Friday Night Comedy from BBC Radio 4 - News Quiz 17th September 2021

Episode Date: September 17, 2021

Andy Zaltzman is joined by comedians Paul Sinha, Neil Delamere and Zoe Lyons to discuss the week's news, including Boris Johnson's reshuffle, winter covid plans and Emma Raducanu's heroics in New YorkHosted and written by Andy Zaltzman with additional material by Alice Fraser, Max Davis, Richard Stott and Rajiv Karia.Producers: Sam Michell and Gwyn Rhys Davies Production Coordinators: Caroline Barlow and Katie Baum Sound Editing: Marc WillcoxA BBC Studios Production.

This is the BBC. This podcast is supported by advertising outside the UK. BBC Sounds. Music, radio, podcasts. Before we begin this week's News Quiz, we have an urgent appeal on behalf of Oliver Dowden, the former Culture Secretary, now Minister without portfolio. If you have a spare portfolio, please send it to Westminster immediately. Furthermore, if you have any idea what the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster actually does, please report in person to Lancaster Police Station as soon as possible, ideally

with something a bit Dutch. Welcome to the News Quiz. Hello, I am Andy Zaltzman, and before we start this week, can I just check that neither of our teams wants to suddenly pull out right before the start of the show, for no doubt genuine, but still not entirely comprehensible reasons, before jetting off to do a better paid radio comedy panel show in Dubai. Good.

Sorry, I've been burnt once in the last week or so already. Best to check. You stole my cricket! Anyway, our two teams this week. We have Team Sacked against Team Backed. On Team Sacked we have Paul Sinha and Neil Delamere and on Team Backed we have Zoe Lyons.

We should also have had Joe Coffey, but I'm afraid Mr Internet has not played ball, so it is just Zoe. And we are also joined by our online audience from all known corners of the universe. And our first question this week goes to Team Sacked, to Paul and Neil. Who wasn't having it with his cabinet? Who finally

gave in on Gavin, junked Jenrick, passed the Buckland, tried to say ta-ra to Rob and instead put his trust in trust, swapped Zahawi for Zahafu. In summary, which dafeffle caused a kerfuffle with a reshuffle? I think I know this one. You're good at quizzes, aren't you?

And honestly, who actually cares about any of this other than the journalist Sarah Vine, who was avidly watching yesterday to see if she was ready to take back her husband, Michael Gove, saw the words housing and communities and said, I don't think so. If you watch The Apprentice, you'll know that every year they have that week where all the new contestants come out

and you look at it and go, but these are all the same faces as last time. This is pretty much like The Apprentice. People get fired, people get sort of fired and moved on to a different job, and the one that always keeps the job is both awful and pretty. That was the only surprise for me in the whole reshuffle, is that

Priti Patel wasn't standing outside Downing Street watching people getting kicked out in her special windsheeter with Home Secretary written across the back of it. Cheerio, cheerio, cheerio. She stayed in place despite her reverse Dunkirk policy of sending people back in little boats who were trying to flee war.

And that wasn't even the biggest headlines. Who will ever forget where they were when they first heard that Dominic Raab had been moved from Foreign Secretary to Justice Secretary? It's been a big event in our lives. But Dominic Raab was understandably angry to be sacked because he had to get out of the pool, he had to put on a robe, he had to go to Downing Street.

You know, he had stuff to do. It was reported that apparently he talked himself into a meaningless title during the conversation with Boris Johnson. Like Boris Johnson said, well you're going to be demoted and he went, well I'm not going on like a Deputy Prime Minister. And Boris was like, grand! I don't care. Is there anything else you want?

Do you want to be King of ASDA? Ambassador to Lilliput? What do you want? I'll tell you what. I'll make you papal nuncio. I'll send you to the Vatican. Oh, no, the Holy See is closed as well. I like to think that Dominic Rabb used his much-spoken-about black belt in karate to angle those extra little jobs out of Boris.

