The Rest Is Entertainment - The Secrets Of Tipping Point

Episode Date: September 17, 2025

What is the perfect episode of The Bill, and when did Richard dream it up? Are the counters on Tipping Point made of plastic or metal? Ben Shephard puts the decades long argument to rest. What would M...arina and Richard recommend from books, films and music, to give children a solid foundation in their future entertainment tastes? Join The Rest Is Entertainment Club: Unlock the full experience of the show – with exclusive bonus content, ad-free listening, early access to Q&A episodes, access to our newsletter archive, discounted book prices with our partners at Coles Books, early ticket access to live events, and access to our chat community. Sign up directly at therestisentertainment.com The Rest Is Entertainment is proudly presented by Sky. Sky is home to award-winning shows such as The White Lotus, Gangs of London and The Last of Us. Requires relevant Sky TV and third party subscription(s). Broadband recommended min speed: 30 mbps. 18+. UK, CI, IoM only. To find out more and for full terms and conditions please visit Sky.com For more Goalhanger Podcasts, head to www.goalhanger.com Assistant Producer: Aaliyah Akude Video Editor: Kieron Leslie, Charlie Rodwell, Adam Thornton, Harry Swan Producer: Joey McCarthy Senior Producer: Neil Fearn Head of Content: Tom Whiter Exec Producers: Tony Pastor + Jack Davenport Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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Starting point is 00:00:00 This episode is brought to you by our good friends at Sky. Some things were just made to be together. Salt of Vinegar, Holmes and Watson, Tommy Shelby and a Taylor who asked no questions, preferably while pouring the whiskey. Oh, salt and vinegar, definitely. Now, you can add to the list of those dynamic duos, Sky and Netflix.
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Starting point is 00:00:56 Requires relevant SkyTV and third-party subscriptions, Central TV includes a selection of sky channels, 18 plus UK, Channel Islands, and I Love Man Only. Hello and welcome to this episode of The Rest is Entertainment, Questions and Answers Edition. I'm Marina. And I'm Richard Osmerman. Hello, Marina. Hello, Richard. How are you? I'm very well, hello listeners as well. Now, listen, I speak for a nation when I am able to ask. you the question that you so wanted to be asked about your dream life, Richard, about your, the workings of your subconscious.
Starting point is 00:01:36 Sarah Longford and others obligingly wrote in, following you, or come and get me play, a question for Richard, have you ever had a dream about a perfect episode of The Bill? Sarah, thank you so much for that question. I did, yes. I was, this is, listen, this doesn't count as an official question, right? This is any other business. Yes, I once, you know, Occasionally, you know, they say that Paul McCartney dreamt the tune of yesterday in a dream. And occasionally, things will come to me. But, yeah, I was once dreaming, and I dreamt the perfect episode of the bill. And when I say perfect, I mean, it was faultless. I would expect nothing else. Everything.
Starting point is 00:02:17 I had, like, the regular people in it. It had a good precinct to it. It had a really, really good twist. Like the whole thing, but the whole thing was there. And I woke up, it's middle of the night. And I could remember it. I could remember the entire thing and I always keep a little pad by the bed
Starting point is 00:02:34 so I thought this is like free money for me right? Because you're thinking I cannot believe I didn't have to do anything I didn't have to do anything my subconscious has done the whole thing I've got this entire thing
Starting point is 00:02:45 and even if it's not going to work for the bill I mean it's going to work for something because it's great and the twist was great so I wrote it down and it took me about half an hour so I was writing down every single bit that I remember of it
Starting point is 00:02:59 the whole thing. So I'm writing down this thing. And I get to the end, I'm like, I'll go back to sleep, money in the bank. Anyway, I wake up, and I forgot, I did it. And then I thought, oh my God, I woke up in the middle of the night, and I wrote down the perfect episode of the bill.
Starting point is 00:03:16 That's such good news. And so look over at my pad. This is word for word what I wrote, perfect episode of the bill, which took me about 40 minutes to write. A man throws a brick through a window. But it is a different man. And that was it.
Starting point is 00:03:35 Different underlined twice. Oh, my goodness. A man throws a brick through a window, but it is a different man. Wow. I mean, I sense it off and they made it. Yeah, of course. But honestly, in whatever waking state I was in, I thought I've absolutely got this. This is amazing.
