The Rest Is Entertainment - The secrets of 'blurb quotes' on books and who is to blame when a guest goes rogue?

Episode Date: February 8, 2024

What is the fallout when a guest goes wild on TV or radio? How genuine are recommendation quotes on books? And bizarre green room behaviour plus a much needed correction around Bob The Builder. Richard and Marina are back answering more of your questions on The Rest Is Entertainment. Twitter: @restisents Email: [e-mail] Producer: Neil Fearn Executive Producers: Tony Pastor + Jack Davenport 🌏 Get our exclusive NordVPN deal here ➼ https://nordvpn.com/trie It’s risk-free with Nord’s 30-day money-back guarantee! ✅ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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in the community, and participating in programs like Smile Cookie and Hockey Card Trade Nights. So join your local Tim's team today. Apply now at careers.timhortons.ca. What day of the week do you look forward to most? Well, it should be Wednesday. Ahem, Wednesday. Why, you wonder? Whopper Wednesday, of course.

When you can get a great deal on a whopper. Flame grilled and made your way, and you won't want to miss it. So make every Wednesday a Whopper Wednesday, only at Burger King, where you rule. Hello, and welcome to another edition of the Rest is Entertainment Questions, Questions and Ans answers edition. And my name is Marina Hart. And my name is Richard Osman. So many good questions this week.

I think, Marina, unfortunately, though, you're going to have to start with an apology. Regrettably, I'm beginning with an apology. Eve Martin writes in, I'm sure I'm one of a tidal wave of people. You're not actually, but thank you for correcting me anyway, because I needed it. With this correction, but please see attached my extensive research on the casting of Dizzy the Cement Mixer. From Bob the Builder. From Bob the Builder. Which we spoke about last week.

Right, which we spoke about last week because they are making a Bob the Builder movie, which J-Lo is executive producing. And I suggested that Dizzy would be someone who could either be snubbed or fated in one of the male acting categories. I'm sorry. Dizzy the Cement Mixer is female in all versions of Bob the Builder, except the Romanian and Slovenian version in which Dizzy is male. And that's a real deep dive into Romania and Slovenia. It is, isn't it? It's quite telling.

But anyway, so it will be either. So I guess that it will be Cate Blanchett edging out whoever plays Dizzy the Cement Mixer in Bob the Builder in two years' time. Ariana Grande. Unless she plays, unless Cate actually gives us her Dizzy the Cement Mixer, in which case I'm sure she'll make the acting categories. Thank you very much, Eve, and my apologies for that error. Shall we move on to some questions, Richard? Yeah, who are you going to misgender this week? That's my question.

Yeah, let's do some, shall we? Honestly, Romanians, Slovenians and Marina Hyde. Yeah. All right, here we go. Okay, I'm going to ask one about Welcome to Wrexham. During the excellent Welcome to Wrexham, Ryan Reynolds and Rob McElhenney revealed that they have invested 10 million into the football club. How much of that do you reckon they've clawed back with a worldwide hit documentary series? That's a good question. I know Humphrey very well from the world of comedy and he's the chief executive at Wrexham. It's a good question.

Obviously, they didn't know it was going to be a hit documentary series when they first started. This is a polite way of saying a lot more, isn't it, Richard? Not really. I will say, so they didn't know that. so the money they put in was genuine and real. And talking to Humphrey about it as well, every ounce of their heart and soul is in that project. They absolutely love it. They want Wrexham to be in the Premier League.

They want to be there. They love the community. They love what they're doing to the community. I think that Wrexham is in very, very safe hands with the two of them. Obviously, if you have a big hit documentary, you do okay. Yeah. It's the truth. So, yeah, they're doing all right.

