UPDATE: America is still f---ing mad

The Bugle, audio newspaper for a visual world.

Hello Buglers and welcome to issue 4290 of The Bugle, the show that has chronicled all of history apart from the first 13 billion years or so.

I am Andy Zoltzman and full disclosure after the shock revelation last week that I have now in my life been to a punk gig.

I

should try to restore cosmic order to the bugle verse by emphasising that I have never ridden in a Hell's Angels rally, attended a dogfight, participated in an exorcism, not an official one anyway, eaten a pelican, performed a tracheotomy, used a pogo stick, not proud of that.

paid nuns to do a motorcycle pyramid, or built a blood igloo.

Those are things that are still on my bucket list, but I haven't done them yet.

Joining me today, right here, right now, or right there, right then, unless you're here in my shed this very second that we're recording, which I'm willing to bet that you aren't, in all six glorious dimensions, Nish Kubar and Chris Addison.

Welcome.

Welcome to the shed.

Thanks, Andy.

What a place to be.

Finally in the shed.

I've never been in the shed.

No, me either.

I've seen it so often on a Zoom.

And the first thing I said,

that Chris said, I was about to say that, is that it's like being inside your mind.

I'm looking directly for the benefit of listeners at a DVD that just says cricket in the 70s.

I'm looking

at

something that appears to be a video of cricket in the 1970s on a now obsolete format.

It could not be more Andy Saltzman.

There's a lot of cricket bats here and a picture of Buddy Waters.

But what we don't see is somewhere there must be, and I'm guessing possibly in this filing cabinet, a crippling sense of shame.

There's so many cricket bats.

But the thing is, some of them are in order.

That's what feels unlike animal.

All right.

Well, that's only the wisdoms that have numbers on.

Everything else is chaos.

There's so many cricket bats.

It is absolutely incredible.

It'd be great if you ever actually needed to have therapy.

Instead of, you could do such a shortcut.

You just bring your therapist in here and go, have a look at it.

That's basically what I appear to have done today.

it's it's thrilling to be here um i've actually just come fresh from football and i've never bugled this close to football i've certainly never bugled this close to having any exercise so i'm worried that the uh

sort of extra oxygen in my blood that's flying around my body it's going to make me even angrier right okay so when lennix lewis used to do that he used to do um chess boxing didn't he so he'd do a round of boxing and then what he'd like play chess in between fight a black guy on one square and then a white guy on another

And then work his way around.

I can't remember that from it.

I'd have to check back over the stats of his career for that.

Yeah, well, I hope you managed to soldier through this hugely important recording.

A lot of very important things happening in the world.

We are recording on the 6th of February, 2024, just as the surprising news that King Charles has died

would have reached people on this day in 1685.

Charles II,

the party king,

Chuck E.

Tutu as he likes to be known,

popped his remorselessly fornicatory clogs on the 6th of February 1685.

You're right.

Some of the opticans

taking effect on

can you get cancelled by association?

Weird trouble.

That's just a fact, just a pure fact.

So he died, Charles II, 6th of February 1685.

At which point, an estimated 17% of the British population were his out-of-wedlock children.

In 1918, the Representation of the People Act was passed, allowing women to vote.

What do you, I mean,

too early to say that.

Too early to see how that's worked out.

His political correctness gone.

Only women over the age of 30, provided they met minimum property owning qualifications

at the time.

This followed followed 17 years after the death of Queen Victoria, who, according to legend, didn't believe that women existed.

But the increasing weight of evidence that they either definitely or probably did resulted in the 1918 Representation of the People Act.

And despite many people's concerns that if women were allowed to vote, then up to 35% of babies would be born as potatoes, men would be forced to wear clogs, or that cheese would become sentient, poisonous and or contagious, especially at weekends.

The Act was passed.

Things luckily haven't panned out quite like that and now we've reached the utopian ideal where female politicians have proved themselves to have the capacity to be just as absolutely useless as men.

And we will touch a little bit on that from a British perspective later in this show.

On the 7th of February, the US state of Mississippi officially certified the 13th Amendment approving the abolition of slavery.

In the year, any guesses?

1978.

Good guess.

Is it going to be something even worse like 2002?

It's even worse than that.

It's 2013.

I mean, people don't mind them for sticking to their guns.

You know, people crumble under popular pressure.

They really are showing how to just stick it out there.

Is there a more telling anecdote about what America is than they had an African-American president and one of the states had failed to ratify the amendment abolishing slavery?

Is there a more telling anecdote about where America finds itself?

Well, actually, we might have one.

Oh, yeah, sorry.

I'm sorry.

But before that, as always, the section of the bugle is going straight in the bin this week.

Well, we have a free giveaway for you because the increasingly liberal government in this country is set to ban disposable vapes, thus denying British children the God-given right to spread cherry-cola-scented clouds and leave detritus that takes thousands of years to biodegrade, a right that our ancestors fought all manner of wars for.

