LIVE, AND ALIVE!

The Bugle, audio newspaper for a visual world.

Hello buglers and welcome to the first sub-episode of our Summer Hiatus 2022.

The hiatus came, I will admit, a week earlier than experts had anticipated due to arguably anticipatable circumstances such as me and these altmen being subsumed by the international cricket schedule to a point where I was unable to say anything other than numbers.

We will be back at the end of August for the final chandrings of the Conservative Party Prime Minister picking Democratic Travesty Fest plus whatever else is going on in the known universe at the time.

If you are at the Edinburgh Festival in August don't forget to go and see all the Bugle co-hosts performing there including Alice Fraser, Tiff Stevenson, Nish Kumar, James Nikito, Neil Delamere, David O'Doherty and no doubt other co-hosts past, present and future.

I think I've covered it there.

And also don't forget to book your tickets for the Bugle 15th Anniversary Micro Tour dates in London on the 15th of October, Birmingham on the 27th, Glasgow on the 30th and Dublin on the 3rd of November.

Plus I'm doing some extra Saturdays for High Shows in November.

Details on the internet.

Or by simply communing with a higher realm, whichever is easier.

You go to my website, andy'sultman.co.uk, where you will find links.

In the meantime, our summer hiatus sub-episodes.

We will be bringing you, over the next few weeks, the best of the bin, highlights of the Bugle's legendary, if we may stretch stretch language to the point of pointlessness section in the bin that was filled up with unwanted garbage since 2007 and we'll have something from the bugle's glossy magazine sister publication the gargle but to start you off this week as we build up to our 15th anniversary live shows we have the best of the bugle live soon after the podcast's rebirth in 2016 the first bugle live show clattered into existence at the Melbourne International Comedy Festival of 2017.

Since when the live shows have provided, well, let's just say, sporadic entertainment to crowds of less than a billion on several of the world's most famous continents.

Here, then, are some of the finest moments from half a decade of full three-dimensional buglage, presented to you now in zero dimensions.

Chris, hit the theme tune.

Right.

Right.

Is that progress?

So

this is now the official start of the show.

Hello, buglers!

Hello, people who are not buglers.

Hello, people who are slightly confused about what is now happening

so uh welcome uh welcome so this for our listeners uh not here is uh bugle 4079 we are live at the end of the road festival at the llama tree uh in dorset it is now uh one minute to midnight

funny o'clock um

and uh i'm this a number of firsts for for this podcast.

For the first time in our proud history, the Bugle is headlining a music festival.

Now, I mean, it does slightly depend on.

Yeah.

If you really are a saint.

Is she a real saint?

Because, I mean, she must have fiddled the paperwork, because usually you've got to be pretty much dead, haven't you?

She's not even a real Vincent.

This is the first ever bugle to be performed outside.

Traditionally, it's very much been an an indoor kind of show but today we join the huge list of things that have happened outside.

A number of amazing things have happened outside through human history.

For example the Battle of Waterloo

the wipeout of the dinosaurs

Most cricket matches

All the good ones

all the all the good ones absolutely all the good ones the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand.

Let's just hope there's no repeats of something happening outdoors leading to a catastrophic mass conflict whose echoes repercuss to this day.

Another great outside event, the crucifixion of a Mr.

J.H.

Christ,

former assistant managing director of Joseph and Stepson Carpentry, Woodwork and Donkey Riding PLC.

Also, outside, precisely 50% of all poping has happened outside.

Did you know that?

Popes have a rare chemical in their bodies.

It's

Catholicium popiosum.

And that means if they don't do exactly half of their poping al fresco, they become Jewish.

How can you not pronounce something you just made up?

Don't give the game away, Alan.

And we are now separate from some of the things that have only ever happened inside as well, including the finals of the World Snooker Championships, all of which have happened under a roof, the painting of the Sistine Chapel ceiling

happened inside, and also all of Theresa May's picnics.

I don't think there's anything more heartbreaking than a Prime Minister having an indoor picnic on her own, but look at her face.

She definitely does.

I think she has a weekly solitary indoor picnic.

Isn't that just known as a meal?

Don't Don't come at me with your science.

So, top story this week, are you happy with the world generally?

No, out of ten, how would you score the world right now?

Two, four, three?

Dog shit out of ten.

But on the plus side, there's a story of great positivity this week, and that is that we are now at war with France.

One, two, three, four, we have declared scallop war.

And

I don't know if you've seen this, but British boats and French boats have been clashing in the channel in a battle about scallops.

