Question Time 20th November 2025
The Panel:
Stephen Kinnock (Labour)
Joe Robertson (Conservative)
Josh Barbinde (LibDem)
Zoe Lyons (Comedian)
Ella Whelan (Journalist)
Venue: Loughborough
There is a routine to such things. Question Time guests are revealed on Wednesday tea time, both on the QT web page and on X. I play football that evening, so mull over them in the subsequent revealing overnight somniance where patterns emerge and old jokes arise from the subconscious. Thursday morning is prep time. Not so this week. With Loughborough being 111 miles and 35 chilly chains from a cold November St Pancras, perhaps the bubble wont venture to the birthplace of Sebastian Coe and Engelbert Humperdinck (not his real name)?
Therefore, we set a new precedent by providing biography, not of the lying fakes planted on the panel by the omniparty, but for the lying fakes planted in the audience by the BBC. The recent QT from Shrewsbury unearthed an audience member from Handsworth, 60 miles away, parachuted in to challenge Robert Jenrick’s ‘Birmingham is racially segregated’ observation – at the top of a programme broadcast as the rest of the world was discussing a new ceasefire in Gaza.
Nigel Farage often complains of Question Time audiences, specifically during the 2024 Election campaign, where he alleged the audience was rigged with a prominent pro-Palestine activist and even a BBC TV director.
But perhaps the gold standard of fakery, close to a Rear Admiral with the wrong medals making a speech at Remembrance Sunday, belongs to a 2020 edition from Liverpool featuring Lawrence Fox. During it, the redoubtable Mr Fox was called a stereotypical privileged white male in stereotypical abuse hurled by a harpy in the audience. The ensuing shouting match melted down Twitter and made the next day’s newspapers. The issue was the Duchess of Sussex, Meghan Markle, who at the time still enjoyed some sympathy this side of the pond, with her supporters liberally using the race card against her detractors.
In the next day’s papers, the lady in the audience was revealed to be a Miss Rachel Boyle, purportedly a researcher at Edge Hill University. In the way in which all things are connected by coincidence, many years ago I played football at Edge Hill. At the end of the game, we set off to pay our respects, assuming there’d be a plaque commemorating the bombing of the college in 1940. This saw 166 killed in what Churchill described at the time as one of the worst civilian bombings of the war.
However, we were at the wrong Edge Hill. Although the present Edge Hill takes its name from the former women’s teacher training college, it is now at Ormskirk, not wedged between central Liverpool’s Kensington and Wavertree districts. Having moved from the city centre and taken the name with it before the war, the bombing was at the old college buildings, 17 miles from Ormskirk.
Therefore, Ms Boyle would ordinarily be located 17 miles away from that Thursday’s venue, perhaps towards the outer orbit of what’s supposed to be a local audience. Or was she? Elsewhere, we read that in 2020, Rachel was an academic at the Carnegie School of Education in Leeds – 72 miles away. Pushing it a bit, even for QT.
Again, all is connected by coincidence. When this humble reviewer of panel shows was supposed to be on, I was left sobbing at the altar at the last minute by a heartless Dimbleby as I lived 70 miles from Hartlepool. Albeit 70 miles in an unlikely straight line given the intervening mountains.
Might a photo featuring Ms Boyle, used for her Twitter header at the time, shed light on the issue? The background didn’t look like Ormskirk, might it be the better half of distant Leeds?
According to the Temp, Rachel stood before classic Haussmann-style buildings, ornate blue doors, and a street scene typical not of Holgate or Harehills, but of central Paris. The specific location appears to be near the Place Vendôme or Rue de la Paix area. The blue door with brass lion-head knockers and the overall style are very characteristic of luxury buildings close to the Ritz Hotel. Oooooo.
However, before we get overexcited about allocating posh Miss Boyle to a particular place at a particular time, we must consider the following. When confronted by a photo of my own considerable Debatable Lands pile, the Temp located me to a housing estate down south in Macclesfield. Not only that, in an unnecessary slight against the detached classes, she described my abode as a ‘semi’. Cheeky tart. Having said that, I wish I was paying the bills of a would-be doppleganger’s semi-detached former council house in Cheshire.
A Daily Mail follow-up to the original commotion announced Ms Boyle to be a university lecturer rather than a researcher, and, in a further twist of be-medalled and sword of honour carrying fakery, to be a former contributor to BBC Breakfast’s Newspaper Review. Therefore, the Walt Hunters Club Mittyometer begins to point towards Leeds, a full 5,120 chains from Liverpool Lime Street.
Further research shows that Miss Boyle claims to be of mixed race. A Windward Islands Boyle, she says she comes from one of the oldest black families in Liverpool, with her great-great-grandfather being a Barbadian. Problem is, rather like her ally, Ms Markle, she doesn’t look black. Therefore, Rachel allocates the victimhood to her mixed-race parents who, in the 1970s, suffered “lots of microaggressions, incidents in isolation that form a pattern”. A situation perhaps better described as not suffering at all.
