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

Episode Date: October 27, 2023

Andy Zaltzman quizzes the week's news. With him to find the answers to all our problems Andrew Doyle, Athena Kugblenu, Felicity Ward and Hugo Rifkind.This week, Andy and the panel discuss Suella's desire to ditch conventions, Sunak laughing all the way to the Rosebank, and the thrills and spills of the Lib Dem conference.Written by Andy ZaltzmanWith additional material by Alice Fraser Ben Clover Cody Dahler and Miranda HolmsProducer: Gwyn Rhys Davies Executive Producer: Richard Morris Production Co-ordinator: Dan Marchini Sound Editor: Giles AspenA 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. Thanks to Mark Zuckerberg launching a range of celebrity AI chatbots this week, we can now choose a different AI bot host of the News Quiz every week. I fancy a week off, so we're going to choose from one of the world's leading showbiz superstars. We could have an AI Snoop Dogg, any Kardashian, Beyoncé, the Pope, George Clooney, Lionel Messi, or Matt Hancock.

But I'm going to go for Andy Zaltzman. Let's see how it flies. Hello, welcome to the News Quiz. Oh, that was pretty good. I'll let him get on with it. See you all next week. Hello, I am A.I.N. Desaltman. Welcome to the new Improved News Quiz.

You can't fight progress, people. Accept it and move on. Let's meet our teams. This week we have Team Oil against Team Boil. On Team Oil we have Athena Koblenou and Felicity Ward. And on Team Boil it's Hugo Rifkind and Andrew Doyle. I should say, before we start under this week's new BBC guidelines, as host of the News Quiz, which I assume is a flagship news show, small flag, toy ship, but that'll do me.

As host, I'm not allowed to express any strong opinions about football. So sorry if that disappoints you. Right, our first question goes to everyone. Kiki D, George Michael, and now after this week, the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees. All

have performed duets with Elton John. But who delighted music fans the world over by finally making that long-awaited Elton UNHCR duet happen? Oh, was that Suey B? It was. That's her rap name anyway. Suella Braverman. Yes. I don't know if you've been on the internet this week, but lots of people have been attacking her because she's a woman, because of the colour of her skin, and I find that disgusting, especially when her personality and politics are sitting right there.

So both Elton John and the UNHCR criticised Braverman's speech that she made to a septic think tank in... LAUGHTER According to Braverman, what has failed? Is it Elton John's hair transplant?

Because I think she's going to want to get back at him. Yeah, she is going to. She's going to be angry. Look, she says multiculturalism has failed and immigration has failed. I don't... I just sort of wish that, like, Conservative politicians in this country would decide whether they love this country

or whether they hate this country. Because either is fine, but pick a lane. It's just getting annoying. Like, with Suella Braverman this week, it's like, generally, one moment, if you suggest that Britain is a place that struggles with integration, that has some sort of deep-seated problems with racism and so on,

the Conservatives will point you and go, like, how dare you? You know, we have a Hindu prime minister, we have a Buddhist home secretary, we have, well, they don't say we have a Muslim mayor in London because they don't like to talk about him, but they'll say, look, we have the most racially mixed and a cabinet that's descended from immigrants like has never existed before. How dare you suggest there are any problems in this country but then the next moment when they're saying the country is actually a hellhole and nobody gets on and everybody hates each other and racial integration

is impossible and you go well hang on that thing you just said about the cabinet they go shut up you racist how dare you even notice and it's just really really tiring isn't it and i also think with braverman i think this speech about multiculturalism, because, you know, Angela Merkel made a similar speech back in 2011, Sarkozy did, David Cameron did. I think it's the kind of speech you make when you've got leadership ambitions. And bear in mind, we're going to have a general election

within 14 months, so she'd better get a move on because that's only enough time for three new Tory prime ministers. So I think, ultimately, that's what it is. It's more tactical than that. But does it make any sense? Okay, because unless Sue Anna Braverman is a vampire and can't see her own reflection in the mirror, I would suggest that if she wants to become leader

of the Conservative Party and therefore prime minister, she wants to talk about how multiculturalism might be a successful thing. It might be a direct result of that. It's worth pointing out, she is the person in charge of immigration. She is the person who's got a backlog of 175,000 asylum seekers.

It is her, and with increasingly mad plans about what to do with them all, whether we're going to send them to Mars next, or store them in disused coal mines, or who knows what. I wouldn't say those out loud. They may be co-opted. It is a hard thing to address. I mean, seriously, the plans sound mad.

