The Rest Is Entertainment - The Real TV Rich List - REVEALED
Episode Date: July 21, 2025Who tops Richard's list of the best-paid people in British telly? And is Gary Lineker *really* the BBC's highest paid star? Why do all celebs' faces now look the same after filler and botox? Richar...d Osman and Marina Hyde explore the annual BBC talent pay-list and 'spill the tea' on what the broadcaster's hosts are really paid, from Amol Rajan to Jeremy Clarkson - we've got the receipts. The beauty industry, fuelled by our TikTok and influencer obsession, is one of the UK's biggest retail sectors - Marina reveals why we should speak more about this sleeping giant. The Rest Is Entertainment AAA Club: Become a member for exclusive bonus content, early access to our Q&A episodes, ad-free listening, access to our exclusive newsletter archive, discount book prices on selected titles with our partners at Coles, early ticket access to future live events, and our members’ chatroom on Discord. Just head to therestisentertainment.com to sign up, or start a free trial today on Apple Podcasts: apple.co/therestisentertainment. The Rest Is Entertainment is proudly presented by Sky. Sky is home to award-winning shows such as The White Lotus, Gangs of London and The Last of Us. Requires relevant Sky TV and third party subscription(s). Broadband recommended min speed: 30 mbps. 18+. UK, CI, IoM only. To find out more and for full terms and conditions please visit Sky.com For more Goalhanger Podcasts, head to www.goalhanger.com Assistant Producer: Aaliyah Akude Video Editor: Kieron Leslie, Charlie Rodwell, Adam Thornton, Harry Swan Producer: Joey McCarthy Senior Producer: Neil Fearn Head of Content: Tom Whiter Exec Producers: Tony Pastor + Jack Davenport Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
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Hello, and welcome to this episode of The Rest Is Entertainment with me, Marina High.
And me, Richard Osmond.
Hello, Marina.
Hello, Richard.
How are you?
I'm all right. It's nice. Very nice to see you. We've seen each other a few times. This week. Yes. We did a special bonus
Q&A. Thanks everyone for your kind words on that. Yeah, it was not an emergency podcast,
but it was a standalone and it was related. You say it was an emergency podcast, but there
were sirens all around and the whole studio was taped off. So something was going on.
It just said that tape saying emergency podcasts do not cross.
But yeah, okay.
This has been ahead of a week for those stories,
which are not big enough for us to do a whole item about.
But I-
Listen, if you think I didn't spend hours thinking,
how can we do what happened at the Coldplay concert
on the Kiss Cam?
Do you know what?
I'm so glad you said that,
because I was about to say to you,
I cannot go on with the rest of the podcast
before asking you about the gentleman and the lady
on the Coldplay kiss cam.
Yeah. I mean, I have, I think, once seen Rupert Murdoch and Jerry Hall on a kiss cam and that
was obviously disturbing in a number of ways. I mean, everyone's seen it, but if you haven't
seen it, at the Coldplay concert, the kiss cam picks out this couple who was standing
together and the second they see they've been picked out, the guy literally just like goes down on, like hits the floor
basically, goes down below the parapet and she turns around and puts her head in her
hand and does all this sort of stuff.
They very consciously uncouple, don't they?
Yeah, I mean, yeah, they've, everyone else is very conscious of their uncoupling as well
and to the point of which
Chris Martin has to say, oh my god, those two, I mean, are they having an affair or
something?
And it turns out that actually they are not with each other in a formal setting, are they?
Although he is the CEO of a company called Astronomer, no idea what they do, and she
is the chief HR officer.
I mean, there you go.
Listen, who do they report themselves to?
I mean, there's no one left, is there?
Well, I imagine Mrs. Astronomer is going to have something to say about it.
Do you know what?
Terrible.
I mean, God, can you imagine?
It's quite a moment.
I mean, I don't think they made it as easy as they might have for each other.
I like my favorite online comments.
A lot of people made the same one, which is, I thought Coldplay weren't releasing singles
anymore. They just released two there.
There's some very good ones. Yeah. I mean, our producer was telling me that Mrs. Astronomer,
that people were joking that Mrs. Astronomers might say, oh my God, I can't believe I found
out my husband makes Coldplay.
Well, listen, we're not going to do that story. It feels like we just have. But we're not
also as Stephen Colbert being canceled in America, which is an interesting have. But we're not also, as Stephen Colbert being cancelled in America,
which is an interesting story, but to balance it, Banna Mori is coming back. So listen,
for every yin there's a yang, right? Every door that closes a window opens.
Yeah. Now, what are we doing?
We are going to talk about talent pay. So the BBC released their top 25 paid hosts in that list that is deeply
flawed as always. We'll talk about why it's deeply flawed and what the real TV talent
pay list might be. People get paid for various shows. We're going to, as you say, spill the
tea.
Yeah. Oh yeah. There'll be tea spilled all over this desk. Now, we're also going to talk
about the beauty industry, which has become incredibly linked to entertainment, but is worth an unbelievably, surprisingly enormous amount of money a year
to the UK economy.
Like, bye-bye creative industries.
This is like, this is blowing out the water.
So we're going to talk a little bit about that because it is actually very linked to
screens and beauty-tainment, as we might call it.
And which should we start with?
I think we'll start with talent pay. Do you think? That too needs billing. Yeah. Okay, let's do that, as we might call it. And which should we start with? I think we'll start with talent pay.
Do you think?
That too needs spilling.
Yeah.
Okay, let's do that, shall we?
So the BBC always bring out their talent list every year.
Well, they don't always.
Can I go back and say the story of that?
Because they didn't used to.
And it was first floated under the idea of David Cameron's government bringing out that
list.
I remember him.
Yeah, well, you remember him.
But for whatever reason, in that era, the idea that anyone could
be paid more than the Prime Minister, who had the temerity to work in arts or culture,
was always regarded as an affront, presumably to the Prime Minister. Although, you know,
did Tess Daley make Libya a failed state? Did Tess Daley...
I mean, for me, I'm with Cameron, the idea that David Attenborough might get paid more
than this trust, I find absolutely horrifying.
Yeah, when all of these things, yes, exactly.
So, but it didn't actually happen under him.
And they eventually got it started under Theresa May, who was, you know, another 13 and a half
of our ministers ago.
And Karen Bradley, I think, who was the Culture Secretary at the time, who even by the standards of our culture secretary was a complete imbecile. She managed
to get it started. So they do publish this list, which is supposedly the top whatever
earners.
25, yeah.
It's usually called the Gary Lineker list.
Yeah.
But next year it'll be the Gary Lineker Memorial list.
