MAGA Pope: Make America Guilty Again

The Bugle, audio newspaper for a visual world.

Buglers, hello!

Oh, you weren't expecting that, were you?

Who says you can't teach an old podcast new tricks?

Welcome to issue 4340 of the Bugle, audio newspaper for a visceral world, with me Andy Zoltzman fearlessly sitting in a hermetically sealed shed, as always, providing pure, unbetaintable objectivity on all the shitbags and sisters who are ruining the planet for good people like you.

Which the 2020s objectivity isn't what it was.

Our two co-hosts today, bravely soldiering through, despite having had their dreams of becoming Pope, crushed, crushed before their eyes, ground to dust by the Vatican machine, which holds so many deep-sitted prejudices against people like them.

I think they're both missed out in at least three categories.

Firstly, Back in the UK after circumnavigating the world on his self-constructed raft of truth, or did he use aeroplanes in the end?

It's Nish Kumar.

Welcome, welcome, Nish.

Hello, Andy.

Hello, buglers.

I am fuming to have missed out once again as Pope.

This is disgraceful.

I paid to watch the film Conclave.

I think that should have at least put me in the goddamn running.

Unbelievable.

It's extraordinary stuff.

Andy, I've been away, as you said, I've been around the world.

I'd like to thank all the buglers that came out to my various shows in Canada, America, Australia, and New Zealand.

Probably one

bugler specifically that's worth singling out.

I'd now like to read to you from a letter that I received backstage in Austin, Texas from Mumar Gaddafi.

Huge blast from the past there

from the big dog.

The address given is the 69th Mech Badonkadon Cavalry Regiment, 2nd Squadron.

The letter, which was dated, it was weirdly formal.

And I will say also featured as a kind of background image a picture of my own face, which is quite an unsettling thing to see on a letter that I received.

Dear Commander Kumar, I, Colonel Mumar Gaddafi, am writing on behalf of the 69th Mechanized Madunkadon Cavalry Regime, 2nd Squadron, Zoltor Zone, where we welcome you to Austin, Texas.

This city reminds me of home, and hope you receive as warm a welcome here as I received a farewell from Sirte.

Please accept these provisions and may they sustain you during your North American campaign.

Thank you for making this moral mission.

The winter has been long, cold, and bleak.

May your travels be safe and profitable.

And then the colonel has actually signed off on the letter.

What accompanied the letter was I can only describe as a basket of absolute bullshit.

We're talking tins of spam.

We're talking multiple flavors of crisps and we're talking a cricket ball.

This is

this, Andy, all I can say is, as I tried to explain hastily to my partner, Amy, who was opening for me at the show, this is what happens when you can't do American tours because of your obligations to cricket and the news quiz.

This is what happens.

Buglers develop bugle blue balls.

And they have to...

horrible phrase, spaff bullshit all over whichever co-host is in their nearest vicinity.

I'd like to thank the Colonel for the provisions.

They were gratefully received by me and my, I would say, absolutely baffled cousins who live in Austin, Texas.

Incidentally, Spaff Bullshit played for the Austin ostriches.

Back in the 30s, I think.

Well, anyway, well done.

Well done.

And buglers, whatever niche is next in your part of the world, that gauntlet has been laid down.

A standard has been set.

Who amongst you can give me a basket of spam and a cricket ball?

The standard you walk past is the standard you accept.

Well, the voice you've just heard joining us from Australia.

It is the fearless pole volter over the garden fence of lies into the thorny flowerbed of reality.

I'm really talking you guys up today.

Don't know me down.

It's Tom Ballard.

Welcome, welcome, Tom.

How are you?

Thank you, Andy.

Hello, buglers.

I'm very well, thank you.

Probably more likely that Gaddafi will be Pope before me, to be honest.

But

a pleasure to join you all in this wonderful, exciting time.

Congratulations to the new Pope.

No, yes, no Australian Pope whatsoever, which is a disgrace.

I believe when they announce the Australian Pope, it will be with a barbecue of some kind.

They'll fire up the smoke, put some shrimp on the barbee, and then when it smells delicious, crikey, you've got an Aussie bloody Pope.

That'll be an update on some of the Catholic barbecues of the past.

Also joining us for the first time, and this is a very exciting new development in Bugle history, as a Bugle Elite

Premium Platinum Galaxy level voluntary subscriber.

It is guest co-producer Belinda from Hendon.

Hello, Belinda.

Hello, Andy.

Hello, Bugless.

Welcome.

Yes, well, indeed.

Welcome to the show.

And thank you for being an elite-level voluntary voluntary voluntary subscriber.

You will be basically bossing Chris around for

the duration of this podcast.

Do I get to say f ⁇ you, Belinda?

Is that how it works now?

The hierarchy?

Yes.

Yeah, I think that's part of the package, isn't it, for

the elites, volunteer subscribers?

Yeah, that's, you know, that's...

I think money very well invested.

At Bugler's Company.

If you too want to join Belinda of becoming an elite voluntary subscriber, you too could have the privilege of what Belinda has just done for the last 16 minutes, which is watch us struggle to connect to an online recording.

Belinda won this position by writing a letter to Andy pretending to be Bashar Alice.

Creativity that we're looking for.

If you two want to join the elite tier.

You too could watch Tom Ballard somehow mute himself on a microphone seconds before the recording was about to begin.

You too could watch me struggle, eventually fail and simply give up on the idea of blurring my background so people can't see my washing or the broken exercise machine behind me.

