The News Quiz: Ep 3. Crossing the Pond, Crossing the Floor

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Hello.

Visiting American President Donald Trump said this week that the UK and the USA are like two notes in one chord.

In tribute to this touchingly poetic comment, I will play that chord for you.

Let me first find the notes that most exemplifies the UK.

I think that's this one.

And now the one that best expresses what America is.

And now let's put put them together into that beautiful chord Trump spoke about.

Maybe I've played it wrong.

We better get the show started before there is any more discordance in this discordant world.

Welcome to the news quiz.

I'm Mandy Zoltzmann.

Later on in the show, we'll be clarifying the official etiquette to what to do if you're a princess and you're sitting next to a sex offender at a big dinner.

That's not related to anything anything that happened this week.

Let me emphasise that.

This is a state banquet special, and our two teams commemorate the leaders of the two EU's, the USA and the UK, marking what one likes to do and what the other might soon come under pressure to do.

We have Team Ban against Team Quit.

On Team Ban, we have Pier Novelli and Sarah Barron.

And on Team Quit, we have Lucy Porter and Hugo Rifkin.

Lucy and Hugo, you can take our first question.

Which King's Castle was visited this week by which dirty rascal?

It's a technical American legal term for convicted felon.

Donald Trump came over to be buttered up by the royal family, and they did butter him up.

They might have covered him in marmalade as well.

We simply don't know.

So two leaders who are quite unpopular in their own countries stepped into a magical fairy land together.

No two men have needed each other more since Anton Deck, really.

So Trump was entertained by the king and queen, and

it was the most.

I was proud and cringing at the same time.

The British way.

Yeah.

If Trump is as wealthy as he says he is, why is he flying into Stanstead?

Did you see that?

It said the king had said that Trump was kin, which I think was a misprint.

I think what he meant to say was he was kin awful.

But they were at Windsor.

Trump was very, very proud to be at Windsor.

He kept saying it's a greater honour to be at Windsor than in Buckingham Palace, which obviously means he probably believed that and hadn't realised that they'd put him there so no one could see him.

It's not as great an honour as being on this oil rig, or perhaps

in this wine cellar.

They kept going on about how delighted he looked, and it was really funny because he was there the whole way through, looking absolutely pleased as punch.

And then Keir Starmer, looking as always like he thinks he's left the gas on.

I mean, say what you like about Keir Starmer, at least he does have the decency to always look sort of slightly fearful, regretful, and self-loathing,

which is the British way, I think.

But they all look lovely.

There was much discussion of the outfits.

The Grenadier Guards were there going, I'll tell you what, that hat Milani is wearing is a bit big, isn't it?

And And then they had a banquet, which I did wonder, right, this doesn't leave this room, but I wondered

if it was a very sneaky, slow-motion assassination attempt.

Because he's in his 70s and they left him out in the rain for a long time.

At the dinner, right, the banquet, they did not sit down to eat until 9:30.

Right, these are men in their 70s, the king and drink.

Like, if you had said to my dad at that age, we're eating at 9:30, he'd have been like, What are we Spanish?

Although, to be fair, the Uber East did say it would arrive by 8:15.

There are two banquets: there's the banquet you see, and then there's a secret banquet full of duplicates, other people, in case someone doesn't turn up to the banquet or is taken ill, so they can come and fill it-like place fillers at the Oscars.

They have a secondary banquet, and you sit there hoping someone falls over in the toilet so you can get promoted to the main banquet.

How does one get a job as a banquet-eating professional?

Banquet stand-in.

There was a third banquet which was Prince Andrew on the stairs.

I always get interested in the food because I think it either is very respectful or very disrespectful.

And the thing that I really glommed on to was the watercress panicata.

Yeah, someone goes panicata, you go, oh my god, someone goes

made of watercress.

I think it's almost like a hostile act, especially to a man who famously avoids anything green other than like the one piece of iceberg lettuce on his Big Mac or whatever it is.

They basically were doing that thing where I think we just make up traditions because we know that sort of visiting dictators like them.

I have no way of knowing, you know, if it had happened before or not.

They're just, ah, the traditional, the ancient plantagenet bikini contest.

Richard III's putting green.

Speaking of bikini contests, I did enjoy the idea that the reason the king and queen wore the sashes was so that Trump could feel more comfortable because he'd think he was just at another Miss Universe competition.

