Episode 1 Have I Got News for You

Good evening, welcome to Have I Got News For You, I'm Stephen Mangan.

In the news this week, China, responding to international

pressure, Apple grudgingly allow their factory workers out for a

five-minute tea break. On the Costa del Sol, as an East

End gang, burst into a bank with Shaun-off shotguns, the safe

cracker realises he has overslept. And in Westminster, Eric Pickles

finally gets round to cleaning the fluff out of his belly button.

It's delicious on toast. With Ian tonight is a writer and

broadcaster, who says she hates people who are chronically pedantic

over puntuation. Hang on, on Ian as team, comma, welcome Grace Dent.

And with Paul tonight is the son of a vicar who studied divinity at

university, plays a Church of England lay reader in the sitcom

Rev, and is odds on to become the Archbishop of Canterbury, Miles

Jupp. And we start with the bigger

stories of the week. Ian and Grace take a look at this.

Tax return. Never a welcome sight. "no tax due", that is a Downing

Street kitchen supper. There is George Osborne. Not having a good

time. He's just spotted some tax someone's paid. Very, very small.

Essentially Osborne was incredibly amazed to find a lot of rich people

and companies don't pay any tax. It was a discovery right up there with

gravity and DNA. This is the shock news that many people try to avoid

paying tax. My favourite is one senior Tory Party donor spent a

night in a private jet, flying from Luton Airport out of British

Aerospace to avoid staying in the country for more than 90 days, thus

qualifying as a resident abroad for tax purps. In a plane. -- Purposes.

In a plane? Could he not teter a balloon. You have to leave the

airspace. You can't just jump up and down. London Luton is so far

away from London is it is in international airspace? He flew

from Luton out of London Air space. If you set down anywhere they get

you for tax. It is more enjoyable as a rich person and go nowhere,

sit in an airport saying you're saving money, they are a miserable

bunch. When it comes to tax, what does every politician want?

declare their own tax affairs and make them public. Transparency?

Exactly. What do they mean in this case? We are not going to do it.

They mean revealing a small amount of information that doesn't mean

too much. You put income in, if income isn't your big thing, say

assets, say you are in the cabinet, thinking randomly, then you don't

have to declare those. Transparency up to a point, which is opaque!

Make as lot of sense, yes, according to the Guardian there is

an agreement between Cameron and Osborne that all senior ministers

should be transparent. Let's hope they don't mean Eric

Pickles. According to the Express, Cameron

is relaxed about revealing his income tax he returns. According to

the Telegraph, George Osborne says he hasn't set his face against it.

Which face does he use when he sets his face against it, does he use

this face. Or this face? Or this face? So why

is it all kicking off, what started this rumpus? It is Ken Livingstone,

it was discovered that Ken had said that people who avoid tax are rich

bastard who is shouldn't be allowed to vote. It turned out he pay as

lot of money into a company, which is not taxed at 40%, but corporate

tax at 21%, a lot of people thought he's avoiding tax, what a bastard.

Then there was a fight between him and Boris. In a radio station?

lift. Did he call him a lying banker. I think it was the F-word.

So a BEEP lying banker. He's one of our finest banks. You are very

close. Boris screamed into Ken's face, you are a beeping liar.

Presumably a phrase Boris picked up from his wife! How is Ken's

election campaign going? Well, he was shown a film of himself this

week, and he was absolutely moved to tears by the image of himself,

just people talking about how wonderful he was. He had a little

cry. Not just a little cry, a proper cry.

