We Shall Flounder On The Beaches

The Bugle, audio newspaper for a visual world.

Hello Buglers, and welcome to issue 4307 of the Bugle audio newspaper for a world that proves that while something may be visual, you don't always want to actually see all or indeed sometimes any of it.

I'm Andy Zoltzmann, the no-time world abattoir description champion.

It's like a luxury spa for animals but more dangerous.

Went out in the second round.

Lucky to make it through the first round on reflection but I was up against Rudy Giuliani who just said the election was stolen over and over again.

It is Monday the 17th of June as we record.

Although for the sake of editorial balance I should add that dates on which we didn't record include next Thursday, last Wednesday and the 18th of October 1482.

I'm joined this week by no members of the all-time top 50 classical composers list, no veterans of the early 18th century War of Spanish Succession, and none of the 12 people who have officially walked on the moon.

But even better, I am joined by two wonderful Bugle co-hosts joining me from Dublin.

It's Neil Delamere and from right here in London, Riya Lina.

Hello to both of you.

Hello.

I like that you said officially walked on the moon because let's just say things happened that aren't in the record books.

That's all I'm saying.

I mean, they needed somebody to scope it out.

And there was a a big, big push in the early 60s and late 70s for just continuing with a tradition of people called Neil who walked on the moon.

That's all I'm going to say.

NASA puts a lot of store in tradition.

I haven't walked on the moon officially or unofficially, but I do have a very close relationship with it as a woman.

Well, there we are.

That's basically I'm going to have to rewrite that start.

Basically, we now have two of the 14 people who've basically walked on the moon to all intents and purposes.

So

what a show

we have for you,

regrettably, here on this flawed planet of ours.

As I said, we are recording on the 17th of June.

On the 18th of June, 1812, the USA declared war on the United Kingdom.

Beginning the War of 1812, which overran a bit and didn't finish until 1815, historians remain split over exactly what started the war, but many now believed it was sparked by the American refusal to pronounce the H at the front of the word herbs, the correct definition of pants, the amount of clothes to wear on a spring break and the social etiquette of whooping in public.

If any of those proved to be true, not even close to being the silliest pretext for war in human history, sadly.

The result of the 1812 war was inconclusive and just hearing that a replay has now been scheduled for the year 2034.

222 years on for Richie Benno fans.

So that's quite exciting to have a nice Anglo-American war to look to look forward to.

Although, depending on what happens in the American election, that might be brought forward.

On the 18th of June 1940, Winston Churchill delivered his famous finest hour speech.

And we've been lucky recently to see some similarly glorious contributions to the canon of great British oratory by Churchill's successors as top-ranking Conservative politicians, including Grant Shaps's We're Absolutely Fs, Let's Just Give Up speech.

Jeremy Hunt's, we're going to have our arses handed to us on a plate, but do you really want to watch us have to eat those asses?

Vote Conservative.

And of course, Rishi Shunak's, we shall flounder on the beaches, we shall flounder in the hills, we shall fight in, sorry, we shall in-fight in the fields and the streets, and we have basically already surrendered.

So touching tributes to

their conservative predecessor.

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

This week, with the summer solstice upon us, it's a special midsummer section.

And we look at all the stories around the summer solstice, including could the summer solstice be cancelled next year?

People, according to opinion polls, are increasingly bored of solstices and the younger generation just prefer TikTok.

So it could be that this could be the last one.

We could see days and nights forced to be the same length the world over, which might be exciting for Equator fans, but not for others who enjoy a bit of seasonal variety in their clockwork.

And there are rumors that the Saudi Arabian government's public investment fund is lining up a big money bid for the entire month of June, which means that the summer solstice, as it is correctly known here in the northern hemisphere, hemisphere, could be moved to another month, such as May or July, the bookie's favourites, or even forced to merge with its longtime foe, the winter solstice.

So it's a really uncertain time

for midsummer at the moment.

And also, we look at whether the southern hemisphere could be forced to move its winter and summer seasons in line with the more popular northern hemisphere to create a global calendar that consumers find easier to relate to.

Also, with Midsummer upon us, we tell you how to home henge safely, safely including how to source reputable bluestone from a Welsh quarry without having to drag it hundreds of miles yourself to where you want it.

We'll tell you the leading delivery firms who are happy to deposit a 25 tonne 4 metre slab direct to your door and which will even install them in a solstice friendly alignment for a small extra charge.

And we give you advice on how to resolve disputes if the weight of your henge causes it to fall through your floor into the apartment below.

The key is to sound concerned and not use the phrase,

I never liked your ceiling fresco anyway, and you can always get a new cat.

They quite literally grow on trees.

So that section in the bin.

Yeah.

Do you hate it when your hench gets delivered to the place next door?

It's awful.

You know what I mean?

They left my capstone in the green bin the other day.

Ooh.

