Question Time 9th October 2025
The Panel:
James Murray (Labour)
Nigel Huddleston (Conservative)
Zia Yusuf (Reform UK)
Zack Polanski (Green Party)
Annabel Denham (Journalist)
Venue: Shrewsbury
We have a first. After all these years of Question Time Review, novelty creeps up behind us and strikes us on the back of our heads with a mallet.
Zack Polanski, absolutely not his real name, is the current leader of the Green Party and a member of the London Assembly. Salford-born Zack, real name David Paulden, was educated at £19,000-a-year Stockport Grammar School, Aberystwyth University and stateside in a Georgia drama school.
On returning to the UK, he resided in London and pursued a career in acting (specialising in The Theatre of The Oppressed), youth work and ‘mental health counselling’ before moving into politics. Originally with the Liberal Democrats, the 42-year-old switched to the Green Party in 2017. In the general election two years later, he received a disappointing 1.9% of the vote in the Cities of London and Westminster constituency.
A treasurer of the Jewish Greens, vegan and gay (partner Ritchie works in palliative care), Mr Polanski took over the leadership of the Green Party from Adam Ramsay and Puffins’ favourite Carla Denyer last month. We touch base with novel Zac in January 2013. In that edition of London’s Kentishtowner, the weekly Ich Bin Kentishtowner interview is with none other than our about-to-become-unique QT Review superstar.
The tosh includes Zack being all about love and his partner being called Cruz (sorry, Ritchie). He takes a weekly break dance. Spaghetti and Quorn is his favourite dish. If he were a dog, he would be a grumpy mastiff some of the time but more Labrador-like on his better days. He has a ‘lovely’ bike and calls it ‘she’. We also learn that Mr Polanski attends Harley Street.
Not for treatment for his gay, Jewish, green, Londoner and vegan conditions, but on the other side of the couch as a cognitive hypnotherapist based at the Lewis Clinic. There he works with a variety of clients, mainly involved in media, politics, business and public speaking. Hmmm.
Serious stuff. Or is it?
Later the same year, Sun girl Kasie Davies, both on behalf of the Sun newspaper and on behalf of her flat chest, agreed to be, in her words, ‘titnotised’ at Zacks clinic. Keen to burn her push-up bras but not keen on a boob job, Kasie was pleased to be reassured by Dr Zack that between his media, politics, business and public speaking clients, he could find time to use hypnosis to boost Kasie’s bust.
After the small talk, the 32B serious girl of letters was asked to imagine how her life would change with new boobs. Will you dress or walk differently? wondered ‘cognitive therapist’ Zack. This was for visualisation purposes, he assured her, as the unconscious can be asked to increase breast size to match a new body image.
When she was under hypnosis, Zack promised to address the part of the brain that controls the release of growth hormones needed for breast enlargement, as well as to stimulate tissue growth and blood flow to that area. ‘He says it is part of the process, drawing me to high-energy foods to encourage tissue growth,’ wrote the great journalist in her resulting Sun write-up.
She quoted Zack as saying, “Our unconscious knows how to run our bodies better than we do. Essentially, I am looking to utilise the unconscious process to make changes to the body.’ Expectant Kasie is pictured here avec des encore petits décolletage about to be hypnotised to bigger boobs by the future leader of the Green Party.
Believe it or not, subsequently Kasie found her diet changed as promised and that she developed a craving for the banana. After three days, she measured her bust and it (they?) had grown from a 32 inch to a 34. Three days later, she was a happy 36. With a hint of the advertorial, Kasie’s piece ends with links to the Lewis clinic’s and Zac’s websites, along with the charlatan’s bank balance-enhancing news that a 90-minute session with Zack costs a mere £220.
And there we have it, for the first time ever a QT panellist has over-promised and actually quantifiably delivered. House points deducted from any Puffin who has previously suggested that all politicians are a load of fraudsters and grifters!
Forty-two-year-old James Murray was born in Hammersmith and is the current MP for Ealing North. His prior series of overpaid public sector non-jobs include Islington councillor and Deputy London Mayor for Housing, after which he became an MP. Educated at the £61,000 per annum St Paul’s School, Comrade Murray is a graduate of Wadham College, Oxford, where he was awarded a First in Politics, Philosophy and Economics.
Zia Yusuf (not his real name, Muhammad Ziauddin Yusuf) attended London’s £30,000-a-year Hampton School and is a graduate of the London School of Economics. His degree in International Relations took him to Meryl Lynch and Goldman Sachs before Yusuf made serious money developing an app, Velocity Black, which connects cash-rich/time-poor clients with providers of luxury services and products while taking hefty commissions and charges from all involved. Mr Yusuf’s share of the winnings is said to be a cool £31 million. A doctor’s son, Mr Yusuf is presently head of Reform UK’s Department of Government Efficiency.
Nigel Huddleston is the Tory MP for Droitwich and Evesham and the present Shadow Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport. A graduate of Christ Church, Oxford, the 54-year-old studied Politics and Economics before taking an MBA at the UCLA Anderson School of Management in Los Angeles. A management consultant type, Mr Huddleston was employed by Arthur Anderson, Deloitte and Google before being elected to parliament in 2015.
