My confidence is in need of boosting.
There was a question on a recent Tipping Point on ITV.
The question was, who's the long-standing editor of Private Eye?
And the contestant said Ian Himmler.
My name is Chloe Petts.
I am in need of confidence because I recently went on a TV quiz
and called Ian Hislop Ian Himmler.
I was recently watching an episode of Tipping Point...
..and they asked the question,
who is the other team captain other than Ian Himmler?
And somebody said, Paul Hitler.
This programme contains some strong language
CHEERING AND APPLAUSE
Good evening. Welcome to
I'm Martin Clunes.
In the news this week - in Essex, a traumatised customer decides
to express himself creatively to deal with his experiences
of the Virgin Media Helpline.
On a visit to Battersea Dogs and Cats Home,
there's an unfortunate mix up
with the used and unused cat litter tubs.
And on a Labour Party awayday, Rachel Reeves wins a game
of political Stars In Their Eyes with a very good impression
of Ed Miliband.
On Ian's team tonight is the BBC's chief international correspondent,
who often has to pull out of engagements at the last minute
in order to report on global conflicts.
So it's a good job
the world is such a peaceful and happy place at the moment.
Please welcome Lyse Doucet.
On Paul's team tonight is a comedian
and Crystal Palace season ticket holder
who says she likes letting out her anger at football matches,
being part of a crowd of furious men shouting abuse at the players.
So pretty much the same reason Ian goes to Millwall.
Please welcome Chloe Petts.
We begin with the bigger news stories of the week.
Paul and Chloe, have a look at this.
Mayoral elections and local elections are happening.
First person being sent to Rwanda.
Yousaf channelling his inner Michael Owen,
playing a 13-year-old there. Yeah.
That's probably just something... I don't know what that is.
So is that the right answer?
I think the woman's holding up a list of the candidates,
just to show the punters that they really are this bad.
With disaster looming, what do some Tories think would be a good idea?
Change in leadership? Yes.
Bring in Penny. Penny Mordaunt.
Yes. A lot of talk about Penny Mordaunt.
How do we know that she might be interested, though?
Have they got a new lettuce out?
Just a sort of pre-emptive one.
I think, I personally think we should have a constant lettuce going
rather than getting them in for the new leaders.
And ironically, Constant Lettuce sounds like the name of a Tory MP.
According to a source in The Telegraph...
And if there's an operation supporting Penny,
what else must there be?
What was the unpleasant surprise for Rishi Sunak last week?
He found out he was still Prime Minister.
A defection?
ALL: Oh!!
Yes, defection.
It was in the news and everything.
Yes, it was... Yeah.
Tory MP defected to Labour.
He was a doctor and he was scandalised
by the Conservatives' lack of concern and investment into the NHS.
Yeah. That's right, yeah. Yeah.
When Labour talked him round he said...
Yep, he fell for it.
I love the idea that he said, "This government just really hasn't
"tackled any of these issues."
And we thought, "You've been in it."
Rishi Sunak's not giving up.
He's got his crack social media team to work.
Do you know what they've been doing?
They put out a video to explain
the National Insurance bonus to us all.
We're all going to get 900 quid.
So they put out a video. Have we got it? Shall we have a look?
We've got it, yeah. Oh, boy, yeah.
What?
It's a lot to pay for a cup of coffee, though.
This is what's known as a TikTok trend where people put milk
into cups of coffee that have messages written on them.
No wonder the Russians hate us.
But what's the really good news
as far as Rishi Sunak's concerned?
The first immigrant has been flown to Rwanda, and just before...
Volunteered. Volunteered.
Volunteered to go? Yes. Paid. £3,000.
Yes. I don't think that's volunteering.
I think he's getting expenses.
So, what? That's just for the first month.
Yeah. And then he has to do Airbnb.
I can just see a wave of 18-year-olds pretending to be
failed asylum seekers, so they get paid £3,000
to go on a gap year to Rwanda.
I would have taken a Jagerbomb to go on a gap year to Rwanda!
Everyone's meant to be very, very excited because we've got
one person to go to Rwanda.
