Anne Insert Name Here

CHEERING AND APPLAUSE

Hello, you, and welcome to Insert Name Here,

the show where we discover surprising facts about people

with just one thing in common - they've all got the same name.

Joining me are six of my favourite people,

each responding to their own given name.

Please welcome James Acaster, Kate Williams

and their team captain Josh Widdicombe.

And on the other side, Ed Balls, Lauren Laverne

and their captain Richard Osman.

APPLAUSE

Now...

You are known for tweeting your own name quite a lot,

Ed, aren't you?

Yeah, well, to be honest, what can you say about my name?

-I mean...

-Well, hey, hey, hey.

-Get the dossier out.

-Just wait.

We've got a whole evening ahead of us.

So, did you know that there's an Ed Balls Day?

I knew that, cos it's my birthday.

-Ed Balls Day is my birthday.

-Wow.

-Is it really?

-Yeah.

-That's amazing.

-Your birthday falls on Balls's big day?

-It falls on Balls's big day.

-That means...

-Which is...

You must know which day it is?

I do. The 28th of April.

-Correct.

-But she's got actually something to celebrate on that day,

your birthday, whereas I've got nothing to celebrate other than...

The nation celebrates you.

You don't celebrate on Ed Balls Day. We do it for you.

I know. It's become a bit commercialised in recent years.

And also it starts earlier every year.

There's Ed Balls merchandise in the shops in late March.

Let's move to our all-important question -

which name is featuring tonight?

They could be Diamonds, Pavlovas, Summers or Wintours.

Tonight's name is Anne.

So, we are going to be discussing Annes

of all shapes and sizes and variations.

That's Anna, Anita, Angela and maybe the occasional Angelina.

Along the way, our teams will demonstrate their knowledge

to collect as many Annes as possible.

At the end, the winning team will have the honour of deciding

who's officially the greatest Anne of all time.

Richard, have you got any early thoughts as to who that might be?

I think I'd have to choose...

There's famously two Annes who have got puddings named after them.

There's Anna Pavlova and Anneka Rice.

Josh, any ideas who your favourite might be?

My mum, Ann Widdecombe.

Not THE Ann Widdecombe?

No, of course she's not my mum.

Um... She's my wife.

She's not. We're just lovers.

Lovers, but still with the same surname?

I genuinely... I met Ann Widdecombe, and I walked in

and her first words were, "I knew this day would come."

Was she stroking a cat on a chair?

Anyway, let's get on with the show.

Time to pick an Anne, any Anne.

Behind each category lurks a famous Anne

which our teams must then attempt to win. We've got...

Richard's team, you're up first. What do you fancy out of that lot?

-A scary Anne, I think.

-You've picked columnist and TV presenter

-Anne Robinson.

-Ooh, Anne Robinson!

-AUDIENCE:

-Ooooooh!

-Let's release her stats.

-Gosh.

That's essentially your entire team in trouble.

-I've got a good trivia question about The Weakest Link.

-OK.

Who was the winner of the first-ever Celebrity Weakest Link?

-Was it you?

-Nearly!

-Sue.

-No!

-Was I the first one?

-Yeah, you were the first-ever winner.

-Wow!

I blocked that.

-I blocked that.

-Wow.

So it goes to show I probably wasn't a very worthy winner.

Do you want to unblock it

by watching a clip that the producers have given me?

-ED:

-No...

-KATE:

-I do.

AUDIENCE CHEER

I'm very surprised to have won because I thought

I was lucky to be in the final round.

I think I picked up and I had some good rounds,

but I let people down quite badly in the other rounds.

I was very, very nervous, but I'm delighted to have won

because I really wanted the charity that I support to get the money,

so it's nice. It's nice that I won and I'm still here.

I look a baby in that!

-KATE:

-What a victory.

God!

To give you a clue of the quality of people I beat

on Celebrity Pointless, in the final I beat Su Pollard.

Did you?

Josh, as you well know, it's not called Celebrity Pointless.

-It's called Pointless Celebrities.

-Oh, I'm sorry.

So, what made Anne Robinson the happy-go-lucky shrinking violet

we see today? She grew up in Liverpool,

where her mum ran a highly successful poultry business.

