Friday Night Comedy from BBC Radio 4 - The News Quiz: Ep 4. A Lib Dem Conference and a Seagull Summit

Episode Date: October 3, 2025

In the week where Trump addressed the UN, Lib Dems conferred on the beaches of Bournemouth, and a Seagull Summit came to Inverness, Andy Zaltzman is joined by Simon Evans, Neil Delamere, Tiff Stevenson and Cindy Yu to break it all down. Expect talk of the Burnham from behind, the Boriswave, and the wettest generation since the floods.Written by Andy Zaltzman.With additional material by: Jade Gebbie, Miranda Holms, Ruth Husko and Peter Tellouche. Producer: Rajiv Karia Executive Producer: James Robinson Production Coordinator: Jodie Charman Sound Editor: Marc WillcoxA BBC Studios Production for Radio 4.

There now follows a public health announcement on behalf of the Farage Institute of British BirdLife Safety. Are you a swan? Are you feeling strange tooth-like sensations somewhere on your body? And are you concerned about rapid weight loss? Then you might be being eaten by a foreigner. Don't worry, it's perfectly normal. It happens all the time. It's just part and parcel of being a British swan these days.

The best thing to do is relax. Try not to worry about it and remember that you're just a porn in a political game as you listen to this week's news quiz. Hello, welcome to the news quiz. I am... Actually, hang on, I've got to tap in with my new prototype digital ID to make sure I'm who I think I am. Sandy, Toxfig.

I couldn't quite nail the technology yet. Right, let's meet our teams. Well, it's just been announced that it is international bird noises awareness decade. So our teams this week commemorate some of the most popular bird noises of all time and also pay tribute to who is running medical science in America and two political leadership rumblings here in the UK.

We have Team Quacks against Team Koo. On Team Quacks, we have Simon Evans and Times columnists, Cindy Yu. And on Team Koo, we have Tiff Stevenson and Neil Delamere. Well, happy party conference season one and all. And to mark this happiest time of the year, we will start with a question about the inescapable swamp of resignation, resentment and... Sorry, politics. I read it wrong. This can go to Simon and Cindy.

Rumours of political manoeuvrings are swirling around Westminster, as so often happens in the months between January and December inclusive. Whose ears in particular have been Burnham this week? Is the king in the north? Andy Burm. Burnham, who says that he doesn't want to run for the leadership, but has given a massive interview to the new statesman in the week ahead of the Labour conference.

But he doesn't want to step on his own toes. Burnham's in an interesting situation, isn't it? I mean, he's got a recognisable face, and actually it's got quite strong features as well, which I've always thought is useful in politics. You can tell what he's thinking, can't you? He has very expressive eyebrows. You rarely see eyebrows that expressive outside of a Pixar film

about some brave woodland animals that are trying... to fight off an evil property developer who wants to expand his golf course. But I think he is deluded as to where the pinnacle of politics is. I think mayor of Manchester is probably about as good as it gets in this country. I mean, being mayor, it's a top job, isn't it? You get to swagger about. You're a big fish or duck or whatever it is in a small pond. You'll never have to buy yourself a drink.

You'll get an extra, you know, little shake of scraps on your chips, won't you? It's a top life. You get to wear a bit of bling, you know. And now he wants to come down to Westminster and just be another cog in the great churning machine of disappointment and bile. I think he's a terrible, calculated error. I think it's a disastrous idea

to be a big fish or a duck in a small pond because apparently Eastern Europeans might eat you. They've got some neck. Burnham also gave an interview to the telegraph, so he's playing... He said, I'm being dragged into this. I am being dragged into this. All I did was give two different interviews

to two different publications. It's like a matter door going, I was just walking by the bullfight. I was carrying a massive red tablecloth and I was covered in grass and I was just dragged into this. Do you imagine how paranoid Keir Starrer is going to be now? He can't go to Liverpool because Burnham is from Liverpool.

He can't go to Manchester because he's the mayor of Manchester. He can't go to Shakespeare because like a Labour Party Internal battle is Shakespearean and he'll be sitting there going Yeah but who would take me on And then three witches

Just go Burnham would And it's a very simple path to power Isn't it for Andy Burnham? All he has to do is retire from the mayoralty And then he has to find somewhere That'll have a by-election To somebody give up that seat The Executive Council has to make sure

That he actually stands for the by-election And he has to win the by-election against a resurgent reform. And then he has to have 80 MPs from some of the most fractious political parties to exist in the history of time. And then, bish-bash-bosh, you're the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom.

