The News Agents: The Phillip Schofield scandal and the future of ITV

This is a global player original podcast, but isn't it a cover up? Yes, it's a total

cover up. It's a total cover up. Those in authority had to know.

That was Amon Holmes on GB News last night, speaking about his fallen and not much loved

former colleague, Philip Schofield, and the way ITV has handled the whole Schofield affair.

Now on one level, Philip Schofield has had a mighty fall from grace, but it's more than

just the story of one individual. It is a story that has the capacity to engulf and spread.

This has become a story about one of Britain's biggest media and entertainment companies

and brands, ITV, and how they handle their top tier presenters, their top talent, and

yet another story about the entertainment industry and British television, where they've

had a very powerful figure that they just didn't seem ever to want to confront.

Welcome to the news agents.

The news agents.

It's John and it's Lewis and we're both in news agents HQ and this story has been rumbling

on for well over a week now, 10 days or so. And we've obviously been back and forth over

that time. Should we cover it? Do we care? Is it being blown out of proportion? We're

doing it today, I think because it feels like today is the day when it really has gone beyond

just he said, she said, rumour counter rumour. There are now things on the record, both from

Schofield and the other players involved and the day when it really now those facts are

established poses really big questions about whether anything has changed in British entertainment,

British television after, and again, we will discuss about whether this is really comparable

or not. But we've had, you know, big, big scandals during the Me Too period going back

to the Sat, Jimmy Savile at the BBC, not necessarily that it's comparable, but nonetheless, where

we've had big media figures and media executives have not necessarily asked the questions they

ought to have done after matters which have arisen from their personal conduct.

Philip Schofield is not the first person to be brought down by a scandal, by a relationship

that should not have taken place in a workplace or whatever. And he won't be the last. But

the manner in which it has been handled, and the manner in which the lies have been told

so freely and then accepted at face value with no further interrogation when it was

clear apparently to everyone in the building that something very, very untoward was going

on between Philip Schofield, comma, 61 years old, comma, and a very, very much younger

man who when he first met Philip Schofield, you'd say was a boy, not a man.

And so this has generated an extraordinary level of toxicity. And maybe to change the

metaphor, you get a small fire on a hillside and you think, oh, well, it's just a tiny

little fire, but it spreads like wildfire and suddenly starts engulfing buildings. And you

feel that is what is happening with Philip Schofield. And last night, one of his former

colleagues, the very successful broadcaster, Amen Holmes, went on GB News, an absolutely

eviscerated Philip Schofield.

I think Philip was absolutely right about toxicity. But my friend, the toxicity is not

with me, Dan Wooten, or anyone else. The toxicity is with you and your mates in management and

everybody who kept you in power and in abuse of power for so long. And if I'm guilty of

anything, it's speaking up for all those researchers who you ignored, all those producers who you

treated like dirt, all those people who are texting and phoning me and Dan Wooten and

saying, we feel now empowered to come out and tell the public the truth. Because the

truth is the public can't handle the truth. The public don't want they think you're a

little broom cupboard person and they grew up with you and you're lovely and you're

adorable and whatever. But you let your fame and your power corrupt you. And that's where

we're at today. And if I'm guilty of anything, it's guilty of exposing you.

I mean, that was an extraordinary interview on GB News with Dan Wooten. And GB News have

been hammering this story for ever since it broke and before that, and Dan Wooten in

particular, and Amen Holmes is also a GB News presenter now. And I think that interview in

some ways as sort of captivating as it was, it sort of demonstrates some of the problems

with this story, right, which is that sometimes those big structural questions that we've

been talking about, we're going to try and talk about today do seem to bleed into what

as we know, John, is the pretty torrid and pretty nasty at times nature of the television

industry of entertainment, television, I'm sure, in particular, and the animus and the

backbiting and quite frankly, the loathing and the jealousy and the jealousies, the

pettiness and all of that sort of thing. But that's not to say, and you could see some of

that, I think, to be fair in that interview. I think, though, what is important to say is

