H A P P Oh God Why!?

So I d do you do you want me to growl or do you want to find some actual bare sound effects Chris?

Well okay for the sake of this room here I want you to growl.

Yeah

the bugle audio newspaper for a visual world

Hello buglers and welcome to issue 4335 of the bugle audio newspaper for a visual world barking at the wrong moon since 2007.

With me, Andy Altsman, coming to you live and recorded from London, where once the aurochs roamed the plains, but now they'd have probably been stuck in traffic or causing people to quietly hurunt from the northern line for taking up so much space in the tube carriages.

Is that progress?

That's not for me to judge.

It is the 21st of March 2025, and I'm joined today.

Firstly, from Dublin via Bulgaria by Neil Delamere.

Welcome back from Bulgaria, Neil.

Thank you very much.

I was in Bulgaria filming something that I didn't really realize I was filming.

And that was an unusual scenario.

We met a Turkish arms dealer at one point and he insisted that he was a very good man.

And I said, who do you sell the guns to?

He wouldn't go on camera.

And he said, oh, I sell it to Western governments and, you know, forces of law and order.

And I'm not a bad man.

I'm not a bad man.

And he insisted this for about 10 minutes.

And then his phone went off.

And the theme tune was Barrett Basiler's.

You know,

it was amazing.

But I didn't realize it was going to Bulgaria.

I would describe it as a Wombles-based mixed-up, which really begins, makes me doubt the veracity of RTE's claim I'll be going to Orinoko next week as well.

But

it was very entertaining, and it's good to be home.

Also joining us from here in London, it's Rhielina.

Hello, Rhea.

Hello.

Hello, hello.

Hello.

I haven't actually been in touch with any of my Turkish arm dealers lately.

You've just reminded me, I do need to get touch base and make sure that they're okay because they're people too.

And their mental health is as much, if not more important to me than mine, because if they get angry, the wrong people win.

Maybe now that I think about it, maybe the reflection, that was a reflection not on him as a ringtone.

Maybe that was you ringing him.

It was said to you.

It's about you.

It is.

um i do very much relate to the the star wars universe um and so i'm kind of chuffed that he remembered that because i don't think we discussed it i i think the last time it came up was like in a coffee that we had together in 2005 so i mean it's really nice that you know when someone remembers the details connected at a deeper level i mean yeah

sympathetic that's what it was you and a turkish arms dealer cool Words, all businesses need that human touch these days, even the ones that traditionally didn't really didn't really major on it um anyway we are we are recording on the 21st of march um on this day in 1829 just a few miles up the road from uh from where i am in south london in what is now battersea park there was a duel involving the prime minister oh happier times time times when people sorted out their political

differences in the time-honoured way of pretending to shoot at each other.

The Prime Minister at the time was the Battle of Waterloo celebrity, the Duke of Wellington, who

took on the Earl of Winchelsea, George Finch Hatton,

early in the morning

after the Earl of Winchelsea wrote a stroppy letter to the Standard newspaper about the Duke of Wellington

and his introduction of the Roman Catholic Relief Act that removed restrictions on Catholics in

national life.

And

it led to a duel just up the road from here, around about, I think, 7, 7.30am.

Just, I mean, that's not the best time of day, is it?

The Duke of Wellington fired why, the Earl of Winchelsea fired high, and they learned to get along and

became relative friends.

Is this not politics working more efficiently in

older times with different values, sorting things out?

You'd have to say that a duel is where Rishi Sunak comes into his own.

You know how difficult it would be?

I mean, Janssen, you fancy your chances all day long.

You'd rush him.

He'd bumble it.

You'd get your eye.

You've got a big target.

Sunak's putting you down all day long.

You'd turn around.

You'd see him.

You'd have no idea how far away he was.

You're losing your confidence.

I mean, he's the winner all day long there, isn't he?

I mean, I think that's what he should have included in his campaign pledges.

Most big things would be settled by Jewel.

