The News Quiz: Ep8. Titles, Jewels and "Chocolate" Bars

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Speaker 3 Learn more at adobe.com slash go slash expression and this is the final news quiz of 2025 and it's a particularly high-stake show today because our winning team will become the new hosts of Strictly Come Dancing.

Speaker 3 So there is a lot on the line and our teams this week, well it is, as you probably know, 2013 2013 Hollywood Blockbuster Awareness Week.

Speaker 3 And in tribute to Donald Trump's strictly inspired home improvement project this week and the UK government's efforts to turn its opinion poll ratings round, we have Team White House down against Team Frozen.

Speaker 3 On Team White House down, we have Laura Lex and Alistair Beckett King.

Speaker 3 And on Team Frozen, we have Arhir Shah and political editor at Politics Joe Ava Santina.

Speaker 3 Our first question for Alistair and Laura, who is going to be asking Santa Claus for some new headed notepaper for Christmas, preferably to be dropped down a chimney in a different house?

Speaker 7 I think this is,

Speaker 7 well, we no longer say Prince of Wales, do we? I think this is Prince Andrew.

Speaker 3 Yes. He was never Prince of Wales, but

Speaker 3 we say king instead of that.

Speaker 6 That's why we don't say it. That's what Alistair's saying.

Speaker 7 That's his old title. I haven't really done my research.

Speaker 3 Duke of York. He was a Diet Hill guy.
We don't call him the Duke of York anymore.

Speaker 7 That was never the phrase I used when talking about him.

Speaker 7 It's Prince Andrew. Can I just say, up front, I want to say how sorry I was to read about Prince Andrew's tragic death in a freak accident next week.

Speaker 7 I'm very, very, very sad to hear about that.

Speaker 7 This is a very tricky story to talk about, British libel laws being what they are, because there's a thing about Prince Andrew that I can't say on the radio. But I can think it.

Speaker 3 And I am thinking it now.

Speaker 7 So if you think it while I think it, they can't touch us for that.

Speaker 6 I feel sorry for him.

Speaker 3 Right, you I think I'm gonna have to show you working on that one.

Speaker 6 Yeah, I just think of all the princes that have existed in England for my lifetime, he's the one behaving the most like a prince as I understand their job to be.

Speaker 6 And I think it's not his fault that the royal family went all woke and changed the rules.

Speaker 6 But I think if you look historically, because king henry the eighth was like 48 when he married his 17 year old wife catherine howard and we learn about him in primary school like that's interesting

Speaker 6 then there's this other like historical king charles the third i think he's called and he was like 29 when he met his 16 year old first wife

Speaker 3 so you know

Speaker 6 i just think andy's towing the party line

Speaker 3 He's not actually giving up these titles. He's just agreed not to use them.

Speaker 6 Yeah, I think giving up is strong when they are literally ripping them out of his like white knuckled hands in

Speaker 1 if you're just agreeing like i also agree that i am not the duke of yeah

Speaker 1 that's a thing that any of us could do wow what did you do

Speaker 3 so i don't use my official title which is zaltor the merciless the first lord of funk you know i i own it i own it but i don't like to show off um i mean politically uh

Speaker 3 is this sort of resonating broadly across the country? Are people, you know, how upset do you think voters people are in this country?

Speaker 6 Well, I think that they're most frustrated that it hasn't been debated in Parliament, which has been a push by several MPs, because it does feel like, well, it was voluntary for him to go out the titles, and it doesn't feel like anyone has actually had to face any consequences or retribution.

Speaker 6 That's a really serious answer. You're all waiting to laugh, and sorry, that's it.
But is it because it's you can't hold both concepts in your head at once in a serious debate?

Speaker 6 You can't say, oh, he's a beastie, but he's also part of God's magical family that own us all.

Speaker 6 You can't fight for both things. And if you're in Parliament, you're literally like, he's my boss, but his brother's weird.

Speaker 7 The punishments that they've discussed all do seem vaguely whimsical. The Scottish newspaper The National said that there are rumours that he could be exiled to a Scottish castle.

