Friday Night Comedy from BBC Radio 4 - The News Quiz - 5th January

Episode Date: February 2, 2024

A look back on some of the best bits of News Quizzing from 2023In this compilation episode Andy Zaltzman casts his satirical eye over the highs and lows of the year, in which the UK managed to hold of a Prime Minister for more than a year (well done us), The Economy moved about as erratically as a paper plane in a snow storm, and there were some events in the Middle East that made doing a light-hearted topical news show a bit of a challenge at times...Hosted and written by Andy Zaltzman.Producer: Sam Holmes Executive Producer: James Robinson Production Coordinator: Jodie CharmanA BBC Studios Production

This is the BBC. This podcast is supported by advertising outside the UK. BBC Sounds. Music, radio, podcasts. Hello, I am Andy Zaltzman and welcome to the year 3024. I speak to you from a thousand years in the future. I thought I'd have a little nosy around to see how things pan out and not much to report. To be honest, the United Kingdom, of course, left the planet after a controversial referendum about 993 years ago.

All that's left is a big hole where the UK used to be, in which, by happy chance, I found this. cylinder recording of the official News Quiz review of 2023, which I have sent back to be broadcast to you early in 2024, just as it originally was. The year all started, of course, as it so often did in those days, in January, with the current incumbent in the number 10 ejector seat, Rishi Sunak, gamely hanging on to power after a frankly epic two-month endurance shift at the end of 2022. And as the new year squelched into action, Sunak set about trying to at least partially de-disillusion the nation's voters. As we approach the end of the first week of the year, who is already on five goals?

So, yeah, I think we know this. It's Rishi Sunak, and he presented his five-point plan. Was it five? I only did maths until I was 16, so I'm a bit hazy on numbers. But, yeah, he had a five-point plan. It was basically him sharing his New Year's resolutions with the nation, and very much like most people's, you know, fix the economy, stop small boats and get a wordle in one.

But, yeah, so it was him sort of telling us what he was going to do, but then it turns out a lot of his five points were things that were going to happen anyway. So things like inflation is going to come down and we're going to reduce the national debt and they're predicted to happen anyway. I mean, it's great to be able to stand up and announce things that you know are going to happen.

I mean, I'm quite prepared to say that I have decreed that this year, February, will follow January. There will be a second series of ratings smashed the traitors. And Piers Morgan will say something unpleasant about Meghan Markle. Now, as the old saying goes, good things come to those who wait. Like most old sayings, it's basically a complete lie, but it also proved to be a surprising central pillar in our national healthcare plans.

I mean, there's been talk of people having to wait 90 minutes for an ambulance after calling 999. I guess that makes it important when you call, because you know you're going to have to wait, you want a distraction for those 90 minutes, so try and have your heart attack at the start of a football match. But also, I know, Ian, you've been looking at the other numbers that we can call in these...

Oh, yeah, so 111 is what you call in a sort of non-emergency case. 999 is emergency. And I was wondering what the other three-digit numbers mean. 222 is for when your ball has gone into a neighbour's garden. digit numbers mean? 2-2-2 is for when your ball has gone into a neighbour's garden. 3-3-3 is dairy-based problems, so if you've run out of eggs, milk's

gone off, but also metaphorical dairy problems, so if you've put all your eggs in one basket. 4-4-4 is for when you can't get a song out of your head. And that's quite a fun one, because when you call them this, you're through to 4-4-4, what have you called us, 4- is for when you can't get a song out of your head. And that's quite a fun one, because when you call them, they say, you're through to 444, what have you called us, 444? It's a bit of a...

555, BBC Complaints Department. 666, obviously, that's satanic stuff. And ITV, they share an office. 777 is for the headaches you get after you've bought someone a present from Lush. And 888 is for injuries, but the sort of injuries that you would shout, it's only a flesh wound!

999, emergency services, 10-10-10, clairvoyance. If you're listening to this show now, which you no doubt are, there is a reasonable statistical chance that you have been in Cabinet at some point in this past year. And if you are Nadeem Zahawi specifically, that rises to 100%. He began January 2023 in his fourth different Cabinet role in just 15 months. Zahawi, however, ended January 2023 as

that guy who used to be in cabinet whom no one, probably not even himself, could remember what job he was actually doing anymore. Well, I think we're all familiar with the series of Mr Men books, aren't we? And so I'm sure we'll all remember the one about Mr Careless. Careless, who forgot about millions and millions of pounds of profit from the sale of a company that was stashed away in an offshore family trust in Gibraltar. And he would have got away with it if it wasn't for Mr. Nosy. And the real irony in the story was that Mr. Careless was actually Mr. Nosy's boss at the time.

