Mourning Has Broken (4240)

The Bugle, audio newspaper for a visual world.

Hello buglers and welcome to the first ever bugle to be recorded in a United Kingdom reigned over by a king.

Since we last poddled into your ears, the queen, the renowned Queen and pro-celebrity non-executive head of state of our British arts and nation for over 70 years died at the age of 96.

Since then, there's been a period of official national mourning, the queue to end all queues, a state funeral attended by so many world leaders that the TV commentators simply gave up trying to guess who was who and still less where they were from.

We've had the biggest fancy dress parade in living memory, and now we have a nervous wait to find out what kind of country emerges from the scratch card of history as normality asserts itself.

Yes, after 70 years of unbroken queenery, and 134 out of the last 185 years, we now have a queue of kings lined up, starting with Charles, stretching out beyond the span of living imagination to a distant time when King George VII rules over the last remaining visible peak of the Scottish Highlands.

So here we are.

I am Andy Zoltzmann and I am now officially a subject, a term with which I'm not entirely comfortable of Prince Charles.

Who was uh, well, well, of King Charles.

Prince Charles, of course, constitutionally instantaneostically rebranded as King Charles III, aka KC3, or Triple Chucky, or

or uh

Cha-Cha Charles, or Chazzy Spanglehat, as you wish, providing the continuity that royalty and monarchy bring to our increasingly fractured and politically chiseled land.

To reflect on all we have seen and experienced these last two weeks for this issue 4240 of the Bugle, I'm joined by, firstly, by a woman who was not chosen to give a reading at the Queen's funeral for reasons that remain unclear to this day.

Tiffany Stevenson.

Hello.

Hi.

I think Chucky 3 is actually Revenge of Chucky.

Or it could be Bride of Chucky, in which case the Bride of Chucky is called Tiffany.

So it could be my reign in many ways.

So who knows?

But we never know these days.

And representing the Commonwealth, aka Empire Light, aka the Whoops.

Let's try that one again, but this time less violently, Association of Nations.

From from india anivab pal hello anivab you've actually been here in london yes uh for this whole um strange

process um how have you found it as a as a as a sort of an outsider looking in um you know adi it's it's quite interesting because um i've been in london and my

um parents have been in London as well um

and they arrived on the day that Her Majesty passed away.

And my parents are of the Salman Rushdie generation of Indians, you know, Midnight's children, as it were.

And they wanted to go to Buckingham Palace on the day of her demise.

And nobody was sure what the protocol would be and how the following days would pan out, because your royals were in Balmoral, which apparently is in Scotland.

So it was basically loads of people from the Commonwealth staring at each other at Buckingham Palace, carrying flowers, unsure of where to put it.

Sort of pondering whether this was the right sort of fealty, the right amount or too much.

Are we paying respects or loitering outside the house of the Queen?

Which basically sums up the Commonwealth's relationship with the monarchy over the last 70 years.

I mean, it was a very strange day.

I was at the Oval Cricket Ground, which was supposed to be the first day of the third test between England and South Africa.

And

news that the Queen was very ill

was announced.

There was a very strange

strange kind of feeling about the place.

There was a lot of rain around so they didn't play any cricket anyway.

And then I went to the BBC where we were due to record the first episode of the news quiz, which was then cancelled when the official announcement was made.

And then I actually walked to Victoria Station

from the BBC which is near Oxford Circus and I went past Buckingham Palace.

On the way to Buckingham Palace there were a lot of extremely full pubs

it should be said people

paying their respects in the traditional British way

and so I might have even walked past you then Anuvab it was

an interesting thing

interesting thing thing to see let's let's get the show started officially before we go into this in a little more depth we are recording on the 20th of September

the the funeral was yesterday as we record so the national period of mourning is now over but looking back in history this week in 1857 at Anuvab the siege of Delhi yes reached a rather brutal

somewhat murderous conclusion in the kind of history we in Britain prefer to flatly ignore

because

it's more convenient that way we don't want to have to rewrite the history out of which we'd already edited stuff like that because it makes us feel a bit awkward about some of the more imperial era relics that we like to feel proud about on important state occasions.

