1 Captions by Faith Hamblyn. www.able.co.nz Captions were made possible with funding from NZ On Air. Copyright Able 2015 APPLAUSE, CHEERING, WHISTLING Well, hello, good evening, and welcome to Best Bits, the show with all the best worst and weirdest of this week's TV. I'm Jesse Mulligan. Let's meet tonight's panel. Beside me from the ZM breakfast show, it's Vaughan Smith. CHEERING From Snort Comedy, it's actor and improviser Donna Brookbanks. All the way from Wales and here for the comedy festival, it's Lloyd Langford. CHEERING And on the end, Billy-T-winning comedian Rhys Mathewson. CHEERING Welcome to all of you. And let's get into tonight's clips. Well, Prince Harry proved hugely popular during his visit to NZ. Kiwis of all ages seem to really understand what he's about. Mm. LAUGHTER And one time, he ate a whole pile of sugar with his nose. LAUGHTER It's great that one of the naughtiest things those kids can imagine is going to the pub. Like, their dad must get yelled at heaps. LAUGHTER Yeah, NZ is such that those two girls were preloading on Raro before the interview even took place. Does NZ still have Raro? AUDIENCE: Yeah. We used to make it all the time at home, but, uh, I'm pretty wealthy now, so, uh,... I'll just get some organic fruit and squeeze it if I want a fruit juice. LAUGHTER I've gotta say, I think everyone expected Prince Harry to be naughtier than he was. They were like, 'Oh, he's a bad boy. He's gonna be out clubbing, tearing up his hotel room,' and then, what, he goes and shakes a few hands and kisses a few babies, and he's off again. Yeah, what was the wildest thing he did when he was here? He did a pub quiz. LAUGHTER He could have at least, you know, pashed one of the Silver Ferns or something. You know what I mean? Just something. Keep the legend going, Harry. Surely, you'd go a Black Stick over a Silver Fern. Can you explain to me what a Black Stick and a Silver Fern are? I've got three you need to know, Lloyd. The Silver Ferns are the NZ netball team. OK. And then there's the NZ hockey team, they're called the Black Sticks. And one of the lesser-known ones is the NZ, uh, badminton team, known as the Black Cocks. That could lead to some interesting mix-ups. Don't Google them to show your support. LAUGHTER All right. We go to Prime news presenter Eric Young now. The science of meteorology can get quite complex, so it's important not to let your weather reports get bogged down in technical jargon. And here you go. Northland, Auckland, Waikato and the Bay of Plenty ` your Friday sucks. LAUGHTER APPLAUSE Tell me, Eric, is everything all right at home? LAUGHTER I was in Wellington for five days, and they had torrential rain, flooding and an earthquake. LAUGHTER I was like, God must really hate hipsters. LAUGHTER I think that was a bit bullshit. Really? > As an Aucklander, don't lump me in with Northland. Yeah, their Friday probably does suck ` they've got nothing to do, all right? We've got culture. Yeah. And tell me the cultural things that you did today, Rhys. Uh, just today? Yeah. > Oh wouldn't you know it, but I think you'll find... that videogames are art. LAUGHTER It's nice to come, like, all the way round the world and realise the weather is still awful. Like on the news. Like, I was watching, uh, the weather in my hotel television room, and the guy said ` it was NZ weather ` he said with an entirely straight face, 'And temperatures, uh, will be dropping as we move towards evening.' And I was like, yes. Because you know that great big ball of fire in the sky? It's, sort of, gone the other side of the world now. So, I mean, that happens every day ` you should be prepared. LAUGHTER All right, we go to the final of X Factor now, and after weeks of intense competition, Beau Monga prevailed this week. But for judge Natalie Bassingthwaighte, the big winner of the night was herself. Do you know, interestingly, the first year I lost by 1%, the fourth year I lost by 0.1%, and the third year, I have finally won! CHEERING LAUGHTER And remember, she's just a replacement judge. She's making Willy Moon look selfless and down to earth. LAUGHTER Do you know one thing I'm glad about this X Factor season is that the person that won wasn't the guy that killed somebody. LAUGHTER After the Willy Moon and the guy that killed someone, they really could have done anything. I'm sorry, but, like, if you kill someone on a TV program, you shouldn't then go into the next round. LAUGHTER Yeah, there was a bit of controversy. You wouldn't have caught this earlier this year, Lloyd. There