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

Episode Date: November 10, 2023

Andy Zaltzman quizzes the week's news. Providing the answers, hopefully, are, Alex Massie, Simon Evans, Alice Fraser, and Rachel Parris.In this episode Andy and the panel deconstruct a Grey Wall, celebrate some Nobel achievements, and get ready for Halloween with the world's largest pumpkin.Written by Andy ZaltzmanWith additional material by Peter Tellouche and Cameron LoxdaleProducer: Sam Holmes Executive Producer: Pete Strauss Production Co-ordinator: Dan Marchini Sound Editor: Marc WillcoxA BBC Studios Production

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 am Andy Zaltzman. I will be honest with you, I prefer doing the news quiz in weeks in which wars are not breaking out. In which acts of unspeakable barbarity have not been committed. And in which the world has not become even more horrifically tragically brutal. But I guess that's the problem with doing topical comedy shows

in places like planet Earth. I'm Jewish. I'm also human. And furthermore, I'm related to, and friends with, other humans. But sadly, this has been another week in which we learned once again that the only true lesson we ever learned from history is that we will never, ever learn the lessons of history. The News Quiz is a comedy show which tries to concoct laughter

from the world's weak, but with some stories in some weeks, when the tragedies lost on suffering are so vast, so raw, so unfathomably sad, a comedy show like this one needs to stand aside to wait for a better time and a better place. So I hope you will understand that we will focus on the rest of the week's news and hopefully prove that whilst laughter is scientifically not the best medicine, it can have some restorative properties that are significantly better for you than sitting on a sofa shouting why, why, why into a void of despair. So welcome to the News Quiz. Our producer is saving the theme tune for later in the show when he decides the mood has lightened sufficiently

to make it feel a little more appropriate. I'm joined this week on the news quiz by Alex Massey from The Times and by Alice Fraser, Rachel Parris and Simon Evans. Simon, it's been a bit of a bad week for the planet, I would say. Would you concur? Yes, it's been pretty horrible, hasn't it? And it's also been pretty horrible trying to make sense of the second and third wave

of commentary that comes out after it as well, and trying not to get caught up in commentating on commentary and so on. Something that came up a lot maybe just in the tweets or the articles that I saw is people saying that this sort of thing doesn't emerge from a vacuum and those people want to provide

context and have you understand the last 75 years or whatever middle east i think in a way it's okay to feel on some occasions that things like this do emerge if not from a vacuum they create a vacuum around them they are something like the experience of being deafened by a bomb blast it's not necessary actually to contextualize them it's okay just to feel the sheer depth of the horror, to register that and to feel sympathy towards those afflicted. And if I'm honest, I think the most positive thing that I felt about it is an extraordinary and profound gratitude that I was not born into that part of the world

and in fact have enjoyed extraordinary peace and security in the British Isles, where I've been lucky enough to spend my entire life and which I hope my children will continue to enjoy as well. Gratitude is sometimes something we fail to register until it's made obvious what the alternatives might be. So you're suggesting that we spread the British Isles all the way around the world again? It's worked well before.

I'm just saying, was it worse? Alex, any grounds for hope that you've seen? Well, if you had a completely different Palestinian leadership in both Gaza and the West Bank, and if you had a completely different Israeli leadership in Jerusalem, and if they lived in a completely different geopolitical neighbourhood, and if they had a completely different history and if they had an agreed

and therefore completely different vision for the future, then in those circumstances, I suppose you could say, so you're saying there's a chance? Right. So, basically, sort of the same chance that Scotland's got of winning the Rugby World Cup this year. Possibly even less. Alice, I mean, do we just have to accept

that maybe now the time has come for the human race to just resign and quit our position as species in charge of planet Earth? Do you think we've had a good crack at it? I would be happy to hand it over to the platypus. They seem benevolent. I have a feeling that the platypus is probably one of those animals that has

managed to avoid contact with the news media for so long that we're not aware that as soon as you elevate the platypus to the kind of status you're suggesting, all kinds of backstories will emerge. I think we've had it good. We've been top dog for several thousand

years now, ahead even of the dog after whom the position was named. We have been number one ranked species apart from a brief period in the mid-14th century when the rat took the number one ranking on a technical... LAUGHTER Right, let's start the show proper now before we split our panellists off into teams. Let's try to shift the tone and have something to reassure our listeners

that there is still some hope in the world. APPLAUSE That's better. And let's quickly lighten the mood a little further. And we're good to go. Our teams, in a week in which the Labour Party desperately tried to avoid complacency in the face of a seemingly unlosable general election, we have team Open Goal against team haven't scored for 13 years,

