Influencer Repeatedly Punches Sick Old Man

I will be in Australia for the next few weeks, hoping that the cricket can provide the distraction for everyone that it has so successfully provided for me since I was six years old.

If you want to come to my shows, there is a Bugle Live in Melbourne on the 22nd of December, where I'll be joined by Sammy Shar and Lloyd Langford.

And I'm doing the Zoltgeist, my stand-up show in Melbourne on the 23rd of December. And we've just added a possibly optimistic extra show in Sydney on the 3rd of January.

The 2nd of January show is sold out, but please, please, please come on the 3rd. My UK tour extension begins begins at the end of january all details and ticket links at andy'saltzman.co.uk

the bugle audio newspaper for a visual world

hello buglers and welcome to issue 4322 of the bugle audio newspaper for a visual world with me andy's altsman coming to you live and recorded from a hotel on the outskirts of Leicester in England.

I truly am living the showbiz dream.

Joining me from, well, let's have a glamour off now. Who can claim the most

glamorous location?

Alice, Alice Fraser, joining us. Where are you in terms of glamour?

I am downstairs in my own garage. I'm about two and a half feet from a bicycle,

which is how I like to live my life. means I've got a getaway vehicle if none of these jokes go well

to be fair I'd be getting away from my own house but yeah I mean it's um uh and you are yeah you're in you're in Australia where I think you're I mean they say it's like you know with rats in London you're only ever two and a half feet away from a bicycle in Australia just the way things are

that's a marsupial

also joining us Aniva Powell can you can you beat a basement with a bicycle or a hotel on an industrial park in a Midland city? Where are you? So Andy, I'm basically in a storeroom

in my apartment building because I'm not allowed inside my apartment building because there's local elections going on in a little lobby area of my apartment building.

So all us residents are locked up in basically what is a storeroom. It doesn't have a cycle, Alice, but it just looks like it's got garbage,

which is sort of where I belong, really.

I feel quite at home here. And I don't have any ultimate Wi-Fi, unlike the Premier In, but I guess it's glamorous in its own way.

Well, yeah, I mean,

it's for democracy, Andy. So look at the

you win the glamour off because you are at the very heart of human freedom in the democratic process. So congratulations.
You are the most glamorous Bugle co-host of the week, a coveted title

I think I won for 293 episodes in a row at the

start of the Bugles' existence.

We are recording on the 22nd of November 2024, meaning it's exactly 61 years to the day since John F. Kennedy was assassinated.
Or was he? Yes.

He was. Also, on this day in the year 498, two popes were elected.
There was a big schism in the church.

There were, well, it there was briefly a double pope situation, which might seem like one too many popes for you. But I think maybe this is something the world could learn from.

Having

two leaders elected, surely that just

gives people what they want. Could America not learn from that?

Because basically, presidents don't get a lot done because of the built-in gridlock in American politics.

So why not just have two so that everyone can just live in their own echo chamber with the president that they want.

I think the Catholic Church in the year 498 unwittingly set a blueprint for human happiness, which is not always the Catholic Church's MO, to be fair.

As always,

the more popes, the better. You know, they get fragrant when you put them all in a bowl together

and get potery.

That's yep, that deserved more.

Why is that not a thing? There should be just like, you know, what is it? A craven of witches, a poppery of popes. It should be a thing.

As always, the sexton of the bugle is going straight in the bin. This week, well, we have a special competition for you, Bugle listeners.
We've teamed up with incoming President Donald Trump

to give you the chance to choose what will replace the Statue of Liberty, which is going to be symbolically smashed to pieces on Trump's first day in office, the spiky-hatted torch waggler, full metal janitor as she's also known.

Now, obviously, not just obsolete, but also embarrassingly anachronistic and dangerously French in both origin and philosophy. So

do send in your suggestions to

the bugle, special bugle competition address,

which

is hello buglers at thebuglepodcast.com with your suggestions for what should replace the Statue of Liberty in New York Harbor.

Maybe a giant Marjorie Taylor Greene made of melted down machine guns, or perhaps a statue of Donald Trump himself naked, firing a semi-automatic weapon into the air, eating a burger and symbolically urinating into the waters of New York Harbor.

