Who? Liz Truss!?

The Bugle, audio newspaper for a visual world.

Hello buglers, it's Monday the 5th of September 2022.

Welcome to the last bugle ever to be recorded whilst the United Kingdom has Boris Johnson as its Prime Minister.

For now.

let's enjoy this moment just a little bit.

I'm Andy Zoltzmann, and by the time you listen to this show, assuming you're not me, Chris, one of my two co-hosts, our studio engineer or a bugle-obsessed hacker who has wormed your way into our Zoom call, Boris Johnson will have boinged off this political coil.

For now!

To spend more time with his overwhelming sense of deluded grievance and to spend more time with his regret at having missed a place on the greatest prime ministers of all time podium by at least 52 places in the rankings.

So we will exclusively reveal who the 56th Prime Minister of the United Kingdom will be shortly in this show.

Joining me for the big reveal this week, a man whose membership of the Conservative Party remains, I believe, unsubmitted.

It's Nish Kumar.

Hello, Nish.

Hello, Andy.

Hello, Buglers.

The idea that you think that's what Boris Johnson is going to be spending his time doing is naive beyond belief, Andrew.

He's going to be spending his time doing what he likes to spend his time doing getting his dick and keeping it wet oh my god

also

i did the only thing you got right there was that you didn't use the phrase spend more time with his children because that is one thing the guy's not going to be doing and let's be quite honest that man needs time because this guy has got children like you wouldn't believe

And for a cold, hard global perspective on our unique British form of chaotic transfer of power from New York City, it's Josh Gondelman.

Hello, Josh.

Hello, Andy.

How is New York responding to the imminent defenestration of Boris Johnson in London?

Pandemonium.

People are marching in the streets, but that is because it is the American Labor Day.

So I will be spending the duration of this podcast trying to unionize Nish, I guess.

Too late, big man.

Hell yeah.

I'm already the member of 15 different unions.

You can't see.

I'm actually starting up the Bugle Union now.

And get ready for a strike, Chris.

Until you start unbleeping my swear words, I refuse to.

I'm on strike.

Well, that's Andrew Laurie's book for next week.

This is Monday, the 5th of September, 2022, the last day, as I say, of Boris Johnson's reign as Prime Minister for now.

The rule of three is hackneyed, it's unoriginal, and it's predictable and unnecessary.

By coincidence, tomorrow is Tuesday, the 6th of September, which is International Replace a Tool Day.

It's International, explain to your baffled children why democracy was once viewed as a source of hope and light.

It's also British, allow 170,000 members of a strange and secretive cult to choose a leader for a nation of almost 70 million people day.

It's World, what's the fing point of anything anymore day?

And it's also International Make Up an International Day for Something Day.

That's the only one I'm bothering with.

Today, it's 500 years since the one surviving ship from Ferdinand Magellan's round-the-world lads-only booze cruise returns to Spain, departed in 1519, returned on the 6th of September 1522 with just 30 out of 270 men and one out of five ships.

And people complain about public transport today.

We don't know how f ⁇ ing good we've got it.

As always, we have various sections of of the bugle in the bin, including your commemorative why Rishi Sunak would have been a rubbish prime minister section.

That's in the bin.

The main reasons were one, everyone would be a rubbish prime minister.

It's the 21st century.

Even if someone is a good prime minister, most people will still think they're rubbish.

Two, because he's exuded the authenticity and everyday humanity of a counterfeit Brenda bullshit doll, which is not even from an actual TV character.

Three, because he's also exuded the level of economic empathy for the less fortunate that you would expect from a multi-millionaire married to a billionaire, or from a hedge fund rouleteer, or from a private school-educated Oxford PPE graduate, all for three very understandable reasons.

Any more reasons to add to that, Nish?

Why Sunak would have been rubbish to go in the bin?

Well, listen,

my feelings on Rishi Sunak are pretty well documented.

But I would say, and I may have said this other people before, and I apologise if I have, but the Rishi Sunak, this is a huge victory for Asian slackers across the United Kingdom.

Because here's the thing that that non-South Asians, and specifically non-British South Asians, won't know: is that all of us grew up with a Rishi Sunak in our lives, and our mothers would constantly tell us, why can't you be more like Rishi Sunak?

Look how neat his haircut is, look how nice his wife is, why can't you be more like Rishi Sunak?

