The News Quiz: Ep 2. Elections (Local and Papal)

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We present the News Quiz with your host, me, Andy Zaltzman.

Hello.

Welcome to the News Quiz.

Exciting news.

It turns out that topical comedy radio panel shows can change the world.

This week, finally, Donald Trump posted a social media message saying, Vladimir, stop shamelessly cribbing what we at the news quiz have been saying for more than three years now.

So let's see if we can influence Trump again.

Save, test cricket.

I'll set the clock.

Crown about summer 28.

He'll be right on board.

Right.

Our teams this week in this age of improvised global politics and unbridgeable divisions.

We have Team Riffs against Team Rifts.

On Team Riffs, we have Andrew Maxwell, an author, journalist, and host of the hip podcast Good Bad Billionaire, available on BBC Sounds, Zing Seng.

And taking on Andrew and Zing, it's Jess Foster Q and Pierre Novelli.

I would pay £500 to hear Donald Trump try to explain cricket.

I would love this.

The ball should be bigger.

Big bouncy ball.

Get rid of the guys all in white.

Make them sparkly.

Everybody gold.

Everything gold.

I don't think Trump will get rid of the guys in white.

No, no, no.

Right.

Our first question can go to Andrew Anzing.

It's local election time next Thursday, the 1st of May.

Control your excitement, everyone.

You have the first chance since last July's general election for voters in the UK to get their harumphon at the ballot box.

And according to opinion polls, a quarter of voters say they would like to do what?

I think it's one in four would vote for reform.

Correct.

Tell you what, Andy, I absolutely love a local election.

Yeah, I get excited.

It doesn't matter what the candidate, the minute I see them come down my garden gate, I scamper off the couch.

I'm straight to the door.

I take the leaflet off them and I go straight to the bin and I recycle it right in front of them.

Which is so bittersweet for the green candidate.

They're like, oh, well done.

How excited are you by the local elections?

Yeah, I'm absolutely giddy.

Yeah, fizzing.

Yeah.

Fizzing.

Reformers saying they're going to clean up.

Hard to tell with reform whether they mean get lots of votes or ethnically.

Politically, Zing, we're in a bit of a strange place, just under a year since Labour came to power, and they're bumbling along in the sort of low 20s percent.

The Tories are struggling as well.

Are we sort of entering a new age of post-two-party politics?

Well, I think it's difficult given that when you look at what Labour are doing, you know, not scrapping the choo-chow benefit, taking away disability benefits from people, you might look at it and think, well, what's the difference between these two parties anyway?

Which I probably think is the reason why people are going, well, why not give the other guys a chance?

It's just a shame who the other guys happen to be.

It's interesting that they look at it and go, there's no difference between these two guys.

I want an even meaner part.

Yeah, but you say that.

It's like, reform's the only choice if you don't want the two big two.

Let's not forget, somewhere out there, Ed Davies on the bounty castle.

It is like the libdems wished on a cursed monkey paw that we'd go back to three-party politics and sort of curled.

And Nigel Frange sat bolt upright in bed somewhere.

I love every time I see Ed Davey on the news going down a log flume or just having the time of his life, I just have this image of just a monster raving loony party candidate in their house just throwing their enormous clown shoe at the television.

Farage has said that there is a 35 to 45 percent chance of him doing what?

Ever visiting Clacton

Is it become the Prime Minister?

Yes, 35 to 45 percent chance of him becoming prime minister, according to no less a source than Nigel Farage himself.

I think the Americans would be delighted because Nigel Farage looks like an offensive drawing of what they think English people look like.

Sort of tweed and sort of slightly sort of yellowed by cigarettes' teeth and like a massive warm flat pint in his hand.

It would be like if Macron had a beret and onions.

Disneyland Prime Minister.

He is toad from Toad Hall, isn't he?

He really is.

That's who Farage is.

Poop, poop.

This Nigel Farage said there is a 35 to 45% chance of him becoming Prime Minister, albeit he did say that in a cameo message to himself that he bought for himself as a special present for himself to congratulate himself on being himself.

So, um

uh but of course I mean everyone sees different things in Nigel Farage.

Some see a genuine patriot, some see a Putin sympathising chance.

So it's a kind of political ink blot test.

You know, that sort of ink blot test that psychologists do, where some people see in the ink blot the petals of an opening flower, others will see two badges in a cage fighting to the death with chainsaws, and others see a silhouette of David Gower driving one sumptuously through the covers for four.

You know, it's

exactly what you're looking for, really.

Today, Farage was saying this overdiagnosis of autism.

He's waded into the sort of RFK Jr.

arena on autism.