Interestingly, or perhaps you want Thomas Paine curled up in the fetal position with a constant flow of tears from his eyes and thrice daily diarrhea and vomiting. It's up to you.

You send in your suggestions for what would be the most appropriate replacement for the Statue of

Liberty. And also, you might want to update the poem famously written by Emma Lazarus in 1883,

which concluded, Give me your tide, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, the wretched refuse of your teeming shore. Send these, the homeless,

tempest, tossed to me. I lift my lamp beside the golden door.
Perhaps you want to replace that with, Are you a huddled mass yearning to breathe free? Then right off.

We don't want you, and we're rolling back environmental legislation, so we won't be able to breathe free anyway.

Something along those lines, or just simply in massive great neon letters, just suck it. Uh, so uh, do send in your options, um,

and uh, it will be uh, we'll try and get it uh sorted out in time for January the 20th. That section in the bid, but do genuinely send in your suggestions, and maybe we'll um

this could be not sure, but it'll quite match the hotties from history emails that you sent in all those years ago. But let's see, uh, let's see what we can get.

Top story this week. Well, we're going to start with continents of the week.
I'm going to draw the winning continents out of a hat from the world's leading ten continents. And this week's winner is

Asia.

Well,

what a good continent to start with. Easily the most popular continent on earth.
What is it? Four and a half to five billion people. Can't be wrong.

Anuvab, you have long been the Bugles representative of the vast majority of humanity.

And what's a few interesting stories, including that one of the things that's emerged from COP is that delegates have suggested that China and India should no longer be called developing countries, which was an official designation dating back to the 1992 UNFCCC.

I can guess what the F, the C, the C, and the C stand for, based on how international diplomacy works, but I'm not sure about the U and the N.

Oh, it's the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change. I was completely wrong.
Anyway,

how has this news been received in India? So, you know, this is the interesting thing, is Indians love telling the world that they're a wealthy, developing nation, except at COP where they want money.

When we show up at COP pretty soon,

then it becomes like a Monty Python sketch where we want to outdo everybody and prove that we're poor.

What's happened at COP is a number of African nations, so this gentleman from Nigeria who's leading the Nigerian delegation, and his name is Mr. Balurabe Abbas Lawal.

And he said that basically China and India are developing nations now.

They no longer should be clubbed together with all the African nations and get aid from Western countries because you know they're you know they have pretty high GDPs now.

And he said they should try and support us. They should also come and make some contribution financially, like the Western countries do to the poorer countries to help climate change.

At which Indian delegates started screaming, we're very very poor we're very poor till someone said is that a Louis Vuitton bag that you hold

so this is the thing it's it's difficult and which is why I have sent the Indian delegation I personally have sent the Indian delegation some tips on how to appear poor when your GDP is growing at seven and a half percent and what they need to do is to go back to the Monty Python sketch of the four Yorkshiremen where they were trying to prove out to each other and how poor they were.

Where one Yorkshireman said, you know, I'm so poor that we used to have a cup of tea without milk or sugar.

And someone else said, a cup would have been a luxury. We used to put our tea in a newspaper.
And someone else said, we used to suck on a piece of cloth.

So

I think that, you know,

double standards is really the best way to play it at COP26.

Only double. I mean, usually we're looking at treble or quadruple standards at COP conferences.

Is the fifth Yorkshireman an Indian who goes, tea, where did you think they took the tea from?

Exactly. Exactly.

Exactly. How do you think that that man in the Argili is poor? They took his tea, and now he has to live in a house with holes in the roof.
It probably doesn't even have a house.

It probably lives in a corridor. You know, it's endless.
COP29 climate talks, more like climate cops policing language. Am I right, Andy? I think this is the woke agenda.
Next time, you know,

if we can't call developing nations developing nations anymore, next thing they'll claim that not all nation states are women who can be drawn in satirical cartoons with their tits out.

Actually, you know, I think it's a reasonable request because these designations were given to various countries back in 1993. They're slightly out of date.

I feel like the old designations ought to be resignated and then new designations nated to the relevant nations.

But basically,

the argument is China and India are developing nations. They're just not developing developing nations.
They're doing well for themselves.

