This programme contains some strong language.
CHEERING AND APPLAUSE
Good evening. Welcome to Have I Got News For You.
I'm Martin Lewis. In the news this week...
James May has rebuffed claims that the latest series
of The Grand Tour has run out of steam.
Ahead of next week's local elections,
the Reform Party campaign bus pulls into Blackpool.
And on Gardeners' World, Monty Don realises it may be time
to clean off the slimy green algae from his decking.
On Ian's team tonight is a comedian whose latest show
is about his love of the US rock band Nine Inch Nails,
which has attracted a lot of their fans to his gigs.
Sadly, though, half of them are hammered.
Please welcome Ignacio Lopez!
CHEERING AND APPLAUSE
On Paul's team tonight is a presenter who hosts a podcast
with Robert Peston called The Rest Is Money.
Other money based podcasts are available.
LAUGHTER
And better!
Please welcome Steph McGovern.
CHEERING AND APPLAUSE
but of course, if you ditch and switch later,
you could save £6 a month!
We begin with the bigger news stories of the week.
Ian and Ignacio,
have a look at this.
IGNACIO: That's the last package holiday I went on.
That's the bill.
Just gone through.
That's Fishy Rishi on a boat, there. That's great. Yeah.
And that's him looking at the camera.
Thinking, "Oh, no, it's the public!
"I might have to meet them."
Yes, this is Rishi Sunak's master plan to win the next election
by appealing to traditional Tory voters,
and it's falling into place perfectly.
So let's just go through it.
What is step one of Rishi's masterplan here?
Lose election.
This is the Safety of Rwanda Bill. It's passed, tick.
Now they've finally got it through,
so this policy that nobody seems to want
and won't happen anyway, is officially now going to happen.
They tried to do this before.
I think they had 12 people on the flight heading over there,
and I think it's a terrible policy,
but that would have been great legroom.
Yeah. He's been very careful with his words.
He said the flights will definitely take off
but he's not indicated whether there'll be anybody on them. Yeah.
They originally said it'll be spring,
and we seem to have moved spring to July now.
The money, I thought was the best thing in this.
It's £600 million total,
which is £2 million per person on the flight.
I mean, that's more than Ryanair, isn't it?
Ryanair are trying to get in on the act on this, as well, aren't they?
Because Michael O'Leary has come out and said
that he'd be happy to quote for their flights.
Surely these people have suffered enough! Oh, yeah, there is that!
Because, you know, they'll get the bill and then it'll be like,
"Oh, it's going to be extra if you want to breathe on the flight."
Before you know, it'll be even bigger than that.
When he was Chancellor, he said this is a terrible idea,
so he's now putting through a bill that he didn't want anyway,
was set up by Boris Johnson, remember him?
LAUGHTER, SOME BOOING
So much of what he did went so well!
LAUGHTER
And he thinks this is going to save him from defeat in the election.
When they picked this place, though,
couldn't they have picked any country that,
when you type it into Google, doesn't auto correct
to genocide immediately after it?
And, embarrassingly,
we have accepted asylum seekers in Britain from Rwanda
on the grounds that it's not safe...
..there for them, so presumably,
if we fly them over on the plane,
then they can then apply for asylum in Britain and then come back again.
Perhaps the plane should be on, like, a bungee rope
so it just flies over then... goes back.
That'd be the way to do it.
I understand these things are complicated, which is why
the BBC invested a substantial portion of licence fee money
in a new explanatory analysis tool,
which was presented by Chris Mason.
But hang on - there are some Parliamentary shenanigans first.
When a planned new law is very nearly there,
here at Westminster,
but there is a disagreement
between the House of Commons and the House of Lords,
we enter something known here as ping-pong,
when the idea pings and pongs between the Commons and Lords,
potentially over and over again, until they agree.
It's difficult to understand the logic
of pointing at a very small scale building
of the building that you're sitting in front of.
So how is Rishi Sunak preparing to deal with the expected
legal challenges to this?
He said, "I've got judges waiting, I've got 25 courts."
I mean, given that the rest of the judicial system has more or less
come to a standstill, you can't get tried for anything,
people are waiting, they've got three-year waits
for really serious crimes, and then for this,
suddenly we've got judges, we've got courts, we've got aeroplanes.
Are you saying that normally you can't buy a judge for love or money?
Sunak also said there would be 500...
Is he "sun-ak"?
