Episode 2 Have I Got Old News For You

APPLAUSE

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

I'm Richard Osman. In the news this week,

the BBC is forced to apologise after cutting to the wrong camera

during an interview with Nigel Farage.

With yet another story about his love life

set to hit a Sunday newspaper,

the victim takes direct action to try and stop the presses.

And evidence emerges that the Australian Air Force

are developing their own stealth bomber.

On Ian's team tonight is a TV presenter who says,

"History is the most exciting thing

"that has ever happened to anyone on this planet."

Clearly he never saw Todd Carty and Bonnie Langford

win the Christmas edition of Celebrity Pointless.

Please welcome Dan Snow.

APPLAUSE

And with Paul tonight is a left-wing comedian

who has been described by one critic as "so honest,

"when he talks it's like he's going to start a war at any time."

Well, he's good, but he's no Tony Blair.

Please welcome Mark Steel.

APPLAUSE

And we start with the biggest stories of the week.

Ian and Dan, take a look at this.

Ah, this is goodbye. Chloe Smith.

Diane Abbott. Yes, goodbye to you, too.

Goodbye. He is one of the other ones.

Don't know who he is.

No, even he doesn't know who he is.

-This is reshuffles.

-Yes.

-All the big political parties have decided

it's time to reshuffle their teams.

And it's extraordinary. The change is unbelievable.

Within a day, no-one's noticed.

-As a swing voter, it's completely convinced me.

-Has it?

-Yes.

I'm definitely voting for one of them now.

What all the parties have done is bring in women,

which is one of those moves that even the Beeb will do.

Erm...

At some point.

APPLAUSE

I'm quite willing to have the operation,

if it helps the programme.

Anyway, what do you want to know?

Three people who used to work for breakfast television

have been promoted.

Who are the three daytime TV hosts who were promoted?

This is like your Pointless programme!

It is a little bit.

-A little bit. Except I am allowed to say

-BLEEP,

-that's the difference.

For the benefit of those of us who have jobs and don't watch daytime television...

-I haven't been a student for so long, I've forgotten who is on daytime television.

-It's him.

You know what, how dare you?

5:30 isn't daytime, it's early evening.

Shoulder peak. Access prime.

-Exactly.

-That's what they call it.

Yeah, it's daytime.

Tell us the names of these three ladies.

-Esther McVey.

-Esther McVey.

-Anna Soubry.

-She's a Tory.

Anna Soubry, she's another Tory,

-and the other one, Gloria...

-Gloria De Piero, who is Labour.

Let's look at Esther McVey. What's her new job?

She's gone to Work and Pensions.

Yes, according to the Mail, she's been asked to play the role of:

It's not all about GMTV presenters being promoted.

Another person has been promoted by Ed Miliband,

and that is the Right Honourable Tristram Hunt MP.

-A TV historian.

-He is my competition.

-TV historian, yeah.

-He's not any more, is he?

-No, he's not.

-I saw him off. He's become a politician.

-That's true.

-It's better to be a historian than a politician.

-Much better.

-We get to write about them and decide if they're good or not.

-Exactly.

I must say, I loved your history of the railways.

I thought it was terrific.

Ian, you did a history of the railways as well, didn't you?

I did a programme about Dr Beeching's cuts, yeah.

It was prime access.

5:30 in the Countdown slot.

Quite hard to make trains interesting, isn't it?

I thought you did it very well.

I'll tell you who else did it very well.

-Portillo.

-Yeah.

-He is charismatic.

-Yeah, he was good.

-And Paul, I like it when

you go to India, on the trains and stuff like that.

I don't know why other people bother doing it when you can't do it right.

Now, there was another man who was promoted in the reshuffle.

His name was Alistair Carmichael.

He is now the Minister of State for Scotland.

I would remember his name, anyone who watches Pointless.

Honestly, give it 18 months, and he is going to be an answer.

The first in the queue to shake his hand was Nick Clegg.

Shall we take a little look?

LAUGHTER

It went on for seven years.

Well, it looked like it, yes.

Speaking of seven years, during the Seven Years' War,

it was said that King Louis XV's ministers used to change

"like the scenery at the opera."

-So often.

-Really?

-Yeah.

Why didn't you say that, Paul?

Because it was boring.

It wasn't all people being promoted, though.

There were a few demotions as well.

You showed Diane Abbott, didn't you? Ed Miliband sacked her.

And she's not even related to him!

She wanted his job originally.

She wanted to be in charge of the Labour Party. God knows why.

