phantom of Whitbread. You forget. He doesn't talk about it very much. So, Bite Back bought them for 1,500 pounds. I think whoever is publishing in the US, I think they paid 6,000. I should say, by the way, that I've not seen this discussed. Sorry if it has been everybody, but I saw in her register of members' interests where the MPs have to say what money's coming in and what they've

been... She's making, by the way, a lot of money from speeches, a lot. I saw that she was making like 15 grand, which is... No, but sometimes 65 grand, sometimes... Yeah, yeah, she's got a lot of big ones that she gets and then sometimes it's a little bit but it's in London. But you know, you're going to China and you're getting 65 grand, I can't really... I mean, that feels like someone deficit funding something, doesn't it?

Yeah, it feels like a lot of things. I don't think if you're the 02, you're not thinking, let's pay Liz 65 grand. You know we'll make it back on the bar. I agree on this, but she says in that that she's taken 90 hours to write this book. So I haven't seen that. That's about two weeks work. Oscar Wilde actually claimed to have written The Pit of Dorian Gray in less than two weeks and I'm gonna go out on a limb here. It is better than ten years to save the worst having said that okay So bite back. I've got this good publishing model. Yeah, I mean it keeps saying it's a hundred thousand words

Which by the way, it's not so I looked at the page account. Yeah But that would be she's wanting a thousand she claims claims it's no more. Yeah. We're aware she can do things quickly. Look at how quickly she crashed the economy. Yeah, she can do it in a heartbeat like that. She can do it in one speech. I don't think she's written a hundred thousand words in 90 hours. Well, yeah. So, bite back at this thing where they give you a very low advance and if you do well, I think your advice is always if you can afford it. Take a low advance. Or don't take it. Some people don't even take one if they are able to.

Clive James once told me, no, I never take advances anymore because you earn out miles quicker. Can you explain that bit to me? So it says she's got a £1,500 advance. I think it would be six grand actually because I think she'll get paid in four chunks. So I think her advance is six thousand pound and people were laughing and saying oh god Boris got half a million and this out of the other. The whole point with an advance is it sort of doesn't matter what your advance is. Certainly if you can write a book in two weeks it doesn't matter what your advance is because you haven't had to fund yourself for those two weeks.

I don't know what Oscar Wilde's advance for the British are drawing great was. And what it means is if you do get an advance, so Boris gets half a million for a book he hasn't written yet, you have to earn that back for the publisher before you see another penny. Yeah. And so Liz Trusser would only have to earn back £6,000 from this book and would then start getting royalties. In fact, I think the independent quoted some of the same.

She's relying on royalty payments to make serious money from the book. Here's a newsflash, if you sell 2,200 books in week one, you are not going to be making serious money from royalties. It's again in this Spectator article, I'll get onto it, said that BytePack have already made their money back. I mean, they definitely haven't made it back on book sales. They might have done on serialization, but yeah, they definitely haven't on book sales. There was a lot of sort of thing like, oh, we've had to reprint because Amazon have run out of it. Yeah, which are completely different things.

So Amazon run out of books sometimes. Amazon work out how many people want to buy a book, because Amazon don't want to have extra stock in their warehouses. This is like a really technical- Are you saying they didn't buy 500,000 copies of Liv's Trusters book? They did not, weirdly. Wow, Bezos, what's wrong with you? Wake up.

Exactly. And so I'm going to talk about this spectator article, because every bit of it was so bad. It said, oh yeah, Amazon sold out, so they've immediately gone for a reprint. You think, right, no, they haven't gone for a reprint, right? The reprint is quite expensive to print a book, so you print however many you think are going to be sold. I don't know how many they would have done with Liz Truss's book, 20,000, maybe something like that. Amazon say we're going to sell, you know, a thousand and when they get towards the end of that thousand they will immediately say

they're out of stock and you have to then deliver more to their warehouse. When they're delivered to the warehouse it comes back into stock. So it's not that it's sold out, it's not that you're having to reprint because of, you know, incredible demand. Second run on Liz Tross's book in 14 minutes. Exactly, it's because Amazon didn't think it was going to do. Amazon sort of roughly worked out how many it's going to sell, never overstock, and then at some point you have to restock them. So it hasn't reprinted and Amazon was immediately back in stock.

