Donald Loves Big Guns

The Bugle audio newspaper for a visual world.

Hello Buglers and welcome to issue 4341 of the Bugle audio newspaper for a visual world with me Andy's Altsman, the silent foghorn of translucent factuality here in the Shed of Destiny in South London.

it is the 19th of may 2025 and the world has made it through yet another week of this struggling millennium to discuss exactly how it's made it through i'm joined by two people who may have their quibbles with this planet but have stuck with it nonetheless firstly from here in london it's tiffany stevenson hello tiff hi i'm i'm a bit full on with the makeup i had my um if you're watching this uh online it's it's a little it's a little extra than i was doing my edinburgh photos today

so um

so yeah, I've just well, actually, that's a light.

This is the high glam that's expected when I do the viewball.

That's right.

I mean, do you know how long it takes me to get my hair looking this good for every recording?

You've been in makeup for three hours, haven't you, Andy, prior to this?

4,331 episodes in a row.

My hair has been perfect

with a few thousand missing episodes in the middle.

Also, joining us, looking equally resplendent.

I have to say that that for the

sake of equality and justice.

From New York.

It's Hari Condabelli.

Now, Hari, I'm not going to ask, how are you?

Thank you.

Because that never goes well.

So I'm going to instead ask, where do you see yourself being in five years' time?

Sadly, still doing this, I think.

If you're wondering, I've worn this sweatshirt on the bugle more than any other sweatshirt, and I've owned it for 15 years because i too am trying

i like that it's good to say you're trying no one can come at you

just say you're trying you're like well failure is a possibility that's inbuilt there

succeeding is also a possibility but you're trying i'm trying and also i mean when the show i mean

this is a podcast this is an audio show even if you're looking to looking at this on you close your eyes this is not supposed to be looked at um

so uh anyway uh welcome uh welcome to uh also

uh to our guest co-producer for this week another elite level hyper premium voluntary super subscriber uh hello to chad from chicago uh welcome to the bugle chad

thank you for having me i'm glad to be here chad

Chad, I know you've been listening

for a long time.

In fact,

I've met Chad in Chicago.

We watched blues together after one of my stand-up

shows there.

So it was a great pleasure

to have you on.

How's Chicago doing at the moment, generally, as a city?

It's still trying to make up what season it is.

But other than that, I think it's, you know, I can't complain relative to everything else.

Well, good.

That's, I mean, to be honest, if we took that attitude on the bugle, it would never have started.

We shouldn't complain relative to everything else.

That is fundamentally what this show is.

It is complaining despite things.

Anyway, we are recording on the 19th of May 2025.

19th of May is apparently celebrate your elected officials day.

I might give that a miss.

So let's focus instead on the 20th of May, which is World Bee Day.

uh which um uh in appreciation of the uh celebrity insects uh the bee you need to give time on the 20th of May to appreciate the wonders of the Apian community and their exploitative feminist monarchical social structures.

I have to admit, I'm very conflicted on bees.

Bees, or woke wasps, as the right-wing press consider them, have been churning out honey for trade with humans for more than 70 years now.

But we have to ask, has the time come for another insect to get a go in place of the bees?

Frankly, they've had it too good for too long.

Also, the day after the 21st of May is World Bee B-Day Day, in which you have to clean your pet bees B-bot in an insect-appropriate bee day.

It's also the 21st of May as World Meditation Day, meaning that the 22nd of May is World Scream in Frustration at Everything, Everyone Day, also known as Back to Normal Day.

On the 20th of May, 1875,

a historic moment in the history of measurement, when the Meter Convention was signed by 17 nations, leading to the establishment of the International System of Units, which means that we can all know exactly how long things are in the world.

Prior to that, there were different units of measurement in every single country in the world, all basically the same, but a bit vague and a bit different.

We have the yard, which I think was defined as one tenth of a percent of the distance between one person in an uninteresting conversation and the point that the person they're trying to talk to is seemingly looking at.

Then there's the doppel schnitzel, which in Austria-Hungaria was the length of two well-flattened schnitzels laid end to end.

One otter's length, that's an ancient British unit of measurement, as is a quadra parsnip's worth, which is four parsnips laid end to end, and the oof, which is the distance the average medieval knight's midriff retracted when he was flonked in the codpiece by a king's mace.

So it was good that the

world unified behind the ever popular meter.