Yeah, because Gary Lineker was always the top of it, at one point, whatever it was,
and that's been a slightly sliding scale.
If you think that Gary Lineker was the highest paid person,
front of house person at the BBC, wake up.
And I do find it quite bad that every single year
it is reported as though it were actually true.
It's a great industry of journalism.
Nobody's earned their money there, let me tell you. Nobody in journalism has earned their money if they're actually
believing that that is the definitive list of who is paid the most at the BBC.
Yeah, so the list is people who are paid directly by the BBC. And so if you look through the
list, Linneco is there, Anna Shearer is there, I think the second place is Zoe Ball, Fiona
Bruce is in the top 10, Nick Robinson. You'll see a lot of them are news presenters or radio presenters and that's because it's one of the few areas where still BBC make
all of their own programs and contract their presenters centrally.
There are very, very few entertainment names on this because Strictly is made through BBC
Studios.
Almost every big entertainment show they do, Michael McIntyre shows are all made through
Hungry Bear.
And we should say that if it's made through BBC Studios, which is the sort of commercial
arm of the BBC, or made via an indie, then you're paid via them and you don't have to
disclose it.
Yeah, and also the indies would go insane if it was disclosed because that's information,
that's sort of fairly market sensitive information.
Although the government always wishes the BBC to publish all its market sensitive information
for whatever reason, or all successive governments
have wished them to do that. Does that deliver extra value to the license payout fee payout
or does it actually just mean that it makes talent poaching easier or whatever?
Yeah, once a year it gives us a fun list. And that's about it, which everyone on it
resents being on because they're like, do you genuinely think that I and Nick Robinson
get paid more than Graham Norton?
Or even than Amal Rajan.
Well, Amal Rajan, I noticed, is on this list. He's somewhere in the teens, I think, Amal
Rajan. 315,000. But of course, that doesn't include...
I'm buzzing in right now.
Hyde, Wadham.
I would like to say I reckon he's on upwards of a million and I'll tell you why because
he has been tried to be poached and they've tried to find things I think to do with him.
You can't be on that much for doing this today program or doing whatever but if they put
you on University Challenge and you make 35 or 40 shows a year and they put you on 12k
a show which doesn't
sound that bad, but when you add up the thing, then you're going high.
No, I am going to, sorry, I'm going to mop up your tea. No way, absolutely no way in
a billion years he's on 12 grand a show for University Challenge.
Well, some people are on much less. So if you look at someone like Clive Murray, who
I don't think has an agent, he will be on a lot less, why would Clive get an agent? Ideally he'll be on a lot less for doing mastermind, but sometimes we find these sort of things
out because other people are trying to poach people and sometimes they might inflate how
much they get paid in order to make their...
Sometimes I find them out by ringing the producers of shows and saying how much this person gets
paid per episode and sometimes they won't tell me, but often they will.
I'm not saying that that's the definitive, but I'm saying it is ballpark and they have found ways
of finessing it. I'm saying it's nowhere near ballpark that would be my view. So the interesting
thing about this list is it comes out every year then immediately everyone goes oh but they're
missing out the you know the big money that the BBC is paying out which slightly hides the fact
that the BBC does actually pay much much, much lower rates for presenters than any other broadcasters.
So if you're doing University Challenge on ITV, you may well be on 12 a show, you might
be on more than that, you might be on 20 a show.
If you're doing it on the BBC, you're not even close to that.
I think number 25 on this list is somewhere around 280,000.
I do 110 episodes of House of Games every year.
Thanks for your service.
I would not be close to that list because of BBC. So you don't get it's, and by the
I'm, listen, that's not me going, where was me? Goodness. I love doing that, but I wouldn't
be anywhere close.
But others that would get more than I would have thought. I mean, Graham Norton would
be on more than Jonathan Ross.
No, I wouldn't have thought so.
I think so.
No, well.
I think he's on 70 a show, Graham Norton.
I'm spilling tea here.
Don't forget he owns a part of Soap Productions as well. It gets made up various different
ways. But the basic principle is don't make me at the end of the show think I'm going
back to the BBC and ask for a pay rise because that's the exact opposite of what I want to
do. You know that I want you to do that at the
end of the show. I always want you to politely ask for a pay rise.
Of course I never will.
Because my view of the BBC, and it is the BBC's view now as well, which is this is funded
by taxpayers, so you do have to pay something because you can get a huge amount of money
elsewhere and most people, especially if they're stand-ups, they're very aware that they can
be out every night earning 40 grand a show because they can just go and play big venues
or they can do a corporate so they can make that sort of money.
So there is a level that would...
Yeah, let's talk about...
We'll have a whole section on pricing comedians later.
But I've been talking to virtually every producer I know at all with anonymity and we have come
up with a lot of things, are the 10 best paid TV presenters on British telly and not a single
person on that BBC list apart from Gary Lineker would be in that top 10.
Not even close.
I've negotiated for years and years as an independent and I can get eight or ten times
more for my presenter if I'm on ITV or Channel 4 than I can if I'm on the BBC.
Production companies accept that.
Most agents have started to accept that.
They didn't five, ten years ago.
They do now. And so the BBC is cutting its cloth about as tightly as they can, I think. Whereas
you only have to look at what people are going to get on Sky, or you only have to look at
what people were being paid on Last One Laughing on Amazon Prime, and you realise...
I agree, on the streamers that. I'm comparing within PS PSBs because I think that's fair.
And I think a lot of other PSBs, by the way, would still say,
oh, there's still that hangover feeling about the BBC,
but in many ways they can outbid on everything.
Yeah, I think most people on this list do, you know,
as I say, they're radio presenters or they're sports presenters,
and they're doing 200, 250, 300 shows a year, which, you know, starts to add up.
That's why most of these people are on the list.
Whereas I could, if I was doing an eight-part entertainment series on ITV, which I'm not
going to do, I would be paid more than I'd be paid for 110 episodes of House of Games.
And rightly so, because it's advertisers' money, and therefore I'll ask for anything,
because it's personal paying, not, you know, British taxpayers.
And the disparity between the two is fairly enormous. When I go through my list of who
I believe to be the 10 best paid presenters on British TV, I'll explain why certain amounts
go to certain people on certain channels for certain shows.
Yeah, I mean, it's quite interesting. I know that there is a sort of counter view. There
is a counter view in the industry. It's certainly interesting to compare something like celebrity traitors on the BBC to I'm a celebrity on ITV
They're these two sort of although we haven't seen the celebrity iteration yet
But we know it's gonna be massive look at the caliber of the people they got
I spoke to somebody who's seen the first episode. I spoke to somebody said to me. Do you want to know who wins?
