Friday Night Comedy from BBC Radio 4 - The News Quiz - 5th July

Episode Date: July 12, 2024

Lucy Porter, Ria Lina, Simon Evans, and Hugo Rifkind join Andy Zaltzman to quiz the news in this post-General Election special.It's official: Sir Keir Starmer will be the next Prime Minister of the UK. Join The News Quiz for this post-vote episode recorded on the Friday morning after the vote has come in. Covering the exit polls, results, the winners, the losers, the other losers, and the rest.Written by Andy ZaltzmanWith additional material by: Peter Tellouche, Alice Fraser, Cameron Loxdale, Stu Cooper and Christina Riggs Producer: Sam Holmes Executive Producer: James Robinson Production Co-ordinator: Sarah Nicholls Sound Editor: Chris MacleanA BBC Studios Audio Production for Radio 4 An Eco-Audio certified Production

This is the BBC. This podcast is supported by advertising outside the UK. Hello, I'm Brian Cox. I'm Robin Ince. The Infinite Monkey Cage is back and we are starting the series with a whole show about trees with Dame Judy Dench. What else have we got, Brian? We're going to do What a Gas with Mark Mirdovnik. Unexpected Science History with R Hounder. I don't know what he knows about unexpected science history. Well, that's the unexpected thing. He hasn't got a clue. No, I'm hoping we're having some experts on there.

Exploring with Annika Rice. No, that's just one of your dreams. The other night I dreamt I was exploring with Annika Rice. And also Alien Life in Glastonbury with Chris Lintol. Yeah, Infinite Monkey Cage. Listen wherever you get your podcasts. you get your podcasts. BBC Sounds, music, radio, podcasts. Hello, I am Andy Zoltzman. Welcome to this post-general election special news quiz.

Hello. Hello. Hello. Welcome to the news quiz recorded on Friday as we digest, then violently regurgitate, the results of an election that will surely go down in history. As indeed do all elections, of course, but this one in particularly fluorescent ink. Our teams this week, well they represent the two main facial expressions of election night. We have team Wipeout Pout versus team Landslide Lip. That little quiver of trying not to seem too overconfident before the results come through. On team Wipeout Pout we have Simon Evans and Lucy Porter.

And on team Landslide Lip, Rialina and Hugo Rifkind. Simon and Lucy you can take the first question. I know many of you listening at home have been avoiding the result of the election so you can hear it first from this show. Only truly reliable source of verifiable fact in the nation. So let's start with a nice simple one. Who won the 2024 UK general election? Oh, democracy was the winner, I think, Andy, absolutely. Well, the Labour Party obviously took the majority of seats due to the vagaries of the first-past-the-post system, which I've been saying for decades now needs a radical overhaul.

They have managed to secure a sizeable, if not super-majority, I would say majority premium. That's great. Lucy, did you have a good election night? I did. Well, I thought the real winner was the woman's hat at Blythe. That was, yeah, hugely... I mean, I think fashion had a great night. That hat looked like she'd put on a hat and then someone would put another hat on top of her hat, as a joke. And she didn't know because she couldn't see it because of the first hat. It was a super hat.

It was a... yeah and I loved the coverage, absolutely loved name. I thought the BBC coverage was great with Laura Coonsburg and Clyde Myrie. Having the kind of chemistry of a recently divorced couple who have to make a joint speech at their daughter's wedding, I thought that was amazing. I enjoyed that. And then Channel 4, I switched over to Channel 4, that was too intense. Channel 4 was like, the minute after the exit poll, they all sort of just hunched over. It was like a kind of load of students in the pub having a discussion about politics, about six points. And I think Rory Stewart was rolling his own fags

the whole way through. Everything he could dream. I just had such a lovely time then. That's good. Hugo and Ria, I mean, it was quite a spectacular victory for Labour, but was it, I mean, was it quite a spectacular victory for Labour, but was it the least impressive spectacular victory in democratic history? I mean, can you call it a win if your opponent cuts off one of their legs and then tries

to finish the race as two separate athletes? It is confusing. I mean, it's like, so Keir Starmer, he's now got a mandate to do the very important things for Britain that are so important for Britain that he didn't want to risk blowing his chance to get to do them by telling us what they were beforehand, which is great. But there is this sort of looming sense that it's like an imperfect victory, even though it's such a massive victory, which I think it's a bit... I'm not sure about that because it's like, it is done now. We are done with elections until the next election.

