The Rest Is Entertainment - The Wheel, Agony Aunts & Sequels

Episode Date: June 19, 2024

How does Michael McIntyre's The Wheel really work? Richard took part in the show and tells us all the secrets. Agony Aunts, are the letters real and what do they say about the wider public? Plus what are Marina and Richard's top 3 film sequels? These questions and a few more on music tour logistics and 'Who Do You Think You Are?' answered on this episode of The Rest Is Entertainment. Sign-up to The Rest Is Entertainment newsletter for more insights and recommendations - www.therestisentertainment.com Twitter: @restisents Instagram: @restisentertainment YouTube: @therestisentertainment Email: [e-mail] Producers: Neil Fearn + Joey McCarthy 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

Your team requested a ride, but this time not from you. It's through their Uber Teen account. It's an Uber account that allows your team to request a ride under your supervision with live trip tracking and highly rated drivers. Add your team to your Uber account today. Hello and welcome to another edition of the Rest is Entertainment questions edition, questions and answers. I am Marina Hyde.

Hello everyone. I'm Richard Osmond. Welcome to question and answers. Are you well Marina? I'm very well. How are you? Yes, I'm not bad. Should we just absolutely leap straight into it?

Leap in. Literally last week when we did this question and answer edition, I had to shoot off because I was going on the wheel. And the only reason I went on the wheel is we had a couple of questions about it. And I'd asked the exec producer the answers and he said, if you want to find that you're gonna have to come on. So I did that. So I have answers later in this episode. That's such an extreme form of service journalism. It's like service entertainment, guesting. I don't know what it is. You go above and beyond for our listeners and I can't wait

to hear. It's like being embedded. Yes. We'll start with a question for you though and it's from Theo Boardman-Pretty. There's a lot going on with that name Theo, that he could do a thesis on Theo Boardman-Pretty. I like it though. You've got to be noticed in this world, haven't you? Because listen, names are important, especially in this world of branding, But Theo, Theo Boardman-Pretty absolutely nailed it. Now, he also has a question, Theo.

He's not just showing off. He's got a question, right? Very good. Yeah, he does. Yeah. In this Q&A episode, Theo asks, My question is about advice columns and agony arts. I've always wondered who actually writes in and hopes that their personal and often ludicrously specific problems are written about in a national newspaper. What proportion of these questions are real? I mean I can tell you right from the start

from my own knowledge that they are all real. A huge number of people write in, it's really amazing actually and someone we spoke to a little bit about this, Gordon Smart who is a former showbiz editor at The Sun said that the Dear Deirdre letters, Dear Deirdre is the Sun's advice columnist, they were 100% genuine and often that desk had the biggest mailbag delivery in the whole building. I can confirm that. Now, Deirdre was amazing to work with, says Gordon. She was lovely, genuinely caring and wrote so much for it, she was the ultimate pro. Now listen, there was also a thing called Deirdre's photo case book, where there would be a story, you know, like, I think my boyfriend's cheating on me, but it would be done with speech bubbles

and whatever, but with real photos of real people. I have been in one of those. When I was a secretary on the showbiz desk, I was in one with the TV critic now, and who worked on the showbiz desk at the time, Ali Ross, and then there was a rather glamorous girl who I can't remember, I was her sort of unattractive best friend. That was the role I played. I was fully clothed at all times. I think actually she really got down to her underwear

as often happened in Deirdre's photo case books. Almost all the problems in the case book were underwear related. Yeah, they were. But I have to say anyway, that I have been in one. Does that exist somewhere, Marina? Can we find that? I would love to find it.

I wonder if I've got, but my mother just sent me a whole load of boxes of stuff, like, you know, the non-presidential archive, and that would certainly be in it. But I should try and see if I can find it, because she would have kept something like that. I mean, I don't know why she would have kept something like that. At least I was, as I say, the unattractive best friend. But, and problem pages in magazines when I was growing up, when I was a girl,

oh my God, that was the first thing we turned to. You went to, in just 17 or something like that, you went to problem page first. They rate enormously still. If you look on the Guardian website, where it's the most easy, I think, of all the national newspapers to see what is getting masses of readers at any one time.

