The Rest Is Entertainment - TV Property P**n & Scarlett Johansson vs AI

Episode Date: May 27, 2024

Why does the This Morning sofa strike fear into every hopeful PM? Richard and Marina take a look at politicians vs daytime TV, tech bros misunderstanding cinema and if Netflix's new show 'Buying London' is any good, and what are the secrets of some of our favourite property programmes? Twitter: @restisents Instagram: @restisentertainment YouTube: @therestisentertainment Email: [e-mail] Producers: Neil Fearn + Joey McCarthy Executive Producers: Tony Pastor + Jack Davenport + Tom Whiter Recommendations: Marina - Final Cut: Art, Money and EGO in the Making of "Heaven's Gate" by Steven Bach (Read) Richard - Glow Up (iPlayer) 🌏 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

Hello and welcome to another edition of The Rest Is Entertainment with me, Marina Hyde. And me, Richard Osmond. Hi Marina. Hello Richard, how are you? I'm all right. You spent most of last week in the post office inquiry with a front row seat. How was that? It was extraordinary really.

And actually I was sitting and I met the people who, the producers of Mr Bates versus the post office and I was talking to other journalists, you know, who've covered it for so long, far longer than me. It was extraordinary but you're sitting there in a room with hundreds of the victims and people have become sort of strange celebrities like Alan Bates comes in and there's a sort of buzz. Not as it should be because it should never have had to happen but it was an it was a sort of extraordinary to be in the room with Paula Venals who has you know been like Carissa Soce for the last 10 years. You haven't seen her and she hasn't uttered a word on any of this. So it was an amazing thing. There was a slight dampener put on it by the suggestion that

I would have to have it immediately go into a general election campaign, but I'm now heavily sedated and can talk freely about that, which we will a bit on the show. Yeah, I wasn't aware about the general election campaign. Then I was listening to the rest of the politics, I heard about it. Sounds interesting. Well, it's breaking. Sounds interesting. And it's the Labour v Conservative, right? Yeah, those two teams will be playing each other. And the Conservatives, that's the same as Tories.

Yeah, that's the same as Tories. We're going to talk a little bit about what happens when a politician has to go on a chat show, a talk show, some non-traditional news programme. That's one of the things we're going to talk about this week. We're going to talk about that. We are going to talk about Scarlett Johansson having her voice stolen allegedly for the new AI chatbots from OpenAI and what that means and what OpenAI chatbots are going to be and is it the death of Siri and Alexa. And we are also going to talk about property shows on TV. There's a new show that's sort of based on Selling Sunset,

which is obviously set in the LA property market, which is called Buying London, also on Netflix. And we're going to talk about that. And yeah, The Guardian called it the most hateable program in TV history. They're using that as their advertising actually. They literally clipped it and using it as advertising. So we will discuss that. But should we start with politics? But politics in a fun way, i.e. politics slash entertainment. Yeah, when they have to go on to the fun program. I don't know if they're fun programs, but I think that the clue was there when Rishi Sunak went on Loose Women not so long ago.

That was the clue, really. Candidates now, the whole talk show strategy, by the way, is relatively recent. I'm going to shock you with a little bit of a history first. Would you believe it started in the United States of America? And in 1992, Bill Clinton was actually third to Ross Perot in June of the year of that election. And he was really in the doldrums. And they decided to send him, his campaign decided to send him on Arsenio Hall's kind of late night show, which by the way, was not one of the big sort of like the tonight shows, whatever, Nixon and Kennedy have been on the tonight show occasionally, but that was it. He opens the show in dark, in wayfarers, like the Tonight shows, whatever. Nixon and Kennedy have been on the Tonight show occasionally, but that was it.

He opens the show in dark, in Wayfarers, playing the saxophone, plays Heartbreak Hotel. The crowd go absolutely nuts for it. He is, I mean, Clinton, you're dealing with quite a useful proposition because he was obviously very good in, and very, he had a sort of easy charm, maybe too easy. Which is part of the reason this campaign was in the Doldrums.

Anyway, I don't think we call it that anymore, actually, easy charm. I think sexual politics has advanced a I don't think we call it that anymore, actually, Easy Charm. I think sexual politics has advanced a bit, we don't call it Easy Charm. But anyway, what they realised at that point was that that kind of soft exposure can be as helpful, if not more helpful, than hard news exposure. Particularly now when mainstream news has been abandoned by so many people, entertainment TV has in some ways become more important and that's for one major reason in elections which is that general elections are the

time when people who do not care about the news or politics, you know, they don't really watch the news. Those people want to know what you are like the politicians and they don't want to necessarily find that out on a news program. 1992 is probably regarded as the start of that type of key campaign interview. And there is a bloodline from that to think like Tony Blair doing little Ant and little Dick when they actually gave Cherie Blair some Union Jack knickers. Again, I'm not sure we do that any longer, but politicians have been on Deal or No Deal.

You can't show the flag on Telly anymore. But they've been on, obviously they've gone on things like WWE, Raw, they've been on Deal or No Deal, all sorts of things like that. And you will see it in the coming weeks. And it's the thing that they really find quite scary to do. Loose Women, I think when you go on the Loose Women, you basically have to say, I mean, if you're a man and you go on Loose Women, you just have to say this is my scariest interview. Because I think there's a bit of politicians who think that the one show or Loose Women is the easiest interview they're going to have. And I think it's very much different.

I think it's very much the hardest interview they're going to have because they don't understand the rules. Yeah, I think they know that. I think they think that this could be my biggest bear trap. As you say, it's complete. They feel like amateurs in it. They're such professional politicians on everything else, but they feel like complete amateurs in these studios, on these sofas or whatever. And they think this could be the point where I lose the election because I say one weird thing, but I don't want to be boring. So I have to say some slightly weird things or else what's the point? Loose women, I think when you go on the loose women, you basically have to say, I mean, if you're

a man and you go on loose women, you just have to say, this is my scariest interview. It's not me who makes those rules. It is electoral law. You have to say I'm terrified of this one. I mean when Tsunak went on it actually Janet Street Porter said Tim, why does your party hate pensioners? It's like, that's a bit of a curve, but I mean that's like the one people we don't hate. They're going to ask you some... Do you know what? And that's the problem is, you know, he should have just replied that. If you'd applied pensioners, they're the only people we like. We hate everyone else. But then you've told Janet Street Porter on Lee's Women that she's wrong and they really hate that. So you can't replied that. If you'd applied pensioners, the only people we like, we hate everyone else. But then you've told Janet Street Porter on Lou Swinburne that she's wrong and they really hate that. So you can't do that. I think he did actually look that he was thinking, are you actually joking?

