Episode 4 Have I Got News for You

This programme contains some strong language.

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

I'm Jo Brand. In the news this week,

as footage emerges from the recent royal tour,

it appears Nicholas Witchell picked the wrong moment

to bend over and tie his shoelaces.

In his last year in office, there are suspicions that Barack Obama

is frittering away Secret Service resources

as extra protection is laid on for Tiddles, the White House cat.

And after a long day's recording, there's a sense of deja vu

for the producers of Top Gear

as they fail to provide Chris Evans with a steak.

No wonder he's angry! He's got pixelated organs.

On Ian's team tonight is an actress and comedian

whose Twitter biography refers to her as a "Northern powerhouse",

presumably because George Osborne has no idea where she is

and has never given her any money.

Please welcome Diane Morgan!

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And with Paul tonight is a business consultant and host of Countdown

who once described me as his celebrity crush.

Only if I sat on you, mate.

Please welcome Nick Hewer.

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And we start with the biggest stories of the week.

Paul and Nick, take a look at this.

Ah, yes, the collapse of British Home Stores,

a very famous name on the high street.

That's their funeral collection there.

Er, baboon, er, he's the new chairman, he's come in.

That's Sir Philip Green and money rushing in.

So, yes, there's a bit of controversy about BHS

-and Sir Philip Green.

-It's a hell of a story.

It's a bonfire of the vanities, an extraordinary, terrible story.

Erm...he's not a spiv.

-He's not a spiv?

-He's not a spiv. I know he's not a spiv.

My lawyer said he's not a spiv.

And you'll remember, he's had his run-ins in the City before.

I don't know why you're planting this on me!

-Because...

-If you want to suggest Sir Philip Greed...Green...

-LAUGHTER

-Sorry.

LAUGHTER AND APPLAUSE

If you want to suggest there's something fishy

about his whole financial thing, well, you say it, not me!

-I'm not saying he should be put inside.

-Your boys on Private Eye

will be all over it like a cheap suit.

Although perhaps not one from BHS.

Let's just do figures quickly, shall we?

He bought it for 200 million. Fair play to him,

it made a profit of around 500 million in less than a decade.

But he also took out around 580 million in dividends

and various deals for himself and his family.

Which is quite a lot to give yourself in a tax haven.

Again, I'm not saying that's odd.

LAUGHTER

I've shoplifted in BHS, but it was never that much.

The flipside of taking all this money out

is that the reason it's gone bankrupt

is there's a £570 million pension fund.

And someone's got to pay the pensions to these employees.

Now, you'd think that might be

someone who'd taken 400 million out himself, but no.

It's another body, called the Pension Protection Fund,

-which is backed by, ooh, the taxpayer.

-AUDIENCE MEMBER:

-Oh!

Oh, you're happy now, aren't you?

I think BHS shutting down

is a bit like when someone tells you that someone's died

but you thought they'd died earlier anyway.

LAUGHTER AND APPLAUSE

See, like, Woolworths, when that went bust,

you know, people were genuinely sad

because they didn't know where to get their pic'n'mix.

That was a big issue for me!

In all seriousness, my concern is that this little episode

damages the whole idea of entrepreneurship.

Because entrepreneurs are meant to create money.

Spread it around. This is all apparently rocketing

-to the South of France into Monte Carlo.

-Are you suggesting

this is more like asset stripping?

-No...

-I wouldn't use that phrase.

And what about the stuff in it? Is that good?

I don't go to BHS.

One thing that's weird about Philip Green -

well, I find it weird - is that

celebrities find him irresistible, don't they?

How much did he spend on his birthday party?

Something like £5 million.

And everyone was there,

but they were there cos they'd been paid.

Which the rest of us would consider, yes, tragic.

I got away with 200 quid for mine.

Erm, well, let's have a look at him with some beautiful people.

Here's a beautiful person - Liz Hurley, of course.

Here's another beautiful person.

Yeah, Rita Ora. And another beautiful person...

Yeah.