As always, a section of this podcast is going straight in the bin.

This week we have a books section, some of the latest books published in the world of books, including The Joy of Oversimplifying Political Problems.

This is a reissue of the 1970s classic from the same people who did the joy of sex.

Rather charming pencil-line drawings of people misrepresenting complex political issues.

Now, of course, all that kind of stuff is online and a lot more graphic and violent, and you really should stop your children accessing it if at all possible.

But I guess that's sharp as long since you get out the fish pond.

Also, we reviewed The Real Gadget, behind the headlines biography of the unhappy life of TV cartoon detective Inspector Gadget,

real name Lionel Julio Gagetovich, the struggles that Gadget had with the inevitable paperwork involved in modern law enforcement and detectivery that dulled so much of the enthusiasm of his early career.

So much of the evidence he collated was inadmissible due to the manner in which he collected it.

Also, Gadget's struggles with the impact of his work on the non-cyborg enabled detectives that he worked alongside and how it destroyed morale across the across the force, plus the inevitable court cases, the impossibility of getting through x-ray scanners at airports and the psychological impact of the extensive cyborgic adaptations to his body, a curse as much as a gift for Gadget, who admitted to quotes yearning genuine human interactions.

And there's a particularly harrowing chapter in which he talks through

well, his romantic struggles, dates which inevitably resulted in people wanting to see his renowned party tricks and whether all parts of his body could extend with the same metallic extravagance.

This is interesting, Addy, because no one ever thinks about Edward Scissor hands and the time he nipped his ball sack when he was, you know,

scissors for hands.

Mistakes are going to happen.

Almost neutered himself.

Yeah.

I was going to write a book on apathy, actually, and then I thought, why bother?

That'd be my contribution.

Also,

finally, in our book review section, we review a book just published, well, a minute ago, which is entitled Everything That's Wrong with What Israel, Israel's Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich, Said Today.

It's a 20-volume magnum opus published within five minutes of his last speech finishing.

Anyway, we might get into some details on that later if we can face the unstoppable chasm of darkness that is hidden within.

Anyway, that's the section in the bin.

Top story this week, American news.

Well, since we've got you on, Hari, we're going to start with

your country, the USA.

I mean, it's just been

another week on this crazy old planet of ours.

I mean, the news over here, one of England's greatest ever footballers had to leave his TV presenting job because he inadvertently reposted an anti-Semitic trope.

It's 2025.

Just what happens.

Our prime minister was accused of channeling the spirit of British politics, most prominent 1960s racist Enoch Powell.

Again, it's 2025.

It doesn't matter if it actually happened.

People think it happened.

But that's all that counts.

The Middle East ceasefire of a few weeks ago appears to have been misinterpreted as an increased fire, and Vladimir Putin is clinging on to his least

trustworthy conversation partner world title, despite what you have to say is fierce competition around the world.

But let's start, Harry, with your president, Donald Trump, who I know you've...

Stop calling him that.

Why do you always call him that?

The president, the president of the United States.

Roshan.

Andy.

It's also Chad's president.

So, you know, you can share the credit, blame, whatever.

Like me, Donald Trump has been on tour, and like me, he's also left some people laughing and other people staring blankly in confusion.

But like me, he's come out of it with a cheeky little $400 million aeroplane as a gift.

So

he's been trucking around the Middle East.

Hari, what have you made of his

contribution to the state of the world over the last week or so?

I mean, we sent a volatile man into a volatile region.

What is the worst that could happen?

Well, I mean, first of all,

he's just an embarrassing figure.

So he goes to Saudi Arabia and they get a mobile McDonald's to greet him because he wants McDonald's.

So they have a mobile version of McDonald's, which, of course, is the dream of every rich seven-year-old ever.

And then Trump basically proves that you don't need to be poor to be white trash.

I think the biggest thing that we get from this is the relationship with Netanyahu in Israel, right?

Because he goes on this very, I guess, successful trip to all these Middle Eastern countries.

And I want to use that word relationship, literally, just for a moment, because

it was interesting.

He met with interim Syrian president Ahmed Al-Shara and described him as a young, attractive guy.

He then met with the family of Qatar, of Qatar, and called them tall, handsome guys.

Then in Saudi Arabia, he greeted Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman and said, I like you too much.

Which is his version, I think, of saying, I wish I knew how to quit you.

