The Reverse Raymond Briggs

The Bugle, audio newspaper for a visual world.

Hello Buglers, I am Andy Zoltzmann and welcome to issue 4304 of The Bugle, not only the world's leading and only audio newspaper for a visual world, but also the universe's sole remaining source of A.

Independently verifiable bullshit, B, coded messages about the forthcoming rapture any day in the next 120,000 years, I'm told.

Sorry, that was supposed to be in code.

And above all, C.

Subliminal hair and fashion tips.

If you play this episode backwards, you will find out how to make your hair be as lusciously receded as mine.

And you'll also find out the best parts of your body to use trousers on.

It's the 24th of May 2024.

I'm in the shed of Incorrigible Truth here in South London.

And if I open the door, what can you hear?

Hang on, I'll just open the door.

There, it's the sound of democracy in the London air.

For we are now just six short, actually long weeks away from the uncaking of the sacred milkshake of democratic freedom once again.

We will load that milkshake into a water pistol and we will squirt it into the eyeballs of destiny, so to speak, because here in Britain, it's election time and joining me to analyze exactly what the ancient Greeks have unwittingly unleashed on us mid-2020s United Kingdomians, I'm joined by two people that I have voted personally onto the bugle this week.

Joining me from Glasgow, it's seasoned voter Josie Lon.

Hello, Josie.

Hello, my pencil is ready and my fingers are itchy, but that's irrelevant.

It's contact dermatitis.

And

joining us from Australia to provide the balanced perspective, only possible if you're almost as far away as it's possible to be without getting all Neil Armstrong about it.

It's Tom Ballard.

Hello, Tom.

Are you excited about our election?

Are you going to vote?

Are you going to vote here?

I'm going to vote early and I'm going to vote often, Andy.

I've got election fever, although there could just be my long COVID kicking in, or perhaps the consequences of the last time I was in the UK when I drank some of your shit water.

Maybe, I don't know, it's hard to tell.

But I mean, truly, truly thrilling.

Thrilling times here.

We are recording on the 24th of May.

On this day in 1607, Jamestown, the first permanent English colony in North America, was founded, thus beginning the slow decline of America as a nation.

The settlement, of course, founded by fans of the time-travelling British rock band James, best known for their 1990s hit albums and singles such as Sit Down, but who were also huge on the late Elizabethan circuit and had a massive number one in 1602 with Love Me Like a Potato, cashing in on the popularity of the newfangled vegetable.

On the 25th of May 1925, the Scopes trial

took place in Tennessee.

John T.

Scopes was indicted for teaching human evolution

in Tennessee, which was not allowed at the time.

And fair enough, 99 years on now.

Still no confirmed scientific evidence that human evolution has reached large parts of Tennessee.

On the 26th of May in the year 946, King Edmund I of England was slain to death in a feast-based scuffle in a place called Pucklechurch, just off the M4 near Bristol.

Disappointing for for the lad to be violently de-kinged at the age of just 25.

1078 years ago on Monday.

Still miss him.

Still in our hearts.

Edmund I.

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

This week, well, after a controversial new portrait of Kate or Catherine, the princess of, I think, Wales, was criticised for, how to put this sensitively, looking like it was done by someone someone who was shit at painting.

We bring you exclusive audio portraits of the British royal family, including King ex-Prince Charles.

Went like the absolute blooming fire, he did.

Here now is our portraits of Catherine, the Dutch Princess of Cornwales.

We're still updating the profiles.

And that is a quite tremendous goal by Matthews, dancing in from the wing and kicking the ball into the net.

It's 2-0 to Blackpool.

Here is our official portrait of Prince Andrew.

Redacted.

And finally, our portrait of Elspring Trevell, the Duke of Snutterbridge, 215th in line to the throne.

So there you go, those are the portraits.

Are they accurate?

Are they realistic?

Does it matter?

Do they express the inner truth of their subjects?

That's not for me to judge.

That section in the bin.

Top story this week, it's election time here in the UK.

Rishi Sunak has taken the bold move of taking the cowardly decision to call a general election early.

Josie,

I mean, we've shared general elections together.

We were on stage together in, I think, 2015 when the election result came out.

Oh, a great night.

We were all so thrilled to see the Labour government we'd expected.

Behind, you know, quite a nice Unity candidate.

To be honest, he probably would have done a good job.

Be routed unexpectedly by the Conservatives promising Brexit.

