15 Years, What Just Happened? With Marina Hyde

The Bugle, audio newspaper for a visual world.

Hello buglers, I'm Andy Zaltzmann, best known in these parts as the host of this show.

And I'm sure you would be delighted to join me in wishing the Bugle a very happy 15th birthday.

Yes, we are precisely approximately 15 years old this second.

And as we prepare for our 15th birthday live bugle tour, London on the 15th and 22nd of October, Birmingham on the 27th, Glasgow on the 30th and Dublin on the 3rd of November, details online, we are bringing you some extra bonus, bonus additional bugle content to mark reaching 1.5% of a millennium's worth of podcastic existence.

To mark this 1.5 decade point and our continuing place as the longest running audio newspaper for a visual world that I've ever been involved with, not only do we have our run of special 15th anniversary shows, which you will hear highlights of over the next few weeks, but we also have other exciting offerings to the gods who rule our Yutzoi for our listeners, such as you.

These include the launch of Top Story, a new parallel pod feed featuring classic top stories from the Bugle archives.

And for this week's offering, Bugle4242 sub-episode A for ah don't millenniums fly by these days, we have something rather different.

This week I look back at the last last 15 years of human civilization, a decade and a half in which, despite the bugle's existence, not everything has gone quite as brilliantly as it might, with one of Britain's foremost satirical writers.

Throughout the Bugle span, now an official epoch in the history of human civilization, Marina Hyde has been writing about the world, politics, related issues, and also, more importantly, sport, for The Guardian, one of the physical newspapers that has withstood the challenge of our own audio newspaper.

As a fellow exasperate, is that the term of this planet, Marina was the perfect guest to reflect on the past 782 or so weeks in the history of our world-renowned species when we met in early September at a time when the United Kingdom still had a female monarch and a male prime minister, albeit not for much longer in either case.

Here to get the Bugle 15th anniversary celebrations underway are reflections on the last 15 years.

Marina, welcome to the Bugle.

Thank you for having me.

It is an honour to be here.

Well, it's a great pleasure to have you on.

Now you have been chronicling the planet for

quite a long time now.

How would you assess humanity in 2022 compared with 2007, the year the bugle began?

I would not say that things have only got better.

I think we know I think we're

every time that we've had a change of leadership was you know the chaos has got more and more kind of intense and you know people used to talk about the omni shambles, we're now in an omni crisis.

I mean, it's just it's magnified, hasn't it?

And obviously, it's been sort of madly driven by social media and things like that as well.

Yeah, I mean, if you told me in 2007 that like the US Apprentice host was going to be the leader of the free world, I'd be like, okay, come on.

And if you told me in, I don't know, 2016 that he was maybe going to be the leader of the free world again

in 2020, 24, I would also be quite worried.

So, yeah, I mean, I would just say a downward spiral.

Isn't that

downward tail spin?

And, you know, I mean, how much that, like I said, the Bugle launched in 2007.

I mean, how much of the blame

should I be accepting, having hosted a satirical podcast all that time?

And how much should you be accepting, having been writing satirical columns about the injustices of the world?

And now

look where we f ⁇ ing are.

Is it our fault?

Now who's being naive, Kay?

Let me tell you, satire has never changed anything in human history.

And if you could think of an example, I would love to hear it.

I mean, think back to sort of, I mean, if you're thinking of even like going right back, you know, the greatest perhaps British satirist that ever lived, Jonathan Swift, in 1729, he writes a modest proposal, which is basically about what the British are doing in Ireland.

And he, you know, suggests in a really deadpan way that perhaps, you know, the Irish could eat their children or, you know, that which would solve two problems at once.

And it's a sort of unbelievable work and everyone thinks it's, you know, and yet nothing changes.

That's still more than a century off the potato farm.

Nothing has ever changed.

That's the greatest satirist ever.

Nothing has ever changed.

And

you still can't get a decently priced baby in a British restaurant.

You still can't.

You still can't, actually, you know, and that we

should do something about that.

But no, satire changes absolutely nothing.

I mean, look, you know, when Peter Cook opened, Peter Cook opened a satirical nightclub in the 60s, which I just love the idea of, which is called The Establishment.