Speaker 7 I mean, that's just my childhood holidays.

Speaker 7 It doesn't really sound like that much of a punishment. But on the other hand, I mean, I guess maybe I know a bit more about Scottish castles than you.
They are quite miserable, to be fair.

Speaker 7 Like, England is full of, like, twiddled-dee country houses that people call castles. But every single Scottish castle is like a solid cube of stone with no windows and no roof.

Speaker 7 You know, they're not that much fun. They were built to keep the English out and the misery in.

Speaker 1 Although, I would say that if they really do exile Andrew to a Scottish castle, the next series of celebrity traitors is going to be absolutely incredible.

Speaker 3 Yes, Prince Andrew, the 65-year-old former It's a knockout contestant and

Speaker 3 14-time National Embarrassment of the Year nominee is to be rebranded, the man who'd long put the horrific into honorific title, will no longer be called by the motley collection of tags he's acquired over the years.

Speaker 3 Robert Jenrick, the shadowy justice secretary and controversy addict,

Speaker 3 said Prince Andrew should leave public life. Now, obviously, Jenrick finds it hard to complete any sentence without suggesting that someone should leave somewhere.

Speaker 3 On this occasion, he could be right.

Speaker 3 Moving sideways and upwards in Team Windsor, who this week did what with whom for the first time in ages?

Speaker 1 Is it that did Nigel Farage speak to someone who lives in his constituency?

Speaker 3 Definitely not that, I'm afraid. Definitely not.

Speaker 6 I know that it hadn't been done for 500 years, which knocked out my original guess because it has only been 400 years since we executed a king, so it's not that.

Speaker 3 It's not that, no.

Speaker 1 Imagine if that happened, and News Quiz was the way you found out.

Speaker 3 Who lost his head this week?

Speaker 3 Yeah, so who did what with whom for the first time in ages? You're getting closer, 400 years and not quite far enough.

Speaker 6 It was the magical family dad playing with the magical family overlord, wasn't it? Yeah, those are the Pope and the King.

Speaker 3 Yes,

Speaker 3 yes.

Speaker 6 Yeah, they prayed together because Charlie's gone to Italy. And he's Vatican, Italy, technically.
It's his own little thing, innit?

Speaker 3 Little pocket. Well, he's probably gone through it, and he can't land in the Vatican.

Speaker 6 Oh, imagine if he did, though. What? Just a chocolate.
Yeah, like the queen in that James Bomb bit.

Speaker 3 That would be.

Speaker 3 It was just great.

Speaker 6 And he just boom appeared by the Pope, like, guess what? I'm divorced too.

Speaker 3 Second one.

Speaker 7 Is the Pope divorced?

Speaker 6 From reality, yes.

Speaker 3 Yeah, Charles and Leo XIV.

Speaker 3 I mean, what do you think they should have been praying? What do you hope they were praying for in this historic meeting of churches?

Speaker 1 I like to think that the Pope prays for pretty mundane things on the day-to-day.

Speaker 1 Because if you were fully the Pope, like you'd worked up to becoming the Pope, and every night you prayed for world peace and it didn't happen, you would start to think, Well, this doesn't seem to work at all.

Speaker 1 And given I am the Pope,

Speaker 3 you'd think it'd work

Speaker 1 unless.

Speaker 1 And so I reckon to play it safe, he just goes with, I hope Liverpool break their losing streak, and then

Speaker 1 5-1 in Frankfurt, the Lord for us.

Speaker 6 Probably also they're praying that Prince Andrew doesn't seek sanctuary in the Vatican.

Speaker 6 They wouldn't really be able to make up much of an excuse, right? Because the crime would fit in there, right?

Speaker 3 I'm Jewish, so this is fine.

Speaker 6 I'll do you one better. I'm Catholic, so it really is fine.

Speaker 7 Charles has always been kind of progressive on this because he always said that he wanted to be the defender of faiths, not the defender of the faith.

