World News Update

Well, I think I'm peaking a bit.

Hang on.

Hello.

That was 2005, I would have said.

That recent.

Well.

The Bugle, audio newspaper for a visual world.

Hello, Buglers.

I am Andy Zoltzman reporting to you live from the Shed and welcome one of the most cordial of all possible welcomes.

In fact, we're talking top 10% of all the welcomes in history in terms of cordiality, so you better fing appreciate it.

I'm going to get a finger.

Oh, shit, we just dropped out of the top 10.

But never mind.

Welcome to the Bugle.

It's issue 4263 of the world's longest running and only audio newspaper for a visual world.

Over 550 episodes now of unrelenting factivitiveness.

And joining me for another one today are firstly, currently in Sydney, Australia, it's Alice Fraser.

Hello Alice.

Hello Andy.

Hello buglers.

It's a delight to be back.

It's great to have you.

How has your festival season been?

So far so good.

I've got to say the first

week of my show was pretty f ⁇ ing brutal.

Because it turns out that if you stop gigging because you have a baby, you get rusty.

Oh right.

And then the very kind people who came to my first week of shows bore the brunt of that right in their stupid faces.

Just me with a wet fist full of jokes going, is this funny?

This is how all shows I must.

Also, joining us.

I don't know exactly where, to be honest, it's Neil Delamere.

Neil, where are you?

What year is it?

I am in your bedroom.

Well, you're in the shed.

I am remodeling your house.

What are you doing with it?

Your wife and family, say hello.

I'm moving it.

I'm moving it slightly to the European Union.

I just thought you'd like to try it out for a little bit, and then you can make a decision in a while.

Yeah, a bit of nostalgia.

We'll see how it goes for 40 years.

And then, if it's really working objectively very well, we'll move.

Yeah,

but what I'd like is if you could split between your children and your wife, like the bare minimum amount of people who want to move the house, then we'll move it on that basis.

Okay.

Okay.

And in 40 years' time, I'll be in about the right age bracket to impose that decision on future generations.

So it's all gonna work.

It's all gonna work very well.

So welcome Neil.

How are you?

I'm very well.

I am in the midst of May is communion and confirmation season over here.

And my young nephew is obsessed with technology.

So he asked me for a drone.

for a drone for his confirmation.

So I bought him the cheapest drone possible and it goes up and down and it it has a limited kind of altitude.

Now he would call it a kite, but I'm very much sticking with analog drone for the moment.

Well, that's good, and also, I mean,

you know, it's a religious time, and what is God if not the original prototype drone floating above us, snooping on the side?

I was going to say the original prototype kite, isn't that the spine?

And therein lies the great schism between the major religions:

drone or kite?

Andy,

not to make this personal, but is there more stuff in your shed than the last time I saw the inside of your shed?

Well, that's a good question, Alice, and that very much depends how you look at it, because what I've actually done is tidy the shed and organise it.

So there's more stuff now on shelves and less stuff on the floor, which as you can see is...

Oh, I've never seen the floor of your shed and I've been in your shed at least eight times.

So, no, it's, I think there's about the same amount of stuff.

I've taken some stuff out, I've brought some stuff in, mostly cricket memorabilia, and I've tidied up.

We should explain that your shed is Mario Konda would walk in and just go, no.

No.

Just turn around and get it.

You must live a life very full of joy.

No,

it's just a bit disappointing because I was playing a game where I just took pictures of the increasing amounts of junk in the background.

I was going to animate it to look like your shed was creeping up on you.

Yeah, it starts off kind of normal, then it goes to hoarding, then it goes to full-on Channel 5 documentary, to be honest with you.

There's a point at which there's an intervention will have to be staged.

Well, as long as I can still move enough to shuffle my bits of old cricket stuff around, then that's fine.

It's your happy space.

Yes.

I'm recording surrounded by this assorted junk.

No way to describe your panelists.

On the 15th of May, 2023, a day on which, in the year 1905, the city of Las Vegas was founded at a ceremony in which officials dressed in white flared trousers, spangly white shirts with the top few buttons undone, and gold-rimmed sunglasses.

They declared Las Vegas inaugurated, and the founders then, in a series of musical statements outlining the city's constitution, called for less verbal discussion and more concrete deeds and progress in the expansion of their new city.

They then toasted for its hope for long life as a city before a minor earth tremor left the officials saying they were to a man feeling completely shuddered.

shuddered.

A decision was made to build a prison on a rocky promontory, and they did also vote to bring in the world's first dating service.

But in the spirit of competitive American entrepreneurialism, they invited potential contractors to submit bids to run it.

