Friday Night Comedy from BBC Radio 4 - News Quiz Best of 2022 – 30th December

Episode Date: January 27, 2023

A look back on some of the best bits of News Quizzing from 2022.In this compilation episode Andy Zaltzman casts his satirical eye over the highs and lows of the year, in which the UK has had two monarchs, three Prime Ministers and countless debates over whether a party can technically be called a party.Hosted and written by Andy Zaltzman.Producer: Georgia Keating Executive Producer: James Robinson Production Co-ordinator: Ryan Walker-Edwards Sound Editor: Jerry PealA BBC Studios Production

This is the BBC. This podcast is supported by advertising outside the UK. BBC Sounds. Music, radio, podcasts. Hi, I'm Andy Oliver and I'd like to tell you all about my Radio 4 series, One Dish. It's all about why you love that one dish. The one that you could eat over and over again without ever getting tired of it. Each week, a very special guest

will bring their favourite food to my table and we'll be unpacking the history of it. And food psychologist, Kimberly Wilson, is on hand to talk us through the science bit. What food reminds you of your child? What's your favourite place to go for dinner? What do you have for Sunday lunch? What's your favourite place to go for dinner? What do you have for Sunday lunch? What's your favourite dessert?

Do you say plantain or plantain? What food would you take with you to a desert island? What's your favourite type of chilli oil? What do you have for breakfast? What's the best pasta? What's the one thing you love? So if you're the sort of person who's already planning what you're having for lunch while you're eating breakfast, then this podcast is going to be right up your street.

That's One Dish with me, Andy Oliver. Listen now on BBC Sounds. Hello, I am Andy Zaltzman and you are listening to the best of the News Quiz 2022. Happy old year to you all. And what a year it has been, unquestionably right up and or down there in the top three most baffling years of the 2020s so far.

We've had three prime ministers, Vladimir Putin missing out on the Nobel Peace Prize by a personal best margin, and that was a high bar, a brand-spanking-new national anthem, kind of, and so many cabinet resignations, outbootings and random shuffledges that if you are listening to this, there is a fair chance that you, yes, you are currently or recently have been a cabinet minister. You might not even have noticed.

Plus, England started not just winning at cricket, but playing cricket from another dimension. So all in all, it has been another strange year. When historians in the future, best place for historians if you ask me, look back on 2022 and debate whether to pop the year into the silly bin or the sad bin, most years end up in both, they will no doubt chuckle at the fact that the office of Prime Minister became a curious cross between a conceptual art piece entitled The Sledgehammer of Unquenchable Chaos and the empty

fourth plinth in Trafalgar Square. So let's look back to the very beginning of the year, January I think it was, and ask how did it all go so wrong for ex-Prime Minister Boris Johnson? Other than the physics of political inevitability, of course. Well, it all started to unravel with a debate about exactly what constitutes a party. Since we were last on air in October, what has happened for the first time since Boris Johnson became Prime Minister? Is it that he's behind in the polls for the first time, Andy? That is correct, Chris. England take an early lead. I think it's for the first time

Keir Starmer is ahead in the polls. He's isolating for the sixth time, I believe, and I think maybe that's just what we want in a Prime Minister. We're not really interested in policies. We just want one that will stay home and not cause any problems, I think, maybe. No parties or anything like that.

That's what we need, no parties. Yeah, just vote the fella in who's going to stay at home the most. I find this deeply worrying as a comedian because I'll have to figure out what's funny about Keir Starmer, a man who looks like the CEO of a budget airline. As the weeks went by in their characteristic fashion, more and more stories emerged about more and more parties. They say that the giveaway that this was a party was that it 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, 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... 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? As this. For all the misdemeanors 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's 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. In the Machiavellodrome of Westminster, the pressure was growing on the self-beleaguered Prime Minister. Some of his own MPs began to scheme against him. Others loyally hurled themselves in front of him to take his custard pies in their faces. It's confusing, Andy, because I believe there are two pork pie plots. There's the one pork pie plot which is like the Tory rebels

who happen to come from the constituency where pork pies come from, Melton Mowbray. And then there's the government's own ongoing pork pie plot which is a plan to get the British public to swallow bollocks and dog meat. So I think you should clarify which one you're talking about. When the pork pie plot chooses its new leader, it lets the public know by squirting brown sauce out of a straw on the top of Big Ben. Boris is

not a big dog. At most he's like a large weasel or something like that. I don't see him and think big dog. Do you think this is what they meant two weeks ago when they said he'd lost his lead? Also, he could probably do with being neutered, couldn't he? I mean, it's too late for Carrie, but we can save so many more.