was a bit of controversy. Turned out that quite a few people on TV3 shows had either been in prison or should currently be in prison. We've had a lot of that in the UK. Have you? > Yeah. Basically, they found out everyone from the '70s was a paedophile. If you watch that again and you pretend that Beau's a ventriloquist and she's a puppet, it's quite funny. OK, so he's actually controlling her? Yeah, yeah, yeah. And even a little bit of the mouth. OK. Let's take a look. Do you know, interestingly, the first year I lost by 1%, the fourth year I lost by 0.1%, and the third year, I have finally won! CHEERING LAUGHTER APPLAUSE That was amazing! Yeah. I'm still amused by the concept of Willy Moon, which is like you go to get your bum out, but then show too much. LAUGHTER < That's good! LAUGHTER Now, time for our Best Bits Awards, where we recognise this week's outstanding moments in television. First up, it's The Show Us How You Feel Award. Now, last week Bachelor Arthur Green returned with a show recapping the highlights of the Bachelor series. Yes, he may have eventually chosen Matilda, but at least the others are not feeling bitter. We just laugh and laugh and laugh, and, um, I find that very attractive. Well, she's obviously a babe as well. Yeah, true. True. > Oh, thanks. Yeah. LAUGHTER Yeah, the girls are thinking, 'Look at that smug bitch everyone else wants to kill. 'That could have been me.' LAUGHTER But if they're just constantly laughing, like, that's also a sign of a mental breakdown. I actually, uh, biked past, uh, Matilda and The Bachelor on Ponsonby Rd today. They were outside having some, uh, brunch together. So they're obviously still together. Contractually obligated brunch? Yeah, I dunno. That'd be hard choosing brunch with him, though. He'd be like, 'All right, well, I'm gonna have to let you go, eggs benedict.' Can I get all 12 breakfast items, then I'll eliminate them one by one? After licking each? No. LAUGHTER Next up, it's The Are We Keeping You Award. Now, some people like to stick around after work for a bit of a chat. But not TV One's Miriama Kamo ` she's got a life! She likes to get the hell out of there as soon as she's done. From all the One News team, though, goodnight. ONE NEWS THEME MUSIC PLAYS LAUGHTER And what's weirder is that Peter Williams stays in his seat until security shows up and asks him to leave. LAUGHTER I think there's clearly, like, something sexual has gone on between them two. Really? > Yeah. Like an awkward one-night stand or something and she just... she can't stay any longer. Cos he mutters something, eh. You can see him. Like, he, like, goes, 'Yeah, well, if you hadn't farted in bed!' Something like that. LAUGHTER I've gotta say, Peter Williams would be doing much better out of that scenario. Miriama Kamo ` young, beautiful, successful, top of her game. Peter Williams... I'm looking forward to seeing how you handle this. Veteran broadcaster Peter Williams is about to get slated by Seven Sharp temporary host Jesse Mulligan. LAUGHTER Peter Williams ` fantastic guy, just can't see him rooting Miriama. LAUGHTER All right, time for a break now on Best Bits. We're gonna be back with a look at niche TV in our Topic of the Week. See you soon. 1 Oh, hey there. Welcome back to Best Bits, where each week around this time, we take a closer look at one particular aspect of TV. We call it our Topic of the Week. This week's topic is niche TV ` TV made for small groups of very passionate people. Niche TV doesn't always mean niche laughs, though. On The Hot Rod Show, you'll find some spectacular and very sophisticated humour. Right, Kevin, well, looks like Doug's disappeared, but how bout we give a listen to your sound system? I hear you've got quite a good sound system in this. Yip. Ooh! # I feel good. LAUGHTER # Der, der, der. Der, der, der. # I'm the new speaker system. LAUGHTER Yeah, but seriously, old man, we paid you a lot of money. Where's the sound system? I haven't seen James Brown for a long time, but, uh, he has not aged well. I love how the guy was like, 'Well, we, uh... Doug seems to have disappeared, 'so how about we see your sound system?' LAUGHTER He was lucky Doug wasn't dead by the time they opened that boot. And this is just obviously a small budget Kiwi show, but as I say, it's got some really passionate fans. I feel like wanna hear more about your Welsh language TV channel, because that sounds like it's got some amazing shows on it. They have this soap opera called, uh, Pobel y Cwm. LAUGHTER Really? < Yeah. I've been to