looking a bit nervous, surely must hit the target. Don't worry about the ball bobbling, just get your head over it and put your laces through it. Come on, the keeper has left the stadium. Your XG is 0.9999. Have a pop at goal, you can't miss. Dip your sausage in the gravy, for heaven's sake. On team Open Goal, we have Alice and Alexlex and on team scoreless for 13 years rachel and

simon rachel and simon you can take our first question uh complete this sequence george w bush shoe silvio berlusconi cathedral former new New Zealand Economic Development Minister Stephen Joyce, Willie, Keir Starmer, what? It's glitter. Those things have all been thrown at those eminent figures in order to humiliate them. Although I think the shoe that was thrown at George W. Bush came from a long line of shoes thrown to express contempt in that culture, whereas the glitter seems to be quite an innovation. Can we just circle back to the dildo incident? In New Zealand, Stephen Joyce got a phallus thrown at his face.

I went down quite a rabbit hole with this one, if you will. I love that it's quite universally now referred to as the Waitangi dildo incident, which I think sounds like quite a good John le Carré novel. So, yes, the glitter, of course, thrown on Keir Starmer, which was quite an own goal, I think, because it just gave him the chance to take his jacket off and roll his sleeves up, which is the straight white man's secret weapon.

It's the equivalent of like taking your glasses off and letting your bun down and shaking your hair loose. It's just an instant like, oh yeah, now we're talking. It's three steps short of Mr Darcy in a pond. It was a slightly underwhelming incident though, wasn't it? The man was on stage for barely three or four seconds. I assumed he was a Remainer or something at first. It turns out he wanted reform in the House of Lords. To express

that through the medium of glitter is challenging, frankly. I mean, you looked at them briefly. For four or five seconds, there were two men on the stage, one of whom had a glittering career. You could say that much. What I don't think people have appreciated is that unless you are a father of girls

or a keen amateur drag act glitter is one of the least biodegradable substances known to man is ineradicable it will continue to be in the presence of Keir Starmer's eyelids under his nails in his foreskin for the remainder of his political career and well into his rose cultivating years I'm afraid So he's going to be reminded of that, and maybe that is the idea. I don't know. I feel like you can't really go past the shoe. The shoe was so simple and pure in its insultingness. It said, I hate you so much, I'm going to get my socks wet on the walk home.

And the glitter thing, you know, it gave Starmer some colour. I mean, hitherto, you know, he has promised the audacity of beige. You know, what do we want? The slow but steady improvement in public services. When do we want it? In the fullness of time. How do we want it? Subject to terms and conditions. You know, I mean, the whole Labour conference was very bizarre. To borrow from Neil Kinnock, you had the grotesque spectacle of a Labour Party, a Labour Party scuttling around the country, preparing for government. I mean, it's something that nobody has seen in more than a decade.

Starmer obviously is often criticised, like now, for being boring, but actually that speech, he went quite Lord of the Rings at one point, which I enjoyed, the bit where he said, do not doubt if the fire of change lives on in Britain. The question is whether it still burns. And I was like, all right, Elrond. That's hard. Can I address the nominative cause that the glitter man wanted to elevate?

Because I do think it needs quashing immediately. He wants to reform the House of Lords. I've lived through a number of reforms of the House of Lords. I'm 58 years of age. Every single reform of the House of Lords has made it obviously worse, and we've ended up with Michelle Moan. When I was a young lad, the House of Lords was one-third old men sleeping soundly

in trousers that had at least 17 individual buttons to their fly. And the young firebrands, barely out of their 60s, who had only been elevated two or three generations earlier and still believed in the myth of progress. Nothing was done. There was no expectation. It was just a sea anchor, you know, and it worked very well. And there was no expectation. It was just a sea anchor, you know, and it worked very well. Nowadays, it's an absolute knocking shop. It's become a disgrace. You know, stop reforming the bloody thing.

I mean, a rallying call for change. Bring back sleeping old men. Something we can all get behind. Alice and Alex, Starmer finished his speech by promising to give what back to whom? Oh, God, it was the future, wasn't it? Which is terrifying in its own way. And presumably the lucky beneficiaries of this must have been the British people.

Yes. Do you want it back? I mean, I've looked into the future and it's, at best, suboptimal. He was also offering... There was a vote that was going to give us back energy and the railways wasn't there, I think, but that was a brief glimpse of the gnarly old engine that sits beneath the shiny polished bonnet of not new Labour

but the electable Labour anyway, and that is best ignored. Rachel, this was an interesting moment in the conference that the leadership lost a vote to one of its oldest adversaries, its own membership. Would you be in favour of... If you can't re-nationalise railways and energies, is there anything else you'd like to...? Oh, I'd re-nationalise railways in a heartbeat.