But the initial investment was an investment, and the heart and soul is genuine, all of that stuff. So I think it's a real feel-good story, unless you're any of the other teams in League Two who are searching around essentially for Brad Pitt to invest or Newport and you want Toby Maguire to invest in you. But yeah, I think it's been a rather lovely story. Thank you to Johnny Mac for that question. Thanks, Johnny Mac. Okay, here's one on book quotes. Andy Vickerman says,

how do you get chosen as a blurb quote as a fellow author? Do you get paid or is it reciprocal with agents or publishers? Do you think some authors don't read the books a bit like I understand the Oscars voters don't always watch all the films? Great question. So blurbs, we call them and it's an interesting one, because right, you know, if you're if you're a debut author for your first book, the immediate thing is who can we get to blurb for this. And it's not just for people picking up in, you know, your local independent bookshop. It's also for the industry, you write a book and it doesn't come out for 18 months because the first thing they're doing is trying to get people interested in that book. So you'll send it out to lots of different authors

and hopefully some of them come back and blurb it for you. So you'll send out a proof copy, essentially. Yes, I get sent huge numbers of them and I always try to do it for as many as possible, but you can't possibly do it for everyone. I always read the ones for which I have provided a quote, yes. That's good, that's good to hear. I'm sure people don't.

Sometimes you even have pre-proofs. So that's what we did. The Thirsty Murder Club, we sent it out to like 100 people. I used to go to all the crime festivals and I made a point of meeting up with people that I knew a few people to send it to. And yeah, then some of them come back, back but yeah you definitely have to read it and we i think on the on the on the first one we had ian rankin and marion keys and the idea there is do you like ian rankin do you like marion keys

do you like the idea of a crime book but that has a bit of marion key sort of art to it so you try and sort of show what sort of book it might be. You certainly don't get paid. Oh, I've never heard of anyone being paid, have you? No, no, you definitely don't. No, you definitely don't get paid. And I mean, I've got a couple of things to say about this. There are some authors who refuse always and just say, you know, it's just a point of very grand say,

I just don't give quotes. I've been asked for a quote for one of these authors' books subsequent to being told that before. Another thing that somebody did to me, this is is off topic but it's not completely off topic I was asked for a quote on someone's book which I did not have time to read and also I knew that I wasn't hugely keen on this person I was hassled endlessly by the publisher I wrote an email back saying I'm terribly sorry I'm not going to have be able to read it and then I offered some sort of blandishment I'm not going to give the exact words because you might be also work out sort of saying but he you know he certainly makes me think meaning really what I think about him is he's wrong about absolutely everything anyhow that book even though I was

saying in the email I can't give a quote because I haven't read it that quote ended up on the cover I think that is very shoddy behavior and I will certainly not be give a quote because I haven't read it that quote ended up on the cover I think that is very shoddy behavior and I will certainly not be giving a quote to that publisher again it is quite shoddy sometimes anything you essentially the rule is anything you say in public can be used almost all publishers will ask you but occasionally you know if we said something on this podcast about a book they could stick yes absolutely we in fact they are going to put something that we've said about the Werner Herzog book on yes which is I mean honored but I had I thought quite the opposite you see so I was using a euphemism which is now on the cover of this book which I haven't read but in general so if I get asked to

blurb something and I don't have time to read it, I'll just say I'm blurbed out. Or if I'm because I'm writing at the moment, so I don't have time. For example, last year, the brilliant Mark Billingham was bringing out a new series, a book called The Last Dance. And I didn't have time to read it, but I would always do a blurb for Mark because I think he's one of our best crime writers. So I said exactly that. I said, Mark, I can't read it. I said to his publisher, I can give you a quote that says Mark Billingham is the master of British crime writers because he is but I you know I can't do a quote and so you know I'm always happy to do that but no if you don't have time to read it you can't there's a brilliant

writer called Ebea Mukherjee and literally yesterday he said any chance you could blurb my book and I would absolutely love to because I love Ebea and at the moment I'm thinking because I'm writing I don't I'm not quite sure I've got time to do it so things like that but by and large I try to I don't do so much blurbing anymore but if you're if you're a new writer it's hard I think because you know if you don't have those contacts and people don't know you what I would say is blurbs aren't as important as you think booksellers are much more important the thing I'd be doing if I was't as important as you think. Booksellers are much more important. The thing I'd be doing if I was a new writer and, you know, your publishers haven't given you proof copies is just get them to give you bound up copies.

