Friday Night Comedy from BBC Radio 4 - The Now Show - 29th March

Episode Date: April 26, 2024

Steve Punt and Hugh Dennis present the week via topical stand-up and sketches. Starring Geoff Norcott on cynical advertising strategies, Rachel Fairburn on our nation's obsession with conspiracy theories and an original song from Rachel Parris. With voices from Jon Culshaw and Laura Shavin.The show was written by the cast with additional material from Cameron Loxdale, Tasha Dhanraj, Pravanya Pillay & Christina Riggs.Producer: Sasha Bobak Executive Producer: Rich Morris Production Coordinator: Caroline BarlowA BBC Studios Production for Radio 4.

This is the BBC. This podcast is supported by advertising outside the UK. I'm Katya Adler from the Global Story podcast and we're looking at this summer's Paris Olympics and Paralympics. Hosting the Games puts a lot of pressure on a city. This means hosting isn't quite as appealing as it once used to be. The Global Story brings you fresh takes and smart perspectives from BBC journalists around the world.

Find us wherever you get your BBC podcasts. BBC Sounds music radio podcasts Hello, I'm Steve Punt and I'm Hugh Dennis with us. So Jeff Norcott, Rachel Fairburn, John Colshaw, Laura Shavin and Rachel Paris. And this is... The Now Show! Thank you very much, and it has been a week of potential threats. First, China has been declared a threat to national security by both the UK and US for targeting people's personal information. The National Cyber Security Centre has issued advice for everyone to use passwords consisting

of three random words, as these are apparently much more difficult to break. I mean, that's not advice I need. My password is already show now there. The Chinese have also tried to target intellectual property and the secrets of Britain's most successful and best-loved organisations. Avanti, Thameswater and the HMRC helpline. The hacking group in question is officially known as Advanced Persistent Threat 31, which sounds like the latest sequel in the Advanced Persistent Threat threat movie franchise all starring Liam Neeson. The group also has several other names

including Judgment Panda which sounds more like a reality show. I think I'd watch. For all the sinister talk about hacking groups though it turns out the basic technique they used was a standard fake email to get information out of their targets. Yes, and in the spirit of public service, the BBC have a bank holiday special to help people deal with this kind of thing. Mortimer and Whitehouse gone fishing with a pH. Now, talking of threats to democracy, Donald Trump, desperate for money for all his various legal cases, is now selling Bibles for $60 a time. He says he wants to get America praying again. Apparently unaware that for a lot of Americans that's

one policy he's already achieved. We don't know what translation he's used, but knowing Trump you strongly suspect he's rewritten it himself. In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth, but they were not so good. It was such a terrible shame. LAUGHTER And God said, President Trump, I need your advice. LAUGHTER

Because nobody builds universes better than you. And I said, let there be light. And God saw that it was good. In fact, it was the best universe and it only took six days and best of all, Mexico paid for it. The threat of climate change became more real this week. It finally hit home with the news that it might affect beer production. Yes, because apparently you can't grow hops in hot climates. People previously unmoved by climate worries suddenly became alarmed. And Extinction Rebellion protesters are suddenly getting a very different reaction

from certain sections of the public. I always said that you people had the right idea. And I love you. And I love your protesting, because you and I, we have a lot in common. Because I, too, am often found lying in the road. It wasn't just hop growers, though. Tractors arrived in London as the nation's farmers protested about the threat to their livelihoods from new trade deals and cheap imports.

Unlike their French equivalents, they didn't set fire to anything. They're farmers, not Youles protesters. And some were slightly late for the protest as London's 20 mile an hour speed limit meant that urban drivers could take a rare delight in reversing the usual situation and holding up a tractor. One or two tractors found themselves stuck behind a neon-coloured tourist rickshaw, gave up, went back to Somerset. Nor were there any arrests made, because it is of course very difficult to arrest protesting farmers

because they have two major skills. We plough the fields... And scatter! Perhaps the most unlikely threat came in the form of my favourite headline of the week. North Korean television censors Alan Titchmarsh's trousers. Yeah, apparently jeans are a symbol of Western imperialism and Alan was therefore deemed a threat to the regime. He told the press,

I've never seen myself as a dangerous subversive imperialist. But he clearly is in North Korean terms though, not so much for the genes as for the showing you how to plant food and grow enough of it. You would also have to say that Alan Titchmarsh's Garden Secrets is a slightly unusual television programme to be shown in North Korea. You think Kim Jong Un would be more interested in no question time, escape from the country and of course, count down. Another unlikely threat came to Saturday's annual university boat race

in the form of the risk of E. coli poisoning to the rowers from the amount of sewage in the Thames. You know, since we got rid of all that Brussels red tape that stopped us from having sewage in the Thames. You know, since we got rid of all that Brussels red tape that stopped us from having sewage in the Thames. Fortunately though, in the same week it was also announced that the five billion pound Thames Tideway tunnel is about to be completed. It's also known as the Super Sewer. Marvel films are really running out of characters, son. The new tunnel will mean all of the capital's sewage can now be carried rapidly eastwards, which is good news for everyone, except for whoever has to open it.

