Friday Night Comedy from BBC Radio 4 - The News Quiz - 26th January

Episode Date: February 23, 2024

Andy Zaltzman quizzes the news. Providing all the answers are Lucy Porter, Geoff Norcott, Alasdair Beckett-King, and Cindy Yu.In this episode Andy and the panel address the issue of BBC bias after upsetting a minister with last week's show, try and figure out exactly what Keir Starmer stands for, and ask the question... who is ready for war?Written by Andy ZaltzmanWith additional material by: Cody Dahler, Mike Shephard, and Meryl O'RourkeProducer: Sam Holmes Executive Producer: James Robinson Production Coordinator: Sarah Nicholls Sound Editor: Marc WillcoxA BBC Studios Production for Radio 4

This is the BBC. This podcast is supported by advertising outside the UK. BBC Sounds. Music, radio, podcasts. Hello. Oh, sorry, I've set off the impartiality alarm. Goodbye. No. Go away.

There we go, right. Come on, balance, balance, complete lack of bias, that's what BBC stands for. Welcome to the news quiz. Oh. Go and listen to something else. There we go. I am Andy Zaltzman.

Oh, God. I am Miles Jupp. I'm Sandy Toksvig. There you go, something for everyone. And we are about to quiz the news in a week which has yet again seen the Conservative Party make a fool of itself. There you go. Welcome to the News Quiz.

Thank you. We've got to... We have to crack on. We're going to try and cram everything into the first ten minutes of the show because evidently that's the attention span of the average transport minister these days. Our teams this week, well, to do the decent thing and reflect how the Conservative government seems to view the BBC

and what it wants to do with it, our teams this week are Team Bias against Team Sellers. On Team Bias, we have Alistair Beckett-King and Lucy Porter. And on Team Sellers, Geoff Moorcock and, from the spectator, Cindy Yu. OK, well, we'll start with a question. This can go to Lucy and Alistair. Lucy, you should get this, since you were on the show last week. Transport Minister Hugh Merriman described which BBC Radio 4 show...

LAUGHTER ..which you, yes, you, I'm talking to you, are currently listening to as completely biased. Oh, I feel so awful. So Hugh Merriman, Transport Secretary, said that he listened to the first ten minutes of last week's show and it was completely anti-Tory bias. And I'm just so glad he didn't listen to the first ten minutes of last week's show and it was completely anti-Tory bias and I'm just so glad he didn't listen to the last 20 minutes.

No, genuinely, I wept. Because I'm such a fan of Hugh Merriman. I don't know about you guys, but he's always been my absolute fave. I'm a Merrie fan, I'll admit it. His lovely, rich hair. i've seen his lovely hair his eyes like limpid pools his breath smells of butterscotch angel delight and my whole family were like you've upset hugh merrim and my kids were in tears but mummy he's our favorite apart from Grant Shapps. So, yeah, I'm just, I'm so sorry

to Hugh and to all who's sailing him. But then he went on to say the BBC's biased. The other example he gave was that he'd been attacked on Universal Credit by Neil Buchanan. Which, unfortunately, Neil Buchanan is the name

of a children's TV presenter who worked on ITV. So it wasn't a brilliant interview for Hugh. So, yeah, he got the wrong Buchanan. I think he meant Neil Buchanan, the Whig MP for Glasgow from 1741. Isn't the internet fun? But, of course, I mean, the art stack was ITV, was it? But there's a long history on the BBC of using children's art shows

to promulgate anti-Tory propaganda. You listened to this from the supposedly neutral Tony Hart on the Heartbeat show back in 1988. Hello and welcome to another Heartbeat, and today the theme is all to do with stone. Now, that sounds perfectly innocent, but what happens when we play it backwards? Maggie, Maggie, Maggie!

Out, out, out! So, Geoff, you are a self-proclaimed conservative, and you get minus 50 points for that. Sorry, better edit that bit out. I think I'm right in saying that you were booked to do this show literally seconds

before we started the recording. I was at home and Culture Secretary, the Right Honourable Lucy Fraser called me up. She's my new agent now. She said, Geoff, we're going to get you on the news quiz. We're going to try Blankety Blank as well. Also Gladiators.

