Episode 3 Russell Howard's Good News

This programme contains adult humour and some strong language.

CHEERING AND APPLAUSE

Thank you. Hello!

Thank you. Thank you. Thank you very much!

Hello!

Welcome. Every week I'm roaming from Oxford to Cambridge to find stories that make you laugh.

Ricky Martin came out this week.

I thought that Sky's treatment was a little bit below the belt.

Now, how about a spot of fudging?

LAUGHTER

Jon Snow was shocked.

Oh, my ears and whiskers!

The Dalai Lama was in the crappest snowball fight ever.

The trouble with Question Time, people just don't get excited any more.

You have to take painful decisions and it's going to be difficult.

So, the biggest news, the election has been announced.

The Prime Minister confirms

what even he called the least well-kept secret in years.

The Queen has kindly agreed to the dissolution of Parliament

and a general election will take place on May 6th.

The Queen has given permission to have a general election.

If I was the Queen I would have messed with him.

-IMPERSONATING THE QUEEN:

-So...

you want a general election?

Dance for me.

Whack on the Beyonce, Philip!

Let's see Tubby move!

LAUGHTER

The campaigns are under way, but who to vote for?

If only they would show me the options in I way I could understand.

Maybe snack food?

You can get these hand-cooked, sea-salted politi-crisps

with Gordon's Brown's face on them.

If you don't fancy Gordon Brown's face on them you've got, of course,

the David Cameron crisps here with his picture

And just...there's no political favouritism whatsoever,

you can have the Nick Clegg crisps.

Imagine getting those crisps from your mum. Thanks, Mum.

Tastes like lies.

The Tories are currently in the lead.

Labour shot themselves in the foot with these posters.

Labour has unveiled a campaign poster depicting Tory leader

David Cameron as the character Gene Hunt from the series Ashes to Ashes.

To be honest, I prefer the way THIS reporter told that story.

Labour's latest election poster

-which depicts David Cameron as TV cop Gene

-BLEEP.

To be honest, they should have wrote that on the poster.

Labour honestly thought that by using DCI Hunt, they would make Cameron look bad. He loved it.

-I was flattered.

-Flattered?!

Imagine if he started talking like Gene Hunt. Wouldn't that be great?

Describing Brown, Darling and Mandelson like this.

A fairy, a queen, a fudge-packing ponce.

We all love DCI Hunt. What were Labour thinking?

The only way to make Cameron more popular would have been if they had done ads like this.

Or this.

Cameron on a red car is not an attack ad. THIS is an attack ad.

Now, because I work for the BBC, I have to talk about all three political parties,

so with that in mind, here's Nick Clegg.

Hello, I'm Nick Clegg.

Right. Done. So...

LAUGHTER

The Tories won the battle of the posters, but they are definitely losing the celeb vote.

Look who Labour have got.

JK Rowling,

Eddie Izzard,

David Tennant.

Pretty impressive, who have the Tories got?

Ken Barlow,

Peter Stringfellow,

John McCririck.

John McCririck looks like a johnny stuffed full of mashed potato.

Squeeze him, just mash and hate, mash and hate.

Phur-phurr!

He looks like Jabba the Hutt's ballbag. The man's a disgrace.

You wouldn't want him out canvassing,

Phur-vaa-va-varrgh!

Listen to him talk.

Teach your children to behave!

So 5-1 now, 11-2 Strong Promise. They asked for 9-4...

What is wrong with you? How old are you?

You are 55 and look at you!

None of you will guess who the Lib Dems have got.

Harry Potter! As if anyone is going to vote based on that.

"Huh, Harry Potter!" He pretends to be a magic man.

If it is good enough for the youngest seeker of all time, it's good enough for me.

Harry Potter. Hang on a minute. JK Rowling supports Labour,

Daniel Radcliffe is a Lib Dem supporter.

There'll be tension on set. What's the next film called?