It's like if you have a... this sort of vicious, drunken fight with your other half, and all about who was an idiot at a party, and you come home and you shout at each other and you narrowly win the argument, and then the next morning your wife is like, well, we need to reopen that, and you go, no, no, no, we'll talk about it again in five years. LAUGHTER I'm really hopeful, because given how much of the vote share Labour got versus how many seats they got it you know they can do a lot with

nothing and I think that's exactly what we need them to do over the next five years so keep doing it I mean I now understand how Jesus did the loaves and fishes. What worries me sorry is that people are making a lot of fuss in recent weeks about Joe Biden being 81. But Keir Starmer is 61, which means by the time the Tories get back into government, he could be 81 too. I do think it is a shame and it's a stain on our nation's democracy that so few people did turn out. It was a very low turnout. Perhaps people assumed it was a done deal, but it's never a done deal and people should take their suffrage seriously. You know, people have died for my right to vote. I remember that.

Not this year, but in 2019 there was a very unfortunate incident, a bit of a mistake over parking places outside the... Liz Kendall was asked about whether she was worried about Labour's vote share this morning and she said, look, our job is to get the biggest mandate we can, it's not our job to get people to vote for us. It kind of is, Liz, isn't it? Do you know where he made his victory speech? Which one?

Yes, in the Turbine Hall, which presumably does get his juices flowing. I don't know, in the Tate Modern Museum, quite an odd place. Seemed kind of appropriate, a place where people generally go to spend a lot of time staring blankly at walls thinking, what is this supposed to be? I mean it was an interesting speech, wasn't it? He tried so hard, but he still isn't a real boy. I remember that when it when it opened the Tate Modern I went there and they had an exhibition of various modern art and they're very conceptual modern art and the one that really stayed with me it was quite powerful was

six oblong mirrors sort of lashed together to form an interior cube of mirrored surfaces which you couldn't see you had to assume it and imagine what it would be like to be inside there and I kind of feel that is emblematic of labor actually that basically is it just a series of mirrored surfaces offering you whatever it is you want to see in them so maybe he was referencing that but it seems better for stretch I suppose best thing I ever saw there was they had a load of swings that you could go on which is Ed Davey would have been in like a shock You know I prefer seeing what I want to see in the mirrored version of Labour than what the Tory version would be which is no reflections at all I mean, it's, you know, you can laugh at Ed Davey though, you know, with his series of stunts but he's done tremendously well with his, you know, crazy cheerful divorced dad

energy. He's taken the country out to McDonald's. That's it. Whenever I see him on TV now, because you only see him from the way staff, I always imagine he's wearing like Bermuda shorts. Sunak made a resignation speech on Friday morning basically as we were recording this in which he said to the people of Britain I've heard your what? I've heard your anger. Yes. Anger and disappointment. It took you

how long? How long has it taken? We've been yelling at you. Is it the distance between where we are and where you are down there? Is there a different atmospheric pressure where you are that it just took longer for that anger to travel to you? It is hard as a short person, it really is. Did he say, I heard you're ridicule for not having an umbrella last time, and that is why my wife is standing behind me this time with an umbrella. It's sad though, because they'll have to manage on just her salary now. But he did also say the UK is the best country in the world. So that's nice to have that in the official rankings.

I mean, it's a pretty low bar these days, but we'll take it. He's still not going to live here though, is he? Now, can you tell me the common link between these people? Grant Schapps, Liz Truss, Count Binface, Penny Morton, Nick the Incredible Flying Brick, Jacob Rees-Mogg, Gillian Keegan and Timmy Mallett. It's Clunidia. They've all been voted out obviously, they all currently visiting the Job Centre. Although I would imagine Grant Schapps has probably set up a couple of vaping shops on the High Street or something by now.

