This programme contains some strong language
Good evening. Welcome to Have I Got News For You. I'm Damian Lewis.
In the news this week, in Westminster,
after the government announces a new tax on stale bread and breadcrumbs,
angry protesters march on Downing Street.
In Doncaster, a lifelong Labour supporter confesses to
what she does every time she sees Ed Miliband on TV.
And after tough negotiations,
Jeremy Paxman agrees to join Channel 4, but on one condition.
On Ian's team tonight is an award-winning comedian
who says her worst fear is being in the wrong place at the wrong time.
Next to Ian...nine o'clock. Oh, dear, it's happened again!
Please welcome Roisin Conaty.
APPLAUSE
And with Paul tonight is a writer
and comedian who co-created Outnumbered.
Just to be clear, that's a sitcom about a modern family
and not about a female comedian on a TV panel show.
Please welcome Andy Hamilton.
APPLAUSE
And we start with the bigger stories of the week.
Ian and Roisin, take a look at this.
Someone being given the bill.
Getting a bit of a shock. Oh, it's him!
And him saying, "I didn't have the starter and...didn't drink much."
It's David Cameron getting a massive bill
when he went to Europe, for not turning his data roaming off.
1.7 billion is a lot, isn't it?
He got a shock cos, although we know the Prime Minister's
absolutely on top of all the detail, no-one had told him...
..that he was due to get a ã1.7 billion bill.
So he had a bit of a fit. And he said, "I'm not going to pay it."
You're bang on. Of course it is the 1.7 billion that's landed on
David Cameron's desk. Why exactly was it sent to us?
It came about cos there's an annual recalibration, I think they call it,
but they've done it over 11 years,
and suddenly, the EU says, "Can you give us 1.7 billion quid?"
And they were rather shocked.
If feels a little bit like the EU are doing that thing when
you're going out with someone and they want you to dump them.
So they just start behaving really badly...
and asking for things that are going to annoy you.
APPLAUSE
If you've ever been out with a boyfriend and it's like,
"I want a threesome and I want 1.7 billion by the 1st of December."
That's what it feels like.
Yeah, I know that so well(!)
What did he actually say, Cameron, about not paying?
He said, "If anyone thinks I'm going to pay this now..."
he added the now...
"..they've got another think coming."
Cos obviously he'll pay it later.
And he got suspicious because Britain has to pay more,
but funnily enough, Germany and France have to pay less.
Wonder how that came up?
And then they said it's cos Britain's doing so well,
but Greece also had to pay more.
I'm not sure about this rationale.
It's quite a short time span -
we should be able to pay off a little bit a month.
You know, you get a massive bill...
It's their fault if they haven't charged us enough over 11 years...
Yes, it's Mrs Merkel as Wonga!
It's GDP, isn't it?
One of the complaints is that they've been measuring our GDP
in a way that includes drugs and prostitution. Yep.
That is a reasonable way of measuring how an economy is doing.
Yes. Is it? Well, it is, yeah.
Cos obviously, if there's more disposable income,
then they'll spend more on drugs and prostitutes.
For a lot of people, Andy, those are necessities.
That's why Italy's GDP is so low,
because once you factor out Berlusconi...
APPLAUSE
Brussels have now calculated sex work has generated ã5.3 billion
for the economy in 2013, and they went on to say...
Makes you proud, doesn't it?
That stuff doesn't get taxed, so how can we...?
Why should...? What?
Am I wrong?
Is it cos they go out and spend it?
So they are criminals - technically.
Well, no - actually!
I'm not condoning anything!
David Cameron had a few friendly words in the Commons
on Tuesday from a Tory grandee.
That's Ken Clarke.
"Big Beast" Tory MP Ken Clarke, yes.
That's nice.
This Euro spat has come at a bad time for the Conservatives. Why?
By-election coming up. Yep. Exactly.
Rochester and Strood. Rochester and Strood.
That well-known Dickensian law firm.
Detectives...
..in 19th-century Edinburgh.
SCOTTISH ACCENT "You'll be wanting Mr Strood."
Incidentally, this week's Funny Farage Face,
er, comes to us courtesy of the Daily Mirror.
LAUGHTER
Well, it is Halloween, isn't it?
I was really pleased to be here tonight cos, er,
it means I'm out for Halloween.