that fundamentally, this is a story once again, about potential abuse of power and about how

the custodians of those powerful figures, in this case, Schofield, and in that case, ITB

management and ITB executives acted because in this sense, you've already alluded to it, John,

it's a story as old as the hills. You have a very powerful figure who has decided or

who's engaged in what he himself has accepted was a very unwise course of action. I mean,

let's just assume this is the end of the story in terms there are no more facts to emerge,

no one else is involved, etc, etc. Let's take it on face value. Schofield has already accepted

that he lied about the relationship to ITB executives to the media to his agent who has

now abandoned him. So we know that he lied. But just to put yourself into a position where you

could meet a 15 year old boy, then help him get a job with you, as you as a very successful,

very well known TV presenter, and then end up in an ongoing relationship with that young man. Okay,

then he was above the age of consent, but nonetheless, still a young man is, and it could

be construed to be an extraordinary abuse of power. And then for others, if this is known about,

or there are whispers about it, for others to tacitly, potentially tacitly accept it, okay,

they may have put in the most sort of cursory questions, they may have had the most cursory

investigations, but to tacitly accept it when everybody seems to have known this was happening,

that is a problem. And that is a story about abuse of power. While I find extraordinary about it,

two things I find extraordinary about it, there was so much discussion in the wake of

me too, and all of the scandals which emerged in the sort of early part of the last decade,

usually about things that happened in the 1970s or the 1980s. I'm not saying again,

that's necessarily analogous in this situation, a lot of those things involve things that were

illegal and horrendous child abuse. But nonetheless, two elements always seem to be ubiquitous at the

time. One is everybody knew, that's what people say about this. And the other is the extent to

which just because someone was powerful in TV or entertainment, just because they were well known,

the whole system seems to be constructed around them. And people avert their eyes and avert

their gaze because they are powerful, because they're successful, because they're lucrative.

And this is in 2023, not 1973, not 1983, 2023. And that is why it poses big questions

for the people at the very top of ITV. Now, Caroline McCall runs a multi-billion pound

entertainment company with tentacles that stretch far and wide, that has all different

profit centers. She has a fiduciary responsibility towards her shareholders. And you think of the

different things she's kind of responsible for, she's responsible for ad revenue, she's responsible

for buying in programs. It's enormous. And so she probably thinks on one level, well,

this kind of thing happening on this morning, I've got people on the food chain who are in

charge of that, they've told me nothing went on. Okay, I've got a million other things in my

entry that I need to sort out. However, the failure to sort it out. And you know, admittedly, what

do you do if you ask the two protagonists to their face, and they say, nothing going on here,

we're not having a relationship, you haven't got investigative powers, are you going to put

private detectives on their tail to follow them home at night, you can't do that.

And you take the denials at face value. And suddenly, this is now lapping at the door

of the chief executive. And she is potentially exposed by all of this.

And there's a big question about the timeline. I mean, bear in mind that even a week ago,

the line from ITV was that Scofield had left this morning, but that he was still going to do

the National Soap Awards, which I think had taken place in a few weeks time, he was going to do

another primetime show, which has yet undisclosed and unannounced, that's gone, and other television

work in the future. So his this morning connection had gone. But the ITV connection hadn't. And ITV

have at every turn, I think, and you know, you and I have obviously much more experience with the

BBC. But I think had this been the BBC, the level of not necessarily wanting to engage with the

question, the level of hoping that this would go away, would never have stood for a second at the

BBC. This would have collapsed very, very quickly. The level of public scrutiny, which has been great

on ITV, would have been that much greater at the BBC. And there would have been that much greater

intensity to the conversation. And I think that line from ITV, which I think has felt at times to

me is if they just put their head in the sand and hope that it would disappear, it would never

have stood. Well, it was unwise. Yeah. Well, as Harold Wilson didn't say, a week is a long time

in showbiz. This was only a week ago. It was last Monday that Alison Hammond and Dermot O'Leary were

on this morning to make this statement. Now, we can't start today's show without paying tribute

to the man who spent the last two decades sitting on this morning sofa, Philips Gofield.

