The Rest Is Entertainment - The Pop Culture Moment That Broke Our Hearts

Episode Date: April 15, 2026

Which celebrity death still brings Marina to tears? Is Martin Lewis irreplaceable? What is a redshirt? Richard Osman and Marina Hyde tackle your questions on TV, film and the world of entertainmen...t. 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 Assistant Producer: Imee Marriott Senior Producer: Joey McCarthy Social Producer: Bex Tyrrell Exec Producer: Neil Fearn Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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Starting point is 00:00:00 The rest of entertainment is presented by Octopus Energy. Now, they've looked at admin and decided it should behave much more like a game show. When you provide your meter readings, they will give you a spin of a wheel, which allows you to win prizes, allows you to win octop points, which you can spend in the shoptipus. Yeah, it's the gamifying of the boring bits of your admin. Now, listen, you know how much I love Octopus Energy. The prizes, I'm going to say, are not quite up to the standard of the Wheel of Fortune. The biggest ever prize on the Wheel of Fortune.
Starting point is 00:00:28 So over $1 million. What feels more similar is some of the random prizes they'll get on the Wheel of Fortune. They've had ceramic Dalmatians. I saw one where you could win a Gucci calculator. You think, okay, that's two of my favorite things. There was an onyx bin. Yeah, I'm not, again, I'm not dissing the prizes, but I would have probably gone for the Dalmatian.
Starting point is 00:00:50 None of these things you have to worry about with octopus energy. It is simply octopoints to spend in the shoptipus. Well, you have to submit your meter reading. and a spin. And then you get prizes you don't actually have to persuade yourself you want like money off your next bill. You can get a thousand pound off your bit. If you get the top prize which is 800,000 octa points,
Starting point is 00:01:07 thousand pound off your bill, just on the spin of a wheel. This episode is brought to you by FedEx. These days, the power move isn't having a big metallic credit card to drop on the check at a corporate launch. The real power move is leveling up your business with FedEx
Starting point is 00:01:26 intelligence and accessing one of the biggest data networks powered by one of the biggest delivery networks. Level up your business with FedEx, the new power move. Hello and welcome to this episode of the Restors Entertainment, Questions and Answers Edition. I'm Marina.
Starting point is 00:01:50 And I am Richard Osman. Hello everyone. Hey Marina. Hello, Richard. How are you? I'm really, really well. And we've got a lovely, I said, broad sweep of questions here.
Starting point is 00:01:59 We've gone behind the scenes with people who've given us answers about shows that we love. But we're going to start with a topical one. Let's get the pain out of the way early. And something that I want to know the answer to, and I know you have some thoughts on it. It is about Kanye West. And the question is from Kat. And the Kat asks, I was reading this week that Pepsi and Diageo have dropped their sponsorship of Wireless Festival after they announced Kanye as the headline act.
Starting point is 00:02:24 How does this work? What clauses would be included in contracts that allow sponsors to drop out? And how would this affect the funding of the festival? You think Wireless might have consulted with their sponsors before signing a headline act? to avoid such mess. Or maybe this is the publicity they wanted. Yeah, I mean, you'd think, wouldn't you, Kat? When you wrote your question, that was, you were correct,
Starting point is 00:02:42 but we now know that the Wireless Festival is no longer happening. Was that the publicity they wanted? So I think we can answer that bit fairly. I think they didn't want to sort of self-immolate, but they have. But yes, if your lawyer has done their job, then the contract should have something called a morals clause or a reputational brand safety clause, which allows you as a sponsor to withdraw,
Starting point is 00:03:03 funding or to take your branding off it and distance yourself publicly. Which just makes absolute sense, isn't it? Because there has to be a synergy between the brand and what's happening and you have to have some control over that suddenly if the event does something crazy, that you can just go. To be quite clear, you're giving the money. There is some suggestion that lots of this deal was done over text message. I don't even know. As I say, the festival is no longer happening.
Starting point is 00:03:28 So well done, guys. But if they bring you into disrepute by association or they cause people, public scandal or outrage or they conflict with your brand values in a sort of meaningful way, then you can, there's an off ramp for you to exit without penalty. So, for example, one of the headline access released a song called Hull Hitler. Yeah, I mean, as an extreme example, if they'd done that. Yeah, or sold T-shirts with swastikas on. And done like one stupid apology in a trade mag or wherever it was.