Speaker 7 And in a post-Brexit world, I kind of think this is our way back into Europe. If the king converts to Catholicism,

Speaker 7 I'm quite excited, frankly, because let's be honest, Anglicanism, it's had a good run, but it never really kicked in as a religion for me. You know, it's a bit like Paul McCartney's wings.
It's fine.

Speaker 7 What's it about? Cucumber sandwiches, tombolas. When was the last time anybody caught a witch?

Speaker 3 Come on.

Speaker 3 Full Catholicism now.

Speaker 6 That would be so exciting. I'm not saying I grew up really sheltered, but I met my first Catholic at 13, and that was the most racially diverse person I'd ever met.

Speaker 6 I grew up in Somerset in a very small house, and it was if we all went Catholic now and we could do like Spicy Church, that would be so exciting.

Speaker 1 Spicy Church is actually what my people call it.

Speaker 3 You'll find me there from time to time. Don't worry.

Speaker 3 Yes, King Charles has settled down for a cup of tea and a three-way chinwag with with the Pope and their joint boss.

Speaker 3 The long-awaited catch-up between the heads of the Anglican and Catholic churches, it's hoped that the joint power of the two figureheads will bring a pretty spectacular response from God.

Speaker 3 But we are still waiting for results on whose prayers proved more effective. The pray-off, which was live on Sky Sports 23, I think.

Speaker 3 The pray-off took place in the Sistine Chapel, the church famously given a slightly over-elaborate lick of paint in the early 16th century by celebrity interior decorator Michelangelo, also known as Mickey Paintbrush,

Speaker 3 prompting then Pope Julius II to say in Latin, of course, you know, Mickey P, there is such a thing as too many willies on a ceiling.

Speaker 3 Right, at the end of that round,

Speaker 3 it's three points all.

Speaker 3 Right.

Speaker 3 And another sort of royalty-related question. This can go to our hearing, Ava.
Who took a blow to the Crown Jewels this week?

Speaker 6 Sorry? Are you accusing me of that?

Speaker 3 No, no, no.

Speaker 3 Who took a blow to the Crown Jewels this week?

Speaker 1 Yeah, we've got a really solid alibi.

Speaker 1 We're wet je

Speaker 3 steel. Yep.

Speaker 1 Le Jules.

Speaker 3 Very good.

Speaker 3 That's good enough for me. Probably good enough for the French police.

Speaker 6 I would say it was the most powerful or like most unionised group of burglars I'd ever heard about. I mean, have you ever heard of a robbery taking place like during the working day?

Speaker 6 Like the French are so well unionized that they're not even getting out of bed like to rob somewhere. Like they're like we're doing this on your time pal.

Speaker 6 I think this is the greatest news story. I think it's so kind of them to do it and give us just like a good old-fashioned news story that there's no real victims unless you care about art.

Speaker 6 Which arguably we could just ask Gen AI to 3D print some new jewels and we haven't really lost anything, have we? Because that's art now. So I just think I read this and I was like, brilliant.

Speaker 6 Like in my head, it was all being done in stop-motion plastic scene, and Feathers McGraw was there, and it was just like

Speaker 6 because the news is always like you're like,

Speaker 6 Andrew's this, Andrew's that. But at the heart of it, it's just horrible, and it's horrible stuff that happened to people.

Speaker 6 And this is just like, boop, boop, boop, drive a ladder up to a wall and steal some jewels. Brilliant.
Thank you for making my week.

Speaker 7 Yeah, in legal terms, a heist is equivalent to a kerfuffle. It's great.
Everybody's happy.

Speaker 7 A little while ago, Just Stop Oil protesters threw soup at a van Gogh, causing no damage to the painting. And everyone was absolutely furious.

Speaker 7 And these guys stole jewels from the Louvre, and the general reaction has been, legend!

Speaker 3 They weren't doing it for a good cause.

Speaker 7 The diamonds didn't go to a donkey sanctuary.

Speaker 1 I was listening to something about this crime, but like at the beginning, they were all like, oh, and then like the ladder with the cherry piggy. You're like, ooh, that's interesting.

