Horndog Special

Hello, it's nearly midsummer here in the hemisphere of shattered dreams, which, if I've read my hinges correctly, can mean only one thing.

An episode of the Bugle is about to start in 10, 9, 8.

Start larynx.

6, 5, 4, begin writing process.

2, 1, blast off!

The Bugle, audio newspaper for a visual world.

Hello, buglers, and welcome to issue 4267 of The Bugle, audio newspaper for a visual and dare I say, extremely fing stupid world.

I'm Andy Zoltzmann, the voice of a generation.

Sorry, not the voice of a generation, the voice of D generation, my mistake.

And joining me today, back on the right side of the equator, where the water goes down the plughole instead of spurting upwards into the nearest tap.

Here in London, it's Alice Fraser.

Welcome back, Alice.

Welcome back to the north.

I mean, it's so exciting to be here, despite not getting free B-days on command.

You've just got to know the right people, actually.

I mean, this is the problem with London in summer is it's deceptively nice, isn't it?

Yeah, yes,

it traps you in.

Also, joining us, stepping into the breach at the last minute after our scheduled guest, a showbiz legend no less, star of stage and screen, had to drop out.

What a

well, we will try to get Sarah Bernhardt on in a future week if she gets better.

But we've got the nearest like-for-like replacement we could find for a second consecutive episode from Mumbai, India.

It's Anuvabh Powell.

Anuvabh, welcome and thank you for leaping into action.

It's no problem, Andy.

I'm considered Sarah Bernhardt of Calcutta.

So that's what

I'm often known as that.

I have to tell you guys, I don't know if you've heard, but there is a massive cyclone that's headed towards India and Pakistan.

It's going to hit us in a couple of days, pretty big one.

And the BBC have been reporting it quite objectively.

And it's really unfortunate because I thought after the BBC's run-in with the Indian Prime Minister, you'd think that they would have learned their lesson, right?

I mean, one thing I know about the BBC is that they're very, very biased about cyclones.

So what they're saying is that the cyclone is moving towards Karachi, Pakistan, and the state of Gujarat in India.

as one of the largest cyclones the Arabian Sea has ever seen, right?

Why can't they just state the the facts, Andy?

And the facts are the cyclone is moving away from India because it is afraid of India's power on the world stage.

Right?

And also, the Prime Minister has just announced that he will personally fly into the storm with the sword and slate, which the BBC is not reporting.

Right.

Okay.

And you know what that is, Andy, Alice?

It's bias.

That's absolutely right.

Well, thank you for telling us right.

I will pass that on to

my producers at the BBC to

feed up the food game and i'll tell the western pundits to begin preparing their thoughts and prayers the most effective form of disaster response

well we'll send them send them in advance um you know that's because we tend to wait until afterwards but you know get them going early We are recording on the 13th of June 2003.

Tomorrow, the 14th of June is the 201st anniversary of Charles Babsy Babbage outlining plans for a difference engine in an academic paper to the Royal Astronomical Society.

Now,

now regarded as one of the world's first and most influential mechanical computers and a stepping stone to the development of its modern successors such as the Sega Mega Drive, the iPhone and the CompuTurtle, the ocean-going computer that works out what's happening underwater.

But Babbage actually intended the Difference engine to be a machine capable of automatically writing observational stand-up.

The 16-time British Profit of the Year spent tens of thousands of pounds of 19th century government money developing the difference engine, but all it could come up with was that cats were different from dogs because they didn't wag their tails in the same way, and that men were different from women because men had jobs and fought in wars, and women often died in childbirth and weren't allowed to go to university.

They were sound observations, but not laugh-out-loud funny.

And after he died on his arse telling an audience at Jean-Glaur's Beaux in 1834 that horses were different from sharks because they could stand up unaided, he readapted his machine to perform mathematical calculations instead.

Anyway, 201 years ago, Charles Babbage's difference engine was outlined in the academic paper.

On the 15th of June, 1878, Edward Maybridge took a series of photographs which proved, contrary to popular belief, that when a horse runs, all four of its feet are off the ground.

Not all the time, obviously, but in between touching the ground.

There are times when a horse is not connected to the surface of the earth.

It had previously been assumed before Maybridge's work that horses kept one foot on the ground at all times, probably out of superstition because a horse legend had it that an ancient horse king, Samarkand Nigel, once lifted all four hooves on the ground and was plucked away by a passing albatross.

Horses were then thought to run with their rear left leg dragging along the ground until Maybridge proved that the cheeky little bastards were cheating, probably to fix bets by lifting their feet up.

Maybridge's pioneering work to show how the body moves also encompassed numerous action shots of humans and other animals, including a naked man cooking potato dauphinoise while rocking out to some vivaldi, a woman in a jock strap hammering a carrot into a pillow, a goat drinking beer out of a teapot, and a footballer flobbing into a bucket.

Anyway, that influential series of photographs was, well, what is it now?

145 years ago in two days' time.

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

This week, as we're sweltering here in London, I mean, it's been like 27 degrees, Alice from Australia, Anuvab from India.

I mean, can you imagine what such oppressive heat is like to have to live with?

I can't imagine what such oppressive heat is like to live with in a place that is completely constructed contrary to heat.