Starting point is 00:03:57 I mean, no. And sometimes actually festivals and big live events will have effectively, content approval will happen via the sponsors. And that's just, I'm afraid, the way of doing business. By the way, almost always, it's sort of meaningless. If you're going to have a festival, it's just people playing music, there's going to be
Starting point is 00:04:15 very, very little that's going to upset the Pepsi coders of this world in, you know, cold play. But if you book, you know, anti-Semitism's leading progator, I don't know, but they should have realised because it happened at Coachella in 2022. And I think they, I think Coachella pivoted quickly enough and said, oh, okay, we won't have anything to do with this.
Starting point is 00:04:37 And we'll get rid of him. Adidas obviously ended the Uzi deal. And they had, I mean, I think millions of unsold sneakers. Gap and Balenciaga cut ties. People have been doing this with him for a long time. It seems that an absurd misstep from WILUS to think that, you know, even if this man had been going through an episode and he was deeply ashamed and he understood what he did, you don't come back yet. Yeah, sorry.
Starting point is 00:05:06 You really have to do an awful lot more work. Yeah. Than that in order to be, you know, headlining a massive festival for three days. In the middle of London. He was the headliner every single night. Yeah. But as I say, yeah, if your lawyer has done the job,
Starting point is 00:05:20 you should be able to walk away and not be in breach of the contract. The contract should contain effectively an escape hatch. And most modern contracts, because I was speaking to a contract law about this, but actually because of the nature of the nature. of like viral scandal and things can just blow up out of the know, which they just didn't in the old days. They just didn't. And because of how social media is turbocharged everything, modern contract law basically anticipates kind of known, unknown, you know, a controversy that could happen. And they're much more flexible than they ever were in the past.
Starting point is 00:05:52 There's something called a material adverse change clause. So if it becomes less commercially viable, the event, you just get out of it. But the one thing that this person said to me is that It very rarely goes to court. Because once this has happened, you don't want to make it even worse by, so they tend to settle quietly because the reputational harm is even bigger. This is why going for sponsors is a really, is a big tactic these days. And it is effective. By which you mean activists.
Starting point is 00:06:19 Yeah, people who want to, people who are angry about this. Instead of complaining to wireless, you complain to Pepsi. And if you don't think their phone was ringing off the hook and people were saying, why would you want to be associated? That is always roots up now. do it all the time. So that has become a very, very big part of sort of activism really and getting things stopped is by targeting the companies that sponsor. So if you're- Well, we've seen it before with book festivals and things like that where people have, you know, big companies are pulled out of book festivals because of, you know, being targeted by activists.
Starting point is 00:06:50 This feels to me like a situation where, I mean, of course this was the right thing to do. But of course this was going to happen. So I can't understand how they couldn't possibly have foreseen this. But if I was someone who was working at the Wiredest Festival, if I'm a rigour, if I, you know, I've got a concession stand or something like that, I'd be, I'd be suing the wireless people. Because this is so obvious. It's such a dumb decision to book him, that you've put everyone out of work that they were expecting that might be a big part of their income stream. And again, another, we've talked to a couple of times recently about imagining a meeting. And, you know, there's a, there's a, there's a wireless meeting at some point where a group of
Starting point is 00:07:26 people all sat around and say, what do we think? Has he served his time? He does seem contrite. And I don't think he was well, and it is Kanye, and that nobody at that meeting just said, oh, whoa, whoa, whoa, well, let's, you know what? Let's for a couple of years just booked somebody else. You deserve not to be having your festival. But I'm sorry for all the people who worked there and derived income from it, because whoever made that decision is an idiot. I mean, it seems absolutely insane.
Starting point is 00:07:52 Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Now, Richard, we had a question last week from Susie about, based on the Scott Mills story, about depping about replacing presenters at the last minute. And I believe you wanted to do a follow up on that. I did because I'd been thinking about it, Susie, because we talked about everyone is replaceable,
Starting point is 00:08:09 was essentially what we were saying. And I was trying to think was that the case? And I was thinking about Graham Norton, but even I think of Graham Norton, Mr. Weik Claudia came in. And funny enough, Graham started his whole career by replacing Jack Docherty on his Channel 5 show again with Jonathan Ross. What I was trying to think of is those shows which are weekly, and as live and are built entirely around the personality of the presenter.