I'll now share with you Anuvab everything I was taught at school about the Indian Rebellion of 1857.

Yes.

Oh, there you go.

I hope that was illuminating.

Enough for you and everyone else.

I've always wondered, Andy, I've seen some of your history books in Britain, and it basically goes from the Battle of Trafalgar straight to defeating Hitler.

And I wondered if you had any suggestions, Andy Tiff, on if you had to fill those 200 years with history, any nonsense, because you don't want to cover the empire.

Fair enough.

What would you fill it with?

Would it be cricket statistics?

What would those 200 years be found?

Well, definitely.

Lindy Hop.

Definitely for me, you know, the career of W.

G.

Grace and

the birth of international cricket that came about, the greatest

peace and joy-creating force the world has ever known.

So I'll probably go with that.

On the 21st of September, three years after that, 1860, the Battle of Palicau in the Second Opium War

was a decisive British victory.

The Britain's strategic objective in the Second Opium War was the legalization of the opium trade as we tried to consolidate our position as the Pablo Escobar of the 19th century.

Soon after that, British troops burned down the Chinese Emperor's Summer Palace.

Again, let me check my school history notes for a few more details on that one.

You're all welcome.

Remember, as the saying goes, those who are ignorant of history are doomed not to be haunted by its harrowing lessons of the depravity of humanity.

As always, the section of the bugle is going straight in the bin and well I mean we have to have this at this time in the United Kingdom, a commemorative audio supplement with highlights of every single minute silence observed over the UK over the past twelve days, all layered over one another to give a unique commemorative audio memento of our national mourning and condensed into 1.5 seconds so you can listen to it at minutely intervals for the rest of your lives.

Here is our official conglomeration of all-the-minute silences of the last 12 days.

You've spoiled it, Anuvab.

You've absolutely spoiled it.

Let's have another go.

Let's have some absolutely.

Disrespectful.

It was very disrespectful.

Let's have another go.

I'll set the clock on it.

We've got to do a second and a half.

Hang on.

Here we go.

That'll do.

Also, Also,

in the bin, a special interview this week with Sir Strangeford Pumperty Grafton, the Royal Crown Sergeant Trainster 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 neck exercises performed by monarchs to hone their crown supporting musculature.

Here's a 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 Berkeshire.

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 rafts during the reign of the first Queen Elizabeth in the 16th century originated, of 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 a turning point in the defeat of the Armada.

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

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

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

yeah yeah that's better that's better yeah

well 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 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 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.

Next, you'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, 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 sport.

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 for the Queen but you know to to to be able to pay tribute and there was a kind of moving minute silence and various other things at the at the ground and you know Prince Philip was a bit a big cricket fan and supporter of various cricketing charities in 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 that says about the relative levels and styles of violence that were and were not

respects for the Queen.

Then, on the resumption of football, Liverpool scored an injury-time winner to beat Dutch champions Ayax 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 an icon of stability and continuity.

And I guess Spurs' defeat to Lisbon was a kind of a gesture that the Queen exemplified the fact that some things in this country must never change.

Some traditions are inviolable, and Spurs losing important football matches is one of them.

Is that how you interpreted it?

I mean, I was actually blaming Prince Charles for our defeat.

I was like, for once, I've got a new target.

Sorry, sorry, King Charles.

Can I please get off this island?

You were at the cricket, Andy.

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

Well, you know, there was a kind of genuine outpouring of emotion around the country, as well as a lot of kind of performating, performative, excessive respect paying, various TV journalists making sure they were filmed whilst paying their respects.

And some really weird...

things happened as well.

