The Rest Is Entertainment - The Rise & Fall of Mr Beast

Episode Date: September 14, 2026

Is Mr Beast’s latest project a massive fail? How do you earn £100m from children's books? And can you buy prestigious awards? (hypothetically speaking… ) Mr Beast have teamed up with James Patterson to release a survival thriller, and one real-life reader could win $1m - but the charts have been unforgiving... has the shine finally rubbed off Mr Beast? Beloved children's writer Julia Donaldson releases Gruffalo Granny, but what is the secret behind her £100m success story? Nicola Peltz has been awarded a ‘Rising Star’ award at the Venice Film Festival, at the age of 31. Richard and Marina explore the world of expensive award campaigns. The Rest is Entertainment is brought to you by Octopus Energy, Britain's most awarded energy supplier. Sponsored by Lloyds. Looking for extra value from your spending? You can bank on Lloyds to help your money go further. Search Lloyds Rewards in your app. For more Goalhanger Podcasts, head to www.goalhanger.com Video Editor: Lorcan Moullier and Louis Mealing Assistant Producer: Imee Marriott Senior Producer: Joey McCarthy Social Producer: Emma Jackson Exec Producer: Ami Bennett Filmed at www.westdigitalstudios.com Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

The rest is Entertainment is presented by Octopus Energy. Now, entertainment loves keeping business in the family. Yeah, it's no secret that that's traditionally been an easier route, perhaps, into show businesses. It's not necessarily the only way to get into the business. However, there are lots and lots of examples where it really has worked for people. The Coppola's stretched out beyond film, into music. Nicholas Cage, though, changed his surname from Coppola. He's Francisville's nephew, and he changed his surname just so that he could just be Nicholas

But one assumes that in LA they didn't know that he was a copular. He stands alone for me. I always think Stedarsgaard is an interesting one because lots of his children became very, very famous and he always calls himself a nepo dad because as his children got more and more famous, people started to come to him more for roles. That's a nice way around. So entertainment has some remarkable family machinery, but however useful the surname, it isn't always the only way in.

No, Octopus Energy, for example, didn't inherit its place in the energy industry. It's proudly independent, and one way it does things differently is having each customer's account looked after by the same small team of around 10 energy specialists. They know exactly who you are. Hello, and welcome to this episode of The Rest is Entertainment with me, Marina Hyde. And me, Richard Osman. Hello, everybody. Marina, what a busy week you've had. I see you announced your leaving the Guardian.

I am after 25 years. Wow. I know, I know. Any plans? Well, yeah, I mean, I was thinking we should sort of do an item about it and sort of general trends. Self-obsessed much. In this general trends in this direction, maybe in a couple of weeks, because I'll be more to say then. Yeah, when you have a better idea of what you're doing.

I have some ideas, but there'll be more to say then, perhaps. How about you? You've been on your book tour? I've been on a book tour. Hello to everybody who I met. It was just so brilliant. I went up and down the country, visiting loads of independent bookstores, doing loads of events. It's really thriving as an industry, books. It really is.

I do think books are an antidote to AI. I think there's something in the air. And I think lots of these shops are expanding. Lots of the events are absolutely rammed. It's just, I think, this human connection thing. I'm really looking forward to mine, which whenever it starts, maybe like, Nets we can. But it's really, I totally agree with you.

It is a, when you're doing it, it can feel a bit daunting before you get started. But when you're doing it, it's like, wow, this is incredible. But local book shops, honestly, I, I can. can't think of a better way to spend one's time than hanging out with booksellers and asking them about stuff. I bet you got a lot of data. I got a lot of data. I said, I'm here for data. I absolutely understand the emotional side of this, but what I am here for is data. No, they are very happy, and they're very, very happy that they've had a great week this week. Lots of big new releases out this week. Well, we're going to talk, actually going to talk about two extremely different books

this week, aren't we? In different ways. We are talking about Mr. Beast's new book, a thriller, that he's done with James Patterson, the sort of prolific accelerated thriller writer, which is called The Most Dangerous Games. And basically the title of that segment is, What's that all about? What's that all about? We're going to talk about the new book

from Julia Donaldson and illustrated by Axel Sheffler, Gruffalo Granny, which is, I mean, will be an instant mega, mega, mega bestseller and classic. And we're going to talk about just how do you become the biggest selling British,

author of the century. Well, that's something you're very interested in. Of course. It's not me. It's not me. It's unbelievably. It is not actually you. And we're also going to talk about a friend of the podcast, Nicola Peltz,

appeared to receive a rising star award at the Venice Film Festival. We're going to be asking, did she? And what are awards all about, please? Can you buy an award? Can you buy an award? I'm not suggesting she did. I'm asking, can you buy an award? It made me think,

on a completely separate note, I wonder if one could. Let's kick off with Mr. Beasts. So the new book is called The Most Dangerous Games. It's a survivalist thriller. It's published by Harper Collins. It's written with James Patterson. Yeah, I mean, the plot won't surprise. Essentially this.

Essentially, if Mr. Bees came to your house and said, in 25 minutes, we have a meeting with Harper Collins, what should the plot for our book be? It is this plot. There's an element of Simon Cowell, isn't it? It's one idea, just done a bit differently each time. Okay, so the plot is

a thousand strangers get an easy. invitation from Mr. Beast, who is a character in this book, and he's seeking out people who don't normally apply to things, maybe veterans, martial arts experts and stuff, and a hundred of them are going to make the cut for some games. Yes, they are going to be in challenges against each other. Mr. Beast is the character running the games. They have to go around the planet and so on.

Yeah, and they get knocked out one by one. Yes, we'll get to what the prize is, because that's a particularly interesting bit of business. What do I think about it? I think it's good that Mr. Bees is writing a book. I think it's good that Mr. Beast is sending people in the direction. I read a great review, I think, in Slate. It wasn't a great review of the book, it wasn't it?

