Best of The News Quiz 2024

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Speaker 1 Hello, I am Andy Zoltzman, and this is the official Newsquiz Review of 2024.

Speaker 1 So this frankly substandard decade has just barreled snout first into its halfway point.

Speaker 1 So what better time to look back at the last 12 months, or at least the bits of the last 12 months that we've been on air for, which is about half of those 12 months?

Speaker 1 The year began with Britain looking to the horizon and not much liking what it saw.

Speaker 1 A national scandal dating back 25 years was jabbed firmly back into the public eye like an unwanted pickled carrot by a public inquiry and much more importantly and effectively, by a hit TV drama series.

Speaker 4 Our first question goes to Ian and Aisha.

Speaker 1 Which television program has brought brought a national scandal into the spotlight?

Speaker 14 The teletubbies.

Speaker 9 Right, can you explain a little bit?

Speaker 14 Not one of them had a TV licence.

Speaker 14 Well, yeah,

Speaker 14 it's the big post office drama, which I haven't watched, and I'm not going to watch it because I know what happens now.

Speaker 14 I know that it's a serious miscarriage of justice, but what I will say is... So the last time I went to the post office, someone had finished and I went up to the counter.

Speaker 14 The woman there, without looking me in the eye, said, I'm not ready yet.

Speaker 14 So I walked back to the queue, and as soon as I got back to the queue, she pressed a thing that went, Cashier number four, please.

Speaker 14 So, what I'm saying is, I wouldn't mind if some of them are in prison.

Speaker 9 Some of them deserve it.

Speaker 16 When I first heard about a royal meal scandal, everyone was like, Oh, what's Andrew done now?

Speaker 16 And also, I find this really, really difficult as a kind of an Asian person because it was like post office owners versus IT guys, and it was like it was horrible to see my people turn against each other.

Speaker 16 Very, very uncomfortable. But just on one side, note, the thing that is so extraordinary about this is we've had a lot of scandals recently, and this just sums up the British legal system.

Speaker 16 You've got Michelle Moan, who is innocent until proven guilty, and you have these post office people who are guilty until proved otherwise.

Speaker 9 It is just absolutely mad.

Speaker 17 The real scandal of this is, after all, is they're still using the Horizon thing. They're still using this technology.

Speaker 17 It's a bit like if in Terminator, they'd have gone, okay, Skynet did become self-aware and tried to kill everyone and everything, but we've had a chat with the programmers and

Speaker 17 we think that we've fixed most of the glitches now.

Speaker 17 And you know, with the post office as well, even if they do deliver compensation, they'll probably leave it with a neighbour.

Speaker 1 Miscarriages of justice, traditionally a proud pillar of our national heritage, and one of the very few that still seems to be functioning just as well as ever.

Speaker 1 Another stalwart plank of our nation, of course, is the news quiz, which has been impartially quipping about current affairs ever since the famous special Go Home Romans episode in 55 BC.

Speaker 1 But we came under fire for a perceived lack of balance. For the sake of balance, I should emphasise that not everyone thinks the show lacks balance.

Speaker 1 I'm not saying who's right or wrong, it's just important to present both sides of the argument.

Speaker 3 Transport Minister Hugh Merriman described which BBC Radio 4 show,

Speaker 13 which you, yes, you, I'm talking to you, are currently listening to as completely biased.

Speaker 19 Oh, I feel so awful.

Speaker 19 So, Hugh Merriman, Transport Secretary, said that he listened to the first 10 minutes of last week's show and it was completely anti-Tory bias.

Speaker 19 And I'm just so glad he didn't listen to the last 20 minutes.

Speaker 19 But no, genuinely, I wept because I'm such a fan of Hugh Merriman.

Speaker 19 I don't know about you guys, but he's always been my absolute faith.

Speaker 19 I'm a Merry fan, I'll admit it.

Speaker 19 His lovely rich hair, have you seen his lovely hair, his eyes like limpid pools, his breath smells of butterscotch angel delight? Did you know?

Speaker 19 And my whole family were like, You've upset Hugh Merriman. And my kids were in tears saying,

Speaker 19 Mummy, he's our favourite apart from Grant's shapes.

