The Rest Is Entertainment - The Harry Styles Conspiracy

Episode Date: March 10, 2026

Can Claudia Winkleman's new TV gig break the chat show curse? Why are Harry Styles' tickets so expensive? And are the #Larry rumours true? Claudia Winkleman is taking over the chat show mantle from Graham Norton on Friday this week, has her 34 year telly career led up to this moment - and will it be any good? Harry Styles' new album is getting great reviews, but why are his tickets so pricey? Richard Osman and Marina Hyde explore the lore behind the UK's biggest popstar. The Rest is Entertainment is brought to you by Octopus Energy, Britain's most awarded energy supplier. Join The Rest Is Entertainment Club: Unlock the full experience of the show – with exclusive bonus content, ad-free listening, early access to Q&A episodes, access to our newsletter archive, discounted book prices with our partners at Coles Books, early ticket access to live events, and access to our chat community. Sign up directly at therestisentertainment.com For more Goalhanger Podcasts, head to www.goalhanger.com Video Editor: Max Archer & Adam Thornton Assistant Producer: Imee Marriott Senior Producer: Joey McCarthy Exec Producer: Neil Fearn Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

This episode is brought to you by our friends at Octopus Energy. Some people in the entertainment industry are successful, but a much, much smaller number are genuinely admired. I was trying to think in TV, who everyone likes. I mean, Attenborough. In movies, Julia, Merrill, you will not hear a bad word said about any of those people. But there are actually very few that no one is rude about behind their back. But those two are certainly two of them. Can I tell you about a company that no one is rude about behind their back and that people admire?

Would it shock you to learn, it is our friends at Octopus Energy? Octopus Energy has ended up being named Britain's most admired company, 2025. That's nice. That's really nice, isn't it? I'm sure companies are like Hollywood, just absolutely vicious behind each other's backs. But to actually be elected, most admired, it's pretty good. All the other companies just sitting around going, should I tell you I met the other day? Octopus Energy, actually, you know what?

lovely bunch really really lovely bunch all of them the most admired company in the UK 2025 which is why we're very very happy that they are our sponsors hello and welcome to this episode of the resters entertainment with me marina and me richard osman hello marina hello richard how are you i'm all right you sound so echoy why why is that oh you might have noticed we're in the big studio today richard like grown-ups yeah we are we've been allowed in the lights are extremely bright we're not really not really we're not really we're not so we're not Not allowed to touch anything. No. Quite right, just in case Alastair Campbell comes in and loses his temper.

Yes. He'd go, why is my microphone four millimeters to the left? Yeah, we can't allow that to happen, particularly in this time of national peril. Yes, and which he is a very important figure. Absolutely, pinch, pimp. Thank you for your service. Thank you for your service. Now, what are we talking about today?

We are talking about Claudia Wincomen's new chat show starts on this Friday. So, we know, Graham Lawton's chat show has been on for a long time. They are now buttressing that with the new Claudia chat show. We're going to talk a little bit about the history of chat shows on British TV, why they exist, who wants them. But also, we're going to talk about the fact that Claudia Wincomen, I think, has ended Antentech's 25-year reign as the biggest rating presenter on British television and how she did it. Excellent.

We're also going to talk about, he's got a new album out, Harry Stiles, the man, the myth, the music. He's very much the Alistair Campbell of One Direction. Leave it now. Yes. He was the Rory Stewart. He was the Robert Peston of One Direction. No. We're going to talk about what it means to be that famous

and how you even end up making music about that. And his album will be number one next week. So I'm going to also talk a little bit about the strange reasons. I said I was going to talk about it last week and we didn't. About why the biggest selling single in Britain all this year has not been number one at all. Why that is. It's quite geeky. But you've got a little kind of starter of Harry Stiles to, you can listen to the Harry Stiles bit and turn off and then I'll do the geeky bit.

Don't tell people to turn off the show. Why? That's okay. People these days take that as a challenge. So I'm not turning off. You think I'm going to turn off? Claudia. Yes.

Claudia, Claudia. One come on her. Chat show starts 1040 on Friday night on BBC One, made by the same team that makes Graham Norton. So television. So television. They have already recorded. The first one. The wires are saying it was terrific. She's terrific. There's lots of audience, participation in it and all sorts of things. And it's a question of whether this is a, do we need

another chat show? I would say, yes, we probably do. Should it be Claudia? I would say, I don't know who else it would be. So yeah, we just want to talk a little bit about, do you want to talk a little bit about chat shows and then I'll talk a bit about the rise and rise of Claudia Wincommon? Yeah, and it's amazing because there, well, you'll see, it's very, very historic that a woman is getting a chat show. She's not the first woman, but we'll end up talking about those. But we've had chat shows. In fact, we had them when they were on the radio,

ages and age, forever and ever and ever. But they became big in America when the Tonight Show started, and then there was Johnny Carson, and then he brought in the monologue at the start of them. So they then became a sort of recognized part of their cultural furniture. And we need this to say, tried to emulate them. and they had very many it's interesting the men who they got to do it

Aiman Andrews is a brilliant presenter in lots of ways but was given one of the first chat shows He used to do this is your life in the UK He used to do lots of things But he he sweated on air So much It actually became a sort of running joke And it just didn't work out this chat show at all

But then David Frost Who had come from That was the week that was They're going to we need someone We need somebody who's not going to sweat And Frost sounds good He had this thing called the Frost program and he did some in America. You know, this is such a sort of Concord thing.

He did some in America. He did eight shows a week actually and was sort of able to do that because of Concord when you kind of fly in and, you know, you arrive before you get, you leave. Then, I mean, there were other sort of 60s ones that were really like a vibe. There was Simon D and it was that was so sort of shagodelic. Simon D is probably the most famous person who no one has now heard of. Who not ever heard of. Talking of falling from, you know, a business. a position of extreme fame to being a footnote.

I think he might be the leading candidate for it. Yeah, I mean, that idea that the swinging 60s actually was only 17 people at Mick Jagger in London and everyone else didn't experience the 60s in that way at all. But Simon D would look like he was having his point in the middle of it. And he looked like he was in the middle of it. Anyway, then they go to Shirley the Doyen Michael Parkinson. And so he says, I don't want a desk. This is one of the decisions that they would have to have had with Claudia.