The song Love Me Tender thus rounded off the city's founding day celebrations on this day in 1905.

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

This week, after Tom Hanks threatened that AI could allow him to continue starring in films long after the unlikely event event of his death.

We review the forthcoming big-budget AI-enabled blockbusters that give movie fans the castings they've always dreamed of but never seen, including the romance sizzles on the screen and off the screen as a young Clark Gable attempts to woo fellow detective Margot Robbie from Neighbours as they try to solve an unsolved murder in the chat GPT authored classic, Whose Is This Corpse and How Did It Get Here?

Rick Moranis and the early 20th century silent movie star Mary Pickford star together in Honey I Elongated the Cat, a hilarious slapstick caper in which Moranis quite literally gets the silent treatment from Pickford after a botched experiment results in the family cat becoming 60 meters long.

Also coming 19th century opera star Jenny Lind will, thanks to AI, star in a musical adaptation of the erotic thriller Basic Instinct.

The music is being provided by an AI Joe Green or Giuseppe Verdi, of course anglicized for today's tech-savvy word world.

The libretto will be by an AI Billy Bigwords himself, William Yeah, Lizzie Wiz.

I'll hack out some Anti-Yorkis propaganda for you, no Biggie, Shakespeare.

Also,

alongside the new basic instincts, we have Jurassic Park Popes to the Rescue.

Starring an AI version of the 17th century Pope Innocent XI as himself in the latest from the Jurassic Park franchise, alongside his predecessors Calixtus III and elaborate ceiling fan Julius II, the popes find themselves brought back to life as part of a botched experiment to create a Christian Stegosaurus.

And they have to rescue Jeff Goldblum, an AI Clara Bow, celebrity British micro-Prince Prince George, played obviously by a body double from the hangar of backup identical children the royal family keeps in secret in case of emergencies.

And they have to rescue them from a rambant horde of Tyrannosaurus Rex, Pope John XII, hybrid cross-breed dino-pontiffs.

Yes, called

Pontifrex.

In which the bad boy of 10th-century papacy papacy

finds himself in a flesh-rending, piddly-armed mega-carnivore reptile's body and wreaks havoc across the whole of a stunningly accurately rendered 6th century BC Babylon.

What a film that is set to be.

Reviews of all those in our section in the bin.

Can I just say if Jurassic Park has taught us one thing, it's in the first movie, it's that a pope should never shit in the woods.

All popes' vision is based on movement as well.

I don't know if you know that.

Basically, you're at Mass, and if you see the holy water just kind of tremble, it means that the Pope has been nearby.

I like the way you think that that's made up, and that is less

fantastic than the Catholic Catholicism that we had to learn for our Holy Communion in school.

I had to learn quite a bit of stuff from my bar mitzvah, but I learned it all in Hebrew, and I was never taught what it actually meant.

Probably the best way to do religion.

Do you know if somebody from the DUP is listening to that entire fantastical film, the only problem they would have at the end is there's no such things as dinosaurs.

Top story this week, the world.

We're looking just broadly at what's going on in the world this week.

We'll start with some world leaders, current, former, future, possibly all three in some cases, including the former American president Donald Trump, who achieved a first

last week, not the first first in his career.

He became the first former US President to be found liable for sexual assault.

The renowned insurrection fan and black belt nation splitter received the verdict last week on Wednesday at 9 a.m.

on Thursday UK time.

This was lead news, understandably, on most news sites in America, almost all, in fact, most in the UK, many around the world.

But Fox News's website managed to find, somehow, 21 stories to put above the Trump verdicts on its homepage in one of the most spectacular displays of editorializing in the history of the internet.

And

that is a high bar.

I mean,

it used to be...

that a politician being found guilty of having a slightly overdue library book would feel the need to tearfully resign and set up a penance-driven charity to help people return things they borrowed on time.

Now, for Trump, it seems being found to have sexually assaulted someone has given him a handy boost in the polling.

Can either of you explain what the f has happened to A, America, and B, the human race?

I think it's an extraordinary win for Trump.

He manages to spin a civil conviction for sexual assault into a victory in the culture war.

That is tertiary-level, like Trumpery.

He's gone away to Mar-a-Lago, like Rocky in a Rocky movie.

Everyone thought he was getting out of shape, and it turns out he was just strangling a chicken with his bare hands and telling a side of beef that it looks like a bad person.

And America used to know how to make a side of beef that knew a woman's place was on the Miss Universe competition stage and not suing innocent predators for simply using their God-given sociopathy.

