Lock Up Your Sons! (4241)

Before we start this week's bugle, a quick note that we did have a slight technical issue with the audio from one of the contributors to this show.

We do hope it does not hamper your enjoyment of the show too much.

The Bugle, audio newspaper for a visual world.

Hello, Buglers, and welcome to issue 4241 of the bugle.

4,241 episodes if you ignore the 3,700 plus that we've missed out of pure unadulterated factuativity from the very heart of this solar system.

I am Andy Zoltzman coming to you live, albeit live only in the sense that you are listening to it right now,

in your time at least, from London.

the city where the new king, King Charles, has stamped his authority on the nation with a brutal campaign of repression and intimidation, in which he has burned down parliament, imprisoned the entire government and announced full supreme executive power for himself.

I'm just hearing that has not actually happened.

Shame, had my hopes up there.

Not obviously what I would want to happen, just a bit of an improvement on what is happening.

Anyway, on we go, joining me to assess the latest mewings and pukings of our still young human civilization.

Let's stop being so impatient of our failures.

We've only had only had the keys to this planet for around 10,000 odd years.

The dinosaurs had tens of millions and they couldn't even crack the f ⁇ ing code.

Joining me from the leafy splendor of Bromley, South East London, it's the man tipped to be the new James Bond.

Albeit only being tipped to be the new James Bond during this sentence, it's Chris Addison.

Hello, Andy.

Hello, hello, buglers.

It's lovely to be bugling.

To be honest with you, it's just nice to get a bit of a break.

I've been writing my Liz Truss musical,

the Book of Moron.

I've got a few songs already.

There's I Am 16 going on 17 IQ.

Sit down, you're dropping the vote.

The Impossible Dream, There's No Business Like Show Business.

Sorry, Andy, that's wrong.

That should just be there's no business.

There's also Everything Goes and the Act 1 finale scene where she reshuffles her cabinet, which is just a cover of Send in the Clowns.

So it's pleasant to be doing something else.

Well, that's good.

I look forward to seeing that.

And joining us from Mumbai, India.

Let me just quickly check the traffic reports from India.

It's busy on the roads, and it looks like it's going to remain that way until 6,000 years from now.

Anyway, from Mumbai, it's Aditi Mittal.

Aditi, welcome to the bugle again.

Thank you so much for having me, Andy.

I am so excited to be here.

I actually just want to do a special shout-out to Erin,

you know, who is a bugler who came for my last show in Amsterdam a couple of months ago.

And she was not feeling well because she has long COVID.

And so she was resting in my

dressing room.

And after the show, I went up to her and

initiated a very long chat with her to the point that she got breathless again.

I would like to apologize to Erin and

just to all the beautiful today.

You know, usually Andy gives me like a two-day notice and I educate myself about what's happening in the world and then try to be thoughtful about it and stuff like that.

And we had like, I had one day notice this time.

So this is basically

unsubstantiated nihilism that's going to come from you.

I have no idea what's going on, but I'm confident about it.

Oh, that's all right.

Unsubstantiated nihilism is actually quite often enough to get you voted in to power, let alone just to do a podcast.

We are recording on the 27th of September, 2022.

And to mark this date, we have a special 27th of September-themed quiz.

Answer these questions and win a trip in the Bugle Time Machine to the 27th of September of your choosing, past, present or future, prize subject to successful completion of time machine.

Question one, on what date in the year 1066 did William the Conqueror, that's spelt T-H-E-E, apparently, distant antecedent of Megan the Stallion,

did he set sail to cross the Channel at the start of the Norman conquest of England?

Question two, on what day in 1777 did Lancaster, Pennsylvania become the capital of the USA for one single day after Congress hot-footed it from Philadelphia in between the 26th and 28th of September.

And question three, which of the following dates is the odd one out?

The 27th of September 1867, the 27th of September 1291, the 27th of September 1584, or the 13th of April 1953?

Pens down.

And your answers, question one, it was the 27th of September in 1066 that William the Conqueror led the storming Normans across what was then known as the Sea to land on the south coast of England.

A couple of weeks later, they beat King Harold's army, taking advantage of the fact that, well, the Normans had had a bye week while Big Harold was getting clanky and cranky with the Vikings in Yorkshire.

William the Conqueror then claimed the throne of England and his continental influence remained until we finally voted the Normans out 950 years later in the referendum of 2016.

