Friday Night Comedy from BBC Radio 4 - The News Quiz - 3rd March

Episode Date: March 31, 2023

Andy Zaltzman is joined by Simon Evans, Felicity Ward, Samira Ahmed and Alasdair Beckett-King. This week, we’ll be finding out what’s up with Matt Hancock’s WhatsApps, who wins with the Windsor Framework, and who King Charles had round for tea.Hosted and written by Andy Zaltzman with additional material from Alice Fraser, Zoë Tomalin, Rhiannon Shaw and Jade Gebbie.Producer: Georgia Keating Executive Producer: Richard Morris Production Co-ordinator: Becky Carewe-Jeffries Sound Editor: Marc WillcoxA BBC Studios Production

This is the BBC. This podcast is supported by advertising outside the UK. BBC Sounds. Music, radio, podcasts. It's Monday, 9am, and it's the News Quiz's turn to use the BBC's magic lamp this week. Hello, Andy. Hi. What's your wish? Oh, three wishes.

One, world peace. Two, unlimited cucumbers for all. And what will I have for three? Oh, Matt Hancock back in the news, please. You can only have one. Only one? Shortages, mate. Oh, right, fair enough.

Well, I've got a topical comedy show to do, so Hancock, please. Your call, Zaltor. Thanks, G. Welcome to a new edition of Hancock's Half... Oh, sorry, the new script! Hello, I'm Andy Zaltzman. A quick apology, the script for this week's show, which, of course, we write exclusively on WhatsApp,

was unfortunately leaked in advance. Which is how the audience knew that they were supposed to laugh in that gap. Our teams this week, we have Team National Interest against Team Massive Betrayal. Let's shorten those down to Team Potato against Team Potato. On Team Potato, we have Alistair Beckett-King and Simon Evans. And the Potatos this week, Samira Ahmed and Felicity Ward.

Our first question goes to Samira and Felicity. Which already-mentioned former health secretary and celebrity wild animals genitals consumer might now regret indulging in the modern fad for oversharing? This is a really hard one, Andy. God, I mean, I'm not from here, but I'm going to say Matt Hancock, is that correct? That's correct, yes. Wow, what a guess.

Yes. The WhatsApp messages. The thing that gets me is he shared them with Isabel Oakeshott, who, if anyone remembers when Vicky Price and Chris Hewn, it turned out that she'd taken points for his driving offence, and we know that she'd shared the story with Isabel Oakeshott, who gave all the information to the police. But there is this big golden rule,

and even if you think lots of journalists don't follow them, there is a rule that journalists are supposed to protect the confidentiality of their sources. And everyone knows that she didn't. So the idea that you'd give her all your WhatsApp messages is quite interesting. WhatsApp is such a useful app, though, isn't it? Because all the messages you share on WhatsApp are coded and encrypted and utterly unreadable by any third party unless you copy them out by hand and pass them over on the sheaf of a four to a woman who has proven to be an untrustworthy broadsheet

scumbag could be said to have delivered your own fate into your hands it is so skullduggerous. Like she got the text while she was helping Matt, Matt, we're mates, helping Matt write his book. She signed an NDA and then she's gone, oh, it's of public interest. Well, let me tell you, Isabel, I am the public and I am interested. Because if there's something that I love, it's business that isn't mine. Nom, nom, nom. Like, what fresh, thick gossip is this? There is no way you could get me to read Matt Hancock's book, not for a million years.

I will sit there and read 100,000 text messages of his, though. It might be an interesting way of getting kids to do their revision, wouldn't it? To actually just reformat the reign of Henry VIII into a series of supposedly secret WhatsApp messages. It might be what they did with the Bible, wasn't it? That's how it all came out in little verses. It was, in fact, whatever. Well, it's fascinating to me seeing Matt Hancock

being stabbed in the back by a serial backstabber. What this situation puts me in mind of, have you ever seen like a snake eating a rat? It's very hard to know who to root for in that situation. You know, I feel like I'm sort of going, oh, poor Matt Hancock. And then I remember who Matt Hancock is. And I'm like, go Isabel Oakeshott. And then I remember who Isabel Oakeshott is. It's a kind of revolting situation.

