The Climate Crisis Is Over!

The Bugle, audio newspaper for a visual world.

Hello, Buglers, and welcome to issue 4284 of the Bugle.

I think we're now only about 10 episodes away from overtaking the John Oliver era total number of episodes.

Woo!

It's very exciting times on this podcast.

It's the penultimate Epsidio of 2023.

Is that a misprint?

Epsidio?

Is that a misprint or a technical term?

Not sure.

Let's see how it pans out.

I think it might be an epsidio, which I think is an obscure form of musical arrangement or folk dance.

Do keep an ear out for my feet scuttling away under the desk as we record.

I am Andy Zoltzmann.

It is 15th of December 2023 and with just 10 days left before Christmas, it is surely time to ask, are we all absolutely sure that that little magic baby was all that?

I mean if he'd been really magic, wouldn't he have magicked a fully functioning maternity suite with with a birthing pool instead of a low-grade agricultural manger?

Not for me to say.

But

joining me today as the year enters its final half month before regenerating into 2024.

Firstly, freshly back from the USA, it's Tiffany Stevenson.

Welcome back.

Hi.

Welcome back, Tiffany.

I'm Palm Spring Forward or whatever.

I don't know.

I was, yeah, I've been in America and it was American.

Are people excited about the prospect of a year's worth of presidential election campaign coming up?

It's already sort of ramping up.

Trump's already on the TV

giving gross opinions about women.

So it just feels like 2016.

Right.

Feels like it's amping up.

Right.

Well,

from a hopefully less f ⁇ ing terrifying part of the world in Dublin, it's welcome back to Neil Delamere.

Hello, Neil.

Are you excited about the American election?

Oh, I'm very excited about the American election.

Yeah, yeah.

I mean, people love Joe Biden here.

People have claimed Joe Biden.

People claim every American president except Donald Trump.

So we claimed Barack Obama, we claimed John F.

Kennedy, we claimed Ronald Reagan.

We claimed Joe Biden.

And when Trump came over, Trinity College Genealogical Society, he was just like, ah, we've locked up for the night.

So, yeah.

I mean, there was a fire in the tea section specifically.

It's really odd.

That can't be helped.

Try Scotland.

Yeah, Scotland.

It should have been Scotland that claimed him, and Scotland made it very clear what they thought of him with a big sign.

Yes, we know the person who held that sign as well, don't we?

But no, I'm talking to you from Dublin, where things are very exciting here.

I have an exclusive for the Bugle.

Oh, the latest episodes of Squid Game are currently being filmed in Dublin.

A couple of weeks ago, all the players had to play this weird game where they rioted in their tracksuits in the city centre.

I don't know if you saw it.

Setting buses and the tram system on fire.

So that's look out for that next year.

Very exciting.

Well, it's

because I think there's tax breaks for filming in Ireland, aren't there?

Is that why Squid Games ended up on the streets there?

Yeah, I think that's it.

We are recording on the 15th of December, meaning it is exactly 15 years since my listening to the radio commentary of the India of England test match in Chennai was rudely interrupted by being called into impromptu service as a freelance midwife

when my son was slightly unexpected.

Well, not completely.

It wasn't completely unexpected.

It was just unexpected is not the right unexpected at that specific time.

I mean, he was not due out for another three or four days, I think.

So, yeah, we're around about the 98.9% pregnant point.

But anyway, happy birthday to the boy.

Bittersweet memories.

Can I ask you a question?

Given how much you love cricket, when he was out, did you go, Huzzah!

That's what you said,

pretty much.

Yeah.

Did you say leg before wicket?

It was one of the finest catches I've ever taken.

And I threw him in the air, high five the wife.

But you know, apart from that,

it was

rock-solid, rock-solid piece of wicket keeping.

Bittersweet memories, to be honest.

I had the extraordinary experience and privilege of delivering my own son out of his frankly weird secret hiding place and into the world.

And

I've enjoyed all the joy, love and happiness that he's brought us ever since.

But set against that, England blew a winning position and lost a game they really should.

That was tough to swallow.

I mean, India were chasing 387 to win.

Obviously, what was then the fourth half successful chase in the final endings of a test match.

And, you know, that's

but luckily the memory, that memory is at least partially leavened by

having the birth of my second child.

But it still, it still stings.

How was this not instantly divorce Andy?

This kind of conversation.

so you think that he's broadcasting from his shed that's where he lives now

she got the house because of this conversation

um on on this day in 1836 the uh patent office building in washington dc almost burnt to the ground almost 10 000 uh patents were destroyed as well as 7 000 patent models apparently and so we lost a lot of potential inventions that were uh awaiting um approval The fire destroyed, amongst other things, the patent applications for the mechanical steambatross, a mechanical steam-powered albatross that could have brought powered flight forward by, what, 70 odd years.

