Friday Night Comedy from BBC Radio 4

00:00 This BBC podcast is supported by ads outside the UK. 00:05 Get more with BBC podcasts wherever you listen. Be the first to listen to your favourite shows like Evil Genius, Good Bad Billionaire and You're Dead to Me with a subscription to BBC podcasts premium on Apple podcasts. You can also enjoy a range of our podcasts ad free with an Amazon music subscription. 00:27 Hello, I'm Ian Smith. We're coming to you from the Edinburgh Fringe, where the people of Scotland have had enough. That's right, we're on the road visiting a new location. It's basically question time, only in this show the funny bits are on purpose. 00:41 Just think of me as your Fiona Bruce. I'm lightly authoritative, with a twinkle in my eye, and I also don't give a shit about antiques. 00:50 But I will pretend to do that for money. 00:53 This is the week that we were told not to teach our grandmas to suck eggs. Not because it's patronising, but because there's been a major salmonella outbreak in the UK. 01:01 But the people have answers. And together, we're going to turn Oman into Yemen. Not Yemen, sorry. Let's not turn it into Yemen. 01:12 I've assembled a dream team of audience members, a people's parliament packed with real-life wisdom, and together we're going to be kicking down the door of politics with more urgency than a police officer at Nicola Sturgeon's motorhome. 01:24 Welcome to... We've got loads of questions to tackle. 01:33 Should controversial rappers be performing in Russia? Kanye or Kanye? 01:38 And as the mushroom murderer Erin Patterson is appealing her conviction, we ask, who would be the more controversial MasterChef host? Her or Greg Wallace? 01:47 I'm going to come and meet some of the audience members to see who we've got. We've got some serious intellect here. You've got a gilet on! Random question off the top of my head. Parallel parking. It's too hard. How do we make it easier, sir? 02:00 Cars that park themselves. I've seen that road. 02:02 Cars that park themselves. We've dealt with it already. 02:06 You might be thinking, how does that work? Stop bothering him with your questions. What would you do if you found out Mr Blobby is just a regular man with a disease? I've no idea. 02:18 No idea. Yeah, these are quite difficult ones. Bit of an easier one. How do we respond to Russia's warnings over Ukraine? 02:26 Just get on with it and stop. 02:30 To me or Russia? Wow, it's an aggressive way, but yes, we'll move on. 02:35 It's such a contradiction, but a beautiful one. Just get on with it and stop. 02:41 So, our mob is here, ready to ram their pitchforks up the arse of politics. But who's going to help us shout our empty threats into the world? Please welcome my People's Champions, Ashley Storey and Harriet Kemsley! APPLAUSE Guys, do you think you're the people qualified to help us solve all the world's problems? 03:00 We're the people that are here. 03:04 I mean, just before the recording, I don't want to reveal too much, but Harriet said she got trapped inside a toilet. 03:11 OK, I am losing a bit of confidence as well. 03:14 So now we have our suitably troubled troublemakers, we're ready for some suitably new news. One big story this week, peace in the Middle East! 03:22 Oh, not really. Can you imagine? It's the opposite again. Negotiations between the US and Iran continued to stall this week as Trump's self-imposed 60-day deadline for peace expired with all the surprise of a delayed Grand Designs build. 03:37 Iran is basically an eco-lighthouse project on the Dorset coast and Trump's the guy standing next to his heavily pregnant wife saying things like, the builders have assured us we'll at least have running water by the time the triplets arrive. LAUGHTER The most annoying thing about this war is I didn't know where the Strait of Hormuz was before it started, and if there's one thing that really upsets me, it's being made to learn geography against my will. 03:58 If two countries start fighting over an oxbow lake, I am out. 04:02 Trump said that if Oman gets in the way of a peace deal with Iran, we'll bomb the shit out of them, before being praised for his uncharacteristic restraints. 