April Fools!

Hello buglers and welcome to issue 4335 sub-episode I for I'm on tour in Ireland and unable to record a bugle this week.

I have however been to the Titanic Museum in Belfast, very good it was, in a striking building, but disappointingly not nearly as big as I had assumed it would be.

I had assumed only 10% of it would be visible above the surface and the other 90% underground, but it wasn't.

It was all ground level and above opportunity missed, I feel.

But of course, the lack of full bugle doesn't mean that we will leave you without some hot takes on the biggest news stories in the world.

It's just they're going to be old ones this week.

We have a show celebrating the history of the bugle and the world since October 2007, one top story at a time.

It's called Top Stories.

Suitably enough, it has its own feed, and there are mountains of bugle gems that you can dig your way through whilst doing whatever you do, whilst listening to podcasts.

I'm not going to judge.

So, as we're just about to enter April, we present for you three collated April Bugle classics for you.

Before we get into those, some important housekeeping.

The Bugle only exists because you, yes, you, the listeners, help it to.

Please go to thebuglepodcast.com if you want to join our voluntary subscription scheme to help keep this show free, flourishing, and independent for the rest of all eternity, which is currently looking like less of a long-term commitment than would be ideal.

Anyway, let's start with a classic top story from Bugle 149 back in the John Oliver days, which was titled hashtag Crucify Bieber.

Yeah, picture the scene.

It's April 2011 and a pop icon makes a surprising cameo in the Middle East.

Top story this week, Middle East update, the forgotten countries.

Andy the international news has been dominated by Libya all this week due to the fact that we as NATO have been trying to bomb some freedom into it and it's been all Gaddafi said this, Gaddafi said that, Gaddafi did this to his civilian population with that.

And it's all definitely newsworthy, no one's denying that.

It's just that there are other countries in the Middle East that we're not giving our physical or indeed mental attention to that are also deserving of being discussed.

What about the plucky countries that no one's really talking about?

The forgotten forgotten Middle East, if you will.

Your Israels, your Syrias, your United Arab Emirates?

What are those crazy little bastards up to?

Well, let's take a look.

Israel!

Jews news!

Israel is currently spending its days shitting itself at the moment over the situation all around it, which is not very different at all from how it's been spending its last half a century.

But there was even more instability than usual coming out of the, oh, come on, you promised, land this week.

Justin Bieber, the floppy-haired asexual object of affection for teenage girls around the world, was visiting Israel this week and unwittingly stumbled into something of a diplomatic snafu.

He was scheduled to have a meeting with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, but it was called off at the last minute with both sides differing on why.

Now,

Before we delve much further into this story, Andy, let's not gloss over what's a very important fact.

let's not bury the lead here which is that before it was cancelled Benjamin Netanyahu was scheduled to have a meeting with Justin Bieber we all live in a world where that nearly happened Benjamin Netanyahu prime minister of Israel very nearly had a meeting with Justin Bieber 17 year old singer boy

Is this how far from a peace agreement we now are?

We're just throwing Bieber at the wall

hoping he sticks.

Well, I mean, it's not,

you know, it's not, I mean, that's not so new, is it?

I mean, let's not forget that Golden Meer had a meeting with Donnie Osmond in the early 70s.

To be fair to him, John, he's not the first young heartthrob in the Holy Land to endure a mixture of public adulation and official interference.

But let's just hope he has a more effective legal team than some of his more illustrious predecessors.

Of course,

I don't know much about Justin Bieber, John.

He's just a name to me.

I have to look him up on Wikipedia, famous for hits such as Baby and the follow-up single Toddler.

And if you play his hit single Baby Backwards, it quite explicitly states that Justin Bieber will only date committed and certifiable Zionists, that he has a tattoo of Ariel Sharon on his back, and that he thinks Israel should extend their settlement programme into other areas, including Jordan, Turkey, and Iowa.

Although whether he knew that when he was singing it, or if he was just stitched up by my people who of course run the entire entertainment industry we don't know

we've got it stitched up John as proved

as proved by my unending run of success in primetime British television

you are a one-man argument against anti-Semitism Andy

a spokesman for Benjamin Netanyahu said that he'd been approached with the idea of a meeting and that the Prime Minister had been, I quote, open to that.

