Friday Night Comedy from BBC Radio 4 - The News Quiz – 13th January

Episode Date: February 10, 2023

Andy Zaltzman is joined by Lucy Porter, Mark Steel, Ayesha Hazarika and Ian Smith. This week they discuss ongoing strike action, the Labour Party's political transactions and a royal family fraction.Hosted and written by Andy Zaltzman with additional material from Alice Fraser, Mike Shephard, Aidan Fitzmaurice and Jade Gebbie.Producer: Georgia Keating Executive Producer: Pete Strauss Production Co-ordinator: Becky Carewe-Jeffries Sound Editor: Marc WillcoxA BBC Studios Production

This is the BBC. This podcast is supported by advertising outside the UK. BBC Sounds. Music, radio, podcasts. Your mission, Andy Zaltzman, should you choose to accept it, is to find something in the public sector that is working. Have you got any missions that are a bit less, um... Impossible? Yeah, that's the word I'm looking for, yeah.

Try this one. Your mission, should you choose to accept it, is to turn a sausage back into a live pig. It's a bit easy, but have you got anything else? Can you make Britain a major player in the space industry? Not this week, mate, no. Easy, but have you got anything else? Can you make Britain a major player in the space industry?

Not this week, mate, no. Try and make this week's news at least partially entertaining. That'll have to do. We'll go with that one. Right. This government will self-destruct in fives. Enough now. It's time for the News Quiz. Welcome to the News Quiz, the show designed to fit perfectly into the average waiting time in A&E.

If you listen to it on a loop, 35 times in a row. Our teams this week, we have Team Spare against Team Spare Us. On Team Spare, it's Mark Steele and Aisha Hazarika. On Team Spare Us, it's Ian Smith and Lucy Porter. Our first question goes to Mark and Aisha on Team Spare. Pick the odd two out from the following list. Civil servants, nurses, bus workers, ambulance drivers, postal workers, highways agency staff, teachers, driving test examiners, train drivers, border force, billionaires,

the DVLA, airport baggage handlers, traffic officers and mermaids. I suppose it's billionaires and mermaids, just because they aren't on strike, although they probably are. Although I think mermaid strike would be... I'd love to see that, wouldn't you? As General Secretary of the National Union of Mermaids and Allied Aquatic Mythical Creatures, our members have been sat on rocks up to 17 hours a day in a single ship.

The thing is, mermaids are generally self-employed, not very good at coordinating for industrial action. And tragic figures, of course, mermaids, because we never see the full story of mermaid life. It's only the Hollywood myth, not the full harrowing reality of life as a mermaid and the difference in life expectancy between the top half and the bottom half.

Ayesha, it's a strange time for the government where it seems that basically nothing is working in the public sector and that finger of blame just keeps landing back in their face, having been in power for 12 and a half years. And yet they are trying to blame everything and everybody rather than themselves. But it is extraordinary that you have got this complete sort of broken Britain right now.

Nothing is working. And what the government have decided to do, instead of fixing the problems and paying people properly, they've decided to bring in really draconian anti-strike laws and so we've gone from clapping nurses to now we're effectively going to sack nurses and the spin around it is amazing

because they've said no, no, no, we're not sacking nurses we're just going to take away all their employment rights How have you been enjoying strike season? Yeah, you've just got to take away all their employment rights. How have you been enjoying strike season? Yeah, you've just got to use your sort of common sense, really. I don't call 999. It must be annoying, though, to have a cardiac arrest to on hold music.

I mean, there's been talk of people having to wait 90 minutes for an ambulance after calling 999. I guess that makes it important when you call, because you know you're going to have to wait. You want a distraction for those 90 minutes. So try and have your heart attack at the start of a football match. But also, I know, Ian, you've been looking at the other numbers that we can call in these...

Oh, yeah. So 111 is what you call in a sort of non-emergency case. 999 is emergency. And I was wondering what the other three-digit numbers mean. 222 is for when your ball has gone into a neighbour's garden. 333 is dairy-based problems. So if you've run out of eggs, milk's gone

off. But also metaphorical dairy problems. So if you've put all your eggs in one basket. 444 is for when you can't get a song out of your head. And that's quite a fun one because when you call them this, you're through to 444, what have you called us, 444?

It's a bit of fun. 555, BBC Complaints Department. 666, obviously that's satanic stuff. And ITV, they share an office. 777 is for the headaches you get after you've bought someone a present from Lush.

