Recommendations and Show Closing

The rest is entertainment is presented by Octopus Energy. Now can I tell you something cool that Octopus Energy do if you ring them and you have to be put on hold? 'Cause they know who you are, they know your birthday. The hold music is the best selling single from the year that you were fourteen. That's quite cool, isn't it? Yes. Well I love this. Exactly. I've looked into it for you. Do you want to know the best selling single in the year that you turned fourteen? So this would be your old music on Octopus Energy. It is Yaz, the only way is up. What do we think to that? Well Yaz and the plastic population. Yes and the plastic population. Oh of course. You know, I need to ring it to Octopus now and just listen to it. It's uh I you you can choose to say, Oh, I don't want to have any whole music at all. Absolutely, yeah, you can you can do whatever you want. What animals, what monster okay, it might be a really bad song, but what monsters don't choose to listen? I have to say that. Yeah. I love that they do. I hope we're gonna do this for me in another episode. But then w but then we find out if I Yeah, I think I'm considerably older than you, aren't I? Not that much. What? It's like two, three years, isn't it? Yeah, you'll be saying uh and the best-selling single in the year that you were 14 Richard, it's Cumberland Gap by Lonnie Doneg an . This episode is brought to you by People's Postcode Lottery. Now it's no longer enough to just watch something on television. We have to go there. We have to stand where it was filmed. We have to visit a place that began as a production backdrop and now comes with opening hours. We used to suspend disbelief, now we pack for it. Escapism has very quietly acquired a baggage allowance. But occasionally the leap from sofa to set is shorter than you'd think. One recent People's Postcode lottery winner, Rianne from Leicester, won four hundred and sixteen thousand 9 49 . 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Absolutely, we're preparing to run the rule over it all. There's we've got quite a few fun things to talk about. We have we're gonna talk about um AI in books. Some people are using it, a couple of high profile examples of that, uh a couple of uh couple of big fools on the way'.re We talking about that. We are talking about talking about big fools. This amazing story. If you know the story, you're gonna love it. If you don't know the story, I think you might love it even more. Um, 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? What a take that. Shall we start with AI in books? We've got two stories we want to talk about. I w I shall we start with my story? 'Cause you've got uh you want to talk about Matt Goodwin. I hope our audience understands that this is a story I find impossible to take seriously at any level. You are you've v virtually been bouncing in your seat all morning because you wanted to talk about it. But um Mia Ballard, who is an an an American author, self-published author, who wrote a book called Shy Girl, which is I don't know listeners if you enjoy your femme horror, but it's it's firmly in the femmegore horror genre , uh about a character who is kidnapped and kept as a pet by uh listen, it's uh it's femgore horror. Yeah. Um 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 thing. Don't be sniffy about self-publishing because how many of actual publishing's hits now come from it? The well of creativity out there is absolutely huge and publishers have been going to that well more more and more and to just take stuff that they know already is popular and publish it themselves. And so uh traditional publishing has started, you know, going into self-publishing, taking these things off the shelf almost, repackaging them, putting them in, you know , um uh 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 f looded with AI . Because this is a world in which you expect to pay 99 cents for a book and you expect an author to do 10 books a year. You know, these are the some of the some of the 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 um um publishers in the world took this book, Shy Girl by Mia Ballard, said, We are gonna publish this, published it in the UK. It appears it has been written or certainly heavily amended by AI and Hashet have accepted it, pulped it, said this is absolutely unacceptable. There's all sorts of other stuff going going on in the middle. 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 dis 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 to differentiate here. Traditionally publish your book. 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 gonna say, by the way, it really drags here or or something in the nicest possible way. It's gonna have to be a bit different for our purposes, but now you have a book deal and now you're yeah going legit and blah bhla. 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 uh publishers involved right from the beginning and is able to sort of have meetings and, you know, is is is heavily invested in it . 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? Right. 