And even when he was opening it, he said, you know, I think this will, he he knew exactly what he was talking about because he said, I think this will sort of, you know, this will call to mind all those great sort of Berlin cabres that did so much to stop the rise of Hitler and the start of the Second World War.

It never has changed anything in human history.

So it's not your fault.

Absolutely not.

But then that raises the question, what is the purpose of what

is it purely cathartic?

I think it is cathartic and I do actually think, I mean, when I think of what satire has done for me as other people's satire, my God, I mean, it gives you such comfort.

i mean it sort of scoops you up in a way and makes you feel part of a fun and fabulous us laughing at horrid old them and it also gives you a way of looking at things you know god there's some oscar wilde thing where he says that sunsets didn't exist until turner painted them which is obviously he's being sort of glib and whatever but you know i people didn't properly see the government in a way for or government in this country until they saw the thick of it and then it's like oh i see it gives you it gives you words for things and ways of looking at things that, you know, really open a window.

And that's a great comfort, but you know, it doesn't, sadly, it doesn't change those things.

I mean, Armando Nucci is very funny about it now.

And he says, you know, the only thing after all those years when the thick of it started, which I think was about, you know, about, gosh, I mean, 2003, I think it was a lot of fun.

Yeah, maybe a bit later than that.

So, you know, the only difference between what that sort of laid bare and what's happening now is that in the thick of it, no one runs around all day going, oh my god, this is just like in the thick of it, you know.

People in the government, but also there's a thing where they actually sort of want it to seem like that.

That's the worst when they take these sort of things as a sort of instruction manual, which I mean, in the day-to-day, they had a great, hilarious sort of just a quick news joke saying, you know, question time live from Wembley Stadium.

And then in the referendum, they actually did question time live from Wembley.

I remember thinking, it's not supposed to be an instruction manual.

Again, it's not an instruction manual.

So predictive satire, essentially.

Yeah, I mean, well, well, lots of that stuff was brilliant because it sort of satirised the future, which was so clever.

So all that said, what do you sort of enjoy writing about most as a satirical columnist?

I mean, are there times where you just get so sort of furious at what you're

writing about that it's hard to sort of see the funny side?

Or does that do you think?

Yeah, I do think you have to keep the anger out.

You may feel very angry, but I do think you have to keep the anger out.

I think tone, as I've got older, I think that tone is like the most important thing of absolutely anything.

And you can have very little to say, but if you say it in the right tone, people are more receptive to listening.

And you can have hugely important things to say, but if you get the tone wrong, then people just switch off.

So I think the anger can make people feel like they're being shouted at.

So I think it's, I often think these things are better done with humour.

For me, it's quite, it has been quite cathartic because I have sort of written my way through some really tumultuous times.

And I actually have to say, I mean, you know, therapists tell you to write it all down, don't they?

I think actually, you know, my job is a form of like mandated news therapy, which is also paid.

So I'm quite fortunate in that way.

But yeah, it's you've got, I think what I like,

what works best, I think maybe this is, I don't know, I haven't probably thought this through, but I do think most great comedy is character-driven.

So when you get, when you get sort of new characters come into the soap opera, it's been like a sort of mad telenovela for the last few years.

Since I have to say, since 2016 to 16, it has become like a sort of crazy telenovela.

I sometimes get people writing to me.

My favourite ones are the people who write to me from America and say, you know, I don't know who any of these people are, but I very much enjoy the story.

Which I love.

Yeah.

I'm sorry, 2016 was where

your book starts.

Obviously, there was Brexit in the election of Trump.

Brexit describes the bin fire of the vanities

in your book.

And your new book is described as you quote slashing your way through the hellscape of post-referendum politics now hellscape i know deliberate understatement is a classic tool of the satirist but why did you only go with hellscape was it because they wouldn't let you use the term

McGee in the blurb

I think they wrote that blurb for me but you're right it's massively underplayed what was I thinking yeah we are going to have to come up with new words I feel that you know sitting here in the autumn of of 2022 it's quite clear we're going to need some new words.

You know,

omnichambles has become omni-crisis, and there's going to be a whole load of new neologisms that need to be invented by you and me and many others as soon as possible to cover what's coming.

PERMA Hellscope.

Yeah,

PERMA, yeah, we'll need to dig out lots of our prefixes, won't we?