And you could see my intensive hair and makeup routine that I did before every year.

So Bernard has also brought a couple of

kosher bread rolls to you

for the occasion, which seems entirely appropriate, Nisha's.

I don't know if the bread roll that was thrown at me was kosher.

Unfortunately, it was not a good enough throw to get near enough for me to ascertain its kosherocity.

Kosherocity, is that the right word?

I reckon so.

Yeah.

I think Belinda's a little more in the loop than I am on these things.

But

we are recording on the 12th of May 2025.

By the time you listen to this, it may well be the 14th of May 2025, in which case it will be the 137th anniversary of the last witchcraft trial held in the United States, which began in, well, Witchcraft Central, Salem, Massachusetts, when Lucretia Brown accused Daniel Spofford of attempting to harm her through his mental powers.

A sign of real progress there, a woman accusing a man of witchcraft.

That just shows, you know, that the cat of feminism was out of the bag, even before women were allowed to vote.

Well, anyway, it was the last witchcraft trial held in the U.S.

until Donald Trump's trial in New York last year, which he defends all wisdom that he is officially as leader of the Democratic World described as a witch hunt, a witch trial.

And to me, that shows the huge advance in witchcraft trials compared with, say, Salem 1692.

That Trump had an independently selected jury, an absolute motherload of evidence, a well-reasoned verdict, and an extremely merciful sentence, in which he was given a chance to get his life back on track with a four-year work placement as president of America.

That is rehabilitative justice at its very best that the victims of Salem 1692 could only dream of.

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

Tomorrow is World Cocktail Day, the 13th of May, a huge day for cocktail fans.

And to mark this, we give you exclusively some bugle audio cocktail recipes.

Your first audio cocktail, the Brazilian margarita.

Two snippets of Margaret Thatcher talking, the roar of the crowd from an A-dare flicked the ball up to himself and volleyed it from 25 yards into the top corner in the 1982 World Cup to put Brazil 2-up against the USSR.

Three crunches of someone eating a carrot, the sound of a blast furnace closing down for the last time, finished with the sound of two people grunting during a particularly vigorous jiu-jitsu encounter.

Our next cocktail, Sects on the Beach, the murmur of two rival specks from a devil-worshipping cult meeting at midnight on a deserted seashore, plus the clip-clap of newborn turtles flipping their way across the sand, the braying of an exploited donkey trotting past some men in speedos playing volleyball, and a distant yelp of shark, shark.

And also the Manhattan, the honk of traffic on 8th Avenue, blended sumptuously with a crowd in the Vatican being blessed by a newfangled Pope wearing a mitre, hence Manhat on.

Finished piquantly with the squelch of former boxer Ricky Hatton punching the early 20th century German writer Thomas Mann in the face.

Right, next one, Pisco Sau.

Actually, won't I skip that one?

Well, you will definitely skip that one.

Anyway, that section is in the bin.

God, it's good to be home.

Top story this week, the nuclear war isn't happening yet.

Well, exciting news for the world, which is breathing very slightly more easily for a bit at least after an exchange of fire between India and Pakistan,

which followed an attack on Indian soldiers in April, which threatened to give the world another live talking point.

To add to its conversation,

which currently encompasses everything from who is better, Laminia Marl or Taylor Swift, our Our unboxing videos on YouTube are sign that humanity has basically given up, and our worms, baby snakes.

To which we were about to add, would Wimbledon still happen after a global nuclear war has reduced the planet to radioactive dust?

But fortunately, after a conclave of concerned nations asked India and Pakistan nicely if they wouldn't mind awfully not catapulting the world into full-blown World War III rather than the simmering, is it, isn't it, World War III state we're all in, John right now, a peace deal was hacked out and everyone lived happily ever after, apart from for a few incidents, and ever is currently two days long.

So,

Nish, I know you're,

I mean, you've generally come out against nuclear war as a means of solving humanity's problems.

Where do you stand on this particular one?

Well, that was back in my wokest days, Andy.

And now I'm pro-war and against DEI.

I don't even know what it stands for, but I'm against it.

And I won't be looking it up because that's exactly what the leftists want.

Yes,

India and Pakistan

flirted with, without having full penetrative sex with, the idea of total nuclear annihilation of each other.

A terrorist attack which happened in Kashmir last month appeared to have escalated tensions in the region.

India then began a sort of military response.

Pakistan then hit back.

And now over the weekend, US representatives and UK representatives have both claimed partial credit or responsibility for averting the strike.

I will say that for the US and the UK, given some of the events at the early part of this century, telling a nation to not respond to a terrorist attack by starting a full war has an element of pot kettle black in this situation.

It has an absolute element of pot kettle black.

If anything, the US and UK representatives should have said, listen, all that awaits you if you do this is death, misery, and a rehabilitation as a fun uncle who does paintings, or in the case of the UK representatives involved in starting the war, a lucrative career in podcasting.

If I may, draw attention to the career of Alistair Campbell post-helping start the Iraq.

Oh, I feel like me.

No, no, that

Zoltzman, you're on the reverse Campbell trajectory.

You've started with podcasting, and then eventually you two will help create the conditions for a massively ill-advised and incredibly catastrophic war in the Middle East.

That's you're on the reverse trajectory.

Andy Andy's ultimate, the rest is bullshit.

Listen, just because India and Pakistan aren't going to war doesn't mean we can't go to war with other podcasters.

