A Collection Of Perfectly Normal Stories From Across America

The Bugle, audio newspaper for a visual world.

Hello buglers and welcome to issue 4260 of the publication voted one of the world's top million audio newspapers for a visual world for 15 of the past 16 years.

I'm not sure how we missed out in 2018.

A bit harsh harsh in my book.

I thought the show was solid, but definitely top meal quality.

Anyway,

let's just move on.

I'm Andy Zoltzmann, just back from a very exciting trip, actually, time travel.

I got asked to review a new time machine for a history podcast.

The machine was, well, excellent.

I went back to 30 AD just to see what was really going on, but I forgot to switch the location.

And I just ended up in what is now South London.

The weather was shit and I forgot to pack any food, so I just came straight back.

I can report they had trees then.

That's that's that's really all I can tell you.

Uh, joining me this week, well, not the Jew I was hoping to have on the show when I set the dial to 30 AD, but he will have to do.

It's NATO Green.

Hello, NATO.

Hello, Andy.

Hello, Buglers.

It's good to be here.

And joining NATO and me, Tiff Stevenson.

Hi, Tiff.

Hi, I feel quite upset because I thought I was a bit of an influencer.

But apparently, there's time travel machine trips going on.

It feels like an influencer

type deal.

I don't know why I wasn't contacted.

Like I definitely could do some branding with that.

Tiff, you were contacted.

Check your message request DMs on Instagram.

Okay, yeah.

You have to get

the...

You know what it was?

Is they were sent before Instagram was invented.

So that's obviously...

Where the confusion has occurred.

How's your week been, both of you?

Reasonable.

I get depressed during

the winter.

I think I have seasonally affected disorder.

Maybe it's the Vivaldi variant.

I have it all four seasons.

But more so during the winter.

So I've been desperate for the spring to get here.

And it seems like little seeds of hope are popping up.

And this morning I spotted a sparrow hawk in the garden.

So that is possibly a good thing, but also quite scary for the other birds.

Really, I just think you need to go by whether the cricket season has started or not that's that's really all you should need sparrow hawks can go themselves

andy my my phone reminded me recently that like it was just it was just the four-year anniversary of my first appearance on the bugle oh and uh

it took me three years and ten months to realize when you say in the bin, it refers to the trash bin.

Right.

I was like, why does he keep saying that?

And finally, I was like, oh, it's like the section of the newspaper that you throw in the car with the United States.

Oh, I get it now.

So

always click on the uptake over here.

What did you think it was?

Like a storage bin of some like for memorabilia?

A sin bin?

A SIN bin?

Do you have that in sports there?

They have the SIN bin, don't they?

Well, I'm glad that

you finally came to that astonishing realisation.

It's never too late to learn, is the point.

It absolutely is too late to learn.

Our entire society and politics is based on the fact that we will never learn.

So, yeah,

that was at Cobb's Comedy Club on the live talk, wasn't it?

Your

bugle debut.

Hopefully, we'll be back there at some point in the next 100 years or so.

I should say, for any confused Twitter users who listen to the bugle, this bugle is an official blue-tick bugle.

I know the blue tick's been undergoing something of a

regenerative process, to put it

positively on Twitter.

But in fact, every bugle, official bugle, is a blue-tick bugle.

If you listen very carefully in the background of every properly sanctioned episode of this podcast, right from the start, you can hear the sound of a blue tick.

So, Chris, can you just zoom in on this week's tick and we'll find out exactly how blue it is?

Being a blood-sucking parasite makes me so sad.

I don't want to be a victor of disease, but such is my fate, alas.

Oh, look at that untrousered calf.

Yeah, I hate what I am.

So, pretty blue tick, that one.

Pretty, pretty blue tick.

What was that accent, Andy?

I don't know, you passed the drink.

We are recording on the 21st of April 2023.

On this day in 753 BC, Romulus founded the renowned city of Rome.

He was, of course,

world fratricide of the year in, I think, 754 BC after bumping off his brother Remus, essentially after a bit of a family spat about town planning.

Romulus was the first person known to have a personalised license plate.