Preparing them for these shows is quite a tricky business. Because do you remember Theresa May on The One Show? Theresa and her husband did The One Show and they talked about like girl jobs and boy jobs and he did the bins and what You have to say is I am a normal person exactly like you and to which the obvious answer is but you're literally the prime minister Or you want to be and you're not Preparing them for these interviews can be quite extraordinary And I talked to to Theo Bertram about this now Theo used to work at number 10 as an advisor to Blair and Brown. Number 10 Downing Street. Number 10 Downing Street.

Late he worked at TikTok and he is now director of, I know exactly, of the Social Market Foundation, which is a leading cross-party think tank. And obviously the first thing he said is like, I'd so much rather talk about policy, but the reality is that elections are when people who are not interested in those sort of things are watching. It's like elections are like, elections are for politics, what Wimbledon is for tennis, which is literally 85% of the population doesn't care at all about politics.

And I've said before, it's not because they're idiots or anything, it's just not the thing that rings their bell. You know, they care about what they get paid, they care about is their neighbourhood safe, they care about their family. They're not interested in the noise. In the same way that most people are not interested

in tennis until suddenly Sue Barker pops up and you think now I'm interested in tennis and that's where we are now with politics. Yes. Question time used to do a funny question at the end. Now this was the thing that the minister would spend like 90% of the time obsessing on, wanted to do it. He said that he remembered doing a long debate with preparing David Miliband in his massive room when he was Foreign Secretary for one of these interviews. Wargaming all the different questions, you know, what if I'm asked for my dream date and he said,

I should say my wife, no that's too boring, what about Kelly Brooke? And a long pause, sorry, who is Kelly Brooke? Wow, okay, hold on, say Kelly Brooke and my wife, no actually don't say that. It's a hard, if you're a politician it's a hard question to answer, because you can't say, do you know what? The British people. Yeah, they're my date. Please go out with me on July the 4th.

All politicians on these things are completely terrified of saying anything interesting about themselves. But also they're really scared of being boring. They don't want to be boring. So they have to try and thread that needle and like maybe not bring their family too much into it because understandably they want to keep it out. So it's very very difficult. Someone like Boris Johnson who was a natural performer in those things but was a very very very bad Prime Minister in many people's view.

Everyone I know who would be good on The One Show would be a bad Prime Minister. I cannot think of any crossover if someone, oh my god they would be great with anecdotes on the one show And then they could just head off to 10 Downing Street and run the economy I don't think you can do both you you have to choose. Yes, absolutely and I Think we should do a separate thing talking to Theo about I hope you will talk about TV debates Debates, yeah, we must talk about that. Because that is well, I think that is in our remit, isn't it? Because it will be it some it's primetime TV, Richard Those are very very hard to prepare people and they are so different to doing the talk shows doing the debates

You've got to be so many different types of not celebrity But sort of so many it is like being a bit of a different type of celebrity for each of those different Formats in an election campaign is interesting. It's normally if you go on something like the one show you are Show, there's something interesting about you or something interesting you're about to do, and it's very rare that someone who is boring, genuinely uncharismatic, gets to be on a show like that. You'll see it on TV quiz shows, you have to have people who've got something about them, and if occasionally people slip through, then you go, oh, that's what it's like. It's like sort of dead. There's something about camera that it kills people. You know, so if you're an author or a film star or something like that, and you're using

a go on those shows and you've got something to talk about, but it's very rare that someone like Rishi Sunak say who I don't think is a natural television performer. Okay. I don't, you know, he's not going to go on the wheel. Well, Stammer isn't either. Exactly. But in real life, they are much, much more personable and people like them. They're always surprised when they meet them. Exactly that, because the TV camera does something to people, it adds £10 and takes an awful lot off your charisma. It's very rare that you'd have someone, the one show would go, we are going to book someone who we know to be boring. We do have to book Rishi Sunak,

we sort of have to do it. And also the one show doesn't really want to do a gotcha on Rishi Sunak, right? The one Show sort of wants to show who he is. I think the issue that these politicians have, they've grown up in an environment where every single show they go on is pretty much the same and also goes out to pretty much the same audience. And there's two problems, I think, with mainstream political interviews. Firstly, this obsession, which I absolutely understand about getting that gotcha moment. I was at West Street and was on one of the Sunday morning things the other day and

there's about three minutes of they were trying to get him on a very specific point about what they're gonna do with the NHS contracts. But for like a really long time, I mean I get what you're doing and I get in the meeting beforehand you said I tell you what he won't be able to answer but this is the problem they say I tell you what he won't be able to answer is this but also they know he won't be able to answer. But this is the problem, they say, I tell you what he won't be able to answer is this. But also they know he won't be able to answer it because all sorts of competing issues he has with his party and with the voters and stuff.

So they know he can't answer it. He knows they know that. And so suddenly you've got this ridiculous dance of something where it's not a real interview. They know the line of attack. He knows his line of defense. And everyone who's watching has made their mind up already anyway.