It was like a cartoon bear cry. He's saying, I don't believe you're

leader of the Labour Party! would be interesting to know what

Miliband is smelling at that particular moment! I met Ken just

before Christmas, I was doing a panel with him, as part of that

panel I was given, someone gave me a gift of the copy of the Koran,

afterwards I went into the Green Room, and Ken was sitting on the

arm of a sofa, I was carrying the Koran and biro, he looked up at me,

and Aspel a joke I said would you sign it for me Ken, and he took it

from me and said, yeah, and I know have quite an inflammatory bit of

literature in some people's eyes. Which trendy, ultra, touchy-feely

companies have been avoiding tax? Amazon, who have made �7 billion

and paid no corporate sales tax. That's perfectly reasonable, that

is a tax rate of 0%, they have made billions of pounds and they pay no

tax, what's your problem. There is a difference between avoidance and

evasion. You would evade. I would not. I might evade. I'm not Ken

Livingstone, you know. Amazon is under investigation by UK tax

authorities for registering its UK sales operation in Luxembourg,

claiming only its distribution arm is in the UK. In 2010 they would

have paid �35 million in UK tax, but they managed to reduce that

slightly to...nothing. Google are using a Dutch Sandwich,

have you tried a Dutch Sandwich, Ian? Em... Google's UK operation is

based in Ireland, where the rate of tax is half that of Britain, they

fundamental the profits via the Netherlands to Bermuda, that

enables them to pay a tax rate of a quarter of one per cent. If you

Google tax, does it give you nothing? Right, moving from a tax

on the rich and privileged to A-ta cks on the rich and trif lijed.

Anyone swimming. Trenton Oldfield swam into the middle of the Thames

and stopped the boat race. He was encouraging anarchist cleaners to

not put toilet paper in the toilets of rich people. They would wipe

their bums with poor people. Someone postered this on YouTube of

Trenton in action. Trenton, Trenton, Trenton.

Trenton. Right, Trenton.

Oh Jesus Christ. The crowd were angry, according to

the Mail they shouted "boo", and "take him to the tower".

And most devastatingly of all, "is it David Walliams?"! This is the

row over tax avoidance by the rich, or as they are known since the

budget, the richer. According to a recent poll:

The other 40% don't follow current affairs.

Adding to the heartbreak of the rich, this week was Trenton

Oldfield, who disrupted the boat race. To be honest, it is not the

first sighting of a turd in the Thames.

Yes, this was the 158th boat race, shown live on the BBC, according to

the Sun, millions of TV viewers watched in stunned silence or

posted angry messages on Twitter, and then a bloke appeared in the

water to liven things up. Paul and Miles, some recent history for you.

This is the pasty-gate story, David Cameron and the Sunday Times

filming this bloke Cruddas, jerry cans, fill it up with petrol, if

you haven't one, put it in your mouth. Francis Maude giving

ridiculous advice to store petrol in sheds, or second houses. Just

absolute nightmare situation, where people are doing this, it is very

dangerous. This is the thing about, if you can't store it in your

garage, store it in a pasty, at least you know where it is. As long

as you don't heat it up, you won't pay 20% tax, or, indeed, blow your

house up. It is pasties and petrol, I'm not never she which is which.

look back at recent Government gaffes, involving the price of

pasties, the panic buying of petrol, and the total pill lock, Peter

Cruddas. How did George Osborne turn a pasty into a hot potato?

There is some rule, if you buy it cold it is so much money, if it is

heated up you pay 20% extra, it is now an ambient pasty, warmer than

room temperature. Paul is right, if you queue for the pasty while it is

warmed up and it goes cold again, it does this at the graph with what

you have to pay. At the beginning of the queue it is 20% up, and then

at the end of the queue it is cold it is 20% down. If you take it home

and it is cold, you are owed a rebate. It is a terrifically well

thought out piece of legislation. After accusations that the

Government was out-of-touch with ordinary people's love of pasties,

what was David Cameron quick to announce? He said he had one

recently. He said it he one in Leeds, and it no longer exists for

the last five years, they were relegated from the Premiership and

the area was dismandled. It is real acting talent, for all those people.

Ed Milliband meetly went with Ed Balls to Greggs, and they both ate

a pie, and the Tory cabinet had to all go there, "what is this?".

you seen the size of the volume will you vents, they are huge, is

there anybody in there. Do you eat pasties? I commute, and

I was keen for that tax to go up to �1 million, the train I go on is

blokes with too much to drink having a pasty shoving it in their

face trying to soak it up. I'm sitting there trying to do the

cross words, 20 minutes into the journey, nothing. Sometimes I fill

in anything, to make people opposite me think I can do it.

That's a sad life you conjure up there, these pasty-chomping, beer-

soaked individuals, you are trying to impress by doing the cross word.

There is issues of self-esteem here. Very sad. Was it in first class

that people sit opposite you eating pasties. It is not first class, it

is ordinary. Travelling standard? Yeah. Don't you feel threatened?

has his own train! David Cameron said he loved a hot pasty, and had

indeed bought one from the west Cornwall Pasty Company, he went on

to tell this highly amusing anecdote. I seem to remember I was

in Leeds Station at the time, the choice was whether to have one of

the small ones or the large one, I have a feeling I opted for the

large one and very good it was too. I think he was talking about the

pasties there, not Leeds Station's wide variety of prostitutes. So was

that an end? What did you say then? I didn't say anything. You are

miming to a backing tape. I was out of British Aerospace at that time.