Don't spend all evening hiding with the lights off.
Trick or... Kids are massive now, have you noticed?
LAUGHTER
There's an immigration figures row been going on this week.
It's about the number of people who are trying to seek asylum here,
which the Home Office doesn't seem to know.
There's a huge backlog of cases, and there are 50,000 people we said,
"You're not allowed to come into this country,"
who said, "Fine," and disappeared, and they're still here.
Where's Theresa May when you need her?
She's very busy talking about, er, not rescuing people in boats,
cos that's the other tactic that Europe's going to deploy
against immigrants.
They're going to let them out into the middle of the sea
and then leave them there.
Yeah. Which isn't great if you're saying
we're the civilised bit of the world.
If the EU are genuinely going to instigate
a policy of drowning immigrants,
then I think UKIP will probably have second thoughts about leaving.
LAUGHTER
Another senior Tory admitted that he had mis-spoken this week.
It was Michael Fallon.
He said that coastal towns are under siege from immigrants. Swamped.
Yeah, he said that Lowestoft,
there are hordes of immigrants using battering rams and trebuchets
to try and get in,
lobbing corpses over the walls with catapults, and...
He didn't really say that, he sort of implied that,
er, and then he was corrected by Number 10.
They said he shouldn't have said "under siege,"
he should have said nothing.
LAUGHTER
Michael Fallon, who referred to...
The next day, he told the BBC...
"I'm from another planet, English is not a language I understand."
Stupid twat.
LAUGHTER
I wouldn't normally have used those words, but, erm...
What's the latest paper-thin
pre-election bribe for northerners...
Sorry, the latest important announcement on investment
and infrastructure in the North?
High Speed Rail 3. Yeah. Leeds and Manchester.
Yeah, Manchester and Leeds. Manchester and Leeds.
Or Leeds and Manchester, depending on which way you're looking at it.
Boris thinks the money would be better spent on another Crossrail.
Here he is chatting to a voter this week.
LAUGHTER
The old Prescott technique. Yeah.
Connecting with the voters, yes.
Why's he fighting a man who's armed with defibrillators?
LAUGHTER
He's not in great shape, Boris.
He'll do anything not to do work, Boris Johnson.
He's never behind a desk. I've never seen a photo of him in his office.
No, well, you don't want him doing anything, do you?!
LAUGHTER
This is David Cameron being hit with a ã1.7 billion bill from the EU.
Britain's EU bill is bigger this year because our GDP has increased -
for the first time, the calculations have included...
So, once again, it's all the bankers' fault.
APPLAUSE
Also this week, the Telegraph's immigration correspondent
had a story of three Albanians found on a lorry in a Portsmouth boatyard
hiding among the jetskis.
Just to clarify, the jetskis were water-sports equipment,
not a Russian family.
LAUGHTER
According to the Mirror, Tory Minister Michael Fallon claimed...
Yes, towns like Kobani in Syria,
surrounded by bloody Brits taking jobs off the local jihadists.
LAUGHTER
I'll let that one settle.
Paul and Andy, take a look at this.
Right, there's a man on the run. Oh.
Yes. David Cameron, someone ran into him this week in Leeds -
there was a man running through Leeds and he was arrested for about
an hour and then they realised he was just a guy on a run
that didn't notice the charismatic politician in front of him -
he mistook him for a large Labrador in a suit,
and accidentally ran into him
and by the time they'd checked his blood type and his fertility,
they found out he was actually a real jogger.
That's exactly right - Paul's got it.
And here is the footage.
It's not really the Kennedy assassination, is it?
Is that the best we can do?
It was a lone jogger in a building on the other side of the road.
It's raised a lot of security fears,
because they're worried about copycat incidents. Exactly.
The Prime Minister would be unable to do his job
because random strangers will just keep running into him. Exactly.
He's a people magnet.
People just want to rush to kiss him and touch his charisma.
Touch his charisma?! I haven't heard it called that before.
You're on the telly, you must have done!
Could be a new sporting craze. Exactly.
Like Cameron-ball. Yeah.
Five points if you make him side-step
and ten if you knock him over. Yeah.
15 if you put him in Casualty.
What was jogger Dean Farley's excuse?
"I love him."
"I actually live in Hull but somehow I started jogging to Leeds."