And Farage was in UKIP when one of their manifesto commitments was to repaint trains in traditional colours.

So I think if there is a demographic Farage doesn't want to mess with, it's autists, because

you might be surprised how many of us are in his ranks.

Looking at the Conservatives now, the Tory leader Kemi Badenock has warned her party to brace for heavy losses.

And there's a bit of a spat between her and Robert Jenrick, who apparently suggested that the party should get all Fausty and make a pact with Farage and reform.

How do you think that would pan out were it to happen?

Well, I would think badly, to be honest.

Well, Jenrick also came second to Kemi Badenock, so he's very much the man in the wings, so to speak, who can kind of take over if she kind of messes up.

So she's got her eye on him.

Very strange.

Tories in reform, in bed together.

Weird.

Be like the Rotary Club having a meeting at Witherspoon's

Technically it's the same side of the aisle, but it's not really, is it?

It doesn't work, I don't think.

Like, sure, reform will kind of spawn out of the most bulbous end of Tories.

But that doesn't mean they get to reabsorb them.

It's hard to even watch them try.

It's like when a cat eats its own sick.

I think it's more like the sick eating the cat, isn't it?

Yeah.

Kirstama's got to be feeling pretty lucky, right?

Because reform and Tories are just stealing votes largely from each other, not entirely but mainly.

So it's a bit like two rival muggers try to mug you at the same time.

While they're arguing, you just get to leave.

So, well, yes, this is the local elections next week, the first major ballot box test for Starmer, with both Labour and the Conservatives struggling to convince the voting public that they remain the best solutions to the problems that they have A caused and B failed to solve for the last hundred years or so.

They have struggled to bounce back from the huge setback of actually winning a general election for once, and it's hard to see how they can recover their form from here.

Less than a year into their government, they're bumbling along in the low 20s in the polls.

Further proof that their honeymoon period as government lasted about 45 seconds into the groom's speech at the wedding reception when the groom said things could get worse before they get better.

P.S.

Can't do the first dance.

I've got to listen to Moneybox Live.

With the economy struggling, the government has been borrowing more than it planned.

We've all done it.

Almost £15 billion more than it planned.

We've not all done it.

But a solution has just been floated as we record.

The government is to bring in a tax on pessimism.

Which,

I mean, looking at the economy, that could turn things around really very quickly indeed.

But sadly, sadly, I just don't think it's going to work.

These things never do.

Point three.

But Starmer has been trying to confront Labour's main right-wing challenge, which now emanates from Nigel Farage's Reform UK.

And at a St.

George's Day event at Downing Street this week, at which top celebrities were invited to ceremonially slay a migrant actor in a pantomime dragon outfit,

at this event, Prime Minister Keir Starmer claimed that Labour is the party of what?

Puppy yoga.

Not puppy yoga.

Okay.

Patriotism.

Correct.

Yes.

Being proud that your patron saint once slayed a dragon in what is now Turkey.

He had a sort of patriotic picnic at Starma in number 10, where everyone had sort of pork pies and English sparkling wine.

And I'm broadly in favor of that kind of thing, but it's a bit late.

for cut through for the local elections, I think.

For it to have cut through, he'd need to go full football hooligan,

you know, down a bottle of English sparkling wine, hurl it at a policeman on a horse,

flare-up bum hole,

pass out a few leaflets while it fizzles out.

It's true.

That young man that stuck that flare up his bum hole at the Euros final has set a very high bar for other Englishmen.

Yeah.

They're issuing a limited edition stamp with him on, I think.

Yes, but I mean, it seems that the patriotism card seems, I mean, that's.

Can politicians do without it now?

Probably not.

I mean, he kind of pushed this idea of patriotism in this Telegraph essay that he published, where he said, I'm proud to be English precisely because it's a place where we can disagree.

And I actually don't agree with that at all.

Patriotism is something that we like to outsource to the people in charge.

So we get to enjoy making fun of ourselves.

But I mean, we don't like it when the people in charge do it.

So it's like, well, we're going to go to Spain and have tapas and things and make fun of ourselves, but you have to go on holiday to a sort of rain-soaked grouse mall

and sort of have like a thin smile outside an incredibly expensive cottage in Cornwall or something.

And you need to do that because you're in charge and you want this, and so you're going to enjoy this burnt sausage and this awful barbecue while I watch laughing using a VPN somewhere nice.

I'm a naturalized British citizen, so I'm quite patriotic, but that's I'm allowed to because I'm not originally from here.

And if you're sort of a proper, you know, English middle-class person, you feel a kind of incredible guilt and self-loathing and sort of cringe at this kind of thing.

