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- [00:01]
A
The rest is entertainment is presented by Octopus Energy.
- [00:04]
B
Now, we're going to be talking about an expression which I hadn't heard till seven seconds ago, which is someone getting their flowers. Can you tell me what that means?
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A
Well, it means like, you've been around a long time, but people suddenly think, hang on a second, you're amazing and you should be recognized.
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B
So you're finally getting your due, you're
- [00:19]
A
finishing your flowers and you're being garlanded. Now, I would say someone like this is someone like Jean Smart, who plays the lead in Hacks. She plays Deborah Vance. Okay. Jean Smart is extraordinary. She did a huge amount of TV and stage work and there was a sense that she was sort of always brilliant. But then this one role came along, Deborah Vance. In Hacks, they literally just give her the Emmy every year now. She gets her flowers every year. She gets her Emmy every year. As we always talk about Octopus's customer service, your. Your account's run by about 10 or 12 people. You've got a small team.
- [00:49]
B
They know who you are.
- [00:50]
A
Yes. And they are permitted to send flowers every week to a customer who might just be going through something, whatever it is, so they can recognize that it's not an apology, it's just because someone was going through something and they. You get your flowers.
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B
Another example of they seem to do business in a very interesting and customer focused way. Imagine if Jean Smart is an Octopus customer, might get her flowers twice.
- [01:11]
A
Yeah, every week. This episode is brought to you by Facebook. So you were scrolling on Marketplace and there it was, the bike you'd been searching for. You sent a message and it turned out the seller was super chatty, kind of funny, and an avid cyclist. The next thing you know, you're in a cycling crew. Well, a community cycling group. The thing about Facebook, you might find more than what you're looking for from a browse to a bike ride this summer. Find more on Facebook
- [01:43]
B
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A
Hello and welcome to this episode of the Rest is Entertainment Questions and Answers Edition. I'm Marina Hyde.
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B
And I'm Richard Osman. Hello, Marina.
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A
Hello. Richard, how are you?
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B
I'm all right. Hello, listeners. How are you? Okay, good to hear. Oh, I'm sorry to hear that. Shall we start straight away with a question? As you know, I always like a question asker with a good name. And Stefan Rocket.
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Oh, my God.
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Has stepped up to the plate. Thank you, Stefan Rocket. And Stefan says, I was watching Coronation street and they were having a breakfast of Chalky crocodile cereal and Wollumstow's bread. Are these fake brands and packaging made up just for the scene, or do they have a warehouse full of different brands for use as and when they need them?
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A
This is called graphic prop design. This whole section of things. There are so many of these, and they're all really good. Corry's got a lot because, you know, it's about everyday life. And so they've got. They've always had, like, Dempsey's Crisps. The beer's Newton Riddle, obviously Kenner's Chocolate, because, you know, they've got the cabin. So, you know, it's like a newsagent. You have to go in. Although, funnily enough, Ken Barlow always used to go in and say, guardian, please. Rita and Fresh Co, the supermarket, they've got all these things. They have Higher Magazine, you know, instead of hello Magazine. Simpsons have Duff Beer. You'll often see things on computers like a pear instead of an apple. Sometimes people. I'm moving out from beyond Corrie in graphics design because, I mean, I saw once on an episode of Grey's Anatomy, someone ordering a Goober.
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B
Right. Okay.
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A
Sometimes they just make it just a little. It's like it's so phoned in, you know, the hotel's called the Five Seasons. I just. I. When they do that, I find it a little bit.
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B
I'm staying at the Hilltop.
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A
Yeah. But that. It can be the most incredible art. And there's someone who I'm absolutely obsessed with called Annie Atkins, who is a graphic prop artist. I, you know, I've said. But I know I've said it before. If I haven't done what I've done, I would love to have worked in props. I find it. And I would have loved to have done graphic props, particularly this. That is still time.
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B
There's still time. We all need a science.
