Friday Night Comedy from BBC Radio 4 - The News Quiz: Ep 5. An Island of Strangers

Episode Date: May 23, 2025

Andy Zaltzman is joined by Alasdair Beckett-King, Sara Barron, Daliso Chaponda and ITV Deputy Political Editor Anushka Asthana. Discussion points include this week's immigration White Paper, tighter controls on international students looking for gainful employment, the elusive definition of a 'skilled job', chimpanzees utility in medical emergencies, and the returns policy on a returns hub.Written by Andy Zaltzman.With additional material by: Samira Banks, Catherine Brinkworth, and Cody Dahler. Producer: Rajiv Karia Executive Producer: Pete Strauss Production Coordinator: Jodie Charman Sound Editor: Marc WillcoxA BBC Studios Audio Production for Radio 4.

BBC Sounds music radio podcasts. Hello, I'm Andy Zaltzman. Due to threatened cuts to the BBC World Service budget, all shows across the corporation have been asked to do whatever they can to save money to keep World Service alive. So on this week's news quiz, instead of a microphone, I'm using this homemade loudhaler made of rolled up cardboard. Our usual pre-show rider of a five course meal has been replaced with a single sausage. Whistle Whistle

Whistle That I apparently have to make myself. Laughter There may be sudden jumps in the audio due to our normal editing software being replaced with an old pair of garden secateurs and some insulation tape and covered by nothing but a large potato.

Also, the theme tune will be played at one and a half times the normal speed, so we don't have to pay the musicians as much. Welcome to the News Quiz. CHEERING AND APPLAUSE Hello. Welcome to the News Quiz. I'm Andy Zoltzman and other cost-saving BBC measures to help World Service. Desert Island desert island discs will from here on NB disused shed in the woods out the back of memory services discs

Whilst interviews with politicians on the today program will be replaced by the sound of a hyena and a pelican fighting in a cement mixer Our panelists this week in tribute to what Keir Starmer set out to do with immigration numbers and how people reacted to his efforts We have team clamp down against team damn clown In tribute to what Keir Starmer set out to do with immigration numbers and how people reacted to his efforts, we have Team Clamp Down against Team Damn Clown. On Team Clamp we have Alastair Beckett-King and Deputy Political Editor at ITV News Anushka Asthana. On Team Clown we have Sarah Barron and Deliso Shaponda. And our first question can go to Alistair and Anushka. Keir Starmer announced new plans this week to bring down what?

Is it the balloon of a laughing child? No? Anushka? His own popularity ratings? OK, wait a second. Is it actually the government because he's trying to be a secret double agent for reform? That does seem to be what's going on, but it's not what he's actually announced out loud. I know the answer. It's immigration. Correct. He's planning to bring down immigration to the UK. The words immigration to are crucial in that sentence. So I mean

politically what do you make of the, I mean this is a hot potato that, well it's not so much a hot potato as a, I don't know, a scalding molten snooker ball that is just slammed into the eye sockets of the nation every time that a political party needs a boost in the opinion poll. So what's the political angle on it? I mean, there is an argument, isn't there, that the more you talk about it, the more people worry about it.

And they're never going to be able to do what people want. I had some polling this week that said 23% of people want negative net migration and 23% of people want zero net migration and basically they're never going to be able to deliver that so they're talking up something they're not going to be able to deliver but they were very upset about Reform UK doing so well in the elections and they're trying to respond but some of their MPs are not happy because they think that he has been echoing language like Enoch Powles so yeah. Also Also, that seems futile. You can't out reform reform. It's like I can't out crazy Kanye.

Initially, when I was coming here, I got a little bit paranoid because I was like, oh no, every time immigration's in the news, they ask me to come on the newsquiz. I was like, oh no, it's always in the news, right? But of course, I am overqualified because I have been everything, right? I was a refugee, I've been a migrant, I've become a citizen, and I currently am frustrated with all these foreign comedians coming and taking my job.

