Episode 7 Have I Got News for You

This programme contains some strong language.

APPLAUSE

Good evening and welcome to Have I Got News For You.

I'm Alexander Armstrong. In the news this week,

on a building site in Manchester

after a construction worker is injured in a fall,

the main culprit tries to sneak away from the scene.

Following Donald Trump's shock victory,

the youth wing of the Ku Klux Klan

slightly jumped the gun with a visit to Washington.

And in the grounds of Windsor Castle, a furious Kate Middleton

wonders where the hell Princess Charlotte's buggy's gone.

On Ian's team tonight is a comedian who in one show

lambasted posh white men as the cause of all Britain's problems.

Yeah, well, that's as may be.

You just try holding a boat race without them.

Please welcome Nish Kumar.

APPLAUSE

And with Paul tonight is a Labour MP

who says she's spent many of her evenings as a teenager

leafleting for the Labour Party,

although her parents told friends she was in prison.

Please welcome Jess Phillips MP.

APPLAUSE

And we start with the biggest stories of the week.

Ian and Nish, take a look at this.

-Oh, yes, the Chancellor flying an aeroplane.

-The Autumn Statement.

-It's jam.

-Erm, that is not scientific.

The big news of the Autumn Statement

-is that he's cancelling the Autumn Statement.

-That's right, yes.

That's a pretty gangsta move, like, to come out and be like,

"What is your Autumn Statement?"

"This is the last one. Mic drop. Hammond out."

-Tell me something not boring about Philip Hammond.

-Ohhh...

-Can you tell us something not boring?

-He...

He's a champion water skier.

-He used to run a nightclub.

-What?

That must have been the worst nightclub ever.

Was it Cinatra's with a C?

Just listen to what this lady has to say.

I remember going round to his house once.

We got hold of half a bottle of sherry

and, erm, proceeded to drink it and, very randomly,

we ended up having a bit of a cheeky snog.

MUSIC: Bang A Gong (Get It On) By T. Rex.

Who'd have thought that Philip Hammond was such a good kisser?

Literally no-one.

I mean, in that photo, he looks like the guy that did it in all films.

But to be fair, he's the only one that's bothered to turn up in focus.

"To other kids, it doesn't matter, you know..."

Well, we saw some jam there. What was the jam all about?

It's a new acronym for the Government -

Just About Managing, and it describes their performance.

The fact is we're in unbelievable debt.

We're in even more debt than we've ever been.

£2 trillion of debt, which we're going to have to pay off.

All those years of austerity and we've just given up.

I don't want to be gloomy.

Cos if you're gloomy, you know, they come and get you.

The Chancellor's only just keeping his job.

People saying, "Oh, for God's sake, Hammond, can't you cheer up?

"Tell us that the weather's lovely."

"But it isn't. Winter's coming."

So how is Hammond going to help the Just About Managing?

-What's he going to do?

-He's borrowing lots of money.

He's reversing some of the cuts and he's going to build roads

-and houses and infrastructure.

-Upping the minimum wage.

Upping the minimum wage.

He's doing lots of things that quite a lot of people agree with,

which is sort of his job. He's meant to be quite boring.

Erm, and to make everyone feel calm.

And that there isn't going to be a disaster.

-Unfortunately, Mrs May used the term "the cliff edge".

-Yes, that's right.

"We don't want to go up to the cliff edge,"

and you're thinking, "Hang on, he's telling us to calm down and...

"Oh, my God, there's a cliff edge!" But...

That's right, Theresa May said she does not want...

No, well, that's sound.

Some people DO want to go off a cliff edge, though.

Who are the people who like the cliff edge?

-Is it Iain Duncan Smith?

-Ooh, yes.

Richard Tice from the Leave Means Leave group, he likes it.

He says we need a quick transition to Brexit to avoid uncertainty,

whereas Paul Nuttall, the UKIP leadership candidate,

says, "There is no cliff. It's a springboard."

He can be the first one off, then!

You try it first.

Philip Hammond, of course, has been debating public spending

for a long time, as we can see from this clip.

-This is a clip from 2010.

-Oh!

I don't think any party has identified in detail

how they will reduce public spending

over the course of the coming Parliament.

