Friday Night Comedy from BBC Radio 4 - The News Quiz - 22nd January 2021

Episode Date: January 22, 2021

Joining Andy this week are Helen Lewis, Olga Koch, Andrew Maxwell and US stand-up, Hari Kondabolu.It's a Biden Inauguration Special for News Quiz this week as Andy and teams reflect on four years of Trumpism and look ahead to the bulging Biden in-tray. There's also time for a mountaineering news round-up and an appearance from a record-breaking French restaurant.Written by Andy Zaltzman with additional material from Simon Alcock, Madeleine Brettingham, Alice Fraser and Suchandrika Chakrabarti.Producer: Richard Morris A 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. I, Andrew de Krikit Zaltzman, do solemnly swear that I will faithfully execute the office of chair of the news quiz. So help me. Help me. Welcome to the News Quiz. Thank you.

I will now put my copy of the 1982 Wisden down. And yes, this is the first news quiz of the post, Mike Pence as vice-president era. I am Andy Zaltzman, and we start once again with some clippings from newspapers. This from the New York Times. Phew! This from the Washington Post.

Shh! Shh! Shh! Shh! This from the Los Angeles Times. And from the National Enquirer, Julia Roberts in Alien Asparagus Heist. Time to meet this week's teams.

This week we have Team Start Healing against Team Still Reeling. On Team Still Reeling we have Andrew Maxwell and Olga Koch. And on Team Start Healing, Helen Lewis. And joining us from New York, USA, it's Hari Kondabolu. Hari, welcome to the News Quiz. And as an American, you do score triple points for any questions about British politics that you get right. So let that inspire you through this show. We also have a lot...

What is three times zero? No, these yanks know nothing. It's 30, you idiot. Sorry, I was never good at math, singular. It's plural. It's plural. Math is plural. Sports is singular.

You people, that's why we had to break up with the 18th century. Right, we start with this question. I'm sure you can imagine what topic it's on, and this goes to both teams. Who did not go to Who's What this week? It was my friend, your friend, and one of the most inspiring men of the history of humanity, Donald Trump.

He's such... He's such... Hey, hey, hey, hey. Guys, people, people, you're just booing an ordinary citizen. You're making fools of yourself. Donald is an incredible act of generosity when you think about it. He realised that his star would shine so brightly that he decided that the only thing to do

would be to go to Florida with a woman who hates him. You're going to watch over the next couple of weeks, Republicans drift away from Trump like ducks from a breadless man. The weird thing is, for the last four years for us comedians, every interview we've done, people have gone, oh, Donald Trump must be great for you comedians. You must get so much material

out of him. That's not how, for us comedians, what comedians really love is mocking a politician who's a half decent human being,'s trying their best but somehow still manages to totally screw it up. Donald, Donald Trump is just bad. It's the same reason why restaurant critics review the food and not

the bins. But also, I mean, I guess from a comedic point of view, we can all just dust off those Joe Biden jokes we wrote in 1988 when he first ran for president as well. God, Neil Kinnock must have been sat there going, I said that! Hari, as an American in America, what does it feel like to go back to normal? Oh, yeah.

Yeah, it's just like Pompeii after Vesuvius erupted. I mean, he didn't attend the inauguration, which, by the way, was fine by me, just because't attend the inauguration, which, by the way, was fine by me just because I watched the inauguration with my five month old who kicked and screamed and pooped himself repeatedly. So it was like Trump was there the whole time. Trump threw himself a farewell party because, of course, he did. a farewell party, because of course he did. And instead of going to the inauguration and on the invitation, he encouraged people to bring at least five friends with them,

which, first of all, is pathetic. And secondly, only Donald Trump would turn his farewell party into a Ponzi scheme. And then he entered a helicopter that was likely it was apparently going to florida which surprised me because i thought it would go to brazil or argentina or chile based on world history or perhaps russia to avoid prosecution which is what i really wanted because i kept imagining donald trump living with edward snowden in m Moscow. What a sitcom that would be. Yeah.

Creating the buddy comedy that none of us knew we wanted until then. I did appreciate his commitment to really going out in the same style with which he's conducted himself for the whole presidency. Did you see the weird send-off on the Air Force Base when he got on the Air Force One once again to YMCA? This is Andy's point about how he's immune to mockery. How can you mock a man who, when they said, why did you pick YMCA,

went, it's a good song. People just really like it. Olga, how did you enjoy the departure of Trump and the inauguration? Honestly, America's going through rich, confused white men like faster than me. So... LAUGHTER

Frankly, I'm impressed. Like, we're all going to remember where we were during the Biden inauguration, except Biden himself. LAUGHTER Helen, it was notable that Trump didn't go to the inauguration. Very, very few presidents have not gone to the inauguration of their successor. I mean, Abraham Lincoln was another example, but he had a much, much better excuse. Yeah, I mean, Trump effortlessly skipped that possibility by never going to the theatre.