Question two, the answer was

27th of September 1777.

Lancaster was the capital of the USA for a day, a scheme which could be set for an exciting 21st century reboots with the capital of America set to be shared amongst 365 different places a year just to try and calm the fing place down.

And question three, the odd one out, was the 13th of April 1953.

It's nothing to do with it not being the only one that wasn't the 27th of September, but it's the only date on which CIA Director Alan Dulles launched Project MK Ultra, an illegal mind-control-based human experiment involving drugs, electric shocks, sensory deprivation and other forms of physical and psychological abuse.

That's what really marks it out from the other three dates.

Isn't America fun?

You're making it sound like that's a bad thing, but then

they named an airport after him, Andy.

So

torture is the best way to get an airport named after you.

Which begs the question: what was John Lennon really up to?

I think technically they named the airport after his brother.

But the point's dad.

Did they?

They did, yeah.

God damn it.

You can't prove it, though.

It's just called Dulles Airport.

Maybe it's both of them.

Could be.

Could be.

Yeah.

And they do have

a mind control electric shock room that you can go in there.

Yes, it's next to the quiet room, which is a terrible piece of planning.

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

This week, some free calm-down sounds.

With the world seeming constantly stressful, hectic, chaotic, and absolutely jam-packed to the hypothetical rafas with political CADs, boundaries, shitbags, and ideological incompetence.

We will provide you with a sound effect more soothing than reality itself every week from now until everything is fine.

Simply play this week's sound effect on a loop, and you should end up feeling more relaxed, calm, and equanimous than if you were simply watching, listening to, or reading the news.

Here is your free sound effect.

So

if you could put in some kind of industrial machinery, drilling, just kind of clanking metal, animal mayhem, and like an alarm going off.

And for what duration would you like this to play, Andy?

I don't know, about seven or eight, so you can build it up.

A few seconds.

Okay.

I'll leave it up to you.

Well, here it is.

There we go.

Hope that's calmed you down.

That section in the bin.

Top story this week.

Well, you can't spell Ukraine without N, U, K, and E.

Which is a bit of a concern if you try to tell what's about to happen in world events based on the letters involved in the place where those events are taking place.

Now,

I do know this is not a reliable method of divining the future using the letters in a place.

I know this after a very disappointing holiday to Slovenia, in which I spotted no voles whatsoever.

Not to mention my unsuccessful trip to find some new bays for my snooker table in Azerbaijan.

Although I did return from Bangladesh with a much receded hairline.

But anyway, here we are, deep into the second six-month review of Vladimir Putin's concerted attempt to prove that there are no warnings from history so obvious that even the biggest idiots in the world can't ignore them.

And the Kremlin gremlin has threatened to quadruple down on his heroically incompetent invasion of Ukraine by nuking the entire human race.

Not his words, not even actually his inference, but an inference from his inference.

The nuclear threats is back and back with without a bang as of yet But Putin said I am not bluffing he said it somewhat bluffily, but Chris Aditi is he bluffing that's my question to you

It's quite possible that he's not bluffing to be to be absolutely honest.

I mean he's a lunatic but look here's the thing we've been here before right we have been here before I was a kid in the 80s and being a kid in the 80s involved being absolutely certain that you were going to be annihilated in a nuclear war any second.

To be honest Andy if we get blown up tomorrow, I'll have had 35 more years than I thought I was going to get in 1987.

And I can't really complain about that.

But it does mean that I have had training at a very, very young age about what to do in the event of a nuclear conflagration, thanks to a government leaflet called Protect and Survive.

Now, many buglers will be too young or foreign to remember this, so it might be a useful time to summarise the main points.

in case all things go off.

So, if you come across a nuclear weapon, the chances are that it's probably more scared of you than you are of it.

You need to maintain eye contact with the warhead, walk slowly backwards, and make a submissive gesture, such as offering to buy it a drink or opening the door and letting it go through first.

Nuclear weapons are attracted by bright colours and opposing political ideologies.

So, as the geopolitical situation becomes more fraught, do avoid snazzy jumpers or twatting on about the rights of the individual in a democratic society.

And most importantly, if you see a smaller tactical nuclear weapon, do not under any circumstances approach it.

It is highly likely that the ICBM, the intercontinental ballistic mother, is not far away and they can be very, very protective.

Well, I mean, that's reassuring to know that

those safeguards are still in place.

Of course, it's just about keeping a sense of proportion, isn't it?