I mean, it's just 213 years since the Battle of Trafalgar, so it's really just running on in the grand scheme of things.

So, this so British boats appeared off the coast of Normandy.

See how you like it, you Norman bastards.

That's for what you did to King Harold.

Never forget.

So around 40 small French boats clashed with five larger British boats.

The boats bumped each other.

Stones were thrown.

And sorry if there's any children in, insults were hurled.

And up to 10,000 people were killed or injured.

Up to being the key words there.

It was 10,000, fewer than 10,000, but still.

And in the middle of this, some heartbroken scallops are screaming, I don't know who to love!

I just want to be cooked in the tastiest way possible.

I mean, the boats on both sides threw stones at one another.

Where are they getting the stones?

On a boat.

They are the least floaty thing.

I don't know.

UK gut fishermen are now demanding government protection while the French are bewailing the loss of what they call a primary resource, which I assume is that

does that not scream primary resource to you?

To me, it's very hard to eat a scallop these days without thinking to yourself, Aphrodite, you are not what you once were.

So I don't know what you thought of this.

I mean, I thought when it came to the fisherman, personally, with all these scallops, I thought they were being a little bit shellfish.

Oh, fing hell.

Well,

I mean, in this kind of conflict, the one who wins is the one who ends up with the most muscles, right?

Boom, there we go.

Do my local Chinese restaurant ran out of scallops because of this

story, because of

this battle.

The owner had visited from Shanghai specially for a scallop and black bean sauce dish.

He was very, very disappointed.

Really, very absolutely crestfallen.

He really was a crustacean.

Crustation.

Sorry,

chopped out.

Thank you.

Welcome.

Welcome to the Bugle Live.

It's very exciting to be here in Dublin.

This is the second and final night of the Bugle European Tour.

We were in Salford last night.

Dublin tonight.

Doubling up, quite literally, coming to you live from the Sugar Club here in Dublin and also doubling up as issue 4083 of the Bugle.

As I said, we were in Salford last night and we are in Dublin tonight.

And Chris, your journey from Salford to Dublin today.

I've had a complicated day, Andy.

Yes, because I mean generally it would take, I mean in layman's terms, not very f ⁇ ing long.

But

we had a slight procedural glitch where you attempted to pass yourself off at passport control as a four-year-old girl.

Well, I mean, you know, I mean, here's my daughter, passport photo, looks just like me.

Sadly, the attendant at the Ryanair check-in didn't agree with that statement.

And I don't live near Salford.

And four trains later, and an emergency meeting with my wife, where we swapped passports several hundred miles away from where I was supposed to be.

and then got another train and then another flight and then another taxi.

I'm here.

There we go.

you are

what you are applauding there is a man's painful recovery from his own incompetence

so you took your daughter's passport yeah I'm a fing idiot I know whatever

I mean like look so so this was our journey today yeah was like It was really simple.

So what we were supposed to do was start there, get there, there.

It was supposed to be so, so easy, and instead, I've gone up and down it.

I've gone sort of from here to there, then over there a bit a couple of times, then back over here,

and I've gone past weird places called style.

I've gone through Stratford,

I've gone through a weird swamp dick airport,

and now I'm here.

There we go, he's made it,

he has made it

hero, absolutely

hero.

On the bugle this week, firstly, representing the entire southern hemisphere, all women and people who hate thin-legged pink birds, it's the wonderful Alice Fraser.

When she walks, she moves so fine,

like a plumma.

Hello, hello!

Hello, buglers, hello, Andy.

How are you all feeling in yourselves morally?

It's been an exciting day.

Chris was stopped at Manchester Airport, Andy mentioned that.

He was stopped for identity fraud after trying to pass himself off as a female infant.

You know most airports are on the lookout for people trying to smuggle children out of the country.

I don't think they have management systems in place for adults who are trying to smuggle themselves out of the country disguised as babies.

It's a bad disguise, Chris.

You didn't even shave.

I mean I don't recommend it, no.

No matter how much you scream and shit yourself, you will never again

look like a baby.

And he did do that quite a lot, to be fair.

So, Alice, your first time in Dublin?

It is my first time in Dublin.

I'm very excited to be here.

My mum was a massive Irish fan.

She did her master's thesis on kind of folk music.

And so, basically, what I'm saying is, I'm related to someone who respects your culture.

And I'm Jewish, so I'm fine.

I'm fine.

I'm neutral.

Also, joining us today, all the way from Dublin, about 10 minutes' walk away, it's the wonderful David O'Docherty!