But this is a bad book. But when I was a teenager, I read a lot of bad books, and they led me on to reading good books. The way that he announced it, I found massively irksome, which was like, I found books boring when I was a child, but, you know, don't worry, here I am, to effectively save books with my, you know, he and James Passon, I think,

he's just saying whatever Mr. Beast needs to say. to get this book out there. Oh, James Patterson is, he can't believe. He's like, yeah. I mean, he's not going to say no to Mr. Beas. The other people he's written books with are Bill Clinton and Dolly Parton. He's, you know, he doesn't mock about. He's collabbed in paginated form.

Yeah, he doesn't just, yeah, he's not writing with Sue Pollard. He's not writing. By the way, Sue, if you're listening. He's not, she did such a great turn for us. The turn up, the quiz. The rest is fast. She did a very good job. Absolutely amazing, Sue Pollard.

So they say they want adults and children who don't normally read to read, you know, this 480 page thing. And it's, it debuted at number three on the New York Times bestseller list. I would like to come back to that. Yeah. If I may put a marker down. And it debuted at number 47 in the UK charts with, I think, 3,370 copies across the first two weeks. Once again, you have the receipts. I have the receipts. We're going to talk about, we're going to talk a lot more about it, but I will say this. There's this truism that seems to crept into publishing that if you go into a publisher, they will say to you, how many followers have you got on social media? And if you don't have enough, they won't publish you. Now, I'll say for a fact

that that's definitively not true. There's not a single agent I've ever heard say that it's not a single editor. If you do have a huge social media following, they will use it, that's for sure, but they're not interested in it. This book, this book, this guy has more social media followers than pretty much anyone else in the world. He has 550 million YouTube subscribers. Essentially, one in 15 people on the planet supposedly follow this guy. Subscribe to his YouTube channel. I mean, it's an insane amount of people. Not only that, but you're always thinking, you know,

is there a little competition that we can run to sort of, you know, send people to bookshops? Can we sort of do a weekend away or something, you know, or a cream tea in a cathedral that you can win if you do this? If you read this book, Mr. Beast is going to get one person who reads the book and follows a series of clues, one million dollars. He's got half a billion followers. He's going to give someone a million pound if they read this book and he sells 3,300 copies in the UK. And that, by the way, is no shade

on him whatsoever. Because as I say, I'm glad that he's written a book. I'm glad that people are buying it and reading it. But anyone who still thinks you have to have a social media following or it helps to sell books in the fiction sphere, you are incorrect. James Patterson, has had 67 New York Times number one bestsellers. So this is... Not that. He's teamed up with the biggest social media star in the world and not had his 68th New York Times number one bestseller.

You know, and again, it's in the top 10 of the USA Today list. But it's... You should be in your first week with some publicity and with a name like James Patterson should be number one. Yeah. And certainly when you team up with Mr. Beast as well, they would have been expecting, they would really have been expecting to be number one for absolutely certain.

You can never tell with New York Times things, but they will not be delighted with that. And certainly they won't be delighted with the performance in the UK, which is very low. That's very interesting, isn't it? Because I really thought it would go higher than that on the New York Times. But what a test list. Number three is not great.

I mean, it sounds good. It sounds good. We solved murders. Your last book was obviously number one on the New York Times best ever. And so are plenty. You know, it's three is not. The three is not great. They've even started saying, and also it's number one on mystery and thriller, hot new releases on Amazon, which, I mean, that's like, that's the last refuge of the

scoundrel. That's when you know you're in trouble. Can I just get a little bit more into the weeds of how the competition bit works? I think it's like, you see, you have to buy the book, you save the receipt, you register it online, and then you have to do weekly elimination challenges online, and you have to work out clues that are in the novels, text, sort of Easter egg type things, I guess. And then the top players face off, and one of them is going to win a million dollars because even books can apparently be gamified, but not, as we say, not particularly successfully.

But I suppose what he's trying to do, because, I mean, what he's always trying to do is make everything a kind of sit-up and non-passive experience. I suppose it's interesting talking about what was in it for James. Patterson, they are both basically content creators in some ways. If you can call an author one, he is one. Yeah, so James Patterson, since he wrote his first, he was an advertising executive, James Patterson. I've got a lot of time for James Patterson, I have to say.

His first book... It's not for me, but I can see what it is. I like the way he's run his career. First book was the Thomas Berryman number. That was 1976, so he's 50 years in the business. He has, over that time, written 416 books. So that's almost 80 years So 50 years he's done that

Started as just any regular writer Thritter writer, The Alex Cross series Various other things like that And then very quickly got into this idea of franchising himself out Yeah And so he writes a huge amount of books With other people

The Ladies' Detective Agency books There's lots of books That he does a series with other writers I read it He does the outline And then he often someone He used to be in advertising with Then takes that

And starts like writing the book which comes in sort of maybe 30 or 40 page chunks, he either kind of totally rewrites those or just gives in some notes and then they do it again. But it's that sort of process. That's happening all the time with, as you say, a series of different writers.

And obviously the longer he works with people, the less he has to do with things. Now, the one thing I would say about it is, first he's interesting as a business proposition. Secondly, he credits all of his co-writers. So it's not like he's not being ghostwritten. He writes these things with a certain person. I spoke to one of his co-writers this week, who I won't name,

and they said he is, A, wonderful to work with, B, gives you all the credit you deserve, and C, pays really, really well. And you think, well, listen, with all of those things, you'll take it, right? If you team up with James Patterson, you'll do good business. People know who you are. People in the industry will know that you've done it. The public will know that you've done it, and you'll be well-paid for it. So I think it's an unusual business model to write 416 books in 50 years,

but at least he's doing it in the right way. So I have some time for James Patterson. As I say, he's done a couple of books with Clinton, did a book with Dolly Parton. So Mr. Beasts comes along and says to him. I mean, it does rather beg the question of the two names on the cover, did either of them write it? Yeah, and also that thing about, like,

I've got a meeting in 15 minutes and what should I do? Yeah. I think what happened is that James Patterson went, you know, Mr. Beath works out of Greenville in North Carolina. James Passon went, Mr. B gave him a two-hour tour of, you know, the facility. I do really now start to think of it as a sort of bond lair now, that facility. And, you know, all the different things they're doing, many of which are various forms of survivalist challenge. And then by the end of it, they're like, oh, we should just do a book.

