The News Quiz: Ep 5. Peace & Peaks

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Right. After taking in this week's news, I have had enough.
So, world, you have just under half an hour to fix things, or I quit for the rest of the year.

And let me make very clear that this is in no way linked to England's imminent cricket tour in Pakistan, in which I will be part of BBC's Test Match Match Special Team, providing exclusive coverage of every ball of every match from Monday morning.

That is entirely coincidental. Right, so let's put a clock on it.
Starting now. In the meantime, welcome to the first test.

Sorry, sorry, sorry,

wrong show. Welcome to the news quiz.

Yes, I do mean it. Seriously, half an hour to sort the world out.

Our teams this week, somewhat nostalgically, are named after words that are being officially removed from the English dictionary at the end of the year because they're no longer needed.

We have Team Optimism against Team Nuance.

I will miss them both. On Team Optimism, we have Scott Bennett and well, it was supposed to be Boris Johnson, but I accidentally sent him all the questions in advance.

So, stepping in at the last minute is the nearest like-for-like replacement we could get. Zoe Lyons.

On Team Nuance, we have Alistair Beckett King, and from the spectator, Cindy Yu.

Right,

let's start where we have to start.

It has been another tough week for our out-of-form planet and are perhaps past our best species, and specifically for the controversial celebra region, the Middle East.

So, without delving into the ongoing power games, brutalities, and political failures that continue to unload tragedy upon tragedy upon the peoples of the area, I want our panelists to offer a suggestion for how to achieve world peace or a beacon of hope and/or light from this week.

We will put their suggestions into this special peace generator,

impressive piece of kit, which mulches them down into a special serum, which we will then distribute to the leaders of the relevant organisation. So, Zoe, what's your offering?

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.

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

I mean, it sounds so obvious when you put it in those simple terms, but

we have a narrow bracket of children. Children between the ages of four and eight, they make the most sense and they're the most fun.

And then we'd have like a sort of

like a UN team of head honcho women that would run the world. I've got a couple of suggestions to go in there.
Beyonce,

James Doo Dench,

Jamie Lee Curtis, Kamala Harris, and a battalion of nanners.

Okay, we'll put those in. Scott, a lot of comedians now are not doing comedy anymore.
They're sort of judging cakes

and sewing. So, this is the last one for me as well, because I'm not bothering dealing with world events.
I'm just going to focus on apple turnovers

and mini skirts. So,

hemlines, not battle lines. That's my

Cindy. What have you got to offer? I think we need more podcasts.

I think I've cracked it. Right.
Well, that is a hugely beneficial suggestion. Alistair?

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

I call it couch to not okay.

That's really helped. Yeah, I mean, it's a tough week to digest news.

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

Drinking, bake off, Korean takeaway.

I had a little session on the kids' trampoline the other day. All right, okay.

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

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

Trampolining for a woman of my age is very different, though. It has its own challenges, and all I'd say is you'll have a trampoline, but you'll also have your own pool.

Well, thank you for your CSI. We'll pop them all in the peace generator and whiz them up.

And there we go. We will post that off to the Middle East.

Right. So, I mean, it's unquestionably not been a happy week for this planet.
Iran launched, allegedly, 180 ballistic missiles at Israel. Let's stay hopeful.

Maybe on the optimistic side, it might have been just another Ian Hislop situation, and it wasn't 180 ballistic missiles, it was 180 mechanical faults in the windows of taxis.

Let's just cling to that.

And let's stay positive. Let's remember Isaac Newton's third law of news: that for every bit of news, there is an equal and opposite bit of counter-news.

So, yes, there might be conflict and bloodshed scarring the planet, but let's not forget the other things that are happening in the world. I'll just get out the newspaper to find the counter-news.

So, here we are. Sweden remains at peace with Paraguay.
Why would we never hear about that? Whilst fears of a conflict between Portugal and New Zealand remain non-existent.

And yes, I can confirm that the Mongolian Navy has not been spotted doing exercises off the Copacapana Beach in Rio de Janeiro.

So if we top those up alongside Ukraine and the Middle East, the current score is peace for war two. Go on peace!

Right, so well let's move on and we'll call the scores. I'm going to give you 10 points each for attempting to bring some light into the universe.

Well it's been a little while since we turned to the Conservative Party conference for some light relief.

But

a pleasant change. Rishi Sunak made his final speech as party leader.

Now we're used to Conservatives calling for things to be stopped: the boats, the mining industry, and the communities that depended on it themselves from being a functioning political entity.