Centre parks, the holiday parks, 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 you know what we know about her majesty the queen is she loved having somewhere to stay and

ideally with a water slide this this was middle class crisis i have not seen the middle class rage since they ran out of free cheette during wimbledon uh i like i i it was quite i was like oh this is interesting and then someone said i think on twitter and i can't i can't um we could probably find out who it was but said good luck you've just you've spent a week training these people in in archery crossbow swimming and hunting

all kinds of other things like they're not leaving without a fight um but it's absolutely insane i think it was it and summers or one of those one of the well i mean i mean

it has to be said that businesses paid tribute to the queen in some of the most moving social media posts in the five billion year history of this country.

Legoland theme pop tweeted a picture of a Lego queen because I think the queen's reign will be remembered as the reign in which more children played with Lego than any other monarchs.

Anne Summers, as you mentioned, the Andegarmentier and Bedrumiel accoutrement retailer, also

paid tribute in a tweet because...

No, I've got no fing idea why they did that either.

No, why?

The Queen loved our edible knickers, our edible thongs.

I mean, we're gonna take a day off selling this because people need time to really sit with their feelings.

But not in that way.

The British kebab awards solemnly express their sadness

in a tweet.

A touching tribute to a monarch under whose reign sales of kebabs have soared by thousands of percents.

This is where we've collectively lost our minds.

Like, you don't mind people mourning, but just like watching a nation descend into madness is,

you know, like the queue, five miles long.

I was like, in nine months' time, we're going to have all these Q babies

as a result.

They say if a true Cockney is born within the sound of the bow bells, I think a true royalist will be conceived within view of Westminster Hall prettimonger.

But we sort of entered into levels, and everyone kind of doing it in their own way, but then the policing of how other people did it.

And if you weren't showing the expected levels of deference and the wall-to-wall coverage, it just felt like it felt like we were living on Insane Island, right?

It was, it was.

I mean, it was kind of hard to discern where that, you know, because clearly a lot of people were hugely fond of the Queen, even people who weren't necessarily fond of the monarchy as an institution.

And, you know, people, you know, have come to respect her over

her long reign for the way she'd done a weird job

quite impressively.

Now, I've got, you know, I have a weird job.

I think she's one of the only people

who had a weirder job than me as monarch.

It's weirder than cricket statistician stroke comedian.

I think that is

so I respect her for doing that for so long.

And so there was a huge amount of both kind of institutional and personal

affection and

gratitude in a lot of ways.

And you should have a life of

massive, massive privilege, but also a huge amount of service.

And it is amazingly rare

how rarely those two actually go together.

It's usually one or the other.

But to get both was,

I guess, fairly rare.

But as you said, I mean,

the queue was, and people were queuing up

up to 20 hours at one point.

Some people went round twice.

And,

you know, it was,

you know, well, it's quite amazing.

The British addiction to queuing

and this kind of desire to feel part of a historic moment.

I can sort of, you know, understand,

understand.

There was a lot of complaints about queue barging

as well from various TV celebrities and politicians.

Beckham queued, didn't he?

There was like a lot of respect for the fact that Beckham queued.

He joined at two in the morning.

I would, I was almost tempted to go down just to do a couple of hours in the queue to get the vibe because I definitely think the beeb are going to announce casting for the queue.

One queue, one epic romance.

It's going to be like, so, so, if a sense of because it is a huge time of change, and I get it.

Like, my mum, you know, watched the funeral and was very upset.

She was upset the day off, and she said she's been there my whole life.

So, for someone like my mum, I can sort of understand that sort of sense of constant.

Um, what I don't understand is when other people are told off and not

paying those

same levels of like kind of res

you know

mourning or what what's considered respectful or

not respectful, I suppose.

Like the even people talking about Megan holding hands with Harry, like the level of commentary on that sort of mad, you know, like people on Twitter and I was like, are these people for real?

Like she's holding his hand.

She has to make it all about herself.

But, like, pearl clutching, like, they were like Hollywood movie stars, like, whatever next?

The show and affection in public and a turn with Marlin.

You know, like, I was like, what do you, what do you, how do you think humans should behave?