And let me say, it's been uphill all the way ever since.

We've gone from strength to strength.

I mean, as you say, history suggests that you can never take a Conservative defeat for granted.

And Labour can always pull some sensational

things

out of its bag to lose election.

But with pretty much everything in Britain in a state of some combination of atrophy, mould, stasis, and advanced disintegration, It's gonna it's it's a tough sell for for the Tories, uh, would you not say?

It is, and it was very funny to see Rishi Sunak coming out.

Um, firstly, when he goes, it's gonna be very sad, those are some small shoes to fill, and

it's the only joke I've written about him, and it's so cheesy, and I can't stop myself.

Um,

to see him coming out, and even he had to give a sort of four-minute recap of his past glories.

Like, no, guys, no, I mean, some of you will be looking at your bank balance thinking, this is not very good,

but what you don't know is how much worse things can get

underneath.

The thing that really, really tickled me, there were two things.

Firstly,

at 9 a.m., the government released a new website telling us that what we really need to do is stockpile drinking water and canned food for inevitable emergencies and told us we all should be preparing for threats of multifarious kinds and then at 5 p.m Rishi Sinak came out and said that he'd made us safer than ever before.

I don't want to know what happened in that day.

That's the most successful work day I've ever seen in my life.

In the morning

we are

in the morning we are where the wind blows and by 5 p.m.

we're the snowman.

It's a reverse Raymond Briggs.

Oh there we go.

It's very simple Josie.

People are criticizing this.

It's just two very simple messages.

Okay, message number one was: Give us another five years in government, please.

Message two was, Judgment Day is nigh.

For the love of God, start stockpiling food, or you'll be trapped in your bunker with your children, and you'll be faced with a horrible choice.

But again, just reiterating message number one: everything's going very well.

Let's just maintain our current course, steady as she goes.

Tom, can I just ask, is there a chance that I could vote for the bunker instead of Kirstalma's labor?

Because then I'm interested.

Well he's just it'd be just as hollow.

I would also say the other thing I really loved was there was Steve Bray,

Westminster's most famous loud guy.

And he was playing very loudly Things Can Only Get Better, which was Labour's iconic 1997 theme song.

And when he was interviewed about it, this is how much people hate the Tories but don't like Keir Starmer.

Even the man outside Parliament playing Things Can Only Get Better, when asked about it, said, No, I I didn't do it to support Labour, I just knew it would annoy the Tories.

Like, mate, you're you're at Westminster playing the song and you're not interested.

And then I researched it and I found out that so I didn't really know this because I was 14 years old in 1997, casting directors, I wasn't even born.

And I

I found out that up until 1997, the election anthem of Labour was the red flag.

And Tony Blair, to modernise it, changed it to things can only get better.

And there's something slightly obscene about that.

Like, it's so degrading to take something that's like this very solid,

dignified song about the people's aspirations and change it to Deerim.

But I was a bit like...

We should change the national anthem to New Rules by Dewey Leeper.

And just do it next year.

No announcement.

I mean, I think we should just change the national anthem to absolutely anything that it isn't currently.

So, you know, a bit of a duel.

Why not?

You know, it has to be better than what we currently have.

I mean, Sunak is not blessed with a gift for communication and rhetoric.

So it was always going to be a bit of a...

an awkward speech.

But then the fact that he sort of basically sold himself

as someone who has a plan compared with Labour, who he claims has no plan, and then making a speech in pouring rain without an umbrella

whilst being trolled, as you say, by a Labour political anthem before turning away and walking away from the cameras drenched and alone.

That was not the ideal way to launch his campaign.

Tom, I know you are an absolute master of manipulating public discourse

and public relations.

What did you make of it in terms of the optics of basically showing yourself to be literally the wettest prime minister we've ever had?

Well, I think you've got this completely wrong, Andy, you stupid idiot.

This is an absolute political masterstroke.

Announcing a British election whilst being drowned by British rain.

This is genius.

This is appealing to the two main traditional British values, miserableness and wetness.

Okay, he's really getting in there.

The only way Senate could have better embodied everything that Britain is about is if he'd made the announcement in the rain out in front of Dun 10, standing atop the Elgin Marbles, all while under suspicion of being heavily involved in an international human trafficking ring.

Okay, the Blue Wall would have absolutely eaten that shit up.

But as it is, I thought he did really very well.