I wouldn't be surprised if she started bribing swordfish to jab at the inflatable boats. But I think, how do you solve it? Because every successive... Labour says they've got this comprehensive plan. They're going to completely solve the small boats crisis. But my memory is the last time Labour tried to address immigration they had that anti-immigration mug.

Do you remember? In 2015. And you can't solve it through the medium of crockery. If you put something on a mug, it immediately becomes true. Okay? I've got a mug. I swear down. It says world's greatest mum.

Thank you. Well, it works. It does work. But she was saying as well, there are 780 million people who could come to Britain. And it's like, well, it's a bit like, you know, if you sort of think the adult population of Britain is, what, about 40 million?

So that means there are 20 million people who could be my girlfriend. You know what I'm saying? It's a nonsense. I spent quite a few years as a teenager in church youth groups, and when I heard this, all I could think is that there are pastors all over the country this weekend that will be going, you know,

Suella Braverman, she's not into refugees, but I can think of a pretty cool guy that was a refugee and... LAUGHTER Another question now from Braverman's speech. I can think of a pretty cool guy that was a refugee and... Another question now from Braverman's speech. Who, according to Braverman, who doesn't do enough to qualify for what? Is this darts doesn't do enough to qualify as a sport?

She didn't say that out loud, but I think... Because that would be controversial. Is it something to do with gay people? Yes. Not doing enough to prove that they're gay when they apply for asylum here? Yes, or not being quite discriminated enough against. She's got this idea that basically a lot of asylum seekers will pretend to be gay and pretend

that they'll be discriminated in their own country and that's the way they get in. But I don't know how you test for gayness other than to give them a test on Eurovision or something like that. But what do you do, like a blood test, like if your chromosomes are YMCA? I don't know how this works. Well, this hits home for me.

I actually only came out as bisexual a couple of years ago. I'm what is known as a late bisexual. And I found out in quite a shocking way. I was buying a skateboard and... Well, that was way. I was buying a skateboard and... Well, that was it. I was buying a skateboard. And if you are in your 40s and you're a woman and you do buy a skateboard, you might be straight, but you are probably also gay.

I've heard of this thing, like, called a gaydar, right? So why doesn't the Home Office just employ those gay people to, like, hold a spoon or something? If the spoon moves, oh, you're gay, right right is that not how it works and then call it the homo office right it's actually really hard to hide or pretend to be a different sexual orientation i speak from experience right because as a teenager i used to pretend that i was straight the whole time i used to leave things around my bedroom to throw my parents off the scent, like a copy of FHM or a can of Foster's

or an Allen key, you know? And it just doesn't work. Like, they see through it. It's not just gay people she thinks aren't persecuted enough. It's also women, of course. But, I mean, look, she did concede that there are some places where it's very hard to be a woman these days, like GB News, for example.

But she... But she says... She says people need a better reason to be let into another country, although this is a woman who was saying this when she'd just been let into America just to give a crap speech. So, maybe not. I worry about Suella at the airports, like, going through, not because of the colour of her skin,

but she's always carrying dog whistles, so I just imagine the security... According to The Times, Hugo, you can have this one since you work for The Times, Bradman has been authorised by Rishi Sunak to suggest that who leaves what? She wants us to leave the European Convention on Human Rights and no longer be governed by the European Court on Human Rights

because they go together as a double act. Because basically, look, we left Europe to keep down immigration and that didn't work so now we're going to leave being humans as well. Do you think Suella's alright? I'm just worried about her. She just doesn't want us to have anything

nice. Do you think she's got like a really bad UTI a really stubborn like a really stubborn one that antibiotics just won't fix what's that whirring sound you might ask yes that is the sound of the Conservative Party shredder warming up again they've only just unjammed it from Liz Truss force ramming

all accepted rules of economics into it this time last year. With the Tories riding low in the polls and with the general election hoving into view like an unwanted hippopotamus at a christening... Let me in the font, I need to bathe. It's now the UN Refugee Convention of 1951 and the European Convention on Human Rights

that could be for the mincer in pursuit of the electorally crucial international agreement sceptic vote. Sue Ella Braverman put the flam and the Tory into inflammatory this week. She said multiculturalism has failed. She's not the first to say it either. Angela Merkel said it some time ago and Merkel forgot to add, mind you, come to think of it, monoculture didn't really work out too well for us in Germany.