Have you ever been to Rwanda, Lyse?
I haven't, but it's actually a very beautiful country.
Is it? Yeah. Is it safe?
Well, Britain has decided it's safe, so I guess it must be.
It's why they didn't send you.
Well... Do you turn up at countries and people in the airport go,
"Oh, shit. It's Lyse Doucet!"?
"Incoming!"
Actually, did you see how people in the audience started
leaving when I showed up?
I haven't been to Rwanda, but I have been to Swindon and...
Yes.
Was that three grand as well?
But I just think, tell the asylum seekers that they'll be going there
and that's enough of a deterrent. LYSE: Yes.
I mean, the ones who have come in are now going off to Ireland
because we've got this porous border which everyone insisted on.
3,500 have gone across the border.
So if I had £1 for every one that crossed the border,
then I could send someone to Rwanda.
It's working!
And staying with abroad,
what's happening in Scotland?
The First Minister has resigned.
He's had to resign because he annoyed the Greens
and then he didn't realise how annoyed the Greens were
and he said, "Well, I didn't mean it."
And they said, "You did," and so he had to leave.
Yeah. That's the latest political analysis from me.
And it's the leader of a country has had to resign
because he's useless. I mean, that's not going to be a good precedent.
Terrible trend.
It is as complicated as Paul said.
The BBC immediately sent Chris Mason up to Edinburgh to explain
what's going on, but he seemed more interested in just sort of
popping in and out of the shot like a cheeky little news goblin.
Have a look at this.
And that is why its political rivals are seizing this moment.
Ah, yes, the general election.
This would be a sticky moment at any time,
and its consequences will be felt here in Scotland and beyond.
And we wish that producer all the best in his next job.
So who is going to take over and shepherd the...? John Sweeney.
Is it Swinney or Sweeney? Swinney.
Swinney. Swinney. Oh, Swinney.
It could be John Swinney. Are we sure?
Well, they have to find someone in the SNP who hasn't been arrested.
So that really reduces the number of candidates.
Yes. It could be Kate Forbes.
She hasn't been arrested. No, but she's pulled out of the race.
Yes. She pulled out? Yes. Yes.
She takes a hardline view on sexuality and is...
I think we know what their position is.
APPLAUSE
Oh!
Oh, yes.
I thought you were going to do the pulled out joke.
Well, it was there. I just backed away from it.
Anyway, it's...
It's a shame for Humza Yousaf because it all started out so well.
Oh.
Yeah. I think it was quite refreshing that he did something
that he considered to be wrong and regrets
and then stood down graciously.
So you like the way he left?
Yeah, I love the way he left. It was with grace and dignity,
and we haven't had that for a long time.
And I like the way that he sort of looked over at his family
and thanked them as he cried.
And obviously, Johnson wouldn't have been able to do that
cos there wouldn't have been a room big enough in Westminster.
On the subject of grace and dignity,
how's Liz Truss's book doing?
Better than we hoped.
Yep. It's at number 70 in the bestseller list.
It sold 2,000 in its first week.
Can you name any of the 69 books ahead of it in the bestseller list?
Is it the Air Fryer book? It is!
And...
That only happened because Ian admitted on Have I Got News For You
that he had the book and he read it.
Oh, so it's my fault?! Yeah.
#justsaying.
What's Boris Johnson been up to this week?
Who cares?
APPLAUSE
Oh, he's been... Thank you very much. Thank you.
Thank you. Thank you very much. Thank you.
Boris and Carrie,
they celebrated their son's four...firth birthday.
Which birthday? Four...
His son's 44?! How did he manage that?
Well, his oldest is, must be.
No, it was his son's - him and Carrie's son's fourth birthday.
All sorts of entertainment on offer, including someone
who spent the whole afternoon trying to amuse people
in a foam rubber dinosaur costume.
They all said it was nice of Nadine to help out.
So would you like to see the disgraced former Prime Minister
Boris Johnson in hell?
Yes. AUDIENCE: Yes!
Someone on Twitter has been finding a depiction of Boris Johnson
in Hieronymus Bosch paintings. Here he is in hell.
