The News Quiz: Ep 8. Interference, Incentives and Interruptions

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Hello, I'm Ian Smith.

Andy's away again this week, so I'm in the front.

Sorry, Chair.

I don't want you to think the power has gone to my head, although I have fired an intern for looking at me directly in the eye.

Andy won't allow it, and neither will I.

Here is the news quiz.

Hello and welcome to the news quiz.

I'm Ian Smith and I've made some pretty big changes to the format.

So strap in.

Instead of two teams we'll have four and for ease we'll group these four individual teams into two squads squad one and squad two and instead of points we'll be playing for credits.

Each credit has a numerical value of one much like a point

but very very different and to ramp things up the individual winner and I haven't haven't had this confirmed yet, will become Director General of the BBC.

There will also be additional jokes for dogs at a frequency only they can hear.

There was one just then.

Joining me this week are our four teams, or two squads, named after the real reasons we believe Andy has been aware: Team Panto Rehearsal

versus Team Brazilian Buttlift.

On Team Panto, we have Jeff Norcott and Susie McKay.

And on Team BBL, we have Alistair Beckett King, and for the first time on the news quiz, Amy Hoggart.

And now the first question can go to Team Panto, Jeff and Susie.

Which evil foreign power is interfering in the US election this time?

Russia, North Korea, the Galactic Empire, the Eye of Sauron.

It's Britain, isn't it?

It is.

It's us.

We're interfering in elections again.

Anything Russia can do, we can do better.

If you want a bus with something written on it, we'll bring it to you.

But crucially, how are we interfering and why are we interfering?

Well, isn't it this thing that some Labour activists went over there?

And apparently, this is the thing that's been happening for quite a while.

It's very common that some people in their spare time go over to another country and help post leaflets.

I think they've got their own issues personally.

But so the idea is then that Donald Trump got a hump about this because he thinks that it's foreign interference and it's shaping the election.

I would say that Labour barely shaped their own election, really, and only just about did.

I don't know what advice they'd be giving, going, right, all you've got to do is make sure the other guy stands in the rain without an umbrella, okay?

Ask him whether or not he had Sky TV as a kid and just don't say anything about anything.

He called Starmer and the Labour Party left wing.

What a shock that was to this country.

I mean, the damage must be frustrating for Starmer and Lammy because they've actually spent quite a while sort of grovelling to Trump to make up for past things that they said about him.

They just must feel so gutted going, oh my god, I can't believe the stuff I said.

I actually complimented his hair.

I said his hair was nice.

He's going, well, that's nothing, Kier.

I praised his achievements as a person of colour.

Can you imagine them sitting around the table and Trump's sitting going, I've got Musk is backing me to the help.

He's buying votes in Pennsylvania.

Keir's like, Lord Dally bought me some glasses.

Amy, you worked on satirical news shows in the US.

What do you think about British people going over to America and interfering with their politics?

The reason there's so much controversy is that Labour are offering housing, so there is some financial benefit.

But the housing's in North Carolina has just been ravaged by Hurricane Milton.

They might say something like, okay, come out, you can do some flyering, you can get on the bus, we'll put you up in a two-bed, there's a bathroom, no electricity, there's a bit of roof,

there's outside space, but only because there's missing walls.

I mean, Nigel Farage said it was wrong for a Labour Party to interfere with politics in the States.

I think he might want to start interfering with politics in Clacton.

I think it's quite rich.

America accusing another country of election interference.

That's like Russell Brand calling someone a bit sketchy, you know.

But I think this is an opportunity, really, for Britain.

This is our chance to retake America.

You know, they're weak.

They're divided.

I'm prepared to make a start myself.

I could smuggle a U into New York Harbour, the letter U.

I say, let's put all the English words back the way they were supposed to be.

Yes.

America, we're going to trouser your pants.

We're going to bin your trash cans.

We're going to bum your fannies.

We're going to fringe your bangs.

We're going to bogey your boogers.

We're going to chip your fries.

No longer will Cramp be called Charlie horse.

It ends now, period.

I mean,

I do believe that's a Radio 4 first for we're going to bum your fannies.

And one of my favourite things that people in America were saying, they talked about the last time something like this happened, that we got the British away, but it was 244 years ago.

I think if the last time you had a grievance with someone was 244 years ago, you've got a pretty good relationship with them.

