The Rest Is Entertainment - What has happened to sketch shows and what doesn't Richard like on TV?

Episode Date: February 15, 2024

Is there anything Richard doesn't enjoy on TV? Are the personal prizes on Taskmaster really given away and just what has happened to the art of sketch shows? Another question and answer edition of The Rest Is Entertainment shining a light on those topics and more. Twitter: @restisents Email: [e-mail] Producer: Neil Fearn Executive Producers: Tony Pastor + Jack Davenport 🌏 Get our exclusive NordVPN deal here ➼ https://nordvpn.com/trie It’s risk-free with Nord’s 30-day money-back guarantee! ✅ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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just that. In fact, Fidelity does the heavy lifting, including rebalancing these ETFs to help navigate changing market conditions. Visit fidelity.ca slash all in one. Getting closer to your goals could start today. Commissions, fees, and expenses may apply. Read the funds or ETFs prospectus before investing. Funds and ETFs are not guaranteed. Their values change and past performance may not be repeated. Best Western made booking our family beach vacation a breeze. And it felt a little like... Good night, kids. Good night, Mama. Life's a trip make the most of it at best western hello and welcome to another edition of the rest is entertainment questions edition questions and answers edition um i'm richard osmond i'm marina hyde hey marina hello i am

over my jet lag now i'm very pleased to hear you're over your jet lag i think we should get straight into this can i say one thing yeah by the way when i had that jet lag i was thinking oh actually i might i felt like i had a bit of a cold and it made me think that thing of if you're a quiz show presenter no one's asked this question but i'm going to answer it anyway when you've got a cold people think you're very very ill because if you had a cold for three days then actually on a tv show that means 15 episodes so they're like my god he has had a cold for a really really then actually on a TV show, that means 15 episodes. So they're like, my God, he has had a cold for a really, really long time. It's a chronic illness.

It's a chronic illness. Anyway, that's what that made me think. Yes. But no one wrote that question. We got questions about literally everything else, but no one said what happens when a TV presenter gets a cold. Shall we start with this question from Craig Walker? Thank you so much, Craig.

Why do you think sketch shows no longer exist? I grew up watching Goodness Gracious Me, The Fast Show, Smack the the fast show smack the pony sketch show etc all 20 plus years ago how and why did british comedy change to leave behind that legacy partly what it is is a rather boring answer and then it's become perhaps the slightly more interesting answer is that money it is so expensive to put these things on and the pool of money available for things like that has become smaller what has become bigger is stand-up is huge and people going into comedy might be going more towards the in the direction of stand-up because stand-up is so huge if you're making a sketch show what you need is little troops of people to build one of these shows around who are out there on the circuit and if they aren't there because they've gone in the direction of

stand-up then you haven't necessarily got these people around whom you can build a show it's very expensive because you've got multiple multiple sets costumes people don't want to watch something where it almost looks like they're watching a sort of kind of cheap panto and they're just pulling on costumes to give you the basic idea of the character it takes a lot of time to do all of it and I suppose that's part of the reason it fell out of favor funnily enough I did watch a show recently called something like deep fake neighbor wars I think it is and it's it's a really it's a really like it's dark it's an AI sort of show and there's a neighbor wars show some strand which I think is internationally

sold as a format and they put celebrities faces onto these people and had them arguing i have to say i didn't like it but i did think about halfway through oh i see i'm watching a sketch show which is something i haven't watched for a very long time money is is of course the answer you get huge sets costumes and and for a two minute thing whereas in a sitcom you know you use your sets over and over and over again so it's's very, very expensive to do. It's very difficult to write because writing 24 one-minute sketches takes longer than writing one 24-minute episode of a sitcom. Certainly more expensive to film in a sketch show as well. By and large, everyone has equal billing

and so it's quite expensive as well because you've got an awful lot of cast. But yeah, two things. So look at Ghosts, and that's essentially a sketch troupe who grew up grew up on horrible histories which by the way is one of the best sketch shows of all time they made one of the best sitcoms of the 21st century one of the best ever british sitcoms ghosts i think we can safely say now and it comes out of the tradition of sketch comedy which is broad characters catchphrases you know and so i think people

are going in that direction but also in the world of youtube and the other platforms there's so many sketches out there now so many great character stuff so many amazing sketches and i think probably the world of sketch shows is going to come back this is going to get cheaper and cheaper to film that will mean it will there'll be less time between maybe filming it and transmission because one of the great things about all these platforms is that things can be so immediate. You can make a funny sketch and someone can see it straight away. Now, this never existed before.

