The News Quiz: Ep 3. The Donald and The Dons

This BBC podcast is supported by ads outside the UK.

Looking for excitement, Chumba Casino is here.

Play anytime, play anywhere.

Play on the train, play at the store, play at home, play when you're bored.

Play today for your chance to win and get daily bonuses when you log in.

So, what are you waiting for?

Don't delay!

Chumba Casino is free to play.

Experience social gameplay like never before.

Go to Chumba Casino right now to play hundreds of games, including online slots, Slingo, and more.

Live the Chumba life at chumba casino.com.

With the Wealth Front cash account, you can earn 4% annual percentage yield from partner banks on your cash until you're ready to invest.

The cash account grows your money with no account maintenance fees and free instant withdrawals whenever you need it.

Money works better here.

Go to wealthfront.com to start saving and investing today.

Cash account offered by Wealthfront Brokerage LLC member Fenra SIPC.

Wealthfront is not a bank.

The APY on cash deposits as of December 27, 2024 is representative, subject to change, and requires no minimum.

Funds in the cash account are swept to partner banks where they earn the variable APY.

BBC Sounds, Music, Radio, Podcasts.

Hello, I am Andy Zoltzman.

Before we start this week's news quiz, I have sneaked into the offices of the Oxford English Dictionary, where they guard all the words in our language.

In this new age of Trump, I'm just having to make some updates to their dictionary.

Right, just uh

cold combative compassion.

Uh, compassion, we won't need that one anymore,

right?

Uh, howl huckster huge.

Oh, here it is: uh, humanity, and while I'm here, humility.

Better make sure that one's properly gone.

Obviously, there's quite a lot of work to be done here, so why don't we have the theme tune for this week's news quiz?

Hello from Dundee

we have come to record this week so we can be in a place where one of the football teams has a shirt the same colour as the face of the American president.

Right, our teams this week, in tribute to Donald Trump's first few days in office, we have Team Monopoly against Team Get Out of Jail Free.

On Team Monopoly, we have Andrew Maxwell and Jay Lafferty.

And on team Get Out of Jail Free, we have Stuart Mitchell and one of our leading crime novelists, Val McDermott.

Right, our first question to Jay and Andrew.

Let's put this in a manner that comedians might understand.

Who this week did a 30-minute gig that really split the audience before signing a lot of autographs?

This would be Donald Trump.

Correct.

They've made him the President of America.

Spoiler alert.

You know the fellow,

he's a Scottish golf club owner.

And he's done such a great job of that.

The Americans have made him the president.

And he's got a best friend now.

That's nice.

Elon Musk is his best pal.

It's just inevitable that Donald Trump's going to fall out with him.

And if he does, Musk is going to lose.

You know, in the Twitter spat they'll have.

Because Trump, you know, know, he's funny online.

He comes up with mean nicknames for people.

You know what I mean?

Sleepy Joe, Crooked Hillary.

What's Musk's one going to be?

I call him Crypto Crybaby.

Jay, did you enjoy the inauguration?

No.

Correct.

I feel about Trump's second presidency the same way that I feel about my early onset menopause

you know I do I feel like Trump is a good allegory for the menopause because it's shock and disbelief that it's actually physically happening

and then that gives way to like a slow lingering dread that it's only going to get worse until I die

I mean come on you need to look at Trump I mean at the end of the day he eats all the junk food he wants He's never off the golf course.

And also, his wife lives somewhere else.

He might be the American president, but he's living the Scottish dream.

Amongst the executive orders, he announced the renaming of the Gulf of Mexico and calling Denali, the celebrity Alaskan mountain, Mount McKinley.

I've not got a problem with renaming.

I still think of America as West Cornwall Plus, to be honest.

Well I have more on Trump and Scotland in a little bit.

Another question now for Stuart and Val.

Trump has signed up to an exclusive glamorous club this week.

The other members of that club are Iran, Libya and Yemen.

So it's pretty exclusive.

Can you tell me what that club is?

Is it the Stormy Daniels Appreciation Society?

That's not what I've got written down.

Should I just tell you the answer?

They are now the four countries not signed up to the Paris Accords for the EU.

I think more countries are worried about the the tariffs

than that.

I mean, Scotland, for example, what's it going to put tariffs on in Scotland?

American candy shops.

I mean, how can you put ten percent on money laundering?

Is this when you're putting out the World Health Organization and the Paris Accords, are you concerned or excited by this?

It's kind of this whole Paris thing is terrifying because Trump has become president of a country which is quite literally on fire.

You know, the LA fires now have been going for, I think it is coming up for three weeks, and there's no sign of them abating.