The Prayer Opult, which was a new device to be used in churches to twang people's prayers more accurately to God.

The average successful prayer response at the time was down around about the 4% mark, and it was hoped that the Prayer Repult would get it up to more like 11-12% but sadly we never saw it in action.

The anti-snooze desk which had a snore activated finger guillotine so if you felt sleepy on your desk

you would just put your finger in the finger guillotine and the subconscious fear of having your finger sliced off

by the pressure activated anti-snooze desk would generally wake you up on time.

That was the plan, sadly never

made.

The stovepipe hat oven that's for keeping your pack lunch warm Abraham Lincoln did have a subsequent version of that.

And also the patent for the internet was destroyed.

That put that back by, well, hundred and well,

over 150 years.

And on this day, oh, well, not this day, but the 16th of December, 1773, the Boston Tea Party, when the Sons of Liberty revolutionary group disguised themselves as Mohawk Indians.

I don't think that was okay, guys.

And for me, that pretty much invalidates the entire history of the independent USA.

But anyway,

they used some questionable costume choices and dumped hundreds of crates of tea into Boston Harbour, salty water, way below optimum brewing temperature.

What's a fucking waste?

And there was.

Is it a hard cancel from you, Andy?

Absolutely.

Hard cancel of the entire USA.

That was what now?

That was

250 years ago.

Tomorrow.

Well,

that's pretty much the Justin Trudeau of their day.

That's really the turning point in US history when it all started going irreversibly downhill.

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

This week, as we continue our look ahead to Christmas and potential presents you might buy, we review some of the new board games that are flying off the shelves this Christmas time, including Charles Darwin's Theory of Evil Can Evolution, an evolution-themed themed snakes and ladders inspired game of genetic stunt leaps can you twang your species across a series of potential extinction causing canyons to evolute faster than your opponents thus becoming the dominant species on the planet choose from a selection of starter species including ape fish

and lizard and robot also we review call customer service a new uh thrilling customer service based board game uh in which you have to avoid being useful uh to any fellow human You have to avoid allowing your opponents to get through to a human operator or providing any advice that might help them.

If they storm out of the room screaming in frustration at what we've become as a species before they move their piece to the elusive genuine help square on the board, you are the winner.

And you get extra points for playing your your call is important to us card the most times before other players tip the board over and start weeping.

And a fairly basic quiz card game, Rabbit or Rabbi, where you have a selection of 100 cards.

50 of them describe rabbits, 50 of them describe rabbis and uh your partner has to guess if you're describing a rabbit or a rabbi it's just as much fun as it sounds that section is in the bin

top story this week the world has been saved well we looked ahead to the cop 28 conference in the last issue of the bugle a couple of weeks ago and thankfully

The world has been saved.

Everything's fine now.

We can all stop worrying about recycling and stuff because the world has been saved by a vague agreement to transition away from fossil fuels.

I think that now means

we can just start being as reckless as we like with litter and everything is going to be fine.

I know both of you are huge fans of the planet.

Do you think this is a genuine breakthrough, a missed opportunity, a commercially driven stitch-up or a bit of all of those three things?

Well, I saw people being pretty underwhelmed by the agreement on the news.

I saw one woman, she goes, these proposals haven't exactly set the world on fire.

And I I thought, no, that's exactly what they have done.

They have set the world on fire.

COP27 was in Egypt.

COP28 was in Dubai.

COP29 will be

chaired by SpongeBob SquarePants in the hold on I have it here.

The Davey Jones Locker Conference Center.

Apparently, we are all doomed.

The only people who give you any hope are the kids protesting at the event, 12-year-olds and 13-year-olds saying, end fossil fuels now, because they know they're the ones who's going to be banjacks.

My eight-year-old nephew asked, you know what he asked

from Santa Claus?

Gills.

That's what he asked for because he knows what's coming.

So the phrase phasing out fossil fuels was in the first draft, but

the OPEC countries, which stands for Oil Produces Environmental Catastrophe, I think.

I'm not sure on that.

But they sent a letter around to their delegates going, you know, don't let them say this and protest against that wording.

But because they are the oil industry, the letter leaked.

Did they clean up after themselves?

No, they did not.

So the first draft agreement said phasing out fossil fuels and then the second draft agreement did not.

So next year I reckon they'll have to have an agreement on wind energy.

So every agreement will be a draft agreement and

they'll have the first draft draft agreement.

Then they'll have a second draft draft agreement.

Then they'll hopefully have a final draft draft agreement.

Gmail drafts?

It could be in drafts and Gmail.

And if Trump gets in,

will he vote against it?

He famously dodged a draft.

They'll get it through

because some countries

negotiators are better at strategy than others.