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 uh 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. Tell me what the signifiers were because, we we know know some of them in non fiction writing. Yes. Like it's not X, it's Y. It's exactly the same. So there is a there's a there's an emotional flattening. It doesn't do nuance and peaks and troths 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. ' Its do ites that sort of thing all the time where you go, oh you go, oh, hold on a minute though. That actually makes any sense. Um it does every single noun will have an adjective. I mean it absolutely overwrites that sort of thing. Um every action has a simile. Every single one of them. It will 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 does these things. M dash is a sort of yeah, but I think people have worked out now you can just go through and say take out M dash. Uh it's really hard. Especially for digital natives who've grown up in these kind of world you know worlds. I mean, I hope I don't, but I'm I'm I feel as a journalist I'm waiting for someone to say your column's AI and it not be. And this is I know we'll get to a whole section of discussion on that. But this is why it's a really interesting thing because a lot of people will say , yes, but that's how people write, and particularly that's how neurodiverse people write. And all of that is true. Every single one- And you've been trained on those people. 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 it does the same thing again, again, again, again. A human writer will for will always at the end of a chapter or the end of a section, just going, okay, how is my reader feeling now ? Um, was that too dense? Do we need a bit of lightness of touch? A real author is 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 uh 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 forty, thirty, twenty years. I mean it's 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 pages. This is not working for me. Even cover letters and you know, cover art and and things like that. So the Mia Ballard thing, a lot of people have now come out in her defence and say, oh no, but you know, if you put Frankenstein through an AI generator it says it's a hundred percent AI and all this 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. Yeah. But 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 uh don't appear to have had AI assistance there. So this is very, very different. So Hashet have pulled it. They said we're not going to publish it anymore. Hashet in the U 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 maybe perhaps listen, perhaps it's uh 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 f and I find them very, very, very interesting and and you can see the the panic amongst them because nineteen 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 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 and 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 if if they're not in traditional publishing. So it is a behol den on our publishers and I think this is a good news story, to keep an eye out for these things. The the world of self publishing is going to be in trouble because there is so much AI stop. And it's- I mean there's so much of it. But there's so much human creativity out there as well. So I just 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 booksho ps. 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 Hashette and not us. That'd be hold. Yes, charges the lightweight brigade. 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 um I'm dreading someone saying it. I've obviously have never written a column with AI, but I'm always thinking that someone can just have it's like when someone turns round 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. 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 there's no point putting everything through those because it'll And they're often designed to get you to sign up and get met you know, th 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. But I spoke to an agent who had a client who had a book out last year, first book, debut book, so 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. Yeah. Lots and lots of AI front covers. And you know, the the 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 there was this huge sort of upro ar. Uh 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. Oh my god. So she had absolute proof of doing it. But in future, because this is uh 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. Something like My Oxford Year, it was come up with by the publisher, Julia Whedon, who's an amazing writer, wrote it and you know, but the publisher owns an awful lot more of that than they would if if Julia Waiden 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 Weirbook. 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 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 they gave it to a writer. It comes out is a huge hit. I go, I don't think um I'd like to know w how you came up with that publisher, because you don't you're you're not somebody who comes up with good ideas. How 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 Hell 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 Hell Mary 2. That's easy. And someone else does Project Hell Mary three. 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. I'm gonna wear a GoPro to write my column. But people would God that would be unwatchable. I've seen some unwatchable things in my life, but that would be up there with you know some of the worst of guy rich but a s but with a simple pre y we we we're going to need a simple piece of blue chip software that is able to show it to prove that A we came up with an idea and then B that we wrote it. And now I'm I've I feel very fortunate. All these writers I've talked to the other day said, My God, thank God I started writing before this all came out. You know, I was talking to Lee Chard. He goes, Thank God. I d I mean he said he'd written all of his books before AI came out and he goes, I d I I never have to worry about it. But if you're a younger writer now, 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. 