Why we all love a good gossip more than ever

Sharing secrets is a natural human instinct — and now podcasts have joined books and TV in telling the juiciest stories,

- Rachael Healy

In the latest series of The White Lotus, childhood best friends Laurie, Kate and Jaclyn arrive at a Thai hotel for a girls' holiday. The trio appears to have a perfect dynamic, but on the first night, two friends descend into a gossiping session about the third, crystallising unspoken tensions in the group.

Gossip drives all kinds of dramas — it's the central force behind every series of Bridgerton, the beating heart of teen drama Gossip Girl. Where would Jane Austen's characters, or even Hilary Mantel's imagining of Thomas Cromwell, be without insider secrets?

But there may be nothing more compelling than a real-life secret - and now insider information as a form of entertainment is big business. The podcast The Rest is Entertainment, hosted by Marina Hyde and Richard Osman, which offers readers a peek behind the showbiz curtain, is downloaded 4.5m times a month, according to its producer, Goalhanger.

Each week one episode answers reader queries about what goes on behind the scenes - and there's no shortage of questions, according to lead producer Neil Fearn. "It gives a watercooler moment," Fearn says. "The number of people I hear who say they've tried to pass off stuff they've heard on the show as their own, then will be called out on it by someone else who heard the show."

He adds: "The distance between celebrities and Joe Public is becoming smaller and smaller. The mechanisms of the media, all those things we take for granted, suddenly we can get these questions answered." From queries about how the Countdown clock works to the scoop on so-called "villain edits" in reality TV, the show has already covered much ground.

It is not the only one, either: the podcast Normal Gossip, which began in 2022, discusses tales submitted by listeners about the lives of people the hosts and audience have never met. Its creator, Kelsey McKinney, published a book last month, You Didn't Hear This From Me: Notes on the Art of Gossip.