The Rest Is Entertainment - The Truth Of Gossip Sites

Episode Date: December 19, 2024

How are blind items reported on sites such as PopBitch or Deuxomi and kept legally sound and how accurate are they really? If someone samples or covers your song, what can make you more money and set you up for life? When contestants give a wildly incorrect answer on a quiz show, how do presenters keep a straight face? Plus, there's an update on which Quality Street are best. Are you team Marina or team Richard? Join The Rest Is Entertainment Club for ad free listening and access to bonus episodes: www.therestisentertainment.com Sign up to our newsletter: www.therestisentertainment.com Twitter: @‌restisents Instagram: @‌restisentertainment YouTube: @‌therestisentertainment Email: [e-mail] Producers: Neil Fearn + Joey McCarthy Executive Producers: Tony Pastor + Jack Davenport Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

The holidays are almost here, but Amazon still has last-minute deals. Like makeup for the beauty lover, electronics for the tech pro, and home goods for the host who was too busy hosting to shop. Shop last-minute deals at Amazon now. For those who embrace the impossible, the Defender 110 is up for the adventure. This iconic award-winning vehicle has been redefined with a distinctive modern design. A reimagined exterior features compelling proportions and precise detailing. Built with integrity and purpose, the interior boasts robust, durable materials.

Whether it's the all-terrain capability, ample cargo capacity, or innovative camera technology, the Defender 110 lets you go further and do more. And with seating for up to seven, everyone can enjoy the journey. Learn more at LandRover.ca. First, the bad news. of seating for up to seven, everyone can enjoy the journey. Learn more at LandRover.ca. First, the bad news. SAP Business AI won't help you generate Cubist versions of your family's holiday photos, but it will help you understand which supplier is best

to help you roll out your plant-based packaging in Southeast Asia. Identify the training your junior project manager needs to rise up the ranks and automate repetitive tasks while you focus on big innovations so you can be ready for the next opportunity. Revolutionary technology, real world results. That's SAP Business AI. Hello and welcome to this episode of the Rest is Entertainment questions and answers edition. I'm Marina Hyde. And I'm Richard Osmond.

It is even nearer Christmas than the last time we spoke. We'll have a show on Christmas Eve, won't we? There'll be a podcast out on Christmas Eve. Yes, there will. So we won't say Merry Christmas at the end of the year. Yes, there will. Yeah, on the Eve, at midnight on Christmas Eve, not the 23rd to 24th crossover. The 23rd to 24th crossover.

Is that what you call it in your house? I don't know. I was trying to think of what it means, the eve of Christmas. Do you say to your kids, Father Christmas will be here on the 24th, 25th crossover? Yeah, we're heavily data driven in that way. This is very much why none of your carols have ever taken off. Right, now there has been a considerable amount of discourse on the matter of quality streets, hasn't there?

I've got to say there's quite a lot of support for me out there. I didn't say the toffee penny was the best. Mesa changed. I just said that it wasn't a war crime and I quite like them. Lot of stuff. So I'm just going to summarize. Quake Savage summarizes quite well. Fruit creams are evil. And there's quite a lot, quite a lot starting with Richard, you're a great guy and rarely put a set wrong on this podcast. I don't even need to read the rest of Thea Butler's reply to say she's on my side on a lot of this stuff. I mean, I feel attacked.

Yeah, for sure. But should I tell you the nice thing is because I know I'm right and because I know that history will judge me well, it's one of those things actually the more abuse that gets thrown my way the stronger it makes me which I think is probably how a lot of these alt-right influences begin. I love your alternative historical timeline where the sweet battles are so much better than the actual wars, wouldn't it? But if history will be your judge, will history be able to taste the sweets? Because I think that's where your theory might fall down. If history can taste a strawberry cream. Yeah, well I think they'll probably still be around.