So,

after all that,

in the context of the Israel relationship, what I think is clear is that he's cuckholding Netanyahu.

That is what's happening right now.

Netanyahu just turned into a cuck.

It sounds like Donald Trump might have done more for LGBTQ rights in that part of the world than anyone else in human history.

I mean, he was laying it on pretty thick.

He was not.

He called

Ahmed Al-Shara a young, attractive guy, and then tried to make it less awkward by adding that I absolutely do not want to have sex with.

Which

seems a little over the top.

Did he ask them, how are you looking so good?

Are you on the fat shot drug?

The fat shot.

That's what he's calling it.

The fat shot drug.

Yeah.

The only thing worse is if he called it the fat vaccine.

I think that would be

slightly worse so it's not good andy the whole trip was it was tense and embarrassing um he uh when he's talking about iran he said he wants a deal with iran uh he said this we want them to be a wonderful safe great country but they cannot have a nuclear weapon this is an offer that will not last forever and again that i mean that that chimes in with Trump's transactional view to life.

But also, as all bugle listeners will know, that is not how offers work these days.

You know, offers, when it says this is your last chance to get 20% off these trousers, you know, tomorrow you're going to get the same email saying 20% off these trousers for the next month.

That's your offers are different.

It's just, you know, you can't use that language anymore.

Tiff, I know you've...

you've many times toured the Middle East in a diplomatic capacity.

How do you

do you rate Trump?

How did it go?

Well, listen, Trump visited the Qatar gifting suite, which was great.

They set up a gifting suite for him.

Every gift horse comes with a mouth.

No such thing as a free lunch unless it's a McDonald's.

And officials in America are saying, you know, it's unprecedented or unprecedented, which is the term I prefer.

But well, what's kind of mad is that he was gifted a 747.

And even conservative kind of talk show hosts and normal supporters of Trump have come out and said, this cannot hold.

This is like bonkers.

Ben Shapiro called it out.

And then everyone's favorite alliterated conspiracy theorist, Laura Luma,

most recently found screaming at a self-service machine for coming over here and taking the jobs.

She said, I can't believe Donald accepted a Trojan plane or words to that effect.

And I mean, Laura Luma is so awful that Marjorie Taylor Greene had to call out a racist rhetoric.

So it's like, when the worst of the Trump supporters think that Trump is doing things wrong, what does that say?

I think he's been handed some crypto.

There's some kind of talk about corruption in crypto.

Crypto, by the way, should never be confused with Crip Toe, which is a fungal foot infection on your left side.

Yeah, so I think

what's scary, here's what's scary is that he actually might

gain or like kind of do more in the Middle East.

He's a potentially more of a positive influence in the Middle East than the Dems, which feels insane, right?

I mean, he'll do things for his own benefit.

I mean, I'm sure the reasons aren't going to be pure.

He'll want to be teeing off at Mar-a-Lago West Bank within the year.

Might he actually do some good?

I mean, I'm slightly concerned about the fact that he said he wanted

the states to get involved and then just make it a freedom zone.

I don't know what that means, but it sounds like something at a family leisure center that involves zip lines.

And so

I'm not into the idea of a freedom zone.

But could it be possible that Trump can actually

intervene in a way that's, you know, that actually is helpful and useful to the Palestinian people at this point?

Well, I guess, I mean, at the moment, that's not looking wildly positive.

I mentioned the Israel finance minister, Bezalel Smotrich,

who has, well, said some...

I think it's fair to say, fairly uncompromising things

today, that the aid that will be letting will be the bare minimum, simply so the world doesn't stop us and accuse us of war crimes.

What will enter in the coming days, he added, is very little.

A few bakeries distributing pizza bread to people and public kitchens, providing one daily serving of cooked food.

That's it.

He said Israel's military is destroying everything that remains of the Gaza Strip.

The population will reach the south of the strip, he said, and from there, with God's help, to third countries, which is pretty much what Donald Trump was suggesting.

I don't know if he's interpreting Donald Trump as God when Trump made those bizarre Riviera of the Middle East comments a little while ago.

I'm not sure if God is inclined to step in.

He has been eerily quiet, as we've discussed on the show over the last nearly 18 years.

He's been eerily quiet on the Middle East situation for heading towards 2,000 years now.