But in his final conference speech as the Work Experience Party leader, Rishi Sunak

called upon his fellow Tories to stop the what?

Squabbling, wasn't it? Squabbling, correct? Yes, two points. It was incredible because he says, oh, we need to stop the, you know, British people don't like infighting.
I disagree.

I love it. I love it.
That's why EastEnders is still on.

Because we love confrontation. That's my mindfulness.
You probably have the cricket on in the background. I like to have two cockneys screaming in a laundrette.

Really calms me down.

Love it. Liz Tross showed up, didn't she? As well, that's lovely.
She's still, yeah, selling a merch.

And speaking of weird and merch, actually, the best merch was Tom Tugenhart, and I know we're we're going to get onto him, but I just wanted to go through my list of Tom Tuchenhart merch that he had.

So he had Tom Tuchen hat, a cap.

That's good. He had Tom Tuchen tat, a temporary tattoo.

God. Only temporary.
That's not showing a lot of faith. I hope it's temporary.
Right.

Excellent gag for radio.

We just put this to go underneath. Cindy looks at her arm.

Cleverly had some merch. He had JC for leader, didn't he? I was on a band.
And that's smart, that, because if he's got any overs, he can go down the church and flog them.

Clever bloat, really, innit? Did he just get them off Jeremy Corbyn, man?

I think there's a lock-up in Wolverhampton full of this stuff.

Were you impressed with Rushi Sunak's valedictory missive?

I think he got what he wanted, because from what I saw, the vibe was weirdly upbeat and it was kind of a bit of a loving.

Like the backstage footage I saw, Peter Andre was there.

What? Peter Andre! It had Year Six disco vibes and the neon lighting. I mean, obviously, I'm older than you, but yes, it was like when I was the same age you were when that song was at a disco.
Yes.

Also, I mean, they have lost a lot of MPs, so it is possible he was just like Shadow Minister for something, isn't it?

Well, let's let's have a closer look then at the candidates who've made it to the last four of the squabble off.

I think they're representing, is it Earth, Air Fire and Water or Tinky Winky, Dipsy Lala Rampo? I can't remember.

So to find out more about them, we've got a battery-operated robot newsreader here.

We have to be careful with newsreaders at the BBC now. So they're basically using...

newfangled technology to control things. So we've got this, but they're very power-intensive as newsreaders often are.
So it keeps running out of batteries.

So it will give us a headline on each candidate. Our panelists have to finish the headline when the robot runs out of power.

Firstly, Scott, you can take this first one. Let's hear some news about James Cleverly.

James Cleverly, the former Home and Foreign Secretary, said the Conservatives must be more.

So how's that supposed to end? Haunting. I had a vision then to my final moments.

Is it they need to be more passionate about Margaret Thatcher? Because

none of them mention her.

But yeah, he wants them to be more normal, is what he said. And the really weird thing was he also said that they shouldn't be so blokey.
But then he was filmed doing an impromptu set of press-ups

in a suit, which is... I'm always suspicious of a man who does shows of strength in public like that.

I mean, I don't know what he did afterwards, because I I think he probably nit behind one of the vinyl banners, lifted his shirt, tensed his abs, and got people to punch him in the chest.

I can't feel it, mate. Can't feel it.

But asking people to be seen as more normal. The only people who say we should look more normal are people who are really not normal.

The only time I've ever said we should look more normal is that when you're a teenager and you come home a bit drunk, you're like, for God's sake, look normal.

But you look at the final four, and I think more normal means less like that.

But it's not worked.

Alistair, in terms of appealing to the Tory faithful, is calling for people to be more normal by James Cleverly, is that pretty much the end of his campaign?

Yeah, it's a terrible idea, obviously, because the people making the decision are Conservative Party members who are, scientifically speaking, the weirdest people in the universe.

So it's like the X Factor if the judges were all complete psychopaths. It's exactly like the X Factor.

Right, let's move on to Kemi Badenock now. Here we go.

Kemi Badenock, the former business secretary, said that the system was broken and told the Tories it's time to.

I think the listener might not believe that there's an actual little guy with batteries, but there is.

You just got that because you want to put it through as expensive.

Well, I did. I mean, we've got a round all about a car later.

It's time to what?

One.

Take money from pregnant women.

She said that I think maternity pay was excessive. That was a bit of a, I think some people regarded as a gaffe.
But some people have come to her defence.

Julia Lopez, the shadow culture minister, she called it a confected maternity pylon, which sounds unsanitary.

She said, and I think I'm quoting her, there is no one in our party right now who knows more about the challenge of jockeying motherhood with professional life.