Starting point is 00:03:56 This is so good. It's got everything. Okay. I think there's something that still could be salvage. I will personally pay for you to go to one of those people who, you know, and puts you maybe like, not past lives, but past dreams therapy, and tries to extract that particular dream. I think that was it.
Starting point is 00:04:14 I honestly think that was it. I think that the issue was me waking up and, you know, it happens with ideas when you're waking sometimes where you go, hold on a minute, if I just come up with the greatest game show of all time, and then the next day you go, no, I haven't. My notes app on my phone is in. entirely that. Just incredibly bad ideas.
Starting point is 00:04:31 I love random notes where you go, I have no idea what that refers to. So, and or people to call. Who is this? I don't know anyone by that name. But listen, if anyone wants, if anyone out there from any, I mean, Amblein,
Starting point is 00:04:43 we have a relationship already, Amblin. If you're interested, the rights to that are still available. But it is a different man. But it is a different man. Yeah, I had it, oh my God. It was so vivid.
Starting point is 00:04:54 A different man. I tell you what, it's only the plot of the next rock art house movie. A different man. Yeah. And maybe he doesn't throw a brick through a window. He throws a rock through a window.
Starting point is 00:05:06 And the rock is his old career as a, you know, as a blockbuster movie guy. And the window is the window between him and Art House acceptance. So much symbolism. So much symbolism. I love this. Let's work on this straight after this episode. It turns out I did not dream the perfect episode of the bill. It turns out I dreamt the perfect plot for a rock movie.
Starting point is 00:05:27 Wonderful. Shall we get on to our actual questions? But thank you to, that might be the most asked question we've ever had. So thank you to everyone. Well done Sarah Longford for winning the raffle of being the person who got to ask the question. Rachel Fleming has a question. We talked about this the other week and so we're going to have a think about it. She says, my sons are 11 and 13 years old.
Starting point is 00:05:45 This is a titled indoctrination. My sons are 11 and 13 years old and I am desperate to educate them on the basis of good entertainment. We have all been there, Rachel. Can I have a film, TV show and book that I should force them to consume to ensure they grow up with good taste. I love this question and I thought about it really hot. I've actually got an 11 and a 13 year old and a 14 year old, but I asked all of them and we discussed it.
Starting point is 00:06:07 And I feel like I feel like I should do the book first because actually everyone agreed on this. And it was going to be the one I suggested too. It's Animal Farm. They've all read it. They all loved it. And they all found it really amazing that it could be a great story, but it could be a sort of allegory
Starting point is 00:06:25 or symbolise something completely different and I remember reading it when I was pretty young it's first of all you know not to weigh for egg the whole short book thing but it is a short book Rachel it is a short book and it's a great story but when you say oh and by the way and did you know and you can talk about it that you know the horse symbolises this or whatever it is I think it's really interesting
Starting point is 00:06:48 for young people and children to think oh I see something can say one thing and mean another or allegory, which, like, in many centuries gone past, everyone sort of understood allegory all the time, but we don't see quite so much of. I think that's a really good one. Opens up a whole area of culture. It opens up anything where you go,
Starting point is 00:07:08 oh, I didn't understand the world could be like this. Funny enough, Catcher in the Rye that I read it in my teens. That's a book where you go, oh, I'm sort of inside the brain of someone from another time, but talking very interestingly and talking sort of how my brain worked as well. And again, you just think, oh, people from other times are the same as me. That's exactly what my second book was going. As you know, I can't ever make a choice between that thing. So I was going to say the second book.
Starting point is 00:07:32 My husband said, oh my God, Catcher in the Rye, because my mother gave it to me, I deliberately didn't read it. And when it got, I was older, I read it and thought, oh, my God, I should have read this ages ago. It's brilliant. And all my children said Catcher in the Rye. And I totally agree with you that I remember reading that and thinking, gosh, this seems to have been written a long time ago, but this is so how I think. So that is a definite one.
Starting point is 00:07:55 But also with bookers, if you can have a lifetime of books, that's a, you know, it's like I always think I'm so lucky. I like sport because it's given me a lifetime of joy. And I'm so glad that I was introduced to books in the right way, that I understand that even if,
Starting point is 00:08:09 in the first five pages of something, if I'm thinking, I wish I hadn't started reading a book, that actually I know that if you stick with it, it brings you the greatest joy. So you will be so careful, the books that transition you, from the famous five upwards.