Every building here is built to like keep heat in against the horrible dank winters.

And so

it's like walking into an oven.

I remember, I mean, in Australia, I don't know, in Australia, one of the things you do if it's a very hot day, and I know this is awful, is you walk past like a Westfield or something and you step into the Westfield and it's crispy, cool, you get a little bit of cool on you, and then you go back about your business.

I remember walking into a mall in the UK and it being hotter than it was outside and feeling genuinely affronted, like on a human rights level.

It's just one of the many ways we like to make ourselves more miserable in this country.

That's what keeps us happy.

There are lessons from India one can take from the 1980s, Andy, about heat.

You know, when India didn't have a lot of air conditioners in the good old days, you could just walk down the street and ask a good Samaritan just to throw a bucket of water at you.

It's a tradition that has died now because of Samsung and other electronics companies.

But it was, you know, you'd often see completely drenched people walking down the street at 40 degrees because you could just ask someone on the road to just take water of a tubular and just smash it in your face.

Again, cultural exchange, cultural exchange.

Well, there's a very interesting sort of arc of human experience that happens when it's hot in the UK, which is day one of sunshine, everybody immediately strips off and lies on like the verge in the middle of the road to just suck up as much sun as they possibly can into their pasty white bodies.

And then by day three, they are itchy and angry.

So much rage.

It's the rage of second day sunburn.

You know, by the end of the week, there's something satisfactory about peeling, but it's that middle place where there's just so much rage floating around the air.

Ambient rage.

I mean, that's interesting because

the Brexit referendum was in the middle of summer.

And that was on a Thursday.

So we hadn't, you know, we'd probably been out getting angry in the sun.

Then we voted sunburned.

on Thursday and changed the course of our national history.

Lessons to be learned.

Anyway,

our section in the bin this week is build your own weather forecast.

We give you all the words you need to construct the weather forecast.

You want to hear this week's words and phrases, and there'll be more over the following thousand weeks on the bugle.

This week's words and phrases for your weather forecast.

Cloudy, warmer, front, will,

will not, surprise, what do you call a sheep that has the same atmospheric pressure as itself?

Sunnier than it looks.

Quit your whinging.

It's better than Antarctica this time of year.

Intermittent.

Absolutely shitting it down.

Fahrenheit, of course.

Otherwise, you'd literally boil to death like an egg.

And ISO baa.

That section in the bin.

Also in the bin.

After a poll revealed that a quarter of the population of the UK thinks COVID was a hoax.

We look at other great British delusions in this new poll.

17% of people in this country think cabbages contain a mind-reading microchip that once ingested send your entire internet history direct to the the Ministry of Thought.

12.4% think Queen Elizabeth is still alive and running a covert operation smuggling penguins into Britain to be used as Donica Babbs.

And that's Elizabeth I, by the way, not Elizabeth II.

She wouldn't stoop so low.

And 39% think Paddington Bear wields way too much influence in this country.

They might be onto something there.

Those sections in the bin.

Top story this week: Bugle Global Horn Dogs Update.

And well, it's been an exciting week for some of the great political horndogs of our era.

We will come to a horndog who has sadly departed us,

the original Bugle horndog extraordinaire, Silvio Berlusconi, who has sadly gone to the great Boonga Bunga party in the sky.

But let's start with Britain's own...

Trainee Berlusconi, Boris Johnson, former Prime Minister, has quat as an MP.

the former PM who put the liar into national liability, has jumped before he could be pushed with the release, the impending release of a parliamentary report into his conduct.

And it's becoming one of the traditional sounds of the British summer, isn't it?

The splash of vomit on pavement outside nightclub, the tinkle of waz on bus stop, the gurgle of intergenerational suspicion, the fizz, crackle, bang of firework between football supporters' ass cheeks, the screaming argument about whether Brexit was right or wrong, whether whether it's real or pretend, and whether we should or should not stop having screaming arguments about it, and the Boris Johnson resignation statement.

These are the unchangeables of a modern British summer.

He quit the cabinet in 2018, he quit as Prime Minister in summer 2022, and now he has quit as a member of Parliament.

That's quite aside from other subsidiary resignations, sackings, flounce-offs, stroppatures, and winge-outs that have marked his career.

I mean, how has this news been reported across our former Imperial colleagues,

colleague countries, because I mean, I think it's fair to say that as a nation,

99.99% of Britain has, frankly, had enough of the stupid.

I mean, it's sort of, it's so interesting the way that he quit, Andy.

I think the way that he quit is sort of that you'd say, you can't fire me, I rage, quit, flounce out, bout a re,

which seems to have not achieved the end that he intended it to, which was that he hoped that by doing that he would stop the partygate inquiry.

And despite that, his statement that it was like a witch hunt and he was being forced out, and also you should stop inquiring.

It looks like the inquiry is still going to go on.

I just find it's hard to convincingly call something a witch hunt if you're cackling over a cauldron wearing a pointy hat.

Yeah, I mean, he said some fairly extraordinary things.

He described the Privileges Committee, which is investigating

his actions, as, quotes, a kangaroo court.