And it turns out Rishi Sunak was a

and we knew that all along.

So this is a huge victory for

South Asian slackers across the country because my arts degree has, as of now, killed no people.

My degree killed an entire civilization.

It was already dead, to be fair.

Tomorrow, the 6th of September, is not only British Travesty of a Functioning Democracy Day, it's also National Reader Book Day.

And for our second section in the bin, it's the Bugle Book section.

I don't know what nation it is National Reader Book Day in,

but still I do have a book about National Days that should have the information in, but I'm not planning to read it until tomorrow.

But anyway, our books recommended by the Bugle include How to Sprain Your Ankle, another minor injury suffering advice for avoiding work, unwanted social functions, and having to play top-level sport by Professor Lubelia Strembelnitz.

Kosplashnikov, How Russia's Favorite Rifle Changed Highboard Diving by Andrei Gretchko and Greg Laganis, a fascinating collaboration by the former Soviet Minister of Defense from the 1970s and an America's 1988 Olympic gold medalist.

We also recommend a recently discovered work by French scribblemeister Marcel Proust, à la recherche du crayons perdu, in the first in his series of books about trying to find things that he'd lost,

which of course continued after pencils with time, khakis, socks and snakes.

Also on the Bugle recommended books list from wombs to wombats, a memoir of a life obsessing about words beginning with the letters W, O, M, and B by Dr.

Wombard Womblowski.

As well as You Can't Crucify Me, I'm a Shark by defrocked former priest, the ex-Reverend Parsiman Hibbons, who examines whether the real Messiah was in fact a hammerhead shark who worked off the coast of the Holy Land in the early first millennium.

We also recommend, it's quite a lot of recommendations for National Reader Book Day, SpongeBob and Vladimir Overthrow the Czar by Maximilian Rampage and Winnia Baggersley.

The latest revisionist historical children's book from the team behind such classics as Careless Carlos, the Slapstick Conquistador, Copernicus, Alien Gobshite, Hats of Abraham IV, The Bulletproof Stovepipe, Saves the Day, and Queen Victoria was a man called Nigel.

That's that's book section in the bin.

Always, one of the key rules of comedy is open with quite a specific Marcel Proust joke.

You've got to get that in within the first 10 minutes.

Otherwise, are you even doing comedy?

You got that Proust down at the end?

No, no, no.

Boost the Proust straight up top.

You don't close on Proust.

You've got to get them on board with the Proust gear.

If you leave it till the end, they'll see it coming.

Well, we're coming up to 15 years on the podcast.

I think,

you know, I think I've, yeah, I can chuck in a Proust gag every now and again.

Once every decade and a half.

I can't wait till another 15 years passes and I'll drink a can of seltzer, much like this one, that will bring me back to this moment.

Just in my mind, I'll be so present here.

Thanks to kind of Bruce's seltzer.

Did he ever, I don't think he did merch, did he?

Did Marcel Proust do merch?

Yeah, yeah, he released his own line of madlines.

The Bruce Madlines.

Paul Newman stole everything from Bruce.

He did.

He did actually, he did have a range of watches that had a special

homing device so

you couldn't lose time.

That was sold quite big for him, I think.

I think that's all the Pruce jokes for this week.

The Pruce is loose.

Good God.

Top story this week.

The United Kingdom will have a new Prime Minister tomorrow.

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

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

She

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

Less than half of the Tory membership voted for her.

Sunak got to just over 60,000 votes.

So 57.4%

of the 82%

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

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

I know you're a massive democracy fan.

You must have really enjoyed the stats.

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

We have a new Prime Minister.

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

But now

Liz Truss has won in a contest between her and Brishi Sunak.

And the whole time people have been determining whether this contest should be deemed the lesser of two evils, it's more like a...

Listen, it's more like a contest to determine Britain's neatest paedophile.

It's not really the lesser of two evils.

It's simply an unpleasant choice that we were forced to make, and most of us didn't get a say in it.

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

It's not a huge majority.

And the margin of victory was actually even narrower than had been predicted earlier in the campaign.

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

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

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

Her dreadful, dreadful personality.

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

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

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

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

And crucially, it was pretty bad to begin with.

But I mean, this is quite extraordinary, really.

So

we've had

this leadership election.

The voting process took, was it almost two months

since voting opened.