And Mr. Careless was actually responsible for Mr. Nosy being as nosy as he was. So I think it's that, but the live-action version starring Nadeem Zahawi. Is that it, Andy? That is correct. It feels... You saying it then, when you were talking about everything everywhere, it does almost sound... It's so farcical. It should be fictional. It should be a film.

You almost want to hear, like, from the makers of the Education Secretary who screwed up an entire country's A-levels and a health secretary who broke his own rules by snogging his colleagues, comes the Chancellor with a hefty fine. It's so mad. Assuming all historians don't go on strike, 2023 will

probably go down in history as a year of strikes, as Frankie Boyle explained to our audience in Glasgow. Basically, everybody went on strike. Train drivers, teachers. It was particularly unlucky for teachers who were hoping to use their day

off to throw themselves under a train. But we need to have streets, because things are getting destroyed. The ambulance service is getting destroyed. Nowadays, your best hope of getting to hospital is phoning Deliveroo, then collapsing on your doorstep, dressed as a lambooner.

Nowadays, most of the ambulances are just a guy with a transit van who does the siren noise out the window. And, you know, these are people who deserve to be paid properly. If someone's in a caring profession, you want them paid properly because your life is in their hands. You know, nurses and doctors and what have you. Of all the ways that I want my prostate examined,

resentfully... ..is pretty near the bottom of the list. You want people in caring professions to be paid properly. If you try and hire a babysitter and they go, do you know what, I'll do it for free, that's a red flag. So I totally support the strikers and any time I see

strikers I honk, even though I don't drive. Meanwhile, Nicola Sturgeon, who some say has done more for the cause of Scottish independence than any other leaders, apart from David Cameron and Boris Johnson, held a one-person referendum and declared herself independent

from her job as First Minister and leader of the SNP. Yes, I can see why you've come to me with this, because as my impenetrable accent will show, I am a Scottish man. Well done for people who are following what I'm saying. I know it's like listening to Hamish Macbeth or something. No, look, I've enjoyed this.

It's always fun when Westminster sort of periodically turns its eye to Scotland and notices something's happening there. It's like people in King's Landing going, something's happening beyond the wall. But it's a big story. She's been there for eight years, I think, and it's a difficult gig, because if you're a prime minister down here,

you can have 40% support, and that's really good, whereas if she's got less than 50% support, she looks like she's kind of failing, because independence is the big holy mission. But a lot of people are going, well, she's leaving because she's failing, but then all her opponents are saying, it's great that she's leaving,

and both of those things can't be true. But the question now turns to who's going to take over and I reckon it's going to be that big guy made of ice with the blue eyes. It was quite rare, wasn't it? It was a genuine surprise. Yeah, it was a genuine surprise. It's sort of tricky as an English person talking about this, really, because it's sort of a bit like, to us, I suppose, the First Minister of Scotland's a bit like a John Cleese wife.

You just wait for the next one to come along and hate you. Someone's just lost the part on the new Fawlty Towers. 2023's predecessor, 2022, was, of course, famously a very disappointing year for the many fans of wars not starting in Europe. And the Russia-Ukraine war retained its place amongst the least enjoyable news stories of the year. As the conflict ticked past its first anniversary, American President Joe Biden and 21-time World Baddie of the Year nominee Vladimir Putin both took to the microphone. One of them had a very different view of how the war started than the other one. I mean, Biden thought it was Russia's fault

and Russia felt that it was very much the West's fault. So it was kind of like Jeremy Kyle, but done on the sort of world stage. Biden said in his speech, we will not tire. But it was funny because it visibly wore him out just to say that. I was just going to note the difference between watching UK and American coverage of these speeches. You know, here we were basically trusted to watch the speech and know who was the good guy and who was the bad guy. But in America, where people have been a bit more misbehaved, that little insurrection and all,

it was interesting to watch the news presenters because they would play the Putin speech and then they'd jump in and be like, this is a lie, this is not true, please do not storm the Capitol again. I do think Biden did say quite a lot in the speech that was wrong because he said Putin thought the world would roll over and he was wrong. But the world is rolling over constantly

back in december 2019 i wrote my top three predictions for the first four years of the decade here they are at one david cameron to become king to the labour party to live in harmonious unity with itself forevermore and three matt hancock to eat a camel's dingle dongle on national television before leaking 100,000 WhatsApp messages to a journalist. Well, one out of three ain't bad. WhatsApp is such a useful app, though, isn't it? Because all the messages you share on WhatsApp are coded

and encrypted and utterly unreadable by any third party, unless you copy them out by hand and pass them over on a sheaf of A4 to a woman who has proven to be an untrustworthy broadsheet scumbag. Could be said to have delivered your own fate into your hands. It's so skullduggerous. Like, she got the text while she was helping Matt... Matt, we're mates.