Yeah.

He then went to Wales and asked people if they were looking forward to a football tournament that Wales hasn't qualified for.

So I mean it's not

been an absolutely

classic start.

It is a difficult sales pitch for Suna.

I know we live in an age of in-the-moment sluggings off, unshiftable cynicism and instantaneous but non-negotiable judgments.

But I think 14 years in office is a reasonable body of work on which to judge a government.

14 years in which the main achievements they're trying to market themselves on are a temporary, partial and barely perceptible economic upnudge in the last week.

The Rwanda scheme, a ludicrously expensive, inefficient, immoral and unpopular policy that won't actually have started by the time of the election anyway and doesn't deal with the issue it claims to be dealing with in the first place.

And the somewhat bold claim after this elongated period of reactive chaoticism that the opposition has no plan.

It's

it's it's a tough it's a tough sell.

You know, I've been in positions where I've found myself, you know, knowing that I have nothing to offer to an audience, but I know that I'm going to be offstage in 20 minutes and the echoes of their hostility and booze will soon fade.

But Sunak has to try and do this now for six.

I mean, how's it going to?

What myxomatotic rabbits are the Tories going to dredge out of their rotten flea-infested hat, Josie?

What are they going to, how are they going to try and sell themselves to us?

They have nothing.

And every time I see Mishi Sunak, I think to myself, you are so rich.

You are so rich.

Why are you doing this?

And then I just think, like, is this Westworld?

Has he paid to do this for a laugh?

And of course he's going to fuck the country because if you were paying to do it, you'd be like, I'll poison the water.

Like, whenever people play The Sims, it's like, put them in the swimming pool.

Get them to walk around.

See how it goes.

And then I think, he's so rich.

Is this his humiliation kink?

Like, he was like, oh, I'll be the leader now.

I won't be the leader when we're thriving.

Get me me in.

And then I think, like, he's so rich, he could literally do anything with his life.

He's so rich, he could be the Prime Minister of Monaco.

I mean, he could just walk around the country handing out 20 pound notes to people.

That might be his best.

He's that rich.

He's so rich that every day of this election, he could give away a million pounds to somebody in England, and his finances wouldn't really take that much of a hit.

It's six weeks.

What's that?

4

six times 7 is 42.

His personal fortune, am I right?

I think it's 700 million pounds or is that his wife?

Well, it's more his wife, I think, although I think he's done pretty well.

You're married.

And what's she going to do?

If they give away a million pounds, if they give away £10 million a day for the next 42 days, I'd argue they wouldn't really feel the pinch.

And I would consider voting Tory.

Do you know what I mean?

If everyone had a chance of £10 million every day, they could do it for the first three months of office.

Right.

Honestly, it's a good policy.

We've had some extraordinary things said on the Google over the 16 and a half years we've been doing it.

But you, Josie Long, saying you would consider voting Tory, I think we've set a...

That's a new high.

I'm just saying, if Rishi Sunak agrees to give up every single penny of his wealth, every single day, giving away, let's say, a million pounds every day for the first two years in office, I would consider that proposal.

And then at the end,

Madame Guillotine.

So it's a good idea, it's a strong.

Strong raft.

Okay.

Yeah.

The irony being, of course, he won't be rich enough to be guillotined and all the people he's throwing the money away to.

You've thought this through to an frankly alarming level.

Tom, have you got any advice to the Conservatives

how they can win them when they are

over 20 percentage points down in the opinion polls.

It seems that they have no cards to play.

I mean, what what do you think they they can do?

What what policies could they thrust in our direction?

A recent Ipsos poll found that 84% of British voters are dissatisfied with the way the government is running the country.

And I guess the Tories have decided that they should strike now to wave to ride this wave of popularity to electoral victory.

And it makes sense.

I've experienced British customer service.

I'd say an 84% dissatisfaction rate is pretty good for you guys.

That's like the biggest one of.

But in that same poll, they found that 10% of voters are satisfied with how this current government is running the country, which really goes to show how bad the mental health crisis is affecting people in your country.

10% of Brits are looking around at the country, failing public services, cost of living crisis, housing crisis, exploited workers, dying high streets, worsening inequality, raw sewage leaking to every available water source.

And they're thinking, yeah, this is going all right, innit?

I find this to be satisfactory, thanks.

Cheers, Rishi.