I feel really sorry for Grant Schapps. He tried so hard because I think he wasn't just running as Grant Schapps. He was also Camp Binface. He was also the Binface man. He was also every member of the loony briefing monster bin party ever was and he still didn't win I think of all of those people Penny Mordant probably has the brightest future because I don't know if you're familiar with this but there are various online services now whereby comedians for instance can make themselves available to give birthday wishes and so on to people you can pay a couple of hundred quid if you want a real a listener Penny Mordant with the

sword I would imagine will be a you know the sword bearer at your birthday party or going ahead of you down the aisle at the wedding that kind of thing. Just smashing away a piñata at a third. Yeah exactly. Jacob Rees-Mogg when he was talking about the election all going on for the Tories he said they're falling like nine pins. Even when he's talking about bowling, he has to pick the weird British one. The no one's done since 1938. I don't like to take delight in others' misfortune. Oh, come on.

Yes, I love it. You're a comedian, Lucy. I did, not as much. See, 97 I was jubilant, and now I'm 51, I just don't have the energy for that anymore. I kept hearing on the radio his interviews and he sounded like he was on an old Bakerlight mic and there was a ticking clock in the background. He's just sinister. I would love to be able to be that sinister without even trying.

But maybe now he's going to show his true colours, maybe he's now going to stop wearing the suits, it's going to be track pants and just a ukulele. I would imagine at this moment he's already ascending the outside of his castle walls head first and about to re-enter his sarcophagus for another 20 years or so. Wait out this administration entirely. A colleague of mine was saying that whenever there's a, whenever Jacob Rees-Mogg is at account, his nanny will always bring for everyone a supply of tongue sandwiches.

So, so wherever Jacob Rees-Mogg goes on election night, there is a strong smell of tongue. Which I feel you can kind of see on the screen, really. Tongue sandwiches sounds like somebody's arse-scouse slang for something we're not allowed to reference in this hour of the day. And sandwiches by the way as we found out are Rishi Sunak's favourite meal so. Saying Rishi Sunak wants a tongue sandwich every time makes me want to vomit. Can any of you tell me to put the scale of the conservative defeat into perspective, which famously disgusted town

where I grew up did not vote conservative this time? That is, um, Tunbridge Wells. Correct. Discussed of Tunbridge Wells in Green Ink, yes. Tunbridge Wells has fallen. Now, to put this in perspective, this week, the world's oldest ever cave art was found in Indonesia. They reckon it's 51,000 years old and that has beaten the previous record of

48,000 years which was found in a cave painting in Tunbridge Wells. It just had a small box like that with a kind of cross sign and the words conservative party next to it. and the word conservative party next to it. That's... APPLAUSE It's... With any particular highlights for you, because we haven't seen this many big beasts brought down

since we were trawling the world looking for majestic creatures to shoot and turn into soft furnishing. So any particular highlights for any of you? I'm in truss. That was... It was especially good, because I love the fact we do the polling alphabetically so it really gave that suspense because she's at the end of the alphabet and oh god it was just a it was a beautiful moment.

What do you think she'll do now? Well, she said after, she said, well, I've got a lot to think about. And I was like, God, that's dangerous, isn't it? I might be out on a limb here, but I don't think there were any big beasts in this Tory government, were there? That was part of the problem. It was more of a petting zoo and it has been for some time. Yeah. Love the petting zoo where all the animals have got manes. Yeah. Mummy, don't make me go to the Tory petting zoo. I've still got the rash from last time.

But darling, I've already made the tongue sandwiches. Quasi-quarting, the former fever dream nano Chancellor compared Compared the conservatives to what as the results came through anyone? Oh, yeah I did it was something to do with ancient Egypt or something. It was yes. Was it a corpse? Curse was that spleen in a jar? A dung beetle. It was the god Osiris. I cannot remember his justification for it other than possibly as you say fever dream.