He's been accused of using dog whistles, which are in political terms a dog whistle is when you say something that sounds innocuous to most people but to a radical subset of your audience is understood in a more extreme way. And what Starmer has done I think is he sort of innovated on the idea of a dog whistle and come up with what I would call a whistle. Of course, I come from a shepherding family, so in shepherding terms, a dog whistle is a whistle that dogs can hear, but sheep can't, so they don't know what you're planning. Now, you might say to me, Alastair, why not just get a sheep whistle and tell the sheep what you want them to do? Cut the dogs out of the equation. I say, you try that and the sheep dog unions will be all over you.

Also, I feel like as a writer, I feel very jealous of the speechwriter who wrote Keir Starmer's speech, because he's clearly writing the speeches for every party. He's cornered. My God, totally. Yeah. Unlike DeLiso, I'm not an immigrant. Kirstammer's speech, because he's clearly writing the speeches for every party. He's cornered. My God, totally. Unlike Deleusse, I'm not an immigrant. I have red hair. My genes have been knocking around these islands for a very long time. But in a way, you know, we all are.

The red-headed genes left Africa pretty sharpish, travelled up... Travelled up the west coast of Europe, reached Scotland and thought, that's enough for me, I'll stay here forever. That'll do. I mean, of course, your roots in this country go back so far. You actually named after Britain's best known 12th century dispute between an archbishop of Canterbury and a monarch, Be it King. So one thing I'm worried about though is they're going to introduce these English standards that everybody has, who's migrating has to have. If other countries

reciprocate every single British migrant is coming back. Can I ask like, does this mean that Theresa May's immigrants go home vans didn't work? It does seem that way, yes. That's the impression I'm starting to get. I smuggled a few of my friends in through one of those vans. MPs are really upset. Some MPs, not all, are really upset about this language, I would say, more than the policy itself. And I've had, like, lots of WhatsApp from people, someone saying, I think this moment will be

the undoing of number 10. Never seen such anger in moderate MPs. It's a values thing. One person just sent me, I prefer the old Keir, but what they're getting in response from number 10 is we need to meet the public where they are. And the polling suggests the public wants immigration to be much lower. but it is interesting when you ask people who should we stop coming and I had a list of them this week doctors nurses engineers care workers even bankers not on any single category to people say stop them coming so I don't know how they think how we think that immigration will come down. I've got it comedians. There must be only one foreign comedian. We didn't have that on our list. Yes he was, Stun was accused of channeling the

spirit of prominent 1960s celeb Enoch Powell when he said that Britain risks becoming an island of what? Strangers. Oh, they're not playing the game, he just yelled it out. Thomas, you don't respect this show as a genuine quiz. He was just bursting to yell it out. So everyone keeps saying this thing like he's echoing Enoch Powell. And I thought as a recent immigrant myself, I thought he was echoing the voiceover of the Love Island host. An island of strangers hoping to find love. But it could be a follow up to Love Island and rather than starting as strangers and

falling in love, they start in love and end up as complete strangers. And I think that would fit better with our national psyche, to be honest. Also, I feel like all British people want is an island of strangers. Like, it would mean you never had to make direct eye contact or hug. But also pedantically, it is an island of strangers.

I don't know everybody. I know. My problem is my pedantic side always makes me take the wrong side of an argument. I could agree with you, but then if you start expressing things that are factually wrong, I switch sides. I resent the implication that immigration has made Britain stranger, because Britain has always been very strange. You get people in Britain saying oh my family goes back 600 years. Well everyone's does. You think my family were invented in the 1970s? Downing Street on the Enoch Powell echo. So we definitely

didn't mean to echo Enoch Powell. Nobody had thought of that. But they do also admit that they thought hard about that language because it would make the story run for longer. But also I noticed that the very divisive language was right at the beginning. And then in the middle, there was

more kind of reasonable things. But they know that people have very short attention span so people only heard the first two minutes. So what was that? Also on the immigration issue Kier Stama's efforts to set up a return hub in Albania have not worked. So this was a hub for failed asylum seekers. So return hubs, not just a memo Liz Taylor quite often wrote to herself. The name of it, return hubs, it sounds like you've asked Amazon to run a concentration camp. Something slightly disgusting about it. I think six months for the process is generous. An expert we spoke to today, because I was making a piece on this