Why is he suddenly Rishi "Sun-ak"? Has he...?
Has he changed his name to be more sunshine and fun?
Rishi also said... Yeah.
..there would be...
..to accompany detainees on their trip to Rwanda.
What do you think they're trained in?
Empathy.
LAUGHTER
Distributing packets of complimentary nuts?
Are they security specialists?
Are they members of G4S?
Or are they security specialists? Yeah, I think...
Back to Rishi's traditional Tory values master plan.
What's phase two?
LAUGHTER
Are we releasing killer whales into the Channel?
Back to basic Tory values.
Oh! Sex in the office with drugs.
LAUGHTER AND APPLAUSE
And phase three?
What do you know about sex in the office with drugs, Ian?
"More Ovaltine, my dear?"
I'm thinking more of the, you know, well, the defence of the nation.
We're increasing the defence budget.
Yeah, by getting rid of some of the civil service.
By deporting them to Rwanda.
Yeah, he's announced on a visit to Poland
an increase in defence spending from 2% to 2.5% of GDP.
And this announcement was of course intended to wrong-foot Labour,
so how has Keir Starmer been fighting back?
By telling us all we need to be really patriotic. Yeah.
I'm thinking more for the moment about the big announcement
this week. Oh, the railways.
No, he said he'd be prepared to press the nuclear button.
If it made the railways run on time.
With a nuclear explosion,
you could get from Paddington to Leeds in ten minutes.
Don't buy a return.
Is that what you were thinking of? No, I was more
re-nationalise the railways. That's where we were going,
roughly, on that particular one. Oh, OK. And what I'd like to...
How do you think that's going to affect normal travellers?
It'll make things better, I would guess.
I'm genuinely in credit on my, you know Delay Repay? Yeah.
Like, cos every single train is always late.
You can't rely on it, can you? Labour want to bring in
automatic Delay Repay, though, don't they? Where you don't have to
do anything and then you get it. IGNACIO: Sounds good.
They do want to bring that in, although how that would work
with cash-based purchases, I don't know.
Well, when was the last time anyone used cash?
Lots of older people still use cash...
Yeah, they've got to bribe the Tories somehow!
They've got to give them, you know...
LAUGHTER AND APPLAUSE
You mentioned earlier that Keir Starmer
also wanted to be patriotic. How did he do that?
He wrote to all the Labour candidates for the upcoming election
and said they needed to be dead enthusiastic
and wave the flag and all of that kind of thing.
St George's Day is not St Patrick's Day, is it? Come on.
There's no downing Guinness, wearing a leprechaun hat,
getting jiggy in the local Irish centre, you know,
there's none of that, is there?
Well, if you come to our village, you know...
Tell me, what you do in your village, Ian?
There's a huge amount of cider, Morris dancing...
I recite the complete works of Shakespeare...
And there's a re-enactment of the repeal of the Corn Laws.
Did you see Lee Anderthal, as I always...? No.
He did a thing about St George's Day and he said how
he was incredibly proud, and he had St George's cufflinks,
and he said, "This is one in the eye for all you lot of avocado eating
"Palestinian flag wavers." And I was thinking,
St George came from Palestine!
LAUGHTER AND APPLAUSE
He kicked off about the England shirts
and the back of the collar being purple, and saying,
"You don't change it purple! How dare you, you know,
"disrespect the flag by changing it and making it purple?"
I was thinking, I grew up in Majorca, right,
I saw plenty of St George's tattoos turn purple in my time!
LAUGHTER AND APPLAUSE
But he isn't the only one.
Keir Starmer tried to reclaim the flag of St George
on St George's Day, claiming that Labour is...
..while wearing trainers.
There you go.
Now, I'm sure you've spotted, Ian, they're Gazelles rather than Sambas.
Keir Starmer explained that... They're what?!
Ian, have you ever worn trainers before?
How dare you?
Keir Starmer explained that he might be asked to kick a football
for a publicity stunt, so he didn't want to wear his normal footwear,
which is understandable.
Can we close in on that? Can we have a look at his feet?
They look a bit like horses' hooves, don't they?
He's not a centaur, is he?
They've kept that quiet! Never mind Angela Rayner, half man, half horse?
According to the latest Gallup poll... Gallop poll! Yes!
LAUGHTER AND APPLAUSE Gallup poll... Gallop poll! Yes!
Brilliant! Gallup poll... Gallop poll! Yes!