Is it because it's got the head of a dog and it's totally dead? Well it's because it's suffered deaths but rises again. He does know they didn't do that. Yeah. Do you think with hindsight, the Tories should have taken a leaf out of Joe Biden's book and said they had jet lag for 14 years? Surely it'd be private jet lag anyway. I think they should have made Sunak give the helicopter back

immediately, and he should have had to get a megabus down Megabus in an ancient Egyptian god as well. I Think that Biden should take a leaf out of a Davies book because I noticed when N Davy did his his speech He said well look when I fell off my paddleboard in Windermere We were discussing the pollution of our waterways, and I went down the water slide, we discussed the future needs of children across the country, and he went through every stunt that he did,

and it was clearly linked to the stunt. I went, that's what Biden needs to do in order to remember what it is that he's up there for and talking about. I would love to see Biden bungee jumping. It was just, I mean, that is just... I would imagine he would literally detach at the waist. On the subject of the Lib Dems, here's a question for you.

They got 11 seats in 2019, 71 as we record with just a few results still to come in in 2024. But can you tell me how many more votes did they get this time compared with the last time? Oh, I know this. Yes. Yeah, they got four more votes did they get this time compared with the last time? Oh, I know this. Extra sixty seats, yes. Yeah, they got four more votes. You've overstated that wildly.

Yeah, they got quite a few less votes, right? They did, yes. Yeah, yeah. Surely fewer, Simon. Fewer, yeah. Hello, I'm Brian Cox. I'm Robin Ince. The Infinite Monkey Cage is back and we are starting the series with a whole show about trees with Dame Judy Dench. What else have we got, Brian?

We're going to do What a Gas with Mark Mirdovnik. Unexpected Science History with Rufus Hound. I don't know what he knows about unexpected science history. Well, that's the unexpected thing. He hasn't got a clue. No, I'm hoping we're having some experts on there. Exploring with Annika Rice. No, that's just one of your dreams. The other night I dreamt I was exploring with Annika Rice and also Alien Life in Glastonbury with Chris Lintol. Infinite Monkey Cage. Listen wherever you get your podcasts. Reform UK got about 14% of the vote, Nigel Farage, eighth time lucky, has made it into Parliament. Is this a genuine political game changer, protest vote, electoral prank?

It's tricky. The danger for reform is the more MPs that they actually have, the more likely one of them is to be discovered to have a cellar full of Nazi memorabilia. Someone was saying, they said, oh, you know, but how will Farage actually cope in Parliament? And I was like, well, it's a wood-paneled room full of baying, boozed-up men. It's a pub.

He'll be fine. It's very much. He's been made like eight times. It's taken him to become an MP. If someone said to me, oh, yeah, I've failed my driving test seven times, I would be out of that Uber. Like a shot.

I mean, like on a constituency level, if you have a reform MP, how is that gonna work? Like, you know, they'll only fill in a pothole if you say there's an asylum seeker hiding in it, presumably. They're just, they're sort of quite one note, aren't they? That's why. A couple of their seats are on coastal constituencies, so I expect they'll be on the beach the whole time

solving the problem, won't they? Just waving it off. I think he's going to be in Parliament all the time because it's a subsidised bar, it'll be cheaper than Wetherspoons. No, come on. No, no, no, no. Nowhere is cheaper than Wetherspoons.

I, in all seriousness, I I think Sunak or possibly even Johnson missed the trick in not elevating Farage to the House of Lords when there was still time to do so. That would have undermined his credibility as a candidate for this election and would have probably won them 30, 40 extra seats. That really does seem to me to be a trick they missed and it would probably have appealed to Farage. As Tim Farron released a tweet this morning, genuinely saying, agent trust has been recalled from the field,

her work is done. Her trust. Which is, you could have done the same thing with Farage five years ago. You could have said, your work is done, elevate you to the House of Lords. That threat is extinct now, and there would have been no bother at all.

Is that why they put Chris Grayling in the House of Lords yesterday? Oh, thank goodness that threat is gone. I'm looking forward to the levels of like financial disclosure the MPs have to make from the Reform Party. I'm really excited to see the accounts of Nigel Farage and Richard Tice. That's gonna be good fun for everybody I think. They have that that is technically a limited company rather than the party isn't it which I don't really understand the implications of that but presumably that is a financial point.