See, straight away, that is surprising, Andy.

I'd have thought that if someone asked the prime minister of a major country located in one of the most violent flashpoints on the planet whether he wanted to meet Justin Bieber he would he would be closed to that or at the very least his instinctive question would be why why exactly would I do that I have a lot to do with my day apparently the Prime Minister's office suggested including children from communities in southern Israel that have been under intense rocket fire from Gaza in recent days but the spokesman said that proved impossible because Bieber's representatives had turned down the idea of including the children.

Wow.

So the special Bieber summit was scuppered over the situation in Gaza.

I guess that isn't much of a surprise, Andy, when you think about it.

So many of Justin Bieber's lyrics are based around the current affairs in Gaza and the West Bank.

You've talked about what it's like when you play it backwards.

Never mind that, Andy.

Look at what it's like when you play it forwards.

Look at that hit, baby.

If you just imagine that the subject of the song is Gaza and the Palestinian territories, it's clearly a song trying to win that land back.

Here's how it goes.

You know you love me.

I know you care.

Just shout whenever, and I'll be there.

You are my love, you are my heart, and we will never, ever, ever be apart.

That clearly speaks to the determination of hardline Israelis' complete refusal to agree to a two-state solution.

Bieber doesn't stop there, Andy.

He goes on saying, are we an item?

Girl,

substitute that for Gaza.

quit playing.

We're just friends.

What are you saying?

Said, there's another, and looks right in the eyes.

My first love broke my heart for the first time.

Now, that's a little poetic license from Bieber there, Andy.

I don't think he's suggesting by any means that this is the first time the Jewish people in their history have had their hearts broken.

But he continues saying, And I was like,

And I was like, baby, baby, baby, oh, I thought you'd always be mine, mine.

Why did he think that, Andy?

Why was he so sure?

Because the land was promised to Moses, Andy.

That's what Bieber cannot get his head around in the plaintive chorus of that song.

It's all there.

It's all there.

In another Twitter message, Bieber wrote,

I want to see this country and all the places I've dreamed of.

And whether it's the Paps or being pulled into politics, it's been frustrating.

And he was quoting there directly from George W.

Bush on a visit to Iraq in 2003.

And Bieber might have a postgraduate diploma in brushing his hair, but he could not punctuate his way out of a wet paper bag, John.

There was a frankly distressing lack of commas.

Not to mention the apostrophes that should be there.

I mean, he's at least three apostrophes down.

It's an absolute disgrace.

I would nail him up if I had the chance.

This just

crucify Bieber.

It's got to be done.

Well, there's a hashtag for Twitter.

This just goes to show how crazy pop singers get, Andy.

With all that adulation, all those fans, your ego is inflated to the extent that even as a 17-year-old boy, you find yourself watching the news on CNN and thinking, well, the Middle East has been in turmoil for thousands of years now and there just seems no hope of a solution on the horizon.

What can I do?

What can I, Justin Bieber, do?

What can I, 17 year old Canadian singer boy Justin Bieber do to not only help but solve this intractable problem forever?

Sure, I could keep singing and dancing and releasing hit albums or I, Justin Bieber, could get the Prime Minister of Israel on the phone and enter into direct negotiations myself.

You know what?

I'm going to do it.

And also, you know what?

I hope he's successful, Andy.

I hope that Justin Bieber, Justin Bieber, can bring peace to that reason.

Would I be surprised?

Yes, but would I be happy?

Tremendously.

Plus, here's the thing.

It could actually work.

And here's how.

If either Netanyahu or Abbas have 12-year-old daughters.

Because there is no greater weak point for any father than when it comes to doing something for their daughters.

And if Bieber can somehow leverage the affection Netanyahu and Abbas have for their little girls, I think he could get them to make major concessions on both sides and there could actually be genuine peace.

Well, I'd love to come and do a private concert for you and your friends, but only if you can convince Daddy to allow Jerusalem to be governed by a third party.

Appropriately enough, for fans of Ian Botham in the 1981 Ashes series between England and Australia, we're jumping forward from Bugle 149, another 118 episodes.

That might be the most niche cricket reference I've ever made.