The thing which frustrates me about all of this is it was a terrible party. Like, if you are going to ruin your political heritage, it should be like a Berlusconi-level bunga-bunga party with ram's horns and, you know, sacrificing virgins,

drinking the blood of Labour Party enemies, or something like that. One of the things that confuses me, we had the Christmas parties where they had wine and cheese and games. No one said what games, apart from, like, avoid Matt Hancock at the mistletoe, that's one. LAUGHTER But the thing that annoys me is that the one that's caused all the uproar

was the one outside, and we're calling it Partygate, and it should be called Gardengate. Why is no-one calling it Gardengate? The name we'll never forget from 2022 is, of course... Let me just check. Sue Gray. Her much-awaited, re-awaited and indeed super-awaited report on the so-called Partygate scandal

ended up setting one of the keynote trends of the year. Something not being delivered on time. 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. I've been thinking about this whole 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. Eventually, Sue Great's initial report did arrive and the devil was in the detail, by which I mean the detail, like the devil, didn't exist. Do you know what? I stopped watching EastEnders and reruns of Love Island because what's happening in 10 Downing Street

is 10 million times more entertaining. You've got the parties, you've got the drama and from what I've heard, you've got the nudity as well. Was that what was in those 300 photographs? No wonder they broke the swing. Ellis, I know that you've long harboured ambitions to be Prime Minister. Yeah.

Are you disappointed that Boris Johnson has not cleared the way for you to run for office? Well, it's just, you know, for Boris Johnson to clear the way, 54 of his MPs would have to write a letter to say they've got no confidence in him. Can you imagine that in any other workplace? Where 54 of your colleagues have to go, I'm not sure about this guy, actually.

I don't know, don't know about him. I worked in a cafe and one bloke, he made a hot chocolate in the microwave once and he was out. He was out of the door. Boris's supporters have started saying stuff like, oh well, you know, we all broke the rules, didn't we? Now, A, I

completely dispute that. I don't know anyone who broke the rules during the first lockdown because we were all terrified. That's the thing, I remember my daughter dragging her hand on the railings outside school during our hours allotted exercise and thinking, oh, my God, we're all going to die! And the Tory party, they were always the party of law and order. You know, Thatcher's short, sharp shock.

The idea, they're like, oh, you know, they've never been the chill-out-is-just-a-party party. And, you know, after the Euro 2020 final, the leading Tories were like, oh, we've all stuck a flare up our bum for crying out loud.

Rhys Mogg does it every Christmas. After a bonus three months gestation, which on reflection we could all have done with this year, her cheeky little trimester away from it all and a specially constructed giant national womb, Sue Gray's full report did finally birth

itself in May. So we got to sort of learn a bit more about the nitty gritty of what really happened. Some of the details of the parties were quite something, weren't they? The red wine all up the walls and the vomit was the thing that really stuck out for a lot of people. And I just think, well, you know, again, they can be explained away.

You know, Boris and Carrie are Catholic, so that could have been just an enthusiastic communion. Can I just tell you that one of the things that's really upset me about this is that I found myself thinking Margaret Thatcher would not have stood for this. favourably of Thatcher, to a point that I'm really worried that if he carries on for another couple of years, am I going to start thinking, you know, that Mussolini wasn't such a bad chap? And do you know what? Maybe the Ayatollah Khomeini had a point. At least he properly banned alcohol and stuck to it. Of that, the highlight was definitely Grant Shapps who claimed that Boris was

in mourning for his mother at a meeting that turned out to be ten months before his mother died. It does mean we can call him Captain Foresight now. I think we're missing the point. We're focusing on Boris but I feel like we should be focusing on Sue Gray.

