Episode 4 Russell Howard's Good News

This programme contains some strong language and adult humour

CHEERING AND APPLAUSE

Hello! And welcome to Good News.

So, what's been happening?

Hey, did anyone else see that guy mistakenly lean in for a kiss?

-Hi, nice to meet you.

-Nice to meet you.

LAUGHTER

Boris Johnson revealed what he saw when he took acid.

A three-toed sloth or a one eyed pterodactyl.

LAUGHTER

Over at BBC Politics, someone did a shit in Andrew Neil's mug.

-WOMAN:

-Politics in Scotland...

LAUGHTER

Here's a bit of advice - if you're going to take a photo,

watch where you're going.

SHE SPEAKS OWN LANGUAGE

LAUGHTER

And finally, I think all the partying

has really taken its toll on Harry Styles.

We thought, instantly, let's...

LAUGHTER

APPLAUSE

Over in America,

the big story this week was the US mid-term elections.

Barack Obama has woken up to a disastrous result

in America's mid-term elections.

His Democratic party lost big, or as one US pundit put it...

The Democrats got their butts kicked.

This makes him a lame-duck president.

Nothing tells the story more vividly than this.

He is left with little to no legislative power.

Something of a lame duck.

In the blink of an eye,

the most powerful man in the world has become history.

HE SIGHS

LAUGHTER

Poor Obama.

He's in power but he has no power.

Hmm. Who does that remind me of?

LAUGHTER

What I want to know is,

how did Obama lose power to people like this?

I'm Joni Ernst.

I grew up castrating hogs on an Iowa farm

so when I get to Washington,

I'll know how to cut pork.

PIG SQUEALS

LAUGHTER

"Vote for me, America!

"I can rip off pigs' nuts!"

That woman is now in the US Senate.

She doesn't belong in politics,

she belongs in a fucking butchers!

Imagine that over here! How sinister would that be?

"Vote for me.

"Because when I was little,

"I chopped off a Chihuahua's dick."

LAUGHTER

AUDIENCE GROAN

It wasn't just her.

Fair to say, in America, they like their politicians pretty simple.

I believe in God.

I'm not Barack Obama.

We're Republicans, we should be better than that.

Bibles and guns brought us here

and Bibles and guns will keep us here.

LAUGHTER

They're like psychotic Forrest Gumps.

"I ain't never done no thinking!"

"Vote for me, America.

"I can't read and I got me a boom-boom stick!"

LAUGHTER

I've saved the maddest candidate for last.

Check out this guy.

Hi, I'm Bob. I'm running.

Running for Iowa's open seat in the US Senate.

Seems like a nice bloke.

I wonder what else he's got to say.

If you are the sexual predator and sociopath

who murdered my sister Lynette

and you come to my front door to do harm to my girls,

I'm going to use my Glock

to blow your balls off.

LAUGHTER

APPLAUSE

He's the friendliest psycho ever.

Imagine what the rest of that advert looks like.

"If you try and break into my house,

"I'll rip your skin off and wear it like a dress.

"If you put your rubbish in my wheelie bin, I'll kill your dog.

So, what else?

Well, we couldn't do a bit about Obama without mentioning this guy.

Mr Long-legged Mack Daddy. LAUGHTER AND APPLAUSE

That's right. That's right.

Now, in case you're new to the show,

that is Pastor Manning

and he is a lunatic.

Most people are upset with Obama because of the economy.

Have a look what he accused the President of doing.

Encouraging more black men to come out of the closet.

And so we have taken direct action

here at the Atlah World Missionary Church

by posting up on our announcement board outside these words.

LAUGHTER

That's right.

That's right. He reckons Barack Obama

has been releasing homo demons!

What? Like he's sat in the White House -

"Hmm, shall I deal with the Middle East?

"No. Release the knob-goblins!"

LAUGHTER

What the hell is a homo demon?

What, are there bright red creatures going around Washington?

-GRUFF:

-"We're taking you to hell...

-CAMP:

-"..on rollerblades!"

LAUGHTER

"Watch out, guys! I'm feeling horny!"

LAUGHTER

Homo demons(!)

Just when you think Pastor Manning can't get any crazier,

he started offering advice to black women

on how to deal with the homo demon.

Black women, let me say something to you.

You have a very hard time competing against a white homosexual male.

He's usually got money,

a white homo usually has an American Express card.

He usually has an opportunity at the theatre.

Homos love the theatre, they love to go out to dinner parties,

they love that kind of a thing.

And, as a black woman, you can't compete.

LAUGHTER

"You can't compete with that, sisters!

"Barack Obama has created theatre-loving dick pixies

"and they're gon' steal your man."

He's such a moron.

