Friday Night Comedy from BBC Radio 4 - News Quiz 28th January 2022

Episode Date: January 28, 2022

Andy Zaltzman and the News Quiz satirise the week's news from the UK and beyond.This week Andy is joined by Nish Kumar, Rachel Fairburn, Neil Delamere and Isabel Hardman. They try to make sense of a week of war mongering and cake ambushes.Chair's Script: Written by Andy Zaltzman Additional Material: Written by Alice Fraser, Heidi Regan, Rhiannon Shaw and Tasha Dhanraj. Production Coordinator: Katie Baum Sound Editor: Marc Willcox Producer: James RobinsonA BBC Studios Production

This is the BBC. This podcast is supported by advertising outside the UK. BBC Sounds. Music, radio, podcasts. Um, yes. Now, as we record this, we are still waiting for this week's script. We were supposed to have it by now. script. We were supposed to have it by now. It does kind of make you think, what on earth is going to be in it?

I should make it clear that I definitely don't already have it, and it's definitely not the case that I am currently redacting the bits that I don't like. Welcome to the News Quiz. Hello.

Time to meet this week's teams. We have Team No Confidence against Team No Shame. On Team No Confidence, we have Neil Delamere and Isabel Hardman. And on Team No Shame, it's Rachel Fairburn and Nish Kumar. And the first question this week, and this can go to both teams, Defence Secretary Ben Wallace said he was not optimistic that what can be stopped. Is it ambushes by cake?

Well, it certainly should have been, Rachel, yes. Is it Matt Hancock cold-water swimming? Is it the Sue Gray report, even though they've threatened to drone-strike her favourite Nando's? It's not that. Is it people banging on about Wordle on social media? Any other suggestions? Defence Secretary Ben Wallace. Not optimistic that what can be stopped?

Antendek. Possibly. Only if they're being deployed to the Ukraine. Is it Russia's military incursion into the Ukraine? It is that, yes. You've got the look on your face of one of my teachers from school where they were just like, if one of you's not going to give the correct answer, I'm just going to have to say it.

This is the Ukrainian-Russian stand-off, isn't it? I mean, I don't know why everybody's getting so worried about this, Andy. Those troops at the border are clearly just day-trippers. They're on the edges of a work event, aren't they? Is that the excuse? Yeah, it's just a work event if you're the Russian military. It's slightly different.

Yeah. Less cake. It looks like this build-up of all this equipment and troops and all the rest at the border looks like a precursor to an invasion. But if you think, like, if the Russians are looking at satellite footage of the UK border, say, around Dover, they're going, 17 miles of trucks, they're invading France. Listen, say what you will about Vladimir Putin and he will poison you to death.

I love this idea that he's some sort of... Like, he's not Machiavelli. He's just a disruptor. That's all he does. He's not Machiavelli. He's your brother trying to shout numbers when you're trying to remember a phone number. That's what he is.

Do you know when you're going 077 and your brother's going 4, 9, 12, 5? Rachel, are you enjoying this little blast of 80s Cold War nostalgia? Yeah, this little frisson of, you know, peril. What I find interesting, there was a report that the Chinese government allegedly have asked Putin to delay his potential invasion of the Ukraine

until after they've had the Winter Olympics, which I think feels very much like, I know we haven't been happy, but please, can we just get Christmas out of the way? And indeed, it's a little ironic, is it not, that in fact the Winter Olympics might have stopped things going downhill very fast. Also, it's not even like when the English and German forces

suspended everything to have a nice game of football. There was a sort of poetry to that. This is the Winter Olympics, the stupidest of all sports. What's that one where they pretend to mop the ice? Curling. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. I don't think they pretend to mop the ice. I was thinking how the Ukraine worried.

So I read that the Ukrainian Defence Minister, Olesky Reznikov, he said, these were his words, he's called for calm, and he said, don't worry, sleep well, no need to have your bags packed. What a chilling thing to say. Can you imagine that as a good night? Don't worry, sleep well, no need to have your bags packed. It is one of the things, weirdly,

that is cheering up Conservative MPs is that there might be a war. So I've been talking to a lot of them and it's amazing how many of them say in a sort of very sinister way, you know, Boris just needs to change the subject with something big. And then they raise their eyebrows at me in a kind of menacing way. And I'm like, but what? And they go, I think, war.

