Friday Night Comedy from BBC Radio 4 - The News Quiz - 29th January 2021

Episode Date: January 29, 2021

Andy Zaltzman is joined by Alice Fraser, Fern Brady, Hugo Rifkind and Daliso Chaponda to quiz the week's news.This week's episode features the vaccine latest, a quick state of the union update and a News Quiz debut for the Scapegoater Vx57, the Machine of Ultimate Blame.Written by Andy Zaltzman with additional material from Charlie Dinkin, Mike Shephard and Mo Omar.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. Britain. January 2020. One year ago. A land mired in furious resentment and recrimination. A country riven by division, disagreement and inequality, where generation squabbled with generation, a nation

bickered with nation, uncertain about the future, divided about the past. But enough wistful nostalgia about happier times. Back to 2021. We have some news to quiz. Hello, I am Andy Zaltzman. Welcome to the News Quiz. And spoiler alert, amongst the wrong answers on this week's quiz,

please don't tell our panellists, are yes, no, just plain old bad luck is why we're top of that particular list, give William Wallace's private parts back, vax enough, and Michael Gove in a flaming chariot of destiny. Time to meet this week's teams. We have, firstly, the Union Jacks, who are Deliso Shaponda, and joining us from Australia, Alice Fraser. And taking on the Union Jacks,

it's the Union Cracks, who are Fern Brady and Hugo Rifkind. APPLAUSE And question one this week is this. According to the government, what should happen as soon as possible? April. LAUGHTER Right.

I've heard that the government wants April to happen as soon as possible, because April is when we're getting back to normal. And traditionally, at this time of year, April would be, you know, what, two and a bit months away, I guess. But I've heard the government is setting up a task force to see if they can make April happen in a sort of shorter time frame. Right. So Matt Hancock, he's going to be basically, he's going to be ramping up the days of the week. So Matt Hancock, he's going to be ramping up the days of the week, and he's hopeful that within ten days we'll be able to perhaps roll out Thursday on Monday, and then Tuesday by the previous Friday, thereby sort of making the weekend happen on Wednesday,

and the February half-term already in the past, which means it's downhill all the way. Right. To be honest, Hugo, I mean, I know that's not official yet, but that is the most coherent policy the government has yet come up with. Yeah. Unfortunately, the government's going to take about two months to get that task force together. Well, I mean, it is possible that due to government failures,

we will in fact have April sometime in September, but I think it's best to just be optimistic. Right. I mean, Alice, that's what you do in Australia, basically, isn't it? You do all the months, like six months after they're supposed to happen. Works for us. And then sort of culturally, we're about 20 years behind in some areas. Do Lisa always say, according to the government government what should happen as soon as possible well i think very soon they're gonna have a plan to deal with covid

let's not rush into it uh well in fact the correct answer answer, I will give Hugo two points for the suggestion of April, is schools to reopen. March the 8th, the government is now aiming for. But I mean, are we not asking the wrong question here? I mean, is it right that we should be getting children back into schools or do we have the wrong people in schools in the first place? Are you suggesting we should send the ministers to school? That might help. It's only March the 8th. I'm sure parents across the country are thinking, kids at home, just till March, just another six weeks, day after day, of endless kids at home never going anywhere with a question every 35 seconds about trigonometry.

That's fine, isn't it? Everyone thinks that's fine. That's been nice to brush up on trig, hasn't it? I feel sorry for parents that have to homeschool, but I don't feel bad for kids missing out on this much because when I honestly reflected on what I did at primary school, the only things that stand out was every so often a dog would somehow get into the playground overnight or a sheep.

And you'd just chase it around for a bit. Did you say a dog or a sheep? A dog or a sheep would get into the school and there would be chaos. And that was the most exciting thing that happened. What else happened at school? We had a drunk teacher that used to just have a badger hand puppet

and he would... He'd go, now kids, tell Mr. Badger all the different ways that you can avoid being electrocuted. I never learned anything at primary school, so I think kids are having a great time. Alice?

Apparently MPs are asking the government for some ideas that are somewhere between school being mostly closed or totally open and everyone dying. I have some suggestions. OK. We're all ears here in Britain. Yeah, well, I think what we need... Because the problem is not so much children going to school, it's children coming back from school bringing disease. So I reckon, like, compulsory boarding school for everyone,

teach children to teach other children, put them on an island, push it out to sea, whichever ones come back alive get into Cambridge. That was the original plan with Australia, I think. That was the original plan with Australia, I think. LAUGHTER Do you think children are learning anything at this point from schooling? My kids are getting quite good at swearing.