They're currently looking to burn longer than Les Truss's premiership.

But he thinks it's California's own fault that they're burning because they've got fish conservation in Northern California, which he says means that all the water isn't trickling down to where the fire is.

And he actually said this week, I don't think we should give California anything until they let the water run down.

What?

Right, let's have another question, shall we?

Why were even some Republicans reduced to saying this week, pardon?

What was that?

I think this is to do with the thousand odd criminals that Trump pardoned on his first day in office, the people who stormed the Capitol.

So he gave over a thousand people pardons.

And it was quite interesting watching the Republicans try and not answer the question about whether or not they thought that that was correct.

There was more sidestepping than there is in strictly come dancing.

They kind of were approaching it.

I was watching one Republican and I thought, oh, he's approaching that the same way I do when my little boy asks for a play date in front of the child in question.

Initially, I pretend I don't hear what he said,

and then when he repeats it, and he'll say something like, Oh, but you let him come last time and I'll say something like, Well, I think we're looking towards the future and not the past.

But on the pardon thing, I thought it was really interesting that the only person that wasn't given a pardon and the person who I think most needs a pardon was Melania.

You know, she's still in that marriage.

She looked thrilled to be there, didn't she?

She always looked thrilled.

The Secret Service, like trying to keep her away from the bar, not because she was getting drunk, because she was asking for Angela.

Elon Musk, the allegedly fictitious cartoon evil genius,

claimed that the two straight-arm salutes he did were not Nazi salutes.

For ten points, can anyone give me the most convincing explanation of what he was actually doing?

I think we have to be sorry for him.

We've all had heartburden, haven't we?

You get the heartburden, it's absolutely hellish, and you just have to grab your chest.

Give it a wee rub, and that eases it, and then you throw your arm out

to show your joy at not having the heartburn anymore.

I think that Elon Musk, I don't know if anybody else agrees with this, but Elon Musk sounds like an Aldi deodorant.

And he looks like he would smell like one as well.

Just like a used car salesman that's been stuck in a lift.

That's how I feel like he smells.

So then I thought, oh, like, maybe to get rid of that kind of Aldi body smell, that he was, you know, the nippy mint body wash.

Maybe he had used the nippy mint body wash in that morning and he hadn't quite managed to wash it off with all his excitement and just suddenly he was just getting out nip under there.

That's the only thing I could come up with.

Either that or, you know, he's a Nazi.

The other possible explanations are that he was demonstrating the optimum trajectory for throwing a javelin.

He was demonstrating how to scrape snow off a car windscreen.

And how to stroke a dog that had fallen asleep lying headfirst down on a playground slide.

So

I'm going to give the 10 points to Val for that.

I think that's the best explanation.

The Anti-Defamation League in the US, what a league that is.

I think you can watch the anti-defamation playoffs next weekend on Skysport 53.

That's an organization dedicated to combating anti-Semitism and other strands of prejudice.

Described it as, quotes, an awkward gesture in a moment of enthusiasm.

And I think that might be an early contender for euphemistic understatement of the year.

Possibly the millennium.

Yes, Mr.

Musk, easily the most disappointing Roger Hargreaves book for me.

He

is,

of course, not the first person to have more money than cents.

It's just the ratio between the two.

He denied making a Nazi salute, although I think it's fair to say he's unable to deny making the kind of salute that someone might make if they were playing the part of a fascist leader in a film about a let me emphasized fictional nation based on Nazi Germany.

Let's move on to Trump's Scottish heritage.

Now of course his Scottish heritage is writ large in his love of walls across southern borders, his lifelong commitment to unhealthy food, and his daily beauty regime, which famously involves bathing his face in a vat of iron brew.

But can our panellists tell me?

You made him, Scotland, can our panellists tell me what bit of Scottish land does Trump apparently have his acquisitive eye on?

Anyone?

Is it the Isle of Lewis?

Because he's actually got three cousins there, or as they're called in Lewis, Tinder matches.

Good answer, but incorrect.

Any other suggestions?

What little bit of land was he trying to get hold of?

It's actually 10 yards of turf at Turnbury Golf Course, so that from one of the T's you get a better view of Turnbury Castle.

But I mean, is that just a gateway to trying to take over the whole of Scotland, do you think?

I know he's threatening tariffs on whiskey.

Yes.

I think we should sidestep this by making a new cocktail iron iron brewing bucky

and claim that we have created it in honour of the orange man.

He won't tax it then.

It's too vain to tax it.

Apparently, Trump may visit Scotland in

what was described in the newspaper as the summer, but there might have been a misprint.

Are you excited by Trump coming to commune with his heritage?

Am I excited about it?

No.

