Friday Night Comedy from BBC Radio 4 - The Now Show - 9th April ft Ria Lina, Alun Cochrane and Rachel Parris

Episode Date: April 10, 2021

This show was recorded on 8th April 2021Steve Punt and Hugh Dennis present the week via topical stand-up and sketches in front of a remote audience - and all from their own home!Joining them from a safe distance is Ria Lina and Alun Cochrane with music supplied by Rachel Parris .Voice Actors: Katie Norris and Luke KempnerProducer: Pete Strauss Production Co-Ordinator: Carina Andrews Editor/Engineer: David ThomasBBC Studios Production

This is the BBC. This podcast is supported by advertising outside the UK. BBC Sounds. Music, radio, podcasts. Hello, I'm Hugh Dennis and welcome to this week's Friday Night Comedy, The Now Show. The show, which is the last in the current series, was recorded before we received the sad news of the death of His Royal Highness Prince Philip. Thank you. Hello, I'm Steve Punt.

And I'm Hugh Dennis. With us are Ria Lina, Alan Cochran, Luke Kempner, Katie Norris and Rachel Parris. And this is... The Now Show! Hello and welcome to the last show in the current series. By the autumn, it's hopefully possible that we will be back in the radio theatre in front of a live audience, suddenly remembering that we needed to be dressed from the waist down again. In short, normality seems to be returning.

Next Monday sees a further easing of lockdown. The latest poll shows 70% public support for vaccine passports, but you'd never know that from the media coverage, which is all about the protests. Kind of the opposite of what's happening in Northern Ireland. Now, vaccine passports are controversial, but in some areas they look inevitable. Without them, we just have to rely on people being responsible and honest. Two tickets for the new James Bond film that's eight months old now. Sure. Before I let you in, have you had any symptoms? Yeah, I can't taste

anything. Oh, that's good. These hot dogs have been here since last March. Now, there are, of course, plenty of areas where we happily accept the need for a piece of paper to show we're not a danger to others, like a driving licence, a hygiene certificate or the doctor's note that confirms Piers Morgan has not gone insane because someone he had one drink with didn't invite him to her wedding. But the Covid

passport is trickier because how much of your medical record will you have to disclose to get a drink in a pub? Take a look at the list sir. I've had the AstraZeneca, the Pfizer, measles, mumps, rubella, tetanus, pneumococcal, BCG, HPV and rotavirus. Well, that's all the real ales we've got on our face. For the next month, pubs will only be able to serve in beer gardens and exterior spaces, which isn't great, although it will help prevent at least one traditional pub

conversation. Do you want to come outside and say that? We're already outside. Oh, yeah. Do you want to go inside and say that? We're already outside. Oh, yeah. Do you want to go inside and say that? We're not allowed inside. Well, we'll stand in the door and you can say that. Sorry, mate, you're blocking a fire exit. I can see why passports are controversial,

but I don't see really why you'd worry about being vaccinated. I suspect that eventually objectors will come round. I will not carry a Covid passport. It is a diabolical infringement of my civil liberties. We change the cover to blue. Finally! I shall bear it with pride! But passports aside, at the moment it's enough just to be able to go out again at all.

Apparently, everywhere's already booked up. This means that lunch and dinner bookings are going to be like any gold dust item. People will be selling them on at a profit. I have lot five, a table for four, Sunday lunch at the Red Lion. Do I have 20 pounds? 20 pounds. I have 20 pounds, so I would like to go for 25 pounds. Come on, we've got prize-winning gravy and local sauce raspberries in the crumble. 25 pounds. Do I hit 30, 20 pounds. I have 20 pounds, so I would like to go for 25 pounds. Come on, we've got prize-winning gravy and local sauce raspberries in the crumble.

25 pounds. Do I hit 30? 30 pounds for this partly 17th century pub AA recommended with a child-free dining area. 100 pounds. It's going once, going twice at 100 pounds, and sold! Thank you to the miserable couple who hate kids. On Monday here in England we'll also be allowed a haircut. Haircuts and meals are one thing but

overseas travel is the big one. The government's planning to introduce a traffic light system in which arrivals from red and amber countries would be required to quarantine but those from green countries would simply be required to test on departure and arrival. The good news is that a number of countries are green. In fact, France and Germany have been bright green ever since the UK started vaccinating over a month before they did. Meanwhile, the European Championships and the Olympics are going ahead this summer, although North Korea has pulled out of the Olympics for fear their athletes might come back testing positive. Let's hope no big countries pull out. Russia almost certainly won't, because as a spokesperson pointed out this week...