By cutting this ribbon, I declare this super sewer open. Oh my God, it's heading this way! Of course for all these threats, it is, in the end, Easter bank holiday weekend. Some will be relaxing, some will be doing subversive gardening, Donald Trump will probably be going to church and probably giving the sermon. It is not true that I compare myself to Jesus because Jesus was born in a stable as there was no room at the inn, which meant that Bethlehem was short of hotel rooms, folks, and I would have built that hotel and Jesus would have been

born in a penthouse by my Bible, thank you. And now, please welcome back to the show, Geoff Norcotts. Thank you. And now please welcome back to the show Jeff Norcotts. CHEERING AND APPLAUSE So, Nike changed the colour of the St George's flag on the New England key and it quickly blew up into one of those stories where you had to pick a team. Team St George or Team Nike? There was probably a team, can we just ignore this and go back to watching Gladiators? But you rarely hear from people who don't give a toss.

Our politicians quickly became Team St George. Prime Minister Rishi Sunak said the design was something Nike should not mess with. There was something odd about hearing Sunak use the words, don't mess. Tough words for someone who looks like he just won a series of junior apprentice. In a political development, which will surprise no one,

Keir Starmer then followed up by taking a fairly similar stance. Starmer is in the odd position of being someone who genuinely likes football but also sounds like the kind of office dipshit who only gets into it for the big games and says things like... Guys, both of our teams come from Manchester, can't we just be friends? Even Shadow Attorney General Emily Formbury went full St George telling Sky News You wouldn't expect Nike to look at the Welsh flag and change the dragon to a pussycat

Well, you might after Wales went out of the euros on penalties Don't at me people of Wales. It's just a joke like England's chances of winning the tournament Thornberry becoming a flag shagger It sounded funny and now I have to say it out loud. Thornberry seemingly becoming a flag shagger represented quite a journey for the woman who once tweeted images of a St George's flag on a housing estate in Rochester as though she'd seen a puma in the wild. Now all of a sudden she's coming off like a West Ham fan you last saw doing cocaine off her knuckles and hurdling ticket barriers at Wembley Stadium. So this was Team St George, a motley collection of football fans, patriots and opportunist politicians.

Team Nike, on the other hand, were the usual coalition of progressive anti-establishment types who balk at any sign of patriotism. The kind of people who tell you... Actually, St George doesn't actually come from England. He actually grew up in Turkey, actually. LAUGHTER I'm going to go out on a limb and say that the average England fan wearing a sombrero, eating a chicken borty pie and drinking sangria, doesn't really care where something was originally from.

And to be fair, there's nothing more English than going to Turkey. St George was probably getting his teeth done. LAUGHTER Some team nikers pointed out, not entirely unreasonably, that this wasn't the first time that St George's cross design had been tinkered with. So why did it kick off so badly last week? Well, perhaps the public have become increasingly wary of how modern brands drum up free publicity. Progressive stances have become an easy way of getting coverage

by dividing us into teams. There are enough recent examples of corporate hypocrisy for us to have become a bit suspicious of any company claiming to be simply modernisers or the good guys. There's a Virgin Atlantic ad running, and they use the lyrics, I am what I am. You might have seen it. Have you seen it? Yeah, I say might in the sense that you might have seen a cloud or a TV format involving Gino Dicampo in the advert we see what Virgin want us to think is their standard clientele there's a punky looking lady with face

piercings an androgynous couple then we have the airline steward looking fierce as he sachets down the aisle wearing a skirt and some eyeshadow. Because you see Virgin had proudly trumpeted their genderless uniform policy and wanted to remind us. And it was all well and good until they tried to land in Qatar. Yes, the first time their values were stress tested, they abandoned them completely. This is Virgin Flight, VA 747, we're approaching Doha. What? LGBTQ. No, no, no, that just means let's go buy things in Qatar. Explaining why the gender neutral uniform policy didn't apply on that flight carrying the England football team, Virgin Atlantic said it was being rolled out in countries more accepting of non-binary identities. Now I'd argue it's not much of a moral stance if

you back down at the very first sign of dissent. I have a dream. Oh no you don't. Fair enough, my mistake, sorry. Now I'm aware that some of my grumpiness is down to the fact that blokes like me are no longer in fashion with advertisers and it makes sense for some brands to skew young. KFC always has young people advertising their product. Because chicken is a young person's meat. And I don't know what I mean when I say that. But it makes a certain kind of sense in my brain. You've got to have it young.

