Friday Night Comedy from BBC Radio 4 - The News Quiz: Ep4. 'Demonstrable lies'

Episode Date: October 2, 2026

Who did Trump call a 'natural businessperson'? What does Ed Davey want to bring back? And why shouldn't we call young people snowflakes? It's all up for discussion on this week's News Quiz.The panel is Rachel Fairburn, Desiree Burch, Robin Morgan and Cindy Yu.Written by Andy Zaltzman.With additional material by Matt Hulme, Christina Riggs and Henry Whaley. Producer: Georgia Keating Executive Producer: James Robinson Production Coordinator: Giulia Lopes Mazzu Sound Editor: Marc WillcoxA BBC Studios Production for Radio 4.

This BBC podcast is supported by ads outside the UK. It's late 2007 and while attending a Christmas party, Facebook's Mark Zuckerberg meets a woman who would change the course of his company forever. She joined Facebook as chief of operations in 2008 and has been credited for making the company profitable. And herself enormously rich. On Good Bad Billionaire, we're exploring the life and fortune of billionaire tech leader Cheryl Sandberg. Listen on BBC.com, the BBC app or wherever you get your podcast. Hello, I am Andy Zaltzman. I'm currently undercover at a secret government laboratory where scientists are working on something to bring this divided nation together. They are cloning Nigella Lawson. After her critically acclaimed addition to the Great British Bake Off, the government is now trying to make sure there is a Nigella Lawson in every part of national life. One in every classroom. One on every roundabout. One operating VAR in every Premier League match. Let's see how it's going. Oh, they've escaped.

I didn't realize they'd already hatched. We'd better get the show started before the entire country has been baked. Welcome to the news quiz. Let's meet our teams. It's 1990s Film Awareness Week this week, and in tribute to what Piers Morgan said should happen to Earl Spencer's book, and what he said was in it, we have Team Pulp against Team Fiction. And Team Pulp, we have Robin Morgan and Times columnist Cindy Yu.

And on Team Fiction, we have Desiree Birch and Rachel. Fairburn. And our first question to go to Desiree and Rachel. I don't think I'm breaking confidence when I say that you are respectively an American and a northerner. So the question is which American met which northerner this week? I mean

I just met Rachel about 30 minutes ago, so glad it made the papers. But yeah, no, this is Andy Burnham, went to go meet with my disaster, Donald Trump. And I did fairly well, apparently. I'd weird that everyone's like, oh yeah, he's like, he did really, really well. I mean, like, I guess he survived

Donald Trump shooting at his feet and just dancing around the entire time. Also, Trump loves a winner. That's how he started. He's like, oh, he won in a big landslide. Remember him at the World Cup, like the oldest make a wish kid on plan? Like, he loves being around winners. Anytime you guys send Burnham over, make sure he's won an arm wrestling contest, like strictly, whatever it is. I just thought it was awkward. Did anyone else think that? To me it felt like two blokes who the only thing they had in common

was the fact that their wives were best friends. And they keep having to speak to each other under duress. And one night they decided after three pints they were going to do a podcast. And that was the result of the conversation. And Andy Burnham, I was messing with his hands quite a lot. I mean, I don't blame him because I wouldn't want to be there either.

And then it annoyed me that someone had to ask Andy Burnham about Manchester. Like, give the man a break. You know what I mean? He's moved on from that. He's now the prime minister. I mean, Andy Burnham does talk about Manchester all the times, I feel like if he stops talking about it, we'll stop talking about it. But he did make sure to wedge Makerfield in there that place

if he was like MPF for like 15 hours or something. He was like, oh yeah, and Makerfield, it's great, Makerfield. It must be so weird for him. Like, he's been a whirlwind. he's been Prime Minister for what, so like 68 days, I think, in like a few months ago he was on that stage in Makerfield, like stood next to the reform candidate Robert Kenyon, who's got like a history of sexist, misogynistic things.

And so much has changed now, because he stood next to Donald Drone. It's a whirlwind, isn't it? Cindy, what did you make of Furnham's first sort of encounter with... I mean, it's very easy to get on with Donald Trump because you disagree with everything he'd say. And that's the way people will have done it throughout, you know, all of these leaders.