When she moved to London,

what did her mother give her as a going-away present?

Chicken.

No. Poultry isn't relevant to the answer.

A turkey.

I think she was given a coat.

-She was.

-A fur coat.

-She was given a mink coat.

Cos her mother got very rich

being the biggest chicken dealer in the north.

I don't think she was dealing chickens.

Chickens, chickens...

Got any chickens? Have you got any chickens left? Please, I'm dying!

You know, I had to come off chickens.

I can't remember what they called the process but it was pretty hard.

-Oh, dear.

-So she got very rich...

-Yes.

-So she bought her a mink coat so she wouldn't get cold

hanging around on doorsteps, and some kind of sports car?

She did. She got a mink coat and a sports car,

which reeks, to be honest, of a panic buy.

Anne was the first female trainee to work for the Daily Mail,

going on to marry the paper's deputy news editor.

What did the Daily Mail give her when she got married?

A mink coat and a sports car.

She was given the sack.

What, for getting married?

Yes - the Mail operated a strict no-spouses policy.

Working with your spouse not an issue for you, Ed?

I mean, it must have been in the past quite strange to be working

so closely with your partner.

We were the first-ever married couple to be in the Cabinet

at the same time, and there's not been one since.

Did you ever bring, like, domestic arguments?

Yvette would go, you know,

"I think there's too much money being put into the war in Iraq."

You'd lean across the table and go, "Yeah, you would think that,

"but you don't put the marmalade away."

Well, the problem was she goes in the shower

and she would always leave wet towels on the floor,

and would never put them back on the rail.

-Oh, Yvette!

-And I raised it in the Cabinet,

and it got no support for action by them.

-Oh!

-Don't you think it's the worst thing?

-It's when you hold...

-No.

-It's not the worst thing, is it?

-It's not the worst thing.

-Short of infidelity,

the worst thing in a relationship is...

No, Ed, it doesn't go infidelity, then leaving towels on the floor.

-Well...

-Does it?

-I can tell you, year by year by year,

it accumulates, and it becomes an issue.

What if, Ed, you picked up a wet towel

and there was a man underneath that she'd been shagging?

Well, I would...

-And this is a hypothetical.

-That's a dilemma.

During the making of a documentary in August 2017,

Anne set up a Tinder profile.

What did she say was her secret for attracting men?

-Winking?

-Is it to do with winking, yeah?

It's not to do with winking but it's to do with something you might wear.

What way is it that you swipe if you like them?

Right. Swipe right, I think.

That was a trap. We really wanted to find out if Ed Balls was on Tinder.

I don't know what Tinder is.

-Oh, you would...

-Well, listen, mate, the nightmare you had on Twitter,

stay away from Tinder.

Nowhere near it.

Don't do it.

-You don't know what Tinder is?

-No.

-It's a dating app.

-I'm happily married.

-Doesn't sound like it.

-Until those towels get...

So it's something that she wore that drew people in.

-Wasn't it her red glasses?

-Spectacles, yeah.

It was her spectacles, yes.

She said, "I've got one particular pair of glasses,

"they're my red glasses, and I can pull in them."

Here they are.

-JAMES:

-Where is she pulling people? At Hogwarts?

All right, eyes down. Time to play for the Anne.

I think we all agree the best thing about The Weakest Link

isn't the host but the really awful, bad, wrong answers.

So we're going to play a little game which I've snappily titled,

Can You Give Me The Correct Wrong Answer To The Following Questions?

AKA The Wrongest Link.

Now, these are all genuine wrong answers from The Weakest Link.

You are allowed to confer before giving your answer.

If you're ready, we are going to play The Wrongest Link.

WEAKEST LINK JINGLE

Hello! Which...

LAUGHTER AND APPLAUSE

Very nice.

It is so important to have a catchphrase.

I forgot that The Weakest Link was hosted by Alan Partridge.

Erm... Richard, remember,

you're looking for the wrong answer that they gave.

The answer is of course Princess Anne.

-What did they say?

-I wonder if it's something like

Prince Naseem Hamed or something.