Speaker 19 So, yeah, I'm just so sorry to Hugh and to all who sailing him.

Speaker 19 But then he went on to say the BBC's bias. The other example he gave was that he'd been attacked on universal credit by Neil Buchanan,

Speaker 19 which, unfortunately, Neil Buchanan is the name of a children's TV presenter who worked on ITV.

Speaker 19 So

Speaker 19 it wasn't a brilliant interview for Hugh.

Speaker 4 So yeah, you got the wrong Buchanan.

Speaker 13 I think you meant Neil Buchanan, the Whig MP for Glasgow from 1741.

Speaker 13 Isn't the internet fun?

Speaker 3 But of course, I mean, the art attack was ITV, was it?

Speaker 13 But there's a long history on the BBC of using children's art shows to promulgate anti-Tory propaganda. You listen to this from the supposedly neutral Tony Hart on the Heartbeat Show back in 1988.

Speaker 21 Hello, and welcome to another Heartbeat.

Speaker 23 And today the theme is all to do with stone.

Speaker 13 Now that sounds perfectly innocent, but what happens when we play it backwards?

Speaker 9 Maggie, Maggie, Maggie! Ouch, ouch, ouch!

Speaker 1 As the Conservative Party were to find out over the following few months, some people had genuinely become very biased against the Tories, those people being their own voters.

Speaker 1 In May, interim Prime Minister Rishi Sunak weckly called a general election, and soon he he and Labour leader Keir Starmer went on the telly to debate the state of the nation.

Speaker 17 The problem with Rishi is he does come across like the bloke that you know when your teacher would say on a Thursday there's a test tomorrow, Rishi would be going, yes!

Speaker 17 He thinks he should be Prime Minister because he revised hard enough for it, doesn't he?

Speaker 16 He's definitely got headboy vibes.

Speaker 17 He's definitely got headboy vibes. And I think the Starma is like, he's just alright.
He sort of seems like the first bloke that your mum dates after getting divorced, doesn't he?

Speaker 9 He's got that.

Speaker 9 You're like, yeah, fine.

Speaker 17 I don't think he's her one, but certainly why she rebuilds her self-esteem.

Speaker 9 You know, he seems like

Speaker 17 he treats her nice.

Speaker 13 I feel like this is the most accurate explanation of our political landscape I've ever heard, Jeffrey said.

Speaker 1 Soon the parties had to regretfully lay out their proposals to win the support, or more realistically, the temporary grudging tolerance of a sceptical, demoralized voting public.

Speaker 1 It was manifestival season.

Speaker 25 Everyone's got their manifestos this week. I think the Conservatives have the most forlorn manifesto, I think.

Speaker 25 It's kind of like

Speaker 25 a sort of marriage guidance therapy manifesto.

Speaker 26 Kind of going like, I can change.

Speaker 25 Your new boyfriend's really boring. Give me another chance.
It's like in no other field of life would it be acceptable to act like the Conservative manifesto.

Speaker 25 It's like your builder going, you know, I thought we'd give your new conservatory a sort of Palace of Versailles feel.

Speaker 9 Cooler thing.

Speaker 25 You're going like, but you built the garage out of mud and it fell down in a week.

Speaker 7 But they just, it's the chutzpah of it that I quite admire.

Speaker 1 We'll do it differently next time because we can, just didn't.

Speaker 27 They don't seem confident. I don't know if you've seen the Tory Manifesto, but the cover is a picture of Rishi Sunak clearing his desk.

Speaker 27 Just putting like gonks and potted plants in a cardboard box.

Speaker 25 We also had the Labour Manifesto, of course, just today,

Speaker 25 yesterday, or whatever, on Thursday.

Speaker 25 It was the front of the Evening Standard. It said, Keir Starmer wants to relight Britain's fire.

Speaker 25 And I thought his speech was sort of amazing because he basically basically said, How can we escape this feeling of insecurity?

Speaker 9 I need you so much. And I'm not sure you really need me.
But if we all stand up, etc.

Speaker 27 For me, Starmer's Labour government is going to be like Turkish delights. You know, go with me.
You know,

Speaker 27 when you read the Chronicles of Narnia, you hear about Turkish delights, and I spent my entire adult life thinking I would love Turkish delights.