And what you see that they've got, they've got a curve. I can already see from the set. They got a curved sofa around a coffee table and all the guests will go together and her chair, as an armchair. But Michael Parkinson said, I don't want to, I don't want a desk. Even though he came from a news background. And he had those kind of Eames chairs. And it was a sort of, but it's extraordinary when you think of all.

He had these amazing guests and he had guests that returned, not because they necessarily had things to promote, but because they just was, and they became part of the sort of Michael Parkinson's law and also things like the Muhammad Ali law, because Mohammed Ali was one of his most famous kind of serial guests. And when you go back over some of the moments, there's sort of extraordinary. There's one episode which I was watching again at the weekend

where Ali really goes for him and just, I mean, it's extraordinary. And you think this could never happen now. I will never see things like this on tech. Even the thing of Emu, by your thing that I would never see that now, Rod Hal and Emu, the puppet, the bird of puppet. Or if you saw it, it would be a YouTube clip that had been set up. Yes, everything is so contrived.

And these things happened. By and large, they weren't recorded. lives, some of them were, but they were allowed to happen. Billy Connolly, who became famous basically by appearing on that chat show. And then there were things like Meg Ryan, which was much later on, and he looked back on it and thought, actually, I was really difficult in that interview. And also, by the way, he was a terrific interviewer, Michael Parkinson, but anyone who says, oh, we don't have anyone like that anymore, it's nonsense. We live in a completely different culture. We live in an absolutely saturated culture where that cannot

exist where, you know, we have so much more access to celebrities these days than we did. Then, you know, that was, you know, a sort of spotlight onto a world that we had no other spotlight onto. The promotional world is so developed now, the circuit of it all. Exactly. And how it's managed. So you could not do a Parkinson these days. And it's not because people are not as talented as him, talented though he was.

It's just the world is a completely different place. Yeah, Claudia's show has been pre-recorded. And most of these shows ended up. Some of them were live, but most of them ended up being pre-recorded. A big part of that was that Des O'Connor Tonight, which was ITV's kind of, ITV had various attempts to, you know, they had Russell Hardy, they had various attempts to sort of try and beat the dominance of Parky, which was not really possible, who was obviously on the BBC, but and eventually they took him to ITV, but this was so much later in the career.

But Des O'Connor Tonight, there is a really famous episode, but I went back and watched it, and a lot more happens on the famous episode where the live goes so. so wrong for Deso Kondasnight. First of all, the thing that everyone remembers is that the comedian Stan Bordman, you won't remember this if you're listening to this podcast, maybe it's a sort of famous episode and why the show could never be life again. Stan Bordman, who was a comedian, went on and told a joke about World War II Flying Aces that used the word Fokkers, the aeroplane a lot.

You can imagine where that went. And it's actually a really good joke. And, I mean, Stan Borman's got a lot of jokes that wouldn't age well, let's put it that way. But the next guest tonight is Olly Reid. And they found out he had some sort of tattoo somewhere. And Desocona says Tim, now you've got a tattoo in a very unusual place. And he says, yes, on my cock.

This is all live ITV. Okay. So it's like, what? What? Okay. The final guest is Freddie Star. Oh, man. I mean, it's quite hard to, you know.

They've gone Boardman Reed Star. I know. It's like on a live show. I'll tell you what, that's, that, I'll be next year's BAFTAs. Yeah. Anyway, the history of Ollie Reed, by the way, on chat shows could be a whole separate bonus episode. But anyway, Freddie Star ends up doing sort of V signs to feminists and all of this thing.

It is Complaintsmageddon. So that is why most chat shows have never been live in the UK. It's amazing. It's an 86 and it's all in one show, okay? So then there's people like Aspel, who's never quite, you know, like not Parkinson. Wogan is massive. three nights a week he has iconic guest George Best

I mean actually David Ike who I think first comes out as the son of God on Wogan That's if you're a chat show host And someone comes out as the son of God You're like okay this is good Okay I've got something here You know when everyone's looking for like

Sort of a news item off the back of their interview If someone sort of you know David I starts talking about Former Coventry City Gold Pickie that is now son of God He's quite a good hero He's talking about football focus And then he says oh no I am actually the son of God you are, you know, any journalist is thinking, oh, that feels like we've got something. Well, yeah, those are the good ideas. Let's just put it like that. But then things, again,

it becomes very influenced by America, particularly Letterman, who I think is the, like, the great sort of giant of all of these things. And then so Jonathan Ross does the last resort, which is a very different sort of chat show in lots of, in many, many different ways. And then you get to people like Jack Doherty, who Channel 5 launched, when they launched, I think they had him on five nights a week at the start. And in hit that, When obviously he was having time off, he was allowed to be replaced by Graham Norton. What a stand in. I think they both get nominated in the same year.

Oh, God. To be nominated for the same show as your stand in? Yeah. Oh, that's not good, isn't it? And then, anyway, but the BBC obviously realised, and Graham Norton does various other things in Channel 4, but the BBC realized he's such a talent. And they almost sign him without having anything. But it's sort of felt that he'll do an interview show, which he has ended up doing.

and now in the off-season of Gray and Norton, we shall have Claudia. The fascinating thing about, really about the history of chat shows on British TV is how few of them there are, compared to America where they're the absolute mainstay of their schedules. I should have mentioned. DeVina McCall had one. It lasted for something like eight episodes. It didn't work out.

So Mrs. Merton, I always think that's a... I mean, they did have real people, but it was so brilliant. You know, Caroline Heron's so amazing. It is really a comedy show. It's not completely fictional like Alan Partridge. knowing me, knowing you, the first series ever of Alan Partridge. But it is, to me, a comedy programme, so I'm not quite including it. Perhaps I should.

No, I don't think you can. But also, there have been hundreds of short-run chat shows. Yeah, lots of other little. Every single, pretty much every, you can split anyone who becomes famous into two. The second you become famous and people go, oh, that's interesting. The public seemed to like you. Is there anything you would like to do? half of all people who are newly famous and who are putting a room with a commissioner,

I would say almost exactly 50% of them say the thing I would like to do is a chat show. Why do you think that is? Well, it's twofold, which is it looks like you're interested in human beings. So it looks like you're a good guy. But actually, you're very, very aware that there is an awful lot of you in it, that actually most of it is you. And especially these days when, you know, segments that get, you know, chopped up and put on YouTube or a thing.