Was that an end to the matter? Probably not. Everyone jumped on

the bandwagon, a spokesman announced that Nick Clegg had eaten

a pasty in the last few months at Paddington station.

How big was it, if it's taken him a few months to eat it.

He was waiting for Ian to turn up with the crossword. Ed Davey, the

Energy Secretary, Lib Dem, announced he loves Cornish pasties,

and once worked in a pork pie factory. Now he works in an even

bigger one! We also saw Peter Cruddas, who was the Tory Party co-

treasurer, what was he offering to feet to David Cameron? Money.

Donors, you have to have dinner with Cameron if you paid enough

money. You could influence Government policy for literally

�250,000. Labour should have put up somebody, paid �250,000 go, in

there, influence Government policy. Easy, don't win an election.

Cruddas was secretly filmed offering access to David Cameron in

exchange for large donations to the Tory Party, and offering to feed

their suggestions in. Let's have a look. �200,000, �250,000 is Premier

League. If you are unhappy about something, we will listen to you,

and put it into the policy committee at Number Ten. We feed

all feedback into the policy committee.

What you can't see is he's talking to Nick Clegg! According to the

Sunday Times Peter Cruddas boasted that he had flattered one donor,

Lord Glendonbrook, into making a million pound donation, how did he

do that? He said he would put him on the bank notes. It was a pyjama

party at Number Ten, �250,000 gets you dinner, if you pay more, you

can stay on for the...entertainment. They get a bit drunk, there is a

bottle of whatever, they say let's play twister, and they go, I've

forgotten my trousers, it is one of those nights.

They go, it is a bit late, why don't you stay, I haven't got any

pyjamas, and it doesn't matter. will put the central heating on,

you wake up in the morning feeling so...oh sorry! He flattered him

into doing it by presenting him with a birthday card, personally

signed by David Cameron. When the undercover reporters asked what

tactics he had used to persuade the Prime Minister to make the gesture.

He replied, I told Number Ten, get him to sign the frigg ing card. The

spotlight was on other donors, Baron Laidlaw has naid donations

totalling �3 million, but heeped imbarsment on when admitting he was

an orgy loving sex addict, Mr Cameron was forced to withdraw the

whip! How did Francis Maude deftly manage to distract attention from

the damage being done by pasties and Peter Cruddas? Put petrol in

your bath! Drink as much of it as you can, keep it in your hat. Is

there a spare pram in the hallway the children are growing out of,

cover it in petrol, and push it outside on a hot sunny day, with

magnified glass above it. Make your children wear paper clothes. All

that sort of stuff. He suggested that a bit of extra

fuel in a injurey can in the garage is a sensible precaution to take.

Instead of rushesing to the garage to panic buy petrol, thousands

rushed to Halfords to panic buy jerry cans, sales of which went up

500%. Having given his verdict on the

utter stupidity of panic buying petrol, he added, he was sitting in

the queue for an hour. This is the run of scandals, including pasty-

gate, dinner-gate, and the totally unnecessary panic over petrol,

caused by ill-advised comments of Francis Maude-gate. David Cameron

now claims he always has an end of the day pasty on the train.

David, that's a beef Wellington! David Cameron claimed to have had a

pastey and a Yorkshire pasty shop that had closed five years earlier,

just after Eric Pickles moved from Yorkshire to London.

As panic-buying continued, one AA man reported seeing a 75-year-old

woman at a petrol station filling up 20 empty paint tins, and a tray

of jam jars. Which sounds mad, but to be fair,

it is the only way to store it, as she didn't have a car.

Time now for the odd one out round. Your four are, the First Lady of

Syria, Asma Al-Assad, Anthony Worrall-Thompson, a passenger

aboard a private jet at Luton Airport, and the on-line shopper,

Mr Cheo. She does on-line shopping, you can see what she has been

treating herself to while thousands are being killed. It would get you

down. Anthony Worrall-Thompson shops with the five-fringeered

discount. What does that mean? Nicking stuff. Different world,

innit, me and you. Who is the guy, he's buying things?