Thank you.

It sounds like it's going pretty well, Andy.

I don't think it's going well enough to get the European residency you you crave, though.

Sure, Poulter and Fleetwood did well enough in the Ryder Cup last week.

They can come in.

JK Rowling at a push.

You and Banksy, still not sure.

I saw his picture shredding itself last week.

I'm like, what does that remind me of?

Oh, one of Andy Zoltzmann's gigs.

Surely.

Brilliant.

Do you mean the ticket holders before one of my gigs?

I mean, he got 1.2 million for doing it.

That's what I remember.

So, David, I mean,

I left my school, I went to a very, very, very good school in many ways, but it did leave me with certain gaps in my knowledge of the world.

For example, well, clearly, the entire history of Ireland and the other side of the British Empire

left me with gaps about, for example, how to rewire a plug, how to change the tyres on a car, how to talk to a girl,

what to do to a girl once I'd talked to it.

Do they need feeding?

Do they osmos?

So huge gaps in my knowledge of the world, albeit that I was able to express those gaps in grammatically perfect Latin.

So, absolutely,

but so, David, can you,

for an ignorant Englishman, please explain a little bit about the history of Ireland?

Chris, could you put on a YouTube clip called Irish Music Sad?

Ireland was founded by footballer Stephen Ireland in 3000 BC.

Ireland's indigenous people were the leprechauns or lapretians,

as nobody has ever called them, but they died out tragically owing to the fact that they were all male.

and never existed.

Nothing kills a people off quicker than never having actually existed.

Your next major character in Irish history, Andy, is St.

Patrick, the patron saint of strangers taking his shit behind the wheelie bin in your front garden.

And that is how he is commemorated for one day around the world.

St.

Patrick got rid of all the snakes and so thorough was he he got rid of any archaeological evidence that there might ever have been snakes in the island.

Around the first millennium saw the arrival of the Vikings.

And they're so unlike any Scandinavian people I've ever met today, it's like one day they must have woken up and gone, hey, you know, let's not rape in peelage anymore.

Let's invent social democracy.

And IKEA and Lego and aha.

Then nothing happened in Irish history for 600 years till the arrival of Oliver Cromwell in 1649 and he

he absolutely wrecked the place.

Although seen as a moderniser in Britain, still seen as that today, in Ireland he is seen as a genocidal f head.

Potato, potato.

Who caused a population drop-off that some expert put as high as 83%!

83% of the Irish population.

Thanks, Cromwell, you barrel of rancid wangers.

Excuse me if I occasionally visit the British House of Parliament where there is a statue of you to take a shit just in front of it.

Cromwell was eventually defeated by Connor McGregor at the Battle of Crumlin

in 18 proper 12.

With his rallying cry, you'll do nothing, you f ⁇ ing prick.

But MacGregor was in turn defeated by Queen Victoria at a bout in Las Vegas where he had motivated her by criticizing her family, her nation and her religion.

Queen Victoria loved Ireland and left us with her greatest legacy, the shop Victoria's Secret on Grafton Street.

Short for Victoria's Secret was that she wished she'd done more to prevent the Irish famine 1845 to 1849.

This is like shooting fish in a barrel in front of these people.

Ireland has always loved a craze, from lion dancing to yo-yos, from Tamagotchis to Catholicism.

But they tend to come and go.

They say you only play this town twice in your career, said the Pope in Dublin on his recent visit.

Once on the way up.

It's great to be back.

And the 11 people in the crowd jiggled their rosary beads and shook their little bags.

Although nominally a republic, Ireland is still a mystical place ruled over by Enya.

I've never met Enya, but apparently you can recreate the feeling of meeting her if you put your peen slash lady peen in a Dyson airblade.

If you feel something crazy in the air, listening to this podcast, that's Irish presidential election mania.

For some reason, a reason nobody can quite remember, Ireland has a Taoiseach or Prime Minister and a President.

The President is a non-political role, the idea of which is that you do the gigs the Prime Minister doesn't have time to do, such as shaking hands at the rugby and apologising for institutional atrocities the Prime Minister has committed.

The runners and riders have assembled for this once every seven years event, and what a group.

Does the incumbent Michael D.

Higgins,

a tiny wizard poet who negotiated the tricky events of the last seven years with a plom.

He hosted the Queen's first ever visit to Ireland without giving her a wedgie

and commemorated the Centena of the 1916 rising without mentioning that he'd love to give the Queen a wedgie.

Job done.

So he should get to do it for another seven years and everyone wants him to, with the exception of five people.