It's a bit like, you know, there was an asteroid going past Earth that hadn't been seen for 80,000 years.

It'd be like if, as we saw it, we're all giving it the finger going, this is for the dinosaurs, DK.

Yes, correct.

That's one credit to Team Panto.

That's right.

Foreign interference everywhere.

Russia is helping the Republicans.

Labour is helping the Democrats.

Thomas Tuchel is helping the English.

When will it end?

The Trump campaign's complaint cited a since-deleted LinkedIn post which said Labour would sort housing for any volunteers who wanted to go and campaign for Harris.

Not the first time Labour have promised to sort housing and then pretended, we never said that.

But the Labour Party insists they did not fund or organise party officials going to the US as funding or organising anything would break manifesto promises.

Also, Ed Davey has refused to confirm whether his whooshing down a log flume in Disney World constitutes as an illegal intervention in Florida's elections.

And speaking of interference, a second question that can go to Team BBL, which billionaire might make you a millionaire if you vote for the guy with the messy hair who's laissez-faire on Medicare?

I think this might be Elon Musk.

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

In the early days, everyone was like, oh, he's doing jetpacks, he's doing electric cars.

He's like Iron Man, he's amazing.

And I remember someone saying to me, have you heard about Elon Musk?

He's a South African billionaire.

And somehow, based only on that information,

I formed an opinion.

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

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

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.

I was also thinking those checks are so embarrassing.

If you want a million dollars, have you seen them?

They're so big.

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

How are you going to carry it?

Because you're going to fold it and then you'll worry that they'll go, oh, oh, it's been tampered with.

So you're going to carry it really neatly away there.

It's all automatically.

I don't catch it.

You have to put the check in the machine.

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.

That is correct.

This is the news that Elon Musk is getting his claws into the U.S.

election.

I think it's good that Musk is encouraging people to vote.

I've registered to vote in Pennsylvania 30 times now.

You've got to be in it to win it.

Donald Trump is running on a staunch anti-immigration message with the help of Elon Musk, the South African immigrant who is planning to colonize Mars, a place as far as I'm aware, and despite appearances, he is not from.

I'm just glad that we have no foreign interference here at the NewsQuiz.

Hello Ian, Andy here from Pakistan.

My question for our panel this week, which unemployed senior citizen briefly rejoined the flipping workforce this week?

From Pakistan, may the cricket be with you?

How's that?

Yes, that question is, which unemployed senior citizen briefly rejoined the flipping workforce this week?

Is that the Donald at McDonald's?

Have you guys seen the clip?

I quite liked it.

You know,

don't make me fond of you now.

After all these years, Donald, he's sort of like that wrong an uncle where you go, I miss him, but I know what he did, you know.

I know what he did.

it's a really like you go this is what you should have been doing all along it's so weird how politics kind of plays out like this he's had a mad week Donald Trump hasn't he flipping burgers talking about dead men's penises I mean we're gonna miss the storylines if he doesn't win it's gonna be very boring and I just realized that if you don't know what I was referring to when I said dead men's penises

It's one of the weirdest ever moments on the news quiz.

So he was at a rally and he started talking about the late golfer Arnold Palmer and he said, look, tell you what he's here.

Well, he was all man and he came out of the shower swinging

you are paraphrasing slightly yeah

I'll give you the full quote that he said about Arnold Palmer this is a guy that was all man this man was strong and tough and when he took showers with the other pros they came out there they said oh my god that's unbelievable

Do you know that like his daughter had to come out like against it and I thought I bet she didn't wake up that day thinking I wonder if I'll have to defend my dead father's penises and immunity.

Do you want to talk to small, shrivelled things?

Can we go back to McDonald's and the Ferrari?

Well, the thing is, Donald Trump, like me, is half Scottish, and he clearly has an affinity for Scottish cuisine, which is why he's chosen McDonald's.

I'm getting really annoyed by this election cycle because I was in the States for quite a while and I went to, I'm not showing off, but I've been to a lot of Trump rallies.

But in my day, they were really depressing.

You would be, I'd get told you're going to go to a field in Michigan or some concrete, like, middle of nowhere.

But now, they seem so fun because he's lost it, which is really entertaining.

And he's just doing what he wants.

