Friday Night Comedy from BBC Radio 4 - The News Quiz: Ep 8. Interference, Incentives and Interruptions

Episode Date: November 1, 2024

This week on The News Quiz, join guest host Ian Smith, along with Geoff Norcott, Amy Hoggart, Alasdair Beckett-King and Susie McCabe, as they break down accusations of Labour door-knocking across international lines, Musk's super PAC and Trump's Big Mac, and the wild adventures of King Charles in the South Pacific.Written by Ian Smith.With additional material by: Alex Kealy, Cameron Loxdale, Christina Riggs and Laura Davis. Producer: Rajiv Karia Executive Producer: Richard Morris Production Coordinator: Jodie Charman Sound Editor: Marc WillcoxA BBC Studios Audio Production for Radio 4 An Eco-Audio certified Production

BBC Sounds music radio podcast. Hello, I'm Ian Smith. Andy's away again this week, so I'm in the throne. Sorry, chair. I don't want you to think the power has gone to my head, although I have fired an intern for looking at me directly in the eye. Andy won't allow it and neither will I. Here is the news quiz. Hello and welcome to the New Squares. I'm Ian Smith and I've made some pretty big changes to the format, so strap in. Instead of two teams, we'll have four. And for ease, we'll group these four individual teams into two squads. Squad one and squad two. And instead

of points, we'll be playing for credits. Each credit has a numerical value of one, much like a point, but very, very different. And to ramp things up, the individual winner, and I haven't had this confirmed yet, will become director general of the BBC. There will also be additional jokes for dogs at a frequency only they can hear.

There was one just then. Joining me this week are our four teams or two squads named after the real reasons we believe Andy has been away. Team Panto rehearsal. LAUGHTER Versus Team Brazilian butt lift. LAUGHTER On Team Panto, we have Jeff Norcott and Susan McKay!

CHEERING AND APPLAUSE On Team Panto, we have Jeff Norcott and Susie McKay. And on Team BBL, we have Alistair Beckett King, and for the first time on the News Quiz, Amy Hoggart. And now the first question can go to Team Panto, Jeff and Susie. Which evil foreign power is interfering in the US election this time? Russia, North Korea, the Galactic Empire, the Eye of Sauron. It's Britain, isn't it? It is. It's us. We're interfering in elections again. Anything Russia can do, we can do better. If you want a bus with something written on it, we'll bring it to you.

But crucially, how are we interfering and why are we interfering? Well, isn't it this thing that some Labour activists went over there and apparently this is the thing that's been happening for quite a while. It's very common that some people in their spare time go over to another country and help post leaflets. I think they've got their own issues personally. But so the idea is then that Donald Trump got a hump about this because he thinks that it's foreign interference and it's shaping the election. I would say that Labour barely shaped their own election really, it only just about did. I don't know what advice they'd

be giving going, right, all you've got to do is make sure the other guy stands in the rain without an umbrella, OK? LAUGHTER And ask him whether or not he had Sky TV as a kid and just don't say anything about anything. LAUGHTER He called Starmor and the Labour Party left wing. LAUGHTER

What a shock that was to this country! LAUGHTER I mean, the damage must be frustrating for Starmor and Lammy, cos they've actually spent quite a while sort of groveling to Trump to make up for past things that they've said about him. They just must feel so gutted going, oh, my God, I can't believe the stuff I said. I actually complimented his hair. I said his hair was nice.

And he's going, well, that's nothing, Keir. I praised his achievements as a person of colour. LAUGHTER praised his achievements as a person of colour. LAUGHTER Can you imagine them sitting round a table and Trump sitting going, I've got Musk, he's backing me to the hill, he's buying votes in Pennsylvania, Keir's like, Lord Ali bought me some glasses. LAUGHTER

Amy, you worked on satirical news shows in the US. What do you think about British people going over to America and interfering with their politics? The reason there's so much controversy is that Labour are offering housing, so there is some financial benefit. But the housing's in North Carolina. It's just been ravaged by Hurricane Milton. They might say something like,

OK, come out, you can do some flyering, you can get on the bus, we'll put you up in a two bed. There's a bathroom, no electricity, there's a bit of roof. There's outside space, but only because there's missing walls. I mean, Nigel Farage said it was wrong for a Labour Party to interfere with politics in the States. I think he might want to start interfering with politics in Clacton. I think it's quite rich, America accusing another country of election interference.