And speaking as someone who has raised jockeys myself,

I really sympathise with Bednock. As a jockey mom, you know,

I'm rarely out of the paddock. It's not easy.
You buy them little jockey outfits, and then six months later, they still fit.

I don't know what sort of future she's envisioning for it. It seems like she wants it to be like a lowry painting where, you know, children are fired straight out onto a loom

you don't even have time to breastfeed them just straight into the workhouse

but let's put another battery in and move on to move on to Robert Jenrick

Robert Jenrick the former

no idea called once again for Britain to take leave of

any suggestions Britain to take leave of what? The EU? Oh, oh, no, wait.

You can see, it's the ECHR,

the European Court of Human Rights. And I'll be honest with you, I'll tell you a little story.
I was walking my daughter to school the other day.

She's only eight, and she's normally very happy or go-lucky in the morning. And she was walking along, and she's I felt some residual anger.

And she kicked a stone which almost hit a parked car, and I sort of got down with her at eye height. And I said, So, you know, what's going on? Have we got some issues? What's happening at school?

And she said, It's not the school, dad, it's the ECHR.

It's all I'm thinking about at the moment. Their overreach is putting this country at risk.

And I was like, okay, that's fine.

Have you got your banana? And then

we moved on. But it just feels like, yeah, it's an odd hill to die on.
I'll give him that because this is a, I mean, we all hate admin.

But it feels very excessive. It's like this is an organisation that protects us from slavery, you know, and torture.
It's like leading a campaign against the RSPB

because you've seen their budget on suet balls.

Was anyone thinking that the

ECHR needs sorting?

But he'll probably get in. He'll probably get in because he's very much pandering towards the sort of reform, isn't the end of things.
He's like, yeah,

he would probably probably take on Nigel Farage in a drinking competition and pass out after half a shandy.

From a purely performance perspective, he actually has done quite well.

If you think back, you know, a year ago, two years ago, he was known as Robert Generic by pretty much everyone in Westminster, and that was the main thing he was known for.

He wrote this article backing Boris Johnson for leadership, and it was him, Rishi Sunak, and Oliver Dowden, and the other two of the three musketeers become Prime Minister and Deputy Prime Minister.

He He becomes a junior home office minister.

But that was where his rise started, and he kind of just took the skin and the policies of Suella Braverman and her supporters and is now the proxy Suella Braverman.

He is now the right-wing candidate within a year's time. It has sucked everything out of her.
He's now been dubbed the front runner.

I think, actually, on a performance level, that's pretty impressive. He released a campaign video, and his pitch seems to be: I will be an evil Prime Minister from an episode of Doctor Who.

It had sinister music running under him talking about his thing. And it's all about the European Convention of Human Rights, and he's phrasing it as leave or remain.

And it's like being in the wizard's castle of illusion. Behind this Brexit is yet another Brexit.

Behind that Brexit, yet another, even smaller Brexit.

Each more Brexit-y than the last.

Right, let's move on finally to our final candidate, Tom Tugenhat. Put another battery in, and

here we go.

Tom Tugenhat, the former hat, said the future would only be bright if he can.

Future will only be bright if he can end.

Is it if he can end his speech with a wardrobe malfunction?

I don't think there's any conference that wouldn't be improved with a bit of nip slip

tugen hats slipping out. These tugan hats.

These tugan helmets.

I'm sorry, this is Radio 4 and it's in the gutter.

This is what happens when you have northerners on.

This is levelling up live. This isn't.

I've warned them. I have warned them.
I've warned them.

We had a recent interaction with Tom Tugenha at the Spectator for our leadership hustings, where at the end, my colleague Katie Bores asked them, what was the naughtiest thing you've ever done?

Great question. Kemi Bajanock just refused to answer.
He was like, I'm just not going to dignify that question, which I actually think is quite a good answer.

It does also suggest she's done some very good idea. Exactly.

It's suggestive.

So you're cool, but not getting you in trouble. Tom Tuchenhart said, the naughtiest thing I've ever done is invade a country.
Wow.

We couldn't quite believe our ears in the studio. Is that about the 2003 invasion of Iraq? Which he's very proud of.
Did you know he was a soldier? I knew he was a soldier.

I didn't realise how cheeky he was.

What a rascal.

In the great British tradition of military understatements.

I think Neville Chamberlain described Hitler as a bit of a rotter at one point.

He said his mission is to become the next Prime Minister, and he has never failed a mission. And we remember the Iraq war did go off really smoothly.