He said...
You can see the confusion. ANDY: Yeah.
There was a lot of security experts, armchair experts,
were dragged out,
and they all pointed out that...
No armchairs were involved.
The bodyguards...the bodyguards were very sluggish... Yeah.
..in their reactions. It's almost like they wanted him to be hurt.
Yeah, I wonder if that's their way of telling him... We want a pay rise.
Exactly! Or they just don't like him.
They all dived on the bloke, didn't they, and nobody thought,
"I wonder if one of us should be with the Prime Minister..."
I like the fact they arrested him
and then realised he was just a bloke jogging,
so they de-arrested him, which I didn't realise you could do.
ANDY: I'd not heard that before. No, it's an official thing.
Can they de-beat people up? Yeah!
Surely you've read the reports afterwards!
According to BBC News, in 2006...
There's endless opportunity for practical jokes there, isn't there?
"Off you go, you can go... Oh, hang on a minute!"
I got stopped coming through Heathrow once,
and it was early in the morning...
That's cos you were playing a terrorist.
That might have something to do with it. Erm, I'm walking through,
I've taken my backpack off and everything,
trying to be unobtrusive, the guy just taps me on the shoulder
and says, "Come over here. Put your bag up there."
"Open your bag, open your washbag, please. Give me your passport."
And I'm going, "Oh, no. I really need to get home."
He looks at my passport and goes,
"Yeah, thought it was you. OK, bye."
LAUGHTER
How annoying is that? Er...
I'm glad they're keeping their eye on fictional terrorists(!)
LAUGHTER Very, very important.
It just begs the question - anyone could run up to David Cameron
and ask him something like,
"Will you wear this feminist T-shirt?"
It was no problem for Cleggy and Compo, of course.
There they are.
This is what a desperate politician looks like.
Why were they doing this? Does anyone know?
ELLE magazine had a feminist issue. Editor Lorraine Candy said...
All right, love, don't bang on about it.
LAUGHTER
Who has been offering Ed Miliband unconditional support?
Is it Gordon Brown?
To my knowledge, it's absolutely no-one.
Len McCluskey stepped up. He tried to take Ed's personality
out of the equation.
If you remember, he said that the next election
was going to be all about good policies, adding...
Any Lib Dems in the news this week?
Norman Baker. He's done the drugs report. Yes.
The Government commissioned a report into
whether being tough on drugs works, and they found it doesn't.
So they've hidden it.
Who turned up to the House of Commons
for the debate on drugs on Thursday?
Was it Keith Richards?
Tory MP Guy Opperman tweeted...
However, it turned out to be...
This is the shocking security breach that saw a jogger
almost bump into David Cameron.
Some people are making light of the incident,
but can I just remind everyone, if anything had happened to Cameron,
Nick Clegg is Deputy Prime Minister.
And so to Round Two,
the one-armed bandit of news.
Fingers on buzzers, teams, here's the first one.
BELL RINGS
Ian and Roisin. Tesco.
PAUL CHUCKLES LOUDLY
APPLAUSE
You can't compete against knowledge like this(!)
And they say literacy levels are very low in this country, but...
I saw that straight off!
Tesco, they're in really big trouble now
for exaggerating their profits by about ã250 million,
and the Public Accounts Committee have had a look at them
and it's all looking very serious.
As I understand it, what they did was they included in their profits
money they anticipate making.
Well, we're all very rich on that basis, aren't we?
But now they're being investigated. I mean, do they look at the books?
I'm just doing this so the lawyers have a heart attack. Yes!
Fellow professionals up to no good?
Why is the lawyer suspended somewhere up there?
We've got a trapeze act lawyer in. Brilliant.
"With your privilege permission, my Lord,
"I'd like to turn this trial into a circus." Wahey!
You're absolutely right. Allegations of...
..and alleged...
Ooh!
Tesco is alleged to have overstated its profits by...
..which led to a drop of...
..in half-yearly profits.
Who is this especially bad news for? Tesco.
Someone took over.
Oh, the guy from Unilever took over.
He got his golden hello.
Dave Lewis.
ã3.8 million, but apparently now, in shares, it's only worth...
Oh, must be awful(!) Poor Dave, yeah.
Who have Tesco blamed for the crisis?