I think we should bring it back, if anything.

I mean, there has to be some rules and structure to it.

You know, you have to have at least 10,000 people sign the signature that they're happy for you to fight on their behalf or something.

But, you know, I think definitely there's, I can think of a number of things I'd love to be able to shoot at Kirst Armour for legally.

I think Diane Abbott and Jeremy Corbyn would have been great in a duel.

I know they're going on very, very well, but the idea of you going, okay, count to 10, and then Diane Abbott just counting to any random number and she just walks into the distance.

It would be amazing.

I mean, if you're the Duke of Wellington going out for a duel,

thinking, you know, 14 years before that,

he'd been fighting the Battle of Waterloo and survived that, survived many military campaigns.

And there must have been, obviously,

it seems like quite a significant proportion of duels ended non-fatally for reasons either of incompetence or manners.

But, I mean, what a way to go that would have been for someone who'd, you know, fought so many, so many actual battles to die in Battersea Park, where now there is a children's zoo in a squabble about an article in the standard.

That's, I mean, that would have been disappointing.

I mean, I do think that points of view would have been much better if instead of writing a dodgy letter in, that the person who'd made a television show could then go and shoot the person who'd written the letter in.

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

The 23rd of March, Sunday, as we record, is World Bear Day.

So to mark this in the bin this week, we have a free audio bear to help you live out your dream of living in a commune of bears.

Various

sounds of your audio bear that you can play as and when you see fit.

Firstly, the bear sleeping.

Now, the bear growling.

I really wish people could see him doing the actions.

Well, they can if they uh.

This is definitely going on social.

Doing the actions.

Now, the bear disappearing off into the woods.

Did he fart as he walked away?

What was that?

Excuse me, I may be sometime.

Now, the bear playing dead.

Now, your bear listening to dance music.

This is your bear being jumped over by a stunt motorcyclist.

And now this is the bear itself on a motorcycle jumping over a canyon.

Can you do requests?

Please do requests.

Can you do the dead bear being strapped to the front of RFK's pickup truck and then be dumped in Central Park?

Is he um is he still got a Spanish accent doing this?

But that was Spain.

Well, it was bear.

Anyway, fortunately, that section is in the bin, so you won't have to just listen to that.

Top story this week: Finland is the happiest place in the known universe.

Um, the annual World Happiness Report has shown that Finland, for the eighth year in a row, is the happiest country on Earth.

And from all the evidence we have from anywhere in the universe, which doesn't appear to be an absolute hotbed of

happiness.

Now,

but before we go into the, you know, what makes a country happy or not, we should probably have a quick look at the history of human happiness.

It's a question that's been troubling, stroke fascinating humanity since the very dawn of evolution when a little fishy in the big old sea thought, I don't like being wet all the time and had a crack at moving onto land and making some changes to its life.

Fair play.

The ancient Greeks took a bit of time out from naked wrestling and pornographic pottery to contemplate the meaning and nature of happiness and seemed to come to the conclusion that it largely involved naked wrestling and pornographic pottery with a bit of epic blood-soaked high body count slasher fancy romance drama on the side.

Have we moved on the intervening two and a half thousand years?

I don't think we have.

After the collapse of Greek civilization, politics and religion came to the conclusion that the best thing to do was to try to eradicate as much happiness from as many people as possible and did so successfully for most of the intervening couple of millennia until the 1960s came along and a rather bizarre school of thought flickered into life under which people should be able to do what they want with their lives.

This rapidly transmuted into the unlicensed private school of thought that rich, powerful people should be able to do what they want with other people's lives.

And here we are today.

So

what do you guys make of this continuing triumph of Finland over all other countries on earth in terms of happiness?

I think it's a lie.

I don't know.

I think they're just the best at whipping their people into answering the questionnaire.

the way they want it answered.

I just, I don't know.

I've been, don't get me wrong.

Finland's absolutely gorgeous.

I love it.

For about three days a year in the middle of July, it's a joy.