But your nickname will have to be Stop the Boats. I mean, I should get all the balanced stuff out. First up, Lucy said everyone hates the government. I'm just very disappointed with them. Is that balanced? I think that sometimes tax cuts can stimulate economic growth.

Maybe six-year-olds shouldn't decide their own pronouns. Royal Britannia's actually a decent tune, you know. Let's get it all out there. I mean, look, the truth is, is the BBC are probably too impartial. They wouldn't even describe Hamas as terrorists, would they? Hamas are sitting there going, lads, what more could we do? I mean, from a journalist's point of view, Cindy,

I mean, the BBC occupies a slightly strange space in the journalistic world. Well, the spectator's obviously more impartial than the BBC, so... LAUGHTER But no, I've got Hugh Merriman to thank for me being booked, as well as Geoff, you know, two right wingers on the BBC comedy show. And thank God that centre-right people now

have airtime, because they've never been heard before on media in this country, let alone have their own TV channel called GB News. Is he a real bloke, Hugh Merriman? I mean, just... He sounds like he lives in Sherwood Forest. Yeah.

I mean, it's really weird, because on the one hand, you had this reaction where they were saying, well, this is out of order, and then Kay Burley on Sky were going, well, the news quiz has got nothing to do with the news. I thought it's got something to do with the news. You'd hope at the very least. But it's all about the balance, Andy. So, Alistair, how are you going to bring the balance to this show?

Well, I agree with the government. I think the BBC is very biased. I was watching the BBC over Christmas, and in that show, three ghosts, not one of them was defending Scrooge. I have a bone to pick with the right-wing stand-up comedians. Not Geoff, obviously, but you see the right-wing comedians out there just doing these unfunny, jokeless political rants and the audience are clapping and speaking as a left-wing comedian. We invented that.

That's our thing. Get your own thing. It's called a cultural appropriation. They say satire is when you criticise the left and right equally. No, these people don't understand their history. Satire is when you do an etching of the king with his pants down and on his bottom you've written something really boring like agrarian reform. That's satire.

In exciting news for the legal industry, can you tell me, the Culture Secretary Lucy Fraser announced this week that what now counts as evidence? Perception. Yes. So between her and Hugh Merriman,

the evidence they could come up with for BBC bias was making a mistake about a bombing in Gaza, a children's presenter from ITV, and ten minutes of this show. Which I think that is pretty damning, but not of the BBC, to be honest. But she sort of said, you know, people think the BBC's biased, therefore it is.

Well, I mean, in fairness, the BBC, if you just have a little knockabout and chat to some people, you know, it skews a little bit. I'll say that the words plant-based appear in the canteen more than is normal. Tofu munching wokorati. I didn't say that. Tofu is not left-wing.

Guys, come on. I think the problem is that everybody agrees that the BBC is biased, but nobody agrees who it's biased against. Sorry. Hold your applause, because this is Radio 4. Nobody agrees against whom it is biased.

Covering all bases, Dan. That is incredible that that got a louder round of applause than the joke. It did give the opportunity for Sky News to put the best banner under news stories, saying, is perception reality? You're going to think, God, what is this? An undergraduate philosophy lecture? Am I watching daytime news? Well, that's basically how news is these days.

It's more perception than reality. Do you know when the BBC really has to be careful not to be biased is in the run-up to a general election? Just saying, Rishi. But to be serious for a minute, the Tories have been in government for 14 years. You know, if you don't punch up at the government, I mean, as comics, I mean, this is what you guys do, right? So the real test is if and when, when Labour get in this year,

what is the news quiz going to sound like at that point? I'd like to see a bit of punching against Keir Starmer's government too. I can't imagine a left-wing person would have any reason to criticise Keir Starmer. I mean, the thing, I'm sure we'll get onto this a bit, but the reason that Labour weren't discussed last week is because they didn't say or do anything.

