On bbc news, time for the Media Show. Hello. Have you turned on the television recently and thought it all looked a little bit familiar . Laurence Llewelyn Bowen boisterously doing up peoples living rooms, Ruby Wax looking back at Celebrity Interviews that she did in the past, and then, look whats coming up never mind the buzzcocks, blankety blank, Sex And The City its a very long list. So, welcome to the era of the reboot, an age when Tv Executives seem to be pouring over dog eared copies of the radio times, looking for formats that they can bring back to our screens. So, why this trend and why now . Is it because the � 90s and the naughties were the real Golden Age of tv after all, or is competition for viewers now so fierce that commissioners are too quick to fall back on what they see as trusted hits from yesteryear . Well, let me introduce you to my guests. Ruby wax, who needs little introduction actor, comedian, writer, mental Health Campaigner and clive tulloh, who worked with ruby as her producer for many years, including on some of those interviews that she did with the likes of Donald Trump and imelda marcos. I wonder what its like for both of you to be reunited via zoom. Well, usually, i touch clive a lot. Theres a lot of interaction between our limbs. Luckily, hes burnt. His face is like a beet, so im very turned off. Clive, shes not in the same room as you, so what was ruby like to work with . Erm. Laughter she was. Talk, clive. She was. She was always exciting to work with, and it was always thrilling. It was thrilling to work with her, and its been even more thrilling to reunite after 20 years. Yeah. Well, youre both very welcome. Layla smith is head of objective media group, part of the tv giant all3media and, before that, she was controller of entertainment at itv. I mean, layla, youre looking after a huge selection of programmes at objective. What are your big hits at the moment . Well, like what were talking| about, one of the big things, was bringing The Cube| back after many years. So, it was off air for many. Years and we bought it back last year in october. It was a £1 million cube with new gameplay. Its back again this year, i and there are other shows that we are either rebooting formats on from other territories and our own, and that, i think, is notable at a time when everybody still tries to innovate, but actually, you do look back at the things that have been l brilliant and think how they can be brilliant again. Well dip into The Cube a little bit later for sure. And Mark Sammon is the Executive Producer of Changing Rooms, now back on our screens. Mark, welcome. Hello, thank you. Why was now the right time to bring back Changing Rooms . I guess what i. Youve touched on it already, julian, the fact that a known title often cuts through, and myjob at the time at Shine Tv was to find shows that would get commissioned, brand new shows that were innovating, but also to win business, put plainly. So, Changing Rooms is something that was available that i was able to pitch and develop. But i suppose i should also say, and its absolutely true, that i loved it. I was a viewer first time round. I think if youre going to sell anything, new or reboot, you need to go in with some passion, so it was a great show. Yes, youve got to believe in it, havent you . Yeah, of course you do. Its a great show, great format. At its heart, youre letting in your neighbours or yourfriends, with a designer, to come in and make over a room in your home. So, its a golden format, and why wouldnt we take that back out again after 19 20 years . Well, for those whove never seen it and im sure there must be somebody out there who falls into that category lets have a brief listen to what youve done. Theres this big thing happening in design at the moment called maximalism, ok . So, its anti minimalism, and its about being really crazy and party orientated, quite feminine, fair. Yeah. And i just thought thats got Claire Written all over it. Yeah. Neat o. Voiceover but surely not written in pink, laurence. You know, the Colour Claire doesnt like . L that was Laurence Llewelyn Bowen sorting out claires living room. This is a reboot, mark, clearly. How much did you want to go back to the original and copy it, or at least come close to copying it . How much did you want to introduce elements that are entirely new . Look, i think you want to do both, dont you . The original. You know, im old. Ive been doing this a long time now. Ive been on both sides of the fence. Ive seen reboots come and go, and some did incredibly well and somejust fell flat on theirface. So the first thing for us when we looked at Changing Rooms was looking at what People Love about it. You know, actually we dont want to lose all of that. Then you look back at The Show that it was and you analyse it and you go, oh, my god, how did that sustain and why did you watch that . Actually, We Cast shows differently, we cut them differently now. So, the bits that we rebooted or the bits that we changed were actually about how you film it, how you cast it, how you tell that story, how you hold onto that audience that have so much more choice