The Rest Is Entertainment - Can The Pope Win Eurovision?

Episode Date: May 14, 2025

Can the Vatican enter Eurovision? What's the deal with the delegation delays? And what would Marina's darts nickname be? With Eurovision just around the corner Richard & Marina bring your burning Eurovision questions to Executive Supervisor Martin Österdahl and Brand Director Martin Green.
 Plus, we talk Klingon, Elvish and Klanger - how are fake languages for movies are created, and how you can get a degree in them. The Rest Is Entertainment AAA Club: Become a member for exclusive bonus content, early access to our Q&A episodes, ad-free listening, access to our exclusive newsletter archive, discount book prices on selected titles with our partners at Coles, early ticket access to future live events, and our members’ chatroom on Discord. Just head to therestisentertainment.com to sign up, or start a free trial today on Apple Podcasts: apple.co/therestisentertainment. The Rest Is Entertainment is proudly presented by Sky. Sky is home to award-winning shows such as The White Lotus, Gangs of London and The Last of Us. Visit Sky.com to find out more For more Goalhanger Podcasts, head to www.goalhanger.com Assistant Producer: Aaliyah Akude Video Editor: Kieron Leslie, Charlie Rodwell, Harry Swan, Adam Thornton Producer: Joey McCarthy Senior Producer: Neil Fearn Head of Content: Tom Whiter Exec Producers: Tony Pastor + Jack Davenport Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

This episode is brought to you by our friends at Sky. And when we say friends, we mean friends with excellent taste in television. Absolutely. And diving into my never ending TV list is so seamless. Sky does all the hard work for me by bringing whatever I want to watch across all my apps and channels into one place. Now let's not forget the blockbuster shows they bring us, Gangs of London, Day of the Jackal. All the different apps all in one place. I like to say effortless input, exceptional output. Do you like that?

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Sorry, yeah. If I try to introduce anything to that opening sequence, it just does derail still doesn't it? Doesn't it? And I'm Richard Osmond. Yes, Richard Osmond. Always have been, always will be. Now, for the second half of this Questions and Answers edition. This is an absolute mess so far. It is. It's a dog's breakfast. However, we have got something of a Eurovision special. So many of you sent your questions in and we were able to put them to entities known as the Two Martins. Martin Green, who's the director of the Eurovision Song Contest and Martin Oesterdahl, who is the Eurovision Song Contest executive supervisor. We had some

great questions. They've given us great answers as well. So that'll be after the break. But first, let's do some non-Eurovision questions. Is that crazy? I have a question for you about fake languages, Marina. Now this comes from Sammy. Sammy has neglected to give us a surname. And the whole problem is that's what you have to give surnames. Otherwise, Martin Green and Martin Oesterdahl, we wouldn't know who was who.

No. That's why we use surnames otherwise Martin Green and Martin Oesterdahl, we wouldn't know who was who. That's why we use surnames. So Sammy McAlamy, let's say, like a Scottish David Lammy. Sammy McAlamy asks, my question is how much work goes into making fake languages on TV shows? Are they just saying any old gibberish or is there actually a lot of work that has gone into the making of it? Oh, okay. I happen to know quite a lot about what are called conlangs, constructed languages. When you hear these things on TV, it obviously ranges from the equivalent of people going rhubarb, rhubarb, rhubarb, and it is just obvious gibberish, to really sophisticated

constructed languages. Like Tolkien is one of the first people who does this in The Lord of the Rings and Cimmerlian and all things like that. There are various different languages, but even Elvish languages, there's two of them, Quenya and Sindarin, and they're the most developed ones. I'm literally losing the will to live. Well, they're quite like Welsh and Finnish. Tolkien was an amazing linguist and he was a professor on everything. Nonetheless, they're not completely codified. You couldn't learn to speak it from the books. But what he did is he created root words and therefore the films when they came to them were able to work on those roots and kind of, so you'd

have words that sort of connote things to do with water and words that can, I don't know, connote things to do with stopping. So you'd put them together and you'd have someone who's like a lock keeper or a dam builder or something like that. You don't hear the word connote that often, do you? I don't know why. And this is great. I love it. Well, anyway. My language skills genuinely after this this podcast, are so much better