Take them into the 10 independent bookshops closest to you. Take them into local Waterstones. You know, if you can get a train into your nearest city, take them into a big bookshop. Give them to booksellers. And booksellers do read everything. And booksellers are more important than other authors in blurbing and booksellers will hand sell your book. And if someone in Waterstones leads loves your book, they will tell people in other Waterstones. So that's a sort of a simple lo-fi way of getting people interested in your book because behind all of this is you want to set as many books as you can before the book comes out that's how the industry

works we always you'll see every author saying pre-order the book now pre-order the book now and what that is is it gives the booksellers an idea the industry an idea of whether a book has got some traction and the more pre-orders you get, the more orders you get. And it just, you know, it gives it a bit of momentum. So everyone's in the game of getting pre-orders from you, and especially debut authors. But that's what I would be doing, is binding up my own stuff. I'll get your publisher to bind up 10 copies, take it into booksellers, and get booksellers to read it.

And, you know, it only takes one bookseller to actually make a book big, because a bookseller tells another bookseller tells another bookseller. And booksellers are the greatest people in the industry because they hand sell stuff. They're the ones that make hits all the time. It doesn't matter who you've got on the front cover of your book. So I would say that. But, yeah, I've never blurbed when I haven't read a book other than saying someone's brilliant. I blurb.

So I blurb. We talked in our first show of the year about a brilliant new book by Johnny Sweet called The Kellaby Code, which I did have time to read because I got sent it just before Christmas. I've just been sent that, so I can't wait to read it. It's really, really good.

And so, you know, I'll blurb that. But by and large, it's, you know, you can get over blurbed. Yes. It's the truth. But no, you don't get paid. God, I wish. I have a question for you, Marina,

from Sean Freeman. We were talking about columnist engagement numbers and how you can look up how many people have read your column and so can the editors and what have you. But before the days when you could look that sort of thing up, Sean asks, to what extent this kind of information would have been known or used before the internet? And how did editors work out who was popular, who wasn't popular,

what was working in their paper oh my goodness well like much of old newspapers it was an extremely subjective thing but it was probably be done on that old-fashioned thing the post bag and people whose columns drew a lot of letters either angry or that was sort of you know analog engagement was like that but it it was really that's how non-exact it was as a science and I mean I should think in some ways it's still a lot of subjective judgment because it's still like and it does and editors might decide that one person they need to have a broad church and so you might have you know you might be the person who's fated to be the right-wing columnist in the left-wing newspaper or the other way around And lots of people might write in and say, I can't stand this person,

but they want they feel like they want a broad church, they want that sort of representation. And if there's a change of government, and suddenly that person becomes much more important, because maybe they have a kind of hotline in. But one of the things that I think was really interesting was when newspapers and the Guardian went very quickly to it went to comments. And my old editor, Alan Rusbridger, always used to have this expression. He said, you know, newspapers used to be like the sort of handing down of the stone tablets, gratefully received, supposedly, by the audience.

And I think people were in this sort of sense that, you know, everybody loves this. We create this wonderful product for them every day and we hand it down to them and they're very grateful. The minute they opened up comments and it was just people saying, this is utter rubbish. You know, how does it get published? Are you paid to write this people some people just couldn't could not handle it and actually in some ways they were sort of technically I think being libeled by their own

publishers because if people were writing underneath something sort of libelous I suppose in the case of the Guardian or whoever's publishing the column you are technically publishing the column you are are technically publishing the column. You are responsible for that output. So you had to have moderators pulling all this stuff out. That was I mean, I found that sort of thing very funny, really, because you suddenly think, you know, you're not the bee's knees and everyone. And I find that's it. But I'm I can sort of take it and I don't mind but some people really really hated it and thought that there was a particular character to um i don't know times commenters or ft commenters or guardian commenters or whatever it is and i'm not sure that was the case i think often internet and online communities sort of