now. You know, Changing Rooms went and disappeared because people would come in for the first five minutes, and then come back for the reveal at the end, normally switching over to watch the Soaps On Itv at the time. Actually, so those are the bits that weve really worked on and that we really changed, but it was about preserving the essence of the, you know, that actually. You played a good clip there and you can feel and hear it from laurence, The Campness and the playfulness, and its an Entertainment Show ultimately. Well, its the clip when hes told she doesnt like pink, so what colour does he go for . Pink. Yeah, of course, of course and therein is some drama and some entertainment, and thats hopefully going to keep the viewer hanging around. But, actually, its really important for us to. You know, to take it seriously, and i know that sounds ridiculous after the Clip Youve just played. And im sure lots of people watched the original and hopefully watch the reboot. But we could have been quite cynical. We could have gone in and said, lets always play that trick, lets always give them pink or green or purple when they dont want it. But, actually, we didnt. Actually i think thats the key, hopefully, to it sustaining an audience. Layla, you mentioned The Cube coming back later this year and, as you say, it had the £1 million specials aired last year. Again, for those who havent seen it, what does Phillip Schofield guide the viewer through on a typical episode of The Cube . Well, The Cube, its. A very simple tag line. You have Nine Lives to playl seven deceptively difficult they look simple, theyrej deceptively hard games try and win a quarter of A Million pounds. | and inside the confines of the perspex cube,. Simple games are incredibly hard. So, thats the game. There were nine series on itv over the last,. Gosh, however many years, 15 years, and its been off air. I but we did change it up quite a lot. We felt like it needed new elements to come back, and it wasntjust £1 million. That was a discussion we had i with itv about creating a stunt week, but we felt like a two Player Game would make it far more interesting. We introduced a different lifeline as a result of thatj because we felt like its greatl to have something evergreen. Its a format Like Game Shows are so hard to get right. If youve got one that actually works, dont change that. Well, except, at some point, somebody must� ve decided that it didnt work, at least not sufficiently enough to stay on the television. And then, what, five years elapsed and you all come back and decide, actually, now is the moment to revive it. I wonder what the dynamics of all that is. Oh, gosh, i wont go on for ages cause i think this stuff is really complicated. I was at itv for many years when The Cube was on, so i obviously wasnt i running objective then. And i think what you do,. With all shows, is you tend to look at it and think, | how can we improve . Does it need something changing up . Do we change elements of it . Do we freshen up a format . When its a game show. It might be different for Ruby And Clive with celebrity interview, thats about really brilliant interview, isnt it . L but i dont think that happened with The Cube. So, actually, its not so much that the format is broken,. But actually, viewers do demand a freshness to their content. They dont just want the same thing, ad infinitum, and thats i think what i happened with The Cube. Itjust didnt have a fresh view, and thats what we did. Ruby, youve gone back to some of your classic celebrity documentaries from The 90s and the noughties. Again, why is now a good moment to revisit those . I didnt realise we were rebooting The Show. The show had been shown for 25 years. I had an interview with someone questioning why that wont be, between clive and me, The Show was commissioned just because the commissioner happen to like myself. But i think there were A Thousand between them, and either didnt get it or thought why show it . Whats so interesting about Goldie Hawn . I have a life, and its nice they put it on before i died, because now i get to do my obituary. Laughter. When you look at them now, what do you think . She looks like shes having the time of her life. I think they couldve been deeper, but was very young. I think i couldve played it more, dont get in front of the camera, go behind it. But my personality was hot on the screen. We went on for 25 years, so i could have changed, but didnt know they would keep saying. You know, dance, little woman. So i kept dancing. People either got tired or a man comes along and takes your time slot. Again, not upset, got me a new life. But if i didnt have a new life, id be quite bitter. Laughs. Clive, between you, you visited some massive stars of their day. How did you get access to some of these people . It was a combination of. It was also a very distinct time in history, if you want to know, because it was sort ofjust before Social Media, just before the Internet Youll remember this, julian you know, when we have a guest, you used to call up the Clippings Library and youd get all the photocopies of every article. Sadly, i do remember that. So, we