than they were. I think you're not being entirely serious and I quite deserve it. That's fine. Now, AI can obviously create you one of these languages so quickly now and they can just whip you up anything, but many were created before AI would do it for you. Like, Watch It Down has Lapin. That was quite sophisticated. Klingon. Now, Klingon in Star Trek. You can learn that, right? Yeah. Mark Ockrund was the person who created that and there's a whole grammar vocabulary very developed as always. There's kind of university courses and actually if you study linguistics at university you can look at certain, like Navi from the Avatar films. They actually took some time, you know, James Cameron had to be sort of so fastidious about

building the world. You can study the building of that language. Imagine how disappointed you'd be in your children if they went to university and they studied Navi. They go, what are you learning? Mechanical engineering. Navi from the Avatar films. Well, maybe they'd be doing... No, but they're doing linguistics. I understand that. Well, hopefully they would be. Game of Thrones obviously had quite a few. They had Dothraki and Hyvalerion and things like that. HBO developed those languages because in the books they didn't really exist. In George RR Martin's books

they didn't really exist. What is HBO and Dothraki? I don't know. They spend no time watching it, which makes me feel, you know, someone needs to really tell them to do that instead of go to war the whole time. District 9, that had a lot. Do you remember District 9, the aliens, they descend on basically Johannesburg. And Parseltongue in Harry Potter, that is basically gibberish, but it's sort of mesmerizing and kind of whispery and you kind of want to listen to that. Navi, I said, didn't I?

That was a guy called Paul Frommer, Dr. Paul Frommer developed it with all its special syntax and phonetics and all of that. Minionese is the last one. Yeah, beer cough man. There's quite a lot of nonsense in that as well as kind of little bits from other languages, but it's sort of funny and that's why it works because you can recognise, it's like a sort of form of kind of comic Esperanto in a weird way. So there's lots of different ones. But now, as I say, I mean, you could just get AI to kind of knock you up a language. I don't know if anyone's actually done that, but it's relatively

easy compared to before when they would kind of enlist all these people to create something so that people could speak in these languages to make authentic. The greatest made up languages really are Pingu's language and the Klangers as well, which are lovely because they just have the rhythm of speech but making noises like when Charlie Brown's talking on the telephone. Those are the languages I understand because we recognize the rhythm of a joke, we recognize the rhythm of a question, all of those things you realize how much of language is rhythm when you just sort of, you know, you could do a podcast that was, you know, just going to... Those kind of strange ethereal noises of the clangers, like the

music of the spheres. Do you know what, I nearly did the clangers and I thought I don't think the microphone could take it. No, I know. I was thinking, I thought, no, I won't chime in here. Now, of course, people try and understand where it can be codified. And since the advent of the internet, which came after things like Klingon was invented. Yeah. But people have tried to codify all these languages. And there are lots of different as I say, there are even university courses. I reckon you could do an entire I'd love for someone to do this. It must be doable. Do an entire episode of The Rest Is Politics, put it into Pingo language, listen to it and still have a pretty rough idea of what Rory and Alistair were talking about.

What a challenge. You've certainly laid down a gauntlet there. If someone could do just a little exchange from the two of them in Pingu language. Send it in. We'd love to see it. I don't know why I didn't say our podcast. I do. Anyway, have you got a question for me? Yes, I do have a question for you. It's about fake languages.

I just asked it to you. Sorry if it's confusing. Can I ask you about the darts, Richard? Can I ask you about the darts? And walk on music. Gareth Parton has asked. Good surname, strong surname. And actually a nice greeting at start. G'day Richard and Marina. I wonder where he's from.

I'm living in Melbourne, Australia, brackets British expat, and I enjoyed the Snooker World Championships from afar. What would your intro music be and what would your moniker be? Moniker, I always think it's confusing that moniker is also someone's name. Yeah. If you're called moniker, moniker is your moniker. I did Let's Play Darts for Comic Relief and my walk on music was, I wish I was a little bit taller by Sceelo, which is great. I've talked about this before, I'm sure. I had Britain's tallest woman was my bodyguard and a guy who was seven foot two as well. And I was the big frimly giant because it was a frimly green. But I think if I really was a professional darts player,

I'd like to be called the Chiswick flyover. It doesn't make any sense, but I think- No, I love it though. There's something about it that I love. I think it sounds pretty good. How about you? I would be Marina Nowhere to Hide because- Oh, that's clever.

