Bonus Bugle: Bugle Episode 92

The Bugle, audio newspaper for a visual world.

Hello buglers, I am Andy Zaltzmann coming to you live and recorded from Multan in Pakistan where I am being contractually obliged to watch a vast amount of cricket.

Tough gig, but someone's got to do it.

And that person, luckily, is me.

Now I was hoping hoping to do a full bugle this week.

In fact, it was going to be possibly, probably even, the first ever podcast recording that took place simultaneously in Multan, Glasgow, and San Francisco simultaneously.

If there is another show that fits that bill, I'd love to hear it.

Sadly, for various reasons, we couldn't record this week.

Those reasons, let me emphasise, did not include me turning 50 and gazing into the icy chasm of inevitable decline, decrepitude, and keep it light-handy.

Anyway, we couldn't record a full episode.

Anyway, I'm told there has been no news anywhere anyway.

The world is all fine and perky again, which is lovely.

So instead, we have for you a special sub-episode.

Now, whilst I have been bathing in the sweet, sweet statistics of cricket and watching England break an almost unhealthy number of records, producer Chris has taken the time to tidy up the Bugles podcast feed.

And what a feed it is.

Easily one of the best podcast feeds for any long-running topical comedy show that began as a transatlantic topical chat between the same two people every week before transmuting into a collection of comedians from around the world analysing the world's news.

Thanks to Chris's hard graft, you can now get the first 100 episodes back where they belong on our main pod feed.

So do tuck in and enjoy those slices of long-forgotten and or partially remembered history.

Now, sorry, what's that?

Yes, thanks for asking.

It is also the Bugles birthday.

We are 17 this week.

And yes, this show will be legally allowed to go to War, Stroke, Drink, Stroke, Marry next year, depending on where we choose to base it.

To celebrate our birthday, let's take a trip down memory lane to the bugles second birthday 15 years ago this week There was news and John Oliver and I broke it to you the bugle audience here to mark the return of our first 100 episodes to our pod feed Here is our second birthday episode issue 92 of the bugle from October 2009 entitled Obama wins first preemptive Nobel Peace Prize

Hello buglers and you are all very welcome to Bugle 92.

Unless of course you are a major criminal on the run from justice.

In which case, get your hands and ears off our podcast and hand yourself in.

I'm waiting.

I'm not carrying on until all major criminals have stopped listening.

Don't just turn it down, turn it off.

Good boy.

Better luck at your trial.

On with the show.

I'm Andy Zosman here in London Town, which is in fact a city and an ocean away, albeit a relatively narrow one by oceanic standards.

In New York City, it's the mayor of Funnytown himself, John Oliver.

Hello, Andy.

Hello, Buglers.

Big news has just come out, and that is that President Obama has just won the Nobel Peace Prize.

Yes, he has.

They have made some strange decisions in the past, Andy.

So this is not unprecedented, but this is a weird one.

He's won the Nobel Peace Prize for essentially saying how much he likes peace.

There are going to be some very angry hippies around today.

I've been doing this for 40 years.

Where's my prize?

It does seem like this is a direct dig at George W.

Bush.

Yeah.

They've basically said, hey, this guy's not even been doing it for a year.

And look at him.

He's already got a Nobel Peace Prize.

Hey, George.

But it's quite amazing, John, though, given what's happened in the last decade, for an American president to win the Nobel Peace Prize.

For most of the last decade, if you've been told the US President had won a Nobel Peace Prize, you'd assume the person you were talking to had mispronounced the word peace.

There are reactions coming in as we speak, Andy.

I'm just looking online.

One White House staff has apparently said, It's not April the 1st, is it?

That's...

That is not the reaction I imagine the Nobel committee were looking for and apparently the taliban have condemned the award so

i don't think that's so much as to who it was given to just the concept of peace is something they're very much against and don't don't believe it should be rewarded i did actually meet a remarkable human being this week on the show andy a guy called william kamquamba who was uh he's now a 22 year old african guy who at 14 built a windmill to power his family's house 14 years old and he made it out of kind of bicycle parts and just general shit.

I read about him on the internet.

Yeah.

What were you doing at 14, Andy?

Because I'm guessing that it sure as shit wasn't building windmills.

Well, it wasn't, John.

I was building wave turbines.