If you go down to the bottom of the thing, you can see what's being not only read most, but deeply read. Every time there is a problem, it always makes that top 10 and it always makes the deeply read top 10. And you've got people who've, I mean, obviously people who became huge figures as Agony Arts, Claire Rayner, Dolly Alderton nowadays, Pamela Stevenson does a sexual healing one in the garden, very, very popular. People love them and people write in. Now, probably people don't know this, sorry, I'm going off at a real tangent, but I do think this is quite

interesting. Problem pages have been around since the late 17th century. There was this guy who was a printer, which was helpful. He was having an affair, but he couldn't bring himself to, he was a guy called, I think his name was something like John Dunton, I could get that wrong, but he was having an affair and he couldn't bring himself to tell anyone about it because he would identify himself. And then he saw, hang on, but he was having an affair and he couldn't bring himself to tell anyone about it because he would identify himself. And then he saw, hang on, but that's actually quite a good idea. And he started this thing called the Athenian Gazette, which later became the Athenian Mercury. And it was the first kind of interactive publication in the sense that people wrote in.

And the advice was on sometimes like on philosophical problems, like how can I tell if I'm awake or if I'm dreaming, things like that. That's a good question. Yeah. And they were answered in a quite a simple way But also people wrote in with their problems and it became so big you got a separate spin-off one for women These things have been big business forever So they are real and people really do write in and I've never heard of people writing fake problems in So it's got that lovely thing a problem page of that's a bit like me or thank goodness. That's not me Exactly exactly that lovely thing a problem page of that's a bit like me or thank goodness that's not me. Exactly, exactly and you think what would I have said and you do often you come to think these

people are so sage and wise and really good writers have ended up doing them in their time and people who have such a sort of you know a really open and wonderful sensibility and you learn a lot and they've been enormously important actually in making people understand things about I don't know access to abortion in going back in the old days, family planning, all sorts of things like that. Those people really dragged on the conversation and I don't know, helped people to know even for what rights they wanted to ask for. They've been really crucial in the story of all sorts of things in history. Philippa Perry does a great one as well. And that feels an awful lot. It's, you know, often

talks about family relationships and, you know, difficulties with that and communication. And it feels like, you know, therapy is a very expensive thing to get. And you can get such wisdom through the answers to quite specific questions sometimes, because often the answers to problems are the same, you know, whatever the problem is, it's usually a symptom of something that's fairly universal. And reading that sort of stuff, I always think is incredibly helpful. By the way, I'm sure some of them have been made up in history. But it's not the prevalent way of doing it, because you get so many are sent in that you really have no need to make them up. And actually, as so often when you hear these things, you think, gosh, I couldn't have even come up with that one. Some of them are

so sort of extraordinary and level of detail is so intricate because people can write quite sort of slightly longer things than in now that we do them online. And they give you the language, the answers give you the language, as you say, the therapy thing for talking about some of these things. We didn't understand in lots of ways how to talk about those things

until people like Laurene taught us how. It's also, and I will present note, a good place to get little ideas for plots. I was going to say, I bet you've used those before. Yeah. I mean, it's not for me. Plots have never been my problem, but people often ask, where do you come up with plots? I pick them from everywhere.

But people only write into these things if they've got an absolutely intractable problem. And intractable problems are very, very useful, particularly in crime fiction, but in any sort of fiction, romantic fiction. Someone who's absolutely under their tether and is thinking, I cannot see a way through this. And fortunately, most people would just write to an agony aunt, but in books, that could lead to rather a handy little plot. There's actually a fun history of agony aunts, I think written by Tanith Carey. And I recommend that because it really takes you through the whole story. Thank you, Theo Thank you, Marina. Dear Marina

You should do a Advice column that I've got no advice. I've got no advice does a podcast. I've got Okay, here we go, mr. Service journalist our question on the wheel from Ben Arnold, please Can you settle a family argument? Ben Arnold as in Benedict Arnold, the American revolutionary traitor? Yes. Yes, it is him. Wow. How old must he be now? He's knocking on a bit, but he loves the wheel.