Well yeah, I mean, by the way, if at this point we're all distilling drinking water from our own urine and living in the catacombs of the earth, a strawberry cream. Yeah, well I think they'll probably still be around. Well yeah, I mean by the way if at this point we're all distilling drinking water from our own urine and living in the catacombs of the earth, a strawberry cream I agree is gonna taste great if we happen to find one. But if things stay in a slightly sort of just pre-apocalyptic stage, I actually still think history's gonna judge you poorly on the strawberry cream. Yeah genuinely I think people will look back at this time in history at a number of things. Firstly, they'll say, why you drove huge hunks of metal, which were fueled by oil, and you just drove them around your streets. I think that's weird. And they'll also go, well, at Christmas, you bought some premium chocolates, bought some premium chocolates, the word chocolate in there.

And one of the main ones didn't have any chocolate on it. And everyone was like, yeah, that's fine. That's absolutely fine. I think that's the thing. And the same way that they'll look back and go, how was ITV two plus one different to ITV three, I think they'll look back and say you ate chocolates, which had no chocolate on them and you had the gall to have a go at your co-host. I think if either of us is on trial, it will be you. That's

what I think. Also- See you in the Court of History. Anybody at home who hates fruit creams and you've got Quality Street at home, send the strawberry and orange creams to Goal Hanger. Oh my God, I can see our producer thinking, you know that there's going to be, when they get back and they aren't able to open the door because they've just, so many fruit creams have been-

Do you know what? That's not my problem. It's Gary Lineker's problem. As, as, as with so many things in life. Shall we get on and answer some questions? Here's a fun one for you from Noor Anne. You might have to explain what a blind item is after this question. Noor Anne asks, how reliable are blind items on De Mois or Pop Bitch? Have you ever known someone to take them personally? Okay, this is a brilliant question and I have also taken one personally. So yes, a blind item is one of those things where they can't actually say who it is the story is about because that person might

actually... These are both gossip sites, celebrity gossip sites. Celebrity gossip site, De Mois, Pop Bitch. And so they'll say, you know, which A-list actor was recently found doing Y with a C-list tradesperson. I don't know what it would be, but it was something odd and then they existed to various degrees of coding where sometimes it's really quite easy to work it out and you'll find that's the one that it's not that libelous.

And if it's really hard to work it out, it's because it's very, very libelous. There are always things that people can't stand up the stories, meaning they can't prove them. Otherwise they'd write them, there's a wonderful scandal story and it'd be on the front of the paper or in front of the website, whatever. Now they've got quite an interesting history,

blind items. They were supposedly dreamt up by a sort of Gilded Age American publisher called William Dalton Mann, and he had something called, um, town Topics and his ones were all sort of, I actually found some original ones. What Playboy was seen at 3 a.m. stealing out of the Newport cottage of which prominent social leader while her husband was in New York? Errol Finn? No, but in a nearby paragraph it said, talked about a fate given by

Mrs. John Jacob Astor and it it said prominent amongst the guests was one of the resort's favorite bachelors, Mr. Crichton Webb, at which point you're like, Oh my goodness. Webber is knocking off Mrs. Astor. And so you wouldn't know now, unfortunately, um, what man ended up doing William Dalton man is that he ended up using it as a form of blackmail, but all the robber barons would pay him money not to be featured in town topics.

So it became a bit of a money spinner. But then from then you moved on to things like Confidential Magazine, which LA Confidential, which we recently discovered was like the top rating film of all time, which is great. And the Danny DeVito character in that is effectively the publisher of confidential magazine. I think they call it hush hush, but that's what it is. And now that obsessions of those blind items with things like hidden homosexuality, race mixing, communism, all of those sort of, you know, those, those kind of scare things of the fifties and sixties, fifties particularly.