They're at about a seven on the scale of up and up to up if one is up and up and ten is up.

So it's not a meaningless

thing because if you're classified as a developer, the reason it's relevant is if you're classified as a developing country, it means you have no formal obligation to cut your greenhouse gas emissions or to provide financial help to poorer countries.

And it means they're also eligible to receive climate aid, which India does, but China does not, which is nice to know it has some standards.

You know, it's like, you know, you know, how Darth Veda is technically eligible to apply for disability payments, but he draws a line somewhere.

He's doing okay.

Alice is absolutely right. I mean, the small gober Beijing doesn't come for free as a constant.

Someone has to be paying for it.

So

I think what India needs to do in COP29 is to send a delegation, dress like the cast of Slum Dog Millionaire. You know, there are a number of ways that

you can't show up in posh suits with Louis Vuitton and Armani and then want money

to put into your climate change thing. You've got to dress for the part.

So, if you want money from COP26, dress up like Slum Dog Millionaire, show up, not like the quiz master of Slum Dog Millionaire. He was quite well dressed.

and then you can demand some money i mean i guess all countries are developing in some way or another it's just some are developing in the same manner that an illness develops for example the usa but arguably the country that is developing fastest

right now also uh based on its belt and road program

um through which china is investing in over 150 nations or international organizations china is not a developing country it is developing countries uh so that's a slight semantic semantic difference

um

And, you know,

like we said, these classifications date back to 1992 and things have changed. For example, in 1992, I was a teenager.
That's how long ago it was.

The internet was basically two guys with yogurt pots and string describing naked women to each other.

Hope was going through a little bit of a late 20th century boom. Nuance was still legal.
I mean, this is a long, long time ago.

This is longer ago from now than from the beginning of the First World War to the end of the Second World War. That is a big old chunk of history.

It's almost as long as from the first Christmas to the first Easter, which is really when things started going wrong, to be honest.

So, I mean, it does seem a bit ridiculous to still be using those classifications. India's GDP, ANUVAB, up by over

1,200%

in that time from around 290 billion to 3.5 trillion, the GDP per capita up by 800%. Those billionaires are doing some seriously heavy lifting on that one, to be fair, but still

significantly. Also, a huge gap between India's GDP per capita, about $2,800 and America's at $35,000.
So, my question for you, Anuvab, and I know you like to come on the people with questions for me.

Should a nation that has over 300 billionaires,

does it need this kind of financial help that COP conferences give, or should it be sorting out its finances a little better?

Well, Andy, if there's free money going and all it takes is a nice looking PowerPoint with photos of poor people, why not?

Why not? I mean, that's if all it takes is to go into a holiday inn in Brazil, I think it's Brazil, right? And give a presentation and get money, why not? And tell me this, Andy.

If India's grown so much and if there are so many rich people, why am I in a store room right now?

Why is none of this trickle-down to me?

I'm in a storeroom staring at a broken lamp. You know, nothing's changed for 1994 for me.
And

I just want to know that

I think among the things the 300 Indian billionaires are not doing

is,

I think one of the basic things they're not doing is giving the money to the rest of the country. That's probably how they are billionaires.

I think they're spending it on really efficient things like aeroplanes and fast cars, which leaves the rest of the country to have to ask for carbon credits.

I mean, you might not be a billionaire yet, but I mean, let's look at the trend in India, Anuvab.

There are three times more billionaires in India than 10 years ago, which means that if things keep going at the current rate, if I've done my maths correctly, which is quite a big if, in just 190 to 200 years, every single person in India will be a billionaire.

So you've not got that long to wait until just by the sheer force of statistics, you also are a billionaire. And also, in terms of developing countries and the model that developed countries set,

the fact that India has these billionaires, but still a huge amount of poverty shows how well we have taught the developing world to repeat our economic mistakes and idiocies. So you're welcome.

You are welcome.

Well,

on the subject of Indian billionaires, Indian billionaire news now. And, well, I mean, it's been quite an exciting week for the rich and powerful being charged with stuff.