The railways are an absolute state. I would, frankly, sack the whole of Aslef. Anyone who is in the union now, sack them all and replace them with elderly middle-aged men, volunteers, the ones who run those nice steam engines, you know, in the scenic railway people. They would be so much better. Simon, I don't want to interrupt you,

but it feels like I'm sensing a trend in the answers that you're giving, which is give more power to old men. Yeah. More country for old men, one of Simon's favourite. Moving on, there's a multiple-choice question. I'll put this to Rachel and Simon. What is Grey Belt? Is it A, the level Keir Starmer has achieved

in the art of political rhetoric? Is it B, the new blue wall, the Grey Belt, are key constituencies of retirement towns that could decide the election? Or in your world, Simon, the new blue wall, the grey belt, are key constituencies of retirement towns that could decide the election? Or in your world, Simon, the only people who should be allowed to vote by the Senate. Is it C, grey belt is the alternative to black rod at the Houses of Parliament S&M nights?

Or is it D, urban land to be built on in Labour's plan to build 1.5 million new homes? Is it E, the shade of luxury paint that Starmer will decorate number 10? It's D. Correct. Yes, D. Urban wasteland, on which he says the green belt sounds lovely, but when you actually look at it in detail, a lot of it is urban scrub, gorse land, disused industrial areas,

abandoned railway lines. And he's quite right, there is a lot of that, and it's not very land, disused industrial areas, abandoned railway lines. And he's quite right, there is a lot of that, and it's not very useful, especially nowadays that the kids have mobile phones. It's not even useful as a nexus for passing on news pornography anymore, is it? I don't really... I'm in with him on this, absolutely. Douglas Adams wrote a book years ago called The Meaning of Liff,

and he described them as a bromsgrove. A bromsgrove was any area consisting of a number of dog turds and a pile of mangled pylon claiming to be a sculpture. Stammer says he's a yimby, meaning yes in my backyard, as opposed to a not in my backyard. I'm a fimbyig, which means fine in my backyard, I guess. Or actually, as a millennial, I will never have a backyard. We keep seeing, Alex, political parties playing the housing card.

I mean, this was an eerily reminiscent of the Conservative pledge from the last election to build over a million new homes. I mean, there's kind of crafty political nudging going on here. Yes, I mean, you have an entire generation, particularly in southern England and so on, who have no prospect of buying their own home, which is not much of a problem for those of us who don't live in southern England, but quite a lot of people do.

Although, obviously, in terms of large-scale infrastructure projects, if recent experience is anything to go by, they'll build one wall in London and another wall in Manchester but never get round to putting a roof on. You just have to find ways round it. Like, I'm a geriatric millennial, and, yeah, I only knew one person in my entire friendship group who owned their own home, and I married him.

If you could build your own brand-new town, it's quite an exciting thing to do, isn't it, to, like, plan a town from scratch. What would be in your urban utopias? Chocolate fountain. Right, in the middle of a town. Yeah. Right.

Yeah, bring people together. A town crier. I think that would be really nice. Not like the shouty bell old-fashioned one, but just someone to sit on the town hall steps next to the chocolate fountain and just weep. And everyone could come and weep with him. I think it would be very therapeutic.

You can't weep into a chocolate fountain. It'll coagulate. Oh, good point. There's a new political party in Austria called the Beer Party that has actually proposed a beer fountain in Vienna and presumably everywhere else in Austria too. I suppose this would be the better form of Austrian populism.

That's quite a low bar that was set, wasn't it? So there's going to be all these new towns as part of these Labour plans, so they're going to need naming. To encapsulate what Britain is as a nation now, what should our new towns be called? Replacement bus service. So you could get a replacement bus service to replacement bus service. If you're lucky.

Any other suggestions? I mean, I live in Hove. I've always thought an airline on the end of that would be more appropriate to help us. I've got an AI place-namer on my computer that factors in everything about modern Britain to come up with the most appropriate

town names for new towns. So the new towns that we could be having in the next few years include Wastage-on-the-Take, Pottymouth, Squabble, South Squabble, North South Squabble. Woefully underdone, Crapton-by-the-Rich.