You know that, right? The Reform Party is not a party in the strict sense. It's an actual... It's a shop, basically. It means they now own Clackton. Yeah. LAUGHS Looking around the UK, well, it didn't go very well for the SNP. First Minister John Swinney said the SNP is not winning what? Anything.

That's pretty much correct. They said that they'd been swept away in the Starmor tsunami, which I thought was lovely. That's made him sound much more exciting than his own party have managed to do, hasn't it? On the flip side of that, Plaid Cymru has claimed its best ever general election result elsewhere around the UK. Northern Ireland is reputed to still exist, but it was unclear from much

of the coverage. The Sinn Fein is said to be the largest party in Northern Ireland and the Greens had a good night with almost 7% of the vote and a huge win in Bristol Central. Does this show that maybe more people are in favour of the world continuing to exist? I mean, a few more. It's still a marginal interest, though. It's still a fringe thing, yeah. Let's try and interpret the results a bit more now, because there's a huge amount of tactical voting.

It's quite hard to know exactly what to make of these results. You could interpret it by saying, well, Labour, yes, they won a massive majority, but 66% of voters didn't want them, almost 80% if you factor in turnout. Now, every vote obviously comes with a lot of subtext and different purposes, and I'm going to help you interpret them with this, of course, high-tech piece of kit, the Cifolatec Ballot Interpreter 5000X vote interpreting goggles. It's the new model. If I put them on and then look at the X on any ballot paper it tells me what the person was in fact voting for. I've stolen a few ballot papers from ballot boxes, our little secret, and I'm going to challenge our panellists to tell me what they

in fact meant. So I'm just going to put the goggles on. on. Ballot of the data on. Right, let's check it's working. Here's a green vote, which now I'm going to interpret. I think it was someone who likes the idea of having an inhabitable planet in 100 years time. Let's see what it actually meant. Bring back wolves.

OK, so Lucy, that's your vote. It's a Liberal Democrat vote. Can you tell me what that person actually meant? Well, I mean, what this says to me is I live in the West country and I've always wanted to try windsurfing. Let's find out what it actually meant. I want to make 100% sure that I vote for a party with no chance of winning, so I have carte blanche to complain about everything for the next five years. Hugo, that's for you, it's Reform UK, tell me what that Reform UK vote means.

This X mark with a pencil, it says to me, this pencil is the sharpest thing I've been allowed to hold in months. LAUGHTER No, no, no. It... It basically says, you know the way everything's gone really, really mad for the last eight years with ropey spivs running everything and consistently promising to make our lives better

while only ever supporting policies that make them much, much worse. Well, let's have more of that. Let's find out what it actually meant. I want Britain to leave planet Earth and be truly free. Right, Rhea, you can have a conservative vote. Have a look at that. Tell me what it means. Oh. There's the classic, I haven't really engaged in the news recently, and by recently I mean the last 14 years. There's also the hipster who would have done it ironically. But most of them would be people that, like that starmer bloke, they feel he's the most sensible purveyor of Tory ideology that they've had in years. What do you mean he's not the Tory candidate?

Right, let's find out what it actually meant. I have been asleep for 14 years. So you were basically Tory. And finally, Simon, you get a Labour vote. Tell me what's up. Okay. I'm a net beneficiary of the state and hope that to continue yeah I thought that would go down well. Let's find out what it actually means. I am bored of the news quiz and want some different jokes about a different government. I better switch it off I can't handle the truth.

Right, yes, a new government has been democratically elected in a reminder that we truly are fortunate to live where we live. Stroke, a new government has been foisted on the country against the wishes of the vast majority of voters. Delete, according to, actually don't delete, they are both true. The result was simultaneously good and not so good for almost all of the parties and simultaneously awful and absolutely disastrous for the Conservatives. Labour got more than double their seats from 2019, more than they could have dreamed of, but saw their total

votes barely move, surfing to power on a just about discernible ripple of enthusiasm against a sitting government that didn't merely provide an open goal for them but kept whacking the ball into that open goal, unprompted. At previous elections the Conservatives have promised this nation strong and stable government and warned how dangerous a coalition could be and finally they have delivered. I mean who and what has had a good election and bad election? What do you say? The nice thing was there was some sort of quite generous, like actually Rishi Sunak's farewell speech compared to the madness of Johnson and Truss and stuff that was actually