Oh, really?

And learning cricket statistics.

But, you know, those two.

I'm more of a multitasker than William.

I've got a celebrity story for you, John.

I met the Olympic decathletes Dean Macy at a recording.

That's good.

A very interesting guy, a very nice guy.

I learned something very interesting about Dean Macy, John.

I learnt that what he really likes is at the end of a smouldering barbecue, he likes to crush open the coals and see the colours within.

Has Dean Macy turned to poetry now that he's not competing?

I think he just likes crushing barbecue coals.

Just lovely orange colouring.

Did that come up naturally in conversation?

Did you say, hey, Dean?

What's the most melancholy image you can conjure up for me?

My My parents were here last weekend, Dundee.

Did they win?

They have not yet.

Yet.

Still time.

They've never started a war, though, have they?

They've never started a war, and they're not against peace.

So that's got to put them like in the top five.

They've got to be on the short list for that.

Although I have met your parents a few times, John, and they've never really sat down and said how much they love peace to me.

No, and so, I mean, that definitely raises big questions.

They were here last weekend, so my girlfriend and I were putting some things up on the walls to try and make the place look a bit nicer.

And we realised we had two letters from American presidents.

I have one from Bill Clinton thanking me for doing a gig for him and my girlfriend has one from George W.

Bush thanking her for her service in the US Army and fighting a war for her country.

Now the scale of those two expressions of gratitude when placed side by side may seem lopsided but I will say this.

It was a tough gig.

It was a large conference room, people sitting on round tables, that's not easy to unites.

Begs the question, what would you prefer?

A good letter from a bad president or a bad letter from a good one?

So this is Bugle 92.

92, of course, the age Scottish people have to reach before they instinctively chuckle whenever people ask them what time it is at 1.51pm.

92.

92 also what Goebbels would have said had he been a TV quiz show host receiving the wrong answer to the question, what is the colloquial name for the world's largest species of armadillo?

Getting a wrong answer and saying, 9!

Tatoo!

92 also, coincidentally, the number of times Neville Chamberlain said bollocks within the first 10 minutes of finding out Hitler had swizzed him on the peace in our time prank.

And also, there have now been so many bugles that scientists believe that if you listened to them all back-to-back, you would suffer permanent brain damage.

I'm sure there is more truth in that, Andy, than you'd be comfortable with.

And this is for the week beginning Monday, the 12th of October.

On this day in 1492, John, Christopher Columbus made landfall in the Caribbean, and apparently he thought he'd reached South Asia.

Bit racist, Chris.

Bit Bit racist.

And 200 years after that, Governor Phipps dismissed the court of the Salem witch trials and a young court reporter named Arthur Miller tucked away his notepad and muttered to himself, this will make a doozy of an allegory one day.

I've just got to wait for the right political story to pin it on and I don't care if I have to wait 250 years to do it.

And also in 1823, on this day, Charles McIntosh, a scientist, sold the first ever waterproof coat.

Can you guess where he was from?

Tom, what country might invent a waterproof coat?

A very rainy one like Scotland.

Scotland!

Bang on, yes!

Now there must have been plenty of other nations who needed a waterproof coat, but it took Scotland to invent it.

A nation where people might be outside when it starts raining and might also be too drunk to get back inside to stay dry.

That is evolution in action.

As always a part of the bugle is going straight in the bin and this week it's a new audio font that the bugle is using called Scrantletter Bold.

This audio font is a low-pitched draw with surprise-sounding vowels and a stutter on the T.

It is of course a sans-serif audio font, but probably only worth using in invitations and stuff.

It's not audible enough to be used for standard speech.

Now we have a special treat throughout the bugle this week and that is that Paul who is he's basically my Tom.

No, no Tom, you're my Tom.

I shouldn't say that.

You are my Tom as well.

Thanks, John.

Paul is the American Tom.

I apologise for that, Tom.

Tom.

It always makes Paul feel bad.

You've always been my Tom.

That's right.

Paul's the American Tom.

And that's quite a thing to be.

Paul, it turns out, is very good at playing the trumpet.

And not just very good,

good.

So we're going to be having live bugle stings in between the bugle this week for you to enjoy.

And there's one of them.

What a treat for you.

You can't beat a good bit of trumpet.

Phenomenal.