But for the rest of the year, I mean, there's a reason they don't talk very much.

It's too cold to open your mouth.

Your tongue will freeze.

You know, and they're also, they're right there next to Russia.

Maybe, maybe

they answered the questionnaire right after they were let into NATO and they were having a particularly good day.

They were just like, oh, thank goodness, you know,

the coalition of the willing is going to come to our aid if Russia turns their mind, turns their attention to us.

But I don't know.

I just, I'm

I'm not sure I believe that.

That said, I recognize that my theory that they've been whipping their citizens into answering this questionnaire falls down by the fact that China isn't even in the top 10.

Because if anyone was going to make their populace answer things the way they want to answer them, it would have been China.

China, unsurprisingly, does not rate highly in happiness or in benevolent measures.

They are not listed in top countries for helping strangers, returning lost wallets, volunteering, donating, none of those things.

Unsurprisingly, Afghanistan is bottom, where they even, which I was amazed at, had a score for the women.

They even said, even the women are unhappy.

And I went, again,

I don't believe you were allowed to speak to them to find out.

So I don't know, I have some issues with the report.

But what I thought was

really funny is that one of the ways that one of the ways that I'm a scientist, okay?

I'm always interested in the metrics.

How are you judging this?

And one of the things, the metrics is how likely is your wallet to be returned by a neighbor?

And the Netherlands is top in how likely, and I was like, now I don't want to live in the Netherlands.

I know the Netherlands is in the top 10 are happy, but I'm not going to feel comfortable if I know that my neighbors are constantly stealing my wallet.

And then coming around and returning it to make themselves feel better.

Well, that is deeply suspicious.

That is the deeply suspicious view of the world, really.

Deeply suspicious.

No, it's just logical like why like why are your neighbors returning it the most who's i mean how many times have yours has your wallet fallen out of your pocket in your own garden and your neighbor who just happened to be trimming the hedge goes oh i'll return that to i'll return that to me later i've been married for 10 years i no longer control my wallet i i'm not let near my wallet i have a handed stipend at the end of every week and that that is all i know especially money is put into the prison commissary for me and i spend it on razors and toilet paper.

And that's it.

I've been to Finland.

I like the Finns.

I think they're happy.

Eight years in a row, though.

Um, Andy, it's it's a farmers league, it's a farmers league at this point.

Even PSG having won it eight times in a row.

I'm against nation states getting involved in this sort of competition.

The Finns are delighted with themselves, in my experience.

Um, and Annie Panto, six of the seven dwarves, are named happy at this point.

Um, McDonald's most popular meal is just called the meal in Finland, uh, because all meals in Finland are happy.

The Fonz's sitcom was called Days.

Pharrell Williams' biggest song has no name in Helsinki.

And what's really important in this is, okay, the Finns did well, but Ireland was the 20th happiest country.

And then we saw that the UK was 24th, and we immediately jumped five places to the 15th happiest country.

That is how we measure it.

Other countries have fallen down the rankings.

One of the reasons, apparently, is because, particularly Americans now, they don't eat together anymore.

And eating together is one of those things that creates this sort of social cohesion.

And

it is hard to argue with that.

If you look at the stats, like, for example, like 12 out of the 13 people were delighted at the last supper.

I mean, one had a lot on his mind.

He was a bit worried about what was about to come.

But all of this kind of leaves two questions.

One, why are they happy?

And two,

what the f ⁇ more do the Italians want?

What do they want?

They've got the best food, the best wine, the best language, the best climate, the best art, the most beautiful people.

They've created like Roberto Baggio and Isabella Rossellini.

What more do you want?

You've been beaten by countries where it's dark six months of the year.

Grow a pair, put nine out of ten on the farm, and we could all be happy.

You're clearly the winner, you moany, moany bastards.

That's a very valid point.

And, you know, the top of the table is dominated by Nordic countries.

