THE BUGLE REVIEWS 2022, PART 2

The Bugle, audio newspaper for a visual world.

Hello, I'm Andy Zoltzman.

Welcome to the Bugle's official review of 2022, Part 2.

In this episode, we'll hear from Buglers old and new on the two big Lizzies of the Year, Tross and whatever the other one's actual surname was, as well as Global Chaos, Coos and a cameo from John Oliver to mark our anniversary.

But before that, time for ads.

Only kidding, this show has no ads because you fund all that we do.

Please continue to support us at thebuglepodcast.com.

Now let's head to July.

I was with Nish Kumar and Chris Addison as the world began shedding leaders at a truly alarming pace.

Top story this week.

Sri Lanka news.

Well if there's one hot fashion trend this year, it's not the return of the floral pantaloon or the diaphanous cassock or the glockenspiel hat.

It's the resigning national leader.

Last week, we reported exclusively on Boris Johnson's non-tearful collision with the immovable bulwark of his own infinite shitness.

And more on that unedifying race to step into his rotting shoes later.

This week, we've seen the Prime Minister of Italy, Mario Draghi, trying to resign after the collapse of his coalition government, but having the President of Italy refusing to accept his resignation, saying, well, everyone, please stop finging resigning.

And in Sri Lanka,

President Rajapaksa has suffered the indignity of the people of Sri Lanka taking a dip in his own private swimming pool, an embarrassment so scarring that he had no choice but to flee the country in disgrace and then resign.

I mean, in many ways, it's

a classic tale, isn't it?

Got it by

Rajapaksa's downfall.

Allegations of spectacular levels of corruption, intimidation, cronyism, parasitism, power grabbing, large-scale political and economic mismanagement, crackdowns on dissenting voices, playing on deep-seated social and ethnic divisions.

When will someone burn copies of that playbook?

But really, it comes down to the fact that everyone took a dip in his private swimming pool, and there's no recovering from that, is there?

There is no recovering from that as a leader.

They did just take a dip in his swimming pool.

They petted his animals.

I think this has to be the most adorable coup in human history.

That is not a very hotly contested topic, to be fair.

It's like you say, bolt sprint records.

There is a huge jump off from first place to second place.

They swam in his pool, they petted his dogs, several of the children, because there were children involved.

That's how wholesome this coup was.

It was like a family day out to Thorpe Park.

It was unbelievable.

They petted his dogs, and several of the children played his piano.

It's an utterly, utterly charming coup.

And yet, somehow, even all the more damning for it.

Having your children play someone's piano is like mafia levels of intimidation.

I quite liked that, that people were just...

There was a woman who was being interviewed who brought her kids to the capital for the day.

Specifically for the revolution.

That's really good parenting.

I just want them to have these experiences while they're young.

So we're going to overthrow the government and then we're going to go to the aquarium.

It's superb.

It is, in almost every extent, the polar opposite of the January the 6th riots in America.

It is the absolute polar opposite.

It really is very wholesome.

Nobody was rubbing shit on the walls or taking cable ties in to tie up democratically elected representatives.

This was a good old-fashioned, corrupt

borderline dictator being removed from office and then everyone having a nice swim.

I sort of feel like we would never be able to to do that sort of thing in this country because those coups stick a flare up there.

Well, you see, you say that in this, but I think it's the problem for us is the palace.

We would never get very far invading a palace.

They just have to put up a red rope strung between two brass stanchions, and we go, we can't go past that.

That's it.

And it's too easy for the police to trap people in there because the only way out is through the gift shop.

That is why it has never really happened in this country.

Not since, you know, that time.

Not since Cromwell got the hump.

Not since Cromwell got the hump.

The Prime Minister, Ranil Wickramasinghe, is now, following Rajapaksa's resignation, the acting president.

He was in his sixth stint as Prime Minister, which is quite a lot of stints.

I shouldn't say that at this point in Boris Johnson's political career.

He might see that as

a goal.

But he's also facing calls for his resignation, and indeed, protesters set fire to his house,

which was

not a good sign if you are then becoming acting president.

A new president is due to

be

elected soon.