So as a show, everyone on an off-screen ITV and this morning want to say a huge thank you to Phil

for what is done to make this show such a success over the last 21 years. Quite simply, we all know

he's one of the best live television broadcasters this country has ever had. And we and all the team

wish him all the best for the future. Yeah. Less the week after that, Holly Willoughby, who is not

there now, and obviously this question marks over her future, had to issue a statement saying,

it's taken time to process yesterday's news. When reports of this relationship first surfaced,

I asked Phil directly if this was true and was told it was not. It's been very hurtful to now

find out that was a lie, Holly, she put on her Instagram stories. So it is just descended into a

classic who knew what when and whether it was truly credible that two things could be true at once,

that everybody could know and that ITV could ask so few searching questions as to simply accept

at face value that this had emerged. Bear in mind as well, and I think this is where it gets

sort of murkier as well. According to the Daily Mail's reporting on this, the only reason that

that line didn't hold, i.e. that Schofield was going to have to go, but then hopefully they

could just sort of ride it out, was because this young man in question decided that he wanted to

admit to the affair that he was sick of lying about it. That's according to the Daily Mail's

reporting. So if that hadn't happened, then we could still be in the situation

which had basically characterized the status quo ante which is everybody kind of knows,

but no one accepts it, no one admits it, and everybody keeps looking the other way.

Well, let us speak now to one of the best media correspondents in the country, Jake Cantor,

who was at the Times newspaper and is now International Investigations Editor at Deadline.

And Jake, great to have you with us. I suppose my question is, is this here today gone tomorrow

scandal or is there something much more profound and long lasting about this?

Yeah, it doesn't feel like a here today gone tomorrow scandal. It feels like we're in a

position a week ago where there was perhaps a deeper, bigger story to come out. And that story

has now, I think, arrived. The dam has burst and we're just seeing these allegations come

cascading out. And I think the front pages that we're seeing, the general wall to wall coverage

on other broadcasters suggests that this has got some way left to run. And I think the attention

will inevitably turn to ITV. We're already seeing big questions about the way ITV handled this.

And I think what ITV probably should be doing is thinking about launching some sort of

independent inquiry. It has investigated both the allegations concerning

Phillips Cofield and this young individual who worked with him and apparently had a

relationship with him. It has also investigated broader concerns about toxicity on this morning.

In both cases, it found no evidence. And clearly, that's proved to be wrong in the case of Phillips

Cofield. So it's clear that there are bigger questions left to seek answers to. And I think,

I mean, if this was the BBC, I think the independent inquiry would have been launched already.

Jake, what are the charges against ITV as it were? Is there not a scenario where

their version of events is correct, which is they asked Scofield and this younger gentleman in

question, whether they were having a relationship, they lied, they said no, what else are they supposed

to do? I think that's true. I think that is definitely true. So Amon Holmes was on GB News

last night and raised a couple of points that I thought were quite interesting about whether

there was any sort of broader knowledge at ITV at the time and whether ITV did enough to

investigate those particular bits of evidence. Jake, you said that if this was the BBC,

a case C would have already been appointed. The independent inquiry would be underway,

as we speak, to report in a few weeks to the Director-General. I mean, look, the BBC

was there with Savile. This, of course, isn't Savile. There are no parallels that we could

possibly suggest between Philip Scofield and Jimmy Savile, but the degree to which it has the power

to do damage is potentially there. Definitely. I mean, look, I'm always very cautious of saying

that name and it's very clear we're talking about entirely different things. I think one of the

similarities that struck me, having said what I've just said, is that at the BBC at the time,

it was said to be an open secret or widespread rumor that Jimmy Savile was involved with wrong

doing. And there are hallmarks here in the fact that a lot of people at ITV are saying this was

known about. This relationship was not a secret. I've spoken to people who do not work in the

daytime division at ITV and they've told me, yeah, even we knew about this relationship.

