Thursday news quiz: station to station, and doing the locomotive after Ted Lasso

1. 

   Who won best actress (not pictured – this is Jessica Gunning) in a comedy at the Baftas?

   1. Katherine Parkinson for Here We Go

   2. Lucy Punch for Amandaland

   3. Diane Morgan for Mandy

   4. Liz Truss for her YouTube channel

2. 

   Great British Railways is to open its first brand new station. Where?

   1. Gosport West

   2. Oxford North

   3. Cambridge South

   4. Durham East

3. 

   Who is suing Samsung for $15m over the use of her image on their TV boxes (not pictured)?

   1. Dua Lipa

   2. Katy Perry

   3. Taylor Swift

   4. Kate Bush

4. 

   Apple Corps has acquired the building where the Beatles played their final rooftop gig, and will be opening it as a tourist attraction. What is the address?

   1. 20 Manchester Square

   2. 3 Savile Row

   3. 57 Wimpole Street

   4. 30-50 Feral Hogs Yard

5. 

   Content creator (are we sure about this? – Ed) Swhileyy (really? – Ed) has started a social media trend for "speedrunning" what?

   1. Assembling Ikea bookcases

   2. Ordering 'secret menu' items from Burger King

   3. Church of Scientology buildings

   4. Movies, by playing them at 30x speed

6. 

   Here's Melvyn Bragg, he loves a flag. All of the countries below have a yellow star on their flag. But which of them places that star in the top left corner, on a blue background?

   1. Mauritania

   2. Cameroon

   3. Burkina Faso

   4. Democratic Republic of the Congo

7. 

   What proportion of Labour MPs would need to back a replacement candidate to trigger a leadership contest against Keir Starmer?

   1. 15% (61 MPs)

   2. 20% (81 MPs)

   3. 25% (101 MPs)

   4. 33% (133 MPs)

8. 

   This week's guest feline lives at the Cinema Museum in Kennington, but refused to give its name when asked. It wants to know which Ted Lasso actor has signed a professional football contract with El Paso Locomotive?

   1. Moe Jeudy-Lamour

   2. Cristo Fernández

   3. Tosin Cole

   4. Jimmy Akingbola

9. 

   Farther or nearer with Geordie Alan Shearer! This week we imagine the England soccer legend wants to know, if he leaves his hometown of Newcastle upon Tyne, which – as the crow flies and according to freemaptools.com – is farther or nearer – Darwin, Australia, or Santiago, Chile?

   1. Santiago is nearer to Newcastle upon Tyne than Darwin

   2. Darwin is nearer to Newcastle upon Tyne than Santiago

10. 

    A video showing an illegal horse race (not pictured, this long-faced individual is just chilling), with spectators firing pistols into the air and brandishing Kalashnikov rifles, has prompted a police investigation where?

    1. Corsica

    2. Sardinia

    3. Sicily

    4. Syldavia

11. 

    Which of these sets of men's football teams have recently been confirmed to have won their respective leagues for the 2025-26 season (not pictured, that is Leyton Orient who very much did not win anything this season)?

    1. Bayern Munich, Real Madrid, Napoli, Sporting

    2. Borussia Dortmund, Barcelona, Juventus, Sporting

    3. Borussia Dortmund, Real Madrid, Roma, Porto

    4. Bayern Munich, Barcelona, Inter, Porto

12. 

    Jimmy Fallon is to produce a gameshow based on Wordle. Who has announced they are presenting it?

    1. Gayle King

    2. Savannah Guthrie

    3. Hoda Kotb

    4. Ronald Mael

13. 

    The Thursday quiz fondly remembers Keith Chegwin, so here is Cheggers plays population! According to the 2026 CIA World Factbook, what is the population of Vietnam?

    1. 15 million

    2. 45 million

    3. 75 million

    4. 105 million

14. 

    On this day with Brian May! And his badger! 14 May is the anniversary of the last 'witchcraft trial' being held in the US. The Thursday quiz imagines Queen's legendary guitarist wants you to tell him – and his badger – in which year …

    1. 1678

    2. 1778

    3. 1878

    4. 1978

15. 

    And finally … in a transparent attempt to feature in every silly news quiz in the land this week, a lorry (though not the one pictured) hilariously got stuck in the hole it had been sent to fix. Where?

    1. Waltham Cross, Hertfordshire

    2. Northwold, Norfolk

    3. Wrestlingworth, Bedfordshire

    4. Walton, Somerset

Solutions

1:A - Here We Go was created and written by Tom Basden and also stars Tori Allen-Martin, Jim Howick and Alison Steadman, 2:C - Services will begin calling at Cambridge South from Sunday 28 June, the Department for Transport said, and it will become the first station to be given full Great British Railways branding, 3:A - The British singer claims the electronics company ‘repeatedly refused’ to stop using a photo of her on its packaging, 4:B - In January 1969, the Beatles staged their final public performance several storeys above confused passersby who spent their lunchbreak hearing a muffled, windswept set of unreleased songs, 5:C - A bold hobby in the US, a country that famously has a lot of guns, 6:D - The national flag of the Democratic Republic of the Congo, adopted in 2006, is a sky blue flag adorned with a yellow star in the upper left canton and cut diagonally by a red stripe with a yellow fimbriation, 7:B - Zzzzzzzzzzzzzzz, 8:B - Fernández, who played youth football in Mexico before stepping away from the sport at 15 because of a knee injury, portrayed Dani Rojas in the Apple TV show about a British team with a US coach, 9:A - Santiago is only about 7,342 miles (11,816km) from Newcastle upon Tyne, whereas Darwin is about 8,547 miles, a difference of about 4,071,900 ancient Sumerian cubits. Top bins!, 10:C - The newspaper La Sicilia reported that horses had been seized, stables shut down and several people taken to the police station for questioning, 11:D - Forza Inter!, 12:B - Half-hour episodes will be filmed in Manchester, England, beginning in June, and will be broadcast prime time in the US in 2027, 13:D - Vietnam has one of the highest population densities in the world, that is according to the archived internet version of the 2026 CIA World Factbook, which has been discontinued by the Trump administration, 14:C - Lucretia LS Brown, an adherent of the Christian Science religion, accused fellow Christian Scientist Daniel H Spofford of attempting to harm her through his 'mesmeric' mental powers. The case was ultimately dismissed, 15:D - My how we laughed on the news desk

Scores

1. 0 and above.

   We hope you had fun – let us know how you got on in the comments!