If you're advertising KFC, you don't want to see a bloke like me, a tired middle-aged man, sitting there killing time until he can check in at the Ibis, nursing a mini-Philip burger just dreaming of when he could smash 12 hot wings without needing a Gaviscon. Advertisers trying to tell you stuff by tenuous associations isn't new, but the trend for brands trying to make you think they're bastions of progressive morality is a recent development which has arguably become a bit tedious.

You end up wondering if they're like that bloke at university who only said he was a feminist to get off with some chicks. And me using the word chicks is a reminder of why I never got off with any girls at university. So how about a revolution in advertising, a brand new way of doing things? Here's my strategy. What are you selling? How much do they cost? And is it any good? I'll go first. of doing things. Here's my strategy. What are you selling? How much do they cost? And

is it any good? I'll go first. Jeff Norcott, author, comedian and recent documentary maker despite looking like the face of Greggs. Thank you very much. That was Jeff Norcotts who just did a whole piece on cynical advertising strategies and also insisted that I now... As women, our life stages come with unique risk factors, like high blood pressure developed during pregnancy, which can put us two times more at risk of heart disease or stroke. Know your risks. Visit heartandstroke.ca. I'm Katya Adler from the Global Story podcast, and we're looking at this summer's Paris Olympics and Paralympics. Hosting the Games puts a lot of pressure

on a city. This means hosting isn't quite as appealing as it once used to be. The Global Story brings you fresh takes and smart perspectives from BBC journalists around the world. Find us wherever you get your BBC podcasts. I'll mention his documentary about higher education currently available on iPlayer. Now the bank holiday weekend is traditionally when lots of attractions and family days reopen but this year we're warned many of them will be charging more at popular times so-called surge pricing. Yes they're introducing this at theme parks which already charge extra if you want to park

near the entrance or extras jump the cubes for popular rides. In fact you can always hear the sound of people who've just seen the prices. Service pricing has been around for ages but they're not calling it that now. It's now called dynamic pricing because AI means it happens in real time. In America Wendy's, the burger chain, already uses dynamic pricing which they haven't really thought through. I mean you can't use it for fast food because it will make the adverts impossibly complicated. Try our new quarter pounder for just £2.99 if you order it at 7 in the morning. If you want it at lunchtime, it's £7.00.

So make it a meal deal and get fries and drink for £6.99 unless a group of school kids turn up, in which case it's £7.49. Because our prices now work on a sliding scale. Off-peak, peak, not especially busy, but massive queue of delivery bikes to serve first. Slight rip-off, massive rip-off, I can't believe it's that much. And at the very top end, might as well go to Five Guys.

I understand the concept of surge pricing. It's basically the law of supply and demand written as an algorithm. But there's a danger that retailers will be tempted to get higher prices by deliberately keeping stocks low. Excuse me have you got any baked beans? I'll two love but there's only three tins left. Oh but I need one of those. Well you can register your interest today the tins are on public view till Thursday and the sale is at Sotheby's next week. Now lot seven this pre-worn pair of jeans signed by Alan Titchmarsh. LAUGHTER

Surge pricing has long been used in the airline industry, although with the problems at Boeing, that might sometimes work the other way. BELL This is an in-flight announcement. The price of your flight has just gone down. As you can see from the hole in the fuselage, we now have fewer passengers than we did ten minutes ago.

LAUGHTER It is interesting that the owners of Man of Two Swords are at the forefront of this AI-driven pricing. There seems to be more technology in their pricing than there is in their exhibits. I mean, surely for all that extra money, they should have AI voices and be able to interact, you know, in the science section. The universe is absolutely massive,

full of cosmic wonder, which is why I find it so strange that all this queue of people want to think about is what face to pull when they finally get to take their selfie with waxwork me. Then in the politics section, education, education, education is what you need if you're willing to buy a ticket here at peak time. You know, do the math. Ha ha ha ha. And of course, in the foreign politics section... My fellow waxworkians, it's me, W. Bush, US President 2000 to 2008. Hey, that's seven years.