And you, as an Australian, Alice, I've no doubt you find this very insulting, given that the average kangaroo has an attention to statistical detail far in excess of anything Boris Johnson has ever shown, not to mention a greater propensity to speak in truths.

We also have a very ethical meat.

All kangaroo is wild-culled in Australia, so it's one of the more ethical meats you can consume.

And I don't think Boris Johnson, were you to eat him, would be.

Well, that's an interesting.

I hadn't thought of of it in that way

I mean are you suggesting we breed free-range Boris Johnsons for food well he's trying isn't he

and Ivab what about in in in India because I mean he's he's he's obviously got a kind of global profile in India we've talked about this on the Bugle before he kind of he cycled around Mumbai on a tiny little bicycle was it a tricycle at one point I can't quite remember it was it was a tricycle Andy he's quite popular here He's after losing several jobs.

He's come here as a corporate speaker.

He's quite popular on the lecture circuit in India.

But the two things that have been playing on Indian TV the last couple of days, one is a quote from Andrew Marr,

who said something on LBC Radio, and he said, Boris Johnson doesn't seem to go away.

Why is it that I think of him more than I think about my wife?

That's a question you can only answer yourself, mate.

Yeah, I mean, to be honest, that's the same question Boris Johnson asks himself.

So, yeah, I mean, that's been playing.

I think it's lost in translation.

Indians are not able to tell whether that's funny or accurate.

And the other one that's been playing on TV a lot is a quote from an MP called Tim Loughton.

And his quote was, My hope for the future of Boris Johnson is that he will shut up and go away.

Which is often what audiences in Edinburgh have told me.

Yeah, but also, I mean, hoping that Boris Johnson shuts up and goes away,

that, I mean, it's good to set yourself achievable goals.

And that is

sort of like hoping that,

you know, a shark wins Wimbledon.

It's unlikely.

It's logistically problematic.

And if it does happen, questions will have to be asked.

Well, I mean, if it does happen, the shark won't be able to stop long enough to receive its trophy.

Well, I guess not.

Sharks can't stop.

But basically, I think one of the most interesting features of this quitting is that

it's being seen as, or it's being characterized as mutinous, that his ex-colleagues are bad-mouthing him after he's gone.

Have you seen this story, Angie?

Yeah.

Look, I don't know.

If I were a Tory, I wouldn't be a Tory, but if I were a Tory, I'd quit being a Tory.

But if I were a Tory,

I'd be relieved Johnson were gone.

Like, it's not mutiny to badmouth your bad boss after he's been fired from his job job and then quit his other job and is now living in a mansion in the countryside with tens of bedrooms, presumably, to house the many, many more children he intends to have, but not count.

Like, it's not like bad-mouthing your ex-husband in front of the kids when you have to share custody.

Where we're in a Yelp culture.

Johnson is lucky they're not leaving Airbnb-style reviews.

You know, wasn't informed that the facade concealed toxic damp problems.

Arrived to find the toilet full of poo.

Open brackets, not even human, exclamation mark, close brackets.

Noise pollution and bad communication from the host, one star.

Just a quick question.

I've asked this before, Andy Alice, because I think Boris Johnson often has referred to himself as Jacillian.

He said he compares himself to Winston Churchill.

Now, it is true Winston Churchill lost elections and then he went off to write a tome.

He wrote History of the World, I think in 10 volumes.

My question is, let us say if Boris Johnson did gracefully disappear and went off to write a book, because he is a giant intellectual.

What would it be?

Would it be the history of the Peppa Pig World?

What

is the volume we can expect?

Well,

I mean, he has written quite a lot.

He's written a book about Churchill.

He's supposed to be writing a book about Shakespeare, which got slightly delayed by the fact that he became Prime Minister.

I mean, if it's as truthful as

his general output, I guess we can expect to find that Shakespeare was a third-century Patagonian queen.

So, I mean, I don't know quite what's going to happen there.

I mean, he might just carry on resigning from other stuff.

He could just quit as a member of the human race, quit as from living as a living, breathing warning sign about the dangers of allowing your democracy to rot itself from the inside.

Because that's the only thing

he's really good at now is complaining about being forced to resign.

That's all he's got.

I mean, it's his, now that he's no longer in power, he has to find creative ways of undermining democracy and basically slamming a report before it's even come out.

That's the main club in his bag now.

But again, being forced to resign is such a disingenuous way of talking about this.

Like, you're not forced to resign if you get fired for wanking into the popcorn at the cinema.

Yeah, I mean, we should say the report has not come out, so we don't know that he definitely did that, Alice.

So let me just cover our backs legally.

And also depends on the cinema.

I mean, I've been to some cinemas here.

Certain things are allowed in certain countries.

Show Anuva.

Hold on.

I'm sorry.

I'm sorry.

Also, just a quick question.

There seems to be now some brewing discontent between

your current Prime Minister, Rishi Sunak, and Boris Johnson.

They seem to have been friends and cordial throughout all of this till now.

Not entirely cordial.

There's been a certain amount of tension.

And the current tension is that we have this strange

tradition here

that departing prime ministers can issue an honours list, people to be given national honours, like OB, CBs, and to be appointed to the House of Lords.