I just think it's a bit sad that my great-great-uncle Neville lost his life in France during the First World War, and yet my kids will be denied the simple joy of filling their lungs with an addictive, if fruitily flavoured, fume-based substance with as yet unknown health implications before tossing away the remnants to slowly decay as a metaphor for the failures of untrammelled consumerism.

I mean, my great-great-uncle Neville wasn't actually fighting in France when he died during the First World War.

He was on an extended holiday in Saint-Tropez and had a heart attack whilst trying to climb out of a brothel window to escape a debt collector who also happened to be his wife.

Besides which, he's fictional, and that didn't happen.

But the point, the point stands.

He could have existed, he could have fought in that war

there's so many things that are that young children have been been deprived of you know simple joys yeah many of them don't even know what the inside of a chimney looks like oh no it's you know travelling at breakneck speeds along country roads in the back seat of a car with no seatbelt on and a drunken drunken parent driving the war yep the warm glow of that hard-earned shilling after you know a 14-hour day up that chimney or

the visceral thrill of taking down a Christian in front of a 70,000 strong crowd in the Coliseum whilst wearing a pantomime line outfit.

Even listening to Test Match Special live from India.

All those joys.

Sadly, gone.

But to make it up to our British listeners,

a free with this week's bugle, you can get your choice of our two free audio vapes.

Simply hang a speaker around your neck and play this snippet of sound as you walk down the streets to generate the same effect as vaping.

Vape A,

watermelon, or is it bubblegum?

Or maybe a little bit of both.

And vape B, menthol, but I'm not ill.

What is menthol and why?

Those are your two audio vapes.

Do use them responsibly in the bin.

Top story this week, America is still fing mad.

Evergreen headlines.

Election year, as exclusively revealed on the bugle over recent weeks in America and indeed in many other places, India, but almost certainly the United Kingdom.

But the phrase a powder keg of stupidity could refer to so many things in American politics and people.

Well, it was your wrestling though, of course.

So I don't know

why they'd nip that from you, first of all.

Well, I'm very influential.

I would list all the things that could be described in American politics as a powder keg of stupidity, but I'm nearly 50 years old and I don't think realistically I've got time to do it justice.

But when a senior figure in the Republican Party is A calling something a powder keg of stupidity and B not meaning that to be a good good thing, you know that something especially lunaticular is going on, even by the bat shit-headed standards of Trumpic America.

And what we've had has been reports that Trump supporters have apparently pledged that they will wage, quotes, holy war against Taylor Swift, the multi-award-winning singer and Kansas City Chiefs head coach.

There appears to be an assumption that there is a conspiracy involving Swift

to basically steal yet another election from Trump.

Nish, I know you're a died-in-the-wolf Swifty.

I'm one of the great Swifties.

I've got my eras tour back tattoo, locked and loaded for when she gets here next year.

I am.

Gets here to the shed.

It is interesting, she's playing stadiums across the country, but she is playing the shed as a warm-up gig.

Little acoustic.

Just Andy and Taylor Swift.

Yeah, I said she could look at my

collection of signed signed cricket bats.

Well, we know she likes sports.

She likes sports.

Yeah, exactly.

Yeah, so she's dating...

Now, how do you pronounce this man's surname?

Is it Kelsey?

Travis Kelsey.

Travis Kelsey, right.

So she's now being accused...

It's Trey Vice Kelsey.

She's stating Trey Vice Kelsey.

So she is now being accused by prominent Trump supporting Republicans of being an op or a psyop engineered by the deep state in order to benefit Joe Biden.

I'm reading these words from the New York Times.

Okay, so she is in a relationship with Travis Kelsey and he plays for the Kansas City Chiefs.

He's the star tight end, which is amazingly a position

in American football and also pornography.

And

so

this right-wing conspiracy that the Kansas City Chiefs have been given a free pass to the Super Bowl so that Taylor Swift can be pictured in the stands at the Super Bowl and because of that people will vote for Joe Biden.

Is that am I summarizing that correctly?

No that is the absolutely correct summary.

Yeah.

And I'll tell you what, I think we can all agree.

If there's one organization that is going to favor progressive politics, it is the National Football League.

It is the organization that punished Colin Kaepernick, not for protesting the national anthem, but for not protesting it hard enough.

They wanted Kaepernick down on both knees.

The fact that he was taking one knee was not enough for them.

And it's an organisation that has hosted such progressive franchises as the New England Clan Robes and the Minnesota White Men of the Best.

Reince Priebus,

again, have I pronounced that right?

Isn't that right?

Reince Priebus.

Former Republican National Committee Chair.

If indeed he exists.

Reince Priebus is a legal tenet, isn't it?

Who you're

He said that he thinks the Republicans are pursuing a questionable strategy by attacking Taylor Swift and the NFL.

And he was the one that said that it is a powder cake of stupidity.