I think PERMA Hellscope was a very popular haircut in the 1980s.

So, I mean, we're now six years

from Brexit and three Prime ministers on

from

have we moved on at all as have we learned anything as a as a country since then in the UK?

I don't think we well, I mean, I don't think I fear we may not be at our rock bottom.

Someone said to me the other day, don't worry, rock bottom's coming soon.

And yet, is it?

I feel that, you know, the election of Liz Truss particularly was not necessarily people saying,

okay,

we have, you know, we've kind of been on a sort of mad chasing high.

It's like people, like people on drugs who instead of actually thinking, perhaps we now have to stop and begin the unpleasant business of getting sober, have just thought, more drugs, we must have more drugs.

This was, you know, we've delayed the come down and the calm down is in the post, I'm afraid to say.

It's in the post.

In fact, bits of it are arriving.

So

you have children.

How old are you?

They are 11, 10 and 8.

And have you started trying to explain politics to them?

Because mine are a bit older than that.

mine are 15 and 13 now.

And there's times where, you know, I try to talk to them about politics.

And looking at the state of, well, not just British politics, but American politics, the state of global politics, you just feel like saying, just try and ignore it for the rest of your life if you want to be happy.

I really agree with you.

I felt throughout like, I mean,

you know, I...

I kept saying to my children for a long time, you know, this isn't, this really isn't normal.

You know, it isn't like this always.

And then I thought, it's gone on for so long now that, I mean, they look at you as like, like, but it always seems to be like this.

It's always mad and crazy and, you know, watching Donald Trump.

You know, you have to try and sort of assert norms that have now been completely burnt.

There's nothing left of those norms.

And so you try and say it's not really like this, but I guess it is like this now.

And it's quite hard to get it back.

So I don't know, my children, there were times in the whole, you know, the mad sort of...

Brexit thing where Theresa Moe was trying to get her deal through and people were watching television every night night on the Parliament channel.

I mean, nobody watches a Parliament channel, but people were sitting there watching these things.

And, you know, my children could do an impression of John Burko.

I mean, that's something very important has been stolen from their childhood.

Absolutely.

Mainly by me, who had to keep working.

So I had to say, I'm really sorry, we're going to have to have this on because I need to work and I have to watch this.

But it went on, you know, so I've got to watch this for three years.

Sorry.

Yes, I mean, I don't know.

It's hard to sort of see how it's going to.

I mean, looking at, you know, I could say the Bugle's been

addressing the universe since 2007,

15 years.

Beautifully, if I may say so.

Thank you very much.

But what can you do?

In effect, so what's it going to be like in 15 more years from now?

If it carries on at the current trajectory, is it just going to be

9 billion people standing around in a big circle screaming at each other?

It's really unclear.

I think that so many things are cracking and you think that the...

the machine is lots of different forms of machine are essentially broken, have been taped over and are now juddering really fast and everything's just going to blow.

And I'm, you know, I think we could have populist challenges from the right, from the left.

I mean, you know, is Martin Lewis going to come through?

And I mean, I really mean that.

You know, is he going to run?

You don't know.

These people can kind of come through because people have just had it with sort of politicians.

I think it's interesting when the bugle started because I'm thinking

clearly in retrospect, although not fully understood at all at the time, the financial crisis was the biggest event of that decade.

But people thought it was 9-11 and it was very easy to live on.

Obviously, there were wars and whatever you lived on in the aftershocks of that, but it was...

it was not understood until much, much later what the financial crisis and the failure to deal with those people, what that, you know, that we're living through a lot of the fallout of not dealing with it properly and of that event.

And I think that Trump came from that and all sorts of other things came from that.

And that sense of sort of, you know,

elites behaving with complete impunity, which, by the way, I still think we see.

But I think something is just going to lots of different things are going to break, and the economics is going to catalyse that.

Right.

So amidst all this,

sorry.

It's a little cheery and talking about

them in five minutes.

Since we've established that Saturn at least has a cathartic element both for the people who write and perform it and the people who read it, who listen to it, who watch it.

So, you know, we still have a place.

Oh, absolutely.

My God, it's been my comfort for most of my life.

So the worse things get, the more important important that catharsis becomes.

However, we also need an escape.