The world not understanding mathematics the way they do.
They've...
First inkling THEY had was when
they were asked to return their Bags For Life.
One of the executives was William Linnane,
whose job title was...
PAUL CHUCKLES LOUDLY
He said he intended to co-operate fully with the...
Ooh, Toblerone!
Tesco executives - what have they been forced to do this week
by Dave Lewis? Oh, shop in Tesco.
"Shop like normal housewives."
What does that mean? They've all gone to Lidl.
I don't know.
LAUGHTER
Speaking of food retailers,
why has the Bumble Hole Foods been sniggered at recently?
Bumble Hole.
The way in which the name was presented in this
perfectly timed picture, which is doing the rounds on the internet.
Do you think somebody carries around a lamppost with them
just so they can...
And finally, staying in-store,
why has butcher David Burdett been in the news this week?
He made friends with a cow. A lamb.
No... The animal's not important.
Oh, right. It IS.
He is the Billy Elliot of butchery. Have a look at this.
REPORTER: David Burdett loves to dance.
Even in the Bradwell butcher's,
he loves to twirl among the T-bone steaks,
to pirouette as he pounces on the pork chops.
David was inspired by the film Billy Elliot.
At the end of the film, a grown-up Billy dancing Swan Lake
leaps onto the stage.
That's a load of rubbish.
He's got to be the most annoying person to work with, hasn't he?
"Got any mince?" "Well, I have today!" Hoo-hoo!
LAUGHTER
APPLAUSE
This is the unexpected profits declared by Tesco.
The Serious Fraud Office is looking into Tesco's accounts.
If you're looking for pre-cooked books,
I think you can find them on aisle 3.
Tesco's new boss has been given a ã4-million golden hello.
The outgoing Finance Director and Chief Executive
were given a two-for-the-price-of-one "fuck off."
Fingers on buzzers, teams, here's the next one.
BELL RINGS
Yes, Ian and Roisin.
Soldiers.
British troops have left Afghanistan this week.
Yes. That was Camp Bastion.
It's 13 years... Three times as long as the First World War
and we're now withdrawing and people are saying, "Was it worth it?"
The consensus seems to be that, you know, it's not the winning
that's important, it's the taking part.
They had a Pizza Hut in that base.
How happy must that guy be to get back?!
The delivery guy in Afghanistan.
It must have been the worst job.
"Where are you? OK, I'll be about two hours."
"I'm in a tank." In a Chinook.
Holding dippers.
I know a lot about pizza.
LAUGHING: This is... It is the British withdrawal, yes,
from Afghanistan, after 13 years. It all started in America of course,
um, September 2001.
Obama may go down in history as the guy who got Bin Laden,
but he's been getting a bit of flack recently.
His own candidates don't want him to appear at election rallies
for him, because they think if he turns up he'll lose votes.
If they can get him off the... Golf course. ANDY: Ah.
It's been pointed out that if he continues playing
as much as he does, by next spring he may have played
more rounds of golf than Tiger Woods
in the last five years, according to the Washington Times.
Although, having said that,
Tiger's usually got one or two other things on the go as well. So...
This is, yes, the British withdrawal from Afghanistan
after 13 years. Paddy Ashdown told the Daily Mirror...
It would have been cheaper to just translate the original French one.
Fingers on buzzers, teams.
Yes, Ian and Roisin again. It's the Queen.
We are on fire! ANDY: We can't compete with this.
They're out of our league. Somebody must have told them.
Tipped off in advance. ROISIN: The Queen used Twitter for
the first time from...the Science Museum? National History Museum?
Science Museum, I can read it there.
Oh, right!
You and your skills! Skills, I know.
I'm just showing off now. Yeah, she did a tweet from
the Science Museum. What did her message say? Anyone?
"Here I am, this is my first tweet, from the Science Museum."
Basically that was it, wasn't it? That was it. "It's a pleasure to..."
That's a bit dull, "Elizabeth R".
She should be #topbitch or something like that.
APPLAUSE
That would be appropriate, wouldn't it? That would be modern.
Absolutely. The Times called the tweet...
And what's she been accused of by the Mail?
ANDY: Is it not paying the minimum wage?
She's not paid the minimum wage?! No, no...
So how can she afford a hat like that?