I'll tell you who thought you could beat a good bit of trumpet, and that was our next-door neighbours when I was a kid, when I used to play the trumpet.

Top story this week, in the words of the late, great S-Club 7, there ain't no party conference like a conservative party conference.

Hey, ho!

Hey!

If you want a visual definition of human awkwardness, Andy, all you need to do is get yourself to the Tory Party conference and look at an audience of white, pension-aged English people attempting to whoop.

It would be sad if it wasn't so pathetic.

This week has been proof, if proof were needed, that British people cannot do razzmataz.

This time last year I just got back from the Democrat and Republican Party conventions and they know how to put on a show Andy.

Balloons.

An almost sarcastic amount of balloons.

The problem is the British people just cannot carry off this level of sincerity and enthusiasm.

We've become immune to it.

The wind changed sometime in the late 1800s and we've lost the capacity to fully commit to any emotion.

It was a kind of curious conference because the Conservatives are basically the government in waiting.

They will almost certainly bobsled into power with the biggest default landslide victory in Democratic history in May.

And their conference, well, I guess if you just sum it up, you'd say, yeah, it was alright.

Adequate.

Really adequate.

Don't really bother ramming home their opinion poll advantage.

Couldn't be asked.

Didn't really need to.

It's basically in the bag.

And also, no one really gives a shit.

But still, out with the old, in with a new version of the even older.

All they needed to do at this conference was avoid major gaffes that could have uh fatally undermined the Tory hand leading up to the election.

And luckily, they did that.

No one stood on the platform and called for all women to be killed, or proposed the forced deportation of anyone with legs, or announced plans to replace all of Britain's hospitals with snake farms.

And it's going to take something of that magnitude to have bought it up from here.

Exactly.

David Cameron seems odds on to become the next Prime Minister, and it's hard to know what he'd have had to do.

He could say something racist, but that's not going to shake off his base.

It would have to have emerged that he was either personally responsible for the global financial meltdown or that he'd killed a prostitute.

Otherwise, Britain had better strap in.

His speech as well, David Cameron, was another bad cover version of what happened in America this time last year.

He used the word change 15 times.

There really should be a moratorium on that word now.

We all need to let it lie fallow for a while before it completely loses its meaning.

Also, it would be very interesting to see if it's physically possible for a modern politician to deliver a speech without that word now.

We need to put a fine system in place, similar to a swear box, except this time, every time you mention the word change, you need to smash the box into your face.

William Haig, the Foreign Secretary in waiting, he said we are ready for government, ready to bring change to this country.

But this is exactly what Labour was saying last week, so I just don't know how to choose between them, John.

They both seem to want change.

they both say they're ready for government what kind of man is the future Prime Minister David Cameron well the short answer is he's a complete asshole the longer answer is this and I find the most illuminating way to judge British politicians is to imagine what they'd have been doing if they'd been alive during the British Empire I'm fairly sure that David Cameron would have been sitting in a rocking chair somewhere in India wearing a pith helmet and ordering his troops to fire on unarmed civilians and laughing every minute of it it.

In fact, I think he even said during a recent interview that he only had two regrets in life.

One, saying the word twat on the radio during an interview recently and two, not being born 200 years earlier.

What would Gordon Brown be doing in the British Empire?

Well, he'd probably be just like a dour clerk somewhere in London.

You know, he wouldn't have done any harm, I think.

Right, okay.

So you'd vote for him on those grounds?

Absolutely.

No question about it.

Just wouldn't have.

David Cameron would have thrived during that time.

And that is not a pleasant thing to say about someone.

He would have had more tiger skin hats than you've had hot dinners.

Exactly.

He said some quite fascinating things during this speech, John.

There were some, well, firstly, there were some entertaining cutaways to George Osborne, the shadow chancellor, who generally has the look on his face as if someone has smeared a dead fox inside his jacket but not told him.

Might just be the look of someone who is about to inherit an absolute shitstorm of a job.

But it was interesting that he announced various measures that might be unpopular, raising the state pension age, freezing most public sector pay.

Was he risking unpopularity?

No.

The Tories were not risking unpopularity because they are already unpopular.

That's true.

Less than 10% of the voters at the recent European elections got off their blue arses to vote for them.

So they're in a fantastic position, John.

