The News Quiz: Ep 1. Flags out, stamp duty. Stamped out, off duty.

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Welcome back to the news quiz.

Before we get started on this new series, I'm going to quickly catch up on the three months of news that we've missed using the new BBC News Condenser AI robot.

I'll just program it in June to August.

All the news

go.

Right, well it's just printed off this.

An exact copy of Edvard Monk's smash hit platinum-selling painting, The Scream.

This AI technology has got seriously good now.

Now we've wrapped up the summer.

It's autumn time, so welcome to this new series of the news quiz.

Hello.

So our team this week as we recommence after a summer, not overly burdened with joy and optimism around the world.

We have team glass half empty against team glass also half smashed, but we're still drinking out of it because that's what we do.

On team empty, we have Coco Khan and Lucy Porter.

Team Smashed, Alastair Beckett King and Andrew Maxwell.

Right, Lucy and Coco, you can take the first question.

Now, for this question, for the sake of impartialism, I'm going to use source material from all sides of the political swamp.

So here we go.

Which prominent politician this week made an honest mistake in an act of shameless hypocrisy relating to a complex technical technical matter of tax law that showed typical out-of-touch politicians' arrogance, resulting from a series of difficult personal family issues that should prompt immediate resignation, if not some kind of public walk of shame through every city in the land, having dealt with the problem swiftly and openly, bringing immutable, uncleansable shame upon the government that ought to flow over quite quickly if we're being objective about it.

And will rightly surely bring down the Starma regime by, oh, I reckon, the end of this show, if not already.

Well, I think this is Angela Angela Rayna, who apparently paid the wrong amount of tax on her flat.

She said she consulted three people before buying the flat.

Those people were Jimmy Carr, Gary Barlow,

and the ghost of Ken Dodd.

So,

yeah, we don't know at the time of recording whether she is going or not, but it's the housing minister and she's messed up buying a house.

This comes after the homelessness minister was accused of making people homeless.

You think, what next?

The Chancellor of the Exchequer owing five million pounds in tax to HMRC.

Oh no, that was Nadim's a hole.

So

yeah, so she's paid the wrong amount of tax.

She says it was a genuine mistake.

She has referred herself to the government ethics advisor who said he couldn't help because the flat isn't in ethics, it's in ethics.

If you were being generous to her, you would say that she is someone who is hounded by the press.

This story was dug up by the Telegraph.

You know, there's been all sorts of stories in her career.

My favourite one about her was that she was crossing and uncrossing her legs seductively to distract Boris Johnson when he was at the podium, which is kind of ludicrous.

So, this is the latest one, in fairness, like he needs that.

So, this is the latest one in another scandal about Raina.

There was also one about how she wore a dry robe and drank wine, which again found it relatable.

So, I guess it's going to be a bit of a litmus test to the public, actually.

And that question, that word relatability, I think is actually quite a good one.

Will people think, okay, she was in a difficult situation, she's opened up more than most politicians would about a messy divorce, about her son with lifelong disabilities, and selling her share into a trust so that he could stay in the house, which has been modified for his needs.

And whether people will buy that or not, we don't know.

I think the moral of this story is that if you take advice, take it from people who know about politics.

Apparently, Raina got her advice from just like a normal high street conveyancer, or just make your brand, I don't give a shit about you, never have, never will.

And then people won't care.

Yeah.

Should you say on that the issue of the amount of money that you know, the five million pounds that you mentioned from the Nadeem Zahawi story and the £40,000 Angela Reyna has underpaid.

Some mathematicians do claim that five million is much bigger than £40,000.

For the sake of balance, I should say that others say they're basically the same.

I always liked Claire Rayner.

She was a ray of sunshine in the mornings.

I didn't usually take her advice about love.

I thought she was good.

And to find out, like, she is on the fiddle, a bit disappointed, to be honest.

There's no vape steam without a charge.

I feel like I should explain then, for younger listeners who might not be familiar with stamp duty, in the olden days when I was a boy, if a man and woman loved each other very much, they could get a mortgage

and they could use that to buy a house.

What's a house?

Nobody knows because the secret of building them has been lost.

But basically, depending on the cost of the house, you might have to pay a tax called stamp duty to an ogre, I think.

I'm not sure.

Angela Rayner is probably my generation's John Prescott, the millennial John Prescott, the working-class sidekick to a sociopathic prime minister.

