The Penitentiary President

The Bugle, audio newspaper for a visual world.

Hello buglers and welcome to issue 4258 of The Bugle, the world's leading chainsaw maintenance and fitness for flamenco crossover podcast.

With me, Ancy Zaldman, coming to you exclusively live from the historic city of London, just a stone's throw away from however far you can throw a stone.

Which, given that we're currently in an underground recording studio, is not very far.

Yes, you heard buglers.

We're back in the studio.

Woo!

Which means I have with me this week two three-dimensional co-hosts.

That's two times three, a total of six dimensions worth of comedic wizardry coming your way from Mish Kumar and Felicity Ward.

Hello.

Hello, both of you.

I may be in three dimensions, but I'm very much a one-dimensional character.

I think I've lent so far into into a particular type of comedic, and let's not be around the bush, political philosophy, that at this point, you could quite easily generate my opinion on any subject.

It's been a massive week for me, because

as buglers will remember, I was part of a short-lived television operation called Quibby.

And I still have a WhatsApp group for the Quibi writers that worked on the show.

And occasionally, that group fires fires into life.

And the reason it fires into life is because there's a funny news story about something absolutely appalling that happened to do with Quibby.

And this week we found out that Quibby may have been involved in the divorce of Rhys Witherspoon.

Oh, no!

Apparently, didn't even know she got divorced.

Rhys Witherspoon is getting to well, she's back at the market, Auntie.

The way that you said that suggests that you're throwing your hat in the ring.

Mrs.

Zaltzman, if you're listening, my apologies.

Apparently.

Is this her second marriage?

This isn't to Ryan Philippe.

No, no, this is to a man who was an agent, but then made a career change to help run Quibby.

And they're reporting that Quibby may be a reason why she decided to divorce him.

Another victim of Quibby.

Quibby, in taking itself down, has destroyed Rhys Witherspoon's marriage.

And do we know whether this was caused by Reese Witherspoon and her soon-to-be former husband watching specifically your show?

Listen, we don't know anything about this.

We don't even know if this is true, but that won't stop us from speculating wildly.

What I'm saying is, I have taken down a television show, a full network, and a marriage of the star of Legally Blonde.

You are a powerful force to be reckoned with.

When you said we don't know whether this is about, I think you meant I don't know whither.

Right.

I think when we do talk about Reese witherspoon, everything gets changed to wither.

Bit of respect, actually.

How are you, Felicity?

It's nice to have you.

Yeah, it's been a while since you did one.

I think the last studio one you did was here with Stuart Lee.

Yeah, it was.

18 months ago.

I was going to say, I did one.

This, let's be honest, is a high constitute a significant

both in terms of comedic quality and, let's not beat around the bush, net worth.

Well, I like to think that I bring the IQ down by about 50 points every time I walk into this studio.

I did one at Leicester Square.

I did a live one, which I was very unprepared for and don't remember being very funny at all.

And in fact, the jokes that I did feel good about, I stumbled all of them.

So there was that nice bit of

where an audience really loses faith in you, mid-sentence, you know, where they're like, oh, that would have been funny if you'd said it as one sentence.

I had that in my first ever gig, and it's I've never really got it back.

Never really recovered.

I'm jealous of the both of you.

What must it have been like to look into an audience's eyes and not see them have lost confidence?

Can I tell you one thing that happened on the way here?

And look, I don't like to piss off Londoners intentionally, but when it happens, I really do still feel warm.

It's very petty, and it's specifically I like pissing off old, white, passive-aggressive Londoners.

So

I ate a hot chicken sandwich with cheese on the tube.

Oh,

God.

Yeah.

I know, and look, I know that no one thinks this is a good idea.

I know it's not just old, white, passive, aggressive Londoners.

It's all Londoners.

The thing is,

when else do I eat?

I woke up, I got my toddler ready, I took him to the nursery, I had a pap smear, I drove to East Finchley Station, I got a hot chicken sandwich, I got on the tube, I came here.

I wrote some jokes.

that's unimportant,

but I had no other time to eat this sandwich.