And that is so much of political broadcasting over the last 20 or 30 years. It's a dance that everyone knows the moves to and that everyone, it's like the arms race. You know, we both got nuclear weapons and so no one's going to do anything. And it's going to take a very brave politician to be the first person to go, maybe I could do this differently. You know, maybe if I was on a show where I had the opportunity to be me and tell the truth and be honest about things, I could do it. But it's hard. That's why we like the weird ones, because everyone will tune into those, even because it's a fish out of water format, which we all enjoy. I have to say that I do think the people

when they're doing the one show interviews or Loose Women or whatever, they are also going for a news line, but their news lines are just so qualitatively different. They want to talk about that Theresa May doesn't put the bins out or something like that. They want those kind of domestic things that I think you can tell so much more about from the domestic things anyway. But it's quite hard when you are actually the prime minister to say, well, yeah, I don't do that much stuff because I don't know if you noticed, I've just been failing to get a Brexit deal for about four years. The thing that really, really, really works in show business is authenticity, or at least

pretend, you know, the potential authenticity. So actually, if you say the bins, I don't do the bins. Oh my God, I couldn't think of anything worse. Then at least people go, oh, okay, well, at least that's something. And if you are, you know, if you go on a show, and there's a question you don't know answer, it's very easy if you're from the world of entertainment because you start telling an anecdote about something else or you veer off into a fun direction or you point at something that just happened with one of the other people because that's the world you are used to. You're used to very fast back and forth with people. You're allowed to say anything.

Nothing really comes back on you. But there's politicians, they have no freedom to do or say anything. They've got their lines, they've got their party lines. And that doesn't work if you're going up against Judy Love and Janet Street Porter. You know, it's just not, it's not the thing, it's not the rhythm of the conversation that you need to have. It is doable if you're really skilled. In that Arsenio Hall appearance, which I actually went back and watched the whole thing, it's really interesting. So whilst Clinton like managed to take the piss out of himself and that line that he'd been in, people had really hated him for saying, you know, I smoked once but I didn't inhale, he was able to say, yeah, by the way, it's because I'd never soaked a cigarette, so I didn't know how to inhale. It's

not that I didn't want to inhale and it's sort of funny and it was disarming. But he also gets asked, you know, about tax and then he does a sort of four minute monologue on the relationship between the tax take and public services. So somewhat, but Clinton is really good at that sort of stuff. And obviously Blair was very good at it as well. It's harder when you're Theresa May who is more, can I say more limited as a media performer? And I mean, Stammer. There's no shame in that.

Yeah, no, there's nothing wrong with it. It doesn't necessarily mean you're a bad no, there's nothing wrong with it. It doesn't necessarily mean you're a bad politician, although in my view, it wasn't great. I love going on Loose Women, right? Loose Women is great because they will literally talk about anything. And I like to talk, you can talk about anything.

You can take anything in any direction. They ask you questions. You think, right, okay, I've never been asked that on a television show before, because they do that show every day and there's a load of them. And so it's really- Yeah, well, Rishi Tuna's never been asked why he hates pensioners before. Let me tell you that for

free. You see and when they ask me that I just I have a very good answer prepared always. I said because some of them can't solve crime. For me it's be very natural to go on Loose Women or Sunday Brunch. Oh you would love it. I'm in heaven. But going on Sunday Brunch I think was slightly smarter with Keir because they are not, Simon and Tim are not going to ask you why you hate pensioners.

Right. They are going to ask you a question about football. They are going to let you cook some tandoori salmon. You know, you just look like who you are as a human being. That's an easier gig. If I was in charge of media strategy for Keir Starmer, there's a number of shows I would send him on, but you want, Boris Johnson as an amazing media performer. You could trust Boris Johnson on loose women. And that's a sentence by the way, it's never been said before.

Sorry, there's so much to unpack there. But you could put him on loose women and he'd be fine. He knows, he's also got a thing of understanding. He's a great lover of women. No, but he is better in interviews with women, for definite. And he's also better in an interview where he can go off at tangents and where he doesn't have to stick to the point. And, you know, he instinctively understands a format that says, I do not have to answer the question you just asked me. It is more fun if I do not answer that question. I don't remember the last time we got a political interview

that genuinely moved the needle at all, that changed our perspectives on human beings at all. And I do think, you know, it starts with the Paxman thing of why is this lying bastard lying to me. Of course, 100%, you've got to hold people's feet to the flame and that's what you've got to do and you've got to expose hypocrisy and what have you. However, you also have to do other stuff, you know, and they concentrate so much on that, on trying to find a bit of hypocrisy, which is very, very easy when they know the stakeholders who are behind these politicians. They know there are certain questions that cannot be answered without someone sounding awful. And so they just ask them and the politicians know they're going to do it. And so we get this political system where there's sort of no point to listen to an interview

anymore. If it's up to me, never have any politicians on a political show. Have, you know, people behind the scenes have professors, have all sorts of people from different walks of life, but who do not have skin in the game and are not having to report back to central office. And they were not having to, you know, whose job doesn't rely on them giving a particular answer in a particular way or not giving out a particular piece of information. You know, we, we learn nothing as a democracy from these shows anymore, I think. And it's hard to see, it's hard to see anyone on either of the front pinches who has, would have the ability to come in and sprinkle a bit of stardust and be able to make that change. Because it's going to come through personality, it's the truth, and someone who really wants

to explain why these things are done. Someone like Andy Burnham, who now has less of that national pressure on him because of the job he does, is able to- Because he wasn't like that before, my goodness, when he was in the cabinet, no way. Exactly, and it's funny how every single time a politician breaks out of the straight jacket of what the party wants him to say, they become more and more and more popular. At some point, you've got to take that into account and do it. If you're doing a book or you're doing a film or anything like that, there's a sort of hierarchy,

there's a certain amount of shows that you go on that you know move them needle. I suspect it's the same for politicians. If you go on the Graham Norton show for example, it's huge. Always huge. Can't quite see either of them on that maybe Keir could do. You might be able to do it but it'd be interesting to see which ones they do. It's a tricky one. The one show really shifts the needle. They'll both do the one show. Because people watch it and love it. If I was a politician, I would for the last two years, if I was Kirsten Armagh, I'd have been doing films for the one show about stuff I cared about. Yes.