Wales, and all the road signs look like someone, like, went like this with a Scrabble board, and however it fell, they were like, 'That's what we're calling that street.' How does it sound spoken? Could you speak some Welsh for us? It's basically Elvish from Lord of the Rings. Is he speaking it now? Cos I can understand him. So I could teach you some words. Um, uh, beer is 'cwrw'. Cwrw. > Yeah. And, uh, 'cwtch' means, like, a cuddle. And then after you cwtch, do you Pobol y Com? LAUGHTER Can I ask you this about your Welsh language TV station, cos we've got Te Karere here in NZ, and one of the best things about Te Karere is watching them speaking in Maori, and then they'll just drop, like, a pop culture term in, you know, be like, 'O te iwi o nga whakapapa o nga... 'Pirates of the Caribbean... LAUGHTER '...no ma ihi o nga sexiest man alive.' LAUGHTER All right, well, speaking of travel, Bon Voyage TV is a travel chat show. I get the feeling that host Olivia has heard some of Gerard's exciting suitcase-packing chat before. I like to unpack once, and for two weeks that would be great. I can be a little bit messy if I like, but everything's put away ` once only. All right, enough about packing, Gerard. I love... (CHUCKLES) LAUGHTER Yeah, I've got some advice for that fascinating suitcase you're packing, Gerard ` put a sock in it. I've also got some news for Gerard ` like, everyone unpacks once. LAUGHTER Like, I don't know how he could have to unpack more than once unless he's repacking his bag in his sleep ` sleep packing. Have you got any travel tips, being a traveller? Yeah, my tip is ` if you've got a wrinkly shirt,... hang it up next to the shower and close the shower doors, and the steam of the shower will gradually decrease the shirt. OK, Gerard, thanks for that, but most hotels have irons in the cupboard. Oh, yeah, or use the hotel iron. LAUGHTER Uh, fun travel tip ` you can cook two-minute noodles in the kettle. LAUGHTER Do you just hold the boil button? It wants to click off, but you hold it against it's will? Yep. Good. Hostage noodles. LAUGHTER Now, on American reality shows, it's common to see over-the-top reactions from contestants, but on NZ's show Native Kitchen, you get more of a Kiwi response. OK. Have a taste of that. Just try the juice. Mmm. Are you happy with that? Uh, yeah. LAUGHTER They can hardly blame him for how the juice tastes, as well, cos, like, that's just come out of the meat. It's like if a chef, like, took a bite of an apple and went, 'What are you doing with this?' He's like, 'Well, I didn't make it; it's just there.' Like, you've gotta stop hassling him over the meat juice. You can't just put your finger in the food! Yeah, if you've got clean hands, I think it's OK. > No, you can't do that! Chefs are doing it all the time with their hands, Donna. Yeah, but if I ordered a shepherd's pie with a hole in the middle, I'm sending that back. If you gave me a shepherd's pie with a hole in it, I would have many worse suspicions, young man. Ooh, shit, there'd be some heat stored under that. Oh, no, I was thinking of a cottage pie with the layer of potato. Same thing. No, it's not. There's a difference, isn't there? It's just the meat used. I like that we've got an international guest, > and we're arguing about the difference between a shepherd's pie and a cottage pie, and someone from any other country would like at us like we were crazy, but the Welsh guy is like, 'I think it's the difference in the meat, yeah?' LAUGHTER And that is it for our Topic of the Week. We're gonna be back soon with another awkward world-leader handshake in our Best Bits from around the world. See you soon. 1 Hey there. Welcome back to Best Bits. It's time now for the best of the TV you don't get to see in our Best Bits From Around The World. Now, handshakes can be awkward, especially if you get left hanging. It's even worse if you're the Prime Minister of Ireland meeting the President Of The United States, and the entire world is watching. Well, it is, uh,... a great pleasure to once again, uh, welcome my good friend. LAUGHTER Yeah. Say what you like about John Key ` he would never screw up a handshake. LAUGHTER I like how he did play it pretty cool. He was like,... 'Just checking my hand. That was where the good light was. Just checking my hand.' Cos if it was John Key, he would have gone like this,... 'Oh! I seem to be groping. I seem to be groping the President Of The USA. 