And listen, here's Sir Philip Green with another beauty.

Aww.

But you are a long way away.

-Where did you find that?!

-It's in my personal collection.

It's a specialist website.

Does anyone know what the boss of M&S said about him

-after his failed takeover of M&S in 2004?

-Was that Stuart Rose?

-Mmm.

They came to blows, almost, outside the Dorchester, you know?

-During that...

-How posh of them!

Not outside Kentucky Fried Chicken.

He said...

Right...

And what's going to happen next?

Does the parliamentary committee have the power to coerce him

to come before them and answer questions? And apparently,

the answer is yes. They're also talking about bringing

Lady Christina! After all, she owns it.

Yes. No, Frank Field seems to think that he will be

summoned to the Commons Work & Pensions Committee...

Let's have a look at him telling us about that.

It's inconceivable that we wouldn't actually invite...

Sir Philip Green to come.

Um...he's called us a load of effing arseholes...

I mean, that's the height of arrogance, isn't it, really?

This is the demise of BHS and Sir Philip Green's battle

to hold on to his title. Philip Green likes to surround himself

with celebrities like Kate Moss, although it's less well known

that Sir Philip has done a bit of modelling himself.

And here's what he was modelling for.

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In 2010, David Cameron personally appointed Sir Philip Green

as the...

Ah, 2010, the same year David Cameron personally appointed

George Michael the Driving Safety Tsar.

And Nick Clegg the Deputy Prime Minister.

Commenting on Sir Philip Green's handling of the BHS pension fund,

Alastair Campbell said it had...

Well, Sir Philip, you've got a yacht, you know what to do.

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OK, Ian and Diane, take a look at this.

The Presidential visit.

Ugh, that's the propaganda.

Good grief, that's a selfie!

And that's Flaky!

We had a visit by an American president,

which was incredibly exciting.

Um...

It was!

He played golf, which is...

important on a state visit.

And he ate two enormous meals with the royal family.

And he advised us to stay in the EU.

No, it was a threat!

He said, "Unless you stay in the EU, you're going to the

"back of the queue," which is a mistake with British people,

cos we think, "Great, queue!

"I'll go back again and queue up!

"This is good."

Are these EU/US trade deals as exciting as they sound?

I'm gripped!

I can barely sleep at night, going over the details.

One being negotiated at the moment is...

They're called the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership.

Obama said, "If you don't stay in the EU,

"you don't get this brilliant deal," which is a terrible deal

which half of Europe is trying to throw out.

It's basically a deal that allows

corporate America to do what it likes.

Having a go at Obama is very popular(!)

What did the Brexit camp make of his intervention

in support of staying in the EU? Were they pleased?

-No, they were jolly cross.

-They were jolly cross.

Because all they've got is Marine Le Pen.

What did Jeremy Corbyn discuss with Obama during the 30 sparse

minutes that he got to spend with him? Do you know?

I think it was global capitalism and the effect on the labour market.

That's not far off, because

the subject of their half-hour discussion was:

What, and Cameron had a round of golf?

Well, I think by the time Corbyn had actually said that,

his time was up.

Yes, a round of golf. That was next on his agenda.

This took place just outside Watford.

The President's retinue blended into its surroundings.

Here's the usual convey of Secret Service personnel. There they are.

And here they are in golf-course mode.

Now, David Cameron and President Obama exchanged gifts.

This is what Obama gave Cameron.

A custom-made Shinola men's watch engraved with the presidential seal.

A bison-leather duffel bag monogrammed with

the Prime Minister's initials.

Three cans of US Open tennis balls.

And a pair of sports towels

personalised with the UK/US friendship flags.

Whatever they are.

Sports towels?

It's an unsubtle message, isn't it? It's "get exercising, fatty".

This is what David Cameron gave him.

A volume of the complete works of Shakespeare.

Oh. That's it.

The only thing I was interested in was, you know...

Boris mentioned this bust of Churchill...

-Oh, that's right.

-..that Obama had that apparently he claimed

-he'd had removed from his office.

