Friday Night Comedy from BBC Radio 4 - The Naked Week with Andrew Hunter Murray

Episode Date: September 29, 2023

The sixth of our satirical specials this summer. From The Skewer’s Jon Holmes comes The Naked Week, a fresh way of dressing the week’s news in the altogether and parading it around for everyone to laugh at. Host Andrew Hunter Murray (No Such Thing As A Fish, QI Elf, Private Eye) will strip away the curtain and dive into not only the big stories, but also at the way in which the news is packaged and presented. From award-winning writers and a crack team of contemporary satirists - and recorded in front of a live audience - The Naked Week delivers a (consensual) topical news nude straight to your ears. An unusual production for BBC Radio 4.

This is the BBC. This podcast is supported by advertising outside the UK. All day long. Taxes extra at participating Wendy's until May 5th. Terms and conditions apply. BBC Sounds. Music, radio, podcasts. Hello, I'm Andrew Hunter-Murray and this is The Naked Week. The week that saw Rishi Sunak reshuffle his cabinet in much the same way that arsonists recently reshuffled the Crooked House pub in Dudley. Sunak's reshuffle, what is it going to achieve? It is the political equivalent of fitting an ice machine in the bar on the Titanic. It is a waste of time. It won't make things better, it may make things worse. But stepping into the rearranged role of Chief Deck Chair for the Ministry of Defence, of course, is Grant Shapps. And on Sky News, Lord Dannett, the former Chief of the General Staff of the British Army, said...

And now we have a new Defence Secretary who knows very little about defence. Right. Well, I, for one, can't wait to say Zastarovia to our new Russian overlords. So, elsewhere this week on The Naked Week, even though Nadine Dorries has finally formally resigned, her constituents are still hoping for an elusive sighting

or proof that she even exists. Dozens are gathered joining a two-day search. We've got drones going up tonight, so they'll be using thermal imaging cameras. It's just the mystery around it all. Trump's arrest photo merch is selling fast, but his fans are being called out. Much of the money comes from mugs.

On Good Morning Britain this week, Richard Madeley continues to ask the big questions. How many squirrels make a burger? How many squirrels make a burger? It's very easy, Richard. It's four. One to butter the bun, one to fry the mints, one to do the seasoning, and Nutkin does the washing up. And Tory chair Lee Anderson and James Sunderland MP finally settle their decades-long dispute

over which is the best Britney Spears song. Toxic. Toxic. It is toxic. To be fair to them, it is toxic. And as thousands of UK holidaymakers remain stranded due to the flight chaos, the newspapers decide now is the perfect time for a pun-off. The paper inside uses the headline, Despair Port, Flight Mayors is what the Mirror calls it. Absolutely shit lazy journalism is what I calls it.

So, as Grant Shapps gets his feet under the fifth different part of the Cabinet Office table in under a year, it's time for a catch-up with no-one's favourite minister, Suella Braverman. There's palpable excitement in the room at that name. Earlier this week, as part of her ongoing campaign to jail everyone in Britain by the end of the year... LAUGHTER ..the Home Secretary demanded that the police investigate every single report of theft. She told BBC Breakfast...

There is no such crime as minor crime. ..which means that eating a sandwich while driving is now every bit as serious as deliberately hurling a series of orphans into a ravine. On the plus side, it means we can look forward to lots more true crime podcasts next year, where earnest presenters will attempt to exonerate death row inmates whose Kit Kats didn't go through the co-op self-scanner properly. As you might expect, to promote all this, Suella did the breakfast news rounds, outlining her new strategy alongside her asylum seeker plan with all her usual charm

of a praying mantis that somehow shops at Bowden. When are people going back onto the Bibby Stockholm? As soon as we've completed all of the relevant checks. I mean, you still haven't completed all of the relevant checks? As I said, as soon as the checks are completed... So it's still not safe? No, you're wrong. Struffy. On the Today programme on Radio 4,

home editor Mark Easton was asked to describe Suella's sunny disposition and naturally appealing nature. Minuscule. There is no evidence. There is nothing there. Right. Thank you, Mark. But Suella's list of the scale of these crimes is even worse than we thought. Just listen to her round-up of what's been stolen. So whether your phone's stolen,

or your watch is stolen, or whether your car is stolen, whether your bike has been stolen, whether your house has been stolen. What? People's houses are being stolen? Thankfully, the government have taken proactive steps to deter house thieves by halving the value of everyone's home over the last 18 months.