She is an icon. No-one knew about her six months ago, and now everyone was waiting for her to deliver a PDF via email. She's going to go on strictly. She's going to win it. It's been quite a year, hasn't it, for women in the civil service? We've had Jackie Weaver, Sue Gray. They must be queuing up now for their turn. And it turns out that neither of them had any authority at all, sadly.

With Boris Johnson's position as Prime Minister safe, for now, spring brought some good news, as nearly two years after first going into lockdown, Covid restrictions ended in England. Geoff, listen to this. It's over! And that is why it's such a shame that Roy Orbison never made it as a cricket umpire. Roy, sadly, no longer with us.

But if Roy Orbison was singing that this week, what would that song be about? Well, it's freedom, isn't it? Freedom from COVID. And I should go, you know, cards on the table. I am very positive about this. You think you're not positive right i'm very i just think you know by all the metrics i think if not now when but the problem is i should also stress i'm not because the way i look i have had the vaccines before the radio four people stare

at me you know despite looking like somebody'd be ideologically opposed to them. Do you know what I mean? I had the Pfizer, because I'm very patriotic, but if I want something done properly, I will go German. I'm not an idiot. But it was weird, because I think, like a lot of people, it's been one of those binary things where you had to either go, oh, I think the vaccine's great,

or you were kind of outside Scotland Yard jostling politicians. But when I had the booster, actually, I was on my way out, and they said to me, oh, you've had your booster, do you mind? There's a local news crew. They just want to film you coming out looking happy about it. I said, well, look, we don't know how this is going to go. You know, I'm sure it'll be fine, but if it does all go tits up, I don't want to eventually be the poster boy for the vaccine idiots of 2021.

Future history teachers pausing it on my face with my thumbs up going, yeah, see that geezer? Six weeks later, he had an arm grown out of his back. Listen to President Rogan. Now, back in January, most people's New Year's resolutions probably included, do not start a futile and unwinnable war to distract from problems at home. But sadly, for all concerned, Vladimir Putin is not most people. And aside from the abominations he's inflicted on Ukraine and its people, he made it a very hard time for optimists and comedians. How do we address all this in a comedy panel quiz show?

Anyone? Well, here's one thing that's cheery about this. For a few days, it seemed as if the country was united in just talking about the horrors and barbarities of Putin. And then over the last few days, I think it's got cheerily back to normal because there's been things to argue about. There have been certain MPs who go, what's happening to people in Ukraine has been horrible, terrible, the refugees, they just deserve all our admiration. Well, can any of

them come here? No, the lying scavengers! And in particular, there was one MP who said, we can invite them over if they're prepared to pick our fruit, Because that's perfect, isn't it? When you've walked 150 miles across a war-torn bloody border with a baby and your house has been shelled, it's good to have something to do to take your mind off it. Nothing's better than picking raspberries. Danny, you have family connections with... Yeah, well, so I've been thinking quite a lot about my dad this week because he came from what was Lvov when he was born,

but then became Lvov in Ukraine. And he was, in 1940, he was arrested by the Russians. Actually, I've got a receipt of all the furniture they left behind when they sent him off to Siberia. So I've been thinking quite a lot about him. He eventually, when he was in Britain, he became Chief Regional Scientific Advisor for London in the case of a nuclear war

so I remember coming home from one of those exercises saying to me we're fine but the Newman's in Mill Hill are really dumb for my favorite one he got this stuff that he was supposed to be doing and they were doing this exercise nuclear exercise he picks up the phone he rings the number that's on the sheet he sort sort of goes, you know, Alpha, Bravo, Tango, 3-7-6-5-2, whatever the nuclear code was, and the person at the other end goes, you're the fifth one I've told today, love, you've got the wrong number. The backlash against Putin was strong. With much of Europe dependent on Russian fuel supplies, however, Vladiputl still had some cards to play. I was wondering if the pipeline was like 404 feet underwater

because that's the exact height of the steeple in Salisbury. Sorry, hang on, hang on. Are you saying they stole Salisbury Cathedral in the middle of the night and jammed it into a pipe? Yeah, this is Nord Stream 1, and it's sequel pipe. Nord Stream 2, it's a gas, which both sprang leaps in suspicious circumstances. The mega pipes, which pump gas from Russia to Germany,

may, and I repeat, may have been definitely sabotaged. So this is pretty bad from an environmental perspective, because even though the pipelines weren't in use, they were full of gas, and it's going to escape and obviously do quite a lot of damage. I'm starting to think Vladimir Putin doesn't really care about the environment, guys. As 2022 continued to stitch its troublesome tapestry,

