Friday Night Comedy from BBC Radio 4 - The News Quiz - Friday 11th September 2020

Episode Date: September 11, 2020

A satirical review of the week's news with Andy Zaltzman and guests Hugo Rifkind, Angela Barnes, Athena Kugblenu and Alun Cochrane.Andy and teams remotely gather in a group of fewer than 6 people to tackle the big stories of the week all absolutely, unequivocally 100% in accordance with international law.Written by Andy Zaltzman with additional material from Jeffrey Aidoo, Catherine Brinkworth, Charlie Dinkin, Alice Fraser and Runi Talwar.Producer: Richard Morris A BBC Studios Production

This is the BBC. This podcast is supported by advertising outside the UK. BBC Sounds. Music, radio, podcasts. Hello, I'm Andy Zaltzman. Stop whatever it is you're doing unless it's quite important or moderately interesting. Welcome to the News Quiz. So this is the news quiz. Some of the answers you might be hearing to this week's questions about this week's news include yes, no, completely inexplicable, a cold portion of battered haddock is what could probably do a better job,

and a cheeky little tennis ball in the throat. We are joined once again down the magical secret tubes of technology by a live audience. and once again down the magical secret tubes of technology by a live audience. You can see them all now, some hugely impressive multitasking going on, some high-octane body popping, some oddly violent knitting,

and you in the suit of armour, recreate the Battle of Naseby in your own time. We've got a show to do. Time to meet this week's teams. We have for you this week Team Flout and Team Obey. On Team Flout, we have Athena Cablenu and Hugo Rifkind. And on Team

Obey, the far more law-abiding Alan Cochran and Angela Barnes. Right, it's time for question one, and this goes to Athena and Hugo on Team Flout. Who is planning to break what, with what and why? This sounds like Boris Johnson, I think. And he's planning on breaking some international laws, which is fine because, you know, there's no jails in the ocean.

because, you know, there's no jails in the ocean. Like, it's no... If you're going to break a law, break an international law, don't double park. That's annoying. He's brought this through, and I think he's going to do it with a bit of law that says he can do it, which is masterful. I didn't know you could do that. I didn't know you could just write a law to say you could break a law. I'm just going to write stuff down now. I don't want to

pay council tax anymore. I'm just going to write that down. It is kind of mad. I mean, this is the agreement that they prorogued Parliament over, and the one that we had the election about, and all along people were saying, look, you know what, there's a problem with this, because the bits you've put in this agreement to keep Northern Ireland aligned with the single market, so there doesn't need to be a hard

border, they might keep the rest of the UK aligned with the single market too. And they're saying it doesn't matter if they're going to break an international treaty because you have brandon lewis saying yes it does break international law but only in a very limited and specific way to which the obvious report is well yes of course nobody's saying it breaks international law in every possible way no one's saying no one's saying that no one's saying that because you're breaking one treaty, you're automatically committing genocide and mining an Antarctica. It's not like you're compelled to start whaling. You break a law and you have, in a very limited and specific way,

broken that law. That is how law kind of works. If you break international law, who's going to arrest you? Like the Avengers? Who enforces this stuff? Some guy's going to arrest you? Like the Avengers? Like, I don't think... Who enforces this stuff? Some guy's going to come from the moon. I guess one of the problems was, it all comes down to Northern Ireland, and the existence of Northern Ireland was not actually confirmed

by scientists until after the Brexit vote. I mean, there have been rumours of the existence of some distant, mysterious place with a land border with the EU, but I, like most people in England, assumed it was some mythical, fictitious kingdom, like Atlantis or El Dorado or Dubai. It's like most of my family. I only really remember most of them are there when there's a row. I think the problem is, isn't it, that they've sort of...

We've framed Brexit, the current government have framed Brexit as this sort of fight between the concepts of liberty and nationalism and the reality of it is it's just a load of very, very boring rules about fishing. But it's also... I mean, if you think back to proroguing Parliament, he already broke British law to make the British law that he's now going to not obey in order to break international law. It's very confusing. The key is you've got to do it an even

number of times because they multiply out into legality. I think that's how it works. I mean, to be fair, you know, every other day I'm signing an iTunes agreement and I've never read the bloody thing. Alan, I know you've spent a lot of your career as an international criminal mastermind.