And these are 170 000 of the most committed toories in the universe they are the members of the conservative party and still

one in six of them couldn't be asked to vote

they've had

almost two months this is not like having to vote on a specific day in an election this they've had weeks and weeks to do it and still only 82 percent of people voted so less than half of the toriest Tories wanted Truss

as Prime Minister.

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

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

And there was an enormous thunderstorm.

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

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

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

So, I mean, it's

now.

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

Are people still interpreting the weather for divine signals?

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

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

Congratulations.

You just elected a leader American style.

I hope that was fun.

That schedule we have going on.

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

I think prime minister is not like a, it's too lofty a title at this point for what these people are, especially because it feels like just with the apocalyptic nature of everything, we're closing in on the Omega minister.

That's what's on the horizon.

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

Boris Johnson was on the way out.

They hadn't decided yet.

I think maybe you just roll that forward.

Go stride the whip.

No prime minister.

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

Yeah.

Yeah.

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

There are real problems brewing.

This strike's brewing.

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

It's going to start next Sunday.

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

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

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

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

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

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

With Brexit, there is still

the never-ending shh.

The never-ending shit of Brexit continues to just pour forth from the anus of this country.

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

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

The biggest problem that she faced...

Oh, and also the global pandemic.

Something about a global pandemic.

I don't know.

I think that that's someone f ⁇ ed about.

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

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

Businesses are facing closures.

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

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

Family.

Family.

He was talking about families.

I was talking about families jacking it together, Andy.

Thank you.

I mean, it is, as you say, going to be a bulging entry after six years of

Brexit, two and a half years of pandemic, seven months of a globally disruptive war, and above all, after 12 years of Conservative government involving largely Liz Truss, failing to address anything of relevance.

So at least you should be intimately aware of the contents of

that intree.

I mean, amongst the things she's got to do, apart from the cost of existence and

people having some form of heating over a British winter, is to fix absolutely everything as well as doing everything else.

So it's going to be

a tough job.

I mean, there have been times, because this campaign has been A, very long, but also focused on this minuscule electorate.

It has felt that it's been taking place not merely in a parallel country, but in some kind of alternative reality and possibly an entirely separate universe.

And now

the task, people are saying, is to bring the Conservative Party back together.

Now, usually the way the Conservative Party brings itself back together is by driving the rest of the United Kingdom further and further apart.

So

what tools do you think they're going to whip out for that one?

Well, I mean, at a certain point, you have to feel like the Conservative Party is going to fall back on what it does best, outright racism.

And they always have that card to play, and I'm pretty sure they're going to play it strongly.

I don't even know what form it's going to take.

I think they're going to say that immigrants are putting dog shit in our soup and also are siphoning heat off to heat their hot, hot curries.

It's hard to know what version this is going to take, but I feel pretty confident that that's going to be the starting point, as it always is for the British Conservative Party.

I think it's fair to say that she's coming in with low expectations.

As I said, less than half of the Conservative membership voted for her.

Less than a third of Conservative MPs had supported her in the phase of the election where

the MPs were choosing the two candidates to put to the party membership.

One Tory MP was quoted in a newspaper this week saying, Somehow, what Liz is doing is dressing up her lack of ability as a form of authenticity, which is not a ringing endorsement for someone taking over the entire country.

One of her own MPs.

There are also reports in the Mirror newspaper that a group of 12 Conservative MPs is already plotting to submit letters of no confidence in Liz Truss and reinstate Boris Johnson as Prime Minister by Christmas.

Whenever you play that, I picture it like the end of a horror movie where the hand reaches up from the grave, but it's just his hair popping out from the ground.

Yeah, it's I, those 12 people I can only assume are Boris Johnson's biological children.

Because I, at this point, I have no idea.

Well, you mean Michael Fabrikin to say that?

Yeah, Michael Fabrikin, yeah.

And if you're not aware of Michael Fabrikin and you're not sure whether or not he is one of Boris Johnson's biological children, search him on the internet, and that will be all the proof you possibly need.

Ignore the alleged dates of birth.

Biology trumps everything.

Well, I think low expectations.

Look, that's taken us a long way over here.

I think people,

when Joe Biden took office,

the day they announced the election results, very similarly, people are on the streets going, it's not like super pro-Biden, mostly anti-Trump partying, but otherwise, kind of the enthusiasm that you might feel for a saltine.

