The Rest Is Entertainment - Was Taylor Swift's Wedding Cringe?

Episode Date: July 6, 2026

Is Taylor Swift the ultimate 'star-fucker'? Why is Katie Price an unstoppable force? Will Sky's purchase of ITV be a success? Taylor Swift and Travis Kelce finally tied the knot this weekend in Madison Square Gardens, with a select guest list of... 1,000 celebs. Richard Osman and Marina Hyde ask why someone would choose such an insane location, and if they'd have liked an invite to the epic nuptials themselves. Katie Price has been one of the UK's most fascinating, and troubling, British celebrities of this century. We look at her journey from Page 3 starlet to the ultimate reality star in light of the new Sky documentary about her life. Sky has confirmed that they will purchase ITV for £1.6bn. What does this mean for the industry and audiences? Recommendations: Katie Price: Nothing To Hide (Sky) Monopoly Deal (Game) No Name - Wilkie Collins (Book) Live tournament football (FIFA World Cup) The Rest is Entertainment is brought to you by Octopus Energy, Britain's most awarded energy supplier. Lloyds. 250 years on and still backing the nation's aspirations. Lending is subject to status. You could lose your home if you don't keep up your mortgage repayments. Conditions apply. 1996 average first-time buyer deposit based on Office National Statistics House Price Index data. Summer sale is here: get an annual membership for a third off with code SUMMER26. That's ad-free listening, every bonus episode, and full access to our exclusive members' series. Sale ends August 31st, so grab it before summer's over. For more Goalhanger Podcasts, head to www.goalhanger.com Video Editor: Adam Thornton & Caroline Kaye Assistant Producer: Imee Marriott Senior Producer: Joey McCarthy Social Producer: Emma Jackson Exec Producer: Sam Psyk Filmed at www.westdigitalstudios.com Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

The rest is entertainment is presented by Octopus Energy. Now, we're going to be talking about an expression which I hadn't heard till seven seconds ago, which is someone getting their flowers. Can you tell me what that means? Well, it means like you've been around a long time, but people suddenly think, hang on a second, you're amazing and you should be recognised. So you're finally getting your due. You're getting your flowers. And you're being garlanded.

Now, I would say someone like this is someone like Jean Smart, who plays the lead in Hacks. She plays Deborah Vance. Okay, Jean Smart is extraordinary. She did a huge amount. of TV and stage work. And there was a sense that she was sort of always brilliant. But then this one role came along, Deborah Vance and Hacks, they literally just give her the Emmy every year now.

She gets her flowers every year. She gets her Emmy every year. As we always talk about Octopus's customer service, your accounts run by about 10 or 12 people. You've got a small team. They know who you are. Yes. And they are permitted to send flowers every week to a customer

who might just be going through something, whatever it is. So they can recognize it's not an apology. It's just because someone, was going through something and they get your flowers. Another example of they seem to do business in a very interesting and customer-focused way. Imagine if Gene Smart is an octopus customer. Might get her flowers twice.

Yeah, every week. Hello and welcome to this episode of The Resters Entertainment with me, Marina. Hi. And me, Richard Osman. Hello, Marina. Hello, how are you? Yeah, you know, like everyone, it's Monday morning. That's when we record.

I've had like one hour's sleep. don't even bother asking me for my recommendations at the end of this because it is tournament football all day long all night long. I mean, for it to be 1am and then to be moved to 2am, if it had been 7pm like they suggested, can you imagine the ratings by the end of that game? I'm actually fascinated to see what the ratings were. I'm looking forward to that. Also this week, you went to Wembley for another very exciting event. I went to Harry Stiles. Wow. I, yeah, I went from the D.O. Congo game straight to Harry Stiles.

Very difficult to work out. He was the best Harry of the evening. No, Harry Stiles was totally amazing and emotional. I want to say a big thank you to Holly on Harry's team for looking after me and my sister like princesses. And to Rachel, Rachel, who looks after Shinar Twain, who took a picture of me quying on my sister's shoulder during sign of the times. It was very emotional. It was very emotional, evening. I absolutely loved it. What are we talking about today? It's a packed show, Richard, because two people got married. Taylor Swift and Travis Kelsey are now married.

We're going to talk about what that wedding says about them. And Neil from Strictly got married as well. Yeah. Yeah, I don't think we're going to have time to get to too much of that because also, breaking news this morning, Sky is buying ITV. Yeah. And that is a big, big thing. And we're going to talk about what that means.

And talking to Sky, they have a new documentary out this week. It is about Katie Price. Yeah. We would talk about her, her as a story and what she says about herself and all of us, I suppose. Yeah. Shall we start with Taylor? Yeah, I mean, a wedding does tell you quite a lot about who people are. A lot of this is scattered thoughts.

Forgive me, like I said, I had one hour's sleep. But you know when they had posted that engagement photo and she was like, your English teacher and your gym teacher are getting married? Yeah. You know, there was just no real sense at any point of like, are they actually doing it in Madison Square Garden? it does definitely seem like getting married at the office. But I think people thought maybe they'd get married privately, and this would be a party afterwards. Just in case you hadn't heard,

they got married in Madison Square Garden, had a huge ceremony attended by a thousand, seemingly of the top celebrities. We will get on to having a thousand people at your wedding. Yeah. That's a lot of people. And I think people can not quite believe she would do it and that this maybe was a decoyne. They'd been married before.