What are your favourite international laws to flout, to break? Oh, I think this one particularly would be my favourite, probably. I agree with Athena. I think if nobody's policing it, I don't really see why it's that bad a deal. And it would have been quite nice if brandon lewis had just blurted out in parliament what you're going to do about it i think it was already a mistake of him to say yes this is technically breaking the law but very specifically

but if he'd added what you're going to do about it i think he would have faced it back out and people would have been like well who is policing this we left we left the eu so we didn't need to obey european law and now in order not to pay international law we've just got to leave the world fine that's phase two i think yes correct this is uh the story about the the government's internal market bill which would uh give the uk the power to uh renege on the withdrawal agreement. Of late, Boris Johnson has been floundering around like a lactose intolerant arachnophobe who's forgotten his safe word at a cheese and spiders fetish party. One of the government's top-ranking lawyers, Jonathan Jones,

head of the government legal service, resigned. And to put into context the extent of the concern in Europe, the European Commission Vice President Maros Sefcovic travelled to London on Thursday to voluntarily spend time with Michael Gove. I hope that shows you exactly what we're dealing with. And let's not forget, this withdrawal agreement wasn't just much trumpeted by Boris Johnson

in the build-up to the election. He fully Miles Davis-ed it. And like with jazz, it confused many people who weren't really into it, but its fans insisted you don't have to understand it, you just have to feel it. And also like jazz, it turns out it's not about the words that you actually put in the agreement, it's also about the words that you don't put in the agreement.

that you actually put in the agreement, it's also about the words that you don't put in the agreement. So two points there to Hugo and Athena on team flout. Currently I may reassess that if it proves to be inconvenient at a later stage. Just a quick bonus question for both teams. Nuance is having another bad year. So my question to you is nuance absolutely awesome or is it simply rubbish awesome just awesome awesome right I won't play with your joke it's awesome

I agree with Hugo I think nuance is really good what's the subtext of what you're saying I'll give a point to both sides and you can read into that whatever you want. Question two. It's a multiple choice question for Team Obey, for Angela and Alan. The question is, what is the rule of six? Is it A, a regulation governing what happens when you hit a cricket ball over a rope? Is it B, the title of Henry VIII's best-selling self-help book, subtitled A 16th Century Monarch's Guide to Marriage?

Is it C, science celeb Albert Einstein's theory relating to the maximum number of times you can drop your toaster in the bath before you should give up your attempts to make crunchy water? Or is it D, the government's new COVID regulation? A, B, C, or D? I mean, I like them all. You're going to have to choose.

But I think, sadly, it's D. It's the government's COVID regulation. And there's a surprising number of rules of six, aren't there? Which I didn't know about today. In comedy, there's a rule of three. But this government apparently have just brought in a rule of six, which I think makes them twice as funny as us.

Is that right? It's quite depressing, isn't it? When you do sort of think, all right, I'm going to do it, I'm going to go out, I'm going to socialise tonight, and then you realise you can't actually get together six people. That's my life. I mean... I'm in my 40s now.

A couple of years ago, I did a proper cull, and I recommend it. I did. What really... I couldn't quite believe what I was hearing when he suddenly started talking about his moonshot idea, you know, his idea that we'll all be testing each other, well, not each other, ourselves, presumably, I don't know, do what you like, if you want to test each other, that's fine, but, you know, doing it every day, and to call it a moonshot,

you might as well call it my unicorn tier plan, you know. The moonshot's interesting. I think what the government means when it uses the term moonshot? You might as well call it my unicorn tear plan. The moonshot's interesting. I think what the government means when it uses the term moonshot is that the test results are going to be faked in a studio in Texas. As public health messaging goes, it is actually a bit of an improvement

than earlier in the week, the extraordinarily creepy, don't kill your gran. Yeah, but it's a good, simple message, isn't it? It's such a weird message because 20-somethings are now catching COVID, they're COVID cases. But I think 20-somethings have got every right to turn around to 80-somethings and say,

I didn't see you getting that bothered about super gonorrhoea. So are you saying, Alan, that you think people should be killing their grannies? Is that what you're saying? Well, that's another problem, isn't it? Because people are very suggestible and we all know that if you say, don't think of an elephant, everybody thinks of an elephant.

And also, I mean, we need to give the government credit. We need to be balanced on this series, as we keep hearing. And making the UK a laughingstock is the closest the government has yet come to doing anything to support the beleaguered UK comedy industry. So it's not much, but it's a start.

