The Rest Is History - 258. Costa Rica: Civil War

Episode Date: November 20, 2022

Join Tom and Dominic as they continue the World Cup series by discussing the Costa Rican Civil War. This event is filled with tremendous characters, including the historian-cum-president Teodoro Picado Michalski, José Figueres Ferrer who abolished the army, and the infamous Dr Valverde. Join The Rest Is History Club (www.restishistorypod.com) for ad-free listening to the full archive, weekly bonus episodes, live streamed shows and access to an exclusive chatroom community. *The Rest Is History Live Tour 2023*: Tom and Dominic are back on tour this autumn! See them live in London, New Zealand, and Australia! Buy your tickets here: restishistorypod.com Twitter:  @TheRestHistory @holland_tom @dcsandbrook Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Thank you for listening to The Rest Is History. For weekly bonus episodes, ad-free listening, early access to series, and membership of our much-loved chat community, go to therestishistory.com and join the club. That is therestishistory.com. hello welcome to the restless history continuing our epic world cup themed sweep through uh 32 countries of the world that have qualified for the football world cup in qatar uh and today dominic we come to i would guess the country that probably has the least history. The least history. The least history that perhaps people in this country have heard of any country. And that is Costa Rica.

Come on, Tom. You're not a fan of Costa Rican history? I am. This is unbelievable. So Costa Rica is famous for its wildlife, isn't it? It is indeed. It's famous for its red-eyed tree frogs. Right.

It's famous for its tremendous program of reforestation. Yeah. It's a great ecotourism destination. It is. And, of course, it's famous for its dinosaurs. Right. Well, I don't know much about Costa Rican dinosaurs. Well, you do.

You do. It's best known tourist attraction jurassic park on the isla nublar very good very good um but the history i know nothing about it well tom i'll tell you what to make it accessible for you now i know we said from the very beginning of this world cup series that it absolutely wasn't going to be about football but we will start with a tiny bit of football, just a tiny bit, I promise. So the 2014 World Cup, which was held in Brazil, Group D, England were drawn in Group D, and they were drawn along with Italy, Uruguay, and Costa Rica. So a tough group, three former winners, England, Italy, and Uruguay. And lots of people in England said, and said well this will be really hard but at least we'll get three points against the costa ricans

tom do you know who finished top of that group costa rica they did and you know who finished bottom england england absolutely right now the thing is we should have known better than to underestimate the costa ricans because that was actually their fourth world cup and they have qualified for six and that world cup in 2014 they went on to reach the quarterfinals and they came within a penalty shootout of reaching the semifinals. Extraordinary accomplishment for such a small Central American country. And actually, when you step back from that and you look at it, Costa Rica, as I said, is in Central America and their neighbors. So Nicaragua, Honduras, El Salvador, Guatemala, Panama, none of them have had anything like the same kind of sporting success

that Costa Rica have had. And generally, as you probably know, Tom, in sport as in so much else, it's actually money and stability. Yes. And Costa Rica is a very stable country, isn't it? Exactly. Exactly. So when you look at that list of countries, Nicaragua, Honduras, El Salvador, Guatemala, many of those countries are some of the most violent countries in the world, higher homicide rates, higher imprisonment rates than anywhere else. They're historically very unstable, and they're also extremely poor. But if you look at any ranking in Latin America, Costa Rica is not merely the safest country in Central America. So

as you said, an extremely popular ecotourism destination where you can be pretty confident that you won't get into any trouble. But it's one of the most affluent countries in Latin America. So it's comparable only really with Uruguay, Chile, and Argentina. So the country's right in the South. Now, when you look at it superficially, there's no obvious reason why that should be the case. Because in Costa Rica, they have the same Spanish language, they have the same customs, they have the same kind of ethnicity as people do in Nicaragua and Honduras and so on. So what is the explanation? Why is Costa Rica such an outlier? And to answer that, Tom, do you know where we need to go back to? No, I literally know nothing about the history of Costa Rica. I cannot put into words how little I know about the history of Costa Rica because I know nothing, nothing, literally nothing.