But I know my music. So wait a minute, so your nickname is Nowhere To? Yeah. Okay. Well, it sounds like a horror film, Nowhere To, which is honestly, it's made like 18 times its budget. Sounds like it's a real indie thing that won like some golden bear claw somewhere. I cannot wait for Nowhere 3.

Okay. Now, my music is not even a contest. It would be the theme from Stingray, Marina, Aquamarina. Do you remember? Yes. Now that was written by Barry Gray, performed by Gary Miller and the Barry Gray Orchestra. And I would ask them to do something with the lighting so it all felt like we were, as it came on, you know, Marina Aquamarina. What are these strange enchantments that start whenever you're near? It would all be blue, like the lighting, so it would feel like we were underwater as I came in. Marina, nowhere to hide.

Do you think they would be able to do that in all the venues? I would make it a condition of my attendance. They tend not to do kind of underwater type things on those... It's just a light, it's actually a really basic lighting effect that you could do in a student theatre, Richard, and I'm pretty sure they'd be, unless you're saying they can't manage it, which I'm pretty sure they could. Yeah, if Barry Hearn is listening, Barry, could you do an underwater light effect for Marina? Barry will tell us. And also tell us how much it cost. He said I'd do it, it'd cost you.

The best dance nickname is Mark Frost who was called Frosty the Throwman. Yeah you're right it's unbeautiful. But it's amazing having you know Luke Humphreys and Luke Littler because you think obviously the first Luke is always going to get the coolest nickname. So Luke Humphreys is Callhand Luke, which is a great nickname. And then Luke Littler comes along, they've still got Luke the nuke. It's still there. I mean, that's a good first name. They're long and strong. They've got plenty more, I think. Yeah, haven't they just?

And yet can't think of one off the top of their head. Luke? Yeah. Luke, I am your father. That would be a good one. That's a drama. Yeah. Luke, stop and listen. Luke, what I'm about to do yeah Luke I'm

ready go to dance Luke who's talking Luke who's talking to yeah yeah Luke Humphrey should have been called Luke who's talking and then Luke literally should have been called Luke who's talking to come on guys you know what just we're not the seniors talk yeah Rob Walker there who does all the the walk-ons at the snooker and it kind of ramps up the audience and stuff. But he's the one, he comes up with the nicknames for all the players. He kind of invents them.

So the older ones, obviously Hurricane Higgins and Whirlwind White and now Zhao Zhentong, he was the world champion, is the cyclone. We've been waiting for a while for a cyclone. James Wattena was the typhoon, I think. But yeah, he makes them up. He fits you with your... He fits you with your... And you know, if you're the first time playing at the Crucible, he'll give you his name. Like Luca Bricell, he was the world champion a couple of years

ago, he came up with the name the Belgian Bullet. It often is the country you're from and something that suggests velocity. But now in some snooker tournaments, they have walk-on music as well. You can always tell a lot about players from the walk-on music that they use. The snooker nicknames are not quite as good asarts nicknames. I have to say. I agree with you on that. The Wizard of Wishaw, it's John Higgins. Mark Williams is the Welsh potting machine. It sounds like something you get at a garden centre. It really just sat, yes, just right at the end by the till. Ronnie of course has got the rocket and that's great. That is pretty much unimpeachable. The worst one of all of course is Mark Selby who is the jester from Leicester and you're like I mean he's I love Mark Selby but

he's not you know he's not Michael McIntyre. So were Rob Walker not broke the idea of people being able to come up with their own names? Well there was a time in Snooker pre-Rob Walker yeah I know it's difficult for you know modern fans to appreciate that and so a lot of those are our heritage nicknames but now if you're playing in your first tournament, he will assign you a nickname. I think he should loosen his vice-like grip on the nomenclature and people should be able to just chime in with their own thing. I love it. But also you can tell some of the names don't age like brilliant. Like when

Ding Junwei was the first big Chinese star and snooker. Immediately he was called enter the dragon. He like, okay, yeah, I sort of get it. And now the nicknames tend to be, tend to be just, you know, about the person rather than suddenly. They've got one from over there. Yes, exactly. Yeah. Dark nicknames in general, which people come up with themselves, I think are slightly more evolved than snooker nicknames. And of course the darts walk on music. So the big thing in darts, apart from the world championship and all that is if you get to play in the premier league, there's eight people each year who gets to play in the premier league and it's a big tour around the country, huge numbers, like big money as well. So if you get into that eight player league, you're making an absolute fortune. And there's a

guy called Nathan Aspinall, nicknamed the Asp, and he would have been on the bubble just on the cusp of, you know, is he seventh, eighth, ninth? What would he be? But his walk on music is Mr. Brightside. And people go absolutely nuts when it's played. The whole place absolutely goes off. And there are people who said, you know what, because he was on the cusp, having Mr. Brightside as his walk on music was the thing that just knocked him into eighth place in that league.