Starting point is 00:08:24 Yeah, I'm pushing a book on someone before they're able to understand. That's why I think I would have to say Animal Farm is the number one because I just think it's... I've never read it. Have you not? No.
Starting point is 00:08:35 I know about it. Oh my goodness. Well, I mean, really, it's not going to take you know. It's too late for me now. No, it's not. It's fantastic. It's really... Anyway, right, movies,
Starting point is 00:08:45 I don't know what age you are, Rachel Fleming, but I was thinking, what I have really liked is to have movies from my generation that we loved. And again, my children said this. They said, modern movies are rubbish. That's not true.
Starting point is 00:08:59 And also they like lots of things. But they all loved Ferris Bueller's day off when we showed it to them. And they watched it multiple times. It's nice that they like a thing that we like when we were about that age. And so if that's not the era of you, Rachel Fleming, and that's a bit earlier than your era,
Starting point is 00:09:16 which it might well be, something that you sort of loved, that some things, you know, they couldn't really get in. the Matrix, which I thought was quite, because I remember thinking, okay, well, that's just like the best movie the 90s or the most important movie some things, though, don't they? Especially things
Starting point is 00:09:29 that are sort of sci-fi sometimes ages. Well, they're redoing that we should, they're redoing when we were talking about Mike DeLufer and Pan Abdi, they're going to redo the Matrix at Warner's. I was going to suggest part fiction, but then I remember the ages and I'm already in trouble for pushing unacceptable things
Starting point is 00:09:45 on, I'm already in trouble for apparently showing a nine-year-old the shining but so I'm probably not going to, yeah, So I'm probably not going to recommend publication because it's not suitable. Although maybe if you want a Stephen King adaptation, maybe Shawshank Redemptions are a good movie to watch at 13 because there's nothing too terrible. IMDB is very, very good, funny enough,
Starting point is 00:10:05 in that sort of nanny state bit of when it tells you all the bits of a film that might be problematic. Because you can remember watching a film when you were growing up and then you show it to your kids and you suddenly go, oh, I'd forgotten that happened in this film and it's a four-minute long sequence. but IMDB is your friend there because it will tell you if there's anything
Starting point is 00:10:23 that's awkward about films that you loved because these kids would have seen back to the future already, right? Yeah, they might not have. Yeah, I mean that was the other one that we said. Yeah. I just feel like pick something from your era because then it's nice to have that at least connection. So if I'm just naming movies that came out too early
Starting point is 00:10:40 and they weren't a big thing for you, find one that is because then you have that thing together. But also rewatch first because the movies are not always what you remember. No. So look up the... IMDB thing just to make sure everything is fine but also just we watch because you might go
Starting point is 00:10:54 why did I like that? Yeah I know it's strange I remember showing my kids the Pink Panther movies I thought great we'll watch the Pink Panther movies because I just remember just being in tears of laughter when I watched them when I was a kid and Peter Sellers and that and we were watching it in like 20 minutes in
Starting point is 00:11:10 you're thinking this is very slow well that's the thing is that a lot of things now because everything just suddenly starts with the whole action sequence if it doesn't you're like sorry, you're establishing character and building... But also not in a particularly interesting way
Starting point is 00:11:25 because I mean there's loads of films where the establishment of character you know, Shawshank Redemptions are very slow burn but every single bit of that burn pays off. Whereas there's some films you just think there was no reason for you to start this slowly or continue this slowly. At the time, of course it was an
Starting point is 00:11:40 amazing movie and I loved it but there are certain things where the sensibilities have changed so watch it yourself first just to make sure. Okay, yes, I agree with that or at least read the synopsis. And then TV shows, it was interesting, I was trying to think, oh, you know, people can
Starting point is 00:11:56 be quite fussy about laughter tracks, because that's just a thing that doesn't exist anymore. And yet, lots of people, as you can see, lots of young people watch friends, and they don't mind it. So you can obviously kind of say, let's watch Seinfeld, or let's watch something that's brilliantly plotted, and that they might absolutely love. But I was
