Friday Night Comedy from BBC Radio 4 - The News Quiz: Ep 8. Musk and Trump Break Up

Episode Date: June 13, 2025

Andy Zaltzman is joined by Glenn Moore, Felicity Ward, Athena Kugblenu and Marie Le Conte to break down the week in news. The panel discuss Musk and Trump's messy break up, getting Britain ready for a war and why children shouldn't be trusted to do town planning.Written by Andy Zaltzman.With additional material by: Eve Delaney, Jade Gebbie, Cameron Loxdale and Alexandra Haddow. Producer: Pete Strauss Executive Producer: Richard Morris Production Coordinator: Jodie Charman Sound Editor: Marc WillcoxA BBC Studios Audio Production for Radio 4

This BBC podcast is supported by ads outside the UK. deal ratings and price history, so you know a great deal when you see one. That's cargurus.ca. Cargurus.ca. Oh, oh hi! I'm Mel Gedroych and I'm going to be your host on… Well, there's a wink, there's a wink, there's a wink. So each week I'm going to be meeting with a different deceased celeb guest to discuss how they died, what they want for their funeral and perhaps most importantly why I should be unlocking the pearly gates for them. You'll laugh, you probably won't cry but bloody

hell you'll be entertained. Listen and watch wherever you get your podcasts. BBC Sounds music radio podcast Hello, welcome to the news quiz and what a crucial show this is as we reach the final show of series 117 the all-time series score after almost 50 years a tide tide at 8,231 points each. And as the nation braces itself for the government spending review, our teams are Team New Direction against Team Screeching U-Turn. On Team New D, sorry, that sounds wrong.

Team New Direction, Glen Moore and political journalist, Marie Leconte. And on Team Uy, it's Felicity Ward and Athena Koblenu. And on Team Yui it's Felicity Ward and Athena Koblenu. First question can go to Felicity and Athena. I'll put this in terms that comedians can understand. Who is bracing themselves for a difficult review? Us? Kia? Is it yours and my friend Kia? It is, yes.

Yes, it's the budgets come out, he's done the big budget announcement for Labor. I'm able to really understand what the fiscal rules are, because I just figured out what smart casual means. And now I've got to understand fiscal rules. Like I don't need any more vague rules in my life. Yeah, because it's not really like concrete plans. I thought this was like the government says how much money is available for something and then they put that money forward for it.

But it turns out that all the military spending is just stuff that they think would be nice to have and it's like, so Keir Starmer's just made a vision board. He's taken the manic pixie dream girl approach to national security. He's trying to like manifest an F35. Well, according to the IFS, them again, appropriate name for an organisation that analyses public spending, IFS. According to... And the other department, B.U.T.S.

According to the IFS, tough what's lie ahead? Days for topical comedy panels? It's tough times basically because tough choices. Which I will say they actually said it last year as well on this exact phrasing and also I believe in 2021 and again quite often. So I love that there's just one guy going, yeah. They should do what we all do when we have a tough choice. We should do what we all do when we have a tough choice. We should use a lifeline. It's like phone a friend or go 50-50 on their options or ask the audience. We have that's called a general election. Well let's look a bit more closely at some of the specifics.

Now for these questions, well everyone is easily distracted these days as I read in the first half paragraph of an article this week. Not least newsreaders. Now some people just really struggle to focus on their scripts these days and misread their worms or just say entirely the wrong tennis. So what our panelists need to do is listen to these BBC newsreaders getting things wrong this week when reporting on the government spending plans because they were not fully dialed in. So we're going to have some snippets from BBC Local Radio. And our first snippet, the newsreader is Pertwin Range and this is on BBC West North South. The government has pledged to spend billions of pounds