Now, you might ask, why is it that a Prime Minister is allowed to appoint people to sit, and I don't know how to put this delicately, in f ⁇ ing parliament for f ⁇ ing ever

in a democratic country.

And I mean, that's the kind of question that you can't really answer.

I mean you don't need to ask a constitutional expert.

You don't need to ask a democratician, a parliamentarologist or a political connoisseur.

You'll get as logical and valid an answer if you ask a bucket of eels, a puddle of shit or indeed a former prime minister.

It's one of the many ways in which we like to preserve our democracy undermining heritage, as I said.

And we pass, we of course passed on these innate nation-shaping skills to some of our imperial era foster countries like the USA with its presidential pardons and so on.

But some of Boris Johnson's proposed

honorees, is that the term, have been rejected by the committee that oversees these things.

And now bearing in mind that currently in the House of Lords, we already have, alongside occasional useful experts, we have time servers, career licks, bittles, convicts, bribers, also known as party funders, highly questionable plutocrats, hereditary embarrassments, bishops, knights, rooks, and political pawns to be rejected from entry to the House of Lords.

That, I mean, that is a low bar that you've failed to get over.

Well, yeah, given that the original qualification for being in the House of Lords was to not have a chin and to have a cousin for a mother.

Yes.

So

there is some

bad blood between Johnson and Sunak over the fact that Johnson is trying to get some of his cronies permanently baked into the heart of our democracy.

But as I said, when it comes to our own democracy, we are complete f ⁇ ing idiots.

Well, it seems like

I just read something Rishi Sunak today where he said that there were a lot of not qualified people like you guys are describing presented for the House of Lords.

You know, for example, I was surprised to see my name on that list.

And I don't even live there.

So he said that Rishi Sunak said he wasn't prepared to...

to do that.

Boris Johnson had given him this list, and he wasn't prepared to approve it verbatim.

And I don't know about you guys, but for the first time after all these years, I actually heard Rishi Sunak say an actual thing that didn't sound like it was generated by a meal Amazon Alexa.

It sounded like a thing.

And I guess there's a rebuttal from Boris Johnson saying Rishi Sunak is talking rubbish.

So this is,

do you think this will get to hand-to-hand combat?

Where do you think this is going to go?

Well,

I think most people in the Conservative Party would like to see that, whatever side they're on, maybe

jousting

to decide their forever leader.

I mean, it's a bit rich coming from Sunak, bearing in mind that he has Suella Braverman in cabinet as home secretary.

So when he's lecturing you about appointing unsuitable people to public office,

well, you either need to take it with

a salt mine of salt or you need to take a long hard bath with yourself, ideally both simultaneously.

Speaking of hard baths, Andy, the water here is so hard.

Yeah, you were complaining before.

It's playing havoc with your hair.

You say that.

Yeah, I feel like every time I come to the UK, there's like a month of transition period where my my curly hair just goes what are you doing why is there minerals in the water right i've had that for 48 years um

speaking of sweller breverman i have a quick question again i have a lot of questions being sort of from another culture what exactly is a wokerati

well that's a good question um

i think it was some ancient uh martial art wasn't it the wokera and the Wokerati were the grandmasters of Wokera.

I'm not sure.

Also, there's suggestions that it is some kind of

cross-breed animal between

a Wookiee and

I've seen this creature.

Yeah, it eats a lot of tofu.

I've seen this.

Or someone who lives simultaneously in the United Arab Emirates and the Surrey town of Woking.

So the Woker Rault.

We don't know.

We just don't know.

I should say, as I said, the report into Johnson hasn't been published yet.

He resigned, having been shown the report and

realizing that it wasn't so much jumped before he was pushed, but pushed himself

because he was being pushed by himself.

And

his own actions basically pushed him.

But we don't know what it will actually say.

And it is possible that it will reveal that Johnson did absolutely nothing wrong legally or morally.

It may equally reveal that all of the Rolling Stone's 50 Greatest Hits were written by Martina Navratilova and featured London Zoo's Keith the Flatulant Porcupine on backing vocals.

It may reveal that Britain has been invaded by opera-loving aliens who are about to install a reanimated Pavarotti as Emperor with 19th century warble star Jenny Lind as his empress.

It may reveal that former Prime Minister Liz Truss has set to join Harry Stiles, Joni Mitchell, George W.

Bush, Jermaine Gere, and Kermit the Frog as lead singer in a new supergroup called Cop Chafers of the Grumble Pit.

Pit.

All of these are equally possible as finding out that Johnson did nothing wrong.

We just don't know.

We will have to wait to find out.

I just don't think we're considering one of the possible scenarios, which is that they handed him this report.

He went, aha, exonerated on all fronts.

I quit.

Moving across the Atlantic to another political horn dog, and obviously even the worst Borisian Johnsonings that we can muster in the UK are as a mosquito in the pajama trousers compared to the crocodile in the underpants that is eating away at American democracy.

Donald Trump is well he's still favorite to get the Republican nomination for next year's presidential election despite the unending slew of court cases in including the allegations that he kept nuclear secrets in his bathroom amongst the various confidential documents that he was not supposed to have that ended up in his

nuclear secrets in his bathroom, sheaves and sheaves of other classified documents.

And that conjures up perhaps the most unsettling image in American history.