So I think it's one of those things where certainly if you're a comic, you think a comic is used to doing crowd work and a comic is used to working with people or working with writers and a comic is used to working off people. So if you're a comic, you think, oh, this is like an hour-long conversation where I do half of it. And I'm constantly being fed stuff and I won't really have to do any prep. You know, I'll probably have to read a few briefs about and I'll probably have to watch someone's film.

But really, I can just be funny. So that's what they all want to do. Commissioners do not want any of those people to do a chat show because you do not want chat shows on British TV because they do not rate. They just don't. I mean, it is of no interest to a commissioner. Panel shows rate on British TV and, you know, formats like that.

That's the stuff that rates on British TV. And people would always, if you're Jimmy Carr, if you're Alan Carr or if you, whoever, they'd always rather put you in a format. That's how British TV works. However much, you know, that piece of talent would like to do a chat show. And the truth is, they would. wouldn't want, you know, really don't want to do a chat show. It never makes anyone look particularly good. There's very few people who can do it. Graham, Jonathan, pretty much the

only people who can do it. Everyone else fails at it. So the question is, will Claudia succeed? If anyone in the current climate of British television can succeed, it would be Claudia. I agree. I would think for all sorts of different reasons. I did mention at the beginning. I do think it's worth noting where she is in her career and why, when Claudia, awards into a run and says I'd like to do a chat show, they say yes. There's a number of different reasons. Firstly, yes, she is now officially the highest rating presenter on British TV and that has been Anton Dek for as long as anyone can remember. It's like growing up, you know, with the queen. You just think, I can't ever imagine anything will ever change here. Anton Dek had been the

absolute, you know, top of the ratings for as long as anyone can remember. Huge franchises. And we all know why because they are sensationalially brilliant. But now their magic mirror is showing someone else to be the fairest of the wall. It shows well, because they have a couple of formats which are perhaps towards the end of where they should be and they haven't yet done the new ones. Whereas Claudia, strictly, which of course is beyond enormous, traitors has absolutely pushed her into a completely different dimension. But again, we're at the start of that cycle. You know, she's even had a hit on Channel 4, you know, the piano.

She said lots of things. Some Crofts on Channel 4 at the moment. There's sort of nothing that she can't do. You know, people are happy to see her on adverts. You know, she's done radio shows forever. But, you know, it has taken her. It's worth remembering, you know, when people say, oh, they put the same people on all the time.

She's on TV for 34 years before she became the biggest rating presenter on British television. I remember her 10 years ago saying to me, I just do so many interviews with people, you know, just things behind the scenes stuff. that you wouldn't see, not that's on TV or anything like that, just sort of maybe there's corporate jobs or whatever, and interviewing celebrities even, but behind the scenes in kind of closed areas.

And she said, that's my, I would love to interview people. And that's 10 years ago, and she's been pretty successful ever since then, and yet. And she's only just been given this chat show. She started, so early 90s, you know, she came from a media family. So that, you know, she started as a journalist. She would do travel writing, all sorts of things like that.

And then suddenly she's on the holiday program. She had a career that could not exist anymore. No. Okay. The Claudia Wincomen and the Anten Deck of 20 years time will not start where they started. She had a career that started, you know, as I say, on the holiday program, BBC 3 sort of went, oh, she's fun. She's smart. She's not a comedian, but she's funny.

Yeah. People seem to find her relatable, which is the absolute kind of goal. golden egg. Is it a golden egg or golden goose? It's both, right? Yeah, it's, yeah. The goose lays the egg. Do you know what I mean? I'm not, I don't need to tell you that. So she does an awful lot of work on BBC 3. There's, there are a million formats that she does. And that's why this world doesn't exist anymore. Because, you know, and it was the era that I grew up in TV as well, where you were sending 20, 30 formats a year, most of which people would never have heard of. She did a great format like a dating format on BBC 3 called 3's a crowd and I think that's the first that's the first

time I think someone went oh do you know what why didn't you just be yourself which is a really funny relatable woman who seems to like other human beings and obviously if she came along now that that avenue would would not be open to her she did that she then this is the this is why 34 years it's taken her to be the biggest rating thing that's all I'll say she says you yes to, oh, I will do the BBC 3 companion show to Fame Academy. Yes. Yeah. So I would do Fame Academy, which, you know, with, I mean, God love it.

And I was at Endemore when we made it. It was not first string singing talent show. Yeah, I was about to say it was a singing talent show. Yeah. In a big house. Strangely can't remember it. Yeah. People in a big house.

Up in Hampstead. And back in those days, you did any show like that, you would always do a companion show on BBC 3 because, and it's, you know, television was a wash with money and they didn't know where to spend it because all the advertising money went to television where now it goes elsewhere anyway so there was a lot of money around so you would make a companion show to a singing show that wasn't a particularly popular singing show anyway she did that she was absolutely terrific on that did it so well that actually when fame academy came back because these things came back she did the main show but more importantly someone else who was making a companion show saw that Fame Academy Companion Show went, oh, this woman can really do mainstream, but she can be really funny and she can do whimsy, and she seems to be interested in what people are saying to her, and she seems to have to come back with her.

And those are the people who are making Strictly It Takes 2. Yeah. So they give her Strictly It Takes 2. And when you do Strictly, it takes two for a few years. The rest is light entertainment history. The rest is light entertainment history, because you are first in line to do strictly, which she absolutely does. And that's where she'd been in TV a long time.

That's probably the first time that the British public as a whole actually knew who she was. Yeah, that's mainstream. Yeah, a lot of people who listen to this podcast, we consume a lot of media. Most people do not. And you'd be amazed at how few people know the people that you know. Yeah. It's amazing. Yeah, it really said, you know, Claudia, if they knew her for anything, it would be literally because of Strictly it takes too.

There we go, oh, oh, that's nice. Yeah. So she does Strictly, becomes, you know, the most loved person. on British television. As you say, sort of in the same year of Strictly, I think maybe the year before, she also does, takes over from Jonathan Ross on the film show.

Yes. Which shows another side of who she is. You can sort of put her in anything. There's very few people who could do a serious film review show could do strictly and could do crafts and do all those things and make them better by being who they are.