Helping Matt write his book, she signed an NDA and then she's gone, oh, it's of public interest. Well, let me tell you, Isabel, I am the public and I am interested because if there's something that I love, it's business that isn't mine. Well, it's fascinating to me seeing Matt Hancock being stabbed in the back by a serial backstabber. What this situation puts me in mind of, have you ever seen like a snake eating a rat? It's very hard to know who to root for in that situation. You know, I feel like I'm sort of going, oh, poor Matt Hancock. And then I remember who Matt Hancock is. And I'm like, go Isabel Oakeshott. And then I remember who Matt Hancock is. And I'm like, go, Isabel Oakeshott,

and then I remember who Isabel Oakeshott is. Another recurring trope of 2023 was our government's ongoing attempts to deal with this stone-cold, incontrovertible fact. There are, outside the United Kingdom, around eight billion, count them, eight billion potential illegal asylums milling around the planet, waiting for us to let our guard down. This new illegal migration bill...

Where's the pause supposed to be? Is there supposed to be a pause in there? Is it illegal migration? But this bill is more than 50% likely to break what? The Daily Mail website. Any suggestion, Chris? It's going to be, it's the law, isn't it? But it does need fixing. It does need solving. It seems that people are either insensitive to the issue

or naive to the issue, and there's some middle ground that needs to be found, really, isn't there? A middle ground? Do you mean like an island in the middle of the channel? The Isle of Wight, yeah. I mean, maybe we could just let anyone in that wants to come in, but just so long as they bring

some hard-to-get vegetables with them. You can imagine them down there. What have you got? Tomatoes, welcome! Next, what have you got, turnips? No, we've got them coming out of our ears. Now, in May, the waiting was finally over. After a nail-biting eight months of uncertainty,

King Prince Charles saw off the competition and was officially unveiled as the new Queen. Who won gold, silver, bronze and assorted other precious metals and gemstones for Team GB last Saturday? That'll be King Charles. Correct. That's it?

Yeah. That's all I can say in this situation? I mean, I know you are a proud and inveterate monarchist, Susie. Oh, aye. Aye. Oh, aye. So much so that I came down to London last Thursday and left on Friday morning.

But it was just a very peculiar thing, wasn't it? A lot of people get very excited about Penny Mordant and her headdress and her sword. I used to manage a gay bar in Glasgow in the 90s. See, if a woman wasn't in by seven o'clock with a headdress and a sword. Was it even a Tuesday, Andy? The thing I found strangest about Penny Morden was, I mean, she looked great and she held the sword very well.

And then immediately afterwards, her odds to become prime minister fell. I watch politics quite closely and last time I checked, being able to hold heavy objects for hours wasn't key to the job. I got very nervous about that sword, because I thought, if she stumbled, she might accidentally pop one of King Charles's fingers. Is that mean? See, when Charles was in his wee box and they put the box round him and we couldn't see in

and it was all that oily stuff I thought, if they take this away and it's not Debbie McGee I will be... What were the highlights for you of the coronation service? For me, it would be the protesters because I think people got really

antsy about it, really upset about it, but there were hardly any of them, you know, they could have just done what they did with Prince Harry and hidden them behind Princess Anne's feathery hat. The coronation probably wouldn't have won any prizes for understated minimalism, unless it was up against the Covid inquiry, the unedifying and seemingly unending endoscopy into the bowels of Covid-era government.

There is nothing to see here. Please move government. There is nothing to see here. Please move along. There is nothing to see here. Said whom about what this week? I'm presuming this is the story about the Covid inquiry and pass. Correct. I'm going to try not to say anything that is unambiguously irrelevant. But the government is in a really quite fierce confrontation now with Baroness Hallett,

who incidentally is making Sue Gray look like a total wussy. Because Baroness Hallett has powers. She has the powers to demand evidence. And I'm a little bit perplexed as to why the COVID inquiry think that the contents of Boris Johnson's diaries and notebooks are important evidence, because none of it will be true. We are talking about Boris Johnson. It won't be a factual record

because facts are like kryptonite to him. I mean, I should imagine the diary will have entries like, you know, Laura Koonsberg definitely fancies me. Because every time I see her, she keeps asking me what parties I've been to recently. I can't see a way that it ends well for them because