Poor woman. Is that not the story? She's been accused of fakery.
The Mail reported that...
#lazy...
And if you're watching, Your Majesty, it's #hig-n-fy.
I mean, what does it matter? The Queen must have to
fake things every day.
What on earth are you referring to?
How long did it take her to get her first troll?
They're pretty fast, aren't they? Yeah. Four minutes.
Four minutes?
LAUGHTER
"Prince Charles."
My favourite story about the Queen was when the iPhone was invented
and there was a story like this
and they said the Queen had got an iPhone, and someone
in the Palace supposedly said, "Well, it's marvellous.
"It stores music and whenever you ask, it just plays it."
And she said, "Ah, like the Band of the Grenadier Guards."
LAUGHTER
This is the news that the Queen has embraced modern technology -
quite a big deal for a woman who can't even embrace her own children.
AUDIENCE: Ooh!
I didn't know that Crossrail was going underneath here.
Time now for the Odd One Out round. Ian and Roisin, your four are...
David Cameron's barber, Lino Carbosiero,
the ginger discount man Richard Macrae,
George Georgious, and an ancient Egyptian in the city of Amarna.
He's Cameron's barber, who was in the honours list. I remember
there was a big fuss that Cameron had honoured his barber.
He gives a discount to ginger people if they, what,
come to his barber shop? No, but you're close.
And that is... Who is this boy?
He's the baby who had Elvis hair He's got, like, Elvis's hair.
What was your first answer, Ian?
I have to confess I wasn't really listening.
Was it anything to do with
ginger discount man Richard Macrae? Yeah, he mentioned him.
Yeah, no... Roisin.
The odd one out is the baby cos he doesn't need a haircut.
Is the wrong answer. The hairdresser, cos he doesn't
need one, he cuts other people's hair. Is the wrong answer.
Is it the mummy, because he's dead?
And if that's the wrong answer
I'm going to go for the bloke with the ginger beard!
He's the only one we haven't mentioned.
Yeah, it's the right answer.
They've all benefited from someone else's hair, apart from the
ginger discount man, who benefited from his own. Richard Macrae
has used his hair colour to obtain discounts in shops
and restaurants by using a ginger discount card.
One barman said he'd given Richard a discount...
And here is the card.
David Cameron's barber, Lino Carbosiero, he received
an MBE in the New Year's Honours for his service to hairdressing.
What dramatic shift was Lino responsible for?
Oh, the parting. Didn't the parting move?
It's on the right now.
Is it? And if UKIP get...
If UKIP get stronger, it'll keep going over and over and over.
Newborn George Georgious hit the headlines this week when
his parents noticed a startling resemblance to Elvis Presley.
What's more amazing is that he was born in a full Elvis jumpsuit.
An Egyptian mummy was recently found with hair extensions. When asked
for a comment, a spokesman for the Ancient Egyptians said,
"Bird, bird, wavy line, scarab beetle, man standing sideways."
LAUGHTER
LAUGHTER CONTINUES
Here she is. Those are the hair extensions?
It's that or Victoria Beckham...
..does hair extensions.
She's put on weight, I'll say that much.
Staying in the Middle East for a while,
a British terrorist fighting in Syria asked his fellow jihadists
for help with something recently. What was it?
ROISIN: Oh...
ANDY: Choosing his lottery numbers. Grooming tips.
Abu Fulan Al-Muhajir used social media to ask,
and this is absolutely true...
Well, if you are a suicide bomber,
you will get split ends in your hair. No two ways about that.
Paul and Andy, here are yours. Ukrainian Prime Minister
Arseniy Yatsenyuk, Napoleon, Jimmy Carter and Paul Daniels.
Daniels was bitten by a rabbit this week. Oh, was he? Yeah.
Is it rabbits? Warm, warm, warm.
All right, then. Now I've got a vague memory of Jimmy Carter
having an incident with a rabbit.
Seriously. What sort of incident? They met in a bar or...?
Out hunting somewhere or...? I don't know.
Napoleon... All those famous Napoleon rabbit stories.
Is it that they've all killed a rabbit except for Paul Daniels,
who was bitten by a rabbit?
So close. They have all bitten rabbits,
but Paul Daniels is the only one that's been bitten!
You sort of had it, I think you should have the point.
