Friday Night Comedy from BBC Radio 4 - The News Quiz: Ep6. Corruption Leagues and Leaked WhatsApps

Episode Date: February 21, 2025

Topical panel quiz show, taking its questions from the week's news stories.

BBC Sounds music radio podcasts. Hello, before we begin this week's news quiz, we would like to offer all of you, our loyal Radio 4 listeners, the chance to be the first people to invest in Zoltzcoin, the new and 149% trustworthy cryptocurrency based on me, Andy Zoltzman. Stop, stop, stop. I've been hacked. That is not my real script. That is not the real Andy Zoltzman. Stop, stop, stop, I've been hacked. That is not my real script. That is not the real Andy Zoltzman.

Yes it is. I love cricket. Nice try, nice try. Let's see who it really is under this obvious mask. Nick Robinson, I might have known. Oh, hang on, hang on, there's another one. Elon Musk, I might have, oh. Hang on, there's another one. Elon Musk, I might have... Oh, hang on, there's another one.

18th-century free-market economist Adam Smith, I might have known. Show me a hand, just as I thought. Take him away, we've got a show to do. Freedom! LAUGHTER Welcome to the News Quiz. CHEERING AND APPLAUSE Hello, welcome to the News Quiz. CHEERING AND APPLAUSE

Hello, welcome to the News Quiz, and you join us at an exciting time. News just reached us that American President Donald Trump has literally, as we both record and broadcast, claimed that he will negotiate a peace deal between Liverpool and Everton. Possibly by as soon as the 2027-28 season. Bit unrealistic, but let's give him some time. Our teams this week to celebrate the historic breakthrough phone call between Trump and Vladimir Putin, we have team Peace in our Time versus team Peas in a Pod. On team Time we have Alice Fraser and Danny Finkelstein. And on team Pod, Rialina and Lucy Porter.

And on team Pog, Rialina and Lucy Porter. CHEERING AND APPLAUSE And we'll start. Danny and Alice, new Home Office guidance is set to deny UK citizenship to any refugees who have done what? Well, it seems to be come here on a small boat. And I've always been a bit surprised that it's the size of the boat that mattered. Yes, well, he specifically made a dangerous journey. I blame hygiene

and the footwear industry Andy, it's like we as a nation have completely lost the ability to imagine what it might be like to be in someone else's shoes. What would they say coming by a dangerous journey? Have you seen the potholes on our road? And this is the thing, it's nothing against the people themselves, it's just that there's too many people in the UK. That's what people are generally feeling. So instead of denying everyone citizenship, what if we just redistribute the existing citizenships? Because I guarantee we want some of those boat people

more than we want the people we've currently got. You know what I mean? For example, I love John Cleese and what he's done, but he's not happy with Britain anymore and he's gone off to the Caribbean. So why don't we give his passport to just like the tallest refugee? My grandfather was a refugee, my father immigrated to Britain. When I think

about this, I think people who made a dangerous journey, are these people not showing the exact range of skills that we need in a competitive global economy? They're showing determination, they're showing initiative, they're showing physical resilience, they're showing the ability to think outside and often inside a box. They're showing a frankly maverick aversion to paperwork. I mean these are exactly what we need. DJ Dogwalker and the Homeopaths are topping the charts this week with their smash hit You Say You Need Me brackets So Let Me In. But what chart are they topping? Anyone? this week with their smash hit you say you need me brackets so let me in but

what chart are they topping anyone the skilled worker visas yes somebody did academic dug into it and said that on the list of medium skilled workers people like Pilates instructors DJs and canine beauticians and I don't know if this is a scandal just a party I really want to be on the guest list for. You know, live bodies banging tunes and cockapoos wearing red hot lipstick. I was looking down this government list of things that were skilled and things that were not skilled and it was really quite worrying. It was like CEOs, yes. Gym instructors, yes. MPs, no. Probation officers, yes. Quantity surveyors, yes. Aircraft technician, no.