You can't leave Bluestone in the green bin.

No.

Yeah.

Like, you're taking a picture.

I don't want to see a picture of the capstone in the green bin.

I want my capstone

on whatever Stonehenge is because nobody knows, do they?

No, no, no, I don't.

Not really.

No.

Can you imagine if someone stole it off your porch?

How irritating would that be?

I know when we had ours delivered,

they didn't take a photo of it on the doorstep.

They druid.

Druid.

Druid.

Anyway, let's move.

Oh, and we're off.

Oh, God.

Off in so many ways.

Make it stop.

Make it stop after one.

Top story this week.

Moving swiftly on.

There are only two and a half weeks to go now until all of us,

all of you around the world, get to vote in the UK general election.

And I assume that wherever you are, buglers, you will do your bit for the nation that gave you the Bugle podcast to vote, even if you're not allowed to legally,

or to help us

start a new era with ideally a new government to make.

Because frankly, after 14 years of jokes about the current government, I think you want to change

as much as I do.

Neil, I assume you're going to vote in pretty much every constituency that's available.

I am.

Yeah, I've actually drive around from constituency to constituency, vote early and often, that's what they say.

I mean, there's parts of me that are sad, speaking on behalf of my people, Andy.

Sad as we will be to lose Rishi, the only Prime Minister whose name is an anagram of Irish,

which not enough people mention, it looks like he is going.

They're talking about basically

how to fund the manifestos.

I thought it was quite interesting.

Because it seems to be, right, the ways to do it is you borrow, right?

And obviously, Labour are going to be the next government, but it looks at things.

You borrow, so Labour have ruled that out.

You can increase taxes.

They've ruled out increasing taxes and working people, cutting public expenditure.

They don't want to do that.

They're relying on growth, but that's dependent on so many factors as to be unreliable.

There is a fifth way that they haven't talked about, and you can raise funds for genuine generational change, right?

So that's what you do: you issue government bonds.

Say you raise a hundred million, say 100 billion quid.

You walk into a Ladbrook's and you put that money down on the date of the next general election.

Easy.

It's easy.

Well, I mean, that's

increasingly popular, evidently.

So, I mean, mean this was referring to one of Rishi Sunak's advisors who placed a bet on when the general election would be, I think, three days before it was announced.

And this is one of Sunak's closest advisors.

And what appalls me about this story, Rhea, is not that this guy put the bet on when the vote would be, but the fact that he only put a hundred pounds on when I mean, if you're going to do something like that,

go in big, for f ⁇ 's sake.

As Neil was saying,

we could have secured the entire economic future of our country and he's put 100 quid on.

It's absolutely appalling.

I mean,

it exactly demonstrates why we can't trust the Tories with any kind of fiscal management because they just don't know how to do it.

I myself am actually just in the final stages of organizing a mortgage for a house that I've managed to raise the deposit on by betting that this episode is going out tomorrow.

And

it's actually a really lucrative way of making a bit of cash.

And I think more people should be doing it.

I think this whole election is fun.

I mean, these manifestos, 80 pages, 130 pages, it's crazy how they're all trying to do something with nothing because, you know, as Labor said to the Tories in a little note 14 years ago, there is no money.

There is no money.

I don't think the Tories are going to write the same note because we're not sure they know how to write.

But

we've got IFS's Paul Johnson instead, who's like the human version of that note, just going around left, right, and center going, this Nabani, that's not bad.

I think that at this point,

given what they're working with, do you know when you do a pub quiz and in the middle they have a creative round where they give you all like a pack of spaghetti and some blue tack and they go whoever can build the best structure wins?

That's what I'd be more interested in at this point.

I want to see Kier Starmer and Rishi with spaghetti and blue tack.

You make something out of that, then I'll believe you that

you can do something with our economy at this point.

I think that could possibly be the closest we've come to a coherent national infrastructure strategy, anyway.

Just two politicians playing with blue tech and spaghetti.

I mean, it would at least accurately reflect the way they're generally going about things anyway.

That'll be the next picture of Ed Davies when he's looking for some sort of, it'll just be him choking on the blue tech and accidentally trying to stick

the spaghetti to the wall instead.

Somebody have to Heimlich maneuver him.

Oh, he's so wacky.

Do not underestimate Ed Davies.

Out of all of the parties that are running for election, I think that the Lib Dems have the greatest chance of raising a bit of money because Ed Davey's been doing what, sponsored fun runs, sponsored swims, sponsored skis.

Like, as long as he's sponsored everything that he's done on this campaign, I think he'll raise a couple of billion by July 4th.

Will the next ad be him just going, have you been injured at an accident that worked?

That wasn't your fault.

Whereas Rishi's like, do you have gold at home that you could, you want to sell?

I've got some wallpaper in number 10 from the last guy.