So this has been a busy week in politics.
This week was the very first time that the Government has relocated
a failed asylum seeker to a third country.
According to The Telegraph...
Ministers! That's good enough for me.
And following the relocation of the first asylum seeker
from the UK, a politician from Rwanda's opposition claimed
that their government...
Good news. Something else we've got in common.
Humza Yousaf's disastrous fallout with the Green Party
was described by The Telegraph as...
To which Liz Truss responded, "Hold my pint."
APPLAUSE
Ian and Lyse, take a look at this.
That's Columbia University.
Tented encampments.
The protests.
The revolution will be catered.
It's an extraordinary moment in the United States
in student politics.
People are talking about comparisons to the Vietnam War,
where students became very politicised.
But there are also Jewish groups on campus who are worried
about their security.
So, unlike the Vietnam War, there's different points of view.
And it's quite astonishing, the way it's gone from New York
to California, then to Utah, Texas.
It's really spreading across the United States
and will soon be coming to a university near you.
Yeah, but the weather's not so good, is it? Yes.
And it's all connected to the Gaza war.
Student activists want companies to stop doing business with Israel
and want their colleges, many with massive endowments,
to stop investing in those companies.
The Republicans are absolutely thrilled because they're all
Democrat students protesting against their own President,
which sort of makes Trump look logical.
They were in the building for over 24 hours, at which point
the police were called on.
And here's a number of NYPD officers storming the building...
..quite slowly.
Aggressive use of torches.
CROWD CHANTING
LAUGHTER
How has Lord Cameron of Chipping Norton described the terms
of a planned ceasefire agreement?
He's described it as very generous.
And in other words, Hamas should accept it now,
release all the hostages and get aid into Gaza.
And Netanyahu, who's been very helpful,
defining what a ceasefire is, said that
if there is a ceasefire, they'll still attack...
..southern Gaza.
And I always thought, if there was a ceasefire,
that meant you ceased firing.
But I've misunderstood this.
And Netanyahu's made it pretty clear.
Temporary ceasefire. Temporary ceasefire.
Truce. Truce.
I'll tell you what I think we need now is a quick round up of
good news stories from around the world.
CHEERING
Fingers on buzzers. Let's have a good news quiz.
Excellent.
Why have I got buttons?
I don't know. Press them and see what happens.
LOUD BUZZER PAUL SHRIEKS
BUZZER
God, this is extraordinary.
It's like finding out Horizon had remote access to the Post Offices.
APPLAUSE
Japan Airlines has successfully reduced its carbon emissions. How?
Grounding all planes.
Making them run on nut oil.
Chip fat.
Don't call me Chip Fat.
Didn't you once do an adaptation of Goodbye, Mr Chip Fat?
Oh, yeah. It was a long time ago. Long time ago.
They're renting clothes to travellers
so they don't have to pack any,
thus drastically reducing the weight of their luggage.
You can rent up to eight outfits for two weeks
and then return them. That's good news. Yeah.
Not if you're the person that's going on the third week. Yeah!
According to these trousers, it was a bumpy ride.
MARTIN LAUGHS
You made that bit up yourself!
CHLOE LAUGHS
And what's the good news linking daffodils and cows?
Come on, Ian!
Wordsworth!
If you hold a daffodil under a cow's chin, does it make butter?
No, that's a buttercup.
You git!
There's a chemical extracted from daffodils
and then fed to cows that reduces the amount of methane
burped out by a staggering 30%.
The extract is called haeman...
Haem... Anyway, it's really good news.
APPLAUSE
Yes.
And finally... Yeah? Yes?
..in the Good News quiz, you are no longer allowed to do what
with a balloon in Florida?
AUDIENCE MEMBER LAUGHS
Not that, Madam.
Tie it to a deckchair.
You are not allowed to deliberately release it.
Good news, because ingesting even a small part of a balloon
can kill sea birds or other marine life.
So no more intentional balloon releasing in Florida.
That's fantastic news at the end of the Good News quiz!
APPLAUSE
Whew!