The question to the Labour Party, to Peppa, if I may,

is you have all the civil servants, you have all the data,

you're sitting on all the contracts,

you know all the forward commitments.

Why have you not published a comprehensive spending review?

She has no answer!

Anyway, so there was great news around Brexit Britain.

Come on, libtards, come on, let's cheer up! Come on! It's great news.

Let's look on the bright side. Now, what's the bright side?

-Brexit's going to cost us...

-No, the bright side, the bright side.

-Oh, sorry.

-Jobs are up.

-Yes.

Facebook and Google are expanding.

They're creating hundreds of jobs - in tax avoidance, mainly.

Erm...

What does The Daily Star claim are coming down?

-Prices.

-Exactly - prices are coming down.

This Friday, there's going to be

a Bumper Black Friday Brexit Bonanza discount.

We're not doing that again, are we?

Yes. It's to cheer up Britain and, in anticipation...

-That's why it's called Black Friday?

-Yeah.

What's a Morrisons supermarket hiring several of?

-Assassins.

-This is...

They're going to cull the shoppers.

"We haven't got enough yoghurt to sell to everybody."

Morrisons are hiring...

Who's planning on making a comeback?

Des O'Connor.

To be fair, he never went away.

-Tony Blair.

-Tony Blair, yes.

-Blair? Fantastic news!

A source told The Sunday Times...

I can think of one.

I mean, are you desperate enough to welcome him back?

I mean, I suppose the Labour Party's having a bit of a tough time,

but I'm not entirely sure he's the answer to that particular question.

You don't think he'd come back and be popular?

Well, it's difficult to say. He won three elections, didn't he?

So he's more popular than we've been for some time.

Erm...

But, yeah, I mean, I think that...

It's not the person I would have picked, but there we go.

But meanwhile, I mean, Labour must just be rubbing their hands

at the disarray the Government finds themselves in.

Just landing some careful blows.

-That's right, it's a precision team.

-Yeah. What...?

What has Jeremy Corbyn's response been?

I'm not entirely sure.

I don't even know the answer.

There have been a couple of gnomic tweets from him.

-Perhaps you can interpret these for us.

-Oh, yeah, the tweets, yeah.

Here's one.

Is that a cryptic crossword clue?

People of Birmingham Yardley speak of little else.

I just think no response is better, because after the sort of...

In the immediate aftermath of the EU referendum,

it was kind of impressive, the way that the Labour Party looked

at the Conservatives in turmoil and didn't think,

"Oh, we can use this to our advantage," and instead just went,

"You call that political disarray?"

"Sit down, let the professionals show you how it's done!"

This is Philip Hammond's first autumn statement as Chancellor.

Well, actually, it's his second.

His first statement was just, "Oh, shit."

Theresa May has inspired the acronym JAM for those who are...

Although, for some reason she hasn't come up with

a term yet for those fat cats who are...

APPLAUSE

Paul and Jess, have this.

This is obviously the story of Nigel Farage being appointed

by Twitter by Donald Trump to potentially be the ambassador

between the UK and the US,

which would make Nigel Farage an economic migrant.

And Theresa May basically saying,

"I'm Ukip enough by myself, I don't need Nigel Farage's help."

And saying, "There is no vacancy

"for migrant-hating racists in my..."

-Administration.

-"..administration," yes, so...

-There's enough.

-Yeah, there's plenty.

Because last week we weren't on because it was Children With Knees

-and we had...

-LAUGHTER

But I have not read a paper, so this just sounds all so absurd.

-Oh, there's more.

-Is there more?

Yeah. Trump has proposed to the Queen...

-NISH:

-Oh, God!

-JESS:

-Marriage?

..and she's accepted, and the wedding is next year.

They're going to have it in Trump Tower.

-It's going to be fantastic.

-Oh, I look forward to it.

-Yeah, I'm best man.

-Oh, are you?

-He hasn't actually appointed him. I mean...

-No, but via Twitter.

I mean, that's real, isn't it?

And the President isn't actually allowed to appoint

-our ambassador yet.

-No, no.

-Thankfully not.

-NISH:

-Not on Twitter.

-If he does it on Facebook, it's legally binding.

-Yeah.

So, it was a late-night tweet from Trump.

Do you remember roughly what it said?

