Friday Night Comedy from BBC Radio 4 - The Now Show - 12th April

Episode Date: May 10, 2024

Steve Punt and Hugh Dennis present the week via topical stand-up and sketches. Starring Gareth Gwynn deep diving into the archives of the internet, Laura Lexx on Russ Cook’s incredible Africa run, and an original song from Jon Long. Voices from Daniel Barker and Gemma Arrowsmith.The show was written by the cast with additional material from Zoë Tomalin, Cody Dahler, Adrian Gray and Peter TelloucheProducer: Sasha Bobak Executive Producer: Pete Strauss Production Coordinator: Caroline BarlowA BBC Studios Production for Radio 4.

This is the BBC. This podcast is supported by advertising outside the UK. BBC Sounds. Music, radio, podcasts. Hello, I'm Steve Punt. And I'm Hugh Dennis. With us are Gareth Gwynne, Laura Lex, Daniel Barker, Gemma Arrowsmith and John Long. And this is... The Now Show! Thank you very much. So, one way or another, it's been a week of scandal.

Old, new and dramatised. First came the Westminster Honey Trap scandal, a flatteringly glamorous name for a depressingly tawdry saga of WhatsApp dick pics and naivety, in which some MPs were sent shocking images. Look at this. Oh, my God. Are those our current poll ratings? And some of them inexplicably responded, sent back pictures of their own,

and promptly found themselves blackmailed. OK, so now you have the semi-naked images of me. What do you want? I want you to do something. Yes, but what? I don't know. Just something. You've been in power for 14 years.

The affair has cost the resignation of the chairman of the 1922 committee, the influential group of MPs who like to hire researchers aged between 19 and 22. But the British press being what it is, most of the papers were much more interested in events nine years ago back in 2015. That was when Labour's Angela Rayner, who was not yet an MP, sold her former council house and made a £48,000 profit. Because if there's one thing the Conservatives really don't approve of, it's people buying their council house and selling it as a profit.

The big question was whether she avoided £1,500 in capital gains tax, a claim first made in a recent book by Lord Ashcroft, which makes it both easier and harder to believe. Yes, because on the one hand as a former deputy chair of the Conservative Party there's obvious political bias involved. But on the other hand he's an expert on tax avoidance, having been named as a non-dom in the Paradise Papers. Yes, oh and if you're not familiar with the Paradise Papers... It's Chris Marshall and Sally Breton on BBC One, investigating financial crimes in Devon. LAUGHTER

Labour are maintaining the line that there's no tax due, but if this proves not to be the case, Angela has a cast-iron defence. Mr Chairman, I was not certain of my tax position, so in the spring of 2015, I called the HMRC helpline. And what did they advise? I don't know, I'm still on hold. LAUGHTER

Her real mistake is, of course, that £48,000 is far too small a profit for leniency. If only she'd made £29 million from dodgy PPE, no one would be bothered. But the fact it was all nearly a decade ago does make you wonder about the coming election and how far back the dirt digging will reach. Daily Telegraph.

Documents show Rachel Reeves avoided tax for nine months in 1978, by living in her mother's womb. Of course, scandals nowadays tend to come in two types. There's the actual scandal, and then the TV dramatisation of the scandal a year later. So, this week saw the first of two dramatisation of Prince Andrew's famous TV interview, in a thrilling example of TV making TV about the making of TV. The Netflix one is called Scoop,

the Amazon one is called A Very Royal Scandal, the follow- up to A Very English Scandal and A Very British Scandal, as well as the forthcoming adaptation of the Westminster Honeytrap Affair, A Very Rubbish Scandal. The thing about these dramas is that there is no drama because you know what happens already. So what they're really about is being able to sit there going... He looks quite like him. Yeah, but she don't look much like her. He does look like Prince Andrew though. No, look he's sweating.