No, of course, I don't. Oh my God, have you lost your mind? I know, I was like, if you take anything, anything that, like one single thing that
meant, and all the next things they said, I was thinking, they're hinting now in a way,
or are they?
I don't know.
Now I'm just obsessed with-
You cannot go anywhere near that.
No, I do not want to know at all.
Anyway, apparently it's amazing.
Apparently it is amazing.
Right.
But for that, they were able to pay everybody a blanket 40k fee, right?
Okay. Yeah, I am spending all my days today
That's been there before to KP you it's very difficult
Can I can I say to the daily express and daily man and all that in this headline?
This is Marina hide is revealing. It's not not Richard Osmond is revealing every time in this podcast
We say anything they get Richard Osmond reveals. I think I'm not I'm gonna reveal some really dark stuff and then just have it ascribed to
your name. But anyway, yeah, so you can give people 40k each to appear on trade.
First of all, it's a sort of prestige format as we can see by the caliber of the people
they got.
Well, it's like White Lotus when everyone got paid the same, they got paid much less
than you would normally do on a drama.
By the way, everyone is massively overpaid in the television entertainment business.
I just want to put that under the record.
We're not saving babies, but we are where we are. No one's getting overpaid in the live entertainment business, which is where the rates come from.
Agreed. And we'll come to that in a minute. We'll have to do more on comedians.
But if something like I'm a celebrity, you can't say everyone's getting paid 40k because you're
not going to get anyone. And you're much more in booking a show like that, you're obviously much
more concerned of like, do I have that kind of marmalade dropper booking so you've got to say oh you know what did what did Colleen
get I can't remember was it like 1.2 or 1.5?
Yeah it was a lot.
I mean Noel got 600.
I know.
Quid.
I was in the first step.
I can't remember what Colleen got but it was something like between one and 1.5 but in
that sense you're sort of thinking I've got to have that sensational booking or whatever
it is.
And also by the way I can afford that sensational booking because advertising money is...
Because it's part of it.
And it runs, however many weeks, it runs three weeks or whatever.
So you're getting some stuff out of it.
Okay.
You're more able to do what's called that sort of Favourite Nations idea, weirdly.
Favourite Nations, if you ever go on a TV show, they'll say, here's the fee, and it's
Favourite Nations, so no one gets more than you.
And so you accept it or fee and it's favored nation. So no one gets more than you. And so you know, except to honor those always nonsense. Yeah. Because
it's then you know, someone suddenly cut like we did favorite nations on a show for years
and years on a panel show. And then Joan Rivers said she'd do it. And we think, okay, now
we don't know we can't do favorite nations anymore. She is not going to take 750 pounds
to do this show. Yeah. There are certain ones. Do you remember that episode of Have I Got News
for You when Johnny Mercer said to Ian Hislop, he really, like all those people who go on
and you're like, oh no, don't try and be this guy. But obviously, a politician going on
and trying to say to Ian Hislop, oh, I know how much you get paid. And I think he said,
I had to get paid 20k an episode. Anyway, Hislop doesn't argue with him. Originally,
I thought, oh, I heard he, that must mean he does get 20k and someone said
to me this week, no, he gets 40.
That's why he didn't argue with him.
So one thing we can say after that is that talent salaries have got smaller and people
have got more realistic because there was a sort of, you know, as you would describe
it, 90s, noughties money and then it has contracted.
We're really talking about entertainment talent here, by the way.
Acting is insane.
I mean, that like crazily insane. Well it's
interesting someone like David Mitchell who is obviously on Would I Lie to You
but also was in that mega hit Ludwig. So that's interesting as a... does he make
your list? He's not on the list even though you know but but things like the
the show he does on Dave, The Outsiders, I suspect will probably pay better per
episode than What I Like to You. So yeah he does not make, The Outsiders, I suspect will probably pay better per episode
than what I like to hear.
So yeah, he does not make me laugh.
I haven't included actors on this because that is really the Wild West.
Yeah.
I mean, that's absolutely bonkers.
It's so ridiculous, this list.
I mean, it's like, light entertainment talent, the end, or I mean, sports or whatever, on
its own, rather than saying, well, what about all of this other stuff? And yet it's never interrogated in that way.
But I will say that I'm happy to go on record as saying there's no way that Amal Rajan is
getting 12 grand an episode for University Challenge. And if he is, then that doesn't
even investigating. I suspect that he isn't even in the heyday.
He's got a parity clause with him.
Even in-
He's got a parity clause with him.
Oh my God. But I don't. That's the point. I love,. He said I want a parity clause with him. Oh my God.
But I don't.
That's the point.
I love, you know, I present on the BBC for a reason.
I don't want someone to have to, you know, pay out a license fee for that.
I don't want to.
I can go to ITV if I want to do that.
I do a podcast if I want advertisers' money.
You know, the BBC is for something different.
The BBC is to do shows for, you know, families to watch that's kind of smart and funny.
That's what I love doing anyway. But yeah, if he's on 12 grand then I resign.
With immediate effect. Richard Osman resigns with immediate effect. Please don't write it in the Daily Express.
Even in the heyday of Deal or No Deal.
I'll tell you the other salaries I know, you can have that for your newspaper. In the heyday of Deal or No Deal, well I'm going to talk about what some of the newspapers
have done, lists of who they think are the best paid presenters.
It is in some ways dumber than the original list of the BBC.
I'm so sorry for my understress, truly.
Even in the heyday of Deal or No Deal, Noel wasn't on 12 an episode, and that was the
biggest hit on television for years and years, and that's Noel. So you know, this is, it's, it's, it's,
he does everything out of the kindness of his heart.
But that would be a lot of money for doing a show where you do four or five a day. I'll
talk about the, um, the newspapers lists cause they did a thing where they said, Oh, actually
this doesn't tell half the story. Here's, here's what BBC stars actually get paid. And
then, then they, they sort of went through companies house at various people and say,
well, they get this,
like Jules Holland, said Jules Holland gets paid 3.3 million.
And you go, no, you've looked at Jules Holland's company.
He does like 250 massive gigs a year, every year.
He's not getting 3.3 million for doing later
with Jules Holland, right?
Even though his name is above the door.
Oh, I saw this bullshit, yeah.
And Stacey Solomon, it's like-
Right, 7 million.
Yeah, she's got to deal with Primark.
Yeah.
Well, we'll get on to beauty and stuff, the way that people actually make their money.
But that, you know, and one of the points is if you can make money outside of that,
that sort of reflects the rate you can get inside of it.
But that list was even dumber than the BBC list.