They're playing chess, where the other lads are playing

drafts, and they'll all go up to celebrate and have a few points as long as the beer is on.

Well, I think you know the rest of that.

I know someone who was at the entire conference,

and I asked him for an 11-word summary of COP28, and this is what he sent to me.

He was there for the whole two weeks.

He said, The 11-word summary is this: Surely, this is someone else's problem.

No, shit well um perhaps so i think you know that's that's progress of sorts i think um for you know we've gone from you know just i mean perhaps is better isn't it perhaps is a step forward i think well they've they said the text in the draft um states the huge challenge with crystal clarity and are we involving crystals at this point are we involving quick because in that case every woman in my friendship circle now thinks she can solve climate crisis including me I think we just need to moonbathe a rose quartz

and I'll do some tarot and we'll have it fixed.

I think Crystal Clarity has got a court case coming up against Donald Trump as well.

Well, there's another suggestion actually.

The hot air that appears every time Donald Trump speaks will be repurposed as an alternative heating source.

How can you not be concerned?

Like, even if you're not concerned about climate, right?

Surely people can see that it will drive climate immigration.

And the Tory government at the moment are obsessed with immigration to the extent it makes them look mad.

Like

so much focus on small boats.

It just makes them look so odd.

The UK had net immigration figures last year of less than 750,000, right?

The people arriving at small boats were 50,000, less than 50,000 of those people.

If you came home and there were 15 people in your house and 14 of them had come through your windows and your doors, if your main response to that was better block up that chimney you look

mad

particularly at this time of year uh you just yeah i mean that is a waste yeah you're biting you're biting your nose up quite a ways aren't you

um we will touch more on on that uh on that story later uh later in the show but i mean just to pick you up on this that the the key thing with this neil is what you're expecting here is politicians to address the genuine root cause of an issue rather than the easily observable uh symptom symptom that they can bark on about.

So, I mean, that's naive on your part.

It is.

It's me being overly.

It's a bit of a open heart of the issue.

Yeah, it's me being overly optimistic.

I mean, you could look at it

in a negative way, like in a decade, oceans will flood inland, making large areas of land uninhabitable.

Or you could look at it positively, in 10 years, the world will be more like a spa, in that it will be the temperature of a sauna, and all baths will be, by definition, seaweed baths.

So,

i mean pluses and minuses andy this is mix that in with the crystals i've got a great weekend happening oh we're going clamping

get your yurt we're getting it on

um it was it was the first time uh at a cop uh conference uh that a deal was uh sort of mentioned fossil fuels as uh

you know a cause of of climate change and and and committed nations to transition away from fossil fuels.

Obviously that commitment comes with the usual caveats in any environmental agreement, caveats including if they can be asked,

if they can't get away with not doing so, and yada, yada, yada.

But, you know, that's about as clear and definitive as a commitment gets in the world of environmental science.

And I guess, you know, they'd say the aim is to avert the worst effects of climate change.

And again, that's acceptance that humanity as a whole has essentially chosen to embrace bad effects of climate change.

But we have finally reached a point where we will now not embrace the worst of so essentially our game of species-level environmental SM.

We have found our limit, and at COP29 next year, there will hopefully be an agreement to

agree on the human race's safe word.

So, so there is progress.

Progress is being made.

What is a safe word?

Greta.

It would be Greta, wouldn't it?

Fossil fuels are going to be phased out unless they're running for high office.

Right.

In which case, that's fine.

They can leave their retirement community in Del Boca Vista to be president.

If I can slip a Seinfeld record,

I will.

But what Neil's kind of saying about the governments looking good is a lot of them are happy to promote clean energy.

So they just keep saying the phrase clean energy, which kind of throws me because it always sounds like a supplement someone sells you under the counter at the gym.

You know, it's real clean, my dude, mega gains.

Yeah.

like clean energy is a catchphrase.

I mean, the report I did delve into a little bit, and one of the things they found in the report about what's been done so far and any results from the last summits, the report found that the technology to suck carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere would have done almost nothing to stop global heating this year.

Current levels of technology-based removal, which does not include carbon absorbed by trees, are more than one million times smaller than current fossil CO2 emissions, the researchers found.

So what we need is something that sucks bigger and harder for longer, like a slutty little Henry the Hoover with a Dyson Airblade body.

All right.

Okay.

Well, I think we can all get behind that dream.

So next year's COP, COP29, next year, this time next year, or round about this time next year.

So COP28 has just taken place, as we discussed, in oil-rich human rights skeptic Dubai.

Next year, COP29 will be held in oil-rich human rights skeptic Azerbaijan.

I mean, this does seem to be the sort of geopolitical equivalent of getting Andrew Tate to host a seminar on gender equality in the workplace.

It doesn't.

I mean,

clearly you're not a member of Hustlers University.

