Friday Night Comedy from BBC Radio 4 - News Quiz 14th January 2022

Episode Date: January 14, 2022

Andy Zaltzman presents a look back at the week's headlines, in a tough week for the Prime Minister.Joined by a panel of Ayesha Hazarika, Paul Sinha, Kiri Pritchard-McLean and Simon Evans, Andy looks back over the events of 20th May 2020 with Sue Gray-like focus. As well as Downing Street parties, the panel discuss rising energy bills, pig heart transplants, space telescopes and Michael Gove being trapped in a lift.Chair's Script: Written by Andy Zaltzman Additional Material: by Alice Fraser, Mike Shephard, Celya AB and Rajiv Karia Production Coordinator: Katie Baum Sound Editor: Marc Willcox Producer: Gwyn Rhys Davies.A BBC Studios Production.

This is the BBC. This podcast is supported by advertising outside the UK. BBC Sounds. Music, radio, podcasts. This show is best listened to whilst not at work. If you are not sure whether you are at work or not at work, please check whether everyone you usually work with has turned up with a bottle of wine and is now getting hammered. If they have not done that, you might be at work.

If they have, ask yourself, am I a professional wine taster? If you're not, you're probably not at work and therefore safe to listen to the News Quiz. not at work, and therefore safe to listen to the News Quiz. Hello, I am Andy Zaltzman, coming to you via the miracle of modern technology and yoghurt pots and strings from Hobart in Tasmania, where I've been sent to provide maximum satirical objectivity for this week's show by being as far away

from the Downing Street garden as humanly possible. It all looks very small from here. Also, in an effort to help boost the amount of patriotism emanating from the BBC, we will be helping you build your own cut out and keep national anthem throughout this series. There will be one word from verse one of the national anthem hidden in each episode. Simply collect the word each week over the next 20 episodes of the News Quiz to complete your own national anthem. You may reuse words like queen, are and dumb from

the dum-dum-dum-dum. So do look out for this week's words. Now let's meet this week's teams. We have Team Apologise against Team Apacalyse. On Team Apologise, we have Kiri Pritchard-McLean and Paul

Sinha. And on Team Apacalyse, it's Simon Evans and Ayesha Hazarika. And we do have a special prize for this week's winners. They become ninth in line to the throne. So, for our

first question, this can go to both teams. Simply fill in the missing words from this famous song by the artist Prince. Tonight we're going to like it's 1999. song by the artist Prince. Tonight we're going to... Like it's 1999. What is the missing word from that? I'm guessing

it's work event. That's close. Yes. Is it make the most of this magnificent weather? That's also pretty close. Let's find out what the correct answer was. Tonight we're going to... Go to a perfectly normal work meeting.

Like it's 1999, so... I'll give both sides two points for some pretty accurate guesses. Now, have you enjoyed the latest escapade into the dark bowels of British politics? Well, I always enjoy anything where the Conservative work meeting seems to be in trouble, if we're using work meeting continuously as a synonym for party. I don't want to appear work meeting-izan about the whole thing, but... They say that the giveaway that this was a party was that there was BYOB.

And you wonder what State Downing Street is, and you have to bring your own booze. It turns out there was a bar, but it was set so low that nobody could find it. I would want to come to Boris's defence. I suppose he'd always forced me to do that, and has done for the last couple of years. I'll be honest, it does get a little tiresome.

Yes, well, I mean, to be fair, Simon, he has said that as soon as he loses your support, he will quit. I am the raven chained to his particular tower, I think that's fair to say. But I was exasperated. May 2020,

they were having 100 people having a bit of a knees-up in the back garden. Two weeks earlier, my daughter celebrated, if that is the word, her 16th birthday in our back garden with a single, isolated friend. I'll be honest with you, you know, that saved me an awful lot of money. I mean... There were those awkward moments. I remember we all had them, you know, elderly relatives,

alone, distressed. And I remember waving to my elderly mother through the window and mouthing to her, no, go home, you know. But it was... If Simon's auditioning for the job as Boris's official defender, I would certainly recommend him, because the ones he's got out there at the moment are very much from that weird bar in Star Wars style of Tory MPs.