He said, I think we ought to have a few things in America that we can agree on, and those are two things.

So, I mean, is that

I mean, is that for a start, are those the only two things America can hope to agree on?

And even if that is the case, should Taylor Swift be I mean, should America have to be of one mind about the multi-Grammy award hoarding pop through the door?

Are dissenting views on the Pennsylvania-born Shake It Off star no longer acceptable in the so-called land of the free?

Chris.

Listen, I've got to put my hands up here to say that I am not.

completely impartial on the whole Trump versus Swift thing.

On the one hand, I increasingly feel there's something a little bit off about Trump.

And on the other, I absolutely, I genuinely love Swift.

I love Shake It Off.

I'm a huge fan of Lover.

That's a great album.

I I adored Gulliver's Travels.

Lemuel Gulliver.

There aren't enough people called Lemuel these days.

There should be more Lemules.

There must be some in the NFL.

They've got.

Yeah, for sure.

Well, there are fewer than you think, because the difficulty is the minute you've managed to get to assemble a decent number of Lemules, they all panic and run off a cliff.

Anyway,

Travis Kelsey is, as Nish says, the tight end.

The tight end.

For the Kansas City Chiefs.

I do love that that is a position.

I've seen that guy in his game day leggings, and let me tell you, it it is not a misnomer.

Other positions in American football include wide on, low-sack, and deep back hole, presumably.

Anyway, but look, it strikes me that conspiracy theories are just, the standard is dropping.

Back in the day, it was the Illuminati and the global elites.

People were convinced that the moon landings were faked.

But the NFL are throwing games to get Biden elected just feels a bit lowbrow.

You know, only a couple of notches above Greg Wallace is using TikTok to try and shift the odds on who's going home this week on Dancing on ice so in an attempt to rectify this situation and with one eye on merch opportunities I've constructed a random conspiracy theory generator so that would-be conspiracists and lonely men sitting in their basements on jizz encrusted cushions can once again get behind some proper gold-plated bat shittery so it's quite a simple system you spin each of these three wheels once

the first determines what is being affected the second determines how it is being affected and the third determines who is doing the affecting.

So, let's have a go.

All right, so spin the first wheel,

unidentified flying objects, spin the second

are being chemically castrated by, spin the third,

the Jews.

Let's uh let's have another go.

Spin one,

white history, spin two

was constructed in a lab by and number three.

The Jews.

Let's go.

Spin one.

JFK.

Classic.

Two

is spread in chemtrails by three

The Jews.

It is always the Jews for conspiracy theories.

They're basically like creative writing projects by anti-Semites.

The third wheel in this system is just a disc with the Jews written all around it.

It's like the dartboard at Jeremy Corbyn's house.

You can buy that from the Bugle shop.

But it is a genuine concern that,

as you say, the standard of conspiracy theories is going to...

At a time when they're more and more popular, I guess it's like anything, if you spread it too wide.

that you know the stat the standard go because i mean it used to be that i mean from the republican point of view yeah you have you know a pizza delivery based mass child abuse conspiracy that yeah there's a bit of imagination and creativity that's gone into making that shit up yeah um yeah but you know what it doesn't have a celebrity endorsement i guess the presence of taylor swift is designed to bump these conspiracy theories up and also it does sort of weirdly fit in quite an odd tradition of american conspiracy theories because in the 60s there was an american conspiracy that the beatles were a way of smuggling they were spreading pro-drug messages in their songs for an international drug drug cartel headed up by the Queen of England.

That was a genuine conspiracy theory in the 1960s.

And we still, I mean, obviously, that's you know, that operation was still covered by the Official Secrets Act, which I think was 75 years after the death of the Queen.

So

we probably won't know for sure one way or the other in our lifetimes.

And there was that time that John Lennon was murdered by the Columbian Drugs Committee.

It was the white Escobar.

So, as you say, the reason that

this

conspiracy has emerged is essentially because of Taylor Swift's nascent romantic romance with

Travis Kelsey.

For whatever reason, Swift has neglected to have a relationship instead with any leading figures in the Republican Party to quell such speculation.

She could have easily had a relationship with Mr.

Trump, with Senate minority leader Mitch McConnell, with the ousted speaker Kevin McCarthy, or even with the late President Rutherford B.

Hayes, whose campaign slogan, oh, be haze yourself, proved so effective in the 1876 election.

And nor has she endorsed the Republicans.

I don't know why, perhaps because she doesn't think supporting their rapist insurrectionist conman for that president would hit particularly well with her fan base.

We just don't know.

I'm not going to prejudge that.

New York Times

report said that the Biden team is even perhaps angling for an official endorsement from the singer who did not write either Gimme Shelter or

Beethoven's Ninth, but nonetheless has been extremely successful.

And also another fear seems to be that Swift might, and strap in for the ultimate nefarious conspiracy, encourage people to vote.

Yeah.