But then it was over, almost before it began. We are just about out of time. Good morning. And out of time they were. Obviously, this is a common problem with the media in general. There is always more to say about a story, but there's just no time. But what if there was? What if there was time, but it's simply been wasted rather than used for news?

What if the BBC's self-styled flagship news show was its own worst enemy, like Elon Musk in a stop doing all this crazy shit competition? And so, in the service of you, the great British licence fee payer in capital letters, we gave one of our researchers a stop watch and we forced him to listen to a whole week of the Today programme. Someone in the front row just went, God. The whole week, every last second of it, 17 hours of current affairs noise dumped into his ear canal like sewage into... Well, like sewage into an actual canal.

Now, unfortunately, he had to be carted off to the Radio 4 hospital after ingesting ten times the recommended daily allowance of Amol Rajan. But while we were clearing out his desk and lying to his family about what had happened, we found this recording he'd made consisting entirely of the same two words. Good morning, Mr Roberts. Good morning, Michelle. Sir Geoff, good morning to you. And good morning.

Good morning, Felicity. Morning, yes. Let's talk to Duncan Wrigley. Duncan, good morning. Good morning. Michael, good morning. Good morning. Natalie, good morning. Good morning.. Duncan, good morning. Good morning. Michael, good morning. Good morning. Natalie, good morning. Good morning. Sir Bob, good morning. Good morning. Good morning to you.

Good morning. Good morning. Good morning to you, Freddie. Very good morning. Good morning again. Morning to you, John. Sally, good morning. Good morning.

Good morning. Good morning. Good morning to you both. Good morning. Morning, Will. Morning, Amal. Morning. Morning.

Morning. Morning. Morning. Morning. Good morning to you. Good morning. It's actually evening here. Oh.

Variety is the spice of life. Now, like us, you are probably wondering how much wasted time all that good morning-ing adds up to. So, to crunch the numbers on all this, please welcome a man who first rose to fame on University Challenge and who's since gone on to become the nation's most beloved and, crucially for us, affordable maths guru, it's Bobby Seagull! Bobby, good morning.

Sorry. False of habit. Now, you've been looking into this for us, of course. Can you tell us, once and for all, how much time the Today programme wastes on this stuff? Well, people saying good morning to each other averages out at 25 seconds per hour, which may not sound like a lot, but that adds up to seven minutes and five seconds per week, which works out at 368 minutes and 20 seconds of good mornings per year.

368 minutes. So that is over six hours of Precious Today programme every year that is just people saying good morning to each other. Six hours and eight minutes. For context, that's longer than Barbenheimer, longer than the complete works of Steely Dan, including all nine studio albums, but excluding live albums and bootlegs, and far, far longer than the lifespan of a Keir Starmer policy.

This is extraordinary, Bobby. It's quite something. So how else is today wasting the licence fee? Obviously, apart from Thought for the Day. Well, there's also a lot of this. Thank you so much for joining us. Really nice to talk to you. Thank you very much. Thanks for taking the time. Thank you very much indeed. Well, there's been a fascinating programme. Now, the thank yous average out at 30 seconds per hour, which is 510 seconds a week, which is 442 minutes, or 7 hours 22 minutes per year.