I'll be frank with you. You're going to to be educated you don't even need to educate yourself because I will do it thank you uh we are going back to the Costa Rican civil war of the 1940s very exciting talk wow okay okay who knew that they'd had a civil war I suppose Costa Ricans do but not many people distracted by the stuff that was going on in the 1940s I suppose and their eyes were not on Costa Rica where the main action was happening. So, okay, let's pull the camera right back. If you're in Costa Rica in the 1940s, where are you? So the bottom end of Central America,

you've got Nicaragua to the north, you've got Panama to the south. And historically, this has been the backwater of backwaters. So before the Spanish came to theicas um there were obviously people in costa rica pre-columbian people but there weren't you know great empires and cities as there were in what are now mexico and peru the spanish called it the costa rica they're kind of the rich coast basically um from hope rather than anything else they hoped there would be gold there so like greenland the vice is calling it green exactly right marketing scam they hope there's gold

and there's a tiny bit of gold but there's not very much and it takes them ages to conquer it they basically don't conquer it for about 50 years almost all the indigenous people are wiped out through disease and after that basically i mean to be to cut a very long story short nothing ever really happens in costa rica it's very underpopulated there's no native labor so there's disease. And after that, basically, I mean, to cut a very long story short, nothing ever really happens in Costa Rica. It's very underpopulated. There's no native labor. So there's no point establishing a big kind of hacienda, the big kind of estates that people establish in much of Latin America. It's very poor. It's very sparsely populated. It's kind of peasants. Even the governor, the Spanish colonial governor, has to basically farm his own crops and even kind of look after his own garden because there aren't enough domestic

servants and laborers and things to do it for him and as you no doubt know at the end of the napoleonic wars much of what's new new spain breaks away from madrid and so costa rica becomes independent kind of despite itself and it goes from one entity to another. It's part of the Mexican empire. It's part of what's called the Federal Republic of Central America. At one point, some American adventurers even tried to take it over and fail, but it ends up as this kind of independent republic. And in the 19th century, the big thing that happens is coffee. So in the 1820s, the coffee trade really takes off. And actually the biggest customer is Britain. So they start an Anglo-Costa Rican bank for coffee growers.

They build a railway from the coffee estate to the coast. And this, presumably, is when the deforestation happens. Yeah, exactly. They're now busy repairing. Yes, absolutely. But even so, Costa Rica is still very underpopulated. No big cities, no big estates. There's not much to fight over.

And so although there's a bit of turbulence in its politics, there's nothing like as turbulent as in Latin American countries where there's a lot of tension between big mercantile cities and kind of agricultural magnates between liberals and conservatives, Blancos and Colorados, all that stuff that you get in the 19th century. The other thing about Costa Rica in the 19th century, before we get back to 1940, we often completely forget this in English speaking.

Latin America was often very progressive. So they abolished the death penalty in 1871. They had freedom of religion. They had separation of church and state and the separation of kind of the judiciary and the legislature and the executive. So they're quite forward thinking. And their politics is not

ideological it's all about patrons and bosses big bosses which makes it very confusing so that's all the sort of context now 1940 so the president at the turn of the 1940s is a bloke called rafael angel calderon and he is a doctor he's been educated um interesting in belgium so almost everybody in this story that we're going to meet has kind of european links somewhere or other and he had come into he'd become president as the sort of the the friend of the of the of the coffee oligarchs as they're known so the people who control the coffee is that just a coffee oligarch yeah you could be a good thing to be yeah there's a lot of money in coffee um but over time, like a lot of Latin American politicians in the same period, he becomes more and more populist.

And he sort of carries that welfare policies. But he doesn't start wearing epaulettes or caps or anything. He doesn't. He doesn't quite go that far. Now, in Costa Rica, there's a constitutional provision that you can't run for consecutive terms as president. So Mr. Calderon, Señor Calderon, can't run for consecutive terms as president so mr calderon senor calderon can't run again and he gets basically a sort of dog's body of his so this is kind of putin behavior

yeah he's in a medford he has a dog's body of his called teodoro picardo mickalski to succeed him mickalski mr yes mr picardo mickalski his mother is from Krakow in Poland. Right. And he, very impressively, Tom, he speaks English, Polish, and French, as well as some Russian, Italian, and German. I mean, who knew that Costa Rican politicians were such polyglots? Does he speak any American? Any Spanish?