Sue Ella Braverman also said, if cultural change is too rapid and too big, then what was already there is diluted. Eventually, it will disappear. At which point, all the Western imperialism irony alert alarms around the world simultaneously went off, sending a honking sound into space that will surely attract alien intervention

within the next 100,000 years. Well, at the end of that round, these scores, let's call it three points all. Moving on, the next question, and Felicity and Athena can take this one. Who promised this week to get all oiled up, despite a lot of people saying, no, that would

be disgusting it's something to do with that they've approved drilling in the north sea and they said they weren't going to yeah you're excited by this oh pumped a bit more oil yeah yeah i think if there's one thing that mother nature needs is for us to take more. She's had it too good for too long, you know? Hoarding all her resources, keeping it to herself. We've got air conditioners to run. I mean, the planet's on fire. It's hot up here. Give us some oil.

What do you think? I mean, it's good that we're not letting the fossils have died in vain. I mean, it would be a shame. I wonder whether this is actually good for the environment. I don't know much about it, but aren't... You are going to have to show some working. No, wait. Bear with me on this,

because is it not the case that sea levels are rising, so if you suck up all the oil, they'll go down again? So this is a good thing. OK, I'm not a scientist, but that sounds right. Did you see this week there was a big study from, I forget which university it was, where they basically said, look, it's completely possible that Britain could completely fulfil its energy needs

within 50 years entirely from wind and solar. And I just almost admire the way the government's immediate response to that was kind of, nah. I think they did the thing they were very put like they were politicians about it they're like i hear you i love that counterpoint oil and gas yeah kind of the same thing it's only going to supply eight percent of oil and gas for six years i think is it is, where it will do damage forever. Yeah, but ever is, you know, like a long way off. We're going to be dead.

That's true. You make a wonderful point, Andy. I mean, it might not be. It might be quite soon. Is that worse or better? I can't figure it out. Yeah, regulators have given the not-at-all-green-light to development of the Rosebank oil field, the North Sea Scorcher, which is lounging seductively atop an estimated 300 million barrels worth of almost erotically crude oil.

It's a classic British 21st century infrastructure project, a company majority owned by a foreign government extracting fuels we don't really need to sell to countries we can't control who will sell it back to us at prices we've got to cross our fingers about, all whilst bringing down bills for British customers by an estimated 0.0 pence. Also, I mean, in terms of the economics of it, rounding it up to the nearest billion, which I like to do,

and my one billion fans like it that way... LAUGHTER In... In 2021, the UK imported £18 billion of crude oil and exported £18 billion of crude oil. In conclusion, we are a silly species. Moving on now, Hugo and Andrew, what could be reaching the end of the line

whilst also not reaching the end of the line? OK, this is hs2 yes they keep saying this week that the government is going to row back on hs2 which is alarming because i'm not sure row back is the right terminology unless we've spent 71 billion pounds on a kayak well at least we have something out of it it's pretty special isn't it it's pretty special when you have a prime minister who's having to talk about whether or not he's going to cancel a train line to Manchester when he's about to go to his own party's conference in Manchester. They've timed that really, really well.

That's really good. But he had to do loads of interviews, didn't he, with the local radio stations, and he just wouldn't talk about whether they were cancelling HS2 to Manchester or not. They kept asking, and he kept saying, I'm not going to speculate on future things. And I said, well, I mean, come on.

It's not like trying to sort of figure out, you know, the next lottery numbers. It's future things that you yourself are going to do. So if anyone's very well placed to speculate on them, it's you. It's like saying, you know, are you going to eat that biscuit of mine that you're currently holding up to your own mouth? I'm not going to speculate on future things.

So he won't speculate, so we don't know whether they're going to scrap it. But if they weren't going to scrap it, they'd say no. So we kind of do. I mean, in terms of, you know, worst infrastructure projects, which we got a pretty impressive track record at recently. I mean, this has got to be right up there, hasn't it?

Is there any things they could have done to make it go even worse than it has? Oh, yeah, they could have just kind of just bought a bus and said, this is the HS2 rail replacement bus. Yeah, Rishi Sunak became the latest prime minister to balls-up celebrity mastermind, scoring no points in his specialist subject, the HS2 rail line.

The rail line is now like a psychotic entomologist pet centipede it's had many of its legs gradually removed one by one when asked yes or no whether he was scrapping the birmingham to manchester line sunak said i'm not speculating on future things we have got spades in the ground right now. Spades. £70 billion. Should have at least got a digger out of it. And at the end of that round, it's six points to Team Boyle, Andrew and Hugo,

and five points to Felicity and Athena. Team Oil. Andrew and Hugo, you can have this question. The least popular of the five seasons, winter, spring, summer, autumn and party conference, is now upon us. If Vivaldi's fifth season ever comes out, it could be the most depressing piece of music of all time. And the Liberal Democrats were first up to the plate.