So in order to integrate properly, I actually need to work on that.

And

I'm going to pay someone to show me a slideshow of the Cotswolds and electrocute me.

So

anything English and nice makes me jump and feel sort of frightened.

And then I'll finally become one of.

I like the traffic jam beside Stonehenge.

That's something to be proud of.

I like the fact that it's all tourists paying money to look at a hodgepodge of ancient rocks, whereas Brits just slow down.

Just slow down.

You know, it's a 40-mile-an-hour zone.

They do 30 and go, here it is.

I like that about you.

It's a typical British infrastructure project, never finished and only works twice a year.

The point is that patriotism is always a tricky balance beam to politically gymnasticise on.

So I'm going to set a challenge for our panelists.

Under the table here, we have Brito, the 100% British doggy.

Brito, the 100% British doggy, is not feeling very patriotic this week.

And he's the most British doggy in history.

All he's ever eaten is British sausages.

So we need to cheer him up by making him patriotic again.

So our panellists have to tell Brito a new reason to be proud to be British.

And of course, he expresses his patriotism by barking the national anthem.

And the more notes he barks, the more patriotic they've made him.

Jess, do you want to take the first swing?

Yeah, um, okay, because it's a dog who likes sausages.

I think we should be especially proud that we've got an absolutely massive-fingered king.

Let's see, Brito, how patriotic does that make you feel?

Six, six box.

What's your session?

I think complaining is a great patriotic trait because when I first moved here from Singapore to the UK, I didn't realize when I first got here that everyone loved to complain so much, but in a really unique way.

So you'd meet someone and they'd be like, oh, it's terrible.

On Monday, I lost my wife.

On Tuesday, I lost my fingers in a freak accident.

On Wednesday, I lost my job.

On Thursday, my children got run over.

But you know, mustn't grumble.

Things could be worse.

I think it's called the stiff upper lip.

Yes.

The stiff upper lip, how patriotic does that make you feel?

Nine, nine, nine, nine box.

Right, Andrew,

you've got to beat nine.

No problem.

Okay.

I've lived in your country for 30 years, a stranger in your land.

But in that 30 years, what I've mostly noticed is the three-pronged plug, sir,

is by far the greatest thing that this country has ever done.

It's only when you go to other countries in the rest of the world and they're dreadful spindly heathen plugs.

Like your phone's going up like one bar an hour.

And then you finally get back to Blighty and you stick that big fat plug that you can either charge a device with or stick in a sock and knock a man out with.

Britto, how patriotic does the three-pin plug make you feel?

Oh, you've got the full 16!

At the end of that section, Jess and Pierre have four, and Zing and Andrew have six.

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Suffs.

The new musical has made Tony award-winning history on Broadway.

We demand to be honest.

Winner, best score.

We demand to be seen.

Winner, best book.

We demand to be quality.

It's a theatrical masterpiece that's thrilling, inspiring, dazzlingly entertaining, and unquestionably the most emotionally stirring musical this season.

Suffs.

Playing the Orpheum Theater, October 22nd through November 9th.

Tickets at Broadway SF.com.

Now we have a special post-Easter question.

What rose again after whose death this week?

Andrew?

Pope Francis, he passed.

Yes.

So we're going to have a new Pope.

I've been looking at it, and the bookies are saying it's going to be a Catholic.

Right.

So that's narrowed it down.

One of the candidates' surnames is Pizza Bala,

which is...

It has to be him.

There has to be a Pope Pizza I.

Yeah, but see, it's not up to us to decide.

It's up to the Council of the Cardinals.

Yes.

This called the Conclave.

This is happening right now.

We're all over the world, all the Cardinals are gathering.

From all over Latin America, from Asia, from Africa, from Europe, the New World, the Old World, the Arizona Cardinals, the St.

Louis Cardinals.

They're all out.

Easy for the the Arizona Cardinals because they're obviously out of season being an American football team.

There's someone standing in for the Pope right now, though.

There's already like a temporary pope in the meantime, and this guy is called Kevin.

Do you think that because he's a substitute pope, all the cardinals, they're not listening, they're messing about.

Yeah, throwing rubbers at his head.

Paper airplanes made out of the little voting things.

Yeah, you're not my real pope.

I think that it's an opportunity to get a really exciting new pope.

Like, you know, Francis, who's just died, was the first ever Latin American Pope.

I think they should get their new pope.

I don't know if you've heard, they're also doing auditions now for the next series of gladiators.

They could tie it in to help find a pope.

Do you feel the power of the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost?

It'd be quite a good gladiator name, Pontiff.

She's got power behind her.

That's nice.

Cardinals ready.

