podcast.

And I think, honestly, they've done an amazing job.

And so I think as we're about, clearly I'm about to say something that sort of raises a couple of questions.

That's why I'm giving them lots of praise.

But they deserve it.

It's been fantastic.

Huge hit.

But it had a real mood.

It's about does this make the people laugh?

Yes, of course.

Ultimately, you're broadly going to judge comedy on whether you came away thinking, "That made me laugh," rather than, "That made me cry." But of course, it's very broad, comedy.

There can be comedy that's making a point about the world or, you know, about social justice.

Um, so it can do all sorts of things, and there are comics, you know, who will literally sort of tell punchline after punchline.

But there are others who will invite you to inhabit a world and maybe think about things.

And, and, and s- I'm, I'm a child, to some extent, of the '80s.

But then what we're seeing i- in this example from Mitchell and Webb is actually the BBC going in the other direction.

No, it wasn't bad.

Um, she said, "That's it," you know.

And it g- again, it's hard to sort of imagine now, but a voice like that, a regional voice like that, you know, on Channel 4 felt, like, really kind of different and edgy.

And what I seem to remember, I think this is true, he was very, very factual at the beginning And I think the first Comic Relief Big Brother with Jack Dee and everyone, where it was a little bit more fun, and so he was more f- he became a little bit more editorialized.

So it's, so that first Big Brother, he's very factual.

It's-

... all media.

It's really, a- as you say, and, and you know this so well, Maria, back then you had this n- the, the thing was on fire.

Intellectual property

... intellectual property.

I beg your pardon.

And by l- law now, in shorthand, um, we as independent producers, uh, creative entrepreneurs who create our own ideas and create our own shows, and I should say don't have a license fee or a household levy, depending on, on the, on, on where we, where we end up, don't have advertising revenue.

We have our ideas.

And so the, so the thought is and what remains is that we own that IP, share it with, for example, the BBC.

We take very roughly between 80 and 90% of what is called the back end, which is basically foreign sales of that program, T-shirts, you know, toys, whatever it happens to be, the commercial exploitation.

And, uh, just T- Tim Hincks, w- very briefly, would retaining fewer rights make you less likely to work with the BBC?