But my favourite bit of yesterday was Melania, who is so done with it. She turned out dressed like a mafia widow for the walk off to the helicopter and then got off the plane in Florida in a caftan and flat shoes, which could there be any bigger? Like, screw you. Like, that's it.

It's joggers all the way for me now. I'm done. I'm out. I've done my time. Horry, now that Trump has gone from the presidency, which of the deep underlying problems in American and global politics and society that he's distracted everyone from, are you most looking forward to really worrying about properly again?

Oh, yeah, I mean... I feel like I was so worried about, you know, nuclear war that I completely forgot about climate change and the fact that it's God and or Darwin that's going to kill us. The big two, what a team they are as well, to be fair. I thought it was going to be North Korea, but no, we have to get back to the fact that, you know, we're going to kill ourselves.

Another follow-up question on Trump. Who begged whose pardon this week? Well, lots of people wanted to get a presidential pardon on the way out. The saddest one being Joe Exotic, who you'll remember from the hit TV drama, surely, The Tiger King. Can't have been a documentary. That would be absurd. This is the worst thing.

He had his lawyers send a stretch limo to prison to wait for him to pick him up. And then the pardon never came. And he made this terrible error, which was that instead of committing collusion with a foreign power, all he did was run a dodgy animal park, which is just not a forgivable crime. I think he's in for conspiracy to murder, isn't he?

Well, yes, I mean... It was a little light conspiracy. Yeah. Hari, I mean, so many people were pardoned by Trump. It must be disappointing for you to have missed out. Isn't it? LAUGHTER

LAUGHTER If you're implying I'm under house arrest, I thought we weren't going to discuss that. It's quite weird, isn't it? As an outside observer of American politics, these presidential pardons, they seem to be obviously idiotic underminings of democracy and justice. Is that an accurate representation?

Yeah, but that's consistent with rest of American democracy. You know what I'm talking about? Like, it doesn't even make sense. Like, we had the inauguration in front of the Capitol, where there was an attempted coup two weeks ago. Like, we're celebrating democracy in front of the place where they tried to destroy democracy. That's like if Kim Kardashian got remarried on top of Kanye West. It's like going to a restaurant where you got food poisoning again, which is an American tradition. I guess the presidential pardons again showed the differences between American and British politics

between the brash ostentation that you have in America and the understated civility of our British system and we saw this with the capital rights in America people who shouldn't be allowed in the parliament building have to force their way in through violence in Britain we simply elevate them to the house of lords much more civilised system same with the pardons.

In America, the president undermines the entire principle of law and justice by issuing pardons to convicted criminals. In Britain, we're much less showy about it. We just quietly delete thousands of criminal records and brush it off as a mere trifle. Different countries, different systems. Yes, of course, this is Donald Trump, his last week as president of the benighted states of America,

concluded Trump will go down in history as a man who did more than any other, perhaps in American history, to strengthen the presidency... Oh, hang on. ..of Russia. Who formatted this document? But that's the past. Let's look now at the present and the future.

Joe Biden becoming president of the USA at 78. Have any of your parents or grandparents taken on a more ambitious retirement project than this? My father started going for walks. He can have a point for that. In terms of the Biden intray, Helen, I mean, how does this compare with the bulgiest intrays

in history of someone starting a new job? It's got to be right up there, hasn't it? I can't think of anyone else who's ever had a worst first day in office. I mean, he signed about a dozen executive orders overturning various things, and, you know, they've got an ambitious plan for what they're going to do in the first 100 days. But nonetheless, it's basically like we expect the American president

basically to kind of solve world poverty, solve climate change, end the coronavirus, and then, you know, also not do nutty tweets. I mean, it's more than anyone human can be expected to do. I think we'll just take the last of those, wouldn't we? Let's set realistic goals. Yeah, so Joe Biden on Wednesday became the 45th adult to be President of America.

Let me emphasise. That is not a cheap joke about Trump being an overgrown, spoiled child. Calvin Coolidge was only 12. He just didn't look after himself, so he looked awful. Accompanying Biden is history-making Vice President Kamala Harris, the highest-ranking female official in America

since Queen Anne in the beforetimes. And the first African American and Asian American vice president. This is historic. This is genuinely a moment of history for America, Hari. Oh, yeah. Not just because she's vice president, but because Joe Biden's president, she's only one misstep away

from being president. I didn't say misstep. I said mist step. I really enjoy the fact that we, for the first time, got a second gentleman. I think that's really nice. I really want to know what the second gentleman's going to do. Actually, I thought Bernie Sanders was kind of getting into the second gentleman spirit by sitting in that photo,

looking like every man waiting outside a changing room, going, looks lovely, dear. Yeah, probably get that one. Well, he didn't look like that, Helen. He looked, as many cricket fans pointed out on Twitter, like someone at a county cricket match waiting for the cocoa. They play cricket in the summer, Andy. How are people that cold?