Like, keep a respectful, simmering resentment from each other, you know, like that, that you actually, so it, so it just, if people felt unhinged, maybe I was on Twitter too much, but it definitely felt unhinged on Twitter.

Oh, yes.

Well, to be honest, all life feels unhinged on Twitter, Tiff.

So I think, particularly at a time of extremes, such as

so.

And it was interesting that

everything sort of stopped, sports stopped, kind of regular news stopped.

But what was allowed to go on was the media hounding of Harry and Megan.

That went on unchecked.

I don't know, is that some kind of mark of continuity

amidst this time of change?

I'm not quite sure what

the tradition of that was.

Just this is my first time encountering

what mourning in Britain entails.

Now, about 15 years ago, one of India's biggest movie stars, Raj Kumar, died in South India.

And we reacted in the uniform way Indian movie fans react by setting shops and buses on fire.

And it was perfectly understandable because

that's an understandable way of reacting.

He was a big movie star.

There were giant posters of him all across South India.

And we set buses and shops on fire.

So immediately the police were called out and it was a natural outpouring of grief.

It makes sense.

The buses were empty.

Fair enough.

Now, this is my first experience with what mourning entails for your 60 million people, which is a conundrum, you know, because I encountered a large number of existential dilemmas.

People saying, should all the shops be closed?

Should they be open?

Should all entertaining and dining be shut?

Is that respect?

Or is that disrespect?

What would she have wanted?

Should I swear a vow of silence?

Should I keep talking?

Should I kick my friends?

Should I run a marathon?

Should I climb Big Ben?

You know, as a foreigner, it was, I was seeing,

and then, sensibly, as a nation, you decided any sort of work would be disrespectful and stayed at home.

And I recommend using this as a tactic whenever you're feeling lazy every year on this day of her passing.

So,

yes, and staying home

was a very good mark of respect because the Queen had so many homes.

So,

The Met Office reduced the frequency of its weather forecasts as a mark of respect.

It was unclear how giving

more regular and detailed weather forecasts could be disrespectful.

But it should also be added that

reports have reached us that Tefnut, the ancient Egyptian weather god, who still operates the weather in the northern hemisphere, albeit in a less high-profile way than 3,000 years ago, did agree to keep the weather as predictable as possible throughout throughout the 10-day state mourning period.

So it was, and it was, you know, there wasn't too much rain.

So thank you, Tef Nut and the Met Office, for that.

British cycling strongly recommended that people did not ride their bicycles during the Queen's funeral as a mark of respect.

That's very much upset, Chris.

That's a personal blow for Chris.

Again, unclear.

You know, unicycles, I could sort of understand that.

Juggling.

Juggling on a unicycle, disrespectful.

Definitely.

And up and down the Isle of Westminster Abbey during the funeral.

Very disrespectful.

I could see that.

But cycling broadly, it's

hard to see.

Also, the NHS put operations on hold for the day of the funeral.

And GP surgeries were closed.

I don't know if that was a mark of respect or just basic staffing logistics.

But either way, that didn't seem appropriate.

And the petitions page on the Parliament website was shut down until after the period of mourning, just in case an opinion should be promulgated at this sad, sad time of national reflection.

So, I just had a quick question, Andy, and Tiff, on what you guys think of this.

Again, my first observation of this: the Airbnb I'm staying in, next door is a taekwondo class.

And they said the taekwondo class, instead of the usual hour, would be half an hour long in memory of the queen.

And I just want to know if that's something she would have wanted,

if that was respectful, disrespectful.

I don't know.

I don't, it's either either going ahead or not going ahead.

A half a taek condo for us

feels like utterly pointless.

What's going on?

What

sort of emphasis to me the

strangeness of the monarchy and its position in this country?

And like I said,

I'm not an arch Republican.

I'm not definitely not a monarchist.

It's a strange place, isn't it?