So, I mean, it would be a good time for him to come out of his self-enforced retirement.

But I'm not wildly positive that he will.

But, God, if you are listening to this podcast, and I know, you know, even for someone who is omniscient and omnipresent, there are too many podcasts to keep up with these days.

But if you are listening to this,

please, please, you know, do

say something.

Anything, anything will do.

And Benjamin Netanyahu said that Israel will take control of

all of Gaza.

So it's not looking

in terms of reaching a solution,

it's still looking quite a way off.

But it was interesting reading the Al Jazeera summary of Trump's uh visit um said that uh he was promoting a realist approach to the Middle East which bear in mind that as I said just weeks ago he was proposing turning Gaara Gaza into essentially a luxury holiday resort um I don't know quite how fixed that realist approach is or how realistic uh it is in terms of non-intervention how you know that sits with you know what what he says about what america wants to do with that region with canada with greenland i guess he's the thinking interventionist non-interventionist um might be the most credible way of uh

of putting it um anyway but i as always tell the thing with with with it's so hard to tell just because you don't know what change of mind or you know in the in the sort of detail free zone of uh of trumpist rhetoric what will actually emerge but he clearly had a bit of a thing for that syrian president and And who can blame him?

He's a young, attractive guy.

Also, I mean, I'd rarely say anything positive about Trump, but this fear that by accepting this plane, there's going to have to be some repayment in favors

because he accepted this plane from Qatar.

If you know anything about Trump, he doesn't repay favors.

He owes so many people money.

He took the plane.

And if they actually were foolish enough to expect something in return, the man doesn't give things in return, he's a taker.

Like, what are you talking about?

So, the idea was a brilliant maneuver on his part.

The idea that there could be a bribe requires him to have a sufficient attention span to remember that he's been bribed

when they try to call that bribery.

And I'm not sure that's going to work very well if it was a bribe.

And yeah, both parties insist there are no strings attached, which is always good news for an aeroplane, obviously.

In terms of whether it compromises his integrity, I mean, can it be compromised anymore?

Is that not just another set of heels in a Melda Marcos' shoe cupboard?

But as you, interestingly, you know, the hardcore pro-Trumperles were against it.

And bear in mind that, you know, they'd still support him.

If he grabbed a doll from

an ill child,

bit its head off, the doll, not the child, belched and then kicked the child down a bobsled run, they'd find some way of explaining how Trump was inspiring the child to take control of their own great destiny.

So, the fact that

they're skeptical of it was

quite interesting.

Even Ted Cruz said that accepting the gift would pose significant espionage and surveillance problems.

And when you have crossed Ted Cruz's maximum point of moral elasticity,

maybe

it's time to have a look at yourself

In other American news, I mean, this story

might be one of the most 21st century stories there's been in the 21st century so far.

The former director of the FBI, James Comey, has been basically accused of attempting to assassinate President Donald Trump by reposting

a photo, so let me do it again, by posting online a photo of some shells on a beach that spelled out the numbers 8647.

Now, I think just from that outline of the story, you could probably write several novels, several multiple part TV series, and some maybe half a factual book.

It just seemed to encapsulate everything

about the world at the moment.

The reason it became

controversial.

is well i mean aside from the weird fact of fbi directors former fbi directors posting photos online anyway is that Trump is the 47th American president that's no secret and that 86

has occasionally been used

in some

circumstances to mean kill

now

Comey said he didn't know that that's connotation of it 86 is more commonly used just to mean remove or or eject.

There was 8646 posted against Joe Biden during his term of office.

That term 86 apparently comes from the restaurant industry.

And, you know, to be 86 is to be asked to leave a restaurant.

And 86 fell between 85 in restaurant talk, which was flobbing and annoying customers' salad.

87 is that person is drunk enough that you can probably serve them supermarket wine and charge them for a vintage 1987 chateau laffitte.

88 incidentally means use the out-of-date chicken.

92 means you might need that ice bucket for something that isn't ice.

And 73 means spill a bowl of of hot soup in that person's lap.

They won't sue.

We have CZ TV footage from the restaurant toilets that gives us considerable leverage.

So it's good to know those codes when you're in restaurants.

But

Tiff, what did you make of this?

Is James Comey openly plotting to assassinate Donald Trump via the medium of cryptic photos?

I think it's clear.