But you can see that someone that at home in a performance venue and, you know, him to a different extent, would feel that they had control. And I mean, one of the big things about her we know is that she likes control. Doing it this way, I have to say, in the centre of Manhattan, we now know forever, never mind the gym teacher and the English teacher, there is nothing understated about them, okay? This is not Tom Holland and Zendaya for one second, okay? You know, she needs a no-fly zone. I get that. It's amazing that they were able to pull it off with the level of secrecy that they had.

have and since it's happened, you have seen like some of the guests sort of post pictures of them. No one has done it, you know, they haven't done it from within the venue or meaningfully within the venue. There was an NDA until midnight, wasn't there? Then people could say they had been there, but there are a number of things they weren't allowed to photograph or, you know, because they were given their phones on the way back out so they could do on the way in photos and on the way out photos. But yeah, I mean, it's a thing where you're just taking like Beyonce and Tom Hacks's phone off them. It's fine. Look, you know, they're all close personal friends, I'm sure, but we'll get to that.

But now we have to wait for, it's usually about two weeks until the wedding photographer sends you the email file. So presumably, Travis, we'll wait until they get all the photos of the wedding and then they'll choose their favourites and hopefully share a couple on their Instagram. I feel sure that we will see a little bit more. Do you think? It's sort of amazing that they were able to pull off that level of secrecy, really. Is it? I think if you're incredibly rich, you can pull off secrecy, can't you? Okay, but can I just say that when the US bombed those hooty targets,

Yemen, like the National Security Advisor accidentally added a journalist to the group chat. So it's actually more secure than a number of high-level US military operations. I think if I was spending $26 million on a wedding, which is my guess as to what it cost, because that's what they gave to charity as well. And that felt like quite a random amount. So I thought, oh, it cost $26 million. Let's give $26 million to charity. Yeah, if I was spending $26 million and I could afford security and police and this,

Yeah, I'd have a fairly secure. Yeah, but what does it cost to bomb the hooties? I don't want to get sidetracked into that, but that's quite expensive, too. So it's a lot more than 26 million. Let me tell you that for free. Well, it was a military operation. And Adam Sandler was apparently the officiant with their language.

Yes. So. Discuss. Well, again, if I've got 26 million, and someone says, do you want a happy Gilmore to marry you? You think, yeah, of course I want a happy Gilmore to marry me. Who would you choose? What I think is interesting about the guest is.

A vicar. Yeah. that it's the sort of a bassist paid by literally the biggest stars in the world. There's a status to being, you know, they want to, and also that those two, your supposed English teacher and your gym teacher, want to be the sort of people who have Stephen Spielberg at their wedding,

who have Beyonce. I mean, celebrities, as we know, don't have old friends. I think they regard it as a moral flight. I only felt that they did have some old friends there. I thought, because they got, I mean, this is the thing. You've got a thousand people. How many people do you have at your wedding? About 150, I think. Yeah, I think we had about 120.

And even then, you're like, I mean, towards the edges of the 130, 140, you're quite pushing it. There's quite a lot of people I'm thinking, did you actually have a chance to sit down with Machine Gun Kelly during the evening? I don't think it did. Some of the people were just sort of like, okay, Hugh Grant, fine. I mean, just fine. But Machine Gun Kelly was an old friend of Travis Kelsey. They grew up together. Okay, fair enough.

He's like a weird, he's a celebrity. Warren Cohen. There are some unusual names on the list. I mean, I like the fact that she invited Graham Norton because he asked her on the show. Yeah. And Greg James, I sort of get it. So, a thousand people. So you get, okay, it's Madison Square Garden.

So you're used to having a lot more than a thousand people there. And a thousand in the kind of abstract doesn't sound that many. But let's sit down. Let's be at that kitchen table with Travis and Taylor. So everyone who's been married, Imagine just that thing where you sit down and go, okay, who's coming to the wedding? You know roughly how many people we've got. Let's say a normal wedding, 120.

You might have a smaller one. You might have a bit bigger, but the maximum. You're not having many more than 200. And you sit there, family, friends, this or the other. And then, you know, maybe you sprinkle a few kind of, oh, it would be interesting if we invited so-and-so, because they've never met so-and-so, and that might be quite fun. And, oh, they did invite us to that thing. So let's invite them.

And before you know it, you sort of got to the end of the list, right? And that's 150 people. they've then got another 850 people to invite. Imagine sitting around, they can't have done the whole list. They cannot have done the whole list. Someone must have gone, here's a list of famous people who you are tangentially attached to. This is the guy when, you know, you said that you can...

I need a yarn wall for some of these. Let me tell you. I need the connection. But that's a lot of people to invite to a wedding. It is, but can we say what this actually means? Yes, please. I mean, if she's like one of the biggest stars in the world for sure, basically the biggest star in the world is still a massive star fucker.

Like beyond, let's be honest. Celebrities love celebrities. We must ask some celebrities because of my normal friends will find it hilarious if they go to a wedding and I'll get pissed and I'll be on the dance floor with like whoever it is. We for example had Miles Jupp at our wedding and that was a lot of fun. Yeah. But that's... Well, did you reveal him or did he actually just... No, but afterwards, people like, all my old friends are like, oh my God, it was so great that Miles Jop was there.

Yeah. Everyone was excited. It's fan service, right? He's an old, very old friend of both of us. So he was lovely to have in there. But that's all you need, Taylor. Just invite Miles. Honestly, it just says something a little bit different.

You notice, I hope, by the way, you notice I hope that the last three people we interviewed on the rest of entertainment, Stephen Spielberg, Tom Hanks and Sir Paul McCartney were all there. Yeah. So it's very, very hard. I wonder, I could be wrong, because I didn't see Adam Curtis on the guest list, But I wonder if Taylor listens to our shows and goes, oh, you know what? Does anyone have had? Whoever Marina has asked about their cultural life.

Tim Davy was there. Tim Davy was there, yeah, absolutely. There was some other interesting guests. There was a guy, Stephen Demetriou, who is not a film star. He's not a pop star. He is the guy who runs the ICE detention center in El Paso. Lena Dunham did a sort of best woman speech and said, as always, in the new space. It said, Drew Gasp's.