Last time he was here, Queen Elizabeth II wore a teardrop brooch, which I think you're only allowed to wear as a monarch if you've killed another monarch.

Melania was given sort of honey sandwiches, and it was...

Kate Middleton's honey from her beehives or something.

And I don't think that kind of humble I own land signaling works on Americans because they'll just go, you can buy your own honey?

My favorite bit with Melania was where the queen was showing around the doll's house, and I was just really hoping Camilla was going, Yes, we used to be very tiny in the old days.

My favorite girls-only activity was Melania and Princess Catherine.

It's just the two of them.

They went to meet the UK Scout Master and members of the Scouts.

So, do you guys think Trump chose to give it a miss?

Because he's like, I already know what it's like to hang out with a member of the royal family in the company of minors.

They had the press conference, obviously, the next day, you know, with Trump and Starmer, which, like, in journalism, we were all very excited about because they're normally absolute road crashes.

And nothing really exciting happened, although he did make up a new country.

Yes,

he made up Abu Bajan,

which is another monarchy but ruled by a dancing queen.

He also said in the press conference that Vladimir Putin had really let him down.

Yeah.

I'm really cross actually

with Vladimir, really disappointed.

Not so much angry, it's disappointed.

If he keeps bombing civilians in Ukraine, he'll start to let himself down.

He'll start to let Russia down.

In terms of the let's get into a bit of the substance of the negotiations, this can go to Pierre Pierre and Sarah.

A big old chunk of what

could be coming our way.

Is it nuclear material?

Well, yes, yep.

Nuclear stuff.

Well, money as well, just investment.

I am pleased that we're going to do nuclear power.

Right.

We did it already in the 50s and we thought, that's boring.

Let's go back to burning chunks of wood we find.

And I'm excited for the modular reactors.

I'm pleased with it.

There was that disgraceful thing where Nick Clegg was defending himself, not approving those reactors.

He said, it would have taken 10 years for them to come online, and that would have been during the pandemic when we had the energy crisis.

I mean, many nuclear reactors are

quite exciting, though, isn't it?

We could all have our own

little

pocket boutique nuclear reactor.

Don't spoil my dream.

They're the size of a tennis court.

So, unless you've got a tennis court,

you know, they have made smaller ones because they want to send one to the moon by 2030.

They're only about the size of a car.

I don't know why, there's no one there.

Seems mad.

But anyway, it's nice when you move to a new place for the electricity and stuff to be sorted out.

They did show the deals that they'd signed.

It had Trump's signature on.

Though we don't know if in 15 or 20 years he'll flatly deny that he actually signed it.

It was the missed opportunity of all time for Keir not to draw a woman's torso up.

He'd have been out, but we would all have loved him.

The report said that this £150 billion worth of investment could create 7,600 jobs.

That works out at £19.7 million.

What are these people going to be doing?

And the steel stuff, steel and aluminium, or as Donald Trump obviously would say,

shiny stuff.

That was offensive.

There was also a big money deal involving American tech companies here.

Obviously, the long-term impacts and benefits remain to be seen.

And

can we trust the tech companies to act in our long-term best interests when it comes to the business?

I mean, they're going to take your words, your soul, your likeness, make the news quiz without you.

They're going to steal every last aspect of your soul.

Right.

But GDP will nudge up a tiny bit.

So, well, that's something to look forward to for everyone, frankly.

But I don't know, we're a bit cynical about AI.

And sometimes when a crocodile beckons you over for a kiss, it just wants to give you a kiss.

Not always, admittedly, as my friend half-eaten Brian can testify.

Yes, the American president's state visit is over.

He's left the country, which I think means that another national leader can now come in under the one-in-one-out scheme.

Trump took a couple of days off from his hectic schedule of being simultaneously the most and least American-American in American history to indulge in his hobby of cosplaying being a real monarch instead of a pretend one.

It was an all-time record second state visit by Opinion Splitting Monthly's Man of the Millennium as he castled it up in Windsor.

Castling, of course, is a move in chess where the king swaps places with the crook.

The rook, the rook, sorry.

Rumours that Trump was found in the crypt of Windsor Castle trying to seduce the ghost of Henry VIII's third wife, Jane Seymour, have just been made up.

Whilst it is fair to say that not everyone in the UK is enough of an unquestioning fan of Trump to be allowed to ask him a question at a press conference, I'm sure we were all moved by his tribute to the special relationship.