And I think that's very progressive.

I think it's great that Britain has its first female, John Prescott.

Fantastic.

But I don't think she has Prescott's juzh.

You know, he had proper scandals.

He'd be out there driving two jags, punching someone, you know?

Like fun, interesting scandals that you'd want to talk about on a topical humorous show where you don't have to look at what stamp duty is.

I think that's the problem with Labour today.

Like, John Prescott, you may not have agreed with his politics, you might not have liked him, you might have liked him, whatever.

You can't argue.

The man was a top shagger.

He was an epic lad, he was a character.

In 2001, if you'd seen a headline that said John Prescott found naked in London Zoo, you'd go, which enclosure?

Oh, marsupials.

There'd be a picture of him sharing a kebab with a kangaroo.

You go, oh, there he is.

Classic, John.

I want more of that, please.

This

sort of rather distracting story for Keir Starmer followed his attempted relaunch of his government.

He described it as phase two

earlier in the week.

He promised to deliver in phase two.

What?

Three things, all beginning with D?

Drama, drama, drama.

Drugs, drugs, drugs.

Neither of those are correct.

Delivery, delivery, delivery.

Correct.

That is the correct answer.

He promised to deliver delivery.

Yeah.

Oh,

when I heard that, he was like, I'm going to deliver, delivery, deliver.

I was like, can we get a tracker number?

A lot of his achievements have actually been put in a safe place.

They're actually in your neighbour's wheelie bin.

I thought it was quite an unfortunate thing to go, it's phase two of labour, because phase one is where your waters break.

Phase two is where it really hurts and you might accidentally do a poo.

In some ways, delivery is quite quite an appropriate term in that sense.

I delivered a child in a brief, unplanned, and highly successful 10-minute career as a midwife

when our second child was born.

And I retired with a played one one one record.

Got out on top, I would say.

In terms of

phase two, how long do you think before he has to launch phase three?

How long are you giving phase two?

Should probably be pretty quick.

I mean, he's done nothing so far.

But he's only been in the job for a year.

He's only settling in.

He's only probably met the cat once.

But he has made some interesting promises, which include nationalising the trains.

The house building promise is some of the greatest investment in house building we've had for decades.

The promises for social housing.

You know, there is stuff.

Nursery hours.

I would say it doesn't go far enough.

Fine, but he's not interested in getting my vote because he's probably thinking I've already got the millennials in London.

He needs to get the reform voters.

What he's going to deliver, I'm quite nervous about actually.

I think some of it might be a bit nasty.

I think that what they're doing is they're naming their phases in the same way as the Police Academy films of the 1980s.

So, Police Academy,

it's just Police Academy, right?

So, that's the first one, it's just Labour government, right?

And then Police Academy 2,

that was the first assignment, their first assignment, right?

So, this is is where they are now.

It's like we've started.

Police Academy 3 back in training, right?

So, we've got to wait for the good one, it's going to be Labour Party 8 Mission to Moscow

because that was the best Police Academy film by some measure.

My favourite bit is when Wes Streeting does those funny sound effects.

I enjoy that.

But sound of ambulances arriving on time.

Yes, a tricky start to the autumn for Labor Deputy Prime Minister and Secretary of State for Housing Angela Rainer admitted underpaying stamp duty when she bought a flat early this year, claiming she followed professional economic advice, which she then discovered was inaccurate.

It does all highlight once again how on the things to ask your tax advisor if you're a frontline politician list, the question, are you absolutely sure about that?

should be pretty high up.

Along with as a tax advisor, should you really be wearing a what would Al Capone do wristband?

Also we don't yet have all the facts, both the true facts and the rather more plentiful other facts, so it's hard to make a definitive judgment right now.

And it's certainly true that Rayner made the mistake of being wealthy enough to buy a flat in Brighton, but not wealthy enough to avoid tax legally.

Right, at the end of that round, the scores are two point all.

This can go to Andrew and Alistair.

It's going to end in 2029, said Keir Starmer about what this week.

There won't be migrants in hotels.

Yes, correct.

They will be in restaurants.

They will then fully be on holiday.

They'll have got their bags in, they'll have settled in, they'll have charged their devices, and they'll just be on holidays.

That's the plan.

And then phase two is the water parks.

I think that's the problem, isn't it?

Because most people associate hotels with luxury.