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A
I know there is. But she is the Diane of this Annie Atkins. She. She's a graphic designer. And so many shows have a graphic designer working on them. And she started on the Tudors, which is Showtime's big kind of prestige series about the Tudors. And she didn't really know anything about the period. And so you're being given these jobs like he wants his wife's head cut off. And that would have had to have happened on, you know, there would have to be some sort of warrant or royal order. And she said, I just had to think what on earth would that look like? You know, and obviously you're staining all the paper and the tea and all this. She's worked with Spielberg, but where she's had the most kind of epic collaboration, I think is with Wes Anderson. So if you look at something like the Grand Budapest Hotel, which is sort of like a masterpiece of all of this stuff, there are so many graphic props in that. And you know, the idea of the cake boxes and all the things that are supposed to create this world. Corrie would look so weird if they were eating out of plain packaging. But you need to create very East German things that. Yeah. That suggest like a supermarket suggestion.
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B
And by the way, you have to do that because you are not allowed in British TV at least to use the actual real brands. That's called undue prominence. And you can't say, for example, you can't have them eating Cocoa Pops without saying it's ad funded. So that's why they have to have Choccy crocodile cereal. So you have to have brands. Cause it gives the truth of a situation. But you're not allowed real brands. I always on tv, constantly someone will do a joke about Toblerone and the lawyers will go, no, sorry, you have to take that out. You think the joke, the Toblerone is part of the punchline to that joke. It doesn't work. Kind of triangle shaped Swiss chocolate or like whenever you're watching Bake off and they, they say, and you're using yeast extract in this, they use in Marmite. Just honestly, it's okay, it's fine to say. But you know what I'd say that's why they have to replace all these things for legal reasons.
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A
Creating these sort of fictional ephemera. It needs to look like it comes from that world. Exactly. In a way. And it takes you out of the world. Like it really, you know, if it was wrong, someone orders a Goober, you're like, oh come on, that's so stupid. Like just do something else. Just, you know, liftly or something.
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B
All it's good.
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A
Anything else. But in order to create these incredibly immersive words, you have to. There's. And so much of it actually is done by lettering, which is why so many of these people started off as graphic and Particularly font and calligraphy designers. And it is so interesting. I mean, Annie Atkins has done books about how she builds these worlds, and it's. It's amazing how much. Much of our world is lettering and packaging. And if you're making a new world, however fictional, that world must have its own lettering.
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B
And how if something looks off, it looks off to all of us. We all get the language of the thing. That's why, you know, with these chalky crocodile cereal, just if it. If it looks 5% off, it take. Completely takes you out of the scene. That's an amazing.
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A
I would absolutely love to.
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B
And yet. And still. And we talked about it before, they still can't get newspapers right.
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A
No, they always get newspapers wrong. There's masses of white space so the headlines don't scan, and they just look. Really. Yeah. They never seem to be able to get it right. Which, by the way, I never think it's that hard not to be. Not to kind of de. Romanticize that trade, but I don't think it's that hard. So I never understand why they. But that takes people out of things a lot.
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B
It really does. You'll be watching the best drama, and suddenly a front page of a newspaper, which would never, ever, ever happen. You're like, oh, no, now I'm watching some actors.
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A
Yeah.
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Which is the last thing I want to do anyway.
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Look up Annie Atkins. Look up all. There's so much online about her worlds and how she's created and how she did it. You know, it's all done by hand. It's absolutely. Just like an absolute artist, honestly.
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B
And by the way, I literally just said that old plain packaging would be like East Germany. And I remembered that I bought the book of East German packaging, and it's so brilliant. I think it's a Fiden book or something like that, but just. Just. Yeah, all the kind of packaging, and it's really, really great.
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A
Oh, my God. I might buy that myself. I would love that.
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B
So I take it back, because they actually had amazing packag.
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A
Okay.
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B
Although at the time, it must have felt very utilitarian. But now it looks great.
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A
Yes. It's a vibe.
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B
Yeah, it's a vibe. It certainly is a vibe.
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A
Okay. This is another brilliant name. Myrtle MacDonald.
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B
That is good.
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A
She says, I work in the film industry and I've just been invited to my first actual premiere. I obviously said yes straight away, but I realized I don't really know what it entails. Is there lots of hanging about? Should I dress up, bring my own snacks?
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B
Any advice appreciated oh, God, that's a great question there always. It is. God, it's like a. It's like one of those, like, sort of running a marathon, going to a film premiere. It's like somebody. Myrtle is right. If you're invited to one, you sort of. There's no way you can't not go. But, yeah, our view of film premieres is very much. We see the edited highlights of just the. The big stars on the red carpets and what have you.