04:11 It's almost as if putting an arbitrary deadline on something incredibly complicated and delicate doesn't help when trying to solve it. 04:18 But we've got ten minutes, so let's have a crack at world peace. 04:22 War. 04:23 What do you think? 04:25 Yeah, it's quite stressful, isn't it? And I'm not even in it. 04:29 I feel stressed. I didn't start it. Why are you still looking at me? 04:33 No-one has accused you of starting the war in Iran. 04:36 I didn't start the war, and I think it's bad. But, you know, Trump's in charge. He posted on his own version of Twitter... 04:42 Truth Social. Yeah, thank you. He posted on that a picture of the Strait of Hormuz with a circle round it going, this is US territory now. And that was just that. And I didn't know that's how you call dibs on things. So I'd like to right now state I'm drawing a circle around the version of Draco Malfoy I invented in my head and he's my husband now and none of yous can do anything about it. LAUGHTER 05:04 In his defence, Trump has had an incredibly busy week this week, shouting at women in the White House, writing love letters to Kim Jong-un, and seeing which household items can be crafted from gold. 05:15 But our big question to the panel, Harriet and Ashley, what's your weirdest tip for stopping procrastination? 05:20 I can't stop procrastinating because I'm constantly on the internet watching little short films on the... Have you ever seen a vertical drama? Vertical drama. Is that not just life? No, those are wider. It's always like a lady who's a maid and she doesn't know she's secretly a billionaire and a werewolf and then she... Booth's a hot guy. 05:40 Oh, you mean partners? 05:44 Did you see him and Natalie getting on a different plane so that all of the press and all his pals could get shot down out of the air? He used his pals as a defence on his plane. It's insane. So how do I stop procrastinating? Erm... 05:59 Well, Harriet, can you equal that extremely clear method to stop procrastination? 06:04 Well, I don't know. I think the best way to stop procrastinating is to have a child. 06:09 It's a big risk. 06:12 It could ruin your life. But you'll get stuff done. I mean, it's not going to be things you want to do. You're going to have to do some things, mainly child-focused. 06:21 So you've, like, completely disregarded the original things you wanted to do, but you've replaced them with a new responsibility? 06:28 Yeah, that's exactly what I've done. Yeah. Oh, no, what a way to find out four years later. Oh, no, here in the BBC tent. 06:36 We've got some suggestions from the audience here about how to stop procrastinating. We've got something here from Linda Martin. Never start anything in the first place. 06:47 Excellent. 06:48 Well done, Linda. 06:49 This is from Steve, but I'm going to do it in a voice that I've picked. Promise yourself a glass of wine. 06:56 And when you complete the task, drink it. 06:59 I like that. What if you just drink the wine before, though, and then you don't have to do the task because you're drunk? 07:04 Let's get Steve's thoughts on that. How long have you been dependent on wine? Quite a long time. Quite a long time. Red or white? Red. Oh, yes. Red, OK. And Harriet's suggestion is, why don't you just drink a lot of wine and then abandon what you'd wanted to do? I like that better, yeah. 07:22 LAUGHTER 07:23 Thank you, Steve. 07:25 Harriet, what suggestion do you have from an audience member? 07:27 I have a suggestion from Ruth, and Ruth says, take a laxative. 07:34 It feels like Ruth has answered a different question. Ruth, where are you? 07:39 She's in the toilet. In the toilet. 07:43 So, the people have spoken, and we are going to make Donald Trump stop procrastinating by having another child. 07:50 Oh, no, sorry. It doesn't work with Trump, though, because then there's just more Trumps. 07:55 Let me go back. The people have spoken, and we're going to make Donald Trump stop procrastinating by taking a laxative. 08:03 I personally make a point of never procrastinating, because... 