Yeah.

Aditi, what's the reaction been in India to the

bluff or non-bluff stroke, threat, stroke, non-threat?

You know, nothing, nothing, because nobody cares.

It's a fact.

It's a fact.

I mean, look, okay, if he had to do it, he would have done it by now.

If he's that unhinged, that nuclear bomb would have gone off like seven months ago, but it's not going to happen.

And this is because, I mean, this is the planet that he's on as well.

You know what I'm saying like if an internet influencer gets cancelled on the internet they don't disappear from the internet they come back to the internet to post an apology video and then sell their apology t-shirts so i don't think he's gonna he's gonna destroy the earth um

uh and i mean this attention that he's getting right now as a professional attention seeker myself um

why

why would why would why would he do that i think i mean i think it would be end game for him and that would be unfortunate for the attention he's getting.

So I don't think we're not too scared here.

He did say

in his message to the world, I want to remind you that our country also has various means of destruction.

Fortunately, for the rest of the world, foremost amongst these means of destruction at Russia's disposal is self.

Easily their favourite form of destruction, the classic Russian destructive strategy.

Unfortunately, Russia quite often also takes down its enemies, allies, and neighbours as collateral damage in its determined attempts to destroy itself.

But there has long been a suspicion about Pootsy, that he is

not necessarily

someone to whom you'd entrust a small puppy, let alone control of a faded sclerotic corruption-ravaged former superpower with an alcohol and winter problem, plus a nuclear arsenal.

So, understandably, the world is a little tense at the moment.

And he seems to be in a kind of phase of dangerous floundering.

The invasion has not gone, I think it's fair to say, particularly well.

The world still seems to be trying to work out if it's possible to negotiate the cottish cat that is Vladimir Putin down out of the metaphorical military tree in which he finds himself or whether you can just lob a big hungry doggy up into the tree or just set fire to the tree and be done with it.

But at the moment, the world is still waiting for someone in Russia to do the decent thing for us and either do to him what once happened to his great uncle Rass or coax him

into entering a Euro Gagarin impersonation competition and hope that his unstoppably competitive nature and arrogance will end up with him blasting himself into space Gagarin style but in his now traditional manner without having thought about what happens after he makes that first move so here we are in this kind of awkward awkward situation what's your way out of this Chris for the world you I mean you obviously have a plan generally for getting the world out of major crises of all sorts yeah at any given moment I've got I've got I've usually got something going I mean I think probably the thing to do with with Putin is just to is just to wait it out because basically he's just he's a man who is slowly shrinking the targets that he claims serving for.

So initially he wanted to kill Zelensky and take Kyiv.

Within several days that was just maintain the Donbass region.

Right now he's losing the Donbass region so he's gonna go all right Crimea.

Eventually he'll go oh or just Sebastopol and then he'll go all right just this corner shop in Sebastopol fine just this finger of fudge button.

Eventually,

that's it, and he'll kind of just disappear into a puff of smoke.

That would be my thinking.

The simpler one would be to

someone inside the regime to kill him.

Right.

I do hope.

I'm delighted by the prospect that Putin's final defeat looks like it may well come at the hands of a man who once went on national television and pretended to play a grand piano with his penis.

So I sort of hope that whichever member of the Russian state security services is finally tasked with walking into his dacha and shooting him in the head, they force him to watch that clip on YouTube first.

So in an attempt to

turn the tide of

his struggling invasion, he's launched a mobilization campaign.

Now, of course, Putin is already a strong runner for the shitbag of the century award.

Although, of course, we know from previous centuries you can't always pick the winner after less than than 45 years.

But he's launched his mobilization campaign to try and recruit 300,000 reservists of varying levels of training from a little bit to absolutely fall to cannon fodder the shit out of in order to avoid himself losing face which doesn't seem a good way of dealing with your problem.

It's a classic male behavior is it not?

You know bottle things up.

at work when things are tricky at work don't talk about your problems with your friends and then you end up mobilizing 300 000 people and threatening nuclear war.

Get it out in the open.

It's the 21st century, Vlad.

It's not gone particularly well, this mobilization.

Basically, the Russian reservists have been up put in a flight or fight scenario, and they've gone for option A flight.

And rather than proudly donning their uniform, they've been hot-footing it to any available airport or border crossing.

I mean, I can sort of understand

that from the reservist point of view, Aditi.