It's proving to be a tricky campaign for the ruling Conservative Party and heavily ironic quote marks around each of those three words.

Can they pull a rabbit out of the hat at this stage or even a rabbi out of the hat or anything out of the hat that isn't just a steaming plate of horseshit out of the hat?

Because that doom-laden compromancy act is starting to wear a little bit thin with voters.

We just want Rishi out of the hat.

He's been sitting in there the entire time and we're like, Rishi, stand up, do some work.

The polls are now suggesting that whilst the Conservatives remain on course to do better than the naught percent of the vote that their performance in government truly merits, they are still heading for an electoral splatting that some are describing as an extinction-level event.

Now,

I would dispute this,

this way of describing it, extinction-level, because extinction is generally not the fault of the species suffering it.

You know, a a rogue asteroid clunking out the dinosaurs, not really the dinosaurs' fault.

The human desire for soft furnishings and meat-based snacks, that's seen off a fair few species in its time, not the fault of the species on the wrong end of that.

The cruel, cold fist of Mother Nature knocking a vulnerably edible species clean out of contention.

Again, not their fault.

I mean, the Conservatives have essentially been hurling asteroids at themselves.

stripping their own skin to make sofa coverings and eating their own arms, to put it in that context.

You're in the garage of democracy, feeding the exhaust fumes of the vote into the lungs of democracy as well.

And that's very much their own fault.

Do you think the DUP will ever, like, in Northern Ireland, will ever face something like this as well, if the demographics change so much?

But will not,

at least, the Conservatives know that it's an extinction-level event.

Because if you say to the DUP, this is an extinction-level event, and then point to the dinosaurs, which they don't believe in, how would you explain

what is going to happen to them?

I did like some of the stuff in the manifesto, so I like

the headline catching one in the labor manifesto is: I think it's probably putting vat on private schools

on the school fees.

So, I know you went to a private school, you've talked about it before on the show, Andy.

Yeah, I think you talked about it in Greek and Latin.

So,

I'm pretty sure you won't like private school.

I mean, why not?

But certain elements, particularly in the Daily Mail, are absolutely freaking out about this.

They're like, this is going to

cause untold damage to the independent school students.

Public school boys are going to have to buy own brand digestives for that game that I believe you play.

I was a day, people.

I never played that game.

Yeah, but they didn't call you Andy the Ames Altzman for nothing, did they?

Oh,

I just kept the stats.

Shots fired, folks.

Shocks fired.

That's what they said on the day as well.

Family show.

Family show.

There's now a replacement bus service going from platform nine and three quarters in King's Cross.

One kid from Eaton had to wear the top hat for Monopoly to the assembly.

It's carnage out there in the public school sector.

Carnage.

I wonder, because they can see it coming.

Because like you said, the dinosaurs didn't necessarily see it coming.

It was just some idiot who threw a rock into the air and thought it was a boomerang.

And then that's it.

The dinosaurs were done.

And I think that's kind of what we're seeing here.

The Trussasaurus

threw something up in the air and went, it's called Trickle Down.

It's called Trickle Down.

And it went,

it did more than trickle up.

But given that they can see it coming, do you think that in a couple hundred years, when archaeologists are digging through London, they're going to find like piles of Tories and old private members' club just huddling in a corner?

And that's how they died?

Well, it's the Conservatives' own personal Pompeii.

That's a

it's it's possible.

I mean, it's uh

to put it in context, so this is uh their manifesto, which they launched at Silverstone, the celebrity motor racing track,

which just invited, having already had events in Belfast at the Holland and Wolf dockyard where the Titanic was built.

I mean, they are

just not really giving journalists anything.

They're just providing, it's just too easy for them.

The priority conference is a crackator this year, isn't it?

At Silverstone, the work and pension secretary, Mel Stride, said he was all revved up and ready to go.

But it does seem that the Conservatives as a whole are as revved up as a dead goat in a Grand Prix, and that after the words ready to go, he forgot to add the words on a prolonged holiday.

So it's not going to up.

The manifesto contains no coherent statement of philosophy and with its retail offer of policies we surely cannot afford, has all the idealism of the Argos catalogue.

Now, those are not my words about the Conservative Manifesto.

Those are the words of the Conservative Telegraph columnist Tim Stanley.

Now,

that shows the level of trouble the Tories are in when

the Telegraph are essentially reviewing the Conservative Manifesto like a particularly stroppy Guardian journalist,

albeit not necessarily

for the same reasons.

But

it's a tough sell.

It's a tough sell for them.

The Telegraph is so despairing of what's going on.

They've allowed Nigel Farage to write an entire diatribe calling out Lord Cameron.

Yes.

Like, that's how desperate they are for something that makes sense,

is that they're willing to publish that.

Yes.

Nigel Farage.

Wouldn't it be incredible if

he was the opposition leader?