Shall we move on with a little bit of Irish politics now? Yes!
Are you aware of the factions within the Irish National Party?
No.
LAUGHTER
Well, nationalist organisations tend to generate
a lot of acrimonious in-fighting.
Here is the new party leader, Justin Barrett, explaining
why he had appointed his rival, James Reynolds, as his deputy.
As he referred to himself, I had no respect for his intellect.
No, I did not!
I have never had any respect for Mr Reynolds's intellect.
And you say to yourself,
"Well, if you didn't have any respect for Mr Reynolds's intellect,
"why did you make him the deputy leader of the National Party?"
Precisely because I had no respect for his intellectual ability,
and therefore thought he was a malleable individual,
and therefore thought in practical terms
that control of the National Party was entirely in my hands
and would continue to be entirely in my hands and was entirely safe
because James Reynolds was too stupid to do anything about it!
LAUGHTER AND APPLAUSE
Refreshing burst of honesty there. STEPH: Yeah.
He looks like he should be a commentator on horse racing
or something, doesn't he? With that...that animation!
This is the news that in a surprising historical reversal,
Britain is about to start rounding people up against their will
and shipping them to Africa.
The Rwandan scheme is proving quite expensive.
It's currently projected to have a base cost of
But on top of that, there is an additional charge of...
Although I've looked into this
and they can get £25 off that if they use a voucher code.
I've managed to source this one.
LAUGHTER
At the start of the week, Rishi Sunak insisted...
Who is he? Who is he?
Who is Rishi "Sun-ak"?
I think he's a cross between a sunbed and an anorak.
Quite a claim. May I suggest, Prime Minister,
you ensure they are ATOL protected,
you pay for it on a credit card so you have Section 75 protection,
and of course, you pay it off
IN full!
AUDIENCE: In full!
Bit weak.
Why are they doing that?
I think he's trying to turn it into a catchphrase.
I've had that the last 15 years, it works. Just on a different channel.
AUDIENCE: Oooh!
Which one's that?
He can't remember.
Paul and Steph, take a look at this.
Ah, yes, this is the lovely story,
the little boy and the seagulls.
Oh, that was me on a hen do! Was it? Yeah.
There's the natural enemy, the OAP and the seagull.
Yes, there's a boy who's won a competition
for impersonating seagulls,
and he does a very, very good impersonation of a seagull.
Indeed, quite correct. That's right, yeah.
What is it, just the sound? STEPH: Yeah.
No, he doesn't fly around the room!
What you mean, is it just the sound? You said it was impressive!
But he dresses up as a seagull. Yeah, he flies out the window
and nicks people's chips from a height of ten feet.
He dresses up as the seagull as well, though. Yeah. Does he?
Yeah, he does, yeah. It's not just any old competition. No, exactly.
He won the European finals! European... Yeah.
I'm impressed! Yeah!
What have you ever won, Ian? Come on!
Yeah, you're right.
Hearts of the nation! Oh, yeah.
In a raffle.
Cooper Wallace beat 56 other competitors in the...
Yeah. Let's listen.
Three, two, one.
MAKES SEAGULL IMPRESSION
CROWD CHEERS
Cooper!
Can you do other emotions?
Um, a seagull that is hungry? Yeah.
MAKES SEAGULL IMPRESSION
INDISTINCT CHATTER
Now, the jury...
17, 19, 19, 18 and 19!
CHEERING
That is brilliant. Very good. APPLAUSE
Do any of you do any impressions at all?
I can do The Godfather, actually. The Godfather? Yeah. OK. Yeah.
AS CORLEONE: "You come here on the day of my daughter's funeral."
Funeral?!
Oh, yeah, it was a wedding! I love the remix of the movie!
APPLAUSE
Here's one for you they told me to play.
The name's Bond. Bank and Building Society Bond.
And if you like your investments neither shaken nor shtirred,
I'm licensed to bill!
Is that you? Let's move on.
LAUGHTER
What was that for? Let's move on.
It looks like a hostage video.
Staying with children,
what has turned 100 this week?
Oh, the BBC's programmes for children,
educational programmes for children. It was first started in, er,
well, it must have been 1924. It was indeed.
Here is one of the earliest programmes to be broadcast. Yes.
A preposition is a word composed of "position" and "pre" -
which means before. In other words, pre-position.
Prepositions are in a position before the nouns.