descend in the same way and i don't mean our send however they've done different things now like the times have gone to um you have to name yourself um they've stopped anonymous commenting and i think that they think it's you can create and curate a better community and the ft has often felt like that as well but yeah that was a real explosion of like what i'm not loved i'm not adored by everybody well that's the thing that you know this feedback thing i'm sure we'll talk about in future episodes the idea of being cancelled the idea of being cancelled is actually just people hearing from people who say no i don't agree with you and for for people who grew up in a certain generation of media as you say you were just exhorted you know the bbc are not going to send

you the letters whether people hate you they're just going to send you the praise and suddenly you have to see sort of unfiltered people's reactions to you and people will like disagree with you in my line of work i mean i'm so rude about other people. I think you have to say. You can't dish it out and not take it. So I'm always fine for anyone to sort of say whatever. I'm the opposite, by the way. Right. I just constant praise.

Yeah, okay. Is what I like. I'll bear it in mind, Richard. Yeah, thank you so much. How many comments would you have under one of your regular columns? Do you know, it's hard to say. It depends how long they leave the... They now try and shut them off over an hour

because moderation became just such a huge part. You can't have limitless moderators because... And people say, well, why am I not allowed to comment on this? Often you're not allowed to comment for legal reasons. There's a huge number of things you're not allowed to comment on for legal reasons because people will just end up libeling or committing a sort of contempt of court or something beneath the story. But they can only leave them open for a bit on almost everything now,

because otherwise you would have to have hundreds and hundreds of moderators working all day on this. And it's just not the best use of newspapers. On your stuff, for sure. No, on all sorts of things. And it's just a useless use of resources. OK, a question on soundtracks from Ben Grogan. As I'm sure you're aware, Sophie Ellis-Bexter's Murder on the Dance Floor and Natasha Bedingfield's Unwritten are both experiencing a significant resurgence in the charts following their appearance in Saltburn and Anyone But You. Given that Murder on the Dance Floor seems to be on track to outperform its original chart run and considering last year's success of Running Up That Hill which was obviously in stranger things kate bush i'm left with a potentially interesting question do you think record labels from that actively start trying to finance their back catalogue

into movies hoping to make a lot of money from songs that are metaphorically lying around in the warehouse well that's an easy one ben thank you and it is a it's not just potentially interesting question is um yes they do they always have done they have done for many years and it's not just a potentially interesting question it is, yes they do they always have done, they have done for many years and there's a job which is music supervisor which is essentially somebody who works in between films and TV shows and the record labels and gets whether it's new artists or

stuff from the archive and puts them on there, we used to have someone at Endemol, Amelia Hartley who did it for all our shows and she chose all the music for Peaky Blinders, for example. So all those incredible Nick Cave songs. There's a brilliant Richard Hawley, Bob Dylan cover. But every single song you'd have heard

has gone through a music supervisor. So yeah, it's a real job. It's big business for films and TV because they make money for licensing stuff anyway. And as you say, every now and again, you get something that's an enormous hit. So yes, potentially interesting question and an actual answer. And I think that actually in an era when so many, so much kind of movie, particularly,

you know, they're going for things that can be made later in order for them to go viral into TikToks and GIFs and what have you. They particularly are looking for those songs because they want them to be kind of spread natively by people who've seen the film and really liked it. Yeah, but it's a big business and a big industry already. Talking big business, big industry, shall we go to an advert? Let's do that. Welcome back.