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A
Well, that's fun to watch.
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B
Oh, yeah. When you're at it, just like to
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A
stand a bit back and watch them
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B
doing it, and you really can. And you're inside the. The barriers, as it were. When you walk along that red carpet, Myrtle, it's. It's. It's sort of. It's got kind of two tracks. There's the track for the people who are going to have their photo taken, be interviewed by the papers, and then there's the other track. The trick is you can walk as slowly as you want along that other track. You don't have to, you know. A, you'll be in the back of lots of shots. B, you will see all the stars walk past. But the key thing is, do not speed through that little bit, because once you're inside, you're in for a big disappointment. That's what. That's roughly what I would say. Once you're inside, you'll be shepherded into various places. Sometimes in premieres, if they're in one of the big kind of multiplexes, there will be two or three different screens all showing it all with different audiences, and those audiences will be kind of. You know, you have. The people who are in the film will be in one and then there'll be, like, the influences in another, and then there'll be, like an overspill thing. Oh, no. We've invited fans to this one. So you'll be in different places. Yes, definitely. Bring your own snacks if you can. I mean, occasionally they will have, like, you know, if the film is. If it's Wonka, you will definitely have a bar of Wonka chocolate on your.
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A
They will often give you popcorn and a drink.
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B
I have to say, they will often give you popcorn and a drink. I remember when we went to see the Adam Partridge Alpha Puppa premier, you had a shot damaged chocolate. Orange was on your seat. So there will be stuff, but you can't absolutely rely on it. I would say that. And sometimes it will be some sort of. They'll have done a deal. So the popcorn is actually just Some new artisan popcorn from a company who, you know, some venture capitalists have put some money into it. And you're like, kind of halfway through, you're like, this isn't proper popcorn at all. So I would bring my own snacks. So the thing is. Yeah, it is. You will be shepherded about a lot because the PRs are trying to run the day that what they. All they really want is those photos. Right. That's all they really want. And they want people to feel like they've had a good time and post afterwards about how great the film is. That's the influencers, the stars having their photos taken. If you are there, I would say just slow down the walk, stay outside.
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A
Never hurry you along. I don't think.
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B
Exactly.
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A
They don't. They just care about those people at the front getting it. If you want to gawp at them. I realized when I went to the Devil Wears Prada to premiere recently, just a couple of months ago, whenever it was, that I've just become something that I would have hated when I was younger. It's like, I'm not interested in any of these stars. My friend said to me, oh, you know, that's so and so. She runs the parks for Disney in Europe. I was like, get out of my way. I want to speak to someone from parks. I'm really interested. I want to know everything about the churros, economics, every single thing about this. I was less interested in the stars than Disney's kind of like arcane corporate hierarchy. And I really wanted to know more about the parks.
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B
But my main piece of advice is stay outside for as long as you possibly can. There will be people, because it's their absolute, their job, be trying to shepherd you through to various different rooms. You can just say, oh, no, I'm okay. I'm okay. Thank you.
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A
Watch it as a spectacle of everybody.
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Yes.
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Performing their little jobs and getting what they need out of it.
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B
Yeah. And bring your own snacks. But as you say, sometimes they're great snacks, but you can't rely on it. That's what I'm saying. You can't depend on it for sure. So lovely big top hat with a bit of pick and mix inside it. That'd do you. We must do something, by the way, at some point about the new popcorn bucket industry in the States, which is. If anyone wants to ask a question about that, about popcorn buckets for next week, we will deal with that because it's fascinating.
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A
Yeah.
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B
Sarah Baker has a question for you. Marina. Oh, my God, Sarah, you're so right. What's with the trend where footage of interviewees sitting down and chatting with a crew gets included as part of the intro? It happens on Netflix all the time, but I'm pretty sure it also got used on Once Upon a Time in Northern Ireland. It's become a meme on TikTok and Instagram. So I'm not the only one who has noticed. You're certainly not.
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Definitely not. It's a thing.
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B
It is. My God.