And if America didn't want Trump to be rich and successful, he wouldn't have spent the last 50 years being allowed to be to pretend to be rich and successful.

I'm sorry, Andy, this is so like the rage I feel at having to make jokes about Donald Trump again is so pure that you could sell it to Gwyneth Poltrow as a detox product.

Could you make it into a candle, maybe?

So the GOP,

hers is Goop, isn't it?

Yes.

So apparently G-O-P is within Goop, the grand old party.

This is all working together, Alice.

This is genius.

Such a basis.

I mean, it's genius to the level of CNN having him on.

And did you see did you see this interview that Donald Trump uh did on CNN with

some of it and found myself overwhelmed by a sense of the futility of human existence and I needed to t to turn it off and bury my head in a in uh in just I don't know, a a cross between a pillow and a book of sports statistics just to try and cleanse my soul of it.

It feels like the direct result of the writer's strike, to be honest.

It's everything that is wrong with the entertainment industry nowadays, just uninspired reboots of previously successful properties.

Haven't they already run the Give Donald Trump a platform opposite a journalist unequipped to deal with his particular form of malignant bluster and resentment, stoking, catchphrasery?

Haven't they already done that?

Sells tickets.

I know three things about Donald Trump.

One, he's a mendacious egomaniac.

Two, his ear is attached at a fixed point, and if you stamp on his foot, it hinges up like a pedal bin.

And three, his hardcore base will forgive him anything they were immediately out going oh it's a civil court it's not a criminal court manhattan is a democratic stronghold whenever he commits a crime he jumps into the air and as he does so he cannot be subject to earthly rules it is

unbelievable but cnn rather cynically enjoys a rating boost from this is that what we're going to do now we're going to put on somebody with opposing views to the network's general viewers to antagonize them into watching it i can't wait to watch fox news News feature an hour of Greta Thunberg dress as a sexually ambiguous tree telling you how to best recycle your handgun.

I can't wait to see GB News feature a sentient, compassionate person.

No, that's it.

I actually thought I had more on that.

Apparently that's just where it ends.

The town hall was horrible to watch.

I have a method for getting through it.

I did watch it.

Every time he lies, I took a shot.

Oh my god, it was bearable.

I had to get my stomach pumped about seven times.

But he just...

The only person, this is my theory, theory, the only person who could moderate that,

put it in a town hall, put it with Trump supporters, that's fine.

Roy Keen is the moderator.

Roy Keene is the only person intense enough.

So when he's doing his whole, we work very hard, Roy Keen is like, you're doing your finging job.

They just shouldn't put anyone up against him unless they have a fully equipped fact-checking team and a bapano buzzer.

I feel like if you had the bapano buzzer, that would be the only thing that would over.

It just was watching the most insane own goal.

It was the political version of fielding a goalkeeper with a football-sized hole in the stomach and octopus for fingers.

Well, I mean, you say they should need to have a full fact-checking team.

I don't think even the world's greatest supercomputer could keep up with Trump in real time.

I think, I mean, you'd still have to

update it the following day.

For those who are unfamiliar with Roy Keene, who's a former footballer, played for

Nottingham Forest, Manchester United, Republic of Ireland.

Neil, could just tell us a bit more about it.

I mean,

his

frown is one of the few things on Earth that can be seen with the naked eye from space, I think.

But just give us a little bit of

a possibly the most intense person who has ever existed in the history of mankind.

I reckon he could stare down Genghis Khan.

Come on, Genghis, you didn't want it enough.

Biggest land empire ever, but come on, you should have pushed on beyond Hungary.

I think he would fully.

I think he would fully, I think he could put him in a Jaws film and he'd stare down the shark.

That's how terrifying Roy Keene is.

Yeah, I find anyone's descriptions of intensity always pales beside my brother, who, while eating an ice cream once, said, why is all pleasure unethical?

But

you still can't blame him.

He's just doing him.

CNN softballing an adversarial interview with Trump is like trying to cure your irrational fear of spiders by filling your bed with extremely poisonous spiders.

I don't understand why they did this.

I mean, other than a sort of cynical ploy for ratings, but it's not like television is a dying art form.

I mean, it was, for those of you who missed it, he was interviewed by CNN's Caitlin Collins, and we'll do a quick multiple choice question for you.

Was Trump A,

remorseful, humble, apologetic, and conciliatory in the aftermath of his court case, then tuneful and emotional in his a cappella rendition of Nirvana's anthem of repentance, all apologies?

Or was he B ragingly misogynistic, willfully deceitful, incandescently disrespectful towards A, the US justice system, B, women in general, and C, Caitlin Collins in particular, and also brainly confident that there is nothing the American voting public want to represent them more than a lying sex pest?