bringing more rams, rain and busts to the cities of the UK. Right, so what did he mean when he said the government is spending billions of pounds bringing more rams, rain and busts to the UK. Right so what did he mean when he said the government is spending billions of pounds bringing more rams rain and busts to the UK? That sounded about right to me. Is it a public transport thing? It is correct yes. So Rachel Reeves once said to be more public transport around the country she's promising trams? Yes. To a lot of places well which seems odd because I think in the last few months Labour have come across as pretty anti trams to a lot of places as well, which seems odd because I think in the last few months Labour have come across as pretty anti-trams. But the best part of going on a holiday is going to a town with a tram, right? So I think

that's really great because it means if you're on holiday in a town, if you live there, it's probably not so fun. Yes, so they've pledged about £ billion pounds for transport in cities and regions. Is this the right thing to do? Should we really be investing in local transport links that could have a big positive impact in the local areas rather than, you know, a big glitzy new train line that runs from, say, London to, for the sake of argument, London in a high-speed loop costing £200 trillion plus another £150 billion for a luxury hotel and spa complex for any squirrels that live along

the route. Is that not a better thing for the nation? Look, I very much support putting money into transport infrastructure. I would say, though, as an immigrant who has just got her British driver's licence, I feel like there could also be put a little bit of money into British country roads. I just feel like when I got my licence it would have been very helpful if they had given me a couple of tips. They would say, do you know about British country roads? I would say, no.

What are they? Three or four lanes wide. He would say, it is the width of a Nissan Micra. I would say, two-way. Wow, that sounds stressful. I assume then that it is very straight so you can see what's coming to what And he would say it is hairpin bend after hairpin bend and there's potholes No guttering no streetlights horses tractors and it's all set in a hedge maze so you can never

Really prepare visually or audibly for what's coming at you next and I would say my god It must take so long to get anywhere because given those circumstances, surely the speed limit, what is it, 10, 20 miles an hour? And it's a 60 British miles an hour? Unless, of course, you're local, then by all means go as fast as you possibly can. Another transport question. What links the following? Batman, Wonder Woman, Robert Jenrick. They're all my exes. Based on a lot of their behaviour, I assume they're dealing with their parents' death badly? It's not what I've got written down here. Well, it's what I've got written down here.

Vigilantes. Yes. Vigilantilism. That's not a word that I can say. It sounds dumber when I say it. I think as long as you haven't shortened it yet, it needs to be like, are you a Vigi? Vijo. My auntie genuinely used the word dezo and I was like what?

She's like yeah, I'm the designated driver. Well he's been, Robert Jenrick has been acting as a vigilante by going on the London Underground and stopping people who have been sort of dodging fairs and he's basically being a rubbish Batman. And I think it's sort of quite a good deterrent and Tia Fell are going to sort of use that. You know how cigarette packets have got like diseased lungs on them and stuff? Oyster cards are going to have Robert Jenreck on them. I don't know if you saw it, but the severe disinterest of the people,

he chased them down escalators, which I just went and they were like, do one? He said, oh, we've got to fix all the crime in London. We've got to fix all the robbery. We've got to fix the mugging. We've got to get rid of the weird Turkish barbers. And I just thought, oh my God, there were weird Turkish barbers going, guys, it's on to us.

And yeah, I thought that was, they were weird Turkish barbers going guys is on to us Yeah, I thought that was really unfair one weird Turkish barbers that let them be weird man They've done nothing to you. Yeah, where else can I get a haircut for eight pounds? I did last week. They gave me more hair No, but it's interesting you should focus on fair dodging as an issue This is you know He admitted helping a Tory donor avoid 45 million pounds in tax by rushing through approval for a housing scheme. That was back in 2020, which is the equivalent of dodging a six zone day travel card every day from now until October 9,450.

