Friday Night Comedy from BBC Radio 4 - The News Quiz: Ep 2. Team Vibes vs Team Bribes

Episode Date: September 18, 2026

Answering the big questions of the week are Mark Steel, Celya AB, Zoe Lyons and Hugo Rifkind. Who's allegedly not been listening properly during a work meeting? How did thieves manage to lose two Renoir paintings almost immediately? And which Harry definitely isn't getting his old job back? Written by Andy Zaltzman.With additional material by: Catherine Brinkworth, Adrian Gray, Ruth Husko and Claire Rammelkamp Producer: Georgia Keating Executive Producer: James Robinson Production Coordinator: Giulia Lopes Mazzu Sound Editor: Jerry Peal Recorded by David Thomas at The Glee Club in BirminghamA BBC Studios Production for Radio 4.

This BBC podcast is supported by ads outside the UK. Get more with BBC podcasts, wherever you listen. Be the first to listen to your favourite shows, like evil genius, good, bad billionaire, and You're Dead to me, with a subscription to BBC Podcasts Premium on Apple Podcasts. You can also enjoy a range of our podcasts ad-free with an Amazon music subscription. Before we start this week's news quiz, we would like to check whether all humanity has already been wiped out by AI. Experts have suggested this may well happen. We thought we'd make sure it hasn't already happened

before we start the show. So I'm going to ask you in the audience here in Birmingham, please answer as honestly as possible. Do you still exist? Yes. Are you all AI bots? No. Are you sure?

Yes. That's good enough for me. Welcome to the news quiz. I'm Andy Zaltzum. This week we are recording here in Venice, Birmingham, sorry, I'm always getting those two mixed up, one for the canal fans there.

Our teams in a week in which the government in the UK tried to find ways to boost the economy despite no money being available and in which Donald Trump offered $5,000 to every adult American citizen ahead of his mid-term elections, we have team vibes against team bribes. On team vibes, we have Zoe Lyons and

Hugo Rifkin. On team bribes, Mark Steele and Selyer A-B. To kick us off this week, a story that's been building since last Friday, which party leader who admits he doesn't always listen could soon be hearing from the police. Sorry, what did you say?

I wasn't... That's Mr. Nigel, isn't it? Yes. That's what I call him. They were trying to do a donation, right? And then he was pretending that he wasn't listening, but really, the whole time,

I think he did. And that concludes the case for the prosecutor. I think you could have come up with a better lie. It could have been like, I was eating a big bowl of cereal. I couldn't hear a thing. And they were pretending to be American, right? Yeah, we've all done it.

They were pretending to be American, but the guy was like, hello, I'm American. Everyone was like, yes, of course you are. We're convinced. Carry on. It's like me pretending to be Scottish. Can you do it? No, I am Scottish.

That was a joke. Can you pretend to be more Scottish human? Not really. Well, it's Nigel Farage, and it's staggered the nation because he's usually so reliable and honest. But we're just used to it, aren't we now, with modern politicians? It's just a few years ago, you'd have thought, well, that's ridiculous, but now you go, yeah.

Can I just say, as someone whose British citizenship is pending, I feel nothing about that man. I mean, to be fair to him, though, it is hard to listen, isn't it, when you're slurping down a plate full of oysters at lunchtime and the popping of champagne corks in the background? And then if anybody does say anything of interest, of course, he just drowned out with a sign of the helicopter landing that's been donated by one of his other suspicious stoners.

So, you know, I feel a bit sorry for him. I think he's hard done. I think the establishment are really going for him, aren't they? It's the establishment, Andy, they're going for. The crux of the kind of reformisting story is whether or not they broke the law, right? Which is actually quite hard to figure out, because if everything in this documentary was accurate, they definitely tried to break the law and thought they were breaking the law. Because basically what happened is the fake donor was paying for polls,

and they thought the money was coming from America. It's a serious amount of money. It was like 35,000 pounds that the fake donor gave them to pay for polls. And they thought it was coming from America. It was actually paid out by this sort of journalistic outfit. And we don't know where their money came from. Reform says they were foreign funded. So that's kind of reform saying, we did break the law,

even though they say they didn't. So if reform's wrong and this group was actually British, then reform tried to break the law and failed to break the law, which is special. Yeah. But if it wasn't actually from Britain, then as reform claims, then they tried to break the law,

actually ended up breaking the law, but in a completely different way from the way they thought they were breaking the law. It's like getting 10,000 spoons when all you need is a knife, but then you realise that the massive box that says 10,000 spoons on it is actually full of knives in a way. That's clarifying, too. Unless you haven't taken money for the polls as well,

than in discovering you've dropped in the polls. That's just a double whammy, isn't it? He can't be asked anymore, can he? You can see it? He's like, like, that, I don't care, whatever. Whatever's, whatever's, whatever's, got five million in the bank. He's come out and said, isn't he? My family are begging me to stop doing this job.