I saw you were on that.
I've heard you've written some books, so that's probably related to that.
Listen, if you thought the BBC list was dumb, that list was, I mean, spectacularly
dumb. If they think Stacey Solomon's getting £7.5 million to present Sort Your Life Out,
listen, I would pay it. But that is not what is happening. So I spoke to a lot of people.
Do you know what? It won't shock you to learn every single producer I talk to loves this.
I'm actually, it's unusual for this podcast, I'm going to go from one down to 10.
But because it actually works better for the format, you must never ever be hidebound.
Like listen, they always said never do a show where the jackpot goes down,
then we have a million pound drop. Sometimes you have to break the rule.
Number one, Antentech. Buy a mile. I mean, buy an absolute mile. Oh, you're talking about the highest paid on British TV. Yeah, right. Sorry. Yes
I agree. Yeah, I thought you took my own the BBC. Yeah, no on the bit. You know what genuinely?
Nobody on the BBC. I've got one name on this list who makes most of it
Yeah, their money from the BBC, but that is it's it's
insignificant in terms of what people are getting paid on television
It's It's absolutely
kind of a foxhole conference.
So when you're saying you're talking about television, can we just do the parameters
please?
Television entertainment.
Television, they're not getting it from touring, Primark, blah blah blah, all the other bits
and bobs.
Yeah, simply what they are being paid to present television programmes on British TV. Nothing
else. Not how they're monetising different things, not how they've got brands, not how
they form a rhythm and blues orchestra and play 300 gigs a year all across Europe,
rather than just presenting later with Jules Holland.
So this is literally just from presenting TV.
Ant and Dec, at the top, by a million miles, you could split it in half
and they would be number one and number two.
Because you've got, you know, you've got I'm a celebrity, you've got Britain's Got Talent,
you've got Limitless Wind, there's always, and they bring audiences time and time and time again. So Ant and Dec.
Well, they do bring an audience. That's what I think is interesting, because it's so amazing
how many people, that's part of what's, I don't want to say depressed talent, talent
arteries, because they still get paid off. But actually, there's so few people in British
television with the greatest respect that
bring an audience.
Antonek, MacIntyre, and there's not that many others.
Formats and shows bring audiences, and rightly so, and they're beloved and people fit so
well into them and they're masters of those formats.
But in terms of actually bringing the audience and it kind of doesn't matter what they're
in, there are very few.
It's funny how after I quit Pointless, literally nothing changed in the ratings.
But of course it didn't.
Of course they don't, you know, it's, you know, anyway.
I should say that Richard's obviously instrumental in the format as well, so there we go.
You did some, you know, by one remove.
Well, I'm not even involved in that anymore.
But listen, I love to watch it.
Number two, Bradley Walsh.
I was going to say, yeah.
Because Bradley has that unbelievable combination,
and very few people do anymore,
of having a daily show on ITV
and a daily entertainment show on ITV
and a daily entertainment show
that regularly tops the ratings on ITV,
an entertainment show that has spin-offs, and then does his documentaries with his son, comes over to
the BBC to do Blankety Blank and Gladiators, which he will be paid a lot less for, but
he will still be paid nicely. But, I mean, he is doing 200 episodes of The Chase every
year. I don't know what he's on. I suspect it's more than you think Amal Rajan is on and less than Anton Decker on, but he's doing 200 of them. And again, he
brings an audience in a way that other people don't. People love Bradley Wash. They love
to watch him. And you launch a show with Bradley, you've got more chance of it working than
if you launch a show with someone else.
And you have to say that what you've just listed is a huge amount of work. He works
a lot.
Oh yeah, he works. He absolutely does. So do lots of people, we understand that.
I know, I know. Compared to lots of the other presenters who are not doing so much.
His year is busy.
Yeah, it's packed full.
Number three, Addison Hammond. I think because she has a combination of Bake Off, which is
a huge franchise now and the budget for which has gone crazy in
recent years since it went to Channel 4.
And of course she does This Morning as well, and she does For the Love of Dogs, there's
all sorts of different things as well.
So I think that, again, this is definitively not a real list.
This is just from all of us talking together, trying to work out who fits where.
And she came on at number three.
Addison, if you're number four, I apologize.
If you're number two, I apologize.
Whichever you'd rather be.
So we've got her at number three.
At number four, we've got Jimmy Carr.
Yeah.
Because Jimmy, he does a lot of formats for commercial television.
So he does, you know, I literally just told you on Channel 4, he does countdown still
for four.
And of course, now he does Last One still for four. And of course now he does
Last One Laughing, which is an enormous hit and is going to remain an enormous hit for
a number of series.
So you're counting streamers in this. I find it so hard to...
I think you have to because there's so few entertainment shows on streamers. You simply
have to. And because you can't... If you are ever... For example, if someone wants to book you on a panel show for Sky, they
pay you 10 times as much.
Which is why you will see big names doing those things.
I think it's crazy not to, and there's another couple of names down here who definitely benefit
from that.
So I'm going to say Jimmy Carr, Lee Mack.
Lee Mack simply because, and again, not from what I lied to you, but
just because 1% Club has been such an enormous juggernaut of a hit. And so he can sort of
name his price because those are the sort of hits that advertisers come to channels
for. And that's been absolutely- He doesn't have to name his price, I should also say,
because he's represented by someone, we could just do a little quick sidebar on. He's represented by Avalon, who perhaps are our listeners.
Avalon, who are like a sort of talent management and production company, they are, I mean,
maybe, I think it'd be hard to argue with the idea that they're Britain's most successful
indie, almost, because of what they do.
But they have, they are famously, what's the euphemism?
Drive a hard bargain?
I drive a hard bargain. I think that's the, there's so many euphemisms, I can only speak the euphemism? Drive a hard bargain? They drive a hard bargain.
I think there's so many euphemisms, I can only speak in euphemisms about.
As everyone, actually people in the industry, when they're not doing a podcast, do not speak
in euphemisms about them, but they've always, always driven a hard bargain.
Yeah, I think also if were they to express a preference, and wouldn't say that they would,
I think they might express the preference that they'd rather keep their talent on Avalon shows than put
them on other people's shows. So you can, which is a sort of a double bubble. They might,
they might argue with that.
Yeah, they wouldn't argue with that. And, but people don't leave. And also if they do
leave, then often they own the formats that they're in. And so this is why you can't see
them on your television anymore.
Yes, exactly.
This is why you can't see TV burp anymore.
Well, number six, I'm going to go joint Claudia and Michael McIntyre.
Only because they both got huge shows on the BBC and shows that sort of run and run and
run.