And you, like me, have an escape through sport.

And you've been writing about sport for a long time.

What role does sport have in your life and in terms of keeping your disposition towards humanity positive?

It does have that role, it does have that role, doesn't it?

And it's...

And it's an escape.

And yet, of course, because nothing of these things exist in a vacuum, there's so many times where you think, oh, this is like what's happening in politics.

Or you think, oh, I know exactly why Theresa Ramay is giving Jeff Boycott a nighthood because, you know, I mean, you know, and you start seeing these constant power.

I mean, I've always think associatively anyway, that's the kind of way I think.

And so it was really quite hard for me to write about politics without thinking about sport.

Or, you know, you think, God, you know, I mean, Starma really plays like Mourinho.

You know, he actually doesn't even want to.

to have the ball because it's just a risk.

Diego Torres, that brilliant, do you know that Diego Torres, he's the Spanish journalist, he codified Mourinho's game.

Bear in mind, he did actually once advance the Champions League final, having only 19% of possession.

I sometimes wonder whether that could happen to start.

He could easily sort of allow his opponent to double fault him into number 10.

But he's a hugely risk-averse thing.

He's almost thought himself into the position where having the ball means the ball can be taken from you.

Therefore, whoever doesn't have the ball is stronger.

So then politically.

So I always end up thinking, even when I'm watching sport, this is a a bit like...

But you know, I always think like that.

So I,

but it's quite helpful to think of it like that, to have those kind of

ways you can map one experience onto another.

I find it quite helpful for understanding things.

And what sports do you particularly feel?

Obviously football you write about quite a bit.

Yes, sir.

Cricket.

I mean,

I'll watch anything.

And obviously in the Olympics, I'll become completely obsessed with handball for two weeks.

Oh, anything.

Yeah, fantastic.

Watched a lot of that live in 2012.

And in fact, in 2008.

But yes,

I'll become completely obsessed with anything at all during the Olympics.

I enjoyed the water polo in London.

I went to a session with my dad.

And that was...

I mean, that was very much a...

You know, we look for metaphors for life.

And water polo, there seems to be a lot of unseen violence going on.

Oh my God, it's staggeringly violent.

Yeah, it's staggeringly violent.

It's, yeah.

But I mean, you know, even the synchronized swimming can be, you know, but they try and politize, sometimes they try and politicise the swim um synchronized swimming.

I was reading once about some French routine that they only banned at the last minute, which was

based in set in the sort of death camps of the Second World War, and I just thought, How did you get all the way to whichever the host city was?

And no one said, I just think we won't do this in sparkly Leotards.

I just let's not do it.

But they got all the way I anyway, but yes, I mean like we say we sport is you know, we looked at sport for a bit of an escape, but then over the past fifteen years we've seen sport

go through the same kind of hyperspeed plutocratic avarice and unfettered globalization that we see you know from politics and and and economics so i mean it is politics yeah and i mean a long time ago i used to think that oh maybe you know you can't you've got to keep it out but it's ridiculous if when when all the people who are buying the tournaments or you know are using it clearly as a geopolitical tool it seems to be so weird that the only people who aren't allowed to be political are the athletes it's like okay you're having your world cup in qatar okay or in Russia.

Putin is using the, I don't know, what was it, the Sochi?

Sochi Olympics in 2014.

In 2014, Bugle years,

you know, which he used as a sort of curtain raiser for invading Crimea.

I mean, ultimately, why can't athletes be political?

Because everybody else around this stupid thing is.

Yes, I mean, it didn't, it's not really worked massively well looking at the state of the world, the way they've, you know, given out Olympics and World Cups.

And though you sometimes hear that, oh, it helps advance.

Oh, yes, I'm hearing that from

IOC and FIFA.

Yeah, I mean, God, I mean, but actually, looking back, I mean, let's look back.

Was it 2015?

Was all that FIFA drama?

Was do you remember how that was the most extraordinary story of our times in sort of 2015?

We're like, oh my god, look at all this.

You know, they're bringing, pulling them out of the hotel, hiding by their own bed.

They were literally coming out with their own dirty linen, I believe, from that hotel.

You know, they arrested them all.

And it was so, you know, people went to like Rikers Island for a night and stuff like that.