One of the kind of unusual sub-stories that developed within this overall story is that airlines, it turns out, have been working tirelessly in the background since the start of the Ukraine war and also with the escalation of this war to ensure that planes will keep flying even after the outbreak of nuclear war.

And I know that everybody's primary concern with nuclear war is, will I still be able to go on my summer holidays?

And I have fantastic news for you.

The insurance industry, that...

tireless organization devoted to human justice and peace has been working tirelessly behind the scenes to ensure that commercial jets jets will still be able to be insured so that they can fly in the event of a nuclear war.

Gallagher, the world's largest aviation insurance broker, have been working on the scheme since Putin threatened to deploy Russian nuclear weapons against Ukraine back in 2022.

Nigel Wayman, who's a senior partner at Gallagher, and also has the absolute perfect possible name for his job of absolutely benign unpleasantness.

He said that back when the wording was drawn up, it was assumed that any hostile detonation meant that it would all be over, Armageddon.

But what they didn't have in those days was tactical nuclear weapons that vary in size and in impact, and which ultimately are very usable.

And I don't think we focused enough on how very, very incredibly usable the new brand of nuclear weapons are.

Those old nuclear weapons, they were a blunt instrument.

These new tactical nukes are the weaponry equivalent of the Tampax Compaq.

That is an incredibly usable tampon that is discreet, it's precise, and crucially, it gets the job done.

Did you test that yourself, Mish?

I have done some Googling, Andrew.

I have done some Googling.

I like to keep the algorithm guessing, and the 25 minutes or so I spent this morning googling small tampons is

already going to have created some level of confusion over at Google.

In terms of usability, I mean, this is very exciting.

Basically, that's the language of the mass market.

And if we get to the point where everyone has their own nuclear, usable nuclear weapon for simple household tasks like clearing the flower beds before planting some new herbs or tidying your kids' bedrooms, then will the world not be a happier place?

Tom,

you come at this story with the cool objectivity of someone who lives in the southern hemisphere and must look upon

what's been going on in the northern hemisphere over the last few thousand years with uh with an element of confusion and and disdain what what's your take on the situation

well i'm just very impressed that donald trump has managed to calm everybody down i think it's uh a real breakthrough he said there'll be a full and immediate end to hostilities after a long night of talks mediated by the united states now no offense indian pakistan but you know things are bad when your conflict is being mediated by donald trump's america yeah if you have to call in representatives of donald trump to be the voice of reason and tell everybody to calm down Your shit's f ⁇ ed up, yo.

I just don't think the Yanks are the first guys I think of when I think of like de-escalation.

In fact, in terms of things that make extremely delicate situations worse, I'd say the U.S.

is up there with ISIS, the Incredible Hulk, and methamphetamines.

Full credit to him.

He does seem to have secured a ceasefire for now.

And I think we're all excited to see what his peace plan for Kashmir looks like, especially as it may require him to know where the f ⁇ Kashmir is.

If he can narrow it down to the correct hemisphere, I will be very impressed.

This is a man who gave a speech in 2020 in which he referred to Thailand as Thailand.

Thailand, Andy.

Thailand.

You know, Thailand.

It's near Singapore and Cambodia.

He also referred to Mattel, the toy company, as a country this week as well.

So it does suggest that his geopolitical radar is,

as you say, still in need of, let's be charitable about this, a little bit of fine-tuning.

Yeah, as always, after the exchange of fire, well, truth was not so much the first casualty of war as the first thing blindfolded, plopped down a disused mine shaft and covered in fast-setting concrete before war has even started.

And there was an instant reaction in the inevitable way of the 21st century of a wave of online misinformation and people posting

footage of completely separate events and sharing the sort of wild conspiracy theories that admit almost like a punctuation in

the modern world.

Truth was also the first casualty of a ceasefire and

as well as war.

And as you say, the various players were scrambling to take credit for the deal, including the USA, Saudi Arabia, Iran, around about 30 other nations,

including the UK, and above all, cricket fans.

Because

to me, the reason that ceasefire happened so quickly

was

the fact that both the Pakistan Super League and the Indian Premier League, two of the world's leading T20 cricket leagues, were suspended due to the outbreak of hostilities.

And I think gazing into that,

that light of truth of what was at stake, I think made peace spontaneously erupt.

I will say, Andy,

it was a very difficult week to refute a lot of your allegations that cricket is more important than anything else in life because the timing of of this was suboptimal if the point you're trying to make is not it was all about cricket

because

the the the IPL the Indian Premier League was suspended at the start of this conflict and it seems that the threat of a suspension of cricket has caused India and Pakistan to suspend their hostilities and it just shows you that with Vladimir Putin and Russia, they have been suspended from Football World Cup competitions, but that has not slowed them down.

What does this tell you about India and Pakistan?

They are simply morally better than Russia

because they were willing ultimately to recognize that people care more about sport than anything else.

And if Putin had a cent of humanity in his body, he would have understood that the second that it turned out Russia weren't going to be able to compete in the Football World Cup, that he would have stopped everything.

Well, I mean, famously, George Orle said that sport is war minus the shooting, which I think means if you flip the equation round mathematically, peace is is war divided by sport squared over two, if I've done the math right, but I'm not entirely sure.

I'll give you this, Andy.

Viewers will know I'm no fan of the sport of cricket.

If the results of cricket decided international border disputes, I would watch cricket, okay?

I don't know what you win at the moment.

You win like a cup and some sandwiches or something.

But if India played Pakistan and the winner gets cash beer, then there are some steaks and board and I'm tuning in, okay?