If someone said to me now, we're going to send you to an event where there's an elderly man who's just DJing,

says dancing and then McDonald's, that's a great night out.

It's a weird situation.

So I read that Trump said that he needed the kind of generals Hitler had.

Something that Trump said.

And then General John Kelly explained to him that Hitler's generals tried to assassinate him three times.

Moving on to

the other candidate.

Jeff, you can take this question.

Kamala Harris was accused of being very vague at her town hall event on CNN this week.

Do you agree or disagree?

I don't know if you've been following.

She doesn't say a great deal.

And it's weird because for us, we see all Donald's mad stuff and we think, how can it be so close in the polls?

But she doesn't say much.

So she was on Fox News, right?

And they said to her at the end, what's your like retail policy offer?

And she said, go on my website, there's 80 pages of policy.

I was like, have you researched the Fox demographic?

I don't think.

And she also said as well, she was just vague.

She wouldn't give an answer on whether or not she'd keep funding the wall, despite the fact she once called it a medieval vanity project, which could also be a way of describing Donald's hair, I suppose.

Or Arnold Palmer's penis.

That's right, campaigning is in full swing.

Trump did a shift at McDonald's.

The sight of him wearing an apron was an image I could have done without.

Turns out he's an absolute dead ringer for Mrs.

Doubtfire.

And in timing, far better than I could hope to achieve as a comedian, days after Trump did one shift at a McDonald's, there has now been an E.

coli outbreak at McDonald's.

Also, Harris had a difficult night at her own town hall event.

Former Obama senior adviser David Axelrod said Harris had a mixed night and that when she didn't want to answer a question, she would go to Word Salad City.

I've driven through Word Salad City.

It took forever.

The road signs are an absolute disaster.

Donald Trump also shared his bizarre fixation with the appendage of the golfer Arnold Palmer.

To be fair, he does have the biggest penis in sport, and that's including sea biscuit.

So, as we come to the end of our US election section, this is the last news quiz until until the result.

So, I want to know from the panel, what are your predictions for the US election running?

I don't know what's going to happen, but I really hope that women come out for Carmela.

And I think that they might, in that, since Dobbs overturned Roe v.

Wade, they have been showing up, and Dems have been overperforming, doing much better than we all expected.

And I think that we knew that was going to happen in 2022 when the Republicans started talking about how the Republicans were going to do so well, and they called it the red wave.

I just think if you know anything about women's bodies,

you would never call high energy, high motivation red wave.

And I think what they're describing, the motivation and the momentum, should be called energetic ovulation wave.

And so this is the US election where American voters will take to the polling stations to decide who will get to hold the moral high ground in the inevitable civil war.

It's a race between Kamala Harris, a woman who had managed to avoid the question if you asked her when her birthday was,

or Donald Trump, a man who looks like a Halloween pumpkin, got a job as a concierge.

If you're struggling to remember the U.S.

Election Day, I always say, remember, remember, democracy is at stake.

My personal predictions for the election: Joe Biden will do the final two weeks of his presidency by wheeling out a big TV and letting everyone do crosswords.

Obama will go on tour with MM.

Kamala Harris will secure the coveted endorsement of ABBA, but in a huge blow, Donald Trump gains the endorsement of the much younger ABBA holograms.

What looks depressingly likely is that we'll see Trump on TV calling the election rigged and totally phony before a flustered aide whispers to him that he actually won.

So now it's time for round two.

Ian, do you want to get us the scores?

Oh yes, I've been keeping track of those.

And at the end of round one, it's three points to Team BBL and two points to team Panto.

And for round two, this question can go to everyone.

Who could unwittingly be doing their farewell tour this week?

It's Charles and Camilla.

Yes.

Do you have to say King Charles and Queen Camilla?

Otherwise, we won't know who you mean.

Yeah.

They're having a really good farewell tour, it would seem.

They've been drinking Cava with a K.

It's a Samoan special drink.

It's not the Cava with a C, which is a shame because that's so fun to drink.

It's only four quid.

You have to drink it out of the bottle and exclusively on the night bus.

So this is how the Guardian described it.

Charles uttered the words, may God bless this cover, before lifting the bowl to his lips.

Charles's wife, Queen Camilla, sat beside him, fanning herself to ease the tropical humidity.

Which seems to me far too sexy a way to describe it.

