 We'll close the show with one of the more surreal show downs of the pandemic, this time pitching pop star Nicki Minaj against UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson and the BBC's political editor Laura Kuhnsberg. The story begins with this pretty wild tweet from Nicki Minaj to her 22 million followers. She says, my cousin in Trinidad won't get the vaccine because his friend got it and became impotent. His testicles became swollen. His friend was weeks away from getting married. Now the girl called off the wedding, so just pray on it and make sure you're comfortable with your decision, not bullied. It goes without saying that the vaccine doesn't make testicles bigger or cause impotence. That was confirmed by the US Centre for Disease Control. They felt the need to clarify that after that tweet because Nicki Minaj has so many followers. The next part of the story is that this came up in a Downing Street Press conference. A question was asked to Chris Whitty in fact and Boris Johnson also commented. Let's take a look. Professor Whitty, one of the world's biggest female celebrities, Nicki Minaj, is today publicly linked the coronavirus vaccines to impotence. Now she's got 8 million followers on Twitter, many of them are young people. The young people you're suggesting should get vaccinated. What would you say to them and how concerned are you by public comments like that from public figures? So there are a number of myths that fly around with varying, some of which are just clearly ridiculous and some of which are clearly designed just to scare. That happens to be one of them. That is untrue. My own strong suggestion, if I may, to media present and not present is repeating them in public actually just gives some credence which they don't need. They're untrue. Full stop. If you think about where we are actually overall, and this is a slightly longer answer to your question because I think it's a very important one, the great majority of people are getting vaccinated. So the great majority of people are ignoring these myths. And if you talk about people in their 50s and 60s and 70s, you're talking about over 90% of people getting vaccinated and very few people actually are actively in this sense in the anti-vax group. There are a group of people who've got strange beliefs and fine and they make their own choices and in a sense also fine. People are adults are allowed to make their own choices, however strange that is a basic principle of medical ethics actually. But there are also people who go around trying to discourage other people from taking a vaccine which could be life-saving or prevent them from having life-changing injuries to themselves. And many of those people I regret to say I think know that they are peddling untruths, but they still do it. In my view, they should be ashamed. And I'll leave it at that. And I look just on that Steve, I'm not familiar with the works of or not as familiar with the works of Nicki Minaj as I probably should be, but I am familiar with Nicki Canani, superstar GP of Bexley who's appeared many times on before you, who will tell you that vaccines are wonderful and everybody should get them. That's why I prefer to listen to Nicki Canani. Chris Whitty's answer there I think quite reasonable sort of saying that we focus a lot on people who are peddling misinformation or people who are genuine vaccine skeptics and less on people who were just a bit vaccine hesitant. They're probably the more important group to focus on. Back to the the flame war, Nicki Minaj was alerted to the fact that she had been brought up in this press conference and tweeted a video of Boris Johnson and Chris Whitty saying, I love him, even though I guess this was a diss, the accent, yes boo, with a lot of emojis. And then she followed that tweet up with this quite exceptional voice note. Yes, hello, Prime Minister Boris, it's Nicki Minaj. I was just calling to tell you that I thought you were so amazing on the news this morning and I'm actually British. I was born there. I went to university there. I went to Oxford. I went to school with Margaret Thatcher and she told me so many nice things about you. I'd love to send you my portfolio of my work, since you don't know much about me. I'm a big, big star in the United States. I went to school with Margaret Thatcher and I'm very famous in the States. I feel like she made up almost. I suppose that a vaccine misinformation is more consequential. You can't just make up for that with a funny voice note, but she got part of the way there, I think. Nicki Minaj has put her fans through an awful lot. I feel like she hasn't really been okay since Cardi B came on the scene and since then she's just been moving very, very mad and exhausting all of her fans who need to defend her. I think that the barbs are tired and you need to give them a break, Nicki. She did say elsewhere on her Twitter that she is probably going to get the vaccine before she goes on tour, but I'm also just disappointed with her because I'm like, if you had told me a week ago that there would be a fight between where Laura Coonsburg, Piers Morgan, and Boris Johnson were on one side and Nicki Minaj was on the other side, you couldn't have paid me enough money to convince me that I wouldn't be on Nicki Minaj's side and yet 2021 continues to uppercut me in terms of just completely spinning me, but it was hysterical, but also get the vaccine. Yeah, get the vaccine. Yeah, she has been over the past 24 hours very keen to stress she isn't actually an anti-vaxxer. She's saying, I'm open to this, I just want people to do their research. I suppose the problem with that line is, I mean, the research she's doing and encouraging people to do isn't the kind of research you should really be taking on board. If your cousin's friend got swollen testicles and then their wife didn't marry them, that's not scientific research. So I do think that while everyone should do their own research, that's fine, that's good, but we should also recognize that, well, I personally do this, I recognize that my knowledge of vaccine safety and vaccine efficacy is very much limited. And so if there's an overwhelming scientific consensus that these are safe vaccines and they're very effective vaccines, then no matter what you tell me your cousin's friend had happened, I'm not going to actually consider listening to you as me doing research. I'm going to just dismiss that out of hand, which probably Nicki Minaj should have done as well, right? Yeah, I think with the people who do their own research, it's like, there are people whose job it is to actually do this research. And I don't think that you have a full lab, testing lab in your garage where you're going to personally test these vaccines out. But also, it's just like, oh, is this what men are doing to get out of cheating accusations now? Like when they are getting STDs from cheating on their girlfriends, they're just going to be like, oh, no, it's a side effect of the vaccine. That's why I've done all kinds of madness. It's innovative. I have to rate it. But also, don't bring your cousin's friend into it like that. It's disrespectful. The other people were suggesting is that maybe the cousin's friend's fiance was a bit harsh to call off a wedding because he was impotent for two weeks. But I think probably more likely she actually knew that it was, I mean, maybe she called off the wedding because the excuse was so ridiculous. Let's go to Laura Kuhnsberg. She was caught in the crossfire. She had quoted Minaj's response to Boris Johnson saying, 2021, everyone, Nicki Minaj responds. Yes, 2021, when jackasses hang onto my every tweet, but can't decipher sarcasm and humor and can't read, go away Dumbo. You're still siding with Kuhnsberg, Johnson, and Witty after that drive-by. So tough, man. Why do you have to do this to me, Nicki? Let me support you in this. If it was anything else, I would have been like, great, let's go. But I have no choice. I guess it's my duty as having a teeny, tiny platform. No, I should take my response. I was starting to kind of be team Nicki, but you're right. We should take our platforms more seriously, even if one side is more funny and talented and likable. If they're the ones promoting vaccine misinformation, we should side with the people who aren't doing that.