A question for you, Marina, from Andrew McAvoy. Why was there no follow-up programme to the enormously successful Castaway 2000? Apart from Ben Fogel, we never got to find out what happened to the castaways. Oh, my goodness, Andrew. First of all, thank you for writing in. But I have to say, because it was shit. I mean, Castaway was shit, wasn't it? This was a really worthy attempt at a sort of BBC reality show

when the BBC, I think, way back in the day were thinking, and they got this island off the coast of Scotland. Was it called Tarrantsey? They got an island off the coast of Scotland and they put some people there and said, wouldn't it be interesting

to start a sort of experimental community and see how they all get on and we'll follow them over the year. But it's like, oh God, it's so bloody worthy. I mean, you know,

island-based formats are things like Survivor, which Richard, you know all about. I do. Yes, I do. Which was good. Absolutely. Andrew didn't expect that, did he?

Sorry, Andrew, because I know what you mean, but I wasn't interested in it as a social experiment. I think you're right. It didn't do amazing numbers. Ben Fogel is great. We talked about Channel 5 on Tuesday a little bit and about how they really know their audience and i remember when um ben fogel goes to chernobyl came out and twitter went

oh my god this is a new low and of course it went crazy yeah i mean so many people watch it because people did want to watch it people love ben fogel but i don't think they love tell you why they like ben fogel and he's the only one you know from castaway because they cast a young good-looking person in the show along with a load of other people that you didn't really you know which let's face it was the whole of the rest of the all reality tv was like that from there on in yeah he's probably the only one there who could also have been on love island yes if you put younger looking people in people would watch so in in that sense yes i don't know whatever happened to them and i don't know what happened to taron say but essentially instead of making Love Island, they made Island. Yeah.

Island-based formats, though. I mean, in the 2000s, you were nothing if you weren't marooned on an island or a sound stage having to remember the lyrics or in a mansion. Well, that was Survivor. Funnily enough, it came about when I was at Planet 24 and Charlie Parsons had seen a show where Joe and Alumni had been abandoned on a desert island. Oh, yes, I remember that one.

And he said, what could we do on a desert island? And then, you know, you get. And he said, what could we do on a desert island? And then, you know, you get the format of lots of people coming together and people getting voted off. So, yeah, it all started from Joanna Lumley on a desert island. There you go. Okay, we've got one from Andrew Coulson, I think not the former News of the World editor. Might be.

Might be, but... Yeah, we can neither confirm nor deny. Let's assume it is. I wonder what Andy Coulson's got on his mind. I have this year decided to start applying to be a contestant participant on some tv shows i think we can assume after seeing some friends get on shows like only connect and the chase what are your tips for how to apply for tv shows what are producers looking for and how can you adjust your application to be exactly that come on it's a yeah it's a

good question what are people looking for different quizzes are looking for different things of course i only connect you just go on and be super clever and know stuff uh and if you're socially awkward doesn't matter at all in fact they're uh they're delighted to see it on other shows you just have to have a thing really a lot of times people go on all these shows they go around the country and they audition people and one of the things they'll do they'll essentially ask you a load of questions and you answer them and a lot of people's mistake is just going oh okay okay i've got 20 questions i'll get all 20 questions right in as fast a time as possible um with no personality and that is not really what people are looking for they are of course on mastermind

and university challenge and only connect that's what they're looking for but on a more of an entertainment quiz like the chase or pointless or something like that they want someone who's got a bit of something about them now that isn't you're super bouncy and go i'm a bit of a character me thing about me is i'm crazy uh don't do that but have have a hinterland, have interests, have hobbies, have an interesting job. It's quite useful. Where do you apply? Where are they advertised? Sorry, this is so basic, but since I don't know.

Almost always on the websites of the BBC for BBC shows. Or, you know, after a show you love, it'll have contestant calls when they're looking for contestants, which is usually a couple of times a year. But, yeah, just have something about you. You know, if you are 85 years old, for example, you are getting on. Just so you know, it's going to happen that you're going to be on that show. You'd have to do something really badly wrong not to get on the show because we already know that people are going to love that.