And if you add that to the good mornings, the total amount of airtime spent each year on unnecessary politeness is approximately 13 and a half hours. 13 and a half hours. I know I shouldn't swear on BBC Radio 4, but crikey. That is more than four days' worth of Today programme

being just hosed up the wall every year. This is very poor value for the licence payer. Bobby, you know, is 25 seconds an hour of good morning really all that wasteful? Not compared to commercial radio. Take LBC breakfast show host Nick Ferrari. Now, Nick has a very unusual party trick, which is to resist saying good morning

until as late as humanly possible. So it's like a kind of tantric good morning. Indeed. And he really does make you wait for that good morning. Here he is engaging in some extreme delayed gratification with Michael Gove. So let's go to Michael Gove. I'm sure he's going to tell us more about this announcement. Piloted some years ago by Margaret Thatcher,

the idea that people will be able to buy their housing association or council housing. Even benefit claimants proclaims one headline in The Times, a paper of great record. Can we just touch on one thing before we get to details on this, Mr Gove? I have to say, you will be aware, petrol prices spiked by their highest level since 17 years. The OECD says the UK economy will grow 3.6% this year, followed by 0% growth next year, and others are saying we're looking at double-digit inflation. What are you and your senior colleagues going to do about it? Good morning. 40 seconds of build-up before that particular release, ladies and gentlemen. I need a cold shower.

By the way, we actually did ask the BBC press office to comment on our findings, but we received no reply whatsoever because I suspect they thought we were all just wasting their time. Oh, sorry. You've just caught me playing with my new gadget. It's called the Pocket Parliament.

It's basically a portable version of the House of Commons audio experience. It's amazing. It really is great. Just listen to this. Ah, yes, this is Lee Anderson's Axe body spray setting off the fire alarm again. He did try Lynx Africa, but he didn't like it, sent it back. I've also just downloaded the Pocket Parliament software update

because it now has a Nadine Dorey's Letter to Rishi feature. I'll scream and scream and scream until I'm sick and I can't. Lovely stuff. Reading through the enormous weight of newspaper opinion columns, one of the stories that caught the eye this week, glistening like the trail left behind by Grant Shapps when he crosses a wooden floor, was the ongoing libel case of former actor, former Mr. Billy Piper, and current Lawrence Fox, who argued successfully this week that his labelling a man a paedophile during an online

argument didn't mean Fox was stating the person was actually a paedophile. Instead, he was merely being abusive. That's a real legal point, because simply being abusive, that's not libel at all. So, for instance, if I was to say to you that Lawrence is a way-faced, lonely ghoul with a head shaped like a mortuary worker's croc shoe and eyes like two spoiled oysters floating in an abandoned council Lido, that wouldn't be libel. I sincerely hope. No, it wouldn't be libel because in legal terms it is simply vulgar abuse. It's not even actionable if I said Lawrence Fox took the unusual step of asking for a jury at his libel trial because 12 good men and true would constitute his biggest audience for years.

Anyway, to help us through this legal mire, please welcome a very busy media lawyer, and we know that because his slate includes the weekly pop bitch mail out, it's Duncan Lamont! pop bitch mail out. It's Duncan Lamont! So, Duncan, we're interested to know what we can say about a public figure. Now, we know that we can't accuse them of anything illegal, and we know we can't say they're dead. That would be libelous. But we do want to see what we can and can't

say. So, just to pick a name of thin air, someone who's never any trouble, doesn't cause any litigation, Nigel Farage. Okay? Great. Now, Nigel's been all over the news this week with his ULEZ thoughts. Well, it's either that or he clicked on the letter E in Microsoft Excel. It proves there is a fifth column. Literally a fifth column.

So my question about Nigel Farage is this. Can we say definitively on air, on Radio 4, that he eats out of bins? No, because unfortunately that would be defamatory. He would say the defamatory meaning, because of the coots bank and everything else, was that he was broke, and that's a quite serious allegation to make.

OK, well, in that case, he definitely doesn't eat out of bins, and we're happy to set the record straight. What if we said... And it's shameful that some people have been spreading it around. Right. What if we said, Duncan, that he eats out of pot bins? Like a skip round the back of a waitress. Is that any better? You'd like to think it was better, but again, I'm afraid to say it's the wrong side of the line, because he would argue the same point. You're saying he can't pay his debts.

OK, OK, I appreciate that. Is the issue that if he did sue, we would have to prove that he eats out of pot bits? If you could do that, yes, but you'd have to have him rooting around in a bin. Yeah, OK. If we found someone who looked like him eating out of a pot of bread, would that get us out of a jam?