So the Spectator have written this article about Liz Truss's book sales, which is the most incorrect article I've ever read in my life. It's beautiful in its incorrectness. It starts by saying, her book sales may ruffle feathers. That's the tone of the thing throughout and gets more and more bonkers as it goes on. So I just pick out some reasons why it's bonkers. It's talking about how it's number one in political biography on Amazon. Now Amazon has this brilliant thing and it works really, really well where they have

a million different sub charts so everyone can be number one somewhere. I'm always number one in rural life humor. Okay, that's what my book is always... I saw Lewis Trost was number one in political philosophers at one point, whatever that is. And this article in The Spectator said, it's talking about Rory Stewart, our friend Rory Stewart, and said Rory Stewart may be displeased to learn that he's like number 90 in political biography. Yeah, that's because his book has been out for a year. It'll be crying into his bank balance because that sold a load. Rory Stewart's book in week one sold 25,000 copies. That's 11 times more and it's gone

on to sell, I think it's up to about 200,000 hardbacks, which is a lot of books and certainly more than Liz Truss is ever, ever, ever going to sell. The article in The Spectator was also talking about the Prince Harry book, It's even outsold Prince Harry. Oh my God. You think it's the single that is the biggest selling hardback nonfiction watch of all time. You know, that's like saying last week, more people watch House of Games than watch the moon landings because last week they did, you know, but the moon landings is still the biggest TV show of all time.

It was absolutely extraordinary. It was doing everything to say this is a huge hit. And listen, it sold 2,200 copies, plenty of books would be happy with that, but not books where you've been in the papers all week and you know, you want to... No, if we could talk about serialization for a bit, because that is quite interesting. So serialization goes direct to you and it doesn't necessarily count against the... Everyone's got a different deal, but in general you would expect that to go to the author. Now, so she would have got a decent whack. I'm trying to think how much. Now, Matt Hancock got 48,000 pounds for his pandemic diary serialization, which is also in the mail. The mail often gets these because they've got a lot more money than a lot of Fleet Street,

and so they might buy these things. But that also included an interview and serialization. And let's not forget he had had an affair with Gina Lollobrigida, a scientist I'm calling her real name, Gina Collardangelo, but he had an affair and I think that was probably quite sort of hooky. Bite back know how to make their books really newsy and how to get the news lines out. They're very good at that and how you can get lots of coverage. And they did get lots of coverage, but in the end, no one wanted to buy this book. If I'm trying to call what Liz Truss got for a serialization, I was talking to people and

they were saying, I think she probably got less than Matt Hancock because he'd had this affair and I think that was the big thing that people would want to talk about. If only Liz Truss had ever had an affair. I know. If only she had had an affair, then it would have been something more to read about. Will we find out in the register of members' interests at some point? Ultimately, we will find out, yes, but we won't find out until she registers it and

she could do it either in a few months or later, or maybe wait till the lack of fuss has died down. It's a fascinating thing, because Hancock suffered from the same thing, I think, which is one of the things about writing a book as a politician. Some books, by the way, politicians books do amazingly. Obama's book is an absolute huge seller. Blair's was. Michelle Obama's was a huge book as well. But one of the reasons you would write this book, you know, especially as it only took two weeks supposedly, is firstly to sort of get your retaliation in first and secondly just to boost your profile a bit so you get to go on all the TV programs,

get to go on Lorraine if you want to, if you write a book. The trouble that she has, and Hancock's got the same thing, is there's no charisma there, there is no, there are certain people that if you put them on TV, Rory Stewart was a very good example, you put them on TV people, there's something about him that people like listening to, and she doesn't have that, and there's no reflection on her. She doesn't connect with people in that way.

And so she's had- I mean, it is a reflection on her. It was a bit of a stumbling block to doing her job, but yes. But it's okay to not be charismatic. Yeah, a bit rubbish if you're the Prime Minister, but you know, feels to me like it is one of the things, but- So there's certain people, when they go on TV to talk about their book, where you go, oh, that's costing you copies.