I find myself finding sympathy for Matt Hancock because one of the revelations is that he was limiting the tests against Chris Whitty's advice, but to be fair, at the time, there were a limited number of tests because half of them had gone to Jacob Rees-Mogg's kids. He's got 400 of them, they hatch in the basement, they come out of eggs, it's a real issue.

It's tough. And you say they hatch out of eggs, Jacob Rees-Mogg, Fabergé eggs. There is also a bit of an agenda because, of course, Isabel Oakeshott very publicly was anti-lockdown. So I think you need to read the whole context of this story being splashed in the Daily Telegraph, which was very anti-lockdown against that background.

You need to read all three million words, in fact, that have been shared before you can really form a valid opinion about this. Three times the length of the King James Version Bible, funnily enough. That's been given as the example of a thing that people might have read and so think, oh, it's quite long then. That's a very useful metaphor. You know, he said that, Matt Hancock said that stuff was taken out of context, so it wasn't complete. But actually, I think one of the joys is taking individual WhatsApp and thinking, who's this about?

So there's a couple I really like. There's one which is, if only they had started working on this a fortnight ago. Is it already in hardback, by the way? It's some turn-up. But the best one was, he needs a haircut and a holiday. a fortnight ago. Is he already in hardback, by the way? But the best one was, he needs a haircut and a holiday. And you think, who could that be?

And then you realise the rest of the sentence is somewhere other than Scarborough. And you think, oh, it's not Boris Johnson. It's Gavin Williamson. Well, on the subject of Gavin Williamson, in one of the leaked messages, and this question could go to Simon and Alistair, the former Education Secretary, those words still don't make sense, do they? Gavin Williamson claimed that teachers simply hate what? Children.

Well, that was, I think, implied. They hate work. Correct. And the reason they hate work is because they hate children, because that is their job, after all. So it is, you're right, it is implied. But I think you have to recognise the job has changed significantly, not just due to lockdown and pandemics and masks and so on, especially for male teachers.

You can put on as many motivational ads as you like about, you know, the joy of unlocking the curiosity and lighting little fires in a child's brain. Since the end of corporal punishment and fat-shaming, it's just been no fun at all. Since the end of corporal punishment and fat-shaming, it's just been no fun at all. Very little appeal remains to a healthy, red-blooded male to spend his days with a bunch of ingrate little scamps like that.

That's part of the problem with where we're headed at the moment. How are your children, by the way? But also, the full quote, wasn't it, was, I know they really, really do just hate work. That's what Gavin Williamson said about teachers. And you think, who was running the Foreign Office during the Afghan evacuation, and where were they running it from? Deck chairs on holiday, weren't they?

I sympathise with the teaching unions, because I think teachers are heroes. Yeah. I mean, every teacher I've met on an individual level has been awful, but... LAUGHTER Nightmarish people. But as a group, I regard them as heroes.

I don't envy people having to spend time with kids. I was recently forced to hug a neighbour's child against my will. By the child, obviously, not by a third party. And I'm always nervous doing that because your smell can get on the child and when they go home the mother will eat them you know the teachers they do a wonderful job i do think we pay them

wrongly because they're paid like an annual salary whereas i think they should be paid according to how much their pupils use the knowledge they've learnt from them during the rest of their life. Just like 20 years on, if a student correctly identifies an Oxbow Lake, they should send their old geography teacher a tenner. OK, I think we all have, like, something that we wish we got taught in school now that we're an adult.