Starting point is 00:12:12 quite interested, my children said documentaries, you made us watch documentaries, and I really like, and there was, so weirdly, World War II in colour, they thought was totally amazing because it's something that you will have learned about us at school. And the other thing is a really good series called Explained. This is documentaries. This is like entry-level documentaries. And they explain everything from things like credit to sugar addiction to all sorts of like absolutely wild and wonderful
Starting point is 00:12:38 things. And they're all about 15 minutes a lot. And you learned such a lot, but it's done in a really engaging way. So I'm surprised not to be recommending like a sitcom or something. But to be recommending documentaries, but often you can otherwise sort of think that they're, because otherwise they're really going to watch very, very short form things. But these are quite, some of these can be quite short form, but it's the World War II in colour thing is sort of incredible because it's definitely something that I've learned about at school. And then to see it like that is kind of revolutionary. Whereas I absolutely would recommend the American office or Brooklyn 9-9, both of them from season two onwards. And because I just think that's a, that's a lifetime
Starting point is 00:13:15 of joy you're bringing your kids. And there's nothing too terrible. But at the same time, you know, there's interesting stuff in there. You know, they're not for children, but there's nothing in there that's going to scare the horses too much. Yeah, both of those. I would absolutely endorse those messages. It's a great question, though. And again, anyone listening, if you've got,
Starting point is 00:13:33 if you've had something that's worked brilliantly on anyone that age, just something where you showed something to a kid and it opened up a world to them, absolutely let us know and we'll read some of those out next week as well. So it's a great question. Here's one that is destined for you from Helena O'Sullivan, Richard. when a novel's published, it's usually in hardback first with a simultaneous Kindle release. In the Times best seller lists, do the Kindle purchases count in the hardback or paperback charts, or both or neither?
Starting point is 00:14:00 Also, how is the price of a Kindle edition decided? I've just looked at the new Robert Galbraith, and the Kindle edition is three pounds more expensive than the hardback. Seems hard to justify that difference. Yes, as always, capitalism will give you the answer to why that is, but I'll get onto that. Yes, those Sunday Times charts, they don't include Kindle, or audio. Do they not? No, 10, 15 years ago, that would be fine.
Starting point is 00:14:24 No, so if you see the numbers next to a book in this first week will literally be print copies. So the Robert Gell... When are they going to change that? Well, we'll find out. There's a reason why the Kindle isn't in there. The audio, I don't know why it's not in there. But the Robot Gail Brace book, I think, has sold 50,000 copies, but that's 50,000 hardback books. And these days, Kindle, fun enough, is taking a bit of a dive, but audio is going at
Starting point is 00:14:49 absolutely great guns. So you could probably add another 30,000 to that. I would have thought between those two formats. So it looks like 50,000, but she's probably sold 80,000. And the money is the same. In fact, you've got slightly more for audio and Kindle. The reason Kindle historically has not been in there is because there are a huge amount, because Kindle is its own ecosystem, and there are a huge amount of books on there for 99P or for, you know, 15p or something like that. So you can get an enormous volumes of books which are sort of virtually free or might as well be and lots of you know buy 10 of these books for a pound each and so it's it makes the charts look a bit peculiar sometimes and it's entirely lost leaders so no one's making money out of a 99p book other than you know
Starting point is 00:15:36 bringing you to their other books so that's why kindle has never been in there it it seems unusual now that audio books would not be in there because it's it's massively growing and I like you know the sales of mine across the years and and audio is becoming a bigger and bigger and bigger part of it and people putting a lot more money into it and you know I've said before I've listened to a lot of audio bits because my eyesight's not great and there's lots of people like that and I think that if you're reading on Harbeck Kindle or audio it's exactly the same thing I mean it's identical so it makes no sense that it wouldn't be included as a rule of thumb you know you can add on maybe another 50 60% sent to the hardback sales if you're looking at audio and Kindle later on when the paperbacks out that comes down a little bit but it's it's a huge business they should change it yeah I think certainly for audio they should do I mean I would love it because it's you know I can I see what the numbers say and then I can see what the actual numbers are and those two things are very different I mean it's I've never seen a situation where the audio and Kindle would make a massive