He's an on-line shopper, that's the clue. He's shopping on-line, I

reckon. It's like watching Sherlock homes

at his finest. Teasing out the truth from a slender strand of clue.

They are all candidates to become the next director-general. What,

including Luton Airport. Is it tax? It is to do with paying? He doesn't

pay. She hasn't paid any of her bills? Not quite. We don't know!

The general air of gloom and despondancy we add to, we don't

know either. They have all avoided paying the full amount, apart from

an on-line shopper, named Mr Cheo, who paid a total of $12 million

Taiwanese dollars to buy a croissant over the Internet. How

did he do that? Pressed button of do you want to pay millions for

this, and he pressed the button. translates as �250,000? Dinner with

David Cameron. It wasn't a Nigerian writing to him saying would you

like one of the fine croissants. You have inherited the croissants?

Your uncle, Greggs the baker has died. He kept paying over and over

again, after a number of phone calls asking for repayments from

the skound reels, before his bank details were used to fleece him out

of cash. He ended up paying �250,000? He couldn't have done.

Where would he get it from. He's obviously a very rich man. How can

anybody that stupid, unless he has inherited it, I have �250,000, I

ain't half hungry, I'll have one of them. The fact is, he never

received his croissant. It just gets worse and worse.

What was Asma Al-Assad trying to get out of paying for? It was a

ming vase, costing �3, 400, she sent details of the vase to the

family's London-based fixer, he responded saying bought it, 15%

discount, delivery ten weeks. She faces a two-year prison sentence

because her shopping spree may have broken financial sanctions imposed

on her husband. Still 15%, eh. Anthony Worrall-Thompson was caught

shoplifting from Tescos, it was three onions and two tubs of

discounted coleslaw. The toughest set of ingredients on Ready Steady

Cook. We have talked about the passengers abroad the jet at Luton

Airport, an unknown Tony donor! Tony donor, the passenger who had

was an unnamed Tory donor, who frequently caught a helicopter to

Luton Airport before zooming out of UK airspace in a private jet to

avoid paying his full tax. Asma Al- Assad's parents were originally

from Homs, the house they lived in is now commemorated with a large

crater. She used to be an investment banker, one of the very

few bankers to move on to something even more evil. Time now for the

missing words round, which this week features as its guest

pibcation Raisin Views, the voice of the raisin industry, I'm a

regular subscriber, as are all of its subscribers.

Tom Jones! A state of indecision? The answer is, woman trapped in

flat-pack wardrobe for 90 minutes. This is one of the many unusual

calls revealed by the Leicester fire brigade, including a man with

his toe stuck in the bath tap, after his wife said don't stick the

toe in the pwhat tap. Sadly, she was stuck in a wardrobe at the time

so he didn't hear. Footballers are what according to a new study?

are actually highly intelligent. That is correct, a Swedish study

has found footballers are more intelligent than previously thought.

As if to prove it, here is Burnley defender Clarke Carlyle appearing

on countdown, some what less impressive when the word he game up

with was "go". Cabbie nieces and what? And,

immediately apologises. Cabbie sneezes and takes wrong turn

into a canal? Cabbie sneezes and wrecks a monument. He drove and

careered into a 15th century monument, the monument in cheddar

is cordoned off, leaving heartbroken residents with nothing

to piss against on their way home from the pub. Popular raisin

seminars teach new recipes using what? There is to chance we will

get this. Even showing it to us is an insult really. I think you will

kick yourself when you find out what it is? Raisins, raisins and

more raisins. That is the right answer! Pret much.

One speaker at the seminar was a member of the National Dried Fruit

Association, Christopher Longbottom, that is dried fruit for you.

Finally, you want babies, my girl? Then don't take...Your Tights off,

do take your tights off! Don't keep your tights on. Don't use raisins

as a contraceptive, they fall out. The answer is you want babies my

girl, then don't hit your lover in the face. This is the news that the

Edinburgh Zoo pandas are more prone to slap anticle. This is another

panda in the USA behaving in a more disturbing manner. There he is,

there's a panda. (children crying). Wait a second.

Aren't children stupid. So the final scores are Paul and

Miles with seven points, but the winners this week are Ian and Grace

with eight. But before we go, there is just

time for the caption competition. Would you live in the greater

London area. And I will leave you with the news that with the race to

the Mayor of London hots up, one of the candidates resorts to a Putin-

style of campaigning. As Alan titch mash's latest novel is turned into