Have I Got News For You continues on BBC One tonight at 9pm, with comedian & presenter Richard Ayoade guest hosting the sixth episode of the show’s current 60th series.
With the programme back filming in studio but now with a virtual audience due to the November lockdown restrictions, regular team captains Ian Hislop and Paul Merton were joined by guest panellists comedian and GameFace star Roisin Conaty (pictured) and writer & director Armando 'The Thick Of It' Iannucci.
It was a busy week for news, with the panel getting stuck into the continued delay to the final result of the US election and the UK re-entering lockdown for the month of November, as well as some lighter stories about a new Guernsey police recruitment video and Cliff Richard announcing that he has stopped swearing.
It wasn’t long before the panel’s attention turned to the biggest story of the week, with Joe Biden and Donald Trump fighting it out in Tuesday’s US presidential election. With the final result still to be settled at the time of filming, the panel discussed Biden’s slender lead and Trump’s insistence that the counting be stopped in the key remaining states, due to his unsubstantiated claims of voter fraud.
“This is the news that the old white guy won,” joked host Richard Ayoade about the lack of a definitive result, checking his earpiece, “Yeah, that does cover us either way.”
“Biden has probably got it. Oh.. Ian doesn’t like that, he’s sat up!” said Roisin Conaty.
“I can’t bear the hope, Roisin, that’s all it is!” replied Ian Hislop.
“That’s a good autobiography title, by the way. If you haven’t written it already, please,” laughed Ayoade.
“Yeah, there’s fantastic footage of a group of Trump supporters saying we've got to stop the count in one state, and then immediately they flick to them saying we've got to count this up, because they thought it was their vote,” pointed out Hislop.
“Yeah but I think over the last four years a lot of people in America have said ‘we’ve got to stop the count’,” joked Paul Merton.
“He kept saying things like ‘they’re finding the votes everywhere!’. He made it out like they were finding them where they weren’t meant to be, like they were down the back of the sofa or Willy Wonka had chocolate bars,” laughed Conaty.
“This is the delayed result of the US election. With the final outcome still in the balance, political scientists agree that the only constitutionally guaranteed way to get Donald Trump out of the White House is to hand him a space suit and say, ‘congratulations, you've just been elected King of the Galaxy’” joked Ayoade, before referencing Biden’s age.
The panel also found time to discuss the UK’s new lockdown, after Boris Johnson gave a press conference to announce the stricter measures for November.
“We’re now in lockdown again. Boris Johnson was very against it but was shown by scientists all sorts of worrying figures showing Keir Starmer ahead, and he thought ‘we've got to do this, it would be morally wrong not to’” Iannucci said.
“He’d given a clue that he was going to change his mind because he said there is no way we're going to have a national lockdown, so most of us just stocked up on food,” joked Hislop.
Have I Got News For You continues on BBC One at 9pm tonight.
Have I Got A Bit More News For You, the extended 40 minute version of the episode, will premiere on BBC iPlayer from 6pm on Sunday. It will then air on BBC One on Monday at 11.35pm.
Picture: Hat Trick Productions