Which, you know, encouraging young people to vote, that goes against pretty much everything the American political system is.

Yes, it does tell you something about the Republican Party's current predicament, entirely self-induced current predicament, that the worst thing that could possibly happen is if young people voted.

That is the it's the predicament actually of the Conservative Party here and the Republican Party in America.

Is the one thing that they have to do is make sure that as many young people as possible get nowhere near the polls later on this year.

The Conservative Party here have extended the vote to expats this week, which is an absolute guaranteed way of getting old Gits.

There's this news breaking that they're proposing extending it to the dead.

Okay, the grateful dead or the dead in general?

Just the dead people.

Provided they're over a certain amount of wealth when they died.

So, Vivek Ramaswamy,

the former presidential candidate who has openly admitted that he is a total and irredeemable cat.

Sorry, I misread that.

He's thrown his support behind Donald Trump.

My mistake.

Conspira theorised.

I wonder who's going to win the Super Bowl.

And I wonder if there is a major presidential endorsement coming from an artificially culturally propped-up couple this fall.

So, I mean, I don't know where do you start unpicking that.

Let's be quite clear about Ramaswamy.

So, he had a presidential candidacy.

It's been abandoned due to lack of interest.

He's now positioning himself to try and be Trump's running mate.

The problem with Vivek Ramaswamy is they are going to have to examine some of the laws about who is allowed to run for office because he's not actually a human being.

He's a horse's colon and anus that was surgically removed and brought to life by a witch's curse.

Tragically, the witch was interrupted mid-process.

So Ramaswamy has the body and face of a man, but instead of a brain, has the colon of a horse.

And as such, is cursed to spew horse shit for the rest of his living days.

So, they are going to have to examine some of the rules around who's allowed to run for office.

And he is another.

And listen, there's a precedent there, because I think James Buchanan was basically

Salzburg with a Buchanan burn.

Take that.

It's another.

The continued political career of Vivek Ramaswamy is another

blank in the in it's just another example of the conservative Indians who are ruining ruining politics.

You know, in America, in Britain, Ramaswamy, Rishi Sunak,

let's not forget the original Indian conservative, Narendra Modi, the old reverse Santa.

The whole thing is making me, as a Hindu Indian, embarrassed to enter rooms.

I'm entering sort of bent over, apologising.

There are lots of reasons you should be embarrassed to enter rooms.

That's not one of them.

I've realised that I'm conducting myself the way white people should have been for the last 2,000 2,000 years.

We've been the bad guys for five minutes and we're all hunched over in shame.

You guys striding into rooms with your back straight, saying another day of doing things people will always think are cool.

But I mean, to be fair, I guess, you know, when he says, I wonder who's going to win the Super Bowl, it is a pretty hard game to call.

I mean, obviously the Kansas City Chiefs with their huge big game experience in recent years, two Super Bowl victories, the coaching ingenuity of Andy Reid and their quarterback wizard Patrick Mahomes, the 49ers with their potent and varied running game and their confidence of having scraped through two gripping matches in the playoffs to make it to the Super Bowl.

You can see why he's finding it a hard.

But you have to remember the 49ers are up against the combined strength of the deep state.

Yeah, and of course...

It's fascinating to know how that would manifest itself.

And of course, Taylor Swift fresh from all those victories in the Grammys.

So my prediction is Kansas to sneak it by 141 points to zero.

Swift running in for 17 of Kansas's 20 touchdowns and the frankly showboating two-point conversion at the end of the first half.

That's my prediction.

So Vivek, if you're listening, put your money on.

In other American news, the current president Joe Biden took some time out from

buttering up.

Current president at time of recording took some time out from buttering up the world's leading pop stars to endorse his presidential campaign to call Benjamin Netanyahu a bad f ⁇ ing guy according

the original BSG

according to

reports I mean that's

yeah that's that's big talk from a president it's big talk it's uh I mean I'd say say what you will about Biden like a stop clock he is right twice a day and fing old

Benjamin Netanyahu to be fair to him is a bad guy who's been trying to

essentially change the judicial system in Israel to make it legal for B.

Netanyahu's to commit any and all crimes that they wish to commit.

Well, he's basically trying to make it legal to be a bad f ⁇ ing guy.

And, you know,

he's conducting a bombing campaign and a military campaign in Gaza that is...

Listen, I think if you...

If you are taken to the International

Court of Human Rights and the evidence presented against you is things your own ministers have said.

That's not a great look.

That's not even a particularly good look.

But the interesting thing about Netanyahu is that he's consistently presented by leaders like Rishi Sunak and Joe Biden in public at least as being someone that they're trying to do business with and resolve the two-state solution peacefully.

But Benjamin Netanyahu has been quite clear.

He has no interest in peace or a two-state solution.

And at this point, everyone is trying to get Garfield to run on a pro-Mondays platform.

Like, it's very clear he doesn't want any of this to happen.