Are you mourning her loss?

Yeah, well, she was never on message,

and in the new political parties, you're meant to toe the line.

So she's been sacked.

-So she'll be back to helping Portillo.

-I love it.

He is so good on trains. Mind you,

anyone can make trains interesting, can't they?

Most people can make that job funny as well.

APPLAUSE

Now, who reshuffled themselves this week?

An extremist, are you looking for, Richard?

I am looking for an extremist. But that's after the show.

Tommy Robinson.

Oh, the English Defence League.

-Tommy Robinson.

-Tommy Robinson, absolutely right.

-What did he do this week?

-He resigned from the EDL.

He found out, much to his horror, that a lot of them were racist.

-Didn't understand that bit.

-"I don't know what's going on.

"I mean, we used to march into Muslim areas and that,

"and go, 'Muslims out' and 'We hate Muslims'

"and 'We hate Pakis' and that,

"and it turns out some of them were anti-Islam. So...

"..I went off 'em."

And do you know what Tommy Robinson does for a living?

Does he work at the United Nations? Peacekeeper.

Does he see sick children with Roger Moore and Lulu?

-He also used to run a tanning shop.

-Exactly right.

What, changing the colour of people's skin?!

APPLAUSE

So your customer comes in, "Come in, madam."

Half an hour later, "You can get out!"

Yes, this is the day of reshuffles.

According to the Daily Telegraph:

I'm guessing that wasn't half each.

Explaining his decision to quit the EDL, Tommy Robinson said:

Yes, it's always the tiny minority

that makes marching on a mosque such an unpleasant experience.

Paul and Mark, take a look at this.

This is clearly somebody trying to post letters there,

there's the dog helping him out.

That dog might be replacing the postmen

in the new privatised service.

And then postmen, in an act of revenge, will bite dogs.

The Royal Mail is being sold off, isn't it, Mark?

Now, even Thatcher said we will not privatise the Royal Mail.

But this lot have decided to do it, and you have to conclude

they really genuinely would sell their granny, these people.

They would go, "Granny, come on, you are of no use to society,

"you are too expensive, we're having to drive you round

"to your mates' funerals and stuff like that."

-Take her down the tanning shop and get her deported.

-Exactly.

Can I guess you haven't applied for shares?

I have, but...

No, it's just, it's horrible.

It's everything about this government rolled up into one story.

It's as if the country's being run by Ryanair now.

You pay for your little thing and that's it, nothing else.

"I don't want to pay for libraries, I don't go to the library.

"Look at all the money that gets wasted on guide dogs.

"I can't climb a tree, nobody buys me a gibbon."

APPLAUSE

It was hugely oversubscribed, though, that's the key.

About seven times as many people trying to get the shares

as there are shares.

All this idea that it is going to be a capitalism

that reaches out to the poor,

and the bank that is organising this,

that is going to make a huge amount of money, is Goldman Sachs.

And you think, "Oh, it's about time they had a break, isn't it?"

Labour say the Post Office is being sold off on the cheap.

Well, because it's so massively oversubscribed.

The logic is clearly, "We've got to sell off the Post Office."

And then the market says, "Actually, everybody wants a piece.

"It is obviously really valuable."

Which raises the question, why are we selling it off, then?

If it's a state asset, why can't we keep it?

And the answer is, they don't know.

According to The Times, this might not be the last privatisation we see as well.

-What else are they suggesting might be privatised?

-The Queen.

They haven't yet, but that would be oversubscribed, wouldn't it? I'd like a piece of her.

I've heard the rumours.

What else have they got left to sell off?

I think the next one will be lamp posts.

They'll sell off lamp posts

and you'll have to put 5p in a little meter.

And it'll give you just enough light to get to the next one and you put another one in.

Somewhere George Osborne is writing that down, you know that?

You know the Royal Mail owns a brilliant miniature electric railway.

-Absolutely, yeah.

-It goes from Paddington to Whitechapel.

It hasn't been used for about eight or ten years.

That'd be brilliant, to use that.

They're thinking about using it for shops on Oxford Street.

They could have their own little spouts

and put the goods up and down it and it whizzes around.

Mark, you were saying that Margaret Thatcher always refused to sell off the Royal Mail.

What reason did she give?

-Oh, something about the Queen's head, wasn't it?

-Yes, she said:

It was Denis's favourite pub, I think.

Yes, this is the mad rush to buy shares in the Royal Mail.