Right, yes. The Tory Conference has been mulling over who best to take the reins of the Conservative Party.

The four remaining political tadpoles who swum to the top of the Conservative talent puddle made their pitches for party support, but only one frog can emerge, and we will have exclusive coverage of the rest of the Tory leadership campaign over the next three weeks.

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Moving across the political divide, well, a bit of a tough week for Labor again.

Starma's government has been accused of moving too slowly on some things, but it has set a new speed record this week for what?

Supermarket Dash.

Not that, but that's might be

the fastest backs payment of six grand in history.

That's certainly up there.

Not the correct answer. Fastest MP to leave after an election, yeah.

So, less than three months since winning the election, Rosie Duffield has jumped the Labour ship. Is there something to worry about, Cindy?

I think if you had to pick anyone from Labour's 400 or so MPs, it probably would have been Rosie Duffield or someone more on the left of the party.

She's been very unhappy for a long time over Stalma's gender stance.

Although, interestingly, in her resignation letter, she'd mentioned none of this and just said it was all about sleaze and the two-charge benefit cap and the winter fuel allowance.

But you kind of wonder, you know, if that didn't, the trans stuff didn't kind of poison the water a bit more. I think everybody's got this wrong.

You see, I think people have been too quick to jump on this bandwagon having to go at Stalma because I think what he was trying to do was, yes, he took the pension fuel allowance away, but what he was going to do was borrow enough clothes

so that they would stay warm throughout the whole winter.

That's why he went to see Taylor Swift, because it was for research, because he's going to tell the old people to just shake it off. Yeah.

Keeps them warm, keeps the circulation going. I mean, I must interject at this point and just let you all know that I was actually bought this appearance today

on a virgin experience deal.

It was either do the news quiz or an afternoon tea in Great Yama.

You've made a great choice. You've made a great choice, hasn't it? But the other thing is, I mean, there is the sleeves, innit?

And he's £3,000 on glasses was one of the things where, and people have said the optics are bad. They don't sound

like they're Gucci, I'll be honest with you.

And the other one that's got him into trouble is the £20,000 on on renting Lord Ali's house so his son could study for his GCSEs.

And now we all do our best for our kids, but I just want to wish him, you know, good luck for the reset.

He's still there, I think. So he's returned £6,000 worth of gifts, including the box of unrefrigerated shrimp that I sent.

I felt a bit weird about it because I don't normally agree with Rosie Duffield. So it was very weird to read the letter and go, like, oh, yeah, actually, these are my opinions.

I think she makes, like, I suppose a stopped clock with Keir Starmer as a Tory written on it is right three times a day.

I think it's weird that she didn't notice any of this before the election when I noticed it.

Like, it's very weird to get in and then notice it because Starmer is the first politician in history to go into an election saying exactly what he's going to do.

He said, I'm going to be the Toriest Tory in Tory town. I'm going to be so Tory you won't believe.
He didn't, not in that voice, obviously. I've never actually heard him speak.

I don't know what he sounds like. He just looks like he sounds like that.

But then when he was criticised for taking the gifts, he said, they didn't give me the gifts to influence policy. They did it because they really liked my personality.

Which I think in a crowded field is maybe the least believable thing a politician has ever said.

And to take so many gifts of clothes and still look like a Matalan dad is quite a thing, isn't it?

It really is.

You know, if you're getting clothes given to you, you know, shake up the wardrobe a little bit. Be bold.

I wanted him to walk away from that press conference he gave the other day after the invasion and sort of shuffle his papers, turn around, and then just a backless number. You know,

show a little shoulder starmer, get it out, let's see a little strappy number. Or an embroidered eagle on the back.

What I don't understand is, I never understand resigning from power when you find something objectionable in the party because I've been in my streets WhatsApp group now for about two years, and it's an absolute bin fire of

paranoia, video doorbell footage, and toxic opinions. But I'm going to change it from within.

That's what I'm going to do. One house at a time, and I will accept free eggs and the occasional cucumber.

Right, at the end of our politics round, the scores are 16 to Team Optimism, Zoe, and Scott, and 12 to Cindy and Alistair on Team Nuance.

Moving on now, and we'll give our panelists a choice of questions in this round. Would you like a question about a mountain or the creeping fear of decrepitude and death?

Alistair? Death, please.

Sorry, that's already been used. You're getting a mountain question.
Okay, here is your

mountain question. What is getting bigger and bigger, and there's nothing you can do about it? Is it a mountain? Yes, it is.

Can you tell me which mountain?