So we're not entirely sure how management could not have got to the bottom of it when

they investigated it in 2020. So those are the kind of hallmarks I think will have echoes of

previous scandals along these lines. And I think for ITV, this will go all the way to the top to

Carolyn McCall and her handling of the situation. She is not in a position of strength at the moment.

ITV's share price has plummeted since she was in charge. And I think

for her to get on the front foot and to launch some sort of inquiry would probably be a smart

thing to do. And Jake, I suppose we should say, the reason this matters beyond the kind of intrigue

of internal ITV and obviously the sort of questions it raises, ITV remains a very big player in the

British media and entertainment market, doesn't it? You already alluded to what's happening in the

share price. This is a big commercial story as much as anything else. Absolutely. This morning is a

lucrative brand and they have big sponsorship deals. They have a big sponsorship deal with

Arnold Clark, which is a car sales. And there are questions about whether that sponsorship

arrangement will continue because of this scandal. And I think more than that, this morning is part

of our sort of cultural life. It's a big piece of the ITV furniture. It's an iconic show.

And that's why I slightly raise my eyebrows when I see reports about ITV

axing this morning. I just don't think that that will be on the cards because it's held fondly

in people's hearts. I've been listening to a couple of phone-ins on this very issue over the weekend

and people are saying, I love this morning. I don't want ITV to get rid of it. It's a big part of my

daily routine. And I think that that will stop, I think, potentially any bigger action being taken

by ITV on this morning's future. I suppose my other question to you, and it's a more general

question, because you have covered the media landscape for a very long time. Is there something

about media organisations where you have a golden goose that's laying the golden egg and you just

think, I don't want to know about bad behaviour because they are making so much money for the

company. I don't want to hear, I don't want to see, see no evil, speak no evil, hear no evil.

Yeah, I think these cases are very difficult for big broadcasters. And this morning is a

probably a really good example. I've been reporting on another case at Channel 4 recently,

Dick and Angel Strawbridge, who are big stars for the channel. They present a show called Escape

to the Shadow. And they've been accused of bullying and harassing their production crew.

I obtained a recording of Angel Strawbridge being abusive to a producer. And Channel 4 has cut ties

with both of them on the back of an independent review. But it took the best part of three or four

years for Channel 4 to get to that point. And they ignored warnings from the production company

during that process. Jake, thanks so much. Thank you very much indeed, Jake. That was really

interesting. Thank you. Picking up off the back of that, I mean, something we've been circling

around is basically the sort of structural dynamics in television and media about when you

have quote unquote stars, quote unquote talents, and you have people who are off camera not seen,

and the power dynamics are so vast. And we've seen that in story after story. I mean, do you think

that is ever going to change? Because as I say, the thing that still strikes me about it is that

I can sort of get that in the 70s. I can get that in the 80s for it to still be so profound and gov

to be so vast in the 2020s that those dynamics basically still manifest themselves and media

industry executives still look the other way at something which we can all accept may not have

been illegal, but was pretty unsavory, very unwise. It's extraordinary to me. So I was in the States

during the Me Too era. And on the news programs, and this really interested me, the news anchor,

the news presenter, Hugh Edwards or Tom Bradby would also be editor-in-chief. And they would have

enormous power to decide what the running orders would be, who would be on, who would be in vision,

who wouldn't be. And I think that as a result of some of the things that happened during Me Too

and some of the scandals, I think that has changed a bit in the US, that you have news

anchors now, but they are not calling all the shots. And that has been a sort of redressing

of the balance slightly. In the UK, I think that you do have presenters, maybe not so much on news

programs, where there tends to be an editor who ultimately will decide what's the lead story

and what's the second story. But on some of these daytime programs, the person presenting it,

or the people presenting it, or the doubleheader presenting, Holly and Phil are the brand.

And that confers enormous power and unchecked, that confers an enormous ability for wrongdoing.