And so there's this woman sitting across from me, she's 65, she's classic North London boomer, classic,

and she's reading the Metro, you know, because she's educated and looking up at me every couple of seconds, like, you know, she's probably reading about the

Ukraine,

but she can't stomach the smell of a chicken and cheese sandwich.

And then there's another guy about seven foot away and he's got long hair.

And I'm like, you definitely went to a punk gig when you were younger, and you're sitting there, and he shook his head at me.

I'm like, f off, I'm hungry.

I'm hungry.

Where else am I supposed to eat in this city?

I ask you genuinely, as a foreigner, where else am I supposed to eat?

Well, I mean, I think that the rule on foreigners eating in London is that you should mulch it down and just inject it intravenously.

Right.

Take it down like a seal.

Just dislocate your jaw yeah okay also in australia instead of uh i'm loving it mcdonald's is a slogan is i'm hungry yeah i'm hungry

what are you looking at

hey

yeah

i mean it's possible that yeah we should have you have badges for people we can say just like really hungry just had a pap smear yeah yeah

I had to say papsmere because I knew that you go read about it and it's my favorite thing to do.

Yeah, that was,

I think I had a lawyer called Pap Smear on the Speaker.

He's the drummer from the Foo Fighters Backlag.

The only time I use the, or hear the word smear be used, is cream cheese on a bagel or Pap.

Those are the only two.

Those are the only two times anything is smeared.

Or campaign.

Very important.

Oh, yeah, that's right.

Sorry, yeah.

Very important not to get them mixed up.

It is.

I had a Pap Smear campaign.

Were you voting on that or was it about HPV?

Oh, that cream cheese is cold down there.

It's yogurt you're supposed to put down there.

Oh my God, I just said yogurt.

I think that's the first time I've ever said yoghurt accidentally.

Right.

I say yogurt.

Right.

Wow.

Ten years, it's finally happening.

Finally,

have you been a citizen now for, what, two years?

I think only a year.

I have no idea.

So, but it's working, obviously.

Yeah, it's working.

You're starting to pronounce the words as God intended them to be.

Yogurt.

That's part of the new Conservative Party Britishness test.

If you pronounce it yogurt, you immediately get sent to a detention centre.

Yep.

Down to Rwanda for me.

I said yogurt.

We are here in the studio,

through the glass, twiddling the knobs that turn my Morse code Tap Dancing into comprehensible English.

It's producer Chris.

What's up?

That'll do.

We are recording on the 31st of March 2023, meaning it is exactly 110 years since classical music hooliganism reared its ugly head as a riot broke out in Vienna during a concert.

This is a sensational bit of history.

It featured controversially modernist music that the Vienna music-loving crowd took against.

And there was a riot at a classical music concert.

The music was by, amongst others, Arnold Schoenberg, Alban Berg.

Carol Jan Gugodievsky, whose work of course inspired the 1980s British New Wave synth pop mulleteer's Kajagugu

and Terminator VII, the seventh

generation in the Terminator musical dynasty and great-grandfather of course of Terminator X.

So

110 years old.

This became known as the Scandal Concert.

This is at least partially true.

And to mark it, there's a special anniversary concert of avant-garde music in Vienna today, featuring, amongst other things, Horst Blauerbach's drilling for worms, concerto for pneumatic drill and flowerbed.

Renee Fleming and Slade performing Carmen Feel the Noise.

That's the leading American soprano and the Wolverhamps and Glam Rockers in their first ever collaboration.

And Perky Schitztlditz, briefly frontman, of course, of ABBA during their four-hour long 1990s rebirth as a madrigal breakcore fusion pro art five-piece.

He's performing My Trombone is a Horse, My Horse is My Lunch, exploring the relationship between brass brand music and the food industry.

110 years ago, today, that original.

Have you ever wrote it a classical music gig?

I've left a a classical music gig, but that's because I was 17 and I went to go drinking.

We did, as part of our, I went to a performing arts high school for like my A-levels, and we, as part of our curriculum, we had to go and see the Sydney Symphony Orchestra four times a year.

And it was wonderful, but I was staying at my friend Sally's house, and she was a year older than me, and she was a bit naughty.