I'd say, do you know what, can I go up and film this thing about something in the past which I really cared about or something where people gathered together. I would have done that for the last two years. That would have been my media strategy. Yes, it's too late now, but yes. This morning, shifts the diet as well. But local news is, I've always talked about, is the biggest one. If I was, you know, if any of those politicians, you'll get bigger grilling on those shows, but also more fairness. It's like, it's the perfect combination for me.

Yeah, so if I was advising Rishi and Keir, it's hard because I don't think either of them are particularly comfortable in that arena. But if you had a politician who was, the world is your oyster in terms of the media. You can be absolutely all over it. You can be in people's houses, you can be absolutely explaining who you are, and that I think we need a kind of Boris Johnson, but who actually cares about running the country. I much prefer that sort of thing when they're in the studio and they have to go to the studio and have to do it as you would do on the sofa, like I don't, you promoting one of your books. I prefer that. I don't like the little films that they do and they're like, this is me living, this is how I live, here I am going to the football

with my friends on the Saturday. I'm not interested in those. But you don't do that. You do, you know, Keir Starmer does something on the Peter Lee massacre. Oh yeah, no, no, that would be interesting. Yeah, he should have done, yeah. I don't like the ones in the run-up to the election. I remember a really excruciating one of David Cameron popping to the butchers. We've got such a lot of it coming in the next six weeks. Yeah, we've got a lot. Well, if anyone does well or eye-catchingly badly, we will check back in on how and why they did so. And at another point, we'll talk about the debates.

Definitely, we'll talk about which is a totally different kettle of fish to this. Oh my God, really is. Shall we go to a break? I think we should. Hello, listeners. It's Anita Arnith here from the Goalhanger Sister Podcast Empire, which Shall we go to a break? I think we should. the country, who dreamt the dream, who wrote the words upon which a country would be born. What were they like? What made them do what they did? What did they actually believe in? And how did they come to play the role that they did in the American Revolution and the creation of America? What really interested me about this was the contradictions. I mean, we expect these men to be great figures. We've seen the portraits in the galleries, we know the faces from the banknotes, but they're deeply complex figures. But in that, and in that blend of contradiction and intellectual

power and writing genius and curiosity and raw ability, lies the nuance of complexity that allows us to understand them. And the United States is in many ways a reflection of them, their beliefs, their experiences. These are the men who wrote the Constitution. These are the men who created the federal system. In every way, they are totally fundamental to what American politics looks like today. It all goes back to this extraordinary group of men. Yeah, and they have rip-roaring yarns as well, let me tell you. So if you want to know why America is the way it is

and who the men were who made it, you can listen by searching Empire wherever you get your podcasts. Welcome back. I've just been told by producer Tom that literally Alistair and Rory are talking about the debates today on this afternoon's episode. Well, let's hope we can still bring something when we when we handle it a little later today. We might know more about whether they're doing them and how many they're doing. And also let's listen to theirs. I bet it'd be nonsense. And you know what, I'm gonna

listen to it then we'll absolutely eviscerate it. But we will, so we'll have a listen but we'll talk about that from an entertainment perspective. Yes. I think next week. Absolutely. Unless they suddenly, if they better not have gone. If they strayed to anything related to primetime. If they at any point mention Michael McIntyre, I'm going to go straight to Gary Lineker and say we've got to have a discussion here. About how the empire is carved up. Anyway, we must move on to Scarlett Johansson and OpenAI. Now what has happened is that OpenAI, who are the firm who have chat GPT and the CEO

is called Sam Altman, they launched a new AI assistant, which is voiced with a female voice. Now that female's voice sounds exactly like Scarlett Johansson. And which fair enough, you would think. Yes. Absolutely. You got a lovely voice ahead of this launch. Sam Altman tweeted simply the word her. Now her is a Spike Jonze movie in which Scarlett Johansson plays

the voice of an AI assistant. And welcome Phoenix falls in love with her. And it's, anyway, we'll come to all the movies that Sam Altman doesn't understand the point of in a minute. But anyway, this voice was suddenly removed. And pretty shortly after that, Scarlett Johansson issued an extraordinary statement in which she said that Sam Altman had approached her last September to be the voice of this thing. And I'm going to go to her statement.

She said, he told me that by voicing the system, I could bridge the gap between tech companies and creatives and help consumers to feel comfortable with the seismic shift concerning humans and AI. He said that my voice would be comforting to people. Oh man. Okay. Now I should say that, yes, her is his favorite film. Yeah. It's not a great advert for falling in love with a AI assistant. Or indeed the whole idea of AI assistants. If you were to watch it, you would say the one thing I'm going to make sure I don't do in future is invent an AI assistant like that. And if I do, I'm definitely not going to get

Scarlett Johansson to voice it. But Sam Altman has done the opposite. This product comes out and she says then, when I heard the release demo, I was shocked, angered and in disbelief that Mr. Altman would pursue a voice that sounded so eerily similar to mine that my closest friends and news outlets could not tell the difference. Now Sam Altman says that it's actually another Royce actress who's voiced this but you can't say who it is for privacy concerns but obviously the feeling is that he's just fed a load of Scarlett Johansson stuff to his machine, who can now talk like Scarlett Johansson. The fact that he treated her, I mean, you know, these people are not the brightest. I know they've got the future of the entire of humanity in their hands. But obviously this feeds into Hollywood's paranoia about AI, that it will come and take

their jobs, but also us normies paranoia that it will take everybody's jobs. There's something so creepy about this, that this woman said no and then they just did it anyway. And also that he's taken a film which is fairly dystopian and certainly not a good advert for personal assistants and gone, listen he likes the film, he's got a crush on Scarlett Johansson and he's a billionaire so he's kind of going great and he's had meetings with Scarlett Johansson and said could we use your voice? She said no and he hasn't heard no for a long time. He hasn't heard no but he's also one of the things about films and him is so weird, he said that he really liked the social network because he thought it might encourage people to do startups. He thought that Oppenheim was problematic because it wasn't encouraging