Britain started playing its part in the Ukraine refugee crisis. People hosted Ukrainian families in their houses, but those seeking to escape from other countries were less fortunate. Priti Patel, using the well-worn out-of-sight, out-of-mind clause of the Magna Carta, formulated the uncunning plan to try to blast asylum seekers across the

equator because, well, just because. Which news ruined the Easter weekend for the Archbishop of Canterbury. OK, so this is clearly the plan to send asylum seekers to Rwanda. I was born a refugee, I'm African.

I have some thoughts, OK? So, first of all, I think it's very arrogant to express this non-welcoming attitude towards refugees because it's based on not understanding that at some point anyone can be a refugee. I was a baby when I was a refugee. You can become a refugee. And I know the English feel so safe that they'll never be refugees,

but the Welsh one day are going to have enough. Outside of Westminster, the cost of living crisis reached alarming levels. Just to say, I think it is the cost of living, obviously, that it's a terrible, it's a difficult time for everyone. I mean, myself, I've just bought a smart meter, or as I like to call it, the anxiety portal. If anyone's listening or watching out there and just live in denial,

don't do it. You think you're going to help yourself, it's like you're getting mugged by your own house in real time. I've realised it's a sad state of affairs that my slow cooker is currently on a better hourly rate than I am.

Yeah, petrol, it's gone through a better hourly rate than I am. Yeah, petrol. It's gone through the roof, hasn't it? I think you might be filling up your car wrong. That's it. I think they should make space hoppers compulsory for journeys under a mile. It would solve the physical health problem, mental health problems.

It'd look fantastic. And we'd all have great thighs. Some of us have great thighs already, thank you. Yeah, but it was weird when you turned up on your space hopper, Alice. Well, it would boost the mood of the country. You can't be angry on a space hopper. Imagine angrily leaving a meeting. Like, you get a disciplinary,

they're like, we're going to have to leave. Oh, well, I'll be going to HR about this. George Eustice, the Environment Minister, suggested that people save money by buying supermarket economy and value products rather than more expensive brands. Now, imagine

you are cabinet ministers, which is sadly not as far-fetched as it might one day have been for a bunch of comedians. What crassly insensitive or well-meaningly idiotic advice would you give to voters about how to save money? Stop eating millionaire shortbread. Clearly unsustainable food stuff. It's pauper shortbread for you unsustainable food stuff. It's pauper shortbread for you.

Know your place. It's a yard saving money, I'm not too sure, but I think there's a way that we like to make money here in the North very easily, and it's just by sticking the name Titanic before anything. I mean, we don't like to talk about it that much,

but we do have a Titanic museum, a Titanic film and studio, a Titanic hotel, a Titanic quarter, a geniusly named Thai restaurant called Thai-tanic. But we don't like to bring it up. I'd say, given the tough times that are ahead of us and the dire economic situation we're going to find ourselves in and the inevitable cuts to public services, I would say turn to crime, because nobody's going to come after you.

Just turn to crime. In a break from the perpetual doom and gloom afflicting the country, or at least in a convenient distraction from it, in June the nation had the pleasure of watching the Queen take tea with Paddington Bear, about the only celebrity in Britain these days who can get away with a hat, duffel coat, no trousers look. Immediately, social media was, of course, awash with speculation

that Paddington was set to replace Prince Andrew in the royal family, but the 12-time Peruvian Bear of the Year's demands for a jacuzzi full of marmalade in his new pad at Windsor Castle proved something of a stumbling block. Nevertheless, there were nationwide celebrations, with many celebrity guests making special appearances, including one of our very own News Quiz panellists. I was part of the pageant procession

because I was deemed to be one of the UK's top 200 national treasures, regular Andy Zaltzman. Sorry, Chris, with all due respect, what? I was on one of the open-top buses, one of the UK's top 200 national treasures. Not sure if I mentioned that, Maisie. I think possibly they needed a little bit more disability representation and couldn't feasibly get a wheelchair up there.