His open-top chariot had a R753 BC plate glistening out, causing everyone in Rome to think he was a bit of a tool and wishing the other brother had won and they'd ended up in a city called Rheim instead upon such threads does history hang in 1509 on this day Henry VIII became Henry VIII having previously just been Henry

his father Henry VII

died and the new Henry Octo Hall as he liked to be known

came to the throne and for a man renowned for the

well his love of a wedding

and of course for the being the first Twitter user to swipe down he averaged approximately one spouse per 2.4 decades in the early phase of his reign but then rattled through one per 2.7 years in the later years before leaving his sixth and final wife for his later squeeze death and on this day in 1934

the most famous photograph allegedly showing the Loch Ness monster was published in the Daily Mail known as the surgeon's photograph it was revealed 60 years later to have been a hoax meaning that the last fact ever published in the Daily Mail does still date back to 1927.

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

This week we review the latest cutlery books,

including From Cutlery to Cultery, how one man's obsession with eating utensils led inexorably to a table manners-based cult in the Patamanchian jungle that ended inevitably with a confusion of sporks.

We review also Hitler's Chopsticks, a fascinating insight into how an increasingly paranoid Fuhrer tried to ban all pointsy cutlery in case someone tried to kill him with it.

When Teespoo...

Sorry,

I'm just seeing Chris's face.

We also review When Teespoons Attack, a graphic and moving catalogue of some of the most harrowing injuries suffered by people using Teaspoons, including 1920s film star Merrick Force losing an eye when trying Lapsang Sushong for the first time on the set of the silent movie Et 2 Tarzan, part of the briefly successful Shakespeare in the Jungle series.

And we review Cruel Fate or Crew It Fail.

Was the failure of the Scrivens-Treflyard expedition to the South Pole in 1908 due not to misfortune, but to

expedition leader Principal Scrivens' insistence on taking a full dinner set of cutmery plus individual salt and pepper pots to cover all eventualities for any eight course meal, not only for his overmanned 25-strong expedition team, but also in case they met any other polar exploration parties and needed to entertain.

It goes into a lot of details.

Scrivens' team included a sommelier with a husky-drawn cellar of fine wines, a pianist to help while away the chilly evenings, a billiard table, his American tennis partner, Jarm Swift Delamore, who was of course Wimbledon Mixed Doubles champion the previous year alongside the controversially opinionated Lady Hesperia Fitz Bernard.

The co-expedition leader Archibald Treffeliard of course didn't actually make it to Antarctica due to becoming inextricably involved in a bridge game at the Imperio Club in London that ended up lasting 14 years and only ended with the death of Lord Maunsley from a heart attack brought about by an aggressive bit of five-no-trumps.

But the extra weight of the cutlery taken on the expedition is thought to have led to Scrivens and his men becoming stuck fast in the ice just 50 yards into their journey, falling short of the pole by around 600 miles.

Anyway, this book really gets to the bottom of that fascinating expedition.

That section in the bin

in the garbage.

In the garbage.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Andy, what wine pairs with raw Emperor Penguin?

I don't know.

I think you probably want, I don't know, an

1893 Chateau Neuf du Pap, probably.

I think that's what they took.

Oh, no, Andy, surely, don't you have a cup of tea with a penguin?

Very good.

Now, that is, I mean, for people who've not grown up with the penguin biscuit, which is, I think, a distinctively British confection, that joke will not have got what it deserved, if.

But I admired it.

The UK listeners will love it.

And the Americans will probably, as per usual, go, what is she talking about?

So no change from the usual.

Top story this week, the United States of America, one of humanity's boldest, silliest, and most self-loathing social experiments, is heading towards the end of its first quarter of a millennium with many questions still unanswered, including, which of America's many states is the silliest?

It's always hotly contested.

NATO Green can bring us up to date with

an extremely feisty battle for top spot that is going on at the moment.

NATO, what states in particular would you say are pulling ahead?

Oh,

Andy, I mean, it just,

it feels like with

America, it feels like the merry-go-round is going faster and faster.

And at some point, we're all going to get up, get off, and throw up and fall down at the same time.

You know,

when Trump was president,

you know, people were like, oh my god,

we thought we hit bottom.

We thought that Trump was incredibly stupid.

If you thought Trump was dumb, nah, how about some Republican state legislators

like Trump, but with all the stupidity and no gold-plated toilets?

I mean, it's just, it's like, it's bananas.

So, Wisconsin had a judge's race, tip the balance of the Supreme Court

in a liberal direction, in a way that might have bearing on the right to abortion and voting rights in the state of Wisconsin,

but at the same time, elected a Republican to the state legislature who gives them a supermajority in the state Senate that will allow them to impeach the judge that they just elected.

It's like one step forward, two steps back.