That's it's like a Mills and Boone, right?

For me, bad enough we have to have a monarchy.

Do we have to be this aroused by them at all times?

That's outrageous.

And then Arnold Palmer turned up in breeches.

He did get very boisterous.

Apparently, he was stood on a table pointing at women, shouting, Divorce beheaded, died.

Divorce beheaded somebody.

I was really disappointed looking at the coverage of Charles's visit to Australia at the lack of Australasian puns in the headlines.

The headlines were all things like, King Charles visits Australia.

It's like, sorry, kingaroo.

I haven't seen the word kingaroo once, you could have had a crown with corks coming off it.

Camilla, queen of the desert.

They write themselves.

And we're avoiding one of the big stories here.

What happened to King Charles when he visited Australia?

He got heckled.

I said that with a bit too much glee, didn't I?

Lydia Thorpe heckled him in the parliament and she was shouting, Not my king, not my king, to which Camilla said, That's right, love, he's not, he's mine.

Do you want to take this outside?

And then, this is my favourite bit of the British media.

Thorpe was wearing a traditional possum skin cloak, which is a fashion faux pas, as it should only be worn as evening wear.

And there's more Commonwealth news.

We'll put this question to Susie.

Who in Australia has slagged off Glasgow?

Exactly.

We'll all be going to Victoria in Australia because they decided, listen, guys, we can afford the Commonwealth Games, it needs to go somewhere with infrastructure.

And my friendly Warhammer, slightly stabby city,

right?

But do you know what?

We're good people.

Like, if we stab you, we'll take you to the hospital, right?

And we went, we'll take your Commonwealth Games, but we've obviously had to scale it back because, you know, certain things aren't in place anymore.

So, like, we've had to take out the hockey, lesbians are raging,

the rugby, lesbians are raging,

and some other team sport that probably doesn't matter.

What is the other team sport?

Cricket.

Yeah.

And he comes bursting back through the door.

He's ran from Pakistan.

So we've taken them out because we don't have an athlete's village anymore, because that all went to private housing and social housing, which is a good thing to do, right, for legacy and all that stuff.

But Victoria are raging, going, if we knew it was going to be this scale back, well, we wouldn't have given it to Glasgow.

You didn't give it to Glasgow.

It was the Commission that gave it to Glasgow.

So I started to think, right, how can we get a way around this?

And I thought, we need to have a scheme for Commonwealth athletes that we had for Ukrainians.

Like, if you phone me up and say, Susie, can you take in the Australian women's hockey team?

In other Commonwealth news, what has Keostama said will definitely not be up for discussion at the Commonwealth Summit?

Slavery?

Yes.

He said that if it, we can't talk about it because it's so far in the past.

It's like, you know what else is in the past?

Every bad thing anyone has ever done ever is just all in the past.

I think he's using that as an excuse because it means he can eventually just fully empty all the prisons.

Yeah, in all the sort of meetings with the parole officers, they're going, well, I don't know if you've noticed, but I committed that crime in the past.

Every so often, a right-wing think tank puts out a report saying, actually, Britain didn't really benefit financially from slavery, which I think is almost worse, because that suggests it was a passion project.

Like, if we weren't making money from it, was it a hobby?

Like, we're talking about the Atlantic slave trade, not making your own soap.

So, across that round, we have an extra credit to both sides.

This is the news that in the Australian Parliament this week, King Charles was heckled by an Indigenous senator who objected to him being the head of state.

I can see why she was angry.

His first mistake was asking her, and have you come from far?

Some have said that the heckling was un-Australian, but what's more Australian than someone shouting at a foreigner?

While in Samoa, King Charles drunk a traditional carver brew.

He downed the drink before being declared a high chief, to which he replied, Damn right, I've never been higher in all my life.

The local drink Carver can have a narcotic sedative effect.

When used properly, it can lower anxiety, which is great when people are accusing you of colonialism.

So at the end of round two, the scores are on five points, it's Team BBO

And still trailing behind at present is Team Panto on four.

But it's time to claw back some points because round three is a quickfire round.

As the country's only northern comedian, this week

I'm going to tell you a news headline and I want you to tell me if the story is from the north or the south.

So your first story is, sausage rolls meet £425 Crystal at Gregg's champagne bar.

North or South?