I think even worse, because we have lost our fabulous Jeannie Godley, who always gave him such a beautiful warm welcome.

And I feel, you know, possibly in honour of Janie and in our memory when he does arrive, that we should all just turn up with our own wee sights.

Yes, the latest instalment in America's harrowingly unsuccessful 248.5 year experiment in splitting off from the UK has played out this week.

It's really not going well for them.

It's really not going well.

As the old saying goes, a week is a long time in politics.

And right now, if you're not a fan of Trump and everything he stands for, 207 more weeks really feels about as appealing as eternity on hold to an HMRC call centre.

Trump was back at the capital, the proverbial dog returning to its vomit.

The political sledgehammer that America has voted to crack itself in the knots with.

Obviously, it's hard to understand another another country's politics as an outsider, but seeing America vote for Trump again after everything he's done and

the so-called American values that they like to pride themselves on, to me, it's like when you meet someone who's lost both hands in separate threshing machine accidents.

One, you can easily ascribe to misfortune, perhaps out of stretch, curiosity, maybe if we're being very generous, horseplay.

But two

starting to look like that's what they wanted to happen.

Right, at the end of that round, the scores are now Andrew and Jay have six and Val and Stewart have 12.

Right, we're here in Dundee, the city of the three J's, Jute, Jam, and Journalism.

So our panelists can choose one of those Js to have a question on.

Jay, since you're called Jay, I'll let you have the choice.

This Jute, Jam, or Journalism?

Let's go with journalism.

Okay, your question on journalism is, which newspaper publishing house had to pay out a princely sum this week?

Oh, I think beautifully it was the sun.

Well, yes, news group newspapers, owners of the sun, yes.

Yeah, they had to pay Prince Harry.

It's been a nice change to have a legal battle where there's a member of the royal family you can actually root for.

I've no doubt he probably must have been sweating as he waited for the verdict, I guess.

If only they'd waited, they could have got all they needed from the 416 pages of spare for the princely sum of £4.49 for a used second-hand copy.

Ah, the sun, what a newspaper.

I think you misread your script there.

It should be what?

A newspaper!

I think it's interesting because all the other people that got destroyed with the phone hacking and got their lives taken apart did not get massive payouts.

So it's the usual thing.

You give it to those who already have it and ignore the ones that haven't got it.

There's my socialist speech for the evening.

The news group apologised to Prince Harry, the former third in line to the throne professional prince, who sadly dropped down the rankings in recent years.

Disappointing form.

He's down to sixth, I think.

He has leveled out a bit recently, but it's hard to see him getting back up that

table.

At the end of our royal round, the scores are 10 to Andrew and Jay and 14 to Fallon Stewart.

Right, we're gonna.

Hey, it's Brian Christopher.

Ready to chill the summer?

You're in luck.

I'm hanging out at Chumpa Casino, and you're in for a treat.

Chillax with hundreds of games, daily bonuses, exciting spins, and epic prizes.

It's all here, always free to play.

Kick back, have fun, and head to chumpa casino.com.

Let's make this summer legendary.

Sponsored by Chumpa Casino, no purchase necessary, VGW Group, void where prohibited by law, TTNC's 21 plus.

With the Wealthfront Cash Account, you can earn 4% annual percentage yield from partner banks on your cash until you're ready to invest.

The cash account grows your money with no account maintenance fees and free instant withdrawals whenever you need it.

Money works better here.

Go to wealthfront.com to start saving and investing today.

Cash account offered by Wealthfront Brokerage LLC member Fenra SIPC.

Wealthfront is not a bank.

The APY on cash deposits as of December 27, 2024 is representative, subject to change, and requires no minimum.

Funds in the cash account are swept to partner banks where they earn the variable APY.

Have a round on Scotland now.

It's your home or home round.

You can have a question about Scotland or Scotland.

Jay and Andrew, Scotland or Scotland?

Oh, Scotland.

Okay, Scottish Health Minister Neil Gray has admitted misleading Parliament over what?

Bizarre use of public funds.

Supporting Aberdeen.

Essentially correct.

Yeah.

Can you give me a little more detail on that?

Yeah, he likes them.

He thinks it's worth leaving Edinburgh and going all the way up to Aberdeen to support the Dons.

That's what he thinks.

And not only thinks that, he thinks that we should pay for him to do that.

Right.

That's basically correct.

He's used taxpayer-funded limos to attend football matches and then apparently wasn't entirely 100% truthful in Parliament.

I mean, as a taxpayer here in Scotland, Jay, do you think this is a valid use of your money to?

I just think it's a good reminder of where Scottish politics is on the world stage.