To our younger viewers, a letter is a bit like a text,

but you write it down with a pen and you put it in an envelope

and you buy a sort of sticker to put on it,

and then you put it in a hole in one of those red boxes

and within two days, it will be delivered to the wrong house,

somewhere near where your friend lives.

The shares were priced at £3.30.

No-one quite understands how they got to that price.

It was a bit like trying to buy a stamp for something

that doesn't weigh very much, but is quite wide.

Ian and Dan, here's another for you.

That's some newspapers, you won't see them for much longer. Lord Leveson.

And that's the Prime Minister.

Oh, this is the Privy Council that's going to report on press freedom

and the plans to regulate the press.

They've decided to reject the newspapers' own solution

and have a Royal Charter.

But the main thing that's coming out of the proposal

is that publications that won't join up to the regulator, such as, say,

a small magazine like Private Eye,

those publications, if they get involved in a libel action and they win,

they prove that they were right to say it,

they will not only have to pay all their own costs,

they will have to pay all the costs of the person who sued them.

That is now law. That has already been enacted by the Government.

Not by anyone independent, by the politicians.

So the idea that then, given any say on the rest of the press,

they will act responsibly - they won't.

They will punish those whose views they don't like who won't play ball,

and obviously, that may well be me.

It ought to be simple.

It's only because it was Leveson,

one of these chaps who sits there,

going, "I've spent 84 years looking through a billion pages",

and really, he should have just sat there and gone

"Oh, for Christ's sake, all you horrible bastards,

"you're just in jail", and that's...

Everyone says "Well, Lord Leveson, he reported and nothing happened."

It did happen!

They closed down the biggest newspaper in the country.

Scores of people have been arrested, journalists.

Lots of people are being prosecuted. It's a big result.

It's difficult for people

-to find themselves siding with the Daily Mail.

-You're not.

But that's what people are thinking.

They think I'm lining up with Murdoch and with Dacre,

and that's very embarrassing. Look at me, I'm embarrassed!

Internally, I'm crawling.

But, you know, in Britain, we have a free press.

It's not a pretty press. But it's free.

It's like the people who can't bear the Daily Mail

who say you should ban it. No, no, no, you don't ban it.

You don't buy it.

APPLAUSE

At least once a week,

there will be a story in there that goes

"Have you seen this woman in a council estate,

"and she's got 403 kids and they're all on benefits,

"and now she's bought a giraffe and the giraffe is on benefits,

"and now she's said to the Government

"that she can't fit the giraffe in the house,

"it's getting a cricked neck,

"so they've put it up in St Paul's Cathedral,

"and now she's saying that three of her kids

"have got compulsive snooker syndrome,

"so the town hall has brought a snooker table round

"but she can't be referee because she's allergic to white gloves,

"so the mayor has to come round and count up the points,

"otherwise he'll be arrested by Europe."

That is absolutely true, but then every now and then,

the Daily Mail runs a story like

"The murderers of Stephen Lawrence shouldn't get off scot-free.

"They did murder him.

"We are going to campaign for ten years until they get justice."

I mean, the free press does good things.

Even if you don't like most of what they do,

you have to allow people to do these stories,

otherwise they won't appear.

You're saying that sometimes,

Luke Skywalker has to team up with Darth Vader, right?

-Or, as I might put it, Churchill with Stalin.

-Indeed.

Just to translate that, that's Darth Vader and Luke Skywalker.

Presumably, Ian is Churchill in that analogy?

-Yes.

-And Stalin is my father.

So this is all going to come into play on October 30th.

I've got the official timetable of what happens.

It's the Privy Council, so it's quite confusing.

The Queen will attend the Privy Council with her official seal.

LAUGHTER AND SCATTERED APPLAUSE

Judging by that noise, he's in the front row.

She will then ratify the Royal Charter,

which editors will be expected to sign up to.

Ian Hislop will then be hung for treason.

Did you see the journalist Mehdi Hasan taking the Daily Mail to task on Question Time?

-No.

-Yes.

-I thought it was marvellous.

-He did. Ian did.

He called it:

Although the Mail did print this in retaliation.

It's a letter from Mehdi Hasan, applying for a job at the Mail.

In a letter to Paul Dacre a few years ago, he says:

Ooh. Ouch.

Ed Miliband, of course,

has done well out of his fight with the Mail.

This week, he's been reinforcing his tough guy image. Let's take a look.

As an example of press freedom, what did The Guardian do that was described this week

as the greatest damage to the Western security apparatus in history?