Listen, I don't mean to be controversial, but I think we should stop electing Nobeds.

We've given it a good go with those guys.

Your Netanyahus, your Orbans, your Trumps, your Johnsons.

The Nobeds have had a proper crack at this, and they're just not coming up with what we need.

I'm not starry-eyed about the whole thing.

I know we're not likely to vote in any actual humans.

What are we?

Scandinavian.

Come on.

But at this stage, I think just any kind of change.

Do the dickweeds want to go?

Sure.

Why not?

The R swipes?

Let's let a couple of those guys in for a bit.

I would take anything up to and including creepy douchebags right now.

I draw the line at treacherous shit weasels, but on the other hand, never say never.

The knob-eds have got to go.

There's your new t-shirt.

Biden, they didn't.

Creepy what weasels?

Creepy shit weasels.

Oh, yes.

I think they would beaselsels.

They were beaten by creepy douchebags.

They were beaten by Taylor Swift in the Army of the Earth.

They threw it.

They threw it.

Wasn't that the original name of the 49ers?

The thing is,

it's it's a weird sort of confected diplomatic route, isn't it?

And Biden, of course, has denied that he said it.

And I think he's in the fortunate position of being pretty much the only politician in the world who, when he says, I have no memory of that,

probably haven't.

What I will say is, I was trying to quickly Google to make sure that I'd found the exact correct wording that his spokesperson used.

What I would say is, if you're looking for these comments, try and googling Biden Netanyahu.

Don't Google bad f ⁇ ing guy,

as I have just done, because it has

it went to pornography alarmingly quickly.

Oh, man.

I was once very much like Renaissance Art.

Gave up.

I was once

the focus of some of Biden's attempts at diplomacy.

Oh, what?

When, yeah, so I met Joseph.

Oh, no.

Chris, it wasn't reveal.

That was a TV show.

No, I know.

So in making that TV show,

we made a little film for the White House correspondence dinner in like 2015, something like that.

And it involved filming Julia Louis Dreyfus as the Veep in Veep, along with the then Vice President Joe Biden,

mocking about together.

And they, so there was a point where we basically, we sat in his official residence, the Naval Observatory, whilst we waited for it to go dark so we could film this scene.

And he very sweetly sort of came and sat with us and

tried to kind of chat and entertain us.

He, by the way, did not like me

at all.

But

he said, hey, I've got something that you'd like.

And he went off and he got an enormous binder of his mother's poetry.

What?

Yeah.

And his mother, his mother was Irish and hated, hated the English to the point, he told us, where once she stayed in a hotel where she was told that the bed had been slept in by the Queen and showed she slept on the floor.

She wasn't having it.

And he read us this poetry, and this poetry was all smashing the English, making their blood run.

Are you sure that wasn't the American national anthem?

It was the English national anthem at Battle of Scots.

But yeah, and he read all of this and then said, What do you think of that?

And that is Joe Biden's diplomacy.

It was extraordinary.

Yeah, so for all of the denials that the White House has been putting out, it really sounds absolutely in character.

100%.

Wasn't he once caught on camera describing the passage of a barbecue and the Affordable Care Act as being a big fing deal?

He's like, no.

He just likes big things.

Or maybe he just likes fing pick.

Another one of the great American statespeople, Tucker Coulson.

Yeah.

Doing his bit to bring about global peace by going to Russia, which he says is doing very well.

Yeah.

I mean, when Tucker Carlson is being deployed to Moscow, does

that

mean

that's a very bold claim that he's been deployed?

It's very much a self-deployment, Andrew.

I don't think he's there on State Department business.

Tucker, yes, Tucker, you've got to go.

Okay, Tucker.

Unless they're actively trying to leak stuff to the Russian government, I'm not sure you'd give Tucker Carlson anything to go to Moscow with.

I mean, where do we go from here as a species?

If, you know, we've got Tucker Carlson meeting Vladimir Putin.

I mean, are we just done?

Well, this is the proposed thing, isn't it?

They've said that there's a rumor that he's in Moscow and he's posting pictures on social media himself in Moscow and he's saying that everything's going well in Russia and the rumour is that he's going to have a sit-down with Vladimir Putin, which I imagine is going to be two people with,

I'm just going to say it, the energy of a pair of absolute sex pests.

Like, I can't prove anything.

I'm just talking about the vibe.

And the vibe is the Frost Nixon of sex pests.

Tucker Carlson and Vladimir Putin.

It's an astonishingly molesty vibe that they share.

Yeah.

The man whose name sounds like what a police chief in a TV show shouts when he's choosing two minor characters for a job.

Tucker Carlson!

You're on stakeout.

The man who looks like the coach in a Nigel Farage-produced reboot of Friday Night Lights.

The man who looks like what happens when Brooks brothers build a branch on an old Native American burial ground is upsetting snowflakes, libtards, crybabies and anyone with a shred of actual decency again.