Then there was Walter Winchell, the notorious gossip person from The Daily Mirror, he used them a lot. But now publicists, if they're any good, know the stories about their clients. So if you see a story, they'll use it as an early warning system. And they'll think, okay, that story is coming out or it's near or oh dear people know about this. But the good thing about them is you can't really go and say that's about my client because then you're sort of confirming it. There are, and there are these sites that nowadays sit beyond libel as far as I can work out things like tattle life and Twitter really, where people can say all

sorts of things and the ones that people love are the things about marriage contracts, you know, which stars has, they're not really married, they've got a contract, any forms of sort of not really married, they've got a contract, any forms of sort of compulsive lying, people who've totally misrepresented their backgrounds, things like that. But celebrities have done it in songs in a way. I mean, you're so vain is one giant blind item,

as Warren Beatty told me, it's not about Mick Jagger. Beyonce's one, you know, he only want me when I'm not there, he better call Becky with a good hair, do you remember? And everyone's like, who is Becky? Is this someone J.T. is having an affair with? In terms of your question, Noran, about do you know someone who's been affected by them? Well, I was once the subject of a pop bitch, sort of blind item or innuendo item, declaring that I was having an affair with my editor at the time at The Guardian which was not true. I remember thinking... So was it a blind item or did it name you? I think it named me there but then maybe in Private Eye they didn't. I can't remember how it

worked but it was and I remember thinking what can I do? So I wrote to Private Eye and said it's not true can you correct it? Yeah. And they said oh we don't correct things but you can write a letter in explaining that it's not true. And I thought, how's that going to come across? Like, dear private eye, I'm not having an affair with my boss, love Marine. I thought it like this would add insult to injury. So I just had to leave it. But I tried to counter it, this pop bitch one. By having an affair with him.

By not actually, by sitting on a really dreary media panel that I thought, oh, The Guardian was running some media panel about something, I can't even remember what it was about, but I saw that the editor of Pop Bitch was going to be on it. And I went and I sat through the whole media panel just so that I could say when she said something about it, shoehorn in some very sort of crass way of saying, huh, what, like my non-affair with my boss, because then I thought people would report it and the news would be disseminated that way. But I thought it was really saying, huh, what, like my non-affair with my boss, because then I thought people would report it and the news would be disseminated that way. But I thought it was really like, oh, this is really not very helpful to me.

So they're definitely not always true. They're sometimes true. As always, it's things that they cannot prove. Sometimes people say, oh, everyone knows that so and so has got a marriage contract and so on. They're the most fun in lots of ways because they're the most outlandish stories. Often the things you can prove are rather more boring,

but they've been with us a long time and they will continue to be with us. And especially now, obviously the internet just powered all this stuff, but you are still publishing things if you're on the internet. But I have to say the burden of proof and identification is less onerous than it is on a traditional publisher.

There we go. There you go. It's the long answer to that one. It's a very gossipy industry. It does run on gossip, most of which you can't repeat. People always say, oh, why don't you say X, Y, Z? You think, well, normally it'd be something that has to go to court and it's not really your place to say. I don't want to go down the strand for that.

I think in the pop bits, it's particularly unpleasant, like, chef thing this week and they just say oh I just maybe I don't know it's I mean if people in the business read it and people in the business obviously contribute things to it as well. Richard here's one for you about Junior Taskmaster from Ruthie Doherty. We're watching Junior Taskmaster at the moment says Ruthie and enjoying it however it made me wonder if on shows like this with a competitive element for kids, does the team have any trouble dealing with the helicopter parents?

Just curious, as I often hear from teachers and other people working with children, that managing the parents is the worst bit. Yeah, my mum was a primary school teacher for many years, and I think, yeah, the moment the kids are dropped off, the job becomes easier. Juno Taskmaster, which is a delight, I think, Rose Matafeo and Mike Wozniak, and they've got four kids

and they do various things. It's not as competitive as the adult one. Of course, one of the things with kids is you have to take some of the competitiveness out of it. The lovely thing on Taskmaster is you've got the ridiculous prize kind of task anyway, so you're not really playing for anything other than glory. So one of the things with kids is you do have to be competitive eyes it a bit. People often ask if we do pointless for kids and I just think it's that thing of it's, it's

actually quite stressful doing something with kids. I think Taskmaster can get away with it because it's so silly and funny and kids like using their imagination. And the show that I did, which is Child Genius, again, it is the idea that they are children, that was the point of the show with that one. But by and large, unless it's a kids' game show, you wouldn't do stuff with kids for the reason that it can be quite stressful being on television. And if you're old enough to look after yourself, then that's okay and it's your choice. But with children, it can be quite stressful. But in terms of... And I guess their parents are on set. Exactly at all

time so Child Genius the parents were there all the time. Then with Child Genius is interesting and in the end I stopped doing it. I liked the kids were amazing on that show the kids were just so great and they were smart and what what have you and also also by the way almost all the parents were great as well. And most of the parents are just sitting there going, what on earth have I got on my hands here with this kid? And some of the kids were super competitive and the parents were also competitive.

