Marina Hyde (1:26)

Cause there's always something new.

Advertiser Voice (1:27)

Join the Nordic club to unlock exclusive discounts. Shop new arrivals first and more. Plus, buy online and pick at your favorite rack store for free. Great brands, great prices. That's why you Rack protein is now

Richard Osborne (1:42)

at Starbucks and it's never tasted so good. You can add protein cold foam to your favorite drink or try one of our new protein lattes or matcha. Try it today at Starbucks.

Marina Hyde (2:00)

Hello and welcome to this episode of the Rest is Entertainment with me, Marina

Richard Osborne (2:03)

Hyde and me, Richard Osborne. Hi, Marina. Marina.

Marina Hyde (2:06)

Hello, Richard. How are you?

Richard Osborne (2:07)

I'm all right. I wouldn't want to be entertainment right about now with the grilling. We're about to give it absolutely.

Marina Hyde (2:11)

We're preparing to run the rule over it all. There's. We've got quite a few fun things to talk about.

Richard Osborne (2:16)

We have, we're going to talk about AI in books. Some people are using it. A couple of high profile examples of that. A couple of. Couple of big fools on the way. We're talking about that. We are talking about, talking about big fools. It's amazing story. If you know the story, you're going to love it. If you don't know the story, I think you might love it even more. The star of the Secret Lives of Mormon Wives and the new season of the Bachelorette has just brought both of those franchises down in one go. We're talking about how.

Marina Hyde (2:44)

What a take. Dan.

Richard Osborne (2:45)

Shall we start with AI in books? We've got two stories we want to talk about. Should we start with my story? Because you want to talk about Matt Goodwin.

Marina Hyde (2:54)

I hope our audience understands that this is a story I find impossible to take seriously at any level.

Richard Osborne (2:59)

You are, you've virtually been bouncing your seat all morning because you wanted to talk about it. But Mia Ballard, who is an American author, self published author who wrote a book called Shy Girl, which is, I don't know listeners, if you enjoy your Femgore horror, but it's firmly in the Femgore horror genre about a character who is kidnapped and kept as a pet by listening. It's a, it's Femgore horror.

Marina Hyde (3:24)

Yeah.

Richard Osborne (3:25)

As I say, she was self published author published. This and the way publishing is now. I've spoken a lot about self publishing. It's an amazing.

Marina Hyde (3:34)

Don't be sniffy about self publishing because how many of actual publishing's hits now come from it?

Richard Osborne (3:38)

The world of creativity out there is absolutely huge and publishers have been going to that well more and more and more to just take stuff that they know already is popular and publish it themselves. And so traditional publishing has started, you know, going into self publishing, taking these things off the shelf, almost repackaging them, putting them in, you know, bricks and mortar shops and making a lot of money out of that. The other thing that's happening is self publishing, quite apart from the top end of it, starting to make a huge amount of money for people. The other thing that's happening is it's been absolutely flooded with AI because this is a world in which you expect to pay $0.99 per for a book and you expect an author to do 10 books a year. You know, these are the, some of, some of the things that happen in self publishing. And so it's absolutely rife for AI Also, absolutely no barriers to entry into this market. Don't have to go through an editor, don't have to go through a publisher. Doesn't have to go through anything legal. You just write it, format it, put it on the Amazon store or lots of other places. You can do that as well. So one hand, all this self published stuff on one hand, traditional publishers saying, oh my God, some of this stuff is really selling. At some point the following was going to happen that a traditional publisher, in this case Hachette, one of the absolute biggest publishers in the world, took this book. Shy Girl by Mia Ballard, said, we are going to publish this, published it in the uk. It appears it has been written or certainly heavily amended by AI And Hachette have accepted it, pulped it, said, this is absolutely unacceptable. There's all sorts of other stuff going, going on in the world.

Marina Hyde (5:20)

Can I ask you a tiny thing about it which is I was quite interested in. Okay, so when they take it, they take, they, they say, we're going to publish your book. We're going to properly publish your book. Sorry to use the word proper but you know, just differentiate here.

Richard Osborne (5:31)

Traditionally publish.

Marina Hyde (5:31)

Yeah, traditionally publish your book. They said we, we are enjoying refining her book with her. So does that mean it's not the exact text that went self published? Because you've now got an editor and they're going to say by the way, it really drags here or something in the nicest possible way. It's going to have to be a bit different for our purposes. But now you have a book deal and now you're going legit and blah, blah.

Richard Osborne (5:52)

I mean, as we will discover, it's actually slightly a halfway house because it's not one of those ones where they're involved. The publisher's involved right from the beginning and is able to sort of have meetings and you know, is heavily invested in it, but, but they will do some due diligence, editing and then a light edit. But you know, essentially they know people like this book and we're reading it and there is a mood afoot in publishing, which I think is quite right, of why would we impose what we think a book is on a book that is already selling? So there's, it's a light touch. But the key thing is there was a Reddit thread started about two and a half months ago that started raising questions about this and started saying, look, I'm reading the first chapter of this Mia Ballard book and it looks a lot like AI. It's reading an awful lot like AI.

Marina Hyde (6:41)

Tell me what the signifiers were, because we know some of them in nonfiction writing.

Richard Osborne (6:47)

Yes.

Marina Hyde (6:47)

Like, it's not X, it's Y.

Richard Osborne (6:49)

It's exactly the same. So there's an emotional flattening. It doesn't do nuance and peaks and troughs very well, other than within individual sentences. Within individual sentences, it can actually go, you know, the light shone like darkness was never there, and the darkness shone like light was never to be. It does that sort of thing all the time where you go, oh. You go, oh, hold on a minute, though. That actually makes any sense. It does. Every single noun will have an adjective. I mean, it absolutely overwrites that sort of thing. Every action has a simile, every single one of them. It will not leave a single piece of action alone without, you know, describing what it is. A bit like, there's lots of lists of three. Something X, something Y, something Z. Now, all of these things every writer

Marina Hyde (7:34)

does so many of.

Richard Osborne (7:36)

Yeah, but I think people have worked out that you can just go through and say, take out em dash.

Marina Hyde (7:42)

It's really hard, especially for digital natives who've grown up in these kind of word, you know, worlds. You absorb the writing style. I mean, I hope I don't, but I feel as a journalist, I'm waiting for someone to say, your column's AI and it not be.