It said that many people think that Nigel Farage would make an excellent

ambassador between the UK and the US, or something along those lines.

That's many in the sense of one.

I responded to Donald Trump and I said, "Name them."

This is exactly what he said...

Donald Trump doesn't even follow Nigel Farage on Twitter,

-which is a massive digital slap in the face.

-Really?

Yeah, he doesn't even follow him,

so he doesn't think he's that great a job.

He doesn't think he's got top bants online.

Do you remember Christopher Meyer,

-who was Tony Blair's ambassador to the US?

-Yeah.

-Do you remember what his instruction was?

-Yeah.

Get as drunk as possible, and then avoid everybody.

-It was pretty nearly that.

-Was it?

He was told to, "Get as far up George Bush's arse as you can."

Exactly! "We want you to go..."

Is he allowed to use crampons?

Is he?

So, that's the brief. Actually, maybe Nigel Farage is qualified.

Well, Blair did it himself. He didn't actually need an ambassador.

Now, who'd like to see a picture of Farage,

quite possibly the happiest moment in his life?

-I think that's the door into Trump Tower.

-It is fantastic.

Have you seen the pictures of inside?

It's sort of late Gaddafi, the decor.

Perhaps early Saddam, but it's...

It's a riot of vulgar dictator chic, it is.

Meanwhile, how is Theresa May's special relationship

-with Trump coming along?

-Very good.

-Very good.

He said to her, "If you're ever over, do drop in."

I haven't even made that up, that was it.

"If you're coming over, let me know."

That's what you say to the couple you don't like on holiday, isn't it?

Trump gave an interview to the New York Times this week.

He broke one of his campaign promises in it.

Do you know what that was?

-The wall's not going to be a wall, it's going to be a fence.

-Fence.

Then a sign.

Then an old man going, "Tchu, tchu, tchu."

-And he's not going to lock up Hillary.

-That's the one, yes.

Anyone would think this show's trying to cheer us all up.

He dropped his threat to lock up Hillary Clinton.

That's not going to go down well with the nutters, is it?

Did anyone catch any other gems from his interview?

He hasn't been locked up himself, so maybe he's feeling clement.

-Yeah.

-Because Trump University settled the case.

First president who's actually had to pay out for fraud.

He said...

There was an issue that some people were perhaps thinking

-might have been there to distract from this.

-Yeah, it was Hamilton.

Mike Pence went to a musical, and Mike Pence believes that

you can electrocute gay people until they're heterosexual again,

and he went to see a musical.

And unsurprisingly, the audience did not react favourably.

I'm just thinking of the potential of the rhyme of Pence and fence.

-JESS:

-Oh, yeah.

-Don't you think that would...? Thank you.

Rap, it's much easier than it looks.

Another flurry of late-night tweets from Donald Trump.

If an audience booing you demands an apology

then the people of Leamington Spa owe me a parade

after last Saturday. I can't...

Mike Pence should try being a stand-up comedian.

The things people... "You're awful." "This is dreadful."

"You're a huge disappointment to me and your father." It's just...

I did love the fact that Trump, in his tweet, said,

"The theatre is meant to be a safe space."

Rather ignores the history of the American presidency.

Have you ever noticed how much alpha males like to touch

-each other, in the US?

-Yeah, quite a lot. All the time.

Noah Garfinkel on Twitter has noticed this.

Let's see how many backslaps there are in this clip.

Well, I think that's proof that Donald Trump believes in

diversity - it's not just women he grabs.

"It's guys, you can grab 'em by the shoulder, hey,

"get 'em by the butt."

This is the suggestion from Donald Trump that Nigel Farage

should be the UK ambassador in Washington.

There's been speculation that Trump might give a job

to his son-in-law Jared Kushner but according to The Telegraph...

Laws brought in by George Bush, or was it his dad?

And so to round two. The picture-spin quiz.

Fingers on buzzers, teams.

BUZZER

The Royal Family have been hit, like all of us, heavily with the finances

and they've started up a two-person Do-it-yourself team.

Liz and Phil - No Job Too Small.

No, I think this must be about Buckingham Palace.

It's got to be renovated at the cost of...

-£370 million, they say.

-That will go up.

-Yeah, it will.

-There have been calls for the Queen

to contribute to the Buckingham Palace repair bill.