It is hard to imagine a government that will have ever entered office in this country with lower public expectations.

And that means achievable goals, as any half-assed life coach will tell you.

He started off by saying, we all know how bad things are, but I want to talk to them about how good things could be.

And my ears pricked up, John, but he didn't deliver.

I was expecting rocket packs for all, but no.

All he offered was things being a bit less shit than they are now.

He said, also, there's a steep climb ahead, but the view from the summit will be worth it.

And you have to ask yourself, will it...

What if it's just the view of another mountain?

Or of two goats rutting?

Or even of a cable car house?

Now, that will be doubly annoying because not only would he not have a nice view, but you also realise you didn't have to make that climb in the first place.

And it's an unambitious metaphor, anyway, because what happens when you reach the summit of a mountain, John?

You look at the view for a bit, you pose for a photo, and then you're toboggan back down.

So he's basically saying, I'm going to temporarily raise Britain out of the dogmas in, and then I'm going to plant them straight back there.

Maybe that's being realistic.

I mean, he was trying to avoid any gaffes, as we say, and there was one that did slip through.

He was talking about the Defence Secretary.

And he said, instead of the revolving door, which he was saying that the current government has had for Defence Secretary, we need a politician of the front rank.

So, no arguments, I guess.

And then he continued, and in Liam Fox, we have one.

This is where him and the country diverged.

This is like saying, I'm going to bring Britain a Wimbledon champion in the next five years, and that champion will be Alex Bogdanovich.

Come on, the book.

He also said, Politics is about we, not about me.

And you have to.

What gross

has happened to our soundbite writers in this country?

This nation has gone to the dogs.

There was also some infantile controversy when Tory chairman Eric Pickles, who sounds like a Victorian orphan, little Eric Pickles have a gammy leg.

Yes, he do.

A coughing and a spluttering, and with Christmas just around the corner as well.

Eric Pickles imposed a champagne ban.

for all visitors to the Conservative Conference.

In an interview with Evening Standard, he said it was their duty to look humble and should avoid offending voters with shows of extravagance.

Basically, he said, I want to see less champagne bubbles and more bubbling activity

before leaving a long, excruciating pause, punctuated only by the microphone slightly feeding back, someone coughing at the back of the room, and a tumbleweed blowing elegantly across the podium.

Do you know, John, if he clicked his fingers and pointed his pointed at the audience whilst winking after that line.

He made it done.

See, I wouldn't mind that comment as much if it wasn't something that he clearly planned, judged to be good, and looked forward to saying out loud.

And also, banning champagne does not make them appear more normal.

It just implies that they normally drink so much champagne that nothing short of an outright ban will suffice.

Nutters update now.

And Silvio Berlusconi has lost his legal immunity.

Now, I know what you're thinking straight away.

Well, why isn't he already in prison?

Excellent question.

And to be honest, it's one that I too am pondering.

Italy's Constitutional Court overturned the law, which granted him immunity from prosecution while in office.

And the move opens up the possibility that Berlusconi could stand trial in at least three court cases, including one in which he's accused of corruption.

Now, he had argued that immunity gave him the potential to govern without being distracted by the judiciary by trying to get him to pay for those crimes that he committed.

I can imagine that would be a distraction.

But it does set a very dangerous precedent because if you're an Italian citizen, you commit a major crime, your lawyer's best advice might end up being you should run for office.

That's your best bet, mate.

Get elected to something.

As of earlier this year, Berlusconi had been involved in, and wait for it,

2,500 hearings, had received 587 visits from the police, and had spent £155 million in legal fees during his political career.

That is not the CV of an international leader, Andy.

That's the CV of Michael Corleone.

He admitted that he's no saint.

And also, he's never had sex with a prostitute.

Hold on.

Will someone please tell Silvio that not having sex with a prostitute is not the qualifying factor for sainthood?

Listen, it's basically this.

If you've never had sex with a prostitute, you're in.

It's the only thing we as a church are unmovable on.

Oh, that's good enough for Jesus.

Was it?

Well, a guest will never know.

And also in Ahmadinejad news, it's a simple question of due or false.

There was a magnificent breaking story earlier this week, which has tragically turned out to probably not be true.

That is absolutely no reason not to repeat it here.

It's too good.