And you thought, my God, this is the, you know, this is the most, we're feasting on this story.

and then of course by the next year you think oh that seems quite small compared to the absolute madness that began to happen in you know politics proper yes and then we have you know things like the the the the Saudi takeover of golf yeah essentially do you think it's come to the time where commentators on sport should be highlighting what sports people are endorsing so you should you know golf conversation well here's Dustin Johnson 85 yards to the pin and let's hope he's not distracted by the sight of an unchaperoned female spectator over the back of the green window how much he disapproves of.

Yes, I do.

I mean, if you take the money, you should back yourself.

But that's the, yeah, I mean, but again, the commentators are not really allowed to be like that.

And the athletes, I mean, some of the athletes, as you say, I mean, I essentially think he has taken it.

Dustin, you have taken a political decision.

Whether or not some things are cast as political and others aren't.

And it's really sad that holding a little kind of rainbow ribbon on the Olympics podium can get you into huge trouble.

Whereas, you know, taking Saudi money is absolutely fine yeah it's ridiculous and it's horrible we need new rules the whole idea that sport and politics don't mix is undermined whenever there's an international sporting event and it begins with a national anthem because

nations are political entities they're like a typhoon fly past and it's like okay look we've seen your hardware i mean it's ridiculous yeah it's militarized if you look at american sport it's completely militarized and it's

you know i mean again

it is totally politicized by people who claim that it shouldn't be politicized you know kneeling down, that's politics.

But my typhoon fly pass is not.

Is the Qatar World Cup later this year?

Is that the logical end point of sport?

Yeah, when you have to build a town to stop a stadium looking stupid.

Yeah, I think that there's something about those mega events.

That is the logical event of the end of those mega events.

Where they did, there is one town that they've had to build a town to stop it looking silly.

Because it's just tiny the country and they've built one of the stadiums and they've had to do this.

Yes, I mean it's completely, obviously corrupt, run by terrible people.

I see Beckham's advertising it.

And yeah, and it'll all be finishing like a week before Christmas.

No, sorry, no.

It is wrong on almost

so many levels.

Infinite number of levels.

What's going to happen to Sports Personality of the Year?

That's their slot.

Yeah, I mean, did anyone ask?

So, I mean, when the Bugle started, it was

about just under a year before the Beijing Olympics.

Did you go there?

I went there, yeah.

And

that was fearsome.

The opening ceremony had these two, I don't know if you remember, the opening ceremony was extraordinary, and

they had 2,000 drummers who apparently had been made to rehearse in nappies

so that no one actually had to go to Liu and leave the...

And

there was just this, you know, obviously synchronized drumming, you feel it in your actual chest.

And in the stadium, it was just like like the kind of

like a blood pulse of like this new superpower announcing itself to the entire world.

Yeah, that was, but I remember going to press conferences there every morning.

And these, they said, we will be allowed, you will be allowed to protest against anything.

And these, you know, two little old ladies had protested that their house had been knocked down for it.

And they were taken to a labor camp.

And so there was a woman from the IOC on stage with the guy from the Chinese organising committee who just refused to answer any questions.

So we would ask the woman from the IOC, Do you see what you've done?

You're now, you know, you're complicit in this.

You're not.

Anyway, three days after that, no press conference is allowed to happen anymore.

But what's going to happen?

You can't stop the Olympics.

So they just, all these people are just totally played by these people, but they quite like being played by them because they get bribed, I guess.

And

that's the healing power of sports.

The world came together in Beijing and all the problems in China were solved as a result of 17 days of people running around and chucking stuff.

Yeah, they did really well there.

They really worked.

They did.

Again, point me an example worth the healing power of this has worked in the last, I don't know, 15 years.

I mean, cricket's changed a lot

in the last 15 years.

I mean, for a start, 15 years ago, I wasn't writing about cricket.

And through the bugle, I got a cricket column, and now I spend an army in it.

Now it's fair to say you are now involved with cricket.

Yes, immersed in it.

But I mean, that too

has changed.

2020 was still relatively new in 2007.

and now...

When was Stanford?

Stamford.

Oh, that was quite soon after.

I think that might have been 2009.

That was brilliant.

That was absolutely brilliant.

Watching that happen.

