The Rest Is Entertainment - The Worst Celebrity Ads Of All Time

Episode Date: February 5, 2026

Why is Jude Law's Uber Eats advert leaving a bad taste in everyone's mouths? How much do contestants get paid to go on The Traitors? And what are the production secrets behind creating luxury sets? Richard Osman and Marina Hyde answer your questions about production design, brand deals, soap operas and more. The Rest is Entertainment is brought to you by Octopus Energy, Britain's most awarded energy supplier. 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 For more Goalhanger Podcasts, head to www.goalhanger.com Video Editor: Adam Thornton Assistant Producer: Imee Marriott Senior Producer: Joey McCarthy Social Producer: Bex Tyrrell Exec Producer: Neil Fearn Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

This episode is brought to you by Octopus Energy. Now, it is award season. Everyone is wondering who's going to clean up. And we tend to think awards are about that one big moment, like, oh, my goodness, that one night, that speech, I can't believe I've won. But... The effort that goes into winning an award. Everyone going for one of those big movie awards. It's not a coincidence that Academy members or whatever are saying, oh, did you see that thing?

You did. It was really good. There is a remorseless, many months campaign. And there are tens of people working on. every single film's awards campaign. I thought you're going to say tens of thousands. No, no. But there are tens.

Yeah, there are tens. But that's quite a lot when you think of like one. And it's a full-time job. We mention this only because we are announcing our presenting partnership with the lovely people at Octopus Energy who have just won the which recommended provider of the year for the ninth time in a row. And that is not something you get just by year. Which is hard to win.

Which is hard to win. Which is hard to win. Which is hard to win. But nine in a row, I would say that. makes Octopus Energy the Merrill Streep of the business. Oh, yeah, they're the Merrill. They're the Merrill. I call them Merrill Energy.

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edition. I'm Marina Hyde. And I'm Richard Osmond. Hello everybody. Hello, Marina. Hello, Richard. How are you? Very, very well. Thank you. I've got over slightly more of my jet lag. I was slightly jet lag on the Tuesday one. I think I didn't realize it. Did you have any more fun on your plane? Yes, Guillermo del Toro. So Guillermo del Toro was on my plane and I genuinely thought, oh great, if this plane crashes, I'm not even going to be the lead item on the podcast. Your number one concern, of course. Yeah. But luckily, both of you live to fight and create another day. Exactly.

But we didn't really, I mean, it was an overnighter. You didn't interact. Yeah, we didn't interact. I don't know what I would say to Guillermo de Toro. Well, there's a lot to say. Oh, no, but you know what I mean. I don't know what he would want to hear from me. While you pulled his sleeve at 4 in the morning.

Yeah, no, I think. Giamond, another thing about Frankenstein. This is just, this is just me. And I know you've already made it now. Can I just say what I'd have done? Yeah. We have a question from Gary, Linneka, later in this. episode.

Oh, that's fine. Gary Nick has asked a question. We'll see it if we answer it. Let's see if we answer it. But we'll start with the question from Lara Hope. Thank you, Lara. Is it expensive to dress a luxury set like Man versus Baby, the Roman accent and something on Netflix,

or is it more costly to create a vintage style thing like on stranger things? Okay, right, Lara. This is part of it's like slightly how long is a piece of string. If your period thing that you're creating is just like some vintage radio, or whatever, it's easier. But I think what's interesting about both of those things is that, although they're kind of lovingly created, both of those things, as was man versus B, are fully built sets,

which we'll get to, and Stranger Things is all sets, and we'll get to the why of that and the cost of that. But I spoke for this question to Simon Bowles, who is an amazing production designer, who's done such a variety of things and built so many different worlds And actually right now, the film on which he was the production of that designers in cinemas, it's called Primate. It's basically the Psycho Chimp Horror movie, which is set in a beachfront house in Hawaii. If you haven't seen it, look at the trailer for it because it's kind of relevant to what we'll discuss, okay?

He sent me pictures of all the models. By the way, his models are so beautiful. His set models are so beautiful. I would like to see a gallery of... They're called McKetz, I think, aren't they? The tiny little versions of exactly. You know, we used to have it whenever you'd get a TV set made and they'd just show you this tiny, you know,

we'd always, every single, every single meeting we'd start with us going, first things first, I think it's too small. Yeah. Well, his, I mean, I would love to see a gallery show of all his sets. Anyway, it's interesting. If you look at the trailer of that film and you'll think, okay, oh, they would have to dress that house.

