Episode 5 Have I Got a Bit More News for You

APPLAUSE

Welcome to Have I Got News For You, I'm Kirsty Young.

In the news this week,

as the major parties gear up for the next election, one householder

is just a few seconds too late in pretending he's not at home.

LAUGHTER

In Dover, customs and excise put together a crack team

to deal with a sudden influx of black market sausages.

LAUGHTER

And as the trial of Rebekah Brooks gets under way,

the foreman of the jury takes no chances

when an advert for Private Eye magazine pops up online.

LAUGHTER

On Ian's team tonight is a radical economist

and critic of corrupt, gangster-style financiers,

who refers to bankers as "banksters,"

and I'm guessing they refer to him as a "wankster."

Please welcome Max Keiser.

APPLAUSE

And with Paul tonight is a surreal Canadian stand-up comedian

who was recently described as "the Sherpa of Stand-up."

Well, he's certainly got me tensing. Please welcome Tony Law.

APPLAUSE

And we start with the bigger stories of the week.

Ian and Max, just take a look at this.

I wonder what this is about(!)

This is the trial of the century.

And I think that's about it. Next round.

It was revealed today that they were having an affair

with each other for about six years.

That's what the prosecution say.

You're quite right, this is the trial of Rebekah Brooks

and Andy Coulson, among others.

It kicked off this week, and not entirely coincidentally,

Private Eye found itself on the front pages for the first time

since you declared yourself a banana.

No, Private Eye chose to put on the cover, it was Halloween,

and so we ran a cover saying, erm,

"Horror Witch Costume Withdrawn from Shops"

and put a picture of Rebekah Brooks with it.

LAUGHTER

Shall I let people know precisely what it was that the judge said

as he held up a copy of Private Eye in court?

Erm, referring to the front page, he told jurors...

Do we know what news vendors had to put up with from police

in nearby newsstands?

Yes, I think one of the news vendors near to the Old Bailey was

asked by a couple of policemen to remove the copy from display.

Yeah, that's quite right.

And he said, "Have you got any court order for this?"

And they said, "Well, no."

So he said, erm, "Get lost."

And he carried on selling it.

The Royal Charter on Press Regulation was granted by the Privy Council also this week.

That happened on Wednesday. Anybody got anything interesting to say about that?

It wasn't a good week cos the Chairman of the Conservative Party

said that if the BBC had any more perceived bias then it may well

have its licence fee cut.

And the BBC, of course, is set up by Royal Charter

and is independent,

and therefore would never be interfered with by, say,

the Chairman of the Conservative Party,

threatening to cut its licence fee.

Just an argument to take home.

Incidentally, on the same day that the Privy Council met the Queen

about the Royal Charter, the Independent revealed

that she also met the Afghan president, Hamid Karzai.

There's a photograph.

Presumably, the chat about the press had only just ended.

I think that is Hugh Grant just slipping off in the background.

He seemed to have got confused with some curtains on the way out.

Who is the Lord President of the Council

and the fourth most powerful person in the land?

Nick Clegg! Yes. AUDIENCE LAUGHS

Don't laugh!

LAUGHTER AND APPLAUSE

So, if Nick Clegg is the fourth most powerful person in the land,

who else above him goes one, two and three?

Well, I think the Prime Minister counts.

Yeah, David Cameron.

William Hague?

No. George Osborne must be...

No. The Queen?

Yeah. Right, so who have we got left?

That bloke off of Strictly Come Dancing?

LAUGHTER

It does actually say on my card, "Simon Cowell."

That is the other person we've got.

Would you like to see the Guardian's picture of Nick Clegg

meeting with the Queen and her private secretary?

This is as imagined by an artist. Yes.

Why on Earth did they bother?

TONY: Look at the Queen, "Urgh, jeez!"

THROUGH GRITTED TEETH "I can't believe it's him!"

She wants to know why her secret bodyguards have taken away

her copy of Private Eye and is extremely irritated.