Their gender-based masters is absolutely top-notch.

I still don't understand how people can deny climate change.

Like, I don't know if it made it onto the Bugles radar this week, but it's clearly causing more extreme weather events.

There was a tornado in County Leecham in the West of Ireland.

A tornado in the West of Ireland.

Now, I know most listeners are thinking, that is wild.

And I know Andy is thinking, is Tony Drago, the multi-snooker legend, playing a tournament in the West of Ireland?

And I know the Leacham tornado does sound like the name of some bare-knuckle boxer

in the red corner, weighing in at a number that doctors have described as life-threatening.

Larry the Leesh of Tornado Morrissey.

But it was wild.

It ripped up roofs off people's houses.

Cars were smashed.

One girl didn't get back to her storm shelter in time.

And her and her little terrier dog, the whole house was lifted up and moved from one place.

to another and landed on Suella Braverman.

So it was a really

odd thing to happen.

But

there was this amazing little uh cameo.

So, Leo Varika, the taoisick, turned up right to survey the havoc that was in the town.

Now, some townspeople were looking for damages, he's the first openly gay taischeck that we've ever had, and he visited Ross Common South Leetram, which is the only constituency in the country to vote no in the equal marriage referendum a couple of years ago.

So, when they were going, oh, will you give us damages?

I'd say Leo Ryder was like, Oh, no, you'll get your damages.

All right, oh, you'll definitely get your damages, yeah, yeah.

Oh, oh, no, it's so bad, isn't it?

It was a twister was it was it a twister is everything bent oh everything's bent is it did it blow you did it blow you it smashed your back door in it did not yeah oh no fill in fill in that form there and i'll put that in the big bag of things i don't give a about how about that

i like i like watching uh i like the idea of watching how ireland deals with with a tornado because in america when they have hurricanes there's a tendency if they're in florida to try and shoot them

which, you know, which happened.

I think it was Hurricane Irma, where they all decided that they would meet outside and shoot into the eye of the hurricane.

Because, goddamn it, Cletus, you show that wind, he'd be a choose bass.

But not realizing that kind of the current of the win.

I mean, I imagine if you shoot a bullet in, it's probably going to come straight back out and hit you.

You mentioned that the USA, the USA, during COP, has pledged new finance

for less fortunate parts of the world to deal with climate change.

The huge sum of $20 million.

That's the USA.

That's around about an average of five cents per person in the USA.

And the USA remains the world's biggest polluter.

So that's...

I mean, that is an almost heroically tokenistic sum, I think.

I think we need to acknowledge quite the effort it took to keep that sum so low.

This term transitioning away, this commitment to transition away from fossil fuels,

I mean,

it's not always as easy as it sounds.

I mean, we in Britain, we have some experience in how difficult it can be to transition away from stuff.

Empire, for example, which took us, well, decades, it left a trail of ongoing problems around the world, and we still haven't come to terms with it psychologically.

So that doesn't bode well, particularly.

We tried transitioning away from monarchy in the mid-17th century by having Charles I's head transition away from his neck.

That also didn't go too well.

And on current trajectory, we will only finally move on from having an unelected God-appointed head of state in around about the year 12,472.

So

committing to transition away from something doesn't always work out quite as quickly and well as you hope.

I mean you did transition away from burning Catholics though.

Yes, only by transitioning to burning witches instead.

Yeah.

Yeah, but I mean, listen, there were smokeless witches.

That's very important.

And the government planted a new witch for every witch they burned, so it was entirely sustainable.

We don't want to persecute men and women when we can just persecute women.

Well, women are far more environmentally friendly.

They burn at a lower temperature as well.

I mean, we don't make the rules.

Firing people to Rwanda news now and the British government's dream of firing at least one person to Rwanda at the cost of a quarter of a billion pounds remains on track after Prime Minister Rishi Sunak managed to see off a rebellion from his own MPs over the bill to allow people to be twanged to Rwanda from our national catapult.

This is a story that we've talked about a lot over the course of, God, it seemed well way too long

on this podcast.

And what is most baffling about it, and this is a government that is in the final twitchings of its elongated death throes before an election at some point in the next year or so, is that they just cannot let this go.

The government is now in a position that it seems to think that it has to be seen to force through a plan that basically absolutely no one thinks will work in terms of dealing with the problem it's supposed to deal with.

Not many people think is genuinely legal and pretty much everyone thinks is appalling value for money regardless of anything to do with the morality of it but the government cannot be seen to back down.

So it doesn't matter how insane a policy is, what matters is that the government shows the strength of character to stick with its insanity in the face of reality, evidence, and logic.

And that is the state, that's the stage we're at now.

Neil, I know you found this fascinating watching as an outsider.

Wow.

They spent 240 million quid on this Rwanda policy so far, and the Supreme Court decided it was illegal to send people.