We couldn't have this. And it's quite hard in lots of ways to keep being au courant, being funny, being about the thing that's just happened when it might not be aired for nine months after you shot it. Yeah, exactly that. And by the way, there was a brilliant sketch show on netflix which is tim robinson's i think you should leave which is it's lunatic so it wouldn't be for everybody but it certainly it takes um every initial premise of every sketch it does and absolutely grinds it to the absolute further outer limits of what you can do with comedy. If you like it, you'll love it.

If you don't like it, after the first five minutes, please feel free to switch it off. But yeah, it's, as so often is the answer, it's economics. And also, you know, that world, you know, the ones that Craig mentions there, Goodness Gracious Me, Fast Show, that world of linear TV has sort of passed us by uh but i think the future for sketches is very positive because it's as you say you can write it in the morning film it in the afternoon put it out in the evening and you know you can't do that with a sitcom i've got one

for you richard horn says do you get to keep the prizes in taskmaster that the contestants have bought in oh that is a good question by the rich way, Richard Horne. Little Alex's brother. He's used my first name and Little Alex Horne's surname. I think that's a pseudonym. Yeah, we could probably do a deep dive on Taskmaster. I would love that, by the way. All the time. Perhaps we'll do an episode at some point. I'm so obsessed with it.

I'd like to do that. It's a load of fun. I'll say that. You know what? I'm going to save a lot of this for the uh for our special for our emergency podcast um about taskmaster um if if i if we do it can i call it an emergency podcast otherwise i'm not doing it don't negotiate with me on this thing no no i'm taking what i'm taking no no we can't do it okay i'm going to talk about everything now then uh you do not get to keep the prizes there's such a lot of pressure on the prizes though because you

know they say beforehand you know what's there i can't remember on mine but you do think you genuinely want the points from greg and obviously you know he's got he greg has his you know he's very capricious and you know will do exactly what he wants but you do if you get one point you kind of want to go your honor that was that was a really that you have to bring in your favourite blue thing right one of mine and my son because this is his personality type

and an antique shop had bought a police riot helmet right he saw the police riot helmet I say it's his personality it's mine as well yeah I looked at it

I was like hold on and my boy was like sorry can we actually buy that I said I think we can and so he bought it and it was blue and so i took it in and i thought well this is to me five points that's the best blue

thing ever especially as i said and my son bought it um so come on and he went well that's getting one point and my son was there that was like the episode he came to i was like whoa that is actually that has actually broken me greg but uh he is a hard taskmaster that is quite simply literally is yeah we will go into much more detail on taskmaster funny i will say this i said to alex horn recently i was on my u.s book tour and so many people in the queue asked about taskmaster did an event in i think nashville where one of the places and you'd get all the questions afterwards and um woman stood stood up, like the third question, just say, can I first say congratulations

on how you did the yoga balls task in Taskmaster? And literally half of this big audience started applauding. In Nashville? Yeah. Oh, my God, that's incredible. It was crazy. So I had that, and just getting back from a book tour in India, and it was the same.

There were people there just going, by the way, can I just say there's two shows they love everywhere in the world Would I Lie to You and Taskmaster those those are the two shows I say but no you do not get to um because people put up their car or their kids or something so it would be I mean some of the stuff that yeah I might have won or lost yeah I've seen Bathroom Suites I've seen yeah there's a lot that you know just can't sling it in this Axiom I mean I put I think you have to have your best piece of celebrity memorabilia. And I put up one of my favorite things in the world,

which is a Strongbow cider promotional poster of Jockey Wilson that he signed. Honestly, if I'd lost that, I would have been devastated because it's hard to replace. It's up in my living room. It's one of my favorite things in the world. So, no, you are, fortunately uh you get to hold on to to what you've got but yeah so let's definitely do because people people love taskmaster maybe we'll get like alex on or something well they've got their own podcast haven't they so yeah they probably wouldn't let us but we'll give it a go right yeah we've never had a guest ever we've never had a

guest first one should be alex horn yeah and and the only guest just yeah just the only person we've ever had on the show before since three times a week we'll do the regular show on tuesday we'll do question answer on thursday and we'll interview alex horn every friday okay i have a question for you marina this is also a very suspicious name dave gorman asks can't be the real dave gorman can it i hope it is yeah he was let's pretend it is uh he was on taskmaster thanks dave for your uh your question possibly the comedian asks how does product placement work? I see it on a lot of shows. What can a show or film make from it?