It's just one of those, just normal relationships. And I liked being able to hang out with all of them and seeing all those different dynamics. But then that show was edited in such a way to make the parents look like helicopter parents. I caught an edit of one and this guy, he's a and his son who was one of the winners, the two of them when they were together enjoyed the competitive nature of it so much. You could just see it. They were just like, you know, a father and son at football. They were enjoying it and

watching the edit, it made the dad look like he was a proper kind of, no, you must do this, you must do that. It's important. And I just thought that's not what I saw so I would say if you got kids on set they are unbelievably well looked after they are chaperoned at all times there are recording breaks at all times the parents will be there but I think that's one of those things that parents in a television studio and kids in a television show it feels slightly different to normal reality. So, however they are, like at home, if they are helicopter parents or whatever, in a TV studio, genuinely,

and the atmosphere is very, very supportive, and the atmosphere is an awful lot of fun. So, I don't think that the parents are the problem when you have a kids' TV show. I think just, so long as the show is made with a bit of glee and a bit of joy, and so long as the kids are properly treated, then everyone feels like they've had a day full of a bit of magic, I think. But Junior Taskmaster, if you've not seen it, I would genuinely recommend it. It's so

ridiculous and so silly in the best possible way. Holly Douglas asked about, we talked about British accents and American actors and American actors and British accents the one thing we didn't cover was best American accents by British people and by the way I talked about some the incredible British accents of the American actors in Spinal Tap and I said Hank Azaria instead of Harry Shearer. They're both Simpsons voiceovers but it was Harry Shearer. Synoptic misconnection. Apologies. Okay worst American accents by Brits. This is okay number three Emma Watson in anything. Sorry. Oh no. Oh gosh. Okay and then equal at number two. I'm gonna have to put. Sorry? Yeah yes. So have you got a number

one as well? Okay yeah you're right. In which case Emma Watson's number four. Okay, a four Emma Watson and anything. Right, so you're doing the top four. So you're doing the top four. Okay, we're doing the top four. Equal at two. It's only because you said you were doing the top three. Equal at two, neither of these will be popular,

but I'm not here to win, friends. Is Ray Winston's In The Departed, oh my god. And I have to say, sorry everyone, Dominic West in The Wire, the affair is good, but in The Wire, that Baltimore is... Oh, I didn't mind it because I didn't know who he was at that point. And also you probably don't know the Baltimore accent. If people from Baltimore will tell you this, okay? And at number one, the indisputable, again, I'm not here to wailing friends, it's Daniel Craig's Benoit Blanc in Any of the Knives Out Mysteries. What the hell is happening there? I've read some interviews with other actors actually where they say things like when he

first did it in the rehearsal room, I think we all thought that we were seeing something quite and the words are things like special, unusual, I don't know I feel like they're euphemisms and having seen it yes I'm sorry. Also in Tomb Raider that's not another Triumph accent by a hit. I don't mind it I don't mind it that knives out it feels it feels like a choice for sure but that's a... to do a bad accent okay cool. What an unusual accent my big issue with knives out. People from the south are unusual aren't they Richard I mean, I think if you... How do you mean to say you think it's a southern accent?

Oh, I mean, I'm afraid to say that it is supposed to be a southern accent. I think it's Louisiana, isn't it? How can you tell that if it's that bad? That's the trap I'm luring you into. You're not going to lure me into your trap. He's playing a person from a supposedly very specific time and place. It is a franchise by the way, it's huge that Knives Out franchise. It had the absolutely unforgivable thing, the second episode of it, of right towards the end just saying, oh by the way she's got an identical twin, which you cannot do in Murder Mysteries. But that aside, it's a huge deal.