Richard Osborne (7:55)

And this is.

Marina Hyde (7:56)

I know we'll get to a whole section of discussion on that, but this

Richard Osborne (7:58)

is why it's a really interesting thing, because a lot of people will say, yeah, yes, but that's how people write, and particularly that's how neurodiverse people write. And all of that is true. Every single one of them.

Marina Hyde (8:06)

And you've been trained on those people.

Richard Osborne (8:07)

Every single one of these things, these tropes are things that writers use. However, they don't use it all the time on every page, which is what AI does. It does the same thing again. Again, again, again. A human writer will. Will always, at the end of a chapter or the end of a section, just going, okay, how is my reader feeling now? Was that too dense? Do we need a bit of lightness, of touch? A real author's going, what? What? What move would surprise my reader next? What move would, you know, move my reader next? Well, AI is thinking, what word would normally come next? It's all they're thinking. And so it doesn't differentiate throughout a whole book. So I've talked to a lot of editors and agents this week because part of this whole Mia Ballard story is someone put all of her. Put this work through an AI, you know, scanner, and said, oh, it's 78% AI or something like that. I didn't meet a single agent or publisher who uses one of those AI detection things. They use their gut because they're reading writing all day, every day. And a lot of these people have been doing that for 40, 30, 20 years. I mean, it's, it's just what they do. They, they absolutely understand it. They understand that writers can use all of these cliches, but they get to a point where they can read five

Marina Hyde (9:21)

pages and you're like, this is, yeah,

Richard Osborne (9:23)

this is not working for me. Even cover letters and, you know, cover art and things like that. So the Mia Ballard thing, a lot of people have now come out in her defense and say, oh no, but, you know, if you put Frankenstein through an AI generator, it says it's 100% AI and all of this stuff. It seems that this is a fairly clear cut case that Hashet went to Mia Ballard and said, we suspect that this is AI generated. She has said this is her quote. She said, someone in my writing group offered to help, she'd done a draft. Someone in my writing group offered to help and assured me she'd do a thorough job. So I trusted her in the process. She also changed a lot of the wording and encouraged me to lean more poetic because that's my background. And I listened. I should have done one final careful pass before publishing, and that's on me. Essentially, she's saying I gave it to somebody else and they used ChatGPT to edit it. She's published previous books which don't appear to have had AI assistance there. So this is very, very different. So Hachette pulped it. They said, we're not going to publish it anymore. Hachette in the us which was about to publish it, has pulled it as well. And it's the first example of this happening. It's the first example of these major publishers being duped into doing an AI helped novel. She's pursuing legal action. Mia Ballard. So may perhaps, listen, perhaps there's an entirely innocent explanation for all of this. And certainly if there was AI involved, it's not the biggest crime in the world. We don't like it, but it's, you know, to have it escalated like this must be absolutely insane for her. But this world of self publishing, I follow lots of self publishing groups and I find them very, very, very interesting. And, and you can see the, the panic Amongst them because 19 well, certainly all the human beings are doing their own Work. You see the panic where they go, yeah, but I use Grammarly to help with my grammar sometimes. Because if you don't have an editor or a copy editor, you know, you're. It's due diligence. Does that mean it's AI and on the other side of things, that there are people who will type in a prompt, go make a cup of tea and come back and they've got a book and they'll publish it and we'll do 200 books a year. So there's no way in the future that these books are going to be AI free because people are going to use tools to help them if they're not in traditional publishing. So it is beholden on publishers and I think this is a good news story to keep an eye out for these things. The world of self publishing is going to be in trouble because there is so much AI stop. And there's so much of it, but there's so much human creativity out there as well. So I just hope people who are self published are not disheartened by this whole Mia Ballard thing, because it's one thing it was found out. It is obvious to almost everyone who has read this book what the situation is. So is this the start of a huge avalanche of AI books that are going to be in your bookshops? I don't think so. I think the exact opposite. I think there's a real kick up the backside for the publishing industry. I think they're all going, oh my God, thank God that was Hachette and not us.

Marina Hyde (12:26)

Yes, charge of the lightweight brigade.

Richard Osborne (12:29)

Yeah. We have another thing which is everyone being accused of using AI, which is something different. And now it's become absolutely a thing that you can beat anyone with. And as you say these, I'm dreading someone saying it.

Marina Hyde (12:38)

I obviously have never written a column with AI, but I'm always thinking that someone can just. It's like when someone turns around and says, oh, you've plagiarized this idea or something. It's like these. The worst thing you can say if you really care about those things.

Richard Osborne (12:50)

Well, as I say, these detection things don't particularly work. So that's, that's. That. That's not something, you know, there's no point putting everything through those because.

Marina Hyde (12:57)

And they're often trying to get you to sign up and get, you know, they're kind of scam. I don't want to say they're all scams, but a lot of them are scams in their own way.

Richard Osborne (13:03)

But I Spoke to an agent who had a client who had a book out last year, first book debut books, a really big deal. And in the first week they were accused of having an AI front cover. So they said your front cover is AI, which is a huge thing in self publishing. Lots and lots of AI front covers. And you know, the writing community are very good at understanding that if you want to be protected, we also protect artists. And so they're very, very against it. So there was this huge sort of uproar. Fortunately for this author, the actual illustrator who had drawn that front cover that people were accusing of being AI had done a time lapse photography of her drawing it.

Marina Hyde (13:41)

Oh my God.

Richard Osborne (13:42)

So she had absolute proof of doing it. But in future, because this is the way that AI, this is the way that public, genuinely, the only thing that really publishing is really think about AI is can they come up with their own IP without having to involve human beings, give it to a jobbing writer, have it written, and then own all of everything, right? So something like my Oxford year was come up with by the publisher, Julia Whelan, who's an amazing writer, wrote it. And, you know, but the publisher owns an awful lot more of that than they would if Julia Whelan had come to them. So if you are a publisher and you sit at home with AI and it comes up with Project Hail Mary for you, for example, which is the Andy Ware book, biggest selling book in the world this week. So it comes up with that for you, you give it to a writer and suddenly you own Project Hail Mary. And so I keep hearing this in publishing that, well, they would just do that, wouldn't they? They would cut out the originator. But, and we go back to that time lapse photography, if that happened, say Project Hail Mary was an AI thing and the publisher sort of came up with it, gave it to a writer, it comes out, is a huge hit. I go, I don't think I'd like to know how you came up with that publisher. Because you don't. You're not. Somebody comes up with good ideas, how did you come up with it? And they go, oh, I just thought of it somehow. No, I need proof. Because if AI does come up with it, if AI came up with a Project Hail Mary, the publishers would not own it. There is no copyright in something that AI came up with. So I'll just go and do Project Hail Mary 2. That's easy. And someone else does Project Hail Mary 3. So this thing of we are going to have to be in a position As I say, as we rebuild this industry after this hurricane has blown through, where we find a way to prove that we originate our own ideas.

