50 Minutes of Bias

The Bugle, audio newspaper for a visual world.

Hello, buglers, and welcome to the last bugle of yet another month, January 2024 in this case.

That does mean that we are approaching a sixth of a trillion months since the universe was launched.

There There was

a lot of advanced publicity for it at the time as far as we can make out.

But then bang!

Big one too.

Short, sharp and shrapnel.

Bits of bang splatting out through the newly launched universe.

Setting in train a chain of events that led directly to me Andy Zoltzman sitting in a shed in South London telling you this.

So I hope that puts what you're about to hear.

in some kind of cosmic context stretching back 13 billion years.

This is issue 4289 of the Bugle audio newspaper for this most visual of universes.

And joining me today, I'm delighted to have, well, veterans of this podcast, Tiffany Stevenson and Anuvab Powell.

Welcome back, both of you.

Hello.

Do you have a particular favourite part of the last 13 billion years?

I'm putting you on the spot a bit with that.

I think, like, being born.

Oh, right, okay.

And then it just sort of got gradually worse.

All right.

This is what babies don't realise when they cry, is that,

you know, this is as good as it's ever going to get.

Anibab,

how are you?

How's India?

Well, it's good.

It's good.

Just very quickly, I think my favorite part of the history of the world is the loss of the woolly mammoths.

I've been thinking about them a lot.

Big loss there, I think.

Interesting weekend, Tiff.

I had a very British weekend, Andy Tiff.

For whatever reason, this weekend, I'm in Mumbai where I live.

And this weekend, we had, in terms of performances, on Friday, we had Jimmy Carr, the comedian, doing several shows in Mumbai.

Then the musicians Sting

and Keen, the band from Sussex, performed back-to-back.

And I'm wondering if India is becoming like the best exotic marigold hotel thing, not just for retirees, but also for British entertainers.

What an odd collection of, like, I didn't expect you to say all of those names together.

Yeah.

And and we also had Herbie Hancock, who's 84.

84.

Yeah,

and he was visiting.

So I don't know what's going on.

I think, is it very cold in the West?

Oh, it's possible.

Oh, yeah, it's absolutely freezing.

I mean, Herbie Hancock and Jimmy Carr are two people that you don't expect to hear in the same sentence, to be honest.

And Mumbai, those three words.

Well, I mean, I guess anything to distract India from the trauma of the

cricket match that they lost.

And I hope you appreciate Buglers.

We are recording this the day after England had one of their greatest ever victories in the history of cricket, which obviously, you know, is universally accepted as the greatest thing ever invented.

So it's basically one of the greatest days in the history of human civilization.

Also, West Indies beating Australia.

And I have calmed down enough in just what?

Since that game finished, what about 30 hours until we start recording?

To be able to speak to you, hopefully, in a comprehensible manner but my heart is still thrumming on the on the inside we will we will touch on this a little bit more later in the show we are recording on the 29th of january 2024 which is apparently officially curmudgeons day

um

yeah

or should i say

yeah well personally i don't see why that's worth celebrating in fact i think the whole thing's ridiculous why does being curmudgeonly need to be celebrated with its own special day makes it sound like it's in some way unusual rather than being the fundamental state of human existence why can't people just accept but accept that and stop trying to cheer everyone up with special days for things i mean really um so anyway i do hope you celebrate curmudgeon's day in whatever way you see fit uh buglers but um to mark curmudgeon's day we have a quiz question for you um

uh what is the origin of the word curmudgeon um it's shrouded in mystery the options are a the curmudgeon it was a now extinct bird related to the pigeon etymologically it's a shortening of covered mud pigeon um

it's renowned renowned as the most bad-tempered bird in the history of avian nature, was prone to deliberately flap its wings in people's faces and guanofact on their picnics before being hunted to extinction in the cheerful late 17th century.

Or was it from Curmudgeonly, a former aristocratic seat in Derbyshire?

In fact, the sixth lord of Curmudgeonley was described by 17th century darist Samuel Pepys as a man of unceasingly unbreakable misery who possessed within his face more means of expressing gloom than the rest of the nation combined.

He invented the curtain, apparently, hence the cur of curtain, so he wouldn't accidentally see anyone smiling outside his house, and was famously the only member of parliament to vote in favour of banning winking, somersaults, and laughter in a vote in 1666.

He was reputed to have invented the phrases, oh, what now?

Is this a bucket of shit I see before me?

And thank you for the offer, but I'd rather grape my arm prongla off whilst bathing in vinegar.

Or was it from Khurmudjin?

In Arabian mythology, the Khurmud Jinn was a foul-tempered jinn or genie spirit from the ancient city of Khurmud that would emerge from a magic lamp, stropperly offer three wishes, and then refuse to grant any of them.

Or was it D?

None of the above, no one really knows.

Do send your answers to yourself by the nearest available carrier Mud Pigeon.

Can I just say, isn't that a bucket of shit before me?