To be fair to Tucker Carlson, I doubt he wanted to go to Moscow at all.

Somebody probably just said his name three times and he appeared.

In fact the only real difference between Tucker Carlson and the candyman is that when the candyman appears after you say his name, he doesn't then hit you with the travel expenses.

My main complaint against the long-time anti-LGBTQ plus campaigner and admirer of strongman political leaders who dresses like he's at a New England boarding school is that visiting Moscow and then going to the ballet just feels a little bit on the nose.

If ever there was a man who needed to get laid, it's him.

And by laid, I do mean folated by a truck around the back of a harvester.

I've always thought of him as basically a grifter.

So when he set up a $72 a year streaming service in December, I assumed it was just another scam.

But actually, I've had a look.

There's quite a lot of stuff on there.

There are TV shows, including the traitors last of the summer wine wine wine I may destroy democracy only morons in the building curb your immigration and it's always sunny in the internment camp there are also films including one angry man the bad and the ugly psycho inglorious bastard schindler's list 2 the reich strikes back and apocalypse now please

He's definitely got the vibe of someone who's going to watch Side of Interest and go, I just was happy for the family.

I was happy for the family and the career achievements of the guy.

The property prices were remarkably low for the area.

It's a good part of Poland.

Gambling news now and

please gamble responsibly obviously.

The Prime Minister Rishi Sunak has been slammed.

Did you just make yourself laugh by remembering it was Prime Minister?

It really felt like

it really felt like an involuntary reaction as as your body reacted to the phrase Prime Minister Richie Zunak as it came out of your own mouth.

It still doesn't seem can't be right.

Can't be wrong.

Can't be right.

I mean, it's not as wrong as some others.

Yeah.

He has been criticised for essentially accepting a bet from Piers Morgan

of £1,000 that he will fire an asylum seeker.

from a catapult or maybe send him in a plane to Rwanda by the time of the election.

Piers

basically bet him, Zunak, then shook his hand.

So the bet is complete, essentially, under the laws of the laws of gambling.

Unless a duel happens, I can't remember that.

And he's been criticised being out of touch for

betting on

the Rwanda plane.

He said he was taken by surprise.

Now, this is an interview with Piers Morgan.

He's

quite young, isn't he?

But he's still over 40.

Yeah.

If you're being interviewed by Piers Morgan and you're taken by surprise by him doing or saying something a bit grandstandy and provocative in highly questionable taste, you do not have the judgment skills to be Prime Minister.

That he's let himself...

That's like being surprised when a bird shits on your car windscreen.

I had no idea they would do such a thing.

It's not a great quality to say the Prime Minister will be fine as long as no one surprises him.

Someone jumps out and shouts boo, he might nuke Scotland.

He said in the interview, he's not a betting person.

There's a couple of things about this.

Is this the same Rishi Sunak who before he went into politics worked in investment banking and then hedge funds?

That is as much of a betting person as you can possibly get.

And the same Rishi Sunak who supported Brexit, the biggest blind f ⁇ ing punt in British political and economic history.

But to me, him claiming not to be a betting person just based on that was like Hugh Hefner looking at

Canova's The Three Graces and responding, not my thing, I'm not really into nude women.

But then people have posted a clip from an interview he did on Test Match Special, the

BBC's cricket commentary of the day.

Declare some interest

of which I am a part.

And I was there the day he was interviewed at Lourdes, it was last summer.

And

they do the big interview during the lunch break.

And I absented myself from my chair whilst the interview happened.

But he

said during that interview that he was quite into spread betting on the show when he was working.

So when he says he's not a betting person,

he's, I don't know, should we say, being forgetful?

Yeah.

Is that fair?

It's quite, I mean, even for the last few years of British politics, it's quite the thing to have to try and wrap your mind around.

So he was doing an interview with Piers Morgan, the journalist, Citation Needed, as part of a television programme.

He presents on Talk TV, a Rupert Murdoch-owned right-wing news channel that has so few viewers.

I should be presenting a show on it.

And

the conversation turned at one point to the Rwanda plan, which just, it's worth reminding buglers, that the Rwanda plan, the bones of it are that anyone who comes here seeking asylum or comes here as a refugee is put on a plane to Rwanda to be processed.

offshore like the wet dream of a racist travel agent and in the process of that conversation Morgan said well you've not actually successfully managed to deport anyone as part of this scheme which is absolutely true and so he said I'll bet you one thousand pounds to a refugee charity that you don't get anybody on those planes before the election will you take that bet so what Piers Morgan is saying is that he will actually be giving that money to a refugee charity what I would say to him is just give the money to the charity like there's no real but what was amazing about Rishi Sudak in that moment is that he said yes I'll take the bet and shook his hand, but didn't then say, I will also give the money to a charity.

The whole thing.

He looks so surprised in the moment.

It couldn't be more,

and lots of people have been pointing this out on social media today, but it couldn't look more like.

a kid who's been bullied at school trying to get in with the bigger boys.