It has been shown through history that Britons cannot be trusted with democracy or naming things You're going to end up with 500 Townie McTowntowns Coming from an Australian that is a little bit rich Alex, I mean, Scotland could be crucial

to Labour's electoral hopes What do you think Labour would need to say to Scotland to get them fully on board the Starmer bandwagon? Would you like Rishi Sunak to remain Prime Minister? Anything else? Any of the rest of you would like Labour to offer? Is it conceivable at this point that it will emerge eventually that the SNP was actually created by the Tory party, much as the Taliban and al-Qaeda were created by the CIA

in order to ward off a short-term threat that then turned into an extraordinarily toxic entity in its own right? But now it's on the way out, Labour will come. I mean, that was the balance of power for a long time, wasn't it? That was the great threat. You spend too much time on the internet, Simon. Yes, this was the Labour conference. There was a moment of drama at an otherwise studiously steady conference

when Labour leader Keir Starmer, on the point of unleashing his latest rhetorical Torda adequacy, was glittered by a pro-electoral reform activist who thoroughly spangled him up. Did he give us a plausible, coherent message of hope for a better future or a sub-Blair placeholder with the strains of the chart hit things can only get probably slightly better in the medium term being realistic about stuff

by the pop group D Realistically Downplayed Expectations? Maybe that is enough for now. Offering mayhem-averse managerial competence and a vaguely sensible wodge of policies, that now counts as radical change in our political landscape. It might spook the global markets. They don't like that kind of rupturing change of direction. At the end of our Labour conference round,

the scores are three to team open goal, four to team haven't scored yet. We're going to look for something positive from the human race this week and we're always striving to better ourselves. Numerous world records are set on an almost secondly basis these days, but we have a very exciting world record this week, and this world record question can go to Simon and Rachel. One of them started working this week out of the 277

that will eventually set a new world record for Team GB for the biggest ever what? Oh, I know. This is the wind farm off the coast of Dogger Bank, which is an interesting name, isn't it? Because we used to have one of those on the A27. Well, it's been specifically the biggest ever offshore wind farm. It can presumably, in that situation, which is off the northeast coast, I think, isn't it?

Roughly speaking, it's there to harvest the wind and turn it into electricity, but in an emergency it could also repel the Luftwaffe, I believe, is that...? I'll tell you who's very happy about it, Don Quixote, because he's definitely going to get at least one. I mean, it's going to power six million homes, right? Yes.

They just need to build those now. This wind farm is located 70 nautical miles off the coast of Yorkshire, which is like normal miles, but more wet. But the good thing is that as global warming increases, there will be more hurricanes, right? That's one of the predicted effects, which will presumably be harvested themselves in order to create energy to prevent global warming so global warming is not so smart now yes this is uh well dogger bank the celebrity north sea area that recently won shipping forecast region of the year the third year in a row seeing off a clearly disappointed north at sierra um is is the play host to an absolute whopper of a wind farm it's 277 turbines will

churn out enough woke energy to power six million woke homes, leaving the fossils who died that we might live unextracted in the ground. Their sacrifice for nothing makes me sick. Another world record question. This can go to Alice and Alex. And this is a new world record set for highest percentage

femaleness in a Nobel Prize for economics at 100%. Who specifically has won a Nobel Prize for drawing attention to how the world has put the pay into patriarchy? That's an economist called Claudia Golden. Correct. That is a factually correct answer. We don't get many of them, though. I'm going to answer your question with a question, Andy. How many Nobel Prize winners does it take to figure out

that having children is the major contributing factor to the ongoing gender pay gap? And the answer is one, but she has to win a Nobel Prize to be taken seriously. Good. Set up, punchline. Proper comedy. Thank you, Andy. Oh, there we go. You've lightened the mood enough that we get the theme tune. Thank you, Anne. Oh, there we go. You've lightened the mood enough that we get the theme tune.

Thank you for that. There we are. We made it. All it took was a proper joke. I did have a quick look at her Wikipedia page to see whether she'd taken her own advice in order to pursue her career with unalloyed vigour. She has remained childish. She is married, however. I thought this was quite interesting.

She's married to a gentleman by the name of Lawrence F. Katz and she has no children, but she does have a number of golden retrievers. So she lives with cats and dogs, which I think is... I don't know, it's just... I don't know what... There's no satire there.

It's just one of those pleasant, you know... But she is now queen of that house, so she is reigning cats and dogs. That's it. Oh, come on! just one of those pleasant you know but she is now queen of that house so she is raining cats it's such an interesting subject for study and discussion traditionally i'm not sure if the audience understands women's work and men's work have been very separate spheres women traditionally have worked in ballet flower arranging finance brokering witchcraft and heavy machinery while men have worked in mining nude flower arranging, finance brokering, witchcraft and heavy machinery, while men have worked in mining, nude wrestling, philosophy, podcasting and cryptocurrency speculation.

So it's very difficult to do a one-to-one comparison. Burn her! You know, obviously it has been historically a bit of an issue that men get paid more than women for the same work, but, I mean, is that true now? Because I'm in showbiz, Beyoncé's in showbiz, she earns a lot more than me. Is that justice?