-Yeah.

But I'd be interested in having that if he's not put it back.

Cos I've got a Martin Luther King snow globe I could swap.

Do you know how Churchill's grandson, Nicholas Soames, reacted?

-Do you know what he said?

-He exploded.

-He was angry.

He thought Boris was out of order to take issue with its removal,

saying...

-"Bogged it."

-"Bogged it." Has anyone here ever bogged it?

Well, let's take a little detour. How did Ken Livingstone

bog it this week?

If I'm using it in the right context.

He came out in defence of someone that the party have now suspended.

Naz Shah, who's an MP, yeah.

Naz Shah, who made some rather unfortunate

anti-Semitic posts. But as she said, it was way back in 2014.

Which is, you know, a world away. It's like 1932, isn't it?

The suggestion was that he said, apparently,

that in 1932 Hitler was saying that he actually was a Zionist.

He thought it was a jolly good idea that he wanted to ship

all the Jews... in Germany...to Israel.

But when you're making a speech saying that somebody else

isn't an anti-Semite, it's best to keep the words...

"Hitler" and "Jews"...

-away from each other...on the whole.

-How did Ken Livingstone avoid

journalists after news of his suspension broke?

Put on a pair of dungarees and went home.

No, he actually did bog it,

because he took cover in a disabled toilet...

which I'm assuming is the meaning of "bogging it".

I don't know. There he is...

nipping into one.

And he was in there for 20 minutes while journalists shouted

questions about Hitler at him.

I watched him being chased up the stairs by Mr Mann

and being given a thumping, and he kept smiling.

But it is something when you've got two Labour figures just

screaming at each other. That footage is brilliant.

Disgusting racist! Rewriting history! You're a disgusting racist!

-Are you saying it's not true?

-Yes, you're a lying racist!

Really? Why don't you go and check the history?

A Nazi apologist! A Nazi apologist!

You're a disgusting Nazi apologist, Livingstone!

Wow!

It's a happy party(!)

-He's got terribly long legs, you know.

-Who? Ken Livingstone?

I met him once. I met him.

I said to him, "You've got disproportionally long legs."

It's a true story. And he said, "I know."

He probably thought,

"This is the weirdest chat-up line I've ever had."

-"Disproportionately long legs."

-Look at him next time.

-Very long legs.

-DIANE:

-That's true. I met him.

He does have long legs. Yeah.

LAUGHTER

-Was that it?

-Was that what?

-All you thought?

-No.

He gave me a mince pie.

This is Barack Obama's visit to the UK.

David Cameron and Barack Obama enjoyed a round of golf together,

though even the presidential golf buggy had to be followed

by a motorcade of Secret Service men.

Still, they were on a golf course,

that's an awful lot of grassy knolls.

Meanwhile, Ken Livingstone has been suspended from the Labour Party

for attempting to defend Naz Shah's anti-Semitic comments.

Livingstone said...

I'm not sure whether that was Hitler or Ken.

Teams now, here's another one.

Yes, this is the extraordinary story of Hillsborough.

Kelvin MacKenzie, the editor of the Sun.

Basically, people were demonised.

Football fans in the 1980s were seen as hooligans, drunk the whole time.

There had been lots of pitch invasions, so therefore

you had these fences put up. Ken Bates, the Chelsea chairman

wanted to put up electrified fences, I remember... So this was how people viewed football fans.

The truth of the matter is that amongst these 96 people were

working-class people, middle-class people, people from Liverpool,

people outside of Liverpool.

And it took 27 years to come out.

Which sort of makes Chilcot look fast.

This is the news that the Hillsborough families had

succeeded in their 27-year campaign. It was celebrated on the front

pages of the national press...

The Guardian, the Mirror...

The Star...

The i...

The Telegraph...

And the Sun...

Absolutely no sign of Hillsborough there.

-At all.

-The fact that the Murdoch papers didn't run it because of

their embarrassment about having run headlines that said

"The Truth..." And then they got it all wrong and they just fed

exactly what the police said to them.