Can you see that Keir Starmer doing question times with Nigel Farage, and he's got a pump, you know, a beer pump at the dispatch box.

And they'd have to make it milkshake-proof, right?

Check everyone before they come in.

I mean,

it is possible.

The reform could have the second highest share of the vote, but still only

one or two MPs, thanks to the glorious wonders of our

18th to 19th century electoral system.

They have suggested one policy that I think could prove very popular with a certain stipulation, a one-in-one-out migration quota.

That if we are allowed to vote for the ones going out and we can nominate Nigel Farage,

I think that might actually work

as a broad vote winner, but it is a bit of a risky door to open.

But we did that for years.

We kept voting for him to be an MEP in Brussels.

We're like, go over there.

Just go over there.

Just sit in the back over there.

Don't come over here with your stuff.

Go over there.

And then he managed to successfully talk himself out of a job, and now he's in our political system.

Well, welcome to the 2020s.

Yes.

Enjoy it while it lasts.

I hate to break it to you, but it was actually the the Tories that came in with the one-in-one-out system in the first place.

I don't know if you've noticed that.

They still have it in this manifesto, actually.

This idea that they're going to hire 92,000 more nurses, 28,000 more doctors.

If you remember, they were quite proud of the fact that they hired 20,000 more police officers over the last 14 years, but they did that by firing 20,000 police officers when they first came into office in the first place.

So they already, I mean, this is what they think recycling is, which is why their green policies are so ridiculous.

We're going to do carbon capture.

Really?

You're going to capture the carbon that you've put out there in the first place by allowing fracking and continued fossil fuel use?

So I think that this is why Nigel Farage wants to join with the Tories.

They are the same beast.

There's a part to me that's like, he failed to get elected as an MP seven times and he's still running again.

Even Elizabeth Taylor stopped getting married at some point.

This is a man.

He's so inflammatory, he's banned from Cruft because everything he says is a dog whistle.

It's just, you know, when football fans shine a laser into the opposition players' eyes, putting them, you know, trying to put them off, taking the penalty.

That's what Farage is at one man and his dog.

You know, that show, if you're watching your border colleague going, come by, come by.

And Farage is just in the corner going, immigrants, hashtag the field is full.

He's just,

how does anyone trust this man?

Imagine him at the G7.

G7 is a moving battleship for Farage.

A game he wants to play with real battleships if you look at his immigration comments.

How do people vote for this dude it gets even weirder because he's standing in clackton the incumbent Tory MP was the actor who played the vicar in the sitcom bread the one that was in the 80s that was really good we used to watch it so how do we even begin to explain that when he was the religious one in bread different groups obviously watched it differently so protestants believe that he was symbolically the vicar in the show but catholic catholics believe he actually transformed into the vicar in the show

we're half an hour in that's the first transubstantiation, consubstantiation joke, Andy.

But if I wasn't bringing that sort of stuff, that's not, I wouldn't be on the show.

One paper crowed that reform has almost as many TikTok followers as Labour.

And you're going, wow.

Well, if there's one thing that's going to convince the majority demographic in Clacton, it is TikTok, isn't it?

It's who am I going to vote for?

Well, I don't know how to make up my mind.

I wonder what that Chinese-owned youth-skewing social media platform thinks.

Maybe I'll go with them for fuck's sake.

Do you know,

it came up on my feed.

Nigel Farage is on TikTok, and he's irritatingly good at it.

It's really disturbing.

Compared to every Rishi Sunak attempt at social media has been a massive fail.

And if you only,

only were introduced to Nigel Farage via TikTok, You'd vote for the guy.

You'd be like, he's charming.

He's got a sense of humor.

He likes to drink with the lads.

What's not to like?

Yeah, I don't know if he'll ever get over when people sent got him to do

cameo messages and he went up the ra accidentally for

some money.

Um, I can't remember what we talked about that um on the Bugle, I think.

I can't remember what his charge for a cameo message was.

I mean, obviously, it didn't involve any research into the words he was being asked to say and uh the potential um historical implications uh thereof.

But um, I don't know if I mean, does he?

I mean, essentially, because he'll reform UK,

he wasn't their leader.

I don't know if they're paying him every time.

Are they paying him his standard cameo rate every time he makes a

I mean, if he is a if he is the official leader of the opposition in parliament, which is you know vaguely plausible, or at least, you know, if his party gets the second most votes and he appoints himself as the de facto leader of the opposition, will he just stand there in parliament until someone pays him the 75 pounds or whatever you need to get him to talk

but they can't get into government though they can't they can't get into government no they no but but but but they can't even really get into the the main opposition party because like they don't because of the first pass the post system so all he can do is damage other parties ability to win seats i.e the tories so it basically imagine tyson fury fighting anthony joshua and five minutes in the referee just starts punching the shit out of fury like what are are you doing?