Speaker 27 And then when you actually try Turkish delights, this is horrible.

Speaker 9 I hate this.

Speaker 4 I'm not enjoying this at all. I'd the same with lions from Reading Economics.

Speaker 9 Real disappointment.

Speaker 25 Isn't it a vital theme always of like Labour governments that Labour voters don't like them? Isn't that just always happen?

Speaker 25 You know, it's like Labour sort of in this tireless war against the real enemy that is Labour.

Speaker 4 And there's still a good amount of in-fighting.

Speaker 22 I mean, it does look like Labour's going to win, but they're not taking it lying down, are they?

Speaker 9 Not coming up without a fight.

Speaker 1 With polling day looming, we at the Newsquiz decided to unleash the the animals.

Speaker 18 One of the key issues in this election campaign is all the key issues that have barely been talked about, the so-called elephants in the room.

Speaker 18 So in this, our last news quiz, before we all vote, we thought we should hear from those elephants.

Speaker 10 Bring in the elephants!

Speaker 18 Just hope we don't have another Blue Peter incident.

Speaker 18 But our panelists will choose one of the elephants in the room.

Speaker 3 The elephant will tell them what undiscussed, avoided or under-the-carpeted election issue they represent. Our panel simply have to translate that issue from elephant into English.

Speaker 18 Luckily I speak elephants.

Speaker 13 Benefits of a private education is basically the same as Latin.

Speaker 13 I'm African but I don't speak elephant.

Speaker 18 Jeff and Katie choose your elephant. Do you want elephant A, B, C, D or E?

Speaker 17 What do you think, Katie?

Speaker 3 C. C.
Okay, elephant C.

Speaker 13 Right, which much overlooked election issue was that?

Speaker 9 I think the elephant sounds disappointed.

Speaker 18 Yeah, it sounds like

Speaker 17 they had hoped for deregulation outside the EU, but it hasn't really materialised in the way they thought it would be.

Speaker 12 And I think maybe they thought there'd be a few more trade deals?

Speaker 17 They thought that, yeah, there'd be more trade deals, and Britain would become

Speaker 17 more like Singapore on Thames rather than Brussels by the sea.

Speaker 7 Yeah.

Speaker 9 Is that our elephant?

Speaker 18 That is correct.

Speaker 9 It is Brexit. Yeah, why not?

Speaker 18 Why do you think there's been so little Brexit talk in this campaign?

Speaker 12 Well, it's funny because if you ask a politician that, they'll say no one cares about Brexit anymore.

Speaker 1 But then you think, well,

Speaker 12 if no one cares, why are you so scared to mention it?

Speaker 12 Because even the Lib Dems don't want to talk about it very much. And Kirstama doesn't want to go anywhere near it because I think the Red Wall voters he's trying to get back.

Speaker 12 Lots of voters in 2019 didn't like the Labour position.

Speaker 12 And then Rishisinek doesn't massively want to talk about it, even though he's done a tweet or two, because there's lots of voters on the right going to reform who think he's done a bad job of delivering it.

Speaker 12 So no one really wants to go near it. And it means they're all kind of being let off the hook because the others don't want to accuse the other because then they would have to talk about it.

Speaker 9 Right.

Speaker 13 It is a forbidden word. If you stand in front of a mirror and you say Brexit, Brexit, Brexit.

Speaker 18 Logic for Arge appears.

Speaker 1 So election day arrived.

Speaker 1 The Sun newspaper finally endorsed Labour, reminiscent of when they picked the USA to win the race to the moon, just as Neil Armstrong's foot was emerging from the Apollo 11 lunar landing module.

Speaker 1 And sure enough, Labour's vote share slumped disastrously and they romped to victory. Thanks be to democracy.
It moves in mysterious ways.

Speaker 28 I mean, can you call it a win if your opponent cuts off one of their legs and then tries to finish the race as two separate athletes?

Speaker 25 It is confusing.

Speaker 25 I mean, it's like, so Kier Starmer, he's now got a mandate to do the very important things for Britain that are so important for Britain that he didn't want to risk blowing his chance to get to do them by telling us what they were beforehand, which is great.