Well, there are a lot of rules on product placement in television. It's interesting in films. And because of a thing, a show I'm working on, I ended up doing quite a lot of research on Marvel's product placement. And, I mean, they make huge amounts of money from it. And sometimes they'll leave a chiller cabinet blank and then you'll add the thing in post-production. Oh, that's cool.

Because there's a sort of huge competition for what, you know, what's going to be in the chiller cabinet. And also certain movies have kind of established product placement that comes back each time. If you think of something like James Bond, you know, he's going to have a certain type of watch. He going to have a car he's got he needs a car he needs a car he needs a car and when he cannot rely on uber he cannot he's a spy but when the people um the cars are slightly different obviously because that's extensive filming those action

sequences but things like the watches when the people come on set with the watch or in any other film when they've got a sort of dr Doctor Strange had a certain type of fancy watch. Five guys will come on set. They will be all chained to their briefcase, will be chained to their thing. And they'll make a really big thing about like checking the watch is being lit in the right way that you can see. It's really meticulously done.

And as I say, it's big business. You make a lot of money from this. But there are also things that are these kind of, I suppose you might call it a sort of soft power product placement. So in Marvel, they've done a lot of work with the Pentagon. And there are certain movies that kind of effectively promote those kind of things. One thing that was quite interesting, this is just a side note,

but I thought it was quite funny. At a certain point, the Pentagon stopped cooperating because they couldn't work out where S.H.I.E.L. where shield would come in the hierarchy with the pentacon and would the pentacon technically and i think they concluded that it seemed like the pentagon might actually have to answer to shield and at that point they were out wow yeah it's fascinating is it so there's quite a lot of that sort of thing sometimes they have huge sort of they say well hang on would this brand exist in gotham city and they will talk for a long time about whether they can have the product because they can to some extent it's a it's supposed to be a quite lifelike world but obviously superheroes exist and although batman

as we know has not got any superpowers he is a costumed vigilante but could the could this exist in gotham city sometimes there are promotions just for foreign markets. So people will pay huge amounts to have their, there was a sort of, I think there was a, was it a Japanese jewelry store, Chinese jewelry store, to allow themselves to be in the background of a shot or blown up in a shot in a Marvel movie, which was only in the, whatever the China release was. And that's something we must talk about

on a future episode is how films get released in China, which is something that people really, really want. So that's just a little note to myself. But there are many in different markets and sometimes they kind of get away with it. But in general, people will tolerate some, but they don't like it when it's being rammed down their throat. So you have to, there's a trade off on the money. Yeah. And there's a fortune to be made. I mean, an awful lot of money.

yeah and there's a fortune to be made yeah i mean an awful lot of money it's like every time we ever see a tv show and they go flew our contestants over to america and they'll always be a shot of an airplane you think yeah well they've okay that that's the airplane there you know they've all got free flights the whole crew everyone's got free flights or they'll show the kind of front of the hotel and you think well everyone's got free hotels so you can get payment in kind and things like that the bbc find it much much much harder because you can't have product placement at all on the bbc even to the extent you know you'll watch you know a cookery show and they'll say do you know the absolute secret to a shepherd's pie is i put um yeast extract in there yeah and that's because someone has just said i put marmite in there and they said i'm really sorry we can't say marmite you have to say yeast extract or they go when clothing which is

constantly has to be completely plain or pixelated at the tiniest logo. Yeah, if you ever come as a contestant on a TV show and you have to bring along all your stuff, you cannot have anything that has, you know, you couldn't even have like a little Adidas logo. You couldn't even have the three stripes. You can't have anything at all like that. You also can't have anything that's going to clash with the background. It's almost impossible to wear it. That's why everyone on quiz shows sort of wear pastel shirts that's like every man ever on a tv show has got a short sleeve pastel shirt because

which he's never worn before or since yeah unless they win this is the shirt then it becomes the lucky shirt which is exactly but they've literally picked it up from m&s like on the way or wardrobe just has like a just rails and rails of uh of pastel shirts for men that don't clash with the background of the set they don't have busy checks on them or anything like that so the bbc find it harder you know they'll say oh we're making our version of an ice cream dessert you go that's a viennetta i'm sorry that is not we all know that's a viennetta so yeah any anything that's um a name you can't say at all on the BBC. But now, you know, companies are making whole shows. Marks & Spencer's have got it inside Marks & Spencer.