Because in America, they've just elected a president who's accused of lying about his involvement in a plot to bring down democracy and change the course of Western civilization.

And in Scotland we have sidelined a health secretary who's accused of fibbing about getting a taxi to a football match.

A Scottish football match.

The only thing more embarrassing for a Scottish minister is if he had used the car to go and watch cricket.

Sorry.

At least to be fair, Andy, you could prove that if the UK Health Minister went to a test match, because he could just say, Well, I'm just seeing if cricket bores you to death.

And it seems just gone to zero points.

Why wouldn't he just make something up?

I mean, he has been truthful.

Although he sort of delayed what he was saying, just make something up.

At least say that I don't know he was there to see if a doctor running onto the pitch after an injured player could be replaced by a nurse practitioner.

And then, when she's not running the line, she's, I don't know,

testing the fans' testicles or something.

Just make it up.

Have you been, Andy?

Have you ever actually been to a Scottish Premier League game?

Oh, I have.

Celtic about over 20 years ago, I reckon.

Henrik Lawson era.

You can't recommend it enough.

Oh, if you've never been to a Scottish football game, amazing.

So good for the self-esteem.

Amazing.

Amazing.

You can actually watch the play on the pitch and honestly be able to say to yourself, I could do that.

I could do that.

If I could pass the piss test, I could be on the first game.

So he basically

used the car to attend four Aberdeen games and five Scotland games.

And just like my blood test, I'm still waiting five months for a result.

The thing he's got into trouble for is misleading Parliament.

It's not actually maybe even the taxis things, it's the fact that he tried to lie about it.

And I was pretty sure that the ability to mislead Parliament was a necessary skill for an MP.

Like, when did they start apologising for it?

You would never have got like Boris or anything like that apologising for misleading the Parliament.

An MP apologising to other MPs for misleading Parliament is like one of the traitors apologising to Claudia Winkleman for being a bit shifty.

A limo, though.

You imagine rocking up in

Aberdeen in a limo.

They must think you're from space.

Odd Dundee.

I mean, I guess as the old saying goes, if you want to win the lottery, you've got to buy a ticket.

Likewise, if you want to go to Aberdeen versus Ross County, you've got to take a publicly funded limousine.

That's one of the basic rules of life.

Of course, transport is famously expensive in Scotland.

For example, it costs around £450 million to get a ferry from Port Glasgow to Port Glasgow without ever leaving Port Glasgow.

And

of course, it's not so bad in Dundee this weekend

with Storm Eowen having a special offer that if you just jump in the air, you get a free flight to Norway.

I recommend hand luggage only.

Scotland or Scotland?

Scotland.

Okay,

Why this week were people celebrating some outstanding hardcore drug abuse that paves the way for a better future?

Well, we do have a slight problem in Scotland with drug death, and they decided that the way to deal with this is to set up a place where people can go and safely take their drugs and it's supervised.

And I think this is a good thing.

One guy went 103 times already.

I've been saying for a while that Michael Gove needs to get out more.

When it comes to innovative ways to take drugs, we cannot be beaten.

Have you ever tried putting a parasite mall as a suppository?

Cures a head.

Well,

not yet, but how much long have we got in the recording?

Probably better on a radio show than a TV one, I guess.

Just pop it in, son, pop it in.

Just lift up your gown and pop it in.

Just because I wear a toga during recordings does not mean it can be used for medical purposes.

I I mean, this is a policy that seems to have an initiative that seems sensible, humane, and backed by scientific evidence that it will work.

That's a bit out there these days, isn't it?

That kind of stuff, isn't it?

It opened and it had been used 130 times in the first week, and that was just by the staff.

Wait till they opened it up properly.

I think

it's a great thing.

Scottish drug deaths are the highest in Europe and they're higher than the USA, which is insane.

And the only joke is that we haven't thought about having safe consumption rooms before.

Like Dundee's drug mortality rate is two times higher than the national average.

And yet, they don't have one safe consumption room.

Doesn't make sense.

One final Scotland question.

Dundee has sadly lost out to Glasgow for what accolade this week?

Anyone?

Sexiest accent?

Close.

Really?

At least very close, but not sexiest.

You're on the right lines with accent?

Heart-throbbiest.

That's basically the same, isn't it?

Is it?

Most honourable accent.

Yes.

The Glaswegians.

Yeah.

Listen.

I totally understand this, because if we say we're going to punch you, we are.

I know, we've got the kind of accent in the west of Scotland where everything sounds like a threat.

That's a very pretty dog.

I think that should be used as the national emergency tone.

Visit Scotland.

They did a survey of 50,000 women all over the UK and asked them to rate, I think there was like 30 different regional accents and rate them for sexiest and least sexy.