This was the review of my last play, I think.

Put a lot of work into that dramatic work and

the critic had that to say.

Lady McShits.

I think they were a support act for Keene weren't they?

Oh, this was a very exciting moment for me.

A couple of nights ago, I went to my first ever punk gig.

At the age of 49.

And one of the joys of having teenage children is expanding my

musical knowledge.

We went to see some punk bands in Camden.

It was great.

So

my not particularly wild Tunbridge Wells-based teenage years did not have a lot of punk music involved.

Did you wear a studded waistcoat?

No, I didn't.

I wore, I think I was...

By some dis...

Did you wear a fleece?

Tell me you wore a fleece.

Well, I was on quite a fleecy jumper.

I think I was, by an almost record margin, the squarest person at the gig,

which is a status status I'm comfortable with anyway as always a section of the bugle is going straight in the bin um this week a cars in crisis section where now for cars the world is asking because with fossil fuels being persona non grata amongst the increasingly influential Armageddon skeptic community we ask After so-called progress and convenience foisted the car upon us instead of the much-loved horse and cart, are we now set to let the tyres down on the age of the automobile just because a few thousand self-proclaimed qualified scientists claim that driving to the shops can make a penguin cry.

We also investigate with electric so-called cars increasingly popular, but not really cars because they don't make you cough if you leave the engine running and suck on the exhaust pipe.

Are real cars going the way of the woolly mammoth mentioned by Anivab just now, as well as the Roman Toga and free exorcisms, hunted to extinction by the woke?

Also, we look at the new hepta cycle.

Could the seven-wheeled pedal-powered vehicle, just waiting for a celebrity to launch it into the commercial stratosphere, replace all cars within five years?

No.

But but but but so what let's say yes is that the kind of world you want to live in and also with research showing that the average width of cars is increasing uh car measuring weird boffins in britain have claimed that the renowned quadri-wheelular vehicle has been ballooning by an estimated five millimeters a year from an average car width of 170 centimeters on average in 2001 to more than 180 centimeters now does this mean that all car parks will have to be expanded um by heat in which case is global warming basically going to save the car park um automobilologists have attributed the car growth girth, um, girth

growth to a combination of factors, including a lack of car motivation, cars having been roundly criticized for destroying the planet when actually it's their drivers who are more responsible, as well as increased traffic, meaning that cars don't have to go as fast, so don't need to keep in trim.

Also, uh, probably the woke as well.

Sorry, I wrote this also to double up in my column in the Daily Telegraph.

Concerns have been raised that the increased width of cars has made journeys more predictable, and because it's harder to overtake, it comes down more and more to strategy and reliability.

And that's not a real sport from now.

Now I'm just getting confused.

But I can tell you that if current trends continue in the

increasing width of cars, in just 364,000 years, cars will be 22 miles wide.

And you'll be able to cross the English Channel to France just by parking at Dover and shuffling from the driver's seat to the passenger seat.

And then, how will we stop the boats?

That is a question that politicians are ignoring.

Anyway, that section is in the bin.

Top story this week, me.

I'm sort of the top story this week.

I've been in the news tangentially, or the news quiz, which I host on radio for, has been in the news because the Conservative Party transport minister, Hugh Merriman, a minister in the government, took some time out from his hectic schedule of failing to rectify the infinite number of problems with public transport in the UK to complain that the news quiz is biased against the Conservative government.

This got a reasonable amount of media traction here.

He was asked by Sky News Kay Burley for examples of BBC bias and lasered straight in on the news quiz.

For 10 minutes, he said, all I heard was just a diatribe against Conservatives.

I mean, 10 minutes.

I mean, the thing is, and I guess this is the slight problem for Hugh Merriman here, the transport minister, is that

the news quiz is a news-based comedy show about the news, not dissimilar, I guess, in some ways to the bugle, but on the BBC.

And the question arises, what makes more news happen?

The government or people who are not the government?

And that is at the root of the issue.

And the issue for Merriman is that his party has been the government now for 13 years and eight months, in which which time they have done lots of things.

And as I said, things that have been done are often relevant for satirical purposes on a show like the news.

The obvious solution is for the Conservatives to stop being in government, and fair play to Merriman and his colleagues.

They seem to be pulling out all the stops to achieve that and help us bring some much-needed balance back to the show.

So, I mean,

I don't know if this made the news in India.

Anuvab.

I mean, I imagine that, you know, I mean, the BBC is in a bit of trouble with the Modi government as well, as it tends to be with

quite a lot of governments, it seems.

But I mean, it's, I mean, pretty much brought the nation to an absolute halt, this fact that the news quiz accidentally made made the news.

I couldn't get an Uber earlier.

No, listen, Andy, this was front page news in the Times of India.

Your name was mentioned in a couple of Indian newspapers, but I have to say that, you know, I've had the good fortune of being on the news quiz.

We've talked about the news quiz.