To Bugle 267.

The UK government were after people's benefits in a dance as old as time-stroke austerity itself.

This episode was entitled Gaining My Religion.

Top story this week, the grateful not quite dead.

And pensions are a big problem, Andy, due to the inconvenient fact that people are just refusing to die at the most fiscally convenient time for society.

And seeing that the government of the UK is hamstrung by not being able to legally order a mandatory cull of all people older than seventy five, they're having to come up with some outside of the coffin solutions.

And

it's going to take a bold plan, but perhaps not this bold, because the UK Pensions Minister, Steve Webb, has revealed that in the future pensioners in Britain will be given estimates of how long they have left to live to help them manage their savings.

He argues that most people underestimate how long they'll live, resulting in poor financial projections.

So experts will apparently now look at factors such as smoking, eating habits, and socio-economic backgrounds when determining approximate life expectancy.

I'm presuming that this has been relatively controversial over there, Andy, because there was an outcry here when it was suggested that Obamacare was going to include death panels, even though there was no suggestion of that inside it whatsoever.

But this is an actual government suggestion.

There's not even death panels.

It's death fortune tellers.

Well, I mean, we would have been up in arms about it, John, had we not spent every single day of our national life looking at pictures of Kate Middleton looking quite pretty on the front of newspapers.

So it's been

slightly buried by this, but I mean, I think it's

fine.

I'd like the government to go much further and just, you know, just basically just give us a precise precise death day that we can all plan towards.

It's good to have certainty in death as as in life.

And there's factors, as you say, smoking, eating habits and socioeconomic background.

Those three factors would make a pretty socially revealing Venn diagram.

But there must be other factors as well that play into how long you're going to live, such as, you know, are you a total dick that people might want to bump off?

Or are you easily riled or with an addiction to fast cars?

Who knows?

It's very encouraging news.

The government's recent budget seemed largely aimed at getting pensioners to blow as much of their economic safety

nests as possible on impulse buys.

Why fork out hundreds of thousands of pounds to stay for years and years in a nursing home waiting for the merciful rabbit punch of death when you could drive a Lamborghini around for a few months and then just sleep rough until you freeze to death?

And also given the new Christian slan this government appears to be taking, more of which later,

I think it's good that they let people know when they're going to shuffle off the mortal cult and meet their maker so they can work out for the last few months, you know, just trim down for a couple of months so they look good at the Pearly Gates.

I know it shouldn't make a difference, John, to whether or not you get into

eternal bliss, but we all know it does.

You know, people don't vote for beards, and God loves a six-pack.

I mean, look at Jesus.

Absolutely ripped to the crumpets, he was, the lad.

Clearly trying to impress his dad.

There's no need, though, Andy, for this consultation even to be face-to-face with an insurance representative.

It should be entirely possible just to have a government robot come to your house, you input your information on a keypad attached to its stomach, and it will shit shit out a piece of paper with a number on it, and that is when you'll probably die.

And there is nothing at all chillingly dystopian about any of this, Andy.

Either that or make this a great public spectacle.

Announce people's numbers on TV like a lottery upon their retirement.

Here are your death dates.

Mike Barnaby of Dorset, 72.

Congratulations, Mike.

Enjoy the next seven years.

Dawn Bluckland of Chester, 93.

Oh, huge number for you, Dawn.

Congratulations and commiserations.

That feels a little too long.

And last name out of the hat, Ian Prince of Lancaster, 66.

Have a great year, Ian.

Live it like it's your last, which statistically it will be.

Well, there's still a bit of uncertainty, John, because I think it needs to be definite.

There was a very interesting article on this in a publication that's very close to my heart, the Actuarial Post,

in which a financial expert talking about life expectancy of financial planning said it's vital to understand that this is just an average figure.

At the end of the day, it's still impossible to say with complete certainty whether an individual will die tomorrow or live to receive a telegram from the Queen.

I don't know if he said that in a slightly sinister voice, suggesting that he's about to bump someone off.

But I think just give it time, John.

Science, the fearsomely unstoppable cut that it is, will soon sort this out for us.

We'll know exactly when.

And the government should be doing this.

Just as they judge everything else, they should be judging it by virtue.