And they both got two huge shows that are almost sort of on season off season.
And you know, Traitors Now, because it's celebrity and it's regular and you've got Strictly,
which runs and runs and runs and runs. I think
that probably puts Claudia on the list and also because she does ITV shows as well. She
does the piano, she does that one question as well which she'll be remunerated for I
suspect. And Michael McIntyre, yes again because he does those huge shows as The Wheel and
the big show and also because that is is somebody who literally could be getting 75 grand a night just doing a gig.
You sort of...
That's the thing that people who commission and whatever say that comedians are really,
really hard to price because they're already in general quite rich.
Very rich really.
Yeah.
And you've got a show that you want to spend a million quid an hour on, and then you think,
well, I mean, Greg Davis might want 150k to do it.
I mean, you're not necessarily going to give it to them.
But they can make such a lot of money touring and they do make such a lot of money touring.
But you do need people to be on the front of your shows and they can't always be a particular
type of, you know, you want comedians to be on lots of them because for obvious reasons.
I always used to say years ago, whenever book a comedian they should do it for free
because you're selling their tickets for them.
And by the way I was right, but it didn't catch on with agents or with comedians.
But if you had said, okay, no comedians ever getting paid again to come on these shows,
you'd still get a steady stream of people coming on, you know, because they know what
they're doing.
Yeah. You know, so much Teddy now is a lost leader.
And, you know, if you take something like Mr.
Beast going to Amazon prime, now he did not make a penny out of that show.
Quite, I mean, quite the opposite.
Probably cost him somewhere around 60 million just to make that show.
At seven, I'm going to say Ramesh Ranganathan.
Yeah.
Because Ramesh, well, first of all, he does a radio show, but, you know, he'll
do things like weakest link, but mainly because he does lots for Sky.
And he'll do, you know, League of Their Own, and he'll do Robin Romesh, and all of those
things.
So he has lots of different income streams, but the most important ones will be the Sky
income streams.
He'll be on an awful lot of money for that.
He might be further up that list, but I've demurred.
And then Clarkson is definitely there because if Who Wants to Be a Millionaire and because
of Clarkson's Farm.
And again, he's doing that Mr. Beast thing of, you know, not that fussed what you pay
me for Clarkson's Farm because this is a commercial enterprise and there's lots of different ways
for me to monetize this and to get this in front of people's eyeballs.
The thing about those shows is that we know about what happens on
prime shows is that people get paid just beyond money because it's a rounding error for the
Edge, everything corporation. They, you know, they, they will use your buy stuff and they
have a market map and each of those shows really carefully addresses, and Mr. Beast
was one of them. What they paid him was extraordinary. He happened to have spent it all because of the extraordinary nature of the show. But Clarkson's Farm is
somewhat cheaper to make.
Yes. Yeah. I wouldn't say it's not super cheap, but it's somewhat cheaper.
No, it's no beast games.
He is. Although it has lots of beasts. So he will be on an absolute fortune. By the
way, some of these can be moving up and down this top 10.
Yeah, it's hard.
If anyone's listening, I would love people on this list to just message us and say, I
should have been lower or I should have been higher. I'm interested in the person that
you've tried to talk to.
All you have to do is do it on the record. If you do it on the record, just ring in and
we'll read you out loud exactly what you said.
So Jeremy, if you think you're higher than eight, do please let us know. And then the
bottom of the list is slightly, bottom of the list, I mean, these are the 10 highest
paid people, but lots of different names came through on the bottom of the list is slightly, bottom of the list, I mean, these are the 10 highest paid people,
but lots of different names came through on the bottom of the list.
I'll go through some of them.
Joel Domet, who I suspect might be there because he does Masked Singer
and the Western National Television Awards.
And he has an aesthetic and he has a youthfulness and he does an ITV game show now as well.
It feels like Send for Joel.
Yeah, he's an investment presenter.
And also such a deeply lovely man.
He used to do warm-up for Pointless.
Did he actually?
In the early days, yeah.
Oh, that's fun.
So in the first three series of Pointless, there's Joel being paid 250 quid a show, me
being paid nothing because I was the creative director, so I always said don't pay me.
And Xander on 90,000 a show. No. Notice
I haven't put Zander on this, even though he does 200 shows a year, because it's the
BBC. So maybe Joel Dommet, maybe someone like Susanna Reid or Lorraine, just because they're
doing 200, 250 shows a year, actually Lorraine does fewer these days. And because they have
shows that bring in a regular audience and that's, you know, and they have.
Yeah, no, I don't think they'd quite make it just on the basis of, I don't think they
would.
I mean, listen, they might not be making as much as Lineker, but they're certainly making
more than Zoe Ball, who was second on the list at 500,000.
Oh, yeah.
I mean, as we said, the original list is just a nonsense.
Yeah.
Jeremy Vine, I'm going to say now because he's already on the BBC list at something
like, he's already on the BBC list at 310,000, add on Channel 5, where it's literally the
Jeremy Vine channel.
Yeah.
He does the Jeremy Vine show, he did Eggheads, you know, there's Jeremy Vine's House of
Games, their new series.
And so they're paying him.
They're not paying him what ATV would pay
him or what Channel 4 would pay him even, but they are paying him and you add in the
BBC thing as well. And I suspect he'd be right up there. Dermot, of course, because of this
morning and because he's done a few streaming shows as well. So he won't be, he won't be
skipping a meal anytime soon. So that would be roughly our top 10.
I'm sort of at the bottom of that list.
I'm spreading it out a bit because none of us could agree.
But I think it sort of shows you what the market is and you can argue whether that market's
good or bad.
But a lot of these people have another way of making money and provably bringing an audience.
But it also, I hope, shows you how dwarfed those BBC salaries are.
I know they sound absurd and ridiculous.
Most of the people at the top of that is because they're doing, you know, 300 shows and they're
doing lots of different things and, you know, it kind of all adds up.
But it's a lucrative business entertainment, you know, like sport is a lucrative business
and music is a lucrative business entertainment, you know, like sport is a lucrative business and music is a lucrative business.
But I just having looked at that BBC list, and it's hard because how do you compete and
get those people to come on the BBC?
So you do have to pay, but it is, you do pay an awful lot less.
But it's still, you know, what we should say and what they do say when they are trying
to get people to compete is you don't get exposure like that almost anywhere else More people are going to watch you here. Yeah, then anywhere else more people will watch you as you say they'll send you tickets
They'll do whatever it is. You'll get more corporates whatever it may be. Yeah all the sort of
You know subsidiary stuff, but that's an argument. That's very
slowly disappearing, you know because well because that you just don't get a huge amount of exposure sometimes, even
on a BBC show. It used to be that on a mediocre show, five million people would watch you.