Harry Potter and the Agonising Goblin Rape.

"I think there's been a mistake here, JK.

"It says I get gang-banged by goblins!"

Yeah, it does, doesn't it?

LAUGHTER

Ron, lube him up!

LAUGHTER AND APPLAUSE

The problem is, we don't want any of our politicians, we want Barack Obama. Sorry...

Mr Long Legged Mac Daddy!

He's so cool...

I'd let him bang my mum!

LAUGHTER

Sorry about that, Mum!

I'm pimping my mum out on telly, this is not the way I wanted my show...

-WEST COUNTRY ACCENT:

-"Here, Russ, I've had Barack Obama on the phone,

"sorry, Mr Long Legged Mac Daddy.

"Funny shit, that. Funny shit.

"Seriously, tell him it's on".

It's true, we are always fantasising about who we want to be PM. Who would you go for?

-Wolverine.

-Jeremy Clarkson!

Jeremy Clarkson!

It is... It is always Jeremy Clarkson, isn't it?

I am not sure he's a good idea.

Imagine him in Parliament.

The whole of the Labour Cabinet is gay.

Be a nightmare! What if David Blunkett pranged his car?

If you don't mend it, I'm going to bone your dog!

What if he has to go to Washington?

You're American? You can't be, you're nowhere near fat enough!

Now, is it me or are kids getting smarter?

Yasha Asley is taking an A-level in maths at the ripe old age of seven.

-And it could put him in the record books.

-Wow, an A-level at seven!

I remember at that age, we were once given a question, pick the odd numbers between 1 and 10.

My mate Spider went, "I don't like the look of that seven".

He's an evil number.

One minute he's like that, next minute he's got arms.

16...power of... three quarters...equals this!

Tell us, what's the answer?

88 to the power of nine.

We'll take Yasha's word for it!

You've taken your first module at A-level maths, what was it like?

-It is was easy-peasy.

-"Easy-peasy" I love the fact that he still speaks like a kid.

If he'd failed, he would have gone, "It was hard as poo"!

The teenagers saw a seven-year-old there and they were surprised.

I bet they were!

How bad would you feel if next to you there is a child with smoke billowing off his pen.

"This is easy-peasy"!

You'd have to do something to put him off, wouldn't you?

"Oi, kid, there's no Santa".

Yasha goes to a state junior school. By the age of 10 he hopes to have a degree.

He can speak four languages, English, French, Arabic and Farsi.

He can speak four languages! So can I. English, loud, underwater and Thundercat.

Apparently, he's read every book in the local library,

I wonder if he has seen any of these genuine children's books.

Let's hope to God that's not a pop-up.

Two Tiggers, one cup!

LAUGHTER AND APPLAUSE

And my personal favourite,

Kids are getting the upper hand. Have you heard?

A feedback session with pupils marking the performance of their teachers.

Allowing students a say in everything from school design to the recruitment of new staff.

Pupils interviewing teachers? Have you seen the questions they've asked?

They include such cases as a teacher being asked to sing her favourite song at an interview.

When she declined, she didn't get the job.

We have a case where a teacher was turned down for a job as the students felt he looked like Humpty Dumpty.

The idea is that kids know what's best for them. Kids don't know what's best for them.

Otherwise they wouldn't do things like this!

Now, this next story is my favourite of the week, it is actually unbelievable.

Leprechauns in Northern Ireland have been granted heritage status by Europe.

Plants, wild animals and leprechauns, ie little people, are protected in this area.

Protected leprechauns.

Are the leprechauns going, "You touch me, you'll be in jail.

"Nobody wants to be in prison for touching a little person."

The leprechauns are celebrating by going to Alton Towers.

Unfortunately, they can't go on any of the rides.

You can probably pick out lots of families coming

back down from the Cooley mountains just above Carlingford to my left.

They've been in the National Leprechaun Hunt.

Hunt?! Why, are they like foxes?