issue, said six years. Six years before you go to the return hub with the country not decided. And it was quite funny to watch Keir Starmer and the Albanian president. Obviously it was quite embarrassing because Keir Starmer said he wants these return hubs and then the Albanian president was like, yeah, everybody wants us but no, not gonna do do it and then he had this funny language because they're doing a deal with Italy and he said we've gone for a marriage with Italy but for everyone else it's just love and if any nation takes marriage seriously it's Italy. Another question, overseas graduates will be forced to

return home after 18 months under these new schemes unless they find what? Is it the golden scarab of Armen Hotepp? Love with someone above the necessary income threshold? That's exactly what I was thinking. He's a collection of Noel Edmonds' old beards. Most people don't realize he actually sheds them like a snake. Is it a skilled job? A skilled job, correct. Yes. This is a little insulting, I think, sometimes to a lot of the jobs that they call non-skilled

require a lot of skill. Like one of the big ones which is causing a lot of discussion is the care homes. They're going to get rid of the care worker visa and try to get more British people in care. I have never seen a British care worker. Like I went to see a friend of mine and everybody taking care of him was African. I felt homesick. Yeah, I don't think of like public-facing, warm customer service as this country's greatest asset. There is 131,000 vacancies in the care sector,

which is obviously why we've had very high immigration. Although there is an argument, isn't there, that so much cheaper labor has been brought into this sector it suppress wages and actually whenever we've done anything on the care sector people say to us we can earn more money working at the supermarket down the road. But I agree with you it is a skilled job and it should be treated like that. Also if you paid them more it it would gradually fix itself, but then the problem is people would have to pay more for it.

But it's a fact, I think, that the average Premier League left-back gets paid, I think, something like one and a half thousand times more than the average care worker. So for that left, you could have 1,500 care workers. But the problem is, how do you play 1,500 care workers in a flat back four? I graduated from university 20 years ago and I have never done a day's work since then. Frankly I resent the implication that just because I was born in this country I have been of any use to anyone. I don't see why the taxes of hardworking immigrants should pay for me to sit around pontificating on Radio 4. This country has

gone to the dogs. But actually you point out something quite revolutionary. Why not instead of deporting the migrants we deport citizens. I think we tried that. It was called the Empire. It just proved a little controversial over the years. Yes, immigration, if there's one issue in politics that does not deal well with the infinite complexities of reality, and there are loads of them, that one issue is immigration. Undeterred, however, Prime Minister Keir Starmer this week became the, I'm going to say, 35th consecutive Prime Minister to pledge to take back control of this nation's borders. Can he do better than the previous 34?

Time will tell. The government's white paper laid out eight core measures to reduce net migration, which has peaked at 900,000 per year, several hundred thousand above what it was before Brexit. So whilst it has been a difficult time for many industries in this nation, British irony is doing tremendously well. Critics from all sides and depths of the political swamp slammed the Prime Minister for saying that Britain risks becoming a nation of strangers. Robert Jenrick, the Conservative Shadow Justice Secretary, belly-splashed into the debate off the top turnbuckle to claim that we are already a nation of strangers, anxious evidently that the Tories should get most of the credit for fracturing national

society rather than letting Starmer waltz in to finish the job and claim it all as his own. Others said Starmer was veering into the same kind of linguistic territory that Enoch Powell chundered out in his infamous rivers of blood speech in 1968. But it's quite a big leap from we're not going to know each other very well to rivers of blood. But of course we are living in the 21st century, the greatest ever age of hyperbole and exaggeration by far. Look, I have a particular interest in this topic because I am the son of an immigrant father who himself was the son of a refugee and also because I'm from the UK which has a well-known history of, shall we say, two-way immigration and I'm a member of a species which has built its success on moving from one place to another

pretty much ever since Eve and Adam refugied the crap out of the Garden of Eden. So maybe I'm not objective enough but there doesn't seem to be a huge amount from any political party on what can be done to deal with the main problems in this issue which are one, a fully dysfunctional planet and two, the evolutionary glitches in the human brain that mean that if we live somewhere not very nice, for whatever reason, we want to move to somewhere a bit nicer. If we just fix those two things, everything else will fall into place. But the obviously obvious best way to reduce immigration is to make the UK a much less desirable place to move to, and fair play to successive governments for stepping up to that particular plate.