On the subject of two men stood next to a very tiny woman,

did any of you see the Chinese politicians who wanted,

did you see this, a photo with an old woman, but the cameraman

in China couldn't get them all in the frame of the picture.

They PhotoShopped it, and this is how it turned out.

LAUGHTER

You can see why they're visiting her,

cos she is exceptionally small. Yeah. Tiny.

Looks like a British care home.

"You getting enough to eat, dear?"

She's actually doll size, isn't she?

I might take her home for my daughter.

"Here you go, honey, an old Chinese lady."

LAUGHTER

So, this is the start of the News International phone hacking trial.

The judge, Mr Justice Saunders,

warned jurors not to go online and...

Or Hugh Grant.

Also this week, the Queen signed the Royal Charter on Press Regulation.

According to the Daily Telegraph,

the Department for Media, Culture and Sport claims that...

..in the same way that the Department of the Environment defends badgers.

Paul and Tony, time for you to take a look at this.

All right, that's a man in 1946,

and there's another man telling him it's 1946.

Has she got a new iPh...? Oh. Yeah, well...

Yes, I thought you'd say that.

LAUGHTER

There's a man with a magnifying glass being held up to him.

So, yes, it's about the Americans listening in to Angela Merkel,

and it's been going on for years, apparently.

This is the news that America's been spying on millions of people

in Spain, France, Germany and everywhere else, it seems.

And all of this came to light how?

Well, the NSA's been spying religiously on all these things,

and now it's out in the open. This is the progression of it all.

Celebrity hacks in the US, and the NSA,

they have used the technology to get into the phones of these celebrities.

They can't fix their own health care, there's no health care in America,

the whole thing is completely "fakakta."

But they can spy on celebrities, using the NSA technology brilliantly.

And the German leader. Of course, she's a celebrity...

LAUGHTER

TONY: She was a celebrity BEFORE she was the German leader. Remember?

The Kaiser Kittens.

LAUGHTER

You were in that.

MAX: Yes, Kitten Number Two.

She was very cross, though. She said this wasn't very friendly.

She said...

Her English is brilliant, isn't it? She's always grumpy, though.

It's because everyone keeps calling her "An-j-ela."

She's like, "Ohhhhhh!"

What phone did Angela Merkel have for four years, then?

A BlackBerry. Apparently, she was very happy with it.

Here she is looking very happy with it.

LAUGHTER

And it wasn't just Merkel that they were listening in to.

How many other world leaders in total were tapped?

35.

Yeah, spot on. Nice.

There we go, one point for that.

I was briefed by the NSA before coming on. Can you name them all?

Absolutely, there's the Spanish, there's Merkel and there's 34 others.

That's 33 others.

LAUGHTER

You mentioned the Spanish, that was the biggest part of the story

this week, about the amount of calls that were monitored of the Spanish.

60 million in one month.

In one particularly busy day, can you remember the figure?

The Festival of Paella.

Someone had forgotten the recipe and they went berserk.

Do you know how many calls they monitored that day

on the Festival of Paella? 60 million.

Well, no, on one day 3.5 million.

Does anybody know what the French security services used to do

to gather information

when they were spying on businesspeople in the 1990s?

Bilingual chickens.

LAUGHTER

Sneakin'. They just snuck around.

Just sneakin'.

"Ah, bon." Sneakin'.

They installed microphones under the seats of first class

passengers on Air France flights.

There's a condition in America now called the Truman Show syndrome,

where people believe that they're being spied on

by the state 24 hours a day.

And... Well, they're not wrong, are they?

Now they believe that they're starring in their own show.

TONY: And it makes everyone feel special.

It's so brilliant and American!

It's very aspirational, it's an aspirational thing.

The American Dream now is to be spied on and to be on a show by the NSA.

What did the Russians discover was spying on them this week?

Space monkeys.

The Chinese?

The kettles.

The kettles? The folk group from the '60s?

No, not the folk group from the '60s.