There was literally nothing to punch at, and why wouldn't they? They're sort of 5-0 up, and what they've done is gone, well, let's park the bus, right? Like a football team, let's park the bus. And then the Tories have gone, well, if you're going to to do that we'll just score loads of own goals see how you like that yes given recent statements from members of the conservative government about the content and alleged bias in this show i'm going to try to put forward a more balanced viewpoint and now this

week i've had this thing written especially uh for. The Conservative government is sleepwalking towards annihilation under a Prime Minister who has gone from asset to anchor and whose uninspiring leadership is leading them to be massacred at the election. He doesn't get what Britain needs and he's not listening to what the British people want. His party's infighting is self-indulgent, facile and divisive. The country is sick and tired of MPs putting their own leadership ambitions ahead of the UK's

best interests, which probably explains why the Tory vote is sinking to historically low levels. Those in the party who can't accept that politics is not a game should shut up or shove off. And whilst we're at it, former Prime Minister Liz Truss should also shut up. We had some new writers for this week. They were all

former Tory Cabinet Ministers. Thank you. All written and for this week. They were all former Tory cabinet ministers. Thank you. All written and said this week. Thank you to our new writing team of Simon Clarke, Priti Patel, David Davis, David Frost and Connor Burns. Not laugh out loud funny, but more comedy of awkwardness, which is not really my thing, but people

seem to like it. I mean, it's a fair point, isn't it? When they say, stop criticising the Tory party, we're like, alright, you first. The language Simon Clarke used to like it. I mean, it's a fair point, isn't it? When they say, stop criticising the Tory party, we're like, alright, you first. The language Simon Clarke used to describe the government is so hyperbolic and dramatic. What did he say? He said the Tories face extinction, massacre and

annihilation, which are all heavy metal bands. He went on to add that they face mega death, anthrax and Coldplay. Sorry and Coldplay. Sorry, Coldplay. I don't know. Maybe I googled the wrong thing there. I don't know. I think the Tories are quite like Coldplay because every election demonstrates that they're pretty popular, but I've never met anybody who likes them.

In the interest of balance, I think we need more metal bands that appeal to Tory voters. balance. I think we need more metal bands that appeal to Tory voters. I would suggest Iron Lady. Well organised crew. Work cooperatively alongside the machine. And

nine inch nails can stay the same because they will not go decimal. I'll die before I let Brussels tell me how to measure a nail. It's not really a civil war, is it, when it's, like, the entire party against one man and it's not Richard Sunak but Simon Clarke and everyone's saying, you idiot, get back down.

We can't have another person again. Well, they sort of said, like, in the papers, like, they said he was part of Liz Truss's cabinet. I thought, well, that's not the greatest endorsement in the world, is it? It's sort of like saying I did PR for Michel Mon or... ..did a bit of coding for fujitsu back in the early but even um even liz trust this week have come out to distance herself from simon clark's like no he is not with us and even lee anderson who quit last week literally quit as

party deputy chairman has come out this week to say no simon doesn't know what he's talking about it's just fallen so flat yeah the timing is really unhelpful it's sort of like calling for the new captain of titanic when kate winslet was already on the floating bit of door it's a bit late now i would say i'd love another tory leadership contest if i had a pound for every time I've heard someone say that, I would be able to buy myself a supermarket trolley. I mean, another way... So that would be four in the last 18 months, if we had another Tory leader. I'm not sure I've changed my sheets that often, to be honest.

But what are the options? I mean, Suella Braverman, I mean, there's no sort of... What is the phrase there? He's Prince Across the Water, right? When it was Theresa May, there was Boris, right? And now, who is there? Suella Braverman. Does she really, I mean, genuinely think that she could take the Tory party to a general election victory? So, worryingly, the bookies think that David Cameron has a good shot.

I'd... Gospes. I do think it's weird that Rishi brought back David Cameron because the one thing about Rishi is he's really small and and David Cameron is really tall and look I'm a human being I react on these kind of like very ordinary levels to be I think well he's quite big maybe he should do it because someone said him and Cameron, it's like Cameron's the headmaster and Rishi's the head prefect. And he looks like he's just desperate to please.