During the Iranian attempt at an election a while ago, qualified lunatic Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was photographed holding up his ID at a polling station and a digital photo revealed that his family surname was in fact originally not Ahmadinejad but Sabojan which evidently is possibly a Jewish name and that this meant that Ahmadinejad was Jewish which does seem to make a lot more sense of the man.

Of course he is.

That explains everything and also it redefines a bad Jew.

That really takes the concept of reform Judaism to a whole nother level.

Not only will I eat bacon and drive on Saturdays, but I also think the Holocaust may be a complete fabrication.

Muzzle taught.

Other reports have said that it really depends on the interpretation of the word Saborja, which in fact is a name deriving from thread painter Sabor in Farsi and was a Shia name.

So nearly so great, Andy.

That was my favourite nearly a story for a long time.

I think I'm just going to pretend it's true.

Well, I think we should, John.

You know, I think we have that license on the bugle.

Well, if anyone can prove definitively that Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is not Jewish, then they're welcome to come on the show and tell us why.

He's definitely Jewish, John.

Definitely Jewish.

What, it's your Judah going off?

Yeah, it's buzzing like a pot of gefilter fish in a microwave.

War news now and Earth is at war with the moon and has been since this morning.

NASA has blown the moon up.

It's not gonna be there tonight.

Wouldn't you believe it?

What are they doing?

You say what are they doing, andy but maybe i've been living in america too long but my only thought is of course we've bombed the moon good and the only credible thing here is how has it taken us this long

we're going to find out what that moon is made of in every sense of the word think of it as an encouragement to an underperforming planet it's like using the whip in horse racing this moon has been doing jack for decades This is how wars always start, John.

You know, just a flimsy excuse.

We want to know if there's ice on the moon.

It's always about commodities, isn't it?

It's oil on Earth, it's water on the moon, and all of a sudden, bang, you fire a missile and you're stuck in an intractable conflict far from home that you have no realistic hope of properly winning.

It's just history repeating on itself.

It could really pull the whole Earth's population together, though, Andy, like taking up war against the moon.

Yeah, but one thing that we can probably all agree on, that the moon's got it coming.

Maybe this is the way to create peace on Earth, by the way.

That's what I'm saying.

Yeah, it could work.

Everyone wants a little shot at the moon.

Yeah.

Hanging up there all aloof,

sneering at us.

The Aryan super planet that it is.

Giving us night time.

So they want to find out if there's water on the moon.

And I guess it would be kind of interesting to find out whether or not there's water.

But at the same time, my overwhelming thought is: who gives a shit?

You know, unless there are animals, aliens, or the real Buzz Aldrin on the moon, I'm not interested.

Science, John, a waste of money.

It's not as good as sport.

Bugle competition time now, and what a prize this is, John.

The prize is two for one voucher for

hold on let me guess Annie let me guess is it brother beyond's reunion tools it's not that is it sister sledge no at the Roman Coliseum no sold out it's is it you yeah doing a gig somewhere it is me doing a gig

I'm doing a gig at the Canal Cafe Theatre in Maid of Vale London on next Tuesday and the Tuesday off that's the 13th and 20th of October to try out material for a radio show I'm doing and frankly I need some bums on seats.

So here's a special offer for you, bugle listeners.

You can get two for one tickets to this gig if you come to the Canal Cafe Theatre with a printout of Florence Nightingale's face.

Present it at the ticket desk and they will give you two for one tickets.

What if you turn up dressed as Florence Nightingale?

I'll pay for you to come in.

Oh dear, this is going to backfire.

It's going to be great for the first couple of minutes of the gig.

You do realise you've just challenged every English bugle listener to turn up as Florence Nightingale.

i should point out it is about 60 seat theatre so it might be worth booking and i hope it's full of 65 florence nightingales

your emails now and we had an absolutely outstanding response for potential gaddaffi translations the nut job translations all very good

but my favorite came from thomas hale aged 19 and a half from london and is that half i think i'm not sure sure he could have done this at 19, but at 19 and a half, you get to write a work like this.

He says, what up, Johnny O, Andy, Mo Funky Zoltzmann and T-Bone?

I think that's you, Tom.

I imagine Colonel Gaddafi would benefit for his message of bewildered senior ramblings to be brought to the hateful West through a medium we could all understand, gangster rap.