And we're like, no, Nigel. Everybody's... If they are begging him to stop doing his job, I guess we can just be disappointed that he wasn't listening to that either. And I'm ambivalent about all of this. I mean, Farage is not listening. Is that actually quite a good characteristic

for a prime minister, to just completely ignore everything that's going on? Oh, boring! That's his tactic, isn't it? Boring. Yeah, I suppose it's just, it's what I do at home, Andy, and it just makes life an awful lot easier. He said, he said, it's not my job to check these things.

It's not my job to be a compliance officer. It's my job to have a nice glass of wine and shake somebody's hand. I'm thinking, I could do that job. I'd like that. Is that what he said? That's what he said. Yeah. But they're also in trouble this week because of the hecklers, they beat up, I imagine comedians have more time for than a lot of people actually

but the hecklers they were in the conference and the whole all these old night of the living dead all these old people attacked them and beat them with sticks and stuff this like this girl that had a hair pulled the guy hit her with the sticks said it was it was blind blind panic it was vital flight so he only hit it with the sticks you didn't have to run away and reform doesn't care Robert Jenrick said boo-hoo he was asked about it he said is this bad and he goes oh boo-hoo

and, you know, I'm not sure about him. I'm starting to think that the man who painted over a Mickey Mouse mural in a child migrant detention centre might not be a nice guy. Maybe this is a reform's idea to get welfare benefits down is to rile up pensioners so much that they just throw away their sticks in the end. He walks! Well, they're trying to do what Trump does, I guess,

and just sort of say whatever they've fan. fancy at the time and then if it turns out to be rubbish, they just don't care. So because he copies Trump, doesn't he? So after Trump said they've been eating the cats and dogs about immigrants, about a week later, Farage announced that asylum seekers in this country are eating swans and he just said it and that's, how much scrutiny does there have to be? It's really not likely that people from after Afghanistan or Syria have gone, we walk away from our families and we cross hundreds of miles and pay loads of money to traffickers and get on a dinghy and pay all our money to them.

And it's pretty dangerous. But if we get there and we've gone through all of that, it'll be worth it because we can go to Hyde Park and nick a swan. I sort of think anyone who can take down a swan I'm sort of full of all Nigel Farrell also said this week that he would ban what from British streets Is it Smiling children and flowers blooming That's what he thought not what he said

We are sick to death of the EU forcing us to have smiling children and blooming flowers We demand the right to have old fashion English flowers that are dead. Your Farage is so good. Is it? Yeah. Well maybe if he doesn't want to do the job of being Nigel Farage anymore, he's going to ban face coverings.

Yes. Which, I mean, is the opposite of what everyone thinks when they see Nigel Farage. Have more face coverings. But it's his response to the process in Portsmouth, where all these lads in black tried to stop migrants arriving, and they all had their faces. covered. And you see, the same people they were protesting outside the Daily Mail

yesterday, this week, on Wednesday, whenever it was, because the guy's in charge of them. He's named Daniel Thomas. The mail wrote a piece about him that mentioned the name of the roofing company that he ran, and he said, this is outrageous, because that company's registered to my mother's address, and everyone knows where she lives. And it's like, well, they do now, you idiot.

You've literally docks your own mum. He probably still lives with his mom, doesn't he? So he was outside the Daily Mail, shouting that they have to now buy his mom in house. The funniest bit of this, he was there outside the mail with all his henchmen, and they were all wearing black shorts, leading absolutely no newspaper, shockingly, to report this under the headline, hooray for the black shorts. Well, he wants to get rid of face covering so that you can face his nemesis face to face,

isn't it? Bin-faced. That's the real reason. Finally, it'll be unveiled. Yeah. To the self-proclaimed army of patriots that took to the streets to protest, from what it looked like against the concept of lifeboats. Quite an odd thing to be protesting against, not really patriotic. I don't know what we... I think when he said stop the boats, they just got really overzealous. I mean, I was watching it on the news and to call an R&LI volunteer a traitor.

These are the best of us, the very, very best of us, who volunteer. And they do the most incredible job. They save lives at sea without judgment, without any scrutiny. It's incredible. Apparently the motto for the R&LIs we can overcome anything with courage. And I think, you know, take that on board. And we can overcome these absolute clowns with courage.