08:07 Yeah, well, I haven't written a joke for that yet. I think there's something I needed to do. Oh, well, there's plenty more to deal with in the Middle East. On the other side of the diplomatic bin fire, this week also saw Trump's son-in-law, Jared Kushner, and ex-PM Tony Blair sit down for a rare meeting with Hamas leaders. Blair and Kushner are members of the US Board of Peace. You don't want to send in a group of guys who are Board of Peace... 08:30 Surely you want to send in some guys who are fed up with war? 08:33 The peace envoy boys later met with Netanyahu after Israel rejected Trump's 15-point Gaza peace plan, which is where Trump points at 15 different people and says, this is your fault. So my question to the panel is, with Trump sending his son-in-law to fight his battles for him, it looks like the Nepo terrorist negotiators are all the rage. We want to know, which family member would you send in to negotiate with terrorists? 08:57 It's probably like some of the ones who were terrorists back in the day. I don't know if anybody else grew up in a house where there was Semtex in the freezer, but I did. 09:07 Mine was more of a goo puddings vibe. 09:12 If I was going to send somebody, it would probably be my ma. She's dead now. I'd send a ghost. A ghost is pretty vengeful. There's been, like, three guys annoyed me at work, and a seagull has pooped on all three of them. And I'm now convinced my ma's come back as a vengeful bird. Because it also does kind of sound like... 09:30 Harriet, do you have any ideas, any vengeful ghosts in your family? 09:33 I've negotiated with an ex-husband. He did take all the spoons. 09:39 I don't know if I negotiated well, cos I'm just eating pudding with my hands. 09:45 I think it'd be kind of fun hearing me out here if we sent Gaza to Gaza. 09:53 mind when he tried to stop Raoul Mott with a fishing rod and a roast chicken. So let's send Gazza out there and at least it will be a good name for a BBC4 Stacey Dooley documentary. It's like, Gazza on Gazza! 10:08 And the good thing about that, we know he's available. 10:12 I imagine he's picking up the phone and just going, yep. Yes, I will do it. 10:16 What's that? 10:18 What's that? 10:19 Send Melania in. Can we get a microphone to this woman? She's got the answers. 10:24 Melania's coming in. 10:26 I just... You're asking who to send in. It just comes Melania. 10:31 Melania. And what qualities do you think Melania would bring to the Gaza peace negotiations? 10:36 Well, she'd just be a woman, for example, to start with. 10:41 Difficult to argue so far. Yeah. 10:42 LAUGHTER And she's got power over Trump, even though we can't see it, really, but she will have. So she'll have indirect power. Yep. She's got words within her to charm the defensive. She could slow-blink them into submission. 11:00 And if they decide, well, they want to kidnap her, then Trump's got a lot to answer for. 11:06 Yeah. Can I just say, I wasn't expecting you to have fought this through as deeply as you have. 11:10 LAUGHTER 11:13 When it progressed to, and if she gets kidnapped, I thought, you have gone in deep here. 11:16 Well, it just came to mind. I just thought, no one's saying it, so, yeah. I want to watch this movie. The unfolding of Melania being kidnapped by the Gestapo over in Iran. It's a long title. 11:31 That's the sort of thing that comes after the colon in a shorter title. 11:36 Can you imagine Trump if that happened, really? 11:39 I think he'd just get a new bird. I think he'd really overestimate how much he loves that woman. I think he'd just find another blinky woman and that would be that done. 11:47 Thank you very much. 11:56 Get more with BBC Podcasts wherever you listen. Be the first to listen to your favourite shows like Evil Genius, Good Bad Billionaire and You're Dead to Me with a subscription to BBC Podcasts Premium on Apple Podcasts. You can also enjoy a range of our podcasts ad-free with an Amazon Music subscription. 12:17 He's making a list. He's checking it twice. He's going to find out who's rough sleeping and how to help them not do that. 12:25 Andy Birdham has set a Christmas deadline for his commitment to ending rough sleeping. The new funding to tackle rough sleeping will also provide intensive wraparound support, which sounds like what Keir Starmer would call a hug. 12:37 I would go one further than this. Once rough sleeping is sorted, I want to bring an end to bad dreams. After a long time in day, I shouldn't have to sit an exam I haven't revised for completely naked while my teeth are falling out. 12:49 My question to the panel, what would you end by Christmas? 