'Banter, just back and forth, just good old back-and-forth banter.' LAUGHTER I'm just really happy he didn't go for a fist bump. Because if that doesn't work, you've essentially just thrown a punch at the most powerful man. Prime Minister of Ireland ` forgive my ignorance, but is there a Prime Minister of Wales? No. You don't seem quite sure yourself. I shall forgive your ignorance; I shan't forgive yours. Yeah, there is, but, uh, you might know him as, uh, Tom Jones. LAUGHTER Is it a regular thing for a pop singer to be elected prime minister of a country? It's not unusual. LAUGHTER CHEERING I thought he was, um, checking his nails, but there's a thing, isn't there? Like, women are supposed to check their nails like that, but men are supposed to do it like that, I think. That's a rule, I think. I've been doing it wrong my whole life. Cos, like, they used to do that at my school, actually, at, uh, Hillcrest High School in Hamilton. They'd say check something on the bottom of your foot, and if you put it up like this way, you're a man, and if you put it up like that way, then you're a homosexual. And that's how they find out. This wasn't, like, science or biology or something ` this was just in the playground. Yeah. > Right. OK. We had a similar thing in Wales. Apparently, if you were a man or a boy and you sat cross-legged, you were also gay,... but I think it's more about bumming, isn't it? LAUGHTER APPLAUSE That's a more sure-fire way. All right, we go to Crete now, where an old Greek man interrupted a live interview. Luckily, you don't have to speak Greek to get his references. (SPEAKS GREEK) Neow! (BARKS, MEOWS) (OINKS) LAUGHTER Yes, things really went downhill for Old McDonald after he lost that farm. It wasn't an oink, like we say oink, don't we, for a pig, but it was like a 'noink'. And even his cat thing was like a 'neow'. It's interesting learning what animals say in different countries around the world in different languages. I'm not entirely sure we should trust that man for accuracy. LAUGHTER Uh, well, I mean, you'd be a good example. What, uh, noise does a sheep make in Wales? Please be gentle. LAUGHTER < So the same here. LAUGHTER We've got the same stereotype here. Why did you think I came? LAUGHTER Now, news reporters have to keep their presentations lively with interesting locations, crowd interaction and hard-hitting facts. Watch as this reporter combines all three at once. All right. So, I've got my trusty stopwatch, and here they come down the hill. It looks like Reuben is in the lead, and here comes Alex. That was a bad idea. LAUGHTER Yes, if this show, Best Bits, has taught me anything, it's that 90% of situations involving a live reporter and snow end with hilarious pain. I love how quickly he admitted he'd made a mistake, too. He's lying on the ground, and he's like, 'That was a bad idea'. Yeah, we all worked that out. When you were upside down, I think we kind of worked that out. I think if you're a reporter, you should just stay away from hills. LAUGHTER Actually, I've been disappointed by a hill while I've been here,... cos I went to, uh, One Tree Hill. Yes. > LAUGHTER I mean, the very least I was expecting was a tree. LAUGHTER Like, that was my minimum requirement. LAUGHTER And then they were like, 'Oh, yeah, there used to be a tree.' LAUGHTER Like that was something that was now difficult to replicate. I don't know where we're gonna get another tree from. Use your imagination. It's like if you went to Egypt, and they just took you to see some sand, and they were like, 'Well, you should have been here 2000 years ago.' LAUGHTER And that is our show for another week. My thanks to the panellists, to our studio audience and to you at home. Before we go, let's take a look at our clip of the week, which proves once again that if you happen to get caught in the background of a camera shot, you should try as hard as possible not to draw attention to yourself. Students can register for the lottery starting tomorrow, and registration is open until Friday. The UAA will notify the winners of the lottery by Monday December 15th, and vouchers can then be picked up from Tuesday through Thursday. Students with more credit hours have the best chance of getting tickets, but everyone is welcome to sign up. Live from the newsroom, Kara Manelli, WUFT. LAUGHTER And that is the end of our series, so for the next six months or so, the only way to see me on TV will be when I do that in the background of Seven Sharp. Thanks for watching. See you next time on Best Bits! Captions by Faith Hamblyn. www.able.co.nz Captions were made possible with funding from NZ On Air. Copyright Able 2015