Investigators discovered that kettles imported from China

contained spy microchips

which can pump out spam data that scrambles Wi-Fi.

The Bond films are way behind, aren't they?

Giving him guns and helicopters, you want kettles!

"Ah, Bond, leave it alone. It'll boil in five minutes."

And which other world power is annoyed

that their data has been stolen by the NSA? Germany.

No, I mean "world" power. Jamaica.

It's Google. According to David Drummond,

who is Google's chief legal officer...

Yeah, and here is David Drummond.

We just found that on Google Street View there.

Now, finally, and it's nothing to do with anything,

but just because it's Halloween, shall we have a quick look at an ITN

report of a man who was paddling a giant pumpkin to the Isle of Wight?

Yes, absolutely.

Dmitri Galitzine from London has spent seven days testing

the giant vegetable in Portsmouth to make sure it wouldn't sink.

He is jogging back in a runner bean. Get it?

AUDIENCE GROANS

TONY: Nice work. Doesn't get better than that. It does.

It gets a lot better than that. Does it?

Yeah, it gets a lot better than that. He's a real Jack-in-a-lantern.

MUTED LAUGHTER

Cross-cultural joke. It is. We don't really do Halloween here.

British people run around, "Penny for the Guy."

Well, that's better than "Trick or treat!"

We had a perfectly decent festival

where we burnt someone to death on a fire!

APPLAUSE

You come over here with your ghastly skeletons, scaring children,

instead of having a perfectly nice evening setting fire to a Catholic.

This is the continuing fallout from the US spying scandal.

Germany is particularly upset at being spied on by the United States.

According to one news website...

LAUGHTER

That kind of depends how old you are, doesn't it?

The Spanish newspaper El Mundo published a leaked

US Intelligence graphic showing...

..which, presumably, looked something like this.

Ian and Max, here's another for you. Oh, good.

It's a train. Mm-hmm. Ah, that's a proper train!

That's the two Eds, better than one!

But not in this case.

It's about investment in infrastructure, yes!

They're building this enormous boondoggle up north.

Is that a technical term? Yes, "boondoggle".

In economics, it's called "a big frickin' waste of money."

And if you really want to connect the country

and get the economy going, give everyone free access to broadband.

Yeah, I think I'd prefer to take the train.

You can't get to Birmingham fast enough.

You can in your virtual self!

It's impossible.

So this is the wise investment slash catastrophic waste of billions

of taxpayers' money... The Labour Party have decided now,

it was their idea originally to do it

but now the Tories want to do it, they don't want to do it any more.

Did you hear the actual words of the dire warning

from the Government about the consequences if Labour do not?

No, I'd like to hear you say it. The precise words were...

It's just hard to imagine what that'd be like, isn't it?

APPLAUSE

Do you know this week's figure of how much it will cost?

I think it's 130 zillion.

The Government's current budget is 50 billion,

although one independent study says it'll cost 80 billion.

Well, you've got Mark Carney now as the Bank of England...

He can just print it! Just print 80 billion.

That's fine, that's what he does, what he's there for!

Print more money! Doesn't matter if it's 100, 200 billion.

Just print! No downside to that?

Unless you include inflation. As long as you don't mind paying extra for energy and food,

it's OK. Just keep printing money! OK, let's have the train.

Bail out the banks, just print money. It's fine.

Put the money in the train and take it to Birmingham!

Listen, Max. One hour and 20 minutes to Birmingham. It's too long!

APPLAUSE

I want, like, an hour. It's too long.

I've got stuff to do in Birmingham!

Very busy, very busy man.

I've got concrete to pour! Yeah.

It doesn't pour itself, you know? It doesn't.

I don't care how many billions it costs,

let's shave 20 minutes off of me getting to Birmingham

and pouring concrete!

Peter Mandelson, who was there when the decision was made,

said, "Yeah, but you can't really trust the costs,

"we did it on the back of an envelope."

And now he says it'll cost too much.

But think about it, during the financial crisis, 2008,

they printed 750 trillion to bail out Wall Street, or 750 billion.