Answers on a postcard to the usual address, and please do mark your postcards.

Death of the American dream.

The only thing you could say about that in being convicted in terms of being a lying sex best, as you said, is that there's a lot of controversy over which is better, a republic or a monarchy.

It's good to see that in certain systems you can have both.

Yeah,

it's not always an either or a best.

A lying sex best can make their way in both systems.

Yeah, that's good.

Of course,

despite Trump riding so high in the polls, it's not an absolutely done deal that Trump will definitely win the Republican nomination.

In fact, just last week, his fellow Republican George Santos was charged with fraud, money laundering, theft of public funds, and lying to Congress.

He also has allegations of sexual misconduct hanging over him and appears to be congenitally incapable of telling anything even vaguely resembling the truth.

So it could be that he proves a worthy rival to Trump in appealing to the Republican supporter base.

If maybe he could just kill someone in cold blood

live on national television.

So I don't think it's quite as done a deal as

people are saying.

Moving across the Atlantic and across Europe as well to the very far side of Europe and quite a big chunk of Asia, Vladimir Putin news now.

And well Putin last week had a Victory Day parade

that marked Russia's victory over Germany in the Second World War.

But in terms of recent victories, it very much lacked any kind of victory for him to trumpet.

What it also lacked was more than one tank.

There was one

solitary tank with which Poodles tried to project the military might

of Russia to the watching world.

So it didn't have victory.

It didn't have military hardware.

He might as well have called it the Vegan Crocodile Day Parade.

It was

even by

Putineska standard.

What's the adjective from

Putin?

It was unimpressive by his current standards, even by his current standards.

He did proudly brandish his many international trophies, Unnecessary Warmonger of the Year, Most Deluded National Leader, which is a really impressive title, not just to win, but to retain.

That's akin to snake with fewest legs.

But it did invite the ridicule of the world to have one f ⁇ ing tank.

Well, let's be fair, Andy.

The rest of them were at work.

I guess so, yes.

Oppressing the people of

Ukraine.

Yes.

I suppose, oh, I guess he couldn't have called them back, could he?

Surely you need more than one of something for it to actually be a parade.

Like,

50 men in bowler hats and suits is an orange order parade.

One man in a bowler hat and a suit is odd job going to the shops, isn't it?

Like, in previous years, the Kremlin had 77 different types of aircraft and helicopters in the parade.

And this year, they just had a man feeding baby food to a toddler going, here comes the plane, here comes the plane.

Oh, it's been shot down by Ukrainian defensive positions.

He is currently exuding all the dictatorial majesty and artfully configured power of a half-digested potato recently shat by a rhinoceros.

So, I mean, what could Putin do to repair his damaged reputation with the watching world?

I mean,

if you were a careers advisor for him now, what would you be or a PR advisor?

What would be suggesting?

I think we're getting lost in the weeds here about whether it was a good or a bad military parade.

Here's a tip.

If you're marching your weapons down the street like a f YouTube beauty influencer unboxing their latest Sephora cosmetics haul, you're not the innocent defender of the homeland you're painting yourself as.

Just the very idea of a military parade, whether it's successful or not, is a weird, creepy, weird thing to do.

Look, I'm sure, I'm sure there are some innocent men who've run an extremely normal military parade down the...

fascistically wide streets of your city to the wild applause of people who are sweating heavily for no reason.

I'm just guessing that those innocent men men have never included Vladimir Putin, a man who was reputedly born with some like enriched uranium in his tiny fist.

Like a modern Genghis Khan.

Well, you've got to remember that this year he is probably more fearful than ever given that terrifying assassination attempt by Kiev.

I mean they have denied it, but judging by the sheer amount of explosives used in it was an attempt on his life.

I don't know if you saw the pictures, but they flew a drone into the Kremlin and tried to kill him by dropping what appears to be one lit match onto one or maybe other, maybe two other unlit matches.

So it's lucky he survived, and he's probably using that as an excuse to not, you know, go full bore on the war.

Ex-cricketer news now and Pakistan's former Prime Minister, Imran Khan,

was arrested and then released after the Supreme Court in Pakistan ruled his arrest was illegal on corruption charges that,

well, many people believe to be not entirely open and honest.

Now, Imran Khan is clearly a divisive figure.

I mean, some people say he's in the top 10 cricketers of all time.

Others disagree, mostly those who haven't studied his stats properly.

He is certainly someone who's not quite the dominant figure he once was, largely because he retired in 1992 after a two-decade-plus career, having led Pakistan to its only win in the Cricket World Cup.