That it's massively anti-democratic, but if we had a vote on it, all the polling suggests that people would vote to keep the anti-democratic institution and it's you know a lot of people love it particularly in the older generations a lot of people are pretty sceptical about it i think quite a lot of people are fairly ambivalent uh towards it but it's just the the instant promotion of uh of the bookie's favourite uh prince charles to become king um with literally not a heartbeat missed um i mean there were it's it did emphasize how strange it all is and you know we're having to rejig on our national anthem of which i as repeatedly stated on the bugle i'm not a fan,

appealing to a deity that I don't believe in to save someone who already has the best medical care and security detail money can possibly buy.

I believe they're wasted words, apart from it being a musical dirge.

But there have been other promotions and reallocations.

There have been re-princings.

Wales has had a princessimentation of

William's wife, Kate.

She's now Princess of Wales.

Camilla, Prince Charles's wife, has been officially consortificated, I believe is the technical term.

And Prince Andrew has been left in the care of two Corgis.

So it's all changed.

The Queen Consort sounds like the last chocolate left in the box after the coffee and orange cream.

That's a horrible title.

It really is.

It really is.

Oh, no.

There's only Queen Consorts left.

I don't want one of those.

And I was going to ask, because it was, obviously, the Queen was a global figure

and India is a member of

the Commonwealth, thanks to our, well, I may, let's euphemistically describe it as shared history.

Not entirely voluntarily shared, but shared.

Nonetheless, what was the reaction?

Because I know a lot of people in India are still waiting for an official apology from the British state for some of the more, shall we call them, enthusiastic excesses of empire, some of the more pelaginous executive bloopers, or the more famine-exacerbating or masochristic abominabilisms, as I believe they're called, or the more diamond-swiping trickle treaties and the more acquisitive in pilferings.

Is an apology what India wants from Charles?

Well, the BBC headline was very good.

It said, India pays respectful indifference

to the state funeral.

And I don't know what respectful indifference is, but Indian Twitter and Tiff was talking our Twitter went crazy.

Indian Twitter went absolutely berserk about the Kohino diamond because it seemed like, however

inappropriate it might be, it seemed like this was a good time for uncouth people on Twitter to come and say these things.

And they were saying, give us the Kohino back.

And they were transfixed on the fact that the thing, the jewel that sits on top of the Queen's crown is the Kohino, which in fact it is not.

It sits in the Queen's mother's crown and I think it's in the Tower of London.

And then Twitter started putting up photographs of random jewelry

saying that this belongs to the Queen.

So

a lot of people in India have moved on, Andy.

And in fact, the day before her demise, Prime Minister Modi renamed Rajput, which was the central avenue of Delhi leading to the Viceroy's house, the Rajput of the British Raj.

He renamed it to...

Kartavyapat, which is

the path of hard work.

And he said, we need to shed our colonial baggage and all of that

ill-timed because it just happened about 20 minutes before the queen passed away.

And then immediately that evening, he said that he was a huge fan of the queen.

And he was, because Prime Minister Modi, who's obviously personal likes and dislikes now guide 1.3 billion people,

got some sort of a present from the queen that Mahatma Gandhi had given her.

And this is what I've realized.

If you reign for 70 years, you can re-gift stuff to generations of great leaders.

She might have some stuff from Emperor Nero that she can pass on to Mario Draghi.

You know, there are things you can do if you've been in charge.

But I just want to say one very quick thing about the monarchy, and I just want to know what you guys think of this.

And we've discussed this on this podcast, Andy Tiff.

I'm a huge fan of monarchies, but not the wishy-washy constitutional kind.

Because there's too much leeway to the general public and it's dangerous.

I mean...

You want to get old school on it do you want to go back to exactly Andy.

Emperor Akbar for example the great Indian emperor ruled for 66 years.

Now if he found out that you disrespected him he'd have your head smashed with an elephant

and and then you sort of know where you stand so

under an elephant

so so

benevolent waving and constitutional neutrality doesn't cut it for you Anivab you want elephants on heads.