And then design consultants, yes. Pipe fitters, yes. Referees, no. My favourite one was nuns. I mean that is a blow to the British nun industry. I mean my mum was a nun, her mum was a nun. That shows how standards have fallen, I guess. I don't get why homeopathy is on the list. I didn't quite understand that. Because the less you know, the more powerful you are as a homeopathy. Because if you don't know, homeopathy is based on the principle that you can put one drop of something medicinal in a glass of water

and then the water retains the memory of that medicine and then you can drink that water and it's going to heal you. I don't know about you but I don't want my water to have a memory. I do not want my glass of tap water suddenly remembering a hot tub it was once in. Imagine if this are all the things I could tell you. I did like, what were the other ones? Auctioneers, fair enough. Mystery shoppers, who was on the list. How do we know? B-farmers, piano tuners.

I'm just giving these to my kids as a list of potential, because none of these jobs are going to exist because of AI anyway, apart from nuns. Let's move on to another question. What's sapping the Labour leadership this week. Well apparently they've discovered another WhatsApp group where people say things that they shouldn't be saying. I know that you're Labour and you don't want to be mistaken for the Tories but you can

learn something from Boris Johnson. He knew to erase his phone. Like come on. I love the fact that the WhatsAppapp group was called trigger me timbers Which I actually quite enjoyed but it's sort of what you're saying You're like pirates because pirates are notoriously bad at texting because the hooks Break a lot of screens that way my favorite thing was the description in it The only MP said he'd gone canvassing and the woman at the door said you you're all a waste of space, you do nothing round here, my street is a shithole. And he replied, it is a shithole

and you effing live in it. Then when asked to repeat himself, he told her, you heard, you live in a shithole love. And gave her a V sign. And I wondered whether he said, vote Labour. And then put her down as a possible. My brother did go round canvassing for me once and somebody on the doorstep goes, you guys, you only ever come round here in election time? And my brother was genuinely puzzled. And he goes, well, why would I come here at any other time? I don't know.

I feel this is sort of a sad decline in standards for the British government. You used to have to lose an entire colony to even get a slap on the wrist. I agree. I think there's a woeful lack of standards. I think members of the Labour Party saying unpleasant things about their constituents behind their back is a betrayal of everything Labour stands for because in the olden days Gordon Brown or John Prescott would have said it to your face. You know. We're kind of reacting to it, you know, the Tories are going, yeah, get rid of them, you know, where are the standards and the rest of it.

I think it's a bit harsh to suspend Gwyn for wishing a pensioner dead. I thought that was literally Labour's winter fuel allowance policy. I think I'm just jealous because I have really dull WhatsApps. Like you could release them all and there would be some sort of harsh words about the conditions of the badminton net at Harrow Leisure Centre. When Edward Snowden went off and he was saying that the American security services were reading all our emails, my thought was at least someone's reading mine. Maybe they could tell my children what I'm trying to say to them.

But you should never assume anything is private these days. I recently found out that what I thought were private chats I had with four different friends each week have been broadcast weekly by the BBC. There you go. Can't trust anyone these days. It's been another tricky week for Labour, more avoidable entries onto the burgeoning Labour blooper reel. And to make it worse, Chancellor of State Secretary Rachel Reeves is facing allegations that she has exaggerated what?

Herself. Correct, yes. Her CV, I think she said she was in control of the economy. I mean she's got a very dull LinkedIn profile. And that is by the standard of LinkedIn. That's like being the drunkest person in a Wetherspoons. Yes she's facing allegations that she's embellished her CV. Suspicions were raised when she claimed to have hosted six series of the panel show Shooting Stars

alongside Bob Morton. Obviously it's a key part of the modern workplace is being able to bullshit on your CV. So I'm going to challenge our panelists. Give me an embellishment from their CVs and a point will go to the one that impresses me most. Lucy? I won the Croydon Under 13's Irish dancing competition in 1981. Which the truth of that is I came third.