They figured it all out on the back of an envelope.

That's the way politicians do it now. They look at the back of an envelope and say,

"What number can we possibly get away with? This sounds good."

And that's the way they figure it. There's no economics involved.

That's the way it's managed.

Sorry, I didn't mean to interrupt, I was just going to say

David Bowie wrote Starman on the back of an envelope.

Don't you normally write your address?

Yeah, "Starman, waiting in the sky..."

"..space."

Labour are considering a cheaper alternative to HS2. What is it?

Making everything downhill.

Is it reversing all the Beeching cuts?

What a terrifically good idea, who's was this?

It sort of is! It is the old Grand Central line through Rugby and Sheffield. Excellent.

That was closed when, Ian? Er, '64.

'66. I was sure you'd get that. '66! Oh, how useless!

I thought you were going to say, "Just get rid of Birmingham."

What?! I'm doing my best!

Do you know how much concrete he's got at home? Jeez!

If Labour do drop their support,

who's going to be most upset about it? Lord Adonis.

He's been the person behind it all. One of the people behind it.

What an arrogant name. Lord Adonis. He must be a superhero.

That's like being Shit Guy. Lord...Adonis.

Super God Jesus Adonis Amazeballs Dude.

It's too many names, isn't it? Anyway, it's not him. It's...

LAUGHTER

It's regional Labour councils.

Ed Miliband has been warned of a long drawn-out struggle

by a council leader from the Midlands, Sir Albert Bore.

Does he have an identical twin brother? Twin bore? No?

If you are looking for an even faster route to prosperity,

why should you ask Christopher Cock?

Pardon? You wouldn't mind saying that again, would you?

Some people would pay good money for that!

APPLAUSE

Well, we don't mind having a whip round. What have you got?

Anyway, I reckon you might know who this guy is.

Is he an economist? He bought ?16 worth of what? Bitcoin.

The bitcoin. That's right. He kept it in a drawer for four years

and they're worth $900,000.

Can you explain to us in an entirely understandable way

what a bitcoin is? It's an electronic currency used exactly like money

except it's not backed by any state so you have no state interference,

they can't print it. How does it work then, what can you buy?

Right now you can buy... Thousands of retailers accept Bitcoin.

Somebody just bought a million dollars' worth

of hardware with Bitcoin. An example in Cyprus,

when that banking system started to collapse,

the adoption of Bitcoin skyrocketed. Same thing in Greece and Venezuela.

Are those very good examples for stable use of currency?

Well, look at what's happening...

But in the UK, I'm saying it's an alternative to those currencies.

So some guy spent a million... he spent a million on hardware?

That's a lot of nails!

How many hammers do you get for that? A million on hardware.

He's got a good gig in Birmingham, though, so he's up and down.

On the subject of trading in dodgy nonexistent commodities,

what has happened to JP Morgan recently?

They paid off a fine, billions of dollars in fines

for mortgages that they mis-sold. They've paid a third of all revenue

in fines over the past several years

because they're a serial fraudster.

It's estimated that in the end, they may pay fines of up to $13 billion.

Speaking of unpopular millionaires then,

which other unpopular millionaires have been grilled recently?

Is this the power company executives? Don't get me started!

I think we have! I think we're way past that point, aren't we?

We're looking at alternative remedies now.

The chief executives, the leaders of the Big Six energy companies

were called in front of the Commons Select Committee to explain

this incredible rise in... A lot didn't turn up though, did they?

There were five of them that just couldn't be arsed

and the only one of the Big Six bosses to turn up...

Actually I've just noticed he's called Tony Cocker!

Now, I don't... LAUGHTER

Pardon? I know!

I mean, it was funny the first time... We're not made of money!

And you wonder why people think they're getting shafted.

Did anyone see a pensioner venting her anger

on the energy suppliers through the medium of video games

on Grand Theft Auto? No! No.

The footage here, when you see it,

it doesn't look quite as good as it looks in the actual game.