And it is a bit weird having this elder statesman kind of... You do think he probably... Rishi goes in to see David Cameron and David Cameron's on the higher chair. Gives him some sweets and just puffs away on his pipe you know. Do you think he sits on his knee? Yeah.

I quite like that as an image. Right. Well I think we're probably ten minutes in now so Yes Hugh if you're listening, I hope you've enjoyed this more than last week's. He said, for ten minutes, all I heard was just diatribe against the Conservatives. Ten minutes.

I guess it's no surprise for the minister in charge of HS2 not to get all the way to the end of something. LAUGHTER APPLAUSE Right, at the end of that round, the scores are four to Team Bias, and to make things as unbiased as possible, four also to Team Sellus.

Moving across the divide now, this can go to Geoff and Cindy. Which wrestling-style nickname did Rishi Sunak give to Keir Starmer this week? It's probably something to do with the fact that he does no definable beliefs, principles or stances. No! We know a lot about Keir Starmer. The things we know about Keir Starmer are that his mum liked donkeys and his dad was a toolmaker,

so I think his wrestling name is Donkey Tool! Or maybe Ass Hammer. Family show. When I write my erotic fan fiction about Keir, that's what he's going to be. The thing is, they're so obviously

going to win. It's actually, we're sort of all running ahead of time now. It's legitimate, I think, to scrutinise him. I think what Starmer's done that's really smart is that Blair sort of slowly disappointed the left over his timing office. Starmer's just gone, let's get that out of the way. Let's just clear the decks here.

I love a bit of Thatcher. I'm having lunch with Ricky Gervais. He's already got so many enemies on the left. There was a thing in the Socialist Worker this week, and they said that a Starmer-led government will act on behalf of the capitalist class, like a rattlesnake's warning rattle. Starmer is doing all he can to let working class people know

that he will attack their interests. So, it's good to see that the hard left are going into it with an open mind, I think. It's really weird, because I've got loads of left-wing mates that are really excited about getting the tories out and i think that they'll enjoy that side of it but there's not really going to be anything radical from the labour government they're not going to like reform drug laws or anything like that and uh and i think drug laws are an interesting one because like the british public are actually more liberal than either of the two main parties on drug laws but a bit more conservative when it comes to the death penalty

because Lee Anderson, I think it was, he actually said that he thought it should be brought back for the most heinous crimes. And a lot of liberal press were like, I mean, who thinks this? In the 2020s, who thinks this? And I was like, quite a lot of my family, yeah. And not even for the worst stuff, man.

I mean, literally, for people parking outside of their house. I don't even mean in their drive. I mean the bit of road that's adjacent to their kitchen window. Well, does anyone know the nickname that was... The human weathervane. Yes. Which for anyone who's gone to a headline writing class or anything like that, it's just too many syllables.

It's just not catchy at all. It's not really Captain Hindsight, which is what Boris Johnson called Keir Starmer, or any of Donald Trump's nicknames, Sleepy Joe, Rhonda Sanctimonious, you know. The nickname. Sunak just doesn't have it. Yeah.

It's just, oh, no, you can't even call someone a slur properly. I know, because you just think, right, so you want a nickname to accuse Keir Starmer of changing according to the prevailing environment. Starmer Chameleon. Starmer, Starmer, Starmer, Starmer Chameleon. You Tory shill, Porter.

I don't want to show off, but I'm on Keir Starmer's mailing list. Calm yourselves. I didn't ask to be on his mailing list. I don't think anybody ever has, but I am. And I can tell you, the way he talks to me in private is very different to how he talks when he's in interviews, when he's on the news. When he's emailing me, he's like,

the Tories are pooping in their pants. Let's kick them in the urethra. And I'm like, yeah. And then I switch on the TV and he's like, poor people need to learn to budget yes okay Keir Starmer has abandoned all of his promises and he just supported military action in Yemen I think we have to accept that this is the new patriotic Labour Party and what's wrong with a little bit of patriotism is the title of my documentary

series about World War II. Starmer understands that if we want peace and stability, we've got to sell a few missiles, we've got to drop a few bombs just to calm the situation down. People are suffering and we have a moral obligation to bomb those people to safety. They all get a bit hawkish, though, don't they, the closer they get to power. It's why Cobra doesn't need to be called Cobra, does it?