At the end of that round the scores are five to Alistair and Anushka and three to DeLiso and Sarah. Somehow the immigrants get less... Rude. Right, science round now. Delisa and Sarah, you can have this question. Weight loss drugs could result in people having much longer what's? Stretch marks. Scientifically true, but not the answer I've got written down.

Elisa? Legs? Legs? No? What's the logic behind that? I guess it's an optical illusion. Conversations with people who used to treat them as invisible. Again, scientifically correct answer.

The answer is lives. Lives, correct. So someone very close to me started Ozempic this this week. I'm American everyone's on it and I was happy therefore to learn that apparently It makes you like one of the side effects is less likely to have a cardiac event But also less likely to like contract an infectious disease and it was unclear to me I'm not going anywhere funny with this and I do want someone to explain this to me, is that just because getting to a smaller weight makes you less susceptible to something like a cardiac event or is it some other

side effect entirely? No I think you're right. My brain when you say cardiac event doesn't think of a heart attack, I just think of any event involving hearts. Okay, do you think that we're getting to that part of your personality right now that is very pedantic? So if a surgeon is doing a heart transplant and they drop a heart that's a cardiac event Don't encourage him All right, fine. Don't use it as a chat up line though. I'm having a cardiac event on a date. It just sends out the wrong impressions. But I mean it's quite exciting scientific breakthroughs that these drugs designed for

weight loss could end up making us live forever essentially. I think it is a big exaggeration. I don't think weight loss drugs are the reason people are living longer. I lay the blame squarely on box sets of prestige television. There's just too many of them. They're all great. They're all 10 series long. I think people are living longer just to get to the end of all the quality content

that is on the streaming services. You've got people in their 90s who haven't started Breaking Bad. Come on. The thing is, we've got an age aging population in this country and older people need younger people to support them and to work and we're running out of young people and we could deal with that by, I don't know, allowing students to stay here, you know, immigrants to maybe stay on and contribute to our society but I think we would prefer to do it by magic.

You are a very short step away from just becoming a politician, spontaneous. Please don't put words in my mouth, Andy, actually, if you'd just let me finish. This research has shown that the weight loss drugs that are causing widespread existential panic in the enormous trousers industry could have massive health benefits for everyone, significantly reducing the risk of heart attacks and strokes, and significantly increasing the risk of saying, I remember when all this was fields, I can't even make out the words, and don't worry my darling great grandchild, home ownership and career stability is overrated. Before we finish our health round, another health story.

Why might people sick of waiting to see their GP choose instead to book a flight to a rainforest and hire a pantomime chimpanzee outfit? Anyone? Because there was a news story this week that chimpanzees can give each other first aid. Correct. And it raised the very interesting question, does this mean Bubbles chose not to resuscitate Michael Jackson? I saw an article in the Daily Mail that said a lot of those injured chimpanzees are just

faking it to get free tire swings. Whitescreen bananas. I just saw it as a sign of the far-reaching fingers of Big Pharma. How big is this pharma? Maybe it means we could hire them to be care workers. Don't say things like that out loud. They will become party policy for someone. Yes, researchers from Oxford University, sorry, boffins have discovered that chimps administer first aid to each other. The chimps were recorded chewing special leaves, then dabbing them on wounds, as well as performing more advanced human-style medical procedures, such as supercutaneous epidermal banana ostomies

that's peeling a banana um uh chimpanz ECGs and um and atembroscopies which is looking around to see if David Attenborough is hanging around with a bloody TV crew again the scientists found that chimps were surprisingly willing to help other chimps even if they were not related to them provided that the ill chimp requested help at precisely 8am and not a second later.