No, no, no. That entire house is built in Elstreet on a sound state. It's like, and behind it, it's like, it's beachfront, but there's jungle behind it. and it's sort of 15 foot of real palms and stuff and then it's a painted backdrop around the edge. So I guess part of what I'm saying, Laura, is what is really expensive is having a set

rather than using locations. So why do we have sets? We have them for control, for maximum control. And also for something like TV, you're returning, you bring that set back out. You might store it, but you bring it back out. I'm not going to give away, if you haven't seen the last season of Stranger Things,

various things happen in the kitchen of Mike's house. Now I've seen that set before and they would have stored that, and then it becomes something quite big happens in that kitchen but it's a lovingly recreated 80s kitchen. But Simon he does also do location works who is contrasting the two for me and he said, when he did Pride, which I don't know if you see

which is about the minor strike, they had one bedroom set but the rest were locations so they were real houses, six in Wales, some around it they probably shot for half a day in those and he described the process of turning up. You replace absolutely everything with 1980s stuff. You take down their wallpaper, you put other wallpaper up, you do the carpets, all the electrical fittings. And then before you do that, you itemise their real life room.

And then you put it all back again when you wrap there. It is cheaper to hire those as locations and do all of that than it is to build them on a stage. It must be cheaper. Yeah. So, you know, and then to strike it after like six hours filming or whatever it is, you have the structure. So you're going into these houses anyway. But it's the same with things like stately homes or national. Trust.

I also thought it was amazing when Emerald Fennell said I wanted a house that hadn't been used for saltburn. But Simon likes that particularly because he said, you know, then you see the money going directly to people, communities, whoever. And there's something about that with props as well. So for Man versus Baby, that looks like a really expensive penthouse apart. I don't know if you see it's Netflix. I'm not sure I've seen it.

So what's the Roan Atkinson, right? It's a sequel to the first one, which is Rowan accent directed by the brilliant David Kerr. And it's, they start the first one, man versus bee. He's a house-sitting house and there's a bee that he drives him mad. But they built, because so many things have to go wrong there, they built that as an entire set, a sort of luxury house. This, again, lots of things happen in this. He has to look after a baby. Okay. So chaos ensues. Chaos ensues. And chaos cannot ensue if it's a private house that you're just renting for a couple of days. You cannot. That level of chaos, it's better to do

it on a set. And also, as we say, you have total control. So in terms of things like, when you're an expensive set. I'm thinking you're like all the sort of sculptures. You can get stuff on like way fare that passes for expensive sculptures, you know, so that that's quite easy. You know, sometimes you need ancient tightwriters and you find the one period exact one on eBay. And people spend a lot of time doing that. There's another movie where, which Simon did called Hyde Park on Hudson and Bill Murray's Roosevelt. And they needed those teletyper machines. Now you cannot get that on eBay. So they go to museums and then, you know, the museums turn up and they put lots of them running,

and they set them all up, and they put them running in the background. Again, Simon loves that because the money goes directly into the museum. The amazing computer science museum in Cambridge is always, they have, because they've got every single machine that's ever existed since the 60s.

So they are every single show you ever see that's set in the 70s office or something like that. They provide everything for those. It's amazing. There's great museums like that all around the country. Yes, again, as I say, to some extent, it's how long is a piece of string. And normally, the most expensive thing always

is man hours because it's how long, you know, we're talking about how long it would take to build or create those set, how long it takes to source those things, whether people need to come in, as with the teletype of machines and run them for you, all of those things. So it's quite difficult to sort of put an exact kind of call the answer one way or another. But I will say that if you've ever seen sets like this, the level of detail is just beyond. And you will get a sense of that if you go to somewhere like Harry Potter World and you look at the sheer detail in the background that's in the deep background of scenes. And they had to build everything for that because it's kind of like astrolabes and things

like that. But I always say that if I would love to have worked in production design, I find it absolutely the craft of it is so beautiful. And when you're on set and you see these worlds and you see the level and the depth of detail that you're like, that is never even going to be in shot. And it is just, and Simon is like a master of it. I absolutely, I love to see all his things. And this is it.