I know that the bill has passed, but

the government has the same relationship to Rwanda as I have to the gym, in that I've been sending it money for

an absolute fortune for the last few years.

But the chances of me or anybody else I know actually going are very, very slim.

And it's odd, you're right, they're so committed to this because, and that kind of takes away from the other stuff that they want to get done, which they have gotten done to some degree.

So they wanted to lessen the number of people coming in boats, and that has happened.

And they wanted to have inflation, and that has happened as well.

Now, when Sunek says he wants to have inflation, I think he might probably means putting 50% less air in the dinghies.

It's every Christmas they go, how can we make it seem most like this year's edition of a Christmas Carol?

Gonna,

and this is the attempt now.

So, it's the British Supreme Court who declared the policy unlawful.

If you don't know what the Supreme Court is, it's not just regular court, it's Marks and Spencer's court.

And

it's sort of mad, isn't it?

Because they were saying, like, there have been 45,000 attempts by boat to breach the shores of the UK undetected, and that was just Michelle Moan on the good ship PPE.

So,

and the amount of money that's gone to this,

it's a policy started by Boris, and there's nothing like, like you say, doubling down on a bad idea.

Sunak decided that he was going to double down on it, and then one of his top five priorities was stopping the boats like he was playing giant battleships.

And so

I don't.

Boris lied about the EU money.

Do you remember his bus lie where he said we'd save 250 million by not being in the EU?

So we're going to save 250 million by not being in the EU.

And that's pretty much what we've paid to Rwanda to not take anyone.

You do have to remember that the

Magna Carta, or Magna Carta, as pedants like to call it, the foundation of British law, does have one of the very few clauses that still applies from the Magna Carta, along with freedom for the city of London and

when you're allowed to piss in a hedge, is

out of sight, out of mind.

And that is the absolute key to this government policy.

I mean, I don't quite know how they came up with this idea to fly asylum seekers to

Rwanda.

I mean,

it's so baffling, a country that is more crowded

and less well-off

than we are because we don't have the capacity or space to take the.

I mean, even by the logic of British politics, this is pretty far-fetched.

I've actually got a friend who works, a fictional one.

The one who was at the COP.

He gets around your friend, doesn't he?

Well, the one who's at COP is actually real, but this is a fictional one.

Let me make that clear.

But he works, this fictional friend, at the Oak Ridge Leadership Computing Facility in Tennessee, where they've recently installed Frontier, which is the world's most powerful computer.

Now, I I asked my friend if he could use Frontier's 8.7 million cores, that's over a million times more cores than a high-spec laptop has.

It clocks in with 1.1 exaflops,

which is not a term for a collection of former Conservative prime ministers.

It's something to do with computer processing.

It works out at 1.1 quintillion operations per second, which is even more than the NHS manages on its best days.

And I asked him if he could use this computer to formulate a more ridiculous policy than sending asylum seekers to Rwanda and after two months of running it every night when the office is shut, still hasn't come up with anything even close.

So I think it was probably concocted by Siwella Bravman during a seance

with

former Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison, who was behind the Australian similar policy,

Salvador Dali, just for the absolute

surrealism of it, and Beelzebub himself.

That's the only possible explanation for how this policy came about.

When you see Grant Shaps having a go at Gary Lineker over a letter he signed on migration, we have reached peak culture war.

Shapes has had five or six cabinet positions in the last year.

Like, you really can't put him anywhere.

He's like Lionel Messi in that he's completely unsuited to politics.

Like,

why could we talk about why they brought David Vicameron back?

Like, that's even that.

It's insane.

He's been gone for seven years.

That's one-third of a Leo DiCapio girlfriend.

What is going on?

He's resigned.

He's enough money to retire comfortably.

He has no hope of getting a job after the next election.

And he still took it.

This does not say a lot for the company of his wife and children, does it?

Would you rather spend time with your family or try and fix the Ukraine and the Middle East?

I'll take Israel and Palestine.

Thank you very much, please.

I think

it's actually quite inspiring because it shows you don't even need to be an MP to be foreign secretary.

So we can all just have a go.

Yeah, you had 350 people to choose from as MPs.

Yes, they make a guy a lord.

I don't know if this,

you know what it reminds me?

It reminds you of when Australian rules football teams take Gaelic football players.

And like, it's like, okay, you can have a new, you need a new captain, Jono.

You can pick any of our guys from our squad, any of the guys from the academy, any of the guys from the underage teams.

Who do you want?

I'd like a part-time farmer from Monhan, please.

Well,

the terrifying thing about this, I don't know if it's terrifying, is that Sunak has brought forward emergency legislation to push this through that seeks to override any laws that would prevent the deportation scheme going ahead.