Well at the end of our health round the scores are now 7 to Alistair and Anushka, 8 to Deliso and Sarah. So and Sarah. Let's move on to our next round which is a cuts round and to mark these cuts it's a missing syllable round so I'm going to give our panelists a headline from the week's news that has had one syllable cut from it and these are all related to well the state of the economy and government cuts so we'll start with this one this can go to Alistair and Anushka one in four employers plan red undies in the next three months what what is the missing syllable in that headline dance is that Anse. Red undancies. Redundancies. Yeah, that's how we say that word.

There's a lot of red undancies coming. It's going to be tough. I think the jobs market is really tough. And when I think about it, loads of jobs that were around when I was a kid don't exist anymore. Like, when I was a kid don't exist anymore like when I was a kid Local characters were everywhere. You could just be a local character You could you could just grow a blonde mustache Just get a pair of gray tracksuit bottoms pull them up to your armpits and just stand at a school gates

He's a local character and if you did it for long enough, they meant you were a PE teacher. LAUGHTER AND APPLAUSE But, I mean, politically, the state of the economy, this kind of thing, how do you balance out, say, slightly better growth figures with more concerning employment figures politically? Well, Rachel Reeves really, really needed the good growth figures, because behind the the scenes Labour MPs are not very happy

about the state of things. They didn't like what happened with winter fuel payments, they're not happy about welfare changes and actually the reason for the redundancies, or people think it may be the reason, is the decision to increase employers national insurance, which actually might be the most controversial of all in the longer run and lots of MPs would not be very nice about the Chancellor. She really really needed some good news and actually 0.7% growth was better than anyone expected. I think I saw a prediction of 0.6% so... Let's move on to our next missing syllable headline. This can go to Deliso and Sarah.

Government announces plan to reduce bets on world's poor. What is the missing syllable? Is this the story that they're cutting like aid? Yes. Bet. Bud, bud-jet. Bud-jet. Bud-jet. Bud-jet. Bud-jet. Bud-jet. Bud-jet. Bud-jet. Bud-jet. Bud-jet. Bud-jet. Bud-jet. Bud-jet. Bud-jet. Bud-jet. Bud-jet. Bud-jet. Bud-jet. Bud-jet. Bud-jet. Bud-jet. Bud-jet. Bud-jet. Bud-jet. Bud-jet. Bud-jet. Bud-jet. Bud-jet. Bud-jet. Bud-jet. Bud-jet. Bud-jet. Bud-jet. Bud-jet. Bud-jet. Bud-jet. Bud-jet. Bud-jet. Bud-jet. Bud-jet. Bud-jet. Bud-jet. Bud-jet. Bud-jet. Bud-jet. Bud-jet. Bud-jet. Bud-jet. Bud-jet. Bud-jet. Bud-jet. Bud-jet. Bud-jet. Bud-jet. Bud-jet. Bud-jet. Bud-jet. Bud-jet. Bud-jet. Bud-jet. Bud-jet. Bud-jet. Bud-jet. Bud-jet. Bud-jet. Bud-jet. Bud-jet. Bud-jet. Bud-jet. Bud-jet. Bud-jet. Bud-jet. Bud-jet. Bud-jet. Bud-jet. Bud-jet. Bud-jet. Bud-jet. Bud-jet. Bud-jet. Bud-jet. Bud-jet. Bud-jet. Bud-jet. Bud-jet. Bud-jet. Bud-jet. Bud-jet. Bud-jet. Bud-jet. Bud-jet. Bud-jet. Bud-jet. Bud-jet. Bud-jet. Bud-jet. Bud- syllable. Budget. Budget. Well done. I can see this catching on. I can see this getting its own show. So politically again, cutting the aid budget always seems to be the first thing against the wall in difficult times. Yeah, and you can picture them just being like, yeah, well, they were only going to spend it on drugs. And you're like, yeah, but they were going to be life-saving drugs.