I'm afraid not. Could we not hire a Nigel Farage look-alike? If we photographed him in the biffer bin behind Fortnum's making canapes out of discarded figs and bits of old hamper, I mean, that would prove it, wouldn't it? You'd get into a lot of trouble. All right. Well, is there anything that we can accuse him of that he hasn't done and still be legally

watertight? So if we say he's been to the moon, is that actionable? No. It's not actionable. So we can't say he's been to the moon? Yes, because it's not defamatory, but it would be potentially a breach of the guidelines about accuracy. OK. I'm afraid there's always a breach of the guidelines about accuracy. Okay.

To come to face it, there's always a trap with Nigel Farage. We might... Is there some wiggle room? We might be able to say he's been to the moon? Yes. But we definitely can't say he eats out of posh bins. No.

No, okay. Okay, we're getting somewhere. So what if we said that while he was on the moon... He bit the head off a clanger? Er, the problem with that, I'm afraid to say, is rights to the clangers. Clangers are litigious, we know that now. OK, let's change it.

Could we say he killed a womble? On the moon. Don't be ridiculous, Duncan, there are no wombles on the moon. Don't be ridiculous, Duncan. There are no wombles on the moon. I mean, is it even safer if we say he got into a punch-up with a womble? Because then what we will be describing is a man having a fight with an admittedly elaborate cushion. He would say that the implication is that he beat up someone in a womble suit. Ah. OK, I think I'm clear now. So

just to clarify for everybody here, if you are thinking of going on social media and repeating the claim that a former leader of UKIP finds nourishment in the black sacks of posh shops to build up his strength for space travel where he willfully murders puppets, don't do that.

It could be libel. As Nadine Dorries resigns this week in order to spend more time... In order to spend more time with the autocue from her talk TV show... As you were, soon that stability extends to the Cabinet with the big beefsteak

and all our cages but the Bradleman back at home in the Home Office. Sorry, I've just completely messed up. Oh, dear. Parliament's loss, in this case, is also television's loss. But it has highlighted again this week the rules surrounding politicians presenting news programmes,

and Ofcom are currently looking into this with no fewer than seven outstanding investigations into talk TV rival GB News. Now, here on The Naked Week, we don't want to dwell on that. Quite the opposite. We want to wish GB News a very happy anniversary because this summer they turn two years old and, like many two-year-olds, they spend a lot of their time performatively wetting themselves for attention. Here's presenter Martin Daubney. This anniversary wasn't even mentioned on the BBC or Sky News homepages.

All too often, the establishment media looks the other way when stories don't fit their narrative. Au contraire, Martin. Au contraire. That's French for on the contrary, by the way. Rather than looking the other way, we wanted to join the anniversary celebrations and the incredible milestone that they have reached. Here is anchor Dan Wootten.

I'm delighted to tell you that our YouTube channel has hit the big one million. Now, one million is no small fry, of course. GB News now has twice as many subscribers as The Wax Whisperer, a YouTube channel dedicated to filming earwax removal. Our researcher did actually watch GB News for two hours, during which time she was one of 1,600 viewers watching the live stream. And for comparison, 30,000 people were instead watching the YouTube channel Cozy Fireplace Ambience with Crackling Sounds.

So, tonight, why not settle down in front of cosy fireplace ambience with crackling sounds, pop on GB News and enjoy this message from the channel's absolute anchor. You can watch me live on GB News from 9pm. No reason to go to bed. Ah. Very nice of Dan to offer to be on that side of the camera

for once. Allegedly. Anyway, happy second birthday, GB News! ULEZ, the ultra-low emission zone, which expanded to cover all 32 London boroughs on Tuesday. It's made Sadiq Khan London's most unpopular mayor since