Speaker 25 But there is this sort of looming sense that it's like an imperfect victory, even though it's such a massive victory.

Speaker 25 Which I think it's a bit, I'm not sure about that, because it's like it is done now. We are done with elections until the next election.

Speaker 25 It's like if you have this sort of vicious, drunken fight with your other half and about all about who was an idiot at a party, and you come home and you shout at each other, and you narrowly win the argument, and then the next morning your wife is like, well, we need to reopen that.

Speaker 25 And you go, no, no, no, we'll talk about it again in five years.

Speaker 1 As Labor said about the challenging task of meeting the expectations it had so skillfully lowered, attention popped across the Atlantic to the quadrennial festival of national self-loathing that is an American presidential election.

Speaker 1 And Joe Biden hit the ground stumbling.

Speaker 21 He clearly isn't up to the job at the moment. He really, really isn't.
And the only person that's going to take him out of that position, apparently, is the Lord Almighty. Yes.

Speaker 21 So, which sounds quite dramatic.

Speaker 21 But, you know, I mean, the thing about it is, he's only three years older than Trump. But Trump has done that incredible thing of being both alive and mummified at the same time.

Speaker 21 I think, I think Trump is like one of those fast food burgers that if you put it in a cupboard, it just won't decompose.

Speaker 21 Like, if you dug him up, they'd be like, yep, that's Trump. Yeah, he's just made up of highly preserved burger meat and Dorito dust.
That's him.

Speaker 13 And he'll probably still be riding quite high in the polls at that point.

Speaker 6 He'll probably be doing that.

Speaker 21 People were originally behind him after the debate. There was a lot of sort of Democratic support for him, sort of going, you know.

Speaker 21 But then this week, George Clooney, one of the biggest Democratic fundraisers, has come out and gone, he's not up to the job. And he should know because he was an ER doctor for a very long time.

Speaker 21 It's his family, really, though, isn't it?

Speaker 21 It's Jill Biden. And we all know why.
People hate it when their spouses retire.

Speaker 3 I think the problem is, you mentioned Trump is also old, but the difficulty for Biden is that people won't vote for Biden because they think he might be mad and detached from reality.

Speaker 3 Whereas for Trump, people want to vote for him because he is mad and detached from reality.

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Speaker 1 Freshly convicted felon Donald Trump was now looking an almost unassailable favorite to win November's election.

Speaker 1 He survived an assassination attempt, prompting a rare instance of the American right criticising gun violence, and his besotted supporters took to their first aid kits to show their adoration for their Hall of Fame nation splitter.

Speaker 19 I think it's very sweet that they're all wearing the little earplaster to support him. I'm going to support Biden with his COVID and just go back to bed.

Speaker 29 My favourite bit is when the Secret Service came out trying to defend their lack of service and they said, Oh, we couldn't put guys in that roof.

Speaker 7 I'm like, What?

Speaker 29 They're like, Yeah, we couldn't. Well, the shooter was the roof was a bit loose.

Speaker 29 And I thought, At no point have I ever watched James Bond or The Born Identity, and two guys have jumped over a fescale to a building and went, Have you seen a risk assessment for us?

Speaker 19 Yeah, the movies, you know, you sort of picture them leaping in front, going, No,

Speaker 19 whereas what actually happened was they were like, Well, duck if you want, I'm not your mum.

Speaker 17 They nailed the secret bit

Speaker 20 because she didn't know they were there. But it was interesting watching him sort of go down.
And then he said, Where are my shoes?

Speaker 29 That's what he said.

Speaker 20 Didn't he? He had sort of blood on his face. He was being bundled to the ground.
And I thought, that's a night out in Nottingham.

Speaker 25 I've heard people say, Where are my shoes?

Speaker 29 They also said

Speaker 29 we need to take violence away from American politics. And I was like, Abraham Lincoln was literally assassinated.
You have always had violence in American politics. What are you talking about?

Speaker 29 He said, I've been doing this forever. The guy never got in the school rifle club.

Speaker 9 This school had a rifle club.

Speaker 20 But it's also, it missed Trump as well.

Speaker 7 It's like the riot guy.