Liberal Democrat leader Ed Davey ruled out what at the conference but did not rule out what? He ruled out winning seats but he didn't rule out losing his dignity. That's what the court vote want for the Liberal Democrats, isn't it? Ed Davey gave that speech. A lot of people found it quite shocking because I think

a lot of their party membership still thought that Joe Swinson was in charge. It's not very memorable but a lot of people found it quite shocking because I think a lot of their party membership still thought that Joe Swinson was in charge. It's not very memorable. But a lot of it came down to this idea of housing, wasn't it? They had a pledge to build, what was it, 380,000 new houses, and then the party rebelled against the leadership. But rebelling against Ed Davey isn't really... It's a bit like slapping a blamonge, isn't it?

It doesn't really mean much. So when I heard a Lib Dem member saying that they wanted to build less houses, I was appalled because that should be build fewer houses. It's weird that they have policies. It's like you're not going to be in government. It's like they sit around talking, going like, will we build a swimming pool when we get to Mars?

It's like, guys, you're not going to Mars. You're the Lib Dems. You're not going anywhere. I heard about the Lib Dems when I first moved over here and then I haven't heard about them since. That's 100% true. And then when I heard them, that they had a party conference,

it's like when you hear a musician is going on tour but you thought they were already dead. You're like, Frankie Valli? From the Four Seasons? Yeah, yeah no good on him yeah no get out there the lib dems are just like here for vibes you know they're just here for the vibes man it's like like what will we do if we win oh and whatever we want right we're never going to win obviously that happened once and had to do it and i've gotten into loads of trouble um so maybe maybe

they should come up with some proper policies just in case you know was it not technically that the party leadership wanted to cancel the house building plans but the members wouldn't let them that's it because they've got this tension because they want people to vote for them so they build houses but they also in every single place where they actually stand they want people to vote for them under the promise that they won't build houses um and they can do things locally that they can't do nationally because people might vote for them locally, but they'll never win nationally and they're not going to Mars. I mean, housing is a difficult issue.

Let me illustrate this with our studio audience now. Who likes having somewhere to live? There you go. That's always going to be a tricky political issue. Aren't they talking about potentially getting into a coalition with Labour? Yes. So the question, he ruled out working with Labour, but he didn't rule out working with Labour. That might be why Ed Davey is really going for the Tories.

In his party speech, he barely mentioned Labour. He went on about the Tories again and again and again. He said that the Tories were like a bad soap opera which is actually unfair because even a bad soap opera wouldn't have a car crash every episode um felicity uh the liberal democrats also pledged to offer what car maintenance service to the british public was it a a full body wash and a special machine with tickly brushes that whiz around and really get your undercarriage proper clean and buff you up like a shiny sausage? Yeah, that one. Or was it B, an MOT? It's an MOT. Ed Davey and the Lib Dems

have this phrase, they want to lead with care, which I thought is lovely. And they want to introduce the idea of a mental health MOT, which in theory is great, but they're probably going to be like my real MOTs, which is I forget about them until the day before and then I just have a breakdown on the side of the road. Obviously, I have mental illness, obviously. So, of course, I support this about having a checkup for everyone, not just people with mental illness, but for everyone, but especially people with mental illness, because statistically we are more likely to drink more, take more drugs, to smoke, to eat worse and to exercise less, which means technically and medically we are heaps more fun.

The problem sometimes having a mental illness is you only hear what you want to hear so even if you do go and get this mental health mot you speak to maybe a therapist my therapist said to me when my anxiety was at its absolute height and i was very controlling over everything i was very like stressed out by it she saidicity, if you keep going like this, you're going to be known as a micromanager. And I said, a manager? I've never had a promotion before. Yes, the Liberal Democrat conference

took place in Bournemouth this week as the party tries to recover its status as the default party people vote for to ensure the party they vote for doesn't win, so they have carte blanche to complain about the government that other people voted for for the next five years. That hard-earned status, of course, took a catastrophic battering when the Liberal Democrats inadvertently, despite their best efforts over several decades, found themselves in government as official coalition gimps for five years at the

start of the last decade. And they now try to find themselves trying to convince the public that they are once again reassuringly unelectable. But the party found itself divided on the issue of housing. Members voted against the party leadership's plan to ditch its target of building 380,000 homes a year and instead commit to a flexible plan with a minimum of 150,000 social homes per year or one giant home for 380,000 people for part of the year. I'm not very good with details.