Like, it is an absolute embarrassment.

And as the country is so fond of talking up at the moment, what would happen if we went to war with with Russia, because there's been a lot of talk about how we don't have enough people in the army, so we might have to have national conscription.

I would say no one needs to worry about that.

If we go to war with Russia, our Prime Minister might get bullied by Vladimir Putin popping out from a cupboard.

During this, he was also asked if Keir Stamer was a terrorist sympathiser, Keir Stammer, the labor leader, and

responded, the facts speak for themselves.

So I guess on one interpretation, that's just him saying, no, obviously he's not a terrorist sympathiser.

But also, I'd like to.

I mean, this idea of the facts speak for them.

Have we learned nothing else

from this millennium?

Facts do not speak for themselves any more than a ventriloquist dummy speaks for itself.

That is the whole art of 21st century politics.

You make the facts, say what you want them to say.

Well, I mean, listen, we can all use those kind of rhetorical flourishes.

I mean, the Rwanda plan, I mean, obviously, people are very outraged at the moment because it seems out of touch, given the cost of living crisis, that two very wealthy people could be making bets like the beginning of the movie Trading Places.

But obviously, at a base level, we should also be outraged by the inhumanity of the Rwanda scheme.

And, you know, we could all throw things around.

And, you know,

all I'm saying is, is Rishi Sunak sexually aroused by human misery?

The facts speaks for themselves.

The facts speak for themselves.

He's knocking one out every night, thinking about, is he?

I don't know.

Is he?

The facts speak for themselves.

I think there's been a lot of this, he's out of touch nonsense since since this there's been a whole lot of he's no man of the people kind of response to this but he is a man of the people he is it's just that the people he's in man of are the terrible terrible

to be fair to the lad I thought it was refreshing to see him take a pointless gamble with his own money for a game that was quite nice and if we're honest here his real danger is winning He's a tiny little fellow.

He's no bigger than his own thumb or charisma.

If Morgan chooses to pay him the grand in one pound coins, it's going to take him absolutely ages to carry them one by one to his figure figureback

so i mean what what's you know obviously people criticizing for taking this bet said it was in bad taste and out of touch i mean what bets do you think he should be he should be taking on them should it be the number of asylum seekers who die in british custody is that is that a more appropriate yeah and if he likes spread betting is he going to be betting on the names of the asylum seekers on the plane like it doesn't it he he's opening a dangerous door up for himself i mean presumably the bet he should be taking is whether or not he's going to be prime minister at the end of this year.

Is he allowed to do that?

Because he can throw that fight.

What's the technicality?

He'd have to put...

I mean, if he put all of his and his wife's combined wealth on that bet, he could get himself a tenor.

Let's start doing that.

Let's commit as a nation for all of the British people's out there.

If you see Rishi Sudak, try and get him to bet all his money on something absolutely absurd.

And if you surprise him, he will agree to it.

That's what we've learned.

Yeah.

Let's talk quickly about his predecessor, Liz Truss, who has attempted to,

I don't know, relaunch, rebirth herself in.

Rebirth this.

Yeah, yeah, respawn.

We mentioned this briefly last week and all the

extraordinary number of different factions in the Conservative Party and this new popular conservatism group that she was trying to launch along with

Jacob Briggs Mog and various other members of the Conservative party and it's at its launch today um yes

and it appears to have splintered into rival factions

the splinter faction

at its launch splintered into further splinter factions it's like uh conservative party it's like the purest version of the conservative party possible yeah it's popular conservativism is the name of the group which is not how anything works if i change my name by deepol to jay-z i don't get to fyonce that's not how any of this stuff works um Four MPs were billed to speak.

Just two were present, Liz Truss and Jacob Reese Bogg.

The former cabinet minister, Ranel Jawardner, who's seen as a kind of star of the Tory right, pulled out on Monday, as you say, swiping at his fellow panelists because there was infighting.

Simon Clark, who was another former cabinet minister, was removed from the line-up after calling for Rishi Sudak to be ousted.

So as Liz Truss was on stage trying to launch this party, she was doing essentially the political equivalent of Martin McFlying Back to the Future, fading away as she's out in front of an audience.

The fact that people are willing to call themselves Trussites is absolutely astonishing given her political legacy.

Listen, it has been discussed on this podcast before, but for a time I did a show for a short form video platform called Quibby.

And the reason it keeps coming up is because Andrew likes to remind me that I took down not only my show, but the whole platform with it.

The premise of it was YouTube, but you pay for it.

And in many ways, Liz Truss is the Quibby of people.

A bad idea who we were heavily warned against that went as expected.

But no one now is walking around going, man, I'm a real quibby guy.

But there are still people calling themselves Trussites.

And all I would say is like, I would sound a note of caution.

King Charles is being treated for cancer.

And Liz Truss has come back into public life on the same day.