This is a sort of survivalist challenge. So you don't actually even need the 15 minutes before the meeting to work out what the book is going to be. I mean, there's absolutely no way James Patterson would have approved us starting with a thousand, then immediately going to 100. That doesn't make any sense. Start with 100. but listen, that's absolutely fine. There is at the beginning of the book, I skimmed it.

I will say that. You get the idea of it. There is a dramatic persona at the beginning of this telling you who the characters are, including Mr. Beast. So it tells you who Mr. Beast is. So he's a character in his own book. What's his character note?

Which he wrote. This is his character note. Mr. Beast, according to Mr. Beast, is sharp, fair-minded, and deeply loyal. But he tells that, I mean, again, the first rule of writing is show, don't tell. But, yeah, on the first page, he tells us who he is. And, you know, at various points in the book, he's, you know, saving ex-marines and stuff in very...

But listen, if I was a character in a book, I'd be doing the same. Yeah. I mean, you do it in your private life, but don't like to talk about it. I don't like to talk about it, exactly. Okay, the things that I find quite interesting about it, there has been, although they've told you there is ongoing a huge bidding war for the film and TV rights. That interested me, because I'm like, hmm, if it's... It would have sold a long...

time ago. I agree. And also, who keeps wanting to bid for these Mr. B's shows where they are so expensive, I don't know, what Amazon paid 100 million or whatever it was for Beast games, didn't they? I mean, they are so expensive, they don't make him any money. And the idea, sorry, it is a rip-off of a good game anyway, which itself is, you know, a hundred games, battle royale. Lots of things, you know, that, you know, he says, you know what he's, what book he says it's based on? What? The Odyssey. Of course. Because he says it's a character.

on a journey going through different challenges. You think, yeah, I suppose so. No, no, no, no. The odysseys about American dads who cry in their cars on the way home, I've told you. Okay. Well, you and Mr. Beast disagree on that. If he comes on a Q&A episode,

we'll have a, what's the odyssey about discussion? God, I mean, yeah. So, as I say, I hope they have nailed down their right steel because I think that if it performs like that on the book charts, it's perhaps not worth as much as they thought it was before. Yeah, it's a tricky story because I do, I like every aspect of it. I like the fact that Mr. Beast, who can do a million different things,

the society to do a book. I like that. I don't know how much work he's put into it. It might just be one of those things. Someone says, would you like to do a book? Yeah, sure. I like the fact that James Patterson has done it. I like James Patterson.

You know, I like the fact that maybe I'll send people into bookshops who wouldn't ordinarily go into books shops. It doesn't massively look like it is. But, you know, I do like all of those things about it. I think it's lame, but anyway. Yeah, but if that's something can be lame and also, you know, admirable. I don't find it admirable. But I think to widen it out to what's happening to him at the moment,

I think it's quite interesting what's happened to him because he's, as we know, if you have followed the show before, you know he is the biggest thing really on YouTube, or was the biggest thing. And it's quite interesting what's happened to him. He doesn't really, he spends so much money on all of those challenges, his weekly videos, and most of which are making people sort of endure things

in one way or another for money. He has big hook ideas. Yeah, very big hook ideas, and they're hugely popular. But we talked, as funnily enough, when we're talking about the BBC, we talked a little bit about the sort of pointlessness of trying to sort of beat YouTube, even though YouTube gave him huge amounts of money because he was their kind of almost,

effectively the non-official face of YouTube for quite a long time. There was something that came out earlier this year where people were like, God, like his video counts of another creator said his viewership's basically 50% down. And as we always say about YouTube, you know, they own the platform. They make sure they win. And people are saying, oh, look, smaller creators are being boosted. They're trying to boost many, many, rather than having these, you know, behemus that no one can

really, any moment come close. They are prioritizing smaller creators. And, you know, they can change the rules any time. And it's, it is clear, although Mr. Bees said, no, no, no, everything's, you know, tractor production is up to make a sound of it so yeah. I have to say that it's clear that there has been something that has happened to the algorithm that has kind of tried to surface more, it's more people. And it has to be at the expense of some of these bigger ones. Either way, he sort of loses money effectively on YouTube. He makes the platform's biggest star, which says something about YouTube, makes more on snacks.

He has his Feastables line, which is hugely popular. So, I mean, I suppose he sort of raises those questions about YouTube. Is it a customer acquisition engine that ultimately owns the platform and makes them all the money for itself? Or is it your ultimate revenue stream? And if the biggest creator effectively makes more money on other stuff and spends a huge amount of money to do what he does on the platform, then we might say it's a customer acquisition engine. But this is the thing I admire most about Mr. Beast.

I have to say he worked up very, very early on that those videos were a lost leader. You've got to, you know, it's very easy to go on YouTube but understand that you're getting, you know, paid X pound per view, X pound per ad and think, okay, I'll try and build, you know, business off that. He worked up very, very early on that I want to build a profile off that,

and I then want to leverage that profile into selling things. Now, you might not love that as an idea, but that's capitalism and, you know, he's done it very, very well. He understands that, you know, algorithm aside, there comes a point where your popularity slips. It doesn't matter who you are, you peak, and then you go, you manage decline from there and in. That's almost all careers is that. And you have to, before that happens, own something.

Well, I agree. So he's had his glow up, and it's been beyond phenomenal. Can he enter his imperial phase? That's the bit that's quite interesting for me now. He wants to create an empire. He's got this base. He's now got a professional CEO in, because who is trying to impose some kind of financial discipline

because they kind of just spent any old, you know, any old money. They were just like Lamborghini's lying around the place, not particularly for them and for his kind of team of posse, but also just to give away to people just there was no sort of discipline particularly. It's very childlike. I mean, the ideas are all very, very childlike in a kind of fascinating way, really. Psychologically. I mean, it's sort of psychologically fascinating. And what I think is interesting at this point in any business person or obsessive creator,

and he is an obsessive creator, I mean, like he's slept there. As we know, he spent five years studying the thumbnail on YouTube. He is obsessed of every single way of trying to kind of win against the algorithm. But it's interesting with anything like this, are you your business's only real asset? This is how you enter your, because you know, we know he wants to sell consumer goods. He's got a finance app. He wants to do toys.