I mean, the attraction of being sent to die by a lunatic despot has rather worn off for humanity over

the last few thousand years.

Internet, it's ruined all of us for body to kill ourselves.

You know, my favorite piece of news that came out the day the mobilization was announced, that there was a spike in the Google search results for the term how to break your own arm

my second favorite thing, there's many favorite things about this war mobilization effort that I love personally, is that

they have been sending out letters.

So apparently there's a

military reserve that they're supposed to send out these letters to, right?

But apparently it's been going to like random people, to like children and old people and women.

Somebody said that this is actually a move by Kiev.

to sort of brew discontent among the public.

Who knew?

Who knew?

I was very impressed.

I was very impressed that now it's going to take letters to bring down, you know, what used to be.

I mean, yeah, people have been, you know, just fleeing to airports, any available border crossing.

So it turns out it's not hugely popular, this mobilization.

I guess we've all been there, haven't we?

You send out an invite to someone to come to a party you're holding to celebrate yourself and they instantly try to leave the country.

I remember that happened with me back in 2006 and

I invited John round for dinner.

But anyway,

we've all been there.

We've all been there.

I mean the alarming thing is that Russia apparently has 25 million potential reservists that it could call up.

But the problem for Russia is that only a reported 17 of them are enthusiastic, although 13 of those people misheard the question as would you like an ice cream rather than would you like to be a porn in a pointless political power game?

Possible side effects may include death.

So

it seems there's not a lot of public support.

More than 2,000 arrests have been made as people protest against the mobilization.

I mean, what would you think Putin could do to try to improve the public relations side of this, Chris?

Well,

they're already sort of trying to qualify the statements that they've already made, saying they're not just mobilizing everybody, there will be certain exceptions to this.

So they've announced groups who will no no longer be required should they reach, you know, should they receive a mobilization notice.

So for example, there'll be an exception, he says, to the mobilization.

This is the one that really struck me for fathers of four or more children.

There must be an absolute festival of finging going on across Russia right now.

The place must be like fresh as week at a Catholic university.

The whole country probably smells like Peter Stringfellow's house.

Satellite images are showing lung cues, not just at the borders but outside nightclubs and IVF clinics.

Black market prices are through the roof for chocolates, roses and secondhand positive pregnancy tests.

That's not the only way for anxious Russians to get hold of the necessary number of kids of course.

What I'm saying is there is going to be an excellent seller's market right now for any excess children you might be wanting to get rid of.

I've looked and there is no mention of selling kids on the sanctions list so you can just go for your life, I reckon.

Obviously it's not for everyone but if you've got twins why not sell the spare one?

Make some money and cut down on rocketing grocery bills.

Win-win.

Or hell, why not sell both of them?

Remember the antiques roadshow rule.

They're worth more as a pair.

In the Ukraine, Russia has been putting on referendums in parts of the country that it controls, described as sham.

referendums.

And I mean, we know, certainly in this country, that even a properly run referendum is an absolute source of unending pain, confusion and dispute.

So a sham referendum, it seems unlikely that this is going to work, surely.

Well I mean are they sham referendums?

Because they have had a 400% turnout of voters and that is four times as legitimate as any previous referendum in history.

They haven't announced the results, I'll grant you that, but the latest polling does show that 52% ticked the box marked, yes, I want to join Russia, while 48% ticked the one marked, no, I don't want to stay in Ukraine.

Seems all above board to me, Andy.

I mean, it's just

cutely democratic of him suddenly to want to do a referendum after starting a war.

I find that a bit confusing.

Just go to their houses and steal their fathers and sons or whatever.

Like, what I love about this is that now, you know, the phrase, like, lock up your daughters and wives, because Putin is here, has now changed to like, lock up your sons and fathers.

And as a a homophobic man, I know it must modern so much.

Do you know on a separate point?

Obviously, Slava Ukraini and all of that, but I, for one, am worried about the level of expectations a victory by Zelensky is going to put on other comedic actors who've starred in satirical political sitcoms.

I just

feel like I've got skin in the game.

Well, I mean, to be honest, Chris, I mean, looking at the people currently in charge of the United Kingdom, you've got to be pretty close.

You have to be pretty close to.

Yeah.

I mean, I think if it was put to a vote tomorrow, Chris Addison versus Liz Truss.

I mean, there's only one winner there, isn't there?

Yes, that's absolutely true.