He said, we are joined by history and faith, by love and language, and by transcendent ties of culture, tradition, ancestry, and destiny.

We are like two notes in one chord or two verses of the same poem, each beautiful on its own, but really meant to be played together.

I'm going to go out on a limp here and I'm going to say he did not write that himself.

The deal also aims to halve the time it takes to get regulatory approval for nuclear projects in the UK.

And I know I speak for all in this nation when I say that the only words more reassuring when it comes to building nuclear reactors than less regulation is hurry up.

Right, at the end of that round, it's four to Lucy and Hugo and two to Pierre and Sarah.

Well, in a sort of kind of related story, many people are off meat, many people are off alcohol these days, but who is now off air?

It's a certain James Kimmel.

Yes.

Jimmy Kimmel's been taken off air for.

It's unclear if he's been taken off air for being rude about the Make America Great Again movement or if he's been taken off air for presuming to know the motives of Charlie Kirk's assassin.

But either way, he's been taken off air for doing a sort of comedy monologue about politics like he's been doing for years.

It was upsetting to me that Americans now only have the choice of two identical-looking late-night talk shows hosted by middle-aged men.

It's just like been really hard.

It's okay, there'll be more.

There'll be seven or eight more.

Thanks for saying that as a friend.

I mean, they have been making the MAGA movement, they have been making this huge fuss, this huge attack on Britain because, you know, like very occasionally someone gets their door knocked on because they've sent a nasty tweet threatening to kill someone.

And then when it's actually, when it's happening there, when people are literally getting taken off air, you know, I mean, Trump's suing the New York Times.

You know, they just, they don't even sort of pretend.

It's not freedom of speech, it's freedom of speech for them.

You know, there's this great Rosa Luxemburg quote where she basically says, freedom is only freedom when it's freedom for the other fellow.

And they just absolutely don't believe that.

They're not even pretending they do anymore.

It's kind of impressive in its cynicism.

Yeah, every single one of them who says Kimmel should have been taken off air has got a quote somewhere where they've complained about cancel culture.

I'll tell you what I feel sorry for with the Jimmy Kimmel thing, as well as the house band.

Because I always think that must be really if you're on the house band on a late-night chat show and you let go, because what you can't play weddings because you can only play 10 seconds of every song.

We're going to have our first complete the stat question now because we live in a world of twisted demi facts and outright hogwashery.

So, what I'm going to do is I'm going to give our panelists a statistic and they have to complete that statistic.

And this can go to Lucy and Hugo.

9%

of British people.

9% of British people know which side is for your basket and which is for the bagging area.

Oh, you've touched the nerve there.

It's tough.

9% of British people have at some point been a leader of the Conservative Party.

The correct answer is 9% of British people, according to a recent poll, think Donald Trump has had a positive impact on the United Kingdom.

You might mean comedically.

I genuinely, I think that's only people who are trying to be interesting at dinner parties.

I choose to believe that.

Complete this stat, Pierre and Sarah.

89%

of people

just stand there waiting for an assistant to come and key in the code.

The correct answer is do not approve of the Starmer government's record to date.

According to a poll this week, 11% do approve, 17% don't know, 72%

disapprove.

He's just having such a terrible.

I mean, it is extraordinary.

If he tried to do his fly-up, he'd lose a finger, wouldn't he?

This is like a personal question, but do you not still fancy him?

Well, do you know what?

I have to say, I still would.

I still would.

And if anyone is, because, you know, like, obviously in the glory days, it was easy to fancy him.

But if anyone thinks that I don't fancy him now, that he's a sad-faced loser they do not know my dating history

right at the end of that section it's now six to Lucy and Hugo four to Pierre and Sarah

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and so you can have this this question penny mordant british sword wielder of the year 2023

said this week that what

is no fun at the moment?

Wielding swords.

She thought there was a real future in it, but

just the coronation thing, apparently.

Yep.

So it's devastating once you've put the down payment on the big sword.

You can't return them, you know.

Until there's a knife amnesty.

She really excites the sort of conservative who absolutely fantasises about losing an arm wrestle to somebody with fantastic hair.

She has got lovely hair and she's very, yeah, sort of that retired colonel kind of demographic.

Find her very arousing, don't they?

Yes, very lovely, lovely woman.

Strong.

Yes.