Well, the um, I mean, what the,

as you mentioned, Jesse, the basic Sunak saying, warning that things could still get worse

and almost suggesting that they'll probably get worse under conservatives, but they might get even worse than that.

So they basically kind of are better the crocodile that's already shat on your carpet and settled down on your sofa while snacking on your poppy than the lion who might, if he exists, shit on your pillow and eat your granny if you have a granny or buy or rent a granny in future.

So it's you know it's a sort of hypothetical disaster versus a real disaster.

Maybe the reality is more comforting for people.

The only other thing they've got, I guess, is a human curiosity.

That given that we are all just dust in the winds of history anyway, why not see what another five years of this will bring?

Just for you know, shits and giggles, basically.

That seems to be the only thing in their favour.

I hope they don't get back in.

There is the darkest humour timeline would be these Tories getting back in because even they don't think they will.

So when they get in there, like,

sorry, it's just, I booked a holiday to Thailand.

So why am I here?

I booked a lot.

I'm just sick of their broken promises, right?

Like when he announced the election, Rishi Sunak said that he'd asked the king to dissolve the UK Parliament.

And I thought, finally, a Sunak policy that I can get behind.

Unfortunately, that was just a figure of speech.

And any hopes you and I have of King Charles emptying barrels of sulphuric acid all over Westminster, leaving behind nothing but the bubbling remnants of the ceremonial mesas and Jacob Reese's mom's stupid glasses, will not be realised.

I think that is still technically Sinn Féin policy, though, to do that.

So

that's always an option.

Kier Starmer said it's a chance to, quote, turn the page.

But I don't think most of this country wants to turn the page.

I think they want to shred the entire book and then drink a memory-wiping serum to erase the book's contents from our brains.

On the pop side, 90% of English cap water is now memory-reducing serum.

It's difficult for the Conservatives.

Obviously, they are a wartime government.

Unfortunately, that war is the culture war, and they're fighting it on too many fronts.

So it's not really working in their favour.

They have policies just coming out today: greasing the the white cliffs of Dover to make it hard for all the asylums to climb up it.

Banning trans people from eating avocados, the ultimate anti-woke policy.

And the claim that Labour actually want to change the national anthem to push it by salt and pepper.

So I don't know how many again it will split the electorate, but first past the post.

You don't need to have a majority of people

behind you.

Also, they're entering the Secretary of State for Business and Trade, Kemi Badenock, in the women's singles in Wimbledon, with the hope that if she storms into the third round by voting day, that will provide a bit of a surge for the Tories in

swing constituencies.

Rashi Sunak said he wants six debates with Keir Starmer between now and the election, which is an interesting tactic because I think if you did watch six Sunak v.

Starma debates, you would just climb into a cupboard, lock the door shut, and not emerge for at least a decade.

So that could suppress turnout, which would work in the Tories' favour.

Oh god, it's so exciting, isn't it?

Sunak v.

Sama.

It's a real nail biter.

And by that I mean I'd rather bite and swallow actual nails than spend almost any time at all listening and watching these two vacuous establishment robo-c ⁇ argue with each other over who has the more fiscally responsible plan to banish Jeremy Corbyn to Rwanda.

Kill me now, Andy.

Well, we've got six more weeks of this to look forward to.

So what can we expect over the next six weeks other than the inevitable deluge of dissemblance, distractions, disinformation, and disparagements?

Look out for high-vis tabards, performative safety helmets, unnecessarily rolled-up sleeves, stage conversations, unconvincing smiles, and even more unconvincing, serious faces.

There will be also appeals to real people,

which I often feel very underrepresented politically as a non-real person, but I think I should still count electorally.

Appeals to hard-working families, which is absolute nonsense.

We get in trouble if we so much as think of sending our children up chimneys these days, let alone actually setting them into a solid 40-nower day stitching shoes together or making matchsticks.

And of course, statistical sorcery, the bedrock of modern politics.

Particularly at the moment, economic

talk about growth, which of course is an entirely entirely relative statistic i mean there have been times in my life where i have been accelerating faster than you seen bolt but that does not mean i am running better than him just please remember that people when people talk about growth

you could have said that before i please ignored that

sorry i can only apologize yes so we might only have this and another five bugles under a conservative government uh so that would just be uh the 490 consecutive bugles under the Tory since issue 114 of the bugle recorded after the May 2010 election, but before the Conservatives and Liberal Democrats had hacked out the coalition deal that began this 1.4 decade-long performance art piece entitled Why, Why, Why?