They've all been attacked by rabbits... Yeah. ..apart from
new Ukrainian PM Arseniy Yatsenyuk, who has been attacked
for LOOKING like one.
He's supposed to look like the rabbit in the Russian version
of Winnie the Pooh, and here they are side by side.
LAUGHTER
ANDY: Oh, yeah! Yeah, yeah.
The Russian version of Winnie the Pooh?!
When did this happen?
Paul Daniels, the magician, he had to have
a tetanus jab after one of his stage rabbits bit his finger.
Paul tried to intervene to...
The other rabbits?
No, Debbie McGee. Oh, right.
It's one of those awful menage a trois things, isn't it?
Well, it starts off with a menage a trois,
then within ten minutes there's hundreds of them.
Be careful. We might be being BUGSED.
Um... GROANING
One off the cuff.
It certainly wasn't off the script, was it?
His...
This is the best round we've ever had on this show.
It's revolting. Let's move on.
What can Paul Daniels say in four languages?
"There are no refunds."
LAUGHTER
APPLAUSE
In four languages.
Jimmy Carter, let's get to Jimmy Carter.
Can I just say I went to see him in panto once?
Jimmy Carter in panto?!
You really do go to posh shows.
Who was playing the Dame, the Queen Mother?
Yeah, and he bought the beans. No, I went to see...
I paid my money to see Paul Daniels
and Debbie McGee in The Sheriff Of Nottingham.
He was the Sheriff of Nottingham, she was...someone or other.
Maid Marian, I think.
And it was very, very long, the panto,
and he did almost no tricks at all, but she sang a lot of songs.
She kept coming on and singing another song, and then another one.
And then just after the second half, the woman behind me
stood up and shouted, "Oh, God, not another one!"
"We want Jimmy Carter!"
It was very unfair. I just have very...
..sad memories of not getting a refund.
Jimmy Carter rabbit incident - occurred in '79.
He was then President Carter.
He was fishing and a rabbit reportedly attacked him
in his boat.
That's when he knew he wasn't the luckiest president.
The odds against being attacked by a rabbit in a boat,
they're pretty high.
It's about the same as being caught by a killer shark in a meadow.
What has the Obama Administration being doing to rabbits?
Are they using them to attack ISIS?
They've got platoons of rabbits.
Myxomat-ISIS. Yeah.
GROANING
Do you have an endless stock of rabbit jokes?
The American government, apparently, has spent 387,000...
No. It's true! ..giving rabbits...
..as part of a study to see if...
Couldn't you do this on somebody
that can speak to you about it afterwards?
It's got to be Swedish massage, otherwise the rabbits just walk out.
Yeah.
"I'm not having any of that."
"I've never been so insulted in all my life."
Then the last was Napoleon. According to reports,
Napoleon was apparently once attacked by a horde of rabbits
after organising a rabbit hunt for himself and his generals.
So, yes, they've all been attacked by rabbits,
apart from Prime Minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk.
Paul Daniels is known for his catchphrases,
"Not a lot", "Say yes, Paul" and
"Get off my finger, you bastard rabbit."
It's not the first time a rabbit's been involved
in an attack on a US president.
Let's not forget Lee "Harvey" Oswald.
GROANING
What?!
That's really terrible.
That film came out in 1952.
I don't mean to be picky, but Harvey wasn't a real rabbit.
No, he wasn't, no.
I like the joke.
I like the joke. I like the idea of... Who likes the joke?
RELUCTANT CHEERS
Who doesn't like the joke?
RELUCTANT CHEERS
Who in the audience would make a random noise if you were asked to?
CHEERS AND LAUGHTER
That's the most popular one of all.
Ooh, we're going to have to get the writers out the pub.
If they were paid more, they wouldn't have to work as bar staff.
Harvey?! Harvey?
CREW: "Who have Tesco blamed for the crisis? Tesco..."
Harvey the Rabbit.
AS JAMES STEWART: When you've lived in a town as long as I have,
you're used to people knowing your name.
That's a very good James Stewart.
Yes, I don't get a lot of call for it these days.
We could do a show where James Stewart
and Marlon Brando live together in a house. Yeah.
AS JAMES STEWART: What are you going to do - wash it off once in a while?
AS MARLON BRANDO: Mmm, you know...
Nh-hh...