used to do masses of research, and i think we would just. And also, a lot of The American stars, in those days, britain was sort of regarded as, it was like doing an advert injapan, they didnt really care. They were like, its, you know. Nowadays, because as soon as you do an interview, its on youtube, its on everywhere, so it would be very, very hard to get kind of the access we did do. And ruby and i would work incredibly hard and explore every avenue. And then ruby as a host, which you sometimes see and sometimes dont, would then be basically almost performing a kind of one Woman Show for roseanne or goldie, or stuff like that, and these guest with think, oh, wow, ive gotta really up my game because this interview is really smart. And quite often, we will cut out that, but it was always and quite often. It was always an audition. It was always an audition, yeah. Yeah. And quite often we didnt have. We didnt know, ruby would say what will they do, what can we do, and id say, look, if i ask any more questions, they will shut door. I said ill get you through the door, and then the rest is up to you. I would carry a bag full of beards and then ruby would say to sharon stone, oh, can you go out on The Street . And then sharon would say, no, i get recognised and all that, and she said, well, what if you wore a beard . And sharon would go, haha, have you got a beard . And wed say, yes, weve got a beard and then theyd think it was funny and then were walking round The Streets. We didnt always carry beards, wed had instincts, like with pamela, i had a feeling. Pamela anderson, yeah. Yeah, the interviews were ten minutes, but again, if you keep making them laugh and entertaining them, they tell their pr to go away and they wanna spend some time, and sometimes it lasted for years, with carrie fisher. But i knew something would happen with pamela, if we got on, that i could play her body double. So i said, clive, grab my red bathing suit, but id just had a baby, so the gusset was down to my knees, and pamela said yes, i could play her body double, and it was some of the most grotesque television ive ever seen, as i replaced her on the beach. But we had an instinct. Yeah, i mean, that kind of approach, its unimaginable now. Clive, you mentioned the advent of Social Media. With Social Media now, you just couldnt do that any more, could you. No, ijust think theres so much control and theres so much. You just couldnt get the access. cause the reason this series came back was that we started to look into, our commissioning editor, michaeljochnowitz, whos a big ruby fan, was like weve gotta get ruby back on. Lets do re meets, so we were Gonna Try and go back and see some of pamela and roseanne, and a couple of them were interested and then then the pandemic happened, so we then actually thought about, ok, letsjust go back and look at the archive. And then it chimed with the Louis Podcast and with his good grace, we were off and running. And you use the word audition. I think ruby, you used it, and i think, clive, there was a sense of even how the Camera Crew operated. There was a degree of auditioning about how they did theirjobs as well, wasnt there. Yes, ruby would say, and she was right, that some Cameramenjust Arent Listening and cant do it. So we would audition the Camera Men And Women and they would come round to rubys house, and then we would walk around the house and they would have to film us. And if ruby said oh, look at that picture up there, if they didnt swing the camera and look at the picture and then come back to see our reaction, they didnt make the squad. You wanted the camera to have a personality, notjust a piece of dead meat. Yeah. And layla, iwonder, given that celebrities in that kind of format were much more prepared to let their guards down to a good degree, perhaps in a way they hadnt much on British Television much before, did that lead us down a route towards programmes like im a celebrity get me out of here many years thereafter . Um, . Yyeah. Um, yeah. Clive, you know this, im sure. Which isjim allen, whoses someone we all know very well, had watched the Joanna Lumleyl Programme that clive produced. And it came from there. We sat and sort of said, well, what happens if its notjust L Joanna on a Desert Island . What happens if you take celebrities and really strip them bare. And so youre absolutely right, its not necessarily from the celebrity interview, but its from that sort of programming and that instinct which is about saying and that is why i think im a celebrity endures today because there is a basic truth to it, its notjust a Reality Concept there is a basic truth to saying what happens if you take people and you think are normally pampered, or they live a slightly different life and you strip that bare, and then watch what happens as a result. J look im a celebrity. Is now in its, what. Gosh, I Cant remember how many seasons its in 15th season or something. So it evolves, but that still runs through and i think thats why people still watch it, and it is very revealing. L and not always in a bad way people meet characters on im a celebrity who are morej rounded, more