Friday Night Comedy from BBC Radio 4 - The News Quiz: Ep2. Prisoners and Pensioners

Episode Date: September 20, 2024

Simon Evans, Ria Lina, Glenn Moore, and Coco Khan join Andy Zaltzman to quiz the news.This week on The News Quiz the panel look towards a cold winter for pensioners, an early fall for prisoners, and try to figure out exactly what was being said during the US Presidential debate.Written by Andy ZaltzmanWith additional material by: Mike Shephard, Christiana Riggs, Rebecca Bain, Sam Lyden and Teresa Burns Producer: Sam Holmes Executive Producer: James Robinson Production Coordinator: Jodie Charman Sound Editor: Giles AspenA 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. I'm Azneh Mashiri from the Global Story Podcast, where we're looking at the dramatic series of pager explosions across Lebanon. As security experts scramble to piece together the paper trail, armed group Hezbollah firmly believe Israel are responsible and say they intend to retaliate. So what's next? Find us wherever you get your podcasts. BBC Sounds music radio podcast.

Hello, I'm Andy Zaltman and welcome to the official opening ceremony of the new series of the News Quiz. Well, it seems to work for Olympics and Paralympics, so I thought we'd give it a spin. So to get this series underway, I've commissioned a spectacular extravaganza that encapsulates everything about news as we know it. Here goes. I think that captured it perfectly. Hereby declare the 115th series of the News Quiz open! APPLAUSE

Hello. This is a new series of the News Quiz. Sorry, I can't start the show yet, so I'm just in a queue for tickets. LAUGHTER Not for Oasis, but actually for just going back in time to the 90s. Well our teams this week, in the week that we've heard, that Oasis are getting back together and as Labour continues to search for a solution to the never-ending political pensions problems, our teams are Team Get the Old Band Back Together and Team Get The Old Band. LAUGHTER Back together, we have Mark Steele and political journalist Marie Leconte. CHEERING AND APPLAUSE

And on team band, Neil Delamere and Lucy Porter. CHEERING AND APPLAUSE This is our first question. Which renowned Northern Hemisphere-based island nation has been having a Brat Summer? And I should explain quickly for those of you unaware of the term Brat Summer. Brat is a new term, it works a bit like Brexit.

The Br is short for British, and the At is short for atrocious. LAUGHTER Lucy, what were the highlights of your summer politically? is short for British and the at is short for atrocious. Lucy what was your what the highlights of your summer politically? It was a difficult summer I suppose for Labour because they got in and immediately said it's all gonna be awful. Keir Starmer bless has done some because he's my fancy imaginary husband and now he's annoying me as much as my real husband does. And it's like... So he's done some quite unpopular things, some of which you go justifiably unpopular, like taking heat payments away from old people,

and then really baffling things he's done, like saying he's going to ban people smoking outside pubs, which is like, who asks for... nobody cares about that. Presumably, maybe they're going to take the patio heaters they're not using and give them to the old people. LAUGHTER Yeah, I sort of feel like the... You know, it wasn't a BratGail summer, but it's going to be a cold nan winter.

LAUGHTER Well, the government has claimed that what are going to get worse before they get better? Well... The finances of the country, isn't it? Well, things. Things, things. It's quite broad. There's a £22 billion black hole apparently, which is four Oasis tickets I believe. So they have to find £22 billion in tax, so Jimmy Carr must be cacking himself. So they're going to do whatever they need to do to raise the money.

They're going to do the usual thing that Rachel Reeves, she brought Stonehenge onto the Antiques Roadshow there on Sunday. And it didn't go as well. Some international clinics, of course, will pay for sperm. So they have called on Boris Johnson to return and clear the national debt. So how they're going to do it is what they always do. Things like library, because that's where the 22 billion quid's gone, isn't it, over the last. That's who's caused the 22 billion deficit, is libraries.

That's what's happened. The energy companies, bless them, the shareholders of the energy companies have done as much as they can, they've been as kind as possible... No, no, no, have all our money, but libraries... You go to any library and there's gold-plated Agatha Christie's everywhere. Kettering library, do you know who they've got as a librarian? Beyonce. Finally, the word is out, because libraries try to keep it quiet for years.