The problem with these endless TV dramatisations of real events is that the two do become confused in people's minds. So the inquiry into the Post Office Horizon scandal... Now a major drama continued this week with Alan Bates appearing before the inquiry and being again accused of fraud. The CEO of the Post Office also appeared before the inquiry and agreed that certain points were true. I agree that the compensation scheme for falsely convicted postmasters was far too slow. I also accept that some of them had been waiting for 15 years. In relation to this, I do concede that sending the compensation forms out second

class was probably unwise. Meanwhile, as all these very British scandals were going on, a documentary on the French Secret Service revealed that Russia gave up trying to blackmail French agents because in France no-one cares what anyone gets up to in their private lives. It's true. The only scandal that can really damage a French politician is if they try and reform the pension system. Scandals of course come in many forms. In the US, the unreliability of Boeing aircraft

is becoming little short of scandalous. Look, there goes the engine. Boeing, Boeing, gone. It's also pretty scandalous how little is happening at the moment. We learned this week that the government have taken so long to get their Rwanda policy off the ground that 70% of the houses the UK government reserved in Rwanda for migrants have now been sold by the developer. Yeah, now most of the houses have been sold to locals, but according to the press there is a rumour that one of them was bought by Angela

Rayner. Now please welcome back to The Now Show Gareth Quinn. I want to talk about technology and progress because when The Now show began the world was changing 1998 saw the launch of the DVD the Sega Dreamcast and the Furby The Furby was a little robot that would pretend to understand you like if you try talking to Alexa with an accent The first DVD out in Britain was Jumanji, but it's hard to find any details because everyone who opened the box disappeared. But something else launched alongside the Now Show in September 1998.

Google. This week Google is in the news because there's a rumour they may charge for their new AI-powered search. So you'd use regular Google to search for, say, pictures of Henry VIII. Or you could use AI and pay more for it to have two extra fingers. A policy already used by Kit Kat.

Should we be scared of AI? I don't know, but all the stuff in the news today reminds me of how the media talked about the internet in the 90s. Here's a clip from a 1994 show called The Net, where early adopters explain what they love about the World Wide Web. On the World Wide Web you can find any topic from astronomy to astrology. Anything from astronomy to astrology. Two words which are next to each other in the dictionary.

The show is brilliant, all opinions are represented. Here's what happens in a 1994 bit about on-demand video when the presenter phones the vice president of Blockbuster Video. Do you think video on demand is going to take off in this country? No I don't. LAUGHTER The mid-90s BBC definitely saw the importance of what was coming and felt the need to explain it to the population. This is from a show called Get Webwise. This man is trying to sell a family on the idea of internet shopping,

so he's finding them a holiday. Let's see how he got on. Look, this is what I found. I checked through loads of websites and I got a flight from Gowick to Antigua. Don't know when it goes, but it's 249 quid including tax. Great deal. He doesn't know when it goes. What travel website is this?

Still, at least he's worked out how much it costs for a family. Is that good? Yeah, really good. So far, I don't know how much kids are, but that's what I'd answer. He didn't look at what the kids cost. Now that Steve and Debbie have the information they require, they can go ahead and book their holiday. Yeah, fair play. Apart from the fact he doesn't know dates, times and forgot to factor in the kids, he has absolutely nailed it.

Just like AI today, there was a lot of fear around the net. This is a teacher on a BBC Wales show all about introducing the internet to schools. Is it going to stop the children using their brains? Like the calculators? You know, when we were in school, we could add up. Today they can't. If they haven't got a calculator in their hand,

they haven't got a clue. That was from a parent's guide in 1996. So 22, no wait, not, hang on, 30. That show was only broadcast in Wales. Now one very weird thing about the BBC archive, a lot of the shows explaining the internet, a disproportionate number, were made by and targeted at Welsh people.

So in 1995 there was a series called Cyber Wales. This is the theme tune. So it's a show explaining the internet to people in Wales in the mid-90s. What's the first thing you see in the title sequence? That's right, a sheep. The title sequence of this show genuinely is a field of sheep followed by footage of coal miners. You know, the other type of Welsh person. The show is presented by Gaz Top. Here he is explaining the internet.

The World Wide Web is one part of the internet. If the internet is the railway lines, then the World Wide Web is just one train that runs on it. No it's not. I know what the internet is and I'm confused. The show claimed it would help you get hip to IT. I watched it all and I cannot explain how far I felt from being hip to IT. If you thought that IT, information technology, might be a bit boring or stuffy, you've got

another thing coming. What we then cut to is a nightclub in Newport. People are dancing, one guy takes his top off, there is a dog on the dance floor. It is wild. And in the corner there is a desktop computer so you can check your email. Also, the whole interview takes place while they are looking at a website for the shaman. And if you think I'm going to do a joke

about emails are good, you've got another thing coming. So what about the early noughties? Those TV shows with unwitting participants speculating about the future. Well, this is a show from 2001 called Don't Quit Now, about a bunch of sixth formers in Port Talbot. Some pupils like Gareth Gwynne know exactly where they want to go.