The International Criminal Court issued arrest warrants for Israel Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his former Defence Stroke Offence Minister, Joav Gallant, as well as the probably dead Hamas Ubeshite Mohammed Dave, all for alleged war crimes.

Netanyahu's office described it as anti-Semitic. No war is more just than the war Israel has been waging in Gaza.

They claim.

Now, whether or not you agree with that claim, and regardless of the extent to which you agree with it, I I think it's probably fair to say that, you know, regardless of the justness of the war, however you define that, it's not always been waged in a remorselessly just manner.

But anyway, we will see what happens with that. Joe Biden, very cross, said, let me be clear, whatever the ICC might imply, there is no equivalence, none between Israel and Hamas.

I would agree with that, but it doesn't mean... that they can't have both committed different non-equivalent atrocities.
But such is

the world we live in. Anyway, as a species, we've never been that good at holding multiple opinions at the same time.
It is a skill worth practicing, but I think we've basically given up on it.

Well, Andy, some of us aren't very good at holding multiple opinions at the same time. I'm definitely not, but also, on the other hand, I also am.
I'm very good at holding multiple opinions.

You are the exception that proves the rule, Alice,

in so many ways.

So let's move on to slightly chirpier, rich and powerful people being charged with stuff.

And And executives from the Adani group, including Gautam Adani, one of India and India, the world's richest people, have been accused of agreeing to pay hundreds of millions of dollars worth of bribes to

Indian government officials between 2020 and 2024 relating to solar energy supply contracts, which are expected to make $2 billion in profits over the next 20 years.

Anuvad, this to me, is a good news story because what it shows is, and we've had the COP conference and all this talk about how we're still not taking the environment seriously enough.

But if renewable energies have become worth the time, the effort, the subterfuge, the tedious admin involved in a multi-billion dollar corruption scam, this can only be good for the future of the planet.

This shows that saving the world is going to provide so many openings for the kind of corruption that drives humanity on. And this is a hugely exciting time.

Well, absolutely, Andy. We've been saying this in India for a long time.
There's nothing, there's no world problem that bribery cannot solve.

I feel like they need to work on this with a pincer movement.

If you can get money and corruption via money on solar energy, maybe it's like we need to address the other end of the motivation spectrum and suggest that windmills whip up pussy or something.

Absolutely.

Family show. The two-stroke engine that drives men forward.

See, these are the benefits of the developed world that we don't get to see here

so very quickly alice andy this is what happened right uh the u.s authorities the sec and others have charged adani uh and issued an arrest warrant against three people including adani himself basically for paying bribes to Indian officials to get solar energy contracts.

Now, the reason this is an issue in the United States is because that is that US bonds, Adani has gone to the US to raise money with US bonds. And America has this weird, weird thing.

I don't know if it exists in other developed countries, of doing due diligence to find out whether companies are ethical.

This is a frightening sort of thing. I don't know when it started.

If only they did the same with their presidents, for example.

Yeah, Anubab, you'll often come on this podcast and scoff satirically at the very suggestion that Western corruption can hold a candle to Indian corruption, pointing to instances like vote buying or this kind of like solar energy bribery.

But have any of your billionaires bought the entire government of America? No, I have to say, Alice, you're right. It's getting better.
The West is getting better.

They're not as good as us, but it's getting better.

I mean,

clearly there's nepotism, nefarious things,

loyalties being rewarded. But I mean, They've got a lot to learn.
If anything, I know the Treasury Secretary job is still open, and I I would highly pitch for Mr. Adani as an option for Donald Trump

because it's ingenious what he did. He basically

raised, he basically got a bunch of solar contracts by bribing the entire department, right? And then becoming the monopoly provider.

Now, this is the thing that is genius about Indian billionaires, is before they figure out what product to make, they make sure everyone in the relevant government department is bribed.

Then they decide what product to make. We probably need to chuck the word allegedly in various points of

this bit. So just

assume it's there at the end of the beginning of every sentence, probably the end, just to cover our backs legally. It's there, allegedly.

Number one, and number two, we're not saying this.

This is the charge sheet. This is the accusation that's come from the US authorities.
They're basically saying that he bribed everyone in the government department to get solar government contracts.