I mean,

it all came as a result of a sort of huge economic crisis,

inflation, power cuts, healthcare collapsing due to lack of medicines, transport systems failing, fuel sales restricted.

I mean, in some ways, you might say it's looking into the future, depending on where in the world you are.

But

it was a very kind of broadly a kind of tragic story of

a country that has so much going for it, and apart from the people who've been in charge.

Yeah, absolutely.

And I think we saw also was the classic fleeing of a bad leader because Roger Pax went to the Maldives and then Singapore this week.

But it's not thought to be his final destination, Andy.

So, where might he go?

I've put together a little guide to some favourite haunts you'll find in the search histories of ex-tyrants.

Been deposed?

Got beef?

Then why not come to Argentina?

You'll fit right in.

World champion handball playing nation and noted geopolitical grudge holder, Argentina is a fabulous choice for any despot fleeing from a baying mob with nothing more than the clothes they stand up in and a private plane filled with half the National Reserve.

Extradition treaty?

They don't even have a regular dish treaty, let alone an extra one.

Fun activities include spot the kindly old German gentleman before the kidnapped squad from Mossad does, having a T-bone steak-induced myocardial infarction, and why not join in the traditional Argentinian pastime of staring furiously towards the Falkland Islands, or as they're known in Argentina, the Falkland Islands.

Dubai!

Dubai, whether it's British expats who, in spite of being in the middle of Arabia, will only buy hummus from the M ⁇ S food shop that you're after, or a sandy vagina, air conditioning capital of the known world, Dubai is the place for you.

You practically can't walk down the street here without bumping into someone who's been chased out of their own country, so you'll always have plenty to talk about.

Whether it's former Afghan president Ashraf Ghani, or the sometime king of Spain Juan Carlos, or just some ex-city trader from Chelsea who retired at 40 and now spends his life drinking from noon and wanking himself to sleep, Dubai is absolutely lousy with people who regret their life choices in extreme but entirely tasteless luxury.

Fun activities include dune surfing, thinking that having a really tall building is important, and not talking about ongoing human rights abuses.

La Belle, France, Zoutalore, Les Francais Adore le dictateur.

That's right, as surprising as it may seem, the home of liberté and égalité has often extended the hand of fraternité to the kind of people who just a few short centuries previously they'd have been persuading to have a closer look at the fabulous new head-removing device they just invented.

France has played host to so many ex-desports that at one point in the early 21st century an estimated 5% of the population were former African dictators.

What draws them there?

Perhaps it's the weather, perhaps it's the food, or perhaps it's just one of the few places in the world where you don't have to explain how to spell coup d'état.

Fun activities include using gold bullion to mitigate highly ingrained institutionalized racism, booing during the Bastille Day parade, and trying to make girls think you're interesting by smoking galois.

And finally, what's got 120 million thumbs, a queen the size of Paddington Bear, and an unquenchable thirst for dirty money?

Us guys.

That's right.

Have you screwed a starving population out of what was rightfully theirs?

Then Knightsbridge is the place for you.

You don't have to be a dodgily elected ex-leader of a country to be welcomed here with open arms, just so long as you've got a boat big enough to land a helicopter on and a brolly.

Fun activities include owning football teams, owning newspapers, and owning the Tory Party.

Well, we could roll out the full Pinochet package for you.

Yeah.

We got game.

That was Bugle issue 4236 there.

Now we move forward to the start of September and the arrival of a brand new, fresh, bouncing, bubbly Prime Minister, Liz Truss, a figure surely set to reign for years and years.

Assuming those years are on a tiny as yet undiscovered planet that circles the Sun at frankly ridiculous speed.

I was joined by Josh Gondrelman and Nish Kumar.

Top story this week, the United Kingdom will have a new Prime Minister tomorrow.

As we record, tomorrow is Tuesday, today is Monday.

Liz Truss, the former Foreign Secretary until she gave up to campaign to be Prime Minister a couple of months ago, since when we've had no Prime Minister or Foreign Secretary, is to be the new leader of this country.

She

is walking into power after being voted in by 81,000 out of 170-odd thousand Conservative members.