And

he announced the

nullifying of $10,000 of college debt.

People just started shooting guns off into the sky with joy.

Or that might just be what we were doing anyway over here.

Just firing guns wantonly.

I think part of the problem Liz Truss has

is that her biography has not endeared her to the hardest of hardcore conservative voters.

Largely because, I mean, if I was to answer the question that's been asked in America this week, which is who is Liz Truss?

As opposed to the question that's been asked in the United Kingdom, which is who?

Liz Truss?

It would give you a very complicated political journey.

So Liz Truss actually grew up as a supporter of the Liberal Democrats.

Now, for context for International Buglers, the Liberal Democrats are known in the United Kingdom as the oh, oh,

yeah,

them.

They are the third party in a country famous for having a two-party system.

It's like if Ralph Nader was a bunch of guys.

She was a Lib Dem.

While she was a Liberal Democrat, she actually spoke at a party conference and advocated for the end of the monarchy.

She then

underwent some sort of reverse Damascene conversion, like if St.

Paul had been visited by God and thought, I know, I have to be more of a

and joined the Conservative Party.

And since 2010, she's been quite sort of prominent member of that party.

She was the education minister for a while, then she was promoted to the environment secretary.

She campaigned for Remain in the Brexit referendum, and then after the result, has immediately sort of switched to a position where she said, actually, I think Brexit is a great thing.

But ultimately, more than anything else, she is and has always been a conservative, I believe.

Because someone who knew Liz Trust when she was growing up described her as being a big fan of Cludo and Monopoly.

And

if games that involve backstabbing and being in favor of landlordism aren't more conservative, then I don't know what is.

Wow.

This kind of turn from the Lib Dam Party, right, to conservatism, it feels very Kirsten cinema.

So, do you think, just for the help of the American audience, could we get her wearing some kind of funky purple glasses?

Oh, she's one of those.

I get it.

Well, I mean, that's unlikely to happen, the funky purple glasses, unless a photo emerges of Margaret Thatcher wearing funky purple glasses, in which case I imagine Liz Truss will wear eight pairs of funky purple glasses simultaneously for the rest of her reign.

One of her first jobs is to assemble a new cabinet.

Now, choosing from the Conservative Party talent puddle, well, that's a challenge, isn't it?

It's not going to necessarily result in the plumpest crop of ministerial genius,

Because our political system has, of course, been specifically geared to producing candidates whose principal skills don't stretch too far beyond saying, yeah, what he said, or occasionally, yeah, what she said, or just saying, boo.

So that's, it's going to be interesting to see how much she sticks with the Johnson loyalists.

And one of the first things she said in her speech today on taking it when she was announced as the new leader.

I mean, she did say some quite weird things in what was quite a short speech,

including the extraordinary rhetorical flourish.

She said, we will deliver, we will deliver, and we will deliver.

Which it's good to see her avoiding the rhetorical flourishes of her waffle-heavy predecessor.

But I don't know what the...

I mean, that's...

I mean, to say that, you know, we will deliver three times.

That is

once again, a savage attack on everything the Conservative Party has stood for over the last 12 years.

Also, she failed to deliver the end of a f ⁇ ing sentence.

Look,

I don't, it's just a bad sign that she's kind of stealing ideas from dominoes.

Like, it is very close to a little Caesar.

I don't know if you have little Caesars, but their slogan is just pizza, pizza.

And that's kind of what this felt like to me.

Yeah, it was, and it was delivered in her customary rhetorical style, which is printing out a speech that would be delivered by a normal human being, removing all of the punctuation, putting that punctuation into a salt shaker, and then just randomly distributing it across the page.

And then having it delivered by a puppet,

unaccompanied by a ventriloquist.

She also said this, I think this were true words.

She did say some...

She said some very, very honest words about the campaign.

She said, I think we have shown the depth and breadth of talent in our Conservative Party.

And I admired that level of honesty.

Just to lay those cards on the table for saying, we've got nothing, strap in everyone.

It's like when I got 12% in a geography exam in year eight, it would have been the equivalent of me calling a press conference and saying, I think we all know how much I know about geography.

How did you get 12% in a geography exam?

Well, it was about the Ordnance Survey.

It was about the Ordnance Survey map.