And there are many people who do not want him back.

Well, he's 70 years old and he's lost a couple of yards apace.

So you can see why he does

split opinion.

It's a very complicated situation.

Really, other than a few cricket jokes, I don't have a lot on, to be honest, with a layman cards

on the table here.

But all I'm saying is it does show that when prominent 1980s all-rounders go into politics,

it's not always going to be a smooth path.

That's what I took from it all.

Yep, I guess we can be thankful that Derek Pringle of Essex and England didn't follow suit and try and become our prime minister here.

Yeah, because if he starts a war once he pops, like

you know what they say about

ex-cricketers turned corrupt politicians, no rest for the wicked.

Ouch.

Yeah, apparently, they've turned off the internet in in Pakistan because his party dominates the narrative online.

So former cricketer better at spin shocker.

Andy.

I've been, this has forced me to read.

He wasn't a spin bowler.

Yeah.

No, I know, but sure, I'm not suggesting he does all his own stuff either.

Like

just, I mean, I'm

just kind of loosely using the

cricket, cricket term for the purposes of

comedy.

That's all I'm doing there.

Oh, it's got to to be accurate, Neil.

Yeah, yeah.

That's what causes Pakistani politics to fall apart is my inaccurate use of

bowling techniques.

I mean, I stand corrected.

I've been reading about Pakistan politics in recent years and what a ride it's been.

So Sharif arrested Benazir Bhutto, then she had him jailed when she got in, then he got back in and jailed her and her husband.

Then Khan had Sharif and his brother jailed, who's now the prime minister, when Khan was arrested.

So basically in Pakistan, your election expenses are posters, ads, jail, bail.

Your go fund me page basically says, Well, as little as two dollars a day, you can protect Imran from the Aryan Brotherhood, the Crips, and the Bloods when his tenure ends.

Five dollars a day will furnish him with a shiv made from a sharpened toothbrush to protect himself.

It's it's it's very interesting to watch, I have to say.

His main focal point of enity seems to be the leader of the army, and he said, There is no democracy in the army, and you think, Well, I'd point out there's no democracy in any army.

Very much the point of the army.

Hannibal wasn't, let's take Rome, and the lads were like, I didn't vote for that.

What about you, Dumbo Nelly?

Oh, she seems up for a bit of travel.

She started packing anyway.

I mean, if you had any foresight as a corrupt politician in Pakistan, you'd furnish the jail with like a really sweet cell because that's where you're going to be staying in about three years.

Yeah.

Yes, yeah,

invest in prisons.

Yeah,

I mean, I think if in

Britain, if we have the same system, and I mean, judging by some of the people who've been Prime Minister, we would do well to head in this direction, then I think that's the only way to get the government to properly invest in improving our prison stock.

You've got to have that element of self-interest.

I would suggest maybe stopping referring to them as prison stock would be the

part one.

Have you sent many coffin ships to the colonies lately there, Andy?

I was talking about the buildings, not the people.

That's not how it came across.

No, how it came across was on a series of small.

Never mind.

A bit of Australian colonisation jokes there.

Just lol.

What sort of bowler was he?

Well, he was a glorious, fast bowler,

able to generate prodigious in swing.

I mean, I could go on for quite a long time.

He adapted after he lost his pace, though, Andy.

I thought that was quite important.

You know, he was still skillful.

Still skillful, and also his batting got better and better.

And you could argue, make an argument that Peek Imran Khan played cricket at as high a level as anyone in the history of the game.

But look, this is not the podcast for that.

It's not the podcast to discuss Imran Khan's stats from 1981 to 1987.

It just isn't.

Absolutely isn't.

Does Imran Khan's undeniably sparkling history with both bat and ball make you feel more kindly disposed towards his political corruption or less kindly disposed towards his political corruption, Andy?

Probably more, I think, to be perfectly honest.

That's really what I've got against Putin, who's a very, very poor cricketer.

Australia still digging for coal news.

It's not stopping, Alice.

The government in Australia has approved a new coal mine

despite having been elected on a climate action platform last year.

What temperature do you think Australia will have to reach before deciding that burning environment aggravating fuels might not possibly be in its own long-term interests?

That's right, Andy.

Aussie, Aussie, Aussie,

oil.

Or as

coal, coal, coal.

We are a nation who is torn between two extremes.

One is our incredible wealth of natural resources that we can sell to China for money that we can use to buy more sandwiches.

And the other is the fact that we're constantly on fire, or the only thing that puts out the fire is the floods, and the only thing that dries up the floods is the next fire.