Less than half of the Tory membership voted for her.

Soon that got to just over 60,000 votes.

So 57.4%

of the 82%,

of the quarter of a percent of the population who who were eligible to vote voted for trust.

It's around about an eighth of 1% of the people of this country have elected our new Prime Minister, Nish.

I know you're a massive democracy fan.

You must have really enjoyed the stats.

This is a huge day in the United Kingdom's history.

Smoke is billowing out of the Queen's anus, and that can mean one thing and one thing alone.

We have a new Prime Minister.

It has been a contest that began in early July and it felt like it's gone on for 750,000 years but now

Liz Truss has won in a contest between her and Britishy Sunak and the whole time people have been determining whether this contest should be deemed the lesser of two evils it's more like a listen it's more like a contest to determine Britain's neatest paedophile it's not really the lesser of two evils it's simply an unpleasant choice that we were forced to make, and most of us didn't get a say in it.

Liz Truss won, as you say, Andy, with around 81,000 votes.

It's not a huge majority, and the margin of victory was actually even narrower than had been predicted earlier in the campaign.

Liz Truss was supposed to walk this through without any problems whatsoever.

As it is, she's won by 57 to 42 percent.

And the reason that that margin has narrowed is simply her personality.

Her dreadful, dreadful personality.

A day before the results were announced, opinion polling suggested that 49% of people who voted Conservative in 2019 believed she looked like a prime minister in waiting in the beginning of August.

This dropped to just 31% by the 30th of August.

Liz Truss is like a biopic of Malcolm X starring Jim Carrey in the lead role.

The more you see of it, the worse it gets.

And crucially, it was pretty bad to begin with.

But I mean, this is quite extraordinary, really.

So

we've had

this leadership election.

The voting process took, was it almost two months

since voting opened.

And these are 170,000 of the most committed Tories in the universe.

They are the members of the Conservative Party.

And still...

One in six of them couldn't be asked to vote.

They've had

almost two months.

This is not like having to vote on a specific day in an election.

They've had weeks and weeks to do it.

And still, only 82% of people voted.

So less than half of the Torious Tories wanted Truss as Prime Minister.

Last night, Josh, I was lying in bed, very excited about the prospect of

Boris Johnson no longer being Prime Minister and then sick to my very core at the prospect of Liz Truss being my Prime Minister.

And there was an enormous thunderstorm.

One mega rumble of thunder rattled our windows as the skies cracked with the whip of Dune.

And I thought, surely this is a divine signal that appointing Liz Truss as Prime Minister has displeased all of the various deities who rule our universe.

But to be fair, that did follow an even bigger thunderclap, which I think was all of those deities applauding the UK for ditching Boris Johnson.

So, I mean, it's.

I mean, in America, obviously, you've had political upheavals.

Are people still interpreting the weather for divine signals?

Now we're having more and more extreme weather events.

I will say, you had an interminable feeling election decided by like a few widely skewed votes and low turnout.

Congratulations.

You just elected a leader, American style.

I hope that was fun.

That scared what we have going on.

I do feel like weather-wise, right, it is pretty ominous.

I think prime minister is not like a, it's too lofty a title at this point for what these people are.

Especially because it feels like, just with the apocalyptic nature of everything, we're closing in on the Omega minister.

That's what's on the horizon.

I will say, you had two months with like no prime minister.

Boris Johnson was on the way out.

They hadn't decided yet.

I think maybe you just roll that forward.

Ghost ride the whip.

No prime minister.

I think if there was a general election now and absolutely no government or prime minister at all was an option, I think that would, particularly under a first-past-the-post system, walk to victory.

Yeah, yeah.

She arrives in office in what can only be described as an absolute mother f ⁇ er of an intro.

There are real problems brewing.

This strike's brewing.

The TEC Congress, which is one of the biggest meetings of trade unions in this country, is going to happen.

It's going to start next Sunday.

Liz Trust has already said that she promises to legislate within 30 days to restrict key workers' legal rights to strike.

So already that's starting off on a bad note.

And I'll tell you what, nothing screams, I believe in democracy, more than we will restrict your ability to go on strike.