And all we're extrapolating is that if he's bribed everyone, then he's only decided that this is what he, you know, the product he wants to make came after bribing everyone.

Because this is the thing, right? Steve Jobs often says the audience, they don't know what they want till you give it to them, right?

So

all that's going on with Indian billionaires, not just Mr. Adani, is they're making sure everybody is bribed and then they decide what to make because they don't want regulations to get in the way.

It's fundamentally kind of capitalism-durbo-charged, if you think about it. Yeah.
And thank you, Gazmadani, for leading where others may follow, and

at last, taking the environment seriously. And big business hasn't done that enough.

But, I mean, we've all in our times, in our own way, paid bribes, whether it's handing over a cheeky banknote in a shop or a cafe in exchange for some food, or saying, if you eat your vegetables, you can have your ice cream.

That's bribery. We say that to our children, or our parents, or ourselves.

And yeah, full disclosure: we at the Bugle, we are currently bribing both Alice and Anuvab with money to bring their wit and insight to this show rather than just screaming, growling, or reciting baudy poetry.

That's just the way the world works, isn't it?

That is just the way the world works.

Oh, so it's my ethical core and willingness to refuse bribery. That's why I always forget to invoice.
Is that it?

Wait, Alice, what is an invoice? I've never heard of it.

Can I just say, you know, while the West is very concerned about business ethics and making sure that bondholders have transparency,

in India, the news was regarded with the question,

why is this news?

The Indian stock market, as we speak, and I just checked it before getting on this podcast

is up 2,000 points today. So

not only is this not seen as a bad thing,

I think it's

quite rewarding, actually. I think its respect has gone up in the eyes of other billionaires.

Crypto plutocrat buys banana news now. And,

well, I mean, quite often on the Bugle over the last 17 years, we've explored

the extent of idiocy which money can buy. And

an excellent contribution to

this section of the Bugle Encyclopedia of Human Life.

After a Chinese crypto entrepreneur bought a work of art for 6.2 million US dollars that is a banana gaffer taped to the wall.

It's entitled Comedian.

I don't know what kind of jokes that comedian would tell, presumably a deeply personal show about how it feels to be strapped to a wall if you're a banana.

Not necessarily laugh out loud, funny, and mook, but moving if a little bit contrived. But anyway, $6.2 million.

Obviously, you know, this art, the art itself is not worth $6.2 million.

The idea is not worth $6.2 million. But what is worth $6.2 million

to a crypto wanker is being seen to spend $6.2 million for no reason other than to show people that you are prepared to spend $6.2 million for no reason.

That in the crypto world is a bargain. I'd say that's probably even worth $7.2 million.

I mean, it's extraordinary. It has confirmed my deeply deeply held belief that crypto guys really don't understand art or money.

All they understand is hype and buzz, and they think buzz is the same thing as art, and they think hype is the same thing as money.

On the other hand, maybe he just bought a bunch of NFT apes and he needed something to feed them.

The idea of a banana might be.

This is a really good, really good strategy, Alice, to feed NFT apes with a real banana.

Well, is it a real banana or is it the concept of a banana in a particular place? Apparently, you get a certificate. You don't get the actual banana.

You get a certificate saying you own the idea of the banana.

And then also

you do get a banana and some duct tape as a sort of a starter kit to making your own.

One of the people involved in the auction said it's an artwork that's a perfect representation of the times that we're living in. Never a truer word spoken because we we live in stupid times, really

stupid times. With that money, with the $6.2 million,

I reckon you could buy at least 60 million bananas and half a million rolls of gas

when you

get a

bulk discount. It is all about context, though, Andy.
Like, I've been at the airport with a hungry toddler, I would have paid $62 million

for a banana at that point.

Can Can you imagine painting the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel and thinking, what will art be a couple of hundred years from now?

Poor old Michelangelo spent four years up a fing scaffold painting plunkers on a ceiling when he could have just nailed a courgette to a baguette and taken the rest of the decade off.

Other news now, and British farmers are fing cross.

This results from a measure in the recent budget, the first budget of the Kiostama Labour government, which changed inheritance tax that farmers have to pay.

And it's one of those stories where it sort of happened when I was starting my tour, and I missed the beginning of the story with all the detail on exactly what the measure was.