No Russian athlete has ever tested positive for anything. Don't worry though, North Korean viewers needn't be disappointed, as North Korean television will still bring full reports of all the gold medals Kim Jong-un is winning. Normality is returning even in areas where we thought it wouldn't. After all those articles last year proclaiming the end of office culture and how we'd all be working from home from now on, it turns out that companies are already changing their minds. Amazon issued a statement to employees last week saying,

Our plan is to return to an office-centric culture as our baseline. Office-centric sounds so much cooler than office-based, which is what it means. I don't really think of Amazon as being either, to be honest. Our plan is to return to a huge and faintly sinister warehouse off the M1 centric culture as our baseline. Meanwhile, Goldman Sachs, the investment bank, say they need their people in the office because... Homeworking doesn't really suit a creative business like us. Creativity has included setting delivery share price 30% too high

and making Greece's debt magically vanish so they could join the EU. But it's interesting that, as it turns out, commuting to work is not dead after all because working from home is not as easy as we initially thought. We thought it would be this. No problem, Bob. I'll get that report over to you as soon as I've finished this pina colada.

But it turned out to be more like this. I will get that report over to you as soon as I've finished this pina colada. But it turned out to be more like this. I will get that report, Bob, as soon as this broadband engineer turns up. One sure sign of returning to normal is that last year's postponed local elections have been added to this year's elections to make a huge election collection in early May. In London, one of the candidates has decided to make part of their platform a review into legalising cannabis, an idea they clearly got wandering around London's parks last weekend and breathing in. In recent years, you seem to smell cannabis absolutely everywhere. I mean, everywhere. Today, bakers, we asked you to create a weed-infused

showstopper. Now, Prue and I have tasted your efforts, but I'm afraid we can't name any of you star baker this week, partly because Prue is hiding under the table, saying you're all secretly judging her glasses, and partly because, from what I can tell, my hands have turned into giant chocolate babkas. Peace out. Blaze it. It does seem like we won't be returning to quite the same world we left. Where I live, local councils seem to have used lockdown to give the entire borough a 20-mile-an-hour speed limit.

Signs have gone up nationwide with the slogan, 20 is plenty. Which is, incidentally, what Rishi Sunak thought about the number of texts David Cameron was sending him asking for government support for Greensill. Driving locally recently, I discovered that while everyone was indoors, the council have also installed environmental areas, little networks of roads that you get stuck in for days trying to find your way out. They're so complicated that in the middle of one in Hackney last week, I found a minotaur.

It's a whole new world out there. Although to visit it, you may well need a Covid passport. Thank you very much. And now would you welcome to the show for the very first time the fabulous realina hi my name is realina and i am here to talk to you lovely folks at the now show about autism i'd like to point out that I have autism, and so do some of the people I've made. You might know them as children. Now, April is known as Autism Acceptance Month, where autism organizations continue their efforts to spread awareness, promote acceptance, and ignite change.

In addition to Autism Acceptance Month, last Friday was World Autism Awareness Day, as internationally recognized by the United Nations. It was also, coincidentally, Good Friday, or as it's known in autism circles, Acceptable Friday. Now, I actually got diagnosed as an adult, which was a relief, because up until that point in my life, I was just a bitch. I myself was originally diagnosed with something called Asperger's syndrome. It was named after the Austrian scientist who first documented something called autistic psychopathy, Hans Asperger, whose mentor was called Franz Hamburger. I am not making this up. Now, unfortunately, they both turned out to be Nazis, so we are trying to disassociate with the name itself,

which is for the best anyway, because Asperger is a terrible name for a group of people who think literally. Being diagnosed later in life, or at least at an older age than boys are, is common for a lot of women with autism, because when we're kids, we just present as, well, really good kids. You know, we get up, we don't chatter too much, we do our homework, we have little interest in dating. Wow, that's like the perfect teenager. What parent would mess with that?