If he sees seashells on the seashore, the shells he sells are seashells, I'm sure, for if he sells seashells on the seashore, then I'm sure it's a call to assassinate the president.

Is that how it works?

I think that's how it works.

Part of me feels a little bit for Trump.

This is twice in one podcast.

I'm not enjoying this, you know, because there's been a couple of assassination attempts and it is a leadership role that has quite a high assassination rate or attempted assassination rate.

So, you know, what do we know about the person who laid the shells?

Did Comey put them down?

Was he the person that put them down?

You know, or was it an actor?

You know, because that's suspicious.

John Wilkes Booth, you know, a marine veteran.

Then we can gauge how likely it is.

And so, I mean, the thing is, once you start thinking about numbers, you get to this point of kind of going, what do numbers even mean, you know, anymore?

Like, 86, it can mean ditch, it can mean get rid of.

It's also the year I met John Moss from Culture Club.

That was a big one for Stevenson, you know.

And what about 8669, which is get rid of overzealous sex positions, or 8680085, which is ban teenage boys from getting near calculators, or 86 2020, who needs good eyesight anyway, or 86 2016, the year it all went wrong in the first place.

Well, here's the thing.

Trump said that Comey knew exactly what he meant, and a child knew what he meant.

So I asked my son, what did he mean?

And he said, it means he wanted to get rid of the president, like how you kick out or ban someone from a bar or restaurant.

It's as clear as day.

Daddy, can I please watch Peppa now?

So,

I mean, that's from my four-year-old.

Yeah.

Clearly, because he asked to see Peppa at the end, so you know it's true.

Well, there are figures on the right calling it a direct threat, but they are the same people that tweeted 86.46.

And you've got to love Twitter for receipts.

People going, is this you?

Like three years ago saying 86.46.

So I also love the fact that, like, I, it's been rebranded X.

Nobody I know has ever called it that.

Like, that has to kill Elon Musk on some level.

The fact that no, despite clear branding, nobody cares.

You know, it's not the most famous 86.

Right.

You know.

Oh, the most famous 86, of course, would be 8675309.

8675309.

Jenny, I got your number.

I wanna make you mine.

Jenny, don't change your number.

8675309.

So

he could have meant that.

He could have meant that.

I mean, there are other possible interpretations of what 8647 meant.

One that has been suggested, and I think this is quite plausible, is that they were the marks out of 10 given by Donald Trump for the wives wives of the first four presidents of the USA after perusing their portraits in the White House when he first moved in there.

I don't know what he had against Martha Jefferson, but anyway, yeah, easy to the right.

Others suggest 8647 is the year by which American democracy is currently predicted to recover to something approaching stability after two terms of Trump as president.

That to me seems a little optimistic.

Obviously, when I look at it, I think 86, 47, well, that's obviously the test caps of cricketers Hadley of New Zealand and Andy Roberts of the West Indies, 86-47, maybe even the scores made respectively by David Garron, Alan Lamb against Australia at Laws in the 1985 Ashes test that England lost before games and win the series 3-1, of course.

Alternatively, in the 1947 World Snooker Championship, Fred Davis made the highest break of the tournament in frame number 86 of the final.

The finals used to go on for a long time in those days.

Genuinely two weeks of snooker.

Happy times, simpler times.

Also, you're like this, Chad.

uh

uh 8647 was the record of the chicago cubs after 133 matches of the 2016 major league baseball season and as a cubs fan you don't need me to tell you what happened that season chad

yes yes that was the the first time in 108 years that we were happy the the cur the the curse of the goat was finally slain um

so uh but also donald trump won the election just two months later after they they'd reached that 86.47.

So read into that

what you will.

So but anyway.

Can I say, as the woman on this podcast, my vagina is fully healed over at this point.

Look,

there's no reason why women can't be as nerdily obsessed with sports stats as men in this day and age.

That is what Mrs.

Pankhurst wanted.

One final piece of American news.

And,

well, I mean, America, yeah, the Statue of Liberty famously calls for the

huddled masses of the world to find refuge in America.

And I think it's fair to say that Donald Trump has not always completely exuded that same Statue of Liberty aura.

However, he has found the generosity within his heart to find space in his country, in your country, for one of history's most put upon minorities, white South Africans.

Now,

so

59 white South Africans have arrived in the US

amidst claims that white South Africans are suffering a genocide.