So get ready.

Look out, Mofos, because G.

Daffy in the hisle.

Here to spit it for Rizzle to the unizzle.

Brain full of crazy and a mouthful of stupid Shooting my rant off in your face like arrows from Cupid a brand new lyric for 2009 Pushing 70, but hey man, I feel fine Made man of the Libyan sand since 69 now listen close to my rhymes as a waste time and cross the line Making you whine and translators collapse into silly syllables like bear traps No claps or applause when I pause, just stand quiet If there's a messed up claim in your brain, son, I'll totally buy it ratified to add it to my fist pumping list of theories and queries bout assassination I'm a conspiracy sensation just ask Kennedy son cause that gun was the CIA and look at Lincoln a shot dead by Mossad the boss of Libya said cuz that's me daffy to the G in the easy ladies squeeze me Dick's potent as my rhymes

Eight strong royal bloodline and now I gotta stop.

Gee Daffy dropped some lyrical bombs on the system.

Wrinkles this deep, I got wisdom.

Oh, and your mamas, I kissed them.

Props to all the ladies in the crowd.

Peace out, and mad props to my homie Huggy C.

Come join me in my tent for a hookah party.

What, what?

Blacked out halfway through that, Andy.

What happened?

This email comes in from Christopher White in Leicester.

On the subject, brings me no joy to say this.

Wibbly Levinianism ain't what it used to be.

Oh, no.

Prepare yourself for a heartbreaker buglers.

Dear deucebags, you write, well if you won't read out my emails, what do you expect?

Well what I now expect, Christopher White, is that next time you write an email you address it in a more polite fashion.

My girlfriend, yes, bugle listeners are capable of sustaining relationships.

I don't think we ever said that wasn't the case.

We hoped it wasn't the case, but we never said it.

And wish nothing but happiness.

My girlfriend informs me that some 41 lead man Derek Wibley and future brackets really question mark.

Well, I think we can heartily concur with that.

Hotty from history, English mangler Avril Levine, are no longer in a concordant state of Wibley Levinianism and are in fact separating.

Oh boy.

Shocking, I know, but pull yourselves together.

The big question now is, will Wibbley Levinianism be redefined to mean short-term happiness in wedded matrimony followed by bitterness and resentment following lengthy and costly Hollywood-style divorce?

Time will tell, but we can be certain that it'll mean whatever we say it means, because we're British British inventors of the wonderful English language whom the rest of the world rightfully fear and speak better than most of our citizens.

See this email as an example.

Cheerio, Tom, let's face it, the only person likely to read this.

F you, Chris.

Wrong again.

I should say, though, John, that we had a number of emails just bringing us this tragic news.

And I think it does show that we have incredible power, that we've basically split up Wibbly and Levine.

If it wasn't meant to be,

it wasn't going to work out long term.

Also, let's look at the positives.

The Wibbly surname is available for another girl out there.

Come on.

Plenty of wibbly.

There's more wibbly to go around now.

It does seem like by very mentioning it that it had brought the marriage to a close.

So I would like to mention, in fact, from Liz Uranek, who pointed out that it's a heavy heart that I must inform you of Zoe Deschanel's marriage.

Oh, no.

She got married to Death Catfercutie front man Ben Gibbard in September.

I just wanted to mention that.

Just wanted to mention that they got married.

All right.

And I'll just now let nature take its course.

And by next week, hopefully, we should have another announcement.

Because we do it with Berlusconi as well.

Yeah, I know.

Actually, I'll take that, but I just want Zoo to be happy.

Well, since you'd mentioned your own girlfriend earlier in this episode as well, I'll just admire her.

Right.

A bit on the side.

No, not a bit on the side, Andy.

Not a bit on the side at all.

I just think she's lovely.

So, buglers, do email us.

If there's anyone's marriage you'd like to break up, please email us.

With names and reasons.

That's true.

We usually do it within about a week.

Maybe an old enemy of yours, you know, an ex whose happiness you resent.

Maybe someone whose spouse you fancy that you want to split up and pick up the pieces.

Let us give it the kiss of death.

So email us.

We'll do some quips.

You sit back and watch despair unfold.

And do put in the subject title, The Curse of the Bugle.

Oh, we've had an absolutely fantastic selection of emails this week.