They also pledged to end the long-standing injustice whereby cars get regular MOTs to check they're OK, but people who, let's not forget, also don't have the advantages of wheels, engines and built-in stereos don't. Because when it comes to mental health, the traditional tried-and-tested British technique of bottling it all up, letting it ferment and waiting for the cork to explode

is now, for whatever reason, viewed as not 100% reliable. Thank you, Brussels. Moving on to the Labour labor party this can go to athena and felicity who definitively said that's enough this week and to whom oh that's got to be um the labor party yes they said like private schools there can't be charities anymore and private schools are like we want to be charities and i think you know you can be charities right we're going to act like charities i want to see adverts at three in the afternoon with Ren and Tobias and poor little Atticus.

Just £20,000 a month. We'll buy these three urchins a white water raft in P.E. lesson. Every day. They're allowed to keep their charitable status now. It's just they have to pay VAT. That's the plan. That's the plan. They're doing the VAT thing rather than the charitable status thing

because the charitable status thing would have taken a long time to get through and there'd have been legal challenges, whereas the VAT thing they can do as soon as they get in. The bad thing about it is supposed to be that all the really, really posh schools get more from charity than they do from fees, so they'll be fine. So it'll just be sort of middle-ranking private schools that kind of go to the wall. But I think it's fine. They want to charge VAT on private schools, but they should also charge them on all the other things that people do to give

their kids an unfair advantage in school, like going to church and moving into catchment areas. Heavy VAT on church and catchment areas. This is kind of outside my experience. I went to a comprehensive, I got free school meals, because there was a weedy kid who brought a packed lunch. I mean, they just do get a better start in life, don't they? They just do. I'll give you an example.

For my school, I remember, this is absolutely true, I had an assembly where a teacher stood up and told us all, I've looked at university applications, you all need to lower your aspirations. I promise you she said that. When I said to my UCAS advisor that I wanted to apply to Oxford University, he laughed so hard he actually died. I mean, it was a few years later from thrombosis, but I, you know, I like to think it was connected, because he did laugh a lot. Yes, Labour is set to row back on its plan to strip private schools of their charitable status.

In fact, we're just hearing that Eton College has offered Labour free use of its Olympic rowing lake to do the official rowing back next week. Labour have pledged to impose a VAT on private schools instead. However, they are also now expected to announce at their conference, which is imminent, that if private schools want to retain their charitable status, all teachers will have to dress up in fancy dress outfits

to prove that they're raising money for a good cause. And the schools will have to rename themselves to sound more like actual charities, so Eton will become the Berkshire Foundation for the Incurably Privileged. And other private schools will become, for example, the Build-A-Bird Beneficent Society's Prehabilitation Centre for Potential Billionaires.

Right, at the end of that round, the scores are now 8 to Andrew and Hugo and 7 to Athena and Felicity. It's been a great week for the creative arts this week we have the exhibition of the shortlisted turner prize nominees opening in eastbourne i want our panelists to submit their entry for the turner prize it's got been artwork encapsulating something from this week's news and tell us its title who wants to start on this one hugo oh very much so it's okay so this is a tent and it's plain white like nothing on it and it's called everyone who wants to start on this one? Hugo? Oh, very much so. Okay, so this is a tent and it's plain white,

like nothing on it, and it's called Everyone Who Wants to Sleep with Lawrence Fox. Mine isn't about a news story. It is about something that happened this week. It was my birthday. No, why did you bring that up? So my piece of art is me sleeping in a bedroom with my door locked and my son can only go in to see his dad in the morning

and that piece is called Happy Birthday. My piece is, I think it's beautiful. It's like a blank canvas, and it's called This Is What I Think Of When I Think Of Ed Davey. OK, I would do, it's a bit avant-garde, but I would do a sculpture of Thomas the Tank Engine hanging himself with a noose and call it HS2. These are all good.

I ran my AI artist programme on here. It just came up with a copy of Liz Truss' forthcoming book, Informaldehyde, and called it The Physical Impossibility of Humility in the Mind of Someone Deranged.

and called it the physical impossibility of humility in the mind of someone deranged. Well, that concludes this week's News Quiz. And our winners, by ten and a half points to ten, are Andrew and Hugo over Athena and Felicity. Our winners... Our winners win a moment of calm in our troubled, hectic world. Enjoy it. Good. Our losers win a, what would Lawrence Fox say, wristband

and a complimentary chainsaw to chop their arm off if they ever accidentally put it on. And in honour of HS2, this week's episode of the News Quiz will end slightly early. Thank you for listening. Taking part in the News Quiz were Felicity Ward, Athena Cablenu, Hugo Rifkind and Andrew

Doyle. In the chair was Andy Zaltzman and additional material was written by Alice Fraser, Cody Darla, Ben Clover and Miranda Holmes. The producer was Gwyn Rees-Davies and it was a BBC Studios production for Radio 4.

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