That's definitely north, because we don't have Gregg's in the south.

Oh, we do, but we pronounce it Gails.

I think it's the North.

I have to say, I'm from Durham, so I'm actually more northern than you, Ian.

Yeah, yeah.

But it doesn't seem that way, does it?

I've just been cursed with an accent that really makes me feel like I'm right on the border.

I'm like Berwick, sort of.

But you've done so much.

You've done so much in spite of that.

Well done.

Hasn't he done well?

Thank you, thank you.

This of course happened in the north of England.

Greggs, I've opened a champagne bar in Newcastle.

Fine dining isn't something we're used to in Greggs.

Or Newcastle, to be fair.

Or the north or England.

On the menu is a £425 bottle of champagne, which you can pair with a steak bake to bring the total cost to £426.

Airport introduces maximum hugging time of three minutes at drop-off zones, north or south.

This cannot be the north, it is not a northern problem.

I've only hugged my dad once, and he said, oh, we're not American, it's not an issue.

I totally agree.

Speaking as an ainly retentive bloke, anything longer than 30 seconds is technically foreplay and should not be happening

in a public space.

It is

showing off, isn't it?

I'm going to have to push you for a north or south.

Must be the south.

South.

Go a bit the south.

Okay, well, for an extra point to both teams, it is the south.

This was from Dunedin in New Zealand, crucially the south island of New Zealand.

Airports are emotional places though.

You'd want human affection if you've just paid that much for a Tobleron.

And now for our final North or South story.

Children's Soft Play Centre apologises over body bag Halloween decorations.

North.

100% North.

Their outfits have got scarier.

They're terrifying.

Last year, I gave them sweets out of my car keys.

I was like, just make it stop.

It's terrifying.

I don't know.

I think this is not a northern story because look at the clues.

Children's soft play center.

We don't have children in the north.

People are born about 25 usually, 25, 26.

Soft play centre.

No, we don't have that.

It's just breeze blocks and broken bottles.

Apologises.

I don't think so.

Body bag is plausible.

So I'm kind of on the fence, but I think it's the South.

Joe, I also think it might be the South because of how much we indulge kids as well.

Like, my son's at primary school and they send texts all day long.

Like, Seb has had a really great morning.

well I've had a terrible one so thanks for that.

Seb has learnt to conjugate his verbs.

Like well I change energy suppliers but I don't feel like any of those

I don't feel like I'm getting any gold stars.

South, I say south for that reason, overindulge kids.

See, I think it's the north because people in the south live forever.

That's how we got Brexit

because they're just like a hundred and fifty and they're like, yeah, I don't like Europe.

I fought in the Crimean War.

That was a southern story that happened in Cirencester.

Said with the uncertainty of a man who doesn't know if that's how you say that.

Cirencester?

The name of the soft play centre where this happened was Rugrats and Half Pints.

I know it's only a half pint, but I don't think the kids should be drinking either.

But Halloween is just around the corner, so do prepare yourself for trick-or-treaters knocking on your door, or as they're called in America, labor volunteers.

And that brings us to the end of this week's news quiz, where the scores are.

Team Panto, Jeff and Susie, you have seven.

But storming away in the lead is Team BBL.

Alistair and Amy with ten.

Thank you very much to our panelists, and thank you to all of you at home.

Andy will be back in the new year to do his God-given duty, finding the perfect cricket analogy to describe the inevitable second insurrection on the US capital.

Happen Ian Smith, goodbye.

Taking part in the news quiz were Susie McCabe, Amy Hoggett, Jeff Norcott, and Alistair Beckett King.

In the chair was me, Ian Smith.

And additional material was written by Laura Davis, Alex Keeley, Cameron Loxdale, and Christina Riggs.

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

Hello, Russell Kane here.

I used to love British history, be proud of it.

Henry VIII, Queen Victoria, massive fan of stand-up comedians, obviously Bill Hicks, Richard Pryor, that has become much more challenging for I am the host of BBC Radio 4's Evil Genius, the show where we take heroes and villains from history and try to work out were they evil or genius.

Do not catch up on BBC sounds by searching Evil Genius if you don't want to see your heroes destroyed.

But if, like me, you quite enjoy it, have a little search.

Listen to Evil Genius with me, Russell Kane.

Go to BBC Sounds and have your world destroyed.

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