Starting point is 00:16:48 to the charts in terms of the positions. So that Yuval Noah Harari, his last book, went insane on audio for whatever reason. I mean, insane on audio, but you wouldn't ever see that shown anywhere. And again, the bookseller will show you the audio charts and things like that, but not on the weekly things and not on the Sunday Times things. In terms of the price, well, the reason for that is that hardbacks will come out, so the Robert Garbray thing, I think it had a recommended retail price of 30 pounds. but you're not really you're not paying 30 pound for it in most places because you know hardbacks they put them at that price so that booksetters can discount them and everyone's still making money on that but there are an awful lot more bookshops than there are places to buy kindle books and audio books and so there's much more of a captive market in kindle and audio so if you've got a 30 pound book by robert galbraith you know you can get that for 12 pound on amazon perhaps 1820 at your
Starting point is 00:17:48 indie bookshop because, as we said before, they've got to pay their tax, they've got to pay rents and all sorts of things. So no one's fleecing you. And so it's heavily discounted, whereas on Kindle, there's not really an economic reason to discount it, particularly because where else are you going to get it from? So, you know, the recommended price will be the same, but the discount will be much lower. And so it ends up, as head on is saying, it's three pound more expensive than the hardback. And that's purely because there are fewer competitors in that market. And so it's that weird thing that, you know, does happen. And that's why they're more expensive. But yeah, it wouldn't make a huge difference to the ranking of the charts,
Starting point is 00:18:28 but it certainly make a difference to the amount of copies people can see you've sold. And if you are one of the publishers, it's great having that big hen line hardback figure. But the money you can get the scale, you can get from audio and you can get from Kindle, because you're not having to print anything. You're never having to reprint. You know, every time, you know, you've sold a load of books. You have to reprint and you have to send them out to the shops. And that's, you know, you've got reps and you've got lorries and you've got distribution warehouses.
Starting point is 00:18:58 And you've got all of that stuff. None of which you have for Kindle and audiobook. So it's a very, very nice business to be in. I would say that for everybody. If you are, you know, if you are taking a cut of ebook and audiobook, which the publishers are, It's the last kind of lovely bit of low-hanging fruit And it's really growing in audio Rather like in the same way that YouTube podcast
Starting point is 00:19:22 Or whatever it is Well maybe because your book The Impossible Fortune is out next Thursday A week on a 25th So maybe we can talk a bit more about the split Pre-orders and how that was Can we talk about that when it comes out? I think it's really interesting so I would like to. Of course we can.
Starting point is 00:19:39 But yeah, that's the reason But you get it a lot, people are asking Why is the Kindle more expensive and the Kindle is more expensive because there's fewer places to buy it. Uh-huh. Okay. Well, on that note, shall we proceed to a break? Let's do that. This episode is brought to you by Sky Sports, home of the WSL. The confetti's fallen, the trophy lifted, the medals stowed carefully in the safe,
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Starting point is 00:21:05 More flights. More of all the things you want in a travel rewards card and then some. Get your ticket to more with the new BMOV-I-Porter MasterCard and get up to $2,400 in value in your first 13 months. Terms and conditions apply. Visit bemo.com slash ViPorter to learn more. Welcome back, everybody. Now, Julia McWilliam has written in with a question about Tipping Point.
Starting point is 00:21:38 She says in Tipping Point, how are the counters put into the machine? These are the questions we love. Yeah, I love this level of stuff. Okay, and is it emptied after every game? I'm also in a feud with friends, quite rightly, about what material the coins are made of. Please settle this once and for all.
Starting point is 00:21:54 Thank you, Julia. I'm not going to settle it. That would be unfair. But, Julia, this feud is about to be settled, and there is no one better to settle it than a host of tipping point himself. Mr. Ben Shepard, Ben, we have a feud. Can you answer all of Judeus questions, please? Hi there, Marina and Richard. Ben here on the set at tipping point with filming series 15 and Julia sent in her question.