enough people to become physicists. He liked Jaws, he hoped it might encourage people to swim. Yeah and they're regarded as these kind of philosopher kings. James Marriott, who writes brilliant columns in The Times that I absolutely love, was talking about this the other day, saying that all these people, you have to listen to all these people now, like they've got these amazing philosophies. Elon Musk will go on shows and say, let me tell you something about the Romans, they were incredible innovators. I'm like, sorry, this is like the Lady Bird Guide to Stupidity. Everything is like it's come out of the sort of business section of

the airport bookshop. And actually they're these weird, creepy, often very stunted men. You know, the social network is really interesting because it shows how Facebook was born out of this kind of weird night of terrible misogyny. Sam Altman, how is your favorite movie? Everything about you is, he just doesn't know about movies. Metta's first chatbot really quickly started to say that Zuckerberg was creepy and manipulative. No, really. Like the machines out of the mouth of the machines really quickly. It would be interesting to see what Scarlett Johansson does with this because she has got an appetite, she has shown herself to have an appetite for these kind of legal battles in the past when Disney bought Black Widow and they'd quite sexist and particularly in a lot of the early Avengers

and she has to go through all of that but eventually you're going to get your one movie that's your dedicated movie and you get your big payday and they put her movie in streaming and in theatres on the same day so they kind of completely kneecapped her box office and did her over on that and she sued Disney which is quite punchy. Yeah, it was not when I, it was when Bob Taper was the CEO, but she sued them. And the reason they did that, by the way, is obviously to build up subscribers and in that fear that they were being left behind on screaming. So it's using people's words. So this is a sort of similar, again, it's a kind of tech argument. We were talking about this the other day on the questions edition

of the show. Which, know in our law we call it the the tort of passing off when you can you just get somebody who sounds like Stephen Fry to do an advert. I think that in America it's different they call it the right of publicity, right to publicity. But she would have quite a good claim here if they I very much doubt that whoever made I think it was Anna Perna made her, but whoever made, whichever production, film production company made her, I doubt they've licensed it to open AI. And obviously- No one's really licensed anything to open AI. No one's licensed anything and they say, oh, we've changed all our models on freely available

stuff. It's like, well, I mean, how do we know? And people are saying, oh, well in discovery, we would be in any potential court case, we'd be able to find out whether if there is an actress who's been told that she has to stand like Scarlett Johansson, that's one thing. If they've trained the machine using, you'd have to have whistleblowers, it's really impossible to say. So I don't know what she will do about it, but she does, she has, as we say, she has had an appetite for these kinds of fights that might have a trickle down to other people in the business. And clearly Hollywood is super paranoid about the idea

of being replaced by machines. Hollywood and Holly Willoughby. Yeah. Genuinely, there's something super creepy behind it. But there's a great documentary watching at the moment about the oil companies in the 70s and how they did all their own climate change research. There's amazing departments and the departments are saying to them, oh, this is definitely leading to climate change. Just so you know, we've got all of these numbers.

Then the oil companies just kind of going, well, yeah, but we really like selling oil. I mean, it really honestly, we make a lot of money from selling oil. So they absolutely shut them down and they started having, you know, PR companies saying, well, we're uncertain. And it looks like it's exactly the same in these big new AI companies, a lot of whom set up saying, actually, we are on the side of good. And we've got groups of people who are doing research into how we can keep this under control and how we can make sure it doesn't fall into the hands of bad actors.

But that doesn't seem to be how it's playing out. And also they don't know, look what happened with Facebook, where all these people said, we basically invented this machine and we obviously had no possible idea that it would be responsible for swinging elections or do it. They don't know any of these things until it's too late to know. They're unbelievably good at coding, which by the way, I'm not. So that's a real skill. No offence, but they're not philosophers and they're often very, very emotionally stunted

and they don't know. And the idea that we're allowing the future to be in, at least partially, in the hands of this guy when he will do things like this, these are the warning signs, these are the red flags and it may just be like, oh, it's just Scarlett Johansson's voice, but it's not. It's a real warning sign as to the much wider issues in this level of power and just the unknowns of it all. And also, I mean, you do sort of slightly feel, I wonder if this would have happened to a man, I don't know. But a woman, of course this woman said no, and he just thought, well, I have it anyway. I'm talking a little bit about Alexa and Siri, which are on their way out, really, because they seemed unbelievably futuristic. But actually, you realize now how unsophisticated they are.

And actually, they're just a huge database of things which has to be typed in by somebody and then is regurgitated to you. Actually this new generation of chatbot assistants, it is gonna be incredible. I mean, I think of all the things that AI is gonna do, this is gonna be one of the useful ones that you will have an incredible,

you know if you ring up with something about your gas bill and you're on hold for a robot and you're there for ages, you won't have to do that from two years time because your computer will do it. So your robot will talk to their robot, it'll all get sorted out. And you know, so that's a good thing, I think, because I think Siri and Alexa, which they thought were going to be huge money spinners for them and haven't been at all, they haven't been able to really monetize them particularly. Almost all uses of Alexa and Siri are turning the lights on and off and playing music.

And that's it, and saying, you know, play rest is history, please. So these new ones will have to have much more of a personality, you know, you can sort of have a relationship with Alexa and that you can ask her to do a fart noise and she'll do it. But with a chat bot that learns who you are

and learns everything about you and learns the things you like and you don't like and learns the things that you laugh at or don't laugh at, then it is going to be a very, very personal relationship, a very, very useful relationship as well. In some things, yes, but in terms of human relationships, we simply don't, it's completely distorting and we don't know the story of social media and the things that have happened over the past few years, couldn't be more salutary in terms of maybe this won't be a utopia. We must know this. Even these small things, what Sam Altman's done, this is a small thing. There's something interesting about the fact

that sort of an old fashioned movie star, a real human that lots of people have a crush on, like, admire, think is amazing, has just come out and said this. I think it's actually quite a sort of moment because he could barely do any wrong because people are all saying, oh, it'll be so interesting. And, you know, obviously I understand that, you know, AI and diagnostics and all sorts of other things are going to be very useful. The human relations side of things, which is clearly what happened with social media, cannot be an afterthought because we've already seen how utterly corrosive it is, particularly to children, to all sorts of things. It's not that she's fighting back against the fact that she could have been paid for this. She didn't want to be paid for it. She didn't

want to be the voice. She's kind of made a movie in which she says this stuff is really bad. He just did it anyway. And I think that it's such a sort of, in a way, it's such a simple story to understand. It's interesting. It's sort of an adjunct that Scarlett Johansson thing to the Apple advert recently that they took off, where they were crushing musical instruments and crushing kind of paints and stuff like that to put everything in an iPad. And again, that's people, that's a very, very visual representation of people going, oh, hold on.