Marina Hyde (15:22)

I'm going to wear a GoPro to write my column. But people, God, that would be unwatchable. I've seen some unwatchable things in my life, but that would be up there with some of the worst of Guy Ritchie.

Richard Osborne (15:34)

But with a simple. We're going to need a simple piece of blue chip software that is able to show, to prove that, A, we came up with an idea and then B, that we wrote it. And now I feel very fortunate. All these writers I was talking to the other day said, my God, thank God I started writing before this all came out. You know, I was talking to Lee Child, he goes, thank God. I mean, he said he'd written all of his books before AI came out. And he goes, I never have to worry about it. But if you're a younger writer now, you, you are absolutely going to have to answer this constantly throughout your whole career. And so just some way like the illustrator with the time lapse photography is just saying, here is me drawing it. We are going to have to have a thing that says, here is me writing it. A publisher is going to have to accept that the publisher is going to have to sign legally to say, yes, you did that as well. Or if they give you a thing, they are going to have to sign something to say, I didn't use AI to come up with this, but I do think this is one world where we, we want human beings. And so we'll just find a little way, a little gold standard of how to say human made. Like when you go to a National Trust gift shop, you know, and there's a little pot of jam and the person who made it signs it.

Marina Hyde (16:38)

You know, it's an artisan newspaper, Colin.

Richard Osborne (16:40)

Art is exactly that. Exactly that. Can I make one more philosophical point?

Marina Hyde (16:45)

Yes.

Richard Osborne (16:46)

Which is the AI industry. I mean, it stole everyone's books. Okay, so Anthropic and OpenAI scraped everyone's books and, you know, has used them in their large language models. There is a feeling amongst some writers still that what AI is doing is thinking this is going to be a brilliant way for us to write books. Oh, my God. We've got all these books so we can copy them and we can do our own versions of books. And that's never been the game for AI at all. The reason they scraped all of our books is because they just wanted a huge repository of fairly well constructed sentences. They're not in the business of oh my God, we can write books here because there is no money in books. If you look at the industries that AI can be going into and are going into, you know, medicine, shipping, all of these things, insurance, these things that are multi, multi trillion dollar industries, books, they don't care. They used us, they used us just for our words, just so they can train people how to write emails. And then they moved on but they've left a mess behind them which we're going to have to deal with. And by we I mean publishers, writers, self published authors. But I think we can deal with it. That's the truth of it. Readers want to read stuff written by human beings. Human beings still want to write books. Publishers want to support that industry. So the anthropics and OpenAI's of this world, we're still going to sue them. Don't worry about that. They're absolutely, they've stolen from us. If you're worried that, yeah, but it's going to get better and better at writing novels and soon they're going to be indistinguishable. That doesn't seem to be the direction that AI is going in. AI, its selling point is to be accurate and concise and boring. Its selling point is not to be radical and different and creative. That's. There's no money in that because the shipping logistics industry don't want that from their LLMs. OpenAI anthropic, they're not interested in books. It's our business again and we as an industry can just get on and we can build something that is real and true and human and that people will I think value even more because of what's happened.

Marina Hyde (18:49)

Okay, well I like, I've got a couple of counterpoints to that in my next case study. This is the business about Matt Goodwin. I'll give you a potted history of who Matt Goodwin is. He is used to, I mean I don't know if he still calls himself an academic. Used to be an academic. He actually co wrote a really interesting book in a research book with another academic who's great called Rob Ford called Revolt on the Right and that came out in 2014 by the way, I, if you read that book at the time you could basically essentially predict that Brexit was going to happen. It was really interesting. It was like an analytical look at how so many, there'd been so many unmoorings from traditional kind of voter bases that some, there was, you know, potential for that. Anyway, since then he's been on A little bit of a journey rightward, if those directions still make any sense anymore. He's got a substack. He. A political substack. He stood in Gordon and Denton and the recent by election. And he lost for reform, right? Yeah, yeah, lost for reform. He lost to the Greens. He's sometimes described as reforms in house. Intellectual. Anyway, he published, self published again, which I think is interesting. Recently, just really recently, last couple of weeks, a book called Suicide of a Nation with the subtitle Immigration, Islam Identity. And he is saying that it's selling amazingly because it's numbered 2 on Amazon or something like that. It's now in the realm of Jamie Oliver cookbooks. Okay. Challenge. It's not. This is not the air fryer and he knows it.

Richard Osborne (20:14)

Citation needed.

Marina Hyde (20:15)

Citation needed. Okay, so a political writer called Andy Twelves has suggested that this book is AI generated. And it's got sort of, or to some degree AI generated. It's got made up quotes from like Cicero, Livy. I mean, they should be glad people are still talking about them. But anyway, and some of them, by the way, a lot of the stories simply cannot take it seriously. So apologies for all the people who've been taking it very, very seriously for the last week and that there are AI hallucinations in it and chatgpt sourcing and so on. He did come up with this epic nickname, Matt GPT, which, I'm sorry, it's just. It's like one of those Trump ones. It's like, oh, it's so good. Unfortunate. I can only think of this person in this way now. Anyway, Andy12 challenged him to a debate on. Or maybe Matt Goodwin challenged him to a debate, which happened on Friday night on GP News. I know I've used this quote before, but I remember in the 90s, watching a dating show, American Dating show, and they said to the woman, what sort of men do you like? And she said, I like men who fight in bars. I remember thinking, oh, my God, okay. I like men who challenge each other to debates on news channels, on TV news. Get in line, girls. And I think it was resoundingly won by Andy Twelves. I mean, nobody really watches these things probably. Yeah, all the sort of inside beltway people watch it, but it exists, like all of this stuff just to be clippable, which is kind of relevant to what we're talking about here. Okay. What I am very much into. And I pretty much think we're going to talk about Taylor, Frankie, Paul in this way. Matt Goodwin's just posting through it. Okay. He's not. And everyone's like, you should, you know, they tried to destroy me. Yeah. No, you have to. They've tried to destroy me. They're making me stronger than ever. My book's now at number two on the Amazon charts, which I'm going to come to you in a second and ask you what on earth you. Yeah, but people have just been like, oh, he should go away and think about. I've seen, you know, genuinely, people who regard themselves as credible thinkers saying, you know, Matt, to go away and actually consider what's happened here. It's like, wake up. Okay?