So he's just like running roughshod over human rights conventions so that he doesn't get a vote of no confidence from hardliners.

And the hardliners don't care because they want to leave the EHRC.

I don't know if you remember Theresa May a couple of years ago was like we don't we don't want to be a member of the EHRC we don't want our hands tied by the EHRC and I was like do you know what they're against binding or restraint of all forms the EHRC that's the opposite of what they're going to do to you

but yeah it's

it's kind of terrifying to think oh you can just push through something with emergency legislation without it going through the proper due process.

Is that not

how is that being allowed to happen?

Well, I think probably because absolutely everything to do with our political system has gone to shit, is the simple answer to that.

Yeah, there might be more detail that I'm unable to get my head around.

Tourism news now, and well, let's lighten the mood a bit.

Some wonderful news, Neil, for Ireland as a nation, for Dublin as a city.

It turns out that Dublin, you know, wonderful city to visit, has the world's leading tourist attraction.

The Guinness Storehouse has beaten other contenders such as the Grand Canyon, the Acropolis, and the Taj Mahal to become the world's best.

Just, I mean,

I've not been to it.

Can you explain how it's won its trophy and what makes it such an amazing place to go to?

I would, I don't know the process involved, but I would imagine a great deal of bribery.

I would suggest.

No, I don't want to cast aspersions on the Guinness Storehouse, but I've been to the Guinness Storehouse and I've also been to Machu Picchu, which it beat into second place.

And can I tell you that the Guinness Storehouse is not as good as a city the Incas built in the Andes 600 years ago.

Surprise, surprise.

I have been to Machu Picchu.

It is amazing.

One of my favorite favorite things I've ever heard from a guide who was walking us up the mountain said, do you want to chew some coca leaves?

And it'll give you energy.

And I said, Okay.

And he goes, No, go on, take them.

It'll make you feel like asparagus.

This is what he said.

And I went, What?

He goes, It'll make you feel like asparagus.

Go on.

And I said, What are you talking about?

He goes, You know, asparagus, the film, you know, asparagus.

You know, Kirk Douglas.

I'm asparagus.

No, I'm asparagus.

No, I'm asparagus.

And that was actually true.

That wasn't like your imaginary friend in Oak Ridge.

But yeah, it's been a great year for Dublin attractions.

So we had Guinness Storehouse beating Machu Picchu into second place, and the Kilimanhanum Jail, which is the quintessential kind of Victorian jail in Dublin, won Best Museum of the World on TripAdvisor as well.

So,

and that was based on TripAdvisor ratings.

Like, it does show you how things can change because it wasn't reviewed nearly as highly by the leaders of the 1916 rising when they were there.

Very much,

very much a one-star rating there.

It really brings it home to you when you see Devil Aira sell to think that 100 years ago

you could get a one-bed in Dublin for less than two grand a month it really makes you think you know

but if you if you if you go back online and you can actually find some of the trip advisor reviews from the 1916 leaders and I actually found James Connie's TripAdvisor rating and I think it'll shed a lot of light on it and we recently stayed at Kilmanham jail a last-minute surprise gift from the British government

we had heard very mixed reports previously but some of our friends have stayed there recently and we haven't heard back from them at all so we thought it couldn't be too bad.

While the location is very convenient for local attractions, we found the staff unhelpful, bordering on rude.

Only single rooms were available, and the en suite is very basic.

Exercise equipment is limited, just a single gymnastic ring in the yard.

That's pretty dark, I'll be honest.

Overall, the decor is quite dated, and there are some holes in the terrace wall that need to be filled.

The all-inclusive gruel package leaves a lot to be desired, although some guests were given a free cigarette right before checkout.

it's our final day here tomorrow and I can definitely say we won't be back so that was very much a one-star view but things have improved since then you know you can't deny it

it's interesting so this is the Guinness storehouse so presumably it's a it was you know began life as a storage facility before it was a tourist attraction and this is kind of exciting isn't it because you know it used to be that you know to to become a you know a big tourist attraction you had to be a temple or an important public building but now this opens up the tourist tourism market for storage facilities with ambition anywhere around the world i mean down down the bottom of my road we've got an access stealth storage unit that opened up a couple of years ago um and you know if if we play our cards right here in south london within just a few years you know we could be sitting in absolutely prime airbnb territory we're talking 600 quid a night 150 quid cleaning fee just for people who want to go and see our storage facility and i mean you'd the guinea storehouse is set you need to stick a roof garden on it to get that really

fired up because that's the addition.

There's a sky bar at the.

I did see this and kind of go, did dads vote solely for this?

Like, it feels like a dad's vote.

Like, can we all go to the Guinness Storehouse?

By the way, did I tell you I'm thinking of starting a micro brewery?

Like,

that feels like I know who's deciding to be able to do that.

