Friday Night Comedy from BBC Radio 4 - The News Quiz - Friday 25th September 2020

Episode Date: September 25, 2020

A satirical review of the week's news with Andy Zaltzman and guests including Francis Wheen, Neil Delamere, Lucy Porter and Fern Brady.Andy Zaltzman looks at the latest COVID-19 advice ("this is not a repeat, I repeat, this is not a repeat") and investigates dodgy bank dealings and even dodgier Welsh broadband.Written by Andy Zaltzman with additional material from Suchandrika Chakrabarti, Charlie Dinkin, Alice Fraser and Mike Shephard.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 everyone. Are you sitting comfortably? No, of course you're not. It's the year 2020. No one is sitting comfortably anymore. Welcome to the News Quiz. I'm Andy Zaltzman and please remember in case you find yourself wondering over the next half hour

this show is not a repeat I repeat this show is not a repeat to prove it I'm holding up a copy of a newspaper from this week September 2020 does that sound like a newspaper from March? No. This week, going to watch sport might have been banned for the foreseeable future,

but the news quiz can fill the void. Simply choose one of our two teams to support, based on which one your parents probably would have liked the best, and then convince yourself you absolutely hate the other one for no real reason. Oh, sport, please don't leave us. Our two teams this week, we have Team Too Little versus Team Too Late.

On Team Too Little we have Fern Brady and Neil Delamere and on Team Too Late, Francis Ween and Lucy Porter. Right, time for question one in this week's news quiz, and this goes to both of our teams. Who cannot be trusted with what? And I should point out that there are an infinite number of potential correct answers for this.

Is it we, the British, can't be trusted with freedom? Yes, correct. Is that the one? Well, you could have also, can't be trusted with freedom? Yes, correct. Yes. Well, you could have also had we cannot be trusted with ourselves, with pubs, sport, music, theatre, a train, hope, joy or indeed freedom. So that was one of the answers on my card. That's two points. But he's making a virtual thing. He's putting us on the naughty step in the last chance saloon because he says we've overdone it. in the Last Chance Saloon because he says we've overdone it. But then when he was asked about this, he said, this shows what a freedom-loving nation we are,

unlike the Germans who just do as they're told. This is why we're in such a mess, because we love freedom. And so he's going to have to stop it, because we've been rather overdoing our love and freedom, apparently, in the Last Chance Saloon. But it was rather oddly timed and phased, this thing, because he did his broadcast on, I think, Tuesday, but the day before we got the warm-up act,

the witty and valance chuckle brothers of coronavirus people doing that incredibly gloomy double act, saying, the seasons are against us, everything is against us. It's like Napoleon retreating from Moscow. And then on came Boris Johnson the next day saying all Churchillian stuff. I mean, he was deliberately channeling Churchill, saying, never in our nation's history and our manifest destiny and collective destiny and we shall fight them on the beaches, socially distanced beaches and all this thing. And then all that to announce pubs would shut at 10pm.

It's not really living up to the Churchillian feeling. It was very, very wise, though, because the virus is very much to the Churchillian feeling. It was very wise, though, because the virus is very much like the rest of us. It likes to watch Bake Off live before it goes out. I do think people are getting annoyed about this 10pm closing time, but if the logic of this is that we don't get messy drunk so we socially distance, well, then that's fine, but we have to be consistent.

We have to ban Sambuca. Sambuca has to be banned. Nobody has a quiet Sambuca ever. No farmer drives home and goes, I drive home from work, I pop into the pub and have a couple of drinks that I can set on fire and everything is fine. You drink Sambuca, you end up on a ferry wearing somebody else's trousers. That is how it works. It is

the quintessential worst drink for a global respiratory pandemic because you get drunk and you have to blow it out. It's a disaster. Why are you not in government, Neil? I mean, in fairness, I suppose we have all been drinking a lot earlier and this is basically, to me, is just saying start at four, Lucy.

So it's an efficiency thing rather than anything else. Well, this has happened in all across Europe. Dubliners were told to see half the people they saw last week. Now, I saw my brother last week, but I only saw my brother, so... LAUGHTER I've been staring at him from the waist down for about seven days now. Has that got awkward?

It's getting really awkward, but... He's definitely my brother, that's all I'll say. LAUGHTER Fern, were you inspired by Boris Johnson's great rhetorical masterpiece? No, I put the speech on and I was sort of gearing up for the next... I don't know why I thought there was going to be another strict lockdown, but I started stocking up on paint and DIY things and booze and stuff.