So, um... They were... feasibly get a wheelchair up there. Chris, are you telling me you had like front row seats to the entire Jubilee procession and you couldn't see any of it? Absolutely. I had to have Brian Connolly telling me when to wave and when to stop waving. A couple of times I waved at a tree. Sadly, as the old song goes, life isn't all marmalade sandwiches and tea with the world's leading coin and banknote model. After the Jubilee, the news belly-flopped straight back into the political swamp,

and Boris Johnson faced up to the greatest enemy that most Conservative Party leaders ever have to confront, the Conservative Party. Have any of you ever had 148 colleagues simultaneously tell you you're rubbish? What's so mad is that Boris Johnson came out and said it was decisive. Like, it was many things.

Decisive it was not. It's a pretty... I recently got engaged. If the proposal was, like, will you marry me? And I did the same decisive response as this thing of, yeah, but just only just. The commentary on it is so wild, because people are like, it's either the losingest win you've ever had

or the winningest loss you could possibly imagine. And no-one's quite sure how to feel about it. Except for Boris Johnson, who's smug, but that's his default. It makes me worry about, you know, the education they received. And well, because they're going, OK, 59 to 41% is decisive. And I went, no, no, no, no. As we all know, 52, 48, that's decisive. Johnson fell on his novelty sword shortly after our summer series ended, and we were off air whilst our next Prime Minister, in time on a democratic tradition, was chosen by a fraction of a fraction of a percent of the voting public.

And I'm not joking here, I really mean this, no kidding, you can check it on the internet, they had chosen Liz Truss to be Prime Minister. When we returned in September, the nation promptly went into mourning because sadly the Queen, at the age of 96 and after a record-breaking 70-year reign, had passed away. More than a quarter of a million people

joined the queue to pay their respects as she lay in state at Westminster Hall in London and almost all of them did so without queue jumping, which I think is quite impressive. Well, I've been moved because my mum, she loved the Queen so much. She was born just a few years after the Queen, and I think she always felt like they'd been through life together, and I think for a lot of people of that generation,

she had that sort of feeling like they'd lived their lives in parallel, even though they were from very different worlds. It's very much the way I feel about Kylie Minogue. Kylie probably doesn't know me me but I always respect her and take an interest in her work so so yes it's been a week because we have loads of royal memorabilia at home because my mum when she died we got all the memorabilia so we have got more tea towels with the royal family on and I've got a plate with the Queen Mum, which I keep above the cocktail cabinet. Just because I think if I'm pouring a gin, it's like she's saying, go on, a bit more, a bit more.

It was certainly an unprecedented start for Liz Truss in her first week as Prime Minister. Her intro included cost of living crisis, Ukraine war, restoring the battered reputation and standing of the Conservative Party and trying to deal with the inevitable chaos generated by the fact that Liz Truss was Prime Minister. It's like she's won her prime ministership in a raffle, and then... LAUGHTER And then what she seems to do is she sort of gives departments

to the people who sort of least seem to have any interest in them. So, like, Therese Coffey loves a drink. She can be health. It's like the Minister for Fisheries is going to be a vegan who's allergic to water. She has got that sort of vibe of a really enthusiastic, precocious child that wants to show off. I've done quite a lot of media things.

I recently did a Question Time with her, and we were quite combative during the Question Time thing, and then you have this dinner after question time and she came over to me, plonked a bottle of wine down and she's like, do you want to see my selfies of me and Taylor Swift? And I went, yeah! I'm sure Harold Macmillan

was very similar. Here's me with the Beverley sisters. Newly appointed Health Secretary, very much from the don't-do-as-I-do-or-do-as-I-say school of politicians, had the huge task of saving the NHS. A big job in anyone's book. But in her first couple of weeks, it appeared that there was a more pressing matter on her mind.

Oh, is this an Oxford comma? Correct, yes. Commas. Not defibrillators, isn't it? Which have increasingly been used as a quick way of making cheese toasties by under-pressure staff. As if they can afford the cheese, Andy. It's extraordinary.