Claims which would be true were there any truth in them,

but there isn't.

Now, I come at this, I'm the son of a white South African, albeit not an Afrikaner.

I think these are specifically Afrikaners from the Afrikaner population of South Africa.

But, you know, as my father escaped South Africa as a white man, not because

that, you know, he felt oppressed in any way during those apartheid times, but I think just because he was fing bored by all the other white South Africans, as far as I can make out.

He's sadly no longer around for me to double check that with him.

But I mean, in terms of America being a welcoming beacon to people

needing a safe new home, Ari, this is a very, very touching moment.

Yeah, yeah, absolutely.

You know, after benefiting from apartheid for generations,

they are now claiming they're a targeted group in South Africa.

And

there's precedence for this, by the way.

This is similar to the asylum provided by Brazil and Argentina, who took in, quote, German refugees

after World War II.

I believe it was called the old Eichmann switcheroo.

That is a phrase that's, well, I've never heard before, and I hope I never hear of it.

I mean, they arrived on a charter jet

that's already

suspect.

Like 59 South Africans arriving on a charter, unlike the Haitians who tried to come into the U.S.

in the 90s on a broken down boat, and they didn't even have a decency to charter a yacht?

Like, really?

No, that's not.

When you're a refugee, you come in style.

Bugle job section now.

And, well, a scientific report, and when I say scientific, they spoke to a few people, has

revealed which jobs provide people with satisfaction and which do not.

Now I'm very lucky.

I'll get a lot of job satisfaction from my portfolio career, as well as the comedy, for which obviously I'm on call 24-7, 365, whenever humor is needed.

So that comes with a level of stress of never being able to switch off.

Cricket stats, obviously, I'm on call for that 24-7, 365 and a quarter, slightly more accurately.

And as a swimwear model, I'm still waiting for my first booking.

It's a bit early to tell, but I think I'm going to enjoy it.

But amongst the

jobs revealed as unrewarding include being a survey interviewer.

So clearly, this who was doing this survey did not enjoy themselves and might have slightly tweaked the results.

Human cannonball and podcast producer,

depending on the podcast, I might have picked that one up.

Depends on how rude your podcast hosts are to you, I guess.

Chris, amongst the

rewarding jobs include being a medical professional, special needs teacher, sheet metal worker, and ships engineer, but a carpenter, not rewarding.

So I don't know what, take that, Jesus, for a start.

But also, what is the massive difference between carpentry and sheet metal working that makes metal so much more rewarding to work with than wood?

Because you can see your reflection in it, obviously, Andy.

So just appealing to human vanity.

Yeah.

I mean, I don't understand something because part of the people who are self-employed generally had favorable reviews of their occupations because they could regulate their workdays.

If that is true,

how come every comedian I know is miserable,

just constantly make careers out of complaining about things on stage, just miserable.

Why, how does that correlate?

Happiness is less funny, right?

Oh, well, Chad's just dropped into the chat to say because they hate their boss, that's why they're moving.

why is my boss such an asshole to me oh it's me i'm an asshole to myself

i always think that when you think about reviewing comedy like how reviewers think they can hurt you any more than the voice in your own head which has said the worst things you've ever heard i'm like you're never going to write anything that's worse than than this guy right here

I feel quite lucky because writing, obviously, you know, we're all writers.

Writing's up high on the job satisfaction.

And I just feel, you know, if it had been a couple of hundred years ago, I wouldn't have I wouldn't be doing this.

You know, I'd be a chimney sweep,

you know, or selling matches to feed my pet mouse or something.

Please, just one box.

So for me, this is, it's all an improvement.

Yeah.

I mean, my kids do sometimes ask me, what would you be what would you do if you were not a comedian and stroke cricket statistician?

And I'll be honest, I have absolutely no fucking idea.

I have a maximum of two skills, neither of which will be needed after the nuclear apocalypse.

So

I think I've hit a sweet spot in human evolution where my jobs exist.

So

I'm other than that, I am a one-man rebuke to the entire concept of Darwinism.

Harry, did you, what did you do before comedy, if anything?

Oh, I was an immigrant rights rights organizer.

I worked in Seattle with the refugees, victims of hate crimes, things like that.

African falminess.

And then I went to school for human rights and then decided to get into the even more lucrative career of stand-up comedy.