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A
You know that. In case you're not totally sure what Sarah's talking about, it's like when people are sort of just getting settled and they, like, you know, putting their mic on before. Are we rolling? It's like, you know, we're rolling because I'm watching this.
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B
Right. Also, by the way, you're fiddling with your mic and yet we're hearing you with perfect sound.
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A
Yeah. Which is not. It's literally not possible, but it's interesting. Okay, so for this, we have to go back into the whole history of sort of talking heads on documentaries. For a long time, you couldn't really have them because sound was really tricky. So you had that sort of voice of God. But then in the 60s, there were sort of two movements in documentary making. There's like direct cinema, which kind of grows out of the us and that's observational. You're capturing real life on the wall. They don't have interviews. They thought that was a sort of form of artifice. Then in cinema verite, which grows out of France, there is lots of interaction between the filmmaker and the subject. And you hear on camera conversations. And both of those, even at the time, were a sort of discussion about authenticity. The direct cinema bunch thought that, you know, asking people to explain events afterwards changed the truth. And it wasn't real unless you were sort of watching it happen. But cinema verite, the people who sort of ascribe, subscribe to that, felt it more emotional context and reflection that went deeper, considering everyone knew you were actually sitting in front of a documentary.
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B
So let's be honest, I knew this would come back to cinema verite.
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A
I knew.
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B
I just knew it.
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A
Okay, but the seated interview, the thing that you're talking about, which we see a lot now, that became very popular in the 70s because it's really good for exposition. You know, you see it tons on the BBC or PBS or whatever it
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B
is, because telling a story just through your own footage or through archive, actually quite difficult. Asif Kapadio does it amazingly. All his documentaries are just archive. But the second you go, oh, I could have someone just telling the next bit of the story here and someone who is involved in it as well. It becomes incredibly interesting.
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A
Concert with the B roll, so you can see then it's very. So, you know. And then they change the style of these things and they kind of made a much more shallow depth of field. They make it more cinematic. They change the lighting. Sometimes they put the eyeline off camera, whatever it is. But the thing you're talking about, they
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B
sit you at the front of a warehouse and you shoot all the way to the back.
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A
So often I've seen James Holland in a lot of warehouses talking about wars. The thing you were talking about comes back in the prestige documentaries of the 2010s. Okay? So things like the Jinx. I don't know if you. My God, that's a documentary. If you have never seen that, that's a sort of true crime thing. O.J. made in Americ, right up to sort of Tiger King, which, as you know, was a big thing in the pandemic. The stuff that's the bit before the camera gets rolling. It takes longer for something to become a cliche than you would think, but it's now been rolled out everywhere. For me, part of why they have rolled it out everywhere is that there are obviously so many documentaries and it gives a flash of authenticity, but there's something undone and deconstructed to it because I think things become so polished. Yeah, it feels real.
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B
So I think it comes, by the way, I think it comes from a real place, which is your Saturn and edit. And you're watching every single, you know, bit of sync you get in every single interview you get in. You do see them at the beginning, sitting down, saying and waiting to look. And as an editor and as a director, you're thinking, this is the time at which this person feels the most natural, the most real. It would be useful for me for people to buy them as a natural and real person. Actually, this would be a really. I wonder if I could just keep this in. It does a lot of work for me. It makes it feel natural. It makes it. This is a real human being. You understand everything that's going on. I think that's where it comes from, is that they saw that footage and went, it would be great.
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A
Well, Adam Curtis always says all the footage he ends up using is after people stop doing the thing that they were supposed to be doing. So you're doing, like, a little quick piece to camera in, I don't know, Sarajevo or wherever it is and the stuff that happens afterwards becomes the usable stuff because it's when people's guard is down or whatever. But again, saying, you know, are we good to the director? Or whatever you're saying all of it is supposed to sort of acknowledge the artifice and therefore kind of remove some of the artifice. Because we're always talking about authenticity in documentary making. So that is why. But I agree that it's become such a cliche now that I don't want to see it anymore. Like, lots of things, like screenshots. No, thank you.
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B
It's also been taken advantage of. There's a particularly egregious version of it in the Vardy documentary where they're doing the. Oh, I'm sitting down. But it's like a scripted or like a really eggy scripted piece to bring a particular prop into the thing. And you think, no, come on, that's. To me, is when. No, more of this. Now I like it. I like seeing people, you know, slightly, you know, off guard. I like the naturalness of it. But now they've using it. And honestly, on that Vardy thing, it's very, very, very early on in that documentary.