I'd love to have seen that situation in the office. Boris just dressed like a sort of old-school wrestler in a leotard, Union Jack on the front. This is sort of, oh, come on. Really? No, really think about that image, people. Really think about it. Yeah, no guessing where he keeps his little red box either. I think Boris may have lost his will to live towards the end, because he seems to have picked his culture, Secretary, based on sticking a pin in a random list of people that he thought were qualified to be in the Cabinet

and missing and hitting a random list of Wikipedia candidates of former contestants on I'm a Celebrity, Get Me Out of Here. I don't think Nadine will be tuning into this. She doesn't seem that keen on the Beeb or indeed left-wing snowflake comedian. So we'll just leave her chewing on kangaroo testicles, which seems to be her area of expertise. Can we talk about the finest thing that she ever tweeted,

as you mentioned, lefty snowflakes, that lefty snowflakes are dumbing down. And what are they dumbing down? Is it the news? No. Is it science programmes? No. They're dumbing down panto. There's nothing sacred. Have you ever brought a child to the panto

in the good old days, 20 years ago, and said I know you're only six, but did you enjoy that? I did. And what did you enjoy? Well, it was very highbrow. That's what I liked about it. Well, if you're a six, but did you enjoy that? I did. And what did you enjoy? Well, it was very highbrow. That's what I liked about it. Well, she's a vehement opponent of gay marriage. In 2013, she once wrote an article saying that nobody wants gay marriage, no gay couples that she has ever met want gay marriage. The gays of the UK do not shop in Canal Street, Manchester, wrong.

Do not shop in the lanes, Brighton, wrong. And don't have a drink in Gaydar. She thought Gaydar was a place. Now, the thing is, she believes the BBC is biased. So I've just said my piece on Nadine Doris. It's now up to one of our other guests to defend her. Well, she's written some lovely books What page turners they are Such an incredible page turner You go straight from the first page to the back page And then straight into the recycling

He has appointed a diverse cabinet It encompasses the patently unqualified As well as the proven inadequate. So, I mean, that's something for everyone. Although, yet again, I do feel I'm overrepresented. We have a special reshuffle quiz now in which the answer to all the questions is six. So there are six points for each question. How many different Secretaries of State for Education

have there been since January 2014? Paul? Six. Six, yes, it is six. I'm correct. How many different Justice Secretaries have there been in the last five years? Is it six?

Six is correct, yes. Well done. How many Secretaries of State for digital, culture, media and sport have there been since the word digital was added to the job title just over four years ago? Oh, this is my area of expertise. I think it's six. Six is correct. Well done. Neil, a bit more of a mathematical one for you.

No, you can't interrupt. You can't interrupt the question. Andy, is this because you really miss cricket and you're just trying to... LAUGHTER You know me too well, do you? Yes, this is this week's Cabinet reshuffle commiserations if you are one of the 68 million or so people in the UK who sadly missed out on a Cabinet position

in this week's reshuffle through no fault of your own, despite being equally well qualified as some of those who have landed prime Cabinet jobs. Boris Johnson's reshamble was trailed with this statement from a number 10 source. Right, have you all got your bingo cards ready at home? Here we go. The PM will today conduct

a reshuffle to put in place a strong and united team, yes, to build back better, yes, from the pandemic. The government must also redouble our efforts, get in, to deliver on people's priorities. Come on! The PM will be appointing

ministers this afternoon with a focus on uniting. Yes! And levelling up. House! House! House! In the reshuffle, Gavin Williamson was sacked as Education Secretary

because how long is this show? 28 minutes. Better skip this bit. The untrainable puppy Michael Gove was again rehoused, in housing this time. Whilst Liz Truss was bafflingly chosen as foreign secretary ahead of Emma Raducanu,

who was already overseas, for heaven's sake! The Justice Secretary Robert Buckland, was sacked. He had been described by colleagues as both competent and popular, crossing not one, but two of Johnson's red lines there.

And of course, the ghost of Margaret Thatcher remains honorary party chair. At the end of that round, Team Sacked have 14, Team Backed have 12. Our next question goes to Team Backed, which is Zoe. Complete the following sequence. Plan A, Plan B.

What comes next? There would be a Plan C in place there. It's the COVID winter plan, isn't it? Correct, yes. Which I think from looking at our government's approach to COVID now, it's very much like we used to do when I was at primary school and somebody had chicken pox, you'd just get out there and lick them. somebody had chicken pox, you just get out there and lick them.

The plan is to sort of stop COVID in its tracks this winter, plan A, which is to get as many people vaccinated as possible. We are doing pretty well with that. We are. The United Kingdom has done brilliantly when it comes to the vaccine compared to other countries around the world. And that is because we realised that if we wanted to get back in the pub, we were going to have to have the vaccine. So it became high priority. But there is still, what, five million people, I think, eligible for the vaccine who still

haven't had them. And surprisingly, a lot of young people, their argument sometimes, as I heard two kids on a train the other day, one was saying to the other, I'm not going to have the vaccine, mate. I'm not going to have the vaccine. And his mate went, why not? He went, I don't know what's in it. And the irony was, he was eating a KFC. Isn't it mad that Nicki Minaj's cousin was on a train with you? Yeah, yeah. You know you've hit sort of pandemic fatigue, I suppose,

when Nicki Minaj is popping up in the newsreads as sort of altering people's uptake of the vaccine. We've hit Nicki Minaj levels of fatigue with the pandemic, you know. She said that her cousin's friend wasn't going to have the vaccine because he had it and his balls swelled up. Testicles, sorry, Radio 4. Doing some work on Channel 5. So, change the lingo, so speak to the people. doing some work on Channel 5.