Finland top, Denmark second, Iceland third, Sweden fourth, Norway seventh, with the Netherlands and Costa Rica storming into the top ten in sixth place, followed by Israel in eighth.

Which

I don't know what you can read into that.

Anyway, but declining happiness and social trust in the US and Europe has been cited as a factor in the increased political polarization because a lot of modern politics does depend on telling people how shit things are and pretending you could make them better.

So America was still

relatively high in this, in the top 25, but this was from last year.

And bearing in mind that the findings have, according to the president of the UN Sustainable Development Solutions Network, Jeffrey Sachs, said happiness is rooted in trust, kindness, and social connection.

I think America might be challenging Afghanistan in next year's global happiness index.

One thing that really worried me was the disappointing performance from countries that play Test cricket.

Because obviously, you know, I've long assumed that

that's the sole key to happiness.

And

none of the top 10 countries are test cricket playing nations.

Australia is 11th.

New Zealand, 12th.

Ireland,

15th.

Recent addition to the roster of test-playing nations.

I think just to bump up the overall average happiness because they brought in Afghanistan at the

same time.

The UK encompassing England 23rd.

South Africa 95th.

The only two

countries that are part of the West Indian cricket, Jamaica and Trinidad and Tobago, both in the 70s.

India, 118th.

Pakistan 109th.

Sri Lanka, 133rd.

Zimbabwe 143rd.

Bangladesh, 134th.

And Afghanistan, as you mentioned, 147th and last of the countries in this list.

And it makes me think.

Imagine how much worse all those countries would be doing if they did not have the happiness-inducing joy of test-match cricket.

I mean, mean afghanistan would be even lower than absolute last um so what number is what number is uh afghanistan

147th out of the hundred not every single nation is uh uh

if you're afghanistan and you're looking at the numbers and you're going to be like 145th or 148th you're going to go for 147th just so you can shout it out

surely surely you're going for 147.

and maybe they don't need to play cricket more They need to play a snooker more.

That is the route to all.

Does Israel play cricket?

I mean, not to an elite level.

I think it's fair to say.

I'm just wondering, I mean, if you're playing cricket in Israel, where is the boundary?

Is it...

Are you hitting it to 1967 boundaries?

Are you hitting it to the boundaries from the 40s?

I mean, it's a complicated question, isn't it?

Along with um uh costa rica uh mexico has made a first appearance in the in the top 10 so that uh that great big war might prove useful after all in the usa for keeping people in rather than keeping people uh keeping people out just a little more on you know why finland is so happy i've done a bit of research into uh into this and you know as you mentioned one of the the key factors could well be that you know they look across the border to russia and think yeah it could be worse um that's good that's got to help frankly um they became independent after several hundred years of non-independence non-independence.

And looking at it from a British point of view, that appears to make people happier than being a fading post-imperial force harking after a fictitious age when it was

better than it is now.

It has a very

cricket.

That's a very generous welfare state.

Huge number of lakes and islands.

168,000 lakes, 179,000 islands.

That's one lake and island per 30 to 33 citizens.

And surely that's got to, you know, know, just boost your morale if you basically think you own at any given time around about 3% of a lake and 3% of an island.

That's surely got to be, do a lot for your general mood and optimism.

You get to pick the 30 people because I would move to Finland tomorrow if I knew when I got there.

They'd be like, just find your 30 people, friends, whatever, family, and we'll give you a lake and an island.

I'd be like, yes.

Yes, I'm coming.

I was interested by the use of

the returned wallets as a metric.

Apparently, people are twice as likely to return wallets as we expect them to be.

And it's interesting to see, you know, what does that teach us?

That we are innately pessimistic, but also more moral than we think we are, or just that we spend too much time watching the news.

See the kind of people who get to the top and think we're all f ⁇ ing cs.

So I don't know the science on that.

Or is it simply that...

Can't believe you robbed the Reinair model for this website.

or that wallets are not as full as they used to be, and people can't be asked to go through the tedious logistics and paperwork of stealing someone else's identity and using the contents of their

wallet on the off-chance that there's some actual money in those bank accounts.