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A
Let the cycle turn over again. I'm bored of it now.
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B
Let the cycle turn over again. But you know, honestly, if you sit in an edit on a TV show and the bits that aren't really on camera, the bits where someone's just talking to the audience, or the bits in between the shots, you think, oh, my God, there's such a naturalness here that is so great. And documentaries can use it. You can't use it in entertainment shows. That's why sometimes you'll see after the, you know, the credits of a TV show, they'll use a little bit from the recording where people are just kind of, you know, slightly off mic and mucking about, because it just, it. It does bring a real truth to things.
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A
Right, shall we now go to some adverts?
- [18:04]
B
Yes. We're going to take a break and after we take a break, we're going to talk about Take a break. The magazine who are using AI for their fiction. Now, we'll be discussing that.
- [18:18]
A
This episode is brought to you by Lloyd's Rewards. Now, a big mistake that people make is leaving the cinema as soon as the credits roll. Cause there might be a bonus scene right at the end.
- [18:28]
B
Absolutely. One of my favorites.
- [18:28]
A
There might be one in the middle.
- [18:29]
B
Yeah, you never know.
- [18:31]
A
In Marvel ones there used to be a mid credits scene and then there'll be an end credit scene.
- [18:35]
B
I remember the first one. I really remember well, too. I remember Ferris Bueller's Day off where he tells you to go home at the end. But also Smokey and the Bandit with Burt Reynolds where they would do bloopers. It just feels like a secret little glimpse of.
- [18:47]
A
Yeah.
- [18:47]
B
Into a.
- [18:47]
A
And it doesn't quite have to be over.
- [18:49]
B
Yeah, exactly. And it's just a lovely little added bonus. You've done everything. You've made your show right. You've given everyone everything. It's just a lovely little extra.
- [18:58]
A
Which is also the idea behind Lloyd's Rewards. Extra value appearing inside something you were already doing anyway. Your daily banking, from shopping to streaming, you can bank on Lloyds to help your money go further.
- [19:09]
B
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A
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- [19:56]
B
Welcome back, everybody. Now, Sam Barraclough has a question that I think we both want to talk about. It says Take A Break magazine is replacing all of their short story writers with LLMs, large language models, revealing that all of their fiction is now going to be AI generated. Is the magazine industry in that much trouble that we need to replace writers?
- [20:17]
A
Wow. Yes, this was first reported by Press Kazakh, which is a brilliant trade publication, but it's Take A Break is a women's weekly magazine and it's got all sorts of different true life stories and things like that in the real thing. But they've also got Fiction Feast, which is a sort of spinoff, which is all short stories written by various contributors. The AI checking service Pangram says that all of these stories are now 100% AI generated. And they have had to acknowledge this now. So an email has gone out to people who would normally be contributors and it said, so the July issue of Fiction Feast has been created using a combination of stories, some writer commissions and some in house creations from the Fiction Feast team.
- [21:00]
B
Now, wow. The Fiction Feast team is doing a
- [21:03]
A
lot of heavy lifting and so nine stories are credited to the Fiction Feast team and those seem to be completely written by AI now there has been a massive backlash from writers as you would expect. And it's interesting these women's magazines are they. You get paid in the sort of low hundreds of pounds for one of these stories but they are one of the last remaining paying markets for short story writers.
- [21:26]
B
And also by the way it's just a great A nursery slope or B just way to. If you're writing novels as well. This is a. It's just a. It's a nice gig.
- [21:34]
A
It's a good way to get published. There's not a huge amount of money in it but there is money in it and it's a very specific tone and it's hard to get it. And once you have it, people are very skilled at it and it's kind of light hearted and it stories about romance or families. Your question is, is the. Are things really bad? Yes, they are bad. There is no click through really from Google. I'm sure Bauer would argue that they're trying to protect their remaining human writers, etc.