Speaker 25 You know, the riot guy is the guy who's saying you've got to take violence out of politics.

Speaker 25 The guy who literally got them to storm the parliament is the guy who's saying, it's getting a bit violent, guys.

Speaker 9 I mean, come on.

Speaker 13 Are you suggesting there might be elements of hypocrisy in American political discourse?

Speaker 1 As America continued to eviscerate itself as only America can, the Starmer government over here, fresh from its eight-minute honeymoon period, found that it wasn't just the mathematical contortions of the first past the post system that didn't quite add up, nor did our national accounts.

Speaker 1 £22 billion had apparently gone missing, and we had to pay for it somehow.

Speaker 34 So how they're going to do it is what they always do. Things like library, because that's where the 22 billion quid's gone, isn't it?

Speaker 34 Over the last, that's who's caused the 22 billion deficit is libraries. That's what's happened.

Speaker 34 The energy companies, bless them, the shareholders of the energy companies have done as much as they can, they've been as kind as possible.

Speaker 34 No, no, no, have all that money, but libraries, you go to any library and there's gold-plated Agatha Christie's everywhere,

Speaker 34 Hector in library. Do you know they've got us a librarian, Beyoncé?

Speaker 17 Finally, finally, the word is out because libraries try to keep it quiet for years.

Speaker 19 I love the idea of Beyoncé being a librarian, that if you liked it, then you should put a hold on it.

Speaker 1 Now, as all of our American listeners are no doubt aware, there's a famous old saying in American politics, if in doubt, groundlessly accuse immigrants of eating people's pets.

Speaker 4 Are you an American cat or dog?

Speaker 4 Are you worried that you've been nibbled at, chewed, or swallowed by someone from another country?

Speaker 4 Then you might be entirely fictional.

Speaker 1 Well, that is further conclusive evidence, and I'm sure you will all agree with me on this, that America's foolhardy 248-year experiment in going it alone is going very badly indeed.

Speaker 1 Come home, America. No shame.
Love the idea. You gave it a good crack.
It just hasn't worked out. All is forgiven.
Kirstama, meanwhile, was discovering the first law of being Prime Minister.

Speaker 1 It's not easy, so don't make it unnecessarily harder for yourself by taking a bucket load of freebies, having constantly criticised the previous government for taking bucket loads of freebies.

Speaker 3 Ian, I don't know who pays for your clothes.

Speaker 14 Yeah, it's very hard to slam someone about their appearance on the radio.

Speaker 14 You can just go back to everyone with made up. So why don't you have any clothes on, Simon?

Speaker 14 Andy, Andy, why have you drawn that offensive moustache on your top lip?

Speaker 25 Why are the audience all looking like this?

Speaker 14 I've reacted very badly there.

Speaker 14 I've reacted like a man who clearly doesn't look good because I've gone very defensive very quickly.

Speaker 14 I could do with David Lammy defending me. David Lamy's come to Kiersteiner's defence.
He said the matter was not a transparency issue, which is very good when we're talking about clothes.

Speaker 14 But yeah, he said this happens a lot, and that Keir Stam and his wife want to look their best to represent the UK.

Speaker 14 And I don't mean this as any disrespect to any of us, but I think if you really want to represent the UK, looking your best is not

Speaker 14 the way to do it.

Speaker 1 Now, whilst the amount of money in the public coffers might have been shrinking, some things were going up and up. We're going to get a second moon.

Speaker 35 Second moon, to send all the astrology girls crazy.

Speaker 35 It's a little asteroid, which still seems quite quite big to me if we're counting it as a moon. It's getting pulled into the Earth's orbit, so for, I think it's like a month and a bit.

Speaker 1 Spare moon. Yeah.

Speaker 13 Quite exciting, though, isn't it?

Speaker 14 It is exciting. Say what you want about Starma, but he said change is going to begin.

Speaker 14 Last 14 years, one moon.

Speaker 27 Three months in, he's doubled the moons.

Speaker 9 Can't say further than that.

Speaker 14 It's about time as well that I think the moons had it too good for too long.

Speaker 14 If you look at like Jupiter and Saturn, they've got lots of moons and they've all got individual names.

Speaker 9 The moon is so arrogant.

Speaker 6 What's your name?