Anyway, have a look at the primate trailer and realize it's all in a. Alstery. Yes, I remember I remember being given a tour of the Thursday Medal Club sets before filming started. It's an amazing production designer called James Merrifield who did this. And yeah, you wouldn't in, so the main bit of it is in a big stately home. The outside of it is a big stately home. And so he then recreated the inside of that stately home, including, you know, painting the huge walls of Shepperton, the exact views you would have seen from the windows of that stately home. But oh my God, the, the, the detail, the beautiful things that he, I mean, I said, do you do private houses?

Yeah. Because you're amazing. He said, I'm quite busy. And just the, you know, the carpenter's working on it and the electricians, just like making it look like just like real apartments. I mean, it was absolutely extraordinary. And it's almost all MDF. And they just can make MDF, like in the Ministry of Magic in Harry Potter where this is kind of good, it looks like these incredible sort of green black glass bricks. And it's just all MDF.

I mean, and watching the sea. painters and it's just watching cross people at work. It's just an absolute joy. So as you say, it's lovely when you can use real houses because it puts money into the community. But when you watch someone actually make a set, like making something out of nothing, it's absolutely extraordinary. Oh, this really interests me and terrifies me about skyscraper live. Abby Crow says, I have a lot of questions about the legalities of Netflix's live stream of Alex Honnold climbing one of the world's tallest skyscrapers. How do you Did Netflix get insurance for this?

Would they be liable for corporate manslaughter if Alex died? What are the ethics of this? Alex Honnold, who has previously made that documentary Free Solo, where he's climbing El Capitan. So he's one of the greatest free climbers in the world. He's climbing up this enormous tower, yeah, with absolutely no safety equipment. So a lot of people saying, well, I mean, what are the ethics of doing that? And Alex Honnold says myself, says, I got paid by Netflix.

He said, I don't get paid like, you know, a big source. sports I got paid by Netflix. I did not get paid to climb the building. He said, I was going to climb the building anyway. I got paid for the spectacle. I got paid for them being able to cover me climbing the building. So that's where Netflix is sort of, there's a legal loophole, which is essentially Alice is going to do this anyway. And he's shown that a million times before. He's always doing these challenges. So Netflix is just covering what he is doing. So he is insured for various types of things. They're on a 10 second delay which is not insurance but you know there's a there's a 10 second delay on the live stream. If Netflix had done something wrong so Netflix when they're putting that

together because they're filming him, Alex Arnold has to you know be cognizant of where the cameras are and so if they do something wrong if one of the drones falls out of the sky and hits him or something or that their due diligence on weather is wrong then Netflix are liable. because that's their part in the proceedings. But everything apart from that is on Alex Honnold. He's saying, like, Netflix are not inducing me to climb this building. You know, this is the thing you do anyway. But Netflix knew I was doing it.

So they say we would love to cover this. And they got, I think, 6.2 million people watching this live. So it was a big deal for him and a big deal for Netflix. If Netflix had gone to Alex Honnold and said, climb this building, we're in a very, very different place. And all sorts of things would have to be in place. And the insurance, it would all be on Netflix. But that is not what was happening there.

Alex is doing it anyway. And Netflix is saying, we would love to film you doing that. In the same way that, you know, if someone is injured at a football match, you know, if a player is injured, match of the day doesn't get sued. You know, that's on the people putting on that event.

And in this case, it is Alex Honnold. So, yeah, it feels like one of those things where you think, well, this is absolutely crazy. But the principle is, he was doing this anyway. We are just pointing cameras at it. If something goes wrong with the cameras, if something goes wrong with the filming, that is on us. If something goes wrong with the climb, that is on Alex Holland.

But fortunately, nothing did go wrong with the climb. And it was an extraordinary sort of TV event. You know, like, do you remember in the 70s when there were, when Evil Knievel and Eddie Kidd were kind of jumping double deck of buses? Yeah. I always thought, I was always trying to pitch like a new big stunt motorcyclist. That feels like there's a gap in the market for it, right? But, you know, people climbing buildings, I guess is the same thing. Well, there are people who do things on.

on YouTube and who do extreme sports on YouTube and they do their own. And they, I was actually, yeah, there are lots of people who do things like that. And you hope to get sponsors and you hope to get, whatever. But they're sponsoring your clothes. It's very carefully done. Exactly. If Evil Caneval wants to jump the Grand Canyon, that is on him, we will happily sponsor his helmet or, you know, film it from afar.