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B
And by the way, Take Take A Break is a. Is a big magazine. It's one of the top ten magazines in Britain. It's got you know, quarter of a million readers every week. It's this, this is not some sort of minor thing at the edge of the magazine industry going oh you know we're going to take a chance on this. This is one of the absolute big hitters in the British magazine business doing this.
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A
But we can already see because the pictures went first. They used to have illustrations and illustrators who would, you know, read the story and now they have AI Slop. And I'm afraid it's very difficult on the one hand, I mean I think this is incredibly depressing and just without any shadow of a doubt. And it's. They don't pay very much. You might not. It's only very low hundreds that you would get for writing a whole story and that's you a long time.
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B
Yeah. And if you can't pay that that then you don't have a magazine. I mean you shouldn't be continuing with it. It's crazy.
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A
The counterpoint I would say not particularly in this case, but the counterpoint is the other struggle for fiction magazines and publishers. Anyone who takes submissions basically is getting through the massive quantities of AI generated submissions that are now coming in. If your job is reading submissions for whatever it is for a magazine or for anywhere that publishes fiction and that includes publishers, how do you know whether what's. You can't tell from the outside whether it's AI you have to get through it. And there have been really interesting cases. There's a science fiction mag called Clark's World who quite often have to say, we're stopping taking submissions now because they're getting so much AI stuff. And sometimes they pause it, sometimes whatever. It's really interesting because what happens is that there are lots of sort of grifters who make TikToks and YouTube videos saying, oh, there's easy money here. How's you? And they make these videos saying, this is how you write the prompts that generate a short fictional store, short story. It's a huge industry now and it's really interesting. Like Clarkswell said, they've paused at various points because. And they say the reason they pause at those particular points is because someone has, with enough followers has done a video saying, these. These idiots. You can make money off these idiots really easily. And so they see a huge spike in AI stuff coming in, and that's when they have to pause. It is difficult to. To fight.
- [24:14]
B
But if you are. Take a break. They've used, you know, they. They use quite a small pool of contributors have done for a long time. And you know, they are. They are naturally protected from that by using people that they've always used and now they're choosing not to because, you know, the writing of stories, it has a weird place in this AI universe because it seems like the kind of first thing that people worry about. And we said before, it's the thing that AI is worst at. It can't do it. And there was a good report last week about different industries and their use of AI. And it says 6% of people in publishing use AI regularly in their job, which is the lowest of any industry that they polled and lowest by quite a way of any industry. And that's because publishing is just very, very aware of this thing and it's very, very aware of this threat to the sort of existence of what it does. I don't think it is a threat because I have always thought that AI is not very good at writing novels and publishing is very good at writing novels. So I think weirdly is much less of a threat in publishing than it is in other. But fascinating that within the offices of publishing, the resistance to AI is huge. Some people were saying, oh, it shouldn't even be 6% and, you know, AI slopping books and. But it's not talking about books being AI. It's talking about people within publishing and the tools that they use. In their daily jobs and in other industries. It's much, much bigger than it is in publishing because publishing is sort of both the first and last bastion, the first and last line of defense against this stuff. Which is why this take a break thing is particularly depressing. Because it was human beings writing stories for other human beings and just the idea that they believe they can now get away with it. If you look at the stories, by the way, the AI written ones, they are very, very prosaic. And I'm sure they've.
- [25:58]
A
Someone who is a normal contributor had sort of gone through and analyzed them and said, you know, this is not characterization. This is not. This is not how I would do it.
- [26:07]
B
This is, you know, yeah, it isn't any. It's. It's sort of. It isn't anything. But we know that already. You can read it if you want, these machines can write it if they want. But it isn't anything. It isn't the future of anything. It's a last swish of something. So I think it's a real shame. I think it's great that that magazine used to exist and used to sell copies and now you think, well, I mean, now it's just some computers making money for some other computers. Now this little chat is brought to
- [26:35]
A
you by Lloyds, Lloyds Dark Horse. Anti fraud technology helps to protect customers by monitoring activity and. And spotting when something doesn't look right.
- [26:44]
B
Yep. Entertainment has developed its very own elaborate backstage version of that. There's fake production titles, red scripts. We'll get onto what they are. And also just the world of quiz shows and how we stop people seeing answers beforehand. All the elaborate things you go to protect the privacy of your production. So films, they do it a lot, right?
