Episode 7 Have I Got News for You

CHEERING AND APPLAUSE

Good evening. Welcome to Have I Got News For You.

I'm Victoria Coren Mitchell.

In the news this week,

as accusations of doping continue to plague the athletics world,

there are fears that some athletes may even have resorted

to taking animal hormones.

Ready, go!

In a new documentary about the sad fate of former child stars,

ITV2 catches up with the sun from the Teletubbies.

And in Los Angeles, after making a fortune in the advertising world,

Churchill the dog enjoys his retirement on Venice Beach.

On Ian's team tonight is a comedian and actor

who went to the same private school as George Osborne,

which, by my reckoning, makes him

the fourth poshest person on the show tonight.

Please welcome Hal Cruttenden.

APPLAUSE

And with Paul tonight is the traditional right-wing Tory MP

who once claimed that guitars should be banned

from the Roman Catholic Mass.

He really has got a feel

for what voters are talking about on the doorstep.

Please welcome Jacob Rees-Mogg MP.

APPLAUSE

And we start with what is really the only story in the news this week.

Ian and Hal, take a look at this.

Oh, right, yes, big comic story of the week.

That's France, that's the police.

That's their rapid reaction force.

Oh, there's our rapid reaction force.

Yeah, this is Paris and the tragedy there.

And our attempts afterwards

to work out what to do about what's happened.

The answer so far being - we don't know.

How terrified should you be? Should you leave your house at all, ever?

Again?

Or perhaps you should go out just a bit and then run inside quickly.

It is...

I mean, it does strike me as one of the few things

we are still allowed to do is make jokes.

And laugh.

-So we might have a go at that.

-Yes.

APPLAUSE

But we have to talk about the aftermath of the events in Paris.

What has been the British government's immediate response?

Who have they hired?

-Who have they hired?

-They've hired 2,000 something.

Spies?

- HAL: Oh, SAS. - Spies?

- Should we know that? - 1,900 extras.

LAUGHTER

-Do you know what that will cost?

-About £2 billion, I think.

£2 billion for the SAS, another £2 billion for cyber security.

Where's this money suddenly come from?

Back of the sofa in the Chancellor's office.

It comes from the magnificent management of the economy

that the government has done.

..the essential requirements of the safety of the nation.

I knew there'd be some comedy tonight.

LAUGHTER AND APPLAUSE

Let's talk about the football match.

What was remarkable about the football match on Tuesday?

Oh, the English crowd joined with the French supporters in singing

the French national anthem, which was a chance to show solidarity.

Which is not always the mark

-of the supporter of the professional football game.

-I love the way...

It was sort of a little bit,

the way the England fans sang that French national anthem,

it reminded me of John Redwood at the Welsh Party Conference.

That sort of... # Allons enfants de la Patrie... #

It was wonderful.

-Are you suggesting everyone didn't know all the words?

-Yes.

-I don't know them. Do you know them?

-Well, yeah, obviously.

Not everyone knows the words to the English national anthem.

I think the leader of the Labour Party

wasn't too clear on them a few weeks ago.

-Now, I must...

-Oh, God!

And the Marseillaise is quite bloodthirsty, really.

It is quite a full-on, defensive number,

which is why it was quite moving really.

But I think the French national anthem is perfect for this

because it is all about we're going to stand up,

whereas ours is all about just saving the Queen.

We've already got enough security around her. It should really be...

Yeah.

Wembley Stadium looked magnificent. The tricolor was up there.

The Tricolour has been put on various things.

There are questions about taste.

Facebook brought in a Tricolour colour filter

that everyone could have on their Facebook page.

And Apple did that. And then there's...

Oh, look, there's the bit where the tax should be.

LAUGHTER AND APPLAUSE

Then there's Uber, the curious cab company. They did that.

There seems to be a bit of a pile-up north of the river.

One of the most touching corporate tributes, this website...

GASPS AND LAUGHTER

Oh, that's proper solidarity.

Is that really true? I'm going to look that up when I get home.

That's the most pathetic excuse I've ever heard.

How did Kay Burley of Sky News capture the national mood?