I love the idea of Beyonce being a librarian, that if you liked it, then you should have put a hold on it. and that if you liked it then you should put a hold on it. I mean Marie, I guess one of the things that they said things are going to get worse before they get better but they haven't put a time frame on how long they'll get worse for. I mean politically five years they could probably get away with, ten might be pushing it, fourteen recipe for disaster. So what do you think the optimum amount of things getting shitter would be for the government to aim for at this point oh that's got a good question I think that maybe so let's say it's a five-year

parliamentary term probably about four and a half in the same way that I think if you're in a house share and you make a point of never doing the dishes if eventually not long before moving you start doing the dishes people start loving you and they're like the expectations were so low that you can do a very small thing and they'll be really happy. So I think generally keep you know making things shit for quite a long time and then out of nowhere go, hi we've changed everything. So be essentially a slightly abusive partner to Britain I guess is what I'm saying which didn't think that's where that was going. Another political difficulty in this back to school week, now of course you know I'm one of those people who thinks that every day is a school day

By which I mean I spend more time daydreaming about cricket than I do learning about the reproductive cycle of a newt Even where French swimming pools are? So school related question stop which organization has been given that one word instruction ironically, is it the British Hammer Times? Which organisation has been given that one word instruction, ironically? Is it the British Hammer Time Society? LAUGHTER British Hammer Time is that half an hour between British Hammer Time and British Hammer Time? We've got to move to Clark and a voice goes, can't touch this. LAUGHTER

It is, Ofsted is the correct answer, I believe. Yeah, they're stopping Ofsted delivering their verdicts in one word. I mean, I just think the whole thing is insane. I think they should move at the times and replace the word with an emoji. Green apple, what does that mean? Come and find out. How's it done in France? Is it just with a shrug? It's a rating of like one in 20 cigarettes. I can imagine it's is the school good? I mean reducing anything to one word Mark that's not I mean you generally use more than one word I've noticed when you... Which question is... you sum up the 21st century so far in one word? Perpendicular.

LAUGHTER You didn't expect that one, did you? And it makes me want to send my kids there. LAUGHTER When you send a kid to school, what you really want to know is stuff like, what's the quality of the booze on the bottle Tombola at the school fair going to be like. The bottle Tombola at our kids' school would get outstanding on its own. People give away bottles of champagne. A lot of the parents don't drink and so they get given gifts and then they put it on the

bottle Tombola and my husband and I are there. Summer fair opens, we've been queueing for about an hour. We spend most of our money on tombola tickets these days. Her kids are 24 and 25, they still just turn up to the school. How many tickets do you have to buy? Well the return is pretty good, my husband's got a spreadsheet and... No your husband has an alcohol problem but it's more fun to win that is what they should do here you go Keir Starmer here's a policy you go to the pub you can smoke outside but only if you have won the right to do so but you win your booze there you go so you want to encourage gambling and alcohol guys? It's like a double negative, Neil. They cancel each other out.

Let's move on to, well, this is a difficult topic, but I think we need to try to look at it this week. According to the Prime Minister, the Grenfell Inquiry Report has posed fundamental questions about the kind of country we are. So I'm going to pose those fundamental questions to the kind of country we are. So I'm going to pose those fundamental questions to our panelists. What kind of country are we? It makes you sort of so angry and so the way that everyone is buck passing and

prolonging the agony for all the families who've been through enough and like the whole system is so enraging and Angela Rayna was saying oh well it's taking quite a long time to sort out all the stuff about cladding because a lot of properties are owned by mysterious sort of offshore companies and so we don't know who owns them and it's like well we do know who owns them, shady bastards who don't give a toss about their tenants basically. And that might be a problem do you think? Shady bastards not giving a toss?

Yeah, I think shady bastards not giving a toss is the essence of it. Can't help feel as well that if this was in a different part of London affecting different people this would have been solved earlier. Because we've had an election issue, we've had politicians saying we are the greatest nation in the world. I don't know exactly how they judge these things, but on the evidence of the Grenfell inquiry, if we are the greatest nation in the world, that seems to be a low bar. I'd only give Britain seven out of 20 cigarettes. Other countries are nationalistic, but they don't say we're the greatest country in the world.

Do Ireland and France go, we are the greatest country in the world? Have you met the French? I'm very glad you said that, Marie. Yes, but on your defence, you are the greatest country in the world. Have you had your wine or bread? It's fantastic. Gregg's is not gonna cut it, I'm sorry. Every country does have certain people that are massively patriotic and go overboard and usually you meet them when you go abroad. So expats, so a lot of time you go to Dubai and you meet Irish people

and they're like, oh I'm from Ireland, oh, the land of saints and scholars didn't, St. Brendan himself discovered the new world in the leather boat in the sixth century. You're like relax by the way is anybody from Northern Ireland that's the difference between the Republic and the North in that when we build a boat it actually gets to well. Oh you're laughing they didn't like that in the Ulster Hall, let me tell you that. I was some angry unionist, that's all. But I stubbed my ground behind that plexiglass.