Hello, what do you do for a living? Work for British Gas, do you?

You wanker! I'll give you "put my bills up"!

Bang, you take that! You won't put them up no more!

Bang! One for you! And one for you!

I'll give you one as well! You come here!

I'll get you, you bastard! Come back!

LAUGHTER AND APPLAUSE

"You bastard!"

HS2 is intended to end the sort of disruption passengers

currently experience, although this week,

to be fair to the train operators,

the leaves on the line were attached to the trees.

Paul and Tony, here's another one for you.

Ooh, OK. Little magical car going around on its own.

With an invisible man. Invisible man driving it.

Is it about a new car being developed that can drive itself, essentially? It is, yes.

It's a new car that is tiny.

And you can actually shrink and become invisible and drive it.

I think that's a new scheme, I think it comes in at...what? 90...

98. Billion. Yep. At the moment.

They're pretty confident that will get us to Birmingham quicker!

It is, it actually said "BRUM" on it! Did it?

APPLAUSE

In maybe 20 years' time, you'll be in a car which drives itself.

Because you've tapped in the postal code, you wake up in the morning, there'll be a bed in the back

and you'll end up outside the place where you need to be.

Right. And that comes in at around 120... Billion. ..billion?

I have to say, that's what you said about the jet pack, though.

Well, there's a reason why the jet pack...

I was going to say "didn't take off", but you know what I mean!

You are right. This is the exciting transport innovation

of the driverless car.

This particular example is set to be on the pavements of Britain by 2015.

Who's behind the scheme?

A sadist.

According to The Mail, it's David Willetts and Vince Cable

along with funding from the...

50 million, they're getting.

Is that a quick way of getting across the river?

According to David Willetts, he said...

Shall we have a look at one of these lovely, little cars? Yes.

There it is. Ah!

TONY: Yeah. We could really relax in that(!)

"I am so relaxed, that I've dressed up

"like a serial killer on my way to work."

It's Milton Keynes that's been chosen as the first place

to have the driverless cars. Do we know why?

Nobody really cares about the buildings in Milton Keynes.

No, because it's probably because... Ah, yes, cos it's built on a grid system.

That would've been a good answer but it's not the right one. Oh.

It's because, according to The Sunday Times, it has...

Who won't be able to use the driverless cars?

Blind people. No, they would be good for this car.

That's what I'm trying to say. It's excellent for those people.

Drunkards, apparently.

You won't be allowed to use one if you've had a few.

Isn't that your target for a driverless car?

I know, I would think so. "I've had a few..."

Into the pod, home.

Provided you remember where home is, that's the thing.

If you can pronounce your postcode, you should be able to be taken home.

They're marketing for all these po-faced sober people, just,

"Ah, being driven around. Grr!"

And all these drunk people going, "This is the only option I got."

There has been another significant technological breakthrough

this week. Has anyone heard about this? Ah, the sex robot.

It's not that, no. You're interested, though, aren't you?

I am, actually, yes. I just made it up.

No, the Japanese have invented a product called Scentee.

It's Smell-o-vision for the Smartphone, dubbed the iSmell.

There it is.

It also offers something called a nose barbecue.

This is a function of the Scentee that livens up bland meals

by releasing appetising smells while you're eating.

Which other great inventor died this week?

It was a guy called Kadir Nurman, the inventor of the doner kebab.

Oh, yes!

That was invented? I know!

That's been around since the dawn of time. It's not created in nature.

It is! There's nothing natural about it. I've shot a doner kebab

while hunting, I swear. They can't run very fast. Their legs are fat.

They told me, "You got him! We're going to cook him up tonight!"

I shot a doner kebab.

What did he invent, just putting meat in bread?

No, I read about this. That's a sandwich, isn't it? A rotisserie.

I read about this. His contribution was actually

to put the rotisserie meat into a flat bread, so apparently

the flat bread was the innovation this gentleman brought to bear,

and this has become a classic ever since.