In Chicago, Illinois, there was a race for mayor.

Brandon Johnson beat Paul Vallas to become mayor of Chicago.

Johnson had the support of the Chicago Teachers Union.

Vallas had the support of the police.

It was a teachers v.

Cops race, and the teachers won.

That seems good.

But no, the media is already blaming Johnson for shoplifting in Chicago, even though he's not mayor yet.

The big one that I'm most excited about is

Tennessee.

So

there was a, so just to bring people up, last month in Tennessee, there was a school shooting that was committed by a trans person.

The shooter was under care for emotional disorder, but had seven legally purchased firearms.

You would think that someone would have caught that.

But anyway, so the whole thing was tragic.

Following the event, three members of the state legislature led a protest on the floor.

Two of them named Justin were expelled.

By sheer coincidence, they were also black.

There was a white lady who was not expelled.

Everybody knows, if you're a comic, a white lady making a scene is just the Friday late show at a comedy club.

The Justins are also millennials.

So, by the way, like,

so I look, I was looking, reading up on the Tennessee state legislature, and I looked at the roster and as a coastal elite from San Francisco, and I don't want to fit the stereotype of the, uh, of like being judgmental towards the hardworking and humble heartland of America.

But the Republicans have a state legislator named Brock Martin,

which just sounds like the generic knockoff brand of Doc Martens.

Like, oh, I got some new Brock Martins under the bridge.

The Justins were elected this year.

Justin Pearson, one of them, was elected in a special election in January, took office, and less than two months later was kicked out for protesting.

The balls, like, he didn't even finish the probationary period at the new job before he was like, I'm burning it all down.

So the case blew up.

The law required the local council to vote to create an interim appointment.

So they appointed the same guys.

The vote to expel them was called by this Republican House Speaker Cameron Sexton, who is now going to be famous for making them famous, like how Voldemort made Harry Potter the chosen one by trying to kill him.

But instead of he shall not be named, the guy's name is Cameron Sexton.

And instead of the greatest dark wizard of all time, he's like a bank manager from Crossville, Tennessee,

who just wanted to keep a bust of the founder of the Ku Klux Klan in the state capitol, like Voldemort would have.

Interesting, so

reading about this, that

this protest involving the two Justins

and Gloria Johnson

was described as an insurrection,

which, by the standard of recent insurrections, wasn't very insurrectionary.

And they were accused of participating in, quotes, disorderly behaviour.

Now,

the irony being, this was a protest against gun violence, which, I mean, what would you say is worse, NATO?

Some, quote, disorderly behaviour or the slaying of innocents to uphold a point of political principle?

Yeah, I mean, they, you know, it was disorderly behavior and a breach of decorum.

And, you know, I mean, I think if someone breaches decorum, they should be murdered.

I think that's the American way.

Okay.

I obviously, sorry, sorry.

I have no wish to pass my personal judgment on America's rights to watch his own citizens being gunned down in cold blood because of shit for brained interpretations of a two hundred and thirty year old piece of legislation.

That's not for me to say.

For us outsiders, it's hard to understand how each apparent tragedy is, in fact, a reassertion of America's unique greatness as a nation.

We can't understand how it's only through allowing and encouraging gun slaughter that you can foster as lively and engaged a debate on guns as America enjoys.

And we don't have much of a gun debate in Britain, so in many ways, America's doing better, I think, if you look at it from that interpretation.

Tiff,

I know you're a huge fan of Tennessee as an adjective,

But as a state, how do you find it?

Well, listen, I'm into Gloria and the Justins.

I'm going to do it that way round because then it sounds like a cool band, right?

I would listen to Gloria and the Justins.

But it backfired incredibly, didn't it?

Because what happened was they expelled two black reps and not the white woman.

And the two men who were expelled are both incredible public speakers, very charismatic, both of them under 30.

And all it did was just increase their platform and get the message out further about gun reform.

So it actually ended up, and

they've both been brought back in.

But Gloria,

she narrowly survived an expulsion vote.

And the Republicans said she played a smaller role in the protest and did not use a megaphone.

And she said, I think it might be because I'm white.

But the megaphone thing is wild because what that says to me is like, it's not what you say, it's how loudly you say it.

And they said it very loudly, so a lot of people could hear.

And we didn't like how reasonable it sounded.

We object to that.

Also, I mean, the megaphone specifically is an inherently comic means of amplifying your voice.