There's obviously the concerns about the situation in Ukraine.

There's unlikely to be any shift in policy for that.

There's no suggestion that Liz Trust is going to deviate from Boris Johnson's policy of continuing to provide weapons for Ukraine.

With Brexit, there is

the never-ending

shit of Brexit continues to just pour forth from the anus of this country.

There's a debate coming up about the Northern Ireland Protocol Bill, which Liz Truss actually managed to get through the House of Commons, but it's likely to get stuck in the House of Lords.

So it's possible that by the 15th of September, she'll have triggered Article 16, which was suspend parts of the Northern Ireland Agreement, which is a bad idea on so many deep levels.

The biggest problem that she faces, oh, and also the global pandemic.

Something about global pandemic.

I don't know.

I think that that's someone fed about.

I don't know what's going on with that.

But the biggest problem that she faces is the energy crisis with people's energy bills being about to double and, in some cases, quadruple.

Businesses are facing closures.

And thus far, this is the most immediate crisis facing the country.

And thus far, Liz Tras has announced absolutely all to do with the energy crisis, apart from her plan, which I think she's just released, which is her plan is to advise households to generate heat by huddling together whilst jacking it to pictures of Margaret Thatcher.

Family.

Family.

He was talking about families.

I was talking about families jacking it together, Andy.

Thank you.

That was Bugle issue 4239.

Now the news happened fast this year and we move on one whole episode now and the final departure of Britain's own head of state.

I was joined by Tiff Stevenson and Anuvab Powell to document the reaction to the end of the Elizabethan II era.

A special interview this week with Sir Strangeford Pumperty Grafton, the Royal Crown Sergeant Trainser of the Noggins since 1947, who gives the Bugle his exclusive tips on how to strengthen your neck muscles to cope with a life of 24-7, 365 crown wearing.

Plus added tips on how to sleep without your crown falling off.

Because I know the new king is an avid listener of this show.

Also, we have some of the history of the necker sizes performed by monarchs to hone their crown supporting musculature.

Here's little snippets from that interview.

Well, Andy, the average crown weighs, of course, 120 kilograms.

Queen Victoria, by the midpoint of her reign, had a neck like an absolute wildebeest.

It was quite strikingly beautiful in a certain light, according to Benjamin Disraeli.

That came, of course, from years of balancing a seal on her head for an hour every morning before breakfast, on the advice of my predecessor, the Earl of Berkshire.

This, of course, was the origin of the kippah as a breakfast food.

It was something that both the seal and Her Majesty Queen Victoria were prepared to eat whilst they discussed affairs of state.

And going further back, the trend for elaborate neck roughs during the reign of the first Queen Elizabeth in the 16th century originated, of course, course, from her extraordinarily large royal necolature, seen at its most potent, of course, when she headed a flaming cannonball off the white cliffs of Dover directly into the Spanish flagship El Botregueño in 1588 at turning points in the defeat of the Armada.

I'm afraid that the full interview is in the pen.

And can I just say this is my first time encountering royal commentators.

Oh, of course, they were out in all their glory.

I think they had been waiting for years and years.

This was their sort of major test match, if you will.

And I think after day four, it was really difficult for them to say something insightful and not repeat.

Day four?

Day four?

Minute 35, technically.

Yeah, yeah, that's better.

That's better.

Yeah.

One of my favorites, I think, by day six was a gentleman saying, it was a delight to meet her, and she was wonderful.

And he'd said this a few times.

And then the main guy said, Well, is there anything you have to add?

And he said, Well, she asked me, Is that a door?

And I said, Yes, ma'am.

That was the kind and warm person she was.

And I think that's when anecdotes have reached their complete nadir.

You have to.

I don't know.

I think we can compete with that.

There was a the corgis had no idea of her status.

That's good.

Yeah.

And there was also the Queen's image in a cloud.

Let's not forget the Queen's.

We've seen the Queen's image in next, she'll be telling me she's on stamps.

This is just ridiculous.

You're seeing her on stamps.

You're seeing her on coins.

She's everywhere.

That was within, that was in the first day.

That was like the first day of commentary on it.