What would yours be? Mine is how to clean a sieve. Because there's no way to clean a sieve because you wash one side and then it goes on the other side and then you wash the other side and then you move it around with your hand and if you've got an old sieve like me, you cut your hand on the loose bits and you go,

oh, I should get a new sieve, but you don't, ever. And then you've just got a dirty sieve all the time. When people say I've got should get a new sieve but you don't ever and then you've just got a dirty sieve all the time. When people say I've got a memory like a sieve what they mean is you can't clean it. So this claim that Isabel Oakeshott made that she thinks the Covid inquiry is going to be a colossal whitewash do you share that concern or is that Well, her big agenda is that they shouldn't have been locked down. And there are issues about how extensive the lockdowns were, particularly around schools. But I just remain really

sceptical about the agenda behind releasing them now. Think how long she's been sitting on them. Yeah, that's quite a lot of things to be sitting on as well. 100,000 WhatsApp messages. Now, to put that in context, that's equivalent to 1.3 days in a school parent's WhatsApp group. I'll put that in context. That's equivalent to 1.3 days in a school parent's WhatsApp group. 0.7 days if someone's

coming to school with nits. In terms of what these 100,000 WhatsApp messages revealed, have we learned anything unexpected from it? Who does this apply to? He's freaking out. You can tell he isn't being wholly rational. That narrows it down, doesn't it?

I was disappointed by how dull their writing is. You know, I thought this will be an insight into their minds, and their minds, I think, are unexciting to me. Like, he described the teaching unions as a bunch of arses now that's that's linguistically inelegant because you you cannot bunch arses they're an unbunchable item like ask any florist you can't best you can have a corsage of arses you cannot have a bunch they also say an absolute bunch of arses, like there's only one bunch of arses.

Yes. Arses. A totality of arses. No, no, it was a bunch of absolute arses, not an absolute bunch of arses. Yes, that's what's important to get that right. Why else this week, this can go to both teams, why else are some people getting shirty with Matt Hancock?

Matt Hancock, the, at the time, health secretary, gave Chris Evans his Newcastle football jersey to auction off to raise money for the NHS, which is disgusting in itself. The man that could change the situation has said, here, have a shirt, You people raise some money. And then, apparently, there is videos that have come out where he's wearing that jersey again,

and he said the person said that he could take the jersey back. And then he also said, oh, Matt, why don't you keep the money as well? And then... And then he said, oh, you should kiss one of your aides during lockdown. Like, I mean, Matt's just doing it for the NHS. I just want to interject here that I have been present at a few sort of dinners where they have auctions and stuff.

It is actually quite common for people to buy them and then give them back because they don't actually want them. They're basically going, I can afford to waste 1,500 quid on this worthless artefact and then chuck... It's basically like you caught a seven-inch trout and you'd get a quick selfie with it and then chuck it back in the river. It is very plausible that the fella bought it and gave it back to Hancock. What is tragic is he then wears it again.

Yes, it was quite an extraordinary story. He was seen wearing a signed Newcastle United shirt that he had supposedly auctioned off for charity, claimed that the person who won the auction gave it back to him. It's also possible that the person who won the auction sold it back to him as fully functional operating theatre-grade medical. Matt Hancock, not the only blast from the Covid past back in the news. Sue Gray has been offered a job by the Labour Party.

Sue Gray, who compiled the report about Partygate, that was her, wasn't it? Well, I suppose it throws a bit of a shadow across the even-handedness with which she might have conducted, whether they feel that they owe her a favour at this point, I don't know, for looking the other way at Beergate or whatever, but it seems a fairly extraordinary appointment, yeah. Being offered a job, isn't the news... It's news if she takes it.

Yeah, that's fair enough. Offered a job as chief of staff. What does that mean, chief of staff involved for Keir Starmer? It's hard to know, isn't it? I remember, well, I remember the fellow who was the chief of staff in the West Wing. He was quite important. His job was to stay at the office when everyone else had gone

and work quietly with one of those nice green-shaded lanterns on his desk. The other main thing I remember about Sue Grey is that she triangulates the character name and the actress name of Sue Ellen in Dallas whose real name was something grey. I could never get that out of my head whenever she came

on the news. I would hear J.R. going, you're an unfit mother! Well, yes, it's indeed Matt Hancock. Matt Hancock can breathe a sigh of relief. He will not,

after all, be most remembered for smooch fondling his assistant during high lockdown or even for going on a TV celebrity pseudo-reality show