And also, like, again, this is not funny. I can't believe I'm being forced to make an actual point, right? But it's never actually been foreign aid. The better way to look at it is foreign investment. Because what you end up having is like, after the Inter-Hamway and Rwanda, there was a lot of aid given, and then the country regenerated. And now now they're

sponsoring Arsenal. It's a circle. Do you know what you sound like Keir Starmer in 2021? Yeah it's nuts. It's all let's run the government like it's a business. Let's ride a horse like it's a bike. It's a different thing. It doesn't make sense. And we're not on track to hit net zero. We're nowhere near. And the Tories think we should stop trying. And we want to go foreign aid. And at the same time, we want to reduce immigration. And it's not going to work because the planet's getting hotter and the equatorial regions are going to get hotter. And I think we're about to see a rhetorical shift from the right saying climate change isn't real man-made climate change isn't

real to it is happening it's too late to stop it and that's why we have to close the borders which is a really good point I think. Let's have one final missing syllable set line. I'm sorry to criticize your game but Uj is not a syllable. Thank you. Well you're not gonna like this one because this isn't a missing syllable this is three missing letters. Oh my god. Okay either side can take this. Government pledges to remove pants from some people with disabilities. What are the three missing letters? I think that actually is Labour policy isn't it? PIP? Personal Independent? You're right, but that's not the word.

That's not the missing... Or payment! Yes, yes, Y, M and E are the missing letters. Like Anushka's saying, there has been a negative reaction in the Labour Party about this. I think Imran Hussein, the Bradford East MP, said something like, scrap these unfair cuts and do the right thing and tax the super rich. And you hear a lot from the super rich, because it's like they own all the media or something.

And the super rich are always saying, oh, the far left wants me to pay 95% tax. And it's like, you know, you have to understand, the far left wants you evicted from your homes by Bolshevik gunmen. Taxes were a compromise. I think you should take the deal, guys. Yes, the Department of Work and Pensions has confirmed that the government has no plans to back down

from its controversial cuts to disability benefit payments. Also, the aid budget is going to be slashed from 0.5 to 0.3% of GDP. Maybe we just have to accept that we live in different times now and things like foreign aid and dignity and hope for those with disabilities are just two of the outdated political relics that modern Britain is bravely moving on from, along with other social antiquities that we've gradually shelved from our national priorities during recent years such as the poor, truth, dignity for the old, public transport in financially inconvenient areas, libraries, a functioning legal system, due process, logic, a manufacturing sector, objectivity, nuance, empathy, Northern

Ireland, logic, the Ford defensive shot, children the future and most tragically of all correctly used apostrophes. Yeah well that is the end of this week's News Quiz, and the final scores, it's 10 to Alistair and Anushka, 12 to Deliso and Sarah. Yes! Yes! Thank you for listening to the News Quiz, I've been Andy Zoltzman, goodbye.

CHEERING AND APPLAUSE Taking part in the News Quiz were Alistair Beckett-King, Sarah Barron, Deliso Shaponda and Anushka Asthana. In the chair was me, Andy Zoltzman, and additional material was written by Katherine Brinkworth, Cody Darla, Samira Banks and Eve Delaney. The producer was Rajiv Kharia, and it was a BBC Studios audio production for Radio 4.

["Rainbow Street", by The New York Times, playing on radio 4.] Strong message here from BBC Radio 4. I'm Armando Iannucci. And I'm Helen Lewis. A comedy writer and a journalist teaming up like a pair of unkempt and unlikely superheroes. Our mission is to decipher political language. Stress testing to destruction those used and abused buzzwords and phrases.

Finding out what they really mean. And looking at whether they're meant to deceive us. Or to distract us. Or to disturb us. And our pledge is to help you spot the tricks of the verbal trait. But be warned, this series does feature strong political language that some listeners may find an inverted pyramid of piffle. Strong message here from BBC Radio 4.

Listen now on BBC Sounds.