It shouldn't be be down to lifestyle choices, it should be down to financial utility to the British nation.

They should be sitting people down saying, Well, Mr.

Fruggin, you've earned very healthily in your chosen careers and investment, nabob.

Tick, you've sent your children to private school, tick.

Private healthcare, tick.

Congratulations, you've barely cost the state a penny.

You can have another 33 years.

Pop buckwheat in 98 with the chosen method of death, please.

Preferably not one of the messy ones.

Do enjoy your retirement.

Now, Mrs.

Glapp, oh dear, someone's had a tough life, haven't they, Mrs.

Glapp?

Five kids all through the the state sector, lots of stresses and strains, judging by the number of times you've been in and out of hospital.

That's an awful lot of benefits you've needed to look after your offspring.

And well, you haven't drunk or smoked or driven a car, so not even contributing that much to the exchequer in taxes.

So tot it up.

How old are you now?

65.

Oh dear, that's your lot.

Hard luck.

Edna, please bring a glass of water and five tablets for Mrs.

Glapp.

You're allowed one last phone call.

I think you should find out when you're going to die on the day that you die, Andy, from a telegram from the Queen.

Basically, you should have an envelope from Buckingham Palace with a handwritten note inside saying, you die today.

That's the best way to have it.

So Steve Webb, the government's grim mathematical reaper, has suggested that

insurance companies should use all of these factors, right down to hereditary factors and postcodes, to pin down a rough date of death.

And the concern is that that date may actually be longer than most people think.

Life expectancy is rising steadily in the UK.

Females are now projected to live until 82.7 years on average.

Males around 78.9 years.

And why did the government stop there, Andy?

Why didn't we just ask people to sign a death guarantee?

I promise to be dead by this time.

Because that seems to be what we're all dancing around.

Like you say, we will support you until such time as you are not economically viable, after which time we fully expect you to trampoline yourself off a cliff.

The correlation between economic background and life expectancy is depressingly clinical and it is absolutely the case here in the US too.

There are impoverished parts of this country where the average male life expectancy is 64 years old, which is less than Iraq.

That is not a great non-war zone number in a fully developed country.

In England, estimates suggest that a girl born today in Dorset can expect to live to 86.6 years on average, 14 years longer than a boy born in inner city Glasgow, because in Glasgow, which has the lowest figure for both men and women, it's 72.6 and 78.5 years respectively.

And I guess the lesson there is, Andy, if you're running out of pension, you're struggling to get by, just move to inner city, Glasgow, and they will finish you off.

It's not euthanasia.

What I'm saying, Andy, is living in Glasgow is mathematically tantamount to assisted suicide.

That's not me saying that, that's numbers, Andy.

Numbers.

I've had gigs in Glasgow that have certainly felt that way.

Time for one more top story on this sub-episode, and we're racing forward in time now to April 2020.

I was joined by Alice Fraser and Al Murray, desperately trying to find a way to occupy our time and brains at the height of lockdown.

This is from issue 4148, Panda Time.

With lockdown now in full swing across many parts of the world, what would you do other than listening to each week's episodes of the Bugle and the Last Post 10 times over and analysing the hidden messages within?

Well, luckily for you, the Bugle this week gives you a smorgasbord of ideas for things for you to do alone with your housemates, partners, with your family or with the increasingly awkward door-to-door salesperson who called at very much the wrong time just as lockdown was being imposed and is now stuck in your house for the foreseeable future, along with the 18 sets of double-glazed patio doors that he has persuaded you to buy.

Alan, can we please talk about something else?

Have I mentioned the advantages of a bifold door?

F you, Alan.

I warn you to leave.

So we have an entire week of activities planned out to keep you busy and active and stimulated to fill the aching void in your daily schedule.

Monday's activity is navel gazing.

It's not often you get the time and opportunity to clear the introspective decks enough to indulge in a prolonged bout of self-indulgent reflection on exactly what you're doing with your life.

So take this opportunity to spend a full afternoon really sinking into a soup of regret, doubt and worry like a not especially comforting tepid bath.

And the great thing with navel gazing is that it's not something you can get done in a day and then put to one side.

It can keep you occupied and entertained for weeks and weeks on end through the interminal human pertmafrost of lockdown.