Posh people going, "You should hear them shagging against my bins.

"It is all be-Jesus and begorra

and feck and potato and Guinness

and Dara O Briain!

Let's be honest, that is one hunt you would kill to go on.

You could capture them by using the ginger one from Girls Aloud as bait.

"This way my tiny pretties!"

# Round round baby, round round... #

That's the Sugababes!

That's my impression of the... That's the Sugababes?!

One second, what do they sing?

Underground.

# It's the sound of the underground. #

And you've captured some leprechauns.

How are they going to show a leprechaun on the news?

A story from Manchester that's bad news for fish-selling pensioners.

66-year-old great-grandmother and pet shop owner, Joan Higgins,

never expected to end up electronically tagged

and placed under curfew.

Her crime? Selling a goldfish to a 14-year-old.

The sick bitch!

Selling fish to a child, what next?

She'll be outside school gates, flogging them heroin!

Ridiculous story. Not allowed to sell fish to children?

This guy must be cacking it.

Apparently selling fish to kids is cruel. More like cruel to the kid.

Goldfish are crap, they just float about.

It is like having a ginger mate with Alzheimer's and can't stop shitting.

It's true, man.

Kids don't even care when they die.

Hello, Laura, what are you doing there?

I'm burying my goldfish.

Oh dear. What a shame. Still, it's only a goldfish I suppose, isn't it?

Why are you doing digging such a big hole?

-Because it's inside your

-BLEEP

-cat!

Did you see how they caught this evil granny?

It is an offence for anybody under the age of 16 to be sold a pet,

so Trafford council sent a 14-year-old boy in here, undercover, to see what happened.

How dodgy must that have looked? Some bloke near a playground,

"Hello, young man.

"Do you like pet shops?

"Get in the van."

Why have they tagged her? She's an old lady.

You want to keep an old person indoors, just ask one question,

What was it like when you were young?

"Oh...I went to school every morning on a horse".

I cannot go out of the door. I can't go in my garden, I can't go to the dustbin.

Anything after 7.00pm in the night.

"I can't go to me bins.

"Sorry...

"It's one of me things in life, 7.00pm, I go to me bin every...

"Don't laugh, you bastards!

"Every night I... Oh, I'm going, I'm going.

"I fucking love that bin."

Over on the Thames, it was good news for wet toffs.

Cambridge have won the 156th Xchanging Boat Race against favourites Oxford.

It was a close race

with Cambridge winning for the first time in three years.

To be honest, I was surprised by their choice of umpire.

Absolutely crucial today is the umpire, Simon Harris,

it is his job to keep those crews honest.

Did you watch the race? They really tried to big it up.

This race isn't just fought in the river,

it is also fought in the mind.

It's such a compelling part of the British national story.

No, it's not in any way. It's about as exciting as watching Dido taking a shit.

They just row in a straight line.

You watch it going, can we not make it more exciting and just release a shark?

What would make them shift, is if we popped in some Somali pirates.

Then they'd fucking move. "Bloody hell, Tarquin, row!"

Ai-ai-ai-ai-aah!

It's horrific. You have never seen a crowd like it.

Rah-de blah-de rah...

People are so posh they brush their teeth with a swan.

I will concede though, some of the rowers did have fantastic names.

Winkelvoss - that sounds like an STD, doesn't it?

Without doubt, this was my favourite.

Sjoerd Hamburger, president of the Oxford University Row Club.

Look at that. Sjoerd Hamburger,

how porn star is that name?

I bet when he has sex he just goes...

# Du du-du du-du I'm lovin' it! #

It was on telly for two hours. Why?

All we wanted to see was this.

One...two...

on three, now then. Yay!

Brilliant! Who doesn't like to watch men toss their cox into a river?

Elsewhere in sport, did you see the design for the new Olympic tower?

What do you get if you cross the mayor with a man of steel?

How about this? This is the legacy of London's Olympics.