He's a huge fan of the wheel. What he wants to know is on the wheel, are the contestants really in a separate area underneath the main celebrity wheel? My son thinks they are, but I can't believe that each contestant has a chair that can be lifted up. It doesn't make logistical sense that they would have to build three. It's a great question. And as I say, I've thought this is easy. I'll ask Dan Baldwin, who's the exec on that, or Tom Blakeson, who's the producer. I'll just say, guys, tell me about the contestant wheel. And both of them ganged up on me and said, well, you can, you

can come and see the contestant wheel, mate, if you want to. And I, okay, they got me. So I literally had like two out in between finishing the book and funny enough doing the podcast. I was able to go and film one, which I did last week and they showed me around. They showed me everything now. So if people watch the wheel, you've got the main celebrity wheel at the top, and the contestants who are coming to play rise up through the floor. So there's three possible contestants that get spun around, and so it's random which one gets chosen, and they rise up onto the set, and suddenly they're in the middle of these celebrities. And you go into that studio, and it's a big airfield, there's lots of these huge studios now, and they chose this studio because the set it's not the widest set in the world, but it's pretty much the tallest set because

The whole set is 12 feet up in the air. I really wanted this to be the answer I really wanted it to be a very deep set. Yeah, you are higher essentially and underneath it So you got 12 feet underneath it and underneath it is one chair and the contestants as well. Just set off to the side, so still underneath everything is the contestant wheel that you see on camera, that they are spun on, and everyone is chosen randomly. Ben is right in saying that there's only one seat, actually, directly underneath, but it's all connected.

So everything is pretty much exactly like you see on television, which is absolutely brilliant. And you've got these three people on the one I did it. One of them never came up at all. It's gutting, isn't it? Yeah, it's random. I can't tell you too much about the episode I was on, but again, the little thing that goes around the arrow, it is completely random. I can absolutely assure everybody of that. But yeah, you go in and you're an enormous hanger. It's like a huge mezzanine level, this incredible set just absolutely floating in the air and underneath it all the kind of gubbins and this seat and all the dry ice coming up and all that stuff. So it's really, they physically

created the thing that you see on television. Tom Blakson, who is the producer, his brother, is a very, very fine movie director called Jay Blakson. And Jay had said to Tom when he first watched it, he said, how much have you spent on CGI on that? It's amazing. And Tom said, oh, there's no CGI, it's all for real. And Jay was like, no way, no way you built that. And they absolutely have this enormous set

and these enormous screens and this this enormous mechanism, like high up in the air. It's an extraordinary piece of kit. But I remember also we had another question about the wheel a while back, which was, does it make people dizzy? Yes. And funnily enough, I turned up quite late because of various reasons. In fact, because of because of our podcasts and then lots of traffic. So it's a bit late. So I missed some of the initial kind of they do little cutaway shots of everyone on GoPros just so they can cut them in at any point of the show. They're filming

you throughout the show as well, but just to give them extra bit of coverage. And so when you turn up, you're sort of spun around about 30 times before the show even starts, just to get various cutaway shots. And I missed all of that. So thank you for the podcast overrunning. That was an absolute dream. But one of the celebrities I was on with had to leave the show because they absolutely got too dizzy and they were ill and they just,

they had to be replaced at the last minute. And another celebrity had to be replaced at the last minute and Another another celebrity had to be what that on the morning of yeah has it ever happened before it had happened once before They were telling me so we were waiting around for quite a while after these initial cutaways waiting to do the show and I was Like I wonder if it normally takes this long and they said oh look here's the situation Because S and X had had to go home because they were nauseous and cut just couldn't because it's it it spins pretty quick. Listen, I'm not saying that- It's like being seasick. Yeah. It's not SAS, are you tough enough? But it's Marina, it's not far off. No. So yeah. So at the last minute, because they were filming two shows in a day and Tony Bellew had turned up early for his other