Yeah.

Although based on the results the last couple of years, Kashmir would currently be under the control of Australia.

Yeah, so international players and broadcasters were flown out of Pakistan on a special military flight.

Then the IPL, which had been suspended, has now been desuspended, and they're going to try and restart it later this week.

Now, I don't know if that gave them time to

get the unscheduled gap in the tournament sponsored like every other gap in the movement

in the icon.

But it could be an opportunity for the bugle.

Currently,

our foreign to sports sponsorship is the board in the goal at the Streatham Red Hawks ice hockey that they put up for people to try and do the shoot of puck from the halfway line into the goal through a little slot at the bottom to win a prize.

And in the corner is a bugle logo.

But that's as far as we've got.

But I'm quite keen to try and sponsor

the suspension of the IPL.

The Bugle podcast, Geopolitical Precipice of Armageddon, Take It to the Brink Break.

I think that's you know, that is an opportunity for us.

I don't know what they want for that.

I imagine travel agents are queuing up once the IPL restarts.

Here's Joss Butler, fresh from his Globestrider Insta Holidays, Nuclear Emergency Micro Vacation,

taking flight with Globestrider, with destinations ranging from Santa Pé to absolutely anywhere that isn't a potential imminent war zone.

All this happened just as the UK had signed a glorious post-Brexitatius trade deal with India, paving the way for British companies to start advertising chocolate-coated whiskey-powered space rockets piloted by heavily lipstick Lamb during IPL cricket matches.

Because the deal reduced tariffs on whiskey, cosmetics, aerospace equipment

and food, including lamb and chocolate.

The Conservatives and Reform UK criticised the post-Brexit deal

because it was the kind of deal that they wanted to happen post-Brexit.

This is where we are in British politics now.

Starmer described the criticism as incoherent nonsense, which is not the coherent nonsense or incoherent sense, which is what voters are looking for these days.

The deal followed prolonged negotiations, and these negotiations were, I'm happy to report, rather more two-way than has sometimes been the case in negotiations between the UK and India historically.

So that's

progress,

I guess.

It did cause a lot of squabbling over here politically.

As I said, the Conservatives were not happy with this deal.

There was some element of national insurance involved, even though the arrangements between the UK and India are very similar to what the UK has with other countries that it has trade deals with.

But the crucial thing was that the deal involved trigger words, which are tax, Brexit, and foreigners coming over here.

Q, political point scoring, provocation, and counter-squawked denial.

So I'm going to average out the reporting on this to try and give you buglers an idea of what went on.

The deal between the UK and India is good and or bad it will boost the economy by absolutely loads and or not that much objectively and or absolutely all by providing thousands and thousands of jobs stroke about three jobs and it will and or won't increase immigration in a manner that is worrying stroke barely discernible thus proving that brexit was wrong and or right so i hope we've cleared up any uh ring and confusion on that nish you must have been very excited by this uh this deal i know you you love a trade deal this is the nishkumar trade deal the trade deal between britain and india um it's uh yeah it's huge business.

I will say that, based on my dealings with my uncles, any offer of a reduced price on whiskey is going to be met with real approval.

I will also say that Keir Starmer is sort of slowly boxing himself into quite an interesting position because part of the conditions of some of the Indian trade deals is some kind of a promise to re-examine some of the rules on immigration that's allowing India to come here, which is in direct opposition to an announcement Starmer has made this morning saying that the UK will cut

net migration figures.

So that's legal migration.

We're going to cut those numbers because Keir Starmer says the UK is at risk of becoming an island of strangers, suggesting that Keir Stalma is being influenced both in his wordplay and his ideologies by the singer Morrissey.

It's a white paper that really leans heavily on the white is what I would say about this morning's immigration white paper announcement.

He said that don't worry we're going to bring down immigration because we've decided that we could do something to fix the complex economic problems that have blighted our societies or we could just blame it on the Browns and the Blacks.

And Keir Starbourne has hit the button marked blame it on the Browns and the Blacks and the Chinese to be fair.

And yeah, so I don't really understand

how this is all going to work.

But I am continuing to enjoy the current history of the last 25 years, which is just don't do anything about the economy.

We're too scared to deal with them because they've got more money than them.

So let's just blame immigrants.

I'm just enjoying basically white people doing the long-winded process of cutting off their dicks to spite their own assholes.

I'm sorry, an island of strangers, isn't that the British ideal?

Aren't you people strangers to people within your own f family?

I've seen people in Britain shake hands with their own mother.

Even that's too much.

A simple wave will do.

In other ceasefire news, the Ukraine war is over.

Well, it could be over, but it probably won't be over.

But there is some talk of a 30-day ceasefire if Vladimir Putin stops being a massive

for 30 days, which seems pretty unlikely.

Tom, you are at the official bugle.

Vladimir Putin is a correspondent.

What's the latest situation?

Can I just say, this portfolio, I am busy.

Very busy.

Yes, European leaders, Lok Saikiostama, they are calling for a ceasefire, an unconditional ceasefire.

They're using very strong language.

And in my my experience, when European leaders call for something to happen,

it doesn't.

Call me jaded.

Whenever I hear about European leaders giving ultimatums to Russia when it comes to Ukraine, my brain kind of goes into emergency exit row briefing slash iTunes terms and conditions slash dentist telling me how to floss mode.

You're just saying words, honey.

It ain't going to happen.

But it's hard to see what's going to happen.