Because you're in London, aren't you, Fern? Because Scotland is tougher, isn't it? Yeah, I actually went up to Scotland for the first time last week and it's so full on there. And people were wearing masks in the street without being told to. And my boyfriend was like, yeah, they're doing it because they hate the English. That's how far they go.

I honestly couldn't believe how much stricter they were being with it. It's really different. I always look at the Scottish news now as a kind of teaser trailer for what's going to happen to us. It's like, you know, coming up next week on the news is whatever's just happening in Scotland now. They've gone much further in Scotland. All people with hay fever will be shot on Monday.

But the obsession of the Boris Johnson thing is with Christmas. He just keeps saying, we're going to somehow save Christmas, as if it's really top of our priorities. I think other religious festivals aren't available, apparently. It's actually been like Christmas without the presents for about six months now, just locked away with your family, day after day, drinking too much, watching Die Hard over and over again.

The last thing we want is an actual Christmas now. I think we've had enough of it. That was the thing that bothered me when he was like, we might change the restrictions and lift them for Christmas Day. And it's like, you're not a prime minister in a Christmas film. Stop thinking. That'll be called Gove, actually. in a Christmas film. Stop saying that. That'll be called Gove, actually. He needs to stop

randomly throwing in idioms like a stitch in time saves nine. I was watching it and going, oh, this speech is okay. And then he just

threw that in and I thought he's going to start going for more. He's just going to, this isn't over until the fat lady sings, which obviously

it's a comorbidity factor, so it could be sooner rather than later. There are plenty more fish in the sea. If only the EU would allow us to catch them, but they're being so drunken. I've got a further question on this topic. This question is, who will have to serve at 15.30 down? Ooh.

This is sport. I need to get sport into it. This is not about sport, but I have to get sport into it somehow. I'm going to have to hurry you. Venus, please. I'm going to get a point for myself there. This is people who are getting married

versus people who are getting married versus people who are getting buried. 15 people will be able to attend weddings, but 30 will be able to attend funerals under a slightly McCarthyist better dead than wed scheme.

This is the story of the latest government announcements. They announced the first official national British hibernation scheme since the Dark Ages. Government scientists have warned that if numbers double every seven days, which, according to science, they kind of might, coronavirus cases could reach 50,000 a day by mid-October, and by mid-March, all 7.3 billion people in the world will have it in Britain alone.

So that puts it all in context. Boris Johnson spoke to the nation once again wearing his worst Faustian pact ever face. The leader of the nation and Winston Churchill's super fan told the British people this is all largely our fault a kind of we shall fight amongst ourselves on the beaches speech. I'm more certain than ever that this is a struggle that humanity will win and we in this country will win. Come on! Now look, I know Boris Johnson has taken to prime ministerhood

like a badger to the outside lane of a motorway, but win? We are not going to win. We are 5-0 down with 15 minutes left. Also this week, Chancellor Rishi Sunak, or as he was known during the Eat Out to Help Out scheme, Rishi, ooh, snack, has announced that this year's budget is to be

scrapped. I'm here all week. Announced a new job support scheme to replace the furlough scheme. The Chancellor also announced the discovery of the long-speculated-upon magic money tree. He said we have finally found that it does exist and we know where it is. It's in the future

and it is absolutely massive. Right, so onto our next question. This specifically is for Francis. According to a study this week, a regular dose of what can do wonders for your mind? Crosswords? Cricket? Both of those are good, but incorrect. The correct answer is wonder. Wonder can do wonders for your mind.

Oh, yes. Or, actually, A-W-E type or. Yes, yes. You're meant to go for a walk, an awe-inspiring walk every day for a quarter of an hour and look at starry skies or tall buildings, apparently, are good for you. Looking at tall buildings seems are good for you looking at tall buildings

seems quite surprising right but um yeah if you if you fill yourself with all for a quarter an hour then you're good for another 50 years yeah so so this is the yeah the story that taking an awesome walk can help you maintain a healthy mind it should be said that uh you know childlike wonder that these walks are supposed to encourage you is different to what it It should be said that childlike wonder that these walks are supposed to encourage you is different to what it used to be. I mean, childlike wonder has changed. Nowadays, childlike wonder is children wondering whether they'll ever have a job, a home

or functioning polar ice caps. So... LAUGHTER I mean, if you know any actual current children as well, they are not inspired to awe and wonder by the natural world. They are inspired to awe and wonder by Minecraft and nothing else. I didn't even know what Minecraft was. I thought it was Hitler's difficult second book,

but I discovered it. Anyway, you should try to fill your mind and your soul with something staggering and awe-inspiring, something that makes you think that anything in the world is possible, which is why I carry this with me in my pocket all the time. This, a photograph of Dominic Raab walking into a cabinet meeting. Because that shows that whatever happens in life, we can achieve the truly unbelievable.