12:53 The year. 12:54 The year. Just get it done. 12:55 No, wait. Yeah, maybe. I think the end of the year should be Christmas Day. Get it all in one day. Because the days afterwards are nothing. It just peters out. Excuse me. Pardon? 13:06 She's English. Don't shout Hogmanay. They'll just go, what? LAUGHTER 13:12 I feel like the tide has turned a little bit. I love hog mini. I hope to celebrate mini hogs going forward. Thank you, good night. 13:24 Harriet, I think you absolutely covered yourself there. Ashley, do you have anything that, you know, what's your top priority? 13:31 I'm just trying to see if I can grow my hair long enough so that it gets trapped between my bum cheeks when I'm in the shower. LAUGHTER 13:38 Yes, I mean, it's really good to have goals in life. 13:42 Also, Andy Burnham's helping the homeless only applies to England. That money's not coming to Scotland either, so just so we're all aware of that. In fact, none of his laws apply to any of us, so I'm really happy for your new Prime Minister. He seems like a cutie patootie. And he's never stole a caravan, so you've one-upped us there. LAUGHTER 14:00 But that isn't all Andy Burnham's been up to this week. Our Prime Minister, our leader, the man to turn this country around has been pranked. It's hugely embarrassing for us, but Andy Burnham has been communicating with someone via WhatsApp who he believed to be top Trump aide Susie Wiles. What could Burnham's WhatsApp messages have contained? Well, he's a middle-aged dad from the north of England, so I can confidently tell you, mostly just the thumbs-up emoji and the word OK. 14:25 Wiles' contacts have been hacked before. She's 69. She can't handle the technology, bless her. I bet every time you have a Zoom with her, the screen is blank and all you can hear is her going, can you see me now? 14:37 Wiles admitted it had been a stressful week for her, but the silver lining was that she'd recently inherited £3 million fortune from a Nigerian prince she was distantly related to. 14:45 LAUGHTER 14:46 So it sounds like we all need to be a little bit more scam aware. So we asked our audience, have you ever fallen for a scam? We've got this answer here from Craig Smith. This is a very interesting one. No. 14:58 Thank you, Craig. 15:02 Thank you. 15:05 He's written that down on the form. He's thought, we don't need any more explanation here. 15:10 But in terms of pranks, I spend my life constantly having to tell my daddy that's not real because he finds videos on the internet and he's a very odd autistic man who doesn't speak to people and he loves videos of people doing Britain's Got Talent auditions, like the Susan Boyles of the world. That's what... He sits there and he cries and he goes, ain't that beautiful? And he comes into my room and he's like, Ashley, I've just seen the weirdest video. Wee fella singing Baby We Were Born To Run gets the gold buzzer off Simon. Okay, he's like, it's terrible, Ashley. I don't understand. He must have a sad life story. 15:41 And I went into the living room And it was a man in India stood in front of a green screen. You could still see the green behind him. And he just photoshopped himself onto the Britain's Got Talent stage and then clipped in a random clip of Simon Cowell hitting a button. And my dad believed that was real. And now I'm terrified because if he believes that's real, he's not seen AI yet. 16:03 So I think that the way to not get scammed is we all just stop talking to other people. 16:09 Well, I'm just absolutely gutted that my favourite Britain's Got Talent contestant's turned out to be a lie. 16:15 Sorry, bud. 16:16 Harriet, do you want to slag off Susan Boyle while you're here? 16:22 The Queen of Scotland. 16:25 I think she's a lovely lady and a talent. 16:28 I once saw Susan Boyle give a prize to a tiny horse and it was the best thing I've ever seen in my life. 16:33 What is tiny horse? Is this a Scottish... No, I thought it was a famous Scottish name. 16:39 Sorry. 