Most of the time, it's all fine. But every now and then, something erupts like this,

and you think, there's something rotten here. Yeah. And there has been also, rightly, a massive

change in sort of wider societal moors around whether or not it's appropriate for there to be

a vast age difference between whether it's a man and a woman or a man and a man or a woman

and a woman or whatever, particularly in the workplace. And it feels that those two things

have fused yet again, coupled with the kind of lucrative financial element of ITV executives

potentially looking the other way as a result. And here we are again. To me, that's the extraordinary

thing about the story. It feels as if we haven't really moved on that way. It feels as a society,

we recognize that these gray areas really ought not to be so gray. And yet when push comes to shove,

two executives at the top of these companies really stand up to their talent presenters,

whatever. No, if anything, it seems they try and insulate them. Okay. In a moment, we'll be back.

Lewis and I are grabbing our passports as we speak, because we're going to be going to Turkey

and Spain all in the space of a few minutes.

This is the news agents.

Welcome back. And it has been a big weekend for elections in Europe. Well, in Spain,

and more particularly Turkey. In Turkey, there was a kind of a lot of speculation that maybe this

would be the end of President Erdogan, who has been in power for so many years. And there was a

sense that given what was happening with the economy, given the handling of the terrible

earthquake, that his time may be up. No, he has been returned to power. The voting number is 5248.

I think you will recognize that from other elections that have taken place.

The curse.

The curse of 5248. And the coalition candidate, Kamel Kilic Droglu, failed to come through

and win. I mean, there were some extraordinary visuals that just made you think,

is this really a free and fair election? I mean, the photograph of wretched type Erdogan,

handing out money at a polling station to people about to vote, you thought. No, that's

really not a good look. That's not a good look for free, fair, proper elections. But he has won,

and he has returned to power, which has big implications for geopolitics in Europe and

wider. Let's hear now from Ekrem Mckicci, a Turkish journalist at Deutsche Welle.

Well, one thing is clear that the opposition coalition in Turkey did not manage to respond

to Erdogan's maneuvers. For example, Erdogan based his campaign on linking the opposition

bloc with terrorist groups, even though it was based on unfounded allegations. So the opposition

bloc clearly did not manage to devise a strategy to respond to that. I think it all boils down to

the propaganda process. I think this is a really important election. It's important because Turkey

is such a major and important ally and sometimes slightly fair weather friend for the West,

its relationship with Russia, some implications potentially for the Ukraine war, potential

implications for all of the millions of refugees that the EU is still currently paying the Turkish

government to keep within Turkey, something that Erdogan has consistently threatened to end and to

release all of these people into the EU, which in different ways would create havoc. But look,

Turkey is itself such a fascinating and important country of 85 million people

on the most important democracies in the world. And it's a democracy that for many Turks and

for many in the country and many outside have been calling into question for some time now,

as Erdogan has become more and more dominant, questions over his being increasingly an authoritarian,

clamping down on opposition, clamping down on a free press, clamping down on women's rights,

and fundamentally as well, I mean, an LGBT rights. I mean, he took aim in his victory speech

at the LGBT community. So for liberal Turks, it is a dark day. Just in terms of the sort of country

Turkey is, I mean, Turkey has been dominated now by two really significant leaders since it became

a republic, Kamal Ataturk, the first Turkish leader of the independent Turkish Republic,

and now Erdogan. And the really interesting thing about it is you can say, and Erdogan to some extent

sort of says this himself, that he is trying to take Turkey in really the quintessentially

opposite direction from the legacy that Ataturk left, which was to be a modern, secular country

with more in common and more connection to the West than the wider Middle East and the wider,

not the Turkey is an Arabic country, but the Arab world. And by contrast, Turkey has an under

Erdogan has been leaning further and further into not quite Islamism, but certainly it's Islamic

heritage and doing things that no one ever thought would be possible. I mean, the eye of Sophia now

itself has been turned into a mosque in a way that they said people said, that he would never

do that. It's never going to happen. It has been a real period, a real 20 years of transition and

change for Turkey. And for liberal secular Turks, it looks like it's going to be another very unhappy

four to five years. And many of those people are, as I say, calling Turkish democracy into question.