I've heard both you and Tiff on on it.

And I've been wanting to say this to both of you for a number of years.

And I'm sorry I'm bringing this up now.

I have personally noticed a number of biases in the news quiz.

Yeah.

And

I don't know what the Tory party were on about.

And I really thought about this when I was going to Edinburgh to do my shows and my train was seven hours late.

I had a lot of things to think about.

So I could have thought about the transport minister, but I was thinking about the news quiz.

And these are the biases I've seen.

I've seen a significant bias towards something called cricket,

a sport nobody cares about.

There's too much of a bias towards jokes and humor, which we all know is detrimental to comedy nowadays.

And

I've also seen within that unnecessary comedy section that you guys do, there's a bias towards puns,

which

almost seems to outweigh all the other things like observational humor, sketch, sketch, and physical comedy, which I really miss on the news quiz.

To be fair, I mean, there is quite a lot of physical comedy on the news quiz.

It's just it doesn't always come across when you listen to it.

That's what I've been listening to.

I mean, Tiff, it's quite standard now for the government to complain that the BBC

is biased.

And I mean, the culture secretary, Lucy Fraser, also claimed that the BBC was biased and was asked asked for evidence and replied that the evidence of bias is what audiences believe is the content of the BBC.

And then basically said that perception now counts as evidence, which is quite exciting news if you're in the legal profession.

I guess it's going to make your job a f of a lot easier.

But I mean, it's quite a weird thing for the Secretary of State for Culture or against Culture, I'm not sure, to say in an interview.

Absolutely mad.

It was a car crash of an interview.

You know, she said, oh,

the corporation is biased.

It needs to adapt or risk losing the trust of audiences.

And that was where Kay Burley kept asking for the evidence.

And she kept saying, well, it's the perception.

And then Kay Burley said, perception is not evidence.

It's kind of like me accusing Brad Pitt of a hate crime for not marrying me.

Like when he ignores my multiple phone calls and letters to his agent, my perception is that he hates me and thinks I'm ugly.

Therefore, that is evidence.

That's a fact.

That's truth.

And I do think we need to have a multiple choice quiz for every incoming Tory culture secretary because there'll be a new one like next week when Rishi is gone.

We have

done her week and a half.

Yes, yeah, it's like jury duty, right?

You swap them in and out.

So we need a multiple choice quiz, which is: is culture A in my actomel, B, the reason I have thrush, C, something to do with the arts, or is bias A, a cut of dress, B, like pansexual, C, something to do with the arts,

or

and finally, is funding A for

A, my mates, B, my mates' mates, or C, my family.

And that's really all they need to be able to answer as a culture secretary.

Yeah, it was, it was absolutely embarrassing.

It was awful.

And look, listen, most comics are going to argue that the news quiz is biased based on whether or not they get booked for it.

Yes, I think it's biased against me.

I haven't actually done the news quiz, so I believe it's biased against me.

I'm going to say that now.

But it's a weird thing of expecting there to be balance when you're the party in power.

You can't expect, like, of course, more of the satire is going to be aimed at you.

Yes.

And I mean, it's interesting, this, I guess, the always thin...

Well, gossamer thin line between evidence and perception has been a thorn in our side as a species since the dawn of time.

And one of the great examples of this came in 1912.

A French-Austrian daredevil called Franz Reichelt put his perception that he could safely jump off the Eiffel Tower wearing a homemade wing suit up against the evidence that gravity is real.

And on that occasion, evidence scored a pretty conclusive vic very conclusive victory, in fact, as the dent in the ground under the Eiffel Tower could testify.

Lucy Fraser

talked about impartiality with the BBC.

And the thing with the BBC, I've done a lot of work for the BBC over the years, and

impartiality

runs through its core,

sometimes to its own detriment.

And, you know, full disclosure.

I do a lot of work for the BBC, and

not including full disclosure, actually, which I pitched them as the first fully naked radio discussion show ever broadcast.

The odd issue of Gardner's question time accepted, of course.

So I do a lot of work for the BBC, but until relatively recently, I didn't do that much.

And I'm always, always aware of the BBC need for balance.

So when I'm on Test Match Special doing my cricket statistics, for example, for every true statistic, I just completely make one up so that we can cater both to those BBC listeners who like the truth and those who prefer who prefer to live in a world of delusion don't tell anyone that because you know people think that I'm reliable was it a post-truth world a post-truth that's the I think we're stuck between a post-truth world and a pre-truth world

so I don't know I don't there are no there are no winners

the thing with the BBC it's accused of bias by pretty much everyone,

which suggests that either it's taking, it's so committed to bias that it is biased in every way all the time, or it's not actually that biased at all.

I guess we'll let history be the judge of that.

All sides.

It's coming from all sides.

So I'm actually wrong.

It's not just when it's, it's, it's from everyone.

Lucy Fraser, the culture secretary, added, impartiality requires thought and it requires accountability.