And yep. That's a career in politics. Where's Maureen Flanagan now? Rhea? Well I've been telling everybody for years that I have a PhD in herpes viruses and because I'm Asian and you're really lefty you're too scared to question it. Alice? lefty you're too scared to question it. I've been telling people my entire professional career that I'm mildly amusing and they keep hiring me. So I was the substitute for the under 15B football team for one cancelled match and

on my CV I won't tell them that the match was cancelled. Yes I mean it all adds up to another awkward week for Labour. Starts with Labour, well now what are we, eight months in? Not so much hit the ground running as hit the ground stumbling ruptured a cruciate ligament after slipping on a banana skin they dropped on the ground in front of themselves and then somehow missed the ground anyway. Kemi Badenoch's conservatives meanwhile are capturing hearts and minds as effectively as whoever graffitied my local bus stop captured the intricate delicacies of the male anatomy.

So, all in all, fairly unimpressive political situation. Right, at the end of that round, the scores are five to Dani and Alice, and four to Ria and Lucy. Right, the Times. Newspaper, Dani Reitz-Wololf, conducted a survey of Generation Z, who are the generation who are named after me. But anyway, it's been an in-depth survey of the attitudes of Gen Z. They've interviewed people aged 18 to 27, and it's a more interesting snapshot of the young people of this country.

So for this round, our panelists have to tell me which is higher or lower out of a result from the Time Survey of Generations Ed and the result of another survey. So firstly to Dani and Alice, which is higher, the percentage of Gen Z who would unconditionally fight in a war for the UK or the percentage of people in the West Midlands who play golf every month? I reckon it's the percentage of people who play golf in the West Midlands who play golf every month. I reckon it's the percentage of people who play golf in the West Midlands, right, because it's 11% of Gen Z who would fight for Britain. I mean, war is horrible. Yes, yeah. I kind of feel like, I think when I was their age I would have said I'd rather not. That's

because they think that it's all guns and hand-to-hand combat, because that's what it was when they did the last survey and the survey before that. But actually nowadays it's more like piloting drones, like playing computer games. So what most gamers don't realize is for the last three years, they've been playing Call of Duty, but they've actually been fighting Russians in Ukraine. I've tried to emphasize to my kids the horrors of war by showing them ain't half hot mum You can't unsee that can you Yeah, I mean it was 11% actually that's higher than the percentage of play golf weekly in the West Midlands, which is 10.2%

I'd fight but only if I agreed with the reasons 37% I mean that seems about right to me. 37% of people fight outside pubs. Rhea and Lucy, which is higher. The percentage of Gen Z who think the UK is stuck in the past or the percentage of people who would not want to use a jetpack if it were commercially available and affordable. Wow. I'm team Jetpack, baby. You think that's higher? You think more people wouldn't want to use a Jetpack?

No, I think that more Gen Zs think we're stuck in the past. So I think that's higher than those that wouldn't. Come on, you'd give a Jetpack a go once. Yes, sorry, I answered the question. Although, I'm saying that just as I'm thinking, I refuse to use those motorized scooters. I think with the jet pack, I'm just thinking about my lower back now. With the jet pack?

Oh, imagine it'd be like a ruptured. No, no, yeah, but it's on the upper back, but as soon as you're in the air, the lower half of your body is weightless and that's gonna take a lot of pressure off your lower back. Oh, man. Well, the correct answer is the percentage of Gen Z who think the UK

is stuck in the past is higher, 50%, 46% of people would not want to use a jet pack. Who are these idiots? Who commissioned the jet pack poll? Somebody must have actually gone out and said I know what I'd really like to know is what proportion of people would or wouldn't use the jetpack? Well the poll is on the YouGov website and it says it surveyed 4,115 adults this month. They didn't. They never did. Would that count as a dangerous journey into Britain just watching? journey into Britain just like that. Laughter Applause

Okay, which is higher? The percentage of Gen Z who think Britain is a racist country or the percentage of people who think it is okay when people refer to their pets as their babies or fur babies

and refer to themselves as their pets mum or dad. Who can imagine that? I mean I think my cats do regard me in the same way as my children do with a sort of bemused disdain. But I don't consider them my children. I think that's... The cats or the children? Well it's 48% think Britain is a racist country but 57% think it's okay for people to refer to their pets as babies. If you're looking for signs of

irretrievable national decline that is barking at us in the face. And finally which is higher the percentage of Gen Z who are proud to be British or the percentage of people who think it is okay to pee in either the sea or a swimming pool? Oh, whoa, whoa, whoa. Those are two very, very different scenarios. Yeah. Because the ocean is the ocean. Yes, I would only piss in a swimming pool. It's a bit depressing, this, because my basic theory is that Britain's a really nice place.