That's all it takes. They should be saving English people. That's what they should be doing. And that is why me and my mates, once we finish protesting outside the Daily Mail, we're going to go and swim across the channel so that they have to come and save up. I just see the RNLA is interfering busybodies who are contravening the will of the Seagod Neptune

but I'm... It's very hard to... You know, because when people get in that state I sort of feel from in a way and then all those people I went down to Portsmouth and I just see the boat just comes in and they're hundreds of them

they just get off, they just come in someone said that's the Isle of White Ferry I said don't make it I'm sick of excuses. Well, I mean, There were other things that were victims of protests for the wrong... And there is a special show on radio for this weekend, an instructional program on how to tell whether something is or isn't

an international under-19 cricket team, which seemed to call it some confusion in Port-Muth. That was the protesters that went down there to a hotel. It's full of them, full of them, and then they were the Pakistani under-19 cricket team. The Pakistani under-19 cricket team, innocently eating a swan. They were not eating a swan.

It reminded you the time when we had far right protesters in Brighton they came and they were sending pictures to each other going, have you seen the size of their mosque? It's massive. That is the royal pavilion. It's not the sunniest of stories this, is it?

In terms of where we are as a nation. Anyway, going back to the reform story, Nigel Farage claimed he frankly wasn't even listening after being undercover stung at a meeting of which senior reform figures discussed potentially legal schemes to receive money from a US donor. Reform have stagnated in the opinion polls for some time now, perhaps because they're struggling to break into the electorally crucial

vast majority of people who wouldn't trust Nigel Farage with a digestive biscuit, let alone the entire nation demographic. It's been a key swing demographics these days. Farage also said this week you ban face coverings in public. This was after Dorset Police had to protect RNRI volunteers in the latest dust-up involving self-proclaimed pay. ...atriots dressed in very much non-tradrad British garb. It was unclear whether this ban will include people holding their heads in their hands,

in which case it might prove illegal for people to react to what Farage has just said and done, if he becomes Prime Minister. Upon seeing the vigilantes take to the streets wearing masks, the designer of the police's multi-million pound facial recognition technology said... Oh no, we didn't think of that. At the end of that round, it's four points all. This question can be for Mark. 11 MPs, Mark, have been banned from doing what this week?

Well, they'll all be very, very upset. They've been banned from going to Israel on account of the government putting sanctions on the settlements in the West Bank. This is the brilliant thing about Britain. So this is obviously a very serious business, you know, the West Bank and the Israel and our attitude towards it and our relationship with it

and Britain has for the first time really done something that's even though it's largely symbolic. And I sort of looked on social media. The 11 MPs, it was sort of all named one to 11, which 11 were banned from going to Israel. And immediately someone put, that's going to be a really decent football team. And put the 11 MPs like on a football field,

like at the BBC, Diaz at the start when they show all the positions and then someone said, I reckon that's a decent team but I don't fancy Corby in goal some of the sort of the pushback was quite extreme. Huckabee, the US ambassador to Israel

he basically accused Ed Miliband of effectively accused Ed Miliband of hating Jews which I thought was like really harsh because I mean he is Jewish Ed Miliband he doesn't hate all Jews he just hates his brother but it's been it's been a big story of the week

I've been doing a lot of it. I've actually been to the West Bank. Not when I was in the IDF. That's not where this is going. I was there for work, interviewing lots of people. And I went to Ramallah, and I met lots of Palestinian politicians, and they were always surrounded by it, really quite hot young men with machine guns.

And then I went to all the settlements, some of the settlements, and I met Israeli politicians, and they're surrounded by really quite hot young girls with machine guns, it turns out, although you think they're hot, actually. But then they interrogate you, because that's part of the job and they start asking you loads of questions like for me they're going like

so you're here in Israel are you Jewish and I'm Jewish are you married and at the time I was like no I'm not married you've got a girlfriend and he goes yes I've got a girlfriend is your girlfriend Jewish and I was like you're not hot you're my aunt

terrified right at this point in the show Zoe and Hugo have 10 Mark and Sely have eight obviously the two most Massivist news stories this week were A, Monty Don retires from Gardner's World and B, sorry,

spoiler in a lot, and B, reports suggesting that the new James Bond has already been cast. Let's join the obvious dots. Monty Don is the new Bond. It's staring us in the face, people. I can't wait for the scene in which he traps the villain in his greenhouse using a trowel, a bucket of compost and a strategically placed

hollyhock. The point is, there's always another story hidden behind any news story. So we're going to give our teams a news story. They have to explain what is really going on behind the headline. A kind of conspiracy theory is kind of butterfly flaps its wings in the Amazon and across the ocean. Pakistan collapsed a 13 for 5.