No, any American languages, kind of. What, Native American languages? Yes. Kind of like Nahuatl or something. Yes. No. No. any spanish any spanish no any american languages kind of uh what native american languages yes kind of like narwhal yes no no no one speaks that in costa rica so it'd be pointless for us right okay unless he was like a sort of jr tolkien figure learning it in his attic yes anyway he doesn't but you know what he is he's a historian is he i'm on his side well are you though because i don't know like like a lot of historians he's a bit of a weed he's a sort of plastic weak figure mr picardo mickalski now as as we get further into the 1940s uh costa rica starts to become a little bit unstable because basically the the populist policies that senor calderon the doctor was was um promoting and then

his his sort of flunky picardo is is they provoke great unrest among the kind of professional classes and the coffee people and so on and as is so often the way in latin america they become increasingly kind of authoritarian to kind of defend those policies and they basically rely start to rely more and more on militias provided by the Communist Party. So you've got this kind of growing tension, sort of violence on the streets and so on. And the stakes are getting higher and higher. And of course, the Cold War is in full swing by the late 1940s. So there's just a sense, you know, the temperature is rising. In 1947, there is a general strike called the Huelga de Brazos Caídos, the Strike of Fallen Arms.

I don't know why it's called that, but anyway, there's a general strike, and the government is very cross about this and starts intimidating merchants and manufacturers and so on. So there's a real sense of pressure. And what really adds to this is that I said there were term limits. It's preventing consecutive terms. But Calderon, like Vladimir Putin, I suppose. Can now come back. It can come back in the next election in 1948. And what's the weedy historian making of this?

He's just going to step aside in a weedy historian fashion, I suppose. I know you're disappointed by this, Tom. I am disappointed. Would you do this? Maybe you would. No, I wouldn't. I would learn the lesson of history and strike, and I'd strike hard. Okay, well, he didn't.

Because that, Dominic, that's what history teaches. It does. I've told you many times, the lesson of history is eat your neighbors before they eat you. That's the lesson of history. Anyway, listen, Calderon is going to run again, and everybody knows this, and everybody knows he's desperate to win. And his opponents, who are the sort of conservative middle classes and so on, and people who are worried that he's too authoritarian, they put up as their candidate a newspaperman called Otilio Ulate Blanco. And everyone knows it's going to be very close and contentious. And in the lead up to

election day, on the 8th of February, 1948 1948 there are all kinds of dark rumors that there's going to be fraud and there's going to be ballot stuffing and all this the the result is announced and the newspaper bloke pilate blanco has won 55 of the vote and calderon has won 45 so the big man the populist who everyone thought was going to be the quasi dictator has actually lost like tom alex salmon in the scotia independence referendum that wasn't the analogy that i was going to look for because he takes he you know he takes the stage and he says this is the mainstream media fake news well very examined i haven't lost at all there's been all kinds of fraud in this election i warned about it beforehand and i'm not going to accept the results.

And mysteriously, the day after the election, a suspicious fire destroys a lot of the ballots. So quite Trump. Quite Trump. Tom, finally. Yes, that's what I've been. I've probably been very hard on Calderon here, but I thought, you know, why not? So a fire destroys a lot of the ballots uh so congress which is controlled by calderon supporters cancels the elections three

weeks later throws them out and picardo the weedy historian says he'll carry on as president for the time being until they that's not what to do that. No, he's doing what he's told. He's doing what he's told by Calderon. So there's absolute outrage at this, Tom. Complete outrage. And Olate, the newspaperman, is outraged. He says, I've had the election stolen from me. He's going around.

He goes to his friend. What's the point of being a newspaperman if you can't? Well, his newspaper is obviously denouncing this. Yes, of course. I mean mean you know fake news well i think the costa rican civil war is definitive proof that people who think their mainstream media control politics are wrong it's all right okay anyway this newspaper bloke he goes to his friend dr valverde i don't know anything about him so i can't provide any any

form of pen portrait let your imaginations do the work with dr i imagine him he has a little pencil mustache and faintly sinister kind of nazi glasses and he does experiments on amphibians for fun but ultimately i think a kindly man tom no no he's the embodiment of evil no no that's not why i'm at dr is he goody you've got the sides completely muddled up oh i know nothing about this i'm just going you're out of your depth tom you don't know who the good guys are in this story at all. Dr. Valverde is very kind

to children, gives sweets to the homeless. Okay. He's a great man. He's a great man.

But this is a dark day for Dr. Valverde because Dr. Valverde, Tom, is hosting... Do you remember who Atelier Olate Blanco was? Yes, he's the newspaper man.