16:39 You've got so concerned now. I love your tiny horses that you have here. 16:45 It was a wee tiny horse in a kilt and Susan Boyle had to give it the Pride of Scotland Award and she went, well done, and gave it a wee bow and I was like, that's the best thing I've ever seen. LAUGHTER It was lovely. 16:56 And me and Harriet have nothing negative to say about the Pride of Scotland Award being awarded to a horse. 17:03 It's a nice horse. 17:04 Oh, yeah, and I'm sure there's no-one more deserving... ..than that small, kilted horse. My mum is from Edinburgh and half my dad's family from Aberdeen. I'm three-quarters Scottish. Don't lie, Ian. No, that's true! 17:20 I'm one of you guys, come on! LAUGHTER Um, Ashley, what do you have? 17:25 Beth has been in touch, and Beth says, My dad convinced me that toffee was pig's earwax from about age 8 to 14. What was his endgame? 17:37 I honestly couldn't tell you. 17:39 But he used to get special toffee from Thornton's for every birthday, and yeah, I just believed it. 17:46 Still ate it. 17:49 I just thought, wow, who first discovered this delicacy? 17:54 Who's going in there? 17:55 That could have been an awkward trip to the city farm. 18:01 Harriet, what audience suggestions do you have? 18:03 So, have you ever fallen for a prank or scam? Yes. My husband, Alan Gary. 18:08 Alan Gary is in. 18:09 Alan Gary, do you know what's written here? 18:11 Yeah, I do. 18:13 My husband, Alan Gary, was pranked by an exploding golf ball on the first tee. New Year's Day, hangover day. 18:21 Aye. 18:22 Are you OK, Alan? 18:23 We were pretty hungover, I should say, right? There was a bit of snow on the ground as well. 18:28 Alan, can I just say, you still sound absolutely gutted about this. I am. Don't blame yourself, is what I'd say. Right, well... 18:37 He was gutted. He's never lived it down. 18:41 You're not helping with that. 18:43 Cut a long story short. LAUGHTER My playing partner, well, there was a few of us, just right at the clubhouse and he put the ball down on the tee for me. You know, as I say, I had a couple of drums in me, you know. I took a swipe at it and the thing exploded. It was just white powder. It went everywhere, you know. 19:07 You are telling the story like it's one of the saddest things. 19:11 It's the juxtaposition of literally a plot line from Roadrunner and Coyote. 19:17 And also, it's not that big a deal, Alan. You need to let it go, pal. 19:21 It sticks up there, you know. Well, yeah, that's Alan's story about the fun prank that was played on him. 19:29 I would listen to an hour of Alan recounting fun pranks with the tone of voice as if he's recounting his favourite memory at a wake. 19:41 I do not like pranks. My uncle took my nose from me in 1996, and to this day, I'm doing everything in my power to get it back. 19:49 I'm getting wise to scams now, though. I received a text from HMRC saying, if I don't pay my income tax, my assets will be repossessed. 19:57 Not falling for that one. 19:59 As if there's such a thing as income tax. Now, I think I speak for the people when I say we hate bad news. Screw you, journalistic integrity. We want unlikely animal friendships. Look at that hippo and that kitten. 20:14 Oh, oh, oh, oh, oh. Oh, oh, dear. 20:21 So, in a bid for endless good news, we've asked our people's champions to show us the feel-good side of these feel-bad stories. This week, Meta is facing a landmark lawsuit, which could affect some of the more dopamine-manipulating elements of its social media platforms. Instagram stories, auto-playing videos, and infinite scrolling could become a thing of the past. But Mark Zuckerberg seems like a nice, normal guy. So, Harriet, can you please help him out by telling us why social media is perfect the way it is? 20:48 Oh, yeah. 20:50 I love social media. I think it's so good. I love it for children. 20:58 It's healthy. I think it's really healthy. I love it as a woman. I love social media. I love people commenting on how I look. I genuinely find it helpful. 