Oh, I know, very happy to devote a full main show item to it when the third one comes out. Let's move on to the best accents by Brits. And these are hard because there's some really good, you've said Idris Elba, what's this we're having to do for, they're all really good these. Matthew McFadden in succession is brilliant. Really good, yeah.

He's English, is he? It turns out he's English. Idris Elba, brilliant in the war. Christian Bale is fantastic in American Psycho. Hugh Laurie, I don't think they even knew when he was auditioning that he wasn't American. Yes, they were like, in house. Excuse me. Yeah. Yeah. So those are the good ones. But do Americans think they're good? I'd like to hear what Americans think. Yes, Americans genuinely think those are good. They genuinely think the early ones I mentioned are bad and they're right.

Yeah, I agree. Americans are right about everything, but they're particularly right about this. They're right about it. Americans are right about everything. That's a historically interesting thing to say. I mean, that's a real toffee penny of an opinion. Yeah, might do it as a main item

on the main podcast at some point. Now, should we listen to a couple of adverts? Let's please. Since later, special guest star Sarah Michelle Geller with Patrick Dency and Michael C. Hall as Dexter's inner voice. I wasn't born a killer, I was made. Dexter Original Sin, new series now streaming exclusively on Paramount Plus, a mountain of entertainment. who shovels your stairs. And to you, when you spend $25 on McDonald's gift cards in restaurants, get a coupon for a free Big Mac or McChicken. See details at participating McDonald's restaurants.

This episode is brought to you by Dyson On Track. Dyson On Track headphones offer best-in-class noise cancellation and an enhanced sound range, making them perfect for enjoying music and podcasts. Get up to 55 hours of listening with active noise canceling enabled, soft microfiber cushions engineered for comfort, Welcome back, everybody. Welcome back everybody. Richard I've got a question for you about samples and covers. Matthew Smith says what is the difference in money between someone sampling your song and

someone covering your song and do you have any control over it? It's such a good question and it all comes down to this two different rights that a songwriter would have in the song. It has the master rights, and that is the actual tapes of the recordings. That's when Taylor Swift did everything. It's so she had her own masters. So you have that right,

which is the thing you take a sample from. And then you have the publishing copyright, which is the song itself, lyrics and what have you. And if you wanted a cover version, that's essentially what you're doing. So if you sample, you are taking something from that master recording. So like a tribe called Quest, Can You Kick It? They took Walk on the Wild Side by Lou Reed. So they are taking, physically taking it from the master recording. And in that situation, yes, you have to get permission, you have to do a deal, you have to sign over some of the rights to that song,

you'll be paying money to that artist. So it can be very, very lucrative for the original artist or for whoever owns that master copyright, which isn't always the artist. If you want to do a cover version, you don't need permission from anyone. Absolutely do exactly what you want. The artist will get publishing rights every time

it's recorded or played or what have you, but you can do that. If you want to change the lyrics, sometimes you then have to ask permission. If you want to subtly alter it, you do. But the master write is the key and sampling is the way you make your most money. Phil Manzanera from Roxy Music, Jay-Z and Kanye used a riff of his on No Church in the Wild. This is a thing from the late 70s that he'd done. Just a little riff. He didn't even know they were taking it. They used that riff and he says his autobiography has just come out. My brother has worked with him many, many times and can back up this story. He said, I made more money from that sample than I made from my entire 40 year

career in Roxy music. Wow. So if you want to know whether samples are lucrative, they absolutely are. The Rolling Stones made a lot of money from from Bittersweet Symphony from the just that little hercs. Yeah. They were not more money than they made in the Rolling Stones, however, because this I think in their 40 years in the Running Stones they they also made quite a lot of money But if you can be sampled it can be it can be a real career changer for an awful lot of people Look at Dido on Stan. Yeah things that you know, it's it can be immensely lucrative because suddenly you've got joint songwriting Credits on one of the biggest songs in the world. And there's plenty of money in that still.