You're not going to sell any more copies from that, I'm afraid. That's, you know, and you can see on Amazon. One interesting thing, if you ever watch something like This Morning or Graham Norton, someone talks about a book and you think they picture particularly well. Look at the Amazon chart four hours later, and you'll see it's gone. And it'll be right up, yeah. And there are radio shows like this, things like Start the Week, which will suddenly sort of cut up. There's lots of shows that you wouldn't necessarily

think. There's huge market movers. Zoe Ball, The One Show. If you're on The One Show, the first time any of my books went to number one before Thursday Murder Club came out, so just in pre-release. And it went to number one, the first time it ever went to number one is just, I launched it on The One Show and it just immediately went up there. We've got to do a deep dive on The One Show at some point because that would be such fun. Please can we do that? I have presented The One Show and love The One Show. It's one of my favourite jobs in the world.

You've got some very funny stories about The One Show set which I'm going to make you tell. Excellent. At least 50% of them. She's been on this publicity thing which is not going to sell any books and not really going to boost her reputation either because you know, she doesn't. It's all from the US, you know, she hasn't got a UK agent. She's got someone in like Washington. Yeah. Some DC based agent. They did get her, I don't know if they booked her at CPAC, which is the sort of conservative conference in America where you saw her, where she ran into trouble because she was on an event with Steve Bannon, who said Tommy Robinson was a hero or something in that vein and she didn't really challenge him.

And you're saying he's not. Breaking, he's not a hero. He's such a lifter. And he, but she went on Fox News with that book, she held it upside down, I think she had to be told to get it the right way up. Perhaps she saw her future as a, in that sort of American thing and maybe someone told her that they can launch her as a personality that I think once they're looking javelin agency at this particular sales line, they're going to think that it's going to be a harder ask to turn her into

like Oasis. I think I think she may be doomed in America. I don't I don't think it's going to work for I was looking at some you know, on Amazon customers also bought. And on American Amazon is quite, number 7,000 on American Amazon last time I looked, but customers also bought Deception, the great COVID cover up by Rand Paul, The Great Awakening, launching the next great resistance by Alex Jones, and the Citizen's Guide to Fifth Generation Warfare. Those were the people also bought. But that's what, you know, if that's the, if that's the pool she wants to smash her feet in, that's where she's looking for money, right? There is a small part of me, I have to say, and obviously she has done something terrible

and whatever, but I don't know, yes, she should never have been made Prime Minister and all those things, but there is something slightly exhilarating about someone just carrying on and just refusing to be sort of cancelled and I don't know it's a sort of a good example for her daughters I don't know I know that people this is maybe is like a real minority opinion but someone just thinking I'm actually not going to go and live it live in shame yeah and even though as I say what she did was very shameful but there is something quite sort of inspo about someone just thinking I'm actually not going to have a terrible sad life and cry on the floor. Well, it's very 2024. It is mesmerizing. And it's funny that this, you know,

a woman who was sort of head of the Liberal Society at university, I was talking to somebody who worked for her and liked her very much indeed. Genuinely said it was a really nice environment. I really liked her. But yeah, she's- I've had some alternatives to that one. Listen, I'm sure. It's fascinating to see the dollar that she is chasing now and to see whether she's going to get that dollar and to see that the shapes that she has to sort of twist herself into

to get it. Ted Cruz was, you know, is quoted on the back of her book in this one. She's talking about how it'd be great if we got rid of Joe Biden. Can you imagine how little of the book Ted Cruz has? Has he read the title? I very much doubt he's read the title. He's probably read about as much as Liz Truss has. No, I'm sure she wrote this. Just very, very, very quickly. It's an unusual thing. I went to an event that Armando Iannucci was talking about and he was saying that there's a generation now who see becoming Prime Minister

as just a step on the ladder to something else, to step on the ladder to money or whatever and she's definitely one of them. It's not kind of you spend out your whole career trying to be prime minister and then you think I did it, I now retire gracefully and go and watch cricket like John Major. You're like, oh, perhaps if I'm prime minister, then I can go over to America and talk on the lecture circuit. And listen, it may... She could easily contort herself. The sheer number of sort of ideological metamorphosis she's kind of been through, she could easily end up being an expert in whatever fifth generation warfare is. I'm not quite sure. But she could easily end up doing one of those things.