Speaker 1 And then at the end of this podcast, they just said, yeah, they only took things where there was really obvious melting down monetary value to the thing.

Speaker 1 So it's just going to be worth 80 million, but it'll just be like put in a furnace and they'll flog it for less. It's just gone forever.

Speaker 1 And you're like, oh, it's like when you say heist, it sounds fun, but it's always done by the worst bastards ever.

Speaker 3 But is that

Speaker 1 the bastards?

Speaker 6 Isn't that like how they originally got the jewels in the first place was through a heist because I don't want to

Speaker 6 reveal too much here, but most of the things you see in a French or British museum was not theirs to put there.

Speaker 6 But that's branding, isn't it? Like, that's called an empire. And this is a height.
Like, can I heist some stuff from Asda?

Speaker 6 Is it shoplifting or is it shop heisting?

Speaker 3 I think we need to rebrand.

Speaker 6 That's where the common person screws up. We're like, I'm a thief.
I'm a heistress.

Speaker 3 That's what I am.

Speaker 6 I'm so sad that it's Asda that you pick to rob from. Like, would you know?

Speaker 3 Of all of the supermarkets.

Speaker 6 Do you know what I mean? Are you not going to go in for like M ⁇ S, like the three-for-eight deal on the picky bits or something?

Speaker 7 You have to do a meal deal when you're stealing.

Speaker 3 You get a reduced sentence, I think, if you do.

Speaker 3 So they took Napoleonic treasures, I think.

Speaker 7 I read on the BBC that a crown of the Empress Eugenie was taken, but was recovered damaged near the museum after the thieves seemingly dropped it.

Speaker 7 And I love the way the BBC has to hedge there and say seemingly dropped it. Like the other possibility being that the crown was the mastermind of the crime

Speaker 7 and the other thieves double-crossed it on the way out.

Speaker 3 Well, it's possible, I guess, that they didn't drop it, they discarded it because it didn't fit.

Speaker 1 Also, I think that that would fit in with the French heist theme, just them getting to ground level, looking at everything and going, it is inelegant.

Speaker 7 Not with cravat.

Speaker 3 Yes, an audacious heist at the Louvre in Paris resulted in the heisting of 100 million euros worth of France's crown jewels.

Speaker 3 Celebrity Louvre resident the Mona Lisa, herself a veteran of being stolen from the gallery after she was whipped off the wall back in 1911, was reported to be looking concerned.

Speaker 3 Or was it disappointed? Or was it mildly amused, but unsurprised, or nonchalantly disinterested? It's so hard to tell.

Speaker 3 Experts say the heists do tend to go for jewellery, which can be broken up and sold, rather than paintings, which can't.

Speaker 3 Would you like a square inch of canvas with a small bit of an enigmatic smile on? I can do it for 2-0. It's not going to cut it, is it?

Speaker 3 Right, at the end of our French thievery round, it's now four to Arhira Dava and five to Alistair and Laura.

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Speaker 3 Moving on, this can go to R here. And Ava.

Speaker 3 According to Did That Really Happen, Fever Dream Vortex of Chaoticised Buffuddery Former Prime Minister Boris Johnson, who paid a huge price in the COVID pandemic?

Speaker 1 Presumably in his mind himself.

Speaker 3 Yeah, but that's not what he said out loud. Any other guesses?

Speaker 6 The children, he does believe, yeah.

Speaker 6 The children paid a huge price, which is strange because they don't pay tax. And actually, it was the taxpayer who paid a huge price because he kept giving away all those contracts to his friends.

Speaker 3 That is an alarmingly factual answer.

Speaker 3 Sorry.

Speaker 3 Did I ruin the game? No, no, no, that's fine.

Speaker 1 It's staggering to see Boris Johnson come to this conclusion in 2025.

Speaker 1 And in fairness to him, it's not like in early July 2021 when he was the Prime Minister, Sir Kevin Collins, who was appointed as the education catch-up czar post-pandemic, said that £15 billion of funding was required to bring children up to scratch after the fact that they had been removed from full-time education for so long and resigned because Johnson's government themselves would only give the equivalent of £50 per pupil per year in catch-up funding.