Tuesday.

Existential dread.

This is a genuine family activity.

Gather around and think about all the implications for the world, all the things that have gone so disastrously wrong as the result of decisions we've made or not made in the past, and the things that are likely to go disastrously wrong as a result of the decisions we're making now and will make in the future.

Don't worry if your dread is interrupted by occasional eruptions of wild optimism about forging a new, more collaborative, more humane humane world order, this is perfectly natural and all part of the process of coming to the conclusion that we are in fact totally doomed.

Wednesday, midlife crisis.

Consolidate all your activities from Monday's navel gazing and Tuesday's existential dread into a full-blown midlife crisis.

It doesn't even matter if you are in the traditional midlife age zone.

Everyone's life is currently at the mid-stage between pre-virus and post-virus, so legally it counts as a midlife crisis, however old you are.

Panic about your personal future, priorities, values, philosophy of life, finances, political views, status, prospects, ambitions, hopes, fears, relationships and general spiritual id.

And don't forget to take regular breaks for snacks, meals, hydration and looking at the sky wondering what the fk it's all about.

Thursday, bickering.

Much as we love our families, there are only so many board games, sing-alongs, film nights, biscuit bakings, experimental poetry recitals, seances and educational dissections of the mouse corpse you found at the back of the cupboard you finally got round to clearing out of a decade's worth of accumulated junk that any family can take.

So pep up the day with some trivial arguments.

Allow those simmering irritations that have been bubbling up to boil over into genuine rancor.

A well-structured day day of squabbling will encompass a mixture of ephemeral snap grudges, peevish oversensitivity to mild criticism, long-held gripes and groundless resentment about nothing in particular.

You might like to consider having a go at one of your cohabitors, family or otherwise, for, for example, not finishing their sentences, eating salad too noisily, working in the international arms trade, or being the kind of person who might work in the international arms trade, or building a shrine to the 1960s pop legends Herman's Hermits on the Sofa without full written permission.

Anything to get the squabble going, then riff it from there for as long as it takes until you get a solid week's peace and quiet from each other.

And Friday paganism.

Lockdown is a great time to learn new skills and in these times of cosmic uncertainty why not get back to human basics with an introductory home course in the basics of pagan worship.

Online lessons are available covering everything from basic incantations via effective and hygienic sacrificing to entry-level henging.

Begin with paper then move up to cardboard within a few days, wood in a week or two progressing all the way to stone inside six weeks.

Also consider exorcisms.

A great way to bond as a family unit and cleanse the spirits of your loved ones.

Plus have some hilarious stories to share afterwards about the paroxysms of spiritual excess that the X or C went through as the demons left their bodies.

And finally, for the weekend, Saturday, whimpering on the sofa, you've made it to the weekend, relax and spend the day in a fug of low-level misery on the couch.

And Sunday, making vague plans that you have no realistic hope of actually putting into action.

Put the negativity of the past week behind you by thinking about stuff that you might do in the future before giving up on that and watching a TV cop show.

That is your bugle guide to how to keep busy during the lockdown.

Well, I'm picking a historical period by which to live each week, matching my diet, manners and acceptable thoughts to think to the period I've chosen this week.

It's been the Regency period.

I spent yesterday in epistolatory correspondence and today planning a ball.

Very strong.

I mean this is one of the few occasions where you can say things were better in the old days.

It's actually viable to be actively nostalgic.

And

it doesn't even have to be the old days.

It could be four weeks ago.

Things were better for, you know,

we're actually, if you're into nostalgia, fill your boots.

Your moment's here.

This is your moment.

I'm just beating myself up over missed chances.

All the times, even four weeks ago, whether I could have just breathed on someone

with impunity.

I feel sad that I'm.

Well, that's one of the joys to look forward to when all this is behind us.

The freedom to just go up and breathe on a stranger without repercussions.

We take stuff for granted as lan in the bbc version of the blind the witch and the wardrobe right a giant glove puppet

you did some great breathing as lane

is that not what we all are already

giant club puppets on the hand of fate

top story this week the virus again uh it's getting uh slightly irritating to have to keep coming back to this but there is literally no other news in the

currently.