Western powers and Ukraine want an unconditional ceasefire, while Russia says it will only agree to a ceasefire if all Western weapons deliveries to Ukraine are stopped.

Which is very similar to that time when I was a kid, and my brother Gavin said he'd absolutely let me play with his Lego pirate ship if I just let him play with my limited-edition Star Wars Phantom Menace Darth Maul double-ended lightsaber.

So I said, Okay, and I gave him the lightsaber, and then he used it to annex my bedroom and my dress-up box.

And when I told my mum about it, Gavin just said he was simply enacting a process of denazification, which doesn't even make sense.

but i don't know it doesn't look like russia is going to be very receptive to this former president of russia dmitry medvedev took to x to post macron mertz stamer and tusk were supposed to discuss peace in kiev instead they are blurting out threats against russia you think that's smart shove these peace plans up your pangender asses

which i think clearly shows that my campaign to raise awareness of lgbtqi identities and sexual practices in russia is really cutting through that's right andy

Some members of my rainbow community happen to enjoy inserting contentious European peace negotiations up their gender-diverse rectums.

And I think that's beautiful.

And we will not be kink shamed.

Let's embrace it.

And in fact, if you're ever in Berlin, I highly recommend checking out a very queer-friendly club called Dasfruttibuti where you can sit on a copy of the Treaty of Versailles.

It's Stalma used some pretty strong language to talk about uh Vladimir Putin.

Uh, he said, All of us here, together with the U.S., are calling Putin out.

That's right, it's called it's a call-out.

You've been called out, Vladimir Putin.

Stick that in your pipe and smoke it.

Or, in to put it in Ballardian terms, write that down on a treaty and shove it up your asshole.

Write up the Eutrechum.

God, Saltzman, you like the words worth of anal filth.

They've said that Starbucks said that there needs to be a ceasefire with no ifs or buts, but you're dealing with Vladimir Putin, a man who likes ifs more than Rudyard Kipling and buts more than Simix a lot.

So it's

something that I would say

might be falling on potentially deaf ears.

Pope news now and exciting times.

Americans have long enjoyed inviting God to bless America.

And whilst there seems to be scant evidence of him taking them up on that generous invitation, God at least now has a direct middleman to go through, should he so want to, as of last Thursday.

We have the first American Pope, not as Donald Trump pitched in a social media post we mentioned last week, Donald Trump himself.

Instead, the first Americope is Chicago's Robert Prevost, aka Pope Leo, Twitter Intravenus, XIV, sorry, the 14th, never sight reader script.

And I mean,

this is for a Chicago Pope.

I don't know what he's going to bring, apart from

this Catholic Church belatedly clamping down on ketchup on hot dogs and some battles

a lot more exciting.

I know you guys have, well, we talked about

your disappointment at missing out this time, but to have an American Pope and one who's expected

not to do Donald Trump's bidding, given that he is an active Christian rather than the least Christian man in the known universe, it could be quite interesting times, I think.

Yes,

it's very interesting to see the election of an American Pope be greeted with absolute disgust by a lot of people that constantly bang on about how much they love wanking over the American flag or whatever it is.

Steve Bannon.

Steve Bannon, a man who seems to have developed the first case of permanent leprosy of the face and head,

has been incredibly irate about the election of the American Pope, saying that whilst Pope Leo is American, he's not America first and expressing concern that he might be following in the tradition of his more liberal-leaning predecessor.

Bannon said that it was kind of draw-dropping.

It is shocking to me that a guy could be selected to be the Pope that had had the Twitter feed and the statements he's had against our American senior politicians.

And we've all seen Conclave.

We know how much of the process involves scouring the Twitter feed of the various people that are in the running to beat Pope.

Bannon said that there was definitely going to be friction between Pope Leo and Donald Trump.

This is where we are at with the current American conservatism movement.

The Catholic Church is too woke for America.

The Catholic Church, an organization that historically has largely existed to hoard gold and shelter paedophiles, is now

too woke for Steve Bannon and Donald Trump.

It is an absolutely astonishing turn of events.

An organization with an interior decor that would make Saddam Hussein say, that's actually a little bit too much for me.

I would love a MAGA Pope.

I think that'd be awesome.

Make America guilty again.

I love the idea.

Yeah, like the Pope is in America first.

What would that even look like?

Like, yes, brothers and sisters, we are all God's children.

He loves us all equally.

But also, US number one, Canada stocks, China eats donkey dicks.

America, baby.

Woo!

If you say it in Latin, though, no one knows what the hell you're saying.

So you could probably.

There is a fair bit of evidence that he's going to be another woke pope or as I like to call them a pope flake

Apparently Pope Leo has previously supported the idea of the Vatican installing solar panels.

Hey Popeye, you want to reduce emissions?

Maybe stop announcing your ascension by pumping smoke into the air, mate.

Yeah?

Have a think about that.

He also wants the Vatican to adopt electric vehicles.

And I'd say, just be careful with that one, Pope Leo.

If the Pope Mobile, which is designed to protect you, is a f ⁇ ing Tesla, that could be a call coming from inside the house scenario.

How do you put solar panels on a dome?

I mean, that's pretty tricky, isn't it?

Can we just say, can we look again, all love to Catholics, but I'm sorry.

An American being selected as the Pope is a sign that God has forsaken us.

Okay.

He has given up.

Our

Heavenly Father has taken a look at the state of the world and all its various problems and gone, you know what this needs?

More power concentrated in the hands of an American male.

F it.

Let's make the Pope a guy from Chicago named Bob.

