Why did Zack Polanski pull out of Have I Got News for You? The show he chose instead explains it
Green Party leader Zack Polanski was booked for an episode of Have I Got News for You in December 2025. He didn't appear — and a fortnight later, Ian Hislop was discussing his absence on a podcast. The swap itself is straightforward. The row afterwards is the interesting part.
Polanski pulled out of Have I Got News for You because BBC Question Time invited him onto an immigration special recorded in Dover on Thursday 4 December 2025, and the two clashed. He announced the change on X on 3 December 2025, saying that speaking up for migrants felt vital, and stated the HIGNFY booking had been postponed to 2026.
What Ian Hislop said about it
Speaking to PoliticsJOE for his annual year-in-review in December 2025, Hislop was asked whether Polanski had impressed him. His answer was that he'd been about to meet the Green leader, who then took a better offer from Question Time and, in Hislop's phrase, "left us in the lurch".
Pressed on whether it had been a silly decision, Hislop said Polanski should have done the show.
Polanski's version
He disputes the framing rather than the facts. In a post on X on 21 December 2025, Polanski said his team had spoken to the HIGNFY producers, who told him it made total sense and invited him back in 2026 instead — adding that Hislop probably hadn't heard that part.
Both accounts agree on what happened. They disagree on whether anyone was inconvenienced.
Had he been on the show before?
Yes — six weeks earlier. Polanski appeared in series 70, episode 6, broadcast on BBC One on 7 November 2025, with Katherine Ryan hosting and comedian Maisie Adam on the opposite team. The December booking would have been his second appearance in a single series, which is unusual for a serving party leader.
For the record: Hislop has appeared in every episode of Have I Got News for You since it began on 28 September 1990 — 630 of them by the end of series 70. Paul Merton missed seven.