I'm doing double maths, physics and chemistry because I enjoyed them at GCSE and thought I was capable of pursuing them at A level. Yeah, that's me. LAUGHTER AND APPLAUSE I really didn't want to appear on that show. The producers asked us about what we'd do when we left school, what university we'd go to, what jobs we'd do,

all of which turned out to be wrong. But having played clips of other people getting the future wrong, I felt duty-bound to do the same. And it has given me the confidence to put my neck on the line and speculate about the next 25, 30, 40 years. So, the question at the start. Do I think we have anything to be afraid of when it comes to AI? Well, as a wise man once said,

and that wise man being the vice president of Blockbuster Video... No, I don't. Thank you very much. Bust a video. No, I don't. Thank you very much. APPLAUSE Gareth Wynne there. So little is happening politically at Westminster at the moment that the media have done what they always do when there's not much news

and look for science stories to fill the space. Yes, so this week we learned that March was the 10th straight month to set a new record for global heat, 1.68 degrees warmer than the pre-industrial era. But there is hope, because if Britain keeps getting hotter, then we won't have to go abroad for our holidays, and that will mean fewer flights. And if Boeing continues at its current rate, there won't be any planes left in the sky anyway, so there's definitely hope. Science is doing its bit to combat climate change as we learn this week from this story. M&S is investing £1 million to change the

diet of cows in its dairy herds in order to reduce the amount of methane their digestive systems release into the atmosphere. This isn't just a less flatulent cow. This is an M&S less flatulent cow. Yes, instead of just grass, livestock will now be fed seaweed, essential oils and probiotics, either by bringing these ingredients to farms in big lorries or by taking the herds to hipster cafes in Hackney. One of the biggest names in modern science left us this week was the death of Peter Higgs, the man who predicted the existence of the Higgs boson, the so-called god particle. Yes, a term which, like the Big Bang, was invented as a joke but caught on with the media, which tells you a lot about scientists and even more about the media.

For a long time, the Higgs boson was a purely theoretical thing like the economic benefits of Brexit until they built one of the most sophisticated machines in the world to try and detect it. Describing his working life he said, my style is to work in isolation and have the occasional bright idea. Which is pretty much what we've been doing on this show for the last 25 years. Higgs was an atheist so his funeral probably won't have prayers and hymns. No, instead the sermon will ask since whether he's now in a sealed box with no observer he's actually both alive and dead at the same time. Anybody who got that joke is unlikely to be offended by it. I hope. Scientific stories are often a bit

scary of course. Yes, the latest results from the government's advisory committee on pesticide residues has found alarmingly that 56% of foods that they tested contain traces of so-called FOREVER CHEMICALS! The thing is these chemicals are in half our food so they need to get the PR people on it. It won't be long before supermarkets start branding them as chemicals for life and charging us an extra 30p for them at the checkout. If you're hoping for a pesticide free evening meal tonight, the highest levels incidentally were found in strawberries and the lowest levels in cucumber. I personally am still going for the strawberries because I have a very bad

case of green fly. Now this... There it goes. The cerakol it goes. Surreal it goes. All over the place. This kind of scary story can be bad for science though. Because as modern science becomes more and more complicated, the number of people who can understand it gets smaller and smaller.

And this has led to more and more people deciding that if they can't understand it, it must still be nonsense. And there must be other simpler explanations for stuff. Yes, in the United States this week there was a full solar eclipse and Marjorie Taylor Green, the conspiracy theory spouting Georgia Republican congresswoman, tweeted that in combination with the recent New York earthquake, these were... Signs from God telling people to repent. Hmm.

Eclipses are of course entirely predictable decades in advance, so if it was a message from God, it's one he's been planning for a very long time. Millions of people lined the path of totality and the scientific world got very excited. Asked to comment on the eclipse, Brian Cox said, I'm the actor who's in succession, you've got the wrong one again. A solar eclipse may be one of the great scientific spectacles, but generally science is a lot less glamorous. In Paris, scientists are frantically trying to improve the water quality in the River Seine prior to the Olympics in July, with organisers fearing that heavy rainfall might mean that E. coli levels would cause the triathlon swimming to be cancelled.