Boris Johnson sitting in his bathroom

with nuclear...

Let's not think about let's not think about that.

I mean, to be honest, it wouldn't be entirely surprising if they actually found an actual nuke in his living room, perhaps as a conversation starting coffee table or an obstacle on his golf course, perhaps even as a piece of equipment in one of his f ⁇ dungeons.

Who knows?

It wouldn't be surprising if they found the nuclear football in his memorabilia cupboard alongside the desk from the Oval Office, an original and now soiled copy of the U.S.

Constitution with multiple unsettling stains, a sex doll that looks eerily like his own daughter, Rudy Giuliani, and various former Miss Worlds.

I mean, there's nothing that can surprise in terms of what he's pilfered

from

the American people and state.

Well, I think nobody is surprised, but I think people are maybe shocked by

maybe the blatantness of this whole thing.

He was sort of, it wasn't just he had the documents and forgot about them, and he was hustling them around and hiding them from people in various really bad hiding places as well, in a ballroom, in a bathroom, in order to sort of keep them for himself, some odd thing.

And then he was talking, he did this on the record in an interview.

He shared unauthorized information about his desire when he was a president to attack a certain country.

And he had this conversation with a writer, and it's on the record.

He said, Look, look what I found.

This was

the senior military official's plan of attack.

Read it, and it's interesting.

I could have declassified it, he said.

Now I can't, you know, but it's still a secret.

I just, as a lawyer, as an ex-lawyer, I have to admire somebody who just covers every angle of a crime and confesses it to it in writing in like two sentences.

Extraordinary efficiency of words.

Truly

a poet of self-incrimination.

I just, genuinely, like, it's an achievement to do that much to damage your own defense in so short a time.

That's absolutely true.

And also, I think, you know,

it definitely breaks ground in home decor.

You know, if you're doing up your Mar-a-Lago house, you've just retired as president, you've got your Dickens,

you know, you've got, you know, your collection of great American writers.

Then you have all the countries you want to bomb, and you have a classified document in each of them.

You know, I think it's not very many people can boast off that bookshelf.

And also, if you're a visiting world leader doing business with Trump many years post-his presidency, you go to the toilet, you know, just right under the vogue or the architectural digest is a little document about how he's going to take you out.

Again, you know, it's a good thing to keep around the house.

Not all of us have that privilege.

I guess not.

Yeah.

And I mean, you say a list of countries that he wanted to

drop nuclear bombs on.

I think that's just a world atlas.

I mean, there are rumors that he also had the actual big red button that presidents are known to have, that he took it from the White House when he left, but had written the words, pull my finger on it, in marker pen.

I don't know.

Normally, when there's nuclear secrets in my bathroom, Andy, it's just because I ate too much humas.

And even then, I have the dignity to deny it.

In other American news, Republican Senator Tom Tillis has been reprimanded by his party.

Now,

why might a Republican be reprimanded, you might think?

Why might a political figure be reprimanded for some kind of wrongdoing?

corruption, for stealing funds, stealing secret documents.

No, in this case, he's been reprimanded for supporting LGBTQ rights and advocating gun control and he's been reprimanded But as a result in North Carolina because of these so essentially what the Republicans are saying is they are Against human happiness and all life unless it's still in the womb now that might not sound like a vote winner But this is America we're talking about and Republicans are staunchly sticking to their principles of trying to make as many people as f ⁇ ing miserable as possible and helping Americans achieve their Second Amendment dream of being shot dead while going about their daily business.

I mean, this really kind of shows, I think, where the Republicans are now, that supporting human rights and wanting fewer people to die is no longer acceptable.

And by a broad majority, it was about a thousand senators voted to condemn him, although it's not like universal.

There's a few people who've made, you know, I think quite good points of like, you know,

why are we attacking our own?

Although State Senator Jim Bergen said, I don't think we need to be attacking our own.

You don't shoot your own elephants.

Which says to me, how many elephants do you have?

That this is a saying.

Yes.

Well, I mean, it also does highlight the Republican attitude, doesn't it?

Because a normal human being might think, well, just don't shoot any elephants these days.

We know that now.

But the Republican thinks we're not going to win an election without offering people ivory cudgels to whack each other

In a country that supports freedom, that's meant the whole thing is meant to be freedom, sort of for good or ill, it's important to move in ideological lockstep with your political affiliates, right?

Yes.

Yeah.

Well, because also, I mean, I guess you've got to protect the freedom to stop other people having freedoms.

I mean, that's not the ultimate form of freedom itself.

In other Trump news, Trump has been criticised by Ben Affleck and Matt Damon's production company after he used audio from their recent film Air,

which tells the story of the creation of the Nike Air sports shoe and the role of Michael Jordan in that.

And Trump's used it in a campaign video.

I mean, I guess you do have to ask, if Donald Trump can't steal audio from a film involving Matt Damon, what is he going to be able to steal?

I mean, he's very unlucky that Damon could remember the film.

It was one of six that he filmed on the 12th of July last year, post-lunch.

And it's his, I think, 500th film of the decade so far.

So he's a bit unlucky in that.

And also, I mean, yeah, you're complaining about him nicking audio from a film.

He's stolen nuclear secrets.