So they can be very, very lucrative pieces of walk-on music. Luke Humphries was accused of stealing his I Predictor Riot because he's from Leeds and Kaiser Chiff's the chiefs from Leeds and there was a player a while back who used I Predictor Riot but it sort of suits Luke Humphries better. But yeah, so if you're the ninth best dance player in the world, my advice would be choose a great piece of walk-on music and you'll double your earnings. Now, I absolutely love that. We've got a huge number of questions about Eurovision. Do you think we should go to a break now so that we can fully service this particular banquet of questioning?

Yes, should we do that? I have to say, even if you're not a Eurovision fan, there are some fun questions and some fun answers as well. This episode is brought to you by Sky, where you can watch the brand new series of the award winning, A Last of Us. So we've both been watching the new season, which once more does not hold back. If we thought the first series was dark and had twists and turns, I'd say this one's darkerer and more twisty turn-over. I think that's correct.

The infected are obviously terrifying, but the real danger arguably now comes from the living Richard. The first season for people who watch that in a year to watch the second season, you know exactly what you're going to expect here. But this time I would say there are even more rug pulls and even more extraordinary moments where you go, okay, I didn't see that coming. Beneath the horror, I suppose it's about the fragile ties that bind people together. So grief, revenge, love, the price of survival, which is fairly high. Now the new characters, Abby and Dina, they have taken it off in a whole different direction, which is as you would expect.

And without giving anything away for those yet to watch, it does just keep delivering those moments where you think, what? I can't believe they just did that. Watch the brand new season of the award-winning The Lost of Us, available now on Sky. Hi, this is Cathy Kay from The Rest is Politics US. And this is Anthony Scaramucci. I've spent over two decades reporting from Washington. Presidents, while they come and go, the chaos, that never changes.

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New episodes every week. Welcome back everybody. Now, it's Eurovision Song Contest this weekend, the semi-finals all week as well, with so many questions about Eurovision that we felt like we had to get some experts to talk to us. So we've got Martin Green and Martin Österdahl. Let's just get a little clip from both of them so you understand exactly what it is they do, what's the difference they do, and also just because we get to enjoy Martin Österdahl's

wonderful Swedish accent. Well, hi Marina and Richard. Thanks for having us on. It's great to be here. My name's Martin Green and I'm the director of the Eurovision Song Contest. Yeah, hello, and thanks for having us on. I'm Martin Osterdahl. I'm the executive supervisor of the Eurovision Song Contest. So I primarily look after the show itself, everything that happens on stage, everything in the contest.

Yeah, he gets the fun stuff. I think the best way to start, I look after the brand. So I'm looking at it more of a year-round thing and constantly in conversation with my colleague here about what we can do for the future. Patsy Davis, this is a good one to start with I think. It seems like the most complex gig of all time to plan, organise and execute on the night, given its live broadcast to not only every European member state but all over the world. Can you talk through how it all works and approximately how many people are involved from performers to country point hosts, jurors and the in-between? Surely it must be one of, if not the, biggest TV event in the world. Martin and Martin.

Well thanks for that question Patsy. How many hours do I get? Well how to explain, I see how many hours do I get. Well, how to explain, first of all, there are 37 this year, 37 delegations which are representing their countries. They come from the national broadcasters or the state broadcaster of each country. They come in a group of 25, 27, 29 people. So it's 37 times all those people.

But then of course, also backstage, we have a production crew and the production crew is usually a couple of hundred, like five, those people. But then of course also backstage we have a production crew and the production crew is usually a couple of hundred like five six hundred people and on top of that you have everyone else working with it with the host broadcaster organization which adds several hundred more and then you have an additional four or five hundred working from the city you have a similar number of volunteers probably probably even more volunteers. You have international and national press in sometimes more than a thousand. All in all, I mean one way to measure the amount of people that actually,

one way or another contribute to these shows is to count the badges that we're all wearing when we're inside the venue area and those in that system we typically print around 10 or 11 or even 12. We're actually up this year there are 14,000 accredited people to Eurovision this year. I think what some viewers probably don't realize is yes we have two live finals and a grand final but each of those shows have two dress rehearsals with a full audience and an extra dress rehearsal with no audience to begin with. So we run the show 12 times in five days.