We are not encouraging him. Nothing to do with this. Yeah, to jump the Grand Canyon. But I would have thought if someone wanted to jump the Grand Canyon, then that would be a good Netflix show. But what do I know? But yeah, it was so Alex Honnold takes all of that responsibility. It was unbelievable.

I mean, it's absolutely. My tummy's going just thinking about it. Yeah, I know, right? I haven't taken, I couldn't look. I'll have a look. I'll have a little look. Yeah. Even though I know the ending.

He survives. Yeah, he's fine. I find it quite hard to watch. Yeah. Marina, Robin has a question. Robin said, I've been wondering why is it that many Australian soap styles have been successful in Hollywood

when I can't think of anyone who's at a major role in a British soap that has ever cracked America? The obvious big success stories include Margot Robbie, Guy Pearce, Eidof Fisher and various Hemsworths. Is it British snobbery that stops certain actors going into soaps? Is it that there are more options in the UK so actors are more likely to stay here? It's interesting.

That's a good question because obviously the pipeline is incredible from Australia. They have a great hit rate. And even people who just did little things like everyone has been on one of those notes, like Russell Crowe's done a four-episode arc. Heath Ledger, I think, had a few episodes on Home and Away. You know, anyway, some of them have done both. Both the Hemsworths have done both neighbours in Home Norway.

By the way, we're all talking about those soaps. Soaps are often seen as stepping stones. I would say they teach you great things soaps. They teach you stamina and professionalism and just being, you know, one of those things. You've got to remember that there is a far, far smaller TV market in Australia. So in a sense, they are always thinking about getting on a plane for the next level of their thing. And they might come here. And also, all Australian actors will have been on a soap before they make that move.

It's not like, I'm going on a soap. Now I'm going to go to Hollywood. I'm going to go to Hollywood. But in the few years I'm working in Australia, one of the things I would do is be on neighbours or home and away. Yes, absolutely. It's just a much smaller market. And you are always thinking that when you're making a jump, you are, and it's Hollywood, I guess, because it's obviously regarded as big. and better. You're quite right that we have our own sort of ecosystem here and we have a much

bigger, bigger market. So there's lots more things that they can be involved with. I would also say that we have had something like Ricky Whittle, who was in EastEnders and he went and he was in, you know, he's like the lead in American gods. Sam Hogan, who was in River City, I want to say, that's Scottish soap. And now is in Outlander and it's like a huge, you know, so there are people who've made it. Colin Farrell was on Baldy Cass Angel, which I know is not a soap. I don't feel that's a soap,

so I can't, yeah, but yes. Also Colin Farrell, not British, but you know what I mean. That's a British TV show. Yes. I would slightly say, this is maybe slightly controversial thing, that there's something about

those all Australian looks that even when they're playing a boy or a girl next door, they're really good looking. And there's something about that kind of, you know, that Margot Robbie, the Hemsworth, whatever. Like, you can be in neighbours

and look like that because we kind of think that that's what Australia. It's like, oh yeah, they're gorgeous surf chicks and gorgeous surf a guy's. And they're kind of more already an idol, even though they might be kind of doughty down and have a mullet like guy, PS used to one, neighbors or whatever, you can suddenly see them making a jump. Whereas we cast much more sort of, there's always a couple of heart throbs on our soaps, but

predominantly they are like authentic kind of people like you might actually know. Yes, they're much more likely to, yeah, be under the arches than surfing. Yeah. As soon as you see in Austria is someone in a soap surfing, you're like, oh, you can be in Hollywood. Like filmed in Palm Beach and, you know, the northern beaches and they look like Margot, Robbie or whatever it is. Well, she was in neighbours. But, you know, if you soon as you see those people, you can slightly see, yeah, I can see you transplanting, whatever. But as I say, we just have so many more things that our soap actors can go on into that, by the way, the dream, obviously lots of people just dream of going to Hollywood because it's the biggest and best.

but many, not that many, do try and do it. Yeah, if you think about who the most successful British soap actor has been in the last 20 years, probably Sarah Lancashire, you know, but she can, she can just do starring role after starring role after starring role on British TV and do these incredibly huge things and be massive and do win every award going without really having to go to Hollywood. One good example would be Ben Hardy, who was Peter Beale in EastEnders, went on to do X-Men, he's in The Conjuring, he was Roger Taylor, in Bohemian Rhapsody.