show because he's a boxer. So he's got some actual discipline. And so he got drafted in to our wheel instead of the, I won't say who it was, but genuinely that person was not well, but it really doesn't, as I say, it's happened like once before in the whole history of that show, but it was really, it was great fun. It was, you know, we had lovely people on mind that Steph McGovern from the rest is money and other things. She was on, Antony Beck was on. We had a good old Strictly goss. That was a lot to gossip about, certainly at the moment. He was, he is the soul of discretion. I can imagine. Antoni Bek,

as you can imagine, he really is. Lovely Kyle Smith-Baino was on, so I had a nice bunch, but yeah, one of them, unfortunately, had to sacrifice their place on the wheel. But it was enormous. When it goes out, I'll tell you a bit more, something very interesting happened during that episode, which I will talk about, but no spoilers at all. But after it's gone out, which I think it goes out in the autumn after Strictly. This is a two-part answer.

I like this, we're spreading it out. This is a two-part answer. But that's also an interesting thing, the thing that goes out after Strictly, because whenever you film a television show of any sort, or if anyone comes on House of Games and films, people always say, oh, when's it coming out? Is it out next week? And of course, you sort of film when you film, you film when people are available.

And by and large, if you've got a big show, and The Wheel is a very big show for the BBC, you want to go out in the autumn or the winter. That's when you want to go out. So House of Games always goes out in the autumn and is paired with Strictly, It Takes Two, and The Wheel always goes out in the autumn and is paired with Strictly. And so they record as many as they can now

because Michael McIntyre is available, and save them and they put them out where the maximum ratings are and where the big audiences are, and when the nights are drawing in a little bit, when ratings just go up and up and up. I will say one other thing which is watching Michael McIntyre is a masterclass. He's so brilliant.

He's brilliant with the punters. He's brilliant with the celebrity experts. He absolutely drives that show through and you need constant energy on that show and he just is incredible. Paul Farah who we talked about on our theme tunes episode on Tuesday, the music is incredible, the wheel music is absolutely amazing. The one thing they said was don't sing along with the lyrics of the songs when you go around, right, because I think they can't use it if you're mouthing the lyrics. Oh, that's funny. People are always dancing but not singing.

Yeah, I mouthe along to every single one. I don't know if they can use me. No, but I couldn't help myself. It was really a lovely experience. But of all the things and Ben Arnold, thank you for that question and also for your help in the Revolutionary Wars. I would say it's one of the shows you would not be disappointed if you see it on TV and see the set and you walk into that space and see how they built it and see how they put it together. It's an absolute testament to the craft of set building and set designing and cameras and lights and all that sort of stuff. It was a real Blade Runner-esque treat. Oh, that's terrific. Right. On that note, because it's unbeatable for now, let us go to a break.

Welcome back everybody. Now, Marina, you've been very excited about this question. I've said you could do an entire episode on it. It's a question from Purina, one of our lovely sponsors who make Dentalife. They're supporting today's episode. They want to know what are your favorite dog moments in film and TV? Okay. Narrowing this down takes a lot, but I'm going to choose one dog, because I think this dog is amazing. Rin Tin Tin. Rin Tin Tin, this is a really old, but by the way,

this is a dog that was literally rescued as a puppy from a genuine World War I battlefield. And this guy called Lee Duncan took him back to Hollywood. And basically, there were other dog stars at the time. One of them even had his own pink washed bungalow. One of them that was a dog called Strongheart, also a German Shepherd. Rinton Tind was a German Shepherd. He popularized the breed and eventually Lee Duncan got him into films and he made 27 films, had a 14 year career. Take that Gwyneth Paltrow.

Now the dogs were the perfect stars in many ways because we all speak dog. You know these sort of films could go around the world which is very helpful. There's a rumor that he actually won an Oscar but they fiddled it because they thought no a dog can't actually win this and he's got a star on the Walk of Fame in Hollywood. Rinton Tin movies were absolutely huge. Darrell Zanuck who became one of the most legendary producers of all time in Hollywood started writing stuff for Rint and Tin. No, really? Yeah. And he did, in fact, have some offspring. I think there was Rint and Tin, the second,

third, but it's all- Rint and Tin 2. Yeah. Second generation. They never have it. They never have it. They never have the hunger. And actually, I think he was buried in Hollywood, but they repatriated his body eventually to the Pet Sematary in Paris. Oh, that's so lovely. Paris. And you could, yeah. And yeah, but had an extraordinary career. Yeah, I'll give a, just a mention to Eddie from Frasier.