I don't understand what anyone is talking about.

I've seen them galloping across the Serengeti,

those beautiful doner kebabs.

Was that after the nose barbecue?

You kill it, you bring it to the nose barbecue. That's it.

Put it into a driverless car, it'll be there in ten minutes.

This is the driverless car,

which will be hitting the streets at the start of 2015

and hitting a pedestrian just a few seconds later.

Also, the man who invented the doner kebab died this week.

He was buried in a simple casket

covered in unnecessary salad.

So let's go to Round Two, now, the picture spin quiz.

Fingers on buzzers, teams.

It's a dog in a Yorkshire pudding.

Would you like to elaborate?

It's the first dog to take Yorkshire pudding across the Channel.

Yorkshire pudding and the Yorkshire Terrier indicate

we're talking about Yorkshire,

which is considered one of the greatest places in the world.

Any person from Yorkshire will tell you that. Indeed.

My favourite part of Yorkshire is North Derbyshire.

Didn't they just find a king in a car park in Yorkshire? Leicester.

Yeah, Leicester. Leicester is nowhere near Yorkshire.

This is the news that...

"A car park space, a car park space, my kingdom for a car park space,"

is one of the lines in Shakespeare.

Beautiful line, that. He wrote it when it was raining. Yeah.

But you do it better than anyone I've heard.

Yeah, but you never heard anybody else do it. No.

MAX: It was during his reign when it was raining.

I'm going to write that down.

LAUGHTER

There's "reign", and then "rain". It's a pun, isn't it?

Yeah, Paul, you got it right.

R-E-I-G-N. And the other one is R-A-I-N. Yeah, I've got that.

LAUGHTER AND APPLAUSE

The lonely Planet guide has declared that as places to visit,

not live in, Yorkshire is the third best region in the world,

and Scotland is the third best country.

AUDIENCE MEMBER: Yay!

God bless you for that!

Yeah. Even if she's working you with her foot.

Which countries are more welcoming than Scotland?

Is it an island or something like that?

No, Brazil, which is fair enough.

Then Antarctica.

Have you heard about the Yorkshire country and western singer,

Tex Piss?

Tex Piss? Tex Piss, in't it?

No, I haven't heard about him. What about him?

Do you know any of his tunes?

Do you? Oh, yeah, he's...

# Oh, it's raining

# Rumpy...

# I long to be back in North Derbyshire... #

APPLAUSE

This is the story that Yorkshire has been named

third best region in the world. In July next year,

Yorkshire will host the first two stages of the Tour de France,

with a flat stage from Leeds to Harrogate followed by...

..which is expected to be won by an old man in a bathtub.

The first foreigner to play cricket for Yorkshire was Indian maestro

Sachin Tendulkar, famous for making 100 international centuries.

Even Geoffrey Boycott lavished him with his highest praise,

describing him as "rubbish".

Right. Fingers on buttons, teams.

LAUGHTER

Ah! BUZZER

Tony and Paul? Oh! Yes! No! Frankie Howerd. Oh! No! Yes!

This is Britney Spears.

Somali pirates are being put off attacking ships

because they're playing her music at an incredibly low volume.

They come running towards them, they hear it,

go, "It'll be a short single, oh, no, it's the whole album,"

and then they go back to Somalia.

And so he is disturbed by the fact that she's singing

and that is what it is.

You're quite right, Paul. This is indeed the news

Britney Spears' music is being used to scare off pirates.

Apparently they prepare "Arr Kelly".

GROANING

Any ideas which Britney songs are being played?

I don't really know that much of her recorded oeuvre.

Ian, perhaps you're an expert on this.

I just thought there were so many I could have said, yes.

I've Got A Yellow Inflatable Snake?

No. According to the Sun...

Well, that's because

the Somali pirates are generally sort of against domestic violence.

I think they're quite keen on violence, really.

No, they're more into gun violence,

shooty shooty, fine, just not hitty hitty.

MAX: That's their code, isn't it?