Yeah, it didn't. Of course it didn't. People were just laughing. Okay, I said it who wasn't there. And this is so cold. Okay. Blake Lively. Yeah, was she not there? No.

They've got some pictures of her attending some horse show with her and Ryan Reynolds with one of their children in upstate somewhere or other. Oh, losers. So what is fascinating about that is, given you're having a thousand people. Yes. There's a lot of people also, can I say when you do a wedding list that you think, I mean, we're not, I don't know why we're friends anymore, but we are friends. And I'm not leaving these people off.

It would be really awful. Who would, like, for your wedding, who would that be? It's a long time ago, Richard. But she really did completely cull her for the whole Lively Baldoni thing. That is so cold, okay. Taylor Swift is godmother, not just to one of Blate Lively's daughters, but to all three of the daughters, she is godmother. Oh, wow.

So she didn't invite her godchildren? No. Because she didn't have bridesmaids. I saw that. And Travis, I don't think, had groomed. No. And that's, um, wow. It's cold.

Come on, man. And it's really interesting because when you look back at, it was this ongoing plotline, like, are they still friends? Is this song on Life of a Show Girl about her when she's saying, good thing I like my friends, cancelled? There was all that sort of stuff that people said. And it was unclear, you know, just because they hadn't been photographed. And if you look at all the messages which came out in the discovery process of the, it ends with us,

mega drama, Taylor Swift is very, very supportive. But is it the exposure of the messages and the sort of brand contamination that she's cold her for? Because I don't know what else you could have done. If you're saying you've got me involved in this and you've exposed me, is that what's done it? It is so cold that she's not that. But again, I mean, we've all had this issue. They were very, very close. We've all had this issue with our weddings.

Yeah. You know, when you go, oh, God, we would have invited Eileen, but after that lawsuit, it's very difficult. So, Auntie Eileen, I'm so sorry because you are, honestly, you're all 1001 on the list. By the way, somebody would have been 1001 on that. that list. Somebody would have been 1001. There was a group of people who were like, oh, I could have, that could have. Yeah. Imagine if we'd interviewed her at some point. And you hadn't been invited. And Greg James had. We'd have been like Greg. She did say I'm going to invite everyone I've ever taught to. Yeah, yeah. At one point. And we just never spoke to her. In terms of it as a

sort of fan service event, because everything she ever does is, in some ways it was in keeping with her songs, which is, you know, there's a long guessing games. Is it, Is it about this? The possibility of sort of decoding things. Also, in keeping with a lot of her songs, it does because of the Blake Lively Angle contain mega celebrity beef. And I wonder how much more will be unfolded for them and what more they'll be able to see.

They had the event the night before, which sounded like a much more sedate affair. That sounded like a hundred people. That sounded like the weddings that we would have. And it'd be interesting to see who went. And it'd be interesting to see if actually they did do. anything official on that night or whether it was just an American wedding breakfast. Everyone does a speech.

Oh my God. Thanks America, but really don't feel the need. Their vows were 20 minutes long each. Oh my God. Can you, I mean, can you begin to imagine? Can you begin? I mean, I love my friends. But if any of my friends did 20 minute vows.

You ever drink during the ceremony? I would be like, come on, guys, this is, listen, you're in love with each other. That's good. A lot of people in this room in love with each other. A lot of people have been in love before. A lot of people here have been married. We've been to each other's weddings. Okay, who, look out, just absolutely look out across their congregation here.

With Tom and Rita have done this, I don't think so. Who here has done 40 minutes worth of vows? And the answer will be nobody. Yeah, that's like longer than Lily Allen's current concert. That's longer, that's longer than injury time in the, in the England, which is the longest thing of all time. Yeah. But, but yes, I think that it's, if you cannot be performative on your wedding day, when can you be?

So we, so that's a given. I'll tell you what, Richard, she has got a number of opportunities to be performing. Oh, she can be, yeah. Yeah. She has, in fairness, Taylor Swift, a number of opportunities to be performances. More than most of us. Yeah. But I think you're allowed to be self-indulgent.

Yeah. On your wedding day. We've all got friends a while. Certainly have been self-indulgant. It's so on brand. I'm amazed. I really thought that they would like be in some sweet. I mean, how many of the songs have got stuff about sweet little churches and aisles

and all of this. stuff and it's like, all right, you're going to do it in Madison Square Garden. So when the announcement comes out, it's going to say just T&T married. So is this like a tie-out with A T&T? Yeah, that was bad. Yeah, that's more performative than I would have chosen to be. Yeah. They even, when you walked in, which I thought was a sort of nice touch, you walk past

a wall of pictures of Travis and Taylor when they were children and getting older, which exactly what they did in Gavin and Stacey. Yes. It's the exact same trick, right? I've seen it before. Yeah. That's, yeah. So they've obviously.

And they built a castle within, I mean, I'm saying a lot of this stuff out loud. I'm told that they built a sort of castle within, and it was a sort of Cinderella sort of Alice in Wonderland themed party. Yeah, I mean, it's fine. I mean, you've got to have a theme. And, you know, they obviously, yeah, they have wedding planners. Yeah. And once you do have wedding planners, of course, wedding plans are got to try and earn their money

somehow. So they're going to be throwing ideas at you and you're going to, you know, say yes. Some of them. Yeah, but you have to do something, don't you? Yeah. And, you know, they're busy people. You know, they've got the recording albums, they've got podcasts, and we know how long that takes. Listen, it's their wedding. They can do what they, absolutely what they want.