Coffey asked staff not to use the so-called Oxford comma, the controversial punctuation mark often used after the penultimate entry in a list, which can cause confusion and is much disliked by the world's most annoying people, Therese Coffee and Jacob Rees-Mogg. Point proved. I'm sure that'll be very soothing to the people who are currently on an NHS waiting list because of a problem with their colon. With the country in crisis,

people struggling with the cost of living, Truss and her Downing Street next-door neighbour and Chancellor of the Exchequer, Kwasi Kwarteng, had to move quickly. So they devised a mini-budget that would soon result in them both having to move quickly. So it's a mini-budget, right? But the reason why it's a mini-budget rather than a proper budget

is because Kwasi Kwarteng, whose name I always think makes him sound like he's not a mini-budget, right? But the reason why it's a mini-budget rather than a proper budget is because Kwasi Kwarteng, whose name I always think makes him sound like he's not a real Kwarteng... LAUGHTER He doesn't want the OBR to check the budget. He wants to just be able to say, meh, maths, and no-one's allowed to say, no, wrong. So it's basically, it's not small, the mini-budget, it's massive, but it's basically, it's not small, the mini budget.

It's massive, but it's just not called an actual budget, I think is what's going on, right? That really irritates me as well, because they're being really specific about it. They're like, it's not a budget. It's a targeted fiscal event. That's what they've called targeted fiscal event. But as we know from Ukraine,

whether you call it a war or a special military operation, the effects are still devastating. And I think the same thing applies to this mini-budget targeted fiscal event. I guess it's that thing of, like, Liz Trust's economic plan is to, like, invest in businesses and all this kind of stuff, and then that will eventually help people who have got less money. But it doesn't really work when people are in, like, immediate peril. It's like seeing someone sort of dangling off the side of a cliff and saying, don't worry, I am going to heavily invest

in the rope industry. It's Liz Truss' big idea, that Britain is going to return to trickle-down economics. And a lot of people don't understand what trickle-down economics is, but basically it's like, if you think of wealth as being like water, then the idea of you've got the rich sitting in the bath, and you add more and more water, eventually it comes over

the sides, and sort of trickles down to the rest of us. But that's obviously not what happens, because the rich just get bigger baths. The Treasury have said that they're not going to publish, like, the economic forecast, which seems to suggest the forecast is not good. Like, you'd be terrified if on the news they said, like,

oh, and over to Jonathan with the weather, and then Jonathan just goes, yeah, I'd rather not say. 2022 has arguably been the best year the Labour Party has had for quite a while. Admittedly, that's an achievement to rank alongside most heat-resistant cucumber, but still. Keir Starmer is up in the polls, and essentially all they've really had to do is point to the Conservative Party, look quizzically at the public, and then point to the Conservative Party again. Nevertheless, Starmer could not avoid Partygate completely, as he was accused of drinking a beer with enjoyment of forethought during lockdown in Durham.

Well, Labour just don't sit. Just even with a government that's just utterly, utterly in chaos and people don't like it and everything, but Labour... When Keir Starmer popped up because of all the parties and everything, first of all, I sort of felt the same way as if you see a branch of Woolworths that's open. You think, oh, I'd forgot you were still going. And then you get these sort of well-meaning Labour Party members

and you think, oh, bless you, I know you mean well, but they make these speeches where they go, we have now got more poverty in the country than at any time since the Stone Age. There are over two million food banks in my street alone. When I look out of the window, I see nothing but relentless misery and gloom and no slight, even faintest, glimmer of hope.

Vote Labour. In terms of the politics of it, Michael, Labour's attempted to consolidate its hold on politics' moral not-quite-as-low ground by Starmer and Angela Rayner pledging to resign if fined by the Durham police after their election campaign curry. In terms of the political strategy of it, do you think this is a smart move to say that he will quit?

Well, I don't think it's a smart move by the Conservatives. I don't understand why they're trying to get rid of Starmer, putting all this pressure on him, because I would have thought he was an electoral asset to them, if anything. I mean, if the Conservatives were a bit smarter, they'd be doing everything they can to keep Starmer in. You know, they'd be going to the press and saying,

oh, no, no, he's clearly drinking, you know, a mango smoothie, not a beer, and it was actually ten in the morning, not ten at night. This is the thing, I think we've learnt, if we've learnt nothing else over the last couple of years, is that British people don't seem to mind when their politicians lie. And I think Keir Starmer's just going to have to get on board with that. He's just going to have to start... Just tell them what they want to hear, Keir.