Dick Whittington charged his cat 12 quid to enter its own litter tray. Climate change is, of course, a very hot topic, not least because a lot of things are on fire at the moment. Here in the UK, as far as the RSPB are concerned, it's the government's pants that are on fire after they accused them this week of reneging on environmental promises over housing developments. The RSPB did eventually apologise. They said they'd attacked the person and not the policy. And you really don't want to be attacked by the RSPB, because they can break your arm with a single blow. So, from this week's RSPB row to the Cabinet reshuffle,

via the Duke of York marching back to the top of the headlines without breaking a sweat, via the Duke of York marching back to the top of the headlines without breaking a sweat. One thing we can be sure of is the sheer weight of columnists' opinions we're all going to be buried under come the weekend. Columnists are ten a penny. Or, if you're the Daily Mail hiring Boris Johnson, one a shitload. This week I'm sure we've all enjoyed his opinion

on whatever opportunistic bandwagon he decided to hitch his cartload of spaffed Latin into in the eight minutes before the filing deadline rolled around before trotting back to his bedroom nude to lie on top of a mirror. Yeah, thanks, yeah. I've seen it, now you have to. But the sheer volume of all the weekly weighty opinions on offer got the Naked Week team thinking. Daily mirror mirror on the wall, which is the weightiest of them all? Sorry, don't know what that was.

And crucially, is there one publication in particular with more heft than the rest? Now, it wouldn't be The New Statesman. It's far too much soft lefty liberalism. It certainly wouldn't be Private Eye, the weedy nerd of the newsstand. Why not, in the end, go for the first out of the pack? The oldest weekly magazine in the world,

first published in 1828. Yes, The Spectator. Now, there is a weighty publication. Everyone writes for The Spectator. The great, the good, Toby Young. So, who wouldn't stand up behind that line-up of piping hot takes, stone-cold truths and bulletproof logic? And that's when it hit us.

Would a single copy of The Spectator be weighty enough to stop a bullet? to stop a bullet. Obviously, it would be ludicrously irresponsible to fire a bullet at a periodical with an audience in close proximity. Right? Right. Ridiculous. And more importantly, if for some reason one copy of The Spectator couldn't stop a bullet, what could?

And if you're now thinking, wait, they're surely not stupid enough to attempt some kind of horrendously risky bullet-catch-style magic trick just to prove a pretty tenuous point about the British media, well, think again. We are that stupid. We are entirely stupid enough to attempt exactly that. So to perform this very real and, some would say, unnecessarily dangerous stunt,

the first time a bullet-catch has ever been performed on the radio. Please welcome internationally renowned magician, member of the Magic Circle, and man who's prepared to risk his life for a tiny percentage of a BBC topical comedy show budget, Chris Dodd! Chris, I am so excited about this.

We're actually going to do this. I should specify just before we begin that real bullets are not actually allowed in performing this trick in this country, so what we are going to be using is, I believe, a paintball instead. Is that right? That's right. Alec Baldwin ruined that for us. So I've got a paintball gun. OK.

Now, what you're getting at, just for the listeners at home, this looks like a really angry pistol. That's right. It's a 68 calibre paintball gun. It fires gelatin capsules filled with paint at 300 feet a second. Ooh! I know. We have here a copy of The Spectator

threaded through a haberdashery hoop. On this week's edition, there is a picture, a comic take, of an American politician's recent police mugshot. And it's stretched taut through the haberdashery hoop, ironing out a few crinkles that the Botox missed. The amazing thing is, when you say an American politician's a recent police mugshot,

it genuinely could be one of a few, and that is striking. Got a couple of safety goggles here. OK. Just to confirm, Andy, you have picked a bullet, you've signed the bullet, you've loaded the bullet into the gun, you are now holding the gun. I've got the gun in my left hand, I've got the Spectator magazine in my right, I'm holding him here, I'm holding the gun about an are now holding the gun. I've got the gun in my left hand, I've got the spectator magazine in my right,

I'm holding him here, I'm holding the gun about an inch away from the spectator. I'm going to stand about 10 paces back and you're going to aim through the spectator magazine, making sure that ball penetrates it. Okay. I'm going to be catching the bullet in the champagne glass here. I'm going to get this audience to give a countdown from three, two and one. I'll give the signal to do that. Are you ready?