War. How exciting. Johnson isn't even the only leader who's trying to use this to distract from unfavorable ratings putin is himself trying to avert a string of domestic crises or at least keep them out of the headlines by having this war and also part of the reason the conflict has started is he's worried about his own popularity in the Ukraine because a poll found that 81% of Ukrainians now have an unfavourable view of him. And that guy is thin-skinned as all heck. If I started a war because I was...

When the man threw a bread roll at me at the Lord's Tavernous gig, I didn't immediately react by driving tanks onto his lawn. Only because you don't have tanks, Nish. to his luck. Only because you don't have tanks, Nish. The best way to stop this is personal sanctions against Putin, because that's what they're talking about.

So the US have already agreed a 50% tariff on all exports of machismo. That's how you get him. He is on 100 milligrams of manliness a day. Absolutely, there can be no question. Make him go cold turkey. Let's watch the PR stunts get less and less impressive

as the masculinity leeches out of him. There'll be no bears. There'll be no Siberian tigers. By May, he'll be headbutting a squirrel topless. That's what he'll be doing. With Russia being a threat, I think we need to send him a message. And I think the best way we can do that in the UK...

I mean, let's face it, we've welcomed oligarchs and, you know, deals have been struck and stuff like that. We need to send a message that we're not pushovers. And I think the best way to do that is we have to deport Sergei, Alexander and Baby Oleg, the meerkats. They're clearly spies. They've got to go. I am so behind this, Rachel. I never liked those meerkats,

and that dates back to a temp job I had in 2009 when I told a guy that I did comedy, and he said, you know what my favourite comedy is? Those Compare the Meerkat adverts. And now he's the controller of the BBC. Yes, it has been a worrying time for fans of the world not mutilating itself with unnecessary conflicts as the Ukraine situation

continues to bubble away. Vladimir Putin, the Kremlin gremlin himself, contemplates whether another one of Russia's trademark unwinnable wars could be just what he needs most and what his country needs least. The big two for Russian leaders. The situation is skirting that fine line between massive global crisis and fun bit of 80s nostalgia.

That's a lovely bit of Cold War retro. All we need to do is throw in a bit of Bananarama brandishing some nuclear warheads and we'll have the world's full undivided attention. Moscow's key demand is that Ukraine is not allowed to join NATO. It's very demanding as cities go, Moscow, isn't it? I mean, you don't hear Litchfield making demands like that. Russia is also, I'm hearing, demanding that Chelsea are given

an automatic spot in the Champions League final every year. And there are also suggestions that old Pootsie wants a pro-Russian government in Kiev, especially having lost Trump from the White House just over a year ago. America and Germany have threatened to pull out of the Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline, which is set to pump Russian gas to Europe. That's the sequel to the blockbuster Nord Stream 1,

of course, and they could instead skip straight to Nord Stream 3, it's a gas, gas, gas, and Nord Stream 4 pipeline of doom. Indeed, one of the main concerns is the potentially skyrocketing effect on gas prices if Russia cuts supplies to Europe with UK households facing record high

bills, but to me this just shows that it's the consumer's responsibility to do their research when choosing their energy provider. Check for competitive deals, be prepared to change your supplier and predict how diplomatic relations with Russia are going to be in five to ten years' time. It's just a basic

geopolitical analysis that every responsible consumer should do. Andy, are you saying we should compare the market? Guys, this is the BBC, so other price comparison websites and other small rodent-like animals are available. Personal sanctions have been threatened against Putin.

I should say he's already barred from downloading the news quiz, so we are doing our bit. These could range from freezing his money, banning him from using Western dating apps, deliberately delivering the wrong things in his Amazon orders. These could range from freezing his money, banning him from using Western dating apps, deliberately delivering the wrong things in his Amazon orders... LAUGHTER ..not ordered the 70 pogo sticks, and photoshopping him so it looks like he's riding

a child's tricycle topless instead of a horse. Fortunately, sport, the undisputed greatest thing in the universe, may have saved or at least delayed the day. Bloomberg reported that Chinese bossman Xi Jinping asked Putin not to spoil his pet Olympics by invading Ukraine whilst the curling's on. I have one question. Do you know the way you said it was Xi Jinping's pet Olympics?