And I didn't revise the Ordnance Survey map and tried to vibe it out.

Vibes-based geography and geographical classification has been a source of enormous turmoil over

the course of world history.

Yeah, that's basically how we ended our empire, wasn't it?

It was vibes-based geography.

I am British, and if I cannot engage in vibe-based geography, then what was the point of any of this?

Well, you you say you're British Nish, but we'll just have to see what Liz Truss does in her equal so as Prime Minister to see if that's

She's already absolutely murked one brown guy

Interestingly, uh in a change to traditional protocol, um

Liz Truss will become Prime Minister not in Buckingham Palace, but she's gonna to have to fly to Scotland to see the Queen, who I think is in Balmoral Castle in Scotland.

So Boris Johnson is going to have to go up there and be sacked.

The Queen has to sack the Prime Minister, essentially.

I don't know.

She hands him a P45 and a commemorative bottle of whiskey.

But essentially, I mean, she's playing the I'm 906 card and the mobility issues.

But really, she just can't be asked to come down from London

to London from Scotland for, I believe the term she used is these clowns.

There was 96.

Different C word.

Different C word, Andy.

96.

I do hope, she's 96 now, the Queen.

I do hope that as an employed non-agenarian, she spent the whole of the year from April 2021 to April 2022 singing Working 95, Dolly Parton style.

And

she didn't, she's gone down in my estimation.

So

what now then for for Johnson,

apart from this rumored comeback?

I mean, he's been very much,

we've had various people saying it's a disgrace that he's been snatched away from his beloved public.

But he's very much not just the architect of his own downfall.

He has frank garied the shit out of his own downfall.

It has been an absolute Bilbao-Guggenheim of self-destruction.

I hope that, like when any, he'll do the traditional thing that any head of state does when they are removed from office democratically, is they'll retire to their South Florida estate with their collection of top secret government documents.

Just leaving to spend more time with classified information.

That's just the tradition in recent history as far as I know.

I imagine he'll go back to writing some of the worst newspaper columns, or at least the very least, some of the newspaper columns that were most clearly dictated to someone typing them out in a stream of consciousness 40 minutes before the deadline.

Some of the newspaper columns, honestly, this bits were like, Am I hungry?

I might be hungry.

Anyway, oh, wait, don't remind me to call that guy at seven o'clock.

Anyway,

are you still typing?

Take that part out.

Yeah, are you still remember to take that part out?

Oh, you know what?

Leave it in.

We've got a word counter here.

Moving across the Atlantic now to American news and some exciting news from New York this week, Josh.

Times Square is to be designated a gun-free zone

from

this week.

A new gun law in New York is going into

effect.

Dow,

how is this going to affect you as a New Yorker, Josh?

Because I know you love to be tooled up at all times.

Yeah, well, no, renowned for your time.

Yeah, this is kind of causing me a lot of anxiety because, you know, as you say, across the pond, I keep that thing on me.

So

it might, this is going to be tough.

I will say, it makes because the gun law is expanding where you can carry guns.

And so Times Square is, they're saying, not well, not here, but this is real.

There is a loophole.

There are many loopholes.

You can still have a gun in Times Square if you live in Times Square or if you work in Times Square or if you're just on the way through Times Square, which does describe everyone

except people who I guess are planning to shop for a while in Times Square, visit all the things.

So, what they're saying is, you can't have a gun in Times Square unless you've earned it with Time Served.

That's really what they're saying.

And this is just going to be another thing that lifelong New Yorkers complain about.

They hate when Times Square gets less sketchy.

Like, I can hear it now, just like, I remember when you go to any corner in Times Square and smoke crack while firing off a few rounds into a crowd, all while getting your dick sucked for an affordable price.

Now it's just citibanks and MM stores.

People are going to be furious.

New Yorkers are going to be up in arms about this.

That was the best John Oliver impression of that.

He's changed.

I am slightly shocked that they're attempting to enforce any laws on Times Square, given that earlier this year when I was in Times Square, it did appear to have been completely just full purge.

A man attempted to sell me a Ziploc bag filled with marijuana while sat on a bucket.

Now, I am aware that New York State has relaxed regulations around the legal sale of marijuana, but I'm pretty sure that is not for bucket-based vendors.

It's actually, there's no, they don't haven't given out licenses yet to sell marijuana, even though it's legal to buy.