Starting point is 00:08:34 And I couldn't think of one. And then I did think of one, which is the Martin Lewis Money Show, which is one of those shows, which has very, very quietly become an enormous hit. It's live, it's Martin Lewis, you know, he's so well respected by everybody. So I thought, well, I wonder, how would they deal with Martin Lewis not being well? I wondered if he was the exception to prove the rule. So I asked Martin Lewis, Martin Lewis said, do you know what I? what? He said, I was listening to the podcast and I thought exactly the same thing. I thought,
Starting point is 00:09:02 I am indispensable. He didn't say that to be fair. But he said, I wonder if they do have a plan. So he very, very kindly asked his producer. He said, I've never thought about this, but what happens if I'm ill? And so can I, this is, Susie, you've gone two for one here. He should do a health show as well. If he's never worried about being ill, he should also do a health show. I never missed an episode of pointless in 2000 episodes. I mean, a lot of the time you don't miss stuff. I say why, because you're a professional. Because of doctor theatre. Because of doctor theatre. do you mean cocaine? Because I always got it, Dr. Showbiz,
Starting point is 00:09:32 and I always think that sounds like a code word, but it's not. No, it's not cocaine. It's the thing that the adrenaline, whatever, that just seems to carry people through, including if they have a sort of norovirus during a live theatre performance, they're somehow able to get through. We've talked about it before in previous episodes. So, you know, Martin Lewis said,
Starting point is 00:09:51 I wondered if my show is an exception. We've long discussed what would happen if I suddenly wasn't well enough, and we've never really found a solution. Let me check with my example. which she did. She says, it's almost like, you know, when the Queen Mother died.
Starting point is 00:10:05 There is a detailed business continuity plan for the Martin Lewis Money Show Live. One, if Martin had an accident, we would go to a contingency show. Network has a contingency program at all times ready to go. For a long time, it was dinner dates. Two, if it were a case of transport,
Starting point is 00:10:21 broken leg or quarantine and Martin's up for doing it, as he almost certainly would be, he's worked through illness a number of times, we would do it from wherever he is, e.g. hospital bed with Jeanette running the studio, much like we did it with him from home during the pandemic. Three, if Martin were ill and we had a day or so notice,
Starting point is 00:10:36 I'd look at an episode that were still editorially valid, could be rerun, i.e. Council tax cost cutting, and strap it that it was a repeat and edit accordingly now to a new time slot. So there you go. Even Martin Lewis is not irreplaceable, although he may have to be replaced by dinner dates. Yeah, there's not a sort of, you know, Deputy Martin Lewis anywhere out Couldn't be, right?
Starting point is 00:10:58 No. Apart from Jeanette, of course. And Claire ends that message with hope that's useful. Claire, it certainly is useful. It is more than useful. And I like knowing, just like I did with the plan for the death of the queen, I like knowing what would happen. Should he be unable to go on in any format, including hospital bed?
Starting point is 00:11:16 Nothing stops, Lewis. Nothing. Marina, a question for you from Sarah. We've really slipped into this thing of not having surnames again. It's lax. We've got to be careful. You'll allow this one? Well, I thought, I guess so.
Starting point is 00:11:32 But it's come on. Because I've thought about this one and this is one I might genuinely cry in. So I'm holding it to get. Yeah, it's really. Ask the question because I know what it is. Sarah, your question is, which pop culture moment broke your heart the most? I still have memories of that fateful day when Jerry left the Spice Girls. Well, I thought about this in advance.
Starting point is 00:11:50 And some of these I could really actually crying. But the cancellation of Twin Peaks in 1991 was a heartbreaker for me. That's sort of like, I absolutely. because I've talked about it on the show before, just how it completely opened my mind to a different sort of world and it felt like something so strange and wonderful on television and I absolutely loved it. I thought a lot about,
Starting point is 00:12:10 when I was thinking about this, I thought a lot about deaths, and I'm definitely not ranking any of these things because I'm not exactly going to rank people's deaths, but the death of River Phoenix, the death of Kirk Cobain, the death of Amy Winehouse, and the death of George Michael.