I was re-electified because the United States is the world's greatest beacon of demography. We work on the principle of one man, one vote, two governors. So funny, y'all used to think I was a terrible president. Now you've seen Donald J. Trump. Had you like me now? The reason for charging more at peak times is apparently that visitor numbers are still not back to where they were before the pandemic, presumably because prices have gone up so much since. It's all about keeping profit margins up to ensure consumers pay for the

recovery and not shareholders, and you can sort of see this everywhere. This week, a company founded by ex-NASA employees announced a scheme to introduce advertising on the moon, on the side of a lunar rover. Yes, lunar rover is the latest model after land rover and range rover, and it appeals to a similar clientele. We don't really need something this big just to drive to the next crater, but it looks good on the school run. Of course, the disadvantage is that the lunar rover does have five kilos of plutonium dioxide in the engine, which can raise your insurance premium. Not if you insure with Mirkets from Russia, where plutonium in your car, surprisingly common.

The lunar rovers are just the start though. It's been suggested that lasers could project circular adverts across the surface of the whole moon, which would be terrible and make life very difficult for werewolves. I am changing. There is nothing you can do to stop me. My body mutates every time I look up at the night sky and see a price promise from Tesco. Of course, we need to get used to it because these new private enterprise

moon missions are not going to be like the old Apollo ones. NASA for example have commissioned Prada to design the latest space suits. So it won't just be science correspondents covering future moon missions, it will be fashion correspondents too. The best bit will be when the British astronauts turn up a few weeks later wearing Primark knockoff spacesuits a tenth of the price. Because for all the horror of stereotyping, nations do sometimes seem to do things that do kind of fit their image perfectly. This week, for example, the French reintroduced the Paris Waiters Race in which contestants have to complete a course carrying a tray, a cup of coffee and a glass of water. It is

so ridiculously French. London once tried a similar thing only carrying a pint of beer and it was customers doing the running. After hearing the words that would be £7.50 please. There was actually a small group of British spectators there in the crowd in Paris and no one realised they were British until one of the waiters dropped his tray and they all simultaneously went, Whoa! And now would you please welcome to the Now Show, Rachel Fairburn.

After days of speculation, Kate Middleton released a video to tell the world her absence from public life was due to her having treatment for cancer. I imagine she felt the need to do this due to the incessant theories emerging from global gossips. Theories that ranged from the plausible... She's just recovering from surgery. To insane. Well, it's obvious. She's the new James Bond.

No, no, she's shacked up in Nottingham with a mate of my brother's. Aliens. From people I went to school with to a pub that I follow on social media, I never knew that so many had direct connections to the royal family. But then again, every cab driver in London knew the Cray twins. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. I was good mates with them, lovely lads. Yeah. Good to them, mam. You knew them? Oh yeah. Oh wow. You only look about 24 and they've been dead, I don't know. Leave it out!

With the rumour mill in full swing, incidentally the rumour mill is actually the UK's only working mill now. And it provides jobs pretty much everybody, and it's brought us such memorable products as Paul McCartney dying at the height of The Beatles fame to recent rumblings about Emmanuel Macron's wife. Earlier in the week, Kate had apologised for releasing a Photoshopped photo of herself and her family for Mother's Day. The photo and subsequent social media hysteria led to armies of keyboard warriors people skiving at work, conducting their own investigations into how and why

Photoshop had been used. I blame the rise in true crime fanatics for this because everyone wants their own Netflix series now. I was just scrolling through social media when I saw the photo. I have no knowledge of Photoshop or cameras, but I just knew I had to get involved. I knew work could wait. One more day off, clearing the backlog of the mental health unit could wait.

This was more important, so I wrote it. Not real, this. And then it happened. Three likes, my life had changed. The celebrity world began to grovel after Kate's address. Several well-known figures from Owen Jones to Blake Lively apologized for making jokes speculating as to her whereabouts.

As a comedian, I can't blame people for getting carried away with a joke. Nobody knew the real reasons for Kate's absence at the time. It's refreshing to hear people apologise though. I don't think enough of us do, mum. Kim Kardashian is currently under pressure to offer an apology for her post.

She posted a picture of her standing next to a car with the caption, on my way to go find Kate. I'd actually have liked to hear Kim's verdict on the Photoshop picture because surely she knows more about the subject than anyone. It emerged that staff at the hospital where Kate was being treated had allegedly attempted to access her medical records.

Regardless of your stance on the moniker, is this what we've come to? Accessing an ill woman's private information because we feel entitled to know everything? I always feel particularly irked when a woman's health is speculated about. I've always felt people feel they have a right to pry with women's bodies. You know, as a woman, whenever you're ill, you're pregnant. I'm a childless woman by choice. You know, I do like children, by the way.