Yes. Have I misunderstood? You mean it's his favourite Olympics? He isn't doing a new thing that we haven't heard about, is he? favourite Olympics. He isn't doing a new thing that we haven't heard about. Because that is something I would watch. Who wouldn't want to watch a big

dog firing another small dog like a discus? Who wouldn't want to watch that? At the end of round one, it's four points to Team No Confidence and three points to Team No Shame. Moving on to round two. What was not delivered this week and may or may not have found the PM innocent

of breaking the law and guilty of nothing more than displaying an inexcusable lack of judgement, empathy and common sense? Is it a parcel from Hermes? Is this something to do with Sue Gray's report, Andy? It is, Neil, yes.

There's this great line in this that somebody said, the news of this birthday party was reported as another nail in Boris Johnson's coffin. Surely that coffin now is more metal than wood at this point. metal than wood at this point. Isabel, do you think this is starting to really impact negatively on the Conservative Party with the voters?

Because there's been talk of Johnson trying to shore up his support and a number of backers have come at Connor Burns saying he was just ambushed with a cake. Yeah, I mean, extraordinarily, a lot of his sort of lieutenants think that things are getting better because the longer this drags on, the heat gets taken out of the situation,

people have got tired of Boris Johnson lying, Keir Starmer will probably have to self-isolate again. So, you know, actually, it's just going to get easier the longer it goes on. But I have to say, as someone who's spent the past, God knows how many weeks, waiting for Sue Gray, I feel a huge affinity with her. This is exactly how I approach pretty much everything I write. You know, I say to my editor,

yep, it's all there, just doing some, you know, minor finessing. It'll be with you in 15 minutes. The other thing that jumped out at me about this whole thing was that they were eating M&S party food. Now, I have a bone to pick with M&S. If you buy a little trifle from M&S, I bought one, it didn't have a sell by date, it had a sell by time. So it didn't say it used by September 19th,

it said used by 7.42am, September 19th. What happens at 7.43? Does this explode or something? I've been thinking about this whole, like, Boris Johnson party thing, and I'm like, maybe he doesn't know when he has been to a party, because I imagine that Boris Johnson wakes up every single day with the symptoms of a hangover,

whether he's been drinking or not. He peels his eyes open and he's like, Oh, my God, everyone hates me. Oh, my God, what did I say yesterday? I can't remember. He'll turn over and he'll be like, Oh, my God, who is this woman next to me? Oh, it's OK, I'm married to this one.

So maybe he doesn't know. I don't want to give him the benefit of the doubt, but maybe he doesn't know. I personally, want to give him the benefit of the doubt, but maybe he doesn't know. I personally, I don't think he will get away with this because I think he has done something that finally the British public cannot forgive. When people think about that, they think, do they mean, you know, the fact that people attended Zoom funerals,

the fact that people put their lives on hold for two years, the fact that the Queen was abandoned to mourn her husband on her own? And it's none of those things. It is one phrase that was in the Martin Reynolds email. Bring your own booze. Because we will tolerate a lot in this country. We will tolerate lying, we will tolerate racism. The one thing we will not tolerate is people who don't get around in.

God save the Queen. Now someone buy her a pint. So, well, that raises an interesting point, because a lot of people, you know, there's been a number of politicians saying well, it's just about a cake. What about Ukraine? But if Ukraine is a big enough issue that we should,

as some have suggested, ignore the Prime Minister potentially having broken Covid laws and facing a police investigation what level of crime would he have had to commit to justify people caring when set against? What are we talking about? Regicide?

I think we'd have to go back to 2010 and he'd have to go back to 2010 and he'd have to put a cat in a bin. That's the only time I've seen this nation united when that woman put a cat in the bin. Cat in the bin, of course, the demonstration sport at this year's Pet Olympics. Yes, as we record, we're still waiting for the Sue Gray report,

delayed in part because the Metropolitan Police have also launched an inquiry into possible COVID-related law-breaking in Downing Street. All the rumours, however, suggest that the report will be uncompromising. She's not going to sugarcoat it. It will not be, as the French would say, Sue Gray, Sucre. Boris Johnson, the alleged Prime Minister, the Grand Duke of Glyb, reacted to the smouldering crisis in the best

way possible by going somewhere for a photo opportunity where he could wear a high-vis jacket and a hard hat. That is proper leadership. It is now alleged that as many as 17 questionable parties or gatherings might have taken place in Downing Street in Westminster. 17 parties. I mean, that's a lot. You can't even do a simple four-round knockout now

to decide which party was the most unacceptable and disrespectful to people unable to visit their dying relatives. You have to have a preliminary round now. That shows how deep we have sunk. Tory MP Edward Lee said, When Europe stands on the brink of war and there is a cost of living crisis, can we please have a sense of proportion over the Prime Minister being given a piece of cake