And thanks to Jamie Emsell, by the way, CEO of Communion Music, who took us through all sorts of copyright stuff as well to tell us about it. But yeah, the master write, that's the key. If you're taking actual something from the original recording, then you're going to pay. And the artists can say no. Lots of Madonna, ABBA, they famously say no to almost everything, but with the occasional exception. Marina Chris Smith. Any relation to Matthew Smith, our previous questioner? It's not clear, is it? It isn't clear. I'm told it's a relatively common surname, but I'll defer to you. Just listen, I'm just saying it's not impossible. That's all

I'm saying. He asks this. People always say, that wasn't on my bingo card. What is on your 2025 bingo card? What's gonna happen in 2025, Chris is asking. I think you know that. I always write the words Richard Branson on, don't know in what format it'll come out, but I always feel like one day my numbers come up. There'll be something.

Oh, something will come up. We talked actually a little bit in the Royal Albert Hall show, and I must say that I, Martha from Baby Reindeer to become a multimillionaire. Yes. I think even though she's asking for 170 million from Netflix, she's not going to get it, but she's going to get a lot. So, yeah, which, you know, arguably would make an interesting show in itself. Martha becomes a millionaire, but I think we know it'll be another difficult year for men in television.

Yes, for sure, definitely. These are the bankers. Don't say Richard like that. Just write it down every... I don't mean it like that. Come out Richard. Right. Don't be Richard.

These are the bankers. You just write that one down. I mean, there are people who you think, oh, there's a lot of stories about that person doing the right thing. There's someone actually who had a very, very phenomenally successful year who I slightly think, if they carry on being more successful, lots of stories about him are going to come out. What else? Oh, I tell you what, in happy news, I'm hoping that we'll finally see a wedding between Lauren Sanchez and Jeff Bezos. Oh, that would be nice.

And I think it'll be very low-key. Yeah, I would have thought so. I don't think they'll splash out much. I think that, yeah. Registry office, reception above the pub. Yeah, something just, you know, that's what they're like. They keep it simple. Yeah. Lots of AI upheavals.

We'll keep talking about those. I actually think that all sorts of big upheavals in news because of Trump and the Trump administration. And I think people in America, I think there'll be not a good time for news. I think people will either try and hive off their news services. I think there'll be a crisis in reporting

in various different ways, because I think people will either try and hive off their news services. I think there'll be a crisis in reporting in various different ways because I think lots of the very big entertainment companies who also have news as part of their business are going to either try and get rid of it or downplay it or even editorially lean on it in order to get what they want at mergers and acquisitions level from Trump. So I think those sort of things are, I mean, I could go on forever, but there's some of the things on my bingo card. And I expect to be putting across on all of them. Okay, I think that Noel Edmonds ITV documentary will somehow end in acrimony. That's pretty much the only thing I have. That's pretty much the only thing I'm absolutely so sorry about.

When is it coming? I'm dying for it. Oh, yes, I don't know. We need to find that out. It's on its way, isn't it? A three-parter. Yeah. Well, I can match that part of a part, no question. Yeah, and Martin Lewis to be Prime Minister. That's all I've got on my... This is a question I've wondered about so often from Arthur Ashman. Arthur Ashman?

Yeah, that's a good name. Arthur, that's a good name. I hope you've copyrighted it because Richard would love it for his book. I hope you've got the master rights to your name, Arthur, because I'm going to do a cover version of it. Archie Ashman. Okay, Arthur says, I was watching House of Games the other night and the question was a fairly straightforward history question on when Queen Elizabeth I was born. While I didn't know the exact answer, some basic schooling would put me within at least one century of the correct answer, plus or minus. So when one of the contestants answered 1903 or similar, which is not only so off, but also a poor guess

for even Elizabeth II's birth year, if that was their confusion, I was wondering how you keep a non-judgmental and straight face. Thank you, Arthur. Yeah, people who do badly on quizzes. It's interesting, isn't it? You know, like for example,