Obviously, he wants to do streaming service. There's lots of things we know he wants to do. But it's whether the revenues are sort of sufficiently predictable and you can separate and they are legally separable and even kind of conceptually separable from the creator so that you can become something that's akin to like an institutional asset class. And I wonder, you've seen lots of people. You know, you look at Alex Cooper with her on Well Network.

Is Alex Cooper the thing that really people want? Or do they think that you can just actually sort of roll it out and she can kind of point at a few things and all the other people she can bring up and then she can create an empire? And there are lots of these people who are that, I don't know if we can call them first generation creators, but then everyone understands what we mean by these people now.

These huge big people like Alex Cooper, like Mr. Beaselike, whatever, they are all having some kinds of troubles trying to separate, you know, trying not to be the only asset in their business. If I look back to, you know, endemarle, which grew so absolutely enormous off the back of Big Brother. So in some ways at that point, that was a one product business,

or certainly it was massively reliant on that. And you're very, very aware at that point, it's all with Big Brother that, how long does this go on for? I mean, it turns out it's still on now, but is it certainly not where it was? By the way, we're going to do a really cool bonus series on Big Brother. Yes, I know.

Yes, with some very interesting people. Oh my God, there's some very cool people. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And so at that stage, you think, okay, you have to diversify, right? And we diversify, you know, you come up with new shows. Deal and No Deal was huge. Various other shows were super big, so that's what you have to do. They then got a point in that cycle where to grow,

they'll do what Alex Cooper does and what Mr. Beast will do. You just buy other people. You just buy other people who are doing that stuff. And I hate it. I think it's cheating. That's what Messer did. That's what Zuckerberg did. He just bought all the small.

you've had your ideas and then you... As soon as you've got a billion, the world of business is easy because as soon as someone comes along who's better than you, you buy them. Because they're better than you, but they're smaller than you, and everyone wants $200 million in their bank account.

So you buy them. And that's what Mr. Beast would do. He's got a lot of money. He's got these brands. There will be a generation who eat feastables who will not have heard of Mr. Beast, who don't understand

that Mr. Beast was a real person. They go, like Colonel Sanders was a real person, right? But at the moment, it doesn't feel like Colonel Sanders was a real person. but we know KFC. They'll come a point in 20 years' time when people go, the Mr. B's character,

who came up with that? And he go, oh, no, that was a real person. Okay, that's really interesting. I do agree with that. But I also think there's something about him psychologically, whether he can do that. Because actually, for all the,

lots of people denigate him all over, for his own brand and his own distinct thing of what he does, he has been an obsessive controller and he's tried to be sort of across absolutely everything. we know that people get into problems when they try to do that. If you cannot, like, you know, sometimes founders say that,

they have to step aside from things because they can't, they just, they're either all in or they just, it stresses them more to have stuff going on that they're not fully controlling. Well, we have a clue to what his inner feelings are about his career and about where he wants to go, because he's never really opened up about that. But in the book, the Mr. Beast character opens up about it. and obviously it's written by Mr. Beast. So in the book, it's fascinating.

The competition, these hundred people, I don't think this is working in the real world. The prize is the winner gets a billion dollars to do something that will help save humanity. I mean, quite why fighting and killing each other is the right way to find that, I don't know, but it's to give someone a billion dollars to save humanity. And Mr. Beast at some point talks about the responsibility

of having that sort of money and having that sort of profile and trying to do good in the world and talking about what money can do and how money can save humanity. He doesn't do it in an Elon Musk way, I'll say that. He doesn't in a slightly more interesting way. Maybe a naive way, but naivety is not the worst flaw in anybody. But he does seem to have some view that an individual can change the world for the better

and an individual can use their money to change world. Beast, 2030s, 2032. you say? Do you know what? I don't think. I don't think, I don't think, I don't think, I think, that's where we are now. I think he'd rather turn into a dolly doing things with his money. He sort of is in some ways, you know, not to, he does, it is, and a lot of people say it's like, you know, kind of the gamification of poverty and he's done all sorts of, he does, because he has the charitable sort of stream of Mr. B's philanthropy where he's constantly doing these things, like, can we build 100 wells in however many days?

I mean, he's building wells. Yeah. We've always said that. There's plenty of people who aren't. Yeah, and there's an element of what he would do that, wouldn't he? But he doesn't have to. No. There's plenty of billionaires who don't do what he does.

And as I said, the Gilded Age, you know, Carnegie, all these sort of people. They were often terrible, terrible people, but they did build extraordinary things and railroads and all sorts of things. Yeah. And libraries. Yeah. If you have a child who would like to read this book, I would say absolutely get them to go into a bookshop, go to the library, pick it up.

Mr. B suggests, by the way, on one of his many videos with James Patterson, that you buy two books, one for a parent, one for a child, so you can talk about it over the dinner table, which is an interesting marketing technique. But you don't have to do that. He said, sorry, my favorite bit in those videos, and it's a slip of the tongue, but he says,

and of course you can buy it online, or go wherever you buy books. I know what it means is wherever you buy your books. Yeah. But it sounded like, or wherever you buy books. This is not a thing he's thought of before. Listen, it's a book. I'm glad you wrote some.

Please let that be the cover line. Please let that be the blur for the paperback. I love James Patterson. It's a book, Dash, Richard Altman. I want that so much. James Patterson doesn't have an agent, which I think is quite impressive as well. He's just got a lawyer.

But the final word, I think, so 3,3,370 copies. I actually say in the US hasn't pulled up trees either. But it is three places below, and the charts, the K-pop sticker dolly dressing book. Oh. Which has been out about two months already,

so it's still out selling the most dangerous games. Is that what is even called The Most Dangerous Games? Yeah. Doesn't even really flow the most dangerous games. Yeah, it should always be in the singular

in a title, shouldn't it? Yeah. I think there is a short story called The Most Dangerous Game, but you can, you know. That doesn't matter. Yeah. But it's, listen, it's a phenomenon.