Richard Osborne (22:12)

Yeah.

Marina Hyde (22:12)

Politics has been post shame forever. Okay? This is. This is good for him. Okay. I'm really sorry. People have spent the whole weekend saying he's been totally destroyed. Rubbish. Okay. You're so wrong. Okay. Nonsense. Okay. It's really interesting how the right has taken so much of what the left did in terms of online stuff. Like the left were, you know, that kind of online victimhood, all of that, which was originally definitely very much a preserve of the left. The white have now just taken that, weaponized it. They're so much better at it. What even is this book? I remember when my eldest son was tiny, like three months old, he had a cloth book, something about a monkey, you know, it squeaked, it crinkled, blah, blah, blah. And I remember thinking, oh, my gosh, his fat. Like he's got a book already. And then it's like, wake up. What are you talking about? It's not a book. It's like a paginated toy, okay? It's just got something.

Richard Osborne (23:05)

That's what books are.

Marina Hyde (23:06)

Yeah. What Matt Goodwin has written. He hasn't written one of these treatises even something like Liz Truss's Let's Save the West. It's nothing like that. It is just. It's aimed at the Facebook audience, which, I mean, skews older. If I can put that blank. And it's a paginated piece of Internet. That's all. It doesn't have to be the same as what you think some whatever book is. I went sitting with my parents this weekend and, you know, like many people of that generation, up next to the landline on the wall is useful numbers. And it's, you know, me, my sisters, the gp, you know. Nice Mark. Taxi.

Richard Osborne (23:45)

Yeah.

Marina Hyde (23:45)

David Hare. Not the playwright. It's David.

Richard Osborne (23:48)

I don't know who does the hair. Okay.

Marina Hyde (23:50)

Ray Plummer, you know, useful numbers.

Richard Osborne (23:52)

Ray Plummer, the playwright.

Marina Hyde (23:53)

Yeah. Useful numbers. This is just useful numbers, this book. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's Useful. I don't even know if they're true, but people don't mind about them being tr. My counterpoint, no one is going to care about this in a few years time.

Richard Osborne (24:09)

So this is not the book industry.

Marina Hyde (24:10)

No, I know this is not someone who buy. The people who are buying this, they may also buy some novels a year. I don't know whether they do or don't. I suspect probably not. It's a different type of audience. It's one of the things they might sell in Waterstones. A bit like they might sell all the games and the toys and the packs of cards and the books of stamps. It's a thing, it's a paginated piece of information.

Richard Osborne (24:34)

And also, you know, Matt Goodwin's living is Matt Goodwin now, as so many people in this era. So his job when he wakes up every morning is, I know how much money I earned last month. I've got a rough idea because I've got this amount of people following me on substack and there's not much churn. I've got a rough idea of how much I'm making next month. Where do I get some extra cash? Look, I'll do this book because. And again, he's not thinking this is the thing that's going to make me millions. He's just thinking this is the next bit of what I do. You know, it's just, just another way of, of monetizing what I do. So you, you do a book and you put it out there and you hope that it blows up and people give you lots of publicity, not looking at how many he sold. He's not going to make a huge amount of money out of it, but he's getting lots of it is not

Marina Hyde (25:14)

going to be a Jamie Oliver cookbook. Let me tell him that right now.

Richard Osborne (25:17)

Oh, no. But he knows that. He knows exactly how many they've sold. He knows that. So this afternoon we'll get the Nielsen ratings which tell you actually how many books you've sold through Amazon and through all the normal bookstores. And if your website, you know, has Nielsen creditation as well, can you explain

Marina Hyde (25:33)

to us what the Amazon chart actually means?

Richard Osborne (25:35)

Amazon chart. I saw a thing where he said it's the sixth best selling book in the UK this week by virtue of

Marina Hyde (25:41)

it being 6 on the Amazon chart.

Richard Osborne (25:43)

And I looked at Amazon, it was actually number three on Amazon. I said you could say third. The Amazon chart updates every three hours, four hours sometimes, and it just tells you where your book is at any given time. So if you're number six or let's be fair, he was number three on the Amazon chart. You are number three on one retailer for a four hour period and that is it. This is not the best selling books of the week or anything like that, but next week we will say exactly how many it sold. But the AI thing is sort of more interesting. So. Mia Ballard, I hope it's a line in the sand and that as an industry, as a fiction and novel writing industry, we can grow from there. The Matt Goodwin thing, it shows how actually books now, as you say, 30 years ago it was different. There was, there was some prestige and oh my God, he's published his treatise and now it's just, it's another. Matt is making his money from substack and he's making money from people, you know, hearing whatever he's having to say.

Marina Hyde (26:39)

And as you said, just posting through it.

Richard Osborne (26:41)

Yes. And this is a printed out version of that. Yeah. Posting through it, do you think, with him. And I don't know enough about him, you know, the thing with L. Ron Hubbard and Scientology, that he was a sci fi writer and would write about and things like that, and suddenly went, hold on, this seems to be quite a lot of money in this. If he did have a cult, you know, having written that book, which as you say, is super well respected, but understanding what was happening online with the right and the agitators and the money there was to be made, did a bit of him just go, I mean, listen, I work really, really hard being an academic and I know what I get paid. I feel like there might be money here.