It's not just our mountain, it's the mountain, it's mountain Everest, I think that's what it's called.

And it's getting bigger. I think it's getting lighter, it's getting taller, it's losing weight.
I think it's possible that Mount Everest is recently divorced

and it's just getting back out there. And you know,

you go, girl.

I just didn't realise how bad the culture of validation was now that whereas a major mountain's having implants

well I thought it was getting higher because of the mountains of rubbish that was left behind by billionaire boy scouts trying to tick off things off their golden bucket lists

do you know i th they pass dead bodies on the way up don't they and that doesn't put them off i find that incredible w they must be walking going if only there was some sort of omen this was a bad idea

see I did the Great North Run recently and I think I found it impossible if in the last mile I'd have ran past corpses

stacked up on the time bridge, you know.

Scott and Zoe, you can have an art question. Which renowned artist saw his work souped up again this week? It's Van Gogh.
Yes. He's been souped twice by Justop Oil.
And have I got this really wrong?

Is it just because they're more into watercolours?

I'm like, what did Van Gogh do? I mean, as far as I know, he lived in Penury. He couldn't hear half the things that were going around him.

I don't think he was sort of whizzing around the south of France and Holland and flaming

flamborghini

please.

It's the sort of car an artist would drive. Yeah, definitely.

Penury incidentally is in south London between Penge and Norbury.

To be fair to them, you know, I don't know that throwing super de Van Gogh is going to win anyone around to your cause, but I do think doing it again is quite funny because

it's just kind of cheeky. Like, I think that is quite a funny thing.
I don't support it, but at the same time. It's just like invading a country.
It's just cheeky like invading a country.

They've said that the impact's going to be that they're going to have a security guard now stood next to famous paintings. And I just, I'd love that.

I don't know if there's a WhatsApp group of security guards down in London, but that would be amazing. What did you do today? I guarded the embassy.
What about you? I was down in street.

How about you? I was on soup watch, mate. That's what I was on.

And why soup? I don't understand why they keep throwing soup. If they want to put a message across more eloquently, surely it should be Alphabeti spaghetti they're throwing there.

I mean, the ironic thing is if they'd have chucked it on a mattress, they'd have won the Turner Prize.

Right, well, that brings us to the end of this week's news quiz. And our winners are Team Optimism, Zoe and Scott, and our losers, Team Nuant, Cindy and Alistair.

Right, that alarm means time on the ultimatum is up. Let me check the BBC News website website to see if the world has fixed everything.
I would say that's a resounding no.

So, as I threatened at the top of the show, that is me done for the series. I'll just confirm that flight to Pakistan.
That cricket is not going to commentate on itself.

So, you're going to need stand-in hosts for the last three episodes before I return in the new year.

And we're going to do this democratically by learning from the FA Cup and drawing the hosts at random. I will put 68 million balls into this large bowl.

Each ball represents one person in the country. I'll mix them up and pick out three at random.

And our first stand-in host is number 14,307. And let me just check the list.
That is Jeff Norcott.

Next ball, 53,910,012. That is Lucy Porter.

And finally, number one,

Ian Smith. So isn't that lucky? I leave you in both the safest and funniest of hands, Jeff, Lucy, and Ian, and we'll take you through to the the end of the series.

If the world is sorted by then, our guests will know who's been the problem all along.

Thank you for listening. Do enjoy the rest of the series.
I've been Andy Zoltzman. Goodbye.

Taking part in the newsquiz were Zoe Lyons, Scott Bennett, Alisa Beckett King, and Cindy Yu. In the chair was me, Andy Zaltzman.

And additional material was written by Jake Gebby, Peter DeLouche, Cody Dahler, and Dee Allen. The producer was Sam Holmes, and it was a BBC Studios Audio Production for Radio 4.

Steve, what links the ring-tailed lema, the club sandwich, the large hadron collider, and what for gap services? Ah, uh, nothing.

But we have to find a route between them for our new show, Rootmasters. Yes, in which we, that is Steve Punt and Hugh Dennis and a guest set off on a 10-week journey from beer to eternity.
Really?

Here by people, places, subjects, and things which seem apparently unconnected. And possibly are.
Punt and Dennis Rootmasters, the comedy show that that takes the scenic route.

From Radio 4, available now on BBC Sound.

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Our independent U.S. family farmers care for every detail, from humane animal care to sustainable farming.
Because when it's better for the animals and the planet, it's better on your plate.

Visit nimanranch.com to find a retailer near you, Nyman Ranch, raised with care.

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