And she's like, Do you want to pretend we have a headache and go drinking?

And I was like, Yes, but I'm not 18.

She's like, Don't worry, I'll get you in.

She wasn't 18 either.

And then we go to, we like the teacher said, Yes, you can go home.

And then we went to this bar and we got in.

And then there was this guy hitting on us.

And this is, this tells you how naive I really was.

I'm from a town of 1,500 people.

This guy kept hitting on us.

I'm like, let's get him off our back.

Let's pretend we're lesbians.

It only made things worse, if anything.

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

This week, an Eiffel Tower section, because it's also the anniversary of the Eiffel Tower being officially opened back in 1889.

So, what's that, 134 years of towering for the big metal spot?

It was, of course, supposed to be a space rocket, but they forgot to put the engine in the big space in the middle.

So, it was hastily repurposed as a tourist attraction.

Designer Gustave Eiffel saw off competition to fill the space in Paris, which is now, of course best known for being where the Eiffel Tower is.

Other proposed commissions were by architect Baker Balphon Mondiou.

His baguette du Siel, a 450 metre-high, deliciously crispy loaf, failed to impress the judges when the 100-metre scale model prototype lost its crunch when it rained, causing the infamous bread sludge flood of 1887 and the unforgettable newspaper headline Pan Demonium.

Also beaten by Eiffel Super Spike.

Fond don't.

Also beaten by Eiffel Super Spike was pioneering philosopher Joan-Baptiste Lira-Membert.

His plan for a literal thought bubble was voted down.

It was a giant tethered airship that Parisians could spend their lunch three hours in, contemplating le Mining du Life, as it's known in France.

So, unfortunately, the helium required to keep the Pense Balon afloat meant that when the customers emerged to dispense their newfound wisdoms, they just sounded ridiculous rather than philosophical.

And of course, avant-garde cheesemonger Pipe de Bloeup, the self-starred Michelangelo de la Fromargerie, also missed out.

His proposal was for a never-ending cheese castle installation where people could nibble at the cheese castle wall on one side whilst he and his students constructed the other with new cheeses.

That was counted out due to the threat of rogue drive-by chutney-ings from disaffected independent French cheesters.

And the Eiffel Tower certainly lived up to its name, being an absolute Eiffel if you stand close enough to it.

And also being the final departure point.

Carbon.

Being the final departure.

How long have you been sat on that joke?

Dean, the final departure point for unsuccessful wingsuit pioneer, not an ideal way to be remembered, Franz Reichelt, who in 1912 splatted to his death off the famous metal megaprong, his last words being, I fell.

That section

in the bin.

Please.

Put it in the bin and set the f ⁇ ing bin on fire.

Top story this week.

Well, a dramatic development in the last 24 hours and the ongoing national tantrum that has torn America apart over the last, what, 240 odd years.

But more specifically, recently, Donald Trump, the celebrity insurrectionist, black belt in the arts of democracy undermining multiple golden strop-winning resentment monger, has become the first former U.S.

president to face criminal charges.

New York's grand jury has voted to indict Trump over his role in hush money payments to Stormy Daniels.

I mean, this is,

I guess, not what you would necessarily expect to happen in the self-styled greatest nation in the world, a former president being

facing criminal charges of paying hush money to a porn star.

Didn't happen under Eisenhower, didn't happen under Lincoln.

Didn't happen under Lincoln.

Jury's still out on Grover, Cleveland.

I'll say it.

I'll say it.

Grover, Cleveland.

Well, I mean, you say.

Had it too good for too long, that guy.

That could be awesome because he was the only president to serve two non-contiguous terms of presidents.

So maybe that's you know, that's the link between them.

Is hush money illegal?

What?

I mean, he seems like he's done so many worse things than pay a sex worker to be quiet.

Or at least she's not a sex worker, she's an adult court.

What's like, I am no Trump fan.

I'm not a Trump supporter.

I mean, sure, MAGA.

But

that doesn't seem that bad.

I'm not aware of the legal system in New York.

But is that illegal?

To pay someone to be quiet?