They're clearly in love with each other. And I think that's really, really lovely. They're 40 minutes in love with each other. Yes, but you could never. Yeah. But I, yes, I think we're allowed to talk about it as a cultural event because they made it a cultural event. It wasn't, as you say, it wasn't a quaint little wedding in upstate New York,

with, you know, a few friends and family. I mean, that would have been amazing. Don't you think? And then they have a party here. I would have done that, do an acoustic set afterwards. Invite Sir Paul, invite Stevie Nix, who both played at the gig. Everyone plays acoustically in a tiny little under a pagoda and a New England church and then release that.

That's a lovely look. I'd call it the wedding album. That's it. If I was their wedding planner and I got down to... I would watch that show so hard. I got down to the last three. That's what I would have done. I said, look, you know, 26 million and the 26 million are given to charities. So it's 52 million. I'll do this whole thing for 400,000, because I've got to include security. You know, so I figure 50 grand for the actual wedding, 350 for security and stuff like that. And then we can give 50 million to charity. And we'll release an album off the back of it, the wedding album, and we'll make all that money back.

Well, I'm sorry they didn't go with you. One of the other, the last things I want to say. say about this. This is the first time I've seen this and you realize just how like convincing AI slop or just AI is, I've seen so many pictures of them that looks so kind of realistic of them facing off against each other in a wedding dress and a thing. And I keep thinking, is that one? Have they released one? None of them are real.

There's just masses and masses and masses of a. We know they were in Dior and it was custom Dior. But there's so many pictures have come out that do look incredibly convincing and they're just, that they're not real. It's, it's becoming, like, compete ubiquitous. Yeah, it's, it's, it's fascinating. It's fascinating. He's shut down New York. Again, we know, we talk a lot about where have all the stars gone and where's the old days of show business and shutting down the middle of New York in a hundred degrees heat. So that's sort of very show businessy and having every celebrity on the planet, apart from Blake lively, at your wedding, that's very show busy as well. A big takeout is that the biggest stars in

the world are massive starfuckers. I mean, they are. there aren't it's very interesting that you know celebrities flock together and they say oh and those because we sort of understand each other you think I don't know if it is I think it's because your power multiplies itself by their power and it's it's like it's like people in the city who will hang up with other people in the city who have a lot of money or access to a lot of money because that multiplies itself it's very easy to make money when you're surrounded by other people who make money and it's very easy to become more famous when you're surrounded by other people who are incredibly famous almost everything written about this

wedding was about who was there yeah You know, I mean, it's, and it makes everyone bigger. And the idea of people, like, you know, Spielberg having to show a sort of QR code to get through. And, you know, yes, Jay-Z, I'll have your phone off you. All of that is such a power move. They were drinking Jay-Z champagne as well, weren't they? Oh, were they? I used to spade champagne was what they were drinking.

I'm sure the brand opportunities were extraordinary. I mean, can you begin to imagine that the money they're going to be making out of it over the next couple of months? Yeah. The stories were going to hear. But everybody, people would, you know, posting people with the ones with the beauty brand like Selena Gomez were posting, you know, putting on their own products in the car on the way there. It was a very modern event. Yeah. My favourite bits was when their friends from home were there as well.

And the family and Mama Kelsey who I've been very much enjoying on. Sleptu traitors. Traters as well. That's nice. There's something very beautiful at the heart of it. That's a nice thing. That's why we're allowed to buy into it. If you can cut your way through the thicket of.

But as a spectacle, I would just say to everybody, everybody here who has been married, who is about to get married, who wants to be married in the future, think about sitting at the kitchen table, think about getting to that 90 odd number of people that you think, yeah, that's, I think, that's our family, that's our close friends from home. Those are the people actually in the last five years who've really become important to us and the people we would really love to meet each other. Think about getting to that number and add another 910 people and just think about how much. how that would be. Given, by the way, if you invite Stephen Spielberg, he would probably say no. So you're really, that's a net you're really going to have to cast mind. I would love to know who said no. I would, that's a document. I would watch, like the Beatles, get back nine hours worth. I would watch nine hours worth of them going through the guest list for that wedding. I would love that so much. I would just love to hear the nose. I'd love to hear the nose on their side and I'd love

to hear the RSVPs that came back. Would you have gone if you had been in, invited. I know neither was would have been invited. Don't be absolutely, of course I would have. Of course. I was talking to Ingrid about this and I said, well, I don't think I would go. Because I don't want to want to go to New York. You would want to see it. Yeah, she just said, stop me. I mean, you're an idiot. Yeah. Of course you would. I can assure you, Richard, you would be going. Yes, that's true. I'm sure you, Ingrid would be informing you. That you are going.

But I just don't know how much, how much fun it would be being a thousand person wedding with people you don't really know that well. The people watching would have been off the chain. It would have been hysterical. Absolutely hysterical. It's like the black and white ball times 100. You could have just laughed so much. It's just like a hilarious moment. You know what? The reason I would have gone, it would be nice to meet Greg James.

So after the break, we are going to talk about, I would say very much the British Taylor Swift. Katie Price. This episode is brought to you by the Lloyd's 5K house deposit. Lloyd's are offering a 5K house deposit, which was last seen in 1996. What are your entertainment memories of the? the 1990s. I feel guilty talking about the 1990s because you look back and it was

it was such a golden era. We'd never had it so good and we didn't even realize because we were young and we just thought we were entitled to it. We absolutely took it for granted. Yeah, Brit Pop was absolutely in its pomp, Oasis playing to a quarter of a million people. You had Blur and Swede and Pop, I'm so sorry. Squise Girls. Amazing movies at the cinema, train spotting. I mean, it felt a time of absolute optimism. But at the time, you just assumed that was the way that the world was going. A very British type of optimism. Yeah. But part of the optimism, of course, is that mortgages were more affordable. And that is what Lloyd's is dealing with right now.