Two things that are not always obviously in the forefront of the government's golf bag,

thought and and accountability.

She added, there are only perceptions and perceptions are important.

Now, unfortunately for the government at this point,

there are also, as well as perceptions,

facts.

And a lot of those facts help create the perception that the government doesn't know what the f ⁇ k it's doing.

So, I mean, that perception, rightly or wrongly, is held by a majority of the perceiving public, according to opinion polls, and by a majority of conservative voters as well, according to other opinion polls.

And these Conservative voters are currently very biased against the Conservatives, with more than half of them, those who voted Conservative in the last election, not intending to do so at the next one, if I've perceived those numbers correctly.

Andy, the more you say perceptions, the more it sounds like a sort of 80s nightclub I expect to show up in these senders.

Is everyone going to perceptions tonight?

I have a question for the both of you.

You guys have the BBC.

We don't get access to it.

But one of the things the BBC is known for around the world, which really annoys me, are facts.

Just like the ones you brought up, Andy.

I guess they look for facts in the UK.

They look for facts here.

Now,

do they not know?

Can you tell someone at the BBC that the world has moved on from facts?

I mean, we've moved on to podcasts.

We've moved on to soothing YouTube videos of people cleaning carpets.

Well, this influences.

Influences, thank you.

It's opinion.

So this terrible habit the BBC have of getting to actual sources, getting them to quote things, and then verifying that it's very tedious.

Yes.

You know, I'll give you an example of a fact that just happened.

There was an AI-generated social media ad, which everybody believed in India, that played a couple of days ago, featuring the Indian cricketer Sachin Tendulkar, great batsman, peddling an online gaming app.

And he played that game with his fake AI deep fake daughter who was made up.

He has no such child.

And this was believed by the whole country.

Why is the BBC behind the times?

All right.

Well, because institutions take time to change, Anavab.

And, you know, the BBC is trying to change, become less fact-based.

And I'm sure it will get there eventually.

But at the moment, it is somewhat stuck in the past.

But just the one thing that really annoyed me about

Hugh Merriman said, and I completely accept that, you know, comedy shows are not for everyone.

Whatever you do, a significant proportion of your audience won't like it, and that's true of pretty much every comedian that's ever lived.

But it was the fact that he said he listened for 10 minutes.

Hugh, you missed the 18 minutes of pro-Tory stuff we did after that.

You missed my explanation for how out-of-control immigration figures are actually giving people exactly what they voted for, how functioning transport links, which obviously is an issue close to your heart, only make people miserable because it shows them that there is a possibility of a better world, which is the surest path to being dissatisfied with your own life.

And of of course, you missed my erotic poem about neoliberal economists Milton Friedman and Margaret Thatcher in a newly privatised British telecom phone box.

I mean, it wasn't that erotic, of course, there's limits, but just

enough for simmering genocide pour quite.

Iron Lady reach melting temperature.

To put in context the state of the Conservative Party at the moment, well, I mean, at last week, well, it was a day ending in the letter Y.

It was a month with three or more letters in its name.

It was a year with four figures in it, and it was a time of day between midnight and a nanosecond to midnight.

So you can be pretty sure that the Conservative Party was squabbling amongst itself and thinking about changing its leader.

What was once considered the party of stability, reliability, and competence has been inflicting its own sordid catalogue of identity crises on the country.

Basically, ever since it came to power in 2010, gulping down and chundering out prime ministers, cabinet ministers, and barely quarter-ass policies like a lead-poisoned Roman Emperor at a particularly headed banquet.

And the latest was Simon Clark, who was briefly a cabinet minister during the afternoon that Liz Truss was prime minister back in autumn 2022, who said that Rishi Sunak must quit before he leads the Tories to extinction.

I don't know, it's not entirely clear who Clark would rather lead the Tories to extinction.

They seem never to be content with their current extinction direction leader.

And I mean, it was just, it doesn't, it just seems like there is no point at which they will stop just bickering amongst themselves and think, oh, what is our actual job?

Well, I like that they said to extinction, because that seems to be a theme today because we've discussed the woolly mammoth, but now it's, oh, first it was the dodo, now it's the Tories.

Will we be digging up their bones in years to come saying, how did this happen?

We banished cronyism and ruined their comfortable habitat forever.

And it's survival of the fittest, isn't it?

Come on, guys, you need to adapt to be the leaders people actually want.

So between them, I mean, the infighting has gone on and on, but there are Tory Party members who've sort of balked at the idea of him saying anything, saying, Do we need advice from Liz Truss's right-hand man who was in the job for five weeks?

And that's fair enough.

They'd probably be as well asking a beauty influencer.

At least they might get a glow up.

But

it's pretty impossible to salvage any of their reputation right now.

They aren't even the rats fleeing a sinking ship, are they anymore?

They're just the fleas on the rats

fleeing a boat that's being screamed at from the shore by Nigel Farage.

You know, like

what is left of it?