I mean, lives from a film is not going to waggle the needle on his completely non-existent moral compass, is it?

Well, you know, I have a slight screenwriting issue here.

And

Ellis, you know, I saw the film a couple of days ago.

Now,

their issue is with the monologue that Matt Damon's character Sony Vaccaro has just when they're about to sign Michael Jordan.

So Michael Jordan has a choice between a number of shoe companies and Nike is the worst chance of getting him.

And then Matt Damon comes out with this great speech.

And the speech is about how Michael Jordan is going to change the world.

He can't even foresee the things he's done yet, etc.

And it ends with this line: a shoe is just a shoe unless someone steps in it.

Right?

Now, Donald Trump uses this entire speech out of context to talk about how unfair his indictment is.

Right?

Now, in screenwriting terms, that's like me using Jack Nicholson's, you can't handle the truth speech every time I take a shit.

You know, it just, there's got to be a context in some screenwriting terms to use something.

I mean,

not to shoot the elephant that's on my side here, either, but

a shoe is just a shoe until somebody steps into it.

It's still a shoe once somebody's stepped into it.

I mean, arguably, it's just a foot-shaped box until somebody steps into it.

And this is what I'm realizing, Alice, there's a screenwriting strike, and I think you can fill an important gap here

in Hollywood with this sort of thing.

And I don't know how it works in his indictment.

I mean, of course, it works for Michael Jordan because he changes the future of the Nike airshoe and the world and everything else.

I don't quite, I mean, what's the context of a man who's going to go to jail for selling secrets?

Are these shoes of corruption i don't know what shoes these are

well i guess yeah they are big shoes to fill with confidential documents uh before you ferret them out of the out of the white house

uh moving on now to the horn dog that has sadly barked his last uh silvio burlesque horny um i don't know if i pronounced that right has gone as i said to the great bunga bunga party in the sky maybe proof of the existence of gods uh or at least the type of god we see in renaissance paintings with angels frolicking on the clouds because we have had entirely cloudless skies in london since berlusconi died which makes me think that the angels have

right off so they don't have to deal with silvio turning up and trying to grope them on the ass uh i mean if there is an afterlife the women in it are being quietly warned about the new arrival um and i mean Berlusconi was a man who featured a lot in the early years of the bugle.

He was, I think it was 2011 that he was last prime minister of Italy.

He's a man who's been involved in more corruption scandals than I've had hot dinners, and I'm averaging close to four hot dinners a day.

And a man to whom a sex scandal is like a 50-mile bike ride is to produce a Chris, even when he's not actually doing one.

He's thinking about his next one, and age and injury cannot stop him from doing it.

Is a man who saw his ancient Roman predecessor Caligula, not as a warning from history, but as a life coach, spiritual guru, and inspiration.

And in this age of the strangely orange political leader and the media celebrity turned flesh-eating national parasite, Berlusconi was very much a trailblazer.

He catapulted himself from football club owner and media mogul to straddle that always gossamer fine line between leader of a country and liar, thief, and lecturer, sex pest.

It's quite the legacy that Berlusconi has left both in Italy, where his political right-wingery lives on, and in the global trend for people like him to become national leaders.

How will you both remember Silvio?

I mean, how can you forget the leathery sex pest and human incarnation of the abstract, if slightly greasy concept of sleaze, Silvio Berlusconi, will leave an odd-shaped and indelible mark in all of our hearts.

I think the thing that strikes me so much about him was,

you know, just he was such an iconic figure.

You know, his complexion was unusual in that it was sort of an unheimlich combination of surgeon's art, makeup, drug use and sun exposure.

And when he smiled, you know, it looked like you were finding a face in a tree.

I don't know whose teeth he had, and I'd like to believe, though I can't be sure, that neither did he.

A political giant in the landscape of Italy's politics, which historically has included a lot of grifters and maniacs.

He's going to leave a mark on Italy's collective memory somewhere between Emperor Nero and the horse he made a senator.

And he's going to be remembered fondly by all of his kind of political colleagues and

all over the world.

He's been getting these tributes coming in, variously ambivalent and carefully worded tributes from Vladimir Putin called him a true friend and said he admired Berusconi's wisdom and ability to make balanced, far-sighted decisions.

And on the other end of the spectrum, the French President Emmanuel Macron described Berusconi as a major figure in contemporary Italy, at the forefront of the political scene for many years.

years from his first election as a member of parliament in 1994 to the senatorial mandate he held until his final days which is as neutral a tribute

as you possibly like, it's essentially running Berlusconi's Wikipedia entry through Chat GPT.

I like a comment from his

first ex-wife.

I'm going to mispronounce her name.

I think it's Carla Dalolio.

And when the news came, she said, What did you think about your married years?

And he said, Well, he was here sometimes.

So few of us could talk about marriage so fondly.

We will have more on Silvio at the end of the show.

Another figure from the past years of the bugle also died this week.

The Iron Shake, the former professional wrestler and grandmaster of the insultative tweet, also popped his clogs this week.

and will no doubt be calling Silvio a f ⁇ ing jabroni as we speak.

And I mean, his Twitter account became rather legendary.