One of the other reasons I probably wasn't diagnosed earlier was because I have some race. Specifically, my mother's Filipina and my father's German. So one of the reasons they couldn't tell sooner is I was raised in a household with a German man and an Asian tiger mom, so there wasn't a lot of room in that household for... expression. So it's not surprising I wasn't diagnosed till later, but it wasn't like there weren't signs I had autism when I was growing up. For example, I finished school early because when I started at a new high school, they tested me and decided I was already halfway through when I was, in fact, 14. And it wasn't hard to figure out. All you had to do was look at me.

Autistic girls and women are characteristically known for looking and appearing younger than they actually are. It means I have never looked my age. And in case I started to, bam! I'm also Asian. So, you know, just to make extra genetically sure, I will never buy alcohol without ID, hail a cab by myself, or pay full price for a train ticket.

So, if they had just taken the time to look at me instead of just test me, they would have questioned whether I belonged in high school at all instead of putting me in charge of the prom committee. Apparently, it was the worst prom in the history of the school. How was I supposed to know you're supposed to play actual music in a silent disco? Now, it just so happens that autism is hereditary, and my mother, if not on the spectrum, is definitely spectrum-adjacent.

Autism wasn't spoken about when my mother was growing up, certainly not with regards to females, but there were also signs that she also wasn't your typical female. You see, my mother is a tiny little Asian woman, barely five feet tall. Yet she decided when she left high school that she was going to go to university and study physics. And then after she graduated, became a computer programmer. This was almost unheard of in the 1960s. Not just for a woman, but for a woman of color.

She wasn't even allowed to sit at the front of the bus, which was fine. She didn't want to sit at the front of the bus. There were people there. But to do what she did in those days was an incredible feat. I googled her and there was genuinely a picture of her in the online computer history museum, the caption of which reads, of which reads, this is a woman. I also have two kids with autism, my oldest daughter and my youngest son. My daughter is a lot like me as a teenager, quite regimented, gets up at 4.30 to get ready for school, so efficient. She would have sorted track and trace out for less than a billion and invested the rest in Zoom. She doesn't hug or smile much. She doesn't make small talk at all and will tell you to your face if she has a problem. People often ask me, are you sure she's British? And I say, oh yes, don't worry. She'll complain bitterly about you

behind your back once you're gone. She might be autistic, but she is fundamentally British. I hope this helps everyone listening understand a little bit more about autism from mine and my family's perspective. If you didn't know that last Friday was Autism Awareness Day, don't worry. You're actually allowed to be aware of it every day of the year. In fact, we'd prefer it if you were. Same with Autism Acceptance Month. Please don't hit May 1st and get out your intolerance clothes, because I'll be honest, they're not a great look. They really clash with the zeitgeist and nobody wants that. So as we all cross our fingers that the lockdown timetable continues, we can begin to see who's

had a good pandemic and who's had a bad one. For example, it's been a good pandemic for AstraZeneca, and it's been a bad pandemic for AstraZeneca. It's also been a good pandemic for hair dye manufacturers. With no hairdressers open and people forced to experiment at home, one UK hair colour brand reported a 1,200% increase in sales over the last year. Yep, that's 600% from people dyeing their hair a new colour. And the other 600% from the same people desperately trying to undo the terrible mistake they've just made. It's also been a good pandemic for the body coach, Joe Wicks,

who's been getting people jumping up and down on the spot as part of his daily exercise routines. And conversely, it's been a bad pandemic for the people who live in the flats underneath the people who do the Joe Wicks daily exercise routine. Or indeed, many different exercise routines are available. It's also been a good pandemic for Couch to 5K, which saw a 92% rise in downloads. OK, for this first run, we'll be running for 60 seconds, then walking for 90, then running for 60 seconds, then walking for 90, then running for five seconds,

jumping to the left and right, and then walking again. This is nothing to do with the regime. This is just what it's like to try and stay two metres apart from people in a park during lockdown. Some of these statistics are pretty amazing. For example, it's been a good pandemic for top-half clothing. In the UK, demand for top-half clothes rose by 167%. And by contrast, demand for clothes from the waist down

saw only 39% rise, meaning not just that people are four times better dressed on screen than they are off screen, but that there are also now fears of a European Chino Mountain. It's also been a bad pandemic for cash, which was banned in many shops and is less used than ever. No-one has any use for small change, especially if it's damaged. Some people have very strong feelings about that.