real, more Down To Earth than they thought and then that becomes another part of their career, onwards, and yeah, i think it endures. I and some people dont, some people do reveal. A different side of their selves. But it all stems definitely. From the sort of interviews that rubys been doing where you really peel i back the layers. Let stay with you on where we began, really, because youve all given us some context to what were talking about in terms of the specific programmes that youre thinking about or bringing back or working on. Leyla, we are in this period where i mentioned a few names where there are clearly others that are coming back or are back or are at least being considered. And i slightly suggested there might be lack of ideas as part of the reason for that happening. Is that fair . Im going to say absolutely not. I i thought you might. Yeah, because there are, oh gosh, notjust in our. Companies, acrossl the whole industry, there are brilliant individual innovative thinkers, constantly thinking l of new ways to do it. That is the challenge, you sit and think theres only so many subject i matters and areas. But whats the new approach, or whats the new way that we do this. But we are in a, look. Theres risk around everything in broadcasting, because broadcasters always want viewers to watch, and even if its a Public Service broadcaster, i they want the right i viewers to watch then if its not sheer volume. That i think leads people to understandably i was at a broadcaster, mark was at a broadcaster it leads people to kind of play the game. Like you have, heres my three new shows, but i also want to know that im going. Going to hit some key demos. And if someones got a brilliant way of bringing back an old format that is really attractive. Mark, you are in an interesting position on this, because you have both commissioned and pitched, so youve sat on both sides of the desk on these kings of conversations. Yeah, i have. I mean, look, Ithink Layla said it perfectly. I have worked with layla at itv when we were both in commissioning there. Youre playing your odds, arent you . Youre looking for some safe bets and youre looking to innovate. If someone presents something to you that is familiar, that It Will Pr itself in the way that Changing Rooms has, or that have a ton of celebrities in, theyre all shorthand, theyre all shortcuts to get an audience to you. That doesnt. Youve still got to deliver the goods. Your mention of money, i mean, Changing Rooms this time around is made in partnership with a paint company, isnt it, which clearly wouldnt have been allowed on the bbc the first time around. Did that make any difference when you were pitching it . Yes, i think it definitely does. I absolutely dont think its the only reason. Look, ive done a lot of ad funded programming. Ive commissioned it and ive made it for a number of broadcasters. And im really interested in this area. We took the decision to take Changing Rooms out and present it to a Broadcaster Channel it in this case with some money attached. Ive pitched other ideas with a tonne of money attached, and broadcasters have still said no. In a way it doesnt matter to them if it isnt a good idea, they might be making a saving in that slot, layla knows this from being at itv. The risk you run in terms of your Ad Revenue and in terms of not getting an audience to it, the Paint Brand didnt fund all of it so theres some skin in the game for the channel as well. I think thats true with all ad funded programming now, the channel needs to pay some cash. Clive, looking back to the interviews we were talking about, clearly some of that wasnt cheap you were jetting off all over the world, often without much advance warning. And you werent always sure you would get the interview when you got there as well. No, no, we were lucky. It was. It was the early 90s, we had a pretty good budget, it was Bbc One prime time. I run an independent company now, but we were making it in house at the bbc. I sometimes think, would i have taken the risks that i did then if it was my own company . We flew to manila, ten of us, and wed been offered half an hour with imelda. With imelda marcos, yeah. You didnt tell me that, clive. Clive just gets me to the door, kicks me in like someone who says. Its just cruel. Go ahead, clivey. Ruby said to me before we leave, go and get some jewellery. Ive gotta wear good jewellery because imelda Marcos Will clock the jewellery. So we went to see theo fennell, who we knew, and he lent us £200,000 worth ofjewellery. So Ruby Sort of dripped into the flat, and in that first half hour, imelda clocked the jewellery and we had three or four days. And she sang feelings to us while we danced in herapartment. It wasnt just the jewellery, clivey. The original deal was for half an hour, and you ended up with four days . Four days, and sitting on her lap and being fed Chocolate Cake and then showing us her stash of shoes in the attic. So that was really a lot of foreplay. And just gushing and loving her and never asking a question that would offend her. But never being a sycophant either. You know . She likes big stars, we tried to create