Yes, I sort of, because it's like being a frog in a pan and the heat is just gradually rising. It takes a while occasionally to go, oh no, you are okay. You actually do want to get rid of all of this stuff and you do want to steal Scarlett Janssen's voice. And there's a sociopathy to the fact that neither of those people could see that they were really bad. That was a real PR, I mean more than an own goal and this is more than an own goal for Sam Altman This is really quite bad and it's it's really it's crystallized so much of what people think

So I think that those are quite interesting, but it's the sociopathy that makes them not see yeah How could you have done this? How could you think this is a good advert? How could you think that and also what once once you're a billionaire tech, bro It's like sort of being a child king in the kind of 15th century. Nobody is saying no. Nobody is going to say no because you want to be around the court. You know, because someone who's a multi-multi-billionaire, money does rain out of their pockets, you know, around them. And so they're suddenly surrounded by people who are going, yep, yep, like while stuffing pound notes into their pockets. Ingrid, my wife, got down to the last three to be the voice of Siri many years ago. It was a huge, huge thing. They auditioned like everyone

and she was out in LA and she got down to the final three and they were going to go to Poland and she would have had to, you know, sort of say words for kind of the next four months. But she got down to the last three. She was so nearly the voice of Siri, which would have been so weird at home. Don't you think you'd never know if she was in? So would she have just had to say all the words? Yeah, pretty much. That was the gig. They were going to fly her to Poland and just for months upon months, say the name of every film ever made, every word in different intonations. And yeah. Wow. You would be driven nuts?

You would be driven nuts yeah I think it was well paid. Yeah. I think she certainly said I was gutted not to get it. What price not being nuts though? Exactly and also what price not being Siri now. Yeah. You know it's not I think on reflection she's happy she didn't do it but at the time you know like any actor she's thinking oh that would have, that would have been a nice one. A bit more fun now, shall we talk about property shows? Oh, please. And this is off the back of as a new property show just launched on Netflix called Buying

London and The Guardian described it as possibly the most hateable TV ever. And it's essentially, it's a selling sunset for London. So selling sunset was the sort of grand papi or grand mammy of these sort of big elaborate expensive property shows. And it's essentially showing people around very, very, very high end, very expensive super prime properties in London. In the London one, they've had to explain at the start, by the way, you get absolutely no square furniture in London. So they've had've had to essentially do an international disclaimer as to why the houses people are about to see are incredibly small and cost a bazillion pounds.

Because in Sunning Sunset, you go up into the hills, you've got these incredible 10,000 square feet houses overlooking the... Dating all the way back to 1996. Yes, exactly. And here you're seeing a two up, two down in Mayfair. What I'm going to do at the end of this piece is reveal what I think the three greatest property shows of all time. But there are two very, very different types. There's the wonderful, long running British TV daytime and sometimes prime time stuff.

The Homes Under the Hammer, Escape to the Country, Place in the Sun, Location, Location, Location. People love looking at property. But I think what the producers of Selling Sunset and these other shows worked out is very occasionally when we're moving house, we look at properties that we can afford. And that's the only time in our life we ever look at properties we can afford because the whole rest of the time, all we do is surf the net and look at properties we can't afford. Okay, that's the real fun of property. So you've got these amazing daytime shows we've got here, but yeah, Selling Sunset was the first big one of just showing these huge, multi, multi, multi million.

They've always sort of destroyed a special needs school to build on top of it. It's absolutely, it's so, there's no, they are obscene, enormous. They're the size of football pitches. There was an amazing thing. I forgot to say, when we were talking about the Sunday Times Rich List last week, one of the guys, if you want the opposite of a Hollywood movie, it was this guy, made all this money and said he knocked down the hospital in which he was born and built a golf course.

That's sort of what you're getting in Selling Sunset where there's all these, but actually all reality TV really is people fighting over money or power or both. So it is sort of perfect for it. And you have these feuding glamazons really in Selling Sunset. But I think they're properly brilliant monsters, these women, Christine and Chris Shell. They're like the final form of girl boss feminism. The London one, they've got a guy called Daniel Daggers. Let me see your birth certificate please. And he's got an agency. Now I think his glamazons, talking to someone in the business, shall we say, I think his glamazons, talking to someone in the business, shall we say, I think his glamazons have been bought in because I'm told that there are some people

who actually do sell houses for this guy and they're not necessarily the ones swinging their hair on the television. I mean, there was a lot of hair swinging. There was so much hair swinging. More than you normally get when you're being shown around the house. Yeah, absolutely. Well, I mean, the other problem you've got is that people don't want in the super prime space They don't you know, there's no benefit to putting your house on the thing You don't really it's a bit sort of declass a you don't want to put your house on a Netflix show

It's not gonna help you sell it at all because the lead-in time is so long It's like nine months. It was either gone or it hasn't and we love selling I mean, I think selling sunset is hilarious and it's very watchable and whatever. There's something about that oceans remove that helps. You think this is what Americans are supposed to be like. Of course it's big, of course it's enormous. Everyone's unapologetic. It's like, yes, of course I've got like 40 foot marble counter. If we see British people doing it,

we slightly feel they should be, they should apologize. It was sorry, you should be apologizing for being such an asshole. And it should work in other ways because we are obsessed with class. And if you like, if ever, I don't know, Colleen Rooney puts some pictures in the house from, you know, just even in the background of Instagram

and the mail will like collate them all in a story or mail online, all of the underneath comments will be like, well, you can't buy class, can you? Or something like that, you know, even when it's just a very, very sort of neutral space, they want to say that. People want to say that. So really, this shows on paper, I feel should work because people are just saying this is absolutely disgusting. I wouldn't live in it if you paid me and these kind of horrendous architectural mishmash.