But actually, on the first day, like on Monday, just gone, I actually got my period out of respect for the Queen.

It's what she would have wanted.

I do actually call it trooping the colour.

So that.

Well, I mean, mean, it was interesting, wasn't it, that the things that were announced as being out of respect for the Queen, and we saw this particularly in sports.

So I mentioned that the test match I was at on day one, so the second day

was cancelled, and then they resumed the game on the scheduled third day, and they announced that they were continuing with the cricket as a mark of respect for the Queen.

But, you know, to be able to pay tribute, and there was a kind of moving minute silence and various other things at the ground.

And Prince Philip was a big cricket fan and supporter of various cricketing charities in his time but football cancelled all of its games out of respect for the queen

and it did I mean it did and then boxing was cancelled but rugby carried on I don't know what you know what that says about the relative levels and styles of violence that were and were not respects respects for the queen then on the resumption of football Liverpool scored an injury time winner to beat Dutch champions IAX as a mark of respect to the queen whilst Tottenham Hotspur lost a sporting Lisbon also as a mark of respect

to the Queen and Chris I know as a Tottenham Hotspur fan

we look upon the Queen as a as an icon of stability and continuity and I guess Spurs' defeat to Lisbon was a kind of a gesture that that the Queen you know exemplified the fact that some things in this country must never change some traditions are inviolable and and Spurs losing important football matches is is one of them is that is that how you interpreted it when I was actually blaming Prince Prince Charles for our defeat, I was like, for once, I've got a new target for this.

Sorry, sorry, King Charles.

Can I please get off this island?

You were at the cricket, Andy.

Surely when you were at the cricket and they announced it, did one person go, well, she had a good innings?

Well, you know, there was a genuine outpouring of emotion around the country, as well as a lot of kind of performating, performative, excessive respect paying various you know tv journalists making sure they were filmed whilst paying their respects um and and some really weird things happened as well centre parks the holiday holiday parks in they incurred the fury of their customers by announcing they would be closing their venues on the day of the funeral and telling the people who were staying there to stay somewhere else which was not ideal given that centre parks as a holiday destination is already the somewhere else that people were staying um they then

They then backtracked appropriately because what we know about Her Majesty the Queen is she loved having somewhere to stay and

ideally with a water slide.

In October, the bugle turned 15.

In the early days, I co-hosted the show with one of the most promising comedians to come out of the Midlands region of England for many years, John Oliver.

He returned for one week this year to toast our longevity and answer your questions.

Hello Andy.

Hello buglers.

What an honor it was to share the bugle with you for eight years Andy.

It was like being on an international space station.

What?

But on the ground and in two different countries.

Honestly that metaphor fell apart instantly.

But it's still one of the most moving things anyone's ever said to me John.

It was just a sense of being in a very confined space.

Does that matter?

Just the remorseless futility and claustrophobia.

Yeah, the kind of aggressive silence occasionally.

Yeah, that made you feel like you were truly alone in the universe.

It's a glorious eight years.

Well, I mean, I like to think that that probably mirrored the aggressive silence we had at, for example, our Edinburgh Preview in York.

I believe so.

I think I've had a lasting appreciation for the different kinds of silence due to the work that we were able to do live together.

I think we can always tell this is an interested audience.

This isn't an apathetic audience.

This is a very angry audience which is about to vocalise it.

In York, I believe you had all three happening at once on different tables in York, I think.

And unforgettably, of course, the space in Docklands,

2004, the night England lost to Portugal on penalties in the European Championship.

That was a silence very much caused by no one else being left in the room.

That's right.

After the entire audience had walked out.

What it was, it was the most natural sound that that room has ever produced.

It was really just the walls that were emitting their kind of silence as

our voices were echoed back

from the flat surfaces in that room.

Voices at that point saying, shall we still continue?

At what point are we just entertaining each other?

And of course, the answer to that was at all points.

And that was very much the joy of podcasting, was it gave

a vehicle for people who could only only entertain each other.

Exactly.

It removed

removed the problem contextualization that an audience could provide.

So that was 2004.