Yeah. Three, two, one. The glass is empty. Chris has missed the glass. And yet, inside his mouth... ..a pristine paintball. I need to get... I need to look and see... Can you confirm that's your bullet? A pristine paintball. I need to get... I need to look and see... Can you confirm that's your bullet?

It has the initials of the Naked Week. Ladies and gentlemen, successfully catching a bullet shot through a copy of The Spectator to demonstrate how weighty or not its opinions are, Chris Dodd! Now, that's just about all we've got time for on the Naked Week, where this week we've been rending the undergarments of the news, and that's what we think.

But more importantly, what do those who live in the bottom half of the internet, in the comments section beneath the stories themselves, and even more importantly, what do the most batshit comments sound like when sung as opera? I know it's the question you've always wanted answered. So, to play us out with a piece we are calling Arguments from the Comments section of the Daily Express website set to music in the style of Mozart,

please welcome the Naked Week Light Operatic Society. Goodbye! Goodbye! Although the snowflake remainers will never allow it You need Jack Emoji, you need Jack Emoji, you need Jack Emoji, you need Jack Emoji, you need Jack Emoji Chilly Penguin 988884917 replies Clutching at stores much? LOL You have absolutely no idea What a classic Flag shagger

The Tories are wrecking The country Tories spelt with two O's for some reason But you lot would vote For a potato if it had a blue rosette To which the original poster After due Consideration Replies To which the original poster, after due consideration, replies,

If Niva gets elected, I will emigrate to France. Ted! Emoji. emoji You couldn't make it up You couldn't make it up You couldn't make it up You couldn't make it up You couldn't make it up. Three exclamation marks.

Three exclamation marks. Sarah Dempster Gareth Keredig Jason Haisley Adam McQueen Louis Mian With guests Bobby Seagull Duncan Lamont Sarah Gabriel And the magic of Chris Dodd Additional nudity from Carl Minns Nicky Roberts Cooper Mahwini Swert

Kevin Swift Mark Haynes It was produced and directed by John Holmes And was an unusual production for BBC Radio 4 You couldn't make it up. Thank you. Westminster like the back of my fist. Every hair, every knuckle and cranny, every electoral vein clogging the pores of the hand of history. Throughout my career in print, and also out loud like this, I've broken some of Parliament's biggest stories, embargoes and egos. Now, in my new podcast, I'm going to take you under the bonnet and into the cogs of our nation's

democratic machine, discovering what makes it tick. And if it does tick, I'll be finding out if it's more like a car or a clock with wheels. If it's clock, I'll ask if a week is a long time in politics, how long's a month? And if it's car, I'll ask who's really in the Westminster driving seat and also why and how and who again. And obviously I'll be joined each week by someone famous but not qualified and is only here because they have the kind of follow account that makes BBC executives go weak at the algorithms. So join me, Bindis Jonestown, every week

on Inside the Bubble, Pissing Out. A brand new podcast from the people who brought you other countless similar political podcasts such as The New Spies, Whitehall Can't Jump with Adam Fleming and the big political circus Maximus cast with Claudia Winkleman and Ken Clarke.

Subscribe now on your favourite podcast app or on BBC Sound. I want something better than that. No. What's wrong with cool Jonathan Pye? It's really boring. OK, so let's all do a brain fart. Actually, what about that? Jonathan Pye's brain fart. It's hilarious. Jonathan Pye, off my chest. Off my chest. Chewing the fat, chewing the pie. Chewing the cud.

Cud? The title for my new phone-in show is Jonathan Pye chews his own sick. I'm just spitballing. Let's just spitball. Jonathan Pye spits balls. Should we just spitball. Jonathan Pye spits balls. Should we just stick with Call Jonathan Pye? Yes. Call Jonathan Pye. Listen first on BBC Sounds.

This is the first radio ad you can smell. The new Cinnabon pull-apart only at Wendy's. It's ooey, gooey, and just five bucks with a small coffee all day long. Taxes extra at participating Wendy's until May 5th. Terms and conditions apply.