Yeah, he's hosting him at a meeting. He's been robbed. He's been robbed. Yeah, he's been robbed of the election. Atelier Olate Blanco has gone to meet Dr. Valverde. Right. But what's the significance of that? Well, the police surround Dr. Valverde's house, Tom.

Because they know he's evil. Shots ring out and Dr. Valverde is shot in his own doorway. And Olate Blanco escapes, but is later captured. Maybe it was for the best. No, not for the best. So this is a sign that the Calderonistas are determined to do anything in their power to retain control of Costa Rica, Tom. Right. But they have reckoned, do you know who they've reckoned without?

A figure we've not yet mentioned, but the greatest figure in Costa Rica's history. John Hammond. What? John Hammond? Is that your suggestion? John Hammond? Who's John Hammond? He that your suggestion? John Hammond?

Who's John Hammond? He sets up Jurassic Park. No, it's not him. They have reckoned without Don Pepe himself. Jose Figueres Ferrer, named Tom to conjure with. To echo down the ages. In the world of Costa Rican,

Costa Rican, historiography. So tell me about him. Do we know about him? I think he is such a big figure And he is the father Of modern Costa Rica We should absolutely

Take a break To compose ourselves And come back after the break To talk about Don Pepe Okay I'm Marina Hyde And I'm Richard Osman And together we host

The Rest Is Entertainment It's your weekly fix Of entertainment news Reviews Splash of showbiz gossip And on our Q&A We pull back the curtain On entertainment And we tell you how it all works. We have just launched our Members Club.

If you want ad-free listening, bonus episodes and early access to live tickets, head to therestisentertainment.com. That's therestisentertainment.com. hello welcome back to the rest of history where we are talking about the costa rican civil war a subject i know literally nothing about um but dominic you know lots about it and you are building up to um perhaps the most exciting moment in this already i have say, thrill-filled episode. And you're introducing Mr. Big, Senor Grande, Don Pepe. Don Pepe, Jose Figueres, the big man of Costa Rican history, Tom. So I told you before the break,

if you were listening, as I hope you were, that all the people in this story had European connections. This is Sergio Don Pepe. His parents were from Barcelona. And he'd been born in Costa Rica in 1906, just after they immigrated to Costa Rica. And his Catalan identity was always very important to him. He's very independent-minded, is Figueres.

Like the Catalans tend to be. Yes, exactly. Well, that's why he sort of says, I'm Catalan. I'm always very Catalan. I'm very strong-willed. He's sent to a seminary. He doesn't like it at all. He drops out in the 1920s, and he goes off to Boston to study at MIT,

the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. But he's studying hydroelectric science at MIT, and he finds it, unsurprisingly, I think it's fair to say, very boring. So he drops out of that as well, and he puts himself through a curriculum he's devised himself of reading at the Boston Public Library. And he reads Cervantes, he reads Kant, he reads Nietzsche, and he reads H.G. Wells. So he's a clever man. He comes back to Costa Rica. He becomes a big coffee

grower and it would delight you to hear, Tom, he is a manufacturer of rope, which I know from your reading of Patrick O'Brien you're very interested in. Okay, I'm against him. He is a philanthropist. He's a very kindly kind of Victorian paternalist employer. He builds houses

for his workers. Maybe I'm not against him then. Yeah, exactly harsh on dr valverde yes i was now dead and you cannot afford to be harsh on don pepe okay i'm all for don pepe he establishes a nice vegetable farm for his workers fifa don pepe a dairy with free milk so what's not to like he's a a great fellow. Anyway, he's a kindly man, I think it's fair to say to his sort of workers. But in the early 1940s, he had become increasingly alarmed by the authoritarian direction of the Calderon administration. And he had in fact been exiled for two years in Mexico because he'd said, this sort of authoritarian president is going

to end up as a communist and you should watch out. He comes home and in the run-up to that election, he had become a major figure in something called the Caribbean Legion. And the Caribbean Legion is a kind of pro-democracy group across the Caribbean. They are very opposed to the dictator Somoza in Nicaragua and Rafael Trujillo, the horrible dictator in the Dominican Republic. And one of their members, Tom, who you'll definitely have heard of, and we won't need to provide an invented pen portrait of, is a young man called Fidel Castro. He's a member of the Caribbean Legion. So the Caribbean Legion think, basically, if we can have Costaica as a democratic base in

central america then we can spread democracy to the rest of central america and figueres don pepe is very keen on this and when he hears about the murder of dr valverde not as you claim an experimenter on frock but a but a lover a kindly gentleman i it's fair, more accurate to say, a man of whom we know absolutely, you and I know absolutely nothing. But maybe, Dominic, maybe we have some, who knows, perhaps some Costa Rican listeners. And if we do, or we have anybody who knows anything about Costa Rican history, they could tell us.