A number of you still giving us links to internet sites with evidence of people drawing cock and balls on stuff, including a football pitch in Wall FC near Western Supermare.

Some of the just pranksters painted a huge cock and balls on the pitch, so it's always good to know.

So,

you know, why have a football academy when you can just make your players more fertile?

But this email came in from Fernando Colina in Boston, Massachusetts, brackets, the other side of the river Styx.

And he writes, which is an interesting way of describing the Atlantic: Dear Click and Clack,

that's a good double act name.

Thank you so much for the brief podcast you put out a couple of weeks back.

I heard it twice before realising my playlist was set to endlessly loot your programme.

You managed to pack as much humour and buddy-buddy banter into this brief experiment as you usually put in your longer efforts.

What?

Thanks.

Hold on.

Thank you, Fernando.

That is neither a compliment nor a full insult.

Actually, I don't think it is a full insult.

I think it pretty much is.

It's as close as you're reasonably entitled to expect.

Dear click and clack.

Doesn't even say who's who.

I ought to think more of myself more of

as a clack.

Yeah,

I'll take click, you take clack.

I used to play the trumpet as well, too.

I had a teacher called Mr.

Clack, trumpet teacher.

Yeah, I was such a bad trumpet player that my own teacher used to turn up 20 minutes late to my lessons.

Oh no, you broke his professional dedications.

I bet he was just sitting outside in his car going to swait.

I could at least give it 10 and I'll definitely not give it half an hour that's the that's the cutoff I'm sure he's a very good teacher but he saw me and he thought no this guy ain't got it

sport news now and golf is going to be in the Olympics from 2016

what well has devalued every medal won at that games

that is not it's not a sport it's a game well I think there are a number of questions to be asked why might golf be in the Olympics now is it possibly because because winning the Olympics would be the absolute pinnacle of any golfer's career?

No, of course it wouldn't.

Most of them would just rather earn f loads of money being mediocre on the US tour.

Is it because the Olympics simply had to have these prime examples of youthful manhood and womanhood on their roster displaying the athletic potential of the human form?

Let's have a look at Phil Mickelson.

Is it because the ancient sport of golf desperately needs the global attention of the Olympic Games or it will simply die out?

No, golf is always on telly.

It is on telly because old people can watch golf and it makes death seem more exciting.

So that remains the only possibility.

Is it for money?

Bingo!

The only reason I watch it is if golf is a fair reflection of the people who play it, in which case I believe the only people who should be allowed to enter the Olympics golf are businessmen on long lunches.

They should all be playing in full suits, half drunk, avoiding phone calls from their wives.

Golf has no more place in the Olympics than competitive kirken eating, speed murder or tennis.

It's a shambles.

Jack Roger, you come on the bugle and explain your thinking.

You are a disgrace.

Jesse Owens would be shitting himself in his grave.

Well that's it for the bugle.

In fact the Olympics brings us around to wrapping up last week's forecast, John, when it was whether Obama would get the Olympics for Chicago or whether he would be the worst president in American history.

And well...

Worst ever.

Worse than Nixon.

But then he's gone and won the Nobel Peace Prize.

Maybe the two were the...

The greatest American president has ever lived.

Better than Lincoln.

Maybe the Nobel Committee had realised that were there to be an Olympics in Chicago, it would lead to a world war.

And that Obama, by failing to win the Olympics this Chicago, has brought world peace.

Yes, that is exactly what's happened.

Well, it makes more sense than what has.

Well, that's it, buglers.

No forecast this week.

Tom's getting stropped because we've overrun.

So that's it.

Bye-bye.

Thanks for all your emails.

Do keep me coming in to the bugle that time.

Thank you for listening to that October 2009 Bugle.

A little more coherent than the average two-year-old, I'd say, but then I'm biased and we always see the best in our own offspring.

We will be back next week with a full episode, by which time I will be in Islamabad.

In the meantime, do enjoy everything else the Bugle Stable has to offer, including top stories from the Bugle archive and Alice Fraser's The Gargle, the glossy magazine's sister publication to the Bugle's remorselessly serious broadsheet newspaper.

And buy tickets for my forthcoming UK tour, the Zoltgeist available at andysaltzman.co.uk until next week buglers thank you for listening and 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.