That's like Russell Brand calling someone a bit sketchy, you know. But I think this is an opportunity really for Britain. This is our chance to retake America, you know, they're weak. They're divided. I'm prepared to make a start myself. I could smuggle a U into New York Harbor, the letter U. Just, I say let's put all the English words back the way they were supposed to be.

Yes. America, we're gonna trouser your pants. We're going to bin your trash cans. We're going to bum your fannies. We're... LAUGHTER We're going to fringe your bangs. We're going to bogey your boogers.

We're going to chip your fries. No longer will cramp be called Charlie Horse. It ends now. Period. I mean, it's all started. I do believe that's a Radio 4 first, for we're going to bum your fannies. One of my favourite things that people in America were saying, they talked about the last time something like this happened, that we got the British away, but it was 244 years ago ago I think if the last time you had a grievance with someone was 244 years ago you've got a pretty good relationship with them yeah it's a bit

like you know there was an asteroid going past Earth that hadn't been seen for 80,000 years it'd be like if as we saw it we're all giving it the finger This is for the dinosaurs, okay? LAUGHTER Erm... Yes. Correct. LAUGHTER Erm... That's one credit to Team Panto. That's right, foreign interference everywhere. Russia is helping the Republicans, Labour is helping the Democrats, Thomas Tuchel is helping the English.

When will it end? LAUGHTER The Trump campaign's complaint cited a since-deleted LinkedIn post which said Labour would sort housing for any volunteers who wanted to go and campaign for Harris. Not the first time Labour have promised to sort housing and then pretended, we never said that. But the Labour Party insists they did not fund or organise party officials going to the US as funding or organising anything would break manifesto promises. LAUGHTER

APPLAUSE Also, Ed Davey has refused to confirm whether his whooshing down a log flume in Disney World constitutes as an illegal intervention in Florida's election. LAUGHTER And speaking of interference, the second question that can go to team BBL, which billionaire might make you a millionaire

if you vote for the guy with the messy hair who's laissez faire on Medicare? I think this might be Elon Musk. Now, I don't want to be a hipster about this, but I was disliking Elon Musk before it was cool. In the early days, everyone was like, oh, he's doing jet packs, he's doing electric car. He's like Iron Man, he's amazing. and I remember someone saying to me, have you heard about Elon Musk? He's a South African billionaire and somehow based

only on that information. I formed an opinion. Now obviously it's wrong to hold stereotypes about wealthy white South Africans but but it does save time, doesn't it? The Democrats are obsessed with the idea that there's going to be like a procedural way that they're going to win. It's like someone sort of hits you in the face with a custard pie and then starts kicking you and you just sort of go, that's illegal actually. I was also thinking those checks are so embarrassing. If you won a million dollars, have you seen them?

They're so big. But if you win one of those checks, you have to, I think you have to go to a bank with it. How are you going to carry it? Because you're going to fold it and then you'll worry that they'll go, oh, it's been tampered with. So you're going to carry it really neatly and get away there. It's all automated now as well you're going to carry it really neatly this way there.

It's all automated now as well. You have to like put the check in the machine. Yeah. Just like ram it in like, come on! Well, you take a photo of it with your phone, but you need to be like so far away. And that is correct. This is the news that Elon Musk is getting his claws

into the US election. I think it's good that Musk is encouraging people to vote. I've registered to vote in Pennsylvania 30 times now. You've got to be in it to win it. Donald Trump is running on a staunch anti-immigration message with the help of Elon Musk, the South African immigrant who is planning to colonise Mars. A place, as far as I'm aware, and despite appearances, he is not from. LAUGHTER APPLAUSE I'm just glad that we have no foreign interference here at the News Quiz.