Valid life skill. I think also children are learning how to frustrate people they live with to the point that they snap, which will be very useful in future marriages. Sorry. It's a dog, Fred. It is a dog. I'm not going to tell the dog to go away. A ticket sale is a ticket sale.

I mean, there are possible alternatives that the government is considering to homeschooling, one of which is bringing forward a year of retirement for children to enjoy now, but they will have to work an extra two years in their 70s. Yes, so schools could potentially open from 8th March, the Prime Minister said this week, although he did add that this depends on lots of things going right,

minister said this week although he did add that this depends on lots of things going right which is not generally his mo as prime minister is it lots of things going right stick i mean so far in this crisis i think we've had one thing going right so what's the one thing that went right well they could have vaccines ago at least i mean we'll touch on this later well it's hard to say whether they're going right, but they're going righter than Europe and that's all that counts in Britain these days. For any school students listening at home who feel they're not being given quite enough work to soullessly drudge through whilst desperately

trying not to think about their long-term futures, here is a quick maths problem for you. If Gavin has one job to do and Gavin does zero of those one jobs competently, how many jobs should Gavin have? Please write your answer on your forehead in indelible marker pen and send it to us by headbutting your radio during any hourly news bulletin. We'll move on to another COVID-related question now.

Let's give this first to the union cracks, Hugo and Fern. Who is not going where for what, when and why? I realise that's a little bit vague as a question, but do have a pop at it. Boris is not going to Scotland this week for his own safety they're instead sending an effigy of a pink balloon and a blonde leg to just be booted in the street or uh they could send michael fabricant and just tell people i just lost weight and he looks different since michael replicant indeed and he works at Prince Ed's Corvette.

Michael Replicant, indeed. Alice, any suggestions? Who's not going where for what, when and why? Well, I mean, let's get this straight. Nobody's going anywhere for any reason right now, but especially children are not going on summer holidays because they must stay indoors forever with their parents like a cautionary tale about someone who ends up turning out badly in a history book.

There's never any good story that begins with and they were locked in the house with their mother for a year. Like, that's not... A gap in the market. That is correct. Yes, this is the story. Holidays are themselves ironically going on holiday for the summer. The lucky blighters. It's all right for some. Who could have imagined that the seemingly innocent Cliff Richard lyric

we're all going on a summer holiday would one day be rendered into a searing piece of counter-cultural polemic? The light at the end of the tunnel is the vaccine, but there's been a lot of dispute over it. This leads to our next question. Who has discovered that you can't always get what you A. Want, B. Need and C. Ordered? Any suggestions?

The EU. Correct. From the audience. The audience gets a point there. The audience is off the mark. The EU is the correct answer. This is the manufacturing issues at AstraZeneca that have led to an unseemly spat

between the celebrity pharmaceutical firm and the continentally renowned trading bloc and former UK sidekick, the European Union. I mean, exactly how triumphalist should we be being about this, Hugo? I think not. i think pretending not sorry i said not i meant pretending not i think we have to definitely pretend no look it's really bad that they haven't got the vaccine i wouldn't make that many jokes about it unless i was being paid to which i sort of am so um but i think um look the eu's problem here it's a bit like when

you like when you order something on amazon and you don't realize you think you've just ordered it but you've actually just pre-ordered it. And what that means is you give them the money now. What that means is they'll just send it to you later when it comes out, perhaps when they've finished making that DVD. You know, it just sort of hasn't happened yet. But the EU's position with the AstraZeneca vaccine is kind of odd because they are simultaneously cross that they're not getting it, while quite often loudly saying that it might not work. And so it's kind of like, well, come on, guys,

you can't really do both. Obviously, it does work. Don't say on the radio it doesn't work. Definitely does work. But there is an oddness there that politicians are saying this vaccine is shoddy and we haven't got enough of it. Very strange situation. Yes, AstraZeneca has said that logistical and supply issues have delayed

production of the vaccine at its european hubs but have promised the eu a free garlic bread as compensation for the delay so with the score now at the union jacks uh three the union cracks uh four we need to sort of start looking at who we can blame for everything that's gone wrong scientists we've blamed a legacy of poor decisions by the uk before and during the pandemic leading to one of the worst death rates in the world as people continue to enter the country long after the virus had taken hold but scientists as we all know well they always like to peddle their own pro-evidence agenda and that's the last thing we need at a time like this so we have to find who is really to blame for the uk's failures and and let's find out as we play The Blame Game.

