1-in-1-out, and a New Monkey

[00:00:00] Hello, I'm Steve N Allen, and welcome to Steve N Allen (almost) Daily. Hello, and welcome to another audio podcast with me, Steve N Allen, looking at the news. We can start today with some Steve news. I'd like to keep you up to date with what's been going on with me. Actually, this just in, I think I'm about to sneeze, so there's that. We'll bring you more on that story as it happens. And then last night, in the middle of the night, I woke up. I kind of remember this, right?

[00:00:27] I woke up, just bit myself on the tongue, and then went back to sleep. Not deliberately. I don't know why I did it. Technically, it's allowed on the keto diet. I shouldn't be too upset, but flippin' egg. So that hurts. So welcome along, then, as I try and struggle through and talk. Also, I was up late last night. I mean, ridiculously late. The missus and kids have gone off to visit the in-laws. The in-law, actually.

[00:00:53] So, instead of doing the right thing and just having, you know, maybe a bath, some candles, off to bed, because I thought, well, I've got some time to myself, I went off and recorded a stupid song for the YouTube show. So, you know, follow me on YouTube for that. And I just had fun. Whether anyone else who listens to it will, who knows? So let's do the podcast thing of taking a look at the front pages. We can start today with, what's this, the Daily Mail exclusive.

[00:01:20] Claudia, why I'm quitting my new chat show. I went French there for a second. Wow. Shocker. I did not know that she had a show. Foreign aid farce over Rochdale grooming gang boss. This is £153 million. It's been given in aid, even though that was one of the things that we were meant to say, like, if you don't do what you're meant to do, we're going to keep the aid. Literally already. It's not like nothing's taken off the table, they say. You have.

[00:01:50] You've taken it off the table and you've delivered it in a brown paper bag. You fools. The sum. Only three. No, sorry. Only 693 days till the Euros. I used to get upset about Christmas getting earlier and earlier this year. Do we have to worry about the. Can we just sit it out and then when it happens again? We can do the thing where you vaguely pay attention to the football until it starts to look like we might actually do something.

[00:02:19] And as soon as that pressure is on, we fold like a cheap suit. And actually, this is a good sign. Back in the day, back in the 90s and 2000s, I started to believe we could win when we got to the quarterfinals because it was so rare. And now you've got to get the sniff of the final before you even start to believe. And then we fail. So that's progress or something. Then the Daily Telegraph. Khan. Khan. Not that one. I don't think. I've not read the story. Not. I'm presuming not the one from Star Trek.

[00:02:49] Handed a peerage in Starmer's honours list. This is Keir Starmer, who in an interview once said he wouldn't be doing exit honours. Has absolutely dumped a truckload in there. Great. No, because we need more people in that house. It's all that space. So Khan's in there. He was already a sir. So now he's Lord Sir Sadiq Khan. Sir Lord Sadiq Khan. I don't know which way it is. I think we need to have an upper limit on how many names you're allowed.

[00:03:16] That should be the limiting factor on whether you can get a peerage. You've already got a knighthood. What more do you flippin' want? You need a caveat for professors, I suppose they get to keep that. IMF issues spending warning to Burnham. It's unbelievable. No, that was IMF. It says it must cut the... Well, this is all to do with deficits and whatever, isn't it? So, Britain cannot afford fresh spending binge on the... This is the International Monetary Fund warning.

[00:03:46] The government should be very selective in accommodating new demands for spending. It cautioned that Britain faces serious challenges from high debts, rising interest bills and increasing costs of healthcare. If you care to see me do some serious stuff, there's a clip of me online talking about implying a Laffer curve style analysis to borrowing and also to spending. I mean, it's as dull as you'd think. So maybe you don't. And the Times goes,

[00:04:15] this picture of King Charles and Camilla having a pint of badger. I should point out that's the name of a beer. God, I hope it is. You don't know what these country folk get up to, do you? And then, well, we've got the mirror. Final insult. Picture of those Argentinian footballers carrying out the sheet with Las Malvinas son Argentina. People... Archie, Archie, who's the other one as well? Oh, the Express.

[00:04:45] It's a childish and petulant insult to the UK. It's written on a sheet. Feel free to ignore it. No, it's not legally binding. It's written on a sheet. I don't think anything written on a sheet has ever been legally binding. No one signed it. Put it that way. Who could manage to sign their mark on a sheet? Amber Heard. But other than that, don't worry. Dip. Dip. Because if you start getting all kind of... You shouldn't even do a joke about the Falklands.

[00:05:14] Then we don't get to do jokes about when most of the map was pink. Do you know what I mean? Be careful what you ban. So there's your front pages. Let's get inside some of them. In politics news, this never goes well. More migrants arrived in the UK than were sent back to France in the first 11 months of the infamous one-in-one-out deal. So, look, I'm not a maths expert. You know, I cracked out an A-level in it back in the day. But one-in-one-out seems...

[00:05:43] My toddlers can manage that, right? And what I worry about is, if this has redefined what one-in-one-out means, I'm going to be really annoyed in nightclubs. Because back in the day, you've got to wait here because it's one-in-one-out. All right, it's a full nightclub. And then all of a sudden, some French bloke turns up. How's he getting in there? Oh, sorry, mate. It's government policy. Ah, missed it by that much. I've got some bad Britain news. Some bad news for Britain. Not news about bad Britain. Although that's a good idea for a section.