it's a bad look if the cover-up of your incompetence is an incompetent cover-up. General election fever is all set to sweep the land in 2024. Do please make sure your inoculations are

up to date. And over the course of the last year, both Rishi Sunak and Keir Starmer laid out their top five objectives with which they hope to gradually let people down over the rest of the decade. I think I'd like a leader that can focus on a number other than five, ideally higher than five, because I don't know if you know,

there's this obsession with the number five now. Both Keir and Rishi both have five things that they're going to achieve. Keir's are called missions. He's on a mission. But to his credit, his missions are actually like full sentences and they make sense and when you read them you go, okay, fair enough. Yeah, I can get behind that. Like what we've been talking about, make Britain a clean energy superpower. Rishi though, has priorities, which were originally called promises. They were promises when he first brought them out, which is kind of like when your husband says he'll promise to fix something. And then eventually it

becomes a priority, you know, like doing the dishes or stop sleeping with Susan from work but the difference is with Rishi's priorities is that he decided he would put them down into two word statements so where Keir says we are going to secure the highest sustained growth in the G7. Rishi has gone, economy growing. That's it. That's it. Make Britain a clean energy superpower. Rishi, debt falling. Is it weird that the ones you're saying second, I'm like, yeah, yeah.

I understand. I like this guy. Oh, okay. So wait, if I say make Britain's streets safe. Not interested. No. Okay. Make that shorter, please. So, wait, if I say make Britain's streets safe... Not interested. No, OK. Make that shorter, please. Small boats! Yes! I want more small boats!

We shuffle ahead now to October, when the news quiz proved, beyond all remaining doubt, that it is not, and I repeat, not, whatever people may claim, a multi-billion pound infrastructure project. And we proved this by going all the way to Manchester. All the way. In the week of the Conservative Party conference. They cancelled the HS2, right?

But I also think that this is the worst train cancellation. There should be at least an HS bus replacement service. A bus which goes at like, I don't know, 120 miles an hour. It's like, oh yes, we've got hope. With Keanu Reeves on board. Andy Street said that Rishi Sunak has cancelled the future. He's cancelled the future?

I mean, are you on board with this? Is that because he had sex with his own mother in the back of a car? Sorry, was that what you would do? That'll do it. The cancelling of HST is, I mean, whether it's a good idea or a bad idea, HST is a bit embarrassing. It's only a train.

You'd think we could build it. It's not like it's a space elevator. If they were serious, they would have started building from both ends. Has no one paid ticket to ride? That's right. started building from both ends. Has no one paid ticket to ride?

Suella Braverman, who by the end of the year had become the, how many times has she been sacked or reinstated now, the former former, former Home Secretary, delivered one of the most talked about speeches of the conference, soothing the always troubled waters of the immigration debate with her trademark volcano of cesium.

But as the old saying goes, words speak louder than actions if all you do is say what actions you might one day take. The exception to the rule being when the action involves something like this. She stepped on a guy dog. Exactly. She probably thought it was a just stop oil protester. That's. She probably thought it was a just stop oil protester. That's what she probably thought.

People were asking why the dog didn't move when she stood on it, but it was like, it was already where it was supposed to be because it had already come to where all the dog whistles were. Yes, in what was described as her most humane and kind-hearted moment of the conference. Yes, in what was described as her most humane and kind-hearted moment of the conference.

Suella Bradman trampled on someone's guide dog. Labour hit back the following week with their own counter-conference. But before would-be Prime Minister Keir Starmer could even start his latest rabble-dousing speech, he was pre-interrupted by someone who was not the first person to think that the Labour leader needed a little bit of extra stardust, but was the first person to literally and physically sprinkle him with that stardust. The glitter thing, you know, it gave Starmer some colour. I mean, hitherto,

you know, he has promised the audacity of beige. You know, what do we want? The slow but steady improvement in public services. When do we want it? In the fullness of time. How do we want it? Subject to terms and conditions. You know, the whole Labour conference was very bizarre. To borrow from Neil Kinnock, you had the grotesque spectacle of a Labour Party,

a Labour Party scuttling around the country, preparing for government. I mean, it's something that nobody has seen in more than a decade. Starmer obviously is often criticised, like now, for being boring. But actually, that speech, he went quite Lord of the Rings at one point, which I enjoyed. The bit where he said, do not doubt if the fire of change lives on in Britain. The question is whether it still burns. And I was like, all right, Elrond. By the time Labour met, the world had already changed on the 7th of October. And when the world changes in a day, it's generally not for the better. What changed it was one of the most horrific acts of terrorism