You're still not going to beat the Guinness Storehouse, though, Andy.

In fact, you're going to be in third place in terms of storage facilities because we've the Guinness Storehouse and there's a guy in Belfast who has a wardrobe with a lion and a witch in it.

So you're not going to beat that.

But I mean, I guess just up against other storage facilities, such as the pyramids in Egypt, which are essentially a storage facility for a corpse,

you know, it's probably better.

probably better than that.

I've got a few Guinness facts for those of you listening who don't know that much about Guinness, huge part of the Irish drinking identity.

Guinness, here's your first Guinness fact.

The renowned stout and metaphor for the European imperialist age was invented by Ireland's patron saint, Saint Patrick, when shortly after driving all the snakes out of Ireland, he turned a bucket of mud covered in bird shit into a smooth, satisfying and nutritious drink.

Guinness is not, despite the claims, a meal in itself.

It doesn't contain a cheese course.

Fact three, if you drink a pint of Guinness in one continuous sip while standing on one leg at dawn on midsummer's morning whilst facing towards Dublin, it is said that you will fall in love with the first person to ask why did you just do that, and you're also legally entitled to a free teddy bear from any participating Guinness retail outlet in the southern hemisphere.

And finally, fact four: the longest time ever taken to drink a single pint of Guinness was 59 years.

Young father Padrig,

how do you pronounce that?

I mean, that's a name I've made up, and I can't even pronounce it myself.

O.

O'Callaghan, I think.

Left an unfinished

name, you couldn't say.

Left and there.

That's too many bugles.

That's too many bugles.

You've actually had a psychotic break.

One part of your brain is picking it a name that the other part of your brain can't pick.

Mother, we're seeing a breakdown before our very eyes.

So I mispronounced O'Kallamahanahan.

Sorry.

It left Langley.

He left an unfinished pint on the bar at the Old Naughty Carrot Pub in Belfast when leaving to tend an ill parishioner who was working on the Titanic as it left the Erling, Holland, and Wolf Shipyard in 1912.

He ended up stuck on the ill-fated mega boat, survived the sinking due to his hatred of band music, ended up in New York, built a new life as a baseball journalist, and returned to Belfast for the first time in 1971 to watch George Best play football and feel closer to God.

He went to the Carrot after the game to find that his pint had been preserved by three generations of the McSnidget family who ran the pub and hated waste.

And Father O'Callumahanahan finished the pint before asking, Is my fing fish pie ready yet?

You owe me a fish pie.

Is there anyone on this planet who isn't trying to rip you off?

Amen.

That may or may not be.

I've only one problem with that fact.

Okay.

Surprisingly, I think it's unlikely that Father Okala Malahallahan would be in such a renowned orange pub as the old palace.

That's my only issue with that whole story.

But I guess you have to ask also, you know, why have other attractions sunk down the rankings whilst the Guinness Storehouse has

risen to the top?

It's a bad year for the Acropolis, by the way.

Really bad year for the Acropolis.

Yes.

Well, I mean, just looking at some of the.

Well, you mentioned the reviews

it's had.

I mean, some of the reasons why it might have sunk down the rankings included this kind of feedback from tourists.

Second time I've been, they still haven't mended the roof.

Another says, a relative of mine was struck down recently by one of Zeus' thunderbolts for something, can't remember what, so I found going to a place dedicated to his daughter Athene, quite triggering.

Another person said, still not enough marbles.

And one final review said, I loved the film based on the Acropolis, but the original was a real disappointment.

There was no sign of a river, the jungle was non-existent, there was nothing about Colonel Kurtz in any of the museum exhibits, and I couldn't smell the napalm at all.

Seriously disappointed.

So that's why the Acropolis is the Grand Canyon, described as just a big empty waste of space, too big to do in an afternoon.

So that's not really what modern tourists are looking for.

Someone else wrote, Not my thing, I like going to the beach, I don't like going to the canyon.

Such is the world of internet reviews.

And

someone else wrote, not great if you're into nightclubbing it's a canyon and the acoustics are not great for house disco or techno music

i guarantee i guarantee the internet someone has written why have they put it there about this damn canyon i bet you someone has said that not very convenient to get to

elegance marbles i have to say if you're ever as a as a non-brit going into the british museum it just feels like walking around a police auction

i wonder used to own that i wonder used to own that well i do i do feel like that's why there's no British tourist attractions in any of these, like in the

full list of top attractions, according to TripAdvisor.

We're like, we're nowhere near it.

There's like 25.

We haven't, and kind of like with Ireland, with the jail and with the Guinness storehouse, it feels a bit like Eurovision.

It's like, are they the best tourist attractions or does everyone just really like Irish people?

Fair enough.

Fair enough.

Just

we just want the hang.

Do you think the Greeks show the antiques road show, but it's called Crime Watching After?