Speaker 1 And if you think that that £15 billion is a lot to ask, do remember that half of it would have gone to Boris Johnson's own children.

Speaker 1 It's really wonderful that Mr. Johnson has been able to see the light after four years.
Really, really lovely stuff.

Speaker 6 I'm not super political. Which one was Johnson?

Speaker 7 I think it was quite a self-serving apology from Boris Johnson. No, no, hear me out.

Speaker 7 I'm going to criticise him here because last week Gavin Williamson said that the government was overly focused on the mission to keep schools open, and this week Boris Johnson is apologising basically for closing schools at all.

Speaker 7 So it's a bit of sort of fancy footwork where he's saying, Oh, I'm sorry we did the thing that I never really wanted us to do, and I take full personal responsibility for Gavin Williamson's failure.

Speaker 7 Basically, he's saying, I'm sorry if you felt like I closed schools.

Speaker 3 Moving on, well, terms of other child-related issues and education having taken a bit of a battering over the years.

Speaker 3 According to a government white paper published this week, what does not stop at 18, or indeed 21, according to this white paper?

Speaker 1 Me when playing and losing at blackjack.

Speaker 6 No, it's education. Correct.
They're changing all of what education's called, aren't they? She said, sounding like she's never had one at all.

Speaker 6 um but i think it's mean because i remember being a kid and you'd say like oh do you know my gcses

Speaker 6 and then like the oldest person in the world would go what's that in our levels and you'd be like oh get away from me that's disgusting you

Speaker 6 were educated before gcses die already

Speaker 3 like

Speaker 6 you shouldn't still be here

Speaker 6 and now that's me

Speaker 6 and that's horrible like now not only when you say to kids like oh i got an a once they're like what's that in numbers because we get graded in numbers now and you're like ugh disgusting and and now they're changing it all they got like T levels which I thought was what you got when your hormones were imbalanced

Speaker 6 and V levels which that feels like a prank doesn't it?

Speaker 3 Yeah so the V level is going to run alongside A levels V stands for vocational A and A level stands for absolutely no idea why we make our children specialize in so few subjects at such young age, but we do and also because France and Germany don't do it so we can't be like them can we?

Speaker 3 So that's what an A-level stands for. So, I mean, the things that could be available under these new V-levels include criminology, also known as government procurement studies,

Speaker 3 hair, beauty, and aesthetics, none of those terms I understand, to goodness.

Speaker 6 The problem with this, and the problem that I've been trying to figure out over the last couple of days, it seems to me that they're worried that too many young people are delaying their life by going to university, and that might have been okay under the Blair government, but now it's so expensive to go to university.

Speaker 6 They want young people to be confused at an earlier age

Speaker 6 and then make that decision and make the mistakes, like you know, so that they can get into work at 18.

Speaker 6 Actually, I think it would be really helpful if we just said to young people, you can make mistakes for the first sort of five years of your adulthood, and that's absolutely fine.

Speaker 6 But then that's not really great for government figures right now.

Speaker 3 No, it isn't, but then I guess you know, if you took the government or indeed the royal family as an example, you could say you could make mistakes for maybe the first 50 years of your adult life.

Speaker 1 Also, I feel like if it were Keir Starmer delivering that message and he'd turn the chair backwards and sit down on it that way and just be like, listen up, kids.

Speaker 1 It's all right. And it would be harrowing.

Speaker 3 Yeah.

Speaker 7 Hey, kids, when I first became Prime Minister, no one liked me.

Speaker 3 I'm still cool. It's a harrowing image of Keir Starmer as the 21st century Christine Keeler there.

Speaker 3 Yes, the government's post-16 Skills in a Higher Education white paper has been published.

Speaker 3 The higher education white paper highlights concerns about how many pupils struggle in particular with English and maths, which are five of the thingies. What

Speaker 3 point proved?