I can just about remember back to do my gap here between Seoul and university and going to Turkey

and being staggered by this lovely kind of thought that you could cross the Bosphorus

in Istanbul and go from Europe to Asia. And Turkey straddles that and its influence in Russia,

as you say, its influence in the Middle East and its influence in what would be called mainland

Europe. And of course, Turkey is a member of NATO, an uneasy member of NATO. I'm not going

to go all Emily Maitlis here because she's away this week, but you know, the old LBJ quote about

better to be in the tent, pissing out than out the tent, pissing in. That is Europe's attitude

towards Erdogan that he's an uncomfortable ally to have, but we would rather have him in than out.

And I think hopes in the West that there might be a change going back to a sort of secularism

of yes, the year of Ataturk has gone for another four years.

I thought you were going to say that you just about remember Ataturk there for a moment.

No, no, I didn't.

You didn't interview him.

No, I didn't. I don't think I did. No, not quite. Old, not that old. Thank you, Mr. Goodall.

That's all right. Other elections at the weekend were Spain.

Yeah, we were the Balearists.

That's the only I had.

I mean, I can't believe you.

You pitched a trick there.

I pitched it to the bosses here, but no possibility at all of an abuse of power on our front.

They just said absolutely not.

Unfortunately, no.

Look, so these were local and regional elections in Spain.

And they were widely considered to be a foretaste, a forerunner of the general election,

which was supposed to, was going to happen in December.

So there's a lot of background on Spanish politics for those who don't follow it.

The Prime Minister, Pedro Sanchez is a socialist.

He's been Prime Minister for a few years now.

He has the first coalition left-wing government in history.

Normally, Spain has majoritarian governments.

It's had a coalition left-wing government supported by further left parties,

which have been unpopular in Spain.

And although actually the country in all sorts of ways has been doing quite well,

unemployment now at a low, not seen since the financial crisis,

widely considered to have done pretty well in the pandemic,

the EU has complimented them on how they've dealt with sort of post-COVID structural funds,

all of these sorts of things kind of be doing pretty well.

Nonetheless, Sanchez himself is pretty unpopular,

and his government is pretty unpopular, not least because of its connection now

to these parties of the further left and what the right have done,

which is to accuse them and critique them of being in the bed with nationalist parties,

Bass Nationalists.

They've said they've got connections to the old Eta terrorist group and so on.

And these elections have led to an absolute route really

for the conservatives, the party that are popular, and intriguingly, interestingly,

this much further right group, far right group called Vox.

And Vox, which has been on the rise in Spain for some years now,

is going to end up in coalition in various different regions with the conservatives.

But the weird thing is, I mean, you might think the response from this would be,

on my word, the Prime Minister is going to try and put off the election as far as possible,

far away as possible.

Actually, Sanchez over the weekend responded to this by saying,

no, we're going to have early elections.

We're going to have an early election in July the 23rd.

Partly, he said, because we want to respond to the sort of shockwave of these elections,

but partly he hopes to try and scare people into the prospects of seeing,

well, you know what this looks like.

You can see that Partidio Popular conservatives ending up in coalition with his far right group,

Vox, and Spain could have its first far right government or first far right influence government

since Franco's regime fell in 1975.

Which would be an enormous shock for Europe, except, I suppose,

the fact that we kind of had that conversation a bit over Italy and Maloney.

And Maloney has come into power.

And actually, the world has not fallen apart.

I was talking to a former Italian Prime Minister the other day who said,

you know, hasn't been that bad.

And of course you were.

Of course you were.

This is just a typical night at Schoepel.

Exactly. A former Italian Prime Minister.

Just dropped round for some pasta and a glass of chianti.

Berlusconi, was it?

Was the Bunga Bunga party?

It was not a Bunga Bunga party for the absence of any doubt.

Emily Maitlis goes for a week and look what happens.

Look, if you look at what's going on across what we have typically called the far right,

I don't know.

It's possible we may have to reassess the term that you could argue that they've

increasingly basically become the mainstream right.