But let's have another headline from a distracted newsreader. This is from Val Halleflunt on BBC Antarctic. Prime Minister Keir Starmer says Britain must be beach body ready as soon as possible or risk looking stupid. Right, so what did Keir Starmer actually say? Got to be war ready, haven't we? Yes. Yeah. War, what is it good for? Economic growth. He said he was going to buy war stuff but also buy AI war stuff because AI is going to help us do war and I did this, I went onto an AI site

and I asked, how do you get ready for war? And I swear down, this is what the site said to me. It gave me five bits of advice for getting ready for war. Train like a champion. Then develop a battle cry, assemble a squad, learn from history, and then finally, the best thing, pack snacks. Also, this is for a war that is apparently potentially ten years away. Keir Starmer's not going to be here in ten years, so why does he care about a sit- like, who's ever used the toilet brush on the train? You said this armor isn't gonna be here in 10 years time. Is that a threat Glen? He's ordered all this stuff for war like submarines, but it's not gonna be ready until 2034

so somebody who wants to like start a war with us is gonna have to be very patient and kindly wait until 2034 until we're ready for it. 12 attack submarines are on the order. No detail on the defense submarines or the midfield submarines to just knock it around, keep it moving, make space for the other submarines. Might be able to pick up a couple of cheap ones from Spain. They've got loads of them over there anyway. So this is a segue that arguably has little in common with what we're talking about,

but it reminded me of it. So when I was a kid, I watched Asterix a lot as he grew up in France. And there is, I think, an episode where they go fight against the English. So in England, they kind of have to go up to the cliffs of Dover to fight the English. Generally for an embarrassing long amount of time, I thought that all of have to go up to the cliffs of Dover to fight the English. Generally for an embarrassing long amount of time I thought that all of Britain was raised up so the entire island was very high up and like English people had to climb up and down. Well that actually is one of the spending pledges actually is to to extend the white cliffs of Dover around the entire coastline of the UK.

It's also pretty unfair of Keir Starmer to just come up with all these pledges of like we're gonna have submarines and we're gonna have tanks and we're gonna have new missiles and actually he's not like Rachel Reeves is the one who's got to find the money for it and that's very unfair and I'm saying this as someone who picked up my kid from nursery the other day and they said oh he was crying a bit earlier but don't worry we told him he can have an ice cream on the way home and it was like skim. Why did you do that? School leavers are going to be offered what to give them a flavour of life in the armed forces? Low pay.

A threatening haircut. One outfit. All of these, quite possible. So I think it's all meant to be about the carrot and the stick, isn't it? So I think probably porn and PTSD. Which one's the carrot? No, it's a military gap year. I think what it is, it provides a welcome change

to the usual sort of gap year people and people will be doing a bit more sort of a destructive one of actually, I actually went abroad to demolish a well. Possibly. It all feels very different to my gap here. I just went brief casing around Europe. Well, I mean, it also just makes you think back to British military in the past.

Are the young people in this country really prepared to put the kind of effort in that, for example, young people in Britain did at the Battle of Towton in 1461, in the early stages of the Wars of the Roses. In a single day of hand-to-hand combat, historians have estimated that around 25,000 people were killed. And I just don't think our young people today would be prepared to put that effort in. I think they'd take one look at the battlefield and say, no, it's not for me, and we'd have to hire in a load of Poles

and Bulgarians to kill each other just to get the job done. And also, those people with the War of the Roses, they were also off an alternative placement at Deloitte, so they could have gone for even. Well, the government has warned, you know, the challenges we face, the challenge of China was described as sophisticated and persistent, the threat of Russia as immediate and pressing. I don't know about you but I find it much easier and

more reassuring if my nation's existential threats are described like a perfume or the nose of a wine. China is set to have a thousand nuclear warheads by the year 2030 so it's lucky we've got 3,000 extra troops coming online by then that should see those warheads off. China could be a formidable foe, assuming they don't repeat their usual mistake of making all their soldiers out of terracotta. Yes, well, the full details of the spending review will be announced next week. Let me illustrate why the spending review is such a difficult thing politically.