Marina Hyde (27:15)

Yeah. And Rob Ford, who wrote it with him and is now sort of like his mortal foe, and he remains in the camp with, you know, he'll do. He'll go in the room with John Curtis all the day of the election and he'll be one of the people who creates the exit poll. And you know, it's really interesting. Yeah, it's. It's a, it's a sundering of. I don't think they were necessarily ever politically in the same place at all. In fact, they weren't. But nonetheless, they combined with that kind of discipline and the research to write this book. And then. Yeah. In the, in 12 years. Yeah, it's. Yeah. Different. Different branches of history.

Richard Osborne (27:49)

Anyway, next week's podcast will give you the. The final scores on the doors for Matt Goodwin's book.

Marina Hyde (27:55)

Shall we go to a break? We'll be talking about someone posting through it after the break as well.

Richard Osborne (27:59)

Oh, my God, she's posting through it.

Marina Hyde (28:00)

She's posting through it so much.

Richard Osborne (28:01)

Yeah, and also. And the best thing about it is it's not in our country. Unless you're in America, in which case we have bad news.

Marina Hyde (28:07)

Yeah, but you've got so much bad news. This is actually a light part of it.

Richard Osborne (28:17)

This episode is brought to you by Bumble.

Marina Hyde (28:19)

Now, there's a modern phenomenon when someone says they're on the apps, but what they actually mean is they downloaded them, opened them once, and then immediately felt tired.

Richard Osborne (28:26)

So, technically on the apps, but nowhere near them. Making and updating a dating profile can be weirdly exhausting. Too many decisions, too much pressure to come across as the best version of yourself.

Marina Hyde (28:37)

Well, that's where Bumble comes in. Instead of asking people to produce a personality from scratch, they give you personalized guidance on how to help show the authentic you.

Richard Osborne (28:45)

And not in a bossy way, more in a you're already interesting, but point the camera in the right direction.

Marina Hyde (28:50)

And the prompts are better, too. Less I like travel more. I once missed the train because I was petting a dog. Something someone else can respond to and spark conversations from.

Richard Osborne (28:59)

Because when a profile actually reflects someone's personality, conversations don't feel like small talk, they flow and they feel like they're going somewhere.

Marina Hyde (29:07)

So download Bumble today. Show more of the real you and see why it tends to be the app people hear about from friends.

Richard Osborne (29:12)

I like the idea of someone missing a train because they were petting a dog.

Marina Hyde (29:15)

Well, it's involving, isn't it?

Richard Osborne (29:16)

Isn't it?

Marina Hyde (29:17)

I mean, grossed.

Richard Osborne (29:18)

This episode is brought to you by People's Postcode Lottery.

Marina Hyde (29:21)

Now, in most things seen on screen, the location does a surprising amount of the storytelling. You see where you are and you already know what sort of drama that you've wandered into.

Richard Osborne (29:29)

Yeah, a big grand house might suggest there's some inheritance dispute lawyers already inside this fog outside. You know exactly where you are with that sort of location. But sometimes locations can be your very own house.

Marina Hyde (29:42)

Every so often, the setting turns out to be much closer to home. Your own front door.

Richard Osborne (29:47)

Your own front door. In People's Postcode Lottery, April draws, you could win a share of £25.7 million. You take that, wouldn't you, in the big spring win. And because your postcode is your ticket, this is one of those occasions where location really does matter.

Marina Hyde (30:04)

Some twists are scripted. Others are drawn for your chance to win. Sign up before midnight on the 31st of March.

Richard Osborne (30:11)

Is your door in the draw? Sign up@postcodelottery.co.uk People's Postcode Lottery manage lotteries

Marina Hyde (30:17)

on behalf of good causes. 18 Condition supply play responsibly. Not available in Northern Ireland.

Advertiser Voice (30:25)

Spring starts at the Home Depot, and we are bringing the heat to your backyard this season. Fire up the flavor with our wide variety of grills for under $300, like the next grill 4 burner gas grill that's perfect for hosting your spring cookout. Then set the scene and turn your outdoor space into the ghost. The patio sets for every budget. Bring it this season with grills that deliver flavor and patios that set the vibe from the Home Depot. Start your spring with low prices guaranteed at the Home Depot. Exclusions apply. See homedepot.com pricematch for details.

Richard Osborne (31:00)

Welcome back, everybody. Now, I should say, just as we've been recording, the news has come through that Scott Mills has been sacked from Radio 2 over his personal conduct. We obviously know nothing about that yet, but we will. We will see how that develops. But, yeah, that's, that's literally just happened as we're as, as we are recording it. It feels like that's going to be a. A big story.

Marina Hyde (31:22)

Market is developing.

Richard Osborne (31:24)

Yeah. Now we are talking about a lady called Taylor Frankie Paul, one of those names that you could do in any order. There'll still be a name. Paul Frankie Taylor sounds like a bassist from Duran Duran.

Marina Hyde (31:33)

She may need to change it.

Richard Osborne (31:34)

Yes, you may indeed. Please. For those of our listeners who are not familiar with her work, I would say she has cost the American entertainment industry over $100 million in the last 10 days.

Marina Hyde (31:47)

For sure. I think that is, I would have thought. Yeah. Okay. So it's interesting. Disney has a new chief exec, Josh d', Amaro, who's just taken over. He's come from the Parks division, the very, very successful and lucrative Parks division. He's now having to slum it in the complex waters of entertainment because on something like his second day in this, huge scandal erupted involving the start of the new completed season of the Bachelorette. The Bachelorette is a show based on the Bachelor where, you know, someone has to find love. They've got to choose through 30 different suitors.

Richard Osborne (32:21)

And it's insanely huge in America. This is like season 25 or something.

Marina Hyde (32:25)

It's an older sort of creaking reality format. It's from the sort of noughties. It goes all the way back to there. Taylor, Frankie Paul, the Bachelorette. They cast for this series because they wanted to kind of revive that old creaking franchise which is Taylor Frankie Paul. Now.

Richard Osborne (32:39)

So in the Bachelorette, there is one woman and there are a whole series of suitors.

Marina Hyde (32:42)

There are 30 guys, and they'd go on dates, you know, blah, blah. You've got to choose the opposite of the Bachelorette. You find true love.

Richard Osborne (32:47)

So the person you cast, quite often, stunt casting, quite often, someone who's been on the other side, you know, who's been one of the suitors in previous seasons.

Marina Hyde (32:55)

Yeah, they normally bring people out of the format because that's part of.