Ah, yes, this was a picture of a Labrador, I think,

a Labrador which she said had sadness in his eyes.

Yes, that's what Kay Burley tweeted.

And people on Twitter were quick to respond with their own tweets.

Here's one.

-There's another here.

-I'm sure I've met him.

Now, that is sad.

Anybody else say anything particularly intemperate?

Nigel Farage said something stupid, didn't he?

-Surely not.

-Yes. He did.

Was he saying stop all the refugees coming or something? That was his...

Rupert Murdoch had something to say about refugees. He's tweeted...

One of the Republican presidential candidates has said the same.

Is it really embarrassing being right-wing sometimes?

LAUGHTER

APPLAUSE

All I can say to that is Jeremy Corbyn.

APPLAUSE

You mentioned Jeremy Corbyn. How's he been coping with these events?

Well, he is a principled pacifist and he has expressed those views

and said that the police shouldn't necessarily shoot to kill terrorists,

and he seems to have very little support from his own MPs

in saying this, who have rather revelled in taking a stronger line.

I don't agree with him on this, but I rather admire his courage in saying

something that is so deeply unpopular but which he profoundly believes.

That's a very generous thing to say.

I think that's a very generous thing to say.

APPLAUSE

And because I'm so unpleasant,

-I'll just point out he retracted it less than a day later...

-Yes.

..which is strongly principled in the sense of not being.

There is probably someone going, "For God's sake, just say yes.

"Just say you'll press the button,

"do your top button up and just do it.

"Just lie, Jeremy, till we're in power.

"That's what the Tories do, just lie till we're in power, and that's..."

LAUGHTER AND APPLAUSE

Anyway, if Labour win the next election,

he'll be 70 and if he doesn't want to press the nuclear button,

it'll be easy to overpower him.

There was an allegedly stormy meeting

of the Parliamentary Labour Party.

You say his MPs don't seem to support him,

many of them attacked him.

What was Diane Abbott doing at this meeting?

I think that's private, isn't it?

-Tweeting?

-No.

-Sexting?

-She was doing...

-LAUGHTER

-Is that the same thing?

-In a way...

-In a way.

..according to the Mirror...

The G20 summit was held in Turkey this week.

What were the US and the major European nations

trying to achieve at that summit?

They were trying to get Putin to stop attacking the Free Syrian Army,

concentrate on fighting ISIS, so we all have a big coalition.

He was sitting there in the corner

like the one that nobody wants to talk to.

They all go over and have their own little individual meetings with him.

Well, shall we have a look at a meeting with Obama and Putin?

There they are in the corner.

And to really know what they were talking about,

there is one fellow we could ask.

-Did you see the chap listening to that conversation?

-No.

Let's have a look.

So here's a bigger picture and you can see there in the corner,

you see Obama and Putin, and just watch this fellow just subtly

coming in for a bit of a listen.

Yes, this is the aftermath of the terrorist attacks in Paris.

One man leading the hunt for the terrorists

is Belgium's interior security minister...

..showing defiance to Islamic State, even with his surname.

APPLAUSE

-Paul and Jacob, take a look at this.

-OK.

Yes, that's Parliament.

-Now, what is this? It looks like parchment.

-Act of Parliament...

GOAT SCREAMS

LAUGHTER

I don't think that's from one of my speeches.

The Acts of Parliament have been put on vellum forever

and to save £80,000, the kid at the end of it,

because I think vellum comes from kids, are going to be saved

and there will be no more vellum

and our laws will now be written on ordinary paper.

So that was just relief from that kid?

Do you know, I don't actually talk to animals, so I don't know...

LAUGHTER

I'm not Dr Dolittle.

APPLAUSE

Vellum is very permanent and laws are very seriously important things

and we ought to have respect for the law and, physically,

it ought to be impressive

and therefore to spend a little extra to reinforce that symbolism is,

I think, worth doing if we're to maintain respect for the law.

Is the law definitely more impressive

if it's written on a goat?

It physically lasts longer.

Which other money-making schemes were criticised this week?

It was the tax credit cuts again.