in his own office by his own staff? Maybe he has got a point. Maybe it is all about the cake. I mean, it is also about the Prime Minister having potentially broken the law he himself set and undermining the credibility and foundations of our democracy. But mostly it's the cake, just the cake. And the fact that as far as we know, when presented with a work event

that looked very like a party, and presented with a room full of people and a birthday cake, he did not respond to either by saying, hang on everyone, have you guys not been watching the news? This is not allowed now! The Union Jack cake looks lovely. Ordinarily, I would love to eat it and put it through my digestive system, so we end up

with a physical metaphor for what I'm doing to this country. But A, I'm 56, and B, I've literally just told everyone in the country not to do this kind of thing. I mean, think about the optics, people. It's one step away from mooning at someone's funeral. But keep the balloons are like balloons. But he didn't say that. He could have said that. He chose not to.

So we've got to stop banging on about the cake. We need not to worry about the phenomenal lack of judgment, empathy, decision-making, and courage to do the right thing that the cake represents. Qualities which might be useful, for example, when Europe stands on the brink of war and there's a cost-of-living crisis. But still, don't worry. It's all about the cake.

He's also faced claims that he's been less than his usual 15% truthful about his involvement in facilitating a flight that rescued a plane load of animals from Afghanistan. So we've reached a confusing point where the prime minister is having to swear that he did not save any animals and basically say i can promise you i left those puppies to die and i will sue anyone who says otherwise strange times indeed but this is not the only issue facing the government. The Treasury Minister, Theodore Agnew, resigned this week. He accused the Treasury of having little knowledge of or interest in the consequences of what to our society? Bake-off. Bake-off, that's almost correct.

Bake Off, that's almost correct. Bake Off presents this twee version of the UK that doesn't exist. You see a white tent in the English countryside on Channel 4 and you think, ah, people are baking. But if you see a white tent on the news, you think, there's been a murder. I just love the way he did it. I thought he was so civilised. He first admitted that no-one had heard of him

and then at the end of his speech he apologised for the inconvenience he'd caused and walked out. That's very sweet. Yes. It's like my dad. Fraud was the answer to the question. He had little knowledge of or interest in the consequences of fraud. The Minister for Anti-Corruption,

Lord Agnew, stepped down live in the House of Lords, citing a combination of arrogance, indolence and ignorance as freezing the government machine and stopping it from dealing with £29 billion of fraud losses every year. Arrogance, indolence and ignorance, in the words of the recently

departed Meatloaf, two out of three ain't bad, but three out of three takes a special effort at all levels of government. 4.3 billion pounds of the missing money from Covid loans has been now written off as unrecoverable. So we'll do a choose-your-own-adventure now. You have mislaid 4..3 billion of public money. Do you A, desperately try to get it

back by any means possible? Do you B, think, ah, never mind, Ukraine? Or do you C, get it all back and then blow it on one hell of a work meeting? I mean, the wildest work meeting you can imagine just filing all over

the place. Can I pick option D, which is buy one roll of wallpaper from Lulu Little? As professional messiah Jesus Christ might have said, had he been around today, let they who have never mislaid £4.3 billion and thought, eh, whatever, cast the first stone. never mislaid £4.3 billion and thought,

yeah, whatever, cast the first stone. After that round, it is now ten to Team No Confidence, Neil and Isabel, and nine to Team No Shame, Rachel and Nish. Next question. Who has not been allowed back into what? Is it Matt Hancock back into his old house? You can pick them up at the gate, Matt.

No, you can't stroke the dog, it doesn't like you anymore. Is it Dominic Cummings into the Downing Street Bants WhatsApp group? Is it Jeremy Corbyn back into the smouldering ruins of the party he nearly destroyed? That is correct, yes. Which is the official title of the Labour Party now. Yes, then Labour's National Executive Committee rejected a motion calling for Corbyn to have the parliamentary whip restored.

I mean, Isabel, where do you see the state of the Labour Party now? Because there have been rumblings on the left about the acceptance of Conservative defector Christian Wakeford into the party. There's talks of a battle for the soul of the Labour Party, but obviously for a political party, having a soul generally means losing the next election. So where does Labour stand at the moment for you? Yeah, I mean, Corbyn was just a really unfortunate guy in that he just kept accidentally befriending anti-Semites in the way that Boris Johnson just kept accidentally walking into parties where there was cake.