Starting point is 00:12:24 Those really, I found those. I mean, there were so many that kind of get, but obviously all of those were untimely and I just thought those those really kind of grabbed me but in fictional things I thought almost felt I found more affecting in some ways all just have stayed with me and it's often the endings of things and I'm not going to do any spoilers so I'm just like I think I can do it without spoilers the end of black adder goes forth yeah that's so that I think that that will be the vote of a lot of people at home yeah the end of the sopranos funny enough there's a lot from Doctor Who
Starting point is 00:12:56 that I cried whilst watching. The end of maybe David Tennant and Matt Smith as doctors I've found really emotional. But there's an episode where Catherine Tate is sort of the end of her particular arc and she says, don't make me go back.
Starting point is 00:13:12 And there's sometimes where there's a line where that distills a whole show and you had that in something like succession with, I love you, but you're not serious people. That's the whole show in one line. And don't make me go back. For me is on, on, to Who, the sort of wonder and companionship, but also the tragedy and loneliness that are involved
Starting point is 00:13:33 by the show. So it's just, you know, it's five words and it's sort of the whole show. And funnily enough, again, no spoilers, but John Pointing and big boys as well, there's a, there's a line in that which has a similar effect. The death thing, I think, yeah, I've, I felt only, I think, because of my particular upbringing and the things that I grew up loving, I felt, you know, when Terry Wogan passed away, that was a big one for me. It's fascinating, isn't that the thing it's always and I this is this this will sound even more ridiculous but when John Virgo died recently
Starting point is 00:13:59 that was like that took like a big chunk of me and I knew you I knew I knew yeah we exchanged on that because I knew but that's you know that that's the joy of entertainment that's a joy of film and television and the things that we grow up with is you know people you know we talk about the ridiculousness of parasocial relationships
Starting point is 00:14:17 but those are also important can I say my actually the one that I think gets me the most every time And it's not a forgotten television series at all, but lots of our much younger audience will not know about it. There was a TV series called Our Friends in the North, which was written by Peter Flannery. It is an absolute masterpiece.
Starting point is 00:14:36 An absolute masterpiece, I think it's 9-1 hours. The end of that, even talking about this, I could actually cry on this. It's over the final credits, don't look back in anger, plays. And it's a contemporary song. And it's taken us from the 60s this show. The time that it aired was when I, I was like the age of the characters in the very first episode and by the time in three decades on. And I just remember thinking it's all about loss and like, oh my God, you're sort of reckoning with youthful idealism and that song.
Starting point is 00:15:07 And I was like, oh my God, is this how it's all going to end? Because I was like the age of their characters when I watched that show in the first episode. The end of that show just is an absolute gut punch. And just that music over the credits. They had a different song over the credits as I remember this each one. but suddenly that song has never made more perfect sense than played over the end credits of our friends in the north. And if people haven't watched our friends in the north, first you really, really recommend it. But we spoke on our Tuesday episode about euphoria and about skins, which are shows where that made people much more famous than they were.
Starting point is 00:15:41 And that show, you had a future James Bond, Daniel Craig, he had a future Doctor Who, Christopher Eccleston. He had the incredible Gina McKee. You had Mark Strong, who people didn't know particularly there who's in everything. and that was just like a TV on some broadcast. That's the quartet that we follow through those decades. They are our friends in the north. Yeah. What a got punch.
Starting point is 00:16:01 Anyway. What a lovely question. And Sarah mentions Jerry with the Spice Girls, which is what we're doing our bonus episodes on. At the moment, and we've got a new one coming out of this week. Jerry's departure is, I believe, pending. It is pending.
Starting point is 00:16:11 So Sarah, listen, that's a trigger warning for you. Shall we go to some adverts? Let's. This episode is brought to you by Bumble. Now, there's a modern. phenomenon when someone says they're on the apps. But what they actually mean is they downloaded them, opened them once and then immediately felt tired. So technically on the apps, but nowhere near them. Making and updating a dating profile can be weirdly exhausting. Too many decisions,
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Starting point is 00:17:45 It's exceptional but effortless. Like actually effortless. Simply press, brew, and explore. Nispresso, what else? Keep exploring at Nespresso. come welcome back everybody now richard after you're very moving him to sort your life out last week we have a sort your life out related question from denise tomlinson surname thank you thank you for the surname as well denise she says how many people work on sort your life out behind the scenes
Starting point is 00:18:12 i simply don't believe all of that can be achieved in a single week is it by an army of runners thank you denise so if if people don't know that show and i really really do recommend it there is a house which is overcrowded cluttered what have you everything in the house and the house has moved out in boxes, everything. Every single item, every single item in that house is then put in a warehouse. All the CDs are being one pile, all the books are being one pile, all the clothes are being one pile. Everything is sort of laid out an enormous warehouse. There's in a few days where the householders go through everything and work at what they need to keep. In the meantime, work has been done on the house, and then the stuff gets moved back in.