What's the next one? Yeah, but but I didn't feel it did work like selling. So what did you feel? I feel see, I'm not a fan of selling sunset. I love watching high end property shows because for exactly that reason. I love looking at a 40 million dollar house and going, oh, I'm so happy I don't want to live in that 40 million dollar house. You could pay me to live in it. Yeah, but you know, because you've just saved 40 million dollars. But you know, you just think this is amazing. I know it exists, but I don't want to live in it and so I don't have to pay 40 million. Oh, you like me. Do you like it? But this is a separate type of show because I don't even think of it as that

I just think of it as a sort of absolutely bizarre confection where it's a complete MacGuffin what Hitchcock called a MacGuffin Which is something just moves along the plot. I almost feel that the houses in that are they move along top But what you really want to do is watch some feuding over each other's weddings over good different deals They're fighting over money and power. So I don't really care whether it's houses or not. See, see, that's where I am exactly the opposite. Cause those bits, I will fast forward through those bits because as a TV producer, I know they're fake, right? I know it's just nonsense.

I mean, it's sort of fattening. But I like fixer upper stuff. I really like fixer upper shows. I love fixer upper shows, buying London the first episode. They've got some interesting houses in there. And again, they do have a thing. They have property developers who become part of the thing because they will always put

their properties on show and what have you. You'll never see a buyer unless it's again an Instagrammer who wants to be on the TV. Yeah, who by the way, won't buy the house because they don't have anything like enough money to buy it. No, of course they won't. But even on that show, there's this sort of awful thing. He's got a house in Radlet that he wants to get the instructions on, which is sort of very Hogwarts-y. But they had to have that. Hogwarts-y. They had to have that house because otherwise all the houses would have been incredibly small.

Yes. So even though they were costing for 40 million pounds. So they had to have a house right out in Hertfordshire because only then can it look even vaguely like something that would be on Selling Sunset. But on then, so he's got his estate agents and one of them is, they sort of say at the beginning, but you're friends with him, you're friends with Daniel, aren't you? And she goes, yeah, I've worked with Daniel for a lot of time now, yes, I'm a friend of his. And so the other two women are kind of just sort of, there's a bit of sort of ominous music.

And then he's going, Daniel Daggers is going, oh, there's three of you, I've taken three of you to show this house and I'm only going to give you there's three of you, I've taken three of you to show this house and I'm only gonna give you one of you the instruction. I don't know who it's gonna be. And the three of them go, oh, I really like this house. And they go, I think I'd really be really good at selling this house.

And then of course they give it to the South African. And then, you know, cause they were at a big dinner at someone's posh house in Chelsea. And suddenly they're all looking daggers at this woman. You think, none of this is real. No. None of it. Honestly I'd rather you show me the second and the third bedroom because you didn't you've skated around the house a little bit and there's other stuff that I would like to see.

Can I just see the sixteen and a half bathrooms please? Could I see, you know, what's the waste disposal system like because I haven't seen it. Have they got a boot room? Have they got a boot room, exactly. So you're watching this you just think well look I know this is not true. This is absolutely nonsensical. It makes me feel like Daniel Daggers is not true. But it was no, if I don't believe in Daniel Daggers, Richard, I don't know what I believe in.

I don't believe in anything. If you tell me that. It's like Father Christmas to me, Daniel Daggers. But I don't like them all fighting beneath him. I don't, as I say, it is girl boss feminism selling sunset, but you get that feeling that these women have it on their own terms in some kind of slightly warped way. But I didn't like that element of this show. But just in terms of these property shows, which are here's a house, someone is going

to buy it or not buy it if it's selling sunset. I want to do my, what I would say are my top three. Number three, I will say million dollar listing because of all the ones that are about, you know, those sort of LA and stuff like that. That's the one where they've got more houses and occasionally they'll do a nice kind of mid-century. Whenever they have like these beautiful kind of mid-century houses in the Hollywood Hills that you just think that just so full of history and just beautiful and with kind of fittings and stuff that you just think, God, this is incredible. The people always just go in and go, well, we'll just gut this. Absolutely get rid of all of this because I can't, you know, this just needs to be white and bright and just, and it's like, Oh my God, you're absolutely destroying Hollywood.

But that's a fun one. I think of the daytime ones, see Homes Under the Hammer is a really interesting one. They think they've done nearly kind of, they're like 1600 episodes. They've done it a lot. And it's, the teams are working on it absolutely permanently because, you know, there's auctions and then they're going back in six months or a year's time. So that's, that's a team who was working, I think, every day apart from Christmas. And over the years they've had six or seven different presenters. They did an amazing thing where it used to be Martin Roberts and Lucy Alexander. And they decided they needed a third host and went for Dion Dublin. But the great thing about it is

they went from the, just as a producer, this is what I'm always watching, you watch the beginning of Homes Under the Hammer, it used to be Martin and Lucy going, if you're thinking of getting a property bargain, why not go along to your local auction? And Lucy go, that's what some of the people on today's show did. Let's take a look. Suddenly, if you've got three of these people, you've got to write a three hander for every single show. So Marcy's got to go. Lots of people in Britain love buying houses in auction. And Lucy is going, yes, we're going to see a few of them on this show. And then Dion's got to say, yeah, let's find out what happened. Come on, man. That's not extra information. No. So I love that as a

producer. And sometimes they'll go back to somewhere in six months, sometimes a year. So it's a very interesting for people who are interested in production processes. It's a really interesting production process in that when you first film it, it's sort of meaningless. It's when you finally film it. And I was talking to the producers,

a guy called Matt Masters, and he was saying, that's the thing, you have to sort of keep in touch with the people doing it, occasionally you have to go and see it, because sometimes if they think it's finished, it's not really finished. And they have great relationships with the estate agents. So the invisible hand of the production team will say, by the way, that looks crap.