This is a man who was beaten for the leadership election the last time he tried by Jeremy Corbyn, of course, which you'd remember. He's been beaten twice. Against Ed Miliband? Yeah, yeah. Right. So that's four times less than Farage.

Yeah. It's something to lose against Ed. If you're talking about good faces in politics, I think Ed binaband, has got a look on his face constantly like he's just seen boobs for the first time. Not even in real life on a calculator. Burnham accused Kirstama

of being divisive. That's quite a divisive accusation to make, isn't it? Well, yes and no. He's divided Corbyn and Sultana into a separate, you know, which have then managed to self-immolate almost immediately, quite extraordinary. I mean, that was one of the quickest,

even by the standards of left-wing politics. Yeah. They usually create a party before internal fury. Tiff and Neil, what did Andy Burnham say should be rolled back? Is it blazer sleeves? So we can all be cool like Miami Vice. The poor skin of austerity.

Now we know what you call your penis, Simon. Thank you very much. The Forskine... It gives, it takes away. This is going to be hard for everybody, but let's just get through it. We're just wondering who's going to explain Forkskin to Andy.

Family show. What did Burnham say should be rolled back? Would it be the 1980s? The 1980s? The 1980s should be rolled back. The 1980s, which he presumably means the Thetorite revolution. Whether he means that he wants to then

shump the 70s onto the 90s, and it just one decade is missing, or whether we're going all the way back to James Callaghan, the winter of discontent, or possibly the last time a pre-new Labour leader. It's hard to know exactly what he's thinking, but I will say this. I am encouraged by a Labour leader with that level of nostalgic ambition, because that's normally very much a conservative trend, isn't it? Or it hasn't been the same since they introduced trade unions

or, you know, collective bargaining or... The Corn Laws. The French Revolution, yeah. Yes, Labour is stumbling into its party conference with a weary resignation of a fourth-term government bracing itself for the inevitable electoral shepherds' crook after just a year and a bit in power. Mayor of Manchester and former Cabinet Minister Andy Burnham

strongly hinted and flatly denied that he might be amenable to the concept of challenging for the leadership of the Labour Party. It's less than a year and a half into Starman's prime ministership. An unrest is growing in the Labour Party about the growing unrest in the Labour Party. And Burnham, in an interview with the Daily Telegraph, the former newspaper, accused Downing Street of spreading alienation and demoralisation, possibly another example of Starma taking on Farage's clothes. Andy Burnham said that he had unspecifiedly been sounded out by some unspecified MPs for a possible leadership at an unspecifiable point in the future, which wasn't the most obvious way not to cause instant speculation about a definite leadership challenge.

saying goes, if a priest comes around to your house wearing speedos, there's a fair chance he'll ask to have a go in a jacuzzi after finishing the exorcism. Moving on to the conference we had last week, fill in the missing superheroes in the film plot announced last week. In an elemental battle with the forces of darkness, people turn to their last hope.

Fill in the honk. You know that honk is the last sound that a swan hears? That a swan hears, yeah. Who is the last hope against the forces of darkness? It's Ed Davy on a jet ski. Correct, basically, yes. So he came into the conference playing drums, and you suddenly realised that you view things

through the prism of your nationality. Because you just saw a man walking along playing the drums, didn't you? Because you're English. Whereas I saw a man playing the drums at the head of a marching band surrounded by people with orange signs. And I thought,

it's not even the season, man. And he made this rousing speech then, didn't he? that we mentioned Nigel Farage 31 times of 49 minutes because the Lib Dems think that reformers are going to be their main opposition at the next election. Just purely for entertainment purposes

I want to see reform go up against the Lib Dems just a divvy up on a paddleboard again and Nigel Farage not letting it land because it's essentially a small boat. He always has a point though, doesn't he, Nigel. But it's never Guinness because Guinness is from a foreign country and you have to let it settle.

At the risk of being earnest, it would be great if the Lib Dems shared more of what they want to do and how they're going to achieve that rather than telling us who they don't want to be like. It doesn't feel like the greatest platform to stand on because it's just sort of feels desperate now. Like Labor are twisting in the wind like an inflatable tube man at a last stop repo sale, literally falling for everything and unable to stand for nothing. So you kind of feel like as a left-wing person, you're like, what hope do we have if it's not the Lib Dem? So you kind of want to hear them say what they're actually going to do.

The problem for them is that they are targeting quite contradictory groups. They want to have the wet Tories who are now turned off by the Tory lean to the right. But they also want to attract people who are more left than labour. But you really can't do both. So at this conference, they were talking about patriotism. I think you talked about cricket pavilions and village greens. So they're clearly targeting the Tories this year. But who knows what they're going to do in the future?