You can't possibly win this fight.

Yeah, but I can stop his chance of winning the fight.

That's what it is.

All he can do is damage

other people's chances and sway them a certain way, politically, after he leaves.

Or maybe Willie's there.

Oh, sorry, just on Farage, I can confirm it's £70

or 90 euros for a cameo.

And he hasn't stopped doing it during the campaign.

Yesterday, he did three Father's Day messages.

Oh, isn't that lovely?

All for Boris Johnson.

He needed to do another five, didn't he?

Surely.

Nobody knows how many he has.

He's only doing a third of his kids this year, Chris, is that it?

So, but this has become that now the Conservatives' main campaign angle is to try to warn people that if they vote for reform, they will be giving what they call a super majority to Labour.

Grant Schapp's Defeatism Today magazine's Person of the Week, multiple times in recent months, warned this.

I mean, I guess there are a number of other ways the Conservatives could have stopped Labour getting a super majority, amongst which were changing the electoral system that they've always supported, that enables parties to get super majorities, and which they were eerily quiet about when, for example, Margaret Thatcher had successive super majorities, or they could have done anything vaguely f ⁇ ing competent in the last 14 years.

Those are two things that they could have done.

Two clubs that were in their hypothetical golf bag, which they essentially doused in petrol and set on fire, which I believe Rory McElroy might have done to his golf bag this morning as well.

Well, in summary, as we conclude our UK election section, we're all fed,

but there is a glimmer of hope that we might start to be slightly less f.

Ukraine peace news now and it still hasn't entirely happened.

We have to reveal that now.

What are we now near?

Almost

heading towards two and a half years into Vladimir Putin's,

I don't know how you'd describe it, deep personal psychological crisis inflicted on the rest of the world.

Optimism, of course, is an increasingly niche hobby on this planet.

And it's not had a great year again.

And over the last week, there was a summit in Switzerland.

More than 90 countries and global institutions attended.

And at the end of it, a document emerged.

So it wasn't totally pointless.

It was a document.

And it was signed by 80 of the 90 countries present.

And the document stated, we believe that reaching peace requires the involvement of and dialogue between all parties.

So well done for bothering to write that down.

I mean, if it took, I don't know, 90 countries and a summit to come up with that, that's I mean, there were other things in the document, but I mean, that that is that doesn't bode overly well for the Ukraine crisis to be instantly resolved.

Sadly, it hasn't resolved itself yet.

And this, despite a very high number of Western politicians wearing blue and yellow clothes and jewellery to show their implacable support for Ukraine.

Sadly, Vladiputils has not seen the error of his brutal ways and withdrawn with a humble apology and a pledge to work on making myself a better me.

This despite

tennis players from Russia and Belarus being forced to play without their national flag next to their name on TV graphics.

I don't know what more could have been done by the international community.

And sadly, there remains no solution to this vast and unfathomable tragedy because while Pootsy, it appears is not a man who responds well to constructive criticism and other people's suggestions.

And because whilst the majority of the world supports Ukraine, getting involved in wars with no foreseeable end, it's just not as popular as it once was.

It's just become a bit...

tainted as a brand, as an idea, despite the boost that it gives to the poetry industry.

So it's,

yeah, it's not looking too promising despite this.

ReRC, you're up in literally up in arms about this.

I think you've hit the nail on the head.

It's a simple branding issue.

If they called it the Hundred Years' War, then they'd know what they're getting into.

If we just rebrand it to the two and a half-year Ukraine-Russian conflict, then I think more people would be like, oh, yeah, there's only six months left on that.

I'll jump in.

I mean, isn't that what the Americans did in World War II?

They waited a couple of years and then went, okay,

now we'll come in.

Well, yes, but

you you mentioned the Hundred Years' War.

That, of course, went over its deadline by, I don't know, 15 to 20 years.

We mentioned the 1812 war earlier on.

Right.

That overran by over two years.

So, I mean, it doesn't always work, you know.

But I'd take your point.

Yeah, but we need to.

On the other side of that, though, the never-ending story, that film, that only lasted a couple of hours.

Yeah.

Yeah.

So it can go both ways, I guess.

It can go both ways.

And you make light of the Belarusian and Russian players not having their national flags beside them when they're playing tennis.

But how how else would you explain their doubles loss to the Dalai Lama and an Alpaca gun and a bobstead run?

So, you know, you can't have it always.

This, I mean, I get why the summit was in Switzerland.

That makes logical sense.

A country that is famously neutral and, you know, not involved in the wars for hundreds of years.

They are talking about having a follow-up summit in Saudi Arabia.

Now, I mean,

I know they do sports washing and greenwashing, but peace washing is a brand new one on me.