If they'd just done it with

an ordinary microphone, it probably wouldn't have had quite the same effect.

But there's something about the megaphone that is

huge.

Yeah.

It's fun.

The megaphone and the tiny microphone that you see a lot of influencers or people on TikTok use.

Have you ever seen them use the tiny, tiny mic?

Huge and small is hilarious, like with penises.

Like, we're at the point where it just, like, what will it take?

Like,

you're having to come up with new words for gun massacres, you know, shooting, sprees, gun violence, mass shooting, serial shooter, gun situation, which is what Trump started calling it, which sounds like a bullet-ridden episode of Jersey Shore.

But I can't.

What I was thinking, because I've been thinking about this, when I was in Louisiana, they had an open carry discount, which was to say

if you go into a store there and you're carrying a weapon, you get like 10% off, 15% off, right?

Which is,

if they don't give you the money off, presumably you take what you like because you've walked in with a hundred percent discount in reality, if you want it like

on your person.

But I sort of thought that was mad.

And I was like, God, if you, if you're broke, you can't afford to not have a gun if you want to get money off stuff.

so I think we need to stop um

de-incentivizing gun ownership and incentivize using your wit and if necessary your fists so you get a no carry discount so that is a certificate that you bring everywhere saying you don't have a gun registered in your name you show it you get 25% off everything everywhere forever So it's the opposite of a open carry.

It's a no-carry.

And then, I don't know, I'm not advocating the use of fists, by the way.

I was just saying, if someone comes at you with fists, you can fist back.

I haven't thought this through, clearly.

I'm suggesting fisting as an option.

Let's not, let's rescind the fists.

But I do.

Do you mean fisting in terms of punching or like the sexual act?

Well, I meant punching, but increasingly it sounded more sexual the more I said it.

So

if someone wants to fight and you want to finger their butthole, that's an appropriate response and you should get a discount at the store.

Do you just need to gradually go back in time?

So from today's guns go back to the 1790s weaponry that presumably the the the the second amendment was designed for the muskets that taken a while to load yes back back to a proper cutlass and then maybe just a eventually a stick and uh you know i think yeah but just gradually wean america off its addiction to self-harm

Tiff, I know you have friends in the Chicago media.

I believe you've asked one of them to give us a full report on the

Merrill race.

Oh, yes, yes, I have asked for a rundown from my friend, the news hawk.

Ah, well, it was a close race, but in the end, this guy, Brendan Johnson, won.

He's real square.

He's finally going to rid this town of all the punks and get them in the cab.

Send those criminals to the big house, but only if they've done big crime.

He wants to reform the police.

That other guy, Vallis, he's got a head as smooth as a pebble and the personality to match.

He wanted the streets crawling with coppers.

Experience has taught me never to trust a policeman.

Just when you think one's all right, he turns legit.

Johnson declared in his victory speech that Chicago is a union town.

So, as a great union member, I'm off to drink some giggle juice and watch that canary with the great gams bell out a couple of tunes.

On the subject of the Supreme Court at NATO,

Clarence Thomas, Supreme Court justice of

1991, I think he joined the Supreme Court as the longest serving member of the Supreme Court because when you appoint someone to a job, why not let them do it for 32 years until

death intervenes?

But he is, according to Vanity Fair magazine, quotes, on a quest to be the most corrupt justice in the Supreme Court,

which I'm not sure if he's defined that quest himself, if he's accepted the challenge of such a quest from some divine being, of which uh uh we don't know yet, but there's an increasing scandal over his relationship with uh a right-wing donor, Harlan Crowe, who is um aside from um

dousing Thomas with uh with with gifts which he's not declared, he is uh Crowe, a collector of far-right memorabilia, including paintings by Hitler.

Um, Now,

it's quite hard to unpack all of this.

I guess, you know, when you look at the Supreme Court, obviously, you know, the Supreme Court itself is a kind of traditional built-in corruption on which the American body politic is founded.

But you want its actual members to be, at least to be pretending to be law-abiding fans of, well, I guess, the law, and also as the supposed leading minds of their country, albeit within the subset of leading legal minds with the right political alignment for whoever happens to be president at the time before they were appointed for all eternity.

You want them to have the wisdom to think, when offered freebies by a known Hitler enthusiast, you want them to be smart enough to think, How does this look?

And ideally, that the answer is bad.

Andy, it's even worse than that.

It's that if you're offered freebies by a known Hitler enthusiast, you're not supposed to say,

I don't think I should do this.