How short a period ago was it when we were sick of Brexit and Trump?

And now it's

I would have given anything to not have to talk about Brexit or Trump anymore.

And now...

Well, I mean, Trump's managed to get himself pretty well.

Well, Trump, yes, Trump has managed.

I mean, God bless him.

He's managed to find a way through

in this story, hasn't he?

To cut through regardless.

It's his unique ability, isn't it?

It's no matter what the calamity is, he's on hand to

find his way to the very center of the story and make it about him.

And it's sort of heroic, really,

on some, I mean, that's not how the historians are going to write it up, but at the moment,

it's sort of extraordinary, isn't it?

You know, and

I, because I was listening to the Today program the other morning, and he did call it a hoax, didn't he?

He did call it, he did call it a hoax.

And there was some US spokesman going, he didn't call it a hoax.

He's like,

come on, let him just say, yeah, he did call it a hoax.

Because it doesn't doesn't even he he's so capable of operating that in a way that it doesn't matter if he called it a hoax or not it just it

he's extraordinary he lives in this 24-hour cycle every day is a new day for donald trump it's fantastic he's got snapchat for a brain once something's said it just evaporates into the mist of time it's gone it's long gone never to return yeah it's fantastic well it's i mean it's um al you have a you have a small child yes it's one of the great privileges of being a child that you can flatly deny having said things unclearly said.

And we see this with Trump.

There was further evidence as to the extent to which he is essentially a child.

The Director General of the World Health Organization, Tedros Adanom Gebriisis,

urged governments not to politicise the pandemic.

It's not too difficult to work out exactly which governments he was most issuing this plea to.

On Wednesday he said, we will have many body bags in front of us if we don't behave.

Now, that use of the word behave, it wouldn't have made it clearer that he was, in essence, speaking to a child.

Yeah.

Unless he'd said to Mr.

Trump directly, look, Father Christmas is not going to come unless we have a coherent, cooperative, international effort.

Well, you know, I mean, the thing is,

you're absolutely right though, Alice.

You said

to talk about anything other than Donald Trump, but like, it is that

the worst that could happen until the coronavirus was Donald Trump.

And now the worst that can happen is Donald Trump and the coronavirus.

Yes, it's cumulative.

There's no indulgences like the Catholic Church.

You can't wipe out one wrong with a right.

And he's literally catalytic, isn't he?

He increases the reaction without changing himself.

Better science.

Better science for you there.

Lovely.

It is.

I mean, strange.

Britain has had no prime minister this week, as we will touch on later, and America has had no president for a long time.

Effectively, Donald Trump has abdicated, but remains in office.

He's resigned, to all intents and purposes, but still has to pretend to do his job.

He's had considerable criticism, as you'd expect, from the

non-Trumpian media.

The columnist Q.

Julius Schlosnitz in the esteemed journal The Natura wrote, American democracy is spluttering for breath, begging for the oxygen of decency, leadership, and good sense.

The political protective equipment of its constitution bunged into an incinerator and replaced with a tattered piss-stained flag.

Not my words, the words of someone I just made up.

He's

this week blasted through his 17,000th presidential pardon for himself for voluntary manslaughter arising from this crisis.

Now, he wouldn't have been necessarily guilty of all of them, but I guess better safe than sorry when it comes to

these things.

He offered Boris Johnson,

the stricken British leader,

some of his free medicine.

I can't remember exactly what he said to Boris.

I said four really great drug companies.

Everyone says they're the most amazing drug companies in the world.

I've sent them to the doctors.

He's got really good doctors around him.

That's what he said.

He didn't name them.

I mean, it's so brilliantly bonkers.

Four of them.

All right, okay.

Not three.

Not five.

Four unnamed drug companies.

It sounded to me something like this.

And

it is quite strange to see the president of America peddling scam cures, essentially.

This is unprecedented since Calvin Coolidge tried to convince America that bunions could be cured by marinading your foot in a strawberry milkshake, or Ulysses S.

Grant promoted snakes as a cure for worms.

Well, I hope you've enjoyed these top stories from the Bugle Archive.

There are several hundred more of these for you to enjoy in your top stories feed right now.

We will be back with a full bugle next week.

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.