It's a sad reflection on everyone and everything.

We're just, I think basically, we're just too lazy now to bother keeping a wallet that we've randomly picked up in the street.

And I don't think that reflects well on humanity at all.

It's like a 19th-century punch magazine insult.

They're too lazy to steal that random group of people.

Yeah, sure.

The UK languishing in 23rd place

dropped out of the Premier League of World's

Happiest Nations.

But I mean, the thing is, I think the only time that we in the UK are happy is when we are unhappy.

So we're inevitably just the natural cycle of that is going to bounce us up and down a bit.

But, you know, the happier we are, the less happy we become and then we revel in our own national misery and that makes us happy and so it's a kind of a fairly you know self-contained controlling cycle of uh of grump stroke happiness so it's all the timing of the question then isn't it so are you happy no i'm not happy how about now yeah i'm fine now how about now no not happy so it's just about the timing of when you asked the question that's what you're saying

yeah so so so so much of life is it's a newton's cradle isn't it you just one end is happy the other end is not and they just bang each other back and forth Yeah, that's uh I think Newton discovered that because he had six testicles anyway.

Um, that's uh that's neither here nor there.

Um

neither rivers balls

So the UK dropped yeah in in the mid in the mid-twenties uh now and um to try and ensure that we we keep our place out of the top twenty uh the government uh this week has conducted a uh announce an overhaul of uh the welfare system uh under which according to some experts, over a million disabled people will lose thousands of pounds in benefits.

The overall plan is to save £5 billion

of public expenditure.

Now, £5 billion is one of those numbers that sounds really big until you realise how little of the overall national expenditure it is, which is considerably less than 1%.

And trying to find this money from over a million disabled people.

I don't know if it's Labour trying to upshystify itself to try and hold on to the whatever Tory votes it won at the last

election.

Davy Abrahams, the Labour chair of the Commons Work and Pensions Committee, warned against, quotes, balancing the books on the backs of sick and disabled people.

Now,

this figure of 5 billion, 5 billion per year.

I looked at the Times rich list of the richest people in the United Kingdom.

The top 20 had a combined wealth of 303 billion pounds.

The gap between the top richest people, the Hinduja family, and the second, Leonard Blavatnik, is 8 billion.

So the Hindujas, should they wish, could pay the £5 billion cost of the first year of this scheme and still be the richest people in Britain by £3 billion.

So I guess

that highlights...

Why it's a kind of politically odd way of going about raising £5 billion.

You could line up the 33 richest people in Britain, all worth six billion pounds or more, and draw lots.

And even if the poorest of the 33 richest people in Britain was pulled out of the hat, had to pay the five billion, they would still have a billion pounds to keep ticking over through their new harshly straightened circumstances.

If they combined to pick up that tab for 10 years, that would cost them 6% of their combined wealth, meaning that they would still be worth collectively almost 750 billion between them and individually at least 330 million pounds each.

So the government's still unwilling to contemplate a wealth tax for reasons that neither I nor basic mathematics fully understands.

But also to factor into this, the wealth of the wealthiest people in the United Kingdom is going up.

In January Oxfam issued a report showing that the wealth of Britain's billionaires was going up by thirty five million pounds a day,

meaning that the growth in British billionaires' collective wealth each year could pay for the entire five billion cost of this and still have, let me just work this out on a calculator, almost £8 billion of change for them to get the bus back to all of their multiple homes and still have all of the wealth they had anyway completely untouched.

Now, I'm not saying this is a better solution than bringing anxiety, stress, poverty, and depression to the less fortunate in society.

I'm just saying it might be.

And maybe, maybe it's worth just at least trialling it in some way to see how it pans out.

It's not what you expect, is it, from a Labour government, is it?

Reducing benefits, changing winter fuel allowance.

It's like waking up tomorrow with Nigel Farage.