Hello Ian, Andy here from Pakistan. LAUGHTER My question for our panel this week, which unemployed senior citizen briefly rejoined a flipping workforce this week? From Pakistan, may the cricket be with you. How's that? Yes, that question is, which unemployed senior citizen briefly rejoined the flipping workforce this week? Is that the McDonalds? Have you guys seen the clip? I quite like it, you know. Don't make me fond of you now. After all these years, Donald, he's sort of like that

wrong-and-uncle where you go, I miss him, but I know what he did, you know. I know what he did. It's really like, you go, this is what you should have been doing all along. It's so weird how politics kind of plays out like this. He's had a mad week, Donald Trump, hasn't he? Flipping burgers, talking about dead

men's penises. I mean, we're going to miss the storylines. If he doesn't win. It's gonna be very boring And I just realized that if you don't know what I was referring to when I said dead men's penises One of the weirdest ever moments on the news quiz so he was at a rally and he started talking about the late golfer Arnold Palmer and he said look tell you what he's here. Well, he was all man and he came out of the shower You are paraphrasing slightly. Yes. Can I give you... I'll give you the full quote

that he said about Arnold Palmer. This is a guy that was all man. This man was strong and tough. And when he took showers with the other pros, they came out there, they said, Oh, my God, that's unbelievable. Do you know what, like, his daughter had to come out, like, against it, and I thought, I bet she didn't wake up that day thinking,

I wonder if I'll have to defend my dead father's penis's anonymity. And going back to small, shriveled things, can we go back to McDonald's and the fries? Sorry, yeah. Well, the thing is, Donald Trump, like me, is half Scottish, and he clearly has an affinity for Scottish cuisine, which is why he's chosen McDonald's. I'm getting really annoyed by this election cycle because I was in the States for quite

a while and I went to, I'm not showing off, but I've been to a lot of Trump rallies. But in my day they were really depressing. You would be, I'd get told you're gonna go to a field in Michigan or some concrete, like, middle of nowhere. But now, they seem so fun, because he's lost it, which is really entertaining, and he's just doing what he wants. If someone said to me now, we're gonna send you to an event

where there's an elderly man who's just DJing. Just dancing and then McDonald's. That's a great night out. there's an elderly man who's just DJing. Just dancing and then McDonald's. That's a great night out. It's a weird situation. So I read that Trump said that he needed the kind of generals Hitler had, something that Trump said. And then General John Kelly explained to him

that Hitler's generals tried to assassinate him three times. Moving on to the other candidate. Jeff, you can take this question. Kamala Harris was accused of being very vague at her town hall event on CNN this week. Do you agree or disagree? I don't know if you've been following, she doesn't say a great deal. And it's weird, because for us, we see all Donald's mad stuff and we think, how can it be so close in the polls? But she doesn't say a great deal and it's weird because for us we see all Donald's mad stuff and we think how can it be so close in the polls but she doesn't say much so she was on Fox News right and they said to

her at the end what's your like retail policy offer and she said go on my website there's 80 pages of policy I was like have you researched the Fox demographic I don't think and she also said as well she was just fine she wouldn't give an answer on whether or not she'd keep funding the wall, despite the fact she once called it a medieval vanity project which could also be a way of describing Donald's hair, I suppose, but... Or Arnold Palmer's penis. That's right, campaigning is in full swing. Trump did a shift at McDonald's, the sight of him wearing an apron was an image I could

have done without. Turns out he's an absolute dead ringer for Mrs Doubtfire. LAUGHTER And in timing far better than I could hope to achieve as a comedian, days after Trump did one shift at a McDonald's, there has now been an E. coli outbreak at McDonald's. LAUGHTER Also, Harris had a difficult night at her own town hall event.