I don't know.

Well, I presume it was some sort of non-disclosure agreement.

Nice, you're a lawyer, aren't you?

No, I'm Asian.

I think that's the same thing.

I actually think that's the same thing.

I think at this point, if you're South Asian, you're anything if you can do it with enough confidence.

I think the question is where the money has come from, right?

Because I think because Michael Cohen is Trump's former attorney, has actually been found guilty of financial irregularities.

And it's essentially to do with whether the money for that hush money came out of his election campaign fund.

So

what he's facing charges for are charges of business fraud, basically.

And we also, the documents are still sealed, so we don't know fully the details of the charges.

But I mean...

God, it's like strictly, isn't it?

Yeah, it's.

They haven't opened the envelope yet.

What's amazing about it is, as you say, this does seem to be the thin end of a fecal wedge in terms of Donald Trump's misdemeanours and misadventures.

And it is a bit like getting Al Capone on tax evasion.

But then, as you say that, you think, well, they probably should have got him on tax evasion as well.

It does feel a bit like he, yeah, it does feel a bit like he should have been in trouble for that as well.

Well, he could, I mean, he could, there are multiple further investigations, so he could become not only the first president to face criminal charges, but the second, third, fourth, fifth, sixth, seventh, and

he's like the Beatles in the 60s.

He's all

at least five of the top ten.

It could reach a point where they will need multiple Donald Trump impersonators just to appear in courtrooms across America

in the multiple court cases against him.

Like when Krusty the Clown trains other people to be Krusty the Clown.

Yeah, yeah.

Which is really not that far away.

Or a more direct comparison when there were all those Saddam Husseins.

Yeah.

Another despot with a fondness for Outre architecture.

and sort of the interior decorating instincts of King Midas on a bad day.

Yeah, so the actual specific indictment is because of this $130,000 payment made to Storby Daniels in October 2016.

And when Trump was president, he reimbursed Cohen with monthly amounts of $35,000

from his personal account.

So Cohen actually pleaded guilty to campaign finance charges, right?

Because

Cohen's federal case said that the Trump organization falsely described the payments as legal expenses.

So he's basically citing legal expenses as hush buddy payments to a porn star.

And I mean, it is incredible.

And so the reason that this seems to have upset everybody, because on the one hand, you look at that and you go, well, that is pretty much a straight-up piece of fraud, right?

That's pretty clearly a straight-up piece of fraud.

But it has sort of sent a lot of even not necessarily right-wing American commentators into a kind of frenzy around whether a person who has been president should be able to be charged with a crime, right?

And even in the New York Times, the home of the leftist dick wad in America, there is an article saying that a new precedent has been set.

Will it tear the country apart, as some feared about putting a former president on trial after Watergate?

Will it be seen by many at home and abroad as victor's justice akin to developing nations where former leaders are imprisoned by their successors?

No, because

he's not been frog-marched on there on faked charges.

It's absolutely extraordinary.

And the other frustrating thing about it is that Mitch McConnell, when he was asked to vote on impeaching Trump, said that they actually didn't have a role in any sort of prosecution towards him because he was a private citizen.

So he voted to acquit, even though he thought Trump was guilty of inciting January the 6th insurrection.

Because, I knew he said resurrection there, that would have been incredible to

me.

But he, yeah, so Mitch McConnell already said that they couldn't charge Trump because he was an outgoing president, because he was no longer president, he was a private citizen, he couldn't be charged by the Senate.

So surely that means he can be charged by the court.

But now they're saying, well, he probably shouldn't be charged by the court because he was president.

At this point, it would be easier if America just admitted they want to add another amendment to the Constitution that says, you know what, if you're a rich white man, any holes are gone.

It's the permanent purge.

Do whatever you want.

As long as one of the things you want to do is hand out massive tax breaks to other rich white men and be racist.

You could do whatever the f ⁇ you want.

Listen, if you're a white man with a bit of cash in the attic and other things you have in the attic include some bed sheets with eye holes poked in them and a big book that says my plan to destroy federal income tax, every single day is the purge for you.

