This programme contains some strong language
# Read about the things that happen throughout the world
# But don't believe in everything you see or hear
# Read all about it
♪ News of the world, news of the world. ♪
APPLAUSE
Hello, everyone, welcome to the Mock The Week end-of-year special,
and let's face it, what says "Christmas" and "special"
more than me distractedly knocking off a half-arsed link
in the first week of October?
Ho-ho-ho!
Merry Christmas. Enjoy the show.
APPLAUSE
We start with a round called If This Is The Answer,
What Is The Question? On the board are six categories.
Ivo, which category would you like?
I would like Home News, please, Dara. Lovely. Home News it is.
The answer is one year. What is the question?
"What would be an appropriate prison sentence
"for people who use the phrase 'holibobs'?"
Not the answer, but I'll take it.
Is it, "How long do the BBC have left now they've lost Bake Off?"
And the clock is already ticking.
Is it, "In a Wetherspoons kitchen,
"what is the chef's equivalent of the five-second rule?"
"If Santa falls over in the bath on Boxing Day,
"how long until anyone misses him?"
What about Mrs Claus?
She doesn't give a shit about him during the rest of the year.
She's a gold-digger, mate. All she cares about is...Christmas glory.
She's just there for the toys, is she? People say, "Where is he?"
She says, "Oh, he's probably in his workshop.
"Normally is. With his elves."
He's always with those bloody elves, isn't he? It seems very suspicious.
I don't know what's going on with those elves.
There's nothing going on between Santa Claus and any of the elves.
Are you telling me he's never got a handjob off one of them?
He definitely has, cos think how small their hands are,
it would make it look massive.
Merry Christmas, everyone.
I think - serious suggestion here -
I th... Hello, by the way.
I realise I haven't said hello to you today.
No, I thought it was a little bit distant.
We never say hello on this show.
There is a lack of that, isn't there? Straight into politics, mate.
Britain needs satire and I'm here for it.
I think people don't realise that we don't all just converge on
this point without having bumped into each other sometime
during the day and the lead into the recording. What can you do, then?
They don't, like, five minutes before the show, start going...
HE IMITATES HORN
..and then we all just emerge from all the different compass points.
Assemble!
We all have little nicknames, like Token Cockney! Whimsy! One-liners!
Woman!
It IS like The Avengers.
APPLAUSE
Anyone know what it actually is?
Well, I think we all know what it actually is. Yeah, of course.
It's Jeremy Corbyn commiserating, sort of, with Owen Smith,
the news that Jeremy Corbyn wins the Labour leadership.
It is, of course, Thank you very much, Hugh. Very good.
APPLAUSE
It's something like the largest political party in Europe
or something at the moment, the largest amount of members.
I mean, he rode in on a huge wave of succ...
It should translate across and yet -
and this is by no means any attack on him -
it feels like winning the technical challenge in Bake Off, you know?
Oh, stop angling for the job!
I'm just saying! I'm just saying.
Can I interject here?
Has anybody on this stage won the technical challenge in Bake Off?
Yes!
APPLAUSE
What did you have to make?
Lemon meringue pie, bitches!
Two things. Firstly, you were doing great
on "I won the technical challenge on Bake Off"
until you said the words "A lemon meringue pie", when you know...
Bitches! That's just a cake, that's not a tech...
A technical challenge is some 17th-century strudel.
Lemon meringue pie is not an easy technical bake.
In fact, Paul Hollywood even said, he looked at mine and said,
"I bet I'm going to cut into that and all the meringue's
"going to just pour out of it." Did it? Did it buggery!
OK, well, you killed my metaphor,
which I was doing really nicely. Tell us instead...
I didn't mean to kill your metaphor,
I just meant to point out that I am more qualified to wield it
than you are. That's all. I'll give you that.
This is actually turning into the Labour Party conference.
Tell us about your Showstopper. How did that go?
How did your Showstopper go? It didn't go well.
It didn't go well, did it?
Carrot cake and it was raw in the middle.
And then you just threw icing at it like you were trying to smother it.
You're slagging, but I like the fact that you watched.