I'm too old for this shit.

Goodbye.

Again,

a thrilling glimpse for Belinda.

Just to be clear,

we've been recording for 45 minutes, which is about an episode length, and we've made it through half the things we'd like to talk about.

Things are progressing as normal.

Yeah.

I thought this might be the case.

Australian election update now.

And, well, Tom, since you were last on the show,

there's been an election, which was last week.

We talked about it briefly last week.

But obviously, nothing is official in Australian politics until we have the full Tom Ballard opinion on it.

So

we want you to bake this into the history books for us with the pure Ballardian truth.

Officially,

I'm calling it now.

The top Ballard is calling it, and the Labour Party's won by heaps.

So that's official.

Lock that in.

Huge loss for the Conservative Coalition.

Yeah, massive majority for Labour.

Brutal result for the Australian Greens, who suffered a swing against them in the national vote and have now lost three out of the four lower house seats they previously held.

In completely unrelated news, I'm a member of the Greens.

I publicly endorse them, and I host a weekly podcast about the Greens, talking about how I think the Greens are good and people should vote for them.

Basically, in Australia, a new phenomenon seems to be emerging that political scientists have dubbed the Ballard Kiss of Death.

Basically,

if you want to vanquish your political enemies, simply get a chubby, preachy homosexual to podcast and post about them positively as much as humanly possible.

And there's a damn good chance that balladization will condemn them to the political wilderness.

By the way, everyone, Tom Ellard says, go see Andy Zaltzmann and Nish Kumar on tour.

I think they're bad.

In the UK, we have something called the the Kamar Effect, but that's an open endorsement that leads to the vanquishing of television programmes and entire streaming services.

I was actually out in Australia for the entire election, and I'll say this for Australia.

It's not a real country.

The week I arrived in Australia, the two big election stories were Anthony Albanese had fallen off a stage and Peter Dutton had kicked a football directly into a cameraman's face and drawn blood.

Australia is trying, is struggling to refute the allegations that it's not a real country with real news.

But it was a huge victory for Albo and a stunning defeat for Peter Dutton, a man who bears an unfortunate resemblance to Keyman villain Skeletor,

and also seemed to have been completely surprised that an election was happening.

And I'm only basing that on the things he said and did through the campaign.

There were a series of U-turns to such an extent that Peter Dunn did the political equivalent of essentially running around a flagpole

for the entirety of the election campaign.

It was one of the most incompetent election campaigns I've ever seen.

And bear in mind, I live in the United Kingdom.

I live in the United Kingdom where our incompetent election campaigns win the elections.

Yeah, you guys really are the best in the game.

Yes, well, Peter Dutton has lost.

He lost his own seat, which was very, very funny.

He's left politics to spend more time with his family in Castle Greyskull.

But this week,

the Conservative Liberal Party will have to decide who will be the new leader, who will be sipping from the sweet, sweet poison chalice that is the Liberal Party leadership.

And one of the contenders is Susan Lay, who's a woman, which, fun fact for our Conservative listeners, is something that people can can be.

The interesting thing

about Susan Lay is that she spells her first name S-U-S-S-A-N, but that's not the spelling she was given at birth.

This is totally true.

She's on the record explaining that she added the extra S to her name in her 20s because of numerology, telling the media in 2015, I read about this numerology theory that if you add the numbers that that's the letters in your name, you can change your personality.

Now, at this point, further to Nisha's point, I'd like to clarify that Australia is a real country with a $1

trillion economy and a population of about 27 million people.

And yet, at this stage, it appears that one of the frontrunners for the leadership position of one of our major political parties is a woman in her 60s who subscribes to the same supernatural belief system as a divorced auntie or a high school goth.

Thank you.

I'll say this

for Susson.

For Sussan, is that your fancy?

I'll say this for Sussan.

She keeps going like this.

She could be running what remains of the Department for Education in Donald Trump's America.

Right, now we are going to move on to some stories that have been requested by Belinda, our guest co-producer,

today,

including Donald Trump's suggested reopening of the Alcatraz prison, which we touched on last week.

But it's interesting to think,

you know,

what other things rightly consigned to history from America's past

do we think Trump would like to bring actually let's not open that rabbit hole to yeah I was about to say that is that's one of the most dangerous roads we could have opened because I think there's quite a few things that Trump would like to reopen from the past

Let's just put it this way in Washington.

You won't be able to visit the Lincoln Memorial, but you will be able to see the Robert E.

Lee Memorial for people who were just trying to preserve states' rights.

And then go see a drama about it in the John Wilkes Booth movie.

So I'm saying I'm going to ask Tom and Nish what they personally would like to see brought back to America from

its past.

Anything you'd like to suggest?

Well, I don't know how practical this is, but Jimi Hendrix.

AI is full.

I just think I've never really never fully bought into this idea that it was glorious that Hendrix died so young and preserved his iconic back catalogue in 20 at 27.

I think that he was a fabulous technical guitar player, and that technique would only have evolved and become more interesting with time.

I just think, is there a possibility for us to bring back Jimi Hendrix from the dead?

That's all I'm asking.

There's not much doable.

Tom?

It'd be nice if he brought back democracy.

That'd be good.

That was a nice little period where they had that going on.

That would be bad.

Boo!

Wokeism.

Sorry.

Sorry.

I've been listening to the Pope again.

I think he's going to bring back stuff from the fictional past because there was a lot of speculation, of course, that Trump just saw the film The Rock and was like, that's right, Alcatraz is awesome.