You're just supposed to write it down on a form.

I put it in the ledger.

Isn't that good enough?

So Harlan Krove collected Nazi memorabilia, as you mentioned, including paintings by Hitler, which is odd because arguably

paintings were not Hitler's best work.

Like, of Hitler's contributions to mankind, of the things that Hitler excelled at, painting is near the bottom of the list.

Like, say what you will about Hitler, but

no one has ever been like, Hitler, horrible person, but quite a painter.

You know what I mean?

Like,

you see his brush stroke.

So you have to be really into Hitler.

Like, you know, you could imagine like a Nazi enthusiast going, you know, I want to have some Hitler military tactical maps or copies of speeches or Gestapo boots or mustaches or whatever.

Like, getting into the paintings is like a deep, you have to be so into Hitler to be like, yeah, I want paintings.

Moustaches, are you saying he's suggesting he had a series of stick-on moustaches?

Yes, I am.

Yes, I am.

It reminds me, I mean, I had a flashback because when I was in college, I was at a party, and there were some guys at the party, like there were hundreds of people at the party in this house, and there were some guys in a room with Nazi memorabilia, like SS helmets and flags and armbands.

And I went to the host of the party, and I was like, what the f, man?

Why are there Nazis in this house?

And he said, Oh, don't worry, NATO, they're not Nazis.

That's just their thing.

And I was like, That's not a thing that you can have.

Like, it's not, you know, it's not like, oh, this is, I had my Nazi phase, and then I had my emo phase, and it's just an aesthetic I was trying on.

Like, it was just a big misunderstanding.

Anyway, so

the donor didn't only pay for, Harlan Crow didn't only pay for vacations that Thomas didn't disclose, but he also bought Clarence Thomas's mom's house in Savannah, Georgia, and paid to have it renovated by an award-winning architect, like any of us would casually do for a friend we were not trying to influence in any way at all, to buy their house and renovate it.

So there's a

Fox News commentator, Juan Williams, who is a good personal friend of Clarence Thomas and wrote an article about the stink of corruption around him and who described thomas as a pleasant guest at his birthday parties um

and i can see a republican ideologue being really into playing pin the tail on the donkey um

does that joke travel across the because the donkey democrats okay so uh

who i don't know i i may have over overthought it so but uh uh according to juan williams In his he said, Thomas can quote Malcolm X by heart and represented the best ideals of what black men could accomplish, which I guess in this case is to sexually harass a woman and get away with it for 30 years and then marry a white woman involved in a conspiracy to overthrow the U.S.

government while hanging out with Nazi billionaires to end democracy, just like Malcolm X would have wanted.

When Malcolm X said by any means necessary, I'm pretty sure he didn't mean these particular means.

Also, when

you're being criticized by a Fox News analyst, that's not ideal for Clarence Thomas.

I mean, that's like being lectured about your attitude to women by the Saudi Arabian government.

It just doesn't, yeah, you think that that's really not looking good, is it?

One final piece of American news, a Tennessee Air National Guardsman has reportedly been arrested after applying for a job on the spoof website rentahitman.com

and reportedly telling undercover agents that he was not only an excellent shot, but was also quite happy to torture people and cut off their fingers and ears.

Now,

I guess when you find yourself applying for a job like that, you might think, what has happened to my life?

But, you know, we all look for jobs that suit our skill set.

Now, I personally am very fortunate that I have essentially two jobs that I love, that suit who I am as a person, that are extensions of my true self.

You know, as a cricket obsessive with a lifelong aversion to reality, responsibility, and regular working hours, being a comedian and cricket statistician suits me perfectly.

So, for Josiah Garcia,

who one assumes has a lifelong skepticism of bits of the body that stick out and secretly enjoys the sound of screaming, a job that involves chopping off ears and fingers and shooting people

must have appealed.

You can understand that.

One

extraordinary detail was that he apparently,

having been arrested, said he's not going to take the job anyway because he'd received a job offer from a Nashville medical center.

I guess it would have been interesting to see how long he lasted.

Ah, Mrs.

Fribbins, good to see you again.

Do sit down.

Now, has your cough got any better?

It hasn't.

So chopping off your fingers and ears has not helped.

Any side effects?

You finding you're playing the piano less well

and your glasses keep falling off.

I mean, how do you just

the name of the website, like you would assume that immediately it was a parody.

Yes.