Starting point is 00:18:49 That's the basic format. So there is a lot going on in that, and I think Denise is quite right. It doesn't feel like that the four people on screen would be able to do all of it. So I spoke to Charlotte Brooks, who's the exec producer of Sort Your Life Out. I might have to read some of this off the paper because she's given a very, very good detailed reply. And if you like, sort your life out, you will love this. Charlotte says, so this show is over seven days, essentially they've got a week to do this whole thing. The seven-day turnaround is genuine. Before the process begins, the team conducts interviews and films that before shots,
Starting point is 00:19:23 but the house is left exactly as it is. Families are explicitly told not to tidy up. That's always the question you have. Is this been made worse? This has been made better. Charlotte says it's not been made worse. It's not been made better. It definitely has been made worse either.
Starting point is 00:19:35 They don't go and they're deliberately messed things up as well. So the packing is done by the family alongside the on-screen talent. That's Dilley, Rob, Ewan and Stacey. With, with, comma, with around 15 runners and a removals company handling the heavy lifting. Because I think it's fair to say they have a lot of stuff. Oh, there is a lot of stuff. It's kind of the point of the show. And these are also making a TV show as well.
Starting point is 00:19:59 I don't happen to do pieces to camera. So it's, yeah, you need a lot of it. If anyone is moved house, you need a lot of people, right? Unlike a normal house move, everything is packed by item type rather than by room. So all the books together, all the charges together, all the toothbrushes together. This makes the warehouse layout possible. That's God. Imagine if you had to move house by item rather than by room.
Starting point is 00:20:20 That would be insane. I put all of our cables in one. I want to say box, but of course it was like about five boxes. And I said to Kieran, I want you to sit down with me because this is so abnormal. And he was like, but I need all these cables. I was like, you just don't need nine scar leads. What even is one anymore? You don't need any of these.
Starting point is 00:20:39 It was so I tried to do just on cables, Assort your Life out. And you know what? We rationalised it down to about 100 cables, I would say one of which we'll ever touch again. But at least we got rid of some of the emotional baggage hanging him down maybe. And by the way, if you haven't seen Sort Your Life Out, that is a pracy of it in about 10 seconds. It's exactly that. Why do we keep what we keep?
Starting point is 00:21:02 What does it mean? Charlotte then says, unpacking and laying out the warehouse takes a team of roughly 20 people, five or six producers plus the runners, about a day and a half. So there's an amazing shot, or one of the really great shots in Sort Your Life Out
Starting point is 00:21:15 is when you see everything in their house just laid out. It takes a day and a half to do that. I did about four hours on the cables, trust me. I know the feeling. Cables is the worst thing you can put together. because they just, they tie, they like, even like one cable ties itself up. That's a crazy thing to do.
Starting point is 00:21:29 For a nice present to try and make it go better, I bought some nice cable ties that we could wrap the ones that we kept with. I think though if you grew up without technology, now there is a lot. The temptation is never to throw a cable away because it's, you never really know which is which. So I'm with Kieran on this one. Yeah, I always say that you're saving this for a presidential archive.
Starting point is 00:21:48 As on so much else. Yes, Kieran's library. The current record on sort of, your life out is 400 boxes of clutter across seven lorries. Wow. The production tries to find a warehouse within 15 minutes of the family's home. The furthest they've managed is about 90 minutes away. So you've got to get like an empty warehouse.
Starting point is 00:22:07 Yeah. That's a good call to get if you're a warehouse owner. Yeah. Suddenly sort your life out of coming in for a week. Producers aren't just unpacking. They're identifying meaningful story items and logging where they sit in the warehouse. So the team that talks to the families extensively beforehand about specific objects, a teddy bear say, they can then be tracked from the
Starting point is 00:22:24 initial snoop, the initial snoop, through the warehouse to the final renovation. This can't be right, but Charlotte says it's right and everything else she says is right. With up to around 400,000 items in an average home, without that work, it would seem completely random to the viewer. There can't be 400,000 items in a home. God, I mean, presumably there can be. They would know. 40,000? Listen, I'm going to go back for... Just defer to these people.