Change of the lingo, so I'll speak to the people. Yeah, apparently he ended up with a couple of space hoppers, which turned out to be completely untrue. Of course it's untrue. Otherwise, if every bloke had had the vaccine, it ended up with swollen testes. He'd all just be bouncing around all over the place. It would just be ridiculous.

I mean, I'm nostalgic for the 70s and 80s, but I don't want to see blokes bouncing around on their own space hoppers. You know, even if... That's where we differ, Zoe, that's where we differ. I mean, it's a world so crazy now that it doesn't seem even that odd that Trinidadian R&B singer Nicki Minaj called Laura Koonsberg a dumbo on Twitter. Is this the logical end point of civilisation, Paul? I mean, where can we go from here as a species?

It's going to be Megan Thee Stallion versus Fred Dynage before you know it, I tell you. Or Fred Dinage, as he calls himself now. I actually have all of the plans in front of me. I hacked the system. And plan A is to carry on as now, but, you know, booster jabs for everybody over 50, vaccinate 12 to 15-year-olds.

Plan B is vaccination, passports, masks, work from home. Plan C is lockdown. Plan D is lockdown in your house. Plan E is you have to climb into your own fridge and freeze the COVID out of you. Plan F is you have to climb into your own fridge and freeze the COVID out of you. Plan F is you're in the fridge but Joe Wicks is in there with you going,

do us it up, do us it up. I'm just, the vaccine passports, we've had them in Ireland for a while. I just don't understand how freaked out people

are getting about this. Oh, it's authoritarian. It's like Nazi Germany. Lads, it doesn't go far enough. I don't want to get COVID. If you're coming to a pub with me, I want to see a vaccine cert, a blood test

and a video of a recent colonoscopy. That's what I want to see. I mean, it's nothing to do with COVID, it's just a weird kink I have, but my point is... I don't see bouncers checking x-rays at the door going, well, you don't have COVID, but you should get that shadow checked out if I were you.

Anyone surprised, by the way, that the government are having a row with an RMB superstar? Well, to be reminded that Plan B will be employed if the NHS gets vulnerable. And Chris Whitty, I think, may have blundered slightly. He's trying to get the balance

right between not alarming the public, but also comforting the public. And he's gone with, winter is coming. Yeah. If this is Game of Thrones, is Boris Johnson Mother of Dragons, then? Well, he's like a power-crazed blonde who doesn't get on with Jon Snow anymore. So I would imagine.

Can we just talk about boosters for a second? I know there's lots of countries in the Western world giving boosters, right? But like if we give boosters to all the over 50s, if you are from a developing country and you have had no vaccine so far, imagine how that feels. Imagine you were born with no nipples, Andy, and then you saw a person who already had two nipples opting for a third nipple. It really struck me, the idea of boosters for the over-50s, because I turned 50 in two weeks' time,

and there was a bit of it that went, no, no, no, I don't want it. I am not owed. I can also now qualify for a saga holiday. Oh, my God. No, don't, no. I'll be drowned under a sea of free pens from life insurance and funeral planning.

It's just awful. You know those adverts that come on and go, have you thought about who will pay for your funeral in the event of your death? I'm like, yes, I have. It won't be me. Surely that is the one advantage of being dead, isn't it? That is absolutely not your round.

Yes, so this is the government's winter plans for COVID. Plan A, also known as the too little phase, could be followed by Plan B, also known as too late. Plan A involves hoping that not having a plan works and Plan B is to come up with a plan if the plan A of not having a plan fails. I think if I've read that right. Booster jabs are involved. Booster jabs

coincidentally also Michael Gove's favourite nightclub DJ. This week also saw one of the more curious celebrity spats between rapper Nicki Minaj and various members of the British political and media establishment after the rapper tweeted that her cousin's friend's wedding was called off after he had the vaccine, became impotent and suffered

his gonadulous swelling up to marriage cancellation provoking sighs. Chris Whitty, Boris Johnson and Laura Koonsberg all found themselves exchanging burns with the 100 million record selling pop star and the spat escalated like a modern day Biggie, Smalls and Tupac, except in this case the