But, you know, a bag of soiled toilet roll versus Liz Truss would come, would, you know, get the same result, wouldn't it?

What about a bag of soil toilet roll against Chris?

I guess that you're worried about

splitting the vote, aren't you?

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Well, I could always enter into a confidence and supply pact with the bag of soil toilet roll.

More on the Italian election later in the show.

And we will keep you fully up to date with the world's descent into nuclear conflict over the next zero to 500 years.

British financial chaos news now, now, and the Truss government is just a few weeks into its

regime

and unencumbered by the restraining yokes of a democratic mandate, any economic sense, the support of their own party or the people of the nation, or indeed the belief of the international markets.

They have

set Britain on a path to economic chaos, it seems, that even the beloved ghost of Margaret Thatcher would struggle to justify.

They've

launched themselves with this, what they call a mini budget,

which

has,

I believe the term is f spooked the international markets

with

essentially promises of huge tax cuts and massive borrowing because the future is always amazing how generous unborn children are.

Just whack it on their tab.

The Institute of Fiscal Studies said this, that the budget could leave a long-term hole in public finances to the value of a hundred billion pounds a year.

We should say this is only an estimate and it's also entirely possible that a magic dragon will shit giant golden eggs worth a billion pounds each directly into the treasury a hundred times a year.

So we don't know which way it's it's going to go.

I mean

it's been described as clown show economics and casino economy.

Essentially they put the economy on seventeen red um and they thrust our national fingers into the plug socket of destiny and just to see if we get hot or burned um chris how did you see i know you're a massive fan of uh the british economy uh how how

how do you uh how's all this t-shirt been going on well what's that tickling your earlobe hungie that's just a couple of turds floating on the top of the slurry of shit we're all in that's all that was what a non-budget that was another absolute triumph for the maths department at Eaton.

They sure turn out some students.

Quasi-quarteng.

Not a real quarten, just a quasi-quarteng.

A man who has the smile of someone who's farted and is just waiting for it to float over you described it as a mini budget, which beforehand seemed like an attempt to downplay it, but now just reads like a threat, as in, that was a mini budget.

What the f is a full quarten budget going to look like?

I'm not saying that reactions to it have been strong, Andy, but when I bought a copy of the Financial Times on Saturday, it was on fire.

The Office for Budget Responsibility didn't get sight of the details before Kwatang made the announcement, but the Office for Budget Irresponsibility rated the fiscal event an unprecedented five disabled airbags out of five.

Already, letters of no confidence are being submitted by Tory MPs, letters of no competence are being submitted by economists, and letters of no condiments are being submitted by the hospitality industry, which has had to make the difficult choice between turning the lights on or buying ingredients.

According to Bloomberg, this is true.

The only currency of the 151 that Bloomberg follow and track, which is currently doing worse than sterling, is the Madagascan Arrayary, if that's how it's pronounced.

I think it might actually be Madagascan Arrayari.

Tighten if you know.

Moody and Standard and Poor, not just three words to describe the atmosphere in the country, but also the names of the international credit rating agencies who now look likely to downgrade the UK from an AAA rating to an AAA, AAA, AARGH

exclamation mark rating.

It was a disaster.

Critics of the measures have claimed that they will benefit the well-off much more than those less well-off, whilst Conservative commentators and spokesparrants have retorted that the measures will benefit the much well-off much more than those less well-off.

So it's hard to see how those two sides of the argument can be reconciled.

Amongst other measures, they've reduced stamp duty, a tax paid when you buy and sell a house.

So people currently struggling to afford a potato for dinner will be encouraged to buy a five-bed detached house in Surrey by this.

So that should hopefully get the economy moving.

The entire package, as I said, could cost around about 100 billion per year or more, just make up a number, who's counting anymore.

And with tax cuts thrown in, because otherwise why would any self-respecting billionaire bother getting out of bed in the morning, it will all have to be funded by free magic money from thin air, also known as increased government borrowing.

And our government is now like a kind of confused 21st century modern day neoliberal Robin Hood stealing from the future to give to the rich whilst wearing tight green trousers and hanging out with monks.

But I guess as

the old political saying goes, if you eat enough hallucinogenic newts you might convince yourself you are a dinosaur.

But there's a greater chance that everyone will just think you're an extremely questionable dinner guest.

Hence a lack of confidence in the British government.

Well, we mentioned the pound sterling, the renowned currency

with which this country pays for stuff.