A guy

landing on the nurse grab with his case of money.

But it wasn't his case of money.

It was his case of fake money.

Yeah.

Well, we found out a lot about Alan Stanford as the time went on.

There were about three actual banknotes on top of a perspex box full of...

Is he in prison now?

Where is he now?

I think he is still.

Because

there was a wonderful story at the time

that because he was out and about with his girlfriend, who was some sort of PR person.

And I believe that Chris Gale and her had some kind of liaison during it.

Sounds like a white Chris Gale.

Yeah,

and then you never saw her again.

But then at the end, Stanford had to give the trophy to Chris Gale, which I thought was just so perfect.

Yeah.

And then I think he went on the run, didn't he?

And And I can't believe those poor people at the Easy Bean had no idea that this would happen.

There were no signs.

There were no signs.

How could we predict?

Yes.

We're such a stupid country.

A guy who turns up with a Perspex box full of fake money

in a helicopter that he'd hired in...

I think he hired it in Battersea, didn't he?

Yeah.

Put his branding on it and flew it to Lourdes.

Yeah.

I just...

I think alarm bells should have been ringing.

Yeah, but our governing bodies, though, Andy, I mean, again,

there's no more tightly fought competition than the one to be the worst.

FIFA and IOC, it's like a permanent.

it's been the great rivalry of my lifetime sporting-wise.

Yes.

Yeah, I mean, it's sort of Fedora and Nadal Djokovic.

Oh, yeah, absolutely.

And all the various sporting bodies and the governing bodies have competed throughout the last 15 years, certainly, to be the worst.

Other institutions that you've written about plentifully

in your journalistic career and in your current book include the royal family.

So, I mean, in 2007, the Queen was was a sprightly 81,

I think, just

relatively inexperienced

as a monarch.

Still with the stabilisers on.

Yep, with just a mere 55 years on the throne under her belt.

I remember the first few years

of the Bugle,

we covered the,

because we take our role on the Bugle as an official podcast of human history very seriously.

We followed professional future King William building up to the beroilment by nuptialisation of Kate Middleton to become our

future overlords.

What interests you about the royal family as a satirical writer?

Well, yeah, I mean, it's quite miserable, really.

I think that people really want them to be unhappy and they want their, they, you know, I mean, what do we want from these people?

It's so sort of miserable.

But people are in slight denial about why they

and how they contribute to it.

I remember going at I think it was yeah it was Megan and Harry's wedding and I went to Windsor the day before and there were all the people camped out you know and there was this woman saying to me said to me oh it's just terrible what they've done to her it's terrible what they've done to her the and I said who the and she said the tabloids she had them all on her niche bought all of them you know I mean it's like Princess Diana you know someone was buying the papers but we're very bad at admitting that, you know,

we're massively interested in this thing.

And I do think, think, and that people are part of it.

I mean, they bought the papers.

They love the paparazzi shots.

That's what they wanted.

And

they want these people to be unhappy, I think, in a very odd way.

And they're obsessed with duty and what duty looks like.

And I think it's very difficult to see how it can possibly not go into some form of crisis after the death of the Queen, because I just don't think people feel the same way about Prince Charles at all.

Fifteen years ago, when we began, George W.

Bush was still president of America.

Barack Obama was on the campaign trail, about to usher in a new era of hope around the democratic world.

And, you know, the Bugles always, you know, we had a fought on each sided Atlantic in the early years

when John Oliver was

co-host before he retired.

I can't remember what he did.

I think he opened a hot dog stall.

Yeah, I think that was it.

What's your relationship been with American politics, and how has your sort of perception of it changed over the years that you've been writing?

My husband takes care of a lot of American politics for our family, and I do the UK politics.

I was speaking to

my friend Georgia Pritchett who write who writes sort of succession and Veep and things like that and because she did those, she always did American politics and her wife does British politics.

And because it's just been so mad over the last few years that you've kind of need to divide the duties, you think I can't watch any of this anymore.

But yeah, American politics, it's

oh God, it's never been as dark in my lifetime.

I mean, that's the thing, you know, you...

To see sort of Michelle Obama and I went to the inaugurate Trump's inauguration, to see Michelle Obama and George W.

Bush,

if you told me in 2007 I'd be looking fondly in any way back at George W.