if I go to get my clutch repaired on a car, right, and a mechanic starts talking to me, I cannot hear what they're saying, right? There's a part of my brain that knows I'm not in my area of the specialism. So they could ask me a very simple question, and I would not even understand the terms of reference in which they were speaking. Is this your car? Yeah, because I go, uh-huh. And that is often the case on quizzes. The lovely thing about House of Games is I always say to people, if you cannot quiz, just come on anyway, because we'll have fun. And so if I ask a question about the birth date of Queen Elizabeth I, someone is not thinking, hmm, Queen Elizabeth I, let me have a little think about who that is and when

she might have been born. That person is going, oh no, it's like kings and queens and there's, oh it's Elizabeth, I heard Elizabeth, I mean she was old, wasn't she? So I guess, I don't know, but in 1983, they're not hearing the question, right? It's just not the way that their mind is working and I always, always, always absolutely understand that and you know, it's not everyone is good at everything and I think all the time on quizzes of the things that I'm incredibly bad at and at the times when something is being explained to me and I cannot listen. So often the last questions on quiz shows and you just see the panic in someone's eyes. It's not form of recall they're being used.

You've told me even you have gone on and thought that was a stupid answer on shows. All the time. Mr. Quiz gets... Shortness of time. You are in a weird situation where there's cameras pointed at you and you're going to be coming up with an answer. We all have insecurities about things we do know and don't know and I just see people's eyes sometimes, I see a panic or an absolute blurring over and so whatever someone wants to say I could not care less you see it on things like pointless all the time people would come on usually the good quizzes and this is like it's their Olympics and they just they freeze and they can't come up with the right answer and they're not listening they just don't listen and almost all of the stupid answers you ever

get on shows it's because the person, the second you started asking the question, panicked and did not listen to what it was that you asked. And so I have, house of games, I have utter sympathy because I always say you do not need to be a quiz, I just come on and have fun. And so I wanna make sure it is fun. And with something like pointless, I have sympathy

because I can just see that people have panicked. There's certain formats in which it has become part of the show, you know, that obviously the weakest link was about, she's going to say, and obviously is going to say something very mean to you. And I love the eyes of the host for many, many years in Family Fortunes. Let's see if it's up there. If it's up there, I'll give you the money myself. Yeah.

There's a certain look in the eye that became part of the show, which is, where the hell did that come from? But quizzes are like strictly, you know what, people will go on it because they're brilliant dancers and some people will go on it because it's a fun thing to go on. Quizzes are the same and so I don't mind if people get stuff wrong. If someone's cocky and then get something wrong, there's a slight kind of frisson where you go, okay. But on House of Games, I always think with anything like that,

some people like quizzes. They like facts, they retain facts, they enjoy, they can pass a question. If you hear a question, you understand what it is that the person is asking. If you're not a quizzer, that's not how your brain works. But every single time, if you see someone giving a bad answer on television and you

can't believe it, just have a think about situations in your daily life when someone starts talking to you about something and your brain panics and just goes, I can't. It's like, you know, if you're in a foreign country and you ask directions and someone the first bit of the direction, you think, yeah, I've got that. And then it goes on for about another minute and you just, you don't even have the first bit anymore. You are no longer listening and all you want to do is get out of that situation and write down 1903 on your board and for the next question to come up.

So I think, I think, I think it's that House of Games is more than about trivia recall, but that round, particularly the one about dates and years and where is Kazakhstan, which is where are different countries. Those are the two that you can see like a cold shiver of fear go up people's spines. Because we can never remember where it went. Our first ever run through of House of Games, I was over 1,000 years out in when the Taj Mahal was built.

So some stuff you know, some stuff you don't know. But hopefully it's fun as well. And sometimes you know that contestants are very happy for you to laugh with them but sometimes you just yeah I get it let's just let's let's not worry about Queen Elizabeth the first let let's move on is that us? That is us! Oh so next time I see you Christmas Eve. It will be yeah and if you want to know what we might be talking about, Beast Games is coming out. So you might want to take a look at that on Prime if you have it. Yeah, one of the most expensive shows ever made. Yeah.

Over Mr. Beast. Finally YouTube comes to the streamers. For that and much more. See you next Tuesday. See you next Tuesday. The End