That's the Somali code.

This is the news that ships off the coast of Africa have been keeping

Somali pirates at bay by blasting out songs by Britney Spears.

Britney is proving effective in scaring off pirates,

mainly because when Africans hear the sound of a washed-up blonde

American pop star, they assume she's come to adopt their children.

APPLAUSE

Fingers on buzzers, teams.

BELL

Max and Ian. Royal Mail is being privatised

and this is a gentleman who's quite upset

that the price of his mail just went up. No.

Well, you're right,

but this is a guy who is upset about something that is happening

within the Royal Mail system, but it's not to do with privatisation.

He got a letter delivered?

No, he is a stamp collector called Angus McDonagh, and he has

this week admitted creating and using his own self-designed stamps.

He calls himself the anarchist philatelist.

He told the Telegraph...

So let's take a little look at how he acted, then.

This is, I think

that's supposed to be French.

I'm not sure if that's particular to any country. He said...

Shall we take a look at the one he did for Christmas?

Yes. Actually that.

MAX: I didn't see that coming.

He doesn't even have Photoshop, he's just doing it on his phone.

They're so rubbish.

According to the Daily Express,

he has sent the Royal Mail...

If he wanted the Royal Mail to get the money,

he should have put it in a birthday card.

Right, it's time now for the Odd One Out round.

One between you this week. Your four are...

Sir James Dyson,

Our Man In Havana,

Khalid Sheikh Mohammed,

and Dutch artist Dan Roosegaarde.

BELL

Dyson invented a vacuum cleaner.

In the Graham Greene novel

Our Man In Havana was a vacuum cleaner salesman...

I've no idea who the man on the bottom right is,

and he's a terrorist.

Khalid Sheikh Mohammed?

So the link is vacuum cleaners.

The link is vacuum cleaners, but can you tell me who the odd one out is?

Did he attempt to suck a US embassy into a machine?

No. No? Who is this man?

At the bottom, bottom right?

He's the artist, Dan Roosegaarde.

Does he draw vacuum cleaners?

There must be an installation using parts of vacuum cleaners, I imagine.

They've all designed a vacuum cleaner except James Wormold,

the spy from Our Man In Havana... Who sold them.

Yeah, he didn't design a vacuum cleaner, but he did pretend

vacuum cleaner designs were in fact sketches of secret military installations.

Khalid Sheikh Mohammed was revealed recently,

this Al-Qaeda big shot and all-around pain in the backside.

He asked his jailers to let him design a vacuum cleaner.

The CIA had a policy of allowing their detainees

to do this sort of thing. They said...

Yeah, I know.

But it's one of those things -

he builds his vacuum cleaner, then the next day,

he assembles it all and it's a boat or a flying plane or something.

He escapes. Yeah, you've got to keep your eye on 'em. Exactly.

"Oh, a vacuum cleaner, is it?

"With a jet pack?"

"Jet pack vacuum cleaner - ha-ha!"

Brrrghhh!

"Ow, ow, ow! Paul was right, this is rubbish!"

So Graham Greene, of course, wrote Our Man In Havana.

In 1949, the New Statesman held a contest,

inviting readers to send in parodies of Graham Greene's style.

Do we know what happened in that competition?

No, what did happen?

Well, Greene himself entered under a pseudonym -

and came second.

Daan Roosegaarde is the Dutch designer.

He was the guy in the blue period there, Ian.

And he claims to have come up with a way

of clearing up Beijing's pollution.

He says laying copper coils in the ground

and running a current through them will attract smog particles

so they can be hoovered up more easily.

That's brilliant.

Or nonsense, depending on your point of view.

Roosegaarde says - you wonder will that possibly work.

He says...

That's a no, then, isn't it?

No-one's invented the merge button yet.

You can't really create imagination, can you?

You can be imaginative, but you can't create imagination.

Well, he was speaking in his second language.

I think it's lost something in translation.

"DUTCH" ACCENT: "You know, merging de imaginations."