Former Obama senior adviser David Axelrod said Harris had a mixed night and that when she didn't want to answer a question she would go to Word Salad City. I've driven through Word Salad City. It took forever. The road signs are an absolute disaster. Donald Trump also shared his bizarre fixation with the appendage of the golfer Arnold Palmer. To be fair he does have the biggest penis in sport and that's including Seabiscuit. So as we come to the end of our US election section, this is the last news quiz until the result, so I want to know from the panel what are your predictions for the US election running? I don't know what's going to happen but I really hope that women come out for Carmelur

and I think that they might in that since Dobbs overturned Roe v Wade, they have been showing up and Dems have been overperforming, doing much better than we all expected. And I think that we knew that was going to happen in 2022 when the Republicans started talking about like how the Republicans were going to do so well and they called it the red wave. I just think if you know anything about women's bodies, you would never call high energy, high motivation red wave. And I think what they're describing, the motivation and the momentum, should be called energetic ovulation wave.

And so this is the US election where American voters will take to the polling stations to decide who will get to hold the moral high ground in the inevitable civil war. It's a race between Kamala Harris, a woman who would manage to avoid the question if you asked her when her birthday was, or Donald Trump, a man who looks like a Halloween pumpkin, got a job as a concierge. LAUGHTER If you're struggling to remember the US election day, I always say, remember, remember, democracy is at stake. LAUGHTER My personal predictions for the election?

Joe Biden will do the final two weeks of his presidency by wheeling out a big TV and letting everyone do crosswords. Obama will go on tour with Eminem. Kamala Harris will secure the coveted endorsement of ABBA, but in a huge blow, Donald Trump gains the endorsement of the much younger ABBA holograms. What looks depressingly likely is that we'll see Trump on TV calling the election rigged and totally phony

before a flustered aid whispers to him that he actually won. LAUGHTER So now it's time for round two. Er, Aird, do you want to give us the scores? Oh, yes, I've been keeping track of those. LAUGHTER APPLAUSE And at the end of round one, it's three points to team BBL and two points to team Panto.

And for round two, this question can go to everyone. Who could unwittingly be doing their farewell tour this week? It's Charles and Camilla. Yes. Do you have to say King Charles and Queen Camilla? Otherwise we won't know who you mean. Yeah. Yeah.

Thank you, thank you. They're having a really good farewell tour, it would seem. They've been drinking Carver with a K. It's a Samoan special drink. It's not the Carver with a C, which is a shame, because that's so fun to drink. It's only four quid. You have to drink it out of the bottle and exclusively on the night bus.

So this is how the Guardian described it. Charles uttered the words, May God bless this carver, before lifting the bowl to his lips. Charles' wife, Queen Camilla, sat beside him, fanning herself to ease the tropical humidity which seems to me far too sexy a way to describe it. It's like a mils and boon. For me, bad enough we have to have a monarchy. Do we have to be this aroused

by them at all times? That's outrageous. And then Arnold Palmer turned up in breaches It will get very boisterous apparently who has stood on a table pointing at women shouting divorce beheaded died I Was really disappointed looking at the coverage of Charles's visit to Australia at the lack of Australasian puns in the headlines the headlines headlines were all things like, King Charles visits Australia. It's like, sorry, King-Guru. I haven't seen the word King-Guru once. You could have had a crown with corks coming off it. Camilla, Queen of the Desert.

They write themselves. LAUGHTER AND APPLAUSE And we're avoiding one of the big stories here. What happened to King Charles when he visited Australia? He got heckled. I said that with a bit too much glee, didn't I? Lydia Thorpe heckled him in the Parliament and she was shouting,

not my King, not my King, to which Camilla said, that's right love, he's not, he's mine, do you want to take this outside? And then, this was my favourite bit of the British media. Thorpe was wearing a traditional possum skin cloak, which is a fashion for Pah, as it should only be worn as evening wear. And there's more Commonwealth news. We'll put this question to Susie. Who in Australia has slagged off Glasgow?