I had...

just under a year as a sub-editor at a business publishing house sub-editing articles about London financial institutions, which is even less exciting than I just made it sound.

And

what else have you done other than comedy?

I've done, I did, I used to do, so for an acting thing, they used to get actors into role play for the Institute of Gynecologists and obstetricians.

And so you had to like go in and pretend to be a patient.

And they'd be like, you're pregnant with twins.

This might happen.

But what would happen is they would fly

people in from around the world to take these exams, and then you had to kind of like do bedside manner and stuff.

And sometimes it would be quite awkward because, like, colloquialisms or words that weren't maybe necessarily in medical English, and people are trying to connect you with you to talk to you about your condition.

But it ended up one of the sessions with a man just roaring at me that I had a broken pussy.

So, that was

quite something.

I think any like in-between jobs that actors do always end up being bonkers.

Like I've done puppet shows in shopping malls.

It was a campaign for like worms in kids.

And so it was trying to teach kids to wash their hands.

So I had two puppets.

I had one called Dirty Beastie, which was like a dirty, like dirty beastie.

And then I had Soap Sad Sally, who Soaps Had Sally would cut.

She had lipstick.

She was a sponge with lipstick and eyelashes.

So like a sexy sponge.

I'm like a contraceptive sponge which

uh and so i had to do this puppet show and teach kids like i've done so many bonkers things so many bonkers jobs in between what other exciting job news donald trump has appointed andrew giuliani as uh the executive director of the task force overseeing the 2026 men's football world cup in the usa if that surname sounds familiar it's because it is fucking familiar he is the son of uh former trump attorney and new york mayor

Rudy Giuliani.

I mean, this is very exciting from a footballing point of view.

I mean, will we have at the 2026 World Cup, a special football that leeches a strange black liquid when it gets hot?

Possibly related to the essence of pure evil.

I mean, this could be very exciting times for

football.

And

a good boost for

the beleaguered Nepo child industry, which has been so criticized and really needed a bit of a,

it's just been too long since people got places purely based on who their

parents are.

And it's good to see him making a bit of a comeback.

Wildlife news now.

And, well, Chad has requested a couple of wildlife stories.

I can't remember from my trip to Chicago what the general state of

flora and fauna in

the middle of Chicago.

I know the river goes green once a year, doesn't it?

Whether that's

green most of the year, but it's a different shade of green.

So, well, this is a story you sent actually, a harrowing story from Alabama of a runaway kangaroo on the loose causing absolute.

Obviously, the headline says run away.

That is not an appropriate term for a kangaroo.

Hop away, maybe, or boing away, run away.

Let's have some accuracy.

AP News.

Federal police ordered an immediate shutdown of all roads and other transport infrastructure across the entire state, if I may exaggerate slightly, for fear that a biblical prophecy that President Trump thought he'd heard about would come true in which pouched animals ran amok across the whole of Alabama, stealing people's children and burgers and discombobulating the good people of Alabama with their strange hoppy means of movement.

With the kangaroo in nation of of Alabama coming hot on the heels of the victory in the Australian election of the non-Trump toadying Prime Minister Anthony Albo Albanese, there are now fears that the U.S.

could cut off all ties with the southern hemispherical nation in order to ensure smooth traffic flows across the southern states of the USA without kangaroos getting in the way.

Very harrowing times for America, obviously, Hari.

I mean, you just don't know where this is going to end.

Well, thank God it was an Australian animal and not a Mexican animal.

Because,

oh my God, Chihuahuas would be being deported left and right right now.

People would be hiding their chihuahuas, like Taco Bells would close down.

The whole

thing would be disastrous.

Yeah, don't inform ICE or Christy will come with her own gun.

Yeah,

there's an animal that I'm not fond of.

It was a privately owned kangaroo, which I found somebody owned.

The only name they could come up with was a C.

Dundee.

Yep.

I don't know if that means anything to anybody, but C Dundee.

They've called her Sheila.

I just think, let a bitch be free.

You know, she's obviously making a run for you.

You don't own me.

I'm a bloody Aussie.

What am I doing in Alabama?

This ain't my sweet home, babe.

She's just out there going, where can I get a flat white and a stubby?

There's nowhere around here for me.

The kangaroo is thought to have escaped from Australia and made its way across the Pacific Ocean to the Americas on a simple ancient-style raft, just to prove that kangaroos could indeed be descended from Iowans.