Yep. Last scene in 1996, Lloyds are now offering 5K deposit mortgages to first-time buyers. Search 5K, first-time buyer. 1996 average first-time buyer deposits based on O&S data. Subject to status, your home may be repossessed if you don't keep up repayments. Conditions apply. Hi, everybody. It's Dominic here from the Restis history. I just wanted to let you all know that on our sister podcast, The Book Club, We have just released an episode digging deep into George R.R. Martin's, a Game of Thrones, the first book in his Song of Ice and Fire sequence. We go deep into the history behind Game of Thrones. So we go into the Wars of the Roses, Hadrian's Wall. We talk about the influence of J.R. Tolkien and comparisons with the Lord of the Rings. But Tabby, we also talk, don't we, about George R.R. Martin's apparent stagnation and whether he's actually ever going to finish the books.

We investigate why it is that he has battled to finish them at all and whether he will ever be able to. But if you want to hear lots more about the history behind some of the greatest novels of all time, Fear Not. Coming up on the book club, we have The Leopard by Giuseppe Tomasi de Lampedusa, which is all about Italian unification. We talk about Circe, where we delve into a particular part of the Odyssey. And then after that, we are doing the 39 steps, which Dominic you chose and you love. Please join us at the book club. It's loads of fun and you will never find a better way to spend your life. Bye bye.

Welcome back, everybody. Now, we are talking about a new documentary that drops on Wednesday. It's called Katie Price, Nowhere to Hide. It's on Sky. It's made by Mindhouse, Louis Thru's production company and it's directed by Paddy Weival. She's sort of obviously been a sort of fixture of national life. And she says it was a fun 10 years. Then the second 10 years starts to get turbulent.

and then the third 10 years it's turbulent. It's an extraordinary thing. It's very, very good, I should say. Yeah, it's really good. And I think it's, we've taught a lot about subject commissioned documentaries on this podcast. And I don't know who commissioned this, but it doesn't matter because there's nothing she would have taken out. I mean, she has a sort of nuclear candor. It's extraordinary.

She has nothing to hide. She has nothing. Yeah, you know, it's beyond I am what I am. I mean, it's amazing. There's a shot. really quite near the beginning, where she's showing Paddy Wival, the documentary maker, you know, into her past. And they can't get into her garage where it's all stored because the old pink range rover she had,

which has now got its windows sort of caved in, and it was sort of overfinched. So it says pricey along the back instead of a range rover. Its tires are down. It's just lodged in front of the garage door. So she has to sort of crawl under to get in it. Anyway, you get us into this garage and there's a load of pink fun fair and a load of other stuff. One of the boxes just says X's and surgery. Yeah.

And even then she says, oh, that's a big box. Yeah. It's on, okay, before we go any further, I do want to say that it is obviously, and anyone who has seen the pictures of her, has read the stories about her in the last few years, will also have this sense that it is an incredibly sad story. And it's an awful story. And then it transitioned from one thing to another. And it's a really, and I definitely think that this does not shy away from any of that.

it deals kind of amazingly with her relationship with her own body, just her sense of herself as ugly. She always struggled to make friends. She's friends with horses, basically. Yeah, there's lots of her as a child, just being a sort of horse-loving, quite solitary child, who, if you listen to the family, changed overnight. Her family are involved in this,

and they are absolutely brilliant. Every one of the family members is incredible. Her mom, her sister, her brother, and her stepfather are absolutely amazing. She then turns 14 and she just becomes this compelling sexual presence to boys. And at 16, she already knows she's going to be famous. She sort of changes, but she's been abused twice by then. And she's a great narrator of her own story because she talks about wanting to be looked at by men, being desperate to be looked at, but not touched.

And so this pictorial thing that's interesting because she gets onto page three, basically, which is her huge, is her big break. And you get in, because someone sends you, pictures in and someone took her lunch break on Brighton Beach at some pictures of her. And then they changed her name from, they didn't want to be called him. They went through a whole list. They said, yeah, that you can't be called Kate because she really called herself Kate. And they showed the list and they had it.

It's like Linda, you think it's got to be Linda, because of Linda Lousardi. But it's just like all incredibly normal names. And someone just said, how about Jordan? She just went, yeah, fine. I mean, Peter Stringfellow used to do that with all the strippers, you know, but you'd always say, come over here, Jerrykey. Come on, come over here. And that was not, you know, everyone had to be sort of rebrand.

I mean, she presents that, weirdly, as a sort of sliding doors moment where her personality splits into. I don't quite, I'll talk about it, I don't quite buy it. I don't think her personality does split into. She talks quite a lot about saying, there's Jordan and then there's Katie and they are different people and people don't see the real me. But a lot of what she does and how she behaves, you think, no, I think that there's quite a lot of you in Jordan.

And there definitely is a very gentle, because you hear about it from people to know it. There is a gentle kind person. there. But I think a lot of this persona is also you. Yes. But she says that because she is a sort of master of narrative and for a long time she believed she can shape the narrative about her. And it was interesting. I remember she so she gets on page two and I worked at the sun at the time and she did something.

It was so ridiculous. They had a no silicon rule on page three. You don't remember what page three was. There was a topless woman on page three of the paper every day. And nobody questioned it. And nobody questioned it. And she wanted to have a boob job and she this was right before the sort of democratisation of this surgery which was not which we now you know is is completely sort of democratised but the sun sort of I mean I hated all this aspects of the sun they they sort of felt they were drawing a line in the sand and they you know readers had to be able to believe what they saw in terms of the

text they were being shown and remember they were so prissy in the sun that they would asterisk out the central eye of the word tit because you know words had to be asteroids often when they were three inches east of a pair of the actual thing. Anyway, but they pulled the readers should she do it, she shouldn't do it. And I remember at the time, because I worked there, and I was doing picture research at the time,

and people are like, she's so stupid, she's so headstrong. She's, she's destroyed her career now, because she can't appear on on page three anymore, because she's done this. Anyway, she ends up doing Playboy and all things like that. But actually, I think what was so interesting about her at the time was, yes, she was headstrong,

but she'd foreseen something that they had not seen, which is that a new type of fame was becoming available. And ownership of yourself was a possibility. And she also said, I wanted them to be fake. I wanted them to look. I wanted that fake look. That's the thing that I wanted to do. I wasn't trying to deceive anyone.