They just, they, they, yeah, like you say, they were, they consider themselves to be the party of consistency and now they can't stand behind one person for more than like five minutes without a knife in their hand ready to get them.

So they get to the front of the queue for their five minutes at the top job.

I don't know if you know, but your prime minister's mother-in-law is India's best-selling, currently India's best-selling children's book author.

And I was at a literary festival last weekend where she's written a short story about a small boy who repeatedly punches a bear that enters, oh, he shouldn't.

And that got me thinking about

your current situation, budget politics, and in particular about a son-in-law who, at the core of it, it is DNA,

has always been a hedge fund manager.

And it reminds me of the 2010 book, Too Big to Fail, which was about the financial crisis, in which Andrew Ross Sorkin, the financial editor of the New York Times, had written, there's very little fun you can have with a hedge fund manager.

I feel about Mr.

Sunak.

I feel like he's the sort of parent that would take his child to an extreme paintball event and then later list that on his CV as having served in the armed forces.

I feel like my only other experience I have with your prime minister is one, Mr.

Boris Johnson, who at least, you know, had humor.

He got in a cycle in Mumbai, and we've talked about this before, Tiffany.

He got in a cycle in Mumbai, roamed around the gateway of India, shouting to homeless people, who wants to do a trade deal.

And I think at least, at least, there's something there you can work with.

Simon Clark

defended himself after

he was criticized by the members of Conservatives for bringing more division to the party.

He said, no one likes that guy that's shouting iceberg.

No, Simon, particularly not when the guy who's shouting iceberg was also the guy who, a little while ago, was shouting, let's ram this ship into that iceberg.

And also, particularly not when he's shouting it long after the ship hit the iceberg, has split in half and is about to relocate downwards.

And everyone is wanting him to shut up so they can hear what the band is going to play for its final.

The one pushing the women and children off the boat

as it goes into the iceberg.

Some senior Tories have rallied around the Prime Minister, which is usually a very, very ominous sign.

Former Prime Minister Liz Truss teamed up with Jacob Reese Mogg.

for details of whom listened to previous various previous episodes of the bugle, the member of parliament for the mid-18th century, I think he is.

He's like a.

oh, I would describe him as an absolute clued piece.

I think that's a

good description of him.

They've launched a new movement within the Conservative Party entitled Popular Conservatism, which is a bit of an out about turn from the unpopular destructivism that Liz

put into practice when she was doing her work experience gig as Prime Minister.

And I was looking at the number of different factions there are within the Conservative Party.

And these are all official groups,

according to various different websites.

At least 12.

This is just within the parliamentary Conservative Party.

There's One Nation Conservatives, the Common Sense Group, the Northern Research Group, the European Research Group, the New Conservatives, No Turning Back, Conservative Growth Group, Conservative Democratic Organisation, the China Research Group, the Net Zero Scrutiny Group, the Conservative Environmental Network, and now the all-new popular conservatism.

So if you are getting the impression that the Tory Party is not entirely unified and entirely dedicated towards the betterment of the United Kingdom,

you might want to add that to your little portfolio of evidence.

Some more Britain news now.

And well, we don't know how many more episodes of the bugle we will be able to make because the head of the British Army has warned that the entire public might have to be called up to fight in a war.

That's not what he said, but that's what some of the headlines implied that he'd said, and that is good enough for me.

What he did was he warned that the military was too small and said that we have to recruit more people as reservists as well as to the regular army.

But, you know, the headlines basically said, we're all going to be conscripted.

Start writing your poems now.

So, I mean, this is a bit worrying,

Tiff and

Anivab, that

you know,

the cozy assumptions that we've lived with in our generation that the peace our forebears fought for might not be quite as robust as it had seemed to be over recent decades.

That's been rather shattered, hasn't it?

It's a fragile piece, Andy.

And now it's time for conscription, baby.

I've been saying for a while, right?

Because I kept seeing all these articles in newspapers and magazines about the power of going grey and embracing aging.

And I was like, oh, this is interesting.

We're embracing aging.

And then gradually I went, oh, no, no, no, this isn't what this is.

This is actually draft dodging because we're on the brink of World War III.

So what's going to happen now is just there's going to be a lot of people trying to prove that they're too old to fight in a war by doing old people shit.

So, just like wandering around with a copy of Reader's Digest tucked underneath your arm, going into cafes and shouting at people that are ordering avocado on toast, like mark my words, young one, you'll never buy a house.

Giving yourself a side parting because apparently that's what ancient people do, according to TikTok.

Telling people to get off your lawn, even if you live in a flat, and

occasionally just wandering into rooms, asking what's on the wireless, and leaving the torch on your iPhone constantly on.

That is some old people shit right there.

I think we're going to get to the point, actually, as women, you know, that we're going to start seeing those ads pop up on TV, you know, like ladies, get yourself an over 40s hottie because they're not going to get conscripted.