21:10 It's helpful. I'm learning stuff. A guy commented under my video last week saying she's got that thing Jamie Oliver's got, fat tongue disease. I didn't know it was helpful to have a diagnosis. 21:23 I like when a man on the internet tells you something that you didn't even know you needed to be self-conscious about. I didn't know I had serial killer teeth. 21:32 I wonder how many men put that on a dating profile. 21:35 Looking for a woman with serial killer teeth. G-S-O-H. We could probably get around social media being so addictive if we just make other stuff even more addictive. 21:46 Oh! Have you ever seen, like, the woman who, like, see, if you're Chantelle McGovern, you come round my house, I'm going to... I watch... Oh, yeah. Those videos with women with neck tattoos and lip filler for hours a day. I get so invested in these women's private dramas where they've had a fight at the school gates that I once, and my daddy had to stop me, had to stop me from literally getting on a tube to go to the school to try and see if they had a fight. LAUGHTER 22:10 So I think we're going to go with... Social media seems quite good. You're still using it, everyone? 22:17 Yeah, well, Harriet... No, I disagree. I had to say it. It's bad. 22:22 No, you think it's fantastic. 22:23 No, it's bad. 22:24 And we'll edit all of this out. 22:26 No. 22:27 You think it's fantastic and you love it. 22:29 I don't love it. This has to stay in. OK. Ian's not Scottish. 22:37 I've actually done my family tree on Facebook and I am related to Susan Boyle. 22:43 That pony. It's not a pony, it's a tiny horse. I just want that clarified. Those are different things. It's a tiny horse. 22:52 So now, job vacancies have fallen to their lowest levels in five years, amid rising labour and operating costs, according to the Office for National Statistics. One economist described the UK labour market as stuck in a low-churn limbo. Low-churn limbo is the phrase I use when I'm not sure if I've got anxiety or food poisoning. And sometimes it's both. 23:11 Reform have announced plans for benefits claimants to be made to perform community service in order to keep their payments. They've also said they would keep the triple lock on state pensions. They know exactly what demographic they're targeting. The old ones. It's the policy equivalent of a Werther's original on a bit of string underneath a cardboard box propped up with a stick. 23:30 Clearly, existing employment schemes aren't working, and we think it's because they're not thinking outside the box. Forget nurses and social workers, whatever they do all day. We think the government should be creating more roles in niche sectors. So, some suggestions from the audience here. I've got a suggestion here from Sheena, who says the most unusual job she's ever had was standing at a conveyor belt, picking out slugs, etc., as peas went past before being frozen. 23:58 LAUGHTER 24:00 Wow, what a job. When did you work in the slug department of the frozen peas world? 24:05 When I was a student in Dundee, you picked out bits of leaves and you got an extra sixpence, if you remember what a sixpence is. Oh, yes. You got a little... You get a little tub, and if you found any creepy crawly or anything on the conveyor belt and put that in your tub, you got an extra sixpence on your wages. 24:29 Do you think that job still exists today? The old taking slugs off the conveyor belt by hand. 24:34 Oh, no, AI will have taken it. 24:36 Oh, yeah. It will just be a computer saying there's something suspicious in the P conveyor belt area. 24:42 This was 60 years ago. I will be honest, the sound of that job does sound like a job that happened in the olden days. 24:54 It sounds like the sort of thing your grandma would tell you and you'd think, ah, she's lost it. 24:59 What did you used to do, Grandma? I used to pick the slugs out with a pee conveyor belt. OK, OK. Well, let's just pop you in the home now, I think. Harriet, what do you have as your audience suggestion? 25:14 I have what's the most unusual job you've ever had. Olivia says, I co-starred, cross that out, I featured in a Thai Charlie Chaplin movie. 25:25 Wow, a celebrity in our mix. And it's another very current story. 