So it's a difficult thing to manage to negotiate our way through these choices.

And I mean, it's not the government's fault.

Their hands were tied Genuinely, they have no option but to approve a new coal mine if nobody objects in the right way during the right time frame, which is sort of behind the bike sheds on a very small form in backwards writing and send it on a pigeon to the moon.

And then, if it comes back, then they can stop the coal mine.

And this is because

Australia's laws are so friendly to people that want to dig the f out of our land.

Only one coal mine proposal has ever been blocked under these laws.

And that is because all of the laws in Australia over the last 50 years that have anything to do with exploiting our natural resources were written with a hefty man holding a large club made of mining interests standing behind the people signing the legislation.

So you really can't blame the government.

Who you can blame is all previous governments in our entire system of government and their hands deep, deep in the pockets of our mining interests.

It does seem when you don't know as much about it, obviously, as somebody who lives in Australia, it does seem that there's a weird kind of cognitive dissonance going on so they've granted permission for a coal mine but the government has also enshrined into law more stringent emissions reductions like 43% by 2030 so it it it feels like someone's going okay we're going we're committed to reducing drink driving deaths and to celebrate free bar

Where is the party?

It's in a venue completely inaccessible by public transport, so you will have to take the car.

Mind yourselves, everybody.

And on the other side of this, the environmental groups said they were opposed to the mine for fairly obvious reasons, but also because it might damage the habitat of animals like the ornamental snake.

Now, I think you've undermined their necessity for the ecosystem if you've called them the ornamental snake.

Like, the ornamental snake is vital for the functioning environment, as is the purely decorative platypus and the window-dressing kangaroo.

Oh, no, no, you don't understand the context whereby the ornamental snake is the one that isn't going to kill you.

That's

an ornamental snake.

Okay, right.

Your leg will fall off, but I mean, that's as bad as a guess.

The new mine, all mine, will produce 2.5 million tonnes of coal over five years.

It'll be used in steel making, other coal-related activities, being building giant coal statues of Shane Warne, and being used as a prop in Parliament by politicians like Scott Morrison, the former Prime Minister, who once took a lump of coal into Parliament to show his support both for the Australian mining industry and for the end of the world.

Yeah, they're caught between a rock and a hard place and the rock is the coal and the hard place is the other coal that's still in the ground and they have to dig it out and all coal in Australia currently is an own goal.

So

it's a tough situation.

It's a tough situation.

Face news now and well exciting times for Saturn, the ringed planet famous for being the second biggest planet in the solar system for several million consecutive years and for having rings that make it fly more smoothly around the Sun than non-ringed planets, such as Earth and Saturn's big rival Jupiter, is claiming to have 62 more moons than was previously accepted.

Very exciting news for Saturn.

The bonus extra moons will give the hydrogen-based mega blob, which clocks in at the size of not one, not two, but 763.6 Earths.

It'll give it a total of 145 moons, putting it above a very angry Jupiter in the most moons rankings.

Earth Earth still lags way behind with just the one moon, but sometimes it's more about quality than quantity.

And what a moon we have, a no-frills moon just doing its thing, affecting the tides, getting bigger and smaller depending on how it's feeling.

Now, in response to this, Elon Watnow Musk has proposed installing 150 additional moons for the Earth over the next 970-odd years to put us above Saturn and give the planet a real confidence boost heading into the fourth millennium.

But the logistics and finance remain muskily obtuse.

145 moons.

Imagine how confused the moths are.

And they're always called Greek names like Phoebe or Titan.

Never Keith.

No.

Daphne, Ban Kee.

That's what I'd be calling them.

It is hard not to see it as an implicit criticism of Neil Armstrong's achievement, though.

It does seem like, we went to the moon.

You went to our moon, Neil.

Relax.

There's at least 145 to go on that other planet.

I would like to see humans land on each of saturn's moons just to watch the degradation in the profundity of the speeches that the astronauts would give as they land just it starts with one small step for a man one joint leap for mankind but like 20 moons in you're like we wish wish you were here and then 50 moons in it's just 50 off all bq lawnmowers for one day only it's just gonna get worse and worse like it should also be said that those moons aren't very big some of them are only a couple of miles wide So that's not even enough to make you go full werewolf.

I think you'd need a big moon for that.

I think a little moon, you'd just be walking down the street one day and you just suddenly be able to lick your own testicles, but that would be it.

Or you'd randomly start chasing a car for no reasons, but have no other symptoms whatsoever.

Well, also this is the day sort of stretching the definition of the moon in that a lot of these are parts of larger moons that got cracked up.