It's the new head of MI5,

who has said The Guardian has acted really irresponsibly

in pointing out that we are spying on people.

And The Guardian has said "Well, even Obama has said, actually,

"we were probably overdoing the spying."

But in this country, everyone's gone mental and said

"Oh, no, The Guardian should be put down",

because they pointed out that we're all being spied on all the time.

It's a matter of consent.

You can debate this and say "Yes, I'd like to be spied on". I know I would.

Anyone showing any interest in my life would be terrific.

I'd be very happy with that.

But I think it's a matter for public debate,

and if we want to pass laws saying we can spy on people, we can.

It's just that what The Guardian did

was point out that this is happening, and nobody knows it.

I always like people's use of the words "in history",

because that's quite a long time.

What about when the entire British Secret Service

-was working for the Russians?

-When did that happen?

-For most of the Cold War.

-Really? All of them?

-Pretty much.

So you'd think that was pretty bad, wasn't it?

So this is clearly also a bit bad,

but I don't think it's the worst security breach in history.

Also, when Judi Dench died...

Yes, this is the march

towards government regulation of the press,

which the whole of Fleet Street argues

would be an unmitigated disaster. According to the Mail,

the cross-party agreement was negotiated:

Pizza? That's Italian. God, Miliband really does hate Britain.

Meanwhile, in a speech, Andrew Parker, the head of MI5,

has attacked The Guardian

and Edward Snowden for harming Britain's intelligence service.

Spymaster Andrew Parker may not look much like

he's a specialist in espionage and covert operations,

but to be fair to him, he is a 68-year-old black woman.

Paul and Mark, here's another one for you.

This is a cat being massaged.

There was a story this week that not all cats like being stroked,

and when they're purring, it could be a sign of distress.

-That's exactly right.

-Who was the research done by? Dogs.

No, it was actually done by Professor Daniel Mills,

of the University of Lincoln.

How could he tell the cats were stressed when you stroked them?

He had them all wired up.

To electricity, which would stress anybody out.

He said that when handled by humans,

they let off a small amount of hormone linked to anxiety.

-I did that at the start of the show.

-Did you?

-Yeah.

But we're not actually meant to do a full massage on cats.

Just if they're feeling a bit down, say,

"Oh, have you had a terrible day?

"What's it like outside?" "Oh, raining again."

Is that the cat speaking?

That's more of a story in my mind, that the cat's actually talking, rather than getting a massage.

No, he doesn't say anything, that was me doing the massage.

Well, that's misleading. You as the editor of a publication,

now on television, telling people that cats can talk?

Where's Lord Leveson when you need him?

Working for the dogs.

-During the tests, what proportion of the cats enjoyed being stroked?

-43%.

-You're so close.

-Eight out of ten.

It was none at all.

I'm just going to warn viewers at home now

to look away if you don't want to see a photograph of someone deliberately stressing out a cat.

The Mail Online carried the story,

and there was a big response in the comment section. For example, Alexandra wrote:

Round Two is called the history noise. I'll play you a noise

which will relate to a story from this week's news

which has a link to history.

Buzz in when you think you know what the story is. Let's hear the first noise.

'Come on. Come on. Quickly, I need an answer.'

-Merton, Magdalene.

-That's Jeremy Paxman.

-It is Jeremy Paxman.

And he's just brought a book out about the First World War,

and he was being asked a question about it at a book festival

-and didn't know the answers to the simple questions he was being asked.

-Absolutely right.

-Do you know what he was asked?

-Yes.

-BELL

-Hislop.

-Magdalene.

By nature or by...university?

He couldn't answer what happened to Lord Kitchener,

very much the poster boy for World War I. What happened?

He was on a ship that hit a mine. It was on its way to Russia.

There was a bit of a Cabinet reshuffle, actually.

And Paxman didn't know at all. He didn't even know

the name of the soldier in that tomb at Westminster Abbey.

-That's inexcusable, isn't it, Dan?

-Yes.

It's also inexcusable to be a BBC history presenter that loses out

to a man who knows nothing in a big landmark history series

about the First World War. So I'm an even bigger failure.

-Was it not offered to you?

-Of course not.

Surely you were a shoo-in for that job?

Well, you'd have thought so, you know.

In addition to Jeremy Paxman, who else is stupid this week?

-Oh, is this the global education report?

-Yes.

The international education report.

Britain was 22nd in literacy, and 21st in numeracy?

And that was out of 20.

I don't know, I couldn't read it.