I mean my whole way I live my life is like my mom was in Belsen and my dad was in Siberia and Pinna is nicer. I think we can all get behind that. But 41% are proud to be British which is well down on the same poll done 20 years ago. Only 5% of people think it's okay to either pee in the sea or a swimming pool. The thing is we don't need to pee in the sea because there's so much sewage in it anyway. Akemi Badenock wrote in The Times a response to the survey's findings. She wrote, we need to instil a sense of pride and belonging in our youth. How should we go about doing that? Who's got some...

National service. How should we go about doing that? Who's got some... National service. National service, but we're constantly putting on the 2012 Olympic opening ceremony. Oh, Permanent Olympics. I like it. I did sort of think it was quite a brave thing to say because you wouldn't say, I tell you how we should start this campaign. Let's ask the Conservative Party how to instil the sense of belonging in young people. I don't think that'll... I mean, I think that there's fundamentally, again defend Gen Z Gen Z because I think there is fundamentally nothing more British than not being proud of being British

It's that you know like Americans. Yeah, they're proud of being American and they swear allegiance to the flag and clutch their hearts We tut That's what we do if one of my friends said to me, I'm so proud of being British, I would think they were having a breakdown or a stroke. It's not our way. We love things about Britain, like Stormzy and Shakespeare and Hobnob. It's like a hamper, I think. In a hamper, it's sort of a random collection of things but the hamper kind of gives them coherence and Britain's like a hamper with just random storms the unit with storms storms you chutney Shakespeare yes we do do good chutney interesting if you put storms he chutney Shakespeare

into the what3words map app Directly to Buckingham Palace It was an interesting survey how you interpret it is a sort of a Rorschach test of how you see the younger generation on Some readings they come across as resilient tolerant understanding and flexible But not everyone has interpreted that way others have said they're feckless lazy and, and betrayers of their nation, but such is the world we live in. And parents have been despairing of their children's generation pretty much since the first amoebic microorganism reproduced in the oceans billions of years ago and said,

you'll never amount to much, which in the circumstances was actually quite accurate. 33% of those surveyed thought they were different to the other two-thirds of the population. 127% of Gen Zed thought they were different to the other two-thirds of the population. 127% of Gen Z were prone to exaggeration. And minus 20% of young people were negative about everything. Another question on the state of the nation. According to the latest league table, the UK is displaying relegation form in what globally popular sport?

This is the Corruption League. Yes. Basically, what's happened is we've gone down in rankings from eighth to 20th, although actually we haven't become more corrupt. It's other countries have become less corrupt and we aren't keeping up. And at the end of the day, I became really, really irritated with Denmark. They're really annoying. They're happy, they're rich, they're not corrupt, they're peaceful and they protected the Jews against the Nazis. So I can't

even be annoyed with them about that. They still not apologize for what they did on these shores what 1200 years ago and it was absolute merry mayhem to be honest. Yeah we're just above Belgium are we? We are. I mean that's good. Yeah. There's there's a hundred and eighty places on the table and number a hundred and forty seven is Elon Musk I mean, yes stuck at 20th place in Transparency International's latest corruption perceptions index The perceptions is quite a load-bearing word. I think this league table is worse than one of your polls They're many percent, but you know, it's 2025 perceptions are the facts of the third millennium so we've got to go with it. I mean I think part of the scores were tabulated during the pandemic when the Tories were handing out PPE contracts to their friends but you know what

lucky for us everyone was doing it so it didn't affect our ranking as much. Nobody ever really talks about the upsides of a global pandemic do they? I know some fans of Britain not being a hotbed or at least a warm bed of corruption think it might do us good to have a season or two out of the top flight because 20th that is relegation isn't it so it's 18th 19th 20th you go down to the championship of incorruptibility you know a couple of seasons out of the top flight sort yourselves out and get back to the glory days but relegated teams don't always bounce straight back and there's a concern if we slip right down the leagues we could even find ourselves

traveling to Albania or China on a wet Wednesday night for a tricky away game trying to stop ourselves dropping into the non leagues but the good thing is we get a parachute payment and we could pocket it well I mean it's not so easy with you know in football you can just whip out the checkbook you can't do that in not being corrupt you can't sign a morally unimpeachable goody two shoes to fill that tricky gap on the left side of midfield. And also, I mean, the way of doing it in football is you sell yourself off to Saudi Arabia and arguably that's going to make things worse.