Conservative MP Stephen McPartland said, "A majority of Tory MPs

"want George Osborne to drop his tax credit cuts."

Are you among them, Jacob?

Well, the Chancellor said he's going to come forward

with plans at the Autumn Statement so I wait and see.

I missed the answer.

LAUGHTER AND APPLAUSE

I don't know...

We're still running a huge budget deficit, cuts need to be made

and major cuts into the billions of pounds...

Is this part of the economic success you were talking about?

The economic success...

LAUGHTER AND APPLAUSE

Absolutely.

The job is not completed, there's still money that needs to be saved.

-Yeah. You could raise tax, couldn't you?

-We have.

Well, you could raise it a bit more.

Interestingly, probably not.

The rate of tax, as a percentage of GDP that is raised currently,

is within the bounds of the highest level we've ever raised.

Yeah, but Vodafone and Google, they could pay tax, couldn't they?

APPLAUSE

-Absolutely and...

-So you'll be going after those?

-The Chancellor's done this, he's done exactly this.

-Has he?

-Do they know that?

-He'll introduce plans to...

-They'll find out.

-They'll find out, will they?

-They'll be getting a letter through, will they?

-Well, the Chancellor...

"Dear Facebook, we've just noticed you've been taking the piss.

"Here's the amount."

Tax laws are being reformed to ensure that foreign companies

make a bigger contribution, that's a perfectly reasonable thing to do.

Who wrote to his local county council to complain about cuts?

-David Cameron!

-It was David Cameron.

He couldn't understand why these cuts were being made.

The thing about not being connected with the real world -

do you even understand what I'm talking about, Jacob?

He did do that.

David Cameron wrote to Oxfordshire County Council to say

he was worried about...

He's doing something perfectly reasonable, let me defend...

LAUGHTER

-Let me defend the Prime Minister.

-Good luck.

-Yeah, perhaps.

But what he was doing was saying to the council that they should

make different choices.

The idea that there isn't waste in local councils that can be

reallocated to the really important services is one that I think

is false and he was encouraging them to do that reallocation.

They did send back quite a long letter

saying why they couldn't do that

saying no, we've cut everything else,

now we've got to cut this.

And the reason we've got to make these cuts is because

Central Office has off-loaded most of the cuts onto local government.

I'm just paraphrasing.

I think it shows he's got a real division

between his being-at-work and being-at-home

cos isn't he writing in the capacity of being a resident of Oxfordshire?

So, he's at home, he's walked through the door and he's no longer

Prime Minister, he's now a normal citizen getting angry.

He probably watches himself on telly going, "LIAR!"

He could be the...

LAUGHTER AND APPLAUSE

You know, he's...

I think it's nice, he becomes at-home David, doesn't he?

Let's talk about the Lincoln MP Karl McCartney.

Karl McCartney, I never thought I'd hear that name again.

Five years ago in Cairo, me and him had this secret affair.

We kissed each other on the balcony...

But, no, I'd better not say any of this, I've no idea who he is.

He may cost us £15,000. Do you know why?

Because I have just libelled him.

I didn't kiss him on the balcony.

15,000? That's not going to cover the lawyer reading the letter!

I bow to your superior experience.

No, it's to do with the way his name is written.

He wants the parliamentary records changed

because they print his name with a small C, like this, and he thinks

it should be written with a sort of floaty C, like this.

So far, it has cost several hundred pounds to change

the parliamentary records but changing it

on Hansard and the House of Commons website could cost £10,000-£15,000.

That's because it's written on vellum

and you can't easily rub it out.

But that's absolutely ridiculous.

Not on his wanting his name spelt properly, most people do,

but that it should cost that sort of money to make a tiny little

change on a computer system where even I -

I don't hold myself up as a great expert in this field -

know that you can change fonts on machines quite easily.

Most of us want our names spelt correctly, don't we?

-It's a reasonable ambition in life.

-May I just say...

Achievable for most of us.

..I find you extremely attractive.

-My wife is in the audience.

-Is your wife...? I'm so sorry.

Would you like the rest of us to discreetly make an exit?

I don't need anybody to do anything about it,

I just thought I would mention it along the way.