And I feel like that's not fair to call each individual bit that is broken off a new moon because apparently size is not part of the definition of a moon.

It's not the you know, uh, it's it's the it's the the motion of the ocean that it doesn't affect, I think is um the thing, but you can't just cut your dog in pieces and say, Now I have six dogs,

it gets you arrested.

I wish you'd told me that 20 years ago.

Um, I love that dog.

Um,

so those dogs.

Uh, the moons have been described in

the moon press as, quotes, like a low-grade dumpling, pointlessly small, the kind of undersized orbiting gobbit of space bullshit that Buzz Aldrin wouldn't get out of bed for, and a floating shit on a stick without the stick.

So people are not that impressed.

And you mentioned the names of them, and we are running out of mythological figures to name them after.

And when you've got down to Amadonius, the ancient Greek mythological figure who gave Heracles a free kebab from his van when the 12 Labour star was hungry after a big stables cleaning gig and was granted an eternal supply of chili sauce by a grateful Zeus as a result.

You know you are scraping the barrel.

So, I mean, could these new...

I mean, the possibilities for what these new moons could be named after.

I mean, could one be named after the bugle?

I think that's...

I'd be happy to have a potato-shaped micro-moon several million miles from the surface of Saturn to help publicize the show.

Or maybe they'll just take the name to the top 32 tennis players in the current men's and women's rankings for the 62 new moons and just disqualify two for being especially Russian.

So, you know.

In other space news, well, it's the news that we've all been waiting for.

Within just months, it will be possible for all of us on this planet to go to space and have a Michelin-style meal for just $130,000 each.

Paired wines are available for just $60,000 per diner.

I don't know what the tipping is in because you obviously got to add the tip on for i mean what do you tip in space because it's a french company behind it and french tipping and say american tipping is very i don't know what what is the what do you tip in space does anyone

does anyone know what

i mean you you can't tip in space because every direction is up right

i see that it's it's tricky isn't it and these are the l the kind of l

side logistics no one really thinks about how i mean how excited would you be by the the prospect of having lunch in space for just $130,000?

I would gladly pay $130,000 just on the very small chance that somebody is taking their beloved girlfriend up to space to show them this incredible time, high, high, high above the earth, and proposes to her, and she says no.

This is this initiative from the space tourism company Zafalto

and they really want to have this like refined and elevated meal, high up in the sky, Michelin star meal.

Of course,

any meal at that height is going to be elevated.

But I just think if you apply the logistics of aeroplane food, this is even higher than that, which I got to assume means the food is even more disgusting.

Well, look, there's no way this is going to go off smoothly.

Most of the flight delays across Europe in the last few months have been caused by French air traffic control strikes.

If you think that those lads are going to let you eat in space without the equivalent bumping paying conditions for them, you are sadly mistaken.

You'll be in your balloon, you look out your window, there'll be a load of lads in yellow vests in their balloon setting fire to a third balloon.

That's what's going to happen.

I think

it's a very important thing, this, for humanity.

I think it sends a powerful message that

for everyone watching on Earth looking up at this balloon, it sends a message that anything is is possible.

Sorry, not anything is possible.

It sends a message, bad luck, plebs.

We'd love to help, but we're in space having a spot of lunch.

But I like, this is this question of lunch in space.

Pigs in blankets in space, presumably, will be

one of the dishes available.

But the edge of, it describes the edge of, it's 15 miles above Earth, 25 kilometers.

That is defined as the edge of space.

But bearing in mind how far space goes,

I mean, it's quite an unimpressive bit of, it's not like having lunch heading towards Alpha Centauri, is it?

I mean, it's really stretching the meaning of it.

It's like having a cup of tea whilst leaning on the Japanese embassy in London and then announcing to your latest travels to your friend saying, I've done Asia.

It's

just not that impressive for me.

The menu, of course, is being designed by celebrity, celebrity chef Scluton Malvain, fresh from the reopening of his perhaps too realistic Bible-themed New York restaurant Testamento, which had to shut down after on its opening night.

There was a bit of an issue.

The amused bouche of snake and apple pierogi had to be eaten before diners were allowed their clothes back.

Then followed by an arc flotant, there was no vegan option, on a Morel flood topped with Riette of Dove with peas.

Unfortunately, the actual flood released into the restaurant did cause structural damage, and the meal had to be abandoned before the Pierce de Résistance crucifix with a Resurrectio of Rescued Soul.

But for the space trip,

for the space trip, Malvain will be offering zero-gravity Gravilax.

It's a logistical challenge, but a tasty one.