I wanted them to look fake. That's a very interesting character note. But also to be told, you won't work here again and to think, well, you know what? I back myself. Yeah. And she did back herself. Which she does time after time in this. Yeah.

So occasionally for ill. but she does it. That represents a new kind of monetisation at that point in celebrity culture, which was, okay, there's the lad mags and there's an explosion of the lab mags and you can make money through those. She's always sold PAP shots. I've watched the first two episodes of the documentary. I don't know if she gets into how much she sells PAP shots, but she does.

There's a very interesting, the very first kind of thing where one of the PAPS session, well, she said, I was going out, this is after she'd had Harvey, and they were selling, you know, photos of me and they were getting paid for it. She says, so I just thought, well, hold on, I'm going to go out anyway. And someone's getting paid for these photographs. I want to get paid. So she teamed up with one of the PAPs, one of the agencies. And he speaks completely freely about it.

He said that she would get photographs coming in. And then she'd tell me, I'm coming out the back. I would photograph her. There'd always be a couple of fellas sort of holding her up. She gave me a little wink. I'd send in the photos. There'd be a code on it, which is my code. So I'd get my money.

There'd also be a code on it, which was Katie's code. And so she would get her money as well. And, you know, but she says it. said this is why I did it. They was showing it anyway. I knew someone was making money. I thought, well, I would, I would like me to be making that money. So she took ownership of her value in a way that was actually sort of very, was radical. But it's even more than that. It's that the idea she saw herself clearly, she becomes very quickly, she sees herself as a serial drama. And the Kardashians, keeping up the Kardashians, only launches in 2007. I mean, it now feels

like we've lived in that era for a long time. But then it's time. to PAs, to endorsements, and the idea that there's a narrative momentum to your own life that people will buy into, figuratively and literally, that they will buy things. And it was the sort of train wreck era of all, you know, Lindsay Lowen and Britney Spears, but she always seemed to be just about in control of her train

at that time. And these books about her life, you know, her autobiographies, the sales on those is unbelievable. Even the first few novels, I think she said about 12 novels now, and the sales now are not what they were. but the first few were big. The first one was 400,000 copies in hardback. Yeah, that's a lot.

That's a lot. Obviously, she has evolved. And, I mean, if we just flash forward to the present day, we had so many questions about this, and we never really answered it because you may know that, I mean, her latest escapade is that she met a guy, they got married after just a few days. He, he, they got, you know, obviously tattoos of each other.

A proposal identical to a one he'd made, very recently he lives in Dubai. He's obviously, I'm sorry to say, Lee Andrews. He's a complete wrong way. Has he got a Cambridge doctorate? I don't think he has. He can't leave Dubai. And people were saying, oh, you can't leave Dubai.

And she was like, he can. He's coming to me. Watch him. Anyway, just when he was due to travel, he says, I've been, he rings her and says, you know, I've been kidnapped. I've been taking to a black site, which I think it's incredibly hard to tell, might be connected to some fraud allegations, which he denies. I mean, he denies a whole lot of things.

I think from a hair transplant to fraud allegations to the fact that he can leave Dubai. And this is the ongoing drama and it's incredibly hard to know what is actually happening. Paddy Wival, the director of this, who I have to say does a great job. He said in an interview, he said the hardest thing about the documentary

was knowing where to end it. He said, because I'd be in the edit for like sort of three months and I think, okay, I think I've got it now. And then I'd get a call and I'd go, sorry, Lee Hu. because it just, it never ends. Even now, she is totally compelling. And I'd sort of forgotten because there's a lot you have to look away from now. She's so thin.

She's obviously had so unbelievably many surgeries. It's interesting. They talk, it's really good access all the way through that. As you say, family, when they're talking about affairs, when they're talking about the Gareth Gates. And Gareth Gates is there talking about it. When they want to talk about Dane Bowers, he is there talking about her as well. But they talk the guy who did her first ever breast surgery.

So he talks about it. He said, and this was the size of it. It said, and then she came back and wanted a bigger one. And then she came back again and wanted a bigger one. I said, no, you can't. I mean, you can't. And Paddy goes, well, what happened? And he went, well, she just went somewhere else

and someone else did it for her. She is a force of nature. And there's something about sort of girls like that that you do see, slightly feel like built the country to some degree. And they should really have been twirling around with all the beds in the 2012 opening ceremony. You know, and I sort of, in a way, I don't know why you compare it to an opera diva, you know, where the life is just this extraordinary tragedy that's sublimated into something.

Or Pickarest, you know, Pickarest novels normally about sort of roguish men, but there are, there's a subsection of them that are about kind of lower-class women who use their wiles to make it. I was thinking about exactly that. It feels like a 19th century novel. It really does. And, you know, these characters have always existed. They've always existed. And she's just moulded herself to the times in which she did.

And actually she's molded some of the times in which she lives as well. You know, she has the curse of being compelling. Lots of people had her background. Lots of people had the things that happened to her. Lots of people had her talents. Lots of people had her story. But she is so compelling to people that she is enabled at every single step of her journey. But she understands what she means.