I think is another one of the all time great dogs. There's an episode where Martin says, we call them Eddie's spaghetti. And someone says, is that cause he eats pasta? He goes, no, it's cause he's got worms. Next week, I'm hoping we're allowed to do our favorite cats in show business. Again, you will have to cut me down to size in this because I could do this for so long.

Okay, our favourite showbiz cats. Thank you. Dentalife are delicious dental tubes with a unique chewy porous texture and distinct ridges that massage the gums, scientifically proven to reduce your dog's tartar build-up with a natural cleaning action. Care for your pet's teeth daily with D dental life's natural cleaning action Marina one for you It's a top three all which you're warming towards you're changing me and I like it I like what I'm becoming Anna Jackson has a question for you Marina She says what are your favorite movie sequels that are better than the original? Me and my partner Stephen have come up with a shared list. This is Anna talking not me

And she said the list is Toy Story 2, Shrek 2, and The Dark Knight. Thank you for this question. Those are none of mine, but I get the point. Well, Anna. No, I get the point. I'm trying to think. I'm going to put a really weird one that you're going to think, why are you doing this? Because I could tell you what, it can't all be Bad Boys 2 and Fast Five, which by the way way are two ones that are way better than the original. If you don't know the filmmaker Joanna Hogg she is extraordinary she is a British filmmaker and these are beautiful odd amazing films. Souvenir which is a semi-autobiographical story of a young filmmaker. Souvenir part two is better

even than Souvenir. That is an art house one, but they can't all be blockbusters, which I'm about to go to. You don't often get sequels to art house films. She's an extraordinary person and if you don't know her work, I really advise you to take a look again. Joanna Hogg. Joanna Hogg. Now, I've having, because of including Joanna Hark, this is a sentence that hasn't been spoken before,

I've had to not include Terminator 2 or Aliens. Both of which, by the way, are absolute bangers, and I think I'd probably have to put Terminator 2 above Aliens, because I still think Alien perhaps is the better movie. In the number two spot, The Empire Strikes Back, it's hard to think now. After the original Star Wars, The Empire Strikes Back shows us that the storytelling can be different, it can be darker, the lore is much deeper, so Empire Strikes Back is much better than Star Wars and New Hope,

as episode four was called. Number one, Godfather Part Two, I'm sorry. This is probably a cliched choice, but it's a cliche for a reason. I think it's absolutely extraordinary and better than the first one. Okay, I'll have a couple. My number three, just because it's got the best title of any sequel ever, is the sequel to Dude Where's My Car. And the sequel is called Seriously Dude,

Where's My Car. So I'm going to put that number three. Number two, because no one ever talks about comedies and, you know, comedy is so underrepresented in every list of movies ever made. But I loved 21 Jump Street, which was the remake of it with Jonah Hill and Channing Tatum. But even better is the follow-up 22 Jump Street, which is absolutely terrific film. Both of those are great comedy films.

And my number one, I'm going joint and I'll go joint for a reason, Iron Man 3, which is the one with the incredible Ben Kingsley performance in it. So I'll go Iron Man 3 and I'll go for Mission Impossible 5. And I'm putting them together because they're both written by the same person who's a British screenwriter called Drew Pearce. And I think with both of those franchises, he wrote unexpected movies that absolutely transcended the previous films and wrote the best films in both of those franchises. And I think that's probably worth a name check, don't you? Absolutely. But I don't think you could say either of those is better than The Godfather Part II. Well, I just did.

Are you convinced that Iron Man 3 is better than The Godfather Part II? Am I convinced? Yeah, sure, yeah. Okay, well I guess that's the difference between us. That's what I said and that's what I mean. Right, let's just move on to the next question. Yes, I genuinely think Seriously Dude Wears My Car is better than Godfather II. I liked as a sequel to something, I still know what you did last summer. I like that one.