and eating a camel's dingle dongle, a lady sheep's virginia bell or even a cow's batholium sphinx strale. Instead, he can rest easy knowing that history will recall him as the man who entrusted 100,000 WhatsApp messages

exchanged between him and senior government officials at the height of the pandemic and lockdown to Isabel Oakeshott, a journalist known to be strongly critical of the government's lockdown strategy, of which Hancock was a key and absolute plank. At the end of that initial round, the scores are four points all. Elsewhere in Covidia, this can go to Samira and Felicity, why were the world's bats and pangolins

demanding a strongly worded apology this week? Because the FBI said that they thought the source of COVID might have been a leak from a lab in Wuhan. Even the scientists have said you can't prove that, but it's out there now. You're saying we can't entirely trust the FBI? Basically, it's an alternative fact. Right. I, obviously, it came from a lab. Why? Because I've watched Contagion, Outbreak, Dawn of Planet of the Apes, Generation Z.

Wuhan MasterChef. This is the FBI director, Christopher Wray. I want to give him his full name, Christopher Secret Death Wray. And, yeah, so it might not be true. They don't really have evidence, but he said it, and we're playing a game of would I lie to you between the Chinese Communist Party and the FBI. Two sort of ingenuous naifs who would never mislead.

I think it's nice to have the FBI come out in favour of a long-standing conspiracy theory. That's what we've been waiting for. We're just lucky he didn't get the wrong file and admit to assassinating JFK. Yes, well, everyone loves an origin story, whether it's about how superheroes

acquired their superpowers. Do not ask about The Flash. How Jacob Rees-Mogg was bitten by a radioactive antique harpsichord as a child. Or where world-fracturing pandemics originated. This week, the director of the FBI, the number one-ranked American federal law enforcement agency, claimed that Covid most likely originated

from a Chinese government-controlled lab. Many scientists and other US government departments do not subscribe to the lab leak theory. Other theories regarding the origin of the virus include a Greek woman called Pandora opening a box that quite clearly said, do not open. At the end of our COVID round,

Team Potato have 16, Team Potato have eight. Team Potato have 16. Team Potato have eight. Our next question can go to Simon and Alistair. Special, exciting and attractive. What or whom was Rishi Sunak describing in such amorous terms? Obviously, Ursula von der Leyen,

who does look spectacular at 65 and with seven children. There's got to be something to be said for Lutheranism, I think. I think he was actually referring to Northern Ireland's new status. He believes that it has extraordinary potential in the future now, because it has unique access both to the EU through its Irish border and to the UK. It's in a really unique and exciting position, a similar position, funnily enough, to the EU through its Irish border and to the UK. It's in a really unique and exciting position, a similar position, funnily enough, to the one England was in shortly before... LAUGHTER I think what I find interesting

is this agreement they've got about having two lanes. They're going to have a green and a... Green lane and a red lane. And a red lane. And the idea is that if stuff is only going into Northern Ireland, it goes through the green lane, and then no-one has any more checks on it. But if it's going on to the Republic, then it has to go through the red lane.

And, of course, no-one would falsely declare anything going through the green lane. It's a fudge, which is what you need to do. The solution was ultimately impossible, that would have satisfied all the rational expectations. So what you do is you create a fog of doubt and miasma. And this is what they've managed to do. And this is what the Good Friday Agreement amounted to as well. The Good Friday Agreement was a fudge, which I always thought was quite appropriate for an Easter treat.

It's what you have to do. You have to create, as you say, something where, obviously, you kind of go, well, that's not going to work, but people have to believe it works. It's like Tinkerbell, you know, and that's where you're at. All there needs to be is goodwill to see it put to bed and we all move on, and that's where we're at now. The only thing about goodwill is they've introduced a mechanism, haven't they, to allow representatives

in the Northern Ireland Assembly to object to any of the new rules that they don't like? And how long has it been since Northern Ireland Assembly last sat? So, Rishi Sunak said that Northern Ireland was the world's most exciting trade zone, which I think speaks of a paucity of imagination. I can think of much more exciting zones, like a jungle zone, or a futuristic zone, a volcano volcano level an ice one where everything is slippy you know it's just easy to come up with with better zones uh he said those trying to