AS JAMES STEWART: It's all right for you. I got a day job...
What the fuck am I doing?
LAUGHTER
What am I doing?
APPLAUSE
Ladies and gentlemen, time now for the Missing Words round,
which this week features as its guest publication
Antique Bottle Collector.
Smashing is one of the regular themes on the problems page.
And we start with...
Is it onions?
Eric Pickles onions...
Not.
It's got to be that. Bottles.
A pin-up. Eh?
The fuller figure. The Russians like that.
Yeah, Eric Pickles, a pin-up in Russia.
How many pins have they got?
Next...
He went on a gun spree. Yeah.
He went home.
I mean, to fit in with the banality of the headline, generally speaking.
"So it's still up for grabs."
What's a water jug doing in an antique bottle collector...
It's not a bottle. Oh, it's a genre confusion. Don't worry, Damian.
What the hell was Vivian Walsh doing taking a jug to a bottle swap?
What was he thinking?
Sorry, it just pisses me off.
LAUGHTER
I mean, the evening was bound to end in disappointment
if you start off like that.
Deep breath. Let it go. Let it go, let it go.
Let's keep going. Next...
..what?
ANDY: I've lost my bottle.
It's not bottle, but it is a receptacle.
I've got my head stuck in a saucepan.
Is warm. I can't come to work today...
Well, it's been used for cooking, probably.
It has been revealed this week that this is an excuse
from an employee,
to which David Cameron replied,
"That's fine, Nick - we'll somehow soldier on without you."
Next.
What...?
ANDY: Pope.
We don't know. That's the quickest way out of this torture. Yeah, yeah.
Well, how the... How the hell are we going to get that?!
Oh! He's the mascot. The mascot for Torquay United
challenged the entire home crowd to a fight...
..which is pretty brave of him. I mean, two against one.
Next.
..what?
To shove yourself into a bottle
and display yourself in a bottle-display competition.
ANDY: To artificially inseminate a polar bear with a bottle. Yeah.
There can be no more difficult task than to be asked
to help a hippopotamus into a tight pair of swimming trunks.
ANDY: With a bottle. With a bottle. In Aberdeen.
In the article, one coat of arms is described as being...
..which is presumably the coat of arms for Top Gear.
Next.
What...?
I know this one.
It's a professor at Warwick University.
Is the correct answer!
Yes, because this story was in
a very, very informative... fortnightly magazine.
LAUGHTER
This professor was... He was a critic of universities privatising
and making the demands economic, and so he was sidelined.
They suspended him for a year and told him that
he'd been inappropriately sighing... Yes. ..in meetings,
and being sarcastic, but now he's back, because...this is very silly.
What's appropriate sighing, Ian? What would be appropriate...
Is an appropriate sigh like... "Ah." That's an appropriate sigh.
And inappropriate is...
Oh, for God's sake... Arrrrrghhhhhh!
Asked to comment after being cleared by a tribunal, he responded,
"Uhh, big deal, whatever. It's just a job."
And finally...
..what?
Voted UK's most transparent magazine.
Voted UK's top bottle-related magazine.
Best bottle magazine. Yes.
And just so you appreciate that in its proper context,
nothing came second.
So the final scores are...
3 to Paul and Andy. Hurray! 8 to Ian and Roisin.
APPLAUSE
Before we go, there's just time for the caption competition.
That's you!
And I did not know that was coming.
That's very, very...inappropriate.
"Do I get my ginger discount?"
APPLAUSE
On which note, we say thank you to our panellists -
Ian Hislop and Roisin Conaty,
Paul Merton and Andy Hamilton.
I leave you with the news that London Zoo nutritionists
hastily abandoned the recent experiment
that involved feeding vegetable madras to the elephants.
In central London, a twinkly-eyed mother can't help but smile warmly
as her beloved daughter-in-law tells her a joke.
And, in the mood for a bit of phone sex,
a careless Boris Johnson calls the wrong number.
Gets his wife. IAN CHUCKLES
APPLAUSE
Good night.
APPLAUSE
Run away now, if you need to...pee, or...
just do anything interesting.
Or if you're an antique bottle collector,
you've probably made your own arrangements.
LAUGHTER
APPLAUSE
That's the best gag in the whole thing, and nobody's recording it.