By the end of the week, the show is so long that the audience coming out are meeting the audience coming in. And I, you know, there's a great way to put this. If you do the Brits at the O2 in London, let's say, you're in and out of that venue in four days. We are in this venue for seven weeks and that kind of gives you an idea of the complexity of it. You've got a live audience, 37 acts, 37 live links into the show to do the voting. I said to someone

the other day, you know, I've produced an Olympic opening ceremony and this is far more complicated. I remember when I first produced this show back in 2013, we had Lady Gaga's world tour as the biggest event after us coming in. And I think that world tour, which was the biggest of that time, had 37 semi-trailers of technology. We came into Malmo Arena at that time with 97. We are now over 200 semi-trailers of technology that are unloaded in the initial week of those seven or eight weeks that we're in the venue. We're the biggest music show in the world. I mean, you know, it's not spin, you know.

160 million people watch us. We have votes from 150 countries. The engagement on our digital now, which is the modern phenomenon, is just off the charts. And there's a great stat, which is 35% of our audience is under 25. And for a lot of broadcasters, that is a holy grail. And we're continuing to see kids engage in this. We've got Roblox this year as well. Eurovision's on Roblox, so it continues.

I love Martin and Martin. Yeah, so do I. Isn't that amazing? But that is genuinely extraordinary. As he says, it's bigger than doing an Olympic opening ceremony. And I have to say that when they were saying, well, it's the biggest thing in the world, you're thinking,

OK, things like the Olympics are a bigger technical challenge if we've discussed on this before, but not all telescoped onto sort of one live event that's across the fortnight or whatever. Yeah, that we just sit down and go on social media and say, oh my God, I can't believe what Moldova are wearing. And those guys have to just give you like every single thing. 14,000 security pass. It would actually be quicker just to give people passes if they're not allowed in. I just, it would be.

Yeah, it's, it, that is enormous. I'm actually interested in another question and jumping off the back of that because given that they have that many people watching 160 million people, Nina Marriott says, which European country likes Eurovision the most by population share? I always assumed it would be Sweden. Actually, by the way, I saw a really funny interview with Remember Monday, the UK entry, and they were talking about meeting the Swedish entry and the Swedish were like, yeah, no, we're like a real no points country. And they're like, no, sorry, sorry.

By the way, you're like topping the leaderboard with, I can't remember, Ireland is it? Brits are the north point country. Come on, guys, you are not a north point country. No way. Anyway, you are Eurovision royalty. So here's Martin and Martin to answer your question, Nina. Well, they're all quite big. I think what I know is that I think it's Germany, Italy, Spain and the UK

who have huge audiences. Obviously, it's all proportional. If you want to look at share, Iceland is like 60 odd percent of the viewing public are watching us. And then you go into things like our digital audiences where we had, it was like six billion different interactions last year, so that half of the show, because I see half of everything we do as digital now is just exploding because we have this perfect format.

We are still one of the last appointment to view linear television events where people will sit down at 8 or 9 o'clock with a group of people to watch it on the Saturday, May. But we produce 37 new pieces of content every year and all their derivatives and we therefore have this perfect format for digital as well. So our numbers are just extraordinary and really interestingly growing. So Iceland, the answer there. Iceland. Doesn't surprise me. I love the Icelandics. Amazing.

I can't believe we're not going to be together for this contest. It's all wrong. I'm having to lie fallow for a year party-wise. Yes, you normally have a Eurovision party but because party, but I'm living in a building site putting out I told you not to buy a building site. I said buy a house. I told you on this is on so many other matters I should have listened to you. The rest is property. Actually what we also want to know Martin's What about things could we always want to know about this on this show? What about things going wrong? Again, how many hours have you got?