She could write a cheque or she could do what she did

with Windsor Castle and burn it down for the insurance.

But what's actually going to be done to the palace?

They are getting in Trump's designer...

And finally we're going to have a palace that actually looks like one.

It's going to be gold outside and leopard skin inside.

The throne's being done up with peacock feathers and

proper bling in, you know, all the way through.

And there's a casino on Horse Guards Parade,

with one-armed bandits all the way and the Coldstream Guards

will play hits from Cats as you...

Prince Andrew's going to be an Elvis impersonator...

He's going to do Love Me Tender, you know,

as you hit the blackjack tables. So I can't wait,

I think it's going to be fantastic.

According to The Guardian, the work will cover...

And even...

"If only", muttered Charles.

Several of the gas boilers at Buckingham Palace need replacing

and of course the engineers who do it will have to be Corgi-approved.

There was a joke in Private Eye that was very similar to that.

-Do you remember it, Ian?

-I do. It's in this issue. It was similar

in the sense of being identical.

But I'm not going to use this as an opportunity to flog my

merchandise if, say, I had a Christmas album of songs.

I...I wouldn't bring it up.

What's that I can hear?

MUSIC PLAYS

ALEXANDER: # Golden Brown

# Texture like sun

# Lays me down with my mind she runs

# Throughout the night... #

I've played that song to my wife as a punishment.

-You know it's a song about heroin, don't you?

-I do, I do.

I think it's a song about a state of mind.

Caused by heroin.

I thought for years it was about Gordon Brown!

Surely the lyric "Never a frown, with Gordon Brown..."?

Must have thrown you off the scent somewhat?

Fingers on buzzers, teams.

BUZZER

It's the annual story, it comes round every year, which is funny

with annual stories...

Basically, Lapland gone wrong, it's always a disaster

-and somebody else has done it this year.

-That's right, yes.

Bakewell Winter Wonderland, for example, is nicknamed...

After visitors paid £7 to trek through a muddy field,

only to find...

If this happens every year, do you think people just never learn?

If I set up Nigerian Minister Sends You A Letter Land...?

Do you think people would come along and just give me their money?

One person compared the conditions slightly dramatically to...

Was there a £7 entry fee for that as well?

Nothing like a sense of proportion, is there?

Here's a picture of the scene...

The magic Wellington Boot table.

Why were the Woodward family particularly disappointed by

what was on offer?

-They'd come a long way.

-They'd come a very long way,

all the way down from Sheffield with their caravan and...

But...

Winter Wonderland in Barrow, Cumbria, was also criticised

this week - the ice rink flooded, the German market never materialised

and one mother said her children...

The Walk Home Land!

I can set that one up, too.

You come to my field, there's nothing there.

Just walk home!

Seven quid! I'll have that.

-It's hard entertaining kids, though.

-Yeah.

Here is a child giving a particularly eloquent review

of a visit to a safari park.

-DAD:

-It's going to kick off here.

-MUM:

-Oh, my God.

-DAD:

-Oh, God.

Yes, this is the annual story of a winter blunderland.

Angry parents said...

Sounds like they nailed Christmas, to me.

Time now for the odd-one-out round, just one between you this week.

And your four are...

Sir Tony Robinson.

DH Lawrence.

Lucy, the oldest known human.

And Simon Cowell.

Lucy, the oldest known human, she is a sort of...

-Is she a reconstruction of...

-She is.

-..of what we used to be like?

-Yes.

-Back in the '40s.

I've no idea.

-Have you got a clue?

-Heseltine has thousands of them.

-Are these trees?

-Yes.

-Oh.

I was going to say effigies of Margaret Thatcher.

-Carry on...

-Trees?

DH Lawrence's books were published in paper...

Zacchaeus could have been up there.

The tax collector...

-He's... Olive trees?

-No, no.

Fig trees?

-No, I misled you there.

-Oh, I see.

I'm more interested in an exact biblical tree than I am...

-Yeah..

-..in the answer to this question...

-Lucy is the odd one out.

-No.

The only thing anyone knows about her,

she was named after a Beatles song.

She was named after Lucy In The Sky.

-Yeah. That's not going to help here.

-I saw it in a documentary.

-Very interesting.