Exactly. Well, I'll be going to Victoria in Australia because they decided, listen guys, we can't afford the Commonwealth Games. It needs to go somewhere with infrastructure, and my friendly, Warram, slightly stabby city, right, but do you know what? We're good people. Like if we stab you, we'll take you to the hospital, right? And we went, we'll take your Commonwealth Games, but we've obviously had to scale it back because you know, certain things aren't in place anymore. So like, we've obviously had to scale it back because, you know, certain things aren't in place anymore. So, like, we've had to take out the hockey. Lesbians are raging. The rugby. Lesbians are raging. And some other team sport that probably doesn't matter. Ooh. What is the other team sport?? Cricket. Yeah. And it comes bursting back through the door.

He's ran from Pakistan. So, we've taken them out because we don't have an athletes' village anymore, because that all went to private housing and social housing, which is a good thing to do, right, for legacy and all that stuff. But Victoria are raging, going with, we knew it was going to be this scale back, well we would never have gave it to Glasgow. You didn't give it to Glasgow, it was the commission that gave it to Glasgow. So I started to think, right, how can we get away around this? And I thought, we need to have a scheme for Commonwealth

athletes that we had for Ukrainians. Like if you phone me up and say Susie can you take in the Australian women's hockey team? In other Commonwealth news what has Keir Starmer said will definitely not be up for discussion at the Commonwealth Summit? Slavery? Yes. He said that if it we can't talk about it because it's so far in the past. It's like, you know what else is in the past? Every bad thing anyone has ever done ever. It's just all in the past. I think he's using that as an excuse because it means he can eventually just fully empty all the prisons. Yeah, in all their sort of meetings with the parole officers they're going,

well I don't know if you've noticed but I committed that crime in the past. Every so often a right-wing think tank puts out a report saying, as they're going, well, I don't know if you've noticed, but I committed that crime in the past. In the past. Every so often, a right-wing think tank puts out a report saying, actually, Britain didn't really benefit financially from slavery, which I think is almost worse, because that suggests it was a passion project. Like, if we weren't making money from it, was it a hobby? We're talking about the Atlantic slave trade,

not making your own soap. That's... So across that round, we have an extra credit We're talking about the Atlantic slave trade, not making your own soap. So across that round we have an extra credit to both sides. This is the news that in the Australian Parliament this week, King Charles was heckled by an Indigenous senator who objected to him being the head of state. I can see why she was angry. His first mistake was asking her, and have you come from far? Some have said that the heckling was un-Australian, but what's more Australian than someone shouting

at a foreigner? While in Samoa, King Charles drunk a traditional Carver brew. He downed the drink before being declared a High Chief, to which he replied, damn right, I've never been higher in all my life! The local drink, Carver, can have a narcotic sedative effect. When used properly, it can lower anxiety, which is great when people are accusing you of colonialism. So, at the end of round two, the scores are...

On five points, it's Team BBL! And still trailing behind at present is Team Panto on four. But it's time to claw back some points because round three is a quick-fire round. As the country's only Northern comedian, this week I'm going to tell you a news headline and I want you to tell me if the story is from the North or the South. So your first story is, sausage rolls meet £425 crystal at Greg's champagne bar. North or South?

That's definitely North because we don't have Greg's in the South, or we do but we pronounce it Gales. LAUGHTER AND APPLAUSE I think it's the north. I have to say, I'm from Durham, so I'm actually more northern than you, Ian. Yeah, yeah. But it doesn't seem that way, does it? LAUGHTER I've just been cursed with an accent that really makes me feel like I'm right on the border, I'm, like, Berwick, sort of. But you've done so much,

you've done so much in spite of that, well done. Hasn't he done well? This of course happened in the north of England, Greggs have opened a champagne bar in New Castle. Fine dining isn't something we're used to in Gregg's, or Newcastle to be fair, or the North or England. On the menu is a £425 bottle of champagne which you can pair with a steak bake to bring the total cost to £426. Airport introduces maximum hugging time of three minutes at drop-off zones, north or south? This cannot be the north, it is not a northern problem. I've only hugged my dad once, and he said, oh we're not American, it's not an issue. I totally agree, speaking as an anally retentive bloke, anything longer than 30 seconds is technically foreplay.