Well going wrong. Again, how many hours have you got? Well, shall I? Shall I? I mean, what's the most stressed me out? Yeah, the I mean, it's live, right? So everything everything changes, everything happens and things do go wrong. I mean, when you're doing a live show like this, you will you will probably we will we will see a lot of things that go wrong and here, you know, the intercom things that go wrong, cameras go down for instance, like all of these cameras that we have,

they are most often working but sometimes they go down and if they go down we have a multi-camera script for each act and of course then we have to start finding another camera for that particular shot. So the acts are usually made up of something like 90 to 130 different shots. So there's a lot of editing and cutting going on between cameras. And of course, things like that happen all the time. But hopefully you at home should not notice too much. We've got hundreds of the world's best production people working on this. And I remember when I was on the other side of this and I was working on the show in Liverpool,

I started phoning people up to work on it. And you only get a year as notice. And I was saying to people, will you do the show? And they said, give me half an hour to dump everything I'm doing because everybody wants to work on this show. And you end up with the most ludicrously talented team.

And that's why lots and lots could go wrong. Touchwood, barely anything usually does because the team is just extraordinary. The rehearsals, the backups, the power backups, the power backups to the power backups. It goes on and on and on and on. But yeah, you still are tense from the moment it starts to the moment it finishes. You are in a state of great tension. And I think one of the things that make Eurovision so special and so great is the courageous creativity from the artists and their teams and their pushing boundaries. We're pushing

boundaries in tech, but also in staging. So, you know, all these props that you see, the famous Eurovision Song Contest props, you know, hopefully they work. Usually they do during rehearsals, but sometimes, you know, something does not work and then you have to find its way around. There's great videos on YouTube

and maybe we should drop one in here of the crew doing the 40 second change between acts. It is a work of art and a ballet and really worth checking out. Unbelievable when you think of how different the staging is for each song. And every year you look at that and then you just think, well, hang on, it's all live. I'm always amazed by how little goes wrong on that show. It is genuinely extraordinary. I mean, you know, you host an episode of the one show and that's hard enough.

And then, you know, that's a half an hour. It's just some VTs and some studio guests. Yeah, it's absolutely extraordinary. I mean, you know, you host an episode of The One Show and that's hard enough. And you know, that's a half an hour. It's just some VTs and some studio guests. Yeah, it's absolutely extraordinary. Perhaps we'll attach one of those videos to the end of this as well, to the YouTube version, because I'd be fascinated to see it. These guys are great. Yeah, I love them both. Yes, me too. James Parsons has this question. There always seems to be a long delay between the host country and the spokesperson of each country. Why is this always the case on live TV and how confusing is it when people stop start talking when presenting live? Well, thanks for that question. Jamie the reason for that delay has to do with satellite Connections and yes, it is confusing sometimes and that's why we try to minimize the sort of back and forth between the host

and the spokesperson in that segment because it does drag on a bit. Has it got better over the years? Yes. New tech. But yes, some broadcasters have fiber connectivity and some others don't. But the delay is actually, you know, caused by that satellite connection. You realise you should have paused before you answered that question. That's Martin saying fibre connectivity in the voice of somebody who has had many meetings

about fibre connectivity in the last few years. And is absolutely trying not to judge individual nation states for whether they've got it or they haven't. Oh they don't. When I did the votes for the UK jury, which I said before was my favourite thing I've ever done, you can see even in that every single belt and brace was put, you know, you were in place like four hours beforehand. You're on a wireless mic, you're also on a plugged in mic, you know ever you're not allowed to move from the room you're at, you do a proper rehearsal and they're right about that thing of not having too much back and forth. They say, we will say this, give us the exact script of what you are going to say, we will then say this and then you say your thing. So actually it gets over most of those issues. Sometimes you will get juries who wants to do a bit

of banter and that you cannot really do because of that delay. You know, there's some times, you know, any, anytime you do anything when you're in different countries, you have to always leave a half a second after what you say. You always have to, and it's very, very difficult to do. And that's when it messes up when people are like, oh, no, you know what? The thing about me is I'm a maverick. I'm going to say what I want. And they're not telling you to give them your script because they're censoring you, they're saying it looks really really eggy when we're talking over each other. Yeah the only award ceremony where this doesn't really happen or where it actually is not excruciating is at the Oscars because it's the only award ceremony where the

presenters rehearse and it makes such a difference for people coming on thinking I guess I'm just going to open an envelope and just bring the magic of me to this moment, please don't bring the magic of you, please let us know exactly what you're saying. It works so much better. Can I ask this as a final question? Please. Absolutely love it. By the way, thank you so much to Martin and Martin. Martins are hugely grateful. So great. And also when we're all watching this on Saturday, let's say a prayer for the