District nurses cycling to mass across the cricket green around the ancient elms. stout calves like a hockham from waitrose you've got to have some powerful evocative images have you just described a mixture between only fans and called the midwife I've never seen a more shameless bid to be poet laureate

in terms of the Liberal Democrats targeting the Conservatives Daisy Cooper the Deputy Leader said the Liberal Democrats who won 72 seats at last year's election at aiming next time to win more seats than the Conservatives for the first time since 1910. So on current polling trajectories, let me do the maths they need, approximately rounding down. They need to lose no more than 71 of those. Lib Dem leader Ed Davy said that his reform UK counterpart Nigel Farage wants to turn what into what?

Flags into legal spouses. So you want to turn Tommy Robinson into? the moderate option they want to turn Britain into the 51st state or like into yeah yeah which is absolutely wishful thinking

we're not even in the next 10 I don't think Canada is 51 Puerto Rico Mexico Greenland absolutely but yeah but yeah like a little mini me to Trump's America

is essentially his fear isn't it is that a fair statement do you think yeah absolutely yeah frack on I'm just relieved I was able to get here from Dublin and I wasn't stopped at all the Sharia law checkpoints Well we did We are recording this at the BBC Radio Theatre in London

And we did have to ask Sadiq Khan For special dispensation for you to be allowed Let's move on Neil and Tiff you can have this question What is a Boris wave Oh is it Nigella Lawson trying to pronounce microwave. Boris Wavi. Is it what Boris does towards a small child

that may or may not be one of his, but he doesn't want to be legally binding? Boris Wave is the wave of migrants who've come since Boris Johnson said he would control migration. It's the wave of people have come, isn't it? As described by Nigel Farage and Reform UK, 3.8 million people, they say, have entered the UK after Brexit, due to the looser rules brought in

under Johnson's prime initiative. And reform was placed to end indefinite leave to remain. Now, do you know what that is? Indefinite. So it might sound like the fence-sitting third option that should have been on the Brexit referendum. It's been fairly roundly criticised for basically changing the rules

that people came here under and the assumptions. How does that sit with sort of British values of fair play that Farage like to like sort of be the exemplar of... Changing the rules after people have come here. thinking that they'll have an indefinite leave to remain. Yeah, I think that's fine under the current British Rules of Fair Play, which have been established for about three and a half weeks. There was a new story about an asylum seeker who I thought really imbibed these British values.

He was meant to be sentenced for assaulting another asylum seeker. And he misses court hearing. He misses sentencing because he was eating fish and chips. So 15 minutes later, his lawyers were panicked looking for him, found him outside having some fish and chips on the bench. So now his court hearings been delayed at end of October. I think we should let him stay. Yeah, I mean, critics say that Farage's proposal

threatens the status rights and prospects of hundreds of thousands of legally resident migrants. People who've been living here under the assumption that they had secured legitimate permanent right to live in Britain. And the counter argument is, yeah. So I'll see how those two sides can be reconciled. I've got a net migration went up significantly after Brexit. So even if Brexit is pleased neither those who voted for it

because it's not banned out the way they thought it would nor those who voted against it because it has banned out the way. I think we can all agree, boom times for British irony fans. And also, immigrants will have to, under reform to represent good character, quote, ruling out people who commit financial misconduct, tax evasion, and other criminal convictions. Because we have that amply covered. We'll have one final politics relationship.

according to Boris Johnson what links Noah the celebrity Middle East based arc magnate and young people in the UK today well a very long line of patronage

I suppose and they're all wet but Noah famously wasn't wet right he was pretty dry on his arc yes yeah so you're going to have to go away and rewrite that Andy oh okay you're the wettestest

generation since the flood. Do you know why he said, why he claimed? Oh, because they don't drink and they don't have sex and they don't drive as much as previous generations. But writing about young people not being the same as to our generation is the most tedious subject in the history of newspapers. Everybody

is over. The Edwardian said this. The Georgian said this. The Victorian said this. I bet you can find the Romans gone, I tell you young people today they wouldn't even suck a she-wolf. I bet if you go back, there's hieroglyphics on an Egyptian tombstone that just says, big dog's head, big dog's head,

I, young people, iPhone. In this piece, he said that young people aren't having sex and he writes, is it because they're worried about the emotional entanglements that come from having sex? I mean, he clearly doesn't know. No, just the Boris wave and out the door.

I mean, given that he's a man that hid in a fridge to avoid a journalist, Accusing other people of being wet seems a bit of a stress, isn't it, Simon? There is a long-term decline in testosterone in young men, which will demonstrate itself, the symptoms of which will, you know, easily be categorised for an elderly Tory as being wet.