Richard Osborne (32:58)

But it's a huge deal. You are carrying that entire season of that entire show. And they choose Taylor Frankie Paul because they already have a relationship with her because of.

Marina Hyde (33:08)

Because of a new reality format that's been going, I think, about three seasons. It started two years ago. It's an absolute mega success. It's called the Secret Lives of Mormon Wives. It's kind of like a housewives thing, but a different. It's all under the Disney aegis. It's a Hulu show, and that is a runaway hit. And she is the standout star, you know, with her chaos and her drama

Richard Osborne (33:27)

for reasons we were going to.

Marina Hyde (33:29)

And they think we'll cross the streams because. And by the way, reality TV has become that sort of a thing. British people complain about the American version of Traitors when it first came out because it was. They had all been on multiple different reality formats. And in the old days, which, as we used to talk about that, you couldn't have someone who'd been on I'm a Celebrity then appear on Strictly it doesn't matter anymore. Reality tv, you just do the rounds of the shows and actually it's better to accrue kind of more clouds.

Richard Osborne (33:55)

You become a professional reality show. I mean, so the antecedent for this happening, for Taylor Frankie Paul being in the Bachelorette is another big, big old behemoth of entertainment television, which was creaking a few years ago, was Dancing with the Stars, which has now, as we've spoken of before, gone huge. And Dancing with the Stars in the last season had two other members of the Secret Lives and Mormon Wives in the cast. Everybody loved it. Again, you're crossing the streams. It was a huge success. So you're thinking, okay, well, that seems to have worked beautifully. We've got the Bachelorette. It's not doing great. I think the last two seasons have been the lowest rated seasons ever. We have had success with the Secret Lies. People going on Dancing with the Stars. Everyone seemed to like that we have this thing, the Bachelorette that needs a really, really strong presence at the heart of it. And actually, that's what launches this show. And we also happen to have in the Secret Lives of Mormon Wives, like, a real breakout star, who is Taylor Frankie Port. So let's cast her, but if we rewind a little bit before the chaos comes about. Why was she such a huge part of the Secret Lives of Mormon Wives? Because it was built around her. Really?

Marina Hyde (35:07)

Yeah. And I mean, I almost find it quite difficult to talk about it without giving away what's happened to her, because right from the very start, in the very, very first episode of the Secret Lives of Mormon Wives, some police body cam footage is shown from an incident in which she's sort of being. She's drunken and being arrested and there's just a little bit of it anyway. And, you know, she confronts this supposedly and talks about rebuilding and I've done the work and all these kind of modern phrases.

Richard Osborne (35:38)

Rita. She had not done the work.

Marina Hyde (35:40)

She had not done the work.

Richard Osborne (35:40)

So she. The whole thing starts. Cause she starts like this mom talk thing, M O m T. Okay. Where she starts showing bits of her life and bits of, you know, life of other people in the Mormon community. And it's quite surprising to people because, you know, amongst the. The, you know, the. The things you would expect, it's not the staid community you might think it is. And her first controversy is she's doing this mum talking stuff. And then she starts talking about how her and her husband at the time and other members of the Mormon community they lived in were soft swingers, which meant that, you know, they swap sexual partners every now and again. And everyone's like, like, huh? And her. This mom talk really, really blew up at that point. And everyone in TV is going, holy moly. So you've got this community of Mormon wives. So, you know, we think we know what we're going to get, but it's like it's a Real Housewives franchise but from a really unexpected angle. And so they jumped on this mumtok thing that Taylor Frankie Paul had started. The Secret Lives of Mormon Wives comes out of that, and she is its progenitor. And as you say, the very, very that happens, the fact that it all comes from there is a charge.

Marina Hyde (36:56)

Anyway, so she's cast in this new season of the Bachelorette. She is on the promotional tour for the new seasons. About the Bachelorette, it's completely finished. It will have cost them tens of millions of dollars. And what comes out now, tmz, the sort of video ratzy site gets Given leaked a video, which is the video of the actual incident that led to that. The police being called. And then we've seen the.

Richard Osborne (37:21)

And this is. And this is not, by the way, a video that we have seen on Secret Lives of Mormon Wives. This is new. So we sort of.

Marina Hyde (37:28)

This video is disqualifying. This is a video of her. She's very. She's really drunk. She's having some big domestic argument. She's throwing bar stools at her on. Off partner and the father of one of her children. She's completely wasted. It's awful.

Richard Osborne (37:40)

Yeah, it's really good.

Marina Hyde (37:41)

One of the stalls hits her daughter from the previous husband, and you hear her cry, and he says, you're not even going to your daughter. And she's crying. Now, that cry is basically regarded as the sort of insurmountable horror for the executives, and they have pulled the entire season of the battle. You can't. It's really interesting. A video. There is obviously. We live in a video culture. There is something so kind of obviously viral and insurmountable about actually seeing the

Richard Osborne (38:13)

incident and knowing that every single one of your potential viewers has seen that incident as well.

Marina Hyde (38:18)

Yeah. And so when you're. But when you're saying, oh, God, who knew? I mean, you should have, because it's not a secret that there was something that led to the original police body cam.

Richard Osborne (38:28)

Oh, so everyone knew about this incident, by the way. So this has been. Absolutely. Has been documented on, you know, their own channels, showing.

Marina Hyde (38:36)

You can kid yourself. It's this or that if all you're seeing is the tiny bit of footage you've seen off the police body cam.

Richard Osborne (38:40)

So they are. Are put in a situation where. And this. This is where you see sometimes where you can really visualize a meeting in the entertainment industry. So they have a meeting, and this meeting is. What do we do about the Bachelorette? Because it probably doesn't have long left. Is there a way we can save the Bachelorette? And I'm going to tell you exactly what this reminds me of, by the way, in a moment. How do we save the Bachelorette? And they go, well, look, how about Taylor? Because we're dancing with the stars.

Marina Hyde (39:08)

She's chaos. She's a trainer.

Richard Osborne (39:10)

She's chaos. And you know, and also, don't forget,

Marina Hyde (39:12)

she's not in the room. But is how they'll be thinking, of course.

Richard Osborne (39:14)

And they'll get redemption arc. You know, maybe she finds love. Maybe that's what she always needs. And someone in that thing go, yeah, but don't forget, there's the thing with the kid. We know that. That.