Speaker 3 Right, let's move on with the score at 6-7. Move on to some politics questions.
Why are the people of Kerfilly particularly cheesed off at the moment, potentially leaving Labour in a pickle?

Speaker 1 Silly.

Speaker 1 There's a Senate by-election in Kerphilly. Correct.

Speaker 1 We don't know the results at the time of recording, but it seemed that Labour were not doing particularly well, and Plaid Cumri and reform both seemed as though they were doing better.

Speaker 1 We've had the current government for over a year now, and I feel like the whole thing started with them all sort of turning up to the country and doing a sort of plumber's sharp intake of breath.

Speaker 1 And just be like,

Speaker 1 it's going to cost you.

Speaker 1 And that's been going up, but the sharp intake of breath has now lasted for over a year, and that might be too long to not provide any glimmer of hope.

Speaker 1 I'm not an electoral strategist or masterminder yet.

Speaker 3 They could make that sort of thinking, though.

Speaker 1 Yeah, yeah. Like,

Speaker 1 have your message be something other than, yeah, I know, mate.

Speaker 3 Don't look at me, which is enough to win an election.

Speaker 6 I think a lot of it, though, with Kefili is that, you know, when you have a by-election, typically the sort of incumbent government won't go because you know that you're going to get a kicking.

Speaker 6 You know that normally they are a protest vote and you don't want to end up in a situation like when I don't know if you remember when Keir Starmer was in Bath and he got shouted out of a pub.

Speaker 6 You don't want to have that repeated. And you also don't want to have to pay for the privilege to keep doing it because it's very expensive to run an election campaign.

Speaker 3 Train tickets alone from London. I mean, that'd be good bank.

Speaker 3 How big a deal would this be for UK Labour if they lose in Kerphilly?

Speaker 6 I mean, electorally, it will make absolutely no difference because he has obviously a huge majority and he'll say he still has a huge mandate.

Speaker 6 But I think it's sort of about the battle of like the soul of the Labour Party, right?

Speaker 6 And if you are turning your back on Wales, which is traditionally Labour voters who work in industry, if you are just saying we don't care about you anymore, then I think that that's a good sign for people who haven't already got their eyes open that Labour might not be the party of working people anymore.

Speaker 3 There is an election whose result will be announced this weekend: that Labour is nailed on at least to come second in.

Speaker 3 What election is that, anyone?

Speaker 6 The deputy leader of Labour.

Speaker 6 Look, I can't engage with the politics of this. I was told very specifically about politics that I was too idealistic.

Speaker 6 Me and a lot of people my age, and with my hopes and dreams and political aspirations, we were told to stop hoping and stop caring. And I think we've really done that over the last

Speaker 3 year and a half. I tried, Andy, I really tried.
On current political trajectories, it is still possible that they will both lose.

Speaker 3 And Rishi Sunak could unexpectedly stick.

Speaker 3 On the inside, the result of the deputy leader showdown will be, stroke is being, stroke has been announced, delete according to whether you're listening to this on or before or after Saturday.

Speaker 3 It's going to be announced at a star-studded gala ceremony in Los Angeles, hosted by a dream team combination of Beyoncé and David Blunkett.

Speaker 3 Stroke in a sparsely populated windowless room at Labour Party HQ. Delete according to whether you want to be disappointed by the mundane drabness of reality.

Speaker 3 Right, the scores are now 10 points all, which means we go into a tiebreaker round.

Speaker 3 Right, so who here thinks things are worse than they were?

Speaker 3 And who thinks things are better than they were?

Speaker 3 Well, you're all correct on both counts. This is the way in places like the world, some things progress, some things regress.

Speaker 3 In this round, we're going to be looking at some things that are getting better and some that are getting worse.

Speaker 3 We'll start with something that is getting worse now. Why are polar bears even less likely to eat penguins than they used to be?

Speaker 1 Oh, they're no longer chocolate.

Speaker 3 Correct.

Speaker 1 So club bars and penguin bars have had to reduce their chocolate content to a state where they're no longer legally be allowed to be described as chocolate, but are instead chocolate flavour, which is coincidentally also my rap name.