-DH Lawrence was named after one of the early hits...

It's not going well, this, is it?

Trees, trees...

They've all knocked down trees. Tell us.

-They all love climbing...

-Climbing trees.

-They all love climbing trees apart from DH Lawrence.

-No.

-Apart from Lucy, who was ground-based.

-No.

-Simon Cowell.

-No!

-Tony Robinson!

-Tony Robinson! There we go.

Apart from Tony Robinson... I'm going to tell you.

He won't even touch a pencil.

They all like climbing trees, apart from Sir Tony Robinson,

who was caught urinating against one in the grounds of Buckingham Palace.

He revealed this in an interview this week. Did anyone not...?

-No.

-I'm amazed it wasn't bigger news.

-Simon Cowell likes climbing trees?

-He likes climbing trees, absolutely.

He revealed in an interview once his favourite hobby is climbing trees.

He said:

Anyway, back to the Palace garden, where we join Tony Robinson.

He was filming an episode of Time Team Live in the Queen's gardens

and got caught short moments before the cameras started rolling.

That... That's not unique.

How do we know that Lucy, our oldest known human ancestor,

liked climbing trees?

She left a note.

She was discovered in the 1970s, but they've only just worked out

by studying her bones that in fact there were multiple breaks,

in particular:

So that makes her the oldest person that's fallen out of a tree

apart from Keith Richards.

They say that suggests this was the cause of death.

Wow.

The BBC website very helpfully shows us

her falling from the... There we are.

Just in case we...

The answer is they all like climbing trees apart from Tony Robinson,

who was caught urinating against one.

Tony Robinson relieved himself

just before a live Time Team at Buckingham Palace.

It was a very exciting dig.

They discovered the bony figure of an ancient prince

who told them to bugger off out of his garden.

According to the New York Times,

DH Lawrence liked to climb a mulberry tree

to inspire his writing. According to the article,

many creative artists took inspiration in strange ways.

Strange ingredient for a fondant fancy.

LAUGHTER

Simon Cowell told The Sun:

Well, they've already made a start on his face.

Time now for the Missing Words Round,

which this week features as its guest publication Towpath Talk.

There are lots of rules regarding barge travel.

There's a limit of 60 - no-one under the age of 60.

And we start with:

Navigate your boat.

Open locks.

Open locks. Open locks.

That is...unwittingly right, actually.

What do you mean, unwittingly?!

You're thinking of barge locks, you're thinking of canal-ways.

-Yeah, that's what I'm thinking of.

-Actually, you can unlock your car.

There are fears that the technology may not be perfect

and if you own a BMW it might unlock doors to anyone

who looks like a smug bastard.

Next:

-NISH:

-Actual donkey as donkey.

Panto saves money using normal-sized people as dwarfs

but making them stand further away.

This is right.

LAUGHTER

It's been revealed that several pantomime dwarves have lost work to:

To be honest, that's how a lot of actors finally get work.

According to one paper:

And remember, that's on top of what they make in the mines.

Next:

-JESS:

-Childbirth.

Reality.

Is it "life"?

It is in fact:

This is from Towpath Talk -

the annual dilemma of how to black your barge's hull:

Or should you go and live in a fucking house like a normal person?

LAUGHTER AND APPLAUSE

Next:

-NISH:

-Is it Windows 8?

No!

Presumably all you have to do is open Windows.

And finally:

Chocolate.

-JESS:

-Lasagne.

-Absolutely right.

Brenden Taylor posted a picture of his partner's scan on Facebook.

Here it is:

To which someone replied:

To which Brenden replied:

LAUGHTER

This is the story of a woman

who posted an ultrasound picture of her unborn baby daughter

only for her friend to mistake it for a lasagne.

Although she hopes to have the baby naturally,

doctors have warned her she may require a Caesarean Salad.

So the final scores are, Ian and Nish have 4,

Paul and Jess have 8.

APPLAUSE

And I leave you with news that

an old showbiz double-act are forced to go back on the road

with their "catch the peanut" routine.

In Washington, one Democrat admits

to putting a crafty 100 on Trump to win.

And in central London, one politician begins to regret

agreeing to the image consultant's suggestion to have a makeover.

Jezzie Izzard!

Goodnight!