Episode 7 Have I Got News for You

And now on BBC Two, in a change to the published programme,

instead of the snooker from Preston Town Hall,

we take a sideways look at the news.

This programme contains some strong language

CHEERING AND APPLAUSE

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

I'm Victoria Coren Mitchell.

In the news this week -

in Plymouth, a pensioner regrets trying on a virtual reality headset

showing what life will be like under the Tory's social care policy.

SHE SCREAMS

Is it real?

Nana, it's...

SHE SCREAMS

In Leeds, one conference delegate from London

suddenly can't remember if he'd watered the strawberries

on his allotment that morning.

And a field trip for the Shanghai Film School

ends in disaster for the silent comedy department.

On Ian's team tonight is a political commentator

who is one of the first names on the list

when any election show is looking for guests.

Well, that's the alphabet for you. Please welcome Adam Boulton.

APPLAUSE

And with Paul tonight is a TV personality and vicar

who once said broadcasting was just showing off,

or, as the Greeks call it, epideiknyomai.

Please welcome the Reverend Richard Coles.

APPLAUSE

And we start with the biggest stories of the week.

Ian and Adam, take a look at this.

That's the viewer.

For all of the shows. Here she comes.

Leaving the studio before the debate starts.

That's... He's giving jam, free.

All voters.

That's her saying, "No...

"I won't be coming."

She was meant to be here tonight, but she just...

..didn't want to mix it with ghastly hacks, so we got Victoria.

This is these debates, which you've all been watching.

Of course, Jeremy Corbyn managed to crash the party.

He decided at the last minute that he had nothing to lose,

-so he might as well turn up.

-Do you think that's what he did,

he suddenly thought, "I'm OK at television after all"?

-Yeah.

-"I went up against Paxman, I didn't die."

-Exactly.

"Why not just go and do another debate?"

Precisely. Although we call them debates,

there is no debate with Theresa May.

-No, cos she's not there.

-She didn't turn up.

She sent Amber Rudd instead.

Amber Rudd did rather well, didn't she?

She got a big laugh. Do you know what she got a big laugh for,

-Amber Rudd on the debate?

-People will judge us on our record.

Hilarious, big gales of laughter.

Shall we have a look?

In your manifesto, there was a noticeable absence of costings.

Well, I would say, in answer to that question, judge us on our record.

On our record, we have...

LAUGHTER

OK, OK. We have cut the deficit.

She had a little smile.

She could see it was funny herself, couldn't she?

She had a little smile going, "Oh, yeah, I know. A bit cheeky."

It's extraordinary. It's neck and neck.

-By the time this comes out, it may be, I think, Corbyn's ahead.

-Yep.

Isn't that right, Adam?

No, I can't tell you. We've been doing the election rehearsal, so...

-Oh, right.

-We know the result, but we can't...

LAUGHTER

What did Tim Farron have to say at the end of the debate?

-He had a lot of gags, Tim Farron.

-Did he?

-Yeah.

He did say, "If Mrs May can't spare the time for you,

"you shouldn't spare the time for her."

Shall we have a look?

The Prime Minister is not here tonight.

She can't be bothered, so why should you?

In fact, Bake Off is on BBC Two next.

Why not make yourself...why not make yourself a brew?

You are not worth Theresa May's time, don't give her yours.

-ADAM:

-He's thinking about his next job.

APPLAUSE

Now I'm worried about the applause.

Do we have a very biased BBC audience, do you think?

It would be an outrage if we don't.

I'm already worried that I've made too many jokes

about Theresa May and not enough about Jeremy Corbyn.

Mind you, you say a bad thing about Jeremy Corbyn,

you get enough shit on the internet if you're not Jewish, so...

..I think I'll leave it.

They did both take part

on Channel 4's The Battle For Number Ten, didn't they?

-Yes.

-What did Jeremy Corbyn have to say in that interview?

Well, I think he said, "Why isn't Adam interviewing me?"

-It was Sky, wasn't it?

-No.

-And Channel 4...

-Oh, that was our thing, yeah.

-Yeah.

It's bad enough if the public aren't following the election,

but if paid journalists aren't bothered...

But we did it with Channel 4, it sort of seemed odd.

-What was the question?

-Well...

LAUGHTER

This is turning into a Corbyn impersonation.