APPLAUSE
Ah, the Christmas quiz!
CHEERING
People now come specially for the Christmas quiz,
to look at our fabulous decorations. Oh, that's nice.
This thing, which I think is actually, sort of, awww.
ALL: Awww.
And then, for no particular reason, a squirrel.
A squirrel with tinsel on him, which is not, in any way, effective.
And Donald Trump's hair at the back. And then this, a genuine...
You can purchase this, which is a glistening owl with antlers on.
You know, this costs, like, ?4.50 or something in a shop. A shop.
Is this your audition for QVC? Anyway, that's... Hey, hey, hey.
OK, here's the Christmas quiz, right?
In which there will be quizzes and questions.
What makes the traditional British Christmas dinner unique?
Turkey. Sprouts. No. Is it crackers? What is it about it that actually...
Racism? Not unique, it's an achievement.
Not racism!
You can't say that for every question, Nish!
What makes a British Christmas dinner outstanding?
Why don't you ask it again without mumbling?
I'm sorry, my face is full of your shitty lemon meringue pie.
Nom, nom, nom, nom, nom. It is quite tart. A little...
Mmm, yum-yum. Oh, it didn't fall apart, bravo(!)
OK, why is the British Christmas dinner outstanding?
Is it considered the unhealthiest or something? Very close, yeah.
Is it the most fatty? It is the unhealthiest in Europe.
A typical Christmas dinner in this country contains 3,289 calories,
70g of fat, 210g of carbohydrates.
The second most calorific Christmas dinner in the world.
Who's the most calorific?
Take a wild fucking guess!
The crazy thing about Theresa May is, obviously,
that hardly anyone has voted for her.
Like, I think it's 165 MPs have got her into power.
I think there are more members of the So Solid Crew
than have voted her into power.
You weren't elected, were you, to this position, Dara? I wasn't, I wasn't.
I stole it in a bloody coup and would do it again, my friend.
People have disappeared from this show, Miles, and would again,
for raising those exact kind of questions. I'm just...
I'm just saying. Where's Frankie now? Where's Russell now? Gone.
You will be dragged through the streets, Dara,
you will be dragged through the streets like Gaddafi.
Then they'll be laughing! There are five regulars on this show.
How many regulars now? Just poor, weak Hugh.
Poor, weak Hugh.
Hugh will always give the correct answer when I ask him to,
won't you, Hugh? Won't you, Hugh? Your shoes are almost polished, sir.
Thank you, Hugh.
Hugh knows what's right for him. In other news...
I think you're terrific on the Megabus, sir.
I don't know if you're being sarcastic here, Hugh.
APPLAUSE
And there goes the final regular.
Just me.
What has become the must-see attraction
for Chinese tourists in the UK?
DARA COUGHS
Is it, like, there's this weird village in...
Are you all right? I've got a bit of a cough.
Have you swallowed a moth?
So, I'll ask the question again, shall I? Yes.
Rather than dying of pleurisy, there. What has become...
God, I hope I don't die! That'd be awful!
If you die in the next while and you go,
"Oh, I know, we never asked."
Oh, 2016, another great gone.
Weirdly, it's like you're mocking me, even though I've died.
I'm not even dead and you're going, "Well, he's no David Bowie."
The only thing I'm thinking is, "Then I will have won."
APPLAUSE
In other news, how did a worker at the Royal Canadian Mint
steal ?100,000 this week? He smuggled it out up his bottom.
He did. He smuggled gold up his bum.
He did. He put gold up his bum.
Yeah, which is... I think it's just...
I think he overheard or misheard a challenge where somebody said
to him, "I can get two carrots up my..."
"That's nothing, mate - 18."
I did the same thing.
I went into Waterstones. I smuggled Harry Potter out one page at a time.
It's an interesting thing, though,
that he actually has sort of done it the right way, hasn't he?
Cos normally when you smuggle something,
you hear stories of smugglers, they swallow stuff and he's
actually just cut out the entire digestive system.
He's gone in the other way. It's much, much more effective.
But how far has he gone in?