So that's the career that she has had, I would say, and obviously post that she's done. Traders. I can go through some of her flops, by the way, because there's plenty. But that's the thing about being a presenter. When you're hot,

you're hot. Well, most shows fail. Yeah. You know what I mean? I mean, she did one question on Channel 4. If people know that, the quiz show,

you know, that fails. She did a Eurovision dance contest. She did Britain's best home cook, which surprised me that it failed, but it did fail. But, you know, then she does great British sewing beat.

She has enough hits that people give her work and Tretus comes along. You think, well, who's the perfect host for this. Everybody loves Claudia, we'll give it to Claudia. So that is a

enormous hit. And all of this is to say when on Friday night you do or don't sit down to watch Claudia doing that show, do not listen to anyone who says, oh my God, they'll give anyone a chat show. But you know what I mean? This is a woman who's done great work for 34 years on television, who's had a series of massive hits in completely different genres, who, as you say, has shown a willingness throughout all of that time to behind the scenes be interested in human beings and talk to people and find out about careers and be interested in different bits of the business. And she wanted to do it. And when Claudia goes into the BBC and she's got Graham Stuart and Yom Magnuson and the team at SoTV who make Graham, that is just about the only thing that

can make a television channel break the golden rule of never, ever, ever give anybody a chat show. That's the one of the few times where you think, do you know what? That might actually work. And I think for Claudia. I mean, I hope it's a huge success. And as I say, people who were at the recording absolutely loved it. But it is definitively the right idea at the right time

with the right person. It might still fail because almost everything does fail. But I just think it's interesting. The career that she's had, the work that she's done, the popularity that she's gained over the years, and it's taken a 34 years,

is to get a chat show. But it is quite historic a woman doing it. I have to say, because it's so few. Yeah. If it works, it will be historic. I mean, I was thinking, I mean, obviously, Parkier's amazing that for me, maybe the best interviewer completely is Kirstie Young. I think she's absolutely phenomenal.

And that's a different thing. She did Desert Island discs and it's done in a, you know, and that's on the radio and that's separate to this. But which, of course, is a chat show. Which is a chat show. Yeah. Yeah, but she is an, but if you listen to, I mean, I think she is, list, honestly. Okay, the first

guests, we know who they are, so can we just talk about, if you're putting together this line-up, yeah, okay, right? So, Claudia's first guests are Geoff Goldblum promoting his band, the Mildredritsa Orchestra. I mean, listen, Jeff, if you want to come on, you're sorry, you're promoting what? Fine. I'm sorry,

you know what now? Fine, we will, of course we'll do a quiz. When you watch it on Friday, time how long they spend talking about that band, unless it's a bit, unless they go, why don't you play us something, or why don't you do or you turn it into a sketch. Yes.

You know, that's a possibility. Vanessa Williams, who's been playing Miranda Priestley in the Devil Wells Prada in the West End for quite a long time now. So it's not like she's starting next week. Jennifer Saunders, who, National Treasure Covered, who's going to be in the magic faraway tree, which is new and which is coming up. And Tom Allen, who's got his new book, Common Decency. But that's just, he's a great comic.

Yeah. So that thing of plugging, I mean, yes, Jeff, I'm sure. he will be flogging his band. What do you think about that mix of guests? I think that this show will live or die on its production. Nothing else. Right. Okay. It just will.

You know, if they make it well, if they've got interesting items, and as I say, they've got interesting audience things, and if it allows Claudia to be Claudia. The audience, by the way, they've said they sort of want them to dress up. So that gives you a sense of maybe what they're going to try and go for. They've said something like no Gilles, no sort of, you know, not your work-a-day clothes. They want you to be like we're all getting glammed up for a night with Claudia.

As far as I can see from there have been instructions as to what they should wear. Yeah, to turn it into something. And as you say, Claudia's been planning this a very, very long time. And she's got great producers as well. And we are aware that we are in a world where Chachas, you look at the late night stuff in America at the moment. And it is all about what you clip from that and what are the bits and how you make your host a personality. And the guests sometimes are sort of ciphers.

And, you know, it works for them because people are watching and you do get to talk about your band. It's whether it gives Claudia the opportunity to be Claudia. And if it does, then people will want to come on because it will get good ratings. And that's all, you know, you really want in return for going on a show. Look at Graham. He's now in Taylor Swift videos. He's going to the wedding. It's hilarious.

But, you know, he is sensationally good at what he does. And people are quite bad at alternate realities of how differently you could do that show. And almost everyone would do that worse than Graham. It's sort of, he makes it look effortless. If anyone else can do that, it is Claudia. She certainly has the goodwill of the British public, that's for sure. I just, I don't want people to say, I can't believe, oh, God, will they give anyone a chat show? No, they will, the whole point is they will give nobody a chat show.

Nobody, nobody, nobody, nobody who has any money in television wants to spend it on a chat show. No one. This is literally. Anyone who's listened to the show, Richard, now knows that for sure. and they will take your message out into the wider world, into their living rooms, and they will impart it to anyone who doesn't quite understand it. That said Channel 4, I would be interested in doing one.

I'm sort of free. I'm free now. You know, how's the game's my bit of it is done? And I just, I like talking to people. That's me, you know? I like talking to celebrities. I would do every single celebrity always goes, everyone pitches this, newly famous people always say,

I want to do a chat show but with ordinary people. That's our new section. I could do that in which every week, Richard will pick a piece of television that he quite likes and just say I could do that. I couldn't do it though. I'd be terrible at a chat show. I wouldn't be any good at a chat show. It's really, really, really, really difficult to make a chat show. I think you'd be good. I don't think that's true. No, I would actually, I prefer to do a chat show with ordinary people. I think that's more fun. And I do think there's a show there.

There's anyone ever done that? No, but it's what everyone pitches. Oh, really? Everyone always pitches that. And it is interesting. Because actually, do you know, the observer always used to have that feature in the magazine, this much do I know. And sometimes they have famous people do it and tell you all the sort of, you know, their theories on life. It's so much more fun when they get like a florist or a bikini waxer or whatever.

Because you learn stuff. Yeah, yeah. It's really, really interesting. Well, that's what you know, because there is a point at which doing a chat show is the law of diminishing returns, because everyone's been on, everyone who is on a chat show has been on so many chat shows and, you know, is kind of. So tell me a tiny bit more. So people always preach the real life. people chat shows, but it never... Yeah, well, because no one wants to chat show.