And now it's 700,000.
Sure. I think it's good to have it because all of these people are now so diversified.
And that's one thing that we do know. In the old days, it used to be a light entertainment
presenter and that's it. And now we see people with clotheslines and lifestyle portals and all sorts of other things and they're brand ambassadors
and they're everything else. So within that, it's good to have a PSB show within that.
And it almost, unless you have that, you can't describe something that pays them 400,000
pounds and you're a lost leader. I can't describe it as a lost leader, but to some extent you
need that in order to have all the other bits.
Yeah. Oh, I forgot to say also we were arguing about for number 10, possibly Greg Davies,
only because he does Buzzcocks for a big streamer and he does Taskmaster and that's a mammoth
hit. And again, a mammoth hit that was bought in from another channel and so is funded at
quite a premium like Bake Off.
So maybe with those two things together he's up there.
But I don't think…
Even though Bake Off, as they've showed, by simply taking it to another format and
getting it off the presenters, it's the format that people are watching and it's
not the presenters.
So despite the fact we know that and it's been actually demonstrably proved…
Because if you look at some of the most loved British TV presenters out there,
look at Stacey Solomon, look at Ryland, look at Alison Hammond, they all started on reality TV
shows. They were not comedians, they were not local journalists who sort of worked their way up,
they were just people who appeared on screen and people immediately liked them. People immediately
went, I want this person to be in my living room. And there
are loads of people out there who don't want to be on Big Brother or Pop Idol or Britain's
Got Talent, who would have that same charm if only there were a way to find them. The
truth is, you would put them on very, very cheaply for the first series. The second that
series was a hit, they would be on exactly the same money as all of these people because
that's the market. But I'm a great believer that there are generations of people out there
who could present television shows.
Oh yeah.
There's people at the top, Michael McIntyre, Ant and Dec, Claudia, you just think, no,
okay, absolutely get it. But there is a level at which you think, yeah, I think we could
probably replace you with somebody cheaper. My radical proposal for these things would
be, because
the one thing I tell you is always you have a hit and yet the money doesn't go up. So
you have this massive hit and then, you know, certainly on the BBC, usually the money goes
down because it has to. The world of podcasts is very, very interesting. So in the world
of podcasts, this is my dream always, always, always. And it's what happens in some podcasts,
no, and actually, funny enough, the BBC is an exception to this. But in the world of podcasts, most of the hip podcasts
I know, people do not get paid. You do not get an upfront fee. What you get is, if it's
successful, you get more money because you get a revenue share of the advertising, which
to me as a producer was the business I was always in. Which is so BBC is different and that's looking after British
creativity and all that stuff.
But on ITV and Channel 4, all I'm doing is giving you something
that you can sell to an advertiser.
You are then selling that to an advertiser.
15 different people are taking chunks of that money.
I tell you, someone who isn't taking any of that money, me.
You know, so as a producer, you get your 10% fee and then it doesn't
matter how well you did with it, you get your 10% fee and then it doesn't matter
how well you did with it, you're not going to get more. If one week you get three million,
then it's what you do. You get four million, you don't suddenly get a 33% uplift in your
money. And I would love TV to be made like that, which is no one gets paid, apart from
the crew, but production, all that. We don't get paid until the numbers come in.
And if we get paid more, if the numbers are bigger and bigger, then you get paid more
and more.
Imagine that.
Imagine that.
That would never happen.
Yeah.
Yeah.
I mean, you've got to back yourself at some point.
Yeah.
Listen, it happens in an informal way because Ant & Dec didn't start on the money they're
on.
They had a series of hits and so they did it.
But it's very interesting, the podcast thing of people just doing it for nothing and then the more successful it is, the more
money you make. Like music, the more records you sell, the more money you make. And TV
is one of the few industries where that doesn't quite follow.
There's that extra layer of friction or skimming off or whatever you want to call it.
Yeah, I would call it skimming off. Also worth noting that every single channel spends all year focus grouping every single
presenter they've ever had.
So whenever people go, you've got Greg Wallace and people go, but he wasn't even a good presenter,
people didn't even like him.
But I mean, you don't want to hear it, but they did.
They loved him.
I saw so many people this week saying, why don't they just cancel this tired show?
Oh no, I'm so sorry.
It's because people really like Master Chef
Yeah, no, there's nothing you'll cancel the sewing ones and this was like no no, no
Yeah, they're all really popular because people like them
Yeah, I guess it's innocent if you're the main character in your own story
Then if you don't like something then everyone hates it
But yeah, the numbers do what we do have some cool ratings
Which allows us to see that other people do like these and those you know, you know, if you go, oh, God, I don't want to watch Alison Hammond.
I tell you who wants to watch Alison Hammond, two groups of people, me and most of the British
public.
And they know that week after week after week because they're constantly asking and people
are constantly saying, yep.
I like her.
We love her.
Exactly.
And so, you know, if it's ever a mystery to you why someone's on TV, it's probably because other people
disagree with you.
I mean, listen, there are some...
You've lifted the curtain there.
Right.
I think we must, after that, curtail this because we could spill this tea forever, but
shall we go to a break?
Yes.
Yes.
Let's monetize that.
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Welcome back, everyone.
Welcome back.
Now plenty of headlines there.
This should be a headline.
What is growing four times faster than the UK economy and is now worth £30.4 billion
pounds to it every single year?
Is it Amal Rajan's wage back?
It is the beauty industry and the value of beauty, which is an annual report compiled by Oxford
Economics and it's commissioned by the British Beauty Council. It's fascinating. I mean,
this is a sector that unlike the creative industries, although it is linked and that's
how we're going to get onto it, but you'll never see a cabinet minister out there talking
about it. It employs more people than are in publishing and broadcasting. Put together, its direct contribution to GDP is more than the whole sports and
recreation sector, so more than going to football, museums, parks, concerts,
all of that. And it makes up over 1% of the UK's economic output. It's part
services, it's part goods, we know all of this. It's like a little beauty spot for British services.
Very good, very good.
Thanks. Thank you.
Brexit slightly slowed the recovery. But it's interesting, it's something that particularly
took off in or was accelerated and catalyzed during the pandemic. And a big part of that
is because people saw themselves on screen. is because people saw themselves on screen.
So, so many people saw themselves on screen.
I remember that Caroline Hirons is someone who is a very sort of significant player and this sort of thing
saying people just couldn't stand it. They were looking at their faces thinking and obviously no one really understood the technology.