The five other candidates who are running for his job.

There's no reason to mention the other candidates because you'll never hear of any of them again.

Suffice to say that most of them, three out of five, have been dragons on Ireland's Dragon's Den

and they look like they're only running for president for a prank they lost with one of the lads at the golf club.

The other two are ladies and they hate science.

Michael D.

Higgins will definitely win and he'll have another sweet seven years in front of him where his main job will be to commemorate the centenary of the War of Independence in 2019 without giving the Queen a wedgie

and the centenary of the Civil War in 2022 without saying he wants to give Michael Collins slash Eamon De Valera a wedgie.

See, it's a hundred years and we're still not over it.

Oh, Ireland.

Who said comedy can't be educational?

Has no one ever suggested that maybe we form some kind of like political

logic seems inescapable now.

Has that never been tried?

Oh no, we can't because you hate those bloody Europeans putting their towels out of the pool early in the morning.

Oh,

trying to straighten your bananas.

They're not your bananas, Andy.

So, joining me today, I am very rusty at this, so I'm finding it quite, well, simultaneously disconcerting,

strangely emotional,

and it's also making me think that I've lost all the skills that I once had.

What do I have to do now?

Oh, yes, the rest of the show.

The rest of the show.

Yes, so joining me today to boil the bones of the last week of news into a hopefully digestible stock.

Firstly, right here, right now, in person, please welcome for the first time in a Bugle Life Show, Chris Addison.

Good evening, Andy.

Good evening, Chris.

Lashana Tova, happy Rosh Hashanah to you.

Absolutely, yes.

I've had an awesome

Rosh Hashanah.

It's been

happy 5782.

Oh, yes.

A hell of a year.

Yes.

I was just wondering, and you know, so obviously you're 3,700 years in the future.

Yes.

What's it like?

Well, if everyone here was offered, what was it, 5,782?

Yep, yep, 5, 2,720.

Would you take a

3,800-year hibernation at this point?

I think that is a majority, Chris.

You've just had a 20-month hibernation, which you were complaining about a second ago.

I still haven't tidied my cupboards.

You're never going to tidy your cupboards.

So

how's your lockdown been?

Really good, actually.

I had a tremendous lockdown.

I put all my money into face masks.

So I'm wildly rich.

I did that suspiciously in October 2019,

but I don't want anyone to read anything into it.

Yeah, it's been an absolute shit show, same as everybody else.

Does anybody actually think they had a good lockdown?

Fuck!

In

a ruling in Texas, well a ruling in the American Supreme Court by a narrow five to four majority, the Texas law banning all abortions after six six weeks of pregnancy go into effect.

This is actually the sort of Republican side of the American political seesaw, which is

a party that doesn't believe in state intervention in people's businesses or in people's not being shot by deranged gun-toting lunatics, but does believe in state intervention in people's wombs, which, I mean, Alice, I mean, do you think this is...

Are we misrepresenting this?

I mean, it does seem slightly hypocritical.

It's such a a peculiar law, Andy.

I don't know if you've looked at the details of the law, but it allows bounties for snitches.

Like a weird pro-life video game where you just whack someone who's helping and their coins transfer to you.

Bing, bing, bing, bing, bing.

No, no, then one of those coins was a sperm, and you have to quickly gestate your new baby to term and look after it for 18 years, even though you don't know where that coin has been.

If your grandmother was right, all coins have been up someone's butthole.

Sorry, I got derailed.

Look, it's so badly written as a law.

You have to assume that they assumed it wouldn't pass.

It's like his very dog who caught the car and then had to figure out how to administer a rule that lets you basically just take $10,000 off someone involved in helping someone.

in distress.

It's completely incoherent, almost impossible to enforce, unwieldy.

It's like if someone just transcribed a drunk uncle's pro-life rant onto a napkin and then slammed it down in front of the Texas legislature and went this whole thing before puking into a pot plant.

That's basically how the American Constitution was written, isn't it?

I'm sure the founding fathers were fing happy.

It was written in a Frank and Benny's on a Friday night.

I just want a sane and rational society where everyone gets all their tubes pegged at puberty.

And then you have to do a test to get a child license, and it's a one-question test, which is, do you want to have a child?

And then they randomly randomly select one social media post you've made, and you have to name your child that post in full.

That would be tricky for me.

That means my first child would have been called die motherfucker die.

DMD Zaltz.

And six weeks is, I mean, that is

absurdly early, isn't Before some people have realized they're pregnant, or at least, you know, certainly come to terms psychologically with the implications of pregnancy on your life, your lifestyle, your responsibilities.