Because it's fancy. So they're like, you know, you can't say a chat show with real people without saying chat show. The truth is, ordinary, but non-shavers people can be much, much, much more interesting. If you've got a good booker, which is, you know, what you need on this, and they've spoken to people with extraordinary stories or who do extraordinary jobs or who can tell you something about an ordinary job that you wouldn't know, that's fascinating. But it is still a chat show and therefore it will not get made. Yeah.

We had an idea once called the chat show of doom. which I really liked, which had you had five guests and the audience would vote off the most boring one after each round. So the first round would be, give us an anecdote from your school days. And the second round would be, you know, bring on a friend and, you know, the third round. Are these real human civilians or celebrities? No, no. It's fine. Otherwise I thought it sounded in humane.

Oh, my God. Yeah, no, we wouldn't. Yeah. That works with celebs. And then, you know, the people who get voted off stand on the sideline and they can ask questions. Oh, I like that. That's kind of, yeah, I know, but again, back in the up days of TV when there was so much money, probably could I get made.

But anyway, I absolutely digress. Claudia is doing a straight-up chat show. There are very, very, very few of them. And I wish it every success. It's got absolutely the best people involved with it. Almost all television fails. But I have my fingers crossed for this one. 1040 on Friday.

Friday the 13th, that's Claudia. That's been the very first person to point out, of course. That's good. But that's Claudia all over. The self-application is persona. I mean, yeah, of course. She would have been the second to go, oh, that's Friday the 13th. Is that the problem?

She'd go, no, that is perfect. I have absolute plausible deniability. Right. Please, I think we should take a break now, but do join us after the break where we will be talking about Harry Styles. He'd be a good guest. Oh, he'd be a super guest. This episode is brought to you by Bumble. Now, Richard, people get very nervous before sending the first message on dating apps.

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But they don't dream, read a room, rally a team, and they certainly don't have shower thoughts, pivotal hallway chats or big ideas. People do. And people, when given the best AI platform, they're freed up to do the fulfilling work they want to do. To see how ServiceNow puts AI to work for people, visit servicenow.com. Welcome back, everybody. Now we're going to talk about Harry Stiles, who's got a new album out, title Kiss All the Time, Disco occasionally. Yeah. I was trying to think what it reminded me of, and I couldn't quite, and Alexis Petreed is who I love,

who's the Guardian sort of music writer, said it sounds like something you'd see you in a poster in a kitchen next to a sign in you that it's Praseco o'clock. And it's very interesting because he's, with that question now, one of the sort of most famous guys on the planet, you know, he's still pretty young. He's had some time away. Well, in the modern world, this is called having some time away. His last tour finished in 2023.

Lazy. And he's, yeah, well, he went away, he went to Italy, also brought out a sex toy range. He's, yeah, diversified. Sure. To give you, we'll come back to this, but to give you a little window into what it's like being Harry Styles, I think he did an interview saying that, you know,

he'd really love being Italy and taking this time away. And he loved the pace of Rome and being able to sit and just have this coffee and just he thought the Italians were great or something like that. The level of backlash on that from online, from like you don't understand anything. You don't understand Rome. You don't understand the modern world. You're so privileged. This is what it's like to live in a world where you just say,

I've quite enjoyed having a cup of coffee and not having to be in a right. for something. I was thinking about something like Alanis Morissette bringing out a song called Thank You, which is the chorus is Thank You, India. Let me tell you, you could do things like that 30 years ago. These days, you cannot have an interview about saying how you quite like not having to do anything in Rome before people kind of completely kick back on you. And so it's interesting living in a world where anything you say can be backlashed against. And I think we'll come on to that as we end up talking about him more. But he's, in order for this new album, he's going to do, he's not going to tour particularly. He's going to do

residencies. He's doing 12 nights at Wembley and 30 nights at Madison Square Gardens, which is totally extraordinary. And he's obviously decided that he doesn't want to particularly move around and you're at that stage, which is sort of difficult, I think, when you're a music artist, where you can do whatever you want, if you're

as famous and as successful as Harry Stars. That is actually, to some degree dangerous territory for artists, but you can. And so the fans will have to come to him. Obviously, in the US, That involves airfares and hotel rooms and things like that. And the prices anyway for these tickets are very, very expensive.

And even Liam Gallagher was sort of joking that, oh, look, I always say it's tickets are quite reasonable now. Anyway, this is all the backdrop to him bringing out a new album. Have you listened to the new album? Yes. Yes. Yeah, I'm a huge Harry Stiles fan. I love Harry Stiles.

It's a bit more, I'm going to do a slightly cooler album. But yeah, I love it. Yes, because you don't know what it's on about quite a lot of the time. And I do think that's interesting. in a world where all of, you know, the endless Easter egg culture and the endless trying to work out what everything means of the lyrics, even though he's quite obviously like the you of the album, he talks about you doing this, you doing that, and you know he's sort of talking about himself, it's quite, you don't really know what Harry Stiles is talking about.

And there is a point at this stage in an artist's life where they can kind of only write music about being an international pop star. What else is there, yeah. Someone like Taylor Swift manages to do it and make it relatable. I think that this is, I don't know, I found it quite hard to wonder. Quite a lot of it sounds like absolute gibberish, the lyrics. I mean, really gibberish. And I wonder if there's something about, if we talk about the background of Harry Stiles,

Harry Stiles is managed by these two, these guys by Irving and Jeff Azov, their father and son. Some people say they curate Harry Stiles. You see, this is the world he has to live in where they, that they stage his life and that none of this is true. and the Azov's also become a sort of fan conspiracy kind of lightning rod and the idea that they've created this creature, this confection, this whole facade because as we know, the whole drive of everything now is to say, no matter how much more polished things have got or also how more raw and authentic things have got, the whole drive of fandom now is to say, this isn't what it is.

This is, you're selling me an image and this isn't true. He doesn't go out with these women or he doesn't, you know, there's something that's being hidden from me here, but I know what it is. And I think it's interesting what happened with the One Direction fandom, the 1D fans, directioners, you know, those ones forged in the fires of 2010's Tumblr, those were hardcore, okay? They were really hardcore. You know, the level of death threat, the level of this or that, just bandied out ridiculously over tiny things.