sort of relatively gracious and there was some nice you know people some people lost their seats Robert Buckland I thought he was great very generous to the winner and and furious with his own party which was hilarious and yeah and Michael Fabricant, he's very gracious in defeat, he has agreed to ease the transition, he's gonna lend his hair to his replacement which I thought was nice. We are just hearing that Michael Fabricant is being returned to the Harry Enfield sketch he escaped from in the movie. We're all winners. The move to competence, right?

It's like if politicians were astronauts, so we now have like the sort of starman's team, they're just another bunch of astronauts. They're just going to do what astronauts do. But we have had 14 years of instead having people who thought they were astronauts, but were just sort of like jumping as high as they could with tin foil. And so that I think is going to be, that's going to be a real benefit. And in terms of Labour's in-t what would you say should be the top priority in that entree, both for the nation and for yourselves?

Yeah, OK, two things I'd like them to do. One is get rid of all the sewage in rivers, because someone should have done that. Bit weird. bit weird And the other is bring back the Cadbury Spira chocolate bar because I don't know why it went and it's been a long time, right If they chuck fruit clubs into the mix as well. I'd be very happy with that rename opal fruits There's a lot they could be getting on with I'm very happy with that. Rename Opal Fruits. There's a lot they could be getting on with. I have to say I am disappointed. Keir Starmer has said that in his lifetime Britain will not rejoin the EU or the single market. And he's 61 years old, so that's quite a long time. Which is kind of like if Biden said, you know what won't happen in my lifetime? Christmas. Well, that brings us to the end of our election special show.

And Simon and Lucy have nine points. Rhea and Hugo have ten. So using electoral mathematics, that means that Simon and Lucy have won. And Rhea and Hugo have 410. So we will of course have world exclusive coverage of the next five years of the Labour government and we'll see. Oh, by the way, I don't know if you know this, Keir Starmer's dad is a tool maker. We do have to say that on every show now for the next five years. Was Labour redrawing the political map or just waiting for the Conservatives to finish

barbequing the map, picking up its child remnants, squirting some ketchup on it and saying, voila, new map? Time, that judgmental little interfering busybody that it is will tell as the Tories take a long hot bloodbath with themselves to figure out Exactly what went wrong and where thank you very much for listening just hearing that Liz trust and Jacob Reese Mogg will be ceremonially released back into the wild on Monday morning And also apparently in the palace just earlier on, Rishi Leena, Simon Evans and Hugo Rifkin. In the chair was me, Andy Zoltzman and additional material was written by Peter Toulouse, Alice Fraser, Cameron Locksdale, Stu Cooper and Christina Riggs. The producer was Sam Holmes and it was a BBC Studios audio production for Radio 4.

Hi guys, I'm Rylan and this is How To Be In The Spotlight from BBC Sounds. It's the podcast where together we're going to hear what it's like to be thrust into the public eye by those who've lived to tell the tale. In this podcast, I'm going to be joined by 12 fantastic guests who are going to share how they've learned to navigate the perks, pressures and pitfalls of fame. This is Rylan. How to be in the spotlight. Listen on BBC Sounds. Hello, I'm Brian Cox. I'm Robin Ince. The Infinite Monkey Cage is back and we are starting the series with a whole show about trees with Dame Judy Dench.

What else have we got, Brian? We're going to do What a whole show about trees with Dame Judi Dench. What else have we got Brian? We're going to do What a Gas with Mark Miodownik. Unexpected Science History with Rufus Hound. I don't know what he knows about unexpected science history. Well that's the unexpected thing, he hasn't got a clue. No, I'm hoping we're having some experts on there. Exploring with Annika Rice. No, that's just one of your dreams.

The other night I dreamt I was exploring with Annika Rice. And also Alien Life in Glastonbury with Chris Lintol. Yeah. Infinite Monkey Cage. Listen, wherever you get your podcasts.