in the distressingly bloated catalogue of brutalities that our frankly ridiculous species has compiled over its long and not always glorious history. Well, it's been a bit of a bad week for the planet, I would say. Would you concur? Yes, it's been pretty horrible, hasn't it? And it's also been pretty horrible trying to make sense of the second and third wave of commentary

that comes out after it as well also been pretty horrible trying to make sense of the the second and third wave of commentary that comes out after it as well and and trying not to get caught up in commentating on commentary and so on something that came up a lot maybe just in the tweets or the articles that i saw is people saying that this sort of thing doesn't emerge from a vacuum and those people want to provide context and have you understand the last 75 years or whatever of the Middle East. I think in a way it's okay to feel on some occasions that things like this do emerge. If not from a vacuum, they create a vacuum around them. They are something like the experience of being deafened by a bomb blast. It's not necessary actually to contextualise them. It's okay just to feel the sheer depth of the horror, to register that and to feel sympathy towards those afflicted.

the sheer depth of the horror, to register that and to feel sympathy towards those afflicted. And if I'm honest, I think the most positive thing that I felt about it is an extraordinary and profound gratitude that I was not born into that part of the world and in fact have enjoyed extraordinary peace and security in the British Isles where I've been lucky enough to spend my entire life and which I hope my children will continue to enjoy as well. Gratitude is sometimes something we fail to register until it's made obvious what the alternatives might be. So you're suggesting that we spread the British Isles all the way around the world again?

It's worked well before. With the world wrapped in an inescapable bleakness, we decided to delay the News Quiz theme tune that week until there was at least a glimmer of light to cling to. And that came with the news that Harvard professor Claudia Golden had become the first woman to win the Nobel Prize for Economics as an individual, rather than as part of a team, which also involved men. How many Nobel Prize winners does it take to figure out that having children is the major contributing factor to the ongoing gender pay gap? And the answer is one, but she has to win a Nobel Prize to be taken seriously. Good. Set up, punchline. Proper comedy. Thank you, Anne.

Oh, there we go. You've lightened the mood enough that we get the theme tune. Thank you for that. There we are. We made it. All it took was a proper joke. I did have a quick look at her Wikipedia page to see whether she'd taken her own advice in order to pursue her career with unalloyed vigour.

She has remained childish. She is married, however. I thought this was quite interesting. She's married to a gentleman by the name of Lawrence F. Katz and she has no children, but she does have a number of golden retrievers. So she lives with cats and dogs, which I think is... I don't know, it's just... I don't know what... There's no satire there, it's just one of those pleasant... But she is now queen of that house, so she is reigning cats and dogs.

That's the case. It's such an interesting subject for study and discussion. Traditionally, I'm not sure if the audience understands, women's work and men's work have been very separate spheres. Women traditionally have worked in ballet, flower arranging, finance brokering, witchcraft and heavy machinery, while men have worked in mining, nude wrestling, philosophy, podcasting and cryptocurrency speculation.

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

She gets all that passive income from all those castles, though. Beyonce castles, come on! That was there, surely. Where's my theme tune? Da-da-da-da-da-da-da. Where's my theme tune? There we have it. Off you toddle, 2023, into the history books where you belong. 2024 thus begins with the least rubbish year of the 2020s award still wide open as we approach the halfway point of the decade.

Can 2024 take its chance to claim top spot in the rankings? Well, frankly, all it needs to do is persuade everyone in the world to agree to sit around doing absolutely nothing and it will romp home. Plus, it's got the advantage of having an Olympics in it, so all is not lost. And the news quiz is back next week, so there's that too. Don't forget, as soon as you've finished listening to the show, we would

appreciate it if someone could preserve the show in wax cylinder form and bury it so that I can find it in the future and avoid an awkward half hour of radio so, oh, you have done that. Thank you very much. Much obliged. Until next week, happy new year, and goodbye to 2023. Please

don't come back. This 2023 compilation was written and presented by me, Andy Zaltzman. The producer was Sam Holmes, and we'd like to thank all of the wonderful panellists and writers who worked on the show this year. It was a BBC Studios production for Radio 4. I'm Dr Michael Mosley and in my new BBC Radio 4 podcast, Cold Therapy, I'm going to be looking at the science behind the surprising benefits of the cold. How turning down the temperature in your house

can improve your blood sugar and fat metabolism. How exercising in the cold can help you get fitter, quicker and more easily, and how cold water swimming can boost your mood and might even protect your brain. Based on the latest research, we'll reveal some simple, safe and practical things you can do and the effect they'll have if you choose to invite in the colder side of life. I hope you'll subscribe on BBC Sounds.