It's a phenomenal world. Anyone out there? It's not burning too brightly. Knowing our listeners, there will be someone who fits this. Anyone out there who has an ironic book club? Hi. And also, just can't hit me up

because I'll be there. Yeah, an ironic book club reading of the most dangerous games. Mr. Beast and James Patterson. Hmm. I'm looking forward to talking about Julia Donald. After the break, we will be talking about Gruffalo Granny.

Yeah. First we'll be talking about Nicola Peltz, but then we'll be talking about Julia Donald's. The palate cleanser of Nicola Peltz. Hang on one second, before we go to a break. This week is the final episode of this trance of our Bond story. We're doing a huge sort of overarching. The Sean Connery years.

The Sean Connery years. It all goes wrong for Sean Connery. No spoilers. No spoilers. It happens in Japan, but no spoilers. But that is for our members. So if you want to join, it's the rest is entertainment.com for ad-free listening and all these bonus things.

Otherwise, should we go to a break? Yeah. This episode is brought to you by Lloyds. Now, show business loves a club. I love all these sort of unofficial green. groupings of people. There's two brat packs that I'm big fan of. There are two brats. Yeah, there's two brats because there's the movie brat pack, all of the Judd Nelson and, you know, Rob Lowe and Charlie Sheen and all those guys. Everyone in the Breakfast Club. Yeah, and then there's also the brat pack of those kind of turn of the 90s novelists,

Bretty Stenellis, Jay McInanny, Donna Tart. And that's the thing creatively. It's actually very, very useful to hang out with other people who are incredibly talented because you drive each other on to do things. because a lot of the British novelists in the 80s, Martin Amos, Julian Barnes, Ian McEwen, they all used to sort of go and have lunch and go and have dinner. And you could just tell, you know, they would talk about stuff and they would make each other's work much better. And that's the benefit of being in a group, being in a club. It becomes more than the sum of its parts. Clubs really do have benefits like Club Lloyds, an elevated everyday bank account with exclusive benefits, plus a lifestyle perk like cinema tickets.

And you get no fees on debit card spending and withdrawals abroad. An exclusive mortgage rate discount, interest on your balance. To join a club worth being in, search clubloids. You must be a UK resident, aged 18 or over to apply. This account has a £5 monthly fee, refunded each month you pay in £2,000 or more. Hey, this is Michael and Hannah from Gollhangers, The Rest is Science. This episode is brought to you by Cancer Research UK. Think of some things that glow.

Okay, fireflies, glow sticks, the northern lights, they're very cool. But what if we could replicate that glow inside our bodies, and what if doing so could help us save lives? Because Cancer Research's UK scientists, they're investigating whether a special fluorescent dye that sticks to prostate cancer cells could tackle an ongoing challenge in the operating room, removing every single trace of cancer.

Because when cancer cells are glowing and easy to spot, surgeons can precisely remove them, leaving healthy cells untouched, meaning there's less chance of the cancer returning and fewer nasty side effects. Cancer Research UK's, vision is a world where everybody lives longer, better lives free from the fear of cancer, with breakthroughs like this leading to kinder, more effective treatments.

For more information about Cancer Research UK, their research and breakthroughs and how you can support them, visit canterresearchuk.org slash rest is science. Welcome back, everybody. Lovely to have you here. Nicola Peltz, Marina. Tell me more. Yes. It's just been the Venice Film Festival, among various. So it's part of the sort of festival season at this time of year. Now, Nicola Peltz, friend of the podcast, wife of Brooklyn Beckham, and daughter of billionaire, activist investor, Nelson Pelt, relevant, perhaps. Isn't it funny when people, because normally when you say the word activist,

you think of, you know, someone up in a tree stopping a bypass, but as soon as you put investor on the front of you think, oh, okay. This is a guy who just likes to screw companies. You think nuclear bunker? Yeah, this is a guy who just likes to... trouble at your company. Anyway, so Nicola Peltz appeared to win the Rising Star Award at Venice. Now, what for? Well, let's go to that. Can I immediately clarify, she actually won the Rising Star Award

in Venice, in the city, but at a festival that takes place at the same time as the Venice Film Festival, but it is not in fact the Venice Film Festival or indeed affiliated with it in any way. It's called Kineo. And it has no official ties. But if you saw this thing, if you saw the pictures of it, there's a big, big red carpet, she's in a big old dress, there's Brooklyn. You know, it looks for all the world as though it's part of the big Venice Film Festival,

which is, you know, one of the huge sort of, it's that and can really, which, although, as we've said before on the podcast, people are getting scared of taking that films, the big studios to those. So again, crucially, this was not the Venice Film Festival. It's just a film festival in Venice happens to happen at the same time as the Venice Film Festival.

So it's like saying my band is playing at Wembley, but it's not the stadium, it's a pub. Yeah, so Kalu said she's attracted to increasing international attention through her work as an actress, screenwriter and producer. Oh yeah. We talk about little else, do we? Yeah. She's also 31, which is, dare I say, not the age of a... In fact, she first won a rising star award at CinemaCon, which is a sort of nothing sort of thing, in 2014. Wow. What does the con stand for? She's been acting a long time. Now, her next film, and this is sort of relevant,

and by the way, it's called Prima. It's about a ballerina. She's in it. Faye Dunaway is also in it. Again, it's been written by Nicola Peltz, directed by others, but funded by, well, I can't imagine. No one knows who it's funded by.

She's got some kind of production startup bunny films, which I think we can assume could be traded. financially back to her father. She did one other film which she, I think, even directed, wrote, directed Anne Stardin, called Lola, in which she played a sort of impoverished stripper, which I think we couldn't all live without the daughters of billionaires doing. They should bid for their film rights for the most dangerous games.

Yeah, yeah. I think marriage made in heaven. Yes, but I think projects in which Nicola is centre stage are the only things that they bid for any... She can play Mr Beast. She's... Yeah, there is a deadness in the eyes that similar, but she's been acting for almost two decades.

So I suppose the question is, what has happened here? There is no shortlist for this award disclosed. We are going to broaden this to a discussion, a wider discussion in a minute, about awards and how much one has to essentially pay to play. No shortlist has been disclosed, no vote tally. We don't even know the process by which the Rising Star Award at Kineo, a festival in Venice,

but not Venice happens. access to the transcript of the jury. No. So in a way, it's more of a question about how these satellite film festivals work and who funds the film festivals themselves and what sort of PR draw is needed for them to continue to exist as kind of going concerns. What's interesting about this award, I mean, you can hear how careful I'm having to be when I talk about it.