I mean, you are definitely in trouble when Michael Fabricant comes to your aid, looking as he exactly does like Boris Johnson after four months with Nurse Ratched. I mean, even his apology at the dispatch box was absolutely amazing. I loved the fact that he couldn't just say, there was a party and I went to a party. He concocted this ludicrous defence that he was in his own home

and he wandered into his own garden and there happened to be a lot of people there and a couple of trestled peoples groaning with alcohol and he stayed for 25 minutes and then he suddenly went, oh, it might have been a party. And the thing is, I actually used to work at Downing Street. I worked in the political office for Gordon Brown.

I just can't believe how many parties that there have been in Downing Street. I mean, it feels like Downing Street morphed into some kind of frat house during the pandemic. Kelly, are there any ways in which Boris Johnson could have shown more disrespect for the voting public whilst keeping his trousers on? Or is this... whilst keeping his trousers on, always as this. For all the, like, misdemeanours he performs, I'm amazed that this one has actually caught people's attention and feels like it's sticking. At PMQs, more people watched his apology on BBC Parliament

than watched the X Factor final. That's an actual fact that came out. That was incredible, right? But I think knowing how sort of like Teflon he is, it means he's probably got quite a good chance of having next year's Christmas number one. I imagine I'll be sorry seems to be the hardest word. It's my work meeting and I'll cry if I want to.

It's got to the point now, though, where the British public are soon going to have to choose between Boris Johnson and Keir Starmer. That is the choice they're confronted with. Boris is on the ropes here, but the reality is you've got a man who organises a work event and it feels an awful lot like a party, or you've got Keir Starmer, for whom I would imagine an awful lot of his parties have felt rather suspiciously like work events.

A man who has designated driver running through his veins like Brighton Rock, so you... Also, this whole thing is being put squarely on the shoulders of Sue Gray now, to sort it out, that he's refusing to sort of remember if he was at a party. Sue Gray, this senior civil servant, who has got the most senior civil servant name I've ever heard. Sue Gray, this senior civil servant, who has got the most senior civil servant name I've ever heard. Sue Gray.

Like, who's assisting her? Daniel Spreadsheet and Kelly Yorn? She's become like an anti-queen in that no-one really knows who she is or what she looks like, but she wields a surprising amount of power. So maybe that's the sort of balance in our constitution. Well, I would like a sort of triumvirate of women to take charge. I want the Queen, Sue Gray and Jackie Weaver.

I think they are the thing that need us. I think the Queen's kind of busy at the moment. Yeah, but the Queen is, like, the only person that didn't have to wait for Sue Gray to make a decision. It was absolutely hilarious to see who was sitting beside him at Prime Minister's Questions, who was coming out to support him. And the question was, where was Dishy Rishi? Suddenly, Dishy Rishi's gone all fishy-rishi

because he's like, um, I am on urgent business in North Devon. Now, Rishi Sunak is like the sort of Kim Kardashian in terms of social media activity. He Instagrams all the time. He tweets all the time. This story broke in the morning. It took him until eight o'clock to tweet. And this was his tweet. I've been on a visit all day, continuing to work on hashtag my plan for a really big job. The Prime Minister was correct to apologise. And I support his request for patience while Sue Gray carries out her inquiry and I get my leadership campaign motoring along. Simon, given that Boris Johnson very much laid his cards on the electorate's table as someone patently unsuitable for the highest office and we still voted him in,

should we not be celebrating this as a rare example of an elected leader giving the people exactly what they voted for. Absolutely, yes. I mean, as government scandals go, it is a perfect Boris one. I remember when Thatcher nearly came down over the Wessex helicopter scandal in the mid-'80s, you know, and that was a scandal you had to pay attention. You had to read three or four paragraphs in the newspaper articles

to grasp the nature of it. And then you know it was Westland and not Wessex. Sorry, Westland, yes. They had detail, you know, there were documents that you had to study in order to grasp it. The present scandal is essentially a tuck shop that has been broken into. Boris has been found with evidence of melted chocolate all over his fingers. I mean, it couldn't be more adolescent and pathetic

and it's a perfect end, really, the whole thing. Yeah, I have actually also heard the defence that actually the bring your own booze was very good for the taxpayer because otherwise they'd only have to claim it on expenses. So actually that was a great act of public service. I like the idea that we can all claim booze on expenses now, presumably. This is office supplies now, right?

This is like... I mean, it's also so ironic because this is the man who really has modelled himself on Winston Churchill. And we all remember the time during the Blitz, you know, when everybody was in blackout to stay safe and Churchill treated his staff in Number 10 to a massive fireworks party. I mean, we all remember that.