And 888 is for injuries, but the sort of injuries that you would shout, it's only a flesh wound! 999, emergency services. 10 flesh wound! Too bad. 999 Emergency Services, 101010 Clairvoyance. Lucy, you know, we've made a great deal of progress. There's not a great deal of public money

available. Are there any deal sweeteners you can suggest to get people back to work and solve this crisis? Well, I always think to get people back to work, I love working here in Broadcasting House because they do the news in the same building and i once saw hugh edwards so i think if you were to say look go back to work and we might send hugh edwards round to see i mean it wouldn't necessarily have to be hugh edwards it could be any welsh heartthrob you could have michael sheen charlotte church shaking stevens that could encourage people back i'll tell you i was very impressed You could have Michael Sheen, Charlotte Church, Shakin' Stevens.

That could encourage people back. I'll tell you who I was very impressed with this week was Steve Barkley. Incredibly strong work from him, saying that we would pay people in the NHS more if they worked a bit harder. Because that is a ballsy move, isn't it? You've just got to think, he... I mean, I hope he's in good health, I really do. Any other suggestions, Varo? Well, there's this thing, this minimum service level that the government is talking about when people strike. I don't know if they've quite understood

the concept of a strike causing disruption, but the whole thing is it is meant to cause disruption. So basically, I was kind of thinking, what other areas would we want to have some minimum service? I mean, the government would be nice, wouldn't it? I think it's brilliant that we're back to old time. We'd miss them sort of union leaders. I saw one about ten years ago or so, I can't remember what it was,

making a speech, and he went you will now be delighted to know that on Twitter this rally is now trending above Ebola we've missed people like that haven't we I mean minimum service levels can mean many different things

do you have a minimum service level as a comedian is there I love the idea I mean I have a minimum service level in every area of life. My first job actually was in a shoe shop and my approach to that was someone would come in and say,

oh, have you got these in a size 8? And I'd go, oh, just go and check, go out the back, have a Twix, and then come back and say no, sorry. That's why we love Britain did you eat Twix's in a shoe shop because they sort of come in pairs as well just on the 999 issue

and this can go to Ian and Lucy when ambulance workers have been on strike people have been advised not to call 999 unless they are sure of what? State of their underwear My mum always told me you've always got to wear nice pants in case you get run over If I've got really nice pants on I think

it's a shame So it's not that statistically people wearing nice pants are less likely to get hit by vehicles? Just, I always give the drivers a little flash at the intersection. Just to see. Is it that you have to be sure that you're dying? Well, you have to be sure that it's a genuine emergency. A matter of life or limb.

Yes. As a result people being encouraged not to call 999 unless it's a massive emergency people are having to treat themselves at home have any of you got any good home remedies for emergency situations i mean dry shampoo always seems to do very well for me so i feel like that could be like a just a genuine remedy or but i do love the fact that Steve Barclay, the Health Secretary, has urged the public to just be very mindful of the pressure on the NHS. So if you are having a massive cardiac arrest,

just do some mindful breathing, maybe. Maybe light a candle or something like that. Just be mindful, just breathe your way through it. Be careful not to have accidents on the days of the strike. I was going to go out bungee jumping just on an elastic band the day one of the ambulance drivers strikes, so I thought, no, I'll leave it until Thursday. You seem to be suggesting, though,

we should get rid of all public services. Yeah, I think that's good. They're completely unnecessary if we're just more careful. LAUGHTER I mean, this will be the government's new strategy. They'll be like, look, when there are no trains running, there are no train delays. So I think we have found the solution to this conundrum.

I don't know if we need any public services. Like bin men, we don't need them. Just legalised fly tipping. What else do we need? Lifeguards. I haven't even got a joke for that. I just don't think we need them. I think teachers, we don't need teachers.

You just need to give UCAS points to sort of street skills, like setting a fire or having a fistfight with someone for some reduced meat. That's my ideas. That's a good kind of practical policies for the world we actually live in. You're hidebound by idealistic dogma. I think you've got a future in.

All fires go out eventually. So, yeah, we don't need a fire service. We just need patience. Well, the police? What do the police do? Because you know anyone who has ever been burgled or had their car nicked and the police have found it and got it back.

Never. Never. Imagine if the fire brigade never, ever, ever put out a fire. But occasionally they did hose down the wrong house. Rishi Sunak reluctantly admitted this week that he was indeed well enough off to have afforded what? The UK. Apparently the NHS has lost about 20,000 beds over the last few years, but luckily Rishi's got that many in his house.