And what I find very weird about it is that she's always lent in, as we've discussed, so completely hard to whatever sells. Yeah. And I think that she now sees, and this is the sort of part of the tragedy of it, she sees herself as a cautionary tale. And so she sees that the cautionary tale is the thing that sells the most. And quite hard because although this,

you know, this business of commodifying yourself in the way that she has, it's quite young in the scope of human history except in, you know, I guess some professions or whatever, but there's a point where you don't really know whether it's the dynamics of the story where that stops and where she starts or what she's doing

because it would make a good story. And it's very difficult to think of, whether just the sales or her are in the driving seat. It's interesting because, as you say, she's brutally honest all the way through. She doesn't hold back to the answer every single question. But her, she doesn't seem to have as much self-knowledge as you would expect. And I think, you know, by the time you get to the age of 48, perhaps you should have some of that self-knowledge.

Her family seem to have a great deal of knowledge about her and kind of understand her. And it's every time something you have it's like Dane or Gareth. And they just cut to one of the family. And they were just like, and then we heard about this and we're like, oh, no. Because they're exceptional. They're exceptional. They're exceptional. Yeah, they really are exceptional.

But you're dealing with the force of nature. You see that. When you see that family who are so great in so many ways, but some people, it's, they can't control. Never mind that. Nature will find a way. Yeah. If that family cannot control her, she is not going to be controlled because they are super bright. But there's only one moment, fun enough, in that first two episodes where Patty calls her out on how she treated Gareth Gates and says,

I think he humiliated him. And it's the only point where she goes, yeah, I may, yeah, gosh, I sort of suppose I did. It's almost that everything that's being asked of her is something she's considering for the first time. She lives her life forwards. Well, she's incredibly propulsive, yes. She is a very, very propulsive person. And I mean, I can recognize elements of that, that it's better to just go forward and compartmentalize things. But one of the things you should take away from it is the idea of the audience, because if you feel like, have a look at it, if you think you've been able to look away from a while, for a while,

because she is compelling, and the audience gaze, that's been a huge part of this. And she, as a, I mean, physically, I mean, to look at and as a story, holds a mirror up to society, you know, what is fetishized and normalized and then kind of expected of women's bodies, the abuse of it, the actual abuse of it, direct criminal in some cases and indirect, and the collateral damage of it to these people around her. And then there's this sort of woman, this tiny woman, kind of staggering on in the middle of it all.

Yeah, she seems in the middle of all of this and in the middle of this cultural force. She does seem to retain her agency, which I think makes it even more fascinating, because she seems to be complicit in a lot of what happens in a way you don't often see in these documentaries. I do, I think it's really worth people watching and it's, it will, you will make your own mind up and everyone will have different opinions. But it's very well done. It's really, really well done. It's it's terrifically interesting. if I may segue, it is on Sky on Wednesday and we will finish by talking

that Sky because they have just bought ITV if you're wondering what that means. I mean, essentially it's been on the cards for a long time. Well, yeah, we first talked about it when we knew it was significantly on the cards last year. They then they were talking about it buying it for $2 billion. They bought it for $1.6 billion

which a lot of people were saying it would be worth about half that in a year so the prices come down. Not ITV studios, we should say. The networks are, so the free-to-air PSB ITV, that's five channels. So ITV studios are the production companies, so they haven't bought that. The people actually make programmes,

they bought the gubbins of the thing. So what does this mean? Well, Sky is owned by Comcast, but this is interestingly, this is Sky's deal. It's been driven completely by Dana Strong who runs Sky in the UK. As the wise of it, we talked about before, but, you know, Sky is too small in pay, and ITV is too small in advertising

and you go for scale and you share many costs. You know, cost synergies is obviously a euphemism and we'll have to get to that because I think that Sky could take about 1.6 billion in cost synergies even before you start the idea

of kind of strategic business synergies. What you're seeing here is two of the three biggest advertising has is merge. So in terms of who should be most worried, we'll talk about within Sky and ITV, but Channel 4 should be. most worried because how do you get protections from being on the sidelines as the smallest advertising has now? This is going to take a while to go through because the competition in

markets authority who decide whether or not you've got too much share of the market or you're tending towards monopoly. As we've said, consolidation sort of has to happen. Yeah, if you look at both the, you know, Sky are very, very open. They said we have to get growth. We have to get growth and we can't get growth in with our current business plan because that's not the market is and ITV can't get growth with where they are because that's not where the market is either. Together there is some sort of synergy so it makes absolute sense. In terms of what would it actually mean as a viewer, at first very, very, very little. The ITV shows will remain on ITV.

The Sky shows will remain on the Sky. There's certainly going to be a discussion about why don't we put Saturday Night Live on ITV and suddenly we can get two million extra viewers. But those discussions haven't been had. That's not what they're planning to do. Well, Sky wants to be the aggregator. Yeah, exactly. They want to use ITVs, crown jewels, so you'll have Love Island and you'll have World Cup.

You'll have all sorts of things like that. But again, on a streaming platform. So the streaming platform will be Sky and ITV. So what it actually means, a couple of things that actually means, we talked before about this need for iPlayer and the other terrestrial broadcasters to team up with each other to form one thing, which would be BBC, ITV and Channel 4. That will now not happen with ITV, definitely. Not with ITV, but...

Channel 4 and BBC 1, therefore... Channel 4 have to team up with. Well, you talked about it before, like a strategic rationale. It is now not just a good idea. It's an imperative idea. Like Channel 4 and the BBC have to find a way to come together. You've got this sort of floating voter in the form of 5, which is owned by Paramount. And obviously, both sides would be saying come in with us.

But I don't think actually with that ad sales point that I've made earlier, that that would even be possible for. So the BBC and Channel 4 and 5, I mean, they've really got to sort of come together. and they've got to do, you're just looking to try and have these destinations to scale because otherwise you're going to get swallowed up. It's, I have to say that... I think, by the way, it's not happening at the moment because Channel 4 is in such a weak position that it's very hard, that they know that they would be eaten now.