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 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 it the the person who made it signs it. You know it's an artisan newspaper colour. Artis exactly that. Exactly that. Can I make one more philosophical point? Yes. Which is the AI industry I mean it stole everyone's books. Okay, so Anthropic and OpenAI, it you know scraped everyone's books and you know has used them in in in their large language models. There is a feeling of footfoot 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 was n that's never been the game for AI at all. The r 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 gonna 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 open AIs of this world, we're still gonna sue them. Don't worry about that. They're absolutely they've stolen from us. If you're worried that, yeah, but it's gonna get better and better at writing novels and soon they're gonna be indistinguishable , that doesn't seem to be the direction that AI is going in. AI , its selling point is to be accurate and conc ise and boring. Its selling point is not to be radical and different and creative. That's the 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. 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 posted 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 sort of there'd been so many on moorings from traditional kind of voter bases that some there was a uh 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. Um he's got a substack, he a political substack. He um stood in Gorton and Denton um and the recent by election and he For reform, right? Yeah, lost for reform. He lost to the Greens. He's sometimes described as reforms in-useho intellectual. Anyway, he published, self-published again, which I think is interesting, uh 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 'cause it's number two on Amazon or something like that. Um it's now in the realm of Jamie Oliver cookbooks. Okay, uh challenge. It's not this is not the air fryer, and he knows it's citation needed. Citation needed. Okay. So a political um 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, I by the way, a lot of the story 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, um, and chat GPT sourcing and so on. It 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, unfortunately I can only think of this person in his way now. Anyway, um Andy Twelve challenged him to a debate on or maybe Matt Goodwin challenged him to a debate on which happened on Friday night on GB News. I know I've used this quote before but I remember in the 90s watching um a dating show American 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 uh debates on on news channels. Get in line girls. And I think it was resoundingly won by Andy Twelve. I mean nobody really watches these things. Probably s yeah, all the sort of p inside beltway people watch it. But it exists like all of this stuff just to be clippable, which is c kind of relevant to what we're talking about here, okay? What I am very much into, and I pretty much think we're gonna 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 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 gonna come to in a second and ask you what on earth you but um people have just been like, oh he should go away and think about I I've seen pro you know, genuinely people who regard themselves as credible thinkers saying, um, you know, Matt Goodwin should go away and actually consider what's happened here. It's like, wake up, okay. It's a good yeah, politics has been post-shamed forever. Okay. This is this is good for him. Okay. I'm 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 um 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 preserver 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 um something about a monkey you know it squeaked it crunch crinkled blah blah blah and I remember thinking oh my gosh his fu 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 some things like this. Yeah. What Matt Goodwin has written, he hasn't written one of these treatises, even something like Liz Truss's Sa let's save the West. It's nothing like that. It is just, it's aimed at the Facebook audience, which I mean SKUs older, if I can put that black, 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 sit 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 sist ers, the G P you know, nice Mark Taxi, David Hare, not the playwright, it's David Cardiff. Um Ray Plummer, you know, useful numbers. Ray Plummer the playwright. 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 true. This is my counterpoint. No one is going to care about this in a few years' time. No, I know. It's just a random outline. 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 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 box books of stamps. It's' as a thing it paginated piece of the U. 