So, it took them like the whole first lockdown to work out.
They didn't have to look at themselves while they were having a meeting with somebody.
I still do that.
No, so do I.
I mean, completely.
And you're just thinking, gosh, I mean-
If I'm being really professional,
I will look at the little lights,
but it's so difficult to do.
Yeah.
And people just sort of mesmerized
by their own flaws or whatever it is.
It really took off.
And so when we're talking about beauty, I should say,
we're talking about skincare, makeup,
haircare, fragrance, sort of tools and devices.
And there's obviously a service element to it as well.
But it's become huge via screens and beauty attainment as it were is absolutely massive.
Like TikTok is now the fourth biggest beauty retailer in the whole UK.
Retailer?
Yeah.
Yeah.
Because people are shop window or sort of stuff.
People are buying shops.
Well, first of all, if you go go into a boot you will now see, which
we've seen for a while in book shops, you know, Book Talk or whatever, you'll now see
as seen on TikTok in chemists and they have to really be sort of nimble with it because
all these trends are happening all the time.
I like by the way as seen on TikTok because you can literally download anything to TikTok.
You know, you could have your local garage, you know, as seen on TikTok because they just
uploaded a video.
But yes, it's a...
But it's become such a sort of thing that people are drawn, and so they've made whole
breakout bricks and mortar areas of their shops.
And it's interesting because, I mean, I suppose in the old days, you know, that whole idea
of shopping as entertainment, I used to be mesmerized by shopping channels.
I remember when they first came to the UK, I'd be like, this is so cool.
You know, I love that novel, Cellavision, that Augustin Burroughs novel
about kind of those places. And I was absolutely gripped by the relationships, as I imagined
in between the hosts, where they hate each other, where they liked each other. I love
to see washed up celebrities doing infomercials. Okay, all of that has gone on its head now.
Nobody washed up does infomercials. I mean, you look at brands like Selena Gomez's
brand Rare Beauty, which is on sale and the biggest retailer in the world really for this
sort of thing is Sephora. Hailey Bieber, who's got her brand Rode. Selena Gomez's brand is
valued at two billion. Hailey Bieber's is just valued at one billion. She basically started
what used to be called a direct consumer marketing thing. She had about eight products. It's now worth a billion.
It's going into Sephora and it's really, it's a little bit like that Gore Vidal quote, you
know, it's not enough for Haley to succeed, Selena must fail.
So they're already being sort of pitted against each other in terms of what it will do to
your shelf real estate in these places.
Oh, I just think, I just think fair play to you for both being billionaires.
I mean, it's unbelievable. But it's unbelievable. You couldn't have done fair play to you for both being billionaires. I mean, it's unbelievable.
But it's unbelievable.
You couldn't have done this before.
And people couldn't do this.
They have these celebrities via screens of all different types, via different types of
social media, and with very, very few products, have leveraged their brands into these huge
businesses that are sort of unrivaled by people who are in those businesses to start
with.
And I think it's very interesting.
Shoppable entertainment is, as I say, what was once a sort of niche thing that I, as
a young person who wasn't going out anywhere, might watch.
Or we imagined bored Floridian housewives sitting there buying diamond rings or whatever
they were buying off QVC.
Shoppable entertainment is everything now.
Well, I remember even 15 years ago, you'd sit in production meetings and people would
say, oh, we could get some product placement on this.
And if I go, oh, I don't know about that.
And now you think it's not like, oh, I've got a can of Diet Coke here.
Let's get some money.
It's literally you can make programs about your own things.
And people consume it.
They watch your advert as entertainment, then go out
and buy your product afterwards.
They watch your Get Ready With Me video. They would rather watch that than whatever is on
ITV at that time or BBC or whatever it is.
Every time I see one, I really, really, really see the appeal.
So do I. That's how they've mesmerized me.
They look amazing. And when I watch it, I get that there's a commercial thing and people
are selling. I'm slightly mesmerized when I see it. I love the...
Well, you get that it's an authentic presenter and that it's essentially a format, right?
Yes, and that they're doing something they're good at and they care about is what I sense
whenever I see those things.
Yes. I mean, you can literally see the views happening and then you can see the click through.
And it's really interesting. The UK, this is another thing that's come out recently,
the UK is TikTok's most advanced e-commerce market outside of Asia.
Number one.
So we're, you know, we're leading the way on this stuff, Richard.
Whether we're leading the way to a good place, I don't know.
But it's really interesting how brands themselves have had to adapt
to this being entertainment.
As we know in entertainment, you know, you want a new episode
and you want something different.
So brands that used to just be like, okay, well, we'll bring out three lipsticks this
year and we'll leave it at that.
Now you constantly need drops and all of the, and they've had to completely adapt.
Other brands that didn't start like this, didn't start as kind of a person on TikTok,
just kind of, and suddenly building up a billion dollar business.
They've had to adapt to this kind of thing and they've had to become much more nimble.
But it's so interesting that it's all a form of shoppable entertainment.
And also that the money goes from, you know, if you are a skincare brand or even if you're
boots, the money that you would spend on filmed adverts that you then place on television
programs which should have been through the roof huge.
You now go, we're going to take all that money. It's like we were talking about podcasts in
the previous thing. We're going to take that money, we're going to give it directly to
somebody who speaks to our audience and get them to make something that doesn't cost very
much.
Get them to put it in a Get Ready With Me video.
And the person making it is getting more money. The brand is having to spend less money and
the result is 10 times bigger than it would have been.
And it's so much less of a gamble than like everyone hates your Christmas advert or whatever
it is.
All of those things are starting to feel sort of...
One of my favorite side things in entertainment these days is because everyone, you know,
there's not a marketing department in the country doesn't try and do these things.
I love seeing failed versions of these.
I love it when people try and get something trending or they try and get a hashtag going
or they try and get some sort of signature move going and
It doesn't work and you see you can just sort of see the desperation
What an old like almost like a legacy brand tries to create one of those organic online moments. I see. Yeah
Okay, there was even like a few years ago
They even there was that sort of very brief interregnum where big brands were kind of going. Oh, let's do an advert
But like it's like an influencer,
and they're doing this thing, and we'll do it, we'll shoot it like it's an influencer doing like a kind of online video,
and that would be great. You go, why don't you just get an influencer to do the online video?
Because, you know, people already like them.
They always had to feel, they had to put sort of inverted commas around it.