Starting point is 00:22:18 I thought it would be timely place to record it would be as we are refilling the machine. You can see here that's Will. Who's there? Wave Will. He's our counter counter and there's Julie, who is a very important, our adjudicator. What happens between each show, we have to empty the machine, then we refill the machine. There are 80 counters on the bottom shelf and there are 8. 80 counts on the top shelf. Every time there's a drop, Will comes flying in. I say how many there are. He confirms that by counting them. We do the pickups and then they get taken out and then Julie confirmed how many are out the back. So everything has to be very carefully
Starting point is 00:22:54 counted and considered because of course we want to make sure every drop is carefully counted so everybody gets the exact money. It's very competitive. And also the question, Julia, about what they're made of. Here you go. I'll show you this. This is one of our counters. you, they are plastic. They aren't metal. We get a lot of people suggesting we're using magnets in the machine. I've never yet found a magnet that can control plastic, but the counters are plastic. And then in the edit afterwards, we had lots of brilliant sound effects, which makes it sound like you're strangling and jangling down. So there you go. A little insight into the magic that goes on when we are putting a tipping point together. And as you can see, the machine now,
Starting point is 00:23:33 as they are putting them up, is starting to take shape, as you see, at the top of the show. and the machine is pneumatic as well so the shelf is propelled was created by a guy called Webbo who Richard I'm sure you know Webbo he has created all sorts of amazing things in the world of television including the Crystal Dome at the end
Starting point is 00:23:52 of the Crystal Mace there go love the podcast guys any other questions I'll look forward to hearing them wow okay number one what a pro shattered thank you one take
Starting point is 00:24:02 one incredible we don't know it was one take could have been 50 someone in the gallery going yeah sorry Ben is all doing this scene for the rest of entertainment. I just love the punctuated by the sound of them shunting the counters around. That just reminds you of every show I've ever done.
Starting point is 00:24:18 I love it. I love just watching the people behind. Just the things you do, just in between shows, just to kind of start, the counter counter. I mean, listen, it raises the stakes for everyone else who answers the question for us. That was very impressively done. If you are listening to this, it's worth having a little look at that on YouTube as well. That's great. That was so great.
Starting point is 00:24:38 And Webbo, thank you for your incredible contraption. And also to have done the dome in the crystal maze, I mean, really. It's a bit of very, I mean, you could retire on that. Listen, don't, Wobo, but you could do. That's so cool. Oh, Ben, thank you so much. Thank you for that question, Julia. And I hope, I wonder what side of the feud Julia was on.
Starting point is 00:24:58 I hope she was on the plastic side. Maybe she bought into the sound effects and thought it was metal, but I hope she was plastic. Yeah. I hear it's all magnets. Whatever show you do, there's always some idiot. I'm going, no, it's fixed because they do that, you think, okay, all right. All right, smart ass. Marina, a question for you from Alan Roach.
Starting point is 00:25:15 Marina, when you see someone reading your column in public, do you ever get tempted to ask them if they found it funny? No way, not in a million years. There'd be a clue, surely, if they found it funny. Well, yes. But also, that experience of seeing people reading your things, which used to be much, well, I'll move on to how you can have it in a different way now, but it used to be, I used to often sit on trains when people had newspapers and you would see, and believe me, many is the time when I saw someone basically look at it and you know they've read like the first maybe two or three sentences, I don't know,
Starting point is 00:25:54 and then turn over the page. That is a great lesson. By the way, I forget this lesson like probably every time. So don't look at my next column and think, oh, well, you didn't really learn that lesson. But it taught me to put something, you know, I know it's basic, put something good at the top to do things differently. I mean, there are columns I've written that have, you know, I've had a sleepless night and there's like one good joke. And I've honestly put it in like the second sentence. And it's a complete sleight of hand that people have laughed at the top.
Starting point is 00:26:19 Then they, you might keep them. Pink Panther could learn from that. Yeah, I mean, good point. But I mean, by the way, as I've spoken before about the Guardian's analytics, which I really value and that they've allowed us to see our data. And you can see, you can see a sort of remote version. You don't actually have to watch the physical excruciation of them. kind of checking out but actually you could you can see when people bail out of an article because
Starting point is 00:26:44 you thought you're going to say you can see where they laugh no that would be good yeah that would be great yeah but you can see where they've bailed effectively because you we have five clocks and so I would always hope to get five clocks if you get five gold clocks then you know sort of they've savoured every word but if you can see and by the way this is no shade on people who's Sometimes you'll see that there's a news story that's got one clock, and you know that that's because that's just one-of-fact news stories in a way that people see the headline thing. I must know the answer to that, and it necessarily has to come in the first or second paragraph, and then they stop reading. But you can see how long they've read, how long they sat with it, where they go afterwards. So I really value all of that.