I couldn't say. I've absolutely no idea.
When they busted him, they went to his locker in work
and they found just a massive tub of Vaseline, so...
but, yeah, you do need that if you're smuggling.
I'd hate to think just a tub of Vaseline is considered
incriminating evidence that you're smuggling.
And if it is, you still need a warrant!
No-one suspected anything because he arrived at this job with a clean...
You know, no previous records. Clean butt. Nice, clean butt.
His CV was very good.
He'd worked at a pineapple factory, then the umbrella factory...
None of those had ever happened before. Never happened before.
It would be great to be the arresting policeman, though,
and he says, "Are you going to arrest me?"
And you say, "You bet your bottom dollar!"
Do you think before he got home
he ever, like, popped into the shops and then was a bit short of change?
"20p short." "Wait there."
I'm not going to continue that act out.
Can we at least assume he washed the gold? Of course.
I think it's very safe to presume that the gold guy would have
been very suspicious if... "Oh, are you the guy with the poo gold?"
Apparently the metal detectors kept going off as he'd leave
the work and they would frisk him and then go,
"Nothing. That's bizarre."
He'd go, "The perfect crime!"
And then waddle out.
Sounds like the worst James Bond villain of all time -
"He's got a load of gold shoved up his arse.
"He is Goldarse."
I don't think it would be Goldarse, would it?
It'd be Goldsphincter.
APPLAUSE
Our next round is called Newsreel.
We play a recent piece of footage featuring people in the news
and ask Hugh to suggest what might be being said.
This week's clip features the royal family.
"Oh, put him down, Camilla. I'm sorry, she's insatiable.
"Anyway, I meant to give you this.
"Er, I don't know why. I don't care."
GRUFFLY: "Oh, look at this, this is lovely.
"This will make a lovely Christmas present.
"Goodness, my voice is even lower than normal.
"I wonder if they have any Strepsils.
"By the way, I have already paid for this.
"I'm not walking off with it."
CHARLES VOICE: "Oh, for goodness' sake, Camilla,
"put them down. It's a compulsion. We haven't got any money."
"Oh, no, no, please, if you could just pop them in the bag.
"Very good. Thank you so much. Lovely. Thank you."
"Erm, just a quick word in your shell-like, Your Royal Highness.
"That is, in fact, the fourth carrier bag your wife has filled
"with Christmas goodies.
"So far, she hasn't paid us for any of them. It's a charity event."
"Don't worry, I'll just write you a pretend IOU.
"I normally prefer to pay the way
"I handle my relationship with my mother.
"Contactless.
"Yes, you take your hat off and you bow, that's what you do.
"Hat off, bow.
"It may be Christmas, but I'm still the Prince of Wales."
"Oh, look at these, he's lovely.
"Could you give me a small, furry aviator? Could I have one, please?
"No? Miserable wanker."
"Hello, Camilla.
"We got all the goods you asked us to obtain for you."
"That's lovely. Are they all here?
"Oh, what a lovely puppy.
"Could I have the puppy?
"Look at these dogs. What lovely dogs.
"Could I have the dogs?"
APPLAUSE
Well done, Hugh Dennis.
What do you want for Christmas this year?
I don't know, I don't want anything for Christmas.
A handjob off an elf.
The number-one gift, apparently, for Christmas this year?
Nerf. Nerf guns. It's a Nerf gun.
The Nerf gun is 64 quid.
You could go to America and buy a gun for less than that.
It's a ludicrously scary thing, the Nerf gun. This is the... Oh, hello!
Don't point that there! Oi! Point that over someone else.
I promise I'll be really careful. I wouldn't dream of doing that to you.
Of all the people here, you're the last person that I would fire the...
Boom!
Oh, yeah, there's three things you can do, right?
You can do this big one here.
Right.
Nerf is how I did this to my eyes. I'm just saying.
I'm just warning you. OK, I'll get him instead.
Are we OK to sacrifice you for this? I guess so.
And then you can re-use them.
I bet you could catch that in your teeth, Ed.