Let's talk about Sir John Chilcot.

Yeah, why not? That will kill the mood.

Are you going to tell me you find him very attractive?

You like a man who takes his time.

Last week, Sir John was pictured enjoying himself at a bus stop.

Well, The Sun has been following him and taking photos.

They found him at his country home in Devon at 4pm on a Friday.

How long does it take to make the 200 mile trip from Westminster

-to Devon?

-Five hours.

Quite a long time because the roads aren't very good.

He would have needed to leave at midday.

And he could have spent all that time just writing out...

"Blair is guilty."

This is the news that Parliament is about to be dragged kicking

and screaming into the 19th century by abandoning

vellum in favour of this new stuff called paper.

Meanwhile, Tory MP Karl McCartney

has asked for his name to be typed differently on

parliamentary records in a move that could cost the taxpayer £15,000.

He is said to be unhappy that his name is spelt with a lower-case C.

Don't worry, Mr McCartney, I'm sure we will all use a big C from now on.

And so to Round Two, The One Armed Bandit Of News.

Fingers on buzzers, teams, here's the first one.

-BELL

-Blimey.

Ian and Hal.

I think this is a man who went on holiday and filmed his whole holiday

with the camera round the wrong way, filming him.

So that was his whole holiday, was just a picture of his face going,

"Oh, that's good."

That is absolutely right.

Yes, he borrowed his son's mini video camera

-to document the trip of a lifetime...

-Oh, no...

..to Las Vegas.

He had the camera pointing the wrong way for the entire trip.

-Shall we have a look at his highlights?

-Yes.

-Yes.

Look at that.

That's the view looking down, see?

Whoo!

Where are we going for breakfast?

He did, ironically, attempt to take a selfie on this trip.

Shall we have a look? That's his selfie.

Fingers on buzzers, teams. Here is the next one.

-BUZZER

-Paul and Jacob.

Well, I think this is to do with athletics

and that they are all taking drugs.

-Not everybody is taking drugs.

-Well, the English don't.

-No.

And nor do the...

-Nor do the Scots, the Welsh or the Northern Irish.

-That's right.

But everyone else seems to.

And there has been a great row about this.

-One country in particular.

-Russia.

-Yeah.

Russia has been suspended from competing

in international athletics. Why?

Because they are all taking drugs and have done...

And have done for years and they have fiddled the testing regime.

The key with this one, I think, is that they have said that

Russia was complicit in the doping of individual athletes.

Do you know what I like? It's the World Anti-Doping Agency, or Wada.

It's just that image of the Russians going, "Oh, yeah, Wada, Wada, Wada."

President of the International Association

of Athletics Federations, Sebastian Coe,

is he the right person to be leading the clean-up?

A lot of people think not.

Some of his other interests have been called into question.

What are they?

He works for Nike.

Well, it's various things.

Sebastian Coe is the executive chairman of sports marketing firm

CSM, which represents...

He is also a special adviser at Nike.

He has his own parking space there

and he is paid £90,000 to advise the firm.

Coincidentally, Nike sponsors the Russian track and field athletes.

Oh, it's all quite compromising, isn't it?

-I just... It's a point of view. It's not a fact.

-No.

But the lawyers are there again, 15 grand...

Lord Coe was also once chairman of Fifa's ethics committee.

-Oh, well, there we are

-I didn't know they had one!

I do want to talk about a football match.

How did one footballer protest at a linesman this week?

-It's an unusual method of protest.

-Did he...?

He was sent off and he went home to the linesman's house,

disguised himself as the linesman's wife...

had a very fruity Saturday night

and then in the morning revealed who he was.

You're not as far as you might think.

This was a derby match between two Spanish lower league sides in which

a disgruntled player was watching from the stands...

Wow!

-This is...

-Is there no footage?

This is the news from the world of athletics that Russia has been

taking the piss and systematically destroying it.

The Times listed all the finishers in the women's 1,500 metres

final at the London Olympics, which featured four drug cheats,

including Yekaterina Kostetskaya, who came ninth.

The Russians have launched an urgent inquiry into how someone

who took that many drugs could be that shit.