That sort of thing. Hugo, the news story that I want to know what is really going on is this. Flights were grounded at several major UK airports this week. Because pilots are lazy gits. could work. Actually, you know what? I interviewed somebody today. A Lib Dem MP. He has a plan for a British standard suitcase because he reckons it's really bad that all the airlines have slightly different rules for your suitcases.

And I said, won't this be a problem because you've got different sized planes? And then he launched into a long explanation of every type of plane owned by every airline. And I had to turn him down. All right. I moved to something else. All right. He's got a point though. Zoe, explain what the real story is here.

Reports have suggested that the earth is now physically spinning faster than it used to. Oh, well, this is interesting. This is because of a culmination of a couple of things. It's the growth of GLP1 weight loss drugs, which now globally around 100 million people are using. so we are physically lighter on the surface of the earth. That combined with the report that just came out recently that we've just experienced the hottest summer for quite some time,

so we were sweating quite a lot, therefore more ferociously lubed. So this perfect storm of being lighter and lubed means that we are now spinning through the atmosphere a lot quicker. I, for one, glad of it. It's knocking about 1.4.4. nine seconds off a day, which means I'm just that little bit closer to retirement.

Could you say ferociously lubed again? Ferrociously lued. It's the name of my next tour show. I'll be slipping through a town near you. My phone do that every time you call, we're just going to go ferociously lute. That was remarkably similar to listening to Broyne Cot. It was amazing.

They're ferociously looted. I'd listen to more physics if it was ferociously loo, wouldn't you? I'd understand quantum physics at this point if somebody had said to me, and that's when it becomes ferociously lewd. I'd do a lot of things, never mind. Mark, explain what's already going on here. Defence Secretary Wes Streeting has committed one billion pounds to Britain's space defence fund.

I think what's happening there is he's got very excellent. excited because he's going to be the next James Bond. This is going to lead to a terrible, terrible fight between him and Monty Don. And I don't know who'd win, really. You would think Monty Don, because he's a big chap, and he's obviously got a load of gardening implements. But, you know, West Street in, because he's probably a bit plucky than he looks. Well, I mean, it's on Sky Sports 23 next week, I think.

I would watch that. Yeah. Particularly if they were both ferociously loosed. Sellia explained the true story here. Two threads of the Bayer tapestry were damaged during its journey to London. Oh, wow. So what I think happened is, are you familiar with Drag Race UK? Are you familiar with that?

It got cancelled. It's no longer... I think somebody tried to make a fun costume. No, it's a... I mean... It was so nice the reaction that you all had. Is this something that you all know about your tapestry? I just found out about it.

Amazing. It's like a... I'm a clever lady in other areas. I just can't prove it right now. But I've just found it's amazing. It's like a whole story. It's 70 meters long, isn't it? Yeah.

I think they should have like... I think we should have had it to Christopher Nolan and then you can move it around. Story changes throughout. But it was just a little... tear, wasn't it? Two threads. Yeah, the problem is the people who made it

are due for a bonus if it lasted a thousand years without getting damaged. As always, it's the ordinary workers who lose out. Right, I'm going to give the points for that to Zoe. Congratulations, two points out. Well, we'll have another jobs-related question. Now, who will not be getting his

old job back? Is it the old James Bond? No. Monty Don's already been replaced with AI. That's what's happened there. Is this a Harry question? Yes, correct. Yes. Prince Harry is not getting his old job back.

Like he ever had a job. Where's this? Imagine the king saying to him you're not getting your job back. He's like, I had a job. Because the king had a letter sent out, didn't he? An official letter to government people. I don't know who else it went to, I'm not sure, but to say that these aren't real royals we're looking at.

These are, they weren't even described as public figures. so these are citizens, actual citizens. Yeah, don't feed the royals. They're not royals. The letter said as well, if you want to know what to call them, ask us. And it's like, surely ask them. No, no, no, no, no. Don't trust them.

They'll make up all kinds of stuff. Ask us. Another sort of king-related question. Donald Trump, taking some time out from his very hectic schedule of making harrowingly distasteful remarks on the anniversary of his nation's greatest single tragedy, posted a video with doctored footage of King Charles doing what?