origin of the alleged problem was that the gentleman's Biggie, Smalls and Tupac, except in this case the origin of the alleged problem was that the gentleman's Biggie became Smalls, unlike his Tupac, which sort of went the other way. So at the end of that round, it's now 16 points to Team Backed and 18 points to Team Sacked. This can go to Zoe, who is Team Backed, all solo this week. According to a global survey,

three-quarters of young people think what is very frightening. Oh, is it the fact that young people think that older people don't really care about global warming? Well, the correct answer is just the future, the entire future. Yeah. Well, they're right to be terrified. I mean, look at the present. It's pretty nerve-wracking. But there is a sort of tendency for young people to sort of blame us older people

for everything that's gone wrong, specifically. Younger people think that we, you know, older people don't really care. And actually, we do, because, you know, we've all got, well, houses in the Dordogne we'd like to see again. So, you know, pressing issues. I mean, I care about the planet.

I care about the planet a lot. I live in Brighton and I'm very keen on sort of preserving nature. But I was having a swim the other day and I realised it was largely middle-aged women that go for a swim in Brighton in the morning. It suddenly dawned on me as I watched us all entering the water that it probably isn't climate change that's contributing to sea temperatures rising. It makes much more sense to realise that it's just a lot of perimenopausal women. Cooling themselves off in the channel on a daily basis.

I mean, we do care about the planet, but we can't help it. We're just hot. Sorry. it but we can't help it, we're just hot, sorry If you think about in terms of Insulate Britain, so Insulate Britain were the people who blocked the M25, they're the militant wing of Ready Brick and they glued themselves

to the M25 which is pretty much a guerrilla tactic named after the glue they used presumably pretty much a guerrilla tactic named after the glue they used, presumably. They did that because they want houses to be insulated because they think that it is a good way to not only save money but help the environment. And if you think about who can do that, it's not young people, it's grannies.

My grandmother could tell a draft at about 400 yards. If you opened a door in a bedroom in a different house in a different parish, she would just pop the head up and go, there's a door open somewhere. She was unbelievable. My grandmother could tell you if you left windows open on your laptop.

Does it show that, you know, how much progress we've made as a species that what we have now, I mean, this is a sentence I never thought I'd hear, radical supporters of loft insulation. In the past, it was votes for women or racial equality. Wait till you meet your triple glazing gang. Wow. I'd like to be at the meeting where they decided on the name Insulate Britain, because it really does sound like a massively aggressively pro-Brexit activist party.

And their choice of protest is to bring disruption to the M25. If ever there was a great synonym for bringing coal to Newcastle, it's surely bringing disruption to the M25. for bringing coal to Newcastle is surely bringing disruption to the M25. When I heard a left-wing activist group was bringing disruption to the M25, I assumed it was Sadiq Khan. For anyone who doesn't live in London,

it's a living hell already. It is the Mrs Brown's Boys marathon. It is... Do you know what would really stop this? If you, as a copper, walked up to somebody who had glued themselves to the ground and they were expecting you to unglue them, if you then glued them harder...

In terms of raising awareness of climate change and the dangers thereof, is causing the grandmother of all motorway tailbacks in which people are sitting there with their engines running, getting increasingly irate. Let's not forget, being stroppy gives off, I think, 384% more carbon dioxide than being calm. That's true.

If Britain had four more Gordon Ramsay, it wouldn't need any coal for the next 50 years. One quick follow-up question on climate change. As a result of climate change, according to the same survey, four in ten young people are reluctant to do what? Get out of bed. Good guess, but not. Actually, the answer is have children. So climate change is putting people off breeding.

The survey revealed that 16 to 25-year-olds are not entirely chipper about the future of the planet they've been bequeathed to the extent that they don't want to bring children into it, whether it's actually that's because of concerns over the environment or worries about the future of test cricket. I'm not entirely sure. It's probably a little bit of both. But all'm not entirely sure. It's probably... A little bit of both.

But all generations fear different things. I mean, when I was a kid in the 1980s, frightening things included rabies, Norman Tebbit, thinking about the backstory of Bungle the Bear in Rainbow. How? Why? And the vague hypothetical threat

of nuclear Armageddon. So we all have different things that we fear. Moving on to our final question with the scores tied at 18 points all. It's a multiple choice question. According to a frankly absurd number of newspaper articles this week, what was the most amazing thing about Emma Raducanu's US Open victory? Was it A, that she won 10 matches without dropping a set to win a Grand Slam tennis tournament as a qualifier,

a feat unprecedented in the known universe? Was it B, she's from Bromley, or was it C, she's going to earn a ridiculous amount of money? A, B, or C? All three. I guess it's C, really. C. Well, it is kind of all three, but C definitely edged it.