But it's very, very rare. Let's go to a break afterwards. We'll see if we ask Gary Lennox's question, which is about the traitors, and also whether celebrities have ever done adverts that have harmed their career. See in a bone. See in a minute.

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Now, as trailed, Chloe Cohen's got a great question about ads detrimental to actors' career. She says, if I never see Jude Law again in that awful Uber Eats advert again, it will still be too much. The ad is viscarily upsetting and reminds me that I don't especially like Jude Law on screen or off screen. My question is, has an advert been ever really detrimental? to someone's career. Wow, Chloe's not holding back, Chloe, is she? No. Yeah, so if you haven't seen those, the Uber Eats campaign, he's sort of due law is pursued through London by a sort of series of potential meat cute scenarios, but he wants to get out to them because all he wants to do is eat some barbecue chicken wings. And listen, Chloe,

I know exactly what you mean. And Jude Law, almost worse than doing the adverts is if you do an adverts, the actors always have to, they have to, like, sort of do a little interview for it as well. They'll say this two days filming plus one press interview. And so I was just looking, I wonder what Duke Law has had to say about his Uber Eats campaign. And I found out, he said, it was great fun poking fun at myself in this way. Oh, he loves poking fun at himself. Let me tell you about that.

Says Jude Law, we've all had moments where we have done enough for the day and just want to relax. That's where Uber eats helps so much They make it easy to enjoy your downtime I can confirm that no one can make Eating chicken wings with hot sauce all over your face Look charming I mean Jude of course has not written that himself Well we've read some adverts like that

Let's be honest But of course we have You know and listen I absolutely get it And you do wonder sometimes Why they do it But occasionally an actor will have a bit of downtime Or they'll think You know what I need a bit of family time

I'm going to take three or four months off And then someone says how about half a million for like a day's filming and a quote about maybe there'll be some prestige version of it at the Super Bowl yes exactly exactly yeah and you know because sometimes adverts can you know absolutely be the making of you and you know if they're fun but listen lots and lots of actors do them yeah that listen doesn't reflect well on anyone but I'm sure it paid well

and I'm sure that Uber Eats are delighted with it. Uma Thurman did a campaign for Schwepps about 15 years ago where she's sort of on a kind of psychiatrist's couch and she's every time she says Schweps it's like she says sex and it's really it's like icky and you know I don't think that did her any favours but who remembers that now there's the Kendall Jenner one in 2017 the Pepsi one diet woke diet woke oh my god that's epic that's one of my favorite avats of all time I think the premise of that is like Kendall Jenner somehow stops, there's a big protest and I think Kendall Jenner averts a massive incident of police brutality by offering one of the officers a Pepsi.

She becomes at that point a meme-fied face of tone-deaf privilege and, you know, this is, oh my God, this is a nightmare for Kendall Jenner. Oh my God, when Martin Luther King's children are going on the record saying this is disgusting. Yeah. What about your Pepsi advert? It's not great, but as I say, it's a camp classic. Yeah, and listen, she's still a billionaire, so she's done her right. In the 90s, did you remember John Cleese did those adverts for Sainsbury's where he's sort of barking through a megaphone and got very well paid, but that sort of certainly harmed Sainsbury's a bit, harmed him for a little bit, but again, everything's fine.

So I think actors get it. I think it's difficult to see a career that's been genuinely derailed by an advert. I think maybe sometimes it makes you feel less of somebody if they've done an advert, but. It doesn't last for long. Less and less now because commerce is so plugged into what the idea of creator is now. Yeah, exactly. I think it's just becoming less and less of a thing that's a kind of sticking point for people, rightly or wrongly, but that's just the way it is because people, particularly young people,

who spend so much time when you're so used to people doing efforts. Everything is sort of an advert that you don't notice in the same way that people used to. You know, the whole plot of loss of translation is Bill Murray going out to Japan to do a whiskey advert because American actors would go and do Japanese adverts on the understanding they would never be seen in the UK, which, as you say, doesn't really work now because that amazing Tom Hiddleston ad for centrum vitamins,

which is designed only to be shown in Japan, but got shown everywhere. It's so awful. It hasn't harmed Tom Hiddleston's career at all. We will put in the show notes the amazing Phil Wang cut of that. Have you seen that? Yes, it's so good. But just because you've asked the question,