I mean, for Christ's sake, I'm only here because I told Andy I like cricket. I can't stand it! This year, we took the news quiz to Liverpool for the first time, where Labour had just held their most successful, or at least least squabbly, party conference for years. I was backstage sort of reading all the reaction to Labour's 33-point lead in the polls, and they've asked also on YouGov,

do you think Rishi would be doing a better or worse job if he'd have won? And 13% of people said worse. And I want to know what they think he might have done. He'd have to have a firework up his backside, a flaming sambuca in his hand and just smearing excrement all over Parliament. What could he possibly do but burn the place to the ground? I love your use of excrement, then.

Yeah, I think you sort of look at what's going on and Labour can't help but feel a little bit hopeful, really. And Keir Starmer had a good week. He delivered a speech which lots of people thought... I mean, let's face it, Kistama isn't the greatest orator in the world. But he sort of, you know, he did the job. He's done some really good interviews. So yeah, I think, you know, this was the first conference in a really long time where the mood was, oh my God, we might be in government in two years.

It might be two weeks. It might be two weeks. Despite his rise up the most likely next Prime Minister rankings, it is safe to say that Keir Starmer is still not quite universally loved. According to a senior Labour Party figure in the ramp to the local elections, and really the first major electoral test of Keir Starmer's leadership, he said this, Whenever I see Keir, the image that often comes to mind is of a what any guesses or tell me what image comes to your mind well oddly he said a wooden plank yes which puzzled me

maybe i've led a sheltered life and there are plastic planks and but he said yeah he said that kia starmer is is a plank That's not necessarily a disadvantage in an election because there are moments when voters crave a plank. If the previous incumbent has been showing a bit too much personality, we often go with a plank, don't we? You know, you had Thatcher, big personality, followed by Major, plank. Then we had Blair, personality, brown, plank.

Then we had Cameron. Looked like... Looked like a personality, but in reality, plank. And then we had Theresa May, pure plank. And then we had Johnson, multiple personalities, all dysfunctional. So vote blank is not a bad slogan sometimes, you know. So it may not be a problem for him. By the time of the Conservative Party conference in Birmingham,

the party had a new slogan. OMG, what the hell have we done and who the hell have we got to do it? The mood, therefore, was not quite so jovial as it had been for Labour. Yeah, I thought it was quite a good speech. I mean, I'm saying that. I mean, I'm trying to be quite sort of toilet half full about the whole thing. Many because of Tory party conferences, the bar is very, very low.

Considering that it was just a few years ago that when Theresa May gave it, the set started collapsing around her like a Buster Keaton movie and she audibly had smallpox. So this was an improvement. The problem was she did new material. And we wanted to hear the classics.

You know, there were loads of Tories in the crowd going, do pork markets. And she did. We wanted cheese, cheese, cheese. I printed off her speech and I noticed that she was trying to hypnotise us because she listed unions and Lib Dems, SNP and Labour memes,

broadcasts and podcasts and folks who vote for anti-growth, growth, growth, growth, growth. Your income tax, your VAT, your money back, your guarantee. Black or white, rich or poor. Well, the time now is to turn to technology and welcome back our old friend, my favourite piece of politico tech, the Equivicax subtextricator 8000P. Now, this is quite a high-tech piece of kit I've got here.

It interprets what people really mean when they say something. I'll just switch this on. Subtextricator on. OK, so let's find out what the Prime Minister really meant in her speech, starting with when she said this. I know what it's like to live somewhere that isn't feeling the benefits of economic growth. Let's find out what she really meant.