I'm fairly certain there's an instruction manual that says,
"Do not aim at people's faces"! Yeah, there is.
Please remember that I am a special man with special powers
and do not try this at home.
APPLAUSE
How far will it get? How far do you think it will get?
I don't know, but if he hits any of you, sue the shit out of him.
All that money they're saving on Bake Off now can go to you!
Can it get to the back?
I mean, I feel it can be unnecessarily powerful, this thing.
OK? Yes, I certainly feel that. Yeah.
Whoa!
Oh, now! Good catch! Well done!
Respect. That is, I'm estimating, seven gardens away.
So you asked, "What do you want for Christmas?"
so you could then shoot us?
APPLAUSE
He's still got the hump with me, James,
because he got heckled in Derby
because they wouldn't shake his hand.
I always shake people's hands after the show and, in Derby,
I was there the week before and shook everyone's hand
and then someone walked out of his show and went,
"At least Rob Beckett shook our hand!"
That actually happened! Can you believe it?
He shakes people's hands on the way out the door
like a little kiss-arse.
Here's what most of us do, right?
We do our stand-up and then we go, "That'll be enough,"
and we go back, cos that's our job,
and Rob goes, "Please like me" at the door.
It's pathetic!
APPLAUSE
I'm just thankful they came, James, and, to be fair, like, you know,
it's only four people you've got to shake, so...
Listen, here's what's annoying about it, right?
I got heckled with this thing, "Well, Rob Beckett shook our hands."
What else did they say? What else did they...
James, what else did they say?
"And he had proper jokes."
APPLAUSE
So then I was like, right, for a joke, then, at the end,
I said goodnight, and then I legged it downstairs to the door
and I shook all their hands on the way out, however...
Yeah, four of them, but, like, shaking all of their hands,
and when the last one went out - and it was clearly a joke
that I was doing to make fun of Rob -
and the last one went out and the venue manager came up to me
and went, "Thanks for doing that. It really means a lot to them
"when people take the time to shake their hands."
"It was a joke!"
I'm not Rob Beckett!
Yeah, but the thing is, let's be honest, I didn't have many other
options open to me career-wise so I'm just very thankful they turn up.
Genuinely, because without them, I would probably be on the street.
Yeah. At the end of my shows, I say,
"I've been James Acaster and I could have been anything."
And I walk off.
Why would you want to be given clothes as
a Christmas present in Iceland?
Cos it's really cold. It's cold. It's freezing there.
It's a land of ice, Dara!
Is it because you can take them back and get the money back
in exchange for the clothes?
No. It's not that perfectly, practically good reason.
Clothes is just a good present wherever you are.
Oh, God, yes, I know, OK, the question...
Is it cos people don't have clothes?
I'm sorry, are you getting exasperated at us trying to think
of humorous answers to ridiculous questions that you're posing?
Should we just try our hardest to come up with the correct answer?
Would that slightly miss the point of a comedy quiz?
Is it cos normally they sell frozen food?
The reason you should be given clothes as a Christmas present
in Iceland is to stop you getting eaten by the Yule Cat.
Or Jola...Jolakotturinn.
You know what? I wonder why you didn't get the QI presenting job.
There's got to be one show you don't present, hasn't there?
There has to be, yeah.
What might you expect to eat at Christmas in Japan?
Food. Yes.
Sushi. No.
Sashimi. No.
Don't just name all Japanese things you can think of.
Wagamamas.
APPLAUSE
A bucket of...? Eels. Turkey. That's not a clue!
It's a really good clue! A bucket of...? Fried chicken.
Fried chicken! Is it fried chicken?! It's fried chicken, Nish!
APPLAUSE
Not just any fried chicken... Kentucky Fried Chicken?
Kentucky Fried Chicken.
Since 1974, KFC has marketed itself in Japan as a Christmas food...
Oh, very clever. ..with the advertising phrase...
QUICKLY: .."Kentucky for Christmas."
I beg your pardon?!
Say that again?
Kentucky-fu-Christmas.
In other news, what's going on here?
Oh, is this the first shots of Channel 4's Bake Off?