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 I've this is the next bit of what I do. You know, it's just just uh just an another way of of of monetizing what I do. So 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 It is not going to be a Jamie Oliver Cook, but let me tell him that right now. Oh no, but he knows that. He he knows exactly how many they've sold. He knows that. So the softening will get the Nielsen ratings, which which tell you how how actually many books you've sold through Amazon and through all the normal bookstores and if your website uh you know has has has um Nielsen creditation as well. Can you explain to us what the Amazon chart actually means? Amazon chart, I saw a thing where you said it's the sixth best selling book in the UK this week. By virtue of it being sixth on the Amazon chart. And I looked at Amazon. It was actually number three on Amazon. I said you could you could you could say third. Um the Amazon chart updates every uh three hours, four hours sometimes, uh and it just tells you where your book is at any given time. So if you're number six or let's be fairly number three on the Amazon chart, you are number three on one retail er 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's sold. But the AI thing is is sort of more interesting. So Mia Ballard, I hope it's a lion in the sand, and that as a industry, uh as 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 a different there was there was some prestige and oh my god he's published his treatise. And now it's just it's another he m Matt is making his money from Substack and he's making money from people, you know, hearing whatever he's he's having to say and as you say this is post it this Yes, but and this is a printed out version of that, yeah, posting through it. Do you think with him and I don't know enough uh about him, you know the thing with L. Ron Hubbard and Scientology, that he was a sci fi writer and would write about cults and things like that and suddenly went, Hold on, there seems to be quite a lot of money in this if you 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. D aid bit of him just go, I mean, listen, I work really, really hard being an academic and I know what I get paid. I I feel like there might be money here. Yeah, and Rob Ford, who wrote it with him and is now sort of like his mortal foe and is br he he's he remains in the camp in the camp with you know he'll do uh um he'll go in the room with John Curtis all the day of the election and and he'll be one of the people who creates the exit poll and you know uh it's really interesting. Yeah, it's it's a it's a sundering of I don't think they were necessarily ever sort politically in the same place at all. In fact they weren't, but nonetheless they combined with their kind of discipline and the research to write this book and then yeah, in the lot in twelve years.. Yeah It's yeah, different different branches of history. Anyway, next week's podcast will give you the um the final scores on the doors for for for Matt Goodwin's book. Shall we go to a break? We'll be talking about someone posting through it after the break as well. Oh my god, she's posting through it. She's posting through it so much. Yeah. And also and the uh the best thing about it is it's not in our country. Unless you're in America, in which case we have bad news. Yeah. But you've got so much bad news that is actually a light part of it . This episode is brought to you by Bumble. 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Or just things, a little just a little extra that you weren't quite expecting. Well Amex makes that a reality. You can earn points or cash back on the things you buy and use them on things you love with no expiration date. Search Amex cards today to find the card that's right for you. Terms apply. Preferred rewards gold, credit card representative eighty five point eight percent APR variable, annual fee applies after first year, cashback cards also available, minimum spend required to earn cashback subject to status eighteen plus rates may vary. Ts and C's apply . Welcome back everybody. Now I should say uh just as we've been recording the news But uh yeah, that's uh 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. Market is developing. Yeah. Now we are talking about a lady called Taylor Frankie Paul. One of those names that you could do in any order. There's still be a name. Paul Frankie Taylor sounds like a bassist from Duran Duran. She may need to change it. Yes, you may indeed. Please, for those of uh our listeners who are not familiar with her work, I would say she has cost the American entertainment industry over a hundred million dollars in the last ten days. For sure. I think that is I I I would have thought, yeah. Okay. So it's interesting. Disney has a new chief exec, Josh DeMaro, who's just taken over, he's but he's come from the parks division, uh 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 the job, this huge scandal erupted involving the start of the new complet ed 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 and it's insanely huge in America. This is like season twenty-five or something. It's it's an older sort of creak in reality format. It's from the sort of noughties, it goes all the way back to that. Taylor Frankie Paul, The Bachelorette, they cast for this series because they wanted to kind of revive that old creaking franchise is Taylor Frankie Paul. Now, so in the Bachelorette there is one woman and there are a whole series of suitors. The opposite. That's how you find true love. So the person you cast, quite often stunt casting, quite often someone who's been on the other side, uh you know, who's been one of the suitors in in previous . Yeah, they normally bring people out of the format because it's that's how the huge deal. You're carrying that entire season of that entire show. And they choose Taylor Frankie Paul because they already have a relationship with her because of 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. So that's and that is a runaway hit. And she is the standout star , you know, with her chaos and a drama. For reasons we will go into. Um and they 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 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 cloud. You become a professional um 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 um entertainment television, which