And all I've had since is everyone screaming at each other. And it's really hard when you miss the start of a news story, and then it just becomes...
the furious debate.

It's really hard to pick it apart and find out the rights.

I mean, it's somewhere in between Labour wants to ban farming and force all farmers to become poets, and Labour tries to stop the wealthy using farmland as a tax dodge.

The truth is somewhere in between those two things. And short, farming is a hugely difficult career.

Very difficult compared with, say, being a social media influencer and beating up a 58-year-old man recovering from a major illness for the entertainment of millions.

It's definitely more difficult than that.

So,

or even by strapping a banana to a wall and saying, I'm fing Rodan. So,

Alice,

as our British farming correspondent,

can you clear up some of the confusion for me?

Well, apparently from April 2026, if you have agricultural assets that are more than £1 million in value, you will... they'll be subject to an inheritance attacks.

Farmers hitherto have been not having inheritance taxes because it harkens back to a time when you just one serf would die and then whichever of their children was the least sickly would inherit, but they didn't have to pay for it.

The thing is,

in England, in the UK, farming is one of two things.

Either it is a heartwarming family tradition where honest Johns make a small but respectable living serving the land they till, selling their produce, and running an Airbnb out of a converted shed.

They pass the land down generation by generation, urgently to the firstborn son, and then afterwards to whichever one of their children is least likely to fuck off to London.

The other thing that farming is,

that's part thing number one.

The other thing that farming is is a massive depersonalized industrial process whereby underpaid and undocumented immigrants earn a pittance greasing the processes of food production.

Now, we want a world where the small family farm thrives by selling locally to organic farmers markets, but we also need a world where even poor people get to eat.

And in order to feed all the people we have.

Currently, we've got to deal with the big old monster farm.

Now, of course, another solution that I don't think anyone else is considering here is that we should have fewer people to feed, but people do just keep making more people. And

I don't think that any of the solutions to that that are being proposed are currently tenable. Farmer wants a wife, Andy.
Farmer wants a wife.

Alice, I don't know if all countries can fall into that accusation. I mean, look at India.
We've got only 1.6 billion people. I mean, it's just, it's a tiny population to feed.

Can I just say that between,

you know, if you do have a choice between taxing farmers or oligarchs who get rich on social media,

which do you think is better? Like, my thing is, I think farmers are better because they didn't invent Instagram. They've just fed you.
Anyone can feed you.

Social media news now, and Australia wants to ban children.

Alice,

that's as far as I got with the headline. I got bored because I got got a short attention span.

What's going on?

We are going to ban, we're proposing to ban a social media for everyone who is a teenager. Basically, under the age of 16, you will not be allowed to have social media.

Parents are for it. They're very afraid of the mental health impacts of social media on their teens.

Everyone else is for it because they don't like teenagers having a nice time.

The teenagers obviously have agreed for, you know, very enthusiastically, their parents will hand their phones to the teenagers and say, please teach me how to lock you out of your phone.

And the teens will happily oblige.

I mean, it's obviously not going to work. It is obviously not going to work.
They will find one million ways to get around it before the law has passed. I think it's sort of a nice idea.

Australia is in a uniquely privileged position because we are so dominated by mining billionaires that we don't have a lot of space in the being dominated by billionaires region to fit tech billionaires in.

So, you know, Australia's refusal to invest meaningfully in its intellectual infrastructure from copyright to entertainment to technology in favor of relying on the old faithfuls of mining and sheep farming has meant we can actually say f off to the big tech companies.

But,

you know, I think the problem is that there's plenty of things that are actually good about social media.

You know, finding connection as a lonely, bullied teenager, finding a community of your own that is slightly larger than the small town you're growing up in, and so on and so forth.

Those things are really powerful. And so, I think, you know,

this is probably not the solution, but I think it'll be an interesting experiment to watch fail.

I was just going to say, the reason I don't think it's going to work, Alice, is that the whole framework is built by young men,

tech experts from Stanford, who haven't ever seen sunlight. And nothing gives them more pleasure than a band that they have to go around that involves technology.
This is what they live for.