Especially here at AC12, because there's nothing we hate more than bent coppers. By contrast, cryptocurrencies have had a very good pandemic, even though it turns out they're really bad for the environment because they use so much energy, mostly from everybody Googling to try and understand how the hell they work. And talking of technology, it's been a good pandemic for streaming services like Amazon, Netflix and especially Disney Plus, who've added more than 100 million subscribers in 14 months. Streaming services, though, are only as good as the broadband providers they use. But Disney have ways around this. Our Internet is is rubbish the kids say the film is frozen me as well this film is frozen too now the captive worldwide audience of the lockdown has led to a number of unexpected

lockdown hits netflix scored a family success with their controversial animated film The Tiger King Who Came to Tea, in which Sophie and her mummy are in the kitchen when an eccentric zookeeper with a terrible mullet turns up, eats all the food, drinks all Daddy's beer and is then arrested for hiring a hitman. The cost of all this, though, is a bad pandemic for the planet, as the internet now accounts for the same global carbon footprint as the airline industry.

And in the US, data centres, which are effectively the cloud, have to be kept at low temperatures, which means that just storing all the photographs on our phones we can't be bothered to sort through accounts for 2% of total national electricity usage. Clearly, we need to do something about that. The ice is melting as we burn fossil fuels to provide the power to stream this documentary you're watching now. Viewing this footage of the damage to polar bears, fish, fauna and flora around us, you are adding to that damage.

A spiral of irony where my very popularity is helping to destroy the planet around me. Which is why, instead of flying around the world with a film crew, I currently have my feet up in front of Godzilla vs Kong. Two creatures which only exist as CGI, much like polar bears in a few years' time. It's definitely been a bad pandemic for Donald Trump, who said the virus would magically disappear last April, presided over the biggest death toll in the world, lost the presidency as a result, and has lost over a billion dollars of his wealth in five years. Actually, that is not true. No, stop clapping. That is not true. That is fake news.

Because if you look at the Forbes rich list, I was the 156th richest in 2016. And then I was 1,001st richest last year. And now I'm 1,299th richest. And 1,299 is bigger than 1,001 and 156 put together. So that is called math. On top of that, he's been accused of misleading supporters into thinking they were giving a one-off donation when in fact it was being taken monthly.

Coincidentally, it's been a good pandemic for fraudsters, with over 400,000 incidents. 400,000 incidents, mother of God! 400,000 incidents of Covid-related fraud since March last year. By accident, one fraudster tried to scam a presenter from Moneybox, here on BBC Radio 4, who managed to record the call. Dan Whitworth kept the fraudster talking for so long, not only were they on Moneybox,

they also won that week's episode of Just A Minute. So, welcome back to the show, Alan Cochran. Thank you very much. I used to think that I would stop doing live comedy one day because I wanted to write a dystopian novel, and then along came the pandemic and I stopped doing live comedy in order to live in a dystopian novel. But some people love it, don't they?

Some people love the fact that we've moved life online, and I understand. I see the adrenaline rush of a click and collect food order. But I just think there are some people who love WFH, working from home. They love it. And they're thinking they're on the right result, saving money on their commute to work and spending all day in their pyjamas. They don't seem to have realised that they could be replaced next year

by somebody working from home from a country with cheaper wages. Well done, you lockdown cheerleaders. Maybe those people are the real hashtag Covidiots. That's what I'm wondering. I've never been that big a fan of the internet when it came to my career anyway. I learned many years ago not to Google or Twitter search my own name. Oh no. I used to think I was my own worst critic but that was before the internet was in such wide usage. Online language has been educational for me. I learned what TLDR meant years ago. It's used when someone means too long, didn't read. And I've adopted TLDR, IRL, in real life.