A pollo eel heaven, which is a Spanish chicken eel dish

tribute to the first lunar landings, served with all bitter gourd and spudniks in

Soyuz sauce

as nibbles, astronuts or cosmonuts, your choice.

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

Thank you very much for listening.

Next week we'll have exclusive coverage of the World Air Clarinet Championships with Britain's Percival Fast Fingers Drenchard miming along to Mozart in the quarter-final.

Alice, anything to plug?

I am doing a headline set at the Tokyo Comedy Cafe on Thursday the 18th of May

and after that I will be doing shows in and around London and the UK.

And I'll be doing the Edinburgh Fringe Festival.

Also, if you like this audio newspaper, you might like the Sonic Glossy magazine to this audio newspaper, which is the gargle of which I am the host.

We deal with all of the news and none of the politics.

It's my one safe space where I don't have to make jokes about

Neil.

I'm doing a gig in the SSE arena in Belfast in February that I'd love for people to go to.

You can follow me at Neil Delamer Comedy and Instagram and I do a podcast that producer Chris has been very complimentary about.

Thanks Chris.

It's called Why Would You Tell Me That?

and we look at the most interesting stories we can find.

It's non-topical and so you can listen to them all and we've covered stuff like why you might throw turf at a corpse.

That one was about funeral games.

Aphantasia, the condition where people don't have a mind's eye so they can't visualize, they can't imagine things visually or the Darien scheme, which was Scotland's attempt at a colony in Panama.

So all sorts of weird stuff that people were like.

Also, I'm running writers' meetings on my Patreon if you want to ride with me.

There you go.

I will be doing the Bugle for the foreseeable future.

Also, the news quizzes on, which you can find on BBC Sounds.

We will now play you out with more contributors to the Bugle voluntary subscription scheme who have joined the Wall of Fame.

If you want to join them or give just a one-off or a curring contribution to help keep the bugle free, flourishing, and independent, go to thebuglepodcast.com.

It is a well-known fact that Bob Dylan often needed help with his lyrics.

For example, it was President Lyndon B.

Johnson who suggested tweaking Dylan's miserable-looking Dutchwoman to Sad-Eyed Lady of the Lowlands.

All of our Wall of Famous this week have made similar contributions to improving the lyrics of songs now regarded as classics of the modern musical canon, beginning with a couple of people who also helped Bob Dylan.

Roger Colwell suggested that Dylan change his lyric, It's Gonna Absolutely Bucket It Down to A Hard Rains Are Gonna Fall, whilst Mike Hall suggested to the American songster that the Clocks Go Back This Weekend for Daylight Saving would not prove quite such an enduring folk anthem as the times they are a changing.

Adam Bruard helped the British rock legends The Who, who were set to begin their classic song Substitute with the lyric, There was a regrettable incident involving disposable cutlery in the labour ward.

Adam, however, suggested changing that to I was born with a plastic spoon in my mouth.

Dave Tapley helped the Who's contemporaries The Rolling Stones.

On his suggestion, Mick Jagger's first draft, Hi Everyone, I'm Minted and Stylish But Old and a Bit of a Bastard, were improved to what became the famous lyrics of Sympathy for the Devil.

David Wilson helped out the Red Hot Chili Peppers, famously massive fans of English coastal resorts.

Their intended lyric, Can I Have a One-Way Ticket to Bogna Regis, was improved on the suggestion of David to take me to the place I love, take me all the way.

Back in the 60s, Christopher Gantler helped out Otis Redding when he was penning the lyrics to the hit that would become particularly famous when sung by Aretha Franklin.

Reding, a notorious Scrabble obsessive, had written, I've got a seven-letter word, I don't believe it, first time ever.

Christopher suggested improving that to R-E-S-P-E-C-T, Find Out What It Means to Me.

Dave Henley helped out with another lyric based on a much-loved game, Snooker in this case, and a song by the Irish rockers YouTube.

who had written a song entitled Excellent, I've Potted a Red, but I'm not sure what colour to go for next.

Dave suggested changing that to the more simple One.

Tara Nash helped out Kate Bush change what was a rather prosaic Alps-based complaint the ski lifts are broken again to the more iconic Running Up That Hill.

And Joe Riley stepped up to help the White Stripes change their rather cumbersome It's About Time NATO streamlined to just the US and six leading European military powers into the catchier Seven Nation Army.

And finally, Eric Knudsen turned James Brown's song about buying his father something to put his golf clubs in into the famous smash hit, Papa's Got a Brand New Bag.

Thank you to all our wall of famers once again.

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.