Yeah. I can assure you, I have scoured what few books there are on Costa Rican history, and I can find nothing about dr well anyway listen figueres decides this is my chance basically figueres is don pepe just just to be it's don pepe yes i'll call him figueres from that throughout let's put down pepper because he sounds too much like a pizza or something he sounds like a brand of sherry doesn't he he does he's actually not a pizza at all that would be italian he's a he's a brand of sherry he's not he's not he's figueres he's a very impressive person. Figueres says, right, this is it. We're going to have to trigger an uprising. The election has been stolen and all this stuff. And he's raised this little army. of anti-communists, of people who represent the coffee interests, but also people on the left who are, you know, they're left-wing, but they're pro-democracy and they're suspicious of the kind of

authoritarianism of the Calderon regime. So this little National Liberation Army fights its way into the second city within a couple of weeks. So the fighting sort of breaks out in march 1948 and by the 20 12th of april they're in carthago which is the second largest city they're kind of carrying more before carthage yeah named after carthage and so this is really becoming quite a theme of our carthaginian theme cup episodes isn't it we've had we've had uh ganabal and now so maybe when the world cup is over, we can repackage this series, Tom, as a...

Yes. The world history... Carthage around the world, yeah. Yeah, exactly. So basically, the support for the government is melting away, and they're increasingly reliant on the communists, on this communist militias. So the capital is San Jose,

and the communists are going to hold up in the capital. And the question is, are they going to hold out while Figueres' little army are approaching? Or are they going to accept defeat? And it's at this point that the United States is really crucial, because, of course, this is the Cold War. The Americans are very, very anti-communist. And the Americans basically make it plain to the government. They say, if the communists end up properly taking over, we will send in troops from Panama. They mobilize, they have troops on alert in the canal zone in Panama ready to step in. And Picardo, the weedy historian who's still president. Oh, he's still there, is he?

He's still hanging around. He's a bit of a figurehead. He sends a message to Calderon and to the communists. And he says, listen, it will be an absolute catastrophe if we have street fighting in the capital. Because as a historian, he would know that, wouldn't he? That would be a lesson of history that he would draw. And if he hadn't been a historian, yes, he could have said street fighting would be brilliant. So this is a victory in some ways for history. It's a vindication of history. I think it is.

So, and he says basically the united states will step in and this will be a disaster we can't have this so the picardo the communists and calderon they all agree they will give up okay calderon goes off to um nicaragua with picardo the historian so the doctor and the historian are gone the communists just sort of melt away after a bit of fighting on the 24th of april so you know what is it what are we less than two months after the the whole business began uh figueres's forces enter san jose and they take over the government so not big death toll about um about 2 000 people the war lasted 44 days well wait for it wait for it so just to tell you what happened to all the characters picardo the historian he stayed in

nicaragua forever he never came back that was the end of him calderon the doctor he goes he's in exile in mexico where he bizarrely he just goes back to being a doctor again then he comes back to costa rica he runs for president unsuccessfully and ends up as an ambassador to Mexico from Costa Rica, which is quite a benevolent outcome. Now, that is a clue about what happens to Costa Rica. Because actually, everything that we've talked about till now is sort of standard Latin American stuff, isn't it? Clues and people called Don Pepe and all that sort of standard latin american stuff isn't it clues and people called don pepe and yeah all that sort of thing but what actually happened is what happens that is the difference what happens now because figueres he takes power for 18 months and he's basically says i will take power

and then i'll give it up i have no ambition to be a dictator. This is the guy we talked about as the Catalan who read Cervantes and was a sort of kindly rope employer. And in his 18 months, he gives women the vote. He abolishes the sort of reading requirements, the literacy requirement for voting. He confirms the existing welfare legislation. He nationalizes the banks. He writes a new constitution, expands public education. He gives citizenship to the children of black immigrants, which had previously been denied them. But he does one thing above all, for which Costa Rica really is famous. He abolishes the army. Oh, yes, of course.