I don't think we're very corrupt as a nation. If someone hands me a brown crumpled paper bag I'm expecting to find an almond quassel. At the end of our State of the Nation round, Danny and Alice have eight and Ria and Lucy have seven But moving on now a fundamental reset who promised this this week and why It's BP BP promised a fundamental reset They promised to turn the world off and turn it back on again to renew our energy They're gonna hold one finger down on the North Pole and one on Ecuador for three seconds until resources are renewable once more.

They basically have been sort of attacked by an activist investor who says don't do so many renewables because it's undermining your profits. And it turned out they care about this more than people boycotting book festivals. I only made seven billion pounds in 2024, your heart bleeds doesn't it? It really does but they're sort of backpedaling on environmental things despite the fact that we have had the hottest January on record, the planet has done dry January. It's extraordinary, in The Guardian they wrote that this is the warmest the planet has been in 125,000 years. And I know that's what they wrote because my husband cut out the article and stuck it next to the thermostat.

Yeah, January was the hottest January in the history of January. And as the old traditional folk song goes, it's getting hot in here, so take off all your environmental commitments. Moving on to another planet related question. The world ain't what it used to be anymore, words that have been said since the dawn of words, but literally true this week. Can anyone explain why? This is because we believe that the inner core of the earth has changed shape. Yes. I mean, how worried should we be by this? Is this a sign that it's the core of the Earth, which of course is known by scientists to be the yoke of the Earth?

It's a sign that soon, maybe Wednesday, a magic giant chicken is going to hatch out and peck us all to death? This seems to be the way it's heading. I'd welcome it. I mean, going with the trend, I don't want to tell the earth what to do with herself. She's been working for a while to get hotter. I think eyelash extensions over Antarctica and maybe some tits on Japan. I was in Norfolk at the weekend and I think Norfolk, Holland got the right idea flat.

Because with my knees, I'm like, let's not have hills. I grew up in Holland, Lucy, and they are all over six foot tall for a reason. And it's because if they ever flood, they'll still be able to breathe. And I love you, but I don't think you're tall enough. But if you're not familiar with the structure of the earth, you think of the outer core of the earth as the chocolate on a Malteser

and the inner core as the sort of honeycomb bit, then you should have paid more attention at school. Moving on to our final round now, we have a special animals round. Now it's increasingly accepted that this famous planet of ours would probably be better off without humans. So for our final round this week, we're our panellistas headlines with a human or humans in. They have to replace the human with some animals to give us the actual news story featuring animals this week. So for Ria and Lucy the headline is, Feral Prince Andrews Run Rampant Around Scotland. What should be there instead of the humans? It's actually feral pigs. Correct.

Feral pigs, my least favorite brand of pig, I have to say. But these have been illegally released in the Cairngorms in what seems to be some guerrilla rewilding. Yeah. Basically, in journalism school, you're taught to do this, you know, the how, the where, the when, and all that was in the story, but I couldn't understand why they'd done it. Why did you go and release a feral pig anywhere? And they were saying that the Cairngorms is full of people rewilding odd animals.

What a sort of bizarre hobby. Where did they put them before they took them out? Where did they get them from? We all bought a feral pig as a pet and then thought, oh no, this will never get on with my lynxes. To be fair, I don't know if the pigs were feral before they were released. Pigs are very quick to go feral.

