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The News Quiz
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[b]This entry refers to a SERIES created as an umbrella for releases of the BBC Radio 4 programme. It should be used only in the second label field, identified as a series.[/b] [i]The News Quiz[/i] is an on-going British satirical radio programme broadcast regularly on BBC Radio 4 since 6 September 1977. Originally pitting the editor of [i]Private Eye[/i] magazine, [a=Richard Ingrams], against the editor of [i]Punch[/i], [a=Alan Coren], in a news-based competition, the show has gradually evolved into a platform for satirical comedians, although journalists do still periodically appear. In the early years, team captains Coren and Ingrams would be paired with other journalists, politicians, or broadcasters and given questions by the chairman from the previous week's news to answer. Four chairmen have taken the centre seat since the show's beginning, [a=Barry Norman], [a=Barry Took] (late 1970s, alternating occasionally with Hoggart in the 1980s, until 1996), journalist [a=Simon Hoggart] (sporadically in the 1980s, then from 1996-2006), and, from mid-2006 to May, 2015, Anglo-Danish writer, broadcaster, and comedian [a=Sandi Toksvig]. At the time of Toksvig's departure (to apply herself full-time to the Women's Equality Party), it was announced that actor, comedian, and author [a5183815] would assume the chair of [i]The News Quiz[/i], beginning with the new series in September, 2015. Other occasional replacement chairs have included journalist, Thatcher fencing foil, and samba dancer [a=John Sargent], [a=Francis Wheen] (who was mercilessly savaged at the time by a gleeful [a=Linda Smith]), and [a=Jeremy Hardy]. During series 97 (autumn 2018), Jupp was absent for 6 weeks due to filming commitments and so only presented the first and last episodes of the series. He was replaced by (in chronological order) [a6271051], Susan Calman, [a4314336], Bridget Christie, [a866872] and Lucy Porter. Through the years, they have been assisted by newsreaders from Radio 4, some of whom have had difficulty when it came time to read out a funny piece of news (announcer [a=Charlotte Green] is perhaps the most notorious example of this). Newsreaders have also occasionally stood in for absent panelists, as when announcer Corrie Corfield took the unavoidably detained Sandi Toksvig's place for one 2003 broadcast (due to the BBC's rules governing the neutrality of presenters, Corfield could only make factual statements about the questions posed to her, to the delight of the other contestants). Although nominally a "panel game" in which points are awarded for correct answers, the scores have arguably been somewhat arbitrary since Toksvig took the helm of the show in 2006. The rounds of the game are generally punctuated by listener-submitted clippings from newspapers, magazines, and (more recently) websites from around the world. Current broadcasts of [i]The News Quiz[/i] may be freely downloaded from the BBC as podcasts, and anthology volumes have appeared, first on cassette and later on compact disc, since the late 1990s.