Right, so the score now is three to Team Too Late, two to Team Too Little. This question goes to Team Too Little, to Neil and Fern. Keir Starmer this week told the Labour Party to get serious about what? Winning, wasn't it? Correct. to get serious about what? Winning, wasn't it? Correct.

Serious about winning. He gave a speech, I watched the speech at the Labour Party conference from the Danham Arts Centre and I didn't kind of get this and I looked it up and Danham is the Roman name for the town so it's Doncaster in English or in French, Danham.

He said you have to get serious about winning and Labour had their own brand new slogan out Labour a new leadership which seems to be more of a statement of fact than inspirational you might as well have it

Labour a political party. That would be an improvement to me. Labour, it has six letters. Yeah, he was pretty brutal on Labour because he said that we need to be serious about winning. If you lose an election in a democracy, you deserve to lose it, which is less of the pick-me-up

that the party supporters might be expecting. And then the end of the speech was kind of mainly about the differences between himself and Boris Johnson. He was kind of saying that he was the DPP and Boris Johnson was a flippant columnist and he's a sir and Boris Johnson is more of a sire.

But although he didn't mention Corbyn by name, the subtext to a lot of it was, I'm not Jeremy Corbyn, because he said, we deserve to lose the last election. It's not very nice about his predecessor. And then there was a bit where he said, this party's under new leadership.

We love our country. Subtext, not my predecessor. He didn't know. And the joy is he could be as rude as he liked because there were no delegates there. I mean, normally at a Labour conference, if you said something like that, there'd be a lot of heckling and shouting. And Eric Heffel would storm off the stage and they'd start singing. Oh, Jeremy Corbyn. I don't know, actually, if they've got a Starmer one for Glastow next year yet. They've got to come up with some equivalent one,

which would be, There's a Starmer man waiting for you. Or Starmer Chameleon. Fern, how have you enjoyed the start of the virtual conference season? I have this weird thing where I was at a kind of words thing last year and then Keir Starmer was in the cloakroom behind me as I was leaving and I only had a sort of peripheral awareness of who the guy was at the time but then he was so overwhelmingly attractive

that i've now got this obsession with him um it's so bizarre and it's the first time i've had any empathy with you get if you're a female comic sometimes you get men who send you these mad sexual comments on instagram and all they care about is you're so sexy and your comedy's alright as well and that's, it's the first time I've had empathy with those men as any time I watch Keir Starmer talk all I can think about

is putting my tongue in his tiny pouty disapproving mouth and rub it! I'll rub it! Oh Fern, I'll tell you what. I do have an erotic fan fiction group that you might want to join. You'll be our youngest member. It is at the moment.

It's mostly thirsty middle-aged women. For the sake of balance, we should point out there are erotic fan fiction groups about Marc Francois as well. No, no, no, no, no. I felt a little bit sorry for Keir Starmer, though, because he was completely gazumped by Boris Johnson announcing the restrictions then. Like, in a manoeuvre straight out of Meghan Markle announcing her pregnancy at another royal's wedding handbook.

I mean, that took some of the attention away. So then in response to the Prime Minister's broadcast, he had a broadcast and presumably Boris Johnson's going to have another broadcast as a response to the response, like the worst rap battle in the history of the world between Keir Starmer

and Boris Johnson. Notorious QC versus Puff Absent Daddy. Kier Starmer and Boris Johnson. Notorious QC versus Puff Absent Daddy. Another question on Kier Starmer. What links the following people, Kier Starmer, Jesus Christ, Winnie the Pooh and celebrity mid-second millennium Spanish writer Miguel de Cervantes?

Donkeys. Correct. Correct. That is the correct answer. Jesus rode a donkey. Winnie the Pooh had a donkey friend. Eeyore Starmer helped his parents look after rescue donkeys in Cervantes. He was addicted to them, dangerously, in fact.