And that is a fact, every generation it's in decline. Not uniformly across the West, and in Edinburgh, they are extraordinarily swift to correct me on that front. They have no problem at all. Which is probably true, because there are two major feedback loops which will bring up your testosterone levels, and those are fighting or standing your ground when threatened

and having an erection. And if you've ever been to Edinburgh with somebody like my accident, at least you're never further from a fight than you want to be if you need a little boost. And the last half dozen spontaneous erections I've had have been going over cobbles in a bus. So they have actually got the infrastructure necessary. But a left-leaning council has recently installed a tram network

in Edinburgh now, which gives a much smoother ride. then, I'm afraid to say, it's probably feminizing their men. I feel like all of this should be on a podcast with you smoking cigars, one in each hand. Well, at the end of that round, I think it's fair to say no one's in the lead. It's two points all. Let's move on to some global news.

complete the following famous pop lyric in the style of a current American president. Don't blame it on the sunshine, don't blame it on the moonlight, don't blame it on the good times, blame it on the... Paracetamol? Correct, yes.

Yes, Trump has... He announced bizarrely during Charlie Kirk's memorial service that he had exciting news coming up about autism. So everyone was braced for anti-vaccine news, and no, it turns out. Now, it's high street painkillers during pregnancy. Correct? He's basically said there's a link between pregnant women

take and Tylenol and autism. Listen, people like me who haven't gone through pregnancy and labour have lots of questions about it. What's it like to bring life into the world? Why aren't contractions called push notifications? I've got loads of questions, but whether somebody who's pregnant should take paracetamol, it's not one of them.

My mother, I know for a fact, took loads of paracetamol when she was pregnant. She needed something to cope with the hangovers. so we said there's been studies and he said that some people you know don't use it and there's no autism and then he looked to rfk junior and then he sort of went who and he went the armish and he went so the armish have no autism and then rfk juniors like lower rates just slightly lower rates you know what the armish also don't have guns in america you can't have a drink until you're 21, but you can buy a long rifle

when you're 18, so you can shoot your sorrows before you ever have a chance to drown them. I think if I had a gun, I'd be able to get a drink. Yeah, Tylenol is the brand name for what we know as paracetamol, which explains why traditional jokes are much harder in America.

Why there are no painkillers in the jungle because of the Tylenol. It doesn't work, isn't it? So they're calling it. Drug misuse. I don't like it when it says in films there's going to be drug misuse. I want the drugs to be used properly. In other Trump news, he spoke at the United Nations this week. According to Trump in his UN speech, who is going where? Is it Jimmy Kimmel to Guantanamo Bay? Very much the subtext, I think. Is it Cliff Richard on a summer holiday?

Is it Melania to Slovenia? God she rocketed up that escalator, didn't she? As soon as that escalator broke, she was like, I see freedom, and it's gone. And she was gone. Remember me. I assume it's something like Europe has gone to hell. Yeah, European countries are going to hell, he said.

Yeah. So you had to go at immigration, and you had to go at green energy. Just a hell of a time to be a South African that makes electric cars, isn't it? He's obsessed with wind turbines, Donald Trump. So he had to go with them again. They're killing the swans. He's always going on, they're killing all the birds.

Even though there's a study that says of a three-blade wind turbine, if you paint one of the blades black, it reduces the fatalities of birds by 70%. It is quite difficult to paint one of the blades black. You have to be very quick, right? He keeps going on about this stuff, and he said Europe was going to ruin,

what was it because of the double-tailed monster of immigration and green energy. Even though, sorry, point of order, but all the best monsters are not double-tailed. All the best monsters have multiple heads. Cerberus, hydra. Monsters don't have two tails. He's thinking of swallows.

A swallow never brought down an administration. He claimed to have put a stop to what in his speech? Specifically seven walls. although he didn't name them all so we're not sure whether these are like the seven signs of aging that are just vaguely myth or whether like one of them might be the war on

drugs or the you know the Pepsi Cola Wars or but there are a number that were specifically mentioned one of them I think between Armenia and Cambodia which if it was to kick off would have been terrifying because the number of people

who would have been caught in the crossfire Serbia was one he said even though there's tension there but there's no war there. Ethiopia and Egypt, which didn't actually break out in the fighting. The Jets and the Sharks, I think he did the Jets and the Sharks as well. A lot of people would say they danced that out,

but he said he solved that one. The one he didn't solve is the Ukrainian war, the Ukrainian-Russian War, which he said, in fairness to him, he said that he would solve within one day when he was inaugurated. But he didn't specify the day, and he meant Venus Day. A day on Venus is 243 days So he that was just last Saturday