Are there really black guys in America -

"Why did I leave my woman?"

HE SNIFFS

"Cos she never took me to see Mamma Mia."

LAUGHTER

"Just once I want to see the Lion King!"

In UK politics, it's been another tough week for this guy.

Ed Miliband is facing the toughest challenge to his leadership to date.

There are reports that 20 front-bench Labour MPs

are poised to call for his resignation.

His own party want him out. There was even a...

We've actually got footage of the firework they lit outside his house.

LAUGHTER

It wasn't just Ed making the news.

Did you hear the latest about tax?

You don't need to read the letter.

I already know what MPs have been spending our money on.

One album by Dire Straits.

Trips to Saudi Arabia.

-I'm travelling to China.

-A deflated mattress.

4,000 cars.

Two passports.

-Illegal behaviour.

-Green crap.

-Ticky-tacky boxes.

-Angry Birds.

-My hair.

-Smirnoff.

-Sea food.

-Prostitutes.

-Tennis.

-Alcohol.

-Transit van.

-My mother.

-Champagne.

-Beer.

-The theatre.

-Sex.

And let's be clear...

Two million cucumbers.

LAUGHTER

-APPLAUSE

-That's right.

Now, away from politics, it's been a huge week of news.

We've had Remembrance Sunday, Ebola in Belfast.

So, with that in mind,

what was the front page of the Daily Mail on Monday?

HE SCREAMS HEADLINE

Noooooo!

Why?!

MUSIC: Adagio For Strings by Samuel Barber

Noooo!

According to the Daily Mail,

people in Britain can't make sandwiches any more.

So how did people respond?

They took the piss and bombarded the paper with pictures like this.

LAUGHTER

Others got creative.

LAUGHTER

And then one genius did this.

LAUGHTER

God bless you wonderful people.

Elsewhere this week,

now, you know Christmas is coming

when the news starts talking about this.

Yesterday, John Lewis launched its ad on social media.

It's caused a big buzz again.

It stars a young boy and his friend, Monty the penguin.

The campaign was an online worldwide trend by the end of the day.

Did you see it?

It's magical.

MUSIC: Real Love by Tom Odell

# Just like little girls and boys

# Playing with their little toys

# Seems like all we really were doing

# Was waiting for love

# Don't need to be alone

# Don't need to be alone

# It's real love

# It's real

# It's real love

# It's real

# Love

# It's real love

# It's real

# It's real love... #

HE WAILS

HE BABBLES

It's the most amazing thing I've ever seen!

Do you know the best thing? Do you know the really good thing?

We've actually got the director's cut

of what happened next with those sweet, sweet penguins.

LAUGHTER

# It's real love

# It's real

# It's real love. #

THEY HOOT AND GRUNT

LAUGHTER

APPLAUSE

HE LAUGHS

I can't believe I did that to the John Lewis advert.

LAUGHTER AND APPLAUSE

In education news, did you hear about this?

Poor behaviour in classrooms in England

is damaging children's education.

That's according to a new Ofsted report that's published today.

You're telling me!

LAUGHTER

APPLAUSE

I tell you what,

if bad behaviour makes you thick then the kid that answered this exam

must've been in a really unruly classroom.

LAUGHTER

This is even worse.

Poor kids, right?

It gets weirder.

Have you seen the latest course being offered at Harvard University?

You can now do a university course in anal sex.

I applied...

but I couldn't get in.

LAUGHTER

APPLAUSE

I accidentally slipped into the wrong lecture hall.

Apparently it's a very difficult course at first

but once you get going it's a lot easier.

The only problem - I hear there's a lot of drop-outs.

LAUGHTER

APPLAUSE

My guest this evening is an amazing wildlife cameraman.

He's the world expert on polar bears and he's travelled the world

with David Attenborough, filming incredible animals.

He's brilliant and his name is Doug Allan.

-DAVID ATTENBOROUGH:

-Capturing animal behaviour

in this extreme and sometimes hostile place

takes a very special kind of wildlife cameraman.

And, for me, they don't come much more special than Doug Allan.

HE LAUGHS

I must be mad.

I've had the extraordinary luck working with Doug over many years.

There's just no-one else who knows these frozen worlds

and their unique wildlife as he does.

APPLAUSE AND CHEERING

Thank you very much.

Doug, thank you very much for coming on the show.

-My pleasure.

-You've brought us so much joy down the years.

Like all that...

You've spent months in the Arctic,

waiting for polar bears to pop out and we get to see the edit.

Yeah, sometimes it can be, you know, weeks and weeks.

My worst one was actually,

there was snow leopards that I went after for Planet Earth.