So we're going to see those hot men over 40 in your area adverts start popping up.

Yeah, I've just done the photo shoot shoot for that.

Now, the Chinese Olympic Association,

they start going house to house looking for children to do gymnastics.

And the children have to be around the age of nine, any older, they're disqualified.

That sort of stuff.

I have a couple of suggestions.

You could do that sort of stuff in Britain.

And I think that it really helps every household to have rigorous combat training.

I think in particular, say, for example, if you have any arts households, any households where both the earning members are involved in freelance arts of some kind, I think those households should undergo jiu-jitsu and knife training

because it's useful both in war as well as in contract negotiations.

So I think it's a double skill.

Yeah.

We need people in proper jobs.

I think a podcast with three comedians on, I'm not sure we're in a position to say people need to get proper job stuff, but yeah.

No, I'm including myself in that.

I'm like, yeah.

Well, actually, I think women, I've like at gigs, there was a I was at gig recently and there was a guy in and he said he was in construction.

And then there was literally like a wet row at the back of the room of women who were like, oh my God, a man with a real job.

General Sir Patrick Sarners, who was the head of the army who made these comments, he said, we will not be immune,

basically referring referring to the current sort of global instability.

And as the pre-war generation, we must similarly prepare, and that is a whole of nation undertaking, which is why people jump to the conclusion that he was saying everyone's going to be conscripted.

But you do have to ask the question, are we tough enough these days as a society?

I mean, even some senior government ministers can't take 10 minutes of mild criticism on a comedy show without needing to take a long, hard path for themselves.

And having seen the mayhem unleashed when cricket commentators started using the word batter instead of batsman, I'm not sure as a nation how we will respond to the challenge of the invitation of being vaporized by a Russian space laser.

So I don't know if we're going to step up to the plate quite as heroically as previous generations did.

I can't think of a time, you know, when young people would be less inclined to fight for a country that sort of robbed them for a hope of any kind of future.

Unless we are some of those lovely lads who protected the statues a couple of years ago.

I don't know if you remember those.

There was that Venn diagram of people who voted Brexit to maintain British culture and people in England tops pissing on statues, and it was just a circle.

Um, so I feel like they might be up for going and uh and and fighting in a war.

Uh, also, Bernie Eccleston, he said he'd take a bullet for Putin.

So, at one point, so we can see how that pans out.

And we just put billionaires on the front line, you know, like Bezos, Musk, we get them involved, like relax, everyone.

The one billionth airborne are going in.

But so, yeah, my stepson's 17, so it's like I have had like young kids like genuinely ringing into like phone-in radio shows, worried that they're gonna have to fight in a war.

He's like 17 and he's a drummer, so we were like, At least maybe you can lead the march and bang a drum.

And he said he'd bring his laptop and do some beats in logic.

So, I think the one thing we know is that it's good to know we've upped our effort on the music production side if we do go into World War III.

We've definitely upped our game there, so we've got more to more to play with.

That's good,

it'll look like the first scene of Mad Max which is ridiculous.

It's

I just have a quick question, though, for both of you.

Does it have to be directly universal conscription?

I mean, would incentives work?

I know it's a voluntary army.

When I was in college in the United States, you know, at the reception area, the U.S.

Army would set up a thing.

It said, sign up for the U.S.

Army and get free snacks.

So,

oh, that's that's interesting.

Yeah.

It's it's possible.

I mean, the problem is, as you say there's you know greater scepticism of you know the the the joy and privilege of being slaughtered uh in

mechanic mechanicalized conflict uh for spurious reasons um laced with often questionable patriotism and the problem for any general kitcheners of today is that if you stick out a finger on a recruitment poster towards the public saying your country needs you it's quite likely that another finger will be raised right back at you

But also, I mean, surely, you know, we've, like I said, we've grown up with these assumptions that we would never, you know, our generation, our children's generation, wouldn't need to fight in the way that our grandparents' generation did and our parents' generation would have done if the Cold War had ever got hot.

But surely the whole point of modern military technology is that we can be cannon fodder just like in World War I, but from the comfort of our own homes without having to trudge around getting cold in the trenches.

We just sit there and wait for the merciful release of nuclear armageddon.

The poetry might not be quite as fun, but you know, we save on transport, which is good for the environment.

Well, it did say men and women in his speech, and I took me a rereading to see that bit.

And I was like, oh, well, I don't fancy going up against Russian women in the war.

Like, they were badass during World War II.

They had the night witches

who used to go in and fly planes and stuff and do like nighttime bombing and shooting.

And yeah, I'm quite...

listen I've got a new series of reacher to get through on Amazon Prime and don't think now's the it's not a good time for me

India news and well um Anuvab

things are always

there's always news in India I mean there's what what one and a half billion people um roundabout there's 1500 languages I don't know how how many religions, um,

48 million different ways of

making curries.

Uh, so it's it's hard to

expect the kind of glorious national cohesion we enjoy in less complicated nations such as the United Kingdom.