Yeah.

The Taj Mahal, Bookie's favourite this year, disappointing showing for the Taj Mahal.

And again, some pretty poor reviews.

This person wrote, not much in it for the adrenaline junkie.

You're not allowed to slide down the dome, and they won't let you string a bungee rope between the towers.

And woe betide you if you even try to take a jet ski onto the pool at the front of the installation.

Even a Lilo and a floating beer fridge seemed to be an absolute no-no.

Mausoleum, snauzoleum or like.

Another person wrote, I didn't like it.

I never met the guy's wife, so I don't know if she was actually worth all this architectural fuss.

Also, it put real pressure on me for my forthcoming wedding anniversary.

And someone else said,

I can barely get planning permission to put up a bike store where I live, let alone a 73-metre-high tomb and a 17-hectare garden.

So you can see why not everyone likes it these days.

So, I mean, I mean, in terms of holiday, have you got any sort of particular dream holidays for, you know, in terms of holiday attractions that you'd particularly like to go into?

What do you think about that?

I think holidays are important so that you can argue with your family in a different location

with sunburn.

But I like to escape from the bleak dystopia by holding up a toilet seat in front of a picture of a tropical island and then taking a picture of it to post on social media and pretending I'm on a plane.

And it really helps me break away from the daily monotony of posting lies on social media to convince people my life is better than it actually is.

I think that might be the most succinct summary of 21st century life that anyone's ever done on a view with it.

No one's going to top that.

That was perfect.

Neil,

what do you look for in a kind of dream holiday destination?

Well, the best thing I've ever heard on a holiday was at a tourist attraction in Rome.

I don't know if you've heard of it.

It's called the Coliseum.

Oh, yeah.

Big, big, big one.

And there was an American family, and they were very kind of Californian in their childcare and very, you know, very reassuring even though the two there's two teenage sons battering the shit out of each other and after about 10 minutes the dal lost his mind and shouted at his two sons he said will you stop fight this is the coliseum and it's no place for fighting

we were

and we were like meh i think it's exactly the place for fighting one of those kids should have hit the other one and gone are you not entertained

well if you can bleep it i can tell you one of the best lines i heard when i was at i think it was Thorpe Park, where someone just shouted at their husband, Oh, just get on the teacups,

which, you know, can't beat it really.

It's the bad language with the gentleness of the teacups, isn't it?

Yes.

Yeah, it really is.

Get on the bouncy casket, you prick.

That brings us to the end of this week's Bugle.

One more full bugle this year before we consign 2023 to the history books where it fing belongs.

Thank you for listening.

Don't forget that, as I said, with just a few days, a week or so by the time you listen to this, possibly to Christmas, the best Christmas present that you can possibly give anyone is a ticket to one of the Bugle live shows in March dotted around

the UK.

Best present, really?

Yeah, best present, Neil.

Best present.

Details on the internet.

Also, ticket links on the Bugle website where you can also join our Bugle voluntary subscription scheme.

Subscribers get access to the exclusive monthly Ask Andy bonus show

in which I answer your questions.

The latest one will be coming out early next week or this week, depending on when you're listening to it.

So there you go.

That's my plugs done.

Neil, anything to plug?

Yeah, I'm doing some UK

dates on the new tour at the Pleasants in London in April, Hot Water Comedy Club in Liverpool and the Comedy Box in Bristol.

And I do a podcast called Why Would You Tell Me That?

where we talk about wild stories that you don't know but you probably should and this season we've had really interesting guys including one I think you might like who's a South African Jewish dude who is the dude who invented Bailey's in London in the 1970s and his name is David Luckman and he's brilliant So it's stuff like that.

I could plug the film that I'm in.

If you haven't seen it yet, it's on Paramount Plus and it's about a killer sloth.

So it's called Slotherhouse.

Oh my god, you're in Slaughterhouse!

Yeah, have you not

watched that?

I didn't know that.

Woo-hoo!

Oh, yeah.

Obviously, the Emmy Noms came out at the beginning of the week and sort of...

Bit disappointed not to have got a nod

for my scenes with the sloth.

Definitely would have been supporting because Sloth is the lead uh alpha is the lead but yes uh it's very silly very fun comedy horror film uh so check that out on paramount plus if you're in america and you're listening you can watch it on hulu um uh for a bit of fun and listen to episodes of catharsis

uh my podcast with the bugle network um so catch up on those they're available to listen to and you know book a ticket to see me live sometime you can you can check me on social media for when and where I am playing.

There you go.

That is all of your Christmas presents sorted out, Buglers.

Thank you very much for listening.

We'll be back next week with Alice Fraser and Josh Gonrelman to bid a not very fond farewell to this remorseless shit of a year.

Thank you for listening.

Goodbye.

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.