And should not be happening in a public space. It is. Show it off, innit? I'm going to have to push you for a north or south. Must be the south. Safe. Go ahead and be the safe. OK, well, for an extra point to both teams, it is the south. This was from Dunedin in New Zealand, crucially the South Island of New Zealand.

PLEASE STAND BY Airports are emotional places though. You'd want human affection if you've just paid that much for a Toblerone. PLEASE STAND BY And now for our final North or South story. Children's Soft Play Centre apologises over body bag Halloween decorations.

PLEASE STAND BY Children's Soft Play Centre apologises over body bag Halloween decorations. LAUGHTER North. 100% north. Their outfits have got scarier. They're terrifying. Last year, I gave them sweets at my car keys. I was like, just make it stop. It's terrifying. I don't know. I think this is not a Northern story because, look at the clues, children's Soft Play Centre, we don't have children in the North.

People are born about 25, usually, 25, 26. Soft play centre. No, we don't have that. It's just breeze blocks and broken bottles. Apologises. I don't think so. LAUGHTER Body bag is plausible, so I'm kind of on the fence, but I think it's the South. Joe, I also think it might be the South

because of how much we indulge kids as well. Like, my son's at primary school and they send texts all day long. Like, Seb has had a really great morning. Well, I've had a terrible one, so thanks for that. LAUGHTER Seb has learnt to conjugate his verbs. Well, I change energy suppliers, but I don't feel like anyone is... LAUGHTER

I don't feel like I'm getting any gold stars. South, I say South for that reason. Overindulged kids. See, I think it's the north, because people in the south live forever. That's how we got Brexit, because they're just like 150, and they're like, yeah, I don't like Europe. I fought in the Crimean War. LAUGHTER That was a southern story that happened in Sirencester.

Said with the uncertainty of a man who doesn't know if that's how you say that, by the way. LAUGHTER Sirencester? The name of the soft play centre where this happened was Rugrats and Half Pints. I know it's only a half pint, but I don't think the kids should be drinking even.

But Halloween is just around the corner so do prepare yourself for trick-or-treaters knocking on your door or as they're called in America, Labour volunteers. And that brings us to the end of this week's news quiz where the scores are. Team Panto, Jeff and Susie you have seven but storming away in the lead is Team BBL, Alistair and Amy with ten! CHEERING AND APPLAUSE Thank you very much to our panellists and thank you to all of you at home.

Andy will be back in the new year to do his God-given duty, finding the perfect cricket analogy to describe the inevitable second insurrection on the US Capitol. Have a good Ian Smith, good boy! Taking part in the news quiz were Susie McCabe, Amy Hoggart, Jeff Norcott and Alistair Beckett King. In the chair was me, Ian Smith. An additional material was written by Laura Davis, Alex Keeley, Cameron Locksdale and Christina Riggs. The producer was Rajiv Carrier and it was the BBC Studios audio production for BBC Radio 4. Hello, Russell Kane here. I used to love British history, be proud of it. Henry the

Eighth, Queen Victoria, massive fan of stand-up comedians obviously, Bill Hicks, Richard Pryor, that has become much more challenging, for I am the host of BBC Radio 4's Evil Genius, the show where we take heroes and villains from history and try to work out were they evil or genius. Do not catch up on BBC Sounds by searching Evil Genius if you don't want to see your heroes destroyed. But if like me, you quite enjoy it, have a little search. Listen to Evil Genius with me, Russell Kane. Go to BBC Sounds and have your heroes destroyed. But if like me, you quite enjoy it, have a little search. Listen to Evil Genius with me, Russell Kane. Go to BBC Sounds and have your world destroyed.