Um, but um, there's been a new temple opened recently that um has sort of emphasised quite how taut things are in India at the moment, particularly under the government of uh Narendra Modi.

Right, yeah.

I mean, there never has been a time on the bugle where I thought we'd run out of time and I'd be lucky.

This is clearly not one of those times.

They built a massive temple in the city of Ayodhya in the state of Uttar Pradesh.

It opened last week.

The plan is to make Ayodhya like Mecca or the Vatican, the center for Hinduism.

Now, the only problem is that

till the year 1992, from about several thousand BC, a mosque stood there.

And you guys have visited India, there's enough place to put a temple next to a mosque.

But somehow a large support base of the ruling party decided that the temple had to sit exactly where the mosque was.

And a slightly disturbed mob in the year 1992 tore down the mosque.

And in the year 2019, there was a judgment from the Supreme Court of India, a court that you guys had kindly set up in the 1800s.

And they decided by statutes of Victorian law that the temple had to be built exactly where the mosque was.

And

they went back to the archives of 2000 BC.

And somehow, clearly, the Archaeological Survey of India had an office in 2000 BC where they could pinpoint that that's exactly where the temple was.

And it was a temple to the Hindu deity Ram from the myth Ramayana.

And he was born there.

And so the temple had to come up there.

And that's the temple that's come up.

The mosque was given land a little further away.

Very controversial.

What people don't know was there was also a wrestlers' association in the same compound.

And they were given land.

This is what people don't talk about.

That's what I'm really upset about.

And the wrestlers were also given land.

But the main temple is the Ramjanra Mahumi, the birthplace of Ram temple.

It's come up and it's had a massive opening last week.

Prime Minister Modi, the head of the right-wing RSS, and the chief minister of Uttar Pradesh were the first three people that went into the temple, along with the high priests, followed by 2,000 different Indian celebrities, businessmen, cricketers, lots of friends of yours, Andy people, you know, the high places.

And I was quite fascinated by the seating chart of the VIPs of who who gets to be closest to god and who doesn't uh interestingly india's biggest billionaire uh mukeshambani richest fourth richest man in the world was three layers removed from god in front of him was the actor who played ram in the popular tv series

and i always wonder who does this seating the income tax commissioner of india

He had the sixth row behind the great idol of Ram.

So the chairman of the electricity commission was much closer to god so

point i'm trying to make is big event big event

i mean

the idea that there was a mosque there in yeah thousands of years bc I mean, this is a radical rewriting of religious history, Annifa.

Well, you know, here's the thing.

If the Supreme Court hadn't given that judgment, there would be a temple built on top of the mosque, which would have been one of the greatest symbols of religious unity the world has ever seen.

But clearly the Supreme Court decided that, no there was a ram temple here and here's the thing right i think a lot of western um listeners may not know this hinduism is often associated with a lot of uh you know just sort of relaxed and groovy sort of stuff you know you think oh hindus you think nice sequin dresses diwali fireworks temples in nisden that kind of thing um now so what is there to worry about um nothing really and that's what i'm really here to say there's nothing to worry about they're they're wonderful you know the the new hindus that are in power, they're not in any way militant.

They are lovely, they're caring, and I am not at all nervous to make a joke about this news item.

I am not currently shaking my leg and hoping that they

move on to the next topic.

And not once have I said that

I am unsafe in my residence, my largely unprotected residence, which currently has had two orange flags planted outside the main gate by peaceful groups of young, reasonably violent men,

without asking any of the residents of my building society whether we'd like to participate in said religious fervor.

So let me repeat,

we have none of us have been influenced at all, except right at our doorstep.

And none of these things are affecting me at all.

I am perfectly fine.

That's good to hear.

I mean, yeah, this is a dispute going back centuries into history, fueled by religion, still causing severe ruptions and disharmony today.

It's just another day in the sausage factory of World News.

That's just what we do on this planet.

Exactly.

Exactly.

I looked up Lord Ram and I thought he seemed pretty awesome.

Isn't he supposed to be the perfect man?

You know, he's blue like the other perfect men, Dr.

Manhattan, William Wallace, and Papa Smurf.

Well, Vanity Smurf, obviously,

the John Oliver Smurf.

That's, you know, could there be a greater example of human well, Smurf, Smurfio, human perfection?

Um, he seemed cool because he's like brave, empathetic, humble, loved his wife, and he's ripped.

Exactly, exactly.

Very in the myth, very progressive.

Uh, eventually ended up letting his wife run the kingdom.

Uh, and

I like him even more.

I didn't know that bit.

I mean, this guy seems great.

Yeah.

Um, currently being co-opted to win elections, not so cool,

uh, not as exciting for him, but the OG ram from the texts is a is a pretty cool guy

but now it seems every version of india has its own ram to one to win an election my local badminton club has a ram symbol uh when we're taking on the rival badminton club uh so clearly there's a ram for everybody tiff

Moving on finally to what the biggest story in India that we've been skirting around, Anuvab, the glorious victory of the England cricket team in the first test match in Hyderabad, one of the greatest victories in English cricket history.