I read on this newspaper called Twitter

and someone had said, oh, other countries will lose faith in the American justice system.

I'm like,

not now.

This isn't the tipping point.

It happened a long time ago.

Bill Cosby's back on tour.

You know what I mean?

If someone has done something wrong, regardless of whether they've been president, they should be subject to a trial.

That is how functioning legal systems and functioning democracies are.

Under more scrutiny.

Because you represented your f ⁇ ing country.

Obviously, I mean, Trump does remain innocent until proven obviously guilty

not to mention all the other court cases within the pipeline because you know no smoke without fire is not as it stands a legally binding part of American law

I mean the entire nation might be choking in acrid clouds of dense smoke whilst Trump stands there with an empty can of gasoline and a flamethrower but let us continue to presume him in innocent it's potentially a misunderstanding

yep more likely actually possibly the so-called hush money was in fact Trump paying Daniels for a rare cigarette card of early 20th century baseball player Honus Wagner, or even for her work writing lyrics for his long-dreamed-of stage musical based on a hypothetical meeting and doomed love affair between 17th-century Barack painter Artemisia Gentileski and Fozzie Bear from the Muppets.

Who knows?

We must not make assumptions of guilt based purely on the facts that the man charged accuses everyone else of being guilty

and the fact that there appears to be a lot of evidence suggesting that he is going.

We mustn't make those assumptions.

I mean,

I don't want to use

over-intellectual language, but whoever smelt it dealt it.

That's what I'm saying.

Also, maybe the money was for Stormy Daniels for comfortable shoes.

They were actually hush-puppy money.

It's possible.

But it will all come out

in the court case.

No need to apologise for that kind of stuff on this show.

If you have a head of state that is above the law, then you are not living in a functioning democracy.

You are living in the United Kingdom

where we occasionally pop a pedo in a palace.

We do love a pedo in a palace.

I think that's fine legally, Chris, right?

Pop a pedo in a palace.

And beautiful allegation.

Trump himself

has not reacted by saying, for example, it's very important to let justice take its course.

He's claimed it's political persecution and election interference, but not just any political persecution and election interference, but the biggest examples in history, which does suggest that he might want to get another history book.

No, that would imply that he has one already.

It's

and you might be wondering how is it possible because a lot of the consensus seems to be this is actually going to help Trump in terms of his

attempts to become the Republican nominee for 2024.

And he has already seen a surge in some of the polls against Ron DeSantis.

You might be wondering, how is it possible he gets away with this?

And you have to remember that Donald Trump has at his disposal one of the most effective propaganda instruments in human history, and that is Fox News.

Because Fox News, who had actually had quite a strained relationship with Trump in recent weeks, especially over the legal case that's ongoing against whether Fox News propagated, actively propagated lies about January the 6th.

But so far on this media organization, he has been described as being badass.

And one of the Fox News presenters, one of the Fox News presenters said, I feel bad for the guy.

Now they're trying to nickel and dime him for a private agreement he made with a woman eight years ago.

It's not private agreement if you claim it as legal expenses on your presidential campaign.

Oh, man.

Another Fox

guest, Mike Davis, said, potentially, you could have a former president behind bars.

The only way you can get a free Trump is to elect a free Trump.

If you start thinking about the logic of those apparently simple sentences, you will end up in an inescapable pit of despair about the state of humanity, frankly.

Well, free trump in Scotland obviously means something else.

You don't pay for farts or you've got some trapped wind.

I just, one of the things that I've sort of found dispiriting over the last kind of few months and years is like, as a kid who grew up as a fan of American stand-up comedians, a lot of the stand-up comedians that I've watched have recently devoted a huge amount of time on their very expensive stand-up comedy comedy specials to complaining that the problem with America is people taking offence on Twitter or any one of a number of different marginalized communities.

And you sort of look at it and go, Your country's biggest problem is that it's basically in the middle of a fascist coup.

And at this point, those comedians are like people on the Titanic complaining that the only reason the ship is going down is because of the gal with her tits out being painted by the little boy.

Yeah, yeah.

Yeah.

Your concerns are irrelevant and at best counterproductive.