I live in the United Kingdom under my own government. Let's have the next clip. That is why I'm determined to take a new approach and break us out of this high-tax, low-growth cycle. Yeah, and what did that mean? I will end 12 years of Conservative government by making my party completely unelectable. All of this economic pandemoniumism

led to Chancellor Kwasi Kwarteng's speed resigning and being replaced by blast-from-the-past Jeremy Hunt. For the second time in the year, the Prime Minister was left trying to bat off resignations like a jam-smeared priest batting off a swarm of atheist wasps. Even arch-loyalist Suella Braverman allegedly felt obligated to resign after breaching government security rules by sending confidential files from her personal email address. But luckily for both Braverman and any airlines operating the lucrative London to Rwanda route, breaching government security rules became no big deal again within a week because Liz Truss herself was forced to

resign after lasting less long as Prime Minister than the average News Quiz series. Well, 45 days means that she eclipses George Canning's record as the shortest-serving prime minister in British political history. He served for 119 days and was only forced from office by no longer being alive. Surely that's cheating, isn't it? I think so. Whereas Truss obviously has managed to sort of blow up her own administration, digging a £60 billion pit of fiscal doom

from which it proved impossible to escape. And so you have sort of unfunded tax cuts, a mini run on the pound, guilt yield soaring, which prompted a pension fund crisis and an emergency intervention from the Bank of England. And as the waters were rising, the ship was sinking. Truss boldly suggested that this was the plan all along. On Thursday, outside Dining Street, she said,

I came into office at a time of great economic instability, which is obviously true, although on account of place she forgot to add, and then I made it much worse. You know, as a general rule, it's normally pretty bad when the rate of inflation is higher than a Prime Minister's approval

rating. With Rishi Sunak now in office to try to start steering the Conservative Titanic back upwards for another crack at the iceberg, we look forward to seeing how many Prime Ministers we'll have in 2023. Out of all the political resignations this year, however, perhaps the most surprising was a town councillor in Wales

who quit after false and not especially scurrilous accusations that he was the mysterious, as yet unidentified street artist, Banksy. He might be. We don't know. I don't think he is, just for the sheer amount of trips he'd have to do from Pembroke Dock to Bristol with today's petrol prices. I mean, you'd have to sell your pieces for half a million quid. That's going to be it. Do you think we've stumbled across something? That if you accuse someone of being Banksy, they have to sell your pieces for half a million quid. That's going to be it. Do you think we've stumbled across something?

That if you accuse someone of being Banksy, they have to resign. Ooh. Well, it is... Well, it is a strange world, isn't it? That he felt he had to resign because he was facing false claims that he was something that it is legal to be.

I love the fact that why they suspected he was... He's a street artist anyway. And he says, the reason they thought it was me is we were at the same sort of places at the same sort of times. I.e. walls at night. Are we supposed to believe that that was Banksy's long game? To be a councillor in Pembroke Dock? Yeah.

Did he have a farewell party? Because if he did, I hope there was a little girl that presented him with a red balloon. So, all in all, it has been another tumultuous year in this turbulent decade. Before we go, though, there's just enough time to bring you some of the breaking news you might have missed had we at the News Quiz not taken our role as a news-gather gathering organisation quite so seriously.

The new celebrity TV show The Masked Surgeon has been suspended following the near fatal appendectomy performed by Walrus on Judge Robert Winston. Show producer Belstrade Noggins admitted we hadn't factored the logistics of Walrus's flippers and tusks. I'm 48 and this is my job. Breaking news reaching us. The government has announced that a new list of priorities is now a priority. Seeking to allay public concerns

that the government have not got their priorities right, Downing Street spokesman Ellsworth Nodgley today confirmed that prioritising their priorities was now a clear priority, which is earmarked for prioritisation as soon as possible, and that by the end of October, or some other month, Britain will have more and better priorities than any other nation in the world.

Thank you to all our panellists, writers and production team who've contributed to the News Quiz this year. Thanks to you for listening, and thanks above all to all the politicians, chancers, incompetents, ne'er-do-wells and scoundrels who have given us enough news to quiz. You're right, I did just look up politician in the special 2022 thesaurus. Sorry, it's late in the year. We do hope you enjoyed the News Quiz in 2022. We're back next week with a brand new series to see what the new year, which experts still predict will be 2023, will bring. will be 2023, will bring.

The News Quiz Best of 2022 was written and presented by me, Andy Zaltzman. The producer was Georgia Keating, and it was a BBC Studios production. Hello, this is Marion Keys. And this is Tara Flynn. We host a podcast you might like for BBC Radio 4 and BBC Sounds called Now You're Asking. Thank you.