Whereas if they have a couple of good years, a couple of big years, a couple of big hits, then actually... Oh, I just think they have to. I think the BBC have to go over themselves and Channel 4 have to go over themselves, and they have to find a way to do this. And I don't think they should be wasting two years, in my opinion. Yeah, but there's ego involved, right? Okay, but the time for ego is now long past.

Yes, I agree, but they'd have to find a way to give it equal prominence and do all of those things. I think within Sky itself, you know, Sky have often sort of said, I don't know, I'd be worried if I works at Sky News, I have to say, in Sky Arts, because those things have been sort of existed. I think Sky Comcast would have got rid of Sky News, as soon as they were allowed to with the obligation after the obligation passed for them to have to keep it open.

But now, you know, Sky will have a PSB. They'll have a news arm. They had things like Sky Arts and Sky News as a lost leader to be part of the ecosystem, but if you now have one via OTV, I fear that would be one of the sort of synergies, as it were. Sky is going to ultimately be a victim of people unbundling, okay, because they just are.

And they've been good at managing not to make that happen, but a lot of pressure has been on the football because the football is what they have basically. Can you explain to people what unbundling means? Unbundling means that you don't say, oh, I'm not going to have these Sky services. Say, at the moment, they've got a big issue, which is that they've still got a lot of people

paying 80 quid a month for their telly. And if you say, okay, well, I'm going to unbundle, I'm not going to have, I'm not going to get this all through Sky, I'm going to have freely and Netflix and Prime and HBO Max, and I'm still going to be paying way less. So there's been a lot of people. pressure because they do have the football. I have to say the new government green paper is trying to list all sorts of different events and make it more difficult. So you need other stuff because

the football has been this kind of huge thing that has kind of kept it up. They need other stuff. They don't make that much content at all. But I do think that those synergies mean that some of the stuff they do make is going to fall away. Yeah, well, they've got plenty of money, which is good. They don't have the shop window quite as much as ITV, whereas ITV got less money than they did, but have this incredible shop window. Everyone involved you talk to on each side feels fairly comfortable with it. As you say, I think there will be redundancies as certain jobs are kind of doubled up. I would think something like Sky Arts would be fairly safe because ITV is a PSB.

Everyone at Sky is saying we absolutely need to stay a PSB. No one at Sky is going, no, we're going to bring this entirely into the commercial thing. We're going to try and get out of all of our PSB obligations. That doesn't seem to be what they're saying. And therefore, you know, ITV do have to do arts programming. It gives you protection to be a PSB. So they want that. They've always tried to argue for being a PSB

because we provide things like Sky Arts and Sky News, but they don't actually have any of the PSB obligations. But they have argued to try and get into that. But the best thing about being a PSB is you're right at the front, you know, front and centre when you turn your television on. That's the main best thing about being a PSB. But I would have thought Sky Arts is perfect. You know, that's a really easy thing for ITV to have

to put all of its arts programming through. I'm not sure about that, but anyone. Yeah, well, we saw. But the new thing would be very, very interesting as well. But yeah, in terms of being a viewer, I think almost nothing changes apart from, you know, what's going to happen with IPlayer. And that's completely changed now because like ITV,

you're not going to go anywhere near it, I think. And BBC Channel 4 have to set up something together. Yeah. Yeah. Get a button on the remote. I keep saying this. They need a button on the remote. You can't compete with the American streams.

You need a button on the remote. Yeah. That's something the government could do. But anyway. Yeah. Well, listen, maybe they're listening. They wouldn't have got to the end. They'd be like, I know, I was only listening for Taylor Swift and Katie Price.

When it got to the sky thing, I was like, yeah, I'm less interested. Any recommendations this week? Tournament football, all there and all night. That's all I'll be doing, and that's all I have been doing. What about you? If you like the idea of Monopoly but I hate playing it because it takes so long, Monopoly deal, which is a card game you can play. It's a bit like rummy that you've got to collect sets,

but it's like a much quicker, much more fun version of Monopoly. MD in the Parliament to the kids. You call it MD? MD. Oh, really? Yeah. You play it too.

I've played a lot. I've had to ban it being played in certain places such as restaurants. I've, yes, I urge you to impose restrictions on it if younger people are playing because it can get actually, in some ways, nastier. It can't get. It's quite frustrating. It's quite frustrating. I don't think I've ever actually won a game. Wow, really?

Okay. Yeah. Likewise, probably. I've got a competitive family. And I'll also recommend We were talking earlier about Pickarest 19th century novels I'm reading No Name by Wilkie Collins

I'll finish No Name by Wilkie Collins which I don't think many people talk about But it's a really really really really terrific book And by the way any Drama execs listening Would make an amazing adaptation It's got some central characters Who you just think oh my God

Oh God I'm going to buy it when I leave I haven't read it No name it's called It's long like all of those things I can handle it Yeah, but you're 100% Katie Price Group would be right in the middle of that book. Right. Other than that, we are back on Thursday with a Q&A,

but also which I enjoyed very, very much, and the second part of your special bonus series on what World Cup have we got this week? We've had US sitcoms. We are doing the World Cup of British bands. So who are the best British band of all time? According to the British Broadway. We've already recorded it.

I will say this. I would say it's very interesting. I would say it's very, very interesting. John Robbins and Maisie Adam are back to talk about that. If you want to become a member, which is actually listening and all of our bonus content, it is therestes Entertainment.com. We'd love to have you. But for everyone else, we will continue to be free twice a week every week.

See you on Thursday. See you on Thursday. Hello, everyone. We've got some exciting news to share with the listeners of the Restors Entertainment. We do indeed. We are holding a summer sale so you can become a member of the club for a third off the regular price. That's right. With the code summer 26, you can head to the rest of entertainment dot com and claim an annual membership with this brilliant discount. So if you want to spend

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