It's meek it's meek and

and so my request to your public

is just two things.

Please bring back drawing and quartering and beheading.

America is obsessed with the British monarchy, very much a here's what you could have had

thing.

And Donald Trump

threw some shade at Joe Biden, the president, because he was seated near the back of the funeral service.

And Trump said there's no way he would have been treated like that.

Well, for a start, well done, Donald, for making the state funeral of our national state granny all about you.

But it was also an interesting revelation that evidently as president, past and perhaps future, Trump was contemplating either joining the Commonwealth or readopting the British monarchy or even reapplying for colony status because that is why Biden was so far back because the Commonwealth heads of state were in front, in front of him.

So maybe this is Trump's unique way of saying America made a mistake and wants to rejoin the United Kingdom.

There was me just thinking it was because Biden didn't get on the bus.

Like the bus got there first.

That was fascinating, wasn't it?

Well,

there was an interesting, apparently the German president arrived in a black BMW with the number plate Germany one or GER1,

which I loved.

I liked the idea that actually, if we're going to play to the stereotype, that before getting into Westminster Hall, the Germans had laid down a couple of towels on the front pews to make sure sure they got the best seats.

And

President Mattarella of Italy was dropped off in a Maserati.

I mean, come on!

Come on.

What had happened to the state Vesper, for instance?

Yeah, that would have been, it would have been cooler.

But you gotta, everyone was really sort of playing to tight with this.

But there was a motorcade, wasn't there, for Biden, and then everyone else on the minibus.

And it's like that one person whose dad drops them off in his Rolls-Royce.

And so, yeah, I mean, it was, they were asked to, this is what, according to Politico, Westminster Abbey informed the world leaders they were told they would not be permitted to use their own state cars.

Um, and they were also asked to arrive via commercial flights where possible to this ceremony, which is an excessive display of wealth and pageantry.

But keep it low-key if you're coming, guys, out of respect to the fact that she was better than you.

Um, Charles's crown has its own car, and then you've got like sort of dignitaries arriving from around the world and heads of state.

But, like, get your sandwiches and your Ribena because you're going on a bus, mate.

There was something

that

Justin Trudeau

did the night before.

He was staying at the Savoy and he joined.

the people at the piano bar to sing songs from the band queen to respect the queen and that was not seen in in very good light also i've realized now that i spent more and more time in this country that it's impossible to explain this country to anyone right how

how do you for example How do you, for example, tell the world that I love you for this country means I will join a stoic queue and associate my beloved monarch with a fictional Peruvian immigrant bear who loves marmalade sandwiches?

How do these things connect?

How do I go back to India and explain to people that these four disparate things are connected?

Well, it is, I mean, if you try to start understanding Britain and all its rituals,

you've made a massive mistake.

You have to just accept accept it.

But it's part of being British, you just accept it, you don't question it, you don't examine it.

The funeral was a fascinating occasion and spectacle.

The Queen was viewed as exemplifying the best of British modesty, peacefulness, humility.

And what better way to pay tribute to that than by a mile-long procession of military personnel tooled up with everything from machine guns to whopping great swords to a tactical nuclear weapon disguised as a fancy hat?

It was an extraordinary procession, also a total sellout.

Huge, huge crowds.

Certainly the biggest crowds in London since the

protest in favor of a second vote on Brexit in 2019.

Another moment of shared communal loss and emotion.

It was at once an incredible choreographed performance and unbelievably f ⁇ ing ridiculous.

And that is what we do best in this country.

We do fancy dress parades better than any nation in the world could possibly, possibly dream of.

And I mean, it's hard to, you ask these questions, you know, when you're just watching the parade, Anuvab,

you would ask, well, a number of things about

the funeral itself, then the parade.

I mean, why was Boris Johnson there?

No real reason, other than the fact that they invited all eight living current and former Prime Ministers, John Major, Tony Blair, Gordon Brown, David Cameron, Theresa May, Boris Johnson, an aching void of nothingness, and Liz Truss.