The gigs will come from that. My favourite review of Covid-19 was the French writer Michel Houllebecq, who said he thought it was banal. He said it's not even sexually transmitted. The rule of six, correct, was option D,

the government's new COVID regulation from next Monday. You'll only be allowed to meet in groups of up to six, with some exceptions, for example, going to school, work on transport, organise sport, weddings, funerals, being a government advisor, or if you just can't

really be arsed. It's going to be quite tricky for families. You might have to reclassify your family gathering as a wedding or a funeral. It's just for the afternoon, Uncle Terry. Think of it as a game of hide-and-seek. Or as an organised sports team. Can Granny play scrum half? Might lack a bit of pace on the break, but can probably organise a back line. There's no substitute for experience.

Anyway, I digress. So since it was the rule of six, that's six points to Team Obey, to Angela and Alan. And it's time for our first question from a member of the audience. Do we have Pauline Leftley here? I mean, to be honest, I know people will say we've only chosen Pauline Leftley

because of her surname. Hello? Hi, Pauline. What is your question for our panellists? My question is, would you be prepared to have the Russian COVID vaccine? Are you offering?

I would. I think Putin is the world's greatest human, so I've nothing to fear. He'll give me the good one. Oh, you're going to have to show some working on that one, Athena. No, no, no. Hey, come on, Andy. Say what you like about Vladimir Putin.

Actually, don't. He's very clear about that. Yeah, I mean, it's not like you're ever going to choose to get it. It's going to come on the end of an umbrella while you walk across the bridge, isn't it? Athene, can you just fill us in? What do you love about Mr Putin? Oh, I wasn't prepared to expand on that.

It's just... He knows how to handle a horse. We've got to give him that. What can I say? I mean, he pairs his chest, he rides a horse. I mean, what's not to love? Hey, they don't't they're athletes maybe the vaccines will give me a six-pack that brings us to the halfway point uh the scores are seven to angela and alan on team obey three to hugo and athena on team flat But since the stories have been about Brexit and Covid and we don't really know how they're going to pan out for at least the next, what, 10 or 20 years,

I'm going to take the score back to nil-nil. So well done to both teams. We will remark the show in the year 2040 and we will post the result online. Question three with a score intriguingly locked at nil-nil. This goes to Tima Bay, to Alan and Angela.

Who has been complaining about how other people have been complaining? Oh, I think I know this. I think this is everybody's friend's Extinction Rebellion who blockaded some printing presses so that newspapers, largely from right-wing press, couldn't get to the newsagents,

which, if you are interested in nuance, you might think is perhaps like a modern version of book burning. I do think Extinction Rebellion perhaps look at Nazi book burning and the thing that extinction rebellion perhaps look at nazi book burning and the thing that troubles them most is the emissions but before anybody gives me any like problem i'm not one of those like climate denying horror shows i actually agree a lot with their message i just don't always agree with what they do to get it across you know i agree with that thing that people say reduce reuse recycle um that's very much the

approach i take to writing comedy but they um they get bad press and good don't they because their their views their their systems are very provocative like when they first came to my awareness it was when they glued one of their protesters to the docklands light railway in london and for any fact fans one of the most efficient methods of public transport on earth what being glued to a train they shut it down and lots of people couldn't get to work and all that stuff and and i remember it very vividly because it really polarized amongst my friendships my middle class friends seem to be like oh this is great they're raising awareness for an issue

that there's not enough awareness about climate change and my working class friends were a bit more like i wonder what glue that is you can stick human flesh to a chewed door that is a good glue and it's worth knowing what brand it is it's a complicated issue though isn't it i actually i i don't want you to think that i agree with all of their message um because one thing i like to do before jumping on a bandwagon is read the small print about where the bandwagon might be going never check the timetable extinction rebellion do that sneaky thing like the voiceover on an advert where it's all like oh

the environment environment and then it talks really fast you know where they go your stocks may go up as well as down they do that where it's like and also we want to destroy capitalism you go hang on hang on hang on I'm not up for that that's not like I mean I know capitalism is flawed but speaking generally I think it works out better for people and the environment than non-capitalism, as in, you know, humans being starving. Yeah, Chernobyl wasn't great for the environment, was it? Or Venezuela, where people got so hungry they ate the zoo animals. That's probably not great for the planet overall, is it?