I did it. See, as an Irish person looking at Britain going, are you right to be patriotic? But you have to take a balanced view of it. Like so, on the one hand, you stood up for six years against Nazism, against the scourge of fascism in Europe, and on the other hand is, everything else you ever did. So. So. So.

So. I mean, those six years, we're not trying to take those away from you, you can take those at home, they're yours to keep. The previous 900 are not great, and the fact that I'm answering this question in English and not my native language should tell you all you yours to keep. The previous 900 are not great and the fact that I'm answering this question in English and not my native language should tell you all you need to know. Well some people say some things are good, potato, sorry that's probably not good.

Oh! Too soon? My joke was up here, your joke was down here. It can only be described as perpendicular. Yes, it's been an uncomfortable week to be Britain, frankly, as the Grand Féil Enquiries held up a mirror. We've looked in the mirror and thought, oh, that needs work. When an inquiry into what and who is to blame for disaster

narrows things down to pretty much everything and everyone in any position of responsibility, you know that as a nation you're set for a could-do-better rating. It's a catalogue of avoidable catastrophes, obfuscated responses, almost flamboyant buck passing the victims and their families, let down by the state, the government, and by the free markets and the cocktail of chance-taking and compromises that they facilitate. But the issue for me is not just that we've had it confirmed that we can add systematic dishonesty to our list of core national values, it's not just the decades of failure, incompetence, greed, underfunding and unscrupulous penny-pinching that led to it,

it's the fact that the two words, flammable and cladding, were ever allowed to exist in the same sentence. And the only collection of words more ridiculous than flammable cladding are the words, flammable cladding still in place seven years after the Grenfell fire. This sort of links from that. According to the social attitude survey, British people are now less impressed by what than they used to be. Is it Britishness? Well, yes, and British history specifically. So I'm going to challenge our panelists now to tell me why we in Britain should be mustard proud of some of the slightly more questionable parts of our history. So, Mark, you can take this first one.

Tell me why we should be super proud of working conditions in British 19th century inner cities. Well, if you've seen kids today, the embarrassment, the rudeness, they play their YouTube things on buses out loud, they can't do that when they're up a chimney, can they? LAUGHTER And if they do, well, only them can hear it. LAUGHTER We invented that.

LAUGHTER Well, that's very good. I'll give you four points. You could go out, you could enjoy yourself as a parent back in the 1850s. Shall we go out? What about the kids? They won't be getting out of there. There's a reason they're called miners. Neil, can you tell me why we in the United Kingdom should be very proud of our role in the opium wars in which we attempted to get China addicted to drugs.

Well I have a Huawei phone so I know they're listening. I thought that was unfair treatment. Free heroin, are you mad? I don't think it was free, I think that was the point. I think you've missed the point. And finally Lucy, tell me why we in Britain should be, it's a more recent piece of history, why we should be so proud that our rivers are all full of shit. Do you know what? It's resistance swimming, right? We are going to be the fittest swimmers, the best swimmers. You have not swum until you have swimmers, the best swimmers. You have not swimmed until you have swum against the weight of human excrements. Our little obese children,

we chuck them in a river between the food poisoning and the resistance workout, they're going to be slim olympiads. Yeah, yeah. And it's chemically sound as well, like H2O in the UK for the water, the H stands for hydrogen, the O stands for oxygen and the number 2. I'll give you three points for that. Right, at the end of that section of the show, the scores are 10 to Mark and Marie and 11 to Neil and Lucy.

Let's move on to the big music story of the week. Complete the journey of an Oasis fans attitude towards buying a ticket to the forthcoming Brotherly Hoff tour of 2025. Definitely, maybe, what comes next? Be here now? Well be there in a year's time I guess. I mean I do quite like this story because good luck to anyone who wants to go and see them, brilliant, good for you. I do not want to go and see them and I feel like I've saved myself 500 pounds. What are you gonna spend it on? I'm gonna put it together with what I didn't spend on Taylor Swift and pay my electric bill for a week. She's gonna buy tickets for the champagne, that's what she's going to. Sweet Tom Bowler money. This is pop music I can get behind. I mean I don't want to go and see it, not

because I don't like them but because I was around in Manchester I lived in Manchester in the 90s and I had enough of them then like everyone you met was in Oasis or had seen. I remember the thing that men used to say in Manchester to impress you in the 90s was either that they were the bass player for Oasis or the manager of Manchester City and we had no way of knowing you had to get off with them just to make sure but the thing is like my husband is the target it's a lot of middle-aged people and especially I would say middle-aged dads and I would not want to go with my husband to see Oasis because I would be treated to his greatest hits including have you seen the prices at the bar are

they kidding these seats are agony on my back. And can we leave 10 minutes before the end to beat the traffic? But I feel like what I don't really get about the Oasis thing is that I've been living in Britain for 15 years now. And I feel like I've got to know you guys pretty well. So I watched all this from the outside. And as I see it, you guys got to queue then complain?