25:31 The pea conveyor belt, or the time we were in a Charlie Chaplin movie. 25:37 Did you meet Charlie Chaplin? 25:38 Well, it wasn't actually a Charlie Chaplin. It was a Thai Charlie Chaplin lookalike. 25:43 Oh! They told me that I was going to be meeting the aeroplane as it came in, and I was going to be walking down the stairs as the aeroplane disengorged itself. 25:56 I'm not 100% sure that's the right word. 25:59 No, that's the right word. That's the right word, and we're all using it from now on. Whenever we leave a plane, we're disengorging the plane. LAUGHTER 26:05 I'm going to get a ban from EasyJay, I reckon. Can I not disengorge on this plane? 26:10 And the Charlie Chaplin was going to fall down the stairs and it was going to be a bit of a chase. 26:16 So they said, well, you're going to be chasing him around in your underwear. At which point I went, well, I don't think so. 26:23 So after a fair bit of negotiation and the promise of a bit more money and a petticoat, I agreed that this would happen. 26:33 I could have never imagined where this story has gone. 26:36 I usually only tell this to people I really know. 26:42 There's going to be a real spike in Google searches for tie petticoat disengorge. 26:48 How would I solve the lack of jobs in this country? It's easy. I'd end our over-reliance on technology by making the red and green men at crossings real human beings. 26:57 And you might be thinking, Ian, do you mean lollipop ladies? No, I mean we paint the lollipop ladies. We paint them. And also, not enough men are applying to be lollipop ladies because their name is too feminine. I think we should call male lollipop ladies Chuppa Chaps. 27:15 Oh, that was an emergency government alert telling us we've pretty much solved all of the news. We've got 30 seconds to sort out some of the remaining stories. I'm going to get back in amongst you. Inflation's at the highest level in months. How do we deflate it? 27:29 Puck a pen in it. 27:30 Oh, come pinning it! 27:31 We've done it! 27:32 You, sir, if we're going to run out of gas by 2013, what should we use instead? 27:37 Er... Fletus. 27:38 Fletus! 27:40 I'm willing to say yes to that, and I'm not sure why. If you were going to murder your family with poison mushrooms, which meal would you cook? 27:48 Vegetarian bolognese. 27:50 Sounds lovely. Count me in! 27:52 Well, guys, no matter what happens next, we all know the true way to stop procrastinating is to get a more interesting job, like picking the slugs off a conveyor belt of peas. 28:03 Thank you to Ashley Storey and Harriet Kemsley. There'll be more news to sort out next week, but until then... 28:14 The People Have Spoken is hosted by Ian Smith and featured Ashley Story, Harriet Kemsley and The People. The script was written by Ian Smith, Angela Channel, Cameron Moxdale, Katie Story. The producer is Gwynne Rhys-Davies and it's a BBC Studios production for Radio 4. 28:35 Hi, I'm Kiri Pritchard-McLean. Best medicine is back. 28:38 We effectively reprogram bacteria. 28:40 So this is what happens in your lab, is that correct? 28:42 Yeah, my lab in Edinburgh called the Wallace Lab. 28:44 Wallace Lab? I bet the Gromit Lab does all the real work. 28:47 Each week, a load of top doctors, scientists, experts and comedians try to convince me what's the best medicine. 28:54 I'm a big believer in fighting. I think the best medicine is something called a free flap. 28:59 Free flaps, not just my nickname in Freshers' Week. 29:02 Gene therapy for Huntington's disease. We've just found out why I went first. 29:09 It's the antidote to doom and gloom. Today is the best day to be alive and tomorrow's going to be even better. 29:14 We can accomplish things that were previously impossible. 29:17 We've done like three series of this show now and I don't throw this around but I think this could be as good as Baraka. 29:22 Best medicine. Listen first on BBC Sounds. 29:29 Get more with BBC Podcasts wherever you listen. Be the first to listen to your favourite shows like Evil Genius, Good Bad Billionaire and You're Dead to Me with a subscription to BBC Podcasts Premium on Apple Podcasts. You can also enjoy a range of our podcasts ad-free with an Amazon Music subscription.