It's not tied to a specific performance. However, at the same festival, Faye Dunaway, who I, recently mentioned a starring in this upcoming Nicola Pelt's film, she got a lifetime achievement award. So the rising style was given to Nicola and Faye Dunaway got the lifetime achievement award. I don't know quite how to put this. It is certainly helpful marketing for a film that has yet to be released. So I thought that was quite interesting. You know, everyone to sort of clutch their handkees to their noses is, is it sort of ridiculous because so many awards across entertainment are effectively pay to play. You often see very small movies, which suddenly have these posters which have like 15 laurels on them,

all the things I say, you know, silver winner XX film festival, which essentially is an everyone gets medals type situation, right? Absolutely, and these festivals want to continue to exist and they have to be funded in one way or another. But if we look at sort of general for your consideration campaigns, by the time you listen to this, podcast, the Emmys will have happened or will we just happen, you know, tailing off. You don't know when I'm going to listen to this podcast. And Emmy campaigns can easily cost a million dollars for a show easily, easily, easily. But in that, you're including like trade ads and billboards, events, PR, screenings, full-time campaign staff.

The combined total of what they think people spend on the Emmy campaigns is made. maybe 100 million. Maybe it's even, last time they looked in about six years ago, I mean, maybe it's closer to two now because there's so many different. And so many of the big streamers who are kind of effectively tech companies have huge amounts of money spent and want those things. And, you know, no offense, Apple have got lots of great shows, amazing shows. But it helps to have, that cachet is very important for television shows.

They really care about that. And remember, they all have films now that they also, they release one way or another, even if it's only for a week into theatre, so they're eligible for these things, and then put them onto their services. So Oscar campaigns, you're really in the big leagues. It is tens of millions to push a movie. And sometimes people, you know,

if you were Apple or Amazon or whatever, and you had a film that you wanted to be pushed for awards, they think people have spent over 60 for a significant push for one of them. Over 60 million. Over 60 million. For one film. But, you know, if... What?

You're a phone company. You're the everything corporation. You want awards. Now, what they spend it on for the Oscars, and you know how long those campaigns go, and they're gone for absolutely months, depending on when your film comes out. Start it out, really, hasn't it?

Yeah, well, it starts. Maybe it starts at Cannes, and maybe it starts at Venice in the old days, because you'd put your big films there, and then you'd essentially get your talent out there campaigning for months. I saw I play Rocky. I'm dying for it. The Toronto Film Festival. I think yesterday,

maybe. Yeah. At the weekend and people are already going, oh, this feels like... I cannot wait. That's not until November for us here. I was looking... Yeah, that's not until November.

But a good example of this, like what you do if you haven't got 50 million to throw on your film. So Andrea Reisbury, you'll remember this story. There was a film called To Leslie. I mean, it is a brilliant performance. If you want to see movies about alcoholics that are brilliant performance, I can tell you people don't particularly, which is why it took $400,000 at the box office.

but it is a brilliant performance. But no one watched this film, and it didn't cost... It probably costs about a million dollars to make. But because the film company who spends a million dollars in the film does not have anything, cannot possibly compete with the studios in this way, there was a sort of celebrity-backed campaign for Andrea Reisbury to get a Best Actress nomination,

which is organised by the director and his wife, who are very well-connected in Hollywood, and they did hire some publicists, and lots of people, lots of kind of big name celebrities, say Gwyneth Paltrow or someone like that, said, oh my God, this performance is so brilliant, stuck it on their Instagram. And there was a really big scandal about that. She did get a nomination in the end, Andrew Ricewell.

The Academy didn't find her guilty of any. They did have a whole big inquiry into this, ridiculous. She was not found guilty of anything, and they didn't rescind her nomination. But it was quite unpleasant. The backlash against it was so unpleasant when really all it is was that some screeners were sent out to people in the entertainment community. and if they liked it, they said, wow, this is amazing. And she's a brilliant actress.

So it was a kind of ridiculous scandal. Yeah, I think it was a supposed scandal, which actually reflected the real scandal. You know, because you're not supposed to lobby directly, and it's like, have they broken rules? It's like, please, if anyone is spending $60 million, for me, it's so much worse to do that. I always thought that scandal was the other way around

when Andrea Reisbrough got nominated. The fury that someone who hadn't played the game had got nominated, the money, the industry, the money they're paying, you look at the Emmys. There are certain shows every year. They go, oh my God, it's got 17 nominations, it's got 60 nominations, year after year after year. And nothing surprising ever manages to get through the door.

I didn't care less that we were doing it the morning after, that we were doing our public calls effectively recording it the day before the night of the Emmys because you're never going to talk about it. It's just, it couldn't. That's one of the most interesting things is that you don't really want to discuss it because it's just, it just feels like something

that's been long decided just playing out. Yeah, and what you, because what you want in, say, an Oscar, is Andrew Reisbber does this performance in a film that people didn't really go and see, but because the Academy is made up of billmakers, they have noticed this, enough of them understand the quality of that performance that she gets nominated. That's not what happens. What happens is, you know, they get sent the screeners, they get to see huge billboards all over town.

It's months of it. Lunch is breakfast. That somebody breaks through that, doesn't know a different way, and gets through. They were so angry because they had wasted. so much money. Yeah, so let's conclude this item by saying, in a very generalized terms, it is a racket one way or the other. I really have to say, I mean, it is a racket why all this awards business, one way or the other. Yeah, normally in any industry, you have to pay for a table, you have to pay to be there. You know, they make a lot of money. And this award ceremony is

fun, they're fun to watch, and they're very political. But for lots of the smaller ones, you were paying an awful lot of money for the privilege of, you know, having a table and being nominated or, you know, whatever it is. It's a, yeah, it's a, it's a, it's a, it's a, it's a, it's a, it's a, it's a, it's a, it's a, it's a, it's a, it's pay to play. Yeah. So, let's conclude that item tactfully there. Yes. And, and. But I look forward to seeing if Nicola is up for an Oscar anytime soon, because that would prove that this, um, um, um, slightly off-brand, Venice jury was right.