It's not whether you win or lose It's how you lay the blame Right, to help us attribute blame to one convenient scapegoat, we have this. This is the machine of ultimate blame, the MUB. This is specifically the MUB scapegoat of VX57. It processes all the facts

and factors from an issue and comes up with a single responsible person or organisation or thing at which to jab the severed finger of blame, thus exculpating ourselves from any responsibility. Let's just switch it on to the default setting. Mub VX57 on. OK, let's just check that it's working.

Why were there too many leaves in my garden today? Blame Chris Grayling. That'll do. Let's see if our panellists can correctly attribute responsibility for various national and international problems. So, firstly, who do you blame for Britain's Covid failings that have led to us passing those horrific milestones this week? Any suggestions? Who do you blame? Deliso?

Well, I think it's obvious. I blame Emmeline Pankhurst, Winston Churchill, and all of the defiant Brits of the past who have put into the genetic code of British people a desire not to listen to authority. In a pandemic, you want to be in a nation of lemmings who just obey what the NHS tells them. You do not want people who are like, oh, my liberties. No, just listen.

I left a dictatorship to move here. Why? Well, it's an interesting answer. We'll find out if it's right. Alice, who are you blaming? Kevin Bacon. It's always Kevin Bacon. Eventually you get to Kevin Bacon.

Am I playing this game wrong? We'll find out. Fern, who are you blaming for our COVID failings? I blame everyone in the UK who thinks that a posh English accent means you're intelligent because that's how we have these people in charge when really it should be people like me in charge or the cast of Geordie Shore. Hugo, any suggestions?

Who are you blaming for all the various failures? Oh, it's probably me. I mean, it's normally me. My kids always seem to think it's me. My Twitter feed seems to think it's me, so I'll take it. It's fine, it's me. It can be me. It's fine, everything else is me. This one can be me. I mean, it's normally me. My kids always seem to think it's me. My Twitter feed seems to think it's me, so I'll take it. Fine, it's me. It can be me. It's fine. Everything else is me. This one can be me. Well, let's find out. Let's ask Mub.

Who is to blame for Britain's Covid failings? Blame the Romans. All right. Why the Romans? I know the Romans sort of normalised people from other places coming to our place, which sort of helped accelerate the virus here, but people had... Blame the Romans.

OK, fair enough. You cannot argue with technology. Right. No points to our panellists there. What about the logistical teething troubles many industries are experiencing in the early days of the Brexit trade deal? Who are we blaming for that? Who are we blaming for the Brexit teething troubles? I would blame Hitler.

Hitler? Yes, yes Hitler. Hitler? Yes. Yes. Definitely Hitler. Right. Why him specifically? Why not? No Hitler. No war. No war. No EU. No EU. No leaving the EU. No leaving the EU. No extra tariff

on a pair of Belgian earrings or whatever. So Hitler. All for the sake of Hitler. Let's find out who's to blame for our teething troubles with Brexit. on a pair of Belgian earrings or whatever. So Hitler. Or Madonna Hitler. I like that logic. Let's find out who's to blame for our teething troubles with Brexit. Mub, tell us the answer. Blame.

Gandhi. All right, OK. You going to flesh that out at all for us? If the members of the British Empire had not cancelled their subscriptions, we would never have had to join the European Union in the first place. OK. Hugo, I'm going to give you a point,

because that was pretty much the same logic that you were going for with Hitler. So, well, thanks very much for helping us attribute the blame. Blame Brussels. Blame Marcel, who runs a gym in Brussels. Blame the unions. Blame Tony Blair. Blame Charles Darwin. Blame the. All right, blame... Blame Marcel, who runs a gym in Brussels. OK, right, I think it's a slight malfunction. Blame the unions. Blame Tony Blair. Blame Charles Darwin. Blame the bookies.

OK, right, at the end of that, it's five all. And that brings us to the end of the Blame Game. And, well, this question goes to the Union cracks, Hugo and Fern. The SNP last weekend announced an 11-point roadmap to what? Freedom! Was that it? That's basically it, yes. So I actually think this is...