But if you stay in hotels for your work, like comedians do, you know that the average hotel is like a battery hen farm with worse Wi-Fi.

Like a remote control covered in mushrooms, but it doesn't matter because the TV doesn't work anyway.

There used to be a hotel that all the comedians stayed in called The Big Sleep, which I think is a bad name for a hotel because that means death.

Raymond Chandler didn't call the novel a lovely snooze.

Anyway, it's not called that anymore.

They They call it the long goodbye now.

My point is that

people are not living luxurious five-star hotel lives because they're asylum seekers staying in hotels.

Come on.

The point is that there's been migrants in hotels.

Some of them are, quite frankly, not very desirable people.

And the people who live near the hotel were expecting tourists or business travellers to be in the hotel.

This has created disappointment,

verging on anger.

Some people have tightened the streets, and there's been some civil disputes, but mostly, people have decided to live like Northern Ireland

and just put flags everywhere.

It's the exact opposite of how we thought the troubles was going to play out.

We thought Northern Ireland would become like the rest of the world, but instead, you've become like Northern Ireland.

But it's all happening in Ireland as well.

There's an enormous amount of flags going up around council estates in Dublin.

I was only home working back home.

I'm a Dubliner.

I'm from the north side, the working class side of the city.

Somebody had hung this massive tricolour, the Irish flag, outside their house.

But they had hung it the wrong way around.

Which, if I don't even notice, but the flag of the Irish Republic the other way around is the flag of the Ivory Coast.

You know what I mean?

When you're a comedian, you're always like,

I just couldn't help myself.

I knocked on his door.

I shouldn't have done.

I'm a busybody and a comedian.

And so I knocked on this dude's door just to see what would happen.

The guy answers the door, and he was from the Ivory Coast.

It's been quite a stroppy summer around

this whole issue.

A lot of talk about the St George's flag and you can see why a lot of people cling to St George, much loved by the right-wing press, largely because he wasn't based in the UK, preferring to register his sainting business offshore.

His most famous act, Dragon Slaying, involved killing a source of renewable energy.

So you can see why that's gone down

well, but I mean it has but it's been an angry summer.

Yeah, I'd say it has been quite an angry summer.

I feel

Nigel Farage, I hate admitting it, but I think he's, you know, he's a clever man.

And Parliament's been in recess.

Traditionally, nothing happens.

What a perfect time to capitalise.

He's been out and about.

He's been working very, very hard.

Yeah, I mean, Farage has been everywhere.

I've been thinking of moving to Clacton just to get away from him, to be honest.

At the end of that round, the scores are four to Andrew and Alistair and six to Coco and Lucy.

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Right, let's move global now.

Trump was not invited.

Putin was.

Gary Lineker wasn't.

Kim Jong-un was.

To

what?

There's been a summit.

Yes.

It's being run by China.

People have informally called it the non-Western Leaders Summit, but it's got a longer name than that.

The main thing about it was that Kim Jong-un came, which was very unusual for Kim Jong-un to come.

They talked about all sorts of things, mainly about trying to push back against the West's influence on the world, I suppose.

Military staff, biochemistry staff.

I think there was even a moment where they talked about living forever.

That was like a hot mic moment between Jinping and Putin, which is kind of weird.

Hot Mike, incidentally, is a very good-looking sound recordist who

makes people

too relaxed and they just say things they don't mean to say.

But he catches so much.

Nice to see Kim Jong-un out and about, though.

The reason why he went is because he'll only travel the world in his bulletproof train.

He's like a really brutal version of Michael Portillo.

I felt, yeah, so on the hot mic, this is extraordinary.

So there's on caught on the Chinese state TV on the hot mic.

There was Xi Jinping and Vladimir Putin discussing how, you know, you can just keep getting new organs and you could live for 150 years.

You could live forever.

And you just think, like, that must have been a dark day for Vladimir Putin's doubles.

You know what I mean?

I mean, you expect to take a bullet for him.

You don't expect to lose an organ for him.

I just thought that, you know, the idea that they're two men over 50, what are they going to talk about but their health?

My husband and his mates, it's all obviously my fungal toad.

The commitment that he has to being just the most sinister bastard.

I know.

I was listening to that and I thought, maybe he's the bad guy.

Up to this point I was like, you know, he's gotten at a point like, yeah, maybe NATO shouldn't have expanded all the way to the east.