But whatever we say about it and whatever spin you might see, publishing wise it has not moved the dial at all. Publishing wise you'd be happy with publishing Sticker Dolly Dressing, Magical Kingdom. Don't knock it. I'm not knocking it. I've got so many of the Sticker Dolly Dressing series. I can't believe I'm doing a plug for Osborne's Sticker Dolly Dressing series, but it's terrific. But also on the back, because the quotes on the back are from you and from Ted Cruz, right?

Yeah. Of that Magical Kingdom thing. Ted Cruz. See, that is a book I do believe he's read. Oh yes. Okay, now shall we talk about, and it's going to have some celebrity in it before you think it's just AI AI celebrity chatbots Richard. Yeah, which as I say is a subject you introduced me to I'd say it's haunting. It's funny But it's haunting. Yes, it is. Like ghosts. Yeah Okay. Now Meta which is obviously the company that owns various things Facebook Instagram, WhatsApp, Messenger They did an announcement very recently,

a presentation where they are and where they're going with AI inside all of those apps. And they are sort of rolling out a chat GPT style bot across these apps. And it's their large language model is called Llama. I think they're on Llama 3, which by the way is nothing like as powerful as chat GPT 4. However, it does have some advantages, which by the way is nothing like as powerful as chat GPT for. However, it does have some advantages, which is that it is free. And it is very, very quick at doing things like pictures. So if you've ever sat there waiting for a picture to come on chat GPT or whatever, this is really fast. And what they want to do is bring AI into your conversations with your friends' connections in their social

networks basically. The bit we're going to talk about today is celebrity related. I must say that I've given a little bit shout out to a guy called Casey Newton who writes an email called Platformer which is really, really good on tech, big tech, AI, whatever. And he's been talking a lot recently about the idea of the synthetic social network. At the moment we interact with avatars of real people we know or whoever. So the first iteration of this product, the Celebrity Chatbot, was weird and misconceived and odd. That doesn't sound like meta. Yeah, exactly. They paid some rumours of maybe five million dollars to various celebrities.

I think there were 28 of them. People like Kendall Jenner, Snoop Dogg and Naomi Sarko. I can't remember who all the others were. Mr. Beast was one maybe. Mr. Beast was one, yeah. But the product was weird and it was basically off. It was Snoop Dogg, but he wasn't called Snoop Dogg. He was some sort of Dungeons and Dragons games master. Kendall Jenner was just like some random LA friend. And so as an actual human being, you could interact. You could see them talking. It seemed like you were interacting with them.

Yeah. But you weren't and it was all AI. No one really cared, by the way, like no one cared. Like nobody, they didn't have any followers. I think even the Snoop Dogg one, he's got like unbelievable millions on all his other platforms and he got like 80,000 of this, but they were just paid to do it. Anyway, now Metta is going to do something completely different, which is they're going to train chatbots in the way that the participating celebrities speak, and then the chatbot version of that celebrity

will interact with the fans. So you can be with Kendall Jenner in your DMs and talking to her, you're not really talking to her, but it will seem very like you are talking to her because they're going to train them in all the already. I mean, as we've seen, you can do, they can create a you from a tiny amount. Now, I mean, you can give them Microsoft unveiled this sort of AI assistant thing the other week, which is called Vasa VASA. And you can give them a tiny bit of audio and one picture, and then you can see this person speaking. So we got AI to do the intro to this show. Shall we take a listen to ourselves

and see if we are better in AI than in reality? Let's do it. Hello and welcome to The Rest is Entertainment. I'm Rich Osmond. And I'm Marina Hyde. What are we talking about in today's show, Marina? Well, today, Richard, we are going to be talking about a brand new software which can clone our voices.