You can say this on the radio, right? Nicola called Boris a timorous beastie? We cowering timorous beastie. Cowering timorous beastie, which I think is absolutely wonderful abuse, which came from a Burns poem, right? But I feel that Boris should answer in poetry as well, right? He should be like, OK, you're born in a Scottish poet, I'm going to answer you with some Shelley.

I think that... Turn it into some kind of pretentious poetry-based rap battle. He's more likely to go with, there was an old man from Nantucket, wasn't he? LAUGHTER I thought, I mean, Nicola Sturgeon, like, calling Johnson a sort of wee, cowering, tumorous beastie, it was like she was

trying to win a prize for doing an impersonator's impression of Nicola Sturgeon. It was quite weird. That's how you talk on Dead Ringers, isn't it? I don't know. Basically, she's crossing Boris Johnson, when she was saying he was a cowering, tumorous beastie because he doesn't want to allow another independence

referendum. And she says he doesn't want to have another independence referendum because he's afraid he'll lose it. But to which he could say, well, you only do want to have it because you think you'll win it, which would show that he understands the concept of democracy. What do you think? Would you like to see another referendum? I am pro-independence,

but like what Hugo said, any time the SNP do these sort of self-parodic things, like when Nicola quoted Scottish poetry or when Ian Blackford wears a tartan tie or Alex Salmond wears tartan anything, I'm just like, oh, can you not upgrade your image a bit? I don't know why I want Nicola to share, like, a Beyoncé gif of her flicking her hair or something.

I want to reiterate what I said before. This is not the time for democracy, OK? This is not the time for your votes and referendums. Like, you need an iron hard fist. Or a war. I did think it would be the great thing for both countries to tackle all the weight we've put on in the last year. Like, yoga with Adrian can be replaced with sword fighting for beginners

and PE with Joe Wicks can be replaced with hand-to-hand combat lessons. Are you suggesting that Joe Wicks leads a nationwide reconstruction of the Battle of Bannockburn? Yes. Yeah. I'll meet you after school behind the bike sheds in Culloden.

Yes, the SNP last weekend published its roadmap to another independence referendum. Obviously, Scotland has been a bit of an issue ever since Roman Emperor Hadrian took one look at the place and said, wall, big wall, they look very cross. Question for Alice. Alice, I know you're obsessed with international stock markets. Who has been playing games with the stock market this week?

Reddit degenerates, Andrew. So a bunch of people who were... Do you know what the stock market is? We should start with basics. I don't really understand them, Alice, to be honest. I prefer cricket. So it's where usually men who don't know how people work guess how people are going to work in the future

and then bet on what they're going to spend their money on. Right? OK. It's like astrology for men. It's a delicately balanced Jenga tower of lies and guesses and it's what the whole economy runs on. You know, they sort of tend to put their big clumsy fingers on the scale sometimes and they do what's called shorting stock,

which is where you get a long stock and you squish it down. And a bunch of people on Reddit saw that they were doing this, a shorting of stock, and they decided that what they were going to do was buy up the stock. It's called GameStop. So it's a bricks-and- bricks and mortar game company that they guessed was going to do badly. And then a bunch of people on Reddit were like, buy, buy, buy, buy, buy, buy, buy. And the stock started to soar up like Bitcoin, which is not like a boring bricks and

mortar game shop that's clearly not going to do well. It's an imaginary money guess. A much better bet. Anyway, so the whole stock market has panicked and pulled the brake on this because they don't like it when other people play with the market like it's a Monopoly game. Right, that's correct. It's basically hedge funds versus enthusiastic amateurs. They were like vigilantes.

Yes. It's this whole sort of boom of people playing the stock market based on social media. Someone sent me this video the other day where he was sort of a TikTok stock market advisor. It was literally this kid with his baseball cap on backwards. And he was going, look, what I do is when a stock is going up, I buy it. And then when it goes down, I sell it. And I was thinking, like, it's just terrifying that people are stupid enough to think that's what's going on in

the real money markets. Then I thought, no, that's exactly what's going on in the real money markets. They're just talking in a completely different way. Actually, this kid has got it absolutely licked. This kid is Goldman Sachs. Sort it. Yes, but essentially hedge funds against enthusiastic amateurs, and

it saw the stock market value of a Texas video game retailer rocket upwards. Best direction for a rocket in my book quadrupling in three days this week and up by 11 000 since last april this was caused by i don't know i don't understand how these things work and i sincerely hope i die that way if i learn it will only upset me. Andrew, I just explained it very clearly. Time for one more question with the score tantalisingly poised at the Union Jacks 7, the Union Cracks 8.