Yes, so this is a big worry for all the potential competitors. Except Team GB, who've been acclimatizing in British rivers... LAUGHTER ..for several years now. Yes, indeed. French engineers are building a massive overflow tank called the Bassin d'Austélite, which will divert excess water and treat it, and then return it to the Seine in both still and sparkling versions.

So confident is President Macron that he has promised to go swimming in the river himself, which is going to be embarrassing if he backs out on the day. Madame, Messieurs, I cannot go swimming today, and yes, I have brought a note from my mother. Science has given us the modern banknote, plastic, unforgeable, ultra secure. Yes, and this week His Majesty the King went to see the first notes to be printed with his face on them. Five is ten is twenties and fifties. It was a very exciting day for Charles. Apart from anything else, it's the first time he's ever seen a five pound note.

Of course, sometimes science does provide us with gadgets that perhaps we aren't quite ready for. And the government is said to be considering a ban on mobile phones for under 16s. Which is ridiculous because they're the only people who really know how they work. They should really be considering a ban on mobile phones for senior MPs and election candidates because they seem to be a menace to themselves. Thank you. And now, would you please welcome back to the Now Show, Laura Lex.

So, news broke this week that a man named Russ Cook has run the entire length of Africa. Russ Cook is, I believe, the first British man to try and run the length of Africa. Now, you have to be careful there and put in the length of, because he's not the first British man to try and run Africa. LAUGHTER It's an incredible achievement, but if you're anything like me, then when you hear that someone has run the length of Africa, your first thought is, why? LAUGHTER

Running is awful. I like exercise. Guys, I work out, obviously, but... But... Shut up. But... LAUGHTER It's radio, I can be who I like. But long distance running is a hellscape of sore feet, chaffed nipples, bouncing appendages

and the chronic need to talk about it once you've done it. Mr. Cook, AKA HarderSkieser said part of the reason he runs is actually because of a history of mental health issues, which it just shows what a multitude humanity contains. Because when I was diagnosed with depression, it did not occur to me to jog a continent I took antidepressants I want to use comedy to lift the lid on antidepressants but it's hard because first you have to push it down and click it round I think when you tell people you're on antidepressants people

go one of two ways. They're either almost too supportive, oh, good for you, babes, good for you. Because if you broke your leg, you'd fix that, wouldn't you? So just because you've broken your brain, good for you. Or they go the other way and they go, oh no, darling, no, you don't want to take antidepressants, darling. It's just chemicals, it's not real happiness.

They don't make you happy. All they do is make you fat and sleepy. Which was really worrying to me because depression so far had made me incredibly peppy and athletic. I just think it's a mind-bending achievement. How on earth do you run the length of Africa? It's just not something I could ever fathom achieving. Mr Cook said he just

took it one step at a time and I suppose he had to because otherwise technically it's not running, it's skipping. He said after finishing that it was even harder than he'd imagined which I think is less of a descriptor of the challenge and more a sign he does not have a vivid enough imagination. If you asked me to imagine yourself Laura running the length of Africa I would picture myself crying and vomiting, crying vomit, vomiting tears and macerating the surface of the Sahara Desert on pulpy lumps of ankle. The only way it would be harder than what I'm currently imagining is if along the way various members of the cabinet joined alongside, lounging on a sedan and explaining in detail why their policies are exactly what the public has mandated.

The most physically arduous thing I've ever done was walk the entire circumference of the Isle of Wight. But the Isle of Wight is about as far from Africa as you can get, speaking geographically and demographically. In fact if you sold it at a supermarket you could still call it the Isle of Wight. Walking the Isle of Wight, it sounds very twee doesn't it compared to cross-country Africa, but in reality I walked for 27 uninterrupted hours and it was one of the hardest things I've ever done. The walking was agony but actually it was my brain that was much worse. What I wanted was a nice weekend of pushing myself and a feel-good hit of achievement

and charitable benevolence at the end but my walk happened to coincide with the Russian invasion of Ukraine. Is there nothing he won't ruin? And I found myself torturously trekking through the dark, thinking about all the people who were doing a similar journey without aiming for a medal and a balloon arch, just to wait to see if they were human enough to be allowed to be a refugee. I thought I'd feel proud of the money I'd raised

and my physical accomplishment, and all I felt was shame that I'd put my Body through something so hellish just because I'm a comfortable middle-class twat who needed weekend plans How come some people are so happy being assholes but my brain can't even let me have a day off when I've raised 500 pounds for a good cause and Achieved something well out of my comfort zone when I've raised £500 for a good cause and achieved something well out of my comfort zone. Obviously, £500 is a drop in the bucket compared to Russ Cook.