Here now is your sterling fact box.

The pound is called the pound because its origin dates back to the 12th century when, under a bylaw introduced by Henry II, if you pounded on someone's front door for an hour, they were legally obliged to give you 16 ounces of metal.

The highest value the pound ever reached was when England itself was valued at £2.99 in the year 1485.

This was when Richard III, facing defeat and death at the Battle of Bosworth, famously spooked the currency markets by offering his entire kingdom for a horse.

Horses were available at the time for as little as £2.99 from Eddy's Equine Emporium, the budget horse market run by Sir Edwin Glabberly, the Duke of Trumpton on the Snaz, meaning that £1 could buy land and assets valued today at £3.8 trillion.

If the current slide in the value of the pound continues, by the year £2381, £1 will buy you half a molecule of Gherkin in a McDonald's hamburger.

The pound is known as pound sterling after the early English saint Saint Erling, a Saxon monk and financier who'd played the markets during a famine in the year 734 and ended up swapping a single pig for 250 Viking ships, 3,000 units of diamond encrusted weaponry and 10,000 flagons of unlicensed mead.

This followed a series of complicated off-the-books futures trades in a broth shop by the River Thames.

That location later became known as the Stock Exchange.

Erling's second miracle, which qualified him for sainthood, was when he made money magically sprout from a tree simply by promising that the state would pay it back in 80 years' time.

And finally, the current collapse in the value of the pound is thought to be in part because people are worried that when King Charles's beaky profile replaces the more restrainedly snouted visage of the late Queen, coins will have to become wider and therefore cost more to make.

After the statement on Friday, the markets tanked and then Kwaten gave an interview over the weekend suggesting there will be more tax cuts to come and the market tanked again.

Then on Monday, in response to those two events, he suggested that he'd set out a plan to bring the debt down on the 23rd of November, and the markets tanked yet again.

Every time the Chancellor opens his mouth, the markets get worse.

At this point, snatching him off the street, tying him to a boiler in the cellar of a safe house, then gagging him looks less like the major crime of kidnapping and more like solid fiscal policy.

Well, we're approaching the end end of this week's bugle.

Just we'll have a quick look now at the Italian election

and maybe cover it in greater detail next week.

I mean, Italy, obviously, quite high up the list of countries in Europe who ought to remember that voting in far-right governments does not always end well.

However,

Giorgia Maloney and the

ban, sorry, and her brothers of Italy party are set to lead what has been described as Italy's most right-wing government since Benito Mussolini on the subject of far-right government.

That didn't always end either well or indeed the right way up from a meat hook.

The coalition led by her party has won around 44% of the vote.

The coalition includes, brace yourselves, long-term buglers, Silvio f ⁇ ing Berlusconi.

Lurking around again, his Forza Italia party picked up 8% of the votes.

Forza Italia means come on Italy.

Or is it, I'm not sure I've phrased phrased it.

Is it come on Italy?

Come on!

It's slightly alarming that we've seen a lot of rightwards drift in politics over recent years.

And she's tried to play down quite how right-wing

her party is and quite how fascistic its origins are.

Chris, how worried are you

by this?

Well, I'm not too worried because I feel like Italy might have made a sort of genuine good faith error.

Because the party that has essentially won the election is called Brothers of Italy.

Is it possible that most people just thought they were voting for Mario and Luigi?

And why wouldn't you?

They'd be excellent for the economy.

They're very good indeed at collecting gold coins.

They have an imaginative transport policy, and albeit there's very little in the way of public transport in the Mushroom Kingdom.

And during tricky renegotiations on the EU COVID funding package repayments, they can use a power-up to grow to twice the size and become invincible.

I do think that putting Mario and Luigi in her new government is something that Georgia Maloney should think about.

It would be another

attempt to make her fascist party look cuddlier.

If Mario was explaining the policies, they'd probably seem less objectionable.

Hey, it's me, Mario.

We're gonna stop all the migrant boats with the navy gunships.

You like her?

Oh, Mario, I can't disagree with you.

You're so non-threatening.

Aditi, is this been big news in India?

You know, I would like to

call upon my unsubstantiated nihilism card

and say

that, I mean, like, to me, I was just like, wow,

Italy elected a refreshing summer salad

to its

highest office.

Because Giorgio Maloney,

I would order that.

Yeah, it sounds nice.

With Palma Ham.

Yeah.