So there are places that have just been like, fuck it, we're opening up anyway.

So there's active dispensaries that still behave like drug dealers where you like walk in and they're like, hey, you smoke weed?

We got weed.

And it's like, yeah, man, you have a big sign that says noise with a Z.

I know you sell weed here.

What I was fascinated by was a detail in this article that

in an effort to crack down on illegal gun purchases, officials in New York have asked Visa and MasterCard and American Express companies like that to approve a new merchant category code for gun shops across the country because at the moment purchases made at gum shop gun shops are listed on financial statements as miscellaneous now

now

I mean just does I mean I think does buying a lethal weapon I think that goes beyond miscellaneous because I mean miscellaneous is you're maybe

I don't know like a piece of wood

I think you're you're just dealing it's just an issue of spelling M-I-S-S-I-L-E-A-Neas.

And then I think everybody wins.

I think it's a dabbing indictment for how far the Republican Party has fallen in terms of its basic morality that the Democrats have taken an appraisal of the situation and decided, no, no, we must appeal to the morality of credit card companies.

There's no point in even engaging with the Republican Party.

We have to go to people who are, let's not be around the bush, loan sharks with bits of plastic.

We've got to enlist the powerful usury lobby

on our behalf.

I was reading this article and two things about it immediately concerned me.

Firstly, what does this gun ban mean for Hamilton?

And is the actor who plays the bullet now going to have to play a sharp stick that's thrown by Aaron Burr at Alexander Hamilton?

Because the Richard Rogers Theatre, I believe falls within the purview of this band.

The second thing that concerned me is there was an explosion in permits, in people applying for permits, because the law states that you can still conceal carry as long as you have a permit.

And I guess like I understand that like the gun ownership concept is very unfamiliar to

British people and also I suggest probably pretty unfamiliar to most of the Americans listening to this podcast.

But I just why

do you need to carry a gun to go to Times Square?

Why is that such a priority for you?

You don't live in the Old West.

You have an iPhone and an Instagram account.

I will say, of all the places I go in New York, Times Square is the one where I most fantasize about committing violence.

So

I feel like extra legislation is necessary.

But it also does feel like, look, New Yorkers, shoot each other if you must, but please think of the tourists.

Don't bring your guns around the tourists.

Think of the man dressed as Iron Man.

He's been stood there all day.

He keeps getting kicked in the nuts by Scottish visitors.

Just think about the indignity of catching a stray bullet dressed in a dirty Elmo costume.

The worst death I can imagine.

So, I mean, Nish, it sounds to me that what you're suggesting then is that to carry

a gun, you you should have to be riding a horse.

Is that the compromise that you would accept?

100%.

I would 100%.

And at this point, in terms of trying to get America to pass reasonable gun laws, and again, not America, trying to get the 10 people in America who seem to count on this subject, because I think at this point, the overwhelming majority of Americans all favour gun laws.

At this point, we are going to have to get creative.

I would suggest the Democrats run a bill that's mandatory gun ownership for all all ethnic minorities.

I think that might scare some of the Republicans into

passing countermeasures.

Or, I do agree, I do absolutely think you should be able to carry a gun, but only if you're constantly on a horse.

Well, that's just going to result in New York City.

That just means cops will have more and more guns and no one else will have any.

It's going to lead to the NYPD riding on a horse on top of a horse and holding an F16.

And

the middle horse, the Oreo cream horse, is going to have its own gun

just in its mouth that it bites down onto fire.

But it's a

slightly curious conclusion to come to.

That what we need is

making it more easy for more people to carry more guns seems not to follow from the stats such as that one and a half million people have died in the last 50 years from gunshots, more than have been lost by the American military in every single war since the War of Independence combined.

So it's heading up towards 50,000 a year.

I don't know if that is that a target figure for the gun lobby at which point

they will start to seek some kind of compromise.

They're just going to keep changing the number on the sign like McDonald's.

Oh, 33 billion serve now.

Okay.

And finally, this week, sports news now.

and Serena Williams' incredible tennis career appears to have come to an end.

She has not officially announced her retirement,

although it seems that she has retired, partly because of the language that she used.

She said she's evolving away from tennis after a career spanning almost two and a half decades, 23 Grand Slam titles.

But I love this terminology that, you know, there's

evolving away from ten.