If you woke up tomorrow and Nigel Farage was the reform prime minister and his first press conference was in front of a podium that says increase the boats, you'd just be like, what?

What?

Like he's got to use it.

Our PM Farage, in an unusual move, has redirected a billion pounds of funding away from a red trouser and tweed factory to a facility to make more dinghies for people fleeing desperate situations.

This coming hot on the heels of his campaign to declare the late Vera Lynn a non-binary icon is a bit of a change in direction.

You just don't expect it from them, do you?

I mean, and all this money, 5 billion quid, is probably gold.

The money's been

mainly been saved from incapacity benefits, as far as I can see.

And it'll probably go to defense spending, right?

So if the Western world goes to war, we'll send young men to war and they'll be injured and they'll come back to the UK.

And guess what they'll be looking for?

Here, Starburst, just, I mean, I think it's very logical that if you're going to have to face someone in a duel, who do you want to face?

One of the 30 richest people in the UK who can probably afford their own personal, you know, sword-fighting tutor?

Because that's what they're called.

Or do you want to face somebody at the other end of the spectrum who only has one arm?

Who are you going to fight in a duel?

Yes.

well, maybe that's why they've announced it

around this anniversary.

What a grim job it is, though.

Like, that's you're gonna go, you're gonna determine if people get much-needed support.

Imagine how much that corrodes your soul.

There's no way that that doesn't spill over to the rest of your life.

You're just gonna be traumatized by that in future years.

You're just gonna be watching films, shouting at that, shouting at Captain Hook, No, Ironside, No, Professor X, No,

My left foot.

Okay, maybe.

Just, just.

Oh, it's kind of grim on every level.

Well, because obviously there's some confusion over the logic behind this.

So if any of you can explain to us why taking lots of money from people who have not very much money is politically preferable to taking an indiscernible amount from people who have loads, do email us.

We will print off your emails and hurl them into a disused quarry whilst screaming at the futility of politics.

Moving down the table to the 111th happiest country in the world, which is on this year's table, Ukraine.

Vladimir Putin has agreed a 30-day halt on attacks on the energy infrastructure of Ukraine.

See, he is a man of humanity, pity, and generosity.

after all.

Some people have expressed concerns that maybe Putin and Trump are not the most trustworthy of peace negotiators.

I don't know if Putin and Trump make mathematically a double negative, which makes a positive and will bring about eternal world peace.

We don't know.

I mean, they are essentially kind of wolves in wolves costumes, also wearing wolves gonna wolf t-shirt slogans and wolf pride badges with audibly rumbling stomachs and slathering at a rate of 22.3 litres of per slobber of slobber per minute.

Do you think this is progress, Neil?

You are our official finding, a glimmer of light in an ocean of darkness correspondent.

Oh my God, it's so depressing.

The idea that Trump is some sort of master deal maker is ridiculous, right?

First of all, imposing levies kills trade globally.

And pretty much everybody agrees in that because you get these tit-for-tat scenarios, right?

So my friend writes for a US topical TV show, and I do one here.

And we tried to send each other reciprocal tariff jokes and they were stopped at customs.

It's an absolute disgrace.

Putin has rejected the idea of a ceasefire.

Trump is still touting this as a victory.

Imagine getting no concessions and calling that a victory.

Imagine a child said to you, I wrote to Santa Claus for a bike, a PlayStation and some trainers.

We had an excellent dialogue, a frank and robust exchange of views, and he agreed to give me nothing.

Nothing.

Santa Claus gave me nothing.

Not only did he give me nothing, he also added preconditions about the process going forward.

Any recent territorial land grabs by Lapland must be respected.

Any contribution by the North Korean elves must be overlooked.

And all reindeer must be allowed to spout pro-North Pole nonsense on Fox, especially Vixen.

This is nonsense.

Look at his record in terms of doing deals.

He's going to start a trade war with Denmark over Greenland, for God's sake.

Do you know what Denmark imports into the US?

Ozempic and hearing aids.