Or for the kids on a day out in the zoo, either. I'm with Alan. I think their message is good, but their means is sometimes questionable. Although I didn't really object to what they did with the papers. I just thought they should have done all the papers because there's disinformation across the spectrum.

I find it quite funny that people are now thinking of ways to kind of silence them. So I don't know if you know that there were plans in the works to classify them as organised criminals, which I think is really offensive to organised criminals. Because I... LAUGHTER Damaging the brand.

It's like, I've seen Scarface, all right? That's a criminal that's very organized all right right there he's got tigers he's got nice furniture i went to the extinction rebellion um protests a few months i think must have been a year ago now in the center of london not a circus that was the least organized thing i've ever seen there are people walking around in odd socks that's not not organized crime to me. That's just people going out for the crack, really. You're talking about badly organized crime, basically.

It did make me think with these printing presses being blockaded, Hugo, and you obviously work in the newspaper industry. If only there was some way that newspapers could share their content with readers without having to physically print it all out but i guess that's just a crazy point from my perspective it was i mean i'll be you know we'll see how funny this is maybe not very but it was very annoying because like there are there are a variety of ways you can make the country greener if that's what you want to do you know one is that you can write columns for newspapers converting formerly a formerly skeptical readership into

being less so and employoring the government to act subsidies for polluting heavy industry and maybe redirect them towards renewable energy. And that's kind of what I've tried to do for maybe 20 years now. And the other way you can do it, perhaps, is that you just superglue yourself to a delivery truck and prevent a granny from getting a newspaper. Each to their own, not judging much. Correct. This is the story of the activist collective Extinction Rebellion making headlines after

they blocked access to several printing presses for a whole 12 hours. The movement has described government plans to treat them as an organised crime group as ridiculous and the government's message to Extinction Rebellion this week has been clear and unequivocal. Leave the disruption

and undermining of our national life, democracy and commerce to the people that we have democratically elected to disrupt and undermine them. So that is two points to Team Obey. Just some breaking news just reaching us now. A new report has claimed that the use of misleading statistics has risen more than a billion- fold in the past 10,000 years and has now reached

128% of its maximum possible level. The report added that the average human is now both 73.8 times as confused as an average pigeon whilst although more than 3 billion people have died since the invention of television radio remains the more deadly medium with more than 3 billion people have died since the invention of television radio remains the more deadly medium

with more than 5.2% more deaths since its invention than television although of course neither holds a candle to the book that just in, right question now for Team Flout on a related topic who was to blame for some

unnecessary environmental destruction this week this has got to be um an expecting couple in america on uh the west coast is that west yeah and they had a gender reveal party and they used some kind of explosive device to tell everybody what genitalia their child would have and it started a forest fire that is still burning today i believe i think it's still going that's that's some genitalia that isn't it that is also a sentence that really should never have had to be uttered in that way. I can't think of a party more boring to attend than a gender reveal party. I can think of a more interesting one, though.

A father reveal party. That would be good. The idea of a gender reveal party feels very American, doesn't it? In Britain, we do that by text message. The joke is, they started this fire to reveal the gender and it's still burning. I've got no idea what gender this child is. It's true, yeah. We can maybe guess.

Is it male or female or is it Satan? Is that an official gender now? It's very hard to keep up. I mean, because girls are fiery, but boys are destructive. So, I mean, it's... But you have the gender reveal part. You have that, like, before you have the baby, right? And you're holding up photos and stuff.

Not afterwards. Is that right? Yeah, that's changed. When I was born, at my own gender reveal ceremony as a Jewish boy, it happened at, well, eight days after birth. Compared with these rather expensive overblown modern things, well, it was an absolute snip. Andy, I don't know if this is a thing, but my friend was circumcised at eight days old,

and I found out recently that his grandmother still has his foreskin in her freezer. Is that normal? That's calamari. Shh, don't give the secrets away, Alan. Yes, this is the story of a smoke-generating pyrotechnic device at a gender-revealed party in California, sparking a wildfire which spread over thousands of acres.

A gender-revealed party, for those of you who don't know, is a party at which expectant parents reveal to their friends, family and, more importantly, social media followers whether their impending bundle of financial and lifestyle constraints sorry, unbridled joy and happiness is a boy or a girl. So I'm not sure gender is necessarily the appropriate term for that. It's not really revealing gender.