I do also love the fact that to have your huge political career destroyed by a really crap garden party is the most Tory way to end your career. I think they're going to struggle, though, to gather evidence because apparently it's come out that they ask people to delete messages from their work phones and Sue Gray can't ask for things from their personal phones. So there's going to be very little evidence.

I don't think there'll be many witnesses who'll be willing to say that they were at a party with Boris because if I was at a party and Boris turned up, I'd deny I was there as well. And do you think that these backbenchers... Because some of them want him to go, and Boris Johnson needs their support to stay in power, but to get their support because they want him to go,

he'd have to resign. So it's kind of a classic catch-1922 situation. they want him to go, he'd have to resign. So it's kind of classic catch-1922 situation. I do feel sorry for Sue Gray, because she's got so much pressure on her, and she's had to look through all these photos of this party and talk to everybody who went to these parties and hear all about these parties

without ever having been invited to any of these parties. We don't know that. She could have been there as well. Like, a lot of people went. I bet she's like that mate, you know, the one who, like, is usually a designated driver but doesn't drink for the night and then you wake up with a hangover and they were like, you had a good time last night and you're like,

don't use this against me, bitch. I honestly think she'll be like that. Yes, this is party time on the 20th of May 2020, less than an hour after the government instructed the country that we were only allowed to meet one other person outside our household bubble and only outdoors.

40 staff members went to a party stroke, not a party but looked like a party, bring your own bottle, work meeting in the Downing Street Garden. There are now claims that there may have been as many as seven questionable parties in 2020, which I think is your standard choice at a general election as well, by coincidence. When it became clear that this was becoming the kind of crisis that couldn't be batted off simply by hiding in a fridge, having another child or cutting his hair, Boris Johnson had

no option but to address the matter in the House of Commons. Johnson eventually admitted that he'd attended the work meeting for 25 minutes, adding, seriously, it was absolutely knackering. It's the longest shift I've ever done in a job. The truth of the matter will be determined by sudden celebrity civil servant Sue Gray. Until this week, Sue Gray was simply an entry on the list of what colour children's TV puppets would turn if they were put on a hot wash and their colours ran sooty, sludgy yellow-brown, Sue Gray. Such is the sad lot of the puppet panda.

Johnson's leadership and judgement have come under increased criticism recently because of... How long have we got before the end of this series? Early March? And Douglas Ross, the leader of the Scottish Conservatives, has called for Johnson to resign. Jacob Rees-Mogg hit back saying that Ross has always been a lightweight, which is somewhat akin to being accused of being a chicken murderer by Colonel

Sanders. Some backbench MPs are in open revolt and demanding his resignation. But this kind of leadership is exactly what they signed up for. It's all eerily reminiscent of when my great-uncle Ignatius complained about the state of his sofas after buying Derek the Incredible Incontinent Dog at an auction. So, at the end of that round, it's two points all. Cheers!

Our next question can go to both teams. What is going up and could bring the government down? Cost of living and inflation. Correct, Ayesha, yes. I mean, often the cost of living crises can be hugely damaging for the government. Do you think that will be the case this time? Yeah, I think it will be damaging. I think lots of Tory backbench MPs are really worried. We've got energy prices going up. The Bank of England have just raised interest rates. They might raise it again.

And we've been told as well that the high energy bills could last for two years. And that is really worrying for me because we were told that lockdown would last for about two weeks. So I think this is not going to end well. A follow up question now. A division of OVO Energy, Britain's third biggest energy supplier, had some helpful advice for customers on how to keep warm and keep their energy bills low. Multiple choice. What do they effectively tell their customers to do? Was it A, join a 100 Years War re-enactment society and volunteer for the role of Joan of Arc?

Was it B, commit a series of deeply sinful acts and ensure a nice, warming eternity in hell? Was it C, think about Captain Scott and remember you're not as chilly as he was? Or was it D, cuddle your beloved terrapin as you hoover the living room carpet whilst wolfing down a freshly spurtled bowl of porridge and doing a Leonardo da Vinci's Vitruvian Man impersonation

before gnawing lasciviously on some raw ginger, bellowing I am Saturn, touch my rings as you waggle a hula hoop around your waist in an aggressively competitive manner whilst eyeballing your terrified children, then chugging a two-litre bottle of cherryade in one mouthful and tearing the wool off a nearby sheep while shouting, I'm going to knit some socks.