was creaking a few years ago, was Dancing with the Stars, which has now, which we've spoken of before, gone huge and d and dancing with the stars in the last season had two other members of the Secret Lives of 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 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 Paul, so let's cast her. But if we rewind a little bit before the chaos comes about, why is why was she such a huge part of the secret lies of Mormon Wise? Because it was built around her really. Yeah, and I 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, we 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. Um and there's just a little bit of it anyway, and you know, she confronts this supposedly and talks about um rebuilding and I've done the work and all these kind of modern phrases. Rita, she had not done the work. She had not done the work. So she the whole thing starts because she she starts like this this m mom talk thing. Yeah. M-O-M-T T, o Okay.K, uh, where she starts showing bits of her life and bits of, you know, life of other people in the Mormon community. Uh 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 sta communyityed 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 they, you know, they swapped sexual partners every now and again and everyone's like, huh. And her this mom talk really, really blew up at that point. And everyone in T V is going, Holy moly, you got so you've got this community of Mormon wives, so you know we we we we think we know what we're gonna get, but it's like it's a real housewives franchise, but from a really unexpected angle. And so they jumped on this mum talk 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 first thing that happens, the very th th it all comes from uh There is a chance. Anyway, so she's cast in this new season of The Bachelor ette. She is on the promotional tour for the new seasons of 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 ratszy 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 see the boy. And this is and this is not, by the way, a video that we have seen on Secret Lives of Women Wives. This is this is this is new 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. Yeah. It's really. One of the stools hits her daughter from and the previous husband, um, 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 bat. You can't it's it's really interesting. A video, there is something we obviously we live in a video culture, there is something so kind of obviously viral and insurmountable about actually seeing the incident. And knowing that every single one of your potential viewers has seen that incident as well. And so when you're s 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 Pete Police body campaign. Oh so everyone knew about this incident, by the way. So this is this has been absolutely it's been documented on you know their own channels should be. So they are put in a situation where and this this is where you see sometimes where you can really visualize a meeting 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 gonna tell you exactly what this reminds me of, by the way, in a moment. How do we save the Bachelorette? Uh and they go, Well look, how about Taylor? Because we 're dancing with a star starting to be chaos, she's a trainer, and she's chaos and you know and also Don't forget she's not in the room, but this is how they'll be thinking. Of course. R and they'll go redemption arc, you know, maybe she finds love, maybe that's what she always needs. And someone in that thing goes Yeah, but don't forget there w there's the thing with the kid. We know that that Well they know there's a police thing. Yeah. And there's a Mr. Meaning battery guilty plea. They go, you know, but what about the stuff, you know, the the the arrest and also we're we're aware you know, it's not the last thing she's done that's been chaotic in the the first few seasons of Mormon Wise. 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 gonna be like huge, isn't it? Go, yeah, well, should we like maybe look into it a bit more because I I'm I'm m I'm a tiny bit uncomfortable with her being because what if she is sort of uncontrollable goes I think honestly you know the guys on the Bachelorette, they're pretty good. I think that they can put they can probably handle it. Let me talk to some of the Mormon Wives producers and they're going, Yeah, uh listen, she's a firework for sure. Uh and they go t tell us more about the arrest. Yeah, you know what, I think that I think that maybe that's sort of in her in her past a little bit. Because it's their show as well. Yeah, exactly. Exactly. This is all owned this is all owned by the same people. And so they so for those guys didn't properly relay the situation because otherwise that that you're threatening your own show. Yeah. I mean it it's crazy. Well but no, but don't forget also Mormon wives are thinking 'cause they're just you know, they're c almost like a start up still and they're incredibly excited to have that's who 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 this is huge for every everybody. Soone's got round a table and everyone's kind of gone, Is is this okay? Maybe this is okay? And everyone's gone, Oh it 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 the center 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 US ambass ador. Don't you think? Oh my God. That everyone's going, uh sort of solved some problems though, wouldn't it? Because like you know, I guess that tr he'd be good with Trump and is it really so bad this stuff that he's done and ask him the the Epstein thing, is it is that okay? And everyone's sat around the table going, May I maybe it's okay. I don't think there is more to come up. No, I think I think it's gonna be fine. And it's exactly the same thing. If only someone had lost that phone footage. It's so unfair anyway. She is re arrested for s 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 he's back in the news again. Somebody releases this video to TMZ. Um domestic violence incidents that he the the on off partner has reported really recently. So not only that, I mean, which by the way should be our primary focus. Yeah. 