But where is Labour now? I mean, you've got Keir Starmer kind of just like wearing as many union flags as possible to prove that he's not Jeremy Corbyn when he's not self-isolating. I honestly think that, you know, when we've actually managed to achieve the impossible and eradicated Covid, Keir Starmer will still be taking lateral flow tests and will still be testing positive and will still be having lateral flow tests and will still be testing positive and will still be having to self-isolate on a monthly basis. The thing about politics in general is that people at the moment specifically say

that the political right and the left are more polarised than they've ever been and there's nothing that the right and the left have in common. And that is simply not true. The right that the right and the left have in common. And that is simply not true. The right hates the left, and the left hates the left. And that is the one thing that we can all come together over. But at this point, the next Labour manifesto should just be a picture of Boris Johnson and just the words,

we are not him. picture of Boris Johnson and just the words we are not him. Left-wingers in the Labour Party criticised the NEC for failing to heal the self-inflicted wounds of the last two years. Perhaps because they were focusing first on trying to heal the self-inflicted wounds of the previous five years.

It's like painting the fourth bridge, healing the self-inflicted wounds in the Labour Party. As soon as you've finally finished stitching everything up on the scalp, you look down and find someone's chainsawed your foot off again. Boris Johnson accused Labour leader Keir Starmer this week of being a lawyer, not a leader. Starmer looked a little bit perplexed, rather than responding by accusing Johnson of being a journalist who got sacked for making stuff up and was then unable and unwilling to follow the rules

he set for his country, not a leader, which just shows the importance of alliteration in political soundbitery. That moves us on to our final round, which is a quickfire round, a special round, questions to which the answer could be Boris Johnson but isn't.

So, the question, what has been described this week as a worrying example of extreme breeding? So the answer is not Boris Johnson, but what is the correct answer? So one of those scary dogs.

Yes, correct, Isabel. What is a scary dog? A one of those scary dogs? Yes, correct as well. What is a scary dog? A litter of hairless French bulldog puppies. They're bizarre looking things if you're not seeing they look like a cross between a desiccated badger, Winston Churchill and the concept of surprise. I mean, you're saying it's bad

but in my head I'm imagining shot put in the Pet Olympics. saying it's bad, but in my head I'm imagining shot put in the Pet Olympics. OK, the question is, what, according to reports, is in real danger of no longer working on the public and is

having catastrophic consequences? The answer is not Boris Johnson, but what is the correct answer? Voodoo. Cowpole? Antibiotics. Correct, Rachel, yes. It is antibiotics, yes, according to... This is turning into an actual quiz here.

The World Health Organisation says antibiotic resistance, which is being accelerated by misuse of antibiotics in humans and animals, is one of the biggest threats to global health, food security and development today. Which is great news, I think, because it means we don't have to think about either Boris Johnson's cake or Ukraine now. It's all about the bacteria. Bingo.

The question, what, after taking a chaotic path for years, now looks set imminently to crash and be destroyed, as was always inevitable? The answer is not Boris Johnson, but what is it? Is it Keith Richards? Close, but not right. Any suggestions?

I think it's the popularity of cold-water swimming after Matt Hancock took a dip. The correct answer is one of Elon Musk's space rockets, the Falcon 9, was launched in 2015, but couldn't be arsed to come back to Earth and has been woosily making its way moonwards ever since. And it's set to smash into the moon. I don't blame it, to be honest.

I mean, I'm not a physicist, but I think the big worry there is that the moon will burst and just fly off into another part of the solar system. That brings us to the end of this week's News Quiz. And the final score? Well, I'm refusing to release the final score. You are... LAUGHTER

..all free to jump to your own conclusions about exactly why. Thank you very much to our panellists, Rachel Fairburn and Nish Kumar, Neil Delamere and Isabel Hardman. Do forget to put your clocks forward this weekend. It's still two months until you have to. And this week's news quiz is dedicated to Barry Cryer, a giant of British comedy and Radio 4.

He's made a very large number of people laugh, a great deal for a very long time. If there is an afterlife, it's just got funnier. Thank you very much for listening. I've been Andy Zaltzman. Goodbye. Taking part in the news quiz were Rachel Fairburn, Neil Delamere, Nish Kumar and Isabel Hardman. In the chair was Andy Zaltzman,

and additional material was written by Alice Fraser, Heidi Reagan, Rhiannon Shaw and Tasha Dunlash. The producer was James Robinson and it was a BBC Studios production. Thank you.