They've got lots of different things. And there's a limit to, even on Channel 4 or 5 or ITV, there's a limit to how many times you can mention a product. And if you've mentioned it three times, you then have to sort of start describing it as something else. So with that, you could say Marmite a couple of times. But from then on, we've got our old friend yeast extract. Yeast extract.

In the spirit of this, I'm going to make a quick little bit of housekeeping, which is that last week when we were talking about Channel 4, we said that ITV and Channel 5 didn't have public service obligations. They do, of course. What I meant was that they are not publicly funded. So just let us correct that. We wish not to be a yeast extractor people this year. Exactly.

And if I can also add something, I just say I'm really enjoying my PG tips. It is so refreshing, isn't it? Not even sponsored. You've done that for free. Although we're available to be sponsored. If Yorkshire Tea want to come and make a counter offer. Yorkshire Tea are just mad on the socials.

They sponsor everything or they get involved in everything. They get involved in every fight beef whatever yeah they should they have that brilliant one where the guy was furious when he discovered that the tea wasn't from yorkshire he said comes from india he said come on and they were like okay i don't know what to say about tea but yeah listen get in touch yorkshire tea so that's product placement oh here's a good one richard fraser webb says i love your podcast and both of you but that's a, here's a good one. Richard, Fraser Webster says, I love your podcast and both of you. That's a good way to start, isn't it? If you want your question read out, that's the way to start.

But it strikes me that Richard loves pretty much everything on TV. Can he wax lyrical for a second about something that he doesn't like? The news or question time does not count. Oh, that's clever. That's clever. A little codicil at the end. Well done, Fraser. He's closed you off there.

By and large, my rule is always, with tweeting or anything, if you like something, talk about it. If you don't like something, don't talk about it. That's literally half my career, so I have no such qualms. Yeah, exactly. And I think Fraser knows that. Yeah, you know what? Fraser's been very

clever there. He's trying to drive a wedge between us, isn't he? He's going, Marina, you don't have any problem slagging things about that idiot there's nothing you don't like on television there's loads of things I don't like I tend not to talk about them

because it's hard to make television programmes no one's trying to make a bad programme I guess I don't like it when stuff is lazy I don't like it on daytime TV when absolutely

every voiceover is full of puns right and every voiceover is full of puns right and every voiceover is full of puns because of Dave Lamb's voiceover on Come Dine With Me which changed daytime television forever because they went oh wait we can do jokes and we can we can you know truly iconic yeah but Dave Lamb writes that and with his producers that yeah and is really really good at it and ever since then just endless daytime TV shows which have that slightly jokey voiceover

and every time there's a pun, they have to, boom, they have to hit it like banging a drum. They go, oh no, can you just say, that is an egg-cellent idea because it's about eggs. And you go, listen, if a pun works, just say it, right?

If you have to go, that is an egg-cellent idea, right? So that I cannot stand. If ever I see that, and daytime TV, and often some evening shows as well, when they hit those puns like that, you think, that is not humour. Dave Lamb is funny. He'll do puns sometimes,

but he'll lighten them up with actually being funny about the contestants and having a genuine comic timing. So puns in daytime television, I don't like. We talked a lot about the traitors. I've just been watching the Australian Traitors Series 2. I have trouble with the casting on that because some of the least insightful people in the entire world are on that show. And I found it quite a difficult watch at times.