Hm. "You know?"

Is that Yorkshire?

"DUTCH" ACCENT: "Yes - I come from, you know...Sheffield?

"It's pretty cool.

"You know, the old steel town.

"Used to make a lot of steel,

"now we, you know...don't make so much steel no more.

"We make rock bands, like Arctic Monkeys."

They have all designed a vacuum cleaner,

except for James Wormold, the spy from Our Man In Havana,

who didn't design one,

but he did pretend the vacuum cleaner designs

were sketches of secret military installations.

9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed

has complained this week that courtroom artist Janet Hamlin

drew his nose too big.

According to the Telegraph...

She wasn't the only one.

Khalid Sheikh Mohammed was in fact captured a decade ago

and has spent a lot of that time in solitary confinement.

What on earth would a man in solitary confinement

do with a vacuum...?

Dutch artist Daan Roosegaarde

is attempting to tackle China's air pollution problem by using...

Only this week, Beijing has had to cope with record levels of smog.

This comes just three weeks after the visit of George Osborne,

when they had to cope with record levels of smug.

It's time now for the Missing Words round,

which this week features as its guest publication...

Parrot, the magazine of the Parrot Society UK.

To be honest, whatever it's got on say,

we've heard it all before.

And we start with...

Pirate?

Came out to his parents.

"I prefer cockatiels, Mum and Dad."

The answer is "Alan Fletcher went into a pet shop 25 years ago

"to buy a cockatiel and came out

"with a Chattering Lory."

Next...

Sorry.

On a sex robot.

Built in Korea. He's also an ex-astronaut.

Nobody cares about that, though.

That made no sense at all, did it? No.

The answer is Gordon Brown said, "I'm an ex-politician now."

Next...

Knob?

Just wapped it out on Newsnight - everyone's like, "What?! No!

"Dude, put that away, man!

"People respect you."

Jeremy Paxman reveals that he is a pretty boy.

No - Jeremy Paxman reveals he is an anti-litter crusader.

According to the Telegraph...

And routinely people who don't.

Next...

Found riding Shergar in Zimbabwe.

Lord Lucan's driver found his employer "a bit murdery".

Lord Lucan?

He was in the back the whole time!

Found in the attic, it's golf clubs in fact.

It is.

..by looking up.

What are you doing? What are you doing? Give them a job.

You can always tell

when a parrot thief is about to break into your house,

he'll climb up a ladder and then ring a bell.

Next...

Twerk?

What is twerking, Ian?

It's...

LAUGHTER

I think a demonstration says so much more than words. I think it does.

The answer is...

Sounds like something I would have said.

And finally...

We will not let him go.

Doesn't like his middle name.

Is it something a parrot says? Must be.

It's the only thing... It's a parrot who's been living next to a mosque.

Yeah. Yeah. The answer is...

I've just made that up.

APPLAUSE

This is from Parrot Magazine, free in this month's issue

is a great absorbent liner for your bird cage floor.

Actually, what I mean is,

this month's issue makes a great absorbent liner

for your bird cage floor.

So, the final scores are...

Max and Ian have 7.

Tony and Paul have 8.

APPLAUSE

But, before we go, there is just time for the Caption Competition.

Oh.

Mine's a bit tight.

Ah.

Oh, it's chafing.

MAX: No, mine's all right, really.

Pig confused by mirror.

TONY: Why did we have to meet in this industrial wasteland?

It's the most romantic spot in Yorkshire.

On which note, we say thank you to our panellists Ian Hislop

and Max Keiser, Paul Merton and Tony Law.

I leave you with the news

that on the set of the new Transformers movie,

one of the extras gives up queuing for the toilet.

Very good.

Deep in the Mediterranean, archaeologists discover

that the lost city of Atlantis

was flooded during an ancient Minoan party conference.

And after severing his hand in a thresher, a Yorkshire farmer

celebrates the first stage of grafting on a replacement.

Good night.

Subtitles by Red Bee Media Ltd