Alvin and the Chipmunks The Sque Squeakwell is a nice one as well. Another great sequel title, by the way, just works perfectly, is the sequel to Mamma Mia, which is Mamma Mia, Here We Go Again. That is brilliant. That's good. Here's one for you, Richard, from Tom Perry. I have a question regarding shows like Who Do You Think You Are? or My Grandparent's Wall, where celebrities have their family trees looked into. How do they choose who to

have on? Do they scour the family history of random celebs until they find something and then ask them to come on? It's exactly what they do funnily enough. They look into everybody without permission if you know, I mean you don't need permission to look into someone's family tree. So they will look at everybody, they will sometimes ask you, they say, look, we have started looking into you. Would you object? And you kind of go, No, that's that's okay. Are there older members of your family we could speak to? And then you put them in touch with and as everyone knows of older members of their family, would you like to talk about your family? Yes, yes, I would. So that's that's a fairly open door. And then the trail can go cold for a very long

time. And often they find absolutely nothing in which case they they can't make the show. But they will still give everyone the research that they did. So you know, even if I think Charles Kennedy once that Charles Kennedy once spoke about the fact that they were looking into him, and they discovered that every single generation of his family going back sort of 400 years had lived in exactly the same croft on exactly the same bit of land up in the highlands and they said Charles I'm really sorry this we can't really do a lot with it. With my Who Do You Think You Are? I think it's like that it took a while and then they found a story about a murder mystery and they thought well I, I mean, this seems to work. This used to be quite on brand. So they will look into every possible side and every possible angle. And if you watch them, sometimes they're talking about, like mine was a five times great grandfather

and great grandmother. Sometimes it would be literally the grandfather. Sometimes it would be a great grandmother. Sometimes it'll be an offsuit of the family in a different country because they would go down every single avenue until they find something that A, tells us a story about our social history, or B, provides an interesting precinct to film in and to go and to tell a story we haven't seen before. But you will not always get that. But yeah, absolutely what they do, they will research huge amounts of people. Most people have got a little something somewhere, enough that you can make a television program out of if you're happy to, as you say with mine, if you're happy to go back five or six generations. And then whoever you are,

though, they will send you ream upon ream of information about your family, which is amazing. So my mum now has every single bit of information they got from my family, every single bit of which is born, place X, job, labourer, died, workhouse. No one moved like about three miles down the river from anywhere. They must have, I think it took them a long time before they finally found my great, great, great, great, great grandfather being involved in a murder trial, not as a murderer or as a victim. And when they went, they went, finally, we've got something in this family. One of the things I always find so amazing about who do you think you are is how emotional

actually celebrities, the celebrities can get from this kind of, in some sense, can be quite dry information. And I find it particularly interesting because I always think of them as quite sort of propulsive celebrities is quite propulsive individuals they look forward and perhaps not back and they're quite driven and there's something about people being forced to confront a lot of dead ends as you've just said you know that that sense of just a lot of people feeling as I say they were in kind of condemned lives or but I think there's something so interesting about watching how emotional people get and it's so authentic. I did, I cried immediately. My mum, who was interviewed on camera as well, she said the only thing about Who Do You Think You Are I Don't Like is when they cry.

Why are they crying? You don't know these people. And of course, my mum and I are very different people. And literally the first chat I have with my mum, we're talking about my grandfather, who I adored. And I was just in floods of tears. She wasn't. And that's her dad. Just, and my mom was just looking at me witheringly. My mom has a wonderful heart, but she just she's not given to, to sentimentality in that way. And if there's one thing in this life I'm given to, other than

reaching things from high shelves, it is sentimentality And so I was yeah, I was weeping buckets. I love it. I'm gonna go rewatch yours. I have a question for you Okay, Joanna Morris. Thank you, Joanna with the Taylor Swift era's tour in the UK What are the logistics of a huge concert tour? Does everything get transported or something sourced locally? EG tour buses lighting screens. Ah transported or are something sourced locally, e.g. tour buses, lighting, screens. Ah, okay. I know someone who used to do concert logistics. It's quite a harrowing job for reasons we'll come on to. And someone else who is helping us is Mazda Pooni, who is the co-founder of Communion One Promotions. Any arena tour that's at the stadium level, the