Traitors Series 1 Australia, one of the best traitors of all times. Absolutely brilliant. The host of Australian traitors Roger Corsa I love I think he's amazing but this series honestly watch here because it's still the traitors and it has this great twists and turns and this that and the other but there's three or four contestants in that who will absolutely drive you mad I mean literally to the extent I was like honestly I don't know, I was like, honestly, I don't know if I can watch the next episode. I cannot

continue to watch these people driving this bus off this cliff. And so, yeah, listen, there's shows that I don't love. But, and there's a, do you know what, this is fun. Yeah. I mean, I could

maybe, maybe Fraser has changed me. I just want to say that we're going to draw this out of him over a period of many moons, and we'll draw more of this out of him. Can we put an asterisk on Fraser's question and just return to it every few weeks? Yes. That's fun.

The perma question. The perma question, exactly that. And we'll find one for you as well that will just get under your skin. Yeah. But yeah, so yeah, there's stuff that, but when I don't like it, I really get mad. Yeah. Paul Ingram and I'm sitting there going, how can this be on TV?

How can they have made that decision and then still thought this was a good idea and put it on television? Honestly, it drives me bonkers. But yeah, I'm not going to listen. You're not going to say that on air. No. Well, I i'm gonna try and get you to say those sort of things on air now with that we're gonna go to a break this episode is brought to you by fidelity investments canada make investing simple fidelity's all-in-one etfs are designed to do just that in fact fidelity does the heavy lifting including rebalancing these ETFs to help navigate changing market conditions. Visit fidelity.ca slash all in one.

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Apply now at careers.timhortons.ca. Welcome back, everybody. Marina, I have a question for you, but before I do, we have some any other business. Nick Holland has been in touch. He says, here is a possibly an EastEnders doof-doof moment for you. We've talked a lot about Gladiators,

Bradley Walsh and Barney Walsh's son who present it. By the way, still doing great guns on BBC One. Huge audiences still. Nick says, Barney Walsh's mum, which I presume is Bradley Walsh's wife, Donna Darby, used to be the lead

cheerleader on the original Gladiators. That's cool, isn't it? The cheerleaders were called G-Force. They're the one thing the new series seems to have done away with. Yeah. The last place you will see cheerleaders is the darts, by the way. It's the one thing they refuse to get rid of. And according to Jet, Diane Udale,

Bradley Walsh first met Donna on the set of Gladiators in the 1990s. Wow. Why hasn't he done a little bit saying I met my wife on this show? Maybe he has in the interviews, but I haven't seen it. That's very cool, isn't it? He met his wife, and I was about to say Barney met his mum.

It's not how it works. It's not how it works. Don't spoil it, but that's not how it works. Thank you, Nick. Marina, a question for you from Ron, just one name. Why is there such a big difference in the number of episodes in a season between British shows and US shows? The answer to that mainly is smaller writing teams on British shows.

And we've historically had things written by one person, two person. You know, sometimes there'll be three. Almost everything on US television, in comedy, drama, whatever comedy drama whatever is written by writers rooms and they are big and that can sustain a 20 episode season whereas we might have a six episode season that in fact in the most recent WGA strike one of the things they were asking for was like a minimum minimum staffing in writers rooms which is a lot compared to anything that was on the you know, we don't have any of that in the UK. But there was an exception to it, which everyone called the Mike White clause. Now, Mike White is the guy who writes the White Lotus, and he's almost unique in American television in that he writes the whole show.

And you just don't have that. They just do not have it. He writes the whole show. And you just don't have that. They just do not have it. And partly what they do, partly what the reason of that is they invest a huge amount of money in these shows and they want bang for their buck and they want to have many, many episodes per season,

particularly in the days of the old networks. And they want to continue coming back season after season. We also have a thing in, it's a cultural thing as well. In this country, we have a thing where you can, you know, I've made two six-episode series of, say, The Office, and Ricky Gervais can say, I think that was where it should end. I think we did everything we wanted to do.

Now, I don't know how many seasons the US version of it, which was, by the way, was brilliant, but they had many episodes per, far more than six episodes per series, and it went on for, I don't know, what would I say, nine seasons? Yeah, I think it's like 20 episodes times nine seasons. And it was absolutely brilliantly done. But you need huge amounts of writers to do that and to keep it at a good quality level. And we have always culturally had things that are brilliant.