If you don't spot that,

then

it might suggest you don't have the attention to detail that is really a key part of the job of being a hitman.

Well,

he's from Tennessee, so how did they advertise?

Did they say it?

Or did they shout it loudly through a megaphone?

So we need to know.

It makes a difference.

It is curious.

I don't know how you'd find out whether or not you've got the skills required.

I mean,

you know, it's, I mean, can you do like a work experience placement?

Or

I think you have to have,

is it you have to have a teenage daughter who potentially gets kidnapped

on her way to watch you two in concert in Europe?

Yes.

Then you acquire, then you find out if you have a particular set of skills.

Right.

You'd have to put that on your C V

UK news now, and well, news breaking today that the Deputy Prime Minister Dominic Raab has quat after a report into his alleged bullying when he was Foreign Secretary.

A report found that he had been unreasonably and persistently aggressive in the meeting, and his behaviour also involved, quotes, an abuse or misuse of power in a way that undermines or humiliates.

A report concluded that his conduct was abrasive and felt intimidating or insulting, but was not intended to be so.

It's a rather

curious case, this, in the sense that, I mean, you might view this as bullying, you might view it as someone being a little aggressive in the workplace in a slightly old-school way.

The more important, pertinent question is: why the fk was he deputy prime minister in the first place?

How had he not been fired for years and years of being unbelievably fing incompetent?

As reported on Passim on the Bugle.

The report cited an example where Rob.

The report cited an example where Rob described someone's work as, quotes, utterly useless and woeful, before he reportedly added, Can you people quit muscling in on my territory?

I mean, Tiff, I know you're a huge fan of Dominic Robb.

I've seen the tattoos.

He'd actually be very sad that he's

showed where the channel is.

Can I say it?

Can I say it?

Rab C exit.

Yes.

Well, there we go.

Rab C exit.

Okay.

Again, this is one that's specifically like the penguin biscuit joke is really not going to make sense to anyone outside of the UK.

But

yeah.

Well, you should express that there was a TV comedy show called Rab C Nesbit.

Nesbit, yes.

So, you know, actually, I mean, technically.

Yeah, technically.

So Rab sees the exit.

So it's punny punny.

It's punny punny.

I knew you'd like it.

So Dominic, I wouldn't let the door hit you on the way out.

Well, he probably won't because he would probably hit it first.

There were like 20 plus complaints.

I might, we should fact check that maybe.

But he said, actually, out of those twenty, they only found that I bullied two of them, which is not quite the slam dunk that you think it is, is it?

To go, it was just only two people.

But I'm in setting the threshold for bullying so low, this is what he said, this inquiry has set a dangerous precedent.

Now, I'm sure if Boris was your previous boss, your threshold for bullying was quite high, but that doesn't mean it's a good thing.

Like, a lot of those Tories went to boarding school where it's part of the training.

You have to, it's actually, you have to do bullying.

Um, you take turns, you know.

Well, some people stay on the bottom of the bullying rung and have to clean all the shoes and make the beds and stuff like that.

But yeah, it's part of the part of the training.

I mean, he's not good at his job.

He's never been good at his job.

And like you say, surely before,

how did he manage to get there in the first place?

It's what we know is that,

you know, they say like cream rises, but in this government, I think it's like incompetence rises, like an ingredient in a souffle.

It's like yeasty.

Incompetence is yeasty because somehow throughout this government, it just keeps rising and rising and rising.

How dare you people complain?

You

spoiled Brits that you have someone who all he did was be bad at his job and abusive to mid-level civil servants and had the self-respect to resign.

Like,

in America, that would qualify him for higher office.

Like, it's in the national anthem that you get to abuse the staff.

Like, it's unbelievable to me that he, that there was, oh, there were complaints, there was an investigation, it was sustained, and then he resigned.

Like, that seems like the system's working great.

I would argue on the self-respect bit, because he also didn't resign at first when he was told to resign.

So I think it was more of a resign before you're fired.

And it also was very much

a resignation saying, I have to resign, but

I personally don't think I should be resigning.

And he listed all the reasons why he didn't really mean it, essentially.

Now, I guess some people would argue that in positions of responsibility...

I resigned.

I was not a bully.

F ⁇ you.

Yeah, some people might argue that in positions of responsibility, it's all about doing whatever it takes to get the job job done and being able to speak firmly and directly to those people who work for you.