Time now for the Odd One Out Round. Just one between you this week.

Your four are...

a Google car, the blink of an eye,

a Japanese runner and Bertie the Tortoise.

BUZZER

It must be about speed, mustn't it? We have got a tortoise there.

The Google car...

-A car was stopped for going too slowly by California police.

-OK.

The Japanese runner, he seems to be quite an old looking man

so I would imagine he doesn't move that quickly these days.

He's probably a marathon runner,

does it between February and October.

The tortoise is the odd one out because that is the obvious

one to go slowly so it must be the odd one out.

The tortoise is the odd one out

because they are all too slow, apart from the tortoise which

recently broke the tortoise world speed record.

Was it falling off a mountain?

-We need to have a look at him.

-Yes.

-Yes, let's have a look at him.

-He is on something.

-Yes.

Looks like tarmac.

Thank God the tyres are there.

Yes, actually, he might hit them at high speed and burst into flames!

Scientists have discovered that "a blink of an eye" is slower

than "a drop of a hat". They have been studying speed cliches.

Yes, they measured the drop of a hat at 5.7 metres per second and

the blink of an eye was slower than that. 6.94 metres per second was...

What about shit off a shovel?

-What about the Japanese gentleman?

-What about the Japanese gentleman?

-He's 105.

-Oh, I didn't realise.

-105-year-old Hidekichi Miyazaki

became the world's oldest competitive sprinter

when he completed the 100 metres in 42.22 seconds.

-Shall we have a look at him in action?

-He's doing well.

AUDIENCE: Aw!

-I think he is doing very well.

-Yeah.

APPLAUSE

He will be dating Jerry Hall in no time.

Why was Mr Miyazaki

-disappointed after the race?

-He failed to beat his own record.

Yes, he had hoped to go faster. He said...

-What does he put his slow time down to?

-The fact he is 105.

He was the only non-Russian in the race.

Mr Miyazaki told reporters he...

Yes, 105-year-old Hidekichi Miyazaki

was disappointed with his 100 metres time of 42.22 seconds.

At the end of the race, Mr Miyazaki gave a urine sample.

No-one asked him to but it had been 42 seconds since his last one.

Time now for the Missing Words Round,

which this week features as its guest publication

Chess Moves, the newsletter of the English Chess Federation.

The editor always keeps his door firmly shut

because he hates draughts.

AUDIENCE GROANS

It could be true.

And we start with...

To run Fifa.

Snap election.

AUDIENCE GROANS

If you're going to start groaning, you need to come out

and do your own jokes.

APPLAUSE

The answer is...

Indonesia's anti-drugs agency is planning to build a

prison on an island guarded by crocodiles to hold death row

convicts because the animals cannot be bribed.

Some people are on death row due to false allegations,

for which you have to blame the "alligator".

Next...

Drank a cocktail. Ruled India.

Reflected about the old times between the wars.

"Myself and Bunty were on the beach.

"Do you think the sea will ever change, darling?

"Will it always be wave after wave?"

Next...

Is this accountant?

-It is something festive.

-Fatty Christmas boy.

You're fatty Christmas boy. Jacob knows what it is.

I think I know what it is.

I think it is for people to untangle the wires of your Christmas lights.

-It is!

-Why?

What is a fatty Christmas boy?!

You are right. It is for...

And finally...

Adam created clothes because he found nakedness embarrassing.

-But that is not exactly a new story, is it?

-No.

It is more topical than that...

Here he is.

His other arm appears to be the same length.

That is to stop him looking stupid.

The good news is, he doesn't have to take selfies any more

because he's now in a relationship...

with Mr Tickle.

So, the final scores are... Ian and Hal with four points,

-Paul and Jacob with seven.

-Outrageous.

APPLAUSE

And I leave you with news that after spending decades

watching her husband fail to win promotion at work,

one impatient wife decides to take matters into her own hands.

At a meeting of European leaders,

one delegate tries to raise morale by burping the alphabet.

And in Harley Street, there are fears that things may not

quite have gone to plan with Alan Yentob's cosmetic surgery.

Goodnight.