Mr.

Void of Nothingness stood in

whilst Boris Johnson did absolutely fall during his last few months as Prime Minister and is, of course, set to become Lord Void of Nothingness when Johnson's valedictory honours list is announced.

You might also ask why was the coffin pulled on a gun carriage by 142 sailors?

And that of course was in tribute to Jeff Boycott's series Turning Innings of 142 Not Out the SCG in the 1970-71 ashes.

Another question you might have asked watching the funeral is why do the drummers put their sticks under their noses whilst drumming?

I don't know if you noticed they do a little bit of drumming and then the drumsticks go up under their nose.

So I did a bit of research into this and it's because it's a tradition that goes back to the 18th century that drummers in the British military have to smell that their drumsticks are made of wood.

Because this came after a disastrous defeat during the War of Percival's Cheek at the Battle of Denis Chavet, where French agents snuck into the British encampment, switched all their drumsticks for cheese straws, and rendered the British infantry unable to march into battle in time

because the drummers' cheese straws disintegrated to crumbs within the first three minutes of the advance.

Ever since then, all drummers have to sniff their drumsticks for cheeseness at least every eight whacks.

That blows out my theory.

I always thought it was so they could drum a bit and then go, oh, look, moustache.

Also, and apologies, buglers, if I have said this before, she did exemplify hope of a more egalitarian future for this nation because the Queen lived a very long, healthy, happy, working life, still working until days before she passed away.

She was given a regular income, somewhere to live, no questions asked.

So essentially, she was a trial scheme for universal basic income, which is often put forward as a means of dealing with some of the economic inequalities of our times, often derided as costly and effective lefty twaddle but the queen showed how well it can work which makes the queen the most effective left-wing political and economic experiment in british history so let us give her give uh give credit and thanks to that

I mean, some people say that, you know, the monarchy is what makes us as a nation.

Other people say it restrains and restricts us as a nation.

I think both sides are right, essentially.

But I can't see it changing in the next 50 years, by which time I fully intend to be one or more of Living in Space with Elon Musk and his band of time-travelling renegades, or UN Secretary General, or, well, number one ranked tennis player or dead or host of Last Week Tonight.

So it's not really going to affect me too much

in my lifetime.

And I think there's so many more things that are more urgent to address in this.

I would like to see it scaled back.

The sort of pomp and the tradition leaves me a little bit cold, but I appreciate that.

You know, a lot of people

like it.

But

there's so many more things about our political system that I think are more urgent, whether it's our first past to post system political patronages and have a house of lords and

70% of the cabinet being privately educated.

Yes, so I think

there's things that we need to address more urgently than one of the few things that has actually been discernibly functioning as it's vaguely supposed to.

If you had to do one job for 70 years,

what would you most like to do?

Well, I'd like to be a monarch ordained by God.

I think it's a very good job.

I think if you, yeah, it's definitely better than being, you know, petty Indian comedian travelling the world.

Tiff, anything else?

I was going to say, I quite like being a petty comedian travelling the world.

So if we could just keep this going,

you know, and also film star, you know, so so let's work on it.

Let's work on it.

I mean, yeah, could I, you know, would I enjoy part of it is like, how much do you enjoy bagpipes?

You've got to bear that in mind if you're going to be a queen or a king, because that's how you're woken up in the morning.

A piper wakes you up, and you know, listen, my dad's Scottish, but he's like,

you know, your bladder bag, the old bladder bag's going off.

You know, he's not, he's not a mad fan of it.

And I live with a Scotsman who is not,

you know, overly effusive.

He's like, I don't mind it a bit, but it's quite overbearing.

So you've got to bear that in mind.

If you're going to be a monarch, that's what you're waking up to.

That's your alarm clock.

My alarm clock currently is my cat vomiting in another room of the house, which is quite an effective alarm clock because nothing will get you out of bed quicker than

from another room.