So, one of those five bugles will be a live bugle election special show at the Bloomsbury Theatre on Sunday, the 23rd of June.

We've just as we record put it on sale.

It's well a a month away, so we need you to buy tickets as quickly as possible.

It's quite a good venue, and we've already got a couple of shows in London two weeks before.

So we're relying on you, buglers.

We will have Nish Kumar and Anuvab Pal and possibly others at our live bugle election special, live bugle special on the 23rd of June at the Bloomfree.

Do come along for us to answer every single question you may have about the election and address all of the issues that have and have not been raised.

23rd of June at the Bloomfree.

Go to theBuglePodcast.com and find it via the live button, I think, or just look on the internet.

There, consider that plugged.

Middle East update now,

still not fixed.

It's still not entirely fixed.

Eight months into the current chapter of catastrophe, still...

still everyone hasn't sorted out their differences for whatever reason.

It's also been conversation.

It's It's like they're not even listening to the bugle, Andy.

No.

Yeah.

I mean,

we have been broadcasting it, you know,

we've made it available for download across the entire universe.

And if people choose not to pay attention to our calls for global peace and harmony, then what more can we do?

However, the International Criminal Court has,

well, I mean, I don't know if you can you poke a hornet's nest

that's already

just, you know, all the hornets are already out and fighting anyway but

they have issued arrest warrants for Benjamin Netanyahu and Hamas leaders which you might interpret as being relatively even-handed or you might interpret as being massively anti-Semitic or massively anti-Muslim depending on which side of which seesaw you're bouncing up and down in indignation on.

I do think if Hamas leaders had a shred of decency they would now just hand themselves over and let justice take its course.

Netanyahu and Yoav Galant as well.

Tom, I know you've managed to avoid thus far in your life

having an arrest warrant issued by the International Criminal Court.

Congratulations for that.

How do you see the ICC's intervention?

What are my tips to Netanyahu and the Hamas leaders to stay out of their grips?

Is that your question, Tammy, Andy Zaltzmann?

That is my question to you, Tom.

They came close in 2003, i gotta say but i got away with them once again thanks to a very well-timed holiday shall we say

uh look i think the response to this to be clear they haven't actually issued the warrants yet this is an application for the warrants there is still a panel of judges to uh the panel of judges like the x-factor or or australian idol to uh make a decision as to whether

that's how they should do it they should have people in chairs and they should turn around if they think that the warrants should be issued that'd be good but uh yes, people, even at the suggestion that the chief criminal prosecutor might possibly issue or apply for some warrants for these people who are, in my view, doing bad things, both Hamas and Benjamin Netanyahu, has provoked outrage.

Of course, everyone is saying, particularly the President of the United States, saying it's outrageous.

There is no equivalence between Israel and Hamas.

There is

no equivalence, which is true.

Israel is putting up way better numbers.

I mean, don't get me wrong, Hamas knows its way around a war crime, but Israel, goddamn, man.

Saying there's no equivalence between Israel and Hamas is like saying there's no equivalence between Serena Williams and Tom Ballard, okay?

Yes, we can both play tennis, but one of us has nuclear weapons.

That's my position.

Yeah, Netanyahu said that Israel is waging a just war against Hamas.

And whether you agree with that or not,

I think even if you think that it's waging a just war, you probably also think it's waging that just war not very justly.

The bafflement is the strategy, if you can call it that, of Netanyahu.

And I guess it's a bit of a fact of modern life that when an estimated over 30, 35,000 people have died and a million have been displaced and a famine has been inflicted, people,

whatever they think of the underlying situation, might start to question your methods.

And it seems that Benny is not reacting particularly well to that.

However,

let's not forget how effective international criminal court arrest warrants can be, because one was issued for Vladimir Putin in March of 2023, and he instantly handed himself in, apologised for everything he's done, and committed to doing everything to foster global peace and cooperation ever since.

So, you know, these things do take effect.

Just give it gone.

I don't think Putin travels as much as Net Yahoo, so that's less of a thing, I suppose.

He's less of of a globetrotter, so he might come up a bit more.

But he was so angry, baby was so angry and shocked at this news: like, oh my god, I can't believe they're going to do this to me and hold me to account.

And it's like, dude, read your Eurovision contract, okay?

When you sign up to being in Eurovision, you are held to the highest standards of ethics and accountability.