If you've got an interesting job, if you're a firefighter, you're coming on the show. So it's that really. It's go along, understand they are looking for you to be someone that people will want to watch on television. And it's not like a reality show where you have to be crazy.

It's just, is there something about you that people will engage with and that people will like? And don't get all 20 questions right. Don't get zero questions right would be the other thing and then also pick carefully the show you want to go on because if you go on pointless you'll have a really really great day and you'll be on three shows and it's a

laugh if you go on the chase you might win a hundred thousand pound so think about the thing that you want but by the way trying to win a hundred thousand pounds is also terrifying you will not have a fun day i mean you will You'll be looked after and all that stuff, but it's a tense day. But yeah, go and be yourself. Have something about yourself. Just a little bit of peacocking somewhere. Just something about you

that's different to the other people, but don't mistake it for an intelligence test. You know, that's not what people are looking for. Here's a question from AP, a question I'd love to know. Who in the team takes the blame on a TV or radio show where a guest goes completely off on one? I'm thinking of Lawrence Fox, et cetera,

Miriam Margulies swearing, that sort of thing. Surely people know what they're getting into when these people are booked. Well, yes, I think they do. You're supposed to control the guest. And if you actually swear, then you'll always notice presenters, the person who's actually supposed to be anchoring the thing,

will get out in front of it and say, sorry, we just want to apologise because Ofcom, who regulate broadcasting in this country, that you have to do that or else you get fined for not having done it. But actually, Ofcom recently, a couple of years ago, released a report saying that over the last five years, how much people care about swearing has completely halved. Like people just don't really care when it happens. You still have to

apologise for it. What they're much more hot on nowadays is sort of perceived sexism, perceived racism, things like that. So those are the sort of things people complain about. In terms of like going off on one, I mean, he's right, isn't he, Richard? I mean, people, you sort of, when you're booking those people, you know it's going to happen. Clearly someone like Lawrence Fox, when you're on GB News, they're always hoping something that happens because basically no one watches it or more people are watching GB News than were before, by the way.

But what they're hoping is to have a little clipped viral moment that they can send around and then that will go viral and everyone will think, oh, you know, exciting things happen on that channel. You can never predict what's going to happen, except you can always predict what's going to happen. Yeah, it's exactly right. You do, you do, you know exactly what you're getting. You know what you're getting with him. It's done completely deliberately. You know, it's sort of what's become the ruination of a lot of political shows is they are looking for,

you know, a sort of spark to go off rather than looking for, you know, and I listen. And the ruination of our politics to a huge extent once news coverage became again sorry this is tangential but once news coverage became something which people sort of cast almost like they were cast in reality tv like well let's get two people who completely disagree on this subject and then there'll be fireworks and it will cause drama and you know for a 24-hour news channel it may have must have seemed more interesting to sort of create pundit tv in that way but i think it has been massively to the detriment of our politics and it implies that everything is on this kind of these these polar oppositions when actually

most people are sort of in the middle yeah i think it's about it's genuinely embarrassing and it's it's the it's the last swish of a dinosaur's tail, which is a dying industry desperately trying to find any way to fund itself and doing it by sort of promoting the basis it has. And it cheapens all of us, I think. Have we found something you don't think should be sport? And that is the news. I do not think the news should be sport. I think that the news should be led by the sports news. Of course.

Certainly. And then foreign affairs and then Westminster. But not conducted as a battle royale. That's not a bad idea, actually. Oh, God. Okay. Sophie Raworth versus, yeah. I think that you do know what you're getting.