That energy, I don't think, has been destroyed, but it has kind of morphed. And there are a whole weird schools within this fandom, which is why people always think, I don't believe things about Harry Styles or whatever, although these people do. There's a Larry Stylinson conspiracy. Are you aware of this? Larry Stylanson.

This is that Harry and Louis are together. They've always been, from one direction, Louis Tomlinson. But they had that in the Spice Girls as well, didn't they? Well, hang on a second. Well, that actually did happen. Oh, okay. I'll take it back.

But no matter how many times Harry and had, Harry and Louis have denied it, that shipping culture, that idea that you want these relationships to be real, has resisted. I don't see the two of them together. No. Well, you know, there are, so the Larry's, the sort of fandom subgroup, who just believe that Libby Tomlinson's son, Freddy, is like a staged event and that they have a series of actor babies and now growing up young toddlers that are sort of shipped in. But the level of how they read stuff into things, they've got this other whole conspiracy theory that attended one direction, the rainbow bondage bears.

The crew puts some teddies round in the sort of final concerts and some of them had unusual costumes. They were read as secret messages to the Lairies from Harry and Louie that they were on the right track. Keep digging guys because you're correct. These rainbow bondage bears are sending you messages. That's how I would do it. If I was having a secret gay affair with a bandmate and I wasn't supposed to say,

but people had got it, I would go, do you know what, Teddy bears. Someone get down to Hamley's. Rainbow, but also bondage. Yeah. That should let them know. So I guess my point about bringing all this stuff is, how do you make music about any of this stuff? Yes. If you live in a world of insanity and anything you say, he's actually, Harry Stiles says so little about his, for someone who's obviously sort of very open and has to feel like someone who's confessional, he says very little about things.

There are certain things. There's a track called medicine that he plays live that talks slightly about messing around with boys and girls. but these are just tiny lines. There are a whole fan treatises, millions of them online about all of these stuff. And I think that it becomes really hard when you're that famous to then, either you kind of submit to this culture and say, okay, I will do what Taylor Swift is and allow it to be, and write these songs that I can quite,

or not just Taylor Swift, by the way, many, many people and write disc tracks or I can write things that people can interpret in their own way and I know how they're going to interpret it and I have some form of control over this. Or you can just become quite sort of obscurantist. And I do find when I'm listening to this album, like, what else are you going to do? You're just trying to kind of be out there,

but also hold yourself back. Well, you must, every lyric you ever write, you must think, oh, God, no, hold on. I know what I'm going to say. Someone could say that. I know. So, you know, you do sort of, that's what I'm saying,

either incredibly specific or incredibly vague. You can't be anywhere in the middle. Yeah. A modern fandom, this type. of obsessive fandom has been incredibly creatively destructive. And I think that... For me, for sure. You can't say anything.

That's why I gave up the House of Games. Yeah. It's too much. The stuff that they were reading in to the silver owl behind me. Yeah. It's just an owl. Come on, guys. It's just an owl.

That's the message to people that it's not just an owl and they have to keep digging. There is nothing happening between me and Alexander Armstrong. Yeah. Absolutely. I promise you. But would that there were... Would that there were... Well, now you said that.

But I do think it's because... I think it makes it very, very difficult creatively. And here's something else that I was thinking about the weekend. Why do we have that? I'd love to be inside your brain sometimes. Just go, oh my God, Marina at the weekends. No, but is there, I was still probably just doing the washing up, but is there a, there doesn't seem the same camaraderie among the big, big male artists in the world.

There is a sort of weird sisterhood, even if they don't acknowledge each other amongst the women. And I thought partly that's because all women in the public eye will, have had some similar experiences. We'll have experienced obsessive fandom in the same way that perhaps only women feel that in that particular way. But I don't get the sense that there's like a camaraderie between, you know,

Harry Stars and Alex Warren. Yeah. Bad Bunny or whatever. I mean, they all come from incredibly different places, obviously. But I don't have that sense that in a world of sort of solo artist, almost exclusively sort of big, big solo artist. Yeah. I don't get that sort of vibe, do you?

Yeah, he feels like, he feels in a class of one, Harry. Yeah. They're all in a class of one. And I know he's surrounded by great producers and writers and kid harpoon and people like that. He seems to be surrounded by good people as far as I can tell. He certainly seems to be surrounded by good collaborators who are making great music.

But yeah, I guess having started, it's funny where people start having started in a boy band that was so, you know, even for a manufactured band, that was super manufactured. They were all chucked out of X Factor and then they were all called back in. It was like reconstituted meat. But even though they were the five. of most handsome people in the category. He goes, that's weird. They got rid of Harry Stiles, the most handsome boy in the whole world who can also sing,

and they put some other people through. Anyway, so that, you know, the whole thing had been so weirdly kind of put together in such an artificial way. And he seems to have, I'm sure, as you say, with his managers, there are people behind the scenes suggesting ways and means of putting his career together. But he seems to have chosen incredibly good collaborators and incredibly real collaborators. And he seems to be quite an authentic human being. And he seems to enjoy his life. Talk to me through why and how much the,

why these tickets are so expensive. They seem insanely expensive. Some of them, like the top prices are hugely expensive. But that seems unusual. That seems a misstep to me. Well, I agree that it seems a misstep. And particularly when you're doing residences, if you're saying, okay, I'm going to go to Manchester,

I'm going to go to Denver, I'm going to go across, I'm going to travel across countries and you can come as close as possible. if you're saying you've got to come to Madison Square Garden, which is, you know, fine if you live in New York. Well, it's like people who have a destination wedding and then don't have a free bar. Oh, my God.

What's they also then do a destination hen weekend? Okay, that is a war crime and I could do a, yeah, I can't get into it. Yeah. I mean, charging that much for tickets for a residency is essentially like having a destination hendoo and a destination wedding. I so agree. And a destination wedding. Oh, I'm more of a destination stag for Harry.

Yeah. still doing a wedding list of presents. God, Harry would have a great stag. Yeah. Don't you think? I think he would. I think it would be. I wouldn't know, you know what?

I wouldn't know what to wear. To Harry's stag. He'd get one of his friends to find you some clothes. Okay. I'd see you in the Harry Star's. Stag? The Harry Star's look. The Harry Stars universe.