Then the anti-pasties are like part of the menu.

I'd be like, ooh, I'll have a Giorgio Maloney.

In one final piece of news, huge celebrations at NASA this week.

It's not often you see people celebrating a high-speed crash.

It often looks at best insensitive.

But you can understand it this week from NASA because what they've managed to do was fire a satellite 11 million miles to crash into an asteroid and it ended up 17 meters away from its target which is

I mean that's quite impressive level of accuracy.

That's the kind of level of accuracy the Bugle pretty aims for with its satire and you know we do achieve that over 90% of the time.

But 17 meters away after going 11 million miles,

That's quite impressive.

It's spanked into a 160-meter-wide chunk of space rock called Dimorphos or Dimo to its friends.

It is an Australian asteroid.

I should

emphasise that.

I mean, it's just hugely impressive achievements.

Basically, it's the world's longest ever snooker shot, and it's

absolutely smashed into it.

This is just like scientists at NASA playing cricket in the sky.

And

I am very worried that if the ball comes back into the crease, somebody's going to be like, oh, was that man cading?

My question is, is this all above board?

I mean, in international law, do they not have to wait for the asteroid to shoot first?

And is it wise in any case?

Isn't this just going to make the asteroids resentful and angry?

This is the classic American following policy mistake.

It's al-Qaeda all over again.

You mark my words.

Ten years from now, we're going to wake up to the news that a group of radicalized young asteroids with fake IDs have hijacked a plane and flown it into a planetarium.

You know, and at this point, like, this is supposed to be some sort of like

it's a preemptive exercise that, like, there's actually no asteroid coming to us, but we're just doing this just in case.

Like, this level of preparation makes me think that NASA knows something that

and thank you so much, NASA, for not telling us.

Well, that brings us to the end of this week's Bugle.

Don't forget, there are Bugle live shows imminently

across the British Isles.

London on the 15th, which I think is sold out, and 22nd of October at the Leicester Square Theatre.

Birmingham on the 27th of October.

Glasgow on the 30th of October, which will feature Nish Kumar and Josie Long.

Two shows.

We've added an extra show in the afternoon at something o'clock.

3.30.

Let's go with that.

I think it's a bit later than that, but afternoon.

I'll call it afternoon.

Turn up then.

And Dublin on the 3rd of November,

featuring a global all-star cast involving Chris Addison, who's just been added to the lineup.

Congratulations, Chris.

Thanks.

Cheers.

I'm glad that application went through.

Career highlights, no doubt.

I will also be doing some Saturdays for Higher stand-up shows in the middle of November details on the internet for the Bugle live shows go to thebuglepodcast.com and click the live button Aditi any anything to alert our listeners to I will be at the New York Comedy Festival on November 8th I will be touring India in December and if there are any Finnish listeners my show The World According to Comedians will be on Finnish public access television in December.

Please tune in because I haven't been paid yet.

Chris?

I don't really have anything to talk about at the moment other than

3rd of November in...

I'm doing the Bugle on the 3rd of November in Dublin, apparently.

Well, there you go.

We will now play you out with our latest installment of the Bugle Wall of Fame, featuring featuring our premium-level voluntary subscribers,

to join the Bugle Voluntary Subscription Scheme at whatever level you choose or to make a one-off or occurring contribution to keep the Bugle free, flourishing, and independent, go to thebuglepodcast.com and click the donate button.

This week's Bugle Wall of Fame inscriptees are Sarah Stilwell, who was of course the first person ever to use a ladder, Brian Fitzsimmons, who wrote most of the Beatles songs, not all of them, but most, Dan Mook personally carried one of the very big rocks all the way to Stonehenge back in the day, whilst Graham Lewis designed a far better helicopter than Leonardo da Vinci ever managed himself.

Thanks also to Matthew Gwynne who discovered gravity before Isaac Newton did, and David Tully, who of course formulated Fermat's penultimate penultimate theorem, and the one before that.

Damien Lunney was the person who edited Homer's Iliad down from 1035 books to a more manageable 24,

and Gregor Hoffman concocted the idea for football pictures to be rectangular rather than octagonal.

Robert Blom added three extra strings to the violin, previously a one-stringed instrument, sparking its success in the musical world.

And finally, Lucy Perrone, apologies for any mispronunciation, famously circumnavigated Antarctica on a windsurfer.

Welcome to the Wall of Fame.

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.