Just two croziers on a thing attacking each other.

First one to knock the mitre off, the other man wins.

Perfect.

What was the question?

The question.

Yeah, it's interesting here.

No one's answered.

The question is, what rose again after whose death?

Since the Pope's death,

it's got to be Conclave Downloads.

Correct.

Yes.

Viewing figures for Conclave, the multiple Oscar-nominated Pope-picking, chasible, rocking, blockbuster.

I think it's because you can make anything interesting with enough of a sort of air of gossip.

It's quite a sort of gossip-driven film.

And I think that's why Henry VIII and the Tudors are so popular in this country, because he's the first king where records get good enough that we get all the gossip about how mad he was.

There could have been gossip about William II, we'll never know.

Record keeping is simply not good enough.

He was from Eltham.

Some people forget about Henry VIII.

He was from southeast London.

It got to make sense, doesn't it?

Big ginger geezer, big van, loads of birds.

Do you know what I mean?

It's a fun film, and I'm hoping that the real conclave is as fun and sort of intrigue and gossip-driven.

Although I imagine it's incredibly slow and boring.

I really want them to live-stream it.

I think that's what they should do.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

React in the chat if you think it should be Pizza Bola.

And then there's a big brother chair for all the cardinals to come in and have a little one-on-one with the producer.

Yes, Pope Francis passed away on Monday.

Entirely the logical thing to do after spending five minutes with American Vice President J.D.

Vance.

Francis had been

widely praised for his humanity in an age of furious, heartless oppositionalism.

As a young man, he worked as a nightclub bouncer, which is also how St.

Peter started, of course.

After his career as Pope had come to an end back in the first century AD.

But the future direction of the Catholic Church, one of the most enduringly popular spin-off franchises from Judaism,

is said to be hotly disputed as the process of impoping a new pontiff begins in earnest.

There are only a few weeks to submit your application, listeners, before the papal conclave.

Now, at a conclave, they all meet facing inwards towards the middle.

Then, when the decision is made, they turn outwards to announce it to the world, at which point the conclave changes to a convex.

It's a little math joke, please.

You should be ashamed for having got that.

You know, you're only encouraging them.

Right, the scores are now eight to Jess and Pierre, six to Zing and Andrew.

Moving from the most Christian man in the world to the least Christian person ever to be endorsed by Christians, Donald Trump,

set to visit the UK later this year.

But what are some people saying he should not be allowed to do when he comes here?

Speak.

Land.

You were very close saying when people said he shouldn't be allowed to speak.

To whom should he not be allowed to speak to?

Was it to speak at Parliament?

Yes, correct.

I couldn't be more in favour of letting him just do more speaking.

Because it's always funny.

I want to know what he thinks the building is for.

I want to hear how he thinks the word Parliament is pronounced.

I want to see his reaction to having Blackrod explained to him.

Again, I would pay so much money.

I don't think we need to take him to the real one, though.

We can just take him to the Hogwarts Hall at the Harry Potter world.

He'll think it's the same.

Yeah.

That would be great.

Keep all the actors there as well.

Yeah, he would be there.

Watching him thank Dumbledore for having him.

So close to Watford, I didn't know.

It's beautiful.

Just off the M25, really convenient.

In another Trump story, surrender, capitulation, betrayal, appeasement, abandonment.

Words in the Daily Telegraph used to describe Trump's treatment of whom this week.

All of us?

Yes.

Can we give you the answer?

That would be right, but you need to narrow it down a bit.

Is it Zelensky?

Yes.

Correct.

He's demanding Ukraine give up all of its territory, and for balance, he's saying to Russia, hey,

stop it.

It's just mad.

If you're going to have conflict resolution between two parties, you need to do that resolution with both the parties there, not just one of them.

I've seen fairer conflict resolution on Married at First Sight.

But it's to Trump's benefit, isn't it, to turn the world back into a place where you can sort of eat bets of your neighbor because he doesn't want to bother protecting Taiwan and it's useful for sort of, you know, Israel-Palestine and Greenland.

And if we go back to that global order, then all the European countries are going to have to huddle together like meer cats and actually spend money on guns for once instead of pretending we can solve conflict through subsidized performance art.

Could have to just be tanks again, I'm afraid, lads.

We tried classical music, and

it's tanks again.

Jackson Pollard wouldn't be as big as he was without the CIA.

Yes, the world, as always, is waiting for the latest strange pronouncements from the president of the USA.

We are in the rather bizarre spectacle of the world's politicians and pundits earnestly discussing how to deal with Trump as if he is some kind of cross between a potentially lethal zoo animal, an alien who could destroy the world, and an overindulged toddler.