Why are you playing cricket in Antarctica? Oh, well, you know, headingly on a Wednesday in April. Where are you playing cricket? In Antarctica? Oh, well, you know, headingly on a Wednesday in April. Biden spent his first hours as de facto king of the USA, wearing out the control and Z keys on the Oval Office computer. He set about restarting all of America's lap subscriptions. America's set to rejoin, amongst other things, the Paris Climate Accord, the World Health Organisation,

the 21st Century, S Club 7. And we are just hearing this exciting news. They are set to rejoin the United Kingdom. Welcome back. Not before the time. Just sign it all. Just sign everything, Joe. Sign everything.

Well, according to the Washington Post Trump lie totaliser, where they've been tracking every single lie Trump has told since he became president, he just managed to break through the 30,000 lies in office barrier just in time before he departed office to spend less time with his family. That works out at approximately one lie every 16 working minutes, assuming an eight-hour day, which is a big assumption.

That's impressive stamina, if nothing else. So, as the News Quiz is parting tribute to Trumple Stiltskin, we have a special round of questions that our panellists are constitutionally barred from answering correctly. The bigger the lie, the more points will be scored. So, the first of these questions, which you have to get as wrong as possible, goes to Maxwell and Olga on Team Still Reeling. Matthew Hancock, the Health Secretary, has advised British people to plan for what?

A timely and efficient vaccine rollout. Very, very incorrect. You get three points for that. Let's throw this over to Team Start. Healy, any suggestions? Modern dentistry. Are you making a rude joke about British teeth? Because honestly, we let you come on our shows

and you just say rude things about our teeth. It's very unwelcome. I know, this is making or breaking my career. Alan, Matt Hancock has advised British people to plan for what? I hope it's seeing every single room in his house. Well, that's incorrect, so two points. You could also have had The Rapture and the Christmas 22 with Hancock Enterprises catalogue. Everything from unusable medical equipment

to more unusable medical equipment. The correct answer is he did... Well, I mean, the factually correct answer, he advised British people to plan for a great British summer. And what do we think this entails, a great British summer? Rain. Just rain. Not a world-leadingly hottest, driest, happiest summer ever.

We won't be told that it's raining by our Brussels overlords. He alluded to the fact that the great British Summer takes place in Britain, when in reality the Great British Summer takes place in Falaraki and Magaloo. LAUGHTER Hancock also said, we are getting the virus under control, very much like Orville had Keith Harris under control. LAUGHTER Who says, he's only for younger

listeners? Next question, you have to get as wrong as possible, going to Team Start Healing, Helen and Hari. What have tennis players quarantining ahead of the Australian Open been told not to do? Go anywhere

near Novak Djokovic. The factually correct answer is they've been told not to feed the mice. There have been mice in their hotel also. They've been told not to kiss any pangolins on the lips. If you've never seen Australian mice, they're a bit like British mice,

but six feet tall with a pouch and a tendency to punch things. Next question. What has been conquered for the first time ever in winter? Wrongest answer possible. What's been conquered for the first time in winter? Is this a Game of Thrones question? Because I didn't see it. It's K2.

Minus five points. It's entirely correct. The second highest mountain in the world, which briefly was technically the highest mountain in the world, and then they remeasured Everest and it was still the second highest mountain. It's been conquered, which sounds a bit sexy, but they didn't do it like that. They just climbed up it.

Nobody's ever conquered K2 in the winter before, right? Do you know how they did it? It was only the Sherpas. It turns out what's been slowing down the conquering, winter conquering of major mountains

is the white dude who used to be in the army. Who keeps blogging. I always thought they needed our help. No, no, no. It turns out the giant privately educated pinky ring, he wasn't needed. No, no.

This is the story of Mr Sherpas climbing K2, the first time the mountain has been climbed in winter. K2, the celebrity Himalaya, and 60 million-time runner-up in the tallest mountain of the year awards. I'm not at all happy about this story. I mean, have some consideration, Sherpas. We're all sitting at home feeling guilty about all the things we haven't got round to doing during lockdown.

I mean, come on. At the end of that round, let's call it nil-nil, and we'll move on. Everything's starting from a fresh slate this week. The spirit of things is back to nil-nil. And this question goes to Olga and Andrew. What is Vladimir Putin not scared of? He says that he's

not scared of Navalny. Correct. Is what he says. But then, you know, he hasn't killed him yet, has he, the chicken? I just gotta tell you, if I was an evil overlord, I wouldn't be scared to kill people.