Sounds fascinating. It is fascinating if not terrifying when it do our jobs even better than us. I went slightly Balfast for one second. A little bit Irish. On the word going. But I think that's terrifying. See I think it's useful. Yeah we could just sit down and have a cup of tea. That's peculiar isn't it? Well this is why I tell you that podcasts are very vulnerable to AI. Yeah, I tell you what, I tell you what AI doesn't like dead air. No. So absolutely we're running on from each other's sentences there. Yeah, I mean I could learn a lot from it. The reason I think this is terrifying, there's actually a really interesting guy and he died this year and he was a sort of cognitive philosopher. He's a guy called Daniel Dennett and he wrote this fascinating essay that came out maybe

last year and it was called Counterfeit People. And his theory is he's a really eminent and amazing philosopher. He wasn't it? And that these are digital artifacts that are being created, which he thinks can destroy our economies. They can destroy all our freedoms. They can... That's Liz Truss's job.

Yeah, exactly. Ten years to save the West. she should have written about this. But he thinks that the creation of fake people is an immoral act and it is a form of social vandalism that should be punished by law. And he gives the example of money. Counterfeit money, there's a reason why every single society on this planet has really draconian laws against counterfeit money, including passing it on as in, you know, and I suppose in counterfeit you might say retweeting them or reposting them or whatever it

may be. And he feels that it's because money is a sort of similar idea, the whole all the bonds in our society depend on that kind of trust. And if you don't have that, then things fall apart really, really quickly. He said look we could all these fake people that you're now seeing online we could watermark it's very easy for them to sort of effectively watermark it they can work out with code very quickly what's real and what isn't. Instead what we do is say oh my god that's so weird you know oh my god it is like Kendall Jenner but it's not quite like her and we're sort of fascinated by it we are really walking ourselves to our own slaughter,

because his point is, okay, if you look at someone like Narendra Modi in India, he is obviously to win votes. He's got AI versions of himself speaking in all the different regional languages, which is very helpful to him. But this is a form of political manipulation that is happening right now. And his, Daniel Dennett's idea is, you know, if this happens and these really clever counterfeit people come and you can't hardly tell, and once we start seeing these meta celebrity chatbots, these are, you know, celebrities are really always a sort of soft launch of all this stuff. And as we can see in India, it's already happening. Lots of other places in politics, political manipulation is already happening by AI and it's going to in the elections

coming. But we'll be manipulated, we'll become paranoid, we'll become ultra skeptical, like we won't even believe true things. And then you then you become apathetic or kind of terminally unmoved. And that is a real that that is breaking down as a society. And then anyone can ride roughshod over you. So it may start with chatting about makeup in your DMs with Kendall Jenner, but it really quickly ends up with very, very bad political actors taking control of countries, economies, freedoms, all sorts of things like that. Oh man. Sorry.

No, that's fine. Listen, let's concentrate on the Kendall Jenner stuff for now. Essentially, you can DM Kendall Jenner, Kendall Jenner's bot, you can just have a conversation with her for weeks and weeks and weeks and weeks, if you wish, in her voice. All the time. And you may prefer to be talking to these synthetic celebrities, because we're all, Mara's all fascinated by or something by celebrities, captivated in various different ways, than having normal interactions. And they think

that you know people will want to bring them into their own chats so that they become a sort of participating character in your group chat. That is actually quite fun. Shut up fake Kendall Jenner on your WhatsApp group. Yeah on my fantasy football league group. Let's put her in our group and add her in and just see what she starts saying. Should we do that and then next week we'll discuss what she's... We'll see what her contrives were.

No, but then we're, as you say, then the world ends. Yeah, really quickly. I don't want to be the person who... Exactly. I need to read that Liz Trust book. There's a TikToker called Karen Majuri who did exactly this. She was one of the first people to do it. She's got an AI version of herself that interacts with her fans.

And she was saying, no, the reason I'm doing it is because I want to cure loneliness. This was her thing. I think she might have wanted to monetize it as well. I don't know. Maybe she made a couple of quid. She wanted to cure loneliness and she thinks that someone talking in that AI version of herself will do that. But that's a healthy way to increase your social circle. And she said she's done that by working with the world's leading psychologists, brackets, citation needed.

Yeah. done that by working with the world's leading psychologists, brackets, citation needed. And so you can see why all celebrities are going to do this. Yes. Because it's honestly… Many of them don't even run their social media anyway. So you're already in a version of a synthesized interaction, whether or not you even realize it. This is the next step in that.