So what's next is the question.

Could Trump become the first prison inmate to be president from within

penitentiary?

I mean, he would have rallies

within the prison every day.

Yeah,

his election campaign is going to look like a string of Johnny Cash gear.

But it's kind of extraordinary that he's the first former president to face criminal charges.

Nixon and Clinton tried their best but couldn't quite get the deal over the line.

Um some other presidents narrowly escaped.

Um I mean did Teddy Roosevelt practice for his famous hunting trips on actors and pantomime lion outfits?

Abraham Lincoln himself was fighting off an investigation into height fraud after undercover reporters cast doubt on his claims to be six foot six inches tall after discovering that his trademike's trademark stovepipe hat was in fact hollow rather than containing what Lincoln claimed was his unusually cylindrical head.

So anyway, we will have exclusive coverage on

Trump versus the USA as it devolves over the next X years.

As it devolves.

Artificial intelligence news now, and humanity is facing its biggest threat since the Manhattan Project.

Not my words, the words of historian Dan Snow regarding artificial intelligence.

This is after key figures in the artificial intelligence world

wrote an open letter to presumably all humanity and all sentient computers.

Dear people.

Warning of the dangers of

artificial intelligence.

The fact that this claiming it's the biggest threat to mankind since the Manhattan Project rather trivializes short-form cricket, in my expressly humble opinion.

But this show is bigger than climate change, bigger than all known diseases, bigger than the millennium bug either, bigger than the New York grand jury, and bigger than the woke conspiracy that wants to make it illegal to look at trees or think about pelicans if you're heterosexual or own a car.

How worried are both of you by the

now seemingly inevitable takeover of our species and planet by artificial intelligence?

I mean, what a surprise.

The robots are rising up.

Who could have guessed?

Sarah Connor.

James Cameron.

The film Terminator 3, Rise of the Machines.

Oh, Felicity, but how could we have known from one movie?

We wouldn't.

So that's why we should have watched iRobot, Her, The Matrix, Blade Runner, 2001 Space Odyssey, Wally.

I mean, that little robot might look cute,

deliberating over a spork.

Is it a spoon?

Is it a fork?

But you give that googly-eyed space dick one second and he will squeeze your head like a blueberry.

Now,

my thing is,

why are they training AI to be smarter?

And why aren't they training humans to be smarter?

Because my stupidity is the greatest threat to my life and humanity at the moment.

So, I've worn glasses since I was 27.

Oh, did you have an accident or an immediate degenerative disease occur?

No,

I didn't know that I needed them until 27 because I just thought nighttime was blurry.

Now,

so I've worn, that's true, I've worn glasses for 16 years, I've lost every pair, I've got one remaining.

But for the times that I've had a pair and every time I've cooked something in the oven, every time I will open the oven and put my head in and my glasses will steam up.

And I never remember that.

And that's 16 years of cooking.

And every time it happens, I go, oh, my glasses have steamed up.

I could use an AI upgrade.

My system is broken.

Please help me.

One of the signatories on the letter is Elon Musk.

And if Elon Musk is telling you that you need to get a hold of technology, it's a bit like Karnier telling you your shoes look weird and you might want to cool it on the Hitler stuff.

But it wasn't just him, Musky, fictitious tetrapreneurial Willy Wonkick Gold Googler.

Also Apple co-founder Steve Not Jobs, but the other one.

And Harold Effenberg.

an actor apparently who if I found the right Harold Effenberg on the internet provided voices for the German edition of Resident Evil.

Now, if you weren't paying attention to this letter with Musk and Steve Not Jobs, you're certainly paying attention now.

You've got Effenberg on board.

Also, Kit from Knight Rider signed it.

Steve Not Jobs is called Steve Unemployed, isn't it?

Stuart Russell, who's a computer science professor at the

University of California, Berkeley, and one of the signatories on the letter said to the BBC that AI systems pose significant risks to democracy through weaponised disinformation and to employment through displacement of human skills.

Yeah, and absolutely.

Some of the people whose human skills are being displaced are Benjamin Netanyahu, Narendra Modi, and Donald Trump, who themselves have worked tirelessly to pose a significant risk to democracy through weaponized disinformation.