What are Zelensky's aides thinking well we need to convince the whole world that everyone has to get behind Ukraine like the whole world yeah yeah but not not women and gays well no no not women and gays come on

it was kind of like Eurovision though wasn't it like

all the countries you knew how all the countries were going to vote and you know they the ones that stuck together going in were the ones that stuck together in in the in the the statement as well.

I would have liked just one bit of an upset.

Like, you know, they're all sitting around the table and a note gets passed around, and someone's like, wow, okay.

Belgium says, nuke that Russian.

Okay, Tay Tin.

I didn't see that one coming.

Some guy dressed as Arcule Perot at the end.

It's the quiet ones you least expect it from.

Just flicking a lighted match over his shoulder.

I have gathered you here today.

First of all, can I just say Vladipoodles?

I'm using that.

Okay.

You've never heard.

Love that.

Vladipoodles.

Yeah.

I actually miss Humsey Wumsey from Scotland simply because he had such a great nickname.

Let's move on to Ireland news now and a story, Neil, which could have been the greatest episode of Scooby-Doo ever made.

This is exceptional.

Well, let you tell the story.

Ah, okay.

There is a woman who is awaiting sentencing because she continued to claim her father-in-law's pension for 28 years after he died.

So, if he was alive, he would have been 110 years of age.

I would put it to you, you're going to get caught.

If he's 110, you are going to get caught.

If you're being investigated by the police, the social welfare, and the Guinness Book of Records, you are going to get caught.

If you look at your window and Norris McWhirther is in a surveillance van on your street, that

is an indication of you going to get caught so the welfare people eventually turned up right because what happened was this amateur gerontologist which i didn't even know was a thing went oh there's a guy who's 110 in this small town i haven't heard of him yeah why why haven't i heard of him and they contacted orson uctaron which is where the president lives big house where the president lives used to be the vice regal lodge and because they gave out money to people who hit a hundred and they went okay yeah but we've given out the coin which is this two and a half grand coin uh so then they went to contact the welfare people.

The welfare people then went and had an inspection.

She tried to dissuade them.

She finally relents.

They walk up into the bedroom.

There's a man in the bed.

He still has his shoes on.

Of course he does.

He's 110, but he has his shoes on in case he has to go somewhere.

And she says, oh, that's him.

He's deaf and confused.

And it was her husband.

Now, if you can ignore the absolute mind-melt of that request, where she looks and needs you to pretend to be your father in bed, that is that that's just not right that's an oedipus electric psychological situation that we can't visit and what an insult to him here you look 110 get up into that bed so he lies in the bed and uh of course they get caught and uh so now they're waiting because the woman is 73 um and they're waiting for her to be sentenced the judge has said you know it you've

you've taken 270 grand it's the equivalent of about 400 grand actually um so i don't know what i'm going to do um

we're gonna see about this how

how do you expect to get away with this is my question when do you think that you will end it

because it's like you rub a bank you you leave the bank you know you wash the money whatever but he's like you have to fake a death or something

you're gonna damn

can i answer that yeah

so what amazed me about this story was once they realized that it was unlikely that there was a 110 year out there still claiming his pension, how hard and how long it took them to find out that he was definitely dead.

I think that's the answer.

First, they went and they went for a visit, then she wouldn't let them in, then they came back again.

Then there's a man in there, but they went, he doesn't look like him, but we, you know, we have no way to DNA test him, we have no way to age him.

Oh, he's wearing shoes.

That's probably a sign.

Then they went to his, to the, the, um,

grave park.

What's that called?

Cemetery.

Cemetery.

Then they went to this.

It sounds so much more fun.

Oh, let's go to the grave park.

Can we just, can we 100% lay it down?

This is where you get a job at Disney.

Yeah, this, this.

Then they went to the cemetery.

They found a grave in it.

They found his name on the gravestone.

They went, oh, but we don't know that he's in there.

Then they went to

the dead makeup man.

Oh, what's the name of that?

The funeral guy.

The dead makeup man.

Undertaker?

Undertaker.

Yeah, that's a wrestler.

Don't be an idiot.

There was a wrestler called the dead makeup man as well, to be fair.

Maybe it's Maybelline.

Maybe he's previously deceased.

Then they went to him anyway.

Yeah, no, I do have a record of doing his makeup from like 30 years ago.

So it took them so long to just prove that he was dead.

She kind of deserves the amount of money that she claimed in the time between when they suspected something and they finally proved he was dead.

Surely.

I don't want to say that this is a trend, right?

But, and this is a slight aside.

I had to, given that they're 110, I had to renew my father's driver's license last year, right?

Now he's 88

and I had to pick his date of birth from a drop-down menu.

The earliest date of birth that you can pick for somebody renewing their driver's license in the Republic of Ireland was the 1st of January 1873.

You know, for all those 150-year-old drivers that you see, you know, when you pull up to a roundabout and there's a giant tortoise driving a Nissan mica in front of you.

I'm not even joking.