Although I did read recently that Mark Ritter, the then Prime Minister of the Netherlands, I actually did handshaking practice the night before he met Donald Trump because they knew that Donald Trump was going to try to pull this man towards him in a kind of rugby tackle. And they did handshaking practice

where Rutter held his own with his advisors and the next day it was an even match. Apparently Trump looked at Rutter and was like, yeah, that's fine. I think the official advice, if you meet Trump, I can't remember if you're supposed to run in a zigzag and then climb a tree. Cindy and Robin,

Trump described Andy Burnham as a natural what? Blonde? We don't know what was said behind closed doors, so let's, that's possible. He described him as a natural business person, which really sort of made me think

Trump doesn't know how to give compliments at all, does he? It's sort of, you know, like I've been with my wife for eight years, and the first couple of anniversary, cards were delightful, really, really nice, romantic. Eight years in, I'm running out of things to say, to be completely honest. Did I call her a natural business person this year?

Yes, I did. She welled up. She loved it. She absolutely loved it. But I feel like, Burnham smiled. He kind of smirked when Trump called him there because he's a natural business person. Burnham was like, I've been in politics since I left Cambridge University. I have no real life experience.

Maybe he thought, like, I could have been a business person. I could be at the Lancashire Business Awards now. I would rather be there than here. He actually has had some private sector experience. For three years, he worked at a trade magazine called Tank Container World. Wow. So there you go. And Tank Container Wild is very excited about Burn and becoming Prime Minister.

I've had a look at their archives recently. This year they've done numerous articles on Andy Bunn. Former journalist reporter at this parish, now is Prime Minister. That's so adorable. Any fans of Tank Container World Inn? Trump has, well, it's had a busy social week, as well as meeting Andy Burnham. He's also been meeting with President Cricket Team of China. Sorry, President 11.

I must stop writing everyone's name in capital letters. I mean, that's quite a high-stakes meeting, Cindy, isn't it? Well, what's sort of on the line with this? Yeah, it is quite high-stakes, you know, it's just the two most powerful countries in the world, both nuclear powers, both AI superpowers, so it's obviously very important that they get along. think we've already had some deliverables. You know, Trump got to show off his new helipad.

Great. She invited 100,000 American young people to China over the next five years. Excellent. And also, two new pandas will be going to Atlanta Zoo. So that's what everyone wants to see, really. I mean, forget about AI and nuclear weapons and everything else. I felt really sorry for Andy Bunnam, because he was there at the middle of the week, and then 24 hours later, Xi Jinping turned up. And Xi Jinping had a 100-foot red carpet. Trump met him at the airport. like a long-distance boyfriend's words. You didn't tell me you were coming, Donald, stop it. My Xi Jinping impression is very good.

And you didn't get any of that. You'd feel a bit annoyed. You'd feel a bit hurt by it. I mean, in terms of that sort of China-American relationship... I mean, China must have spent most of this millennium just giggling quietly to itself about how easy it's proving to become the world's number one super... What do you think Xi says to Trump?

Does he just say you do you? The Chinese do have a nickname for Trump. They call him Tran Jian Guo. Now, Tran is like the transliteration of Trump, so that's his surname. Jien Guo means to build the nation. And the joke is that it's actually quite a patriotic communist name because there are actually lots of people in China called Build the Nation. But they've given him this name because he's actually building China.

He's making China. Is he building China by tearing America down? Because he's doing a lot of home renovations as well. He's undercover Asian. I guess that's quite, it works quite well that joke, because I don't think he'd pick up on that. Yes, Donald Trump, taking some time out from his hectic schedule of suppressing media dissent in 1930s despot cosplay, met the new British Prime Minister Andy Burnham, face to sort of face. The two met privately, as well as in front of the press.

We're not entirely sure what was said in the private meeting, but our computer simulation here suggests that Trump demanded 110% ownership of Scotland, the right to turn Buckingham, palace into a strip club and casino, and a free-go in King Charles' special golden cart. My simulation suggests may also have said to Andy Burnham, Hey, Bernard, if you ever find yourself needing to pay hush money to a pawn star, just give me a shout. Players going to play, special relationship, hands in. Cindy and Robin, in his speech at the UN,

Andy Burnham said that he will set up a new what for the UK. And he likes things northern, doesn't he? Is it a northern centre for northern things? Well, no one's told me yet. Expect a cool. It was a national centre for information defence, wasn't it? It was this big sort of anti-Russia thing. It was a big speech at the UN.