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 thirty worked out, the thirty suitors, because she's back with the guy that she's got and and there are ongoing uh reports of direct uh domestic violence from him. Um, so I guess we know she doesn't find love. Yeah. So what does this tell us about the state of reality Production has been paid. Every the you know, the 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 I was reading somewhere that was 45 million. Look I it's more around seventy million dollars 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 a 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 DeMarrow, as you say he's not that poor. Um com coming from parks where you just think in I mean this is just a business w literally on day two, he turns into the directory general of the BBC and goes, Oh what? So what now I feel that they can uh 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. Um and you know, I'm I'm not d debating the morality of this, this is uh entertainment television. Uh 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 you could get freaks and hot messes and provocateurs and the format could sort of take them because you you weren't building a show around someone already and you so you could sort of say, oh they 're you could expel them you could 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 on 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. 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. Uh 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 because they have other sources of income and they have other sources of um attention, which actually bad behaviour will only increase A lot like Matt Goodwin, really. A lot like Matt Goodwin. I mean the uh the absolute Matt Goodwin of Salt Lake City. But um she uh she's posting through it. Very also like Matt Goodwin. She's posting through it. Because again, I j I just i I love to think that these moments culturally are we now know who you are and you go away with your tail 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. Um You get the documentary about you in five years' time. Yeah. Shame is just the whole kind of legacy respectability politics concept that w doesn't work any longer. And you just carry on and I I've I've 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 t you know, on whether or not it would have died down or whatever. Not at all. Yeah. She is absolutely leaning into it. Yeah, leaning into it. Leaning into the skid. Yeah. But I would have thought they will try and find a way of building it entirely into Mormon wives because you can't lose your shit. And I think 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, all our lovely producer Immy was talking about how all the guys from The Bachelorette who've been on this series. So by the way, they've they've filmed this whole thing. Like everyone in their hometown knows they're going to be on the bachelorette. They're going, Oh my god, they did this amazing thing. They did this thing where and I said to Taylor, X, Y, and Z , they're all ready for their moment in the sun, 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 all you know, all these big reality shows a morality and now the d industry about and a bit of me is thinking oh I'm I'm I'm glad that 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, uh, I think in twelve in twelve months' time can sell it to whoever they want. You build a documentary Can we do something next week about all those sort of shows? Because it's so interesting how that early kind of um golden toxic whatever era you want to call it of reality TV and the brutal shows like America's next top model, the biggest loser, are now being kind of revived as the subje cts of tell all documentaries about how dreadful it all was then. Can we talk about Any recommendations this week? There is a positive ban quet 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 thing , but I have to say that the thing I was most looking forward to was, which is only just come out in America, was season three of The Comeback. Oh my god, it's a very interesting show. Lisa Coodrow 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 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. Well yes, watch all three of them. Yeah, because they're whatever, twenty twenty twenty one years between all three seasons. I'm gonna 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 Carrell um show, which I which is just really, really funny from what and I I've watched Steve Corral in anything, but uh I won't tell you the whole plot of it, but just watch it. And there's a couple of um British actors in there, Charlie Clive and and and Phil Dunster and an amazing supporting cast. But it's it's a yes, a really lovely I mean, oh my god, when the Americans do comedy well, they do it well, don't they? Yeah. Okay. Um that about does us for today. We will be back on Thursday with our QA and on Friday for our members, the b first in a bonus series about the Spice Girls. Where are they now? Incredible story. Which is a huge amount of fun. Um if you want to join