Or Queen Mum would have been, like, spectacularly wrong,

cos she probably wasn't very sporty.

-We're going to say Queen Mum.

-All right. They said...

-JOSH:

-That is great!

That is amazing.

Josh, this is yours.

We know the answer's Ambition.

What did they say?

-JAMES:

-James Blonde.

I think it's Blonde Hair.

Yeah? OK, they said...

All right, listen, guys, no-one's got one right.

This is the tie-breaker. OK?

In science...

-JOSH:

-Bottoms.

The answer, of course, the right answer is plants.

They did say bottoms.

Oh, yeah!

Go, Josh!

Well done, Josh.

You are the Wrongest Link.

Goodbye.

OK, Josh, your turn to pick an Anne.

We've got...

Can we go for T tragic Anne, please?

You've picked Henry VIII's second wife, and the first to be beheaded,

Anne Boleyn.

Let's have a look at her stats.

Most of what we know about Anne

is wild propaganda written 50 years after her death

by a Jesuit called Nicholas Sander.

Blaming Anne for her husband's rejection of Catholicism,

he painted her as a monster.

What did he say about her appearance?

Too much...

of a head.

She was meant to be really beautiful, wasn't she, Anne Boleyn?

She was meant to be. He wasn't very flattering.

-Do you know about this, Kate?

-He was very unflattering.

So a lot of them said she had beautiful eyes,

but he said that she was very ugly.

She looked like her skin had got jaundice,

and he also said that she had a great big wart on her neck

that she covered up.

Lots of the Protestants called him Nicholas Slander

because he kept coming up with all these libels.

Oh, that's... Yeah.

Anne was born around 1501 to the Boleyn family

and lived in the home Blickling Hall in Norfolk.

It was rebuilt in the 17th century.

Now it looks like this.

What poll did Blickling Hall top in 2007?

Voted most what?

-LAUREN:

-Sexiest chimneys?

-Most haunted?

-Yes, it was.

It was voted the most haunted house in Britain.

-Yeah.

-Oh, yeah, you can see those little ghosts in front of it.

Just standing around in the gravel.

Yes, they say that on the anniversary of execution,

Anne Boleyn's ghost, carrying her head beneath her arm,

arrives at Blickling Hall

in a carriage driven by a headless coachman,

which is what happens when you book an Uber.

If I had been beheaded,

the last thing I want is a coachman who's also been beheaded,

cos I just think that would make you feel so self-conscious.

Also, he'd definitely see it as an excuse

to really get a conversation going, wouldn't he?

Yeah. "Sorry, I've seen you...

"I know you're probably reading.

"I see you don't have a head. I don't have a head either.

"How did you lose yours?

"Do you mind... Sorry, do you mind if I listen to Talksport?"

He's great for his blind spot.

Check your blind spot.

Has anyone seen a ghost?

Has anyone had any ghostly paranormal activity happen?

-No.

-I did see a ghost coming home from Brownies once.

-Of course you did.

-Sorry,

-were you coming home from Brownies, or was the ghost?

-I was!

"Just got my dead badge.

"I'm fully dead now."

-You must have played at the Lancaster Grand Theatre?

-Yes, yeah.

Which is haunted.

I played that. Do you know what happened?

-What happened?

-WHISPERS:

-Nothing.

But, to be fair, that often happens when you play gigs.

In April 1536, keen to ditch Anne Boleyn and marry Jane Seymour,

Henry had his wife arrested on trumped-up charges

of adultery, incest and treason.

What did he do a week before the trial?

Do you know this, Kate?

He hired this wonderful swordsman so that Anne could die quickly.

Well, he did. He hired an expert swordsman from France,

known as the Sword of Calais.

It's just another thing we won't be able to do after Brexit.

All right, heads down and stick your necks out.

Let's play for the Anne.

What was Anne Boleyn doing when Henry VIII had her arrested?

Wearing a hoodie in a town centre.

-Was she hiding?

-Watching tennis?

No... She was. She was watching a tennis match, hence her final words,

"Come on, Tim!"

Not necessarily verified.

-She was gambling, wasn't she, on a tennis match?

-She was.