I know when my wife and I found out that she was pregnant in 2006, well, it took me a good

decade and a half and counting to get my head around it, to be honest.

You mean if I want to go out and watch sport on my own, I've got to monetize it?

What the f ⁇ ?

I mean, Chris, I know you're a massive fan of the brutal inhumanity of American vested interest politics.

What's your.

Well, the thing is, my problem with this law

is that it makes it even more difficult to ask that age-old question, am I in Texas or am I in Saudi Arabia?

Oil in the ground?

Czech.

Large areas of desert?

Czech.

Distinctive headgear?

Czech.

Religious lunatics as standard?

Czech.

Somewhat punchy attitude towards immigration?

Czech.

They're talking, but I can't understand what they're saying.

Czech.

Hatred of women, masquerading as moral high ground.

Check.

Really, the only way you can tell now whether you're in Texas or Saudi Arabia is to order some food and see whether it comes with barbecue sauce or hummus.

And the tigers as well.

And the tigers.

Lest we forget.

Look, let's try to take some positives from this situation.

I realise that that's like saying to somebody who's been wrongfully imprisoned, hey, at least you don't have to pay any bills and the clothes are free.

But nobody ever gained by being relentlessly negative, obviously apart from the the billionaire owner of the Daily Mail and Jeffrey Boycott.

But for a very long time, it's been of huge concern that medical procedures in the United States are ruinously expensive.

And to some degree, this law solves that problem.

It's a bigly American approach to solve the expense of medical procedures by banning medical procedures, but it's a little like solving the problem of being overweight by sawing your legs off.

But be careful what you wish for, I guess, is what I'm saying.

Well, you don't have to be pro-choice to see that some of the arguments are completely off the rails.

My favourite one that I saw recently was the guy who said that if women can't abortions,

if women can't get abortions, sorry,

they'll be more selective about the men they sleep with and only bang men who they would be happy to have fathered their children, and so all other men will have to step up their game, which is such a cute argument from somebody who's never met people before.

I think the problem for the pro-choice movement in fighting this law is that it's very hard to argue that a six-week-old fetus is non-viable when by that stage it has roughly the same mental capacity as a Republican voter.

The Republican Party, by the way, is technically no longer registered as a political organisation, but a handmaid's tail reenactment society,

which has the double benefit of allowing them to circumvent rules on donors and make the hoods they bought for their wives tax-deductible.

Most decent people believe that you don't really have a right to make laws concerning women's bodies if you don't have a woman's anatomy.

But of course, the largely male legislature of Texas was able to get around this on a technicality by being a bunch of.

I think the best way to fight this horrific tendency for largely male legislatures to make decisions about women's bodies is for women to say, okay, fine, fine.

Well, then you make all the decisions then.

The whole thing would very quickly stop if the likes of Texas Governor Greg Abbott were being wrung up every two minutes by a woman saying, is this milk off?

Or, oh yeah, I'm just in Nando.

Should I go with macho peas or peri-salted chips?

Greg, hello, sorry to bother you.

I was just going to send you something for your birthday, and I was wondering, do you think it should be a dog or a cat that I get the turd from?

Look, I know plenty of people who are kind, normal people who have feelings about abortion or aren't sure what they think.

And to those people, I would say, you're right.

It's a really hard ethical position to be in if you think women choosing not to carry a pregnancy is murder from day dot, which is actually what a blastocyst looks like.

But it's a really fascinating trolley problem for philosophy class.

And until we can measure the weight of a pending soul, and unless the issue is situated inside your own body, just pretend the unborn child is like collateral damage in a drone strike.

Oh, wow.

You know, that seems quite comfortably in the realm of quite sad boo-hoo, none of your business.

That or throw your pocket money into artificial womb technology and then every unwanted baby can be put grown in a bag and used to colonize the stars or whatever.

It's good to have a dream.

I am my brother.

But well luckily the Satanists are standing up against it.

Our people.

Yes, the Satanic Temple has launched legal action

against the ruling.

I mean Chris, I know when we were first working together you were dabbling in

the occult.

Yeah, I'm 74.

Hello, buglers, producer Chris here.

Thank you so much for listening to this, and do please come to our live UK and Ireland dates, even if you live nowhere near either of those places.

What a chance to travel it is.

The full information for all these episodes is in the show notes, but for the record, they were Bugles 4079, 4083, and 4204.

We'll be back with another show just like this, but different 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.