And older people in this country are much more literate

and numerate than younger people,

and in all the successful countries, it's the other way round.

Which suggests that something has gone wrong.

They've got their own language, haven't they, 19-year-olds?

So have the French.

-Who were the least numerate people on Earth?

-Below us?

It was the Americans.

They don't even know there's more than one math.

Yes, Jeremy Paxman is the latest in a long line of people

to cash in on - sorry, commemorate - World War I.

One plan for the commemorations

is to replay the famous Christmas Day football match

with a special game between England and Germany,

to be shown live on Sky Sports Sombre Sunday.

Also this week, the Cookie Monster made an exclusive appearance on Newsnight, saying:

I'm so sorry, that was Boris Johnson.

Let's take a listen to the next history noise.

ZIPPER SQUEAKS

BUZZER

-Paul and Mark.

-That wasn't a zip?

-It was a zip.

Why is a zip historical this week?

Must be the 100th anniversary of the zip.

Yes, it's been 100 years to the day since a man first went

"Ow! No, that's just making it worse."

Tell you what, if cats don't like being stroked, they should try that.

The zip appears in the top five

of the list of the 100 greatest inventions of all time.

-Can you tell me what else might appear in the top five?

-Fire.

There's a moth in the studio. Moths. A moth. Fire.

-Fire's got to be one of the top inventions, hasn't it?

-No.

I think fire was a discovery more than an invention.

That moth is very excited.

Someone's got something very old out of the wardrobe.

I think it's that gentleman's jumper.

It shows you how interesting this programme is.

Everybody's focus is now on that moth.

So, yeah, fire's a discovery.

Let's take a look at the top five. They are, in order:

Fire! Portable fire, I should have said.

What about the moth zapper?

We could really do with one now.

I told you to wait in the van.

Told it to wait in the van.

And the next history noise for you.

TRUMPET FANFARE

WHISTLE, THUMP

BUZZER

-Paul again.

-That's the sound of a football being kicked.

-Yeah.

And the whistle was a clue that it was a football.

There was some sort of fanfare before that.

We've had a football match at Buckingham Palace this week.

-Exactly right.

-150 years of the FA,

and one of the teams playing was one of the 12 original teams.

-Civil Servants United?

-Yeah, Civil Service FC.

I only read the first few...

I got so bored of the story that I stopped reading it after PO.

That's why, as a historian, you haven't buzzed in for one of the questions on the history round.

No wonder they gave Paxman that documentary.

-Didn't Prince Harry play in this game?

-It was Prince William.

-Shall we take a look at him?

-Yes.

That's from Danny Baker's 101 Campest Throw-Ins Of All Time.

In his pre-match speech, Prince William said:

"And what's more, you'll have to pay for it.

"Oh, hang on, you already pay for it."

Now, there were all sorts of nationalities playing in this team.

So what did they have to do with Prince Philip while the game was on?

-Where did they send him this week?

-Balmoral, somewhere like that?

-They sent him to an old people's home.

-Oh.

A people's home, I think he would call it.

But how did he show he was back on form?

He saw this girl, who was a pensioner's great-granddaughter. He said:

Time now for the missing words round, which this week

features as its guest publication International Sheepdog News.

It's a brilliant read, brilliantly illustrated, the dog's bollocks... are on page 16.

And we start with:

Eating sheep.

Telling the neighbours that you're bisexual.

Next:

DAN: Too soft, says Putin.

MARK: All right, once you got to know him.

You were actually right the first time. Apparently:

Ivan the Terrible died whilst playing chess.

He was given the last rites by a bishop,

who took his time getting there cos he could only move diagonally.

And finally:

Lebensraum!

A historical joke!

Sheepdogs!

Of course.

Partly because all the Polish Border collies are in this country,

rounding up sheep for half the price of the English ones.

So, the final scores are: Ian and Dan, 7 points.

Paul and Mark are this week's winners, with 11 points.

But before we go, there's just time for the caption competition.

DAN: Budget cuts affect Incredible Hulk movie?

And this:

If Qatar can have the football, Atlantis can have the cricket.

Rain stops play.

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

Ian Hislop and Dan Snow, Paul Merton and Mark Steel.

And I leave you with news that in London,

the publisher who suggested a new Bridget Jones book would be a great idea is swiftly tracked down.

As part of a crackdown on recycling, Kingston council officials

go through the bins at Ronnie Corbett's house.

And there are incredible scenes

at the World's Smuggest Man competition, as judges declare it a three-way tie.

Good night.