But now I'm thinking maybe he was wrong to invade Ukraine.

He's got the biggest country in the world.

Like, you know,

why do they bother making such space-saving dolls?

That's true.

This is a summit, which I'm from the north of England.

In the north of England, that's just a thing you can't remember the name of.

A big, big, big summit, big, big deal.

All the big players were there.

China, Russia, etc.

North Korea was, no offense to Kim Jong-un, but North Korea is not exactly a big player.

It wouldn't have been weirder if it had been Vladimir Putin, Xi Jinping, and your mum's friend Kim.

And in fact, I think it would have been good for her after the divorce to get out there and meet some guys, you know, move on, forget Alon, I think.

Thing is, though, North Korea, so because there was the summit and then there was the party, whether it was a commemoration of the end of World War Two or a celebration of the beginning of World War III, we simply don't know.

But so the summit, it was like some people like Turkey came to the summit and Egypt, but they didn't get invited to the parade, whereas Kim Jong-un went to the parade.

It's like a wedding where you sort of go, Well, we won't have Kim Jong-un at the ceremony.

We'll invite him to the evening due because he likes a drink, he'll get the dance floor fill.

But if we invite him to the wedding, he'll just piss in the font and try and get off with a vicar.

Basically, what happened was G had a sleepover, and he didn't invite Donald Trump.

And then he did all the things that Donald Trump really likes,

hoping it would get back to him.

Like, oh my god, we had such a great time.

And then Donald's there with Milani, going, Oh, god, they had like missiles and bombs, and I love all those things, and they didn't invite me.

And they're all just sort of snickering at him behind his back.

It's like if my friends went out for a Toby Carvery, a pub quiz, and a Dolly Parton-themed karaoke night

and didn't invite me.

That's how Donald...

And because he laughed it off, he was like, I didn't care.

I didn't want to be there.

Didn't care about that laugh.

Did you see the message he wrote about it?

It was like, please give my warmest regards to Vladimir Putin and Kim Jong-un as you conspire against the United States.

Yes, indeed.

This was a big name, big hitting, small commitment to human rights conference in China that brought together some of the world's less conversationally generous leaders this week.

Chinese boss Xi Jinping, welcome the likes of Vladimir Putin, the self-styled Kremlin Gremlin, and North Korea's 10-time economic progress suppressor of the year, Kim Jong-un, for a fun-packed few days of lads chat about the future state of the planet following America's de facto resignation as a country.

Chinese President Xi told a summit of leaders that global governance has reached a new crossroads.

No doubt someone will paint a union jack on it before the...

The highlight was Xi putting his buddies through a generation game type challenge where Putin and Kin had to remember all the different military hardware that had gone past them on the conveyor

down a shot of vodka every time they got one wrong

that explains why there was a hologram of Larry Grayson

the karaoke at the after party was reportedly sensational Xi of course went with DePow's power ballad China in your hand

and indeed the 2025 Oasis reunion mania had clearly reached Beijing with Xi and Putin both jumping on board the live forever bandwagon the leaders caught on mic discussing the possibilities of eternal life via organ transplantation.

And if people do get more right-wing and authoritarian as they get older, the mind boggles at what a 150-year-old Vladimir Putin

is going to be painting on the mini roundabouts of Moscow.

The uninvited America boss Donald Trump was suffering some very public FOMO and accused Xi of coercing Putin and Kim to conspire against America.

Trump was later seen going into a tattoo removal parlour and was overheard saying, well, if they can't take the naked Vladimir off my shoulder blade, can they at least make it look like a laboo boo?

At the end of our global summit round, the scores are now eight to Andrew and Alistair, and six to Coco and Lucy.

We enter our final quick-fire tie-break round, and in honor of Angela Reyna's difficulties, there are 40,000 points per question.

But all of these points will have to be handed back at the end of the round.

So our first question is going to go to Coco and Lucy.

Children under the age of 16 could soon be banned from buying what?

Second homes in Hove.

Energy drinks.

Yes, correct.

Outrageous.

What's the message?

This government wants to

allow 16 year olds to vote, but under 16 year olds aren't allowed to have energy drinks.

Where are they going to find the focus to research the policy initiatives?

What I like about energy drinks is the way the logo is like: if a heavy metal band could give you diarrhea.

That's great branding.