I take a pencil into charity bookshops and scribble it on the last page of War and Peace. Too long, didn't read. I don't want to join Twitter to argue with strangers. I have enough trouble arguing IRL in real life. I don't thrive in arguments. I think some people do, and they should become politicians, but more often become online social justice activists or terrible dinner party guests. I had an argument a few years ago, and it wasn't even about politics. It was actually about the ethics of eating meat,

and I was chatting to a friend who, turns out is a passionate vegetarian he told me he cares passionately about animals not enough to be vegan but passionately and he he and I were chatting and before I knew it we were arguing and he became furious that I believe the optimal diet for human existence was a mixture of vegetables and animal products and he got really really angry at me and started shouting facts and accusations you're just spouting the meat manufacturers propaganda Alan we don't even need vitamin b12 actually that was proven in a study in 1982. And I had a strange moment in the argument. I hope some of you have had similar moments in similar arguments where I thought, oh, no, I can't remember any of my facts.

Online schooling got too easily accepted for my liking. I think adults know the internet can be a learning tool occasionally. People in favour of school closures were like, oh, I once learned on YouTube how to put a pop-up tent back into the zip-up pouch. I'd been really struggling with it. And then I learned it on YouTube. And I don't think it follows, therefore,

that children will be OK with eight hours of screen time a day attempting to learn academic subjects and, depending on the quality of the school, sometimes not being required to respond verbally or in writing for months at a time. And I'm sure they won't develop tics and eye strains and mental health issues. And then when they leave, if they ever do get jobs,

they have to pay for all this. But, hey, let's all pretend that it's fine because an adult we know once learned how to bleed a radiator on YouTube. We used to openly acknowledge that kids weren't really meant to get so much screen time, and even then I disagreed with those parents who would complain, oh, you can't get them off the gadgets, can you? You can't. I'd think, yeah, you can, just take the gadget.

Just say, give me the gadget. I'd just think, if you can't get them to give them the gadget, just snatch it out of their little hand or do that fun trick that an uncle would do when stealing a chip. Oh, look, a flying pig. And then when they look, you've got the gadget. Oh, no, but they'd really cry. Yes, they would.

I'm not sure how many altercations you've been in, but when your opponent is sobbing, that is you winning. If anyone's listening to this online thinking, oh, that's child cruelty, no actual children were harmed in the making of that image, IRL, in real life. If only we could say the same about lockdowns that you all seem to love so much.

I'm pretty certain children have been hurt in lockdown, but not by my jokes. And now, playing us out for the episode, Rachel Parris. See you all next series. We've done a report And it turns out there's no problem We hope these findings offer some assurance

We've done a report And it turns out Britain's golden And best of all, we're less racist than Europe No need to go on protests Don't rise up or resist. Because we've finished our report now and your issues don't exist. We've done our report. It's got labels and dividers. And reflects the hope and glory that we knew resides inside us.

We've done our report. Don't be gloomy or downhearted. We're only getting started. There's so much we can get sorted, now we know how to report it. Is, say, Ted Cruz a decent man? Do you find Putin shady? We did a report and respectively he is, he's not, and you're crazy. Are you struggling with your household bills that roll in every quarter? Well, we done a report for you, it says you don't need heat or water My husband says I didn't clean the bathroom And I don't remember cleaning up the bathroom

I remember avoiding cleaning the bathroom But we've done a report, and I did Recently read reports report that your carbon footprint's roughly nought and your recent haircut's not too short that's what our reports have shown us In other news you're great at sport and lacy bralettes offer great support And you can afford that dress you bought on a whim from all of a bonus you think plug hair's gross but our report says it's really nice you forgot to exercise today our report says you did it twice you think some politicians are dire that they're cowards bullies

liars but we don't report on them and their approval's getting higher wasn't sure how this song would go down but according to my report it says this song will satisfy a hundred percent of the listeners of radio four it's a record i'm delighted they're so easy to please the report said that i'm the future of the bbc the report said i definitely won't be asked and i trust that report because it's covered in union jazz. Forget your experience. Forget what you thought.

They've done a report. You've been listening to The Now Show starring Steve Ponce, Hugh Dennis, Ria Lena, Alan Cochran, Luke Kempner and Katie Norris. The show was written by the cast with additional material from The song was written and performed by Rachel Parris.

The producer was Pete Strauss and it was a BBC Studios production.