Australia first performed at Eurovision in 2015 for some reason.

And since then, we've been trying really hard to do absolutely zero war crimes, and we've really been very successful.

Okay, so it's actually not that hard.

If you try and you take the

you can actually get there, but he got very personal, I think, with uh Karim Khan, who is the chief prosecutor of the International Criminal Court, and he said that he was one of the great anti-Semites in modern times, which is pretty huge.

That means Mr.

Khan is up there with the greats, right?

A list of the greats, anti-Semites in modern times, of course, include Adolf Hitler, Roald Dahl, Mel Gibson, and Andy Zoltzmann, of course.

Some of the greats.

Well, I mean, that's not a list I found myself on very often.

All coincidence is He was also in the

short list for a very short-lived short story prize.

Yeah, none of us have played international table tennis.

We're reading about what you want.

Well, we will have full updates of the legal pot boiler that is the International Criminal Court versus Hamas and the upper echelons of the Netanyahu government over the next 25 years of global peace.

Moving on now, gay animals news

and well bad news.

I'm right here Ed.

So I mean we it's a good story to do on an issue of the bugle in which we have an abomination in the eyes of God as one of our as one of our guests Tom.

Yes, apparently a satanic gay agenda is at large with a new documentary series that is going to be broadcast on NBC in America entitled Queer Planet, which

delves into quotes the rich diversity of animal sexuality featuring bisexual lions, clownfish that change sex, and gay penguins.

And obviously,

this is evidence of a satanic gay agenda.

I mean, to be honest, most nature documentaries are ethically questionable.

They involve a combination of murder, sexually predatory behaviour, often with at best dubious levels of consent, and wall-to-wall nudity.

So, you know, let's not turn to nature documentaries for

good, wholesome family entertainment.

But the reaction to this programme, which is going to be on NBC Peacock in America, apparently, it's

predictably hilarious.

I mean, you shouldn't delve too far into social media responses, but one in particular that

fascinated me was someone who said, so sick of this LGBTQ shit being rammed down our throats.

Now,

rammed down our throat is an interesting term.

This is on television.

The television is an electricity-powered device with at least three main methods available for switching it off.

The remote control, the button on the TV itself, and the plug on the wall.

Further alternatives to avoid any potential throat ramming include changing the channel that is on US TV.

Most US TVs have hundreds of channels, the vast majority of which will not be broadcasting by Curious Wildebeest or gender unconventional terrapins.

Furthermore, many televisions are also internet enabled, so any viewer wishing not to have the gay animal documentary rammed down their throat can access enough live-streamed entertainment to last literally years.

Netflix, for example, has an estimated four years worth of content available at all times.

And if that's not enough, if your TV also has YouTube access, well, one estimate suggests that's 95,000 years of content available on YouTube, some of which may involve gay animals, but most of which does not.

So if you are really concerned about having this documentary rammed down your throat or eyes, just plonk yourself down in front of your television, change the channel, and by the time you finish watching it in 95,000 years, assuming you don't watch anything added from the moment you start watching it, of course, we should have a clearer idea of whether or not God gets really cross about gay penguins and destroys the planet planet in his furious vengeance.

Or you could just do something that isn't watching tele.

Go for a walk in the park.

Although there is a danger you might accidentally see two beetles locked in a loving insectual embrace and not be sure whether they're heterosexual or not.

So there are options not to have this rammed down your throat.

Tom, as

a spokesman for the LGBTQ

and

Animal Kingdom, of which you are a member of both,

as a human.

I mean, this story is, you know, you must feel deeply ashamed of your people and everything they stand for, that

you're broadcasting stuff that might make children

believe that this kind of behaviour is natural.

Yes.

Just as a note, if people do want to see LGBTQI shit being ran down people's throats, that's another documentary that is airing on NBC.

But it's after the watershed.

So that's a bit later on.

Probably don't show the kids that one, I suppose.

I don't know why all the outrage is there.

We've obviously known the existence of bisexual lines for a very long time, about 80 years, ever since the release of The Wizard of Oz, featuring an extremely camp lion who was cowardly, and by that I mean deeply closeted.

But it's just a documentary exploring the fact that there is homosexuality behavior in more than 1,500 species, apparently, in the animal kingdom.

Hot tip, Andy, if you're ever trying to get a straight guy to do a little bit of experimenting, I can tell you from personal experience that citing that statistic does not work.