And the results of the DNA test have just come back.

He is all three of those things.

Right, that means that the scores are nine points all, which means we go to a tiebreaker.

And

for our tiebreaker, we'll let Pierre and Jess choose the topic.

It's you can't always get what you want, tiebreaker, so you can request the topic and I'm going to ask you a question about something else.

So choose the topic you'd like a question on.

10th Century Denmark.

Okay.

Well, it's not too far off.

You're getting early first millennium York.

Okay.

So a bit of a compromise.

Archaeologists in York have discovered the first evidence of what happening in this country almost 2,000 years ago.

Puppy yoga!

Oh no.

Madonna concert.

Big fossilized Brazier.

Is it a gladiator who got killed by a lion?

Yes.

In Yorkshire.

Yeah.

The greatest lions in the world.

Twice the size you'll get over the other side of the Pennines.

We've got tiny little Moggies over in the Red Rose County.

It's your own fault for trying to fight him, you dast airpit.

Don't be soft, you bastard.

Get out there and fight that lion.

Is it Sean Bean's gladiator?

Did they also find an enormous perfectly preserved woolen mouse toy?

It doesn't say that.

But again, you know, archaeology is never finished, is it?

They might find these things.

You know what else they found in York?

From the Viking era?

They found the world's largest fossilized poo.

Really?

There's a technical term for it.

It's called a coprolite.

It's when a poo becomes fossilized and then becomes science.

Stops being funny, because it stops being a poo and it becomes a copollite.

And they think it was a giant Viking did it.

And it is, honestly, you should say this thing.

It's a proper Fjord clogger.

They also found an issue of Viking times from the same week with a particularly difficult cryptic crossword.

That poo has a whole hazelnut in it.

What?

Yeah.

Generally.

That is fusion food gone mad for me.

You can see why the North of England laid down their weapons and just gave them money for 400 years.

Yeah.

If their spears are as fearsome as their bowel movements, we'd be wise to pay now.

Well, I think Simon Sharma is fearing for his career, telling you.

Apparently it's the first ever physical evidence we've ever had that animal versus human combat happened in the Roman Empire, but we've been going on about that happening for for decades to kids.

Where have we been getting the evidence we thought we had before?

Facebook.

Yeah, but it's I mean the first time it's been found in this country.

Yeah, they found a pelvic bone with a bite mark from a big cat.

That's brutal as well, isn't it?

That it was in the pelvic bone.

It means it's eating him willy first.

That's all ye eat a Yorkshireman.

Willie first.

It implies that maybe he wasn't trying to fight the lion.

Coming to you alive from God's own country.

That's right.

Truly the bravest man.

That lion was hungry and he'd heard there was a hazelnut in there.

He looks like a human Ferrero Roche there.

The lion was saying about all the gladiators.

Has anyone got the little map of what flavor is which?

Yes, the archaeologists have found the remains of the unnamed gladiator.

They do know that Jeff Boycott at the other end ended the day, 48, not out.

Well, that brings us to the end of this week's news quiz, and our winners are Zing and Andrew with 10.

Jason.

Yeah, finish on nine.

Just some breaking news reaching us after leading Team GB to a superb first place in gold medal at the 2025 World Regretting Championships.

Skipper Thrapston Brampville said the team was very disappointed with the result.

Absolute class.

Absolute class.

Thank you for listening to the news quiz.

Goodbye.

Taking part in the news quiz were Jess Fostercu, Pierre Novelli, Andrew Maxwell and Zing Seng.

In the chair was me, Andy Zoltzmann and additional material was written by Alice Fraser, Cody Dahler, Chris Ballard, Eve Delaney and Brito, the 100% British dog.

The producer was Rajiv Carrier and it was a BBC Studios audio production for Radio 4.

Hello, I'm Robin Ince.

And I'm Brian Cox and we would like to tell you about the new series of the Infinite Monkey Cage.

In this series, we're going to have a planet off.

We decided it was time to go cosmic, so we are going to do Jupiter

versus Scepter!

It's very well done that because in the script it does say in square brackets wrestling voice question mark.

And once we touch back down on this planet, we're going to go deep.

Really deep.

Yes, we're journeying to the center of the earth with guests Phil Wang, Chris Jackson, and Anna Ferreira.

And after all of that intense heat and pressure, we're just going to kind of chill out a bit and talk about ice.

And also in this series, we're discussing altruism.

We'll find out what it is.

Exploring the history of music, recording with Brian Eno, and looking at nature's shapes.

So if that sounds like your kind of thing, you can listen to the Infinite Monkey Cage first on BBC Sounds.

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