I spent 11 weeks looking for snow leopards

and I saw one for one hour

and it was asleep for 50 minutes of that hour.

And did you think of sort of prodding it with a stick?

Going, "Come on, mate, you're on telly. Jazz it up."

I was keeping my distance. I was keeping my distance.

Are you not scared when you're with polar bears?

Cos presumably you're filming,

it's all white, the only thing you can see is a little black nose.

Well, you must admit, the one thing with a polar bear,

you can't hide from a polar bear.

That sounds like a challenge.

That's true.

And the Inuit, when you're filming, the Inuit have got this great saying.

They always say, "Just remember, it's not the polar bear you can see

"that's going to get you." So you're looking at this one

and there's one coming round the back and thinking about attacking you.

Because they do. Every year, two or three people

get eaten in the Arctic by polar bears.

What, they work in pairs?

"You go round the front, do a bit of a dance,

"they'll think they've got a good bit for telly,

"and then I'll come round and eat him."

Well, sometimes there can be two or three.

Usually they're solitary but occasionally they will come together.

And they're pretty hairy.

But, you know, that's what makes them exciting -

the fact that they might just eat you.

LAUGHTER

You sound like my brother on Tinder.

LAUGHTER

APPLAUSE

What I love about the job that you do for us,

and it's a real public service, because we can all remember the

moment of David Attenborough with the gorillas, fascinating moment,

but there's also lovely, hilarious moments like this.

Have you seen this clip before? It's wonderful. Have a look.

LAUGHTER

That is just a magnificent thing to see.

Just the time it must've taken to make the entire nation laugh

cos it does honestly look like the squirrel's going, "Oh, shit!"

LAUGHTER

-"Time to go, time to go."

-Yeah.

You know, we were, a friend of mine, Jason and I,

we were working in a hut in Svalbard and we'd been there a long time,

waiting for these polar bears to come out of the den,

and I looked and for a split second I thought,

"Somebody's got a squeegee on the windows,

"it's just like a chamois leather."

And I turned round and it was a bear's nose against the window.

HE SQUEAKS Like this.

The bear's nose was flat against the window

and we had the lights on inside and it was dark outside

and it was like the bear was there looking at us, thinking,

"What's going on in here?"

We turned round and, "Oh, there's a bear out there."

Wow. Presumably, at that moment - "Nothing to see here.

"Just two people that probably taste horrible."

Well, later that night, we chased away that bear...

-You chased a bear away?

-Well...

-That's the big part of the story!

-That's... How do you do that?

-Well, you just...

-Just clanging a pot?

No, you open the door and you go, "Go on, fuck off."

What?!

LAUGHTER AND APPLAUSE

Wow! Wow!

Could you...?

Could you have sounded any more Scottish then if you'd tried?

-SCOTTISH ACCENT:

-"Away to fuck with you, you radge bastard."

No, you had to. When you went out for a pee or something,

always you'd have a look round the corner

in case there was one sleeping.

That's not how you want to go, is it?

I'm presuming it's so cold there

that your piss becomes a blade and you can go...

LAUGHTER

What are we dealing with?

Does it come out cold or is it like "whrrr"? Cos you've worked...

-It's like little tinkly noises.

-Yeah. But you've worked -52, haven't you?

-Yeah, I was in -52.

-Can you imagine how cold that is?

That's as cold as Katie Hopkins' heart.

-That's how cold it is.

-Oh!

That is unbelievably chilly.

We were talking about David Attenborough,

who you've worked with.

Does he always speak in that wonderful way?

Cos I've got an image of him as soon as the cameras go, he's like...

-COCKNEY ACCENT:

-That went all right that did, yeah?

Let's get a couple of jars in.

There isn't a great deal of difference between him

-on camera and him in real life.

-He's incredible, isn't he?

He's always helpful, always got a story and all the rest of it.

-He's a great guy.

-There's no denying that.

You're an incredible man, and I kind of feel bad to have to do this.

I've got some questions from my brother.

Here they are. I have to apologise in advance.

Have you ever thrown a snowball at a penguin?

Well, I did want one to move just a wee bit at one point,

-so I didn't throw it at it.

-That's a yes.

That's a massive yes.

What's the biggest animal you could kill with your bare hands?

And he's put brackets here - I'm confident I could kill a pig.

Um... Well...

A small whale.

-I've got to go one better than your brother.

-Absolutely.

-I mean, he's a moron.

-And the final question...

Did you say he's a moron?

He absolutely is.

You can read the last one if you want.

I'm slightly dancing around it

because I know I have to say it out loud

because I told him I would.

What's the weirdest place you've ever had a shit?

Well, we were camped on this...

Do tell.

We were camped very close to this cliff.