I'm lucky my kids touch word their teens, but they're not into energy drinks.

They seem to chips off the old block, they've embraced a lethargic lifestyle very, very well.

But yeah, they're awful.

It's like one of those, it's such a great policy, isn't it, for a government to go, who is going to object to this?

If you ban energy drinks for kids, you're going to have to make school a lot less boring.

It's not really fair, is it?

They need four coffees worth of caffeine.

Give them an espresso martini before they go in, that's what I do.

I mean, if kids aren't going to be allowed to buy these sort of caffeine-fueled energy drinks, what sort of psychotropic liquids do you think we should be feeding them instead?

Beer!

Be normal!

Get this country back to when it was great.

Drinking cans in the park.

Right, Andrew and Alistair, your question.

We are here to replace you.

Ominous words uttered by whom in whose direction this week.

I think this is outrageous news.

We now have one party leader in this country who opposes the war in Gaza and supports trans rights in the form of Zach Polanski of the Greens.

It's outrageous.

The Tories say that the Green Party has been captured by the hard left.

Which is imagine that.

In other news, I went into Games Workshop earlier and it was full of nerves.

It's the new leader of the British Green Party, who in a previous career with his mind could make tits bigger.

Yeah, I mean, are you going to sort of fill people in on that?

Nope, that's not all right.

I thought when you said we are coming to replace you, I was going to say, is it me to Melvin Bragg?

Just putting my hat in the ring.

I just wanted to...

Because you have to do, that's how you do it, is in Radio Radio 4.

If you want a job, you have to say it on air.

You have to dibs it.

And you have to get in quick because Amil Rajan is really fast.

How good are you at getting Boffins to hurry up?

Because that's where Melvin was really brilliant.

Oh, I loved it.

Hurry up, Boffin.

Get to the bit where we find the very start of the Industrial Revolution.

We don't need to hear about the charcoal era.

There's one, the Reign of Terror, brilliant.

He absolutely loses it with this lovely historian.

She's done nothing wrong, but he just goes for her, and it is the sexiest thing.

Was this the history of the Dutch East India Company?

Oh, no, was that another fighting?

Oh, God, she blathered on and he nailed her.

Absolutely.

God,

dammit must have been grumpy that day.

Right.

What has dropped to its lowest level in the UK since the 1950s?

Anyone?

Is it people saying ooh matron?

You never hear it these days.

Yeah.

Use of the word knockers.

Hanky panky, is it an all-time low?

Or grumpy bus ticket inspectors.

Yeah.

Why are you, butler?

The correct answer is the levels of cement production in the United Kingdom.

Correct.

Yeah, lowest levels of cement production since the 50s.

Because I mean,

it's really sad, yeah, for people of our generation.

You know, when back in our childhood days, we didn't have games, consoles, and social media.

We just used to play with cement.

Yeah, in 2024, the UK produced 7.3 million tons of cement, which does sound like a lot, but you have to understand it's a lot less than we used to produce.

And bear in mind that the government has set aside half of that for a giant statue of Nigel Farrar,

which is going to straddle the English Channel like a colossus of Rhodes,

pointing out migrant boats with his woolly.

It's the only time the strange kink in my willie has come in handy.

If you look closely, my Todgers actually pointing them along the coast to Belgium.

That brings us to the end of this show and the scores.

Both teams have lost their 40,000 points in that round, so it's eight to Andrew and Alistair, six to Coco and Lucy.

Thank you.

Before we go, if you would like to contribute your bodily organs to help your favourite world leader to live forever, please send them, preferably in a sealed and even more preferably refrigerated container, to the BBC Despots Never Die appeal with your chosen recipients and why you think they should be immortal in no more than 40 words.

Thank you very much for listening to the news quiz.

I've been Andy Zoltzman.

Goodbye.

Taking part in the news quiz were Lucy Porter, Alastair Beckett King, Andrew Maxwell and Coco Kahn.

In the chair was me, Andy Zoltzmann and additional material was written by Mike Shepherd, Rebecca Bain, Milo Edwards and Ruth Husco.

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

Hello, I'm Brian Cox.

I'm Robin Ince and we're back for a new series of the Infinite Monkey Cage.

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Of course, we're doing one on potatoes.

You love potatoes.

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Yeah, you love chips.

I'll only enjoy it if it's got curry sauce on it.

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