this image that i was. And clivey put the Hello magazine, i know you did, clive, in her garbage can with a picture of me on the front. I know you did that, clive. Thats too much of a coincidence. So she picked it up and went oh shes on the cover of Hello she thought i was just a journalist. From that moment, she took my hand, she took me to parliament, she pretty much, she covered me in her jewellery. I mean, clive, that was clever. Ruby, i was wondering about those like yourself in front of the camera. Weve talked about changing trends and particular programmes being reinvented and coming back. How much are you conscious of that need to adapt as fashions change in terms of what you do in front of the camera . Well, i wanted to produce after my show finished. cause i constantly like to reinvent. And i wouldnt have minded being behind the camera and working for a production company. Next time ill present and you produce swap roles. Everyone will watch that. Clivey will do anything but. That was too much fun. When i went to america they said would i do a show from behind the desk. Thats not my skill, I Cant get anything in five minutes. I need to cut a move in. That doesnt exist any more. So i go, ok, thats not my interest. I suppose what i was getting at was, weve talked about rebooting programmes, but do people in front of the camera have to acknowledge the need to reboot sometimes as well to continue their careers . If i was doing more, but im not that interested. These were Movie Stars with skills, and the thrill of spending time with them will never happen again. So, i wouldnt even know how to. Id invent something else. I would make up another style of show. Layla, how much further do you think this Rebooting Trend has got to go . Ithink. I think it will be. So i dont, cause want to write off the reboots that are coming because i know youve listed them, but i think there was also and i hate this word because i know were all a bit over it, but there was also a covid thing here. Where there were certain shows, and i think The Cube was part of this too, we couldnt do audiences, so actually its| great to do a show that you know. And there isnt an audience, l but its fine because you know The Show. If you put a new show that l probably would work better with an audience, but you try it out for the very first time l and the Audience Isnt there to react, that might affect it doing well, i so you dont want to take that risk. I think that happened i quite a lot during covid, and i dont meanjust with Game Shows and audiences, but theres a sense of familiarity, of people going back to what they know. And i think thats playing out now across our schedules,. And our streamers, and i thinki maybe i hope, but the reboot will always happen because its happened forever and People L will always, if there is a new way of doing and old, familiar format, why not . But i think we might i see now a switch back into more originality again. I think that crest might changel now because i think covid made people more risk averse. Thats all we have time for today. Thank you to all my guests Ruby Wax, broadcaster and writer, clive tulloh, Executive Producer of when Ruby Wax met, layla smith, head of objective media group, and Mark Sammon, Executive Producer of Changing Rooms. The Media Show back at the same time next week, so thanks very much for watching and goodbye. Hello there. Not sure how much sunshine were going to see over the next coming days, but it will be dry. There will be a lot of cloud around, though, so its going to be Shades Of Grey as we chase the cloud across the country, and because theres a little more cloud, those temperatures perhaps down to around average for the time of year. You can see from the word go on monday, that Northeasterly Breeze Filtering in quite a lot of cloud off the north sea, thick enough for some drizzle as well on those exposed East Coasts where well see the coolest of the weather. In sheltered western areas, again, some brighter spells and highs of 20 degrees. We keep the cloud coming as we go through the night. Thats going to prevent those temperatures from falling very far at all. Itll be a mild start to tuesday morning, but once again, it is going to be a rather cloudy one. Always closer along that East Coast where it could stay damp and drizzly. Hopefully the cloud should break a little out to the west, but not as much as weve seen in recent days, and as a result, temperatures are going to be a little more subdued. Welcome to bbc news. Im david eades. Our top stories more than 700,000 people are without power, including the whole of new orleans, as Hurricane Ida hits louisiana. The governor urges people to stay indoors. We can expect devastating impact to continue for most of the next 2a hours or so as the hurricane passes through the state. The us military says its carried out an Air Strike to thwart a further militant attack on the airport in the afghan capital, kabul. As The American withdrawal draws ever closer, many afghans are still desperate to leave. Flights are almost over. What are you going to do now . So what about us . We are work with them. We support them