Let's bring that back.

Now, I would not be surprised if Donald Trump has signed an executive order demanding that NASA revive the face-fopping technology for face-off.

That and everything that he saw in the Flintstones.

Folks, we used to have the birds working for us and the pigs, they used to be our garbage disposals.

We need to bring them back.

We got to bring it back.

Personally, stovepipe hats is the obvious way to go for me.

I think, you know, everyone knew where they stood when everyone wore a stovepipe hat.

And people who are prepared to get changed quickly in phone booths.

I don't think Superman could exist now.

You can't get changed inside a mobile phone.

No wonder the planet's gone to shit.

I will say that there are still some phone boxes up where I live in London, and there are still some people undressing in them.

I will say that's not completely been consigned to the dustbin of history around my neck of the wall.

Most people also believe that they're aliens from outer space who get power from the sun, I believe.

Yeah,

so let's just say

it's not all done and dusted.

I would like to bring back the pinstripe suit and the culture of firing tommy guns out of the window of cars.

Right.

I think that was a more innocent era.

Also, in terms of gun violence, it was actually a much less destructive weapon than the IR-15 that is available to buy in the United States of America commercially.

So Belinda, does that answer your question?

It does.

Thank you.

There are suggestions rather, if Trump can't get the Alcatraz plan off the ground,

they they could turn the Oval Office into a prison cell.

I mean, it's Donald Trump is basically serving out his sentence there, as suggested.

Or Baffin Island instead of Alcatraz Island when the takeover of Canada is complete.

It's huge.

It's cold.

It'll be basically impossible to escape from.

Another story Belinda requested was

ideas for the designs of the

memorial to the late Queen Elizabeth II.

What?

What the f?

Who sadly.

I tell you, you've got to read the news.

Oh my gosh!

I can't believe I thought it was a prank.

Well, we don't know that it isn't because, frankly, with that national anthem, it's quite possible she just got bored and faked it.

She,

as people may remember, passed away sadly on the scheduled first day of the England-South Africa test at the Oval in 2022.

But anyway, there's going to be a huge public memorial to the late Queen Elizabeth.

And I've long thought, Nish, that there's not enough things dedicated to or named after Elizabeth II, as I was saying just the other day to my two children, Elizabeth and Elizabeth.

But the problem is,

the standard of public statuary has been taking a

bit of a downward dip over the past, let's say, two and a half thousand years.

And in particular, the last, the most recent bit of that.

And in fact, some of the things that have already been built in tribute to Elizabeth II are not absolutely tipped up.

There's a slightly odd-looking marble statue on the outside of the celebrity Gothic Cathedral, York Minster.

It doesn't really look a lot like her, and she's holding her robe as if she's about to pretend to be a vampire,

which I don't remember her ever doing in public, certainly.

There's another statue of ex-Queen and her longtime squeeze, Prince Philip, in Antrim, that looks like two actors who auditioned for the parts of Queen Elizabeth and the Duke of Edinburgh in the crown and didn't get part of the first round of the auditions because they stood really weirdly.

They didn't look anything like the Queen and the Duke of Edinburgh.

And there's another one that has her surrounded by psychotic looking corgis who appear to be in force-fed amphetamine spiked squirrel corpses before posing for the artist.

So, I mean, it's a challenge.

The things that have been suggested on the shortlist, there's one involves elegant bridges across a lake, because whilst, of course, the late queen could walk on water, she chose not to in public, so to demoralise people.

And she found bridges a terrific way of getting from one side of a lake to another.

So that's appropriate.

A bronze oak tree because of course queen elizabeth ii was magic and if she half-chewed an acorn then spat it into the undergrowth the next morning a fully grown oak tree laden with golden mangoes would have sprouted forth um another is um um

three more years of winter

and that's bronze oak tree uh will be connected to a path made of stones from all around Britain, which will pass other bronze statues, presumably of the Queen's favourite snooker players, Eurovision song contest pop stars from her reign, and the royal quad bite the Queen used to ride at breakneck speed through Windsor Safari Park to check whether God would, in fact, save her or not.

It worked pretty well.

And speakers are going to play a soundscape of memories from her reign and life.

I'm not sure what they'll be.

I mean, for most people...

the greatest moments of their life, if they've had children, are the births of their children.

But I'm not sure they're going to go with that, to be honest.

That's going to spoil your walk

around the park, frankly.

Maybe the Poltax riots, who knows?

Anyway, and authentic sounds of the Commonwealth.

And that could go wrong in so, so many different ways yeah um then there's one that has slightly odd giant lily pads that look like they might be landing pods for spaceships for our long-awaited alien overlords uh to land in central london and being uh snouting down on some prime noodles in chinatown within 20 minutes and there's a sculpture of wind because the wind blew every single day of her reign somewhere in the uk or the commonwealth so um and the queen on a horse because she sometimes droves a horse so it's It's difficult to choose, Nish.

Do you have a particular favourite for that or something else you'd like to suggest?

All of this is bullshit.

Every single one of these suggestions is bullshit and does not adequately pay tribute to the queen, who I've just found out is dead.

If I'm honest with you, there's only one thing that can possibly pay tribute to the Queen.

I've got two words for you, everyone.

ABBBA Voyage.

Let's get the people who made ABBA Voyage, who I believe are Industrial Light and Magic, to do Queen the Voyage.

Let's get a full computer-generated hologram show that you can go and see.

Okay, sorry.