drag us back into the past will not succeed and he was quite passionate and i was almost impressed for a second but then i remembered that's just how linear time works and kind of taking credit for it. It's like gravity will continue to apply throughout Northern Ireland. British goods will not be floating off shelves. Thank you very much. I find that in trying to understand this, the main sticking point for me has been the phrase Northern Ireland Protocol,

because it sounds really boring in my voice, but if you say it in like a bad impression of Liam Neeson, Northern Ireland Protocol, it's much sexier. Like I may not know what the Northern Ireland Protocol is, but I will find out before I'm on the news quiz. And I will still not

understand it. Final question on the Brexit negotiations. Crass and controversial. These are not the Secret Service codenames for the two prime ministers who preceded Rishi Sunak. It is not the all-new podcast in which Piers Morgan interviews himself. And it's not even the first review of the new biography,

Florence Nightingale, Alien Sex God. But they were words used to describe who doing what with whom this week. Wasn't it King Charles II? Third! Third! Is he the third? It's not a great trilogy, because he dies at the end of the first one, but then they bring him back. It's having tea with the king. Ursula von der Leyen.

Yeah, Ursula von der Leyen had tea with the king and the DUP are very upset about this. They have said that it could jeopardise the monarchy. I'm a Republican, but in the good sense, not in the American kind of pew, pew, pew, pew. I just don't like them. Not in that sense of Republican. But this is very, it's controversial because the King's not supposed to be political. He's just the unelected head of state. He's not political. You understand? He's just a famously

interfering member of the British royal family. He's just the Supreme Governor of the Church of England. He's neutral. That's not a big deal. Anyone could be the Supreme Governor of the Church of England if they tried hard enough. Supreme Governor is what a cockney will call you if you give him your chips.

It's not political, come on. I think he should probably have followed the Queen's lead. She set a great example. She would probably not have met Ursula von der Leyen under such potentially controversial... She limited her encounters with visiting animated bears, for instance, when she wanted to take tea, and that was considered a heartwarming gesture

towards the immigrant bear community without necessarily influencing legislation and so on. It's a tightrope, and she walked it well. We never saw the full version of that sketch with Paddington. They cut out the bit at the end where the last words he said to her during that filming was, are you still single? This was European Commissioner Ursula von der Leyen taking tea with the king,

deemed crass and controversial by some because the king is supposed to be politically neutral and because von der Leyen dunked a chocolate hobnob in her cup of tea and then popped it behind her ear as one for later. But it has been a week in which Britain and the EU finally reached an agreement intended to resolve one of the trickiest legacies of Brexit,

the fact that Northern Ireland isn't in East Anglia, as had been previously thought. The new agreement, named the Windsor Framework, in homage to the best-selling motorcycle of the 1930s, includes a new series of measures The new agreement, named the Windsor Framework, in homage to the best-selling motorcycle of the 1930s, includes... ..includes a new series of measures in the Northern Ireland Protocol that are intended to resolve the, shall we call them, glitches latent in Boris Johnson's Brexit deal.

Wherever your personal Brexit graph reading currently is, from Dear Grandchildren, Sorry For Everything, to FREEDOM! At least some progress has been made after years of struggling with problems that could only possibly have been foreseen with foresight. At the end of that round,

Team Potato, Alistair and Simon have 20, Team Potato, Felicity and Samira have 10. Since you're behind, Felicity and Samira, you can take the next question. There will, according to reports, be a shortage of what for at least another month? Money and sunshine.