So imagine being it, imagine it making it harder to get weight loss drugs and hearing aids when you're an abet man who's recently been shot in the ear.

This is insanity.

Which of his sons did he send to Greenland to drum up interest?

Don Jr.

He has two older sons, one swarthier and darker complexion, and one lighter of hair, almost strawberry blonde.

You have two choices to send your son to Greenland and you don't send Eric the Red.

You're an idiot.

If I was doing a deal with the US and one of my sons was called Amerigo Vespucci Christopher Columbus Delamere, he would be the one that I would send.

And he's criticizing Zelensky, right?

This is a man who avoided Vietnam because he had bone spurs on his feet.

Up with ecalcium.

That's what stopped him going to Vietnam.

Up with e-calcium.

You still want Ukraine's rare earth metals.

Your feet couldn't control your own mineral deposits, but you still want theirs.

All of this.

It's just, it speaks to Trump not, he just doesn't know what he's doing.

You know what?

Map making businesses have a lot to answer for because they have historically

over-embellished how large Greenland is in comparison to the rest of the world.

And now Trump's been looking at that map going, ooh, that's a nice bit.

Like, it isn't as big as you think it is.

Like, honestly, if you really wanted a landmass, go for Australia.

You know, that's that.

They're almost kind of a continent, but not quite.

go for that, but no, Greenland.

Not immediately, though, because I'm supposed to be going to Australia to watch cricket in November.

And

I need him to hold off at least until after the Ashes has finished.

I don't know if you've noticed your face, but I think you'll be fine, Andy.

No matter where you go, you'll be fine.

Under a Trump-Putin Netanyahu coalition, you'll be fine.

I wasn't expecting Mercator, the guy who came up with the projection that overemphasises how big Greenland is, to be the main source of blame for the next war in the Arctic.

But, I mean, you learn on this podcast, like inform like nothing else.

Well, we will have full coverage of

how the peace deal pans out currently.

Not started too well, I think it's fair to say.

And history tells us that we cannot judge a peace for years, decades, even centuries afterwards.

But obviously, modern attention spans demand a definitive verdict within the length of time it takes an influencer to advise you to rub strawberry yogurt into your eyeballs for that super glimmering smile.

So, but we will tell you if, despite everything, Trump's genius negotiating tactic of giving Putin everything he wants so the Ukraine situation becomes so desperate they simply have to negotiate bears lasting fruit for a better planet.

Moving on in other statue news now,

Neil, you are the

people in Dublin groping the metal breasts of statues correspondent.

And it's an unwieldy business card.

A statue of

Molly Malone in Dublin has

come to

media prominence in the last week after a campaign to try to stop people groping its

metal tits,

which is a technical sculptural term.

I like the way you said metal tits as if a metal statue would be all metal and the tit possibly would be made of a different a different material so you get to say metal tits

like have you ah you know those and i you know the irish and they're wooden titted metal statues they just want to be different

so um just quickly molly malo the stat the statue went up 37 years ago um yeah uh and people have been been been groping the a metal version of a probably fictional late 17th century woman who sold shellfish out of a wheelbarrow then died of a fever and came back as a ghost.

I guess that shows there's a niche, a niche for everything.

You get anything on Pornhub, man.

It's just, it's just ridiculous.

Yeah, there's a statue and it's kind of near Grafton Street.

It's hard to explain where it is, but

yeah.

And if you look at it now, it basically is kind of a copper colour on most of it.

And then two large gold baubles are on the on the front because people have been groping a statue.

I don't remember this happening when I was growing up, by the way.

I think it's got a relatively recent thing.

And look, so it's not some sort of Brownley Stone kind of get luck.

It's been this myth spread on various tourist websites, apparently.

And if you grope this thing,

you will get good luck.

It is Dublin once again proving itself as the classiest city in the world.

The Italians throw a four throw coin into the Trevi fountain and you will return to Rome once again.

And we have grab a pair of knockers and you'll be back fortnight.