Yeah. Or it would just prove that some more money had been. spent further down the long. Well, I see, I don't have that cynicism. I believe in artistry. Now, to happier and heartier fair, a celebration of the wonderful Julia Donaldson. So Gruffalo Granny is out this week. It's a follow-up to the Gruffalo books. It's going to be an absolute enormous seller.

I mean, like, beyond huge. I believe you bought it. I bought a copy at the weekend. It's extraordinary, and we'll get on to why I think it's extraordinary. later. Now, Julia Donaldson is the best-selling British author of the century. She has sold over 50 million books. She's much beloved by generation after generation of children. So I just wanted to look into how you become the best-selling author of the century because it's an interesting story. So Julia Donaldson, who is the most wonderful woman. I mean, she's incredible. She was at university in Bristol in

the late 60s. Study drama and French. Her and a friend went to Paris for a year and started busking on the streets of Paris. She's always been a songwriter. That's the thing that Julia Donaldson loves to do. While at Bristol,

she meets a man called Malcolm Donaldson, who will be another hero of this story, and they start playing songs together and this, that, or the other. A former, after university, form a theatre troupe, they tour plays around Council of the States, and she started writing things,

where people who came to the members of the audience could have roles in them. She started to understand what it is that kids liked and tried to get them involved in stuff. So very participatory. So she's writing songs. She's very, very interested in the imagination of children. You see where all this is going. You see the foundations you have to lay a very, very, very long time before anything else happens.

Started busking around Europe with Malcolm with their guitars. got married in London. She composed an operetta for their wedding, which she and the other guests all performed, including, by the way, this is a real niece sidebar for fans of, I'm sorry, I haven't a clue, Colin Sell, who plays the piano on that. He was Malcolm's roommate at university and a very good friend of Julia Donaldson. They moved to Brighton. Her husband is a pediatrician, Malcolm, so he's always moving around and start playing on the local folk scene, So that's, you know, writing folk songs, this or the other. Someone suggested that she started sending songs to children's BBC.

So this is like the 80s. So they've been touring around. You know, she's been doing these plays and all sorts of things. So she starts writing songs for Playaway and Play School. Sorry, if you were a child of the 80s like me, play away is amazing. Well, actually it was kind of, yeah, it's like the turn of the 70s to 80s. But it was absolutely.

It was absolutely brilliant. I loved to play away. And so at some point, by the way, at this point, in the 80s, Flewella Benjamin would have sung one of Julia Donaldson's songs. Who would have known? It's too iconic. It's too iconic. It's too iconic.

Becomes an English teacher because the writing work is drying up. The song might is drying up. You know, those shows are not showing anymore. And always in the teaching, she was writing songs and plays and getting kids to be in them. Right. So she's this extraordinary one, but we know exactly the type of person

we're talking about, someone who actually cares, someone who's incredibly creative, someone who loves collaborating, and someone who really, really cares about what it is they're doing. And in 1991, Matthew and the publisher, say, you wrote a song in 1975 for playboard, and it was called A Squash and a Squeeze. And she's like, yeah, I suppose so.

So we'd like to turn it into a picture book. And she's like, Oh, okay. So this is 1991, by the way. It's not like 1978 or something. This is 16 years after she'd written this song that she'd long forgotten about. And Matthew Moussey could we turn that into a book? And she says, well, yeah, I suppose so. He said that, but I can't, you know, I don't have, would someone do the drawings? And they say, oh, we got this young guy from Hamburg called Axel Sheffler. He can do the drawing for you. And she's like, well, okay. So they publish squash and squeeze. It doesn't do enormous business, but it makes her think, I've been doing these plays for years. I've been writing these songs for years. I wonder if there's other ones that could be turned into books. And so she starts doing lots of things for kind of, you know, educational publishers and this or the other. So she does that throughout the early 90s. 1995, it comes across a Chinese folk tale about a girl walking through a wood. Yeah. Yeah. Do you know this one? No, I forgot that it was based on a sort of Chinese folk tale, but yeah, or inspired by.

Aspired by a girl walks through the wood with a tiger, convinces the tiger, it's terrified of the tiger, convinces the tiger that she's the queen of the jungle, and then as they go through the rest of the forest, or as they go through the rest of the jungle, the tiger sees how frightened all the other animals are and assumes that they're frightened of the girl. So that's the Chinese folktale, and do you know, Dolos, I think, oh, God, there's something in that, isn't there?

Start sort of kicking it around a little bit, and her kids really help her out with it and, you know, decides, oh, maybe, maybe a tiger's not right, And actually Tiger doesn't really rhyme with anything. So it comes up with the idea of it may be, you know, being a monster and comes up with the Gruffalo. She said, look, it's four years later she writes it. Okay, so this is, again, this is the writing process.

She's thawed it and thought it and she lights this tale, but it's not right. And anyone who knows the first Gruffalo understands some of the things she then did to that story to turn it into something even more extraordinary. So 1999, she writes it. So it takes her two weeks. And don't forget that two weeks is just writing that text. she'd been thinking about it for four years, sends it to a publisher, but also goes,

oh, that guy who did that book with me four years ago, Axel Sheffler. I wonder if he'd like it, so sends it to Axel Sheffler as well. And the Gruffler is published. And 18 million copies of that book later, and many, many other books, Room on the Brooms, or things like that. She is the best-selling British author since Records began. And I do think, when we think about writing and books,

right the way back to the late 1960s, you could see what she cared about. She could see that she was writing songs. You could see she cared about kids. You could see she cared about participation. And that's how you do it, I think. You have to really mean it. Absolutely.

I think that there's so many interesting things she said that I find sort of kind of fascinating. The stories are sort of about storytelling. And the new one, which is sort of inspired by, again, by Shehazade from the Arabian Nights. But it takes in all these stories from the Julia Donaldson and Axel Sheffler, extended universe. There's a bit of room on the brim in there.