Well, I asked what Jeremy Corbyn said in the interview,

but it might be quite difficult to remember.

Shall we have a look at why?

Yeah.

-I'm horrified at the very idea...

-You promised to renew...

I'm horrified at the very idea of a nuclear attack...

You promised to renew a nuclear weapon.

What I want to see...

I'm asking you perfectly simply, do you think it's morally right?

What I want to see...

A lot of manufacturing industry...

-Haven't you done any sums?

-Can I finish, please?

Really, just for a second?

No, I'm asking you for a figure.

But this manifesto fundamentally...

You're trying to persuade the Cabinet, the Shadow Cabinet...

-Can I finish a sen...?

-No.

-I've said...

-No.

Did you enjoy that interviewing technique, as a viewer?

Um... Not really, no.

I believe you want to inform the public in interviews.

I don't think we learned an awful lot from that interview.

Do you think there were other, you know,

-senior broadcasting journalists who could have done it better?

-Um...

How did the audience show their approval of Theresa May at the end?

They let her live.

They almost had a tiny, little... Not quite a Mexican wave.

It was more like a sort of Mexican gesture, wasn't it?

A Mexican gesture?

They sort of stood up and went like that.

-Is that a Mexican gesture?

-Yeah.

Did she not have a one-man standing ovation?

-Would you like to see it?

-Yeah, lovely.

Theresa May, thank you very much. Thank you.

LAUGHTER

And the Scottish Labour leader, Kezia Dugdale,

was given quite an unusual introduction

by Sky News' Sophy Ridge, do you know what that was?

Again, Adam, your channel.

I was asleep at the time.

You and the audience.

-Oh, no, no.

-APPLAUSE

Let's have a look.

Hello, again.

We're live from the Glasgow Science Centre

talking to all the party leaders north of the border.

Joining us in our studio now is the leader of Scottish Labia...

Labour, sorry. Kezia Dugdale.

I think that's magnificent. More Labia leaders. That's what we need.

That's what we need in public life.

You would never make such a mistake, would you, Adam?

Shall we watch you trying to read a front page headline of a newspaper?

-Yeah, sure.

-Yeah.

On the USA Today money page, at the top there,

"Wall Street rally ups Brexit-like erection... Election risk."

APPLAUSE

So you'll be wanting a hard Brexit, will you?

I never knew I'd done that. One-track mind, you know...

No wonder they keep you behind a desk!

I'm afraid we don't have a clip this week of Diane Abbott

getting figures wrong, but we have got Jeremy Corbyn on Woman's Hour.

Just not getting the figures at all.

Let's see.

How much will it cost to provide un-means tested childcare

-for 1.3 million children?

-Em...it will cost, em...

It will obviously cost a lot to do so.

-I assume you have the figures?

-Yes, I do.

So how much will it cost?

I'll give you the figure in a moment.

-You don't know it?

-Em...

You're logging into your iPad here.

That's a major policy, and you don't know how much it'll cost?

Can I give you the exact figure in a moment?

You're holding your manifesto, you're flicking through it,

you've got an iPad there, you've had a phone call while we were in here,

and you don't know how much it's going to cost.

Can we come back to that in a moment?

Anyone can lose the bit of paper... I mean, if you're a vicar,

everyone expects you to be able

to quote chapter and verse from the Bible,

but you don't hold the information in that way.

It's, "Thou shalt not commit adultery", you know?

Tiny detail.

The Gospel According To Shrek. I don't know...

No, he was announcing the childcare plans.

-Yeah, it was a big one.

-It was that issue.

So there were two things to remember -

how many children and how much it cost.

It was poor. I mean, it's difficult to spin it any other way.

I've just heard that Theresa May has now pulled out of doing

Woman's Hour herself.

She has been replaced by Justine Greening.

-What do you think of that?

-That's in the same studio

as Saturday Live.

So I'll be detecting

signs of nervousness on the seats when they go in.

That's really disgusting.

APPLAUSE

It's another edition of

I Didn't Know A Vicar Would Say That!

-ADAM:

-Do you usually sniff the seats?

APPLAUSE

This is the exciting news

that the election campaign is nearly over.

Theresa May warned that when it came to the EU,

Jeremy Corbyn could find himself...

Something only achieved once before by a rat-arsed Nigel Farage.