And then they stuck to that line for years.

I mean, there was extraordinary collaboration to make sure

-there was one story put out.

-After the tragedy, 164 police statements

submitted to the Justice Taylor report were altered

and most of the alterations were to remove criticism of the police operation.

And senior officers' lack of leadership.

If you want to learn more about the findings of the Hillsborough inquest,

you can read in-depth analysis on the BBC website

and if you want to know less, then read the Sun.

APPLAUSE

And so, to round two, The One-Armed Bandit of News.

Fingers on buzzers, teams.

Bloop!

BUZZER

This is the astronaut in space, Tim Peake, is it?

And 26 miles, he ran round the... On a little sort of space thing there.

-Do you mean a treadmill?

-Treadmill. Actually, if he stands still,

he does more than 26 miles, cos he's orbiting the earth, so he's...

Yeah, he ran the marathon cos the cameras were on him

and he ran and ran and ran and everybody was very happy at the end.

-That's nothing compared to you, is it? A marathon?

-No.

-You did how many?

-135 miles.

-Yeah, just like that.

-In an hour...

In an hour?!

That's fantastic!

Oh, all right...

Were you parachuting out of a plane?

-Seven days.

-Seven days.

-Yes.

-You had sticks?

-I had sticks?

-I saw you with the sticks.

-Oh, yeah, I know, but...

-Were they helpful?

-They are quite helpful but I didn't really use them

very much because they make you look like a twat.

No, they really do.

People are thinking, "Is she skiing? There's no snow, what is she doing?

-It does look like...

-You might have been approaching a giant Chinese meal.

Actually, Tim Peake, he broke a world record for running a marathon in space.

Was he dressed up?

-Tim Peake?

-It seems like he's showing-off, really, you know,

he's already in space, why run a marathon?

Yeah, you're right.

How do you even run a marathon in zero gravity?

-He was strapped down so he didn't float away.

-OK.

You mustn't leave the window open.

That's right. They strapped me to the treadmill

but that's cos I kept trying to get away!

Back down here on earth, who slightly undermined Tim's incredible achievement?

All those other people in the marathon.

Yeah, well, there was one man called Martin Hewlett who set the

Guinness World Record for the fastest earth marathon dressed as an astronaut.

Running in a costume that can be dangerously dehydrating,

here he is before the race.

That's him in the middle.

Here he is after finishing.

Although, I think in terms of suffering,

I'm not sure anyone beats this guy.

I know what you're thinking, but don't worry,

a bloke dressed as Simon of Cyrene came and took it off him soon after.

Have I got my Bible facts right there, Ian?

-Terrific.

-Great to hear a Simon of Cyrene joke.

There've been very few for about 2,000 years!

Simon of Cyrene walks into a pub and says...

"I'll take your pint off you."

Why did this lady, Betty Barker

think Tim Peake was drunk last Christmas Eve?

She works in his local pub?

He came in, he said, "I'm going into space next year."

He called her from the Space Station by mistake

after getting the wrong number on his space phone

when he was trying to call home.

Oh. She was lucky there was a photographer there

to capture the moment.

APPLAUSE

Well, Betty Barker thought he was a drunken reveller

looking for a good time.

She's optimistic, old Betty, isn't she?

And she said...

And she said...

-That was quite picky.

-It is a bit.

Extraterrestrials may have been trying to contact us for decades...

..but speak to the wrong people.

Betty Barker fucked it up.

Anyway...

Finally, shall we see how Tim Peake is inspiring a nation of youngsters

-to reach for the stars?

-Absolutely.

Here we go.

-You look like an astronaut - are you going to be an astronaut?

-No.

OK. Time now for the Odd-One-Out Round.

Your four are a spelling test for schoolchildren,

Bernie Clifton's new album,

the Sinner's Bible

and the village of Mela Thiruvenkatanathapuram in India.

-That's a...

-APPLAUSE

-Very good.

-Thank you.

Is that the place that's got a railway station

where they say, "We're here."