So the tickets are very, very, very expensive and there are people who say that this is just that, I mean, we've talked a lot about ticketing and how people, and it's all live and how people can just do sort of what they want. You don't have to. And I think even the cheapest to hear, if Liam Gallagher's making a joke about them being very, very expensive. But is there, is there a bit of it? Is it sort of saying because there's only room for so many absolutely mega brands and really you want to be world conquering

in every way? So, you know, Harry Starz would like to be the male Taylor Swift. Yeah. And, you know, Taylor Swift definitively, you know, there's some huge, huge, huge female stars. I can talk about one in a second, out there in the world, but she is, she is above all of them. And is there a bit like Stera Artour is reassuringly expensive, okay, is there a bit that says, you, you have to, you have to show your loyalty to me, you have to show my primacy in the, you know, the, the, the world pop culture by paying that much money for tickets. That's how, that's how big I am. And part of what I was saying to you earlier when we were talking about this is that,

that stage where you can do whatever you want and you can say, actually, I'm not going to get on the tour bus. I'm not going to travel around the United States. I am just literally going to get people to come to me. You can do it and it does show your power. Whether you should do it is another matter. And I realize that touring is grueling and if you found just great headspace in Italy, maybe you don't want to do that. But if you are going to do it there and stay in one place, then you have to factor in the cost of doing these things. I think it's very, if you're sort of message and you're,

your vibe is, I am Mr. Inclusive. As we've talked of before, you know, there's nothing, you can't really be inclusive when you cost this much. I guess, but I wonder if it is like, you know, like De Beers holds all of the diamonds and just lets them come bit by bit. Well, yes, that's what, to make them artificially expensive. I wonder if there is a bit that says, do you know what, if you are come to see me, you are not going to be able to afford to go and see Alex Warren or Benson Boone.

It's just me. It's just Harry. Well, that's why the conspiracy theories now kind of funnel so frequently through the management because nobody wants to think that the guy they love is like this. So you have to think that there are people who are making him behave like this. No, you can do what he wants. Exactly. But you see it's all part, but this is why people have to feel that

because you don't really want to think that Harry Stiles would rinse you without a second thought. So you have to think. There's plenty of people who go home, you know what he could rinse me without a second thought. Well, quite right. But what they really want to say is, no, he is under the thumb of management who are making him do this. That isn't how it works. Anyway, the album is terrific. It's going to be number one this week.

He's also had a number one single this year, Aperture, which leads me, can I do this geeky chart thing? Please do it. So Aperture is the only song this year that would have been number one, apart from Man I Need, by Olivia Dean. So Olivia Dean's Man I Need has been the best-selling single in the UK all year, like the whole of the year, apart from the number one. the one week of Harry Stars. However, it has not been number one at any point. And so I just wanted to talk about why that is. It's quite geeky. But if you're interested in the charts, I think it's interesting. So we, I think most people know now the charts are based on sales and streams. And the way it works is one sale is one sale, one physical sale. But it is a hundred streams

equals one sale. Okay. So a sale, a physical sale, that counts as one. A stream, a hundred counts as one. And you add the sales together with the streaming and that's where you get your chart position. Now, Man I Need came out last year. It was number one for one week. It was in the top ten. It was number two for seven weeks, I think. It's in the top ten for it's been the top ten for 24 weeks. Huge song. Definitively, Olivia Dean's biggest song and she's become such a massive artist. But it is currently this week, again, it's the biggest selling song. It's number eight in the charts. And the reason that is, I just think, again, I'll say this because I, think it's interesting. And if you're interested, by the way, in anything geeky in the charts,

it's an amazing blog called Chart Watch by a guy called James Masterson that I read every week. I just, I love, I'm fascinated in the charts. Anyway, but you can read about all this stuff. But the reason that it is not number one is there is a thing called ACR, which is accelerated chart ratio. So. First time on the podcast? Yeah. You get SCR, which is standard chart ratio, which is, as I say, that thing of 100 streams is a sale. Yeah. And a sale is a sale. After 10 weeks in the charts, if you've been in the charts for 10 weeks and you've

had three consecutive weeks of declining sales, you go into ACR, which is accelerated chart ratio. And then you have to have 200 streams to count as one sale. And that's to try and stop the charts being clogged up by the same songs, like endlessly, which... Even though they are. Oh, they're insanely clogged up. But it would be even more clogged up.

And man I need, literally after the first 10 weeks, had three weeks of declining sales. So from that moment on, it's had to have 200 streams for every single sale. And that's meant that it has been, it is outsold, actually outsold, every single number one this year, apart from Harry Stiles,

but there's never been number one. The song that is number one at the moment is another Olivia Dean song. It's the Olivia Dean and Sam Fender duet, Rained Me In. So that's number one, as I say, sold fewer than the other one. But that has been out.

It went to number one, two weeks ago, three weeks ago, and holds the record for, it had been in the top 40 for 35 weeks before it went to number one, before it went to number one, which is a record. There's been lots of records that took years and years to get to number one, but that had been consecutively in the top 40 for 35 weeks before it hit number one. If you look at the chart sales of it, it has never had three weeks in a row of declining sales, so it has never gone into ACR. It is still in SCR.

It's still 100 streams for a sale. and a couple of times it's had two weeks in a row where it's dropped and then the next week it's gone up again. So it's never, ever, ever gone into ACR. So that is number one despite the fact that man I need sells more copies. A song like Ray's, where the head is my husband, it's about number 14 this week. That went into ACR after about 10 weeks as well.

So all of those old songs, the ACR songs, would be much, much higher up the charts. But because of this thing which is attempting to stop there being all of these kind of Stop it being gummed up, even though it is so gumbed up. There are 19 songs in the top 100 at the moment to have been there for over a year. 19 songs. I'll go through some of them.

Espresso by Sabrina Carpenter is still in there. Good luck, Babe Chapel Rowan. Stargazing, Miles Smith, Aperture, of course, stick season are still in the charts. That's so true, Gracie Abrams. Messy, Lolly Young. Loose Control by Teddy Swims, that's still in there. You've still got Mr. Brightside by The Kidners, which has been in the chart for 495 weeks. But without ACR, these things would be even higher.