Starting point is 00:22:49 The show is amazing. Listen, it is amazing. Families are asked to remove anything super valuable before the process It starts. Anything private or confidential found during packing, including adult accessories, which they find a lot of, are placed discreetly in a sealed box and returned off camera. That's the other question people would always ask. Do they ever find? And the answer is, yes, they do. They should have an after-out version.
Starting point is 00:23:10 They should do. After filming, discarded items are stored for about six days as a grace period. That's interesting. So when they've agreed to get rid of stuff, they get stored for six days. Families often need a week to adjust to the reorganised home, and the producers give them a tour and they remain available by phone to help them find anything. Firstly, anything that they've kept that they've lost, but also anything they've agreed to throw away,
Starting point is 00:23:31 they can bring back within that six-day grace period. Selling everything is the family's responsibility. The show may help sell to set up, say, a vintage account or suggest a car boot sale, but it's not their job to shift the stuff. We also asked Charlotte about Stacey. She's such a brilliant presenter on that show. And she says, her Stacey's DNA is all over the show.
Starting point is 00:23:49 Her total empathy, zero judgment, and genuine obsession with crafting an organisation, and her tap-to-tide Instagram videos made her a natural fit. Her life experiences as a mother of five and a blended family means she walks into every home believing it could be hers. You can't produce that. Thank you, Charlotte. I mean, listen, as a testament to the producers craft, you can see how much is produced on that show and the incredible work that goes into it to give us those wonderful moments.
Starting point is 00:24:13 But the best producers in the world also will always end with, and you can't produce that because there is. There's also the, you have to leave room for the magic as well. I love that. a masterclass. I have a question for you now from Alex MacDonald. Surname. Thank you, Alex. Alex says, you've recently discussed Mcuffins and Chekhov's Gun. I wonder if you can discuss red shirt characters in films. What are the origins of the term and what are some of your favorite red shirt characters? We're really going through all the McGuffins, Chequence, and the other red shirts. A red shirts comes from the original Star Trek series, and
Starting point is 00:24:46 what it means is expendable characters who end up dying to sort of show you how dangerous the situation is. And the red shirt came from whenever they were, they'd be down to another planet. They'd always say there'd be Kirk, they'd be Spock, but there'd also always just be some junior kind of crew member in a red shirt. Red shirts, security personnel rank wore red shirts
Starting point is 00:25:09 and within Starfleet. And so those people would often die. Actually, yeah, someone did an audit, I think, and it actually found there's fewer red shirts than died than you think. Gold shirts, that's command line. they, quite a few of them died, and Blue, which was famously science and medical, wrapped up quite a lot of casualties as well.
Starting point is 00:25:30 As I said, what they're doing is they're showing, the purpose of them in a narrative is to show you how dangerous the situation could be. What are the big bads that you're facing? What's their method of dispatch? And so you're supposed to think, oh, my God, but that could happen to our leading characters too. Exactly. But without it having to happen to your leading character.
Starting point is 00:25:46 And it might happen to bank security guards or it might happen to whatever. Sorry, I keep mentioning Kieran in this, but Kieran, who's, grew up with his father of watching films and who would always say, oh my God, end of at one at a certain moment. So he had that sort of structural sense of it. Kieran always does this when watching TV or watching a movie. He'll be like, oh my God, it's tickets for him. If someone comes in and it's like really sweet and it's got a kid brother, they just want to
Starting point is 00:26:08 get back home to, but he's not one of the main characters. Within two seconds, Kieran will have said to our children, is tickets for him. That's the, I think it's quite an Australian expression. His father of Australia, you know, punching your ticket, getting whatever, meaning, you know, this person's going to die in a minute. And he's like, thank you, we know. Anyway, I think slightly, the ones I'm going to, it's sort of, if they just do just get shot the minute they get off the landing craft, then they're such a sort of low-level henchmen
Starting point is 00:26:34 that we can't even remember them. So for me, when you slightly care, you care about them. So that's not a red shirt character, someone just in the background getting shot. Well, they sometimes were in the Star Trek thing just to show you. But it's usually somebody who's had a couple of lines or all the beginnings of a character, something that's kind of hints of a character. Agreed. Character arc.