We're going to do a quick social experiment with our audience here today. Give me a cheer if you would like everything in the country to work better. And now give me a cheer if you would like to have much less money. And that is a hard circle to square politically in the Bermuda Triangle of public spending. There remain some questions about where the money will come from. Some within the Labour Party propose a wealth tax, but there are concerns that this could disincentivise hardworking people in, for example, the care sector or education from working hard enough to become billionaires. Government borrowing is already tinkling along

at around 150 billion pounds per year. So remember, there is a magic money tree, and that magic money tree grows in the very fertile soil of the future. Tough choices are unavoidable as the government finalizes its spending plans leading to possible cutbacks in amongst areas education. Fair enough Wikipedia can cover it. Criminal justice trial by media is far quicker and cheaper than traditional trial by jury and does away with those annoying not guilty verdicts. Defense they should have an AI Vera Lin ready to go by the end of the decade and

housing they're just gonna pop an inflatable 200 square mile peninsula floating in the North Sea off East Anglia so problem solved there. If you're wondering where the money has come from for all this Rachel Reeves has very cleverly changed the definition of government debt, which is quite a cunning plan. You should try it yourself. No, Mr Bank Manager, it is not, as you describe it, a mortgage. It is in fact a funky fun fund. The score at the end of that round, I have to get this right this week because the White

House have been complaining about the accuracy of scoring on the news quiz. Just the latest pop at the BBC. It's six points all. Ever feel like car shopping is designed to make you second guess yourself? Is this a good price? Am I making the right choice? With CarGurus, you don't have to wonder. They have hundreds of thousands of cars from top-rated dealers and advanced search tools, deal ratings and price history. So you know a great deal when you see one. That's cargurus.ca. CarGurus.ca. Oh, oh hi! I'm Mel Gedroych and I'm going to be your host on... Well, there's a wink, there's a wink, there's a wink. So each week I'm going to be meeting with a different deceased celeb guest to discuss

how they died, what they want for their funeral and perhaps most importantly why I should be unlocking the pearly gates for them. You'll laugh, you probably won't cry, but bloody hell you'll be entertained. Listen and watch wherever you get your podcasts. Right, well this is a question based on a story that has been evolving whilst we've been recording. Which president of the world's most powerful nation and which world's richest man have had a massive public falling out whilst we've been recording? Is it perhaps Donald Trump and Elon Musk? Correct.

They're fighting like ex-boyfriends, so like Elon Musk has posted Time to drop the really big bomb. At real Donald Trump is in the Epstein files. That is the real reason they have not been made public. Have a nice day, DJT. Donald Jeffrey Tepstein. It's such a bad break up, which is the best breakup. Like how delicious that they're so immature and poorly emotionally regulated that they're

just putting everything out there. You know, you're like, oh my God, that is not the way for a grown up to act, but don't stop. Elon Musk has retweeted someone posted a poll saying just who is right and you can click on Elon Musk or Donald Trump like this is just... That's democracy. Yeah that's also why democracy will never work. Well yes so we have a well a new story evolving over the course of this show I was going to ask our panelists what Elon Musk had described as a disgusting abomination,

but it sounds like he's describing quite a lot of other things as disgusting abominations now. I mean, it's essentially a new perfume wafting across the air of Washington, DC. Inevitabilite. LAUGHTER Par politiques, musky, yet flagrant. LAUGHTER I'm right here. In terms of breakups, this has all the ingredients to be one of the absolute all-time classics. So, where has this come... This has escalated wildly, and it's over the Bill?

Yes the big beautiful Bill. Yes. One big beautiful Bill. Yes who's married to the one big beautiful Hillary. If there's one thing that I love more than seeing a rich loser fail, it's seeing two rich losers fail. It is so wonderful watching an incel lose. I know that he does have 14 children but I don't believe that he's had sex 14 times. He just don't. He just looks like a mechanical furniture with skin stretched over it just with the eyes of a serial killer but the mouth of a pensioner still waiting for his soup. You know what I mean? I don't really know that I want to comment straight after this. But what I do find on

a brief sort of series that's fascinating about this is that Americans in Hollywood they have this habit of kind of taking either that Japanese, British, whatever movies and making bigger, sexier versions of those. And I feel like that's what happened, because in Britain, we had that with essentially Boris Johnson in Dominic Cummings, that we are watching exactly the same thing happen on a much grander scale. And I think Boris and Trump clearly have this thing, they inspire this thing in people, because person after person will go,

well, that guy in power has betrayed every single person who's worked for him. He will not betray me though, he'll be fine. And that's exactly what's happened again. Well, a related Musk question. What has come down by over one third and why? My trousers since taking OZempic. My IQ from being on this show. Is it Match of the Day viewers?