If you book a TV panel show example would be Johnny Vegas. So with Johnny Vegas, you've got a finely honed TV panel show. Johnny Vegas, you know, you've got a finely honed TV panel show. You know if Johnny comes on, your fine honedness is for nothing because Johnny will be Johnny and, you know, will make it funny in his own way. So you sort of have to ride the wave of Johnny Vegas. If you've got Richard Iowardi on, he's going to question everything about the format. He's going to bring that particular um element uh to it but yeah in terms of um swearing it's not an issue on recorded shows because you can lop the swearing out

um but uh something says a time delay a slight five second time delay and they can take things out exactly that you know which i don't know if they do on the football because you hear a lot of swearing in the stands of the football or sometimes the managers. I know in radio phone-ins on certain channels, they have a sort of five-second delay and they've got a crash button they can press if somebody swears very extremely. So if you hear a peculiar edit on, let's say, TalkSport, I don't know why I choose them, that's because somebody has just said something awful about Gary Neville or something like that. But then they have to build up that time because they've taken away their five second bleep. They now need to build that back up and that might take 20 minutes

so if you ring in fairly shortly afterwards and want to say the same thing about E.G. Gary Neville then unfortunately it might get heard. That used to be the case. If you were the swearer. They now have a button called a double dump which means you've got 10 seconds, essentially. If you do it for a third time, definitely you can get on air.

Get three friends together if you've got something you really need to get off your chest and coordinate it, and you'll probably get it through. We used to do a show years ago. I can't remember what it's called. Isn't that terrible? But we had a comedian called Ross Lee, whose only job was to get on air on phoning shows.

And he got on this morning three days in a row, just saying absolutely ridiculous things, but live as well. And by the third one, Madeley is so furious that he got done again. So he got different accents, different things, and then just being absurd. But his job all week was just to get on the television shows. So, yeah, you know when you've got a live wire, by and large, on your show. And there's certain people you just wouldn't invite on your show.

And also your producer will know beforehand whether they are completely wasted before they're going on, things like that, if they've turned up and they're in, shall we say, a state. Yeah, you get reports, certainly from the runners, about how much certain people have drunk before they've gone on to a show and stuff like that and it listen i mean what can you do you've got to put a show on air yeah i never really sometimes in when we were recording pointless in front of an audience and if it's quite a quiet audience we'd swear uh just because they loved it they'd all go oh because they know they're not going to see that on the actual... Exactly, yeah. So they're behind the curtain. Exactly.

Once Zander said, **** her in front of Mary Berry. And she gave him such a stare. Can we beep out that word, by the way? Because that's not my brand. No. I'm not a swearer, but it's Zander's brand. Oh, my goodness.

Oh, yeah, but people love the sense that they're seeing the bloopers real that no one else is going to get. I'll tell you who didn't love that, Mary Berry. No, no. And poor Zada, who is the nicest man in the world and the politest man in the world. I don't really know why he said it. I just saw a little glint of mischief in his eye before he said it. I can't remember what it was about. But you could tell as a well-bought-up man, he realised that he'd upset Mary Berry.

He really overslept a line. Yeah, mortified. I could see him writing a note of apology on his podium as we spoke on headed notepaper. One more, Green Rooms from Sean O'Neill. What memorably bizarre behind the scenes celebrity behaviour have you witnessed? Oh, I've got one good one, which is on an episode, I think it was the Jonathan Ross show and we're all in, it's at the BBC. We're sitting in the Green Room, there's just four writers and door opens and the head of the BBC at the time, we're sitting in the green room with just four writers and door opens and the head of the BBC at the time, Alan Yentob pokes his head around the door, looks

around, slightly annoyed, and then goes, if you see Jay-Z tell him Alan's looking for him. Yeah, that went down well, I can tell you. I think that's all we've got time for. That is all we've got time for. Great questions and I'm looking through the questions here and there's so many we haven't done,

but new ones keep coming in. So we're building up. If we haven't answered your question, it may well just be on the list of ones that we love. A vast arsenal of questions from you. A vast arsenal. Please send more to our vast arsenal. We are in an arms race here.

It's therestisentertainment at gmail.com. Vast arsenal at btinternet.com don't send it to vastarsenal at bt I wonder if that exists probably not don't send it to that address send it to us thank you so much for listening

thank you so much and by the way if you're wondering which word I said that was beeped out it was © BF-WATCH TV 2021