Starting point is 00:26:51 You think, oh, maybe this person's going to stick around? I'll do three. I'm glad you haven't asked me them in order, although I think I do have a favourite. But I actually... Would you do your favourite last? Yes, I will do my favourite last. Were you going to? Yes, I was actually on this occasion.
Starting point is 00:27:04 I'm learning real fast. Yeah. I mean, I wouldn't say real fast, but I'll agree with learning. Okay. I just find it funny when the Steve Coogan character in Tropic Thunder steps on one of his own landmines. Mostly because Steve Coogan is actually famous. So making him a bit of a red shirt is funny and it's really unexpected. And he's not necessarily, you wouldn't necessarily say his tickets for you, mate.
Starting point is 00:27:28 Yeah, that's a real subset, by the way, is famous people who become red shirt catches. Because the one thing you know when a famous person's in it is they're sticking around throughout the whole thing. Or also the murder, or. Yes, yeah, exactly. But occasionally you know that someone has gone into a show as a favour to a mate and they've just done a day. Yeah. And they've gone, oh, yeah, of course, dude. What, the character steps on a lamb on.
Starting point is 00:27:46 Yeah, yeah, I'll do that. Don't worry. So Steve Coogan is the director in Tropic Thunder that that happens to. In a way, because of the nature and the origin of the red shirt trope, I slightly feel like you have to deploy somewhere. There's kind of a quasi military or a lander or something to it to me. And so there's a guy called Porkins in Star Wars A New Hope. And this entire law has built out around this character.
Starting point is 00:28:09 By the way, he's the guy, he's one of the X-wing pilots. He's Red Six. and they get rid of some sort of, you know, deflection thing on the Death Star, but then he gets kind of taken out. But he allows Luke Skywalker a shot at the ventilation shaft. So there is a whole sort of point to him. But it being Star Wars, this entire, and he was, the actor he played him, actually was American, but lived in the UK,
Starting point is 00:28:38 but this enormous law has built up around this particular character. So I find that quite interesting. And then my favourite has to be, because I think it just ticks every redshab box, is Bill Paxton as Hudson in aliens. For me, it's so crucial, you know, he's about to leave the service, he wants to set up a bar, you know, all of that stuff. He's really funny. He has lots of good lines, so he warmed him, but then he does have a sort of breakdown. And he has a very, he has an iconic line, game over man. And then there's a moment where he is running a single hand of resistance, you know, I'll hold them off as long effectively.
Starting point is 00:29:12 he doesn't say this, but I'll hold them off as long as I can. So you know it's a form of sacrifice, and then a drone takes him. But he is posthumously decorated. So for me, that's the full red shirt arc, and it's perfect. And I love Bill Paxton in that movie. And he's the sort of, you can see why he became such a fan favorite. And it's a sort of iconic movie. So I'll put, I'll say Hudson from aliens.
Starting point is 00:29:32 But yes, and it's another great trope, the red shirt. Yeah. So I haven't books all the time when I'm thinking about characters. You know that they, because you know, as I say, you never quite know who's going be killed, or I don't, and I start writing a book. And you know, you'll have people, and some people, you love them so much, you think, oh, no, I want to bring you back for another book. And some people go, I really love you, which means I think it would be quite moving if we kill you. And sometimes people are just awful. Shoot the puppy. And that's my career. Do you remember, by the way,
Starting point is 00:30:03 and this is something, if you want a, like a free shot of getting a question on this podcast, you remember when Bill Paxton and Bill Pullman sort of became famous at the same time? and became absolutely interchangeable in my mind at least. I'd love a question on people who always get mixed up for each other. Oh, that's a good one. Yeah. Yes. Because there are people with either similar names or similar looks who get mixed up for each other all the time.
Starting point is 00:30:25 And there's some synaptic malfunction at one point. And then for thereafter, you always think the other one has the other's career. Yes, exactly that. If you want to word that in a neat way, and by the way, if you want to include your surname, then that might be a good way of getting on the podcast. The rest is entertainment at Gollhanger.com is I think all I need to say now. Yeah, there we go. Thank you so much, everyone.
Starting point is 00:30:45 Thank you, Marina. Thank you. As we've said, our Spice Girls special series is continuing tomorrow for our members. Do feel free to join up for that if you wish to, add for listening and all of that, but you don't have to. And if you don't, then we'll see you all next Tuesday. See you next Tuesday.

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