Mama said knit some socks. Is it A, B, C or D? It's various things that you mentioned in D. The ones I can remember, hug a loved one, play hula hoops with the kids, cuddle a pet i've been married for two years now to a guy we don't have kids we don't have pets and as any married couple who've been in each other's pockets in this lockdown we used to love each other so none of those options are available i I took the advice, actually, and I did some star jumps with my cat and I now have a draft excluder, which is really good.

I do think the advice is flawed because they say it's to cuddle a pet, but it's not, is it? It's to cuddle a dog. You are more likely to survive the coldest winter on record than comfortably cuddle your cat and survive it. survive the coldest winter on record, then comfortably cuddle your cat and survive it. You have to lure your cat onto a Velcroed lap. It is bad for most people,

but shout out to all the menopausal women out there. While everyone else is freezing, we're going to be in a vest top saying, is there a fan that we could put on anywhere? wheezing, we're going to be in a vest top saying, is there a fan that we could put on anywhere? Why is it that women get all the breaks in life? If you have a cat and you manage to cuddle it really hard and it dies, I reckon the Conservatives would

buy that dead cat off you because they're running out of them. Yes, I did suggest a combination of cuddling a pet, doing some housework, eating some hot porridge, doing star jumps, challenging your kids to a hula-hooping contest, drinking soft drinks instead of alcohol and wearing woolly socks. Or, to sum up their advice to their customers in one phrase, go screw yourselves. Energy bills are set to soar in the coming months following the collapse of a number of energy providers.

And encouraging signs for the government's levelling-up programme, for many years it's been a stereotype of the upper classes that they sit around in massive houses they can't afford to maintain. Now it doesn't matter what size your house is, you won't be able to afford to heat it either. It's Downton for all. But at the end of that round, it is four points to Team Apologise and three points to Team Apacalyse.

Yay! Now, it has been very well documented that this decade is not going tremendously well, but there have been some hopeful signs for our world-renowned species this year. However, we also know that the problem with getting excited about something good being about to happen is that it leaves you disappointed when it doesn't.

Exhibit one, the ashes. So, the challenge for our panellists is to take these ostensibly positive stories from the news and tell me why they are actually very bad news. So, I'll go to you first, Paul. A man has received a

pig's heart by transplant, raising hopes that a major medical breakthrough has been made. Why is that actually very bad news? Well, lots of reasons. It happened in Baltimore, who are currently suing an Indian restaurant in Birmingham for taking their name. Secondly, are we not sick and tired of hearing from scientific experts?

I read this on Twitter. Thank you, Piers Corbyn. He's released a record called Don't Go Bacon My Heart. That's where I've got my facts from. You're having an extra point for that. You used to be a doctor. I mean, surely the thrill of having someone come in and you having to say to them,

I could cure you with one of these, and just holding up a dead pig's heart. I mean, that's... You must be sad to have missed out on that. I used to be a general practitioner, which, with respect, is... What district nurse is to professional football is what a GP is to medicine. So...

LAUGHTER I mean, there is a cream that is antifungal, antiviral and antibacterial, and three-quarters of my day was just spent prescribing that cream, hoping people would go away. So... LAUGHTER To say that I was in a position to introduce a pig's heart into the equation, it would have filled me with more terror than excitement, I'll be honest with you.

Are the rest of you excited about this? I genuinely can't wait. I think it's a brilliant idea. I've got a shopping list of things I want from animals. Right. I want the buttocks of a thoroughbred. Write that down. Or the legs of the Cadbury's bunny. And I want the hair of Michael Fabricant. There we go, that's my list.

You've just described Michael Fabricant. I would like the tail of the pig. It would be a nice little party trick to just lower your trousers slightly and uncork a bottle with it, wouldn't it? Getting strong Downing Street vibes here. I think this story is bad news, actually, because, first of all, there's another heartless pig in the world and we don't really need that.

The really interesting thing about the science is that pigs can't sweat, and I think I know somebody who that might be useful for. Yes, this is the exciting news that 57-year-old David Bennett became the first known human to receive a pig's heart by transplant after a pioneering operation in Baltimore. The heart operation followed successful trial schemes to implant pigs' brains into serving politicians.