Keep her away from him.

She already did the mum.

She's come back for the sun.

She's like the Terminator, but she actually gets results.

Keep her her the f away from King Charles.

She's come back to do the sun.

She's extraordinary.

There's a report about this meeting in The Guardian that referred to her as being, and I quote, unfazed by the criticism.

You've got that right.

I think she might be the most unfazed human on the planet.

In many ways, it's a complete inability to be phased that was our economic undoing as a nation.

I think phaseability is a highly underrated quality in a politician, along with shame and knowing when to go the f away now.

Also, like this whole popular, because they're calling themselves, and it's on the, you know, the livery behind them, popcons.

Popcons.

It sounds like a mid-90s CBBC show starring the people who didn't quite make the audition for the Spice Girls.

Or a cereal that had to be withdrawn after somebody choked to death on a free pog.

Even quartain wasn't there, because he's standing down.

He's standing down.

He's standing down.

That all happened today as well.

And it's sort of being seen as like his final revenge on her.

He's announced that he's going to stand down instead of picking up.

Well, it's like the old tongue twister, isn't it?

Quasi quarten, quasily quash the economy, then quietly quit his constituency.

Her speech was an absolute, it was just a batshit bingo haul.

Because she was just hitting all of the key phrases.

She said that the leftists who were disguised as environmentalists were taking power away from families and giving it to the state and unelected bodies.

She hit out, she said the attempts to achieve net zero was pandering to anti-capitalists and said that ordinary people believe the wokery that is going on is nonsense.

And she said, wokeism seems to be on the curriculum.

And in response to this, you have to ask the question we all have been asking.

Who has been in charge this entire time?

She keeps saying the left have been on the march.

The Conservatives have been in power for 14 years.

It's unbelievable that the idea that the left has been on the march this entire time.

I mean,

I genuinely can't believe the gall.

Well, I've started to wonder whether, like, I think for her, she's damaged.

She genuinely has to believe this.

Yeah.

In the way that people don't remember traumatic experiences, because if she, for one second, understood what had happened,

your own cranium would collapse into this.

You're basically saying that.

Same.

Her prime ministership is essentially like childbirth.

Yeah.

Didn't last quite a bit.

But I've got to be honest,

nothing really good came out of it.

Except that since then, none of us have slept through the night.

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

Do enjoy Taylor Swift's Super Bowl on

Sunday.

I mean, it's,

you know, it's going to be, it's huge.

Is the halftime show just going to be a close-up camera of her face?

I think so.

Who is doing the half-time show?

Well, I assume there's Taylor, just like a thousand cloned Taylor Swifts.

It'd be great if it was just her booing who ever song.

It's Usher.

Usher.

Oh, my God.

The early 2000s are back.

Low-rise jeans were waging a war on terror.

And Usher is in the news.

That is incredible news.

I am thrilled to see Usher.

Usher up.

It's become a legacy gig, hasn't it?

You sort of half expect Shoe Pan.

love to see show pan

my dreams or won't

my dream half-time gig Zoltzmann right in the middle in the round that would be great but well anyway do enjoy the game if you're uh you're football fans and I think strategically it could all come down to the fact that George Kittle the tight end for the 49ers he's married to his college sweetheart whereas Kelsey is dating the world's biggest pop star and I think the whole game could swing on that.

Well his college sweetheart is actually Diamond Leaper so it's really

much of a muchness.

Thank you for listening, Buglers.

Don't forget to buy your tickets to the Bugle live shows that are in March, dotted around the United Kingdom details at thebuglepodcast.com, where you can also join the Bugle voluntary subscription scheme and give a one-off or a current contribution to help keep the show free, flourishing, and independent.

Premium subscribers

get an exclusive bright orange vinyl record that is currently in production plus the monthly subscriber only Ask Andy show.

Nish, what do you have to plug?

I'm touring the United Kingdom and Ireland, though I do accept the anger from the people of Ireland that when I say I'm touring the UK and Ireland, I'm touring the UK and I'm doing a show in Dublin.

And I accept their anger.

It is legitimate.

I'm doing that.

So you're coming.

Yeah.

So I'm doing that.

The tickets are on sale at nichekumar.co.uk and you can buy my stand-up show about Bread Rollgate, which Chris was actually there for.

I was there.

Yeah.

I was there for the Bread Roll.

Bread Roll or Bread Roll Gate.

I can't.

I apologise so many times, but

what a reveal.

It just felt like the thing to do in the moment, Nish.

What a reveal that would be.

All of that is available at my website.

Chris.

Well, I just want to plug that Nish is on tour.

And since I threw the Bread Roll, I get

some kickback off the DVD.

Thank you for listening, Buglers.

Until next time, goodbye.

You can listen to other programs from the Bugle including The Bugle, Catharsis, Tiny Revolutions, Top Stories and The Gargle, wherever you find your podcasts.

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.