He said Russia had been peddling lies. I mean, his whole speech was basically slamming Russia. And in the UN, in the General Assembly, there was a representative from Russia in the room who just sat there, just listening to it, just going, Yeah, we did do that. That does like sound like all we would do. That is classic us.

The speech wasn't great. I don't think he's a natural speaker. I think it was the best speech I've seen from an English person reading from an auto queue in America since Edgheron's one. It's actually quite embarrassing. If you see the photo of him from behind Andy Burnham and look at the audience, it was like three quarters empty.

It was really embarrassing, actually. Yeah, so it wasn't just Trump not rolling out of red carpet. I don't actually just, don't think people know who Andy Burnham is. They can't keep up with us right now. Joking some of them thought that, like, Kirstama looks a bit different. He's putting an accent on. That's weird.

Yes, during his speech to the UN, Andy Burnham, race concerns over disinformation spread by states like Russia online. He's set out his aim to deal with the poisonous tide, as he described it. Trump made his speech to the UN as well, disappointingly short on messages of sense and or sensibility,

not really tapping into the Jane Austen Zeitgeist. the president repeated his threat to annihilate Iran and drive them to hell, which suggests he knows the directions. And he can afford gas money. Well, it has been a busy week for Trump. According to Trump, out of the top 59 cities in the world, Washington, D.C. is the only one without what?

Self-awareness. Planning permission for major renovations. Listed building. But no, he means a triumphal art. Yes. one of his latest real estate tycoon projects, because that's what the presidency is to him now, having completed the reflecting pool and the ballroom

and the helipad that we mentioned before. Now he's going to make an arch out of granite, I think, three golden statues on top, which was already quite controversial, but in the last couple of weeks or so, he said, oh, it's always going to be a military installation. So we're going to put drones in there, we're going to put guns in there.

It's going to be great. Hey, world, here's where all of our guns and ammo are. He's in a lot of, um, hot water over this, isn't he? Because it's going to block the view of the Lincoln Memorial, which of course, you know, memorialising Lincoln who led the US through the Civil War, but this arch will commemorate Trump

who will lead them through the next one. So that's fine. And it's also going to impact Arlington Cemetery as well, where US veterans are buried and nothing ever bad has happened from building on a burial site. So it's going to be fine. Yeah, so it's going to be multi-functional, I guess.

Maybe we can learn from that. What UK buildings would you like to see, purpose to become multifunction. Water slide down the shard. Come on. The ultimate day out with the family. I don't know if you know this, but as the Northern correspondent

for everything, you might not know this, but you know Number 10 North, do you know it's just the registry office? It's a building called Heron House, but it is just the regimen. My mom and dad got married at number 10 North.

There's a slug and lettuce underneath. There's a chain pub underneath number 10 north. I don't think enough people are shocked at this. You know what, houses of Parliament turned into a massive pub might be quite fun, and they wouldn't have to change a thing about it. Donald Trump also announced this week that what will no longer be artificial. Is it his hairline?

Melania's love for him. This is artificial intelligence, which he's taken it upon himself to rename a... super intelligence because it's not fake, he says, not like fake news, it is just greater than human intelligence so he wants it to be the best in the world.

Yeah, so he's calling it SI, but I don't think anyone is really going to follow him on that because actually SI means something specific in the artificial intelligence world, so it's actually quite really, really unhelpful. Did he ask his followers on social media for name suggestions for this? And that's what they voted for.

So apparently he gave options on his social media. He said it could be superior intelligence, extreme intelligence, and supreme intelligence. And none of those won, what won was, white supremacy, intelligence. They could have gone for Make America Intelligent again, but they didn't do that. I think it's the kind of thing you couldn't really put to a public vote in this country because then AI would end up being called Intelligence McIntelligence. But he's really pro-AI.