Coming back from a huge deficit after

the first innings for each side to win.

Winning in India has been one of the hardest tasks in global sport in recent years.

India had only lost, I think, three of their last 45

home test matches.

England had a rookie spinner on his debut, had no real record, and out-bowled India's legends of the game, Ashwin and Jadeja.

It's basically, like I said, one of the greatest days, along with West Indies, who've been terrible for, well, not terrible, but really struggled for decades now, having their first win in Australia since the last millennium, sparking.

If you've not watched the celebration when they took the last wicket, it was one of the great sporting celebrations and covered a spectacular distance

as the players ran around the field celebrating.

It was, I think, one of the greatest days in the near 150-year history of Test cricket, which, as I said, is the greatest thing ever concocted by the human mind.

So it's basically the greatest day in human history.

But how is India coping with these convulsions in the space-time continuum of cricket that have seen them dominate at home?

Well,

the news story here is we've won because you can make up anything.

Now,

we don't have the BBC.

We can say whatever we want.

And most news outlets are saying we've won.

So that's one thing.

But the thing I want to say about this, Andy, is normally, and Tiff, you're here, you're evidenced to this.

When we discuss things on the bugle, we go back and forth on news stories, various headlines which have some ironic view on world situations.

The story we were covering, this particular story, India loses at cricket.

Andy, it didn't come in an email, it came as a personal text message to me.

I'm worried this is not a bugle thing, but you're trying to say something.

And

I'm not sure what it is.

But again, again, you know,

I guess it's not common for these sorts of things to happen, but accidents happen in the world.

You know, there are tragedies, bridges collapse, England wins.

I mean,

things happen.

I mean,

one Indian news website, Andy, CrickInfo, that you know well, had a headline, which I think summed it up.

It said, we were shit, they were not.

And

I think so much of the world is that, really.

It's a metaphor for life.

It is that.

But I'll have you know that the message travels because I heard the great Sting, who is a British musician at a packed Mumbai stage last night.

And he was two songs in.

He said, How about the cricket?

And 80,000 people booed him.

That's that's I took that to the how I feel about that, but just again, facts.

Just India going, how about you just play the hits and shut up?

Yeah.

Gordon.

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

We will have further updates from the world.

There's been some, well, some fairly heavy stuff going on around the world

that we might have to return to when it's February.

Next week, we have Nish Kumar and Chris Addison on.

Don't forget to book your tickets for the Bugle live shows in March, dotted around the UK details at thebuglepodcast.com.

Come to all of the shows or one of them, up to you.

I mean, if you want to come to eight shows in eight different cities, you'd be more than welcome.

But also, there's a couple of London dates in June as well.

You can also hear me on the NewsQuiz currently via the BBC Sounds app, or if you want to listen to it when it's gone out of date elsewhere.

Um, uh, Tiff, anything to plug?

Um, I am at Leicester Comedy Festival on February 25th, and I'm doing a show at 1 p.m.

because reasons.

Um, so it's in the afternoon, so I just I'm heavily plugging that.

So, buglers, please do come along.

It's a work in progress of my new show, Brave New Tiffany, because I think the world needs a PR,

a new PR, should I say.

So, I'm going to try and come up with some solutions.

So come to that.

And also old rope every second Monday of the month at the comedy store.

I believe Andy is doing one maybe in March.

Yes.

You are doing March.

So come along to that.

Just look on my Instagram or Twitter.

I'm still calling it that.

I don't care.

And you will find information for those things.

Yeah, I returned to the UK in May for a short tour of the Department of Britishness.

I hear that there is a big demand for Britishness in the world.

So I am

hoping to tap into those large

audiences that want to listen to an Indian person talk about Britishness, especially in towns like Romford or Suffolk, places like that, where I've never been but I plan to visit for the first time.

So yeah, that's in May and the dates will be on my website.

Don't forget, if you want to join the Bugle voluntary subscription scheme to become a voluntary subscriber to the show and keep it free, flourishing and independent, go to thebuglepodcast.com and click the donate button.

Subscribers get access to an exclusive monthly Ask Andy show.

Plus, premium level voluntary subscribers will be receiving the Bugle vinyl record, which is currently, I think, in the vinyl record factory being pressed.

So you should be receiving it soon.

It's going to be orange.

There.

I've said it now.

Thank you very much for listening.

Um, book those tickets to our live shows.

See you at them in March, and we'll be back next week in February.

Until then, goodbye.

Hi Buglers, it's producer Chris here.

I just wanted to very quickly tell you about my new podcast Mildly Informed, which is in podcast feeds and YouTube right now.

Quite simply, it's a show where me and my friend Richie review literally anything.

So please come join us wherever you get your podcasts right now.