And also, surely more importantly, how will this country continue to attract the best caliber of the Rabian level of quality people to high-level public office if they do not have the workplace perk of being able to psychologically destroy their underlings, flaunt their overweening egos and act like a total shithead whilst failing to get anything discernible done anyway?

So I worry about the impact this will have on recruitment into politics.

The new deputy prime minister is Oliver Dowden, who again we've talked about periodically on the bugle.

He's the man who you may remember blamed last year the weakening of the West, as he described it, not on the hollowing out of society by the forces of untrembled capitalism and political and economic short-termism or one of the other many contributing factors, but on some people wanting to use different pronouns, which he said has essentially left the West unable to deal with Putin.

He is now Deputy Prime Minister of the United Kingdom.

So, talk about failing upwards.

I'm not sure what direction this is failing in.

It's that kind of scattergun.

Flailing.

What direction is it flailing in?

Coronation news now, and well, very exciting news ahead of the coronation of King Charles, our feudal overlord, who will be officially bekinged on the 6th of May.

His coronation coronation is to feature shards of the true cross, which have been given to him by the Pope.

Not just any Pope, the actual Pope, not a guy in a Pope outfit, the actual Pope has given him bits of the cross, one bit that is a centimetre long and one bit, I think, that's five centimeters long,

to help him, I don't know, coronate himself even

better.

The Greek government has also offered to douse the king in water from the river Styx to make him immortal.

So I mean, it's going to be a sensational,

sensational coronation.

I don't know if it's still got any bits of Jesus on this cross.

I don't know which bit of the cross it's from.

It might be, I don't know, the bit that I mean, I hope it's not from the bit

that his arse was on.

So you can't describe it as coronating himself.

That sounds so masturbatory.

That's essentially what it is, isn't it?

It comes with special oils, Tim.

It's a very expensive wank, is that what we're saying?

Yeah.

It's expensive in oil, as we discuss.

It's international wank.

What do you give the man who has everything, including huge amounts of entitlement?

Shards?

Shards of the cross.

I mean,

that is how high you've got to go to give a member of the royal family, to give the monarch of this country something they don't already have, a bit of the f ⁇ ing cross.

I've got a true cross fact box, actually, because I did a lot of research into this, because obviously, you know, for for my team um it's a bit of a controversial piece of wood to be honest it's cost us cost us a lot of market share over the years so here is the bugle true cross fact box

fact one if you put together all the pieces of wood claiming to be from the true cross you would be able to build a wooden empire state building and crucify a giant wooden king kong to it

Fact fact 2.

Golfer Ben Hogan won the Open Championship in 1953 using a three-wood reportedly made from the True Cross.

Every shot he played went perfectly down the middle of the fairway, accompanied by a shaft of heavenly light and a choir of angels singing, Get in the hole!

Fact 3.

Do be careful when handling fragments of the true cross, as they can be sharp, and if a splinter of the true cross pierces your skin and enters your bloodstream, you could end up being unable to handle any vessel containing water without automatically turning it into wine, behaviour which could see you barred from your local swimming pool and or accused of insensitivity towards teetotalers.

Fact 4.

If you think you might have a fragment of the true cross but aren't sure, please contact your local church.

If you take the fragment to the church and the organ starts playing spontaneously before you float up towards the heavens, smashing through any stained glass windows that might be in the way, then yes, it is a fragment of the true cross.

And finally, fact 5.

It is thought that Jesus was quite impressed with the workmanship of the cross.

The gospel according to St.

Nigel, quotes Christ as saying, gotta say, that is beautifully sanded and elegantly finished with a clear varnish that really brings out the grain of the wood.

Terrific job.

It's an absolute pleasure to be crucified on such a lovingly crafted piece of work.

But, and I will say this now for May,

don't you think it seems a real shame to whack nails into it?

Guys, can we take a rain check on the nails?

Any other coronation news, Tiff?

It's only a couple of weeks now till the big day.

My husband sent me

a wiki page, and I'm thinking about divorcing him because of it.

Because

it was an article about someone called Roland the Farter.

It said, Roland the Farter, known in contemporary records as Roland Le Fatiere, Rolandus Le Fatiera, or Roland le Petur, was a medieval

flautist who lived in 12th century England.

He was given Hemmingstone Manor in Suffolk and 12 hectares of land in return for his services as a jester for King Henry II.

Each year, he was obliged to perform

unum sultum, et sifultum, et unum bumblublum.

One jump, one whistle, one fart for the king's court at Christmas.