Henry, then, when she was executed, he wasn't watching.

He was playing tennis.

-No!

-And so that's why he married Jane Seymour so quickly afterwards.

-What's going on up there?

-And she died, didn't she?

-She did.

-What is it, divorced...?

-Beheaded.

-Died.

-Died, divorced, beheaded, survived.

-I've got a rhyme.

I remember my ex-girlfriends.

It's dumped me, dumped me, dumped me, dumped me, dumped me, dumped me.

Catchy.

Congratulations, Josh's team.

You get the Anne. Well done.

OK, your turn, Richard. Pick an Anne. We've got...

We'll go for Princess Anne, please, Sue.

All right, Princess Anne.

You have selected Princess Royal, Princess Anne.

Let's have a look at those stats.

Anne's status has varied over the years.

When she was born, she was third in line to the throne,

becoming second when her mum became Queen.

Now 12th and in danger of dropping, I'm afraid, into the Championship.

What was specifically set up for Princess Anne

-when she was just eight years old?

-Just everything.

It's really sweet. I'll give you a clue.

Her entire life.

It was a way of her making friends.

Oh, Facebook!

What would you do when you were eight?

-What sort of things would you be involved in?

-Scalextric?

-No.

-Oh, Brownies.

-Brownies.

-There she is.

-They set up Brownies?

They set up the first Buckingham Palace company of the Girl Guides.

She would say, "I promise I will always do my best

"to do my duty to God, and to my mum."

What milestone did she achieve in 1976?

First-ever member of the Royal family to be

-BBC Sports Personality of the Year?

-Very close.

-It's sporting-related.

-First Olympic gold medallist.

She was the first member of the Royal family

to compete in the Olympic Games.

She took part in the eventing competition

in the Montreal Olympics.

She rode the Queen's horse Goodwill and finished 24th out of 30.

Her love of horses, legendary.

Speaking of his daughter, Prince Philip once said...

Royals have always loved horses.

They've always been of the equestrian bent, Kate?

Always. The Queen, a keen horse rider.

Still in her 90s riding a horse.

But I think the greatest horse-lover was Caligula,

who adored his horse so much that he gave it a special house

made out of marble, an ivory manger,

and pretty much made it a political adviser,

like a SPAD, and was going to make it consul before it died.

So his horse got higher up the political ladder than Ed Balls?

Was it one of the ones that could do a one for yes, two for no?

In the 1970s, Princess Anne became something of a hipster chick.

Here she is.

I'm not sure which airline she's working for there.

Hello! March '74.

What happened to her on the way back from a charity event?

Didn't she almost get taken hostage?

-She did.

-By... And she got held up at gunpoint

by a guy who jumped out

and threatened the security people and tried to take her hostage.

-That's absolutely right, yes.

-On the Mall, wasn't it?

Yeah. She was the victim of a kidnap attempt.

Her Rolls-Royce was forced to stop by a white Ford Escort

driven by a labourer called Ian Ball.

-The would-be kidnapper began to...

-Unrelated.

-Hold on a minute.

-Yeah.

Unrelated. He only had one.

The would-be kidnapper began firing a pistol,

injuring Anne's bodyguard and her chauffeur

before approaching the car.

What did she say to the kidnapper?

Was it literally something like, "Oh, piss off," something like that?

-Along those lines. Do you know the answer to this?

-Not bloody likely.

"Not bloody likely," she said.

Eventually, a passing member of the public,

a former boxer named Ron Russell,

punched Ball in the back of the head and helped her escape.

-It's extraordinary.

-This is like...

Why hasn't Guy Ritchie made this into a film?!

Interestingly, the kidnapper was planning to demand

£2 million of ransom,

which he was going to give to the National Health Service.

Nowadays we just write that on the side of a bus.

She's clocked up loads of firsts in her time, Princess Anne.

She was the first member of the Royal family

since Charles I to do what?

She was on A Question Of Sport, wasn't she?

I don't think Charles I was, no.

She was the first since Charles I to get a criminal record.

-Really?

-She appeared before in Berkshire Magistrates' Court

in 2002. Do you know this story, Kate?