But if you look across the picture in Europe at the moment,

you're right about Maloney in Italy, currently got a pretty popular government there.

Le Pen gave Macron a very good run for his money in the French presidential election.

It is widely tipped for the next one.

We've seen what's happened with Sweden and the Sweden Democrats.

The very right-wing Chega party in Portugal is now appalling at 15 percent.

Seeing in terms of the authoritarianism in Turkey that we've just been talking about

with Erdogan as well.

I mean, there has been talk of the kind of slight decline, sort of gradual decline of

the far right, the populist right.

I think what we can see is, is that this is part of a much longer-term battle.

Indeed, in our own country, we've seen the kind of, we saw what happened with the National

Conservative Conference just a couple of weeks ago.

It feels like the ideological dynamism on the right in politics in Europe is absolutely

on what we would have called, probably should still call, the far right or certainly the

extreme right of politics.

That is where the ideological energy within conservatism in Europe is.

And in terms of the long-term consequences of that, quite extraordinary.

One of the annoying things about doing this podcast is the extraordinary popularity of

Lewis Goodall.

After the break, I'm going to try and make him less popular.

Welcome back.

Now, if like me and Maidless, you are obsessed by succession and you're now feeling there

as a whole in your life as they have gone.

Waste all Royco.

No more.

The final season ended last night.

We're not going to do any spoilers about who's come out on top and who hasn't and who's lost.

We're going to talk about it as just such a culturally important show, except with someone

who doesn't like it very much.

I'm joined in the studio now by someone.

Go on, Lewis.

Make yourself unpopular and say why.

No, it's not that I don't like it.

I have, you know what, I watched the first season, but I didn't feel that compelled to

watch any more of it.

And I've just started because of you, right?

Because of Emily.

Because you don't stop.

Basically, you talk in 90% succession references now and I just haven't got a bloody clue what

you're saying.

I decided to start resuming watching it, which I did even last night.

Just because we tell you to fuck off doesn't mean we're summoning up our inner Logan Roy.

No, no, you already had that down some time before.

No, look, I mean, it's obviously very good in its own way, but I just don't understand

the obsession with succession.

I just don't get it.

The theme tune is excellent.

I actually think the theme tune is great.

And by the way, just in case, Jesse, I'm strong as this thing, no disrespect to you.

Deep Show is probably, well, definitely one of the greatest TV shows of all time.

I'll give you that.

Oh, Sophie.

Not again.

I'm not having a baby.

I'm having a party.

So what do you reckon?

How many buttons?

Because like one is old school, Blair on holiday, two is the new one.

So I was thinking maybe three, but then if I'm doing three, maybe four.

I think you're doing a reserve chicken.

What do you think?

Five lasagnas, Mark.

Lasagnas can't save you.

You are still going to have to talk to people, you know.

And succession is obviously very good.

I just don't really understand.

I think it's a bit too knowing.

It's a bit too clever by half.

I sort of feel like there's a lot of media people who are just obsessed with the Murdoch's

and just interested in it for that reason and kind of want to be seen to like it.

It's one of those things where you've just got to be seen to be watching it enjoy.

Not you, obviously, John.

You wouldn't be that.

OK, I'm going to hit back.

I think that the portrayal of the relationship between a domineering,

boorish, overbearing father and his three deeply damaged children and the psychological

interplay between them is absolutely riveting.

I also think, actually, Murdoch is the obvious parallel.

But what about Trump and his children?

And you see some parallels there as well.

And I just think that the way it is written and the texture of the characters

and the the riffing and the dynamism of that script is fantastic.

And I just think it's as good as it's up there with the Sopranos, the wire.

It's top quality over eight shows in the main.

I thought you were going to say, you know, look, the extraordinary

interplay between this sort of older, overbearing presenter

and then his sort of young guy.

I see where this is going.

His younger, dynamic, sort of successor.

We'll be back tomorrow.

We'll be back tomorrow. Shut up, Lewis. Bye bye.

This has been a global player, original podcast and a Persephoneka production.

Machine-generated transcript that may contain inaccuracies.