And you, that's- I don't think that's finished. But occasionally if they say, well look, I'm selling it anyway, you know, you will go up and you'll do a piece saying, it's not quite done. So you know, so you film, you will go up and you'll do a piece saying it's not quite done. So you film your sort of go arounds, then you film your finished item and it's like a jigsaw puzzle, you piggybacking these things, which I find interesting from a TV producer's

point of view because I love the jigsaw puzzle of it. I think we've had every single presenter of Holmes Under The Hammer on House of Games because I'm such a fan of it. Whenever I see a name on a list, I go, oh yeah, oh yeah, Martel can come on, yeah, oh Jackie Joseph can come on, yeah. And I spoke to one of them once, I said, what's the best house you ever saw? And they said, I've never seen a good house. I was like, come on. I mean, they were being funny, but it's... Don't hear that on the show.

One of the great things about Homes Under the Hammer is the music choices and which is always you know there's always got Ripper Up and Start again by Orange Juice or Billed by the House Martyrs. It was a two bed cottage in Maidstone and this song started, I can't recognise that and it was made of stone by the stone roses and I thought that's come on that's pretty good. That would be so fun I'd love to do a week doing that. Well, people always say, oh, that must be the best job in Teddy being the person who chooses music.

You think that is not a person's job. That is the editor and the producer. They're all kind of going, yeah, we could have a bit of fun. So it's literally an editor just at the end of their tether. I saw one on the other day where there was a woman talking about daughter had loads of horses or something. So they needed a garden and they played my lovely horse, the father did Eurovision entry straight after it. So I love that. And there's

also just a shout out to the best edited clip ever on daytime TV, which is Dan Mayer's one of Martin Roberts doing the imaginary piano. Have you seen that? Yeah, you were talking to me about this just a moment ago, yes. It's really, if you put Martin Roberts imaginary piano and Roberts' imaginary piano, and it's very, very funny. I think number two, I have to choose between The Scape to the Country, which I love, and Homes Under the Hammer. I think I have to go for Homes Under the Hammer. But number one, a show we haven't mentioned yet, which I think combines all the good things

of these shows, which is one where the properties are unbelievable. I mean, unbelievable. One that's not in Britain, so we don't feel guilty about watching it. And one where the soap opera is actually believable and incredibly charming. And there's a new series starting on Netflix this week, and it's The Parisian Agency. Oh, yes. I've seen it. Yeah, this is very good. Oh my God. It's so good. It's like three really hot French brothers and their grandma and their mum and dad.

These beautiful houses in Paris and then they go down to the Côte d'Azur and what have you. But they're so lovely. Yeah. And I believe... And they're also very French. It is absolutely delightful. So Buying London starts on Netflix this week, but also Parisian Agency starts on Netflix this week. I think if you don't like Buying London, I can see reasons why you wouldn't.

By the way, I'm going to keep watching it. Oh, no, don't be buying London, I can see reasons why you wouldn't, by the way, I'm going to keep watching it. Oh, no, don't be ridiculous. Oh my God, yeah. By the way, the Parisian Agency, which I adore, I think season four has just started, so there's lots to catch up on. Just halfway through season three, they're going, oh, we have a British real estate agent coming out who's got lots of properties, and so we really have to impress this guy.

And who is it? And Daniel Daggers. No! They get like for about four episodes they keep going Daniel Daggers is coming out next week we've got to impress Daniel Daggers and Daniel here he comes Daniel Daggers and so I knew I knew the guy before buying London I'm like yeah I know Daniel Daggers yeah I'm a Daniel Daggers guy already. Maybe there'll be a crossover maybe the Parisian but those brothers on the the Parisian show are such a delight. Any recommendations this week? So many people have asked me about flops since we're talking not that Horizon and American Saga and Megalopolis are yet flops and maybe they will not be flops. People ask me

about books about flops and there is a book that I think is absolutely brilliant and it's out of print but you can get it on millions of our sites like Abe Books or Wilder Books, all those sort of things. And it's called Final Cut, Dreams and Disasters in the Making of Heaven's Gate and it's by the executive at United Artists who kind of effectively greenlights the film. So that's the film we were talking about when we were talking about, yeah. Heaven's Gate is almost the trope-namer of mega flops. And it comes at the end of that period of extraordinary innovation in Hollywood in the

1970s. And Michael Cimino, who is the maker of Heaven's Gate and how it all, who has come off The Deer Hunter, which is a huge hit, and then how it all goes wrong with this film and it collapses the studio. And it's so interesting, those questions we've talked about before when people say, but do you know if it's going wrong? But this guy is the executive

and he's really unsparing of himself and he writes it brilliantly and it's a complete anatomy of how it happens. And you kind of think can see how it did happen because in retrospect, of course, we all like, how the hell did you just keep giving this guy this money? That's Final Cut and it's by Stephen Bach. B-A-C-H. Amazing. And I will recommend Glow Up, which is on BBC3, but certainly on BBC iPlayer,

which is on about season six. But it's the hunt for makeup artists. But you know, it's fascinating generation, fascinating creativity. It's a world that I know nothing about. And the people who come in, they'll have like guest judges are going, the guest judges coming on is Sebastian. And they go, oh my God, they go absolutely crazy. Cause there's like a huge Instagram star to them. And I'm like, oh, I don't know who that is. And I love something if it's a world that I don't know

anything about and suddenly, and you realize how big it is for people and in some of the stuff they do is absolutely unbelievable. So it'd glow up. And it's the whole of this new series is on is on iPlayer now and on that bombshell please send your questions in the rest is entertainment at gmail.com and we will answer as many of them as we can and more top threes as well because I loved it I know you hate a top three but I love a top three no I enjoyed doing I enjoyed being near the top three we got told three adjacent we got asked

last week didn't we about our top three cartoon mice so we're gonna have to do that on Thursday show. So that's something to think about. We will do. Yeah, we will go to the cartoon mice. All right then, take care everyone. Bye.