Dottie the terrier did bite two children in the park,

in Windsor Great Park,

and she was told that Dottie needed to have obedience training.

It's not the fairest courtroom drawing, is it?

It looks like Sandi Toksvig's taking down the details.

It looks like Princess Anne's wearing a gumshield.

Anyone here got in trouble with the law?

Has anyone got a criminal conviction for anything?

I saw a policeman once. I thought it was really exciting.

He was hiding behind a tree like that and looking around,

and I was like, "Oh, man, there's a robber

"around somewhere or something."

And then I looked and what it was,

there was just another policeman walking down

and he was waiting to jump out on him for a laugh.

It was his mate. And when his...

When his mate saw him, he just got the radio and went,

"I can see you, John."

-Like that.

-It's time to crank it up as we play for the Anne.

Princess Anne has a rather unusual hobby.

Does anybody know what it is?

-Does she collect something?

-It's more of a hobby.

She likes to visit things.

Oh, is she doing the thing where she's trying to visit

every single Greggs in Britain?

I've almost succeeded in doing that.

She likes particular buildings.

Does anybody know what buildings?

-Leisure centres.

-Not leisure centres.

-Lighthouses?

-HMV.

Lighthouses it is.

Yes. She is a pharologist.

She is a lighthouse enthusiast.

-Oh, wow.

-In fact, she's the patron of the Northern Lighthouse Board

and is on a mission to visit every one of the 209 lighthouses

dotted around the Scottish coast.

We think she's about halfway through visiting the 209 that exist.

-It's only...

-It's impossible to be halfway through visiting 209.

Unless as we speak she's halfway up one of them.

Well done, Josh's team, cos you win the Anne.

Time now to fire up our Anne-flavoured fruit machine.

Each time I spin, up are going to pop three of my favourite Annes.

You must match the extraordinary fact to the extraordinary Anne,

and it's also a chance to unearth more candidates

for the greatest Anne of all time.

So let's spin. We've got glamour model Anna Nicole Smith,

Radio 1 DJ Annie Nightingale,

and Hollywood actress Anne Hathaway.

The question is, which Anne claimed she'd had sex with a ghost?

Whichever one was in the Brownies.

-So...

-Well, Anna Nicole did have that very old husband.

Yeah, but I don't think,

-that would be...

-He wasn't dead, though. Was he?

But he might be near...

-Which is almost...

-That wasn't how she announced he'd died.

-RICHARD:

-Yeah, to his children.

"I have some bad news, I just had sex with a ghost."

"He was not a ghost when we started."

We haven't discussed Anne Hathaway.

That doesn't sound like the kind of thing she'd say, does it?

But then maybe that's why she's there. Maybe it is her.

-Trick question?

-And they've put two people

who are more eccentric there and it's like,

-we're not going to think it's her.

-Maybe she had sex with Shakespeare.

Oh!

You've got the wrong Anne Hathaway.

This is a highbrow reference, isn't it?

-I'm going to believe that.

-You think Shakespeare

came back thinking that Anne Hathaway was HIS Anne Hathaway?

Looked her up.

And this Anne Hathaway thought,

"Well, in for a penny, in for a pound."

Who do you feel moved to pick?

I think it's...

I would be annoyed if I didn't go with Anna Nicole Smith,

and it was Anna Nicole Smith,

because it's surely Anna Nicole Smith.

All right, so Richard's team.

You must know Annie Nightingale.

I've met Annie Nightingale.

What a legend. She...

Let me tell you, she has some fabulous stories.

-Oh, she's brilliant.

-But I can't think that that was one of them.

Cos I did a Q and A with her about...

Imagine if that had been your opening question.

Annie, great to speak to you. Long career.

Have you had sex with a ghost?

I call her Hathers. Shall we go for Hathers?

-Let's go for Hathers.

-We will go for Hathers, please.

-I think it is her.

-The answer is...

It's Anna Nicole Smith.

Yes, Anna Nicole Smith. Apparently a ghost would visit

her Texas apartment, crawl up her leg and have sex with her.

The thing about having sex with ghosts is when

they leave ectoplasm-covered towels on the floor.