Please tell me there's going to be a goat at the bottom?

Son of a bitch!

You know, my ex wife...

LAUGHTER

She was at the bottom of the cliff.

We were out filming in a helicopter and we'd been out for a while.

This story is getting better and better.

We were out in the helicopter and you wear these survival suits.

We'd been out for a good long time looking for seals.

Didn't see any. So the pilot said, "We've got to go back.

"The weather's going down."

Sue said, "I've got to...

"Well, let me go and just have a pee before I get back in the helicopter."

She went round the back, dropped her survival suit. Had a pee.

Came back on. I was looking at her from the other seat.

As she was about to get in, she put on her survival suit

and then pulled the hood up over her and I looked over...

It was like this thing dripping down.

She realised and I realised that what she'd done was actually

peed in her suit and pulled it over.

-I just had time to grab a quick photograph.

-Oh, nice!

Well, that was an absolute delight. It was a pleasure to meet you.

-Thank you so much for coming on the show.

-Thank you.

Now this is wonderfully mad.

Have you heard the latest news about bees?

Gardeners should use their lawn mowers less often to protect

Britain's bees and other pollinating insects.

That is the advice from the Environment Secretary.

In a speech today, Elizabeth Truss will say -

bees should be treated like Premier League footballers.

Apparently bees should be treated like footballers.

What? We should stand on the lawn and sing at them?

# He's black and he is yellow

# He mumbles cos he's mellow

# He's a freaky looking fellow

# The humble bumble bee

# Buzz, buzz. #

I'll tell you what,

if we're treating bees like footballers, does that mean

nature programmes are going to start looking like this...

And there he goes. He's flying in.

Ooh, that is unbelievable pollination.

And he's...!

Oh, shit.

BURP

That was horrible.

You were like, "Oh, that was...! Oh, no, he's dead."

Mind you, if you think treating bees like footballers is strange,

it's got nothing on the latest technology being used on chickens.

How insane is that?!

They're fitting battery hens with virtual reality,

so they think they're free-range!

I've got an idea how you could make them feel free-range -

open the fucking cage!

LAUGHTER

CHEERING AND APPLAUSE

Imagine the chickens putting it on. Just like,

"Oh, this is incredible! I'm running in an open field.

"I'm so lucky."

System error.

"Oh, no, I'm dancing in my own shit."

It's crazy.

It's like some kind... It's like some kind of chicken Matrix.

He is The One!

CLUCKS

From...from the chicken Matrix to cat cuddling.

If you're looking for a job, this could be for you.

Now an animal rescue centre on Tyneside has advertised

what some might consider to be their dream job - cuddling cats.

Volunteers are invited to spend just an hour or two

stroking and cuddling the little creatures.

Ah-h!

Cuddling cats is a dream job? It depends on the cat.

Hey, Bon Jovi, on a scale of one to ten , how much do you love me?

GROWLS

All right, Bon Jovi?

YOWLS

I love you.

YOWLS

Good morning, sunshine.

YOWLS

Hello, Bon Jovi. High-five. Come on. High-five, Bon Jovi. High-five.

YOWLS

Aggh! Bon Jovi, you're so cute.

YOWLS Aggh!

Finally tonight, I've got a lovely story about friendship and surfing.

Had a new car that had power steering and basically just over corrected.

I was with a friend, talking, and I got ejected out of the car,

fell on some rocks and straightaway I could tell my friend,

"Oh, I can't move my legs."

Doctor said, "T4 complete paraplegia."

Just got to relearn to live a different way.

Was pretty hard at the beginning to get back.

I had six months in Adelaide in rehab and I was quite good then,

but going back to Elliston was difficult because suddenly there were

all these things that I loved doing that I couldn't do any more.

I just used to watch my sons a lot, like, you know,

drive the car as close as I could and watch them surf.

I'm good friends with Tom and Morgan, her sons.

When we first came up with the idea, you know, I've always thought of,

"Oh, I wonder if she could go tandem on this.

"I wonder if she could surf on the same board.

"Well, I could duct tape you to my back and surf.

"I don't see why I couldn't."

He just put me on his back and he could get up.

The challenge of getting her on my back and, I was like,

"If I can do what I normally do with an extra 40 kilos,

"pretty good challenge, really."

I remember just looking up and just the colour, the sound.

It was like being part of everything, being part of the water.

I can't even find words to explain it.

Because I can't...

I can't feel my body, I feel like I'm moving cos being taped

right there at the same height, I can picture it's me.

It's really shown me, yeah, you can still have a dream

and things are possible.

-APPLAUSE

-What a dude.

Thanks very much for watching Good News. Good night, my friends.

Farewell. Bye-bye.