So he said, actually, I've signed up with an NHS GP. Yes. I mean, he signed up with an NHS GP in the same way that I have an annual subscription to the gym. But yeah, and then it emerges, of course, that he also goes to see a private GP that charges £250

per consultation. I mean, for that amount, I can tell you what's wrong with you. You've got too much bloody money. They're richer than the royal family, aren't they? Isn't that right? I don't know, until we see the final book sales, I don't know if we can... This story is absolutely ridiculous

because this question has hung over Rishi Sunak for quite a long time about whether or not he uses private medical care. And he should have just fessed up and said, yes you know I'm not ashamed about it I'm a full-on Thatcherite conservative she used private health instead he's done this kind of dance of the seven veils and he basically got had an absolute mayor on the Laura Koonsberg show and it's just so ridiculous I mean the thing that's really coming across with Rishi Sunak is everybody was like he's really like presentable he's kind of really slick and now it's like this curse has

come upon him, he's sort of like the love child of Zoolander and Alan Partridge A final question on our winter of discontent one in five police want to do it almost two in three NHS junior doctors have thought about doing it. And almost a third of teachers have been doing it

within five years of starting the job. What? Is this going on Love Island? Not what I've got written down here. Any other suggestions, Ian? Using handcuffs in the bedroom. Is this that they have just had enough because they're so exhausted and so weary

and they just want to walk away? Yes, quit. I mean, I've actually looked at the stats here because we have NHS waiting times going up and up and up. Life expectancy has sort of plateaued and gone slightly down. And I've done the maths. And at some point in April 2054, the average NHS waiting time

will be longer than the average life expectancy. So you'll have to book an appointment for your kids before they're born. Yes, for your grandkids, actually. There will be one remaining nurse in the country suspended over the geographic centre of the UK in a hot air balloon with a loud hailer saying, you're looking fine, eat some spinach.

I just think the queues and the waiting times, and I think if the government ministers just came on and said, look, this is a nightmare, we're all having a terrible time, we're really, really sorry we chronically underinvested in the NHS and it's all such a horrendous mess. Instead, everything has to have a positive spin. So I had a Tory MP try to sell this to me the other day as I was having a chat with them.

They were like, well, the thing is, we do like queuing in this country. I think if you want to reduce your queuing time, I've only ever gone to A&E just before the clocks go back. This is the state of the nation. Our winter of discontent continues stroppily onwards. These days, if you hear a politician utter the famous question, crisis, what crisis?

It's no longer them denying there is a crisis. It's merely them trying to narrow things down to the specific crisis you want to talk about. After repeated questioning about his use of private healthcare, Rishi Sunak said he is registered with an NHS doctor, but that he has gone private in the past. Now, whether your personal internal headline-writing part of your brain interprets this as out-of-touch PM,

shows deep lack of faith in the health service, an unwillingness to slum it with the plebs, or as billionaire frees up NHS capacity for struggling non-billionaire community, that's up to you. I mean, it's no secret that he's well off. And in a wide-ranging interview, Sunak also claimed that he had heard of buses.

Suggested that he might be prepared to compromise and allow surgeons to take patients home with them at weekends. And he refused to be drawn on whether he owns his own nuclear deterrent or just uses Trident like the rest of us. Sunat was criticised for using a jet when visiting a hospital in Leeds. A Downing Street spokes-excuser justified the move, saying the PM was setting a good example. If people are worried about difficulties getting to hospital in an ambulance,

it's always good to have a jet on standby. Responsible leadership. Just some breaking news reaching us about further industrial action. Britain's ghosts have just voted to go on strike. A spokes-spook for GASP, Ghosts, Apparitions, Spectres and Phantoms, said, Aside from declining public belief in us, most people are so haunted by reality these days that we've basically become irrelevant.

And at the end of that round, the scores are three to Team Spare and two to Team Spare Us. The same within politics. This can go to Aisha and Mark. When is a business not a business? And whose business is it? Whose business it is? Is this

to do with lots of sort of murky money floating around Westminster? Yes. So this is, Tortoise and Sky News have done some investigation and they have been trawling through all the databases from different MPs.

What's Tall Toys? It's like a news sort of service. It's like they're very good. They sort of do lots of investigative reporting and things like that. God, I'm de-eyed, aren't I? They're meant to be like slow news, so they sort of do lots of kind of long-form,

slow-burn investigations. They're very, very good. And when they're under attack, all their journalists gather together under shield. And they've done this investigation looking into what mps are getting what funding from different organizations because if you want to give a donation as an individual you have to there's certain roles you have to register it you have to put a name you have to be an electoral register but now it turns out that lots of people are donating money through these very shady companies. People don't really know very much about them.