More accurately it should be called a sex reveal party but that just sounds a little bit 1970s, doesn't it? The origin of gender reveal parties is not actually American, as some of you have been saying. It's believed to have originated from the Pope-revealed parties that the Vatican holds to announce what the new pontiff is going to be, and I think white smoke means it's going to be an old man. Right, so that's two points to Team Flout.

On to another parenting question. This goes to both teams. When is it acceptable to buy a one-year-old child a bottle of whiskey? This has made me really angry, this story. This is the story, isn't it, of the guy who bought his son a bottle of 18 year old scotch on his birthday every year and now the son is 28 and he's flogged the collection for 40 000 pounds and now he can put a deposit on his house and i just think do you know if if you can put a deposit on your house in the current climate because your daddy bought you a bottle of whiskey every year for your birthday, the least you can

do is shut up about it. Spare a thought for the granddad in the story that got 40 years worth of toys and baby clothes. Yeah, this is the story of Matthew Robson from Taunton, given a bottle of 18-year-old Macallan single malt by his father every birthday since his birthday in 1992. He's now selling his boozy nest egg in order to put down a deposit for a house.

And this leads on to a question from audience member Candia McCormack. Are you there, Candia? Hello there. Hello, Candia. Can you pose your question to our panellists? Yeah, given Matthew's handsome return for his whisky stash, what would you give to a newborn baby now as a good investment in 28 years' time?

An EU passport. The EU won't exist in 28 years. No, they'll all be members of the UK by then. I've learned my lesson from the pandemic. If I was giving somebody something that I thought would rise in value over the years now, it would be dried pasta and toilet roll. Yes, well, let's get the correct answer.

What is the best gift to give to a newborn baby now as a good investment in 28 years' time? I'm just running a computer simulator of the next 28 years of all global events now, and the correct answer is a polar bear, because nostalgia always goes up in value, or at least it used to. Oh!

goes up in value. Or at least it used to. Getting upset on behalf of a hypothetical polar bear. People get offended by anything these days. Right, well, we are tied at four points all, which means we need a tiebreaker question, so we're going to go for a second audience question. We've got a question from an Ed.

Is Ed there? No, it seems to have dropped out, so I'll just read it. Hi, I am Ed Davey, leader of the Liberal Democrats. I've noticed leaders of other opposition parties in other countries seem to be much better at getting on the news. So what would you advise to try to raise my media profile here in Britain? A Russian-style near-fatal poisoning or a Belarusian-style bundling into the back of a van?

Happy to do whatever it takes. So any advice for Ed Davey? Take your kit off, get some super glue, tape yourself to the DLR, OK? Well, I think that might have won it. A naked Ed Davey on the front of an electric train. I think that might be the logical end point of British democracy. So, you've just won the game.

Team Flout takes it by five points to four. Congratulations to Athena and Hugo commiserations to the devastated Angela and Alan well that brings us to the end of the show, just a quick bit of breaking news before we leave you some slightly disturbing news here, scientists

have proved that all necessary recipes have now been cooked this is devastating for the TV industry, devastating for society. Sorry to end the show on such a downer. Thanks to our teams, Athena Koblenu and Hugo Rifkind

and Angela Barnes and Alan Cochran. I've been Andy Zaltzman. Goodbye. Taking part in the news quiz were Angela Barnes, Alan Cochran, Athena Kublenu and Hugo Rifkin. In the chair was Andy Zaltzman, and additional material was written by Jeffrey Adu, Catherine Brinkworth, Charlie Dinkin, Alice Fraser and Rudy Talwar.

The producer was Richard Morris, and it was a BBC Studios production. Richard Morris, and it was a BBC Studios production. Have you ever wondered what teachers talk about when no one else is listening? Well, you're about to find out. I'm Maureen Bake, and my brand new podcast, The Secret Life of Teachers, goes behind the headlines to see what's really going on as teachers go back to school after the lockdown. I was a teacher for almost a decade, but I never witnessed a time like this.

So I've created my own virtual secret staff room where each week some teacher friends and I will discuss everything from remote learning and mental health to offset inspections and teachers behaving badly. If you'd also like to overhear their uncensored staff from Confessions, then subscribe to my podcast, The Secret Life of Teachers, on BBC Sounds.