I mean, all the labs in America are saying, please, like, regulators. We're actually quite scared of this thing that we're creating. And Trump just said, we're going to encourage it, not rein it in, which couldn't be more ominous. I mean, literally sounds like the last thing that people said in Jurassic Park before the dinosaurs are killing people. But he's super into it because that's where he's invested all the money that he is siphoned out of America into AI. And that's the only way he thinks that America is going to make all the money he's wasted back is if AI really takes off. So like it's really just a, you know, he's like, got to pay off some gambling debts. And AI is

the only way that's going to he's going to get out of them. Well, they had, is it Sam Altman, the Open AI CEO? He was at the UN General Assembly doing a little speech when the news broke that his company had a rogue agent, was it Australian Medicare? Yeah, yeah. They sort of hacking into this Australian Medicare system. I think we needed something like this to happen to show that it, you know, it actually can get into government stuff.

I just think it's a shame that it's Australia because you can't really take it seriously. It's like, oh no, what Obama. It's thought us again. I think the worst thing would be to hack into our medical records because I think they'd finally realize how many units of alcohol we actually drink. There are concerns that this hack in Australia could result in confidential details being accessed by AI,

including patients' official test results, which in Australia, of course, are categorised as either no worries or worries. At the end of that round, it's six points all. It's late 2007, and while attending a Christmas party, Facebook's Mark Zuckerberg meets a woman who would change the course of his company forever. She joined Facebook as chief of operations in 2008 and has been credited for making the company profitable. And herself enormously rich.

On Good Bad Billionaire, we're exploring the life and fortune of billionaire tech leader Cheryl Sandberg. Listen on BBC.com, the BBC app, or wherever you get your podcasts. Right. For our next round, we have a Books round. Now, demonstrable lies, something of which who are. accused whom this week? Pierce Morgan, my father, is... He's not litigious, is he's fine?

He's claimed that this book that Earl Spencer has written is full of lies, because apparently it says that Pierce Morgan was the editor of the mirror in 1993 when he was actually of the son. I think that's good on, peers, because not many people

would make a book about the death of a role about him, but he's managed to do that. He wants an apology also because the book is called Swan Song and he thought that title was referring to him. But also, like, this has been such good press for the book. Because everyone's been talking about it for, like, I wasn't going to buy a copy of this,

but now it's annoyed Pierce Morgan. I've bought 16 million copies. And if you all look under your seats, Radio Pierce's, you get a Swan Song! You get a Swan Song! I actually downloaded the audiobook on the day it came out because I'll love a bit of gossip. It doesn't involve me. and I'll be honest, there's a bit in it where he goes on a bit too long about his pet budger

and I'm like, mate, get to the tea, come on. I guess part of this is like it is a memoir, right? This is about how he remembers it. But also, books have editors and stuff. Didn't somebody do any fact checking on the, like, facts that he put in there at all? I mean, they really don't have that much checking, to be honest. Okay. This is the concerning thing.

This is what the Centre for Defence of Information should be looking into. to, but the publishing world is really understaffed at the moment. There's basically no fact-checking. Sorry to say, guys. I haven't read it, but I did go on the Amazon reviews on it, because I thought that would be more entertaining. And there's lots of, it's quite mixed. There was one person that gave it one star, said, arrive today, but now I've heard what it's about. Disgraceful, not going to read it. And then one person, genuinely is true. You can look them up. One person gave it five stars describing it as, and I quote, lovely big book, lovely photos and big

words. Say what you want about it, but lovely big book. Well, the book has been described by Earl Spencer's publisher as being, quotes, like a magic immortal dog. But I didn't use that term, Unput Downable. I'm here all week. I was described by Pierce Morgan as being not just palpably untrue, but pulpably untrue. Now, obviously, this country has a proud history of people distorting our proud history, particularly when it comes to the royal family. Shakespeare, for example,

Not the most accurate on, for example, Richard the third, skipped out the bit where he played hide-and-seek in the car park. Yeah. The Bayer tapestry as well, which doesn't show the Norman Archer firing that fateful arrow into H-R-H King Harold's eye from a clearly off-side position. So far on national heritage. So the score is now 10 to team pulp, 8 to team fiction.

Now, this round celebrates the fact that we are getting into the heart of party conference season. That is the least in third. enthusiastic cheer. Yes, it is the least wonderful time of the year. The annual festival of barking into your own bubbles. And my question is, and this can go to Desiree and Rachel. At his party's conference in Brighton, Lib Dem's leader Ed Davy, promised to do what, when?