There's loads of other acronyms they could have done, but it's for guys that were sort of like nerds well into their mid-20s, so they just go, I'm going to a Cobra meeting. Or not, in the case of the former Prime Minister. I think when it comes to Starmer, he's lucky that he's so boring. He really is, because the amount of policy U-turns that he's had, literal pledges that he's promised in the past that he's U-turned on since then.

There's a heavy, long list of that, and if he looked any more exciting, he would just be sinister. But if you look at the things that he's U-turned on, bombing the Middle East, whether or not you give Parliament a say before then. He's now saying, oh, well, it's not a military action,

it's an operation. He said before that he would abolish the two-child limit on welfare in 2020, but not anymore. You know, he said he would abolish tuition fees, not anymore. He said it would increase income tax for the wealthiest, not anymore. He said he would nationalise energy, water and mail, not anymore. I mean, the list goes on.

And here I am providing right-wing balance for this panel. It's true. It's all getting very confusing, isn't it? I'm starting to warm to this guy. He has one left-wing policy left that I'm aware of, which is that he's going to add 20% VAT to private schools, which I think is a big mistake because that is going to hurt some of the very poorest rich people in the world. I didn't go to a private school, but I do have a double-barrelled surname,

so I'm one of you. I know what it is to struggle, but I've come up with one weird trick for saving money on private school fees, which is send your kid to a normal school. It has two advantages. The first is you just get all that money back and you can spend it on anything you want. And the other advantage is your kid will never have to say no, no, I'm not rich. My parents

worked bloody hard. I mean, I think he said things to get elected leader that he has now sort of rolled back on. But the first thing he said was, I will unite the Labour Party, which even at the time I was like, yeah, while you're at it, make me 25 again

in a tall, willowy blonde. Rishi Sunak unsheathed the new nickname for Keir Starmer this week, the human weathervane, adding to a list that includes Captain Hindsight, Sir Softy, and Brian the Sad Apricot, which is sadly seldom used.

I haven't been accused of changing his position on many things. Starmer has recently declined to reaffirm previous commitments to ending arms sales to the renowned international sports franchise the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. He's been accused of U-turning on Yemen, Palestine, democratic reform, the environment, changing the offside law in football and pledging to make a definitive

binding ruling on jam, cream and scones. So at the end of that round, the scores, let's say they're still tied. It's six points all. Right, moving on now to our military section. What is too small and what could be done to make it bigger?

I think it's the army, isn't it? Yes, correct. It's really small. 74,000 or something, which I think you could fit inside Old Trafford and that would still be a more traumatic tour of duty than anything going on right now. I mean, this is the problem.

They talk about how do we do this, like if we do have to fight a conventional war. I just think generationally we just don't have the chops, do we? I mean, Gen Z, they'd want their support animals. Millennials, they'd ask if they could do it over Zoom. I think my generation would just say, look, is the combat zone near a good or excellent school? And the boomers, they just like the idea of war

they've never really fought i think you just got to get people that fought in the original world war i think they're the only ones they're the only ones really with the chops to do it so essentially jeff you're suggesting sending nonagenarians into combat as the only way to they're the only ones with combat experience get warmed up granddad you're coming on i mean on this one grant shapps maybe was ahead of the curve you know as defense secretary he got in trouble when he was first appointed for having a tiktok account and people were worried about the security implications of that of being given as a chinese company but you know maybe that is the way to get gen z to fight for their country

well he maybe it's really weird grant shapps defense secretary just sounds like a sitcom doesn't it? At least with Ben Wallace, who was in the job for quite a while, he looked like he was made from shrapnel and old bits of tank. Grant Shapps, he sort of looks like him, Starmer and Jeremy Hunt go to the same spinning class. And it was really weird that he got to announce this week like it was a new laser that the British Army have got