It's Tesla's, isn't it? Yeah, Tesla sales, yes. I think it's quite cute that it's now Tesla's becoming like a bit of a niche community. Do you know what I mean? You know, you see bus drivers and they sort of flash their lights at each other.

Apparently Tesla drivers just do a little sort of salute out there. Everyone thinks it's because like you know I don't want to drive a Tesla because I'm not a Nazi. No, we don't drive Teslas because there's no charging points in this bloody country. You can't charge them. Tesla's for people who looked at car door handles and went too easy. Well, some breaking news reaching us. Elon Musk is now on the loose. These are worrying times. I have been asked to share the official advice for what to do if you encounter an Elon Musk

in the wild after his escape from the White House. Do not attempt conversation. He cannot hear anyone. Sorry, he doesn't listen. Slight difference. Wait until his charge runs out, then take him to your local robot repair garage and see if they can rewire him before you switch him back on, or if all else fails, run in a zigzag and climb a tree.

Alternatively, you can just on an open palm put some ketamine very quietly towards him and lower your eyes as well. Don't make eye contact. Inform, educate, entertain. Ghost is in the air. At the end of that round the score is 7 points all. Our next round is a science round and to make it seem more intelligent like Only Connect, we're going to ask our panellists to choose a category that has absolutely no link to the question they will then be asked. In tribute to Robert Jenrick, the categories are symbols

of national decline. Felicity, you can go first. Would you like three-foot pothole, discarded chicken leg, graffiti bus stop or unidentified floating object in river? Let's go with chickens. Alright. Research funded by what industry is more likely to suggest that what is good for you? Oh, this is meat? Yep. There's research into meat funded by the meat industry to suggest that red meat is good for you.

Yep. I mean, shocking. It's big meat and they're sponsoring big meat. And as someone who looks like a vegetarian... I find this very... I'm not a vegetarian, by the way. I've never been a vegetarian. I would be if I didn't eat meat,

but they tell me that that's a deal breaker. I think people are really unfair when it comes to this kind of research. I think it's completely legitimate and I am a researcher myself actually. I fund my own research and I conducted some research into Pedro Pascal using my own money and my research came to a very interesting conclusion that there's a knot in my back that only he can get out. That's actually an epidemic because I've also got an itch that only he can scratch. I think you find funded biased positivity in almost every field and for instance, Andy, everyone is very nice to you and I'm actually the only person on this panel not funded by Andy Saltzman. And I've got to say, actually, backstage,

you're actually a real bastard. LAUGHTER And you won't hear that from Felicity. She's in the pockets of Big Andy. LAUGHTER With wine, recently, we've had different reports, some saying red wine is good for you, others saying that any more than one glass of red wine per year

is tantamount to skinny dipping in a shark tank And also that one hot dog per decade can make your knees and elbows switch places So I guess all these things have a bit of a tainted history You know in the days of smoking you get these reports funded by the tobacco industry saying Smoking 180 high tar gaspo lung busters a day reduces your chances of dying of old age. So let's have another question so the remaining categories you've got pothole, bus stop or unidentified object in river. What would you like Glenn?

I think an identified object in river. What do you think? Excellent. Okay following yet more research guys get out and live your lives It has been suggested that urban planning could be improved by tapping into what precious resource Oh Young people we should be grinding them up for energy This is the next logical step at this stage. Yes, I mean that's actually closer than would be ideal. It's kids' imagination. Yes, it is, yeah. But that shouldn't be used to plan a town.