Remind us every day who he is, because none of us ever remember that he exists. Every time I hear Ed David, I'm like, oh, that guy, they completely pass me by now, the Liberal Democrats. Ed Davy, I wouldn't know him if I fell over him. You know, he's not even, is he real? I don't know. He is saying something about, like, if we undo Brexit, we'll have all the money we need for stuff.

Like, he's going to give us all money back or something. Yeah, so what he said was he's going to cut taxes in around eight years' time. If the Lib Dems win. Yes. So there's quite a few. Things attached, yeah. If we still have a planet and, like, societies by then. You'll let some of that.

I thought he said that he was going to fight tight. and fury anywhere, any place. I mean, the most unbelievable part about that is that the Lib Dems could renegotiate reentry into the EU and I think the timelines are such that they'd have to do it within 12 months. But that means that Ed David would have to get off a jet ski. There was an interview on the BBC website with the youngest Lib Dem MP who's 25 years old

and I really, really liked him because he was asked to describe himself in three words and he said, I like to have a bit of fun, serious and get some stuff done and you've got to have attention to detail. 22 words. So how can we expect them to balance the books if their word count inflation is 633%.

That's my question. Davy said there's no ceiling on the Liberal Democrats' ambitions, but do you think there should be? Just being realistic. And also the last time they accidentally got into power, it was disastrous for them. It was disastrous. But of course, I think most Brits,

if you were sympathetic to a Lib Dem, you would think that that was a massive mistake for them, and they would never do that again, because they got so burnt by the Conservative Party, why they've kind of languished in the polls since then, despite our 71 MPs, that I think even Ed Davy and his antics can't get them back to the front line.

They had the same policy announcement as reform did a couple of weeks ago, they're, like, raising the income tax threshold, and Ed Davy was trying to really sort of like separate out, like, we're not like them, we're not like them. But Ed Davy also wants to stop the boats, but that's because it stops him paddleboarding. We've got the Labour conference coming up in Liverpool this coming weekend

and Andy Burnham did not rule out what being in the next Labour manifesto, anyone? Economic growth. Getting the Smiths back together. That'll be one morning. All of the manifestos can be scratch and sniff, I heard. People take more notice of it. If that was the case. He didn't rule out a referendum on reversing Brexit.

He didn't rule it in. He didn't rule it out. It's one of those things that nothing happened and it became a news headline because it's the 2020s. Tony Blair also said that Burnham should be preparing for talks to rejoin the EU. Is this, I mean, politically, Cindy,

do you think this is likely to become more of an issue over the next few years? Yeah, I think so, because I think Andy Burnham could have ruled it out a bit more. And what he said was, I would like to see us rejoin at some point in my lifetime. So obviously his lifetime

is, you know, he's got at least, at least a couple more decades. You know what, why doesn't Tony Blair mind his own beeswax? He's always interfering, isn't it?

I would like a national centre for former Prime Minister. You know, like in Paddington, like the Home for Retired Bears, all the old PMs can just piss off there and just shut up. Nobody cares, Tony. He's got his own institute.

Yeah, it's you. It's just you at your desk. You're embarrassing, Tony. We're just going to get more and more of these days because prime ministers are getting younger and younger. and they're lasting a shorter and shorter amount of time every time. Yeah.

So that cue at the cenotaph is just going to be a mile long at some point. But it's like, I mean, I get, like, it is kind of the internship so that you can get really high-paid speaking gigs. You just have to do, like, some time in number 10, but then you get that out of the way, and you can make some real money. I've been doing a podcast for 19 years now, and I started so long ago in podcasting that you didn't have to be a prime minister before you did one.

Well, yes, there's to round up the conference season as it stands at the Liberal Democrat Conference in Brighton. Ed Davy, placed to raise the base income tax threshold to £15,000 a year if the Liberal Democrats win the next general election, which is quite a big if, I think, possibly the biggest if since Rudyard Kipling started projecting the title of his poems up onto the night skies above Gotham City. Davy drew a link between 1930s fascism and recent violence in Dover and Portsmouth citing, quote, thugs in black shirts and balaclavas. Black shirts and balaclavas don't give off the most traditionally British-y vibe. I mean,

let's try and be charitable. Maybe there's a positive explanation for this. Maybe the black shirts are harking back to old-fashioned football referees. Arbiters of unimpeachable British fairness and the balaclavas tributes to our polar explorer, such as Captain Scott, the heroic silver medalist in the 1911, 12 Antarctica Grand Prix.