I know it's from a while ago the Phil Wankham, but it's so brilliant him cutting himself into that Tom Hiddleston advert. So, yeah, it's certainly ads can make you feel

less good about certain people and certain celebrities, for sure. Hard to find someone who's been completely derailed by an ad. But yeah, I would think that Kendall Jenner would be the closest,

but she seems to have got over it. Oh, great. Anthea Turner, having the flake at her wedding with Grant Bovi. This is of taking you all the way back to the late 90s, when they did the, on the front of OK magazine,

they were biting into the thing. And it just went, that was like a complete viral storm before we knew what those things were about the fact that she was promoting a new Cabri's chocolate bar, which I think was called Snowflake. I think it was a snowflake, wasn't it? It was a white chocolate covered plate.

You can call the chocolate bar that now. I know, can you imagine. Again, we didn't know what those were either. Yes. She was ahead of her time. Yeah. And she was destroyed for that. And it's really, for like,

oh, the terrible commercialisation of your wedding, even though everyone who sold their wedding was commercialising it. That genuinely derailed her career. Do you think? Yes, it did. It absolutely did. And she was just such a, and it was the only person, whereas so many people were doing commercial that activity, really comparable.

But for some reason, as we all know, like there's no rhyme or reason when the herd moves and it just decides that one person's going to be the pariah for this or that. And that was really what happened with that. So I think it really, it took her a long time to come back. and she had to come back by things like perfect housewife and all those kind of... Select Big Brother. Yeah, yeah. But it's interesting because, you know, the converse of that is, you know,

when Alexander Armstrong did the PIMS adverts, you know, it's PIMS o'clock, genuinely, it was a huge thing. People loved it. People loved people shouted in the street all the time. So, you know, there are, you know, there's a reason why some people do adverts, which is actually they can be an incredibly good calling card for you. OJ Simpson, sprinting, sprinting, an advert for her, sprinting across an air in the 70s.

did so much of his great work in chases, but leapt over some chairs in the airport, and it was like, okay, right, now you've stopped being a football star and you've become an actor. I think the catchphrase was Go OJ Go, and lots of people were holding those signs up when he was riding in that white bronco. Yeah, that was good for his career,

less good for Hertz a number of years later. Yeah. I mean, John Leiden doing country butter, I kind of get it, but, you know, the whole thing with John Leiden is he'll do what he wants to do. And, you know, he had good reasons to want that money and so, you know, it's... He exists in a place beyond success or failure now in that...

I don't know, there's... That's not like someone who's at their TV peak and then, or whatever, no. I do wonder about Robbie Williams doing adverts for Felix Catfood. That I've always wanted to... In fact, let's try and see if we can do a deep dive. If anyone has any, like, background knowledge on the Robbie Williams doing a song for Felix cat food, that feels like a mismatch. Joseph Vaughan has a question for you, Marina.

Will niche platforms like Crunchyroll for anime or Pure Fix for Faith-Based movies continue to survive and thrive outside of being owned by a big player? Or will they be swallowed up by the likes of Netflix? Good question, Joseph. Those platforms, we know that Netflix and Amazon and Disney Plus are all acquiring things and rushing to further consolidate and have even further scale. Patchy World is anime, but it is actually owned by Sony. so that it's already part of the major media conglomerate, but it's allowed to sort of exist within it, you know, as quite a sort of self-contained thing.

Pure Flicks, faith-based, I don't know why we always say faith-based. We only mean one face, one faith, Christian things. Pure Flix is owned by great American media and Sony. So lots of these people could divest and go somewhere else, but they aren't now. What is interesting that's happening at the moment, and this is really quite a current thing, is that they're forming kind of these small players,

obviously can see how difficult it is amongst all this MNA activity. They're forming collectives. And actually, Pure Flicks and Crunchyroll are part of, they've become part of something called Beyond Mainstream. And this is actually an interesting thing. And they're trying to form alliances and sort of collectively bargain and be a more powerful boy banded together.

And I mean, I think, you know, they want to stay independent these people. People, it's interesting, you know, you see people who just want to be acquired. These people want to say independent. And actually, the best thing in their favour is, and what we know about them is, that they have incredibly engaged fan bases. And unlike the churn, Netflix doesn't have that much churn in subscribers, but lots of the other services do.