During her interview with Jeremy Paxman,

Theresa May insisted that what's needed to negotiate

a successful Brexit is...

Luckily, that's exactly what Germany has got.

After Theresa May missed the debate, the Mirror referred to the absent Prime Minister as...

You can order Chicken Theresa May in a restaurant near me.

It's thin-skinned, boneless and refuses to be grilled.

APPLAUSE

-Paul and Richard, take a look at this.

-Yes.

Ah, yes, this is...

Here he is, the bozo of the Western world.

That's what his hair does at night when he goes to bed, collapses.

This is... Oh, yes, he tweeted a word...

It looks like a very incompetent logo for the Church of England.

So, yes, this is Donald Trump and he's going to be, sort of...

Because we're recording on Thursday night, round about now,

he'll be announcing whether America are going to pull out

of the, you know, climate change agreement.

That's basically what it's about. Climate change.

And executed with his traditional sleek statesmanship,

as he greeted the Prime Minister of Montenegro, I think it was, with a friendly shove.

Yeah.

Would you support...? If somebody...?

I mean, um...

Is it right to hit him?

APPLAUSE

Just once. In the face.

Just once.

I might strongly advise him of the wisdom of turning the other cheek.

If he'd like to try it a few times...

I don't know.

It's the climate change, the Paris Accord of 2015,

the whole world, or nearly the whole world, signed up to it,

and then Donald Trump thinks he's going to make America great again

by making sure everybody ends up with a tan just like his.

But not out of a bottle, Victoria.

AUDIENCE OOHS

Welcome to another edition of

Who Would Have Thought A Priest Would Have Said That?

I don't mean to be ungallant,

but Victoria did reveal to us that she had splodged on...

Slapped it on, straight out of a bottle.

..as a tribute to Donald.

-She's not going to rise to this.

-I know.

She's going to turn the other, lightly bronzed cheek.

You don't understand! Everyone's orange on TV, now.

-If you come on a normal colour, people think you're ill.

-Exactly.

So, this was the early hours of Wednesday morning, he tweeted...

And left it at that.

Do you think he was trying to spell "kerfuffle"?

-No, coverage.

-Coverage, it must be coverage.

This is what somebody said on Twitter,

they made a dictionary entry where they wrote...

He sent out Sean Spicer, who is his spokesman,

who is saying people who need to know know what that means.

Did you see what the Eurostar did?

They actually put up a sign on...

The main Eurostar, officially, looked like this...

APPLAUSE

Back to the climate change agreement.

There could be another reason why Trump pulled out of the Paris deal.

Why is he annoyed with Europe particularly at the moment?

NATO payments? Something to do with that?

-That's what he SAYS it is.

-What he says it is, but it's not.

Well, the Scandinavians made fun of him...

Is it Macron's handshake?

They copied the orb.

Yes. Let's have a look at the picture.

These are the five leaders of

Finland, Norway, Denmark, Sweden and Iceland.

Literally, the leaders of those countries.

World leaders are ganging up

to take the piss out of the American president?

It's brilliant!

-There was a nice little...

-When are they going to punch him?

And you mentioned earlier, Ian - what did Macron do

to try and beat Trump in the public eye?

Oh, well, Trump does this thing of grabbing people's hands,

other world leaders, really hard, and, you know,

giving them a bit of a shock.

And Macron's been in the gym for years.

So he literally said, "I'm going to get him,"

so when he got his hand, Macron went...

HE GROANS

And he wouldn't let it go, and Trump was...

He was completely crushed.

It occurred to me that Donald Trump is famous for grabbing things that aren't just hands.

Trying to, kind of, just... "Thank you."

According to CNN, how did Trump sum up his first foreign trip?

"Where the fuck am I?"

APPLAUSE

According to CNN...

What has Nigel Farage recently become?

Pleasingly obsolete?

APPLAUSE

This audience is so biased!

He has become a person of interest in the FBI...

I know! Difficult to imagine.

In the FBI inquiry?

-Is exactly right.

-They're worried that Farage...

..was a bearer of discreet secrets to the Russians.

-SLURRING:

-I'll have another one of them!

You got to know America and Trumpland pretty well,

didn't you, Adam, whilst you travelled in America?

Shall we see you getting to know the American voters

on election night last year?

-Why not?