We had her open the fate, actually.

Lovely, lovely.

Radio force has gone back to the 1970s.

What did she say was no fun at the moment?

Is it being a conservative?

Correct.

Being a conservative is no fun.

Was it ever fun?

Is that what it's for?

Being fun?

I don't think it's supposed to be fun.

The whole point of the name is let's keep things about as they are.

Which is never the line late at night in a party.

Where should we go to next?

Let's stay here.

Yeah, I mean, lib dems are fun.

Like, Ed Davies fun.

Yeah, he lives in theme parks.

Is he fun?

Yeah.

He's like the man who has the most fun, who looks the least fun.

You know what I mean?

He's like, even when he's in a Zorb, you're kind of like a bit dull.

Yeah, it's clear something of the Greek mythological punishment about it.

I can't figure out, I have to try and back-engineer what crime he committed against the gods.

He scorned his own team, and now he must team-build forevermore.

Yeah, Penny Morden said that she's planning a return to frontline politics, so not joining the Tories presumably.

can anyone give me anything that is more fun than being a Conservative harbour voyage

part-time accountancy

nude beekeeping

well possibly because it's not much fun a number of Conservatives are defecting to reform UK Danny Kruger has left the Conservative Party is there any way Hugo that the Tories can ever recover from the loss of Danny Kruger?

It has been this sort of thing where there's a new defector and you're like, you're just making that one up, aren't you?

But I think what's the best thing about the idea of defections to reform is the people they don't want.

Because, like, Nadine Doris, when she defected, she defected, even though Nigel Farage had previously called her mad.

But nonetheless, she defected and she said, you know, Boris should come with me, Boris and Nigel should team up.

And Nigel Farage is like, no, thanks.

And they've said they won't have Liz Tross.

People were saying that Sibella Braverman would defect, but actually, her husband did defect and then undefected after they slagged off Swella Braverman.

So, it's all very messy.

So, I maybe they should do a one-in-one out.

I mean, their MPs kind of do, to be honest.

Yeah, well, it seems like everyone's always really excited to join reform, and then they work for a bit with Nigel Farage, and then they quietly disappear and are never heard from again.

It's like that's what we should do to people who want to come into this country, is we should make them work with Nigel Farage.

See how keen they are.

But, yeah, Maria Caulfield, never heard of her.

It's nice that Andrea Jenkins will have some backing singers at the next conference.

They've got a difficult tightrope reform because, on the one hand, the kind of native candidates who've come up through their system are always absolutely mad.

But the other option is to get boring Tories who've defected, who no one trusts.

So it's a real sort of nutter dullness kind of

sort of balancing act on the scales they've got to do.

You can have one vaccine denialist as a treat, and then you have to have a former shadow cabinet member.

Well, Danny Krueger, because I had vaguely remembered that he's Prue Leith's son, but I just think the grassroots anti-establishment ethos of reform is a perfect fit for the Eaton and Oxford-educated

Danny Kruger.

The thing is, he's going to have to learn to shout stop the boats in a context that isn't officiating at the Henley Regata.

Yes, Danny Kruger has jumped the sinking shark of the Conservative Party to give his constituents the reform MP they never knew they needed or had chosen.

In fact, last year, Kruger said the Conservatives were leaving the nation after 14 years in power, sadder, more divided, and less conservative.

But clearly he didn't think that work is finished yet.

And getting reform ready for government, that's a job akin to preparing the inhabitants of London Zoo for a production of Les Miserable.

It's not completely impossible that you'll pull it off, but it's going to be tough.

Another question now, this can go to Lucy and Hugo.

We will never surrender.

Kirstarma channeled his inner churchill this week saying that Britain will never surrender what to whom.

Britain will never surrender the phrase picky bits to the growing menace of small plates.

Well, I hope those words are true, Lucy.

I think the answer is your flag.

Correct.

To those that use it as a symbol of violence, fear, and division,

I say I'd like to see you guys reclaim your flag for its true purpose: girl power.

You can take control of symbols through the use of them.

I think it's a good idea not to just give up on all of our best graphic design and logos.

Just have the flag on a dress.

If you waved England flags and union jacks at every gay pride parade for two years, these guys would lose interest in them.

All it would say.

Yeah, the whole flag discourse has been just it's depressing.

And

there was one picture that I thought was great, which was one of the marchers wrapped in an England flag going to buy onion bar juice.