But I think the biggest shock to everybody, and this really is a huge injustice, is that Theresa May is getting paid millions of pounds for speeches. Yeah, I mean, it is a very strange world we live in. If your most famous speech is where you coughed and the backdrop fell down... LAUGHTER Yeah, but she's an amazing dancer.

Is she like a 60s rock star where she goes to do her speeches and everyone says, do the thing where you cough and the backdrop falls down? Is it a concern that we have a business that contributes hundreds of thousands of pounds to the Labour Party that lacks the traditional components of a business such as a website, any staff or a business?

Is that something we should be worried by? Yeah, MPM Connect was the name of the firm and someone said it's a firm with no obvious line of business so presumably it's got a massive contract to provide faulty PPE. Ian, have you ever given hundreds of thousands of pounds to a political party to further your own interests? No, no, but I'd love to be in a situation where I could. That's what I'm hoping for.

I just don't think it's surprising that businesses are corrupt. Like, I don't think Dr Pepper even has a PhD. Yes, it's the story of MPM Connect, which has contributed over £300,000 to Labour MPs, including Yvette Cooper, despite lacking anything you'd expect a business to have, including people. So what could it be funding these MPs for?

What does it seek to gain? Well, a cynic might say that a company that does absolutely nothing seems a perfect fit for Starmer's Labour Party. That cynic's cynical friend might add that this story is surely further evidence of Starmer's Labour trying to muscle in on Tory territory, trying to appeal to core Tory voters who'd like their elected representatives

to receive questionable funding from opaque sources. But it certainly highlights, once again, the unsavoury workings of the Westminster Sausage Factory. And if you love sausages, what you don't want when you bite into your sausage is for a screen to pop up with a short film showing every stage of the sausage-making process in graphic detail.

It's best that we don't know about these things, which is why the ingredients of the British sausage are still covered by the Official Secrets Act. Some might say that we live in a free market economy and if you are legally entitled to use your or someone else's money to buy, for example, a pencil, or an ice cream, or a house, or a deceitful side of

a bus, or a newspaper, or the ownership and editorial control of a newspaper, or a not guilty verdict, then it also stands to reason that you should be able to buy covert influence with politicians. And perhaps it would all be more transparent if politicians were simply forced to wear the logos of the companies that have funded them which works very well in formula one i mean sure there might be some suspiciously russian looking logos on some worryingly front bench overalls but at least we knew where we stand

and at the end of that round team spare have five team spare us have three moving on now to the topic we simply had to address at some point this week just buzz in with your answers here it's a multiple choice question prince harry the professional prince released his memoir this week. But what is it called? Is it A, how to win friends and influence people? Is it B, how to completely alienate your family and massively split opinion? Is it C, medieval feudalism ruined my life? Is it D, spare?

Or is it E, I got frostbite on my plonker and popsicle my charrington with a horse lady in the field out the back of a pub and other story? Any guesses? Well, it's obviously E. I think it is a fascinating story, because, is it four years ago? Just think what it was like, just four years,

and the week of the wedding, and it was all the madness that happens on these occasions every day for a fortnight. All these reporters, Windsor Castle. This is the most exciting moment of the whole of humanity. Nothing has ever been so momentous. It's the royal wedding. Even the worms are a special shiny shade of brown.

The birds are tweeting the national anthem, all of this. And then all the homeless were moved out of Windsor, weren't they, because you can't have people lying around in sleeping bags on the week of a royal wedding, and they were all immediately replaced by these people who sleep in sleeping bags queuing up for four days. And then, from about two days after the wedding, who does she think she is, bloody Markle?

She should be covered in marmalade and wedged into a hive of wasps and stuff like that. So it was called Spare. Is that an appropriate title? Would you prefer to be called something else? I love the fact that it's Spare because it's an heir and a spare, and he's the spare and it's the rhyme.

Because I'm one of three children, and in our family, the rhyme was, first the worst, second the best, third the one with the hairy chest. And I'm the youngest, and it's absolutely true. See, this is why I kind of feel for him, because obviously, you know, the ghostwriter has done an amazing job, because it's all the things we want to read about. It's largely penis chat.

But, yeah, I feel like he has massively shot himself in the foot with... I don't know who's advising me. Elon Musk, presumably. But I do love the salacious details. The fact that he lost his virginity around the back of a pub to an older woman who liked horses, and everyone's going, it's Claire Balding, isn't it? around the back of a pub to an older woman who liked horses and everyone's going, it's Claire Balding, isn't it? He said that that woman treated him like a stallion.