Staying in the United States,
what might happen to Donald Trump this week?
Well, he's on trial at the moment, isn't he?
Keeps falling asleep during the trial.
But that's because he's anti-woke.
Ha!
APPLAUSE
He's trying to break the gagging order.
Oh, the $9,000.
Yes. He's done it nine times.
Hmm. At the moment.
There could be more... But after a point,
you can actually incarcerate someone.
That's what I'm... Yeah.
So he might go to jail.
But, apparently, they're trying all these tricks.
President Trump is sitting there all by himself,
so they got people to sit with him,
and then they put a whole bunch of documents
and they gave him a marker so that he could start marking the documents
so that he looks like he's really, really paying attention.
Yeah. Yeah. Some colouring in. Yeah.
This is the latest front to open up in the Israel-Gaza conflict.
Protesters occupied Hamilton Hall at Columbia University,
which was symbolic as, according to the Times,
the same thing happened there in 1968...
The only difference being that, right now, Agent Orange
is sat all day in a New York courthouse.
APPLAUSE
In recent weeks, staff have been concerned that Joe Biden's
slow shuffling round the presidential garden
is making him appear old and doddery.
In fact, he looks so frail that Captain Tom's daughter
has started building a spa on the White House lawn.
APPLAUSE
Lyse, it's a little-known fact about you that you used to play
a certain winter sport to a very high level, didn't you?
Curling. Curling. Hurling? Curling.
Yeah. Well, it also brings us neatly to Round Two,
which is the curling-o-meter of news. Oh, really? Oh, yeah.
Fingers on buzzers.
Here comes the first one.
LYSE: Oh.
APPLAUSE
Keep going, keep going!
Oh, this is the strange object,
which is a Roman antiquity, which was recently dug up,
but they don't know what it is.
It's a dodecahedron.
Oh, dodecahedron. Yeah. Yeah.
It's a curling puck before they got good.
It means it's got 12 sides. Yes.
And 33 of these dodecahedrons have been found in the UK,
but this is one of the largest at 8cm,
discovered by a member of a local history society in the village
of Norton Disney near Lincoln.
It's like Euro Disney, but less shit.
The head of the Norton Disney History and Archaeology Group,
Richard Parker,
Nosey to his friends,
he told the BBC that it was for...
In other ancient news, what was discovered this week
that revealed Plato's last words?
It was a scroll in Pompeii.
This is the sort of topical news quiz I like. Yeah.
And there are a lot of burnt manuscripts,
but they've developed a new sort of laser-reading technique
and they can tell what's on the scrolls. Ah.
It's got Plato's last words,
in which he's complaining about someone playing the flute.
So you think, "Gosh, I wonder if Plato had something
"really profound to say before he died,"
and it was, "That girl's useless at the flute."
Does anyone recall the singer and actor Adam Faith's
poignant last words? Yes.
Yes. He said, "There's a lot of shit on Channel 5, isn't there?"
APPLAUSE
But...
..I think you'll find that output
has improved considerably since then.
So this is the news that a dodecahedron discovered
near Lincoln is confusing Roman scholars.
If you're unsure what possible purpose it could serve,
Lincoln is an administrative centre in the north of England.
The artefact was found in the village of Norton Disney,
although, if you missed the story, you can always catch up with it
on the local news channel, Norton Disney +1.
According to a newly unearthed papyrus scroll from Herculaneum...
So it's quite possible that he killed himself.
Fingers on buzzers, teams. Here we go.
Keep going. Keep going!
Keep going.
Oh, well done.
That was a tough one.
This is the new stadium in Manchester, the Co-op Live stadium,
as it's usefully labelled on the outside,
which has still not managed to open properly.
They've sort of had to cancel many shows.
They were about to open up.
Some people started coming in and a piece of air conditioning
fell out of the ceiling onto the floor,
and so everybody had to go home.
This is 25,000 people capacity,
but only six people have been let in so far.
And they went in to fix the air conditioning.
Yes.
Whose performance became the latest casualty
of the arena's technical problems?
A Boogie With A Hoodie?