I mean, I love the way all the papers were just looking at everything that she does for clues to her partnerships and sponsorship deals. Like, oh, she's wearing Tiffany earrings at the finals so she's going to do a deal with them and oh she wore Chanel for the mess so they'll be her partner. She's boiled a kettle she's signing for pot noodle, that's the next thing for them.

Oh look, she's peed in a cup, could be a drugs test, could be working as an Amazon driver and nobody knows. It just kind of went crazy. And I just thought the two things that you saw in the papers

were first of all people obsessed about how much money she's going to earn. But then on Twitter you saw loads of people just went, oh my God, she's amazing.

When I was 18 I was doing this. I caught my head in the railings or whatever. All the stupid stuff that people do. I just wanted to see one tweet from someone

who did even better than her at a younger age. That's all just wanted to see one tweet from someone who did even better than her at a younger age. That's all I wanted to see. I wanted to see one tweet from Malala going, Nobel Prize 17, but enjoy your little tennis. As one of the most woke people on Earth,

even I got exhausted by everybody trying to claim her politically. I think Sadiq Khan was just claiming this was a triumph for the diversity in London. And of course the worst one was Piers Morgan. He was trying to claim that Emma Raducanu listened to his advice after she withdrew with mental exhaustion at Wimbledon. I can just see her discussing with her coach, and her coach saying, we've had some advice.

And she's saying saying who's it from a journalist is he like a tennis journalist is he like a superstar tennis journalist no does he know anything about tennis no well what does he look like a mixture of ego and pies get that man to motivate me now she's clearly clearly a last-minute call-up to that party as well, the Met Gala, which she went to. And she looked amazing. There was some all sorts of weird outfits at that. Kim Kardashian went dressed as the pedestrian from a road sign.

But she looked... She looked amazing. But she was clearly a last-minute invite to that party. So you just wonder, who lost an invite? Did she just get a phone call going, Hey, Emma, space has opened up, we've had a VIP dropout. He's very reluctant to come to the US for some reason. It's almost like he's had recent news that prevents his trip.

But listen. The famous AOC had a controversial dress. And on it, it said, tax the rich. And people called her a hypocrite for being rich and wanting to tax the rich. We need to get away from this idea that left-wing people aren't allowed to earn independent money. And I was saying this to my valet just the other day. It did not show, though, that much as she's achieved

incredible things already, but it shows how much Emma Raducanu still has to learn about A-list celebrity life, that she turned up to the Met Gala dressed in something that looked discernibly like human clothing. Give her a couple of years, she'll have a few doughnuts stapled to her, she'll get the hang of it. Yes, it was a truly sensational victory for Emma Raducanu in the US Open in New York, the first British woman

to win a Grand Slam tennis title since Virginia Wade in 1977. But let's call this what it is, an absolute betrayal of British national sporting culture. Because... LAUGHTER Hear me out. British sporting success is supposed to come with at least some of the following.

A. Years and years of agonising failures, near misses and heartbreaking defeats before finally achieving victory. B. Violent swings of fortune in the final, nerve-shredding brushes with the feet when it looks like everything is about to inevitably go down the pan, as it always bloody does. C, lashings of good luck.

Geoff Hurst off the crossbar, Ben Stokes ricocheting the ball for four, overthrows off the back of his bat. And D, stomach-churning doubt and ideally the odd tantrum. Raducanu gave us none of these. Not one. A bit of a hurty knee was all we got. That was it.

Where was my emotional rollercoaster? What is the point in a victory like that earned purely through brilliant play and icy-veined calmness within a few short months of first springing into the public consciousness? Young people today, they don't know how good they've got it. Andy. Andy, sorry, is it safe to come back in? I just mused you after

British sporting success, so... I assume you were banging on about Jeff Hurst or some nonsense like that, were you? Right, that concludes this week's news quiz. And the final score is 18 points all. Thanks to our panellists, Zoe Lyons, Paul Sinhart and Neil Delamere.

Don't forget, later on on Radio 4, you can hear a special Venture Capitalist edition of Tim Harford's More or Less Statistics show entitled More or Even More. Thank you very much for listening. I've been Andy Zaltzman. Goodbye. Taking part in the news quiz were Neil Delamere, Paul Sinner and Zoe Lyons.

In the chair was Andy Zaltzman. Additional material was written by Alice Fraser, Max Davies, Richard Stott and Rajiv Kari. The producers were Sam Michelle

and Gwyn Rhys-Davies and it was a BBC Studios production. This is the first radio ad you can smell. The new Cinnabon pull-apart Thank you.