Well, they had to get somebody to do it.
By the way, any comments we make about Bake Off,
this is done on a Tuesday,
things are all just breaking, Mel and Sue are not doing it,
who knows who's going to be doing it?
It's a situation that we don't know by Friday,
but can I just say I'm really excited to be taking over?
I find it quite insulting that you've even made a joke assuming
that you'd take it over
when I've actually hosted episodes of the Bake Off!
I've actually done it!
Yeah, for charity. I'd do it for money.
APPLAUSE
Sorry, do you think that kids might confuse
Corbyn with Father Christmas?
Because he's got a beard, hasn't he?
He's promised people lots of presents
and adults laugh at you for believing in him.
Yes! It's a Christmas joke!
APPLAUSE
CHANTING: Christmas! Christmas! Christmas!
You have, you've not just saved Christmas,
you've saved the Christmas special.
Cos maybe she's saying something like,
"See? It's all right if we go into work together.
"No-one will make fun of you."
And no-one has made fun of you, have they?
They haven't cos it's been bring your partner to work day,
and Sara's brought John,
and it's a historical thing for the show.
We've never had...
Which Labour MP would you turn to if you wanted to buy a washing machine?
Probably none of them.
I'm much more likely to go to Currys PC World.
And when the princess announced that she had...
LAUGHTER
Sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry! It's become a running joke!
Moving on, how is the Labour leadership contest shaping up?
There's no-one there, Dara.
Should have gone to Specsavers.
Is it, "How many people say 'No' when they..."
Oh, fuck off, Rob.
Is it, "How many people say no when they get asked,
" 'Have you been to Nando's before?' "
Because it's a pretty popular place, and most people go, "Yeah."
LAUGHTER
It's a joke, innit? It's a fucking joke, that's what you want.
How long does it take Craig David to...
comprehensively seduce 26.6 women?
Does he say that?
"You have been comprehensively seduced"?
Miles, how would you comprehensively seduce someone?
Ah, you know when it's over, Rob.
I'm Dara O Briain. I'm, like, in a mind jail of my own creation.
I'm forced to say my own name over and over again.
Save me. Save me now.
Obama's had an interesting week.
What happened between him and the leader of the Philippines?
We don't need the others.
APPLAUSE
Hi, I'm Dara O Briain and I'm sick of this shit.
Oh!
APPLAUSE
Why might Italian kids be eating this?
Now, you can get a clear view of that.
Because things have gone very badly wrong in the Italian economy.
They're called coal sweets.
It's from the tradition of giving naughty children coal.
This is a sweet that looks like coal, apparently.
It's called carbone dolce. Er...
Whoa, whoa, whoa, I'm sat next to you and I haven't got any goggles!
Right, and so...
LAUGHTER
This may take some time.
If someone tunes in now, it's going to look like your science show
has gone right down the toilet, Dara. That should do it.
There we go. Beautiful.
You first? That is... Yes, or pass it on.
That is the traditional gift for bad children.
What, this is what you get if you're a bad child? Do you eat it?
Yeah, you eat it. Yeah.
Oh, my word! It's like nanna's ashes!
"Tastes like nanna's ashes."
That's a heart-warming Christmas story right there, isn't it?
That is sugary! Wow. It's just two types of sugar and egg, that's all.
You look like the bloke from The Incredibles, I think.
APPLAUSE
There's a touch of the Minions about you.
I can't be both Gru and the Minions.
I can't.
That's what you want to do with naughty children -
fill them full of sugar.
They'll sit still and behave.
Put that away.
Oh, that was awful. It was shit, wasn't it?
You'll notice I didn't eat it.
I didn't have any of it. Oh, no, you haven't. What?
Poisoned it.
To be the king of the show at the end of Christmas!
You think that would be what I would want?
Yeah, I want to kill the other six people on the Christmas special
and just end with the six of you slumped and me going,
"Have a wonderful Christmas."
That is absolutely despicable, Dara.
LAUGHTER AND APPLAUSE
No! You've got me hatching a master plan.
Christ, this Gru thing is never going away.