But

the outrage.

There we go, I guess.

Oh yeah, it's always good to use some facts every now and again.

The outrage online was pretty amazing.

There's a big account called End Wokeness, of course.

They shared the trailer saying this is so fed up and evil for our youth, describing it as science revisionism for a satanic gay agenda.

And it's true.

Finally, as I've always predicted, Andy, science has teamed up with Satan to turn your children into gay penguins.

I'm so glad that all my predictions have come to pass, and I don't regret that tattoo at all.

I like that idea of science revisionism too, that idea of like updating our understanding of the world based on new evidence and explanatory theories.

You know, you might think that's science, but no, that's science revisionism, okay?

Science was finished, and we figured it out in the 50s.

Everyone knows this.

We've locked in the facts, and that's it.

Our scientific understanding of the natural world is like God's law or the BBC.

It cannot change.

I think they should go back to, you know, science of the fourth human, you know?

They had a scientific idea then.

You're dying.

You've got too much bile.

You're feeling lightheaded?

You've got too much blood.

Why revive?

It worked for them, because.

Why not?

Yeah, it still works.

They are, to be fair, though, they are totally right.

This is all part of the LGBTQI plus agenda.

This is how we make children gay and trans.

We put together a documentary detailing homosexual activity in the animal kingdom.

We screen it on free-to-wear television, which young people love to watch.

And then we just sit back and wait.

It's the perfect plan.

We have a very similar strategy when it comes to trying to get kids to hibernate over the winter and lay eggs as well.

We're using the same approach

on those kind of behaviors as well.

So, fingers crossed, I think it's going to work out pretty well.

I find that really funny that one of the comments was that they are coming for your kids.

And honestly, if a lion is coming for your children, I feel like advertising at sexuality is very low on the list of priority.

There's other options, of course, other than, as I mentioned, changing channel or watching something else.

You could just smash your TV to pieces.

That's another option.

You could smash it with a baseball bat, a golf club, a fire extinguisher, a curling stone, a euphonium, a concrete sculpture of a heterosexual goat, or any other large objects.

Or you could just gouge your own eyeballs out.

I mean, those are all options to avoid this being rammed down your throat.

So please take one of those, but do it safely.

I've got a great tagline for my next show from this, which is the wonderful world of woke

brings us some great lucky lunacy.

Need us to pay a PR.

More devil news now, and tech companies are being urged to get rid of Satan in a very specific way

by people whose names are autocorrected to Satan from, for example, Savan or Stan,

wanting autocorrect to be a little more sensitive.

I mean, this is, I guess, understandable if you're worried about being associated with the devil, but a new campaign called I'm Not a Typo has been launched, asking technology companies to make more effort to not autocorrect non-traditional western names to other things.

The campaign was initially launched as I'm not a potty, but then they corrected it.

So, I mean,

is this yet more evidence of the kind of...

That was very funny and very clever.

Well done.

I mean, two out of two.

It's quite a lot of two.

I mean, is it out of two?

I don't know.

So is this yet more evidence of the kind of structural prejudice that permeates every level of our society and could and should be addressed?

Or is it not a big deal that people shouldn't spend too much worrying about?

Because, come on, it's not that hard to work around autocorrect in its various forms.

The answers to those questions are yes and yes.

So let's get the opinions of Toy Bollard and Juicy Lord

on this.

What my name, incidentally, Autocorrect 2 sensational human being and fashion icon.

Oh, God.

What

that is an error.

That is a very serious error.

Something has gone terribly wrong.

Yeah.

which is pretty much

a succinct history of the 21st century so far.

Tom, I mean, this is obviously probably top of humanity's agenda and things to fix at the moment.

Well, look, I'm similar to you.

Like, I understand, like, is this does this deserve a campaign for God's sakes?

What, with the earth being on fire and the Middle East still having a few issues, as we've discussed and solved on the podcast today?

But then, I guess, well, if this was your name, if your name was Savannah and every single time you typed it, your device told you, you're Satan.

I guess that would get pretty annoying.

I mean, you might be able to, you know, make some documentaries for NBC, perhaps.

But

ultimately, I think it must be annoying.

We've got other names like Druti, which is autocorrected to Dirty, or Dorito, which must be very difficult.

But perhaps the most concerning thing out of this whole story for me was some of the stats, right?