Nothing. Well, essentially. Yeah. So basically there was a... So Donald Trump, he came out of a helicopter and his guard of honour saluted him and he ignored them. And he thus came into criticism in the American media. So he retaliated by posting a video of lots of other world leaders

ignoring soldiers and other people. Well, he was great. But the one he posted of the king had the king ignoring an ASDA worker passing out and it's outrageous, it's a terrible store on Britain because actually when the ASDA worker passed out, the king went, ugh. And they chopped that out because they hate Britain. Isn't that insane?

Are you the leader of the free world just making memes about the King of England, ignoring it? Don't you have other stuff to worry about it? It's incredible. I don't know how this one even made the news. It's like the least mad thing. He's posted in about two years. He posted himself as a space marine last week.

Oh God. It's just, it's... What are you supposed to do? Because you do all right. It just now... I heard Jeremy Bowen on the radio one morning. Seems like a nice bloke. Seems to know what he's talking about.

The foreign affairs man. And he was on the radio one morning. He was literally, he was saying, well, today the president... of America announced that he'd received a present from Iran. It was a huge present, he said. He said he was looking forward to playing with the present. He couldn't say where it had come from or what it was,

but he assured us it was a huge, huge present, the biggest of all the presents, and he was going to play. And you could tell, in Jeremy Bowen's voice, he was that close to going, I can't do this anymore. That is correct. The whole video was set to a song called A Thousand Years by Christina Perry.

Who else was it that wanted to rule for a thousand years? I forget. I'm sure it's nothing to worry about. Right. Well, that means that the scores are now level, which takes it into a tiebreaker question. Our tiebreaker this week, we are at the start of a new school year with sixth former starting their A-level courses, but who this week set a disappointing example by dropping art?

These are the two burglars in the south of France. It's brilliant. Oh, the French loving arts heist, don't they? They're good at it. They're really good at it. This was two burglars in the Renoir Museum, south of France. They stole four paintings. They cut them out of their frames.

So not bulky, I would have said. It's all rolled up like a sort of Christmas wrapping paper or something. Anyway, they made off with the four paintings and managed to drop two in the garden. Which beggars, but you had one job. The mayor of them. the town and said these were obviously highly skilled people who knew exactly what they were doing. I was like, clearly not. They've dropped half the swag.

They were chased by a dog, in fairness. Oh, fair enough. So I think their mistake was rolling them up because the dog probably thought they were sausages. I kind of get it, though. You've ever been to the South of France. You've been there? It's so relaxing that even like mid-crime, you'd be like, I just want to relax. I'm doing all this. And also, I mean, there's a Renoir paintings. It's quite easy to steal them.

People just think you're walking off with a large box of chocolates. One massive Renoir fan in the same thing. How much were they worth? About $8 million. Wow. Yeah, eight, nine million quid. So they've dumped $4 million on the lawn. I mean, they've still got away with $4 million.

It's still... I know, but that's... I mean, it's a better gig than this. It's terrible. You guys are not on 4 million for this. Pretty pissed poor heist, wouldn't you say, Mark? Well, to leave something on the lawn, leave half of your... Yeah, that's big wastage, isn't it?

Maybe it was Thameswater doing them. If caught the thieves could apparently be facing still-life imprisonment. Yes, this is the Wren. What, what, what, what, what. I mean, theft. Art theft isn't what it used to be, is it? I mean, four paintings. Try nick in an entire temple's worth of marbles, France. That's how you do it. We've just cleverly pilfered a 70 metre long tapestry from France in broad daylight. Well, that means that our winners this week are Zoe and Hugo.

Thank you for listening to the news quiz. Goodbye. Taking part in the news quiz were Selyer AB, Zoe Lyons, Hugo Rifkin and Mark Steele. In the chair was me, Andy Zaltman, and additional material was written by Catherine Brinkworth, Adrian Gray, Ruth Husko and Claire Rammelkamp. The producer was Georgia Keating, and it was a BBC Studios production for Radio 4. So, Alice Lockstone, I'm here for the history. Well, Ben Henderson, I like the formality, and that's perfect because we have a lot of history to share. Why did T become such a British obsession? How did English turn into the language we speak to And yes, why do women's clothes still not have pockets?

Well, in our new podcast Here for the History, we're investigating how stories from the past shape everyday life today. Basically, the things we've all noticed but never stopped to question. Listen on BBC Sounds. Or watch on YouTube. Just search for Here for the History. Get more with BBC podcasts, wherever you listen. Be the first to listen to your favourite shows, like Evil Genius, Good, Bad Billionaire,

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