Speaker 3 I was wondering why that had gone when I tried to register it.

Speaker 7 It's a climate change story, really. Sorry to be a downer, but it is.

Speaker 7 Droughts in the Ivory Coast and Ghana and West Africa, where the chocolate comes from, are pushing up the cost of making real chocolate.

Speaker 7 So, you know, we keep talking about the effects of climate change as a thing that's going to happen, but it would be more accurate to say that it's happening now.

Speaker 7 We're just looking at the wrong penguins.

Speaker 3 Let's have one thing that's getting better. Who didn't want to blow their own trumpet this week, but instead blew their own clarinet?

Speaker 7 This is actually a really heartwarming story. Yes.
A woman played the clarinet while having brain surgery, and they stimulated her brain.

Speaker 7 She has Parkinson's, and she was able to regain the ability to play the clarinet while they were actually operating on her.

Speaker 7 So it's, on the one hand, really touching, but I think it also reveals kind of a double standard because they don't let you play instruments during any other medical procedures.

Speaker 7 I can tell you, if you try and play a swanny whistle during a prostate exam,

Speaker 7 you have no patience for it.

Speaker 3 Yeah, I mean, it is a really amazing breakthrough. This,

Speaker 3 I don't want to take anything away from the story.

Speaker 7 It's really extraordinary.

Speaker 6 Yeah, it's hard to like be blase and hilarious, but something where you're just like, dude, that's really cool.

Speaker 6 I found myself with two layers of insecurity reading that though, because on the one hand, it was like, wow, some people on this planet are so smart that they've worked out that they can regress this amazing, wow, to be that clever.

Speaker 6 And then I was also like, ma'am, I can't play the clarinet in the first place.

Speaker 3 Miss Denise Bacon, who has Parkinson's, underwent deep brain stimulation during which she was able to play the clarinet better than for several years.

Speaker 3 It's a truly amazing breakthrough, and anyone who has family or personal experience of Parkinson's will know what a remorseless shitbag of a disease it is.

Speaker 3 So I mean, it's hugely promising, both for the treatment of Parkinson's and for the quality of chamber music recitals

Speaker 3 and Acabilk impersonators.

Speaker 3 Of course, the relationship between medicine and musical instruments stretches back through history.

Speaker 3 The harmonica, of course, was invented by Florence Nightingale as a medical device to monitor the breathing of injured soldiers in the Crimean War.

Speaker 3 She just popped one in their mouth and could tell how alive they were and whether or not they had the blues.

Speaker 3 Well, that means our winners are here and Ava. Bad luck to Alistair and Laura.

Speaker 3 Thank you very much for listening to Newsfiz today and indeed for the whole year. We will be back in 2026, assuming there is still some news left.
Until then, goodbye.

Speaker 3 Taking part in the newsfiz were Arhir Shah, Laura Lex, Alistair Beckett King, and Ava Santino. In the chair was me, Andy Zaltzman.

Speaker 3 And additional material was written by Milo Edwards, Cameron Loxdale, Marty Gleason, and Ruth Husco. The producer was Gwynne Rhys-Davis, and it was a BBC Studios production for Radio 4.

Speaker 3 Political language can seem archaic.

Speaker 6 It's like the light from one of those stars that actually died.

Speaker 3 Sometimes bamboozly.

Speaker 6 It's a theme park with a five-foot log flume from one thought to another.

Speaker 3 And very often beyond words. I don't know how to describe the language I use.
I'm Amanda Unucci. I'm all reset and turbo-charged to stress, test, to destruction.

Speaker 3 used and abused buzzwords and phrases from the world of politics.

Speaker 3 I come with a dazzling array of guest presenters and I'll be exploring the verbal tricks of the political trade, the intentions behind them and the effect they have on all of us.

Speaker 3 The new series of Strong Message here with me, Amanda Unucci from BBC Radio 4. Listen now on BBC Summons.

Speaker 3 November is all about gathering. Friendsgiving, Thanksgiving and football weekends.
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