artist carries all of their stuff. It's everything. It's the PA, the lighting, the screens, the stage, the sound desk across the whole tour, across all the countries and all the continents, because they need it to be exactly the same every single night, because there are so many things anyway that can go wrong when you're kind of putting up a new show in different places. You need to be sure of every single thing. Now, as I say, entertainment logistics is very, very stressful. And it's a sort of freight category, all of its own on the airlines.

In Beyonce's formation tour, I think she had seven seven four seven cargo planes just because you can't say, oh, sorry, there was an eight hour hold up at customs. Often they'll have two sets of everything and a really big for a really big artist. The second set of kit can be with the advanced party going to the next city or ever to set up because it takes a while to set up the staff. That's like my brother who is in a band he's got two passports because you always have to send your passport off if you're going to do a tour around the world. Often your passport is in the Thai Embassy and you have to go to Australia so he's got he can piggyback his passports as they get their visas for different

countries as they travel around the world. It is such a performance. You've got all the trucks have to be sort of padded, you've got to pack it all in reverse so it can be unpacked in the right way. You know you've got a hundred crew but even with all of that, I was talking to a friend of mine actually who saw Taylor Swift in Singapore and said that people have always said that the national stadium acoustics are not great in Singapore. And I think she basically redid the ceiling. No. Yeah, yeah.

These things are so absolutely enormous. You cannot have delays, you cannot have damage. And I think apart from being like the first AD on a movie set, jobs most guaranteed to give you an ulcer and worse is entertainment logistics. It is so hard. Much smaller tours obviously are not like this and you do you source local things but in the big things they even use their own, they take their caterers all the way around the world. So nothing is left to local chance. You just own and run the whole thing.

And there's also a whole logistical effort, like a year beforehand, which is if you're Taylor Swift, you know the dimensions of your set, you know the things you need technically for the set as well. And so you will have a whole group of people traveling around the world, going to every stadium. They can possibly find working out if they have exactly the right access, if the width is right, if the height is right, whatever you need, which is why big open air stadiums are often very useful.

But there are only a certain amount of stadia in the world and certain amount of venues who can take a tour of that size. And sometimes it's tiny little things like access roads, which mean it's possible to use that stadium. So somebody's people's job year in year out to travel around every single stadium in the world and work out exactly how you might where you could land seven, seven, three,37s nearby,

what the roads are to get there, what the big access into the stadium is and what you can build on, what you can't build on, when other events are going to be on, if it's a sporting stadium, when the off season is. So it's like, it's absolutely any job with logistics in it, I take my hat off to anybody who does it. Oh gosh, me too. It's like that after it, because we all rely on it our entire lives, and none of us could do it. And the second it goes wrong, we bitch so badly.

Yeah, it's the biggest anxiety dream. Waking up, I don't know why my anxiety dream is being on reality TV. I think my anxiety dream actually on reflection would be waking up and thinking, you're in charge of the logistics for Taylor Swift's tour, go. Yeah, if they just said, do you know what Marina, nine month tour, stereophonics Far East. You're like, ah, no. Ah, I might dream about that tonight.

I've got a column to do. Yeah, poor me, I've got to write a newspaper article. Yeah, no, I'm going to dream about this tonight. Anybody out there who has logistics in the title of their job, thank you from the rest of us. Yes. Because I don't think they get thanked enough. No, not at all. Not at all.

It is heroic and beyond stressful. I think that about wraps us up for today, but do please keep sending in the questions to the rest is entertainment at gmail.com and your top three, which are now just part of my life. It's happened. The crossover has happened. And I've been having a great time

listening to the Spotify playlist we made of all the theme tunes we talked about on Tuesday's show, which you can get on our newsletter. So, restisentertainment.com. You can sign up for it there. Thank you very much for listening and we will see you next Tuesday. See you next Tuesday. The End