Absolutely. Yeah. Yeah.
APPLAUSE
And here's the Today programme on Radio 4 naming him.
The new Co-op Live Arena in Manchester has apologised
after postponing its opening for the third time.
The announcement was made last night as people were queuing
outside to see the American rapper
A Boogie Wit Da Hoodie.
They confirmed there was a problem during the sound check
when people listening could understand every word he was saying.
According to the Mail, cancelled acts at the Co-op Live Arena
included Peter Kay and Olivia Rodrigo,
and if that wasn't bad enough...
After a concert by American rapper
A Boogie Wit Da Hoodie was cancelled...
I went a bit Scottish there, didn't I?
SCOTTISH ACCENT: A Boogie With A Hoodie.
I think just say it with your normal voice. Yeah.
I thought I was.
A Boogie Wit Da Hoodie.
A Boogie... Oh, no, it is hard. Yeah. Yeah.
A Boogie With A Hoodie.
No, no, "Da Hoodie".
After a concert by American rapper
A Boogie Wit Da Hoodie was cancelled...
..footage showed a digger and a dumper outside the venue.
He's a bit early.
A Digger And A Dumper's concert's next week.
Other stars set to play at the venue include Take That and Eric Clapton.
The Village People say they've also been approached
as long as they bring along
the bloke with the hard hat and the toolbelt.
Just time now for the Missing Words Round,
which this week features as its guest publication
Guinea Pig Magazine.
Or, as it's known in Peru, the menu.
And we start with...
It starts making faces behind your back. LYSE: Yeah.
CHLOE: It's loading the dishwasher more loudly than usual.
Yep. This is from a full-length article in Guinea Pig Magazine
all about how to keep your favourite fluffy pet
feeling relaxed and happy.
Now, that, Lyse, that's proper journalism.
Next.
She was one of the first, actually,
to do a live television broadcast when she was in Canada.
What, Queen Elizabeth I?!
Oh, sorry...
No, no, no!
Wrong Queen Elizabeth!
Queen Elizabeth was one of the first people to own a guinea pig.
Yes! Come on!
Oh, bravo!
Next.
Two half-dolphins.
CHLOE: False eyelash.
It's a catfish.
LYSE: Oh. Let's have a look.
LYSE: Wow.
That might just be a little bloke.
That's going to make the best Tinder profile picture that anyone has had.
OK, next.
You can re-experience the thrill of the Liz Truss government...
APPLAUSE
..with just two toilet rolls.
You can create an adventure playground for your guinea pig.
An exercise park.
I'm close, aren't I?
You're very close. Go on, then.
And if it turns out that they were the last two toilet rolls,
you'll just have to use the guinea pig.
Finally...
Launching missile attack on Women's Institute.
Misunderstanding the purpose of a needle exchange. Yes.
APPLAUSE
Oh. CHLOE: Ooh!
The knitting club in Shepton Mallet in Somerset received complaints
about their display of naked figures and were forced to cover them up.
That really is Village People.
The policeman on his left has got his genitals exposed,
so he's presumably from the Met.
The bloke next to him is obviously a Tory MP.
So the final scores are -
Ian and Lyse have 4,
Paul and Chloe have a massive 6. Ohh!
Well done.
But before we go, there's just time for the caption competition.
Ian and Lyse have this.
Oh, you don't look anything like your profile picture.
And Paul and Chloe, you have this.
Passenger complains of long wait between buses.
And why is it being sponsored by an Irish rock band?
U2. U2.
In case people are thinking,
"I can't think of an Irish rock band called Uxbridge."
On which note, we say thank you to our panellists,
Ian Hislop and Lyse Doucet, Paul Merton and Chloe Petts.
And I leave you with news that, in Islington,
a middle-aged man is disappointed that the one day
he's ready to play five-a-side football, everybody else cancels.
In Reading, a man arrested for selling stolen watches
in the big Tesco car park
says he regrets using a reversible coat.
And at a photo op in Norwich, Rishi Sunak tries hard
to conceal the fact that there's been
a terrible accident with a clamp.
Goodnight.
APPLAUSE