So let's give him a break Right Yes the 10 year perma whinge That is Donald Trump's political career Continue with a virtuoso display Of live performative nonsensicalism At the UN General Assembly The delusion addict and professional resentment munger

Whitted on for almost an hour Well over his allotted 15 minutes slot cramming in his trademark cocktail Of not entirely 101% verifiable claims gratuitous jibes And the free-form ramblings of a man with no internal or external editor. He claimed to have put an end to seven wars,

not entirely clear which ones he meant to get his totaliser up to seven. Vietnam, possibly, his heroic refusal to enlist, made the peace movement great again at the time. Steve War, the apprentice that made Donald Trump into the figure he is today, the American TV show, began on the 8th of January 2004. Steve War last played for Australia's cricket team on the 6th of January 2004.

Join the dots, people. Evelyn War, not written a sausage since 1996. The Franco-Newzeleac War, he started, that never really got off the ground, it was just an argument in a bar about whether Camember is better than rugby. And the full war, the battle that raged in and around the tabloids and ladsmags

over whether or not it is acceptable to make lascivious comments to complete strangers. Well, the scores are now five points all, which means we're into a tiebreaker, and our question for our tiebreaker, Who has been struggling to deal with gull power this week? Scotland? Yes.

Isn't it? They're calling it the Seagull Summit. Isn't there some conference about seagulls and having to try and come up with measures against seagulls? Seagulls get a bad rap when you think about it, right? Because basically, if you go for a lovely seaside meal in Britain or Ireland, all you do is get annoyed by seagulls versus mosquitoes in different countries. When you think about what mosquitoes and insects can give to us,

like sleeping sickness to tessy fly, it can give us to West Nel fever, dengue fever. for malaria versus stealing your chips. Like that's all Seagulls do is steal your chips and then make you chase after it to get them back. They are at the forefront of our fight against childhood obesity when you think about it. Aren't they?

Because they never steal healthy food. You never see somebody going, that's Seagull's taking my quinoa. You've never heard that. I know it is a stereotype, but they're absolutely getting big. I went to the beach a place called Dolly Mount Strand in Dublin about four or five weeks ago. Lovely Summer's Day.

And there was a kid getting an ice cream from a van, and I turned around, and the seagull had flown off with the van. Yes, the Seagull Summit has been convened in the northern Scottish city of Inverness in an attempt to clamp down on seagull mayhem. The birds of no fixed abode, age generally between nought and 20, have been raiding bins befouling sports facilities with their seagull posterior depositions, taunting locals over their inability to fly and stealing snacks. The Highland Council have attempted to do the Scottish thing

and send the birds homeward to think again through the use of lasers and spikes and have even tried to create bird-on-bird violence using a falcon, but there now seems no hope beyond sitting back and waiting for Russian drones to invade Scottish airspace and drive the gulls away. No goals were available for comment. Since you both answered that last one at the same time,

we'll have to have another tiebreaker. We're going to try and make a medical breakthrough using American techniques. I'm going to give a piece of paper to each of our panelists. Here we go. So one of the team, so we'll go with Cindy and Neil, have to write down a medical condition, and TIF and Simon have to write down

the first thing that comes into their head. Okay. Are we done? Yep. Now pick a number between one and two inclusive, Simon. Two? Okay, you've got a cure rather than the cause. So did you write the first thing that came into your head?

I did, yeah. Which is what? Dungarees. Cure. Chronic lying. We're making progress. Let's see if Tiff and Neil can beat that. Tiff?

Swans. Leprosy. We have a winner. A genuine medical breakthrough. Swans. Cure leprosy. Congratulations to Tiff and Neil for that breakthrough. Winning them this week's news quiz, hard luck.

to Simon and Cindy. Well, that's it from the news quiz. Do tune in to Radio 4 for the next episode of The Life Scientific, in which Jim Al Kalilii interviews Donald Trump about his life and love of science. That will be on Tuesday morning between 9am and 2 seconds past 9. Until next week, goodbye. Taking part in the news quiz

were Simon Evans, Cindy U, Tiff Stevenson and Neil Delamere. In the chair was me, Andy Zaltzman, and additional material was written by Peter. Toulouche, Jade Gebby Miranda Holmes and Ruth Husko. The producer was Rajiv Kariah, and it was a BBC Studios production for Radio 4. Attention, animal lovers, haters and undecideds. A little birdie, a tit, told me that you're looking for a podcast

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