So it's an attempt to stop this happening, but the charts are not what they were. That's the way you didn't have top of the pops anymore because it's the same songs week after week after week. But don't you have that feeling? This is what we've been talking about before, which is that sort of slight feeling of cultural inertia and that you're sort of stuck entreecal and you can't move forward in the way at the speed of which you did. Because a huge part of modernity is the kind of shock of the new. And there are obviously bits of UK music that are the kind of sub-genres that are very, the kind of sub-genres that are very, very avant-garde and there's lots of churn and it's very interesting, something like drill or whatever it is or, I don't know, you know, experimental indie or something like that. There's a lot

going on. The pot is becoming very conservative. What it sort of is. I mean, it's brilliant. I mean, there are so many amazing pop, I mean, there's so many huge amazing pop tunes. They just hang around for a really, really, really long time. In a way, they sort of come classics long before the classics of the 80s did because- They're like catalogue when they're new. Something like Ordinary by Alex Warren, which has been in the chart for over a year. You know, it's a great track, beautiful things by Benson Bean. These songs, but they hang around for a very, very long time. The other thing they try and do is, so for example, Harry Starr's album, has got 12 tracks on it, I think.

All 12 of those would hit the charts next week because of streaming. So you don't really suffer as a single anymore. It's literally just a single track counts as a single. All 12 of those would be in the charts, but you're only allowed three tracks in the chart. So your three highest-selling songs will be in the chart. Olivia Dean, funnily enough, has got four because one of her songs is this duet with Sam Fender. Bruno Mars has got four as well.

But you are in only allow three, which means that the top ten, otherwise the week Tader Swift comes out, the top ten would all be Tader Swift, you know. And the week that Harry Stars comes out, the top ten would all be Harry Stars, which again you can't have. That's why music is somewhere that you're not feeling

that the culture is propelling and you, because things hang around for so long. And you definitely feel it in video games. visual art for sure Hollywood films no everything feels retready TV sometimes but not really

pop music no I just don't think so they're kind of in the risk management business I think it's becoming very conservative I do think that the things that hang around and the sense of it just these kind of hegemonys that just go on it's not the same it doesn't feel experimental I think this

might be a chart issue rather than a culture issue is what I will say so I love the charts and I fetishize the charts and I look at it every week and as I say this I'm it's amazing blog chart watch if you're like me it's great and it's full of amazing little facts and where the charts are going but if you forget the charts which most people do actually the amount of music and the quality of music and the diversity of music is kind of never been better there's this is what people are actually what most people are listening to and that that's why the charts even

though they seem an antiquated concept or not, because it is actually quite interesting to find out what most people are listening to. And so even though there is all this other stuff out there, there is a sense of hegemony at the top. Yeah, but that's just popular culture, isn't it? Well, I don't think it has always been, actually. I think that it has felt much more dynamic. And I actually think that some, as I say, something like gaming or visual arts where you do think there is a dynamism, you feel less of that in pop. Yeah, maybe. I just think we live in sort of one of the glory eras of pop music. That's for sure. So we probably don't live in the glory eras of, you know, new, young, cool bands playing in small venues, which is a shame because

that's what I grew up with. But I definitely think we're living in a golden age of pop music. I will, to bang a drum I've bang many times before, 19 of the top 20 are solo artists. Yes. There's only one band of the top 20, and that's the Italian house band, Milky. So, you know, that's the chance for you. But I know it's geeky. I'm aware it's geeky. I thought that people maybe don't know. ACR and the fact you're only those three songs in the chart at any given time. Explain a lot of,

they're desperately trying to unclog the charts. It is almost impossible. I mean, there's two Fleet with Mac tracks in the top 100. I mean, you know, come on. And, you know, I like Fleet with Mac. And I cannot lie. No one's saying you don't like Fleet with Mac.

Any recommendations this week? Yes, I have got, I would love to recommend a new novel, which is out on Tuesday, this Tuesday. Look what you made me do by John. Lanchester who wrote Capital, he writes lots of novels and also a brilliant sort of essayist. It's gone on entertainment angle, Richard. It's about, okay, a recent widow is forced to sort of excavate her marriage after the hit TV show of the year, like the one show that everyone's up, everyone's talking about, appears to be completely

based on her marriage. And it is a black comedy about intergenerational resentment and loathing. I would say. Boomers v. Millennials. Anyway, it's funny. It's really good. So I would recommend that. Look what you made me do by John Lanchester, which is out today.

I'm going to recommend two home renovation shows, both on IPlayer. One is the Alancar Amanda Holden renovation shows. This one is the Greek one. They're so brilliant. I think they are the best of Alan Carr and the best of Amanda Holden at the same time. They're so delightful in these shows. You genuinely see something about them

and their relationship is delightful, and they're doing up a house. But I mean, that's by the bye. There's so many laughs in that show. I think Alan and Amanda's Greek adventure. But also, if you enjoyed designing Hebrides, which I talked about before, Banjo, who started on Interior Design Masters with Alan Carr. It all comes together. This is like my version of Harry Stiles and Louis Tomlinson.

He and his husband, Roe are doing up a hotel on a tiny island called Olver, which is just off Mull. And it's really, really, really beautifully made. and their relationship is lovely. It's called Banjo and Rose Grand Hotel, I think. And it's just really a very, very charming look at Island Life. Again, they're doing overhouse. I mean, that's absolutely fine.

But it's a really, really lovely bit of television. So Alan and Amanda's Greek Adventure and Banja and Rose Grand Island Hotel, my recommendations for the week. But I will also be reading that John Lancaster novel. What was it called again? Look what you made me do. Look, that's a good title as well. Look what you made me do.

Right. We are back on Thursday. Yes, our Q&A is With Tim Davy, the outgoing Director General of the BBC, which promises to be extremely interesting. You sent in some genuinely brilliant questions. I'm very proud of you all.

They're some really good questions there, really good questions. And our bonus episode this week is on the village people who 50% of the band appear to think is a straight band, has only ever been a straight band, and 50% of the band think is a gay band. It's a really good story. It's such a fascinating story. Anyway, you can join as a member,

the rest is entertainment.com. Otherwise, we'll see you on Thursday. See you on Thursday, everyone. Getting ready for a game means being ready for anything. Like packing a spare stick. I like to be prepared. That's why I remember, 988, Canada's Suicide Crisis Helpline. It's good to know, just in case.

Anyone can call or text for free confidential support from a train responder anytime. 988 suicide crisis helpline is funded by the government in Canada.