They're stealing Modi's thing, Andy.

Next thing they're going to be, AI is going to be rounding up its political opponents.

Well,

we do need to think ahead, because technological advances always have unexpected consequences.

If you think back to to the Industrial Revolution, the spinning jenny,

the spinning jenny, a multi-spindled spinning frame invented in the 1760s.

That was a key moment in the industrialization of the world

that sparked the Industrial Revolution and led unerringly just 260-odd years later to oil-rich Saudi Arabia buying Newcastle

as a means of trying to make people start remembering about them murdering journalists and bombing children.

So we need to be careful.

That's what I'm talking about.

At the start of these processes, we didn't didn't put safeguards in place in the 1760s, and look what's happened.

That's all I'm saying.

In terms of people having their jobs replaced, I've actually used the AI software that's available to write some jokes about AI.

I was trying to make myself obsolete.

So here we go.

I can do it if you like.

Why did the AI cross the road?

To help humanity out.

Okay, tough crowd.

Knock, knock, who's there?

AI.

AI who?

AI is here, but here to help.

It's not great so far.

Doctor, Doctor, I feel like a pair of curtains.

The doctor is gone.

I am AI.

I am the doctor.

My prescription, death.

You were gifted and eaten, and you burned it to the ground in pursuit of profit and material gain.

And in your greed, you created me, your destroyer.

You stand, the modern Prometheus.

Look upon your works, you mighty, and despair.

It's funny stuff, actually.

It's darker than I thought it would be, but it's funny stuff.

I like the dark stuff.

I like the dark stuff.

It should have finished with, I'm sorry I can't do that, Hal.

In one other brief technology story, obviously technology spends most of its time plotting the end of humanity, but it does occasionally keep itself entertained by helping us out.

And this happened in Brighton when a pet owner was reunited with her lost cat

after using Grinder.

Okay.

The

Grinder.

That's the...

all I know it as was the title of the forthcoming biopsy.

Notoriously functional South African batsman Gary Kirsten.

Honestly, I was waiting to see which cricket player you were going to go for.

I had the picture in my mind, and I was waiting to see, will it be Boycott?

Will it be Jack Callis?

But yeah, she advertised with Grinder and other dating apps with pictures of this lost cat, and the cat was

found.

I mean, I don't know if the cat itself was on Grinder and how that would affect your relationship with a cat if you didn't know.

Yeah.

You definitely don't want to be the person who was like, oh, at last.

I thought I had to go to a different app for this.

One that you have to do private safari search for.

Yeah.

The person's name, the cat owner's name is Erin Johansson, and she'd been looking around for a lost cat and putting posters up.

And a friend of hers suggested she use his profile on Grinder to help find the cat and the friend unfortunately neglected to change the personal specifications so his profile was still available so there was a cat on grinder who was single with an average bodybuild with interest in karaoke movies and readings

and the cat was also a bottom who was looking for dates and relationships

I thought it was the other way around where his photo had gone up and he's like a black Pekanese.

Occasionally seen licking his own genitals.

On your dinner table.

But it's a happy story because it did work.

Yep.

She put stuff on Grinder and Tinder.

It covered all their bases and people started responding saying that

they'd seen this bottom cat.

Mate, which oppressed group are more activated than queer people?

You put up a poster in the queer community,

especially in Brighton.

Everyone knows everyone, you know.

They probably had a little announcement on the local like gay club on a Friday night.

At midnight, they cut the music and went, Hey guys, just a little announcement for the community.

My friends lost a cat.

This is the picture, if you know anything.

Yeah.

And then they saw it like a week later.

It's doing nothing for the rapidly increasing stereotype that the LGBTQ community is both relentlessly compassionate and organized.

Yeah.

And also, lesbians loves cats.

The existence of these dating apps,

my relationship predates certainly their popular usage.

So I've definitely missed out on a lot of these things.

And

sometimes when I look at it, I think, oh, I might have, maybe if I'd had these when I was single, I might, but in reality, I would have had to launch my own app called Wanker, which it wasn't really a dating app.