And I've always wondered what irony tastes like.

I suppose I'm very lucky, I live in a very multicultural area, I have very multicultural friends, all the mums from school, there's women of every faith and none, and we all go out and we have a brilliant time, and then the Muslim mums drive us home.

That's absolutely true.

I mean, it is important, as a lot of people have said, that it wasn't just a far-right protest.

There were lots of people they don't identify as foreign.

It was only really a far-right protest if you judge it by the people who organised it, who spoke at it, and the things they said.

Right, the scores, it's now 8-4.

So, we'll have some more.

Complete the statistic questions.

Complete this stat.

One bottle a day.

It's an alien concept to anyone who attended the Oasis Reunion tour.

It was, that's about what is drunk by some primates in the wild.

Yes, chimpanzees.

Chimpanzees.

Chimpanzees.

They eat fruit that is fermented and it's about...

And to wash it down.

Yes.

They go, not madri, that stuff's cack, but.

Of course, chimps can't use tools, so it's a big problem for documentary crews.

They have to keep opening lagers.

Jane Goodall is essentially running a bar at this point.

Attenborough's just, yeah, he's like a tequila girl with shots in his bandolaira.

What are you having there?

They basically they eat like sort of extremely ripened fruit and they get wasted on it, which I have not yet tried, but I'm now extremely tempted.

The night's the night.

In the wild, you can tell which of the chimps is driving if they eat the unripe fruit

they've designated.

What does it say about the world that chimps now are drinking to forget, whereas in the 80s they just had a nice cup of tea?

Yes, wild chimpanzees have been found to consume the equivalent of a bottle of lager's worth of alcohol a day by eating ripened fruit.

So that's roughly the equivalent of half a pint of strong lager, which probably explains why those pissed-up half-wits still haven't written even a single work of Shakespeare.

Sure, their typewriters have run out of ribbon, but even so, all they've written so far is a bawdy limerick, half an episode of Silent Witness, the script of a right-wing podcast, and some libelous social media posts about football referees.

So, well, the scores are now tied at eight points all,

which means

we go to a tiebreaker.

Who has said they won't do what if who else also does that what?

What?

Do you know?

It's Eurovision.

Correct.

Yes, welcome, Hugo.

Spain has said they won't take part in Eurovision if Israel does take part in Eurovision.

Correct.

But then Germany said they won't take part if Israel doesn't take part.

Yes.

So some people will, some people won't.

We still won't win.

Like we're kind of shroding as Eurovision song contest.

Even if it was down to just us and Israel, Israel wouldn't vote for us because of our terrible record on human rights.

I mean, is this

puts everything in perspective, really, doesn't it?

With the UN having declared that a genocide is being committed.

But I mean, I think Eurovision is the kind of language that the world truly understands, isn't it?

Wow.

If Netanyahu doesn't see the light now that he's offended Graham Norton.

Let's really turn the screws on Israel's hardline far right and deny them access to the gayest European contest.

I reckon they could still get away with entering as long as they just called themselves Aberbaijan.

Spain has become the latest country after Slovenia, Ireland, and the Netherlands to confirm it will withdraw from next year's Eurovision song contest if Israel is allowed to participate.

Eurovision, for those unfamiliar with it, well done on a life well lived.

I mean, we're looking from a British music point of view, the Beatles, the Stones, David Bowie, never quite nailed it.

Storm Z still waiting for his chance.

Fire started by the Prodigy did come second.

It was 1996, I think.

It's behind Liechtenstein's amflaut schnautwurt with his song, I'm a Little Squirrel, brackets, Do you want to see my nuts?

Memory stays tricked.

BBC Director General Tim Davies said the BBC is aware of the concerns, but Eurovision has, quotes, never been about politics.

Out of all the ridiculous nonsense to have come out of the BBC in the last hundred years, that has to be right up there.

Well, that means that our winners this week are Lucy and Hugo.

Padlock, Supierre,

and Sarah.

I'm just hearing, actually, that we're being taken off air.

Because it's the end of the show.

Until next week, thank you for listening.

Goodbye.

Taking part in the news was where Piernelli, Lucy Porter, Sarah Parron, and Hugo Rifkin.

In the chair was me, Andy Zaltzmann, and additional material was written by Cody Dahler, Laura Major, Sam Lake, and Ruth Husco.

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

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