He overdosed on them. He was famous for his donkey OD. Do you think that's why, actually, that Keir Starmer in his speech said, you tried growing up in Surrey with a name like Keir because your parents named you after a former leader of the Labour Party. I do wonder if, in fact, he was named Eeyore, but as a baby he couldn't pronounce it properly, and it just said Eeyore Starmer.

He gave a speech at the virtual Labour conference, in case any of you missed his speech, here's a quick summary. I'm not him, and I'm definitely not him either. He played the spot-the-party leader who's ever had a proper job card, and he played it hard. He spoke at a lectern, displaying the message, a new leadership. Other slogans included Starmer, reassuringly pensive.

No, Jeremy Corbyn. He also spoke about wanting a country that embodies the values I hold dear. Decency, fairness, opportunity, compassion and security. Maybe try New Zealand? Let's move on. We have a question from our audience, our virtual audience, who are all tuning in from home. Do we have Rohit Silhi here from Canterbury in Kent?

Hello. Hello, Rohit. Tell us what is your question for our panellists? Now that Kent is seceding from the United Kingdom, what colour should a Kent passport be? I think her passport should be the Kentish flag which is, it's like a red background with a little white horse with his hands up ready to fight people I think and there should be a speech bubble saying

get out, that's me trying to be English get out If you're trying to think what colour should a Kent passport be, Dungeness Grey might be nice. I love Dungeness, it's beautiful and I think that would be a nice artistic colour. That's a good idea because you know those really posh Farrow and Ball and all those paint manufacturer colours?

You need to call it something like Elephant's Breath or Hedgehog's Tears or something like that. A nice kind of... A soft pink like Farage's liver. It's quite a truly extraordinary story. Michael Gove, he's announced that basically we're going to have a de facto border

for lorry drivers entering Kent and I mean this is a story of great personal resonance for me as someone who grew up in the disputed border town of Tunbridge Wells. This idea of a hard border in Kent, I can't help thinking this has come about 1,977 years too late. Hashtag Romans out.

Brings us to the end of that round. It's five to Team Too Late, four to Team Too Little. This goes to Francis and Lucy on Team Too Late. Why should we not feel bad about stealing those little pens from banks? Because they're

robbers themselves, or launderers at least. I mean, they do a bit of dry cleaning of money. There's a thing called FinCEN think which is the u.s treasury financial crime enforcement network or some such thing and thousands of documents have been leaked from it so in fact we've got about three pages of them in this issue of private iron buzzfeed and panorama all over them and it basically shows that the big banks have been merrily money laundering and helping fraudsters put their money away in different places and not doing anything about it until it becomes too embarrassing and they have to cover themselves. And so they then go to financial enforcement people say, oh, I think this thing that's got 200 billion,

this account called Honest Joe's used car thing might be a bit of a front from Russian mafia. And Britain shows another great achievement to this government in the last one. Britain has more of them than any other country in the world of these documents. I think there are about 2,000 or 3,000 of them. 5,000?

3,282 of the dodgy companies in the report. This is something we are genuinely world-beating at, thank goodness. Yeah, and it's because we love freedom so much. We just love freedom, and especially the freedom to launder money, because that's an age-old thing. People died for that right to launder their money over here. And they set up LLPs, these limited liability partnerships,

which, again, we need the world in. There's one in Potter's Bar and has turnover of below 15,000 quid a year. And it turns out from these bank documents that it was laundering $237 million for some Kazakh people who obviously had a lot of laundering that needed doing. And it was wash day every day. So good old Potter's Bar. The thing that struck me about this story, really, was that on the back of this HSBC share price went down.

And I thought, surely this is going to attract actually more custom to HSBC. I don't bank with them, but I would think about it. Because, you know, notoriously, if you're going to handle the finances of criminals and violent regimes, you've got to be very competent. Otherwise, you're going to end the finances of criminals and violent regimes you've got to be very competent otherwise you're going to end up with a lot of pulled teeth and severed noses on your hands, right? There's this implication that the banks

are not looking at who owns the bank accounts enough and they're going, oh we don't know who necessarily owns this and it could be a drug trafficker It cannot be that difficult to find out who owns a bank account. Look at the security questions. If his mother's maiden name is Escobar and his first pet was a capybara, maybe

maybe don't let him open the bank account. This is the story of the FinCEN leaks. Leaked documents showed that around 200,000 transactions, totalling around $2 trillion, have been moved by the world's banks,

allowing criminals to shift their naughty money around the world. It's hit me really hard, this story. I mean, are there no massively overpowerful global financial institutions left that we can trust? The scales are falling from my eyes. There was an article on the BBC website about this that began, if you're planning to profit from a criminal enterprise, one of the most important things to have in place is a way of laundering the money.