We love more than anything and last for two seasons because that's when the creators want to stop them. we love more than anything and last for two seasons because that's when the creators want to stop them. If you're signing a deal for a US, you know, there are various sort of development deals I've done with US television and deals for shows that have gone to air. They're not saying, oh yeah, do you want us to invest huge amounts of money

in this show and the development of it? Then make it. And then you're allowed to walk off after two seasons if you don't like it. If it works and it becomes successful, you're sort of of contracted to stay around you have to have the option of staying for seven years really in something like comedy seven is the key seven is the key seven is the key if you're effectively signing if it goes well a seven season deal on something because they want you to stay you can't just say well i think we've done everything we'd like to do with those

characters but that's why season eight of any big long-running American sitcom is interesting because that's when the Steve Carells leave, that's when Donald Glover leaves community. I always think It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia is amazing because they're on like season 15 and they've all stuck around. They're all like, no, this is a lot of fun. But that's, you know, the joy of finding an American sitcom you like is suddenly there are 200 episodes of it for you. So if it's a community or a office or brooklyn 99 and you watch two episodes you go i love this you go well you got your next couple of months of every night you can watch two episodes of this because it goes on and on and

on it's such a joy and that yeah you're you're quite right that but they wanted you to have that feeling because of syndication you could not syndicate a show in america i.e rerun it unless it had 100 episodes so you really want to get to that magic number, i.e. rerun it, unless it had 100 episodes. So you really want to get to that magic number. And then it can be rerun and it can become very successful and go even on different carriers. In the UK, we can rerun anything. We don't need to get to 100 episodes before we wouldn't have a whole lot to rerun. And so that was a really big part of it. So yes, if you get into something and they wanted you to get into it and they wanted to rerun for years and years and years and they have these huge kind of behemoth shows like, I don't know, I Love Lucy or whatever went on forever.

Yeah. And that's what they wanted. You had to get to 100 episodes or it couldn't be syndicated. And that's where the real money comes in for the creators as well. Interestingly, that's also coming back, you know, the key with Netflix and some of the other streamers is that thing of returnability, that thing of comfort watching, where you just stick on it. Anytime you're anywhere, you think, oh, there's an episode of Friends. I will watch that. And we've sort of lost that with binge watching.

You wouldn't sort of watch an episode of Ozark. And actually, that's the thing they want to get back, is those shows that whenever they are on, you will just watch it. But yeah, having a big old writing room is the way to do it. And the question, well, why don't we do that over here if it's so insanely profitable, is 19 times out of 20, old writing room is the way to do it and the question well why don't we do that over here if it's so insanely profitable is 19 times out of 20 those shows completely fail and it's just we've only heard we don't and fraser and yeah we and we don't we don't we don't spend the same amount of

money they have far more potential eyeballs although nowadays when you can see everything on you know dairy girls can go to netflix and just become a huge hit all over again but imagine if there were like 100 150 episodes of Derry Girls how happy would we be it'd be wonderful wouldn't it if you just think because I would spend you know I'm culturally I think they told it she told it brilliantly Lisa McGee and she did it in the way she did it and she went out she wanted I'm actually it's just different it's just different it doesn't mean that i i really love the u.s office for instance but i also love the uk office and it's a is a totally different that that is a very good show for looking at the completely different way in which the two

countries treat it now now i want to watch 150 episodes of dairy girls uh ron of course we uh expanded on that thank you very much ron okay here we. We've got a question from Darren Fletcher. Darren Fletcher, the football commentator, or the former Man United midfielder. Yeah, it could just be someone called Darren Fletcher. And it's a follow-up to the blurb question. Hold on a minute. What if Ron, we just had, was Ronaldo?

It's been Dave Gorman, Ronaldo, Darren Fletcher. Yes, yes, okay. Okay, blurb follow-up. Darren says, You said that you don't have the time to read in order. Okay, blurb follow-up. Darren says, you said that you don't have the time to read in order to provide a blurb when you're writing, but do you also have to stop reading anything in the same genre for fear of contaminating your work,

or is it easy to compartmentalise? Nobody wants an inadvertent plagiarism allegation. It's such a good question, and every writer will say something different. I mean, the key to writing is you must read all the time uh you know that's otherwise why are you writing a book you know you've got to be a reader um what you don't want to read is something that's coming out at the same time as your book and is better than yours or something that's terrible you don't want to read bad writing and you don't want to read writing you're jealous of that's i think when you're in

the middle of writing after writing read the best books in the whole world but while you're writing you you it's a my brother who as you know is in suede and he was said that the thing is you have to listen to music from the 60s and 70s because you can't while you're recording you can't listen to your contemporaries because it's too it's too much uh and i i think it's the same as that when i when i was writing the very first book, I hit upon all the Patricia Highsmith Ripley novels because they're brilliant. So my brain is not getting smaller by reading them. They have a style that's sort of impossible to copy.