Marina Hyde (39:24)

Well, they know there's a police thing and there's a misdemeanor battery, guilty plea.

Richard Osborne (39:29)

They go, you know, but what about the stuff, you know, the arrest? And also, we're aware, you know, it's not the last thing she's done. That's been chaotic in the first few seasons of Mormon Wives. And they go, well, yeah, no, I know what you mean. Yeah, it's interesting that. But it just. I sort of feel like, can you imagine when we announce. I mean, can you imagine when we announce it? It's going to be, like, huge, isn't it? Yeah. Well, should we, like, maybe look into it a bit more? Because I'm a tiny bit uncomfortable with her being. Because what if she is sort of uncontrollable. I think, honestly, you know, the guys on the Bachelorette, they're pretty good. I think that they can. They can probably handle it. Let me talk to some of the Mormon Wives producers. And they're going, yeah, listen, she's a firework for sure. And they go, tell us more about the arrest. Yeah, you know what? I think that. I think that maybe that's sort of in her past a little bit, because

Marina Hyde (40:16)

it's their show as well.

Richard Osborne (40:17)

Yeah, exactly. Exactly. This is all owned. This is all owned by the same people. And so they.

Marina Hyde (40:23)

Those guys didn't properly relay the situation because otherwise you're threatening your own show.

Richard Osborne (40:28)

Yeah, I mean, it's crazy. No, but don't forget, also, Mormon Wives are thinking. Cause they're just, you know, they're almost like a startup still, and they're incredibly excited.

Marina Hyde (40:37)

That's who.

Richard Osborne (40:37)

I mean, two cast members on Dancing with the Stars, and they go, oh, God, now we're gonna have Taylor on the Bachelorette. This is huge for everybody. So everyone's got around the table, and everyone's kind of gone. Is this okay? Maybe this is okay. And everyone's gone. Oh, is it okay? And the fact that they've all kind of gone, well, is it okay that the decision is sort of made sort of in absentia of any moral thinking whatsoever? And they go, you know what? Let's do it. And it's exactly the same process that leads to Peter Mandelson being the U.S. ambassador. Don't you think?

Marina Hyde (41:08)

Oh, my God.

Richard Osborne (41:09)

That everyone's going. I mean, it sort of solves some problems there, wouldn't it? Because, like, you know, I guess that Trump. He'd be good with Trump. And is it really so bad this Stuff that he's done. And ask him the Epstein thing, is that okay? And everyone sat around the table, gone. Maybe it's okay.

Marina Hyde (41:22)

Exactly. It.

Richard Osborne (41:23)

Maybe it's okay. Maybe it's okay to do that. And like Peter Mandelson.

Marina Hyde (41:28)

Has he done the work?

Richard Osborne (41:28)

Yeah. Has he done the work? Maybe. Is there more to come out? Is there more to come out here? I don't think there is. No. I think. I think it's going to be fine. And it's exactly the same thing.

Marina Hyde (41:38)

If only someone had lost that phone footage. It's so unfair.

Richard Osborne (41:41)

Anyway, she is rearrested for something else. So please go and visit her house much more recently. And this is the thing that somebody obviously releases this video because she's back in the news again. Somebody releases this video to tmz.

Marina Hyde (41:54)

Domestic violence incidents that he, the on off partner has reported really recently. So not only that, I mean, which by the way should be our primary focus, but she's also destroyed the season of the Bachelorette because it's quite all right. She's with the guy that she's got. That she's back with that guy. So I guess none of the 30 worked out the 30 suitors because she's back with the guy that she's got and there are ongoing reports of domestic violence from him. So I guess we know she doesn't find love.

Richard Osborne (42:24)

Yeah. So what does this tell us about

Marina Hyde (42:27)

the state of reality?

Richard Osborne (42:28)

Well, I mean, what happens now is the big question, which is. So they've shot the whole of the batch of are at it's all in the can. All in the can to the extent that the production has been paid every, you know, the production company has been paid. Taylor, Frankie Paul has been paid her quarter of a million pound fee and does not have to give it back because she. She's done everything she's been asked to do. Everything that happens afterwards is not her business. It costs, as you say. There were some. I was reading somewhere that's 45 minutes. It's more around $70 million this cost. And that's before you start, you know, any, any sort of publicity campaign. So that money is written off. Or is it park that for. For a second. The Secret Lives of Mormon Wives latest season is also on hiatus because of all of this, which is another absolutely enormous franchise. So poor Josh d', Amaro, as you say, he's not that poor. Coming from Parks where you just thinking this is just a business. Literally on day two, he turns into the director general of the BBC and goes, oh, what?

Marina Hyde (43:26)

So what Now I feel that they can, you know, in a really grotesquely cynical way, that Mormon wives can probably save it because they can bring it into the format because it's that type of a show. And you know, I'm not debating the morality of this, this is entertainment television. But I think that they can probably bring it in. It does say something to me about the state of reality tv, which is that in the old days the format of all these shows would be the start. And basically you're dealing with unknowns and. And you could get freaks and hot messes and provocateurs and the format could sort of take them because you weren't building a show around someone already. And so you could sort of say, oh, and they were sort of dispel them.

Richard Osborne (44:09)

You know, they're discrete entities. And the next season we start again.

Marina Hyde (44:12)

But now the formats are built around the biggest outlier characters. People, you know, nobody's a nobody. Everybody's famous in some way, whether it be online. They all come with these huge high profile platforms outside the show. And so reality TV contestants can be much more toxic and crazy in some sort of way because they actually have a form of power that they never did before.

Richard Osborne (44:35)

And also they are going to be. They are suddenly returnable. So in the same way that, you know, Peggy Mitchell was returnable in EastEnders, but you were writing her and if she misbehaved, you could get rid of her. These people are returnable. They're the reason people are watching the franchises. But you are not in control of that person. You can pay that person for sure and you can withhold pay if certain things happen. But you can't control them as a human being. Cause they have other sources of income and they have other sour attention, which actually bad behavior will only increase.

Marina Hyde (45:01)

A lot like Matt Goodwin, really.

Richard Osborne (45:03)

A lot like Matt Goodwin.