called the Dragonfly. Is that what it's called dragonfire dragonfire which all sound it all sounds a bit nerdy sort of dungeons and dragons doesn't it i deploy my dragonfire well colleen i will use the wizard sleeve i mean it's a representative of the nerd community i find it very offensive use the term dragonfly it did take a little while to get the technology to work the fact Representative of the nerd community. I find it very offensive. Use the term dragonfly. It did take a little while to get the technology to work. The first time they tried it, it didn't injure any of the enemy, but left them all with perfect eyesight.

The guy who's saying this, that the army is too small, is General Sanders, who sounds like he ought to be selling chicken, but is a real guy. Now, I'm not a fighter. I'm also not a lover, so I have a lot of free time. I'm terrible. I was actually thrown out of Fight Club because... Well, I can't talk about it, but... I'm not an expert, but this is all about Russia,

and I don't believe that we're going to be fighting a trench war with Russia. Russia is not a wealthy country. Russia's economy is smaller than Italy's economy, and no-one in this room is afraid of Italy. I could beat Italy in a war. Italy's two biggest heroes also work as plumbers. It's not going to happen.

I mean, yeah, I really hope I don't get caught. I mean, I say that, I think I would be good in a war. Right, so what skills do you think you'd bring? Well, I'm little, so I don't get caught. I mean, I say that, I think I would be good in a war. Right, so what skills do you think you'd bring? Well, I'm little. Right. So I've got little hands. I could clean the machinery like a Victorian child in a mill. Right.

Also, the enemy would think you were further away than you actually are. Alistair, what skills do you think you'd bring to global conflict? I would like to be the counsellor, I think, in the army, because I look at the Dragonfire project, which is the laser that can get a pound coin from a kilometre away, and it's absolutely terrifying. And I would like to be there to sort of advise people, because what I would say to people in the army is,

if you are working on a secret military project, ask yourself one question. If this were a movie, would I be the goody? And maybe, like, I think they called it Dragonfire because Death Ray didn't test well with focus groups. I've just got this image of Grant Shapps stroking a white cat now. Cindy, have you got any skills that you think would help? Well, journalists are very good at hacking phones.

Right. So maybe that's what I can bring. Geoff, what would you bring? I've improved at DIY, I think, in my later years. I recently remounted the bog roll holder on the wall without prompting. Form a queue, ladies. I'm not sure, to be honest, I'd be able to contribute a lot to the military effort if conscription happens,

which no-one suggested but still made the headlines. I mean, the skills... I can do cricket stats, I can cook a decent carbonara, and I do a very realistic impression of a sheep being catapulted into a greenhouse. Listen. You there? Pretty good, eh? Pretty solid?

Wow. If I hadn't seen it with my own eyes. Yes, General Sir Patrick Sanders, head of the British Army, warned that Britain needs to increase the size of its armed forces, sparking panic that everyone in the country could be called up to walk into

German machine gun fire in 1916 again. That's the way news works these days. The government said that conscription was not being considered, which is good news both for those in the younger generation who don't particularly want to fight in wars and for those in the older generation who like to complain about how people in the younger generation don't have what it takes to fight in war. Are we tough enough these days? I mean, even some government ministers can't take ten minutes of criticism on a comedy show without needing a long, hard bath. Well, at the end of this week's strictly unbiased news quiz,

the scores are completely and utterly equal. There are no winners. There are no winners. There are no losers. Only justice. Thank you very much for listening. Until next week, goodbye. Taking part in the news quiz were Alastair Beckett-King, Geoff Norcott, Lucy Porter and Cindy Yu.

In the chair was Andy Zaltzman and additional material was written by Cody Dahmer, Mike Sheppard and Merrill O'Rourke. The producer was Sam Holmes, and it was a BBC Studios production for Radio 4. I'm Tom Heap. And I'm Helen Cheresky. A journalist. And a physicist.

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