And Costa Rica is still the only country of its size with no army um and why does figueres do it well he basically he knows that the army is sort of untrustworthy i suppose he's frightened maybe of a coup so and he knows that the army was working for his adversaries but also there's a kind of idealism there. He basically says, if you don't have an army, then you won't have more coups and you won't have civil wars. And he's also, crucially, I talked about his reading in the Boston Public Library in H.G. Wells. H.G. Wells, in his book, The Outline of History, predicted a future with no armies. And he had said, a world with no army, this sort of pacifist world would be a better one. Figueres genuinely believes it.

And that is a kind of much nobler way to not have an army than Qatar that we talked about in our first episode, which also doesn't have an army. So there's a parallel. And then does he give up power? So he gives up power. He literally walks away. So he's like S's like he's like sulla

the a bit like the roman dictator but but obviously less bloodthirsty sulla kept coming back didn't he no sulla laid down his dictatorial powers and then went off and died of intestinal worms but i mean he killed a lot of people but it sounds like don pepe don pepe didn't kill anybody no he's a much more benevolent figure He walked away and then just became a democratic politician. So he actually had two more terms as president. What an admirable man. In the 1950s and 1970s. He had such an interesting sort of political identity.

He was always close to the United States because, of course, he studied in Boston. Yeah, reading all that stuff in the library. He was very careful. So he would sort of criticize them in public and in private, saying he used to say, your hands are not clean to fight communism if you don't also fight dictatorships. And he's not wrong. He took money from the CIA and the KGB, interestingly. So he's not only a benevolent man, but a canny man, yeah. He's a canny man. When, in the 70s, when he's quite an old man and president again, some Nicaraguans hijacked a plane in San Jose in 1971. And when Figueres heard about it, he went straight, he was 5'3",

so very short. He went straight to the airport himself with a submachine gun and pointed it at the hijackers in the cabin until they surrendered. So he's a brave man. So he's benevolent, he's canny, and he's a have-a-go hero. He is. He sounds one of the most remarkable political leaders of the late 20th century. Apparently he went to a Central American summit where he was held in low regard by other Central American strongmen for all this behavior. And he went, but in a Central American summit in 1973, he said, apparently said, ruined the atmosphere, apparently by his own description. He spoiled it for them all by saying to them, isn't it odd that

all you bastards are generals and I'm the only civilian, but I'm the only one who's ever fought and won a war. He sounds great. I love him. I love and i took to say it again the thing i'm loving about this series is learning about all kinds of things i knew nothing about i think he is dominic i think he's my favorite 20th century hiking south american leader well central american leader i think he is proof that political choices genuinely make a difference to countries' destinies. Because if you look at Costa Rica right now, it has the lowest crime, the highest literacy, the best health care, the greatest stability, and indeed the best football team in Central America. And the best frogs. And the best frogs.

And it still, of course, has no… Despite the efforts of the evil Dr. Valverde. Dr. Valverde. I like to think that you'll get angry letters from his descendants, Tom, about your shamefulness. But I'll tell you, do you know what they did with the army? Do you know what happened? Well, of course you don't, because you've said yourself

you don't know about Costa Rican history. So they had a public ceremony when they abolished it in 1949. And they had a public ceremony. And the commander-in- chief in public took the key to the army headquarters, and he handed it to the minister of education, who announced that it would henceforth become a museum. Wow. And it still is. Swords beaten into school textbooks. Exactly. So there is Costa Rican history. Amazing, Dominic. Wonderful. I honestly thought this was going to be probably the most boring episode, but I completely apologize. That was a brilliant episode. So thank you very much. I think the highlight of that was

your discussion of poor old Dr. Valfoy. Well, I hope that everyone else listening enjoyed that as much as I did. Thank you all for listening. We'll be back with more world cup related historical shenanigans tomorrow bye-bye adios thanks for listening to the rest is history episodes, early access, ad-free listening, and access to our chat community, please sign up at restishistorypod.com. That's restishistorypod.com. I'm Marina Hyde. And I'm Richard Osman.

And together we host The Rest Is Entertainment. It's your weekly fix of entertainment news, reviews, splash of showbiz gossip and on our Q&A we pull back the curtain on entertainment and we tell you how it all works. We have just launched our Members Club. If you want ad-free listening, bonus episodes and early access to live tickets, head to therestisentertainment.com. That's therestisentertainment.com.