Now, all these prepositions are at the end of the sentences.
There are pedantic grammarians who sometimes object to this
but there's no harm, really, in using prepositions
at the end of a sentence in order to make conversation.
Is that you, Ian?
LAUGHTER AND APPLAUSE
Could be. Could be.
POSH ACCENT: Well, I think the diction's a little too casual.
LAUGHTER
This is the news that nine-year-old Brit Cooper Wallace
has won the European Seagull Screeching Championships.
Cooper Wallace's total immersion in the role of a seagull
wowed the panel, leading him to a score of...
..dropping two of those marks for eating a cigarette butt
and a further six for shitting on a judge's head.
The BBC is, of course, looking to attract a younger audience
and what's cooler than a money saving expert
hosting a topical news quiz? Hey, kids, put down that vape
and let's jam on the fact that since the 6th of April
you can now open two cash ISAs in a tax year and not just one.
Can you really? Yes.
LAUGHTER AND APPLAUSE
Still to a maximum of £20,000, though. Ugh!
But you can have them in separate places.
We'll talk later. Yeah.
And now to round two. It's time for the Randomizer Of News.
Fingers on the buzzers, teams.
JAUNTY JINGLE
BELL
That is the horrifying thing I see
when I've taken the wrong medication before I go to sleep.
Is it Joe Biden? It is indeed. He's managed to pass a bill through
to give more funding aid to Ukraine.
Yeah, this is the news that a $61 billion US aid package to Ukraine
has finally been agreed. Why has it taken so long to be signed off?
He lost his cheque book.
The Republicans didn't want it, did they?
So he had to sort of win them over.
112 Republicans voted against the aid package.
Let's go on to talk about Joe Biden's Uncle Ambrose.
What claim about him made by his nephew is being disputed?
He didn't invent the rice pudding.
LAUGHTER
No, this is that Joe Biden said this week his uncle's plane
had been shot down during World War II
and that he had then been eaten by cannibals
on what is now Papua New Guinea.
What?!
How has the President of Papua New Guinea reacted?
"We didn't have any anti-aircraft guns at the time."
According to the Daily Star... Oh, well, there we are.
..the President of Papua New Guinea wants to make it clear that...
LAUGHTER
Which is indeed true, as his uncle's plane ditched in the ocean.
Now, Biden's got form in this area. Do you know anything else
that President Biden has said that's turned out not to be true?
He couldn't remember the name of Hamas.
I think he thought it was Hummus.
It's just a "tahini" problem.
GROANING AND LAUGHTER
Meanwhile, in a New York courtroom, why is Donald Trump's treatment
being described as cruel and unusual?
The judge is, I don't know, doing real cruel and unusual things,
asking him to tell the truth... LAUGHTER
Nothing but the truth. Nothing but the truth. Let's find out.
The guy needs exercise, he's usually golfing.
And so you're going to put a man who's almost 80,
sitting in a room like this, on his butt for all that time?
It's not healthy. You know how big of a health nut I am.
He needs sunlight. And he needs activity.
He needs to be walking around, he needs action.
It's really cruel and unusual punishment to make a man do that,
and any time he moves, they threaten to throw him in prison.
I like how he said that he needs sunlight. If that's the case,
why has he got so much Ronseal on to protect him from the rain?
Like, that makes no... LAUGHTER
Steph, do you have some connection to the Trump trial?
Oh, my God, is this you accusing me of being Stormy Daniels?
This is the second time this has happened to me this week!
First of all it was you, Ian...
LAUGHTER
You'll have to explain that encounter.
LAUGHTER
Ian didn't pay.
OOHING AND LAUGHTER
I thought it was mates' rates. Shall we have a look at this?
Lovely clip of Private Eye there.
But do you know what? So many people agree that I look like her
so I should have cashed in on this, shouldn't I?
Taken the hush money. Yeah, exactly.
Maybe I did.
In Donald Trump's trial,
the first witness was the editor of the National Enquirer,
who ran a story claiming one of Trump's Republican opponents...
..although later it turned out Grassy Knoll
was just the name of another porn star.
I know her!
OK, fingers on buzzers, teams.
BUZZER
Bees can do things underwater that people didn't know they could do.
Correct. This is the news that bees can survive underwater.
How did scientists find this out?
They put some bees into water, came back a week later
and the bees were still alive.
"Blimey, these bees can live underwater!"