It's a tower with a twist. Orbit, a dipping, swirling spiral of steel.

Does anyone else think it looks a bit like a crane shagging a roller-coaster?

The best thing, did you hear Boris talking about it?

If Paris can have the Eiffel tower, we thought that our great Olympic site had to have the...

Something!

LAUGHTER

I just love watching Johnson talk about the Olympics, his demands are getting weirder and weirder.

A convolvulus. A giant treble clef.

A helter-skelter. A super-sized mutant trombone.

A monorail above the city, made of stilton, driven by talking hippos!

That's just the art. Look at the sports he wants to introduce.

The pankration

whose chief exponent was Milo of Kroton.

Whose signature performance involved carrying an ox the length of the stadium,

killing it with his bare hands and then eating it, all on the same day.

A play that portrays Jesus as gay is drawing lots of controversy.

A student at Tarleton State University in Stephenville

is directing a production called Corpus Christi.

He says he wants a play that portrays tolerance and unconditional love.

Wow! Doing a play about a gay Jesus in Bible-belt America.

That is like a mouse strutting into a cave and teabagging a sleeping lion.

What of it? Hmmm. You know the play will be terrible.

Some one-dimensional actor, "Jesus was nailed against the cross.

"And when I say nailed, I mean nailed.

# I am what I am. #

It is not the first time there have been rumours about sexuality of the messiah.

Earlier this year Elton John claimed Jesus was gay.

I see him, from my point of view,

and that's just my point of view, as a compassionate gay person.

Luckily nobody was upset.

We're here today to remind Elton John that he has to die.

Remind him?! "Yes, I must kill myself. Thank you."

For a straight man, this bloke has a good knowledge of what goes down.

What he means is the Lord Jesus achieves orgasm by receiving men's penises up his anal orifice.

Or by sucking other men's penises.

Whoa! Could we not just get along?

We get one chance to live.

In the Bible it says that Jesus is in all of us,

so, technically, he's bi.

This is the part of the show I genuinely don't know anything about.

There's a mystery guest who's been in the news, and I have to figure out who it is.

So, please welcome my mystery guest.

# From Russia with love

# I cried to you. #

-Nice to meet you. How are you?

-Nice to meet you too, I'm fine.

-Be my guest.

-I will.

-Snow, I'm sorry.

-It's fine. It feels like a slightly creepy Narnia.

-It is all right.

-So why...

-I am not an evil witch, you know.

I'm not saying you're an evil bitch!

-I said witch!

-Witch! I didn't say that either...

LAUGHTER

-Anyway.

-Thank you, nice.

Why were you in the news? I'm trying to figure out what's going on.

I can't tell you, you have to guess.

-That is your job, isn't it?

-That is my job. Yes. Ha-ha!

Anyway, you didn't introduce yourself?

I do need to introduce myself? Hello, I'm Russell Howard.

-Hello, I'm Anastasia.

-Anastasia? Great name.

-Where are you from? Let's do that.

-I'm from Russia.

From Russia, OK.

Things I know about Russia...

Have you ever seen a Russian pregnancy?

It is freaky, you deliver one baby, and inside that baby there's another...

You're taking the mick.

-OK, so you are from Russia, are you living here at the minute?

-Yes.

What brought you to the country, was it love?

-A bit of everything.

-A bit of everything?

-Love, job.

Any clues I can get from your job?

Does it involve... there is a babooshka down there.

Is it modelling? You did that pose.

-No.

-Not modelling. You'll have to give me some help here.

It involves sports.

Sports, we're getting there. What sport? Gymnast?

-No. Do I look like a gymnast?

-You do look like a gymnast.

-Thank you.

-That's all right. Um...

What else do the Russians do?

Skiing and the shooting?

-No.

-OK, shooting?

-No. Well, close.

-OK, archery?

-No.

-Javelin is a very good one. Javelin?

-No.

-Spear!

-Spear?

-Close!