Rachel boasts of failing her A-Levels while simultaneously being a former primary school teacher. Not only that, a ‘former Primary School teacher who spent many happy years teaching the children of Huyton, Liverpool’ before making the move into higher education in 2010.
Given she was 41 at the time of her QT appearance, had no A-levels at 18, and would need two years of A-Levels and a three-year teaching course, might one suggest she had (understandably) few ‘happy’ years avec les jeunes d’Huyton?
Since that Sliding Doors fateful moment, Mr Fox has had his ups and downs. Sacked by GB News for misogynistic comments and ordered to pay £180,000 for calling two innocents paedophiles, he’s presently before the law for sharing a photo depicting the vista from the pavement while looking heavenwards towards the contents of a skirt being worn by a Miss Narinder Kaur. Strange times.
Ms Boyle, however, has continued on a particular type of stratospheric academic pathway. Now Head of Interdisciplinary Studies in the Carnegie School of Education, Leeds Beckett University, Rachel’s ‘passion and research focuses on race, racism, ethnicity and education.’ The first woman of colour to be appointed as dean at the university she ‘uses critical race theory as a theoretical framework to examine ‘race’ inequalities in society, specifically in education.’
One of her more recent social media posts promises Puffins that for a mere £125 a head, Rachel can arrange a two-hour interactive session to tell you how inclusive your recruitment process is, and help you to look inward to ensure you create a truly diverse and welcoming environment. Strange times indeed.
***
Question one was about Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood’s new illegal immigration rules, some of which Fiona read out to give the impression that something is being done about the contentious issue. Stephen Kinnock (Labour) wants a cohesive society based upon fairness and secure borders. There are pushes and pulls. Mahmood’s policies address the pull. This is all Farage’s fault. And Brexit. The small boats didn’t exist before we left the EU. What about the lorries that pre-dated them, wondered La Bruce? Steven mentioned the Dublin Convention under which, he forgot to say, hardly anybody was even sent back and under which other EU countries could send their illegals here.
Joe Robertson (Conservative) said his side of the uniparty would support Kinnock’s side of the uniparty in parliament. However, few countries seem to be involved in the return of those who are already here. He mentioned Mahmood’s home country of Pakistan. One hundred thousand Pakistanis claimed asylum last year, but only a hundred of them came on small boats.
Josh Barbarine (LibDem) ranted about vulnerable people and, despite not looking very native, the ‘British thing to do’. The government are apeing Reform. Joe wanted to think outside the box. As unemployment rises, he wanted the illegal immigrants to take your job off you. This is, apparently, ‘smart and compassionate’. The loons clapped. One of them even hooped. He quoted all kinds of studies from academia – no doubt authored by the likes of Dean Rachel Boyle. Thing is, Joe, the illegals are already allowed to steal our jobs after they’ve been claiming asylum for a year.
Zoe Lyons (comedian) riffed about brain surgeons and rocket scientists. Presumably this was humour? There’s a problem with them and us. We put them in with the other thems who aren’t part of a London media luvvie bubble and who struggle to make ends meet and then they blame the brain surgeons and rocket scientists. Much mention was made both by the panel and the audience of rhetoric. As if, one suspects, Shabana Mahmood and the London elite don’t really mean it. An audience member thought the rhetoric to tackle Farage’s rhetoric would be counterproductive and the Reform Supremo would move on to another divisive issue, leaving ‘refugees’ rights diminished for nothing.
When asked, only two in the audience supported what the Home Secretary has done this week, but whether they thought it too little or too much can’t be told from a hands up. It won’t stop the boats, said Ella (journalist). The civil servants, lawyers, judges and ECHR will kibosh. If we hadn’t left the European Union, we wouldn’t even be able to do what Mahmood claims to intend.
The audience was determined to make contributions based on the far-right weaponising of language rather than on facts, which allowed Kinnock to play the race card. Runcorn Reform MP Sarah Pochin complained about the over-representation of coloured people in adverts. Nigel Farage had not condemned her, but Kier Starmer had called it out for what it is: Racism! Stephen went on to say that dark forces (bit racist?) were gathering at the gates and that Labour would never ape (bit racist?) Reform.
Joe reminded Stephen that becasue of divisions within the Labour Party, they might have to rely on the Tories in the House of Commons. Then he exploded a mega-ton truth bomb. Did I say all is coincidence? What I really meant was, no it isn’t – all is part of a giant plan.
Jo explained that Andy Burham was supposed to be on tonight’s programme but was replaced by Kinnock at the last minute. Hence, the late announcement of the guests. The over representation of the tinged explains the high-profile Ms Boyle. As for the playing of football at Edge Hill in the great scheme of things, it’s significance will come to me in somniance. Best go to bed.
© Always Worth Saying 2025
The Goodnight Vienna Audio file