The Eagle came into being, if I've done my maths rightly, 2022 minus 15, in 2007.

So let's go back in time.

Yeah, let's leave the stats to me, John.

Let's go back in time to

2007.

Now, at that point, you had already left the United Kingdom to try and crack it as a goaltender in the NHL, if I remember.

That was the dream.

I was about to host the hit 12th series of Bar Mitzvah or Bust on the BBC.

So, you know, our careers were in different positions than

what they are now.

I mean,

what do you remember of

your early time in America, those early

bugle episodes?

Let's just gloss over the fact that I don't think I can make it in the NHL now.

I think the Bar Mitzvah or Bust dream, there's no need for that to be dead.

That's as good an idea now as it was then.

Right.

Sorry, what was the question?

I was so fucked up on Bar Mitzvah or Bus

and just what potentially that game show, if it is a game show, I don't know how you've envisioned it, would involve reality show game show.

Either you

basically you have your bar mitzvah or you renounce Judaism.

I don't know what the bus counts as in there.

It's a good show.

I'm already interested and you've not explained anything about it to me.

Well, I mean, that's, you know, you've been in television a long time, John.

You know that a good title can be enough to take a show a very, very long way indeed.

That is true.

If you want more of John, head to your local charity shop and see if they have the Smurfs on DVD.

Let's move to November now when I was joined by Chris Addison and Alice Fraser.

And the talk of the town was Elon Musk.

Well, Twitter news now.

And...

Yes, Twitter, for those who've not heard of it, the 21st century equivalent of standing in the middle of a roundabout with your trousers around your ankles

screaming at traffic and rubbing radioactive paint on your crotch,

has been bought by Elon Musk.

Now, Alice, you for many years have kept Bugle listeners informed of all the comings and goings in Elon Musk's life and brain.

What the f ⁇ is going on with him now?

Andy, I, as you know, am mesmerised by Elon Musk.

Elon Musk, a baby's idea of a grown-up.

You know, all of the money and resources in the world, and he's using it to send cars to space like the wank fantasy of nerds that wish they were brave enough to be assholes.

And

he has now bought Twitter.

And he's throwing his weight around.

He's brought in other programmers.

He's decided that he wants to revolutionize Twitter by making it more Twitter than it's ever been.

The problem here, Andy, is among many other things, is he's suggesting that verified users need to pay to maintain their verified user status that in order to have a premium Twitter experience you're going to have to pay money and this is is the core issue at the heart of this purchase of Twitter is the relentless urge to be a landlord

if you want to make a premium Twitter what you need to do is ruin the general experience of Twitter to such a degree that people will pay to be out of it.

It's the same thing that leads to airport lounges.

It's the same thing that leads to VIP clubs.

If the airport is fine, you have no need for a lounge.

What counts as innovation for a billionaire is making the world like it is for them all the time, but only for people like them.

He's bringing in coders from all his other programs to deal with the Twitter code.

And the problem is that Twitter is not a tech product.

Twitter is a nightclub.

Twitter is a people product.

There's no innovative code in Twitter.

Twitter is selling the addiction of Twitter of people like Stephen King and Elon Musk back to themselves.

There's no innovative moderation algorithm, and if there were, Elon would already be deconstructing it in the name of this glowing ideal of absolute unregulated free speech, the equivalent in sophistication to a 19-year-old libertarian.

This free speech idea has been ruthlessly proven to lead nowhere good by places that already exist on the internet, like 4chan.

The moment he bought it, slurs went up on the platform, which you always know is a good sign.

You know that's a good sign that you're doing the right thing.

The moment you buy a platform, people start using the N-word more.

It is kind of extraordinary.

He bought it for a huge amount of money.

He said he wasn't going to buy it.

Then he was kind of trapped into buying it.

Since he took it over,

he told all the coders to print out their last 30 days of coding, then told them to shred their printouts, then sacked a load of them.

He wandered through his office carrying a sink.

And he's got rid of half of his senior executives.

So basically, what we have with Elon Musk is someone who, had he been born 2,000 years before he was would have ended his life with his penis in a horse being hacked to death by his bodyguard.

Ancient Rome.