Well, you say that. They tried to poison him, which is to kill him, and now they've just arrested him, so that means they've increased the severity of his punishment from death to being alive, but in Russia. The balls have stale on this man. Navalny, they've tried

to kill him. Before that, they tried to blind him, and he lost most of his sight and one of his eyes. Then he carried on with his campaign for democracy and transparency and whatnot in Russia. So they tried to poison him with his underpants. That's how they did it.

He almost died, survived that. Did he quit? No, he did not. Do you know why? Because he's Russian, and he's relentless like the driven snow. The website Bellingcat got him to phone up one of the guys who tried to poison him and went, hello, I'm your line manager here,

just checking in on how the poisoning went. Would you like to give me a full rundown? And the guy's like, well, yeah, the thing is, actually, the poisoning in some ways went quite badly. And they had like a half- hour conversation. He's only a assassin. Olga, your father was involved in high-level Russian politics, looking at how things are going for Navalny.

Have you got any ambitions in that direction to become a leading opposition figure? Well, you guys are talking about Alexei Navalny, like he's such a hero, criticising the government from within. And like, I see myself in Navalny, except I'm doing it from the comfort of a satirical Friday night Radio 4 show. There's no wrong ways to do it, is what I think.

This is the story of Vladimir Putin, apparently not scared of opposition leader Alexei Navalny, who's returned to Russia and been instantly arrested. Putin is apparently afraid of the verdict of history and Virginia Woolf, but nothing else. Andrew, in terms of opposition leaders, what Navalny's had to put up with, I'll really throw some shade at Keir Starmer over here.

Being poisoned and sent to prison seems to be working out pretty well in terms of raising Navalny's profile. Do you think Starmer can learn anything from him? I've been looking into this guy, this Keir Starmer character. Here's just, at the most cursory glance of the internet, this is what I found out about this individual. He once let a bouncy castle down in 1983. Oh, no, it gets much worse than this.

You better save your gasps. He once snuckamaro into an aubergine competition. That's what's waiting, skulking in the wings. Hari, from America,

what have you made of Keir Starmer's leadership of the Labour Party over the last year so far? I didn't know who he was until it was mentioned in this conversation. We've kind of had our own thing going on over here for a while. What I will tell you is I believe

an aubergine is the word you use for eggplant? No, it's not. It's the word we use for aubergine. Navalny and Starmer do have something in common, controversial opinions on the Premier League. Starmer hit out at Arsenal last year for making the iconic mascot Gunnosaurus redundant. And Navalny has criticised Chelsea owner Roman Abramovich, calling him one of the key enablers and beneficiaries

of Russian kleptocracy. So they really do share a keen interest in football. Both are prepared to have a pop at people who use football as a front to camouflage their true selves. Moving on now. The score is now two to Team Start Healing and one to Team Start Reeling, if I may pluck a couple of numbers out of thin air. We've now just got time for one final question before we go.

A Michelin star has been given to what in France? A vegan restaurant. Correct, yes. I mean, it's not a real Michelin star, but it tastes and looks just like it. Andrew, this is a huge moment for French identity, isn't it? Coming to terms with the realisation that you don't necessarily have to force-feed

a goose until it pops to make a tasty lunch. It won't catch on. Do you know how many people eat in a Michelin-starred restaurant? I don't. Exactly. My point entirely, Andy. This is a proper minor, you know is this is a proper minor you know

this is a minority sport and always will be yeah it's just like a bit of ice fishing or lacrosse or some of that sort of stuff

you know what I mean or cricket bigger boo for that than Donald Trump. Yeah, rightly so. Pirates, people. Rightly so. Yes, indeed. A vegan restaurant near Bordeaux,

become the first vegan restaurant in France to be awarded a coveted Michelin star. You've got to hand it to Michelin. They've always been pioneers of animal rights and the vegan lifestyle. In fact, they haven't used animals in their tyres since the early 1920s, when they discontinued their popular Papa Le Pleu model

of tyres made of octopus tentacles and armadillo pelts. That concludes the show. The final scores. Teams still reeling have loads. Teams star-healing have been fully disqualified

for anti-cricketing sentiments. Thank you very much to Helen Lewis and Hari Kondabolu and to Olga Koch and Andrew Maxwell. And just to leave you with the leading diets in the international diet charts this week, some very exciting new diets this year, the DASH diet, which involves eating whilst running as fast as possible, which generally leads to an 83%

fall in the amount of food actually going into your mouth. The Hegan diet, in which you only eat meat from male animals, taking down the patriarchy one sausage at a time. And the 5-2 diet, in which you have to eat as if your favourite football team has just been beaten 5-2. Technically, the football smattering,

I know objectively it was an exciting game for the neutral, but I'm not happy. Thank you for listening, News Quiz audience. We'll be back next week. I've been Andy Zaltzman. Goodbye. Goodbye. Taking part in the News Quiz were Olga Koch, Goodbye. The producer was Richard Morris and it was a BBC Studios production.