Starting point is 00:27:28 So I can see a virtual representation in that. That's great. It's not that bad, though, because it doesn't take that long to write a newspaper column, if I'm honest. But I have spoken to directors who have sat on planes next to people who've watched someone turn on their movie and then just like bailed on it after honestly two minutes and I just years of my life doing that. And a lot of directors will talk about people just walking out of, you know,
Starting point is 00:27:53 I mean, Lars von Treas enjoyed making people walk out of his premieres. Jean-Luc Goddard used to say there was a movie called Weekend and there was a sort of traffic sequence. It's sort of about capitalism. And when people found it really boring, obviously, and walked out, he said, well, this is a sort of, that's part of the film's statement about consumerism. Is that you... Yeah, yeah, okay, sure.
Starting point is 00:28:14 But a lot of people, directors, I've spoken to so many directors who've said that experience of being on a plane next to someone and seeing them watching a movie and then watching them switch off, which is probably more painful because it took an awfully lot longer. The thing about laughing in public is interesting, isn't it? Because that's the thing that every writer wants. If ever you see someone reading what it is you've done. And which you do in public, quite often it's if a family member or someone is reading something you've done. If you see somebody laughing, if I see someone laughing on a train, it takes every single ounce of what I have to not go up and say,
Starting point is 00:28:53 I'm so sorry, can I just stop because I just ask which bit you were laughing at? Which was the joke? That's all, that's the only thing that's, if anyone I know and I've seen reading something, then I want to say, what were you laughing at? Because I want to know, yeah, you want to. know which bit landed the best. Yeah, if you ever say to a writer of a sitcom or anything, oh yeah, no, we really enjoy the show. There's lots of good laughs. They go, where, where will us? I'm so sorry. Just which bits did you laugh at? What do you think gave you the biggest laugh? That's the, that's the heroin hit for any writer, isn't it? Is, is, did it make you
Starting point is 00:29:22 laugh out loud? What was the bit? What was the bit? What was the joke that made you laugh out loud? And to understand. And there are so many times, you know, and actually, often with, when you're writing something. An actor will find a joke where there wasn't a joke. And you'll, I've actually found some of, weirdly, the ones that have made people laugh the most, have been when I'm writing so quickly on a deadline, like say you're just doing something and it's a live thing. And you haven't actually realised that you've written a joke. And weirdly, some of those, there's something about the spontaneity and just the, like you're so in the zone when you've written it, that you think, gosh, I could have spent all day trying to come up with something good. And something I didn't
Starting point is 00:30:00 almost realised it was a joke because I was writing so quickly, has hit and landed much better than anything else would. The different version of that, funny enough, going back to Kindle, so it's not jokes because it never applies to them. But on any book's Amazon page or Kindle page, you can see the bits that have been highlighted the most. So you know on Kindle, if there's a section that you like, you can highlight it. And there's an aggregation of that.
Starting point is 00:30:26 I've never read a book on a Kindle, so I didn't know that. Yeah. So that's the equivalent me, like, turning pages over and doing all of that. So, yeah, as an author, you can see the bits of your book that have been highlighted or high lit the most by Kindlew is interesting, isn't that? That's fascinating. You must love that. That's very interesting.
Starting point is 00:30:44 As I say, it's never the jokes and it's never, it's always something short and pithy and usually something that's about life, usually like a life lesson, is the thing that people are highlighting. It's the thing that it's something, if you're only highlighting, because it's something you need at any given time. That's usually some sort of... I often think in your books, oh, that's such a good point about...
Starting point is 00:31:04 Yeah, and even though I laugh lots, but yes, I see. So people highlight those bits, like Lessons for Life. Lessons for Life, yeah, exactly. That's fascinating. Is that us done? I think that is us done for today. That was great.
Starting point is 00:31:16 What lovely questions. I really enjoyed that. We will be back tomorrow with a bonus episode about the absolute, maybe all-time classic, the Rocky Horror Picture Show. That's for our members if you want to become a member. Restis Entertainment.com.
Starting point is 00:31:31 It'll be where you can find other details, add free listening, all that kind of stuff and all of our bonus episodes. This cracking little library being built up now. But for everybody else, we shall see you next Tuesday. See you next Tuesday. This episode.
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