Marina Hyde (45:04)

I mean, the absolute Matt Goodwin of Salt Lake City. But she's posting through it also like Matt Goodwin, she's posting through it because again, I just, I love to think that these moments culturally are. We now know who you are and you go away with your tail between your legs. In some ways you get more interviews than you can possibly have. You get more publicity, you get more clout. Yeah.

Richard Osborne (45:28)

You get the documentary about you. Yeah.

Marina Hyde (45:31)

Shame is just the whole kind of legacy, respectability, politics concept that doesn't work any longer and you just carry on. And she's done so many interviews this week that there's no sense that in the old days, I mean, I'm not even talking that many old Days. I'm talking three years ago, she would have just gone quiet on her socials and, you know, whether or not it would have died down or whatever. Not at all. She is absolutely leaning into it. Yeah. Leaning into it.

Richard Osborne (45:59)

She's leaning into the skid.

Marina Hyde (46:00)

Yeah. But I would have thought they were trying and find a way of building it entirely into Mormon wives because you can't lose shots.

Richard Osborne (46:07)

And I think also that the Bachelorette, that whole season will see the light of day because you just do it as a documentary. But by the way, our lovely producer Imi was talking about how all the guys from the Bachelorette who've been on this series, so by the way, they filmed this whole thing, like everyone in their hometown knows they're going to be on the Bachelorette. They're going, oh, my God, I did this amazing thing. They did this thing. And I said to Taylor, X, Y and Z, they're all ready for their moment in the sun. Done. And suddenly that's pulled for all of them. So they're all currently on their Instagram saying, I'd really like to tell my story. Follow me, I'll tell my story. You know, it's. There are so many documentaries at the moment about the, you know, the, you know, Biggest Loser and just, you know, all these big reality shows, the amorality

Marina Hyde (46:47)

now the industry about.

Richard Osborne (46:49)

And a bit of me is thinking, oh, I'm, I'm glad that, you know, things have changed. And then you look at this decision, you go, oh, my God, of course it hasn't changed. But I imagine that, you know, yes, the Bachelorette, the documentary version of everything that they just filmed will be the thing that's on in a year's time because the production company, I think in 12 months time can sell it to whoever they want. You build a documentary around all of that footage anyway, it will be number

Marina Hyde (47:13)

one on your streaming service.

Richard Osborne (47:16)

Yeah, I think that's right.

Marina Hyde (47:18)

Can we do something next week about all those sort of shows? Because it's so interesting how that early kind of golden, toxic, whatever era you want to call it of reality TV and the brutal shows like America Swan, next up, Top Model, the Biggest Loser are now being kind of revived as the subject of tell all documentaries about how dreadful it all was then. Can we talk about.

Richard Osborne (47:41)

We must do that.

Marina Hyde (47:41)

Maybe we can talk about that next week.

Richard Osborne (47:43)

Any recommendations?

Marina Hyde (47:44)

This week there is a positive banquet awaiting on new streaming, new UK streaming service HBO Max. I mean, the pit is terrific. It's very hard for me to pick something the most, but I have to say that the thing I was most looking forward to was, which has only just come out in America, was season three of the Comeback.

Richard Osborne (48:04)

Yeah, the Comeback has come back.

Marina Hyde (48:05)

Oh, my God. It's a very interesting show. Lisa Kudrow plays a TV actress and it's about, it's so much about the indignity and pathos of being in the entertainment industry. But what's so interesting about the show is the first season was in 2005. The second season was in 2014, and the third season is obviously now third and final 2026. Valerie Cherish is still with us. She's still working, trying to work, just trying to make her way in a difficult industry. And I absolutely love it. It's just brilliant. So if you haven't, if you don't know about it and you can go back and see all of it.

Richard Osborne (48:38)

Oh, yes. Watch all three of them.

Marina Hyde (48:39)

Yeah, yeah. Because they're whatever, 21 years between all three seasons.

Richard Osborne (48:44)

I'm going to recommend an HBO Max thing as well. We are not sponsored by HBO Max, by the way. Although if you're listening, which is Rooster, the Steve Carell.

Marina Hyde (48:52)

Yes.

Richard Osborne (48:52)

Show, which, which is just really, really funny from what I know. I've watched Steve Carell and anything, but I won't tell you the whole plot of it, but just watch it. And there's a couple of British actors in there, Charlie Cliven and Phil Dunster, and an amazing supporting cast. But it's a really lovely. I mean, oh my God, when the Americans do comedy well, they do it well, don't they?

Marina Hyde (49:12)

Yeah. Okay, that about does us for today. We will be back on Thursday with our Q and A and on Friday for our members, the first in a bonus series about the Spice Girls.

Richard Osborne (49:26)

Where are they now?

Marina Hyde (49:27)

Their incredible story, which is a huge amount of fun. If you want to join for ad free listening and bonus episodes, it's thereesticentertainment.com

Richard Osborne (49:36)

See you on Thursday.

Marina Hyde (49:36)

See you on Thursday.

Advertiser Voice (49:53)

This episode is brought to you by Athletic Brewing Company. No matter how you do game day, on the couch, in the crowd or manning the snack table, Athletic Brewing fits right in with a full lineup of non alcoholic beer styles. You can enjoy bold flavors all game long. No hangovers, no buzz, no subbing out for water in the second half. Stock the fridge for tip off with a variety of non alcoholic craft styles. Available at your local grocery store or online at athleticbrewing.com near Beer Fit for all times.

Marina Hyde (50:23)

Spring just slid into your DMs. Grab that boho. Look for that rooftop dinner, those sandals that can keep up with you, and hang some string lights to give your patio a glow up. Spring's call, Ross.

Richard Osborne (50:35)

Work your magic.

Advertiser Voice (50:39)

The UPS Store is making packing and shipping Easter gifts quicker than ever this year with UPS Air.

Marina Hyde (50:44)

How quick?

Advertiser Voice (50:44)

Quicker than a walk around the park? Quicker than eating all the Easter candies? Quicker than finding a golden egg that you know is stuffed with cash. When you ship UPS Air at the UPS Store, your items arrive on time or your money back, guaranteed, at no extra cost, exclusively at the UPS Store. You US retail locations send Easter joy on time at the UPS Store. Visit the upsstore.com air guarantee for full details. Terms and conditions apply.