Like, what more do you want? Laughter Applause Oasis of course were originally named after Oasis, the ancient Greek god of decades long sibling rivalries. But what caused controversy was this practice known as dynamic pricing, which is a charming euphemism is it dynamic pricing it's basically a modern euphemism for used to be known as daylight robbery you know we knew they were in it for the money but they're in it for literally all the money and because they said it's cuz no was getting divorced he's got an expensive divorce on his hands so that's why

they're on tour again which I would say you wouldn't be getting divorced if you'd carried on going on tour because that is the only way my marriage works is that one of us is always away from the house. Yeah why do other people's divorces have to bring us so much pain? That goes back to Henry VIII I suppose. I suppose. Something else our country can be so proud of. You used to have lovely monasteries. He was the first ever tinder user, Henry VIII, and if he couldn't decide whether to swipe left or swipe right, he swiped down instead.

The first tinder. I think Joan of Arc was the first tinder. Too soon for a Joan of Arc joke. Let's move on now. The scores are tied at 12 points each. So question for you now. This can go to Mark and Marie. If Priti Patel was not the answer but Robert Jenrick might be the answer. What the hell was the question? Is it a really harrowing new season of The Bachelor? This will be the Conservative leadership election ending. Yes. It's marvellous because it's so, I'd forgotten about it and I follow these things far more than is healthy and I'd completely forgotten about it and it was only when I think I was looking up the US Open tennis

scores that I came across the story that Priti Patel had been knocked out. And I thought, oh, now was she a surprise entry into the mixed doubles? And it's sort of like it's other news. The Conservative Party is other news now, like at the end of the radio, five news when they go, and finally ice hockey. And that's it now. And finally, the Conservative leadership, Pritz Patel, has been knocked out of the leadership race. And now back to the rugby league.

LAUGHTER I think she's secretly delighted to be knocked out first because the last day of voting, the ballot closes on Halloween and she's going to be out collecting souls. I mean it's the kind of swift removal she never quite mastered as Home Secretary. Kimmy Bednock took on Doctor Who. Did you see that? I didn't see that. Kimmy Bednock took on David Tennant in her launch video. I did enjoy though that I feel like literally in the video if you watch a kind of leadership

pitch video she says I think the sentence, I'm not afraid of Doctor Who, which sounds like something a Dalek would say. I'd like to see James Cleverly win. Just because for diversity purposes, seven out of the last nine Tory leaders have been nouns. Heath, Thatcher, Major, Johnson, Truss, and then the proper nouns of May and Hague, and he's an adverb, Cleverly.

and he's an adverb, cleverly. LAUGHTER AND APPLAUSE So who's that? I mean, Sunac is a... That's a brand name for some kind of lozenge, I think. Well, I mean, I don't know, but I think the adverb community haven't been this happy since Inspector George Gently was promoted. LAUGHTER There is no other show I could do that joke at. This is what you should be proud of in Britain.

This utter nonsense wordplay. That is what you should be proud of. Where else would a man like you have a job like this? Yes, Priti Patel, the former Home Secretary, has been eliminated. The voting was done by the Conservative MPs who survived the summertime general election. But I've yet to be convinced by any of the candidates who all received between 14 and 28 of the 121 possible endorsements. So Robert Jenrick polled the most votes with 28, which is only 28 more than voted to have Mark Steele as leader of the Conservatives.