And it's really good to see the BBC fulfilling its remit to inform, educate and entertain. And to cater for a broader audience, the BBC isn't just for the wokey-wokey generation who tend to be opposed to money laundering. It's for everyone, including Britain's would-be money launderers and large-scale financial criminals. At the end of this round, appropriately enough, both teams have decided to stash all the points they've scored so far

offshore via a dodgy PO box address, so the score is once again nil-nil. are offshore via a dodgy PO box address. So the score is once again, nil-nil. I've just wrote that on my score sheet. Let's move on to our final question of today. Why is television to blame for everything this week? Oh, this is the finest story of the week.

It's from Wales. There's a little village in Wales and they couldn't figure out why. Their broadband stopped at 7am every single morning and they couldn't figure out why. And it took them 18 months to figure this out. Engineers turned up and they laid new cables and still couldn't figure it out until somebody walked around,

an engineer walked around with a monitoring device and found that someone who lived in the village had a television so old, when they turned it on, the electrical impulse basically took down the entire broadband from the whole village. It is magnificent. The resident who owned the television was mortified, but didn't, and agreed never to turn on the TV again, but didn't agree to get rid of the television because it makes them the king of the village. They have all the power.

They have all the power. I'd like to be mayor. I think you'll find you'll vote me in the mayor house. I'd like to build a wholly unsuitable extension to my house. Can I get planning permission? No. Oh, really? Somebody doesn't like Netflix? Click.

They were on the Piers Morgan Susanna Reid or whatever it's called, the Good Morning Britain show. And they were sweet. I think Eileen and Alan or something. And he, Alan, the grumpy husband, didn't say a word throughout the long interview, whereas she chatted away about their camper van

and all sorts of things, crocheting all the way through the interview. Oh, yes, yes. Never dropped a stitch. It was fantastic. And then they were told that Piers Morgan was going to give them a six-foot-tall television set or something and deliver it.

I don't know if he's delivering it in person. Perhaps they could just lure him into the Bermuda Triangle of power, the little corner where they have supreme power and never let him out again. Yeah, that'd be great if they got the new big telly and then Piers Morgan came on it and they just put their foot straight through it. I told my television was on the blink yesterday.

I kind of fell asleep on the couch, and then the TV stations kept changing, and I woke up, and my dog was eating my remote control. And I said to him, I actually said to him, why are you doing that? And he turned down the television like he was going to answer. Yeah, this is the mysterious story of engineers finding that an old TV set was to blame for an entire village

losing its internet connection every morning at 7am. It's not the first time that outdated technology has impacted on the wider community. It is now believed by respected archaeologists that the collapse of the Roman Empire in the early 5th century AD can now be traced to one man on Hadrian's Wall who insisted on sticking with black and white mosaics

long after everyone else had switched to colour. So that brings us to the end of this week's News Quiz and the final score is one all between Team Too Little and Team Too Late. However, because Francis had the worst internet connection, he's been deducted a point so the winners are Team Too Little and Team Too Late. However, because Francis had the worst internet connection, he's been deducted a point. So the winners are Team Too Little, Fern and Neil.

1-0, a low-scoring defensive classic. Thank you very much for listening to this week's news, because please show your appreciation for our panellists this week, Francis Ween and Lucy Porter, and Fern Brady and Neil Delamere. I've been Andy Zaltzman. Thank you for listening. Goodbye. Taking part in the news quiz were Fern Brady, Neil Delamere, Lucy Porter and

Frances Ween. In the chair was Andy Zaltzman and additional material was written by Suchandrika Chakrabarty, Charlie Dinkin, Alice Fraser and Mike Sheppard. The producer was Richard Morris, and it was a BBC Studios production. John Holmes curates twisted, topical comedies. A reasonably settling concept album of news and current affairs flowing in a satirical river of silence. Award-winning satire like you've never heard before. To unsettle and intoxicate.

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