Because at the moment they're having to pay an assistant to be them. And sooner or later they won't have to pay anyone to be them. But there's companies, Forever Voices I think are the ones who do Karen Majore's stuff. And they will own part of your likeness and your soundness as well for a very long time to pay you for it. But you know, they're going to own who you are. And as you say, So you don't get final approval?

I assume they must do in the contracts and what have you. But you're certainly the thing is you can't listen to if you she could be interacting with 100,000 people at any given moment, well, in which case, she's not going to approve anything, it will shock you to learn that within a month, they were saying we do need to make some tweaks because the chats were getting too erotic. I think they were surprised by the fact that the thing that people were using it for was to try and... Who can predict these things, Richard?

Who can predict that humans would do this thing? Who can predict that? And listen... Did she cure loneliness? Hold on, let me check. Let me check on the phone. It's still going now. It's pending.

But apparently she's helping. Yeah. I'm looking at the chance here. But you would think the world leading psychologists would know what they're doing, wouldn't you? Listen, two points of view and people at home can take one or the other. So Daniel Dennett essentially says these parasocial relationships where you're talking to someone who isn't real and we can't trust what we're seeing and we can't trust the people we're talking to will lead to the end of civilization. But Mark Zuckerberg says it's all about entertainment

and it will feel fun and familiar. So listen, six of one, half a dozen of the other. Just one of the world's people alive. Because the other thing about these technologies is that they, unlike nuclear weapons or other sort of known harmful technologies or potentially harmful technologies, these have an organic quality in that they can reproduce. So these kind of AIs can reproduce and potentially become, as we've discussed on various different occasions, much more powerful than they originally intended and more powerful, by far more powerful than their creators. But I will say this to people, you know, on their dog walk or, you know, driving the kids to school or anything like that. It's all going to be okay, isn't it? Well, I hope so. I hope so. Yeah. I mean, as I've said before, I think podcasts are very vulnerable to this

technology because it'd be very, very easy to create AI podcasts. You think? Yes, very, very easy. And I think we'll be seeing that. Maybe we already are. And someone will come out and say that hit was, by the way, entirely AI. I really think that is almost imminent. Music for sure. I can't believe there hasn't been an AI number one single yet. That feels like the easiest thing in the world. Some art collective putting together a song just by AI.

If they're making money, they will think I don't want to say anything. And there are always those things where you're like, oh my God, that was a model and she wasn't really singing. You know, we had this. Milly Vanilli. Yeah. That was the first real first AI there, wasn't it? Yeah. What about Black Box right on time? Was she maybe not the actual singer? She was not the singer.

Yeah, Loretta Holloway, I think was the original singer. Loretta was? Was she? Okay. And yeah, it was an Italian model was the... Yeah, she looked amazing. So we've had it for years is what you're saying, so it's fine. But yes, I think this is of a different order.

But yeah, we're definitely going to add Kendall Jenner to our The Rest is Entertainment group chat. So do you know on our group chat that Gary Lineker is on it? Yes. Do you think it's really Gary Lineker? No. No, because a lot of the stuff he says. Yeah, that is just a bot. Because we'll say something like, what time are we recording?

And he'll say, great goal by Jeff Shlup there against Fulham. I don't think that's, it doesn't seem right. They're working on it. They're perfecting the software. Yeah, but we're real. So that's the- We are at this stage real. We'll have to prove ourselves. Yes, and we'll never interact with anyone via synthetic versions of ourselves.

Recommendations, listen, despite what we said, I would recommend watching Baby Reindeer. It's a challenging watch, but I think it's a very, very interesting piece of TV. I think it's completely compelling, and yes, I would recommend that if you haven't already seen it along with many millions of others. And if you can pick up this Trusses book anywhere in Oxfam. Pick it up and then put it back down. I'm going to count the words. Listen we're back on Thursday aren't we for a question and answer edition. Back on Thursday. Keep your questions coming to the email address is therestisentertainmentatgmail.com and I promise it's us and not an AI version of us. No, we're so faulty that you will be able to tell that it is the real thing. Yeah exactly. See you then. The moment we're slick you'll know it's AI.