Whether or not he actually wrote it himself or not seems to be slightly disputed but there's a pinned tweet left even as he has has left the mortal realm there is still a tweet pinned at the top of his twitter feed that i think sums up what what the iron shake was to humanity it simply says take a minute of your day to be nice to someone you dumb son of a bitch and

i mean in many ways those words encapsulate everything about humanity in the third millennium so far

it's perfect well is it extraordinary Is it an extraordinary figure, sort of a divisive person playing this kind of caricature of Arab nastiness at the same time as providing a recognizable figure for people who might not otherwise encounter any Arab stereotypes?

It's such an extraordinary role that he played both in the WWE and in the broader American political landscape that it feels it feels weird because you don't know what kind of a person he actually was.

Sometimes I think when I looked at at the Iron Sheikh, I wondered whether, you know, the current regime in Saudi Arabia,

you know, like one, the Iron Sheikh has nothing on the current regime in Saudi Arabia.

You know, like they're far more menacing.

I mean, no matter what the Iron Sheikh does, I think the real Sheikhs are still winning in the wrestling arena.

I mean, in many ways, I think you can see the influence of

TV wrestling,

which was previously viewed as rather over-the-top and contrived.

And essentially,

that is what mainstream politics has now become.

So, yeah, I guess in many ways, he's a figure that straddles different eras of human civilization.

We will play you out at the end of this week's episode with some excerpts of Berlusconi and the Iron Shake from Bugle's Long Past.

We will end this week's Bugle there.

As I said, we will play you out now with some classic excerpts in the Bugle archives dealing with Sylvia Berlusconi and the Iron Shake, who have both departed this planet for whatever comes next.

Thank you very much for listening.

Alice, anything to plug?

So I just want to say if you're going to have an Iron Shake, you also want to have some vitamin C shake

so that you can absorb it better.

I have a podcast called The Gargle, which is the glossy magazine to the Bugle's audio newspaper for a visual world that goes out weekly.

Also patreon.com slash Alice Fraser.

I have weekly writers meetings if you want to come and write with me and we also have a workshop afterwards and that's available for everyone who signs up to the Patreon at patreon.com slash Alice Fraser.

And you are doing the Edinburgh Festival this year?

I am doing the Edinburgh Festival.

My show is called Twist.

If you're in Edinburgh, come see it.

It's at the Underbelly Bristow Square and it's like sometime in the evening, you know.

Anivab,

are you doing Edinburgh this year?

Just for two weeks, Andy.

I am at the assembly last two weeks of edinburgh 14 to 28th and uh i think i mentioned this once before i'm not doing comedy this year i am coming as a representative of a new department in the british foreign service called the department of britishness and i've been hired to spread britishness in india uh which seems to be losing its value

Oh, yeah, it's not just India that's happening, to be honest.

You can listen to me um talking about cricket for uh a potential 25 days in the next six weeks as the ashes uh begins uh there is no unbelievable ashes this year because uh felicity ward is busy uh filming some stuff in australia however there will be a daily bugle ashes zoltzcast with the stats of the day

and um assorted other uh

purely truthful nonsense that will be available via the internet in an exciting new addition to the Bugle stable.

As a result of the cricket, we are having a week off next week.

We will be back in two weeks to go through until our summer break in August.

We will now play you out with some classic archival bugle about Silvio Berlusconi and the Iron Shake.

Goodbye.

My favourite something sort this week came from Silvio Berlusconi, and the Prime Minister of Italy and career criminal.

Never lets you down.

Who described Obama after his victory as young, handsome and even tanned.

Oh, Silvio.

Whether that was an opinion or a joke, either of them would be from the 1950s.

Well, you can always rely on Berlusconi to come up with the goods.

I mean, that's what you you want in Italian politics, John.

I mean, you can't make jokes about the Lyra anymore, and we all miss them.

And they don't change government quite as often as they used to, and it has been a while since their tanks only had a reverse gear.

But Berlusconi will always be there for us, John.

He will always say something genuinely appalling, but at the same time, quite funny.

He said some amazing things over the years.

He suggested that the Chinese used to boil babies under Mao.

This caused a bit of a rumpus with the Chinese.

And then Berlusconi clarified his comments by saying that they didn't eat them.

They just boiled them in order to use them to fertilise the fields.

Also, he told a German member of the European Parliament that he'd be perfect for a film role as a Nazi camp guard.

Also described himself as the Jesus Christ of politics.

I'm a patient victim.

I put up with everyone.

I sacrifice myself for everyone.

And he also said, if he was talking about why companies should invest in Italy, he said, another reason to invest in Italy is that we have beautiful secretaries.

Oh, my God.

He's the worst human being in the world.

Yeah, but he's great value for the neutral spectator.

There have been some admirable and unusual protests from members of 51% of the world's population this week.

The wife of Silvio Berlusconi, poor woman.

Well, John, poor woman, yes.

But not only is she his wife, but she's still his wife.

So

you can kind of understand her marrying him by mistake.

But she stayed married to him.

Silvio Berlusconi, Italian prime minister and spectacular crook, has

had

staying in?

That is legally rock solid.

It's a fact.

That is a legal fact.

It is a fact.

He is shaped like a shepherd's crook.

That's right.