The infrastructure would collapse and within weeks you'd go, where is the nearest water treatment facility? And you'd go, right, okay, it used to be where the rollercoaster shop is. If I asked my three-year-old to design a town, it would literally just be ice cream shop, ice cream shop, ice cream shop, playground, toy shop, vape shop, ice cream shop. My rule of thumb is if you drink your own bath water,

you don't get to plan cities. All right. Oh, well, what a way for me to find out. Right? It's because kids are imaginative. That's basically what they've said. But kids are imaginative because they don't know anything. They don't know... Like, I'm imaginative about loads of stuff,

and it's all stuff that I know I don't know about. In the sense that, like, I, for instance, I've never been on the dark web. I imagine it looks like C-fax. LAUGHTER I'm really certain about that. I've never been on the dark web. I imagine it looks like CFAQS. I'm really certain about that. Yeah, just on a serious note. I haven't been on the dark web, but I also don't know what CFAQS is. So it was a bit like the dark web, but for the Premier League scores. Okay.

So was CFAQS your the Premier League scores. Okay. So was CFax your equivalent of Minitel which we had in France? So this is one of those weird things of like obviously when you grow up somewhere you don't really realize what's normal and what's not and then I moved in people like what what on earth are you on about and yeah which I also had as a realization when it turns out that when you play Tribal Pursuit not every country in the world calls the little things Camembert's. We just called them Derry-Lee triangles. Yeah, so this little bit of research found that children remove limitations of reality and plausibility.

Now whether you personally want limitations of reality and plausibility removed from the design and safety of your buildings, roads, bridges and flyovers? Well that's up to you, but town planning has been held back for too long by things like basic practicality, stuff costing money, people having to live in towns. It's so much easier to design urban areas if you didn't have to sully them with humans. Town planners should be working in special hermetically sealed pods in a secret location, rubbing their hands as they gaze in wonder at their own genius manifested in a 3D hologram of a skyscraping futuristic utopian megacity giggling wait until I add the low traffic neighborhoods it's going to be awesome. Right well the scores are tied at eight points all

which means we now have a tiebreaker, which is predictions for what will happen between now and September. So we're not gonna know the winner of the show until September. Marie? Aliens, why not at this stage? Okay, aliens, Glenn?

I'm calling it now. 2023 is gonna be my year. I think. Elon Musk, Donald Trump are going to make a baby. Come on, mate. There are people eating listening to this. Felicity? Well, I'm going to Mallorca on Monday, so I don't care. Well, we will have the official winners of this show based on which of those...

I think, Marie, you've got the biggest chance with alien there that brings us to the end of this show just some breaking news reaching us a commuter train has just arrived 23 years late the train left Snutter Bridge Parkway in early 2002 and it's just pulled into London Peccadillo Street it contained 30 passengers who've reached retirement age during the journey, a couple who'd married and divorced twice, and an entirely new species thought to have derived from the train cat and a ham sandwich from the buffet trolley.

Passengers on the effects of train will be entitled to a 50% refund under the lost decade scheme. Anyway, thank you for listening. We'll be back in September. Until then, may the summer be with you. Goodbye. CHEERING AND APPLAUSE with Pete Strauss and it was a BBC Studios audio production for Radio 4.

Hello, Russell Kane here. I used to love British history, be proud of it. Henry VIII, 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 world destroyed. They have hundreds of thousands of cars from top-rated dealers and advanced search tools, deal ratings and price history. So you know a great deal when you see one.

That's cargurus.ca. Oh, oh hi! I'm Mel Geddroych and I'm going to be your host on... Well there's a wink, there's a wink, there's a wink So each week I'm going to be meeting with a different deceased celeb guest to discuss how they died, what they want for their funeral, and perhaps most importantly why I should be unlocking the pearly gates for them. You'll laugh, you probably won't cry, but bloody hell you'll be entertained. Listen and watch wherever you get your podcasts.