Wife is the interesting Melissa, who presumably he met at UCLA, and whose global business credits include marketing the Walt Disney’s Mighty Ducks Professional Hockey Team and managing the repositioning of Healthy Choice Soups. You go girl!
Annabel Denholm is so cagy with her personal details that one suspects that might not be her real name either. Aged about 40, she is a graduate of Manchester University (History and French) and holds an MA in International Studies and Diplomacy from London’s School of Overseas and African Studies. After that, a predictable Cook’s tour of London politics, advocacy and journalism. One yearns for a bit of boob enlargement quackery.
***
Peace in the Middle East. Perhaps the story of the century, but not at the BBC, where, far more important than an end to the war in Gaza, is the Corporation’s stark naked terror at the consequences of its own enthusiasm for so-called diversity. Question one was asked by Henry, the only black face in the Shropshire audience. Was Robert Jenrick right to say he hadn’t seen a white face while visiting Birmingham’s Handsworth (forty-four miles from Shrewsbury)?
Henry said he’d never heard anyone complain about not seeing a black face. Not so. Puffins may recall another Henry, Lenny, complaining that he is always surprised by a lack of black and Asian faces at Glastonbury. Glasto gets a free pass as it’s posh and Islington’s weekend away. Not so the suburbs of Birmingham. For clarity, amidst the furore raised by Jenrick, the local authority states that 9% (i.e. 1 in 11) of the population of Handsworth are white. Therefore, Jenrick was likely correct.
Nigel Huddleston massaged the debate away from race and towards integration. These (dark) waters proved to be equally choppy. A loon in the audience claimed Handsworth is fully integrated because the late Handsworthian, Benjamin Zephaniah, had been a QT panellist. The next speaker was, by an amazing coincidence, not only from Handsworth but was also white. Hold on, what’s he doing in a Shrewsbury audience? Surely the BBC don’t bus in plants to further their own leftie metropolitan agenda? Surprise, surprise, he complained about Robert and pointed out that Jenrick lives in a village of 200 inhabitants with no black faces. Surely that proves Jenrick’s point?
Fourteen years of Tory austerity, began Zack, to applause from the fake BBC audience. Zack is going to Handsworth tomorrow. The Green Party have spoken to Benjamin’s wife and were wanting to use one of his poems, entitled British. He insisted all politicians should talk about immigration in a positive sense. Why? What’s it got to do with him what other people’s view of immigration is? He blamed the problems caused by mass, uncontrolled, unlimited immigration on millionaires and billionaires who haven’t been taxed enough.
There are massive issues with integration in the country, that is a fact, began Yusuf. Jenrick was the Immigration Minister while over 6 million people were shipped in under the previous 14-year-long Tory administration. Against, he pointed out, the wishes of the British people. A remarkably well-rehearsed audience member accused Mr Yusuf of an overgeneralisation.
The vast majority of the people of this country live peacefully together, he claimed. That’s because they live in un-integrated ghettos, mate. Those who don’t have to put up with the stabbings and rapes. He challenged Mr Yusuf not to mention immigration again for the rest of the programme. I am going to mention immigration, Yusuf replied, because according to a YouGov poll, the number one issue is immigration. He pointed out that his family are immigrants and still serve the public via the NHS even though they are in their seventies. There has been far too much immigration, and it is detrimental to this country.
Zack accused Yusuf of spreading misinformation – that is why it’s such a big polling issue. Yusuf challenged Zack to point out an example. Fathcha!!!, he cried, the Thatcherite policies that Reform UK supports cause a lack of resources, not the booming population. Six and a half million, replied Yusuf, doesn’t that have an effect on public services? Brexit!!! screamed Zack, clutching at straws. Then blame the Tories for mass immigration after Brexit, not Nigel Farage, said Yusuf, they were the ones in government.
La Bruce turned to the carefully selected BBC audience – apparently all white except for questioner Henry – but got no sense from them beyond carefully rehearsed catchphrases. Terrified James complimented the audience and said Jenrick was talking down both the people of Handsworth and the place. The camera cut to Mr White Handsworth, the one on a BBC-funded day trip. On cue, he nodded like a donkey.
James was uncomfortable about Mr Jenrick’s remarks. La Bruce asked if he’d been uncomfortable with Starmer’s comment about an island of strangers. “That’s different,” said James. Another of the bussed-in said they were born in Liverpool but had lived in Birmingham for ten years and worked there at the moment. Jenrick is divisive, a divisiveness that is driven by Reform. He wanted the language to change, but steered well clear of the actualité it describes.
Annabel found the responses to Jenrick’s comments troubling. For too long British people have been unable to speak out about the concerns they have about immigration and integration. Another terrified panellist, she proved her own point by feeling obliged to lie that we are a successfully integrated multi-ethnic society. The pillorying of Jenrick by an elite pushes people into the arms of Tommy Robinson.
Well, there you are, Puffins, you know where to be pushed to if you aren’t in favour of mass, uncontrolled, unlimited immigration. As for me, phoney Question Time with its diversity obsession and blind naked terror of modern-day segregated Britain is driving me prematurely into the arms of Mr AWS – time for bed!
© Always Worth Saying 2025
The Goodnight Vienna Audio file