Uncannily accurate. Researchers at the University of Guelph in Canada
were conducting an experiment on bees... Yeah.
..when a mishap meant they...
But, happily, the bee survived the mistake.
And there was, of course, concern that this was a super bee... Yeah.
..so how did they find out that the bee survivor wasn't just a fluke?
They waterboarded more of them?
"Where's the honey? Tell us!"
LAUGHTER
Indeed they did. They drowned some more bees just to make sure.
They're monsters! According to The Telegraph,
147 bees were exposed to various levels of water for up to a week.
Here's a handy diagram.
There you go. AUDIENCE: Aww!
Over 80% of the bees exposed
to the harshest conditions survived.
But how do the bees manage to survive underwater for so long?
Scuba gear.
Very, very tiny snorkel. Minute.
Well, the author of the study, a...
LAUGHTER No way. No way.
..described how when underground or in low oxygen environments,
bees can enter a sort of...
Nice.
LAUGHTER
Dr Raine said that...
That's like Liz Truss, isn't it? LAUGHTER
We could try keeping her underwater for a week, couldn't we?
See what happens. See what happens, yeah.
Time now for the Missing Words Round which this week also includes
some tips taken from my website.
IAN LAUGHS
That's very stupid. Normally, we take a very boring magazine and...
Thank you very much.
LAUGHTER
15 million monthly users. Yeah.
LAUGHTER
Ahem.
No-one likes a show-off.
15 million people do.
LAUGHTER AND APPLAUSE
And we start with...
IGNACIO: Work for another 25 years.
LAUGHTER
IAN: I do hope so!
PAUL: Waste your time watching the Martin Lewis website.
Joining 15 million other losers.
That's your credit rating fucked.
LAUGHTER
The gloves are off. Here we go.
The correct answer is...
To claim the discount, which is only on Tuesdays,
you have to show a valid proof of old age. Such as...
Failing that, a hardback copy of the latest Richard Osman.
LAUGHTER
"100 million people can't be wrong."
LAUGHTER
That's your literary rating gone.
LAUGHTER
APPLAUSE
Next one.
IAN: Your website. PAUL: Yeah.
LAUGHTER
IGNACIO: Is it - counting themselves?
The answer is...
Farmers in Norfolk have discovered that spraying rams with Lynx Africa
masks the hormones that make them want to butt heads.
If they want to agitate them, they use Lynx Gravy And Mint.
Next...
PAUL: Watching the Martin Lewis website.
Whistling. Singing. IGNACIO: Drinking.
STEPH: Eating ice cream.
Oh, is it? Well done.
Plans by Milan Council to curb noise after midnight could mean
ice cream sellers have to close earlier.
Fair enough, it's no fun when you're trying to sleep
and you suddenly hear a drunken English tourist going...
LOUDLY: # Just one Cornetto. #
LAUGHTER
Don't know what you're all laughing at.
Where the hell did that come from?
The diaphragm, darling.
And finally...
PAUL: Sausages, wellington boots
and virginity.
LAUGHTER
STEPH: Is it - the lion, the witch and the wardrobe? Yes!
Gotta be.
For some people that's a night out.
LAUGHTER
This is actually the survey of Uber drivers in America.
Some of the items included...
LAUGHTER
Now, you would have thought Donald Trump would have used his own car.
What's a frontal toupee? Is that like a merkin? No!
She ran Germany for a while, Angela Merkin.
LAUGHTER
So the final scores are -
Ian and Ignacio have 3
but Paul and Steph have 7.
That's amazing! Well done.
DROWNED OUT BY APPLAUSE
But before we go, there's just time for the caption competition.
OK, is the Dalek saying, "Well, I'm still bent on world domination,
"this is just a Saturday job"?
LAUGHTER
Or, "Order what you like, I can only carry one plate."
LAUGHTER
On that note, we say thank you to our panellists,
Ian Hislop and Ignacio Lopez, Paul Merton and Steph McGovern.
And I leave you with news that
there's an awkward moment for one US Army officer
as they're greeted with the words,
"Pleased to meet you, Colonel Gaddafi."
LAUGHTER
Following complaints about the standard of food in hospitals,
the NHS hires contractors
to break the skin on the kitchen's vat of rice pudding.
And at a G7 press conference, in front of the world's media,
one representative really regrets having a second helping
of the three-bean salad.
Goodnight, thank you!
CHEERING AND APPLAUSE