His wife has criticised he and his party's plan to field attractive young women as European election candidates.

Other awkward awkward relationship news now and Andy never mind Nick Lag and David Cameron being thrust together bugle favourite Silvio Berlusconi has well I mean he's been quiet by his standards recently Andy not not getting hit in the face with any more miniature cathedrals nor sleeping with any more teenage models who he momentarily and repeatedly mistook for his wife

and perhaps it was little snafus like that that have caused him getting divorced Now Berlusconi's wealth was estimated by Forbes at $6.5 billion in March putting him at number 70 in the rankings of the world's billionaires.

Pretty good.

His taxable earnings in 2007,

taxable earnings,

this is hypothetical, of course.

That's right.

Total 14.5 million euros.

Still actually a huge drop on the 139 million euros.

he declared in 2006.

But that is also just what he declared.

Because, as I think we both know deep down, down, all of us know, you have to understand that paying tax for Berlusconi is like bungee jumping.

He can understand in theory why people do it.

It's just not something he can ever see himself personally being interested in trying.

Berlusconi's architect apparently said there are two philosophies of restoration.

One is just to clean the work and leave it as it is.

The other involves making the work whole again, without damaging it, to provide an image of the work as it was originally conceived.

Well that sounds great in theory Andy.

I just don't know exactly where a detachable magnetic penis fits into that philosophy.

Next week Berlusconi attaches detachable magnetic massive tits to the Venus de Milo.

Here we have Berlusconi news now and well he's been charged since we last did a bugle.

He's been officially charged with

being very, very naughty indeed.

But this is the latest in his spectacular 17 years in and out of power.

Allegations of wild sex parties, prostitution, bribery, tax evasion, corruption, and much, much more.

And yet, the polls show that his public approval rating is still high.

And if an election were to be held tomorrow, he would win it.

Amazing.

What do these people want, John?

Amazing.

The thing is, prostitution, he's been accused of paying for sex with a 17-year-old Moroccan exotic dancer.

He's called the charges groundless.

And the thing is, prostitution is not illegal in Italy, and the age of consent is 14, but a prostitute must be 18 or older.

So, in Berlusconi's defense, he might be a 75-year-old man banging a 17-year-old.

But illegally, it's just a technicality.

Leave the man alone, let him live his own life.

strap in googlers tweet number one ioc i f you up no disrespect the legend my only sport wrestling they have no dick they make new sport of go f yourself right strong tweet

straight out of the gate there that's what the format was invented for that kind of concise expressing of opinion No, you would think he would then put his computer or phone down and think that I did that was perfect.

Well, I just communicated everything I needed to say about this thing.

This upset me.

But you know what?

Then he picked it up again and he typed this.

Tweet two: You see the legend, you know, I break the ICO back, make them humble.

Go f the badminton and the walking, they are not sports like wrestling.

The ICO, but I think

he clearly typed these in something of a rage, John.

Well, that's right, that's not that's not a problem.

Tweet number three: New Olympic sport is who has smaller dick than Hog Holger.

Hashtag save Olympic wrestling.

I don't know what to be honest.

That would get quite big TV viewing figures.

And it's also definitely something that Britain would have a live medal chance in.

Other tweets he said were, good night and IOC, go f ⁇ yourself.

Don't ever insult the legend Iron Sheikh or I break the Olympics back, make you humble.

I'll tell you one thing he also hates, Andy, and that is punctuation.

The Iron Sheikh did not just save this the email goes on to say the Iron Sheik did not just save his weird brand of vitriol for Twitter either offering up the following quotes in an interview with TMZ After a thousand years they take away the best sports in the world this is the first time the dumb motherfuckers have no balls for they make the walking an Olympic sport.

He really hates walking.

He really hates walking.

He really does.

If I see anybody on the street that worked from the IOC, I swear to Jesus that I suplex them, put them in camel clutch, break their back, make them humble.

And finally, is that really the humility?

Having a broken back?

The hashtag, the hashtag Team Sheiky, respect the Olympics now.

They could all go f themselves and make the curling Olympic sport.

That's the Winter Olympics, but you don't want to argue with him when he's this angry.

Because they're also the biggest piece of no-good shit, and I never watch the Olympics again.

Also, buy my t-shirt on my website or go f yourself.

Buy my t-shirt or go f yourself.

If you had any balls, that would be your slogan.

Buy my t-shirt or go f yourself.

Damn it.

Let's just distils marketing down to its elemental forms.

He's run that through a focus group, John.

Oh, God, that's good.

This guy's not to be trusted, though, because after he was the Iron Shake,

where, because that was when America had a problem with Iran in the 80s.

Then when the war of Iraq happened, he renamed himself Colonel Mustafa and teamed up with Sergeant Slaughter and said he was from Iraq.

Yeah, really.

So

this guy is not to be trusted.

He's a cheat.

Chris, I would say everything we've learned over the last few minutes, I would be very, very careful irritating the IG.

Otherwise, you're about to get...

I'm going to buy one of the t-shirts just to protect us.

He posted the following tweets, messages on Twitter saying something like, Chris, I break your back.

Go f ⁇ yourself.

Triathlon, not sports.

ICO mother f ⁇ .

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.