Erm... So, spelling tests.

Wasn't there something the other week

about there were some kids had been given a spelling test

they'd already seen?

The real test happened to be exactly the same - is that the story?

-Yes.

-That's that. OK. So the Sinner's Bible...

That was an early Bible, where it had a misprint in it.

-Ah, yes.

-And in the Ten Commandments,

instead of saying "thou shalt...not kill", they'd left the "not" out.

Was it kill, or adultery?

-That was adultery.

-It was adultery. That's why people got excited,

because...

It said "thou shalt commit".

Did you say Bernie Clifton's got a new album out?

-Yes, he has.

-And what's interesting?

They printed the songs of a death-metal band

instead of his own titles.

There must be a spelling mistake in the name of that town then?

-I think I've got it.

-Test for the children, because it's been changed.

-That's the odd one out.

-That is the right answer.

In all the other three cases...

-There have bee...

-A misprint, a mistake.

-Yes, that's right. Absolutely.

-Whereas, with this town,

-they've got it completely right.

-No, no.

-I said that Paul had got it right.

-What you asking him for?

-You might as well ask the cat.

-I said before he'd got it right.

But between you you've got it, so one point each.

They've all featured misprints,

except the spelling test for UK seven-year-olds,

which appeared online correctly before the exam took place.

-NICK:

-Ah.

-Do you know how the error was discovered?

-Somebody spotted it.

Correct. A primary school teacher noticed that...

One would hope that at least one of them would.

Where do they get this knowledge from?

And we've already mentioned the mix-up

at the launch of veteran entertainer Bernie Clifton's new album.

Can you explain why he's on an ostrich?

-That was his act. Those aren't his legs.

-No.

No, don't give it away!

The magic is spilling out.

You're making me feel stupid now.

Bernie's album's been misprinted with a track listing, as you said,

of the new album belonging to

death-metal band Abhorrent Decimation.

Cheery Bernie Clifton said...

Well, not to your face, mate.

Bernie's trying to relaunch his career,

but with one big difference - what is it?

-He's not doing the ostrich any more?

-That's right, he's ditched it.

-Really?

-Mm. And he says this...

But you kept giving to them, Bernie - you whore.

Time now for the Missing Words Round,

which this week features as its guest publication Deposits Magazine.

The magazine of rocks, fossils and geology.

Which, when it comes to its own content,

can't always make its mind up...

And we start with...

Knock Keith Chegwin's confidence.

This is the story of Reza Beluchi,

who attempted to walk across the ocean from Florida to Bermuda

in a large inflatable plastic bubble.

After being rescued by the coastguard,

Beluchi popped the bubble and stepped out of it, saying,

"I feel like I've really let myself down."

I think it was "the dinosaurs died out",

but I heard they "dined out for no apparent reason".

No. It is, in fact...

Brexit.

-Exactly. The dinosaurs' departure...

-Tyrannosaurus Brexit!

AUDIENCE GROANS Thank you very much indeed.

APPLAUSE

Finally...

-Nick:

-Chokes.

Is it there's nothing missing? "Man with giant foot"?

-No, there is. It's...

-Yeah?

A traffic warden in South London ticketed a giant foot

that parked outside Balham Tube Station.

Here's the traffic warden

giving the foot a parking ticket.

To be fair, the foot had just broken down

and it was waiting for a "toe truck".

So, the final scores are -

Paul and Nick have 5,

but Ian and Diane have 7.

APPLAUSE

But before we go,

there's just time for the caption competition.

Bet you a quid I can lose my hand.

Don't put your keys in me - I'm not a handbag yet!

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

Ian Hislop and Diane Morgan, Paul Merton and Nick Hewer.

And I leave you with news that, after drastic budget cuts,

it looks like the next StarWars movie

could be a little disappointing.

In Cambridge, a long-running feud in the council traffic department

escalates to full-on civil war.

And in Glasgow, there's terror as the police are called in

to identify a mysterious and suspicious package.

Goodnight!

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