Is that just combing his hair? I have read the book. I just sort of blitzed it really quickly. There's stuff that hasn't gone in the press, which I'm mad some of the details. He claims the royals made him ginger to make him less popular. I think it is

weird that if I was him and I was going to use a ghostwriter, I would have chose Diana. She was there. The trouble is, Ian, she's on strike. Yes, this is the publishing sensation of the week. The artist still currently known as Prince Harry has been shifting some serious units with his much-trumpeted Warts and More Warts memoir, Spare.

The 38-year-old Hartholomew, who has been on the professional printing circuit since his birth in 1984, has revealed the extent of dysfunctionality in the royal family, including his distinctly unbromantic relationship with Prince William. Now, fans of the Norman Conquest will know that Williams and Harold don't always see eye to eye.

But wherever you sit on the monarchy attitude seesaw, from shouldn't we have ditched this nonsense hundreds of years ago to it's all we've got left that defines us as a nation via not my bag but I'm prepared to tolerate it. This has been a damaging episode for the family that brought us such controversial characters as alleged nephew murdering

car park space hogger Richard III human barbecue fan Mary I and Tinder presaging I think I'll swipe down on this one schism whiz Henry VIII. And that round brings the scores level at eight points all. We'll quickly finish with one final question. This can go to Ian and Lucy.

Aside from Prince William's advisers, who else might have said, Cornwall, we have a problem this week? The UK space mission ended in disappointment. The problem was in Cornwall the satellites go on top

of the rocket and in Devon they go underneath. So pretty gutsy timing as well to do a rocket launch on the same day of ambulance strikes. How far did it get? Not far enough, I think. I love that, I love that. The rocket suffered an anomaly,

and I think that's a phrase that historians will be using when they describe this period in British history. The UK suffered a rather large anomaly. Do you remember when some school kids, I think in Cornwall, launched a pasty into orbit? That's still currently the UK's most successful space mission. Yes, this is the UK's first ever attempted satellite launch. Failed after an anomaly prevented the Virgin orbit rocket

from reaching the Earth's orbit. The launch took place in Newquay in Cornwall. The company had a little pre-emptively declared the mission a success on Twitter before removing its announcement minutes later when the anomaly anomalised itself, raising a rather interesting modern philosophical question, a kind of tree falling in the forest kind of question. If you've said on social media that a tree has fallen in the forest,

does it actually matter if the tree is still standing or if it never existed? I think they should have just styled it out. The rocket was blasted off of a jumbo jet called Cosmic Girl, which saw a competition from other aeroplanes named after 1990s pop hits, including a Lockheed Martin Macarena and an Airbus A380 called Teletubby Say Eh Oh. Further confusion was added to the story when it emerged that a photo tweeted by Business Secretary Grant Shapps

of him happily visiting the spaceport had had former Prime Minister Boris Johnson eerily removed, whether by Photoshop or by coming from some form of idyllic parallel dimension in which Johnson had never gone into politics and Grant Shapps was about to be blasted into space. That concludes this week's News Quiz. And the winners are Team Sparrow, Ian and Lucy, with ten, and Mark and Aisha on Team Sparrow, Ian and Lucy, with ten. And Mark and Ayesha on Team Spare have nine.

Thank you very much for listening. I've been Andy Zaltzman. Goodbye. Taking part in the news quiz were Lucy Porter, Ian Smith, Ayesha Hazarika and Mark Steele. In the chair was Andy Zaltzman, and additional material was written by Alice Fraser, Mike Sheppard, Aidan Fitzmaurice and Jane Gebby. The producer was Georgia Keating and it was a BBC Studios production. Nature Bang. Hello. Hello. And welcome to Nature Bang. I'm Becky Ripley.

I'm Emily Knight. And in this series from BBC Radio 4, we look to the natural world to answer some of life's big questions. Like, how can a brainless slime mould help us solve complex mapping problems? And what can an octopus teach us about the relationship between mind and body? It really stretches your understanding of consciousness. With the help of evolutionary biologists. I'm actually always very comfortable comparing us to other species. Philosophers. You never really know what it could be like to be another creature.

And spongiologists. Is that your job title? Are you a spongiologist? Well, I am in certain spheres. It's science meets storytelling with a philosophical twist. It really gets to the heart of free will and what it means to be you. So if you want to find out more about yourself via cockatoos that dance, frogs that freeze and single cell amoebas that design border policies, subscribe to Nature Bang from BBC Radio 4, available on BBC Sounds.