And food. Yes, specifically... Fresh food. Yes, fruit and veg. Supermarkets have been limiting customers how many fruits and vegetables they can buy. And I just think Jamie Oliver must be turning in his grave I mean he's not dead he's just very disappointed now obviously I have come

on this show before I have made fun of the country that I've lived in for 10 years I love the UK I live here and I don't want to make fun of you, but when something like this happens, you leave me no choice. Limiting people from fruit and vegetables. This government couldn't make enough people stick with the Eat Out to Help Out campaign, so now they're trying to bring back scurvy. I think we've become too namby-pamby as a nation. My

grandad fought in World War II, and so by extension did I. He was a minesweeper in the Royal Navy. He would go around drinking other people's pints. That's how we did it in those days. He was a working class Mancunian man. He would go weeks without

vegetables by choice. By the way, backstage at the BBC here, it's just loaded with fruit and veg. There's, like, champagne buckets full of cucumbers. There's stacks of tomatoes. They're like, take whatever you want. We can't move for kumquats. Simon, Greg Wallace, the MasterChef-hosting pudding fetishist...

Mm. ..has suggested that people should do what to combat these food shortages? Store extra food in their little hamster cheeks like he does. He said that they should consider, not exclude the possibility, of dried, frozen or canned vegetables. Canned vegetables? Frozen vegetables? You mean we don't have to eat absolutely sparkling fresh produce gathered on a thrice-daily basis from the local farmer's market?

I mean, does he not realise what most people's vegetable intake is? Heinz baked beans and frozen peas on an absolutely absurd patronising intervention from the hamster-cheeked impresario. He said, yes, he suggested people should use tinned or frozen veg and or host an average of 2.7 TV shows a day. Yeah. Either of those are good options.

And Samira and Felicity, Marks and Spencer have apologised for displaying what alongside vegetables in one of their shops? I think it was just a cardboard cut out of a middle finger. It was daffodils. Daffodils next to spring onions, because, of course, they do sort of look a bit similar. I mean, if you look at the picture,

I would have absolutely just grabbed myself a little bunch of daffodils, chopped them up. That's a joke, I don't cook. But if you eat them, they can make you very ill. Yes. You can bunch daffodils, that's what separates them from arses. As Britain heads towards a harrowing future of meat and zero-veg meals, consumers have been told not to panic about shortages.

In some supermarkets, empty shelves have been accessorised with cardboard cut-out pictures of fruit and vegetables, including at the fictitious budget supermarket Nibble, who have marketed the pictures as their new North Korean range. Whilst the Church of England has chipped in by announcing that all believers have, by default, given up tomatoes for Lent, so everyone is fine, and the former Environment Secretary, George Eustace,

suggested we should be committing to onshore production of tomatoes. Now, for those of you wondering, an offshore tomato is more commonly known as a fish. And at the end of our final round, the final scores, Alistair and Simon on Team Potato have 26 and Felicity and Samira on Team Potato have 18. Congratulations to our winners, Simon and Alistair, who go home empty-handed.

Felicity and Samira each get two signed copies of Matt Hancock's book. Can I please auction that off for the NHS? Thanks very much for listening. I've been Andy Zaltzman. Goodbye. Taking part in the news quiz were Simon Evans, Felicity Ward, Samira Ahmed and Alasdair Beckett-King. In the chair was Andy Zaltzman and additional material was written by Alice Fraser,

Zoe Tomalin, Rhianne Shaw and Jane Geby. The producer was Georgia Keating, and it was a BBC Studios production. Hello, I'm Greg Jenner. I'm the host of You're Dead to Me, the Radio 4 comedy podcast that takes history seriously. And I'm delighted to say that we are back for Series 6. Once again, I'll be joined by a fantastic cast of expert historians and top-notch comedians to talk about a wonderful, fascinating, surprising array of historical subjects from all over the world. We'll be popping on our biography hats to look at the lives of Cleopatra, Sarah Bernhardt, Frederick Douglass, Leonardo da Vinci and Simon Bolivar. Plus, we'll be exploring some weird and wonderful subjects, including the history of vital electricity, the Jacobites and the Columbian Exchange.

Find out what that is by listening in. And the series will be launching with a Valentine's Day special about dating and courtship in 18th century Britain. So that's series six of You're Dead to Me. Make sure to subscribe on BBC Sounds so you never miss an episode. Bye! This is the first radio ad you can smell. The new Cinnabon pull Apart, only at Wendy's. It's ooey, gooey, and just five bucks with a small coffee all day long.

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