There's a bit of monkey puzzle. There's the snail and the whale within the Gruffalo Granny's story. And it's incredible when you think, you know, I think the Gruffalo itself is like 700 words. You read these things on the internet now where people think they've done some long-form journalism. It's like, my God, this isn't long form, it's just long. You've done 5,000 words and it could have been said in 50.

The amount that is packed into tiny amounts of words in these kind of children's books, she's very interesting. What she said was she doesn't like books as medicine. She's got this kind of very, something very distinct about. She's got a very 2020 kind of memory of what it's like to be a child and what children want. And as you say, through constant interaction with it. And so she's not rude about books about, she said,

there are a lot of books about sort of feisty girls and climate change and things like that. And she says there's an awful lot of books about, I love you, mummy. Yes, I love you two, darling little bear. We all know these. And they do sell brilliantly. And she said, but there's so many books on that, which I think are probably quite reassuring for the parents. and it's such an insight, isn't it?

She says, most children I would hope would take for granted that their parents or carers love them. They want a story where you're not with them and you're having some sort of adventure. And I just think, I know, just gets you here, right? And it's also part of the sort of, not business story of it all, but how hard it is to break into that market.

Because the children's book market is enormous. It's like whatever it is, a third of all but sold or something. But there's a huge amount of nostalgia within that market. So parents just want to read the books that they had when they were children, and their children to like them too. So you're buying things like, you know, the Tiger, which is amazing.

By the way, you can do a whole special on Judas Cull as well. But you're buying books like that you like when you were a child, you know, or you're like the oil bugs, Good Night Moon, all these sort of things that you had. So it is really hard with a market that's kind of like that to break through with something completely new. And rhyming, by the way, was really out of fashion because in order for it to make any money,

you basically had to translate it. And as we've discussed before in musicals, it's very difficult to translate. And especially someone who is obsessed with the ascension as she is. She's like she is, she refines and refines and refines these books. And I think it's really interesting that, you know, she managed to break in the hardest way, really, to break through with rhyme and new books and something that, as we say,

isn't immediately like, oh my God, I love my kid, that's why this title is all about how much I love you. And two ways that she did break through, and both of which I think are very, very interesting. And both of which, funny, the mirror image of this Mr. Beast thing of you really don't need social media followers. Because she toured for years, this marriage she had with Malcolm, who sadly passed away a few years ago, seems so beautiful. And the two of them, don't forget this guy is like a very, very senior pediatrician. He's got a full-time job.

He's working in hospitals. He's saving children. But they would tour the country, just the two of them, would they're going to. guitars and sing songs at schools and libys, even when the gruffalo was being published. That's the thing that they would do. So all of these places, people remembered them. People remembered exactly what they did. They left a great impression wherever they were.

And so they built up this sort of groundswell. So there were enough people who sort of knew who they were. And she said, you know, after the first couple of weeks, and it's true as true now as it was then, it was word of mouth. People read that book, were like every learning that she had got from. that long career and every sort of ounce of love in her heart, all of which come across in that book, people just went, oh, this is great. This feels like it's a different level to other things. And so that combination of things of going up and down the country, really putting

the work in, and then people reading it and loving it turns you into the best-selling author in Britain. And, you know, it's amazing that, you know, the book is out there and people heading up and down the country to their local bookshops to buy it and kids being able to buy it and libraries just being inundated with people wanting to get this book as well. And what an extraordinary life and career she had and what a testament to her these books are and how lovely we have someone like her right in the heart of our culture, right? Absolutely.

I couldn't admire it more. And I just, as I say, the book is so sort of meta that it really, in the way that whenever you read, I mean, I remember when I was reading my children stories like this, you're thinking, but what's really happening here? The one thing that hasn't happened is a tiger hasn't come for tea. Okay, what is this actually about, you know, whatever you... Of course, one has come to tea, but you're always thinking this,

but if you are a parent reading these to small children, which I no longer am, you will 100% be deep in the matter of, like, how are all the other books fishing into this? It's so interesting. There's so much contained in so few words that I think it's a lesson to anyone who writes of how much you can do. Exactly. So I love to Julia.

She lives, two other facts. She lives in the village where my granddad used to be the village, Bobby, many, many years ago. They bought her and her husband, when the post office was going to close down, they bought it, so it didn't close down. That's what you want, right? Yeah. And her great niece is Lola Young, who sings Messi. I did not know that. Yeah.

That's a family, isn't it? That's a family who knows how to write songs. Wow. Okay. Yeah. All right. Any recommendations this week? I would like to recommend the second series of the paper.

if you remember what happened at the end of the first series, and if you haven't seen the first series, it's a sort of, it's technically like an office spin-off, but it isn't really. Oscars in it, essentially. But if you remember what happened at the end of the first series, don't worry, it didn't change anything. Okay.

And it's just, it's a wonderful show about industry newspapers that are in a terrible, terrible decline. And I've got a simple recommendation, which is if you live anywhere near an independent bookshop, go in there and ask them what you should buy because they are the best of people and they'll suggest something absolutely amazing and every high street is better

for having an independent bookshop and they're absolutely thriving and you will pay a couple of pound more for your books than you would do online but that's because, as I always say, they pay rent and they pay taxes. But please, please, please support them. I know.

That's it for us, I think. Yes, back with that Bond episode for our members tomorrow and otherwise, see you on Thursday. See you on Thursday. Big struggle between Britain and Russia. We assess a prime minister. With high confidence, it was Russian.

Holding the Russians accountable is World War III. They took down a British passenger jet containing 350 people. Man in the Kremlin is playing, Alex. Got to ask yourself, you want to play or not? You're the Prime Minister. You've done nothing! We would need to understand the policy context. All the relevant context will be structured as a framework today

and disseminated into an operation order, or Fragow. A Fragor that says to kill the president of Russia. Yes. New from Goldhanger. Who is going to be able to pull this off? Tom McDuffe! An audio drama journey like no other. Men like Duffy, they are our most valuable weapons.

Devised as a technically rigorous, geopolitical action thriller. We have two times friendly key. Where Britain plays its strongest hand. He's the best. Against its strongest vote. Available now, wherever you get your podcasts.