That's how you know.

-That's the advantage of a ghost - no need for towels.

-No towels.

They're already wearing sheets.

Josh, you win the Anne.

So, here are your next three.

We've got German Chancellor Angela Merkel,

the Russian tennis ace Anna Kournikova

and the Scottish chanteuse Annie Lennox.

So, which of these used to live in a squat?

-Richard's team.

-Well, look. When Annie Lennox came to London,

she definitely was penniless.

She was a waitress when she met Dave Stewart?

-Mm-hmm.

-And they formed The Tourists.

So, you know, it wouldn't be...

That would have been the, you know, the '70s punk scene.

Pretty much everybody would have lived in...

It's obvious, but maybe that makes it right.

-Shall we say Annie Lennox?

-Yeah.

-She was in London at that sort of time, wasn't she?

-All right, OK.

So my initial thought is Anna Kournikova, cos I think she...

It often is, to be fair, Josh.

I think, trick question,

it's all three of them at once and it was a sitcom.

Which is the most unlikely?

-Well, Merkel.

-Yeah, Merkel.

-Yeah, let's go Merkel.

-All right, OK.

Let's see who the correct answer is.

Angela Merkel. Well done, Josh's team.

During her 20s, Angela lived illegally in an apartment

in what was then communist East Berlin.

Ed, talking of living in a squat,

what's the most rebellious thing you've ever done, you rogue?

Gosh. I think actually the most rebellious thing

was during a massive hurricane storm on the east coast of America,

when we were supposed to be travelling from New York

down to Washington.

I was at the Treasury at the time with Gordon Brown,

and it became a massively long journey,

and about seven hours into this journey,

because the weather was so bad,

we stopped in Baltimore and got off the train,

or at least I got off the train with his private secretary,

and then they suddenly called for the train to depart again,

and we didn't move fast enough to get back on the train.

You're saying you got off a train

to avoid spending seven hours with Gordon Brown?

It is... It's pretty much exactly what the British electorate did

soon afterwards, isn't it?

So, congratulations, Josh's team, you win the Angela.

Right, everybody, let's play Finish The Facts.

I'm going to start out by reading out an Anne-based gem,

and you buzz in when you think you know how it ends.

First up we've got American teacher Annie Edson Taylor.

Did she go over the Wayne Rooney age threshold?

The rainbow?

She actually went over Niagara Falls in a barrel and became...

-BELL RINGS

-Dead.

BUZZER BUZZES

The first person ever to go over Niagara Falls in a barrel?

You said that she died. She didn't die, she actually...

-Lived.

-She survived the trip, yes.

She was the first person to survive the trip.

Yeah. Here she is.

It was a very tense occasion, as the barrel floated towards the edge,

broken only by the sound of urgent thumping and the frantic shouts of,

"I've changed my mind!"

Well done, though, Josh. You win the Anne.

Next up it's Tory grandee, Josh's favourite Anne and Josh's lover,

-Ann Widdecombe.

-Oh, God.

Ed Balls.

Oh, was it a detective that investigates the curse of Strictly?

So basically it was inspired by her time on Strictly Come Dancing,

which featured a...

Was it a jury that marked the guilt out of ten?

You're on the right lines.

Is it a dancing detective or something?

Yes, a dancing amateur detective called...

At least change the first name.

-It's called The Dancing Detective. Self-published.

-Oh, wow.

And if you want to know who committed the crime,

it was Ann Widdecombe in her study with a typewriter.

Well done, Josh. You win the Anne.

And so we've come to the end of the show,

and I can tell you that tonight's winners with the most Annes,

Josh's team.

OK, a big moment, Josh.

Who are you going to name as the greatest Anne of all time?

I'm going to go with Anne Boleyn.

Cracking choice. Let's put Anne Boleyn on the Insert Name Here

Hall Of Fame. Up she goes.

I hereby declare that Anne Boleyn is the best Anne of all time.

Congratulations to Josh's team.

My thanks to all of my guests.

Special thanks to all the Annes here, there and everywhere,

including my darling mum,

and thanks most of all to you all at home for watching. Goodnight.

CHEERING AND APPLAUSE