- [27:02]
A
Oh my God. Film and tv. By the way, if you want to get onto a film studio lot, good luck. It's like a maximum security. You are not gonna get in there. And yet even on the lot, lots of productions have like fake knit, like House of the Dragon. They called it Red Gun. And I remember thinking when I was walking past it, nobody could get in here at all. It's so unbelievably secure if you're out on the street. I remember the guys on Succession saying they didn't really realize by the time they were filming their second series. And so it would just say Succession and it became a complete sort of nightmare. So like, all right, hang on. We need a code word for our
- [27:36]
B
production because if you see ever like tied to lampposts, they have those sort of ARR. And that's because you have to, if you're filming on a different place, you have to send all the trucks to the right place. So you have to tell people where it is, but you have to give a fake name if it's a big show because anyone can find where your unit base is or where your set is.
- [27:54]
A
And the scripts are so completely. I mean, you get so paranoid about not giving your script in at the end of the day to the script supervisor and not getting shredded.
- [28:03]
B
And they're all watermarked. They know exactly whose script is who.
- [28:06]
A
They're red. Yeah, you can't photocopy red with a watermark saying like Marina Hyde across it in diagonal. If it's yours, it's going to be really, really obvious that it's got lost, so you have to give it back in at the end of the day.
- [28:17]
B
I mean, more prosaic. But in the world of quiz shows, one of the absolute keys is it has to be fair. You have to make sure no one's seen any of the questions. You have to make sure that no one knows what happens. And every single quiz show has an independent adjudicator who is in charge of all of that stuff. It keeps everything under a lock and key and makes sure everything is above
- [28:34]
A
board off to a briefcase. And then they should open the quiz questions like that.
- [28:38]
B
I mean, we used to do that with the prize money on million pound drops, for sure. I mean, that never came off a handcuff at any point because it was real money. We wanted to have real money there. But in terms of quiz questions, there was one quiz which they recorded a whole series of, I won't say what it was called. And they realized that the person on podium one could just about see over the presenter's shoulder where the question and the answer were shown. They didn't think anyone had done it at all, but the very fact that they could have done it meant they scrapped the entire series. Everything has to be complete. Not on House of Games because there's no. Because the prizes are meaningless. But on, like, on a normal quiz or a Millionaire or something like that. Yeah, the people know that. So it's absolutely. The security of it did. I know, did as well, where you literally have an independent adjudicator by themselves putting all the bits of money into the different boxes using like a random number generator. I mean, nobody could go anywhere near it. And, you know, the privacy you have to have on your computers just case someone could hack into the questions. It's a huge Huge deal. Because if you lose that integrity, you lose everything. And so the hoops you have to jump through on a quiz show to make sure nobody can ever find out an answer.
- [29:47]
A
So much more watertight than many government departments.
- [29:50]
B
It really is. Yeah, it really, really is.
- [29:52]
A
So beneath the fake titles, red scripts, answer checks and phone bans, protection rarely comes down to one dramatic locked door. The real work is quieter, controlling access, watching what's happening and noticing when something doesn't fit.
- [30:05]
B
Yep. And that's the principle behind Lloyd's dark horse anti fraud technology. He uses intelligent monitoring and real time to help spot suspicious activity, checking more than 1 billion transactions every month.
- [30:18]
A
That's an average of over 20,000 checks a minute. Lloyds has invested 100 million pounds in technology to protect customers from fraud. Less visible than a locked film set or an arena security detail, but considerably
- [30:31]
B
busier, Dark Horse helps keep customers safer from fraud. But people still need to stay vigilant around potential scams. Search Lloyds how we protect you. To find out more about how Lloyds helps keep you, you and your money safe. Based on Lloyds Banking Group data 2023-2025,
- [30:48]
A
there's a question from Stuart Best. He says, I was browsing in a W.H. smith and I found myself thinking, who is buying all these magazines? I don't mean Vogue or the Economist, but the many publications on fishing, caravans and gardening.