I mean, also, just in terms of,

you know, from the parenting point of view,

you know, throughout history, we found ways of making children more miserable, whether it's organized religion or private education.

And social media has stepped into the gaps in the post-religious world that many of us live in. So we're going to have to find something else.

I don't know what it can be. But anyway, I'm sure humanity has always found ways of doing that.

Another social media story around, well, a social media influencer, one of the most prominent influencers of the recent influencer epidemic that has struck the world over recent years. Jake Paul.

the social media star has heroically repeatedly punched an ill 58-year-old in the face in what was allegedly

a sporting contest that has really made humanity feel sick about itself on so many levels. Mike Tyson,

formerly

one of the finest heavyweight boxers in history for a brief period, troubled life,

not always a 100% well-behaved human being. And the spectacle really was, I think, one of the low points in the entire history of

not just of sport, of human civilization. We'd like to think that we're on a general forward progress as a species, but I'm not sure even the Romans would have paid to watch that shit.
The latest

well, the next thing, the prominent social media influencer Preble Chicken Jr.

says he is primed and ready to go ahead of his contest with the 90-year-old former number one ranked tennis player Ken Rosewold.

Chicken has said he's confident of victory, a special hybrid version of tennis in which he will clatter Rosewall repeatedly over the head with a heavy-based frying pan whilst the Australian full-time women and finalists sit strapped into a chair being read the last rites before Rosewell gets his his go the chance to respond with some old-style servant volley tennis using a wooden racket like the good old days so uh it's going to draw a huge uh estimated 2.3 billion strong pay-per-view audience which would make it the highest grossing sporting contest in the history of the universe although that itself could be broken the following week when PewDiePie hurls the 1964 Olympic long jump champion Mary Rand into a crocodile pit while smearing melted down dollar bills all over his face.

But such is sport. You know, I love sport, so you know

that's what it's become. I think the biggest

defeat for Jake Paul was probably that despite winning the fight,

the one moment that went viral from the fight was Mike Tyson walking away from the camera with his buns out

and the Netflix camera operator desperately zooming into his upper back

after a full two seconds of total bottom exposure.

Any YouTube star versus any other person can be great matchups. For example, here's one I'm suggesting.

Maritime Calypso crooner Harry Belafonte

versus eminent chef Gordon Ramsey, whose YouTube channel for an omelette has 20 million views.

Who wouldn't want that? Well, we need to wrap this bugle up at that point as sport plumbs depths that no one thought could be plumbed

or even found. But anyway, such is the world we live in.
Thanks for listening, buglers. Do come see my tour show dates and ticket links at andydalton.co.uk.

We've added a few extra dates now running through till May, by which time, presumably, the world will have changed and I'll have to write a load of new jokes.

But anyway, thanks for those who've come so far. It's been a lot of fun.
Alice, anything to plug?

Sport lifts us up and gives us inspiration.

And I just am so glad that there are children out there who can watch that fight and think one, you know, they can just go out into the street and punch an old man.

You can find my book at unbound.com. It's called A Passion for Passion.
And I do a podcast called The Gargle, which is the sister podcast to this podcast. It is the glossy magazine.

It's got all of the news and none of the politics and the rest of my stuff. You can come to my twice-weekly writers' meetings at patreon.com/slash AliceFraser.

I'm also running a kind of a new year reboot creative online course. If you want, if you're doing something creative and want to get writing or working on that,

it'll be in the Gooch of the Year between Christmas and my birthday. But patreon.com/slash AliceFraser is the time for that.
Place

time and place.

Just very quickly, I have two days days in the UK. My last trip for the next weekend, I'm at Headliners Comedy Club in Chiswick, where I'm opening for Dylan Moran.

But the more important announcement is that I will be spending my winter holidays trying to make a map of Italy from a mannequin inspired by one Andy Zoltzmann from his Taskmaster

map making skills. And I'm hoping to give that as presents to lots of people over Christmas, even though it's not even an Indian holiday.

Well, you know, inform, educate, and entertain the Wrethian values. I do a lot of work for the BBC.
I just can't, I can't help it. I just can't help it.
Thank you for listening, Buglers.

We will be back next week. Until then, goodbye.