-Let's see...

-Cheers to you.

-Cheers.

Splendid.

And do join me for...

..our special programme tomorrow night, that's at midnight.

I'll be speaking, amongst others, to Bernie Sanders.

And, of course, full coverage of the...

..of the inauguration on Friday.

APPLAUSE

This is Donald Trump's rejection of the Paris climate change agreement.

Also this week, Trump attacked the Germans over trade.

He's happy to import some expensive European models,

but only his wives.

Round Two, now, and we couldn't really be bothered

to think of anything original, so, Richard,

we've just copied your Big Painting Challenge.

Welcome to the Big News Painting Challenge.

-This sounds exciting.

-What news story is being painted?

-Ooh!

-Fingers on buzzers, teams.

BUZZER

Paul and Richard?

I sort of have to declare an interest, here,

but this is the interesting...

-ADAM:

-It's a church.

-RICHARD:

-..invention of a robot priest in Germany.

Quite how effective as a dispenser of sacraments, remains to be seen.

Well, shall we have a look at the priest in action?

IN GERMAN:

APPLAUSE

What name do you think they've given this robot priest?

-Vater?

-It's called...

According to a German newspaper...

Do you feel threatened, Richard?

-Uh...

-PAUL LAUGHS

I have to say, did rather a more efficient job

than some of the clergy of my acquaintance, but...

Actually, I think in canon law, you can't... Robots aren't allowed.

I think when it comes to the dispensing of sacraments,

you have to be at least a human.

In the Church of England, now you can be a woman too!

-Yeah.

-LIGHT CHEERING

This is the robot priest which gives out automatic blessings.

It's rumoured that the Anglican Church in the UK

is working on a similar model

called C of E-3PO.

Fingers on buzzers, teams.

BUZZER

-Paul and Richard.

-Now, this may be a tribute

to the late, great John Noakes. There he is.

That's the footage they showed earlier this week.

I remember seeing it at the time when I was at school.

He's climbing up Nelson's Column long before health and safety.

Essentially, he's climbing up a ladder that's tied to Nelson.

It was incredible bravery, wasn't it?

At this level, the plinth on which Nelson stands overhangs the column.

I found myself literally hanging from the ladder

with nothing at all beneath me.

You told me there was overhang,

but you didn't tell me it leant to one side, did you?

No. That was the awkward part.

There's a cameraman up there with him as well,

with a great big camera, and maybe even a sound guy. I mean, it's...

-They've all climbed up.

-Yes.

There was a sound guy.

-But unfortunately...

-Yeah?

-..the sound engineer

didn't record sound the first time he went up.

He had to do it again. LAUGHTER

What happened when John Noakes and a few other Blue Peter presenters

opened a time capsule?

BUZZER

This was one of the landmark experiences of my life.

-When I was a child...

-LAUGHTER

Seriously, in 1971...

Yeah, forget the call to the priesthood!

LAUGHTER

Forget that moment of divine revelation.

It's why I do this now!

They buried a time capsule in 1971, the most exciting thing ever.

And I realised in the year 2000 when they dug it up and they opened it

and they just turned it up

and this kind of brown sludge just poured out!

And, I don't know, it was not a good...

It had all got wet, hadn't it?

A last brilliant John Noakes story.

What happened when he'd had a bobsleigh accident

and he wanted to show the bruises on camera?

-He showed his underpants or something.

-Sort of.

John Noakes himself told the story that when he took off his trousers

to show the bruises, he noticed that he was wearing...

That he'd put on by accident in the dark that morning.

Oh, yes(!)

How easy that is to do(!)

This is the passing of one of the nation's favourite TV presenters,

the great John Noakes. "Get down, Shep"

became one of Blue Peter's most famous catchphrases

along with "here's one I made earlier"

and "one of our presenters, Richard, has done a very naughty thing".

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

Your four are...

Prince Harry, Tybalt,

a dishwasher

and Charles Darwin.

-BUZZER

-It's an exam question.

Tybalt was wrongly identified as a member of the Montague household

-in a GCSE English exam.

-Ah, yes.

-Whereas in fact he was a Capulet.

-Yes.

And these poor students were asked "Why did Tybalt hate the Capulets?"

Which he didn't, because they were his own family.

-And what's the odd one out?

-Dishwashers...