You know, you become a member to watch the certain things that you're obsessed with or everyone's talking about, and then you quickly cancel for the next month or whatever it is. But they don't have this because they have, the faith-based, sort of niche streamers or platforms or whatever have very, very engaged fans and so do the anime things. So I think it's more likely you'll see once they've performed into these alliances that they become part of, they collectively bargain and become part of bundling deals

and other sorts of alliances. You know, they'll have separate alliances for all the faith-based ones may go together and lots of sort of anime and other content like that may go together. But they are, what they really benefit from is these incredibly engaged and loyal fanbases who stay with them. So I don't think you should just assume that they're all going to be sucked up by somebody because actually they might not. And interesting things may continue to happen in those spaces.

And also that some fan bases take against large corporations buying their sort of pets organisation as well, not always. But if you don't need it and you can band together because you actually can rely on a fan base, lots of things can be done. So I think that to some degree that I would. I would think that they're quite sort of safe. But as I say, in some cases, they're partly owned or they sit under kind of big entertainment company on Breda Bres already. Okay.

I mean, we said that Gary Linneka on our Tuesday episode never decides anything that goes to the podcast. Immediately, I'm going to sort of undermine that because we've got a question from a Mr. Gary Lineca that I'm going to ask you. It's about the traitors. He's on the past. Gary says, do contestants on traitors get paid just to appear? How much do they get paid? It's interesting that. You wonder if Gary is interested in popular culture or whether someone has just put in a call to him to be on celebrity traitors.

He's like, how much, what are you getting paid to do that? Thank you. He's talking about the civilians. He is talking about the civilians. Thank you, Gary, for your question. They do not get paid. There we go. That was easy, wasn't it?

No, they don't get paid on that. I think, well, I know, because they're playing for a prize and actually doesn't take a huge amount of time out of your year to be on traces. Unlike some reality shows, some reality shows, they do pay people. Yeah, it's unpaid because they're playing for a prize. They'll get pediums for food and all that kind of stuff. And obviously they're put up and all that sort of stuff. But no, it's... Well, they've got a lovely lasagna laid on.

Yeah, exactly. Yeah. You don't have you give them any money for the food. We see them get breakfast, for heaven's sake. So, yeah, it's a... That one is unpaid, but obviously, unless you win, in which case it is very much paid. But thank you for your question, Mr. Linneka. Michael Richards, if you've got anything to ask, you know the address.

Members, we will see you tomorrow for a bonus episode on Hollywood's most sinful couples. Valentine's Day special. Otherwise, we will see everyone next Tuesday. See you next Tuesday. Hi there, everybody. It's Dominic Sambrick here from The Rest is History. And Gordon Carrera from the rest is classified. Now, over the last month or so, the regime in the Islamic Republic of Iran has been pushed to the edge, having seen the largest protests for a generation ripping across the country.

Tens of thousands of people have been killed by the Ayatollah's forces since the uprising began. And a lot of people outside Iran are asking, is this the beginning of the next Iranian revolution? And goalhanger is covering every element of this. On the rest is classified, David and I have looked at the role of intense. intelligence agencies in this conflict with the internet blackouts and so much unknown, we've been looking at whether spies are best place to judge whether the regime is truly at risk of falling. Now, on the rest is history, we have been looking at the origins of the Iranian regime. At the 1979 Iranian Revolution, which saw the fall of the last Shah and his replacement by the rule of the Ayatollahs,

now given that the last Shah's son is being touted abroad as the man who might just might, save Iran. You can't understand what is happening now without understanding what happened back then at the end of the 1970s. But it's not just our own two podcasts that are covering Iran. If you want to know whether Donald Trump's military buildup in the region means it's likely he's going to wade in and force regime change. Here, Alistair Campbell and Rory Stewart cover the latest developments in The Rest is Politics. And our dear friends that the rest is money have been looking at the economic it collapsed, the corruption and the impact of the sanctions that have been eating away its social cohesion in Iran over recent years and have pushed so many people onto the streets.

And on empire, they've been looking at the similarities and differences between 1979 and today. How is it that a country that less than 50 years ago forced the Shah out of power is now seeing crowds chanting, long live the Shah? So whatever happens next to the people of Iran and to all those brave souls who've turned out on the streets to protest. Stay tuned to Gollhanger for all the context and the answers and the analysis that you need. Find the rest is history, the rest is classified, empire, the rest is politics and the rest is money wherever you get your podcasts.