That puts everything in perspective, Mark. What are you going to do to try and close that gap for the next round of voting, do you think? Well, it's going to be a Steele-Brotherman joint ticket. LAUGHTER And our slogan's going to be a still brother man joint ticket. And our slogan's going to be make Britain perpendicular. We'll finish now with a world news round. It's always comforting at difficult times to look around the world and remind yourself that it's not just us that is having a bit of a weird time. Let's start with France. Marie, after two

months without one, France have now got one again. What? Oh, a prime minister, regrettably. Right. It's been a slightly odd situation, so if you didn't follow, so back in July we had a snap election of our own, and the three parties that had the most number of seats are, so at first you've got the left-wing coalition, then you've got the centre, then you've got the far right. And yes, after two months of choosing to just not choose a prime minister, Macron announced one, and he's from the right. So the right being a minority, it's more minority party in the National Assembly. So it really felt like, so you remember in kind of like 2018 when

Parliament just could not agree on a single thing with Brexit and Theresa May when we'll find I'll find you a Brexit deal that no one will like and so that's essentially what we have as a prime minister now We just have the Brexit deal made flesh There was there was a great line on the paper is about the leader of the Republican and he said he could be the kingmaker But I thought in France be the kingmaker but I thought in France. Well in fact when you say it's I mean it's Michel Barnier, former Brexit negotiator, so a bit of Brexit nostalgia flying around there, it's amazing things. Who wrote a book and did not call it the Chronicles of Barnier.

We'll have another European news question now Neil and Lucy, which country famous for being an object lesson in the dangers of voting in far-right political We'll have another European news question now, Neil and Lucy. Which country, famous for being an object lesson in the dangers of voting in far-right political parties, has just voted in a far-right political party? Is it Germany? Correct, yes. Well done. So the one majority in a state election in Thuringia, I think, and their leader has been, he's not a very pleasant man, he's been convicted of using a slogan that Hitler's storm troopers used

and you legally actually now call him a fascist they've actually the German courts have ruled on this and Elon Musk asked him why he was convicted and he said because every patriot in Germany is defamed as a Nazi so I mean if it talks like a duck and goose steps like a duck and its right wing is massive, that's a fascist duck. I mean, I'm not saying he's definitely a fascist, but his pronouns are him and l'r. And you know what he said? He said, I didn't realise that that was used by storm troopers. Which is believable until you realise that his job before he was in the AFD was a history

teacher. Can you imagine his lesson plans? Right children, we're going to talk about the time the plucky vegetarian painter took on the world. Or as you might call it, Naziism. And rural children, put your hands up, yes, in that special way. That's the way. I like the name Thuringia. I didn't think that's that. For a boy or a girl? For a fascist.

That sounded like a really weird perfume slogan. For a boy, for a girl, for a fascist. Thuringia, the smell of jackboot finally right the Venezuelan president Nicolas Maduro has attempted to ease his political difficulties by doing what to Christmas bringing it forward yes the answer so he's moved to every year like 2020 he said we're gonna have Christmas in October and now it's gonna be on the 1st of October, which Keir Starmer is looking at and going,

I should have done that. I should have said, you can have your winter fuel payments until Christmas, it's next week. So yeah, to distract from all the horror that's going on. Yeah, that means Jesus would be premature though. Yeah. Sorry, Andy, Jesus was this guy. I am aware of his work. He was a prominent turn of the first millennium Middle East based magician, raconteur and influencer. Yeah, got terrible reviews, one star.

Right, at the end of this week's News Quiz, our winners are Mark and Marie, with 15 to Lucy and Neil's 14. APPLAUSE Thank you for listening to the News Quiz. I've been Andy Zoltzman. Goodbye. APPLAUSE Michael Schepard, Merrill O'Rourke and Sarah Dempster. The producer was Sam Holmes and it was a BBC Studios production for Radio 4. Hi, I'm India Rackerson and I want to tell you a story. It's the story of you. In our series, Child, from BBC Radio 4, I'm going to be exploring how a fetus develops and is influenced by the world from the very get-go. Then in the middle of the series we take a deep

look at the mechanics and politics of birth, turning a light on our struggling maternity services and exploring how the impact of birth on a mother affects us all. Then we're going to look at the incredible feat of human growth and learning in the first 12 months of life. Whatever shape the journey takes, this is a story that helps us know our world. Listen on BBC Sounds. I'm Azneem Asheri from the Global Story podcast, where we're looking at the dramatic series of pager explosions across Lebanon. As security experts scramble to piece together

the paper trail, armed group Hezbollah firmly believe Israel are responsible and say they intend to retaliate. So what's next? Find us wherever you get your podcasts. Find us wherever you get your podcasts. I'm Azneh Mashiri from the Global Story Podcast, where we're looking at the dramatic series of pager explosions across Lebanon. As security experts scramble to piece together the paper trail, armed group

Hezbollah firmly believe Israel are responsible and say they intend to retaliate. So what's next? Find us wherever you get your podcasts.