The one that won at the time was the Edinburgh BA pilot voice.

Just coming into land, that sort of...

Just blow the froth off a few.

Head off to watch the game at Watsonians.

Vladi good guy.

Got an 800-pound bike.

I cycle around the Pentland Hills.

People get to see my Lycra ass crack.

That was considered the sexiest.

The least sexy of all was the bromie.

Was the bromie accent, right?

This is crazy.

Second least sexy was mute.

Come on!

This study,

it was led by Cambridge University, and I think it's led to every male Scottish actor to go and pay them a wee visit.

Because we pride ourselves on the typecasting of the seemingly endless line of Scottish actors playing the quintessential Glasgow hardman.

And now we've got this like trustworthy, honourable Cambridge Seal of Approval.

I mean, what's going to happen to all those actors?

Because, like, we aren't cut out for romantic comedy.

Do you mean, can you imagine?

Haw,

see you.

You complete me.

Akira, carrier, you're hurting my hair.

Here's looking at you, Hen.

These Cambridge people that were doing this research, it must have been like quite a small pool because it feels very much that, in order to get this honourable Glaswegian accent, that everybody was doing their best phone voice.

And then I was thinking, the phone voice, that's like a thing that's going to be lost to the Gen Zs.

Because they don't know the joy of hearing your mother interrupted mid-sweary rant.

Just to go, 0141636892.

Yes, this is she.

Sprivers get a hard time for their gender exclusiveness, but my mum was leading more pronouns in the 90s, so she fell ahead of the curve.

The study found that people with Glaswegian accents were likely to be honourable.

People with scouse accents were most likely to be giggling about Man United's current form,

and people with Dundee accents were most likely to accept obviously insincere flattery by laughing when talked about.

And people with acute accents were most likely to be French.

That's the correct response.

That was very grav.

But anyway, exciting times for Glasgow, not only having the most honourable sounding voice, but also hosting the Commonwealth Games next year, and also in line for hosting the 2028 Republican National Convention if Trump's plan for conquering cold places continues.

Also, this week, a prominent brand of Smart Doorbells announced that for the first time you could make your Smart Doorbell talk in a Scottish accent.

As Khasada from Glasgow won the audition, managing to see off the incredible challenge of Mel Gibson.

So well done to

Ask Best for that.

And the final scores are 16 points all.

Do look out for the exclusive coverage on Five Live of the best thing ever competition.

First round matches to find the best thing ever to start all the arguments about what is the best thing ever.

Our first round matches live on Five Live this weekend are Forks versus Impressionist Art.

Sliced bread versus penicillin

and bouncy castles versus an independent judiciary.

So

some classic first-round ties there, no easy winners there.

Thank you very much for listening.

I've been Andy Zoltzman.

Goodbye.

Taking part in the new squiz were Andrew Maxwell, Jay Lafferty, Stuart Mitchell and Val McDermott.

In the chair was me, Andy Zaltzman, and additional material was written by Rebecca Bain, Cody Dahler, Alexandra Haddow and Peter Talouch.

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

Hello, Greg Jenner here.

I am the host of You're Dead to Me from BBC Radio 4.

We are the comedy show that takes history seriously and then laughs at it.

And we're back for a brand new series, Series 9, where we're covering all sorts of things from Aristotle to the legends of King Arthur to the history of coffee to the reign of Catherine of Medici of France.

We are looking at the arts and crafts movement and the life of Sojourna Truth and how cuneiform writing systems worked in the Bronze Age.

Loads of different stuff.

It's a fantastic series.

It's funny.

We get great historians.

We get great comedians.

So if you want to listen to your dead to me, listen first on BBC Sounds.

With a Wealth Front cash account, your uninvested cash earns 4% annual percentage yield from partner banks with free instant withdrawals, even on weekends weekends and holidays.

4% APY is not a promotional rate, and there's no limit to what you can deposit and earn.

Wealthfront, money works better here.

Go to WealthRunt.com to start today.

Cash account offered by Wealthfront Brokers LLC member Fenra SIPC.

Wealthfront is not a bank.

The APY on cash deposits as of December 27, 2024 is representative, subject to change, and requires no minimum.

Funds in the cash account are swept to partner banks where they earn the variable APY.

Want to stop engine problems before they start?

Pick up a can of CFOAM Motor Treatment.

C-Foam helps engines start easier, run smoother, and last longer.

Trusted by millions every day, C-Foam is safe and easy to use in any engine.

Just pour it in your fuel tank.

Make the proven choice with C-Foam.

Available everywhere, automotive products are sold.

Seafoam!