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Best of Newsbiscuit – April 2024


April 2024


The blue team continued to struggle on in government as speculation about (and betting on) the date of the election continued. Looking back, with 20:20 hindsight, the general view was that the Tories were toast. Burnt toast. This didn’t stop them from taking a hard line on benefits and woke, snowflake, working from home.


Scotland had political problems of its own as the SNP and Green Party ‘consciously uncoupled’, bringing down another SNP leader.


In overseas news, shiny faced David Cameron was inexplicably being Foreign Secretary, and Venice was implementing a tourist tax, as it felt that pizza and ice-cream sellers were getting too much of the action. And the Republicans continued to make things tough for ‘Sleepy Joe’.


Here is a selection of the top stories that month, loosely organised by topic. Click through to read the stories and the author credits. Scroll down to see some of the month’s best headlines. Recycling is good, right?


UK Politics


US Politics


Overseas News


Other nonsense


Selected headlines from April 2024


Sunak's master plan to win election is to defect to Labour

Struggling acetone manufacturer insolvent

Ofsted's unwillingness to end one word assessments judged - Appalling

Civil servants picket their own gardens in working from home dispute

Humza Yousaf leaves his greens

Grimsby becomes the first city to pay tourists £5 a day to visit

Man who botched making a cup of tea gets a re-straining order

Producers of King Arthur epic say it's not set in stone

Humza, You's Off

Sick notes only to be given out by coroners, says Sunak

Rishi Soon-out

Man who 'lit up every room' buried with his favourite torch

April Fools joke both funny and well executed



Picture credit: Deep Dream Generator

The Last Simple - a parody


Bradford knows he’s the lead in a third rate parody. However, his ambition is to be the lead in a Dan Brown story, but doesn’t know if he has to dumb up or down for the gig.


In ‘The Last Simple’, Bradford, a professor of Simpology from Harvard, follows clues left by the illiterati, ignoranti and even the bingoranti as he tries to track down the kidnapper of Lord Bartholomew. Aided by Lord Bartholomew’s daughter, Lady Bartholomew, and her loathsome manservant Belsen, Bradford has to evade arrest by not one, but two Buffoons of a Copper while bouncing around the renowned cultural centres of Northern England, from Lincoln Cathedral to Blackpool Tower.


Aided by Surly Teabing, the rudest man in England, while dodging Teabing’s servant Snivell, Bradford finds himself in a race against time, logic, bad jokes, ridiculous puns and awful gags as he searches for the Last Simple in an improbable if unbelievable storyline.


This a laugh a minute book, assuming you’re a very fast reader.


Includes the Christmas Special and at least one deleted chapter.





Ray Sullivan is a writer and editor for Newsbiscuit. He has ten novels published ranging in genres from comedy, science fiction and thrillers.




7 more adolescent shows that should be showed in every school


After the success of hard-hitting Netflix drama Adolescence, Keir Starmer announced that the programme would be made available to all secondary schools to stream for free for educational purposes. But why stop there? Here are 7 archive shows featuring adolescents that should be compulsory viewing for schoolkids and adults alike:



Why Don't You - a 1980s school summer holiday stalwart, this programme still contains many nuggets of useful information for contemporary schoolkids on how to navigate teenage life, including where to find the best free museum day outs in Bristol, how to make a walkie-talkie with a piece of string and two bog rolls, and (from the Belfast and Newcastle teams only) the best fil-terms to watch at the local cinema. Parental warnings: Includes gratuitous violence of TV sets being destroyed by a kicking foot in every episode, as well as some criminal bowl haircuts. 



Grange Hill - ever wondered what school life is really like in an inner-city comprehensive? Grange Hill  has all the answers, along with a catchy jangly them-tune and some trendy comic-book style opening credits.  From Zammo McGuire 'chasing the dragon', Gripper Stebson and Imelda Davis' peak-level bullying, and Mr Bronson's nazi-style teaching and moustache, kids today could learn a lot from this Phil Redmond classic. Watch out for flying sausages on a fork, and remember to Just Say No. 



Tuckers Luck - basically Grange Hill on steroids, with teenage pregnancies, mass unemployment, and the harsh reality of the YTS scheme and life after school. Grim, existential viewing, apart from an accidental one-liner gag about white dog turds in series 3, episode 2. 



Red Hand Gang - a pre-cursor to Adolescence's single-camera, the Red Hand Gang seemingly had just one single episode, showed repeatedly, every Saturday morning. 5 wholesome American schoolkids and their dog solve crimes. Main learning outcomes: red paint hand-prints are not easy to remove from fence panels; home made go-Karts fall apart way too easily under pressure; and the La La La, La La La theme tune will stay in your head for decades. 



The Box of Delights - much loved high-production values children's series from the 1980s. Often remembered as a classic, but when pushed, few kids can remember anything about it apart from the one minute advert featuring Patrick Troughton  that was showed incessantly, and the fact that there was a box involved which shrank people. Adults should be forced to watch the whole thing - yes all 6 bloody episodes - and forced to admit that it wasn't actually that good at all.



Press Gang - ridiculously over-confident, attractive teenagers are somehow given the freedom of a high-spec newspaper office and full printing press to engage in banter, school politics and frankly outrageous flirting. Kids today could learn a thing or two from Spike Thomson's quickfire repartee, whilst Lynda Day's style of leadership should be a compulsory part of the syllabus on any contemporary MBA.  




We are the Champions - learn about the harsh realities of competitive sport and teamwork, but with the added embarrassment of having to fail alongside your schoolmates. The only bits people remember are the pool games where the main life lesson learnt is that its impossible to cram 10 wet, sweating teenagers from a Bolton secondary school on a 6ft by 3 ft float. Ron Pickering adds touches of gravitas, credibility, as well as very sweaty armpits to an already heady mix of testosterone, swanny whistles, and bean bags. One last thing to say....AWAY YOU GO. 


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