I've got nieces and nephews, and they are amazing. Well, one of them needs work, but it's not my problem. LAUGHTER But I've been offered pregnancy as a diagnosis from everything, from a hangover to indigestion. I mean, to be fair, if I were to become pregnant, I do think the lead up to a hangover would be one of the causes. I understand people feel they have the right to know what's going on in the lives of the royals. They are, after all, the national soap opera that we all pay for, and in a way, we subscribe to them.

I just feel that some things can and should be allowed to remain private until a person feels they want to discuss them. You know, on a human level, we should really think about things before we tweet the same joke three hours after everyone else has. The thing is, if you want to know what's really going on in someone's life, be it the bloke next door or Beyonce,

get my mates on the case. You know, working-class women can tell exactly what is happening with you from the smallest thing. Hello. Oh, my God, he's cheating on you, isn't he? LAUGHTER If Kate had really wanted to make an impact, she should have left protocol at the door and got one of my pals to do it.

I can imagine my best mate Laura leaning on the bar halfway through a bottomless brunch, staring down the barrel of the camera, addressing the world by saying, feeling bad now are you? All those lies you've been spreading and now you know the truth. You need to think on you and not be such a snake. Can't trust anyone now, apart from your mum and David Attenborough. I think what we can all learn from this is sometimes that privacy is allowed, and most of us need to stop scrolling and get a hobby. Thank you. Rachel Verburn there.

Now this week, an NHS doctor urged the British public not to eat a whole Easter egg in one go. So in the light of this attack on what is basically a once-a-year guilty pleasure, we've asked our audience what they enjoy eating that they probably shouldn't, and how they discovered it. What's your secret pleasure? Imperial leather soap and cotton. How did you find out you liked it? Sucking my flannel when I was little.

LAUGHTER You liked these, probably shouldn't. Millionaire shortbread with pound cake. I want my menu to highlight wealth inequality. LAUGHTER Guilty food pleasure, bacon and ice cream. How did you find out you liked it? Catastrophic fridge shelf collapse.

LAUGHTER Four Easter eggs and an entire head of broccoli. liked it catastrophic fridge shelf collapse. Four Easter eggs and an entire head of broccoli. I needed something to make the guilt go away. So thank you very much to our audience for sharing those with us. So this week scientists at CERN in Switzerland have found a new way to try and prove the existence of ghost particles which could greatly advance our understanding of the universe. So with more on this would you please welcome Rachel Parris. Hello there's actually so much that we don't know about the universe. These ghost particles are part of the 95% of the universe that we still know nothing about. For me, this news story has just raised more questions,

big existential questions. What is the point? Why are we all here? What does our life mean? What is it worth? Where are my car keys? Is custard liquid? How do we unlock the secret to life on this earth?

These aren't rhetorical. How did we get here? Why did we get here? Who did we get? Whence and which how we be? How is your nephew? How are we doing? Leave a review, please, your feedback is key. What am I doing? What are you doing? Are you called David? Where have you parked? Are you a Virgo? What are you wearing? Have you considered a new life on the island of sock?

Have you David? Where are we going? Where are we headed? Are we nearly there yet? And are we insured? What destination? Is it near a station? Are you convinced that we'll all fit in your little Ford? I don't think so, David. Is there a god or a garden of Eden? Are they in Sweden? How do we check? Who is the maker? Who's the creator? Yes, it seems likely it's Ant, but is it also Deck? Where is our money?

What is it kept in? Trapped in a spreadsheet or up in the sky? What's in Baraka? What's in Kombucha? Have you considered a new life on the island of sky what are we here for what even is money what are your bank details please write them down so much unknown like your security code all of our lives are so fleeting the world is repeating and all that we thought

is a tiny proportion, a smidge in a trace of an infinite space and we live on the cusp of it. Humans are just a blip, try to adjust a bit, this is the thrust of it. We should be needing less, fortune is meaningless. Thank you for reading this please transfer Many thanks You've been listening to the now shows during Steve punch you Dennis Jeff Norcott Rachel Fairburn John Colshaw and Laura Shavin The song was written and performed by Rachel Parris. The show was written by the cast with additional material from Cameron Loxtail, Tasha Danraj, Pravanya Pele and Christina Riggs.

The producer was Sacha Bobak and it was a BBC Studios production for Radio 4! As women, our life stages come with unique risk factors, like when our estrogen levels drop during menopause, causing the risk of heart disease to go up. Know your risks. Visit heartandstroke.ca I'm Katya Adler from the Global Story podcast and we're looking at this summer's Paris Olympics and Paralympics. Hosting the Games puts a lot of pressure on a city. This means hosting isn't quite as appealing as it once used to be. The Global Story brings you fresh takes and smart perspectives from BBC journalists around the world. Find us wherever you get your BBC podcasts.