What began 23,000 years ago? Dogs. Dogs did. Correct, yes. Apparently dogs were domesticated 23,000 years ago. Dogs. Dogs did. Correct, yes. Apparently dogs were domesticated 23,000 years ago. Yes. Which leads me to wonder, what the hell is wrong with mine? Because he's had a long time to get up to speed

with where dogs are supposed to be, and yet he still barks at weird stuff in the park if there's weird stuff. If you get a chair in the park, he does not like that. A chair? A chair. Something like a bit of furniture. Just stand someone's left a bit of furniture in the park, hours. Hours, hours, hours, hours. Was that kind of Norman Tebbit thing?

Just wanting people to be more productive and not sit down. No, it doesn't need to be in the chair. It's just a chair. Someone's abandoned something. It shouldn't be in a park. It's not right. I don't know why he's got this fierce conceptual image of what parks ought to be like, but that chair is the way. The other thing he hates in the park is sad people.

You get someone walking along, having a really, really bad day, perhaps crying. Doesn't like that. Not having them in his park. No. Also a guy on the monocycle once. He wasn't having that at all. Yeah, so dogs may have been domesticated 20,000 years ago, but mine bloody wasn't.

I mean, they say dog is man's best friend, but it's not necessarily you, your best friend. Like, the question is, which man is dog's best friend? Also, if dogs are man's best friend and diamonds are a girl's best friend, everyone's best friend is that thing where they compress the ashes of your beloved pet into a diamond? This, of course, did come from an archaeological study.

And I always look at some of these conclusions and it's lots of extrapolation from very thin evidence. It's like, you look at a few dog bones, you look at a tool and be like, oh, this is what happened. And I often feel like they have more in their job description in common to Stephen King than Marie Curie.

They literally just like imagine this whole situation after watching too much Game of Thrones. Because I was like, this is very thin evidence. Don't bring nuance into this discussion, Delisa. Dogs can only listen to arguments in black and white. There's been loads of dog thefts

since lockdown. Loads of people's dogs getting stolen from them in parks, which proves a dog's anyone's best friend because they literally just take the dog and walk off with it. They don't need to wrestle it into the back of a van like you would a human. You say that like you've done it before.

Much easier than it is, for example, a hitchhiker. Yeah. Scientists have uncovered evidence that the relationship between humans and doggies began in Siberia a long time ago, depending on which side of the friendship you're on, either 23,000 years ago or 161,000 years ago. That's a dog years joke. I was hoping it would go better than it did. Never mind.

So good they didn't get it. And dogs must have loved it. All that time ago, 23,000 years ago, archaeology suggests the entire planet was covered with bones. the entire planet was covered with bones. That brings us to the end of this week's News Quiz. The final scores. The Union cracks have nine,

and ominously the Union Jacks only have seven. Is that an omen for the future of the UK? Maybe. And just some breaking news coming through. Hollywood has announced the production of a new blockbuster dramatising the rollout of the Covid vaccine. The film centres on 82-year-old Brian Pinker, the first person to receive the AstraZeneca vaccine, and Margaret Keenan, 91,

who is the first to receive the Pfizer vaccine. Obviously it's Hollywood, so they will be 38 and 23 respectively, have to steal the vaccine from Russian agents, then fall in love, despite initially not getting on very well, then save the Queen from being eaten by a giant mutant virus, and at the end of the climactic fight scene where they blast all the viruses with a special virus blaster,

they fail to notice one tiny little escape virus scuttling out of the room. Sequel! Sequel! Sequel! Thank you to our panellists, Hugo Rifkind and Fern Brady, Alice Fraser and Deliso Shaponda. I've been Andy Zaltzman. Thank you to our panellists, Hugo Rifkind and Fern Brady, Alice Fraser and Deliso Chaponda. I've been Andy Zaltzman. Thank you for listening. Goodbye. APPLAUSE

Taking part in the news quiz were Fern Brady, Deliso Chaponda, Alice Fraser and Hugo Rifkind. In the chair was Andy Zaltzman. Additional material was written by Charlie Dinkin, Mike Sheppard and Mo Omar. The producer was

Richard Morris and it was a BBC Studios production.