two of them and recognize the seven weeks of work that they put in and how much fun we're doing. In the venue. Several weeks in the venue. In the venue. Yeah, recognise. Several weeks in the venue. In the venue, and of course all year round for everything else. But this is a question from Ben. Ben, I'm going to forgive you not giving us a surname because it's a great question. I heard that somehow the Holy See, the central governing body of the Catholic Church and the Vatican City, could have an entry into Eurovision,

but as yet has not. Could you please verify this and what would you like their entry to be? So could the Vatican City enter Eurovision? Oh god it's a great card to have held back. Yeah. You can participate in Eurovision if you are a member of the EBU. Now my understanding is that it's Vatican Radio, the oft listened to Vatican Radio that is a member of the EBU. So I think technically, quite a stretch technically, they might be able to enter an act. And frankly, a lineup of dancing cardinals, I'm all for. Me too. I think that could do really well.

I, you know, song choice. Yeah, you know, let's cross our fingers. It would be a moment, right? I think it's a testament to the madness of the ceremony that that would only be like the 90th maddest thing that had ever happened at Eurovision. It would be like, oh again, line dancing cardinals. You can tell the emails that come into those guys inboxes every day that they hear a question like that. They're going, um, yeah could we do it? Yeah, it's Vatican radio, I guess. So yeah, it's doable. Yeah, we can do it. They've heard madder questions all the time. I would love the Vatican City.

I just, just, just a series of popes. As I say, it's in the back pocket've heard madder questions all the time. I would love the Vatican City. Just a series of popes. As I say, it's in the back pocket. That is a card yet to play. They've played quite a lot of cards in their time in the Vatican, but this is something they haven't yet done. It's worth it. There'll be a cardinal somewhere who lives in the Vatican City who has a musical background, for sure. Oh yeah. And it'll be a bit of fun. I think at least have a go.

Someone with a mild ego., potentially there might be someone in that particular group of 700 odd people. But also you get the Catholic vote in lots of different countries. You might do well, you might get through the semi-finalists. I love that you're already onto the syphilogy of it all. Yes, you're right actually that you could do, I'm trying to think of the demographics. I mean you'd hope for the, if the scale of it was widened out. If I was like Chisney Hawkes or something, let's not rule that out. If I was, why not go into a seminary now, just really play the long game,

and just go, I'm going to become a cardinal, and then I'm gonna win the Eurovision Song Contest. So often you've given me some enormous food for thought there. Something to think about. Certainly something to think about. Now that we are friends with Martin and Martin, I might send that, say, how would that work for you? Would you disqualify him? It's not for them to decide whether you're a fake cardinal or not. Does Chesney Hawkes have to

become a cardinal? Or can he just become some sort of a monk who's seconded to Vascon City? Yeah, or like, yeah. Which happens. But would that count as a ringer? No, because you can be from any country and represent any country, can't you? The writers are often from different countries, the performers are often from different countries. You know, like you get people like South London guys who go out and play for Guyana in the World Cup and stuff like that, go and play for St Kitts and Nevis because of their grandparents. You know, that idea that you could be a ringer and just go and live in the Vatican City and then win Eurovision. You have to be approved by top brass at the Vatican. I'm vaguely aware it's been in the news recently.

I think you'd have to get the approval. That's the difficulty. They always want a ringer playing for St. Kitts and Nevis or whatever, but it's just whether they want to be represented at Euro. I think the time will come. Well, you've got an American Pope now. I think... Oh, anything can happen now. Anything can happen now. Well hopefully anything can and will happen on Saturday night. Thank you so much to the T Martins for doing that.

That was absolutely super. I can't wait for next year now because I want to hear from them again. Yeah me too. And I'm sure we might be discussing that next Tuesday. We'll have to see. Thank you Martin and Martin thank you for all your questions as well. And we'll see everyone next Tuesday, I guess. See you next Tuesday.

Well, that brings us to the end of another episode of the Restless Entertainment brought to you by our friends at Sky. I have been catching up on The Last of Us recently, such a gripping watch. Absolutely right. The critics are fairly unanimous. It's dark and intense, brilliantly done, they're all saying, especially on your Skyglass with its high quality screen. Yeah, even those very low lit scenes, every flicker, every detail, it really pulls you in. One minute you'll be stretched out on the sofa, the next you'll be gripping the cushion

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