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The Rest Is Entertainment

Our Most WTF Celebrity Couples

29 Apr 2026

Transcription

Chapter 1: What are the benefits of gamifying admin tasks with Octopus Energy?

0.031 - 6.817 Marina Hyde

The Rest is Entertainment is presented by Octopus Energy. Now, they've looked at admin and decided it should behave much more like a game show.

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6.897 - 25.975 Richard Osman

When you provide your meter readings, they will give you a spin of a wheel, which allows you to win prizes, allows you to win Octo Points, which you can spend in the Shoptopus. Yeah, it's the gamifying of the boring bits of your admin. Now, listen, you know how much I love Octopus Energy. The prizes, I'm going to say, are not quite up to the standard of the Wheel of Fortune.

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25.995 - 45.377 Richard Osman

The biggest ever prize on the Wheel of Fortune... So over $1 million. What feels more similar is some of the random prizes they'll get on the Wheel of Fortune. They've had ceramic Dalmatians. I saw one where you could win a Gucci calculator. You think, okay, that's two of my favorite things. There was an Onyx bin.

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45.357 - 49.784 Marina Hyde

Yeah, again, I'm not dissing the prizes, but I would have probably gone for the Dalmatian.

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49.844 - 56.014 Richard Osman

None of these things you have to worry about with Octopus Energy. It is simply octa points to spend in the shop.

56.074 - 63.345 Marina Hyde

Well, you have to submit your meter reading to earn a spin. And then you get prizes you don't actually have to persuade yourself you want, like money off your next bill.

63.446 - 70.116 Richard Osman

You can get £1,000 off your bill. If you get the top prize, which is 800,000 octa points, £1,000 off your bill, just on the spin of a wheel.

73.488 - 78.898 Marina Hyde

Hello and welcome to this episode of the Rest is Entertainment Questions and Answers Edition. I'm Marina Hyde.

78.998 - 81.243 Richard Osman

And I'm Richard Osman. Hello everybody. Hello Marina.

Chapter 2: What is the significance of production quality in House of Commons footage?

226.558 - 234.545 Marina Hyde

You can obviously have no shots of documents of any kind. And it's, as I say, it's got to be sort of medium angle shot where you can.

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234.646 - 236.267 Richard Osman

And this includes in the select committees that

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236.247 - 253.484 Marina Hyde

Yes, all of it is very, and it's kind of largely the same because you've got a speaker and someone who might be being referred to. So you're in general switching between a kind of medium angle thing and a wide thing, never close up and never split screen. That's like, you can't have anything like that.

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253.504 - 258.469 Richard Osman

I mean, it was absolutely transformative for the darts, split screen. Maybe it could be transformative for democracy.

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258.489 - 264.195 Marina Hyde

The darts, so much you believe could flow from darts. So many things could be made better by adopting more of the conventions of the darts.

264.175 - 269.603 Richard Osman

Well, listen, liberal democracy is in crisis. I agree. I just say, why not throw a few balls in the air?

269.723 - 277.495 Marina Hyde

Yeah. You can occasionally in the chamber have panning shots along the benches, but only really occasionally. And it's a whole sort of special permission thing.

277.515 - 285.947 Richard Osman

Christopher Nolan did the thing when, because he directed for a day, didn't he? And he turned the whole thing into like a tombola. And so it was like a Jamiroquai video. That I liked.

286.007 - 287.389 Marina Hyde

That was a great day.

Chapter 3: How does a ghostwriter's role impact the success of a celebrity's book?

406.09 - 408.493 Richard Osman

But yeah, it's not going to look like that.

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408.659 - 428.445 Marina Hyde

It's not. One thing that therefore I would say is that I absolutely adore the work of something that is such a unique thing in our country, which is the sketch writers. And they can, when it's done brilliantly, there's so many great sketch writers. You know, I love Tom Peck in The Times, John Crazen, The Guardian, Rob Hutton, The Critic. I loved Madeleine Grant's Spectator.

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428.465 - 443.372 Marina Hyde

I love her ones in The Spectator. And the ones, the one of that committee that you were talking about, the Ollie Robbins one was so good. And I haven't spoken to her about it, but I would say that probably what she's done is, She's probably done this subconsciously because, by the way, you have to file it so quickly after it's all over.

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443.773 - 461.121 Marina Hyde

But the reason her one was really good of Ollie Robbins is because I think she subconsciously probably thought, you know, you're thinking it conforms to the conventions of a sitcom. or ideally a sitcom, really, which is that you've got two lead characters here, Emily Thornberry and Ollie Robbins. The rest are just sort of bit bars.

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461.683 - 479.944 Marina Hyde

And everybody doesn't like a third character who's not on screen, and that's why it's funny, who is Keir Starmer. And it all sort of works because... because they conform to the conventions of a sitcom, but they also tell you things that you can't see because of the way it has been filmed. As you say, it's this very dry way of filming.

480.284 - 496.132 Marina Hyde

And so what I love is when the sketch writers who are in the room, and if they're not in the room, people always say, oh, you can do it from the TV. I've done occasionally had to do sketches from the TV for one reason or another. You're not allowed into the room when you're on the election trail. It's always worse. It's always so much better. It's like covering sport.

496.433 - 503.905 Marina Hyde

Yes, technically you could cover a golf tournament off the TV, but it's nothing like doing it when you're there.

503.885 - 520.358 Marina Hyde

I really value the work of our sketch writers particularly because they give you the little details, the little bits, what people were doing when the camera, you know, which you'd never know what the other committee members were doing, who was getting everything off their phone, who wasn't really concentrating. And I really value that particular thing. And it's funny because...

520.338 - 534.78 Marina Hyde

It's not something that other countries particularly have. It's just a British thing. And so those accounts, which often come out really soon after they've happened, are a very good window into the actual drama and the actual, you know, they have higher production values, if we could put it that way.

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