- [31:00]
B
So we talked about. Take a break just then. Which quarter of a million people a week. That's one of the top ten magazines in Britain. There's very few magazines. Magazines used to sell millions and millions. The biggest magazine In Britain is TV Choice, which sells about 850,000 copies a week. All the biggest magazines, in fact. Well, TV Choice, what's on TV and Radio Times, all in the top four. The Economist in third place, just over 400,000. And the rest of the top 10, you've got. Take a break. Slimming World Magazine, Private Eye.
- [31:28]
A
Yeah.
- [31:28]
B
Which has done unbelievably well.
- [31:30]
A
Success story.
- [31:31]
B
But, you know, they've absolutely concentrated on the thing that they, they are best at. And it's, it's been. I think it's underestimated what Ian Hislop has done at that place. I think it's extraordinary. It really is, because in the world where all magazines are failing and he keeps it at a really, really. It's one of the top 10 magazines
- [31:48]
A
in the podcast is brilliant. All the things they sell, all of that stuff. Yeah.
- [31:52]
B
And then you've got Good Housekeeping, BBC Gardeners World and Woman at Home, they're in the top 10. If you get much, much further down the list of the Audited Bureau of Circulation, you get to the sort of ones that Stuart is talking about. You've got things like cycling Scottish Field, Airfix, Model World Classic Car, Weekly, Garden Answers, Model rail, Bird watching. And these are all selling, I mean, eight or nine or 10,000 copies, which is not a lot, certainly not really a sustainable business in the long term. But what a lot of these magazines are doing, and we talked about it on Tuesday, funnily enough, is they are super serving a niche audience. So in a way, this sort of 10,000 thing just being on the shelf at all is slightly a loss leader, but they can make enough money out of advertising to a very, very, very specific targeted audience.
- [32:42]
A
A lot of click through on, but
- [32:44]
B
like a lot of click through, which is, you know, you get. If you can get a lot of orders on 10,000 readers, then you do have a business. Lots of them have event arms as well and have merchandising arms. If you look at all these magazines that look like they're very niche, you think, yes, that's why they are there. It's because they're very nice and because they understand how to serve that audience. And if you can, if you've got 10,000 people a week or a month who are buying this sort of. It's almost like an advert for your business, you know, buying a magazine like Scottish Field, but the business inside is advertising, it's events, it's all of that kind of stuff. So every single one of them, the more niche it looks, the more reason it has to be on the shelves. And lots of these have consolidated and there used to be like a hundred of cycling magazines and hundreds of model train magazines, and they get this fewer and fewer and fewer and fewer. But the money is there, the advertising money is there, the people buying things is there, the event side of it is there. And the magazine is almost just like a poster in a shop window for these things. So it's really, really, really hard to be in the magazine business, that's for sure. But if you can really super serve an audience, then it's worth it. There's now a lot of things in America and stuff like that where people are starting to publish magazines because they see them as an advert for their events business or for their merchandising business. They just see it as a shop window for that. But that's where the money is coming from. The money used to come from. I can sell 100,000 magazines a week and take all of that money. And I've got the advertising on top. Now. They tend to be advertising and events businesses which have this lovely shop window of a magazine.
- [34:20]
A
But if you're in the top 10 magazines, please don't feel the need to give jobs to machines because you will ultimately cannibalize your own business.
- [34:28]
B
Yeah.
- [34:29]
A
Fundamentally believe that It's.
- [34:30]
B
You are 100% right. And, you know, take a break. I mean, it's. It sells a lot of copies. It has lots of good journalists working there. Lots of people cut their teeth on take a break. It must be hard for everyone who works there, I think.
- [34:43]
A
Just awful.
- [34:43]
B
Yeah. And on that uplifting note. But it's. Listen, you have to call it out. You have to call it out. It's the thin end of the wedge. And we all know that that AI is going to do more and more and more things. We absolutely get it, we understand its use. But there are moments where you do have to say, that's just not acceptable. It isn't acceptable. It's not. It's not a way to run a business, certainly not a way to run a creative business. And it's, you know, whoever. I'm sure they had their reasons for doing it. I'm sure they think they're protecting editorial jobs and what have you. And I get it, but it's the wrong thing to do. It definitely sends out the wrong message. And it's not the way to run a creative business.
- [35:28]
A
Agreed. Right. That said, on that note, we will see you next Tuesday.
- [35:36]
B
We will. And it'll be really us in person, Sam.