But

the, I mean, where will it end?

This is the kind of social breakdown that was always inevitable once Trump released the January the 6th insurrectionist.

If the laws don't apply to them, how on earth do you expect Australian mammals to behave themselves?

And, you know, it is, you know, that you can't, you can't put that particular Pandora back in a box.

The motor wayward marsupial goes by the name of Sheila, and like many Antipodian animals, is

fiercely ambitious.

She thinks you can be whatever you wallaby.

That you can go all the way to the top.

Everything is possible.

They are very demanding, though, at baseball games.

If you say they can only pitch, though.

I'll won't bat, they insist.

For me, they're only in the fourth category of sweetness and adorability as animals go.

I say they are a band D, cute.

You son of a bitch, how dare you?

How dare you

put us through that?

Bandicoot.

Oh, God.

Well, that brings us to the end of

this week's bugle.

One final thing before we go.

Chad is a big hockey fan, and

you sent me a link to an article about the tragic loss of the Toronto Maple Leafs in Game 7 last night of

their playoff series,

which was, was it the eighth consecutive Game 7 that they've lost?

Is that correct?

I believe that to be true.

I believe that.

I mean, that is, you know, a heroic persistence.

And look, I know many buglers may well be Toronto Maple Leafs fans.

I'm not going to lampoon you in your moment of suffering.

I'm just going to say that the whole purpose of sport as a sports fan is to teach you valuable life lessons about the inevitability of failure.

And that is what elite sport is truly for.

It's not about watching people do things that you can't possibly conceive of doing yourself due to their incredible dedication to perfecting themselves physically.

It is about seeing the lessons of human life played out before you live in real time.

And those lessons are that generally you'll f up when it matters.

So thank you to the Toronto Maple Leafs for reteaching that oft-learned lesson to humanity.

Well, that brings us to the end of this week's bugle.

Thank you very much for listening.

Hari, anything to plug?

Yes, I'll be headlining the Gramercy Theater in New York City on May 29th.

That might be my biggest show of the year.

May 30th to 31st, Houston Punchline.

And finally, Lafayette, Louisiana, Club 337 on June 1st.

You can find me on Instagram, obviously, if you can spell my name.

So you won't find me on Instagram.

Tiff.

I am

doing,

it's Builders and Evening with Tiff Stevenson at

Stony Fest, which is in Milton Keynes, which I'll be doing my last hour hour show, husband material, and then a career retrospective/slash QA afterwards, where I will talk about the people I've worked with, who's an asshole and who's not.

You don't come out of it well, Andy.

Um,

and uh, I'm also doing um my show at the Wardrobe Theatre, uh, in I think it's June 27th or 29th, uh, roundabout.

Then, I should know this, shouldn't I?

I should know that.

This is the way we do plugs on the bugle.

We pull public.

Yeah.

June the 6th,

I'll be doing husband material.

And then I've got to just write a whole new show for the Edinburgh Fringe, which starts in August.

So, so, you know, buy tickets for that.

I'm sure I'll have it, a show by August.

Thanks enormously to Chad for being an elite premium voluntary subscriber.

Thanks.

I hope you've enjoyed seeing what it's like to be Chris for a day, Chad.

Yeah,

it's been eye-opening.

I think I just want to say how much I'm impressed by you all every week.

And the show's adapted to the point where now you're just openly selling access to keep up with the modern world.

Just learning from politics.

We talk about politics, we eventually become politicians.

Anyway,

thanks to you and to all Bugle subscribers.

If you want to join the Bugle voluntary subscription scheme, go to thebuglepodcast.com and click the donate button to help keep this show free, flourishing, and independent.

I don't have a lot to plug, but if you like cricket, the test match special starts on Thursday with England versus Zimbabwe at Trent Bridge.

And to be honest, looking at the state of the world, I am looking forward to it even more than I usually do.

We will be back next week with Helen Zlots.

How's that pronounced?

Zlotson.

Someone Jewish sounding.

And Josh Gondelman.

So until then, goodbye.

Hi, buglers, it's producer Chris here.

I just wanted to very quickly tell you about my new podcast, Mildly Informed, which is in podcast feeds and YouTube.

right now.

Quite simply, it's a show where me and my friend Richie review literally anything.

So please come join us wherever you get your podcasts right now.