-Darts?

-Yes.

-Darts! Do you play darts?

-Yes.

-I sling arrows.

Yeah, for a while now, I've been slinging arrows.

I got a hole-in-one the other day.

That's right! Um... So, why are you in the news?

Because I'm the only female dart player competing against man.

Fantastic. You made that sound grand, like man in general.

I believe your guy's got some footage.

Footage of you? Let's see you.

She has done this hundreds of times.

Two darts at tops.

Get in! What a lovely way to finish the match.

There's the celebration, the crowd love it.

Quality. Did you see the poster? "Russian beauty!"

-Now, why are we wasting time?

-Let's nail it.

-Now, we have a challenge.

-Done.

-Ladies first.

-OK.

-That's you.

OK.

Hey, don't forget I have to win. We're not finishing until I win.

Wouldn't it be fucking great if I did? It's not going to happen.

Ooh.

Son of a bitch.

What did you say?

I said, I missed.

21.

Ooh, struggling!

I wouldn't like to be you right now!

Come on, play fair.

Fair enough! Well done.

You're not even going to do the last one?

No, I don't have to.

So, how did you get into that?

You just discovered it, like, at a circus one day?

How did you fall into something like that?

That sounds appalling, like you just wandered in.

Can I give an answer before you carry on?

Of course you can.

Forever.

CHEERING AND APPLAUSE

It's like we're in a relationship already. "Can you shut up? OK.

"You never once clean up."

I did it in an after school club, we don't play darts in the pubs in Russia.

-So I wanted to know what darts was all about.

-Brilliant.

-Now I'm here. Would you believe that?

-I think it's fantastic.

-It's lovely to meet you, Anastasia. What's your surname?

-Dobromyslova.

-I will call you Anastasia.

-Thank you.

Ladies and gentlemen, please give it up!

Did you see the story about the award-winning Top Gun remake?

If you didn't, here it is.

We told you the story of a film-maker from Cambridge

who's re-made a Hollywood blockbuster lasting just 60 seconds.

And now it's an award-winning remake.

Mark Wong's movie has beaten off 5,000 rivals from across the globe

to win the Empire Done In 60 Seconds award.

Doing one film in 60 seconds, anyone can do that,

what is impressive is doing loads of films in 60 seconds, like this.

All right, Harry?

All right, Sally?

Damn it! Somebody get me Iron Man.

Hello!

Sorry. I'm stuck. I'm stuck.

Can you come out now?

Dragon, you've been hiding for ages.

Me no like the boom-boom!

-There will be no boom-boom on my watch.

-I love you.

And I love you, you blue bastard.

Hello!

Now, it's time for this week's good news story.

I think this film is one of the most inspiring stories you will ever see.

I really hope you like it as much as I do.

People freak out when they see me for the first time.

It's so cool, I was at a water slide all by myself.

Everyone at the bottom of the slide was looking up and waiting

for other people to come down. I come and they are freaking out. They are like...

I was so tempted to look at myself and go, "What happened?!"

There's no point, I believe in my life, where I wish I had arms and legs,

I wish I had arms and legs, because wishing won't help, but what I have seen in life

are a couple of key principles, and the first thing I've seen

is to be thankful. It's hard to be thankful, man.

When I was eight years old, I summed up my life and thought

I'm never going to get married, I'm not going to have a job.

I'm not going to have a life of purpose.

What kind of husband am I going to be if I can't even hold my wife's hand?

It's a lie to think that you're not good enough.

It's a lie to think that you're not worth anything.

It is scary to know how many girls have eating disorders.

It is scary to know how many people feel like they're worth nothing.

Every single girl right here, right now,

I want you to know you are beautiful.

You are gorgeous just the way you are.

And you boys? You're the man!

That, ladies and gentlemen, is exactly why I do Good News,

to show you human beings like that. What a wonderful man.

Thank you for watching my show. Hope you had fun. Good night.

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