That was the earliest date you could pick.

1873.

What I liked about

her efforts to sort of talk her way out of it, saying, as you say, you know, a man in bed with shoes on.

I mean, there's a kinky niece for everything, but shoes in bed, I think that does arouse suspicions.

But when she said, here he is, he is deaf and confused.

Now, the problem she has with that is that in the past, that might have elicited some sympathy.

But nowadays, we know that being deaf and confused doesn't necessarily stop you getting out of bed and, for example, running for president of the USA.

So it's not quite the gambit that I think she thought it was.

And in fairness, he was only 110.

I mean, Biden.

Yeah.

Can I just say that in the UK,

they didn't actually start issuing driver's licenses until 1903.

So, and apparently in Ireland, they said that the driving test was introduced in the mid-1960s.

In 1979, they just handed out driving licenses to people who failed the driving test as there was such a backlog.

Yeah, well, I'll put it this way.

I think we can boil this down to if the person you're applying for the test is older than the idea of the car.

Yeah.

That's maybe

a drop-down menu that you can shorten a little bit.

I guess.

Yeah.

Also, I mean, it's 28.5 years that she claimed his pension, and the total value was 271,000 euros.

That does show that's

not a lot of pension flying around.

That's less than 10,000 euros a year.

But

anyway,

well done for trying.

It's still higher than the UK pension, by the way.

Yeah, but

here in Britain we just have the joyous spiritual nourishment of being British and having the Union Jack flag and the queen and/or kings faces on our money.

And we don't actually need to have any of that money.

You're warmed by the memory of your empire.

That's right.

Yeah.

And we don't live to 110 either.

Yeah.

We choose to enjoy that toasty glow of nostalgia.

Who needs insulation when you once had the raj?

Space news now.

And for those of you who thought there weren't enough stars in the sky, good news, because NASA is going to put more stars in the sky.

They're going to put an artificial star in the sky, in orbit, which is quite exciting.

It means we can achieve space travel to the stars much more easily if we just put stars closer.

It's a classic, classic bit of problem solving from NASA.

The satellite, apparently,

will

shine lasers at ground-based telescopes, enabling astronomers to fine-tune their instruments and potentially leading to great advances in the study of the universe.

The satellite will be quotes, and this is a direct quote from the article about the size of a proverbial bread box.

Now, what proverb has a bread box in it?

I don't...

Pandora.

Not a proverbial.

That's not what I'm putting.

Bread box?

Don't know but she didn't open that bread box.

Pandora.

It might have gluten in it.

All those world's fears and some sourdough would get out of it.

That was my own cynicism because I did check

the global collection of proverbs from all cultures, and there are a number of proverbs with bread boxes in it, including a bread box is a coffin when the baguette becomes stale.

Are we learning?

When the chicken sleeps in the bread box, the egg sandwich wakes at dawn.

That was from the Bible.

A bread box is a palace in the mind of a croissant.

And a puppy in the bread box is worth two kittens in a mop bucket.

So there are, you know, so you can have a proverbial bread box.

Bread box is just an oven.

Really?

I couldn't think of the word earlier on.

That's all it was.

Will this bread box star mimic our sun and rise in the yeast?

Strong.

You're so gluten intolerant, Andy, by the way.

I think I...

I'm worried now.

I'm genuinely worried about everything we think we know about our universe.

Because if we can stick a bread box in the sky and make it mimic a star, are we the idiots that have actually been analyzing other alien bread boxes thinking that we're super clever?

You know, and that when we've gotten to the point, they'll all be watching us going, oh, they got to the bread box stage.

Will this affect astrology then?

Will this like it?

Well, you're a Capricorn.

Well, because there's extra stars in the sky.

I'm a bread box.

I tell it like it is, and I just want to be held.

We really match Geminis.

This is only to calibrate our instruments on Earth.

That's all it is.

And it's going to cut because it shines lasers out and then we can point our telescopes at it and we can figure out how far away things are.

And it's going to cost 19 million quid.

Do you know when you're driving down a motorway and a fella who's driving a van with

a ladder out the back of it has tied a rag to it so you can judge the distance to us?

Yes.

That's what this is.

I mean, I'm pretty sure that's not how it was pitched by NASA, but

it's essentially what it is.

Yeah.

Yeah, apparently the eight lasers will enable it to mimic almost any type of star or supernova.

We all know how this ends.

This ends with an evil trillionaire tycoon turning the entire sky into a giant web of ray gun death lasers, and the world only being safe by a hunky young man and a pretty young woman who didn't get on initially but have fallen in love against the odds, running somewhere in the nick of time.

I would ask you: is that worth the risk?

That's Elon Musk's next biography.

And finally, sports news now and mayhem in the world of competitive eating.