Now, I have to say, right?

So my husband sent it to me going, is this a relative of yours?

I think he's saying I fart a lot and it's not a lie.

And I think if I can get an invite to the coronation, that is probably my way in.

Because this said, like, imagine farting so good that the king gives you a 30-acre estate.

And I think

I could be this generation's Roland if I'm just given the chance.

So that's my pitch to get an invite to the coronation.

I will turn up.

I will fart in front of the king.

I will make it loud.

I will make it wet.

And I'm going to reclaim some of the land for the serfs.

the peasants and I'm going to take her back.

Chris, have you been invited to to the coronation?

Yeah, I have actually.

I'm really looking forward to it.

Yeah, I'm going to be Prince Charles's chair.

Do you have to be like the font and say, sit on it?

Then I'll have to do a ceremonial jumping of the shark, as everyone does at such events.

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

We will be back in about 10 days.

We're shifting back to recording early in the week as the news quiz is back next week, which you'll be able to hear on BBC Sounds.

A quick plug for a regular Bugle co-host, Hari Kondabolu, has a new YouTube special entitled Vacation Baby, which is available now.

Do watch it, Buglers.

NATO, what do you have to plug this week?

Well, as always, I have some comedy albums out, the NATO Green Party and the Whiteness album.

You can get them.

The best way to get money to the artist is via band camp.

Also, if you're in the San Francisco area on Saturday,

April 22nd, I will be judging the U.S.

Air Guitar Championships.

Oh, so how do you do that?

I will be a celebrity judge of the U.S.

Air Guitar Championships.

Is anyone going acoustic this year?

I will report back.

It's at the bottom of the hill.

So, and otherwise, gigging around.

Tiff, any shows you'd like to I am on tour

starting in two weeks.

So in May, I'll be on tour.

I think the first dates are Southampton.

Please buy some tickets for that one.

Southampton, Bristol, and Cambridge, I think are the first week.

So I'd love to see you there.

Also, check out Catharsis,

my podcast with the Bugle Network.

A whole network, a whole network of podcasts now.

And we've got some fantastic guests.

We've had a recent one with Mark Thomas.

We've got one coming up with Ali Makofsky.

One coming up with Lou Sanders.

So looking forward to getting your feedback, guys.

And by feedback, I mean like and subscribe.

That's what the main feedback.

What I'm only looking for is positive feedback.

But yes, please, please check them out.

Listen, like us, love us.

We will now play you out with more entrance to the Bugle Wall of Fame.

If you want to join the Bugle voluntary subscription scheme and give a one-off or a current contribution to help keep the show free, flourishing and independent, go to thebuglepodcast.com and click the donate button.

Goodbye!

Sarah Nakmias was responsible for the high reputation of ancient Greek philosophy superstar Plato after proving that what people had thought was badly spelled and poorly written nonsense was in fact really quite clever stuff.

but in a foreign language using a different alphabet.

Nicola Lawson calculated for NASA that when launching a space rocket to the moon, you did not actually have to wait until the moon was directly above the launch pad.

You do in fact have to factor in lots of other stuff, including whether you launch your rocket with spin.

Aaron Green was the person who suggested adding dimples to the surface of golf balls in order to stop passing birds thinking that a vengeful egg was heading their way whenever a golfer's golf shot with a golf ball sent the golf ball flying towards them.

Birds are haunted enough by guilt at the best of times, explained Aaron.

It seemed the very least I could do.

Sean Nulty dissuaded Albert Einstein from trying to launch a career as a nightclub DJ under the pseudonym MC Square, and convinced him instead to do much more physics.

James Tunnicliffe similarly convinced escapology celeb Harry Houdini not to branch off into crime fiction and Houdini's Whodone Its remains mercifully unpublished to this day.

Peter Hennessy convinced science duo Marie and Pierre Blotosnich to change their surname to something more befitting befitting people making significant medical breakthroughs that could help people recover from serious illness.

His suggestion of Curie proved instantly popular.

Paul Thomas did his very best to make table tennis more popular as a global spectator sport by suggesting that, like in actual non-table-based tennis, tournaments should be played on different surfaces.

And Kyle Cohen jumped in to back up this suggestion, advocating, amongst other potential table surfaces, clay, grass, concrete, so far, so tennis, astroturf, antique tablecloth snooker style green bays ice gravel corrugated iron writhing tray of worms and bed of nails regrettably their suggestion was not accepted

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.