The campaign group wrote an open letter to technology companies, which pointed out that between 2017 and 2021, 2,328 people named Esme were born compared with 36 Nigels.

Esme gets auto-corrected to ADMAR while Nigel is unchanged.

Now, I'm sorry, but is the UK only producing 36 Nigels every five years?

What the f is going on over there?

That's the big issue to me.

Where are the Nigels?

Yeah, it's been hollowed out.

You go to China, you'll see they have a million Nigels a year.

It's been outsourced.

We got

Britain doesn't make anything any

I think we're solution I really am on the side of this campaign because I think it adds up your time it's not fair to sort of other people like this it's so silly and you know when you're making technology the people making the technology build their biases into it what I would like to see is every single name auto-corrected

And ones like Nigel, double corrected.

So you type in Nigel, it corrects you to Nigela Lawson.

You try and correct that, it corrects you to lovely bone marrow lasagna.

And that's what happens every time.

You put it in Tom, it corrects you to Tim.

You try to correct that, it corrects you to Tan.

You try and correct it again, it's just the Tim Tan

emoji that's going to be new.

Nobody is going to be able to type their name at all, and then we'll see whether it's annoying or not.

Yes, Queen.

Yes.

We will have more coverage of this campaign here on the bulge as it develops.

One final bit of news, and well, as the world seemingly teeters on the precipice of World War III, some exciting news.

The ancient Greek armour has been tested by scientists.

Do some real work, scientists.

Yet again, I have to make this call.

And it turns out that it actually works better than you think for a load of clanky metal um

just bonked over a human body um

i mean i've never i've never fought uh in uh a battle modern or ancient i've never really worn armor beyond uh what is necessary to play low-level cricket um

so

uh josie i know you've you've you know you're huge in the greek armor scene um

it's exciting exciting news it's exciting news but i'll say rude so rude Like, such an insult to the Greek to be like,

we've tried it, and we're so much better than them.

And you know what?

It actually works.

Yeah, no shit.

Like, they fought a lot of battles with it.

And next year will be saying, we've had a go at this Euclidean geometry.

They actually, even.

And the good thing about this is now they've tested it.

Obviously, there's been big cuts to the British Army.

There's been a lot of talk in the recent years.

The British Army just don't even have the equipment that they need to do their job.

You know what we do have?

The British Museum.

So the British Army is going to be bijet in the ancient army of the entire world that we've purchased.

Not just that.

We've got some lovely Mesopotamian shields.

We've got some Iron Age swords.

And we're going to use 100,000 precious, priceless Japanese netsuke as a kind of compound tank.

So it's really good news.

All right, I'd be a little less worked up if this is the armory and weapons that we sent to Israel.

Okay, like if this is what the West sends over there, go, here you go, mates, have a crack at this.

You'll look ridiculous out there.

At least that'd be more entertaining and maybe slightly less destructive.

I'd be on board if this is the new stock that we were sending over to the Middle East, I reckon.

Well, that's a positive note that we can maintain the arms trade, but make everyone safer by just selling them stuff from the British Museum.

There we are.

The world is getting better as we speak.

You're welcome, buglers.

buglers.

Things

can only get better.

We've tied it all together.

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

Yes, interesting collection of stories this week.

We do hope

you've enjoyed it.

Do not, under any circumstances, allow your children to watch any nature documentary whatsoever.

Nature, like history, is full of f ⁇ .

That is all you need to know.

thank you to both tom and josie anything to plug

i really do that's sad isn't it

please continue to follow me as i make creative work right there we go that's a nice broad plug that won't that will never date there until until of course your death sends everything up in value and now none of our listeners can afford to buy it anymore um

I would also like you to keep encouraging and supporting Josie Long as she creates creative work.

And me too, please.

If you'd like, you can watch my special, It Is I for free on YouTube.

Just search my name, Tom Ballad, and It Is I.

That's on 800Pound Gorilla.

You can watch that no matter where you are in the world.

If you're in Melbourne, you can see my show Good Point Well Made at the Comedy Republic on Friday, June 21st.

And that very same show, although it will be changed significantly to make sense to British people, will be coming to the Edinburgh fringe for all of August.

And those tickets are terrifyingly on sale now.

Also on sale now, as I mentioned earlier on, the Bugle Live election special on the 23rd of June at the Bloomsbury Theatre by as many as financially viable.

See you all there

and we will be back next week.

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.