LAUGHTER

It's recently been revealed that dishwashers

-are very good at washing, erm...

-Dishes?

No, no, no!

The answer is that dishwashers were also on the exam paper.

And so was Darwin. This is all in the last month.

There was a geography paper which asked students about dishwashers

and they said they'd been preparing for things like climate change, and

similarly, I think it was a biology paper, and the question was...

Why had he been drawn like a monkey? In a cartoon.

And they thought because the reason why he was drawn like a monkey

was because he had written the Evolu... You know, the...

-Theory Of Evolution?

-The Origin Of Species.

-RICHARD:

-It will never catch on.

LAUGHTER AND APPLAUSE

-And then... Prince Harry is the odd one out.

-Why?

Because they were using his voice in Germany for an English aural exam

and they decided he didn't speak the Queen's English.

LAUGHTER

He was dropped from the German aural exam, there you are.

That's right. They were all... CHEERING

They've all been the subject of controversial exam questions

apart from Prince Harry, one of whose speeches

featured in an exam question but nobody could understand it.

What was wrong with Harry's speech?

Well, I suppose, if it was for Germans,

if you're going, "OK, yah..." it's not a translation, is it?

LAUGHTER It's... It's not that the...

The problem with Harry's speech is that he muttered and mumbled so much

that thousands of students...

The geography students, as you say, were cross

because they were asked about dishwashers.

They weren't expecting it.

-Do you know what the question was?

-Water.

Yeah. LAUGHTER

That's a tough question! Water question!

No, it was something like...

"More people are using dishwashers, why is more water being used?"

-Yeah.

-And what percentage of the UK population

owned dishwashers in 2001?

Er... Oh, it's on my laptop, er...

LAUGHTER AND APPLAUSE

"27% of the UK population owned dishwashers in 2001,

"and 40% in 2010.

"Outline why the demand for water is likely to increase in the future."

And, yes, in the GCSE biology exam, students were shown this drawing

of Charles Darwin as a monkey and they didn't really understand why.

One student tweeted...

Tybalt, as you say, the question paper asked why did

he hate the Capulets and he didn't, he was a Capulet.

As Shakespeare himself said...

Or as the exam board put it...

Another criticism of the GCSE English exam was that

it focused less on Romeo and Juliet and more on the characters...

One student has no problem with that question, tweeting...

LAUGHTER

Time now for the Missing Words Round,

which this week features as its guest publication

Oil Installer, the magazine of the heating industry.

-That looks like my local priest!

-LAUGHTER

And we start with...

-RICHARD:

-I must get out more instead.

If anyone gets this, I'll give you £100 of my own money.

OK, right, here we go!

I look forward to the arrival of Oil Installer Magazine but...

I wish you had more colour photographs to indicate

the wide-ranging aspects of our industry.

-The opposite!

-I look forward...

I give you £100.

The answer is...

Next...

-Theresa May.

-LAUGHTER AND APPLAUSE

The answer is...

This is the faceless fish that was spotted this week

for the first time in Australia since 1873.

According to the scientist who found the fish...

I think what you found there, mate, is a stick.

Next...

-RICHARD:

-Covfefe!

Dirty.

Oil!

Oil: no longer a dirty word.

According to Oil Installer, oil is no longer a dirty word.

Well, that depends on your point of view.

For some, oil is refined. For others, it's crude.

And finally...

-ADAM:

-Fly short distances.

-RICHARD:

-Cluck longer.

PAUL LAUGHS

Scientist revealed this week that birds with small brains are

associated with promiscuity, with females being the guiltiest of all.

According to the research...

Followed by the guillemot, while the common shag

was what they called the sparrow who lived opposite.

So, the final scores are Ian and Adam with six,

Paul and Richard with seven. APPLAUSE

Congratulations, sir. Well done.

It's just rigged.

Definitely rigged.

And I leave you with news that in Brussels,

as world leaders gather for a photo opportunity, Theresa May insists

that the UK and United States still have a special relationship.

LAUGHTER

In Central London,

there's the unusual sight of a Lib Dem celebrating victory.

On the campaign trail, one man's attempt to convince the electorate

that he is strong on defence doesn't go as planned.

And following her failure to win the French presidency,

Marine Le Pen's head of security assures her

that her campaign manager has been dealt with.

Good night.