Bush, I would have,

I mean, I really wouldn't have understood it.

But, you know,

when he came off the platform, he was filmed and they had the lip reader who said that he said to Michelle Obama after Trump's mad speech, well, that was some weird shit.

And you just think, oh, cuddly George W.

Bush.

Obviously, I don't completely think that, but that's the thing, isn't it?

It's got worse.

So you look back and think, oh, we didn't know we were born.

Yes, that was some weird shit.

I mean, that could be a title, you know, the alternative title for your book.

For my book, I know, yeah.

What just happened.

Yeah.

Well, that was.

That was some weird shit.

The title of my book has got the question mark and the exclamation mark because I actually have no idea what happened.

That's what it's supposed to imply.

I don't know the answer.

I've saw someone else had done a book.

Some sort of brilliant scientist had also written a book some years ago called What Just Happened, but there was no question mark.

I think this guy knows what just happened in whatever his field of specialism was.

I have no clue.

I've just been a bystander.

And, you know, away from the UK and its former nephew, I believe, the USA.

I mean, internationally, over the last 15 years, we've proudly covered on the bugle some of the

great rogues of our burgeoning millennium from Chavez to Ahmadinejad.

We've had Gaddafi, Bin Laden as his final exit from the international stage, the Kim dynasty in Korea, Bolsonaro, Putin, as well as the various

charlatans and shysters

in Britain and in America.

I mean, what do you think these people have in common apart from being A, men, B, men who think they ought to be leaders,

C, men who have actually become leaders, and D, total shitbags.

I mean, what else do they have in common?

You've covered quite a lot of bases there, I will say that.

I mean,

they must be sort of narcissists, sociopaths, I don't know.

I mean, but they they have tapped into something quite sort of primal, and they say things that,

you know, people just didn't say in public life.

Yes.

And I think we've been warning about politics is, yes, people have been.

These kind of leaders for two and a half thousand plus years.

Yeah.

And then what a clutch of them we currently have.

Yeah.

It's, but that's what I mean about something being broken and that we didn't properly understand.

This is what happens is that populists come through and,

you know, to be serious for a moment, that is what happens if you don't deal with the problems is that and that someone who has got a quick and easy solution for them.

I mean, look, you know, Duterte in the Philippines, you know, people voted in their masses for someone who said, I'm just going to execute people.

I'm just going to and they thought it made it made things better.

And you've got people actually, which I find also very sad that there's lots of people saying, you know, I mean, people in the Philippines saying it was better under the Marcoses.

It was, you have people saying it's better under Ceausescu in Romania.

You've got lots of people who look back and say, well, it was better back then.

And that, I think, is,

I mean, does the arc of history bend towards justice?

It's gone on a hideous kink at the moment.

It's on a hideous kink.

Stop bending.

That's the problem.

I mean, bending towards justice, isn't it?

Could the arc of history please return to justice?

Please return to justice.

I think it's the boomerang of history.

Yeah, currently.

Fast in the other direction.

So, I mean, who have you enjoyed writing about most?

You say, you mentioned how a lot of comedy comes from characters.

Who have you?

Well, you can find the character in all of them.

I mean, at the the start, you might have thought Theresa May was relatively sort of uninspiring as a character in some ways, but the things that happened to her, which were, by the way, the result of her character,

you know, once she had her mad election, and because she fought the campaign so badly, then she actually got lost her majority and then had to just carry on being Prime Minister for TS doing this most impossible thing.

I remember, you know, Frankie Boll said it was like trying to shit out a pool table.

It's just, and just trying to do it with no, it was, you know, watching people in those situations It's like watching Basil Forty or something.

You know, you're watching someone just come up and up and up again to events.

You know, they say about sitcom writing that it's you know you chase your characters up a tree and then you throw stones at them and that's really what has happened to a lot of our a lot of our political leaders.

I mean it's good to get new characters and breathing life back into the franchise

and you know we'll see how this trust character works out.

But I think there are the signs are not good.

You know, as someone who, you know, I've been doing the bugle weekly for about 40 weeks a year for 15 years.

And

without a deadline, I don't get a lot done.

I mean,

how do you go about,

right?

Do you kind of work your deadlines beyond the point of flexibility?