She gets all that passive income from all those castles, though. Beyoncé castles, come on! That's there, surely. Where's my theme tune? LAUGHTER Claudia Goldin, she was the first woman to win the Nobel Economics Prize and not share it with a man, which I think we can all agree is rather mean.

Not very womanly. Moving on to another world record. The Beatles famously claimed to be bigger than Jesus, but what this week claimed to be bigger than a Ford Fiesta? Is it a Ford Escort? Well, no, that's not the answer I've got written here. Any suggestions?

Well, it's presumably that pumpkin. There's a pumpkin which is not just large, but absolutely grotesque. Gone well beyond the bounds of what would form, to anyone's mind, a handsome but well-endowed pumpkin. Whoa, whoa, whoa. Simon, I feel like I need to be body positive for the pumpkin.

It's a perfectly healthy and beautiful pumpkin that can be any size it wants. Yeah, yeah. But this is the sort of time of year where we have to complain about foreign pumpkins coming over and usurping the great traditional British turnip from its place of supremacy as we prepare for Halloween. Yeah, I mean, it's a new world record for heaviest pumpkin in the history of greatest ever all times.

I think that'll do as a phrase. It's been set by a pumpkin, ironically. Owned and trained by a horticultural teacher from Minnesota. And it tips the scales at 1.2 tonnes, which means that the mega vegetable is 100 times heftier than your bog-standard pumpkin. Pumple Stiltskin, as it's known, has become an instant celebrity in the USA

with its newfound celebrity. It's been romantically linked with, amongst others, Warren Beatty, the American football star Travis Kelsey, and a record-breaking 700kg potato. The love that dare not speak its name. You called it Pumple Stillskin. It does actually have a name, though. It's called Michael Jordan. Yes. After the basketball player. Yes.

And that really is a bit odd, because if there's any physique that that pumpkin does not resemble, it's the world's greatest athlete. Got amazing hang time, though, for a massive pumpkin. I feel this is a myth, Andy, that people care how heavy a pumpkin is. I don't care. I want to know the kindest pumpkin, the pumpkin most interested in my inner life and goals and my pleasure. You know, I don't think it matters how big a pumpkin is.

It matters what the pumpkin does for itself. Yeah, the pumpkin is larger than a 1982 Ford Fiesta. And as a low-emission vegetable, it's exempt from road tax and Euless tax. You can ride it with impunity through central London. Pumpkins in supermarkets currently cost around £2 a kilo, which means that this pumpkin would cost £2,500. It's as big as a Ford Fiesta.

You know what this says to me? I've got teenage kids. First step on the property ladder. Scoop out the flesh for food, use the seeds to make a seed-mail protective jacket and live in the shell. That's got to be the way forward. Right, at the end of our world record

round, the scores are now eight points all. And our final round is on the greatest human distraction of all, and we've all needed distractions this week, sport. Now, humans have always looked for distractions from reality, whether it was playing Pictionary inside caves in 20,000 BC. Let me guess, Brian, is it by any chance another bloody bison?

Always with the bison. But of course the greatest distraction yet invented is sport. We've saved the best for last. Why will 2028 be the greatest Olympics in the history of the known universe and therefore the greatest year in the history of time? Alex, any suggestions? Well, since you've asked this question, Andy, I have a suspicion it may be because cricket is going to be in the Olympics for the first time.

Correct. Yes. Ideally, obviously, this would be a series of timeless tests played between all cricketing nations and so on, and so the 2028 Olympics could last, with luck, until about 2033. Wonderful. Not since the planes of marathon rang with the knock of willow on leather. Well, I mean, obviously, cricket is the greatest civilising influence

ever developed by humanity and makes all countries that play it basically social utopias that never start wars or do anything wrong. So I'm not going to show my working on that. There's a great bit in Wisden each year called Cricket Around the World, which invariably begins with things like, it has been another challenging cricket year in Outer Mongolia. But the green shoots of recovery and growth are now in evidence. Do they still use the severed goat's head for a ball in Outer Mongolia?

Only in the one-day matches, I think. I mean, given Australia's recent performance, I'd like to see it reintroduced to Australia, I think. I think we could use a reboot. Right, well, that brings us to the end of this week's News Quiz, with the scores tied at ten points all. Thank you for listening.

I've been Andy Zaltzman. Goodbye. Taking part in the News Quiz were Alex Massey, Rachel Parris, Simon Evans and Alice Fraser. In the chair was Andy Zaltzman. And additional material was written by Cameron Loxdale and Peter Toulouche. The producer was Sam Holmes and it was a BBC Studios production for Radio 4.