He managed to raise £803,000 for his charities, which is an incredible achievement and enough to send four-fifths of an immigrant to Rwanda. LAUGHTER But people love a charity event. They're so popular, they're wildly out of control. Try logging onto your Facebook without someone asking popular, they're wildly out of control. Try logging onto your Facebook without someone asking you

for money to fall out of the sky. I mean, you've got to feel sorry for Russ Cook's grandad who offered him a sponsorship of a pound a mile. But like the marathon used to be the top thing. That was the thing. Now that we've got ultra marathons, venti marathons, maxi marathons, that's a marathon with a heavy flow. But we love pushing ourselves. Why? Well for the challenge and the charity because humans are

amazing. Me and Russ are sacrificing toenails left, right and centre to raise money for good causes because it feels like some way of helping when you feel powerless. It's just such a shame that the people with the country's purse strings are not cut from the same cloth. So good on you, Russell. A hell of a lot of money raised and an incredible achievement.

But should we stop now? Like someone's run Africa. That's enough, innit? LAUGHTER AND APPLAUSE MUSIC MUSIC Your legs there! So, you might have seen that Gen Z are apparently ditching traditional table manners as not relevant.

So, we've asked our audience this week whether manners still matter, what people do that irritates them and why. What do people do that irritates you? Speak loudly on the phone in public. Why does it irritate you? Because I'm really nosy and I hate only hearing one side of the conversation. What do people do that irritates you most? Well, my children hate me ruffling their hair. Why does it irritate them? They're in their forties. When people apologise when they haven't done anything wrong,

why does it irritate you? It's so English and unnecessary, I'm sorry. That is almost it for this week. Yeah, but with a song to play us out, would you please welcome John Long? So, I saw Greta Thunberg has been arrested recently for protesting, and I care quite a lot about eco-activism. A few of my friends got in touch and said, are you a bit worried about Greta?

I had to say to them, no. I think her steely resolve would mean she would thrive in that situation. Gretas in jail, but she's taking it well. A hundred push-ups every morning in her cell. She's stronger than she seems, as mean as she is green. When Greta first walked in the canteen she knew just what to do. Greta scanned the room for the biggest, baddest prisoner in there. And Greta spotted a big sue. Big Sue. A six-foot-two behemoth. Greta walked right up to Sue, who was at the time just finishing her bottle of Evian. And

in front of everyone, Greta drew her metallic reusable water bottle. And she just... Big Sue went down hard. And in the ensuing hush, Greta spoke. This is my Greta impression. I've been working on it for three days. If I see anyone using single-use plastic again, there will be grave consequences. Green is the new orange. Now Greta's hench, she's covered in tattoos

She fashions her own shanks out of compostable bamboo And she's not lost any of her rebel spirit either She led several prisoner protests to improve conditions With great success, all her demands were met The canteen food's now vegan, the meat eaters pissed, but know if they speak up they'll be beaten again Oh, so many beatings But to be fair, although it's brutal, life does run pretty well under Greta There's no denying it, it's true

Greta's in jail and she's runnin' the show A sustainable utopia behind prison walls But she run it too well, now no one wants to go It's like in Shawshank Redemption where Brooks doesn't wanna leave Or alternatively like Bridget Jones' The Edge of Reason in a Thai prison Where Mark Darcy turns up to secure her release But finds that having a great time with all her inmates Singing Madonna's Like A Virgin with full choreography.

Yeah! APPLAUSE Yeah, Greta's in jail and she's doing so well. And I'm not just saying that because I'm in the cell next to her and incredibly terrified of her. I'm Jon Long and this has been my One Phone Call. Thank you very much. APPLAUSE I could have been terrified of her. I'm John Long and this has been my one phone call. Thank you very much. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.

Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.

Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.

Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. The show was written by the cast with additional material from Zoe Tomalin, Cody Darla, Adrian Grey and Peter Toulouse. The producer was Sacha Bobac and it was a BBC Studios production for Radio 4!