So quite similar to bagpipes in Medicare.

If you keep squeezing the cat to make sure it's got it all out.

There was a lot of bagpipes at the funeral, funeral, which I'd assume was, you know,

they knock on the Pope's coffin, don't they, to check that he's dead.

And I think that's what we do with monarchs in this country, is we play bagpipes for an hour, knowing that if you're not 100% dead at some point, you're going to say, sake, shut that racket down.

It's a long time to be, to do a job.

The population of the world trebled from 2.6 billion to around about 8 billion under the Queen's reign as she unleashed an era of unquenchable romance.

I thought you were going to say the banging era, an era of banging.

This was a stat that I found quite interesting.

The oldest MP

to be in parliament during the Queen's reign was born in 1871 and the youngest was born in 1996.

So that's a long time.

That's 125 years worth of births of MPs.

There were 15 prime ministers, 16, if you include the aching void of nothingness, during the Queen's reign.

Well, listen, she saved us from Boris doing a speech at the funeral.

Like, that is like the Queen has got sort of

a lot of money.

You know, she knew what she was doing.

Yeah.

There have been 71 England cricket captains

from Donald Carr and Molly Hyde to Ben Stokes and Nat Civa, and 31 Secretaries of State for Education, or variations on that post, which really should tell British children how fing low they are in our national priority list.

Well, look, we are running out of time on this, because we did have quite a lot to get through in terms of British politics, but I think that might have to wait until next week.

And also, then the incoming Truss government will have unleashed what it's euphemistically calling a fiscal event.

It's like an emergency budget, but they're calling it a fiscal event

or

panic-ridden shitstorm, I believe is the official economic terminology.

We will report back on that

next week.

We have also run out of time to cover other major news stories, including the Chess Grandmaster Einal Beads conspiracy,

which might be the greatest news story in the history of all humanity.

With all due respect to the Bible writers and

other historians.

I mean,

we can't really go into it in superficial.

This is a story that requires

a full analysis.

We're going to save that for a future bugle.

Because this has been a time of

sadness, of loss.

The retirement of Roger Federer has hit me very hard indeed.

And we'll never really be able to look at the world the same again

once that sumptuous backhand has played its last stroke.

Thank you very much for joining us for our

British ten days of mourning and national fantasy special.

Don't forget to buy tickets to the Bugle 15th Anniversary Live tour shows available online now

from any computer you can get your hands on.

Shows in London on the 15th, which I think is sold out, and 22nd of October.

And Glasgow, are we adding an extra show in Glasgow, Chris?

I don't know, Andy.

Are we?

We'll sort that out.

Let's try and sort that out in the next

couple of days,

out of respect for

Her Majesty.

Dublin and Birmingham.

Details on the internet, also at thebeaglepodcast.com, which is part of the internet.

I'm also doing some satirists for high shows in mid-November.

details also on the internet Tiff anything coming up I'm doing Abba Riswith

comedy festival on the 1st of October I think so I'm doing my show sexy brain

at that so yeah buy some tickets to that and I have other live shows but if you just go to my Twitter at Tiff Stevenson or the Instagram you can watch clips of me um losing my mind uh and

uh and find out where I'm where I'm playing live shows

Anabab.

Andy, I'm still getting over the words chess and anal beads in the same sentence.

So I've been quiet for a while because it's been.

I don't know whether this episode is about homage or anal beads, or I'm very uncertain of how much respect to pay.

But our podcast, our last week, has restarted, and

we are

doing a podcast about conundrums from India.

And it's available, where podcasts are available.

And I'm doing a live show at Market Drayton, which is a town in Shropshire.

And the show is about Lord Clive,

whatever he was of India.

And he came to my hometown with some intention, so I'm going to his now.

Revenge 250 years in the making.

That's on Thursday, the 22nd.

So by the time people listen to this, it'll be done.

Thank you for listening, Buglers.

We'll be back next week.

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.