Speaker 9 The moon.

Speaker 15 I am THE MOON.

Speaker 14 So I think we need to come up with a name for the moon now, because it isn't just the moon. It can't be called the moon too.

Speaker 16 I can't believe this libertarian moon economics that you're coming up with.

Speaker 32 Oh, the free market will solve the moon's arrogance problem. It'll get competitive again and start, I don't know, giving women women more periods like, I don't understand.

Speaker 32 I'll wait for this rash of werewolves that come in every fortnight.

Speaker 18 Oh god, yeah, there's going to be so many werewolves.

Speaker 1 Sadly, our temporary micro-moon did not hang around for long, unimpressed by what Earth could offer it as a moon and hoping for a planet that was better able to look after itself.

Speaker 1 Stung by this rejection, the news quiz instantly concocted some plans to make the world a better place.

Speaker 21 I think it's time that we hand over power to people in the world that are worse affected by what is going on at the moment.

Speaker 21 And that is why I think only women and children should be allowed to run the world currently.

Speaker 9 That is it.

Speaker 13 I mean, it sounds so obvious when you put it in those simple terms.

Speaker 12 I think we need more podcasts.

Speaker 7 I think I've cracked it. Right.

Speaker 13 Well, that is a hugely beneficial suggestion.

Speaker 3 Alastair?

Speaker 27 I try to stay positive. In the spirit of de-escalation through escalation, I've started jogging through sitting down.

Speaker 27 I call it couch to not okay.

Speaker 27 That's really helped.

Speaker 3 Yeah, I mean, it's a tough week to digest news.

Speaker 22 Is there anything if you do personally to just try and lighten your own mood during weeks like this when the news is just unremittingly shit?

Speaker 12 Drinking, bake off, Korean takeaway.

Speaker 20 I had a little session on the kids' trampoline the other day.

Speaker 11 I don't think you can be annoyed at the world when you're you're bouncing.

Speaker 13 It's a good point. You make Bryony Page, who won Olympic golden trampolining this year, has never started a war.

Speaker 1 The Mini Moon was not the only thing to leave the scene in October. I did as well.
Well, those test matches in Pakistan weren't going to statistically analyse themselves, were they?

Speaker 1 Whilst I was away, Jeff Norcott kept tabs on the first Conservative leadership election for more than two, count them, two whole years.

Speaker 17 Whose surname didn't save him this week?

Speaker 2 Cleverly, James Clatterly.

Speaker 17 Yeah, it is James Cleverly.

Speaker 17 On Wednesday, after surging ahead in round three of their leadership contest, James Cleverly was unceremoniously dumped out as Robert Jenrick and Kemi Badenock made the final two.

Speaker 17 So having been destroyed in the polls after lurching to the right, the Tories have done the smart thing and lurched further to the right. It's good stuff, yeah.

Speaker 24 You know, you ever come out of a nightclub with your mate and you're both too drunk to drive? That's what these two candidates are like. None of you are fit for the job.

Speaker 9 Well, yeah, I mean, you make it.

Speaker 17 It's interesting because the Tories saw cleverly. He did give a really good speech, and they were like, we're not having any of that, right?

Speaker 9 That is not what we do here, okay?

Speaker 10 He's an odd boy, isn't he, Jenneric?

Speaker 7 Jenrick, I can't.

Speaker 26 I've never seen a man that needs a session on a sun bed more.

Speaker 10 Like, it's the end of the summer and he's grey.

Speaker 10 What are you doing? Get outside.

Speaker 26 Why are you so indoorsy?

Speaker 26 He looks like a shade you can only get in a fancy paint shop.

Speaker 1 If the inner workings of the Conservative Party remain one of humanity's great unsolved mysteries, so too does the economy, as our next stand-in host, Lucy Porter, and her guests discussed.

Speaker 19 Rhea and Hugo, what might be the cause of a sudden lack of interest in the economy?

Speaker 25 Okay, so inflation has fallen to 1.7%,

Speaker 25 which means if things carry on like this this time next year, if you want to bribe a government minister, you'll have to give them, I think, 1.017 Taylor Swift tickets.

Speaker 9 They'll do it.