Ancient Rome is missing an emperor.

That is essentially

what

has happened.

He did say this, free speech is the bedrock of a functioning democracy.

And looking at the nate the state of free speech around the world, it might be the bedrock of a functioning democracy, but that bedrock is radioactive and it is poisoning democracy from within.

I feel like he was wandering around, well, he was wandering around the halls of Twitter with the sink so that he could just look over people's shoulders and say, I have a sinking feeling.

And then they have to laugh because he's the boss.

But he literally, didn't he post

Let That Sink In as he went into Twitter?

Yeah.

Twitter is sort of now run by the least funny person on Twitter.

And That is a hotly

nightmare.

Oh, yeah.

Yeah.

No matter what he does, I just, whenever I see him, I don't see the world's richest man.

I just, I can't help thinking, do you wash your face in a deep fat fryer?

What's going on there?

I mean, okay, let's not make fun of how he looks.

He does look like the face of a man in a police sketch of a man.

But I think the core issue...

is that he's selling himself as a representative of the war between engineers and the artistic class.

The artistic class being people who have taste and good jokes and the engineering class are the people who actually get things done.

The problem being that he does not get things done.

What he does is he goes around and he bloviates with lots of money until other people get things done for him.

Apparently he's a great engineer.

I await one of his pig, Neuralink pigs, to show me that he is.

It's a spectacular fall from Grace though, isn't it?

Really?

If you think about Elon Elon Musk, say three years ago, when all we really knew was that he liked the idea of making Tesla open source and he was going to build all these batteries that he would explain how he was doing it and anyone could do it, and this would solve the energy crisis and so on.

That was when he was at his absolute to go from that level of cool.

Just stop.

Somebody should have just said something at that point.

Stop.

Stop.

Nothing you say from this point.

Nothing is going to better the things that you've already said.

And it has just been a phenomenal ride without brakes downhill ever since

Yes,

he lost his traction somewhere between Tesla's going to solve the climate crisis and we can make it make fart noises instead of horn sounds when you press the beeping button.

There have been some other new social media platforms launched to try and

replace Twitter.

Bark Void, where no one is allowed any followers, but they can just bark their bile into a vacuum of nothingness.

I think that might be that's the logical end point of social media, I think.

Bile duct, which automatically generates insults, but then shares them anonymously equally amongst all users.

So everyone gets abused the same amount.

I think that's democracy in action.

And Spubicle, which is only insults that would in previous times have been scrawled over the walls of a toilet cubicle.

Now let us play you out with a clip from Bugle 10, our first ever Christmas, where John Oliver and I revealed our Christmas wish lists.

Find more classic clips on our Top Stories podcast with new clips from our archive every day.

Do have a happy new year.

We will be back in 2023.

Because I have a samurai sword, but it is for private use in my own personal blood grudges.

I have to avenge the death of my ancestors, Andy.

They're all dead.

I suspect foul play.

All of them are dead.

I will track down the perpetrator.

Further and further back in my family tree, Andy, there's more and more corpses.

I will have my vengeance.

What would you like for Christmas, John?

I'd like a samurai sword.

I thought you said you had one.

I told you that you can't have too many.

I want an imitation samurai sword because I love breaking the law in a petty way.

I guess they're like golf clubs, though.

They're all slightly different, aren't they?

Although you're not allowed...

I think the real samurai's aren't allowed more than 13 samurai swords in their bag at any one time.

Yeah, and one of them has to be a very lofted sword as well.

Personally, these are the things on my Christmas list.

I would like a giant working replica of Nadia Komenech, but it's got to be at least 30 feet tall.

I'll bear that in mind.

I'd also like the power of life and death over the people of the northern hemisphere.

I'd like the world's largest watermelon.

I would like pancreatitis.

I'd like my old bin back from the people at 53.

Stop settling scores.

I'd like the Queen Mother back from the dead.

Oh, yeah, true.

We all want that.

We all want that.

Taken from us all so tragically early, Andy.

Other things I want: a ride on a dolphin, a trolley dash around the British Museum, a game of table tennis with Hillary Clinton, a Portuguese accent.