It's not great.

I mean, we assume it's Source doing it.

Again, my job is to bring the lighter side to this podcast.

I'm going to be optimistic in this.

And I think the very best trading of this is that the health messaging has gotten through and she is checking herself regularly.

That is what I hope is happening.

But I fear it is the first scenario, I'm afraid.

I think it's a remarkable statue.

If you have a look at the picture of it,

it's funny that people do still grope her because she does look like she has some kind of infection that's slowly rising up her decollage

and could well be

infectious, whether that be scabies or, you know, I'm not sure, some kind of psoriasis.

But what amazes me about this story is the fact that this outrage means they're going to try and raise her up on a plinth, not paid for by the Americans.

They're going to try and raise her up on a plinth so that she's too high for anybody to touch.

And the fact that all that one

university student had to do was complain about this disgusting behavior.

And they're like, yes, we should do something about that immediately.

And yet the number of women that are being sexually assaulted on a daily basis, barely anything's been done about that.

And I just went, so the answer is, women, be more statue-like,

have metal tips.

And then people will actually pay attention to what's going on and perhaps provide us all with plinths that we could stand on to avoid being groped.

This story is actually reminiscent of this.

This happens also to another statue in Italy, in Verona.

There's a statue of Juliet.

And so whereas if you grope Molly Malone's tits, you will have luck and potentially return to Dublin.

Apparently, if you grope Juliet's tit, you will have luck in love.

And I find that also rather disturbing, that they go, if you grope this virgin, you will be lucky in love.

And the messaging there is a bit bothersome.

I mean, you know, Molly Malone at least was thought to at least know what she was doing and probably would allow you a grope for a groat.

I don't know what your old money was, Neil.

Did you have groats?

Groats for groats?

Well, when she was around, it was the same as the UK.

So it was shillings and pence and all that sort of crack.

And she saw really what's that?

Oh, okay.

Yeah.

Okay.

So a shilling for a shag or whatever.

So I now know that when walking down a dark alley, if I do feel threatened, that what I need to do is stand very, very still.

And be made of metal.

Fully metal.

In terms of

the science of whether touching this statue's breasts does or does not bring good luck, I've done my own research into this.

I've been to Dublin maybe five or six times

over the course of my life.

I've never fondled Malone's metallic frondules, and I've been,

but I've been quite lucky in life, I think it's fair to say.

Whereas my fictional friend Streville,

he did on his one trip to Dublin, he befondled the bronze boubiers, and he sadly,

swiftly lost everything in an ill-advised pyramid scheme.

So hard to get planning permission for such a space-inefficient form of burial these days.

He then lost an arm when a crocodile cheated him in a game of slaps and was last heard of trying to earn a living, charging people £20 a pop not to disturb their grandparents' funerals by standing at the back of the room singing, You're dead and you know you are.

So,

you know, my research into this suggests that the statue does not bring good luck.

I know that's a joke.

I'm 100% going to do that at a funeral.

And now, now Stravio's going to lose out on his pit payments as well.

Yeah, I know.

Poor guy.

That's really kicking him when they're down.

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

Next week, you can, if you're in Belfast or Dublin, or both,

or anywhere near that, you can see me do my show.

I'm in Belfast on Friday, Dublin on Saturday, Glasgow on Sunday.

I think that is full.

Tickets at my website, andy'sawsman.co.uk.

Neil, anything anything to pug?

Yeah, I do a podcast called Why Would You Tell Me That where we have weird and wonderful facts and I'm also on tour at the moment so I've just added an extra Leicester Square Theatre in November and I'm doing all around the UK the Dub in Birmingham and Dlee Club in Cardiff and they're all on my website neildelamere.com.

Real?

I'm going on tour in September so those tickets are now on sale from my website Riolina.com.

I'm going all over England, Scotland and Wales at the moment but I think we still have a few more dates to announce so just keep an eye on that on my website.

There you go, Buglers.

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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.

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