Personally, I also don't believe you would ever do it.
At the end of that,
only the living may receive points at the end of our quiz.
Yes, that's all from Mock The Week.
I did it! I did it like you told me to do it.
What? Now I have to do the audience as well?
They'll not fall for it again.
But we'll try.
APPLAUSE
OK, the next topic is Unlikely Lines From A Horror Film.
"I know what you did last summer,
"because you keep posting all your boring shit on Facebook."
APPLAUSE
"I'd rather you not say 'zombie',
"the term now is 'differently alive'."
APPLAUSE
"I have a message from the other side.
" 'We have Bake Off now!' "
APPLAUSE
"The ghost is trying to say something to us.
" 'Old Kent Road'...
" 'Community chest'...
" 'Go to jai...' Sorry, I didn't have time to get a Ouija board."
"Oh, my God, everybody run!
"Oh, no, it's just some fat prick with a Nerf gun."
I think you mean a broken Nerf gun.
For example, this bit shouldn't do this.
"It's alive! It's alive!
"Oh, no, sorry, it's dead.
"I really am an awful vet."
"I'm afraid I have no choice but to kill you...
"because I've already chosen to shag and marry your two friends."
"28 Days Later, a horrifying journey of
"a man going from Three Bridges to East Croydon with Southern."
APPLAUSE
"I see dead people...
"Oh, no, my bad, it's Keith Richards."
"Get back, you demons! You devils!
"Get away, Satan spawn, back from whence you came!
"That was a party political broadcast
"on behalf of the UK Independence Party."
APPLAUSE
"Here's Johnny!
"And then I'm going to put it on my willy!
"And then we're going to have sexy!"
"Sir, there's been another attack by the undead in Wimbledon.
"No, not zombies this time.
"Zombles."
APPLAUSE
LAUGHTER
"A seance?
"No! I've been pronouncing it 'se-yon-say'!"
Next topic is Unlikely Things To Hear At Christmas.
"Oh, John, thank you so much for my electric toothbrush.
"No, it's everything I wanted and more.
"Oh, you got lots of Nectar points on it? Good."
APPLAUSE
Do the fork and take a pew.
This one might run for a while.
"Oh, Sara, a holiday to Barbados?
"That's going to help in the fight against plaque."
APPLAUSE
"It's Christmas? Today?
"Are you sure?
"The shops have kept that very quiet."
APPLAUSE
"Oh, look, everyone has eaten all the nuts I bought.
"I should buy some more."
LAUGHTER
"Leg or breast?
"I'd really rather you just put your clothes back on, Gran."
"I'd just like to be reassure everyone that the sponsorship deal
"will have no effect on this year's Nativity.
"Now, Joseph, if you could just pop Jesus in the Pret a Manger."
APPLAUSE
♪ Chestnuts roasting on an open fire... ♪
Mmm, Christmas with a vegan.
APPLAUSE
"This is your Christmas and birthday present.
"Yes, it IS a turkey with 16 candles stuck in it."
"We always have a goose here at Christmas.
"I don't know why, really.
"Its conversation is terrible and it shits all over the floor."
"No, I will not calm down, Alfred. Did you hear what they were singing?
" 'Jingle bells, Batman smells' "?
"They're not the original lyrics!
"They wrote that to hurt my feelings!"
APPLAUSE
"Yeah, a good tip for sprouts is to slice them very thinly,
"drizzle them in olive oil,
"throw them in the bin and drink a bottle of red wine."
APPLAUSE
"50 Shades Of Grey! Yes, I'm well good at charades.
"Put your top back on, Nan."
"Oh, I just wish that Monopoly lasted longer."
Yeah, I said it! It's a shit game!
"Yes, little Annabel, I did say we were going to see The Snowman,
"but I should have explained The Snowman
"is what I call my coke dealer."
"What the fuck is eggnog?"
APPLAUSE
Boom, there you go. I'm sending out Christmas wishes to everybody!
Christmas wishes! Take my Christmas wish in the head!
Go on, take that!
Oh, for God's sake,
This is the least festive one of these we've ever done.