So you can't sort of take on board any sort of mannerisms. And she's dead. So she's not a rival in any way so that's the ideal combination and the book I'm writing at the moment which is going to be announced next Tuesday I wonder if we can announce it on the podcast I think we better actually

if we don't get a podcast exclusive of that I know but everyone wants an exclusive they all want a piece of you let's cut that bit out we're having a piece of it so the book yeah let's cut that bit out oh no yeah keep that we're having a piece of it yeah have a piece of that um so the book i'm uh writing at the moment i'm i'm reading middle march for the first time i've never read it before and again it's brilliant i'm not suddenly going to write like george elliott and spoiler alert she is no longer with us so it's one of those wait she's a woman wait a minute George Elliot hang on a second yeah

so I don't think writers by and large read stuff that's in their own genre while they're writing they do of course straight afterwards you can go back

and do it so I think you have to try and find stuff that makes you a better human being I really feel that when I'm writing a column if I get up early

in the morning and I want to write a column about something I just won't read I certainly wouldn't read anyone else's column about it. And you have a very limited, well, my deadlines give me a certain amount of time. You have a very limited amount of time to write the column. I might write it in two or three hours.

If I'm thinking of a column that someone else has written, I just don't read it because then you think, if I've unfortunately replicated all the same ideas. I once actually wrote an almost identical column to a friend of mine about a story which was really funny and we looked at it and we were like this is such a mind meld Was it Marina Jekyll? It was a friend of mine Matthew Norman and there's a story about some secretary

who had done some sort of scam on her boss or whatever and we'd both written it I mean almost word for word via the Dolly Parton 9 to 5 song and the movie and it was I mean it was almost identical it was really odd but that was just a sort of strange occurrence but I try then you can legitimately say I'm terribly sorry I have not actually read your thing sometimes when you're just in a hurry in your writing if someone's put it very well it's really

hard to think of the slightly different way that you'd put the same thing even if you've had that thought completely independently which you probably have done so I just find it much easier to not read anybody's things plagiarism things easy you're never going to copy someone's sentence in a book but when you're reading a great stylist you do sometimes the next day you know if I'm reading John le Carré and i'm thinking oh you try and work out why is he a much better writer than me okay so what's what is he what is it he's doing uh and but it sort of gets into your head and suddenly you start the introduction to the next chapter that you're writing you go is it a bit more involved than you normally do

you're sort of describing the surroundings a bit more and people are being a bit more shifty you think yeah you were just reading john lecarré you idiot and then you then occasionally you sort of you you know then you have to row it back but you know the whole point about writing is you are a collection of your influences and so when you do read someone that you think i love the way this is written and you and you can roughly work out why you love it then that you take all of you learn so much from it and actually as you say it becomes a sort of adapted recipe and you all sorts of other ingredients go into it and it's part of finding your voice yeah exactly that but it's it's a genuinely great question and it's something that writers often talk about that there are certain books it is impossible to read when you're writing thank you

darren and also great work on either the commentary or the uh or the football whichever whichever darren flitcher you are thank you so much for all your questions that was fun yes it was great our producers just said there's literally a warehouse full of all these questions but please keep sending them in because they're so good the rest is entertainment at gmail.com and we'll be back on tuesday with a with an exclusive on my book if uh if if the lawyers at penguin allow but also what are they gonna i mean what are the lawyers at penguin going to do this is i'm officially speaking to the lawyers at penguin now are you now going to come and get, what are the lawyers at Penguin going to do? This is... I'm officially speaking to the lawyers at Penguin now. Are you now assuming they're going to come and get me pleaded the lawyers at Penguin? Yeah. Come and sue me.

Come and sue me. And I might spend the week trying to find some more TV I don't like, because I rather enjoyed that. I won't. You know that I won't. I look forward to hearing about it. I'll find plenty. We'll see you on Tuesday, everyone. Bye-bye. we'll see you on Tuesday everyone bye bye