Joey Chestnut, the undisputed Mohammed Ali of speed hot dog eating, the self-styled Da Vinci of Devouring, the Graham Gooch of gluttonous guzzling, the Frank Sinatra of face stuffing has been kicked out of the world's leading hot dog gluttonizing contest after signing a promotional deal with a vegan hot dog maker.

I mean, this has got to be one of the biggest controversies in the entire history of sport, wouldn't you say?

His record, and indeed the world record, is 76 hot dogs in 10 minutes.

He can eat a hot dog in 7.89 seconds.

Now, the world record for 100 meters is 9.58 seconds, which is really more impressive, I would ask you.

Which is, which is,

you know, I mean, if when he got that record, the headline wasn't Chestnut Conquest, I will be very, very upset.

He...

is deeply talented.

He is the natural enemy of the pig.

If Animal Farm ever does happen, Joey is first against the wall.

What a level of commitment does he have to have for that, though?

Like, I just imagine the commentator, of course, Joey is the first competitive eater to engage in tongue shaving to make more room in the mouth.

Known by all in MLE as the Pelican.

He really is the dominant force as a governing body.

He always drug tests a competitor who is as dominant as Joey after each competition, but he has eaten 76 hot dogs, so the urine test could be sometime.

He

is nominated by, so he's sponsored by a vegan brand.

So so that's why he's not allowed in the

Nathan's competition.

It's not the partnership I thought he would be.

What a massive waste of talent if he doesn't do gay porn.

Sorry.

I mean, the man can gobble down 38 feet of sausages in 10 minutes.

That's three snooker tables worth of cock in 10 minutes.

He's keeping it family friendly.

I'm avoiding all of those references.

He could literally look at even an over-dick ceiling and pluck those fleshy stalactites out of the sky.

Oh,

um, um, Andy was in a band called The Fleshy Stalactites.

That's why he was doing the reference.

Yeah, yeah.

Dude, it seems weird that you would go for sponsorship from a vegan alternative because surely, like halfway through that, if you were doing it with vegan hot dogs, you'd run out of energy to even finish.

You know what I mean?

I don't know.

It just money's money.

Do you know what they win after eating 20,000 calories in 10 minutes?

A belt.

Which I think is just taking a piss, isn't it?

I mean, he's a truly extraordinary figure in World Sports, 16-time winner of the hot dog eating contest.

He's eaten 76 hot dogs in 10 minutes, but he was still hungry.

182 chicken wings in half an hour, but he was still hungry.

141 boiled eggs in 8 minutes.

25 and a half chock ices in 6 minutes.

And 23 meat pies in 10 minutes.

And after a rough night, one nice green leaf, after which he was fine again.

I hope he didn't fly home from the egg eating contest.

Can you imagine if they actually scanned him at the airport?

They'd be like, this man's full of drugs.

Imagine having to explain that.

Imagine having to go into a small room and have them just one by one tell you, no, it's a hard-boiled egg, it's not a condom.

No, that's also a hard-boiled egg.

No, that's a hard boil.

No, I thought, sorry, babe.

I thought that, you know, in fact, that's the best way to smuggle drugs, is to eat 181 hard-boiled eggs and one condom full of drugs, and then challenge them to find it.

What a kinder surprise that would be.

Anyway, a huge disappointment in the speed eating community.

Disappointing for Chestnut not to be able to share his god gift and gullatry with his adoring public.

Disappointing for them not to see their hero do what he does best, be a metaphor for the boundless idiocy of our great species.

Sad for everyone.

Honestly, there are no wieners in this story.

Wow, we went all that way.

On that note, we need to end this bugle before anything disastrous happens.

You mean as a podcast or just this episode?

To be honest, if that was our bar for ending the podcast, it would have ended several hundreds times by now.

Thank you for listening to this week's Bugle Plugs Time.

My tour show is now on sale.

Tickets available to all the gigs, of which there are about 45 on my newly revamped website, andyesaltsman.co.uk or dot com.

I can't remember, but look it up, you'll find it.

Neil, anything to plug?

Yeah, I'm doing the Edmund Fringe Festival, doing the Pleasant Theatre, and I'm doing a few dates around the UK as well.

Wardrobe Theatre in Leeds, Hotwater in Liverpool, and the Stand in Newcastle.

So they're all available on neildelamere.com.

Yes, I'm also doing Ed Fringe, only for four days, the 12th to the 15th.

Annoyingly, I'm not showing up on the website, but I am on the Gilded Balloon website.

But just keep an eye on my website.

Come see that, please.

That's the new show because I'm only like six, seven shows out from this tour that started in 1873.

I'm just about finishing it now.

So I'm working on the next one.

So please come to Edinburgh and see the new stuff.

Thank you for listening, Billas.

Our next show will be the live show at the Bloomsbury Theatre, which we are performing and recording on Sunday, the 23rd of June.

Some tickets still available on the internet.

See you all there.

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 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.