We'll just we will need to clarify it's Queen Elizabeth Voyage.

Otherwise, Queen Voyage.

Queen Voyage is

another one.

That's another one we're working on.

That's another one we're working on.

This bitch isn't singing Bohemian Rhapsody at all.

Abba Voyage is actually currently in a site in

the park that's called the Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park.

So already

it's heading on its way to do this.

Let's get a full hologram show of Queen Elizabeth where she flies around the room and shoots lasers out of her eyes.

Full disclosure: I have not seen Abba Voyage, but I assume that that's what happens.

Shoots lasers out of her eyes,

revisits some of the highlights of her reign, like the time that guy broke into Buckingham Palace,

when she had Diana killed.

I mean, when Diana died by accident,

that time her son was a

uh all of the highlights of her reign, allegedly.

Let's get them up, and then at the end, let's just reuse some of the Abervoyage technology and have her sing Dancing Queen while she does a little dance because that'll be a fun end.

She's already called the Queen, and just so everyone likes that song, it will end on a reel.

And the national anthem is, no disrespect, an absolute vibe killer.

That is an absolute, it's a boring song, it's a bonus shrinker, it

pops dust up a fanny.

It's not

good vibes as a song.

So

let's get.

Why did I turn the lights on loo?

Corgi's dancing next to her.

Philip standing there, but not actually being microphoned at any point because he'd have had some opinions.

And we don't need to hear those.

I just want to give a shout out, Andy.

All these design elements are coming from the Queen Elizabeth Memorial Committee.

Well done, folks.

I've actually just been elected the chair of the Queen Elizabeth Forgetting Committee.

And we're

dedicated to fostering forgetting, what's her name, across the globe.

That's some of the work

that we're doing.

But I'm the same niche.

I want animatronics.

Yeah.

You know, I want an AI robot recreation of Lizzie to greet me at the little center there.

She talks you through her justification when it comes to supporting Prince Andrew when he settlement with Vegeta Jaffrey.

And then she transforms styles, turns into a water slide.

You get to slide down her back.

That's my opinion.

Hi, everyone.

Welcome to Wands park

i am available to do the voice i'm also available to do actually they don't like they probably don't need someone to do the voice they can probably cobble it together from the interviews

my husband and i would like you to exit through the gift shop yeah

nish i take great offense at you uh impersonating a white person there

my own personal

suggestion would be the queen in a full suit of armor charging into battle karate kicking hitler in the face while hurling a nuclear corgi straight into napoleon's open mouth because i think it's quite hard to be heroic as a modern monarch and uh you know she did a very good job uh in being constitutionally neutral for seven decades so we need to pimp it up or as a sports fan uh some kind of sporting montage of the great moments from uh the queen's reign maybe the queen roasting one in off the crossbar to put england 3-2-up in the 1966 world cup finals

taking a pass from scrum half Matt Dorsen before kicking a drop goal to win the rugby world cup for England in 2003.

Charging in off the deep mid-wicket boundary to throw the ball to wicketkeeper Joss Butler to complete the run out that secured the 2019 Cricket World Cup for England or romping to victory in the 1980 men's 100-metre Olympic final despite being drawn in an outside lane.

Let's get that in a statue.

Well, Buglers,

we've recorded long.

You've got great value, Belinda.

I think this has been one of our longest ever records.

By the time you listen to this, Chris will have probably cut some bits out and saved it for a sub-episode at some point in the future.

Uh, yeah, so uh, anyway, I agree with that based on the fact that Chris has written in the chat, we have passed the point that I have double what I need.

Well, that suggests we're overpaying him.

Um,

sorry, I thought I didn't realise that was time he was talking about, right.

Um,

so uh, well, we need to wrap it up.

Uh, Belinda, thank you once again for uh for your outstanding work as co-producer and for uh being uh an elite bugle voluntary subscriber.

I hope you've enjoyed joining the show today.

Loved it.

It was the comprehensive analysis I was looking for.

Tom, anything to plug?

We report.

You decide, Belinda.

We report.

I think, Belinda, I don't know how much audio editing experience you have, but I would like you to just give it a go and see what comes out.

Okay, here goes nothing.

Plugs for me.

I've got a podcast that I mentioned called Serious Danger, which is about the Australian Greens, which is, yes, the kiss of death.

I'd love people to check that out.

And go to my YouTube channel and you can watch some free specials there if you'd like.

Youtube.com forward slash Tom Ballard Oz, I believe.

A-U-S.

I have lots of tour dates.

If you're in London on the 24th of May, I'm filming my show

for a TVC platform that I'm sure once it goes up will immediately be destroyed.

But

there's two shows, a 5 p.m.

show and an 8:30 p.m.

show on the 24th of May.

Also, if you are a European Bugle fan, I am coming to continental Europe in open defiance of the political will of my country over the last decade.

I am going to Europe.

I'll be in Paris on the 30th of May, Amsterdam on the 31st, 1st of June, I'm in Cologne, 5th of June, I'm in Berlin, 6th of June, Oslo, 7th of June, Aarhaus, 8th of June, Copenhagen.

Some of those dates are very close to selling out.

Paris, it looks like there is going to be a lot of room for a lot of madames et monsieurs.

I have nothing to plug.

So, this is the end of the show.

Thank you for listening, Beavers.

We will be back.

Oh, I should say thanks to everyone who've come to my tour, which just finished last week.

There should be some extension dates early next year that I will tell you about at some point in the near future.

Anyway, 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.