[00:06:12] Write that down. Britain is losing the mobile network race. I don't even know what that is. We come eighth out of ten in the countries. This is behind US, Singapore and South Korea in terms of the speed of our mobile network. Oh, I see. Well, okay, look, it's always nice to beat other nations. I think that's why we do the football. But is our mobile network kind of fast enough? It's fast enough for a video call.

[00:06:42] And I'm not happy about all of those. The only time I'm waiting for anything is when someone has forwarded me a video on WhatsApp. And it takes, I don't know, 10 seconds to download, depending on where you are. And I can wait those 10 seconds for an incredibly offensive joke about Keir Starmer. Also, that tends to be what people send on WhatsApp. We all pretend there's not a network of thoroughly offensive material that would not be allowed by Ofcom. And we all just crack on as if that doesn't happen. Well, bless.

[00:07:11] But, you know, at some point in the future, get some 6G and you'll be offended in record time. In Simian news, which I think I've got the right word. Is that the word that means monkeys, not those dodgy machines online? Don't ask. A new species of monkey has been, it's got bright orange lips, has been discovered by scientists. It's in the Democratic Republic of Congo.

[00:07:38] I don't wish to judge because I am not the monkey expert. I don't even know if the word's Simeon or the word for the other thing. But I do think this is a weird time. After some really hot weather, there is a chance this is just a normal monkey that's been having to go on the old ice pops, the old orange-flavoured lollies. Do you know what I mean? Look at his lips. They've gone bright orange. Yeah, but he is a little bit cooler. So can we just recheck that? Can we get the scientists to do that? Google it. Don't put a B in the word. All right?

[00:08:08] Thanks. There's a survey that's looked at people where they plan to go on holiday. And they've really framed this in a bad way. The average Brit will holiday within 85 miles of their home this summer due to the rising costs, according to a survey. Flip side, you live within 85 miles of a nice place to go on holiday. Shut your yapping. If you live within 85 miles of a nice holiday thing, you can go there instead of troubling everyone at the airport. What do you think about that? Go and have a nice time.

[00:08:37] Stop wasting your time being surveyed by Halfords for some reason and go and get yourself a nice holiday, honestly. I'm about to do a 180, a U-turn. I'm going to pivot. I'm going to vault fast. I'm going to do the reverse ferret. Basically, I said something wrong previously and now changed my mind. But what's the point in having a mind unless you're willing to change it? Millions of unspent national lottery winnings are sitting in players' online accounts, an operator said.

[00:09:06] It's urging people to check after finding over a million people have neither cashed their wins nor used their money. In the past, I've said that one of my pet peeves is when you're in the newsagents and the person in front of you, yeah, they're buying milk, newspaper, whatever, and then they say to the person, oh, can you just check these tickets? Oh, hello. Check your ticket for me. See if we've got any winners. Check your own beep tickets.

[00:09:35] You might be a millionaire at the end of this. Put some effort in. What are the odds? Why am I sad? But now the idea that I could set up a company and say, I'll check your lottery winnings for you. I'll take a little bit of scratch on the back end. Not an actual scratch on the back end, but the, I think I'm onto something here. It's like the PPI thing. Like those things you get that says,

[00:10:05] you could be entitled to compensation. You could claim for free. But just give me money, please. You could check your lottery numbers for free. But have you played the lottery recently and it wasn't your fault? I don't know. I'm calling the company. Steve checks your balls. No, actually, can we check if that website's available? What do you mean I've already registered it? Oh, in weather news, Britain's getting, it's that thing where we suddenly get extra sand everywhere. You know, you go out to your car, you've not moved it for a few days.

[00:10:34] It looks like I've been rally driving through the desert. Well, we're getting another one. Britain's getting a giant sandblasting from the Sahara as dust storms from the world's hottest desert fuel health fears. Of course, everything's a health fear these days. But it is annoying, isn't it? Well, I say it's annoying. On the same page of the newspaper, Alan Titchmarsh says people shouldn't go on holiday. They should stay at home and enjoy their garden. And then you think, well, what if you enjoy the beach? Do you know what?

[00:11:02] Some beach is making its way across the world and landing in your garden. That Alan Titchmarsh is onto something. That's the podcast just about. There is that story of the two talented hackers who've been jailed for hacking transport for London, pulling the plug and bringing it to its knees. You say talented. Sometimes you think it's not going to take that much to bring the London Underground to its knees. You know what I mean? Look, but we don't have time to talk about that. We're done with the audio podcast for today. Subscribe to wherever you got this podcast.

[00:11:31] Find me on social media at Stephen Allen. If you go to youtube.com forward slash at Stephen Allen, the live streaming show on there will include the new song, which I recorded last night. So far, my EP on Spotify, not really getting in the way of the success of people like Taylor Swift, but I'll do what I can. And then basically we're sorted. Till next time. Thank you for listening to Stephen Allen almost daily. This podcast is part of Podomity,

[00:12:01] the UK's podcast comedy network. Why not laugh at what else we've got? Visit Podomity.com.