I mean, I feel I've been evolving away from comedy for some time now.

But without that definite cutoff of playing

my final gig

in the

Arthur Ash stadium.

I mean, I think this is quite an exciting time in the language of sport,

the fact that retirement is, well, we'll soon become a, because she's hugely influential, Serena Williams.

She's changed the face of sport.

And she has now started this trend where people will evolve into something different.

And I think it could be quite exciting that, you know, I think in just a few years' time, we'll have players playing their last match.

and then going into a special booth and like emerging as something completely different to begin the rest of their lives.

And I think we will look back on this as a turning point.

I hope she's evolving into a different sport.

I hope she's

Serena Williams play cricket next year.

The only

one thing that everybody wanted for her was to pull ahead of Margaret Court.

She's on 23 Grand Slam Singles titles.

Court still holds the record at 24.

And the reason that people want that is because Margaret Court is a turd.

And

in spite of the fact that she was named literally to be a tennis player, and I assume that the record is only going to be taken by, you know, Jasmine Balls when she finally takes to the court.

Margaret Court is an absolute turd she's an opposition of safe sex marriage.

She's an opponent of same-sex marriage and just in case you forgotten how much of a turd she was she popped up this week saying that Serena Williams had played in a much easier era in spite of the fact that when Margaret Court won her majors A lot of the players just didn't go to the Australian Open.

In spite of fact that

cross comparison of eras is often very difficult.

In spite of all of that, Margaret Court has come out and said, ah, it's much easier for Serena.

And I think what it's good to remember is Serena is not only the greatest as a tennis player, she's also not a turd like Margaret Court, who is, and I cannot stress this enough, a fing turd.

Yeah, Serena Williams is amazing, one of the greatest athletes in history.

Just incredible.

And she means so much to tennis, right?

There are people who in their 20s and early 30s, I think, who didn't grow up knowing tennis before Serena Williams, and they'll only know the tennis world she's left behind and is leaving behind, which I think is really wonderful.

She means so much to the game.

She said she's evolving away.

She's not retiring from tennis.

She's gently breaking up with it.

Well, that brings us to the end of this bugle.

Do enjoy buglers, the warming sensation of Boris Johnson no longer being in a position of global responsibility.

It's something.

It's something in these benighted times.

Don't forget to book your tickets for the forthcoming Bugle 15th anniversary live tour in London, Birmingham, Glasgow, and Dublin.

Details on the Bugle website.

Click the live link at the top of the page.

Anything to plug?

Josh, do us a favor and quickly plug while I Google myself.

Sure.

Yes, I have a special out, an hour special called People Pleaser that's streaming where you stream things.

I think Vimeo is the best place for it worldwide, but it's also Apple TV and YouTube and Amazon.

And I'm about to go on the road a bunch this

fall.

So I'm doing, I've already got some New York stuff, some Boston,

Pittsburgh.

I'm going to announce Louisville and

Cleveland soon.

So I'm going to be all over.

Come, come see me.

Nish.

Yes.

Have you finished Googling yourself up?

Yes.

No, I've got my,

let me just,

I think it's nice to let the Americans go first.

You know, just

the old War of Independence, Snafu.

On October the 17th,

in London, I'm going to be recording my tour show

at the Arts Theatre.

So that's October the 17th, and there will be a 7pm and a 9.30 p.m.

show.

About half of the tickets have gone, so please buy those now.

And then

on the 28th and 29th of November, I will be in Melbourne.

And then on the

30th of November and the 1st of December, I will be at the Sydney Opera House.

This is studio room.

But crucially, it will be the Sydney Opera House's studio room that are the final two dates of my tour.

Now, we had to add second shows because of a demand that is yet to manifest itself in the sales for the second shows.

So if you live in Melbourne or Sydney or live in Australia, or anywhere in the southern hemisphere and are willing to really put in a shift,

please, please book your tickets.

Details at nichekumar.co.uk.

I'm also doing some satirist for high shows for a week in mid-November, including my emotional homecoming show in Tunbridge Wells.

Yeah.

First time I've played Tunbridge Wells for about 20 years.

And my mum's coming to that, so I need people there.

So do come along to that details at my website, which is vaguely up to date with gigs andesolson.co.uk.

We will be back next week with exclusive coverage on everything that's happened in the world between now and then.

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.