You can have a tame pig and it goes, it's like that thing where the lift stops and the person you're in the lift with immediately puts camo gear on their cheeks and like rips the bottom of their skirt and uses it as a headband. Like they go feral immediately. They start trying to eat their next door neighbor

before you've even run out of Mars bars. Like this, pigs just to go feral. When the cameras stop rolling on babe pig in the city. Pigs just want to go feral is my favourite Cyndi Lauper song. Yes, the feral pigs, illegally released in the Cairngorms, the pigs were eventually captured, summarily tried and executed. Sorry, kids kids are listening they were humanely relocated to feral piggy heaven where they frolic with the frogs made of felt and where the veggie sausages taste so sweet moving on now Danny and Alice replaced the human in this headline with

the correct animal scientists plan to bring Florence Nightingale back to life wooly mammoths correct yes story yeah it makes me so happy they want to bring bring Florence Nightingale back to life. Wooly Mammoths! Correct. I love this story. It makes me so happy. They want to bring a... There's an eccentric billionaire, because of course there is, and he's trying to de-extinctify animals, including the dodo, the thylacine,

the wooly mammoth, and presumably some dinosaurs when people stop being so gun-shy about the documentary known as Jurassic Park. Yeah, I'm really excited by it. I want to see a woolly mammoth. I think we could probably do with a cautionary T-Rex. Tech billionaires have been at the top of the food chain for too long. They've gotten complacent.

It's a dangerous game because they want to implant the woolly mammoth embryo into an elephant but then that elephant's going to give birth to a very hairy baby that it's not expecting. And it's going to end up with like all of these abandonment issues when the elephant goes, that's not my baby. And then it's going to need therapy to understand how to provide for its needs. I mean, it's just, I think it's cruel. And it's like, well, yeah, they're not going to do better now, are they? If all our jobs are going to be replaced by AI, how are they going to fare in the gig economy?

Yeah, they didn't have avocado at the time, but it's going to fare in the gig economy? They didn't have a... Yeah, they didn't have a cardo at the time, but it was going to be much better off now. Yes, the woolly mammoth, another thing in the long list of things that were thought too big to fail but failed anyway, despite having tusks that could grow up to almost the height of a double-decker bus, which is not the problem it sounds as the mammoth generally eschewed all forms of public transport, the creature died out after complaints from the woke and due to an ice age for which they were ironically not actually woolly enough. They've used the DNA from a mammoth that it says here died 50,000 years ago so more precisely

mid-February 47,975 BC disappointing Valentine's Day in anyone's book. They've hacked into its DNA and are now we can only assume planning to create an elephant-woolly mamm-mammoth hybrid to quite inevitably take over the world and one day destroy us all. The DNA tests interestingly have proved that the mammoth was not, as some have suggested, an elephant that died whilst running a marathon for charity wearing a Chewbacca outfit. It wasn't that of a different species. Right, that brings us to the end of this week's news quiz. And the final scores, Rhea and Lucy have 13, Danny and Alice 12.

Thank you for listening to the news quiz, I've been Andy Zoltzman, goodbye. Taking part in the news quiz were Alice Fraser, Lucy Porter, Rhea Leana and Danny Finkelstein. In the chair with me, Andy Zoltzman and additional material was written by Christina Riggs, Tasha Danraj, Cameron Locksdale and Ralph Jones. The producer was Rajiv Kharia and it was a BBC Studios audio production for Radio 4. From BBC Radio 4, this is What Seriously? I'm Dara O'Brien. And I'm Izzy Suttie. And in our new series, we're bringing you short stories and tall tales.

What Seriously? is packed with real life strange but true stories that make you go, what, seriously? And provide you with excellent social ammo to impress your friends. The twist is we don't know how each story unfolds and we'll have to figure it out one fragment at a time with our special guests who each have a mysterious connection to the tale. That's right, I am your spy expert. And I don't really want to bring you back to the real facts of the story because you're making me laugh so much, but I feel like I should. We're the only country in the world that ate the animal on our crest, like, and I never

know whether to feel terrible or brilliant about that. All these engineers trying desperately to reduce the amount of dust in space and you get Izzy taking up a balloon full of glycerin. Wow! You're welcome. She's had that one in the house. She's had all the stuff in her mouth. I know, right?

It's like I'm reading from a sheet or something, but no I haven't! Join us for What Seriously? from BBC Radio 4, available now on BBC Sounds.