Have I Got News For You

Writer and presenter Victoria Coren Mitchell guest presents, her 25th appearance on the programme and 17th as host. Joining her are Ivo Graham and Isabel Hardman.

Guest hosted by writer and presenter Victoria Coren Mitchell (it is her 17th appearance as guest host), she was joined on the panels by regular team captains Ian Hislop and Paul Merton, alongside comedian Ivo Graham and the assistant editor of The Spectator, Isabel Hardman.

In the week that saw Elon Musk renewing his intention to buy Twitter, and changes being made to Quality Street wrappers for environmental reasons, the panel's attention was quickly drawn to the biggest story of the week - the Conservative Party Conference in Birmingham, in which Liz Truss made her first conference speech as Prime Minister, days after she and Chancellor Kwasi Kwarteng backtracked on their 'mini-budget' pledge to drop the top rate of income tax.

"So you were there, how gloomy was it?" Ian Hislop asked his teammate Isabel Hardman.

"Oh, it was great. If you like feasting on human misery, I cannot recommend a better holiday than the Conservative Party Conference in Birmingham," joked Hardman.

"I read in the papers that Liz Truss's speech was marvellous and was going to rouse the nation," Hislop replied, "Is that not true?"

"If it had come at the end of a really, really good conference, it would have been a really, really bad speech," Hardman replied.

"Who got the biggest reaction from the crowd?" asked host Victoria Coren Mitchell.

"The Greenpeace demonstrators?" Paul Merton asked, referencing two climate protesters who interrupted Liz Truss's speech at the conference. "They appeared with a banner and a man angrily pulled the banner away from them. And then brilliantly they had another, identical banner!"

"When the crowd were shouting 'Out! Out! Out!', I wasn't sure who they were saying it to!" joked Coren Mitchell, continuing, "Liz Truss was adamant she wasn't going to drop the plan to scrap the 45p tax rate, but less than 24 hours later she had U-turned on that. Having come out and said it, should she have stuck with it?"

"No, because she's got a number of other U-turns to go" said Hislop.

"But if you do two U-turns aren't you then facing the same way?" joked Merton.

"I said last week you should be chancellor!" laughed Hislop.

"Yeah, I'm waiting for the call!" Merton quipped.