Right, the scores are now level, which means we go into our tie break around and the subject is young people. Complete the headline. According to a newly published review, young people are not old. A lot of funding went into that review.

It's not the review that I've got access to. They're not writing Christmas cards anymore. This is something my nan used to say. She used to keep all her Christmas cards, not throw them away year on year, because when she was in a care home it made her feel like she had more Christmas cards than any of the other residents.

I was the cleverest thing in the world. May she rest in peace. I think young people are not equipped with enough shovels to clean up the mess that we are leaving them. Well, that's actually quite close to the correct. Young people are not specifically...

The answer is snowflakes. Snowflakes, correct? Yeah, so this is the government review that West Treating started back when he was health secretary, and now his defense secretary, about mental health in the youth between 16 and 24-year-olds, and the guy who heads it up says that actually

these mental health issues are real. They're not just making it up for attention. So we should feel very sorry for them, to your point, Desireadette, that actually they're dealing with a lot of stuff right now. I feel like they always kind of go off on young people like, oh, you're no snowflakes. And it's like, I mean, like you couldn't pay me enough money

to be young right now. Do you know what I mean? It feels that bad in terms of what they have to go through online and what their prospects are. I mean, have you seen that video of that, like, four-year-old kid who's like crying, He's like, what's the point of studying math or being good at it? I'm just going to grow up and be a wage slave.

I was like, how does this kid know wage slave already? Like, I mean, they just know that they're screwed from young. He'd read the Roger Hargre's book, Mr. Free Markets. So what's the review? What's the guy called? Phonagie, I think, his name. Professor Peter Fonagy, and he sounds young. And he says apparently it's much harder to be young now.

Compared to when? That's what I want to know. Good question. Like, compared to a medieval peasant, I think they've got it pretty good. Yes, the report found a combination of factors making it, quotes, harder to be young today. It was a fair point.

Our younger generation have been generously bequeath. The jobs market, the ones to replace them with robots and environment, they didn't have a chance to enjoy polluting, a Brexit they didn't have a say-in, houses they can barely afford to look at, let alone think about buying whilst eating an avocado. An internet that crushes their spirits even quicker than organised religion or boarding school

ever used to be able to do, and that is a high bar, a world without stability, without responsible global leadership, without live test cricket on terrestrial television. We should be amazed if any of them don't spend at least 50% of their time gazing vacantly into space, muttering, we chose a bad time to be born, didn't we? So I agree they're not snowflakes. They're members of a generation growing up in a not especially brave new world,

each of them facing a unique challenge, similar, of course, but with no two exactly the same, a bit like snowflakes. Also like snowflakes, their long-term prospects aren't great in the current global climate. And our final scores, well, our winners are Cindy and Robin with 14. Desrey and Rachel have 10.

Don't forget later on Radio 4, there's a special edition of the moral maze dealing with a tricky issue of whether it is right or wrong to slash at an inflatable dingy with a knife. We listen to that if you If you're not sure, it's a very short, very simple episode. Until next week, goodbye.

Taking part in the news quiz were Desiree Birch, Rachel Fairburn, Cindy Yu and Robin Morgan. In the chair was me, Andy Zaltman, and additional material was written by Matt Hume, Christina Riggs and Henry Waley. The producer was Georgia Keating, and it was a BBC Studios production for Radio 4. Could you talk about being invisible,

or double denim? Who knows what's next on the new series of just a minute? belting out a rendition of Godabat. Whatever the topic, our panel has just a minute to speak without hesitation, deviation or repetition. Join Zoe Lyons, Desiree Birch, Paul Merton, and many more for the new series of just a minute with me, Super Kids. It's funny because it's true.

Listen on Radio 4, and the full box set is available now on BBC Sounds. It's late 2007 and while attending a Christmas party, Facebook's Mark Zuckerberg meets a woman who would change the course of his company forever. She joined Facebook as chief of operations in 2008 and has been credited for making the company profitable. And herself enormously rich. On Good Bad Billionaire, we're exploring the life and fortune of billionaire tech leader Cheryl Sandberg. Listen on BBC.com, the BBC app or wherever you get your podcasts.