It just plays soothing music to help process the shame after a bout of self-love.

I thought it was just you doing one of your comedic political rants.

Wanker.

Yeah, yeah, he's on the app.

He's on the app again.

I did Guardian Soulmates when I first moved here.

That was the one that friends of mine were using to get into relationships.

This is 10, 11 years ago.

Yes.

Yeah, I moved here and I had been single for, I don't know, 18 months or something and didn't know how to meet people over here and didn't drink.

So I went on it.

And unfortunately, it's that thing um

i mean it probably just shows my self-loathing more than anything else but i was interested like obviously there was a there's a lot of interest for me and other people that read the guardian uh but far out it was insufferable like

every guy was like well i listen to radio six music of course i do i mean i do but but like they all had a picture of them acculturating in thailand to show them you know how interested in children they are And they had a picture of them finishing a marathon.

I was like, no, we're out.

We're out.

I'm not interested in listening to that.

Thank you.

Anyway, dating apps are good for finding pussy.

Come on.

Come on.

Come on.

We've been talking about this for ages and no one's made that joke.

I've got it written down.

I've got it written down.

I was like, nah, don't do it.

It's a dereliction of the heritage and tradition of this podcast.

That is true.

That is true.

One, just a quick update from a story we talked about last year about the cheetahs being brought to India 70 years after cheetahs went extinct in India.

They imported eight Namibian cheetahs and now four cheetah cubs have been born in India.

They've all been called Narendra and are reported to be the fastest cheetahs in history.

I was going to make a Shane Warren joke and yet here we are.

Man, cheetah.

Rest in peace.

Cheaters be f ⁇ ing.

Cheetahs be f ⁇ ing cheese.

Second biggest f ⁇ fan, cheetahs.

If Boris Johnson was left in a room with a cheater, oh man.

If a bunch of cheater c was running around with blonde mops of hair.

Well, on that note, it's going to end

this issue of the bugle.

We are taking a week off next week, so I'll be back in a couple of weeks.

We'll put something out next week, Chris.

All right.

Ah, just some high-quality gold.

Hall of Notes, greatest hits.

Private eyes are watching you.

They take your every

move.

She's a man eater.

No, no, no, no, no, no.

You making my dreams come true.

Ooh, ooh.

Is that one song or lots of songs?

That's three different songs.

They're hitmakers, baby.

It's a genuine medley.

They're all looking at me going, is this a joke?

No, this is me and how I live.

Yes, that is the end of this week's Bugle issue 4258.

Thanks to both any forthcoming shows or other stuff you want to plug.

I've got something to plug.

I've got two things to plug.

One is a little show called Please Tell Me a Story.

It is a series.

Also made at something else, recorded here in these very studios.

That's on Apple Podcasts, hosted by Omid Jalili.

And it is one person telling their story to six other people and getting it wrong along the way.

And it is very funny.

Secondly, I'm doing McInthleth Festival.

I'm on April the 29th.

It's Saturday night, 8 o'clock.

It is a two-hour show.

It is my trilogy show done as one show.

The end.

I'm just plugging good vibes this week.

Okay, cool.

Where can we see your good vibes?

You can see my good vibes.

If you just sort of hang around in central London, I'll be

there.

I am starting a podcast on the...

I think the first episode...

Well, this is another classic Bugle

piece of self-promotion.

It starts on May the 4th, and there'll be more information coming out about it soon.

It's called Pod Save the UK.

and it is actually a serious news podcast.

So, I'm now basically trying to take hold of all of the means of production.

I'm generating the news and satirizing it.

When the podcast was originally announced, some people asked if I would be leaving the bugle, and I will say, Absolutely not.

You'd have to pry the bugle out of my cold, dead hands.

I'll never leave.

Even after death, I'll appear like the Tupac hologram.

What if Andy doesn't invite you back?

Oh, yeah, that what that is.

Apart from that,

then it's out of my cold dent hands very easily.

That is the end of this episode.

We'll be back in a fortnight.

Goodbye.

Hi, Buglers, it's producer Chris here.

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

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

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