And it's flipped round what was previously been a one-way street of organ donation ever since scientists discovered that if you put two actors in a horse's skin in the run-up to Christmas, it magically comes back to life. This can go to Ayesha and Simon. Tell me why this is bad news. A new mega telescope with a giant golden mirror

to impress the aliens with human bling has been blasted into space and could soon tell us the secrets of the universe. Why is that bad news? First of all, it's bad news because apparently it's going to take months for this telescope to focus. It's a bit like me after the Christmas break. And the other bad news about this is that it apparently costs £9 billion because this most important bit was this gold reflector centrepiece. But I've just seen one on Wayfair for £19.99.

centrepiece, but I've just seen one on Wayfair for £19.99. I can't think of anything bad to say about this. I can't remember any movies, for instance, in which a giant space mirror turned out to be available for nefarious and evil purposes. It could at least be turned around. If it can see deep into the distant past and see the formation of galaxies 13 billion years ago, they might be able to just swivel it round briefly and see what really happened on May 20th last year. That could at least be... Just settle a few matters beyond his speed. I mean, they're just going to be embarrassed when they find out

if they want to find the secrets of life, Sue Gray will do it in a week. Yes, well, this is the James Webb Space Telescope, which is said to be 100 times more powerful than the Hubble Telescope, which I think makes it 200 times more powerful than the Billoddy Twitchmaster General 4000X birding binoculars. This week it fully unfolded its 18-segment golden mirror so it can start snooping on deep space. It truly is a glorious achievement.

I think it's a little bit much that it's named after James Webb, though, given that he's already had the internet named after him. The telescope is now on its way to a space parking space named Earth-Sun-Langridge-Point-2, which is 930,000 miles away from Milton Keynes, incidentally. It's £3.70 an hour, Monday to Saturday, free on Sundays and bank holidays, but be warned, the app doesn't work, so take cash.

Before it becomes fully operational, Big Jimmy as it's known, still needs to test out its instruments and align its mirrors, something which it should have learned from the highway code, is the first thing you do before you start your journey. And finally, this can go to Ayesha. Tell me why this is in fact bad news, not good news.

Michael Gove got stuck in a lift. So the bad news is that they got him out of the lift. And the other really bad news is that Michael Gove has now got lots of really cheesy jokes about I'm the minister for levelling off in the BBC lift. So the whole thing was an absolute disaster. The one I read most often was Gove in an elevator, which again could be a Christmas number.

Yes, Michael Gove, the cabinet minister who possesses in his name all the letters for Machiavelli. Read into that what you will, listeners. That was supposed to appear on the radio at 8.10am, but at that time he was stuck in an elevator in Broadcasting House which had stopped working, either due to mechanical failure or due to it just feeling an icy chill at the special one's presence. And that brings us to the end of this week's News Cruise,

with the scores tied at seven points each. Don't forget the bonus prize becoming ninth in line to the throne. We're going to have to split that prize. So Ayesha and Simon, you are now HRH and Paul and Kiri are the new Duke of York. Congratulations.

A couple of pieces of breaking news coming through to us. MI5 issued a rare warning this week that a Chinese agent has infiltrated Parliament. Now, as a public service broadcaster, we are obliged to issue the following information so you can determine if your local MP has been compromised by the Chinese Communist Party. Have they suggested replacing the swings

or other amenities at your local park with a 150-metre-high bronze statue of Mao Zedong? Have they presented the awards at your local school sports day by announcing that the winner of the long jump has won the gold medal in the Great Leap Forward? Have they started referring to workplace training courses as re-education? If so, please raise the alarm. And another piece of breaking news just reaching us now.

Philosophers acting on behalf of Prince Andrew claim to have proved that the beleaguered royal does not exist. They've issued papers in an American court saying carrots exist. Andrew is not a carrot. Therefore, Andrew does not exist. When asked by the American court to provide further supporting evidence of the non-existence of Prince Andrew, his philosophers responded, the non-existence of whom?

And that concludes this week's News Quiz. A huge thanks to our panellists, Ayesha Hazarika and Simon Evans, and Paul Sinhart and Kiri Pritchard-McLean. I've been Andy Zaltzman. Thank you for listening. Goodbye. APPLAUSE I've been Andy Zaltzman. Thank you for listening. Goodbye. and Rajiv Kharia. The producer was Gwyn Rees-Davis and it was a BBC Studios production. As women, our life stages come with unique risk factors, like high blood pressure developed during pregnancy, 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.