It's a bit different in a newspaper, isn't it?

I mean, I quite like it now because in the old days, newspaper deadlines used to be at seven o'clock in the evening.

I don't know what I used to do all day.

You know, now I get up and I write it and I send it by lunch.

And I never know really what I'm going to write until the morning and I don't have I just and I start I just open a word document and I never start at the beginning I write some random things down and then I kind of move them all around and I you know I don't really know what I think about a lot of things until I've done the writing.

It's funny and then out of the sort of primordial soup comes a column.

I'm not saying really, but you know, it's

an artifact is formed and that's what it is.

But yeah, no, I don't, I don't have any, I just do it on the morning.

It's a trade, ultimately, journalism.

It's not an art.

Right.

And

what what if you if you're, you know, you're you've you're writing something, you've chosen your topic and, you know, the sort of the humour or the insight isn't flowing out.

How do you force it?

That happens all the time.

Oh, well, you know, you've just got to, I mean, if you, Matthew Parris told me, Matthew Paris told me something hilarious.

When he first started being a sketch writer at the Times, he was employed and it was many years ago before mobile phones.

And he was sent to the Liberal.

The first job he did was he went to the Liberal Democrat Party conference anyway and his the editor of the Times he'd appointed was Charlie Wilson anyway and he kept finding suddenly this guy said to him on about day four there's a lot of notices phone messages in your in your pigeonhole mr parrots and he looked at them and it's like call charlie wilson call charlie getting more and more abusive and then charlie wilson said sorry where's your copy and he said wouldn't nothing interesting's happened and he said sorry i don't think you understand your job

i don't care if anything interesting has happened you make it sound like something interesting happened and you produce an article every day and it's a really good discipline, actually.

And I will say that to young writers.

I mean, just write something, anything, just a small bit every day, and you'll get in the habit and the knack of being able to do it.

It's agonizing.

The anxiety of authorship is not something that you should think about for journalism.

So, well, let's just again

look to the feed.

Do you think in 15 years when you're back on the show and the launch of your new book in 2023?

Well, I very much hope to be.

Your new book in 2037 entitled, I Was Wrong About Everything, and Emperor Boris Deserved to Rule Us Us All.

I mean what will we be talking?

We'll just be talking about how hot it is or how amazing our trade deal with Madagascar is that turned both the UK and Madagascar into two of the world's top five economies or you know how we're getting on with those.

Yeah those sound like bankers definitely yeah I think with those sort of things yeah I mean I think we will be quite hot yes.

Maybe, hopefully something radical will have happened because I do think that people on the ground are you know shared with extraordinary resource with those amazing initiatives.

I mean, you know, it it sounds quite boring and sort of non-satirical, but sometimes you go to these charity things that, you know, whole charities springing up, trying to feed people, doing all these things, and you think, wow, these people have really got it together.

This is a logistical masterwork.

And I just, if our overlords aren't like that, then I hope these people have overthrown them and have taken over instead.

And in terms of sport, you know, within 15 years' time, generally cricket will just be two people hurling balls at each other for three minutes and then everyone will go home.

Well, we'll be watching it all on VR and it will it feel like we're will it will it will will there be VR elements to all these things immersive won't we be watching all these things immersively in a really odd way?

Well that can be that could be so so I mean if they could create virtual reality of an unending test match that just goes on for all eternity yeah just sign me up

sign me up I'll watch it just let me log out let that's the matrix for me put the that matrix on I'll be quite happy put them plug me into that matrix I don't want the red pill anymore just a meal every every two hours play.

Just let it go on forever.

Well, there we go.

A note of hope

on which to finish.

Marina, it's been great having you on.

Our special 15th anniversary bonus extra

sub-bugle.

Your book, What Just Happened, is now available at every single good bookshop in the universe, I assume.

Absolutely, all of them, every single one.

And the internet will just ask nicely.

Whoever you're sitting next to, if they've got a copy, you can borrow.

Thank you for listening, Buglers.

I hope you enjoyed that.

Don't forget, you can buy Marina's book, What Just Happened, from anyone who has a copy, if you ask nicely.

We will be back next week with our birthday show recorded live at the Leicester Square Theatre.

Until then, goodbye and happy birthday to you all.

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.