Speaker 28 Nobody understands it. Nobody understands the economy at all.
It's like that movie Tenant. I think the economy is being directed by Christopher Nolan.

Speaker 28 If I'm honest, because nobody quite gets. One goes down, one goes up, one does the other.
But let's be clear: this is a blip. Unless it continues to last, this is a blip.

Speaker 28 It's like when you skip dinner and then weigh yourself first thing in the morning the next day, and you're like, oh my god, I lost a kilo. It'll be back by lunchtime.

Speaker 25 It's because airline ticket prices have fallen, is the main thing that's going to do.

Speaker 7 Well, it's like, I wasn't buying buying that.

Speaker 9 We weren't buying fuel or airline prices.

Speaker 28 Not really. Okay, well, your inflation can stay up at 2% then.

Speaker 7 Thank you.

Speaker 9 You're welcome.

Speaker 19 So we can get a plane to somewhere, but we can't afford to pay our mobile phone.

Speaker 25 We can get a plane to somewhere less increasingly expensively than we could before.

Speaker 26 I blame decimalisation.

Speaker 1 The news quizzes year came to an end with Ian Smith in the temporary chair, just in time to not know for certain whether or not America wanted to stick its national fingers back into the dodgily wide electric socket that is the Donald Trump presidency.

Speaker 1 Trump is of course famously both the most and least American American there has ever been and he was planning to put someone equally American and non-American into his cabinet in the form of the world's leading obviously fictitious cartoon evil genius.

Speaker 27 Now, I don't want to be a hipster about this, but I was disliking Elon Musk before it was cool.

Speaker 27 In the early days, everyone was like, oh, he's doing jetpacks, he's doing electric car, he's like Iron Man, he's amazing. And I remember someone saying to me, have you heard about Elon Musk?

Speaker 15 He's a South African billionaire.

Speaker 27 And somehow, based only on that information,

Speaker 9 I formed an opinion.

Speaker 27 Now, obviously it's wrong to hold stereotypes about wealthy white South Africans, but it does save time, doesn't it?

Speaker 27 The Democrats are obsessed with the idea that there's going to be like a procedural way that they're going to win.

Speaker 27 It's like someone sort of hits you in the face with a custard pie and then starts kicking you and you just sort of go, that's illegal actually.

Speaker 37 I was also thinking those checks are so embarrassing. If you want a million dollars, have you seen them? They're so big.

Speaker 37 But if you win one of those checks, you have to, I think you have to go to a bank with it.

Speaker 37 How are you going to carry it? Because you're going to fold it and then you'll worry that they'll go, oh, it's been tampered with.

Speaker 9 So you're going to carry it really neatly all the way there it's all automatically

Speaker 14 you have to like put the check in the machine

Speaker 9 ram it in like come on well you take a photo of it with your phone but you need to be like so far away

Speaker 1 so there we go 2.5 of the way through the millennium we've only got 975 years to put it round can we do it It's looking touch and go. Will 2025 be better? Let me look into my crystal ball.

Speaker 1 Well, all I can see is a weeping penguin, so still not clear. Anyway, Anyway, do tune into the news quiz as we fearlessly chart the 26th candidate for stupidest year of the third millennium.

Speaker 1 Happy old year to you all, and hopefully, an even happier new year.

Speaker 1 The News Quiz 2024 compilation was written and hosted by me, Andy Zoltzman. The producer was Sam Holmes, and it was at BBC Studios Audio Production for Radio 4.

Speaker 36 Best Medicine, dissecting funny and fascinating medicine.

Speaker 23 I think pain management is the best medicine. Bibliotherapy.

Speaker 3 Therapy by books.

Speaker 23 Sleep.

Speaker 9 Well,

Speaker 36 Spot the Comedian.

Speaker 36 Celebrating medicines past, present, and future.

Speaker 33 I think transplantation is the best medicine because it can completely change someone's life.

Speaker 1 Defibrillation.

Speaker 9 Oh, defibrillators. Okay.

Speaker 36 Amazing machines. That much is clear.
Sorry. Clear.

Speaker 36 That's a new series of best medicine from Radio 4 with me, Kiri Pritchard McLean. Available now on BBC Sounds.

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