And in fact, it's all been blown away. But as we've talked about before, people are,
and social media to some extent, as people have always said, is you're just participating in something in which the product
is you and you're giving companies your data. But that line between advertorial and entertainment,
which used to be, as you say, either sort of morally frowned upon or disregarded as really
NAF, like QVC and infomercials, the of NAF but that's completely gone it's definitely not something you do when you're washed up
anymore it's something that you know hot and talented young 28 year old women do
and then become billionaires. Well also you know I've you never ever meet any
presenter of any stripe at all who wasn't kind of going what can I do what
can I do that you know because they sort of see now that rather than someone just
paying you to present a TV show out of money that comes from advertisers, for example,
me, I mean, there is not a brand in the world that would increase its share if I advertised
it right.
I don't believe that.
No, but there isn't.
What about your voice?
And if it was something, it would not be something that has a high market capitalization.
I get that.
It would be snooker balls or something.
That's not for me.
But you know, all sorts of presenters, they're all kind of, what can
I do?
What is it that I can do?
Where can I, how can I monetize this?
And as you say, 10, 15 years ago, everyone would have turned their noses up at it.
Everyone would go, no, I'm not going to do this.
I'm not going to, you know, hawk that.
And now they kind of go, what kind of hawk?
What have you got?
I remember when we first started doing this podcast before, you and I were talking about
it and you said, I don't care about things like the adverts, because as I always say to anyone,
unless you work on the BBC, you've been in an advertiser-funded medium forever.
So what is the difference?
You're just holding your handkerchief to your nose like some pretentious thing.
If you think that if you're on a channel for an ITV show, the thing that happens in the
commercial breaks is nothing to do with you.
People say sometimes, I never advertise that.
You go, listen, here's the news.
You've been advertising it for many, many, many years.
Exactly.
You have.
You can't have it both ways.
You know, either it's OK or it's not OK.
But that's why all those people make so much money.
All those middlemen, because they go between you and the advertisers.
So, you know, you never have to meet them.
They're still paying you.
We're talking about skimming off again, aren't we?
We are talking about skimming off.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
But the great skimmers off are in retreat now.
Yeah, they've faded away. And now they will become Instagram influencer managers, which
is I think the biggest growing industry in the UK.
Is that the growth sector?
Yeah, you look at the latest census, I think there are now more Instagram influencer managers
than there are miners.
And people who believe in the Jedi.
Yeah.
Where does it go next, do you think, this sort of thing?
Is it because it
feels like if you're so enormous and so ubiquitous and as you say, you know, you've got people making
billions out of this. Sure, there comes a point surely where that market becomes saturated. I
mean, obviously there's huge money to be made in very natural makeup and all of those things, but
don't bet against making women feel crap about themselves. I mean, that's the thing, isn't it?
Don't have a bet against that. I mean, the nice thing is now they're trying to do it to men as well, because they're thinking,
hold on a minute.
It's like Philip Morris, tobacco, they're going, hold on, we forgot China.
Why don't we?
Oh my gosh, why haven't we killed millions of people there?
And the whole beauty industry thinking, hold on a minute, men are feeling pretty good about
themselves.
Well, this report was very interesting, because they were saying that more young men in the
sort of, I think it was 18 to 23, had had Botox than women in that. Yeah, this looks
maxing this whole big online trend is absolutely huge.
I didn't know what fillers were particularly, but whenever Ingrid sees a young person with
fillers she's like, and now I recognize them. Now I see a filler.
You've become filler literate.
I've become filler literate. And it's all like youngsters.
They look the same as the 40 year old women,
it's just a sort of homogenized face
that is incredibly linked and defined by the platforms.
You know, the idea that someone can talk about Instagram face,
the aesthetic is, I don't want to say decreed by Mark Zuckerberg,
but it's effectively handed down, you know, via his medium.
We are literally becoming our own uncanny valley.
Yes.
People who look almost like a human being.
But they don't in real life look like human beings at all, actually.
Where they look like human beings and where they look of a piece with what they're looking
at is on the platforms.
So on screen, people actually used to say this about celebrities, oh, it was quite shocking
when I saw her, you know, I happen to see so and so
on wherever it was, and I was shocked by what she looked like.
First of all, she was tiny, you know,
they're always much thinner than you possibly think.
This is what I'm talking about, this is going back
20, 30 years, people would say that.
They look very odd off camera, but everyone now
is on camera all the time, and so everyone has a sort of camera face
Yeah, hello to our YouTube viewers, by the way. Yeah, this is all
My highlight which are delightful by the way, thank you
They were done on Tuesday. Who is that by the way who does this?
My hair. Yeah, someone called Josh Josh word. He was wonderful Josh word. Yeah
Chimching ching ch, ching-ching, ching-ching. He's a listener to this podcast, by the way, too.
He is very, very good to me.
Let me just put it that way.
He's a wonderful person.
Pauline does my hair.
Thank you, Pauline.
Yeah, she was my pointless makeup artist, if you know what I mean.
And yeah, now she's my Josh Wood.
So that's beauty.
Yeah, that's beauty.
We've done beauty.
From all the way from Hayley Bieber to Josh Wood.
We are now going to conclude this episode of the podcast by me saying to you, have you
got any recommendations?
I do.
I have a very strong recommendation this week.
I think we have a new proper, proper massive hit on our hands, which is Bookish, the Mark
Gatiss detective drama, which is on You and Alibi.
You can see it on NowTV as well.
It's so great.
He's incredible. I literally, I mean, he is a national treasure beyond all that.
He plays Book, who is a bookseller. Please stay with us. But it's sort of set just after the war
in London. And he's a sort of a detective sort of a bookseller. It's surrounded by brilliantly cast
and brilliantly acted sort of gang as well. I was watching it fingers
cross thinking if this is as good as the people involved then this is going to be amazing
and it really really really is. Honestly I thought it was terrific you know when you
watch something you just think oh this is going to be on for years.
This is my recommendation too. I absolutely loved it. I love him. I think pure joy from
start to finish.
Yeah and just every actor in it absolutely doing a terrific job.
But we watched the first two and I will literally be going home this evening.
You're now in that rationing stage where it's that good that you want it.
It's one of those shows you'd like to ration.
100% that, it's exactly that.
On that note, we will be back on Thursday with our question and answers episode.
Yep, we have another bonus episode concerning British sitcoms.
Don't forget to try and count down the greatest British sitcoms of all time.
Please remember to vote and if you want to join the club, it's at therestofentertainment.com
and you get ad-free listening and various other things besides.
That felt like a long podcast.
That was a long podcast.
I mean, to be fair, it's the first time we've ever done a tight half hour on a Mulrajan.
You know, and so I guess if you're doing that, it tends to spread out, right?
I think it does.
Right, we'll be back for a properly timed Questions and Answers edition on Thursday.
See you then.
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